And it fades

  Morning above Arbanassi, Bulgaria

There's still laundry out from the trip, vestiges of the Black Sea tan. In R's fridge, one final bottle of Bulgarian champagne and probably still some leva (or stutinki) in a pocket, somewhere.

With the final threads of a perfect trip, and imagination, will hold onto Bulgaria a little longer but I can feel New York taking hold. It's turning to fall here and that seasonal switch is a rigorous one.

Labor Day watershed.

C - nostalgic 

What arrowheads are to us

"All archaeologists working in the area have already joined their colleagues at the site, and are working without rest, adrenaline rushing through their veins."
- From Sofia News Agency, "Bulgarians Unearth Unique Thracian Gold Treasure"

Bulgaria's ancient culture made front pages elsewhere (though not registering on our own domestic screens).

Thracian priestess burial mound found on Black Sea Coast, just south of Sinemorets, not far from Veleka River head. Thracian = 3rd cen. BC., found intact - an univestigated mound left alone for over 2000 years.

R and I were there two weeks ago. Just a little early and without our Thracian tomb radar on, we drove right by the mount.

What they found, and this is even more stunning if you're getting the frequency that these tombs are being turned up, is an intact burial chamber full of lovely things to accompany a priestess on her journey into the underworld.



(What we don't know about Bulgaria could fill more than one Thracian tomb.)

C - hoping priestess reached and reigns

Not yet celebrated

 
Nessebar (Black Sea Coast), interior The Church of St Stephen

I've spent too many bulgaria posts dwelling on the ideosynchrosies of an ancient country poised to join the EU in 2007, and maybe not enough on its very rich, too little known, and everywhere evident history.

Which is plain lazy of me I suppose - like the guide book writer pointing out the horse cart beside the SUV, juxtapositions aren't exactly journalism.

So, we're celebrating from here on in.

And starting with this gem of a church in Nessebar. Painting to the rafters and I had it to myself to wander.

Love, and much respect, C 

Signs

Diligently pitched into our modern era (on course for EU inclusion next year), signs of the new Bulgaria are about.

Bigger-than-Sam's-Club super stores on city's outskirts.
Swankier-than-our-own gas station shops stocking liquors and gourmet coffee.
Little girls dressing like Nicole Richie.
Japanese tourists.

To the mix add SUVs. Fortunately and like their western counterparts, they keep to urban areas while in the countryside, soviet-era cars continue do the heavy lifting.

And displaying.

(Out of shot but the mellon-purveyor-car-owner was shifting produce from the front seats to the back display as I walked up.)

C missing Sozopol, as is R

Treats on wooden sticks

The way Cracker Jacks might make me nostalgic, these sugar squirrels in an Etara shop window took R right back.

Which, in turn, made me sort of misty for a past I couldn't possibly have had, not having been raised behind the curtain that separated R's childhood from my own.

That his boy-years had featured treats like these - more mid-19th century than late 20th.

Cracker Jacks pale. (Madeleines come to mind.)

C

Bulgarian Bagpipes

A great deal of uncertainty, conflict and controversy surrounds the questions of the origins, evolution and distribution of bagpipes. At risk of throwing gasoline on the fire, the following opinions and speculations (with stress on those words) are offered here.
from: Hotpipes: Some notes on the history of the Bagpipe


Because he's a romantic, and possibly very old, soul, and because there's some tartan in the genes, my father has always had a thing for bagpipes.

Perhaps many do.

(I've seen bag-piping men amidst small-town-America parades, awkwardly abroad in kilts and knee-socks.)

With our hereditary link and gross-cultural-assumptions, we'd never questioned that a bagpipe was a Scottish thing. We imagined, I suppose, that the highland shepherds must have muddled into the making of the first with a stretch of hours, a goatskin, some pipes.

R entered our lives and set us straight.

Apparently, Bulgaria's charted a parallel claim - it's own very rich folk/traditional music heritage filled full of bagpipes.

Which would make some sense as their land supports a similar cast of shepherds, pastoral farmers and gypsies amongst whom (it's said) the instrument is much favored.

Dad remains a sceptic so for him, and the rest of the Scott-attributors, I post these photos as evidence.

