Summer extremes

It was just a couple of weeks ago when we in southwestern Ohio boasted high temps in the upper 70s and nights cooling into the 50s with glorious high blue skies all day.  Oh, the joy of cool summer high pressure systems!  

And then -- it seemed overnight -- we morphed into the June from hell with triple digit highs and muggy and warm nighttime lows.  So much for leaving the windows open. 

I am indeed one of those tree hugging types who thinks the planet is warming up too fast due to our industrial lifestyles.  Yes, Earth has been this hot before; and yes, planet temperatures fluctuate in very long cycles that take  millennia to complete.  From my understanding, though, our home planet has not seen such a change in conditions in such a short period of time ever before.  Why should we not be held responsible?  

To complete this thought, let me say, too, that one would be remiss to blame our warmer than normal winter and extreme summer temps strictly on global warming.  I believe the Earth is one heck of a complex system with a myriad shifting parts.  Were this past weekends two summer windstorms a product of global warming, or just the roll of the planet’s dice?  Don’t know.  Still, it seems goofy to me for us to ignore all the carbon we release into the atmosphere, knowing the alterations it can make, and assume we’re doing just fine and there’s no need to adjust how we live.  Just sayin’...

With all of this in mind, though, I made an effort to sit outside in the extreme warmth the last couple of afternoons to just let the heat soak into my body.  Kind of like my enjoying going out to walk in the snow, I suspect.  It’s sensible to stay indoors when weather gets extreme, but for me, I like to get out and feel it a bit.  

Don’t get me wrong.  I’m no brute.  I sat in the shade as much as I could, and after an hour or so, I retreated back into air conditioned comfort.  The thought did come to mind, though, how hard it would have been to have no fans, no air conditioner, no ice in the refrigerator -- no electricity -- like so many of my neighbors are dealing with.  Right now a neighbor’s small freezer has been relocated into our garage for the plug-in power to save all therein from spoiling. 

Originally I thought I’d title this blog ‘An hour on the back porch @ 102 degrees.’  I did, in fact, sit on the back porch in said heat for more than an hour actually.  Some of that time was tending the burgers on the grill, but I was there mostly to do what I like to do most afternoons: sit in the presence of Nature and observe the many beings who venture in to take some sustenance from both what Cindy Lou and I offer and what Wild Grace gives on its own.  For us in summer, it’s mostly fresh water at the birdbaths -- an upper stone dish with a water dripper, and lower basin to catch overflow and aid the folks who can’t get to the upper dish.  We feed a bit, but only sweetwater for the humming birds.  We keep the sunflower seeds, peanuts, and suet for winter feeding.  I trust there’s enough natural food out there for everybody.

So how does Nature survive in such heat?  We do our best to water the rooted people in our little patch of Wild Grace.  The tomatoes, I have to say, are going great, but then they have a reputation for liking lots of sun.  Cone flowers, black-eyed susans, and day lilies are doing okay, too, getting deep watering every couple of days.  

But what of the mobile members of Nature?   Here’s a list of what I witnessed in my hour in the heat on the porch: 

• White breasted nuthatch working the bark on a maple tree
• A couple chipping sparrows grazing the patio
• Ubiquitous Carolina chickadees flying in to the water
• Ruby throated hummingbirds up to the sweetwater about every 5 minutes  (And yes, they fought over it, as you might expect.)
• Tufted titmouse family at the birdbath  (I have been watching these parents and kids work the yard for food and instruction over the last week.) 
• Gray catbird (A rather nice find.  We don’t see these guys all that often.  Must be the water feature.) 
• A half dozen or so American goldfinches
• A few American robins  (Man, do these guys splash a lot!) 
• A pair of Northern cardinals
• A three-some of house finches.  (Two females, one male.  Makes a guy wonder....) 
• A chipmunk coming into the lower basin 
• A few bees and insects coming to the water, but I couldn’t tell you who they were.
• Two red squirrels
• Four gray squirrels

So as bad as we think it might be at 100+ degrees, the critters seem to take it all in stride.  And as always, it is very entertaining to sit still and watch ‘em work at making their living.  Bless their little hearts. 

