Chez Shay

I'm in Boulder, CO at Betsey and Rob's rental house, which is in Sunshine Canyon, about 15 minutes west of Boulder. This canyon was seriously affected by the Fourmile Canyon Forest Fire in September of 2010. Some 170 homes were destroyed in that fire, including a log cabin on the site of Betsey and Rob's house, which was built after the fire in 2012. Insurance claims following the fire totaled $217 million, making it the largest fire in CO history in terms of claims. Evidence of the fire can still be seen around their house - blackened trees, etc.

Rob and Betsey's house in Sunshine Canyon

 Today I have been helping with unpacking, mainly with books. I schlepp, Betsey sorts and Rob shelves. There is still a lot of work to do. But my bedroom looks very nice, and the bed is the one I am accustomed to sleeping in at Columbia - it is an antique bird's eye maple spool bed handed down from Shirley's Townsend Family relatives in New Hampshire.

My bedroom

Today is pretty socked in, so the views are limited - hopefully tomorrow will be better for picture-taking. But here are some views:

View from my balcony

Rob in the kitchen

View from the west window

 The setting is pretty spectacular. It will be very different living for them - especially in the winter!

Moving books, I made a concerted effort not to look at what I was moving - too distracting. But a wonderful book about the Marlboro Music Festival's early days surfaced, and I found this delightful photo of very youthful James Levine and Van Cliburne playing a piano duet:

James Levine and Van Cliburne

Here's what we accomplished today - in part:

Before

After

A feeling of accomplishment!

Heading for Boulder, CO

I'm in the Gate lounge at Bradley waiting for Southwest flight to Chicago and on to Denver, where someone will meet me and take me to Boulder where Rob and Betsey have moved and are still in process of unpacking. I'll be there Wed-Thurs, and then leave with Katie and drive to Columbia, MO. on Friday and Sat am I'll take Amtrak to Chicago and on the Albany, arr. Sunday afternoon.

I'll try to blog along the way.

Lillian Thoele and the I Dare You Library

Back in early June, Ellen and I visited Camp Miniwanca in Michigan, where Shirley spent the month of August, 1954, being trained as a "Danny Grad" for the Danforth Foundation. Her assignment was Kansas State Teachers College (KSTC) in Pittsburg, KS, and it was during that assignment that she came to Chicago for a conference at Chicago Theological Seminary, and that is where we met, Thanksgiving weekend, 1954.

On our visit to Camp Miniwanca, I  had one very specific goal: to find where the following photo was taken:

Shirley with Danny Grads at Camp Miniwanca, Aug. 1954

Shirley is at the far right. This is one of the few photos I have from that summer. The building that this group was sitting in has some distinctive features - the windows, the pine paneling, and especially the mural running along the top of the wall and over the window. When I showed this photo to the young man who was showing us around the camp, he immediately said, "Oh, that's the I Dare You Library. I'll show you how to get there." And he did.

The I Dare You Library is named after William H. Danforth's book, "I Dare You" in which the title expresses his Philosophy of Life - a challenge to "be your own self, at your very best, all the time." The mural expresses something of this philosophy, and must have been commissioned by Danforth for this building. It runs the entire perimeter of the interior. The artist is Lillian Thoele, who signed a panel of the mural. It depicts idealized scenes from American history and American life, as well as some visionary scenes of the unity of all peoples under the auspices of the triumph of Protestant Christianity over the entire world! 

The I Dare You Library is a charming, cruciform little house. Ellen and I immediately thought, "this would be the perfect little house for us!"

The I Dare You Library

Ellen took the following picture of me in more or less the same place that Shirley was sitting in 1954. As you can see, little has changed. Amazingly, even the same many-sided table, which the Danny Grads were seated at, and which fits nicely under the central dome, was still there.

