Thanksgiving, then Christmas

I tried to illustrate my list this year with watercolor pencils, and ended up leaving important things off the list. We've enjoyed Tai Chi on Tuesday and Thursday mornings at 7 AM (I see my dad shaking his head. . .) and we have jobs and are whole and solvent in all ways. And then, there's Sandy Witman who keeps gently encouraging me to sketch with watercolor pencils. Friends make life good.

Upstate Roadtrip

Last week I went traveling with my co-workers for the express purpose of seeing small, Upstate South Carolina towns during the pretty time of year in the mountains. There wasn't much color in the trees and it didn't feel as much like being in the mountains as I usually do in North Carolina, but sometimes we would get a view and I knew I was definitely on the crest of the Blue Ridge.

Generally, I found small towns in the Upstate to be more prosperous than small towns in the Lowcountry. Here is the pretty B& B we stayed in in Lyman which is on the road between Spartanburg and Greenville. These days it's about the only thing in Lyman, but back in the day, (the early 1900s) it was the home of the owner of the textile mill. 

 The Walnut Lane Inn in Lyman, SC

Textile mills were huge in this part of the state -- as were classic mill villages. Say what you will about "paternalism" but many people worked in otherwise lean times. During the Great Depression no one had money, but the mills gave you "script" you could spend at the company store. It was better than nothing, which was another option of the day..

Here is my theory -- I'm sure those more learned than I can argue, but, from what I've read, it seems that maybe white people in the Upstate were not as dependent on slaves as they were in the Lowcountry prior to the Civil War. They had them, but they worked on farms, not the vast "plantations" more common on the coast. After the War when slavery collapsed,Upstate farmers were able to downsized their operations until they were manageable and pretty soon the railroads starting bringing business to town -- and then those textile mills got going. 

People in the Lowcountry couldn't manage the huge indigo, cotton, and rice operations with just family. They certainly weren't going to go wading out in the swamp and fight the mosquitoes, so they mostly just wrung their hands and despaired. Really, not much helped until air conditioning and tourists came along and if you were inland from the coast, you still aren't in great shape.

So, there you go, a one-minute overview of South Carolina, past and present.

Here is one more odd little happening on our trip. We met this Blue and Gold Macaw by the name of Co-Pilot at a restaurant in Landrum where we were having lunch on the patio. Apparently everyone in Landrum knows him and he goes out to eat frequently. He had just returned from a vacation to Dollywood (definitely fall under the category of "You can't make this stuff up.")

When Co-Pilot realized we were friendly, he moved right in on us. Below, Kerri's daughter Katie is standing beside her mom with her arms crossed while Co-Pilot checks out our leftovers. Katie's chair was Co-Pilot's quickest path between his own table and ours. She decided she wasn't going to stand between a parrot and the potato chips.

 It's good to be home. The next thing we're looking forward to is Mom's visit next week.

Personal Grounds

A friend and I went downtown today and saw Personal Grounds, an exhibit at the City Gallery by Susan Lenz, a fiber artist who lives in Columbia. I was much more intrigued with the ideas in the exhibit than I was in the art process, although, this woman is definitely very creative, talented and prolific. She must stitch  in her sleep!

Personal Grounds was a series of nearly 100 portraits -- photographs transferred to muslin with hand embroidery, embellishments, and stitched text -- each representing a decision that person made.

To be confronted with such a large number of individuals who made one choice or another somehow honors the integrity in making a clear choice. Sometimes one person's decision was the exact opposite of the decision represented by the portrait right beside it (Atheist - Born Again Christian, Refused to Put My Father in a Nursing Home - Placed My Father in a Nursing Home). The whole exhibit brought awareness and personalized the huge number of the big and small decisions we make all the time.

Here is one of the first portraits and choices that grabbed me. . .

I've always had this thing about "Voting as a Feminist Issue." Now here's this woman with very little time or energy left in her life, and she chooses to spend some of each casting her vote, having her say, influencing the future. Wow.

This one is called Illegal Immigrant. Susan's notes said all the portraits were taken from photographs, obviously, of real people. This man is shielding his face because it would be dangerous for him to be recognized. As an American, I can't even imagine that going to another country and living there illegally would offer me more opportunities than staying here. Wow.

Many of the decision points illustrated were related to health issues. . .  mastectomy rather than chemotherapy, pursuing aggressive treatment, opting to end treatment, a man going public with his battle with breast cancer   I like this one, called Warrior, about choosing to do everything possible to stay healthy after a battle with cancer. Look at how complicated life gets for a Survivor Warrior:

Other big areas of decision included choices about family -- to marry, to have children, to marry when one really wants children and the other really doesn't, to adopt, to give a child up for adoption, to search for a birth parent. . .  Other decisions didn't seem as big -- one woman choose not to have a television, someone else chose not to own a car. Lots of choices related to personal appearance -- hair dying, head shaving, losing weight, a drag queen. . . here's a woman who chose tattoos. . .

