Lance and Mary in Rhinebeck!

WE MADE IT!

After an eventful nine months, announcing the change in regime, finishing the season, selling the house, moving 3000 miles, settling into our new condo in Rhinebeck, NY, ten miles from our daughter, son-in-law and two year old granddaughter Freddie.

And though we miss our friends already, we are very happy in The Hudson Valley. Rhinebeck is a delightful town – we’re just inside Rhinebeck Village, with its shops, Victorian homes and 30 mph. It’s gorgeous country, farm country. We’re in a lovely two bedroom townhouse condo in a community known as The Woods, built on a wooded section of the old Astor Estate.

View from Condo

We’re about five miles from the Hudson River. We cross it every time we go shopping in Kingston. We’re within walking distance of both the Village and the Dutchess County Fairgrounds. The Village is home to The Beekman, the oldest continually working inn in the country, where Washington, Hamilton and even Burr shared a beer. The fairgrounds has already hosted the Dutchess County Fair, where I watched 4H kids show off their Holsteins, and we await the NY Sheep and Wool Fair this coming weekend.

For centuries, the Hudson River was the major highway running through the state, and the valley was a beehive of activity during the Revolution. It’s also the inspiration for writers like Washington Irving the The Hudson Valley painters. The farms are beautiful. A ride along the 55 mph, two lane highways with no traffic takes you past fields of corn and apple orchards, “U Pickem”, horses and cattle.

Rhinecliff Landing, 3 miles away

The Hudson Valley's been a respite for New York City refugees for many years, with the Livingstons, Astors, Vanderbilts and Roosevelts building estates along the river and running their rail lines alongside. Then in the pandemic a new wave of young people, like ours, found remote work and hour and a half from Brooklyn offered a much more varied experience to raise their families.

And we’ve fallen right in. Mary is now scouting Episcopal churches, with Church of the Messiah – with Tiffany window – being her current favorite. And I have been able to focus on my new passion – The Parson’s Nose Radio Theater, a logical extension of our Readers’ Theater and our 50 pandemic podcasts. Our son-in-law, Dave Bennett, just happens to be a fabulous sound designer who’s built a studio in their new home where we can polish classics like Hans Andersen’s “The Emperor’s New Clothes” and add fun graphics to enhance the experience.

Click me!

We’ve just re-recorded Kenneth Grahame’s “Wind in the Willows – Chapter One – The Riverbankers” and it will be released, hopefully, this week. Mary is about to record American feminist playwright’s delightful “If I Were a Man”, written in 1914. And I am tossing in a Trumpian parody of Dr. Seuss our friend Ken Springsteen called to my attention, in time for the election.

So we’re busy. True, we’re Californians, the only ones walking about the campus ponds and willows with our umbrellas.

And we know The Snows are coming. But I have 5 years in Minnesota in my background. Mary knew the Boston winters very well. It’s great fun to need a sweater and boots to go for a coffee. The Fall Foliage is everything they said it would be.

To be in it, and near our family, our East Coast roots, with children and sisters and cousins within reach, at this time in our lives, convinces us we made the right choice for us. We shall continue to create our Radio Theater, available to all, free of charge, and to cheer for the live theater, in good hands. We now see our work as a way of bringing Parson's Nose and these great works to a global audience.

So please go to our new website, www.parsonsnoseradiotheater.org and see what we’re up to. And if you’re in the Pasadena area, get your tickets and head over to “Nightmare on Poe Street”!

Lance

Emma Freddie Bennett and Pop.