End of the season

For some of us anyway.  The Yankees and the Brewers are in the playoffs.  It was a memorable season, though, adding to baseball lore for years to come.  Okay, after being philosophical, I can now scream.  AAAAAAGGGHHH!

 

Oh well.  Life goes on and it's how you play the game or root for your team.  Put away the Reds and Red Sox hats.  What is it about that color?

 

It's also the end of other seasons.  Like summer.  I could scream about that as well, except we all like fall and the foliage colors.  Still, there's little like green.

 

I am hoping I mowed the lawn for the last time in Pittsfield last week.  With all the rain, though, in some spots I was mowing puddles.  Still, there's progress on the house, as the brick on the chimney is almost done (and may be done by now.)   I had gone up to attend a history conference at UMass which turned out to be very interesting.  One speaker was the director of the 9/11 museum which will open up next year.  Also, on my history meanderings, I went to the new Martin Luther King memorial in DC, a talk at the National Archives on James Madison, and the birthplace of Susan B Anthony in Adams, Massachusetts.  And, at Arlington last Sunday, Mary and I attended a Peace Corps 50th anniversary ceremony commemorating the 280 volunteers who had died during their service, including one friend we knew in Gabon.  If anyone's interested, I have another blog recounting these random history jaunts. 

 

On the way up and back, I stopped in to see Grandma.  She is feeling well, but has trouble walking and seeing.  She has an aide come in once a day to help with her morning routines, and she needs to have someone wheel he down to the cafeteria for the meals she takes there.  I have also started transcribing the interviews which some of us did last summer.  Some of the stories are familiar, but some are new, like the way Grandma found out she had an older brother!  (step-brother)  In my Old Testament class this week, I came across the name Abiathar, which was our grandfather's middle name.  I always thought it was a strange name.   Turns out Abiathar in 1 Samuel was the only priest to escape the wrath of the first king of Israel, Saul, who put to death all the priests in a town called Nob.  Still sounds like a strange name to give your little baby in 1899, which was when Gramps was born.    

 

It was Paula's birthday, and it sounded like a good one, from Facebook.  They both recommend the movie "Moneyball", by the way, even if you're not a baseball fan, or a Brad Pitt fan.  They are also going down lists getting ready for the big wedding.  I bet Jeff and Melodie are as well.  Margaret accompanied Melodie to her final fitting for the dress.  She says both Jeff and Melodie have been very good on their diets.  Sadly, I have not.  Why don't they ban chocolate chip cookies, or soft serve ice cream?

 

Our back cases (Mary and Lur) seem to be showing slight improvements, with emphasis on slight.  We got a Miles August Jones birth announcement in the mail this week!  We hear good news from Dundee about Claire's studies!  They are in the midst of checking out and thinking about colleges.  Speaking of college, Joe seems real busy with his course work, exams and teaching load.  Annie talked about some possible job changes, working on crisis communications for companies in China.  Margaret's company lost their bid to continue their Fulbright teacher exchange for next year, so she is hot on the trail of other job possibilities.

 

Other than that, we will fill the void of baseball with Netflix episodes of "Breaking Bad," football, exercise and maybe even reading! 

 

Hope you all are well.  Love from down here!  And, happy birthday Johanna (Saturday!)

 

Ides of September

Kind of catchy?  6 months after the Ides of March.

We start with remembering Arthur and with our condolences to Janet, Peter, Johanna and Sean for the loss of their father, grandfather and friend.  Janet gave an inspiring eulogy of her father at his service, and Sean and Johanna read from Ecclesiastes.  Janet ended by quoting from Winnie the Pooh: "How lucky I am to have something that makes saying goodbye so hard."   I am not sure how you got through saying that Janet, but it sure was fitting.

Mary and I had driven over from Meadow Lakes.  Grandma had thought about going but was worried that it would be too hard for her.  We continued on to Pittsfield where we spent the night and met up with Annie the next day.  

Wait, I should have mentioned that Annie came home last week.  For a short visit.  She flew in on Wednesday and then flew up to Vermont the next day to join a wedding celebration of two of her friends from Hamilton.   So we met Annie, drove back to Meadow Lakes for Sunday night, and then I took Annie to Newark for her flight back home the next day.  Afterwards, I stopped back at Meadow Lakes and wheeled Grandma down for her haircut.  No trip to the dump or to Spags though.

Peter came over for dinner on Sunday night, bringing delicious soup and stories from Arthur's wake, service and reception.

Earlier, Margaret came over for dinner and an overnight to spend time with Annie, and we talked to Joe on the phone.  He has started classes and was able to get the program he wanted.  This week he also starts his teaching assistant duties.  

Speaking of classes, Sean is into his third week of law school, and says he has worked harder in those three weeks than he did in the three months of work at his last job.  First year of law school!

