I usually grab a soup or salad from the cafeteria located in our office complex and work through lunch at my desk. Today I was compelled by a perfect fall day to go outdoors. I located this rather idyllic scene less than five minutes from the office. It never ceases to amaze me what great photos I can find in my own backyard. I need to remind myself to keep looking.
Nicolai saw lots of action today in a match against Boston Latin. The 1-0 victory brought the team’s record for the season to 10-1-1. Nico was dominant in the air and made several nice passes to set up attacks on the goal. We have learned that both People Magazine and USA Today would like to do articles about his recent exploits.
The entire company attended a retirement luncheon today to bid Joe Dyer, iRobot’s Chief Strategy Officer, farewell after nine years with the company. Joe served as a three-star Vice Admiral in the US Navy, commander of the Naval Air Systems Command, and commander of the Naval Air Warfare Center. Earlier in his career he was both a naval aviation chief engineer and the Navy’s chief test pilot. Several stories were shared by colleagues. My favorite was about a sailing voyage by the iRobot executives aboard Joe’s boat destined for Bermuda from Maryland. Apparently, as they were exiting the Chesapeake Bay they were radioed by the USS Enterprise aircraft carrier to give a wide berth (any small or large vessel failing to yield to an aircraft carrier will be shot out of the water as a matter of defensive protocol). Joe got on the radio, identified himself, and stated his destination. With no further communication, the Enterprise turned from its course to make way for Joe’s sailboat.
With the deadline for CCHS senior portrait submissions around the corner, Nico and I did a photo shoot yesterday and this morning he selected this image as his favorite. While I enjoy taking these pictures I am also left with a sense of melancholy. I miss both my little boys, GaGa and NuNu (toddler Maya-speak for the names of her brothers). Nothing left now but men.
My calf strain is finally healing. I missed my third soccer game in a row but feel confident I will be ready to play next weekend. It remains to be seen, however, what kind of shape I will be in after nearly a month on the disabled list.
Despite a strained hip flexor, Maya was in fine form this morning on the soccer pitch. With minutes remaining in a game tied at 1-1, she unleashed a right-footed rocket from the top of the box. The goalie was not able to handle it cleanly and a teammate tapped it in for the win. The air temperature was as cool as the skies were free of clouds. Jeanine and I decided to head up to Maine for some leaf peeping and to have dinner with her sister Susan who had rented a house in Kennebunkport with some friends. Our initial destination was the Sebago Lake State Park. Although there is a nice sand beach there, we cut our hiking short when it became apparent there was little fall color anywhere.
Our next stop proved much more scenic, tiny Mackworth Island, home to the Baxter School for the Deaf. A 1.25-mile trail around the perimeter of the 100-acre island offers great views of the surrounding area. We completed the trail just as the sun was setting and I found many great photographic subjects making all the driving today worth it. Our dinner with my sister-in-law Susan and her friends Jean and Lea was most enjoyable and fortified us for the return leg of our journey.
We share our breakfast nook with a small lemon tree where it is bathed in light from an east facing window for most of the day. One of three lemons currently on the tree appears ready to be picked. Jeanine’s gardens supply a reasonable volume of vegetables and herbs for our consumption. At a rate of one lemon every several months, however, our tiny citrus tree would be hard pressed to supply enough juice for a couple of glasses of lemonade. Still it is very satisfying to notice how the fruit grows and then ripens from week to week.
This autumn has been stingy with clear weather days aligned to peak fall color. Shortly after arriving at work this morning, I checked both my calendar and the weather forecast. Realizing I had a light schedule and a window of ideal weather, I decided I would take a vacation day to enjoy the fall foliage, something I increasingly look forward to with each passing year. I drove north for two hours to the Franconia Notch State Park, a favorite New Hampshire destination which never fails to provide a wealth of photographic opportunities. I revisited many of my favorite locations and several new ones. My calf muscle has healed sufficiently to allow pain free walking and benefited from all the hiking I did over the course of the day. I returned to Concord by 7:30PM with a camera full of wonderful images and a happy soul.
In 7 years of maintaining this photo journal I have never devoted a post to a topic entirely unrelated to our family. Today I would like to adopt, as my own daughter, 14-year old Malala Yousafzai from the town of Mingora in the Swat District of Pakistan. She was named after Malalai of Maiwand, a Pashtun poet and warrior woman. At the age of 11, she began blogging for the BBC under a pseudonym about the atrocities of the Taliban regime and their ban on education for girls. Malala was awarded the first National Peace Award by the Pakistani government last year and was nominated for the International Children’s Peace Prize by the international children’s advocacy group KidsRights Foundation. She remains a defiant voice against religious extremist views and an outspoken champion for children’s rights.
Yesterday she was shot in the head and neck along with two of her classmates as they were returning home from school by two masked gunmen. The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack and vowed to try again after learning she had survived. She is now in stable condition after an operation to remove the bullet from her neck.
I was reduced to tears and filled with anger when I learned of this story. Perhaps it is Malala’s nearness in age and appearance to Maya that has contributed to my profound grief and rage. I am not a man who believes in a God but I found myself praying for the full recovery of this brave young girl.
Today, I embrace Malala as my own daughter. Today, let her be your daughter as well. Tomorrow, let her be the daughter of all nations and let us all vow to protect her and to punish the cowards who attack our children.
