A couple more winners from the trip. The tractor stuff is about 5 miles this side of the border on Route 9, that empty stretch of road that occasionally passes through a small town. Don't depend on your cell phone to work.

I collect hopeful bits of news to share with Sydney who gets a cup of tea at the library and a few minutes of respite from caring for her husband who is fading with dimentia. That's led me to collect them for myself. There's lots of good news politically; it remains to be seen if this is one election or a movement to a kinder government that works for people and not corporations. (We will know that when single payer health care gets seriously considered) So two things: Samsung has developed a solid-state battery for EVs that has a 600 mile range, recharges in minutes, and lasts 20 years. Rebecca Solnit posted about a Texas company, Texas Solar Sheep, "that supplies sheep to solar farms, where their grazing keeps grass short for less than the cost of mowing it. Demand for his animals has skyrocketed." Small steps to a better world.

This Stephen Hawking book is surprisingly readable, as if he is explaining it all to a fourth grader. There is nothing more calming and humbling than this kind of review of the big picture, this reminder of how little we know and how long it took us to know even this much, how knowledge builds on knowledge and is verified by inventions, how science can change its mind with new information. It's a spiritual read.

Staying near South Head this trip to Grand Manan and walking trails, plus the usual shopping, the Swallowtail shop, Canadian dollar store, Old Well House Cafe. I think there are only 2 ATMs on the whole island. We chased Debbie east and had a rolling ferry ride over, but halcyon days after that. The sight and sound of the surf from our east-facing windows is magic and it is otherwise quiet. We are just off a trail called Flock of Sheep, named for the way the shore looks from the water.

Thinking of the difference between dream world and waking world, how in dream world the universe cannot be questioned, or rather it never occurs to the dreamer to question the rules she is set down in and therefore emotions are not alterable. That universe is the only one and there is no walking out of it. Waking world is full of solutions and choices and alternate perspectives. Still I love the magical immersion of dream world with its transformations and merging of times and places.

I am obsessively following political events on Thread and Twitter, still shocked at the turn around and the crowd sizes and the polling. Of course I had to buy some campaign bling. Ezra Klein said Biden had made Trump big and scary, and Harris/Walz has made him smaller and weirder and laughable. Someone else said the end of a narcissist is always a descent into madness, and so I expect much craziness and threats of violence before this election is done.