Christmas

This year we decided to find a central place for Christmas, a place as close to equidistant from each of us as we could get.  After a good deal of drawing overlapping circles, we settled on a house in southwestern Pennsylvania.  It was located on a river, at the edge of several park areas, near lots of good hiking and, most important, big enough for all 9 adults and 3 children.

Best of all, it came with a moose head on the dining room wall.  That thing was so big I had a hard time  believing it was real.  But it got very friendly when we decorated the antlers with all the 12 Christmas stockings.  [I would insert a picture here but I'm having my usual computer issues.]

There was a Christmas tree, too, all decorated and ready.  The kids added homemade ornaments thanks to Nate's bringing lots of pipe cleaners, construction paper, beads, scissors, etc.  There were also paper chains (one of my personal favorites form my own days of making ornaments) courtesy of Aunt Becca.  The three littlest kids developed an activity they called "reading the presents" which involved checking the to and from and then arranging and rearranging them in different groups.  Lots of planning by those three went into Christmas morning.

Other days included walks, snowboarding for Nate, and ongoing and rotating games.  Some of the old faves like checkers, new ones like Forbidden Island and Catan Junior, and, of course, for this group, hand and foot.  Hand and foot is a card game that involves five or six decks of cards and lots and lots of shuffling.  It has just enough luck and just enough strategy and just enough table talk to keep the game going on at intervals through the whole vacation, with much high fiving by various parties at various times.

As Nate's father, Ron, put it so accurately, "This is the best Christmas ever, until the next one."

Ouch, Mr. Wright

Most of you are very aware of how much I admire Frank Lloyd Wright and his work.  I've planned part of my earlier trips around tours and stays at his work.  When I realized that the Christmas house was a short drive from Falling Waters, I put my bid in right away for a family trip there.  My own enchantment with Wright goest back to the original Mike Wallace interview in 1957.  I watched it then and wanted nothing more than to have this man design a home for me someday.  He wasn't able to do that so I continue to move about the country visiting as many of the homes he did have time enough to design as possible.

Falling Waters is special to my family not only because it is amazing and beautiful, but because we visited it together many years ago when we were all together driving back home from Interlochen Arts Camp.  It makes the kind of impression that none of us have forgotten, so pretty much everyone was there on our first full day after our arrival.  Falling Waters did not disappoint and we were happy to be able to share it with two of the grandkids (Fiona was taking a nap at the house).  Luke liked the explanation that Wright wanted to focus on the sound of the waterfall but kept a special enjoyment for the places where you could see the river or the falls.  Annie, too, liked the idea of having a house with the outside so very much inside.

What I had forgotten was that there are a lot of stone steps throughout Falling Waters and somewhere in there I must have taken a wrong step.  When I got back to our house, I realized that my left foot was not exactly comfortable.  I expected improvement by next morning but it kept getting more painful and I was unable to keep from remembering when I broke a bone in that foot and how similar it felt.  After a firm talking to from the rest of the family,  I agreed to a drive to a nearby town for an x-ray.  The good news is that nothing was broken.  The bad news was that it was days after Christmas before I could finally get a shoe on and go for a walk along the river that ran right in front of the house.  At least it means that there will be a lot left for me to explore if we do this again next Christmas.

Over the River

Over the river and through the woods to grandmother's house we go.  But this time it was Gran doing the over the river and through the woods bit.  I had been on the road ever since purchasing a dozen or so bagels in Amagansett that morning.  It was the 21st, the shortest day of the year, and I was headed for southwest Pennsylvania and the house where the whole family was rendezvousing for Christmas.  The weather had been pretty close to perfect but now it was getting dark, snow was thinking about falling and it was time to leave the Turnpike.

Rural roads are very dark.  They are also twisty, with lots of turns and ups and downs.  Now the snow had decided to be rain and at times it was one of those rains that just slashes down.  When the rain let up for a while, it was fog that looked like a wall in front of the car.  Take your choice.  It was probably good that I couldn't see much beyond the edge of the road because I really didn't want to know.  If I had been able to see enough to find a place to turn off, I would have let the line of cars behind me go past.  They undoubtedly knew the area much better than I did and I would have been happy to have had someone to follow.  As it was, I mentally apologized to all of them and waited for them to find their homes or the turnoff at the next crossroads.

About 7:30, the GPS told me I was close and I made the last turn.  The house was alight.  There were five cars in the driveway.  I was the last one there.  I made my way up to the porch and opened the door.  A 2 and a half year old started jumping up and down and announcing to the whole gang, "Gran's here.  Gran's here."  The everyone hugs started.  I was home.

Baby, It's Cold Inside

Back home to Amagansett.  All set to get organized and wrap presents.  Just one problem.  There's no heat on the lower level of the house.  The level that just happens to contain my bedroom.  After some poking and prodding and convincing myself that this was something I couldn't deal with, I called my propane supplier, who also does repairs.  We carefully discussed that I had checked the level of fuel just before I left on my trip and my conservative estimate of the reading was 80%.  The agent agreed that there was no way this would be a fuel problem so I needed a repair visit.  I was told that the repair person would call me to tell me when he would be arriving.  This was classified as an emergency call, by the way.

Four hours later, having received no call, I called the provider back.  They were very courteous and very sorry, but there was no way they could give me any estimate of when repair would arrive.  I tried every form of the question I could come up with.  Where was the repair person at this point?  Was I the next call or were there others in the queue?  Could they contact the repair person and get an answer to any of these questions?  No to everything.

Sometime after midnight, the truck arrived.  Just one problem.  It was a fuel truck, not a repair truck.  The driver confirmed that I had more than enough fuel and that I did not need a delivery.  He said he had no idea why they had sent a fuel truck instead of a repair truck.  Obligingly, he took a look at the heating unit and confirmed that it was the problem.  He said he thought it could be fixed easily but, of course, he had no tools.

My next step was to get back on the phone.  The emergency office was very concerned to know how the mistake had been made.  I realized they would need to know this at some point but somehow I was much more interested in when I could get heat.  They said they could correct the information and put in a call for a repair truck but once again they could not give me any estimate of when he might arrive or what else he might have on his agenda.  Based on past performance, I had very little hope of resolving this before the dawn so I asked that they schedule it for tomorrow.  Sorry, but they couldn't do that.  I would have to call back next morning before 8:00 am.  I decided to call it a day and set my alarm.  I piled on every blanket I could find on the couch upstairs, where the never very satisfactory electric heating helped a bit, and settled in.

Next morning I placed the call and a repair unit did arrive.  The blockage was cleared and once again I had an operational furnace.  I basked in the heat and took a nap to make up for the night before.  Heat is a wonderful thing.

Beacon, New York

Next stop Beacon, NY.  Kit was in a sale event with a number of other excellent crafters.  It was one very long day and I signed on to keep an eye on Fiona while Mom went to work.  The show/sale was great.  I loved the tables and boards made by the woodworker whose workshop was the site for the show.  She really respects the material she is working with.  Quite a bit of it was made of black walnut.   Finally I couldn't resist what she calls a baguette board, a cutting board long enough to fit a proper baguette.  I told her about the black walnut trees I had had on the farm and she understood immediately.  "You miss your trees," she said.  Right on.

It was good to see Kit and Nate and Fiona and hang out with them.  We fitted in some stocking stuffer shopping and some good food at a special restaurant that is situated next to a waterfall.  A partially frozen waterfall after a snowfall is a lovely and constantly changing sight.

Chicago and Thanksgiving

After New York City, it was on to Chicago where Team Daugherty were hosting Thanksgiving and Hanukkah.  It began with the 67th Latke - Hamantaschen Debate at the University of Chicago.  The moderator has been handling this debate for so long that nobody can remember when he wasn't in charge.  The rules are that the debaters must have a doctorate and one of the three must be non-Jewish.  They all, debaters and moderator, appeared to the strains of Pomp and Circumstance and wearing full academic regalia.  Of course, it was the wrong academic robes for these particular people, but, hey, who'd notice that at the University of Chicago.  One debater discussed the issue in Star Wars terms and concluded that the hamantaschen was suspect because it was the same shape as part of Darth Vader's mask.  My favorite was the Professor of Medieval History who presented a tale of the battle of these forces in the style of Tolkien's Lord of the Rings with more in-jokes than anyone could count.

Thanksgiving was wonderful, vegetarian and omnivore alike.  Family, food, wine (imported from an earlier expedition to Canada, of all places) with lots of time to talk and enjoy each other.

I stayed for some extra days to have a "sleepover" with Luke and Annie, when both Elly and Steve had to be out of town on business.  I also came in handy, when first Annie and then Luke came down with colds and needed to be out of school for a few days.  It was fun as we shared Harry Potter readings, new games and breakfast at the Med.  I also got to see Annie's horseback riding lesson and Luke's skating lesson.  It's good to catch up with them and get back into the Gran persona.

Onward, or actually backward, to Michigan and my Christmas present from Judy.  A dinner at our favorite restaurant, a traditional English holiday dinner with more courses than I could keep track of, including roast goose.  I cooked goose once for Christmas about a gazillion years ago.  That was nothing special.  This on the other hand was delicious.  Now I see why it was the traditional main course in Dickens' day.

