Lots of news

We took advantage of the extra hour of sunlight and 50 degree weather to go out for an extended walk this evening, without coat, without hat and without gloves!  (The warmest place where there are Dicksons?  Rochester had us beat by 14 degrees, one degree warmer than Washington.)  It's the best way to accept the loss of an hour of sleep.  Mary got a lot of pictures for her photography class, including some of a beaver, getting to work on his spring cleaning.

March means, first of all, happy birthdays to Daniel and to Lur, and in a few weeks David.  Big days, happy ones.

Not so happy though in Rochester last week, as David and Paula had an accident on the freeway, when their new car was swiped by a pick-up truck.  Fortunately, they are all right, and the car is going to the repair shop this week.    

I have a new sport.  It's counting trucks on the lake.  In the last letter I mentioned I saw 6; last weekend I counted 27.  No lie.  Today, even with the warm weather, there were still about a dozen on the lake.

 

We have a social life, after all.  Friday, we went to a corned beef and cabbage dinner at a local club where many of Mary's family had congregated.  Later, Charlie and Annie from North Carolina came for the evening and for a day of cross-country skiing on Saturday.  Fortunately, we had some snow, just the day before, which our clan in DC managed to avoid.  They still got a day off, however.  Hopefully it's the last of the year.  Last weekend, one of Mary's friends from Peru came over from Boston for a night of chatting and a hike.  What is it that women can never exhaust the list of topics, while men finish theirs in about 10 minutes?  One of those topics is our diet which is continuing, in spurts.  Still, we have cut back on many of our bad influences.

We also saw last night a movie, called Quartet, which was about an assisted living home for retired musicians.  A wonderful story, with familiar actors.  And, we spent one night this week over in Northampton to go to a couple of lectures, including one by the first U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan after the fall of the Taliban, and another by the author of a biography on Thelonious Monk. How different are those?  

I have been busy at school, working on a couple of different projects, including a historic survey of the mill which is next to the house.  It's a beautiful old building which I learned was the longest, continuously operating textile mill in this part of the state.  Now, it lies mostly vacant.  That's a photo of Mary in front of the buildings. 

 

Joe and Margaret recovered from their snow day, which they needed to shovel all the rain off their sidewalks.  They are busy at work; Margaret went to see Michelle Obama at the annual International Women's Day ceremony.  We think they're both coming up for Easter.

Annie has big news; she may join the New York City set next year.  She got into Columbia for her masters degree program in psychology.  Yea!! 

One item left over from last week was news that there is a champion in the family.  Mary's niece Colleen and her partner Pauline won at the Westminster Dog Show at Madison Square Garden in February for their Borzoi wolfhound.  Bubba must be proud.

Tomorrow is Peter's knee operation, which will put him out of commission for a while, but he'll soon be back in the backfield, running the end sweep around Clay Matthews in no time. 

So, happy March.  Spring is close.  Hope you are all well.

Love from over here.