Clocks and Rocks - NY State

New York.  So often limited in the minds of those who have never been there to the bustle and over-crowded city.  Not so.  We have learned so much about the beauty that up-state (and side-state) New York has to offer.  The morning after our concert near Roanoke with the youth group, our generous host Kevin Kimble showed us his clock workshop.  He and his wife have found the training to work on almost any and every clock imaginable.  Cuckoo clocks, chime clocks, grandfather clocks, you name it.  Clocks surround their house and clock parts fill their basement.  The mechanics of a clock are impressive and the material that go into a simple time-keeper held more than a few lessons for us.  It was so cool to see that there was a time when men built things to last; that is, they built things to be fixed.  When something was fixable, you could tinker with it and hand it down generation to generation.  I will not do that with almost anything I own.  My computer won't last that long, certainly.  Cars don't last that long anymore.  What is there that is left that humanity (especially in the West) doesn't approach with the careless attitude of consume, destroy, replace?  This clock workshop showed us that some of the greatest things to be preserved are those things capable of being understood and tinkered with the human mind.  There is something more organic about a clock--cogs and all--that is far more humane than the digital world which we understand less and less and rely on more and more.  

        After being wowed by the clock workshop and amazing hospitality, we headed out to Keaton's Dad's house in Oneonta.  We sang for a very receptive and bit larger crowd than we were used to. The concert was recorded well by Keaton's dad and we have a CD now to help critique our concert and make it even better.  We stayed after the concert and talk about all things good, true, and beautiful.  As expected, Hillsdale came up a lot.  Hopefully we drummed up some interest; a few of the kids I met seemed like they'd be a great fit there.  That night we chilled with Keaton's Dad, Martin, who is ridiculously musical.  Nathan and I hit the hay pretty early, but Allen and Keaton stayed up late jamming and just talking with Mr. Christiansen.  The sun rose and we decided to try to run.  The area around Oneonta is very hilly.  Deciding to run when you know you're out of shape is mostly stupid.  We started downhill (always a bad idea) and ran about a mile and a half away.  The entire, ENTIRE way back was uphill.  None of us ran the whole thing (pansies that we are), and we wanted to die at the end.  Perhaps, someday, we'll be back in shape.  None of us even like running... but it is a good way to see the beauty in nature. We packed up the car (which always takes a while...I am always the mean guy rushing us out the door to our next stop) and headed up to Keaton's old house.  We had sung the night before at the Lutheran church that Keaton attended until he was 10; today, we saw the house he lived in before he moved.  He showed us the beautiful forests around his house which included sweet rock formations coming out of the ground in their steel grey sedimentary layers.  The gray and the green combined for a beautiful, albeit wet, hike up the hill to Keaton's favorite climbing tree which, alas, is no more.  We got a good view of the rot it has been experiencing since it fell (looks to be of natural causes).  The forests around were fairly new growth, probably sprouting up in the last sixty years or so.  We got to see the history of the forest which used to be a field.  The entire area reminded me of the beauty of almost every Robert Frost poem.  We saw many crumbling field-stone walls and I thought of Frost's poem "Mending Wall."  Good walls make good neighbors, right?  :) We then drove up and over the Appalachians into Massachusetts and on our way to Boston.  We're now in Boston; I will update you on our way out.  We're having a blast!!