Ballet in the Boughs - Newport Parks Department

I had an excellent front row seat, seeing a dedicated crew deliver a public service. The Newport City Parks Department’s hardworking expert tree team toiled in July’s scorching heat for hours in front of my house, caring for trees who had looked to me like they were dying. Big sections of the trees were riddled with shriveled wood. I had figured the trees were rotting with disease. Wrong. They just were in dire need of what amounts to a haircut. Deadwooding. It was amazing (and a little scary) to witness. I literally pulled up a seat (dragged a dining room chair out to the front porch) and sipped my coffee as I watched. The team of three cut down multiple dead branches from the two city-owned honey locusts. Jenna climbed in the bucket loader and swung it around, lopping off the wood with her saw. Charlie flung a rope up into the treetops to assist his climb up, reaching areas where the bucket loader couldn’t go. Fisher stood on the ground and spotted Charlie, dangling in the air from the rope. Once they amassed a giant pile of discards, they fed the mound into a super-fast wood chipper. I enjoyed watching those amazing, dedicated people. And I wasn’t a bit surprised to learn in chatting with Fisher, that he just graduated from college and after his summer job ends, in the fall, he will begin studying to become a priest.

Looking Back at my Family's War Heroes (thank you, DAR)

My mother's ancestors from Virginia fought in the revolutionary war. I joined the Daughters of the American Revolution for its deep resources for genealogy and US history. Here's a link to a DAR publication with a little piece I contributed about three brothers who all were WWII heroes. If you visit the DDay memorial in Normandy, you'll see Earl Parker's name on the wall. The stories are in this link. (the link in the graphic might not work): https://online.fliphtml5.com/wrnur/aobs/index.html

European Union's New EES Entry/Exit System has kinks (putting it mildly)

On April 10, 2026, I arrived at Amsterdam's Schiphohl Airport, as the European Union's new automated Entry/Exit System went fully operational. They had installed a row of self-service kiosks intended to make border checks more efficient and modern. The kiosks are similar to the ones that American citizens use for Global Entry into the United States. You slide your passport into a digital scanner and you press your fingertips on a glass reader. And then, a message appears on the screen, informing you what to do next. I encountered my first kiosk of three as soon as I arrived into the terminal from the jetway. My encounter with the kiosk went fine. The message screen told me (in English) to proceed. Human usher/attendants greeted me and the others in the line, facilitating the flow, directing us up a flight of stairs to the large immigration hall. This is the type of room one usually encounters, with a wall of glass-encased tollbooths at the end, each staffed with an immigration officer weilding a visa stamper. The booths haven't changed, except instead of being fronted by a giant Disney-world velvet-roped snake line, there's only a small roped line, with most of the space now occupied by an army of those self-service kiosks. The airport staff hosts directed me and my fellow river-of-people to engage with the kiosks. As far as I could tell, this second kiosk did the same exact transaction, except that at the end, it delivered one of two messages to travelers. Either go to the automated exit gate area (which means success), or go to the human tollbooth area (which means failure). The screen on my kiosk designated me as a success. Yay. I went to the exit area, which looks like the kind of gate you would encounter at an updated train or subway station, or an office building, where you lay your pass down on the glass reader screen and if your credentials are validated, the waist-high doors retract and allow you to exit. Except that the EES also requires fingerprints again; for the third time. The fingerprint reader probably needs some sensitivity training. You have to lean your full weight onto your wrist, while making sure that each fingertip receives enough pressure to satisfy the reader. I failed. A red light flashed at me. The little waist-high exit doors stayed shut, and another of those nice, but by now annoying staff ushers pointed me to the end of the Disney snake line. I inched forward toward the toll booths, for the opportunity to have my passport read the old fashioned way, by a human being. A very nice, very perfect English-speaking Dutch man flipped through my passport pages, glanced at my passport, then up at my face, did not require fingerprints, and sent me through to meet my friends. I was the only one in our group who had the pleasure of being immigration screened four times. The others only had three. Anyway, I am confident that the smart, well-run European government authorities will tackle this thing and fix it. But, I'm really glad I only had to go through four times and that I didn't miss a flight or have a four-hour wait, like some people did.

Butterflies, Birds and Blessed Ones

There's nothing like marveling about the beauty of nature with the beauty of a grandchild.

Open Air Museum in Hakone opens your mind

There’s a beautiful outdoor sculpture museum in Hakone, Japan, in the region near Mt. Fuji. Visiting feels like walking through a park, except that there are large sculptures scattered throughout and each winding path leads to a grove or a lawn with more delights. It reminded me of Crystal Bridges in Bentonville, Arkansas. Maybe it inspired Alice Walton? There are several buildings on the campus. One is a tower made of stained glass, which you can climb inside. The sunlight streaming in through the brilliant colors helps take your mind off how your legs ache from trudging up about 7 stories of stairs. Toward the end of the path that trails through the property is a communal foot bath. Great for families with hot kids with hot feet. The day I visited, the temperature was 90 degrees and mucho stickiness factor. This is what I felt like when I headed out. As I turned the corner toward the exit, I bumped into an old friend. Jean Dubuffet. His sculpture mounted on a wall reminds me of a lithograph in my home growing up. That made me love this museum even more.