The trip to New Hampshire and Maine 2013

The Group!  21 years after college graduation.

 It’s now become an annual tradition to meet up with my former college friends in the summer. This year we went to NH to meet up with Matt and Kelly’s family. They all have children and so together we numbered 13.  The kids look forward to this so much.  It’s great that they all get along, but for those few days, they act like they knew each other daily.  Now that they are older, I enjoy chatting with them also.

Our adult conversation this year was about food, frugality, house, a little bit of politics, social media, and health.  Kelly, as always, astounded us with her simple ability to be “Mom”.  She baked two pies from scratch!  Yes, she made a homemade crust!!!  I really should have taken a picture. 

Children learn from their parents' behaviors!  LOL!

Our first day we ventured to a farm where they had really cute little animals.  There was a calf that kept seeking attention and head scratches like a puppy.  Then there was the cat on the “mossy shingled roof”.  I learned there are chickens that lay colored eggs.  They are nicknamed Easter Eggers.  We also walked around three corn mazes and created lightsabers/ swords out of corn stalks.  And yes the kids are all budding nerds.  They spent a chunk of time coming up with fake song titles for a fake band.  Amanda brought her guitar and they created a parody of a 1Direction song that rivaled Weird Al’s (naw, it was way better than Weird Al).  Jack, Bridget and Kevin were more than happy to share their love for Dr. Who (now I really have to watch/catch up).  At the farm we had ice cream that was so good I may never be the same.  I had raspberry with chunks of brownies in it…a perfect marriage!

#Hashtag

We ate well!  Matt grilled, we had pizza, there was homemade pie.  I brought peaches from my tree and now Vinny is in love with peaches and wants a tree for their yard.  We all garden.  K & M has 6 acres.  We ended up taking a two hour walk to the bog and the creek that borders their property.  It was so beautiful and peaceful.  I’d be there every day if I lived there.  However, let’s face it, we all take the beauty of our own locations for granted.  That’s why I wrote the Loving Albany post (w.i.p). 

Finally, as if it wasn’t special enough to reconnect with people you lived with 20 years ago (as if it’s only been like 5 years and not more…I love picking up right where you leave off).  We saw a meteor shower.  I just laid in the driveway to get a better look.  The sky was so clear that you could see the Milky Way.  I saw about a half dozen “shooting stars”.  It was more amazing than any planetarium, that’s for sure. 

The kids said Katniss!  I said, "Katniss at 43!"

On Monday I left for Dover, NH.  My great grandmother Mary Cunningham grew up there (she was born in Pennsylvania).  My first stop was the library so I could look her up in the city directory.  After searching the wrong years, I found her in 1909.  She was listed as a border at 41 Forest Ave., and a worker at the Velvet Mill.  Her brother John, worked at Cocheco Falls Millworks which is used differently these days.  Dover was once a textile mill city, but unlike some mill cities that have decayed over time, Dover is an attractive small city.  I walked around there for well over an hour.  I barely remembered to set the Map my Walk Ap on the phone so I could see where I’d gone on the map and how far.  

41 Forest Ave. 2013

I walked to 41 Forest from the center of the city.  It wasn’t far.  I’d like to think that in some ways I was tracing the steps my great-grandmother walked on her way to work.  As I crept up on Forest Ave. I wondered if time would have changed the street, but most of the houses in that section were from about 1860-1890.  They were older, but well maintained.  So I really wasn’t surprised that the house was still there.  As you can see in the picture, they added a porch and other additions to make it look bigger and it looks quite different, but it’s the same one.  

41 Forest Ave. @ 1909

After I ate my packed lunch of cold pizza (I was traveling frugal with a cooler in the trunk) I headed over to check out a rail trail I happened to spot on a map.  Imagine my joy when I discovered it was not only flat, but paved.  I strapped on my roller blades and spent about 30 minutes skating along what used to be the trolley line.  It was gorgeous!

The  Mill at Dover.

The view down Forest Ave.

I got to York, Maine by 2 in the afternoon.  It had been nearly a decade since Maine, but I’d been there over five times.  I drove past the ocean, just soaking it in before finding my way to Footbridge Beach.  Footbridge Beach is my favorite place.  There is a big parking lot and an easy walk to a large open beach that isn’t lost at high tide.  I hung out there for several hours before checking in at my hotel.  Then I headed to York to wander around the silly shops.  I ended the day on the beach while eating my fish taco. (I have a thing for fish tacos….it’s borderline obsessive).

 

My sunset view

This is a real picture of Nubble Lighthouse.
 It was dusk and this photo looks like the whole thing is a miniature doll house.

The rocky beach at Wells, ME.

The next day threatened rain (the previous days were so summer perfect you think that we custom ordered them), but it didn’t.  I went to Wells Beach for old times sake, and it didn’t disappoint.  I sat in my chair and drank a morning coffee while watching the waves.  Then I eventually went rock hunting.  I gathered a few good ones for the garden.  I got some at Kelly’s too.  I love having a little piece of the trip to see every day. 

On the way home I stopped at Kittery Outlets, something I’d never done before.  I needed new sneakers and found they had a Saucony outlet, so that was easily done.  Then I continued down Route 1 to Portsmouth and found Cool Jewels.  I have several funky necklace piece from there.  This time, I found earrings and a wall hanging.  Then the trip was done [cue the sad sobs] and I had to drive the tedious three hours back across the Mass Pike to Albany.

I think it kinda looks like a bear.

What did I gather from the trip?  A sense of love and family among my friends, peace from the ocean’s waves, and connection with the ancestors.  

Atlantic Ocean @ York, ME

Life is Good!

Peach Fest 2013

“Millions of Peaches, Peaches for free…..”  This was a song from the mid-1990’s!  Why these guys sang about peaches perplexes me to this day.  The peach is definitely a sexualized fruit, so I’m not sure if the singer was overwhelmed by the fruit or women!

I, on the otherhand, was most definitely overwhelmed by the fruit.  My 5 year old peach tree came into maturity in the middle of August.  It was late this year, as where the peaches at her parent orchard, Fix Bros. (south of Hudson, NY).  However, late or not, once the peaches are mature, it’s a speed race to pick them and prepare them.  I call it peach fest! And yeh, if you know me, you know that I'm a little obsessive about the tree and the fruit.  I'd wanted a peach tree since I was a little kid, but we never had luck growing one at my parents' house.  So, what can I say, I'm living the dream!

Peach Fest 2013 officially started Thursday, August 15.  Mom came for a visit and we picked from the tree in my yard.  There must have been 20 pounds easily that day.  Mom said, “you really think you need to go to Fix Bros?  You’ll have plenty from your tree.”  I was aghast.  Of course we had to pick at the orchard.  I was making jam!

We went to Fix Bros on Friday and tried to not get too many, but the trees are low to the ground and the peaches are enormous, and it’s just too easy.  We ended up with 45 pounds of the beauties.   It took less than ½ an hour to get the job done. 

Enter peach madness.  I spent the next several days sorting and culling the peaches from my tree.  There was probably 20 more pounds coming from her alone.  Once the peach is ripe I boil them until their skins pop off.  They retain an incredible amount of heat!  I lost a little feeling in my fingers peeling so many hot ones. 

I made a pie, a crisp, ice cream…..I froze 17 containers from my own tree.  As I write this, I need to boil up some of the remaining Fix peaches to freeze.  I also made 27 jars of jam!  It’s not quite over, but it’s dying down.  What fun.  Peach Fest 2013.  

The pictures sometimes tell the story better:

Point of reference.  Me and the tree after planting in 2008.

2013.  That's a 4 foot ladder under the tree.

Sorting the ones from my tree.

Green to go!  The sorting process! 

Hot peeling pain!

Wait!  There's MORE??!?!!

Yeh, 45 pounds more from Fix Bros.

Better make something and eat them daily!

Peach ice cream!

Peaches over angel food cake!

Jam!

New Canning Pot

Prepped jars await.

The process.

Just some of the frozen.

25 jars of joy.

What's left!

Incredibly Easy Tofu Salad

This is such an easy and basic cold salad, the marinade really makes it work.

Tofu Salad

Ingredients:

One container Extra Firm Tofu
1/2 cup sundried tomatoes
1 pint fresh grape tomatoes
1 cup green peas
2 cups cooked rice or quinoa
Speidie sauce or vinegar type marinade
Coconut oil for frying

1.  Cut tofu into smaller slabs and place over a paper towel to drain excess moisture
2.  Place into a dish and cover with marinade.  Allow to sit several hours to soak in the flavor.
3.  After the tofu is marinated, cut into cubes and fry in coconut oil until browned.
4. While the tofu is cooking, prepare the rice or quinoa.
5. Defrost frozen peas, chop up fresh tomatoes, and cook sundried tomatoes for 2-4 minutes in water in the microwave to soften them.
6.  When everything is done, combine into salad.
7.  Chill and enjoy!

Fry the marinated tofu in coconut oil

Add fresh tomatoes to cooked rice or quinoa.

Add thawed peas and softened sundried tomatoes

Add a little balsamic vinaigrette to the end product if you'd like.
Otherwise....ENJOY!

