Yes, it's vacation time for the Uncle Mike family, and we're on Block Island, which -- along with Nantucket and Martha's Vineyard -- is one of New England's biggest vacation spots.

To me the name Block Island suggests an 18th-century penal colony, but I am happy to report that it's actually a delightful place, with surprisingly intense sunshine and a surfeit of things to do and see.

During the course of the last week I have been devolving into the sort of man I would normally laugh at. I now own a straw hat and a muscle shirt that says BLOCK ISLAND and I wear my sunglasses indoors and I reek of suntan lotion. Whenever I pass by a mirror, or a storefront window, the man I see looking back at me is a ridiculous fellow, a clueless, sunburned, grasping tourist, determined to buy and jealously stockpile happy memories before the vacation days run out.

But of course there are worse things than being a tourist. Some twenty years ago, I read a jaw-dropping Ellen Goodman column in which she rhapsodized about the virtues of being on vacation: the time to sit and think without distraction, the ability to hear the whisper-soft sound of a turning page, etc. The column had the distressing feel of being filed very quickly, while on vacation, or perhaps at the end of it: the columnist wrote about the idea behind vacations as if her readers had never been on one before. Goodman's ability to write fifteen column inches about the completely fucking obvious was in a neck-and-neck race with her condescension. By the end of the column it was a photo finish, but I never waited around for the film to develop.

I'm all in favor of vacations, but no one needs to sell me on them; and as always I'll be ready, on the last day, to return home to Saint Paul -- the best city on Earth.