The Third Annual Havasu Film Festival, part two

This is a continuation of the previous post. I recommend you read them all in order.

7. The American

Starring George Clooney

Directed by Anton Corbijn

released: 2010

 Our Celebrity Guest Viewer was here for the showing of this movie, but consensus was no less attainable for that: we all agreed with Sherry's assessment that the movie spent a great deal of money on eyedrops, because the performers did so much staring: either at each other, or off into space. The film is an hour and forty-five minutes, consisting of a few shootings and one chase through a charming Italian hillside town, plus about seventeen minutes of dialogue. The rest of the time, the camera watches somebody stare.

 That is, of course, an exaggeration, but it does capture the mood of the film, which may be described as pensive or suspenseful but is really just slow. Very slow. 

 It begins promisingly with "Jack" (George Clooney) and a pretty girl relaxing in post-coital bliss in a remote Swedish cabin. They go for a walk and discover tracks in the snow. Jack pulls out a gun and starts hunting snipers. ("You have a gun?" says the girl.) Jack shoots a guy, then tells the girl to go call the police. When she, dazed and confused, finally turns to go, Jack shoots her in the back of the head. Why? It's never explained, and the four of us came up with three unsatisfactory explanations. Then Jack hunts down another shooter before disappearing into the crowds of Paris, where his employer or whatever tells him to lie low in Italy. The rest of the movie is concerned with Jack's growing ambivalence about his career choices. We watch him mull things.

 The American is very nicely photographed and edited, and the performances are for the most part capably done, with a special shout-out to Paolo Bonacelli as the town's priest. He deserved better lines. When Jack grabs a scooter and chases down another would-be assassin, we feel hope that things will pick up; they don't. When Jack meets a gun-buying customer in a restaurant, we think there'll be some action now, boy! There isn't. And when Jack proves that brain beats brawn in the penultimate shooting of the film, we are surprised, but then we knew it'd happen like that, because, you know, Jack is the Good Guy here and it has to. And then comes the final shootout of the movie, between the Good Guy and the Bad Guy. Nobody wins.

 

 I feel like I should say more, but there's really nothing else to say.

8. Becoming Jane

Starring Anne Hathaway and James McAvoy

Directed by Julian Jarrold

Released: 2007

 I suspect this film was chosen for the Third Annual Havasu Film Festival because it includes a small-ish though vital performance by Maggie Smith as the crusty Lady Gresham, who believes herself entitled to order a preacher's daughter to marry her heir. She has maybe three scenes in the film; it is possible to watch this beautiful movie from start to finish, admiring the glorious countryside (it was shot in Ireland, re-labeled as England), the elegant costumes and props and manners, the clever dialogue and the magnificent script, and remember only Maggie Smith's bitchy character informing Reverend Austen that she will not be attending church that day. 

 Maggie Smith is undeniably that good, but the film is about the relationship between the two main characters. Anne Hathaway (an American! Horrors!) and James McAvoy (a Scot playing an Irishman ... well, that's okay, apparently. He is known for his skill with accents.) portray Jane Austen and Tom leFroy, both real people. She's becoming the world-famous author, he's becoming a successful lawyer. They meet and fall in love. (History does not record most details of Jane Austen's private life, so this stuff is all made up. Go with it.) You really don't need to be told more than that. One of the nice things about our factual ignorance of what went on in Jane Austen's life when scholars weren't looking is that we can make her anything we want to. The makers of this film wanted to make her a hero for 21st-Century romantics, and they have succeeded. As a romantic myself (though really more of a 20th-Century version), I recommend this movie.

 

9. Notes on a Scandal

Starring Judi Dench and Cate Blanchett

Directed by Richard Eyre

Released: 2007

 

 Which is worse: an attractive thirty-something teacher who cheats on her older husband with a fifteen-year-old student, or the wizened old crone who blackmails her about it? The woman who is driven to madness, or the madwoman who pushes her down that road?

 In this case, the wizened old crone is Barbara, played by Judi Dench, a grumpy history teacher at an English school who has lost patience with newfangled methods and soft post-modern jargon. She has not a kind word to say about anyone or anything, and leaves no thought unexpressed, even if it's only expressed in her diary. She starts off criticizing, in voice-over, Sheba, the new arts teacher, played by Cate Blanchett. At first she seems only judgmental, a kind of crochety grandmother who, one suspects, has a lining of silver in the storm cloud of her thoughts. But after Sheba demonstrates a willingness to be friendly, Barbara latches onto her and attempts to supplant the younger woman's own family in her affections. She becomes the increasingly demanding friend who won't go away. 

 

 But once the old woman witnesses the arts teacher's indiscretion with a student, she realizes the hold she has over the younger woman. Her view of their relationship takes on an increasingly creepy cast, and we begin to feel a relative sympathy for Sheba, despite the culture of moral outrage that we feel bound to apply to her actions. Is Barbara jealous, and if so, is she jealous of Sheba's attractiveness or of her happiness? Does she want Sheba as a friend, a companion, or a lover? In the end, the two women destroy each other and I doubt that anyone would admit to feeling either's destruction is undeserved. We are voyeurs of the process; it's thrilling to watch through their windows and see how it's done.

 

 

 10. American Animals

Starring Evan Peters, Barry Keoghan, Blake Jenner and Jared Abrahamson
Directed by Bart Layton

released 2018

 The most remarkable thing about this "true-crime thriller" is that all four of the people who actually attempted the real-world heist came on camera to talk aboout their view of the scheme. They don't agree on the details, but the film handles the disagreements with shrewd juxtapositions, leaving the viewer to decide (a) if the variances matter, and (b) who's probably telling the truth. 

 The heist involves the theft of millions of dollars' worth of rare books from a Kentucky university library. We watch the conspiracy progress from wild idea to careful scheme, then watch it disintegrate into a briefly-successful farce. I felt no sympathy for any of the bone-headed conspirators: not the art student who let himself get sucked into a harebrained scheme; not the stoner student athlete who is the driver of the scheme; not the fastidious young man who is willing to help as long as he doesn't have to actually do anything; not the straight-laced young man who is recruited as a getaway driver. 

 As one of the real-world thieves puts it, "I was torn between the desire to keep the adventure going and waiting for the insurmountable obstacle that would stop everything in its tracks and return things to normal." But the obstacle never arrives: each difficulty is dealt with by these halfwits in what seems to them a logical way. The scheme comes together, and in the end they believe they can actually accomplish their heist. The movie chronicles the development of their plan and their ludicrous attempt to execute it. The result is a kind of testosterone-fuelled farce, entertaining on one level, laughable on another.

 

11. All is Bright

Starring Paul Giamatti and Paul Rudd

Directed by Phil Morrison

Released: 2013

 Dennis has just been paroled from prison in Canada after four years. He arrives home to learn that his wife told their daughter he was dead. "I just couldn't take it anymore," she explains. She expects to marry René as soon as he gets a divorce. 

 In this black comedy, Dennis (Paul Giamatti) and René (Paul Rudd) go off to make their fortune, such as it is, legally by selling a truckload of Christmas trees in New York City. Unlikely colleagues, they endure adversity -- often of their own making -- and find a sort of resolution in a most unlikely way. 

 I enjoy movies where characters show real growth; this is one such film. Interesting, even amusing at times, but not funny. And even though Giamatti tends to get on my nerves as an actor -- I don't know why, he just does; it's something to do with the shape of his face -- and I find René's reactions not really credible all the time, I would recommend this movie as a nice little Christmas film if you don't really want a Miracle on 34th Street kind of vibe.

12. Allied

Starring Brad Pitt and Marion Cotillard

Directed by Robert Zemeckis

Released: 2017

 A love story set in Britain in World War II. Pitt plays Max Vaten, a Canadian officer who speaks French, albeit with a Quebecois accent. Sent to Casablanca as a spy after the fall of France, he is assigned to play the husband of Marianne Beauséjour, a Resistance agent there (Marion Cotillard). They fall in love while accomplishing their assignment (try not to think about the likelihood of such an arrangement in real life), and Max succeeds in getting Marianne back to London, where they marry and start a family in north London. 

 Difficulties arise. Information has been received indicating that the real Beauséjour was killed some time before in France, and a substitute put in her place. Max is called in to be informed, and instructed about how to behave while the authorities execute a plan to make a definitive determination. The scene where these instructions are delivered seems raw and out of place, as though Pitt never got to rehearse it; as though it was written, or re-written, just before being filmed. In any case, starting with that scene, Max demonstrates phenomenally bad judgment at every opportunity, gets one courier killed, royally fucks up another courier drop for his own purposes, endangers a number of French operatives in the process (and implicitly kills a number of unseen French girls as well), and tries to steal a British airplane. Just before that, we learn that his wife's judgment is every bit as bad as his own. 

 This movie is just over two hours long. There is plenty of action throughout, and I enjoyed the portrayal of that era, as always. I also enjoyed the twists of the plot to some extent, but I have to admit that the set-up phase of the story took way longer than necessary. It seems to me it could have been done in ten or twelve minutes, but was given 46: long enough for me to start noticing the flaws in the story. It would, I think, have been better to devote most of that time to building the characters, including supporting characters, in the part of the story that takes place in London. Or they could have devoted more time to the two tasteful sex scenes. I spent the first one wondering how anyone could have accomplished that in the tiny little coupe they were driving. The second was less distracting and all too brief.

13. Hook

Starring Robin Williams, Dustin Hoffman, Julia Roberts and Bob Hoskins

Directed by Steven Spielberg

Released:1991

 When Maggie Smith died, most of the tributes I found on the web site Imgur.com referenced her role in this film, so it's no wonder I was surprised to discover that it's a small part, bookends really: a couple of scenes near the start, then one at the end. She does it very well, of course, made up to look much older than her actual age at the time, but considering the breadth of her career, this was hardly a major performance by her. 

 And more surprising to me, it wasn't a great performance by Robin Williams. He is at his best when he goes off the leash, ad-libbing and extemporizing while others stand around and admire the talent. He didn't do that at all in this movie, and the result is a kind of flat, whine-y performance as Peter Banning, né Pan, rediscovering his heritage.

 Dustin Hoffman is much more the consummate performer as Hook. His kiddie-film villain is right on the mark. Is he scary to little kids? If he is, he can't be too scary. He's a fun villian.

 The real surprise is that Spielberg could produce such a sadly dated movie. I suspect that people who came of age in the 90s -- people who post on Imgur.com, I guess -- look on this bit of fluff as a seminal influence in their development, much as I see the British Invasion or The Graduate. (I've tried to think of some kiddie film from the mid-to-late 60s for comparison, but nothing comes to mind; I must not have had a childhood.) Hook is full of giant cellphones and skateboards, and Never-Neverland is done in those awful primary-color palettes. How was this movie nominated for Best Visual Effects? It must've been just on the strength of the names associated with it, because the reality was unimpressive so long after Star Wars Episode Four.

The Third Annual Havasu Film Festival

 The Mojave County Library now allows borrowers to take out fourteen videos at a time, but still only for a week. I'm here for about three weeks all told: first with my wife and her sister, then by myself; and we'll have a special guest juror for a small part of the time, as my former law partner Curtis is scheduled for a brief visit or two over the weekend(s). Naturally, as the sole author of this blog, I'm also the sole arbiter of film quality as reflected in the following reviews. I welcome the others' opinions, but don't promise to be swayed by them. You, dear reader, deserve the full righteousness of my own views on each film.

 I doubt that we will get through all the videos that we've checked out this first week. I got ten myself, using my tried-and-true method of picking a shelf at random and taking the first ten movies that sounded interesting from the blurbs on the jackets. I had heard of (and, in fact, seen) one of them before. My wife took five or six, but hers include at least two television series videos, which are ineligible for inclusion in the film festival report. Nancy got seven or eight. Our choices for actual viewing are sort of random, and the reviews reflect that random order, rather than any kind of merit.

1. The Song of Names

Starring Tim Roth and Clive Owen

Directed by François Girard

released: 2020

 

 This movie takes place in two times: 1951 and 1986. David Rapoport is a violin prodigy brought to London from Warsaw just before World War II begins; his father leaves him in the care of the Simmons family, who promise to do their best to develop Rapoport's musical skills. The father goes back to the rest of his family in Poland, and they disappear during the war. 

 Meanwhile, true to his word, Mr Simmons has done all he could for young David, including keeping the boy true to Jewish culture despite not being Jewish himself. Simmons' son, whom David calls Mottl, has become David's best friend.

 At the start of the film, Simmons has arranged a grand concert for David on the strength of a well-received recording of the young man's playing. Simmons, unwisely, has not insured the concert ("I didn't think I need to.") and when David fails to show up for the event, Simmons loses everything. Two months later he is dead. His son Mottl ends up being a music instructor in Newcastle. Thirty-five years later, by chance, he witnesses an idiosyncrasy of David's being performed by another music student. This starts him along the path of tracking down David, to find out what happened to keep him from appearing at his big concert.

 The drama of the story is wrapped up in the Holocaust and the sense of Jewish identity. David is an arrogant prick, and acts like it. Mottl tracks him down through 1980s London, Warsaw and New York to find out what happened, then sets up another concert for David as some kind of compensation to make everything better. 

 It's kind of hard, considering current political events, to keep from letting my view of this film be coloured, now that the State of Israel has lost all claim to any kind of moral high ground. (I'm not going to get into any arguments about whether it really ever had any such claims; suffice it to say that, growing up, I believed it did.) But by focusing on the Jews of London in 1951, I can appreciate the horrors they survived and the efforts they made to rebuild their society and culture. In that way, I can understand David's journey from the Simmons household to the final scene of the film. It is, in some respects, a sad journey, and his resolution is valid. But he's still an arrogant prick, and he still acts like it. He didn't deserve Mottl's friendship, and he doesn't really deserve our sympathy or respect as film viewers. 

2. Fantastic Mr. Fox

Animated; starring the voices of George Clooney, Meryl Streep, Jason Schwartzman, Bill Murray and Owen Wilson

Directed by Wes Anderson

released: 2010

 

 My wife had this puppet show on some list she keeps of films that pique her interest. Having now seen it, she is unable to speculate on why it ever made it onto that list. Maybe it was because it's based on a book by Roald Dahl, about whom people tend to say nice things. At least she and I both got short naps during the film, which is intentionally so low-key as to be thoroughly boring.

3. All is True

Starring Kenneth Branagh and Judi Dench

Directed by Kenneth Branagh

released: 2019

 This was the one film that I had seen before, when it was in first run. I remembered it as an elegant film with a moving story. That's pretty much all I remembered about it.

 I was right about that, though it wasn't the tour de force that I recalled from five years ago. The cinematography is glorious, and the performances are superb, as one would expect from two of the English-speaking world's greatest actors (not to mention Ian McKellen, who plays the Earl of Southampton in one outstanding scene, wherein his character manages to lift Shakespeare up and put him down at the same time). 

 The story concerns the final three years of Shakespeare's life, after his theater has burned down in a performance of what would be his last play. He goes home to Stratford Upon Avon to take up the frayed threads of his family life, learning what lies he has been allowed to believe in his absence. The events recounted in the film are fictional (not much is known about what really happened, despite four hundred years of intense academic speculation) but they make for a coherent tale in Ben Elton's script. The references to truth -- "All is true"; "Nothing is true" -- come fairly thick in the film, keeping that theme front and center in the viewer's mind, but in the end you can believe either that nothing is true, or that all is, in fact, true. And the gentle pacing of the film (which I would not call "slow") gives you time to consider the idea as you watch it unfold.

 The single most enjoyable moment in the film is when Shakespeare turns on the local self-important snob and puts him down in a truly Shakespearean speech.

4. Along Came Polly

Starring Ben Stiller and Jennifer Aniston

Directed by John Hamburg

released: 2004

 The movie stars a ferret. That should be enough said. 

 Well, not really. Of course I picked this movie because it has Jennifer Aniston in it, so I was bound to like at least something about it. And I did. And not just her.

 The plot is entirely predictable, the jokes are somewhat tired, and what little character development there is goes exactly the way you would expect it to. Yet overall the movie is a modestly entertaining little romantic comedy. Ben Stiller plays Reuben, a tightass risk-assessment analyst who gets married to Lisa, played by Debra Messing. She betrays him on their honeymoon, whereupon he returns alone to New York to hang out with his moronic best friend Stan, played by Philip Seymour Hoffman. They go to a party, where Reuben meets Polly, his polar opposite, played by Jennifer Aniston. 

