Too Tired to Blog

Well, it's been a loooong day! Started out at 8:00am at a breakfast meeting for the Ramapo-Catskill Library Association where I was the keynote speaker. The location was a restaurant on the top of a hill in Bloomingburg in Sullivan county. Looking out into the valley one could see all the way to New Paltz in Ulster. What a sight with the early sun shining down on autumn trees -- oranges, reds, greens, yellows, purples, blues, all blending one into the other. In the middle, a farmhouse, barn and silo surrounded by golf course green and manicured fields -- or so it seemed from the distance. Of course, being somewhere a half hour from home by eight, means up at six to throw goat and chicken feed where it must go, sprinkle some turtle food in the large one's tank, walk the dog, check the cats' bowls and shower and fall into some semi-respectable clothes.

I gave my talk on the history of movie making in the Neversink Valley, and I guess it went well because many people came up afterwards and I've already been booked to present it at the Monticello Library on January 14th. Me, performing in the Catskills, makes me feel like Jerry Lewis at Brown's all those years. I have to remember not to shout "HEYYYYYYY LAAAAAADEEEEEE" in the middle of my prepared notes.

Then off to work at the museum, where it was one thing after another (isn't it always), home for a quick bite and check on the animals, including the bees, and back to work for one of our benefit concerts....a little folk, a little blues, a little Neil Young, a good time was had by all. Miro Ludvik, who organizes these always puts on a good show (Find him on myspace).

Now home, too exhausted to move, as I didn't get enough sleep thanks to Macavity the monster of depravity, who snuck out just as I was about to go to bed last night and hid under the forsythias every time I tried to get him back in -- for an hour! I still can't decide if I should cut down the shrubs or make cat sausages this weekend!!!!!!!

Well, I know this isn't fascinating, but my nephew complains I don't blog often enough, so this one's for him -- I need to now check every pollster's website in the country to see what's happening in the electoral colleges since I last looked yesterday. Here's to Joe the plumber, who is really named Samuel, isn't a licensed polumber, and why should he care if Obama will rais ehis taxes? We learned he doesn't pay his taxes anyway!!!!!!!!

MOVIES MOVIES MOVIES

So while the rest of the world is worried about Sarah palin and Wall Street Bailouts, I've had my head in boxes and boxes of reels of film --- it must be miles of plastic!! Today I picked up over 350 films, almost all silents, as the beginnnings of the film library of the Neversink Valley Area Museum Institute for Early Film Studies. there are some amazing classics, fun comedies, from DW Griffith in 1908 to the early 1930's. I can't wait to set up some projectors and look at these. The non-period pictures are great insights to styles and fashions of the day, all of them them reflect the morals of the period they were filmed in. This is an amazing treasure trove and I feel priviledged to be able to be their keeper for a while. I now must look for opportunities to show them, and more importantly, raise the money for the proper temperature and humidity controlling equipment and monitors. I know how I'm spending the grey days of winter this year!