the beauty of the lake

I am sitting here just thinking about the beauty of the lake and the scent of the Adirondack breezes. Here are a few more photos from the 2016 collection. It is amazing how one week back to work and routine makes the distance from that relaxing time magnified. It feels like weeks since I was there, and it has only been 7 days.

An American Painted Lady Butterfly -- this beauty likes the mountains.

Can you hear the lapping waves? Can you feel the lovely breeze?

Even cloudy days bring muted beauty -- shades of blue and gray and green.

the return

We returned from a week at the lake on Friday afternoon. Here are just a few photos for you. I took so many it was hard to pick just what to post here.

Yesterday was spent in laundry and readying-for-the-week-ahead mode. Today has just a few things on the list as I prepare to go back to the routine tomorrow.

This annual lake vacation is something I treasure. We enjoyed the beauty of the Adirondacks... a cloudy day, a brief heavy rain, a nighttime thunder storm, and mostly perfectly sunny, breezy, warm days. The sunsets were beautiful. The week included some reading, a couple of mountain climbs, one tennis match, swimming, card playing, and taking in the vistas.

Not only is the environment completely re-charging, but I get to spend it with my family, recalling years of good memories and creating some new ones. To be together (and apart) in one familiar place is a lot of fun. Each year we have a pitch tournament (card game) and one team of two ends up with first prize mug "trophies." We take turns cooking and we go out to eat a couple of times. We have a lot of little traditions. Each year is different, and each year has common threads.

No week "all together" is completely perfect of course. There are a few moments of "button pushing," where we are reminded of the enmeshment of personalities that make up a large family. Someone might be sad one year due to one loss or another. This year we all grappled in one way or another with the loss (by impending divorce) of a brother-in-law. We all missed the old "entire" family after many, many years. We remember lasts. (Last year he was with us). There are new firsts. (This year my other sister had her longtime boyfriend stay for a few nights.) We know that future years will hold other losses. Loss is part of life, and life is all the sweeter to appreciate what we have right now.

Another thing I realized, and I don't know why I was so surprised by this, but vacations are different when your child gets older. The teen arrived late to the week and left early due to his work schedule, and it was odd and a bit worrisome to have him away from us for three of the days. Thank goodness for text messaging to give me some reassurances. Probably my happiest snapshot memory this past week was the night before the teen had to leave, and all the cousins knew it, they all decided to run to a dock and jump in the water (some in their clothes...) and go night swimming. They actually without realizing it jumped in in age order with my guy first, then the other four cousins following -- with just a moment's hesitation by the youngest (10) before she plunked in. They swam together to a shallower part and played in the water and they tapped into that happy, carefree childhood place that I wish we could bottle.

Every year, I see a friend and colleague from within my university system who vacations the same week we do nearby with her extended family.  We see each other more on the beach in this one week of the year than we do otherwise because she lives/works about 3 hours from where I do. Her children are still young and she doesn't get to relax much. We had a laugh about how she was jealous of me being able to read in a chair at the beach area, not having to be lifeguard, being able to relax during the days ... Meanwhile, I was a bit jealous of that sweet time with a young child when I knew everything about when my son played, ate, and slept. Now, I am awake many nights at 3 a.m. when my son is at his late night food delivering job and I wonder if he is safe, if he is tired, if he is eating properly (because he certainly doesn't have a good sleep cycle.) I guess being a parent means to never relax if you let that stress and worry and fear get to you -- and it means coming into harmony with those things as possible. My mom and I had a talk about letting go of "control" in being a parent. She wisely stated that it is a fine line between "control" and "responsibility," and finding that balance is the key.

Separation is normal, and it happens, and I suppose we are never quite ready for it. The challenge is to have a strong mind, a present mind, and I did okay. One thing I decided to do was the #AwakeAugust small stones writing month. I haven't been writing much lately. The small stones form is a form I very much enjoy. If you are interested, they are posted over at tiny river splash.

So, off to the day I go. Holding onto this inner Adirondacks peace as long as I possibly can. Ciao.

washington, dc beauty and the flu that followed

Sorry for the extended blog absence. I went to a great conference last week Monday through Thursday in Washington, DC. Came home late Thursday night, worked Friday, and came down with the flu on Friday night. This, despite my flu shot in the fall. I am in the 40% for whom the vaccine did not "match up" with the strains. And it has not been fun. I will spare you stories from fever delirium that I experienced for 48 hours. I will spare you that I was weepy because my throat hurt so badly I could have cried every time I had to swallow and it was too painful to sleep. Finally after five days of this I can talk again (kind of). I have turned a corner. Thank God. I started the Tamiflu just under the 48 hours into it they recommend. I am hoping this is helping to shorten the duration. I never want to have the flu again. It is a terrible thing. And now, please enjoy some photos I took on my cell phone. (And yes, I did get to see VP Biden! He addressed our conference for more than an hour. His passion on the topic of ending violence against women is palpable. It was a real treat.)