C (adding fuel)

Bulgarian marketing

 

A wine display in the beachside cafe.

R reports the tag line is:

From my land.


C - bossed into wine-drinking 

Live and let

A favorite quote from Bulgraia Blue Guide's, James Pettifer:

"...Bulgarians are generally broad-minded, moderately hedonistic and tolerant."

He refers to family and relationships, but I'd say the Bulgarian live-let-live (have a rakia, lose the top, park on the highway if there's a phone call to take) spirit runs through more.

Walking the eastern sea-edge of Sozopol's old town one evening glanced down (pretty light on the beach) and spot these guys.

If they were aware of how vividly, symbolically, eve-affirmingly picaresque they were, they didn't let on.
They never looked up from beers or game.



C - toasting Bulgaria, though sadly not from a table amidst the evening-tide.

Bulgarian bagpipes

The way Cracker Jacks might make me nostalgic, these sugar squirrels in an Etara shop window took R right back.

Which, in turn, made me sort of misty for a past I couldn't possibly have had, not having been raised behind the curtain that separated R's childhood from my own.

That his boy-years had featured treats like these - more mid-19th century than late 20th.

Cracker Jacks pale. (Madeleines come to mind.)

C

Fish sausages, jams and lace

R, father Vladimir, and I returned from the Black Sea yesterday. R and I are very tan and a little fatter. We have only a Bulgarian day left.

We came home the long way - mapped so that I'd have extreme exposure to history and sites. First along the Black Sea coast north of Sozopol to Nesebar, then inland, across majestic gold fields that could be any stunningly bucolic land where Americans spend lots of money and compose books about living off the grid amongst the locals (by authors with last names starting with "M").



Whereas the Black Sea Coast is - at its most popular beaches - package tourist-to-sweaty-shoulder by package tourist (not so much Sozopol, but generally), the acres just inland are untouched and un-populated save for the shepherd, or the scant evidence of a farmer - a Vlada parked by a field. No pick-up trucks here, the eastern european tin/cardboard autos-of-old continue to boldly service the agricultural community. The Vlada-by-the-field motif is a quick location check - this is not Provence).

Cross these Thracian Plains then take a right and pass north through the Balkans (mountains), on a road built by the Bulgarian youth in the 50's. There's a monument to the teen-builders at a high pass: brave, brawny and stunningly patriotic.

Then you arrive at Arbanassi, where we spend our night in a farmhouse hotel...

But that's for another post, I should get this up while I still have battery.

And with so many Bulgarian stories to tell.

C in Sofia...

beaches and sand

Sozopol - view from our hotel towards Old Town.
(From favorite guide, conservative with compliments save for when writing up local liquors: "...a remarkable and evocative little town with some of the most attractive and best preserved buildings on the whole Black Sea Coast.")

And in case they get a mention no where else on this blog:
all hail Bulgarian PEACHES.
God smiled on the fruit trees of this country...

From sozopol

SOZOPOL

R insists he told me Sozopol but I'm quite sure i heard "Varna". No matter, we're in the former - so no dracula sitings and a much lovelier, charming-er and smaller Black Sea-side town to report from.

I'm on a clunky hotel computer with a faded keyboard, so can't get my own photos up yet, but leave reders with yesterday's favorite word.

stutinki

100 stutinki = 1 lev (bulgarian currency).

C - wishing the country was even cheaper so I got to say "stutinki" a lot more

Off

To where cars are made of cardboard and the bacteria's a national treasure.

And to where dear R, Maria and Vladimir wait.

More soon, possibly from a Balkan land (or possibly from JFK).

Love

C

A plume too many

When Mountbatten was Commander of the British Navy in the Mediterranean, spit and polish often allowed the British to outshine other fleets, Lady Pamela observes:

"Our pageantry is so marvelously done because it doesn't become comic opera," she noted.
"With some nations, it's too over the top - one plume to many."
From "Born a Lady" in W Magazine

(Context: Mountbatten was Lady Pamela's father, the Last Viceroy of India, friend to Gandhi and Nehru, rumored to have shared his wife's affection with the latter.
Lady Pamela is widow of late interior designer David Hicks, mother to designer Ashley Hicks and social beauty and sometimes coffee-table-book auteur, India Hicks.)

Bend of the twig

(back of car picnic with with dad and linds in trunk, turkey 1974)

“How odd that one bends one's own twig
and it stays bent.

Who could have foreseen the permanent effect of childhood journeys ... "

- Martha Gellhorn, Travels with Myself and Another

(read it all though, quotes no substitute)

Of wind, the waves and train travel

Aboard 12:45 Empire Line (last stop Albany, mine Hudson)

All the way up the Hudson's run brown, slashed with whitecaps. (Surmise: river's taken this less-traveled mid-week day to attend to its own business of churning, too few passers-by the get blue and pretty for.)

Now, as the train stops just out of Rhinecliff (near empty and compartment sad quiet now that the ladies doing crosswords aloud have disembarked), it starts to snow.

More aware these days of my luck, to have this split city/country life. I travel weekly and so anticipate train trips as a matter of course. I still feel a pull back towards whichever habitat I've just left. But it passes and my attentions are amplified like a tourist's in the new one.

Like hurdling to and fro between plots across a fence - before one side's hinted at losing luster - BAM – I'm on the other.

Encased in the gray-brown world of this Wednesday's Hudson landscape, en route home to country portion of my week, I miss the city a little in this in-between stage. It's fresher and I wonder at the parochialness of what I see. To other passengers, thinly, discreetly scattered through the train, I think:
“City for the whole week: too much for you?"

C - waiting for own stop.

Jet-lagged spirit

"Here I am, safely returned over those peaks
from a journey far more beautiful and strange
than anything I had hoped for or imagined -
how is it that this safe return brings such regret?"

- Peter Matthieson

C - Legs bowed round phantom sheepskin saddle, notebook smelling of eucalyptus, sipping crude Starbucks stand-in for cafe con leche.

Horse stage, delayed

Cintra and the eucalyptus

3 days on the estancia = 6+ horse hours, making me some sort of middling novice.

Considering the hours were logged crossing eucalyptus-edged, roadless pampas, once pursued by the wild-maned stud-steed, once witnessing cattle called to mass by a human's bellow, perhaps they count for more?

And after the hours astride: the unsaddling.

(Indulge me, I took up no one's time in my teenage years. Having sat out the Black-Beauty/Misty stage, the animal's blissfully new.)

Returning a horse to its natural state after a ride taps something primal. It encapsulates man's history with the animal in a morning's span: saddle, domesticate, control and then unsaddle, un-bridle and, with the gate unlatched - return to freedom as if the imbalance can be re-righted daily.

C - suffering that "horse thing" too late for sleep-away camp

Uruguay: discuss

"Meat is what remains,
when nothing else is left."
- Unknown (assuming Uruguayan/Argentine persuasion)

More meat posts to come. Como no when reporting from a land of herd-dotted hills, where life centers on the asado (grill) and steak knives out-number butter.

C

Meat remains

"Meat is what remains,
when nothing else is left."
- Unknown (assuming Uruguayan/Argentine persuasion)

More meat posts to come. Como no when reporting from a land of herd-dotted hills, where life centers on the asado (grill) and steak knives out-number butter.

C

Gaucho time

Sylvera.
First mate gaucho of El Alamo, lover of 3 ladies, ex-husband of 2, gaucho swagger exuding.

"The Gauchos, or countrymen, are very superior to those who reside in the towns. The Gaucho is invariably most obliging, polite, and hospitable: I did not meet with even one instance of rudeness or inhospitality. He is modest, both respecting himself and country, but at the same time a spirited, bold fellow."

- Charles Darwin, The Voyage of the Beagle


In a land of 3.5 million people amidst 8 million plus cattle and a half million some horses, the gaucho is - by necessity - king.

Uruguay's two official times reflect the phenomenon. Estancia owners (landed gentry), city folk and deinzens of the decandent-but-Uruguay-unrelated Punta del Este observe one time. The gauchos, along with the country's sheep, cows, horses and flocks, are one hour behind (not recognizing daylight savings).

Cattle-time = goucho time.



And that's not all.

Time spent on an estancia requires a gaucho glossary.

