As the internet signal regains its strength, I'm adding photos to back entries of the blog. 
Things are looking up!

For our trip to Machias-Seal Island, we arose at 5 am once again.

By 5:40, we found ourselves walking to Crockett’s point, which takes just over twenty minutes and requires lots of picking through slippery rockweed and loose rocks.

We carried our backpacks full of gear along with baskets of food for the eight-hour trip.

Despite the journey lasting three entire hours, there were many fewer people seasick than on Pot Day- perhaps the Dramamine I saw on the kitchen counter the evening before had something to do with it.

When we arrived, we found the landing to be exciting, though dangerous. It required quite a leap onto a ramp from a not-so-gently bobbing skiff.

Ralph, the lighthouse keeper, greeted us.
He explained how to best use the blinds to keep from scaring off the birds and then led us out to them, telling us we would have a maximum of an hour of blind time and that if we chose to leave the blinds before someone came to collect us we should do so quickly and quietly and return to the patio area where we had received our introduction.

Our time in the blinds was incredible! We saw innumerable puffins, razorbills, and murres, and even a gannet. These birds have over a six-foot wingspan and are gorgeous, and they haven’t nested in the Gulf of Maine for decades. We also saw terns overhead.

The sound of the birds landing on the roofs of the blinds was prime entertainment as well: they are a little awkward in the air and sort of skid to a stop. The combined pattering of many skittering feet sounded like unusually strong rain that fell only at intervals.

When we reluctantly left the blinds after our allotted time had passed, we chatted with the graduate students working on the island. Their lifestyle is very different from ours, with running water, heat, even television.

They also work at night, so they aren’t early risers as Kent Islanders are.

After departure from the island, we ate lunch on Island Bound.

The return trip was shorter by nearly an hour, and Colin, Elisabeth and I passed the time napping in the sunshine on the bow of the ship.

We had the whole afternoon ahead of us when we returned, so Saturday was nearly a typical workday.

Aidan and Elisabeth made us a lovely meal of pasta with homemade sauce, giant breadsticks, glazed carrots, and chocolate cake.

We had our usual Saturday meeting in the lab with the assignation of chores, though this time at 8 pm.

When it was finished we passed the time until he 11 pm petrel walk (for Mo and Sarah’s last night on the island) in varied ways, some of us writing letters to send back to the US, Kathryn and Haley walking to the North End, and Mo getting some last-minute recording of Savannah Sparrows done.

Sunday morning was another early one as everyone came together to help our Williams friends prepare for departure.

Elisabeth and I moved to Hodgson House for good, and Charlotte migrated to Fog Heaven, taking her turn in the traditional Kent Island writers’ retreat.

Anja had brought pineapple with her to the island, and we were treated to it as an accompaniment to our breakfast of Janet’s delicious baked oatmeal.

Once everyone was out of the kitchen, we went about our chores: Elisabeth and I dismantled and cleaned the stove and oven, Sarah swept and washed the ceiling, and a team of Kathryn, Haley, and Christine mopped and scrubbed the floor tiles in the kitchen.

When all this was over with, Charlotte made another batch of truly delicious whole-wheat bread.

I spent part of the afternoon in the shire with Colin and Haley, and we found the first hatched baby petrel of the year! We flew the petrel flag over the dinner table to celebrate.

When I returned from the shire, I went out to the South Field with Jesse to help with his experiment treating Savannah Sparrow nestlings with stress hormones.

When we finished up in the field, I had some time to spend in the sun relaxing and uploading photos.

Half an hour before dinner returned to our workout routine.

When the bell rang we were served an elaborate baked potato bar, plus a dozen snails which were available for all those who were interested in trying one. Sara, who takes apart snails all day in the lab, was neither impressed nor appetized.

There was a multi-hour Frisbee toss in the yard after dinner, with many enthusiastic participants.

Having moved to the Hodgson House for real, Elisabeth and I were delighted to get a solid night’s sleep, a rare thing on Kent Island. 

Bad weather has returned: more photos to come when it clears up!

The internet out here is always finicky, and for almost two weeks I couldn't update the blog at all.
Now that we've got better weather I can access the internet minimally, but uploading is still nearly impossible.
I've been cooking, writing, and taking photos every day. 
As soon as there's stronger internet I'll get everything back to normal!
Our internet comes in on a line-of-sight signal from White Head Island so when it's foggy things go awry.
There's also always the possibility of interference on that end- increased humidity in the air, growth of vegetation around the receiver, and countless other factors can cause weak signals.
Shucks!

