Maria and I finally caught up with our 3rd wedding anniversary Friday, we honored our short and wonderful time together in typical fashion, informally, mixing up food, walking, photography, sketching, art, culture and people. We went to North Adams, Mass., the home of Mass MOCA, the sprawling art museum in a vast old former New England textile mill. We stayed in an architecturally dazzling new hotel called Porches Inn At Mass MOCA, a dozen or so old mill houses connected to one another and meticulously rebuilt and refurbished. The hotel was beautiful, pricey, hip and fascinating, the most beautiful rooms and bathrooms, no expense or detail spared to integrate the past with the town’s artistic future. It was powerful to look out at Mass MOCA from the rooms and windows of the people who once worked there, although their homes would not be recognizable to them.

It was an architectural adventure. It is hip place, not a homey place, it was a fascinating and very comfortable place.

We began our anniversary at the Round House Cafe in Cambridge, we had breakfast there and then set out for Massachusetts. On the way, we stopped at a nursery near Stephentown and mulled getting another tree to plant along the pasture fence by the house. Then we drove into North Adams, walked all around the town, stopped at a new Mediterranean restaurant with good food and Frank SInatra and Mario Lanzo playing in the background. North Adams is still figuring out it’s new hip future. We went back to the hotel, read and then went to Williamstown for Thai food, and then to Williamstown Theater to see the Tom Stoppard play “Hapgood,” which was great, terrific dialogue, great acting. We had breakfast at Porches, headed back to the nursery, bought two water birches at a great price (photo later) and picked up sandwiches at the Round House on the way back.

When we got back, a dozen boys from the St. Joseph’s Boys Home in New York City came to visit the farm and see the first donkey’s and herding dogs in their lives. We had an amazing time, I’ll put up some photos and write about that it a bit, it was the perfect capper to a wonderful 24 hours, they were blown away by Red and mesmerized by the donkeys. Since they came with bags of carrots, they got a fine donkey reception. More later.

I am so grateful for my life, my time with Maria is so good, so precious, so much in sync. We just fit, I can’t recall a sweeter anniversary celebration, nor can I quite believe it took me so long in my life to permit love to enter it. I don’t dwell on that, there is no point in looking back,  I am grateful for every precious day that I am alive.