Today’s Elder Idea:  When I touch that flower, I am touching infinity.  I learn what I know by watching and loving everything. 

George Washington Carver

image:  Neighborhood damage from the Friday, 29 June, storm.

'Living in the past'

For the second time in recent memory, a member of my family has concluded that I live in the past.  It is not a very pleasant feeling, I must say, to be accused of such.  And to make matters more difficult for me, I don’t quite understand what that even means.  

The most recent accusation came yesterday when my ex-wife (well, she used to be family) called to tell me she did not want to go out to lunch with me because she does not want to live in the past.  

Let me set this up a bit:  Another lifetime ago when she and I married, I got a job teaching junior high in a Dayton suburb.  She had not finished her post-high school education, so while I taught, she went to school.  Then, of course, came our babies, and her schooling was put on hold yet again.  

When we got our youngest into elementary school, college for mom was finally finished and she took a job teaching at a local Catholic school.  A few years later she found a better paying gig in Mad River, and just earlier this month, bless her heart, she finally had enough time in the classroom to retire with a monthly check from the State Teachers Retirement System.  

When it became clear a couple years ago that she was planning to retire, I’d ask her at family gatherings how many days she had left.  Sure enough, she could tell almost to the hour what remained.  We laughed a bit, and I joked that when she retired I’d take her to lunch.  I mean, for a guy who’s already been out for ten years, I figured it was the least I could do to both thank her for getting me through my years and to celebrate her own monumental accomplishment.  Besides, I’ve had so much fun at this point in my retired life, I wanted to help her get a good start on her own.  So when she invited me to her retirement party a couple weeks ago, I reminded her that I’d be in touch regarding that promised lunch. 

Then yesterday she called me to say she did not want to have lunch with me because she did not want to live in the past.  

This living in the past thing came up a couple years ago via my older daughter, the one, who I have to say, is most like her mother.  At the time there was some stuff I was feeling that I wanted to sort out with said daughter.  Yes, it was from the past, but I figured by talking things over, we’d enrich our present.  I had attempted this some years before, but it never really went anyplace.  

My older daughter’s response this most recent time was Everything is fine.  There’s nothing to talk about.  Dad, you’re living in the past.  So whatever it was I was dealing with was dismissed as water under the bridge and not worthy of consideration.  I wasn’t happy about that, but, after all, my daughter is an adult and can speak her mind.  I told her I’d never bring up my stuff again, and I haven’t.  These days my family issues are worked out through personal meditation and talks with a very supportive Cindy Lou.

So, it would seem, affirming a shared past is now considered a liability and, from my position, shameful.  After all, if a body can’t take another body to lunch, there must be something wrong with it.  

It is especially odd for me, too, because as a poet, writer, and history teacher, I rather enjoy reflecting on past events and interactions with people.  For me, this is the stuff of poems, short stories, blogs, books, and interesting after-dinner conversation.  Remembering the past is not living in the past, for heaven’s sake. 

One more thing I’ll mention:  In my heart of hearts, I see myself as a loyal person.  I don’t see a whole lot of past tense in friendship.  If we were friends, then we are friends.  

Indeed, divorce happens, but that doesn’t mean a former spouse is necessarily out of my life.  We have two lovely daughters, after all, and a handful of really great grandkids.  I figure we have a whole lot of today to talk about, especially with retirement still brand new on her horizon. 

It is obvious she doesn’t feel that way.  Too bad, too, because I figured we had some important things to share. 

But everybody’s an adult here.  I guess if folks want less of me than I’m willing to give, so it is.  It’s their loss, as far as I can figure.  Still stings, though.

Today’s Elder Idea:  The distinction between the past, present, and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion. 

