February is here and we are doing fine. Jordan continues to work long hours and Abby is still making pizzas in Altamont. Getting the girls on the school bus is always a challenge for me.
So Jordan got Brian and he installed Zachary and John’s dish washer in our Kitchen. They are getting a new kitchen and gave us their old one.
I have been washing dishes by hand for the past 30 years and will not miss it. Brian did a great job installing it.
New/old dishwasher
Still have plenty of wood but as with every winter I am getting sick feeding that damn stove.
Zachary Simpson Chairman of the Council of Albany Neighborhoods (CANA)
He showed promise at his nursery school graduation. All the kids had their names on placards where they were to sit. Zachary showed each kid where their name was. Some did not know how to spell their names. His mom and I used to call him “Hercules”.
A strong and hardworking CANA Chairman
20 miles southwest of Albany. Thatcher Park in the Helderberg Mountains …a place I have gone to all my life. Family picnics, just looking out at the overlook. You can see Albany, the City where I grew up, and the Berkshire Mts. in Massachusetts and the Green Mts. of Vermont. Jordan was married there.
20 miles southwest of Albany. Thatcher Park in the HelderbergsI turned 73 in August..not much of a day until Jordan came with a whole bunch of clams. They were delicious. I am a lucky guy.Alissa loves Lobster…she found every piece of it in those shells.
We had an incident here this week. On December 14, 2022 Alissa was mad at her father because he would not allow her to play Grand Theft Auto. She was so upset that she got her Christmas Advent Calendar and opened all the remaining doors and ate all the chocolates. I told her that it was not right and I would never buy another advent calander. She told me she did not care, she had no regrets and the candy was delicious. Here is the evidence….
Abby, me and Alissa🌻Alissa and Jordan at White Birch PondStarted in 1976 & continuingNever forgetPetra, JordanThe day my son married John.Welcome to the Simpson Residence.Here…for your tire needs2011 Kashmir…rug is hanging on my wall next to my bed. 2nd time I went to India after 40 years. I had to go to most dangerous place. I was in Kashmir on the night they killed Osama. Only 80 miles away. I heard the news on the BBC and felt that what he did to our country was finally repaid. I worked in NYC for 2 years to recover, got sick and have not worked in 20 years. Damn him he hurt so many innocent people.Abby @15..ready for the FairHope by Alissa
November 3, 2022…Jordan at work, Abby up in her room and Alissa came in my room and said I want to listen to Christmas music. She asked if she could light a candle. So I got the music going, turned off the TV and lights. I watched her play with the candle…telling her you are going to burn yourself. So for an hour or two…no politics and watching Alissa experiment with the candle wax. She has a 95 in robotics and has been working with drills and sawing wood. Alissa is one of the reasons my life is worth living.
March 27, 2010….on board the Itaberaba (503 passengers) this ship leaves Manaus, the largest city in the Amazon, on Sunday afternoons for a 6 day trip up the Amazon to the western border of Brasil and the borders of Peru and Columbia. We will get off at Tabatinga, the last stop in Brasil. I am travelling with a boatload of Brazilians, 2 Japanese, Chin Chin, and his fiancé Connor, Cedric Lassagne, from Paris, Christina Stefanita, from Washington DC, via Romania and Deirdre Hayes, from Ireland. The bottom part of this boat is loaded with food, building supplies and all the other things you need to live. There are no roads connecting these people, just the river.
It is amazing how I meet and become friends with excellent people from all over the world. They are doing what I am doing. Travelling the world as far as we can go, seeing new things, learning every day, and putting up with really minor small things along the way. The stories and pictures I get to hear and see from my fellow travelers are simply amazing. When I see some of the places they have gone, and when we talk about the things they have done, I get envious.
They all have excellent educations and most have, or will have, excellent jobs back home. I believe we all represent the best of each one of our countries. I am now on the road for the past 6 months. Some of the people I meet have just begun and some are coming to the end of their world trips and back to jobs and job searches.
We are on the road to learn and enjoy the places and people we meet. Some of us speak several languages. I know about 30 words in Portuguese, but I try… I always try learning the basics… Hi, thank-you, how much… a smile goes along way with the people you meet. It took me about 2 weeks to say “Ho dough V aria” that is the bus station.
