How ABBA Maybe Saved My Life

The apartment is closed, the check is in the mail, and we have the money to build a house.  With apologies to any readers who have read this blog and know the background, here it is again: ten years ago, we bought about 75 acres of land, and during those years we have rented an apartment in a barn that lies within two arms of its boundaries.  The land is very pretty for the most part. Once a successful apple orchard on the north and western sections, a few trees still bear fruit, but essentially meadows, spotted profusely with shrubs and brush, dominate this part of our landscape. The highest point on the property sprouts a cedar forest, which is slowly but inexorably marching its army back down into the meadow. My favorite part of the land is a rocky ridge in the center toward the north side, which provides the best view: Catskills to the west and Berkshires to the east.  And last and least, there's the south end, a nasty no-man's land of impenetrable thorn, brush, and the horrible beggar weed.

A small wedge of our land borders Olana, the beautiful Frederic Church estate, and a chunk of the property is also in its viewshed. A few years ago, we half sold and half donated our development rights to Scenic Hudson, and as part of the deal we're allowed to build on five acres that aren't within the Eye of Olana.  The rest of it -- the fields and trees that had once been the apple orchard can only be used for agriculture and the forest can't be touched at all without permission.  We won't be able create a golf course or have neon signs. If we build a house it can't be chartreuse.  All good.

The five acres that Scenic Hudson allowed for a residence is, however, on the wretched south side in the lowest part of the property and so overgrown that during all the years we’ve been weekending here, we have thrashed our way through that vegetative garbage only a couple times and then given up.  We had no idea what it might look like when it was cleared out. 

So as soon as we knew we were going build, we found a contractor, Pete, and he hired Paul, an excavator, who, with his son on a bulldozer, in one day scooped out of that mess a landscape that looked as if it had been created specifically to contain our fantasy: a two-story glass and steel modular house with an adjoining guest house and garage, a native wild flower meadow, a pond, and a substantial vegetable garden.  We also want the house to be green, with solar electricity and geothermal heat. There's no far view, but that's ok; I am envisioning a place like a Hobbiton tucked into the Shire.

There was one tiny worrisome thing regarding the easement.  It only specifies that we can put solar panels within the allotted site, and because the land is so low, Michael wants to place them on a rise slightly outside the allowed building site to get more southern light. We can probably make them work within the approved area, but it might be harder to generate the electricity we need.

With the solar panels in mind, a few days after the machines had exposed the bones of our beautiful site, I decided to check out the uncut far western section that was still in our allotted area to see if there might be a better spot for the panels. So, I set off to chart the remaining virgin part of the building site. I started from a path that led across edge of the forest area, planning to make my way down through pristine section to the clearing.  However, once I stepped off the path, I encountered the same wasteland of thicket, brush, and briars that used to constitute the entire allowed area. I began confidently, however.  It was late autumn and the foliage had thinned out.  I stepped down upon a thick carpet of raspberry bushes, laid nearly flat from the chilling temperatures. The mass of canes was springy and so dense that I was able to walk on it without sinking in or getting stuck.  "Huh. This isn't so bad."  Wrong. 

Within a few yards, the raspberries met up with and were defeated by the deceptively evil multiflora rose and Japanese honeysuckle vines (both gorgeous for about two hours in the spring), which encased me like one of the loser princes seeking the Sleeping Beauty.  Worse, as I wormed my way back and forth against the current of this floral horror, thorns tearing my hands and digging through my jeans into my legs, my wool jacket became coated with the dreaded beggar weed, tiny seed claws that embed themselves into your clothes and never, never, never, ever come out again.  

Saying goodbye to my beloved pea coat, I laid it out in front of me across a mess of junky sticks, vines, and prickles, with the intention of using it as a wooly bridge. It was then that I heard the noise. "Huff! Huff! Huff! Stomp stomp." Bear? The Legendary Hudson Cougar? Insanely horny angry deer (most likely threat)? Trapped within the autumnal trash, unable to move forward or backward, I pulled out my phone and called Michael, who was back in the barn. "Help!  Come rescue me!"  While I waited for him, the huffing and stomping got louder, and although not frozen with fear, I was a little nervous.  

Suddenly, I realized I had a weapon.  I pulled out my IPhone and mentally searched through my song library for music most likely to frighten bears.  Quickly, I chose Dancing Queen over Gimme! Gimme! Gimme! and pushed the volume to the max.  Whether it was that inanely cheerful beat or those pointlessly happy falsettos, the huffing stopped and I was inspired to leap up and forward, throwing myself out into the open just as Michael appeared, dragging my dead coat behind me, the only victim of my adventure.

 We'll let the solar panels lie where they might and we'll leave the Northwest Passage uncharted, but in case she's ever needed in our new remote home to pounce out cheerfully at some vague rural threat, I'll have Mama Mia squirreled away in a secret playlist called Beggar Weed.

Closing and Losing

Last Friday, on Halloween, we had the closing for the apartment, and New York, that old slut, put on a costume. The apartment gleamed as we walked out the door, with our superintendent Iggy telling us not to be a stranger. The weather was warm and gentle. On the subway, an Hispanic man gave me his seat. When we got out, a Halal food truck vendor smiled at me. During the closing all the lawyers were kind and funny. The new buyer hugged us. Behind this gentle disguise, Manhattan leered, but all I felt was loss.

I had also lost my political womb. In New York, as a thumb-sucking Democrat, all my party needs were taken care of. I closed myself in during the Reagan years, emerged to adore Clinton (who wouldn't have slept with him?), retreated again during the Bush years, and became ecstatic over Obama. But basically, I did nothing active to promote our issues. My friends and I nodded to each other in smug agreement; no discussion needed.

Up here, it is very different. They need me. When I moved to New York 50 years ago, I left 8 very old Democrats in my hometown. And, except for the city of Hudson, the numbers here haven't changed that much. Republicanism is so pervasive that I believe it has now evolved as a genetic mutation north of Westchester, entrenched and reproducible at birth.

So, over the past few months I have forced myself to knock on about 200 Democratic doors and to call hundreds of them in order to generate enthusiasm for three local candidates: Sean Eldridge for Congress; Didi Barrett for Assembly; and my personal favorite Brian Howard for State Senate. Didi was an incumbent and a solid upstater. She's tough and very local and so managed to keep her seat. Brian, a former teacher, principal, and superintendent, would have been terrific for our state, but he was inexperienced and his campaign was drowned out by Congressional urgencies, and he lost. So did Sean.

Midway through the campaign, Sean had a debate with Chris Gibson, his ultimately very victorious opponent, that I watched online. Sean appeared calm, although he betrayed some nerves by continually knocking back water from an endless supply of plastic bottles, setting each one carefully in front of him and then dipping it down somewhere by his feet after he emptied it. His answers were careful, measured, and by the Democratic Book. 

Then, in the middle of the debate, the mediator asked the candidates to rate Obama's job score on a scale of 1 to 10. Gibson, surprisingly, gave the President a six -- generous for his side of the fence. And then Sean spoke: "Well, I guess I'd go lower, 4 or 5." At that moment, I knew we were truly dead. Over the course of the next few days, a number of the Democrats in town, particularly from our most solid base -- those in the African American community -- told us they felt betrayed by Sean's low score. So did I. So did a lot of the other workers. Although we trudged on, we did it with somewhat less enthusiasm.

There are four types of Democrats in the region that form our base: old, brown, eccentric/artistic, and weekenders. That's about it. In town, the local Bangladeshi population was 100% behind us, and so were most of the African Americans, the local artists, writers, and all the men who wear boas and spikey shoes to the supermarket. On my own road, three out of the six Democratic homes, including ours, were owned by weekenders.

As for the aged voters, the responses from many of those whom I called, especially from Olga, 84 years old, suggested to me that a part of this voting population might be straying from the flock. Olga has supported the party all her adult life, but she "wasn't sure she was going to vote Democrat this year " because Fox News seemed to give "a pretty poor picture of Obama and I thought they were pretty balanced. And I voted for him twice." I learned that her beloved husband had recently died, that she had fallen in the bathroom and lay there next to the cat litter box all night long, and it was her belief that shooting every person who tried to cross the border was a simple solution to all our problems. Her best friend, also in her eighties and a Democrat, watched the same balanced news and had also turned on the President. I told Olga she should stop watching Fox News and didn't offer her a ride to the polls. Because we called everyone at least twice, I got Olga again on election night. This time I learned she was having a terrible time with her dentures and couldn't find a dentist who could relieve the pain they were causing. I asked around the headquarters' room for referrals and someone suggested "Nothing but the Tooth", a local practice, but she had used them already and they were unable to help. I commiserated about her teeth but didn't ask if her opinions had changed nor offered a ride to the polls.

During this final desperate weekend, I served haphazardly as the canvassing captain, and was in and out of the local headquarters from 8 AM to 6 PM for the first three days and 8 AM till 11 PM on Election Day. We were only calling our fans, the loyal Dems, but it was still tough. We had hit them so often, and they were getting pounded, as I was, by so many other political calls and emails, that, in the end, I could sense from their growls and desperate responses that they were becoming resentful and even bitter. And I couldn't blame them.

After the election, I kept hearing political experts claiming that one of the reasons we lost was because Obama hadn't communicated his own positive record strongly enough. But why should he? He has to run the country. Communication is what the party strategists are for, the hacks who sent out the 60 daily hysterical, whining, panicking, desperate daily emails, the shrill death throes of the election. I would think that, given their powerful verbal swords, these articulate and professional Democratic marketers could have swash-buckled both supporters and opponents effectively with Obama's important successes and political feats, with his attempts to reduce disparities between rich and poor. But they didn't and neither did many of their candidates, who simply mouthed in ads and in person the same mechanical liberal catch phrases over and over until everyone became tone deaf.

The idea of backing away from Obama was an insane strategy unless the Democrats were hoping to get Olga and her friend to the polls. But for the rest of us, who are in there for the long haul, we really like our President; we think he's done an amazing job in the face of racist, vicious, and stupid opposition. Even if we couldn't win, the best the Dems could have done this season was to embrace Obama, his record, and his efforts to reduce the wealth gaps, and then go with God. Losing would at least have been honorable.

Don't get me wrong. I like Sean a lot. He is earnest, honest, has good ideas and intentions, and his wealth allows him to be independent. However, he didn't stray far from the party pack (I longed for him to produce a spontaneous sentence). Some people complained to me that when he visited local stores and restaurants, he was too distant and he didn't buy anything. Sean also has the disadvantage here of being gay and, worse, perceived as a weekender. He owns a house upstate but, like me, he is still a cidiot, a Manhattan expat. Finally, and fatally, Sean was pitched against a large, genial military veteran, a family man, and an incumbent who personally knows half of the people in the district. In spite of Gibson's generally nasty voting record, he crossed party lines a couple of times so he could claim being a moderate. Therefore, at the end, he took all of the Republican and yanked in some Democratic votes and won.

I would like to see Eldridge run again, but by that time he needs to be rooted, friendly, and entrenched in the lives of his neighbors. And his young smart campaign workers must not be fighting the last war. The intense grassroots grunt work with its multiple hits on well-researched targeted voters that worked so brilliantly for Obama didn't this time. Our targets considered the knowledge we had of their ages, addresses, phone numbers, and voting history invasive. In addition, with the introduction of multiple emails on top of ads, phone calls, and door knocking, the noise became deafening. Certainly during the next race, Sean needs to sit down at Tansy's and have a bowl of her wonderful home made vegetable soup, even if he's already eaten Earth Food's fabulously rich Veggie Supreme for breakfast. And he also needs to find Olga a good dentist. So if Sean wins then, like the fabulous Sally Fields did at the Oscars, he will be able to yell, "You like me. You really, really like me."

A Tale of Two Restaurants

Daniel, the owner chef of DABA, a high-end restaurant in Hudson, is rushing through the aisles of a Los Angeles supermarket, peeling off boxes and produce, for his third round in the horrifying chef challenge show, Guy Fieri's Grocery Games.  His opponent is another chef, an attractive young woman who lives in California.  Daniel has made it to the third and final elimination round; the current barrier is to choose only one item from each aisle.  Daniel is making a parfait and the young woman some kind of fabulous chocolate thing.  The prize is $20,000, which the winner of this round still has to earn through a final humiliating run around the supermarket. I'm a Food Network junkie (just binged on six "Beat Bobby Flay" episodes), but I've managed to avoid Grossery Games. We are watching it now just to see Daniel. 

DABA is our favorite restaurant in Hudson, our weekly hangout, and one more reason why leaving New York has been relatively pain free.   Daniel, a bear of a young man, with a smile that manages to be both cherubic and sly, is a serious chef and great host.  Often out front, he not only makes the round of his regular customers but during busy times also serves and tends bar.  Stumbling into DABA last winter off of the bulky snowdrifts buttressing the streets and out of the miserable temperatures was like coming into a welcoming alter-home.

DABA has all the attributes that Michael and I have sought out when I have wanted to escape my own kitchen both in New York and here in Hudson:

• A bar substantial enough to be populated by Chaucerian regulars and staff who provide good stories and useful local gossip. 
• Beautifully cooked meals, with a menu that ranges from high-end items when we are flush to a low-priced selection of bar-type food when we feel broke.  
• A quiet subtle atmosphere with warm lighting and no blast of music or monster TV muscling the bar space. 
• And an owner who occasionally hangs out with the customers.

The only other time we've had comparable hang-out experiences was in the nineties at Cal's, a bar-restaurant on 21^st between 5^th and 6^th.  I still miss it.  The owner, Kahlil (Cal) Ayoubi, was the grandson of a Syrian President, whose family was exiled first to Beirut and then to Paris.  Cal took his part of the family money and moved to New York, where he first owned a restaurant in Soho and then in our neighborhood. It was a large space, with a very long dark shiny bar, subdued warm lighting, and candle-lit tables spaced reasonably apart throughout the room.  We were regulars there for about eight years and many of the customers and staff we met remain our friends today.  Like DABA, Cal's also had the price-range spread, with both good high-end food and an award-winning hamburger.

Cal was often out front, holding a glass of clear something, sitting at the bar and describing his alcohol-induced impotence and the degree to which his cirrhotic liver was killing him.  (He provided his doctor with free meals.)  He flirted hopelessly with pretty women and defended his staff over his customers, occasionally permanently ejecting those who were particularly rude to one of his waitresses or bartenders. Given all this, Cal still retained a profoundly heroic, non-American cynicism that could have rebuilt Casablanca's Rick's Place.  And at the deep end of his despair was a dark belief in his failure as an artist.  I loved Cal's work, which might be described as cheerful German expressionism (is that possible?).  His paintings enlivened the walls of the restaurant and to this day I regret not buying one of a small white cottage dancing in space among cheerful child-colored apple trees. (My desire for that painting appears now to be prescient, as we begin planning our house, which will also be dancing in space in the hollow of our apple orchard ghost.)  

Unfortunately, Andreas, Cal's young talented chef, who roller skated to work and dazzled young women, quit after a few years and moved to Long Island. Cal didn't replace him with anyone equally skilled but relied instead on the kitchen staff who had learned the menu.  Their food was ok but not fabulous enough to get the two stars Cal had earned earlier. And finally, as with everything in our neighborhood, the skyrocketing rents knocked him out of 21^st Street.  Cal opened a small restaurant on the upper east side, but it lacked the bar and our neighbors.  We went there a couple of times but it was too far away and we need a Cheers.

DABA is Cal's spiritual heir, and the food is better.  When DABA first opened, the menu heavily reflected Daniel's Scandinavian background.  My first meal there included elk and a three-herring appetizer that transformed my whole view of oily fish.  Eventually, the elk went away, but the Swedish meatballs are still available, dense and flavorful, balanced on a swipe of pureed potatoes and set off by a slash of bright lingonberry and a dish of thinly sliced cucumber pickles.  The filet and scallops are meltingly cooked, with the latter accompanied by curried spring rolls that would make a great dish by itself.  On some nights if you're very, very lucky and you get there early, you might get the special fish tacos.  

Suddenly the bell goes off.  Daniel and his opponent are grasping and hugging various food objects as they rush to their cooking stations.  The female chef is in despair: she forgot to pick up chocolate, the key ingredient in her dessert.  As with all these chef competition shows, each contestant has a background story intended to appeal to the audience.  Her husband has lost his job and they are on Medicaid and food stamps.  She could really use the $20,000 prize.  Daniel's wife had just delivered their third child back in Hudson the day before the competition. She went into labor as Daniel was driving to the airport to fly to LA.   He could use the 20K, but his tale (he and his adorable wife have two other adorable children and live above the restaurant that he owns and they'd like to find a bigger place) lacks the woe of his opposition.  Now, Guy announces that Daniel had won an advantage when he responded correctly to some inane quiz question: he can choose any food product he wants from any aisle.  Dan pauses and, unlike any Food Network contestant I've ever seen under this pressure, he becomes calm and thoughtful.  He shrugs and turns to his opponent.  "I've got all the stuff I need.  Go ahead and get the chocolate."  An enormous virtual crowd roars silently across the TV universe.  The woman wins the contest but Daniel becomes the first Food Network hero ever! 

