Upon release from the hospital with a clean bill of health...

New the rest of the story: Dr. Mensh, 'der Unmensch,' contradicted Dr. Tarnas on all points and I am back on medication and back off all enjoyable beverages. This is supposed to continue until mid-October, when there will be another blood test with the possibility of release at the time when the test results are analyzed. At this point, Dr. Mensh estimates that some 70% of the healing process is behind us. So, there.

After the visit and the doctor's office I went shopping for supplies and received a phone call from the DePalos with an invitation to coffee and cake. Bless AT&T for making this communication possible! I arrived at my hosts' appointed hour and we had a nice chat again over home-baked caked and cookies and then I went home and took my revenge on Mensh: I had a can of sardines and two glasses (160 ml) of white wine, and now I go back to being a good boy on dry land.

Dr. Mensh's orders are caused by pure selfishness: he does not want to see me again. In a way, I can understand that and somewhat share his position. He is a great guy, and I would wish to count him among the friends of my family, but if seeing him means having sprung another leak, I'd rather not maintain an active acquaintance with him.

Speaking of leaks, he is a sailor, too. There are pictures in his office that tell me that, even though his professional attitude does not allow stray-talk into person territory such as what he is doing during his spare time. Oh well; being a sailor is enough to make him a good guy.

Good night, all! It is supposed to be a wonderful day again tomorrow, and until then, we all will have a wonderful night. 

Love, Opa

The Jacksonville Bridge of Flowers

If you drive down into Jacksonville and cross the town, going up the opposite hill past the Stone Soldier Pottery and towards the cemetery, then pass the cemetery bridge and follow the course of the brook on your right side, you come--after a few miles higher up and where you leave the woods--there lies Gates Pond on your left.

This photo was taken at the lower edge of the pond, which is actually an ancient beaver pond, the main dam being situated right there, where the road comes out of the forest and crosses the brook, which is fed by the pond.

Just in front and to the left of the peninsula, in the center, there used to be the ancient beaver house-- and in the early years, when Lulu started her life up here, you could see the beaver family playing in the water, gathering food or maintaining their dam. Occasionally, passing vandals would break the dam, but every time the beavers would rebuild it under the applause of the residents, and in a few days the pond would come back up to its established level.

The brook that takes its beginning at the dam, by the way, is the same as the one that fills the pond at the cemetery and forms that artificial waterfall just below the bridge over which the road to the cemetery crosses the water. This bridge, which earlier I called the 'cemetery bridge,' I just learned, is called the "Jacksonville Bridge of Flowers." Two local families, the Colmores and the Joneses, purchase all the flowers and organize a planting bee. Families is Halifax and Jacksonville share in the watering.

Bugs?

Or early signs of the fall season approaching?

 

 Our best guess: bugs.

An Incredibly Varied Life

Something or someone spoke to me while I was peacefully reading my current book. Whatever it was, It caused me to stop the reading and to google Madeleine Sitterding (my cousin) and found among many other publications with her tag—many by her—this obituary. She was six years my senior and passed away in October 11, 2008.

I am sending you to this link because there is a picture with this obituary which shows her as a yet young woman of about thirty, the time frame when I saw her last. The obituary describes an incredibly varied life, wrought with family and professional hurdles. Yet she prevailed. She had to finance her studies herself, and was often interrupted, but earned the respect and support of many of her colleagues.

She earned her PhD in Archeology and worked mostly in Switzerland, but also in Turkey and Italy. She held several high-ranking positions, towards the end of her career in archeology as 'State Archeologist' to the Canton of Thurgau. The list of publications in this obituary reveals a very varied and interesting as well as a productive career, indeed.

Late in life she left her profession and went back to study psychology, which she completed successfully. She practiced in this as therapist while she also worked as publisher of the trade magazine of her field until her death. She died of what is described as a progressive illness.

The colleague who wrote the obituary refers several times to her stubbornness which would put her squarely into the line of her family inheritance. It is shown to us in that she never let any of us know of any difficulties and never asked for help, even as her own father repeatedly addressed his brother for support after his return from Africa in the fifties.

