A Cape Cod Notebook

The beach is greedy.The surf eats the sand. The wind carves out the dunes. The tide sucks shoes, hats, and iPhones out to sea.

The other week, I spent a few days with my five-year-old nephew and his parents in Truro. It was a trip we’d looked forward to all summer.

One of my favorite Jerry Seinfeld moments is not from his hugely successful TV series, but from a documentary entitled Comedian, which follows Jerry’s career after Seinfeld had ended.

Well, it’s late October again, and once more the Red Sox will not be in the World Series. Once again the Fenway Faithful will turn to the past for comfort – and the nice thing about baseball is that there’s so much past to turn to.

Does anyone still eat jam?I ask myself this as I stand over a hot stove of bubbling tomatoes, sugar, ginger and lemon, stirring at the edges as the lustrous fruit melds into a gorgeous mush of tomato jam.

Last Friday afternoon, when I should have been at work, I went scalloping. Six days of rain had finally relented, giving way to a bluebird sky. It didn’t take much convincing on my part.

In the wake of another season of disastrous wildfires in the West, I‘ve been surprised that there have been relatively few forest fires on the Cape and Islands during our long dry summer and fall.

We all live our lives within routines, whether we are aware of them or not. Every morning, in my own routinized life, I eat a simple breakfast and then sip my coffee and read.

September is summer dialed down a notch. By the time you hear this, we will be just a day away from autumn. But if you are like me, you coax summer to stay as long as you can.