 Opposites attract, I hear. Boy meets girl; boy wins girl; boy loses girl; boy wins girl back and they live happily ever after. Is it really possible to spoil the ending of a movie like this? Short answer: No. None of the big-name stars (who include Alec Baldwin, Hank Azaria, Michelle Lee and Kevin Hart in small roles) is doing, or even attempting, their best work in this fluffy little film full of fart jokes, but it works on the level of a second date. It's good enough. And you get to see Jennifer Aniston salsa dancing. Did I mention she was in this?

 Oh, and by the way, the ferret is named Rodolfo and this is his first film role. He nails it.

5. The Miracle Club

Starring Laura Linney, Kathy Bates and Maggie Smith

Directed by Thaddeus O'Sullivan

released: 2023

 

 Maggie Smith died last week; her final film was this quiet little movie about three women who travel to Lourdes from Ireland in the 1960s. None of them is looking for a miracle in the physical sense, but they find one in the guise of reconciliation. They have an unpleasant history with each other that gets worked out -- rather easily, if you ask me -- by saying the things they perhaps should have said to each other forty years before, when Linney's character was involved with Smith's character's son, who died young. Bates's character seems to have been, at least in part, the catalyst for the group's falling out.

 Having never been to Lourdes myself, and having apparently never even seen pictures of the basilica there, I was a little surprised at how beautiful a place it was. But it's a distraction, really, from what I see as the real meaning of the film, which is encapsulated literally and metaphorically by a single word unexpectedly spoken in a whisper near the end of the movie. I won't spoil the ending by telling you what the word is or who says it, but will just say that all three starring actors, and several others, gave performances that make this slightly-too-cute film an enjoyable way to pass a couple of quiet hours at home.

6. Quartet

Starring Tom Courtenay, Billy Connolly, Pauline Collins and Maggie Smith

Directed by Dustin Hoffman

released: 2013

 

 Every now and then one comes to a film or tv show that seems to have as its main purpose the employment of old-time actors who have fallen out of favour. I'm thinking Murder, She Wrote; Matlock; and Diagnosis: Murder and any number of small movies aimed at the older generations. Younger people who stumble across these shows will ask "Who's that?", and their parents will be shocked by their children's ignorance of such huge stars and accomplished performers. It is the way of things. (It works the same in reverse, of course, which is why old folks tend to cancel their subscriptions to People. I can't tell you how long it was before I figured out that Lady Gaga is not a country-and-western group; and I'm still not sure what a Dua Lipa is.)

 

 This is one of those movies; and since it is thoroughly British, there's another layer of obscurity to factor in. I know who Maggie Smith is, of course, and I'm sure I've seen the rest of this film's stars in something or other over my lifetime, even if I wouldn't call them Big Names. (Well, except for Michael Gambon, who plays the pompous retired director; he did something in the Harry Potter series before he died, and so is almost as big a name as Ms Smith.) They've probably all been in Midsomer Murders or something like that.

 Anyway, all these people play retired musicians -- opera folk, mostly, but with a sprinkling of less highbrow backgrounds thrown in -- living in a fancy retirement home in the English countryside. Money for the retirement home's operations is running short, so the residents are putting on a fundraising show. (Mickey Rooney died before this film was made, and anyway he's not a musician. Or British. Although he could sing....) Into the bubbling cauldron of jealousy, rivalry and friendship a new personality is injected, as the retirement home welcomes a Great Star whose identity has been kept secret pending arrival. 

 

 Let me be honest: like in The Miracle Club, above, the great tragic consequences of a lifetime of snubs and betrayals get resolved rather too easily in Quartet, but that doesn't mean the film's not enjoyable, even moving in its storytelling. And because these are all huge stars and accomplished performers (presumably) they play off each other, inspiring each other to give the film their best. It is, on a human level, quite a good movie. And while we got the DVD to see Maggie Smith, I have to say that Pauline Collins as Cissy gave what I think is the best performance in the movie.

The Third Annual Havasu Film Festival will continue in the next post. I don't want it to get too long for 21st-Century readers.

The Not Dayton Trip, Part Nine: The End

 This is the ninth and final part of this series of posts; you really should read them in order. 

Here's a link to Part One; and here's a link to all the pictures from this trip.

 I have been just a little out of touch while I'm on the road. Seems there's a hurricane coming up the Mississippi Valley today. Well, okay, I actually knew that, but what I didn't know was that it stretches all the way east to Georgia, where I'd plan to go today. That, plus the likelihood that Interstate 10 might be experiencing some problems in the travel lanes led me to jettison my plan to drive south from Front Royal on the Skyline Drive, which I believe goes along the top of the ridge all the way through Shenendoah National Park, and the entire length of the Blue Ridge Parkway, which picks up where the Skyline leaves off, and goes all the way to North Carolina or maybe even Georgia. I was looking forward to a nice, relaxing cruise at between 35 and 40 mph all day long, or most of it anyway. 

 It wasn't to be. Instead I decided it was best to try and get to the west of the rain, which I predict will come north and veer slightly to the east today and tomorrow. So I plotted a route across West Virginia and Ohio, to St Louis, then home from there. I might possibly catch the western edge of the storm tomorrow, but it should be pretty well spent by then.

 I made it as far as Cincinnati today. (Almost ironic that I've cast up just a few miles from Dayton for the night.) I did get a few hours of top-down driving in cool, clear weather, and about one glorious hour was on exactly the kind of winding mountain roads I most enjoy (except in this case, the roads were less than two lanes and had speed limits of 55 mph. They were like English B roads, along cliff edges with soft shoulders. I never hit even 40 mph. And luckily no one hit me.)

 The rest of the day was on four-lane divided highways and freeways, so there's not much to say about the day. I should be in St Louis by early afternoon tomorrow; I doubt that I'll make it all the way home from there by Saturday night, but I'm going to try. In any case, unless something really remarkable happens between here and San Antonio, this will be the closing post for this trip. And I didn't take any pictures today, but I hope you'll look at the ones I've taken until now, in the album at the link at the top of this page.

The Not Dayton Trip, Part Eight: Corning, New York to Front Royal, Virginia

 

 This is the eighth part of this series of posts; you really should read them in order. 

Here's a link to Part One; and here's a link to all the pictures from this trip.

 

 When I left Corning before sunrise this morning, the roads were blanketed in a moderately thick fog. Luckily for me, the rising sun quickly dissipated it. At one point, with the sun still low in the eastern sky, I was admiring the green of the surrounding hills laced with rising wisps of fog, the near-empty highway rising and falling and weaving through the land, appearing and disappearing and vanishing in the distance. There was one particular spot where I really wanted to stop and take a picture. I didn't, though, but maybe by re-reading this description in the years left to me I'll be able to recall the beauty of that moment. The rest of y'all will just have to use your imagination.

 I had been texting back and forth with my old friend John and we had agreed on a place called Brickerville House for lunch in the little town where he lives now. I trusted Google Maps enough to arrange to meet him at eleven, and sure enough I was there about ten minutes early. The restaurant was pretty nice, easy to locate, spacious, with very friendly staff. It looks like the kind of place that's expanded organically over the years; it's kind of a warren inside. The menu is long and varied, so it took a little while to go through it. 

 I settled on something called the Pittsburgh Steak Salad. Maybe I didn't read the menu's description of it as closely as I thought I did, because in addition to the plentiful (and perfectly cooked) strips of medium-rare steak, and the various fresh veggies that make up the bulk of the salad, and the hard-boiled eggs that I remember being mentioned in the description, there was a generous layer of french-fried potatoes over the steak. That surprised me. And they were so plentiful that it was nearly impossible to avoid them; I only left probably half of them on my plate. 

 I had seen John when he was in San Antonio, probably last year, but we still had a good time catching up on people we knew or sort of knew from the old days, and in the things that have transpired since his last visit to Paradise South. Apparently I hadn't told him I'd had a heart attack last December, because I think he would have remembered; but I don't remember who I've told and who I haven't, so I guess this will be news to some of you. And if people later tell me they didn't know about it, then I'll know they don't read my blog and the hell with them, am I right?

