Scene from Chief Joseph Highway
We'll be in Columbia, MO tonight -- it will be about a 11-hour drive -- and tomorrow we'll visit Southeast Missouri State University (SEMO) in Cape Girardeau, MO with Katie.
Tuesday, June 29, 2010
Mullen, NE
We had a long drive from Worland, WY to Mullen, NE yesterday. We lucked out in finding a very nice motel in Mullen, the Sandhills Motel. The only downside was that we are right next to the train track and wow! are there a lot of freight trains during the night, and they all blow their whistles as they roar by! But we did manage to get some sleep. Here is one of the many lovely scenes from yesterday's drive down the Chief Joseph Scenic Byway.
Monday, June 28, 2010
Another beautiful day
Bull elk in Yellowstone
Lanceleaved Stonecrop
Parry's Townsendia
Thursday, June 24, 2010
A Beautiful Day
Yesterday was a beautiful day. Ellen and I got up early and watched the US-Algeria soccer game in the World Cup competition - an exciting game which was tied 0-0 until the second minute of overtime when the U.S. scored a goal and thus not only won the game but won their group of four and will advance to the "Sweet Sixteen." Then we took off for Teton National Park, and hiked the Two Oceans trail. We didn't do the whole trail, but we did about 4 1/2 miles r.t., which is about the most I've done in one spurt since my knee surgery last fall, and it was fine. Then we went on a 2-hour float down the Snake River in a raft, which was wonderful. The river was pretty full, but there were no real rapids. We saw an eaglet sitting in its nest, a couple of beavers, blue herons, but no moose, elk or bear. What we saw a lot of were trees uprooted by heavy spring rains and deposited in and alongside the river, which made it interesting for our raft guide. After the float we ate a hearty meal at Dornan's Chuckwagon -- outdoor dining with a magnificent view of the Cathedral Range. All in all a splendid day.
Otherwise, we have had a wonderful visit with Paul and Jenny and have really enjoyed Max. We will really miss being with him every day and watching him grow. His verbal and physical development has been amazing in the time we have been here, and he is the sweetest little guy imaginable!
Friday we will head to Yellowstone where we will spend two nights, then on to Columbia, MO, and while there we'll visit SEMO (Southeast Missouri State University) in Cape Girardeau, MO -- where Katie is matriculating in the fall. That will be a very interesting day trip. Then back through Bartlett, IL for another little visit with my brother and at least some of the Crockett clan in the Chicago area, and from thence -- back east. I hope to be able to do another post before we get home.
Otherwise, we have had a wonderful visit with Paul and Jenny and have really enjoyed Max. We will really miss being with him every day and watching him grow. His verbal and physical development has been amazing in the time we have been here, and he is the sweetest little guy imaginable!
Friday we will head to Yellowstone where we will spend two nights, then on to Columbia, MO, and while there we'll visit SEMO (Southeast Missouri State University) in Cape Girardeau, MO -- where Katie is matriculating in the fall. That will be a very interesting day trip. Then back through Bartlett, IL for another little visit with my brother and at least some of the Crockett clan in the Chicago area, and from thence -- back east. I hope to be able to do another post before we get home.
Sunday, June 20, 2010
The Failure of Human Imagination and Thinking the Unthinkable
In my last blog I spoke of there being many layers of experiencing this trip. Last night I lay in bed awake much of the night dwelling at one of those layers, thinking the unthinkable. Yesterday, Ellen and I took a walk up one of our favorite trails nearby, the Long Point Trail. It is a walk up a canyon that opens into beautiful meadows and hillsides filled with wildflowers. We took this hike two years ago when we were here a little later in the summer, at a time when everything was in full bloom. It was spectacular. Yesterday was different, both because it was earlier in the summer, and on top of that, spring has been retarded this year because of consistently cool weather, so a lot of flowers were not yet in bloom. Nevertheless, Ellen identified 27 different species of blooming plants. It was very beautiful and quiet. We sat a long time on a log and just listened. We heard the songs of many different birds; we heard the wind in the pine trees; it was a time of calm.
But it was different this year for another reason. Something is happening far from here which has cast a pall for me over the full enjoyment of that moment of beauty. I’m thinking, of course, of the oil gusher in the Gulf of Mexico. I call it a gusher because that’s what it is, isn’t it? Everyone calls it an oil spill, but it isn’t really a spill. The weeks since that gusher first started spewing oil into the ocean have been a case study in the inability of the human mind to grasp certain realities. The recent Congressional hearings that put the CEO of BP on the hot seat were a particularly egregious example. Tony Hayward probably deserves all the calumny that was heaped upon him, but then, he is hardly alone, is he? When it comes right down to it, we all deserve to be in the hot seat, because we all use oil, and BP was just trying to slake our thirst for it, however incompetently.
I’ve been thinking – what if that gusher never stops? I haven’t heard anyone in the media ask that question. There is talk of eventually being able to drill another well that will take the pressure off the existing broken pipe and make it possible finally to cap it. But what if that doesn’t work? We’ve been given a lot of assurances that have proven false, so maybe we’re entitled now to doubt that assurance as well and to think the unthinkable – that it may never stop. Now of course, ”never” is a long time. I guess that eventually, the reservoir of oil that that broken pipe is tapped into will be exhausted. I wonder how many gallons of oil are in that reservoir? Someone probably has an estimate. It is revealing now, in light of the gusher, to realize that we humans had planned all along to empty the oil out of that reservoir and burn it. That’s just business as usual, and has been for a long time. But now that the oil is being pumped directly into the ocean, instead of being diverted through your and my gas tank first, it’s a catastrophe.
John Crockett has pointed out that what is happening in the Gulf right now in a very visible way has actually been going on for a long time, but in a more invisible and insidious way. It is called the acidification of the ocean. Extracting oil from the earth and burning it has gradually increased the acidity of the ocean. This has already had a devastating affect on ocean life, and will continue to do so for centuries to come, even if we were to stop burning oil today, completely! Cf. the following quote from a blog (http://oceanacidification.wordpress.com/):
Ocean acidity has increased by 30 percent since the start of the Industrial Revolution. If current trends continue, it could rise another 100 percent by the end of this century, exceeding the highest acidity levels during the past 20 million years. Increased ocean acidity could devastate coral reefs, shellfish populations and countless marine animals that rely on them for food and protection.
So the oil gusher is actually just making more visible a process that our consumption of oil has been causing for a long time. I don’t remember seeing any headlines about this. No front-page, two-inch bold headlines, screaming, OIL CONSUMPTION BY HUMANS KILLING OCEAN LIFE! I guess when something happens very, very gradually, it isn’t news.
But now, it is news. All that oil that we had planned to burn is now just being pumped right into the ocean. And what if it never stops? I find it interesting to realize that to my knowledge, no novelist, no poet, no visionary, has imagined the end of the world being caused by an oil gusher. I’m remembering Nevil Shute’s novel (made into a powerful movie in 1959 and again in 2000) On the Beach – a title which, by the way, suddenly takes on a new, ironic resonance. It was about the end of the world, but by nuclear war, not by oil. A lot of novels have been written about a nuclear apocalypse (e.g., A Canticle for Leibowitz), or a viral pandemic apocalypse (e.g., Earth Abides and Emergence), and even an “end of oil” apocalypse (e.g., World Made by Hand and Sidewall) but none that I know of about an undersea oil gusher apocalypse. Maybe someone will write one now. We need to understand this failure in human imagination. I wonder if this fall, if the oil is still gushing, there will be college courses put together that will explore this phenomenon, this failure to imagine an apocalypse caused by oil, and at the same time explore a genre of literature that has suddenly taken on new significance: apocalyptic literature.
