june greenery and the view from our backyard

Thanks to landscaping by our neighbor David Manning who has a business there we get a great view and have a peony in our garden with all the greenery too. Also here the lovely garden of our friend in Westminster (last photo) and the view from our hotel room in PA

Vt. Welcome Center

Loved seeing our friend and painter Susan Bull Riley's show at the VT Welcome Center just south of Brattleboro on Rte. 91.

Beatiful writing and the stars

1.When I read the NY Times editorial page and come to writing by Verlyn Klinkenborg I know it by reading the first sentence that its his writing. Here's a quote from the most recent one, but check him out (you can find about 500 of them on NYTimes/org) and enjoy him.
He's talking here about the "geography of familiarity" and one night coming home from a restaurant getting lost:

"And as I drove, I admired not only the beauty of the night but also the pleasurable sense of being comfortably lost. At last I came to an unfamiliar intersection and made a right. The moment I did so, I knew exactly where I was, and I could feel my sense of being displaced in the night slip away. It was like looking into an unknown sky and seeing the stars suddenly whirl about until they formed the age-old, long-familiar constellations of my childhood. The surprise wasn’t just being reoriented so abruptly. It was also discovering that an unfamiliar world lay a few dozen yards off a road I drive all the time. In a way, the unfamiliarity of that world has been eroded now by driving through it once.

....home is ultimately a portable concept, something we’ve nearly all discovered for ourselves in our mobile lives. The trick, of course — and it is a hard one to master — is to think of home not as a place we go to or come from, not as something inherent in the world itself, but as a place we carry inside ourselves, a place where we welcome the unfamiliar because we know that as time passes it will become the very bedrock of our being." VERLYN KLINKENBORG

(from http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/03/opinion/03weds4.html?adxnnl=1&emc=eta1&adxnnlx=1244561376-KCOp/iFmurQK0dIO3QD2Cg)

2. thanks to Pete Sutherland for recommending this graduation speech by environmental activist Paul Hawken in Portland
http://www.charityfocus.org/blog/view.php?id=2077

So I have two questions for you all: First, can you feel your body? Stop for a moment. Feel your body. One septillion activities going on simultaneously, and your body does this so well you are free to ignore it, and wonder instead when this speech will end. You can feel it. It is called life. This is who you are. Second question: who is in charge of your body? Who is managing those molecules? Hopefully not a political party. Life is creating the conditions that are conducive to life inside you, just as in all of nature. Our innate nature is to create the conditions that are conducive to life. What I want you to imagine is that collectively humanity is evincing a deep innate wisdom in coming together to heal the wounds and insults of the past.

Ralph Waldo Emerson once asked what we would do if the stars only came out once every thousand years. No one would sleep that night, of course. The world would create new religions overnight. We would be ecstatic, delirious, made rapturous by the glory of God. Instead, the stars come out every night and we watch television.

This extraordinary time when we are globally aware of each other and the multiple dangers that threaten civilization has never happened, not in a thousand years, not in ten thousand years. Each of us is as complex and beautiful as all the stars in the universe. We have done great things and we have gone way off course in terms of honoring creation. You are graduating to the most amazing, stupefying challenge ever bequested to any generation. The generations before you failed. They didn't stay up all night. They got distracted and lost sight of the fact that life is a miracle every moment of your existence. Nature beckons you to be on her side. You couldn't ask for a better boss. The most unrealistic person in the world is the cynic, not the dreamer. Hope only makes sense when it doesn't make sense to be hopeful. This is your century. Take it and run as if your life depends on it.

Shadows on the Hudson

Took these at a wonderful dinner with our friends at Shadows on the Hudson, a fun restaurant with this view; plans for the longest pedestrian bridge over a walkway are happening for the fall opening just in view of this place which parallels the Mid Hudson bridge.

Chicken Curry, my newest fave

Thanks to my friend Eric Gidseg for making this. I've made it a few times now even leaving out some of the ingredients (fish sauce, coconut milk and cilantro and it still great)
Vietnam: Chicken Curry

"This is one of my all-time favorites. It’s real Vietnamese comfort food, mildly spiced, perfumed and rib-sticking at the same time." (Eric's friend)

4 lb. chicken, skin removed, cut into 10 pieces
2 Tbs. vegetable oil
1 medium onion, diced
1 tsp. crushed red pepper
1 large shallot, peeled and chopped
2 cloves garlic, chopped
4 Tbs. curry powder, either Vietnamese or Madras
1 large carrot, peeled, sliced into coins
1 sweet bell pepper, seeded and diced medium
2 cups peeled, cubed potatoes
3 cups chicken broth
2 cups water
14 oz. can coconut milk
2 Tbs. fish sauce
2 kaffir lime leaves (optional)
Juice of one lime
1 small bunch fresh cilantro, roughly chopped
1 small bunch of mint, roughly chopped
4 scallions, sliced into rounds

1. In a heavy casserole, sauté the chicken in the oil until golden, then remove and reserve.

2. Add the onions, crushed pepper, shallots, garlic, carrot, bell pepper and curry powder. Sauté, stirring, until everything is wilted and coated with curry. Add the potatoes and toss to coat.

3. Add all remaining ingredients except the herbs. Bring to a boil.

4. Reduce heat to a gentle simmer and cook covered for 35-40 minutes or until chicken is cooked through. Serve in bowls, garnished with cilantro, mint, and scallions.