A full and exciting weekend!

• Gosh, these past couple of days have been pretty full. Friday,  members of the Guilford church were sent an email which told us the name and something of the background of the candidate for the position of pastor of the church.  That same day, Katie and Savanna and Brendon all came up for supper on the deck and we had takeout from Panda North. It was a beautiful evening and that worked out really well. We had downloaded a menu, and we called in our order and then Ellen went down and picked it up. The portions seemed unusually generous. Ours were good for three meals for the two of us. While we were picking up the food, Brendon actually went down and had a swim in the West River.  Brrr!

Saturday, we had a meet and greet session on Zoom  to get a chance to interact with our new candidate at the church. We are being asked to keep her identity confidential for a few days until she has a chance to notify her own church that she is leaving. But we were very happy with our introduction to her, and then today, Sunday, she lead the service on live stream and a meeting was held after church, again by Zoom, to vote on her, and the vote was affirmative unanimously. And then at 2 o’clock there was a drive-by at the church where we got a chance to  say hello to her and her wife and they to us. So that was another special occasion with balloons and banners and so forth and lots of excitement. I’ll have more to say about all that after we no longer need to be confidential. Then after that, we drove up to Westminster, and had a short visit outside with John and Cynthia. We learned from John about an interview he had had with a candidate for a position on the faculty at Antioch. He liked the man very much, not least because they share an interest in the Indian philosopher Krishnamurti. Since we got home, we’ve been working on recording music for the Guilford service next Sunday, but we’ve been having trouble getting our voices to cooperate. 

Katie, Brendon and Savanna on the deck

 Congratulations to our new pastor!

If you go onto YouTube and put in a search for Guilford community church, and scroll down, you’ll see this video. We are on the front because we were leading  the opening hymn

Jiddu Krishnamurti

A little ride

Yesterday was such a beautiful spring day, we decided to take a little ride. I hadn’t had a morning-glory muffin for some time, so we called the bakery in Londonderry where they make them, to see if they were open. And they were! They only had muffins frozen, but that was OK because we freeze them anyway. So we had a lovely drive up Route 30 to Londonderry and in addition to the muffins we got a little treat: an almond horn,  a raspberry bar, and a decaf. We were very close to Lowell Lake, so we took them there to enjoy. There was a family there, but we didn’t get at all close to them. The lake was beautiful. And the treats were yummy! Coming back, we came through Grafton and Saxtons River, and since we were pretty close by, we decided to drive by Tom and Kathy’s place. It was really great to see them, and I talked with Tom from the car while Ellen got out and looked at Kathy’s beautiful garden and a new hen house Tom built. Tom has often dealt with sciatica, and he said that pre-natal yoga stretches on You-tube were helpful. So I’ll try that! It was a very enjoyable ride.

Lowell Lake

Kathy’s garden

Recording

Yesterday, we went to Andy and Robin Davis’s house to record two pieces for the  service coming up this Sunday. We sat outside in the backyard where Andy had set up a little recording studio. We sang Jesus shall reign where e’er the sun (Ellen on alto and me on melody) and also parts (alto/bass) on Marlborough, an early Ascension hymn in the shape-note tradition. Sunday is Ascension Sunday and also the day we will meet the new candidate for the position of pastor of the Guilford Church!

Robin got a photo:

At the Davis’ backyard 

Fresh asparagus

Saturday afternoon we took a drive down into Massachusetts in search of asparagus. We took Route 5 instead of the Interstate. A beautiful drive down past Greenfield to Deerfield. There we found a farm stand with a few bunches. Bingo! Our drive took us through historic Deerfield, which is charming. Super charming!

