vividreports: Catching up

I have a little catching up to do. I posted Stewart's letter, but nothing about us for about a week. It is definitely not as easy to maintain my blog at home because I do not have computer access to the internet from the house, and an added complication is that I cannot upload photos from my iPhone to my blog anymore. I guess my 4S Apple smart phone is pretty much obsolete, though I am loathe to replace it, because for basics, it works fine.

So - what have we done? I'll go backwards. Today, I had a dental appointment for cleaning at 11:45a.m., and Ellen wanted to go visit Eliza before that. So we left a little after 10a.m., I took her to Eliza's and dropped her off. Then I had just a little time to go to the Putney Library to download email. But for some reason, neither laptop would let me download email! The MacBook Pro would not accept my usual password for my Sover.net account, and the MacBook Air just wouldn't download... period. No explanations. Grrr. Downloading on the MacBook Air has been working fine up until today. So who knows what's going on there.

At the dentist's I had a male hygienist. Alex. First time, I think, that I have had a male hygienist. He was very nice, and almost overly-solicitous. However, he used the "sandblast" approach to cleaning (which involves irrigation and suction) which I find unpleasant. But I got though it. No cavities. He said I seem to be taking good care of my teeth, but I have some "deep pockets" between my teeth in the back on both sides which are of concern. Using a water pic would probably be useful.

Then I ran a couple of errands and went back to get Ellen. Maggie, Sarah's new baby, keeps them busy. She cries a lot and is not easily comforted. Someone has to hold her much of the time. So having Ellen there was helpful.

Yesterday, we had an excursion. Tom and Courtney MacLachlan invited us down to visit them in Massachusetts. They are friends that go back almost fifty years for me, back to my years at Lawrence University in Appleton, WI. I was Dean of Men, and they were head residents in Trevor Hall, a men's dorm. So Tom was part of my Dean's team - HR's, RA's, myself and John Nissen, Ass't Dean of Men. We had a great time together. Lots of laughter. Tom was also Ass't Minister at First Congregational Church in Appleton, where we went to church. When we moved back to Vermont, Tom and Courtney came back east too, and for a while, Tom was an ass't minister at the Congregational Church in nearby Keene, NH. Eventually, Tom left parish ministry and became an academic, working in the Community College system in the Boston North Shore area. They live in Newburyport, MA now, but their daughter, Kate, and her family, live in Burlington, VT, and their son Alex and his family live in Northampton, MA. Alex teaches at the Hilltown School where Tamar has been a student all these years. Tamar actually had him as a teacher one year. So Tom and Courtney have been drawn to our area by family ties, and this year they bought a little cabin on a lake outside Northampton in Goshen, MA, about an hour's drive from here (and very close to Alex). We had not seen them for a while, and had never seen their cabin. So we met for lunch in Shellburn Falls, MA, near the famous Bridge of Flowers, and afterward drove to their cabin. They also have a dog, a 100% mutt named Caesar. We had a lovely lunch, take out from a pub right next to the Bridge of Flowers, sitting on some benches next to a stone wall. Then we explored the Bridge which is spectacular. Then went to Hammond Pond, where their cabin is. Very simple, but cozy. We had a very nice time, and vowed to arrange a future gathering in Wilmington,VT (sort of a central gathering point) that would include Mary Anderson (John Nissen's widow) who also knows them from Lawrence years and after, and lives in Bennington, VT (which makes Wilmington a good gathering point).

We came back via Route 112 - a different way that took us through Jacksonville, VT - a place we rarely go - and ended up in Brattleboro in time to take in a movie at the Latchis Theater - The Farewell - which is a wonderful movie about a Chinese family stretched between China and New York City, and their resolve not to tell grandma she is dying of cancer but to all gather (in China) to see her anyway on the pretext of a wedding. Maintaining this pretense was very difficult, and almost breaks down. You are left wondering how much grandma really knows!

Monday was basically a be-at-home day. It was a beautiful day weather-wise. I did some mowing. Did some reading. Enjoyed the deck. I went up to the Dummerston Church to look for anthem for the choir (for September 8th) and didn't find what I was looking for in the file, but eventually found it in a book at home! We invited John and Cynthia for supper, but they were too tired to come (see Saturday below). We watched TV in the evening.

Sunday we went to a Union Service of the four churches (Guilford, Dummerston, W. Brattleboro and Centre Church) which was held this time at Centre Church in Brattleboro. We sang in the choir, which met at 8:45a.m. The organist and Choir Director, Mary Milkey-May, was someone we had never met before, and had never heard play the organ. She is excellent! She played a Buxtehude piece as a Prelude which was great! We liked her choir direction also, though she took the Introit, Be Still and Know, a bit faster than I do (we sing this in Dummerston as an Introit almost every Sunday). After church we bought a Sunday New York Times and got the Spelling Bee! So we worked on that in the afternoon, read the Times and listened to NPR in the evening. I worked on transcribing Stewart's letter while Ellen watched a movie on the TV.

Saturday was the day of the memorial service for Cynthia's sister, Lyn, who passed away last week (August 11th, actually). The service was held in the Hartford, VT UCC church, near White River Junction, about an hour or so away, and a place very familiar to me because when I was the UCC Annuitant Visitor years ago, I would hold Annuitant Lunches there every fall, so I knew the "kitchen ladies" very well. One of them was working on the reception luncheon and remembered me very well. John and Cynthia played at the service - very beautifully, I have to say. John had a particularly lovely solo on Irish whistle. They also played harp/cello duo. That was the high point of the service for me. But there were many thoughtful and emotional remembrances of Lyn and we got a good sense of her as a mother and grandmother and as a lively, feisty person. There was a luncheon afterward. Ellen was suffering from an allergy attack, so after the service she sat in the car while I went to the luncheon. I got to meet some of Cynthia's other siblings, and John pointed out other relatives as well. It is a big family. If John and Cynthia's music was the high point, the low-point was an encounter with a fundamentalist preacher who was at the service - not a member of the family. He was sitting right behind me and was very friendly at first, but when we got to talking afterward and he learned I was a UCC minister and approved of gay marriage, he dropped me like a hot potato and refused eye contact after that! Fortunately, he left early (maybe because of me!). We left at 9:30a.m. and didn't get home until almost five. We took a more leisurely drive home on Route 5 instead of I-91, and that was a good idea. The day was tiring, but even more so for John and Cynthia - it was draining for them, and they were still recovering Monday.

Friday was the day we came back from Maine. We hung out with Katie and Savanna in the morning, and then left around noon. Another gorgeous day! The trip back was not bad despite Friday end-of-summer tourist traffic (most of it northbound fortunately!). We stopped for bread at When Pigs Fly and for a late lunch/early supper at Bob's Clam Hut - our usual stops. No time to walk the beach at Ogunquit, unfortunately. Got home around 7:30 as I recall (a bit hazy on that). It was a cool evening and it got into the 40's at night. Great for sleeping.

So what else? Ah --- waiting for me at home outside the front door was Robert Alter's 3-Volume, The Hebrew Bible: Translation and Commentary, which I had ordered online. That was exciting! More on that later.

Photos:


Evelyn "Lyn" Hughes McDaniel (1945-2019)

Tom, Courtney and Caesar

A view from The Bridge of Flowers

The Bridge of Flowers is an old trolley bridge in Shelburne Falls which decades ago was converted into a garden which lines both sides of the bridge and provides a footpath down the middle. It is spectacular in every way, has an amazing variety of flowers, shrubs and small trees, is very well-maintained, and draws thousands of visitors.