All that body art is done with machine stitching.


There were several about ways people chose to do good in the world. A volunteer who gave 3 1/2 hours a week to a museum for something like 34 years, a woman who visits and writes letters to prisoners, a very moving one about a child who declared, after noticing her mother's driver's license, that she too, wanted to be an organ donor. She was killed in a car accident when she was 11, and her organs saved the lives of seven other people. Fittingly, this one was called The Gift of Life and the portrait included everyone in her family.

I like the representation of the blood donor with the little red sequins mounting up the frame.

There was more. In the middle of the gallery, all these sheer panels hung from the ceiling with questions stitched on them -- all the little questions that run through your mind all day every day. . . should I wear the dress or the pants suit for my court appearance?, send a letter or an e-mail?, let me daughter go the party when I haven't met the parents?, decaf or regular?, Mac or PC?, how can I say this tactfully? This list is endless -- there were about 30 panels, two stories high, each with probably 25 questions. . . See what I mean? When does this woman sleep?!

I'm glad I got downtown to see this one.

Bringing Meaning to Our Lives

Funny. The topic of replacement windows is much on our minds these days. I think a new sliding glass door is in our future.

Fall is Coming

Here are a few random images captured during the last week or so. Clearly, nothing imperative to impart. . .

I saw these cute little ducks in the window of a shop downtown.

This was the sign in the window. Typical artist? Typical Charleston business mentality? I don't know, but I still really like the ducks.

And on an unrelated note: This is Tripod  -- the stray cat we regularly feed. You can see his missing paw. It is only because of this handicap that Eloise tolerates his presence on her deck. In her own haughty way she is kind to him and sometimes sits guard at the top of the steps while he eats.

He comes to eat with us regularly, but is skittish and will not let us touch him. He is all-boy and cannot behave inside the house (we've tried). We've talked to the pet shelter about him and they will not take him because there is little likelihood that he would be adopted. We should get him to a vet, but we haven't undertaken an attempt to catch him . All we do is put food out for him and try to make him feel safe here. That he let me close enough to take this picture is sort of a break-through.

We also call him Tripodius, TP, and Hiya Handsome.

Looking Out My Back Door

Earlier in the spring, Sandy Witman took a picture of the marsh from our back deck and went home and painted this lovely oil from the photo. I wheedled it out of her this week and it is now hanging on the wall in the living room in such a way that you can look at the painting, then look out the door, and if the tide is in, -- same view! Now, how cool is that?!  I love it. 

I am lucky to have so many very talented people in my life.

Our Pretty Church

There's a fellow in town photographing all the churches in Charleston. No small task in a place that calls itself "the Holy City". Go here to see his beautiful photos. I've directed the link to take you to our church first, but you can surf around and see seven or eight others that are all quite special. The collection grows and he's beginning to add churches from other places as well. I think he hopes to publish a book.

Ours is Circular Congregational Church and it was the founded by the early settlers in 1681 as the first non-Anglican  Church in Charleston. Because they weren't part of the Church of England they were looked down upon and considered "dissenters". Not to be encouraged, they weren't allowed to call themselves a church – only a "Meeting" and that's how the main avenue through downtown Charleston came to be known as Meeting Street – because it was the location of the Meeting House. This building is the church's third; built in 1890.

Circular started out and continues to be a denominational mishmash. In 1775, it was said to be "called either Presbyterian, Congregational, or Independent, sometimes by one of the names, sometimes by two of them and at other times by all three."

The Scottish immigrants who wanted a "truer" Presbyterian experience split off early on and formed First Scots Presbyterian down the street in 1731.

Another group left in 1817 and went around the corner to worship as Unitarians on Archdale St. And finally, the black memebers withdrew in 1867 and founded Plymouth Congregational Church. All of these are still active congregations.

Here is one of my favorite church pictures, taken by a member of the church sometime last year. It is our recently retired pastor, Bert Keller, weaving a newly baptised child "into the life of the congregation."  Even without seeing the architecture, this photo somehow gives a sense of the circle that is our worship space.

Swimming Lessons

Last Summer we all just sort of floated around aimlessly. This year, Duncan is determined to teach Fiona to swim. I sort of  miss the aimless floating, but Fiona does want to be able to "Do it myself!"

Across the Rockies to Banff, Lake Louise, and Glaciers!

Leaving Vancouver, we traveled for two days on the Rocky Mountaineer excursion train across the most impressive Rocky Mountains to Banff National Park. None of us - even Duncan - had ever been closer to the Rockies than a fly-over, so the awesome views out the window were captivating for all of us.  

Our traveling companion doesn't look very happy, but we enjoyed her company throughout the trip. It's a good picture of the rest of us and the only one we ended up with of all three of us.

We were not lucky enough to see much wildlife -- no bears or elk or moose. From the train, we saw osprey and eagles, some deer, and a big horned sheep. At one of our stops, this little guy practically posed for us. I thought he was a really fat chipmunk, but learned he is a type of squirrel.

By the end of the second day on the train, we were at the edge of the "Alpine Tundra" -- above the 7,200 ft. treeline. Many mountains reached 10,000+ feet. The color of the rivers changed from dull green to bright aquamarine, indicating they were fed by glacial ice-melt.

Before we visited glaciers, we fortified ourselves with lunch at the Fairmont Chateau at Lake Louise. It is just as elegant as the more well-known Banff Springs Hotel and had this nice view of the gardens (gardens everywhere!), the lake, and the mountains.

A two-hour drive from Lake Louise got us to the Columbia Ice Field at Jasper National Park. Mom is in front of the Athabasca Glacier where the ice is between 270 and 1000 feet thick.

This bus with monster tires actually took us out onto the glacier. They told us the ice under us was as deep as the Empire State Building is high and the riverlets of running water we could see were from melted ice that fell as snow up to 150 years ago.

It was a bit windy, but otherwise a mild day. As you can see, lots of kids out in shorts.

The next day we did a bit more touring around the Banff area. We had lunch here, at the Banff Springs Hotel, built in the late 1800s to entice the rich and famous to visit using the new transcontinental railroad. In a display of old photographs, we learned that in the late 1920s, the wealthy would arrive with "letters of credit" for $50,000 to cover their 3 - 4 month stay. One photo showed a waiter serving "Lithium bromides" to a group of smiling ladies at the swimming pool. Well, no wonder everyone was happy!

Everything inside was on such a large scale, it is impossible to depict the grandeur and elegance.  I would love to go and stay a week. Let's see, if a 4 month stay cost $50K in the 1920s, a one week stay would have run just over $3,000. In today's dollars, that would be ??? What would you guess?

Of course we admired gardens here, too.

Here is a map showing our route for the trip, beginning at Seattle and ending in Calgary.

What a great time for all of us!

Canadian Rockies -- Victoria & Vancouver

We are home from our big Rocky Mountain excursion -- here are a few highlights from the Victoria - Vancouver leg.

Here are Victoria's signature hanging baskets.Victoria is on the southern tip of Vancouver Island, the capital of British Columbia, and a retirement and tourist haven. I had no idea the climate was so temperate here. I thought you had to be a polar bear to live this close to Alaska. But it doesn't get too cold in the winter or too hot in the summer. Flowers thrive! 

We're in one of the water taxis that scoot all over the harbor, and we're going down a "street" of houseboats. One of these floating houses was in the movie, Sleepless in Seattle.

Here is British Columbia's Parliament Building -- it is outlined in lights in the evenings, giving it a definite Disney glow.

Duncan, just being himself, as we visited a Victoria city garden. Butchart's Garden, one of the stops we (well, Mom and I) looked forward to the most, comes next.

  Rose Arbor

  Fuchsias -- my favorites. They make me think of tiny dancers in tutus.

  Tuberous begonias. This is definitely one of the things that does well in these cooler temperatures. We saw them everywhere, huge, and in every color.

 
And here we have the tuberous begonias, a profusion of fuchsias and hydrangeas to boot.. Butchart Garden did not disappoint. We loved every minute we spent there.

 
Another day, another ferry ride to Vancouver. This was a bigger, more sophisticated city than we were expecting. Lots of modern architecture -- skyscrapers of glass and steel dominated the downtown. But it is on the water, with a marina, and a paved boardwalk stretches the length of waterfront.

 
I was quite taken with this fairly new public library building. It is a square glass and steel structure within a concrete structure that has curved walls and lots of arches -- reminiscent of Roman ruins.

 
Here it is from outside -- you can see the building within a building. We were told the design and scale of this as a public facility is controversial in Vancouver.

The roof peaks are fabric sails. This venue was built for the World Expo in 1986 and now serves as the cruise ship terminal.

This is the Olympic torch for the most recent winter games. It is only lit, we were told, for very special occasions. Apparently, they weren't told we were in town.

Tai Chi in the park on the waterfront. The red, squatting figures are an installation of public art. They made great photo props.

Here, as well as in Victoria, the harbors are busy helioports. There is steady traffic of float planes taking off and landing and for some reason, I found it relaxing to sit and watch.

Stanley Park is to Vancouver as Central Park is to New York -- a vast, multipurpose green space within the city. Here is a display of old and new totem poles carved by First Nations artists. Some of these poles tell a family's history and stories. We discussed what our family's totem pole would look like. We thought we'd have some wise owls in ours, because we have some pretty smart people in our family!