Paper airplanes

Ellen has been busy folding paper airplanes out of a Star Wars Paper Airplane book. They actually fly really well. Max has played with them almost constantly.

               The Star Wars Millenium Falcon

                          Max launching the MF

A nice walk

Alpine is participating in the general warming trend that is going on in the west right now, so Ellen and I just had a nice walk up the hill. Today has been really lovely all day, and the light was particularly clear this afternoon.

       View from the hill above Paul and Jenny's  house in the late afternoon light. 

I went to Star Valley United Church this morning. I missed seeing and hearing my friend, Allen Schoonover, because he and his wife, Dee, are on a late winter vacation. Filling in for him was a retired Methodist pastor, Ben Nardi, who resides in Jackson. He was ok, but I felt he didn't really come to grips with the biblical texts he was given by the lectionary, which admittedly were very difficult. He glossed over the difficulties, rather than wrestling with them, which would be my preference. But he was genuine and personable, and his basic message - that God's grace is greater than his judgement - was good. 

Earlier this afternoon, the two neighbor girls, Aubrey and Jayda, came over for lunch and played with Max, so I retreated to the bedroom to read and ended up napping a bit. Then I watched a rerun of last week's Downton Abbey episode with Ellen and Jenny, before our walk. Tonight may be the last one - or is it next week? Tonight is also the Academy Awards. We'll be here tomorrow and head back to Boulder Tuesday morning. 

Fun in the pool

Today, Max had a ski lesson in Jackson but the weather was terrible - a heavy rain and snow mix - so we all went to the pool instead. That was fun! It is quite a facility, including a huge water slide.

                    The Jackson Rec Center pool 

        Paul and Max come down the slide together

                     Max loves being in the water

            We all went to Jackson in Paul's new truck, which has a double cab. 

Tonight the TarHeels lost another heart-sinker, this time to Virginia. Once again, the opposing team came up with a player who put in one of the best games of his career, and the Heels had no one who did the same. Nevertheless, it was close - tied several times. But Carolina just couldn't do it at the end. They will now drop to a tie for second place in the ACC, after being #1 for several weeks. Sigh!! 

In Wyoming

Tonight we are in Alpine. Ellen brought Max a Lego set to make a truck and camper, and he just finished putting it together.

                     Max and his Lego camper

We left Boulder this morning at 9a.m. We estimated it would be a ten-hour drive, with stops, and it proved to be nine and a half hours. It was a beautiful day, the driving was easy, no snow, no wind. We listened to several lectures in a Teaching Company series called Cultural Intelligence. The first part was ten sets of contrasting concepts which help define differences among cultures, such as "individualism & collectivism," "tight & loose," "neutral & affective," "low context and high context," etc. We found several  lectures useful for understanding our own styles of communication with each other, and that led to some good conversation. The miles sped by. 

But let me go back a day. Yesterday, we took Betsey to work. She herself had not been to the office for a couple of weeks because of the shingles, but we had not taken her to the office since last August. In the meantime, her office had changed. She now shares an office, because her hours are much reduced, but she has her own private cubicle, and it is actually nicer than her original private office, because it has more window. She overlooks a large public space which right now is under construction to repair some heating and AC infrastructure, but by spring will be a student gathering place for the College of Engineering. And there is a large tree right in front of her window, which should be nice this spring. 

                     Betsey at her desk in her new office

               Looking up at Betsey's window from the ground. 

While Betsey worked, we did some errands - first we got a sandwich at the food bar outside Betsey's office, then got Max his Lego set at Target, got some cereal at the Sprouts market, and made a trip to the P.O. to mail things and get stamps. 

Last evening we watched most of the Republican debate. It was a cat fight. Sort of out of control. Wolf Blitzer, the moderator, could not maintain any sense of decorum, and often, Trump, Rubio and Cruz were all shouting at each other simultaneously. Quite a spectacle, which could be quite comic, except that it is actually very disturbing when you remember that these are presidential hopefuls. 

Today, on our trip, we passed a wind turbine propellor blade bring trucked along I-80.  They look sort of small from a distance, but up close on the highway, they are "yooge," as Bernie Sanders would say. 

                       Passing a wind turbine blade

We stopped at a gas station and truck stop in Rock Springs, WY, and I saw something I had never seen before - a walk-in cigar humidor! Hundreds of boxes of cigars! I thought cigars had gone out of style, but not with truckers, I guess. The air in their cabs must be something fierce! 

                    Cigars in abundance!

As we went up Route 191 toward Pinedale, we got some nice views:

                                    Beautiful Wyoming

Tomorrow Max has a ski lesson in Jackson. But it's also supposed to be windy and rainy. We'll see. 

