Wow, almost two weeks!

A lot has happened since my last blog post. The big thing was Thanksgiving. We went to Katie's and had Thanksgiving there with Katie, Brendon Tye and B, and were joined by John and Cynthia and by Karen and Brian. It was a very nice time; there was an amazing diversity of dishes to satisfy several diets around the table, good talk, remembrances ofSavanna, and many hands pitched in to clean up. Tye's pet hedgehog was a hit. A good day!

My beautiful Thanksgiving dinner plate!

Cynthia, Brian and Karen

John examining the hedgehog

Cute little guyc! ********************************** Before Thanksgiving, we went with Jerry and Max Feinland down to Stamford, CT to visit Jerry's mother, Doris. I had not seen Doris for a while because of COVID. She seems to be doing very well, living alone. She still drives and gets out to see people. Her daughter, Laura, stays in touch.

Doris and Max

Jerry and Max and a fruit center-piece Doris got.

Happy Birthday, Ellen!

Yesterday was actually Ellen's birthday. We had a special time going to Burdick's Restaurant in Walpole, NH and meeting Katie and Brendon there for a late - 2:00p.m. - lunch. Burdick's is always a real treat. I made a lunch of soup and salad - beer and cheese soup and an Asian pear salad - which was delicious. Ellen had what I had, except she had French Onion soup. Brendon had swordfish, and Katie had pasta. It was a leisurely lunch and we had a lovely time. I made a card for Ellen - I always try to make a hand-made card if I can - but forgot to take a picture of it. But it was a perfect time. Then in the evening, Ellen went to the movies - about Elvis Presley's sister, Priscilla - and I stayed home to put finishing touches on my Bible Study class which is later today.

Another week!

So, last Saturday we went down to Greenfield Community College again to a production of Tony Kushner's play Angels in America, which is set in the 1980's and is a powerful portrayal of the way the AIDS epidemic ravaged the homosexual community. I do not think of GCC having a top-drawer Theater Department, and so was blown away by the excellence of this production. Brendon was singing in the GCC Community Chorus, which served as a kind of Greek chorus in the play, and that is what brought us down there - but, Wow! - this was worth seeing on its own terms. It was very well cast, and the characters were vividly portrayed. It was a "theater-in-the-round" production and the audience was really drawn in as part of the play. It was long - we had to leave early so that Ellen didn't have to stay up until 2a.m. baking. And that was only Part I - Part II will be performed next April, and I think they will repeat Part I as well. Quite an ambitious production! Katie and Tye were also there, plus Dusty and Dorothy. Angels in America was on TV and also made into a movie, as I recall. You can find it on YouTube, or somewhere, I'm sure. I wish they had recorded this production for YouTube.

Brendon's chorus at the Angels in America play.************************** Saturday morning I went to the Men's Breakfast at the Guilford Church an took Jerome. There were 18 men there - quite a turnout. I had two pancakes, scrambled eggs, link sausage, pineapple, and a big bowl of oatmeal. A hearty breakfast! I started a Men's Breakfast back in 1991, and it ran for several years until it sort of petered out - I think the moving of the church interrupted it, and then I retired. But now Dwayne Johnson has picked up on it and is promoting it with enthusiasm, and it is working. Of course, in today's world, having a group of just one gender meeting together has a whole new resonance compared with the 1990's, so we talked about that. A week ago, there was a Women's Retreat - also single-gender, also very well-attended. So I guess there is still a desire by people to be just with others of the same gender. We haven't yet faced the transgendered issue. Maybe we will.

Two views of the Men's Breakfast.******************************* SundaY, we went to church in Guilford and sang in the choir - Perrin Scott led the service, and her sermon was based on a parable - the parable of the Ten Virgins. Very interesting! She had done quite a bit of research online. After church, there was an Annual Meeting of the church to vote on officers and budget. We learned that an anonymous member has donated $10.000 this year, and will give another $10,000 next year! The church will not need to dip into its endowment again as it has done the past few years. That was exciting news. We are without a regular pastor right now, and there seems to be a good energy percolating through everything. So that is good.******************************* Sunday evening, Ellen went to a birthday party for a group of women with November birthdays - including herself. There were 8-9 women there - it was held at Patrice's house in Brattleboro. They did a lot of sharing of stories about their lives and families. So that was great. And sometime - Sunday? - I went to John and Cynthia's and had suppet with them and spent the evening. Ah yes, it was Sunday, because we had a River Singers make-up rehearsal at 4:00 p.m. at Westminster-West Church, then Ellen took me to J&Cs, which is near the church, and she went on to her party. There. was some talk of coming back to the church for their Sunday-evening movie, which this week was Michael Moore's Capitalism: A Love Story,, but we ended up staying at the house and just visiting, which was very nice. Then J&C took me home, and we arrived at our house at just the moment Ellen returned from her party. Good timing!