Elisabeth and I awoke better rested than usual in the Hodgson House, where we had slept to avoid the early morning noise we were reluctantly becoming accustomed to in the dorm.

After our return I made pretzels with help of Charlotte, who was in the kitchen making four fresh loaves of whole-wheat bread.

When everything came out of the oven, the kitchen quickly became crowded as the hungry masses descended upon hot baked goods.

I spent a bit of the early afternoon reading in the almost-hot sun in the backyard.

The Magus has remained captivating.

Charlotte joined me in the kitchen at 2 pm and proved herself once again to be the one to save the day when dinner looks nearly hopeless.

I was boiling 15 kinds of beans with hambones from Thursday night, and having never done such a thing before, had no idea how to season a soup like this.

On top of my fear I found myself discouraged and a little terrified- the soup was also gray.

At least I knew how to make black bean soup for the vegetarians, I reassured myself.

As that simmered away Charlotte made biscuits from Bisquick as we could not make corn scones- we discovered the amount of flour we had in the pantry would measure out to be what Charlotte described as “a scant one cup.”

It seemed like everything was going wrong.

I decided to reassure myself with a salad and began chopping lettuce that Emily had harvested from the garden earlier in the afternoon.

Yet another obstacle put itself in place, though. I looked for salad things in the refrigerator and found one package of carrots, frozen solid by the malfunctioning temperature control. Cucumbers and peppers were gone, and Damon had composted the frozen celery in frustration sometime earlier in the day without my noticing.

Fortunately, I found some carrot and broccoli slaw in the fridge.

I added dried cranberries and mandarin oranges and mixed up a batch of balsamic vinaigrette and voila…we had, if nothing else, a passable salad.

Charlotte made it even better when she used the stale bread in the pantry to make garlic-herb croutons.

The biscuits were out of the oven now, so on to dessert.

With almost no flour, making dessert for 22 people seemed like it would likely be impossible.

I decided on fruit salad, which of course comes from a can. I had to bump up what little of it there was with more mandarin oranges and still wasn’t satisfied.

Thankfully Nina had left a cookbook of Kent Island recipes including one for something called Sledge (the half-assed dessert).

It was incredibly simple, made of applesauce, brown sugar, chocolate chips, baking soda and vinegar, and a little flour (I used whole wheat because it was all I had) and instructions including phrases like “add more things if the consistency is too soupy” and “bake 10-20 minutes…if this isn’t long enough, bake some more.”

It turned out great, and was a total hit; there were people literally fighting over the scrapings in the pan. Not bad!

Things with the soup were shaping up by this time, too- after some more boiling the mysterious gray hue had disappeared as unexplainedly as it had come to be, and I’d devised the strategy of smelling everything we had on the spice shelf and deciding whether it smelled like something I would want in ham and bean soup (before starting this process I had tasted it and announced “it tastes like ham and beans.” Charlotte replied: “well, ham and beans sound really good!” She’s a good liar.). It turned out there were quite a few things that I wanted in ham and bean soup, so I added them.

When people began praising the soup at dinner I was taken aback, but it turns out the smell-and-evaluate method is a reliable one, at least in this kitchen.

We were treated to the arrival of more guests: Janet’s friend Anya and Mark’s son Seth and his girlfriend Carla.

We performed the usual round of introductions at dinner, this time with Emily’s camera running.

While the dish crew was at work, Jesse climbed into the refrigerator, much to everyone’s amusement.

We were also entertained by singing and dancing from Colin.

When the tide came up around 10 pm, went down to the dock under the still-light sky to unload the groceries that had come over on the boat with our guests.

With these things came gifts from two of our supporters: somehow both outhouse-related.

Heather had purchased books of The Far Side and Calvin and Hobbes for entertainment, and Stu Mackenzie had sent us a toilet seat for the outhouse. He told us in a letter we would be amazed at the difference such a thing can make.

After things were back in order we packed food for the trip to Machias Seal Island, and went to bed early to the sound of strong howling winds.

 The day started early, when Haley, Mo, and Christine made brightly colored star-shaped pancakes at 5 am. 

