The Finger Lakes area

Driving through rain showers on the way to our next campground outside Ithaca, New York, we began noticing big road signs - the kind that ordinarily warn you about a bridge out or a detour ahead - telling us "PHISH CONCERT CANCELLED".  A huge rock festival had been scheduled for Watkins Glen, just down the road from where we were scheduled to camp, but torrential rains washed it out.  For weeks now TV news has been telling us about severe flooding in several of the northeastern states.

And we have indeed seen a lot of rain over the past few months.  In fact, all up and down the East Coast, the pastures and lawns and trees have been incredibly green and beautiful, a result of the fact that unlike on the West Coast, which has a wet season and a dry season, it rains on the eastern states all year round.  Unfortunately, the rain has also allowed the mosquito population to flourish, so we're itching and scratching.

Our campground was in the Finger Lakes wine region of New York state.  We drove to a well-reviewed vintner, Catharine Valley Winery, for a tasting.  The winery is in a pretty setting on the shores of Seneca Lake (one of the fingers).  Those are vines in the background.

For $5, we sampled six wines.  (Napa Valley has a slightly different pricing structure.)  The two reds - Cabernet Sauvignon and Cabernet Franc - were truly undrinkable.  The whites were pretty good, especially the Riesling and the Late Harvest Gewurztraminer.

Ithaca is home to two institutions of higher learning, Cornell University and Ithaca College.  Cornell is one of the famous Ivy League schools   We visited its campus, which was welcoming the return of its students from summer break.  To be honest, most of the architecture was unimpressive, and the surrounding housing looked a bit seedy.

The town of Ithaca has a very nice pedestrian mall downtown.  Nancy and I had a fine lunch at an outdoor restaurant there.  We passed a barbershop, and Nancy forced a haircut on me.

Ithaca's downtown has a summer concert series, and one of the strangest groups I've ever witnessed was playing while we were visiting.  It was a Dixieland jazz band with an opera singer.  Don't see that combination very often.

Ducks

The most controversial food product in the US is foie gras - the fatty livers of force-fed ducks (or, in France, geese)  The production of foie gras in California was outlawed by the California legislature about six years ago, because of the belief that force-feeding is cruel and a form of animal abuse.  By far the biggest producer of foie gras in the United States is the Hudson Valley Foie Gras Farm, and as an example of our brand of hard-hitting journalism we wanted to try and get a look at the process.

It turns out that the farm is happy to provide tours of their facility, and we made an appointment.  Our tour guide, a nice man named Erwin, told us that large quantities of baby ducks - I believe they are a mix of Pekin and Muscovy ducks - are brought in on a regular basis from Canada, and he took us to a huge room filled with hundreds (thousands?) of the little guys.  By the way, boys produce better foie gras than girls, so these are all male ducklings.  Here are some of them at the water dispenser

Then we went to a different room containing ducklings a bit older - these were five or six weeks old.  You can see feeders for them on the left, and the water supply on the right.

These big rooms looked clean and well maintained.  The ducklings seemed comfortable and not stressed, although I don't know how one could judge that with confidence.

Finally we entered the room where the force-feeding (gavage) is done.  At this point the ducks, larger now, had been segregated into pens containing about ten birds each.  The bird feeding technicians - mostly of Mexican extraction - are specialists in what they do, and are well paid and given trailers in which to live, right on the property.  Each of these men has an assigned group of birds to feed and is given bonuses whose values depend on the quality of the foie gras harvested from his ducks.

The process consists of restraining each duck, holding its neck vertically, inserting a tube down its throat and discharging feed down the tube.  The tube is in place for only about four seconds and the feed is squirted in for about half of that time.  The birds don't seem to enjoy the process, necessarily, but since they don't have a gag reflex and the esophagus is tough enough to handle whatever they ingest normally (without chewing), it may be more panic at being held than discomfort.  This process is repeated three times a day for eighteen days, which results in livers much larger than normal.

Overall our impression was that the birds are handled as humanely as possible.  Certainly their lives are more pleasant than those of chickens who spend their entire lives in cages.  But the images of force-feeding have led animal-rights advocates to focus on foie gras production, and Erwin said that the company's legal fees may run into the millions.  Many years ago activists broke into the buildings at night and damaged equipment and stole flocks of ducks.  Seems to me that there's no intentional cruelty at this facility, and there are much more egregious violations elsewhere in the world of meat production.  Of course for some the consumption of any meat is immoral, and while I respect that point of view, most of us don't feel that way.


Driving on the side road to our next campground, we passed a bunch of young men and women dressed in the characteristic style of Hasidic Judaism - dark pants, white shirts, yarmulka or brimmed hats, and sidelocks/pigtails for the guys, long dresses and hair coverings for the ladies, long black coats for older boys and men.  We learned that the Catskill Mountains is a popular area for Hasidic summer camps.

