Fun with Friends

A long session at Five Rivers this evening - the monthly Board meeting, preceded by an extra meeting to discuss plans for celebrating the 40th anniversary next year of both the Environmental Education Center and the Friends of Five Rivers. 

There's to be an event for each season: a fundraising gala in the spring, a family fun day in the summer, Fall Festival (of course) in the autumn, and rounding off with a winter carnival.  A lot of work, a lot of fun, it should all be good.  A much-needed new building for the Friends-sponsored "Guided Schools Program" (the scheme I sometimes teach on) is also scheduled to open sometime in 2012.

More immediately for me, I'm working on selecting some student photos of Five Rivers to display at the visitor centre, and putting together a sort of diorama to go on show at the local library next month. 

How did you/would you celebrate your fortieth?

Birthday blessings

The children and I were invited out to a birthday party tonight, hosted by my refugee friends. 

Although it was only the actual birthday of one child in the family, they were holding the celebration in honour of all four childen.  Not having been given much hint about what the party would entail, I was a bit surprised when it turned out to be a church service in their sitting room.  Less surprised that it was all in Karen (one of Burma's many ethnic languages).

Now, having done a six month stint in a convent in Burma (as I've mentioned before) I have quite a high threshold for religious services in languages I don't understand.  At the convent I always enjoyed the hymns - belted out in four-part harmony - and the crowd gathered in the small apartment tonight sang with similar gusto.  But the sermon was long, and the prayer was long and once it dawned on me that we were probably set for an hour-long session I did wonder how my own children (not much accustomed to church in any language) were going to hold out.

They did me proud - sat still, no complaining.  Although they have no religious leanings themselves, they appreciated that for the people gathered in the room this was a special occasion - and they rose to it.  After the final Amen, they fully deserved to tuck into birthday cake with the rest of the guests. 

Firther remarks

Until we started looking into it (where else but online?) we hadn't realised just how many varieties of Christmas tree there are to choose from. 

As I mentioned yesterday, we opted for a Douglas Fir, although the farmer did his best to steer us towards the Canaan Firs, commending their strong, well-spaced branches for hanging heavy ornaments, and superior Christmassy scent.  But we are swayed more by shape, and we just liked the look of the one we chose.

How do you select your tree?  Or do you spare yourself the bother, and just drag one out of the attic every December?  (Assuming you put up a tree at all.)

While we're on the subject of Christmas, I got started on some gift-shopping today.  Browsing in the very lovely Book House in Stuyvesant Plaza, someone suddenly thrust a TV camera in my face. "Don't take any notice of me," he said, improbably.  It was a local news network doing a piece about an Amazon app that's undermining sales in independent bookstores.  Blimey, though - it seems like there's no stepping out of the house these days without ending up on the telly...

Fir from the madding crowd

We collected up some friends today and set off in search of a Christmas tree.

At the first tree farm we came to, the guy said sorry but he was all out of trees.  We could, in fact, see trees - however he was saving them for next year.  But he directed us up the hill and along a bit to another farm: "Tell 'em Earl sent you."

There were, thank goodness, a few trees left for sale at the Pretty Penny Tree Farm.  We tramped off into the field and inspected them.  Happily for indecisive us, there were few enough to choose from that picking one wasn't very hard.  Not that you pick a tree, of course - you saw it down.  The Man did the honours, and then the children kid-handled our Douglas Fir back to the car.  The proprietor, who has lived there for forty four years, cracked open some black walnuts for us to try and showed us photos of the farm's friendly wild coyote.

The tree seemed rather small on top of the car, but became much bigger inside our house.  Even so, with a spot of teamwork we had it decorated in no time.

Bobbing along

We've had a cheerful but not particularly bloggable day (though the meal with a friend at the Hidden Cafe in Delmar was fun and we enjoyed visits with the kids to the last-but-one Farmers Market and a second hand book store).  So, since we haven't posted any pictures for a while, here's a caption comp:

or indeed:

Screening off the world

Waiting for the Girl to change after skating at the YMCA the other day I suddenly realised that everyone else sitting in the waiting area was looking at a screen.  Laptop, i-Pad, i-Phone, DS...  No books, no knitting, no passing the time of day with an acquaintance or stranger.  Just everyone locked in and interacting with a gadget.  It was...disturbing somehow.

Now obviously I'm interacting with a gadget as I write, and you are as you read this, so it's not that I'm completely averse to screens.  In fact far from it.   I love the fact that computers allow me to keep in touch with friends around the world, and catch up with people I'd lost touch with.  Email really does make planning events and whatever very much easier and...oh, so many things are more efficient and convenient because of technology. 

And yet...  As much as we're gaining, I think we're also losing skills.  I don't think this is an entirely good thing.

What are your thoughts? 

Here today and gone today

Great disappointment this morning - the merest dusting of snow on the ground, not enough to cause so much as a snow delay, and all gone by lunchtime.  Yet friends less than twenty miles away, the other side of the Hudson, were snowed in and had the whole day off.

The Girl was performing in a concert tonight (she's in the 6th Grade choir).  I read through the programme notes and registered the message from SADD (Students Against Destructive Decisions, a school club where I guess the kids sit around not drinking and smoking) - they wanted to encourage parents not to drink and drive over the holiday season.  Can't argue with that.

I mention all this because, before the concert kicked off, a special announcement was made to draw the audience's attention to this message, with the added inducement that one lucky programme-holder would find a smiley face on the SADD page and therefore win a prize.

Well, I'd already looked at the page of course and hadn't noticed a smiley face...or had I? 

I looked again.  OMG!  It's me!  I'm the winner!  Look!  Look!  I've got the smiley face!  I murmured internally as I strolled up to the stage to receive my prize...

Since you ask:  two holiday mugs with complimentary sachets of drinking chocolate.  Will go very nicely with a hot toddy and a cigar between seasonal parties... 

I'm kidding, lovely SADD students, you know I am. Thank you for the nice prize.