This morning

I slept late this morning, and was awakened when Ellen came in and asked if I could make a quick "emergency" trip to Jackson for a plumbing part - the plumber had arrived over at the house with the wrong part this morning and Paul needed the right one ASAP. I was willing to go, but it worked out that Ellen could go quicker - I wasn't dressed and had not had breakfast - so off she went; Paul and Harry are over at the house and I'm at the condo alone. I just had breakfast and will now shower and get dressed. I was just looking back a year at my blog and was reminded that this was the weekend of Tamar's bat mitzvah last year. It was also just a year ago that my old upright piano was moved out of my study and taken to Green Mountain Camp. I have had many occasions in the past year to miss that piano!

It sounds like we will all move into the new house when we have to leave the condo. The basics will be in place - water, electricity, heat if needed, a working kitchen. It will just be inconvenient  - when Paul needs to finish a room, stuff will have to be moved out and then moved back in again when he is done. It is far from ideal to have people living in a house when you are trying to finish it! But it is not uncommon - that was our situation back in 1973 when we built our house in Vermont and moved in before it even had flooring - just sub-flooring. Paul's house at least has nice hardwood flooring down already - as of this week! I remember what a pain it was to have tons of stuff packed into a house when it was not finished. Truth to tell, there are closets in our house that are still unfinished 45 years later! The sheet rock never got sanded and painted. I hope that will not be the case for Paul.

I am hoping that today or tomorrow I can make a trip to the NAPA Auto Parts store in Thayne - the next town south of Alpine - and see if I can get a refund on the NAPA alternator that was installed in Eden, NY and only lasted four days. If they can't actually give the refund, I hope that can at least tell me what I have to do to get it.  It comes to over $500!

Later:
Ellen got the part, delivered it, and the water is on at the house. What is not yet on is power to the electric water heater. Cold showers for now! (Of course, we have hot water at the condo).  

South Dakota Tourist sites

On our drive from Sioux Falls across South Dakota on I-90 yesterday, we stopped at two very famous tourist sites - the Corn Palace in Mitchell, SD and Wall Drug in Wall, SD. Wall Drug is what I used to call a TT2  -  a Tourist Trap squared. Everything is overpriced and it is mostly useless. However, it is a phenomenon in its own way and Ellen certainly found a treasure-trove of postcards there. The Corn Palace is amazing. It changes every year, and has done so for over a century.  Much of it is made from corn cobs - decoratively, not structurally. And its free. So it is well worth a visit. And there were postcards there too.

The Corn Palace as it looks today

This is the gymnasium inside the Corn Palace, which functions as a gift shop when there isn't a basketball game or a performance of some kind. To the right off-camera is a large seating area for spectators. The wall murals are made of corn cobs.

Close-up of a mural

Two earlier versions of the Corn Palace from the late 19th and early 20th century

The facade of Wall Drug Store (just a small part - it fills an entire block)

A main corridor inside Wall Drug - shops are on either side and there is a lot of stuff on the walls and ceiling

Part of a mechanical country music band display - not sure it was still working but it used to play every half-hour

A selfie with a friend I met at Wall Drug

A Subaru addendum

A couple of posts back I told about a 1970 Subaru that was on display in the showroom at Schulte Subaru in Sioux Falls, SD. I did not have photos of the actual car I saw then so I put up pictures from the internet. But I got photos the next morning when we went back to pick up our car. Here they are. I just love this little car.

 The 1970 Subaru 360 - the first Subaru exported to the U.S. It did not sell well - it was too small and under-powered for American taste, and deemed unsafe. It had a 2-cylinder rear engine that got 66 m.p.g. I think it sold for under $2000.

We've arrived!

So, after many ups and downs, we have arrived in Alpine safe and sound. We spent the night last night in Gillette, WY and got on the road about 9:30am this morning. Our drive today was beautiful and without incident. We got to Alpine at about 6:30p.m. and went right to the house and got a quick tour. The water will probably be turned on tomorrow. A lot has been done since February but there is still a long way to go. However, Harry Kalish, a friend from Pennsylvania, has arrived to help out and he will be camping there. I guess the family will be moving in after the 13th. A lot needs to happen before it will really be livable. Don't know yet what Ellen and I will do.

Yesterday, we drove from Sioux Falls, SD, to Gillette, WY. We had planned originally to get as far as Sheridan, WY - about 100 miles beyond Gillette, but we were delayed by another "Oh No!" moment. Not the alternator this time, thank goodness, but a lost wallet. At some point near the Badlands in SD, Ellen suddenly realized she did not have her wallet. We stopped and thoroughly searched the car, but no wallet. So we thought - where was the last place she had it? Back in Kennebec, SD, about 75 miles back, we had stopped at a Clark Gas Station to get gas, and it was warm, so Ellen took off her flannel shirt. She remembered taking off the wallet, which she wears around her neck on a strap, when she took off her shirt. Thinking about it, she decided that the most likely possibility was that she put it on top of the car while she took off her shirt and then forgot to retrieve it. So it would have fallen off onto the road somewhere, but where? We talked about whether it was worth going back to look for it, and decided it was. So we headed back to Kennebec. From the car, I found the tel. # for the Clark Gas Station, called them and told them our problem. No one had turned in a wallet, but the manager said he would look around. He said two wallets had been retrieved there recently, one with $3000 in it! So we were not that unusual! He took our cell phone # and said he would call if he found it. He never called. About an hour and a half later we arrived at the Clark Gas Station. I went in to see if there was any news and Ellen started walking up the road we would have taken with the car. No news inside the store, but when I came outside, I saw Ellen coming down the road and she waved triumphantly!  She had found her wallet about halfway up the entrance ramp in the middle of the road!  It had been run over several times, so it was dirty, but everything was in it! Wow! Sort of a miracle. It reminded me very much of an incident that had happened almost fifty years ago when Betsey's glasses were lost on a trip to Chicago. That incident became a children's story at the Guilford Church years later - and I have attached it below.

