Visit - potential difficulties

Forecasts for Thursday up here range from a chance of snow to more than a foot. If the latter becomes more probable I'll have to cancel my visit to Ridge. Please keep checking this spot for updates.

Visit to Basking Ridge

Hope to be in Basking Ridge on 1/2/14. Any takers for an early lunch?  Let me know by 12/30 by a comment with your email address or phone number so I can get back to you.

Best Wishes

If you are celebrating a special holiday or simply enjoying the season of good cheer, have a Merry Christmas.

Winter is here [calendar notwithstanding]

Yesterday the day began at -2 F which was followed by a pretty good snow fall ( topping for the weekend's 10") and temperatures soaring to about 11 F. Last night we had to drive through heavy snowfall to pick up Daniel ( our younger son), who is visiting from Colorado. It was 7 degrees when we reached home.

This morning we got our reward. I took a short walk and  recorded these sights at our house and near a neighbor's place. As you can tell, I am particularly fond of the big maple in front of our house.

 Around our home

 From Hawley Road 

  From the Smyth's

Back Home

Two Wishes

I wish more of you could be up here to see how the snow covered trees and houses look in the moonlight. The big maple in the front of our house looks especially enchanted. Some magic is real.

Some of you have had great year, some so so, and some a really tough one. Whatever kind of year you had I hope it was much worse than your next year.

More of the White Season

Another ten inches fell last night. That combined with single digit low temperatures makes it pretty clear what season we are in.

 I just shoveled the cars out so that our neighbor can finish plowing our upper parking space. We are fortunate to have a space to the west of the house to place the cars before a snow storm so he can plow out the drive to the east of the house. Then we move the cars and he plows the upper space. Now if only I can keep a walkable path from the large basement doors to the barn. I will be a happy camper.

Not having to drive anywhere makes it possible to truly savor winter. Don't know if we'll do a snow shoe or just a road walk but we will be out there soon.

The start of "White"

We are entering the white season. I have concluded that we have six seasons here and that they are best identified by color. White begins around or shortly after Thanksgiving and its obvious as to how it earned its name.  Brown begins in late April and has to do with bare trees and lots of mud. Light green begins towards the end of May when the leaves start appearing. Dark green begins toward the end of June when those leaves have matured and the strawberries are getting ripe. Gold is the season of  those days when the leaves have turned to red, orange and yellow and the sun casts more of soft glow then a bright glare. It starts sometime between mid September and early October. And then there is gray from early November til the first lasting snowfall. Gray is  when the forests, fields, and the weather take a somewhat dismal turn waiting for the white blanketing beginning the next cycle.

Thanksgiving and Hannukah

The holidays were great. On Thursday we had friends from the western Mass area; friends (made through Daniel, our younger son) from the Boston area including their two young boys; my sister and her husband and her son and his wife and two little girls, my older son and his wife and three children. All told 12 adults and 7 kids. Everyone got on really well including the children. The only sore spot was when my nephew's two year old panicked at the sight of the dimunitive and bedraggled  Natalie, our nineteen year old cat ( again via Daniel). I guess there was one more sore spot: Too much to eat.

Friday we traveled to southern Connecticut to spend an evening visiting and celebrating Hannukah with my sisters family. We took Henry, our youngest grandchild ( he's 8). Another fine time and again amazing good will and behavior amongst children ranging from 2 to 17.
We did miss having the rest of the family, my two other sisters and their clans, and especially Daniel, at this time.  However the additional leftovers for me help mollify my grief.

Thanksgiving

As most of you who read this blog know, I am a rather old fashioned and sentimental person. Thus I take Thanksgiving seriously and would like to say that among the many, many things for which I am thankful, getting to know most of you who read this, is high on the list.

I hope you have a great holiday and have as much to be thankful for as I do.

A long post on music

Went to a concert at U MAss last night. The first piece was Verdi's overture to Nabucco. The performance was brilliant; both the orchestra and the conductor, a visiting artist named Ng, deserve much credit. The overture is full of powerful themes and great changes in mood.

The second piece was Wagner's Siegfried Idyll: five minutes worth of music spread out over 20 minutes of notes. Less repetitious than Ravel's Bolero, but not by much. He composed it as a birthday present for his wife and then used it commercially. Some present. Kind of like me giving my wife a derivation of Maxwell's equations as a gift.