Our days here have been dominated by Mary's bad back and related other problems.  This week, she started getting stomach problems, so the doctor told her to stop taking the pain medication.  That means that she is now feeling her sciatica for the first time since July 30 when the pain medication first kicked in.  She is an excellent patient, doing all her stretching and physical therapy, but is contemplating surgery.  Next up: an MRI.

We hear that Lur is feeling better, but is also doing her back exercises.  

We also hear that Johnny is recovering from his cracked ribs.  Marilyn and Kara and three granddaughters had a full trip to Lancaster and Hershey Pennsylvania.  One of those places has a chocolate factory and one has Amish farms.  Can you guess which is which?

A month from today, many of us will descend on these southern parts for Jeffrey and Melodie's wedding.  Wonderful.

Love from down here.  

You got the generator

but I got the blocks

We win!

Well, Andrew got the grill, David got the clock, John the table and chairs, but I GOT THE GENERATOR!  It has sat behind our garage for six years now and I never tried to start it or hook it up or do anything at all.  After the worst of the storm passed, we seemed in good shape, but then the power went out.  So we moped around for a while and the PSE&G recording said we would get our power back a week later.  So then Sean and I went out to see if the generator might get started.  The wooden enclosure fell apart when when we took it off, but after sixty or so pulls, it started and kept going.  It couldn't help with the water or septic, which are wired to the circuit board, but it powered my sump pump, the refrigerator and a couple of lamps.  We cooked dinner on the grill.  I turned the generator off at 11:00 last night because it's so danged loud, and it took maybe a hundred pulls this morning to get it going, just as the sump was about to overflow.  We got our power back about an hour ago and I just turned the generator off again.  I coulda kissed that thing.

Johanna, Sean and Amanda wisely came out to put some distance between themselves and the worst of the storm.  (Well, Johanna was coming for a vet appointment).  We all had a nice adventure together, and they all helped with the pre-storm preparation, which included jerry-rigging some old gutters and downspouts to help route water away from the house.  

The downtown area of Hightstown flooded, but Mom was fine, no power loss or anything other than a huge crash in the middle of the night which no one can explain.  Janet is just back from driving Johanna, Sean and Amanda back because there is still no NJ Transit service.

Mom talked John out of driving a truck to Hightstown Saturday night, so at this moment he's somewhere in Pa trying to make his way down to DC.  Good luck!

To Louisville and Back!

We're back from our road trip to Louisville.  We had a great time, and the weather cooperated so we did most of the driving top down, an added bonus.  Some highlights:

- We had a wonderful dinner with Gary and Patty Casendino Gussoff, who have been in what she calls "Looneyville" for four years but will return to NJ as soon as Gary retires.  They said to say hello to each of you.

- The waterfront area of Loo-ville, where we stayed (in a two-room suite overlooking the river) is great.  It's an old warehouse district.  Nearly all of the old five and six story cast iron fronts have been preserved, a pedestrian-friendly streetscape was created, and several museums and arts centers are located there.

- An Imax movie in the Looo-ville Science Center about the Lewis & Clark expedition.  I have been reading an edited version of their journals, but it came to life in this very difficult to make movie.  News: we were all taught about "Saca-ja-wEa," who guided the expedition for much of its length.  It's actually "Sac-A-ga-way-a."

- The Hillerich & Bradsby baseball bat factory, where 60% of all Major League Players have their Louisville Slugger bats made, and which you can tour.  The actual manufacturing area is surprisingly small, no bigger than a typical restaurant.  The gift shop is almost as big.  On the day I toured, bats were being made for Brandon Phillips, who plays for some midwestern team (can you help me, John?), and Derek Jeter.

- Long drives along Skyline Drive, the Blue Ridge Parkway and through the Great Smoky Mountains, beautiful mountain country.  When we confine ourselves to our home areas, it is easy to forget what a beautiful country this is.

- A visit with niece Geren Zoubek Mandl and Dave, who now works for Oak Ridge National Labs outside Knoxville.  Their twins were getting ready for their first day of school.

- People in these parts of the South are polite (although, as Patty said, that's not the same as friendly).  Best example: on the interstate driving north to Lou-a-ville, a sign said "right lane closed two miles ahead."  Immediately everyone merged into the left lane, leaving an empty right hand lane two miles long.  In NJ, there would have been aggressive jockeying and lane switching even past the merge location.  I am telling you, that was weird.  Also, almost no one speeds.

- Monticello, Thomas Jefferson's long time home, with lots of inventive interior and agricultural innovations.  Rather smaller than I expected, and Jefferson himself occupied only a small part of the first floor.  Things to grapple with: he died indebted in $2 million in today's dollars, and his daughter had to sell all the home's furnishings when he died; over 600 slaves lived and worked there over the course of his lifetime, about 200 at any given time, and he freed only eleven in his lifetime, all members of the Hemmings family. 

