Out of the chrysalis

Every year in late summer, Amy searches the local fields for monarch butterfly caterpillars; she brings them home and puts them in a netted container, where she raises them for some weeks until they form a chrysalis and then hatch.  The monarch chrysalis is my favorite stage -- I find the gold beading on each green shell to be truly miraculous.  But of course the hatching and the fledging of the butterflies is pretty great too.

My wonderful cousin Philip has been going through some wonderful stages too.  He is a self-taught artist.  Five years ago he wrote and illustrated a great children's book, Mommy Has A Tattoo (Phil is quite tattooed himself).  In 2010, while working as a guard at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art, Phil was swept up in the media attention surrounding the publication of Swipe, an art journal established to feature the artwork of museum guards (including Phil).

Not surprisingly, the beautiful stages of the monarch were in my mind this fall when we had the privilege of attending Phil and Lauren's wedding.

It somehow seems that at this moment in my life, the stages come fast and furious.  With Sarah's start of college this fall, our children have both fledged; they are building new important relationships and thinking about their futures.  Rebecca has one semester left in college and is interviewing for jobs.  Wow!  The trite phrase becomes our reality:  "It seems like only yesterday when ..."

We have been very, very busy this fall.  My photo blog posts have become rather intermittent.  Perhaps I will post more reliably in 2012; what is clear to me is that (camera in hand or not) I have the opportunity to enjoy the beauty and joy of each change as it comes.

Thanksgiving 2011

Thanksgiving is a time to appreciate all that we have, which in practice means we gather to cook together, remember how much we enjoy and love each other, and then eat together (going around that cycle several times in the course of the afternoon and evening).  Amy, Sarah, Rebecca and I spent Thursday at Amy's parents' Thanksgiving and Friday at my brother Eric's Thanksgiving.  We may finish working off the calories by February, and I think the joy will last even longer.

The setting of the table evokes our longstanding family traditions.  At Eric's house (above), the fruit plate echoes the Hochheimer grandparent's in Norwalk, Connecticut (there always was a persimmon on the plate along with the figs, dates, grapes, pears, ...).  At Amy's parents, we debated whether the paper turkeys with our names written on them included any originals from Amy's and her sister's childhood.

Good food appeared, provenance of all sorts.  Where did these amazing olives come from?  Eric made the fiery garlic string beans for his celebration.

Benigno made the brussels sprouts at the top for the Eppler event -- he grilled them on the Weber grill outside.  Beni is also the recognized turkey-chef for the Eppler Thanksgiving, and cousin Daniel is always the turkey carver.

My brother David and I have carried on our mother's tradition of bringing sticky buns.  This year, someone asked, "How did sticky buns become part of the Hochheimer Thanksgiving meal?"  Aunt Ruth, Mom's sister, said that she had no early memory of sticky buns at Thanksgiving.  Since the recipe we use has always been the one from the Woodbine Cottage in Sunapee, New Hampshire, we worked out that Mom must have started bringing the sticky buns in the late 1960's or early 1970's, when we were going to the Woodbine quite often during the summer and consuming as many sticky buns as they would serve us.

 Thanksgiving isn't just people time; it's also puppy time (here cousin Ray with an Irish Setter named Lucy).

There was a Lucy at my brother's house as well -- below is one is one of my cousin Beth's pre-teen girls, who are both growing up so fast!

There is a long tradition in both households of bringing as many others as you can.  We played Password with Rebecca's boyfriend Philip and their friend Ben.

Benigno brought his lovely mother, who lives in Miami (and is my best dominos partner).  

 Sarah grabbed my camera to take pictures for awhile - here is my brother David

and she also took a picture of me!

The Eppler Thanksgiving group took the traditional pre-dessert walk to the Croton Reservoir dam

and both celebrations featured an inordinate number of creative and amazing desserts.

Some people set their year's goals around New Year celebrations.  But my big goal for the year is to master the art of the pie crust in time for Thanksgiving 2012!

The Halloween Storm of 2011

When we went to bed the night of October 29, power was already out.  We had been outside to see the snow coming down on the autumn leaves that still dangled from tree branches.

Some people we know only got power (and water and phone and internet) back last week, over ten days after the storm.  We were lucky; we only lost power and water for three days, and we still have an old fashioned land-line (rather than phone through the cable company) so my grandmother's black rotary-dial phone still worked.

The night of the storm, we slept in the living room downstairs, worried that the giant tulip poplar would fall in the night and crush our bedroom.  We heard lots of cracking and crashing through the night (at one point we woke and I said to Amy, "Well, the house didn't shake so I guess that tree didn't hit us!").  When we woke in the morning, one day before Amy's Halloween birthday, the snow and devastation were unbelievable.

Our front yard was unrecognizable -- there were seven trees down, and you could barely see our house through the tangle.

Large trees were leaning on power lines everywhere.  We read that this was the most widespread power outage ever in Connecticut, and that there were even more trees down than we had seen two months earlier from Hurricane Irene (many trees resting on power lines and across roads).

