Annandale-on-Hudson, New York June 1982

Late in June of 1982 I caught an overnight flight to JFK, and at six the next morning found myself outside the terminal waiting for a shuttle to travel 100 miles up the Hudson River to Rhinebeck. The sky had no discernible color and it felt like it was 90° out with 90% humidity. I wondered how anyone managed to eat in such an oppressive climate. Once arrived in Rhinebeck I had been instructed to find a phonebooth, from which I was to call a cab to take me to Bard College, in Annandale-on-Hudson. This accomplished I was duly installed in a dormitory room in one of several wooden structures perched on pilings on the sides of a ravine. It had a lovely shaded view into the forest's mid-canopy, and was rumored to have originated as some former undergraduate's senior project in architecture.

Installed blogger - June 1982

That afternoon a get-together had been arranged at the home of Leon Botstein, the College President. It was there that I finally met Benjamin Boretz in person. He asked me if I had heard the Clash. I had not (though I had heard of them). I probably met some of my fellow music students as well, many of whom became good friends and collaborators - Jill Borner, Bruce Huber, and Dan Sedia among them. I was also introduced there to the poet and classicist Charles Stein, who extended his hand in greeting with a hearty string of glossolalic gibberish. Strangely, it made me feel, for the first time, out there on the far side of the continent, quite at home.

That evening I was hanging out in the open stairwell of the dorm building and met another fellow student, the poet Alison Watkins, who proceeded to haul me along with another returning student to a late snack at a long since forgotten establishment in Rhinebeck. They were amused by the fact that I was apparently a dead-ringer for a composition student from the summer before, right down to my leather satchel. They must have thought I was a replacement acquired by the school at central casting. 

The house over the ravine

That night there was a massive Catskills thunderstorm, such as has resounded down through literature by way of Washington Irving. The next morning I was enjoying the cooler air on the balcony outside the dormitory kitchen chatting with another music student who had just arrived form Korea. He asked me, somewhat hesitatingly, if I thought that "this house" was safe. I immediately answered in the negative and we thus found ourselves culturally simpatico. Welcome to New York.