So Here It Is

“When you moved to the Hudson Valley, did you know how long you’d be staying?” a friend recently asked me.

“I don’t think we really knew anything,” I answered.

I meant it. We didn’t. We knew we wanted to live in this beautiful place. But we didn’t know for how long. We didn’t really have a plan except to enjoy every day, savor the people, the scenery, the food and never forget to be thankful for our luck.

We certainly have done all the above. Our life in this unique place for the last three years has been like a dream, surpassing everything we thought it’d be.

Do you feel a ‘but’ coming?

It’s not a but. It’s a change.

We’re headed back to the Midwest, at the end of May. There are several reasons. None of them are because we don’t like it here. We adore it here. Family and work are calling us back. These are two very important things, right?

We’re headed to Minneapolis.

That’s in Minnesota, New Yorkers. It’s an M state, so you can’t confuse it with Ohio. Well, if you’re Martha Frankel it turns out you can confuse it with Milwaukee.

We’ve both lived there before. It was my home for 20 years. I love the city and I have very dear friends there; people I taught with for many years. I’m thrilled to be going back to be near them. In many ways the friends you made during your 20s, 30s and 40s are the ones who know you best. It’s life affirming to have friends like that. I’m lucky.

Here’s our new place, somewhere in this building. On the 11th floor. Good, right? It’ll be a new adventure, a deluxe apartment in the sky.

Here’s the view. Out that window on the left is the new Twins stadium. I mean, come on. And across the street is a beautiful park. And the Walker Art Museum. And and and.

So it’s all good. I’m just tremendously sad to be leaving this place.

The Hudson Valley and Catskills - what a magical setting. So much beauty and history all wrapped up in one funky package, just teeming with wonderful people.

In no particular order, these are SOME of the things I’m going to miss.

Our friends. Our wonderful, generous, delightful and forever friends.

The light.

The side roads and the back roads. Getting lost and discovering stunning vistas and villages.

Cuddy coming home saying things like, “Oh I ran into Pete Seeger at Rhinebeck Health Foods. He had a little shopping cart and he was looking at tomatoes.”

The craggy elegance of High Falls and its Mercantile. The Mercantile and its adorable people.

Autumn. Mocking the “leaf peepers” while not-so-secretly being one.

Winter. It snows a little then melts. Everyone whines. We know better.

Spring. Everything about spring in the Hudson Valley is a miracle.

Summer. Knowing people who swim in secret “swimming holes.”

Upstate Films.

Bard, right down the road.

The summer theatre at Vassar. Dinner from Gigi on the lawn before.

The have and have-notty discord that is Hudson.

The Norman Rockwell Museum in Stockbridge, Mass.

Calling Massachusetts "Mass." As in taking the Mass Pike over to P-town Mass.

Going to the red brick Rhinecliff fire hall decked out in its election day buntings, being greeted by a white-haired man in LL Bean clothes, peacefully signing in and casting my vote for both NY governor and president of the United States.

Saying, "Let's go to that coffee place in Red Hook," then ending up in a different place after that every single time.

Driving north to the Adirondacks, marveling at more of New York’s astounding landscape.

Keene, New York. And the heaven on earth that is Dartbrook Lodge and Dartbrook Rustic Goods. Created and owned by two of the sweetest, most talented and generous guys you'll ever meet.

Vermont. Boston. Great Barrington. Connecticut. New Hampshire. Maine. New Jersey. (but not Rhode Island)

The fall sun and pumpkins, bees and farmers markets.

Big bad sturdy gritty oh-so-serious Albany. I may be the only person in New York who loves the Empire Plaza and those twin mid-century buildings Rocky plunked there. I'm obsessed with taking photos of that space. And that Egg. What about that?

Oriole9. The coffee, the handsome honey badger chef with whom I wrote a book. The dolls who work there. The Before I Die Wall I helped paint with the beautiful woman who owns it.

The beautiful sister of the beautiful woman who owns Oriole9.

The beautiful children of the beautiful sisters.

Woodstock itself. Accept no substitutes.

Jumping on the train in Rhinecliff – where else on earth is like Rhinecliff? – and meandering down the Hudson, only to get tossed out at the intersection of Mayhem and Chaos, aka Penn Station.

Scrambling to the closest high spot in Manhattan to catch the sunset, then lingering until lights twinkle below.

DIG in Saugerties. Where my life changed when I met Daisy Kramer Bolle.

The Peekamoose. Oh, the Peekamoose. Oh, oh, oh…the Peekamoose. My loves who own it.

Crossing the Rhinecliff Bridge and never not being amazed that I'm crossing the goddamn Hudson River.