One article in the Washington Post suggests that although global warming is increasing the amount of extreme weather we get, scientists don't yet know whether the freakish snowstorms of the past year are anything other than random aberrations. I must admit that while I enjoy the drama of the wild weather, the experience palls after a few days hauling water to flush the toilets.  But the interruption of modern conveniences and the downed trees littering our yard don't erase the beauty that we had for a few hours, the day before Halloween, when the sun came out and the too-early winter landscape shone radiant.

Dress-up Day

Last Saturday I wore a red spangly skirt and learned something.  Here's the story:

Amy and I rode our bikes from Boston to New York (290 miles) again this year, in last weekend's Braking The Cycle fundraiser for AIDS services at The Center (The Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Community Center in New York City).  Thank you to all who supported our fundraising.  As last year, the ride was an extraordinarily moving experience.

We rode with my brothers David and Eric as "Team Sasha" (Sasha is Eric's very energetic Vizsla dog, so we felt very energized). 

The first part of the ride went through beautiful countryside.  This is Oneco Pond in Connecticut

and some nearby cows.

But what really got me back to posting on this blog (yes, I've been away for awhile!) was my experience on Day 2 -- "Red Dress Day."  Riders are encouraged to wear red dresses -- originally the idea was to create a vision of a giant red ribbon, but even more Red Dress Day has turned into a way to claim freedom of expression (even freedom of exuberance!), and to raise public attention to the ride and its effort to combat AIDS.

I am not usually a flamboyant dresser.  I wear a button-down shirt and khaki pants to work every day, with the explicit intention that I not draw attention to my clothing.  But this was a cause, so I was all in.  Amy made our sequined red skirts, which were very wearable while biking and also quite ... noticeable.  Here I am with my brother Eric:

and my brother David:

And here's the story:

I rode with David and Amy and some other riders through most of the morning on Day 2.  It was quite cold in the morning, so only later in the day did we strip off our layers and start to show our "true colors."  After lunch, I went off at a faster pace.  For awhile I rode with other riders, and then for awhile I was in a section of the ride by myself.  This is the point at which I was down to my red shirt and skirt, and I started to notice the reaction.  There were some little girls outside a church pointing and laughing.  There was a woman in a car who refused to make eye contact with me (OK, there was also another woman in a car who called out "I love your outfit!" in a very friendly way).  I started to attract comments and looks from the sides of the street that seemed quite hostile.  Most of this time I was biking myself, and I started feeling very vulnerable.

Finally, I was stopped at a stoplight, I felt that the men on the side of the street were looking at me in a really unpleasant way, and I had to admit it:  I felt scared.  I wasn't going to take the skirt off (I had bike shorts on underneath); that felt like it would be ducking the question.  But I was feeling pretty nervous.

And then some other riders caught up with me.  One guy was wearing wings made out of amazing red feathers.  Another man was wearing a fluffy red tulle ballet skirt.  And I thought to myself, "I never before knew what a comfort a man in a red tulle ballet skirt could be!"

My other thought, of course, was to think about the ways in which living my mainstream "button-down" life shelter me from the hostility and fear that others must live with daily.  

Here's a picture of Team Eagle, a rather flamboyant group of riders representing the Eagle Bar in New York City.  Together they raised well over $100,000 for AIDS services this year.

People in Yunnan Province, China

We have returned from our 3 weeks in China -- about a week and a half in Yunnan (southwestern China) and then about the same in Beijing and Xian. China was breathtaking in every way -- size, physical beauty, depth and richness of the history and culture, architecturally, and on and on.

For a start, here are some pictures of people in Yunnan province.

We saw street vendors selling huge piles of beautiful fruit

and many selling smaller piles of fruit that we suspected were picked in public places on the way into town.

We saw people making all sorts of street food.

We saw people working in shops everywhere from the biggest cities to the smallest, dustiest towns. There were few shop windows -- when a shop was open, its front was wide open.

We saw people herding their animals

And countless people working in rice fields

We saw people carrying huge loads on bicycles and motor bikes

and on their backs

We saw people getting married (in this case, a wedding party in a restaurant; it turned out that beautiful tourist destinations were also prime locations for wedding photos. We were informed that wedding photos are taken a month or more before the wedding and sent with the invitation.)

We saw many, many people waiting ...

We saw lots of people chatting on cell phones

and chatting as they passed

We saw people outside Buddhist temples having their prayers for a good future written out for them by scribes

and we saw the well-tended fiery ovens where those prayers are sent aloft

We saw people praying and chanting inside and outside temples

and people rubbing ceremonial objects for good luck.

We saw many Chinese tourists getting their pictures taken (the places we went in Yunnan are much more popular with Chinese than with Western tourists)

and our light-haired fair-skinned daughters found themselves cheerfully pulled into many Chinese tourist photos.

Everywhere we saw children tended with love. They were dressed up for photos

they studied calligraphy

they dressed for parties

and they were wonderfully cute.

Little babies were frequently carried in beautiful, traditional cloth back-slings.

And of course we also saw many very "modern" people!


Many millions of people, working very hard, in a very beautiful part of China.