Mr. Squirrel wants in!

For a couple of days now, a squirrel has been making resolute efforts to get into our house! He has investigated every window and door;  he's climbed up the side of the door and sniffed out every crack and just now he's just been standing outside the door looking in a little wistfully.

                                                                 "Won 't you let me in?" 

Today is a "bake cookies day" for Ellen and it is not going well. One batch of dough came out strangely and some almond slivers got over-roasted. Plus a beautiful knitted vest she 's been working on for months showed up today with two holes in it - mice ? Anyway, it can't go into the church bazaar raffle like that! Sigh ! Hope it starts going better for her - she has a lot of cookies to bake for the bazaar.

Meanwhile I had a dental cleaning this morning that wiped me out. They used the ultrasound machine which I find very disagreeable. Then I went to the computer store to get ink cartridges and they said they've stopped selling ink because they lose money on it! Huh? I thought that was how they made money? Staples doesn't carry precisely the cartridge I need, so I have to order them from Amazon. I tried and couldn't read those letters you're supposed to reproduce to prove you 're not a robot ( I think my old iPhone cannot handle their website) so I'll have to go out with the computer. It's one of those days!

Later:
Made the order for ink cartridges on the computer at the church, easy as pie. Also got my music copied for Sunday choir. Yay!

More photos from Thanksgiving

Thanks to Michael Schoeck for these photos!

         Katie, Gertie, Amy and Michael

 Gertie and Katie outside the glassblower's studio

                 Working on a jigsaw puzzle

                    The hearth in our house

          Looking out the window

2nd Thanksgiving dinner Saturday at Katie & Savanna's  (photo LCC)

Putney Craft Tour

Black Friday is traditionally the day we do the Putney Craft Tour - 25 craft venues of all kinds from glass-blowing to cheese. Before lunch we went to the Putney Spinnery and then to Dena Moses, weaver.

      A woven stole by Dena Moses

Now we are at the Westminster-West church for soup.

Katie, Amy and John having soup

In a minute we'll meet Katie, Savanna and Brendon at the glass-blower.

Later:

         Robert Bruce, glassblower

                             Brendon is giving rapt attention to a glass pumpkin in progress

Happy Thanksgiving!

It is Thanksgiving day and we have a wonderful day in progress with Katie , Michael and Amy here and John and Cynthia arriving soon. Ellen has been cooking and baking up a storm yesterday and this morning. KM&A arrived very  late last night - around midnight: they drove up from New York leaving at 8 o'clock.

It is very cold today  -  about 10 degrees, and also very windy. But with wood stove, electric and propane fireplace all going, we are cozy.  We'll have dinner around four.  KM&A have already done one jigsaw puzzle this morning and are now starting a game of Uno. 

                Last night waiting for KM&A

                      Michael, Katie and Amy

                              Pre-dinner snacks!

Thank you Ellen ! 

Snow again

We are at Katie and Savanna's house. We decided not to go home last night at the end of our trip because it was snowing and the house would be cold and we would have to sleep in a cold bed. So we came here and we had a nice sleep last night but now it's snowing. And we don't really feel too eager to get out on the road right now, so we're going to wait until it winds down. We have a River Singers rehearsal tonight, which may be canceled because of snow, but probably not. So we need to get home, get the house warmed up and get on with things up in Vermont! 

      Snowy world out there! 

At Suzy and Dennis' place

We spent Friday and Saturday night at Suzy and Dennis house in Elgin. We arrived at about 8pm Friday evening, talked a bit and went to bed. Then on Saturday, we got up fairly late, called Carol Plagge and found out she was available to have lunch, so we went to our usual place, Alexander's, and had a good lunch and visit. She is mostly recovered from a fall in which she broke her jaw. She had to get through several weeks with it wired shut though. After lunch, we went to Bartlett to visit Jerry and Maggie. Jerry is going through another spell of chemo for colon cancer that has metastasized, and the chemical formula this time is different and has been devastating, So it is being re-evaluated. He wasn't up for the gathering Saturday night but we wanted very much to see him and wish him well. Daniel came by and picked up Maggie though, and we all went back to Suzy and Dennis's. Peter was there, Tristan and Samantha, and Becky. A good gathering on short notice. There were three November birthday people there - Ellen, Peter and Samantha, so Maggie had brought a cake with EPS in icing, It is always great to be with the Crockett clan!

I was fun for me to be at Suzy and Dennis' place because she has some things I haven't seen for a while - like a painting of The Little Match Girl that dad brought back from France after WW 2. It hung on our wall during my high school years. There was also a drawer in our bedroom full of Stewart items. No time to go through it all, but I found an envelope of photos of the old buildings of the Pittsburgh Bible Institute. So - there is a story there.

