A beautiful day

Today was just a perfect Vermont day. It was sunny, cool, a little breezy, a perfect day to be outside or inside. As it turned out, I spent much of it outside. First of all, we slept pretty late, then I got up and fixed tea and toast for Ellen and I to enjoy in bed (Ellen usually does this but today I did). Then I put out a load of wash to dry in the sun that I had run last night. I put it on a rack on the deck. A perfect place to dry. While I was at it, I brought out the deck table and chairs from the shed and set them up on the deck. The official start  of summer. Just on time, too, because John came by, and he and I sat on the deck and talked for at least three hours or even more. Ellen made some snacks for us to munch, but she enjoyed this time reading in bed- her favorite recreation. We covered a lot of topics: his favorite place in the world, Grand Manan Island, what's happening with Betsey, his workplace, what he's currently reading - a good talk. While we were talking, a wild turkey flew over the deck, wings fully extended, a rare and amazing sight.

After John left, Ellen and I went to the P.O., and then took a nice walk. Then we ate supper while we watched the PBS Newshour. A nice day! A beautiful day ! 

Home

We did make it on time for the Samson concert. Barely. We had time to turn on the frig, open some windows, change   clothes, and get to the concert. It was an exciting oratorio, full of drama and passion, aided by excellent soloists. We're glad we went.

Curtain call at the Handel Oratorio, Samson, in the Latchis Theater, Brattleboro. 

After the concert we had to do some grocery shopping at the all-night supermarket, and by the time we got home and had put the groceries away, we were ready to fall into bed. But it was a short night - we had to get up to get to a Guilford church choir rehearsal at 8:50a.m. Which we did, and then after church we came home, had a bite of lunch on the deck, and went to a Hallowell sing for a 104-year-old woman at a local nursing home.  Then Ellen and I split - Ellen went to a Yellow Barn concert of Schoenberg and Weill in Putney, while I went to Hallowell sing at Thompson House, another nursing home, their annual memorial service for residents who have died during the previous year. Then Calvin Farwell brought me home and I spent some time working on the  Bach St. John Passion. Yes, I have rejoined the Blanche Moyse Chorale after an absence of over a year, and I went to a rehearsal of the Chorale this evening. It was wonderful to be singing Bach again! So this was a full singing day for me! It was good because I had not used my voice for singing during our trip and I was worried that I might be losing my ability to  sing. But it came back. 

Ellen loved her concert. One of the top ten in her lifetime, she said. Wow! Sorry I missed it! 

Tomorrow, we're going to take it easy! 

A long drive

We left Bartlett at about 10a.m., Friday morning, but of course, that quickly became an hour later when we went into Indiana and the Eastern Time Zone. So by the time we got to South Bend, IN, it was already close to 2 p.m. We had decided to take I-80 all the way to Scranton, PA, and then go up through Binghamton to Albany and home. Google said that was a 15-hour drive, We were trying to get home in time to attend a concert Saturday night of Handel's Samson, a concert we had started to rehearse before we left for Boulder on April 6th. So we needed to get more than half way on Friday to make a fairly easy trip home on Saturday and arrive by c. 5:00pm. When I know we'll be going late, I usually make a motel reservation, so I somewhat arbitrarily chose Clearfield, PA as our destination for Friday night. I reserved a room at a Rodeway Inn, and I estimated we might arrive about 9 p.m. or so. I read aloud from Alice Munroe's Dear Life (a collection of short stories), and we listened to more lectures on the History of the English Language which are fascinating (we are up to the 18th century, and the rise of the dictionary, e.g., Samuel Johnson, and the whole issue of English as prescriptive vs. descriptive. That is, when you write about English, do you dictate a right and a wrong way to speak and write  English, or do you just describe what is happening as it evolves? This is a question which inevitably relates to social class, education, elitism, etc., as well as regionalism.) So anyway, the miles flew by and we decided to stop at our favorite restaurant, the Aladdin, in Oberlin, OH, for a suppertime snack, and of course we had to go to our favorite used book store, the Ben Franklin, next door, and before we knew it, it was 7p.m. and we still had a long way to go.

