Guests usually see us at an unusual time

A census of July 4

“You wouldn’t think, driving up here, that it’s the busiest day of the year,” said Claire as we turned into the hotel driveway at about 1 p.m., coming back from seeing her family on Cape Cod.

They’d had their annual party last night, where someone asked Claire, so is the hotel usually full? No. Well in the summer at least? No — but summer weekends, yes, we’re mostly sold out. With 34 rooms, that’s about 68 guests. But it’s a big property and there’s things to do in the neighborhood; you’re not gonna see them as you’re driving up the driveway. What are they doing?

I’ll catalogue every time and place I saw a person for the rest of the day.

At 2:30 p.m., a guy climbed out of the pool. It was 73°, breezy, sunny. On the near side there was a woman sitting alone dangling her feet in the water; on the far side, another doing the same.

On the left side there was a man with his feet in water and a woman sitting outside the water by his side. A man was reading a book on a lounger, wearing cool sunglasses. Farther left, two women and a man were chatting sitting at a table in the shade.

To the right, two women were lounging on loungers, chatting, flipping through a magazine, facing away from the pool toward the view. Beyond them was one man at a table with his laptop, also facing the view. I thought about tallying how many had water bottles or little handbags but didn’t; let’s say half.

Beyond the far end of the pool, facing away from it, facing the view, six people lay quietly on loungers and one worked on a laptop at a table under an umbrella.

That’s, what, nineteen people? I think that’s the most people I’ve ever seen out there. The pool is not ambiently visible from the standard guest flyways — you only see it if you look for it — but it’s the loveliest spot on the property and so Claire has made a point of emphasizing it at check-in.

Notably, nobody was swimming. They had all come deliberately to the pool; I think most were in bathing suits; a couple were at least partially submerged. But none were sweeping their hands and kicking their legs to propel them through it. Swimming is incidental to the appeal of a pool.

“What hath night to do with sleep?” asked Milton’s Comus. And what hath pool to do with swim?

I haven’t read Comus, but I remember coming across that line in college and using it to glamorize working all night. But Comus is the villain of Milton’s masque. Named for Dionysus’s cup-bearer in Greek mythology, he is here trying to seduce “the Lady”:

By dimpled brook and fountain-brim,
The wood-nymphs, decked with daisies trim,
Their merry wakes and pastimes keep:
What hath night to do with sleep?
Night hath better sweets to prove;
Venus now wakes, and wakens Love.
Come, let us our rights begin;
’Tis only daylight that makes sin,
Which these dun shades will ne’er report.

That sounds like classic hotel marketing! Cheers to the weekend 🥂, come relax and indulge, leave your God-given powers of reason behind! The Lady is captured by Comus but remains firm in her chastity and temperance and is freed and rewarded by the nymph Sabrina.

I have at least read half of Paradise Lost, which demonstrates Milton’s same fixation again, as Eve relays to Adam in the garden that she heard a voice whispering in her ear:

…[M]ethought
Close at mine ear one call’d me forth to walk
With gentle voice, I thought it thine; it said,
Why sleepst thou Eve? now is the pleasant time,
The cool, the silent, save where silence yields
To the night-warbling Bird, that now awake
Tunes sweetest his love-labor’d song; now reignes
Full Orb’d the Moon, and with more pleasing light
Shadowie sets off the face of things; in vain,
If none regard; Heav’n wakes with all his eyes,
Whom to behold but thee, Natures desire,
In whose sight all things joy, with ravishment
Attracted by thy beauty still to gaze.

The voice is Satan’s. Between writing Comus (1634) and Paradise Lost (1667), Milton had gone completely blind, and so the night and nightingale had taken on even greater significance for him.

Greta Gerwig’s Barbie (2023) handles the same topic of the slippage between (1) the activities (sleeping, swimming) commonly associated with a setting (night, pool) by metonymy and (2) the practical space of possible or likely activities:

KEN RYAN GOSLING: I’d like to apply for the job of Beach.

LIFE-GUARD: So you want to be a life guard?

KEN RYAN GOSLING: Oh, I’m not trained to go over there. (points to the water) I’m trained to stand confidently right here. (He points to the sand at his feet.)

LIFE-GUARD: But there’s nobody in danger here.

KEN RYAN GOSLING (proudly): And even if there were, I’m not trained to save them.

“America the Beautiful” wafted up the hill from Tanglewood rehearsals. “God shed his grace on thee.” The book man came to sit with the near side solo leg dangler. Ah, she wasn’t alone! They weren’t talking, just lounging. A man climbed down into the pool and just sort of floated back and forth.

