Trip to Vermont

We spent two days in Vermont visiting with cousins Larry and Sue Kopel who were staying at the Wilburton Inn in Manchester. It was great to see my cousins who have led an adventurous life including crossing both the Pacific and the Atlantic in their 39 foot sailboat. (The puppy in the picture belongs to the inn's owner.)

The views from the terrace of the turn of the century Wilburton mansion were beautiful.

While Jean kayaked around Emerald Lake, I took a ride and went past one of our favorite places to stay, the Marble West Inn, in Dorset. We haven't been there in a while and it has changed hands since we last stayed.

On the way home we played a round of miniature golf. Jean beat me by 12 strokes.

Local Fairs

We have lots of local fairs here. One of the bigger ones occurs on the weekend before Labor Day Weekend. There were : 

sheep, both wooly and shorn; 

cattle of many varieties, lots of kids taking good care of their animals; 

some huge oxen including some massive white ones (Charlais ?) standing well over 6 feet high at the shoulder and weighing well over a ton; 

and a midway full of rides and serving such healthful foods as deep fried Snickers. 

There was a nice assortment of tractors and old engines, but I don't have any pictures of these.

A busy week in August

Been a busy few days. Most of last Saturday evening was spent recovering from the day's fundraising ride. Sunday was spent, very slowly getting ladders set and some brackets in for our upper level gutters. Monday began with more work on gutters but changed radically as we headed for Tanglewood for a Beach Boys concert. It was a beautiful day and evening and there was a good sized crowd for a concert that was arranged at the last minute and held on a Monday night.

They produced an amazing number of hits in their heyday and they sang most of these, including eight without any stops in between to start the concert. We were there with our friends Denise and Doc. Here are some pictures from the concert.

Tanglewood is a beautiful spot with great views. It also has some very impressive trees including a Norway spruce with more trunks than a herd of elephants.

Tuesday was a great day for a ride, so I rode up through Buckland, and along the Deerfield River, through Charlemont and Rowe in Massachusetts to Readsboro and Jacksonville in Vermont. It was a long, tough ride but the scenery made it worthwhile. The highlight of the trip was seeing a pair of bald eagles perched above the river. I was close enough so that I could clearly hear the female's wings flapping when she took off. I hope to take some pictures of the route soon to post here.

I said it was a busy few days and I meant it. Wednesday we went to Boston to have lunch with Julianne Viola, see the Museum of Fine Arts, and attend a Red Sox game. It was great to see Julianne and to hear of her impending studies at Oxford.

We focused on the impressive collection of American art at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts including some wonderful pieces of Newport furniture from the late 18th century.

Then a walk ( a little longer than necessary due to my map reading error) to Fenway Park for the game. We were there with our son Chris and his family as part of a League of Woman Voters event, so there were about 80 LWV members and family.

The stadium is tightly set within the surrounding city and the streets around the stadium take on the air of an urban carnival. The game was not particularly well played and both teams went through most of their relief pitching staff, partly because the Angel's starter injured himself while covering first early in the game. LA A 8 Bos 3 was the result. We left at the end of seven innings since it was about 11 PM and it takes about 3 hours to get home. The people were all friendly and good natured, even in the extremely crowded subway.

Gutter Picture

Since I forgot to take my (actually Jean's) camera on my ride and didn't take pictures of the Shakespeare and Company campus, all I can offer you is a picture of some of the gutter I installed. It's flexible plastic and is pretty light. It snaps into (and I hope out of) the brackets, and I plan to take it down for the winter so the ice and snow won't destroy it.

Mid August Shakespeare, Gutters, and Rides

1) Last Thursday we saw Julius Caesar, the play, not the guy.  While the subject of the play includes all the ingredients of great tragedy and there are many great speeches, I think it does not not achieve the power of some of Shakespeare's other works. Two of the main characters lack tragic stature.

Brutus is  more of a bumbling fool  who gets everything wrong than a great statesman who merits the respect he is shown by all around him. He let's Marcus Antonius live. He lets Marcus Antonius give a eulogy without monitoring what he says. He chooses to fight at Phillipi instead of waiting for his enemies' rabble forces to dissipate. He is full of platitudes and faulty reasoning and is still very convincing. Thus, he may be more realistic than many truly tragic figures.

Marcus Antonius is a conniver and self seeking rabble rouser, and a perhaps sincere sycophant of Caesar. The only character of real depth and tragic stature is Cassius, who is constant in his refusal to be ruled by a tyrant and his dedication to the Roman tradition of freedom (for some). It is his misfortune to link his fate with Brutus.

While the play may lack the power of great tragedy, it is still an effective play. Both Julius Caesar and Brutus fail to take good advice. Caesar ignores the soothsayer's warning about the Ides of March and his wife's pleas for him to stay at home. He does this out of vanity and ambition for the crown.

Brutus ignores the good advice he receives from his fellow conspirators, especially Cassius, out of his conceit that he knows best. It may be considered a play about the havoc caused by a man of good will but small understanding, who is revered beyond his merit and placed by others, and by circumstances, in a position to alter history.

2) Two years ago, when we had our septic redone, I had the contractors install a system of drain lines to which I would connect the downspouts of gutters. Last week I finally installed 44 feet of gutter and downspouts. It had been so long that I had trouble finding the outlets of the drains so I could make sure the lines were clear. A lot of brush had grown up  around them. I still have to install about 20 feet at the higher roof level, and that will only take care of  the front.

3) Yesterday I went for my longest ride of the year so far, a 75 mile tour of the Hoosic River Valley. It was a fund raiser for the Hoosic River Watershed Association, who are trying to clean up and restore the environs of this river. The ride covered some of the northwest corner of Massachusetts and nearby New York and Vermont. It was a pretty ride on mostly back roads. There was one major climb and an enormous number of short climbs of rolling hills, including some ridiculously steep pitches ( over 16%) for a total of  a vertical mile of climbing. For those who cycle, my low gear was a 39/26, a bad choice for this terrain and my legs. I was among the  oldest and slowest riders. Still need to lose ten pounds, although I'll still be old and slow.

Frankenstein, the Play

A few weeks ago we went to see a play based on Mary Shelley's novel Frankenstein, with the author (of the play, not the novel) playing Frankenstein's monster. The play was interesting if not overwhelming. The actor/author chose to play the opening scene of the monster coming to life in the nude.  I thought about this for a while and decided it was inappropriate. After all, anyone who has seen a picture of Frankenstein's monster knows that he never appears without a stitch.

House Painted

I keep forgetting to mention that we had the house, at least the front and both sides, painted and I've finished installing new storm windows and reinstalling the shutters.  We got rid of the pink and purple highlights and added a few green ones. Still not sure I like the color of the doors. Jean thinks it's brownish brick, but I thinks it's more like salmon.

Address Sign

One of the things I have been doing is carving an address sign. Although it was my first real attempt at carving numbers, or anything else for that matter,I managed to do a decent enough job to hang it out, so I made a post and bracket, dug a hole and placed it. I attached a bird house we bought two years ago to the top of the post. All this made my wife pretty happy.

The address sign was kind of necessary, since the 1884 (presumably the date of construction) on the center of the house confused lots of folks. Like all projects, this one required a few preliminary projects, including repairing the post hole digger I bought last year. I'll paint the post white after the wood has a chance to dry out properly.

During the time I was working on the sign and installing shutters and some needed preliminary work for gutters, my neighbors managed to nearly complete a 36 foot long addition to their barn. You can see the addition in the  picture.

Company and Brownies

We had a great weekend with guests from our old neighborhood in Glen Rock. Not only did they provide lots of interesting conversation, they brought lots of food, including delicious brownies... did you hear that Ridge students?

Early August

Had a pleasant birthday on Monday. On Tuesday I tried to do an 84 mile ride into the southern Green Mountains, but after hitting a pothole at about 40 mph I had to "limp" home on two bent rims and an unglued spare front tire. Still, it was a pretty 37 mile ride.

We went to see Design for Living, a Noel Coward play about a triangle of sorts among two men and a woman.  It was hard to develop much interest in three characters who seemed much more concerned about their place in the world than the world.

Wednesday we volunteered  at Tanglewood where the Duetsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen ( try to say that three times fast) gave a great all Brahms concert. Paavo Jarvi, conducted and Lars Vogt was the pianist. The program included the Academic Festival Overture, the First Piano Concerto, the Second Symphony, and a Hungarian Dance as an encore.  The second piece is a difficult one with many beautiful ideas and themes, not always well integrated; how like much of life. It was played as well as I have ever heard with all the drama and melody one could ask for. The orchestral pieces were similarly well played with all their romantic and emotional facets well displayed.