October in New Jersey--yes, I am way behind!

It's not a trip to Jersey without a jaunt down the shore, no matter what time of year.  Rich and I took a quick trip one day just for fun.  I believe we may have lost a little bit of money in one of the casinos after wandering the boardwalk and having a cheese steak.

 It's a little deserted in October!

 And a little chilly!

 We had lunch at my cousin Ruth Ann's one day.  Here's Rick and daughter Katie

 Mom and Ruth Ann

 "Enough with the photos!"

 Ruth Ann and Rick's oldest son Richard with his daughter Natalieanne.

Drove past my Grandmom and Grandpop's house, which always makes me sad.  Every time I see it, it is in worse and worse shape.  They were always so proud of it and kept it pretty with flower boxes and hanging flowers on the porch, along with a couple of green rocking chairs that we loved.  The yard was always fixed up and the house clean and painted.  We have a lot of history in that house.  Now the people who live there don't even know who my grandparents were.  Time marches on, I suppose.

 Mom's cute house decked out for fall.  Love the colors!

 On our last day we walked down to the deli in town and had some lunch with Patty and the kids before heading to the airport in Philly.

Becca and Billy

Billy's getting a little cold and hanging out in Alex's sweatshirt.  :)

Another nice visit comes to a close.  I always love going back to my Jersey roots.  :)

Living Life v. Blogging about it

As you can see, I have not documented anything in a long time.  I used to be pretty anal about wanting to get something up on the blog as soon as it happened.  Not that I have a ton of anxious readers awaiting my next post (thanks, Suzasippi, my one constant reader--I think even my family members have quit checking in!) but it's been a great way to remember our experiences over time.  I've been using Blog2Print to create blog books since the beginning and have a nice little collection of the past several years' stories and photos that we can glance through and reminisce about. So, I guess what I am saying is that it has become more for us than for anyone else, though I am always happy to have you come along.  :)  At one time, I thought I would be writing profound thoughts and ideas and tackling the problems of the day but I think I've ended up taking the easy road just highlighting what's happening in our lives.

So, although I am sitting in a hotel room in Jamaica during a rainstorm, I am going to finish up the New Jersey trip first and then try to catch things up.  What's been happening?  Lots of life and little of blogging!

After New York City and the Hudson Valley, we returned to my mom's house for a few more days.  As I've said before, New Jersey is the place that most feels like home to me, though I have only lived there for a few years on a couple of different occasions.  Perhaps because both my parents were from there and we had a large extended family, I feel some sense of rootedness even though I was a nomadic Air Force kid.

Only one of my siblings still lives in Jersey, my youngest brother Bill and his family.  Although we have vastly differing political and religious beliefs, he's always been my buddy and I think we both try to put aside our differences and just enjoy each other's company when we are together.  (We reserve our biggest arguments for Facebook. haha)  His wife Patty is always a big help to my mom and to one of our elderly aunts, and has a heart of gold when it comes to taking care of people.  Their kids are a blast, smart, fun, and funny.  So when we all got together to have some dinner and play a mean game of "Mexican Train," all kinds of hilarity ensued.  I have to admit, I thought "Mexican Train" sounded racist and was calling it "Train," but my mom sent Rich and me our own set and the official title emblazoned on the box reads "Mexican Train." So then I had to descend into the rabbit hole of research about the silly game and could not find a satisfactory answer about why it is called "Mexican Train."  Indeed, it is also just called "Train."  It apparently is derived from a Chinese game called Pai Gaw and has nothing to do with Mexico. Go figure.  I'd never played before but it was hilarious fun.

 Patty, Abby, Alex, Becca

 Abby, Alex, Becca

 Alex, Becca and my mom

 Rich, who seems to win every game we play, no matter what it is.

Something's funny!

 Boom!

 Billy

Bill and his kiddos

The females of the clan

Hudson, New York

My poor little blog has been neglected for quite awhile.  We got back home weeks ago and have been busy, busy, busy ever since.  Rich had these nice photos of Hudson but hadn't had time to edit them so I decided to wait, though I suppose I could have gone ahead and posted other stuff.  I couldn't quite work up the motivation, though, so we will just continue in chronological order.  :)

After a few hours of sightseeing, we took Mom back to the B&B for a rest while Rich and I wandered around Hudson.  We love quaint little towns with lots of interesting architecture, local shops, restaurants, beautiful old churches, funny signs, and the friendly feel of a walkable downtown.  We always say we'd love to end up living in a place like this.

 Love her name--do you think she was meant to be a lawyer?

 Yes, as a matter of fact, I actually AM "White Rice."

 Mexican Radio, where we ate one night

Thanks for a lovely stay, Hudson!

