Where Does the Time Go

One of the results of a busy life is that one doesn't have time to blog. Notice it has been more than a year

Tyler and Kathi

since there has been an update. Many of the details of our lives repeat every year: Chester poetry group in late July (in 2022 only 3 of us met but we're hoping for a full group in 2023), and Gilmanton in August. Because of Covid, long-distance travel by air was not desirable, but we decided we would go to California for Christmas in December 2022. We flew to Santa Barbara, which has a charming airport, and hung out with our friends Roger and Fran. Second stop, Pasadena, visiting with Kirk and his family. Got to spend a little time with Tyler and Kathi. Third stop was Laguna Beach with my sister. Came back home, thankfully no Covid, ready to start the new year.

One small trip I did make in October 2022 was to Princeton to read with my fellow Cool Women Poets for a launch of our latest anthology. Came back after a 3-day trip, back in my own bed Sunday night October 16, was woken up at 3 a.m. by the fire alarm. Unfortunately it was a real fire. The good news is that our building is very well built (steel and concrete) so the fire, which was on the next floor up from us, did not spread from one apartment. The bad news is that the sprinkler system worked (I know, that sounds like good news), causing damage to at least 30 apartments. Ours did not have any water damage but water ran down within our walls, so we had to have 2 feet of drywall removed from 5 walls in our apartment so that insulation could be removed and the interior dried out. It has been 3 months since that was done and we are still waiting for the drywall to be replaced. No comment.

Beth, Sharon and Michael

In December 2022 we lost one of our closest friends here at BayWoods. His name was Michael Kurtz. He and our friend Beth had become very close in the last year. Michael was our neighbor across the hall. He had an illustrious career as an archivist, serving as the top non-political officer in the National Archives from 1996 to 2011. He also did incredible research on the efforts to find art stolen by the Nazis during World War II, and his work became the inspiration for the 2014 movie "The Monuments Men" directed by George Clooney. But these achievements do not begin to describe what a wonderful friend he was, a gentle soft-spoken man, but strong as iron in his convictions, and always ready to act upon them.

The two genealogical projects I was working on last year continue to take up my time. The Friends of the Van Ness House learned in December 2022 we had achieved 501(c)(3) status. And the Cedar Grove Cemetery project has received much good publicity, last week we were featured on WNYC: https://www.wnyc.org/story/researchers-aim-show-cemetery-final-resting-place-enslaved-people-who-helped-build-nj-town/

Our biggest plan comes about in May, a trip to Scotland to see our Scotsman friend Dave Berry. Hopefully you'll be reading about that in the next post. I almost forgot, I was in 3 different acts in the Variety Show here at BayWoods, see some of the highlights here: https://photos.app.goo.gl/t3AnbkS4kaWaRt2BA