But - that delay meant that it would be 1 a.m. by the time we got to Sheridan if we tried to get there. We would be driving through Wyoming wilderness at midnight, with possibly no cell phone service. What if the alternator decided to fail then?  I decided to cancel the motel in Sheriden and we stayed instead in Gillette - it was only 11pm when we got there. It was worth what I had to pay for the cancelled room to get that peace of mind.

The wallet, safe in the motel room after its adventure (and a bit cleaned up)

Here's the story - it was part of a book of Shirley's and my children's stories which I published a few years ago, which is why I have it!

319 - Lost and Found

September 30, 1990 and June 29, 1997 - L

This is a true-to-life story that happened in our family. It’s about a pair of glasses. [Larry takes out a pair of glasses.] I would like you to help me in this story. I want you to pretend that you are this pair of glasses. Become this pair of glasses in your imagination. If glasses could feel, like a human being, I would like you to try to feel what these glasses are feeling in this story. Every now and then I’ll ask you what you are feeling.

This story goes back to a time about 30 years ago when our daughter, Betsey, was about 10 years old. She had just gotten a new pair of glasses. We picked them up at the optometrist’s office just as we were leaving on a trip to visit my brother, about 200 miles away, a fairly long car trip. Betsey was excited to have her new glasses, and so she put them on and we started down the highway. What do you think the glasses were feeling? [“Different” . . . “Wonderful” . . . “Glad”] Yes, they felt good. They were finally being used.

About 60 or 70 miles down the highway Betsey got sleepy - she almost always got sleepy when she rode in a car. She wanted to take a nap in the back of the station wagon. So she said, “Dad, would you please hold my glasses while I’m sleeping.” So I took her glasses and put them in my pocket. What are the glasses feeling now? [“Safe”]

At this point Shirley was driving. We usually traded off driving so neither of us got too sleepy. But not too much later, she thought she would like me to drive. So we stopped, I got out, went around to the driver’s side, got behind the wheel, and we started down the road again. Maybe a half-hour later, Betsey woke up and said, “I’ll take my glasses now, Dad.” So I reached into my pocket - no glasses! They were not there! We stopped the car, I looked through all my pockets, we searched all through the car - no glasses. We finally decided that when I had gotten out of the car to change drivers, the glasses must have fallen out onto the road! Brand new glasses! What are the glasses feeling now? [“Scared” . . .“Sad” . . . “Disappointed”] You can imagine what I was feeling. STUPID! And I was feeling very badly about letting down my daughter. But it was too late in the day to do anything about it. We were due at my brother’s. The glasses were somewhere by the road, but who knew where? So we just went ahead with the Thanksgiving weekend, and Betsey and the rest of us had to let go of the fact that the glasses were lost, and we all tried to have a good time.

The lost glasses beside the road

Sunday afternoon we started back home. All weekend I had been thinking, “Gosh, maybe we could find those glasses.” Meanwhile, what do you think those glasses had been feeling all weekend? [“Lonely” . . .“Bored”] Maybe not too bored because there were cars whizzing down the highway just a few inches away. [“Scared.”] Yes, scared. We got into the general area where we thought we had stopped beside the road to change drivers, and we thought maybe if we went over to the other side and went slowly along the edge of the highway we could see the glasses. So we went across and started going along the edge very slowly, and we hadn’t gone very far when I looked in the rearview mirror, and guess what I saw? [“The glasses?”] No - I saw a police car with its light flashing. He pulled me over and said, “You can’t go that slow.” We explained what we were doing and why, but he said, “I’m sorry, you just can’t go along like that on this highway.” So we let him get out of sight . . . and just kept on going as we had been. We got to a place where there was an entrance ramp onto the highway, and suddenly we got excited because we remembered we had pulled over just beyond an entrance ramp like that. “Yeah, yeah, I think that’s where it was!” So we slowed way down and looked carefully - and guess what!! [“You found the glasses.”] We found the glasses!! There they were! They were beside the road, and we picked them up, and they hadn’t been broken, they hadn’t been run over, no one had stepped on them, they weren’t scratched, they were just like new!  What are the glasses feeling now? [“Happy”] You bet! Sometimes in our lives we feel just like these glasses: lost, forsaken, abandoned, lonely, sad, no one cares about us. But there is a little parable here. All the time those glasses were lying beside the road feeling lonely and scared, we were caring for them and wanting to find them. And I think that’s the way God is when we are feeling like those glasses. God is working very hard to find us!

