Rhododendron power!

Our huge rhododendron bushes are in full bloom - despite having been flattened to the ground by a snow and ice storm back in late winter. See my blog post for March 15th. But by golly, they have pushed themselves back upright. Amazing! Yesterday, Memorial Day, we went to a BBQ and birthday party at Mary Cay and Manny's house. Clif and Eliza Bergh picked us up and took us, so we didn't have to drive our car. There was a good group - 20-25 people - and we sang several Balkan songs and quite a few played croquet. Mostly we talked and ate.

Scenes from the party. **************

We're scheduled to get a car rental on Thursday at Enterprise. Haven't heard from an Appraiser yet. That is frustrating! But with a rental car we can attend Brendon's graduation in Amherst on Friday and Tamar's on Sunday. By then we should know about our car's fate.

Brendon is here

Brendon drove up from Shutesbury in Katie's car - the red Prius. We met him halfway - in Greenfield at the Applebee's parking lot. We went down Route 5, not I-91, so we didn't have to go fast. I worry about driving fast with the car held together by a bungi-cord! I came back with Brendon in the Prius, and Ellen drove our car back. On the way, we stopped at a huge tag sale in Bernardston - Brendon loves tag sales - and he bought an electric coffee pot for $7. He found sludge in one of the reservoirs, so now he is cleaning it, or trying to. It's a hard-to-reach spot. Otherwise, it seems to work well. Brendon ran some vinegar through it in case there was any mold. Now he is flushing it out.

Brendon cleaning the coffee pot.*************************** It is a beautiful day today - warm and sunny, but not too warm. Brendon will spend the night and go back home tomorrow in time to meet a friend at noon. Church tomorrow is a Union Service being held at First Congregational Church in West Brattleboro. The service starts at 11a.m., not 10a.m. as usual. So we don't have to be there until 9:45a.m. We are coping okay with the car. It seems to run fine, and that is good. I'm worried that something will shift while in motion, and something will drag on the ground, or whatever, and make it impossible to drive. But that hasn't happened. The main inconvenience is having to pry up the fender to open the driver's door. But we still don't know if it can be repaired, or whether repair cost will exceed book value, in which case the insurance company settles for an amount, I think. We have a reservation for a rental car at 9:30a.m. Tuesday morning, which we will probably take. The adjustor should come Tuesday or Wednesday.

Lunch on the deck - Brendon and Ellen talking.

A sing for Joy

Joy Hayes has been a member of the Guilford Church Community for a long time, almost as long as I can remember. i knew her parents, Jim and Olive Hayes. Jim Hayes, in his later life, was a paraplegic, due to an injury in a ski jump accident. But not before he had inspired a local boy, Bill Koch, to be a cross-country skier. That's the Bill Koch who went on to be the first U.S. Nordic skier to medal in the Olympics - taking the silver medal for the 30k race in 1976.

Bill Koch, Nordic skier. protégé of Jim Hayes, Joy Hayes' father. ****************************** Today, Joy Hayes is a resident at Langdon Place, an assisted living facility in Keene, NH. A group of us from the church went there today to sing for her. But she wanted to share us with the other residents. So we sang in a parlor where about 12-15 residents were gathered - mostly women. We sang hymns from the Guilford Hymnal, which we had brought with us. Three hymns had been requested by Joy Hayes beforehand: "Siyahamba" (We are marching in the Light of God), "Precious Lord, take my hand," and "How can I keep from singing." About 8-9 more requested or suggested by one of us. Several residents sang along. We learned later that there are no Protestant services held there, and there are many residents who miss singing hymns very much. They hope we will come back - regularly!

Langdon Place, Keene. NH

The Parlor where we sang - decorated for Memorial Day Weekend

Joy Hayes

Mary Grove, who organized the group and accompanied some songs on her guitar.**************** We were brought to Keene by Cathy Hess, because we didn't feel safe driving our car to Keene, after the deer damage. She came to the house and picked us up, which was very nice.

