Posts Tagged ‘Minnesota’

Letter from the Vineyard

February 16, 2026

February, 2026

I’m home from a day at the bookstore, now reopened after being closed for four and half weeks while a new floor was installed and we did inventory.

Generally, I spend a few days crafting my “letter.” Not this one.  It’s poured out of me; I want to get it out before I hack at it again.

My return from vacation while the floor was installed corresponded with the most snow the Vineyard has seen in a dozen years.

The day the store reopened, walking to my car, I didn’t notice a patch of ice, fell, made a small fracture of my ankle.  Now I am in a boot, which makes navigating difficult.  This winter is more trying than any other I’ve had on the Vineyard.  I am working very hard not to be cranky.  It’s not easy.

So much is not easy these days.

There is so much to be angry about, dismayed about, and I effing don’t want this man and his MAGA movement to dominate my head space completely. Trump and his minions do so many things so despicable it is hard not to have one’s jaw constantly dropping.

While all of this is going on, relentlessly, from our president and the cast of despicable people with whom he has surrounded himself, I must seek out things to give me solace because in solace there will be found strength to go on resisting because we are moving into a time when we have to actively resist.

There is joy in my days in the bookstore, in the comings and goings of people, of the joy of watching them pick out books for themselves, often not what I would guess. There are moments of conversation, about the weather [for the island, pretty awful right now], politics [most of our customers are aligned with me, but not all], our Banned Books section, which is forever changing as there are so many banned books.

Hope I feel when young people come into the store and buy thoughtful, serious books that will demand something from them.

Gratitude when I wake in the morning and look out my windows, surrounded by nature, glad I am still walking the earth with a moment to feel grateful.  And that’s been harder to do wearing a boot on my left leg, using an umbrella as a cane to help me navigate the sheet of ice my driveway has become.

I am grateful for all of you who take the time to read my letters.

Yes, I am enraged right now.  The administration is working to obtain subpoenas to look at social media accounts to see who opposes ICE.  Well, yes, I oppose ICE in this manifestation, thuggish as it is, masked as it is.  Even the Brown Shirts back in the day didn’t wear masks.

So, if the administration gets its way, I will, perhaps, be targeted for opposing the behavior of ICE.  And that astounds me. That in this country this would be happening.  Goes way beyond Richard Nixon’s Enemies List.  Brings it down to all of us, at every level.

This morning, I was at St. Andrew’s, confirmed as a member of the Vestry, the Episcopal Version of the Parish Council, my second tour of duty as a Vestry member. As I stood on the altar, I thought doing this was an act of hope.

St. Andrew’s is a little church and it’s the church which took in the Venezuelans dropped on Martha’s Vineyard by the Governor of the great state of Florida from the great state of Texas.

In the day to day, we work to do good things.  We collect food and clothes to pass on. We helped start the first shelter for homeless on the island, along with two other churches, now grown into its own building.

Mainstream Christianity has been in decline but, unless I am misremembering the reports from Pew, the decline has plateaued, perhaps because of Covid, perhaps because churches are, in their essence, community in a time and world craving community.

To stand for good is an act of hope – and defiance – in a time when hope and defiance are now needed as much as ever.

An immigrant in Minneapolis posted a video on Tik Tok in praise of old white women in Minneapolis, who helped him feel safe.  Watch it here. It’s wonderful and some of those old white women are people with whom I went to grade school.  Take inspiration from them.

As, God knows, we need inspiration.

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Letter From Claverack 08 15 2017 Sorting through history…

August 15, 2017

rocking horse

Staring out my brother’s kitchen, the day is beautiful after a series of grey and gloomy ones.  After prevaricating for days, I have finally determined I will return home on Friday and am now looking forward to returning to the comforts of the cottage.  My kitchen is freshly painted and I will do a re-org of it upon my return.

This afternoon, I am going over to St. Paul to visit my cousin’s ex-wife at the home where she works with her mother, caring for developmentally challenged adults.

And then, this evening, I will be dining with Christine Olson, a friend from college days.  She dated one of my roommates; we have stayed close.  He and I have not.

Being in Minneapolis is always a time of sorting memories.  Yesterday, I had breakfast with my ex-sister-in-law, which is hard for me to say as she is still, in my mind, my sister-in-law, even if she and my brother are no longer married.  We, as we always do, laughed and giggled and had fun.

Last night, I dined with my nieces, Kristin and Theresa, Theresa’s son Emile, his girlfriend, Irene, and we, too, laughed and giggled and reminisced about some good things and some hard things.

