Tivoli

Drove up to Tiovli where TaxBwana Linda took me on an inspired march through the outer reaches of the old eeeevil-Livingston Clermont estate and lunch—her treat—at GioBatta where Jan Wenner used to hang out when he owned Teviot (yes, another old eeeevil-Livingston estate) and hip & famous Bard faculty members still do.

The high point of the afternoon was the St. Paul’s & Trinity Parish church and its graveyard.



I’ve written about this church. (Elliott Roosevelt’s Motorcar—a story that will need revising even if I only want to self-publish: There are good things in it, but the final Peter Quint, you devil! scene and Eleanor’s seduction by the ghost of her father are just baaaad, warmed over Stephen King.)

But I’d never actually visited it.

I was pleased to find the church was exactly the way I’d imagined it.

And moreover that its graveyard is like ground zero for dead eeeevil Livingstons:



The jewel in the crown, though, is this crypt here, which is the Hall family crypt, the Halls being Eleanor Roosevelt’s horrible eeevil Livingston grandmother and the demented Hall offspring (one of whom was Eleanor’s mother.) After Elliott Roosevelt—Teddy’s brother and Eleanor’s father—jumped out a window when Eleanor was 10, poor orphaned Eleanor was forced to live with them. The Halls were quite insane.





Elliott Roosevelt and his tragic wife Anna (who died of typhoid when Eleanor was three) also have a crypt somewhere on church property, but we couldn’t find it. Here is TaxBwana Linda trying to weasel directions out of one of the occupants.



Knock-knock-knockin’ on heaven’s door! Or hell’s…



TaxBwana Linda, in the words of my beloved MaryBeth, is quite the find. We have an enormous number of areas of overlap, chiefly stemming from our residence in Berkeley at approximately the same time. Get this: She was a teacher at Highland Elementary School at the same time I was a nurse at Highland Hospital, and had some eerily similar workin’-in-the-warzone experiences.

Although she is smarter than me. After her last horrible warzone experience, she took the test to become part of the diplomatic corps and spent the majority of her career traveling the world and being stationed in fabulous places.

Anyway, I don’t think we paused for breath once in five hours of nonstop chattering.

I had a very good time indeed.