Dear Everyone,
Summer is back with a vengeance, after the mild seventies of
last week. Of course, last week the air
quality was greatly diminished by the smoke travelling westward from the many,
many Canadian wildfires. When we left
for Albany a week ago Thursday it was as dense as a winter fog, and acrid as
well. Certainly, our fearless leader is
justified (as he is in all things) in setting up a 50% tariff on imports from
our northerly neighbor. No more hockey
sticks! I fail to see how this is the “consent
of the governed”; I’m becoming increasingly paranoid about election security
come November. After all, the sins we
see in others are usually the ones we ourselves commit the most. Do Republican 'fears' of election rigging indicate guilty consciences (if they can be said to have them?)
The Men’s Soccer World Cup is now over, and Cindy is
suffering from soccer withdrawal. Of
course, I am disappointed in the showing of the US, Netherlands (for Meeko and
Smokey), and France (especially their loss to England). I was astonished by how thuggishly the Argentinian
players behaved in their loss to Spain in the final. I guess if your entire game is based on Messi’s
performance, the only other trick in your hat is to try to make the other team
fight you so they get yellow-carded. It
backfired on them, and they came out looking pretty awful. Of course, some blame must devolve on the
officials, who were quite complacent throughout most of the tournament; better
to watch Aussie rules football, where there are no rules! And then
the scandal of Trump getting the FIFA president to rescind a red-carded
American star, not that it mattered. Our
golden boy corrupts everything he touches.
At least it may be the summer of roosting chickens for him, with the disasters
of western fires, Iranian war, his joke of a 250th celebration, and
the sheer incompetence of the reflecting pool, plus an endless number of other
scandals and idiotic policies. However,
it may serve only to make our incipient fascist state to become more venal and more
repressive.
Anyway, last Thursday Cindy and I went to Albany to visit
with her many cousins, and to see Ariella (Ari) and Isabella (Izzy), our two
grandnieces. Cindy has seen them
multiple times, but for me it was a first.
We had an uneventful flight to Albany, even through the smog, picked up
our car, and then went to visit her sister Joanne and her two cats, Carlos and Rosco. Joanne followed us to our Airbnb, which was
on the south side of Albany, right near a large Jewish reform temple and a Jewish Community Center (where Cindy’s Aunt June
plays pinochle). We had dinner at the
nearby Spinners Pub,
where we had good Buffalo wings, and sandwiches.
Friday morning, I walked to the same building complex that
Spinners was in to Pearls Bagel shop,
where I got a half-dozen bagels (including pumpernickel!), some cream cheese,
and rugelach. Yum! Later that
morning we went to visit with Aunt June (and Jane, in from Portland) and Uncle
Gary. Gary is about mid-way through his Alzheimer’s
evolution. He is pretty obsessed with
his large vinyl record collection. We drove south to Cindy’s hometown
of Ravena/Coeymans, and had lunch with her second cousins Mary and Peter (They
are cousins to Cindy, but not related to each other; the Italian families in
this area were so large and tightly knit that teenagers had lists of who they
could date without consanguineous complications.) We were also joined by MaryAnn, Peter’s Mom
(and Angelo’s [Cindy’s grandfather] first cousin). Mary Ann is around 90, but
still quite sharp. We ate at Yannis Too, a seafood themed
restaurant on the Coeymans marina on the Hudson River. All of us (except Cindy) had clam chowder,
and then a variety of other dishes. It
was pretty good.
After lunch we drove back to Albany, stopping at a
supermarket to get some groceries for the girls (milk, etc.), who arrived with
Cheryl and Brittany at the bnb a little before us. They were quite excited to see Cindy, but a
little fearful of the strange man with her, even though I had even shaved that
morning. The bnb was a cute house that someone
was clearly still living in occasionally, but could use a little TLC. It had a beautiful sunroom and garden that
someone clearly cares for. A big bonus was the basement area which was set up
for small children. Brittany unloaded
two travel cribs, and that is where the girls spent the night. Brittany has a
child monitor that has both audio and video, quite an advance from 1990. Cindy’s
sibs, Joanne and John and his wife Karen, stopped in to see the kids before
they went to bed.
Saturday, I lazed around in the morning while everyone else played with the girls, who are obsessed with the song “Let It Go” from Disney’s Frozen. It has been ear-worming me ever since.
In the afternoon we went to her cousin Cori’s
house, where we were joined by three of Cindy’s aunts and a slew of her 1st
cousins. Gary brought a number of his
records (Elvis, Barry Manilow, Neil Diamond, Earth Wind and Fire) which he
played on a small portable record player.
The little girls were playing in the basement, and the TV was
broadcasting the races at Saratoga.
There was a large banquet of Italian food, including meatballs, eggplant
parmesan (the eggplant must have been sliced with a mandolin, and was
multilayered like a lasagna), several pastas, and multiple desserts including
anise pizzelles
and orange tatalutes with icing with sprinkles,
made by Cindy’s cousin Kara (just like those Grandma Josephine used to make). Brittany took the girls back to Connecticut,
hoping to outrace an oncoming storm. After stuffing ourselves practically
comatose, Cheryl, Cindy and I returned to the bnb and watched the sad
France-England soccer game.
Sunday we (Cindy, Cheryl, and I) got up early, picked up
Joann, and drove 120 miles south to Danbury CT, where Cheryl was reunited with
her granddaughters, and we got to also see Jon, Brittany’s husband, and their
three cats. For lunch we had Pepe’s pizza, which started out as a
coal-fired pizzeria in New Haven but now has seventeen locations on the East
Coast. Then Cindy, Joann and I drove
back to Albany via the Taconic Parkway
(we had taken I87, the Thruway, to go south), watched the final of the World Cup and headed out for dinner at the Tipsy
Moose.
Monday morning, we flew home. Life was pretty slow here after we got back,
although I was in an aikido seminar this weekend.
Entertainment: We finished the first season of the Night Agent on
Netflix. It was ok, but we both felt
there were a lot of big plot holes and people acting stupidly and illogically. Perhaps it is a subtle indictment of the
current state of affairs. We don’t expect to watch the additional seasons.
Books: The Tinder
Box by M A Carey, an interesting retelling of the Grimm tale; The
Tapestry of Fate, second book in a series.
Well written, but overlong; In
a Strange Room by Damon Galgut – we read this for book club, it’s three
interconnected novellas with interesting grammatical stylings. The author’s
voice reminded me of W. G.
Sebald.
Love, H
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