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On the road again

We got on the road about 10:30 am with a new alternator. Let's hope this one works. We just passed the exit to De Smet South Dakota, home of Laura ingalls Wilder. But it is 50 miles north of where we are, so we won't go there. We are going to stop at Mitchell, South Dakota, and look at the Corn Palace.  Will be in Sheridan, Wyoming tonight, hopefully Alpine tomorrow night. 

Lots of flooded fields along side the highway.

Sioux Falls overnight

We did in fact get a loaner and we are spending the night in Sioux Falls at a Super 8 motel. They were still running a test on the alternator when we left the Subaru dealership, but it seemed the likely culprit. The bad news is that they do not have a Subaru alternator in stock - we would have to wait 2-3 days for one!  So we will have to get another "after market" alternator, which I was trying to avoid by coming all the way to Sioux Falls. But there is nothing to be done for it. We'll just have to keep our fingers crossed (well, I'll keep mine crossed - hard for Ellen to steer with crossed fingers).

It is sort of odd to have this car trouble all of a sudden because we drove the 1200 miles or so from Angola, NY to Pipestone, MN without incident. Not sure just what is going on and what the "message" is, if any.

We tried to treat ourselves to a nice meal at a Red Lobster restaurant this evening but it was only partially successful. I ordered NE Clam Chowder and a "starter" of seafood-stuffed mushrooms.The chowder was ok - it was much thicker than it would be in NE, but still ok - but the mushrooms were served in an incredibly rich butter and cheese sauce  that was just too much for me. I picked out the mushrooms and left the rest. The dish didn't look like that in the photo in the menu!  Ellen ordered lobster bisque, salad and coconut shrimp, which was just too much food. She enjoyed the bisque, but the salad was drowned in dressing. After supper we went to a Dollar Tree store to buy  reading glasses - I had managed to misplace mine on the trip.  I'm always sort of amazed to buy reading glasses for $1. Now we are back at the motel. The room has no fridge - we have a little cooler we usually put in the fridge overnight - but the front desk clerk was very accommodating about letting us use a motel fridge. So that was nice.

Before all this happened, we had an interesting visit in the morning at Pipestone National Monument, which I think is unique in the country as a place where Native American families can come and actually work at quarrying the red pipestone which is ubiquitous at that location (but buried under many feet of quartzite) and which is used to carve very beautiful pipe bowls and stems. Indigenous peoples have been doing this for millennia at this place. It was made a National Monument in 1937, and a treaty with native peoples is built into the law establishing the NM. The pipes have deep spiritual significance for native peoples - typically, herbs are smoked, not tobacco, and the smoke is a form of prayer. We saw a film which gave the background very beautifully, and then we walked around and looked at quarries. Because of a very wet spring, the quarries are flooded, so no one is working there now. All the quarrying has to be done with hand tools, which is a lot of work!

Display at Pipestone NM Visitor's Center

A variety of objects hand-carved from red pipestone

A typical quarry

Along the quarry trail

A little bonus: behind our couch in the waiting lounge at the Subaru place was a 1970 Subaru on display. I didn't get a photo, but it looked like this except it was bright yellow. I'll get a photo in the morning. The car had a 2-cylinder engine in the rear and got 66mpg! Too bad they didn't keep making it! Cute! But it lasted only a short time in America because it didn't meet the public's demand for space and power, and Consumer Reports put the  final nail in the coffin by giving it an "Not Acceptable" rating because of safety concerns. It doesn't seem all that different from the VW Beetle (tho that had 4 cylinders). This was Subaru's first car in America.  A modest start to what has become quite an empire. I hope Trump doesn't force the Japanese to reduce their exports of Subaru's to the US.

t

1970 Subaru

 We'll go back to Schulte Subaru in the morning and hope to be back on the road in good season - and hope it gets us to Alpine!

deja vu

Well, here we are in a pickle all over again!  We were driving out of Pipestone, MN this morning after a nice visit to the Pipestone National Monument, and the "charge warning light" came on - a red battery icon - and pretty soon a bunch of other warning lights started coming on, Ellen felt the power steering go off, and then we lost everything electrical and were coasting for a while. That came back but we obviously couldn't go on like that, so we pulled off in a place where we could safely get fairly far off the road - but pretty much in the middle of nowhere, about 15 miles east of Brookings, SD. This was all pretty much a repeat of what happened last Thursday near Angola, NY. So it was AAA again! This time we made sure the truck would take us too! Since the likely explanation for this was a defective alternator (the one put in last Friday was a NAPA part and likely a rebuilt alternator), and since our Premier AAA membership allows free towing for up to 100 miles, and since Sioux Falls was about 75 miles away,  and since there is a Subaru dealership in Sioux Falls, Schulte Subaru, where we could likely get a new alternator, i asked to be towed to Sioux Falls. The truck showed up within about 30-40 minutes and indeed brought us to Schulte Subaru, and so here we are. No word yet on a diagnosis, but they did assure us they could give us a loaner if we needed to get somewhere like a motel. But it is just 2:47pm, so who knows, they may be able to fix it this afternoon. Will we ever get to Alpine? Sure hope so, but it probably won't be tomorrow night because we are still almost 1000 miles from Alpine.