Albert Einstein

Venus & Professor Todd

I suspect if you are reading this blog, you are aware that I have been in the process of writing a book about Hog Island in Muscongus Bay, Maine, for some time now.  

Currently, the island -- just about an hour’s drive north of Portland -- is home to the Audubon Camp in Maine.  (The camp’s name has gone through a series of changes over the years, starting as the Audubon Nature Camp for Adult Leaders when it opened in 1936, through the Audubon Ecology Camp in Maine when I got there in 1981, to its current iteration.)  

The primary focus for my book project is Mabel Loomis Todd, the first editor of Emily Dickinson’s poetry, who in 1908, started the process of buying tracts of Hog Island to save its mature stands of spruce from being harvested for making wooden boxes.  

Theodore Roosevelt, who was the US President at the time, was promoting the newly-minted idea of conservation on a nationwide scale.  America must not waste her resources.  Use raw materials wisely.  Did Mrs. Todd save Hog Island’s primary growth because of Teddy Roosevelt?  As an educated woman and lover of Nature, she was most certainly aware of such developments.  I look forward to making some of those connections clear in my book.

Following her purchase of about three-quarters of the 330 acre island, the family created a summer camp on Hog where they spent many warm seasons when they weren’t traveling to other destinations.  It was there, in fact, in the fall of 1932, where a 75 year-old Mrs. Todd suffered a cerebral hemorrhage and died.  

For all of the years I’ve told the island’s story and through all of the articles written about the place, Mrs. Todd and her daughter, Millicent Todd Bingham, get top billing.  Mabel may have saved the place from cutting, but it was Mrs. Bingham who sought out the Audubon Society and witnessed the formation of the Camp for Adult Leaders there.  Except for a few summers ever since, the camp has been teaching folks about birding, the sea, and the interactions of ecology.  Audubon will be at it again summer 2012.  [see:  Hog Island Audubon Camp in Maine]

Today, however, I would like to turn attention away from the girls and onto Mrs. Todd’s husband, David Peck Todd.  Mr. Todd hardly gets a mention in island history, but it is clear when looking at the family’s camp on the west side of the island that there was a lot of testosterone expended to make the place as comfortable as it was.  We know David was responsible for ordering roofing & nails, lumber, and keeping the boats sea-worthy, because of assorted notes and receipts preserved in the family archive at Yale.  

And on this very day --  5 June 2012 -- David Peck Todd deserves a special mention in astronomical history. 

As you have most likely heard, a transit of Venus across the face of the sun takes place this evening, visible from across the United States, cloud cover permitting.  This event is special because it happens so rarely.  

As it turns out, Venus’s orbit around the sun is not on line with ours.  It’s orbit is tipped about 4 degrees different from Earth’s, so as a result, eyes on our planet can’t see Venus pass between Earth and the sun except for every hundred years or so.  If you miss seeing the event tonight, you won’t see it again on this planet until 2117.  

Last time the transit of Venus occurred, photography was barely 60 years old.  David Todd was working at the US Naval Observatory in Washington DC at the time and had a stellar track record observing eclipses of the moons of Jupiter.  His boss, renowned astronomer Simon Newcomb, liked David’s work and put him in charge of photographing the transit of Venus to take place on 6 December 1882. 

David Todd was a technical wonk.  He loved creating stuff.  He loved playing organ, too, and whet his mechanical chops on keeping those instruments up and running.  By late fall 1882, David was developing a thing for photography, as well.  [As an aside, transits of Venus come in pairs when they occur, separated by 8 years.  When the 1874 transit came along, David took copious notes and made sketches.  By 1882, he was ready to try his hand at photographing the event.] 