Haley’s fleece caught fire as she leaned over the stove, so the rest of us sleeping in the dorm woke up to shouting and the smell of burning plastic. 

Once the day got further underway, people began going about their work and chores. 

Aidan mowed the lawn, Charlotte wrote at the kitchen table, and Colin began sanding the trim on the dorm.

Colin found he also had to remove a paper wasps’ nest if he wanted to continue working where he was. A few stray critters buzzed about him on his ladder, but they were mostly gone. 

I spent my morning time (in between frustrated attempts at uploading blog entries in what had seemed like promising weather; it seems that something is wrong on the White Head Island side of our internet connection) reading John Fowles’ gorgeous novel The Magus on East Beach. 

Reading about islands is made all the more pleasant when it is done on an island. 

When I returned, Colin had moved on from sanding to painting.

He ended up with quite an interesting set of tan lines, paint-y hands, and the discovery that painter Colin is at least as valid an option as fisherman Colin if he suddenly decides against medical school. The porch looks great.

In the afternoon, a large portion of the group hiked to Hay Island (at low tide). They saw many blooming sea roses, explored the Idle Day cabin, and took a dip in the small pond.

I was in the kitchen making dinner with Emily. 

She was placed in charge of preparing a quinoa-and-black-bean vegetarian entrée while I peeled and chopped squash and sweet potatoes, got peas ready for the pot, made a double batch of Oatmeal-Yogurt Cake from the Moosewood Cookbook (Recipe), and started baking two enormous hams.

Who makes a big sweaty pork in the middle of July?

When Emily was done with the quinoa and the hams were in the oven we discovered we had a lot of extra time. 

We decided pretzel dough was a good idea, so Emily prepared that while I swept the floors and washed the dishes.

We hoped that everyone might like to join us in shaping, boiling, and baking the pretzels, but not much interest seemed to exist so we put the dough in the refrigerator.

After dinner I cleaned ham bones (and cooking pans- so much fat!) with Janet, and took the fat and scraps to the beach. They were quickly snatched up by some very excited gulls.

I returned to the dorm to find that preparations for a bonfire were going on. This seemed like a very suitable fourth-of-July activity.

A crew of people gathered driftwood and others brought supplies for S’Mores.

We selected a spot among large rocks, which provided seating for several people. We augmented this with driftwood benches. 

The arrangement proved to be just what we wanted!

Elisabeth played my ukulele, we told stories, and toward the end of the evening we burned some packets Emily had purchased on Grand Manan labeled “mystical fire.”

They turned the flames purple, blue, and green. Well worth the $1.50, it seemed.

When the tide came up over the fire, we all retreated to the dorm.

I’ve heard tell that Emily and Charlotte stayed up past midnight finishing the Little Kingdom jigsaw puzzle, but by then Elisabeth and I, having put beans in to soak overnight for soup, had already retreated to the Hodgson House to get some real sleep. 

We woke up to discover it was finally only a little cloudy out, though still a bit misty as well. This was the best weather we had seen in weeks. 

I took the opportunity to wash my laundry, which had been piling up for far too long. This became a much larger task than usual, and by the time everything was clean(er) than it had been my arms were tired and my back was sore.

Time to hang it all on the line and hope it dries enough to bring inside within a week…even when it doesn’t rain here the air is so moist nothing ever seems to be completely dry.

After an exciting lunch of leftover green salad Elisabeth and I revived our tradition of showering amongst the ferns on the P-Transect. Hair received a much-needed washing.

Because of the continued cloud cover, the water that came out of the heater, while tepid to warmish when we filled our buckets, was cold by the time we reached our showering spot. It was better than what came out of the hose, though, so we accepted it.

Charlotte had once again made wonderful bread, this time with garlic, parmesan, and basil- the closest thing to pesto we’ve ever seen on the island. 

The air became much warmer in the afternoon, and I opened the kitchen windows to make myself feel better about being trapped indoors. 

When Jesse arrived at 2:15 I was part of the way through making hamburger buns to serve with dinner. While these were rising and baking I made tabbouleh salad (minus the tomato), garlic mashed potatoes, and two fruit pies.

Meanwhile Jesse skewered pineapple for the grill, formed ground beef patties, and mixed ingredients for veggie burgers. 

We were interrupted by a visit from a few of the girls with a green crab they had found in the intertidal. Colin and Jesse took photos with it.

