The Openness of late fall

We drove to Grandma Miller's bakery yesterday and got our usual order of Morning Glory muffins and chocolate eclairs. The drive was lovely but very different from recent weeks. The foliage season is over, as these photos, taken from the moving car, make clear.

The leaves are gone! ********* But I love this season, the openness, the lovely, fragile, lavender tint that covers everything. This little excursion followed my last physical therapy appointment, for now at least. Sort of a gift to myself for a job well done. My assessment showed gains in strength and balance. Now it's up to me to continue the daily exercises.

Zara Bode’s Little Big Band

Zara Bode is Stefan Amidon's wife and mother of Desmond and Vera. She is a fine singer and has a band which has a repertoire of "big band" songs from the early-mid-20th century, but only 7 people, and thus is only a little "big band." But those 7 people are all fantastic musicians and can really put out the sound. The seven are: Guitar: Alton Lathrop; Bass: Ty Gibbons; Percussion: Stefan Amidon; vocals: Zara Bode; Clarinet: Anna Patton; Saxaphone: Ron Kelly; Trumpet: Don Anderson. We went to the BMC Sat. eve for a concert, and it was great! They had gone through the vast big band repertoire and pulled out sort of spooky songs to make a Hallowe'en-themed concert, and it was fun. They even came out for the first song in ghost costumes! We heard a lot of songs we had never heard before.

The ZBLBB dressed as ghosts.

Alton, guitar, Ty, Bass; Stefan, percussion.

Zara, vocals; Anna, clarinet; Ron, sax; Don, trumpet.

The ZBLBB. ***************** Today is Hallowe'en. Not sure if we'll have trick or treaters or not; we have some candy, just in case. For us, a quiet day at home. Tomorrow I have a physical therapy appointment - it may be my last in this series. We are reading Toni Morrison's Song of Solomon for our Swarthmore Class - partly reading, partly listening to it's being read onAudible by the author. That is very satisfying. It has been very dry and the spring is on the low side. So we are being careful about water usage and hoping we will not have to turin off the pump. I don't think we are up for hauling water!

The last ten days

Ten days since the Underground Railroad OLLI presentation! There is another OLLI today, but we are not going. It's on "spooky Vermont places" - could be interesting but not high on our "must do" list. The big feature of these last ten days, I would say, has been the fall foliage and weather. It has been a beautiful fall - sunny, mild and colorful. I have not been out there getting fall foliage shots, but I did these very representative ones behind the Guilford Church

At River Singers, we had John Harrison as a guest leader. John comes down from Plainfield, VT, where he used to lead his own Gospel Choir. He taught us 3 songs from that repertoire. He is a character, but is a good teacher and fun to work with.

John Harrison.
Sunday, we sang in the choir at Dummerston and after church we went across the road to see the "mummers" - a local group of Morris Dancers who at this time of year go around to various towns and put on a mummers play - a mock "death and resurrection" play. very humorous and sometimes downright silly. We know several them well - e.g., Fred Breunig, Arthur Davis, and Paul Eric. Here are some scenes:

The Underground Railroad

Yesterday, we went to our second OLLI session in Springfield, VT - the topic was the Underground Railroad before the Civil War in Vermont. The presenter was Michelle Arnosky Sherburne, who is what I guess you could call an amateur historian - she does not have a PhD in history or an academic appointment, but she does have a passionate interest in the topic and has devoted 20 years or more to researching it and has self-published several books. She is most interested in finding people of that era who were involved in the U.R., and actual, still standing homes, barns, etc. where freedom-seeeking slaves were actually housed in Vermont. There is discussion among historians about how "cloak-and-dagger" the U.R. was in Vermont. Some think that while it is true that escaped slaves did travel through Vermont on their way to Canada, they did not have to be very worried about being caught because slave-catchers didn't usually come this far north. Ms. Sherburne thinks that might have been true to some extent early on, but after l850, the new federal law - the Fugitive Slave Act - upped the ante considerably, and agents did come into Vermont and people assisting escaped slaves were at risk of arrest. She focused her presentation on 4 "hubs" of the U.R. in Vermont: Springfield, Thetford, Burlington and Ferrisburg. She has identified several persons, and located some houses. She had a slide show, but we were in the back of the hall and couldn't see the screen very well. But we could hear just fine, and it was interesting, though it was not crisply organized. But there is a lot of information online, and my interest was certainly aroused. One item I was particularly interested in: a local Vermont minister, the Rev. Joshua Young (First Congregational Church (Unitarian), Burlington, VT), a "Garrisonian abolitionist" very much involved in the U.R., got wind of a funeral service that was to be held for abolitionist John Brown, executed for his role in the Harper's Ferry Raid. The funeral and burial were being held at John Brown's farm in North Elba, New York, just 60 miles or so west of Burlington. Young was the only ordained minister attending the funeral and was asked to preside, which he did. When he returned to his church in Burlington, he was viciously attacked by members of the congregation and forced to resign because of this involvement with John Brown. I wrote fairly extensively about John Brown in this blog back in July, 2010 (see the post titled "Weathersfield Congregational Church Service) when I was seeing some connections between John Brown's struggle against the evil of slavery and the contemporary struggle against fossil fuels and global warming, triggered by the Deepwater Horizon Oil Gusher which released an estimated 134,000,000 gallons of oil into the waters of the Gulf of Mexico over a 3-month period, April-July 2010. All of this still has a lot of resonance today in the current election season (Trump intends to undo all restraints on oil production if he wins).

Michelle A. Sherburne, lecturer.

Company Galore

This past weekend we were visited by four people: two women friends of Ellen's from Salem, Oregon, and two men friends of mine from California (and Maine). None of them actually spent a night here at the house, but Ellen's friends, Bonnie and Shelby, spent part of Friday, Saturday, Sunday and Monday here, and my friends, Phil and his son, Tom, my godson, met me for breakfast at the Guilford Country Store Sunday morning at 8:30a.m., and after breakfast we went to church at the Guilford Community Church (which is about a 100 yards from the store), and they left early to go to Logan airport in Boston for Tom's flight home to California. Phil returned to his summer home in Maine and will fly to Claremont, CA next week. Bonnie and Shelby flew home to Oregon yesterday. Bonnie and her husband, Roger (who died a year ago yesterday), became Ellen's friends when she lived in Salem and her then husband, John Peel, was on the faculty of Willamette University, where Roger taught art history. For a while, Ellen worked with Bonnie at The Arbor Cafe, which Bonnie co-owned, in Salem. Bonnie is also an artist. We have visited them frequently in Oregon since I came into Ellen's life, and we have had many wonderful times together. Ellen started sending Bonnie a post card every day some years ago, and came to call it her "snail blog." She has now sent Bonnie over 5000 post cards! Shelby, who is a VP for Development at Willamette, and whom Ellen had not met before this visit, heard about the "snail blog," saw the boxes of cards at Bonnie's house, was entranced, and wanted to meet Ellen. She wants to put on an exhibition of the snail blog in Salem! So she came out with Bonnie, and recorded an interview with Ellen talking about the whole project. That interview will provide a sound track for a video that will accompany the exhibit. Eliza and Robin came over on Friday to meet Bonnie and Shelby. Saturday, Ellen and I had supper with them at Burdick's Restaurant, in Walpole, NH, Sunday they went to church with us, and Monday Shelby made her recording. There was a lot of visiting at our house along the way. A very special visit. When we went to Burdick's, I had a big bowl of mussels, as did Shelby. I ate them all, by golly. While I was eating, Bonnie made a sketch of me on the brown paper used to protect the table cloth, tore it off and gave it to me. My time with Phil and Tom was much shorter, but still special. Tom is ratcheting up his involvement with music and is preparing both a concert and a CD (or whatever substitutes for a CD these days). He is a singer-songwriter and accompanies himself on the guitar. 26 years ago, he accompanied me when I sang at his sister, Susanna's wedding in London. In talking with Phil, I mentioned John Cobb, whom I had learned about from Shelby - a faculty member at Claremont School of Theology whom Shelby came to know when CST (a Methodist school) was considering merging with Willamette (also a Methodist school). Turned out Phil knew John Cobb because he is a resident of Pilgrim Place, the retirement community where Phil lives in Claremont. And while I had never heard of John Cobb, a bit of research revealed that he and I shared a teacher at U of Chicago Divinity School: Bernard Loomer, who taught my Constructive Theology course. John Cobb (like Loomer) is a "Process Theologian" and has written extensively on process theology and the ecological crisis in ways that seem similar to my son John's work on "Contemplative Ecology." So ... lots of resonances in these visits!

Bonnie and Shelby

Bonnie, Shelby and Ellen.

Robin and Eliza.

Bonnie and Shelby at Burdick's.

Bonnie's sketch of me she made at Burdick's.

My bowl of mussells.

Hard to believe !

Today is the last day of September! Officially, we are nine days into Fall. And indeed, days are cooler, leaves are turning. I am very tired tonight. That is because i had a real workout at physical therapy today, but also because the weekend was unusually full. My nephew, Daniel Crockett, and his friend, Julio, visited us from Chicago, and Sunday we went to a special concert by Zadashe, a choral group from the Republic of Georgia. All of that involved navigating strange places and terrains, and that is tiring. E.g., we met Daniel at the Brattleboro Farmers Market and ate lunch there. For dinner we went to Panda North, our favorite Chinese restaurant. . .

Musicians at the Farmers Market - the spot we agreed to meet Daniel. e

At Panda: Daniel, John, Cynthia, Ellen, Me, Julio.

Members of Zadashe performing at Westminster-West Church.

Zadashe publicity photo.

Yet more catching up.

I can't remember recently going this long without writing a post for this blog. I'm not sure exactly why that is the case, but it is what it is, and this is an effort to bring things up to date. I apologize to my followers who have been wondering and worrying. I'm okay! I think the last post was about the Primary Election in Vermont - that was a month ago! Yikes!! The next thing after that that I can remember was on Thursday the 15th - we had John and Cynthia over for supper on the deck - a lovely summer evening meal. Ellen made her signature veggie salad platter - beets, potatoes, carrots, green beans, deviled eggs, etc. I have a photo of Cynthia showing off the platter - a work of art as well as being delicious!

Cynthia displaying the beautiful veggie platter Ellen made.*************** We have actually seen quite a bit of John and Cynthia lately - that would not have been possible if they had done what they originally planned to do in August, which was to spend three weeks on Grand Manan Island in the Bay of Fundy. They had reserved a little cabin at the "Hole-in-the-Wall Campground" and had planned to drive up in their Honda Fit, with their kayaks on the roof rack. Sadly, just days before they planned to leave, the clutch on the Fit began to fail, making it very difficult to shift gears. Their attempts to get it fixed in time to go on their trip all failed, and to make a long story short, they cancelled the trip. As it turned out, they got a new clutch installed in September and were able to re-schedule their trip - they left for Grand Manan on September 8th and will return on the 17th - not as long a trip as they originally planned, but they are having great weather and really enjoying their time there. Meanwhile, back in August, they came with us to a concert starring Keith Murphy and Becky Tracy and two of their friends at the Retreat Farm (Saturday the 17th); then they came with us for an evening dinner cruise on a boat on Lake Sunapee in New Hampshire (Tuesday the 20th), and then came over at least twice later that week, once to have a long and fruitful talk about my physical condition and issues of safety, especially here at the house (e.g., things like going up and down stairs), and once to actually get some things done (like putting in a second railing on the stairs to the third floor). We've had some good times together that would not have happened if they had not cancelled their trip. That, I guess, is an example of being given lemons and making lemonade. But for John, especially, there is no substitute for going to Grand Manan, so I'm glad they are there now.

Keith and Becky and friends at the Retreat Farm concert. ******************* Of course, other things happened as well. Sunday Aug. 18th there was a Hallowell sing for Tom Goldschmid and Kathy Leo. Tom has pancreatic cancer, but is doing fairly well at the present time. It was very special to sing for them. We sat in a circle in their living room, and they sang with us. There was also a Village Harmony concert that same Sunday afternoon, at the Guilford Church. This was a group that had a camp in Westminster-West, led by Mary Cay Brass, Kathy Bullock, and Carl Linich, and this concert was their culminating event. We had to dash down to the church right after the Hallowell sing, and even then got there a little late. But it was a great concert - a really interesting repertoire. I didn't get to talk to Carl Linich, but it was wonderful seeing him again, and hearing the Georgian music he led. When I went on the Northern Harmony tour back in 2001, he was my roommate, so I got to know him pretty well.

Village Harmony concert at the Guilford Church. **************** Monday was the start of the Democratic Convention in Chicago - Monday night was Joe Biden night - but I also had a doctor's appointment Monday afternoon. Tuesday the 20th was a special day, as I mentiioned above - John and Cynthia came with us to Lake Sunapee, NH - about an hour's drive - to go on a dinner cruise in a boat on the lake. We were early, so we drove around the lake, which is pretty heavily developed with cottages and mansions. That was an interesting little tour. When it came time to board the boat, we were disappointed to learn that the boat we thought we would be boarding had been reserved for a private wedding, so we were put on another boat - the "MV Mt. Sunapee" which was not quite as charming - a bit newer and with less character. But it had everything we needed, and actually had an open-air top deck which the original boat did not have which Cynthia and John both enjoyed and was especially good for taking photos - no obstructions! So it worked out fine. It was a lovely evening and we got a nice sunset. It was a buffet dinner which Ellen thought was at best average in terms of food quality, but which I enjoyed (I knew it wasn't anything like what she would prepare, but it wasn't bad). There were ample gluten-free and vegetarian options for John (we had checked that out ahead of time). We had a good time.

Scenes from the Lake Sunapee dinner cruise.****** The Democratic Convention continued through Thursday, and there were a lot outstanding speeches, with the prize perhaps going to Michelle Obama. Overall, it was an uplifting event for sure.

Michelle Obama. ********* Thursday the 22nd, I had a gathering of retired clergy in the morning at the Dummerston Church - another good discussion, this time on the chapter titled "Loneliness," (i.e., as one grows older, one loses family and friends and watches one's world fade away). In the evening we had a Hallowell rehearsal at the West-West church - something we always enjoy. Then we came home and listened to the final speeches of the DNC, including Kamala's acceptance speech. A lot of good energy there! On Friday the 23rd, we went down to Shutesbury to have supper with Katie and Brendon. We had a lovely supper on their screened porch. The only glitch was that when we left to come home, I left my laptop on the porch. But Katie brought it up to the Brattleboro Farmer's Market the next morning and met Ellen there. I didn't go to the Market with Ellen because Peter Amidon came to the house to visit me. That was very nice. I'm not sure if he had a specific reason for coming or just wanted to be in touch, but he did offer to set up a wood bee for us to get a pile of wood stacked. Ellen normally would say, "I can handle it," but lately she is having hip and leg pain and stacking wood isn't so easy anymore. So I think she is appreciative (though it hasn't happened yet). Sunday there was a Union Service of the usual four UCC churches (Guilford, Dummerston, Centre Church and First Church, West Brattleboro), this time at Centre Church. There was a good congregation and a good choir, led by Mary Milkey-May, whom we like - a good choir director and a fine organist. Centre Church has a very nice pipe organ. Scott Couper, pastor at Centre Church, gave a very rousing sermon. Centre Church is located in the heart of downtown Brattleboro, and a lot of homeless people spend the night on the church lawn. The church has even installed a porta-potty for their convenience. But Scott has to pick up a lot of needles and trash every morning. Housing is so expensive in Brattleboro that there are more and more people who have nowhere to live. It's a big problem, and Scott clearly feels the church has a responsibility to help alleviate it, but the question is - exactly what should it do? How much should it have to do? It was a timely sermon. After the service, the "coffee hour" was really a full-blown lunch - we didn't eat the full spread, but what I had was good.

The coffe hour "spread" at Center Church. ******************* That brings us up to the last week of August - a week in which John and Cynthia came over several times, for one reason or another. The highlight of the week was a visit from my granddaughter, Katie, and her friend, Gabby. We hadn't seen Katie since she came last year with her housemate, Christian. Things have changed, and now Katie is living with Gabby! Gabby (a.k.a. Gabrielle) is a very easy person to be around, and Katie seemed relaxed and happy with her. They were going to a wedding in New Hampshire, and came a couple of days early to see us. We met John and Cynthia at Panda North for supper Friday, and on Saturday, Katie and Gabby took a trip around Vermont because Gabby had not been in Vermont before, and then J&C came over Saturday and joined us for supper here at the house. K&G enjoyed looking at photo albums of Katie when she was a little girl. K&G left for the wedding Sunday morning, so we said our goodbyes when we went to church.

Above: Gabby (left) and Katie (right). Below: Katie (left) and Gabby (right) looking at photo albums. ****************** I still have two weeks to cover but I'm going to get this already very long post up now!