The Coopers' Adventures

Goodbye David Cooper

2018-04-30T15:48:00.000-07:00

My name is John Cooper. David Cooper, one of the Coopers Two is, was, my father.

I am posting to the blog he shared with my mother Susan during their travels to announce that David G. Cooper died on April 4, 2018 of Interstitial Pulmonary Fibrosis that he contracted by being in downtown Manhattan in the hours following the 9-11 attack.

John David Griswold Cooper, Sr, father, husband, friend and mystic, was known as “David” to everyone. David’s battle with IPF started with his diagnosis in 2012.

After diagnosis, David described, with frustration and sadness, downtown Manhattan after 9-11 as being like a nuclear winter, everything covered in thick white dust.

David was kind, gentle, soft-spoken, curious, knowledgeable, reflective, quick-witted, and tenacious, all his qualities wrapped in a deep, contemplative spirit. My dad came from modest beginnings, attending a two-room schoolhouse in Colebrook Connecticut. We would often visit Colebrook duing my childhood, exploring the pond, swimming hole, and town where my father always felt some roots.

My dad went on to become a lifelong learner, graduating from Gilbert High School in Winsted Connecticut, then from Lehigh University, and receiving graduate degrees from Pace University, Teacher’s College at Columbia University, and the University of Arizona. David was active in the Osha Lifelong Learning Institute (OLLI) in Tucson, Az and Asheville, NC.

Dad kept a daily meditation practice through decades of his life, writing that meditation helped him him to learn just how much of his thoughts were ego and helped him to find a space that moved beyond that noise. He loved music, especially Jazz and often listened with exuberance. My dad and I often shared and talked about topics close to meditation and spirituality, and we shared some similar tastes in music. He introduced me to Crosby, Stills and Nash when I was young, and I have never been able to listen to them since without feeling his presence.

A quiet leader, it was easier for David to share or give credit than it was to accept credit. Though he rarely told anyone, he served in leadership almost everywhere he went, including as President of his Fraternity, Alpha Sigma Phi, for the Institute of Noetic Sciences, on various church committees and on the board of almost every building or home association where he lived. He had an unassuming way of inspiring others as a leader, something that grew more beautiful and masterful to me as I learned more about leadership myself.

David is survived by wife Susan, children Payson and John, and in-laws Chris and Sutton as well as many dear friends and other family.

Our family wishes to recognize and thank the incredible staff at Wissahickon Hospice at UPenn Medical, who kept David comfortable towards his end. David fondly called Wissahickon “Kiss a Chicken” when he couldn’t remember the proper name; David loved puns and wordplay and his humor was often sneaky, clever and surprising.

Our family is planning a memorial at the Colebrook Congregational Church in David’s hometown of Colebrook Connecticut, on Saturday October 20th, 2018 at 11am. As the date approaches, more details will be available here on this blog that David and Susan kept during their travels. For family, friends and acquaintances, David has a memorial Facebook group at https://www.facebook.com/groups/DavidCooper/

Memorial contributions can be made to the Pulmonary Fibrosis Foundation, 230 East Ohio Street, Suite 500, Chicago, IL 60611 in David’s name. Contributions can be made online at https://pulmonaryfibrosis.donorpages.com/Tribute/DavidCooper/.

More from Scotland...2nd post.

2015-11-03T00:54:00.000-08:00

We left you last time at the end of September in Glasgow at the Barras Market – still one of the most fun places we've been (speaking for myself, says Susan). Since we are so close to Loch Lomond, we have been exploring it and finding out-of-the-way places (with great ice cream). Lomond is the largest “lake” in Scotland and the roads don't go all the way around, so it can be a challenge to see just how much of it we can see without being in a boat.

A Food & Drink Festival on the shore of Loch Lomond

We did get out on a boat once -

It was quite a lovely ride

And in the last post we mentioned hearing a talk by the creator of the Kelpies near Falkirk. Well, we finally got to see them in person, and they are breathtaking. They are massive and full of energy – you almost expect them to snort any minute. And we had a short tour of the inside of one to get a look at the structure – very neat!

The Kelpies are only known as "Head Up" and "Head Down"

People do seem very small next to them

Inside of Head Down

We took a sojourn down toward Ayr (on the West coast a bit South of Glasgow) to visit Dundonald Castle (the inside stone work is just amazing) http://www.dundonaldcastle.org.uk/

A model of an ancient fort in the Dundonald visitor center

The amazing vaulted ceiling and brick work in the great hall

And, had a good visit with the guide – everywhere in this country that we have visited, the guides are very friendly, open to all sorts of questions, and seem to have all the time in the world to chat...gotta love it! Dundonald Castle was built on the site of much earlier fortifications (Dun means hill fort) by Walter FitzAllen who was steward to King David I and ancestor to the Stewarts.

Just a few miles away is the 13^th century Crossraguel Abbey

http://www.maybole.org/places/crossraguel/abbey.htm . . .

Crossraguel Abbey tower remains

Crossraguel Abbey ruins

another beautiful ruin where, after talking with the guide for some time, he shared with us that religious divides run deep even here in Scotland – he is working in a “catholic” ruin for Historic Scotland, but is a practicing protestant and some of his fellow protestants stopped talking with him when he took the job...amazing, huh?

We also stopped to see Souter Johnnie's house which has a very beautiful thatched roof (he's a Robert Burns character) in nearby Kirkoswald - how many people can you get into a bed? http://www.nts.org.uk/Property/Souter-Johnnies-Cottage/

Kirkoswald thatched roof building

And had a wonderful – fresh lobster - late lunch The coastal areas of Scotland are known for the fantastic seafood and the preparation is more often than not, quite wonderful. Fish and chips at a Chippery, especially close to the shore, are always fresh and yummy, some even available with gluten free batter. And yet, so many Scots are thin! Go figure.

David has been mowing the small lawn in the back of the house. The sun and warm weather has been wonderful and very unexpected – folks accuse us of bringing the great weather as they have had a really miserable cold, wet summer. It's getting colder now and the trees are turning, there is much more rain expected, but it just makes being in the house – or in the car – more delightful.

We are always on the look out for funerals and weddings when we travel, and within the space of a couple of weeks we managed to see both. We joined up with friends, Kendra & Jim Golden to tour the Isle of Skye, a beautiful trip in a beautiful place. Whilst driving up a one-track road, up a mountain, to see some geologically interesting formations, we came upon not one, but two cemeteries and remarked about how really out-of-the-way they were. On our way back down this one-track road we managed to pass a hearse on it's way up with a coffin in the back, then a whole string of cars filled with mourners followed. Fortunately there were fairly frequent “pull-outs” so we all made it to where we were going. We spent the night in a B&B, had a super meal in a local pub and listened to some really good “Trad” music played by some folks who were playing just for the fun of it.

Approaching Skye

Crofting Museum on Skye - it had just closed for the season

We met up with the Goldens again to tour the Borders area – several ruined abbeys, the Robert Burns center, Broughton House in Kirkcudbright (say Kirk-coo-brie) home of E.A. Hornel one of the Glasgow Boys artists and one of Susan's favorites. On the way, we stopped at Gretna Green to check out the blacksmith's shop where many weddings are held (it's a great history, check it out at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gretna_Green ) Kendra and Susan noticed a couple – about our age – arriving in wedding dress, took their pictures and got asked if we would be witnesses – we were really privileged to have this experience...David & Jim were in attendance too and we have lots of photos of a lovely ceremony.

The Happy Couple and their witnesses

I'll stop here and Dave will insert some photos...a popular motto in Glasgow these days is “People make Glasgow” and it's true. We've always love the Scots folks and are loving them even more now...polite (even the signs say “Please” and “Thank You”), calm, understanding, kind, helpful, and on and on. We are loving our time here. We are so very lucky!

Three Months This Time

2015-09-29T15:26:00.000-07:00

This time we are house sitting in Cardross, Scotland...in a house between Dumbarton and Helensburgh about 45 minutes West (and a bit North) of Glasgow, on the River Clyde... and we get to stay here until the end of November (having arrived on 30 August). The folks who own the house are also retired and have taken their compact motorhome to Italy.

Bruce Court, Cardross

1 Bruce Court, Tiny Fiat 500

Rear Yard of 1 Bruce Court

Our trip began on August 22^nd, with legs from Asheville to Charlotte to Philadelphia to Glasgow. We were planning a week in Edinburgh at the Fringe Festival before going to our assignment. But since it will take four auto rentals to get us to the end of November (it has to do with the 30-day insurance limit VISA insists on), we had planned to start in Glasgow.

We did not make it to Glasgow from Philadelphia. The airline's story was that some passengers complained that crew members on our incoming aircraft were under the influence of something and under FAA rules the complaint had to be checked out. So no aircraft to fly us to Glasgow. Instead, US Air offered to send us to Edinburgh, through Dublin, and it would only take 7 or 8 hours longer instead of waiting until the next evening to leave Philly. Since we were bound for Edinburgh anyway it sounded OK, but it caused significant changes in car and hotel plans. And, our bags did not get to Edinburgh for 3 days (but, for the first time ever we had clean socks in a carry on :-)). So, after our first month here, on the 26^th of Sept, we drove back to Edinburgh (about two hours) to turn in the first car – a lovely mustard yellow Fiat 500 – then took a train and a bus to Glasgow airport to pick up our white Ford so we could get back on track with car reservations. Whew!

Though our start in Edinburgh was a bit uneven, we had a great time wandering the streets and finding interesting performances to see – 12 pieces in 4 days/nights – largely drama and dance, though there was one odd, fun piece of mostly flamenco music but featuring a man (apparently of Indian descent) who performed what we took to be classical Indian dances usually performed by women. And, the piece was named for a traditional Sufi repetitive meditation! It's what makes this “fringe” so great – over 3,000 performances in 3 weeks and you never too sure about what you are signing up to see next!

A couple of dance pieces finished with repetitive Capoeira (martial arts) type moves, accompanied by very loud music. Several others were pretty hard to make sense of, but we enjoyed others very much. David's favorite was a fairly serious play about relationships, involving a somewhat androgynous person who decided he is now a man, a woman who is suffering through a painful split from her spouse, and an artist who is supported by her brother and who has not left her flat in 2 years. It was wonderful, but Susan missed a lot because she had her hood up - really cold air was blowing right on her head.

The other really super piece was a one man show put on by Pat Kinervane. This one was called Underneath, and you can read about him and his works online. Suffice it to say that he is a strong, older Irish actor playing a dead woman is this case. The piece was memorable.

Edinburgh goes a bit crazy during the three weeks of the fringe – and there are other festivals going on at the same time. A great deal of the busiest part of the city is totally taken over, as you can see from this picture showing a park near the University that has been fitted out with temporary fake grass and four performance spaces. The last time we were here (a few years ago) we saw a play in several tiny bespoke buildings in the Botanic Garden – this time the strangest place was in a movable storage container.

