Hope Springs eternal

It has finally stopped raining on Cape Cod. April has held a razor’s edge to our throats with cutting winds and pelting rain smudging the skies for weeks. Although it is hard to remember, the giant Klieg light glaring down from above... is the sun. I kid you not. How quickly after the switch gets turned on does our behavior brighten. Suddenly there is a cause for hope. The birds are numerous and colorful at the feeder, not just the black, white and grays of the winter months, and their appetite’s are voracious. Even a wild turkey sauntered through the yard the other morning to add to my picture window life list. The flowers, timid as they might be to enter the dance a little too early, are ready to Cha Cha, and sing. I can’t remember the forsythia taking this long to golden up though. Come on guys give us some color. Why even the Red Sox...(Note: Speaking of color. Theo, please have the boys keep the green shirts in the lockers as much as possible. I appreciate the genuflect to the great Red-Man Friday night, may his soul rest in the rafters of the old Garden forever, but my television control dials are still askew trying to figure out why the Bo Sox, who these days wear their pants down low to hide them, have suddenly got a Christmas look to them.) Sorry, I digress. The old town team have found good fortune so far this weekend against the Evil Empire. Today will be a great chance for us to see what the new kamikaze kid from the Land of the Rising Sun can do against the dreaded Rankee's. Will he crash and burn, or will it be Bronx Bombers away. Please, please let it be the latter. And one last thing before I head out to my son’s Little League practice, gosh I salivate just typing that. It’s getting to be time to clean out the tackle box, and cut and re-tie the lures for surely on any tide now the Sound will be full of stripers again. So it goes. Another Cape Cod winter may be coming to an end. As winter’s go it wasn’t as bad as it could be, but enough is enough, let’s move on.

That gnawing feeling

The name rip is fairly appropriate for the slashing currents along Cape Cod's backside. The recent Nor'easter tore yet another hole along North Beach, creating yet another island. Pleasant Bay might not be worthy of her monika now that her big bad sister the Atlantic Ocean seems to barge in with each passing sizable gale. Oh well it will keep the cartographers busy. Hmm...The insurance companies might be on to something when it comes to being a little nervous when it comes to covering all those new million dollar cottages that have sprung up since any really bad blows like '38 have come a calling. Cocktail conversation of the "Jetty" setters is surely to include rip rap on the rocks.

Then one day he blew

It pains our hearts to see the carnage in Virgina. The nation, the world, stops and stares not able to find adequate words to express the shock and sorrow. Although the gunman fit the criteria to obtain a handgun, he seemed hard put to fit into the norms of campus society. Funny how that is. Odd, a loner, quiet, strange, anti-social one by one traits noticed by a few but not quite enough to set off the early warning alarm. Not even mentioned with his filled-out form and ID cards presented for the background check to buy what turned out to be his weapons of mass destruction. The hazy signs existed, dabbed here and there like graffiti sprayed on walls, but the mural of Mr. Cho Seung-Hui's massacre can only be brought into focus by taking a few steps back, only after the shots stopped ringing and the smoke drifted away. As skewed as his vision was he saw it with crystal clarity. He had his plan and when the time came he executed it. After getting the taste of blood, he methodically went back to his dorm room sent his 'manifesto" to NBC and loaded his pockets with clips of ammo, to finish the job. The fuse was lit long ago in Seung-Hui's disturbed brain, smoldering until it exploded on a Monday morning in April. Not the first, and unfortunately not the last. Once again another who slipped through the cracks to shatter many innocent lives around him.