Welcome to Sunnyhill

This is the second pretty warm day, a trend, not a fluke.  We are not fooled into thinking winter is over, but this is a welcome break and it holds the promise of change to come.  Charlie has aged so much this winter.  There’s no spring in his step.  But he does lift his nose…
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We woke to an inch or so of new snow, the heavy wet kind that coats every surface, even the vertical tree trunks.  Look, I said, a winter wonderland.  Jay didn’t miss a beat.  Yeah, he said, I wonder how did we land here? He relented and admitted it was beautiful.  Everything was white, and…
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The long and intense cold spell has broken for now, and we’re seeing temperatures above freezing. Today, in winter sun, the icicles on the west side of the house, just outside my office window are dripping their lives away.  The massive wall of icicles that hung from the canopy above the front door has broken…
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In bright moonlight the shadows of trees are sharp on the crusted snow – each branch, each twig.  Winter compensates for its inconveniences with breathtaking beauty.  Icicles threaten gutters, but they are alive with light when the sun is out. The fields shine so brightly we need sunglasses.  Across the landscape there is the vivid…
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Ashley is not the only reason I haven’t written in so long, but she has made life here a little busier and a lot richer.  Ashley Katherine Nanyonjo arrived here from Uganda on August 25.  Seventeen years old, she’s a Rotary exchange student attending Cooperstown High School.  Over the summer a friend of ours was…
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A flash of red outside the bathroom window caught my eye, a beautiful male cardinal.  I watched him land in a raggedy old pine tree, and there above him sat a brilliant yellow Baltimore Oriole, the first I’ve seen this summer, although I’ve heard them.  The cardinals are here all year, color relief in the…
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My dear friend Leland Levy will be buried on Friday in California.  It’s hard to be so far away when there are losses.  Leland has a long and rich biography and a wide circle of friends and family who can speak about his life, a life well lived.  I met Le through my late husband…
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The Fenimore Art Museum, one of the surprising jewels of Cooperstown, has held a series of zoom lectures focusing on different parts of their collection.  The last one I attended was less about the collection, focusing instead on the life of Susan Fenimore Cooper, daughter of James.  One of Susan’s many gifts to posterity, and…
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For weeks after the snow melts there are only damp dead leaves from last year’s bounty along Averill Road.  Then one day there are forget me nots, brilliant blue in the dull leaf litter, each with its golden center.  A whole cloud of them appears overnight in the annual magic of spring.  My mother loved…
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I met Judy in 1992 when I joined the Chai Tech Chavurah, of which she was a founding member.  I found Judy reserved, somewhat harder to get to know than the more outgoing members.  But over the years I found so much to love and admire in her.  Judy and Mel, and later just Judy,…
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