New Ideas, New Places to Go

So we survived driving to Buffalo and back for Christmas, stopping at Corning on the way up, lots of nice visits with Bill’s family. We got outta there just in time missing a big snowstorm, took a new route home, stopping in Lewisburg. Our newest discovery was Frederick, Maryland, our very first stop. The old part of town was truly lovely and we expect to return there.

Much of 2026 flew by as Bill and I were thinking of making another trip to Europe. We first thought we’d try a river cruise, but even those seemed a little too strenuous. Bill wanted to try going to the Early Music Festival in Utrecht in September, and I said I’d like to visit Tyler, Kathi and Elio in Berlin, so trip planning took off. In the meantime the BayWoods annual board election came up in May. We were doing well, having a new chairman in our sights, and somehow I sailed through getting reelected.

By July it was clear Bill thought it would be too much even just going to Utrecht, so I just soldiered along with my planning, deciding to add Copenhagen to the trip so I could see an exhibition of Remedios Varo at the Louisiana Museum there. In August we still drove up to New Hampshire and back! This year we went to Easton, PA to see Juditha and Jim. They had us to their house for dinner, which was yummy. The next day we had a lovely drive through NW New Jersey, very rural, and then the Hudson River Valley. We had lunch with folks we had known in Palo Alto, Susan Kraft and Carl Yorke. Gilmanton was great, the whole family plus Phoebe the dog, and cousin Luka, Jenna and their baby Thad. A nice wedding celebration potluck for Mark except his bride Bara wasn't able to make the trip from Colorado.

We came home with a week before I was to leave for Europe. I know I’ve whetted your appetite. You’ll have to hang on, but I promise to update the blog sooner this time.

2025 One New Car, One New Baby

It felt like a betrayal, turning in my 2010 Volvo, such a good friend. But it was time to get a new car, maybe something a little bigger. It was either a new Forester or a VW Tiguan, the latter was my choice and amazingly Bill liked the one we test drove. Feels nice to have a new car, seems reliable so far.

This year it seems my introversion is almost an ancient memory. I was in the first row for the St Patricks Day line dance, and Sondra asked me to be one of her singers (sing??) at her 90th celebration. Even Bill thought I was the only one on key.

In April we took the train up to NYC to rendezvous with Mimi and Wayne. Hard to see them very often since they moved to Walla Walla. We also got to see some of the Radoses, dinner at an Alsatian restaurant (Cafe d'Alsace). And we squeezed in a concert, the Markus Passion at Corpus Christi. 

In July we put our new car to the test, drove up through NJ to Guilford, where we were able to spend a little time with Gwen. Her dear Norm was dying, so we spirited her away to dinner at Chapter One on the Green. I also was able to have coffee one day with Dennis Culliton, and we shared our similar projects researching slavery in CT and NJ. We even went to Old Saybrook for dinner outside at Liv's Oyster Bar and then to the Kate to hear some Stravinsky and Fauré. The last morning I attended a meeting (at the graveyard) of the General Andrew Ward Cemetery Association, the first one I had been able to go to in many years. Our next stop was Fox Hill retirement home, where we stayed a couple of nights and visited our friend Sherla (who had moved there from BayWoods). Many comparisons were made. She has access to more cultural events, but the place is lot bigger, and she's a long way from the dining room!

A few weeks in Gilmanton, very restful. Nice visits with Jay and Alaiyo, Bruce and Janet, a potluck with Mark. We also finally had dinner at the Gilmanton Winery, just Bill and Genevieve and Phil and me, sitting outside on the front porch. On the way home this year we went to Shelton, CT, again, and dinner on the Housatonic at the Housatonic House, best crab cakes!

Wasn't home very long before I had my next trip coming up, a long weekend staying with Janet in Laguna and attending my 60th high school reunion in Newport Beach. Susan Winston Noble stayed with us, some very funny coincidences with her life and Janet's (her twin sister Linda's husband, for example, was the son of Len's law partner). The reunion itself was worth the trip, even though it was only a few hours long. Got to sit and talk with lots of old classmates, probably the last high school reunion I will go to. I had done a lot of the publicity (via Mailchimp) so it was great that so many people showed up. I also got to visit Janet's new CCRC in Dana Point (at this point in time she's planning to move there in early 2026), Sea Bluffs.

We now have TWO younguns in the family, Riley and Michelle's daughter Robin was born October 16. We haven't seen her yet but the photos are really cute. I can only imagine the day when she gets to meet her cousin Elio from Germany, that should be fun!

Thanksgiving we spent with my second cousin Kathy and her husband Shibley again. We felt like we remembered well most of the people there, a very pleasant way to spend the holiday.