The farm stand and Deerfield scenes:

Pandemic birthday party

Today we participated in a birthday parade for the 90th birthday of Don Hazleton, a long-time Dummerston resident. Don and his family were our next-door neighbors back in the 1950s when I lived in the Dummerston parsonage. He still lives in the same house. A couple of fire engines, several trucks, and scores of cars participated in the parade. Ours was decorated with a big sign and balloons, as were many others. Don and members of his family were all sitting outside the house beside the road, so I guess somebody had tipped them off that this was going to happen. We all drove by the house honking and yelling our congratulations, went up a ways to turn  around and came back and did it all again. Lots of people were wearing their masks, including Don himself. At the age of 90, you can’t be too careful.

The birthday boy

A beautiful Spring morning 

Meeting folks coming back

Ringing the bell

Last Monday, Ellen was the bell ringer. The folks at the Dummerston Church have decided that the bell should be rung at the church every evening at 7 PM. It’s a thank you to people who are working on the front lines of the pandemic, and a reminder of what’s really important. Ellen was supposed to ring it a week ago Monday, but we went down to Northampton for Julie’s birthday and we forgot. So she made sure she was there last Monday at the dot of seven. Actually, we were there early and got used to the idea, and then she started ringing just as the cell phone said seven, and rang it for a minute. She said it was very satisfying to do.

Ringing the church bell

The main news for me since then is that I am dealing with a bout of sciatica. It’s pretty painful in my left leg, so I am muting it with ibuprofen and trying to do stretches. It’s definitely put a crimp in my daily walks.

We participated in the River Singers zoom rehearsal Tuesday evening. Wednesday, the Chicago theological seminary had their commencement exercises which were all on zoom. They  did it very nicely. They had several short speeches, some music by a grad. And then the dean read a name, president conferred the degree, and then you saw the degree recipient accept  their degree.

Dean Crowder

Pres. Ray

Today

Today started with fixing tea and toast for Ellen and myself - it is Mother's Day after all - and then Krista Tippett and On Being. She was reading from Pema Chödröns book When Things Fall Apart, which is absolutely the right book for this time! It inspired me to pull out our copy and read parts of it this afternoon. I don't consider myself a Buddhist, but this is just profound wisdom. After On Being, I got up and got dressed for church - even though we are in our own home. Guilford Church was at 10a.m. - another wonderful service which contained the news that the Search Committee has decided on a candidate and we will be introduced to that person in two weeks, May 24th. So that is exciting. After that we listened to Shawn's service for the Dummerston Church - a much simpler service but a thoughtful sermon as usual. And then Ellen fixed pancakes and sausage - our Sunday tradition. We listened to a concert by the Brattleboro Women's Chorus led by Becky Graeber - on Zoom of course - and after that talked with Jim  and Mary on the phone, and then Paul called and we talked with both Paul and Max. So a good family day for Ellen. We worked on the Spelling Bee puzzles and took a walk. A nice Sunday!  

Thread #6: Digitizing

An ongoing project is turning cassette tapes into CD's. This is a very time-consuming project; there is no way to do it quickly. The most recent project was a two-cassette recording of a performance of the Handel Oratorio, Judas Maccabaeus by the Brattleboro Community Chorus back in May of 1994. I play the tape on a little tape recorder that is patched into my computer. I have to stay right there with it because I am editing the tape - eliminating the dead spots, creating bands. which each contain one or two movements, etc. So it takes a lot of time. I use the app Garage Band on the computer to do this. Once I have recorded a movement in Garage Band, I send it to iTunes and create a folder there where I can collect all the movements. In this case there were 50 movements which made  32 bands, which fit on 2 discs, about an hour and a half all together. Then I have to create a case for the discs, and make a cover, liner notes, etc. It's a project!

The original cassette tapes

The tape recorder I use - it is an old Optimus Vox, It is probably 40 years old at least, but it still works well.

