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Column: Coming to Grips with Greenwich’s Endless Attractions this Thanksgiving

blue-bar-pigeon-fi

By Anne W. Semmes
Sentinel Columnist

Paul Anderson cradles his Blue Bar racing pigeon
Paul Anderson cradles his Blue Bar racing pigeon

Greenwich is an impossible embarrassment of riches! Just when I get a handle on my day, my week, my month, something pops up, some intriguing event, some art show, some incredible author, concert, or friend’s theatrical production causes a conflict. I’m tearing my hair (it’s beginning to show) over which to choose!

I’m beginning to dread those “Five Things to Do Today” in the Sentinel (thankfully they’re not 15!) for discovering must-go-to-events at the last minute like author Andrea Wulf speaking at the Garden Education Center (GEC) on her hit new book The Invention of Nature, that celebrates the visionary German explorer Alexander von Humboldt. So, I was already booked that night to attend an artist friend’s show of new works. Okay, I can skip the Humboldt talk and just take the book out of the library. But they’re all out with a waiting list!

Oh, boy what I missed, but 85 didn’t said Lisa Beebe, GEC director of horticulture, who was bowled over by the slide show on Von Humboldt. “He inspired Darwin…met with Thomas Jefferson after his exploration of South America…discovered Walden Pond before Thoreau…traveled to Yosemite…inspired John Muir…the artist Gaudi. Add to that list Wordsworth and Goethe: Humboldt is credited with “turning scientific observation into poetic narrative.” Good grief!

While writing this column, the invite came to an appraisal day at Putnam Cottage given by Washington, D.C./Virginia-based auction-appraisals The Potomack Company. That dagger I inherited from my father I wanted to learn more about. And yes to a reception following “to learn current art market trends,” but I was on my way to jazz vocalist-restauranteur’s Antoine Bleck’s scintillating concert in Port Chester!

It’s not as if I don’t have to make a living! And speaking of living, and dying, there are three funerals to attend. Am I’m only catching up with friends at their funerals?

I am beginning to pine for blizzard to freeze me at home. Or how about a blackout? I remember living in New York when those spectacular blackouts stopped the clock. It was blissful looking out at no action!  And by the way who needs to go to New York City when we have the Metropolitan Opera HD nearby!

Sundays have been the one day I’ve held sacrosanct for a special writing project but they too are starting to crumble. A friend who does impressive outreach in Tanzania invited me to a learn how she’s helping to rescue abandoned children, raise and educate them. Saying no to her is saying yes to my writing, but she’s a friend! Hair tearing time again.

There are no slow days in the week anymore. Is this why people move to Florida, to calmly gaze at palm trees?

Surely its technology that’s terrorizing my life -online newspapers, emails, Facebook

bringing to me these tantalizing events. Heh, there’s no one in town at the controls of managing events! And I haven’t yet the ability to clone me!

The truth is this town is bursting at its seams with opportunities for learning. It has a population that attracts the very best that is out there, in the arts, in music, in human interest, in service to the world. Greenwich is a magnet. And my Achilles heel can be described as “curiosity killed the cat.’”

So, “Don’t cry for me Argentina,” it’s all about priorities. And, it only takes a page a day to write a book a year, doesn’t it? So, yes, on Saturday, this bird fancier had to check out the New York Combine Pigeon Show at the Eastern Greenwich Civic Center, to know what those pigeon racing fanciers were all about.

What a passion! Hundreds upon hundreds, flocking to Greenwich like – pigeons, pardon the pun – from Poland, Germany, Holland, from Maryland to Brooklyn. And all men! The only townie found was that inimitable roving photographer Stephen Marino who was impressed as I was by the extraordinary diversity of the pigeons as well as the rough and ready diversity of pigeon enthusiasts.

So why all men with these gentle birds I asked Paul Anderson from Harrisburg, PA, a former longtime head of the National Pigeon Association. “This is an old sport,” he said, “from when women were at home doing domestic work and men were more free for sports events.”

Marino got a gauge on just how passionate these guys are about this sport. “One said if he had to choose between getting rid of his wife or his pigeons he’d select his pigeons!”

Anderson’s been at it for 70 years. And why? “It’s to have a winning pigeon,” he said, who’ll beat the others back after being released as far as 600 miles from home. I sat with Anderson watching a judge handling snow white “show homers,” to calibrate their muscle tone, eye color, and beaks etc. Anderson shared a peak moment at age eight, when one of his birds in training did not return. “It was in the fall, and it didn’t return until the following spring. It came tuckered out and in poor condition. I was super excited,” he said.

That homing pigeon became a metaphor for me. With Thanksgiving on the morrow, the time has come to fold my wings around home and family. At Thanksgiving, all roads lead to home. And this Thanksgiving, my home will smell of roasting turkey and the sweet scent of Paperwhite Narcissus home grown thanks to that Paperwhites (and Amaryllis) planting workshop at the Greenwich Garden Education Center.

Just another example of that embarrassment of riches that living in Greenwich brings.

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