Best E-mails of the Week 08/08/04.   

 


 

Everyone seems to be on vacation now.

Many emails to me are like the TV reruns that we have already seen!

Or else they are about Bush and Kerry that I won't publish.

So here's what's happening on my job this week:

Actually last week, Frank, our next door neighbor brought in the portable saw mill.

He made and is selling oak planks from the wood we cut.

 

 

Frank also had sent out quartzite rocks from his land next door, to China to be cut to gem quality stones.

When they returned, they look like a combination diamond and glass.  One of these is for Mary.

 

Frank insisted that the four mailboxes for the new houses and his be on this giant 8' x 6' x1' slab.

The Ackerman brought it out of the woods to the cul-de-sac where the three of us erected it.

 

Here, the Ackerman loads one of many containers with stumps from the site.

 

Same location, showing where house and driveway could be built.

The first couple who saw the seven acre lot this weekend purchased it from us.

Working 7am 'til 6pm spreading hay, etc. keeps me thin, but tired at my age!

 

This is the pond the lots view when the leaves are down, and from the road to and fro. 

The lots are 300' off the water and to the right of the existing house, in the center of the picture.

One thing our development does not do, is pollute this beautiful resource.

 

On to the next job!

 

Congrats Jim B. on your family's story in the NYTimes

To all - here is the article from the NYTimes in the NJ section:

The article is titled,  "www.mudda&fadda.com Not Everyone Embraces E-Mail
Messages From Summer Camp"

There are two pictures one of me and Alice looking at a laptop computer
screen with Chris' waterski picture barely visible on the lap top screen.
Just along side that picture is a computer bordered full screen picture of
Chris waterskiing (from the Kingsley Pines web site).  The pictures' caption
is " Jim and Alice B. with a laptop computer displaying a Web photo of
their son Chris, above, from Kingsley Pines Camp in Raymond, Me." 

The article reads as follows (typos are mine):

When Jim B., now of Ridgewood, went to camp 40 years ago on Panther
Lake in Maine, his mother sent him letters with newspaper clippings of
Yankees games.  Today Mr. B.'s son Chris, 15, is at camp on that same
lake, and he also gets news of the Yankees.  But his news comes in the form
of e-mail messages.  And Mr. B. can keep up with his son's activities
on the camp's web site.

Just a decade ago, postcards and letters, along with the occasional forlorn
phone call, were the prime communication connections between summertime
campers and their sometimes equally lonely parents.  Now, new technology has
hit the campgrounds: e-mail messages, JPEG images, Webcams.  And the wave of
campers that emanates from New Jersey each summer is among those adapting to
the new ways.....
 

 

We just saw De-Lovely, the story about Cole Porter played by Kevin Kline.  It did not include his youth, but had many great songs like “Night and Day”.  It showed all his affairs, etc.  It did have an appearance by Irving Berlin who wrote “Lets face the music and dance”, “Blue Skies”, “Sun in the morning and Moon at night”, “Cheek to Cheek” and “Always”. But neither wrote my favorite oldie, which is “Summertime” by George Gershwin, from the show Porgy and Bess.  Rhapsody in Blue is the story of Gershwin. 

 I was pleased that Auntie Ann told us the story of how George and Ira Gershwin used to drive by our house to visit Max Dreyfus and his wife Victoria, the music publishers, who lived in the castle next door to us (and quite a ways up the road and before I was born.)

I remember as a boy visiting Victoria, after Max passed away, to ask her to buy little league raffle tickets, which she did.

She was in her bed in a tall ceiling room with drapes from ceiling to floor. I did not know at the time that she was Queen Victoria’s godchild.

Max made his fortune selling sheet music of Gershwin.  He was very thin and then very heavy in appearance. From http://warnerchappell.com/wcm_2/wcm_help/ourhistory_2.jsp

Max Dreyfus joined the Tom B. Harms Company in 1901 as an arranger. He demonstrated his ability in lifting songs out of Broadway musicals and making them hits. Also, by placing Tom B. Harms Company songs in Broadway shows, Max Dreyfus became a top executive in the Company. In 1904, Alex and Tom Harms left the company and Dreyfus, who already had acquired a 25% interest in the firm, became its head. His creativity as a publisher made him one of the most influential figures in the music publishing business. 

The web site shows how all these songs were connected: “Sweet Adeline”, “Bicycle Built for Two”, “I only have Eyes for you” (from the 1920’s which I have often sung for Mary and once at the piano.) “Happy days are here again”

Max and Louis Dreyfus sold their interest to Warner Brothers in 1929 for $11,000,000.

 He bought the 387 acre estate as a birthday gift to Victoria. They did not have children. The castle and land was formerly owned by Daniel Drew who wanted Princeton to change its name to Drew University, but when they wouldn’t he started his own college.

Drew was from a poor farm family in Carmel, New York.  He bought a cow on credit and sold it for profit and eventually herded them to NYC (or NJ slaughter houses) He would feed them salt so they would drink water and fatten up.  He wanted to buy a cow on credit, and when the owner wouldn’t sell, Drew claimed he would some day buy him out, and he did buy the 1000 acres that included the Dreyfus estate.  Drew is buried across the street on our side.

Today the Max and Victoria Dreyfus Foundation gives away about $40,000 per year  “THE ASCAP FOUNDATION MAX DREYFUS SCHOLARSHIP was created to identify young talent and to encourage the study of musical theater; it is presented each year to a student at NYU's Tisch School of the Arts. Funded by an endowment from the Max and Victoria Dreyfus Foundation, it honors the music publisher Max Dreyfus who served on ASCAP's Board for 50 years and was a mentor to many musical theater legends.”

So our mysterious neighbor from half a century ago is finally explained!

Auntie Ann or others, please correct if necessary. 

 


 

 

Pete   

 

Back to the Best E-mails Home Page