Our next event is driving to Buffalo for Christmas. You're doing what?? You'll hear about it, especially if we survive the trip.

Ireland At Last!

Beth and I finally made it to Ireland in late April 2024, a Road Scholar trip. It was very exciting landing on that green island that so many times I had flown over, on the way to England and other places in Europe, without stopping. We stayed for three nights in a grand hotel in Ennis, The Old Ground Hotel. Our first day we had glorious sunshine in Galway, learned its history, walked up its High Street, and later visited Coole Park, its Autograph Tree, and a small museum about Lady Gregory, friend of Yeats. That night we heard a mother and her daughters play haunting reels in an old forge. Our second day we explored the Burren area, saw Celtic crosses in Kilfenora, and got a brief moment of clearing at the Cliffs of Moher before a giant rainstorm blew in. Our third day centered on two castles, Bunratty and Blarney. We skipped kissing the Blarney stone, Beth and I being responsible in our lives for too much gab. 

We stayed three nights in Kinsale, at the Trident Hotel. The day after arriving there we drove along a river til we got to Bantry Bay, then climbed over Caha Pass and later Molls Gap. In the afternoon we visited Muckross House, a sumptuous mansion built by an Irish couple who actually lived in Woodside, California (the estate called Filoli) and bought the home in Muckross for their daughter and new son-in-law. Our last day in Kinsale Beth and I took a boat ride around the bay. We lucked out with full sunshine, blue water, green hillsides, churches and forts, and a smooth, comfortable ride.

We left the next morning, stopped in at the Cobh Emigration Museum. Then on to Dublin, with a planned stop in Kilkenny, Kilkenny being the only place in Ireland that had a family connection for me, as it was where my great-great grandfather came from. So Beth had been amused that I talked about this fellow with the same name as my great-great grandfather (Patrick Rafter), and who was also a violinist from Kilkenny. I was hoping to connect with him, even though he was quite famous, playing with many major orchestras. But it was he who first contacted me in a genealogy forum,

asking if we might figure out how we were related. So I had his phone number, and he had asked for mine. And we emailed. I told him we had this 2-hour window of lunch in Kilkenny, and about 20 minutes before we arrived there, my phone rang: Patrick Rafter calling! So we met at a great cafe in Kilkenny with Patrick and his mother, a wonderful encounter (we would return to Kilkenny at the end of our trip). Patrick's mother stared at me and said, "She looks just like baby George....!"

So now we had three nights in Dublin. On the first day we had a helpful bus tour to orient us. I took off to visit Sweny's Pharmacy, which James Joyce knew and put in his novel Ulysses as a place his character Leopold Bloom briefly stops. It is now a mini-museum, and the proprietor sings you a song, plucking his guitar. He recommended lunch at Kennedy's Pub across the street, which was perfect. Other places I visited that day were the National Library, the National Museum of Archaeology, and Oscar Wilde's house. The next day we were to see the Book of Kells, but Trinity College was entirely shut down because of protests over the Gaza War. So instead we visited the Museum of Literature, and had a lovely walk across St. Stephens Park. We spent the afternoon in the National Gallery.

The tour was over, and Beth and I then headed for Kilkenny, so I could explore my family's beginnings. We got there by train, and the very first taxi driver we engaged, who drove us to our hotel, turned out to be a gem. He said yes, he could certainly arrange to drive us to Callan (where Patrick Rafter was evidently born and went to school) and anywhere else we'd like, for a reasonable sum, and he'd pick us up after lunch! So this was really a dream, I wasn't sure I could pull it off. There I was strolling up and down the main street of Callan, looking in at Patrick's school (the priory), and we even visited where he went to college in Kilkenny, and the graveyard where his brother was known to have been buried. A great beginning for our visit. Sipping a Bailey's Irish Cream in Rafter Dempsey's pub (owned by present-day Patrick's cousin) was nice as well.

The next morning we explored the neighborhood where (the original) Patrick's three sisters lived near the Friary, then walked up to Rothe House, a house museum with a beautiful garden, and finished off the afternoon with a visit to Kilkenny Castle. That night we showed up at Kytelers Inn to see a show. It was part of a "country" music festival I had read about, so I purchased ahead tickets for us to see and hear Sam Outlaw, who had once lived in Los Angeles and was actually terrific. I ended up on the dance floor with a

couple we met there, great fun. Our last morning in Kilkenny we took a relaxing boat trip up and down the River Nore. Flew home a day later from Dublin.

Can't really top this trip, except for seeing Elio in California! That was part of my sister's fun 90th birthday celebration at the La Jolla Beach and Tennis Club in June. All 23 of us in the family showed up. A great place to catch up with the family, and take turns getting our pictures taken with Elio. A slight mishap, one day after I had bragged to my nephew Kent, the orthopedic surgeon, that I had never broken any bones, I slipped and fell near the pool and managed to break three little toes on my left foot!