It's a plan.

Tonight we worked out a plan for the next  two weeks. Betsey will be going to work for two hours tomorrow. Katie will probably take her down and we'll bring her back. Then we'll leave for Wyoming Friday morning, be in Alpine Sat and Sun,   and possibly Monday too, but be back here in Boulder Tuesday night. Wednesday, Rob and Katie will get up early and go skiing, and if Betsey feels up for it, the three of us will join them for lunch at the ski lodge, which would make a nice outing. Then Ellen and I will say our goodbyes Thursday morning and head for Bartlett. We'll be there over the weekend and head for home Monday a.m. That would get us home by Tuesday, March 8th if the weather cooperates and all goes smoothly. It's a plan, anyway.

Today, Ellen and I went into Boulder to do some errands while Katie was with her mom, and then she did some errands after we got back. Rob fixed a great supper, Ellen baked two delicious fruit tarts and we watched Bridge of Spies after supper. Quite a gripping movie about the Francis Gary Powers incident in 1957, which of course Ellen and I remember. 

                                        Snow at the Shay house

Let's do lunch

Yesterday was the day the cleaners come to the Shay house, and typically, we try to vacate it to be out of their way for vacuuming, etc., so Ellen, Betsey and I decided to treat ourselves to lunch at one of our favorite places, the Chautauqua Dining Hall. I say favorite - Ellen and I had never actually eaten there inside, though last summer we had a snack on their patio. The Chautauqua is a National Historic Site, but still functioning as a venue for concerts, and vacation cottages. The Dining Hall is a lovely old building with lots of ambiance and very good food.

The Dining Hall at Chautaqua

                             Betsey and Ellen at the Chautaqua Dining Hall

When we got home, the cleaners had done their job and had left. Good timing! 

Last evening, we watched a TV show with Betsey and Rob that we had never heard of, much less seen: The Biggest Loser. It's a reality show in which very, very overweight people are found who are willing to subject themselves to the humiliation of being seen on national TV in their underwear as they subject themselves to a bootcamp-style weight-loss regimen for 12 weeks or so. Each week, someone who looses the least weight that week gets sent home, and the field is winnowed down to the last person - the " biggest loser" - who is awarded $250,000! Along the way they are mercilessly manipulated by both relentless motivational harrangues and dramatic temptations to break their discipline. We the viewers have to endure their constant quasi-religious testimonials to how their lives have been changed for the better. It's a pretty creepy mix! 

This morning we awoke to about 6-8 inches of snow! I managed to get the car out so I could go pick up Katie, who arrived on the airport shuttle-bus in Boulder at about 1:00p.m. Great to have her back. Gertie was overjoyed! 

Nice outing

Rob decided we all needed an outing. Betsey hadn't been out of the house for ten days. So he made reservations for the four of us at one of Boulder's top ten restaurants - a craft beer brew pub, the Avery Brewery. It was about a fifteen-minute drive out of Boulder, in N. Boulder. On this February Sunday afternoon, the outdoor bar was jam-packed. We took an elevator up to the restaurant. It was lucky we had reservations -  walk-ins were being told it would be an hour and fifteen minute wait. But it would have been worth a wait. First, you could self-tour the brewery from an elevated catwalk. Secondly, both the beer and the food were great. A lovely outing.

 

                                        Our destination. 

                                     The popular outdoor bar

                           Looking down at the work area 

                            Ellen and I sampled four beers

                        Betsey loved it!

Ellen got a cheese fondue with four kinds of things to dip in it - pretzels, fingerling potatoes, veggies and Granny Smith apple slices - delicious.  

   Rob and Betsey's samples. We got to sip eight kinds of beer. Each unique and good. 

Into Boulder

This afternoon, after Rob came home from hosting auditions for scores of prospective students applying for admission to the College of Music, Ellen and I had our first chance to come into Boulder together. We went first to K.T.'s BBQ and shared a small basket of ribs, then got an ice cream cone and went to McGuckins' Hardware where I got some washers to fix a bracket back at the house. Now Ellen is at Whole Foods. I just looked into Barnes & Noble, but didn't find what I wanted.

                          Ribs at KT's

 

McGuckins is a Boulder classic-it has everything - this is a display of cookie cutters.......

                                 .....blenders.......

 

                                            .......fans.

P.S.  The TarHeels, who had that heartbreaking loss by one point to Duke on Wednesday, came roaring back today and defeated Miami, a team ranked higher than Duke. They won by 25 points, 96-71, and are now undisputed leaders of the ACC. Duke meanwhile lost today to Louisville. So does the wheel of fortune rise and fall in college basketball. 

