We had a number of visitors this year, starting in January when two of Eirah’s friends from South Africa came with their two delightful children. Apparently the kids had never seen snow and very much wanted to. We’d had a snowfall before Christmas but it didn’t look likely during their visit. Then all of a sudden it came, snowing during their visit. They were even able to make a small snowman.
Our friends Ken and Doreen Cross moved to Thailand, but before they left they needed somewhere to stay after their house was rented. So they stayed in our house in Briarcliff Manor, while we stayed up at the lake. They also returned for a few weeks in December and stayed there again.
In May some old friends (Alison and Bob Ledbury) from university days came to stay and we did some “touristing” around the Hudson Valley visiting Storm King Art Centre, Lyndhurst, Sunnyside, Chuang Yen Monastery, New Windsor Cantonment, Bannerman’s Island etc.
In May Eirah was able to go to Europe (Switzerland, France, UK) to help out with baby sitting while our younger daughter was travelling on business.
My brother-in-law, Vic came to visit in July and we all drove down to Virginia to meet up with two other brothers and their families, one of whom later came back to stay with us at the lake.
We were also lucky to have three visits from out son-in-law Colin in NY on business and to see his father.
Our final visitor was a bit out of the ordinary: our friends George and Gloria were going on vacation and asked us to look after their King Charles Cavalier spaniel, Charlie. He had a great time with Harley.
The year started off with Ken and Doreen Cross at the Hudson Room in Peekskill and throughout the year we went to a number of concerts and other events. We saw a number of musicals: South Pacific, On the Town, Oklahoma, Show Boat, An American in Paris and the Radio City Spring Special – interesting in that it was the first time I’d been to Radio City despite living in NY for the best part of 30 years.
The old Tompkins Corners Baptist Church re-opened in June as a community cultural centre. In addition to the opening event there were also performances of the David Amran Quintet and a reading of Edgar Allen Poe poetry by our friend, Paul Savior. We also went to a couple of presentations given by the Briarclif Manor, Scarborough Historical Society: “Historic Downtown Ossining” and “Legends and Lore and Facts of Washington Irving’s Legend of Sleepy Hollow”. In July we took visiting brother-in-law, Vic to a performance of the “Arabian Nights” at the Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival at Boscobel, one of the most beautiful locations in the Hudson Valley.
A couple of other highlights included the New York Air Show in August and the Pope’s visit in September (Eirah managed to get two tickets to see him in Central Park where after several hours of waiting on line we did, indeed, see him for all of one minute as he drove by).
No review of 2015 would be complete without mentioning Jami’s birthday party in July. Jami is Eirah’s dance teacher and Eirah offered to host her birthday party at our house. It was quite an event: myself (and one other male friend) and fifteen women!
On a sadder note we lost our niece, Eve suddenly and unexpectedly in July. Our daughters came for the funeral and while it was great to see them again, we would have wished that the circumstances had been different. We also lost our old friend, Dandy in December.
On the photographic front it was a good year. I’m continuing to get out a lot and take pictures.
My camera collection continues to grow, but at a slower pace than before (I’m trying to focus a bit more on using the cameras). During 2015 I picked up a Kodak EK 4 Instant Film Camera; a Voigtlander Vito B; an Exakta Varex IIa with 58mm f2 Biotar and 40mm Meyer Optik Lydith; a Voigtlander Vito CLR; a Voigtlander Vitomatic II; and an Exa with Carl Zeiss 50mm Tessar. I also picked up a few vintage lenses: mostly old Minolta lenses to use with my Sony DSLR. Perhaps the most significant (to me at least) was a Tamron 18-250mm, which has finally given me a “walk around” lens for use with the DSLR.
I’ve continued to maintain this blog, which now averages around 38 posts per month. I’ve no idea if anyone reads it (I don’t check), but it serves its original purpose of making sure that I keep on taking pictures.
The first part of the year was awful: dreary, snowy and very cold. I didn’t feel like going out much and even if I had there are only so many snow pictures I can take. So instead I focussed on one of my long term projects: scanning my old negatives and managed to get a lot done including negatives of: Netherlands, Spain, Kenya, UK, Indonesia, North Wales, Florence, Venice, Rome, Geneva, Thailand, Bermuda, India.
I also managed to complete a couple of photo books. One of them involved scanning old negatives belonging to my fried Paul Savior who wanted to turn them into a photo book to give to his daughters as a Christmas present. I’m pleased to say that we managed to get it done in time. The second book consists of a number of photographs taken with an iphone (the only camera I had with me) of a house and garden we were invited to just after Christmas.
All things considered a pretty good year!