Sunshine!

We are back from our week plus a day in Florida. Here are some things we saw and did. (We were upgraded to first class on the way down: Janet "I could get used to this." Me, too.)

Friends are forever. We stayed two days in Siesta Key, a funky island community on the Gulf Coast, with Steve and Judy DelViscio. Steve was a Princeton roommate and he and Judy moved to Florida to go into the real estate business in 2005, just when the market tanked. They have a nice house in the highest point in their neighborhood – 5 feet elevation – and are doing much better now. We had a nice supper in town, which boasts that it has not a single chain store or restaurant. We also watched the Princeton women's basketball team beat U. of Wisconsin-Green Bay in the NCAA tournament. We toured the John Ringling house in Sarasota, a fancy palace on the water, but more impressive was a huge diorama (in a separate building) depicting how a circus would arrive by rail, get set up (with all the extras like dining tents, makeup tents, practice rigs, etc.), put on the show and then break and leave town, all in one day. It's the work of one man.

Family is forever. We spent two nights in Naples with Janet's cousin Nancy Byrne Reinhart and her husband Peter. They live in a huge gated and high-walled condo community south of Naples proper, still under construction. We spent the day walking around a large arts fair that closed most of the town's main street, and then had lots of delicious Florida blue crabs at a crab house. Naples has the largest concentration of millionaires and the largest concentration of golf courses (80) in the country. It absolutely reeks money and lots of it. About every three minutes a jet would fly over downtown on its way to the airport. All day. All private jets. Not my life, but the area is rapidly growing.

We also spent two nights at Aunt Georgia's spacious golf-course-side home in Stuart, and spent a lot of time with Rell, her son Jacob and Sarah. This is a nice area of the state – nearby Port St. Lucie is the Met's spring training complex – and all are doing well. Georgia is recovering from hip surgery; she said to Janet "My leg disappoints me." She has round the clock care and her daughters look after her, too. She'll be 94 in a few weeks. Sarah lives in a gated community about 20 minutes away and does a lot of painting. Rell has recently bought a house on the St. Lucie River and takes her canoe out on the river, teaches yoga several days a week and is off to India for a month to work on her knowledge of and devotion to Buddhism. Jacob is a great guy who will graduate from Cal Poly this spring and go up to Seattle to work for Amazon. Great restaurant dinners both nights.

The Everglades may not be forever.

We spent two great days in the Everglades. The original plan had been to spend just one day and then get up to Port St. Lucie to take in a Mets spring training game, but we were glad to have the additional day in the Everglades. I had always thought of this as a dark swamp, but it's not. It's a seemingly endless sawgrass prairie that is wet or damp depending on the time of year, and on the Gulf Coast, an area rightly called the Ten Thousand Islands. We took a boat ride around the islands and saw lots of dolphins. We hiked in an area called Shark River and saw lots of alligators, big blue herons and other exotic birds, striped turtles, and other wildlife. We took another boat ride into Florida Bay, at the southernmost part of the state and enjoyed watching the highly acrobatic ospreys dive for fish and pelicans trolling along the surface of the water. We also took a ranger-guided hike and learned about the gators and birds. I just finished a book about the onslaught of development that continues to degrade the area and adjoining Big Cypress, which is a real swamp.

We stayed in a motel in Homestead, and ate a marvelous genuine Mexican dinner in a dark hole-in-the-wall place.

Money, money, money. On our way from the Everglades to Stuart, we stopped off in Palm Beach to have lunch and to visit the Flagler Museum. On the two block area where we parked for lunch, we saw almost nothing but large Mercedes, BMWs, Lexuses and yes, five Rolls-Royces or Bentleys, four of them convertibles. Across the bay we saw a huge collection of humongous yachts, most of them much bigger than our house. Henry Flagler was the original business partner of John D. Rockefeller in Standard Oil of New Jersey, and he built a large Beaux Arts mansion on the Palm Beach waterfront as a wedding present for his third wife. Very, very, very fancy. It was later turned into a hotel and was threatened with demolition, but a niece of his bought it back and $12 million was spent to restore it.

     Well worth the visit: we saw how the other .001% lived then and how they live now.

A day that will forever live in – well, infamy is too strong, but certainly dismay. On Monday, March 23, in the morning I found out that I lost my Supreme Court appeal, 3-2, the majority opinion a completely dishonest pastiche. In the early evening, we watched the Princeton women lose to Maryland.

Overall, a very nice trip. Florida is very very flat: Jacob says the highest elevation in the entire state is 600 feet up in the panhandle. Gated one story communities and subdivisions are absolutely everywhere, interspersed with strip malls. Staying with family and friends is the best way to see any place. Also, I did learn that until I own a Rolls-Royce convertible, I do not want to live in Florida.

Dundee Update

What a week! First, Claire came home for spring break, but a day late because she had car trouble at Hope and had to wait a day to get it fixed. Then last Friday evening saw the Hope symphonette group play at a rural church north of us. Very impressive.

Daniel started physical therapy on his foot, the good news is that there is no tear. The orthopaedic surgeon found out through conversation that I had gone to Ripon, and he mentioned that a close friend from high school went there, and I knew him well. 

Lur is still volunteering at the area hospital on the oncology floor, and she loves it. We decided to rent a raised garden plot at the hospital to grow vegetables and herbs, and whatever is too much, will donate to the area food pantry. We went to the first meeting and were told the do's and don't's. Rule #1: Clean up your mess!

We volunteered at the local St Patrick's Day parade. The little town of East Dundee had over ten thousand people show up. I did crowd control with Daniel, and Lur was on the podium. She volunteers each week at the Village historical site, so she had an "in". One of our local bars ordered two thousand pounds of corned beef, and when we went by later in the afternoon, the place was packed. 

Claire had some friends from Hope come stay with us for four days. Lots of laughter, baking, movies, a day in the city, laundry, cooking and we got to hear them practicing music. A treat.

Lur and I got together with some college friends and got home at three o'clock am. We have not done that in a long time. The next night we went downtown at the Old School of Folk Music to see Tom Paxton and Janis Ian. Incredible. Some great old songs and Janis Ian has a stunning voice, and both are great guitar players. The day before I received an old album of Tom Paxton's from Amazon that I used to listen to all the time at Lawrenceville. It seemed to have the same scratches on it. I told Lur that I might of bought my own album back.

Claire went back to Hope yesterday which was good, because last night we got six inches of heavy snow. I hope it did not reach Michigan because Daniel and I are going up there this week to look at colleges.

A great week. Lot's of really good food. Great music!

Look closely and you might see Lur!  

Next week, spring?

Rumor has it that the sun is shining and some places are actually warm, and perhaps even seeing the first signs of spring.  It is only a rumor, as it snowed here today (didn't stick) and I just went out snowshoeing.  Last weekend, I went cross-country skiing around the lake (photo.)   We are seeing temperatures above freezing, and so we're imagining it's soon to be spring.

I was able to go skiing only because Mary got a bad cold and cut short our weekend trip.  We went to Princeton on Friday, to complete an interview with the Princeton University architect I had been trying to get for months.  After a couple of hours of waiting and missed appointments, I finally got the interview and it was worth the wait.  This is for my project on the Pittsfield library, designed by an architect who had also done 6 different buildings on the university campus, including the one where Grandma and Pop met. 

Anyway, it was a good excuse to stop in and see Peter and Janet.  Of course it had snowed there the day before we arrived, but that didn't stop any of us from our agenda.  We went to a Princeton basketball game, that thankfully was not too heart-stopping, as Princeton led most of the way.  Supper at a brewery (yeah!) and then we submitted Peter and Janet to our slide show of our school project in Gabon.  They were good sports.  By the way, it's coming your way, too, if you want.  Margaret and Andrew had already seen it, but we can show you again.

Sunday morning, we had a leisurely breakfast and heard about Janet's busy schedule, including arranging a trip to New York City for her 6th grade class (I hope I got that right.)  Peter's signed up to audit another class on campus.  After many years of being on the receiving end of Peter's books, I brought one down to give to him that I thought he'd like.  In return he put a bag of about 15 books in the car on leaving.  Not really a fair trade, but thank you.   

So, we were supposed to then head off to Rhode Island but Mary felt a cold coming and we opted to head home.  Not before stopping in to see Annie, though.  (Hope you didn't get sick.)  Annie was busy with school work but was on her way to a conference at the law school on the country's incarceration problem.  

Through the week, though, we've been battling the colds that just seemed to linger around.  Thank goodness for Alka-Seltzer Cold, DayQuil and other assorted medicines.

We saw some wonderful photos from New Orleans, where Margaret and Andrew went for the long weekend and let the good times roll.  We talked to Joe who has been gearing up to run a marathon in Berkshire County in May.  I signed up for the half-marathon, but found that Joe was already running half-marathons as part of his training.  I did 6 miles yesterday on the treadmill.  Hopefully, the snow will be melted by May.

We had a bunch of calls to finalize plans for Mountain Springs in July.  Thanks to David for organizing everything. That should be fun  We were last there nine years ago.  David also told us that they were in the middle of a renovation project to replace all the doors in their house.    

The news from Dundee is Daniel's injury from basketball.  He hurt his ankle tendon, but they were waiting the results of the MRI.  Not sure if I am supposed to say this but he hurt himself by dunking the ball.  That makes him the first Dickson to dunk a ball, at least on a ten-foot basket.  Good news and bad news.

This week is spring break at UMass, but instead of heading to Cancun with all my peeps, I'll be staying home.  Mary has a break in April, and we toyed with the idea of traveling then, but it turns out we had to scratch Daytona off our list as John and Marilyn are coming north then.  Why?  To close on their house.  They got an offer and so they are making the big step final.  Congratulations are in order since I know they've wanted this, but all the same we're going to miss them.  Right now they are in Arizona on a dune-buggy vacation.

This coming week, David's birthday.  Have a great one!   

Love from up here.    

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