Story goes that David Peck Todd was the first person in astronomical history to succeed in photographing Venus’s transit across Sol from Earth’s perspective.  He traveled west to Mount Hamilton in California to accomplish his feat, where a solar photographic telescope was prepared for his use.  In all, Professor Todd took 147 “superb” exposures on glass negatives.  But as good as his work was, astronomy had turned to other techniques for determining the size of the solar system.  His transit negatives were stored in a mountain vault beneath the Lick Observatory on Mount Hamilton and remained largely unknown for over a century.  [For a piece on the animation of David Todd’s transit photos, see the July 2012 issue of Sky & Telescope:  David Todd's photos of the transit of Venus]

Hog Island is about some great stuff.  I feel blessed to have found it in my life.  Along with birds and sea critters and island habitats, though, it was the first place I ever saw moons at Jupiter -- one clear night through somebody’s birding scope.  Astronomy has a story to be told on Hog Island, too, right along with Audubon, Mabel Todd, and Emily Dickinson.

Today’s Elder Idea:  Earth, air, and water are always with us.  We touch them, handle them, ascertain their properties, and experiment upon their relations.  Plainly, in their study, laboratory courses are possible.  So, too, is a laboratory course in astronomy, without actually journeying to the heavenly bodies; for light comes from them in decipherable messages, and geometric truth provides the interpretation.  

David Peck Todd

from A New Astronomy (1897)

Venus triptych by David Peck Todd (1882).

Some Dayton history

So much has been going on lately, including some family travel south, that I have (once again) been remiss in writing much here at The Back Porch.  My apologies.  And if I have it figured right, this summer looks to be pretty distracting, too.  So it is with a full life, I suppose.  Thanks for stopping by.  

***

Friday, 1 June, is an interesting day in Dayton history.  

Following the city’s slow embrace of the Wright brothers’ accomplishments in flight, the local community staged a huge area-wide celebration in mid-June 1909.  During the centennial of flight festivities in 2003, the 1909 parade and celebration feting Orville and Wilbur was reproduced regularly at Dayton History’s Carillon Park.  Special angel-clad monuments were recreated to duplicate the ones set up on Main Street, downtown, the century prior.  From all accounts, 1909 Daytonians were mighty excited to celebrate their then world-renowned native sons. 

But just three years following that celebration, the Dayton community faced a painful reality:  Wilbur Wright, age 42, had succumbed to deadly typhoid fever.  It was on 1 June 1912 that Dayton came out to help put Wilbur to rest in the family burial plot in Woodland Cemetery.  Story has it that Dayton ground to a halt for part of that day.  Industry assembly lines stopped, telephone switchboards went unswitched, and twenty-five thousand locals lined the streets leading from First Presbyterian Church downtown to Woodland Cemetery.  Such a contrast, indeed, between this and the huge celebration held just three years prior.  

So on this 1 June, the centennial of Wilbur’s interment, Dayton gathered once again to celebrate her fallen native son.  Special guest for this year’s event was Ohio-born hero and flight/space icon, Neil Armstrong.  

Maybe a couple hundred people made it to Woodland yesterday for the commemoration.  Two fly-bys were scheduled, but due to rainy conditions and a low ceiling, neither the Wright B Flyer nor the WACO bi-planes (flying in missing-man formation) risked the trip.  Still, being there with Mr. Armstrong was powerful stuff. 

Unfortunately, the sound system set-up by the cemetery folk failed to amplify voices well enough.  Some speakers, too, including Mr. Armstrong, didn’t understand that their voices weren’t being heard.  By the time we could hear something of Mr. Armstrong’s remarks, he was into his second paragraph.  From what I felt at the time, his words sounded pretty poetic to me.  Wish I had a copy of what he said to share with you here today. 

Along with Neil Armstrong, Stephen Wright and his sister, Amanda, addressed those gathered.  They are grand-nephew and grand-niece of the unmarried, childless brothers.  Also speaking was a representative of United Theological Seminary, the Dayton establishment first headed by the Wright’s father, Bishop Milton Wright.  Thirty minutes into the commemoration, at 3:30, all stopped for a moment of silence.  Though we could not hear any from the cemetery, church bells around Dayton pealed in memory of the loss of Wilbur a century ago.

