For the Love of Camping

Every year for about the last 10 years (10? Really? I think so) we have gone on a camping trip with our two favorite families. As the kids get older it gets more fun, and last year we added a rafting trip to the weekend. We did the same thing this past weekend except we had 2 rafts, a canoe and a kayak.
On arrival we tried to stop for dinner at a local diner, but it had the look of someone who ran out in the middle of a meal - the screen door was locked, but the inner door was open. The lights were off. The signs for burgers were displayed. It was like the people vanished in mid-sentence. Turns out there was a blackout from a storm on Friday. We arrived at the campsite hungry and unwilling and not ready to cook. Usually on the first night we buy dinner on the way, but this time I had to drop off the boys to set up the tent while I drove around to find sustenance in the form of very delicious Philly Cheese Steaks.
Our rafting/canoeing/kayaking trip was pretty eventful as it rained on us three times in the afternoon, once very very hard. The canoe with Stephen & Ryan capsized in a set of rapids, sending 11 year old Ryan into a bit of a panic. He did great, though, and we rescued him into our raft while Stephen got the canoe back up. I was most impressed with their waterproof bags, which kept all their snacks dry and snuggly. Max kept his head on straight and remembered the safety lesson we'd had last year in Canada while white water rafting where they told us to pull people out of the water by their vests, not their arms. I, of course, tried to pull Ryan's arm when Max stepped in and called me an idiot, and easily pulled Ryan up by his vest.
On Sunday we went to a secret, unmarked path to a waterfall and swimming hole. The rope swing was a big highlight, though Max and Slim were the only ones brave enough to climb the slippery rocks, and Max the only one willing to take the plunge.
Video of the rope swing. The loud horrible sound is the deafening waterfall in the background.
(Note: having trouble with the uploading; I will try again later)

Fairway Parking

This past Sunday we zipped to Fairway in Red Hook for a shopping extravaganza. On arrival, the parking lot was packed and the only way to get a spot was to stalk someone getting into their car and wait while they unpacked. I found someone pretty quickly, and with my blinker on, stopped just a few feet away from a woman loading a trunk full of groceries.

After she finished piling about a thousand boxes of something into the bag of her van, she very purposefully moved her shopping cart to a spot that was exactly between my car and her spot. As I sat there, furious, wondering if I should get out now and yell at her, or wait until she cleared the spot, I watched with delight as the cart slowly rolled backward, directly behind her van, where she would never see it until it was too late.

Under normal circumstances I would run out and warn the driver about the impending impact, but in this case, revenge was looking pretty sweet. Imagine my surprise when she hit the cart with the rear of her car, AND KEPT ON DRIVING. Even though she felt the impact, she just pushed the cart, until it bounced off her bumper, and then bounced back into the side of her minivan, scraping its way along the passenger side. I was pretty happy about this turn of events, even though the cart ended up in my way and I had to get out and move it.

As I moved the cart, the woman looked out of her window at me, shrugged her shoulders, and SMILED. Even with revenge witnessed and complete, I still wanted to smack her across the face.

Not My Irish Roots

Last week a package arrived in the mail from my mother-in-law containing one of the most amazing documents I could have hoped to receive from her. A check for millions you think? Yes, that would be amazing, but alas, it was then actually the second most amazing document I could have received. It was a copy of a self-published memory book made for my husband's great great grandparents (Susanna & William), produced in 1910 just after their death, by their 2nd son George, elder brother of his great grandmother.

In it George describes his parents and the love they had for them (along with his description of their good looks), but the best part of the booklet was where he typed up several letters written to him by Susanna & William after he asked them to put down information about their Irish heritage.

The result is an incredible insight into the minds of his 19th century ancestors that is unheard of in my family, as no such records exist of anybody beyond some very old photos of my great grandparents. Ah, the joys of being married to a WASP.

In a nutshell, what we found out were several salient facts:

- His great great great grandfather was a terrible drunk (in Ireland, how scarce that must have been) and an architect/builder. While she grew up during the potato famine, there was nary a mention of it, though when she was a young teenager her (drunken) father moved them to a small farm that they worked as a family. No mention was made of what crops they grew (or didn't grow?)

- Susanna remembers her grandmother (I think that would make it 5 greats) meeting and being influenced by Charles Wesley (founder of the Methodist church who toured Ireland quite a bit), thus setting the stage for the next few generations to produce some very serious Methodist preachers.

- Susanna had a set of twins, her 8th & 9th children, who died after one day. Her 10th and last child, also a boy, born a year after the twins, died at 10 months of age. Her descriptions of her grief, written 25 years after their death was so raw and powerful, her desire to die from her profound sadness so strong, it jumped off the page.

- There are several sets of twins in every generation, and his grandmother was half a set (which of course we already knew). What we didn't know was that his grandmother (and her twin) had a second set of younger twin brothers.

- One of Susanna's sisters died on a ship on her way to Quebec as a young woman. Susanna blamed the mishap on a drunken captain (see the theme here?) who ran the ship aground. She reported that they tried to put 80 people on a single lifeboat, thus drowning them all.

- Some speculation that their family wasn't always from Ireland, but that a few generations earlier had come from England along with William The Orange to invade (circa 1696).

- His great great grandfather (also named William) came to the US in 1870 as a Methodist preacher, and was assigned to several places in Wisconsin, moving every 2 years. There is a Methodist church in Wisconsin that recently celebrated its 125th anniversary with a tribute to William. They finally settled in North Dakota, where it seems that cousins still live.

- William & Susanna grew up in neighboring towns but met at the Methodist Church that was between them. Today, one of the towns is in Ireland and the other is in Northern Ireland.

- William & Susanna were married in Skibberreen in 1863, near where William was preaching at the time. That church burned down in 2006, though it had been turned into a restaurant. The replacement church doesn't look that interesting, so Ireland also has succumbed to bad architecture.

- I like very much that this particular family line came down the pike in the form of a lot of Williams, my son's middle name.

- If you ever meet someone with the first name Blaney, I'll bet he's a cousin.

The Rent is Too Damn High

Jimmy McMillan has a great song on his website, and despite his slightly anti-semitic remarks, I'm loving this guy. I especially admire how tucked into his rent control agenda is a single sentence in support of not ticketing UPS trucks when illegally parked.

Retraction

I said in a previous post that The Pearl rarely got good critical reviews. All that changed this week when New Yorker gave Vieux Carre a pretty rave review. I am pleased for them.

Some More Cute Kitties

I can't help it, they are just so cute.

An End of a Pearl Era

The final production of the season, and the very last forever at Theater 80 by the Pearl Theater Company was Tennessee Williams' Vieux Carre. It's not his most famous, but his most autobiographical. And, as usual, we enjoyed ourselves immensely.

However, I cannot help but think that the reason I enjoy The Pearl so much has to do a lot with the venue. Theater 80 is very intimate. Our seats are front row center, and the only way to sit comfortably is to rest our feet on the edge of the stage, moving them if an actor seems to come to close.

This intimacy is crucial to the enjoyment. Without it, I'm not sure their productions will stand up. When they move uptown to Center Stage II it will be in a normal theater, with a normal size stage and a distance that will be difficult to manage. Their success emanates from the closeness the audience feels to the players. While they are good actors, I am not confident that they are great actors that can command a large stage. Many of them, individually, and amongst a team of strong actors, possibly, but with each production there are usually a couple of weak areas that pull the entire thing down a notch. Their charm was in their "we're putting on a play" attitude. Their charm was that I can always see the imprints on the soles of their shoes.

One case in point. During Vieux Carre, the character of the resident lout gets completely naked. He was standing there, just a foot in front of me so that if his foot was a foot long, it would have been at my nose. Luckily his foot maintained its innocence, so my nose stayed clean, but that moment cannot be replicated. In contrast, in Hair, which I saw recently, there is also a scene of complete nudity, but they are so far away and high up, that you really can't feel the power (or in the case of Hair, the freedom) of the moment. It's distant, and part of an experience you have at arms length, not a nose away, and it's not the same warm, yummy feeling. The most impressive things about Broadway venues is usually the sets and costumes, and sometimes one or two outstanding performances that can shine beyond the glitz.

And finally, just to display my discontent in public, the subscription renewal notice that I received did not mention that they were moving (or if it did it completely bypassed my notice). I sent in my renewal check, excited at seeing how they would put on Dickens next season, and a day later read in a Grieve's blog that they were moving. In a blog. They never told me. While they sent me Christmas cards and pleas for donations, their changing venues to 50 blocks away went unmentioned. I was incensed. I was told I should have been called but likely they didn't get to my name yet (I guess the A's are way down on the list). I was never called.

Should I cancel or stick with them for their uptown debut? I'm having trouble deciding. At least moral dilemmas such as this get my mind off the upcoming college tuition I can't afford.

My Vote for Stupidest Architect in New York

This building at Canal and Houston has to be the dumbest thing I've ever seen, and there are a lot of dumb new buildings in downtown New York these days.

While walking home we passed by several other stupid glass monstrosities and the husband made an excellent point: "When it is time to take these disasters down, they can probably do it with a wrench and a glass crusher."

Too Depressed to Blog

Sorry I've been rather ignoring this blog lately though I've taken a bunch of pictures to share with you. I just haven't shared them. It seems overwhelming to upload them and write about them and try to think of snappy things to say. And now they are getting old and not so interesting as I thought they were when they were fresh. Contrary to the title of this entry, I've been out enjoying the summer weather (well up until today that is) and for some reason or other my calendar has been chock full of crap every single day.

For example, tonight, I found out some news that will nag the back of my mind for the next two years. We went to see a college financial planner and he confirmed that it is true, we cannot afford to pay for college because we will not likely be eligible for much financial aid. Apparently we are caught in that not-so-mythical middle class trap of making too much money to qualify for aid, and not enough money to actually be able to pay.

According to the formula they have devised, we would have to live on a sum that would require neglecting all retirement savings, eliminating health insurance and never leave the house lest we make a purchase for the four years our son is learning how to drink beer bongs (or do you smoke a beer bong? What the fuck is a beer bong anyways?).

So the bottom line is we might be able to afford SUNY or CUNY but it is quite unlikely that we will get enough aid to afford a private school. My Princeton dreams have been crushed.

Max with the Harvard ladies he will never get to know.
I hope he treasured this moment of closeness to Cambridge as it is likely his last.