Like Cal's, DABA will not be our source of warmth, comradeship, and culinary happiness forever. But I know that, unlike Cal, Daniel is young and eager for a more expansive venue for himself and his family.  So someday I expect to see him impressing us in the Iron Chef Stadium or moderating some show where chefs compete by cooking with utensils made out of bark with ingredients they have to find in a field.

As for Cal, I just Googled Khalil Ayoubi and found a show of his paintings in Beirut from last November.  One of them was of a house lodged in green space within a grove of child-painted trees. I emailed the gallery owner and asked if it was still for sale.

The County Fair and the Thrill Continues

When I was kid, growing upstate in the middle of the woods, going to our county fair in Schaghticoke, New York was my annual vision of the World.  My mother would give my sister, brother, and me a dollar each and send us off to ramble about the fairgrounds by ourselves. (Mothers did that then.) Here, I believed, was what a city must be like, full of excited people, crazy technological miracles, color, movement, music, and shady men with scary eyes and false seductive voices urging us on rides and to play unwinnable games.  (This early infatuation was, in fact, a pretty accurate preview of my future experience of NYC.)  One year, I think I was about eight, I spent what seemed like hours talking to a mechanical farmer, entranced by the magical feat of conversing directly with this robotic creature.  Best day of my life up to that point. 

I still love the county fair, but with the irony that time presents us with, it now literally means country to me -- not city.  When we first started coming upstate on the weekends, we went to the very extensive and grand Duchess County Fair.  But now we favor its much smaller Columbia County neighbor, which smells like grease, hay, and a hint of cow manure no matter where you are on its grounds.

After arriving this year, we first aim for the animals: floppy-eared bunnies, humps of warm thoughtful cows, sheep staring vacant-eyed at nothing, and cages of chickens -- feathered bimbos gloriously clothed and rackety with silly chatter.  I'm especially searching for the goats, who, unfortunately, never warrant their own section at the Columbia Fair.  Now, I can't find them at all.  A couple of young slow sheep men point vaguely in the direction of the back end of their large area.  There, we find only three young kids huddled together in one pen.  Where were the goats this year?  I find this disconcerting. Our family had in fact raised some goats for a few years and we loved their goofy looks and cagey intelligence.  If I had retired when I was younger, I would have taken on a few.

Michael and I next check out the winning vegetables, studying with scorn the blue ribbon won by the flaccid Anaheim peppers withering in their baskets, and I remind myself to enter my far superior Big Jim chilies next year.

We skip the awful games along the runway, with the hanging corpses of large unattainable panda bears and stuffed Looney Toon characters and where small children aim semi-automatics at cute metal animal heads.

We are hungry now and ready for the terrible irresistible fair food, which has, like the world, evolved since the corn dogs and cotton candy of my youth.  Ethnicity bellows from each stand, democratically displaying foods with equally uncertain bacterial counts. Michael buys lamb souvlaki, and I pick up a taco, an unfortunate choice of bland chicken chunks drippy with bright yellow cheese food suffocating in a thick flour tortilla.  Ugh.  I throw it away and eat instead a Polish sausage with sauerkraut and mustard, which is fine but tastes suspiciously like a big hot dog.  We are eating at a battered wooden picnic table, and I stare longingly at a meatball sandwich and a blooming onion, that miracle of deep frying, with horse radish ranch dressing pooled lavishly in the center of golden oily petals, being enjoyed by an appropriately overweight couple across from us.

After lunch we head for our main objective.  This year, the Columbia State Fair has a special focus.  The mechanical marvels we seek out now are not ungainly talking metal farmers but shiny green John Deere tractors, which growl about heavy lifting, snow plowing, and the transformation of our land.  It is not clear yet whether we'll need a Mama tractor in the 2 series or a smaller version.  We'll have to pay an excavator to rough out a road and the building site in order to determine the horsepower we'll need.  But before we head home, today I sit happily in the clam shell of a 2032, and poke at the handles, envisioning the fields of wildflowers and native trees and fat shiny blue-ribbon winning vegetables that our property will produce with the help of our steel-clad pal.  

And while the fair of my childhood gave me my view of the future, so now we beat on, tractors against the furrows, back ceaselessly into my past.