- Biltmore, Geo. Wash. Vanderbilt II's estate in Asheville, NC.  It's the largest and most often visited home in the US.  He originally bought over 600 square miles and built a railroad up to the house to carry in all the materials used to build it.  2.6 million plants, for one example, with the grounds landscaped by Frederick Law Olmstead.  Some photos in a basement exhibit show the massive efforts that went into its construction.  It's still owned by his descendants (who put in a pompous and snooty tribute to themselves in one of the rooms), and is clearly a very big business.  Along with the gardens and house, there is a huge hotel, a winery, a couple of "villages" with stores, restaurants, etc.  But it's very well done, you can wander around the house as you wish and not get stuck on a "tour."  While the outside is patterned after three French chateaus, the interior is more gloomy Germanic/Teutonic darkness.  He died with insufficient funds for his widow to maintain it, so she sold off most of the land, which is now the Pisgah National Forest and parts of the Blue Ridge Parkway.

- Asheville itself, an arty smallish town; we extended our stay another night to take advantage of the restaurants.

- The Cherokee Indian Museum, detailing the life of the tribe before the white man arrived and the "trail of tears" journey to Ky and Ok after they were evicted.  It's not far from the huge Harrah's Cherokee Casino.

- Abraham Lincoln's birthplace (reproduction) and boyhood home (reproduction) sites, a few miles apart in Ky.  Strangely isolated and sparsely visited.

- Watching Reds games on TV every night in Loo-uh-ville, while tracking Mets games pitch-by-pitch on my phone.

- Janet had her new iPhone and I my new Android phone.  A few glitches but everything worked as promised.  However, you can't read the screens with the top down!

Back to DC

It's hot and humid, so we know we're back in points southern.

We closed up shop in Pittsfield, at least for Mary, for the summer last Thursday.  Hard to leave, especially since we have so many fine memories of a glorious summer.  

Joe had arrived a day later than expected when his flight from Michigan was cancelled stranding him in Washington.  As luck would have it, he ran into two of his "Jordan/St Andrews" buddies so it wasn't a total loss.  We picked him up a day later and he spent time packing and loading up the car with his stuff to start his final leg to his year in the Boston area.  

We went for a morning long hike up Mt Greylock with Johnny before he left, also benefiting from Joe's one-day delay as we otherwise would have been hiking in the rain.  It was a nice, little bit arduous hike (for me anyway) with sore muscles and a monster blister to help me remember a nice outing.  Johnny was free due to a) he couldn't golf because he broke a rib and b) Marilyn was on a Grandma trip with Kara and three granddaughters to Hershey Pennsylvania.

We stopped on the way down for an overnight with Grandma in Hightstown, who seems pretty good.  We met Brenna her new helper who comes each day.  It was a good idea to not try to drive straight through as Mary still has back issues.  She went to her doctor here as soon as we arrived and got on new medicine.  We'll see how that works.

She's not the only one struggling as Andrew told us Lur had a rough week with her back, compounded by a nasal problem.  She was having a procedure to clear out sinuses on Friday.  Staying in Illinois, Joe and Tamara stopped by Bill and Jen's house on his drive across country.  All seems well, and we hear Miles is a quiet, peaceful baby, especially when visitors are around.

Our plan to sign a lease on an apartment as soon as we could worked out.  Our new place is close to our old house, so we won't have to change grocery stores or gym!  We saw Margaret and D a couple of times, delivering a few items to her, including a tv.  Pretty amazing how bulky and heavy the old tvs were.  Anyway, they still work!  Margaret has an apartment to herself for a few weeks, until her new roommate moves in in September.

The other big news here, has been a decision for me to wait one more year before starting my history program at UMass.  That means I won't be driving so much between Massachusetts and Maryland this coming year.  I'll still go back and forth, but not every week.

So, we are continuing the tradition of staying with friends, first Gerry and Dennis and then Ellen and Larry.  Thank you very much for bailing us out!

All from down here.  Hope you are thriving.  

Two weeks ago

Where is everyone? We wanted to play badminton and bocci. We are going to have s'mores.

We heard from Joe that he and Tamara stopped and saw Bill, Jen and Miles today. The two of them continued on to Michigan as Tamara had a shipment coming.

Joe is not the only one on the road. Peter and Janet took off for Kentucky.
They got Johanna's dog Molly stabilized before leaving. Molly had a brush with what looked like a fatal illness for a while.

And David also avoided illness when he discovered a tick bite.

Mary and I had a fantastic trip back in time when our Peace Corps friends gathered here, in Maine and Vermont last week. We shared slides and stories, reconnected, danced and ate African food. Wonderful.

Annie is planning her trip back in September as a bridesmaid for a friend's wedding. Margaret had a busy work week with an orientation for all the Fulbright teachers heading overseas.

Mary's back continues to bother her and she is trying lots of different things to get better.

Thanks for all the calls, letters and e-mails. Sure was nice to see everyone.

Love from the Berkshires.