New Record for the MillionDollarWay Blog?

I count at least fourteen (14) stand-alone posts so far today and umpteen updates of previously posted information.

For newbies, be sure to scroll down to catch all the new posts, and depending on how many posts/day your site shows, you may have to click on "older posts" to see the earlier posts of today.

It's an incredibly beautiful day in Boston. Actually Cambridge.

Notes To My Granddaughters

Coming up out of the "Harvard Square" subway/bus entrance, I was greeted by several Starbucks employees, offering passers-by buck-off coupons on bags of coffee. I grabbed three coupons and another four inside the coffee shop. In addition, for free, I was given a small cup of coffee from a portable coffee delivery system -- sort of looked like SCUBA gear on his back, and a rubber hose with a valve attached at the end. I think the whole interaction was less then 6 seconds and reminded me of a NASCAR fuel-only-no-tire-change pit stop. It was quite incredible.  Six seconds, a free cup of coffee, and three coupons.

[Oh, yes, now I see them from the second floor window; there they are, two guys decked out in black with a yellow Starbucks icon on their front -- advertising Blonde -- one of Starbucks new blends -- and on their backs are those large SCUBA-like contraptions I mentioned earlier. Now that I get a better look, they are like huge bongo drums (single) with earth-tone colors, reminding me of murals on the Four Bears Bridge near Parshall, near New Town, North Dakota.]

I would wager that the Harvard Square Starbucks is one of the chain's most profitable and they don't rest on their laurels. The line inside the coffee shop can be 20 people long, and you are served in less than two minutes. The line forms along a high narrow "table" allowing one to rest carried items for a moment.

I am not a Starbucks fan as a rule. But if they put up new coffee shops like this one, they have a new long-time customer.

I hear they are adding other beverages. As mentioned in an earlier post, this particular Starbucks comes as close to the Yorkshire coffee houses I loved (and love) so much.

As I walked up the stairs from the subway/bus at Harvard Square, I thought about all the forks in the road over the years. how we end up where we do.

The Million Dollar Way in Williston -- as I've written before on this blog -- was my way out of town, hitchhiking cross-country three times, and the start of many, many conventional trips in addition. There weren't many forks in the road in North Dakota. Smile. It's a pretty straight shot once you get out of Williston; the only "forks," I guess, were the four compass points from the center of Williston. North to Regina. South to Rapid City. East to New York City. West to ... okay, west to Montana, and then southwest to Los Angeles.

I could have written "north to Alaska," but I didn't.

Most of the forks in my road were notable for the women that happened to be standing, sitting, sleeping, working, playing, at those sites, with the forks being time-stamped-GPS coordinates.

Time-stamped is the operative word. If I went back to those GPS coordinates today, the women would no longer be standing, sitting, sleeping, working, or playing there. Perhaps one exception, Collette; I hope she is doing well in her adopted shire. One has died, the one that did the most for me at a most important point in my life. One continues to travel the road with me, albeit often taking separate side trips. With another woman,  a detour that will never be forgotten. We stopped just short of the cliff.

Three of the women changed my life in ways that cannot be summed up in a short post.

One woman did not change my life but she reminded me what life is all about. She invited me to run away to Morocco. But unlike Susan, I had already seen Morocco; and, like Susan, I was married.

Some of the women I never met in person: Emily Brontë, Virginia Woolf, Martha Gellhorn, and Kathleen Norris.

I was so stricken with Virginia Woolf's Mrs Dalloway, I typed the entire book in free verse. Martha Gellhorn was considered by The London Daily Telegraph, among others, to be one of the greatest war correspondents of the 20th century (cut and paste from Wiki).

The many women who crossed my path left incredibly long-lasting impressions and introduced me to sights and sounds, experiences and exclamations, I would not have experienced otherwise.

They all taught me so much.

One taught me something I have never, ever forgotten: "Write it down, look it up, do it now, and keep your patients out of the surgeon's hands."