Tag: travelblog

Alpha and Omega

Jeffe Kennedy / / Blog

I’m back from Oklahoma City today and, as always after one of my work trips, playing catch up.

It can be shocking, transitioning between my various lives. At home, it’s quiet. I like it that way. Sometimes I don’t interact with anyone else for hours on end. This level of concentration is meditative for me. I feel most at peace when I can do this.

I know. I know. My mother despairs of me.

On the work trip, I uproot myself from my lovely home, plunge into the semi-hysterical swirl of airports, luggage and rental cars. I meet up with my colleagues and work in a room where seven people are asking me questions at the same time. Or they say, “okay, after you answer those three people, I get you next.”

It’s good to be needed. (And paid!) But I get overwhelmed. I try not to get cranky.

(But – guys? – just because I’m smaller and female does NOT mean you get to overlap my airplane seat!)

Fortunately, I love the people I work with. The last evening, we all went out to Bricktown, in the older renovated part of downtown Oklahoma City. The heat had relented and we enjoyed a gorgeous evening on the rooftop patio.

I posted the other day that being in OKC reminds me of the past, of my family’s origins, of how cities rise and decline. This work project, too, has been like that. I worked on it for over ten years, sometimes at a crazy level of intensity. Then it got axed and we went cold turkey. Now, after an 18-month hiatus, it’s running again. But changed.

It seems that things rarely ever end. They just stop for a while and then start again in a new way, with a slightly different face.

There’s comfort in that.

Before I Put on My Make-Up

Jeffe Kennedy / / Blog

Still in Oklahoma City for the day job, in a hotel I’m really not thrilled with. What I get for letting someone else pick it!

As I put on my make-up this morning, I noticed that the nasty lights over the mirror made my skin look green. At least, that’s the excuse I’m using to explain the puffy bags under my eyes. But, suddenly, I had this memory of those make-up mirrors with the lights on either side, that you could stand up on your vanity table. They had something like four settings: indoor, outdoor, evening and office. You could set the lighting so you could craft your color scheme to look best in that particular lighting.

Office was decidedly green.

This says so many things about how the world has changed. Designing a cosmetic scheme for different events in the day is no longer a priority for most women. Not all offices are studies in green fluorescent lighting. (For verisimilitude, Mad Men really should have used it. But who wants to see people in that light?) And who really has a vanity table anymore?

Being in Oklahoma City turns my mind to the past. My grandparents met here, back in the 30s. My grandfather managed the Criterion Movie Palace, which is now gone. They left the high-rolling scene here in a scandal, exiled to the backwater of Denver. Now this city is a declining ruin in many places. One of my colleagues asked why it declined and Denver boomed.

I don’t know.

But this city has beautiful places, too. With lots of renovation going on. What goes around, comes around.

One day I’ll send the city all those photos of the Criterion. I keep thinking someone would love to see them.

Row, Row, Row Your Boat

admin / / Blog

Over the weekend I got to attend a Regatta.

Don’t you love how that rolls off the tongue?

Regatta.

It was just that styling, too.
Laurie’s daughter, Catherine was rowing with her schools’ team. She’s the ripped blonde in the red cap.
Here’s her team rowing out for their race while the boys prep.
Steaming to the finish line. They won handily.
Love the synchronicity.

Almost made me feel athletic, just to watch.

Sweet Life

admin / / Blog

On Saturday, my hosts took me on a hike on the Sweet Trail. Madison is a big fan of hikes, too.
All of this is freshwater estuarian marsh. Teeming with nesting birds of all types.
So lovely. The still water makes for great reflections.
If you look sharp, you can see lots of heron nests here.
The trail leads to the Great Bay. There’s a memorial there. Laurie’s husband, Bob, felt quite contemplative. For those of you keeping notes, this is what I want – a bench and an engraved marker in some beautiful spot.

Forget-Me-Not

admin / / Blog

I’m at my boss, Laurie’s, house this weekend in Durham, New Hampshire. All the flowers are in bloom.
I love the natural rock walls. And every opening looks like a lane into an enchanted forest.
The pond near their house. (Though the huge place in the background is not theirs.)
On the drive here, I wound through rolling hills and small towns. All along were small and ancient cemeteries, edged right up next to what used to be narrow lanes in dense woods.
Forget-me-nots all over their garden.

Always a special blossom.

White River Junction

admin / / Blog

It’s interesting being in New England, in such a different landscape from my home. As soon as I landed in Manchester yesterday evening, I smelled the ocean. Not the sun-warmed southern California surf, but the damp spring brine of the northeast sea coast.

There is SO much water here.

I’m staying in White River Junction, which is at the meeting of the Connecticut and White Rivers. They’re celebrating their 250 year anniversary this year – which seems funny to me after Santa Fe’s 400th. But it seems old to me here. Quiet at night, industrial on the edges, renovating nicely.

I took a walk this evening and saw these neat lofts with lovely glass balconies that overlook the river.
Neat sculpture in the Veteran’s Memorial park along the White River.
Road bridge crossing the river. I love how these staid little New England churches have been repurposed – this one into a Zen studio.
The White River itself.
This is a railroad town from way back and the Welcome Center is in the old depot.

Very pretty weather, but all this damp makes me feel chilled!

Fancy Hill

admin / / Blog


Tonight I’m in Abingdon, Virginia.

You know! Home of the Barter Theater?

No? Well, okay. Well, we were promised this would be the jewel of our work trip. The shops are cute. But the town? I’m not quite getting the buzz.

But, we’re staying at the Victoria & Albert Inn (that’s my room), and I’m sitting by that selfsame fireplace, only lit, while snow falls outside and my mahogany bed awaits. It’s pretty damn wonderful. The website is lacking, but don’t let that dissuade you: the Inn is possibly the best B&B I’ve ever stayed at. Very romantic and cozy.

Too bad David isn’t here…

Overall? I liked the town of Lexington better. Maybe I’m just a college-town kind of gal. But, as we were leaving, we took Route 11 south out of town to connect with the interstate, at the advice of our innkeeper there at the Llewellyn Lodge. I would be remiss if I didn’t note that our two nights there were lovely, comfortable and I slept like a log. And ate breakfast with cardinals. Birds, not priests. They have a gorgeous song, did you know? The birds, that is. Anyway, as we were headed out Route 11, we passed several horse farms and a number of beautiful homes, the oldest and most gorgeous of which had been slapped with a highway sign that said “Fancy Hill.”

And my colleague noted that everything around here falls into two categories, hillbilly or fancy.

I think Val has a point, actually. I like that way of looking at things, that if you’ve gotten your act together, you get to be “fancy.” If not, well, at least you’re wholesome and charming. I think I’ll adopt this as my approach to life now.

Hell, I even feel fancy!

Lexington, Virginia

admin / / Blog


I’ve been working in Lexington, Virginia yesterday and today.

The town is quaint and lovely, with streets way too narrow for the SUV boat the rental car company made us take. It’s sleepy, in a winter-in-the-South kind of way.

We wondered at the quiet. Of course, most people here are still traumatized by the Snowpocalypse that became Snowmaggedon. They’re staying inside. Mounds of snow still frown from the ends of parking lots, warning the complacent. People ask us, did you hear we got a lot of snow?

I finally told one guy, that’s the beauty of you guys living on the East Coast — you can just assume the rest of the country knows your news. For a week, all I heard about was Snowpocalypse.

Then they sheepishly ask if us Westerners laugh at them. I had to say, yes, yes we do. But I added that we also understand that they’re ill-equipped. I guess that makes it a sympathy laugh?

The town is nearly silent, both day and night, but Lexington is home to both Washington and Lee University and Virginia Military Institute, so it seems this little hamlet should be teeming with young people, dashing about, doing their higher ed thing. My colleague and I decided that the VMI kids probably don’t get to dash about doing frivolous things. We finally glimpsed them today: the track teams out, running the sidewalks in earnest muscularity. One trio of young men ran past the snowbanks in shorts, flashing their sculpted thighs. My colleague sardonically commented that some people can have legs like that just by being young, much less by running.

I just enjoyed the scenery. Is that so wrong?

Turns out it’s Washington Break at WLU, which explains their lack of presence in the community. No, no — it totally doesn’t matter that they have their own self-named break. Amusingly, the school is named for both George Washington, who gave the original bequest to the school, and for Robert E. Lee, who was president of it. Revolutionary and Civil wars come together.

I’m wondering when Lee Break is. Fall, right?

Yes, we drove around and read the informative historical signs, since the sun was out and we finished meetings while we could see the town in natural light. We did not go see, despite the urgings of a surprising number of people, the gravesite of Stonewall Jackson’s horse.

But I like to think this funky balcony support is a tribute to that brave steed.

Besides, my favorite time of year is Horse Break!

I’m Just Wild About Harry

admin / / Blog
Santa Fe has been getting the rain. Much like the rest of the Rocky Mountain West, I suppose.

Our company HR director, Mary, lives in El Dorado, just outside of town, and we visited with her and her husband, Richard, last night. (Of course the HR director of our Boston-based company lives in Santa Fe — why do you ask?) They wondered if the late summer monsoons had come early or if this was a different pattern altogether. Funny weather all over.

But the flowers are gorgeous. The desert is in bloom, which is like a dessicated skeleton bursting into full human form. Every flower bed in town looks like an ad for High Country Gardens, which is apt, I suppose, since this is the mother ship. All is flourishing, which does the heart good.

After cocktails on their gorgeous patio, we went to Harry’s Roadhouse, which was a first for me. And it was fabulous. Great setting, beautiful patio out back (which we only gazed at from inside because of the rain). Food was excellent and the least expensive meal we’ve had thus far. I had the blue corn turkey enchiladas as Mary recommended and they were fab. Real lime margaritas, too, with all the tartness you could ask for. They are purportedly also open seven days a week, for breakfast, lunch and dinner, which is really something to maintain.

Here’s the sunset breaking through the rain clouds out at Harry’s. You can almost hear the angel voices.