Husband and I just spent two days driving around central New York as part of our staycation. First we visited the mother of one of Husband’s childhood friends, an elderly woman who has been living in Binghamton for over a decade. Once a year Husband makes a pilgrimage to visit her and talk about times gone by while eating her award-winning chocolate chip cookies. Usually I hang back at home because she’s a big cat lover and I’m desperately allergic. But sadly for the cats, although not for me, the little darlings all ran out of lives and went to cough up a big hairball in the sky, so I accompanied Husband to see his buddy’s mom.
After getting totally depressed listening to her go on about all the funeral arrangements she pre-made for herself and how she’s glad she won’t be around to witness the children bicker over her will, we stuffed some cookies in our pockets and headed out to explore. Our friends JJ and Leon had suggested the towns along Historic Route 20 as worth visiting, so we set the GPS for Skaneateles to see what we could see. Pronounced ‘skinny atlas’, Skaneateles is a delightful village on Lake Skaneateles, one of central New York’s picturesque Finger Lakes. The name means ‘skinny lake’ in Iroquois, which makes sense because they’re not called The Finger Lakes for nothing. Bustling with tourist activity on a beautiful summer day, it was nonetheless a charming town where we found a sweet bed and breakfast and shopped at the local artisans’ cooperative. Actually, I shopped. Husband sat outside on an artistic looking bench reading his book.
Walking around the quaint streets filled with buildings dating back to the 1700’s, I couldn’t help but think about the area’s native residents, the Onandaga tribe, one of the original members of the Iroquois League of Nations. History traces their occupation in the area back to 1100 A.D., well before we set our ugly feet on their land and proceeded to eradicate them and anyone who looked like them. Like the other Native American groups all over the United States, the Onandaga signed treaties in good faith that became worthless, and like their fellow tribes across the country are still struggling to maintain fragments of their culture and tribal cohesiveness amid the breathtaking beauty of their former homeland. As I plunked down my credit card to buy my friend betty a holiday gift from the artisans’ gallery, I didn’t have to look around to know there wasn’t an Iroquois in sight. To our country’s eternal and conveniently forgotten shame.
Also on my mind this trip was the much-discussed Ground Zero mosque, proposed for construction and awaiting final okay. Everyone from the Mayor to the President to the JDL to the Catholic Church has weighed in on this issue, and there is little that hasn’t been said. It was a topic of discussion at our dinner with JJ and Leon, the mourners at a condolence call we made earlier in the week, Husband’s friend’s mother in Binghamton, our fellow bed and breakfast guests, and almost anyone else upon hearing we’re from the city. Politics fusing with raw emotion and a general epidemic of fear makes for strange bedfellows. Regardless of my personal opinion, I know we will find a way to make our peace with the final decision, even if it makes us feel more like the Iroquois than the settlers.
Daughter’s Featured Fotos celebrate the Girls of Summer
the cupcakes
girls rock
show over
Sami’s bridges