"behind every cloud is ... another cloud"

OK. I have to admit it. Nobody laugh. I have a secret passion. My kids think I'm a complete loser, but I have this thing for....clouds. Don't ask me why, but they just really speak to me. Sort of like those shells on the beach that call out to be picked up and taken home, to be displayed in a little jar on the windowsill. Except it's kind of hard to do that with clouds.

So last year the kids gave me a gift certificate to Borders, and what did I do but buy myself a book on clouds and the weather. I keep it in my car, and have been known to pull over on the side of the road to look up an interesting cloud formation. I run the risk every day of being pulled over for "cloudspotting while driving." I have seriously considered becoming a member of the Cloud Appreciation Society, but I'm not much of a joiner. I might join just to get the t-shirt. Is that so wrong?

Well, I've decided maybe I've inherited this trait. The diary and guestbook that Helene brought and gave me (see post below) turns out to have belonged not to Grandma Loomis but Great-Grandma Isabel Abbot. And in it were dozens of newspaper clippings about the weather -- she obviously had a passion for such things as well:

• Coldest Wave Since 1899 - Extend from Rockies to Atlantic and Lakes to Gulf (32 below in North Dakota)
• First Snowfall is Only a Flurry (October 30, 1925)

• Hottest September 8 since 1881 & Mecury Again Above 90 (1918)
• Temperature Goes to 69 - Weather Bureau Records Show it was Hottest Oct 29th in 44 years (1918)
• Northeaster Brought 3.77 inches of Rain (1923)
• How to Dress to Go to Frisco -- Democrat Convention-Goers Should Trade Palm Beach Suits for Overcoats (1920)
  

A brief article Great-Grandma collected from 1922 states "the only thing to do about the humidity is to bear it. But while it endures be tolerant of the frailties of the human temper. Sea bathing affords only temporary relief. Cooling drinks are of no help, because the perspiration they provoke cannot be radiated. It is only possible to wait till it is over and to remember Mr. Shakespeare's injunction that time and the hour run through the humidest day."
So what's your secret passion? Not the ones that everybody knows about, but a thing that fascinates and resonates, even when no one around you gets it? I have one friend who is an enthusiastic member of Friends of the Erie Canal, even though she's never lived anywhere near it, or even visited in the area that often. Uncle Jack Loomis put together lists of funny names he found in the phone book, like Jack B. Nimble or I. P. Freely or Olive Yew. He had collected dozens of pages of them, lovingly typed out on his ancient Underwood typewriter.
Now you know my passion. Tell us yours in the comments field below. We promise not to laugh.

another long lost cousin

Cousin Jon in his comment on an earlier posting admitted to acts of SG -- Self-Googling. I practice another private vice -- GOP -- or, Googling Other People. Hadn't heard from Dana for several Christmases, so I did a little fiddling around on the Internet and found he's moved from North Carolina to parts West. He's relocated to Nevada, where he's Director of the School of Public Health at the University of Nevada at Reno. Read all about him in the University's NevadaNews. If anyone has contact information for him or updated news, I'd love to get him back on my Christmas card list.

why is kyria stabbing grandma with a fork?

Finally getting around to sharing these photos of our summer visits. Pictured are Kyria, Mom, Fransje, Livy, Claire, me and Hannah. A whole bunch of goofy girls, I'd say.

visit from helene

Cousin Helene Van Oosten visited today. She divides her time between Fisher's Island, NY and Santa Barbara, CA, and points in between. For those of you who may have forgotten, she is our second cousin -- Edna Lapham Van Oosten was her mother and Aunt Helen and Uncle Roger Lapham were her grandparents. She brought along an album that Grandma Loomis kept -- a guest book for the house in Washington, Connecticut -- full of autographs and photographs and letters and clippings. I'll scan some of those items and share them with you. She also brought an album of Grandma's photographs of her sister Helen and the Lapham family. Grandma was an aspiring photographer and studied at the Art Student's League of New York and with noted photographer Clarence White. Helene told me that Grandma was much chagrined that her parents wouldn't allow her to pose nude for him -- when she later saw an international exhibit of his, which included a number of nudes, she realized that she could have been famous!

Here are a few of the photographs that Helene brought along. I believe that Grandma Loomis took all but the one of herself.

Dorothy Abbot Loomis

Helen Lapham, Carol Lapham, and Isabel Abbot

Lewis and Carol Lapham and Edgar Abbot

Isabel Abbot

• 
  
  
  
  Lewis A. Lapham (pictured above) is the father of Lewis H. Lapham, editor of Harper's Magazine.
• Uncle Roger Lapham, of course, was Mayor of San Francisco in the 1940s.
• Carol Lapham Valentine, pictured above, is sister to Edna, and Helene's aunt.
• Buy a copy of Aunt Helen's book about life with Unlce Roger.
• Waveny was the Lapham family house in New Canaan, Connecticut. Grandma Loomis took many photos of her sister's family there.

cousin jon writes a novel

Visit Jon's blog, too.

From the Publisher:
Provincetown police detective Frank Coffin had been a well-respected Baltimore homicide detective. But when he started having panic attacks at crime scenes and fainting at the sight of corpses, he was forced to pack it in and go home to Cape Cod, where the most gruesome crimes confronting P’towns five year-round cops were usually break-ins, bicycle thefts and domestic disputes. After eight uneventful years, a vacationing TV evangelist turns up dead on the beach at Herring Cove, wearing a wig, a pink-and-yellow muumuu, and a pair of size-twelve pumps. Not to mention the raspberry-colored taffeta scarf strangling his neck. Ordinarily, the Cape and Islands DA’s office and the State Police investigate major crimes on the Cape, but P’town’s powers-that-be are nervous. Coffin’s given a choice by the new police chief: investigate or lose his job. So Frank and his partner, Officer Lola Winters, an ex--army MP, start out on the trail of a killer, visiting the restaurants and tourist spots the evangelist and his wife visited by day, and the drag bars and isolated trysting spots he might have frequented at night. As the body count begins to rise, however, it becomes alarmingly clear that this wasn’t an isolated incident: A killer with an agenda is at large in Provincetown. Tracking a murderer is something Coffin hoped he’d never have to do again, and the experience triggers the same nightmares that plagued the end of his time in Baltimore. And if his life isn’t complicated enough, Frank’s girlfriend Jamie thinks she’s being stalked by an overzealous suitor; his senile mother is stirringup trouble at the nursing home; and everyone in town has a theory about who’s committing the murders. Funny, sexy, and dark in equal measures, High Season is a mystery for anyone who’s ever fallen in love with a seaside town.

Author Description Jon Loomis is the author of two collections of poetry, Vanitas Motel, which won the 1997 FIELD Poetry Prize, and The Pleasure Principle. Twice a Writing Fellow at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Loomis has also been awarded the Jay C. and Ruth Halls Fellowship in Poetry at the University of Wisconsin, and has been the recipient of grants from the Ohio Arts Council and the Virginia Commission for the Arts. He lives with his wife and son in west-central Wisconsin. High Season is his first novel.