New writing, old church

Today is another delicious writer's marathon, the COTA readings at the Walloon Church in New Paltz. Twenty minute meals of poets and fiction writers and writers of other ilks, boom boom boom, part of a whole art-filled day: dance, installations, sculpture, music. I'm reading at 1:40, one of the eager jets taking off from this literary runway.  Planning on reading Galletas, just because I hardly ever do, and it does that 20 minute thing with room to spare — possibly for a scene from the new book. Always look forward, someone once told me. And keep it neat.

What really gets me going is reading in this old church, on this very very old street, I mean back to the 1680s kind of street. Old French Huguenot and Dutch gravestones tilt and hunker and shrug at each other in the graveyard right outside. New Paltz was founded by the French Huguenots, and Huguenot Street has some kind of honor as the oldest continuously settled neighborhood in the country. That's hundreds and hundreds of years of tricycles, bread, money, old cabbage leaves, cars and horses and worn down boots, winters, falls, rain, heat.

Graveyard, Walloon Church, New Paltz

Ulster county has lots of traces of old Dutch around. The buffet at Eng's Chinese Restaurant in Kingston is called the Smorgasbord, and everyone, including three year old tow headed boys, knows how to say it. The Pine Hill Bakery has Dutch shoes decorating the corners, and one nailed to a tree, higher up than anyone could reach. The old French culture, les Walloons, the protestants — is right here too, but often overlooked. But New Paltz is named for a village in Germany that sheltered the Huguenots. It's not Dutch. The name DuBois, not the Blanche kind but the Louis kind — traces right back to one of the first French families. New Rochelle, down south a good ways, is Huguenot. Staten Island's south shore. History is a 9,000 layer cake, baked during endless arguments, conflicts, migrations — so often about the divine. Divine providence as persecution, as run away and settle, as make a deal with the Esopus and build a hut, build another. Hate to ship to water to shore and logs to stones to arts festivals. My mother hated organized religion, bless her atheist modernist soul. But without it, we wouldn't necessarily be here.

Olive

Town of Olive before the reservoir, showing towns and land now submerged (in blue) and land now owned by New York City (in green), from town of Olive archives.

Yesterday was Olive Day, a yearly fete at Davis Park for the whole giant little village that seems to be the official town of Olive (population 4,579 as of 2000). I was an author guest at the Olive Free Library booth, brought my books and basked in the questions, eyeing the table of vintage cookbooks for later (bought 5). The library ladies are sharp, hospitable, enterprising, and in a book club — and Russian Lover is one of their picks. Another book club, based nearby and held, lordy, at a B&B I've always wanted to escape to, is reading it too. Can't wait to sit with both. Promise me you olive gals won't hold back.

Part of the fare at the library table on Olive day. What you can't see: apples to the left, baked goods to the left of them, books all around.

At Olive Day the sheriff was holding court,  food booths included alligator and chicken (mixed together, I wondered, before or after being dispatched), and there were handcrafts and try-this's. It was 9/11. Kids ran around and got their faces painted. Sheep nosed for treats from their little exhibition paddock. EMTs sat at their HowToBeSafe table —some, no doubt, recalling the day and its aftermath not that many years back. A fellow chortled into a bullhorn about getting down and dirty in the upcoming egg toss. A tiny brown pony in a tiny western saddle got led around with a succession of kids, its head bobbing quickly as it fought the urge to trot.

Not the toolbox at Olive Day, but a green one I loved.

It was festive and somber at the same time, which made it kind of dreamy. I get into a heightened state when doing a reading or appearance, so the whole scene was bright brights and dark darks. There were those odds and ends that enhance the carny, grubby feel so often crusted under the edge of the cake dish, like a cloudy looking woman with ash colored hair who'd laid out a scatter of objects on a tarp on the ground. I picked up a rusty green toolbox (love toolboxes). This one had a sticker on it that had been torn off, leaving a fuzzy scar. I opened the lid and found rust, cobwebs, a dank smell. So the box was uncharmingly wrecked. The woman, the seller, perked up and rose from her lawn chair when I opened the lid — it signified interest. But she wanted a lot for it. Without thinking, in fiction not vintage mode (etiquette out the window), I said, No. That much? Really? Said it too abruptly to temper it. She was offended, and so overreached to justify: The box is a military antique. The green is U.S. military green. They are the only ones allowed to use that green.
Like UPS brown? I played.
No, she said.

None of what she said was true. It was so not true that I somehow wanted to help her save some kind of face. I wondered if she was trying to connect with the vaguely patriotic (not so vague for some) tone of the day by selling military-looking things.

The box was olive colored. I offered, well you've got an Olive green box. That's right for Olive day. She saw no connection there and frowned. It's true, it was a terrible effort. She dropped me for the tweens riffling through her pile of string bracelets, dollars in their hands. I went back to wandering. There is something about being the guest writer that turns me aimless when otherwise I'd be mission-ready, hunting for vintage, trying all the food, shuffling around in jeans and boots.

There were a lot of American flags. There was an art exhibit. There were rows and rows of cherry 1950s cars I couldn't quite get to. There were fresh apples two for fifty, barbecue ladled into giant white buns, a sportsman booth with dozens of pelts strung up along the edge of the tent, many with heads and paws attached, and a murky tank of some kind of fish. There was a timber wolf pelt, which threw me back into my book for about three minutes, sent me scribbling some notes before I headed for the coffee stand.

And two currents ran under the whole thing. One was 9/11, which some people chose to bring up in conversation between hot dogs and pieces of home-baked pie. The other, literally, involved water, the currents of it, running from the Esopus into the giant reservoir that sits like a hole in this part of Ulster County, being snared into tunnels and aqueducts and sent southwards to the city, away from here. In the Olive town offices on the other side of the parking lot, there are framed photos and documents dating back to when much of Olive was first emptied of whole towns and townspeople and then razed to make the reservoir and give NYC fresh water. Thousands were displaced. People tell stories about families watching their homesteads and farms burn to the ground, about a man who jumped out of a hayloft as the barn was torched beneath him, and then ran right back into the barn. It didn't happen that long ago. It happened to grandparents, great grandparents. And if Olive has a bit of an underdog feeling this might partially be why.

Giles general store, pre reservoir days, town of Olive archives. 

Building the reservoir, town of olive archives

I often run along the road over part of the reservoir, a road known around here as the lemon squeeze. It used to be the main way home. But they closed it after 9/11, for security reasons they said, and locals had to drive the long way home and once again felt like the city owned their lives. I run above the waters of the reservoir and the phantoms of hamlets.

Shokan village, under water, town of Olive archives.

To the right, as you head out, there's a long swath of lawn-struck hillside and woods crouched along the base of it, turkeys lacing the edge as they hunt for food. To the left is the reservoir. Lack of rain has exposed bare bars of land in the water. People stand at the edge, looking for foundations exposed. There's talk of a church steeple visible somewhere, but I'm told that's a myth. The city was, mostly, effective. Still, you find this.

Old foundation exposed by low water levels, Ashokan. Taken by K. Barbariantz, 2008.

Back at the library booth the ladies were still energized and people were buying those vintage cookbooks and children's books in bulk, and the donations were coming in, and the raffle tickets were flying out. I bought my vintage cookbooks, two apples, said thank you, headed home.

Fast forward a hundred and something weeks


To be honest, I had this blog for the sake of my book being out, because I wanted it to function as a kind of trumpet section, tootling fanfares for anyone who happened to notice. But since the book came out my life has changed, let's say, immeasurably. And being unable to measure just how amazing those changes have been, I just decided to let the trumpets toot until they got tired, and then fade out gently. And I imagined a little deserted yard filled with trumpets in varying stages of tarnish and decay, and noone to pick them up and point to the sky. But I couldn't maintain that idea. I felt terrible about it.

Meanwhile the changes kept changing and the book kept living and oddly enough, when I least expected it, there was that bleating sound again, the Vivaldi of hope curling all over the place with its little frippery of notes. So I decided what the hey.

Ever since the age of 4 I have been wearing sailor dresses and writing and that is not going to change. At the age of 10 I was given a gold horseshoe with a little bell ringing from it, and I hung it around my neck as I trotted around a ring on palomino morgan whose name I swore I'd never forget. But I can wear the bell again. And will.