Channel 13. New York public television is where it all started.

WAMC. I love hearing them give the weather for the entire northeastern United States.

Those people who own Fabulous Furniture. I love em.

Every single thing about Rhinebeck. But especially Oblong Books and the Paper Trail. And the summer nights we walked into town to sit on a bench, eat ice cream and marvel at our lives.

Sitting in my beloved writing teacher Abby Thomas' living room knowing I'm free to say or write whatever I want; a miracle I've not once taken for granted.

The Vanderbilt Mansion and the weirdness and wonder of Hyde Park.

The music.

The food.

The art.

So, there it is. That’s the news. I like to think of our time here as a visit to a really great arts camp, and now it’s over. Or the best internship in the world, and now it's back to the real world.

But we’ll return often.

And until June, we’ll be here.

After that, our hearts are here forever.

                                                                                             Cooper Lake, Woodstock, October 5, 2012.

Calling All Girls

Yesterday Martha Frankel and I were in the midst of one of our texting flurries. I made a joke, and her usual cryptic response led me to think she didn’t get it. I spelled out the joke again. She let me know she’d gotten it the first time.

“Was my face red!” I texted back; smiling at my reference.

 What followed was one of our typical arguments.

 I’m in blue.

Just ignore the fact that she keeps calling Highlights “Highlighter.” That’s for another day.

So I googled it.  As usual, we were both wrong.

It was from Calling All Girls, which I’ve blogged about before.

Courtesy of Jane Marie at The Hairpin, here it is. This will take some of you way back. OMG.

As I read these, it dawned on me. This is the original Facebook, people!

We’d wait each month to read these. Often it was the first page I’d turn to when I got my hands on the new issue. I drafted so many versions of my own stories to send, but I never did.

And now…some of us post our embarrassing stories daily on Facebook.

Daily is a lot better than waiting a whole month for them, and then not even being able to interact with the people who wrote them. I always sort of had my doubts about whether girls like Patty Crain, Ambridge, Pa or Babs Layman, Hagerstown, Md were legit. Why weren't any of these red-faced girls ever from Iowa or Nebraska? Always from the northeast. I pictured some sniffly guy named Murray sitting at a desk in a tiny windowless office typing these things while nipping from a bottle of Scotch.

Maybe that’s one of the reasons I like Facebook. I love reading funny things people are up to. I like to share my own funny stories.

Sure, Facebook is a lot more than that. But most of that stuff is hidden or ignored in my news feed.

I gotta go. I have to stalk Nancy Reidman, Waterville, Me on Facebook and see if she’s still doing shots from fingerbowls. 

Keep Thinking

                                                                         photo taken at GREER Chicago

I have learned the only sacred bond that truly exists is the one you have with yourself to stand up in the face of hatred, bigotry, homophobia and any other kind of behavior that denigrates another human being.

It may take many years to understand what this truly means.

It may have been plain as day all along; it may have been written on the windowpane you’ve been looking through your whole life, but you saw past it for some reason.

Maybe you thought you were honoring a memory or a tie you really never were part of in the first place; one that sort of fell into your lap.

And then one day the cup overflows and you find yourself tired of trying to balance the cup and not spill it.

You dump out the whole mess, walk away and go on living your life.

You’re surprised once again at how little effort it takes to do the right thing. 

Manti Teo's Netflix Queue

Because

                                                     (no clue as to origin of this photo other than it's all over the internet)

So a bunch of people are lying to us and to each other about a sports star at a prestigious university who's doing its best to cover it up and make him the victim. And people are shocked? Cmon.

Sorry Manti, but you gotta expect the jokes.

As long as we're making believe, here's Manti's Netflix queue, as I imagine it.

1. Lars and the Real Girl
2. Harvey
3. Heaven Can Wait
4. Drop Dead, Fred
5. Donnie Darko
6. Being There
7. Imaginary Friend
8. Sweet Smell of Success
9. Rudy
10. Love Story

What'd I forget?

Hey, Your Mom's Calling

Sunday afternoon I was having a hilarious phone conversation with a good friend. One of the ties that binds us is the -- shall we say, large -- role alcohol played in our households as children.

We were exchanging the inevitable tales of holiday hijinks. He told me about the Christmas his grandfather smashed a chair over his uncle's head. And in turn, his uncle broke a raw egg on his grandfather's forehead. You know, the usual reindeer games.

I told him about the year my mom finished decorating the Christmas tree, helped along by her regulation bourbon and water. After all the lights, ornaments and tinsel were done, she remembered she'd wanted to spray fake snow on the tree. So, she did. Thus giving us a collection of ornaments and lights covered with slightly un-festive white chunks for the next several years.