I’ve been to the Wright’s Woodland Cemetery plot lots of times, taking any number of visitors with me.  Yesterday I was glad to have son-in-law Bill Bryant, his son Alex, and my other grandboy, Noah, with me.  We shivered a bit and the boys were disappointed the flyovers were cancelled, but all of us were struck by the dignity of the event and the significance of how Wilbur and his brother changed the world forever.  We felt ourselves proud native sons of Dayton, too. 

It was first time the boys have seen Neil Armstrong in person.  Seeing the first man to set foot on the moon standing over the place where one of the guys who invented flight was buried was enough for this grandpa to think the day had gone just right. 

Today’s Elder Idea:  ‘A short life, full of consequence.  An unfailing intellect, imperturbable temper, great self-reliance and as great modesty, seeing the right clearly, pursuing it steadfastly, he lived and died.’ 

Bishop Milton Wright

written in his diary the day of Wilbur’s death

Spring rain

As I near blog entry #150 here at The Back Porch, I am aware that some of the topics I elect to tackle have close connections with other entries written at earlier times.  My intent is not to repeat the same message, but just the same, re-treating an idea that has stuck with me must say something about what I hold valuable.  

Such surely is the case with spring.  

I mean, how can a writer from the Midwest not be impacted by the amazing greens produced this time of year in our ‘blessed to be rainy’ climate?  I have a couple of sibs who travel South every fall to enjoy winter activities in Florida.  Cindy Lou and I have been down to see their lovely winter places, and we both admit, shirtsleeves in January is a fine situation to deal with.  

Still, hanging out up here -- up North -- for winter allows the change of seasons to really get inside a person’s head.  I truly love fall and winter.  Hands down, both are favorite seasons for me.  But by the time leaves fall and autumnal color turns to crunchy brown, we who stay are in for many indoor winter hours that have a tendency to get inside our bones.  No back porch sitting or garden tending. Birds are still pretty good, though. 

It’s always exciting, for me, to see the first flowers of the season blooming.  Crocus, hyacinth, daffodil, spring beauties, dutchman’s breetches -- all first of season blossoms -- are colorful indicators that we’ve made it, that winter has passed. 

But that’s just March and April.  By the time May comes around, hold on to your seats.  I’m talking green coming out of the natural woodwork.  Ferns pop up and unfurl; day lilies erupt into full size, waiting to extend flowers later;  dogwood and forsythia pass blooming and get on with the task of new hard growth; hostas come back from their winter retreat and tower over the leaves left on the beds as water-retaining mulch.  

Such continues to amaze every year. 

The pictures accompanying this image were taken just this morning at our place, which some loyal readers know we like to call Wild Grace, following an entire night of light rain.  And, of course, we slept with the windows open so we could hear the continuing patter of raindrops on the trees just outside our bedroom window.  

Wild grace, indeed.  Wild spring!

Today’s Elder Idea:  Spring also means tending and renewing house plants.  Here’s a poem by Lynne Sharon Schwartz from a recent Writer’s Almanac.   

Repotting

The healthy plant outgrows its pot

the way a healthy child outgrows its clothes. 

Don’t let it suffer constriction.  Spread the Sports 

or Business section of the New York Times 

on the dining room table.  Find a clay pot 

big enough for fresh growth.  In the bottom 

place pebbles and shards from a broken pot for drainage. 

Add handfuls of moist black potting soil, 

digging your hands deep in the bag, rooting 

so the soil gets under your fingernails. 

Using a small spade or butter knife, 

ease the plant out of its old pot with extreme 

care so as not to disturb its wiry roots. 

The plant is naked, suspended from your hand 

like a newborn, roots and clinging soil

exposed.  Treat it gently.  Settle it 

into the center of the new pot, adding soil 

on the sides for support -- who isn’t shaky, 

moving into a new home? 

