Library day

I'm at McCabe library on the campus of Swarthmore College. I'm a bit early - the library opens at 10 and it's 9:45. But it 's lovely outside. Students are waiting to get in. I thought the college snack bar would be open but it isn't. I haven't had a lot of breakfast. Maybe the library has a snack bar. A lot of colleges do these days.

                                       Swarthmore College 

                                    McCabe Library

Oberlin, OH

We're having breakfast in Oberlin, OH, one of our favorite towns in the US, at the Black River Cafe:

                                      View from our table

If I could live anywhere I wanted to, Oberlin would be one of my top choices, because of the college, an abundance of fine pipe organs, and favorite restaurants,  book stores, etc., we have come to enjoy.

But it's not close to any family, and it is probably unaffordable. 

Norwalk, OH

 We're in an Econolodge motel in Norwalk, OH  tonight. We left Bartlett this morning at about 10:15 or so. We didn't  feel under great pressure so we didn't push too hard. We got off I-80 a little earlier than usual in southwestern Chicagoland and drove through a good bit of Gary, IN on Ridge Road. Boy, what a revelation. One boarded up home and building after another. Homes under foreclosure being sold for a few thousand dollars. A very sad sight. We continued on U.S. 6 all the way across Indiana, stopping at Amish Acres for an early supper, called "The Threshers" meal. I guess you've just come in from the fields and want a lot to eat. Here's what the dining hall looked like - empty, because we were eating at 3:30pm

                    Dining room at Amish Acres

One little bonus was that a peacock was looking in the window: 

  

         How much is that peacock in the window?

Along the way I read from Great Northern, which is about a group of children trying to prevent a villainous egg-collector from stealing the eggs of a rare Great Northern Diver they have discovered nesting on a loch in the Hebrides. It's good. 

Yesterday we had lunch with Suzy McQuen and clowned a bit at the table:

                     Maggie and Suzy and Ellen clowning with cheese spread cans. 

Rest time

Yesterday was a time of rest, for the most part. We both slept in pretty late, had a late breakfast on the back deck while M&J went to an eye appointment for Maggie, but then it started raining, so we moved indoors. Then we just sort of hung out; had a bit of lunch; Ellen went to Goodwill looking for books; I managed to access the JSTOR periodical archive by using my connection with Brown U as as alum, which I hadn't been able to do before; we had an early supper date with Carol Plagge at Alexander's; then came home and watched Serena and Venus Williams play each other at the U.S. Open - that was some tennis! The we watched Chopped and came to bed.

Today will be a family day - Suzy is coming for lunch and tonight is "family night," for pizza, only we're not sure who can come. Daniel we think is still in Europe on a vacation, Peter has to work, Suzy has to work, which is why she's coming for lunch. So it may be just Becky and Mark. Which is fine. The weather has cooled down a bit, so I hope we can get in a nice walk today.

Tomorrow morning, we will head on out for points east; we'll be in Swarthmore for the weekend. I'll have a chance to do some things on the Tolles MS project at the Friends Library there, which is where the original MS is. I need to check some things I can't decipher on the copy I have, and look up a few more citations I couldn't find at the Univ. of Colorado Library. And then -- home!

We're at Maggie and Jerry's

 This is my 501st post in this blog! Yesterday was #500!! A milestone!!

Yesterday, Labor Day, we spent mostly on the road, driving from Columbia, MO to Bartlett, IL, which is approx. 400 miles.  The way we do it, it takes about 8 hours. We go on Rte. U.S. 54 over to Louisiana, MO, and cross the Mississippi there, and then work our way over to Jacksonville, IL where we pick up I-72, which runs into I-55 at Springfield. That takes us up to Chicago, and I-355, and then Rte. 20 takes us to Bartlett. Only this time I was so tired, I dozed off and we missed the Rte. 20 exit, and the Elgin-0'Hare expressway exit, and had to take Golf Road over to Bartlett road and then go down to M&J's. We got there a little after 6pm, which was fine. The one big difference in this trip was the hot, humid weather. It was in the 90's and sticky all the way. We have been blessedly free of that most of this trip.

Back at Columbia, Katie had an 8am filming date with her film crew, so she came by our motel room a bit after 7 and had a bite to eat from the Bfst buffet, and we heard more about the movie she is filming. If you use Firefox to go to     http://thecrowdfundingcentre.com/project/FCB70C    you can watch a video that Katie filmed about  "The Bike Thief" - the film she is working on. You can even make a donation to help fund it. (For some reason that link doesn't work when I try to use it on Safari. I have no idea what will happen using Internet Explorer. Good luck!)

When we came to the Mississippi, we found that the bridge was up - it's a drawbridge. A barge was coming through. We were the lead car on the bridge, so I got some pix:

                             Bridge is up!

                                Here comes the barge!

                                          Going through

                                            T'other side

At Springfield, we stopped at a Culver's we had stopped at before. I had half a Reuben sandwich left over from Sunday night supper at the brew pub, so I brought that in - discreetly - and ordered a bowl of soup and - discreetly - ate my sandwich with the soup, topped by a scoop of the "flavor of the day," cherry cheese cake, which was surprisingly good.

I usually read aloud in the car and today was no exception. I read a couple of chapters from Robert Athearn's The Mythic West, a book I had come across while working on the Tolles MS project, and also a few chapters from Arthur Ransome's Great Northern, which is the last in the wonderful Swallows and Amazons series. But I was fighting drowsiness all the way. I think both Ellen and I were feeling a letdown from our time in Boulder. Ellen felt exhausted too, but fortunately she has no tendency to get drowsy at the wheel. We were glad to get to Bartlett safe and sound. Becky was there too, with her friend, Mark, and we all had supper together. We managed to stay awake through supper and after, but were happy to fall into bed. 

Columbia tonight

We're in Columbia, MO tonight. We just had supper with Katie at the Flat Branch pub, which is a favorite place here but had one disadvantage - it's very noisy. It's hard to talk. But we did, a lot. We heard all about the film Katie has been making - she is the camera woman. Except for two boys in the cast, it's all women - all Stephens College students. She is  very excited about it - especially because the Director - her friend, Aud Robies - wanted the camera work to be like that of the TV series It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia and Katie has really nailed it.

She' coming by the morning before she goes to film location at 8am!

Colby, KS

We said our goodbyes at about 1:00 this afternoon - a lot of love flowing back and forth - and we headed for the  Boulder Farmers market where we knew we could get a good lunch. It was extra-large today, augmented by a big crafts fair. I got a falafel wrap; Ellen a pizza. A remarkable thing happened-walking through the crowds, a woman seemed to sort of greet me with a smile. I thought she was just an extra- friendly Boulderite, but she came up a moment later and said, "I think I know you! " And she did. It was Kathy Bernstein, who lived in Brattleboro for several years and sang in the Blanche Moyse Chorale with me back when Blanche directed it. I had not seen her for at least ten years, so I was amazed that she recognized me so quickly. She said that when she saw us, "Vermont" came into her head, but then she thought, "No, that's impossible." So that was cool!

We went east on Arapahoe out of Boulder and managed to get on I-70 way east and avoided a lot of Denver traffic. Then we drove about five hours to Colby, KS, where we are tonight.

                     The Kansas Welcome Center on I-70.

An information placard at the Kansas Welcome Center, showing scenic by- ways. 

It has a nice Walt Whitman quote, extolling the beauty of the Plains. 

                         We were treated to quite a Kansas sunset!