I’m generally unaffected by celebrity deaths, but when you listen to a person candidly talk and express their opinions for years, you get to know them in a similar way that you get to know a friend in real life. When I heard Tony had died, I almost felt like a friend died.
He was a thoughtful, creative person. He created, he had opinions, he was extremely worldly and he had a ton of insight. When I see that in a person–especially at 63–it gives me hope that I can try to be that way too, even as I age. It’s not a tragedy when a person like that dies, because those people have awesome lives.
I saw this show on TLC called “I Cloned My Pet”. It’s one of those things that’s so lowbrow that it goes full circle and becomes an interesting analysis of human emotion. The program follows three people who were madly in love with their pets; so in love that when the pets died, they couldn’t let go. They are driven to cloning as a way of bringing them back–and invest an unbelievable amount of time and money in the process.
There’s something kind of pure about A) loving a pet so much it becomes your whole world and B) refusing to let go. The show raises a lot of questions without clear answers: Questions about love (“Can you love something too much”), mortality (“What is death?”), being (“Are the cloned pets really the same?”) and ethics (“Is there something wrong about cloning a pet?”). Although most of TLC’s audience probably watches the program as some kind of grotesque freak show, I think it’s actually pretty cool.
Lately, I’m exhausted. Physically and mentally. I’m not just extremely busy, but extremely busy doing psychologically demanding stuff. I get so tired sometimes that I feel like I’m walking around in a daze.
A daze. When things aren’t so clear anymore. I think I notice how interesting everyday things are more when I’m exhausted. Things like how cool it is to have so many books in libraries and how interesting arrangements of dirt on walls can be. I want to experiment in abstract photography to highlight things from this different perspective (like the shots in this post).
Being tired a lot isn’t necessarily a bad thing, especially since I expend most of my energy doing stuff I don’t mind. I think that’s probably more than most people can say. Since it seems like my schedule is only getting busier over the next several weeks, I might as well celebrate my complete and utter exhaustion.
Fallout from the Euro-Crisis will lead to a major event that will have a significant negative impact on the global economy.
Mitt Romney will win the Republican primary by at least 10%. Obama will win reelection by a hair. *
Enough people will default on student loans simultaneously for it to be considered a trend. It will be in the news and have a slight negative impact on the economy.
Netflix will have a big comeback.
A new hit will revitalize Justin Beiber in 2012. He’ll remain as popular as he is today.
The iPhone will lose significant ground to Android. By 2013, there will be limited media coverage of and only short lines for the newest iPhone.
Windows 8 will be released and it will be a Vista-like disaster.
There will be growing social unrest in Europe; in particular there will be animosity between the member states of the Eurozone.
There will be overt military action against Iran.
iTunes will decline while Bandcamp gains traction.
Threatening Internet legislation in Congress today (e.g. SOPA) will be struck down before it becomes law. US law will not change the structure of the Internet in any major way in 2012.
Cell phone technology will plateau the same way desktop computer technology has. A cutting edge smartphone bought today will still be slightly old, but not completely obsolete in 2013 (or even 2014).*
The “Occupy” movement will splinter into two groups: A moderate Democratic group (like a liberal Tea Party) and a more extreme group.
There will be no economic recovery in the United States in 2012.
I will still be actively maintaining this blog.
* This could be wishful thinking on my part
Reflections of Bare Treetops on a Pond
My New Year’s Resolution: Be more optimistic.
According to Martin Seligman’s work, being optimistic helps us endure setbacks better. By not being incapacitated by bad events (which are pretty common in anyone’s life), optimists tend to accomplish more in the long run. Since there’s a lot I’d like to accomplish in 2012, I’d better be optimistic.
In today’s world of mass production, consumerism and marketing, it’s easy for the humanity to get sucked out of art. What ought to be a soulful communication from one person to another can become a commodity–something that’s value is derived from how much it can sell rather than the substance of its content. I think of the dozens of identical Christmas music CDs sitting next to dozens of identical TVs at Walmart. The commoditization of music isn’t the only thing removing the human element from it; the people who write music are also separated from the listeners by storefronts, marketers and publicists.
The large distance between musicians and listeners isn’t something that people typically notice because that’s the way it’s always been. The only reason I’ve been noticing it lately is because of one my favorite musicians: Redding Hunter (who often plays as Peter and the Wolf or Traffique). He is doing so much to try to eliminate that distance that a lot of other music seems painfully impersonal by comparison.