The CD cover I created. The picture is by the French artist,Gustave Doré (1832-1883) and it depicts Judas Maccabaeus confronting the vast army of the Seleucid general, Nicanor, and all his elephants!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Singing hymns

Thread #5: Singing hymns. Ellen and I started a new thread last night, that of singing hymns together. We've realized for some time that without regular singing, our voices are deteriorating. The occasional virtual choirs that we are participating in just aren’t enough. With the voice it really is a case of "use it or lose it." So we're going to try to sing ten hymns every evening before we go to bed.  We will be using the Guilford Hymnal. Typically, I am singing the melody line and Ellen is singing alto harmony. Sometimes we sing the melody line in unison. Occasionally, Ellen will sing the melody line, and I will sing the bass harmony. If we succeed in sticking with this every night, it will take about 2 months to go through the hymnal. Hopefully, our voices will benefit from this. It also should be quite enjoyable.

I spent some time yesterday afternoon working on a spelling bee puzzle that Ellen had created. It was really a good one: a great diversity of words. Not too hard, not too easy. The middle letter was L. The other six: GYTAOU. Try it! How many words can you form with those letters - four-letter-words or more (you can use each letter as often as you want in a word and every word must have at least one “L.”) I’ll post my list in a couple of days.

Keeping in touch with family

#4. Keeping in touch with family. This is a very important thread and it is one that I pick up almost every day in one way or another. I am in touch with John almost every day by phone. We have also actually seen John and Cynthia a fair amount of times since this pandemic required us to be isolated.They have come here or we have gone there; we have stayed outside, kept our distance,  able to have a good conversation. I do miss the hugs that we usually have. Similarly, we have visited Katie and Savanna in Shutesbury, or they have come here, again staying outside. Our deck is actually the perfect place to have a conversation and keep more than 6 feet apart. We have not been in quite as frequent contact with the Feinland’s, though Ellen does text Tamar and sometimes Max, and for a while Ellen was playing games on Game Pigeon with Tamar - like Anagrams and Boggle. That has slacked off for some reason. But yesterday was Julie’s birthday, and we drove down to Northampton and Ellen gave Julie a card and we saw Julie, Ben, Tamar and Max, and had a conversation from the car while they stood on the sidewalk. A little over a week ago, we had a zoom session that included Katie Shay and Rob and Kate. I haven’t heard yet how things are going now that Rob and Katie are living together in the house in Boulder. We are in touch with Jim and Mary in Owls Head, Maine,  sporadically. For some reason we never talk with them on the phone. Or at least very rarely. But we do send them things via email and we occasionally hear back from them. And Mary does regularly send the Sunday morning Spelling Bee puzzle to us. We would love so much to visit them, but Maine is closed down right now, the beaches are closed, etc., and we’re not sure that it’s a wise thing to visit. We’re in touch with Maggie and Jerry in Bartlett, Illinois mostly by email. Jerry is good about sending us reports and interesting fun things that he picks up on the Internet.And I think that they and other members of the family in Illinois read this blog. So overall, I think we’re doing pretty well in staying in touch. Obviously, we look forward to the day when we can actually visit again.

Tamar and Max with Toby

Plus Ben and Julie

More threads

#2. Eating. I guess you can call eating a thread.  My eating habits are a little irregular. I usually have three meals a day, but sometimes they are compressed into a period between noon and 6 o’clock. My typical breakfast is a smoothie and cereal. I always prepare my own breakfast unless Ellen prepares a special treat like pancakes and sausage (like this morning). Lunch often consists of leftovers. Sometimes I fix my lunch, sometimes Ellen does. She always prepares supper, unless she’s away, and even then she usually has something prepared for me in the fridge. Yesterday evening, she prepared a wonderful soufflé.

Ellen’s soufflé. She insists it’s really easy to make a soufflé.

Overall, Ellen certainly does most of the cooking. She also does a lot of cooking for other people. Needless to say, I am very fortunate to have Ellen preparing meals for me. I’m sure that I’m eating  far better than if I were eating alone. We eat very little processed food.