I think the appeal of the pool is:

• Bathing, wading, floating — languidly immersing yourself in the water, as if in the womb.

• The beauty of water, its liquid reflections and refractions and undulations.

• A setting that gives you permission by convention to lounge quietly, maybe read, in our case with a great view.

• The swim option.

A-ha! He swims! The man who climbed in to float began to swim. Head under, a few relaxed breast strokes. A quarter lap, transverse. And he was out again.

“It’s worse when you get out,” the lounging woman with him quipped. What’s worse?

Could they tell I had some affiliation? I was sitting alone in khakis and Salomon sneakers, weird for the pool. My eyes generally flit about in a different pattern to the opposite things: guests look at the building and view; I look up when people enter. That is, everyone looks at the thing that’s new to them, but we’re in opposite reference frames. And yet I’m obviously not working or doing anything useful for the guests! I’m a confusing presence. Sometimes they look at me for a second and my returning gaze somehow confirms their suspicion and they ask a question and I answer as best I can. I try not to say “I don’t work here,” but I often have to get someone else to help them.

“Do you think there’s anyone staying here who still doesn’t have tickets?” the man at the three-person table to the left asked.

A woman got in. “He could die onstage tonight,” I think I hear, muffled by wind. Something like that. “He’s canceled his concerts for the next two years.” What? Who?

At 2:53, I left the pool area to walk back toward the main house. A woman was walking to the pool; I tried to maintain a friendly bearing but didn’t initiate eye contact; she said hi, I said hi.

I counted one, two, three cars coming up the driveway, all in a row. Nice! Check-in starts at 3:00.

There was a couple at the picnic table in the shade of the tree on the lawn. They’d been there at least since 2:30.

Notice the picnic table on the right, Adirondack chairs on the left. The table is anchored to the tree, the shade, close to the driveway — but the chairs are way out there “in the middle of nowhere”, where Danny put them last summer, in what struck me as a bold and inspired move. Much like the pool, the appeal of the chairs is not just that you can sit in them — it’s also that you can look out at them and imagine sitting in them. The chairs are almost always empty, but I hear people point them out when they stroll by on the road to the pool. People need reminders and cues about how to use the space, and a view is enriched by seeing in it another vantage point from which you imagine an even greater view. (Imagine looking at a cliff face and how it is enriched by the dot of a single house perched over the ledge, or even those videos of people watching games or movies and reacting for you.)

In fact, as I walked by, the picnic table couple walked over to the chairs and started trying to drag them¹ over toward the picnic table, toward the shade. Then they seemed to think better of that and left them in place and moved their stuff over to the chairs, in the sun.

As I came up toward the main house I saw Claire coming toward me. A guest was having a bad time and had asked the front desk to speak to the owner. When we first got here, Claire was more or less always at the front desk; then she got Christian, Abby, Jeff, and now Abby’s sister Maeve; and now Claire has no more regular front desk shifts. In a way guests enjoy having the owner at the front desk, but it leaves nobody to escalate to. Now, when something goes wrong, it’s better for everyone:

1. The person at the front desk has a certain emotional detachment; it is easier for them not to take things personally than it is for Claire.

2. Claire has the “emotional bandwidth” to bring more verve to exceptional encounters.

3. The guest has the dual satisfaction that (a) the operation is robust enough to employ front desk people and (b) they can escalate past that to the top.

Claire was walking down to talk to the Tanglewood box office on behalf of the guest, and asked me to look around for something to make them more comfortable in their Shed seat.

Inside the hotel, Christian and Abby were at front desk. On the porch was a group of four and a group of two, plus Max lying down. In the round room one person was working on a laptop. (We have lots of space but none of it is obviously designed for laptop work.) In the Ostrich Room was a group of two and a group of three.

Magdalen and Peter were at the bar, Luke was setting tables or something, Sean was buzzing between kitchen and tavern.

I went down to the basement to brainstorm ideas for things to make the guest more comfortable. Cushions, milk crates to rest their leg on, a little folding step-stool.

By 3:30 music had started in the Ostrich Room — Riverbend, a local trio I think, their first time playing here in Claire’s tenure, the earliest we’ve ever done music. Abby was showing Susannah Emerson’s new map to two guests, walking them through it. Claire had Susannah do a watercolor map dedicated, not to one place, but to the relationship between two: us and Tanglewood. I was skeptical at first — don’t we want to get a good map of just our property first? — but now I think she was totally right. It’s a luxury to have a map dedicated to one route.