We drove to the nearest grocery store, and it was in a town dominated by Orthodox Jewish stores.  More signs in Hebrew than English.  The grocery was a fascinating one, with breads and pastries that looked delicious but were not what we're used to seeing in secular stores, and lots of kosher products.  Israeli music filled the air.  Very exotic.

In the grocery parking lot was a nice little park.

When we drove through Canada a few weeks ago, it was almost like being in a couple of unofficial American states.  But this Catskills town felt like a foreign country.

Hudson River Valley, New York

The Culinary Institute of America, in nearby Hyde Park, the premier college in America for aspiring chefs, is closed for a student summer break.  This was a significant disappointment, because we wanted to attend a tour of the campus, and I might have even taken a class.  There are four restaurants on the site, all staffed by students, one of which we were planning to visit, but they were shut as well.  We did visit the campus, which is extensive and features some really impressive architecture.

Our plan is to return to the Northeast some upcoming fall season to see the New England color changes that are so spectacular, and to include a visit to the CIA campus at that time.

Also in Hyde Park is the former home of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the 32nd president of the United States.

The first-floor interior of FDR's home featured an impressive library, but the air-conditioning was on the blink, so we never got a look at the superheated second floor, which included a dumbwaiter contraption that allowed Roosevelt to move his wheelchair from floor to floor.

The Roosevelts were one of the great political families of their day.  (Teddy Roosevelt, the 26th president, was a fifth cousin of FDR and an uncle of first lady Eleanor.)  Franklin was a prominent Democratic politician when he contracted polio and lost most of the use of his legs.  He was elected to the presidency in 1932 in spite of his disability, defeating Herbert Hoover in the midst of the Great Depression.  He was at the helm when Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, and he presided over the nation during most of the war effort, dying from a stroke in his third presidential term just before the Axis powers surrendered.

FDR's list of accomplishments is long.  Because it was the run on banks that had triggered the rapid collapse of the economy and led to the Great Depression (since bank accounts were not then insured, many lost everything), he established the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, which as an arm of the federal government insured individuals' bank accounts.  His administration also initiated many other financial reforms.

During the depression he tried everything he could think of to help American families survive, including the creation of huge numbers of jobs through the Public Works Administration and the Civilian Conservation Corps.  Among the long-term changes he is credited with are the Social Security system and unemployment insurance.  Clearly FDR was responsible for greatly expanding the power of the federal government in our lives.  Your appreciation of his presidency will depend on your own political outlook, but historians consistently rank him as one of the top three chief executives of all time, along with Washington and Lincoln.

Roosevelt was the first president to establish a presidential library to house the papers documenting his time in office. Before that the preservation of presidential documents was haphazard.  The library facility is on the same grounds as his ancestral home and contains an office at which he worked when in Hyde Park.  As with all the other presidential libraries, we walked through rooms detailing all the important stuff that happened during FDR's years in office.  At the time we visited, there was also an interesting exhibition of World War II poster propaganda art promoting the war effort.

A really cute little town, Rhinebeck, with several good restaurants, is nearby.

I'm a fan of the architect Frank Gehry, and Bard University has a performing arts center designed by him in his monumental sheet metal style.  Unfortunately, no performances were scheduled during our visit.

The New York State Fair is scheduled a week for now, and Nancy loves her state fairs.  She's even a fan of county fairs like the one in Watsonville, and the New York State Fair should be a whole lot better.  But we'll miss it.

Obviously there's a lot going on in this area (although our timing wasn't good), and tomorrow when we move the motorhome on to a nearby town still in the Hudson River Valley, there's something else fascinating that we hope to see.

Upstate New York

From our campground outside Burlington we drove south, headed for upstate New York.  About twenty minutes into the trip our GPS - a unit specifically configured for recreational vehicles - told us to turn left and get into a line leading to a ferry.

Whoa!  We don't hold with no ferry where our motorhome is concerned.  Some ferries have weird rules regarding onboard pets.  And getting our big old motorhome and its towed pickup truck onto and off ferry ramps was not a complication we needed.

Turns out there is a GPS option - "Avoid ferries" - which had not been turned on.  Operator error.  After ordering the GPS to yes, avoid ferries, we re-entered our destination - Lake George, New York - and off we went.

Unfortunately, no U-turn appropriate for a motorhome of size presented itself, so it was quite a while before we got back to our Burlington area campground and on the proper road to our next campground.  We found Lake George to be a truly beautiful body of water, and we would have enjoyed more time there, but we had only one night scheduled before our reservations further down in the Hudson River Valley.