A New Diva

My first stop was New York City.  My thought when I headed back from the last road trip was that I would stay in Amagansett and be able to go into the City for theatre and concerts.  Well, not so much.  That trip is longer than I thought.  In fact, that's my one real disappointment with living on the East End.  New York City is too far away for frequent trips and I miss being able to get in for a bunch of different things.

This time, however, I was on my way to the Midwest so I could talk myself into stopping overnight in the City.  Found a very pleasant hotel and enjoyed a leisurely dinner.  The next day it was Lincoln Center and the Metropolitan Opera.  You see, there's this eight year old little lady who was making her first scheduled appearance on the stage of the Met (she'd already been on once subbing for another kid who couldn't make a performance in Midsummer Night's Dream).  She is a member of the children's chorus and the opera was Frau Ohne Schatten.  I was completely unfamiliar with the opera and was really astounded not only by the music, but by the amazing staging that was like painting with light and color.  Truly amazing.  I know the Met is all about music, but the stagecraft here was wonderful.  I wanted to buy tickets for everything else they were doing because of that experience.

The most fun and interesting though was sitting with the young diva during the third act and hearing her tell me about being in the chorus, learning the music, switching from language to language with each opera, as well as what she had been doing in school.  Sofia is a delightful person and I admire her so much; for her talent, of course, but also for her hard work and most of all for being her own strong self.  I hope this is the beginning of many dreams come true for her.  I will always delight in being the first one to bring her flowers after a Met performance.

Starting Again

Now that the Amagansett house is taking shape (new deck, wood floors and butcher block counters sanded, garage door opener that actually works, replace worn siding and one window [it has been about 30 years after all), I was beginning to make plans for more travel and adventures.  I just hadn't expected it to start with a mini disaster here and there.

First I crashed my iPhone.  When you don't know an app from an OS, that's easy to do.  That, of course, happened just before I was set to leave for the Midwest for Thanksgiving. I wasn't keen on driving without a phone available for calls and for information.  I know, I know.  Once upon a time we stopped and used pay phones.  The problem with that is that pay phones hardly exist anymore.  At least ones in working order.  Besides I'm an iPhone and Google convert and no longer like being separated from my devices.

So, in an attempt to be efficient, I made an appointment with the Genius Bar that was not too far out of my way as I left Long Island.  Watching my time carefully, I drove up about 15 minutes before the appointment and was met in the parking lot by an Apple employee explaining that all their systems were down.  Apple store systems not operating?  What is happening to the universe?  Not to worry, he said.  All the appointments had been transferred to the Roosevelt Mall store.  Back in the car for a 20 minute drive to a store that looked like the last shopping day before Christmas.  I've seen crowded stores but this one was seriously crowded and mostly by aggravated Long Islanders who didn't like having to change the location for their appointment (one lady, unfortunately ahead of me, had to describe what she termed an hour drive -- somewhat difficult to comprehend when her original appointment, like mine, could not have been more than 20 minutes away at slow speed).

The customers were not doing anything good for the New York or Long Island image.  The Apple folks, on the other hand, were acting like real New Yorkers.  They were coping.  They listened patiently (how they did that part I will never know) and kept the lists and found the next available Genius.  The punch line?  My iPhone was functioning and had my contacts back within half an hour.

Onward to my first stop -- but more on that later.

Thanks for the Memories

When someone dies, you find yourself going over and over memories you didn't realize you had.  At least I do.  Of course, that's after you get over being so stunned that it seems your mind just isn't working any more.  That was me a few mornings ago, when I got a text telling me that a long time family friend had been shot and killed.  It wasn't just the loss of my friend, although "just" is not a word that can really fit into that sentence.  It was the intrusion of violence into my life.  I've lost loved ones to accidents and to sudden health disasters, but violence, a violent death caused by someone's malice, had never reached me before.  I love my murder mysteries, read them all the time, but I never expected one to find me or one of my friends.  There is a very real comprehension problem here.

The part I can comprehend is my friend's life and the memories I have of him.  Ross was my son David's trainer when he competed in horse shows.  One of my favorite memories goes back to the early days of showing.  It's horse show day and David and I are still new to the game.  We've made sure he has all the right equipment and David's looking spiffy in riding gear and trying to look confident.  I've loaded the car and am just doing the driving.  We arrive at the show, somewhere out on Long Island, and start to get ready when we realize we've got a problem.  We (okay I) forgot to put the saddle in the car.  Pretty basic, right?  I have no idea how to solve this problem.  You can't just run to the corner drugstore or even the nearest shopping mall and pick up a saddle.  So, in fear and trembling, we go to Ross to explain how much trouble we're in.

"Ross", I say, "we have a big problem."  Ross looks at me, expecting the worst, and I tell him we forgot the saddle. "Oh," he says, " I thought you meant a real problem."  Then, without moving from where he was standing, he calls out to someone else at the show and asks to borrow a saddle.  The next thing I know someone walks up and hands him a saddle.  Ross looks down at it to see what we've got.  He hands it to David and says: "Carry it carefully.  It's the best saddle you'll ever ride in."  It was Hermes.

That was my friend, Ross.  Always with impeccable good taste.  Always there for his kids, for his friends.  Don't rest in peace, Ross.  Ride in peace.  Ride well, my friend.

Like Old Times

Just when I thought all my immediate neighbors had left for the season.  As I finished my coffee this morning, I heard something, something that turned out to be voices.  Looking our my window, I saw a strangely familiar sight at my next door neighbor's place.  A number of miscellaneous vehicles, including a huge camper trailer.  A small tent with open sides.  A few people, soon joined by a few more.  It was when I realized that everyone I could see was on a cell phone that I had it.  Of course, a photo shoot.  Possibly a film or a tv show.  All I know is that if I see Kevin Bacon, I'm keeping an eye out for serial killers.  After I say hi to Kevin, of course.

Treasure Hunt

It's all in how you look at it.  That's a piece of possibly good advice that I have never liked hearing.  Recently, though, my daughter, Eleanor, found a way of expressing it that got to me.  If you can't change it, change the way you look at it.

That fit in very well with an issue that had arisen for me.  Most of my worldly goods, other than the things I had in my car as I traveled, are now in a storage room.  Getting all of my things into storage with a closing deadline coming up when I sold the farm wasn't easy.  I attempted to organize it by numbering the boxes and keeping a list of the box numbers and contents on my iPhone.  Let's just say that the first few boxes list almost every individual item, but at the end the descriptions got more and more general.  Sometimes I listed the closet or room, sometimes a general category like pots and pans or towels and such.  That's the first part of the issue.

The second part is that I envisioned neat rows of cardboard boxes in more or less numerical order.  Wrong.  Since I spent most of my time packing, I did not get to see the storage room much until after we had fitted in the two rugs I sent out for cleaning at the last minute.  I say "fitted in" because by the time the rugs got there, there was just about enough room to shoehorn them in.  When I opened the storage room door, there was almost no room to stand inside the room.  So much for making a nice list of the boxes I wanted to get to first because they contained things I could use as I settled into Amagansett.

I was so frustrated.  Then the advice finally got through.  I could continue to be frustrated because I couldn't locate or get to what I wanted or I could regard the whole thing as a treasure hunt.  I would simply take out boxes as I could reach them and see what I found inside.  A treasure hunt.  And that's what it has turned out to be.  I'm finding things I almost forgot I had, let alone that I had packed them.

My favorite item surfaced when a friend delivered a chest of drawers that was somehow accessible for removal and would help out a lot at the Amagansett house (I hate the idea of buying something when I know I have it somewhere already).  As it was moved out of the bed of the pickup truck that had transported it,  he looked down and asked if I had dropped my watch.  No, it was still on my wrist.  Wonder what this is.  I looked.  It was a watch I had bought a few years ago.  Not very expensive but it was a shape and design I liked and seldom saw.  Also it was purchased on a girls weekend trip with my daughters and a dear friend.  I was so sure that I had packed it in things I took with me on my road trip, that I had turned all my bags and boxes upside down more than once in a search for it, but to no avail.  Now suddenly here it was again.  I have no idea how it failed to get taken out of the drawer or how it stayed in there despite all the moving around, but here it is now.  Now that's what I call a treasure hunt.

We Lutherans Rock!!!

Yesterday in Church, toward the end of the service, came the usual announcements.  Except they weren't just the usual announcements of groups that would be meeting that week and calls for sign up for various things.  This week our pastor was pleased to announce that the ELCA (Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, my own particular brand of Lutheran) had chosen as the presiding Bishop of our Church, our denomination, a woman, Elizabeth Eaton.

Okay, now I was sitting up straight and listening with really full attention.  While the ELCA has had women pastors and local bishops for some time now, selecting a woman to run the whole thing and to speak for us as a group -- well, it's kind of like the Berlin Wall falling. To hear that she was Harvard trained, which means she may have known Krister Stendhal, the head of the Harvard Divinity School who attended the church I went to in Cambridge during my Harvard days, that was icing on the cake.  Change and tradition both.

