Reflections on balance and change and on the town where I grew up

It’s been a while since I’ve written a post for this blog. That’s because I’ve been traveling. I was in New York again recently to attend a wedding and to deal with certain issues connected to my brother’s death. I did a lot of walking on this trip, and had a lot of time to reflect on being there and on my life in general. These are some of my recent observations and reflections, most of them having to do with the importance of having balance in one’s life. My life now is about achieving balance.

There is a time for sadness and a time for happiness. My brother’s sudden and untimely death in February was followed by the happiness of a May wedding. I don’t think I have ever enjoyed a wedding as much as I did this one. Perhaps because I needed something happy to round out the sadness I have been feeling since February. Or perhaps because this wedding really was something different—a lot of fun. Or perhaps both. Thanks and best wishes go to Andrea and Mike who love each other and are happy to share their happiness with us.  

An exceptionally warm spring in New York balanced out the cold winter it experienced. I was lucky enough to experience that warmth in New York on this trip. There is nothing like sunlight and warmth to compensate for the darkness and cold of winter, and that is true no matter where you live.

As always, when I return to the town where I grew up, Tarrytown, I realize how beautiful it is and how privileged I was to grow up there. I remember train rides into Manhattan when I was a young adult, and some of the rundown ugly areas through which the train passed. I always knew that I could return to the loveliness of my hometown.

I always remember my parents and growing up in our house when I am in Tarrytown. Yet for each year that passes, I experience so much that is new, and these experiences eventually become joyful memories. I walk around there now and experience the town as an adult, far removed from my childhood and teenage years. I will never forget my parents or my growing up, but I have new memories now that lessen the sorrow of the old, the reminders that my parents are gone and with them the life that was. The bittersweet memories of my early years have been balanced out by new and happy experiences in this lovely town. I have integrated both into the person I am now. Sadness and happiness coexist within me—side by side.

I know my way around Tarrytown, that was clear to me on this trip—the names of the streets, where to make a right or left turn if one is driving, where to find a parking space, and where to take a short cut when walking or driving. I spent one day while I was there just walking around the town, from my hotel on Route 119 down to the railroad station and then up again to Broadway through the different residential streets. I walked further on to Sleepy Hollow (formerly North Tarrytown) and all the way to the Sleepy Hollow Cemetery, at which point I turned around and headed back to the hotel. I must have walked at least eight miles that day. On my way back, I visited the Warner Library and read a few newspapers in the reference room. I also took some photos for the book I am writing about growing up in Tarrytown. In the lobby, I met a Maryknoll priest who was taking photos for a book he is writing about growing up in Tarrytown. It was nice to meet a fellow wanderer. I also stopped at the Pastry Chef and enjoyed some biscotti and a cappuccino. The Pastry Chef is where my parents always bought the excellent cakes (lemon sponge cake comes to mind) that we had for the special occasions in our lives—graduations, birthdays, holidays.

I have changed, yet parts of me remain the same and will always do so. Much like Tarrytown itself. Tarrytown has changed, and yet it remains the same as I remember it from growing up in many ways. It struck me that it truly is a little slice of Americana, to be able to walk around this town and see shops and buildings that existed when I was a child, and probably long before I was born as well. And as my sister commented, the places where we hung out as teenagers are still very much the same. She and I drove around Philipse Manor and Sleepy Hollow Manor, the Lakes, and to Rockwood, where we walked for a while like we did when we were teenagers. Rockwood is still a montage of sprawling hills and flat meadows, untamed vegetation and growth, lovely old trees, gorgeous views of the Hudson River, and a sense of wildness that never leaves it. The nature of Rockwood exists for itself; it is not under man’s control and I like that. Being there frees the heart and soul. The trees are old and beautiful, and speak of a time that existed long before we were born. I like that feeling of mystery, of the unknown.

The Headless Horseman leads the way

I’m sharing a pretty cool photo with you today; for those of you who grew up in Tarrytown or North Tarrytown (now Sleepy Hollow) New York, you’ll understand why I was so taken with this photo. It shows the Sleepy Hollow High School (SHHS) football team being led onto the field by the Headless Horseman (of the The Legend of Sleepy Hollow by Washington Irving fame). The Headless Horseman is apparently their mascot, and this photo was taken right before a recent game against their arch-rival—Ossining High School. They beat them 41 to 32, so that was good news for SHHS fans.

I grew up in Tarrytown as most of you know. My parents were big fans of the SHHS football team when we were growing up, so many Saturdays during the autumn found us in the bleachers watching the team play its season games. What I remember was the excitement and electricity in the air—that sense of life or death that can only be understood by die-hard sports fans. A bad call by a referee that led to our team’s defeat was the worst that could happen and was talked about for hours after the game. I remember the sounds of the players hitting and tackling each other, and the cheerleaders who led us in chants and songs. But what I also remember was freezing my butt off sitting in the bleachers in early November; I was dressed for the cold weather, but it’s tough to sit outdoors in the cold and rain, as often happened, for hours at a time. I remember feeling miserable and just wanting to go home on some occasions, which of course was what happened if it got too unbearable. But mostly, we were loyal supporters and a win by our team could make our day. The cold and rain were forgotten when our team won. I guess that’s how it should be; after all, the players and the cheerleaders were also cold and wet, but kept right on doing their jobs. There’s something to be said for that kind of dedication, and for that kind of loyalty on the part of the supporters. 

This photo was taken by photographer Patrick Tewey; check out his website at http://www.patricktewey.com/

Classic postcards of Tarrytown's treasures

A set of very old postcards of Tarrytown's architectural and historical treasures was among the items my father had in his collection of letters and documents, probably purchased during his teenage years. The postcards are undated, but must be from the 1930s, for several good reasons. The Lyndhurst postcard states that it is the residence of Mr. and Mrs. Finley J. Shepard. Mrs. Shepard was none other than Helen Gould, the daughter of railroad magnate Jay Gould who owned Lyndhurst until his death in 1892, at which point Helen took charge of the estate. She passed away in 1938. Additionally, another postcard is of the beautiful Warner Library, construction of which started in 1928; the dedication ceremony was held in 1929, and my best guess is that artistic renderings of the library flourished during the 1930s. My father was born in 1918 in Tarrytown and would have been a teenager during the 1930s; assuming that he would not have started collecting such cards until he was twelve or thirteen years old, it makes sense that these postcards are from that time. Just like the Cambridge postcards, the front sides of the Tarrytown postcards state specifically what is depicted on them, which I find very useful.

