Not too good at keeping up the blog since I got home. Today it hit 100 for the first time this year. This is incredibly late for that to happen. But up until now, we’ve had really nice summer weather.

I’ve gone back to jogging for the first time in about ten years. It’s not a pretty sight, and I’m pretty much jog/walk because I don’t have the stamina to jog solidly. Tomorrow it’s going to be warm enough to go swimming, though I don’t know if I’ll have time since we have a rehearsal at Billie’s, which means I won’t get home before about 4 p.m. (Later note: It was 4 by the time I got home, but since I had ridden about 5 miles in 102 degree heat, I wasn't in the mood to ride the rest of the way to the gym to go swimming.)


But there have been some fun things.

Two weeks ago I went to a really fun meeting with hurdy gurdy players in Grass Valley. We mostly worked on cotton and how to take care of hurdy gurdies, and then we played a few pieces. It was great fun. uploading a little bit of the end of the session.

Yesterday Zoe and I went to a home tour of mid century modern homes in Sacramento. I put a link here to their blog. A little ways down there's a slide show of all the houses. About half the tour was really good. Towards the end (in the direction we went) there were a couple of houses that were individually designed by architects, one of which was owned by the owner of an art gallery in town, and they were pretty nifty. Another house used to be owned by a friend of mine, so it was kind of interesting to see it again, restored to its mid-century modern glory. Of course there was a lot more money in those than in some of the others which were tract houses at the time they were built.

Last night we went to a CD release party for Doug Newton at Blue Moon Gallery. Nice party, nice music, and I really overate. Big surprise there.

Today we went to hear Lady of the Lake, which is mostly some local baroque musicians who sometimes play Celtic music. The event was a fundraiser for the Episcopal church’s work in Haiti but it was held at St. John’s Lutheran church. The music had a bit of a disorganized feel to it – like many groups in which I’ve played, but it was fun. They had Cathie Apple playing with them which is a big asset to any program. Not only that, the church was air conditioned, so we had about an hour and a half of AC at the church and another hour while we ate dinner at California Pizza Kitchen (one of the coldest restaurants in town, and I didn’t even put on my sweater). It’s more or less cooling down now, but then it should, because it’s 10 p.m. And any time now, it should be cool enough that maybe I’ll get my internet connection back.

I got an email notice today that I won a three-piece set of pans Le Creuset. I have entered a lot of contests, and I don’t particularly remember this one – or at least their web page isn’t familiar. The three-piece set is worth about $300. There’s a really nice casserole pan in there, which I think is what I entered for. Here's a link to the page that shows what I won.

Winding down

This is a two day blog because we were too busy drinking last night to blog.

Martha and I spent yesterday morning working on some programs for a recital she’s having at her house tonight. After we had them to death, John and I went down Broadway to the street fair -- this week’s being between 66th & 73 more or less. It kept looking like it was going to storm and the wind was blowing wildly so that the vendors had to hold onto their tents lest they get blown away.

I had a really good falafel and an order of french fried sweet potatoes. The falafel was the best I’ve had – very crispy on the outside and almost creamy on the inside.

We didn’t get back home til almost 5, had to spend a certain amount of time at Filene’s basement because it finally did start to pour down rain. Oh, too bad. Didn’t last long, though, so we walked home instead of taking the subway or bus. We stopped and had a gelato and paid $10.50!!! for two small ones. Ah, New York.

We had dinner at a Mexican restaurant on Columbus which had really good food. I had fajitas which were not at all like what we would get in California – the pieces of meat were cubed about an inch square and seemed deep fried or something, but they were good, and the side vegetables were wonderful. Plenty of them and very tasty. Of course there may be some sort of a halo effect since I started my dinner with a grande Margarita.

Then we came home and had some more wine. I certainly slept well, though.

This morning we worked on the program some more – especially the translations page, then found out one of the players isn’t coming, so I volunteered to play in the concert tonight – probably not a good idea, but I am the slave and I will do what I am told. I spent most of the afternoon making a watermelon and cucumber salad for 20 people, and a broccoli/cauliflower/fennel salad for 20 people. I feel like I’ve been chopping all afternoon. John and I went out to lunch and had a sandwich at a health club, which was quite reasonably priced for NY and tasted good as well. Then we stopped and had 1 coffee and 1 cookie (both shared) and that was almost $6. And the cookie wasn’t even very good.

I’m waiting for further instructions to start cleaning up for the party now.