My copy of The Ivori Palms may look like a bootleg, but the label is actually just hand drawn, supposedly by Hunter himself. It’s a rare thing when musicians even design the covers of their own albums; To have something hand drawn is really special. It gives you a sense of connection with the person who created it and the feeling that your copy is unique and unlike anyone else’s.
Hand-making CDs isn’t the only thing that Hunter does to make his work personal; he also writes and, at least, plays a major role in producing his own music. His stuff is really his stuff.
But all these personal touches wouldn’t be worth much if Hunter wasn’t also an extraordinarily talented musician. The stuff he comes up with is extremely creative and beautiful; and has a heavy emphasis on catchy, elegant melodies and harmonies. I’m not the only one who recognizes this guy’s talent: He has been featured on NPR, filmed by Vincent Moon of La Blogtheque (alongside musical heavyweights like Sufjan Stevens, Andrew Bird, Beirut, St. Vincent, Bon Iver and Arcade Fire) and recorded by Daytrotter.
As you might hear in “Better Days”, Redding Hunter’s songs are very human. Analog recording equipment adds hisses and earthy tones. Hunter intentionally leaves in small imperfections that are digitally removed from most mainstream recordings. Much like the album cover, it’s these little imperfections that help make the songs seem authentic and real.
Hunter’s work makes me think about how perfect most music is; and by extension, other things as well. I think of things like T-Mobile ads in malls–with the perfect model in the perfect pink dress against a flawless white background, the minimalist primary red Target logo and even the Apple iPad. Almost everything is mass produced, so it tends to be completely free of visual flaws. Don’t get me wrong, I’m a fan of mass production because I like technology and inexpensive things; but a byproduct of it is a world that can, at times, seem a uncannily perfect and impersonal.
Peter and the Wolf’s New Album: Easy Mountain
I’ve been thinking about Redding Hunter latey because he just released a new album: Easy Mountain. Although it fits in well with Peter and the Wolf’s library of songs, this album is a bit more intricate and focused than previous works. The songs on the album share similar underlying themes and instrumentation, including eerie female vocals he frequently goes back and forth with and some really nice electronic sounds.
“Hazy Lions” is an absolutely beautiful song (notice the ornateness, female vocals and electronics I was talking about). It has a gorgeous lyrical hook that’s characteristic of this album:
“And every morning we transcend the past,
and each evening is like the last,
and in dreams we escape the fields,
It’s so easy out here”
Themes of freedom, escape and loving the present permeate the album. It’s a very insightful work, for lack of a better term. There’s a lot to it, to listen to and consider; if you take the time to think about what’s being said you’ll get a lot out of it.
A reoccurring theme I find particularly interesting is the concept of ”easiness”–being worry free, not having much to do and being able to relax. Americans typically don’t place a high value on having “easy” lives. We are taught to value hard work, challenging ourselves and competition; the opposite of easy. However, listening to this album, and the way it celebrates easiness, makes me wish I could inherent a small house on a beach in Brazil and do nothing for the rest of my life.
Part of the reason this album is so persuasive is Hunter’s remarkable ability to paint landscapes with his songs. Often in this album you’ll find yourself walking along side of rivers with friends, listening to the waves of the ocean by moonlight, staring in awe through clearings on hilltops and the gazing into the bright lights of the city at dusk.
For example, in “Lightfalls” you’re called to imagine a huge tree, swaying in the breeze on a hazy night–a person silhouetted by the moon. And suddenly there’s thought of the joy of being alive in the land that set your “heart ablaze”. It’s just a beautiful landscape within a song.
Stuff like this makes me thankful to be alive. In a world of mass production and manufactured tastes, passionate people are still out there making things. It’s just they don’t have the budget to have posters in malls, TV ads or kiosks in Walmart. Maybe my New Year’s resolution will be to be more proactive in finding stuff like this: Real, authentic, passionate stuff.
During the last few years–and the last few months in particular–I’ve been kind of stressed out. I wasn’t really sure what I was doing with my life; not knowing and trying to find out was psychologically taxing, to put it gently.
But over the last few weeks everything seems to have fallen into place. I like how I’m positioned. I’m basically satisfied with the direction things appear to be headed. For the first time in a long time I can just go with the flow for a while. I don’t have to worry about making any life altering decisions. I can just relax.
