The past week

Quite a lot is going on that I haven't reported here. Last Sunday at the Guilford Church (February 18th) it was the first Sunday for our new Interim Minister, The Rev. Allyson Platt, who was the interim Minister back in 1997-1998 right after Shirley and I retired. She was very much liked, back then, and people are very excited to have her returning. The church attendance has been quite good both last Sunday and yesterday. She sat in on my Bible Study session yesterday, which was nice of her.

Rev. Allyson Platt and her therapy dog, Hero. **************************** Otherwise, I had River Singers Tuesday, had a session with Holly King (massage therapist) on Wednesday, Dummmerston Choir Rehearsal Friday evening, a Deacon's Dinner at the Dummerston Church Saturday evening, and Bible Study after church on Sunday. So it wasn't a super-busy week but just right. I had time to prepare Bible Study - the parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus (Luke 16:19-31) -- and I think the session went okay on Sunday. We had 15 people there - including Ellen and me. The one thing that didn't go well was that the recorder I use ran out of storage space and the recorder stopped after 12 minutes - unbeknownst to me. I'm supposed to be erasing past recordings but I haven't been - it's a reccorder I borrowed from John. So I got no recording of that session to send out to people. I will have a Zoom session Thursday covering the same material, so hopefully I'll get a recordong of that. Right now, I am at Planet Fitness while Ellen is at the Guilford Church with her Prayer Shawl knitting group. I just worked on three machines - the bike, the arm pedal and the leg squeeze. They have a nice lounge room with comfortable chairs and WiFi.

Concussion revelations

Saturday afternoon Ellen and I went to a talk and exhibit in Northampton at the New England Visionary Artists Museum. The star of this event was Abbie Steiner, an artist who lived at Pathways, a co-housing facility in Northampton, where Julie and Jerry also owned a house, and whom we therefore got to know and actually came to own a couple of her prints. One hangs on the wall beside our bed; the other is near the dining table. Her work back then was very intricate montages of images and words, often Hebrew words and letters. In 2011, all that changed. She was walking late one night through a dark public parking garage when her head hit a canoe which was mounted on top of a minivan and sticking out behind it - it struck her just above her left eye. She collapsed to the ground, having suffered a concussion. The effects of the concussion were profound. The symptoms worsened over time and led to having to give up both her work - as an Alexander Technique Therapist - and her art. Her vision and the way her brain worked fell into a kind of chaos, unpredictable, changing constantly, painful and exhausting. But she didn't give up. Two years later, she began drawing for a few minutes at a time, whatever she could tolerate, and gradually did more and more. Her art was completely changed and became a kind of journal of her recovery. This went on for years and still goes on today - 13 years later - though she has almost fully recovered. But she is a different person, a different artist. The event Saturday included an exstensive exhibit which was stunning, and included detailed descriptions of her physical and mental condition and symptoms at the time the work of art being displayed was being created. I have never seen anything like this before. There was also a panel in which Abbie herself talked and showed some illustrative works of art, and she was joined by one of the caregivers who was a big part of her healing - Dr. Naomi Clay, O.B., a vision specialist - and a friend, Nancy Pick, who is an author of books about science. I learned a great deal about concussions (e.g., no two are alike), and found the whole experience fascinating and inspiring. I was particularly inspired by Abbie's courage to "hang in there and keep working" when it would have been very understandable if she had just said "to hell with it" and given up. Julie and Jerry were there also, and afterward, we went to their house and saw Tamar and had a snack with them - including soft pretzels just made by them, dipped in cheese sauce. Tamar seems to be doing well at Brandeis. She has just started the second semester of her Freshman year. It looks like a year of study in Japan is definitely in the future. Here are some photos of the Abbie Steiner event and samples of her work.

Abbie at left and Nancy Pick looking at a fairly recent work by Abbie.

Dr. Naomi Clay, looking at the same work.

Above: Three works by Abbie, all since the concussion, but otherwise unknown dates, taken from her website.

Two pre-concussion works by Abbie - the upper one in our bedroom, the lower one in our dining room.

Opera on the Air

Sunday afternoon, we attended a charming production of three short operas at U Mass, staged as live radio productions. The three operas were: Samuel Barber: A Hand of Bridge. Libretto by Gian Carlo Menotti; Gian Carlo Menotti: Old Maid and the Thief; Douglas Moore: Gallantry: A Soap Opera. A Hand of Bridge, was only about ten minutes long, and only one act: Four people, two unhappily married couples (Sally and Bill; Geraldine and David) sat around a card table playing bridge. They bid until they reached a contract of 5 Hearts. As the game progressed, each character expressed inner thoughts and desires, mostly about their unhappiness. Old Maid and the Thief, is about a middle-aged woman and her maid who are unexpectedly visited by a mysterious and handsome young man, a "beggar." He is invited to come in and given food and a place to sleep. Later, a neighbor rushes in and tells the two women that a man - a notorious thief - has escaped from a nearby prison and has been seen in the neighborhood - and his description seems to fit with the "beggar" they just took in (who the women are explaining is actually a distant cousin!). This announcement sets off a train of events - the women don't want to antagoize their guest so they go overboard in giving him things - especially money, which they steal from their neighbors! I.e., the women are becoming the person they think they arw harboring - but it turns out he is not the thief after all. He is a wandering poet. But it all comes to a surprising climax. Gallantry: A Soap Opera, is a wonderful satire both on social mores of the 20th century and also radio commercials. A surgeon and a nurse get romantically involved, but the nurse is also in love with a patient the surgeon is operating on, and there are moments you are not sure what the surgeon is actually going to do with that scalpel he is holding! Meanwhile, a woman off to the side is using all her wiles selling hand soap and floor wax! It's all pretty hilarious. Ellen, Katie and I went to the opera workshop and then went to Shutesbury for the Super Bowl! We knew Savanna woud have wanted it that way. We had yummy snacks, Brendon was there, of course, and it turned out to be a pretty exciting game which went into overtime- not common in football. The game went late, and it was after midnight when we got home - well after midnight!

The mysterious "beggar" in The Old Maid and the Thief."

Selling "Billy Boy Wax" on the radio.

Surgeon, patient and Nurse.

The casts of all three plays giving a curtain call.

In Maine

We came over to visit Jim and Mary in Owl's Head on Friday, arriving c. 5:30p.m. We stopped at Bob's Clam Hut along the way, but not at WHen Pigs Fly, for bread. Ellen brought a tasty dinner of Swedish meatballs on noodles, with squash and lignonberry sauce. In the evening we watched a show that they have been watching which they like very much, but we were unaware of. I can't remember the name of the show, but it was fun. Saturday, I slept late, fixed a breakfast of orange juice with Kiefer, scrambled egg and cereal. Then Jim and Mary took us out to lunch at Archers on the waterfront, where I had steamed mussells. Yum! We thought we would go to the Farnsworth Museum afterward, but when we got there, we found they were closing within a half-hour, so we came home and went to the Farnsworth on SUnday. Saturday evening was the TaHeels/Duke MBB game, which I watched on TV. Great game which the Heels won handily. It looks like they could be Final-Four material this year. That would be exciting. They have a very deep bench this year - a large number of real stars, capable of double-doubles (10 or over in both points and rebounds). Hubert Davis does a good job of rotating through them, giving his starters a chance to rest. Sunday we went to the UU church with Jim and Mary. The pastor "preached" on equity and equality - I use quotes around "preached" because I don't think he mentioned God at all. But it was interesting and timely. Then after church (which included sort of a "lunchy" coffee hour), we didgoto the. Farnsworth. Ellen puched me around in a wheelchair and we pretty much saw everything. I got a chance to sit in front of virtually every painting/print in the museum without getting exhausted. That was great. We paid special attention to An exhibit of Wyeth's "botanical" watercolors - trees and shrubs. See below! After the museum we came back to Jim and Mary's, and I rested a bit and we had supper and played Scrabble. I had miserable luck on drawing tiles - all vowels and 1-point consonants. I came in fourth, but witha higher score than I would have expected. We also bought a toilet seat extender - on Sunday, almost too late to use it. It will be useful at home and whereever we visit someone. It's getting harder and harder to "get up." The extra five inches of height makes a big difference. I brought Richard Ford's "Be Mine" with me to read, and I finished it this morning. It is about Frank Branscome abd his son, Paul, who is 47 years old and has ALS. They go to the Mayo Clinic and then make a side-trip to Mount Rushmore, before Paul dies. Paul's symptoms and physical challenges are very siimilar to mine, so the book cut pretty close to the bone. Paul's attitude is different from mine, but 47 is very different from 90! It' a brilliant book in its exploration of the father-son relationahip, which is sort of universal regardless of peculiar individual traits. And now, as I write, we are heading home. We left a little after 11 a.m. It is sunny but cold and windy.

At Archers, having mussels for lunch.

At Rockland UU Church after the service.

Wyeth print.

Wyeth tree.

ANother Wyeth tree.