We find we can't keep from noodling down to New Jersey from time to time. This visit coincided with a poetry reading in Princeton at the D & R Greenway Land Trust's Johnson Education Center where our friend Carolyn Foote Edelmann is the Arts and Education Associate. The setting was the beautiful art gallery there and the topic was trees. I was selected to read along with many other local poets, some from the U.S. 1 and Delaware Valley poets' groups, some even from Princeton the school not the place (C.K.Williams and Paul Muldoon, for example). So a wide range of voices and a great audience. We went out to dinner with Carolyn afterwards, and I went on a hike with her the next day. We also managed a dinner in Hopewell, and then set off the next day for Hightstown (it's verrrry close to the Turnpike and has quite a nice little Italian cafe), and then stopped only in Larchmont (lovely weather for our picnic in Manor Park there on Long Island Sound) and Westport (a Whole Foods stop). On the way down we had lunch in Nyack, NY and expect to go back, quite an interesting town. We also visited the Great Falls in Paterson, NJ, inspected the Simonson homes in Verona (they're looking fine, Mom), and stayed overnight in Summit, our first visit there. Nice setting and fast trains to New York!
Winter definitely seems over, although spring is not officially here yet. We're down to light coats and have even started sitting out on the deck before dinner. Rooting for the Stanford women's basketball team, we'll see how far they get this year.
Photo above of Edward Hopper's birthplace in Nyack, and closer here is my mother's home in Verona. An Irish couple live there now (reason for flag, it was not so long after St. Patrick's Day).