George Square Edinburgh, next to the University

Fringe Festival Posters, George Square

One of many food carts outside George Square

Cardross is a tiny town – a golf course, a pub, an ancient church and a ruin – pretty typical. We are in a fairly new house in a neighborhood built about 10 years ago on farm land. The bus is at the corner and the train just down the hill. We are out and about a good deal as Susan's lists of things we “MUST” see and do is very, very long. For starters, Glasgow is a fairly short drive and we just love that city...it is filled with very different “hoods”. One of the oldest is where the “Barras” (barrows) market is now – one of the coolest is the West End, near the University, and the world-class Kelvingrove Museum. Another one of the oldest is around St. Mungo's Cathedral, Necropolis and Museum and the one that feels like Tribeca is called Merchant City. It would be easy to live here and the real estate is not too expensive either. There is a good deal of theater, many museums, music (it's known as “Music City”), and other special event venues that seem to be busy continuously....and it is second only to London for shopping – especially high end along the many “pedestrian-only” streets. One day, we saw a sign in a window announcing a lecture/slide presentation by Andy Scott, creator of the “Kelpies” being held in the only church that Charles Rennie Mackintosh actually saw built. It was a terrific evening for a local benefit and we would encourage you to check out these amazing sculptures at http://www.thekelpies.co.uk/ and the church at http://mackintoshchurch.com/

A view of Merchant City, Glasgow

A view of the Barras market in Glasgow - it made us nostalgic for our volunteer job at the CarePartners Estate Sale

Another scene from the Barras market

We just love abbeys, castles, cathedrals, and palaces...mostly those in ruin...and the older the better. We are doing day-trips so far but are planning a couple of over-nights to get to some further away places. One of our favorite areas is Kilmartin Glen and Museum – a very large area with over 300 ancient things to wonder at...cup and ring carvings, cairns with and without burials, stone circles, and on and on. Before we left Asheville we made a reservation for a tour and lunch in their lovely cafe – it was the last tour of the season so we got up early and made the long drive (because of all the lochs you have to drive up and around – there are few direct roads here in the West). Although we have visited this area several times, it was a stunning and informative day to say the least.

Nether Largie South, Kilmartin Glenn

Standing Stone, Kilmartin Glen

Stone Circle, Kilmarten Glen

So, enough for now...we'll try to get this posted with some pics and will write more sooner or later, promise.

Oh, one last thing. Susan did a video when we first got to the Barras market. Here it is:

Toward the end a man calls out, "cigarettes, tobacco, viagra", and we later learned that it is all contraband. A few seconds later he notices Susan's camera and says" what's this all about?" She stops and when he hears her accent he decides she's not an undercover agent, reporter or whatever. Ends up calling her "Darlin" after quite the conversation!!

Summer 2014 - South London

2014-12-26T10:46:00.001-08:00

What a wonderful 2014 summer – eating from a garden that we didn’t even plant, taking the train into Central London in about ½ hour, a huge park off the back yard that Henry VIII rode thru to visit Ann Boleyn, concerts, pubs, food, new friends, and an excursion to, into and around a crop circle – a real one!!

Rear of S. London House

We were offered the opportunity to house sit in a small “close” of homes in a very pleasant small town in South London. Our responsibilities were tending to the fantastic vegetable/herb/flower gardens, and lawn – and keeping the house in good condition and clean, and collecting the mail and reporting on it and other local news via email. Tough job, but someone had to do it!

Gardens

Neighborhood Fox

We flew to Heathrow a week before we were to meet the owners and drove out to Cornwall - down to St. Ives then Penzance and around Land’s End . . .

Church Steeples St. Ives, Cornwall

Bus negotiating Streets of St. Ives, Cornwall

Polperro Harbour, Cornwall

. . . Then back up to the Exeter area. We knew we'd be getting into crop circle territory then, so we had searched the web for a current one and found a possibility. Our information was that it was near the ancient hill fort of Badbury Rings (seems most of them are near ancient mysterious sites), but until we asked in the parking lot there we had no idea how to find it. It was within a mile, marked only with a little arrow on the back of a road sign. We drove into a small parking area, and paid a modest entry fee (for losses to the farmer and some donated to the local church) to the farmer’s niece who was sitting in a van at the entrance to the huge barley field. So, google Badbury Rings Crop Circle to read more if you’re interested, but this is what we found – it was huge (it was harvested later that week – lucky us!)!!

Crop Circle near Badbury Rings (at top)

Entry to Crop Circle

Crop Circle from Ground

Having 6 weeks in one place was great – gave us an opportunity to explore nearby sites such as Oxford, Darwin’s house, Elthan Palace, Winchester and it’s outrageously beautiful cathedral, Dover with it’s bronze age boat, Roman House and WWII hospital caves under the castle and cliffs, Avebury and its accessible stone circle which we love more than Stonehenge, Devizes (with its crop circle museum), and much of London that we hadn’t explored before. We got really familiar with the bus routes and rode them lots, we walked the canal that passes right thru the northern part of the city and goes thru Camden Town with it’s fab international food court, spent time in the Jewish Museum, the Jewel Tower next to Westminster Abbey, Westminster Cathedral, the Serpentine Gallery, Freemasons Museum, the original British Tate, Sloan Square Church noontime concerts, Albert Hall, Saatchie Gallery, Borough Market, Southwark Cathedral, Pace Gallery in the Royal Academy of Art, we explored the fantastic RR stations in different parts of the city (arrived at them from different stations in and around So. London), were awed by the huge and peaceful pro-Palestinian demonstration (and the police without any guns!!!) that we happened into on our way to a concert in St. Martin’s-in-the-Field church and on and on and on..

Winchester Cathedral Interior

Winchester Cathedral Crypt


Winchester Cathedral Tomb

London is so so wonderful – it was a fantastic summer. We thank the owners of the lovely house and garden for allowing us this opportunity!

Seems it takes us longer and longer to post our news....

2014-06-30T13:45:00.002-07:00

This post starts with Thanksgiving 2013 in Asheville, NC – our home town. We were delighted with our role as ‘organizers’ of the Thanksgiving dinner that 50 people enjoyed in our Unitarian Congregation. We are planning on doing it again in 2014….after so many Thanksgivings with lots of folks in our house, this was a ‘no-brainer’ for us and was great fun.

The day after, we left – in our new little and environmentally friendly KIA Rio - for our next house-sitting assignment in Portland, OR and after a night of venue hopping in Nashville, we headed west. On the way we had a good visit with David’s brother and wife in Lincoln, Nebraska (they drove up from their home in Manhattan, Kansas - the Little Apple). After Lincoln and an overnight in Cheyenne, we planned the next stop in Western Wyoming, but a scary run-in with a huge snow storm ended with an unplanned stay in Rawlins instead. So, our visit with son John & his wife Sutton in Salt Lake City was shortened by a day. From SLC we crossed southern Idaho into Oregon, made it thru another big snow storm in the Pendleton area and finally arrived in Portland – this is one HUGE country where the weather is, indeed, at times, as big as the country itself.

Lisa and Paul, owners of the house we were going to care for are delightful folks with a wonderful story of their own and live in a lovely renovated home in a great ‘hood in Portland.

They were off to Asia while we really took advantage of being in that great town: had Christmas dinner with an old friend, attended many performances of music both before and after Christmas (this was a 200 strong tuba concert),

attended lectures at the University, saw plays. Enjoyed a visit with Kendra & Jim Golden who were passing thru in the motorhome we had shared with them for several years. We met friends-of-friends and had several great lunches and dinners with them and with other couples who we met thru other connections. Had a visit from son John who just happened to have an appointment in PDX while we were there, took walks marveling at the lovely Portland gardens – even in the mostly mild winter - and enjoyed being within walking distance of Whole Foods and the big in-town mall (with a skating rink where little kids had lessons that we became addicted to watching).

Time flew by and before we knew it Lisa and Paul returned and we were off to explore the exciting and wonderous Route 1 down along the CA coast – we loved it in years past but it had been a long time since we had done that drive. We stopped in Eugene for dinner with a friend and a fun impromptu concert in a consignment shop; we stopped in Mendocino for a eagerly anticipated visit with our friend Shirley Frerick who lives in a gorgeous spot on magical land…while there we had a great visit with the folks at the Ford House Visitor Center on the headlands where we volunteered as docents for a summer a few years ago. We had lunch at Nepenthes at Big Sur, stayed in San Luis Obispo, stopped in Venice Beach and went on to Borrego Springs for another visit with the Goldens. Then on to Tucson.

Except for Susan’s nasty cold/virus that just wouldn’t quit we had an exceptional time in Tucson! We were treated to a get together by the IONS Tucson group, had lunch and dinner nearly every day with some of the wonderful friends we had made during the 7 years we lived there. It was a really wonderful visit and so so good to see these really special folks. On our way back to Asheville – 3 ½ months after we left – we did that endless drive thru Texas (but the presence of wind turbines gave us great joy) as did the spring flowers (like the dogwoods in Vicksburg) – the earth’s coming alive is so exciting, although winter and spring seem to fight it out during March and early April - here in Asheville the greening is breathtaking.

Now that we’ve been back awhile, David has been working on rebuilding the “purple” room downstairs that had to be dismantled because of the failed waterproofing on one wall (see the 'big dig' a prior post) – so, the framing, insulation, sheetrock and tiling are about done, and then with the taping and painting done we will have yet another room that we’re not sure what we will do with…

we’ve installed an outdoor shower and just love, love, love showering under the stars or in the sunshine. We are open for guests after August 13th and hope you will consider a visit…..we are off tomorrow morning (1 July) to the UK to do another house sit...with a week in Cornwall and Devon first....crop circles here we come. We'll try and report sooner about this new adventure....bye for now.

Many hugs, S&D

A visit to Washington, DC.

2013-10-08T11:55:00.000-07:00

We promised to add to our last post on this Blog but never did it…our apologies. Very briefly, we spent a wonderful week in London last March after house sitting in Coltishall for 6 weeks (but still haven’t made it to Belgium), then returned home to Asheville and continued to work on our house and yard. We are especially interested in getting the water to flow AWAY from the house, which obviously hadn’t been a priority for the people who have lived here in the past.

And, here’s a report on some more recent activities . . .

Susan subscribes to 2 house sitting sites: MindMyHouse.com and Housecarers.com and gets emails from them every day. Because of allergies we don’t even look at the house sitting situations that require pet care so our options are much reduced. But every now and then…..

On August 27^th we left Asheville for Washington, DC…and another house sitting gig. A really neat woman who owns a condo in Falls Church, VA – a short walk from the DC metro – left for a hiking trip in Ireland and Spain and we moved in to care for her home. We were there until Sept 30 when we returned to Asheville for a couple of weeks.

We thought being so close to Washington would give us a really good opportunity to get to know the city and nearby, something we never did in all our years in NJ and NY. And it did and we had a blast especially in the city – we were on the go most every day. The most amazing thing about this city (among many) are the Smithsonian museums – they are all free, open every day except Christmas and are filled to the rafters. Their collections are surprisingly well presented. And we are very impressed with the employees – all knowledgeable, kind and pleasant. We were not back a week when they all closed down as did much of DC – our niece tells us that restaurants are offering discounts to federal employees and are charging congress people extra!


The Washington Monument is still being repaired from the earthquake damage.