Once the pies were out of the oven and everything was put together, Jesse ran the grill while I cleaned the kitchen, did dishes, and cooked veggie burgers in a skillet.

Kathryn appeared from the field and very kindly volunteered to assist with dishes. 

She was a huge help!

Everything came in off the grill right at the last minute and the apparently ravenous crowd began piling their plates high as soon as the dinner bell rang. 

Dinner pepper flips were mostly to the end of Canadians painting American flags onto their faces for July 4th or standing at dinner and singing the Star-Spangled Banner; none landed. 

After the dishes had been taken care of and Damon had announced the results of the quiz of the day (how much have we spent on food, boat fuel, and propane since the start of the season?) a casual Frisbee toss took place on the lawn. 

I spent what was yet another rainy and foggy morning organizing photos and writing about the adventures of the weekend and Canada Day.

As I worked at the kitchen table, Charlotte made Challah bread as part of her bread-and-granola-making chore.

It was beautiful and so delicious! Both loaves disappeared within less than an hour of their coming out of the oven.

Heather, who seems to be always working on a project to make the island a better place, upgraded the outhouses by installing new multi-roll toilet paper holders and magazine racks.

In the afternoon the miserable weather showed no signs of improving, so the girls had a snuggle party featuring the movie Big Fish on the sofa in the library.

Meanwhile Christine and I worked in the kitchen, which was pleasantly warm despite the disagreeable climate outside.

I started by preparing a garlic-herb marinade for the pork chops while Christine prepped and baked a double batch of Bob and Melinda Blanchard’s extra-lemony lemon squares.

When dessert was out of the oven parmesan-buttermilk biscuits went in- I made these when I realized how much extra time we would have when we were finished preparing the simple meal we had planned.

I chopped tofu and drenched it in a marinade similar to the one we were using for the meat.

Christine and I then teamed up to make a green salad that turned out to be unusually nice for Kent Island, with fresh bell peppers and, of all things, avocados.

I made some homemade ranch dressing to accompany it.

Our side dish for the evening was based on a Moosewood recipe for risotto, but prepared with orzo pasta instead. I caramelized onions, steamed carrots, crumbled feta, and sprinkled (dried…sigh) parsley on top of the starchy dish.

After dinner, we decided to get our Kool-Aid hair dying experiment underway. We decided to mix the powder with conditioner rather than water to make a paste similar in texture to commercial hair dyes.

Surprisingly, the blue-green tropical punch packet contained bright red drink mix, and the purple grape packet was full of a curious black powder that lightened not to blue or purple but to gray.

We decided to go with the red, much as I had wanted blue streaks in my hair.

First Emily French-braided my hair to identify which strands we wanted to color- the way the colored bits would look in braids was the whole appeal of the project.

We had originally selected four pieces but decided only to do two in the end as we only had one color to work with.

We went about coloring the streaks as one would with commercial dye, brushing the tint onto the hair over a sheet of tinfoil. We wrapped the colored bits tightly and decided to leave the dye on until bedtime. We repeated the process with Charlotte’s hair.

Colin decided he wanted some color too, so we attempted to bleach a bit of his hair with hydrogen peroxide, to no avail.

While we were waiting for our hair to set we finished our murder mystery puzzle and moved on to a circular one with an image of a fairyland called The Little Kingdom.

We soon found ourselves all puzzled out, however, and decided to finish off the evening with another episode of Everyone Together in a Band. We played our signature song, Wagon Wheel, and followed it up with a few other favorites.

When we washed our hair in the sink we found that the experiment had been a success!

Charlotte’s chestnut hair now had streaks of cherry, and mine was hot pink. Not so bad for 59 cents.

We awoke to yet another day of dense fog, matched at intervals by driving rain. Not exactly promising weather for traditional July festivities. 

Our plans for the trip to Grand Manan changed from three separate groups in Ernest Joy to one big load of people in Island Bound at 10:45 am. 

We spent the morning packing raingear, clothing for the greasy pole contest, and snacks, in between working on our 500 piece romance-murder-mystery puzzle (quality entertainment if I’ve ever seen it).

Our first stop when we arrived on the big island was at Harbour Gifts, a shop that also has a lunch counter and sells ice cream, a resource of which we all gleefully took advantage. 

