8/10/10 – Back from New York, Connecticut, New Hampshire, Maine, Vermont and Montreal – Photos – Dad picked me up at 4:50 Monday morning, July 26th and drove me down to the Central San Rafael bus station where I caught the Marin Airporter to SFO. The flight to JFK got in at 4:30ish, a full hour early due to strong tail winds, but we waited on the tarmac for a full hour! I took the Air Train to Jamaica Station and then took the E and F trains to Rockefeller Center, about three blocks from the St. James Hotel. After settling in for a bit in the air-conditioned room, I met Jen on the steps of the New York Public Library on 40th Street. We wandered around and ended up eating at the restaurant at the Afina Hotel and then having a drink at their rooftop bar, which looks out at the Empire State Building and the Chrysler Building.
After sleeping in my air-conditioned room – hip, hip, hurray for artificial air when it’s 90 degrees out and humid!– I wandered though Murray Park and had an iced-coffee watching the bacci ball players, took the train down to Washington Square, and then wandered up to Union Square to meet Jen. We wandered downtown to a couple of bookstores where she was dropping off some copies of Versal, an Amsterdam-based poetry journal that she edits, we took the train up to her sister Stephanie’s place in west Harlem for a second, and then back down to the California College of the Arts gallery to hear some poets that are featured in their journal, Eleven Eleven, read. Suzanne Gardener and Amy King both read some really exciting poems. We then wandered along the Hudson and into the West Village and had some wine and cheese at Entwine a tiny wine bar with an outdoor patio. I love wandering around in New York on a muggy summer night with just a t-shirt on after enduring the heat of the day.
The next day, I met Jen at her sister Stephanie’s place in Harlem above Morningside Park, and met her son, Lukas, and then drove to Brooklyn to see her sister Aimee and meet her daughter, Annie Rose. We ate at Aimee’s favorite local Italian restaurant called Zio Totti’s, which I highly recommend. Their pizza margharita tastes just like they do in Italy. On the way there, we drove past Ground Zero. This was my first time seeing the huge empty space, and having just finished Falling Man, Don DeLillo’s haunting post 911 novel, I reflected on it. “These are the days after. Everything now is measured by after…The clouds she retained in memory were dramas of cloud and sea storm…the fleeting spirit that carried lives and histories, theirs and hers, everyone’s, into some other disdance, out beyond the towers.” We caught Charlie Haden’s Quartet West with Ravi Coltrane and Rodney Green at Birdland, The room is tiny, and the band sounded beautiful playing, First Song, Lonely Woman, and Blue and Green. I’d seen Ravi a couple of times before, the last time with his mother just before she died, and he played mostly upbreat free-improvisational pieces, so it was great to hear him on ballads and bebob tunes. It was awesome to see Jen, reconnect after so many years, and wnder around New York for a few days!
We drove to Redding the next day to stay at Jen’s parents’ home. It was great to connect with Orestes and Laura, and really interesting to drive around my old neighborhood and all the familiar places, past the new Samuel Staple’s Elementary School and past our old house on Morehouse, the Redding Country Club, Putnam Park… We met Eric and Jess at the Barlow High School twenty-year reunion at a golf club in Trumble. I met Woddy, hugh, and a bunch of others for the first time in a long time and had a blast catching up. After the reunion, Jen, Sokol, Jess and I thought we located a Duchess, our favorite Connecticut fast food place and home of the Big D with cheese, but ended up at the Duchess Diner, a total let-down though the food was good. The next day, Eric, Jess and I drove up to Lake Winnipesaukee where Eric’s parents recently bought a lakefront house with a dock. Chris and Christine were also there with their sons, Crispin and Wealer, who I met for the first time. Eric and Jess had left Tetreaux and Ruby at the house while they were in Connecticut. We spent a really fun afternoon tubing behind Frank’s boat and an excellent evening eating on the deck.
We took off for Portland the on Sunday and I spent a few days there with them. Jess and I rode bikes with the kids out to Mackworth Island, sat on the beach, and built a small ferry house out of bark, sticks, moss, stones, and shells, in a designated area in the forest where people build little ferry houses with the kids,Tetreaux and Ruby. See the photos. I got a chance to see Eric’s office, which is on an old whard surrounded by lobster boats and seaguls. It was really interesting seeing photos and plans for all of his architectural projects. The seafood is so fresh in Maine and we enjoyed lobster rolls at Dry Dock, some incredible Japanese-French raw fish treats at Miyake, and some drinksand jazz at Local 188. The food at Miyake served not only the freshest most well suited spiced dishes, but the tastiest meal I’ve had in a long time: raw lobster served in the lobster tail, and the fresh tuna and salmon… Seeing Eric and Jess and the kids is always like visiting family and a really grounding and wonderful experience.
Completely by luck, it turned out that some friends of their neighbors were heading to Vermont and I caught a ride with them to my good friend from high school, Earl’s farm, the Strafford Organic Creamery, the 24th certified organic creamery in the country, where he milks and process the milk of 60 Guernsey’s on a farm that he grew up on that he now runs with his wife, Amy. I joined their family dinner with Earl, Amy and their four sons: Cliffy, Jackson, Harley for pulled pork and cole slaw, all from the farm, and fresh bread, milk, and ice cream. Most of all, it was great to hang out with Earl on the farm, feeding the cows grain while he milked, driving around his properties, and mowing a field in the John Deer, catching up on the last twenty years. I’m amazed by the opration that they run at the farm with the 4am and pm shifts milking the cows and taking them to a new field in the rotation. And they’ve added a creamery that pasturizes the milk and makes the best organic ice cream.
I caught the Friday afternoon bus from White River Junction up across the border to Montreal to see Dave for the weekend. Dave and I have spent many days together travelling, playing music, and just living, and seeing eachother brings us right into our way of life – shrimp scampi and bison steaks with gazpacho and kinoa and fresh vegetables from his garden. We went to a party at his friends Oscar and Carolyn’s apartment for a rooftop party, worked on some recordings at Dave’s with a singer from Venezuela, Sandra Galicia. We had very little time, managed to reord one song well, How Insensitive, by Jobim. We met some of Dave’s friends – John, Cecily, Homery – for dinner at a Middle eastern restaurant, and caught an exhibit on Miles Davis at the Musee des beaux-Arts called We Want Miles that featured lots of his trumpets and gear, musical scores, paintings, album covers, videos, books, etc. It never seems like enough time and the whole two week, quadreped trip seemed like five trips in one, but I’m back after an all-night-Greyhound from Montreal to New York on Sunday, a ride on the train, and a fligt from JFK to SFO in the morning.