My Aunt Julia, my mother's sister, dedicated her life to the Pittsburgh Bible Institute, a church and training institute for missionaries, that was founded at the beginning of the 20th century and initially occupied a number of buildings in downtown Pittsburgh, at the corner of what was then Congress and Wylie Streets. The photos I found are of those buildings. I visited Julia once there. PBI functioned in downtown Pittsburgh much as the Salvation Army does today in many large cities. In 1957, the city took the buildings and tore them down to build the Pittsburgh Civic Arena, a huge domed building that housed conferences and local sports teams. PBI moved to the suburbs, to Gibsonia, where they acquired over 50 acres of farmland, built new buildings there and adjusted their mission to a new reality.  Stewart and I visited Julia there in Gibsonia many times, starting in the 1970s and continuing until her death in 2000. I remember those visits with fondness. Stewart and I stayed in a dorm, had oodles of time to talk and take walks, and also be with Julia. Toward the end, PBI ceased to be a school and became just a church community, much like an Assembly of God church. They sold off much of the land and are now surrounded by million dollar homes. The cemetery where Julia is buried is today literally an island in a sea of huge houses. Meanwhile, the Civic Arena has been torn down! and is a parking lot. As a final irony, Wylie Street has been restored.

We left Suzy and Dennis' Sunday morning and started our journey back to Vermont. We hit sloppy weather around Cleveland and decided to take I-80 instead of I-90. Tonight we are in a Microtel Inn and Suites in Clarion, PA. A free room because I had acquired 15,000 Wyndham Rewards points which I decided to redeem to cap our trip. It is a very nice room.

PHOTO GALLERY

 

Suzy and Dennis' house

A birthday cake for Ellen, Samantha and Peter

The Little Match Girl

Pittsburgh Bible Institute main building, c. 1956

Julia Winter

Me and Aunt Julia in the 1990s

My brother Stewart with Aunt Julia

Julia (2nd from right) with a group of retired women missionaries at PBI, including Miss Rhome (2nd from left) with whom Stewart and I did many things - Miss Rhome would take us places in her car.

The summer of 1954

Yesterday (Friday) we drove from Onawa, Iowa, which is on the western border of Iowa, on the Missouri RIver, to Elgin, IL, home of Suzie and Dennis McQuen, my brother Stewart's eldest daughter and her husband. Suzie was born in Independence, Iowa in 1954, and that was the summer I spent in Onawa between my graduation from Drury College and entering Chicago Theological Seminary in the fall. i drove over to Independence that summer to meet my newborn niece. I was reminiscing about that summer with Ellen as we drove along in the car. It was an interesting and sort of wild summer for me. My dad served two churches, in Onawa and Blencoe, IA, and I led a youth group in both churches. We had regular meetings and did projects. The Onawa group tackled the refurbishing of a large meeting room in the church, removing the old varnish from the wood paneling and refinishing it. That summer, a new pipe organ was installed in the church - a Moehler Unified Pipe Organ. They needed a "grunt" to help with non-technical tasks, so they hired me. One of my jobs was to hold down a key on the organ console while they tuned the pipe. I was thrilled with this job because it gave me the chance to really see the inner works of a pipe organ. I had studied organ for a year at Drury, and loved the instrument (still do). When it was all built, I got to play it, much to my delight. That was also the summer of a major flood in Onawa. The Missouri River overflowed its banks and flooded a lot of fields. That was my first experience with the stench that follows a flood when the waters recede and the rotten vegetation is exposed. That was also the summer that I had an impacted wisdom tooth removed, and it was a traumatic experience. The dentist had snapped off the crown of the tooth for some reason and then was not able to grab the roots to pull them out. They kept slipping further down into the gums. I remember him pulling out drawers looking for a new forceps and throwing things on the floor in frustration! Finally he unpacked a new suction machine he had just bought and used the suction to hold the roots steady with one hand while he grabbed them with the other! I was in the chair for a long time and afterward I could scarcely open my jaw for days! My mother made liquid meals I was barely able to suck through a straw. That summer was also unusually hot and humid as I recall. Temps in the 100's with high humidity for days on end. Great for growing corn, but hard on humans. Quite a summer!

The churches have not fared well in the intervening years. Ellen and I did visit both churches on a trip we made back when we were first married - 2006-  and made a long trip to the various places we had formerly lived. The Onawa church was struggling and has since closed and become a Bible Baptist Church. The Blencoe Church was doing a bit better and is still a going concern, I think. When we visited, there were still people in the congregation who remembered me and my parents. We did not have time on this trip to go to Blencoe.

The present-day Onawa Church. It still looks as I remember it, but the parsonage, which was next door, is no longer there.