a sense of place

Charles B. Wang Center, Stony Brook University

Happy Saturday! I am back from a 39 hour whirlwind trip to a one and a half day conference. Five hours down and six hours back thanks to some city traffic getting through NYC - it was well worth the time and energy. I ended up doing all the driving, and had to get some "city driving" on in parts, but all is well and I am home for what I hope is a relaxing weekend. The conference was held at Stony Brook University in a beautiful building called The Wang Center. There were several exhibitions going in the gallery spaces, and there were interesting and beautiful indoor fountains throughout the building. I love water fountains! It was a great setting for a conference of just a couple hundred people. And the food was good, to boot.

Why did I title this post "a sense of place?" I think it is because I really liked the center where the conference was housed. Asian art abounded from several different cultures and times. The sound of water flowing, the light, the design . . . was expansive. It was a perfect place to think and learn. I also feel a sense of place being home after a relatively long drive in a short space of time. Think about sense of place. It is both grounding and freeing at the same time. Cheers.

road tripping

The New Yorker - Bruce Eric Kaplan

I am off on a work trip tomorrow with three other colleagues I don't know all that well. I am the main driver as I am the one that rented the vehicle. The conference we are going to should be very interesting. Even though it is nice to travel with others, seeing this cartoon gave me a pang of missing the days when I traveled a lot for my old job (by myself).[That is a strange pang, because I really don't miss all that travel...] It is a different kind of travel - kind of an adventure - when you can be alone with your thoughts or the music of your choice. It is a bit more tiring to travel with others that you don't know well. I hope I can hold up my end doing the small talk thing. Would it be inappropriate to start out with "WTF is all this support for Donald Trump?! I am scared out of my mind. Who are these people?" and let it fly from there? Heck, it is only a 5 hour trip one way. Down tomorrow, and back late Friday. Ciao.

mindfulness and nyc

W. 81st St.

Central Park - Shadows and Light

Central Park Reservoir

Gothic Bridge Central Park 

Episcopal Church of the Heavenly Rest

Here are a few photos from my jaunt to NYC this past Thursday/Friday. It was a quick trip with a lot packed into about 31 hours. The purpose of the trip was to hear Jon Kabat-Zinn talk about the healing and transformative potential of mindfulness. The lecture was held at Symphony Space on the upper west side of Manhattan, and I found a cool hotel for my friend and I to stay at that was within a 20 minute walk to the theatre. We had a very smooth trip into the city (with a stop at a great diner in Goshen, NY) and had time to walk around and have a light dinner before getting in line for the 7-10 p.m. event. We were near the beginning of the line and were lucky enough to be sitting in the fourth row dead center of the lovely 765-seat theatre. I can't do justice to describing how amazing the event was. I didn't look at my watch one time (and even if I had, as Kabat-Zinn joked, it would have still been "now.") He incorporated meditation practice into the lecture and wove in poems by Rumi, Dickinson, Rilke, Keats, Machado, Oliver (quoted my favorite... The Summer Day), and one poet that I really want to remember, someone I didn't know, whose poem wrecked me. Daniel or David perhaps with a double surname - who wrote with a Buddhist theme of not missing your life now by thinking about the future or past.

After the show, we had a glass of wine at the hotel bar and rested amazingly well. We decided that our due diligence would be to take a relatively silent walking meditation of as much of Central Park as we could walk before needing coffee and a bagel. We walked for about 90 minutes on a warm, sunny and breezy morning, covered a lot of ground, and I worked really hard to keep photo-taking to a minimum in order to be truly in the moment. I couldn't help myself a few times, but that's okay.Now I have a few souvenirs/ reminders of good practice. Afterward, we had the best bagel and coffee, and then we headed back.

There is so much diversity in New York City. The past few years with my old job, I would go to the busier part of Manhattan and to Brooklyn every November. I love the relative quiet and beauty of the upper west side. I imagine living there for a year. It would be really nice. 

Oh! And I almost forgot! On the car ride down, I got to see an enormous bald eagle perched in a tree on Route 17 heading east. It was unbelievably beautiful.