And so there is a sorting of thoughts.  The rocking horse was my brother’s and I inherited it and rode it in our “rumpus room” in the basement long after he had last touched it.  Now it sits in his bedroom, a reminder of the past.

My best friend from high school came up from Chicago to see me this weekend and as we sat on Friday afternoon, working at this kitchen table, I looked up at him and laughed.  We both settle back in to being with each other in minutes and it is a comfort from knowing him a lifetime.

It was important for me that he knew how much I loved him and how important it has been that he has been in my life.  I hope I succeeded.  We have reached the part of our lives where we definitely can’t see around the corners.

As usual, jazz plays as I write.  I care for jazz the way Sidney does in “Grantchester.”  It has become a thread in my life.

And it captures the melancholy that comes from sorting thoughts, working to put the pieces of the puzzle together, a never-ending process in life.

At dinner last night, we talked of my mother and one of my nieces shook her head.  Her grandmother was a complicated individual who sometimes delighted us and often vexed us.  Always kind to strangers, that kindness did not always extend to her kin.  As she aged and as dementia set in, her granddaughters occasionally saw her rage and it shook them.

As the rage of the White Supremacist movement shook me this weekend when one of them, barely an adult, drove his car into a group of counter protesters and killed a woman and injured nineteen in Charlottesville, Virginia.

Our president’s tepid “many sides” response to the incident has resulted in a series of resignations from Trump’s American Manufacturing Council.

The first to leave was Ken Frazier, CEO of pharmaceutical company, Merck.  Trump viciously attacked him for doing so.  Critics of Trump have pointed out that Frazier is black.

The others who have left are white and, so far, have not been targeted by the kind of ire that hit Frazier. They have also not mentioned Charlottesville.

FORTUNE, a magazine I do not think of as a bastion of liberal thought, has praised Frazier’s resignation as an act of courage.

The others have only been called “grand-standers” by Trump. The latest to go is Scott Paul, head of the American Manufacturing Alliance.  And Mr. Trump knows “plenty” who will replace these “grand-standers.”

As I begin to wind down my time in Minneapolis, I continue sorting my thoughts, fitting the past into my present.   As I must sort and parse the actions of a president whose reactions and words defy my understanding of his position and the kind of deportment it requires.

Here is a link to what Jimmy Fallon had to say and it was well said.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Posted in 2016 Election, Claverack, Columbia County, Education, Entertainment, Greene County New York, Hygge, Life, Literature, Mat Tombers, Mathew Tombers, Matthew Tombers, Media, Political, Political Commentary, Politics, Social Commentary, Television, Uncategorized | Leave a Comment »

Letter From New York 04 16 16 The way we once were…

April 17, 2016

When I was kid — and perhaps when we were all kids — there was one house we all gravitated towards, to hang out, to be around.  When I was a kid, it was the McCormick house.  They were a large family, six kids, in a big house and every year the back yard became a skating rink. In the freezing Minnesota nights the whole neighborhood of kids was there.  During the summers we played kick ball in their enormous driveway.

Still close to the McCormick family, I had lunch with Mary Clare McCormick Eros yesterday at Cafe du Soleil on New York’s Upper West Side.  Sarah, whom I have known since before Kindergarten and I were planning yesterday when to get together when she is in New York next month.  Her son, Kevin, thinks of me as his “Uncle Mat,” even now when he is 31.

Today, I went to Rhinebeck to return to Robert and Tanya Murray innumerable egg cartons as they had donated dozens of eggs from their chickens to my Easter Brunch Church adventures.  When I arrived, two of his children and one of their friends were preparing to do a car wash and I was their first car.  Robert and I sat on the steps and watched them, sipping deep, rich coffee with steamed milk while they soaped up my car.

IMG_1209

I suspect Robert and Tanya have the house in the neighborhood to which everyone gravitates.  Sitting there, it reminded me of John and Eileen and the parade that made its way through their home on Aldrich Avenue in Minneapolis.  Robert got up from the stoop and swooped in and helped them.  It took me back to a much simpler, it seemed, time.

It is very doubtful that time was all that much simpler but it seemed that way to us as kids.  I am sure when Tanya and Robert’s five are grown, they will look back on now and think it was a simpler time.