Pack more soil around the plant, 

tapping it down till you almost reach the rim. 

Flounce the leaves as you would a skirt.  Then water. 

Place the pot back on the shelf in the sunlight. 

Gather the Sports section around the spilled soil

and discard.  Watch your plant flourish. 

You have done a good and necessary deed. 

‘Repotting’ by Lynne Sharon Schwartz

from See You in the Dark.  Curbstone Books, 2012. 

Used here without Ms. Schwartz’s permission.  I hope she doesn’t mind.  

Foreclosed

When I was a kid growing up in Dayton’s Belmont neighborhood, I didn’t know what a vacant house was, let along a foreclosure.  

To be sure, not all neighborhood abodes looked all that good.  Some most certainly could have used a paint job and more yard work, but all the houses I delivered rubber-banded Shopping News papers to every Wednesday had somebody living in them, at least as far as I can remember.  

These days, though, quite a few neighborhood houses I drive by have really tall grass this early May, and upon a closer look, windows without drapes and driveways without cars.  It is obvious that whoever called that place home no longer does.  It doesn’t take long to make an ‘eyesore’ out of such places, either. 

Last Saturday for the Rebuilding Together Dayton annual event, my team worked on a house down the hill from the Veterans Administration compound and tucked back into a rather well-tended neighborhood.  Upon first look, the house appeared pretty tough because most of the exterior paint was removed to expose lots of board feet of bare wood.  Such was the case, though, only because the homeowner had done extensive sanding in anticipation of the paint job.  Be the time we finished on Saturday, even despite a mid-day thunderstorm, much of the exterior had a coat of paint and a whole slough of interior projects completed, including installation of a brand new shower in the bathtub.  

I must admit, the neighborhood where we worked last weekend isn’t one I frequent very often, so as I drove through it while on runs to Lowe’s for something else someone on our team needed to complete a task, I tried to pay attention to what I was seeing.  

So many houses on blocks around the house where we worked looked really good:  grass well tended, nice front porch set-ups, good-looking paint jobs and roofs.  

Still, too often I saw completely derelict buildings with windows not just broken, but complete removed.  Grass, as you might imagine, was three cuts past acceptable already this early in the season.  I can only imagine how discouraged a neighborhood homeowner would feel about having a piece-of-crap house like that just down the street from the property they are trying to keep looking good.  

But I suppose that’s the world we live in now.  A new book by economist Paul Krugman makes it clear that the economy in our world isn’t just in a recession, but a depression.  I don’t know what data he used for that conclusion, but seeing empty, beat-up houses on the same block as well-cared for properties tends to have me believe such an assessment. 

Let me just say that I wish that all who need one had a job that paid enough to keep their neighborhoods looking good.  The stark truth is that that part of Dayton has a closed-down mega-printing operation and more than one shut-down and abandoned General Motors plant.  Jobs those neighbors used to enjoy have since moved on to places like Mexico and China -- away from where personal and family incomes make a local difference. 

All of this pretty much bums me out.  True, there are still good local jobs in Dayton, but not like the ones we used to have.  Now, it seems, all of the good ones require a college education.  The days of graduating from high school -- or dropping out -- and being hired on for a good assembly line job that paid enough to raise a family while leaving enough money for vacations and entertainment, are harder and harder to find.  

I was blessed to be able to afford attending Wright State for enough years to not only graduate with a teaching degree, but to finish with a masters.  Such a difference this has made in my life.  I doubt that many kids from lots of local neighborhoods have the resources to work through post-high school education to achieve the skills necessary to have a successful career these days.  

Seems to me as I drive down streets and witness so many untended yards and vacant houses, it is obvious that way too many families are struggling to make a go of it in this tough and demanding world.  

My heart goes out to so many who have so little and to those who try to do the best they can, despite the limitations brought on by change. 

Today’s Elder Idea:  In a country well governed, poverty is something to be ashamed of.  In a country badly governed, wealth is something to be ashamed of. 