Ellen's cake for the women's birthday party.

We did it, by golly!

Yesterday evening, Ellen went out to take postcards to the post office, and shortly after she left, the stove began to beep. Ellen had said nothing about the oven. I turned off the timer, and the display said PRE. And it just stayed there. I opened the oven door, and there was a pie in the oven. It did not look baked. Clearly, it was supposed to be baked, but the oven was not getting hot. I turned it off and turned it on again: it just said PrE. it never got to 350° or whatever. This was not normal. Eventually, Ellen got home and we checked everything out. it became clear that the oven heating element was broken. This was a disaster: Ellen had agreed to bake a birthday cake for the women's group that all have November birthdays. That had to be done Saturday. What to do? Friday (today) Ellen was going to meet Katie for lunch in Greenfield again, and we both had a Guilford small choir sing at Langdon place in Keene. There seemed to be no time to fix it! Ellen pulled the stove out to try and find the Serial # plate. Couldn't see it. We went to bed frustrated. This morning, Ellen left for Greenfield and I got busy. Using the iPhone I queried oven element replacements for Hotpoint ranges locally and was told "Cocoplum." We know them. I called, found out where the serial number on the stove is located, found it, couldn't get close enough to read it, took a picture of it with the phone, read that easily, gave it to Cocoplum, they looked it up, and BINGO! They had an element. We could pick it up easily coming back from Keene. I had to turn two hex screws to get the old element out. Did I have the right wrench? I looked and looked. YES! I found it! I was just getting the second screw out when Ellen came home. She was amazed! We went to Keene for the sing, came back and picked up the element - no problem ($99!), came home. The element had to be detached from two wires. I dimly remembered doing this once before. I had had to take a metal plate off the back of the stove to access the connection. Ellen checked out a YouTube "how-to" video for doing this job on a GE Hotpoint range. But the range was different from ours - a different connection. So I took the metal plate off and sure enough - there were the two connectors, very accessible. It was fairly easy then to take out the old element and put in the new one. But then we had to put the range back in place. It sits on a little platform we had to have built back when we raised the counter. We figured that out, turned on the stove, turned on the oven - BINGO again! It worked. Ellen could bake her pie and her cake. Good for us!

************ Meanwhile we had a sing at Langdon Place. 18 people showed up! It was held in the memory care unit and was very moving. One of the best things we do!

Falling Behind!

I'm really getting behind here! My last post was about a concert on Friday, October 27th, and here it is November 9th! That's almost two weeks. The problem now is remembering! I know that Sat., the 28th, a young man, David Scott, came to help with chores, and he was going to powerwash the deck. I rented a powerwash machine from Rentals Plus, but when we hooked it up to the hose and started the motor, it did not deliver a pressurized stream of water. We checked various things but nothing helped. So we gave up on that. He did hammer some upper windows tight and cleaned a pile of creosote out of the flue so we could start up the woodstove, and cut up some wood for kindling. So we got something done! I guess the big things have been Bible Study on Oct. 29th and Nov. 2nd, Dummerston Choir rehearsal on Nov. 3rd and performing Bruckner's Locus Iste on Nov. 5th - a beautiful but demanding piece which the choir did pretty well - with help from Mary Westbrook. I am finding it increasingly difficult to lead the choir physically. I took John to an acupuncture appointment in Greenfield on Wed., Nov. 1st., his first time with this person. I got two vaccinations on Friday the 3rd, one for regular flu, one for COVID, with mild after-effects, and I had a final session with Angelina on Monday the 6th before she heads back to Sante Fe. Monday evening I listened to my first Tarheels men's basketball game of the season on the Tune-In radio app on my iPhone. They easily defeated Radford University, not exactly a BB powerhouse. They have some games with big teams, including Connecticut, last years national champs, coming up soon (Dec. 5th). Without a doubt, what I have given more time to than anything else is Bible study preparations: reading about parables and dealing with logisics, both very time-consuming. I record the sessions, and uploading those recordings and sending out links to them is sort of a technology nightmare. But the actual Bible study is enjoyable. The next topic - "The Parable of the Feast" (Matthew 22:1-14 and Luke 14:16-24) just happens to very much relate to my doctoral dissertation where I did a detailed analysis of Luke's interpretation of the theme of the "Messianic Banquet" in Isaiah. I think I showed pretty convincingly that Luke's version of the parable is very much influenced by that Isaianic theme. So that got me back into my dissertation - submitted 57 years ago! Reading it is like reading something written by a stranger! Well, almost. In the midst of all this I did find time to fix myself a grand breakfast - eggs-over-easy, link sausage, English muffins, and a piece of cherry pie, courtesy of Ellen. Yum!