Being 43

As a teacher of 11-12 year olds I always try to be mindful of the year they were born and what was happening in the world at that time.  This year’s group was born in 2001 or 2002.  They don’t remember a time before Columbine and 9-11.  Their first president was George Bush.  People have always had cell phones….etc……  So I was thinking about my own time frame.  Now this might be a boring read to those not my age, but if you’re somewhere around 40 years old, I hope you can appreciate it. [Disclaimer:  I am American, so this is from an American-centric point of view.  It is also based on my experience and contains my opinions.  Still, I hope it speaks to you somehow.]

To be 43:

To be 43 is to be born in 1970.

·         Nixon was president, there was a war in Vietnam, but you don’t remember either

·         Men had landed on the moon the summer before you were born

·         Two years before that...the dream ended and Martin Luther King was killed

·         In pop culture, the Beatles were  no longer a group

·         There was Laugh-In, from time to time now people recall it and you smile, but you never saw it live. 

·         You never saw the Brady Bunch or Bewitched live either, but you liked the reruns.

·         Because to be 43 means you grew up with a black and white TV and 4 channels. No DVR, no VCR, just reruns. 

·         You watched it live or not at all.  Cartoons, better tune in on Saturday morning.

·         When you’re 43, you are familiar with the “land shark” of SNL, and more likely to remember “Hans and Franz’s :  “We’ll pump you up,”  and the church lady than John Belushi.

·         Because Belushi died just as you were entering your teen years.  And Lennon died then too.  You remember, this was a time you started to pay attention.

·         At 43, you remember political things like the Iranian Hostage Crisis, you do not remember the Bay of Pigs, that stuff is history just as your first hand experience is history to someone younger.

·         No one had a cell phone, but there were “car phones” that you never saw except in a movie.  Some people had VCR’s.  And video games…

·         You had Pong in the 70’s and the Atari 2600 when you were 12. 

·         And you remember when MTV was born!

·         And they played music videos and the exposure to pop culture exploded:

·         43 means you might have worn leg warmers, boingers, Madonna inspired jewelry, florescent clothing, roach clips with feathers dangling off them and of course, the off the shoulder Flash Dance look.

·         At 43 there may have been a time when you wished you were:  Laura Ingalls, Wonder Woman, Daisy Duke, Baby, or Molly Ringwald…or maybe you wanted to be as cool as them, or as trendy.

·         And you remember where you were, not when Kennedy was shot, but when the Challenger exploded.  In 1986.  I heard about it while walking in the hallway by the chemistry room. 

·         It’s likely you never believed there’d be a nuclear war.  But felt some worry when 3 Mile Island had a leak and later with Chernobyl.

·         It was your generation:  “Generation X” that saw The Berlin Wall fall, Glasnost, the end of the Soviet Bloc, the massive change to Europe.

·         You went from “Free Nelson Mandela” to seeing the man become the president of a nation you never thought would escape apartheid.

·         Clinton became president and it seemed that anything was possible.

·         You survived Y2K and learned to say Twenty-Ten, (well no, you planned on saying it that way since you were a little kid).

·         And that debate you used to have, who will the US elect first:  a woman or a black man?  That got answered.  When you stopped everything in the middle of the morning to watch the Inauguration, you may have cried a little with joy….or maybe not.

·         Sadly, when you are 43 you remember a time when people were more free.  There was the ERA and women felt the time had come to go out and take what was theirs.  They used birth control and planned families and had careers and some never even changed their names.  You remember when society wasn’t quick to go to court and sue, when people took personal responsibility…and with that came a freedom.  The freedom to make mistakes and be forgiven.  Children could play and even work some and learn from their mistakes and slowly gain responsibility, all while no one would be sued if someone got hurt.

And there is so much more, but I thought I’d stop the list around the turn of the century.  So much has happened since my newest group of students were born.  So many new memories for them to build, but that will be their story and their list to make, someday, when they are 43.

Some notable events of your coming of age years in the 70’s and 80’s (and you thought these things were always around)!!!

1970

Aswan High Dam Completed

Beatles Break Up

Computer Floppy Disks Introduced

1971

VCRs Introduced

1972

Pocket Calculators Introduced  

Terrorists Attack at the Olympic Games in Munich

Watergate Scandal Begins

1973

Roe vs Wade Legalizes Abortion in the U.S.

