Annie's home

Did you hear the cheering?  She flew into New York on Thursday and stayed there for a couple of days.  Then Saturday, Mary and I drove down to pick her up.  She reminded us of us.  She had a backpack, packed to the seams, and two roller suitcases, similarly packed.  She said she carried all three on the Beijing subway, getting to and from the airport.  Hard, but she has closed out an important chapter of her young adulthood, and those three suitcases are evidence.  

Welcome home.  She's on the job market this summer, and then will head back to NYC to start her organizational psychology program in August.  We drove by Teachers' College at Columbia, and I pointed out the dorm where I spent one summer.  Annie said she had applied for the same dorm!

Annie just missed the visit of our friend, Valerie, from Seattle, who had been here for a few days on a trip east.  We dropped her off at the bus station, as we headed to New York to get Annie.  We did the cultural tour of the county, north, south and center, with Valerie, going to MassMoca for art, to Arrowhead for Herman Melville's story, and then to the Guthrie Center for open mic night.  In between, we ate and talked and hiked a little.  John and Marilyn came over for dinner with Valerie, who they knew from the memorable visit to San Miguel years ago, with Mary's mothers and aunts.

We finally opened up the porch for meals, as last weekend we almost had snow.  Too cold, and it did snow on Mt. Greylock.  My college roommate, Steve Tobolsky and his wife, had come over from Boston for the night, and we thought about having a fire.  We did turn on the heat.  This weekend we wanted air conditioning.  The photo was a panorama trick taken at MassMoca, in front of a Sol Lewitt mural.  Fun.

Mary started a job this week.  A paying job.  She's tutoring a young boy in the 4th grade an hour a day.  She might have another fill-in job until the end of school, and there are several she's seen to apply for.  

I also started a job, of sorts.  If someone had told me last year or 40 years ago that I would be explaining Herman Melville to a paying tour group, I'd have thought it a dream of sorts, more like a nightmare.  But, there I was, giving tours to people last Monday who had come to Arrowhead to get a glimpse of the writer, his work and his life in the Berkshires.  It's actually very interesting, and I have a lot of homework to do to get the story right.

We spoke with David and Andrew who filled us in on happenings out their way.  David and Paula had a birthday dinner for Matthew with Tina and Oliver last week.  That means that Peter and Janet also had a wedding anniversary.  Congratulations and fond memories (and one great photo of a certain sports jacket) from that weekend.

Andrew says that Claire's graduation was terrific, and that she is planning a camping trip in Michigan before school starts.  Daniel has decided to play football this fall, and he has been working out and lifting weights to get ready.  Look out!  Lur has been busy helping her parents.

The next time you see Joe, hopefully he'll be wearing the bow ties that Andrew sent him.  If not, maybe it's because he's got his kilt, which after years of promise since he graduated from St. Andrews and then Tufts, finally arrived last week.

This is Margaret's big week as the orientation programs she's been developing start.  Good luck!