dance roots

wow. last night on the hdtv i stumbled on some of the most amazing ballet i have ever seen. it was a presentation of edouard lock's "amelia" ...it's dance that is choreographed for the screen, not the stage, and it's brilliant. i found a snippet on youtube.

makes me wanna go see and explore more dance. maybe mom and i will check out some goings on at lincoln center for the fall season. alvin ailey? you reading this, ma?

bedford house update

here's a slideshow of the latest and greatest at bedford!


if you cannot see the slideshow, click here to link to the photos...

camping videos!

here's some youtube fun from our camping trip last weekend!


wanna see a 7 year old become suddenly interested in riding a two-wheeler? it's easy:
1. go camping
2. bring a two wheeler
3. forget to bring his baseball glove


baby jaden eats her baby-food jar, and aunt jenny makes a cameo!

got kids? watch this.

look at the mess in the room he's in. that explains enough without even hearing the audio. much tribute to mr. crawford, wherever you are! great job.

pahmer at the beacon

check out the one and only jdp on stage at the beacon with crowded house playing one of the great classics...

enjoy the whole video or fast forward to the 3-minute-mark to get your dose of john jr.
click here

camping retrospect from jackson

jackson and i are lying in bed for storytime on sunday night after a great camping weekend (see the next post for details). jackson wanted me to write some sentences that talk about the weekend from his point of view.

"when i started to ride my bike, i didn't think that i could do it because it was two wheels and i thought i couldn't remember how to do it. then i tried it but my dad still had to help me, and then i started to do it. then i tried a u turn and it was bumpy and i still could do it. then my cousin sean tried to do it and at first his bike always stopped. then he tried one more time and he could do it. then we both always did u turns and after we had to pull in a driveway and then started all over again. then earlier this morning we tried u turns but our bikes stopped because we were too tired but we still tried and then later we did it. then it was as good of a u turn as yesterday. then we had so much fun but sean fell twice but he was ok."

heyyyyy boo boo!

Camping 8-07

us and the nussbaums went up to the old catskills (home of the nevele, grossingers, the concorde hotel, and all the bungalow colonies) for a weekend visit to yogi bear's jellystone park campgrounds.

great campground for tents, rv's or cabin rental (our choice)...nice bathrooms, showers and facilities, along with every walk of life and their offspring. jews, gentiles, blacks, puerto-ricans, indians (the kind from india)....all enjoying the american way. that means all the stuff that comes with those cultures was up there too. you can imagine the scene at the pool. it was a little intimidating but fun nonetheless.

we also met paul, who was in his very early twenties late twenties, and probably up to the same number of cans of cheap beer in his belly, and somehow he got sean, chase, and jackson to sit with him up on his cabin porch and tell stories of his latest tour in iraq, and show them his tattoo: the same one he got with 11 of his buddies, only two of which were still alive including him. the kids were wide-eyed and wide-mouthed, kind of like the modern-day version of a ghost story around a campfire. for the rest of that evening and into the next morning, they were asking to go back over to "uncle paul's" (i take tribute for that moniker). it was pretty funny. paul wasn't the ripest banana in the bunch, and his lurking 18 year old ass-whooping half pyerto-rican-half-itialian-half irish girlfriend plus a case of pabst blue ribbon didn't help much in the brain department. what a scene.

jaden was a trooper. she loved the trees, loved the campfire, and loved hanging in the playpen next to the picnic table.

scott did the chef thing as usual. gourmet meals on the camping stove morning and night. delicious.

and it was jackson's big weekend for bicycling. the fact that we forgot his baseball glove and sean had his bike, and that we threw jack's bike in the van even though he never rides all helped fuel success. he spent a couple of minutes with me going back and forth on the camp road learning how to balance on two wheels, and that was it. he spent the rest of the weekend biking all the time!

a final hint...check the album above and see if you can find the full moon.

plum island

plum island. sounds exotic right? well, it is. straight from the prestigious art collection of none other than mr. benjamin moore cabot stains. actually, it's the color of the stain stanley is using to cover the raw cedar boards on our barn. plum island...it's not a traditional barn-red, not brick, not purple, not brown, but a combination of the latter two. and it's almost all done.

the cedar siding on the main house are getting a few coats of cape hatteras, another benjamin moore painstaking selection. its not tan, not gray, not taupe, but a very light, neutral combination of all three, and we picked it because among all the similar hues, this one has the slightest, subtle tinge that matches the plum island.

Baby Einstein = Baby Dumb Dumb

Baby Einstein will Turn Your Kids into Anything But...

Check out the link above. The Journal of Pediatrics has done a study, and if you put your babies in front of the tube to watch those little mobiles and toys spin around on those "Einstein" DVD's , their vocabulary will actually be worse than if they never watched it at all!