Trip to Greenfield Community College

In my life, the acronym, GCC, stands for "Guilford Community Church," but just 20 miles south of here in Greenfield, MA, it would be immediately recognized as "Greenfield Community College." That is where Brendon is going to college, and on Friday, Ellen and I went to the GCC campus in Greenfield where we joined Ellen's sister Katie and Brendon, to hear Brendon in a mid-day choral concert put on by the GCC Community Chorus, of which he is a member. I had not been on the GCC campus for many years - decades even - but back in the 1980's and maybe even the early 1990's, I had occasion to go there quite often. Two things took me there: (1) my friend, Judith Kinley, a nurse at the Brattleboro Memorial Hospital, who sat with me on the BMH Ethics Committee, taught a course in "Bio-Ethics" at GCC (they have a nursing program there), and she invited me on at least two occasions to visit her class and talk about ethics in general and bio-ethics in particular. Back then I not only sat on the BMH Ethics Committee, I also was teaching courses in "Management Ethics," "Social Ethics," and even "Sexual Ethics," at Southern Vermont College, and so I was sort of an "expert" in "ethical theory." The other thing was (2) I was teaching a course in "The Bible and the Arts," at SVC, and one segment of that course dealt with the Book of Job and the play, "J.B," by Archibald MacLeish, which is based on Job. It just happened that MacLeish lived near Greenfield, MA, and when he died, he left his papers to Greenfield Community College, and they had created the "MacLeish Room" at the college where you could peruse his papers, and even watch a video of a performance of his play. "J.B.," and other things of interest. So I took my class down there to see the play. It was not the sort of thing you expect to find at a small, community college.

Archibald MacLeish (1892-1982).

Judith Kinley (1942-2018).********* Anyway, the campus has grown a bit since those days, but still looks pretty much the way I remembered it looking. Brendon's concert was in the Sloan Theater, which was very conveniently located near a handicapped parking space, so it was very easy for me to get to.

Greenfield Community College.*********** The GCC Community Chorus is small, and it is open to community members not enrolled at GCC, so Brendon is one of the few actual students in it. The chorus is led by Margery Heins, who also is choir Director at nearby Ashfield, UCC Church. The concert included pieces by William Byrd, G. F. Handel, some traditional Hebrew and Ukrainian music and a piece by Carly Simon titled, "Let the River Run." It was a small audience, but an enjoyable concert - maybe the word will get out and the audience will grow. After the concert, the four of us met at the Greenfield Coop for lunch. You can go to an area where there are prepared foods, and then take them up to a balcony overlooking the store where there are tables and chairs. We tried sitting outdoors, it was such a lovely day, but the honeybees wouldn't leave us alone. So we sat inside.

Brendon in the GCC Community Chorus

The GCC Community. Chorus, with Margery Heins talking about one of the pieces.

At lunch in the Greenfield Coop

The entrance to the Greenfield Coop. ************************** Friday evening, we had a Dummerston Choir rehearsal and worked on "Locus Iste," a motet-like piece by Anton Bruckner. We'll be singing that this coming Sunday, November 5th.

Retired clergy gathering

Wednesday morning we had a gathering of the retired clergy group at the Dummerston Church. This group last met on April 19th! A lot of water has gone over the dam since then. The group has settled into being Jeff, Jack, Lee, Roger and myself, and sometimes Catherine. But Catherine is in an assisted-living facility in Bellows Falls, and doesn't drive. If we could meet in Bellows Falls, it would be easy for her to get there, but the part-time minister at the UCC Church in Bellows Falls has not returned any calls, so we haven't been able to set something up there. I offered to go get her and bring her to Dummerston, but she said she needed to have tests of some kind that morning. So it was just us five men. Jeff is planning to offer a course at St. Michael's Episcopal Church (which is where he attends church, even though he is UCC himself) - a course on "Aging". He brought a bunch of books with him that he has been reading on this topic - there are a lot of books on "aging!" I guess it's a hot topic! I took pictures of three in particular that caught my eye. Jeff is probably going to use Joan Chittister's book in the course. I have always admired the work of Parker Palmer, who is a Quaker, and the one by Arthur Frank looked particularly interesting - it is based on his interviews with scores of people who have a "life-changing illness" like cancer or ALS, in which he has collected their "story." He believes that people with such an illness, which he calls "The Wound," inevitably develop a story of some kind, and the book talks about those stories and the role they might play in the person's life. So we talked about aging, which we all have experience in! We also talked about what's happening in our various churches, and in our own lives. I had a lot to share because of all the things that have happened since our last meeting. I like the group - for some reason I didn't think to take a photo of the group itself, but here are the books: