IT HAS BEEN A BUSY SPRING AND SUMMER
As mentioned in the last newsletter, visits with medical professionals, including another endoscopy for Rebecca, just about ate up all of April. Thankfully Mrs. T is still cancer free and most of our collective parts are functioning about as would be expected for folks of our age. But a busy April was just the beginning of a projected busy summer. Some things had been rescheduled to this summer due to COVID. We have just passed the Fourth of July festivities and Mrs.T brings you up-to-date on what we have been doing the last couple of months:
In May we had a three week sojourn in the west. The first week was the Glass Art Society Conference. It had been canceled for two years because of COVID. We decided to attend because of the cancellations and also because of the nearness of family. We found the GAS conference somewhat diminished but still fun. We saw some old friends, especially Yilmaz and Nimet, and enjoyed some very fine demos. One was when they made a humongous shark. Actually the body was already made; what they did was add all of the fins and tail. (About a two hour job. -dt) Another demo was when they made a Saturn kind of thing. The thing is, when you have some of the best glassblowers in the world, like Dante Marioni and Preston Singletary as your assistants, how hard can it be to do fantastic work.
We enjoyed visiting the Museum of Glass in Tacoma and one of the local studios. Area 253, (Much like old Glass Axis at the Belmont building. -dt). We rode on the downtown trolley. We visited the vendors and saw the student show. We bought a very nice marble at the silent auction. There was a lot more to see and do but we are kind of old and were tired. We remembered those who were no longer there. There were magnificent others past and the new ones coming on, the gift and curse of age. And so we left and went to visit relatives.
After the glass conference we went to Seattle to visit Dan's brother John and his wife Suzy. Suzy has the loveliest garden; she lavishes it with love and every kind of special care. In the moist climate it flourishes. I am in awe.(Actually it is more like three connected gardens. -dt) After a brief stop we went to visit their River House across the mountains in the Metlow Valley in Twisp, Washington. (Five/six hours from Seattle. -dt) Twisp is named for an Indian word for the sound that bees make, evidently it has always been a buzzy place (He! He!). Their home is on the edge of a mountain river which runs down from the Cascades carrying the melting snow to the valley below. Suzy and John bought their river house so they could live near their grandchildren. Twisp is a creative little place (About the size of Philo. -dt) with lots of artists and historians and librarians. In the summers people come there to hike and in the winter people come to ski.
The first day we were there I saw a merganser duck family paddling down the swift river in a line, with the ducklings following their mother. I was enchanted. On the far side of the river - the river isn't very wide - a family of otters live and with binoculars you can watch them cavorting. In the evenings the deer walk quietly down to rest in the shadow of the breezeway of the house. One evening I looked out and saw a great dark shape. A bear, I thought! But no, it was a huge black dog of a neighbor. The dog liked to walk along the river in the evening. The neighbor came to fetch him eventually. During the days we visited the little craft stores, ate at the bakery, and were introduced to the grandchildren's chickens.
The chickens were quite friendly, rushing up to take bugs and worms from the children's hands. In fact one of the chickens was trained to walk on a leash. Although they have a very fancy chicken coop I guess the chickens tended to lay eggs wherever the fancy struck them. About half of the chickens were retirees. Everyone was horrified when I inquired if they were destined for the pot. Everyone, but especially the children, lives an idyllic life in Twisp where the father is a building painter and the mother is a nurse and the grandparents live just down the street. (Check out Suzy's wonderful almost daily blog, sue-feathersandflowers.blogspot.com/, for more about Twisp, gardens, and other things. -dt) After a few days' visit we returned through the mountain pass to Seattle where we caught a plane to Idaho to visit my sister Rita.
We sat in the airport for several hours. That was not the plan, but we did. (Getting through SEATAC is not fun, similar to DFW. -dt) Finally we got in the air and headed East. It was a little bumpy but at this point I did not care. In a short while we were in Boise. The next day there was a big barbeque at Sarah's house. (Nice work Chris! -dt) Sarah is Rita's younger daughter. She has a husband, Chris, and two young daughters (Sage and Nora -dt) and of course Sammy. Sammy is, well there is no getting around the fact, a corn snake. Sarah explained that Sammy was the perfect pet. You only have to feed her once a month. She only poops once a month. You can leave her alone in a cage with a bowl of water for 2 or 3 weeks. While I saw Sarah's point I did not rush right out to buy my own snake. The children enjoyed walking around with Sammy coiled around their necks. I explained that I admired Sammy better from afar. Chris had planted lots of fruit trees and when they all produce they make pies, applesauce, and cider. (Some of it of the hard variety. -dt)
The next day we went out to the ranch now owned by Kate, Rita's elder daughter, and her husband Jeremy. (A real cowboy -dt) (They have two sons, Drew and Dre -dt) They had three colts which were curious and cute and still a bit fuzzy. They would come up to be petted and scratched. Then they would jump away in sheer exuberance of just being alive. The mares are a mixture of pride and patience, gently calming and comforting the excited little ones. After visiting the horses, we ate a delicious homemade pie (Great job Drew! -dt) and conversed while their little dog talked to me. (The cats also seemed contented. -dt)
Rita took us to a mystery challenge about trying to find the bell in grandma's curio cabinet. And we went to see "Much Ado About Nothing" at Shakespeare in the Park. It was quite amusing and very well done. It was nice to share Rita's life for a little bit but time to get home to Ohio.