The unbelievable storm

I was up until 4 am Oslo time last night watching super storm Sandy make landfall on the eastern coast of the USA. It chose the area around Atlantic City as its entrance, and the video footage of the Atlantic Ocean pouring into this casino city was just unbelievable to watch. The Atlantic Ocean has never been the enemy before. Not until last night. Watching it flood these coastal towns was kind of like watching a mini tsunami—scary, unbelievable and fascinating at the same time. I can understand why people want to get close to the fury of a storm to film what it does to everything in its path, but you would have been completely foolhardy to have done so yesterday. I’ve been in Atlantic City, walked along its boardwalk, and enjoyed its shopping and luxurious hotels. Last night it did not look luxurious at all. It made me sad to see the destruction, as it did to see the flooding and destruction in Manhattan and Queens. This is not supposed to happen in these areas. But it did. The monster storm from hell made sure that we will not take anything for granted ever again, not where nature is concerned.

I grew up in Tarrytown, a lovely little town on the Hudson River, about a thirty-minute train ride north of Manhattan. In all the years I lived there, I cannot remember this type of storm occurring. Yes, there were intense storms, with resultant minor flooding here and there. I can remember the Saw Mill River and Bronx River Parkways being flooded and becoming impassable. Once I tried to drive through one of those parkway floods with my car, but had to back out of it as I could not steer my way through it. Luckily I managed to back out of it; not everyone was so fortunate. I was together with a friend of mine; we were commuting home from college that day. Water seeped into my car through the doors, and we had to bail out pails of water from the car afterward. It was a stupid decision on my part to attempt to drive through the rising water, and I learned an important lesson that day for the future about not taking unnecessary risks. But in Tarrytown (and other Hudson River towns) yesterday, there was unprecedented flooding. The Hudson River rose higher and higher due to the storm surge further south. Boats floated inland, having broken free of their moorings. In the town of Ossining, a few miles north of Tarrytown, a boat floated onto the railroad tracks, blocking passage in both directions. The pictures tell the story—proof that the unbelievable happened. I am including two links to online storm photos here. I am sad to see the destruction and flooding, and only hope that most people have come through the storm safely. http://www.businessinsider.com/at-least-16-dead-75-million-without-power--heres-what-hurricane-sandys-destruction-looks-like-photos-2012-10?0=bi

and

http://www.flickr.com/photos/mtaphotos/8138916414/

The Westchester River Walk

When I was in New York this past August, I spent a hot and muggy Sunday afternoon with Jean wandering around the Lyndhurst estate, something we hadn’t done in years; we were the only ones there and had the place to ourselves. As we walked down the hill in the back of the huge main house toward the Hudson River and walked along the path on the way to what used to be the caretaker’s old house, we discovered a path along the river that we followed for a while. It wound its way along the river, to the south toward Irvington and to the north toward Tarrytown. I’ve written about this walking and biking path, called the River Walk, briefly in another post, but just thought I’d include more information about it in this post. You can get an idea of how long the River Walk is when you look at this map: http://planning.westchestergov.com/images/stories/RiverWalk/riverwalkmap11x17.pdf

And for more information on how it came to be and when it will be completely finished, you can go to the following link:  http://planning.westchestergov.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1187&Itemid=2128

I am so looking forward to biking the entire distance of the River Walk on a future trip to New York. Jean and I have briefly discussed it and agreed that it would be fun to take a picnic lunch with us and just be able to stop along the river when we wanted to. It’s funny, but perhaps not so odd, that now that I live outside of the USA, that I am learning more about both my country and New York where I grew up for each year that passes. Just as many things have changed in Norwegian society during the past twenty years, the same is also true of New York and Westchester County. I need only think of the subway system in Manhattan; how clean and spruced-up it is now compared to when I was a graduate student at New York University thirty years ago. I’m glad to see that things change for the better; the same is true for Times Square in Manhattan. I enjoy being a tourist in the state of my birth and look forward to more explorative trips in the years to come. 

Visiting Tarrytown

On two separate occasions I had the chance to wander through the town where I was born on my recent trip to New York. I am always drawn back to this town—Tarrytown, and I’m not even completely sure why (my life remains a mystery to me in so many ways—why I do and feel the things I do and feel), since I have lived in two other places after I moved from Tarrytown in my early twenties before moving to Oslo Norway. I guess the main attraction is that I was born and grew up there, and from that perspective it is interesting to see the changes that the town has undergone in the years I have been away from it. My old neighborhood is no more; it has been replaced by a new generation of young people raising families. The old generation has passed on, and in truth the town is really a stranger to me now. I was discussing that recently with my friend Gisele who also grew up in Tarrytown; we agreed that as much as we think it is a lovely town, it could feel a bit strange to live there now because everyone we used to know is gone. But I remain fascinated by it just the same. If I am driving, I make the turn onto Tappan Landing Road where I used to live and just drive around and look at the apartment building where my mother lived (and where I grew up) and where I visited her on my annual trips to New York after I moved to Oslo. I drive around the corner to Henrik Lane to look at the houses that used to belong to friends and neighbors many years ago. Or I drive down Tappan Landing Road to its end, and stare out over the Hudson River, remembering what it was like to walk up from the Tarrytown railroad station when I was commuting to Manhattan to go to New York University for graduate school. When I went to Fordham College, I used to sometimes take the train to the Marble Hill station on the Hudson Line, and take the bus from there to Fordham. Being in Tarrytown is a trip down memory lane for me, and a real one at that, since I am witnessing the churches, schools, houses, libraries, parks and shops of my younger years. Some of these places still exist—like the Transfiguration Church and school, the Washington Irving (WI) junior high school, Sleepy Hollow high school, the Warner Library, the Music Hall and Patriot’s Park. But many of the shops of my youth have been replaced by newer shops, and Main Street is nearly unrecognizable. There are so many restaurants, antique stores, and small shops that line this street now; it used to be home to some bars, a pizza restaurant and some stores that I have forgotten about. I like the street now; in fact I prefer it now to the way it used to be. It has been spruced up, and the restaurants are trendy and quite good. There is a Seven Eleven on the corner of Broadway and Main Street. I don’t recall what used to be there before, but the fact that Seven Eleven is there now is fine with me. And why should I have an opinion, one might ask? I guess I still feel a bit territorial—I mean, it was my hometown once, and a part of me still wants to feel like a Tarrytowner, even though I am an Oslo-ite now.

