In the Summer Swim

The view from the beach house in Connecticut (click on photos to enlarge).
TD and I have had a wonderful summer and have been able to get out of town a lot on the weekends. We used to go to visit my parents in Guilford, Connecticut, taking the train out of Grand Central Station on a Friday night after a week of work. But my mother has passed away and my father has moved to Colorado and the family house was sold so TD and I have gotten creative regarding getting out of town in the summer. Also, we have lovely invitations!

TD and I both like to be near the water, specifically salt water. Ted grew up in Atlantic City and so he spent his childhood on the beach, and my family took summer vacations on the Jersey Shore on Long Beach Island, which is where my great aunt Margie, who lived in Philadelphia, had a summer beach house. We drove to the Jersey Shore from upstate New York, six of us in the station wagon, and there I was introduced to the ocean and the soothing, calming sound of the waves.

Then in college I spent two summers on the island of Martha's Vineyard where I was very close to the ocean. I especially liked the "up island" end of Martha's Vineyard, previously called Gay Head and now called the Indian name Aquinnah, which is very wild and free and feels like the end of the earth to me. I recently came across this photo of my family on the beach there. This is from around 1985 - clockwise from the top, Eric, me, Cynthia, my mother, my father, and Thom.

I love to swim in the ocean and float along. When I'm in the ocean drifting I feel like I'm detached from the earth and earthly concerns and in the care of something greater, floating along in my life on my adventures and all is well. The water is a spiritual place for me.

One weekend in July, Ted's cousins the Pero's invited us to the Jersey Shore for the weekend and we went to the Ocean City beach, which is huge and wide. We spent a fun week there a couple years ago. It's packed with people as far as the eye can see having fun at the beach -

Another weekend, we took a ferry to the Sandy Hook National Park beach in New Jersey. On the boat ride back, this is the view as you return to Manhattan. New York City sparkles - it's like approaching the Emerald City.

Our friends Gary and David invited us for a weekend to their home in Fire Island, Pines -

With the ferries coming and going in and out of the harbor, carrying passengers to and from, the Pines really is a special place -

Southampton was the destination one weekend when we were hosted by my brother Thom and his family. We arrived on Friday afternoon and went promptly to the beach where neighbors had set up camp with billowing umbrellas and sheets for shade. I thought the arrangement looked very "Gerald and Sara Murphy in the South of France."

TD and I took a bike ride into the village to pick up some things. With its high green hedges and majestic trees, Southampton really is a beautiful town.



One weekend we took a subway and a bus to the beach at Jacob Riis Park in the Rockaways at the end of Brooklyn, which we had not been to before. Another time, we took the train to Jones Beach. But the best part of the summer was when we rented a beach house in Guilford on the Long Island Sound for a week in August. We came in the back door and walked through the house to find this view of the water out the front (and at the top of this post).

It was a wonderful house and we enjoyed being there on the water so much.

The view was so beautiful that we could barely close our eyes day or night -

To take a break from the sun we drove one day to New Haven to the Yale Center for British Art, which has recently been renovated. In the Long Gallery (pictured below) on the top floor, paintings are now hung and stacked by theme - Landscapes, Portraits, etc., for a dazzling display of English art. It's a jaw-dropping room and offered the perfect combination of a heady dose of art on a sunny beach holiday. Admission is free. Do get to the Yale Center for British Art if you can -

Back on our little seaside point, we enjoyed a small community beach where neighbors of all ages came to sit in the sand and swim out to a floating raft. My brother Eric and his wife Tracy came out to visit.
At night we took walks around the neighborhood -

And tried to commit to memory the beautiful vistas

Summertime is a happy time of travels and get togethers, and I'm always a little wistful when Labor Day comes along. I hope you are have having a wonderful summer too --

A Peaceful Week in Connecticut

A lot of blue and white clothes were packed for the trip. (click on the photos for larger, clearer versions)
TD and I miss going out to Connecticut where we visited my parents so at the end of the summer we rented a beach house for a week on the Connecticut Shoreline to have a chance to be back in the area. I found a nice beach cottage on the internet at Vrbo.com, where I have in the past found vacation houses on Martha's Vineyard and the Jersey Shore. This one in Connecticut was located on the border of Clinton and Westbrook, not far from Guilford, where my parents lived. The location of the house was nice - across the street was the Long Island Sound for swimming 

and behind the house were peaceful salt marshes where the sun set in the evening and the only sound was the birds singing.

We took the train from Grand Central, as we often did, to the New Haven train station. There we rented a car and stopped in Guilford to visit the farmer that my father regularly frequented. We stocked up on vegetables and fruit and country flowers.

In that beach house we had the most relaxing week. After the cacophony of New York, the quiet was most welcome. The birds sang a lot in the morning at sunrise and again at sunset. It was a nice neighborhood to go running in. On a run I passed sidewalks that led down to the water

and other beautiful vistas out to the Long Island Sound.

TD and I always enjoy being near the water. We went to the beach at Hammonasset Park which was nearby. And we visited Guilford. We bought books at Breakwater Books, Guilford's wonderful independent bookstore, and headed to the town beach where we had spent many afternoons over the years -

At the end of the day we went to Chaffinch Island which is pretty place that my mother favored. She liked to bring drinks there for cocktail hour, and we have a good family black and white portrait which a photographer took of us there. After my mother passed away, I dropped her ashes in the water at Chaffinch Island -

One night we drove to nearby Essex, Connecticut, where we had dinner at the Griswold Inn, founded in 1776. The Tap Room there, its walls covered in paintings, is one of the great bar rooms.

