We’ve been traveling for over a week now, Wilmington, Delaware (as opposed to Wilmington, North Carolina), and Long Island.
In Wilmington I have a cousin and her spouse, two very gracious hosts who put up with us for four nights until we left via Uber for a flight out of Philadelphia. During our time there we saw much of the DuPont estate as enhanced by various stewards, the most remarkable that of Pierre, who in the 1930s opened his estate (Longwood) to the public. The whole area is beautifully managed, flowers and trees of every imaginable variety. We walked in the rain among the vegetation and fountains, barely aware of the precip.
Most impressively, left behind at Longwood is a pipe organ of massive size, surely among the largest in the world. There are more than 10,000 pipes varying in size from less than a pencil to six inches in girth. The instrument can reproduce sounds from a bass drum to a very high pitched piccolo. We were treated to a concert put on by the controlling computer. Once every year organ players of all levels of talent are given five minutes each on the beast. My cousin, an accomplished organ player, has not taken advantage, but she should. While at their home she treated us to Andrew Lloyd Weber’s Memories from the stage play Cats, and did not miss a note. Her husband gave us a polonaise, a complicated Chopin piano piece played with intensity and great skill. I watched as his eyes, half closed, guided his fingers racing up and down the keyboard, all without benefit of sheet music. (He is also an accomplished trumpet player.)
Last Saturday we attended a concert by the Philadelphia Orchestra, some unusual pieces by way of intro, and then the Fifth Symphony by Finland’s Jean Sibelius. I suggested we attend, hoping for a rendition of Finlandia, often proposed to be Finland’s national anthem, but no such piece was played. The Fifth we were treated to was gripping, with several interludes of great power from the entire orchestra at once. My cousin and her husband had more in-depth criticism than I can manage. I can only say I was moved.
Our Uber drive to Philadelphia Airport was early morning, and I sat in the front seat with the driver. The night before at a pizza joint I watched bits and pieces of the Phillies vs the Marlins, so I broached the subject, and for the entire trip we talked sports. He knew not only Phillies and Eagles, but Packers, Broncos, and even some Cincinnati Reds. Make note when in Philly, it is a rabid sports town, so that you’ll never be at a loss for words if you know even a bit of the Philadelphia teams. (We did not cover the Flyers.)
That morning we flew to LaGuardia, and the next four days were spent doing family business, which leads to my sitting here at Aloft, a hotel run by Marriott, waiting for a shuttle to LaGuardia. My impressions of Delaware, Pennsylvania and Long Island: Lush vegetation and birds. Northern Long Island is especially charming, narrow roads through beautiful well-kept-up homes with views of Long Island Sound. As we moved closer to LaGuardia, the buildings got more run down, and where we are staying, the streets are lined with litter. Many of the hotel staff know no English, not that they should, so it is a veritable Tower of Babble.
That’s New York, a mixed bag from lush wealth and beauty to run down areas where the native language is a mixed bag. Our first morning here was in Flushing, and the population is largely Chinese, strong and accomplished people who are a credit to our melting pot, a work in progress.
Back today to Colorado and our high-elevation life, Douglas Firs and aspen and very little in the way of bird variety save a few migrants passing through on their way to the Boreal Forrests of Canada. Each place has its unique charm. Ours only lacks the persistent precipitation seen here. We get our share, and what the ground does not absorb makes its way to Denver reservoirs. Without them, Denver would still be a small remnant of a gold rush town.
Piece of Mindful 
Mark – so you enjoyed the northeast USA – glad you came by. It’s remarkable, as someone who has carefully studied climate and precipitation (everything that comprises the outdoors) my whole life that in New England we get the same amount of precipitation, by month, year round, year after year (~3-4 inches per month). I consider that a great blessing, as we never really have to worry about droughts in the Northeast.
Also, my 9th grandfather was brother to the founder of Delaware. I mention this because the name Delaware is derived from De La Warr – their real last name was West (mine).
Thomas West, 3rd Baron De La Warr , was an English nobleman, for whom the bay, the river, and, consequently, a Native American people and U.S. state, all later called “Delaware”, were named.
Thomas West, 3rd Baron De La Warr – Wikipedia
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Fascinating! My family business while there was about ancestry, my wife’s, not mine. I cannot go in to detail except to say that your Delaware roots would fascinate her. Her own go back many years but in different lines. Mine go back to Austria on Dad’s side, and Ireland on my mother’s, each truncated due to lack of records, nothing before the late 1800s.
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I assume it’s like that for many people, nothing before the 1800’s in their genealogies.
They can get as far back to their great great granparents. But we see with peerage people their records go farther back in time.
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Good tip, I’m going to try that. I always feel proud when I can learn a new bird song I had been ignorant of my entire life. Cornell has great videos capturing the birds singing: watching them sing is as exciting as hearing the song, especially for tiny birds like the northern wood thrush – you rarely see them in the wild without binoculars. Its amazing something that weighs a few ounces they belt out their songs with such volume.
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Inhad that video playing as backdrop while I was doing other stuff. On and on it went … delightful.
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Speaking of birds, it has been a great year for birds here. Nothing exceptionally out of the ordinary, but the population of birds appears relatively high this spring. Lots of cardinals, flycatchers, northern wood thrush, blue jays, and so on. I live right next to fed, state, and local conservation areas, and wetlands, so I get a lot of migratory birds coming and going between Canada and parts south, like Mexico.
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We use Merlin, offered by Cornell for free (with occasional requests for voluntary support, which we have done). For each song or call, they have put together a massive library of sounds, accuracy is in the 90% range, though recently while walking the hills above us, far away from water, Merlin told us it had picked up the call of a common loon.
So, while waiting for our hosts to leave the house to drive us on a trip, Merlin picked up ten birds, seven of which we do not get here in Colorado. This in a residential area in Wilmington. However, today we did pick up a hermit thrush on our property, and it will be with us for the coming months. They are hard to see, hence the name.
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