Tag: Manhattan
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Historic Rehabilitation
Once upon a time—starting in about 2005 or 2006 and concluding about a dozen years ago, if memory serves—I was on the board on Historic Essex (formerly Essex Community Heritage Organization, ECHO). Todd Goff, a fellow director, Essex neighbor, and friend, took it upon himself to correct me, differentiating for me “historic preservation” from ”…
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Wavy Window Glass
I find something whimsical and intriguing about looking through o-o-old windows. Antique panes of glass. Wavy window glass that subtly distorts and dream-ifies the view. Another more Apollonian observer might consider this riffled reality discomfiting, unsettling. But wonder wells within me when grandfatherly glass slumps and swirls. It’s like a watercolor. An impressionist painting. A mirage. It…
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Demolition: Rosslyn Dedux
When it was built it was just right for the times. But it didn’t adapt… Rooms were shut off and fell out of use. Neglect left the paint chipped, with bare wood and brick showing through… rehabilitation fails with no sustainable plan for use. ~ Stef Noble (www.stef.net) I don’t recollect how I came across Demolition, a…
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Kamikaze Wild Turkey: The Gallopavo Imbroglio
“George, uh, when you get a chance, can you give me a call? A, uh, a turkey hit your door last night and, um, it knocked the door off its hinges…” A turkey? What? The voicemail had popped up on my mobile while I was riding to the airport in Antigua following ten days of…
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Paris, Rome, New York City and Essex
Early in the millennium I lived in Paris and Rome for a little while. Twin hardship posts! I shuffled back and forth on a roughly two week cycle with frequent detours to New York City to visit my then-girlfriend-now-bride. I lived out of a suitcase and a briefcase. I collected frequent flyer miles and passport…
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Serene, Patinaed Fantasy
Accustomed to living out of a suitcase, I pendulumed back and forth between Manhattan where Susan was wrapping up a degree in interior design following a decade-long career in video production, and Westport, New York, where both of our parents owned homes and where we’d met a couple of years prior. Susan had recently refinished…
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Paris Renovation Bug
Starting in about 2003 I initiated an unfocused real estate hunt for a “fixer-upper” in the Adirondacks’ Champlain Valley. I’d returned from four years in Europe with enough savings to justify some idle time, a reprieve I hoped to plough into a long languishing novel while tinkering with the vestiges of a web-based business I’d…
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See you at Depot Theatre
Adirondack storyteller and writer, George Davis, needs you to help him kill a few stories on Wednesday, August 3 at The Depot Theatre in Westport, NY. Prepare for a pell-mell parade of vignettes, monologues and readings ranging from a wader-wearing Amazon named Rosslyn to a perennially pickled bathtub yachtsman… This solo performance pokes fun at…
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Totally, unabashedly, irreversibly seduced
Today’s question from Al Katkowsky‘s Question of the Day book was the perfect invitation to reflect on Rosslyn Redux, the “big picture”! What should you definitely not have done that turned out okay anyway? In the summer of 2006 I definitely should not have purchased a dilapidated, almost two hundred year old house in Essex,…
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Almost Logical
Within minutes we were tripping over each other, drunk with excitement, imagining one whimsical “What if…” scenario after another. No filter, no caution. Our reveries flitted from one idyllic snapshot to another. “What if I finally sat down and finished my novel?” After dawdling self indulgently for a dozen years – writing, rewriting, discarding, rewriting,…
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Postprandial Soak
After dinner Susan opted for a postprandial soak. Quiet. Languid. Sybaritic. Tasha curled up beside the bathtub, sighed and fell asleep. A breeze carried the faint smell of pine trees through the open window. A whippoorwill called in the distance. “Wouldn’t it be great if we could live here?” Susan said. “Why couldn’t we?” I…
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Vintage Adirondack
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8TQI3QmIhrw] My bride and I credit the Adirondack lifestyle for luring us away from Manhattan in 2006 to become North Country full-timers. But what exactly is the Adirondack lifestyle? Actually it’s not so easily defined, perhaps because there are so many different perspectives on what makes living (or even vacationing) in the Adirondacks desirable. High…