During the summer we stopped on our way to New Hampshire in New Jersey, to visit with Maxine and her husband Jay. Jay passed away a few months later. No Chester gathering this year. Drew Farm packed with all the Radoses and dog Phoebe. On the way home we stopped in Middlebury where Clare was beginning her sophomore year. A scenic drive home, the Fort Ticonderoga Ferry, and down the Hudson.

Back to California we flew in October for my Stanford 55th reunion. Enjoyed seeing Holly, Cindy, Audrey, and other class of '69 pals. Some very nice lunches at our class headquarters, some excellent lectures including one about Mississippi Summer, and a fun class party where there were only Cindy, Betsy and Marlene and I up on the dance floor, until they started playing Louie Louie (my request) and about thirty more people streamed onto the floor. The last night was our traditional Italy XIV dinner at Vaso Azzurro in Mountain View. Some new people came we hadn't seen since 1967! The last morning of the reunion Holly, Betsy, and I showed up for the Class of '69 Authors event. Although it was mostly just our friends and relatives (an exaggeration, the audience numbered about 7...!) we had a great time. On Sunday night we stayed at an airport hotel looking over San Francisco Bay, and flew home on my birthday.

Thanksgiving was really special this year. My second cousin, Kathy Hopps, whom I had probably not seen since we were children, found my article about Patrick Rafter on the Internet and wrote an email asking if I was her cousin? Then it turned out that while we both thought the other person must still live in California, where we were born, we lived not that far apart, me in Annapolis and she in Silver Spring. In trying to figure out a time to get together with her family, she proposed having us come for Thanksgiving. We had a lovely day with them and seem to have made new, lasting friendships.

As they say in Wordle, having just completed this by the end of the year, Phew!

My How Time Flies!

Hard to believe it's been almost a year since the last post. Last summer in Chester, Connecticut we finally had all of our members together for a long-overdue poetry conference. At its conclusion we rushed off to New London to pick up very special arriving passengers, Corinne and Owen, who visited Drew Farm with us our first few days there. 

In October I got my birthday wish to return to Chestertown and the Great Oak Manor, where we had stayed way back in 2007. It was picture-perfect fall weather. We hadn't planned anything but happened to be there during Tall Ship weekend. There was also a Halloween parade downtown for which we were able to grab frontline viewing from our lunch spot. And later we were sitting on a bench near the river, and got talked into boarding a boat for a one-hour tour past all the tall ships that were anchored there for the weekend, a perfectly easy way to view them.

Late October, October 31 to be exact, arrived the newest member of the family: Elio Maro Marangi, born in Berlin, Germany. Photos of him come frequently, so we almost feel like we are watching his steady journey from day one to the arrival of his first curls. We are looking forward to seeing him for the first time in June, when we travel to California for my sister's birthday.

In December we had a quiet Christmas, but a few days later my sister arrived, her first visit to us since we had arrived in Annapolis. She seem positively impressed with BayWoods. She got to meet quite a few of our friends over lunch in the Bistro. Dinner was at Jalapeños, then I stayed with Janet overnight at The Graduate, and the next day we drove her back to DC, stopping for lunch at Harvest Thyme.

In February I was busy rehearsing for the three acts in which I was involved in the Variety Show. One was a skit I re-wrote so three of us could perform the famous "wall scene" from Midsummer Night's Dream. The second was a goofy dance our aqua class did to the tune of the 60s song "The Swim." I was most proud of my (almost) flawless performance of a line dance called "Seduced." Got to dress up a little and swing our boas.

In March I went with a BayWoods excursion to hear a group called The Suits, who sang 60s-80s doo-wop, Motown, and disco tunes. At one point they asked for a volunteer to come up on stage with them. There were hundreds of us in the audience, and I was in the second row. Behind me I imagined lots of people with their hands up, so I stuck mine up, too. It turned out I was the only person volunteering! So of course I went up on stage, introduced myself, and sat on a stool as they took turns singing to me different verses of "My Girl." The audience thought I was singing, too, but I was only mouthing the words, as it was one of my favorite songs. They say I danced, too, but that was only briefly...

Today I happen to be off to Ireland. Road Scholar trip with my friend Beth, staying near Galway, in Kinsale, and Dublin, finishing off with a private trip to Kilkenny, where my great-great grandfather Patrick Henry Rafter came from. So stay tune. This blog should become more timely soon!