Boleadores (or Las Tres Marias): leather wrapped metal or stone balls tethered to a leather thong used to bring down cattle, ostrich or - in the day - wayward indians.
Bombacha - the natty wide top, tight legged gaucho traousers.
Domidor: Gaucho subduer of horses. A multi-step/year process that produces horses with hair-trigger reflexes suited to the game of polo and novice riders.
Facon: Gaucho knife, tucked in the back of the Bombacha pants.
Yerra: The complete process, done in one swoop, of branding/dehorning/castrating young cattle. ("In autumn and when the moon is waning, branding is carried out in every cattle breeding establishment in the country.")



C - missing gauching it up (R's term)

Casa Puebla: An ego in plaster

Witness to the folly

Sr. Carlos Paez Vilaro claims title of Uruguay's leading artist - still churning out at 81. His early work is whimsical, colors bright and stock of images: fish, suns and moons, universally pleasant and benign.

But what was once artistic whimsy, and a wanderlust that took him to Tahiti, Spain (for requisite portrait with Picasso), and African airports where his murals hover over departure lounges, has faded. In the blurry celuloid journey thrust on visitors to his "fantasy" home cum landmark cum museum cum hotel - Casa Pueblo - the symbols all but lose their magic.

What's left disipates as you wander Casa Pueblo itself - a Gaudi-esque (his claim) confection of bumpy plaster teetering above a dramatic shoreline south of Punta.

And the charm tips to repulsion as you realize this "museum", incased in his architectural folly, is no more than a glorfied giftshop. His symbols morphed into pure commerce objects of astrology signs (for sale), posters, cheaply produced dinner plates and mugs.

Casa Pueblo, Punta del Este

C - pro-artist, pro-folly, sad for art reduced to ashtray decals during an artist's own lifetime

Punta's hand

A joke that never weathers, a photo op not missed -

Punta de Este's beach(ed) hand.

C

En route to La Boca, BA

Boy, bust banana



Young silouette


Tango tools

(Working backwards, no real order, as I get through photos and maintain a connection)

C - somewhat sunburnt, La Barra Uruguay

City tells its past

"The city, however, does not tell its past,



but contains it like the signs of a hand,
written in the corners of streets,



the gratings of the windows, the banisters of the steps,
the antennae of the lightning rods,



the poles of the flags,
every segment marked in turn with scratches, indentations, scrolls."

Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities

A gaucho's breakfast

Uruguay, Punta del Este

Late, blasted north across the massive Rio de Plata by aggressive winds, wet and packed into a station wagon Avis surely wouldn´t claim as its own, we arrived Punta late yesterday afternoon.

Our estancia hosts-to-be, Jasja´s parents, came for breakfast this morning. Jasja´s father, a distinguished, supremely accomplished player of the world´s business games, scoffed at our breakfast of coffee and baguettes. The fussy pouring of meuseli over yogurt.

Fixing R´s little cup of coffee in his stern gaze, Raymond announced:
"On the estancia, we´ll teach you to drink mate."

R pursed his lips (having tasted the bitter brew at Cin and Ian´s).

"The gauchos eat no vegetables, have no breakfast - only mate," he continued. "You´ll try when you arrive, so we can separate the men from the boys..."

C - intimidated/fascinated to meet horse-wrangling tea drinkers

Buenos Aires

"This city that I believed was my past ,
is my future, my present ;
the years I have spent in Europe are an illusion ,
I always was (and will be) in Buenos Aires."
- Jorge Luis Borges, "Arrabal", from Fervor de Buenos Aires (1921)
(the man who first put BA on my map)

Late this Sunday eve, R and I depart for Buenos Aires to visit Cintra and Ian, who have bought a remarkable apartment down there and set up a remarkable life.

They write, they explore, keep an excellent blog , make many friends, learn to take a long time cooking meat (and eating a meal), buy fantastically cheap but not cheap clothes, live in the flip world of our seasons and ski in August, master Spanish including elusive subjunctive, and do all of this just one hour behind us.

Intrigued, already overwhelmed by how much we'll see and the wonders that Cin and Ian will reveal, and anticipating the ache of why-can't-we-live-multiple-lives-in multiple-places coming on...

Last saw Cin into a taxi in the West Village many months back. Now she's almost a dual citizen of that other land.

Cin + Ian in a brand new context - will report.

C (your woman in BA, then Uruguay...)

Really

P1010262
Originally uploaded by Circa.

With a crap camera (now lost) - the view from the toilet of #5, Cocos Hotel, Antigua.

Really.

Why return's just not that easy.

C - mourning

Happy 2006, Antigua

Cocos Hotel, Jolly Harbor, Antigua

from December 29th (1 day into our 3 days of no luggage)
No tv, no radio, and the magazines almost finished. What freedom. No newspapers either.

(Obviously, this radio silence is impure - I'm posting - so there's internet - so news does get through - it's just not sought...)

The days, strangely, fly. They feel more filled, or more substantially filled out, by the sturdiness of the activities: reading (a whole book: the lovely bones), kayaking (not to far shore but far enough that we sweat the return, that perhaps sensible boundaries have been gone-beyond), grocery shopping for the necessities the not-yet-arrived luggage deprived of, eating – because it's lunch or dinner and you really are hungry - the swimming and shell collecting and life-living having done their thing.

New years in Antigua is astounding - even better than on paper.

C - typing in a bikini, drinking a beer, ashine with optimism if 2006 maintains this tenor.

Tropical Handel

The shack down the beach from our hotel had a 12 piece steel drum band going at itthrough this first day.

(The hung-over were duly outraged - subdued-like.)

Their repertoir ranged - there's little a steel drum can't do, instruments it can't stand-in for.

Most surprising: The Messiah (followed by Hotel California).

C - sort of getting it

You shall know, by inhabiting

Taking this back for a second, this entry from my notes of the first night.

October 31 (first night in the house)
On the screened porch. Chilly, but with wine, cigarettes and candle. Feel like a lucky interloper in a space not yet mine.

The traffic on 9G's quieted.
Carrie Haddad (former owner) just called - distressed to reach me at her number.
I told her they'd switch the landline soon.
She said, “I hope so.” And hung up.
Hard to like a woman/former owner who leaves an oven so grease-coated I can't begin to see through the window. Hard to warm.

Enjoying first night. Now. Now that I've unravelled a can opener out of the “Cutlery” box in the no-order barn and eaten soup from the can.

Rusticating. Wish I'd pioneer-ed properly and opened the soup with one of those “G” shaped blades rather than the OXO thing.
Vannessa D'aou on, no call from R yet.
Can hear the train but see no lights from here.
No headlights either, a relief. Hate to find they cross the front rooms like search lights.
From this evening, amidst my skeleton set-up of 2 tables, 3 chairs, 4 rugs – I'm enjoying the space.
Or, maybe, I'm enjoying putting things away.
Alba's “Congratulations Courtney” is on the slate board. Miscellaneous candles lit throughout to dispel the sad staleness of Nick's (former owner) smoke.
He smoked with abandon the last few days of clean-up – he'd been relegated to the porch for the 20 years of inhabiting the house. I imagine I'd have too. Like a final pee for ownership.

With my few things on ledges and counters - soaps in the bathrooms, my saint and some books - it feels like we're (me + house) growing together. A little.
A dog would help. Even a fish might I imagine.

I feel like I've come through every ringer this last weekend. House + Circa Trade shop + car.

Probably the most dramatic for its actual danger angle was driving back tonight from the shop this afternoon.

Just past 4 I realized I was doomed. Witching hour, daylight savings – darkness sure to fall before I reached home. Nothing to do but, with good-byes, head to the car and steel for the drive south, home.

As I'd feared (hunched forward in tense anticipation of this new inevitable), I passed my driveway. Surprise, it comes upon you, surprise you're already past it.
I pulled off onto the narrow slope of land tween 9G and my fence, tilted askew and blinker still going, and sat.
And thought – what would the seasoned driver do?
Cars passed. I sat. Hazards? Get out? Continue to next place to turn? Not sure if my reversing would freak out everyone and was the ONE thing you do not do as a driver.

(Note to self: Put big, bright, flashing lights on the barn. So I can see my target well in advance of over-shooting it.)

Can't sleep – continuing notes from the library floor atop high pile carpet, below comforter.
Feel fine now. Solved the bump in the night of the dryer buzzer. Callas only audible on the high notes.