Christian was off to the side talking to another guest, also with the map. “It’s like a block but it’s flat”, he was saying. We rented a golf cart this summer (as pitched by Rory last summer) and Claire really tried to get Tanglewood’s permission to drive onto their property — but we can’t, so we can only shuttle people down the hill. Which still helps a lot of people a lot! But then you still have to walk the flat block along the road to the Tanglewood gate.

A man and woman came into the lobby. From the front desk, you can’t see much of the main lobby; you have to come around the corner to see the fireplace, round room, Ostrich Room, etc. The man looked up, ears perked, said “That sounds live!”, and strolled over to Ostrich Room while his assumed-wife stayed behind with her handbag to take a call; it sounded like she was planning a rendezvous. “You have to take a left, like a really sharp left… Apple Tree Inn…”

By 3:41 there were, in addition to the band, two people at the bar, one talking to Luke, two sitting at a table (a “two-top”), and one standing by the long thin high table by the entrance — a new piece which serves as a kind of nucleation site for people hovering, waiting, chilling, almost like a second bar, but one where you can face the music. It has been very popular and effective.²

Claire was prepping a milk crate option and a step ladder option for the woman going down to Tanglewood who needed some leg support. The James Taylor show was starting at 8:00; Claire said the peak dinner reservation time was around 5:30.

At 4:07 Sean shouted “There’s the titan of industry!” as one of our regulars came in and hugged Claire.

At 4:10 I took another stroll. There were 21 cars in the lower parking lot by the main house and 25 in the upper lot by the lodge. I tallied license plates in the upper lot: thirteen Massachusetts, three New York, two New Jersey, one each from Vermont, New Hampshire, Connecticut, Virginia, Kentucky, and Florida, and one without a visible plate. Five trucks, one EV, one hybrid. We don’t have an electric car charging spot but people sometimes ask.

I moved the trail cam that Nick gave us for Christmas up closer to where it had been spotted bears.

I went back to check on the pool, passing a young couple returning the lodge. (There are no changing rooms or bathrooms or anything out by the pool; you’ve gotta schlep from your room; at least the lodge is closer.)

At 4:23 it was much emptier than earlier. Just two people lounging on the near side couch, one with a book.

Back in the hotel lobby, there was one guy reading by the piano. At 4:37 I saw Claire chatting with Deborah, our marketing consultant and Rafi’s sister-in-law, chatting on the couch. Two people were reading some light printed matter, magazines or brochures, on armchairs.

Two people came in from the side door and talked to Sean at the host stand, another relatively new and very effective piece of furniture, an old repurposed pulpit. Sean asked “Do you have a reservation?” — we take those now — they didn’t; looking for a table for two; we had plenty of space. The guy said “This place is amazing… right next to Tanglewood….”

At 4:50 a sassy teen in the lobby whined at their assumed-relative that they were putting their leg up in a weird way. You don’t see many teens here.

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I think someone in Gary Hustwit’s documentary Objectified (2009) points out that a toothbrush spends most of its life in a landfill and is only fleetingly deployed in your bathroom. Similarly, every establishment is primarily populated around its opening hours — but the structure keeps existing when it’s closed. Go to a packed restaurant and ask the walls if it’s usually packed and hear them answer like Christopher Walken answers Tim Meadows’s census taker in the 2000 SNL skit:

MEADOWS: Now are you currently employed?

WALKEN: Yeah, part of the time.

MEADOWS: Oh you work part time? How many days a week?

WALKEN: Every day, but just part of the day. From nine to five.

MEADOWS: So you work a full day?

WALKEN: I wouldn’t say that. There are huge chunks of time at night where I’m just asleep. For hours! You know, it’s ridiculous!

The standard metric I hear about for evaluating the health of a hotel is RevPAR: revenue per available room. I don’t know what ours is or how to calculate it, but notice that the denominator is available rooms. That’s what matters for the business, and room are often not available. The lodge is only open during the summer and fall; the hotel is only open on weekends off-season; rooms go “offline” for cleaning or maintenance or redecorating or whatever.

But as someone living here, the psychological experience of the property does not care so much about the availability criterion. It ’s more raw: on a given day, who’s around? And by that metric, over the course of our first 365 days here, the median number of rooms booked on a given day was just two. It is usually quiet!

