Colonial Princeton, NJ - take that, Colonial Williamsburg, Va!

A couple dressed in the style popular around the

American revolution.

Having recently returned from my first visit to Colonial Williamsburg, I decided to try to come up with colonial sites to visit in my home state of New Jersey, to assuage the let-down of leaving that truly charming town.  Once I started to tote up the sites, I realized that New Jersey has an amazing colonial heritage still standing and open to the public.  Of course there is Burlington, and Trenton, and Princeton, and Mount Holly, and, and, and!  

I realize how remiss I have been in taking my home state for granted.  There are so many wonderful historic houses and sites around, I am going to make a list (and check it twice) as well as mark up some maps to try to come up with some itineraries for myself and Chir.

Tomorrow, we finally go to Olden House and its grander older sibling, Drumthwacket, on Route 206 in Princeton.  Olden House, a four-room farmhouse which was built between 1759 and 1765 by John Hill, is named after Thomas Olden, a tailor and farmer who purchased the house from Hill in 1772. His father was John Olden, one of the six early settlers who established the Quaker community of Stony Brook. Charles Smith Olden, one of Thomas Olden‘s grandsons, who was born here in 1799 was responsible for beginning the construction of the mansion Drumthwacket in 1835.

I have spent more than 35 years in this area over the course of my life, but not once have I visited Olden House or Drumthwacket.  I hang my head rhetorically in shame.

Next week will be Morven, also in Princeton, built in 1758, which has an amazing history peopled with fascinating characters, including a woman George Washington himself called "The Muse of Morven" in honor of her poetry!

Ice and Roses

Our second snow this fall greeted me this morning . . . big, fat, sploshy flakes tumbling down and laying a temporary white cover over everything, including the last buds and blooms of my roses, including a juicy red Eden bud that will probably never get to open, and this lovely pink Eden bloom, capped with ice and snow, but still breathtaking.

Our first snow was in October, just after the much-vaunted and quite terrible Hurricane Sandy storm blew through, toppling trees and branches right and left.  I wonder if this winter will be like last year's - heralded by Autumn snow, but snowless itself.  I hope not.  It's not that I want to be inconvenienced, but Winter without one substantial snow storm seems somewhat pointless.  I want to be able to build one snowman, and fulfill my typical winter resolution.  I would prefer it snow heavily on Friday evening, so Saturday morning would find everything under a blanket of sparkling white snow, and that it melt away Sunday late afternoon and evening, leaving Monday morning traffic unimpeded.  Not that I'm picky or anything.

Fall is here

Fall is here . . . actually, Fall has been around for about a month; I just hadn't noticed.  All of a sudden I'm surprised by the bare branches, the colored leaves heading into brown decline.

As Sherlock Holmes would say, with a lip curled in pitying arrogance:  "Hempel, you see, but you do not observe."

Of course, he would not be entirely correct.  There are many things I observe minutely, but the passage of time has never been one of them.

My experience of time is that it is one long, continuous taffy pull; that it will keep stretching out forever, and that  a certain day or event in the future will never arrive, because time will keep on stretching.  A kind of Zeno's dichotomy paradox for time, as it were.  You never get there.  The thing is, of course you do!  And of course time doesn't actually stretch further and further; so Spring ends, Fall arrives, Fall progresses, and all of a sudden I look at dwindling brown foliage in surprise.

I love Autumn's weather; "October's bright blue weather," as Helen Hunt Jackson put it.  My only argument with it is that winter inevitably follows, and although I am not filled with melancholy at the prospect, as I so often have been in the past, the colder months are still less fun than Spring and Fall, no two ways about it.  At any rate, here is the poem by Helen Hunt Jackson.  I discovered it when I followed up a quote about "October's bright blue sky," which turned out to be a misquote.

October's Bright Blue Weather




O suns and skies and clouds of June,

And flowers of June together,

Ye cannot rival for one hour

October's bright blue weather;




When loud the bumblebee makes haste,

Belated, thriftless vagrant,

And goldenrod is dying fast,

And lanes with grapes are fragrant;




When gentians roll their fingers tight

To save them for the morning,

And chestnuts fall from satin burrs

Without a sound of warning;




When on the ground red apples lie

In piles like jewels shining,

And redder still on old stone walls

Are leaves of woodbine twining;




When all the lovely wayside things

Their white-winged seeds are sowing,

And in the fields still green and fair,

Late aftermaths are growing;




When springs run low, and on the brooks,

In idle golden freighting,

Bright leaves sink noiseless in the hush

Of woods, for winter waiting;




When comrades seek sweet country haunts,

By twos and twos together,

And count like misers, hour by hour,

October's bright blue weather.




