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   Ok all of you guessers out there.  Where was this photo taken?

So, on Saturday we were driving along Sarah Wells Trail and noticed two more regional differences between East and West.  The Trail has been recently resurfaced, and the highway caution signs read Loose Stone  and Low Shoulder.  In the West, it would be Loose Rock, Watch for Rock, etc., and the (giggling allowed) Soft Shoulder.  I’m not even sure what they mean by Low Shoulder.  Is that the same as Soft Shoulder?  Or maybe even Cold Shoulder? 

  Craig and Claire walk behind Ginny, Nicholas, Tiffany-Ann and Noah, who is up there somewhere, leading us all down the path.  Deering Oaks Park, Portland, Maine, Tuesday, August 14th. 

  Watching the kids play.

   Happy Belated Anniversary to Nicholas and Tiffany-Ann, who celebrated their sixth anniversary while here last week.  My, how you’ve aged.  (Just kidding.)  And happy 61st anniversary to Mom and Dad, celebrating in Driggs today.  They show us all how it’s done. 

  Happy 9th anniversary, Libby and Patrick!  What fun it was to attend your wedding in Seattle.  It seems like a long time ago.  Nicholas was in Russia, Tom and Jeanette were at the wedding…we lived in Idaho, sort of.  This photo was taken not long after your wedding, in Coeur d’Alene.  I hope you have a fun celebration, now that you’ve come full circle, back in Seattle. 

  Contrary to what you might think, Maine has some great sandy beaches and water temperatures are fairly warm.  Claire loves the water almost as much as Noah. 

   Nicholas and Noah are fast buddies.

   Tiffany-Ann and Charlie. 

    We walked around Portland and came across this great little trio who play at the farmers market on Wednesdays.  They obviously have been playing together for many years.  They were really good!  Portland is a wonderful little town.

The is the other side of the audience from last night’s production of Arthur Miller’s The Crucible, which we attended last night at the Elmwood Playhouse in Nyack, New York.  This wasn’t your usual community theater, and though I expected the folks to take it up a notch, considering the proximity to the city, I didn’t expect excellence on this order.  I’ve seen community theater in many places, but nothing remotely approached the quality of last night’s production.  Dang, these folks knew their craft.  We sat not five feet from the action.  I hadn’t seen The Crucible since college, (the movie doesn’t count), and though that production was in the round, this one took the prize for the most intimacy.  Though a metaphor of the McCarthy witch hunt, the play is as relevant in its allegorical references to today’s political climate.  I wondered aloud to Randy on the way home how many new productions of The Crucible we’ll see before Bush leaves office.