The psychological experience of the guest is skewed in the opposite direction. When forty people are here, forty people are thinking “there are forty people here”; when only one person is here, only one is thinking “I’m all alone here”; if you survey all forty-one people and ask “How many people were there?”, the mean answer will be (40 × 40 + 1 × 1) ÷ 41 = 39, and the median will be a full forty.³

By that measure, over the course of our first 365 days here, the median room would have observed that twenty rooms were booked. I don’t know how to pull guest count from our system, but assume two per room: the median guest observed forty people here. That’s the typical guest experience.

With all 34 rooms booked, there are 68 person-hours of guest pleasure or pain being lived every hour. In the depths of winter, it may take a week to accrue 68 person-hours of guest experience! As Lenin said, there are days when person-months happen and months when only person-days happen.

Everything around you exists when you’re not using it, looking at it, visiting it. A screwdriver lies in the toolbox waiting to briefly screw. There is slack in the rope. But this seems to be truer of physical capital than of labor; Claire is not that much busier in July than in January.

In a movie, A calls on B to enlist their help. What was B doing before A arrived? Frank was dealing blackjack under a false name; Rusty was cold-decking Teen Beat cover boys; Reuben was chilling by the pool. Love Actually (2003) focuses entirely on that time before A and B arrive at Heathrow. Sometimes it feels like nothing was happening before A met B, like B materialized inside the house the instant A knocked, like the plot’s unity of action has deprived B of any prior autonomous life. In mother! (2017), Javier Bardem and Jennifer Lawrence are dawdling around nursing their home improvement projects and writer’s block until someone else’s story erupts into their life. You wake up and open your curtains to find an audience there as actors come up behind you. That’s a movie about hospitality.

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At 5:02 p.m. there was a man (red shirt, blue jeans) and woman (white shirt, flag scarf) sitting across from me. I was on my laptop. They were sitting on the same couch that I had first sat on when Claire invited me over to her New York City apartment in 2014.

The man left and came back. “No reservation required. But it’s just light bites.” “What?” “Just light bites. Just light bites.” “Oh, that’s fine. When does that close? When does the kitchen close? Eleven, right? Remember last night we came back at 11:30 and it was closed?”

At 5:47, they were still there, but dinner service had picked up. On the porch there were tables of 3, 1, 2, 2, 2, 1 (working), and 4.

There was nobody sitting just outside the Ostrich Room, in the area recently converted from lobby lounge to dining space.

In the Ostrich Room, at the bar, groups of 1, 2, 2. At the tables, groups of 2, 2, and 10 — a big group at the table in the back corner, all wearing red white and blue, four with headbands with little wires propping up fireworks of sparkly streamers. The band was on break.

Outside, past the fire pit, 2 at the Adirondack chairs looking over the view. (Not the aforementioned “way out there” Adirondack chairs — this was the main group of seven chairs just outside the round room.)

At 6:25 Lonnie showed up, meeting a friend. The band did a rousing rendition of R.E.M. “Losing My Religion”. “We’re just warming up here — and it’s time for us to end!” said the man in the band. “Speak for yourself, dude” said the woman beside him.

At 6:30, in the Ostrich Room, there were 6 at the bar and tables of 2, 2, 2, 4, and that same 10. A couple came in and hovered at that new hovering table.

At 7:30, on the porch, groups of 2, 2, 4.

On the fire pit patio, a group of 4. One woman taking a call by the fire pit.

In the Ostrich Room, 0 at the bar and tables of 4, 3, 3, 1.

Ah, a fourth rejoins one of the groups of 3. That makes sense; more common to see even numbers. It’s the family with the cute little kid.

At 7:38, there was one guy swimming — properly swimming — in the pool.

Two people were walking down the driveway, presumably to Tanglewood. We tell people two paths; the first, the most obvious, is down the driveway and along the road. But our new map recommends out past the pool and down the parking lot hill until you can cross the road to the main gate path. It skips the part walking alongside the road (with grassy shoulder but no sidewalk). But the pool route requires first walking slightly uphill to the pool, and I think people prefer to flow monotonically down.

On the front lawn, past the fire pit, a group of 4 chatting, drinking, smoking.

At 7:40 I did the walk down to Tanglewood myself; I saw nobody on our lawn or the parking lot hill, only one couple and their baby crossing the road already leaving Tanglewood. The crossing guard asked them why; they said the baby. At 7:45 I heard my first firework of the year. There were some people milling about by the main gate but pretty much everyone seemed to already be seated for the 8:00 start.

The step ladder option for the woman who needed leg support was still sitting in the front office, not needed after all.

At 8:30 I went out on the porch to sit with Sean. He talked about growing up around here, sneaking into Tanglewood through the fence as a kid. (There’s a lot more fencing now.) The neighborhood kids used to all play games on the Tanglewood lawn.

They’d play Capture the Flag across all of downtown; such-and-such street was the dividing line. I asked where all the kids went. He said they got old. He said but it’s getting younger again, that people are moving back and having kids of their own. I wondered if the town could really be all one cohort, aging in place, in phase.

I’d never seen Sean able to enjoy one of his own cocktails out here like this, but the hotel was all cleared out. Like a storm and its eye, the hotel is busier when Tanglewood is busier, right up until the moment Tanglewood is busiest; we are not the main stage.

By 9:00, much of the staff had joined us — Claire, Luke, Magdalen, Peter. Claire took a moment to appreciate the staff and said this is such a contrast to last July 4.⁴

At 9:15 Lonnie played an original song on the piano, “Something in G”, and Phish’s “Tela”. At 9:29 he described a crème brûlée (which Claire had burned) as “shattered, browned, and beautiful.”

Describing how to get somewhere, he said, “What’s great about this area is you just follow the signs.” That’s true! The town centers are distinct and each connected by roughly one road; to go to Lenox you take Lenox Road. Lonnie was anxious to get out so he wouldn’t get stuck in Tanglewood traffic for the second time that night. You gotta seize the opening of the eye!

At 9:40 I took a picture.

Claire described that when she first interviewed Magdalen for the job, Magdalen said something funny and sassy and Claire thought, OK, she’s hired.

Sean was enjoying his tortilla Negroni and brainstorming how to make it more complicated. “Tell me this doesn’t need a little saline!” to finish it off. “Salt will tie together every flavor.”

Magdalen said, “I know some salt hates to see me coming.”

Claire said, “You know, when I opened this bar my whole concept was we would not have complicated cocktails. That was like the whole thing. Simple cocktails. And then Sean came and I was like: whatever you want, man.”

Claire asked everyone to go around the table and say what they’d add to the menu.

Magdalen proposed a substantial but health-conscious entrée. Grilled chicken or fish or something.

Luke said, “Risotto. Some mushrooms. Kind of a premium ingredient.”

Claire asked, “Mushroom risotto or are you saying two separate items?”

Abby said, “Some vegetarian-centered dish.”

I said, “You’re pandering!”

Luke said, “Tofu for the salad?”

Abby said, “I don’t know if you’d want to go in the Kripalu direction, but having a like risotto or quinoa or substantial healthier option that isn’t like a block of tofu…”

Christian said, “Here’s a block of tofu!”, and pointed to me.

Claire said, “OK but what’s your final answer?”

Abby said, “Oh gosh, I don’t know what the dish would be, but something with rice…”

It got to me and I said a nice big hot soft pretzel.

Kids shrieked insanely in the distance. Sean said, “There’s James Taylor’s voice,” and it got a big laugh. Someone said, “Best one liner.” Claire said, “‘Seven layer dip’ still wins. Sean, we were making fun of you.”

I said or maybe Brussels sprouts. Ooh yeah.

Christian said, “Definitely some seafood thing.”

Claire said, “Lobster Fra Diavolo? Lobster Thermidor?”

Christian said maybe fish tacos?

Luke said, “Ooh what if we did poutine?”

Claire said, “Too weird,” and tried to pin down Christian. “OK but so what sort of…”

Christian said, “I’m really not the person for this. I was taking a nap.”

Magdalen said, “I really liked this cabbage slaw…”

Claire said, “Slaw we can serve cold.”

Magdalen said, “Well we wouldn’t serve it warm.”

Christian shouted, “Warm slaw!”

At Sean’s turn he started to say, “I think the best thing about us is we are chaos inside a fence…”

Magdalen said, “That is not a food.”

Sean said something about skewers or lemongrass.

Christian went inside and came back out with citronella candles.

Sean said we need to order way more of those. We’d been getting eaten alive. It’s good to sit in the guest’s position!

At 10:00 Peter was describing how we could get some kind of mini keg and fit it somewhere. “Every night someone asks ‘What do you have on tap?’” (We have no kegs, no taps, nothing on draught.)

Christian asked, “Does it really happen every night?”

Sean said, “Oh yeah.”

Peter said, “I think there are portable solutions, it’d be a slam dunk.”

Claire said, “What about food?”

Peter said, “I agree with Magdalen — when I’m looking at menus I want a large piece of protein and some veggies and some starch.”

