Yesterday Rosa started yelping in pain while just lying on the floor doing nothing, asleep. I thought she was having a nightmare or something. That stopped, started up again later. Dear Wife came home and called the vet's office; our buddy Steve A was the vet on call. He's seen Rosa a lot recently, as she's ancient and generally falling apart. I'm going broke paying my vet bills, frankly. He said, basically, "if it's not external, I cannot find out what it is, for example a tumor, without expensived diagnostic tests. And if it's a tumor or something, there's nothing I can do for her at her age anyway. Give her some benedryl so she can sleep, at least, and let's see how she does over the weekend."

Steve A used to be married, and his son T used to be a boy -- I was his boy scout leader. T's a man now. A snowboarder in Colorado. I was a boy scout leader because my son has various disabilities and it was hard for him to fit in with kids his age, so the best way for him to have a good experience with things like Boy Scouts was for me to be involved. Here on liberal Martha's Vineyard the Boy Scouts are not very popular -- they do give off that 1950's paramilitary air, after all. But our little troop was hardly paramilitary. Just a bunch of kids, about ten of them, half of whom had no fathers in their lives, who liked to go camping and make stuff. Decades ago, however, scouting used to be much more popular here, and there is a group called "Friends of Vineyard Scouting" that has a bank account with an obscene amount of money in it, left in the will of some guy who died in 1960 or so. The trustees of the group are ancient. I don't know what will die out first -- scouting on Martha's Vineyard, or the guys who are the trustees of Friends of Vineyard Scouting. I wonder what will happen to the money then.

Of the few kids who were in our troop, Chris P, who was frankly a little strange, very strange, actually, joined the Army. He became a paratrooper and was with the 82nd during their initial assault in Iraq. I think he may have been kicked out of the Army. He's no longer in it, and his family moved off-island. Chris W became an Army ranger, and served two tours in Afghanistan. I don't know where he is now. Chris R. joined the Marines and became an MP. He's in Iraq now, due home in March. His father (why do I always forget his name?) is the "Agent" down at the Steamship. The Agent is the guy who handles everything on land having to do with boats at dock. In other words, he's to the loading dock what the captain is to the vessel. So, the agent controls the loading of cars onto the boat. Don't tell anybody, but once or twice he has bumped up my position and gotten me on a boat ahead of some tourists waiting to go home. Why? Because I was his son's Boy Scout leader when the parents were getting divorced, and I know where his unit is stationed in Iraq and always ask how he's doing.

I hate war and its glorification and sentimentalization. Twelve years ago Steve B and Lissa were some of our best friends. Lissa is up in the ground in the West Tis. cemetery now, dead of ovarian cancer five years. Steve, a totally fucked up Viet Nam combat veteran, is in prison, and I hope he dies before he gets out. Which is supposed to be January 21 next year. Sometimes my wife and I drive up to Lissa's grave and yell at her for dying on us. Fuck you, Lissa. Did you let yourself die of cancer just to get away from Steve? There are other strategies, you know. Well she's dead now and God rest her soul and to hell with her. I don't know how much combat stress and war contributed to Steve's fuckedupedness, but it didn't help, I can tell you that much. Fucking war sentimentalism. I understand that sometimes war is necessary. But sometimes it's not, yknow? And it never should be glorified. I wish none of my Boy Scouts had signed up, but they all had their own reasons, and I hope they all come home safe. I worry that Chris P. is already as fucked up as Steve is, but at least he's off-island and somebody else's problem now.

The nice thing about my own son's disabilities is that he'll never be in some fucking army and sent off to kill and die in some fucking nonsense war. The things that are not nice about his disabilities are his business, although they play a pretty big part in my life.

It's raining here today and supposed to rain harder later today. One of my odd habits is that I like to go out in the rain and find a spot in the woods in the shelter of a tree, or perhaps of a little lean-to or one of those structures in conservation land where they have a map with a little roofy thing over it, and smoke a cigar. I'm not much of a cigar smoker, but I do like to smoke a cigar in the rain and think. Yesterday, having seen that rain was forecast for today, I rode my bike eight miles to Jim's Package Store in Oak Bluffs where they sell pretty good cigars for $2.97 + tax. Lord knows I need the exercise.

On the way back there was a police car parked in the middle of the road & a very young policeman was in the street diverting traffic off the Edgartown/Vineyard Haven road down County road. I rode my bike up to they guy and asked him why the road was closed. "House fire on Covent Lane".

I rode by, and there, not too far from the high school, there were fire trucks and police cars and an ambulance and lots of pickup trucks and cars belonging to the volunteer firemen all over the Vineyard Haven road. The house that had burned was about a hundred yards away down the side street, in the woods. You could smell the water on burned wood.

Someday somebody will say, "over there on Covent Lane, where that house that burned down used to be."