Welcome to Sunnyhill

The Coast Starlight Express left Diridon Station in San Jose exactly on time at 8:23 PM Sunday night, 3/24. We had finished dinner before Oakland and were asleep before Martinez. Our little cabin is 4x7x7, just big enough for two narrow beds at night and two comfortable seats during the day. I take the upper…
Read more

Jay plowed the driveway today, and it struck me that it may be the last time he plows it this year. When we come back from our trip to California and Washington on April 2, we will be coming back to spring. People remember that there was once snow on Mothers’ Day, and with the…
Read more

We spent most of Monday watching the wind and staying inside. Our neighbor, Peggy Quinn, wrote that they were staying inside to hold the house down. It did feel like the kind of wind that could push our place down the hill, but the only damage was a few more shingles ripped off the garage…
Read more

Saturday morning. Jay was off early to meet Mike who is going to do some work on the building at Laurens for us. There’s a light snow falling. Charlie, Hazel Tov and I are on the couch in front of the pellet stove and the great, west facing window. It’s a beautiful place to sit…
Read more

The Oneonta celebration of MLK’s birthday had been postponed because of stormy weather. It was held this past Sunday at Temple Beth El at the start of a few warm days following the visit of the polar vortex (which was as bad as it sounds). The beautiful sanctuary was packed and sun streamed in the…
Read more

Jay turned seventy yesterday. The evening before, he got a lovely birthday blessing from Rabbi Molly at our tiny congregation in Oneonta. There were 10 of us, including the rabbi, for Shabbat services and a pot-luck dinner. The contrast with our huge congregation at Beth Am is still a little stunning. I do miss the…
Read more

The talk in town as early as Thursday was all about the coming storm; what would be closed, what was canceled or postponed, how folks were preparing. We had a dusting Friday and another Saturday morning, but the main event was scheduled for last night. This morning it was clear that the wind we heard…
Read more

Everything seems a little brittle in the cold. The forecast calls for a low of -2 tomorrow and nothing above 30 degrees all week. We had about six inches of snow on Thursday, but it has compacted down in the cold. There are cold weather chores. We have to scrape ice from the windshield, and…
Read more

The new year roared in on wind. I woke to it in the night, and again in the dark morning. The wind bowed the big, west facing window so that the reflections danced on it. When it was light enough I could see the wind tearing at shingles over the garage (where we had just…
Read more

I met Desmond Fitzgerald in high school. We went to Mamaroneck High, a conventional, large, suburban school. In a sea of girls who seemed to care mostly about clothes and football players, Desmond was unique. It is almost certainly unfair to characterize most of the girls that way, but I’m sure it’s a fair characterization…
Read more