note to Susan, who lives in Massachusetts

Last time I went to Ipswich was the summer before last when I had an unbearable craving for fried clams. My boyfriend Steve and I drove up for a weekend and wouldn't you know, it was the same weekend after the NYT food section put the Ipswich Clam Box on the front of the food section. Aaauuurrghhh! We had to wait about 4 hours. But it was worth it.

I was really disappointed when my parents sold their family home on the river that led to the sea, and moved to Wellfleet for summers, and St. John for winters, because now I don't have a reason to go back - and I miss Crane's Beach and the smell of the salt marsh.

Joe's column today slamming James Hanson is very depressing to me. It feels like people on the same side are attacking each other, basically because there is no way forward that will work in time. This is so bleak that I am utterly uninspired to post a comment.

It reminds me that I don't see really how it CAN'T be, that we have already passed the tipping point where we are going to have disastrous climate change. Too many things are happening so much faster than expected, any one of which would be enough to seal our fate. Melting glaciers and polar ice, rising seas, ocean acidification, drought, fire...I really think we would have had to put on the brakes 40 years ago, or at the very least 20, to avoid catastrophic famine and resource wars.

Even though I see the signs of ecological decline all around me, still there is enough valiant effort of the trees that spring is so lovely, it makes my heart ache. Where I live, I can see miles of rolling, wooded hills, and the flowering trees are festooned with blossoms, in a last ditch effort to reproduce. Around my home, the floor of the woods is carpeted with violets, swamp lilies, and pale pink spring beauties. There aren't as many birds, or spring peepers, as I can recall from years past, but their voices are just as sweet.

Life is so precious. I try to balance despair with savoring each minute I and those I love are allotted.