And now it’s Wednesday night. I just really am not keeping up. Part of the problem is that if I don’t take my camera, I don’t think anything I do will look very interesting, and while I did take the camera yesterday, I left the memory card at the apartment. John has totally moved into going home mode as of about yesterday afternoon, so we have basically done nothing except hang around, walk down Broadway a bit, take the cats to the vet, move heavy things for Martha, and other stuff that while not unpleasant, isn’t very interesting to read about. We did manage to make it to one of our favorite restaurants, Cafe con Leche, which is a Cuban place on Amsterdam.

I got a new haircut and I love it. So my only picture will be a before and after. It’s really short and spiky. I think most of my friends won’t like it, but I HATED it when it was so long.

East Side, West Side, all around the town (on the boat)

Today was supposed to have a thundershower, and it still may, since I’m starting this at 4 p.m. and we’re planning on going on a red and white cruise at 7 p.m., which gives us time to either have the thundershower while we’re on our ride, or while we’re trying to get there.

This morning the alarm went off at 5 a.m., which was totally my fault as I was messing around with it last night. I went right back to sleep, though. Then around 8 or so Julia started carrying on as she felt she had gone far too long without eating. I continued sleeping, but I was aware of it. But I was tired. I guess I’m getting old or something.

When we finally got up we had our favorite breakfast in NY, a bagel and cream cheese and coffee while reading Time Out and the NY Times. Makes me feel like such a New Yorker.


Then we headed over to the Met. There’s supposed to be a street fair over there, but it’s just the usual art vendors and hot dog stands as far as I can see. They had a great Picasso retrospective there and also a really interesting history of women’s styles, basically of the 20th century, but going to about 1890 Some of the dresses were just drop dead gorgeous. I got a couple of pictures before I found out you weren’t allowed to take any.

We had a leisurely walk back to the apartment and John has now gone to sleep, Martha is practicing, and I’m just waiting for everybody to be ready to go on the boat cruise. It starts at 7 p.m., you’re supposed to be there 45 minutes early to go, and it’s now 10 to 5. Martha is still practicing and wearing a dress you would never wear out of the house, and everybody expects to stop and have dinner on the way. I am continually amazed at what little concept some people have of time – this from someone who tends to always be late herself.

It’s later now, and amazingly enough, we did not miss the boat. We still don’t know how that happened. We left here about 5:30, stopped to get a light dinner, and then at 6:05, got on the subway to go to Times Square to get the 42 bus to go to pier 42. Well, first of all, that was nowhere near enough time, and secondly when we got off the subway, we couldn’t find the 42 bus. (And this isn’t just us lame tourists talking, Martha, who goes everywhere on the bus, couldn’t find it either. As it turned out, it was only about 5 blocks or so down to the boat place, but remember, we were supposed to be there 45 minutes early and boat sails at 7 p.m. At this point we decided it couldn’t be anything but a dry run for another evening, but we walked on down there anyway. It’s now about 10 to seven, we are not moving all that fast, but we can, in fact see water. When we get within about a block of the place, I say, “I’ll just run on ahead and see how long we have and maybe we can still make it.”

I went up to the ticket booth (I’d already paid on line, but I had to exchange a voucher for the tickets) and said, “do you think we’ll make it if my friends are still a block away?” They said yes, and believe it or not, we did. We still had to walk about a half a block from the ticket booth to where we actually boarded the boat We were the very last people to come aboard. The horn blew, the lines were released, and we were underway almost before we were even seated.

It was really late afternoon when we started (7:05) and it was dark by the time we got back, 9 p.m. I got a few nice pictures. But mostly it was just fun to be on the boat. The sailboat is the one Zoe and I didn't get to go out on last time because it was raining so hard and thundering and lightning-ing.



And for the Sacramento crowd: Frozen yogurt is SO CHEAP in Sacramento. They have none of those self-serve yogurt shops here, and the shops they do have have damn few flavors. Afterwards we stopped for a yogurt and Martha and I each got one. Flavor choices, regular, European tart, green tea, and choice of the day. There was no choice of the day. They dish up the yogurt from the exciting list of choices, and then for a dollar each, they put toppings on it. So you get, say, 4 raspberries for a dollar. I had mine plain because the toppings didn’t look all that good, and then when I saw how small they were, I was even happier. But it cost $8.60 for two yogurts. (John didn’t have one because he stopped at the grocery store. If we’d had three, he would have had to take out a bank loan.)

So now we’re at the usual thing. It’s 1 a.m., everybody is in bed, and I’m still up. It's cooling off, and perhaps we'll still get that thunderstorm that was supposed to come today.

We're in New York City

There won't be any pictures in today's blog, sorry, unless I steal some off the net, because I didn't take any.

We left Albany at 10 a.m. on Amtrak, froze our butts off in seats that were assigned to someone else, for two and a half hours, and arrived in New York with John ready to take a nap and me ready to hit the streets. John got his way and I ended up looking up stuff on the internet, etc., etc.

Since we aren't going to Long Island, we met Laura and Sandy at the Rubin museum at six and spent a couple of hours with them. The Rubin museum is basically a collection of Buddhist, or maybe Tibetan art -- this exhibit was titled Remember that you will die. I almost bought the t-shirt, but I have finally grasped the concept that I seldom wear t-shirts that say things on them, though I buy many of them.

The exhibit was very interesting and we really enjoyed it. I had never seen much of this art so after awhile, I was having a difficult time making distinctions. One very interesting piece was a Tibetan theme but a Chinese 20th century interpretation -- so had a lot of European influence, I would say. It was done in what they called forbidden knots, which we call french knots in embroidery, but where we use it to make places that kind of stand up and separate themselves from the rest of the embroidery, they make essentially a carpet of these knots, and they do it with a very fine silk thread so that this "carpet" is about a millimeter thick. If you're interested, the website is www.rmanyc.org. They seem to have set up their website so you can't download any pictures.

There was a movie at 9:30 but we had finished looking at all the exhibits at 8:30 and John was looking a bit exhausted. He wanted to go home, so we left. On the way home, once he'd been sitting down on the subway for awhile, I convinced him that we could stop in and see perhaps the end of the Empire Viols concert with Martha McGoehy and Arthur Haas, IF when we got off the subway there was a crosstown bus right there. There was, so he reluctantly allowed me to drag him along. We only heard the last two pieces on the concert, but we got to go to the reception and chat with Arthur and Martha, so I was a relatively happy camper.

Everybody else has gone to bed, of course, and I'm still up, so I guess I'll tie this up. I did make a hair appointment today and am getting a haircut, which I hardly need, on Tuesday. I may play with Martha's recorder consort on Monday afternoon for their performance if one of the players doesn't show up.

Farewell Hudson Valley

The first town we stopped at was Rhinebeck which is supposed to be a cute little town (yes) with the oldest inn in America from 1766 (maybe). The inn is lovely and looks to be in the style of the period, and they’ve furnished it to remind you of that, but realistically, it’s probably so remodeled that it’s nothing but the same foundation anymore. The most interesting building to me was a restaurant that obviously used to be a church or something. It looked very neat. It’s kind of an American wood gothic in brown.

We stopped at a cute bakery called Bread Alone, but we had some really dense chocolate cake, maybe a flourless one. We walked around, checked out an art shop and an antique shops and decided to move on.


The next town we headed for was Hudson. Our tour book had said that Hudson had seen better days – the part I remembered, but as I look at it now, it also said it was second-home territory for New Yorkers (this meaning folks from NYC) and an antiques mecca. That it is. There must be 20 antiques stores on the main street. Looks like a place where the trade shops as well.

We had planned to go to Olana, the home Frederic Church, of one of the best known and most successful artists of the second generation of the Hudson River school, but again, we couldn’t find it. This was mostly because John is obsessed with following the map, even if the signs say something different. After about the third antique store we looked at, a dealer told us how to get to the house. His directions weren’t perfect, but we finally found it. It was well worth the aggravation. The place is best described as Islamic-Victorian. It’s very interesting, both inside and outside with all the Islamic décor and yet a lot of the closed-in fussiness of Victorian and of course the necessity of keeping warm in New York in the winter. He had wonderful views from the house, often framed by arched windows. We were the only two people on our tour.



After the tour, we still had a little time to go back to town and check out a few more antique shops. Not much to my taste, frankly, and none of the shops around here have any A&C antiques. But there were some pretty nice Art Deco things, including all these chairs.

We stopped and had a really delicious pizza at Baba Louie’s then went on to Albany. I’m thinking I won’t get to publish this tonight because though this hotel has so-called free wi-fi, I can only get on it for a second or two at a time.

Beautiful Hudson Valley

Today is a day in Poughkeepsie and Hyde Park, which is about four miles from Poughkeepsie.