Springtime and a Lowland Fling

Word reached us in mid-March that Tyler and Kathi had tied the knot in Denmark, and photos came showing their lovely wedding in a lighthouse, just the two of them, so romantic. 

In April my friend Beth and I took off north in her car. She dropped me off in Princeton so I could do some work with my research buddies George and Dory in Princeton, at Rutgers, and later in Newark and NYC. Then I took the Metro North up to Milford where Beth put me up in the cottage behind her old home (now belonging to new owners). We walked on the beach and explored Milford, and then the next day I showed her my favorite places: the Trolley Trail in Branford, Stony Creek, Chaffinch Island Park, and the Foote-Ward cemetery. She also got to meet my friends Gordy and Andrea, and Lois back in New Jersey.

Back at BayWoods I was running for a seat on the Board of Directors. In the first week of May I learned I had won, joining two incumbents. So this will add a load to my life at BayWoods, we shall see what transpires. In mid-May Bill and I took off on our long-awaited trip to Scotland and England. We flew to London where the first night we ate dinner at our favorite restaurant, Margaux, on the Old Brompton Road. The train ride to Edinburgh was quite lovely, especially along the coast. We finally arrived at North Berwick, home of our friend Dave Berry, who had invited us and myriad other friends for what he called A Lowland Fling. We had a great room overlooking the High Street. There was a welcome dinner, a city walking tour led by Dave, and a wonderful party Saturday evening at the local pub, where Dave played

the drums with his old mates he had gathered together. A half pint of Guinness Stout and I was up there dancing to Sweet Caroline and Gimme Some Lovin. Sunday was the boat trip to four islands, each with their different birds, one with a lighthouse built by Robert Louis Stevenson's family which might have been the inspiration for Treasure Island. We hated leaving, but Monday left for Edinburgh and spent the afternoon at the National Gallery, meeting some of our new friends for lunch. On Tuesday we went to Glasgow, highlights were the Transportation Museum and the Willow Tea Room, but unfortunately I came down with a cold. Back in Edinburgh we discovered Howie's, which served excellent Scottish food in an historic building with windows all around. Later that week we took the train to Beverley, where we attended a concert in the beautiful church St Marys performed by the Early Music group The

Ministers of Pastime. The next day Bill came down with the same cold so we had to cancel the next night's concert, The Tallis Scholars. But the hotel was comfortable and we got a lot of rest our last couple of days. 

Back at BayWoods I hardly slowed down, went to an event at Quiet Waters Park and then a few days later went on a "pedalling" boat cruise of Baltimore Harbor. The summer beckons, we're planning our annual trip north to Gilmanton, with my Chester group meeting the last week of July. Oh, and Beth and I signed up for a trip to Ireland in April/May 2024!

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

Settling In

 So it's taken me a little over a year to report again on this blog. As promised, we moved in to Baywoods of Annapolis on March 3. Baywoods has had a really good record during the pandemic, no one in the independent living quarters dying of Covid. Rules have been strict here. We moved in when there were no dinners being served in the dining room, so we got used to dinners arriving in a bag. Instead of cooking we now reheat dinner in a microwave! We also learned how to order from local grocery stores, and ventured out to our favorite espresso bars and a few restaurants when it seemed safe. In May 2021 we took a fun day trip to Easton, Maryland on the Eastern Shore (also got my car registered, lines were shorter there). We've made very good friends here so far. I joined the staff of the Breeze newsletter, and one of my specialties is interviewing new residents. Earlier this week on Valentine's Day we participated with three other couples in a "newlywed game," came in second. Over the year we've gone on a few excursions with small groups to the outdoor sculpture garden in DC, the Baltimore Museum of Industry, and earlier this month to the African-American Museum. As I write this things are slowly opening up more. Dining room serving again, even happy hours. I take a swim exercise class twice a week. 

Eddie, Bill and I in Jávea,
Spain, in 2009

Last summer we managed to drive all the way to Gilmanton, stopping along the way to visit friends in the Princeton area, in Brooklyn, and Guilford, Connecticut. We stayed at the Jersey City Hyatt and were given a room with a view overlooking the Hudson. We were able to use the PATH and Lyft to get to Brooklyn to see our friends Ruthie and Eddie Lemansky. As I write this we've just learned that Eddie died of a heart attack yesterday, February 15. He was one of Bill's oldest friends so we are glad we were able to get to see him last summer.

Last October we were lucky there was a small decline in covid cases, so we boarded a plane at BWI and
flew to California so we could attend my great-nephew Riley's wedding to Michelle in the wine country. We went to all the wedding festivities, the rehearsal dinner, the wedding in a vineyard, brunch the next mroning, all in one fast weekend. And of course we got to see all of my family in one place, together, true luxury.

Recently my genealogical "career" has picked up. I not only published the second of two installments of my Captain Sandford article, I have become involved in two unrelated but somewhat connected projects in New Jersey. One is an attempt to collect all known information about the Cedar Grove community (of which my Simonsons were one family there) in a project to develop a possible museum featuring the cemetery there. The other one is to try to save the Peter Van Ness house in Fairfield, New Jersey, this campaign has just begun in earnest, and I am on a committee of three planning it. So I work with four different men on these two projects, and some of them know each other, so I am juggling to remember what I've said to who about what...

Our next excursion will be to New York to hear Jordi Savall at Carnegie Hall, and see Jenny, Phil and one or two grandchildren. Perhaps I'll be writing here more frequently. Hard to believe I've been so busy but I guess retirement can be like that.

Surprise Move!

This will probably surprise the heck out of anyone actually reading my blog. We are on our way to Annapolis. Let me back up and catch you up from the last post of June 6, 2020. Soon after that I was a featured reader along with Doren Robbins for a Poetry Center San Jose zoom reading (June 9). The regular events were changed slightly, my Chester group met for a week via Zoom in late July. We decided going to New Hampshire would work fine, pandemic-wise, as the levels of infection were very low there. So we drove up to Guilford, had dinner (masked, socially distanced) with our friends Gwen and Norm, and then arrived at Drew Farm on July 25. The first week we were there with Clare and Lucy only, then the rest of the family came. Going to the pond was easy, people stayed away from each other enough so we all felt safe. Bill and I even shopped at the market pretty regularly, how daring! We stayed until mid-August, then drove home stopping at Wallingford, my new Connecticut discovery where I'd stayed with Juditha the year before. Bill liked it very much, especially the Library Bar and Bistro for dinner. 

All of the regular activities took place, except via Zoom, like my various book groups, the Cool Women, the Chester group. In fact, it was nice to meet with the Chester group once a month instead of the usual once-a-year gathering. The first part of my article about John Sandford/Sanford/Santford, the three Revolutionary War soldiers, came out in September (and then part two is soon to arrive in March 2021). 

But the real excitement came around October when I convinced Bill we should go down to Annapolis and take a look at some of the apartments at BayWoods of Annapolis, the retirement community we had researched and which was beckoning to us. So we drove down on my birthday, staying at Country Inn and Suites, found the good espresso place there (Ceremony Coffee), found a beautiful park by the bay (Quiet Waters), and had dinner outside (tented) at Vin 909 to celebrate. The next morning, after breakfast downtown outside near the docks, we showed up for our tour with Jim Harrington of two of the two-bedroom apartments that were available. Unfortunately, both were on the north side, not as sunny as the south side. But it all looked good. We spent some time also at a wonderful bookstore/coffeehouse and had lunch in Eastport in a sandwich place, sitting outside looking out over the harbor.

So then we mulled it over for awhile...! Genevieve and I arranged a Zoom 80th birthday surprise for him with friends from all over the country wishing him well. Thanksgiving came and went, quiet, just the two of us. Christmas came and went, quiet, just the two of us. We decided maybe my niece Karen could help us out, since the Covid cases were particularly high around the end of the year. So she went to BayWoods on January 9th, toured an apartment newly available on the south, sunny side, took lots of photos and talked to Jim Harrington. The apartment looked great, was on the fourth floor, had a view of the water, and so we decided why go down again to look at it, since the two-bedroom plans all had the same layout, and we had seen the facility. We had looked into at least 30 or so other places, ranked them financially and by amenities, and this place just seemed the best fit for us. We had only visited Annapolis one other time (back in 2007) but the visit in October revealed a town with a lot of excitement, and the fact that we would be right on the Chesapeake Bay just seemed very exciting and relaxing at the same time. Also nice to be near D.C. and all of its activities, as well as Karen and Elena and Marina being nearby as well. And friends Anne and Fred, and Hiram to boot.

I am writing this as we are in the throes of moving. Many boxes of books. Backaches, packing exhaustion. We are looking forward to being in our new place, that's for sure! Next post will have more news about our adjustment to the retirement community and life further south. At least I don't have to worry about my not seeming to be much of a Jersey girl. All I have to be now is a decent Annapolitan.

Long Days at Home

Cooperstown Public Library

The last post ended with a recap of whirlwind activities involving my new book, a train ride across the country, my 50th college reunion. Soon after that reunion Bill and I drove to Buffalo for Thanksgiving. On Sunday we planned a leisurely drive across the state to Cooperstown, to spend a night there as we had done a few times before. Unfortunately a storm was also planned for that day. We thought to ourselves, how bad could it be? Well, it was pretty daunting, took us all day to reach the turnoff for Cooperstown, the thruway full of cars creeping along in slush, our windshields pelted with pellets of frost. At the turnoff it was already dark. And a steep hill was on our route, unbeknownst to us the rather locally famous "Vickerman Hill." Cars to the right of us, cars to the left of us had spun out, but my Volvo soldiered on, only balked once, steady pressure to the gas and we made it to the top. I am becoming an accomplished winter driver. Still not there yet, though, another hour or two when it normally would have taken less than an hour. And minimal visibility, luckily very few cars on the road. We finally reached our destination, an old Victorian in Cooperstown, the Landmark Inn, and were fortunate one restaurant in town was still open, Mel's at 22, and it was warm and cozy with delicious food. The b&b let us stay an extra night of course, who else would be coming with several feet of snow? So we darted in to the Cooperstown Baseball Hall of Fame the next day (we had to take turns because parking seemed to be prohibited everywhere...). We discovered Alex's World Bistro for a late lunch, then ordered takeout for our dinner back at the room (a bottle of wine purchased at the liquor store next door...seems liquor stores never close in inclement weather). So this is rather a long-winded description of a two-day event. Not to worry, there won't be much to relate for the next series of months...

I seem to remember a reading the Cools gave at the New Brunswick Public Library, and Gretna, Maxine and I having a great pizza lunch afterwards. That was March 7. Then the world started closing in. The pandemic had arrived. Events began to be cancelled. Frances Mayes' reading in Doylestown. Gray Jacobik's long-anticipated reading at the FDR library in Hyde Park. Bill and I navigated getting groceries delivered, and ordering takeout from places that allowed us to pick up at the curb. Masks acquired. The kindness of neighbors, some of whom shopped for us when online delivery was interrupted.

My great great grandfather Patrick Henry Rafter
becomes a citizen

Staying home is not as difficult for old people like us who are somewhat introverted and like to spend time on the Internet. I finished an article that I sent off to my editor at the Genealogical Magazine of New Jersey. Threw away bags of papers, files, photos. Started more genealogical research. Wrote some poems. Was interviewed by the Guilford Poets Guild. Zoomed with my poetry friends, Gilmanton folks, Bill's family in Buffalo.

But watched in horror as the president of our country seemed to become a more and more frightening and dangerous individual. And George Floyd was murdered. That is where this blog is at this point in time, June 2020. People rising up. So many helpful commentators. Trevor Noah, for example, on the social contract. What good does it do, he asked, if the people in charge have broken the social contract, why should the oppressed continue to obey it?

Bill and I plan to go to New Hampshire in late July. That is about the sum of things here. Be well and stay stafe. And listen to the voices of change. What do we want, justice. When do we want it, now.

Recap of 2019

Chicago

The year 2019 began with the publication by Cherry Grove Collections of my second book of poems, Will There Be Music? The book launch took place in Guilford, Connecticut, reading for the Guilford Poets Guild on April 27, 2019. But even before the book launch, I decided to attend AWP in Portland, Oregon, and to take Amtrak across the country as a sort of meditative journey, arriving in time for the conference which began March 27. I was able to touch base with lots of west coast poetry friends there, as well as staying with my college friend Peggy and her husband Bill. We drove up the Columbia as far as Cascade Locks and found the Sacagawea statue, and also went to see the University of Oregon women win the game that sent them to the Final Four!

Ward Ritchie Collection

Clouds Brushed in Later

Bill met me in Southern California where we visited my sister for a few days, then drove up to the Pasadena area. Some highlights were visits to two cemeteries where I found my Swedish grandmother (in Long Beach) and my maternal grandparents (in Whittier); a tour of the William Andrews Clark Library and its Ward Ritchie Collection (where a copy he owned of my chapbook resides); Santa Anita racetrack; and a tour of the Charles F. Lummis House with Kirk and Melinda.

Santa Barbara Mission

Unbeknownst to my sister, we needed to kill time before her "surprise" birthday party, so we drove up to Santa Paula, were given a tour of Ojai by my Italy XIV friend Jerry Dunn, and hung out with friends Fran and Roger, and Gil and Joan in Santa Barbara, visiting the Santa Barbara Mission among other sites. When the time came, we truly did surprise my sister at Kent and Cindy's house.

Returning to the east coast, there were two readings for my book, one as mentioned above in Guilford, CT, and the second at the Princeton Public Library in June. In between these events was a quick trip to Buffalo to attend my step-daughter-in-law's graduation from the University of Buffalo Law School. On the way home I managed to create a genealogical mini-tour at Honeoye Falls, where some of my Sandfords migrated in the early 1800s.

Honeoye Falls, NY

In late July I joined my poetry friends in Chester, Connecticut where suitable hijinks as well as serious endeavors took place. Then on to Drew Farm, the grandchildren, swimming, the Rock Party, all went on as usual. On the way home I convinced Bill to take a detour to Vermont where we found a monument to one of the Sandfords in Weybridge, and then we stayed two nights at the Inn in Westport (NY), and on the day in between we drove up to Long Lake and had lunch with a distant cousin of mine, also a Sandford, a fellow writer Pat Garber.

With Ned at the game

With Tom and Cindy at the game

With Holly at class party

In September I gave my third reading for my book at the Newtown Library Company. Then in October I flew back to Portland, Oregon, where my friend Penelope had invited me to read at her White Dog Salon. Staying again with Peggy and Bill, and the last night at Penelope's, was quite cozy. The next stop, meeting Bill in the Bay Area where my Stanford Class of '69 50th reunion was about to begin. As one of the volunteers I got to go to an extra party, and Bill and I attended dinner on the Quad before a cold virus struck him down. I avoided this malady for the nonce and was able to attend the class party, the football game (where our class walked on the field during halftime), and the dinner I arranged at Vaso Azzurro in Mountain View for 24 members of our Italy XIV group (with some spouses, luckily Bill was able to bounce back for that!). We stayed in town an extra week to visit Palo Alto friends, and ended with a final reading at Waverley Writers before we flew home. Some highlights were being driven to the first event by my friend Holly in a tiny bright red Mazda Miata, re-connecting with my freshman friend Ned Wight (who swung me around expertly at the class party), attending the football game with Italy friend Tom, who plastered a red pompom on his head for the walk across the field, and being sung to for my birthday by my Italy group and the entire restaurant at Vaso Azzurro! The Waverley reading was especially lovely, so nice to connect with such old friends.

With Bill at Vaso Azzurro

Poem I wrote for our class

Coming this way: Oregon and California!

Don't miss Sharon Olson reading soon in Portland, Oregon and Palo Alto, California.

Sunday, October 20, 3-5 p.m., White Dog Poetry Salon (reading with Laura LeHew), 507 NW Skyline Crest Road, Portland, Oregon AND Friday, November 1, 7:30 p.m., Friends Meeting House, 957 Colorado Avenue, Palo Alto, California, hosted by the Waverley Writers. Sharon will be reading from her new collection entitled Will There Be Music? published in 2019 by Cherry Grove Collections. Copies available for sale at the readings, from Amazon and from Barnes and Noble, or order from your local independent bookstore. Cincinnati, Ohio, Cherry Grove Collections, ISBN: 978-1625493026, 106 pages, $19.00. The loose ends of lives and generations are expertly bundled in these alert, meditative poems. Part of a poet’s task is to catch the resonances of time and Sharon Olson has done that. —Baron Wormser ‘Will there be music?’ asks the poet in her title poem. This collection definitively answers that question: we cannot live without it.—Fred Marchant Sharon Olson is a retired librarian, a Stanford graduate, with an M.L.S. from U.C. Berkeley and an M.A. in Comparative Literature from the University of Oregon. Her chapbook Clouds Brushed in Later (1987) won the Abby Niebauer Memorial Chapbook Award. A previous full-length book of poems, The Long Night of Flying, was published by Sixteen Rivers Press in 2006. She has published (with co-author Chris Schopfer) numerous articles about the Sandford family of New Jersey in The Genealogical Magazine of New Jersey. After retiring from the Palo Alto City Library she and her husband moved initially to Guilford, Connecticut, and presently live in Lawrenceville, New Jersey. She is a member of Cool Women, a poetry performance ensemble based in Princeton, New Jersey.

Newtown Library Company Reading Sept 20

Poetry Night: Sharon Olson

Who: Sharon Olson
When: Friday, September 20, 2019 at 7:30PM
Where: The Newtown Library Company, 114 E. Centre Ave. Newtown, PA
Bring a friend and a poem for the open mic!

Sharon Olson is a retired librarian, a Stanford graduate, with an M.L.S. from U.C. Berkeley and an M.A. in comparative literature from the University of Oregon. Her chapbook Clouds Brushed in Later (1987) won the Abby Niebauer Memorial Chapbook Award, and a full-length book of poems, The Long Night of Flying, was published by Sixteen Rivers Press in 2006. Her second book Will There Be Music? was published by Cherry Grove Collections in early 2019. She has published (with co-author Chris Schopfer) numerous articles about the Sandford family of New Jersey in The Genealogical Magazine of New Jersey. She is a member of the U.S. 1 Poets’ Cooperative and also performs with the Cool Women Poets.

114 E Centre Ave, Newtown, PA 18940, USA

Next Reading, June 10

Poets at the Library

Monday, June 10, 7:00 pm - 8:30 pm
Princeton Public Library, 65 Witherspoon St.
Newsroom, Second Floor

Featured poets Gretna Wilkinson and Sharon Olson read for 20 minutes from their works, followed by an open-mic session.

Sharon Olson is a retired librarian, a Stanford graduate, with an M.L.S. from U.C. Berkeley and an M.A. in comparative literature from the University of Oregon. Her chapbook Clouds Brushed in Later (1987) won the Abby Niebauer Memorial Chapbook Award, and a full-length book of poems, The Long Night of Flying, was published by Sixteen Rivers Press in 2006. Her second book Will There Be Music? was published by Cherry Grove Collections in early 2019. She has published (with co-author Chris Schopfer) numerous articles about the Sandford family of New Jersey in The Genealogical Magazine of New Jersey. She is a member of the U.S.1 Poets’ Cooperative and also performs with the Cool Women Poets.

Gretna Wilkinson began her career as a missionary teacher in the jungles of her native Guyana. She has performed her poems on radio and television and is published in Saranac Review, The Literary Review, and Poets of New Jersey: From Colonial to Contemporary, among others. She’s been featured in The New York Times, The Star Ledger, Courier News, and others. After 17 years as a college professor, she joined the Visual and Performing Arts Academy of Red Bank Regional High School where she ran the Creative Writing program. Her online literary magazine, theravensperch.com was nominated Top 10 Literary Blog on The Web (Feedspot). She is an honorary Eagle Scout, Monmouth County Art Educator of the Year, Red Bank Regional Teacher of the Year, and was recently named Claes Nobel Educator of Distinction.

Ekphrastic Poetry: Part Four, Finding Comfort

Geertgen tot Sint Jans
John the Baptist
in the Wilderness

The genius of my first art professor, Patricia Rose, was how she demonstrated the power of detail in works of art, especially the capability of details to convey emotion, a surprising revelation. I remember sitting in the dark as she displayed the slide showing John the Baptist in the Wilderness by Geertgen tot Sint Jans, and then she zeroed in on the proliferation of flowers and animals, and the way the central figure sat in this wild grass, with one foot slightly above another ("one foot deliciously massaging the other beneath it"). It was many years later that I wrote about this image, the poem appearing in my book Will There Be Music? 

Hieronymus Bosch
The Extraction of the
Stone of Madness

Similarly in my poem "Motley Fool" I have examined closely Hieronymus Bosch's "The Extraction of the Stone of Madness," depicting an early form of the medical barbarity known as trepanation ("ice fishing into the skull to pluck the fish of madness"). I think the viewer places himself into this work, commiserating with the victim, this patient of 1494.

Death of Harold
Bayeux Tapestry

By chance I came upon the story of a friend of mine, a librarian named Ellin Klor, who was clutching her knitting materials while running up some stairs, and inadvertently stabbed herself in the heart with one of the needles (she survived!). Somehow this tale fit so nicely with a long poem I was writing about Einstein ("how starlight bends around the sun"), color theory, horse racing, and the Bayeux Tapestry ("Heavenly Bodies Along the Rail"). The detail in the tapestry that captivated me was the place where the dying Harold is depicted ("a spear hanging like a tear from his eye").

As a young woman reading Proust (my literary side) I remember being interested

Adoration of the Holy Wood
Piero della Francesca

in the way he was able to focus on such interesting themes, like the way one saw a steeple "move" as you traveled by coach upon different curving roads. And I loved his description of three trees, "those trees themselves I was never to know what they had been trying to give me nor where else I had seen them." By the time I had read these words I had already seen "these trees," those in Piero della

Overlooking Arezzo
Taken by author, 1967

Rembrandt
The Three Trees

Francesca's paintings, an engraving of three trees I had laid eyes on in Rembrandt's house, and a group of cypresses I had photographed above the city of Arezzo. The poem I wrote about all these ideas, if one could call them ideas, is called "Placement."

Portrait of Masolino
Town Hall, Panicale

Basilica of Sant'
Eustachio, Rome

Finding comfort in art can be as simple as noticing a portrait looking down upon you as you are being married in a town hall (Masolino in "The Marriage Ceremony"), or seeking solace from the head of a stag on the front of a church ("Meditation in Rome"). 

The appearance of my father in a vivid dream, not long after his death, seemed at the time to remind me of the Raphael drawing I had seen long ago in the Vatican, The Miraculous Draught of Fishes ("the disciples reached down for the nets, sun on their muscled arms").

This ends my art tour. It has been a pleasure being your guide.

Raphael, The Miraculous Draught of Fishes