Here’s a list of some of the things we managed to do…..all of which we would highly recommend if you get to visit for a time –

Lunch at the beautiful Kennedy Center on the Potomac, dinner too and several performances both free and not…including a tribute to Ella Fitzgerald, a dance performance by Teshigawaro and his Japanese dance troupe Kaaras AND the Gospel Awards where Congressman John Lewis was honored – he is the last living person who spoke at the 1963 march on Washington – he captured our hearts with his brief remarks.
Smithsonian Castle – surprisingly there is not much in this building but a good place for snacks, to rest your feet and to people watch – everyone comes into this building it seems. Susan thinks they are missing a huge opportunity as the gift shop here is not very exciting, but some of the other shops in the other museums are wonderful.
Renwick Museum – a great collection especially a wonderful sculpture of a clock that looks covered in fabric but is all wood!
Museum of American History – including a great exhibit on the 50^th anniversary of the march on Washington and an interesting special exhibit of the gowns First Ladies have worn to Inauguration Balls … how many of these past presidents have you lived through?
Natural History Museum – saw a 3D iMax film of butterflies that just blew us away…also a super interesting exhibit on the human Genome – and took another quick look at the Hope Diamond.
Toured the Capitol and the fantastic Thomas Jefferson building at the Library of Congress and walked in the Eastern Market/Capitol Hill ‘hood.
Went to the Phillips Collection, to KramerBooks in the Dupont Circle area, and to the street festival in the Adams - Morgan ‘hood.
Went out on Rt. 66, to one of several wine trails in Virginia, and tasted at 4 delightful wineries.
Sackler Gallery and the Freer Gallery both have wonderful collections.
The Udvar-Hazy Air & Space Museum in Chantilly, VA – a sister museum to the one on the Mall. The one in DC has a super 3D iMax of the Hubble telescope and its pictures of deep space – try and find a place to see this, it’s just breathtaking. It also has the front end of a DC-7 – the plane Susan flew between NYC and Flint Michigan when she was working in the retail business – here’s a photo of the inside where she and her associates used to work on the 5+ hour, hugely noisy flight that shook the fillings out of your teeth - she doesn’t remember taking a typewriter, but they did carry heavy “unit control” books.
Spent a day at Mount Vernon (George’s house) – and ‘Old Town’ Alexandria which is a quaint shopping, restaurant, gallery place…they have converted a torpedo factory into an artist space for working and selling – a great idea and a very fun place.
Saw a visiting Jamaican Boys Choir and small orchestra on the plaza at the African Art Museum – the exhibits here are just beautiful.
Saw a day of performances at the American Indian Museum and loved the unusual building and the exhibits –the café with many yummy choices of food from the Americas is pretty special.
Couldn’t get enough of the Hirschhorn – and its sculpture garden…love that place!
Had brunch in Georgetown, walked the streets and watched the kids play in the fountain at water’s edge; drove under the amazing Chinatown Archway.
Couldn’t miss the Smithsonian zoo and the pandas!
Spent a day in Annapolis and took a trolley tour.
Went to the new Arena Stage building and saw “The Velocity of Autumn” with our niece then had a fantastic dinner at a nuevo Indian restaurant – Rasika.
Walked around the monuments that fill the Potomac Park/ Tidal Basin area – monuments to ML King, Abe, FDR, Jefferson and the amazing and very moving Korean War Memorial.
National Gallery, both the East and West Galleries – The Ballets Russes film and exhibit are really amazing and if this comes to any area near you GO!!! There are other exhibits that are out of sight as well, but the Ballets Russes takes the cake.

When we weren’t running off to the next “attraction” we managed –

Dinner with niece Patricia, a real mover and shaker in DC, and her beau Andrew, at Estadio, we had fabulous tapas and a stunning bottle of wine from an Italian winery owned by a friend of theirs.
More meals – a couple of brunches and tea – with niece Patty at some of her other great favorites.
Even did some cooking and shopping (especially at Costco since there is not one in Asheville).

We spent the last few days poking around some more (we still have a pretty long ‘to do’ list – a month is just not enough time!!), sweeping the large terrace, dusting and running the vacuum around the house before packing up and driving back to Asheville. We’ll only be at home for a couple of weeks – we’re going to drive up to Connecticut for David’s 55^th high school reunion. It is fun for Susan, too, as she was only 2 years behind him and knows most of the folks pretty well. On this trip we’ll stop in Raleigh to see Kendra & Jim Golden, go up to Cape Cod to say hello for a couple of days to Bev and Bruce Nightingale, stop for a night at Susan’s brother’s in CT, spend a couple of nights with Payson & Chris in NYC and enjoy seeing a bunch of folks at a reunion of sorts at the Ridgewood Unitarian Society. Then home - until the next adventure ….

Hoping you are all well and happy and are enjoying the crispiness in the air that greets the morning sun with a feeling of anticipation, a new season has begun. Harvest days are ending, winter is drawing near, yet in between is surely the most special time of (fill in the blank)....

Two Chapters: 2012 Move- Jan 2013 in the UK

2013-01-24T14:03:00.000-08:00

Two Chapters follow: One about the house (very brief except for some photos) and the other about our current house sitting adventures (a few photos) we will post more about this trip to the UK later

We moved into the house at 14 Cedarcliff Circle, Asheville, NC 28803 a few days before Thanksgiving and had a wonderful “Gratitude” party on the Sunday after Thanksgiving. We painted and painted those strange colored walls, George and his helpers got our "Big Dig" filled in, a new deck built and the land regraded...

and we worked with the contractors on getting the ‘popcorn’ ceilings smooth, the bathrooms done, the stairs rebuilt, the floors done, etc - we are ready for guests and have had it tested out by our kids at Christmas time and the Goldens for New Years....reports are that it's comfy, so come and try for yourself!!

– and we just got all the windows and some of the doors replaced finishing the day before we left for England and our 6 week house sitting gig! (Having covered some furniture with sheets.)

But. the current news is about our house sitting task - this time is to mind a 300 year old B&B in the very East of England while the owners visit family in Australia. There will only be one guest, who comes and goes as he pleases and takes no meals. A cleaning person will see to his room, so for all intents and purposes, the B&B is closed until the owners return on March 1.

This part of England is new to us, and we are quickly finding that it is full of unique and interesting cities, towns, geographical features and human artifacts. We are in the county of Norfolk (pronounced “Norfook” here) - an unusual feature of the area is the Norfolk Broads (not to be confused with the women who lived in Susan’s hometown in Norfolk, CT). These are lake-like bodies of water that were created when people in the middle ages dug peat for fuel and then these areas filled with water. They, along with the many canals and rivers are now enjoyed for recreation often in the form of canoeing and water cruising. Who knew?

Our B&B is in the village of Coltishall, on the river Bure, which connects with the Broads in several places. It is a lovely little river, and the property here adjoins it.

Coltishall is about 8 miles north of Norwich (pronounced “Norridge”), where we arrived by train from London on 14 January. We wandered around the periphery of the city of about 110,000 wondering where we were since there are zero road signs. By sheer luck we found our way to a mid-city shopping center and a phone store where we activated a five year old British cell phone. Now we can order Indian takeaway from the shop down the street and loan the phone to Bev & Bruce Nightingale who will be visiting the UK in May.

When we left the phone store it was dark, and snow began to fall. We found the right road, got to our destination and met the owners of The Bridge House. We took them for really good food to the Recruiting Sergeant gastropub, a 6 – 7 minute walk from the B&B. More snow fell the next morning, and movement on the roads began to slow. The road through this wee village rises to cross the river, and a long line of vehicles formed as one lorry couldn’t get up the grade. As we watched the action from the front windows, villagers emerged to throw sand on the road and push cars to get things moving again.

Our hosts left two days later, after teaching us as much as they could about the house, the associated buildings and the supporting systems. You can see it all on their web site at www.BridgeHouse-Coltishall.co.uk Most of the space is not insulated and it has been COLD here –we’re told this is the worse that’s been seen in at least 10 years. We are mindful of heating costs so are keeping the heating off in most of the house but comfy in a small area – the “Snug” – that is equipped with a great wood/coal stove. We are learning how to manage this, and we’ve been left a substantial supply of coal and wood cut to just the right size.

In spite of the snow, we’ve been to a couple of grocery stores several miles away and to the laundry as the drain pipe for the washer froze creating a mess. The plumber was in Brazil and the electrician on a skiing trip, so we contacted the heating contractor who came that evening. The washer drains to a long, bent and inadequately supported outside PVC line and it froze in the low spot. They shored it up with an upside down flower pot found nearby and proclaimed it a very professional fix. We await warmer weather so we can do laundry without the drive to the unheated laundromat.

We’ve done some other driving around especially along the shore from Gt. Yarmouth (a funky summer resort town with a really interesting church), up to Cromer (where the crabs are legendary but out of season). The countryside is beautiful, very rural with lots of windmills, lighthouses, beautiful old churches and ruins. Many of the houses are “flinted” – covered with small, flat stones placed one at a time in the mortar covering the entire exterior.

We promise more in a few weeks - the owners of Bridge House return on 1 March and we don't fly back until 9 March so are considering a whole host of possibilities before returning to the States....London is high on the list, but so is Belgium where Susan's grandmother was born - we don't know anything about the "Timper" family except that they were from Belgium where we have never been. Hugs all and merry winter!

It's been a long time, but really busy for us!!

2012-10-25T20:52:00.001-07:00

We’ve gone and done it again – bought a house that has more issues than most anyone could conjure up if they tried. This is a long post with lots of pictures, we hope you enjoy reading all about our lives.....

We first decided that Asheville is a cool town about 4 or 5 days after we got here! And, after about 5 months of being here we decided we’d make it our home base, and we began to look at real estate. We came very close on two places (another story or two), and around June we decided on a third place that is part of a “cluster home,” community which “needed some work”.

We knew we wanted to take down some walls in the house and redo the bathrooms, floors, etc but didn't know that we had a seriously faulty foundation wall. Even with a home inspector, an engineer and all of our experience no one caught it until the previous owners moved out and got their piled up stuff away from the wall in one of the bedrooms in the “walk-out" basement - after the closing we discovered a soaking wet carpet and tackless that was very much disintegrated and black.....then, as it rained some more, a puddle on the floor appeared and the moisture meters put on the block wall read from 60-100% wet. The bottom line is that we now have a 40’+ long hole next to our house that is 11-12’ deep by about 5’ wide in an area that is only about 10'wide total, so the dirt has been taken out creating a new couple of mountains in our neighbors yard! Some of it will be returned and we will change the landscaping considerably. . .

We got 6 formal recommendations and estimates and about a hundred suggestions about how to alleviate this problem and it has been quite the learning process…in any event below are some of the photos of “The Coopers Big Dig 2012.”

Before we knew about his issue we had contracted to have the 3 bathrooms gutted, the stairs replaced, wood floors installed and tile floors on the lower level…the painted over wallpaper and the popcorn ceilings removed and skim coated…and, the ceilings painted. We are doing the rest of the painting ourselves – every square inch of the place was painted in really awful colors and, except for closets and bathrooms our “Linen White” is being slathered on everywhere (sometimes it is taking 3 coats to cover those nasty – to us – colors).

So, along about November 10^th, we should be moving in and will have plenty of room if you care to drive to the south east where it really hasn't been very hot this summer…where the fall is glorious both weather wise and with fall color treats….and if this year is anything like last, the winter won't be very cold either - the town doesn't own snow plows so when a tad of the white stuff appears everyone goes back to bed.

As we said, aside from this house mess, we are really busy - the OLLI Senior Learning Center at the Uof NC is much bigger and more sophisticated than in Tucson and the courses are super...did 2 days a week in the spring, but skipped the summer and are only taking 2 courses 1 day a week this semester... the UU congregation is really something too! About 800 people, very active with lots of social stuff (monthly “restaurant tour” dinners with a group and “dinner for eight” groups), as well as social action and good adult RE programs (we will facilitate one on “Living Deeply” beginning in January). Then we are still spending at least one day a week (sometimes 2 or 3) volunteering for the Hospice estate sale/resale store program - we pack, unpack houses and trucks, set up the warehouses for sales then man the cash registers. It is hard physical work and we seem to love it....they raised over 800K for hospice last year and hope to top 1M this year.

Here are some photos of what we bought at 14 Cedarcliff Circle in Asheville - and what we've managed to turn it into so far...

The kitchen/dining room was an amazing turquoise green color - 3 coats to cover it, we took out the wall between the kitchen and the dining room, and took out the fireplace in the 'brown" living room and opened the wall behind it in the kitchen so that the fridge can be counter depth but full size. Note that the floor in the kitchen is a dark stain and the adjoining floor in the living room is very light - go figure...They are being sanded and stained all one color - "Espresso."