Human imagination may have failed to grasp the details, but there is certainly no lack of literature that has imagined the end of life on this planet, and it may be that now, suddenly, some of those words are going to jump off the page. I’m recalling, e.g., T.S. Elliot’s poem, The Hollow Men, in which the last lines are
This is the way the world ends,
This is the way the world ends,
This is the way the world ends,
Not with a bang, but a whimper.
I’m recalling passages in the Book of Revelation like…
….and the third part of the sea became blood; and there died the third part of the creatures which were in the sea, even they that had life; and the third part of the ships was destroyed. And the third angel sounded, and there fell from heaven a great star, burning as a torch, and it fell upon the third part of the rivers, and upon the fountains of the waters; 1and the name of the star is called Wormwood: and the third part of the waters became wormwood; and many men died of the waters, because they were made bitter….
I wonder, if the human imagination had imagined an oil apocalypse, fifty or a hundred years ago, would it have made a difference? Did novels like On the Beach actually help prevent nuclear war? Has our ability to imagine a nuclear holocaust, aided by novelists and poets, actually shaped our attitude toward nuclear weapons, and created a restraint? Did the famous “doomsday clock” which was created by the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, which was set at one point at “2 minutes before midnight” i.e., only a short time before a nuclear holocaust, actually shape the attitude of the public and even world leaders? (Today it is “six minutes before midnight”). And if there had been a similar “clock” for the likelihood of an oil holocaust, would that have changed our attitude toward oil? Would it have been enough to cause us to “kick the habit” of our addiction to oil? Unfortunately, we will never know. And the big question now is, is it too late?
By my estimate, sometime between December 15, 2010 and May 22, 2011 (depending on the estimate you use of how much oil is spewing out every day), a billion gallons of oil will have been pumped into the ocean. A billion gallons! Just later this year! Or at the latest, about this time next year! How ludicrous that we have been comparing the Deepwater Horizon gusher to the Exxon-Valdez spill. We should be comparing it to Chernobyl, at the very least. This is the oil industry’s Chernobyl. Perhaps eventually, if it just goes on and on, we will have to compare it to events like the eruption of the volcano millions of years ago, that created the Yellowstone caldera, that dumped 6 feet of debris over half of North America!
The media have highlighted the devastation to the oyster and shrimp industries. President Obama has urged BP to create a $20 billion fund to compensate Gulf Coast residents. Fair enough. But what if it never stops? How could the devastation caused by a billion gallons of oil in the ocean be compensated by a mere $20 billion? Or even $200 billion? Or $200 trillion? How much oil can the ocean absorb before all marine life is killed? And long before all ocean life is dead, how will financial markets react to that possibility? How long will it be before the effect will be a world-wide economic collapse? World-wide famine? How long before a lot of people feel that there is no hope for the future of this planet? How long before there will be mass suicides? The mind reels.
But maybe it will stop. I am praying that a way can be found. Maybe it will be capped by Labor Day of this year, and only ½ billion gallons will have been released, instead of 1 billion gallons. But will our attitude toward oil then be changed? Will a near-holocaust, just short of a full-scale holocaust, cause us to stop using oil? Many voices are already saying No! to that suggestion. They are saying we can’t give up oil. Oil, they say, is essential to the both the local and the world economy. We have to accept the risk of another Deepwater Horizon-like gusher deep under the ocean. It’s just the way it is. Just this morning I was reading the New Orleans Times-Picayune, which was lambasting President Obama for “not getting it” in his placing a 6-months moratorium on off-shore drilling. “Doesn’t he realize the impact this is having on the people in the oil industry and on this state?” they cried. Obviously, ending our oil addiction will cause great turmoil and upheaval, and cause immense suffering for people whose livelihoods have been dependent on oil – and that is a lot of people! But won’t that suffering be minor, compared to the suffering that will occur if that gusher just goes on and on and on? Or another like it?
There is another concept we need to understand more fully – the Greek concept of hybris, usually translated “pride,” but that translation doesn’t quite do it justice. In modern terms, it’s thinking we humans are superior to all other creatures. It’s thinking we can do anything, that we can solve any problem, that our technology can fix anything that goes wrong. The Greeks understood that when we are possessed by hybris, we are riding for a fall. Hybris inevitably leads to nemesis. It seems to me that drilling for oil deep under the ocean is a clear case of hybris.
Today (June 19th) is Ellen’s and my fifth wedding anniversary. I am so immensely grateful for our marriage. Every day I think “What a lucky man I am!” “I am so blessed.” It is sad to have that joy and gratitude marred by these dark thoughts. But there must be thousands of residents of the coast of Louisiana who have celebrated anniversaries and birthdays during these dark days, whose special day was utterly devoid of joy. But since it is our special day, let me end on a more positive note. This morning, Ellen, Jenny, Max and I went to Alpine Mountain Days, sort of a fair with events that celebrate western themes and culture. One event was a horse and buggy ride around town. I sat up on the buckboard next to the driver and I really picked his brain. A buggy from his company, Star Valley Buggy and Harness, in Afton, WY, costs about $5000, and a horse about $3000. It would be much cheaper, he said, in Goshen, IN, which is a center for the Amish and is where he buys horses and buggies, and then trailers them out here to Afton for re-sale. In Goshen, he thought, you could get a horse trained for pulling a buggy for about $1500. Not just any horse can pull a buggy, but one that is well-trained to do so is as reliable as can be. The horse pulling our buggy was 16 years old and had been pulling buggies all it’s life. “Your wife could drive it,” he said. (A little gender bias there, but we’ll overlook that. We get the point. He could just as well have said, “Even you could drive it!”). An ambulance went by, siren screaming, but our horse didn’t so much as flick its tail. Average speed is about 12 miles an hour. I asked him what it costs to feed the horse. He said in the summer, the horse pastures and lives on grass. In the winter, it consumes about 3 tons of hay. In WY, hay costs from about $60 a ton to maybe as high as $150 a ton. That’s a lot cheaper than gasoline for sure. We’re spending at least $2500 a year on gasoline. He thought in most states it is legal for a horse and buggy to be on the highway.
We enjoyed our ride. Max really seemed to like it. The sound of the horse clip-clopping along was very satisfying. And it really got me thinking!
But it was different this year for another reason. Something is happening far from here which has cast a pall for me over the full enjoyment of that moment of beauty. I’m thinking, of course, of the oil gusher in the Gulf of Mexico. I call it a gusher because that’s what it is, isn’t it? Everyone calls it an oil spill, but it isn’t really a spill. The weeks since that gusher first started spewing oil into the ocean have been a case study in the inability of the human mind to grasp certain realities. The recent Congressional hearings that put the CEO of BP on the hot seat were a particularly egregious example. Tony Hayward probably deserves all the calumny that was heaped upon him, but then, he is hardly alone, is he? When it comes right down to it, we all deserve to be in the hot seat, because we all use oil, and BP was just trying to slake our thirst for it, however incompetently.
I’ve been thinking – what if that gusher never stops? I haven’t heard anyone in the media ask that question. There is talk of eventually being able to drill another well that will take the pressure off the existing broken pipe and make it possible finally to cap it. But what if that doesn’t work? We’ve been given a lot of assurances that have proven false, so maybe we’re entitled now to doubt that assurance as well and to think the unthinkable – that it may never stop. Now of course, ”never” is a long time. I guess that eventually, the reservoir of oil that that broken pipe is tapped into will be exhausted. I wonder how many gallons of oil are in that reservoir? Someone probably has an estimate. It is revealing now, in light of the gusher, to realize that we humans had planned all along to empty the oil out of that reservoir and burn it. That’s just business as usual, and has been for a long time. But now that the oil is being pumped directly into the ocean, instead of being diverted through your and my gas tank first, it’s a catastrophe.
