Mitt is gone

Dave and Bill along the canal

Snow in our backyard

Clean slate here in Lawrenceville, pure white snow falling all evening. We went out to dinner in Princeton, having driven there to attend a poetry reading which was cancelled. We hardy Californians are always puttering about in the snow, doesn't stop us. What a wonderful world today, all traces of right-wing hysteria O-MITT-ed. Maybe it was the visit of our friend Dave Berry, Scotsman, that brought good luck. He has won all his local elections, serves the East Lothian Council. Last weekend before the ahem, hurricane, we walked along the D&R Canal and dined at the Blue Point Grill. The next day, my birthday (64th) we had breakfast in Lambertville. Then, the coolest thing was that the San Francisco Giants won the fourth game of the World Series, sweeping Detroit, and...it was still my birthday! Next day, Hurricane Sandy arrived. Terrifying winds, transformers outside our window cracking and flashing, then complete darkness. We stuck it out at home for a couple of days, temps dipping to 52 degrees inside at night. Spent the daytime picking up wifi in the Princeton Library and Small World Coffee. Then we jumped onto a Septa train and rode to Philly and the Hilton Garden Inn. A little thing like hot showers (why do we own yet another house with an electric water heater??). Pretended to be on vacation, tapas one night, Northern Italian the next. But nervous how long the power outage would be, not wanting to spend too many nights in our hotel. And then we needed to vote, which we were going to do in Trenton, but gloriously our neighbor emailed us that the lights were back on. So now we've been home for a few days. And tonight it's snowing. Should be sunny tomorrow, sun on snow, now that's a lovely sight.

What did I know of Mitt

So let's set the stage. Here I am with my brother, we're cleaning out my freshman room at Stanford. That's where Mitt went for his freshman year, before his mission in Paris, before completing his college years at BYU. So what did I know of Mitt...not much. But I DID sit next to him in Western Civ. Seeing as it's an election year, maybe I'll just jot down my impressions. Actually I already have, they are in this poem (see below). For me it all seems just like Yesterday, which of course was one of the big hits for that year.

Just another boy in the class

Seated next to me in the course formerly known as
Western Civilization was Mr. Mormon himself,
the one we see on television running for President.

Each week he wore a different-colored button-down
Oxford-cloth shirt, and because I was close by,
I could see how darker pixels mixed with white
to make pale lavender, or robin's-egg blue, or
the yellow that went particularly well with his tanned
complexion, his smoothed-back, un-ruffled coiffure.

The week we covered pantheism must have been
especially difficult for him. While he was undoubtedly
used to the concept of multiple wives, the idea that
different godheads might reside in various rocks
and streams must have been slightly threatening.

I remember he found talking easy, the way most of the
males in the class took to grandstanding, but can't
remember anything he said, which is the difficulty
he carries with him to the present day. Not surprisingly

I have become suspicious of latter-day saints,
rumpled agnostics win me over with their gritty allure.

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.

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.

Cottage of Janet's Bnb

The Brigantine, Atlantic
City in the distance

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.