The Highway by Peter and the Wolf. I would like to feel as mellow as this song.
But relaxing isn’t easy. There’s a lot of anxiety left over from months gone by; and I still feel like I’m a little too tightly wound. And while being up-tight is unpleasant–there’s more at stake than just my own personal sense of well being: The more wired I am, the less patient I am with other people and less pleasant I am to interact with. Being internally off balance affects how I behave in a way that can lead to negative outcomes.
So I need to relax. This is the plan: I’m going to make a conscious effort not to let some small things bother me, to appreciate other small things, to be more optimistic, to get good sleep and to focus on doing things I enjoy. Those are things that I can really do.
Here are some specific enjoyable things I’ll be doing for the next several weeks:
I’ve finally started to read Steven Pinker’s new book, The Better Angels of Our Nature. As a fan of Steve, I’ve been meaning to get around to reading this book since it came out in October, but it’s a long, dense, heavy piece of writing. I just haven’t had enough spare psychic stamina to tackle a book like that until now.
I’m finally upgrading my phone. I’ve had my HTC Eris since late ’09, and while it has served me well, it’s getting to the point where the software (which is upgraded regularly) is so much more advanced than the hardware it’s almost too slow to answer calls. I am upgrading to the latest and greatest (and as of yet unreleased) Android phone, the Samsung Galaxy Nexus.
I’m dying to get out and get some new shots of winter landscapes. There’s no snow in the forecast, but I’m considering experimenting with the mist that forms over icy bodies of water in the morning.
Finally, I want to keep updating this blog a few times a month with reviews, pictures, songs or even just pointless posts like this one. It keeps the mind active.
Sometimes the smallest details can have the biggest impact. Things like the tone in someone’s voice when they say hello, a single dead pixel on a cellphone, a hint of cinnamon in hot chocolate or a smile that lasts a moment longer than expected. Even if something seems insignificant at first, it can become huge when you take a moment to pay attention to it. When you take a moment to notice the smell of the air after rain, the sound of cicadas in the summer-night or birds perched in the treetops, something you never noticed before can become awing.
I’ve been thinking about small details a lot lately. I think it’s because over the last few months I’ve gotten into chamber music: traditional Western music preformed by a small group of musicians in intimate settings.
With chamber music, paying attention to the details pays off. I’ve watched the video above many times over the past few days and every time I see it I get something new out of it. You can focus your attention on the harmonies, on the sound of any one of the instruments or even on the way the musicians’ bodies move with the music and get something different out of it. For example, when you learn Bella Hristova is playing a violin that is over 350 years old (made by the famous Nicolò Amati), you pay special attention to tone and character of the instrument. You can just watch the video and imagine what things that violin must have been through in its life. It’s all in the details.
Performing chamber music has been described as a social experience–like a conversation between musicians. Knowing this, as a layman, I find myself paying special attention to how the musicians interact with each other. From glances and subtle smiles you can see the surface of the discussion beneath the music.
Both the above videos are produced by the Chamber Music Society–an organization that brings together some of the most skilled musicians around to play both well known and unusual works. These are actually clips from live broadcasts CMS periodically streams online. It’s such a special thing to be able to watch these performances live for free in the comfort of your own home. I’m glad there are organizations like CMS that do stuff like that.
I decided to wake up at 5:30 and rush off to Cove Island Park to catch the sunrise this morning. Waking up that early on a weekend was a little excruciating and it was so cold that I couldn’t feel my hands or nose by the time I left the park at 7… but it was worth it:
I was surprised to find that I wasn’t the only person wandering the park early in the cold. One man sat and fed seagulls and squirrels as the sun came up, right at the overlook where I was planning to take pictures. At first I was a little miffed the guy was in my spot; then I realized that he–a lone man in the cold, quietly enjoying a sunrise on a park bench with seagulls–was actually kind of a romantic thing to capture.
Besides for him, there were a few other people at the park before sunrise: Joggers, workers and people walking their dogs. Somehow it warms my heart to know there are people who do that.
The sky reflecting off the water shortly before the sun came up.
I’ve always felt like there was something unearthly about Sufjan Stevens. He expressions, his voice, the words he chooses to use, his strange storybook like back-story—it’s all so bizarre and fanciful. Almost inhuman. I keep on thinking: it must be some kind of act. How can a guy like that be real?
