Vermont Here I Come

Tomorrow morning I'm leaving to go visit my friend in Vermont, and realizing this is really the first time I have traveled anywhere by myself in about thirty years. Alone as in without traveling companions, husband, or kids. I'll be taking the train up and back from Philadelphia.

The friend I'm visiting is an artist too, so something creative will surely happen while we're together. She is also my writing partner, even though we haven't written much in the past couple of years. Hopefully we'll do some of that too. But if not I could care less. I have no plans. This is going to be purely living in the moment and my computer is even staying home. It's a nine hour trip and I have already made a picnic and stocked up on books to read.

I love to ride the train and am also taking some Interfaith Golden Rule Coloring Books to give away here and there. I really love the coloring books and feel very happy giving people a complimentary copy. If you would like one, email your shipping address to artypantzvo@verizon.net, and I'll put one in the mail to you next week. Hopefully you'll love it so much that you will order some for all your friends and family.

I have not been to Vermont since I was in my early twenties, when I went on a camping trip up there with a family friend and his two young children, and my new boyfriend. At the time we were all living together in an apartment in Manhatten NY.

We were planning to visit a professor from Goddard College, but from the time we left NY and got to Goddard, Vermont he was literally in the middle of a sit-in in the presidents office at the school! So the trip was full of all that drama and excitement.

We all spent most of our time there in Goddard Lake as in our bathing suits splashing around in.......That boyfriend died many years later long after we'd broken up. He was dancing in Central Park to a group of drummers and dropped dead of a heart attack. He was an incredibly multi-talented, extremely disciplined artist/writer/filmmaker/photographer and I learned so much by being with him. I'm sad that he is gone, but he occasionally visits me in my dreams.

One of those children who was with us in Vermont is now a grown woman and owns a fantastic community restaurant in Brooklyn. She is coming down to visit us next week, with her two children! Can't wait to see them and to hear her laugh. She has the most unique laugh, that wells up inside of you too. When she laughs you're taken along for the ride.......

http://www.artypantz.blogspot.com/