Now, only one ornament from this collection remains. I told my friend how I always save this one for last when I decorate the tree. It makes me smile to look at it. It's one of those big red vintage glass kind, with "Merry Christmas" in cursive, a few flecks of mom's snow still on it.

We were laughing and inventing my mom's slurred dialogue as she decorated the tree when I heard the sound of glass breaking in the living room. I ran in, expecting to see my husband up to something clumsy. He was sitting innocently in his chair.

The very ornament we'd been discussing, that red one, had fallen off the tree and crashed to the floor and shattered. THAT VERY ORNAMENT.

I unleashed a bunch of truck driver vocab on my friend, too shocked to even explain what had just happened. When I did finally tell him, he said, "I gotta go, Miss Sheehan. I can't talk to you any more right now."

When I told this story to other friends who knew her, we all agreed: this was Betty, 100%. Especially in the way I first blamed it on my husband. She'd have liked that.

Merry Christmas, Mom. And I am trying to be good. It's just so hard sometimes.

A Permanent Man Card is Something You're Born With

If you need this to have it re-issued, you never had it in the first place.

ad courtesy Mother Jones magazine

This, on the other hand -- this is a man.

photo courtesy of the parents of Emilie Parker, via @WestWingReport, December 16, 2012

John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, Boston, MA

Last weekend I visited my first presidential library. I know! 
Never mind that there's one right down the street, in Hyde Park; I'm going there next.
But for now, let's look at this one.

The JFK library was finished in 1977. I was curious about how this works. It turns out President Kennedy actually began selecting a site for the library himself, in 1963. The original site was near Harvard, but then Harvard, and more specifically, Cambridge, decided they didn't want all those tourists streaming in.
After the president was assassinated, a new site had to be found.
The museum was built on Columbia Point, overlooking the sea, which Kennedy loved, and the Boston harbor.
After much deliberation, Mrs. Kennedy selected I.M. Pei as the architect. One of the reasons she chose him was because he was the same age as her late husband, and she thought it would be fun to work on the project with someone with his kind of energy. He considered this project the most important of his career.
The building itself is breathtaking. When you walk in the front door, the entire atrium is open to the ceiling - the glass you see on the outside is all the open area inside. More on that later.

It's quite an easy place to navigate. You watch a film, then move through the exhibits. One of the first things on display is the Underwood typewriter John Kennedy used at Harvard.

Campaign office, 1960 presidential election. Kennedy, at age 43, defeated Richard Nixon to become the 34th president. (for all you kids out there)

Frank Sinatra sang a special version of "High Hopes" as Kennedy's campaign song. Since this was pre-iTunes...people had to buy the record and play it at home. My parents did, over and over.

Close-up, campaign headquarters desk.

Outdoor memorabilia. As I was taking this photo, this man's wife said, "Get off that bench! You aren't really supposed to sit on it!" As you can see, he wasn't too concerned. I was glad.

The object below, and its story, was one of my favorite things in the museum.

At this point, things start to get very glamorous and beautiful real fast.

Here's another favorite piece, below. The First Lady's words that accompany it make the Kennedys seem like any other couple, in some ways. Her words did that often throughout the museum. She seemed focused on making sure the library told their story with as much personal detail as possible.

Always the editor, Mrs. Kennedy.

These doors were delightful. Their vivid, lively colors must have been a unique addition to the White House.

I longed to put a period at the end of that piece above. Can you believe it's missing? I cannot.

Some of the drawings and poems Jacqueline Kennedy created throughout her life - spectacular!

At one point, a very loud guy standing next to me exclaimed to his friend, "I never knew this was a MUSEUM. I thought it was just a library. I'd have come a lot sooner." Never mind that it says so on the front of the building. It was actually great to see so many people there.

But he's right, it is a library too, and it's important to note some of the other things in the museum include an oral history project containing thousands of hours of interviews from people who were involved in the life of this president.

On the upper floor are the books, papers, photos and archives used by scholars and writers.

Outside, during the warmer months, the president's beloved 26-foot sailboat Victura is next to the dock on the grounds.

Back in the atrium, the Profiles in Courage award. First presented in 1990, it's a private award given in recognition of displays of courage similar to those JFK described in his book, Profiles in Courage.

The final quote as you exit the atrium, below.

Well, there's a glimpse. I hope you'll get there someday, or to one of the other presidential libraries.
There are thirteen in all. 
Each one tells our stories too, in its own way.

There was much more to see at the JFK Library - and if you're interested, here are more of my photos.