The nose bleed seats

Three people asked me if David Sommerstein and I were in Albany yesterday for the governor’s State of the State address. Apparently, they took my mention of us watching from here “up in the nose bleed seats” literally. I’m certainly happy to have provided such a sense of immediacy, but truly, we were in the NCPR on-air studio, craning our necks to watch the governor via NYS satellite hook up on the TV across the hall.

I was thinking metaphorically — the North Country is sort of the nose bleed seats, far from the action, and we were laughing at ourselves, once again outside the loop. In the sports or theater world, of course, the nose bleed seats are cheap. But no one would say that distance from Albany is any guarantee of a “discount.” Far from it, in many cases.

There’s often a certain element of whining in this upstate/downstate convention.

But later in the day, I came to my other senses. Barb Heller has a bunch of Army surplus ski poles in her office…white with big baskets, like the ones my dad had in the 50s.

They popped into my mind as I was skiing in the woods across from my house. Then my dad popped into mind, his cast-off 10th Mt. Army skis, white with metal edges. I got thinking about how we used to ski out the back door on Mt. McGregor, where I grew up. Pretty often my little hickory skis would get wet and sticky, and I’d end up crying, in a truly whiny tantrum. Snowshoes were even more anger-producing for a little girl. On the other hand, we also roasted hotdogs on winter picnics, and hid caches of fudge under a special spruce tree.

The love of snow and the woods seems permanent, and now I have good wax. The twilight was deepening. It was just a little fugue of memories on the way back from a short ski after work; I was really glad to be so far away still, and still so close to the outdoors in winter.