Posts Tagged ‘Columbia County’

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Letter From New York 10 15 15 From the Kardashians to real issues…

October 15, 2015

Columbia County. P.D. James. Obama. Afghanistan. Alexander the Great. Pluto. Tom Swift. Tom Swift and His Atomic Blaster. Hardy Boys. Lamar Odom. Khloe Kardashian. The Kardashians. Love Ranch. Star Trek. Hillary Clinton.   Democratic debate. UN Security Council.

The sun setting in the west is crowning the trees on the far bank of the creek with a golden glow; the mirror still creek is golden, too, with the same light. It was a brilliant fall day in Columbia County, the air crisp and bright with a sky of soft blue across which scudded a few billowy clouds.

While observing this sun kissed fall chill day, I struggled with faulty Internet access, a recalcitrant printer and a scrum of personal paperwork that worked my nerves. In frustration, I left and went for lunch at Relish, running into Jeremiah Rusconi, between house restoration errands as he labors on a huge project across the river, in Athens.

Returning home, my stomach went tetchy and I decided it best to stay close to home, spending the afternoon continuing with the paper scrum.

Now as the day ends, I began to feel reflective, attempting to light a fire [not going well] in the Franklin stove while listening to music from the 1940’s and early ‘50’s.

In the future, I see a continuation of my reading of a P.D. James mystery while eschewing food for the rest of the evening.

Evenings like these are pleasing to me, giving me time to think, sort the world, at least in my own mind, and to enjoy the particular solitary life I lead.

While I was driving into town for lunch, I heard the confirmation of what was expected this morning – Obama will keep troops in Afghanistan for at least another year. Alexander the Great, the British, the Russians, all came to a nasty place in Afghanistan and I hope we don’t either.

While things on this planet are fairly grim, scientists are excited by the unexpected variety Pluto has to offer. It has an atmosphere. It has mountains. It is not what we expected. Information from the planetary flyby continues to come in and each new drip of information is a bit stunning. That excites me.

I was always a science fiction fan. Instead of the Hardy Boys, I read Tom Swift. One of my favorites was “Tom Swift and His Atomic Blaster.” A devotee of “Star Trek,” I hope we will continue our exploration of space. It does feel like the next frontier.

Also, while I was driving there was a radio report on Lamar Odom’s condition. The basketball and reality television star, not quite divorced from Khloe Kardashian, apparently ingested alcohol, cocaine and herbal sexual stimulants during a stay at a legal brothel, Love Ranch, in Nevada. He paid $75,000 for his stay and may also pay with his life.

Khloe is with him. He has been intubated. Not a good sign…

I have never understood the titanic appeal of the Kardashians. Boggles my mind.

While I didn’t watch the Democratic Debate on CNN, Hillary apparently, according to the pundits, is the winner while Bernie Sanders scored some points.

The United Nations has five new members on the Security Council, its most important body. They include Japan, Uruguay, Ukraine, Egypt and Senegal. It will be very interesting to watch. Ukraine is not exactly friendly with Russia, a permanent member of the Council and Egypt, usually a U.S. ally, has been playing footsie with the Russians.

We all thought this was going to be simpler when the Iron Curtain fell. Wrong.

For me, the sun has set and the golden light on the trees outside my window is from the spotlights I have installed. The mournful sound of jazz comes out of Pandora and my fire has almost come to fruition.

Tomorrow, I will continue the scrum with paperwork. But that is tomorrow.

Enjoy tonight.

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Letter From New York 10 12 15 You can’t go home again, even if it’s nice…

October 13, 2015

It is 7:30 PM and it is dark already. I’m headed north on the 7:15 Amtrak out of Penn towards home after two weeks of wandering. Baltimore followed by Indianapolis followed by Minneapolis and now home. I made a stop in New York and listened as Howard Bloom recorded his podcast, “Howard Bloom Saves the Universe.” Look him up in your iTunes store. He’s very good, very funny and very wise.

Having not had very much to eat today, as in almost nothing, I stopped and got some California Roll from Penn Sushi and ate it while waiting for the train to start its journey north, which it has. I would love to be able to watch the river but it’s too dark, the river is hidden.

Minneapolis is a lovely town. There are an infinite number of things to do in the city of my birth. Often I have described my youth as being what it must have been like to grow up in one of the great provincial capitals of Europe. It has the Minnesota Orchestra, back to making music after a crippling strike. The Minneapolis Institute of the Arts, the Walker, the Guthrie, an amazing theatre scene. One Uber driver said to me that in Minneapolis/St. Paul you found a college on almost every corner. Which is almost true.