In a gesture of simplicity and love, Pope Francis, sure to be a saint, went to the isle of Lesbos, the epicenter of the refugee crisis and made a speech on the exact spot where orders for deportation back to Turkey were given two weeks ago.  In a stunning surprise, a dozen Syrians returned with him to the Vatican to be resettled in Italy with the help of a Catholic charity.  All had lost their homes to bombs and six of them were children.  It was an act to “prick the conscience of the king.”

Tuesday is the New York Primary.  Bernie and Hillary slugged it out, in an increasingly strident fashion in a CNN debate in Brooklyn earlier this week.  Both hoarse, both looking exhausted, both fighting tooth and nail, they harried each other and some wonder, no matter who the nominee, if the Democratic Party is suffering wounds as deep as the Republicans have been absorbing with their phantasmagorical season?

It is pitch black outside except for the floodlights on the creek and the lights on my house.  It is quiet, except for the thumping of the dryer with a load of clothes. 

In the early evening, I went to an event, “Prose and Prosecco,” a fund raising event for the little Claverack Library which is working to raise the money to finish moving into its new building. 

Local writers read from their works, two good, one questionable, at least from my perspective.  I chatted with a few people but was not in my aggressive meet people mode and left a bit early to come home, do a few things and write my blog.

I relished watching Robert and his children and Maya, the friend, work through their carwash.  It was an hour filled with the squeals of delighted children, embracing the joy of being children.  The way we once were.

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Posted in 2016 Election, Claverack, Columbia County, Entertainment, Hillary Clinton, Hollywood, Hudson New York, Mat Tombers, Mathew Tombers, Media, Mideast, Political Commentary, Pope Francis, Social Commentary, Syrian Refugee Crisis, Trump, Uncategorized | Leave a Comment »

Letter From New York 01 18 2016 Hotel California to present day travails….

January 19, 2016

Minnesota Los Angeles Fred Pinkard Rocky II Ron Bernstein Adagio Nik Buian The Eagles Glenn Frey  Hotel California Paul Krich David Bowie Donald Trump British Parliament about Trump Martin Luther King Day JFK RFK Nazis Genocide

In the long ago and far away, I left Minnesota and ended up in Los Angeles.  Volunteering at a theater as an usher, I met Fred Pinkard, an African American actor who guest starred in television shows and was in Rocky II; never famous but almost always working. 

I needed work and he put me together with Ron Bernstein who owned Adagio, a little “Cafe California” kind of restaurant down the street from Paramount.  As a favor to Fred, Ron hired me.  I was not good.  I was actually going to be fired.  I could feel it. 

Staying up half the night one night, I kept thinking about it and worked out a system.  The next day everyone on the staff gathered round me at the end of my shift and asked:  what happened?  I had worked out a system.  I went from being the worst to the best.  

Late at night after all the customers had left, Nik Buian, the manager and I, would crank up the music system and pull out all the bottles of wine that had been left behind with something in them.  We’d drink them, talk about life and fold napkins for the next day, sometimes to four in the morning.

We’d listen to The Eagles non-stop.  They were his favorite and I can never hear “Hotel California” without thinking of those nights with Nik, folding napkins, learning about wines and sharing good times with a good friend.

Eagles founder Glenn Frey died today at 67.  Not much older than I am. 

I am surrounded by mortality this week.  Wednesday I will be giving a eulogy for my friend Paul, much of it written but in need of a bit of burnishing.  My friend Paul, David Bowie, Glenn Frey and I now find I am at the time of my life when friends are beginning to go and it is sobering.

Life is sobering.  As I am sitting in my dining room the world is full of all kinds of travails. I know that and am frustrated because I can do so little to change any of it.

This morning I had a conversation with an old work friend who confessed to me how scared he is about this coming election.  No one appeals to him; they all frighten him and he will vote based on which one frightens him less.

This is not good. It seems worse than the choice between the lesser of two evils.

Extraordinarily there was a debate in Parliament today about whether to ban Donald Trump from the UK because of “hate speech.”  Now it is the purview of the Home Secretary to ban someone from the UK but it was an extraordinary opportunity for the Brits to weigh in on the American election process.  One member of Parliament described Trump as “an idiot.”

He is far from that.  He is manipulative, decisive and pandering.  He is bringing out the worst of us.  He reminds me of the crass politicians of ancient Rome and that’s not good.

What is good is that today is Martin Luther King Day and we are remembering an extraordinary man who changed the fabric of American life. He taught black Americans to move beyond their fears and called to white Americans to be the best they could be.  When he died I was but a boy and already reeling from the death of JFK.  His death and that of RFK mangled my mind, probably for the rest of my life.  I still reverberate with all those deaths from the ’60’s when I was young and realizing the world for the first time, making my first realizations of what life was about and what life seemed to be about in those days was killing.

And it hasn’t changed.  We have not had many high profile murders as those but we have fallen into the grinding news of killings on a daily basis all over the world, killing that is disgusting, motivated by twisted religious beliefs as the Nazis twisted people into genocide.

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Posted in 2016 Election, Claverack, Columbia County, Elections, European Refugee Crisis, Gay, Gay Liberation, Hudson New York, Mat Tombers, Mathew Tombers, Media, Nazis, Political Commentary, Social Commentary, Trump, Uncategorized | 2 Comments »

Letter From New York 09 20 15 Getting ready to go on the road…

September 20, 2015

Today begins three weeks of travel for me. I am heading down to the city this noon to attend a party for my friends, Kris and Eric, who now live in California. They are stopping by New York on their way to Martha’s Vineyard for a week.

Monday and Tuesday I am in the city, Wednesday I leave for Provincetown to visit friends, back to the city, down to Baltimore for Lionel’s birthday, off to Indianapolis for a conference and then on to Minneapolis to visit family and friends, circling back to the city before heading home.

I am squeezing in all of this, fulfilling promises to visit, before winter hits. I do my best not to go to Minneapolis when it’s freezing.

It’s a gentle morning here, temperature in the sixties with no rain forecast either in the Hudson Valley or down in the city. It has warmed enough that I am now on the deck with my coffee and my increasingly cranky laptop. It is now three years old and beginning to feel its age. Oh well, aren’t we all?

There is a touch of fall in the morning’s air, cool with no humidity, a desire to go put on a sweater. Yesterday young Nick and I discussed the need to fill the racks near the house with seasoned firewood from the piles out by the shed. I am settling in to a comfortable fall.

Not so in Europe where refugees and migrants find themselves trapped at borders, struggling to get around them. The nights are already cool and I doubt any of them are prepared for a chill walk across Europe. The seas will be getting rougher and therefore more dangerous.

Pope Francis has arrived in Cuba and is asking for more freedom for the church. If anyone can convince the Castros to loosen their grip, it’s this man. Tuesday he arrives in New York, one of the reasons I am choosing to be gone. It will be a little bit of chaos; no it will likely be a lot of chaos. Pundits think it will be worse than when the President is in town. But the town is revving up for him.

On the west coast, Seattle is getting ready for a two day visit starting also on Tuesday by Xi Jinping, President of China, in which he will immerse himself in all things tech before heading on to visit Obama in Washington on Thursday.

Ben Carson has declared a Muslim should not be President and The Donald has had to respond, which he has done in typical The Donald style, to not having corrected a man in an audience who said the country had a problem: Muslims and the President was not an American and was a Muslim.

Staggeringly, near thirty percent of Americans still believe Obama is a Muslim. It causes me to roll my eyes and despair of the electorate.

The Greek electorate is deciding today whether to return to office Alexis Tsipras, who was elected to defy the country’s European creditors and ended capitulating to them. The Greeks are weary; this is their fifth national election in six years. Ridiculous, says one man. It will be a very tight election.

The Conservatives are running neck and neck with Tsipras and his Syriza Party. We will know by the morning, at least, who wins.

Tonight are the Emmy Awards. Since I no longer have cable, I’ll not be able to watch them. I don’t have over-the-air service either. I’m interested in seeing if Jon Hamm will FINALLY get an Award for his iconic performance as Don Draper in “Mad Men.” A couple of others interest me too, but not terribly.

Increasingly, I feel removed from media except as a distant observer. I’ve had my fun.

Now I seem to be looking for other fun, closer to home, some still media related but on the very local level. It brings a smile to my lips.

Now I must go and get ready to go to that party…

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Letter From New York 07 04 14 Happy Birthday, America!

July 4, 2015

Today is the birthday of the United States and I am spending it in Baltimore, sitting in a lovely apartment in the Inner Harbor area called Fell’s Point. Outside it is, as almost everyday seems to be this summer, grey.

We all went to see “Inside Out,” the new film from Pixar and it was everything I didn’t expect it to be. It was heartwarming and brought tears to my eyes. I highly recommend it. A young girl from Minnesota migrates with her parents to San Francisco. In a mishap, the emotions and characters Joy and Sadness get lost with all her good core memories and poor Riley, the girl, finds herself left with Disgust, Anger and Fear. Not a good combination. But the combination of elements in the film make it wonderful and so, once again, I highly recommend it.

We are waiting to see the fireworks tonight – unless they pull a rain check and decide to do them tomorrow though the forecast for Sunday isn’t better than today’s.

While America is celebrating its birthday, the Dalai Lama is celebrating his July 6th birthday all weekend with a whole series of parties. Happy Birthday! The venerable Dalai Lama turns 80 on Tuesday.

As America celebrates its nationhood, Vladimir Putin has sent holiday greetings to President Obama and suggested there were many things they could work on together, like global terrorism. Obama apparently reminded him of the necessity of living up to the Minsk Accords, which require Russia to pull back men and armaments from Ukraine. I suspect it was not a jolly conversation but at least they’re talking, always a good thing.

Yesterday, I mentioned that IS has begun destroying some of the ancient artifacts of Palmyra. One of the noted spots in the ruins is an amphitheater where, I suspect, the plays of the ancients were performed. I’m sure there was nothing quite like a good comedy by Aristophanes to lighten a moment in Roman times.

Yesterday, the amphitheater was used by IS as a stage for killing 25 captured soldiers. The firing squad was composed of militants as young as 13 and 14.

Iraqi jets soared over Mosul earlier today, dropping not bombs but leaflets promising that soon a campaign to free the city would begin. A new radio station, Mosul FM, would soon begin broadcasting and the city’s citizens should listen to it for instructions when the campaign to retake the city begins.

IS did its best to keep people from reading the leaflets.

In the meantime, bombs in Baghdad killed 19.

Tomorrow is the fateful day for Greece. They will go to the polls to vote yes or no about the bailout that has already expired. Apparently, media is encouraging people to vote yes while the government is encouraging a no vote. Lots of Greeks aren’t really sure for what they’re voting. Polls indicate it could go either way, with the country seeming to be split almost exactly down the middle.

European leaders are predicting a Greek collapse if the vote is a no. The Greek leaders are telling the Greeks that it will give them a stronger position in negotiating with their creditors.

Let’s just hope it doesn’t bring a collapse for the rest of us if Greece votes no.

While Greece is voting, the British will be celebrating the christening of Princess Charlotte Elizabeth Diana of Cambridge which will occur on the Queen’s Sandringham estate at St. Mary Magdalene Church on the grounds. The Princess is fourth in line to the throne and generally someone this close to the throne would be christened in London but the Cambridge’s are breaking with tradition.

It will give the world something happy to focus on while watching the vote in Greece.

Right now, I am munching on cheese and crackers while writing and sipping a martini made by Lionel. Our chairs are on the balcony, facing the Inner Harbor, ready for the fireworks.

It was here, in Baltimore, that Francis Scott Keyes composed the “Star Spangled Banner” during the war of 1812, a song set to a ditty that was making the rounds of London’s Gentleman’s Clubs in the late 1700’s.

I hope all of you have exceptional and safe 4th of July’s.

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Letter From New York 05 29 15 Riding up the Hudson, ruminating on the world…

May 30, 2015

It is a stunningly beautiful day as I ride the train north, having slipped out of town early. To my left, the Hudson runs wide with sun glints coming off the silver grey surface of the water. It is sunny and warm, with a soft breeze blowing with low humidity. Saturday will probably be like this though there is rain in the forecast for Sunday with cooler temperatures.

My mood is better today; I feel less weighted by the world and its events. I feel more accepting that there is ONLY so much I can do individually and that as long as I feel I am doing that, I can breathe a little easier.

It is still a crazy world. In my home state of Minnesota, a Muslim couple was picking up their son at the home of one of his friends. While waiting for him in the car, they were approached by a woman with a rifle who forced them out of the car and marched them at gunpoint to the house where they told her their son was so that they could prove it to her.

The boy was there.

The woman is facing charges of assault, terroristic threats, terroristic threats-reckless endangerment and maybe some more.

This kind of occurrence just strikes me as so un-Minnesota like. You know, Minnesota nice, it’s baked into us.

She must have skipped that part of the cultural indoctrination.

Former Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert is being charged with lying to the FBI about cash withdrawals from banks that allegedly were going to “Individual A.” Apparently, Hastert was paying hush money to a man for inappropriate behavior years ago when he was a schoolteacher and a wrestling coach. Everyone who knows the Former Speaker is shocked as he always was a “stand-up” kind of guy.

He has made no statements but has resigned from his law firm and from the Board of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange.

In reading about this I was reminded that the Speaker of the House is second in succession for the Presidency. The thought of John Boehner being two heartbeats away from the Presidency is sobering, at least to me.

In the midst of probably the worst sports scandal in the last century, FIFA President Sepp Blatter was re-elected. While it seems unbelievable to me, he had a lot of support from Africa and South America, enough to propel him back for another term. The aftershocks of this affair will continue for a long time and there may be more arrests.

Cuba has been taken off the list of states that sponsor terrorism, paving the way for the normalization of relations. Visiting Cuba is on my bucket list, has been since I read Hemingway who had a home there.

Dressed in a burka, an IS devotee blew himself up at a mosque in Saudi Arabia, killing four, including himself.

In Pakistan, gunmen hijacked buses and ended in a battle with security forces. Nineteen civilians were killed.

North Korea, widely suspected of the hack attack against Sony Pictures, has something called Bureau 121, a cadre of 6000 hackers devoted to discovering ways to create digital trouble. Apparently, many of them operate out of China, some in the basement of well-reviewed restaurant.

Not a happy thought.

Out in California Michael Jackson’s fantasyland named “Neverland“ is for sale for $100,000,000. But now it’s called Sycamore Valley Ranch. It’s a stunning place for those who have a spare hundred mil.

The rain ravaged states of Texas and Oklahoma are going to be receiving drinking water from the breweries of Anheuser-Busch, which halted production of beer at one plant in Georgia and switched to canning drinking water, which is desperately needed. At least thirty-seven are dead in the two states.

Amazon is planning to create its own private label for a variety of foods. Called Elements, its first products were diapers and baby wipes. It is also opening data centers in Ohio that will employ about a thousand people. Amazon just keeps on growing…

Ross Ulbricht, creator of Silk Road, a dark Internet site for the sale of drugs, was sentenced to life in prison today.

The train is rolling into Hudson and I need to gather my things up and make my way over to my car for the short drive home before dinner at the Dot!

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Letter From New York 01 18 15 On the value of friendship…

January 18, 2015

It is a quietly miserable day in Claverack. When I woke yesterday the temp was 8 degrees; when I woke this morning it was nearly 38 and a steady, dank rain has been making an icy mess of the driveway. All through the Northeast, the roads are reportedly terrible.

I only ventured out to make a quick trip to the grocery store for supplies for tonight’s dinner; friends are coming over.

The rest of the day, I have huddled inside and stared out at the grey and misty mess outside my windows. I can hear rain steadily falling on my roof. It’s a day that could feel quite hopeless. Returning from shopping, I put on some big band music to lighten the mood and turned on a bevy of lights to combat the dark.

It was a typical Sunday, waking to read the news on my NY Times app while sipping some dark, rich coffee. Waking early, I dozed back to sleep for an extra hour despite my best intentions to get the day going. It is that kind of day.

The fall in oil prices has not been good for Wall Street but it is making a huge difference on Main Street where winter heating prices are being alleviated by the fall in oil. In Maine, it could make up to a difference of $3,000 to the average family of that often brutally cold state.

Days like this are meant for contemplation or conversations with far away friends, which I did this morning, having a long call with my old, dear friend Tory Abel. We met in Los Angeles a long time ago and are still close despite not having lived near each other for a long time.

So it was good to catch up with her and plan a get together in the summer.

Ah, it is 4:15 and my deer have just crossed the yard, picking their way slowly across the ice. It’s what we’ll all be doing in the morning, I’m guessing, picking our way carefully over the ice.

Shortly, I will light a fire in the Franklin stove and settle in for the evening. I am fixing simple things for dinner this evening, salad, chicken, risotto, green beans. Tomorrow I go back to the city to have lunch with an old friend who is in from Minnesota on some business. Kevin went to high school with me and we reconnected some years ago and see each other whenever he is in New York or I am in Minnesota.

I’m lucky. I have friends who go back to grade school and high school and one from college days. I always thought that I would have more friends from my college days but almost everyone seems to have scattered across the globe and fallen out of touch.

But it is good to have old friends who can commiserate with you on what it was like to have Sister Neva teach you in third grade – an experience that is indelibly etched into the psyche of everyone who was her student. Ah, Catholic Elementary School!

But now as this grey day grows darker, I will wrap up and begin to prep for dinner and be grateful for the coziness of the cottage, while reminding myself of the luck I have in friendship.

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