Yesterday Lori sold her 2019 Audi to an Elmira dealer. She had done her homework and got a fair price and the dealer got a very nice car in superb condition (which went on their market within a couple hours of the transaction). Lori liked the car a lot but had to make room in the garage for the next automotive adventure coming in a few weeks. More on that later but for now let’s just say we won’t be acquiring any vehicles with internal combustion engines again. The future is now!

Fireworks, picnics, family get-togethers: it’s that time of the year for the national celebration of Lori’s birthday. If she’s not so keen on another birthday, everyone else seems to be in an extra-festive mood this year, possibly due to a rebound effect from the Covid malaise. Regardless, those of us on Lori’s periphery are reaping benefits from birthday generosity and well-wishing. Happy birthday Lori, keep ’em coming for the next several dozen years.

Lori and I spent a (hot) week in Chicago exploring art and architecture with a Road Scholar tour. Among our impressions of Chicago compared to NYC (which we were much more familiar with):

• Central Chicago is cleaner than NYC.
• Chicago people are generally friendlier than their world-weary cynical NYC counterparts.
• Chicago has noticeably less panhandling and acting out than in NYC.

Chicago has a lot of great art and architecture but, at 1/4 the population of NYC, doesn’t have quite the huge breadth of arts that NYC has. Overall and despite the usual set of big-city challenges, Chicago impressed us as a vibrant city with a long record of resilience and adaptability. We’ll no-doubt return for future visits having only sampled what Chicago has to offer.

Lori and I joined friends & neighbors Marie and Ed for a honey tasting at the unique Honeybee Embassy at Bright Raven Farm and Apiary in Trumansburg. What a revelation! I realized I had never tasted pure raw honey before–almost everything available in grocery stores etc. is typical American hyper-processed industrial imitation often heavily infused with corn oil. Real honey without industrial chemistry and over-processing has a wonderful complex taste. The season of the year, the plants in bloom, the terroir, all contribute to a distinctive taste and texture when it isn’t blended and processed into generic honey-like substance. We tasted 6 different honeys, each with highly distinctive color, texture, and taste depending on what the bees had available for production at the time.

Besides learning what real respectfully-harvested honey tastes like, we learned a lot about honey and bees from the owners who have many years of experience and learning behind their enthusiasm for this remarkable substance and its producers. Apparently humans are still learning new things about the amazing honey bees.