The city is freshly spruced. Every building looked like it had just been splashed with a fresh coat of paint. Everything was sparkling clean and looked like the glistening city of the future. Unemployment is low and the city is prospering.

But I sampled none of the intellectual delights of my hometown. I spent all my time visiting with people, my friends and family, people that have been important to me over the years.

When I taught high school there I became close to one of the families involved with the school, the Elsens. I spent an afternoon with them at a restaurant. Don is 88 and his force of nature wife, Betty, has been dead now almost ten years. Julie was there as was her cousin Brenda. After Don and Julie left, Brenda stayed to chat with me. She wanted to let me know that I was the only teacher she had in her life she felt “saw” her. I was humbled.

There were long mornings of coffee with my brother and sister-in-law, Deb, and a long and lovely lunch with my ex sister-in-law, Sally, with whom I laughed and cried.

I have deep roots in Minneapolis though one morning, driving to some get together, I also realized that the old phrase, “ You can’t go home again,” is true. I have roots but I no longer belong there.

All was familiar but I am no longer a citizen of that place; I am a citizen, for now, of Columbia County, where I have lived for, for me, a long time. And now I am on the train, headed back to the little cottage by the creek, looking forward to being in that space, surrounded by my things, to be able in the morning to sit on the deck while having coffee and to think about the future and not the past.

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Letter From New York 09 18 15 How lucky am I…

September 18, 2015

It is a stunningly beautiful day here in Claverack. The creek is a mirror of the trees above it, the sun is beginning to descend in the west, the temperature is perfect and I am savoring every moment I get to be out on the deck.

Those days are numbered. I needed to wait awhile this morning to come out here, as it was just a bit too cool when I woke up.

There hasn’t been a letter for a couple of days. I’ve been busy. Yesterday I drove down to Norwalk in Connecticut for lunch with a good, old friend, Bob Altman, who is the king of recipe videos. He’s done thousands of them.

We toured his studio and then went down to the beach for lunch. I had no idea Norwalk was on the water until yesterday.

It was a five-hour journey both ways but very much worth it. On the drive, I listened almost exclusively to NPR, catching up on what they were saying about the world.

There were interviews with Syrian refugees, men and women who had lives there but have found their towns destroyed. Fearing for their lives and the lives of their children, they left Syria. Many went to Turkey but there is no path there for them to legitimacy so they continued on, trusting in many cases to rubber boats to take them to Kos or Lesbos.

Hundreds if not thousands have died in the pursuit of their dream to make it to a safe place. Overwhelmed, Europe is reacting, attempting to staunch the flow coming toward them. It is a human crisis of unfathomable dimensions.

And I sit here in this blissful spot, bothered by nothing except an occasional mosquito. I cannot comprehend the misery of the millions on the move. I accept it in the abstract but I have no visceral connection with it.

My brother probably does. He has been going to Honduras for years to deal with the lack of medical care for those who live in the back of beyond, people who have no more and sometimes less than these refugees.

Sitting on this deck, overlooking the creek, I realize what luck I have had to have been born me, in the time and place that I was. I have been spared many of the world’s travails by having been born in mid-century America.

The future has always been uncertain. I am old enough to remember “duck and cover.” As if that would have saved any of us from a nuclear blast…

But here I am in the third act of my life, seated on a deck overlooking a placid creek with the luxury of looking at the world and being able to ruminate about its meaning. I am SO lucky.

In the next months, I will probably spend more of my time in Columbia County. Last night I went to Christ Church’s “Vision Meeting” and was glad to have been present. It helped me feel connected to this place.

I may be doing some work with the local not for profit radio station, helping them with their marketing and fundraising. I am settling in to being a citizen of Columbia County as opposed to being a “weekender.”

It feels good.

The god Fortuna smiled on me when it/she brought me to this place, allowing me to settle into a home that I think had been part of my dreams since I was a child. It has been great fun to have lived in New York but I think that time is passing.

Once, when I first moved to DC I though how fortunate it was I was there. I had been allowed to know several great American cities. I have lived in Los Angeles, part time in San Francisco, Washington and now New York. How lucky is that?

I’ve never lived in Chicago and I’ve never really liked Chicago so I don’t think that’s a big miss.

I’ve seen a great deal of the world, much more than I might ever have if I had remained a high school English teacher in Minneapolis and have been a witness to two generations of technological changes and been, somehow, a part of both.