Beyond This Place is a documentary that tells the story of Cloud Rock La Belle, hippie father of filmmaker Kaleo La Belle. When Kaleo was very young his mom separated from Cloud Rock, gave up the hippie lifestyle and took him with her. In part because Cloud Rock didn’t make an effort to see his son and in part because Kaleo’s mom didn’t go out of her way to encourage him to be involved with their lives, Kaleo didn’t really know his father growing up. The film is anchored around a reunion of Cloud Rock (who appears to be in his 60s) and Kaleo (now in his 30s, with children of his own) for a biking trip near Mount St. Helens in Washington.
Not much really happens on the biking trip; the film instead captivates by exploring complex ideas about alternative lifestyles, freedom, drugs and family. Although Kaleo, the narrator, has a clear opinions, he rarely speaks. Instead, ideas are communicated through interviews with people with distinct perspectives on the matter—allowing the viewers to reach their own conclusions.
One theme that the movie addresses, mostly through interviewing Cloud Rock, is the point of life. Cloud Rock is extremely articulate and, partially on account of prolonged heavy psychedelic drug use, he has a very unique take on life. You can see evidence of this in how he lives his life: Surviving off of money he gets from renting out a house he inherited; living in a small shack in the backyard, where he spends all his time enjoying nature, cycling, practicing Tai Chi and doing drugs.
Cloud Rock believes that most people live in a fog: Going with the flow, conforming, never fully being aware of the beauty around them, never fully living. Cloud Rock lives for the present, he lives for enjoyment and he lives for himself. Ever since he became a hippie over 40 years ago, he has avoided almost all responsibilities. By avoiding them, he believes he maximizes his own personal freedom.
Listening to Cloud Rock at first, there is an allure to his life philosophy. I definitely agree that a lot of people live in autopilot and never really stop to critically analyze—or even appreciate the world around them. The idea that greed and materialism are at the root of inequality, injustice and war also resonates with me. However, as Kaleo illustrates as the film progresses, Cloud Rock’s way of taking these ideas to heart—his life of radical freedom and “spirituality”—has some issues.
Kaleo’s first challenge to Cloud Rock’s world view is this: Are he and the hippies truly enlightened or are they just living their life in a drug induced fantasy? Usually, when given a chance to speak, Cloud Rock and the hippies have something that sounds pretty insightful to say. They are good at coming up with soundbites.
However, Kaleo doesn’t just hand the hippies a microphone: He questions them. He probes them to see if they can come up with internally consistent arguments to defend what they believe. After a short amount of questioning, it became apparent to me (although I recognize this is subjective), that these are people who have hobbled their ability to reason. They are mellow, they have a lot of ideas, and in many ways are more open minded than your average American—but the price of prolonged psychedelic drug use is clear. Magical, irrational ideas are deeply embedded in their worldviews. Long silences and awkward pauses revealed slow wits. Their tendency to contradict themselves when challenged shows that a lot of them have lost their ability to construct lucid arguments. They pay a price for their bliss; drugs had warped their minds in really profound ways.
Hippies in a community like the one Kaleo was born in
The ultimate example of this is Kaleo’s younger half-brother (also a child of Cloud Rock) Starbuck. During filming, Starbuck was homeless, wondering the streets of Maui in Hawaii. He dresses in robes and speaks in bizarre non sequiturs. When Starbuck was boy, Cloud Rock took him out to the desert and introduced him to psychedelics. It is unclear whether Starbuck was profoundly damaged by being introduced to psychedelics at such a young age, but considering how his condition would seem to be a more extreme version of the condition of the other older hippies, I believe that it’s likely.
Cloud Rock has disdain for Starbuck—seeing him as annoyingly self-righteous and irrational. Through this irony, Kaleo makes a really strong argument that Cloud Rock is blind to his own orientation to the world. Both Cloud Rock and Starbuck see themselves as enlightened renegades, whose drug use brought them closer to truth and reality; However, if their perspectives of themselves held true, you would expect the enlightened Cloud Rock to recognize Starbuck as such as well. Instead, it would seem more likely that they are both living in similar psychedelic fantasies, where they both have warped conceptions of themselves and the world around them.
Kaleo's mother
Kaleo’s second major challenge to Cloud Rock’s worldview is also exemplified by Starbuck: When a person tries to free themselves of responsibilities, other people get hurt.
