The unexpected at church

I Ellen and I went to church this morning - at Star Valley United Church in Thayne -   our first opportunity to go to church since we left home. It was Ellen's first time to hear Alan Schoonover, the new minister. Allan had gotten maybe five minutes into a sermon based on the 23rd Psalm - mainly on the phrase "he restores my soul," when one of the congregants, a man on his seventies, began to have a medical emergency. Allan stopped speaking, of course, people gathered around the man in concern and helped him recline and elevated his feet, while someone called 911. Eventually, Allan offered a prayer, and then invited people into the fellowship hall for an early coffee hour, with the idea that we would resume the service after Scott, that was the gentleman's name, had been taken to the hospital. The EMT's came pretty soon - which was reassuring in such a rural community - and Scott was alert and responsive when they left. It happened that the woman in front of him was on oxygen herself and had a portable oxygen tank she could share, so he  got oxygen even before the EMT's arrived. Ellen and I stayed nearby instead of going to the coffee hour, and had a chance to get better acquainted with a couple we had met before. It turned out that they were going to be visiting a daughter- in-law in Hanover, NH in just a couple of weeks and could have visited us, but we'll probably be in Boulder! They moved to Alpine about 17 years ago and built a retirement home next to a spot that unbeknownst to them was to become a development and landing strip for out-of-state billionaires' second homes and their airplanes! Many of these billionaires are Californians who by living in Wyoming for a few months out of each year can avoid paying income tax in California! Which probably amounts to  $ hundreds of thousands a year! Another tax loop-hole for the wealthy. To add insult to injury, the billionaire next to them put up a huge berm so that he can't see their house, but the berm blocks their view of the mountains! They seem to have accepted all this with remarkable grace and humor. So, the service was not the usual. Eventually it did resume in a somewhat shortened form. 

This afternoon, Paul sanded the kitchen, dining area and living-room floor. When he originally built the house, he used a water-based varnish that had spotted wherever it got wet, so it looked pretty crummy after a while. So he's redoing the whole floor. 

    Newly sanded floor, but before sealer

               Living-room area 

Tonight we watched episode 4 of Wolf Hall. Pretty gripping. British history in the days of Henry VIII is quite a soap opera!