Confucius

Sand lessons

When I was a kid going to Catholic elementary school in Dayton, the only spring break we ever got, as I remember, was Good Friday, Easter Monday, and the somber/happy weekend in between.  

The concept of taking a week off from school or work in the spring of the year to have fun didn’t catch up with me until I was going to college.  And frankly, all spring break really meant then was that I could get a whole week of work in at Rike’s warehouse, my place of part-time employment.  

Even with the advent of my teaching gig in Huber Heights in 1972, spring break didn’t really mean anything more than a week away from teaching kids.  If the truth be told, I didn’t really have any more money to spend on seasonal fun then than I did while in college.   

Not so much with the lovely Cindy Lou, who tells the story of her driving to Florida one spring in her Austin American with a crew of Ohio University girls who loved to play softball.  Can you see it?  Oh, it hurts just to think I didn’t even know her then!    ;-)

In any case, Cindy Lou has loved heading to sunny sand at the very tail end of winter for some time now.  First time she took me along was twenty-odd years ago when I Pricelined five nights at the old Radisson in Fort Walton Beach for 50 bucks a night.  The room wasn’t much, but the setting was terrific.  

By mid-week I could see a change in Cindy.  Her skin had transformed before my eyes.  She came to radiate a warmth that, well, I found downright fascinating.  And sexy, too, I might add. 

So, being the wise man that I am, I determined that we should make a concerted effort to get to Florida every spring break.  While in Fort Walton Beach, we found a condo down the road with a pool and beachfront that rented by the week for a heck of lot of money, but not so much we couldn’t afford it.  The Nautilus became our spring beach place the next few springs.  

With that in mind, about the time Cindy Lou retired, we started talking about the idea of buying a timeshare.  Guaranteed beach time seemed a no-brainer.  My brother and his wife have a couple timeshares, in which they get to spend weeks in cool places a couple times a year.  Joe took us with him once to Williamsburg where we had a lovely time.  Finally, last winter Cindy Lou and I bought our own timeshare.  Which is one heck of long introduction to the whole point of this blog:  

Last week the Cooke Schaefers had our first timeshare week -- at Hilton Head, South Carolina -- and we took along my 91 year-old mother.  

And a good time was had by all!  

The Barony Beach Club, a Marriott Vacation Club property on Hilton Head, was downright amazing.  When we first entered our villa, Cindy Lou stopped in the middle of the living room, soaking in the prolific use of her favorite colors and recognizing how clean things were, and said, ‘This may be the best place I’ve ever stayed in.’  Trust me, it was light years ahead of the Radisson!  

Oh, what a week we had.  I toted the slow-cooker and fired it up for a pork tenderloin one night and a whole chicken another.  My, my.  Amazing stuff.  The girls just crowed about how good things were.  They liked the store-bought peanut butter cream pie, too, and the two half gallons of ice cream! 

The day before we left, Cindy and I decided it was time to get Mother out to the beach for at least a short walk.  We would go at low tide when a solid, very walkable beach -- even with a walker -- appeared right out of the ocean!   Mom agreed, and braving loose sand and unsure footing -- she held on tight -- she made it all the way down to the edge of the ocean.  

As my sister Martha wrote, ‘Sometimes the image speaks for itself.’

I am now a proponent of taking annual spring vacations in warm, sandy places near big water.  Can you tell?  ;-) 

***

On the way to Hilton Head, Mother checked an item off her bucket list with a visit to the Billy Graham Library in Charlotte, North Carolina.  One exhibit on marriage there ran a clip from an old late-night television show in which Rev. Graham’s wife, Ruth Bell Graham, was asked if she had ever considered divorcing the often-traveling preacher.   Her response: 

Today’s Elder Idea:   ‘No, I never considered divorce, but I did consider murder!’ 

Howls of laughter followed.  

images:  Hilton Head Island (April 2012)