Hippie culture, as portrayed by Beyond This Place, centers around the individual—an individual’s pleasure, freedom, personal growth and enjoyment of the moment. Kaleo, through pointed questions and interviews with children of hippies, argues that all that self-centeredness ends up causing children trauma. Examples include Kaleo himself who grew up without a father, his mom who had to raise him alone, the homeless Starbuck and a women who grew up in foster care after consuming a bowl of sugar cubes laced with LSD as a little girl.
Despite Kaleo’s challenges to hippie culture, part of me still admires it. As I mentioned earlier, I think there is a lot to be said for the premises the culture is built on: The idea of not living life in autopilot, appreciating things, rejecting materialism and recognizing that societal norms aren’t always justified. What I took away from Beyond This Place is that the psychedelic drugs that helped create the culture also ended up being what crippled it. Sustained use of psychedelic drugs will incapacitate a person. The thing to do, I think, is to make an effort to appreciate the world, to be open-minded and to question society, but to do those things without the use of psychedelic drugs. It may not be as fun or easy, but it’s sustainable.
The BAM Experience
The view from my seats before the movie started.
There were only two musicians in the house: Sufjan Stevens and Raymond Raposa. They sat on stage, off to one side, beneath the screen the movie was projected on. Raposa played a semi-hollow electric guitar throughout the performance. Sufjan, a skilled multi-instrumentalist, alternated between banjo, electric guitar, acoustic guitar, flute and pump organ. The film opened up with Sufjan’s song In The Devils Territory from Seven Swans. Sadly, that was one of only two really fleshed out songs with lyrics in the movie. The second song was an original composed by Raymond Raposa for the movie, was played to the credits and can be heard here.
In The Devil’s Territory is a beautiful song
For the most part, the music didn’t distract from the movie; it was very subtle. It generally consisted of 15-30 second instrumentals that served to link scenes. There were also songs set to the background of one or two lengthy montages. A few of the instrumentals were actually quite musically interesting, especially a bit with vocal chanting from Stevens and Raposa and a bit with a pump-organ.
After the movie Kaleo La Belle walked on stage and took questions. Unlike Sufjan, Kaleo seemed like a pretty down to earth guy. From Kaleo, we learned that he has not heard from Cloud Rock since they watched the initial screening of the movie together. Also, presently, Starbuck is locked away in a prison in Mexico for being caught without any identification.
The Opera House ceiling
Sufjan and Kaleo were childhood friends, both attending the Detroit Waldorf School growing up. Kaleo is currently working on a documentary about Sufjan Stevens and Marzuki Stevens called Crooked River, which is yet unreleased. Not long ago Kaleo announced that was still on the way. I wonder if these screenings are a prelude to that?
To express my love for Sufjan I figured I’d post a mediocre (but well intentioned!) cover of Chicago. Sure, I make a lot of mistakes (I’ll be busy over the next few days, so I didn’t have that much time to record a perfect version) but that’s what the song is all about !
Halloween is vast. Aesthetically and culturally, there is just a lot to it: from spider-webs to goblins, from rites-of-passages to parties. It provides a backdrop so rich that creative people like Tim Burton have built whole worlds around it. But what makes Halloween really fascinating to me is that it revolves around really primal human feelings that we normally don’t pay much attention to: the stuff of nightmares.
This October, in a effort to better acquaint myself with the culture of Halloween, I made an effort to watch some important scary movies from the past that I’ve missed. Although all these movies are considered classics in certain circles, I didn’t necessarily watch the very best ones: I just chose the movies that were available on Netflix Streaming or playing in the Avon theatre.
I really loved The Fly. It’s my favorite of the films I’ve seen this October. It’s a classic remake of a mediocre 50s movie about a scientist who slowly degenerates into a fly-man. A unique quality of The Fly is that it is a love story as much as it is a horror story.
What makes this movie really great–and scary–is how emotionally real it is. The scientist acts and feels like how I think I would. Watching the movie you imagine yourself in his shoes, slowly losing your humanity. The theme of slow degeneration is also fascinating: There are lots of parallels to disease and aging that can be explored. On top of the great concept, the script is extremely witty and the acting is spot on.
This movie is classic and is referenced commonly in pop culture (for example, the line “Be afraid. Be very afraid.” is a reference to this film). It’s almost worth watching just to know when you are hearing a The Fly reference.