In what will likely be the last interview Nicolai grants related to his now famous soccer goal (nearly 1.5 million YouTube hits and counting), we were visited this evening by a crew from the Fuji Television Network. They are working on a segment for a TV show called Shiritagari that will air in Japan this Friday afternoon. We have also been contacted by a South Korean network interested in doing a 20-30 minute short documentary piece to be filmed over 3-4 days. Given how time consuming each one of these interviews can be, we have decided to say no to the Korean opportunity. Nicolai is in the thick of the college application process which takes top priority. He has completed applications to 6 schools and plans to add another 6 before he is done. He is also sensitive to the distraction such interviews create to his soccer team when he is filmed at practice or during games. Hopefully life will now return to what passes for normal at the Calabria household.
I have encouraged Kyle to send the occasional photo of his life at Santa Clara University so that we can share it here with our family and friends. He is pictured in the basement of his dorm, participating in a P90X fitness workout. We are happy that he has nearly returned to his pre-snowboarding accident level of strength and flexibility. He made great progress over the summer and judging from this photo (see if you can find Waldo) it appears he is really staying on the path to full recovery. From our conversations with him it sounds like he is doing well academically and thriving socially. All of us miss him enormously and are looking forward to seeing him at Thanksgiving.
The joy of being an uncle is that you can enjoy a relationship with your nieces and nephews that is unencumbered by years of established patterns that exist between parent and child. My niece Rachel is a smart and beautiful young woman who is already an accomplished ballroom dancer at the age of 15. Like her mother, she is something of a fashionista and her idea of fun leans more towards an afternoon at the shopping mall than a walk through the woods. I decided, with very little input from her (an uncle’s prerogative) that she needed to join me on a kayak outing. The fact that she liked the color of the paddling shirt I provided (hint to her mother that she would like a rain coat in this hue) and that I could offer her a selection of sun hats to choose from worked in my favor. Before she could say “boo” we were in my car headed for a nearby put in. After a brief review of basic paddling strokes, she was on the water where we spent a few minutes practicing before setting off downstream for the Old North Bridge. Rachel’s dainty little stabs at the water soon gave way to powerful strokes that propelled her with great speed. By the end of our three mile round trip she had mastered forward and reverse sweep strokes, could easily perform a 360 degree turn and was able to steer with great accuracy. We encountered several Blue Herons and a couple of turtles which we glided right up to for close viewing. Rachel was undaunted by my reports of trolls which lived under the bridges or alligators that infested the river. She did, however, seem genuinely terrified when a tiny fish jumped out of the water near her kayak. Apparently her next uncle-niece outing will need to include a fishing pole, an adventure I will leave to my brother Mark, the master angler of the family.
Cool night air made for perfect camping weather. Maya and I were quite cozy in our down sleeping bags and two person tent. We enjoyed a hearty breakfast in the nearby town of Jaffrey before embarking on a kayaking tour of the Contoocook Lake and River. Maya can be seen above just barely able to paddle underneath the Monadnock Branch Rail Trail. I had to resort to a Limbo style maneuver and had an even tighter clearance.
This is without a doubt my favorite time of year in New England. Everywhere you turn the colors of autumn cover the landscape and in our case the waterscape as well. I never take for granted the beauty which surrounds us and sharing the experience with Maya is all that a father could ask for. We covered about 4 miles on the water but a very serious headwind on our return translated to about 6 miles of paddling. Maya put ashore on what could easily be the state’s tiniest island and relaxed after a full morning on the water. From this vantage point she took a photo of me which I thought she did a very nice job of framing. We returned to Concord by mid afternoon as the perfect weather gave way to overcast skies and the threat of rain.
Twenty two years ago, on a similarly spectacular fall day, I married Jeanine at our home in Fishers, Indiana. Our ceremony was held outdoors among massive beech trees with nature as our cathedral. We celebrated our anniversary this evening in the company of Maya and my sister Alissa and her two children, Rachel and Johnnie, at the Petit Robert Bistro in Needham. An exquisite finish to an exceptional day. My only wish now is for another 22 years with the woman I love.
With kayaks atop the car and camping equipment in the back, Maya and I left on an impromptu father-and-daughter weekend adventure. When we left the house at around 6pm we turned right on Williams Road with the intent of heading north. As Maya ran down a checklist of critical gear, I realized I had forgotten my GPS unit and PLB (personal locator beacon – last resort distress signal). We turned back having traveled less than a mile. With the missing items retrieved, we struck out again and this time turned left on Williams Road heading to the west.
There is something very exciting about setting out on an adventure without a predetermined destination. When we stopped for dinner about an hour later we found ourselves in the vicinity of Ringe, Hew Hampshire at Lilly’s on the Pond, a fine restaurant familiar to us from a past outing. When we returned to the car we programmed our navigator to locate the nearest campground and were please to discover that we were minutes from the Woodmore Campground which happily had a few tent sites remaining (exquisite fall foliage brings many campers to NH at this time of year). Maya and I quickly pitched our tent and built a rather massive fire by which she did homework while I enjoyed photographing her.
Chocolate syrup, honey, and milk. Which is the most dense? Which is the least? This evening Maya conducted a science experiment to determine the answers to these questions. Her initial hypothesis was correct as confirmed by her testing and documented in this photograph that she took. Apparently, Maya is unfamiliar with the tale of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde and concluded her experiment by sampling her concoction which she reported to be VERY sweet.