Third day: Uncle Tom's Train Station, and Back On the High Line Again....

Strange it is, that I'd run my first-ever commute from New Jersey to Manhattan out of a station named for my almost great-great uncle.

T-Alv married my father's great-aunt's sister. At least one member of my family worked for Edison around the turn of the 20th. Sadly, Mary died before his electric empire really got going. But one of his legacies is the name of this small Jersey town, not far from the Menlo Park lab that housed so many successes and failures.

Today for me, though, it was no more than a staging ground for a longer and happier mission. An hour after leaving Edison, I was back in Penn Station and, soon, meeting a longtime LJ friend and her husband on their first-ever trip to New York.

They saw Hedwig last night while I was dodging short-range pucks, and I met them at their Herald Square hotel, barely a block from ours of last month.

They were interested in good food and good reads. We found both near Union Square.

In the square proper was a hipster-aplenty farmer's market:


Just past it, we could see the banner for the bookstore, along with a perfect choice for foodage:



Oddly, we had very little actual chorklit here- just the atmosphere full of it was plenty:



We had an odd moment where the server brought us the check quite a bit before we were finished- someone else's check, and said someone's credit card. Oops. We later saw a psychic reader on West 14th and wondered if SHE had been in on that.

From there, books. First at the Strand- that iconic indy that needs no coffee bar, comfy chairs or Wifi to bring in the readers.  I scored gift books for Eleanor and Em, and the Gaiman/Pratchett book Good Omens, to mark Sir Terry's passing. He had a big display inside and a Broadway window with his Times obit. Here, we were among his people- and ours.

Two doors down, just as much so. Forbidden Planet is basically a permanent sci-fi con dealer's room, and Kristin found books she wanted that even the Strand didn't have.

Then back to retrace a route Emily and I took last month, in much warmer weather. We wandered through Chelsea Market, and headed up for 10 blocks or so of High Line. Though warmer, there was fog today and we couldn't see much more than a few blocks over.

Some final false starts and an A train detour later, we said goodbye in Penn... and this time I made the damn train.

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I'm now in Hudson, a bit southeast of Albany, where Lucy Kaplansky will be playing tonight, along with  her latest band incarnation. And Billy Joel's Vienna is on the pre-show audio. He's in the Garden, in the rafters of the Coliseum, on my car stereo. You just can't get the Long Island away from me;)

It's perfect to see Lucy tonight, since it's Pi Day, and at both of her previous shows I've been to, she's sung her mathematician father's whimsical "Song about Pi."

That story, and final pictures, when I'm home:-)

The final stretch: Saturday Night Show, and Back Home Sunday to the Best Friend of All....

Over 1,000 new miles on the tires when it was all done. I've been home since 3 p.m. and am happy to be back. I stopped at the kids' place on the way to get a final tax document and drop off Emily's Strandery-



- and listened to good stories and music all the way home- from a Mountain Stage St. Patrick's Day encore to the album from Lucy Kaplansky's new project that I picked up last night.

Right. That.

Lucy has been recording with fellow folk artist Richard Shindell for decades, and for most of them they've wanted to record an album of duets, but time and places intervened. (Shindell is not the Rick she's married to, and when Richard S. is not making music here, he lives in Argentina.)  But they finally got it together, Kickstarted and, as of this Tuesday, officially Out There....

unless you're at the right club at the right time, and boy was I.

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Hudson, NY is a riverside town within 20 miles of the state capital, but it's definitely in between the economic boom at the south end of the river and the government largesse nearer the source to the north. Yet on a quiet side street is a wonderful acoustic space in a former factory that has brought many to a town that needs the love that such music brings.

Four other musicians preceded (and eventually joined) Lucy and Richard onstage.  Working stage right all night was Larry Campbell, who opened with his wife Therese Williams on vocals. She's good; he's legendary. He spoke of working with Dylan; and he reminded us that he was part of the 80s music network that brought Shawn Colvin to New York and, eventually, her Career As We Know It.  I'd just been reading her memoir earlier in the day; Lucy appears in it several times, also, but even earlier in the book, Shawn mentions Larry's virtuosity and versatility, including his having been tagged with the Costner-inspired nickname "Walks With Instruments."  As he did, all night:  here, he's on acoustic guitar in his opening set:



When the Pine Hill Project duo joined him and their bassist and drummer (both awesome, as well), he switched to mandolin:




And keyboard:


Fiddle, anyone?


And, near the end, plugged in:


His wife came back out for the encore, and they proceeded to blow the roof off the dump:


Mostly, though, they debuted the songs on the new album, which ranged from George-Jonesish country to straight-out rocking out; and they covered a range including Greg Brown and Gillian Welch on one end and Nick Lowe and Paul Carrick on the other.

And they said, and boy you could tell, they were having FUN up there. The audience had a few younguns, including one woman who go-go-danced through both sets the entire time. More, though, were couples older than us, holding hands and smiling the whole time. My beloved was almost 300 miles away, having laid down flooring tile rather than musical tracks all day, but she was much in mind and heart as I heard the songs from the better half of Pine Hill that we learned to love together.

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The venue has a full menu, which I neither knew (slogging down fast food on the Jersey side of the border) or could've afforded. And I was alone, which got me a mezzanine stool, but one with with a good view for those pictures- and the company of Working Press.

Still not sure who he was or who he was working for, but he had the requisite hat and leather jacket to qualify him as an insider even before he brought out the Reporters Notebook and Nikon. He also had a full bottle of wine and a plate of the house-special Laundry Day Red Beans and Rice to act as muses. I left him to his work, only asking him, when Larry mentioned Shawn Colvin, whether he'd read her memoir. (He hadn't.)

I also felt a bit for the server who was also working around me. They don't push show customers to order off the menu, but she seemed to want to be attentive, so finally I came up with something to order from the dessert menu: for the band.

Last post, I mentioned that Lucy's father had written, and she's performed, a song about pi titled, fittingly,

Watch on YouTube

The song wouldn't have fit the format of the evening, but the day still had to be acknowledged, so I ordered a slice of pecan pie and asked it to be sent to the green room. The only message I got back was "3-14-15," so they knew:) They also promised to autograph pi's onto their merch (as Larry correctly observed, CD's have circumference AND diameter;).

I didn't get one on mine. Lucy just signed it "all the best," and yeah pretty much, that's what they gave us:)