But Pastor wasn't finished yet.  Not only had my church put a woman in charge, it had passed -- by overwhelming votes -- a series of resolutions calling on member churches and their members to advocate for gun control measures that would require universal background checks, measures to stop gun trafficking and require reporting of lost or stolen guns, and measures that sought support for same gender couples and their families and measures that sought comprehensive immigration reform with a path to residency and citizenship.  Way to go, folks.

This is most certainly not the conservative Lutheran Church I grew up in and I am so glad of it.  We've come a long way, baby.  As our pastor said with a big grin on her face, We rock!!

End of a Time Warp

Tomorrow is the last day for Quinn's.  Truly the end of an era.  Or as I prefer to call it, a time warp.
Quinn's is a restaurant in Beacon, NY.  Walking into it was like stepping back into the 50s or 60s.  Classic diner configuration with booths and a counter and the colors were the reds, browns and creams that go with that.

I was introduced to Quinn's shortly after Kit and Nate moved to Beacon and it became our go to place for breakfast or anything else that came close to that time frame.  It was the place where all the real locals hung out, young and old alike, talking, reading newspapers and solving all the problems of their worlds.  Kids were welcome and I believe we were still counting Fiona's age in days when she first went there.  Of course, she and we all kept coming back.  As she grew up she met everyone there.  When she began her studies of the counter stools and how they revolve, she would work her way methodically down the row, spinning each and every one.  Patrons who were seated would even get up to let her test out their stool and its ability to spin.

When Sandy was on her way and there was talk of closing the bridges in the area, I abandoned Long Island and headed for Beacon and Quinn's because Quinn's had a tradition of staying open no matter what.  Whatever the storm, the snow, even the hurricane, Quinn's was open for those who were out dealing with the storm or were out of electricity or supplies or anything else for that matter.  Quinn's was sort of like the little engine that could.  I wound up staying for the 10 days it took LIPA to get my electricity back, so I had a good few occasions to stop by Quinn's.  The day I walked in and our favorite waitress said: You don't need a menu, do you? I felt like I'd become an honorary local.

Yesterday morning, Kit and I had planned a last visit to Quinn's.  It worked out to be after a music class for Fiona and several other toddlers.  We had planned to meet one other mother and kid at the restaurant, but before we knew it the whole class of kids and mothers were coming too.  Even the teacher came.  And a couple of fathers refused to be left out and also joined in.  Typical Beacon.  Typical Quinn's.  Need I say that it was great and a good time was had by all?

I will miss the pancakes (too many sorts and varieties to mention), the homemade bread and the French toast it became, the endless coffee, the memories of the talks and the celebrations, the wonderful assortment of folks you could find at Quinn's on any given day, but most of all I'm going to miss our waitress who made sure I knew where the polling place was so I could get my vote in despite Sandy and the amazing owner and cook who needed to check to see if I really liked the cheddar and sausage pancakes.  Yes, ma'am, I really, really liked them.

Finally

It took several more days to finish all the nits and nats and to cart off the debris but at long last the repairs

and/or renovations to the Amagansett house are done.  I am reveling in not having workmen in and out of the house and, perhaps most of all, not having to get people back to complete anything more.  Actually, I am only complaining about the inevitable side effects of having work done on a house.  They did a good job as far as I can see.  I am sure that  - now that I've said that -- the next person in the door will point out something that I overlooked.  I guess that's what handymen are for.  Now if only I could find one.  Just in case, you understand.

Rescue

Last weekend, Kit and Nate and Fiona joined me to enjoy the new deck and get in as much beach time as possible.  The beach time effort took us to Atlantic Beach in East Hampton on one morning.  Most of the time it was about sand and waves and sun and good times.  Then at one point I noticed our nearby lifeguard standing at attention staring out to a point way beyond the usual swimmers.

Following the gaze, I saw two lifeguards swimming fast and straight toward that point.  When I say fast, I mean that I don't think Michael Phelps could have bettered their time.  Not in that water.  It was the most efficient Australian crawl I have ever seen.  A bit farther down the beach were two more lifeguards on the same mission.  In the surf were more lifeguards paying out the ropes towed by the swimmers.  And way out there was a woman who was not going to get back without help.

The swimmers arrive and there are now four swimmers surrounding her and making sure she knows that she's going to make it.  Now the ropes are being reeled back and the group moves slowly back to the beach.  EMT trucks are already on the beach waiting.

The best part is that as soon as they reached the beach the woman was able to get up and walk toward the rest of the rescue group.  Lifeguards and, in fact, the whole beach broke into applause.

Wow!  Nothing like realizing that it's a really big ocean out there.  REALLY big.  And being so glad that there are so many strong, well trained folks with the abilities to help us.  And sometimes save us.

Renovation Continued ...

Well, the deck didn't get done the day it was promised.  But it did get done - functionally, that is - a few hours before Team Burke Smith arrived.  That doesn't mean it's actually done, of course.  The work continued on Friday and Saturday and will continue on Monday.  Every time I make out a punch list, work does get done on it.  But somehow, when I check on it at the end of the day, the punch list doesn't seem to be much shorter.

Things have improved,  though.  The deck chairs and tables are back on the deck.  Which means that the living room has room and the indoor furniture has now been rearranged and the place is now actually a pretty nice living room.  There may be light at the end of the tunnel, but I'm not counting on it yet.

Don't Do It

If you are contemplating any kind of home renovation work, I have just one piece of advice.  Don't do it.  I know, I know -- sometimes things just need to be done.  That's pretty much the situation here at Amagansett.  After a good number of years, the deck needed to be redone and the sliding window/doors were pretty beat up and needed replacement, too.  So I looked for a builder who had a good reputation and found one that seemed promising.  He said he could do the job in two weeks and that sounded even better.  Of course, since I have dealt with contractors in the past, I mentally added on a week or two to the estimate.

Well, it is now nearly six weeks and I am so ready to get these guys out of my house.  The doors, I freely admit, are done and are a great improvement.  That makes the house usable.  But not the deck.  There's enough of it there for me to walk on the finished part (if, of course, you don't consider railings part of a deck).  I can even put out a rocking chair and the view is great with none of those silly railings in the way.  Witness my meetings with my deer neighbors.

The problems are that during the day I have guys carrying decking and rails and equipment through my living room and bedroom.  Add the general noise of tools and there's still not much getting done on any given day.  Their explanation is that it's a long drive to get to my place (they knew the location before they started) and the weather has been really hot.  I pointed out that if they had finished the work anywhere near the estimated time, they wouldn't have been working in that weather.  I also pointed out that on the same day they "couldn't work", there were two guys fixing my septic tank system.  My logic may be fine, but it's not getting the project done.  So I resorted to an ultimatum.  I have family coming to visit and they have a two year old.  I can't have them come with a deck without complete railings.  They have promised to work miracles and have it done for my company.  They're out there right now sawing and hammering.

to be continued ....

My Neighbors

I have learned that sitting out on the back deck as the day cools down in the late afternoon is a good idea.  Not only does it actually get cooler so that sitting outside is now a pleasure, but one also gets to meet the neighbors.

The first neighbor to put in an appearance was a young doe who gave new meaning to the name for the ground cover behind the house.  It's known as deer feed and it certainly is.  She stayed for quite a while, moving on slowly.

Yesterday, there was the usual aerial display -- mocking birds bravely chasing off a crow easily twice as big as both of them together; seagulls of course; a few swallows cruising for mosquitos; and finches.  This time there was also a rabbit, larger than the ones I'm used to from the horse farm and differently colored to blend with the browns and beiges out here.  He alternately scooted through the dunes at quite a good pace or stopped absolutely still, waiting to confirm that it was okay to check out the edibles. 

Then came the star of the show, a young buck with velvet still on his antlers.  Could have been Bambi in person.  The doe had stayed at a distance, on the far side of most of the scrubby jack pines that form lines between the house and the dunes.  This guy came much closer, starting out on the near side of those pines and moving in from there.  He actually came up onto the dune (the one the house is built backing into [if you can follow that]) so that he and I were basically on eye level with each other.  He posed beautifully and apparently found the house interesting because he and I stared at each other for a long time.  It's kind of nice when the neighbors drop by to welcome you to the neighborhood.

And One More Farm

Yes, I know this farm thing is getting to be sort of a theme.  Perhaps it's a way of realizing that although  I no longer have my horse farm, there are still a lot of farms in the world and ways I can be part of them.

This time it started with a book -- The Omnivore's Dilemma.  It's been around for a long time and I've been resisting reading it for an equally long time.  I know some of the issues involved in raising animals  for food, but I still remembered the farms I had seen as a kid and my Mom's stories of the farm she grew up on.  Her comment that she treated her pigs as pets always caught my attention.  I just couldn't imagine treating a pig as a pet, but she told me they were clean and friendly creatures and that the mud was a way for them to keep cool.  Wilbur and Charlotte would have loved it.  The problem was that I was somewhere off in fairyland when it came to my ideas of farms.  When I saw some of the feed lots out West, that was not what I had in mind.  The cattle grazing the tall grass prairies were still there, too, but they belonged to rich Texans like that guy who cornered the silver market years ago.  I still wanted my burgers and steaks but I wanted them from animals that had had a life where they grazed in a pasture or, for the pigs, got to loll around in the mud.  And chickens - they belonged outside pecking up bugs.