So that is my last couple of days. I am off to work the concessions stand at the high school this afternoon while the school hosts a state soccer tournament. We had a dusting of snow this morning that has now melted, but it is still pretty cold out there. Hoping for no injuries on the field. I am ready to serve some hot chocolate and hot dogs. Ciao!

truths and the everyday

Jessica Hagy - thisisindexed.com

Hello blogosphere. If you happen to be stopping by, I hope you are doing well. We have been enjoying abnormally warm for November (and welcome) temperatures in the 60s this past week. I haven't written in this space in more than a week - hard to believe. I am having a bit of a lazy Saturday morning before heading off for a visit with friends. My yoga teacher is unfortunately sick and so there is no class this morning.

Last weekend we saw a great movie called The 46ers. Recommend. Halloween was fun. We never did carve our other pumpkin, so it sits on the porch as an autumn decoration. We had quite a few trick-or-treaters, but still we managed to have leftover candy. Tragic, I know. And the spouse has given up sugar again, so let's just say I have had more than my share of Skittles (minus the green yucky ones) and Sour Patch Kids in the past week.

The week was fairly busy at work. I showed a film on campus Thursday evening called The Hunting Ground. If you haven't heard of it, it is an expose of sexual assault on college campuses and how some colleges have done an incredibly poor and shockingly unethical job of handling reports. It will be shown on CNN on November 19th. Catch it if you can. It is by the same makers of The Invisible War from a couple of years ago - available on Netflix. This is the subject matter that I work with at work quite often. The added excitement came when the location of the screening had to be closed for the evening due to toxic fumes from a construction project. The announcement came at 4:30 p.m. and the film was set for 7 p.m. I knew quite a few faculty members were bringing classes or offering it for extra credit, and I had worked on getting the film in our library collection with presentation rights for months, so with the help of a colleague, we got it rescheduled to another location, blasted email and social media location changes and put signs up on all the doors of the lecture hall that had closed. We managed to get about 175 in attendance in the new location. That was pretty great.

The next day, yesterday, I gave a talk as part of a Women Working Together community lunch and lecture series. I had written my notes last Sunday and practiced them once to be sure I wasn't over the 30 minutes, and actually was quite nervous about doing it. Public speaking on a training topic is something very comfortable for me. I do it all the time. Public speaking about myself - personal stuff- is definitely outside my comfort zone. I have only ever done one other talk like this a few years ago in my home town for one of my mother's social groups, and I talked about open adoption, so it really wasn't "all about me." As it turned out, not having over-practiced worked to my advantage. I had some friends in the audience and they put me at ease. I decided to tap into the inner calm that we all have, smile, and I just spoke from my heart (and glanced at my notes). I even read a few of my poems. I had never read any of my poems out loud in public before. It was fun! I ended it by reading my all time favorite poem, The Summer Day, by Mary Oliver. It ended up going well and yesterday afternoon I felt a very nice TGIF relief that was greater than most weeks.

So today we are off on a jaunt to visit some old friends. Tomorrow I have tickets to a fundraiser kitchen tour, and later in the week I head to NYC with a friend to see Jon Kabat-Zinn. Good things are ahead, and I am trying to keep all my attention on all that is right now. I will try to check in when I can.

beach self

it is a lucky thing
to experience beach self.

you know the self...
that one that throws on
yesterday's tee shirt
because it's still pretty clean
the one that walks along cool sand
in bare feet
at 6 a.m. watching the sky
brighten
as the sun rises higher.

whoever you may briefly pass
along the walk
is experiencing beach self too
so all is needed is a quick hello
or nod or maybe no greeting at all.

it doesn't matter
who is a wall street executive or
a new widow
or a worker on a coveted vacation.
beach self is precious and levels all.

beach self swims in the cool ocean
lets her hair air dry all crazy
and takes Instagram photos of waves
and birds
and everything she tries to keep.

everyone has a beach self --
if only they can get to an ocean
loving the sounds of the sea roaring
ocean salty air blowing gently
waves pulsing here here here

like breath inside us
coming in and out
whether we are tired or rested
hungry or full
poor or comfortable
in pain or in joy or in peace.
mind occupied or empty.

wave after wave
one foot in front of the other
walking the sand
avoiding sharp things
and sea weed.

gulls fish and flutter and fly
sandpipers poke and scramble
sea birds sometimes cry out.

we vaguely listen.

© nan, 2015



[Note: I started this poem on my phone this past week. It is a work in progress.]

meanderings by the sea

It's a small thing, but I do it every time I take vacation. The watch comes off and doesn't go back on the wrist until it's time. Today, it's time.

How lucky can a person get? We had a trip to Lake George for family reunion and northern NYS college visits at the end of June, I had a jaunt to Vermont and back in July, a week in the Adirondacks with family, and then this past week, the three of us enjoyed a generous accommodation right on the Nantucket Sound on Cape Cod for a few days, thanks to Tom's sister and her husband. I won't complain that it could have been a full week, but due to the teen's golf team schedule, it ended up being just three days plus travel time, because those three beach days were heavenly. I got back in touch with my beach self, and getting in touch with her should hold me for a while.