After dinner, we walked around Essex which is such a pretty town and was famously attacked by the English in 1814 during the War of 1812. This is one of my favorite houses on Main Street. It reminded us of Cooperstown -

As dusk fell we walked down toward the water and all was still -

We had been before to the Florence Griswold Museum in Old Lyme and we wanted to go back. This museum was originally a boarding house owned by Florence Griswold where American artists, known as the Lyme Art Colony, lived and painted. The original neoclassical mansion is charmingly preserved. Here is Miss Griswold pictured at home painted by William Chadwick circa 1905-1908.

Miss Griswold inherited the house from her father, Captain Robert Harper Griswold, who is here painted by Thomas Coke Ruckle in 1840. In her letters, his wife mentions gazing at his portrait during the Captain's long voyages out at sea.

Towards the rear of the property is a modern gallery where current exhibitions are displayed. TD and I enjoyed it all –

There was also a trip to the Clinton Crossings Premium Outlet mall where we stocked up on clothes!  We had such a nice relaxing week in Connecticut and it was great fun to visit our favorite places and see them again. On our last night there, the sun set dramatically over the salt marshes in the back - 

while in the front over the Sound the most extraordinary rainbow appeared. The last time I saw a rainbow was on the day my mother passed away when we were at the New Haven train station headed back to New York City.
This huge rainbow stretched from one side of the Sound

to the other. Too giant to get in one photograph!

I thought it was my mother saying a big Hello.

My Mother's Table

Readers may remember that my mother passed away two years ago. Since then, my father has been living in the family house in Guilford, Ct., alone, and he has wisely now put the house on the market to sell as it is way too large for one person. My parents bought the big, modern house in 1981 when it was still under construction. With four bedrooms and two bathrooms, it fit our family well. Not soon after, I moved to New York City, and over the years it was always fun for me, and later TD and I, to go Grand Central Station on a Friday night and take the train out along the Long Island Sound to visit my parents in Guilford.

The dining room was the place to gather for big, celebratory family dinners. In later years, my mother got the idea from a magazine or book that she wanted to turn the dining room table into a kind of salon table, piled with some of her beloved things. She covered the table with a purple cloth and put on it some of her favorite decorating and fashion books and art and cards and objects. The combination of colors and flowers and sparkly things was a real expression of her taste; it was like a little portrait of her.

When she grew sicker, she was confined to her bed. When I was visiting once, she asked me to arrange the table, dust the objects, and adjust things, so that it looked good. I did as she requested and when a friend came to visit, she reported to my mother that the table was pretty which made my mother happy, even though she could not see it.

My mother had a decorating style which was uniquely her own, and she applied it to every corner of the house. She liked light, clear pastel colors, leggy brown wood furniture, and lots of art and books and personal things around. Come to think of it, that is my decorating style too. There was a lightness to everything she did. She also was an artist who painted, and some of her paintings hang on the wall in this night time view of the dining room – 

This big painting in the living room was found in Maine and features the colors and whimsy and lightness that my mother favored –

Here is a picture of my parents sitting in that chair on the right –

My father is currently considering a move to Colorado where he would live near my sister Cynthia. My mother's table is gone now. To prepare the house for sale, a stager came in and rearranged things for potential buyers. According to conventional wisdom, a lot of personal items were taken out of the house so that a buyer can see the possibilities. The collection my mother arranged was disassembled and the dining room table was laid with white dishes and silverware, as if awaiting diners to sit. My father reports tonight that a family came today to view the house and liked what they saw. And so begins the end of an era. 

Summer in the City

Sitting in Madison Square Park and looking out to Fifth Avenue. You can get a glass of wine at the Shake Shack and enjoy the park; sometimes there are concerts. (click on photos to enlarge)
I hope you are having a nice summer. It doesn't seem that long ago since the winter snow was falling. Thankfully summer is now here, and it is not yet too hot. I've been enjoying the city and taking some pictures along the way.
Sitting next to me on a bench in Madison Square Park was a young woman looking casually stylish in an embroidered tunic, silky pants, and chic sandals.

One of my favorite events is the Jane Street sale, held in June, when people in Greenwich Village come out and sell their goods.

I bought this big, old, heavy metal container which is meant to hold ashes at the fireplace.

Now, we put kitty litter and other supplies in it in our kitchen. $25. I love it.
Over on the Hudson River, boats passed each other on a sunny day.

Up at Bryant Park, the lilies are in full bloom. The flowers there are so pretty.

This talented young woman was singing and playing an accordian in Bryant Park - wonderful!

At Bergdorf Goodman, horses are the current window theme.

I had lunch at the Coffee Shop on Union Square with my niece Jane who was much smaller when we started this blog... This summer she is off to art school. Where did the time go? I am her proud godfather.

We took a weekend trip out to Connecticut for Father's Day and had lunch at the Stone House Restaurant.
Here is my nephew Ben, brother Eric, and my pa.

After lunch we had a quick trip to the beach 

and the following day we went to the beach at Hammonasset State Park where the rugosa roses were in fragrant bloom - 

This weekend we had a successful trip to the Union Square Farmer's Market, where fresh flowers, lettuce and bread are now plentiful.

Sunday was the Gay Pride Parade so TD and I marched down Fifth Avenue and Christopher Street with the other revelers -

We stopped for a glass of water along Fifth Avenue -

TD and I say equal rights for all!