Tag: Hand-me-downs
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Sacred Exchanges
I awoke this morning thinking about Danusha Laméris’s poem, “Small Kindnesses”, and Rosslyn. Two discrete points of reference mingling, as if in conversation. Two planets passing, briefly eclipsing, a gravitational closeness, a tender but fleeting affinity, an ephemeral communion. The echo of a question in Laméris’s lines lingers. Like a hint, a glimmer of affirmation.…
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Merry Christmas!
Merry Christmas from our home to yours. We wish you merrymaking, loving laughter, a banquet shared, an opportunity to cherish “old chestnuts”, and the desire to dream up plans for new adventures. This evening’s post is a kind of scrapbook collection of images from our Rosslyn Christmas gathering with family and friends collaged together with…
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Christmas Eve
This evening I would like to share a memory of our first Christmas Eve at Rosslyn in 2008. It was to be our first Christmas at Rosslyn. For weeks we had been racing the calendar, coaxing the team forward, cramming days into hours to ensure that construction would finally end and Rosslyn would at last…
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Mileage May Vary
Slide into the wood and leather cabin of our hand-me-down 1949 Riley RMB, and you’ll be transported (despite the sad fact that this handsome saloon has not been driven in about four decades), transported to an earlier time when details, materials, and finishes mattered. A time when motoring was an appreciated privilege whether commuting to…
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Riley & Icehouse
This evening we’ll glance briefly, obliquely on art, memory, nostalgia, sentimentality, visual narrative, and letting go. First, I’d like to praise artist Annette Gurdo (www.annettegurdo.com) for this beautifully rendered, personally poignant portrait or the Riley in front of Rosslyn’s barns. Thank you, Annie! I will return to the artist and her art soon, but for…
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Riley Redux?
Returning to the topic of a beautiful vintage British motorcar that has spent the last decade or so in Rosslyn’s carriage barn. The photo of this evening’s post was taken on August 3, 2019 during a rare out-of-barn outing. My beautiful bride ready to roll in the Riley! Is it time for a Riley redux?…
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Adirondack Guideboat or Vermont Dory?
“Today,” as the cool kids say, “I did a thing.” I’ve been lusting after an Adirondack Guideboat, well, probably since the late 1970’s when I enjoyed my first rowed ride in this quintessentially ADK conveyance at the Ausable Club. During the early days of the pandemic my mind returned this timeless watercraft, as elegant today…
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The Farm Backstory
As we hurtle toward completion of the icehouse rehab, I catch myself in barn reflection. Again. Yes, I consider the icehouse a barn. And, yes, migrating my books and artifacts and works in progress from a bedroom-turned-office (aka study/studio) in our home into the almost renovated icehouse is enthusing me beyond reason. It’s also catalyzing…
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Does Mystery Make a House a Home?
Today’s dispatch delves into a puzzling enigma, maybe even a genuine mystery. Shortly after purchasing Rosslyn in the summer of 2006 friends were touring the house with us when their young son blasted through a doorway. “Do you think this house is haunted?!” His optimism was palpable. He related in quick chronicle what he’d discovered…
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Searching for Poetry
Searching for poetry, questing for questions that need no answers to matter and guide and enrich. This might be my epitaph. Some day. But not yet. I hope. Today, the vernal equinox, I awoke at 4:00 AM, eager to start cooking a wild boar roast I had thawed. Actually it wasn’t the roast that caffeinated…
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Generosity of Friends: Lemons from Afar
Picture perfect lemons arranged in an enormous clay bowl. Layers of largess. The sweet tart citrus was a gift from a recent friend married to my former student of 25+ years. The ceramic vessel, wheel thrown by my godfather, OMC, in the 1970s and gifted to my mother was recently regifted to Susan and me.…
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Bygone Barns
Swapping December for January signals that we’re four months into Rosslyn’s icehouse rehabilitation which, in turn, means that I’m four months overdue for a look at (or perhaps the first of several looks at) my love of barns. Truth be told, I’m a bit of a barnophile. And, given my weakness for wabi-sabi, I’m especially…