When I arrived at my house on Cape Cod last month the Boston Red Sox were a couple of games behind the New York Yankees in the American League East and their position at the top of the Wildcard spot for the playoffs seemed assured.  Hopes were high in Sox Nation that this could be the third time this century we went all the way to the World Series because hope is what Sox fans do best.  Were it not for our perennial optimism, the Boston Red Sox would have gone out of business in the 1950s.

Even when I attended a game at Fenway Park on September 19th and the Sox lost, no one seemed particularly concerned, but in the rear view mirror we were headed for an iceberg.   That slow motion play in the outfield symbolized the lumbering and painfully consistent Epic Collapse of 2011, now recognized as one of the greatest late season failures in sports history.

After the Red Sox lost 21 of their last 29 games, the first to go was Manager Terry Francona.  A neophyte to the sport would have a difficult time spotting him in the dugout because unlike the coaches of all other sports, the “coach” or manager of a baseball team suits up like the rest of the guys instead of wearing a sports coat.  I’ve always thought there is a psychological purpose to this.  He’s the boss, but he dresses like a player which should make for a more cohesive team spirit, except that this manager was unable to keep an eye on his spoiled players in the clubhouse drinking bear, eating fried chicken and playing video games, during the baseballs games.

The next head to roll was General Manager Theo Epstein, the trailblazing Yale educated wonder boy hired in 2003 at the age of 28  to turn the team’s fortunes around, which he did in 2004 and again in 2007 with World Series victories.   The Red Sox let him out of his contract one year early this week to take a new job with the Chicago Cubs.

Finally, Boston’s beloved Big Papi, the colorful and powerful David Ortiz, told ESPN he was no longer happy playing with a team that lacked any spirit, and he envied the — are you sitting down?  —  New York Yankees.  Sacrilege!

It’s ironic that fans battled big-city traffic and paid $50 for a ticket to watch every play on the field, while Josh Beckett, Jon Lester, and John Lackey acted like they were at home in the family room.  When a baseball game is an imposition on a multi-million dollar player’s free time, and management fails to correct it, the team is doomed.  That is Business 101. There was talk that the Red Sox and its $161 million payroll would ascend in the 21st century to the role the Yankees held all through the 20th, but today the Sox don’t seem to be any better now than they were a hundred years ago.

It’s all so frustrating for diehard fans of this team, and all so familiar.  Only after the Sox won the World Series did I start to see people in Syracuse wearing  Red Sox T-shirts and hats.  I suppose the Epic Collapse of 2011 will take care of that.  There’ll be an abundance of Sox clothing arriving at Goodwill boxes around the country in the coming months.  Who wants to be associated with a toxic team?

Last month my friend Catherine and I bought  Jacoby Ellsbury T-shirts to wear to the game at Fenway Park.  Yesterday, I was wearing mine to paint the breezeway of my house, preferring to splat paint on that shirt before sacrificing any other in the drawer.

In the end, with little effort, I didn’t get a single spot of paint on my Number 2.  An omen perhaps?  It still looks new and I can wear it again next year.

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There is a wonderful bicycling culture on Cape Cod.  The Commonwealth of Massachusetts repurposed the old train tracks no longer needed once automobiles and trucks took over the job of transporting people and goods here, and applied an eight-foot wide paved path extending 22 miles.  Now you can bike from Dennisport in the central part of the Cape to Wellfleet which approaches the “wrist” of the Cape’s sandy arm that extends into the Atlantic Ocean.

The trail is primarily wooded with scrub oaks and pitch pines, and glossy poison ivy occasionally extends its reach onto the path.   But there is plenty of variety on the rail trail too.  You pass salt marshes and cranberry bogs, you cross dozens of streets both large and small, and you even cross over the only highway on Cape Cod on a small bridge built specifically for bikers and pedestrians.  Whenever you reach a street, all cars must stop to let bikers pass.  That’s part of the culture here.

