A very peopled and winey time

It has been a very social time.  First of all, we went off to Ithaca where we both read in a festival to launch an anthology of tribute poems to Adrienne Rich, edited by Katharyn Machan.  She organized the festival and danced with two of her belly dancing students before the readings.Since we were to get there by 4:30, we drove to Geneva – on the next finger lake, Seneca—and spent the night there at a hotel at the head of the lake.  The weather was gorgeous that day, but the next day, it poured till supper time.  We went to three wineries on Seneca and six on Cayuga.  A few years ago, when Ira and I taught a mini residency at Ithaca College, we drove up Cayuga Lake and stopped at wineries randomly. One, Hosmer was excellent, a couple were okay and a couple simply produced undrinkable plonk.This time I did my homework first and we didn’t stop at any wineries that were not highly rated by Food and Wine or Wine Spectator and had not won any meaningful awards.  There are lots of more or less local awards that mean diddleshit so you have to look at them carefully.  But my research paid off and every winery was interesting this time. We brought back a mixed case and a half with us of mostly very nice dry whites and reds.We had been asked by dear friends who used to live in Geneva to bring back a six pack of Ithaca wheat apricot beer.  They said to get it at Wegmans.  We had heard people talk about Wegmans before, but one supermarket is pretty much like another, we thought.  No.  Wegmans is the size of Truro and it took an afternoon hike to get to the beer department where they sell every kind of domestic of imported beer you ever or never heard of.We got them their beer.After the preliminaries that started at six, at eight 90% of the audience arrived to hear Ira read from his new book You’re Married to Her and me to read poetry.  The place was full – many new chairs put out – and it was a great audience who asked for an encore. We got up at 4:45 to drive home. The cats were furious with us, in spite of being well taken care of in our absence.This weekend we went to a wedding of two friends, Dan and Paul.  The wedding itself was on the bluffs overlooking Wellfleet Bay at a famous house all the locals call the elephant house because of its shape.  It was a moving ceremony. Then we went to their home for a great party.Next day Sunday at sunset, we celebrated Rosh Hashonah with other friends, with a brief ceremony of appropriate blessings and poetry and then had a great meal.  It was a good way to start the day.  If the rain holds off, we’ll go to the Bay this afternoon when Ira gets back from his radio program and do tashlich. We had a long conversation Rosh Hashonah morning about what we should try to change about ourselves.