2026: Sunday June 7: Allie

I was Allie's 12th grade social studies teacher and since I'm friends with her parents, yesterday I went to her college graduation party. Some people know what they want early, and they go at it, and they get it. Allie wanted to be a music teacher when I taught her, and here she is, about to start a new job as a middle school band teacher at a local school. We talked about the band room being a haven for some students, we talked about music building team work skills, we also talked about music being something we teach because hey, it's music and it is part of being human and doesn't need to be justified in non-musical terms.

Me and Allie. I made her take the selfie because I always assume younger people are better at that than me. I will resist making an old-person comment about fashion coming around again in regard to the hair style of the person behind me. I mean, it's not like I'm doing anything interesting with my own hair.

 

Ella's high school band teacher was there and I got to thank him for providing a creative space for her to grow and explore in. I also got to answer the "what is Ella up to now" question several times. Oh, no big deal, just Yale, you know, following her passions. Then, because Allie's family are all from Brooklyn, I threw in a casual comment about Ella subletting in Park Slope for the summer and one of Allie's uncles strolled over and asked how much a one-bedroom in Park Slope was going for these days and I pretended I understood the nuances of Brooklyn neighborhoods. (Ok, I know Park Slope is nice, but that's about as far as my awareness goes). 

2026: Sunday May 31: Dogwood

This blog is subtitled "I owe you all letters but instead you get this," a little explanation I came up with years and years ago when letters were still things people wrote. I didn't realize until Sandra died this year that most often I imagined my posts as letters to her. She would write back regularly commenting on things I'd said. Now she's gone and I miss her replies and I'm not sure who I'm writing for anymore. 

When this little dogwood flowered this spring I was very happy. I planted it as a tiny bare stick a couple of years ago and wrote about how one day it might turn into something more. Sandra wrote back with a story about planting trees in her garden, and the tree person who told her that you really had to take care with new trees. After she said that, I was extra conscientious about watering the dogwood through its first summer, and look, this year it felt secure enough that it flowered! Yes, I know dogwoods don't actually have flowers. They have bracts. But I can't say my tree bracted, that sounds wrong.

Look at my strip of shady wilderness along the back wall, under the neighbor's pine tree. The chipmunks love it back there, among the dogwood, some bleeding hearts, a columbine about to flower, ferns, some giant hostas I dug up from a sunny spot where they weren't as happy, wild strawberries (tiny white flowers), and a lot of things that are weedy and that I sometimes pull up but they come back and it's not a battle I care enough about. There used to be mint thriving back here but a combo of pushy weedy plants and shade has diminished the creeping power of mint, which is hard to do. I'm going to replant it elsewhere. 

Bonus photo! On Friday we went to Ithaca to see I Love Boosters (mostly quite good, some iffy patches, but you have to admire a movie that actually tries to do something interesting), and after we went for the first ice cream of the season at Purity (ok, for Michael the pilgrimage is for a malted vanilla shake. I get ice cream). 

The server offered a junior size shake, which is a very smart idea. 

2026: Sunday May 24

 Oh look, it's Sunday night and I haven't posted. Contemplating posting less, actually. I don't always have stuff to say that I haven't said before. Although, I guess I'm always up for sharing another silly cat photo. 

Ada watching while I do yoga. 

2026: Sunday May 17: Cat in a box.

That's it, a cat in a box. She's yawning, but it is always funny when you catch a yawning cat, because they look like they're screaming mad.

"Love Your Baby"

2026: Saturday May 9: Research Purposes Only

I have never smoked a cigar in my life and since I'm writing about cigar makers, that seems like it could be a problem. So when I learned that the Broome County Historian, Roger Luther, was giving a talk at the Lost Dog Cafe on the history of cigars in Binghamton, and that there would be a cigar lounge in the tent out back afterwards, well, I had to go, right? 

The Lost Dog Cafe is a Binghamton institution housed in the Hull Grummond building, which was built in 1886 as a cigar factory and employed 600 people in its heyday. Michael and I used to be such regulars there that one Christmas our server gave us the gift certificate they'd been given by management to give to a customer (I'm sorry about that sentence). But we don't go out to dinner much any more, so it has been a while. 

Roger Luther told me when I chatted to him afterwards that his primary research passion is the New York State Inebriate Asylum, a massive gothic pile overlooking the river on the east edge of town, but he put together an exhibition of cigar workers for Women's History month earlier this year, and last night's talk emerged out of that. He said only a few things that I didn't already know, but it was all fascinating, and I enjoyed how much the audience was into it and I was intrigued by their questions about things that I've taken for granted ever since I first started researching women's work during my college thesis on the Dunedin Tailoresses Union. For example someone asked why were women doing the low pay work. And I'm thinking, uh, because of the long history of devaluing women's labor, both economically and socially, that leads to women being deliberately excluded from skilled crafts?

Anyway. I asked my writing group if any of them wanted to go, since they've read some of my chapters, and Ethan and Rhonda and Rhonda's husband Jonathan all came along and we bought one cigar and smoked half of it together and I asked the cigar dudes how to properly smoke it and because they are cigar dudes they were so happy to explain stuff to a lady, and like a lot of people who are into a thing, they were thrilled that someone else was about to start on a journey of exploration. Except I'm not going on a journey, I'm getting off the train after one stop. One quarter of one half of a cigar with a mild Connecticut wrapper was enough for me. My mouth still tastes ashy and burnt even though I've brushed my teeth several times and the cats keep sniffing my hair like I smell wrong. But the whole thing was a blast and I thoroughly enjoyed myself. 

Me trying to look like I know what I'm doing. Jonathan took the photo. He is a professional photographer and his original framing tells a better story, but I cropped it to take out the faces of people in the background. Perhaps I will pay Jonathan so I can use this as my eventual author photo. 

Here's a link to one of Roger Luther's pieces on the State Hospital. He's still researching the place, and has given updated talks as recently as last year, but these photos from his 2014 post are particularly fascinating. http://nyslandmarks.com/treasures/14feb.htm

And here is a post Roger Luther wrote in 2012 about the Hull Grummond building.  http://nyslandmarks.com/treasures/12jul.htm

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.