Down came the rain and why the Dutch are more fun

House acquires lake.

October 8, 2005 – Bouwerie in the rain, kitchen table listening to Lite FM.

Fall's here and that means it's a great time to go rv-ing (Camper's Barn, in Kingston) then back into Phil Collins.

Good to be upstate in the pouring rain – gutters pumping, lawn ponds swollen and a stream we'd all but forgotten about in the pristine September of sun has marked its swelled, snaking way across the sodden lawn. An efficient, straight down rain – 18" of all business.



Picked up the Town of Clermont History again this morning. Now that I live in Germantown (vs. Clermont as first told), had to re-read the history with a different pen in hand. Worse, I had to ally myself with the less fun settlers: the Germans/Palatines. Author Thomas Hunt doesn't come right out and condemn these early Germans, but he might as well:

First he gives the German settler a bland context:
"Honest, laborious men who had once been thriving burghers...their ingenuity and diligence could not fail to enrich any land which should afford them an asylum.”

Then proceeds to shade their intentions darkly: Seeking religious liberty, they reached our shores:
“...with the bitterness and pathos of their antecedent suffering and endurance, and the steadiness of the unconquerable faith and determination to wrest fortune and happiness out of the very talons of despair...”

Whereas Hunt has no issue with the Dutch - a forthright lot, here for trade and not as persecuted refugees - he has no patience for the dour Germans and closes his unflattering portrait (in sub-chapter entitled: “The Unhappy Palatines”):
“There was nothing unusual in their (the German's) unhappiness under the circumstances (last to arrive).

From time immemorial the stranger who first settles in an old community is apt to meet with a cool reception, and some time will pass before he can know whether he will like the place or the people - or, (darkly), they will like him. The stranger is hopeful and the older inhabitant distrustful. Such was human nature with the Dutch, English, and Palatine colonists in Clermont at East Camp (current day Germantown) in the years 1710 and 1712, and such is it with us today in Germantown, Clermont and everywhere.”

The German's “permanent” contribution to the community: the Lutheran Church.

C - with Germantown but not of Germantown.