Being towed to Sioux Falls - a view from the passenger seat into the rear-view mirror

Schulte Subaru waiting lounge

Wish us luck!

Avoiding severe weather?

We've left Maggie and Jerry's and are on I-90 west which goes north into WI, MN and SD,  hoping to avoid severe thunderstorms, hail and tornadoes forecast for Iowa. It is raining pretty hard.

Later:

It's 3:30 and we're in MN approaching Rochester. Still raining, sometimes hard, sometimes not so. Manageable.

Even later:

Now, at 5:55,  it is not raining and has not been raining for over an hour. We are near Mankato, MN.

End of day:
We made it to Pipestone, MN at about 9pm. No problem with rain or weather of any kind since we got off I-90 on to US Rte.14 at Rochester. So that was a good decision. I read aloud from These Truths, which continues to be a fascinating history of the US - particularly powerful in the way it depicts the role of slavery and the fundamental conflict between the ideal of liberty and the reality of slavery and the interplay between them.  

We are at an America's Best Value motel. Pipestone is home to Pipestone National Monument which we will visit tomorrow.


Yesterday, there was a gathering of the clan at Maggie and Jerry's. Always a good fun time. Jerry is doing well.

Daniel and Lori and the back of Jerry's head).

Suzie, Peter, Maggie and Becky.

 

Quickie stroganoff

Tonight we had a supper of "Quickie Stroganoff" - a recipe Maggie found in one of the Home Cooking magazines that were found at Stewart's house. It was good. Ellen has been pouring over the magazines - she loves reading recipes from another era. We've actually been talking for some time about having a "casserole party" for me - a retro party to celebrate the food I remember having as a kid in the Midwest at church suppers. She's finding a lot of potential casserole recipes in these magazines!

Quickie Stroganoff

Some Home Cooking Magazines

Arrived safely in Bartlett

Here we are at Maggie and Jerry's. We had a very good breakfast at the motel this morning (I had a bagel with cream cheese, a hard-boiled egg, a bowl of raisin bran with yogurt, a smoothie with orange juice, veggie  protein powder and kefir, which I brought with me, and a decaf coffee). Our room was very nice - probably one of the nicest we've ever stayed in. We were on the road by 9:20am, but soon crossed into CDST and gained an hour. I read aloud for a while from  Jill Lepore's These Truths, which is her recent history of the United States, and our book of choice for reading aloud on this trip. It is very interesting and very well-written. It is exploring in depth the basic ideas that the country is founded on and how they have played out. Today we were reading about John Locke and the almost unbelievable contradiction in his thought between his affirmation that all men are born into a state of natural freedom and equality on the one hand, and his writing a justification of slavery into the Caroline Constitution on the other. 

We got through the Chicago traffic zoo fairly easily and arrived at M&J's a bit after 11:30a.m. Ellen managed to get postcards into the P.O. before the Saturday mail pickup - which always makes her glad. The car continues to perform well, no "check engine light," and we're getting 35.4 miles per gallon so far on this trip.  We just had a nice lunch with M&J. Ellen is now looking at old cooking magazines Maggie saved for her that were found at my brother's house in a drawer- they go back to at least the 1970s.  Maggie is making a recipe from one of them for tonight - a "quickie stroganoff." Today is a nice warm, sunny day here in Bartlett, but showers are forecast for tomorrow and "severe thunderstorms" for Monday, when we plan to leave for Alpine. Have to keep our eyes on the weather!  It's no fun to drive when it's raining so hard you can't see the road.

M&J's living room with Maggie reading in background

An uneventful afternoon - yay!

We picked up the car at about 12:20pm today and got on the road - and whaduhyouknow - no problems! Not only did it run smoothly, the check engine light never came on. That makes me wonder. Maybe this alternator problem all started Wednesday night when the check engine light came on. I took it to Subaru Thursday a.m., and they said, "catalytic converter." But maybe it actually was "alternator"! Who knows? Anyway, a few hours later the alternator started really misbehaving, forcing us off the road and having to be towed. The other complaint I have is that AAA told me on the phone the tow truck driver would be able to take us to a motel near the garage where he took the car, but in fact he said he couldn't take us at all because "they no longer had insurance to cover passengers." That seems to me to be unacceptable. He in essence stranded us. To his credit, he waited until we found a ride to a motel, but still.... I think if you are going to be a AAA tow truck, you'd better carry insurance for passengers, especially if AAA is promising you a ride! As it was, we got a free ride from a local "angel" who overheard our conversation and offered her help; and this morning, it cost us $30 + tip for a cab ride from the Angola Motel to the Special Tech Garage where the car was (about 15 minutes for us, but the cab driver drove 45 minutes from Buffalo to get to us - and 45 back, so that wasn't too bad). The repair was close to $500. Over $400 of that was the alternator. There was only an hour of labor. All in all, we were fortunate it wasn't any worse.

Our first stop after getting on the road today was the White Turkey Drive-In in Conneaut, OH, a Roadfood spot we visited years ago - maybe one of our very first trips. It hadn't changed at all. We did not go for the "Large Marge" - a very big turkey sandwich. Ellen got a root beer float and I settled for a small cone. It was fun to see it again, and doing a good business.

The White Turkey Drive-In

 Tonight we are in a very nice Inn in Nappanee, Indiana, which is in Amish country, as evidenced by this horse and carriage we passed on our way:

Amish couple in a carriage

The Countryside Inn where we are staying is just a few $ more than the Angola Motel but way nicer and includes a nice breakfast which the Angola Motel did not (we walked to a nearby market and made do with what we could find on the shelf this morning).

We'll be at Maggie and Jerry's by midday Saturday. That will be very nice !!

Maybe today

Update on our situation! Our car is at Service Tech Garage in Eden, NY. I talked with them, and they checked out the alternator and did find it faulty. They said they could possibly have a new one by 11am, or failing that, by 1pm from another supplier. It is a 1-hour job, so we might be on the road by c. 12:00pm or 2pm. If all goes well! Meanwhile, we are at the Angola Motel, about fifteen minutes from the garage. We walked to a super market not too far down the road and got sort of a breakfast there. Made do. I called a local cab service but his car is "down" so I got an alternate from him, Liberty Cab, out of Buffalo. They will be here in about an hour and take us to Service Tech, and it will be about noon by then. Maybe the car will be ready! I'm sure all of this is going to add up to big $$$ !! Oh well. It could have been worse. 

Later:

We're at the garage! Car is ready!

Break down

Well, there is a first time for everything. The car started acting funny on the New York throughway south of Buffalo, electricity was going off and on and the car was bucking and the speedometer would go to zero and then go back up, vmaybe the lights were going off and on - anyway we got off the highway, came to a service station, got some gas cause we needed gas and when we tried to start it up again it wouldn't start: battery was almost dead. This was in Angola, NY. 

So -  call AAA. Tow truck came pretty quickly, but had no room for passengers. Said he would take car to Service Tech in Eden, NY, next town over. We were on our own. While trying to figure that out, a local woman offered to drive us to the Angola Motel , which is where we are now. An angel! Now we'll have to get ourselves to the mechanic in the morning. I suspect the alternator. He is a NAPA dealer so maybe he 'll have parts.

This is a first in all our travels.  

Another delay

In addition to a late start, we have hit bumper-to-bumper traffic on the NY thruway, due to an accident. We've crawled for almost an hour! Not what we needed !

A little (or big?) delay

Well, wouldn't you know it? Late last night as I was returning from a trip to the ATM, the "check engine" light and the "slippery road" icon lit up on the dashboard. We were all packed up and ready to load the car this morning, but instead, now I am once again sitting in the Subaru waiting room. I did not have an appointment (obviously), so they told me "I'll need to be patient." But they have fit me in and we'll have to see what will need to be done. We may not get to Bartlett by Friday evening as planned. I guess when you have a car with 230,000 miles on it, you can't be too surprised when something goes wrong. The timing was poor, however! Have we come to that point where we need to be thinking "new car"? We had hoped to put that off for a couple of years. After all, the Corolla had 390,000 on it before we got rid of it! Sigh!

Later

We got off at 11:30. Problem? Catalytic converter. A  $2000 job, but not urgent. 

Leaving Thursday

We will now be leaving on our trip on Thursday morning. An extra day feels good at this point. Today we had breakfast with John and Cynthia at the Putney Diner and then Cynthia went to school, we dropped Ellen off at home and John and I went to Jamaica Cottage factory in Londonderry to check out possible pre-built additions to their house. We found some real possibilities, I think. One is the Xylia cottage. There is a 12x20 model that would be just right for a bedroom, bath and a sitting area and a desk. The total cost could be c. $25k which is a lot better than the $75k for the Wheel Pad!  It's more rustic, but that's ok. Definitely worth looking into more.

The Xylia Cottage - this would attach to J&C's house on the right hand end.

All kinds of things

This was another very full weekend. Friday, we had lunch in Wilmington, VT (about 18 miles from our house) at Dot's Restaurant with Marcia Dorey, a retired UCC minister who was in a couple of classes I taught decades ago and whom I haven't seen for a while. She broke her neck in a car accident a year or so ago, and had to wear a brace for some time, but is out of the brace now and seems to be doing fine. She told us about a new company in Wilmington, called WheelPad, which builds what you might call a tiny house on wheels, except it is only a bedroom and bathroom on wheels. It is designed for people with physical disability who want a quick accessible bed and bath attached to their house. She said there was a model to look at just outside Wilmington, so we went to take a look, the idea being we might attach it to John and Cynthia's house. It is interesting -  it's attractive, and very functional. It's in a very different architectural style, and we don't know the cost yet. But worth looking into more.

A WheelPad. We learned later they cost $75,000! Too much!

Friday evening was a Dummerston Church Choir rehearsal, which went well. We were rehearsing Jeremiah Ingalls' Wedding Hymn, and it was complicated because I wanted a different combination of voices on each of the five verses, so there was a lot to keep track of. But the choir was very game about it. We were doing Wedding Hymn because Shawn was preaching on Jesus' appearance at the wedding at Cana, in John, chapter 2, and Wedding Hymn starts out with a reference to that. During rehearsal, one of our basses cried out excitedly that their mother goat was giving birth to kids at that moment - an event they had been anticipating for some time. After rehearsal, Ellen and I went to their place and saw the two new kids!

