New home

Wonderful to be able to read books again, I've read about 5 novels in the last few weeks. Can't do that when you're buying a house, no way. And once you're actually moved, there are more things to do, bookcases to buy, orchestrate the handyman, the electrician, the plumber. But we love it. Love the house, the neighborhood. We've been to New York recently, visited family in D.C., drove down to southern New Jersey in the pinelands. We're a bifurcated family--I got my NJ driver's license and plates but Bill is behind me, still a nutmegger. Love driving the countryside around here, lots of preserved farmland. And I am bicycling again--starting from my house across local parks, on the campus of Lawrenceville School, wherever my wheels take me. This last week poetry workshop was up north of here near a village called Ringoes, sometimes it's at various people's houses in Princeton. I am hosting in mid-June. Also, I am reading in a few weeks as representative for U.S. 1 Worksheets in West Caldwell, amazingly very close to where my Condit relatives lived. I am determined to solve my dead-end Dutch ancestry, the Sanfords and the Simonsons. I will either find them in sources at the New York Public Library, where I have a card (!) or maybe in the Trenton State Archives. Onward.

Hiatus

I know there must be someone out there following this blog. If so, you're probably wondering...when will she return? And what has she been doing in the meantime?? Well, all I can say is that from the end of summer until now we have been criss-crossing the country, thinking hard about the future, where we might want to live if we moved from here, and so there was no blog time for me. First we thought of buying my sister's cottage, left over from her bed-and-breakfast empire, in South Pasadena. A few blocks from Buster's, a few more blocks to my sister's house, and my nephew's family. So we had to fly out there and check it out. We decided the house didn't really feel like "us." So after a wonderful Thanksgiving vacation, which included a stop in New York, and a family visit in Washington, D.C., I stopped in at Princeton to look again at a house Bill and I had seen in early October. It spoke to us. We were listening. We made a hard choice. We don't have the house yet...but it is within our grasp. In fact, I may be blogging again in a few days, imagine that. We'll keep you all posted. In the meantime, the photo of the day is a family portrait my cousins sent me of my great-great-grandfather Patrick Henry Rafter, who came to New Jersey (him too!) from Ireland. Recently I was perusing a fantastic genealogy blog written by a descendant of the Miner family--it had so many great features I decided, well, to start my own. Based on his model. So if you get tired of waiting around for slopoet to tell all, you can head off to olsonsumner.wordpress.com, where you find lots of action, and more coming soon!

Gathering summer

I remember one spring day in Guilford, or maybe two. Then it rained again. Soon it was summer. In between there was a visit to Boston for the Early Music Festival, and we went with Harry to tour Frederick Law Olmsted's offices at his home in Brookline. There was a trolley program we put on for the GPA, and a quick visit to New York to see Jerry and Geri Fleming. Went with the Flemings to the Neue Galerie, a precious gallery on the upper East side. And Bill and I visited the Archives at Yale to read some of the 70,000 letters of William Graham Sumner stored there. We also discovered Chatfield Hollow, not so far from our house, a new place to hike and swim.

We reported dutifully to Gilmanton for the Fourth of July. Got to see Sarah and Jody's twins, Willa and Josie. And other little ones. Soon we were off to Canada, Quebec, Montreal, Kingston, and Toronto. A lovely two-week trip bracketed with overnights in Vermont, one of our favorite states. We arrived back in Gilmanton at the end of July, and Jenny and Phil and the kids blew in a few hours later with a tent, a new van, and various bicycles tied on to the back. Soon there were more, Lorie and Thomas and their kids, lucky a lot of them actually liked sleeping in the tent. We celebrated the union of Abby and Wes, and their new daughter Talia, and commemorated the lives of Joe Urner and Jimmy Johnson at beloved Loon Pond. The Rock Party was the fitting conclusion, Roger and Liz walking down in front of us under the full August moon.

Now I am in Chester, Connecticut, with a few friends from last year's workshop at the Frost Place. We are going at it full bore. I have revised two poems already. Grateful for all comments.

Waking Up the Blog

a foot and a half more or less

You never know who might show up here, expecting to find an up-to-date blog. The last post was oh-so-last year. Would you like to go forwards or backwards? I prefer going forwards, on the Metro at least. We'll have to pick up just after Christmas (white) when Karen and Fede and the girls arrived to help us celebrate the new year. No champagne (we all went to bed early...) but lots of cookies. The heaviest snow came a few weeks later, one day it was a foot and a half. As February rolled in, we rolled down to D.C. to attend AWP, sold quite a few Sixteen Rivers books at our table, some great readings (one at Busboys and Poets was especially good). Bill and I also went on a tour of the Library of Congress, which took us to the top of the building where the Poet Laureate's office is...he wasn't in. For Presidents Day we had a visit from the grandchildren, walking the Stony Creek Trolley trail was a particularly nice excursion.

bnb cottage in South Pasadena

Bill and I left suddenly for California that week, as my sister's husband, Len, had passed away. Many tears, but a lot of pride watching my nieces and nephews, and my two very grownup great nephews, speak about their Nonno at the service in my childhood church, filled with hundreds of mourners. We had fun staying in the last part of my sister's bed and breakfast she hadn't yet sold, the cottage in the rear. And we had a nice dinner with Mimi, too. Not the California visit we had planned, but it turned out to be a meaningful visit with family and friends.