Sears Tower Built

U.S. Pulls Out of Vietnam

1974

Halie Selassie, Emperor of Ethiopia, Deposed

Mikhail Baryshnikov Defects

Patty Hearst Kidnapped

Terracotta Army Discovered in China

U.S. President Nixon Resigns

1975

Microsoft Founded

1977

Elvis Found Dead

Star Wars Movie Released

1978

First Test-Tube Baby Born

John Paul II Becomes Pope

Jonestown Massacre (and you know what “drinking the Koolaid means)

1979

Ayatollah Khomeini Returns as Leader of Iran

Iran Takes American Hostages in Tehran

Margaret Thatcher First Woman Prime Minister of Great Britain

Mother Teresa Awarded the Nobel Peace Prize

Nuclear Accident at Three Mile Island

Sony Introduces the Walkman

1980

John Lennon Assassinated

Mount St. Helens Erupts

Pac-Man Video Game Released

Rubik's Cube Becomes Popular

1981

Millions Watch Royal Wedding on T.V.

New Plague Identified as AIDS

Personal Computers (PC) Introduced by IBM

1983

Sally Ride Becomes the First American Woman in Space

1984

PG-13 Movie Rating Created

1985

Mikhail Gorbachev Calls for Glasnost and Perestroika

Space Shuttle Challenger Explodes

Chernobyl Nuclear Disaster

Live Aid

1988

You graduate High School

1989

Berlin Wall Falls

Exxon Valdez Spills Millions of Gallons of Oil on Coastline

Students Massacred in China's Tiananmen Square

My current students will not have been born in the same century as me!  And that’s why, sometimes at 43, you feel a little old!  

The years of our lives are like the months of the year......

Dawn, August 1, 2013

If months were the decades of our lives, August would be our 40’s. The 40’s comfortable practiced, bloated.  August, a bit tired, hot and the end.  The end of the summer day, the beginning of the turning leaves.  August leaves me melancholy.  Leaves me thinking about what has already passed:  did I waste my time?  Did I squander those precious moments of summer whether they were work days or not? And what of life?  Did I waste my youth?  My 20’s or 30’s?  Heck, aren’t I still 35?  How did I wake up one morning eight years older? 

If August is our 40’s, then certainly we can see it this way:

March and April are birth and youth.  May, the first flower of summer is the time that we are teens.  June, when summer officially arrives and peaks is our 20’s.  July, the days grow shorter, but each day is one of bright sun and skies, the possibilities are endless.  This is our 30’s.  August, the month of the dying day.  Nature understands….no longer do the birds wake at 3:30 and when they do greet the dawn, it is not the song of the robin you hear, it’s a mockingbird or bluejay.  The robins will still appear, but their time has passed.

September is still summer, but it changes to fall, just as our 50’s starts fresh, strong, healthy, and fades as we near 60.  The nights are cool, the leaves will turn, the birds will leave for the south.  The last harvest occurs…..the last chance to produce.

October is a beautiful month when the leaves turn and the days are bright and sunny.  We are used to the autumn now just as a person in their 60’s has the comfort of what they learned in their 50’s.  But November is more difficult.  Tired, grey, cold, at times snow.  The green is turning brown, the leaves have left the trees.  At times a vibrant reminder of life peaks out….a late summer apple is found, a bright red cardinal streaks across the sky.  A warm breeze blows. This is our 70’s.

Like winter, the time given is short, days are filled with resting.  The earth rests, we rest.  Winter is the time of our 80’s and beyond until our rebirth.  Just like nature, we live in a cycle.  There is always hope.  The solstice brings the turn towards more sunlight…..spring is coming!  Everything will awaken over again.

What is my point?  It’s awfully sad to sit here on the first day of August lamenting the end of summer when that end is still 7 weeks away.  So maybe that is my point.  Yes, August sometimes reminds me that May, June and July have already passed.  That summer is on the downward slide.  But it’s not over yet!!!!  Just as being 43 does not signal the end of the time that I am at my best. 

There is something beautiful to be found in every season.  There is something beautiful to be found at every age.  If we spend too much time thinking about “then” (past or future) we are not thinking about now.  We are not engaged in that beautiful moment.  Something woke me this morning at 5 AM.  The sky was growing light; so instead of turning over and going back to sleep, I got out of bed and went outside.  It was true dawn, not quite full daylight, peaceful, cool, but warm enough to stand in my nightgown.  Across the street in the mulberry, the mockingbird was singing his own song.  A sliver of moon stood out in the blue above me, far away, a jet streaked across the sky.

The lyrics of a well-loved song come to mind:

I dig my toes into the sand

The ocean looks like a thousand diamonds

Strewn across a blue blanket

I lean against the wind

Pretend that I am weightless

And in this moment I am happy, happy

•  INCUBUS - WISH YOU WERE HERE

I had planned to write this post already.  My early morning inspiration was perfectly timed.  

Today is August 1, 2013.  

This day will never happen again.  

Enjoy it!