The motor, on this relatively new ship, has no muffler and is very loud. I wish I could say I got use to the constant noise of the engine as it chugs up the Amazon. I never did. This ship is much nicer than the 11th of May ship which I took from Belem to Manaus. That lasted only 6 days and will be covered in another story when I write it.
I will have crossed the entire country of Brasil by boat when I get to Tapatinga. A jet would have been much faster, then I would have missed all the sights of the Amazonia people who live and work along this river system. How can you put a price on witnessing how people bring their little power boats up to the big ship and get aboard without the ship stopping. The people mostly live in small houses along the river, there are some small towns too, but the river is what connects everybody. It brings the people to school, to the doctors, to their jobs…. People and things move up and down the river on these passenger ships. The people who live along the water put their kids into the little paddle boats and hurry out to catch the waves of this big ship.
I am here surfing the Amazon for fun.
On this ship, the food is good and is included in the price of a ticket (300 rials, about $180 US). When it is time to eat, a bell rings, and people line up to get into the air conditioned dining room. Sometimes there are some announcements in Portugese. No one seems to listen to them and I have no idea what they are saying.
Some of the passengers bring their own plates and bring the food back to their sleeping area. For breakfast, we have coffee which is way too sweet, with hot milk… the only other thing to eat in the morning is some soft rolls and margarine. Lunch and dinner are similiar… some white rice, some spaghetti, some yellow stuff (grit), meat, sometimes chicken, sometimes beef and of course some nice brown beans…
Unless you pay a lot more for your ticket and get a “cabin”, you have to bring a hammock with you when you get on the boat. First come, first served when it comes to the location of where you put your hammock. Sleeping in a hammock does take some getting use to. Sometimes your neighbor will put an elbow or a foot someplace on your body… not complaining though. You keep your stuff under you hammock. The hammock is a great place to just lay back and watch the Amazon shore and people go by.
The action on these boats takes place up top. These ships have little bars up on the top deck. These is where you go to watch the river, drink cold beer and for some, to smoke cheap cigarettes. This boat has a satellite tv dish and a large HDTV and every so often you need to go and move the dish a little when the picture gets fuzzy or lost. The Brazilians love their soap operas and of course the place is full when football is on the TV. We are very close to the equator and all of the tv satellite dishes are pointed straight up to catch the satellites which circle the equator in geosequenence orbit.
We are all reading, taking pictures, the ladies have big SLR (single lens reflex) cams which are very heavy but take excellent pictures. We all have laptops except Cedric. At nite, up on the top deck we gave slide shows to each other. Christina showed us her pictures from New Zealand and Australia. She does it all, bungee jumping, skydiving, snorkeling, walking on glaciers. Her pictures are fantastic. She seems to have been many places on this earth. She spent plenty of time with her computer, editing her pictures, organizing them and it takes hours. With her encouragement and good example of what hard work can do, I started to organize my 6 months worth of pictures into slideshows. Last nite I showed our little group pixs and videos from Romania, Turkey and of course Brasil. They really perked up when their pictures showed up in the slide show.
I still need to organize my pictures from Greece which I took in October 2009.
Chris, Dee, Cedric are exceptional people, they have all accomplished a great deal in life and we are lucky to spend 7 days together on a boat. We all will arrive in Peru and most go separate ways, never to see each other again, but we had our time on the Amazon heading to Peru…
Jordan is an excellent guitar player.NYC gig October 24, 2021
Jordan with the shades. Phil the lead singer, no short Jay the drummer and silent Paul the bassist.
My brothers and sisters got together on 10 October 2021 for pizza at the Orchard in Guilderland NY. My sister Joanne and her husband Ed are going back to Florida for the winter and, due to Covid, we have not been together for several years. My son Zachary and his husband John were there too. Just an hour together but I enjoyed it.
5 Simpson Elders Jack, Joanne, Robert, Jeannie and BillJeannie, Ed, our host and ZacharyJohn, Jack and both Joannes
Look who showed up at our house. I went out on the side porch and this beautiful bird was just sitting/perched on the porch. I took some pixs and he flew away.
