Summer into Fall

Dinner before the play overlooking the Hudson

What do I remember of mid-summer? Players from the Shakespeare on the Hudson striding in 17th century costumes towards us on the meadow between the theater and the river. Eleanor Roosevelt's home nearby. The Chester ferry. Huddling with my fellow poets at our now annual Chester Conference. Gilmanton, Loon Pond, always the same. Kayaking across the center of the lake.

Lighthouse near Mukilteo ferry landing

Before we knew it, fall had arrived. I volunteered for my 45th Stanford reunion as co-social-media-coordinator (Holly and I monitored the Facebook page!), and wrote a memorial poem for the class book. We decided to "add on" Seattle and Portland to our trip west for the reunion. Stayed with Cindy and Doug in Bellevue, got to see Corinne and walk the UW campus with her, stayed with Peggy and Bill in Portland. When we got to Palo Alto I discovered it was the night of our old poetry group's workshop, so I went to that, too. Holly had us Branner 3C corridor mates to her home for cocktails, and the dinner I arranged at Vaso Azzurro for Italy XIV went off splendidly.

Morristown Presbyterian Churchyard

Got back to Lawrenceville and soon my sister arrived! Lots of planning on my part to figure out just the route we should take--she appreciated how we avoided the major highways, stuck to the countryside. Lunch at the Bernards Inn, stops in the Mendham and Morristown churchyards the first afternoon, and dinner at the Madison Hotel where we stayed. The next day we found our great-great-great grandmother's tombstone in Fairfield, stopped in at the Van Ness house and the Sandford-Stager house (the latter is for sale!). Earlier in the day we went to Montville, saw two houses there (Hyler and Parlaman), both owned by our ancestors. Lunch in Montclair at the Red Eye Cafe. Found great-grandfather Fillmore's home on Roseland, across the street from the Robison house, both in good shape. All our relatives found in the Prospect Hill Cemetery (Fillmore, Ida and Everett, Stephen J. and Catherine, Charles S. Simonson and Emma Winans, Henry Winans and Mary Hotto, Ann Sanford and Isaac Simonson. Don't think I'm missing anyone. Couldn't find anyone at the First Presbyterian Churchyard, graves too hard to read, although our folks were listed in the books they had in the office. Mother's house looked great, the owner was just leaving or she would have shown us around again as she did for me a few years ago. Russell's house still there, and their father Charles' and the store with "Simonson 1909" in the brick. Also Fillmore's older home on Bloomfield, Everett Field, Overlook Cottage. Back home in traffic on the Garden State, but in time for dinner with Bill at the Blue Bottle in Hopewell.

Handel and Virginia Woolf

Berwick Church

Paula Modersohn-Becker Museum

Our early summer trip to England and Germany was delightful. Our themes were music, art, literature. We visited the homes of Handel (1 in London, 1 in Halle), Virginia Woolf, Vanessa Bell, Horace Walpole, Goethe (his home in town and his cottage in the park), Paula Modersohn-Becker, Heinrich Vogeler, Max Liebermann, and Bertolt Brecht. We went to lovely churches: Berwick church in Sussex (with paintings on the walls by Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant), St. Martin-in-the-Fields (where we heard a noon concert), St. Peter and Paul in Weimar where Herder preached. We went to museums: The Brighton Museum, The National Portrait Gallery, The Foundling Museum, the Kunsthalle Bremen, the Paula Modersohn-Becker Museum, the Goethe Museum, the Duchess Anna Amalia Library, the Weimar City Museum, the Kunstmuseum Moritzburg Halle, the Alte Nationalgalerie in Berlin, the Wannsee Conference House. We strolled along the Downs above the chalk cliffs at Beachy Head in Sussex, we travelled by ferry overnight from Harwich to Hook of Holland, we took the old-fashioned Moor-Express train from Bremen to Worpswede, and we went on two river boat tours, one in Halle and one in Berlin. And then there were the concerts: at the Town Hall of Lewes, Jordi Savall at the Handel Festival in Halle, and the Akademie für Alte Musik in Berlin. And best of all we got to see my great-nephew Tyler in Berlin, where he is studying at

Humboldt University.

Happy New Year

View of NYC from top of Frick Library

In autumn we took some great short trips, really enjoyed Open House New York with tours of the Frick Library and City Center. A short visit to Drew Farm with its fall colors as we attended the burial of our friend Heather. We heard Fretwork perform at Corpus Christi Church on the upper West side in November. We went up to Buffalo for Thanksgiving, just enough snow there to make it pretty, made sentimental stops at Spot Coffee and Betty’s for lunch. Phil’s parents and most of his sisters and their families were able to come to Thanksgiving dinner at their house. And we were joined by Chris as well, who drove all the way down from Gilmanton to drive us to Buffalo!

In December we went up to Guilford to see friends at the Guilford Poets Guild reading and the Guilford Preservation Alliance Christmas party. On the way home we stopped in NYC to hear Dark Horse Consort at the Park Avenue Christian Church. Bill thought the duo of Robert Mealy and Julie Andrijeski (violins) playing Schmelzer’s “Pastorella” was an exquisite experience. A little snow before Christmas was just the beginning of winter…

Ah, then on Christmas we got on the train for DC to join Karen and her family for a few days. Family included new members Biscuit and Jazz (their new cats). On New Year’s Eve we attended the Lawrenceville annual bonfire, and threw lists of all the bad things that had happened in 2013 into the fire! A few days later it snowed in earnest. Followed by some low temperatures that seemed a little excessive. Time for our annual winter break in California.

In front of Batchelder House in Pasadena

And California was all we expected, lovely weather in Laguna Beach with my sister, and at the track (Santa Anita) with Mimi, touring the Arroyo with Fran and Roger. The only low point...was the level of the pond at the Arboretum in Arcadia, more pond scum than water. California is in a terrible drought. But onward, Melinda cooked us a lovely dinner, with salmon en croute (and S ♥ B on top!). One day Bill played bridge and I hung out at  the Los Angeles County Art Museum. At the end of our trip we went to San Diego and attended the 98th birthday party of our friend Janet Richards. Her three children were there, so it was nice to catch up with old friends. We especially liked visiting the new Central Library in downtown San Diego, a marvelous building, 8 stories high, with state-of-the-art features.

We came home via Baltimore (our original flight to Newark had been cancelled) and were greeted with lots more snow, then ice, then a power failure (mercifully only one full day). But the year has begun with some lovely surprises. A publication of my poem "Caryatids"online in Cider Press Review, two poems in California Quarterly, and then in the mail arrived the new issue of Off the Coast with three of my poems (two of them can be read using the link). A nice surprise was the title of the issue, “Ice Fishing,” which when I turned to the back cover I realized came from a line in one of my poems--and there was the quoted line and my name right there on the back!

The Blog is Dripping Slow

I'm back at my post. May, June, July, August have slid by. Let's recap. I remember meeting up with Karen, Fede and the girls in Philly over the Memorial Day weekend. Then in June we went up to Boston for the Early Music Festival. And on the Fourth of July weekend we went to New York for a visit to the Morris-Jumel mansion in uptown (way uptown!). While we were on a roll that day, we also stopped in at the Cloisters, my first visit there. A very hot, humid day, but we persevered.

At the end of July there was Saratoga Springs, and then the Chester Poetry Conference with my 9 returning fellow poets--our third year there now, we are really plugged into each other.

We arrived in Gilmanton in early August, spent a few lovely evenings at a new place called The Landing, on Chris and Heather's property near our house, where they had cleared away vegetation at this fabulous view spot. On August 10 we all saw a lovely sunset. The next morning, Sunday, August 11, Heather had a massive heart attack and died. Our dear friend Heather. Only 63. Very hard to believe. The summer proceeded on, there was an anniversary party for Linda and Pat planned for that very evening--we all came to cheer them up but everyone was thinking of Heather. The weather was lovely for the service we held for her at Loon Pond the next weekend--even the loons showed up. We had a very nice visit with Bruce and Janet at Kittery Point on our way home.

We're back in Lawrenceville for the autumn coming up, temperature a little cooler, nice clear air. I am taking aquatic exercises at the gym, hope to get in some canal walks and bicycling. I'm also doing layout for U.S.1 Worksheets, yet another job!

What Have I Been Thinking?

Long Beach harbor from our hotel room, December 31, 2012

My readers, all of them, must have thought the hurricane did us in. Why else haven't I written anything for this blog since November? Guess I've been busy. Christmas we spent here in L'ville, but in late December we flew to California. We had tickets to the Rose Bowl game. Featuring Wisconsin and Stanford--of course we were rooting for the Cards. They came through, our first thrill. Got to spend some time with my sister, walking the beaches of Laguna. South Pasadena, and then up to the Bay Area. Saw Holly and Mary in Palo Alto. I remember a charming Muni tram ride down to Dogpatch to eat breakfast at Just For You. We had a great breakfast in the Mission with Riley and Michelle, also got to see his apt.

Back home in February I started auditing two classes at Princeton. One was for all auditors, a class discussing various notable memoirs, from Nabokov to Mary McCarthy and Joan Didion. The other featured lectures on connections of Italian modern literature with gastronomy, from Svevo to Moravia. I got a little more out of the first class, since we could participate, whereas for the second one I was really just listening for nuggets here and there.

In March Bill and I took Amtrak to Boston. We had a great dinner with Vicki and Steve at the Atlantic Fish Company. Attended a lot of great readings and lectures at AWP (the reason we were there...). Dinner with Renato Rosaldo was another lovely evening. Quite a bit of snow. Right after I got home I gave a reading at the Princeton Public Library sponsored by the Delaware Valley Poets and U.S. 1 Poets Collective. My co-reader was Vasiliki Katsauru. I had been looking forward to this reading for several months, it was sort of my "Princeton debut." It seemed to go really well--I sold lots of books!

Easter weekend we spent with Karen and Fede and the girls. First Bill and I stayed in Lancaster, a

really interesting city with a small museum dedicated to the painter Charles Demuth and a fabulous farmers' market in a huge brick building. We met up with family in Hershey, then again in Gettysburg. The last day we took the CD-audio tour, starting and stopping at various points around the battlefield like Little Round Top and Devil's Den. Definitely a place we'd like to go back to.

April has been swimming by. We joined a gym (called Can Do) and there's a great pool there. Have also explored Pilates. Neither of us would call ourselves "in shape" yet. Tomorrow we're heading up to Guilford to attend the premiere of "Letter from Italy," an oratorio by Nan's sister, libretto by Nan. I just know it's going to be terrific, and it will be great to see folks.

So...what have I been thinking? Poems most recently about my family, they are starting to surface. I'd like to write more dramatic monologues about historical figures, maybe more about my ancestors, too. Lots of material, have to get organized so it can spill out.

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.