A Full Thanksgiving Weekend.

These past five days have been full! I've reported on some of it already, but not all. I don't think I've mentioned : the birthday supper for Ellen on Wednesday at the Feinland's house, with both Max and Ben there - Max coming in from Boulder and Ben from Philadelphia. Jim and Mary were planning on coming, but Jim was having heart irregularities and decided not to come. We had a very nice supper prepared largely by Max, a birthday cake (I think made by Julie), and then we played Salad Bowl - a word game that Ellen had specifically requested, that we had learned originally from Max and Ben. Have I described it here before? Probably, but not recently. Initially, every person is asked to write down a word or phrase on a slip of paper - each person wrote five. Some examples from this game were "Princess Diana," "Barbershop Quartet," "Portland, Maine," "A Black Hole," "Lady Gaga." The slips were folded and put in a large bowl - hence the name of the game. We organized into two teams of four people each. with Julie acting as time-keeper. My team had Katie, Jerry and Tamar on it. The other team was Ellen, Max, Savanna and Brendon. Ben couldn't play because he had a tutoring session on Zoom - he is working as a tutor, preparing high school seniors for their SAT's. There were forty slips in all. The game has three rounds. The first round, the first person stands up, faces their team, takes out a slip, opens it, takes note of the word or phrase and without using any word from what is on the slip, describes it to his team. The team has to come up with the word or phrase and say it out loud. Ideally, everyone on both teams should hear the phrase spoken clearly (this doesn't always happen). When the word or phrase is identified, the slip is thrown on the floor, and the team-member takes a second slip from the bowl. Obviously, the team-member who describes the word or phrase has to know something about it. If they are ignorant of its meaning (and this happens a lot), he or she puts down the slip on the table (not the floor), and opens a second slip. This goes on for one minute and that person's time is done. If they are good, they might get through three-four slips or even more. The slips on the floor are collected and held by the team. The ones on the table (that were passed over) go back in the bowl. Then someone from the other team goes through the same process with their team. This continues until the bowl is empty - all the slips have been described and someone has spoken the word or phrase out loud so that it can be heard by everyone. Then round two begins. The same procedure is followed, but this time, no words are spoken. The word or phrase is"mimed" by the team-member, very much like one does in charades, and again, someone on his or her team has to say the word or phrase out loud. Brendon turned out to be particularly good at this - he went through a lot of slips during his turn. The third round, the team-member can utter only one word in order to elicit the word or phrase from his team (and obviously it cannot be any word that is on the slip of paper). So just to give an example, if the phrase was "Barbershop Quartet," the first round the person might say, "A group of men singing in harmony." As soon as someone on the team says, "Barbershop Quartet," the slip. gets thrown on the floor and a second one is opened. In the second round, the person might mime singing (but make no sound), and could even hold up four fingers. The third round they could say "harmony." After each round the slips on the floor are collected and at the end of a round, they are counted, and then all go back in the bowl for the next round. After three rounds, the numbers are totaled for each team. In our game, the score was a tie! It is a fun, fast-paced game. Thursday was Thanksgiving dinner at Katie and Savanna's house. See my "Happy Thanksgiving" blog. Friday was the Putney Craft Tour, and we were joined by Michael Schoeck and Amy. Michael is my son-in-law, Rob Shay's, nephew - his sister Nancy's son. They live in Queens, NY, but have a "second home," a cottage, over in New York, just south of Albany, which they come up to almost every week. They stayed in an AirBnB in Brattleboro - as it turns out we knew exactly where they were. An old church, a Swedish Church, in a section of Brattleboro that was called "Swedeville," has been turned into a home. For a number of years, a couple of artists lived there and also had a stained glass studio there where they created beautiful stained glass pieces. They have now retired, closed the studio, and made a couple of AirBnB rooms. It borders on the lot where our friends Andy and Robin Davis have their home. "Swedeville" was so-called because a large community of Swedish immigrants lived there who worked at the nearby Estey Organ Factory back in the 19th century. Here are some photos Michael took:

Michael took a hike on Saturday up into Haystack Mountain near Mt. Snow, and got this view from the top.

The Swedeville Church, with Amy.********************************** We met Michael and Amy at Robert Burch's glass-blowing studio north of Putney. We go there every year, it is so interesting. Bob is not only a talented glass-blower, he is also a talented raconteur. He keeps up a flow of patter while he works that is very entertaining as well as being educational about glass-blowing. He was making a vase. We saw how he holds the glass in the oven; how he adds colors, how he blows through the pipe to create the bubble of glass; how he elongates the bubble by spinning the blow-pipe that the molten glass is attached to - thus creating a vase-shape; and most spectacularly, how he scores and taps the glass to remove it from the pipe without cracking it. Ellen bought some of his work for gifts. After that we went to the Westminster - West Church for lunch (the same place where we rehearse each week at River Singers), and we met Katie, Savanna and Brendon there), and saw some other folks we know. They make a spectacular array of soups there. I had West African Peanut Soup. After that we said goodbye to our family and went to Eliza's house to watch the USA/England World Cup soccer game. It was exciting even though they played to a 0-0 draw. For the US to hold England scoreless was remarkable. Unfortunately, it doesn't help them move on to the next round. They have to get a win over Iran on Tuesday. If they don't, they are going home. We learned on Friday that John had come down with COVID. He had tried to stay apart from Cynthia, but he got it. He is pretty sick - more sick than either Ellen or I was. This is really unfortunate, because he is dealing with so much otherwise. Saturday, we originally were going to have John and Cynthia here for a vegetarian Thanksgiving meal, along with Michael and Amy. But COVID kept J&C at home. So we took the meal to them - Ellen prepared a lovely meal - very tasty and beautiful to look at. But we had M&A here at the house for the same meal, and we had a very good meal and a very good visit, cozy by our now-functioning propane fireplace. We learned a lot about improvements M&A are making at their New York cottage property. They are discovering the challenges of ownership! There is always something that needs to be done! Amy stepped up and did the dishes - sparing me that job, which keeps me on my feet quite a while. So we got to bed in fairly good season and watched Vermont This Week on the phone before going to sleep. Today we decided to go to Dummerston to church to sing in a pick-up choir Mary Westbrook organized. We'll split ourselves equally between Dummerston and Guilford during Advent. Next week, Guilford. The choir sounded good! We sang "Come, Thou Long-expected Jesus,"as an anthem. Pastor Shawn was away, so two deacons led the service. There was a very nice lunch during coffee-hour afterward. Now we are home, and Ellen can rest a bit. No more meals to prepare. We have lots of leftovers!

Top to bottom: Bob Burch doing his thing.