The Brigantine in the Pine Barrens

In March we went down to NY to hear Bob Hass, Adam Zagajewski and Claire Cavanagh read and talk about their connections with Czeslaw Milosz. A bonus was getting together for breakfast with Gwen and Norm at the M. Wells Diner, and seeing their apartment in Long Island City. At the end of the month we took our (now) annual trip to New Jersey. We met our friend Carolyn down in the Pine Barrens, where she took us on a tour of the Brigantine, a wildlife preserve in vast stretches of marshland, and a view far off of..Atlantic City. The next day Bill and I drove to Batsto, a former iron manufacturing company town--we thought we'd spend about an hour, but it was really fascinating, so of course we were there much longer! We drove up through the pine forests to Princeton, and the next day I joined my fellow U.S. 1 Poets in a reading at the Princeton Library from the new anthology. We also ate for the first time at the Blue Point Grill, had to eat at the counter, but it was really great! Dropped William at the Princeton Junction station the next morning (he was off to play bridge with Harry in NY), drove home in a little rain, stopping for lunch at the Runcible Spoon in Nyack. I think we're pretty up-to-date now. Time for Easter brunch in Gilmanton!

November eases into December

Hudson, NY

After driving the nifty Volvo station wagon rental car in the Land of Altena (our Netherlands part of the trip), I didn't wait a week before I visited the New London Volvo dealer. It helped that The Broken Yolk breakfast place was nearby. I'm now learning to pronounce the new car I own. I guess it's Vahl-voh not Vohl-vo, I keep trying to turn it into an Italian car. So we set off in the new vahl-voh, driving west for Thanksgiving. First stop was Hudson where we discovered a great coffee place, The Swallow. Then we stayed in Cooperstown at the August Lodge. The next morning we had breakfast in town, and visited the Fenimore Museum, which was a delight.

Fenimore Museum

Then on to Buffalo to see Jenny and Phil and the kids. Their cousins were visiting as well, so everyone had someone to play with. Thanksgiving dinner was yummy, each family's contribution a little different, the Croatian goodies, my sweet potatoes roasted with pecans and currants, and succulent turkey roasted by Phil's parents. Snow fell while we were there so we had a nice outing in a recreation area south of the city. On the way home we stopped in Skaneateles, then stayed in Cooperstown again.

Dream Trip

We've just come home from a dream trip, 8 days in Italy, 5 in Antwerp and the Netherlands. Not a long trip, but packed with wonderful experiences. We went to Italy with our friends Gwen and Norm, who had never been to Italy before, so Bill and I were the guides. We began in Rome, then drove to Country House Montali in the midst of Umbria, took day trips to Panicale (our wedding locale), Assisi, Pienza, and the Abbey of Sant'Antimo. Final 3 days were in Florence. Then we all flew from Pisa to Amsterdam and split up, Bill and I travelling by train down to Antwerp, where we spent 3 nights tasting gourmet food and exploring the city's beautiful museums and churches. We picked up a car in Breda and drove through the southern part of the Netherlands looking for the places where my Dutch ancestors lived: Den Bosch, Almkerk, Woudrichem, Heusden, Noorderloos, Laeckervelt, Lexmond, and Vianen, and then we finished out our trip by staying the last night in Utrecht, a gorgeous city of canals and more gorgeous architecture.

Now we're back in glorious Guilford in the height of autumn colors. Back to projects for the Guilford Preservation Alliance, the Guilford Citizens for Responsible Development, and the Guilford Poets Guild. So what else is new??!

July into August

On our way back to Gilmanton for round two, we drove up to Northampton, had a nice dinner at Circa. Next stop, Albany, staying at the Desmond Hotel with a wedding party and a whole bunch of soldiers with their families attending seminars on supportiveness so that there were phalanxes of men in khaki camouflauge, then giggly bridesmaids, on our way to breakfast. Bill and I enjoyed the Diana at Saratoga, both had some money on the winner, Proviso, which edged out 3 other horses in a four-way photo finish.

Joining Jenny and the kids was especially lovely this year, they are all a little older and so much fun to be with. A poem I wrote about them:

Grandchildren

After they had gone, it was almost as if I had dreamed them.

The younger girl followed her sister everywhere.
They strutted past me, making crisp turns, re-enacting a parade
on the front lawn, beating sticks together like snare drummers.

Their brother pondered large questions,
such as whether, after fireworks, it were possible
to sweep up all the sparks.

And if brooms existed that wouldn’t catch fire.

Also, he had read in a local newspaper that Mars
would appear on August 27 almost the same
size as the moon. And it would crash into us.

These are exciting times.



Soooo, the second week of August I went off to attend the Advanced Seminar at The Frost Place, with Nan, a bunch of new friends, and our faculty: Gray Jacobik, Jeanne Marie Beaumont and Fred Marchant. I learned a great deal from all 3, from all the other 18 participants, really. I am going to think about each line, whether it needs to be in the poem, whether something else needs to be in the poem, whether the poem is finished, well, I should be paying more attention, I think. No dashing off poems.

Got back to Drew Farm for a few more days before we head back to Connecticut. Attended Opera North in Lebanon, a lively performance of Don Giovanni. A visit to Portland and Brunswick is in the near future. More later.