The Quest

When I wrote that title just now, I decided settle might have a bad connotation. I don't mean settle for less than the best;  I mean come to rest . So I went to thesaurus.com for some alternatives. I had to laugh out loud when one of them was "plop." A season to plop. Mmmmkay. We've just enjoyed a long visit with my parents, who decided that fall was a much better time to come to New York than Christmas. On the plus side, they came early enough that we could celebrate dad's birthday together. On the unfortunate side, the fall colors really haven't peaked yet. So they didn't get a fall color fix, even though we tried. It is, however, very definitely autumn. The temperatures are much cooler; the heater even kicked on when it got down to 37 degrees the other night. Every day when I go to work, there are new trees starting to display the tell-tale golden hues of letting go. I, too, am starting another season... one of settling in. At the end of the mo...

I suppose it was inevitable that shortly after I announced my return to full-time work, my career as a daily blogger came to an abrupt halt. I had all good intentions of keeping up with it, but a tiny voice in my head told me I didn't have to because things were going back to normal. At first, my mind was solely focused on preparing to re-enter the work force. I needed to unsubscribe from all of the job-search notifications, de-activate my open resumes, and decide what to wear the first day of work. Then there was the first day. I felt, in a way, that I was narrating my life much like Genesis. In the beginning, the job front was formless and desolate. Then God said, "Let there be light," and there was light. I went to work, picked up paperwork, got an ID, met with my new boss. There was evening, and there was morning. The first day. Then God separated the sky and the waters. I had projects assigned, had more work than I could finish, and went home to a busy weekend. A...

Today was a beautiful day in Albany. The sun was radiant, the few clouds withheld rain, and a swift breeze cooled the air... a perfect day for a walk through Albany Rural Cemetery. Many times, I have tried to photograph entire sections of the cemetery. Today, however, I wandered through taking photos of Celtic crosses and checking here and there for headstones that haven't been added to Find-a-Grave. There are many of both. One memorial in particular caught my eye today... a unique carving of stones, draped with roses and calla lilies, topped with a cross and anchor. It belonged to a young woman named Hettie Ten Eyck. The Ten Eyck name always catches my eye because that was the surname of the woman who worked in the communication office at FUMC Grapevine before me. That, in combination with the stunning headstone and the fact that she died on my birth date (87 years earlier), made me curious about Hettie and the life she led. I thought the anchor was interesting and won...

Today I was back in Troy to go on a tour of the Emma Willard School campus before I begin work. This was my first introduction to an "Emma Girl" as well. The young woman who showed me around, a senior day student, was excited to tell me everything about her school, her interests, her projects, her friends' projects, what she's learned and what she hopes to learn. At the same time, I got to see the inside of each of the original buildings on campus, as well as the new additions over the years. I also got to see my office, which is ready and waiting for me to show up next Thursday! When I left Emma Willard, I drove through the surrounding neighborhoods to see whether I might like to live in any of them. There are several houses for sale that are within a few minutes of the school, and even some that might be in my budget. That will be another upcoming adventure! On my way to the school, I had passed a sign that said "Welcome to Troy - Burden Pond." I have ...

I've been "blog silent" for a couple of days and much has happened in our world during that time. Domestic terrorists (meaning, our neighbors) have killed many people, among them a young mother (the great-niece of a dear friend of mine) and her husband. Three children under the age of 5 were orphaned by a man who held hatred above all else. (And that's just the one family I'm most aware of... how many others are there?) On the other side of the country, another friend was verbally insulted and made to fear for his safety and that of his family. Why? Because he was skipping with his daughter. A stranger felt hatred above all else, and felt it so profoundly that he ruined a perfectly innocent moment between father and child. These acts of physical and verbal violence have hung heavy over my spirit these past few days. This morning I was at a breakfast meeting with a room full of people I've never met. The last thing on our minds was hatred. Our interaction...

It all started one mornin' on Kef Mason hill... the workers had gone and the air it was still. Our brood was itchin' to get on outside, when there in the distance we saw a fox stride. 'Ole Roxy was chompin' to give 'im a chase, while red tail a-flippin' he crossed the fence base. At lunch a bit later I says to my sis, that fox he was Irish 'cause red 'is hair is. Well I can't seriously write a whole blog like this because I'm done with the rhymin' and droppin' my g's. But you get the idea. This morning after the yard guys had finished up, we were preparing to let the herd loose when I spotted a fluffy red tail following after a tall, slender fox. Inside the yard. The doodles saw him too, and my two were oblivious. As Kef was about to go shoo him away, I was preparing to close the dog door so the hoard wouldn't go after this poor soul. Before we could act, he slipped his slender body through the fence and out into the...