Luke asked, “Is foie gras legal in Massachusetts?”

Magdalen said, “Oh, believe me, it’s legal. I ate it by accident when I worked at Blantyre…”

Luke asked, “What if we did a smoothie? Would that be weird?”

Claire said, “What? For dinner? Yes.”

It got to Claire and she asked, “Wait so is this what customers want or what I want?” I don’t know Claire, you asked! “I hate to go with the popular consensus, but…” she agreed with the chicken and veggies answer. But, she said, “I think if I could add anything… avocado tacos or something.”⁵

I thought: if?⁶

At 10:09 a car alarm went off and people leapt up to investigate but it promptly stopped. Two people had come back, presumably from Tanglewood, and applause and music was wafting up the hill. “They’re clapping,” one of the guests said. “Why are they clapping?” “I don’t know,” their mate said, “the music.”

Luke said everyone’s been asking about Tito’s and Sean said “Nope, nope, never!”

At 10:13 the car alarm went off again.

At 10:18 Claire said she was going to leave us to go make a hundred blueberry muffins. Christian said “Can I float something by you? Is there maybe a different pastry you’d want to make for tomorrow? We’ve had blueberry muffins the last two nights…”

Claire paused and thought. “Something else… um, not really… I just think it should just be our thing… I can think about it…”

Christian laughed, watching her think, and said it’s fine, it’s fine, “I regret asking!”

We cleared the table and went inside. The concert was ending at 11:00; people wanted to beat the traffic. At 10:27 Abby headed out and I stayed at the front desk with the curtains open, one of those rare times I briefly sit in a guest-facing role, when nothing much is depending on it.

At 10:50 I grabbed Claire from the kitchen for the start of the Tanglewood fireworks. We sat on the front steps with Christian with a perfect view. Max had found a great stick and kept trying to toss and nudge it toward us, unperturbed by the pyrotechnics. A few guests watched with us, maybe four.

As the show ended, eighteen thousand people across the street headed for their cars. I forgot to write down the times others came back to the main house, but I didn’t see that many. Maybe a group of four and two pairs; something like that.

At 11:40 Christian called me. Two guests were at the base of the driveway wanting a ride up in the golf cart. I’d been hoping for a chance to drive it! Boy were they happy to see me. It’s amazing what a relief it can be to get a lift up that hill. I asked which building they were staying in and they didn’t even understand the question; they said they parked right across from the Ostrich Room. Ah, they were restaurant guests, not hotel guests! They insisted on tipping me a $5 bill.

At 2:19 a.m. I checked on Claire in the kitchen. She had made 96 muffins. She noted that breakfast has not been as successfully delegated as some other functions of the hotel, and she had more to do.

It was a “half day” of work for her, in that we got back from seeing her family at 1 p.m., and so far it had been more than thirteen hours.

The property was quiet again now. Recall that Satan whispered to Eve that the moon illuminated the nighttime beauty of Eden “in vain, if none regard” — that all the beauty of Earth and heavens has no point if Eve’s not looking at it. I don’t think I should side with Satan! There must be categorical beauty here regardless of guest eyes landing upon it.

In the morning I learned that Claire had gotten to sleep at about 5 a.m., as the sun came up and the hills began to glow. She’d been chopping fruit because they’d run out the last morning — but only because she had mismanaged others’ chopping, she said.

That next day we went to High Lawn to see the cows and get ice cream. The line for the outdoor ice cream truck stretched over the horizon; the indoor shop was so choked by its line you could barely walk around. Normally there might be like two or three people in there.

As we waited, Claire said, “It’s weird that this is how most people experience High Lawn.”

I said, “I was just writing about that…”

1. That’s against our Terms of Service! “To avoid damages and breakages, no furniture is to be moved whatsoever.” I only know that because I recently re-read them while working on redesigning the website; I think they’re pretty much copied over from the previous owners. The Race Brook Lodge Policies and Terms & Conditions are so good, and make me wonder how few we can get away with.

2. My favorite illustration of how people need something to latch onto when hanging out in a space is “The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces” (1980).

3. I wrote about this same phenomenon applied to college class sizes in 2012 for our student newspaper blog.

4. It appears I also cited mother! in last year’s July 4 newsletter, for the same reason.

5. We used to love Hook Fish’s avocado tacos in the Outer Sunset in San Francisco.

6. Future topic: In what sense can Claire decide what the hotel does? In what sense could Napoleon decide to invade England?