Calling all fathers

Dateline: Chapel Hill North Carolina

On the road again. A quick trip to come to our Peace Corps friend's daughter's wedding. And it's an excuse to stop in DC on the way down and back. I will admit to having a secret desire to return to the dark days of the pandemic when no one was on the roads. Especially between Washington and Richmond VA. And around Baltimore. And through Delaware. Maybe even the Garden State Parkway.

I misread Jeffrey and Melodie's Facebook post that they were also on their way to a wedding in NC. I missed the Y as they were headed to NYC.

Either way it's going to be hot. Heat waves this weekend and all next week up and down the east coast. Even in Pittsfield, it'll reach 90 each day. We talked with John and Marilyn, and they had just gotten off the golf course where it was closing in on 100 degrees. That's commitment.

I thought we were on the move but then I read Annie's latest letter which had travels to temples, to islands and then to a place Mary and I went to back in November. Our big excitement was the rest stop on the NJ Turnpike.

Actually, we got to walk Simon to school. That counts as adventure. Margaret had been in training all week on the new world of disinformation. And their refrigerator broke down over the weekend, but it worked to our advantage as Andrew made a wonderful Italian beef stew served on rolls. Better than The Bear. (TV show recommendation)

We'll stop at Joe and Leonor's on the way home. They've been busy with all the end of school year festivities. When did they start doing graduations for pre-K? Field days, concerts. Did someone say heat wave?

David was in Pittsfield last week. He had a weekend planned for reunions at Darrow and came by for chats and dinner the night before. He cut short the reunion since the room on campus where he was supposed to stay looked more spartan than the Shakers ever endured.

Speaking of reunions, I usually flip through the Princeton Alumni Weekly rapidly. This time I stopped on Peter's class (1973) and saw he had taken on responsibilities as the Class Zoom Director. That's a challenge for people our age as zoom meetings usually spend the first ten or so meetings with people complaining that they can't hear or they don't know how to raise their hand or they forget to mute and talk on their phone and so on and so on. Good luck!

We were invited out to dinner this week but when we told our hosts that the menu would have to be low residue colonoscopy prep, they picked a different date. Mary had her five year colonoscopy date and passed with flying colors (pun intended.).

Out in Illinois, Bill and Jen are full steam ahead on their move to Colorado. They have July dates for the move and plans to rent while their new house is being built. Ambitious.

We saw Timmy a few times as he has moved back to Pittsfield. We took him on a tour of the house next door which sadly doesn't look like we'll be able to salvage. We had applied to This Old House but knew it was a long shot. Next week we go to the excavation company. Sad

A milestone. Forty years ago Mary, Joseph and I went to DC to start Foreign Service training. At the swearing in, Joe through his glass milk bottle on the floor near the Director, Charlie Wick. If I remember right, I think Peter and Janet were there too.

Finally, June 9 passed with memories. Pop would have been 101.

Love from down here.

Back and forth

My aching back. Every time I load a wheelbarrow full of mulch, I wonder how many more years I can do this. Mary, in ordering three cubic yards of the brown stuff, even offered to hire a young man, who our neighbor recommended, to spread it around the garden. "Why?" I rejoined, "You'd be taking away my fun." So, just to set the record straight, an aching back is not fun.

Spring mulch also heralded a passing of sorts. My wheelbarrow died. Actually, the handle that I had cobbled together with wood and screws (I'm thinking here of the chair Andrew and I built in Wilton) finally came un-done as I dumped and wiggled the load into a garden bed. This had been a free wheelbarrow, one we found in the shed on our property in 2007, a shed we promptly tore down, a shed that had a brick path to it, that we uncovered years later, as we were preparing yet another garden bed. The wheelbarrow is no more, but the brick path is an ornament of sorts to Mary's flower garden.

Too much information? Yes, but it has been a quiet week in the family. There is news, though, especially birthdays! Joao/John turned four! And, it looked to be one of those birth-weeks of celebration. Party and cupcakes and balloons and presents and then start all over again. Matthew also had a birthday, and Sean did too, which should have been in the last letter. Matthew's birthday calls to mind Peter and Janet's anniversary, as their wedding and Matthew's birth happened in the same week. Congratulations all!

I'm not the only one with an aching back, as Andrew and Lur put their garden in at the community garden, and David finished up his spring plantings. Maybe even Simon has an aching back, as he was seen mowing the grass in front of their house. Never too soon.

Speaking of mowing the lawn, my ride-on mower also broke. No, to be accurate, I broke my ride-on mower, for the second time this spring. It wouldn't start, so I lifted the hood to see if it was something simple, and then promptly broke the plastic hood when I "set" it back down. Okay, it wasn't shutting properly so perhaps I might have jammed it down, just a little. But I wasn't angry. Really. Because the grass was tall, it meant I had the pleasure of a 4 ½ hour lawn mowing job with a push mower. The repair guy said I was flooding the engine.

Too much information, again? Yes. Here's a quick tour of the fam.  Annie and Sankar are on a four-day hike in northwest India, which means not far from the Himalayas. The photos from their lodging are just stunning.    

We also see photos of Jeff and Melodie enjoying the spring with baseball and crab feasts, separately, of course. Photos of a hike through Rock Creek Park with Joe and Leonor and friends. Photos of concerts, cub scouts and fishing outings with Donald and Everett.

In the last letter, I spoke too soon about no one getting sick after our last trip to DC. Margaret promptly came down with Covid and had bad cold-like symptoms. Fortunately, neither Andrew nor Simon got sick.

Back to me. We had a wonderful overnight visit to the Big Apple, to catch an off-Broadway play that our neighbor designed the costumes for. The Life and Slimes of Mark Summers. Very entertaining and creative. Who knows Mark Summers out there? We now know that Mark Summers was the host of a Nickelodeon show where the child contestants were "slimed."  Somehow we missed that at the time, but not the rest of the audience.

We took in a couple museums, including a first-time stop at the Guggenheim, which, pun intended, floored me. Loved it and recommend it highly. If you look closely at the picture, you might be able to see Mary.

I could go on, perhaps about our back and forth with the project next door, but that's enough for one letter. And we still have not decided whether to tear it down.

Love from up here.