Getaway to the Fingerlakes

Dad and Agnes were SO kind as to take care of the kids for a overnight, freeing Jon and me to snatch some time away! We were celebrating our 7th anniversary, just a few months late.

We took the scenic way, route 31 through Palmyra (the birthplace of the Mormon church!) and then route 96 through Waterloo (birthplace of, ready? Memorial Day. *shrug*).

In Palmyra, there is a corner with four churches, one Episcopal, one Presbyterian, one Methodist, and one Lutheran. So who says religion is dead in the Northeast? :-)

Just another adorable WNYS town.

I LOVE all the Victorian houses in these little towns. 

We arrived in Seneca Falls and went immediately to the Women's Rights National Historic Park Visitor's Center.

The Declaration of Sentiments was engraved on this water wall. It was so gorgeous! If you haven't read it in a while, it deserves another look. What a great document.

Me, next to the wall.

We learned that Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott planned this whole event in about 2 weeks. Mott was in Seneca Falls and was re-introduced to Stanton, and the two of them began plotting a convention. Mott had a train ticket to return to Philadelphia two weeks later, so they had to rustle up a lot of participants with absolutely no internet to help them. They wrote a letter to Frederick Douglas, and he responded that he would certainly come. He did come out from his home in Rochester, he brought friends, and he took minutes diligently. His promotional efforts did a lot for the women's rights cause.

The museum, though slightly less well organized than we would have liked, was delightful.

Sojourner Truth

Demonstrating negative effects of corset use

Comparing average pay between sexes and ethnicities. Sobering. 

Following this, we had a delightful tour of the Wesleyan Chapel where the convention took place.

You don't need an encyclopedia of all that we learned. You should go take the tour yourself! The park ranger did a lovely job. A major thing we learned, however, was that we were visiting exactly 165 years to the DAY from the convention. I got goosebumps; we had no idea.

We took a stroll downtown, after the museum & tour.

Oh guess what. Seneca Falls is widely believed to be the inspiration for Bedford Falls in the movie, It's a Wonderful Life. They do have a case. There are a lot of similarities, and there are references to Rochester, Elmira, and Buffalo as being nearby cities. The town is so sure they're the real life Bedford Falls they've made a museum!

Cute boat on the canal.

More It's a Wonderful Life nods.

Our adorable bed and breakfast roasted their own coffee beans!

Saturday morning we took a walk along Cayuga Lake before returning the kids. It was a lovely morning. The intense heat had finally broken, but the water was still much warmer than usual. Great combination.

I got thoughtful, after all the history and all the scenery. We look at the details of peoples' lives from 150 years ago, and the distance makes them interesting. An ordinary day, or a boring day, or a vexing day for the subjects of our study, we look at them through this halo of History. It's almost the same as gazing across a body of water at the land beyond.

When you look at villages atop mountains, or the towns we can see from an airplane, or hazy land across the water, the sight has such a glamour. We think, oh how tranquil! I want to go there.

And for all we know, there is someone gazing up at the airplane, or down the mountain, or back at us across the water thinking, I want to go there! How delightful it looks.

So I don't know. Either neither place is really extraordinary, and nothing really is, or everything- everything- is extraordinary. Worthy of an audience.

This morning certainly was.

I hate how pregnant I look here. I assure you, we have nothing to announce. 

Low Bridge! Everybody Down.

 The Erie Canal was completed in 1825 and runs 363 miles from Albany to Buffalo. It allowed goods to travel from the Eastern Seaboard to the midwest at a previously unknown high speed and low cost. Though its practical use has since been eclipsed by the advent of railroads and, later, air travel, the Erie Canal made Western New York the settled, industrialized, and often progressive hotbed it became, and gave it the population density what it enjoys today. And in 2013, we still rather like it.

 We visited the Pittsford canalfront on Friday.

Pittsford High School's rowing team practices.

 The kids enjoyed a sunny walk that was not yet too hot for comfort.

And, as has been his wont, Miles adopted a stick.

We've taught Miles the Low Bridge Song that I grew up singing. It's a cute folk song, one of the only local folks songs I know. We love the Bruce Springsteen version! Enjoy.

Downtown

We have just finished a sustained and powerful heat wave. Dad says it's only once in a few years you get one of these waves; temps had been over 90 (and sometimes up to 96!) for about a week! This will strike my more southern readers as average summer weather, but if you are unused to it and are living without air conditioning, it calls for some creativity to keep your good humor!

Downtown we went, where I'd heard there was a great fountain playground next to the Museum of Play. This fountain is an ice rink during the late fall and winter, where I used to skate (and where Leah memorably broke her poor elbow a few years ago). In July, it's a decoration only.

But we wandered up the hill and found the goods: Awesome fountain-based playground! See the sprayer on the left?

Half of this climbing octagon was being misted constantly.

We stayed for a couple hours and made sport of the heat wave!

On Tuesday evening, I took advantage of the communal living and sneaked out with some friends to see Shakespeare in the Bowl, a Rochester tradition. The glaciers had left a lot of drama in the WNYS landscape, see, and one of their gifts was a really gorgeous natural bowl with lovely acoustics! We have an amphitheater and look forward to performances and movies there all summer.

There's also a pretty sweet statue of Frederick Douglas. He gets to watch all the shows up close!

Miles took this picture of me and my lady-friends-since-high-school, just before the performance. Yes, I spoiled my kid and let him stay up way past bedtime to watch Shakespeare. He loved it so much that I can't find it in me to regret it.

It was so delightful to just enjoy the play, and take my academic hat off. They did a kind of 70s glam-rock interpretation (twin mohawks on Cesario/Sebastian!) that was a heck of a lot of fun. We were doused in bug spray, so the only bugs to distract me during our hours on the green were the fireflies. It was magic.

But that will be the last time that I carry Miles home from Highland Park. Oh, my back! I'll bring a stroller next time.

Nostalgia Day

I took a nostalgic trip to the suburbs last week, after Miles expressed a desire to see the house where I grew up. I did that, and more.

From my Dad's east suburban house, we headed south and west to Henrietta, my district and where I lived from aged 2-18 (we lived in the city when I was an infant).

My enormous high school was unchanged, as far as I could see.

My old church, which my family attended from before I was born until 2001, is quite different. When I went, it was just the brick bit. they've also replaced the playground with something newer. I'm quite happy about both these changes, since the addition means the congregation is growing, and the old playground, quite frankly, was probably going to kill someone one day.

I got a couple photos of the places I spent the most time, however.

I was up this tree every other Sunday.

These swings were some of my first memories. The building housed my old daycare, so I really spent like every day of the week there for a while. These swings saw a lot of me, at every age.

After enjoying the new playground, I drove the kids to the townhouse where I grew up.

It's small, but it was my home from age 2-16.

Those trees have matured a lot! You were hard pressed to find shade when I lived there.

Most of the playgrounds I remember have been replaced. NYS seems to have a vendetta against the wooden playgrounds. Now they are mostly plastic, but at the site of one where I spent a lot of time we found a metal one.

At the neighborhood pool, we even ran into my childhood friend, there with her kids and expecting her third. It was a perfect pilgrimage!

Hanging around town

At the close of our second week in NY, we've had some time to linger and live instead of just visit. Adele's had opportunity to perfect one of her favorite new skills:

We've been able to visit both Dad's new church, St. Thomas Episcopal, as well as cousin Matthew & Leah's startup, the South Wedge Mission. The Mission meets in a building that used to house the Lutheran Church of Peace in the South Wedge. The window is from that building.

Tibetan prayer flags in church make me happy.

After a meditative service last Sunday evening, we went to Matthew & Leah's for dinner, Eucharist... and s'mores!!

Miles is in sugar-saturated motion after his first s'more.

Fire pit in the backyard! It's the best backyard ever.

Matthew and his new friend, the violin.

Adele rather likes s'mores, too.

Adele's best friend forever, Kirby the dog.

Jam session after Eucharist!

The bean, pea, and tomato plants are all in robust health.

One of the gifts of our stay with the Nickoloffs is the proximity to fun shops and lovely views downtown. I hope to get prettier pics of the city later, but I snapped this one in a hurry while wine shopping on foot with Leah. Priceless.