Below is the downstairs "purple" bedroom - after we closed on the house, we found that the carpet was dripping wet in this room - there is mold and the water seepage thru the wall was enough to create a really neat puddle in the middle of the floor. We removed the sheetrock and the insulation and the wall is now supported with 2x4s at angles. We are anticipating that "The Big Dig" will allow the wall to dry out so that the rebar that has been put into the 2" wide strips (every 16") on the inside can be secured with epoxy.

The home inspector pointed out these cracks in the unfinished part of the wall and we called an engineer before we closed on the property - he said in his report that we could easily fix these little cracks with rebar and epoxy, that it looked as though there "had been" a water issue but it was fixed - so "no problem" - we'd have a stronger wall than when it was built...now it is part of this massive waterproofing/wall stabilizing project and the engineer returned and changed his report...free of charge! We broke the sewer twice and the AT&T cables 3 times with the earth mover - what a mess!!

All the bathrooms had 25 year old plastic tub/showers - the master had nasty shiny pink walls with nasty cabinets and sink tops. The paper in the second bath was amazing with a ton of paint over it...and a dreary pink. The down stairs bath had a border of wall paper and painted white walls that were really a greyish color.

The downstairs bedroom was "major blue" and it took 3 coats to cover it up. The rug smelled. It now has a tile floor, white walls and the bathroom has been tiled. We can't wait to hang some pictures - this is to be the guest room and will be a comfortable place for you to visit...we will post some finished pics after we move in.

It's taken so long to get this blog together that "The Big Dig" is moving toward completion. More to follow...

Take care and hugs to you all. We are just off the Blue Ridge Parkway and it is glorious – come!!

Susan & David

It's 2012 - WOW!!

2012-01-02T19:52:00.000-08:00

HAPPY NEW YEAR!! Hard to believe that it’s 2012, isn’t it???

First and foremost…It is our intention that all you wish and hope for in the coming year becomes your reality.

We are writing to you from Asheville, NC, where we have rented a 2 bedroom 2 bath apartment (read: room for guests) thru August. For starters, it is really fun to live out of a closet and drawer space – since we left New Mexico last March we have been essentially living out of our 2 small suitcases and one bag full of toiletries (requirements of this advanced age, we’ve found). We were ready to “park” for a bit and had heard many good and wondrous things about Asheville and so decided to give it a test drive.

After returning from Ireland on Oct 1, we spend a couple of weeks visiting folks on the east coast then flew to Salt Lake City, bought a car and headed east – with the autumn leaves in full glory, it was a great trip. Our intention was to spend a month here then go south, west then north ending up in Northern California so we didn’t bring much of anything from our storage space (we have clothes, some art, a few rugs and kitchen stuff in SLC). But, we found the Unitarian Congregation here with 800 members and lots going on; we found a large and active OLLI (Senior Education) at the U of NC and we found CarePartners Hospice Estate Sale Division (where we are now really active volunteers – worked 3 days last week hauling and selling stuff)…so, after 2 weeks at the Residence Inn we decided to stay awhile and found this brand new apartment within about 2 days.

Since we couldn’t find a good furnished apartment we thought about renting furniture, but figured out that we could buy estate/used furniture and at the end of 9 months donate it back to hospice both saving money and supportinga worthy cause – we started with the most unlikely (especially for us) chair.

And we have gone on from there having a good time and supporting some great causes – it’s amazing what you can buy for next to no money! Wish we had thought about this concept years ago…reusing is great for us and super for the planet!

Our future plans are unknown – but we have many possibilities all under discussion.

For those of you who keep up with our kids: John and Sutton in Salt Lake City are doing great – John has returned to school – he’s at Iliff School of Theology in Denver ( http://www.iliff.edu/ ) doing a distance masters with the intention of becoming a Unitarian Universalist Minister, continues to run his web/data business & Sutton (bless her heart) continues as a Jr High art teacher and to develop her Mary Kay business – they are both very involved with their UU society and with their 2 dogs, Felix and Memphis who are a hoot. Payson and Chris in New York City are also doing great – Payson is an entrepreneur at heart and has her fingers in several pies but at the moment focuses on consulting with other entrepreneurs on how to use social media in their growing businesses & Chris (bless his heart) continues to manage one of NYCs tall commercial buildings and play music, music, music – he’s a terrific guitarist.

IRELAND (a little travelogue – been meaning to add this to our blog to finish our postings about our 6 months overseas, but somehow it has never gotten done – earlier posts are at www.cooperstwo.org )

We were there for a month – actually 30 days – and it rained on 29 of them. Spent our first week in Ashbourne, just north of Dublin in the Boyne Valley – we really enjoyed the several days we spent in Dublin! The architecture is a wonderful combination of old (as Trinity College) and ultra contemporary (as in the big financial company buildings). We also spent a number of days while in Ashbourne, setting a pattern for the rest of the month – tracking down and marveling at ancient sites.

tombs,

round towers

(there are over 80 on the island),

abbey & castle ruins.

The Boyne Valley is where Newgrange and several other Neolithic burial mounds are located – magical!! http://www.theboynevalley.com/

From Ashbourne we headed south –

had the best crab of our trip (they reminded us of Florida stone crabs – yum!!) near Wexford on the water.

Our plan was to circle the island, which we did, putting over 5000 kilometers on the rented car (a diesel Vauxhall that got 40+ miles to the gallon – which was great as gas is about $8 per gallon). We headed across the southern end of the island and began our trip north along the West coast …It is just simply a gloriously beautiful country - we drove around the Ring of Kerry, the Ring of Beara and, also a peninsula called “Dingle,” but not called the “Ring of” for some reason ;-)

Susan has always loved wool tweeds and when we got to Donegal we bought one for David from the man who wove the cloth…

And, she got to sit in with a few folks playing "trad" music on drum, in a pub!

Once in the north we headed East spending time in Londonderry (these days most folks call it by its ancient name “Derry”) then on to Belfast which we really loved!! The botanical gardens, adjoining the university is in a wonderful ‘hood – there is really good food and people are wonderful.

Here are some things that we never knew:

· There was a Norman “moving in” in the 1100’s! They stayed and mixed with the prevailing inhabitants. So, many names that we think of as “Irish” are really “Norman” (i.e., all the “Fitz” names such as Fitzgerald and, the Butlers – who were the tasters for the Norman kings).· Extensive settlements in the 3-4000 BCE years – there are stone age remains everywhere and in some areas (like the Boyne Valley) they are really dense.
· Celiac disease is so common among the Irish that most restaurants (including pubs) identify Gluten Free items on their menus (David was thrilled – we found this to be the case in Scotland, too)

· Ireland has lost 95% of its bogs. And, it takes 5000 +/- years to make another one. They appear to have been created by iron-age people clearing forests, lakes being filled with residue over time. The Netherlands have used up all the peat in their bogs and so they are encouraging (even with $$) Ireland to increase the preservation of those that are left . This has become a political issue as many people are attached to burning peat. Although houses are now heated with oil/gas and cooking is done differently, the tradition of burning peat in the home is very strong.

We have tons of photos and many stories and if you come and visit we will be delighted to share them.

We are at: 41 North Merrimon Ave #305 in Asheville, NC 28804

Home 520-326-1894 David 914-316-2553 Susan 917-273-9579

We’d love to see you … they tell us it’s really beautiful here in the early Spring – the Blue Ridge Parkway is just down the road!

Again, Happy 2012 – we are hopeful that this is the year things will begin to turn toward a more sustainable planet with folks who can really live the concept of wholeness. With onelove….. http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=one+love ,

S&D (& Bob - thanks, John)

It's been a great couple of months here in Scotland...

2011-08-29T13:23:00.000-07:00

Susan especially hates leaving!!

But first . . .

What a terrific opportunity we had - attending “England and the 67^th Anniversary of Operations of 550 Squadron, Royal Air Force from North Killingholme Airfield.” A great friend from Tucson, 87 year old Roy Harris, was the navigator on a Lancaster aircraft which had a crew of 7 and flew bombing missions during WWII from a field nearby. Twenty of these planes were being shot down by the Germans each night and the crew members had about a 45% chance of returning each time they took off. Roy was one of 8 original fliers who attended this reunion which is held annually, but there were a total of 80 in attendance, including friends and families. These survivors meet to catch up and honor those who did not return or who have since died – and we were there!

After the Saturday lunch, we marched about a mile, led by the Immingham Air Cadets Band, to the memorial on the “Lancaster approach.” There was “An Act of Remembrance and the laying of wreaths at the squadron memorial stone.” Then, right on schedule, the only remaining Lancaster flying in the UK, the “Lancaster Bomber of The Battle of Britain,” made three flypasts - a pretty impressive and emotional sight - then headed off with three waves of the wings.

We all marched back to the village for a “Service of Thanksgiving” at the local church (which has a stained glass memorial window) then attended a tea for the group in the historical society. Dinner was fun and festive, the program included songs by a lovely young woman who had come with a group from a small town in Belgium that had sheltered two survivors of a Lancaster crash (those townfolk were caught by the Germans who took 20 of the them away -3 never returned - as punishment).

No pics, we deleted them by accident! Whoops!

We took that jaunt down to Kingston Upon Hull (Susan’s maiden name is Hull) not only to attend this event, but also to explore the east coast of England which we had never done. A key stop was Lincoln, to visit the Lincoln Cathedral and St. Mary’s church where there is a stone carving of the rabbit that was the inspiration for Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland.

We drove up along the coast, stopping to walk out to the cliff tops and watch the hundreds of thousands of birds – including the super cute puffins - nesting in the magnificent cliff-sides. Reminded us a bit of Mendocino and last summer, but with even more birds!

We returned to our “Chalet” in Scotland (http://www.homeaway.com/vacation-rental/p802854) and began a wonderful 2 months – with 3 Shetland ponies, a sheep and a mass of rabbits in the field next door. Although The Chalet presented some challenges (uncomfortable beds, up to 4 of the same picture hanging next to each other, thin bottom pots, really crummy sheets, etc, etc.) it was warm and dry, and in a fairly convenient location in a very rural area about halfway between Glasgow and Edinburgh (the two cities are about 50 miles apart). As we explored in all directions we found larger towns that had grown up around now closed industries, and the still weak economies make the towns pretty drab and uninteresting. So, we explored the larger towns and cities, and we found some great things, especially just north, around the Firth of Forth.

Our first find was Linlithgow, about a half hour away. Unlike the towns near us, Linlithgow has a long history, some important sites (notably Linlithgow Palace), and some good pubs and restaurants. It also has a refurbished canal now used for recreation, and there is an active group of volunteers, having a great time, who maintain the local facility and offer canal boats rides.

A new find for us was the Royal Burgh of Culross (pronounced coorus), on the North side of the Firth. The town, with a fascinating history, an ancient palace, a ruined abbey and a church with it’s most important character/builder, George Bruce buried with his 5 daughters, 3 sons and wife...possibly David’s long lost cousins! The town was a backwater for a very long time. In the 1930’s the National Trust began preservation and restoration. We found it a quiet, delightful look at the past (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Culross) with nice, helpful people (which Scotland is full of).

On one of our several visits to Glasgow, we got a taste of the Merchant City Festival, which was a fun mix of food, entertainment and just plain whacky stuff. One of the strangest things was a group of 10 or so creatures dressed in pink from top to bottom, who pulled pranks and generally freaked out most of the people they came in contact with. Merchant City reminds us of Soho and Tribeca as they were some years ago – great restaurants & loft conversions happening, but still very commercial.

We thoroughly enjoyed visits from our friends from Spain and from Princeton, NJ. With the Vergaras we took a 3 day trip up into the Highlands by way of Arbroath (home of the Arbroath Smokies – a delicious fish, and of the Declaration of Arbroath http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Declaration_of_Arbroath). We had a delightful dinner in the very typical Scottish home of their friends in Aberdeen, then continued on to Inverness….and down The Great Glen past Loch Ness (we stayed on Loch Lochy), then back for a quick tour of Glasgow. We also spent time touring the Falkirk Wheel, Stirling Castle and other special places.