While I was waiting one morning to be picked up by my friend Jean when I was in Tarrytown, I spent a couple of hours walking along Broadway from the Doubletree Hotel where I was staying all the way to Main Street, and then meandering my way back to the hotel through all the side streets dotted with pretty little houses with lovely gardens, some of them flying American flags. It felt good to see this—comforting, like coming home in a way. This is the town of my youth, when we had free from school during the summer, when we would hang out at the WI field on hot summer nights with friends, or sit in the bleachers at the same place watching the fireworks together with our parents and siblings on July 4^th, or spend a lot of time sitting in the darkness of the Music Hall theater on Main Street watching feature films or going to Baskin Robbins on Broadway for ice cream (Pink Bubble Gum comes to mind, as does Mint Chocolate Chip and Rum Raisin). Some of the memories are not so pleasant—boys who weren’t as interested in me as I was in them, or friendships that didn't last. But by and large, the bad memories have faded and have been replaced by more of a nostalgia for the past. I would not want to return to this past, to go back to that time. I am perfectly happy in the present. But I understand that by understanding where I came from, by turning my past over in my mind and carefully examining it, I am figuring out who I am—even at the age I am now—figuring out the person I was, the person I am now and the person who is yet to come. I am trying to integrate them all into one person, if that is at all possible. It may not be, but the considerations give me a perspective about myself that I find comforting and even enjoyable. Perhaps it is a way of bringing back loved ones who have passed on, even if just for a short time. I don’t wallow in the past memories. I respect them as things of value. I want to preserve them. They are part of my history. Perhaps this matters to me, to the woman who moved a long way away, because she cannot just return on a whim and visit her birth town. It is kind of cool to wander down memory lane as I visit the ‘old’ places and haunts. And as I am wont to do these days in most situations, I take lots of photos. Photos of houses, gardens, schools, churches. libraries. The list is endless. I am capturing the life and history around me on film. I started doing that when I was thirteen, and I’m still doing it. I have become a historian of sorts, and I have to smile, because my mother and father used to be quite interested in the local history of Tarrytown, and here I am, so many years later, interested in the same. Perhaps they are smiling at that as well.

Transfiguration Church

The Warner Library

Washington Irving school

The Music Hall

Back in New York State

I’m in my home state of New York this week, on vacation visiting family and friends. It’s been a wonderfully relaxing visit so far, even though I’ve traveled here and there on planes, trains, in cabs and in a rental car. Some of my friends wonder how I deal with the stress of traveling. I deal with it, probably because I am not working and living in the New York City area anymore and don’t have to deal with it on a daily basis. I was in New York City yesterday and met a good friend for lunch. When I left her apartment at around 3:30 pm, it took me almost 45 minutes to get from the upper west side (88^th street) to Grand Central train station on 42^nd street because the streets were so congested with traffic. I had forgotten that it could take that long. Could I do that now each day—deal with this kind of traffic? No, not anymore. But I did at one point in my life—commuted into and out of Manhattan from my home in Somerset New Jersey. Two-hour commutes each way. I got a lot of reading done on the commuter buses; in fact, I don’t think I ever got so much reading done as in the space of the four years I commuted into and out of the city. But I had no social life to speak of in New Jersey—I got home too late each night, and on weekends, I was often back in Manhattan again with friends, going to discos, to the theater, or out to eat.

One of the reasons I love coming back to New York in the summertime is because of the heat. It’s hot here! The week before I landed at Newark, the temperatures were over 100 degrees Fahrenheit. My brother told me that it was so hot last week that many cars just couldn’t tackle the heat. In fact, his car’s air conditioning system collapsed. It’s not that hot this week (temperatures in the high 80s, low 90s), but it’s warm enough so that you don’t need a jacket when you go outside. That’s summer to me. Or sitting for a few hours on a white sandy beach like I did with another good friend out in Long Beach, Long Island, digging my toes into the warm sand and watching the waves roll in and crash onto the shore.  I’m sunburned and I don’t care; I so rarely lie in the sun that it can’t matter too much one way or the other in terms of all of the potential health risks. We ate paninis on the beach and fed some of the sandwich bread to the many seagulls that stalk the beachgoers. Sly little birds, just waiting for an opportunity to pounce on a piece of bread. I love them too. I love them in Oslo as well when we’re out on the boat, even though they poop on the boat to the great irritation of my husband. My friend reminded me that they poop on people too; this I know. It’s happened to me twice in my life; you wash it off and go on. I cannot imagine a world without them, or any bird for that matter. Incredible little creatures.

I was in upstate New York again too, this time in Highland Falls visiting my sister and her husband. We ended up at West Point and took some gorgeous shots of the Hudson River at that vantage point. The day we were there was also a scorcher; there were a lot of boats out on the river, and it was just a lovely sight. Such a beautiful river, the Hudson River. I know that I could photograph it at all angles and from all vantage points and it still wouldn’t do it justice. Its essence cannot be captured; you just have to ‘feel’ how beautiful it is. I will be posting some shots from my New York trip shortly; as always, I am taking many photos and enjoying snapping away.

It doesn’t take much to be happy in this life. A long vacation away from work stresses will do wonders. But it’s more than that too. You can start vacation feeling overloaded from work, and that feeling can just pervade and ruin an entire vacation. I feel free this year, entirely free, from all the negativity and confusion that has defined my work life and environment for the past two years. I don’t miss work. I know it’s there when I get home, but there’s no rush to get back to work. How I have changed. And I wonder how that was possible—me, the career woman for many years. But no longer. I still love science, the wonder of learning, I am still curious about so much in nature, but I am no longer interested in an academic career. I’ll leave that to those who are. I’ll do my level best to do a good job now, but within the confines of a forty-hour work week, and no more. My free time is my own. That is what has given me this newfound freedom; the knowledge that I changed my way of working and living. I work to live now, not live to work. Again the word grateful springs to mind; I am grateful these days for the changes, for the work difficulties of the past two years, for the learning processes, for the ‘divine choreography’ that is ever present in our lives as my friend Bernadette puts it. God is ever present and working in our lives, and sometimes we are granted an open window into ourselves or out into the world. We can look in or look out, or maybe even both. The window is our connection with the divine and when it is there, true happiness is there too.