Me, seated at the table where Shirley sat in 1954

The artist of the mural, Lillian Thoele, was a St. Louis, MO native, born in 1894; she died in 1971.  She studied at the Washington University School of Fine Art and the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art in Philadelphia. Early in her career, Thoele worked as a commercial artist, becoming an active member of the Women’s Advertising Club. She was also a member of the St. Louis Artists’ Guild and the Society of Independent Artists of St. Louis. As an indication of her reputation, in 1962 Thoele was voted into the Federated International Artist’s League.  One auction site describes her as "a well-listed Saint Louis, Missouri painter, illustrator, commercial artist and designer."

There is a charm to her paintings, which remind me of children's books from long ago. Here are a couple of her paintings from auction sites:

Club House Sun

Missouri Autumn

And here are some samples of panels from the mural - photos I took:

Close-up of the mural on wall behind the Danny Grads

Teacher calling children to school

 

The Pilgrims going to church

The achievement of the Transcontinental Railroad

Industrious early American life

A vision of a new world - under Christian leadership!

Achieving new heights

The Four-Fold Life: Religious, Physical, Mental and Social

We're home

DAY FIFTY-TWO: Got home late Monday night. Safe and sound. Home looks good.  More later

No time

DAY FIFTY-TWO: Just a quick note from the motel. These past few days have been pretty full with little chance to blog. Last night we had to drive until after 11pm to get to our motel! Poor Ellen! I'll try to catch up on the blog when we get home, but I'll lose WiFi access for the computer so it may take a day or two to catch up. But we're doing fine.

Rocky Mountain College

Sunday night, July 13th, we stayed in Billings, MT at a Rodeway Inn. Monday morning we paid a short visit to the campus of Rocky Mountain College, Montana's oldest college and considered one of its finest - also one the many colleges with a connection to the United Church of Christ.

I first became acquainted with RMC - from a distance - when about 20  years ago I researched colleges for a young man, Chris Tracy, who was a member of the Guilford Community Church and was graduating from high school and wondering where to go to college. None of the VT colleges seemed to quite fill the bill for what he was looking for, so I looked into UCC-related colleges and found that RMC was just the sort of college he was looking for - and he went there! His parents were not too happy that he went so far away from home, and as it turned out, both finances and distance led to his dropping out after two years, but I think he enjoyed those two years.

Rocky Mountain College is interesting academically. It has the usual liberal arts curriculum, but it also has very strong programs in, e.g., Aviation (with majors in both Aeronautical Science and Aviation Management), Equestrian Studies (with several sub-majors in this field), and Environmental Studies. There is a strong Music Department and a Peace Institute is also located there. The campus has many very handsome sandstone buildings, quarried from the Rimrock Hills behind the campus - Losekamp Hall is an example:

Losekamp Hall, which houses the Music Department at Rocky Mountain College, Billings, MT

I sometimes wish that I lived in a town with a college like Rocky Mountain College - a small, fine, independent college with a good library, a rich program of concerts and other cultural events, visiting lecturers, opportunities to sit in on courses or attend conferences, and maybe even occasionally be an adjunct professor and offer a course in Biblical Studies. Brattleboro comes pretty close, but it doesn't quite make it in every respect.

Beartooth Scenic Highway

Our trip out of Yellowstone took us over one of the most beautiful highways in the United States: the Beartooth Scenic Highway. It winds for 68 miles, with numerous switchbacks, through one of the highest and most rugged areas in the lower 48 states, with 20 peaks reaching over 12,000 feet in elevation. In the surrounding mountains, glaciers are found on the north flank of nearly every mountain peak over 11,500 feet high. The road itself is the highest elevation highway in Wyoming (10,947 feet) and Montana (10,350 feet), and is the highest elevation highway in the Northern Rockies. It opened in 1936, and is reputed to follow a route which was first traveled by horse by General Philip Sheriden in 1872 when he and 120 men were returning from an inspection of the newly created Yellowstone National Park, and taking the advice of an old trapper, Shuki Greer, went over the Beartooth pass. The wildflowers were at their height, and we stopped several times to get out and just marvel at them. It was a beautiful, sunny day with spectacular clouds, mountain views, a perfect day for taking photos. There was still deep snow in places beside the road - on July 13th.

Here are some scenes: