Clanggg! Clanggg! Yesterday I felt like I was living in a Kafka novel. I was being cut off from the world one step at a time with no idea why and no idea how to fight my way back in. First, by mid-morning I became unable to use any search engines, a tool I frequently turn to throughout the day for research. Rather than delivering vital information, I simply found myself being routed through an apparent mobius strip of “redirects” and “jump” sites. I struggled to no avail and finally gave up awaiting IT support. After several meetings, I returned to my computer in early afternoon optimistic that IT had solved the problem, but instead I found my screen black and unresponsive. No function, no activity, the power light the only one lit. Bad signs all around. The verdict: hard drive crashed. Had I done something to offend the technology gods? Had I forgotten to pay protection deposits to our IT director? And why had I saved so many handy files to my desktop instead of to the network? I received a new laptop, connected to the network but continued to feel increasingly cut off. None of my program or file shortcuts existed. None of my hundred or so internet bookmarks survived. None of my personalized email formatting remained. Every task that had been a click or two became a seemingly arduous and interminable process of manual keystrokes. Things that had only taken two seconds now took 15 or 20! The final straw was later in the day when my boss, the founder and president of the Stern Center, told me she’d been trying to call me fro her Blackberry but that the speed dial indicated my phone number was no longer available! I was frustrated, bewildered, and trapped. It was nearly the end of the day and coworkers advised, “Just go home. It will be easier tomorrow.” But I saw the voice mail light blinking on my phone and decided I could at least check messages that way. I pushed the button only to hear, “There are no messages.” Clanggg!

“Music is a moral law. It gives soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination, and charm and gaiety to life and to everything.” Plato

Last Saturday evening over 100 souls and imaginations gathered for a new community experience at the opening concert in the new burlington ensemble’s 90/10 series. The concept grew from conversations among three local musicians aspiring to make their music more accessible to new audiences while supporting broader community resources of the nonprofit world. The 90/10 reference in the series title illustrates the ratio of funding support between the nonprofit and the musicians for each concert. The founding musicians are developing programs which reflect the essence of each nonprofit partner, have secured a donated venue, and are seeking commitments from local and regional professional musicians. The opening concert benefited the Stern Center for Language and Learning with a program of Beethoven’s piano quartets written when he was only 14 years old, a truly Precocious Prodigy per the concert title and fully in keeping with the Stern Center’s conviction that ‘all great minds don’t think alike.’

As people lingered after the concert, still basking in the shared pleasure of fine music, conversations focused on both the quality of the performance and the wonder and simple elegance of music helping build community. It touched our souls and gave flight to our imaginations. It’s not Plato, but it reminded me of another famous quote, “Let it be.”

When I was a kid, fishing on Lake Champlain with my grandfather in his 15 foot, closed hull, outboard we paid serious attention to the weather forecast, especially the wind speeds. All afternoon each Friday I listened to my pocket transistor radio for the weather. “Small craft warnings” and “waves over a foot” smashed my fishing plans for Saturday. So imagine my adjustment when last weekend Jill and I were invited sailing because there would be “really good wind, with waves 1-2 feet!” Neither of us has been sailing more than twice and never on a 32 foot craft or with 2 foot waves, but we decided, “Why not?” and had a great time. I handled the wheel and learned a bit about tack and jib. The real sailors, our hosts, noticed I was clenching most of my muscles and advised that I relax, which I found easier said than done. Eventually I unclenched but never became “one with the boat!” (The photos prove the angle of the boat with the horizon in the background.)

I guess the point here is that we didn’t say, “No thank you,” but rather went for it despite our trepidation, and it proved really cool. Last year it was a hot air balloon ride one mile high. This summer was sailing when my grandfather would have headed for shore. I’m finding that often saying, “Yes” is more fun than, “No.”

The end of summer carries many clichés, many poignant memories of releasing our grips on long days, balmy nights, volleyball on the beach, smore’s at camp, shorts and flip-flops. State fairs. Leaves beginning to change. And school busses slowing our morning commutes. It’s that last one that still tugs at my heart the most. Having spent 24 years working in public schools, 19 as a principal, at this time of the year I feel like the geese being pulled toward a familiar, powerful destination. As I drove to work Monday (now at the Stern Center for Language and Learning, still education though not in the schools), I passed clusters of kids waiting for busses. Kindergarteners in crisp new clothes, clutching primary colored backpacks with one hand and a parent with the other. Teens slouching in T-shirts and boarder’s shorts, ear buds linked to i-Touch. Still, four years removed from the school scene, my heart bends just a bit, like a dowser’s rod, toward those kids, those schools, those days.