Have realized why I'm drawn to buying properties then inhabiting them (vs. flipping).
It mimics travel.
Same rush, the leap, and the first terror as you come in low over an entirely new terrain that has no shred, yet, of you marking it. From the initial fear (it looks so gray, it could be any city, New York's finer), there's the why bother, how terrifying. And, for the most part, the terrains are indistinguishable (from the air) anyway. Hardly worth the effort, stay home.
But.

You will know it by inhabiting it.

Save for sleep-away camp (though with hearsay and a brochure), I can't recall anything akin to the new home's leap into a life unknown.
(Even prep school had trial overnights with friend's older siblings, and college was an overflow of opinions, information, reputations and, again, the siblings). Even a car you may rent, read about, test, lease and borrow so as to know.

But, the largest of all commitments financially and impact-fully (discounting marriage, which does allow for test-drives, pre-nups and other back alleys), can only be known by inhabiting.

I can hear the train. It's tracing the Hudson's course a mile to my house's west.
(Will I live hear so long I know its direction by its whistle?)
And there's a plane – to Albany? North from the city on an arctic route?
And now a dog (whose?)
Traffic's thinned (thank god). Now just every few minutes.

I had to unplug the stove. A 1970's model baffling in its electronics. With a buzzer eternally set to a clock that circled back (eternally) to 4:11.

There are, indeed, NO lights out back. Which means (now I realize), I have no neighbors (just the road + frequent passers-by). If only I could shift my house from the road too and confirm our isolation by picking up our skirts and, showing some leg, and moving just west and inwards.

There's no guarantee of a clean oven even. For $411,000 you aren't guaranteed a clean oven.
Further: the light switches will be distributed irrationally (front door lights behind/within door of study), or askew, or link to nothing you can see.
Windowsills (between glass + frame) are strictly as is: peeling paint, abandoned pupa, residue of mowings.
The shower may/may not retain the worst sort of vestiges of owners past (and beneath the seat too).

For $411,000 you still get:
someone's last noodle, kidney bean, in the kitchen drain strainer.
The shower head dribbles and the brown (caulk, tub, faucets) will not just scrub.
No one looked behind the fridge, beneath the stove, at the far corners of the cabinets. There are still traces. No getting around, the house retains.

And here on the library floor (literally), I can now attest that no one painted the rough undersides of the pine shelves. You can see the coverage thin as they descend below eye-level.
The dog's hair won't come out from between floor and molding.
There's a Goosebumps sticker on one of the boy's room light switches. With finger nails and polish remover, I can just get it off but there will be residue.
The ceiling fixtures (did I not see them??), are ghastly. They represent an economy-sized generic that I'm now seeing throughout the house. Everything left behind is enormous, nameless, big box (to the 10 gallon bran + raisin box used for a BB target on the lower lawn). This “arty” couple I bought from was (pull back the curtain), cheap and updates were done on weekends, by hand and, possibly, decades ago. The rust was allowed to take, the contagion of brown across the dryer's top allowed to spread, the contact paper to shrivel back from its original points of contact.

It's all tired, old houses do get tired. Why would someone pass on a house without some decay, rot at its edges.

But, really, new home buyer addressed:
Would all this knowledge have changed anything?

No, no I'm sure not.

For, like travel after all. Can only know by inhabiting and so, by the process, know just a little more of the self.

C - now on the cusp of second month of ownership.

Carhart vs Babour

At the Far Hills Steeplechase Saturday - a muddy-medley of cultures colliding at the porta-potties; there only incidentally for the love of horses, most for betting, all for the drinking.

The majority gathered under one-room tents, a pick-up flanking the enclosure's back-side and ramparts of beer cases. This was a drinking event first-and-foremost - tail-gating vs race-attending. Clothing was utilitarian, layered, Carhart.

Atop the hill, the event's sponsor, Mercedes, had a series of wedding tents with garlanded chairs. Inappropriately-dressed corporate invitees listed into the sodden ground with drinks clenched. In a location farthest from the races, the horses – the sponsors indicated only a passing interest in the event. Within the Mercedes compound, the gathered turned away from the action, inwards around the bar in uncomfortable clutches.