Tom and Matt went on a fishing charter one day, and went golfing with a friend another day. That gave me some alone time that I really relish.We met up with college friends over ice cream one evening. I imbibed the sounds of the waves, which we could hear from our unit day and night.

Each morning I woke up before the seagulls and I got to watch the many colors of the ocean for as far as the eye could see throughout the day from various vantage points. I didn't get a lot of exercise like in the Adirondacks, but we did manage a few beach walks where I took a gazillion photos. A highlight was going out to a nice dinner one evening with a gift certificate that Tom's sister had given us at Christmas. It was at a really great restaurant that won a "Best of Cape Cod" this year. 

I read a perfect vacation book that has been around since 1990, called Circle of Friends by Maeve Binchy. What an enjoyable read full of interesting characters. It isn't every day you get to read something with a character named Nan it is. Unfortunately, it was hard to like Nan in this story. If you've read it, you know what I mean. I guess a movie came out based on the book back in the 90s, but I never saw it. I had heard it wasn't nearly as good as the book, so I put it on my skip list. I might check in out now though just to decide for myself.

So now the vacation time I had saved accruals all year for due to the job change has been taken. I give a Sunday evening presentation to a student athlete group this evening and it's back to work tomorrow.

Today, it was time to put the watch back on. As it slides a little on my wrist, there is no tan line, and I can still hear the sounds of the waves if I try really hard.

method of entry

the only way to get in
is to first walk in quickly
(no backing up; no pausing to acclimate)

then start to run, with big splashes
and before you can
stop the momentum
take a shallow forward dive
in and under
the cold water

jump into the air
and then pop back down in again
moving around quickly

exhale and inhale
powerfully
make some noise
(mostly joyful with some
genuine shock and alarm)

an august swim
in an adirondack lake

there is nothing like it


© nan, 2015

meanderings

Hello! Wow, it has been awhile since I have sat down at the keyboard to jot down a few thoughts or share a few images. We were away the first week in August and my intention was to mostly unplug, and I mostly did. I didn't even bring my laptop, and I had very little cell phone service unless I took a walk to the end of the dock. The place where we stayed had WiFi, though, so I did play some Words With Friends and hopped onto email, Instagram and Facebook a couple of times. Last week was very busy being back at work. This is the first chance I have had to sign on here at JPP.

The week in the Adirondacks was really lovely. The weather was perfect -- low to mid 70s, virtually no rain, a cold lake to swim in, tennis, mountain climbing, good food, and the camaraderie of family. We are very lucky to be able to spend the time together. The teen enjoyed his cousins. We got dressed up one evening and went to dinner, and otherwise took turns cooking. There were between 8 and 15 of us at any given time. It was great. I got to see some beautiful birds... a loon, a cormorant, a wood thrush, a great blue heron, and others. I was able to take a few paddles in the canoe. All in all it was a really healthy, active, enjoyable week -- one that I really needed and appreciated after not taking more than two days off in about a year. A job change will do that. I took many, many photos. Here are just a few. You get the idea. 

highway flowers

the highway flowers

along route 67 east

are the prettiest wildflowers

i've ever seen

periwinkle blues, 

shiny lemon yellows,

golden brown-eyed susans

and bright wispy queen anne's lace

daisies and bright orange day lilies

cat tails with all shades

of greens and browns 

sprinkle a patchwork spectrum

all the while,

high telephone wires

pull me

forward, faster, faster,

like a spaceship 

hurtling
horizontal
through a starry night sky

- the beauty whizzing by

© nan, 2015

back together

Going all the way back to 2006, this is Citizen Cope singing Back Together here on WJPP. (Thanks, YouTube.) I had a whirlwind weekend traveling to Vermont and back in a day and a half. I managed to not stop at all on the 4 and 1/2 hours there. Great tunes, a peanut butter sandwich and thermos of black coffee fueled me. I enjoyed the annual picnic with my former colleagues and the many families we worked with. It was fun. On the way home yesterday, I was really happy to have dinner with my folks and spend the night there (in my old bedroom, no less). I saw my nieces and nephews this morning for brunch before heading home again. My traveling companions included Mark Knopfler, Nirvana, Annie Lennox, and a couple of WFUV sampler CDs. One of the samplers featured this old favorite. Enjoy.