Nancy was intrigued by the description of one of the many resort hotels on the lake - the Inn at Erlowest: "A magnificent turn of the century stone castle".  You know how we love our castles.  We drove there, thinking that we might have a light dinner at the bar.  The building was impressive but probably doesn't meet the Wilson criteria for a castle.  Not a single turret!  (Sorry about the underexposure.)

We walked into a wedding reception at the inn.  Pretty twenty-something girls in beautiful bridesmaids' dresses and their male counterparts on a gorgeous terrace overlooking Lake George.

The bar was open for business, and we had drinks and small plates for dinner there.  It was fun talking with our fellow barflies, most of whom were guests at the inn and hailed from all over the country.

The next morning we moved on .. and the skies opened up.  A heavy rain descended upon us, and driving on a busy multi-lane highway in a downpour is not one of my favorite things to do.  Eventually we pulled safely into our destination RV park in the town of Rhinebeck, New York.

The Hudson River Valley in upstate New York is a fascinating part of the country.  It contains a number of "gilded age" mansions - that is, magnificent - some would say excessive - residencies of the super-rich built in the late 19th century.  It also is home to the FDR presidential library and the Culinary Institute of America - the premier cooking university in the country.

We began our explorations by visiting Staatsburgh, the home of Ogden Mills, who was the fabulously wealthy son of Darius Mills, one of the richest men of his era.  I'm not sure what dance step Nancy is attempting there.

The Leland-Stanford-designed mansion is said to have similarities to Downton Abbey (or Upstairs, Downstairs or Gosford Park) in that the lower floors were the province of the servants, and the upstairs was where the owners and their guests lived what looks like a charmed (if stuffy) existence.

Unfortunately, our tour through the property was led by a middle-aged lady who inexplicably loved the sound of her voice.  No on-off switch was provided so it was something of an excruciating hour.  But the house was nice.

Ogden Mills reportedly was one of the good guys.  He built his estate as a working farm not to be a profitable enterprise but to provide work and prosperity for the community and the hundreds of his employees.  An admirable outlook.

Burlington, Vermont

Our current campground is in South Hero, Vermont, not far from Burlington, the home of Vermont University.  Our motorhome looks out onto Lake Champlain.

One of the surprises of our trip has been how hot and muggy it's been in the Northeastern states during these summer months.  That was true even close to the Atlantic coast, and here in Vermont it doesn't even cool down properly at night.  We are told by the locals that this heat and humidity are not normal but I'm beginning to suspect that my ideas of the summers back East were simply off base.  Spoiled by the California coast, I guess.

This is one of only two RV parks on our travels that have encouraged us to use their WiFi for streaming video services.  Most campgrounds advertise WiFi but in many cases even their basic WiFi is incredibly slow and often unusable.  So while we can ordinarily use our Verizon services for hotspots to stream videos, Verizon enforces a limit to data usage, so it was deeply satisfying to stream away without worrying about bandwidth.

We signed up for a trial period of Hulu so that we could watch season two of The Handmaid's Tale, and also are enjoying Hulu's Castle Rock, based on a creepy Stephen King story.  On Amazon Prime we're currently streaming A Very English Scandal, which is a brilliantly told and hilarious true story starring Hugh Grant and Ben Whishaw, and The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, which is funny as hell.

Burlington is an incredibly impressive town.  It has a wonderful downtown pedestrian mall called Church Street Marketplace.

At night that mall becomes even more magical.

On the last night at our campground I went to a Latin jazz concert at the FlynnSpace theater just off the downtown mall.  It was almost like being transported to the Kuumbwa Jazz Center in Santa Cruz.  This basement theater, somewhat smaller than Kuumbwa but with the same wholesome ambiance, was pretty much sold out and full of enthusiasts.  The nine-piece band was called the Burlington Latin Jazz Orchestra and was headed by Ray Vega, a trumpet alumnus of the Tito Puente band and now a Senior Lecturer in the music department at the University of Vermont, which is just a few blocks away.  The group was a combination of teachers from the university, local professional players, and university music students.  The rhythm section was outstanding, the solos somewhat inconsistent, but the sound and drive were great.  Ray Vega, shown soloing below, is a talented player and a charming leader.  It was a fun and rewarding evening.

Nancy, with less enthusiasm for jazz than I, wandered the enchanted downtown mall while I was at the concert.  She had a light meal at a wonderful steakhouse, browsed a bookstore, and bought some maple syrup liqueur at a shop there.  Because of the local university, there was a heavy presence of young people, but folks of all ages were out in droves for the delightful evening.

We're charmed by Burlington.  It has almost everything we're looking for as a place to settle down.  The dealbreaker, however, as you might guess, is the climate.  It's not old people winter weather up here.

Wilson Castle in Vermont

Vermont is one of the truly beautiful states.  Deep rolling hills absolutely packed with deciduous trees, meaning that the jujube colors in the fall should be amazing. It's not a populous state, probably because the winters here are brutal.  It is a well-educated state, its schools among the best in the country.  Our impression as we drove through the countryside was that the houses don't look particularly prosperous, and in fact the average home price in Vermont is $195,000 whereas the national average is $217,000.  Of course both those numbers seem ridiculously low to anyone from one of the nicer parts of California.

But some of the towns here are impressive.  We walked through Woodstock (no, not that Woodstock), which has a charming downtown.

Woodstock has one of the coolest libraries we've seen anywhere in America, the Norman Williams Public Library.

Plenty of restaurants and shops.  We even found a house for sale we liked in a street just off downtown (although listed at a price much higher than the state average).  But we must be realistic about it.  Regardless of how desirable a town is here, those winters make it unlikely that Vermont will be our first choice.

Our campground is just outside Randolph, Vermont, and one of the local attractions advertised at our RV park's office was Wilson Castle, near the town of Rutland.  Because of our fascination with castles - especially one with such a distinguished name - we drove over to check it out.

Wilson Castle was built around 1850, mostly by local craftsmen out of imported materials.  It was eventually acquired by someone named Wilson, and it's been in that family for five generations.  The brick exterior is impressive, with two turrets and interesting curves and angles.

The extensive interior woodworking is very well-done and well-preserved and much of it is in raised panel style with some similarities to what I did covering some of the walls of our house in Ben Lomond.

But this was nothing like visiting one of the grand mansions in Newport, Rhode Island and taking a well-organized tour.  Parking was haphazard and the grounds were a mess.  Inside, everything was untidy, and it was obvious that renovation was underway, not necessarily in an orderly fashion.  A very sweet young lady took our admission fees and led us around but unfortunately was lacking in knowledge.  Before we began exploring the place, we watched a DVD about the history of the building and some of its treasures on one of those old 32-inch TV sets that are a couple of feet deep.  None of those fancy flat screen models to detract from the past-century mood of the house.

Still, I love these old palaces and enjoy dreaming about what life was like for the upper classes in those days.  Lots of work before Wilson Castle is ready for prime time but I sure wish them the best.

Incidentally, I've almost recovered from the viral illness and possible allergic reaction I mentioned in the previous entry.  Thanks for asking.

Nancy attends her family reunion and I fall apart

Nancy had a wonderful time at her family reunion in Glen Mills, Pennsylvania.  Around twenty-five members of the Meisenhelder clan attended.

She caught up with her very funny retired electrician brother Ren who lives nearby, her brother David, who spent six months in Cambodia before returning to his CPA job in Pennsylvania, and her retired graphic designer sister Julie, who now lives in Massachusetts and was the primary organizer and researcher for the reunion.  Jeff and Peggy Meisenhelder (who hosted us and our dogs at their home not too far from Austin, Texas when we passed through in late December, as was reported in this blog) attended.  Of course various cousins, nieces, and nephews and their offspring were there.  The reunion was held at the beautiful home of Nancy's niece Melissa and her husband Drew.

Julie put up a world map onto which attendees could put colored pins on the countries they had visited.  Nancy had a good showing but was topped by her cousin Sally and her cousin Jeff.  Sally has had an amazing life and career working as a nurse and English teacher all over the world, from China to Cambodia to Nigeria to India to Mexico and various other nations.  Jeff was a petroleum engineer and lived and worked in many of the oil-producing countries in the world, including exotic places like Mongolia.

Julie also established a pet corner consisting of photos of the attendees' pets - dogs, cats, goats, and birds, as well as photos of Meisenhelder ancestors, and yearbook and baby pictures of the attendees for guessing who was who.

And Julie assembled a Meisenhelder history book, a copy of which went to each of the attendees.  It contained family genealogy details dating back to the 17th century, newsclippings featuring Meisenhelders of days gone by, a list of Meisenhelder generations, and perhaps the most fascinating component, the extensive writings by Nancy's grandfather, Ren Senior, including his rides with Pancho Villa.  She handed a copy of that book to each attendee.  Unfortunately, the fine Meisenhelder name is in danger of disappearing from this branch of the tree, unless a couple of male millennials - you know who you are - step up to the plate.

Amazing job organizing this Meisenhelder reunion, Julie!

Meanwhile, back at the trailer park, on the day after Nancy left, I came down with some vague early symptoms of a viral respiratory syndrome, including loss of appetite (an affliction from which I'd never suffered before).  Then on the evening Nancy returned, my lips puffed up, and the next morning so did my eyelids.  (There are no known photos of that grotesquerie.)

This saga to be continued ......