My daughters and I were celebrating Fathers’ Day in August, a recent tradition they began when they bought themselves fishing licenses as a Father’s Day gift so we could plan a day of fishing and picnicking together. It has been great fun despite my not yet having caught a fish on this special day! This year we were fishing near the camp where I’d spent most summer weekends with my grandparents. I was shocked that I’d never brought the girls to see this place that had been so important to me through my teen years, so we took a detour which ended up feeling more like a pilgrimage. Driving slowly down the road, I felt my body travel back in time. We stopped in front of the log cabin camp with the full screened-in porch, and I noticed only two visible changes. The current owners had installed white, ornamental scrollwork along the roof lines, and the porch door (I could still hear it slapping behind me) was lavender. Otherwise the camp was the same place I remembered from all those enduring and endearing summer weekends. However, when I drew back for a wider view I realized that what had been small, neighboring camps had been transformed into two-story, expanded year-round homes complete with vinyl siding and garages. “Our” little log cabin looked like the main character in the children’s book “The Little House” (1943, Caldecott winner), diminished by encroaching and expanding development. Nevertheless, the girls thought it was cool, and they both remembered the most dramatic story from family lore, “This is the place where your grandmother fought all the bats!” It was also the place I slept on the porch on a green plastic glider couch, played cribbage with my grandparents for hours on end, and caught a lot more fish than I have on the these Fathers’ Days in August!

Pixels and degrees; by any measure the separations between us all are at least fewer if not thinner. I attended a very provocative luncheon session yesterday featuring Mitch Joel, blogger, podcaster, and author of Six Pixels of Separation. As the book’s subtitle says, “Everyone Is Connected.” In the emerging digital age of social media, those connections are broader than ever before and growing exponentially, or is it “fractally?” The presentation, less than half delivery, more than half Q&A conversation with the audience, was lively, focused, witty, both philosophical and practical (“Don’t ask what you should be doing with social media; ask why you would use it for your business.”), and stimulating. While not unusual for VT, before the session even began as we 7 at our table made introductions we discovered almost instantly that 6 of us had at least one connection only one degree of separation apart. Given that in terms of our physical social networks, image how connected we and the other 300 people are in terms of pixels!

Marissa had just turned one, and Lindsay was not yet even in the plans when we first stayed at the cottage on Thomas Pond. Built by the parents of Jill’s college friend Liz, it had the rustic allure of the film On Golden Pond. Quiet, peaceful, loon pairs, families of geese, canoes and paddle boats, no television but with electricity and plumbing. We were young and enchanted and without knowing it began constructing family traditions with unbreakable bonds and deep roots. Last week we returned for our annual stay, now less than a week but still made graciously available to us as the only non-family members having access. (The Wood family is now into its third generation of cottage-goers, so we are delighted to schedule our days whenever offered in their family calendar planning.)

Over the years the cottage has gained accoutrements of that family’s growing interests, talents and needs. It became part of our family tradition to ‘find the new things’ each year. Some where obvious, like the carpeting over the cement slab floor, or the window curtains, or the television (both a blessing and a curse), or the microwave, or the new dock. Others less so, like the can opener or the extra set of coffee mugs or the replacement screens. Of course, as the cottage changed, so did we. Our activities took on more variety as the girls moved through childhood into adolescence and now are adults. Over the years we added a trip to Freeport, first night lobsters for everyone, fried shrimp boats at the Lobster Shack at Two Lights State Park, s’mores, occasional friends adding to the mix, eventually even a boyfriend, wine tasting at the Blacksmith Winery, collecting sea glass, feeding the ducks, and watching the loons.

Every year at least one of the girls, but in a remarkable blessing, most years they both want to and can be with us for a couple of days. Last week for two days and nights, both girls managed to join us. Marissa is now 29 and Lindsay 25, and we still play “find the new thing,” still go to Freeport, eat lobster, watch the loons, and taste the wine. And again this year, when we returned home, I sprinkled a handful more sea glass into the vase on our coffee table.