I arrived home to 90+ degree weather. This was my first occasion to get in and float in the (unheated) pool, and to my delight, this nice waiter brought me a Warsaw Mule in a copper mug to help me float away travel stress. We now wait for thunder storms and a busy week ahead. How summer flies. I wish it would slow down just a little. Be well.

serpent charmer

WJPP spinning you a catchy tune by Iron and Wine for a Friday evening. This is Serpent Charmer. I like the notes of world music mixed with Americana. This has some momentum to carry you past the end of a long work week into a full-paced and hopefully nice weekend. I am off on a bit of a jaunt tomorrow and will see my parents on my way back home again. Our teen got a new summer job and starts tomorrow so he and Tom will hold down the fort while I gallivant. What I hoped would be a family trip will be me in the car with a freshly loaded bunch of CDs and many miles to go on winding roads. The two of them took a nice camping trip last weekend while I kept the home fires burning. Be back soon! I'll be back Sunday, perhaps with some pretty photos to share.

away and home

Checking in here at the blog after five days of family travel. We like taking a little road trip when the school year ends. It marks summer as started. We began a roundabout of northern NYS by heading first to Lake George for a reunion of Tom's siblings and cousins over the weekend ... good fun ... followed by two college visits to Northern NY colleges on Monday and Tuesday that the teen might consider applying to this fall.

These were our first college visits and we managed to visit with friends in both locations. We arrived home last night, tired from many hours in the car and four nights of strange beds and pillows, and the work-morning routine presented a rude awakening when I could have used a day to catch up. Instead, I will catch up a little at a time in the evenings.

Here are a few snaps from the travels. I enjoyed time at Lake George and Lake Champlain. We managed to see some cool art at both campuses.

We have my family visiting this coming weekend, so onto the next summer gathering! I will stop here as I can. 

#artiseverywhere

I had to travel for work earlier this week. I wasn't really up for it but I got to stay at a very cool old hotel, my favorite type of hotel actually. This was the shower head and I thought it was pretty in the light.

thanksgiving

If you have wandered by today, Happy Thanksgiving! Where I live, snow is lightly falling, and it is quite pretty out there. We are traveling to Tom's brother's home today down in Allentown, PA, about three hours away. They got much more snow than we did yesterday. The weather patterns continue to be so odd... after three earlier snows this past month, we actually had mid-60 degree weather just Monday, and everything looked quite green again. Today? probably 4-6 inches of fluffy snow... again.

Who doesn't love a day that focuses on one's blessings? Last weekend, we celebrated my parents' 50th wedding anniversary with a nice dinner party for just family. It was a lot of fun. This coming Saturday, we will gather for a family photo with a photographer we weren't able to book on the same day as the dinner. The last time we had a formal photo taken, the youngest kids were very young, so it was a bit stressful. This time, it should be more fun.

So many things come to mind as I focus on gratitude today. I am thankful that I am reading a great book that helps keep my emotions in check when I have visceral reactions to the injustice of what has happened with the grand jury the Ferguson, MO case or when I read news pieces about the Ebola epidemic. I can do what I can do to be mindful, loving and kind, and speak out for justice when and how I can. It beats powerlessness. (The Places That Scare You, y'all.)

I am thankful that we will gather with Tom's family today. It will be bittersweet, missing Tom's brother Charlie who died this past summer. It will be our first Thanksgiving without him, and he loved this holiday. I plan to have an extra dessert in his honor. He would have liked that. He was quite a character.

I feel quite lucky to be making a job change. My last day of the job I have had for the last three and a half years was yesterday. My remaining days there are going to be paid out as vacation days, and I start my new position on Monday. I have had to move all my files and programs from my work laptop to my older, slower notebook computer. (A new computer may be in my future. Not sure if I can truly handle this.)

Certainly I am thankful for the Internet and the ability to be quiet with my thoughts as often as I can make time. I enjoy reading blogs, listening to music, reading poems, and writing in this space. Even the hackers can't get me down. As I was trying to load Skype on my personal computer so that I can keep in touch with one of my clients who is out in California (my choice to do as a volunteer), I was not paying close attention and got fooled by a phony Skype download which put some malware on my computer including a proxy server. Argh. I have been working for hours trying to remove it and correct it and I am hopeful that the malicious programmers were not able to get saved passwords. Here's hoping. These malware programs are tricky, and as tech-savvy as I like to think I am, this is beyond my level of knowledge.

Well, it seems I am making up for lost time in writing a long post this morning. I need to pack, exercise, get the teen up and moving and we have to get on the road. I will close with a link to a previous Thanksgiving post...and within it you will find some of my favorite Thanksgiving prayers/ blessings / quotes. (After all, this is a #TBT, and I am throwing it back to 2007!) Peace.