Now, the end of summer!

Classes at SUNY New Paltz begin tomorrow; so ends the summer. The same sensation each year at this time: OMG, it's here and I'm not ready.

Our kitchen is done! The formerly honey-toned cupboards are now a creamy vanilla, with new pulls and hinges. I'm telling you - it looks good. We processed 19 pints of salsa yesterday in it, and it works as well. The stove fan is a revelation - clean, for one thing. Light is brighter; fan is quieter. Pictures to come.

Because memory fades, here is a list of what we did:

1. Moved all the furniture from the downstairs room into the garage.
2. Picked up the Pergo-like flooring, then flipped, gouged, pounded on the asphalt tile underneath.
3. Took out the old, paltry, puny closet, complete with the pathetic folding door. Jeez, what an excuse for a door.
4. Filled in cracks in the cement floor, then spread a product called Dry-Locks (or Dry Lox), which provides another barrier to water (hopefully).
5. Talked about and then bought the tile at the local big box store. I'm sorry about that, but this year price was a bigger consideration.
6. Laid the tile. What an innocent little phrase for such a big job. Ken did 75% of the work, but I did the other quarter and let me tell you, tile layers deserve the money they get.
7. Grouted the tile and did the other stuff you have to do to make the floor look good. That includes more hands and knees work to scrub the grout residue off. More fun.
8. Made a closet. Yes, fellow DYIers, that involves drywall and all the pleasant tasks that accompany.
9. Made a stairway. Ken took out the existing, ratty-looking stairs and replaced them with a slightly more gentler slope. He had never created a stairway before and I'm here to tell you that it works. Involved staining and polyurethaning.
10. Painted walls and ceiling.
11. Hung art and a new hook set/coat rack, inspired by a similar set in Midge and Jay's house on Ashley in Ann Arbor. Put in new switch plates.
12. Worked on two doors - moved the door from the upstairs bathroom to the new closet and installed a new door in the upstairs bathroom. That means our work touched all three floors of our little house. That also means more stain and polyurethane.
13. Shampooed the rug, bought on rock bottom clearance from ABC Carpets several years ago in one of my most enjoyable shopping experiences in New York.
14. Switched to the kitchen.
15. Dissembled the kitchen - all stuff on every flat surface in the room. Rendered the kitchen basically inoperable for 3-4 days.
16. Palm-sanded all the cupboard doors. Applied a product called Styx. Sanded. Palm-sanded all the cupboards themselves, in and out. Applied Styx.
17. Painted.
18. Sanded a little.
19. Painted again.
20. Remounted doors. New hinges. Again, two words but such a big difference. These 1959 cupboards were held together by copper, mottled external hinges that may have been attractive to some people at one time, but no more. The new hinges match the pulls we bought last year in a brushed nickel.
21. Put stuff back in cupboards.
22. Admired.

Last year, we had a 'staycation' and painted the upstairs rooms and the metal doors. This year, our projects were much more complex and demanding and instead of taking the front half of 4 pleasant days to complete, it took us many hours over a month. But now, both projects are 99.9% complete and we move on.

More salsa today and peaches to freeze.

Finally, Summer!

Summer has finally arrived in New Paltz. Since Friday, it has been sunny and warm and there is no rain in the forecast until Wednesday. The weather has been improving steadily for weeks now, and the rain and gloom is temporarily in our rear view mirror. Our garden may not recover, and tomatoes may be in short supply throughout the area, however. What we do have: jalapeno peppers, eggplant, cukes, onions, and now, red peppers. We have some tomatoes, but are concerned about blight. We'll see. Ken has hot packed 8 pints of pickles.

We had our work/play week off in honor of our 29th wedding anniversary. We worked HARD on Saturday, Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday; played on Sunday and left for New York City mid-morning on Thursday. The renovation and total transformation of our downstairs room is 99% complete. It is amazing. It has gone from dark and musty, to light and airy. The closet Ken built is the biggest in the house and gives us some wiggle storage room. No more crammed winter clothes. We are now 1/3-1/2 way into the kitchen cabinet painting project. We are going from 1950's era honey stain to a vanilla paint, plus a new stove exhaust fan. Next year, we plan to put in a new stove top, countertops and a sink. That will be our kitchen renovation on the 'cheap'.

For right now, the kitchen is laid out on the table and counters and in the living room, so it's off to the Bistro for breakfast and a full day of sanding and painting. We'll send pictures! More to come!

A soggy June

We are between trips to Michigan, celebrating graduations and cruising down memory lane in a wet, cool climate. Jess, Erica's oldest daughter, graduated from Hartland High School last weekend and Nicole, Karen's oldest daughter, will graduate from the University of Phoenix in a ceremony at Detroit's Ford Field next Saturday.

We drove last weekend, as I was at the AIRPO meeting in Buffalo. I took the train with my colleagues Lisa and Laurel and Ken, after flying in from Pittsburgh on an inevitably late plane, got up early and steered our green girl VW Bug west. We left Buffalo about 1:00, crossed over the Peace Bridge and took the QEW, 403, 402 and 401 to the Ambassador Bridge over the Detroit River. We stopped at the retirement party of Linda C, who, after 40 years of teaching at the Redford Union High School that both Linda and Ken attended, is retiring amid her family, friends, former students and loved one. It was Ken's past, spread throughout a room at the Idle Wild Golf Course in Livonia where he and I attended a party in 1979. We saw Bobby, Linda's older brother; Nancy, weak from radium treatments; Shawnie, her oldest daughter, and Jay and Jackie, her younger children. We say Mikey, Linda's pip of a son, who is now 31 and a fellow teacher at RUHS. We saw Pat V, who was a brief dream for Ken. Saturday held more memories, as we spent more time in the Detroit suburbs than we have in years. We toured two college campuses that nurtured us both: Schoolcraft College, where Ken attended in 1967 and 1968, its 2nd and 3rd years of being; and Washtenaw Community College, where I worked from 1984 to 1999 and where we both served, attended classes, taught classes, danced, sang and provided ice cream. After breakfast with Kathy at Beezey's in Ypsilanti, she, still a daughter of WCC, took us on an insider tour. What an amazing place! The citizens of SE Michigan should be proud of this gem.

We then had a small celebration of Jess' graduation, with lunch in Novi for Erica, Jess, Chelsea, Jennifer, Karen, Mike and Jody. It was lovely.

We moved to Midge and Jay. We stayed at their house on Ashley in Ann Arbor, had dinner and hatched a trip to the British Virgin Islands for Thanksgiving. The SaJay is moored there and we'll have clear water, warm skies and fish in late November. Seeing as we have had no summer yet, the thought is enticing.

We met Tony, Erica's friend, at breakfast on Sunday, then went to an ice rink in Northville (not sure exactly what suburb it was in). Graduation is a major positive ceremony in a life, so here assembled a father, a step father, a mother, a grandfather, a step grandfather, a grandmother, two step grandmothers, a stepfather, two half sisters, and a panoply of relationships that needs a chalk board and a diagram.

Then Ken and I got in the car and drove east. First north to the Blue Water Bridge, then straight east across the NY Throughway. We left the lot of that ice rink at 3:30 p.m. and pulled into our driveway at 2:30 a.m. For some people, 2:30 is an alert time - for us, it's about as dead of night as it gets.

So we have a weekend at home. On Friday, we get on a plane for Detroit Metro and build more memories.

Ken has been very busy in the past few months. We are happy, because with the economy, the viability of a small, family owned business could be worrisome. Yet he has been on planes that have been more late than on time and lousy weather and long days and the use of planes, trains and automobiles that sounds unbelievable when recounted. Ken is an excellent, patient traveler who knows how to work transportation systems. He is amazing.

This Saturday at home means a 5K for me, the Rhinebeck Arts and Crafts Fair, a Roosevelt lecture at the Roosevelt Library. For Ken, it means gardening between the expected rain and a look at what is under the floating floor in the ground floor in prep for a ceramic tile installation. Father's Day is tomorrow and I hope I can honor Ken enough. He is the most wonderful father and he has the most wonderful father.

I hope, dear reader, that your day is sunny and dry.

Happy Mother's Day

To the mothers in my life and everywhere:  this is your day.  Have chocolate, eat eggs and potatoes, watch hockey and baseball, have a nap, do something you've really wanted to do all week.  

My mothers:  Adair, gone so long; Veda, mother of the fantastic Ken; Fran, Midge, Barbara, Kathy, Jean, Linda, Shelly, Mary Beth, Bern, Jackie, Jill, Judith, Cathy, Mary Ann, Lucy, Lisa, Julie, Erica, Jennifer, Karen, Millie, Marilyn, Nancy, Jane, Linda, Eileen, Maryann, Jane, Marda, Linda, Candace, Yvonne, Barbara, Denise, Jan.  

A word about Ken.  As you know, he is the best.  He's given us fresh evidence today.  A lovely MD card, complete with his 'faces'.  And a gift card to Studio One, my hair cutting place, just down the street in Cherry Hill Plaza, across from the True Value Hardware.  I have an appointment for a cut/color on Thursday and Ken did what we have long wanted men to do:  he listened to me and took action based on what he heard.  It is awesome.  He is awesome.  I'm actually not sure I deserve this, but I appreciate him totally today and, hopefully, every day.   

Today, we begin prep in earnest for our Dutch artists, who arrive May 25 and leave June 14.  We will be housing them in the Larson/Stadtfeld wing, with us in an outpost on the ground floor.  Ken will be gone during the week pretty consistently, and actually we will be gone on all but one of the weekends they are here.  They are making a movie that will be part of the 400th Hudson up the River anniversary celebration in the fall.  Having them here will be very interesting and I am looking forward to it.  But today, we think very concretely about having people in the house and how we can allow them a space.  

We played yesterday, going down to the USMA in West Point for a Patriot League baseball playoff.  Army beat their opponent Holy Cross soundly the first game, but lost on errors and pitching in the second.  The rubber game is today and it will go on without us.  As a lifelong peacenik, my affection for the USMA is a little surprising, but the campus moves me in ways I cannot articulate.  That we live so close and that it is so accessible is but one of the many pleasures of the Hudson Valley.   

A last word about B & H Dairy, on 2nd Avenue between 7th and 6th Street in Manhattan's East Village:  go for breakfast, go for lunch, go for dinner, go for a snack, go for soup, go for eggs and potatoes (a theme here?), just go.  We were in town for The Public's production of "The Singing Forest," ended up staying the night on Friday and ate dinner, then breakfast at the restaurant (a grand word for it).  We would have gone back for lunch on Saturday, but it seemed a little excessive.  Their Lima bean soup inspired Ken to make a pretty good facsimile (let's hear it for fresh dill), and we had toasted cheese sandwiches based on their model.  

Enjoy the day. 

In celebration of Brahms

Not long ago, Brahms was just another name in a list of distant, uninteresting composers whose music appealed to many, but not to me.  Ah, but things change, and the Brahms German Requiem is now among my all time favorites.  I mean all time, and I have spent a fair amount of time on this earth.  The concert April 26 has taken its place among the high points of my long-ish life along with the commencement at Hill Auditorium in 1983, our wedding in the Arboretum on 08/08/80 and the day I got a job offer from Steve Poskanzer in June, 2006.  

Ken, my good friend Kathleen from Michigan and my good friend Dr. Marsha from Delhi were in the full house (well, church) who enjoyed (I hope and think) the concert, which featured a large orchestra (maybe 8 violins, led by the talented Carole Cowan), and the combined Community College Chorale and the Concert Choir.  The GR has 7 movements, and is about the human condition.  It is based in the Bible, but has lessons for us all:  "Denn alles Fleisch, es ist wie Gras (For all flesh is like the grass)."  I started out loving movement 1, which we sang in the fall, but then moved to enormous enthusiasm about movement 6, the climax ("Tod, wo ist dein Stachel," "Death, where is your sting?"), then came to an appreciation of 2, with its sequentially soft and blasting statements about Fleisch.  Movement 5 also resonated, with its line "...wie einen seine Mutter trostet," "...as one whose mother comforts him."  

I think I knew this piece better than I have in the past, because enjoying performing is all about knowing whatever you are performing.  I focused on Ed Lundergan, our enormously talented conductor.  I listened to Kate, the most talented alto.  I opened my mouth and sang and smiled and loved each of the 90 or so minutes the whole concert took.  At one point, inverting the saying 'from God's mouth to my ear', the sentence appeared full blown in my mind:  I am the luckiest person on this (transitory) earth.  

I hope you all 'rabbit, rabbit-ed' this morning.  Happy May.  The end of the semester and the 2008-2009 academic year.  

There's a place for us...

We saw West Side Story yesterday, in a rainy, chilly, but crowded New York.  Among the huge throng of people whose lives were affected by the 1961 movie, and for whom in 1957, when the original was on Broadway we were in the outposts of Michigan and Wisconsin, we were very excited.  Thanks to Barbara's Christmas gift, we had pretty good seats - a 2nd balcony center - a good vantage point to witness the best part of the production (and of the movie for that matter) - the dancing.  The dancing was glorious, riveting, moving.  To watch the Jerome Robbins' choreography brought to life was wonderful.  However, I found the overall production to be only intermittently wonderful.  The dancing was great.  The music, with a big orchestra, was immediate and fresh.  But the set was only a C+.  We have been spoiled rotten with unbelievably great sets.  The great weakness of the movie was Tony and Maria - Richard Beymer and Natalie Wood.  In spite of the reviews to the contrary, I did not see that this production corrected that flaw.  The two young people who played Tony and Maria were somewhat more vivid than the vanilla players of the movie, but not much.  There was medium chemistry between them.  They made the problems with the book more obvious.  And the actors who played Riff and Bernardo:  where are you Russ Tamblyn and George Chakiris?  So I'd say the production was a B-.  Ken would give it a B.  This is compared to South Pacific, which for me was a big fat A+!  

I'd like to welcome my sister Fran to the online world.  She got hooked to the Internet this past week.  I know once she gets familiar with it, she will love it.  I'm waiting to give her a tour of my favorite websites.  

Ken managed to drop himself flat on his back in the creek that lies between our house and the campus this week.  He was walking to see the exhibit at the Dorsky Museum and thought the path through the woods was too boring. Ever the Sacajawea, entered the woods at the wide part.  It was wet, but he's creative.  Then he came to the creek, which is much wider at that point than at the path.  He found a branch that he thought he'd use to pole vault over it.  Of course, it broke, and down he went, feet and arms akimbo.  He was wet through and through, although he saved his phone and was close enough to home to get dry clothes.  He then came back to campus too late to see the exhibit, which closed that day.  He came up to my office laughing about his adventure, but I was ever the scold and only envisioned what could have happened and thankfully did not.  As he says, I was never a boy. 

April is a busy month at a college and this April is no exception.  There is the bad kind of busy - the endless conversation and documentation about our financial crisis and the decisions we have made to weather it.  And then there is the good kind of busy - the wrapping up of the semester by students with performances.  I am lucky enough to be involved in two kinds of student performances.  I am one of two dramaturgs with the Theater Department's production of Blood Wedding, the Frederico Garcia Lorca play about a very bad wedding day.  I actually made my TV debut on the local On Campus show, talking with the talented director Anita Gonzalez.  I am also organizing and will moderate a panel of faculty and a student about the play before the production on April 19.  I am among the altos in the Community College Chorale's performance of the Brahms' German Requiem on April 26 at St. Joseph's Church in New Paltz.  This is BIG, MAJOR choral music and I am loving singing it.  To say that I am lucky to have these opportunities is about the biggest understatement of all times.  If you are a New York reader, get thee to one of these occasions.  Kathy is coming in from Michigan for the German Requiem.  

To cycle back to New York City, I must say a word about B & H Dairy.  It is a restaurant in the East Village that we found through our research into vegetarian places.  It is vegetarian/vegan, with the addition of a few fish items.  It was Jewish, I'm sure, but now its staffers, at least, are the New York polyglot of Latino and eastern European, all lively and visibly hard working.  It is a long skinny place with a counter and one four top table and maybe five tables for two.  The distance between the counter and the grill/working spaces may be enough for a man to stand sidewise, but probably not.  I cannot move along the back of the customers at the counter without banging into them.  It is cheap and very tasty, with 5 vegetarian soups, the most fabulous potatoes.  We've eaten mostly breakfast there and lunch yesterday:  two bowls of soup, a serving of mac and cheese and the biggest egg salad sandwich you have ever seen and a glass of freshly brewed iced tea.  The bill:  $15.  No joke.  I want to come back again and again to eat everything on the menu, which includes veggies in cabbage leaves.  It's a place that my sisters Fran and Midge would love.  

So Happy Easter to all of you.  I hope the bunny is good to you.

New Paltz in the News

Dear reader - go to the SUNY New Paltz url - www.newpaltz.edu - for a link to the New York Times front page story about public colleges.  Pictures and everything!  

It's 8 degrees out there this morning.  Brrrr!