9/15/73
George and Edith our father’s parents who came from Portadown, Northern Ireland. They lived in Manchester Conn.
Mulligan-Emmott WeddingMy grandparents…Mary and John Mulligan
Donna Lynn Mosley Simpson April 1987….she always got the best dogs.
TJ and Brutus IAMC Medivac lands at Knox Firehouse Sept. 2021Working on WTC Recovery.Simpson Family 1987Christmas in 1990When I retired in 2003
Rowland, Deborah M. CLIFTON PARK Deborah M. Rowland, 56 of Victory Way, died suddenly on her birthday Saturday, March 20, 2021, at the Samaritan Hospital after being stricken at home. Born in Albany, Deborah was the daughter of the late Donald and Madonna Mulligan Rowland. Deborah grew up in Latham, and was a graduate of Shaker High School and Adirondack Community College.
She had resided in Clifton Park since 1996. Up until the COVID-19 outbreak, Deborah had been a sales clerk at Boscov’s in Clifton Park for a number of years. She and her mother enjoyed vacationing together at Cape Cod and Florida.
She is survived by her brothers, Donald J. (Dee) Rowland Jr. and Douglas J. Rowland both of Latham; her nieces and nephew, great-nephews, her uncle and many cousins. Relatives and friends are invited to call from 9-10:15 a.m. on Saturday, March 27, at the Perry-Komdat Funeral Chapel, 2691 NY 43 at Glass Lake, Averill Park. The funeral service will be private.In accordance with most recent health parodical masks, social distancing and occupancy levels will be observed. Interment will be in St. Agnes Cemetery, Menands. In lieu of flowers, the family kindly requests donations in memory of Deborah M. Rowland be made to the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation, 1757 Central Ave., Suite 102, Albany, NY, 12205 or upstateny@jdrf.org Visit perrykomdat.com for a private guestbook.
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Our family is losing our members. Debbie Rowland was always there at our family functions with a positive attitude and a smile. She just made it easy to be around. Our families grew up so fast it was impossible to be close and always in contact. That is just the way it is. I know Debbie was close to her mom and after my Aunt Donna passed, we lost touch. My condolences to all who loved her, especially her brothers Don and Doug.
RIP Cousin Debbie
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I worked with Deb at Boscovs this past Christmas season. She was kind and was always happy to see me when we worked shifts together. We had some fun times. I wish I got to know her more and I wish her and her family peace.
Jess
Jess McCarthyMarch 30, 2021
I am so sorry about your sister’s passing at such a young age.
Kathryn Ehrhardt
March 27, 2021
So sorry for your loss. Deb was a great person. She always had a smile and a kind word to offer. She will be missed.
Connie Reynolds
March 26, 2021
Many fond memories of growing up with Debbie on Latham Ridge Road. She was a good friend during those years and beyond. Always she remained committed to that friendship. She will be missed!
______________________________ When I was very young, and television was in black and white, and there were only several channels,
I remember there was a show on Saturday mornings which I loved. Andy’s Gang with Andy Devine (“pluck your majic twanger froggy” if that helps); this was a show I never missed. I do not remember much about it except it had a continual story of a young Indian boy (Gunga Ram) running through the Indian jungle; I suppose it had tigers, elephants and maybe even had some music. He always seemed to be running.
Fast forward to September 1967; I am at Siena College, a Franciscan college near Albany, New York; my parents wanted me to go to school and I suppose I was glad to be there. The Viet Nam War was going on and Siena was a much better place to be. That was the summer of the Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper Lonely Hearts Club. The first song on the second side of the album is George Harrison’s “Within You Without You”. The sound of that weird sitar and strange drums (tablas) interested me. I can remember sitting in a class-room, not really wanting to be there, and making a solemn vow with myself that I would complete college and reward myself by going to India someday.
Everything good in my life always came very slowly and after a great deal of work; my school, my career, my family, my house, my happiness, etc…. The trip to India took 4 years of planning and saving to make it happen. I did not know it then, but those were good times. The State was building a large marble office complex downtown and I was able to work as a union laborer. My father sold construction equipment, knew alot of the people and got me in. I was able to work every summer and make enough to pay for school. I always had other jobs and seemed to have enough money for cigs and gas for my little Yamaha 180. Most of my money always went into the bank to pay for school.
