Little Cemetary

Meet "The Blauvelts"!

We live among the walking and the dead here in the Hudson Valley region, because the first Dutch settlers who bought the island of Manhattan for some wampum many moons ago to create the city of "New Amsterdam", also took the first opportunity they had to buy vast tracts of land upstate. In fact, Native Americans used the wetlands here on Pearl River's hilltop for a well, not just farming. Why would anyone want land that swamps out every year? Because it was easier to irrigate their European crops through flooding, that's why.

And that's exactly what many European settlers did: replicate their vast landowning system overseas to control property through agriculture and land resources. It's what's passed for Rockland County nobility over the years: that same sense of ownership and entitlement from controlling the land that marked the oppressive regimes of the corrupt European monarchies many of our ancestors rebelled against. How revolutionary of them to do so! Sigh....that's the rich white man.

And John P. Post! The British have not yet arrived.

And so it was that on one Monday morning in yoga, a nice German grandma had to let me know in conversation that one of her children is married to one of "The Blauvelt's", because as a first generation American, she's on much less solid ground than I am as a native, and she wanted me to know about her very important family connections. 

I name-dropped some rich German publishing credentials and European towns from my working past that she hadn't known first-hand as a German native, because she followed her sister over here as a teen to our now re-named "New of York", in honor of our country's next wave of wealthy landowners: the Brits.

Here lies a Mary Van W...something Dutch, and a Perry: Dutch and British!

Except for one very big and powerful distinction: I'm the publisher she follows, and I'm in yoga class with her instead of humping the grind that is the tri-state commute, a trial deemed by weaker souls than me to be so bad-ass, many outsiders write t.v. shows and movies about it. 

Enjoy your time here on our land of freedom; a land we fought for dearly and created, as it ever evolves and changes with the times, because that's what I call "The Royal Treatment".

Aha! A "Bogert" name-changer: much easier to trade with the Brits.

Here it sits on the sub-divivded remnants of their large land parcels.

Time, erosion, and neglect have removed many of their names anyway.

Goodbye, Ye Olde Blauvelts! Maybe someday one of their own will take care of this burial site, but not today. I'm sure they're hard at work at one of their very important desk jobs in the city.

Old Houses

National headquarters for a fraternity.

You know by now that I love really old houses, especially the kind 
of atmospheric ones from the historic revolutionary region called 
"The Hudson Valley", and so it remains still to this day. 

I have a deep, abiding love for architecture that began when I grew up near some of the oldest houses in America, here in the tri-state area. They look good in every season, too. 

Small shed, big house.

Large and in charge, for a house.

The corner turret, and other domicile delights.

Stone walls, and other revolutionary structures.

Beautiful portico and side balconies with rocking chairs.

Peaked roofs and wide open porches made for afternoon breezes.

Big old trees, planted when the house was new.

 

Free

For Madiba.

Farming Since 1712

Revolutionary times, and the seasonal harvest.

I missed the seasons out west, where the semi-arid lands jump from summer to winter, briskly stepping over the seasons of spring and fall. There's a verdant, fertile lushness to our river valley, and it's no surprise that early settlers took here well, after a few very dramatic fits and starts. Imagine Ireland and England with some of its' original woods and forests still intact. Our forefathers knew this well, and stayed on. Family farming is one of the roughest, hardest types of work on the planet, and yet, like our scrappy, hard fighting ancestors, some of them have endured the test of time. Go see for yourself.

http://www.orchardsofconcklin.com/ 

http://www.orchardsofconcklin.com/2010/04/orchards-of-concklin.html?m=1