August brought several festivals to Edinburgh (book, art, spiritual, etc), and we focused mostly on The Fringe Festival. The Fringe is about performance – music, comedy, dance and drama. There are about 250 venues around the city, and anyone can book one if they pay the price, so the events are very mixed. Given all that, the numbers of things to see and the variety are off the chart. In 2010 there were over 40,000 performances by more than 21,000 participants! Amazing, and very difficult to decide what to see. High Street, from early morning till very late at night is like a carnival!

We all decided to focus on drama at the Festival, and that helped narrow the choices some. We went to see three shows the first day, and they were fairly poor overall. But then things picked up…we saw about 10-12 performances over all (including the Intl Breakdance competition which was great) and the range was from great to yucky. We had a special treat, because a drama teacher who worked for Susan at Service Messenger Co in NYC 25 years ago and who we haven't seen since, brought her high school group to perform. We saw their show at 9:30 in the morning and caught up with Janet and her husband, Jim, over lunch. WOW!!

When Pat and Jim Hyatt visited, although the main purpose of their visit was the Festival, we talked them into an overnight trip to the Borders region with the goal of seeing several ruined abbeys. Although it rained most of the time it was beautiful!

We are off to Ireland for the month of Sept before returning to the US on 1 October. We are not yet sure of our plans once back, but will let you know when we know….

Oh, just before we go, we realized that we didn't tell you about the Highland Games that happen every weekend during July and August in towns across Scotland. The photo below is of a contestant in the "heavy weight events" - he is from New Jersey and is wearing a breast cancer tartan kilt designed and patented by a woman in NJ who challenged him to wear it - he was quite the site - we loved it.

And, finally....we attended a Fringe event at the Edinburgh Zoo - "Feeding the People" - we sat in the rain and watched a wonderful, funny performance. There is a huge population of penguins in this zoo and some of them take a daily walk through the zoo paths... This is the sign on the wall at the top of the very steep hill near the performance space- it resonated with us in a very big way...

Which reminds me of what one young man said to us in Israel - “The youngsters will lead the way – we are all one.”

Hugs to you all!!

Israel is thought provoking indeed!

2011-07-19T04:19:00.000-07:00

You will need a few minutes to read this – it's long and perhaps a cuppa will help!!

Israel is thought provoking indeed… and a bit difficult for us to “get our heads around.” Writing this blog has been quite the challenge and we thank you for being there to read it – we’ve grown from the exercise.

We never thought we’d get to Israel. The usual reasons people go seem to be related to religion, culture, tradition, etc. but, for us there never was that fit. A friend planned an extended visit to study in Safat, and then we learned that another couple were going to be there at the same time, and they asked if we’d like to join them to tour the country. Being with folks for whom Israel was special and important would give us the opportunity, to absorb some of the pleasure and meaning it held for our friends and others. It brought Israel “up a notch” on our list and it turned out to be a very rewarding trip.

It may be that our doubts originally were due to a feeling that Israel would be very intense – and it was. There is so much deep history, so many stories, so much to see and to understand, so many stresses on this small country.

We were there for 15 days. We began our time in Tel Aviv and ended it in Tel Aviv, but in between we drove all over the country, with the exception of several days in Jerusalem when we were without a car. We were exceptionally fortunate to be with 3 really wonderful friends from Tucson; LynnRae Lowe, an artist, had been in Safat (Tsfat) for several weeks studying kabalistic Judiasm, Karen Zittleman, who had never been in Israel before and is not Jewish, and her significant other, David Sadker, brought up in the Jewish tradition who had been a few times but not in recent years.

As we said, we spent our first night in Tel Aviv (could have been any city in the world on the water), admiring the wonderful beach and amazed at how international the city is. We rented a car the next AM and drove to Safat, (in the northeast part of this country that is the size of New Jersey!) meeting up with our friends and a guide, Adam, to hear about the city The road signs are in Arabic, Hebrew and sometimes in English – this kept us on our toes throughout our visit.

Safat has a very large and popular artist quarter – LynnRae (http://www.lynnraelowe.com/) will be represented there soon – and where we spent some interesting time as well.

It is the city where studying the Kabbalah is a tradition and so is filled with very religious folks.

We had an exceptional Friday evening, first attending, a service in a very old synagogue, then Shabat dinner with a really remarkable family – one son studying to be a rabbi, another a sharpshooter in the army, who each brought a friend. There were other children and families – about 20 people around the table (the Mom, chief cook and bottle washer, MickyG from California, said every Friday is a Thanksgiving in this house). LynnRae had rented an apartment from them and became very good friends with MickyG and we certainly benefitted!!! The conversation and being part of the ritual was really wonderful. WOW!

Saturday, we left Safat and headed west to the Mediterranean. Stopping at Akko for a lunch by the water and to see the crusader ruins, then heading for Haifa where we were blown away by the beauty of the B’Hai Gardens, by their beliefs and by the monument to the founder. http://www.bahai.org/

From Haifa, LynnRae and the two of us went on to Natanya for a couple of nights, while the others headed to Jerusalem. From Netanya we explored the ruins of Megiddo (with much ancient history and identified as the site of the final battle between the forces of good and evil at the end of time) and those of Caesarea, the huge seaport built on prior ruins by Herod where we had a most delicious lunch!

www.parks.org.il

Then we joined Karen and David in Jerusalem for a few nights. What an amazing city. K & D had engaged a truly fine guide, Nadav, and the five of us spent a day together with him trooping through the warrens of the old city focusing on the Jewish history. After a goodbye dinner our 3 companions left Israel and then we spent another day with Nadav….but before we talk about that – here’s a story for you….

While at the Western Wailing Wall (which is divided) the Davids (Sadker and Cooper), and Nadav went into the men's side while Karen, LynnRae and Susan went into the women's side. While there, David Sadker had a tefillin tied on and David Cooper told them about our friend, Steve Schram who is a chiropractor/acupuncturist in NYC, and is very interested in the relationship between the tefillin and the meridians. Nadav remembered reading something about that during his studies. Susan sent an intro email to Steve and Nadav....and had a response from Nadav. The articles he refers to below were written by Steve – one of them is here: http://www.drstevenschram.com/tefillin.pdf

“Susan Shalom

Hope you and David are well.

I have not yet contacted your friend but wanted to inform you that I have The Source and will be getting to read it real soon.

Check these articles I found in my research of my second year... :)”

Another WOW!!

There is so much to say about Jerusalem. Some highlights are:

A tunnel dug by archeologists along the 1500’ retaining wall built by Herod (of which the Western Wall is the above ground part) – people are inside the tunnel praying at that part of the wall all the time.

The Jewish, Muslim, Armenian and Christian Quarters of the Old City, full of shops, cafes, and monuments, much of it below ground, crowded and super busy. This photo was taken on the Via Dolorosa - the path that Christ followed after being condemned to death. The real path is probably far below this, buried by eons of rubble and dirt, but the Church has put the stations of the cross on the buildings along this route and so this is the "official" trail.

The Mount of Olives - there are many stories about this place, most religions have some sort of tie to it...but, one story we heard is that Jesus ascended to Heaven from here and when he returns to this dimension, he will return here to enter Jerusalem through the gate in the wall at the bottom of this Mount, but he cannot walk through a cemetery, so to keep him out of the city the mountain is filled with burials (???).

The Temple Mount and Dome of The Rock.

We were so fortunate to be here on a day when the public was able to enter this area - it is restricted to 2 days a week and then only for a few hours - non-Muslims are never allowed inside the Mosque - it is a remarkable building and a remarkable place.

The Church of the Holy Sepulcher - occupied by several religious groups, there are many things going on in this building....theoretically it houses the cave that Christ was placed in, a piece of the cross, the slab that he rose from, the rock the cross was placed in, and on and on. Many branches of Christianity claim it and that sometimes creates unseemly issues - but mostly it's cool. To quote A Historical Tour of the Holy Land by B. Ratzer..."Possibly the most complicated of the holy places is the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, also known as the Church of the Resurrection. The key to the church is held by a Muslim family who open the doors in the morning and close them in the evening. One representative each from the Orthodox, Catholic and Armenian churches are permitted to remain in the Church overnight. In addition to these three churches, the Copts, Syrian Jacobites and Abyssinians all have a small part of the church."

And there is so much more! Clearly Jerusalem was the highlight in a trip of seemingly endless highlights!

The last chunk of our time was spent at a dude ranch (yes, a dude ranch) overlooking the north end of the “Sea” of Galilee for two days (it is really a large lake). From there we toured around the Galilee area. There were more ruins to see and at one of them – Kursi – we sat for a long time feeling extraordinarily peaceful at what has been identified as a magnetic power point - (strongest under this rock) (http://www.geobiology.co.il/Articles/High_Energy_2.asp). We were also treated to watching a group of young, beautiful and playful Japanese tourists amid the wonderful flowering trees and bushes.

The Church of the Beatification was another wonderful stop.

We had a delicious lunch in the Little Tiberas Pub ion the resort town of Tiberas and were waited on by a pretty cool gal from California. It was amazing how many people we ran into who had transplanted themselves to Israel from the U.S.

Hearing the planes flying over and seeing tanks on the road, everywhere young people, in the army, carrying automatic rifles, brought home the reality of the situation in Israel....and the conditions under which people live. The problems are not simple and the solutions even more elusive. On some level we knew this, but now it is more real to us - having the opportunity to talk with Israel's people face-to-face was really great - one really good reason to travel.

On our way back to Tel Aviv we got caught in nasty traffic in Nazareth (wonder if the donkey traffic was as bad…), made a stop in Zippori to visit more impressive ruins, then a stop in Netanya to pick up David’s cell phone left there by accident a week or so before, and finally back to Tel Aviv. We had a great apartment at the Diaghilev Hotel and walked a bunch, particularly along Rothschild Blvd, which is filled with Bauhaus buildings. That night we had champagne with our Indian dinner then, in the morning, flew back to London via Rome arriving late at night…..we will tell you about our next adventure on the British Isles next time.

Much love, many hugs and WOW!!

The Costa del Sol and onward.....

2011-07-06T09:33:00.000-07:00

Time has certainly slipped away from us. We must be - we ARE, in fact - having fun!

When we left you last time, we’d moved on from our Holy Week adventures to Spain’s Costa del Sol where we would be until late May. Last time we posted a photo of the incredible view from the apartment we rented, so we won’t repeat that (though it’s almost worth it). A good bit of our time was spent getting reacquainted with old friends and their families and catching up on all their news. Amazing that there are now a number of grandchildren where there were just babies and school age kids when we used to visit. For example, here are the delicious grandchildren of our friends Virginia and Pedro, Aitana and Adrian.

Since we sold the place we owned in 2001, the Costa del Sol has expanded and modernized, but now is showing some signs of the difficult economic conditions felt everywhere, with more vacant stores, restaurants and apartments than usual. Even so, it is a fun place to visit and we thoroughly enjoyed our time there.

We contented ourselves with checking out the places we’d known before and seeing how they’ve changed. One highlight, though, was a day when we ventured into the mountains near Marbella to a small, old town called Istan for which we’d seen signs but never visited. It is really built into the mountain, with very narrow streets and buildings just sitting on the rock outcroppings. It was quite a sight!

Entering the town is accomplished by driving from floor 0 to the 8th floor of the parking garage and exiting into the town square - this picture was taken from the top floor of the garage.

