May Member Newsletter

Most of you know by now that the last six to eight weeks have been full of changes for me.

I left the NYC metro area, my home for most of the past 40 years, on March 26th to head west to Prescott, Arizona. The journey, most of which was made by Amtrak, took about three weeks all in, with stops in Connecticut, Massachusetts, Chicago (twice), Cincinnati, Kansas City (MO), Santa Fe, Albuquerque, and Flagstaff.

I’ve been chronicling that journey ...

The Cross Country Craft Chocolate Odyssey: Prelude
In which I leave New York City, my home base for nearly forty years, and covering the week before embarking on the first leg of my journey – Boston to Cincinnati via Chicago.
#CCCCO First Leg: Boston and Chicago to Cincinnati
Chronicling the first leg of the 2023 Cross Country Craft Chocolate Odyssey #CCCCO – Boston and Chicago to Cincinnati.
#CCCCO Second Leg: Cincinnati, Back to Chicago, to Kansas City
Chronicling the second leg of the 2023 Cross Country Craft Chocolate Odyssey #CCCCO – Cincinnati to Kansas City via Chicago. I am still getting settled into my new surroundings so my publishing these posts about my trip is slower than I wanted them to be.

... with more installments to come!

The last couple of weeks have been spent settling into Prescott, the first capital of the state of Arizona.

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Prescott is a town of about 45,000 people – less than 60% of the population of the NYC neighborhood of Brighton Beach Brooklyn I just left. The borough of Brooklyn clocks in at about 2.75 million inhabitants and the population of the five boroughs of NYC is greater than the entire state of Arizona. So yeah. A small town.

I spent much of my childhood in Southern California and my family regularly visited friends who lived in Cave Creek and Carefree just north of Phoenix. So, I am very familiar with the high desert in this part of the country and so much of the landscape is familiar and welcoming.

And I have been walking everywhere I can! There’s not a lot of foot traffic outside the downtown Prescott core and I am determined to figure out a way not to have to buy a car before I absolutely have to. Tilting at windmills, I know. But I’ve managed for over a decade without one and I like that feeling of freedom.