F

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Letter From Columbia County 09 08 15 A day for me…

September 8, 2015

It has been a hot and humid day in Columbia County. Waking early, I went out onto the deck to read the Times and drink my coffee before the heat of the day descended upon me.

The Pope is loosening the parameters for an annulment in the church and there was much in the paper about the refugee crisis in Europe. The markets were trending upwards before the open and succeeded in closing up.

Today was all about me. After playing host to my brother and family I felt like I needed a day to myself. After reading the paper, I went to town to collect a week’s worth of mail and to do some shopping for staples.

It is apparent we are in an election season in Columbia County. Everywhere there are signs for candidates. They have increased exponentially since I went to New York City to spend time with my brother. Lawns are littered with them.

Bill Hallenbeck, a Republican and the incumbent Mayor of Hudson, is running for reelection against Democrat Tiffany Martin Hamilton. He probably will win; the town is still deeply Republican though the drift has been slowly toward the Democrats.

I’ve never met Hallenbeck though have always thought, based on what I have read in the papers, that he seems a bit out of his depth as Mayor. Still, he has served two terms…

My friend Larry and I met for lunch at Ca’Mea and then I went with him to collect things he had bought for the new loft above the renovated barn on his property.

While we were there, eating at the bar, surrounded by folks, there was animated conversation about the refugee crisis in Europe and, of course, about The Donald. The fellows to Larry’s right were astonished that Trump is the Republican frontrunner.

As am I…

The refugee crisis is astonishing. The situation is desperate. And there is no unified response even now from the EU. They are making it up as they go.

For a moment today, I thought I should go and volunteer to help out on the island of Kos or in Hungary but I don’t think there is a mechanism for such offers for help.

The day is fading. I am on my deck, a soft wind blowing from the west, cooling me a little. Across the creek, I realize the first leaves are changing. Yellow mixes with green and I grieve for what is going and am open to what is coming.

The seasons are beginning to turn.

As they turn all over the world, the refugees in Hungary are enduring cold nights now while my air conditioning keeps me comfortable.

It will be awhile before the leaves all turn and there will be more nights when I will be able to sit at my circular picnic table, viewing the creek and enjoying the moments.

Then will come real fall and after fall will come winter and then spring and then summer and I will be observing it all from my deck.

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Letter From New York 07 23 15 A perfect day in Columbia County…

July 24, 2015

In the west, the sun is slowly setting, a great golden orb pulsing through the trees and almost hurting my eyes as I sit at my desk typing. It has been a magical summer day in Columbia County. Rising early in a cool morning, I sat on my deck reading and sipping coffee, reminded of summer mornings when I was a child in Minnesota. Then the sun was glittering off the creek. Snapping a shot of it, I sent it to Nick Stuart, my friend who is currently touring Southern California with his daughter Francesca. He returned with a shot of a greyish morning in LA, with downtown Los Angeles visible in the background of the shot.

It is Thursday night and another week has slipped away. Last Friday night I was headed north, plumped with the excitement of having a full week at the cottage. Now that time has slipped away and it has been very sweet. Friends have visited, I have had friends for dinner, books have been read, shopping has been done and now that time is coming to an end. Next week I will be back in the city.

World events swirl around me while I am here and I make note of them but feel far from them. We have done a deal with Iran, something that seemed impossible. Republicans are going to attempt to derail it. Interestingly, the Ayatollah Khamenei seems to have decided he is okay with it. Is that a good thing or a bad thing?

Ash Carter, the Secretary of Defense, has surprised Baghdad with a visit to discuss the preparations to retake Ramadi from IS. How strange it is that I have become so familiar with such unfamiliar names of places like Ramadi. Years of war have caused them now to be tattooed on my brain.

Obama is about to make a visit to Kenya to address the Global Entrepreneurship Summit; Kenya is agog with excitement. Obama’s father was Kenyan of the Luo in the west of Kenya. “Mama Sarah,” his grandmother, will go to Nairobi to see him but he will not go to the ancestral lands of his father. Kenya is deeply invested in the success of Barak Obama. Schools are named after him; children are named after him. He is the “native” son who has become the leader of the most powerful nation on earth.

Ah, the sun has slipped down and the sky is now a soft pearl grey. Twilight has arrived while I review the events of the day.

NASA has announced the finding of a near Earth twin, Keplar 452b. Well, may be an older cousin like planet but one that holds the possibility for all the factors NASA believe are necessary for life. Heavier gravity, older than earth, but in the “Goldilocks” zone, it may well be a place where life has evolved. Hopefully, radio telescopes are looking at it to see if there are messages that might be coming from it. Unfortunately, it is 1400 light years from here. We will need warp drive to get there.

Donald Trump is in Laredo, Texas. I would so like to chat with my friend Alicia who is from there. Would love to get her take on his visit. He is causing constant conniptions in Republican circles, even more so now that he is thinking of running as a 3rd party candidate. They see catastrophe in front of them. The Donald is leading in the polls! And if he doesn’t get the nomination, he might not go away! Ouch!

How rich is he? Hard to tell from the forms filed but Forbes is guessing $4 billion.

The Euro is up on the progression of Greece obtaining new loans from the EU. Reading an article just now it seemed like it’s Peter borrowing from Paul to pay…I have to say it seems more and more like a house of cards that will only work if there is a reduction in Greece’s debt, which is unsustainable. The country can’t survive with the amount of debt it has.

The sun is almost gone. Evening is upon us. The light has turned on for the fountain in the courtyard. Soon it will be summer dark.

What a wonderful summer day it has been. I am going to curl up with a new book or a good movie and let the day slip away. Tomorrow I have lunch with a new friend and then dinner at home with my friends Susan and Jim; we know each other from the train.

Perfect. May your day be perfect too!

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Letter From New York 01 31 15 How lucky are we?

January 31, 2015

The days are growing longer. It is 5 PM and there is still light and I am grateful. It lightens my sprits for the days to be growing longer. Not so long ago it was dark at this time.

It is a white world that I look out upon. There was fresh snow yesterday and we are facing yet another storm that will lay another foot upon us and may disrupt my intentions of being in the city on Monday. It is very cold outside with wind chills of minus 15.

I am just back from a long and lovely lunch with my friends Larry Divney and Alicia Vergara. Recently they were in Mexico and while scouring a flea market there Alicia found two masks to bring back to me, knowing I collect them. They are wonderful and I already know where I will hang them. Primitive and powerful, they will make a great addition to my collection.

Alicia went off before we started lunch to buy something from one of the neighboring stores. While she was gone, Larry and I chatted about how lucky we are. For one, we are above ground. That’s always a good beginning. And we are living in Columbia County, New York. It’s a great place to be and we were having a lovely lunch at Ca’Mea, one of the best restaurants in Hudson. We had a martini and then a lovely white wine with lunch. I had onion soup and pasta with a chicken ragout – tremendous.

As we chatted, I confirmed how lucky we are. After all, we could be living in Donetsk in Ukraine, where there is a constant shelling of the city and where residents are running out of the most basic supplies. Apparently, the Russians are reinforcing the dissidents with their “little green men,” Russian soldiers or “volunteers” in uniforms with no markings. Lots of tanks have crossed over from Russian into Ukraine. They are dying by the dozens there.

We could be living in a hundred places where there is no peace but we are living in Columbia County, New York where there is a great deal of peace. Surrounded by white snow with more to come, it is hard to imagine a place more tranquil than this. As I waited for Larry and Alicia, I noticed two women at the bar, eating lunch and thought how lucky we all are. There is no shelling of the city where we live. We have all kinds of reserves. All we have to worry about is a coming snowstorm. That’s a luxury. In Donetsk, a snowstorm could be the difference between life and death.

In the “Caliphate” that is ISIS, there is video out that allegedly shows a second Japanese hostage being beheaded. I wince with pain that this is happening. While denouncing all the mistakes the west has made, ISIS is creating its own path of travesties, crimes committed for reasons I do not understand.

Far from my world of snow and peace, men are trampling on the rights of others in the name of religion. Christians and Protestants did it some centuries ago and now Islam is doing it, between Shia and Sunni.

We are so lucky to live where we do. As brutal as 9/11 was – and I lived through it – the thousands upon thousands who are dying in Islamic countries, as Sunnis kill Shias and Shias kill Sunnis, dwarf the numbers killed that day.  It goes on and on and on.

And I don’t really understand why. But then that’s what Christians were doing back a few centuries ago when Catholics and Protestants were locked in brutal warfare with each other, all in the name of God.

The sun has set. The floodlight on the fountain in my yard has turned on. I will soon go to a neighbor for dinner. We are gathering for a movie night, in a neighborhood where we aren’t worried about bombings. How lucky are we?

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Letter From New York 01 03 15 Snowflakes falling; tragedies and miracles

January 3, 2015

Outside, snow is falling, big, thick, wet flakes of snow, falling and covering the ground, making roads treacherous and the landscape beautiful. It started shortly after I drove into Hudson to deliver Holiday quiches to Alana Hauptman, proprietress of The Red Dot. I had some for her earlier in the season but when I went to deliver them, I couldn’t reach her and they stayed with me so long I felt the need to rid myself of them and to bake fresh for her, which I did this morning.

It was cold this morning in the cottage and shortly after rising; I set a fire in the Franklin stove to help warm the cottage and have used its wonders to keep a soft warmth flowing through the cottage all day.

After delivering the quiches, I returned home, following in the wake of one of the big, bruising snowplows that seem to relentlessly patrol the roads of Columbia County to keep them passable. We crawled along at half the speed limit as the roads are deteriorating rapidly. I’m home now for the evening. And tomorrow it is supposed to climb up into the fifties!

Ah, right on schedule! The deer are crossing in front of the window where I write, headed off toward the field beyond my woods. They stand proud on the tip of the hill before it slopes down to the farmyard.

It is a quietly good afternoon. Jazz plays, snow falls, deer roam, the cottage is full of the smells of a good day’s baking. In total, young Nick and I whipped up five quiches today in record time while doing some much needed straightening of things after the busy Holiday season.

For the first time all day, the cottage feels warm. I’ve just put another log into the stove.

Outside the safety of the cottage, the world continues its pace, full of tragedies and miracles. A seven year old survived the crash of her parents’ plane and walked through rough terrain to seek help. Everyone else on board perished. The story brought tears to my eyes.

As they did when I got a text from my friend Nick Stuart, letting me know that his long anticipated Green Card had arrived in the mail today and when I read it, my eyes watered up. It has been a long journey to getting one.

Things here seem piercingly close when I read about them or watch news on my laptop, having now been a cord cutter for three years now. I think it is the landscape with its raw beauty that makes all things seem closer to the heart.

It is what I have treasured about this time in the country. I have been closer to nature than I have ever been in my life, with time to notice the changes in the seasons and in the tenor of the days themselves.

Like noticing that the family of deer always seems to cross in front of my window when I sit down in the fading light of day to work on this blog. I have taken time to notice the snowflakes falling and the raindrops splattering into the drive.

Next week I will begin to go back to the city more often and am hoping that I don’t lose my sense of connection with life in the burly bustling that is New York.

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Letter From New York October 2, 2014

October 2, 2014

Or, as it seems to me…

As I write this, a doe and her fawn are scouring my drive for acorns – at least that’s what I am guessing they’re looking for, noses to the ground. And if that’s is what they’re looking for, I have a surfeit. I can hear them bombing the roof night and day right now.

It’s a great, pastoral fall scene. Yesterday was the beginning of deer hunting season – or so an eager fellow passenger told me on the 2:20 up from New York. He was waiting for it to get a bit cooler before he went off hunting. It didn’t feel quite right to be deer hunting when the weather was about 70.

So about this time of year I notice the number of deer crossing my land gets to be a bit higher. Somehow they know I don’t let folks hunt here.

The land is filling with leaves as they slowly, majestically drop and my little bit of woodlands is looking very fall like. Pumpkins now sit on my door stoop, a visual nod to the season.

While I am not technically in New England, I’ve always believed New England went as far as the east bank of the Hudson River. From there on, it’s the west. So I’ve always considered Columbia County where I live spiritually part of New England even if it’s not really.

Here in Columbia County, Halloween is a BIG deal. There are almost as many Halloween decorations as there are Christmas ones. So it was no surprise to me, when I went to Lowe’s today, to discover the store full of artificial pumpkins inside, real pumpkins outside, full size hanging skeletons, a twelve foot inflatable goblin and any number of things that glowed in the dark.

What I was dismayed about was that not only was Halloween being pimped but so was Christmas! The artificial Christmas trees are out. The light-up decorations are lit up and on display. I could even have a golden, blinking Eiffel Tower to grace my lawn.

My jaw literally dropped when I saw this Holiday display. It appeared they were just getting into it into place – I suspect they started yesterday, the first of October! A whole quarter of Holiday Hysteria awaits. There will be, I am sure, Christmas Carols piped into stores before we have cleared away the pumpkins!

It is unseemly. This is the season for ghosts and goblins, pumpkins and skeletons! NOT the season yet for HO HO HO. Halloween, yes! But Christmas in October? Bah! Humbug!

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