Mama goat with one of her kids

 Late Friday evening, actually after midnight, my granddaughter, Katie, arrived from Brooklyn. She had only Saturday and Sunday off, so she left after work Friday. She used ZipCar as a rental agency - you go through an app on your phone, locate a car in a parking garage near your apartment, pick it up and drive it off! She was tired but happy to be here. We talked a while and then all went to bed. Almost 2 a.m.

Saturday morning, I sang with Hallowell at a memorial service for Chuck Ratte at his home in Saxton's River. I first met Chuck 45 years ago when I was on the dean's staff at Windham College in Putney and he was a faculty member in Geology. He was also Vermont State Geologist and had quite a bit to do back in the 70's in getting Vermont off the list of possible sites for nuclear waste storage. It was a service outdoors under a tent on a beautiful day in a beautiful location. Katie wanted to sleep late so it didn't really take away much time from her visit, fortunately. It was a lovely service, we sang four songs, and were much appreciated. My friend Arthur Westing, also Windham faculty, took a photo and sent it. There were a lot of old Windham College folks there. Almost a reunion. Windham closed in 1978. It's campus is now Landmark College.

Hallowell at Chuck Ratte's service

John came over Saturday afternoon and for the rest of the day we all just snacked and talked about Katie's job, her love for Vermont and wanting to have a "root" down in Vermont, etc. Ellen and Katie did go over and visit Eliza, Sarah and the new baby. A good day!

Sunday morning, Katie came to church with us and sang in the choir. John and Cynthia were there. Choir went really well. We had four sopranos, two altos, two tenors and four basses! But the way I had variously arranged voices for the verses of Wedding Hymn, the balance was actually quite good.

After church, we had some snacks at the coffee hour and then came home, had a an additional quick snack for those who wanted it, and Katie was off for NYC by a little after 1pm. A good visit. John and Cynthia had things to get to, so they took off, I went down and got the NYTimes, and worked on Spelling Bee, and then Ellen went to a tea party at Eliza's and I went to a Windham-Union Association Meeting in Bellows Falls. An interesting meeting where the topic was on using cartooning as a means of communication in the church! Not the usual topic.  We all got a crash course in cartooning and were given the opportunity to express the story of Pentecost in cartoon form (Acts 2- where the Spirit descends like  "tongues of fire" on the heads of the disciples and they speak in many "tongues" - in foreign languages which are understood by many visitors who are amazed at hearing their own language being spoken by "Galileans"). I'm not much of a cartoonist, but here is my product. 

Pentecost in cartoon form by LCC

Today I met with a Brattleboro Hospice staff person to talk about the early years - I was part of the founding group of Hospice in Brattleboro and served on the Board in the early 1980s. So I shared memories and dredged up some names. Then I did a bunch of errands including a trip to the landfill - much needed - with both trash and lots of recycling items. All part of getting ready for our trip to Wyoming. But Paul called today and reported that they had been thrown a curve ball - the condo which they had been told they could stay in until end of June was suddenly sold, and they have to be out by June 13th. That's where we were going to stay, so we're not sure how that will be resolved. We'll see!

Eggplant

Betsey wrote this piece for piano and bassoon in 1983 when she was 25 years old. She was working in the Admissions Office at Bennington College for our friend John Nissen, and took a course at the college in composition with Vivian Fine. I don't know if this piece was performed by college musicians as a part of the course, but I'm pretty sure I personally have never heard it. Betsey also composed a song-cycle at that time which was for piano and baritone, and I did perform that at a recital sponsored by the Guilford Friends of Music which featured local composers. Unfortunately, Betsey did not continue to compose - she met Rob the following year, got married, and her life took another direction.

The score of Eggplant

Betsey

Vivian Fine was a highly regarded composer and pianist. She championed and premiered the works of several 20th century American composers.

"Fine wrote extensively for voice, employing the poetry of Shakespeare, Racine, Dryden, Keats, Whitman, Dickinson, Kafka, Neruda, and others in a wide variety of settings. She composed two chamber operas, The Women in the Garden (1978) and Memoirs of Uliana Rooney (1994). In The Women in the Garden, Fine used the writings of Emily Dickinson, Virginia Woolf, Isadora Duncan and Gertrude Stein to fashion conversations among the four women and a tenor representing the various men in their lives. Memoirs of Uliana Rooney (1994), Fine's last major composition, is a contemporary opera buffa, with libretto and videography by Sonya Friedman. The work, autobiographical in spirit if not in factual detail, follows American composer Uliana Rooney as she journeys through the 20th century, surviving changing political climates and several husbands to ultimately triumph"

Fine died in 2000 at age 86, following an auto accident.

Vivian Fine

More familiar territory

And now I am at the Putney Public Library - another familiar place because this is where I come to transfer paper files into .pdf files by running them through the scanner. It is a nifty operation, but it is not without its challenges - first, staples have to be removed, and second, the papers have to be lined up with very even edges, and a lot of my papers have folded edges. My best efforts to create an even edge still result in paper jams in the machine - and that, of course, involves un-jamming the scanner, which can be frustrating. But I have done a lot since I got here a couple of hours ago. I found, mixed in with other, unrelated things, a musical composition by my late daughter, Betsey, titled Eggplant, written for piano and bassoon, which I have never heard. I'm wondering if there is some way I could run it through the computer and hear it performed that way.