O sun and skies and flowers of June,

Count all your boasts together,

Love loveth best of all the year

October's bright blue weather.

Simple leaves

Aren't these beautiful?  They are composed of the simplest leaves, artfully arranged, then sewn to the page, as you can see in the last panel.  Why don't I do that?  What a reminder of the beauty all around us we do not see clearly enough to appreciate!

Long time, no see

Well, time flies.  It has been more than a month since I posted.  I am working on a piece for a gallery show called View from Above, View from Below.  Or that is, I should be working on a piece for this gallery show.  I have the idea, I have a sketch, but I haven't started yet.  My first step would be making a tree; not so hard to do.  I am hoping to have it done in the next several days.

I made a new journal cover.  I inset a wooden mini casement window which open to reveal - ta da!  - whatever image I put behind it.  Perhaps a woman sitting at a window?  We'll see.

This summer I have been to brooks, found many stones with holes, convoluted shapes, and fascinating grotesqueries, and even made necklaces out of some of them.  I got to Doylestown to see the art on loan from the Uffizzi Museum in Florence, which I remember dimly from my childhood.  I finally finished my Spring book/journal . . . But somehow, this has been a slightly gray summer.

Right now, there is a lot going on in my life.  One of my two best friends had a small stroke after surgery, impacting the peripheral vision in her left eye.  Her daughters, who live in Seattle, panicked and strong-armed her into moving into assisted living in Seattle just one and a half days after her release from the hospital.  No time to say goodbye to the house she lived in for 40 years, or her friends, or her town, or her life.  And for what?  The loss of some peripheral vision?  She was in such a vulnerable condition, and they literally forced her into it.  She has been there about a week and a half, and is miserable, and told one of her daughters, from whom she has taken a lot of guff and for whom she has done a great deal, and the daughter basically said, "No way are we letting you go back to Princeton."  Letting her?  But my friend is still very psychologically shaken, and said to me "I guess I'll just have to make the best of it."  Her house is still there, most of her clothes, books, and belongings are still there, all of her furniture except one chair a friend took and can return is still there, and my friend doesn't need assisted living - so just why shouldn't she come home?

Last Friday, one of my mother's best friends would have died if I had not come to visit her.  It was very frightening, and reminded me all the more of the fragility of life and the constant change and unpredictability all around.

And I have given notice at the school where I teach art that I am not returning for the Fall term.

So much change.  I feel quite unsteady, and even vulnerable.  I believe good comes out of everything, although we may not, with our limited capacities, be able to recognize it; so I believe good will come out of all this as well, but it doesn't mean that it is easy.

Speaking of songs, how about . . . . .?

"Friendship, friendship, just the perfect blendship . . . "

I can hear Ethel Merman's braying in my ears as I think of this classic song.  Her charm has always eluded me.  Why is she so heralded when her voice was awful:  abrasive, brassy, nasal?

 However, the song is funny and warm-hearted, and hits on an essential truth. Friendship is good for what ails you.

Thanks, pals!  You know who you are.  Probably.  Sometimes we don't know the difference we make in other people's lives,

The Power of Song - Here's to you, Reb Shlomo!

For the past couple of weeks I have had Chassidishe nigunim swirling around in my head.  It all started with reading tehillim (psalms), which I love to do.  I keep on meaning to memorize more of them, but haven't gotten around to it.  The ones I do know by heart, I love to be able to recite to myself when the moment calls for it.

At any rate, when I was reading psalms, I came across the phrase "Essa eynai el heharim"  "I lift up my eyes to the hills," and the melody I knew from college days jumped into my mouth and I started singing.  What a pathway to heaven!

Once I remembered "Essa eynai," I started to recall other songs:  "Pischu li sha'arei tzedek,"  "Am Yisroel Chai," "Romemu Hashem" . . .  Why couldn't some of these be incorporated into a Taize-style service? These are all songs by Shlomo Carlebach, a charismatic neo-Chassidic troubator who, starting in the late sixties, I believe, started touring college campuses with his music and his message of connection to G-d.  I met him when I was at Brandeis, and spent quite a bit of time with him.  His loving warmth was like a balm.  (There were reports later in his life that were very serious, but that was not my experience.)

At any rate, I am grateful to get those joyous nigunim back into my life.  There is a place for solemnity, but we shouldn't forget about just plain, flat-out joy,  and Reb Shlomo's music is one way to experience it.