The Blencoe Church sign (c. 2007). So far as I can tell, Linda Boggs is still the pastor

Me, Maggie and Stewart in the living-room in Onawa, c. 1952 or '53

Happy Birthday, Ellen

Today is Ellen's birthday. Happy Birthday, Ellen!  I am one blessed guy!

We have been talking about it and having anticipatory celebrations of it for some time, so, of course, I lost track of the date and forgot to say "Happy Birthday" when we got up this morning! But it was a lovely day anyway, a beautiful drive across Nebraska on a surprisingly mild and sunny day. I read aloud from the book we are reading on the Great Lakes, and we also listened to lectures on Native American history. And we listened to NPR. Tonight we are in Onawa, Iowa at a Super 8. My father was a minister here from 1952 until his death in 1957. I was his assistant here the summer of 1954.

   The church in Onawa my father pastored . Today it is a Bible Baptist Church

Our friend Jerry is dealing with adverse reactions to chemo, so we will be staying with my niece, Suzie McQuen and her husband, Dennis, Friday and Saturday night. I hope we will get to see Jerry and Maggie a bit anyway.

Ellen had to drive a bit longer today than she would have liked - we arrived in Onawa at 8pm. Driving in strange places after dark is not much fun anymore. Thank you, my love!

       On Wednesday, we stopped at the Big Horn Sheep Museum in Dubois, WY. 

An amazing set of horns!

This grizzly bear family became addicted to food provided by humans and eventually were deemed dangerous and were put down and then put on display as a warning to humans to not feed the bears!

Another diorama from the Big Horn Sheep Museum.

In addition to displays, the museum provides field trips into the hills around Dubois to see Big Horn Sheep in the wild.

The new house

Paul has accomplished an astonishing lot of work in 6 1/2 weeks. Much of it all by himself. E.g.. he put up all the Tyvec by himself.

     Looking at the front 

     From the opposite corner

Looking into the kitchen from the living room

The master bedroom

2nd floor - Max's room

The huge upstairs bonus room over the garage which could be an apartment. 

Quite a day!

Sunday proved to be quite a day. We knew we were going to have to deal with post-blizzard road conditions, so we got up at 6:30a.m. to get a good start. We had the motel breakfast room to ourselves! I went online to the Colorado DOT to look at their road conditions map. We were surrounded by snow-packed, icy roads, and that was particularly true for our original plan to go north on US 285. But going west on US 50 toward Gunnison, CO looked better - we would be on dry roads in about 60 miles. But we had to go over Monarch Pass first - at about 11,000 feet (as I recall). We decided to do it. We would just have to go slow. We were on the road at 8:30a.m. It turned out to be not too bad. The road was well plowed. We went about 35-40 m.p.h. for probably an hour and a half anyway, maybe two, but soon after Gunnison we were on essentially dry road and eventually we were totally out of the snow zone and had clear sailing all the way to Alpine. So we made the right decision. We basically went to Western-most CO, went north through Grand Junction, then up to Rangely, CO, over into Utah and up into western Wyoming at Mountain Home and then up along the western border of WY to Alpine. Road conditions were great, it was sunny and cold, the scenery was awesome, but the roads were full of curves, so it was not fast-going. We drove 13 hours and 600 miles! Ellen is a trooper for sure. We arrived at Alpine at about 9:40p.m. Jenny had gone to bed but Paul and Max were still up waiting for us. We talked a while and then went to bed. Shortly after settling into bed, I got a really bad nosebleed! Hadn't had one for decades. I guess it was a combination of dry membranes and altitude. I had to wake Ellen up and get her help, and eventually it stopped, thankfully. I did get some sleep after that and it's fine today. I've had a fairly quiet morning. Max has stayed home from school since Nana is here just one day. Pretty soon we'll go over to the new house site for a tour. We heard a lot about it last night and this morning from Paul - it dominates his life right now for sure and will continue to do so until end of May 2019 when they hope to move in. It is basically going pretty well, though building a house is never easy or without a wide variety of problems to be dealt with.

PHOTO GALLERY:

                                            Starting out

                                          Pretty snowy 

                         Up over the Monarch Pass

                                   Driving getting better

                        Ah!  Totally snow-less conditions

                                        Great views!

 

                                          Clear sailing! 

Mission Accomplished!

The wedding of Kathryn ("Kate") Lowerre (pronounced the same as "Lowery") and Robert Shay took place on Saturday, Nov. 10th at 2 p.m. at the Church of the Holy Faith in Santa Fe, NM. It was a very lovely service, very classicly Episcopalian in its liturgy, and also full of music - hymns, choir anthems and a Handel duet for soprano and mezzo. Kate has been a member of this choir for about four years, and Rob has also been singing with it since he has started to visit Kate in Santa Fe over the past year.

