We had a small Thanksgiving this year. It was Ed, Lynne, and Bud. Danita had to do some recipe downsizing. She was quite successful. We had a wonderful dinner with all the normal stuff, but not too many leftovers. Ryn’s cheese was a big hit. It’s really good cheese.

Our decision to join the Columbia gym seems to have worked out well. Danita’s going to 5 exercise classes a week, most of them in the pool.  Plus we do yoga 2 or 3 times a week.

The standard joke is that we had the biggest holiday of the year — black Friday. I think it’s mostly turned into an excuse to spend money we wouldn’t otherwise spend. But we actually made a black Friday purchase this year. Center Stage offered half price on theater tickets. We’ll be seeing “Lookingglass Alice” next week, and “Skeleton Crew” in late January.

We’re going to the Sabiston’s this afternoon. We missed Dot’s funeral (we were in South Dakota). Dot was big on Christmas decorating. She had the entire house covered with Christmas stuff. Dwane and the daughters decided to have a Christmas decorating party. We’ll be spending a couple of hours finding places to put all the Christmas things Dot has collected. And we’ll be doing some eating also.

That’s all there is this week. I hope this finds everybody doing well.

I spent most of this week in West Palm Beach with Mom. We took her car to a shop to get a leak fixed, we went to the lawyer and reviewed her documents, and we did a few things around the house.

Mom wanted a new ceiling light fixture for the hallway. We went to Lowe’s and picked out one she liked. It said “LED” which I figured was marketing. I installed the base unit and realized the parts needed to screw in the light bulbs were missing. Then I realized there was no provision for running wire through those parts, even if I had them. Before taking everything back to Lowe’s, I tried turning the lights on. Low and behold, a dozen very small white LEDs illuminated. When I installed the globe, it looked like a regular light fixture. Now I understand why Lowe’s gave a five year warranty. I showed Mom there were no lightbulbs and explained why she should hold onto the receipt for 5 years. It’s a neat concept, but I think it’s a lot easier to replace a burned out bulb than it is to replace a defective ceiling fixture. We’ll see how it goes.

While I was at Mom’s, Danita took her dad to the doctor. Bud pulled the emergency cord one evening while we were visiting Ryn. Bud spent a day in the hospital. He couldn’t remember anything, nobody could find anything wrong with him, so they sent him home. The working theory is that Bud accidentally took too many Ambien. The doctor switched him to melatonin, which is probably an most excellent idea.

I got back Thursday evening. Mike Bertch’s funeral was Friday. It was a nice ceremony followed by a wonderful reception. Mike was cremated, so there was no graveyard ceremony. They had an hour of gathering time, then the funeral mass, then a reception in the church hall downstairs. The funeral was at St. Johns, the church we used to attend when we lived in Kingsville.

The weather folks said there was a good chance of rain mid-afternoon today. I decided that gave me a perfect window for a nice bike ride. It started spritzing, so I cut the ride short. After I got home, the weather improved. As of 2:45, it still hasn’t started raining. I’m not impressed with the forecasters.

That’s all the news this week. I hope this finds everybody doing well.

There are lots of pictures this week.

Cheese Production

Kathryn is at Cricket Creek in Williamstown, MA these days, making cheese. (The $24/pound kind. We’ll have some available for Thanksgiving dinner). We took a 4-day trip to visit. Tuesday was mostly driving up. We arrived mid-afternoon, and had a brief view of cheese production. We saw cow milking, milk storage, the cheese aging room, and lots of stainless steel.

Shaker Village; round barn in the background

We were discussing where we wanted to eat dinner. I suggested visiting the nearby retirement community. We would say we were thinking of moving up here to be close to our daughter. If we got there about 4, we could probably get a free dinner so we could see if we like the food. I thought it was a great idea, but cooler heads prevailed. We had an excellent Mexican dinner at Coyota Flaco.

Pie Oven – The main dish for most dinners was some kind of pie

Wednesday we visited the Hancock Shaker village. We had seen the Canterbury Shaker Village many years ago. The Shaker’s were a large utopian society with several prosperous villages. Their most striking characteristics were the unique dance they did during worship, and their insistence that all members remained celibate. At it’s largest, this village had about 100 people.

Window detail. Note the thumb screws. It’s easy to lock the window open or closed; or to remove the window for cleaning.

Visiting Hancock was quite interesting. There are *very* enthusiastic docents giving talks on many subjects. While the docents were always interesting, they would let their talks run way over the allotted time, which meant we had to leave one talk before it was over so we could see another talk on another subject. We found it striking how often docents bemoaned the large number of buildings the Shakers tore down. The non-profit that took over the village is interested in preserving the past as much as possible. This was in direct contrast to the Shakers, who were forward-looking and practical. They readily adopted new technology and were interested in the most efficient operation possible given the size of their community and the technology available to them.

Round Barn

The Shakers kept their property spotlessly clean and well-organized. They had many clever ideas to make their facilities more practical. The signature building is the round barn, which was used for hay storage and cow milking. But when better methods of milking cows became available, the Shakers promptly built new facilities for milking, leaving the barn useful only for storing hay.

Workshop Lathe

They had a reservoir above the village. They installed a 16″ water pipe with a turbine to generate water power for their workshop. It still works today. There was a second turbine at a workshop for contractors, and a third turbine to run a ceiling fan in the Trustee building.

Atwater Kent Radio

Thursday we visited the museum in Bennington, VT; and the Clark art museum in Williamstown. The Clark is a traditional art museum. The building is very large and modern. The collection is surprisingly large. I enjoyed the Impressionist exhibit, and spent all my time there. The Bennington museum has a large collection of Grandma Moses paintings, as well as several artifacts collected from the area. I especially enjoyed this rare Atwater Kent radio. These were made mostly in the 1920s, before the invention of superheterodyne receivers. Atwater Kent was known for innovations in their electronics, excellence in performance, beautiful styling, and very high price.

Ryn-hand-made Shoes – on her own feet!

Ryn is interested in making things by hand. She slaughters and butchers all manner of animals. She has blacksmithed, made butter churns, built her own smoke house, and more. Lately she has been learning how to make shoes. She made these shoes by hand.

TV in the  ShakerTrustee Building

Our last dinner was a pot-luck that the people at Cricket Creek have every Thursday. The workers at Cricket Creek may not make a lot of money, but they certainly eat well. We had an uneventful drive back Friday. I’ll close this with a picture of a TV in the Shaker Trustee house. I hope this finds everybody doing well.

I’m sad to announce that Mike Bertch has passed. His funeral won’t be until the 17th.

Cunningham Manor

We attended an extravagant event this week. Somehow we got on the “high roller” list for Baltimore’s Ruth’s House. We were invited to an evening at Cunningham Manor. This house looks like a restored English manor house. Actually, it’s 15 years old. The owner it is David Smith. He also owns Sinclair Media, which is a large collection of TV stations and media outlets. Most of the TV stations are in the FOX network. One of David’s children is into gardens. They flew a garden designer in from England. Today, they have two full-time gardeners to maintain the grounds. They built the house on a farm (~ 200 acres) off of Falls Road. The other houses in the area are a mix of ages and styles, but they are almost all middle-class.

We arrived to valet parking. After walking around and giving the public part of the house a good gawk, we stopped at the buffet. It was straight out of Gourmet Magazine. The roast beef was thick-cut and perfectly cooked. There were also huge prawns, crab cakes, crab dip, and lamb chops. There were about 10 different fancy desserts. The chocolate covered strawberries used dark and white chocolate to make it look like the strawberries were wearing a tux. In addition, waiters walked around with almost a dozen different hors d’oeuvres (including lobster, of course). They had the only open bar I’ve ever seen that didn’t have a tip jar. And the wine was really good. After the speech, the Smiths gave House of Ruth $75,000. The executive director is really good at looking overwhelmed. There was no way we belonged in this event. But we had a fabulous time. And we’re not going to ask to be taken off the “high rollers” list.

A couple of weeks ago, I mentioned the condo wants us to improve the drainage of the sump pump and rain gutters behind our house. Everybody was asking who owns the land behind our house. I called CA (Columbia Association), and said the words “Open Space Land” (which was a pure guess on my part). It was a bulls-eye hit. Early in the process, we were told that open space land had to be kept in a wild condition and couldn’t be mowed. But things got better after that. The condo has a landscaping easement on the land. Nobody has found the actual copy of the easement, so we’re still not sure what rights we have. But it’s pretty certain we can mow. The people at CA are open, friendly, and professional. I think I have our property manager convinced that the condo should make a deal with CA, instead of each unit owner trying to do something slightly different. I figure this issue will take years to straighten out, which is fine with me.

Here’s my panic of the week. We bought an E-car, which entitles us to a $7500 federal tax credit. We arranged for our income to be enough to generate a $7500 tax bill, which nets out to $0 owed. Under these conditions, we didn’t have to file quarterly taxes. Now Trump’s proposed tax bill will eliminate the credit. For our travels next year, we will volunteer at a national park and visit France. Or maybe we’ll get free room and board, courtesy of the federal government penal system. What a bother first world problems are!

Danita and I are looking forward to our trip to Cricket Creek, MA next week. We’ll be visiting with Ryn and seeing how cheese is made. It should be a lot of fun.

I hope this finds everybody doing well.