This post, from Brooklyn Beat, covers a lot of turf: the end of summer blues, school shopping at Staples, Big Pink, and meeting Uma Thurman.

"Summer days, summer nights are gone..
I know a place where there’s something going on"
–"Summer Days" by Bob Dylan from LOVE AND THEFT

We made our annual pre-first day of school pilgrimage to Staples to
start loading up on school supplies and generally to begin our familial
reality testing as to the fact that those lazy crazy hazy days of
summer are dwindling down to a precious few..

Our older daughter is already back at college and our younger kids got
their school lists in June and this weekend we started to gather
folders, notebooks, pens, graph paper, etc. I think we do this every
year — we like everyone else apparently, try to go the week before
school begins to start to get some supplies (I think it helps the kids
deal with some of their back-to-school anxiety), but so does eveyone
else and the store was quite jammed. I always think of the Staples TV
commercial that my late Dad adored, and I guess I do too, which is the
middle aged guy whooping it up, swinging around the aisles with a
shopping cart, while the holiday tune "It’s the Most Wonderful Time of
the Year" plays in the background. He is followed by his drooping kids,
despairing at the return of Fall and homework..

Since we are an edu-ma-cation centered home, my wife also begins to
enter the mourning mode in mid August. She bought a copy of "How to Get
Along at Work with People You Hate" and a magazine on ideas for
starting home businesses..She is a special education art teacher who
works with special needs kids (primarily autistic and emotionally
disabled).. She loves working with her students, her students do
amazing work and have won numerous arts awards, but like anyone who is
employed in a large organization, the adults often pose the greater
challenges.

Anyway, we were remembering a fantastic summer a few years back. We had
rented a place in Bearsville NY, a lovely little home with the Esopus
running through the backyard. The kids were younger, 4 years through 11
years I guess. I work year round so we spent a few weeks up there and
then went up every other weekend that we could.

The kids had a great
time. We were relaxing but in the process of selling our first home in
Clinton Hill and buying our current place in Flatbush. But in between
the phone calls, faxes and Fed Exes, we enjoyed our summer in the
country. We went to a concert at the old Woodstock site near
Monticello. We saw great outdoor theatre— "Rip van Winkle" featuring
giant puppets. My son and I searched the back roads nearby until we
found Big Pink, where Bob Dylan and the Band recorded the legendary
Basement Tapes in 1967. As a matter of fact, less than mile away, on
Stoll Road, Bob Dylan had had his mythic motorpsycho accident in 1966.
Our next door neighbors, including a volunteer fireman were wonderful
and we went with them to the 4th of July parade in town. We loved that
summer. Wading in the Esopus, visiting the town.

Speaking of puppets, one day that summer, we went to the Woodstock
Library. I had a NYPL card and we were able to get a Woodstock Library
Card and visited often. They always have amazing used book sales at the
library and we have picked up many gems over the years. Everyone was
very friendly. Anyway, we were browsing around the library and a young
guy came in with his daughter. Our kids were in the childrens’ oom
looking at books and playing with kids toys. The young dad, a little
grungy but very friendly, started doing a puppet show for his daughter
and our kids. Mostly kid-talk with puppets. I recognized the dad
immediately. Suddenly, the mom shows up in a granny dress with
heavy-framed glasses. "Ethan, we gotta go". And that’s how our kids met
Uma Thurman and Ethan Hawke. My wife and I were polite and cordial but
frankly starstruck. The librarian lady said "Your kids had a very
famous playmate". My son (you might remember him, the 16 year old
autograph hound, who, by the way, this summer completed a film that was
shown last week at the NYC Summer Arts Institute at the Tribeca Film
Institute) still hocks me for not getting an autograph