We knew quite a few of the people attending the wedding, but the majority were members of the Church of the Holy Faith congregation. My granddaughter, Katie was there, of course, and her friend, Emily, also came. Their friendship goes back to high school in Winchester, MA - over ten years ago - and she just decided on her own that Katie should have a friend with her, and reserved a plane ticket. A real friend! Emily is a baker - she works for a catering service in Boston which specializes in catering corporate events, and Emily specializes in cakes. Rob's brother, Neal was there, and his wife, Sue. They own a vineyard and winery in Oregon and also run a BandB there. Neal supplied the wine for the event. Rob's nephew, Michael, and his girl friend, Amy, came from Queens, NY. Two couples who were friends from Columbia were there: Thor and Julia Norgaard,  with whom we stayed when we visited Columbia with Katie for the total eclipse a year ago; and also a couple who live near them who were in a book club with Rob and Betsey - Clark and Marty - were there. A colleague of Rob's from Univ. of Colorado School of Music was also there. And Brian and Carolyn Hopewell, who first knew Rob and Betsey back at Lyon College in the 1990s and now live in Salt Lake City, were there. We know all those folks. A former teacher of Rob's from Univ. of North Carolina, John Finson, was also there - I knew of him, but had never met him before.

We met Kate for the first time at the wedding reception. She is a reserved person, and we had only a few minutes to talk with her. So actually getting to know her lies ahead. We urged her and Rob to make a New England tour and invited them to visit us if they do. For the time being she and Rob are going to continue to work their separate jobs - she in Public Health in Santa Fe and Rob in Boulder, and see as much of each other as they can on weekends, etc. Rob, of course, is also dealing with multiple myeloma. He managed to get through the whole day without wearing his neck brace, so to look at him, you would not have known he was dealing with a serious illness.

There was a reception in the church hall after the wedding and then in the evening a wedding dinner for about 42 guests at a restaurant up in the hills outside Santa Fe - the Arroyo Vino. Between the wedding and the dinner, Ellen and I hung out with Katie, Emily, Michael and Amy at their AirBnB, and while there we did FaceTime with John and Cynthia. John wished he could have come, but it just wasn't possible, and so it was good to have that connection.

After the dinner, Ellen and I had a little adventure: our cell phone had no service up in the hills and thus we had no GPS to lead us back to our motel. We had to sort of guess our way back, and then eventually we did get service, and it turned out we had guessed well.  We made it back in good time.

This morning, Sunday Morning, we met Katie and Emily at Chez Mamou - a French restaurant near their AirBnB - for breakfast. They were flying back east on a true "redeye" flight that leaves Albequerque at midnight tonight. So they are at the airport as I write. Katie will get in to JFK just an hour  or two before she is supposed to be at work! She was contemplating calling in sick. But maybe not.

We said our goodbyes after breakfast but not too sadly because Katie, Michael and Amy are all coming up to Vermont for Thanksgiving! That just got worked out sort of spontaneously while we were together. That will be fun. Then we headed north on our trip to see Paul, Jenny and Max in Alpine - and to see progress on the new house. Our route took us into Colorado right by Great Sand Dunes National Park and Preserve, and we decided to visit the Visitor's Center. But on our way there we hit a blizzard - 40-mile-an-hour winds, blowing snow, almost zero visibility. Out of nowhere! We couldn't see any dunes at all and could hardly see the road. We managed to get to the Visitor's Center, saw a movie about the Park - we saw in the film what we couldn't see in reality - and Ellen got cards, of course. But when we left, it suddenly cleared and we got a glimpse of the dunes behind us - sort of magical. The road was clear for quite a while and we made a motel reservation in Silverthorn, CO up closer to Denver, for the night, But then, south of Salida, the blizzard hit again, and the driving was awful. It didn't look like it was going to let up, and it was getting dark, and we know we would not make it to Silverthorn without risking our lives, so we pulled off at Salida and found a room there. I called and cancelled the one in Silverthorn, but I may have to pay for it anyway - it was non-refundable according to booking.com  - though if the motel doesn't charge, maybe I won't. So that's where we are now. We'll have a LONG trip to Alpine tomorrow so we're getting up early and hoping the roads will be ok. 

PHOTO GALLERY:

Church of the Holy Faith, Episcopal, Santa Fe, NM

The chancel of the church where the wedding was held

Reception in the church hall

Kate Lowerre and Robert Shay, newly married

Katie and Emily at the wedding dinner

Amy and Michael at the dinner

At Chez Mamou for breakfast this morning

My omelette with potatoes and salad at Chez Mamou

At the Great Sand Dunes Visitor's Center

A ghostly view of the dunes as we left

The skies cleared, but not for long!