I will include a reprint of this obituary in the family papers.

What a day!

Sunday! Get up early, shower, get dressed, have breakfast, make sure your fingernails are clean and you have a fresh handkerchief in your pocket and get to church before the door closes and the congregation starts on the first hymn--which they sometimes do before the door closes! But make a detour to the cemetery and take a full watering can and deadhead the flowers! Pressure? No! All self-made.

I had time for a quick bowl of my favorite: raw bits with banana, today dressed with a tiny harvest of first blueberries from the bushes down by the pond. The flowers at the grave were beautiful. I had some minutes to stay, and look and breathe the calm mountain air.

Doug's sermon was on Philippians 4:4-9 and the thrust was "relax, don't worry"--all is under control and all will come out OK.

After church, the blue sky and the fresh air sidetracked me. I decided to go for a little walk. I drove to Wilmington, and this weekend you must know your way along the back roads because teh main road, VT 100, is cut off for bridge construction. The official detour must be about 20 minutes down to Readsboro and up Searsburg and down Rt 9 to Wilmington. Along the back roads, you have a trip maybe two miles longer, and is it beautiful out there! It is probably beautiful anywhere, on a day like this.

When I reached Rt 9 I drove through Wilmington and west another couple of miles or so and then turned onto the National Forest Road #71 that takes you up to Somerset Reservoir. There, the road ends and trails begin. On the schematic below, Somerset reservoir is in the upper left corner. This sign saw only when I came out of the woods after I had put Doug's message to the test.

I chose the East Side Trail that leads along the lake shores. It begins as a wonderful trail, smooth and clean as if you were walking through a groomed park, and I was glad about it, because I was dressed up in my Sunday's best for church.

Soon, there appeared obstacles--fallen trees, rocks, boulders, creek crossings where you had to dance over stones to keep your feet dry. I felt good! After all, just a few years back, Lulu and I crossed the Alps on foot along, over mountain trails. We were then 15 and 13 years old. We had our backpacks and sleeping bags and good shoe work and we were on our way for five days. So what can a lakeside trails hold for me other than the views over the lake, the peace of the woods, and the blue sky overhead? My only company was that nice woman's voice in Runkeeper that keeps you apprised of time and speed, and if you want more information you can pick up your phone and get to know all those other details.

For one who has done nothing for the past four or five weeks because of back aches and arthritis, I did pretty good. After a warm-up I was prancing along the trail at a decent clip of about 30 minutes per mile. I thought it was a good clip, because the prancing was slowed by the need to watch where you put your feet on the next step.

But the going got tougher and then there were some obstacles that made me think going forward would be easier than trying to go back. Eventually, I thought, without looking at a map, I get around this lake and back to the parking lot where I had left the car.

There was a crossing over a creek on shaky stones, and I realized that I was not as secure on my hind legs anymore as I used to be. There there were some boulders you had to climb up and over, or you had to jump down from. And the trail often became almost invisible at times, overgrown with weeds or defined only by the way stones were lined up over wet areas; definitely man had been here before and, thoughtfully, nailed an occasional way-sign to a tree. Those signs were between seven to nine feet above ground and hardly served as guides, because one had to keep one's eyes on the ground to determine the next step and occasionally raise one's sight quickly and just enough to make sure one was still going in the right direction.

Then there came a crossing over a large, wet area. Here, the path was well-marked by a foot log, but when I stepped on it, it crumbled, rotten as it was under its bark. I lost my balance and sat in the muck.

Muck! I said. If you ever went skiing on fresh snow, a few feet deep, and tried getting up, you know the situation I found myself in. Like the ski pole that sinks to the hand grip down into the snow, so my arm sunk into the muck to my elbow, my feet disappeared, and the so-called foot log could not serve to push myself out and up again. One overcomes any obstacle if the other choice is giving up completely. I had not seen a living soul on this trial since I got on it, and I had visions that, perhaps late this evening, rangers would check out the parking area and see my car and start wondering where its driver and perhaps its passengers might be--"roughing it somewhere deep in the woods, sitting around a campfire and getting ready to turn into their sleeping bags? We'll have to come back tomorrow and check this out."