In 1971 I graduated from Siena, then I worked on construction and saved up about $2,500. In August I hitched out to California and back. That took 4 weeks and I proved to myself I could do what seemed difficult. In September I got on a brand new 747 at JFK and flew to London. I carried my cheap guitar, a sleeping bag and a backpack.
I went up to the small town of Burnley, near Manchester to visit some friends of my mother’s mother who came from there. Tom Jones and his wife took me in, fed me and showed me a great deal of Lancashire including the house where my grandmother was born in 1900; I remember them taking me to a local museum which had some beautiful paintings which were hundreds of years old; the concept of Europe was starting to sink in. The last I saw of them was in Blackpool where they took me to catch the ferry to Ireland, the home of my father.
In Ireland I visited all of the Simpsons; and there are plenty of them. My father’s father’s twin sister, Bella took me in for several weeks. I will always remember the day when I got to her door; one of many in a long line of grey row houses, and she opened it. I saw myself in her wrinkled face. My days in Ireland will always be remembered. Breakfasts in bed, great bread, plenty of beer, singing, and the warmth of family. Of course I visited Northern Ireland in the height of the “troubles”; I did not take any sides, my father was raised a Protestant and my mom a Catholic.
After going over to Scotland, taking the Hovercraft over to Calais and wandering down through Germany, Italy and spending 3 months on Crete, I found myself in Istanbul. This was Asia and things really began to get interesting. By the way, every post card and letter I got from my parents always ended with the words “Do not go to India”.
The trip through Turkey was a nightmare (if anybody ever saw the movie Midnight Express, they have a good idea of this country; the people are neat though). I took a train through Turkey and then went into Iran. They still had the Shah back then, and they had some nice roads. I can remember seeing some strange sites in Tabriz of a religious procession where people were actually beating themselves with chains as they walked along. We looked down on the parade of people from a hotel balcony, we were told to stay inside, but of course I was 22 and had to look at it and take pictures too. All I could say as I was going through these countries was “this is just like the bible”.
Well we made it through Iran and then took buses through Afganistan. I developed my life time love of pomagranates there; but you would have to see it to believe it. Television really does not do these countries justice. Down through the Khyber Pass into the warmth of Pakistan. Now I really enjoyed being stuck in Lahore for several weeks. India and Pakastan just had a war and the border was closed. We had to take a 727 over the border to Amritsar. I can remember going down the steps in back of the plane onto the hot tarmic. I looked at my foot as it hit the ground and said to myself “mission accomplished – you made it to India”.
I went to Delhi and then down to see the Taj Mahal. I first saw it at midnite under a full moon; it is beautiful. I can remember going around it and hearing real live Indian music from a village across the river from the Taj. That nite I slept in the tall grass along the road. ( I look back, with visions of cobras, and think what a fool I was)
I did get over to the Ganges and saw the river and visited some very beautiful sites. Then I took the bus ride of my life up to Katmandu, Nepal. That road is incredible and I can not believe I survived the trip. Well I got my tatoo on my right arm there and I remember sitting in a Hotel and drinking a Tuborg beer and a song came on the radio, a beautiful song; “So Far Away”. Well my mind immediately thought about my family and home. I flew out of Katmandu on a DC-3 to Patna, took a train to Delhi and then got a ticket to Amsterdam. I got back to London and came home.
The whole trip took about 10 months; I used to tell everybody about it (brag actually). I went back to work as a laborer saved up money to go to South America, and just before I left I got a call for a job interview with the New York State Office of Natural Disaster and Civil Defense. I started work there on November 16, 1972 and worked there for 30 years before I retired on St. Patrick’s Day 2003.
After I got the State job, I took the money I was going to use for my next trip and bought some land in the mountains near Albany. I built a geodesic dome and lived in it for several years.
1973.. Building the Dome
My wife and I built this great big house on the same land, and that is where I live today.
Shed, garage and home….
Thanks for sticking with this story; I love to tell it.
