I’m back in London and, as a result, I’m finally back to my blog. I’m not certain why I can’t seem to keep it up when I am traveling. I guess I just am not in my usual place and I get distracted. And, after all, it is called nickinshoreditch, so maybe I shouldn’t post when I’m not here. My next step is to get back to painting….

It was nice being back in America for a visit, if for no other reason than we got to experience some true, hot summer weather. It’s not so much that going out into a 98 degree day is fun, it is just something that we were never going to do in London (which is a good thing since nothing is air-conditioned, especially our flat).

Liberty: We had a lovely “Rinearson Sisters’ Weekend” at our place in Liberty, NY, which was made extra special by the fact that all of our nieces, nephews and children showed up (for the first time in years), along with my sister Norah. I even got to play a small amount of golf (with Hannah and James). The next weekend, we had our English friends Phil Saunders and Phillip Saunders (both lawyers for the City of London) visit us the second weekend (Phil with Jenny Bakshi). Phillip, who it turns out is a “mad keen fisherman”, hired a guide in Roscoe and went trout fishing in the famous Beaverkill and they all went to the Fly fishing Museum and the Fishing Festival that just happened to be scheduled that weekend. Even more important, we go to spend that weekend with our old friend, Paul Weeks, who drove himself down from Bangor. He has been through a lot in the past couple of years between his illness and injuries and the untimely death of his wife Gig and we really have not been able to be there as much as we would have liked. It was wonderful to be able to spend time with him.

A few things I noticed being in Montclair: In Shoreditch, we feel like we are in a neighborhood completely populated by people between 22 and 32, with very few children. In Montclair, that young adult demographic seems to be utterly missing. Perhaps because I feel a bit less connected to the town after being gone for a year, I also found myself thinking more like a city person as I drove around. We love Montclair and our friends there and look forward to our return, but it is now easier to envision a move into New York City at some point.

Adventures in Bureaucracy: Judie and I flew back to America on the very date that her employment at Bryan Cave officially ended. That meant that Judie’s U.K. visa expired at the same time, raising the issue of how we were going to get back to London. K&L Gates, her new firm, has been very helpful, hiring a boutique immigration firm to help us, and it finally all worked out. We made it infinitely more complicated by having passports due to expire in seven month and, in Judie’s case, completely filled with stamps, etc, leaving no place to put the new visa. So I got to spend the first couple days of this trip figuring out a way to quickly renew our passports with Judie out of town for the week. At the same time, I had to detail every foreign trip each of us took in the last ten years, along with countless other stuff for our visa. (Why they need information about each of my deceased parents is a mystery.) They also wanted my marriage license to prove that I was married to Judie, which meant a trip to Norwalk, Connecticut. Thanks to all of that and spending lots of money of expedited service, we finally got our visas in our new passports on the Friday before we were set to leave. They are only good for six months (because Judie is in a new job), so they expire in early February. This is a bit problematic since our house is rented through March 15th (and the idea of moving late January is not appealing anyway). I’d like to figure out a way to stay until late March. I assume it is possible.

Woodstock Nation Remembered: We decided to go to Bethel Woods Art Center while we were up in the Catskills. It is about 25 minutes from our place and is the site of the original Woodstock concert. There is a big stage and lawn seating right where the original stage had been at Max Yazgur’s farm. We went on a tour of the accompanying Woodstock museum, led by a guy who had been at the festival and appears to have enjoyed the chemical entertainment as well as the music. He was a bit of a comical space cadet, but ultimately really had nothing much to impart. The exhibit itself was a bit repetitive, but kind of interesting. If you lived through the 60s and saw the movie, there were no great revelations, but the sections dealing with how the town dealt with it and how Woodstock ended up in Bethel gave another view of things that made it worthwhile. And the music videos were great.

R.I.P. Mets: I got to go to a Mets doubleheader while I was in the States. It was brutally hot, but fortunately, Bob Benno and I were sitting in the shade. The Mets got good pitching, were unable to score much and split the twin bill, which pretty much sums up their season. The injuries to Wright (it may not be career ending, but he’ll never be the same player), Duda and Harvey for most of the season were huge blows. D’Arnaud, typically, got injured and then did nothing since coming back other than allow everyone to steal bases at will. Conforto and Wilmer did not develop. Cespedes carried them for a while and then he got hurt. It is just not happening for them this year. Their pitching is still impressive and they’ll have it for a few more years, so they ought to be contenders next year when I get back to being a full-time fan.

Trump: It may be that we were in America for the pivotal moments of the election. When we arrived, Trump had gotten his convention bounce and was roughly tied with Hillary. Then came the Democratic convention, which was incredibly well produced and seemed very effective to me, despite the sour grapes of some Bernie supporters. There were great speeches every night, with the Obamas reminding us how much we will miss them. So Hillary got her big post-convention bounce and Trump compounded it with his attack on the Kahns and on babies and on everything but apple pie. The election seemed to turn in those two weeks. It may be that it will turn back, but it may also be that the election narrative has been set and that Trump is stuck as being perceived as the utterly unprepared crazy person that he is. The other thing that I believe is happening is that most people really don’t pay that much attention to the election until about now (unlike me, for instance) and only just started to take a close look at Trump in the last few weeks and were horrified by what they saw. I hope this isn’t just wishful thinking on my part.