Photos of Tarrytown Lakes and Hudson River Valley Estates

As promised when I wrote my post the other day about the Tarrytown Lakes and the Hudson River Valley estates, I am posting some photos that I have taken of the Lakes as well as of Lyndhurst, Kykuit, and Philipsburg Manor. The Lyndhurst photos are very old (and very edited in Photoshop; they were taken with a Kodak Instamatic, believe it or not), but have withstood the ravages of time. The Tarrytown Lakes photos are from the autumn of 2005 when I visited New York. I always drive around the old familiar places--memories abound and I enjoy my trips down memory lane. The Kykuit and Philipsburg Manor photos were taken in the summer of 2008 when I was in New York together with my friends Jean and Maria. You will get an idea of how beautiful the Hudson River Valley area and the village of Tarrytown are. Enjoy the photos, and if you are ever in the area, visit these places. You will love being there.

Tarrytown Lakes in the autumn

Tarrytown Lakes--you can see the roof of the shed where we used to sit in the wintertime when skating

Lyndhurst mansion--looking up from the riverfront

Lyndhurst mansion--view facing the Hudson River

View of the Hudson River from the Kykuit mansion

Another view of the Hudson River from Kykuit

Kykuit Mansion

Philipsburg Manor

Philipsburg Manor 

You know you grew up in the Tarrytowns during the 1960s/1970s if......

I grew up in Tarrytown New York during the 1960s and 70s. I remember a lot of different things from my childhood and teenage life in that small town, and have already talked about some of them in this blog. It is funny what one remembers, and also what one forgets. When I write about my growing up there, I do so from a distance of a good number of years, in other words, I’ve gained perspective, and it is mostly the good memories that remain now. But it was not always so easy to grow up in a small town, especially if you wanted or needed a certain amount of anonymity to survive mentally or emotionally or both. But somehow as you get older, the anonymity is no longer so important. It becomes more important that people know the real you. One’s teenage years are about trying on many different coats to see if one of them fits. If you find one that fits, you hang onto it for a little while because it feels comfortable. The coat can be a clique of friends where you fit in, or doing well in school and winning praise from your teachers and parents, or being part of sports’ teams, or all of those things. Many of these coats are tried on in the context of small town life, where it is safe, even though you don’t really know that at the time. Looking back now, the ‘smallness’ of our lives then is appealing, but when we were young, some of us couldn’t wait to get out into the big world. In those intervening years, much has happened, both to those who stayed put and to those who traveled out. We now have the chance to know what happened in the lives of many of those people, thanks to Facebook. Facebook has closed the gap of those intervening years in a way that nothing else has before or will again in quite the same way.  

 ‘You know you grew up in the Tarrytowns during the 1960s/1970s if’ is a Facebook group that now has close to 670 members.  It is a fairly active group in the sense that there are new posts published regularly, not necessarily daily, but it doesn’t matter. I joined the group a couple of years ago, right after I joined Facebook. I don’t remember how I found the group but I'm glad I did. I know some of the members personally, others I’ve heard of, but most I have never met. What is appealing about the group is what they remember about the Tarrytowns--Tarrytown and North Tarrytown (renamed Sleepy Hollow in 1996); their posts reflect this. Some of the more recent posts have informed about the deaths of two Tarrytown women many people knew and loved, while others wonder about what happened to this or that person. The uploaded photos are priceless, literally a walk down memory lane as well as a walk into town history. Some of the photos are probably worth some money, taken as they were during the early 1960s and 70s. I think especially of the photos of the big fire on Main Street that destroyed a major portion of the building that faces onto Broadway, or of the old General Motors plant on the Hudson River in North Tarrytown. Some of the photos of the old Tarrytown Music Hall are just beautiful. I spent many a Friday night there at the movies. I saw one photo recently on the site of a long trailer truck packed with new cars--a standard sight in Tarrytown at that time--hauling new cars up from the General Motors factory, out onto Broadway where the road would take them out into the world at large to be sold elsewhere. Broadway was (and still is) the main thoroughfare through both towns. When I was a teenager you could visit the little hole-in-the-wall bookstore near Main Street, the Murray Franklin stationery store for cards and gifts, small stores like the Great California Earthquake with its penchant for hippie clothing, larger clothing stores like Genungs, the Baskin & Robbins ice cream store (with the great-tasting pink bubblegum ice cream with actual pieces of bubblegum—talk about chewing and trying not to swallow the gum at the same time as the ice cream, as well as the heavenly mint chocolate chip ice cream), the Pastry Chef (with its memorable cakes—lemon sponge, Boston cream pie, marzipan—all of which remind me of special family events that we always ended up celebrating with a cake of some kind from the Pastry Chef; Jean and I were talking about this recently when I was in NY), several funeral homes, supermarkets and finally the majestic Warner library with its late 19th century bronze sculpted front door http://www.warnerlibrary.org/node/888. I haven’t seen a more beautiful library building except possibly the New York Public Library in Manhattan. It is interesting to see from the newer photos posted on the site how the town has changed since then—Sleepy Hollow high school has undergone extensive renovations, gasoline stations have been replaced by diners, Patriot’s Park is now the site of the Farmer’s Market, the old Woolworth store is now a gourmet food store, supermarket fronts have been spruced up—just to name a few changes within the last decade or so. The riverfront areas of both towns are more or less unrecognizable compared to what I remember from my childhood, except for the train station in Tarrytown and of course the Tappan Zee bridge, which is unchanged and which remains the landmark that identifies that one has finally reached one’s destination on the east side of the river and the bridge—Tarrytown. The riverfront areas have been renovated and built up with apartment building complexes, among other things, and this I know just from my driving around the areas this past summer. I’ve written about these changes in some of my earlier blog posts.

I love looking at many of the old photos of the Tarrytowns on the Tarrytown Facebook site. Recently I came across a paperback book that took me even further back than the 1960s and 70s. It is called Tarrytown and Sleepy Hollow (Images of America), and is by and large a collection of black and white photographs from the late 1800s up until 1947. The Introduction to the book states “Not intended to be a comprehensive history, this volume offers selected images of our community from 1609 (artistic renderings of specific areas) until 1947”. The book was written and put together by The Historical Society Inc. serving Sleepy Hollow and Tarrytown, and published by Arcadia Publishing. It can be purchased through different sellers via Amazon.com http://www.amazon.com/Tarrytown-Sleepy-Hollow-Images-America/dp/075240881X. It is not an expensive book; I don’t think I paid more than 15 dollars for it. But it is a must-have book if you are a history buff or if you are interested in rediscovering the town you grew up in. I wanted to rediscover Tarrytown, and in doing so I got in touch with those parts of myself that remember and appreciate this beautiful historic Hudson River town.  

Dark Shadows and Collinwood mansion

Long ago, before the current fascination with vampires--before True Blood, Twilight, and The Vampire Diaries, there was Dark Shadows, the afternoon TV horror soap opera that ran from 1966 until 1971, Monday to Friday. If I remember correctly it was a half hour soap opera that started at 4 pm, at least in New York. The series was created and produced by Dan Curtis, who also made the two Dark Shadows movies that came afterwards. A remake of the series appeared in 1991 starring Ben Cross as Barnabas, but nothing ever beat the original Dark Shadows. It was truly a creepy series, and one that we and our friends followed devotedly. I remember playing basketball after school when I was in the seventh grade and running home from practice after it was over in order not to miss it. When my father became ill in 1969 and was home on sick leave for a while, even he got interested in watching the series with us in the afternoon.

The opening music itself would draw you in (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XUuQK4CR5fM). It was spooky in its own right, accompanying the opening shots of the Collinwood mansion that sat atop a hill overlooking the sea, shrouded in mist during the early evening. I don’t recall all the plots and storylines, but I do remember the characters well: Barnabas Collins, the vampire, played by Jonathan Frid; Elizabeth Collins Stoddard, the Collins family matriarch, played by Joan Bennett; her daughter Carolyn, played by Nancy Barrett (with the beautiful long straight blond hair); Angelique, the witch, played by Lara Parker; Victoria Winters, the governess, played by Alexandra Moltke; Maggie Evans, a waitress, who resembled Josette du Pres, Barnabas’ love from long ago, both characters played by Kathryn Leigh Scott; Julia Hoffman, the doctor and friend of Barnabas, played by Grayson Hall; Quentin Collins, played by David Selby; Daphne Harridge played by Kate Jackson, and so many more. Barnabas could be quite evil at times and yet there was some sort of pity for him too- he was a vampire who wanted to be cured of his affliction. The stories were well-written for the most part, and quite strange. They were haunting--they got under your skin. Characters became identifiable with specific music as well; I remember Josette’s music box song (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LItWENw8Plk&feature=related), and Angelique had her music as did Quentin. The stories revolved around different love relationships (past, present and future), betrayals, witchcraft, vampirism, ghosts, and numerous Collins family problems. At times overly dramatic, sometimes campy, sometimes funny, but always memorable and the acting was always mostly good. There’s a reason the series has the fan base that it has, so many years later.

The actual mansion that was used (at least the exterior of it) as the fictional Collinwood mansion in the TV series is located in Rhode Island. When Dan Curtis decided to make his two Dark Shadows movies, he chose the Lyndhurst estate in Tarrytown New York (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lyndhurst_(house)) as the film location. The Lyndhurst mansion became Collinwood mansion. Both films, House of Dark Shadows followed by Night of Dark Shadows, came out in 1971. The actual filming at Lyndhurst was done during the early spring in 1970, and there were many people who hung around the gates of the estate waiting to get a glimpse of or an autograph from the actors and actresses after they were finished filming for the day. I remember doing that with some friends from grammar school; we waited for hours for them to be finished on the set. The actors and actresses were always very gracious and they would sign autographs and pose for pictures with us. I have photos from that time of two of my friends posing together with Jonathan Frid, and I have autographs from Jonathan Frid, David Selby and Kate Jackson. It was an exciting time, and even more exciting when the films were actually shown for the first time at the Music Hall in Tarrytown. It was fun to see the Lyndhurst mansion transformed on the screen into a house that was inhabited by vampires and witches, a real house of evil.

Lyndhurst mansion--back view

Lyndhurst mansion--front

An update on my blog from the Nyack News & Views in New York State

My blog post 'A Tale of Two Rivers', published on July 17th of this year, has been written about in the online Nyack News & Views. Their short article is entitled 'As Others See Us: From Hudson to Herring' and can be found at the following link http://www.nyacknewsandviews.com/2010/07/aosu_hudson_herring/.

I was very pleased and excited to see this, as I really enjoyed writing this particular post. 

Movie Nights

When we were teenagers, Friday and Saturday nights were often our movie nights. We would make our way to the Music Hall on Main Street in Tarrytown or to the Strand Theater on Beekman Avenue in North Tarrytown (now Sleepy Hollow). Both theaters catered to the horror movie crowd, and there was no dearth of horror films available for our viewing pleasure when we were growing up. The interesting thing was that the Music Hall showed a lot of foreign horror films, something that I have reflected on in later years because it was quite unusual. The films that come to mind are the Italian horror films directed by Dario Argento, with titles like ‘The Bird with the Crystal Plumage’ (from 1970) and ‘Four Flies on Grey Velvet’ (from 1971). They made quite an impression on an impressionable teenager. I was reminded of them recently because I happened to watch another of Argento’s films, ‘Tenebre (Unsane)’ on TV the other night, which was quite violent, and it struck me how violent the murders in the earlier films were, already at that time (the early 1970s), albeit done in typical Argento style. We also watched a lot of the Christopher Lee vampire horror films from the 1970s as well as a number of psychological horror films like ‘A Child’s Play’ (1972) and ‘You’ll Like My Mother’ (1972) with Richard Thomas of later Waltons fame. My sister might say that I dragged her rather unwillingly to some of them, which I probably did. And even though ‘Death Wish’ (from 1974) with Charles Bronson was not a horror film, it should actually be classified as such considering the subject matter. We had to sneak into the Music Hall to see the R-rated Alfred Hitchcock film ‘Frenzy’ (from 1972) since we were still underage. No one stopped us or caught us. There were many other types of films that we went to see besides horror. I remember keeping a list of the movies I had seen starting around the time I was thirteen and since it was not unusual for us to see about four movies a month, by the time I was nineteen I think I had seen several hundred movies. Going to the movies was part of our social life—we met friends and went to the movies, dated and went to the movies, and even now, I still meet friends for an occasional movie night. But I will often go to see a movie alone—I enjoy sitting in the theater with other people and experiencing the movie together.

The Music Hall and Strand theaters eventually closed for business as cinemas and were replaced by more modern multiplex cinemas in Yonkers and Ossining that we made good use of as we moved into our twenties and thirties. The new cinemas sold huge boxes of popcorn and giant-size candy packages, the theaters were huge and the sound systems were loud. We continued to see all kinds of films, from horror to romantic comedies to war films to costume dramas. We liked them all and still do, although our movie nights now are more geared toward romantic comedies rather than horror—we like to laugh and keep it light. Reality is tough enough sometimes and the violence around us is real enough without having to see it brutally re-enacted on screen in living HD color. But every now and then, I still enjoy being scared, even if I have to cover my eyes with my hands during the scary or violent parts. This was definitely the case a few years ago when I went to see ‘The Grudge’ (the American version from 2004) with a friend. Both of us had problems sleeping for a few days afterwards. Other people have seen the film and it did not have the same effect on them—who knows why it bothered us the way it did—but it definitely had something to do with the facial distortions and the sudden appearances of the female ghost and her creepy son who would silently rise up from the floor along the side of the bed.

When I first moved to Oslo, it was still possible to see many films at the older and grander theaters like Gimle and Soria Moria in addition to the cinemas that showed multiple films. Soria Moria is closed now, but Gimle is still in business. Modernized multiplex theaters dominate now. The theaters here have always shown the most popular American films so it has never been a problem to keep up with the new films. They do not dub films here as they do in other European countries except for the young children’s films, and even those are offered in two versions, the dubbed version and the original version.

Scandinavian films tend to be dark, melancholy, and a bit depressing, at least the ones I saw when I first moved to Norway, influenced no doubt by the dark winters, the coldness, grayness and long summer nights. My opinion of Finnish films (at least the ones I saw in the early 1990s) was that they were just plain crazy, with binge drinking, nudity, sex and sometimes violent behavior, and they often lacked a coherent storyline. Danish and Norwegian films from the 1980s and 1990s often dealt with drugs, addiction, prostitution and other depressing themes. Some of them were good, most of them were forgettable. Danish films that I enjoyed were ‘Pelle the Conqueror’ from 1987 and ‘Smilla’s Sense of Snow’ from 1997—both were directed by Bille August. Sweden had the internationally famous film-maker Ingmar Bergman who made such classic films as ‘Fanny and Alexander’, ‘Cries and Whispers’, and ‘Hour of the Wolf’. The late 1990s saw the re-emergence of Norwegian romantic comedies, some of them quite touching and funny; some of the comedies from the 1950s and 1960s were very funny as well. One of the best Norwegian comedy films I have seen is a film called ‘Mannen som ikke kunne le’ (The Man Who Could Not Laugh with Rolf Wesenlund from 1968)—you cannot watch it without thinking of Monty Python—it has that absurd humor that makes it stand out. Many of the recent Norwegian horror films are quite scary—‘Fritt Vilt’ (Cold Prey—a psycho slasher film from 2006) and ‘Død Snø’ (Dead Snow—a film about Nazi zombies from 2009) come to mind. But one of the best Norwegian psychological horror/thriller films is from 1958, called ‘De dødes tjern’ (Lake of the Dead or Lake of the Damned). I saw it on TV when I first moved to Norway and it was a ‘skummel’ (creepy) film about a group of people that spend their holiday at a cabin in the forest that holds many dark secrets, and how they deal with the disappearance of one of them.

As long as movies keep being made, I’ll always find my way to the cinema for my movie nights—American, Italian, Scandinavian, French, British, Spanish and many other international films. I will always prefer the cinema experience to the DVD/TV experience, but I must admit that it is good to have the opportunity to watch films I missed for some reason when they were first released.

A Tale of Two Rivers

There are two rivers that have wound their way into my mind and heart over the years---the first is the Hudson River in New York State where I grew up and the other is the Akerselva in Oslo Norway where I live now. Both are beautiful rivers that wind their way through city, town and countryside alike. The Hudson River, over 300 miles long, starts in upstate New York at Lake Tear of the Clouds in the Adirondack Mountains and ends in the Upper New York Bay, which is the New York harbor area between New York City and New Jersey. The river narrows at some points, other times widening so that you could believe it was more like the narrow part of an ocean than a river. The Akerselva river flows through the city of Oslo, having started its journey at Maridalsvannet in the forest area north of Oslo. It empties into the Oslo fjord. Compared to the Hudson River, it is not a long river at all, only about five miles long.

The town I grew up in, Tarrytown, is one of the small towns located on the Hudson River. The Tappan Zee Bridge crosses the river at this point, connecting Tarrytown with Nyack at one of the widest parts of the river. The bridge is a landmark like the George Washington Bridge. On a clear day, you can see the George Washington Bridge and the New York City skyline from the Tappan Zee Bridge. The river has been known to freeze in the wintertime, although it does not do so each year. I can remember my father talking about this happening when he was a child (he grew up in Tarrytown) and how the townspeople could walk all the way across the river to Nyack if they wanted to. I remember when I was around sixteen or seventeen, the river partially froze that winter and I was able to take some really nice pictures of it. It was amazing to see how the ice was pushed up in some places like small icebergs. I don’t remember it freezing much after that. There was always a lot of activity on the river—barges, tugboats, pleasure boats, cruise ferries to Bear Mountain and West Point—all on their way to upstate NY or back to Manhattan. I remember as a child being out in a very small motorboat together with my uncle and my family; it was not a pleasant experience because the boat was too small, we had to sit completely still, and none of us had life vests on even though they were probably there in the boat. Looking back on it, it seems so foolhardy to have done that. Yet knowing my stubborn uncle, he probably insisted to the point where my parents gave in rather unwillingly. It never happened again. During the summertime when we were children, my mother would take us and some friends to Kingsland Point Park on the river, where we would make a day of it swimming, picnicking and lying on the beach to get a tan. It was also interesting to watch the male lifeguards flirt with the teenager girls and I always wondered what became of some of those people. Did those summer flirts lead to romance and a future together? As we and our friends got older, we hung out at Rockwood Hall State Park on the Hudson River, which was the former estate of William Rockefeller given to NY State by the Rockefeller family. Part of the local folklore would have it that it was haunted in places by the spirits of the Indians who used to live there. I can remember being there with my sister and a good friend early one evening, walking around, and suddenly experiencing the feeling that there was something else there with us—an electricity in the air, a feeling, a coldness. We did not hang around there very long after that. It was an odd experience because we all felt it at the same time, and we had not been talking about spirits or any such thing when it happened. In the autumn, if you looked across the river, the Hudson Palisades were always there in the distance. They were not real mountains, rather more like steep cliffs falling down to the water, but in the autumn the leaves on the hundreds of trees on the cliffs would turn beautiful colors, so it was incredible to look across the river and see that foliage. When I come back to NY now, usually during the summer months, I often stay with my friend Jean who lives upstate. For the past four or five years now, we have been attending the Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival in Garrison, which is held on the Boscobel Estate (http://www.boscobel.org/main.html), also overlooking the Hudson River. It is a fantastic experience to sit in the audience tent and watch the actors and actresses run about on the sweeping estate lawns, making their entrances and exits. The plays usually start when it is still light out, but then darkness descends, and the stage lights illuminating the tent come on, giving the place an eerie-like glow that is usually quite in keeping with the tone of the play at that time, whether it be comedy or tragedy. In other towns along the Hudson, such as Irvington, Dobbs Ferry, Hastings, and Riverdale, to name a few, the waterfronts have been developed so that there are now lots of different restaurants and shops to visit. It was not like this when we were children. The waterfronts were often shabby, old, dotted with factories (with many broken windows), garbage areas, small marinas, rundown buildings and weary-looking men hanging about them—in short, they were not very appealing places to walk around in or look at. I remember taking the train from Tarrytown to Manhattan when I went to school there, and it was always interesting and sometimes disconcerting to look out the windows at the life along the river. The town waterfronts look very different now, all changed, and mostly for the better in my opinion. Of course it is now almost impossible to afford an apartment in the newly-built complexes on the river, so this is the flip side of the coin of improvement and development. When I am back in NY, I still enjoy taking the train ride from Manhattan to Tarrytown or Irvington—it is a beautiful ride that always makes me feel like I am coming home. If you want a book that presents the Hudson River in all its glory during all the seasons, I recommend The Hudson River: From the Tear of the Clouds to Manhattan (http://www.amazon.com/Hudson-River-Tear-Clouds-Manhattan/dp/1580931723) by Jake Rajs. Some of his photography is breathtaking.

The Akerselva river is not a long river as I mentioned earlier. Nonetheless, it weaves and winds its way through some lovely scenery and areas of Oslo. It is a people-friendly river, with bicycle and pedestrian paths that allow one to follow it all the way up to Maridalvannet and all the way down to the fjord. If you walk north along the river, you will come to Nydalen, which is a complex of apartment buildings, shops and businesses that blend in nicely with the river and its small waterfalls. I often think how nice it would be to work for one of those companies that have buildings there—one could sit out along the river and eat lunch during the summertime. The Nydalen subway station boasts an escalator ride down to or up from the train platform that will enchant you—the escalator ride, called the Tunnel of Light, envelopes you in a rainbow of colors that change and glide into each other accompanied by a kind of mood music that creates a truly memorable experience (http://performative.wordpress.com/2007/01/21/tunnel-of-light-nydalen-metro-station-oslo/). There are many people picnicking in the parks along the river in the summertime. If you walk south along the river, you will pass some idyllic spots perfect for taking pictures. You will also come upon a part of the river where salmon and trout swim upstream—we have stood from the bridge and watched them flopping about and trying to swim up the waterfalls. We don’t really know how far up the river they actually manage to swim. The city of Oslo has used some money to renovate formerly rundown areas along the river, and these now are populated by restaurants and galleries and coffee shops—again a change for the better in my opinion. I have taken numerous photos of the Akerselva river during all four seasons and I never tire of photographing it. I always seem to find new idyllic areas that I have not photographed before. The Akerselva river has now become a part of my life in much the same way as the Hudson River—captivating me with its beauty, hidden spots, bird life and constancy.

Neighbors

I recently wrote about my old neighborhood in Tarrytown New York and what it was like to grow up there. I often think about all of the interesting elderly people who lived there, most of whom have passed on. Most of them were first-generation Irish immigrants who were hard-working, faithful to the Church, faithful to their spouses, and charitable to their neighbors. I think of Mary, Betty and Harry, Sally and Frank, Rose and Dan, Mike and Philomena and so many others. They did not have top jobs or degrees from the best schools, but they had empathy, kindness, personal ethics and they cared about other people. None of the latter can really be taught in school nor can one get a degree in any of them, at least not a degree that ensures that the recipient will actually be kind or ethical once he or she goes out into the world after college.

Mike passed away recently at the age of 80 after a long battle with cancer. I have kept in touch with his wife Philomena throughout the last ten years because she is the angel who watched out for my mother in her last years--shopped for her, sometimes cleaned her apartment, or carried heavy groceries up the stairs for her if it got to be too much for her. Since I live abroad, it was a godsend to know that she was there for my mother. And when my mother’s daily life got to be too difficult, she called me to let me know that too and that something had to be done. My mother would never have admitted to her children that she needed help or that she couldn’t manage her daily life anymore, she was far too independent for that. Philomena has taken care of a lot of the older people in my old neighborhood. I know that some of them tipped her or gave her what they could afford, but she did not do what she did for the money because she made very little money doing it. She no longer lives in Tarrytown, but I imagine that her new neighbors have gotten to know her in much the same way as I know her--nice, unassuming, kind, helpful and charitable. Her husband Mike, who was a plumber, was much the same way--helpful, always a cheerful hello and a positive word. Both of them always asked about my life and my family’s life; their interest never once struck me as other than genuine and well-intentioned. It was after my mother’s passing that my relationship with Philomena deepened. If she wrote me a letter telling me that she missed my mother, I could write back and tell her the same. It was the way those letters were worded--the tone of them--that told me how much she missed my mother. And when one of the other older women (Mary) that she also looked after passed on, she told me that she missed her too, and I know it prompted her to want to move to be nearer her own children who lived in another state. So she and Mike moved from Tarrytown to Pennsylvania. She would send me Mass cards on the anniversary of my mother’s death, would go back to visit the old neighborhood and visit my parents’ grave when she was back in Tarrytown. She wrote to tell me of all those things. I have saved all of her letters, they mean that much to me. She gave me the gift of an ear to talk about life and death, grief and sorrow, and memories of our earlier life, and so many other things, and I hope that is what I have given her too. This is what I think the world needs more of--the simple gift of true listening--being there for another person in whatever way one can be there for them--in person, talking on the phone, writing letters. It is really the only real gift we can give and in the end the best gift we can give another person.

The Old Neighborhood

I grew up in Tarrytown New York and lived there until I was twenty-three. Our family home was an apartment in a complex on Tappan Landing Road that was built shortly after WWII. My father was born in Tarrytown, and it was here that my parents settled when they married in 1955. After my mother’s death in 2001, it struck me that she had lived in the same neighborhood for over forty years. She knew all her neighbors and they knew her. Of course there were newcomers to the neighborhood, but it was a surprisingly stable community of neighbors who lived there, most of them older people, retired or like my mother, old-timers who had raised their children there and who stayed on as they watched their children grow up and leave.

My parents were on friendly terms with most of their neighbors. They were always willing to stop and chat briefly with the parents of our friends, who attended the same grammar school as we did. In that way, they shared their lives without becoming intimately involved. There were always borders that were not crossed—none of the neighbors as I remember ever invited the others to dinner or in for coffee. Or if it happened, it was very seldom. I do remember that the older women would sometimes sit out in the shade of one of the big trees on the front lawn and talk for a few hours during a summer afternoon, but that was also a seldom occurrence. Nevertheless, they were good to one another and supportive of each other in difficult times—sickness and death. When my father died in 1985, my mother’s neighbors made food for us and I will always remember their kindness. My mother, who loved the winter, was often out early to help the superintendent shovel the walkways and when she was done with that, she would clean off her elderly neighbor’s car. Sometimes she and another neighbor would go shopping together, and she and the same neighbor got their driver’s licenses together shortly after my father’s passing. They would visit sick neighbors in the hospital, and attend wakes and funerals for the same neighbors who passed on after one too many illnesses. They were charitable toward and respectful of one another and that was a valuable lesson in how to live life.

There were a lot of children in our neighborhood when we were growing up, and we hung out together. We played a lot of kickball and dodge ball, and did a lot of roller-skating, hurtling down the parking lot driveway at top speed and smashing into the garage doors at the end of the driveway. It surprises me now, thinking about it, that none of us ever really got injured (or that the garage doors never got damaged). We also hung out at each other’s houses, listening to rock music on WABC or WPLJ and talking. During summer vacation, after dinner, we would walk around the corner to Henrik Lane to hang out with friends who lived there. Sometimes we would walk to WI (Washington Irving junior high school) ball field and sit in the bleachers looking out over the Hudson River, and just talk. It was here that Tarrytowners would gather on July 4th in the evening to watch the fireworks that were sent up from barges on the river. The event was always crowded with people, and an orchestra would play until it got dark enough to send up the fireworks. They were always a spectacular sight and watching them together with family was always a special time. We also spent a good deal of time in the summer at Kingsland Point Park, which was a beach and picnic area on the Hudson River. And if we weren’t doing that, we were hanging around downtown, shopping at the local gift store, bookstore or clothing stores. We were also often at the movies at the Music Hall on Main Street.

I was restless when I was a teenager, as most teenagers are, and looked forward to leaving Tarrytown when I grew up. I wanted to leave because Tarrytown seemed too small to me when I was younger, and that meant lack of privacy. Everyone knew everyone else and everyone else’s business, or so it seemed. It was hard to be anything other than what people perceived you to be or assumed that you were from when you were a child. So if you were the smart one in the family, it felt as though you could not suddenly become an actress after years of talking to the neighbors about the biology courses you were taking. It wasn’t possible to ‘try on new selves’, if that makes any sense, without a whole lot of commenting and tongues wagging. Perhaps it is that way in most small towns. I wanted to immerse myself in the larger world. So I did leave Tarrytown after I finished college, trading it for the Bronx, thereafter New Jersey, Norway, California, and then Norway again. Throughout these moves and changes, my old neighborhood with my mother still living in it remained a point of stability on my mental map. I always knew she was there. The same phone number, the same street address--stability. I could pick up the telephone and dial her number, and she would always be there to answer it. While it seemed as though my life changed from year to year, hers remained fairly much the same. She seemed fine with that, never complaining, enjoying her daily routines of volunteering at the local library, walking to the store to buy groceries, chatting with her neighbors and going to mass. When we talked, she would fill me in on life in the neighborhood—who was doing what, whose daughter or son was getting married, who had become a grandparent, who had bought a house, who had graduated from college---and we would talk about now and the past and how things had changed. Her keeping me up-to-date kept me grounded and connected in a way that I never would have thought possible, and I am grateful for it, even though I didn’t appreciate it as much at the start. Her point of reference was always her children in relationship to the neighborhood families with their children.

That is what I miss, now that my parents and their neighbors are gone—most of them having passed on. The neighborhood as we knew it is gone. As long as our parents lived there, it was still our old neighborhood and we could always ‘go home’. I don’t really know anyone who lives there now. Yet an odd thing has happened, and that is that I now appreciate the smallness of Tarrytown. It is appealing to me now because of its smallness, because it is possible to get to know it due to its smallness. It is not overwhelming. Mostly, it is just a lovely town--a small quaint town on the Hudson River with a wonderful vibrant history, lovely estates, lakes, river parks and nature. I look forward to seeing it each year when I come to NY, because it has become my ‘hometown’ even though my old neighborhood is gone.