Lake Forest: the unflat lands; Machiavelli on calms and storms; Tallulah Bankhead on diaries

 

Yesterday Caro and I bicycled a mile and a half to the beach, partially though a small park and mostly beside mansions. Lake Forest is among the wealthiest towns in the country.  Somewhere between number 10 and 30, depending on which metrics are used. Carol had told me that the beach itself is reached by a long set of steps.  Somehow this is no longer the upper flatland.  Elevation has crept in, but I don’t know where.  It still seems all flat when you drive or take the train from Evanston the twenty miles north to here.  As you can see the beach is a long way down.  I counted and it is 118 stairs.  I had no idea.

The beach is a half mile long, but broken into segments by breakwaters.  There is even a Lake Forest Yacht Club with boats GANNET size and smaller, all on trailers out of the water.  There is a ramp and a crane.  Most Moore 24s raced on the west coast are sailed dry and hoisted in and out routinely.  GANNET had an eye attached to a keel bolt directly beneath the companionway for that, but I removed it.

Wind from the NE was refreshing, but was creating waves that had the beach closed to swimming, something we weren’t planning on doing anyway.  A lot of people walking, sitting, sunbathing.  The beach is free to Lake Forest residents.  $25 for non-residents.  Keep the riff-raff out.

I just finished rereading THE PRINCE for the first time since college.  Machiavelli thought most people vulgar and untrustworthy.  Shocking.  He was also quite politically incorrect about women.  Were he writing today Internet vigilantes would have been outraged and all over him, but then having already stated what he thought of most people, he wouldn’t have cared.

In writing about how some Princes lose their dominions through being unprepared for change, he wrote:  It is human nature when the sea is calm not to think of storms.

Also politically incorrect is a quote by Tallulah Bankhead, of whom I expect few younger than I have ever heard, from THE ASSASSIN’S CLOAK:  Only good girls keep diaries.  Bad girls don’t have the time.