So eventually I maneuvered myself--half hanging, half sitting--onto that rotten log, and from that position I got up on my feet again and my mind was made up! I will not try this crossing again. I walked on.

At the full hour of my hike, curiosity overcame me. There was an old tree on the tail side and it served as a bench and I sat and took out my phone and switched to Google maps and I saw that I had covered about one third of the lake's length. You know of course that the Data signals you can get in a place like Somerset Reservoir, one hour's walk into the thick of the woods, are stronger than the ones we get at home! I was glad about that! Anyway: one third way in one hour, would make six thirds and six hours plus the end was formed by two long arms to get around which, by distance alone would be the equivalent of perhaps two more hours for a total of eight to hike round this lake and it was now almost noon. What would you have done? I turned around. I'm glad I did. When I came back to the muck, the hollow where I had taken my seat was filling with water, black as the devil's blood.

Going back out of the woods took me a half hour longer than going in. But I made it. The shoes I wore I had thought to wear to Evie's wedding. The shirt might have served for the same occasion, but perhaps not, because January in southern VA is not like August in southern VT. And my slaks--well, they are of an original color not unlike the muck with which they were caked, so maybe they'll serve. All of them, except the shoes, are in the wash. The shoes were new New Balance walkers. They have not given me a new balance, as I noticed now that I got proof I have lost my old.

During this day I thought a lot about the sermon this morning. I'm glad I was there to hear it. I came home and showered and changed and made me my meal--marinated grilled chicken tenders with stir fried mixed veggies, and a bottle of lil' Kola Chardonnay. All this in place of 'relax, sit back, have a home brew,' which in normal life replaces so easily the words Paul and Timotheus wrote to the Philippians.

More on Blogging and Boccalini

Thank you, Laurie! I found it and got sidetracked into the memories you revived with your collection of my thoughts, random indeed. But of all those who have access to this blog, you are the only one who has given me a hint of seeing it. I should correct that: Carole Paquette, the school friend of Tiiu's, mentioned it to a visitor to her house, a Swiss, and asked for permission to let him have the link.

But while I reminisced in these past flights of thought, I came across the comment you made on the boccalini story from November last year. I saw that comment then and often thought of it but never came thought together with opportunity to take that picture you asked for. Here it is at last. These were Lulu's boccalini.

They are standing on the window frame over the kitchen window on Townhill. Ours are on the top shelf, center, kitchen cabinet, right hand of the kitchenwindow in Goldsboro. It is possible that many of them are packed away in one or several of the boxes stacked up in the garage. Who can remember? If Mims sent them from Switzerland, after Tiiu and I were with Lulu in Bivio, they were sent to Lynch Station, VA, were packed and hauled to Townhill in VT, went to Groveland, MA and transferred to Goldsboro, NC, at last.

The standard boccalini are the three red and three blue jug-like things, all alike in form and size. In the center of that display is another souvenir of Lulu's not related to the boccalini. On the two ends of the half dozen are two larger boccalini with non-traditional glazing, such as you find mostly in souvenir shops. And, of course, on the right side, that little donkey harnessed to the cart, is a whimsical sugar bowl, which you would find in a local shop on a shelf containing whimsical stuff for tourists and for use as stocking stuffers - if the Italians had such practices. The thing is that in our time, traveling off the beaten tourist paths, we saw farmers and homesteaders leading such rigs, the real live things, along the roads of their neighborhoods in the course of their daily work.