The last piece was Beethoven's Seventh Symphony, one of the great achievements of civilization. The performance was pretty good, but the music itself is beyond words.... however I'll try below.


 Last night reminded me that there is good music and great music and then there is Beethoven. Works by Bach and Mozart appeal to the intellect, works by Vivaldi and Tchaikovsky delight the senses. Dvorak and Brahms touch the heart... but Beethoven's greatest works enter the soul..... you feel them in the very marrow of your being.


The program notes were interesting. I reproduce them here. 

The text is informative but the material in the side bars is truly astounding. Note that Verdi sets the record for precocious composers, having written Nabucco, his third opera, fully 42 years before he was born.

Wagner, according to the text, lived in the fast lane. However according to his dates, he apparently exceeded the speed of light and expired prior to his birth.

BTW [ see how up to date I am] they were both born in 1813.

Questions

Psych majors: Why is it that I will sometimes substitute are for our [ as in my last post] when typing on a computer? I would never make this mistake orally or when writing.

Linguistic types: Why do some people use the definite article for things like a computer, as in "I was on the computer when I saw your email message"? Almost everyone will say  "my laptop".

Room mates and butterflies. Early Winter?

 My college room mate and his wife visited this weekend. After all these years I can still see why we chose to room together. We spent several hours in a butterfly conservatory, where, thanks to Peter's insatiable curiosity and need to understand, I learned a substantial amount about butterflies. The butterfly place is now on are list of things we might  do, especially on cold days.

Yesterday was real opportunity for frostbite. The high was 16 and winds hit over 30 mph. We had a dusting of snow to make things pretty  to look at, but I cut my walk to about 1/4 mile just to keep my ear lobes intact.

Its 11 degrees now, but with no wind, so I will go out for a walk soon.

Boston Visit Results

On 11/15 I went to Boston with my wife: she had LWV meeting and I got to walk around a little of Boston and Cambridge and to have linch with three students.

Julie Viola is now working with an education psychologist ( a Harvard prof) and hoping to start her Ph.D.; Sandra who is a senior majoring in the history of science; and Vanessa, another Harvard senior who is hoping to use her computer science degree to get an interesting job.   It was good to see they all still have a huge enthusiasm for life and learning.

Boston Visit

I expect to be in Boston area on Friday 11/15. If you have any interest in meeting email me. If you do not have my email send me a comment on this blog with your email address or phone number and I'll get back to you. Looks like there will be four or so students at this point.

Cats

Since everyone knows the real purpose of the internet is to supply cats a reason to exist here is some cat stuff.

Natalie is about 19 years old know and has decided she is now mature enough to eat with the adults:

while Sally ( although middle aged at 11 years  old) continues her youthful antics which now include sleeping in a basket:

A mid autumn potpourri

It's been a busy few weeks:

Had a visit from a young lady we've known for quite a while who we think of as "the daughter we never wanted", but we love her just the same.

Went for a walk around the neighborhood and said hi to some of the neighbors

and admired the late fall colors:

celebrated halloween:

enjoyed a visit to our friends home in the Catskill Mountains where I hiked to the top of Balsam Mountain with Bob Rapp:

Visited  friends in New Jersey including colleagues at Ridge, Sarah B. ( a favorite student) and folks from my old neighborhood and nearby.

Finally, we had  visitors from our old New Jersey town come and visit us this past weekend. It's ben a great few weeks.

Ridge Visit 11/5

If you would like to get together at Ridge sometime tomorrow (11/5) probably somewhat after 3 let me know,  my cell phone which I only use on the road is 201 444 8206. I'll check my email at about 9:50 AM tomorrow for any messages.

The Joys of Amazon

I ordered a new USB cable and a charger and camera batteries from Amazon. I wanted to order a second cable to be sure I would have a working one, but that cable came from a 3rd party and the shipping exceeded the value of the cable.  Even to buy the batteries/charger and the Amazon supplied cable was a real challenge. The total came to $24.98. Every time I tried to check out it told me the cable would be held back 'til some time in the future when I placed an order exceeding $25. Then the cable would be shipped free, but not the other items. So I found a book I liked for $11 and added that. No good; the book was coming from a third party so it didn't count towards the $25. So I found I book I thought my wife might like for $10 from Amazon. I then started to check out only to be shocked that the shipping brought the total to about $44. So I cancelled that book, found a book of crossword puzzles ( have I told you how much time I am spending on old NY Times crossword puzzles lately?) for about $11 and added that instead. Now my total was over $35 so I got free shipping. So in a real sense the book cost me about -$12. The whole exercise took well over an hour. Placed the order Thursday (10/31) and am still waiting for it.

 I really enjoy purchasing items from real people in real shops with whom you can have a real conversation.

Miscellany

1) One reason my latest posts took so long and are pictureless is the USB connection for downloading pictures from our camera to my 10 year old Mac died. Not sure if its the socket in the camera or the cable.

2) The weather here continues to be very fine. Yesterday I took a long walk which passed by a cemetery that has not been used for 130 years (but had been used for 100 or so years before that), and went over a stone bridge that carried the local highway until about 1870, and through lots of pretty forest. Best of all I got to shuffle through 10 billion leaves ( I counted them).

3) Things here are going along as usual. Had a very nice visit from Megan Banta. On Saturday we got to Hartford to see the Wadsworth Antheneum, and then attended a showing of Disney's Fantasia with live music provided by the Hartford Symphony Orchestra. It was a great show visually and aurally.

The Wadsworth has a good collection of fine art and an overabundance of really silly contemporary paintings.

A half wasted day

I wasted half a day today. I wasted it walking in the woods, looking at the shapes and shadows of hills and valleys, seeing the gold and orange of a sugar maple's leaves, looking at the perfect blue of the sky through the branches of century old pine, watching the sun turn clouds pink and purple.  I hope you all get to waste half a day this way very soon.

An important lesson

Acting with too little data and not even taking advantage of all the data you have can lead to serious errors. Bear with this long post. There are a few neat "punchlines".

 This weekend our guest noted water dripping from the first floor bathroom ceiling. He said it was luke warm. I immediately went to the basement and closed the hot water shutoff valve to the upstairs bathroom. The drip continued. I rushed and shut off the cold water valve. The drip stopped shortly afterward.  I opened the hot shutoff and no further dripping occurred. I surveyed the plumbing arrangement for the upstairs bathroom.   The cold water feed came up through a first floor closet. At the first floor ceiling it had a horizontal branch which went toward the sink while the line continued vertically to the shower. I went to the upstairs bathroom and noted that the feed to the toilet tank was at floor level. None of the lines I could touch felt wet. The piping ( tubing) was of chlorinated polyvinyl chloride (CPVC). My conclusions were: the line to the toilet branched from the horizontal line in the floor; the leak was most likely at the "tee" fitting where this line branched off; the best way to reach it was through the ceiling where removal of a small piece of metal ceiling would give me good access.

Results ( why my conclusions were faulty):

1) After spending well over an hour ( not counting the time searching for tools) carefully removing the cove molding and the many nails holding the ceiling sheet in place and bending it back, it was obvious that the original plaster ceiling was intact even including some stenciling, and had never been entered by a plumber.   Reaching the the pipe through here would require destroying the original fabric of the house and a lot of work and mess. So access through ceiling was a bad conclusion.

2) Went to the upstairs bathroom and looked at the floor. The cuts the plumber made were so obvious and obtrusive anyone with any sense would have known immediately that this was the way to gain access to the pipes.  So I pulled out the vanity floor and pulled up the three floor boards the plumber had used for access and exposed the horizontal line I mentioned earlier.  There was no tee in the line to feed the toilet. So the conclusion about how the line to the toilet ran was wrong as well as the conclusion about where the leak was. I revisited the vertical line and reaching up into the space above the closet ( remember the closet where the vertical line ran?) I found where that line branched off with one line feeding the bath/shower, and the other  running in the wall and then down to the floor to connect to the toilet.

3) Now having the horizontal line fully exposed I was ready to find the leak. I asked my wife go to the basement and open the cold water feed valve. She did. Nothing happened. In short, there was no leak!!!

What had happened was she had taken in a shower in the upstairs bathroom without tucking the curtain in properly and some of the water had seeped through the floor to the first floor  bathroom ceiling. The fact that the dripping stopped when I closed the cold water feed was just coincidence.

I just hope I remember this lesson and  that maybe some of you will learn to be less hasty in drawing conclusions before gathering and analyzing all the available data.