John Crockett has pointed out that what is happening in the Gulf right now in a very visible way has actually been going on for a long time, but in a more invisible and insidious way. It is called the acidification of the ocean. Extracting oil from the earth and burning it has gradually increased the acidity of the ocean. This has already had a devastating affect on ocean life, and will continue to do so for centuries to come, even if we were to stop burning oil today, completely! Cf. the following quote from a blog (http://oceanacidification.wordpress.com/):
Ocean acidity has increased by 30 percent since the start of the Industrial Revolution. If current trends continue, it could rise another 100 percent by the end of this century, exceeding the highest acidity levels during the past 20 million years. Increased ocean acidity could devastate coral reefs, shellfish populations and countless marine animals that rely on them for food and protection.
So the oil gusher is actually just making more visible a process that our consumption of oil has been causing for a long time. I don’t remember seeing any headlines about this. No front-page, two-inch bold headlines, screaming, OIL CONSUMPTION BY HUMANS KILLING OCEAN LIFE! I guess when something happens very, very gradually, it isn’t news.
But now, it is news. All that oil that we had planned to burn is now just being pumped right into the ocean. And what if it never stops? I find it interesting to realize that to my knowledge, no novelist, no poet, no visionary, has imagined the end of the world being caused by an oil gusher. I’m remembering Nevil Shute’s novel (made into a powerful movie in 1959 and again in 2000) On the Beach – a title which, by the way, suddenly takes on a new, ironic resonance. It was about the end of the world, but by nuclear war, not by oil. A lot of novels have been written about a nuclear apocalypse (e.g., A Canticle for Leibowitz), or a viral pandemic apocalypse (e.g., Earth Abides and Emergence), and even an “end of oil” apocalypse (e.g., World Made by Hand and Sidewall) but none that I know of about an undersea oil gusher apocalypse. Maybe someone will write one now. We need to understand this failure in human imagination. I wonder if this fall, if the oil is still gushing, there will be college courses put together that will explore this phenomenon, this failure to imagine an apocalypse caused by oil, and at the same time explore a genre of literature that has suddenly taken on new significance: apocalyptic literature.
Human imagination may have failed to grasp the details, but there is certainly no lack of literature that has imagined the end of life on this planet, and it may be that now, suddenly, some of those words are going to jump off the page. I’m recalling, e.g., T.S. Elliot’s poem, The Hollow Men, in which the last lines are
This is the way the world ends,
This is the way the world ends,
This is the way the world ends,
Not with a bang, but a whimper.
I’m recalling passages in the Book of Revelation like…
….and the third part of the sea became blood; and there died the third part of the creatures which were in the sea, even they that had life; and the third part of the ships was destroyed. And the third angel sounded, and there fell from heaven a great star, burning as a torch, and it fell upon the third part of the rivers, and upon the fountains of the waters; 1and the name of the star is called Wormwood: and the third part of the waters became wormwood; and many men died of the waters, because they were made bitter….
I wonder, if the human imagination had imagined an oil apocalypse, fifty or a hundred years ago, would it have made a difference? Did novels like On the Beach actually help prevent nuclear war? Has our ability to imagine a nuclear holocaust, aided by novelists and poets, actually shaped our attitude toward nuclear weapons, and created a restraint? Did the famous “doomsday clock” which was created by the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, which was set at one point at “2 minutes before midnight” i.e., only a short time before a nuclear holocaust, actually shape the attitude of the public and even world leaders? (Today it is “six minutes before midnight”). And if there had been a similar “clock” for the likelihood of an oil holocaust, would that have changed our attitude toward oil? Would it have been enough to cause us to “kick the habit” of our addiction to oil? Unfortunately, we will never know. And the big question now is, is it too late?
By my estimate, sometime between December 15, 2010 and May 22, 2011 (depending on the estimate you use of how much oil is spewing out every day), a billion gallons of oil will have been pumped into the ocean. A billion gallons! Just later this year! Or at the latest, about this time next year! How ludicrous that we have been comparing the Deepwater Horizon gusher to the Exxon-Valdez spill. We should be comparing it to Chernobyl, at the very least. This is the oil industry’s Chernobyl. Perhaps eventually, if it just goes on and on, we will have to compare it to events like the eruption of the volcano millions of years ago, that created the Yellowstone caldera, that dumped 6 feet of debris over half of North America!
The media have highlighted the devastation to the oyster and shrimp industries. President Obama has urged BP to create a $20 billion fund to compensate Gulf Coast residents. Fair enough. But what if it never stops? How could the devastation caused by a billion gallons of oil in the ocean be compensated by a mere $20 billion? Or even $200 billion? Or $200 trillion? How much oil can the ocean absorb before all marine life is killed? And long before all ocean life is dead, how will financial markets react to that possibility? How long will it be before the effect will be a world-wide economic collapse? World-wide famine? How long before a lot of people feel that there is no hope for the future of this planet? How long before there will be mass suicides? The mind reels.
But maybe it will stop. I am praying that a way can be found. Maybe it will be capped by Labor Day of this year, and only ½ billion gallons will have been released, instead of 1 billion gallons. But will our attitude toward oil then be changed? Will a near-holocaust, just short of a full-scale holocaust, cause us to stop using oil? Many voices are already saying No! to that suggestion. They are saying we can’t give up oil. Oil, they say, is essential to the both the local and the world economy. We have to accept the risk of another Deepwater Horizon-like gusher deep under the ocean. It’s just the way it is. Just this morning I was reading the New Orleans Times-Picayune, which was lambasting President Obama for “not getting it” in his placing a 6-months moratorium on off-shore drilling. “Doesn’t he realize the impact this is having on the people in the oil industry and on this state?” they cried. Obviously, ending our oil addiction will cause great turmoil and upheaval, and cause immense suffering for people whose livelihoods have been dependent on oil – and that is a lot of people! But won’t that suffering be minor, compared to the suffering that will occur if that gusher just goes on and on and on? Or another like it?
There is another concept we need to understand more fully – the Greek concept of hybris, usually translated “pride,” but that translation doesn’t quite do it justice. In modern terms, it’s thinking we humans are superior to all other creatures. It’s thinking we can do anything, that we can solve any problem, that our technology can fix anything that goes wrong. The Greeks understood that when we are possessed by hybris, we are riding for a fall. Hybris inevitably leads to nemesis. It seems to me that drilling for oil deep under the ocean is a clear case of hybris.
Today (June 19th) is Ellen’s and my fifth wedding anniversary. I am so immensely grateful for our marriage. Every day I think “What a lucky man I am!” “I am so blessed.” It is sad to have that joy and gratitude marred by these dark thoughts. But there must be thousands of residents of the coast of Louisiana who have celebrated anniversaries and birthdays during these dark days, whose special day was utterly devoid of joy. But since it is our special day, let me end on a more positive note. This morning, Ellen, Jenny, Max and I went to Alpine Mountain Days, sort of a fair with events that celebrate western themes and culture. One event was a horse and buggy ride around town. I sat up on the buckboard next to the driver and I really picked his brain. A buggy from his company, Star Valley Buggy and Harness, in Afton, WY, costs about $5000, and a horse about $3000. It would be much cheaper, he said, in Goshen, IN, which is a center for the Amish and is where he buys horses and buggies, and then trailers them out here to Afton for re-sale. In Goshen, he thought, you could get a horse trained for pulling a buggy for about $1500. Not just any horse can pull a buggy, but one that is well-trained to do so is as reliable as can be. The horse pulling our buggy was 16 years old and had been pulling buggies all it’s life. “Your wife could drive it,” he said. (A little gender bias there, but we’ll overlook that. We get the point. He could just as well have said, “Even you could drive it!”). An ambulance went by, siren screaming, but our horse didn’t so much as flick its tail. Average speed is about 12 miles an hour. I asked him what it costs to feed the horse. He said in the summer, the horse pastures and lives on grass. In the winter, it consumes about 3 tons of hay. In WY, hay costs from about $60 a ton to maybe as high as $150 a ton. That’s a lot cheaper than gasoline for sure. We’re spending at least $2500 a year on gasoline. He thought in most states it is legal for a horse and buggy to be on the highway.
