I can’t write about workers’ comp this week. I’m on vacation, and therefore must avoid work at all costs. My wife has indicated that being caught working on vacation could be injurious to my health, and since as noted I am on said vacation, I would not have any indemnity or medical protection.
My wife and I fell in love with the state of Maine several years ago when we toured the coastal regions from Ogunquit to Bar Harbor. Although I have been to Maine a couple of times since on business, it was not until this week that we had the opportunity to return to enjoy it’s many offerings. It is a beautiful state, and the food is excellent, particularly if you like lobster and wild blueberries. The people are extremely friendly, although they seem incapable of pronouncing “R’s” when they appear at the end of any word, or immediately following a vowel.
We flew into Portland last Wednesday. I have some very good customers and acquaintances in that city, and a suggestion that I attempt to meet with them so they could buy me drinks was quickly vetoed by my wife. Besides the fact that this was a vacation, she pointed out that I should be buying them drinks – not the other way around. I swear I will never get the hang of this business networking customer/client relationship thing. But I digress….
The majority of our week has been in Bah Hahbah, or what the rest of us would call Bar Harbor. Bar Harbor is a small coastal community located within Acadia National Park. Acadia, which as best as I can determine is an ancient indian word meaning “broken ankle, twisted knee”, offers a multitude of rustic hiking trails, any number of which start out as an inviting, manicured gravel path, but quickly narrow after about 100 yards, eventually becoming undistinguishable and then dropping you off a cliff. The remainder of your hike on these trails is spent looking for blue paint spots that are supposed to define your safe return to civilization, but you cannot escape the feeling that the person who painted these spots at some point just fell down a mountain, and you are merely following the errant splatters his brush created as he plummeted to his death.
It is a beautiful park. I highly recommend it.
Another highlight of the trip was a pleasant surprise we discovered at the Bed & Breakfast in which we stayed in Bar Harbor. Cleftstone Manor is a mansion built in 1881. For three summers in the early 1890’s, it was the rented summer residence of publisher Joseph Pulitzer, creator of the Pulitzer Prize. Pulitzer had a custom dining room table built for the residence, which he left there when he purchased his own residence in Bar Harbor. Amazingly, the table is still there today. The amazement is tempered with the realization that no one has probably been able to figure out how to get the single piece 12 foot by 6 foot Tiger Oak table top through the door.
The table today is worth around $80,000.
I have noted in several articles, usually when announcing a brilliant idea or concept, that I may eventually be awarded a Pulitzer Prize for my work. Now I get to sit at his dining room table and scribble one of my incoherent missives, hopefully drawing some shred of talent from its aura. I also did a bit of research on Pulitzer, and discovered that the doctor attending to him at his death was Dr. Robert Wilson. Great. Why couldn’t Dr. Robert Wilson have been his podiatrist, or urologist? No, Dr. Robert Wilson had to be the one taking care of him when the stupid bugger died.
Bob toiling at the Pulitzer table to try and suck the aura from it.
Now I’ll never get his Prize. The truth is, writing at this table will be the closest I ever get to a Pulitzer.
Now I just have to figure out a way to get my wife to stop looking at real estate books for Maine. Some areas of the state have incredible value in their real estate offerings when compared to our area of Florida. The fact that some of the best deals are on remote islands lacking electricity and accessible only by dugout canoe does not seem to dissuade her from a desire to relocate here. I have assured her any property we buy would be named the Seamless Brassiere House, since we would be living here without any visible means of support.
All said, it has been a terrific week. We fly back out of Portland early Tuesday, and I will once again be able to pontificate on critical issues about workers’ comp. Or strippers, or sex, or whatever I feel like writing about at the time. Anything is possible. I’ve recently been Pulitzer aura infused.
Thanks for indulging me. I’ll see you in a few days; unless I am stranded in the Atlantic in a dugout canoe listening to a Realtah prattling on about “island side appeal”.