Across the street was a grand little thing called the Great Canadian Dollar Store, where many of us purchased candy, and I procured those two things I have missed the most on Kent Island: a four-pack of cans of ginger beer and a bag of reusable ice cubes to place in the freezer. 

Our group decided to head to Dark Harbour next, a greatly mythicized place in Kent Island minds. It was beautiful, with steep hills, enormous cliffs, gorgeous evergreens, and a gently running brook. The small camps along the seaside were charming. 

Driving back toward the other end of the island, we decided to stop at the infamous Save-Easy. I bought myself some real juice: a blend of mango, carrot, pumpkin, and sweet potato, as well as a packet of mixed olives to snack on in the coming weeks. 

We headed toward the gorgeous Swallowtail Light, a curious building that has eight sides at the bottom and seven at the top. We were amazingly fortunate to arrive at a time the keeper was present, and he took us up to the top of the closed-to-the-public structure. The views from 150 feet above the sea are spectacular and dizzying. 

The lighthouse is surrounded by wild strawberries, and Elisabeth, Charlotte, and I picked until our bellies and shirt pockets were full and our palms were stained red. We then made another step at the Save-Easy, where Aidan bought a watermelon and Emily and Charlotte bought nectarines. Charlotte and I each picked up a couple of packets of Kool-Aid mix, which we plan to use to dye our hair. I’ll put bright streaks in mine, which should create quite an interesting effect worked into my braids. Charlotte is deciding between streaks and dip-dying. Elisabeth and Colin bought some scratch-off lottery tickets and did quite well, Elisabeth breaking even and Colin coming out six dollars ahead. 

After we brought our purchases back to the car and I had fed my sourdough starter in the parking lot (feeding times are 6 am, 2 pm, and 10 pm) we drove to the whistle. 

This is a lighthouse at Long Eddy Point, where one is quite likely to see surfacing whales and which is surrounded with beautiful (though risky) walking trails- there is a sign that proclaims “great risk of falling to your death” if you walk too close to the trail edges at lookout points. 

On our way back to Seal Cove, we stopped at a Kwik-Way convenience store for fireworks (a no-go in the end: pricey!) and more snacks. 

The greasy pole contest had quite a turnout, of at least a couple hundred people. This is the most fun the group has had all summer. 12 Kent Islanders tried it out, and Sarah, Jesse, and Colin all had success in snagging the flag from the end of the pole, for which each of them received a prize of 10 dollars.

When the contest was over we headed back across the water in high seas and thick opaque fog.

We arrived around 8:30 pm, and everyone helped me put away groceries which Damon and Janet had purchased for this week’s menu. We also had the excitement of receiving clean hand- and dishtowels (washing at a Laundromat is a bit different from washing in a bucket). 

The group made a simple 9 pm dinner of six boxes of Kraft Macaroni and cheese.

What an exciting day!

Saturday was again misty and gray, so I did chores in the morning. Wet weather is perfect for containing burns (minimizing the risk of setting the whole island ablaze), so I spent an hour or so burning cardboard behind the dorm.

There was talk around the breakfast table of changes to the island infrastructure: the place is drawing more people, and there simply isn’t room for them the way things are now.

Sara was boiling hydrochloric acid and snail guts on the stove as others waited for water to heat for coffee: work and life are one here.

She and charlotte cooked dinner for the group, a wonderful meal of homemade tomato soup, grilled cheese with apples, bacon, or both, and a delicious cakey gingerbread for dessert.

During the day everyone went about their fieldwork as it was a day mostly without rain, and they seemed to disappear almost immediately when they stepped out the door into the dense fog.

I spent the late morning planning next week’s menu and also doing some recipe hunting just for my own benefit.

My finding is that cookbooks written before the early 1980s are much more entertaining than they are useful to me today.

During our afternoon chores, Damon and Janet reminded us students we’ll need to be more productive in the coming days and weeks than we have been as we have many group activities coming up soon, and our remaining month here will fly by. We were also admonished to see more of the island (the group activities in the evening tend to take place indoors).

As Kathryn and I were reorganizing the kitchen shelves I found some bananas had hidden behind a large box of hot chocolate mix and turned all mashy.

I made two loaves of banana bread from them, which disappeared almost immediately after they came out of the oven.

Because of its proximity to Pot Day and Canada Day, Sunday was a regular workday, again in gloomy weather.

I knit an eggplant hat, with a purple bottom and green top and stem-like pompom.