We enjoyed our ride. Max really seemed to like it. The sound of the horse clip-clopping along was very satisfying. And it really got me thinking!
Wednesday, June 16, 2010
Many Levels
I'm aware that the past couple of weeks, a lot has been going on at many levels. There is the level of the trip itinerary -- where we've gone and what we've done. Our second day in Boise, we took a walk up in the foothills, walked through a beautiful botanical garden where everything was in full bloom, and spent a couple of hours with three musician friends of Susan's informally performing songs by Purcell, Handel, et al. We got to see a power-point presentation on water issues in Idaho that Christian had made to a select group concerned with the future of water in the Boise area. On our drive to Salem, OR, we went through central Oregon. It was very clear and we got magnificent views of the Cascade Range (e.g., Mt. Bachelor, the three Sisters, Mt. Washington,Three-fingered Jack, Mt. Jefferson), went through the Santiam pass, stopped in Sisters, OR for a meal and Ellen explored a quilting store, arrived in Salem in the evening and stayed up late visiting with Bonnie and Roger Hull. Roger had just had a retirement blast (a "Hullaballoo") after 40 years of teaching Art History at Willamette University, and there was a lot to hear and see about that. While in Salem we saw a part of a show she had given of her work, got to see the studio where she produced it, and went to the Hallie Ford Museum where Roger had devoted much of his talent and energy over the years. You can get a full appreciation for Bonnie's amazing creativity at her blog which I think you can get to just by clicking on her "Follower" icon. Lots of pictures there! We also had a lovely hike in Silver Falls State Park with JoAnn Elizabeth Seibert - it was the perfect day for a hike, sunny, cool, a light breeze. And the falls were very full - it has been a wet spring.
Silver Falls State Park
Silver Falls State ParkJ.E. treated us to a lovely meal of sushi (she teaches English to Japanese students), and we also had a tasty Mexican meal in Salem at La Margarita restaurant, followed by a walk over a new pedestrian bridge over the Willamette river created out of an abandoned railroad bridge. Salem is becoming a lively and attractive small city. On our way back to Alpine, WY we stopped in Bend, OR to visit Helen Seidler, who was my colleague at the Experiment in International Living 35 years ago. Together we administered the Teacher Ambassador Program, the Foreign Language Assistant Program, the Schools Educational Exchange Program and the US-France Teacher Exchange Program. Whew! Helen and her husband Owen now live on the outskirts of Bend right at the edge of an 8000-year-old lava field (thus they called their home LavaEdge). It is a beautiful and fascinating spot, with a view of Mt. Bachelor framed by a dip in the wall of lava. It was wonderful to reconnect with Helen, whose interests now include gardening an learning to be a jazz singer.
Helen Seidler and Ellen at LavaEdge
From Bend we drove to Baker City, OR where we spent the night at a Knights Inn (cheap but quite nice). Outside Baker City is the National Oregon Trail Interpretive Center, which has a commanding location overlooking the old Oregon Trail (0ver 300,000 people made their way over it in the mid-19th century on their way from the east to the Willamette Valley, OR). What a fascinating exhibit, including a live dramatic monolgue re-enacting a farmer's dilemma over whether to but horses or oxen, several films, and an extensive series of dioramas portraying vividly the hardships encountered on the trail.
Photos never quite do justice to it but here are a couple.
Oregon Trail Center, Baker City, OR
Old Conestoga Wagon
After that we wanted to go up into the Zumwalt Prairie, but found the road closed by flooding and washout - so we settled for a 30-mile drive up to the Hell's Canyon Dam, a spectacular ride! 
Old Conestoga WagonPhotos never quite do justice to it but here are a couple.
Hell's Canyon Dam
Snake River Canyon below the dam
Snake River Canyon below the damWe had a little adventure on the dam. Walking across (which a guard had earlier said was ok to do), we were suddenly accosted by a loudspeaker which said, "Walking over the dam roadway is not permitted -- get off the dam double-time!!!). Ok, Ok! Maybe I was taking too many photos and they thought I was a terrorist plotting an attack. Fortunately they didn't send out the swat team!
Well, that's the superficial layer. A lot more has been going on, but I'll have to save that for another day. It's time to get moving!
Well, that's the superficial layer. A lot more has been going on, but I'll have to save that for another day. It's time to get moving!
Monday, June 14, 2010
Quick update
We are currently in Salem, OR, and have had a perfectly lovely visit with our friends Roger and Bonnie Hull and JoAnn Elizabeth Seibert, including stimulating talks, good food, hikes and walks in perfect weather and in beautiful natural surroundings, and fascinating reading. We've had a relaxing time but are about to continue our journeying. I'll post a fuller entry when I get a chance. Love to all, Larry
Wednesday, June 9, 2010
Betsey, Katie and Larry at the restaurant in Rocheport, MOCommencement was held in the Mizzou Arena (basketball); the families of the 560 graduates of Rock Bridge High School almost filled the lower bleachers – I’d guess 3000 folks easily – or more. It was a joyful and noisy affair, organized very efficiently so that every name was called, there were speeches and tributes and music and we got out in 2 hours!
The grad and her dadOne of the things I gave Katie for her graduation is a bound copy of her grandmother Shirley’s poetry. This is a project I have been working on since we left on this trip, but I haven’t said anything about because it was a surprise. A year ago I had found a note among Shirley’s papers asking me to publish her poetry for our friends if she were to die before I did. This seemed like a good occasion to honor that request. There are 52 poems in the collection I gave Katie, written between 1945 and 1976. Here is one Shirley wrote after spending five wonderful days on an island in the Bahamas:
SEA URCHIN
We’re black or grey and spikey
and fearsome if you catch us by surprise
We live best in warm water
among sand and coral lie
And if perchance you catch us
and bring us to the land
We are playful and delightful and
wriggle shyly in your hand
But when we leave the water
and find death upon the shore
a lovely, lacy, fragile shell
remains at our core.
Sea urchins are a paradox
And I know because I am one.
1973
We’re black or grey and spikey
and fearsome if you catch us by surprise
We live best in warm water
among sand and coral lie
And if perchance you catch us
and bring us to the land
We are playful and delightful and
wriggle shyly in your hand
But when we leave the water
and find death upon the shore
a lovely, lacy, fragile shell
remains at our core.
Sea urchins are a paradox
And I know because I am one.
1973
I flew back to Jackson on Monday and Ellen met me at the airport and we immediately started a trip to Idaho and Oregon. Of course the first hour or two were filled with me telling Ellen everything I had done and she telling me everything she had done – especially the birthday party which Max took in stride beautifully.
Monday evening, we had a glorious experience at the Camas National Wildlife Refuge which is about 30 miles NW of Idaho Falls. We were the only humans there. But we saw ibises, western tanagers, ruddy ducks, cinnamon teals, scaups. shovelers, coots, mallards, redheads, willets, a sandhill crane, lots of yellow-headed blackbirds, and some type of merganser we couldn’t identify for sure. It was awesome.
Camas National Wildlife Refuge, IdahoWe spent the night in Arco, ID – I think we found the last room in town at a very humble motel, but it was ok. I got up at about 6 am and explored Arco. The early sunlight on the snow-capped peaks around the town was stunning. Arco is beautiful if you ignore what’s under your nose. It was the first town in the world to be lit by atomic energy, back in 1957. Today it seems to be a haven for junked cars, and also a paradise for ATVs – lots of rentals and trails. Could be fun, I suppose, but we passed on that and after breakfast at an RV park across from the motel, we drove on to Craters of the Moon National Monument – an amazing lava and cinder strewn landscape created by volcanic activity over the millennia, and as recently as 2000 years ago. We climbed a steep cone of cinders called Inferno Hill and got great 360 degree views. Then we headed for Ketchum and Sun Valley, big ski resort areas which I was not impressed with, and then on to Stanley and up to an old ghost town, Bonanza, ID, where gold created a thriving village back in the 1880s, all gone now, but the cemetery remains, a haunting reminder of how difficult life was then. Ellen counted at least 26 wooden grave markers with the single word, “Unknown.”
After leaving Bonanza, we had a beautiful evening drive along a very mountainous highway through the Sawtooth mountains, with lots of curves and switchbacks, and arrive in Boise a little after 9 p.m. at our friends’ home, Susan and Christian. Then today, we met with the Boise Hospice Singers, which Susan leads, for an informal “workshop,” which turned out to be quite moving. Ellen and I had met with them 16 months ago, at their inception, and it was wonderful to see how they have grown and matured. We have another day in Boise and then will head for Salem, OR.
Friday, June 4, 2010
Graduation weekend
I (Larry) am back in Columbia, MO for the graduation of my granddaughter, Katie, from high school tomorrow (Sat). It will be held in the University of Missouri Arena, i.e., the basketball court, no small venue! But there are 600 graduates, so I guess if you add up all the family members you're talking about 1000s of people. This week Katie had her Baccalaureate, Class Picnic, Class Banquet, Rehearsal for graduation and then after exercises tomorrow, an all-night party Sat night. Remember those days? I'll undoubtedly get some photos to post. My flight from Jackson to Kansas City was fine, ditto the drive from KC to Columbia this a.m. All is well here.
Wednesday, June 2, 2010
June 2, 2010
OK. I think I've got it. Users need to go to URL That should give them access to my blog. Yeah!
Last evening, Ellen and I watched a Netflix movie, The Magnificent Ambersons. It is an old 1942 Orson Welles movie, remade in 2000 by Alfonso Arau. There is a bit of dialog in it which struck me as being very pertinent in light of the gulf oil spill. Oil has been spewing into the ocean from the very beginning of our trip; millions of gallons have been released into the gulf and there is no end in sight. That spill has cast a pall over our trip for me (pace the cheeriness of my reports). My feelings have ranged from appalled to horrified to saddened to despairing to anger to guilty to resolved....I am well aware of the irony/complicity of being on a road trip and using 100s of gallons of gas. As Pogo said, "we have met the enemy and he is us." The question is -- how do we change our dependence on the automobile? The dialog from The Magnificent Ambersons was as follows (the setting is Indianapolis about 1905)
George Miniva (arrogant young heir of the Amberson fortune), speaking to George Morgan (auto inventor, manufacturer, very nice guy, who is in love with George Miniva's mother and wants to marry her, but son George hates his guts): "Automobiles are a nuisance, they had no business being invented."
George Morgan (after a shocked silence around the table at this offensive remark made right to George Morgan's face): Well, I'm not sure but what he may be right about automobiles. For all their speed forward, they may be a step backward for civilization. Maybe they will not add to the beauty of the world or the life of men's souls, I'm not sure. But automobiles have come, and almost all outward things are going to be different because of what they bring. They are going to alter war, and they are going to alter peace. And I think men's minds are going to be changed because of the automobile. But you can't have the immense outward change that they will cause without some inward ones, and it may be that George is right, and that the spiritual alteration will be bad for us. Perhaps 10 or 20 years from now, if we can see the inward change in men by that time, I shouldn't be able to defend the gasoline engine, but would have to agree with him, that automobiles had no business being invented."
Amazing words for 1942! Bravo Orson Welles! Well, now, 100 years later or so, with consequences Orson Welles could not have imagined, all the more pertinent words. Will this utterly catastrophic spill be the thing that finally causes us to change our behavior and end our dependence on oil?
I recommend to everyone my son John's blog. Go to his website are find the link there. He's saying what needs to be said!!
Love, Larry
OK. I think I've got it. Users need to go to URL
Last evening, Ellen and I watched a Netflix movie, The Magnificent Ambersons. It is an old 1942 Orson Welles movie, remade in 2000 by Alfonso Arau. There is a bit of dialog in it which struck me as being very pertinent in light of the gulf oil spill. Oil has been spewing into the ocean from the very beginning of our trip; millions of gallons have been released into the gulf and there is no end in sight. That spill has cast a pall over our trip for me (pace the cheeriness of my reports). My feelings have ranged from appalled to horrified to saddened to despairing to anger to guilty to resolved....I am well aware of the irony/complicity of being on a road trip and using 100s of gallons of gas. As Pogo said, "we have met the enemy and he is us." The question is -- how do we change our dependence on the automobile? The dialog from The Magnificent Ambersons was as follows (the setting is Indianapolis about 1905)
George Miniva (arrogant young heir of the Amberson fortune), speaking to George Morgan (auto inventor, manufacturer, very nice guy, who is in love with George Miniva's mother and wants to marry her, but son George hates his guts): "Automobiles are a nuisance, they had no business being invented."
George Morgan (after a shocked silence around the table at this offensive remark made right to George Morgan's face): Well, I'm not sure but what he may be right about automobiles. For all their speed forward, they may be a step backward for civilization. Maybe they will not add to the beauty of the world or the life of men's souls, I'm not sure. But automobiles have come, and almost all outward things are going to be different because of what they bring. They are going to alter war, and they are going to alter peace. And I think men's minds are going to be changed because of the automobile. But you can't have the immense outward change that they will cause without some inward ones, and it may be that George is right, and that the spiritual alteration will be bad for us. Perhaps 10 or 20 years from now, if we can see the inward change in men by that time, I shouldn't be able to defend the gasoline engine, but would have to agree with him, that automobiles had no business being invented."
Amazing words for 1942! Bravo Orson Welles! Well, now, 100 years later or so, with consequences Orson Welles could not have imagined, all the more pertinent words. Will this utterly catastrophic spill be the thing that finally causes us to change our behavior and end our dependence on oil?
I recommend to everyone my son John's blog. Go to his website
Love, Larry
Report from Alpine, WY
Dear Family and Friends:
I'm sitting in the Library in Alpine, WY. It is very rainy today, and the Library is bustling with activity because they are having a kick-off for a summer reading program for kids. I really like this library -- the staff is very friendly and helpful, it is an attractive environment, and, of course, they have WiFi!
This is my first attempt to send a group email after my "dust-up" with Sovernet. I have received permission from everyone who is receiving this group email. Here's hoping that none of your servers will think this is spam! It has been recommended to me to create a blog and then anyone who wanted to keep track of our travels could just go to that. I intend to do that, but I haven't figured it out yet. But these road reports sent as a group email may be a vanishing species.
I think when I sent my first report we were in Bartlett, IL, and that was 3 weeks ago! Wow, time flies when you're having fun. So the short story is that since then, we were in Columbia, MO for five days, visiting the Shays, then we were on the road for two days heading West, arrived in Alpine, WY on May 21st and have been there ever since. Let me fill in some highlights:
1) The highlights in Columbia were definitely seeing Katie in two performances. The first was a Theater Showcase at Rock Bridge High School. Instead of putting on a spring Broadway musical, this year the Musical Theater Class staged 17 scenes from as many plays and musicals. It was a very ambitious effort-- especially for the set crew and the costumers!. Katie was in four scenes, (a)An opening scene from Cabaret (Katie was a Kit-Kat Club dancer, and her boyfriend, Taylor, had the role of Joel Grey in the movie -- the Master of Ceremonies); (b) a scene from the Stephen Sondheim musical Into the Woods (Katie was the Witch and sang very beautifully the solo "Children will Listen,"); (c) a scene from a play by Japanese playwright Kobo Ane (whom folks of my generation know best as the screenplay author of Woman in the Dunes), titled The Woman Who Turned into a Stick (The original play was actually The Man Who Turned into a Stick, but since Stick was played by Katie, the gender of the protagonist was changed; Katie's performance in this cryptic but powerful play was quite moving);
(d) a final Circus scene in which Katie was a chorus-member. Ellen and I were so enthralled by these performances that we went twice! The second performance came four days later and was by the Mixed Choir in which Katie sings -- actually the evening featured three Rock Bridge Choirs. They have an outstanding music program at Rock Bridge! At the end of this performance, 39 graduating seniors were honored, including Katie! That will leave quite a hole in the choir!
2) During our 5-day stay in Columbia, Rob and Betsey (Katie's parents, Betsey is my daughter), went to Santa Fe, NM for a meeting of Big 12 Conference Music School Directors (of which Rob is one). So Ellen and I got to "hold the fort" with Katie. As you can imagine, Katie's final weeks as a senior are pretty full, but we got to see her in between events and activities.
Ellen and I took several nice walks on the MKT Trail in Columbia, had good ice-cream a couple of times at Sparkey's Homemade Ice Cream (with flavors like Lavender-Honey!), watched a remarkable movie on Netflix - Birdy - and made a day trip to the nearby town of Hermann, MO, which was settled in the 19th C. by German immigrants and still retains a strong German heritage. It is the center of a wine district which sort of replicates the Rheinland, and has many lovely old brick homes and stores. The UCC church - formerly Evangelical and Reformed - is HUGE, and was still holding services in German as late as the 1950s. We also visited a spectacular nursery, Strawberry Farms, outside Columbia, and got some plants for Betsey's garden and also got a couple to bring to Paul and Jenny.
3)We left Columbia Thursday am, 5/20, and drove 748 miles to Alliance, NE!!! As you know, Ellen does all the driving while I sit in the back seat, comfortably stretched out, keeping Ellen entertained by reading aloud, playing music, and of course, just chatting. What are we reading? We are working through a biography of Ludwig Wittgenstein by Ray Monk, which we are finding quite compelling mainly because Wittgenstein was a remarkably difficult and complex person who was tortured by his incredibly high standards of thought in the field of Logic, his sense of obligation to be faithful to his genius, and his difficulty in finding people who could understand and appreciate what he was doing. He divested himself of all his worldly wealth (his family was incredibly wealthy), served on the front in WW I by preference (he would accept no special favors), and buried himself in rural Austria as an elementary school teacher, living a life of poverty among the poor but trying to lift the sights of his pupils intellectually, and thus mostly eliciting hostility from students and even more, their parents who just wanted their kids to stay home on the farm. Parents particularly resented his pulling the hair of his female students who didn't do well in math!!
We are also reading Pigeon Post, one of the books in Arthur Ransome's Swallows and Amazons series. These are utterly charming books -- anyone who hasn't read them, should. I also read excerpts from things we pick up along the way. I am still reading the biography of John Brown which I'm finding quite fascinating. It is unbelievable how much we have not been told about this man in the standard histories. I venture to say that the new text books in Kansas do not mention him favorably!
Our long trip to Alliance was mainly via secondary roads rather than Interstates, and took us along part of the old Pony Express Trail in Kansas and Nebraska, through the Flint Hills of Kansas and the Sand Hills of Nebraska, through Grand Island, NE which has a HUGE Mall, and through a lot of towns suffering from economic depression: e.g., lots of empty stores, boarded up windows, empty streets. Now and then we would find a sweet little town, and we did find a nicely-kept park near (I think) Broken Bow, NE where we ate our lunch on a picnic table.
Our second day of travel, from Alliance to Alpine, WY, took us mostly through Wyoming (Lusk, Casper, Shoshoni, Riverton, Dubois, etc,). None of these towns are particularly lovely -- they are highly industrialized, and places like Shoshoni are almost dead. We used to go to a RoadFood spot -- "The Drugstore" -- in Shoshoni, where you could get 64 flavors of shakes, but it has disappeared. However the natural scenery is spectacular. The latter part of the trip, late evening, took us through the Tetons when they were shrouded in clouds, but with spectacular breaks of sun and visibility. We only drove 540 miles the second day -- a mere nothing.
4)Since arriving in Alpine we have has a pretty quiet time enjoying being with Paul, Jenny and Max. The weather has been unusually cold and wet, and there was even a bit of snow. Ellen and I have taken a few walks, 1-2 hours in length, one up into the Caribou National Forest into Idaho. We've seem a few wildflowers, and some spectacular birds. Just outside the house we've been watching a red-napped sapsucker and a western tanager almost every day, and yesterday I watched what I think was a Wilson's warbler through the binoculars a long time. We saw an eagle up close, a fox crossed the road in front of us carrying prey, and there are pelicans, osprey, herons, geese, mallards, all over the place (lots of water nearby). Max's vocabulary has exploded just in the last two weeks and grows daily. When he is outside and free to do what he wants, he is sheer joy. When he is frustrated in his desire of the moment, he can be pretty fierce, but he gets over it fast (usually). We've taken him to church two Sundays (a United Methodist/ELCA Church), and he loves the nursery room there -- no end of interesting things to play with. He is a very sweet little boy to say the least. We're eating well, between Jenny and Ellen, we've had a lot of great and creative meals. Paul is unemployed at the moment, but working on odd jobs, e.g., building a deck, making picnic tables, doing finishing work around the house. He's applying all over the place, but so are hundreds of others. Patience definitely needed!
5) I (Larry) will be returning to Missouri on June 3rd to be there for Katie's actual graduation ceremony on June 5th. I'll fly from Jackson Hole to Kansas City, drive to Columbia (2 hours) and then fly back on June 7th. Then we'll head to Boise, ID, where we will do an informal workshop with the Boise Hospice Singers, and then on to Salem, OR around June 14th.
My battery power is down to 20% so I guess I'll sign off.
Love to ALL!!
Larry and Ellen
EARLIER
May 11, 2010
We’ve been on our trip for a week, and it’s been an interesting week. Our first 3 nights were spent at Wallace Ayres’ home in Swarthmore, PA. We enjoyed Wallace’s new house, especially the very comfortable screened porch and her newly planted garden; Ellen and Wallace got to do quite a bit of visiting, made a trip to IKEA together and worked on a sewing project. Ellen and I had a lovely lunch with Sarah and Harry, friends in the area; I walked over to the Swarthmore College campus and looked around. It was a welcome, low-key, restful time, after having had a very full weekend at home (including two Chorale concerts and pre-concert talks (by me), a Chorale 30th reunion, and much more).
Friday, leaving after noon, we drove down Route 1 through the PA countryside – everything in full bloom – heading toward Virginia. We made a spontaneous stop at Harpers Ferry N.H.P., the site of John Brown’s raid on the federal arsenal there in 1859, his failed attempt to arm a slave rebellion that he hoped would end slavery in this country. He was tried and hanged for his effort. We arrived in late afternoon, not much time to “take it in,” but we were there long enough to have our interest whetted, and I bought a biography of John Brown in the bookstore which has proved to be very interesting (David S. Reynolds, John Brown, Abolitionist; The Man who Killed Slavery, Sparked the Civil War and Seeded Civil Rights, 2005).
I learned pretty quickly that Brown grew up in the Congregational Church, and that his Calvinist faith, a militant form of Puritanism, was a major source of his abolitionist fervor. He was supported morally and financially by folks like Emerson, Thoreau, Alcott and Garrison, even if they didn’t agree with his tactics. And through the power of the Internet, I learned that the weekend I “discovered” John Brown (I knew of him, of course), the UCC church in Lake Placid, NY – where Brown had a farm – was hosting a symposium about him. I was largely unaware of all of this, but when I’ve finished Reynolds’ book, I will be more aware.
Friday night we spent in Charlottesville, VA. It is the home of the University of Virginia, and so Saturday morning, we visited what we would call “the campus” but that word is not used at U of VA; instead it is “the grounds.” The center of the grounds is the “Academical Village,” designed by Jefferson – consisting of “the Rotunda” which we were able to see inside, and emanating from it, on both sides, a long, columned, covered walkway, lined with rooms, which are student housing for seniors (“by application” we learned). Each room has a fireplace, and outside each door was a stack of firewood and a metal ash bucket. It is incredibly old-fashioned, charming and beautiful. The Rotunda, especially the large room at the top under the dome, is exquisite. The entire grounds of the University are a marvel to behold, architecturally. It manages to be monumental and very human and cozy at the same time. Well worth a visit.
Our ultimate destination (we blush to confess) was the Walton’s Mountain Museum in Schuylar, VA, dedicated to the 1970’s TV series, The Waltons, of which we have become ardent fans, via Netflix. Saturday was a high-brow/low-brow day! The museum was delightful in its own, funky and unpretentious way. Housed in a former elementary school building in a tiny village, being there is like looking at a somewhat elaborate family scrapbook, and I guess for many people, like us, the Waltons have become family. You get to learn just about everything you might want to know about Earl Hamner (the creator of The Waltons), his family (the inspiration for the Waltons), and the actors who portrayed them for ten years on TV. We were not disappointed.
Saturday evening, we drove on to Buena Vista, VA where we stayed in a motel of a vintage older than The Waltons, but not, unfortunately, correspondingly priced. It was ok. We took a long walk around Buena Vista, which has seen better days. Southern Virginia University is there, which has the unique claim to be a college which “preserves the culture and values of the Mormon Church” but is not supported or in any way under the control of the Mormon Church. Mmm…interesting!
Sunday we drove (mostly via Interstate) through West Virginia, which was in full Spring beauty. Our “church” was a Guilford Community Church tape which turned out to have two 1987 services on it: one led by Larry in which the theme was the healing power of laughter, and another led by Shirley about thanksgiving. Wonderful! We hoped to find a Road Food restaurant in Charleston, WV (there were two listed in our book and both sounded worth a visit), but one (Southern Kitchen) had closed permanently, and the other (Blossom Dairy Bar) is closed Sundays. Disappointment! We kept going, and ended up driving along the Ohio River, crossing over into Kentucky and staying near Maysville, KY, an historic old town with some very attractive features. We saw a lot of economic blight driving through West Virginia, but Maysville seemed to be more vibrant.
Monday morning we drove through many back roads of northern KY, and it was really lovely. Then we worked our way over into southern Indiana, got on I-65 and hightailed it to Bartlett, IL, which is where we are now. My brother Stewart is having a tooth extracted today but we got to see him last evening and tonight we’ll see most of the larger Crockett family at a meal. By the end of the week we’ll be in Columbia, MO, chez Shay. Stay tuned.
Love, Larry and Ellen
I'm sitting in the Library in Alpine, WY. It is very rainy today, and the Library is bustling with activity because they are having a kick-off for a summer reading program for kids. I really like this library -- the staff is very friendly and helpful, it is an attractive environment, and, of course, they have WiFi!
This is my first attempt to send a group email after my "dust-up" with Sovernet. I have received permission from everyone who is receiving this group email. Here's hoping that none of your servers will think this is spam! It has been recommended to me to create a blog and then anyone who wanted to keep track of our travels could just go to that. I intend to do that, but I haven't figured it out yet. But these road reports sent as a group email may be a vanishing species.
I think when I sent my first report we were in Bartlett, IL, and that was 3 weeks ago! Wow, time flies when you're having fun. So the short story is that since then, we were in Columbia, MO for five days, visiting the Shays, then we were on the road for two days heading West, arrived in Alpine, WY on May 21st and have been there ever since. Let me fill in some highlights:
1) The highlights in Columbia were definitely seeing Katie in two performances. The first was a Theater Showcase at Rock Bridge High School. Instead of putting on a spring Broadway musical, this year the Musical Theater Class staged 17 scenes from as many plays and musicals. It was a very ambitious effort-- especially for the set crew and the costumers!. Katie was in four scenes, (a)An opening scene from Cabaret (Katie was a Kit-Kat Club dancer, and her boyfriend, Taylor, had the role of Joel Grey in the movie -- the Master of Ceremonies); (b) a scene from the Stephen Sondheim musical Into the Woods (Katie was the Witch and sang very beautifully the solo "Children will Listen,"); (c) a scene from a play by Japanese playwright Kobo Ane (whom folks of my generation know best as the screenplay author of Woman in the Dunes), titled The Woman Who Turned into a Stick (The original play was actually The Man Who Turned into a Stick, but since Stick was played by Katie, the gender of the protagonist was changed; Katie's performance in this cryptic but powerful play was quite moving);
 |
| Katie as "Stick" |
2) During our 5-day stay in Columbia, Rob and Betsey (Katie's parents, Betsey is my daughter), went to Santa Fe, NM for a meeting of Big 12 Conference Music School Directors (of which Rob is one). So Ellen and I got to "hold the fort" with Katie. As you can imagine, Katie's final weeks as a senior are pretty full, but we got to see her in between events and activities.
Ellen and I took several nice walks on the MKT Trail in Columbia, had good ice-cream a couple of times at Sparkey's Homemade Ice Cream (with flavors like Lavender-Honey!), watched a remarkable movie on Netflix - Birdy - and made a day trip to the nearby town of Hermann, MO, which was settled in the 19th C. by German immigrants and still retains a strong German heritage. It is the center of a wine district which sort of replicates the Rheinland, and has many lovely old brick homes and stores. The UCC church - formerly Evangelical and Reformed - is HUGE, and was still holding services in German as late as the 1950s. We also visited a spectacular nursery, Strawberry Farms, outside Columbia, and got some plants for Betsey's garden and also got a couple to bring to Paul and Jenny.
3)We left Columbia Thursday am, 5/20, and drove 748 miles to Alliance, NE!!! As you know, Ellen does all the driving while I sit in the back seat, comfortably stretched out, keeping Ellen entertained by reading aloud, playing music, and of course, just chatting. What are we reading? We are working through a biography of Ludwig Wittgenstein by Ray Monk, which we are finding quite compelling mainly because Wittgenstein was a remarkably difficult and complex person who was tortured by his incredibly high standards of thought in the field of Logic, his sense of obligation to be faithful to his genius, and his difficulty in finding people who could understand and appreciate what he was doing. He divested himself of all his worldly wealth (his family was incredibly wealthy), served on the front in WW I by preference (he would accept no special favors), and buried himself in rural Austria as an elementary school teacher, living a life of poverty among the poor but trying to lift the sights of his pupils intellectually, and thus mostly eliciting hostility from students and even more, their parents who just wanted their kids to stay home on the farm. Parents particularly resented his pulling the hair of his female students who didn't do well in math!!