Back in Ohio at the beginning of June, I mowed the yard and Dan washed our vacation clothes when we had the first thunderstorm. We were listening to the rain which pounded our roof like horses hoofs - I always wanted to say that - when Kaboom! Our house shook. We walked through the house, checked the garage, peered out all of the windows but we couldn't see a thing. Obviously a very large tree had fallen. The next morning we saw it. A huge tree had fallen and split our storage shed completely in two. A disaster for everyone except for the squirrels who were running excitedly back and forth through the large hole in the roof.
Well Dan was quite busy on the phone, calling the insurance, getting guys to cut down the tree and put a tarp over the roof. Finding out costs and how to get rid of the old shed. We had discussions about what to do with the junk in the shed. I was for chucking it all out except for a bunch of my old paintings. This conundrum is not yet settled. (We will be sorting through things as much of it is moved to the garage temporarily. -dt) Fortunately we got the tree cut and pitched over the hill and a tarp over the roof before the next disaster came on Wednesday in mid-June after the storm. It was an area-wide heat wave which overloaded the power grid causing it to go down.
Dan called it in and got a recording that said in effect, "We know your power is out and so is 800 other people's. We do not know when it will be back on." (Note the editor is the one who handles the phone calls. -dt) We had already had breakfast and lunch so we lay around reading books and napping. It was very hot. Every couple of hours we called the electric company. At first it stayed around 800 but then it went up to 1200. We went out to supper at an air conditioned fast food place. The number of people affected kept rising which was not encouraging. We lazed about until it got dark. Fortunately Dan had bought these little electric lanterns which we placed strategically before we lay down.
The next couple of days were more of the same. We kept hoping the power would come back on but it did not. We worried about the food in the refrigerator and freezer which we did not open. We flushed with water from the hot tub.(No electricity means no water pump from the cistern. -dt) Finally on the third night we checked into a hotel for a nice shower and a cool night's sleep. (By then the hot tub was a tepid tub. -dt) We returned home the next day. Saturday, so I could mow the grass and we could pack for our trip to Pennsylvania. I was mowing away when Dan came out and was waving frantically. After almost three days the power had finally come back on. The refrigerator was beeping angrily.
We were already packed to leave the next morning. We decided to leave the fridge to its own devices. We left and went to our art workshop. We had a wonderful time at Touchstone Center for Crafts.(Our fifth visit there. -dt) We both took a class in large scale print making. (Dyeing, screen and block printing. -dt) Dan's prints were probably more artistic than mine. Actually my prints were a little bit of group projects; I had a lot of help from the teacher and other students. And they came out okay. I made seascapes. I made a boo boo using dye instead of ink. But I covered it up and pretended it was an artistic statement. Thanks April!(A classmate -dt) Our intern Terra helped me cut out my blocks because my hands were not strong enough and my classmate Linda lent me her silver ink. But I was happy with my work. Dan's were more his own. The class was exhausting for both of us. (We enjoyed everyone: Linda, Jane, April, Hanna, Gretchen, and Terra -dt) But we are glad to be back in Philo with the fridge which had fixed itself in our absence. (Just about everything in the fridge seemed okay. -dt)
Well, that brings you just about up-to-date as promised. Another meeting/workshop we were scheduled to attend - the Nature Printing Society annual conference in Maine - was sadly canceled due to concerns about COVID. Rebecca is in rehab trying to work out problems related to her strokes; she is thrilled to be relearning how to swim. Other medical visits are in the offing as well as routine maintenance around the house. Next events are the Y-Bridge arts festival and Muskingum County fair. Looks like more fun for us.
Here are a few pictures of the latest adventures; the Phoebes have returned: https://flic.kr/s/aHBqjzWTPo
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Best wishes for a wonderful summer.
Dan and Rebecca
www.casa-de-terrible.blogspot.com
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