We left Spain and headed for England, to the county of Lancashire and a great cottage (owned by a terrific couple) we rented on a farm with millions of cows and billions of sheep and not another dwelling in sight. Rolling green, green, green hills, very narrow roadways, delightful inns and pubs. One reason for being there was to check out Susan’s father’s family – Francis was born in St. Anne’s on Sea (now joined with Lytham) in 1910 and was brought to the US in 1916 – that’s a story for another time…. We found his baptism record in the local church and then, in the Preston library, found census pages that revealed many connections, dates and names – not the least of which is Barnaby Hull (Susan’t great, granddaddy) from Goosnargh, not too far inland from St. Anne’s. (the photo is of David (not Barnaby) on the one evening at the farm when the weather cooperated for an alfresco dinner). We also made a stop at the house her Dad was born in and were given a quick tour by a renter.... it was all really neat.

Another highlight was a stop at the Leeds and Liverpool Canal (there are over 2000 miles of canals in Britain that have been restored (mostly by people a little at a time). After seeing a documentary on British canals we stopped and talked with a couple who have brought up their kids living on a canal boat – mostly parked in the town we visited near Foulridge – and with a couple of guys who gave us a tour of their boat which is much like a motor home but mostly these boats are only six feet wide, and 40 feet or so long.

We reluctantly left our farm and drove to London, stopping at Stratford-Upon-Avon for a great lunch. We spent the night at Heathrow and left on a 6 am flight to Tel Aviv the next morning and that adventure will be the topic of our next posting (we are so far behind....). On a rainy day from Scotland we send you all many hugs and good wishes.

Semana Santa (Easter Week in Spain)

2011-05-12T03:51:00.000-07:00

This post is long! If you have little interest in this topic, skip to the bottom where there is just a little more news & photos, or just hit the delete key…..

We’ve been in Spain in years past during Holy Week and have always been very moved by the Semana Santa activities during that week before Easter. The music is especially compelling and watching the people in the processions is just a remarkable experience.

http://www.emusic.com/album/Various-Artists-Semana-Santa-en-Sevilla-religious-music-of-Sevil-MP3-Download/11021917.html (play #'s 3 & 4 especially)

This time, Susan was determined to get to see the “inside” story and we did! We set aside the whole week for this; we booked Sunday through Wednesday in Seville, and because we knew that Seville would get very crowded toward the end of the week, we went to Jerez de la Frontera, a small town in extreme Southwest Spain, for Thursday through Sunday. Jerez is most known as the capital of the sherry business, but the area also produces some of Spain’s finest bulls, and it has a strong Semana Santa tradition.

The Holy Week processions reportedly began in the 1500s, and there are forms of them in other Mediterranean countries (and in New Mexico and Mexico we’re told). In Spain, the men in the churches take the life-sized statues of Christ and Mary into the streets of their neighborhoods, working their way to the Cathedrals and then returning. Because of the size and weight of the statues, they built platforms for the statues to ride upon - these platforms are made of wood mostly covered in gold or silver (the real stuff), it takes dozens of men, under these pasos, to carry them.

Over the years – centuries in many cases – fraternities have formed (called cofradias) associated with one church or another, and they arrange processions for usually two statues, plus bands (following the Christ paso is a drum and bugle corps, following the Mary paso is a full band – some of the processions also have a band in the lead).

The cofradia members also walk as robed penitentes, some barefoot, and you may see some all dressed up and purposefully walking through town to their assembly point,

and military-like honor guards.

In larger cities like Seville, there are as many as 7 or 8 processions a day, all week, most lasting about 12 hours. Since some do not leave their churches until late afternoon they continue into the wee hours of the morning.

We had the smallest hotel room we’ve ever seen, in the old Jewish quarter on the route of some processions and about a 10 minute walk to the cathedral where all the processions pass through and where most people believe Columbus’ remains lie(but Santo Domingo disputes that).

At about 11:00 PM on Monday equipped with a bottle of wine and camera we took our places on the 4^th floor roof of the hotel. It was a treat to see the cofradia and its pasos plus relatives, etc. coming down the street from our vantage point. Often they stop for extended times, as they did below us.

By custom most of the hooded penitents do not talk during the procession. But, the younger ones especially would talk with family and others walking along with them.

The Spanish handle the crowds graciously and it seems you can always move around and through the processions even in the very narrow neighborhood streets.

When the entire procession had passed, we went to the street and manuevered our way up to where the band following the Mary paso was stopped, and we were just blown away by the haunting beauty of the music and being in the middle of it.

We had gotten into one of the nearby churches on a rainy afternoon to see the pasos all completely decorated with tons of flowers, multitudes of candles and the statues, all ready to go. Parishioners had been bringing flower offerings (red for Christ, white for Mary) and were stacking them in front of the pasos.

Unfortunately that night the rain forced the cancellation of the processions and there were many tears from everyone...for example, the men hold a lottery to determine who will carry the paso - everyone wants a chance.

But, the next day, Susan saw a man carrying a big white floral arrangement together with two women, all walking quickly down the street in the drizzle – “We’re going to follow them!”

And we did, through the old quarter, across main streets, through the commercial meat packing district, into an unremarkable neighborhood (imagine David’s nervousness) – the drizzle turned to rain (it’s probably how I got this nasty cold I have been nursing). They finally turned into a building next to a church where men were building ramps in front of the main door – “Eureka!”. Another man came out, saw us trying to figure out what to do and motioned for us to come in…..he led us into the church were people were working on decorating the 2 pasos (tons of fresh flowers are used on all the pasos during the week) for their procession the next day and he gave us a million dollar tour!

The next day, we kept crossing that procession as it moved through the streets feeling very much a part of it.

Then, off to Jerez de la Frontera by train…rain was forecast and rain it did. Many processions were cancelled but on Easter Sunday things changed…the one procession originating and returning to the cathedral was held,

AND the Tio Pepe bodega was open for tours and sherry tastings.

On Monday we took the train to Malaga (on the way we were supposed to connect with Shirley Freriks - from Mendocino - but for health reasons she had to cancel her trip :-(, we rented a car and drove to the apartment in Sitio de Calahonda, Mijas Costa, (on the Costa del Sol) where we will be until the end of the month. As we look out the huge windows in the living room we see mountains, white buildings and the Mediterranean – it is just beautiful.

One of the first things I did was to start washing dirty clothes, I remembered most things from the apartment we owned here for so many years, but for some reason the washing machine presented quite the challenge. There was 1 bottle of what looked at first glance like washing liquid – 3 places to put stuff in the washer….so, I put some “stuff” in the left side and ran about 4 or 5 loads (it’s a really small machine). No dryer, so hung them out on the terrace on a rack. They smelled wonderful on the surface, but if you put your nose in them – not so great. Turns out I was washing them with softener….so much for efficiency!

Please let us hear from you – we do get carried away with Samana Santa, but it is – and always has been – very close to our souls….something about the music, the silence, the ancient and narrow streets, the obvious overwhelming faith of so many people…..

Hugs to you all!

A Love Affair

2011-04-22T04:55:00.000-07:00

It is difficult to describe how, in one week of volunteering, you can fall in love with a whole bunch of Spanish people – perhaps part of the reason is that they are very special teachers working with kids who range in age from 3 to high school seniors.

These folks were all from Castilla-La Mancha Communitad (region) in central Spain. The region decided to dramatically strengthen English education. They are now teaching science courses in English to various grades, and they have begun English instruction to 3 to 5 year olds in preschool. In a few years, these kids will all be conversant with it. This is a big change for Spain.

Teachers can get funding to attend this program from the Community, and as part of the program, they must spend a month abroad in an English speaking country, working in a school. If you have any ideas about where…please let us know at www.cooperstwo@yahoo.com.

Here is a photo of them all gathered together after the Queimada singing some typical Spanish songs to the equal number of Anglos (the collective term for the volunteers from the US, the UK, Canada, Wales, Australia and New Zealand) in the bar in the Hotel Abadia de los Templarios in La Alberca, Spain. http://www.spanishunlimited.com/spain/salamanca/city4.asp.

You’ve got to love people who will do most anything to learn how to speak in English (they all know how to read and write it) in front of a bunch of native English speakers whom they have never seen before. They want to be as accurate as possible in their pronunciation, sentence structure and use of phrasal verbs and funky sayings. They know they are establishing speaking habits with their students.

And, because they were all so willing to stick their necks out, so were we, doing hour long one-to-ones and two-to-twos, playing games, taking all meals in mixed groups and especially doing skits together– some impromptu, and some with a very brief preparation time.

Here’s David as the big bad wolf in a skit of Little Red Riding Hood:

Here’s Susan as the witch preparing for the Quamada ceremony (during which David read the words in Gallego and the Spanish folks were really impressed!): the goal of this ritual is to distance the bad spirits:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Queimada_%28drink%29 )

Here’s David as Santa Claus:

Here’s Susan as the mother in Goldilocks and the 3 bears:

We spent hours talking with each Spanish person in all the planned activities, we drank wine together during lunch and dinner, and we partied after dinner in the bar. We went into La Alberca for lunch and dinner on 2 separate days (from our “conference” center) and wandered, sang and played in this most beautiful, World Heritage, medieval town.

Here is a link to the Pueblo Inglese program:
http://www.vaughanvillage.com/venue-alberca.asp

We returned to Madrid (Susan with a cold) for just 2 nights and then trained to Seville – very excited about Semana Santa…..the subject of our next post….

We are thinking about the possibility of returning to this part of Spain in the early Spring for 6 months and volunteering with these teachers and their students in their villages where Americans are rarely seen, let alone heard….we think it might be a small but good way to encourage a more connected and peaceful world.

With hugs to you all….

March to April in Espana

2011-04-09T15:26:00.000-07:00

March 30th

We are trying to get 6 months of toiletries into our suitcases here in New York City and it’s working!! It’s just that there is no room for any clothes...funny how, as we age, the toiletries take preference over style. We’re also carrying a variety of equipment, especially phones and, of course, our iPod with a small set of speakers making even less room for clothes.

We left the mesa in mid March as planned and, after a soak in the mineral springs at Ojo Caliente, drove to Salt Lake City where we switched out clothes in our storage unit, loved visiting with Sutton, John and Felix, and spent a very short, but great time with Kendra and Jim Golden who were on their way home to Pt. Townsend after being south in the motor home for 2 months.

We flew to New York City a few days ago, saying good bye to our 11 year old Honda Accord, and are really enjoying our stay with Chris & Payson. We had a great lunch with Pat & Jim Hyatt and Glen Daum and a terrific visit with Susan’s brother John and his wife Kate at their wonderful location on the Connecticut river….we are now are off to Madrid to begin our six month sojourn.

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April 7th

Well, here we are in Madrid, ready to leave tomorrow morning for La Alberca and our Pueblo Ingles volunteer time for a week. We have been here for several days, riding the subways and buses and walking and walking and loving every minute. We are finally acclimated to the time change but are more active than we've been in a while so we are getting reacquainted with leg muscles. Susan's knees are doing pretty well considering.....

Among the folks here in Madrid is at least one invisible man, spotted here in the Puerta del Sol.

Today we had our “anglo” orientation lunch for and saw some wonderful flamenco…..here’s our first attempt at uploading a video. The lunch was at Casa Patas, a foundation for preserving Flamenco, where newbies come to study and veterans come to perform.

We've had a mess with our cell phone. Four years ago we went to China, stopped into a phone store, bought a sim card, installed it into our phone and had great service the whole time were were there - in Tibet, too. The other day we went into Vodaphone in Madrid, bought a sim card and we can't get it to work no how..... so what does that tell us? It told us to buy a cheap Spanish phone, which we did - the number is 627-615-262 and to call from the US you would first dial 011 (to make an international call) 34 (the code for Spain) then this number.... Susan should answer....

Friday morning (the 9th) we left Madrid on a bus and traveled about 4 hours to the world heritage town, La Alberca, just south of Salamanca, where we are staying at a conference center doing a volunteer week helping Spanish Primary and Secondary School teachers improve their "conversational" English. We are challenged to explain idioms like "shooting from the hip," "come in handy," and "come up with" and other strange workings of our language like and "work out," vs "work off" (which we now understand are phrasal verbs). It's very difficult for these folks to really learn to speak the language but when we talk the way we usually talk it's near to impossible and very frustrating for them. We will be here through next Friday and the experience is just wonderful!!

The land here is remarkable, the almond trees are in bloom, the chestnut trees are glorious and the singing of birds, crickets and frogs is a delicious continuous concert.

We are the most fortunate people in the world......and send hugs to you all!!!

Planning is progressing for the next phase

2011-02-14T21:23:00.000-08:00

It’s pretty amazing how the time flies when you are sitting on top of a mesa! We have spent lots of it (and miles, too) getting to Santa Fe where there is a Trader Joe’s and a Whole Foods and concerts (we just saw an amazing performance of an opera that is a combo of Japanese Noh and Western revelation by Benjamin Britten), and stores and museums, etc. We have spent some of it exploring the area, including Taos (what a GREAT IONS group!) and Los Alamos (talk about negative vibes). We’ve gone to special dance ceremonies at a couple of pueblos (there are 7 or 8 traditional pueblos where the heritage is really honored) and we’ve spent as many as 10 days in a stretch mesa-bound in the snow, ice and frigid temps.

Susan had her knee operated on, and had an MRI on the other one – both are functioning but are definitely in line for knee replacements one day as far in the future as possible David is seeing a Swiss-trained osteopathic physician (operating with a massage license) to try and make his gut behave like a newborn’s.

And, the majority of our time over the last 6-8 weeks has been devoured with scanning in all our files (we aim to be paperless) because we can’t take paper files with us where we are going, in finally converting our Palm Pilot files to Yahoo contacts….and most recently in the actual planning of our next moves. The current version of the itinerary is up to 12 pages.

Here’s a photo of the planning implements.

We are really excited about returning to Pueblo Ingles in Spain in early April where we will volunteer helping Spanish teachers improve their conversational English in the world heritage town of La Alberca. From there we will love being in Seville and Jerez de la Frontera for Holy Week and the Semana Santa processions. Then we’ve rented an apartment on the Costa del Sol for the month of May – we have an extra bedroom that Shirley Freriks (a friend from Mendocino) will use initially but that will be empty (hint, hint) from the 2^nd thru the 23^rd.

From Spain we will fly to England where we will kick around in Susan’s Father’s home town (Lytham St. Anne’s). We’ve rented Tewit Cottage in Clitheroe, Lancashire and Payson and Chris are going to join us! From there we go to Israel from 6/8 thru 6/22. We will spend time with friends from Tucson who have visited before and will travel from Tel Aviv up to Safed, to Galilee, to Jerusalem, and all over that country (it’s the size of NJ) learning as much as we can as fast as we can.

Then it’s back to the UK and on up to Scotland where we are hoping to rent an apartment for July, August and then maybe Ireland for the beginning of Sept. From there, back to Spain to do another volunteer gig, then home to the US on October 2^nd. Because Medicare does not cover anyone for medical care off shore, our supplementary policy will take over but is only good for 6 months, so we need to return to the US for 3 months before it kicks in again.

We have no plans after all of that….none at all. We will fly back to NYC and hopefully, by then will have decided on some place to spend some time….but, right now, we will go into “let the Universe tell us” mode and see what happens and what opportunities arise. Any ideas??? We are perhaps the luckiest people on the planet!!

Holiday Preparations

2010-12-17T17:16:00.000-08:00

Our holidays will be quieter than usual this year, for at least a couple of reasons.

First, there is the fact that we are all by ourselves in Northern New Mexico, a long way from any family or friends. So, there will just be the two of us . . . a small group for partying, to be sure.

The other cause for quiet celebrations is that Susan will have her left knee operated upon two days before Christmas, and she will probably be somewhat limited as to revelry. The official diagnosis is in - she tore the meniscus in that knee at the end of October, and arthroscopic surgery is recommended. So, the surgery should not be invasive, and recovery should be speedy, but caution is advised. No more pain and no more cane!. YYIIPPEE!!!!!! What a merry Christmas! It will be more comfortable than this one a couple of years ago when she broke her ankle, but not as much fun, missing all of the wonderful folks who helped us celebrate not only Christmas but LynnRae Lowe and Frank Kramer's birthdays on Christmas eve!

Yesterday we went to Espanola for her pre-op work-ups at the local hospital (though the surgery will be done in Santa Fe). While there we bought some greens and such and did a little decorating when we got back to the house. Susan also decided to prepare some eggplant lasagne to freeze for Christmas dinner, and she chopped up some chard to saute for the dish (she really looks eager to get started, doesn't she).

David found that, as usual, the greens Susan had arranged and put in front of the fireplace were lovely but not in quite the right place, so he made an adjustment.

You may see through the window that we had a little snow yesterday, and it continued to snow lightly through the night. By morning we had perhaps two inches, but it was enough to wet things down a little, which is good because it has been very dry and dusty here.

Hoping you are having a wonderful Thanksgiving

2010-11-25T16:44:00.000-08:00

We want to say Happy Thanksgiving to you all! And it’s time to bring you up-to-date on our wanderings. But, mostly we really want to share our big heart-felt gratitude not only for the life we are blessed with, but for each of you. This is one of the few times we have spent Thanksgiving with just “us two” and it’s fun. But being away, in the hills of Northern New Mexico, all by ourselves is making us think of how many rich connections we have and how great it is to have all of you in our lives. Thank you for being who you are!

At the end of October we finished our wonderful summer volunteering at the Ford House in Mendocino – what a blast we had! Susan telling people where to go! And David telling story after story about the history of the house, the town and the redwood industry.

We went from Mendo to Petaluma for a weekend at the IONS campus and while settling in for a session on Saturday morning Susan, taking a very long step up on a seating platform, heard a really loud pop and was in amazing pain in her left knee. Long story short, she is scheduled for anthroscopic knee surgery on Dec 23^rd. The pain has subsided – it comes and goes - she’s on a cane instead of a walker, but the MRI showed that the meniscus is torn apart and needs a good vacuuming out.

We drove the motor home to Portland where the Goldens were meeting us and retrieving the rig (saving us the drive to Pt. Townsend), but we left before they arrived so that we could get to Santa Fe and a doctor’s appointment asap.

On our way to New Mexico for our 4 month house-sitting gig, we stopped in Salt Lake City to hug Sutton and John and to visit our clothes in the small storage unit that holds all of our belongings. We drove on to Santa Fe and spent several days there before heading up to Medanles where we will be until mid March.

We had a nice dinner and spent the next day with Roberta and David McCleary, owners of this house on top of a mesa in an area called Vista de Pedernal – and it really is! Georgia O’Keefe must have painted the Pedernal hundreds and hundreds of times and when we look out the living room window – there it is! The McClearys are now “jeeping” in So. California for the winter. To get to the nearest store, in Espanola, we have to drive 2 miles down a dirt road then another 8 miles – WalMart is about our only choice for food shopping unless we continue on about 30 miles to Santa Fe....but, it is beautiful here.

Although this is not a Chirstmas letter, we are reporting that Payson Cooked today! – an amazing event! And John and Sutton went to Sutton’s 90 year old grandparents home to dine with family (Grandma played the piano!). All is just perfect!

So, there you have it – we’re here until mid March, and then have no idea what we will do with ourselves….we’re open to ideas, so give us a shout. Thanks to Vonage our old phone number - 520-326-1894 - works just fine here (though the cell phones don't) Many hugs and much love!

Have you ever bent a spoon?

2010-10-12T23:27:00.000-07:00

We had a great trip south last week, had 3 nights in a hotel room twice the size of the motor home and slept in a king-sized bed! Got all frozen up by our new dermatologist - Rosie Chattha; had a terrific lunch with Cassie Vieten (the head of research at IONS) - boy, is she ever so smart! Saw my great Dr. Joe who is fixing a stubborn shoulder and neck, and did a spoon bending "Star Party" for the Libras at the very very beautiful IONS campus in Petaluma. Nearly everyone at the party was able to bend their spoon using the "Jack Hauck" process: 1. Concentration and calling in the energy of the Universe 2. Setting intention and 3. Letting go and letting the Universe do its thing. This was the first time that I tied a fork and spoon together - take a look!

Many people will tell you that this spoon bending thing is a "magic" trick - and, I suppose it is if you consider your own "power" to be magic.....it was fun....try it some time, if I can do it, so can you!! Call me and I will coach you through the process - the larger the group, the greater the success it seems....

We are still stunned by the trees - this one made me put on the brakes and stop right in the middle of the road - it is huge and is on the way to Judith Bayer's house (she is THE world's greatest acupuncturist and a really neat woman to boot). I rushed home and got David so he could stand in front of it. Amazing, no??

We are getting ready to welcome Angela Murphy and beau Mark this weekend (Angela works at IONS) and is one delightful person...and, we 4 are invited to a really traditional tea ceremony at Shirley Freriks' house on Sunday! We are working at the Ford House on Fri and Sat this week and next then are done - wow - this summer really flew by. We will be at the IONS campus to experience the World View Literacy Program the weekend of the 29th then will drive up to Portland to meet the Goldens - do the "Passing of the Keys" to the motor home ceremony then will head to Salt Lake City to change out clothes, hug John & Sutton and off to Abiquiu we go to spend some time with Georgia O'Keeffe (niece Patricia recommended "Full Bloom: The Art and Life of Georgia O'Keeffe" by Hunter Drohojowska-Philp which we bought and I have just started).

BTW - "Eat, Pray, Love" is a delight and so is the book... I highly recommend it! Hugs to you all!!

WOW! More than a month has passed since our last post so this one is LONG...

2010-09-26T21:50:00.000-07:00

Our daughter Payson and her Significant Other, Chris, flew from NYC into SanFran a couple of weeks ago and we used their arrival as an excuse to spend several days in the city - boy, do I love that town! Once they arrived we spent that day and the next in town then drove up to Santa Rosa, showing them our "haunts" in Marin and Sonoma, then had a great week with them here in Mendocino...on our way to Bowling Ball beach Payson slipped and hurt her foot which curtailed the hiking a bit... so, .we did.the Skunk Train, http://www.skunktrain.com/ ,

Open car on the Skunk Train

drove thru an ancient Redwood tree on The Avenue of the Giants http://avenueofthegiants.net/ ,

It's our Honda coming thru the tree

walked thru the ancient redwood trail at Bull Creek in Rockefeller Forest, spent time at the Botanical Garden and on and on...

Chris, Susan & David on the Bull Creek Trail

Last week we had a delightful visit from Ed Gelardin (retired psychiatrist who does mentoring of new psych students at the Univ of Arizona and is an IONS fan) and his brother Bob (lives in Marin, lucky guy!!). They made the 3 hour drive up the really windy, curvy roads from Marin to Mendo (we often ask this chicken and egg question - are there no decent roads to Mendo because there are no people here, or are there no people here because there are no decent roads - my vote is for the latter 'causes it is beyond beautiful here). they arrived after lunch and we immediately went to our 5 star, amazing botanical garden in Fort Bragg where the begonias are the size of your head

and the dahlias are in bloom.

This Garden is one of only 2 in the US that is on the ocean. And, it is just wonderful. We had a great dinner at the Mendocino Cafe, they walked the headlands the next morning and we said goodbye in the Ford House after telling them everything we have learned. Here are Ed and I in the gardens....it was really fun, and special, to have him here...