We are also reading Pigeon Post, one of the books in Arthur Ransome's Swallows and Amazons series. These are utterly charming books -- anyone who hasn't read them, should. I also read excerpts from things we pick up along the way. I am still reading the biography of John Brown which I'm finding quite fascinating. It is unbelievable how much we have not been told about this man in the standard histories. I venture to say that the new text books in Kansas do not mention him favorably!
Our long trip to Alliance was mainly via secondary roads rather than Interstates, and took us along part of the old Pony Express Trail in Kansas and Nebraska, through the Flint Hills of Kansas and the Sand Hills of Nebraska, through Grand Island, NE which has a HUGE Mall, and through a lot of towns suffering from economic depression: e.g., lots of empty stores, boarded up windows, empty streets. Now and then we would find a sweet little town, and we did find a nicely-kept park near (I think) Broken Bow, NE where we ate our lunch on a picnic table.
Our second day of travel, from Alliance to Alpine, WY, took us mostly through Wyoming (Lusk, Casper, Shoshoni, Riverton, Dubois, etc,). None of these towns are particularly lovely -- they are highly industrialized, and places like Shoshoni are almost dead. We used to go to a RoadFood spot -- "The Drugstore" -- in Shoshoni, where you could get 64 flavors of shakes, but it has disappeared. However the natural scenery is spectacular. The latter part of the trip, late evening, took us through the Tetons when they were shrouded in clouds, but with spectacular breaks of sun and visibility. We only drove 540 miles the second day -- a mere nothing.
4)Since arriving in Alpine we have has a pretty quiet time enjoying being with Paul, Jenny and Max. The weather has been unusually cold and wet, and there was even a bit of snow. Ellen and I have taken a few walks, 1-2 hours in length, one up into the Caribou National Forest into Idaho. We've seem a few wildflowers, and some spectacular birds. Just outside the house we've been watching a red-napped sapsucker and a western tanager almost every day, and yesterday I watched what I think was a Wilson's warbler through the binoculars a long time. We saw an eagle up close, a fox crossed the road in front of us carrying prey, and there are pelicans, osprey, herons, geese, mallards, all over the place (lots of water nearby). Max's vocabulary has exploded just in the last two weeks and grows daily. When he is outside and free to do what he wants, he is sheer joy. When he is frustrated in his desire of the moment, he can be pretty fierce, but he gets over it fast (usually). We've taken him to church two Sundays (a United Methodist/ELCA Church), and he loves the nursery room there -- no end of interesting things to play with. He is a very sweet little boy to say the least. We're eating well, between Jenny and Ellen, we've had a lot of great and creative meals. Paul is unemployed at the moment, but working on odd jobs, e.g., building a deck, making picnic tables, doing finishing work around the house. He's applying all over the place, but so are hundreds of others. Patience definitely needed!
5) I (Larry) will be returning to Missouri on June 3rd to be there for Katie's actual graduation ceremony on June 5th. I'll fly from Jackson Hole to Kansas City, drive to Columbia (2 hours) and then fly back on June 7th. Then we'll head to Boise, ID, where we will do an informal workshop with the Boise Hospice Singers, and then on to Salem, OR around June 14th.
My battery power is down to 20% so I guess I'll sign off.
Love to ALL!!
Larry and Ellen
EARLIER
May 11, 2010
We’ve been on our trip for a week, and it’s been an interesting week. Our first 3 nights were spent at Wallace Ayres’ home in Swarthmore, PA. We enjoyed Wallace’s new house, especially the very comfortable screened porch and her newly planted garden; Ellen and Wallace got to do quite a bit of visiting, made a trip to IKEA together and worked on a sewing project. Ellen and I had a lovely lunch with Sarah and Harry, friends in the area; I walked over to the Swarthmore College campus and looked around. It was a welcome, low-key, restful time, after having had a very full weekend at home (including two Chorale concerts and pre-concert talks (by me), a Chorale 30th reunion, and much more).
Friday, leaving after noon, we drove down Route 1 through the PA countryside – everything in full bloom – heading toward Virginia. We made a spontaneous stop at Harpers Ferry N.H.P., the site of John Brown’s raid on the federal arsenal there in 1859, his failed attempt to arm a slave rebellion that he hoped would end slavery in this country. He was tried and hanged for his effort. We arrived in late afternoon, not much time to “take it in,” but we were there long enough to have our interest whetted, and I bought a biography of John Brown in the bookstore which has proved to be very interesting (David S. Reynolds, John Brown, Abolitionist; The Man who Killed Slavery, Sparked the Civil War and Seeded Civil Rights, 2005).
 |
| John Brown |
Friday night we spent in Charlottesville, VA. It is the home of the University of Virginia, and so Saturday morning, we visited what we would call “the campus” but that word is not used at U of VA; instead it is “the grounds.” The center of the grounds is the “Academical Village,” designed by Jefferson – consisting of “the Rotunda” which we were able to see inside, and emanating from it, on both sides, a long, columned, covered walkway, lined with rooms, which are student housing for seniors (“by application” we learned). Each room has a fireplace, and outside each door was a stack of firewood and a metal ash bucket. It is incredibly old-fashioned, charming and beautiful. The Rotunda, especially the large room at the top under the dome, is exquisite. The entire grounds of the University are a marvel to behold, architecturally. It manages to be monumental and very human and cozy at the same time. Well worth a visit.
 |
| University of Virginia Quadrangle |
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| Smokey Mountains |
Our ultimate destination (we blush to confess) was the Walton’s Mountain Museum in Schuylar, VA, dedicated to the 1970’s TV series, The Waltons, of which we have become ardent fans, via Netflix. Saturday was a high-brow/low-brow day! The museum was delightful in its own, funky and unpretentious way. Housed in a former elementary school building in a tiny village, being there is like looking at a somewhat elaborate family scrapbook, and I guess for many people, like us, the Waltons have become family. You get to learn just about everything you might want to know about Earl Hamner (the creator of The Waltons), his family (the inspiration for the Waltons), and the actors who portrayed them for ten years on TV. We were not disappointed.
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| Display at Waltons' Museum |
Sunday we drove (mostly via Interstate) through West Virginia, which was in full Spring beauty. Our “church” was a Guilford Community Church tape which turned out to have two 1987 services on it: one led by Larry in which the theme was the healing power of laughter, and another led by Shirley about thanksgiving. Wonderful! We hoped to find a Road Food restaurant in Charleston, WV (there were two listed in our book and both sounded worth a visit), but one (Southern Kitchen) had closed permanently, and the other (Blossom Dairy Bar) is closed Sundays. Disappointment! We kept going, and ended up driving along the Ohio River, crossing over into Kentucky and staying near Maysville, KY, an historic old town with some very attractive features. We saw a lot of economic blight driving through West Virginia, but Maysville seemed to be more vibrant.
Monday morning we drove through many back roads of northern KY, and it was really lovely. Then we worked our way over into southern Indiana, got on I-65 and hightailed it to Bartlett, IL, which is where we are now. My brother Stewart is having a tooth extracted today but we got to see him last evening and tonight we’ll see most of the larger Crockett family at a meal. By the end of the week we’ll be in Columbia, MO, chez Shay. Stay tuned.
Love, Larry and Ellen
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