Although I didn’t like The Thing as much as I liked The Fly (it didn’t have the same rich narrative and wit), I still thought it was extremely interesting and successful as a horror movie. It’s about aliens that can shape shift to mimic any person or animal trying to kill off the inhabitants of an isolated research station in Antarctica.
What’s interesting about The Thing is how it plays on feelings of being cut off from the outside world and trust. Since the movie takes place in Antarctica, with the characters completely out of contact with the outside world, the movie is permeated with a sense of isolation and suffocating helplessness. Issues of trust and paranoia also figure prominently into the character of the film since the shape shifting aliens can mimic any person: Anyone can be an evil alien in disguise. These elements come together to make a really unique, novel and unusually effective scary movie.
The Hills Have Eyes is a lot less cerebral than The Fly and The Thing. I had the pleasure of seeing it at the Avon Theatre as part of a Wes Craven double feature, projected from old, grudgy 35 millimeter film.
The Hills Have Eyes tells the story of a family stuck in a broken down camper in the desert. They are hunted by local savages that occupy the land.
There isn’t too much in the way of thematic meat to chew on in The Hills Have Eyes. Like in most of Wes Craven’s movies, the quality stems from well edited, suspenseful scenes and grotesque acts. Not too much is novel, or really stands out about it — so I might hesitate to recommend this one.
Believe it or not, 1996 was fifteen years ago: History, in my book.
Scream, a relatively modern Wes Craven movie, is actually a comedy movie mixed with a horror movie. Its humor stems from the fact that it is aware that it is a horror movie. Characters in the movie consciously explore horror tropes and stereotypes.
What I love about Scream is that it is a fun movie. All it wants to do is entertain. So while there are no meaningful lessons to be learned from its exploration of horror as a genre, I walked away from the movie delighted. And that’s pretty cool. I’d definitely recommend it.
Child’s Play is a corny horror movie from the late 80s about a doll named Chucky that kills people. As silly as the premise is, I liked it. If you can manage to really suspend your disbelief, it’s actually kind of magical.
That’s right: I’m not ashamed to admit I kind of liked Chucky.
Last House on the Left was the first grudgy, 35mm film I got to see at the Avon as part of their Wes Craven double feature a few days ago. It’s a fairly grizzly movie about two innocent young girls who are brutally murdered by a gang of sociopaths and the revenge one of the girl’s parents extracts on the gang after they find out.
Unlike Wes Craven’s other movies listed above, there is actually some interesting stuff going on thematically in this one. It shows good people (the girls parents) doing pretty horrific things, implying the question: Would any person be capable of horrible acts under the right circumstances? Also interesting are the relationships between the members of the gang. A group of sociopaths who have no empathy for strangers seem to care about each other… neat.
Unfortunately, Last House on the Left has some serious issues too. It’s extremely low-budget, so the acting, the editing, the cinematography and (especially) the soundtrack are pretty awful. The script isn’t especially witty; not too far off from something you’d expect out of Uwe Boll. So, even though it’s cool to see people get chopped up and it has an interesting concept, it’s hard to ignore how bad everything else is. While Child’s Play requires a viewer to concentrate on suspending their disbelief, Last House on the Left requires viewers to suspend their judgement.
About an hour into the Connecticut countryside from Stamford, amid windy back roads and farm fields, stands the greatest ice cream place I have ever been to. It’s called Ferris Acres Creamery and it’s in Newtown, CT.
It’s very popular with Newtown locals, attracting long lines on warm summer days. Despite it’s popularity, it’s still a local thing–not a tourist attraction–and it maintains the atmosphere of an old-fashioned community hang out. There are lots of families and smiling faces.
More importantly, the ice cream served is the freshest, richest ice cream I have ever had. And not only is the ice cream good, but they have lots of interesting flavors, some of which you can only get there. When I went employees in the back were in the process of creating a new flavor for fall. I wonder if they give the experiments that don’t come out quite right to the cat?
Part of the reason the ice cream tastes so great is that it’s fresh. Ferris Acres is a functional dairy farm, so the ice cream you eat comes from the cows you see in the surrounding fields.
Sometimes the cows are close by the ice cream stand, so you can walk up and say “Hi!”
If you live in the Greater New York area you should definitely take a ride and check it out! Just remember that it closes during the winter season, so check the calendar on their website before you go.
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