Yesterday we spent the day visiting other museums in "the area" - that makes me laugh because everything is really far from everything else and, I can't say it enough, on very curvy, roller-coaster roads. We headed out for Willits on Rt. 20 for the Mendocino County Museum http://www.co.mendocino.ca.us/museum/ - that's 33 miles and an hour away. When Payson and Chris were here a couple of weeks ago we drove back to the coast from Willits at night trying to make Ft. Bragg before the restaurants all closed - that was an experience for them that I bet they won't soon forget. From that museum we drove down 101 to Ukiah (Haiku backwards) to the Grace Hudson Museum http://www.gracehudsonmuseum.org/. Both tell stories about the wreck of the Frolic (why Jerome Ford came here in 1850-51 seeking his fortune, but finding Pomo Indians wearing silks and eating from Chinese porcelain plates, but that's another story, I digress) and about Grace Hudson's amazing paintings of the Pomo Indians which, from an anthropological point of view record much history and and and.... The drive back - only about 50 miles from Ukiah - took well over 2 hours.

We watched the sun set over the ocean and the moon rise over the hills and welcomed Fall last week - it was just spectacular and awesome. We are just so very, very fortunate! Hugs to you all.....

Our Next Move

2010-08-16T18:42:00.000-07:00

We thought that we and the motor home may just turn into pumpkins on Halloween, but it is not going to happen. We are driving out of Mendocino on October 30!

Beginning on or about November 17th, we will be house sitting in Abiquiu, New Mexico until March 18, 2011!!! And, getting there from here will be fun - we are going to take our time going north (not much choice given the roads) but have committed to meeting the Goldens in Portland on the 8th of November when they will reclaim this wonderful little rig and take it on home to Pt. Townsend. They are planning an extended trip this winter - Jim is retiring at the end of the year!!

From Portland, we will drive to Salt Lake City and have a visit with Sutton, John and with the clothes in our storage space. All those summer clothes will continue to reside in SLC (we don't have them with us now as Mendocino is very, very cool - all summer long I don't think that we've seen a time when the temp rose to 75 - I had to order more turtlenecks). We will need winter jackets, gloves, hats, etc because it's going to be a cold but sunny winter in Abiquiu which is about 45 miles north of Santa Fe. The house is on the top of a mesa and was built just a few years ago - the heating runs through the floors so it will be toasty.

We'd love to have visitors - although there is not an option for anyone to stay with us in the house, there are BandBs and other kinds of accommodations nearby and there are full hook-ups on the property. The owners, Roberta and Lorin McCleary are very helpful and have all sorts of information to make our stay interesting and educational - we are happy about this situation.

We will make some decisions about what to do after March 18th, but very high on the list is a trip to Europe to volunteer with Pueblo Ingles in Italy and in Spain - we so loved our time with them a couple of years ago that we are going back for more....we are talking about spending time in Italy, Spain and France and then going to Scotland for an extended time, but who knows - these plans could all go out the window when another option presents itself for consideration....ideas??

We are learning how to live without plans - trying to stay in the NOW.....it's not as hard as we thought it would be. Although Susan spends time searching for interesting possibilities it is as much for fun as it is for planning....

We're in the wine country

2010-07-28T16:03:00.000-07:00

First, I received this link from a friend and have to share it - it contains important information for anyone who drinks wine.

http://www.wimp.com/wineshoe

We are at the north end of the Alexander Valley wine region and there are more than 50 wineries within 50 miles of our location in Mendocino....we are working our way through them and they are beautiful! It is amazing to see the miles and miles of vines and the beautiful tasting rooms along Rt 128....from now on it is a requirement to take shoes, just in case.

I am attaching a picture of our motor home which, as you can see is parked next to our deck! And we've planted a bit of an herb garden....with so little sun it is amazing how it is thriving,,,, with the exception of the tender mint basil....you can also see our "curtains" in the front window. We put these up (using the "summer" drapes (read sheets) from our bedroom in Tucson)so that we wouldn't have to open and close the "real" drapes in the rig (they are 10 years old and we wanted to reduce the wear and tear (haha) on them). Pretty fancy!

We continue to explore the parks - hiking the 2 mile trails and working our way up to the 3,4,5,6.....mile trails - there are so many options and so many trails that it is hard to decide where to go. Right outside the Ford House door there are opportunities to walk the headlands and to get onto the beach!

http://www.parks.ca.gov/?page_id=442

The biggest news is that we have found the most amazing pizza ever and it is gluten free - just up the road (about 10 miles) in the Ft. Bragg bakery....they only are open from Wed thru Sun and it's a very good thing - you might have guessed that David is absolutely addicted.

Hope all is well with all of you.....With many hugs, S&D

It's still July....the Music Festival is terrific

2010-07-18T21:21:00.001-07:00

Forgetting What You Didn’t See

One day last week I had two people say unintended funny things I’d never heard before. Each one requires a brief story.

First, while volunteering in the Ford House (the visitor center in Mendocino) I got to talking with someone about Glass Beach, which is at the north end of Fort Bragg, the next major town north of Mendocino. It seems that the site of Glass Beach was a nasty dump, but it was cleaned up a few decades ago. The broken, sea polished glass is all that remains, and it makes the beach a destination. We even have a book for sale at the Ford House that tells the story of the dump and how people finally did the right thing. One interesting point mentioned in the book is that certain colors of the glass are more rare than others, especially blue and purple. We speculated a bit on what might have been the source of such colors, and my co-conversationalist suggested incisively that blue was probably from the “milk of amnesia” bottles! (Maybe that’s what you take when you just want forget about the intestinal distress?)

Later in the day I went out to take a look at the work being done to build a tent next to the Ford House for the upcoming Music Festival (see above). The huge tent (16,000 square feet) was about complete, and on this day most of the work had been devoted to assembling the large stage. As I looked down the inclined field toward the tent with the stage at the lower end, I really thought the stage was pitched toward me, but I wasn’t sure. So I turned to ask one of the workers sitting at a picnic bench nearby about it. “Is the stage level?” I asked. He answered yes, it was. I went on to say that it sure looked like it was pitched, but he said no, that it was really just an “optical delusion”! Meaning you fooled yourself into seeing it?

It is possible that they really didn’t say what I heard, but this is way funnier I think! Or are we just getting too old to know what in the world is going on.....

BTW – Yesterday we sat for a couple of hours in the big tent listening to a really good big band rehearse for their Music Festival performance, and we just loved it. The really special treat was a young pianist, who we thought was just fantastic. Turns out he is only 22, and the son of the band leader and the classical pianist who founded the festival. His name is Julian Waterfall Pollack (his mom is Susan Waterfall), and he is making a splash (no pun intended) in the NYC jazz world. He has a new album, Infinite Playground. Check it out!

The Music Festival draws folks from all over the world - performers and attendees....some famous, some not......been going on for 23 years and there are, on average, 3 performances each day for 20 days - it's really amazing for this town of 900 residents!!! There is a theater, many art galleries, a wonderful art center and on and on...."unique" is not even in the running for a descriptive.

Up dating the day-to-day....

We were in Reno, NV this past week getting a new license plate for our 2000 Honda and new drivers licenses - had to make this hurry-up trip as the bank wouldn't allow us to open an account, all of our addresses didn't match and we don't have any utility bills (whoops) - me thinks they were suspicious that we wanted to launder money.... when, really all we wanted to do was to launder our dirty clothes and that's another story - it's at least 8 miles to the closest laundromat.

Mendocino is super - foggy much of the time, but when the sun comes out the blue blue sky and the blue blue ocean become one...the trees are awesome, some the height of a 20 story building and more....and the green, the green makes you weep.

2010-07-08T22:22:00.000-07:00

The Fourth of July in this really small town (pop. 900) drew tons of people to the parade - we were "on duty" at the Ford House all morning then at about noon we locked the door and went outside to help with the hot dog sale (we sold 400 - quite the feat given the resources) until the parade started at 1:00.

People had been parking their pickups and flat beds and putting out their folding chairs on Main Street all night and in the morning brought kegs of beer and other party paraphernalia along with with grand parents, kids, cousins and friends to take their places. We had been told that in past years there were times when the parade went around twice, but this year it only happened with one float - the nastiest one in the parade - covered in sea weed with dancing girls wearing bikinis that they had tucked sea weed into - came by smelling worse the second time than the first.

The band was terrific, wearing all sorts of hats and other garb....the party went on all afternoon on the Kelly House lawn (another period building) and we went back to greeting people and telling them where to go and what to do and all about the history of the Ford House and the start of the lumber industry - we do tell them about the remorse that was felt by some of the men who found and cut down the thousand year old redwoods - but those guys were few and far between. We are lucky that some state and national parks were created to protect some of these great-grandfather trees - they are so very amazing!

A few pictures of the parade follow. Note that there are causes (like the salmon) here that you don't find everywhere. Also note the water tower in the background across the street from the Ford House - the water table was high, the wind was heavy enough to make the windmills turn - they pulled water up into the tanks on top of the towers and gravity supplied running water to the houses - there were many, many of them in Mendo in the late 1800s!! today they are used for all sorts of things - like guest houses, galleries, etc.

Can't believe it's the end of June!!

2010-06-28T11:23:00.000-07:00

So much has happened!!

Some of what I wrote in the last installment just didn't pan out - we didn't meet Jane Katra in Eugene, OR because the motor home decided not to go more than 40 MPH just north of Vancouver, WA. We spent the night in the repair shop lot just to find out that they couldn't deal with a vehicle of this size - so off to Portland we went (neat because there is no sales tax in OR). The Ford dealer there took 4 days and close to $3300 to fix the air filter, and a bunch of other stuff - all good. They even supplied us with a "snorkle" ! Ain't that the cat's meow! And, there is a gluten-free bakery in Portland that makes 4 kinds of thin crust pizza every day - so, David was in heaven for the 3 days we had lunch there!! And, it was the rose festival in Portland, so we sniffed thru sneezes and wallowed in the fabulous smells, colors, shapes....and names of the plants!

Then off we went - drove (to catch up with our plans) to Grants Pass for one night then to Eureka/Arcata, CA where the Victorian houses we think might even outdo those they copy ( in New England). The history here is really interesting and as we spend more time learning, the more we begin to really respect the creativity, bravery and hard work done by the folks who traveled west in the mid 1800s.

We headed off to Mendocino but didn't make it on this try - instead the brakes started to burn and the transmission fluid started to leak (this very-loved motor home is 11 years old) and we spent 5 hours at the top of the 6-mile hill on Rt. 20 outside of Willits, CA waiting for a tow truck.....we were towed to Petaluma 101 miles away to a Ford dealer who can fix a Ford Triton V10 truck (upon which this motor home is built) - the 75 year old guy who showed up to do the job was amazing as were all the mechanics we met along the way.

Aside: Years ago, I (Susan) took care of a 4-yr old boy who invented this joke: What happens when your toe falls off? Answer: You call a toe truck....

We spent 3 1/2 days on the IONS campus in Petaluma (some of the most beautiful land in America) meeting with the Member Council and staff then a couple of days just wallowing in the glory of San Francisco and points just north thereof. And.......finally.......off we went to Mendocino where we have committed to volunteer in the Ford House thru October 31st. More about this adventure later....

I think that we might just run a contest to see who guesses correctly what we will do come October 31.
That is the date our gig in Mendo ends and the rig has to return to the Goldens in Pt. Townsend, WA.
Without a house or home, with no furniture, but with the wind at our backs and the sense of adventure in our cells whatever will we do? We welcome suggestions and delight at your interest and send you all love and good wishes.