Middle-tier were the country-folk: feigning squiredom in wellingtons and barbour jackets, patina-ed, range rover-driving, and implying authentic with every single malt, wishing they could just loose the hounds and be done with everyone else. These were the people of the tent R had been invited to - a corporate sponsorship of long enough standing (it appeared) that we were, in fact, there for the racing and actually track-side). The tent split itself nicely between the busy work of warming by drinks and watching the races themselves.

Steeplechase means the horses jump (over streams, hedges and gates). We saw some of this. Thrilling seeing the horses, the jockeys in their colors and skinny bow legs, the bugle call to start. I dressed silly/faux-equestrian part for the day and, for a few hours, was that Greenwich-girl who'd segued from horses to tennis to field hockey to just plain being insufferable, but with a wardrobe for every sport.

Fun, muddy, involving horses, red blazers and not at all like other Saturdays.


Now to learn to ride.


C

Juxtapositions, and other cultural contrasts

From The Parachute Artist: Have Tony Wheeler's guidebooks traveled too far?, Tad Friend, The New Yorker, April 18, 2005

“Even Lonely Planet, however, hasn't figured out a way to market its epiphanies other than by using the impoverished language of travel writing.

And so 'palm-fringed beaches' and lush rain forests and other 'sleepy backwaters' are invariably counterpoised against 'teeming cities' with their 'bustling souks'. Every region has a 'colorful history' and a 'rich cultural tapestry'.

And every place on earth is a 'land of contrasts'. As the Arabian Peninsula guide observes, 'Bedouin tribesmen park 4WDs alongside goat hair tents; veiled women chat on mobile phones while awaiting laser hair removal,' and so on.”

And from the latest LP Bulgaria:

"Bulgaria has changed swiftly over the last decade, though in the villages you can still find folk who ride the donkey to work, eat homegrown potatoes and make their own cheese. The difference now is that they wash it all down in front of a satellite TV."

C - in Starbucks on the upper west and observing altogether too little contrast

Rabidity is hokum

Little recently update-worthy on my upstate house purchase (in Germantown - can't claim Clermont). Inactivity on my end, and frantic packing on the owner's as they extract 20+ years of themselves.

I imagine they've been turned inwards for the past few months but, with our closing (minus key turnover) this Friday, a finality's seized the packing household and my spectre: owner/outsider, has entered the picture.

Suddenly, like parents assessing a child before the first day of pre-school, they've stepped outside their beloved home. To follow is an email I received from the husband-owner: a catalogue of the house's quirks so that the one-soon-in-the-world will find the transition smooth.

It reads like a love letter.

Dear Courtney,
Rather than burden everyone, especially you at the closing, and at the risk of me appearing overly emotional, there are a few things I think you should know about the house, barn and yard.

The barn, which I understand you are considering renovating, has a healthy returning colony of migratory bats. This is a very good thing, but not so if you have intentions of using the barn to display merchandise. Bats are more responsible for the pollination of fruit trees and flowers than bees, believe it or not as well as eating mosquitoes and other biting insects, as such we have very few of them. Rabidity is hokum, more chance of that with raccoons. I would suggest that once renovation starts you can coax the bats out of the barn with the simple addition of a bat box outside. I'd be happy to tell you how, as odd as this may seem, I belong to a conservation group specifically devoted to bats.

The large black locust in the front yard has a thriving honey bee hive in the lower trunk. It has been there almost 10 years and if not disturbed will be there for 10 more. Plus the smell is pure heaven when you get close. They don't sting either, just busy at what they do.

I'd also suggest putting up bird feeders front and back. During the winter the pine trees, lilac and forsythia are home to hundreds of cardinals, doves, chickadees, sparrows, titmouses etc. They come back every year and without us to feed them the winter can be very hard. Also they are delightful to watch, as you probably know already.

Second to last, there are 2 laid up stone wells, one off to the right of the burning/ compost area. Good to use if you plan a garden. The other is right off the front doors of the barn at the base of the apple tree. Should you plan on bringing water into the barn, that well would provide all that you would need. A shallow well pump is all that would be necessary.

Should you want to dig a small pond the area to the west of the barn below the brush line has water at about 2' so a pond would be an easy project. The clay below assists in the lining.

Short of that, we'll see you at the closing, and thanks for being patient with this note.
Regards,
N

C - overwhelmed + pro-bat