Chaplain Crockett

I brought with me on this trip, as a kind of project to work on, three journals my father created when he was a Chaplain in WW II. They record his activities as a Chaplain at Fort Lewis, WA, from late 1942-June, 1944, and then with the 1314th Engineers Regiment in France from July, 1944 to June, 1945, and finally stateside again, at several camps, but mostly Camp Breckinridge, KY, until his discharge in March of 1946. I am photographing each page and studying the contents of these journals in a way I have never done before.

The Three Journals

Entry for March 10, 1944, in Journal #2

At Fort Lewis, my father was a Hospital Chaplain, and the journal for that period records sessions he had with servicemen in the hospital. He deals with a very wide variety of situations, many of them entailing problems at home, e,g, a sick wife, or an unfaithful wife who wants a divorce, or the death of a sister. Often the problem is with the Army bureaucracy, or the soldier just is sick of the Army and wants to go home.  In many instances, dad uses the American Red Cross to look into the situation, or he consults with an officer to see what can be done. Or he writes a letter. Some entries are pretty wild:

March 19, 1944: "Mrs. Bailey, dau. of Ernie ("The Barber") Lafferty, came in. Wants to be married to Bailey, to whom she has been married twice. After first marriage, he went to the Aleutians; she started divorce, married A.W.O., whose wife had started divorce; baby by this marriage; W.O.'s first wife drops divorce proceedings; marriage annulled as illegal; she was remarried to Bailey by proxy; meanwhile Bailey was sentenced by court martial to 12 months, has served 7, is now in Post Prison (en route to Turlock Prison), and they will be married while he is here." 

Dad doesn't say he performed the marriage; I doubt that he would have in this case, though he did do a lot of weddings.

By the way, "Turlock Prison" was an infamous spot. Located in Turlock, CA, it was originally built as as a fairgrounds, but from April to August, 1942, it was used as a detention center for Japanese-Americans, where they were housed in pathetically inadequate structures, their only crime being that they were of Japanese descent, and the U.S. was at war with Japan. When they were relocated to the Gila River Concentration Camp in Arizona (where they remained for the duration of the war), Turlock became one of several "Detention and Rehabilitation Centers" for GI's. "These centers were established in order to discipline and rehabilitate soldiers that violated military regulations before reinstating them for military duty." That's where Bailey was bound. 

Turlock Detention Center

Japanese-Americans arriving at Turlock, photographed by Dorothea Lange

When dad went to France with the 1314th Engineers, the nature of his chaplaincy changed. Now he was chaplain to hundreds of troops scattered over a fairly wide area, and he conducted numerous services as well as providing counseling to individual GI's who were in trouble of some kind. The 1314th Engineers followed the advancing front line and rebuilt roads and bridges destroyed in the fighting and generally did what was needed to keep open lines of supply and communication. He was not in the line of fire, but things were still risky, as this entry shows:

Sunday, August 27, 1944: "Driving out of Trevierres toward Colombiers, driver noticed French young men running across a field and glancing back over their shoulders. Turning to determine the cause of their fright, T/5 Gougis saw an object fall from a plane. An explosion followed, smoke and flame rising in a column perhaps 100 yds. high in an instant. We took it for a bomb. Thought it might have been an accident, or perhaps horseplay; decided that the thing for us was to move away. Later, returning to the scene, we found a plane burning, and were told this story by soldiers who were camping nearby and were eye-witnesses: Two planes met 4 planes (all 6 were C-47's, troop transport planes), and one banked to avoid one of the 4, and so struck his partner, knocking off the right tail piece. The injured plane crashed. The two men aboard were burned beyond recognition. The tail piece fell c. 100 yds. behind my jeep; the plane c. 300 yds. from us, some debris c. 50 yds."

I entered "1314th Engineers" into Google as a search term, and the first item to come up was a post in a website called Lest We Forget by a Phil Sammon. Phil's father, the post said, had been an officer in   Company A of the 1314th Engineers. Phil knew a little about his father's regiment, but was asking for more information. I looked in my father's journal, where he had listed the officers of Company A, and there was "Platoon Leader, 1st Lt. Paul E. Sammon." Then I looked at a group portrait of Company A that I had earlier scanned into my computer. My father had conveniently put an onion skin paper over the group photo, carefully outlined the face of every person, put a number inside each circle and then made a numbered list of names. There, just two seats away from dad, was 1st Lt. Paul E. Sammon! Now what do you think of that!

 

Company A of 1314th Engineers

 

Closeup of front row, with Chaplain Crockett on the left and 1st Lt. Sammon on the right

I thought it would be neat to contact Phil Sammon - he might like to see what I have.  He had posted his request in 2007, when he was working with the Forest Service in Ohio. A little online research revealed that he had moved to Missoula, MT, where he worked with the USFS.  A call there informed me that he had retired. The secretary was not able to give me current contact information for him, but I left a message with a colleague, and I hope to hear from him.

Wind, wind, wind!

The past three days, the wind has blown here unsparingly. Day and night. Gusts, we are told, up to 75 mph. It has been quite amazing, really. It is very noisy, the house shakes and rattles, the glass in the windows moves, branches of trees jostle violently. I just went for a little walk and got blown all over the road. We don't have steady wind like this in Vermont. I think it's supposed to calm down later today.

Meanwhile, life goes on in a routine. Betsey has breakfast around 9a.m. or so, but stays in bed until afternoon. It is more comfortable with her shingles that way. Yesterday, she didn't come downstairs until 5p.m.  We had supper and then watched the Democratic Town Hall from Las Vegas, NV on MSNBC. It was very interesting. Both Hillary and Bernie gave direct, substantive answers to questions from the floor. They are in good command of the facts and don't bash each other, although they do point out differences. It is so civil, compared to the Republicans calling each other liers!

Ellen has pretty much stayed here at the house during the day, since Katie left on Tuesday, so she can be available if Betsey needs her. I have gone out to the store each day to shop for food for dinner, which Ellen has then prepared. This morning, Ellen got to take a short walk while she knew Betsey was asleep.

It is very mild here. Yesterday, it was 73 degrees when I went to the store in Boulder.  Among other things, I picked up a bag of Taste of the Wild dogfood for Gertie, at the Whole Pet store. Next to Whole Foods. The pet store is quite the place. I have never seen so much "high end" pet food. I think pets in Boulder must be a lucky lot. A couple of nights ago, we watched the Westminster Dog Show on TV. What an amazing group of dogs! Some of them probably get Taste of the Wild with Salmon to eat, which is what Gertie is getting. Gertie had no interest in the dog show. But she is a very sweet dog. I think she misses Katie, but she is getting a lot of loving. She spends the night on the bed with Betsey.

Heart-breaking loss

Don't freak out from the title! It was only a game. But it was a heart-breaker. Duke beat North Carolina last night, 74-73. It was a home game for Carolina. They were favored to win. They lead the ACC. They are ranked #5, nationally, Duke is ranked #20. Duke was down two key players due to injury. Carolina led  virtually the entire game. But Duke pulled ahead in the last minute. Carolina had the last possession, with 7 seconds left, down one point. A chance to win. Their shot was blocked. Game over. Fans stunned. Players crying. Betsey swore that was it for her this season. Too painful to watch. 

Today has dawned bright and clear. Amazingly, life goes on. 

Katie is off

This morning I was up at 3:30a.m. to take Katie to the airport shuttle bus from Boulder to Denver. We left the house at 3:55 and got to the bus stop at exactly 4:15, just as the bus was arriving.

              Katie in line for the bus

                         Bon Voyage, Katie! 

Her flight was at 8:00 a.m, so she got there in plenty of time. She is flying to Boston. The original plan was to leave at 4am for a 4:40 bus. But when I came out to the kitchen to meet her at 3:45, she said she had just learned online that the schedule had changed. The busses left at 4:15 and 5:15. I said, let's try for the 4:15, and we made it, mainly because we hit every single light in Boulder green and at that hour there was no traffic. 

Going back, we arrived at the Shays Sunday evening at about 7:30. Betsey looks good. She has shingles, on top of everything else, so is very uncomfortable - and on her "good" side, the right side. So movement is even more difficult. And her doc says she is suffering from "chemo brain" - mental fuzziness. But the tumor is stable at the moment. She and Rob have more trips in the works - to L.A., Miami, and maybe even Scotland!! She is determined to make every day count. 

Yesterday we hung out at home and listened to the wind blow all day and night, gusts up to 75 mph! It was incredible. Not uncommon here, I guess. Ellen folded laundry much of the day. Katie packed. Rob cooked. Betsey and I sat and chatted. We watched the news and followed the seismic changes following the unexpected death of Judge Scalia. What a time! 

Yesterday

Yesterday we drove from Lewisburg, OH to Topeka, KS, a distance of 650 miles. We left the Super Inn at 9:40a.m., and arrived at the Topeka Super 8 at 10pm (11 pm eastern time). A long day. It was I- 70 all the way. Along the way we stopped in Columbia, MO, where Katie still has a house rental and a lot of stuff. We picked up some things she needs, saving her a trip. We met Sam, her housemate, who helped us find things. Thanks, Sam. 