1939 Plymouth convertible at AACM

 My plan had been to go from there to a car museum in Huntingdon, Pennsylvania, about an hour and a half west; but I remembered that another, much closer museum, was just a short distance down the road. I had planned to visit it on the trip up, but it had been closed when I was in Hershey. Today, it was open, and I got there with enough time to see the whole thing. It's the Antique Automobile Club Museum, and has a large building with three floors of exhibits of cars, motorcycles, and related items. The current exhibition is about service vehicles -- ambulances, hearses, police cars and such -- and there's also a small exhibit dedicated to Plymouth cars. The most interesting vehicles on view were Whitney Houston's Rolls Royce limousine, Governor Rockefeller's Chrysler Imperial limo, and an 1896 Benton Harbor, the first car made in Michigan and the oldest extant American car in the world. But the car that piqued my curiosity the most is one that I didn't see. 

 Down in the basement is a store room that was left open, so I wandered in. There are dozens of cars jammed in higgledy-piggledy together, and there are signs describing them collected against a side wall and interspersed with the vehicles. I saw a sign for a 1929 Stearns Knight, but couldn't get close enough to read the description; I was particularly interested in where the car came from (many of the signs name the owners or donors of the cars). When I was a kid I used to play in a 1929 Stearns Knight in a barn in LaPlace, Louisiana, and while I doubt it's the same one, there's the chance that it is. I asked a couple of the staffers about it, but neither of them knew. One of them offered to go downstairs with me and check the sign, but the building's elevator is out of order and it's about 40 steps down and 40 steps back up, and having done that twice already at that point, I decided I just wasn't that interested. 

 The museum also has an interactive exhibit called Driving After Sundown, about the development of headlight technology over the past hundred years, from candles and kerosene and acetylene to electrical headlamps and sealed beams to the latest thing, "adaptive headlights" which, according to the materials I picked up, "direct projected beams around oncoming traffic," directed by computers and cameras. I have no idea how that works, or even how it looks on a car at night. Maybe I'll meet someone with a relatively new Land Rover, and they can show me.

 Another video exhibit gave me information I hadn't known about early braking technology, and bumper developement, both things I've been thinking about for a couple of years. Maybe I'll remember what it said. (I had not known, for example, that early brakes were strips of animal hide wrapped around the outside of a drum.)

 That was the end of the good part of the day. After that I decided I could get to Front Royal, Virginia, by about 6:00pm, so I made a reservation. Then I set out. My planned route was set to avoid Interstate 81 altogether; it's the worst interstate in the country, in my experience, so I told Google Maps not to go that way. There's another, more fuel-efficient route through Frederick, Maryland that would take only about twenty minutes longer, so I selected that one.

 Well, don't you know, there was a wreck on the highway going through Harrisburg, a 22-minute stoppage. I figured there must be a way around the stoppage, and I wanted to put the top down and apply some sunblock anyway, so I got off. But it turns out there's a river crossing near the stoppage, and it was getting on toward rush hour, so I didn't gain any time by getting off. And with all the re-routing the program was doing, at some point it put me back onto Interstate 81. (It asked me twice if I wanted to make that change, saying it had "found" a faster route that would save me 18 minutes; I said No both times but it did it anyway.) After a second stoppage for a wreck, in southern Pennsylvania, I gave up and let it take me down I-81. There was a delay for construction at the Virginia line that, it said, I could avoid by taking a detour along some highways just to the east, so I said OK. If it saved me any time I'll be shocked: not only was every over-the-road truck taking the same detour, and slowly, but there was an incident of some sort at a business along the detour route that called for police, fire and ambulance services, and of course meant the highway was blocked off at that location. The upshot is that I did not get to Front Royal at 6pm; it was nine o'clock when I pulled into my hotel's parking lot, and it's 11pm now.

 In the morning I'm going to start down Skyline Drive, which runs from Front Royal to Waynesboro; and from there I'm going to take the Blue Ridge Parkway from beginning to end, Waynesboro to some point in northern Georgia. After today, I feel the need for a day of relatively slow, calm driving along a nearly deserted highway. At the end of the Parkway, I may or may not stick to my plan to wander a little through some of the un-visited counties of central and southern Georgia. We shall see: that's a decision to put off until tomorrow, at least.

The Not Dayton Trip, Part Seven: Valhalla to Corning, New York

   This is the seventh post in a series; you really should read them in order. 

Here's a link to Part One; and here's a link to all the pictures from this trip

 

 I had planned to leave Valhalla on Monday morning, but during Sunday evening's meandering discussion of things New York, which mostly centered on food, a gross oversight became manifest: we had not had any New York Style pizza during my visit. In order to rectify this, I had to stay an additional day. A sacrifice I was willing to make, as the cause was righteous.

 We started off with breakfast at Tommy's, a delicatessen and cafe on Broadway in North White Plains. The breakfast menu was limited, and to be honest I wouldn't go back to this place; the coffee was the best we've had, but the food wasn't by any stretch of imagination. I had a bacon, egg and cheese on a roll because the cheerful and outgoing owner recommended it, but the sandwich was a disappointment. It was cold and not very filling, and the roll was flavourless and lacking in texture. It was like packaged dinner rolls. 

 From the reviews posted on line, it's really more of a lunch place, and we actually only went there because the place we had come looking for, the City Line Deli (not to be confused with the City Limits Deli, where we went a day or two before), has disappeared from the building across the street. Tommy's shop is very small, with only three or four tables inside; we snagged one outside, as the weather was nice, and we got to watch the cement trucks going back and forth on the road, and some guy with a shovel grumpily scraping up the gravel that they drop in the travel lanes. (There's a cement plant just down a side-street; we passed it on the way to the restaurant.) It was also entertaining, watching people try (or not try) to park without blocking the crosswalk, and trying to extricate their cars from the curb when a delivery vehicle double-parked and blocked them in. This is apparently an accepted hazard in the metropolitan area, as no one was the least bit upset about it.

 Steve had some errands to run with Dorothy, which left me on my own. (That was when I went out to the Dam Plaza and wrote Part Six of this blog post series, which you should have already read. These posts make so much more sense when you read them in order.) When they came back they brought pastries from an upscale bakery in Connecticut. Steve assures me that "upscale" is not redundant when used to describe any old thing in Connecticut, but I have my doubts. We sampled a chocolate scone, a white chocolate scone, a sort of Danish pastry, and a streusel-looking cake thing. All were good. We talked for a while and then it was time to take Dorothy home. She lives in Port Chester, in a co-operative apartment building, which I don't really understand. It seems to be like a condo, but with a surfeit of rules.

 So we dropped her off and then drove north to Chappaqua and some other towns up that way; I forget why. Again, we missed seeing Bill and Hillary, but I can't say I'm surprised. They probably don't get out much, and we don't actually know where in Chappaqua their house is. 

 At some point we started trying to narrow down our choices for pizza. It was essential that we find a place with excellent New York style pizza, but first we had to have the discussion of what the hell constitutes New York style pizza. I'm of the opinion that there are only three "styles" of pizza in the United States: New York style, with thin crust; Chicago style (or pan pizza), with a sturdy crust capable of supporting vast quantities of toppings; and Sicilian, with a sort of thick cake-like crust.* There are all kinds of variations of toppings, including of course Hawaiian, the very idea of which is heathen sacrilege to New Yorkers, though I like it. Steve is of the opinion that there are lots and lots of pizza styles, and he thinks that New York style is not the same as thin crust because somewhere they sell pizzas on crusts as thin as crackers, and because once upon a time a pizza maker told him he couldn't sell him a pizza with more than two ingredients because it wouldn't support the weight. 

 I, of course, am right, but Steve wouldn't accept that and found all kinds of web sites listing twelve or twenty or sixty-two styles of pizza; but they weren't "styles" of pizza. They were variations on the three styles, some of which -- like "Colorado style" -- are sold in only one shop in some remote provincial town like St. Louis or a suburb of Denver. Just because a shop owner in South Philadelphia makes a pie with some odd combination of toppings, he hasn't created a new style of pizza. Just because some guy in Detroit decides to put the tomato sauce on top of the cheese doesn't mean his creation is anything but a Sicilian pizza with the sauce on top. Just because a bunch of bar cooks use a mix of cheddar and mozzarella cheese doesn't make "bar style" pizza a real thing. Putting clams on a pizza doesn't make New Haven pizza a style: it's still just a New York style pizza with clams, popular in New Haven.