So I started out to find farms that worked that way and discovered that there are still quite a few.  There's Mr. Anderson, who sells eggs and is more than happy to introduce you to his hens, hens who may have to be shooed out of the way to get at the outside refrigerator where you pick up your carton of variously colored eggs.  I like to say that I've personally met the hens who lay my eggs.  Mr Anderson has also taken in two peacocks and several retired ponies who needed a good home.  Starts to sound a bit like Dr. Dolittle doesn't it?

My latest find, however, is in Southampton.  I went on line to find a source for pastured beef and any other meats I could locate.  I realized that cattle and sheep take a lot of space and so I wasn't really hoping to find a farm that raised them.  I expected that to be more upstate.  I would be happy just to find a farm or farmer's market where I could routinely buy properly raised meat (properly as I define it, of course).  Instead, I hit the jackpot.  I found a farm that raises it's own cattle and sheep and pigs.  As I followed my GPS in search of this anachronism, I took a turn that seemed familiar and to my delight I found that my new-found farm was across the road from the farm owned by friends I used to see every week at the horse shows.  The new farm was great.  Beef, pork, lamb, sausage, eggs both chicken and duck.  Heirloom tomatoes, purple Peruvian potatoes ( say that fast a few times) and fresh young garlic and garlic scapes that smelled so good I wanted to start cooking immediately.  The owner was happy to talk about his farm and get me other types of meat that weren't in the freezer at the stand.  After the usual "how did we talk for so long" conversation,  I drove off and realized that on one side of the road were my friend's horses and on the other side was a pasture with cows grazing contentedly.  Maybe some fairy tales do come true.

Home Again

I'm back on Long Island.  Yesterday I decided it was really getting to be time to unpack and be in one place for a bit so I headed for the Amagansett house and got there about 7:30 pm.  Still nicely light to get around and unload, but first I found myself greeted by some old friends from the farm.

The  cranes used to be at the end of the pond and the dragons stood either side of the front walk of the farm house.   Thank you, Burt and Margie and Oma for settling them into their new home.

Yet Another Farm; Yet Another Love

Last weekend, Kit and Nate and Fiona and I attended a family wedding in the Hudson Valley.  At a farm, of course.  In our usual fashion, we left a few minutes later than we had planned, but as we turned into the beautiful farm and wedding site a few minutes before the schedule for the ceremony, I could only remember what Bill would have said:  Looks like we planned it.

The day was sunshiny and beautiful, the cows were in the meadow, the sheep were in their pasture, even a few goats were there.  The flowers were wild flowers picked by the wedding party, displayed on ladders at the focal point for the ceremony, the seats were bales of hay with blankets and quilts spread out on top.  The people attending were looking like they were really ready to celebrate.  No formality, just a lot of smiles and hugs and chat.  The wine and ice were keeping company in a wheelbarrow and it turned out the time had been pushed back so that there was time for all that.

As the groom and groomsmen gathered and we all looked up toward the big white farmhouse waiting for the bride and her attendants,  the groom caught sight of us and announcing "I've got time.", he swooped over to us with hugs for each of us.  The joy just mounted as he shared his happiness with us.  And, not to worry, he was back in place well before the flower girls and bridesmaids and his bride approached.  The whole ceremony expressed such love and happiness.  If anyone's faith in love was wavering or had taken a hit, this wedding in all it's aspects made me realize that we all do believe in love.  It's what it's all about and this chance to share it once more with a beautiful young couple very much in love, was renewing and revitalizing and just plain fun.

Thank you Evan and Luloo and everyone for sharing the wonder and the joy and the love with us.

Picnic at Another Farm

Today Fiona and Kit and I went to Preschool at the Farm, an activity for preschoolers at Common Ground Farm, the CSA that Kit and Nate belong to.  It was all about the summer solstice, making crowns from grape vines and flowers and checking out the cows (I was amazed to find that I still recognized Jerseys and Herefords and knew which was which).

This was followed by a picnic which included strawberries from the strawberry patch and sugar snap  pea pods picked by Fiona and two new friends for me, Maureen and her daughter, Tally, who is definitely in the running for cutest kid.  When they left so Tally could check out the sheep in the barn (you should have seen her face when the barn door opened signaling her chance to go visit her friends), Kit and I and Fiona continued munching and talking.  A few early swallows were swooping by.  Kit spotted a groundhog thinking about a raid on the CSA vegetables.  And then, wonder of wonders, a fawn appeared right next to us.  It stopped completely still.  I'm sure it's mother had told it that the first line of defense is to stay still and hope nobody notices you.  We looked at each other for a few seconds.  Then in three bounds it was out of the clearing and into the trees.  Such a beautiful creature.  I have never been that close to a fawn before.  I don't think I have ever seen anything so lovely.  What a moment to share.  It's one for my collection of moments.

This may not be my farm but I am so happy to know that Fiona has her own farm and her own adventures.

Back East

After about six months of traveling and exploring, I am back in Beacon, NY at Kit's house.  This portion of the adventure pretty much began about January 6th when we wrapped up the holidays and I headed out for visits and explorations.  Now I'm back hanging out with Kit and Nate and Fiona, waiting for the work on the Amagansett house to be done.  At the moment, we're trying to make a decision on color for the new deck and color and shape of railings for the deck.  There really aren't many options to choose from so you'd think I could do this, but I seem to be able to agonize about anything.  I'm kind of hoping this goes as quickly as the builder says it will so I can actually unpack my car and stop carrying my world around with me.  Progress reports will follow.

They're Everywhere

While visiting in Michigan, my friend Judy, and the dog she is currently fostering, showed me that there are great places to walk everywhere.  The West Bloomfield trail follows a former railroad track and extends over about seven miles.  Houses back onto it and many of the owners have left openings in their back yards so they can access the trail, making it quite a communal asset.  It seems to be quite popular for dog walkers and cyclists as well.  I only did about two miles of it but it was great to find this  opening up at the end of an ordinary street and find some good old Michigan wild flowers.

Hyde Park and its Art Fair

Hyde Park, Chicago is a wonderful neighborhood.  For one thing, it contains two of my grandchildren, one of my daughters and her husband, and a group of amazing and diverse people, including President Obama and his family.  It also has the Lab School, the Oriental Institute, one of my all time favorite bookstores, a farmers market just beyond the Midway Plaisance, several restaurants that I feel absolutely must be visited each time I'm in town (you know who you are), Rockefeller Chapel with one of the best pastors in the world and, of course, UC and its quad.

Once a year it also has an art fair.  My daughter and I took off into the booths of the fair, while Steve took the kids to the playground that is literally in the middle of the fair (nice planning, Art Fair).  Of course, we both found works we couldn't live without.  Amazing photos that we all liked for different reasons.  Clothing, hand made and hand dyed, perfect for small granddaughters.

For me the emphasis seemed to be on wood as a material.  I found fountain pens (when was the last time I wrote with an actual fountain pen?  tomorrow?) made of  various woods, one of which reminded me of talks with my father about different woods and their characteristics and his favorites.  Then I came across the lady from Arizona with the wooden cooking spoons and other kitchen and dining implements and accessories.   In some cases, when the wood she was using for a cutting board or lazy Susan had a crack in it, she had filled the crack with tiny bits of turquoise or malachite.  Eye catching and attention catching.  I had to ask her how she did that and tell her how much I admired the color and its effect.  Somehow that led on and on as we discussed Arizona and my recent trip there and to New Mexico.  We found that we were pretty close in age.  That both of us wanted to rent rather than buy property because we didn't want to be tied down because how could you move around and explore whatever caught your fancy if you were tied down (Good lord, there is someone else like me!).  We talked about what we knew we wanted in the place we might find and settle down in.  I was intrigued that her primary requirement was a political attitude that was congenial to her.  When I mentioned how much I had liked Savannah, she reminded me not about the heat and humidity in the summer, but about the fact that Newt Gingrich was from Georgia.  The conversation wandered all over the place, in every sense of the words.  My patient daughter went off to visit a nearby booth and came back.  We were still in animated conversation.  Finally, I was reminded that we really should go and rescue Steve from playground duty and we did.

Thinking back on the day, I realized that the pleasant conversation with the lady with the wooden kitchen items had netted me not only some presents and some additions to my own kitchen but a memory and an insight.  In our family, Bill was always the gregarious one with the gift of gab.  He could and did talk with anyone and everyone about anything and everything.  I liked this characteristic because it was something I was not good at and it meant that he was naturally cast as what I called "Secretary of State" for the family.  But it was not always one my favorite things about Bill.  I used to remind him on quite a few occasions that I did not see the need for all these conversations.  Somehow he could never see the need for that comment.

The clearest thing, though, was that this was something he did and something I most certainly did not do.  But wasn't what I had done today, just what he would have done?  His conversation would have been a different one, I'm sure, but the chat, the laughter, the fact that there was always just one more thing to say, one more point to make -- that would be Bill to the life.  Where was my "I don't know what to say", my reluctance to talk to "a perfect stranger", the idea that I should keep it to what needs to be said to accomplish a mission like buying some cool stuff?  Frankly, I have no idea.  I don't think I've changed fundamentally, but something has been going on for me.  Perhaps a little more openness and a little more willingness to risk a little embarrassment.  What does that matter anyway?  Personally I think that the curiosity that has always been there is now poking it's head up more and asking some questions and demanding some answers from me and from the world, whoever that may be.

Chicago Again

After a second tour at Taliesin, I headed south to Chicago.  Should have been just a few hours and it was going well.  Then I hit the I-90 expressway headed for the south side and Hyde Park and Elly's house.  Oops.  Solid traffic. And then it was stopped, just completely at a standstill.  For someone who's been in the mountains and then the prairies and then the lovely, green backroads of Wisconsin, this came as a startling reminder of urban traffic.  Eventually my urban self kicked back in and I remembered there were surface streets and it should now for sure be well past any rush hour.  Sure.  Well, maybe not so much.  Traffic was at least moving but those stop lights sure slowed things down.  And then the storm hit.  Pouring rain and absolute sheets of lightening.  Thanks for the light show but really, folks, you didn't have to go to all this trouble for my arrival.

Welcome to Chicago.

Taliesin I

In a somewhat characteristic fashion, I seem to have gone about my Frank Lloyd Wright tour in more or less reverse order.  After a couple of Wright stops on the way out to the SouthWest, the major stop was Taliesin West, which, of course, is in the latter part of his career.  It is fascinating to see how the architecture and nature, the landscape and the plants and the light, all became interwoven and built on each other.  It was a new direction in many ways.  It was also a point at which Wright had pretty much become what he always said he was -- the best architect in the United States.

So, on my return swing, I went back toward the beginning and visited Taliesin in Wisconsin.  One of the intriguing things about the house here is that he was constantly changing and building it over differently.  Not just after the two disastrous fires or because there were repairs that needed to be done.  Photographs for a magazine article or a special visitor were enough reason.  And I don't mean redecorating.  No, it meant changing walls and windows and floors.  Making a terrace into part of a room.  Changing stables into apartments.  It gives new meaning to the term "work in progress".   Not always the most practical (Wright houses seem to have a tendency to leak) but always open, always beautiful, always integrating the world outside and the world inside.

The real beginning for Wright was Chicago and Oak Park.  Taliesin came later.  It was a dream, a life.  About refuge and work and disaster and keeping on and changing, over and over and over.  I can't get enough of the spirit and the beauty.  After watching the Mike Wallace interview with Wright, my goal was to have Wright design a house for me.  I never quite accomplished that, but I am grateful for the many ways he influenced places I have lived.

Tall Grass Prairie

Having worked it out so that I didn't have far to drive today, I was able to go back to the Tall Grass Prairie Preserve and take one of the tours given by the Rangers.  Listening to Rangers is always fun.  Each one has his or her own stories to tell about the Park he works in.  And every time you listen, you come away with more knowledge about some thing or some area of study that wasn't on your horizon at all before that.

I'd walked one of the trails the day before, but this time we used an old blue school bus covered by a painting of the hills and wildflowers in the prairie area, so we covered a lot more ground.  I learned again that Rangers not only know their area, they also have sharp eyes.  So I added a meadowlark and a western bluebird to my life list.  (Forgot to mention that I added a roadrunner while I was in Arizona and yes it was running across the road.)  Also I now know what a wild indigo flower looks like.  What flint looks like and how to spot the scooped out evidence that someone or some weather force chipped away at the flint either to make a tool or as a means of chipping away and shaping another piece.  Most interesting was learning how the various flowers and grasses space themselves seasonally, how they use different means, e.g., different types of root systems, to get what each species needs without competing with the other types of plants.  How fire beneficially regulates the growth patterns of plants and the grazing patterns of animals.  How important grasses are to the overall ecology of the planet.  And how sometimes nature gives us a chance to undo our mistakes.  The work that is going on to preserve the ecology of the prairie is one of those chances.  Once the prairie in the US and Canada covered literally millions of acres.  Today less that 4% of that is still grassland.  But a combination of groups from the Park Service to the Nature Conservancy to rich Texans who send their cattle to graze there are holding the line.

The best story had to do with the buffalo herd that is living and growing on this prairie.  At the beginning of the 1800s, buffalo herds were everywhere and the numbers were so great that it seemed unthinkable that they could ever be threatened by extinction.  But by the days of Theodore Roosevelt the buffalo were down to no more than 1,000.  They were functionally extinct.  It was only a matter of time.  Then TR and one of his NY friends decided to get involved.  They collected a small herd of buffalo and took them back to NY where they could be protected.  The descendants of that herd are still around and some of them are now living at the preserve here at Strong City, Kansas.  In fact, they are thriving and the numbers are multiplying.  They are no longer facing extinction.  It will take a long time but we have been given a second chance to give these animals a second chance.  Sometimes we learn, don't we?

Taking Stock

I'm looking back on my sojourn in the SouthWest and trying to figure out what I take away from it.  I really can't quite explain how different it is.  The space, the colors, the horizons, the shapes of the land itself, the fact that rain and even hail actually dries before it ever hits the ground, the art, the peoples and the history.  Believe me, this is not like the difference between say Savannah and New York.  Maybe the best way to tell it is to say that it is so different that when I would get into a conversation with someone local, there would be a nano second when I would be surprised that we were speaking the same language.  It feels so much like another country.  A beautiful and friendly one, but another world.

I'm in Kansas right now (of course, Dorothy had to return to Kansas) and today my taking stock went a bit farther into this question of variety.  I had stopped at The Tall Grass Prairie Preserve in Strong City, KS.  A couple had been in the Visitor Center and as they headed out to the parking area, I saw them take a look at my car with its New York plates.  I followed them out, got into my car and started to study the map of hiking trails.  Then I looked up to see the gentleman who had noticed my car standing at my window.  He said he had always wondered how someone from New York would feel about the prairie and the flint hills that surrounded us.  I told him that one word that came to mind was "stunned".  I told him how impressed I was and how much I loved a simple thing like the immense horizon, the sheer size of it and how far it was away.  I explained that I loved NYC and its theatres and art and the harbor and the ocean.  I told him about the fact that it was so different that it seemed like another country, as though something this far away and this different couldn't possibly be part of the same place.  "I see, " he said, " but then I guess that's what makes us us.  We can be so different and still it's all us."  From the heartland, straight to my heart.

Earthship

What's an earthship?  That was precisely my question.  Well, for one thing, it was on the far side of the Rio Grande Gorge Bridge from Taos, where I was staying.  Having talked myself into driving to the other side, rather like the bear going over the mountain to see what he could see, I proceeded on past the other side of the gorge.  A few miles on in the middle of one of those flat stretches of New Mexico with nothing much more than knee high other than the Sangre de Christos in the distance, I found it.

An earthship is not a ship at all.  It's a house built entirely of recycled materials that relies on natural sources for its utilities.  It takes some pretty interesting shapes, which is understandable when you consider it's made of things like old tires filled with sand, glass bottles and cans.  The most normal material - at least for the Southwest - is adobe, which is basically dirt and straw.  It uses solar panels for power, water collected from rain and runoff, such as it is in a climate like New Mexico.  That, of course, means that the water is scarce so it is re-used three times.  First, for drinking, cooking and washing.  Then on to water the plants which are growing in a greenhouse along part of the outside wall.  Last for things like flushing toilets.  The plants looked amazing, both ornamental and vegetables. I asked if the soaps used in cleaning affected the use of the water for the plants and they said it was not a problem.  The grand total of cost for all utilities for an earthship for an entire year is $100.  Now there's a help for a budget.

The earthship is now actually a small community of earthships and new ones are in construction.  The local realtors have at least one listed if anyone is interested.  Or you can see the whole thing on earthship.com  It is definitely interesting to see what can be done if you're really willing to take the next step.

Trails

I've found it a little difficult to find the sort of trails that suit an arthritic 60+ year old (I can still use that designation for a few more months).  Either the difficulty or the distance is more than my knees care for.  The best leads came from an outdoor equipment store and a local photographer who knew not only photography but the land he was photographing, as well.

The first was the Rift Trail which is a little south of Taos and along the east rim of the Rio Grande Gorge.  I tackled that one twice.  First, mistakenly thinking the loop was a lot shorter than it is, until I finally thought to check the trail map on Google (thank you, Steve Jobs).  That was not a bad hike for scenery.  It was just longer than I had wished for and didn't take me to the destination I had in mind.  So, a few days later, when I had stopped getting protests and 'What were you thinking?' from my right knee, and after consulting the map again, I started from the other end of the loop and in about 2 miles found myself at the east rim of Rio Grande Gorge.  Check the photo on Facebook as I still have not mastered uploading my photos to the blog.

The next one was the West Rim Trail right next to the Rio Grande Gorge Bridge.  It was the fact that it was on the far side of the Bridge that gave me pause.  The bridge, you see, is said to be 650' over the river.  I use the term "said to be" because it is said to be several heights, depending on who is speaking.  The least I have heard is 550' feet, so this is something of a distinction without a difference, to use an old law school term.  And don't be picturing the Verrazano Bridge or the George Washington Bridge.  This is a two lane road with railings slightly more than waist high.  The supports are all beneath you.   All you see is open air and flat plains stretching beyond the bridge and on to the next mountains.  Gorgeous, beautiful and visually almost no indication of support.  Also, tourists, who have walked out on the bridge to take a picture, have an extremely bad habit of stepping back into the traffic lanes to be sure they get a great picture of their friends and the 650' deep panorama.  If there is really anything to the survival of the fittest, there would be a decrease in tourists on the Gorge Bridge.

It took me a few days to talk myself out of all the "let's scare the out-of-towners" talk.  When I finally did it, it was, of course, not scary at all -- except for those tourists taking pictures.  They really do that.
It led me to the West Rim Trail, which would have been a piece of cake if I had remembered my walking stick.  I gave it a couple of miles with several photos (again, please see Facebook) and time spent on some handy large rocks just absorbing the views.  When the storm clouds over the Sangre de Christo mountains started to get close enough to smell rain, I headed back and, wonder of wonders, got to my car just before the few raindrops started down.  For New Mexico as I have experienced it, it was a decent rainfall.  I wish many more of them for this beautiful area and for the pinon pines.

Kit Carson

Who knew Kit Carson was the hero of Taos?  Come to think about it, I didn't know much about Kit Carson at all, apart from the name recognition.  Well, it seems he lived a good deal of his life in and around Taos.  His home is in the center of Taos and the condo I'm renting is just off Kit Carson Road, so it was inevitable that we get together.

His home is about 200 years old and part of it was once a saddlery.  Is any of this familiar?  You might say I had an instant rapport with that house, even if it is made of adobe.  It seems pretty comfortable.  Adobe is a good material.  The thickness makes for coolness in summer and warmth in winter and the fireplaces in each room add to that comfortable home feeling.  The place did a good job of conveying the fact that a family actually lived there and had all the chores and family times that families do.

One of the most poignant stories about Kit Carson had to do with the dime novels about him that became popular in his lifetime.  He had scouted for Army expeditions at least twice and, although Carson was pretty diffident and not talkative, the Army commander of the expeditions wasn't.  In fact, the commander seems to have been good at some exaggeration here and there.  Probably didn't do his career any harm either.  So, Carson became the superhero of his day, credited with a whole bunch of things that no one could live up to in reality.

On one occasion, an Indian raid had occurred near Taos and a woman had been carried off by the raiding party.  In a story right out of the dime novels, a rescue group rode out with soldiers and Kit Carson with them. They caught up with the raiding party.  So far, so good.  But they could only do so much.  They drove off the raiders but in the fight, the woman they wanted to rescue was killed.  With her she had one of those novels about Kit Carson.  It is said that that is when Carson really began to feel the burden of those books.  Perhaps it behooves us to realize that the issue of "the media" has been with us for longer than we think.  It creates heroes and it also creates burdens, even for those heroes.

Ghost Ranch

I'm just back from a brief visit to Ghost Ranch, Georgia O'Keefe's summer home for many years.  Actually, I didn't visit the house which has to be arranged separately. But the area is stunning and more than made up for anything else.  Shapes simply rising immediately out of the ground.  And colors that look impossibly bright and impossibly geometric, laid out in broad bands and conic hills.  It has elements of looking back in time as you look at those bands and realize they are millions of years old.  Then there's the fact that New Mexico has it own dinosaur, a relatively small one that was found here some years ago and eventually became New Mexico's state fossil.  I wonder if any other states have their own official fossil.  I really wish they had named it the official dinosaur instead of the official fossil.  Sort of like a little kid's dream of having a pet dinosaur.  I guess I shouldn't expect too much from a state legislature.

Apart from the sheer drama of the landscape, it was enlightening to see a particular landscape and compare it to the painting or paintings that O'Keefe made of that place.  How she made you look at particular aspects of the scene or see the colors as she saw them.  Even more, to see how she saw it at different times or seasons.  And "her mountain", which slips into so many paintings, sometimes a major component,  sometimes so small that is almost unnoticed.  I especially liked one of her last paintings, Stairway to the Moon, that I had not seen before.  Especially after hearing how she often slept on the flat adobe roof of her house and saw the home made ladder sticking up and over the parapet of the roof.

Taos Pueblo

Taos Pueblo is not Taos, although it is just outside Taos.  Outside in the middle of openness and next to the beginnings of the Sangre de Christo range.  It is older than memory in terms of how long people have lived there.  It pretty much goes back to the beginning of humans living in the area.  It has always been a place to meet and trade for all that time so far as anyone can determine.  The adobe buildings are at least 1,000 years old and people are still living in them.  There is an adobe church that goes back to the 1800s, but there is also a kiva that goes back a lot farther than that.  Both are still in use.  The church is open to visitors.  The kiva is open only to members of the group of Indians who live here, living according to traditions and a heritage that has lasted for thousands of years.

[I want to say here that I am using the term Indian because it is the one that comes into my mind when I think of these people.  It is not PC but it is less strained for me than Native American.  So I'm gong to use the term that is comfortable to me.  It may be mistaken historically, but it is used with no intention to show disrespect or condescension."]

There is no electricity and no running water in the Pueblo.  The source of water is the Red Willow River which runs through the village.  It begins with snow melt in the mountains at a specific lake, which is sacred ground to them.  The Indians do not sell their traditional food, although they do sell their art and their crafts.  They do not sell at all on festival days.  That is festival days according to their heritage and tradition, not Anglo holidays or church holidays.

It is a strange feeling to sit by the river and think about what it must be like to drive a pickup truck but not have electric lights in your home.  To carry water from that river for every use and to try to keep that river free from contamination from others who don't feel about it as you do.  That is a level of respect for one's heritage and one's traditions that I don't think I have ever encountered before.  I am reminded of a quote I came across from Eleanor Roosevelt.  She and FDR were visiting a very talented Indian potter in New Mexico and Eleanor said, more or less:  Educate your children, but follow your own Way.

Taos, New Mexico

For the last week I have been relaxing in one place and getting to know Taos a bit.

This part of the world is so different that it takes some getting used to.  There's the wind, for one thing.  I thought of the desert as many things.  Hot, dry, bright, open, a different set of colors, but windy hadn't occurred to me.  Then I saw the signs along the highway that said: Zero visibility possible.  I saw miles and miles of low pines and sage and tumbleweed and other things I couldn't identify.  But what was there to reduce the visibility to absolutely nothing?  Then I saw that the wind was not just rolling tumbleweed across the road.  That dust was picking up quite a bit.  Thankfully, I was never around the zero visibility level, but I began to see how it could happen.  Especially the next day when an interstate was closed because of the dust.  I was beginning to learn that this country demands respect.  That was on the way to Taos.

So I was ready to hang out and just relax for a day or two when I got here.  There was a packet of mail to go through and laundry to do and maps to collect and go over and plans to make for day trips.

Even the maps here are intimidating.  I'm not used to seeing large areas marked as wilderness.  And the roads.  Taos is in a valley but it's still at almost 7,000 feet so mountain roads are involved in going almost anywhere.  I think the ones around here are actually the easy ones but to a New Yorker who is okay with traffic, but not so much with hairpin turns and descents you don't argue with, this takes some getting used to.  I'm taking it slowly in every sense of the word by visiting the old adobe churches in the area, some in Taos itself and some in the up to 70 miles away range.  Out here folks would think nothing of driving 50 miles to get to a particular restaurant.  The concept of distance changes when the horizon is so far away and the vista is so spacious.  It's something I keep shaking my head over.  Perhaps by the time my month is over, I will have absorbed some of that attitude.  And gotten better at mountain driving.

Route 66

One of the other themes of this trip has been Route 66, the Mother Road.  I have been following it rather loosely since Route 66 as such doesn't exist any more.  It has been superseded by interstates, although there are route 66s in severe states.  I've tried to keep an eye out for the historic Route 66 as much as possible but have mostly just followed its general route from city to city.  Chicago, St Louis, on through Kansas, Oklahoma City.  After Scottsdale, I made a point of driving to Flagstaff and Gallup.  And as the song says, Don't forget Winona.  Someday maybe I'll pick it up again in Flagstaff and continue the rest of the route to California.

Wright Mania

I think I'm becoming something of a Frank Lloyd Wright groupie.  This particular part of the trip started with walking past Robie house in Chicago practically every day.  (It's about two blocks from Elly's house and on the way to the kids' school.)  I continued with a visit to another Wright house in Springfield, IL.  Then I remembered that Taliesin West was somewhere out there in the Southwest.  Having googled it, I decided to add Scottsdale, AZ to my itinerary.

It was so worth it.  Amazing setting and amazing architecture.  It was also my introduction to the desert in bloom, as Taliesin West sits in the middle of over 100 acres of desert land that is being preserved in its original condition.  So much so, in fact, that Wright boycotted bringing electricity to the area because he so disliked the sight of the utility poles and eventually the even bigger metal structures.  It didn't succeed, of course.  Electricity came to the area.  But Taliesin West is very proud of the fact that they have recently added solar panels which are quite well masked by the normal vegetation.  Vegetation which includes a form of cactus that gave Wright the idea of how to support the skyscrapers he designed.