#3. Worship. Today was a little unusual in this category. We attended church three times. You might even say four, if you call the program On Being a kind of church, which it is. We listen to that on NPR  at 7 AM on Sundays.  But anyway, after On Being, today we attended a live stream from Saint Michaels Episcopal Church, and then a bit later the Guilford church pre-recorded service, and after that the service from the Dummerston Church, which was after the fact. Each was quite distinct in character. The Guilford church service is the most complex and richest in character with a combination of lots of things, all skillfully edited into a seamless whole. To compensate for the fact that it is pre-recorded, there is a live coffee-hour following the service where you can chat with your friends via Zoom. Everyone is in their own home, of course. These services are the heart of the week for me - like an anchor .

The Guilford services are still all available on YouTube - you just have to go to “Guilford community church” - and are done in collaboration with Brattleboro community television. Today, Paul Baker  called from Wyoming during the Dummerston service and we had a long FaceTime session with him. Worship during the week is more haphazard. There’s prayer sometime every day but we have never been able to establish any given time for meditation. I am hoping that is something we might actually achieve during this time of relative isolation.

Diane and Elliot during coffee hour

Threads

Life during the isolation inspired by COVID-19 seems to me to consist of a number of threads which I pursue, sometimes on a daily basis, and sometimes just now and then. I will pick up a thread and follow it for a while and then put it down and pick up another thread. Just for the fun of it, let me see if I can describe these threads - some of them anyway, in no particular order.  I’ll try to do at least one thread a day.

#1: The New York Times Spelling Bee puzzle. For a long time, this came only on a Sunday. It was part of the New York Times Magazine puzzles section. But then we discovered that online, it is a daily feature. Oddly, while the daily puzzle is basically the same as it is on Sunday, the rules are different. Well actually, there is one huge difference. The Sunday puzzle is done with paper, while the daily puzzle is done on the phone. When you do the Sunday puzzle, you draw a hexagonal diagram on paper and fill in the seven letters that you are trying to make words from - six letters around the outside and one in the middle. The middle letter has to appear in every word. You get that hexagon from the Sunday Times magazine. The answers  - the word list the Times editor has come up with - are printed on another page of that same magazine. You have to make your own list and then look at the answers to see if your words are acceptable. It does have the disclaimer that if you have a word they don’t have that is found in a dictionary, you can count it in your score.With the daily puzzle, however, you form words by touching the letters in the hexagon on the screen of the phone. If it likes the word you formed,  it adds it to a list. If it doesn’t like your word, it just disappears. So in that sense, you get instant feedback. But that isn’t all. The scoring is completely different. In the Sunday Times, every word of five letters or more is worth one point. The exception is a word that uses  all seven letters in the hexagram - it is worth three points. To be a genius, you typically have to get a score between 16 and 24 points depending on the day. The daily puzzle is very different. First of all, you can use four-letter words. They are each worth one point. Words of five letters or more are worth the number of points as there are letters in the word. Any word that uses all seven letters gives you a bonus of seven points in addition to the number of letters in the word. This is called the “Pangram.” Scoring in the daily puzzle obviously runs much higher. To be a genius, you often need over 100 points. There are also different gradations in the scoring. In the Sunday puzzle you are “good,” “excellent,” or “genius.” Good typically runs around 8 to 10 points, excellent maybe 14-18, and Genius 16 to 24 - something like that. In the daily puzzle, the first main level is “solid “ and then “nice” and then “great” and then “amazing.” Finally “genius.” You can get stuck in one of these levels: you keep adding words and you don’t go on to the next level!  Getting to “genius”  can be particularly frustrating. Recently, we discovered a level higher than genius. It is called “queen bee.” That’s when you get every word on their list. We have sort of accidentally gotten to this level once or twice. I say “accidentally “ because if you try to get to “queen bee”’you’re going to be disappointed almost every day. Their word list often has very obscure words on it even though they say they don’t accept obscure words. I guess one man’s “obscure” is another man’s “common.”

Today’s Spelling Bee puzzle

So far I’ve made it to “Great” with 20 words and 73 points. Sort of stuck there. I did get the pangram. It is “marzipan.” That actually sort of jumped out at me right away.
Here’s my list so far: