Ike

At midday today, Dave and I will be heading down to Pevensey Bay with Olga on the train. Of course the weather is gray and damp, because we're going to the beach! There's even rain in the forecast on Tuesday and Wednesday. But we'll make the best of it.

It's not like I won't have anything to do, because I'm bringing Jonathan Franzen's book "Crossroads," which I've been meaning to read for a couple of years and which, being a Franzen novel, is typically HUGE. (Actually, now that I'm looking at it, it's only 580 pages, which isn't that bad. Besides, as I always tell kids, a long book will seem short if it's good -- and the inverse is also true.) I've liked his books in the past so I'm not dreading it.

There's a possibility the house we rented doesn't have WiFi. So this may be a wireless holiday, in which case I will be scarce in blogland. I can always post on my phone, but they may be very short posts -- maybe even just photos. We're not sure what we're getting into. Dave is a bit anxious about it, but I think five days unplugged would probably do us some good. How long has it been since I've spent five days without going online? I can't even remember. Maybe not since we went to China back in 2014.

There might be a cafe or some public place with WiFi, but I get the impression our house isn't close to much.

Last night I watched a PBS documentary called "Dear Ike: Lost Letters to a Teen Idol." Any readers around my age will remember Ike Eisenmann, a child actor in the late '70s and early '80s. He was in a lot of Disney fare like "Escape to Witch Mountain," which was one of my absolute favorite movies as a little kid. The documentary tells the story of a nerdy boy in Ohio -- about my age -- who was obsessed with drawing and eventually wrote a whole movie with invented characters that he intended to animate. He became convinced that Ike Eisenmann should be part of his project, and he wrote Eisenmann letter after letter, trying to get him interested. Some of his letters were returned by the post office and somehow he still has them -- as well as his childhood diaries, drawings and the storyline for the movie -- and they form the basis of the documentary.

An added twist is that this boy ultimately grew up to be gay, as did one of his current friends, the documentary's producer (who is from my hometown). So there's also an element of having an early and innocent crush on a teen movie idol, even though they may not have entirely understood it as such at the time. The movie "Escape to Witch Mountain," which is all about kids who have supernatural powers that make them outsiders, had a special appeal to kids who felt different from all their friends and didn't quite know why. (I can attest to that myself!)

Anyway, it was an interesting documentary, and Eisenmann himself participated in it. You can get it on the PBS streaming site if you want a poignant shot of '70s-'80s nostalgia.

I have to gloat once again about our rescued ficus tree. Remember how terrible this tree looked when I found it on the street? I don't want to get too excited because I might jinx it, but seriously, it looks much better than I ever expected.

Coming to you tomorrow from Pevensey Bay, one way or another!

(Top photo: A ladybug on a teasel in the garden.)