At the Putney Public Library

The dandy scanner

The first page of Eggplant (unfortunately, Photo Booth, which is the only camera available to me at the moment - it's an app in the computer - reverses images for some reason. So you have to hold this up to a mirror to see it properly! But you get the idea. The total work is 4 pages long. I would scan it, but the blog requires a .jpg image, and won't take a .pdf file. When I get home I can take a photo with my iPhone, but I can't upload that from the house. But I can upload it tomorrow from the Guilford Church, which I will do - all 4 pages.

familiar territory

This morning I'm back at the Subaru waiting room - seems as though I've spent a lot of time here. This time it's for a Vermont State Inspection. Our sticker expires June 30th, and we will be in Wyoming then. So it needs to be renewed now. Not a big deal, but I had to get up pretty early. They said it would be at least an hour - they also are replacing a brake light switch - that is a recall.   They have WiFi here so I can take advantage of that.

The Subaru Waiting Room

Home alone

Right at the moment I am home alone listening to NPR and working on my computer. I'm alone because Ellen has taken Tamar and her little dog Theo back to Northampton so they can be there when the other Feinland's all return from their trip to Chicago. I could've gone with them but decided to just stay here and be quiet and rest.

These past few days have been pretty eventful. I guess you could say the eventfulness started on Friday. We were going down to Northampton to Tamar's school  for grandparents day, and as we were arriving, I got a call from my son John who said he was calling from the emergency room at the Brattleboro hospital! He had been driving home from work in Keene, not feeling very well, and then suddenly started having pretty severe chest pain. So he decided a trip to the ER was in order. By the time he called me he had already had an EKG which was negative, so it was looking like he probably was not having a heart attack, but there were further tests that he was having so I left and came back up to Brattleboro. I spent the next three or so hours with him -  Cynthia was there also - and the news was good re his heart and  the explanation for his pain seemed to be, according to the doctor, pleurisy. So he was sent home  and told to take ibuprofen.

So I said my goodbyes to John and Cynthia, much relieved, and headed back to join up with Ellen and Tamar. But that turned out to be not so simple. Suddenly,  my cell phone simply would not go on. I even took it back into the hospital with the charge cord to see if it would go on there. But no luck. I knew that by then, Ellen had joined up with Ray and Doris Feinland, who were also at grandparents day, at a hotel in Springfield, Massachusetts. They were planning to take Tamar with them to the hotel to swim. We were all supposed to gather for dinner at the hotel. The problem was that I knew they had been trying to reach me to find out about John and had been unable to because my cell phone was dead, and I didn't know exactly where the hotel was. But there was nothing better to do than try to find them. I sort of remembered the word "garden" in the name of the hotel, and that it was near the basketball Hall of Fame in Springfield. That turned out to be good enough. I found the Hilton Garden Hotel just past the Hall of Fame. And they were all in the restaurant ! But then when we came out to the car to come back to Northampton  with Tamar, I plugged the cell phone into the charger cord in the car, and it went on! So I don't know what was going on there, but was glad to have my phone back. Amazing how we have come to depend on these phones! 

So that was all Friday. We stayed overnight in Northampton Friday night, and on Saturday we hung out there at the house for a while. Ellen took Tamar to the movies in Hadley - The Pokémon movie - and I stayed at the house with Theo. I had a date a little before six to meet John and Cynthia for supper and then take them to a play in  Dummerston.  In one scenario, Ellen and Tamar were going to join us for supper at Panda North, and then Ellen and Tamar would go home and I would go to the play with John and Cynthia. But we got a late start heading back to Brattleboro, and the logistics just got too complicated. So Ellen dropped me at the restaurant and they went home. John and Cynthia and I had a nice supper there at Panda and then we went to the Dummerston Grange to a production of Gaslight by Patrick Hamilton, a play written in 1938. It was a psychological thriller about a man trying to drive his wife crazy intentionally by accusing her of losing things that he himself had hidden. She did indeed think she was going crazy, and became quite distraught, and all of that was painful to watch, though very well acted. I think this play was ahead of its time, because the wife is freed from this abuse and the play ends with her redeemed and the husband in jail. You can watch a 1944 movie based on the play on YouTube. That is in fact what I did while Ellen and Tamar were at the movies earlier in the afternoon. I watched the entire movie, Gaslight,  and I have to say that in some ways I think the movie was superior to the play. (Note: I just realized that the movie I watched on YouTube was not the 1944 version of Gaslight with Ingrid Bergman, but an earlier, lesser-known 1940 British version, starring Diana Wynyard as the wife. It was free. The 1944 version costs $2.99). 

Poster for the 1944 version of Gaslight

This morning was the Shirley Harris Crockett award Sunday at the Guilford church, and so I had to be there to give certificates to two young women who are going to be youth delegates to the UCC Synod meeting in Milwaukee this summer. Lisa was preaching on Hagar this morning, who is of course the mother of Ishmael who is the father of all Muslims. So she chose a Muslim song for an anthem, and Andy Davis decided to do Ahmede Muhammede, which was the song we sang in River Singers last week  in which I had a little solo, so I got to reprise that this morning. Then I came home with the New York Times and worked on the Spelling Bee while Tamar and Ellen played a game and watched a movie. And now here I am! Happy to be sitting quietly by the fire.

