2026: May 3: New Haven

Just got back from another weekend in New Haven, visiting Ella and seeing her last show of the school year, for which she was an Assistant Technical Director. 

Technical direction involves implementing the designer's vision safely and effectively. It is technical, yes, but also collaborative and creative in its own right. She gave us a tour of the set - here she is showing me some of the magic she performs in the service of art. 

More showing me stuff. Ella was responsible for this wall and there is more going on behind there than I ever imagined. I don't know how anything works, so it is all fascinating and impressive.

Yale is obscenely rich, and full of wonderful creative interesting things. On this trip we went to the Yale University Art Gallery, which is free, and you can just wander in off the street and randomly pick a floor and discover they have a stunning collection of modern art from the early twentieth century, mostly donated by artist, patron, and collector Katherine Dreier, who I'd never heard of, who seems to have been incredibly important, and about who I am intrigued. I now want my next novel (hah!)  to be some weird mixture of circus people, social reformers, and artists living in New York in 1911. I have no idea how I will pull it off, especially since I know next to nothing about the circus or art and still haven't actually figured out how to write a first book.

Ella and Michael discuss two Kandinskys, casual Mondrian in the background.

Please enjoy this close-up of Ella's Red Wing boots, with the steel caps showing through. She does have other, newer, boots, don't worry, but I think these are molded to her feet and make them feel like they're wrapped in a security blanket. The server at dinner on Friday night even commented on the legitimacy of her footwear, noting that they weren't boots for show. 

2026: April 26: Chainsaw season

It happens every year. The weather warms, the birds start singing, the daffodils bloom, and the big trucks loaded with power tools pull up all over the neighborhood. On Friday I was working at the kitchen table downstairs when I heard chainsaws start up in the yard behind us. Not exactly conducive to my creative process, that sound. Then two behemoths backed into the driveway of the people across the road in front of us. My physical reaction is testament to the traumatic effect of losing heritage tree after heritage tree all along our street, and the two prior owners of the house in front each did some serious tree damage. So I was worried we were about to lose more habitat, more shade, more beauty. I paced. I texted Michael. I peeked out through our curtains. When the tree men out front started waving and shouting cheerful insults down our driveway to the tree men out back, I nearly lost it completely.  

Yes, I am the lady who takes this photo. 

In the end, the carnage was relatively minor. The people behind us removed a few hemlocks on their street frontage, trees that I can barely see, there's so much other greenery in between. And the people across the road were simply letting the tree service use their driveway to access their neighbor's backyard to take down a minor and dead-looking trunk. No-one was touching that magnificent horse chestnut. For now, at least. But I'm watching, I'm watching. 

2026: April 19: New York City

Two and a half days in New York City is like a month in Binghamton. We crammed in so many things. A Top Ten Lifetime Meal in a very fancy Mexican restaurant, walking the Highline, bookstores, museums, hipster cocktails, all that happened before we even got to the main event - Death of a Salesman, on Broadway.

Us experiencing the sensory overload of Times Square on our way to the theater.   

Top billing was Nathan Lane as Willie Loman, and obviously he was very good. But Laurie Metcalf as Linda Loman, and Christopher Abbot as Biff, I can't stop thinking about their performances. Linda Loman could easily be a harridan, a sad victim of the false promise of capitalism to American masculinity. But Metcalf played Linda with power, sometimes taking her to Lady Macbeth-like heights, then laying her open with soul-scouring emotional honesty. The production was dark, the set looked like an abandoned subway station. Lines, scenes, and timeline switches layered quick-fire on top of each other, then slowed down to spare moments that let us absorb the impact of it all. 

Then, oh my goodness, then! We met Laurie Metcalf. She reads Michael's crossword blog and when she heard he was coming, she emailed and told him to come to the stage door after. I have never ever been to a stage door before. We walked past the lines of theater buffs waiting behind the sidewalk barrier, a man had Michael's name on his list and we went through the narrow back stage areas, waited, literally in the wings, and then Laurie Metcalf came out, with her little dog, and Michael talked to her and I may have said some things too, but who knows if I made any sense. (Okay, I know. I know that I did not make sense.) Laurie Metcalf was as delightful as you'd expect, more so, actually, given she'd just buried Nathan Lane. Then she had other people waiting to see her, and we said bye and went back outside. Two blocks later we stepped from the craziness of Broadway into the dark blocks of the Diamond District then wandered across a behemoth digging up the surface of Fifth Avenue and spewing it into a truck.