The only thing actually on the agenda today was to go to the FDR birthplace and museum. On the way there, we went to the Culinary Institute of America which is an incredible campus. I thought, oh yeah, a really good cooking school, but probably no big deal.

WRONG. It’s a beautiful campus, for one thing, with charming buildings and which obviously gets donations from big people in the food business – big enough donations that they then get buildings named after them. We thought we’d just like to walk around the campus, because it’s really pretty, and after we’d spent an hour there, we realized we should have taken a tour because I think it would have been really interesting. One of the things they obviously stress is that the students should e friendly to the “customers” so students were very friendly and outgoing .

I asked at the admissions desk how much it cost to go there. $33K a year, and it’s a 38 month program for a bachelors, 26 for an AA. It was interesting to watch the students and look into the classrooms. One room had a bunch of students in a “theater” (high raked seats) and in front of each student were about 10 wine glasses. There were people baking, making some sort of wraps, and a bunch of other things. It was just so interesting and the energy in the place was really different from other schools.

We had a cookie in the bakery, which was sad, because there were so many good things to eat and I was just too full from last night’s dinner. Damn. I took a few pictures before I found out you weren’t allowed.




We finally tore ourselves away from there and went up the road a couple of miles to see the FDR museum and library and the house he was born in. Roosevelt was the first president to establish a library, and the only one to actually use it during his lifetime. His mother died only about 4 years before he did and he basically always lived in the same house she did (with the exception of the NY Governor’s mansion and the White House.) Roosevelt is also buried on the property in a rose garden. (The name Roosevelt is a kind of contraction for some Dutch words that mean field of roses.)


After we finished that tour we left and went on to the William Vanderbilt house. It was a mansion built for $2.2 million in the 1890s. He had no children and when he died left his money to childrens charities, one of his nieces and 30 of his servants. Some of the servants got about $1000 apiece, the groundsman got $250 K plus a house on the property. He was not a favorite of his father, and inherited the least of the family estate, but was the only one of his five siblings to leave more money than he inherited.

The rest of our day was spent doing laundry (yay – clean clothes) and trying to find downtown Poughkeepsie. We’re not sure whether we did or not. If we did, downtown is a dump. We ended up having dinner at an Italian place near our hotel which wasn’t bad, but certainly wasn’t actually good.

Tomorrow we will spend the day driving up the Hudson valley to Albany where we will get rid of our rental car, stay overnight, and take the train to NYC on Friday.

From Cornell to West Point

Travel day, so not a lot to report.

Our eventual goal was Poughkeepsie for tonight, and we hoped to get to West Point in time to go to the museum and walk around the grounds.

This was about a 200 mile trip, and knowing us, you’ll know that we didn’t get an early start in Ithaca. Anyway, most of our trip was uneventful, but as we neared West Point there were several squalls of thunderstorms. And it poured. Wipers on the rental car weren’t as good as they might have been.

When we got to West Point, it turns out that you can’t just randomly go in there since 9-11, or at least that’s what the guard told us, though the woman in the car ahead of us did, and obviously there are things in there that civilians can see. But he sent us to Highland Falls, the town below, where the West Point museum is actually located. From there we could take a bus tour of the campus, which was actually just as well. We were treated to a lot of views of athletic facilities, but we also got a visit to the chapel.
This is a beautiful building with a lot of history. The chapel has a long history, most of which I’ve already forgotten, but involves its being torn down and rebuilt in another place on the campus. In the 20th century, a number of classes donated the windows for the church, but in the name of classes a hundred years before. The Williams stained glass company in Philly made all the windows. They made the first one in 1935 or so for $300 and they kept the price the same for each window until the last one in 1975. The pictures don’t really do it justice.



The organ in the church has 23,000 pipes and about a million stops and presets. Apparently this is a really good job, because they’ve only had four organists here in the last 50 years. The chapel also has a reserved pew near the front of the church in which a candle burns 8 hours a day. The candle will burn until the last POW/MIA returns, and the seat will never be filled until that time. In other words, never, since we’ll always have a good war going.


After West Point we were planning the cross the Hudson at Newburgh, but we must have missed the sign and ended up going up the east side of the Hudson instead of the west, but our hotel is not too far from the next bridge up. I took a picture of the bridge just to be funny. Not bad for a picture taken while driving.
We just came back from dinner where we discovered that John left his credit card at the Ale House last night. We called them, and they have it, but there's no way they're willing to send it to us, so we had to cancel it. (No small project when you haven't got the number written down, by the way.)