Charlotte, Elisabeth, Colin, and I spent some time writing in the Hodgson house, which was cozy in its grove of evergreens which kept the fog from settling in around it the way it does downtown.

Emily hung a chive blossom garland in the kitchen, which made things festive and bright.

As Heather and Janet listened to podcasts of NPR shows, they prepared a Moroccan-style chicken dish with couscous (and chickpeas with spinach from the garden for the vegetarians).

Charlotte and I went to East Beach to feed the gulls, which attacked the chicken parts we brought with more zeal than I have ever seen from them, landing in the roasting pan I carried while it was still in my hands. This was a terrifying experience.

In the evening while Janet prepped baked oatmeal for us to eat before the next morning’s departure, the excitement for Canada Day festivities grew as we pored over maps of Grand Manan and brainstormed activities for the day.

The kitchen was bustling in the morning as everyone made themselves hearty rainy day breakfasts of pancakes, breakfast burritos, and the like. 

To get my bread in the oven I found I needed to maneuver through the crowds with pans heated to 450 degrees, something I found less than enjoyable. 

Once the bread was done, since it was the fourth day in a row I was unable to upload anything to the blog, I set out to find some new reading material. 

I selected Never Let Me Go, which had been a Booker Prize finalist and of which Charlotte had a copy.  It was a smallish book of about 300 pages.

I found the characters difficult to attach to, not quite human (although those who have read the book will understand why), but the plot was well planned and the writing good. On, now, to The House in Paris- something completely different. 

Elisabeth and Charlotte had gone to spend the morning writing at the Hodgson House, which they later described as being “nice, but cold.”

It was too rainy to do much of anything else. Intertidal and sparrow researchers alike were lounging about in the library or in their beds, grateful for the time off from being in the field. 

Mo was my sous chef. When she and I met in the kitchen at 2 pm our first task was, as always, making dessert.

Mo’s favorite dessert is brownies, but there never seems to be any baking chocolate on Kent Island so they proved an impossibility.

We decided to settle for chocolate cake, which requires only cocoa powder. (Recipe)

Frosting, of course was another problem: no confectioner’s sugar. We fell back on the boiled white icing Colin and I had made a couple of weeks earlier, using granulated sugar and egg whites. 

Dinner was another fallback: tamale pie. This dish, served with the crusty bread, proved to be an ideally hearty meal for the cold and hungry bodies around the table. 

While we were cooking Sara was using the stove to boil snail samples; life and research are not easily separated on Kent Island.

We were glad we gave ourselves the full four hours for this relatively simple meal when we ran into difficulties. The electric mixer hasn’t been working, so we had to beat egg whites stiff for the icing by hand. This was doable with a lot of extra time, but when we added the sugar syrup and vanilla extract to the mix, even after another half hour of mixing the blend remained liquidy.

Mo and I decided that since it tasted great, we would settle for floppy frosting, and since it was pouring rain down harder than I had ever seen on Kent Island we decided to take advantage of the weather and take a shower- simply by standing in the yard.

We got the cleanest we’d been all season! 

It was a little frustrating at times, like when the rain would momentarily let up a bit and we’d be left standing soapy and being dripped on, but we discovered that if we stayed under the eaves of the porch roof there was a strong and dependable flow of water. 

It felt at least as cold as the water in the basin does when we jump in, but we had fun being out in nature wearing shorts and sports bras. Heather, Amy, and Emily emerged from the lab to take photos. 

When we came back into the house we were of course dripping. We dripped across the floor, up the stairs, and into our respective bedrooms. 

My clothing (what little of it there was) was dripping as well.

Because of the awkwardly placed clotheslines, I found I had to rearrange the furniture in the bedroom to keep the dripping from interfering with bedding and laptops. 

Elisabeth was not too keen on the new desk placement against the wall opposite from where it had been, but I assured her it was only temporary. 

To warm our recently chilled bones, I built us a fire in the woodstove, which the others gathered about with reading material to stay cozy as they awaited dinner.

We boiled water for tea, to the same end. 

After dinner, somehow a weird-noises-making competition began: loon, elephant, duck…the kitchen was quite a raucous place, especially when Haley, Mo, and Sara burst into song.

We exhausted our entire Walt Disney repertoire and then moved on to more conventional (for Kent Island) Friday night diversions: Bananagrams, Euchre, and dance music.