The Lake That Was Pronounced the Cleanest in Europe

Your great grandfather spent the last years of his life on a property he bought in Desencano, in northern Italy, at the southern end of the lake of Garda - Lago di Garda - when he returned from South Africa to Europe. We, Mims and Pips and Lulu and I, went there to visit on traditional Easter trips before WWII. After the war, Opa Wilhelm had passed away, we went for vacation trips to the Lago di Garda and camped wherever we were. The most favorite site was a private property, without buildings but many olive trees, shut off from the shore road by stone walls and an iron gate. This was a beautiful site I know I have written to you before. Life down there was restful. There were vast expanses of open land, cultivated and uncultivated, with romantic farmsteads and beautiful old villages and towns and lots of traditional architecture and residents without pretensions playing Boggia with river stones in the cobbled streets of their villages on Saturdays.

Now, I was prompted to revisit the area on Google earth and I was led to click on an icon that led me to a site called Gardaland, the most popular site of entertainment in Europe. Another Busch Gardens or Dolly Parton Land.

When we were visiting down there, the lake was pronounced the cleanest in Europe. We used to use its waters to cook, wash our dishes at the shore, and bathe, brush our teeth and shave . . . we were only four of us, for a week or so . . .

This was opposed on the other end of the scale by the lake of Zurich, the most polluted of all. In our time, when we lived in that area, lake Zurich's shores were the most populated of all. If it had not been for the signs on the road sides, you would not have known when you left Zurich and got into Rüschlikon and on into Kilchberg and farther into Thalwil etc where we spent our post-war years. All the way up to the upper end of the lake it was just one long stretch of territory densely occupied by man to live and industry to work. You get the picture traveling fro VA-Beach to Norfolk and Chesapeake and on.

Things have turned around. Laws developed and forced each community along the lake of Zurich to build waste management plants and defined the quality of effluent permitted to leave those collection sites. And the laws were enforced!

Around the same time people discovered Lago di Garda.

The following years, decades maybe, reversed the view: lake Zurich is the cleanest of Europe, Lago di Garda the most polluted.

The way this was measured at my time was to meter the amount of light penetrating to defined depth under the surface of the lake.

That was our time.

What will 'civilization' do to make such differences too small to report?

You inherit the earth. I hope we've learned our lessons and were able to transfer some of our experiences to you.

Just thinking out loud . . .

Love you, Isa

I Love That Alison Krauss Radio

I love that Alison Krauss Radio. Not all the play list is her own, of course. But more or less, all the music played there is of the languid, soft, alluring style that I first became aware of in the movie - what was the title? Three convicts who escape from a chain gang being detailed to road work . . . There was that scene at the river with the allusion to the Greek mythology - Odysseus and his crew being lured by the Sirens. What was the title?

I found it: Oh brother, where art thou? Great movie, would watch it again many times over.

The Difference Between Shiraz and Syrah

I am having me a bottle of Shiraz for dinner and after. I asked Google about the difference between that an Syrah. While on one hand, there is no difference because both are made using the same grape, which according to lovely legend was already grown and properly used 7000 years ago in Persia. On the other hand, it is said that after the grape had found its way to the Christian world some 2000 years ago (the timing appears to be logical, because more that 2000 years ago there was no Christian world), it got lodged in the upper valley of the Rhone, where it is named Syrah, or Sirah, once it can be drawn from a barrel into a glass.

By the way, within hailing distance of Switzerland the Rhone leaves the lake of Geneva at Calvin's lodgings in Geneva and on short notice crosses the border to France, where it then irrigates those grapes, and branches out to carry the same blessings to a whole world of even more famous wines - you got the book, look it up. It might be the reason of Calvin's activity against the consumption of wine: it was the French who chased him into virtual exile into the safety of Geneva, while just within the view from his drawing room window he could see the Frenchmen at table enjoying some of the loveliest drops created by the art of French vintners out of the reach of his own domestic staff.

They further say that if you were lucky enough to have a glass of the Syrah next to a glass of Shiraz, you would not - nor could you - support the claim that both are the same. They are not! And the wine maven says further it is because of the climatic difference: moderate in France, and broiling hot in Australia. I would also like to throw the difference of soil into the equation, but of course I cannot know anything about that.

So, there is a mission: find a good bottle of French Syrah, and a good bottle of Australian Shiraz and set them up side by side with glasses ready. Got it? I'm coming.

9:31 p.m.
Please do remind me of this when next we meet again near a Total Wine. The more I cruise the shelves other than supermarkets, the more I am convinced that the former are not super at all when it comes to wine selections. Now TW and Trade Joe's have the courage to lay up wines different from what us mortals found to exist from our reviews of the supermarket shelves. And since trader Joe bought Aldi's, there' something surprising to be found there, too.

And let us not forget dear ole Co-op in B'boro, where they also keep men and women who did not take their wine merchandizing apprenticeship at Shaws or Big Y or Hannaford. I now have a pretty good view and taste and smell of the Lil' Koala Shiraz and am ready to face the French original, for sometime around the 1800's, those grape vines from the valley of the tone were deported to the penal colonies of the British on the other continent (is it the seventh?) Can't wait do do that in congenial company.

Such banter, of course, can come up only in reduced company. Mine, right now is limited to endless time, with Shiraz and Allison Kraus Radio and William de Morgan. 'A Likely Story', indeed!

Pretty Well-Fed, Both Body and Soul

Good morning to you all! You caught up with me while I was zipping over Hogback Mountain after having flipped pancakes with the church congregationists for today's fund-raiser. Since 6:00 AM. It was rather successful, I think. Doug will tell us, tomorrow. While the plain pancakes lagged somewhat, the blueberry pancakes went like hot buns - or better, even. We flipped them on two pro-sized griddles and just barely could keep up with the takers. Then at the end, we were commanded to finish all the dough that had already been mixed and after that we had to have breakfast on site. We were proud of what we had served.

For this affair, they bought gallon jugs of VT maple syrup, 49.50 a gallon. Why, that's some pretty good price compared to retail at 25 bucks a quart for the touristers!

Then I went to town because I had to get some Red Rice Yeast, and while I was there I also got some wine from Aldi's, Sirah for 4.99. I just can't resist that. Also got some Chardonnay for the same price, both wines from Argentina. And at the pancake flipp'n I "worked" with a guy who hails from a family that hails out of Sicily. He made a remark about enjoying his wine in the afternoon so I asked, "Did you come from Italy?" Because that's what he looks like. He protested: "from Sicily," so I told him about the Nero d'Avola I like so much and he did not even know about the town of Avola. The Nero d'Avola is said to be the most popular wine in that region. Yet, his dad used to make his own wine in CT where they had settled. Maybe that' steht reason he never introduced his son to the wonders of his inheritance. I told him to come by the house and I'd introduce him to his 'home brew'.

Then on the way home I stopped to get some beer for Chip. I got some Long Trail amber ale and when I drove by the mail box I saw chip standing up there on his deck so I drove up to him and intended to just give him the six pack but he offered to share some and I saw Brenda sitting there also so I somewhat hesitatingly, I hoped, accepted and we sat and I think the three of us just about finished the six pack and we had a nice afternoon.

Lastly (?) I went down to the pond and checked the berries. There is a tremendous crop of blueberries hanging there but they are all still green. There are almost no red raspberries and what I saw is not ripe either and looks kind of sick. I just picked some black berries to mix in with my raw bits with strawberries from the store, just a few to cut the tip of the sweet strawberries and put some new character into my favorite breakfast.

Tomorrow we'll have Communion and after that they want to serve the leftover pancakes at the fellowship hall. We aught to be pretty well-fed, both body and soul, by tomorrow lunch time!

Here, the weather is Vermontish! It was cool enough to put on an undershirt and a long-sleeved winter shirt. Down in the valley it got uncomfortably warm, and by the time I sat on Chip's and Brenda's deck, I spent time mopping my brow. Down by the berries in the shade and the breeze, things were a bit cooler and now I am sitting in my dining area and clouds have moved in, and I am debating if I am really cold enough to close the doors and the windows.

If you don't like the weather, just wait five minutes!