Second October Weekend

Had company over the weekend. We hit the Ashfield Fall Festival, along with about ten million other folks. I picked up some useful tools at the giant tag sale Mike Skulski runs every year. Our friends bought some art glass from local artist Ed Bransom. My grandson, Walter made a killing with a game I helped him build. ... and of course I forgot to take pictures of all this. The best part of Fall Festival was the blueberry cobbler our friend Jane made for the local Episcopalian Church's fund raiser. Later Saturday, we saw a very entertaining play at Shakespeare and Company in Lenox. "Accomplice" is full of the usual plot twists of a stage mystery and then some.

On Sunday, we went to an antiques show in Historic Deerfield and the to Shelburne Falls to see, amongst other things, the Bridge of Flowers. The Bridge of Flowers is an old trolley bridge that has been converted to a pedestrian bridge flanked by flower beds maintained by local volunteers. Here are a few photos from Sunday:

Our friends and Jean, 

Our distinguished neighbor across the road. The sheep are there to eat the grass. The llama, Fern, is there to protect the sheep from coyotes. She is very protective and bossy. She is also a snob. I have never managed to meet with her approval and she always glares at me with disdain or even out right contempt.

and some photos from Shelburne Falls and the Bridge of Flowers. The first is the Deerfield River, which flows through the village.

 My photos aren't bad, just not up to the standard set by Julia V.

News from the previous week

These are from the week prior to going to Vermont.

It's been a busy few days for us. I've cut and installed some more boards and done a bit of painting. On Friday  9/ 27 Jean went to a Massachusetts LWV board meeting in Boston. Then we met in Historic Deerfield to attend a reception for the opening of a new exhibit on 400 years of furniture making in Mass. From the reception we went a seafood restaurant in Greenfield where quantity and low prices were the hallmark. From there we went wonderful concert, the real reason we were in Greenfield. The program included pieces by Jay Ungar and Stephen Foster and the truly beautiful American Quartet by Dvorak. I urge to get to hear this when you can. Much of the music was performed by a recently formed Wistaria Quartet and they did a fine job, especially with the Dvorak. The other performers were also quite good. The only down side was the small audience. I urge you all to go out and see the local performing artists in your area. Leave the TV off and turn off the other devices, including the one you are reading this on.

Saturday 9/28 was another busy day, with Jean helping out at the local LWV book sale and getting signatures for an expanded bottle bill and me going for a 78 mile bike ride contributing to a Southern Vermont food charity. The ride was very scenic, following the Deerfield River for about 30 miles. The worst thing about the day was that I could swear I ate very little and did all that riding and still gained 2 pounds.

Sunday we spent some time cleaning up destruction... I mean construction debris and visiting with our son and his family. Then we went to Keene NH to meet our former Glen Rock neighbors and very good friends. We had a fine meal at a place near the town center called Luca's. Not cheap but well worth the cost. Keene is a charming town with several old homes and other buildings showing outstanding architecture.

Vermont Trip

Just got back from a long weekend in Vermont. We stayed in Dorset, near Manchester. It's a beautiful area with lots of forested mountains and hills all trying to outdo each other in color and graceful shapes. Thursday was great weather and we got some walking and tandem cycling in. Friday was a day for more indoor pursuits: crafts and antique shows.

Saturday I did a charity ride for a small foundation that provides equipment and other support for cancer patients and survivors pursuing things like skiing, cycling, running, etc. It was founded by a young man who lost his entire left leg to cancer about ten years ago. He took up cycling and within two years did his first 100 mile ride. He rode in this event, a mere 100 km.

The ride went through some of the prettiest valleys and up some of the steeper roads in the area.  I plan to do it again next year and may be soliciting contributions.

Autumn at the head of Apple Valley

I think autumn is about the best time of year up here. Here are few reasons why I feel this way. The trees are starting to turn orange and gold, the air is clear and crisp, and the wooly bears are out in force.

House front repairs.

I am very nearly finished, for the moment, with the front of the house.  The repairs to the front of the house required lots of tearing apart, chiseling,out rotted wood, making new pieces including planing to thickness and shaping profiles by hand or with machines, and lots of nailing and screwing parts in.  A lot of measuring of angles, compound angles and guessing what was there before it rotted. All this took place in the 14 feet between the end of the left porch and the small porch on the right [see first  photo below to understand  the area I'm discussing]. The rest of the photos give some idea of what I encountered and the repairs.

below.]