schmolze studios

Yes folks, we are back after a rather extended hiatus. Back to blogging and back to school following an unexpected medical adventure. I’ve been woefully unproductive photography-wise, and I hope to remedy the situation in the year ahead, but in the meantime I do have a few snapshots from the summer.



This is about the only artful picture I’ve taken in the last few months. We used to walk up to this cabin all the time when I was a wee lad, but for a while now it’s been the exclusive domain of the sheep who have free range of hundreds of acres surrounding it.






I went to Block Island for a few days with Nori and Pa. It’s a small island (10 square miles) off the coast of Rhode Island, reachable via a 45-minute ferry ride. We left the car on the shore and brought along some bikes. I was in the middle of a doxycycline regimen (ask me about Ehrlichiosis!) and was feeling a bit trodden upon, but I still managed to have fun. The thing is, doxycycline can induce a photosensitivity reaction, and I wasn’t supposed to be out in the bright sunlight. More on this later.









The first night there was a killer double rainbow during dinner on our hotel porch. The very next evening the exact same rainbow appeared. Auspicious.












I’m not quite sure what the idea was here, but it was fun.












This was advertised as a “labyrinth”, and I was expecting the type of hedge-enclosed structure in which little kids get lost and start crying, but it was just a path on the ground that snaked its way to a central pile of rocks/alter. We spent about ten minutes walking in, and then just stepped over the path to get out.





















This is the public beach, with our hotel visible in the background. It was the only beach with any people on it — all the beaches that we biked to were pretty much deserted.






Alright, so remember what I said about doxycycline and photosensitivity? The last day was pretty sunny, and as we biked around the island my hands and feet started to feel a little weird and these red blotches started popping up. On the ferry ride back the blotches deepened and started to get pretty painful, then very painful. Basically, I was developing a bad sunburn, but mostly just on the sides (not tops) of my fingers and toes. Anyway, it was bad for a couple days but faded pretty quickly. Now I can tell patients about this side effect with the authority of personal experience.






I went to the Columbia County Fair with my Dad. It’s a genuine old-timey country fair, with a big 4-H presence, classic rides, and horribly disgusting food that will kill you if you eat it more than once a year.






Ricky Skaggs was there performing with his band, which was kinda surprising for such a small venue. A seriously talented group of musicians.






That’s all for now. Stay tuned for Seth’s Bar Mitzvah!

Here are some photos from my Spring break a week ago. I decided to pass up offers for Mexico and Florida, and instead spent the week lounging about in Great Barrington.

I stayed in Worcester Friday night, and picked my Mom up at IMS in nearby Barre, where she was doing a meditation retreat.

It started raining on the ride home, and the high winds and torrential rain didn’t let up until late the next evening, when Steve went out to pick up a friend’s daughter at the Steiner School. A few minutes later he was back empty-handed, and explained that he had met someone who told him the road was blocked by a fallen tree, and by the flooded Green River in the other direction. He grabbed his chainsaw, and he and I set out, all pumped up for some manly road clearing. Unfortunately, someone with a snow plow had already pushed the tree out of the way, so we made it to the school without incident. Disappointed, we collected the girls and headed home, only to find that in the meantime another tree had fallen across the road. Hurray! We got to work, and with the help of another motorist, we had the road cleared in short order.






The next I set out to check out the flooded river. It had already subsided substantially, and the road to the school was now passable.






Here you can see the water line from the night before:

Mom and I took a walk. Here’s the result of our handiwork from the previous night:






Later we went to Bartholomew’s Cobble (in before the ticks!).

We had one really gorgeous day, and Mom, Ben and I walked to the brook.

Other random pictures of the neighborhood:

The water did plenty of damage to roads and driveways. Case in point:

One day Mom and I did a little bushwhacking through the woods, and had to cross a stream using a fallen log. Mom took off her shoes and crawled, and despite a minor freakout at the end, managed to make it.

Progress on the barn workout studio conversion project continues. Ben and Gio finished up the sheet rocking, so all that remains is spackling, painting and installing the floor.

I gots me a new camera!






I’ve been wanting something small that I could have with me wherever I went, and this one shoots in RAW so I can use the same post-processing workflow as with my big camera. It does video too, so now I can take the self-indulgence to a whole new level. Check it out:

In other news, the med school prom was last night! Hard to believe it’s been a year since the last one. Due to various technical difficulties (malfunctioning autofocus, an unfortunate wine spill, the fact that I forgot my brand-new camera) I dropped the ball bigtime in the photo department, but here are a few representative examples. Behold the future doctors of America and tremble in fear:









It all ended very abruptly at 1:00 AM, and a few of us were still revved up and feeling hungry, so we went to the Boulevard Diner. It was packed, and we had to wait about 10 minutes for some bar stools.









Other highlights of the evening included nearly running over a classmate’s head after he slipped on ice. All in all a fine time. I finally got to bed at about 4:00 AM.



Note: still working out the kinks on my new host (image borders, etc.).