Author: stumberry

Good Sunday to all near and far:

It’s been relatively short week in Mt. Holly, our hometown. We no sooner got back from Chicago then we took off for the NYC family visit- returning on Thursday afternoon. So, this week’s Blog will be short synapsis’ of updates from the Greens. Have to keep it short, partly because not a lot happened here but also because THE POND scum is screaming for my attention AND we have our fist dinner parry of 2016 at our house tonight…which brings out our usual eclectic (maybe eccentric) blend of Vermont friends. The melting pot (not really, too hot here) includes: The Jewish pig farmer, the trailer massage lady, the on-the-  lamb Communist, the fish monger, the Mormon style organic farmers and the local mixed race gay couple…Hmmm, interesting group……

So, the Updates:

More Family…it was a big week on the family front (see the pix!) . We went down to NYC for our gathering of the Tribe of Paul cousins at my newly found cousin Howard and Gloria’s place in Nyack, NY. 52 years since the last sighting. This was momentous, and means I no longer have to be the Patriarch.  Howard took us all out to a fine dinner at local Italian iconic restaurant, along with his sister Sally and her husband, David and my other cousins Sherry and Joel. What a trip hearing fifty years’ worth of family history and stories. After a number of drinks, we came to the obvious conclusion that the Paul family were mostly a bit “disagreeable” sorts, who had had the good fortune to marry or mate with more “agreeable” sorts (think Jenn and I, and then duplicate). We ate, we drank, we laughed, we cried- what a night. While in the city we also visited my childhood friend, Bob, at the nursing home in the east Bronx, in an old stalwart Italian neighborhood, which was hard, as always, but good. We stayed with Sherry and Joel in their new high rise apartment in Riverdale (far north Bronx) and determined that more people lived in her apartment building than in our town of Mt. Holly. The Country Jew needed to get back to the country after two nights of this. Lucy found the elevator rides up and down and the revolving front building doors quite interesting as well as the aromas of minions of fire hydrants. I spent an hour and half one night trying to find  a parking spot…..different lifestyle.

 More Weather……..went from winter to heat wave, but lots of sunshine-almost hitting 90s in day- but still in 40s at night. Good to be back in the mountains where we have not yet heard of air conditioning.

More Pond……..We now run our  makeshift pump operating at least an hour a day, which looks really cool like a fountain , but has done little to defeat the scum insurgence. The scum was so thick that when I was out this week in my kayak and kitchen strainer, it dragged the strainer right off the handle and into the deep…where it joined my last three strainers in scum heaven

More Gardening…We are apparently in high garden gear- up in preparation for being included in the Mt. Holly Garden Tour in mid-July. That has created some high anxiety for one of us (you guess) and a lot of flower buying. The gardens do seem to be cooperating by blooming quite nicely at the moment- not sure how to keep them that way for three more weeks?? I was at the library dropping off books yesterday and ran into two matrons (read- “Yentas”) who are in charge of the garden tour. They mysteriously knew who I was, and said they had driven up to our house to make sure they could list the location properly, but Really, I’m sure, to confirm we were worthy and did not have a yard of overgrown weeds. Seems we passed the drive-by test….they must not have noticed the POND……

More music…….Music is everywhere at the moment in the little towns surrounding us. Lucy and I spent the afternoon yesterday at “Music in the Meadow”, a festival for breast cancer fundraising at a small motel we used to stay at in Chester. The music was mediocre but it was a beautiful day, and Lucy was in her element- though not nearly as much as the two hours we spent at Walmart in Claremont, NH (no sales tax) where she pranced the isles and charmed staff and shoppers alike…she loves shopping!. This Friday we are going down to Saratoga for the Phish show and sometime in the next week we are trying to find a way to get to the massive Rainbow Gathering of the Tribes. 20,000 people are descending on the White Rocks National Forrest in the tiny hamlet of Mt. Tabor, to re-create Woodstock vibes and torture the locals and the state police. This gathering happens once a year at various national park sites, since 1971,and lasts for 3-4 weeks. If you don’t hear from me next week, you’ll know we have joined the Tribe and drifted back to the 60s. One of the tribe members attended folk club last Monday and brought not only his fiddle but his SAW (yes. a SAW), which he played with admirable aplomb. Henry the Fiddler has been on  the road with the Rainbows since 1976…you can only imagine!

And, finally. more BEDDING…………….not only are we on the constant lookout for more potential bedding accoutrements (Amazon Prime gets the bedding to us in 2 days if they can find us), but Jenn has spent the last two months researching new beds. She has consulted 73 websites, over 30 friends pooled, an astrologer, and met with the local mystic to consult the Ouija Board. I think she is close to making a decision of this magnitude (organics vs. support). I am encouraging her to start her own weekly Blog on the world of bedding…. stay tuned for that.

Be well, get out in the sunshine and stay in touch,

Love, Stu/Ferlin’/ Chuck/ Cuz/DA/Uncle

 

Happy Father’s Day and Greetings to all:

“If you resolve to give up smoking, drinking and sex….you don’t really live longer…it just seems longer”……………………………………………Unknown Vermont Philosopher

 It is really summer in the mountains- days in the mid to high 70s and nights in the mid to high 50s…and no snow for a week now……..as such, we have had a busy week here at Scum Pond- as people have come out of their caves, tossed off their long johns and basked in the sunshine. And, we have gone six days without rain (well maybe some at night, but who cares). SO, the highlights of this week’s life in the Greens…….

The Pond Project– after kayak-kitchen straining the Pond  4-5 times, with my faithful pond boy, Seamus, we felt we had to do something, before the gelatinous scum oozed its way up the hill and into the house. So we got on line (who loves Amazon Prime?) and bought a ½ HP pump for $40. It was supposed to come in two days, but that’s only if you live in the flatlands- because UPS cannot find us, so they deliver it to multiple post offices (this is called SURE Post) and eventually it winds up at our local one. In the meantime, I complain to Amazon, and they send me a free second one, which arrives before the first one which is still touring Vermont. Once we get it, it seems we need some sort of effective connection to get it going, so after placing it in a 5 gallon bucket and sinking it with rocks, we cut up a hose and surrounded it with a “noodle” (you know, a noodle!) and get the pond boy to slip and slide his way into putting it up. We attach it to 100 foot cord, plug in into the barn..…and VOILA, the water flows like magic….almost looking like a real pond. It runs for ten minutes and then falls over from the water pressure. Though Seamus has cleaned up and is ready to go home, we send him back in after we bury a pole in the mud and attach the noodle-hose contraption to it with baling wire…and now it mostly works, though scum removal seems hard to come by. We will see. At some point, Jenn is laughing hysterically and claiming the “Country Jew” has struck again. We need help!

More Music on the Greens– we made our first trip to Castleton College’s weekly music extravaganza, which featured a local horns and rhythm group, that tried to emulate Chicago and Blood, Sweat and Tears…not particularly well, but admirably. What a setting…I want to go to college there, surrounded by mountains and watching the sunset set over the Adirondacks. Of course, lacy made many new friends, both Canine and human admirers. We started the evening with dinner at the Trak Inn on lovely Lake Bomoseen- decent, not great, food, great early bird price (give me a break, we are old!), magnificent view of the lake, and finished with a lovely sunset ride home down old route 4A. We have many towns to hit for free music this summer and Lucy is VERY excited (me second, Jenn a distant third as there are many projects to do around the Scum Pond. Did I mention that she has entered us in the Mt. Holly home and gardens tour in July?)

Jenn discovers crime in Rutland– so while I was away overnight (just wait, I’m getting to it), Jenn made a trip to Rutland and Walmart. She got a 12 pack pf toilet paper and two bags of miscellaneous things we apparently needed (there were 3 things on the list, but Jenn finds the Mart uncontrollably enticing). She leaves there and goes to the local Mission thrift store to look for juice glasses and then to the Garden store (there is lot of gardening to do before the masses descend on Scum Pond). At the garden store, she notices the Walmart purchases are no longer in the car, and embarks on a five hour journey to solve the crime, with the assistance of the Rutland police. No luck yet, but she is having daily calls with the Commissioner….and has notified the customer service management at the Mart to watch for the thieves trying to return the stolen toilet paper for store credits. Will keep you posted on this one.

Ferris-Stu’s Magnificent Day Out– Had to go to my monthly meeting at the capitol for the Governor’s Council I sit on. It starts at 8:30, I am never on time and it is a 2 hour drive, so I decide to use a free night coupon I have for being a Titanium elite member of Marriott and stay at the spanking new Fairfield Inn in nearby Waterbury (up until now, there have only been 3 Marriott properties in Vermont aside from the usual mass in Burlington- guess it is not a fertile ground for commerce barons). Apparently Ferris or Stu needed a road trip so the wonderful ZEN of the day was: a drop dead gorgeous day’s drive through the mountains, lunch from a little general store in Pittsford on the spectacular Route 100, knocking six things off my to do list while doing compulsive work from my laptop at the spanking new hotel (did I mention they upgraded me to a two room suite), a nap, a workout in the quaint (read tiny) little hotel gym, a jog through the back roads of very cool Waterbury (who knew?) , dinner across the highway at a real article family-run Thai Restaurant (who knew again?) and a night spent on the legendary-  such a treat “MARRIOTT BED”. Wild times, there!!!!!

We finished the week with quick (well it’s traveling from Vermont, so not really quick to get anywhere) weekend trip to Chicago to visit our good family friends, the Moon-units, who were hosting a benefit bash to support Cathy Moons’ art therapy work in East Africa where she goes every year. It started as a small undertaking but gained momentum and eventually both Max and Tess decided to make the trip, and The Nave came over with dad Ray from nearby Rockford, so it’s was a family reunion, visit with the Moon-units, celebration of Grandpa Rays’ 91^st birthday and a small gig for Nave, Max and I all rolled into one.  We picked up a fourth player in Robin Lee, a very talented folk-jazz singer songwriter who took the stage immediately before us. Given that we were already shooting from the hip, adding a fourth added to both the chaos and the fun………….and I got to spend some of fathers’ Day weekend with my two favorite offspring and my long time second children, Jesse and Brea. Short trip, good time, …lots of pictures of the soiree are attached, along with those of the Pond adventures and other highlights of life in the mountains.

So, until next time, pull up a chair and shout your tonsils off for THE CAVS in game 7 tonight. Be well and prosper.

Mostly love.

Papa Stu

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Greetings to all near and far:

Well, summer came and summer went. Went from 91 hot degrees last weekend to 35 at night this weekend. Last night it was 42 and we were huddled in front of our electric fireplace with blankets on watching “Outlander”, when we saw a notice that it was 86 degrees right then in Delaware, Ohio….such is life in the mountains.

THE Gust Room project– is wrapped up- see the photos. four weeks of stripping wallpaper, mudding, painting and new bathroom accoutrements. Jenn disappeared for most of four weeks up there and is now on the hunt for all new bedding and related items…see the pix.

Syrup Breaks– in Vermont, we often stop what we are doing to find some way to ingest Maple syrup…so I had to leave for a few to make some pancakes, which is an excuse to eat more maple syrup.

Speaking of bedding……..we acquired a new Duvet (at least I think that’s what it is) from this monster moving sale in Mendon, up the mountain by Killington. These really rich people were selling one of their many homes (it has  sauna, a whirlpool and a tanning bed!)- so we took a drive over on a rainy Saturday morning and made quite a catch. Did not really intend to buy anything, but they gave us wine (before noon) as soon as we walked in….so we shopped. Came away with the requisite bedding, a magnificent set of five Ansel Adams framed photos and the elusive 24 foot ladder (40 bucks and a wine filled adventure getting it on top of the car). Good day’s plunder.

And on Saturday…we almost always make a stop during our weekly shopping expedition to Rutland for a few slices of Ramunto’s NY Pizza (2 slices and drink for $4.25!) – which also provides us our weekly access to the Burlington alternative paper, Seven Days, a wonderfully hip rag, that gives us the skinny  on true Vermont life. They are famous for their “Bernie Beat”- which gives us all things Bern, and their searing exposes on small town life. Right now, we are in the middle of a heated local controversy over the exuberant Mayor of Rutland moving to take in 100 Syrian refugees. Needless to say, the Trumpists are not happy about this and want to kick him out on his butt.

so…THE POND…has now been skimmed for scum three times , but the Scum is stronger than we, and returns with a vengeance. After a week of mail related fiascos (none of the mails services can find our house apparently), we got a shiny new ½ HP pump, with the general notion that moving water around will inhibit the frogs from laying a billion eggs and the algae from moving cross country to settle on our pond. Keep tuned on this one.

Wednesday night out…is usually when we head for some new Vermonty experience. This week we had planned on going to the Bellows Falls Opera House (really!) to see a showing of Prince’s Purple Rain…but it was cold and wet and Jenn was buried in upstairs mudding, so we bagged it, watched the CAVS win one measly game.  We instead went to Rutland on Thursday night for a mega-shop (I have to drag Jenn out kicking and screaming from the Walmart bedding section), and then to a new find for dinner, the Countrymen’s Pleasure on the outskirts of town. Quaint German -Austrian place with schnitzels and Wurst and all that Aryan stuff. Not only were we intrigued by the out of the way nature of the place, but our benefactress and previous home owner, Karen, worked there for many years, so we felt obligated to follow her trail again.

AIRBNB– we had our first guests of the season this week- an unobtrusive couple from southern Mass. who were the first test for the fabulously re-done bedroom. They were here for about 12 hours- eight of them sleeping…but we spent about ten hours cleaning the house. Need to slip Jenn some valium prior to guests coming it seems.

Music in the air– its’ time of the year for the weekly music on the greens all over the state, so we have weekly listings pinned up of all the small town offerings nearby, with the usual local band suspects. The quality of the music is actually quite impressive and the settings are typically magnificent. Our Mt. Holly series does not start until July, with the arrival of the summer hoards, but we went this week to Jackson Gore at Okemo Mountain to hear a local guitar legend channel Jerry and Jorma…quite entertaining and a gathering of many of our mountain friends. A love Fest as well for little Lucy, who wanders around being oohed and ahhed at……”what is she”?

the last month has continued my adventure in family finding- an expedition to trace the Paul family of NYC and beyond, through their arrival at Ellis Island in 1908 to the current manifestation. This is my mothers’ family, which is very small these days, and for which I have long been the patriarch. But my investigations have led me to my 81 year old cousin Howard and his sister Sally, in Westchester County, NY. Not only has this allowed me to fill in many gaps in the “Family Tree”…. but we are going down there to visit both of their families in a few weeks with cousins Sherry and Joel…this is like ghosts rising form the ashes. I’m hoping to vastly expand our notion of the Paul family .

We’re off to Chicago next weekend to see the Moon family and help out with a benefit concert (along with Max, Tess and the Nave and dad Ray, who is magnificently turning 91), so may be a bit before my next missive. Until that time…..

May the sun shine on your crystal clear Pond (or its equivalent)

Love and  joy,

 

Stu

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Greetings to all near and far:

It’s been a busy week here in the Mountains. Green has taken over the land, which is requiring much in the way of wackin’ and trimmin’. Big week on the sports scene as well…Go Cavs!!!, and I, as many of my contemporaries, mourn the loss of the great Ali, who filled our childhoods with excitement and panache, and provided fifty years of dignity to all our lives. RIP, Mohammed.

We have been out and around- went to a dinner on the ground last Saturday at our friend Robin Blue Skies (massage in the trailer girl), which provided a nice campfire with herbal scents everywhere. Lucy has taken to forlornly laying on the steps by the door to watch as the critters go by… with extreme longing for the chase. See her lounging photo along with the masterful carrot, which shows that in Vermont all vegetables have duplicate meetings-we think what we eat. Everybody seemed to have a party for Memorial Day weekend, since it is the official end of winter and a must to take advantage of the relatively short summer. We worked like dogs for the whole weekend; Jenn on her guest room remodeling project which she has been at for three weeks and me trying to keep us with the flowering growth and finally organizing the barns and figure out how to utilize fifty years’ worth of Walter’s tools and bric-a brac.. Finally got around to tackling Scum Pond, which is filled with algae and a million frog and tadpole eggs (slimy oozing globs of life that slip out of the strainer and have to be recaptured multiple times). My pond boy, Seamus, is a hard worker, but easily distracted by the primeval life force abounding in the scum, as well with Lucy’s lunging for hours after the frogs and other sordid creatures. She may quit stinking of pond by the fall.

We spent the better part of two days this week dealing with multiple car issues, after finding the local hippie mechanics down by the little airport. Not much in the way of frills or teeth for that matter, but seem to know their stuff, and we got both cars fixed over the course of two days; which resulted in ongoing back and forth trips up and down Rt. 103 between Rutland and Ludlow. We were actually on our way up to Middlebury to try a new hike (we got a new Vermont trail book, which we will compulsively try to complete every trail included therein) and my brakes started smoking at the bottom of the mountain before we even set off, which led us to the car shop instead of the trail. In between fixings, we managed to do a local hike on the Star Lake wildlife management trail, which turned out to be pretty magnificent short hike to a mountain meadow with views of all the ski hills in every direction. We walked back to the car through some nice people’s property (more Vermont 10^th generation blue bloods with a million dollar view) and then past the gun shop in the woods where we ducked and made beeline for the safety of the car.

We got around this week to finding yard sites for all the tchotchkes we inherited from cousins Sherry and Joel, so we now have little yard things poking up from every garden (which are wildly blooming, by the way) and chimes hanging and jingling in all directions. This ads to our already symphonic mix of bullfrogs, tree frogs, crickets, the howling dog up the road and the occasional wild boar drifting by. I might add that you can see that the massive exercise unit continues to lay in a pile in the barn waiting for divine intervention.

We made our first trip in several years yesterday up to the metropolis of Burlington for their Discover Jazz Fest. Burlington  is about ten times larger than the next largest hamlet in the state, and still really only a pretty small city….but it is HIP….lots of great dining and music and art and VERY cool people. Most people around here like to say that Burlington is wonderful and living there is almost like living in Vermont (this is a local joke). In any case, it’s a great 2 hour drive up and very easy to get in and out of. We found miracle free parking a few blocks from City Hall Park and hit the Farmers’ Market there for grazing, and then listened to three Jazzy bands from New York City, that were uber-Hip. The first was a combining of Dead like jam music with West African traditional and the last was a fifteen piece performance art-music outfit who were very URBAN. The setting was idyllic and we finished with a stroll down pedestrian only Church St. (has the mother ship of Ben and Jerry’s stores) which also has  2443 outdoor cafes one after the other…did I say it was HIP?. We walked down to a very lively Lake Champlain, with proms, weddings and river cruises…got to get out when the winter ends.

The drive home down lovely Route 7 was panoramic with the setting sun and Greens on the left, and the masterful Lake and the Adirondacks on the right. There is a section around Leicester (pronounced Leister) that may be the foulest  smelling dairy country on the continent, but then it quickly turns into scented pine and flowers….really, the whole state is just HIP.

So now it’s a very rainy Sunday. Lucy is still passed out from a day in Festival and DOG heaven and I am being summoned to assist with THE room project (which I have managed to avoid for three weeks, as it included multiple bedding issues)….so see you soon.

Peace, love and stay HIP.

Stu

Happy Memorial Day weekend and welcome to summer:

I left town for a week and came back to the total greening of Vermont. The drive home up route 7 was breathtaking; a jungle of vegetation. With it has come a really unusual stretch of weather with highs in the low 90s…not very mountain like. The grass is exploding, the flowers are blooming, the pond is scrumming…all is good in Vermont.

Since I was gone for nine days, there are no pictures of the mountains in this week’s blog…only a collection of shots from my trip to N’Awlins (check out the Gators and THE Food!). I went down for a few days of work (talk about hot and humid) and met up with Tessa to honor her 30^th birthday. Max flew down as a surprise for her, and we all spent five day together doing the complete tourist mega trip. It was great fun- an old fashioned, throwback family gathering for the three of us. They have gotten aged enough that I no longer have to separate them with rope and blankets. Even left them in their own room, which they could trash to their heart’s content.

So, below are the ZEN highlights of our time together in the Easy:

Thursday- Met up with Tess and headed out to dinner to be ambushed by a panhandling Max, hiding in doorway on Charters street; we both ran way from  him before  realizing he was our own prodigal (then we really ran!)

Friday- drop dead heated walking tour out to and then through  the Garden district (even hotter in there), street car ride back, afternoon nap for kids, flirting for me at rooftop hotel pool with nurses’ convention, dinner with local friend Rachel at the Parkway Bakery (best PO boys in NOLA) and on to Bayou Boogaloo Fest. Late night trip to Café du Monde for beignets and short trip to Casino to make our contribution to the economy.

 

Saturday- Breakfast at wonderful little farmers market in Warehouse district. Three hour French Quarter walking tour in morning with temps approaching 95, street music abounds, afternoon trip to Audubon Park on St. Charles street car, quest for some/any shade, lunch in ‘Uptown Mexican joint, dragged asses via Lyft back to hotel for nap, dinner at John Besh’s Domenica, requisite stroll down Bourbon Street for smells of vomit, drunken kids and crazy Jesus folk competing with bare naked ladies.

Sunday- continued three day quest for juice bar for breakfast. Canal St. streetcar out to City Park for bike rental/ride out to Lake Pontchartrain (see the fools try the tandem buke before they traded in for old fashioned kind). Walk back down Carrolton Avenue to find lunch at Espis seafood joint (nothing but fried’) and return to simmering Bayou Boogaloo fest where we crawl round looking for shade (at least I did). Back to hotel to pass out and then late dinner on Frenchman street in the Marigny, where we are drawn to various snippets of street and bar music that you can only find in the Bayou.

Monday- Early morning trip to Slidell for the infamous Swamp Tour; Gators, fish, birds, snakes and quite the history of the Bayou. Back to hotel to get kids checked out and then onto lunch and the World War Two museum. Tess leaves. Max goes to an Airbnb, Stu goes to the gym. Dinner with Max and work colleagues at the ubiquitous Luke.

After that, I had to get prepared, adjusted and work for two days….which was quite the shift. It was good to get back to the Greens after eight days and a layover night in Albany -and be greeted by the same heat…now time to attend to the land and get the scum out of the pond.

More life in the Greens next week.. Be well as can be.

 

Love to almost all of you,  Stu