25 years ago today

This past weekend was a time of remembering Shirley and celebrating her legacy, but today is the actual anniversary date of her death. In fact, it was at about this time of night that we were in vigil by her bedside, Betsey and me, and she died sometime around 11p.m. as I recall. In the mid-afternoon, we had a feeling of hope that the blood thinners were working and that she would recover from the stroke she had suffered at the beginning of the day. The doctor sounded hopeful; his mother had suffered a stroke, he said, and recovered well from it. I went home with Betsey to have supper with her and Rob and Katie, and I had picked up a book at the motel for Shirley to read while I was at supper. But when I came back to the hospital room after supper, everything had changed. Shirley was very ill and could barely talk, and when she tried to talk, it was mostly gibberish. Her doctor was not around and had apparently gone somewhere and wasn't answering the phone. Finally he came and ordered a brain scan. That is when we learned Shirley was suffering a cerebral hemorrhage, and that already the brain damage was severe and irreversible. She could not be expected to ever recover from it. By then Betsey had joined me at the hospital. We had to decide whether there would be an effort for Shirley to have brain surgery to relieve pressure and possibly clesr some of the blood from her brain. But the liklihood of that actually helping seemed almost nil. Back in 1957, I had gone through the experience of my father having brain surgery and never regaining consciousness, being in a coma for four months before dying. I could not wish that for Shirley. So we decided to let nature take its course, and in a matter of a few hours, Shirley was gone. We were devastated. The painfulness of that time is still vivid in my memory. But then we had to do so much - notifying people, making decisions and arrangements for travel back to Vermont, and on and on. I don't know how we did it, but we did. Shirley and I had flown out of the Providence, RI airport to Arkansas (I don't remember why) , and our car was in the parking garage at the airport in Rhode Island. Our friend, Phil McKean (who we just saw last Saturday), agreed to go to the airport and get the car and bring it to Vermont. I don't remember how he got the keys! We managed to "get by with a little help from our friends." And that is still true today. Thank you, all you loving family and friends!

Phil McKean's wife, Deborah, with Shirley, at the time of her ordination, May 1, 1994.

Sudden disaster

They say your life can change in an instant. Mine did last evening. I hit a deer with the car. There was a deer crossing the road in front of me, and when I swerved to avoid that deer, a second one darted right in front of the car. There was no way to avoid hitting it. There was nothing I could do. The car was drivable. It felt risky to go back and investigate. I felt terrible, but I just drove home - about six miles - and called 911. The car is badly damaged - hood, bumper, fender, headlamp. We can't open the driver's door- it catches on the edge of the fender. You can get in from the outside using a screwdriver to pry up the fender. But from the inside, you have to crawl over into the passenger seat and use that door. Doable, but not easy. It may be totaled - i.e., the cost of repair may exceed it's book value. I've done all the paperwork today. Now we just wait for the adjustor. My euphoria over the weekend has crashed to the ground, at least temporarily. I'm basically an optimistic person. I guess in circus terms, which is what Shirley used in her ordination paper, based on Kierkegaard's "Knight of Faith," I fell off the wire, but the net caught me. Now I need to climb back up on the wire!

World Trade Center tightrope walker - I don't think he had a net!

Omigosh!

I don't usually go over a week without posting a blog! But it has been 9 days. That is because this past weekend was huge, and I was obsessed with preparing for it all week. It was a weekend devoted to remembering Shirley and celebrating her legacy. We were observing the 25th anniversary of her death, which is actuually tomorrow, the 24th, but we used the previous weekend so that more people could be involved - especially Sunday. But we had a really lovely small gathering on Saturday - nine people - at John and Cynthia's house. In addition to J, C, E and me, that included Tom and Courtney MacLachlan from Amesbury, MA, who go back to our time at Lawrence U, 54 years ago; Mary Anderson-Nissen, from Bennington, VT, who we also first met back at Lawrence, and Phil McKean, from Cushing, ME, who goes back 60 years to our time in Providence, RI. The ninth person was Karen Fisher, an old friend of John's, who we first met back in the 1980's I guess. That group of people had never been together before, and some had never met before. But they all knew Shirley, all had memories to share, and they are all just really special people. There was also Henry, a very nice, well-behaved dog. We had a great time together. Lots of love and gratitude flowing around!