               Aladdin 's Eatery in Oberlin, OH -  It has the best lentil soup ever ! 

        For some reason, this is a bookstore where just about 

            every book on display is one I would like to read! 

Back in the car, on I-80, I read some more Alice Munroe, and we listened to more lectures, but it was after 11p.m. before we got to Clearfield, PA! Now, after some sleep,  it's almost 8a.m., Saturday morning, and we should be able to get a good start and be in Brattleboro in time for the concert.We'll see!

More family photos

Jerry forwarded the pictures he took with his camera yesterday:

Gretchen wanted to raise a toast to Betsey and have a sign that said, "Here's to you, Betsey" So Ellen made the sign in her fine calligraphic hand

The completed sign

Raising a toast at lunch with Susie (who wasn't able to come later in the evening with the rest of the gang)

Hanging out with Susie

"Here's to you, Betsey"
l. to r., Jerry, Gretchen, Marc, Becky, Peter, Larry, Ellen, Daniel

Family time

Today we saw family in two sessions - Susie came for lunch and after lunch we went out to some garage sales in Bartlett. Then this evening, Peter,  Daniel, Becky and Becky's friend, Marc, came for pizza. We met Marc for the first time and liked him. Didn't have my phone handy for pix but Jerry took a couple. I did get one of Susie. 

 Susie McQuen. Dennis couldn't make it. 

Dennis lost his job but immediately got a new one doing the same thing. Similarly, Tristan's company folded but he immediately found a new job too!

We'll leave in the morning for the last leg of our trip home. 

What a quiet day!

This has been a really low-key day! Not a lot to report unless you love quotidian details - like, I had oatmeal for breakfast, talked with Carol Plagge on the phone, read about the Obama presidential library coming to Chicago (big news in the Chicago Tribune), read about the folly of Tax Increment Financing in the village of Bartlett (don 't ask me to explain it), I napped on the living-room couch, ate a bowl of soup and a turkey sandwich, Ellen and I went for a walk in the bright sunshine and brisk air, we got an ice cream and went to a used book store, we came home and met Rick, Jerry's boat buddy whom he had been helping today over at Lake Michigan- stuff like that. That kind of a day. 

From Crete to Bartlett

Crete, NE is home to Doane College. Doane is a college I have known of since 1949 or so, because I considered it when I was applying to colleges as a high school senior, and that's because it was a "Congregational college." My father was a Congregational minister, and the Congregationalists had founded some of the best colleges and universities in the country, e.g. Harvard and Yale. So why not limit one's search to that cluster of institutions? Doane was one of them, but in the end, I did not apply to Doane. I applied to Grinnell (IA) and Drury (MO), was accepted by both, and chose Drury - sight unseen -  mostly because it was half the cost of Grinnell - $750 a year, room, board and tuition, as opposed to $1500 a year at Grinnell.

But back to Doane. I was curious to see the campus of a school I had heard about for decades. It turned out to be a very impressive school which has a beautiful campus. Not what I was expecting in Crete, NE! The campus is large - 350 acres, rolling, wooded, with a large number of handsome buildings, many of them quite new. We took a short walking tour and I took some photos:

                      Entrance to Doane College

            The Bell Tower and administrative building .

The main academic building where faculty and students can mingle.

    The "Con" - originally used as a conservatory, dating back to the late 19th century. 

         Swans on a campus pond

       Boswell observatory, the oldest building on campus.

If you're looking for a college, check out Doane!

 

We left Crete at about 11a.m., and headed east on Rte 2 into Iowa, and worked our way up to I- 80. Along the way we passed some wind farms: 

We stopped in Sidney, because Ellen's friend Bonnie has a grandson named Sidney (these are for you, Bonnie):

Crossed the Mississippi at Savanna, IL: (another family name! ) 

            The bridge at Savanna 

                     The Mississippi at Savanna

While we're into family names - we went through this town yesterday:

    

    

I don't ever expect to go through a town called "Larrimore."

We got to Bartlett at about 8:45 pm. Great to see Maggie and Jerry.