You also pass behind the back yards of homes and you find little homemade signs indicating a cafe or bike shop nearby.  One such treasure is the super unique breakfast bar at the private little airport in Chatham where my friends Carrie and Dave biked 5 miles the other day to earn the calories for our breakfast.  At any point you can get off the path and share the roads with cars to get to a particular destination such as a beach.

That’s what I did yesterday afternoon.  I left my house in Harwich and rode 11 miles to Skaket Beach on Cape Cod bay.  I only needed to accommodate auto traffic–my least favorite form of biking, for a couple of miles between the ocean and the rail trail.    Once I arrived at the beach I pulled out a lobster roll I had made at home, rewarded myself with my favorite sandwich in all the world, and rode back home.  It was about 23 miles in all.

Here are some photos I took along the way, including a few of cranberry bogs.  If you ever wondered where your Thanksgiving cranberries come from, it starts right here on Cape Cod.  What appear to be ordinary fields or marshes are actually cranberry farms which are intentionally flooded at harvest time to allow the buoyant berries to float to the top for gathering.   It’s quite a sight, right down to the man who stands up in a surface contraption to pick them up.

This is the typical view along the Cape Cod Rail Trail

A narrow little bridge allows bikers to cross the highway in Harwich

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Occasionally you pass through metal culverts

Cape Cod is filled with fresh water ponds which you can see from the trail

Here is where I left the trail to get to the beach. Pretty home for sale

Arrival at Skaket Beach, Orleans. Famous for sunsets

Cranberry bog before annual intentional flooding

And here is a bog that is flooded. All the red you see are cranberries

This funny-looking machine looks like a stand up paddle boat

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I met some new friends yesterday who told me why the children call their grandfather “Guppy”.  When one of them was very young, he tried to say “Poppy” like his siblings but it came out “Guppy”, and that was so cute it stuck.  The more I think of a grandfather known as Guppy, the funnier it gets.   And Guppy has some nicknames too; Gups, Gup, The Gupper.

My family has a similar story.  When Christian was learning to talk, he pronounced his own name as “Kitchen” which was too adorable to correct.  I ignored the advice of all the experts who advise stating it correctly each and every time until the child gets it right, and instead, I perpetuated it.  Christian was Kitchen until the older siblings abbreviated it down to Kitch.  When he’s not ‘Honey”, he’s still Kitch to me.

When I was a baby, my parents told me I once watched a dog relieve himself on the lawn and instead of remarking “messy doggy”, it came out “messy doddy”, and for my entire childhood, poop from any living creature became a messydoddy.  I think it brought my squeamish parents  some relief not to call it by any other name than one that didn’t sound like anything at all.  Messydoddy?  Now that’s some code!  Who could overhear our family’s bathroom talk and conclude messydoddy was feces?

With three slightly younger sisters there were many years of our odd family euphemism, such as “do you need to do wee wee or a messy doddy?  Any parent of little ones knows the “messydoddy” involves a different strategy.   That ridiculous word went on for years.

Guppy, Kitchen, messydoddy.  The more I think of them, the more absurd they seem.  Do you have any silly family names?  Please share.

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It’s been a long, long time since I saw a Boston Red Sox game at Fenway Park; so long in fact, that I don’t recall going there even once after I moved to Syracuse in 1980. Back then I was one of only about 550 people in the world who still thought the Red Sox could do it.  Sure, they hadn’t done it since 1918 but what did a detail like that mean to an optimist like me?

But I was the only Sox fan in Central New York, land of the N.Y. Yankees with a smattering of Toronto Blue Jays.  My drought began.  No mention of my Sox on TV in Syracuse, nothing but a tiny box score for coverage in the newspaper.   That went on for 24 miserable years.

But then our fortunes changed.  The Sox finally won the World Series in 2004 and again in 2007.  Suddenly there were Sox banners on cars all over the place and people wore Red Sox hats and sweatshirts, in public even.

So how long do you think I considered the invitation of my Cape Cod friends Catherine and Barry, who had an extra ticket for today’s afternoon game; the first of a doubleheader?  The Red Sox have sold out every game since May 15, 2003.  Heck ya, I’d love to come!

We made the hour and a half drive from the Cape this morning, gabbing all the way, and you know, I didn’t even ask where the seats were?  I was prepared to sit at the top of the bleachers, or behind a pole, or way under the roof where you almost have to duck to see the outfield in the distance, or gee, a hallway TV monitor wouldn’t even be so bad as long as I was inside that marvelous brick structure again, hearing the crowd and smelling the food stands.

When my sisters and I were teenagers in the 1970s, we smartly went to the box office at the beginning of the summer and asked which of the box seats on weekday games had been turned back in for sale.  Weekday afternoon games were more frequent years ago, but they sparsely attended by the businessmen who held the boxes for the season, so we bought them up in advance for about $12.00 a piece.

Often the best seats were when the worst teams were in town.  Those were the games my sisters and I loved most because we had the pick of the park and we frequently ended up almost on top of the Sox dugout.  Those were the days.  Days which don’t happen anymore.  Until today.  I never even asked Catherine where our seats were because I really didn’t care.  When you’ve been thirsty for a long time, you don’t mind if the first glass of water is warm.

Outside the park, Catherine considered buying a Jacoby Ellsbury T-shirt, so I bought one for each of us.  This is a tradition begun with my other dear friend Valerie.  When we travel someplace new we buy two of the same thing as a remembrance of the day.  For Catherine and me it was these bright red T-shirts, which we put on over our regular clothes for the game.  We looked ridiculous, like some pathetic older moms with a crush on a young player, and we didn’t care.  We thought it was funny.

We moved with the sea of other fans in a wave that was both festive but purposeful as this season winds down and we’re still in second place. We passed the iconic gates and old-style ticket booths and went up one level into the park but then we went down.  Down and down further, on steps that seemed never to end but which took us close enough to the field to view immaculate grass discerned by blades not just by color, to where the pitch of the seats flattened out for being at eye level with the players.   Our seats were in the fourth row.

I don’t remember much about the entire first inning.  I was in shock.   With so much of the Fenway system changed since those opportunistic days for my sisters and me, and with so much of my life changed since then too, never did I believe I would park it in box seats at Fenway again.  Today proved one more time, everything in life is possible.

Once I got a grip, I made the following impressions: A hot dog at Fenway Park is about the most delicious thing you can eat.  In spite of 30 thousand people sitting all in one place, it’s a remarkably quiet place to be, until everyone roars on a play.  You don’t have to whisper like golf and tennis but if you talk about anything personal, the people seated just one foot in front of you will hear every word.  You get two seasons of apparel at the park in September –people in full sun in the bleachers are in July and wearing white T-shirts, but it’s late fall with dark jackets in shade behind home plate.

As I get bigger and my world expands, Fenway shrinks and becomes more important.  When I went as a child with my parents I don’t know if I had ever been in such a gigantic and scary place.  Today it is smaller than ever.  Thank goodness.

So thank you, thank you, thank you Catherine and Barry.  I will always remember this.  And when the day comes that my memory is a little fuzzy, I’ll have a bright red Jacoby Ellsbury T-shirt to bring it all back.

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All my life I’ve dreamed of an extended stay on Cape Cod and now I’m doing it.  The fourth child is securely in place at college.  My one-month sojourn at the house in Harwich is underway.

It was 11 years ago next month when I bought it.  Since that time I’ve stolen a week each summer with my family,  plus some long task-filled weekends opening it up and putting it away, while other vacationing families rent it and pay for it. One of them is a woman from Texas who comes every year for three weeks in June.  She has spent more time in my house than I have.

Friends ask how I can stand other people using my stuff.  Those other people, none whom I’ve met personally, are the reason I have any of this “stuff” at all.  Plus the pen pal experience of describing it each winter to the families shopping for their rental online is very pleasant.   In that way, I feel I do know them a little bit.  The Texas woman I now consider a friend after all these years as we share the ups and downs of our lives via email throughout the year.

I learn something from the items that get left behind in the rush out the door each changeover Saturday.  I’m mailing back a Wii video game controller to a family with children as attached to their game systems as much as mine were.  One year I found a bottle of anti-depressants that obviously rolled beneath a dresser and hung out under the baseboard heat until I came along with my dry mop in the fall.  I wondered at what point in the vacation did the woman realize her medication was gone, and did it trigger the kind of stress she thought she’d avoid during her week at the beach.  I’ve found tiny bathing suits left in drawers and baseball caps in the garage.

I admit, the first trip back in the fall after a succession of families has occupied the house all summer, is a little rough.  Things get moved around, the kitchen cabinets are completely reorganized, missing items which I first wonder might have been taken are almost always discovered in a different room, but the total effect is jarring.  This year someone rearranged the furniture in the living room and didn’t put it back.  Was it a family from the beginning of the summer and was it left that odd way for all successive families?  Or was it the last family at Labor Day?

Then of course there is the occasional stain in the carpet and item that breaks.  Last year I discovered someone had stained one of the living room sofa cushions, and instead of taking some cold water and detergent to it, they simply flipped it over to wait out the rest of the summer in secret.   I will spare you the description of what heat and high Cape humidity did to the stain while it was tucked out of view.

This time I found the top to the vegetable drawer in the refrigerator broken off.  These are not partyers who rent my house; they are families seeking their slice of Cape Cod for a week.  I attribute the breakage to the cheap plastic parts of new fridges more than any mishandling on the part of guests.  The sofa stain?  Maybe it was a child who wasn’t supposed to be eating in the living room and feared getting in trouble.  You have to be highly flexible to manage a house like this but the reward for that flexibility is the house itself.  And right now, it is all mine again.

In between walks to the beach and dinners out with two girlfriends I’ve come to cherish through the years, I’m sorting toys, touching up paint and doing lots of cleaning.  I’m not done yet but unlike years past where I literally ran up and down stairs to get it all done before departure in a day or two, this year I have a month to finish it!

Oh and this time, I’ve got the added “benefit” of cleaning up after Hurricane Irene.  We didn’t hear much about the damage on Cape Cod with all the flooding in Upstate New York and the Southern Tier, but much of the vegetation here, including my gigantic New Dawn roses which face south –the ocean side, got scorched with salt spray burn.  It looks like an early, colorless autumn in my yard, plus two trees suffered fatal breaks and will need to be removed as soon as the over-booked tree guys can get over here.

Here’s what the roses looked like in June: Cape Roses

And here’s what they look like this morning: After Hurricane

No place, no situation, is ever perfect, but this one is pretty special.

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I had the incredible good fortune to spend an afternoon on Stony Island in Lake Ontario last weekend, a 1,500 acre land mass carved up mostly by just two property owners; my friends and the Phillips Petroleum Corporation.   The warm, sunny September weather and my first-ever sighting of a bald eagle in flight made the day all the more memorable.

Stony Island is part of the Galloo Island cluster of land masses on the eastern edge of Lake Ontario near Henderson Harbor.  It is accessible only by boat and because Lake Ontario is big water, the boat must be particularly seaworthy.  My friends and I went over on a 29 foot fishing boat which effortlessly handled the chop, though the lake was very peaceful on that day.

Waterside views of Big Galloo and Little Galloo islands,  Calf and Gull islands among others,  mark the 40 minute cruise at 28 mph and then Stony Island is in sight.  We find the narrow-walled bridge which serves as the gateway to the private dock of the property and let me tell you, you’ve never seen a fit so tight as going under that bridge.   Luckily our pilot has 50 years of experience navigating these waters.  He did it in a cinch.  A video of his effort follows the article.  On my screen it reads like little numbers.  Just click on it.

From there it’s a slow cruise up a sleepy river through the center of the island. This is where I saw the bald eagle which flew above the trees on shore and seemed to follow us for several minutes before disappearing into the tree canopy.  He was smaller than I thought he would be, not much larger than a big black crow, but the white head and furry legs identified him immediately.

We tied up to a small, solid wood dock.  In fact, everything about this ancient place is solid wood and home made.  The old camp is virtually unchanged for more than 100 years when my friend’s great, great grandparents purchased 1,000 acres of Stony Island when waterfront was cheap.

From the dock it is a 100 yard walk up a grassy tree-lined path to the cottage.  We pass a rusted old truck which was brought over by barge in the 1950s, died in the yard and left to form it’s own nature preserve.

The closer we get to the house on the little hill, the louder it becomes.  Within moments you see the white-caps and dark blue water through breaks in the trees, and by the time the house is in sight, the chilly wind tells you you have reached the other, open side of the Lake.   Of course, “lake” is relative.  For its uninterrupted view of undeveloped waterfront to the left and to the right of the house, it mimics some undiscovered island in the vast carribbean ocean.

I brought my bathing suit to take a swim, and the water was certainly warm enough to accommodate me, however I feared I would never warm up afterward and it would be a miserable ride back on a boat with cold bones and wet hair, so my only exposure to the beautiful water was to wash the few dishes we made with our picnic lunch at the water’s edge.  The generator that powers the hot water heater and electricity in the house was turned off for the season.  Talk about old-fashioned!

This was the first time I met my friend’s five and seven year old children who spend much of their summer at this quiet place.  I have never seen two young children so able to entertain themselves in the way of earlier generations.  They amused themselves among the trees and yard of the property, alternately playing together like a sibling symphony, and trotting off on their own to explore bugs, rocks and twigs.  Not once in the four or five hours that we were there did these children cling to their mom to report they were bored.  It reminded me of my own childhood a bit because if I ever told my mother I was bored, she would not have cared.  There were rocks and bugs I was expected to discover in my backyard too.

Our return boat ride was lovelier than the arrival.  It was warmer by 4:30 pm, and the sun was spotlighting our faces as it sunk toward the horizon.  I didn’t want it to end.  Maybe that’s why I swear it took us 40 minutes to get to the island, but about 15 minutes to get back.

Isn’t that always the way when you’re doing something special?

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I’m joining some new friends on a day trip to Henderson Harbor tomorrow.  From there we will go on a boat to an island in Lake Ontario.  Cool, huh?

We’ll have a picnic lunch so when deciding what I would bring, I chose my mom’s potato salad.  Mom was German but this is not classic German potato salad.  When my mother emigrated to the U.S. right after World War II, sentiments toward Germans were not particularly warm and she worked like heck to assimilate into our culture in every way, including cuisine.

This potato salad recipe was always a huge hit growing up, perhaps because of a unique ingredient.  See if you can detect it in the recipe that follows.  I don’t know where my mother first saw this recipe; probably in a magazine or old cookbook.  With vegetables coming in in abundance now, and with the kitchen cool enough to boil potatoes again, I thought I would share.

Liz McCann’s Potato Salad

Combine 4 large potatoes, peeled, diced and then boiled, 1 cup chopped celery, 1/2 cup sliced scallions, 1/2 cup minced fresh parsley, 3 hard-boiled sliced eggs.  Add 1/4 cup bottled French salad dressing, and salt and pepper to taste.

Mix 3/4 cup mayonnaise, 2 1/4 tsp. mustard, 1 1/2 Tbl. fresh lemon juice.   Add to potato mix and refrigerate for several hours.  It always tastes better the next day.

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My good friend and blog advertiser, hair stylist Isabel Claps has moved to Syracuse’s newest, most charming location.  She joins owner Annette Knapp of Salon Bellezza at 204 Loma  Avenue off Court Street on the north side.

Annette grew up right around the corner on Grant Boulevard and she told me her new salon was years in the making.  Other north side “lifers” will recognize the tidy little brick building as the former Mulhauser Florist that lasted two generations at that location.  Annette purchased the building from the Mulhausers earlier in the year and did an extreme makeover; knocking down interior walls and installing beautiful tile and gleaming dark wood floors.  The color palette is espresso wood with limestone beige and touches of aubergine and gilding throughout.

The sweetest touch is the chandelier prominently displayed above the waiting are.   For 40 years, Annette and her sisters enjoyed holiday meals and family gatherings beneath that chandelier in the dining room of their childhood home.   With some family belongings “shared” equally among the sisters, the ladies chose to give Annette full use of the beloved heirloom so they could all enjoy it every time they entered the new salon.

“Oh, the stories that chandelier could tell” Annette chuckled.  ”But they’d all be in Italian”, a nod to the heritage of her parents.  Rose and Dominick Procopio met on the boat coming over as immigrants from Italy.

Annette currently has five stylists sharing space at Salon Bellezza (pronounced “Bell- ET- suh) , including my favorite, Isabel who transforms me from rag tag  into something nearly respectable every couple of months.

Check them out.  They accept walk-ins which is perfect for those who find their hair is fine until one morning when it became impossible overnight.  Or, make an appointment at 315-314-6301.  And for the next two months, until the end of October,  you can take advantage of their fundraiser for Breast Cancer research.  For $10.00 they’ll weave in a pink hair extension for you with all proceeds going to the worthy cause.

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I was fortunate to attend the fourth annual Notah Begay III Challenge at Turningstone in Verona this week.  Begay is the only full-blooded native American on the PGA tour, but many people know him as the childhood friend and Stanford University roommate of Tiger Woods.  Plagued by injuries, Begay continues to compete on the tour but his greatest legacy will be the millions of dollars he is raising to help native children with obesity and type 2 diabetes.

At the elegant reception on the lawn between the Shenandoah Clubhouse and the Lodge on Tuesday night, Begay welcomed fellow golf standouts Tiger Woods, Suzann Pettersen, Hunter Mahan, Annika Sorenstam, Natalie Gulbis, Cristie Kerr and Rickie Fowler.  Unlike years past when Tiger walked in with a crush of bodyguards, this year he casually strolled to the party tent with all the players and hardly a guard in site.   In the past, the event was held inside the edgy Lava club with the players seated on a stage rather far from the guests.  This year the whole thing was more approachable.  Woods enjoyed a scrumptious dinner with Oneida Nation Chairman Ray Halbritter and laughed at Notah’s jokes from the podium.

This year the question and answer period with guests was generously timed and there wasn’t the impression Tiger was looking at his watch and wondering when would this be over.  He seemed like one of the guys (and girls, as the men and women formed a team), and as often as guests asked a question of Tiger, they asked them of Notah too.  Everyone seems to know Notah is onto something with his ambitious fund drive to improve the health of young native Americans.

Woods got the crowd laughing when he recalled being a freshman on the golf team at Stanford while his friend Notah and many of the others were seniors.  Notah told the newest member of the team to prepare to get stronger, which Woods took as an invitation to work out with the guys at the gym.  ”No”, Notah said, “you’re going to carry all the bags for the whole team”.  Woods hilariously described hoisting all the bags in and out of the van, and on and off baggage carousels in airports, and he claimed that after a year of that, yes, he did get stronger as promised.

Also absent this year were the lovely young ladies who turned heads the last time Woods was here.  We wondered who were these women who looked better suited to Vegas than Verona.  I have no reason to believe they were anything more than pretty guests at the time.  But the people milling around that super elegant reception looked more like you and me this year.

Here are some photos taken with my iphone.  Sorry about the blurry images, but I didn’t want to look like a stalker with a camera, even though I was kind of starstruck.

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Tent was lined with cellophane and uplighted in pink and green. Chandeliers hung from the top

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Tiger, at center, enjoys the meal and playful comments

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Players Pettersen, Woods, Kerr, Begay take questions from guests

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Mahan, Sorenstam, Fowler. Fowler is my hero with that getup

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