Above: John talking to Mary/Below; Phil (r) and Tom (l). Alas, no photos of Courtney, Karen or Henry. Cynthia and Ellen are well-known here, of course. Sunday was over the top wonderful and deserves its own post, when I get a chance. But if you go to YouTube and search "Guilford Community Church," both the morning May 21st service and the afternoon "Memorial Celebration" are there to click on and you can see for yourself.

A special guest preacher

Last Sunday, a day that was complicated for Ellen and me because we had conflicting commitments (Katie's birthday for Ellen and the Association meeting for me) we had a guest preacher at Guilford Church, Rev. Clair Bamberg, who also led a workshop after the service, open to anyone. This was no ordinary guest. Rev. Bamberg is a widely-known church consultant specializing in the facilitation of healthy communication. Her sermon and the workshop were both concerned with communication. Our church is going through a time when healthy communication is going to be key to a good outcome. So this was good.

A lot has happened in five days - twice!

Five days: a big concert, a fall, a very special church service, a trip to the gym, a trip to the neurologist, a good rehearsal, and probably something I am forgetting. The concert took place at Bennington College, Saturday afternoon. River Singers joined forces with Dr. Kathy Bullock's class, the Benningtoh Children's Chorus and a local Balkan Band, and it was a very high energy concert with people literally dancing in the aisles. Unfortunately, my feet got tangled in wires on the floor, and I fell down, But I fell softly and rolled, and didn't hurt myself. I got right up, sat down on my stool, and sang the whole concert. Lucky me! We went to Bennington with Eliza, in her car, rehearsed for 1 1/2 hours, had a nice lunch in the college dining hall, sat with Jim and Patience, and had a nice visit. The concert was at two, was live-streamed. Except for the fall, it was a great day, and the fall was not a big deal, though it certainly could have been.

Photos of the hall we sang in and the dining hall where we ate lunch.************************ LATER: Now another five days have gone by, even fuller days, if anything. I can't even remember Thursday the 4th - except you could say "May the 4th be with you" (Ha! Ha!). And I had an appointment with Angelina. But Friday we had a River Singers dress rehearsal; Sat. we had two RS concerts - at 2pm and 4:30pm - John & Cynthia came at 4:30; Sunday there was church, a BIG congregational meeting after church, and a Windham-Union Association meeting at 3pm in Peru, VT (that waa an exhausting day - and that was just for me! Ellen went to her sister's birthday party after the GCC cngregational meeting and took a birthday cake she had made - so she had to take me to Centre Church in Brattleboro to meet Scott Couper for a ride to Peru - in his Tesla; and last night, Sunday night, I got very little sleep, and today, Monday, we had a sing for Sylvia Morse - a sing arranged through the church, not Hallowell (a very nice sing at that), and then drove to Deerfield, MA in search of fresh asparagus - which we found! I haven't been very good about getting photos, but here are some:

The top two photos are from Sunday, April 30th - Mary Alice Amidon was leading the service and gave her personal testimony about her life faith journey, and Ellen and I sang in the choir. The middle photo is of Kathy Bullock leading the Friday dress rehearsal. The bottom two are of the Congregational Church in Peru, VT - an interior photo I took and one from the air off of their website. It is a lovely church; there is a mural of their setting in the mountains painted in 1931 on the wall behind the altar. They are just a few miles from Bromiley Mountain, which is a big ski area. Cynthia took pictures of the RS concert, but hasn't sent one to me yet. I'll try to pull some pix off the GCC website from Sunday's service. We had a guest preacher, Rev. Clare Bamberg. I left the phone in the car during the sing today, so nothing there.