Olana State Historic Site

We headed back toward Hudson and found the correct turnoff for Olana, the home of the famous landscape artist Frederic Church.  Church was one of the more well known artists of the Hudson Valley School, a group of painters who were friends with one another and worked in the same style between the 1830's and 1870's.

According to the website www.olana.org, "Paintings of the Hudson River School are characterized by fidelity to nature; clarity of detail; skies sometimes glowing at sunrise or sunset, sometimes shining a sunny, clear blue; nearly invisible brushstrokes; an overall feeling of tranquility; and a presentation of the American landscape as a new Eden in a benevolent universe, blessed by God and providing an uplifting moral influence."

Frederic and Isabel Church were well traveled and envisioned a home that had elements of design they'd seen in Beirut, Jerusalem and Damascus.  The Persian style home encompasses many of the ideas they loved from their trips to the Middle East.

 It is said that Church searched for three years to find the perfect property upon which to build his home.  The website goes on, "Like his painted landscapes,  the physical landscape at Olana is composed of foreground (the house environs), middle ground (the rolling fields and forest), and background (the Hudson River and Catskill Mountains). As in his paintings, the foreground at Olana was a much more detailed landscape, where canopy, understory, and ground plane were created with richly layered plantings of choice native species. Spatially, these plantings – along with natural landforms, the very windows on his house, and the careful layout of miles of carriage drives – were used by Church to reveal exactingly framed vistas of his own property and the wider Hudson River Valley."

 These truly were the most spectacular views we experienced on our trip!  Look at those colors!

 Interesting bench and fence on the property

 Acorn

 Imagine living here and looking out on these sights every day. 

Church died in 1900.  The home remained in the family till 1966, when the Olana Preservation organization and the State of NY combined forces to fight a great-nephew who'd inherited the property with plans to sell all of the original furnishings through Sotheby's.  Apparently, down to the wire, the organization finally raised enough money to purchase the home and everything in it. Thankfully.

You can read much more  about Church and Olana at www.olana.org. There's even a virtual tour of some of the rooms in the house. 

Autumn in the Hudson Valley

 Mom and me relaxing in the living room before breakfast at the B&B

We were too busy enjoying our breakfast to get any food photos, apparently!  It was great!

We asked where we might get some nice fall foliage pics and our host Duncan suggested we visit Olana, not too far from Hudson.  Of course, we managed to miss our turn and kept on driving.  We noticed a sign for the Clermont State Historic Site and decided to take a little detour. 

According to the Friends of Clermont website, "Clermont was built between 1740 and 1750, by Robert Livingston, Jr., on land acquired in 1686 by his father, just a dozen years after New Netherland finally became British New York.  A royal patent secured by Robert Livingston, Sr. granted him the privileges of a manor lord and 160,000 acres, stretching all the way from the Hudson River’s east bank to the border of present day Massachusetts."

"In October 1777, the Revolutionary War arrived on Clermont’s doorstep via a British armada sailing upriver from New York City to provide support for General John Burgoyne’s army, whose march from Canada was foundering north of Albany. That same force had already stormed two forts in the Hudson Highlands and burned Kingston, the first capital of the new New York State. The next target was the riverfront seat of the rebel Livingstons.  Learning of the imminent danger, Margaret Beekman Livingston — the wealthy (in her own right) wife of Clermont’s owner — took action, after refusing the offer of protection from a wounded British soldier recuperating at Clermont. (She steadily declined aid from an enemy of her country.)"

The site continues, "The British courteously gave her time to vacate, which she did, with most of her prized possessions, before burning the house to the foundations. But she returned, and, calling in favors from the governor who she helped to elect, succeeded in rebuilding her grand house — in the middle of the Revolutionary War."

 "Margaret’s son, Robert, is perhaps the most famous Livingston. He administered the oath of office to President George Washington, co-invented the steamboat with Robert Fulton, established the rights of a monopoly that lasted for decades and continued the line of Livingstons which lasted until Honoria (Livingston) McVitty gave the last of the Clermont lands to the state at her death in 2000."

On the road back to Olana, we pulled up behind this bus.  The Bread and Puppet Circus!  My people!  I wanted to know where they were going and what they were doing!  From their website: "The Bread and Puppet Theater was founded in 1963 by Peter Schumann on New York City’s Lower East Side. Besides rod-puppet and hand puppet shows for children, the concerns of the first productions were rents, rats, police, and other problems of the neighborhood. More complex theater pieces followed, in which sculpture, music, dance and language were equal partners. The puppets grew bigger and bigger. Annual presentations for Christmas, Easter, Thanksgiving and Memorial Day often included children and adults from the community as participants. Many performances were done in the street. During the Vietnam War, Bread and puppet staged block-long processions and pageants involving hundreds of people."

 Lovely stone church along the road