Crossing the Mississippi at St. Louis - we saw no obvious vestiges of flooding. Probably not in the right place. 

                     Katie's housemate, Sam

                     Katie's house rental in Columbia, MO

Today we are continuing along I-70. Traversing Kansas. We've been enjoying a loaf of bread Harry gave us - with goat cheese spread on it. I use the road atlas as a work surface for cutting bread and spreading cheese. It has a shiny surface that can be cleaned. 

                                    Preparing lunch 

We're about to cross over into Colorado. I've been reading aloud from The Radical King, a collection of MLKing, Jr.s writings by Cornel West. We keep finding extremely apt passages for today's political campaign. E.g., King's formulation, "the inseparable twins of racial injustice and economic injustice." A perfect motto for Bernie's campaign. 

Snow squalls

Yesterday we set out from Swarthmore and had an easy drive along the PA turnpike- occasional flurries but road clear and dry. We located a Roadfood restaurant west of Columbus - Henry's - and headed for that, arriving about  5:30 pm. Henry's was a classic place, utterly unpretentious with basic, very reasonably priced food, famous for their pie. Ellen had custard and I had peach. Certainly good if not 5-star.

                       Henry's in West Jefferson, OH

            Interior shot of Henry's 

But when we got on the road again, we were suddenly enveloped in a snow squall. Total white-out. We managed to get onto a side road and waited. It stopped snowing, we went on, it started again. We had intended to aim for a motel in Indiana, but the driving was so tense, we pulled off in Lewisburg, OH, near the IN line, and found the Super Inn, a very down-scale motel. One room left, and we took it. Really basic motel. The room was cold. Ellen slept in her clothes and jacket. I had my heating pad,  thank goodness. We got some sleep. It was hard to get a hot shower - we settled for lukewarm. Today is very cold but bright. Road is fine. 

                                              The Super Inn

                  Beautiful room 112

Our first leg

We are in Swarthmore, PA -  the first stop in our journey to Boulder. We stayed last night at Wallace's, and had breakfast this morning with Harry and Sarah, at Hereford Place, in Lansdowne.  We just took a walk with Sarah, and Trey, along Darby Creek. But it was very cold and blustery, so we didn't stay out long.

We learned yesterday, in an email from Rob, that Betsey has developed shingles.  Not uncommon for someone on chemo with a compromised immune system. It is evidently not a bad case, but it must be uncomfortable for her.  The medical advice we have received is that we are not at risk to get shingles from Betsey. If we had not had chicken-pox, we could get that, but you can't "catch" shingles from someone. Shingles erupts in your body as the result of a breakdown in your immune system. Neither of us have been vaccinated for shingles, but for someone my age, it is not very effective anyway, and in any case, it takes a few weeks for the vaccination to work. So we'll proceed as planned. 

              Walking along Darby Creek

A lot to report

It's been a while since my last post and there is a lot to report. Looking ahead, we are leaving in two days to drive to Boulder again, to provide some respite help to make it possible for Katie to take a week off to visit friends in the Boston area, and also just provide Rob with support. We will be away about a month.

Looking back, we left Owl's Head, ME last Tuesday, stopped in Bath, ME on the way so Ellen could visit the Halcyon Yarn store, ran into Jim there, who came down to meet music students, then went on to Ogunquit, where we walked the beach, and then Kittery, where we went to When Pigs Fly bread store, and then Bob's Clam Hut where we had lunch, and then on to home. Since being home, we have gone to a rehearsal of the Rachmaninov Vespers, a "cabin fever" workshop with Larry Gordon and Carl Linich, singing Georgian, African and Gospel songs, a wonderful Service at the Guilford Church, a powerful concert of African-American spirituals and songs by Charles Mays, and got together with John and Cynthia. There have also been meetings, Ellen was with Tamar for a while, had a supper and movie date with her daughter, Julie, I spent several hours in the Subaru agency while our Impreza had some major work in anticipation of our trip, and I also did some major cleaning and organizing in my study, which desperately needed it - that is ongoing. So it has been a full time. 

          The entrance to Jim's studio in Bath

 

                    Jim in his studio, where he meets students one day a week.

                      When Pigs Fly bread store

            Some of the delicious bread there

   

Bob's Clam Hut, featuring Lilllian Mangos, who worked the counter for decades. 

                               "Cabin Fever" workshop

       Larry Gordon leading a song 

After church at Guilford. A group of young people and adults from the church is leaving for Kenya this week, taking with  them 80 tie-dyed T-shirts they made for orphans there - on display on the wall. The church has a more than a decade-long connection with the village of Kaiguchu in Kenya, deriving from a visit by Wangari Matthai to the Guilford church back in 2001.