Here it is... the moment we've all been waiting for! Many of you have been as eager as I to discover where I'll land next... and probably just as many are ready for me to get on with it already. I'm overjoyed to say that we're all getting what we want! I'm starting a new job and you all get a reprieve from reading about the in-between! So, the winner is.... Emma Willard School ! I am amazed beyond reason that I'm going to be working on the communication team at the "first women's higher education institution in the United States" ( Wikipedia ). It started out as higher education in 1814, and is now an all-girls high school. The girls can board or be day students. There are many students from other countries as well. Growing up in a small town in West Texas, I never knew about boarding schools. I didn't have the benefit of Harry Potter to fuel my imagination about what going away to school might be like... at least not as a teenager. I did,...

Pupstraction: Being distracted by puppies. We stood in the dining room this evening discussing possible blog topics while the pups entertained both us and themselves. Roxy's CleverPet was the source of much of this distraction. In case you haven't heard of the CleverPet... it's like a flying saucer full of dog treats has landed in your home. It has blue lights across the front a la 2001: A Space Odyssey , only less spectacular. If your pet taps the lights in the right order, they are rewarded with a treat. Unfortunately, it doesn't ever respond with Also sprach Zarathustra . (That would be super entertaining if it did, though.) Meg has decided that the CleverPet is the best source of nighttime snacks, but she doesn't really know how to open it. Her mom helps out when she gets the first one right but can't figure out the second one. Her Aunt Kef's tactic is to point to each correct light and encourage her to do it herself. She can do it with Kef's hel...

A couple of weeks ago, I mentioned that I was in Schenectady for a PRSA meeting, that I took pictures, and that I'd share them later. Later is now. Schenectady is one of those towns I've always heard of but don't know why. I just remember the name, but not why the place might have been significant. Maybe it's because Grace Adler was from Schenectady, but I doubt it. All of the other popular references are ones I wouldn't have known, but I can't imagine that I paid attention that closely when watching Will and Grace . Regardless, I knew the name before I moved here. It's about a half hour drive from our house to the downtown area of Schenectady, where we have had lunch, enjoyed a show, and I have had some meetings. It's a cute downtown area, with historic buildings along a very walkable main street called State Street. The place where we had our PRSA event is called Urban Co-Works. It's an interesting flexible office space that allows non...

I've often wondered whether the technology effect is good or bad. By the technology effect I mean the fact that you can readily find information on just about anything online, and you can use your devices for almost everything. For the most part, I love it. What I don't love is the fact that I don't seem to really know things anymore. I rely on Google to give me answers to my questions, my digital calendar to remind me of appointments, my phone to wake me up and do basic math, Facebook to tell me when there's a birthday and remind me what I was doing at this time last year. Growing up, my parents always encouraged us to find answers to our questions. Any time we asked them something, they'd say, "Look it up." What they really meant was that we should consult an encyclopedia or a dictionary. We had about four different sets of encyclopedias (maybe five?), which are now sorely out-dated. I miss looking things up in a book. Searching for subjects in Funk...

As I was walking through Petco today, I passed the ferrets and parakeets. Both reminded me of other ferrets and parakeets I'd encountered. I could tell the story of the diseased ferret that came into my life for a brief moment a few years back, but many of you already know the story... and that's not the one on my mind today. What's really on my mind is Pete. Pete was my green parakeet. My parents gave me Pete for my birthday (I don't remember which one), along with a custom cage that my father made. It had a sliding tray in the bottom that you could remove to clean out the cage and replace the paper. Pete came from my babysitter's house. She raised parakeets. The first challenge I had with Pete was naming him. Apparently, my parents had had several parakeets. I honestly don't remember the birds themselves (maybe they were before my time?), but I remembered that their names were Pete 1, Pete 2, Pete 3, etc. Because I knew this, my young mind could only think...

Today's post was going to be a photo gallery hodge podge. I intended to write something about a few of the  pictures in my phone that I haven't posted for whatever reason and explain why I took said picture. Well, apparently the wifi adapter in my computer has chosen to take the night off, and this is rather difficult to do on my phone. So, I'll just do one tonight. This info graphic was on display at the Kate Mullany house. It describes the discrimination that many Irish Catholics faced when they immigrated to the United States. I admit to being fairly uninformed about this.

I spent this afternoon in Troy, the Collar City. It is so named because of the detachable collars that were first imagined and then manufactured there. The purpose of my visit was primarily to visit the campus of the Emma Willard School for a job interview. Emma Willard was a pioneer in education for women, and felt there was no reason women could not be as well-educated as men. She was right. Over 200 years ago, she started a school for women and it is still going strong (although it has moved locations over time). The campus is stunning, and the staff are friendly and engaging. In addition to the advancement of education for women, Troy was also the home of Kate Mullany, the first woman to organize a labor union. She was a young Irish immigrant who took issue with the dangerous conditions and low wages paid to laundresses who washed and ironed the detachable collars Troy was known for. Kate organized her co-workers into the Collar Laundry Union in 1864. After my intervi...

When I was visiting the Horn-Eldred family last weekend, the end of my visit was punctuated with a much-anticipated geode smash. I have never had an unopened geode, much less participated in the process of breaking one open. Apparently this is something that Emma has done often, and each time she hopes for an interesting color other than white. When Emma took a hammer and broke the stone open, it was indeed filled with white crystals. Although that's not what she'd hoped for, they're beautiful nonetheless. I was gifted with this part of the stone... This entire experience got me to wondering... what gives a geode its color? The answer, I've found, is that it's the composition of minerals in the stone. Most are filled with white quartz. Sometimes you'll see brightly-colored geodes, but the brightness of color generally means it has been artificially colored. Certain minerals can contribute colors like blue, purple, pink or green but these are rare. You ca...

Originally posted on my travel blog . As I was leaving Holland this morning, I checked two boxes on my GPS settings: Avoid Toll Roads and Avoid Highways. It was time to see a little countryside. One of the things I wanted to make sure I did this time was stop and take pictures of this church in Palmer. It is my favorite building on the way to my friends' home, and I have never taken the time to get a photo. St. Paul's Church was founded as a Universalist congregation in 1876. I guess I just assumed that it was something else first, but after looking into the history I found that it has always been a Universalist congregation. The church building was built in 1879 out of Monson granite, quarried just a few miles to the south of Palmer. Rather than turn north at Palmer to get on I-90, I continued through the town and its historic homes to take Highway 181 toward Bondsville. Passing white-washed fences that skirted red barns and silver-gray silos, I took in the charm...

Today in Massachusetts, and in fact all over the northeast, it was Texas hot. Like Houston. Hot, sticky, sweaty, oppressive hot.  When it's this sweltering, you look for something to do that allows you to stay indoors in the air conditioning, assuming you have air conditioning. Luckily Shannon and Tim do. We spent our evening watching the "Best Marigold Hotels" movies because I had always wanted to, but never got the opportunity. They were as lovely as I expected them to be. As the characters reflected on lives well lived, or in some cases seemingly wasted, there were a couple of quotes that stood out to me... Evelyn Greenslade: Nothing here has worked out quite as I expected. Muriel Donnelly: Most things don't. But sometimes what happens instead is the good stuff. I like the thought of the"instead." We all have expectations of how situations in our lives will turn out.  Sometimes we have more control than other times. When things don't work...

Yesterday evening, I had the pleasure of having dinner with the Troy Irish Genealogy Society at Max410, the restaurant at the country club on Van Schaick Island. Before you pronounce that wrong in your head, let me tell you it's not "Shake" as I've been saying, but "Skike" ... of course it is. The island is located at the confluence of the Mohawk and Hudson Rivers in Cohoes, New York. Our meeting was at 6:30, but I remembered incorrectly that it was at 6, so I was a half hour early. What to do, what to do... Several times, I had passed signs to the Van Schaick Mansion, but had never been there. According to the Google, it was a minute's walk from where I was. So I decided to zip over there and take a look at the outside of the mansion. It really was just around the corner, and let me say that it didn't look like a mansion to me. But it was built between 1735 and 1755, so I guess back then it was a mansion. Think about that. This home was built be...

I actually had quite a bit to write about today, but I got sidetracked and it's past my bedtime. I'll save it all for another day. But I will tell you one little tidbit. As I was leaving a PRSA meeting in Schenectady this morning, I decided to walk down the street to get a closer look at the church whose steeple was beckoning from a few blocks up the street. I looked, took pictures (which I'll share later), and turned to head back to my car before my 2-hour free parking was up. Just as I was about to walk up the side street to the parking lot, I saw these intriguing furry shrubs that just begged for a picture. I found them this evening on the google. It's called a Smoke Shrub because the tufts of (what I call) fur look a bit like smoke. Very unusual. Although this plant is able to grow in Texas zones, I don't recall ever seeing one. Apparently they are more prevalent in the north because the colder weather makes their colors more dramatic.

When I lived in Lubbock, I was very active in the Emmaus Community. The Walk to Emmaus is a weekend of spiritual renewal that is once-in-a-lifetime. Once you go on your Walk, you can participate as a team member. But you only go on your "pilgrim" walk once. I went on a walk for teenagers, called Chrysalis, in 1990. I worked on several teams and was eventually a Lay Director for a Walk in the Llano Estacado Emmaus Community . I even served as the secretary of the board for several years. Over time, I was a member of a couple of different reunion groups. These are people who get together regularly to share the spiritual aspects of their lives. (Although it's called "reunion," group members don't have to have been on the same Walk.) When I moved to the DFW area, Emmaus was harder to connect to. Monthly gatherings weren't the same as they were in Lubbock, if they happened at all.  It took me several years before I even sponsored someone on a Walk in tha...

If there's one thing that intrigues me, it's an ornate old building. I always want to know what it once was, especially if it has fallen into disrepair. I want to know the story and see the pictures (both then and now). I first heard about the Albany Almshouse, or home for the poor, when mother and I were touring the New York State Museum shortly after I moved here. They had a display there about the people who died there. They had even reconstructed the faces of a couple using their skulls, and were able to somewhat describe what life would have been like for them. Many were buried in basically a mass unmarked grave, the exact location of which is unclear. News reports a while back said that it was on what is now Albany Airport property. Fast-forward a few months, and I saw a news article about how the Ann Lee Home, which was the later-given name of the Albany Almshouse, was to be used to house homeless veterans. It was last used as a county nursing home, but had fallen in...

I've been working on a new brochure for the Troy Irish Genealogy Society . In the process, I've been looking at old photos of Troy. This city is one of the most interesting ones in this area, in my opinion. Looking at the skyline from the Hudson River is like stepping back in time. The church spires tower above a crowded matrix of row houses and historical 19th century buildings. It looks much like this, even today. View of Troy from Mount Ida (I think) This afternoon, I was going over to Troy to register for a drawing class at the Arts Center of the Capital Region , a gift from Kef. As I was sitting at the stop light to turn right onto River Street, my eyes were drawn to the Market Block building rising up at the corner of River and Fulton. The light changed, so I couldn't take a photo, but you can see it here on a Google Map street view . This amazing structure is characteristic of many buildings in the Central Troy Historic District . The Wikipedia article on this...

I was standing outside this evening, looking through the windows at the warmly-lit living area that has been the center of my home for the past few months. There is very little inside that belongs to me. The furniture isn't mine. Most of the linens and cleaning supplies and dishes aren't mine. The electricity isn't mine, nor are the walls and floors and toilets and bed. But from the outside looking in, it felt like home. There have been many times over the past few months that I've missed my "stuff." I have wished I had this thing or that. Hesitated to buy this or that, because I have a similar one in storage. I've spent a fair bit of time thinking about how I'll get my things when the time comes. And yet, as much as I've missed the trappings of my own home, it has been a little bit freeing. It's not often you're able to be liberated of almost everything but the clothes you wear. I've reflected on it many times, wondering if I reall...

A while back, I was playing a game on my phone that kept popping up with an advertisement for Merge Dragons. One fateful day, I finally installed it. Since then, I have lost hours of my life. That little game is like Count Rugen. "I've just sucked one year of your life away... Tell me, and remember this is for posterity, so be honest. How do you feel?" ( The Princess Bride has an uncanny number of real life applications.) When I was trying to decide what to write about this evening, all I could reflect on was the fact that I spent all day merging things. Just about every weekend, the game creators entice you with a special goal or mini-game that is only good from Friday to Monday. It's what Kef and I call "The Time Suck" because you can literally lose hours while merging things toward your goal. What is it that makes us so enthralled by this game? A site about addictions says that some gamers are addicted to the completion of a mission. I'd have to ...