Power wash

This afternoon I power-washed our deck. I didn't get a picture in progress, but here is how it looks now:

The newly power-washed deck!

Before this wash, much of the deck was covered with a greenish-grey/black mold. I rented the power-wash machine (which was a real bear to unload and load) from Rentals Plus in West Brattleboro ($68 a day! They didn't have half-day rates).

Yesterday, I raked out the leaves from around the foundation of the house - I don't think I ever raked last year, maybe even two years. It was pretty bad. Looks good now:

Newly-raked foundation area - now the ferns can grow!

Tuesday (think it was) Ellen took food to Eliza Bergh to help out at the time of the birth of their new granddaughter, Maggie, who was born Friday. I got to hold Maggie, who is a beautiful little baby:

4-day-old Maggie

Guilford Church Service

If anyone is interested in seeing the service which I led at the Guilford community church last Sunday, it is now posted on YouTube. Just go to YouTube, put in  "Guilford community church" as a search item, and you will get a long list of GCC services. You will need to scroll down to 5/5/19 and click on that. Good luck!

What a weekend!

These past few days have been extraordinary, which is saying something for us! It started when Ellen came down with a cold on Tuesday and then seemed to squelch it, but I started to come down with it on Thursday - feeling the effect enough to cause me to not go to the special Thursday River SIngers rehearsal with Kathy Bullock. But I too squelched it with immune system boosters of various kinds, and felt able to sing the two concerts on Saturday. I actually had more singing voice than I often have. It was a long day - starting with a 12:30pm  rehearsal - we had not sung our regular repertoire for ten days because the entire week before the concerts was devoted exclusively to learning the five gospel songs Kathy taught us. So we had to get our heads back into all that music: Georgian, Bosnian, Macedonian, African, American shape-note, etc., - our usual range of music. We had a concert at 3pm - to a sold-out audience, and it was great. I had a short solo in a Muslim song that went very well. Then instead of joining with everyone for a potluck supper at the concert site - which would have taken more energy - Ellen and I went home and had a chance to eat supper and lie down to rest before coming back for a 7:30pm evening concert which was also sold-out and if anything even more high-energy and intense. Wow! John, Cynthia, Katie, Savanna and Brendon all came in the evening. We didn't get home until after 10pm, and I had a few last minute things to do to be ready for leading the service at Guilford the next morning, and then I was so revved up I had a hard time getting to sleep. I guess I got some sleep but not much, and was up a bit after 7am and at the church by a bit before 9am. Amazingly, the service went really well; I think the Spirit was holding me up! It was a long service - I tried to pack too much into it, but everyone seemed to respond to it and I got a lot of very touching words of appreciation. Then we came home for just a short break - working on the Spelling Bee from the Times - before we left to go to Shutesbury for Katie's 70th birthday celebration, which was a high tea, featuring the Tolles family tea service in all its glory, tea sandwiches (the dainty kind with no crusts) and scones with clotted cream and marmalade, and of course a birthday cake. We had a lovely time and laughed a lot. But we didn't leave to come home until almost 10pm and got home at 11pm. Then this morning was the final Osher lecture. I did get some sleep last night, thank goodness! It was a great final session with Meg Mott which featured some role playing, arguing various positions on the issue of a bill in the Vermont legislature calling for a 24-hour waiting period on the purchase of a hand gun. Another high-energy event! Afterward we treated ourselves to lunch at the Chelsea Royal DIner (fish sandwiches and Maple creamies!) and then a real treat - a walk on nearby Gulf Road trail which is a wild flower bonanza spot where we saw, e.g., coltsfoot, saxefrage, trillium, Jack-in-the-pulpit, and Dutchman's britches. It was a beautiful day for a walk - warm and sunny after days of rain. After our walk we went to four stores looking for a new kitchen sink faucet (ours is leaking like crazy) with no luck in finding one with the kind of handles we want. We ran into Clif Bergh in Brown and Roberts hardware store and got the news of their new granddaughter, "Maggie," born on Friday. Everyone is doing well, and Phoebe, Maggie's older sister (2 years old) wants to hold the baby all the time. Ellen will take some food to them tomorrow morning before we drive to Bennington to have lunch with Mary Anderson. You get the picture! And speaking of pictures, here are a bunch:

Kathy Bullock leading the Tuesday evening rehearsal at Westminster-West church

Kathy leading from the keyboard at Next Stage in Putney, our concert venue on Saturday

The women's section of River Singers taking a bow at the end of the concert

The table set for high tea

"Katie Tolles poured and a good time was had by all"

Katie blowing out the candles on her birthday cake

Spring green on the way to class this morning. Cool, rainy weather has slowed the progress of spring

Our teacher, Meg Mott, political science prof at Marlboro College

Peter Abell, a retired dentist who introduces each session at Osher. We meet at the New England. Youth Theater which is about to stage a play: thus the props

Role-playing a debate in the Vermont legislature

Outdoor service at Chelsea Royal Diner

Moss and wildflowers on the Gulf Road Trail

Saxifrage and moss

Jack-in-the-pulpit

Dutchman's britches

Coltsfoot

The trail