Mary's Boys

Mary and Devon and Simon. Devon, the older one, has turned eight and Eitan looks up to him for all that he is - and especially his age. Devon plays football (check), is on the ski team (check check) and lives in New York City (check! check! check!). Simon bops in and out and the boys amuse themselves by "hiding" from us during our walk. Devon and Simon attend a primary school for Columbia profs where Amado teaches maths to 13 and 14 year-olds. He is well respected and serves as a confident, I understand. Without doubt those kids are in good hands.

Fungi

Mary, Sonnet, Devon, Eitan, Simon and I walk the Pine Nob trail, which is a small piece of the Appalachian trail, which is over 2000 miles (3,200 km) long on the Eastern Seaboard extending between Springer Mountain in Georgia and Mount Katahdin in Maine. Along the way, the trail also passes through North Caroline, Tennessee, Virginia, West Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Vermont and New Hampshire. The trail was conceived by Benton MacKaye, a forester who wrote his original plan shortly after the death of his wife in 1921. MacKaye's Utopian idea detailed a grand trail that would connect a series of farms and wilderness work/study camps for city-dwellers. Our chunk is uphill for about two miles offering us a lovely view of the green leafed Berkshires (come back in four weeks and the colours do their famous change). We have p&j's and eat gorp before finishing up on an earned downward slope.

My photo of a mushroom (I think) on an oak. This was the only formation I saw like this today

All In The Gang

I take this photo the only moment the kids are without motion - watching "Spirited Away". The first night, all share a bedroom with double-bunk beds and lay away mattresses making for a Late Night. There is too much energy to go around and at least half the crew chattering away at midnight despite threats and extortions. The adults, for that matter, are not too much better off and happily lubed with adult drinks and conversation (I groan at the morning after). The order from left to right: Devon, Jaimes, Sophie, Simon, Maya, Madeleine and Eitan. There has been a little jockeying between ages and sometimes a younger kid or opposite sex is (purposefully) left out but overall they entertain themselves nicely and with good compromise and cheer. It is fun to observe their size and change plus we have a good few years before they are teenagers.

Deck

On Sloan's marriage to Rob: somehow I am blamed for a sloppy attack he made on her at a black tie ball... but that is for another story and anyway I am happy to be a part of the legend. Sloan's Sextant Partners now employs 60 people while she remains one of the top-producing partners - this while cutting back her practice to one client. The girls immediately head out for an afternoon run and I await her mint cocktail martinis.

Connecticut!

We arrive Friday at Mary and Amado's house on Woodridge Lake not far from Litchfield and less than two hours from the Upper West Side door-to-door. Eitan and Madeleine peel out of the car to hug Devon, Simon and Maya who they last saw in Paris. Stories of the four hour line to the Eiffel Tower are gleefully recalled then an afternoon free-for-all takes place in the backyard. Adding to the excitement is the arrival of the Sloan and Rob, who flew in Thursday with their team. Sophie and Jaimes join in the melee while us adults grin at each other and our kids. Our afternoon is spent catching up, jogging, canoing, dining and drinking vodka cocktails and beer. Rob has a go on the jumper - pictured.

Rob and I spend some afternoon discussing college football. He grew up in Columbus, Ohio, so the Buckeyes are a Big Deal - he frequently joins his friends at College Bend to see the important games. The Bears are ranked a place or two ahead of Ohio State in the pre-season polls and about ten below USC who again is #1 (ho-hum)

Hackey

I buy three Hackey Sacks for Eitan and Madeleine - the third is back-up for the Inevitable Loss followed by the Inevitable Tears. Eitan understands that Hackey is a good practice for football and he becomes obsessed with getting the moves right, arguing with me and Madeleine on the best technique. Madeleine goes along for the ride happy to be doing what Eitan is doing (much to Eitan's discontent). Any case, I recall Hackey from about the 10th grade circa 1982, when Ivor Brown and a crew of malcontents picked up the game. Ivor quickly dropped the sport to pursue other Ivy League enriched activities like water polo to get in to Brown but there you have it. For me, I pick up the game for the first time now and suggest to Sonnet that this may be better than an evening martini and television - she chortles. We prepare our departure from Vermont momentarily and I sneak in this last blog from here.

World record for hackey sack consecutive kicks is held by Ted Martin with 63,326, accomplished over 8 hours, 50 minutes and 42 seconds on June 14, 1997 at the Midwest Regionals in Chicago, Illinois. He was totally stoked!!

Sunset

This photo taken ten feet from where I write. No touch ups or other manipulations applied to the shot. I finish off the last of the chocolate chocolate chip ice cream and Sonnet takes the final slice of blueberry pie a la mode.

Oink Oink

We go to a local working farm to see the pigs, roosters, horses and baby sheep which has Madeleine going "awwww" (I resist the urge to connect chops and bacon). Eitan is not into the scene and lallygags. "I hate this place" he groans. I think it is also likely that he is jonesing from a sugar high: blueberry pie for breakfast and chocolate cake with chocolate chip cookies after lunch. Ah, the holiday will come to a painful end next week. From the farm we head for the swimming hole then pizza dinner. Everybody is tired so we take the edge off with a Disney movie - the same one from yesterday and the day before. But hey, for Eitann and Madeleine - repetition is insight. For us: two hours bliss.

A quick read on London's weather: 55 degrees and rain. Bunk.

Cards

A quick game of Buggo is played this morning before clean-up, swim and my parent's departure. The object of the game, I think, is to match the insects and get the most pairs. In the background is a human skeleton - one of mom's mind-friendly presents. Madeleine's stripey night-gown once belonged to Sonnet when she was a kiddie growing up in Alaska - go figure. BTW the kids are so sick of my camera that the going rate for a posed photo is $2, up from (an undefined) "treat" or $1 in Colorado.

Me: "Do you know why we put on sun tan lotion?"
Eitan: "So you don't get a tan?"

A very sad Eitan on everybody's departure: "It is going to be sooo boring."

Blueberry

Sonnet and Gracie's pie from last night. The recipe includes blueberries, sugar, lemon, lemon zest, cinnamon and corn starch. The pie crust is Crisco, butter, flour, salt and sugar. Grace notes that the recipe comes from Mother Manning's (my Great Grandmother) "Fanny Farmer's Cook Book." It goes especially well with morning coffee.

Red, White and Madeleine

Katie's friend Cara from the Columbia International Affairs school arrives last night for dinner and a stay-over. Cara lives in Burlington and consults world organisations like UNDP and CARE on their H.I.V. policies to eradicate the horrible disease. Gracie, Moe and Katie return to New York today leaving us by ourselves for the first time in a month. Wow. Tomorrow we drive to Connecticut to visit Mary and Amado's lake house and to see their kids Devon, Simon and Maya - a Paris re-union! Rob and Sloan will join us from San Francisco and everybody is way excited for the weekend.

I ask Eitan if he wants blueberry pie for breakfast. He, bug-eyed: "really?"
Madeleine goes the extra yard: "can I have chocolate cake too?"

"It is the hardest thing in the world to frighten a mongoose, because he is eaten up from his nose to tail with curiosity."
Rikki-Tikki-Tavi, by Kipling

Fat Freddy's Cat

Pre-Spider Man and the Hulk, which I collected with madness, I recall the Fabulous Freak Brothers found in the back-bin of Berkely's North Side book store which sadly closed in the early '80s. (Sonnet and I watched American Splendour last night about R Crumb's contemporary Harvey Pekar). Freddy was a creation from the late 1960s during a time of free love, Vietnam War protests, Berkeley marches and underground comix. The spelling of 'comix' instead of 'comics' helped differentiate them from the mainstream comic books available. The 'x' also warned the reader that contents was sometimes adult-oriented. From the off-campus book store I found "The Adventures of the Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers." Created by Gilbert Shelton, it featured three brothers: Phinneas, Freewheelin' Franklin and Fat Freddie, the '60s equivalent of the Three Stooges. The brothers were usually found in some form of wacky hijinx, chasing girls or running from the 'fuzz.' Fat Freddy Freekowtski had a tom cat, known as 'Fat Freddy's Cat,' who became a regularly featured character in the series. Fat Freddy often forgot to feed the cat, who would then eat his weed, shit in his boots or cat-claw the water bed. I'm pretty sure Grace was unaware that I was sneaking reads and hoping for tits (and utterly clueless about marijuana but curious too). Those were good times to be in Berkeley, a promise eventually fulfilled in the public school system-- but that's for another day.

Banzai!

Eitan takes a leap from a relatively small craig at the marble quarry. About Vermont: the state ranks 45th by total area, and 43rd by land area at 9,250 square miles, and has a population of 608,827, making it the second least populous state second only to Wyoming. VT is the only New England state with no coastline along the Atlantic Ocean and is further notable for the Green Mountains in the west and Lake Champlain the northwest. I have yet to see a black person or a person of any colour while the locals are hearty and just like those in Colorado: beer drink'n and reds smok'n (overheard at the quarry: "her nickname is Peter Pan b/c she is got so drunk she peed 'er pants" ie, Peter Pan- get it?). It's a beautiful place - more so in autumn for sure - and we are happy to be here taking it all in. Willie Nelson sings as I write and the naked kids play nearby with their buddies.

Mavericks

I stay up late - 1030PM - to watch Riding Giants, a tale of surfing the Big Waves of Hawaii and Northern California from riders Greg Noll, Jeff Clark (who surfed Mavericks in Norcal 15 years before they were "discovered" in 1991) to icon Laird Hamilton who caught the perfect wave in Teahupoo, French Polynesia - a once-in-a-100 years wave that was thought un-surfable and on film for posterity. The sport has evolved from the early, heady days of beach-bumming in the '50s and '60s to sophisticated tow-and-drop operations allowing surfers to ride smaller boards and 60 foot drops. Legendary spots include Jaws' at Peahi, Maui; The Banzai Pipeline, Sunset Beach, Waimea Bay - all North Shore; and of course Teahupoo. For me, I fondly recall expeditions up the Highway 1 where Dan, Adam and others would walk through cabbage and broccoli fields to skinny down cliffs for the breaks at Four Mile and Three Mile points (Danny wrote a book, "Caught Inside," about this). Sitting in black-ink, 60 degree salt water in a kelp bed often surrounded by fog at the dawn allows for some contemplation of nature or one's loneliness. But then the rollers come in obliterating life's worries replaced by movement and joy. Amen.

Photo of Twiggy Baker at Mavericks by Tom Cozad, Newport Beach.

That Kid!

Susan's Joey Jr will turn one September 14 and is a baby otherwise in motion. He loves crawling around and grabbing anything that moves and small enough for his mouth. He's also into stairs and coffee tables, where he will spend the morning walking round. I'm not the first to suggest that not all babies are cute - but man Joey is cute. It is also nice to see the love affair between baby and mum.

Sonnet makes blueberry pancakes using the blueberries picked yesterday at a berry farm. Blueberries grow on shrubs and are native to North America, Asia, and Northern Europe. I learn that Beginning in 2005, blueberries have been discussed among a category of funcitional foods called superfruits having the favorable combination o nutrient richness, antioxidant strength, emerging research evidence for health benefits and versatility for manufacturing popular consumer products. Anyway, we have enough for another month if not year. The kids want to take them back to London.

Gracie

Grace brings a large duffel full of toys to celebrate the kids February and September birthdays. She also makes a Big Cake complete with new year wishes. Before presents, the kids are asked to seek out clues leading to the treasure - which they tear open with abandon. On offer are Tonka Toys, the Solar System model kit, construction magnets, erector sets and more. Madeleine says she loves her "boy toys" (we say: for boys AND girls) and the afternoon is made.

After my two hour nap, Sonnet and I go to the Vermont outlets (J Crew, Barberry, Banana Republic etc etc) for some retail therapy. She has spent the afternoon making her turkey chili, whose recipe has travelled with us from London. Perfect for ten people and yum! Eitan feels cheated because we don't make it to the swimming quarry but is compensated with a Disney movie . They skinny dip as I write this.

Red House

The Lee's house was built in the 1940s on Marble Mill Pond whose water powered the turbine to cut the rock. Larry's vision has turned the mill into a jewel with a living room surrounded by trees, water, river and light. There is not a dull moment as the overhead sun changes the vistas and white stone while the grassy greens offer a lovely contrast for croquette or kids. Bravo.

We spend the afternoon at the first commercial quarry in America - Dorset Quarry - opened by Issac Underhill in 1785. The Dig was the town's attraction and main interest for 130 years. Eventually, the Dorset Quarry struck H2O filling the 150 foot deep with cold spring water. Today, the quarry's walls present sharp cliffs for thrill seekers who dive 30 or 40 feet. Not I nor Eitan, who steadfastly refuses to go anywhere near those local teenagers.

"Goodbye, good riddance."
John Edwards on Karl Rove's departure

Moe

Dad at the crack of dawn. We lounge around talking about Trailhead Capital, clients and Europe. Moe is handling his parkinson's with class and his mind is straight and clear. From breakfast, he and most of the family head out for a walk (Sonnet goes for a run) while Katie and Grace read their magazines and I doodle away on this blog. Ho hum. Today, should it arrive, may include shopping, tennis, swimming or none of the above.

Eitan occupies himself this morning doing his sums on a plane white piece of paper. He tells Gracie that he is very sad "because I cannot watch television but Madeleine can." When asked why, he say: "Madeleine hit me so I hit her back but daddy only saw me."

I ask Madeleine if she has a lady bird in her hand.
She: "No, it is a dead centipede."
Me: "Oh. What are you going to do with it?"
She: "Bury it of course."

Sun Up

I'm up at 0500 during the false dawn when I take this photo from the pier outside the living room. The house is asleep and I try to find Diane on Fox News but am not able to work the satellite dish. Instead I do some stretching and have a swim. Moe putters around making coffee and then Joey and Susan rise for his early feed. Madeleine snores away next to her brother.

Dorset

After a four hour drive we arrive at Marcia and Larry's Vermont house in Dorset and Eitan strips clean to take a dive. The red house has been in the Lee family since 1987 and is located on a secluded pond which cascades over a water-fall into a pool for dipping. There are ducks and beavers. In its commercial day, the property was a mill whose blades turned with the water. From the living room where I write (wi-fi!) I see the ridgeway, pond, distant blue mountains and dam covered by an arching cedar bridge. The rushing water is soothing and ideal for looking and sleeping