I guess they can't exactly repave Fifth Avenue during the day. 

The next day we had breakfast in an Australian cafe half a block from our hotel and took the most crowded train we've ever experienced back up the Hudson to where we'd left the car at the Beacon train station. Hudson River bird count included a bald eagle clutching a fish, a kingfisher, maybe an osprey, many cormorants, a swan, a heron, plus geese and ducks galore. 

2026: Sunday April 12: Birds

My first memory of anyone taking an interest in birds was Ingrid observing the tuis in the flax outside the kitchen window at our Brownville Crescent house, when I was a teenager. But there must have been earlier instances, because paying attention to birds just seemed like a reasonable thing for any person to do. Birds are everywhere, and if you're walking around with your eyes open, you're going to notice them. I don't know when birdwatching turned into a cliche about aging. Is that an American thing? People of a certain age reading binocular reviews and downloading the Merlin app to keep track of their life lists? (Guilty as charged). I don't relish being a cliche, but I guess somethings are unavoidable.

Michael checking out a cormorant in the middle of the pond. It's that little black dot you can just see if you squint, there, on the edge of the reflection of the trailer. The pond is usually the domain of the geese and the cormorants tend to stick to the river. But this one was sailing around like it owned the place while the geese watched uncertainly. (A double-crested cormorant, I believe)

Spring migrations have begun here in northeastern North America, and today our long Sunday walk went through what Michael terms "bird alley," a strip of Otsiningo Park, between the river and the highway, where bird calls compete with the sound of traffic. Brown-headed cowbirds. Black-capped chickadees. Goldfinches. Etc. We experienced some frustration because the app told us we were hearing flashes of a Rusty Blackbird, which neither of us had ever heard of before, and which we could not catch a glimpse of. Apparently they, or it, are on their way to breeding grounds in Canada, so their window of time here with us is small. Godspeed, Rusty Blackbird! 

2026: Saturday April 4: First Quarter Reading List

This quarter's list is a tad shorter than usual because one of the books was a tad longer. Dickens! Getting paid by the installment and just keeping on going and going and going. I thought it would never end. The only reason I read as many other books as I did is because the rest were shorter. 

Broome County Public Library

Charles Dickens, Dombey and Son. 1848. I blame this on Michael. He decided to start the year with a Dickens and I wanted to be one of the cool kids too, so I also started the year with a Dickens. Thanks goodness the library no longer charges late fees, or I'd owe them a fortune. It took forever because I could only read a few (dense) pages at a time. Parts of it were genius and incredible for their time. The brutal indictment of marriage and conventional treatments of women. The skewering of ambitious men. The absolute psycho-sexual mind games of Dombey's side kick. There were lines that made me laugh. And then there were lines where I thought, Dickens old chap, you've already said this five different ways in the past two paragraphs, we get it. Oddly enough, this hasn't put me off the man. I'm thinking Nicholas Nickleby for next January, maybe. 

Some second hand book store or another. It has been sitting on the shelf waiting for me for a while.

Willa Cather, The Professor's House. 1925. A nice little palate cleanser. Second favorite Cather after Death Comes for the Archbishop. Just a fascinating personality study with a whole crazy other story dropped into the middle of it, because Cather can do anything she wants. 

Chaucer's Books, Santa Barbara

Helen Oyeyemi, Mr. Fox, 2011. It took me a long time to figure out what was going on here. I could tell it  was very clever but I wasn't captivated the way I wanted to be. 

Michael brought this into the house and said I might like it and it has been sitting on The Pile for over a year

Deborah Levy, Things I Don't Want to Know: On Reading. 2018. I didn't know anything about Deborah Levy before I picked this up. It is memoir, but not the kind I expected - that "on writing" subtitle was slightly misleading. Well, maybe not entirely misleading, the book is about writing, but she arrives at the topic sideways and you've almost forgotten about that part of the title by the time you get there with her. Very clever and also captivating. 

Broome County Public Library

Julie Otsuka, The Buddha in the Attic. 2011. I read this for class and I liked it less than most of my classmates, so I kept my mouth shut during the discussion. The first couple of chapters were intriguing and pulled me along, fascinated, as Otsuka played with the form and told a dynamic story. Then her POV started to wear on me and the story became relentless - you know where it is headed and it is not one of the high points of American history. And I'm apparently pretty conventional after all, because I just wanted a character to follow. But, you know, respect for throwing down something different. [Edited to add that one of my classmates said that this was history written as poetry, and another said that since the piston of character is weaker, the pistons of language and narrative have to work harder, and both these helped me appreciate the book more]

Broome County Public Library

Jhumpa Lahiri, The Namesake. 2003. I read this for class and I'd read it before but only remembered two things about it. I didn't realize it was groundbreaking until a fellow student talked about it as something that had laid the way for other immigrant stories. I guess I just forgot how long ago 2003 was. The book was better than I remembered, perhaps because I was reading it through the lens of class discussions about writers' use of time, point of view, tension, stakes, etc, and I could see how well constructed it was. Solidly satisfying read. 

2026: Saturday March 28: A few things I did last week

Living so far away from where I grew up and where all my family is, sometimes the very fact of my youth feels like a dream. When I took a side step out of my routine to go to New Zealand for five days for Sandra's funeral, the intensity of it all both increased that dreamtime feel, and also brought me crashing back into who I am. 

So much happened it feels like I was gone for much longer. There's no way I can tell you it all, so here's a quick snapshot from each day. I'm mostly leaving out anything specific about Sandra for now, but rest assured, there was a lot of it.

Thursday: 

Peter took us to Martin's Bay, Sandra's favorite beach, at the tip of the Mahurangi peninsula. Towards the end, when she could no longer walk, Sandra and Peter would get coffees from up the road then drive down here and sit in the car watching the ocean. It is a long wide sandy expanse lined with mature pohutukawa trees, nestled between two bush clad cliffs, with a campground at one end. I get why she loved it.

Ingrid, Peter, and Nick staring out at the Hauraki Gulf

Friday

When a cousin you haven't seen in over forty years laughs so hard while saying "do you remember the camping trip when we all ate so many cherries that we all got hives and you scratched yours and had to go to hospital," you know you're home. In addition to farm-stand-cherry-induced hives, we share the experience of mothers who died far too young, and that did come up in conversation, yes. It is grounding to remember the power of connections like these.

Nicky, me, Francie (or Frankie, as her family now call her).

Then I left the lunch a teeny bit early to go visit with my college-era boyfriend who lived nearby. I got teased about this, because teasing is one of my family's love-languages. 

Saturday: 

The Warkworth A and P Show. That stands for Agricultural and Pastoral, and the closest American equivalent would be a county fair. Where do I start? Miniature pony judging? Donkey agility? (Turns out they aren't terribly agile but they seemed to be enjoying themselves). A line dance demonstration accompanied by a live rendition of Sweet Caroline? 

My aunt Anne, Ingrid, me, all appropriately hatted for the weather.

I don't usually post videos but I need to share this with you. I was genuinely in awe of the judge's knowledge, love of cattle, and public speaking skills. 

Sunday:

We were instructed to wear colorful clothing for Sandra's Celebration of Life, and I am nothing if not obedient. This was a long day with inspiring highs and challenging lows. 

Me wearing my Goodwill op shop dress, with my lovely nephew Fern

Monday:

A flat white and a long black while we discuss What It All Means at the Snell's Beach cafe before I head to the airport. 

Ingrid's drink is a long black - two shots of espresso with the hot water on the side. When are these coming to America?

Oh, and the bird count. Tuis woke me up every morning, going off like alarm clocks outside my window. There were pukekos, dotterels, variable oyster catchers, white faced herons, fantails, terns (I can't remember what kind), black backed gulls (mature and needy juveniles), mynahs (I feel like these shouldn't count, they're the starlings of NZ), mallards, canada geese. Heard all through the night but never seen were the little morepork owls (ruru). There were rumors of godwits at the next beach over, but I didn't have a chance to check them out. 

I was going to keep this shorter, but just one more - each morning I got up to watch the sunrise over the bay and walk over the headland. 

2026: Sunday March 22: New Zealand

Actually, it is very early Monday morning here in Algie's Bay. I'm about to get up and catch one more sunrise over the water. The last four days have been wonderful but exhausting and I'm almost looking forward to my Auckland - JFK - Port Authority - Binghamton haul that starts later today. 

Sharing just one photo for now, because I don't want to miss that sunrise, and I still have lots of emotional processing to do before I can write anything more coherent about the past few days of saying goodbye to my aunt Sandra.

Friday at the crematorium. Close family only. I'm towards the middle, surrounded by cousins I haven't seen in forty years but who I had instant connections with. Yesterday at the Celebration of Life there were close to a hundred people, and I was part of the eulogy line up. Met a woman who used to babysit me, It's been that kind of a trip.