 Steve and I somehow ended up at Colony Grill, a local chain of Irish sports bars with a location back in Port Chester, by the marina. I don't know how that became our pizzeria of choice. It appeared on several people's lists of the best places, but come on. An Irish bar? For pizza? And we passed easily more than half a dozen other, more likely venues, places with Italian names. But there we were.

 They offered pizza in one size and with one type of crust, the thin crust that I consider the defining feature of New York style. They offer the traditional toppings and a few that I suspect are there just for the determinedly contrary sort of trend-driven postmodern consumer. I'll only say two words about it, and then move on: salad pizza.

 Steve had no preference as to toppings. I was tempted to choose just pepperoni, as that is an archetypical New York pizza topping. But I decided it would be better to go with the same toppings I almost always get on my pizzas back home, in order to have a more valid point of comparison. So I asked for sausage, mushroom and black olive.

 It wasn't a bad pizza. The restaurant's signature feature seems to be something called "hot oil"; I'm not sure if it's supposed to be hot-spicy or hot-heated; it was neither. It's listed as a topping option, but we didn't ask for it, yet the pizza we got was oily in the extreme. You have to eat it over something you don't mind dripping on, like the table or a paper plate, which they provide. The sausage was plentiful; the mushrooms seemed a little scant; and the black olives were as abundant as rules at a co-operative apartment building.

 The pizza has good fold. This, I believe, is an essential criterion for true New York style pizza. You have to be able to fold it in half so you can eat it while walking down a crowded sidewalk. Of course, the oil dripping from the crease kind of militates against actually doing that with this pizza, but structurally the Colony Grill pizza meets the requirement. It's a success, too, in terms of crunch, another vital characteristic of New York style pizza. The pie we had definitely is one of the crunchiest I've ever had, and no matter where I go in the world (with two exceptions: Chicago and Austin), New York Style is my preference these days. But none has had the crunch of this pizza. So mark that down as a Yes. 

 The last discernible criterion is undercarriage. This has to do with the structural integrity of the crust. Does the narrow tip of the slice droop under the weight of the ingredients? Is it soggy, or has it cooked evenly in the oven? Is the thickness uniform from tip to rim? This one was successful, on all points. So I guess you'd have to say this was a high-quality New York style pizza. The only aspect of it that I wasn't completely happy with was all that damn oil dripping all over the place.

 So anyway: the pizza-related oversight was rectified, and we celebrated by stopping off at the Village Creamery in Valhalla for an ice cream cone. They make their own there, and it's worth every penny of the prices, which are comparable to any premium shops where they don't make the ice cream in-house. I had a scoop of chocolate chunk salted caramel and I think it showed massive self-control that I only had one scoop. I would go out on a limb and say it's the best ice cream in the United States, but the truth is it's only the most recent home-made ice cream I've had. Places like Baskin Robbins and Amy's and Stone Cold Creamery and, yes, even Ben & Jerry's are good -- very good -- but places that make their own, like the Village Creamery, are in the Honors Class of ice cream shops. (Shout out to Justin's Ice Cream, back home!)

 Afterwards we developed a plan for Tuesday. I wasn't in any great hurry to get on the road. My original plan had been thwarted by the fact that the car museum I'd planned to go to in Allentown switched its schedule at the beginning of September and is now closed on Mondays and Tuesdays. So instead of going there and then up to Corning for the glass museum, I'd go directly to Corning. The change also meant that I'd be able to put Lititz, Pennsylvania, back into the mix. I'd planned to visit with John, a friend who lives there, on the way up, but he was away from home when I went through; and when I'd looked at rearranging my return trip with the Allentown stop intact, it wouldn't work to go to see him. Now, though, it's a modest enough variance of route and it won't put the next stop, in Huntingdon, out of the realm of possibility. I'll be able to meet John and still get to Huntingdon in good time to go to that museum. 

 I'm not sure why, but these people in the Northeast seem unduly curious about what route I'm taking. Both Steve and John focused on the point: Steve on what route I would take to get to Corning, as if I knew, and John on which way I was coming from Corning to Lititz. They want to speculate on which is the best route. And neither seems to accept, deep down, that I'm not wedded to taking the fastest or most efficient route. At some point on return-trips I tend to get on a freeway and just go home, but until that moment arrives -- usually a moment of pique or frustration, or after learning of bad weather a-comin' -- I'm more likely to be found on some two-lane back road than on the freeway running in the same direction a few miles away. That's the whole point of my wandering. And I have Google Maps, and now that I've deleted and re-loaded it, it works well enough, so I don't particularly want or need speculative advice about which route to take, especially since, not having studied paper maps in great detail, I have nothing to offer in such a discussion. (Sometimes I do study maps before setting out, and in those instances, advice from well-meaning but relatively amateurish locals is not welcome. I know what I'm looking for in route planning, and it's something that departs greatly from the norm.)

 Thus, before I left Valhalla, I went to breakfast with Steve at a place called the Thornwood Coach Diner, on Kensico Road. It was great: easily the best breakfast we've had. The service was outstanding; the prices were reasonable; the atmosphere was comfortable and traditional. The menu was extensive, as most of these places' menus seem to be (Tommy's being the notable exception), and the food was very good. I had a Florentine omelet (feta and spinach) with bacon added, home fries and a bagel in lieu of toast, and it was all very well done. The bagel was dripping with butter, which was delicious. And the coffee was top-notch, and it kept coming. Definitely a five-star place.

 Then I hit the road. The trip up to Corning was uneventful, even dull, despite the construction along the way. I was at the Museum of Glass by two in the afternoon, and decided I'd rather spend the time available there instead of using any part of it for lunch. I can afford to skip a meal. So I spent three hours, until closing time, looking at the exhibits. I don't know if the museum is way bigger than it was when I was there years ago, or if I just missed ninety percent of the displays. (I suspect the former; the building I thought was the museum is now a Welcome Center.) All the exhibits are on the spacious second floor. Large rooms are devoted to this history of glass around the world -- Africa, China, Japan, India -- but the bulk of the exhibits focus on European and American glass, because that's where most of it is done. 

garish, klutzy and pretentious

 Much of the museum's contemporary art glass shows the unfortunate influence of Dale Chihuly; I swear I don't know why people seem to like his stuff so much. I suspect it has more to do with herd mentality than any real appreciation for beauty in art. It's the same with most modern painting and orchestral music. It appeals, perhaps, to practitioners who see challenges in the creation, but it leaves us ordinary folk cold. It's not pretty. It's not representative. It's garish and klutzy and pretentious. 

Nocturne 5

 But then there are other new pieces that are beautiful, graceful, magnificent. Of these, the ones I particularly like were a piece called Eve by Lino Tagliapietra, who is modestly (and accurately) described as "the greatest glassblower alive today"; the piece may have been there when I visited before, but I don't recall it. And there was a black and white chandelier at the entry to the exhibition space, but unfortunately I didn't find a card giving the name of the artist or the work. And the most impressive new work was Nocturne 5 by Karen Lamont, a stunning piece of glass sculpture. My photographs don't do it justice at all.

 By the time the museum closed I was as hungry as I've been in a long time, so I consulted Google Maps and found a Chinese restaurant not far away. When I pulled up, my instincts said I should go somewhere else, but I was hungry enough that I followed through, and got perhaps the worst pork fried rice I've ever had. At least it was filling, and I shall never have to go back there again. While I was there I made a reservation at a hotel for the night, and went there to write up this post. I also watched the last half hour of the US v New Zealand men's soccer match, an unimpressive draw, and a little bit of the presidential candidates' debate, an even less impressive performance.

*I would be willing to accept napolitano as a style, with the not-so-thin irregular crust such as one gets at Dough Pizzeria in San Antonio, one of the few restaurants in the United States that makes pizza by hand in the style of Naples; but there really aren't enough such places to make it matter whether napolitano is a style or not.

The Not Dayton Trip, Part Six: New York City

  This is the sixth post in a series; you really should read them in order. 

Here's a link to Part One; and here's a link to all the pictures from this trip

 The rain on Saturday afternoon really started to pour down just as soon as I finished writing up Part Five of this blog post. That was about half past four in the afternoon, and the pharmacy closed at six. I checked my weather app and it was predicting a break in the rain before 5PM, so I waited until then; and sure enough, the rain pretty much stopped by about five, and I was able to make the 15-minute drive north to Chappaqua in relatively dry weather; and without too much traffic. I got there and got my pills -- I did not see either Bill or Hillary Clinton, though I did witness a sort of Gathering of the Clans in the drug store's parking lot. There were a surprising number of people wandering around there on foot, and the guy in the car in front of me seemed to know them all. 

 When Steve got back from whatever he'd been doing, we decided just to go down to the Village* for dinner. The train station in Valhalla has been converted to a restaurant. (Trains still stop here, but all the ticketing functions are now done by machine, so the station building is surplus to requirements.) The new restaurant, called Valhalla Crossing, occupies the entire old station building, plus a rail car added for the purpose. I forget what Steve had; I ordered the shrimp po-boy, which is served "on a wedge." This, it turns out, is not a slice of lettuce, but the local word for a hoagie roll. It was just okay; the shrimp weren't very plentiful and were prepared in some unusual way that made them look like they were fried until burnt, but actually were just in some kind of dark batter. They had a good texture but no memorable flavour. There were maybe half a dozen of these oddly-dark medium shrimp on the "wedge", with lettuce and the other proper accoutrements of a well-dressed po-boy. I had it with a kölsch, which was the best thing on the table. The service was excellent, and the ambience was good. I think Steve picked up the check -- we seem to have been taking turns, completely unplanned -- so I don't recall if the prices were right. I'll assume they are.

 Sunday was gorgeous: cool, with clear blue sky. We went for breakfast to the City Limits Diner in White Plains, getting there just as it opened at 8. This time it was Steve who went for the lox and bagel with cream cheese and all the trimmings -- red onion, capers, olives, I don't know what else -- while I went simple with just a bagel with cream cheese, and coffee. The coffee there was excellent, the best we'd found to that point, and the service was outstanding. We had a relaxing breakfast, and I was surprised to learn that we'd spent an hour and a half there. Once we were done, we drove to Port Chester to pick up Steve's girlfriend Dorothy, who wanted to go with us into the city.

 The only thing I had on my list of things to do in NYC was to go across the Brooklyn Bridge. I think that in all the times I've been to New York, I had never even seen the old bridge, and I wanted to get some of those famous shots of the Manhattan skyline that you see on TV all the time. It took us almost an hour to drive to the bridge access on the Manhattan side, and then we crossed it in the car and found a place to park not too far from the pedestrian access on the Brooklyn side.  

 The number of people walking and biking on the bridge late on a Sunday morning is amazing, and they're almost all young, like 20- and 30-somethings. I had heard that Brooklyn is currently a big draw for the post-college crowd, and it certainly appeared to be so from this, my one time in the area. I think, though, that it may be a victim of its own success. The living spaces we saw in the area immediately around the bridge are surely out of reach for the vast majority of young people, but until the upscale market is completely saturated I don't expect they'll be building more affordable housing in any place where you can see even the tallest tower of Manhattan or the slightest hint of the East River.

 Anyway: we spent at least an hour out on the bridge. We only walked to about the halfway point, just far enough that we could get views of Manhattan free of bridge cables. The weather was gorgeous, and the crowd was tolerable. Even though you're on the upper deck of a very busy artery, you hardly notice the traffic down below; which, by the time we left (after a light lunch in a small park there), was bumper-to-bumper heading into Manhattan. We drove over to Williamsburg, which is another neighbourhood that I'd heard was sort of up-and-coming; and I suppose it is, but mostly it's remarkable for the number of Hasidic Jews that live and work there. I've never seen so many people wearing black, or so many men with wide-brimmed hats. And, of course, with the sideburn-curls that are the most immediately identifiable affectation of that population.

the Vessel

 From there, Dorothy -- who is even more of an urban aficionado than me -- suggested we go see something called the Vessel, near the newly-redeveloping Hudson Yards. The Yards used to be a train-storage facility for the railroads, but it's being phased out, and there's a clump of new skyscrapers already rising there, even as the area becomes the Disneyland of the City. The architectural motif seems to be glass and steel with non-standard angles plugged in at random to set the buildings there a little apart from the other tall towers of Manhattan. Apparently the miles of distance between that clump of skyscrapers and all the other clumps of skyscrapers isn't enough to differentiate it.

 So the Vessel is ... what can I call it? A climbable sculpture? A tourist attraction? At the moment it's closed -- has been for years -- while the people responsible for it install clear barriers to keep people from using it as a launching pad for suicides. In the brief time it was open to the public, it quickly became the go-to spot for people who wanted to end it all in the most unpleasant and public fashion possible. (The possibility of that happening seems never to occur to the designers of these projects, despite the long history of Falling to One's Death as a means of shuffling off the mortal coil.) 

 That evening, back in Westchester, we dropped Dorothy back at her place, then just cruised around the area. Steve has lived in Westchester essentially his entire life, so every place is a memory for him. For me, who has been here only a handful of times for a few days or a couple of weeks at a stretch, the memories are fewer and farther between, and less clear. Still, I enjoyed just staring out the window of the car while Steve recounted some person or event associated with a place we passed, and every now and then I could say, Oh, I remember such-and-such happened here, or there. We passed the place where Steve and I had dinner once, and he ordered satay, which I had never tried before. The restaurant's gone, apparently, but the memory remains. 

 Our own choice for dinner Sunday night was the Nautilus Diner, in keeping with our accidental theme for the visit of eating in places that feature American food. Steve got a pulled-pork sandwich, which came with an overload of french fries, while I chose the Texas Nachos.

 There wasn't anything particulary Texan about the nachos, but I guess the name suggests southwestern cuisine to people here. In the present case, I'll accept it on behalf of my home state as a great compliment, as the nachos I got were very good, and there were a lot of them (because things are bigger in Texas, I suppose). The menu mentioned chili as an ingredient, so I was expecting, worst-case scenario, Doritos with canned chili with beans on them. The chips are not Doritos, but some kind of large rounds with good corn flavour and not too much salt. There's a lot of jack and colby cheese, some black beans, some pickled jalapeño slices, and lots and lots of pulled pork on top. The nacho plate is piled high, and they're delicious; it's served with sides of good-quality chunky salsa, sour cream, and guacamole. I only managed to eat about two-thirds of the portion served me, and today (Monday) it's my lunch, and still delicious.

 After writing that, I took myself out to Kensico Dam Plaza again to walk; after all that walking yesterday I expected to ache in my joints, but I feel fine, and I want to try and build on that, in the hope of getting myself down to a tolerable weight and condition. I remembered that there are various walking routes laid out at the plaza. I picked the route that's half a mile long, and made two circuits, plus going slowly around the 9/11 Memorial (called, I learned, "The Rising") and looking at the names of Westchester's dead. No one could doubt that this country is a melting pot (or maybe a stew) when they read those names: Albanian, Arabic, Chinese, English, Irish, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Polish, Scottish, Spanish, and some with roots I don't recognize. For all our faults as a society, that mix of nations is something to be cherished, now threatened by people who prefer to hate and fear others.

 Lots of dogs out, too, setting the good example.

N.B. I wrote that last bit before I found out that Haitian immigrants are eating the dogs in Springfield, Ohio. My point was that there were lots of things going on at Kensico Dam Plaza. But I wish I knew how to embed a meme of the Cheeto making the dog-eating claim during the presidential debate.

* It occurred to me that this reference to "the Village" might confuse people. I don't mean "Greenwich Village," which is commonly known simply as "the Village"; I'm referring to the one street of shops along Highway 29 (Columbus Avenue) across from the train station that is the business district of the Hamlet of Valhalla. It also is known simply as "the Village," but much less widely.

The Not Dayton Trip, Part Five: Hershey, Pennsylvania to Valhalla, New York

 This is the fifth post in a series; you really should read them in order. 

Here's a link to Part One; and here's a link to all the pictures from this trip

 I was parked on the street in front of my hotel in Hershey, Pennsylvania, overnight, and when I started the car to leave Friday morning, the "Engine Coolant" warning light came on. I figured that it was because I was facing downhill, but as the engine was still cool I figured I'd go ahead and check the reservoir. Glad I did: it was almost completely empty! This has never happened before. But ever since the sensor started malfunctioning I've carried the coolant mix in the trunk, so I was able to refill the reservoir. The warning light never came back on after that. (I just checked the reservoir again -- noon Saturday -- and it was down slightly, so I definitely have a leak now.)

 I had breakfast at a local chain restaurant called Funke's, a few miles up the road in the next town: eggs benedict and coffee, all pretty good. The one server was a little overstretched but made up for any delay with a level of cheeriness that I have never expressed. At the next table, an 8-top, were two old guys sitting side by side and keeping an eye on the entrance, apparently waiting for the rest of their party. I thought of them as the Welcoming Committee, as they seemed to know almost everyone who came in. Eventually one more old guy joined them, but by the time I left there were still only three men at that table. 

 The route to Valhalla took me through Allentown. There's a car museum there that I plan to go to on the return trip, but it wasn't open when I passed through. I did, though, stop at a Chase Bank ATM to replenish my cash supply; it was only a few miles out of the way. Someone had left a comment on Google Maps saying that it was "scary" in that area of town, but I don't know why. It's downtown, but there are nice-looking apartments in the area, some small shops, and a convenience store (or ice-house). Maybe the other people were there at night, when it probably has a different vibe.

 It only took a few hours to cover the distance to Valhalla, where Steve lives. He's buying a condo outside Cleveland and planning to move around the end of the year, so I'll probably never be back in Valhalla again. (I was thinking the last time I was here was about five years ago, but I checked my photo albums and find that it was 2013, when I was coming back from Canada. How time flies.) 

photo by SteveStrummer

 The highway coming here is, at one point, part of the New York State Throughway; it used to cross the Hudson on the Tappan Zee Bridge, an impressive looking cantilever structure opened in 1955, but a few years ago they had to tear it down and replace it. The replacement, called the Mario Cuomo Bridge, is a sad ugly modern cable-stayed thing. The proportions are all wrong, the angles of the towers are off. It's designed to last long enough that people will forget the inappropriate behaviour that forced its namesake out of office.

 Steve got home soon after I arrived, and after picking up sandwiches from the deli at the bottom of the street, we spent the afternoon swapping family histories. As part of his preparations for relocating, he's going through all his old family photo albums and culling many duplicate pictures, and those of people and places he can't identify. I rescued a few photos, mainly of his family members that I knew slightly. After a few hours of that, we went off to meet up with Steve's Friday Bar Crowd at a place in Armonk called The Beehive. The group consisted of the survivors of a group of friends that have been going there for upteen decades on Friday evenings. It sounds to me like about half the membership has died, but those who remain are a fairly lively crowd: it includes a contractor, a realtor, a fireman (Steve) and one person, the one seated farthest from me, whose background I didn't ascertain. It was a very Noo Yawk Suburban crowd, with the edges sanded off all the accents. 

 We had gone there just to have drinks with Steve's friends, but ended up staying for supper at the bar. I just had a grilled cheese with bacon, served with a baked potato, while Steven had mussels marinara. Both were really too much food.

Kensico Reservoir at sunset

 The rest of the evening was passed at Steve's house, with the TV tuned to PBS while we ignored it and resumed swapping stories.

 Saturday was supposed to be rainy, but the morning was dry enough that we went out to breakfast at a place called the Townhouse Diner. I ordered lox and bagel with cream cheese, and coffee. The food was very good -- lots and lots of lox, and I could only use about half the cream cheese they served with it. The coffee, though, bordered on the execrable. I needed two packets of sweetener and a dose of salt to make it drinkable. I will not be returning to that place. 

 Steve had the Irish Breakfast plate, which included eggs, breakfast sausage, potatoes, and something called Irish bacon (which turned out to be, basically, ham) and "black and white pudding." Neither of us knew what that was, and honestly I think it's the reason he decided to order the dish. Turns out it's yet another kind of sausage; four sliced portions, two black, two much lighter in colour (hence the "white"). They both had some kind of seasoning in them that made them pretty deplorable to me. The scent of them, whatever it was, stuck in my nose all morning. Another reason not to go back to that diner.

Kensico Dam Plaza

 Following breakfast, we drove up to the Kensico Dam. I've passed it I don't know how many times in my life, but this was the first time I got out of the car. First we went to the top, which is just behind the village shops, and walked across. On one side, of course, is the reservoir, which is part of the water supply for New York City; the other side is a park-like plaza. It's very popular with the locals. On a pleasant day like today, they were out in force, playing with kids and dogs in the lawns, walking the measured-distance routes around the plaza, and generally just taking the air. In winter, they fill the concrete basins with a foot or two of water and have ice-skating. There are fountains on either side, but they were dry right now, and a 9/11 memorial off to one side to commemorate the many Westchester residents who died in that attack. 

spotted lantern fly

 There are also a lot of lantern flies on top of the dam. (I don't know why they're only up there and not in the plaza below.) I saw one walking briskly along the top of the dam and got my camera out to take a picture, when Steve started saying very excitedly, "Kill it! Kill it!" and he started slapping at it with his shoe. My shoe was much more accessible, so I took a swing at it, but they're quick little things. It got away.

 So, according to Steve, lantern flies, which are so named for the bright colours underneath their outer wings, are an invasive species from down south, the only natural predator of which is a type of parachuting spider that doesn't live up north ... yet. So there's a concerted effort to kill lantern flies before the predators show up and make life in the Big City even worse. Wikipedia, though, says the species is from East Asia -- ain't that typical of a Yankee, to blame the South? -- and the predator is a wasp. Not sure that's any better than spiders. (I did see what looked like a yellow jacket eating a dead lantern fly, so there is hope.)

 By the time we left the dam I was experiencing about a 55% kill rate. 

 Now it's Saturday afternoon. Steve had to go on a fire call, which turned out to be for some woman who called the police to come scare her son straight, but when you call for emergency services from a car on one of the Parkways, all the emergency services show up. Then he had some errands to run, so I've been here alone for a while; long enough to write this post, shave, take a shower, call in a prescription to the drugstore in Chappaqua, deal with gmail's security protocols (which I find so frustrating at times that I'm seriously considering changing to Duck Duck Go's email service), walk down to the sandwich shop at the bottom of the street for lunch (because I couldn't identify anything edible in Steve's fridge). Now that I'm about done I'm going to drive up to Chappaqua and pick up my prescription.

 The rain has just started.

The Not Dayton Trip, Part Four: Beckley, West Virginia to Hershey, Pennsylvania

 This is the fourth post in a series; you really should read them in order. 

Here's a link to Part One; and here's a link to all the pictures from this trip

 When I went outside this morning it was cold. I went back in and put on long sleeves, though I still am wearing shorts. It's not that cold.

 I started off the morning with a brief exploration of Beckley. I lived there forty years ago, but I've so completely forgotten the place that I couldn't recall the name of the street where I lived. I drove through downtown, but absolutely nothing looked familiar. So after filling up the tank I headed out.

 The cold didn't really matter, because it was to be a day on the freeway. The sun was just up and I was headed due east, so I was blinded for the first half hour or so, until I got into the fog that I always expect in the hollows of West Virginia. I wasn't disappointed.

 The car has been going through a rotating series of electrical issues. (1) The little motor that drives the radio antenna up and down stopped working last year; I think it's the mechanical connection, because I can hear the motor turning but nothing happens. It's not worth worrying about. (2) I hit a hard pothole in New Mexico last year, and ever since then I sometimes get a warning light and the messages "cruise control not available" and "check rear lights." I've checked the rear lights and found no issue, and I generally don't need cruise control. Today, when I wanted it, it worked; yesterday it didn't. And (3) I get a red warning light and the message "Engine coolant low." I started getting that a couple of years ago and the reservoir is always full. I did some on-line research and learned that the sensor for coolant level is defectively designed. I had it replaced last year and it's been fine until this trip. This morning the warning light came on every time I went down a steep hill, and went off when I went up hill. Plus the temperature gauge didn't move, so I'm sure it's just the defective sensor. Once I got to the flatlands it stopped coming on. The repair is still in warranty so maybe I'll have it replaced again when I get home.

 I made four unsuccessful attempts to get breakfast this morning. First I pulled off the freeway at Lewisburg, West Virginia, "the coolest town in the USA" according to somebody. The traffic into town was so bad it was backed up onto the freeway exit ramp and the main highway inbound, so I said the Hell with it and got back on the freeway. It looked to be a long wait to get into the town proper. Next I took an exit where there was supposedly a Waffle House, which is good enough for me. It wasn't there. A few miles farther on I took an exit where there was supposed to be an IHOP. It, too, was nowhere in sight. You can't trust those blue highway amenity signs. I took another exit where there were supposed to be restaurants, but the only one actually there was a McDonalds, which is too far down the list of tolerable options, so I just got coffee at a convenience store and made do. (There was a sign advertising what looked like a Mom-&-Pop diner at one exit, but I missed the exit because of trucks in the right lane.) I just cruised along, listening to my audiobook, and skipped breakfast. I may have skipped lunch, too, because I can't remember stopping except at a TransAmerica after crossing into Pennsylvania, where I took a nap. 

 After a couple of scares when I think I actually fell asleep at the wheel, I now make it a point to pull over whenever I feel fatigued, stop the car and count to 300 with my eyes closed. If I get straight through it takes me about five minutes. I don't think I've ever gotten straight through. Today it took me almost 40 minutes, so I must have napped most of that time. Fortunately the weather was excellent and I could put the windows down. After that I was bright-eyed and bushy-tailed and good to go for the rest of the day. 

 I got to my first destination, the National Civil War Museum in Harrisburg, at 3pm, which gave me two hours to go through it. That wasn't long enough; I ended up skipping through the last 3 or 4 galleries. At the same time, the overall experience was pretty frustrating because of the noise. Not the noise of the visitors -- there were very few; the noise was coming from the exhibits. Every gallery featured too-loud audio tracks and videos that made it impossible to concentrate on the signboards. Often there were more than one audio track to be heard. 

 Here's an example: I was standing at the bottom of the stairs reading about the first battle in which Union cavalry proved as good as Confederate cavalry. As I read, I could hear (1) the sound of infantry firing by rank, from a television monitor right behind me; orders being shouted, then click, click, boom, click, click, boom; (2) a description of a field hospital, where amputations were being performed, from an exhibit to my right across the room; (3) the sound track of a recreation of an infantry charge, with all the sounds of battle, coming from a loudspeaker on the stairs to my right; and (4) the sound of soldiers singing at night in their camp, from an exhibit at the top of the stairs. I don't remember any of the particulars about the signboard I was trying to read. 

 This experience was repeated throughout the museum. I know there are technologies -- I've seen them at other museums -- that will localize the sounds of exhibits; at the very least, they could use motion-activated devices and turn the volume down some. The distraction was maddening.

 And while I'm bitching about the visit, they could record the audio using people who don't have distracting speech impediments. In one area (just before the singing soldiers) it sound like Virginia's version of Elmer Fudd, somberly intoning that "Wichmond could bweathe again." I'm sorry, but after about seven minutes of this guy descibing various events of the war, it just became laughable.

 And there were the usual museum complaints: duplication of exhibits, specifically having to do with the development of signal flags, first used by the Union in the Civil War; misspellings; and incorrect grammar: they refer to "less men" instead of "fewer men," and they used the word "sunk" when they should have used "sank." You kind of expect educated people to recognize these things and do them right. 

 I suppose it's to be expected that the battle of Gettysburg, which is just down the road from Harrisburg, gets its own full-gallery exhibit, while the equally important capture of Vicksburg, which occurred at the same time, got one signboard and one photo mounted on a wall. This is called chauvinism, I think.

 And finally, after reading several signboards describing various battles, one wonders that the war lasted the full four years, because each Union victory "left no doubt that the Confederacy would be defeated." Well, there must have been some doubt, because they fought on for another year or more. What we have here is a failure of imagination on the part of the signboard writers.

 Like I said, two hours wasn't long enough.

 My next stop was going to be a car museum in Hershey, that RoadTrippers said was open until 9pm. So I picked a good restaurant in Harrisburg, close to a Chase Bank ATM, and went into town for that. At the ATM (which is located next to the county jail) there were three women withdrawing money, over and over. When they finally finished I pulled up and found that the ATM was no longer available; they had drained it of cash. I assume they were getting together bail for somebody. So I went to the restaurant I'd picked out on line, & found there was nowhere remotely close to park. (Also I didn't want to walk very far in that neighbourhood.)  

 I located a nearby place to pull over to get directions to my next destination, the car museum in Hershey ... and learned that it closes at 5pm, not 9. So I just asked for directions to Hershey, which is only like 10 miles away, and figured I'd do what is becoming customary on this trip: go to dinner at a random restaurant, and make a hotel reservation while there. I found a Bob Evans restaurant in Hummelstown and made a reservation for a nice little mom-&-pop motel called the Simmons in Hershey. Very pleasant, not too expensive (they advertise "private bathrooms"!), right on the main drag of this quiet little town which, by the way, no longer smells like chocolate. The lady at the desk says they closed down the big yellow factory in the middle of town, so it only occasionally smells like chocolate. Another disappointment. 

 

The Not-Dayton Trip, Part Three: Campbellsville, Kentucky to Beckley, West Virginia

 This is the third post in a series; you really should read them in order. 

Here's a link to Part One; and here's a link to all the pictures from this trip

  So at some point this morning I stopped and made a list on my phone of things to mention in this blog post, because I often find that by the time I sit down to write in the evenings I can't remember all the interesting little things I've thought of while driving during the day. When I made this list it was late morning; I didn't add anything to the list after that, so I expect this post will be heavy on the early stuff and pretty light on the after-lunch stuff. Not that it matters, really: when you get right down to it, there's not a lot of interesting stuff for anyone besides me on this trip (so far). 

 I got out of my hotel pretty early this morning. The place where I stayed (Campbellsville, Kentucky, I  think it was) is just over the line in the Eastern Time Zone, so my internal clock is a little off. I went to bed last night at about 11pm EDT, even though I wasn't really tired, and got up at 6AM EDT because my alarm went off. I shut it off and tried to go back to sleep, but couldn't, so by 7AM EDT I was on the road. The sun wasn't even up at that hour. (The disadvantage of being in the western edge of a time zone.) Traffic was light, though, and by the time I got to the next town it was well up.

 That town was Lebanon, Kentucky, only about 30 miles along, but as I was passing through the downtown area I saw exactly the sort of mom-and-pop cafe I like to patronize, so I stopped for breakfast: the Main Street Diner. Parking was very easy: mine was the only car in the on-street parking area at that time of day. And I was the only patron in the restaurant at 7:40 on a Wednesday morning. I hope the place makes it; it was a pretty pleasant place, with good food and reasonable prices, and excellent coffee. They've only been open since January, and everybody knows how hard it is to make a go of a restaurant. But we need more of this kind, and fewer of the fast-food chain restaurants. (I was going to leave a glowing review on Google Maps, but for once I've found a place before they did; it's not listed yet. I added it, but will probably not remember to post a review when they add it a few days from now.)

Secretariat in the traffic circle, Lexington

 

 This morning was spent cruising through the Bluegrass Country of central Kentucky: geologically, a karst subsurface where the overlying layers of softer rock have eroded away. I stopped in the outskirts of Lexington to get a picture of the statue of Secretariat -- objectively the greatest race horse of the past 100 years, at least -- and there was this exhibit in the scenic overlook there that described the geology of the area. I've probably gotten it wrong but who gives a damn?

  All the way from Lebanon to Lexington I was seeing these dark rock walls lining the road, and I mean for miles and miles and miles, on both sides and in the neutral grounds. They're called double-rock walls because the bottom parts, about three feet tall, are limestone blocks set horizontally without mortar, while the tops are irregular limestone set at an angle. I didn't get a picture of it myself, but there are lots of them on line, including the one at the link above. (Though my experience has been that, a year from now, that link will be broken.) I suspect these walls were slave-built, but then New England is full of fancy stone walls that go on for miles, too, and they didn't use slaves (most of them). Anyway, they're very pretty, these walls, and are a big reason that the entire Bluegrass area was made a historical district.

 Another thing I noticed was that in that part of Kentucky, which is big-time Horse Country, a lot of the bluegrass paddocks, huge areas of grass, were actually mown. That surprised me, to see the lines left by tractor mowers. You'd think they'd just let the horses run out there and keep it cropped. 

 So by the end of the day of very pleasant top-down driving I'd finished touring all the remaining counties of Kentucky -- 41 states down, only 9 to go! -- and slipped into West Virginia. I expected to have to set my clocks back a hundred years but it seems the government has been busy since I moved away, resolutely dragging the state into the 20th Century. I'm spending tonight in Beckley, where I used to live, and other than the roads still being in the same place, everything I've seen so far is new since I left. I didn't expect to feel at all at home here, and I have not been disappointed.