Taliesin and its sister school in Wisconsin are still very much schools of architecture and the apprentices, as Wright insisted on calling them, still build their own structures for housing in the desert and sleep there, although there are dining and study and technical facilities available in the main buildings at Taliesin.  The solutions they have come up with to keep the packrats and other desert critters out of their structures are really amazing.  One of them actually suspended his living quarters off the ground -- after he carefully calculated the maximum height a packrat could jump.

I also discovered, and got to sit in, a Wright Origami Chair.  It is made of wood and looks as though it is a folded piece of origami with cushions.  It is also the most comfortable chair I have ever sat in.  If anyone ever comes across one of them or a source for them, let me know.

After the last stop on the tour, I finally became an official groupie and took out a membership.  After all, there are Wright buildings all along my route back east.  Or I can make it that way.

Desert in Bloom

When I set out on this road trip I wanted to see the desert in bloom.  That expression dates back to my botany courses at the University of Michigan.  I just wasn't sure when that phenomenon happened.  So I contacted a friend who lives in Arizona and asked if it would work out if I visited in April.  Would that work, especially if I might not get there until the latter half of the month?  Her response:  If you come in April, you won't be able to miss it.

Still worried, I set out with "desert in bloom" in mind.  Today I drove through parts of New Mexico and into Arizona.  Well, Sarah was right.  As I headed into Arizona, I began to see color off to the sides of the road.  Yellow, white, some red.  Even the cacti were in bloom.  I can't wait to get out and about and start identifying some of these blooms and trees.  I have a feeling it's only going to get more gorgeous.

Thank you, Sarah.  And thank you to Dr. Cover, my old botany teacher.  Yes, that really is her name.

Horizons

I'm on the road again and once again I keep finding surprises.  As soon as I got past Kansas City, the view opened out.  All at once, the horizon was a long, long way away.  As I continued on across Oklahoma and the Texas panhandle, it just got to be more and more.  It was like being in the center of the world.  I just had to get out of the car and turn 360 degrees to see it all.  The cloudscapes were phenomenal.  Something that you usually don't pay much attention to at all now has enough canvas to become a moving architectural show.  Stunning is the word that comes to mind.

The feeling that goes with all this openness and the amount of space you can see and feel is wonderful. Exhilarating and relaxing at the same time.  Driving along in the car, you feel yourself sitting straighter and your shoulders relaxing.  When you're actually outside with the wind added and cloud shadows and the smell of grass and rain, well the word becomes spectacular.  There's something that feels very, very good about having that much space before you get to the horizon.  Horizons suddenly seem not to be constricting, but inviting, opening you up and leading you on.

Chicago Time

I spent three weeks in Chicago and it was great.  Initially I was there to help out with a temporary babysitting crisis.  It was very reassuring - probably to all of us - to see how easily and well it all worked.  I got to see and learn a lot about my grandchildren Luke and Annie and possibly even a little about myself.  From Luke I learned about Lego and more specifically about the fact that you have to be very careful about constructing the base of your Lego building because "if you don't get the base right, things can go wrong."  Somehow I feel that there's a lesson about more than Legos here.  From Annie I learned about saying "please" even when you're giving instructions about building Legos.  When I finally did remember to add "please" to my instructions, her response was:  "It's okay, Gran.  I was going to do it anyway."  Now that is true courtesy.  I also learned about adding sparkles to just about every outfit.

There was also the great Easter egg hunt, which is sort of like being in the center of a small, but vocal tornado.  And getting lost finding my way home from buying the strawberry plants to be set out in the garden.  I knew something was wrong when I saw a sign for Wisconsin.  But the crazy route did take me through Oak Park and past the Wright house and studio.  Can't argue with that.

Then there was  also the concept of knit bombing (I do hope I got that right).  It's a totally non-violent activity in which a knitter emulates Christo (the one who wraps buildings and added orange gates to Central Park) by wrapping or decorating outdoor objects with knitted work.  At the University of Chicago quadrangle, it was knitted additions to trees, bushes, and lampposts and it was charming.  If I could only figure out how to upload photos, I would share some of them with you.

The last weekend there was a dance performance by UC student members of the South Asian Student Association (once again, I hope I got that correctly).  Rocking, roaring and incredibly diverse and beautiful.  As one description in the program put it: "India loves to dance.  That's why there are so many different styles of dance throughout India."  So much energy, so much fun.  Perhaps the most impressive, as well as moving, moment came at the very beginning.  The program opened with the national anthems of all the countries represented in the evening's dances.  First there was one person on the stage singing her anthem, a second joined her and made it a duet.  Then he began his national anthem and then another person joined him to make that a duet.  And so it was passed down to the last of the anthems and then everyone was singing together a poem composed by a poet from one of their countries.  The last words were:  "What are we waiting for?  Another sign?  Another call?  We have to find a way to peace."  Indeed, what are we waiting for?  I hope they keep that part for next year's dances.

UC Style

Today I spotted an extremely dusty car parked on one of the streets here in Hyde Park in the University of Chicago area.  Written in the dust were the words Wash This Car.  But it's the University of Chicago so it was written in five different languages.  I couldn't even identify some of them, let alone read them. Looks like the place is living up to its reputation.

Technology and the Trace Part II

I continue to be amazed at what they've built into my car.  A few days ago, it informed me that it was due for service.  Since I'm in Chicago, this seemed like a good time to get it taken care of before another jaunt.  Yesterday I dropped it off and headed back to the house in a cab.  At which point, I got a call ID-ed as Dealership.  Thinking of the dealership I'd just left and muttering because I assumed it meant I'd forgotten something there, I took the call.  Well, it was from my local dealership back on Long Island.

I learned that someone had found my keys back on the Natchez Trace in Mississippi and gotten them to a dealership there.  Since, of course, the key is chipped the local folks knew where they belonged and got the keys back to my local group. The Oyster Bay folks were calling me to ask how I wanted the keys returned.  After explaining the story, I asked the gentleman if he could just send the keys to my new mailing address.  He told me he lived in Glen Cove and would personally drop them off where my mail is being held and forwarded.

When I hung up from the call, I couldn't resist commenting on it to the cab driver.  He listened to the story and said he was glad I had told him because a friend had found some car keys and didn't know how to go about getting them back to the owner.  Now he would tell him to return the keys to the dealership.  Paying it forward.

So now my keys are wending their way back to me and all is well on the adventures.  Now if I could just make a decision on where to go next.

Houses, Houses, Houses

Having completed the Natchez Trace, I continued on to Natchez, Mississippi.  Somehow it seemed inevitable.  Another old town full of old houses.  Not plantation houses.  These were the estates or, I would say, the town houses.  Built by the planters to show how much money they had.  Back before the Civil War, at one point the majority of the millionaires in the United States were in Natchez.  So they had a lot to show off.  And they surely did.  Big, graceful houses.  Spacious to catch the breezes off the Mississippi on all those 90+ days.  With details from all over the world.  And I never knew there were so many things you could put gold leaf on.

Maybe it has something to do with having recently sold a 200 year old farmhouse, but I love these old houses.  They have so many stories and they speak a language I understand.

Then from one sort of house to another.  I had passed through Asheville, North Carolina on my way to Savannah.  This time I came back to see Vanderbilt's Biltmore house.  It is unbelievable.  Even though not all of the original 250,000 acres are still there, it's still three miles from the gatehouse to the main house.  I swear I've seen smaller castles in Europe.  It is hard to imagine that a house that is measured in acres could look and feel like a home, but somehow this one manages.  The walls drip with Sargent portraits (he commissioned Sargent, one of my all time favorite painters BTW, to do portraits, not of the family, but of the architect for the house and of Olmstead who did the gardens and as much of the rest of the property as he could get to in his lifetime) and then there is a wall of Durer prints, including the inaccurate rhinoceros.  I thought I had some acquaintance with the Vanderbilt style after seeing the house in Long Island, the one in Hyde Park and The Breakers in Newport, but I had no idea.  The house parties here would leave Downton Abbey in the dust.  And somehow, through it all, you do see real people and a family, which is perhaps the most amazing thing of all.

Technology and the Trace

For the last couple of days I've been exploring the Natchez Trace.  It's a wonderful, do-it-yourself kind of place.  You drive the Natchez Trace Parkway, stopping at whatever turnout or historic site or nature trail looks interesting, doing as much or as little as you like.

At one point I stopped at a spot where you can walk on the old trace.  It's sunken quite a bit below the ground level but it's maintained by the National Park Service.  I thought it would be neat to walk a short ways on the original trace so I set out after carefully locking the car (this will become relevant later).  I walked a bit and headed back to my car.  Put my hand in my pocket and couldn't find my keys.  Not that unusual.  Probably in another pocket.  After repeatedly checking every available pocket, I had to believe they had dropped out of my pocket somehow.  So I started back over my short walk.  An older gentleman and his daughter who were also checking out the trace saw what I was doing and promptly started to walk along with me checking the ground.  Unfortunately my key ring had only the black key insert for a BMW and not much else. And the trace is just as you might expect -- wet and muddy in places, covered with leaves, twigs and everything that falls from trees and bushes.  Not exactly easy to see anything, let alone a small black object a couple of inches long.

My new friends suggested calling AAA or my insurance and I envisioned hours at a turnoff on the Natchez Trace waiting for someone to find the right place and then probably tell me that they couldn't deal with it on the spot.  But the suggestion did spark my memory of those commercials for BMW Assist.  Well, let me tell you, those commercials are true.  I reached a human being on my cell phone quite quickly, convinced him that I was the owner of the car and about a minute later - as we all watched - the button popped up on the driver's door and I could get the spare set of keys in my purse.  Hooray for cell phones and magic door openers.

Rediscoveries

You would think that with no appointments and no one but me to set my "schedule" I could get my time organized and keep my postings up to date.  When I figure out why that isn't so, I'll let you know.

You would also think that after a month in Savannah I would  have definitely rediscovered the South.  And in fact I did do a bunch of that.  Paula Dean's fried chicken helped a lot.  As did the softer attitude and voices and the patience of drivers and the helpfulness of everyone.   But I've added a few things to my rediscovery.

First there were the Civil War battlefields at Chattanooga and Chickamauga.  I remembered visiting Lookout Mountain but I had forgotten or never known that it too was a battlefield.  I'm not enough of an historian to appreciate the nuances of troop movements and the old firearms.  What got through to me was the waste of life and young life especially.  I don't remember the statistics but the overall feel of the story is so sad.  I wish we could learn that very, very few things are worth dying for.  There are beautiful stories also, of course, of the times when each side showed respect for the gallantry of others but it just does not balance at all.

The next discovery was much more upbeat.  I revisited Memphis, a place where I used to visit family every summer when I was a kid.  Most of the time it was just me and my mom because my dad couldn't leave his business and I remember those long, long Greyhound bus rides.  But then there would be the arrival and hugs, hugs, hugs.  My cousins (the relation is more complicated but we just said cousins because it was easier and after all there are so many kinds of cousins in the South) who were close to me in age and the visits to relatives in Mississippi who lived on farms.  Sleeping on pallets of quilts and talking long, long into the night with all the younger relations or listening to the stories the adults were telling out on the porch.  Well, the family part is no longer around, but Memphis is still here.  Looks like it's struggling with the hard economic times but it is struggling and that's a good sign.  There's still the Peabody, where my oldest sister once worked as a hostess for the dining room, and the ducks are still there coming out of the elevator and hurrying down their red carpet to the fountain.  What a life.  Too bad the dining room was closed but good that Beale Street is right there to provide.  Blues City Cafe.  I took a bite of the ribs and they tasted like home.  Who knew I'd been missing the taste of Memphis all these years.

Next morning I visited the Metals Museum.  Completely forgetting that a combination of daylight savings time and a new time zone had completely thrown off the time on my watch, I arrived before the museum opened.  Still completely unaware of the correct time, I saw the gate opening and thought how well timed my visit was.  Well, the gate closed after me and I realized someone had opened it to get in or out.  A few questions and I realized my goof but the folks were so nice they let me stay anyway.  I wandered through the sculpture garden, took pictures of the fantasy of metal flowers and of the barges on the Mississippi.  Chatted with the guys in the smithy about ironwork (what I call it), which is actually steel and wished I could commission them to do a chandelier or a set of andirons for me.  I wish I could figure out how to upload some of the pictures to the blog, but I'm going to post some on facebook in any event.

I'm now in Mississippi exploring the Natchez Trace.  Did you know that buffalo actually helped form the Trace?  Once upon a time, they did live in this area and were one of the animals who began this trail.  I sure didn't know that before.  National Park Rangers are very informative.

Further Moving On aka Improv

I have said way too many times that I believe that improv theater is the best training for life and its events.  I may not have done improv but I am now getting into the spirit.

Plans change, as they say.  I am not headed for Chicago.  Judy is headed back to Michigan but I have freed up my schedule and am now faced with the question of what to do and where to go.  Opting to stay in the South and away from snowstorms and all that cold, I am now in Alabama.  I was going to Memphis for the weekend but found that reservations were hard to come by so I am detouring up to Chattanooga and the ChooChoo and then on to Memphis where I hope to see the ducks in the lobby of the Peabody Hotel.  Memphis is a place I used to visit a lot in the summers when I was kid and the Peabody has a couple of places in family history so I am looking forward to seeing it.  Not sure about Graceland although as an Elvis fan, I may be obliged to visit.  And of course there's the barbecue.

Meantime, I will take a look at the Smokies and some memories of that locale as well.  Just taking it slow and easy and making up my mind as I go along.

Moving On

I will be moving on from Savannah tomorrow.  Fortunately, my friend, Judy, will be accompanying me for the next couple of days, but then our ways separate as she heads back to Michigan and I go on to Chicago. A few days there and then I hope to heading Southwestward.

Of course, Judy and I will be dining at The Pink House tonight for one more Georgia splurge.  And ice cream at Leopold's, of course.

Visitors

My first visitors were Kit and Nate and Fiona, but you've already read about our adventures at Tybee Island.  They were followed by my friend, Betty, a historian who was in Savannah for a conference.  Thanks to her history connections, I was able to join a visit to Wormsloe Plantation.  Wormsloe has been in the same family for nine generations.  It is now a historic site that is home to an amazing amount of research.  The studies range from boxes full of papers documenting the work and events on the plantation back to the days of Ogelthorpe to a plant which is essential to an endangered butterfly and, of course, the butterflies.  Not to mention the care of the mile and a half avenue of live oaks and Spanish moss.  It was so heartening to see someone so excited about her work as the lady who is in charge of this site is.  As a result of the work of this one lady, there are now more and more scholars engaged in more and different areas of study in this location.  Talk about jobs creation.  Who needs corporations?

As if that weren't enough, Betty and I went on to a presentation on heirloom grains from the Low Country.  Once again, it was great to hear the excitement and the commitment of the people engaged in this work.  But I have to admit that the best part was getting to taste the grains they had brought back to life -- White Flint corn and Carolina Gold rice and Hopping John with a new variety of pea beans that goes back to the settlers.  Seconds were offered and gladly accepted.  It's amazing that local and unaltered foods can really taste so different and so wonderful compared to what is usually available.  Keep on working, plant historians.  I'm ready for more.

Walk a Tybee Island Beach

I highly recommend this activity.  Especially when it's February and they're talking about another major winter storm.  And if you have your 20 month old granddaughter with you and her parents, that's even  better.
Recently, I read a suggestion that you document 50 things about a walk in your neighborhood.  I don't know about 50, but here goes.
1.  Sand so firmly packed that even we folks with arthritis can walk comfortably.
2.  Finding so many perfect or almost perfect shells that you have to start choosing which ones to keep.
3.  Watching pelicans fish for their lunch.
4.  Watching your daughter and son-in-law be wonderful parents.
5.  Watching you granddaughter show everyone that sometimes you just need to sit down and check out the sand and the shells.  There's no need to be going anywhere.
6.  Piping Plovers -- new species for me.
7.  Jellyfish that didn't make it on the outgoing tide.
8.  Horseshoe crab shells -- really big ones.  Like the ones we sometimes find in Amagansett but there seem to be more of them here.
9.  A cloud of ducks settling on the waves or taking off in one long, long line.
10.  Cormorants -- another new species for me.  My life list is really improving.
11.  Learning about how to recognize sand dollars that are still alive so you don't reduce their population.
12.  Waves chasing you back up the beach.
13.  Swings on the beach for once again just sitting and letting it happen.
14.  Warm sun on your face, even if you know that face is going to be red tomorrow.
15.  Okay, okay, I've got some work to do on noticing but I am working on it.

Madeira

Have some Madeira m'dear?  Anyone else remember the Kingston Trio recording of that song?  I know.  I've probably lost everybody below the age of  60.  I couldn't help remembering it when I discovered that the Davenport House has Madeira Tours every weekend.

The parties are in the late afternoon/early evening at about the time a traditional Madeira party would have been held in Savannah in the early 1800s.  Candles are lit and madeira and appropriate snacks are served.  Almonds and ground nuts (peanuts to the rest of the world) with the lighter Madeira and pound cake with the heavier Malmsey.  It seems that in England pound cake is called Madeira cake because it went so well with Madeira.  And Madeira was stored on the top floor of houses because heat improved it.  Apparently this was discovered when the colonists realized that the Madeira they got was better when it arrived than when it was sent, due they felt to the sloshing around in kegs in the holds of the ships transporting it.  Can't argue with the scientific method.

Definitely a fun tour and and a beautiful house.  BTW, did you know that the tune for our national anthem is actually the tune of a drinking song known as the Anacreon Hymn.  Our guide said it was chosen because it was a tune everyone knew.  I just wish we could forget about fiscal cliffs and sequestration (I thought that was for juries) and get back to the wine and song part.