My Summer So Far. . .

On our fourth anniversary in June, we went out to eat and took a walk on the docks at City Marina, looking at other people's boats. 

After Adam's graduation from Wake Forest, The Parker Boys spent 10 days in France, mostly Paris. Here are Jeffrey and Adam looking a little ragged after climbing to the top of the Eiffel Tower. I love these boys!

A favorite Residential College professor's wife, Helen Ashby, was the first weaver-artist (as opposed to weaver of useful things) I knew. By coincidence, in that way that makes you wonder if anything is just a coincidence, I have gotten to know the Ashby's daughter, Ann, this year. She does not weave or knit but has had her mother's yarn packed away for many years. She recently gave it to me -- and I became a wealthy woman. Cones and skeins of beautiful wools, textured cottons, silks, jute. . .  It has taken quite a bit of reorganization, but I have found a home in my loom room for nearly all of it. The picture above is tag ends of multicolored mohairs.

The crypt myrtles have been really pretty this summer.

With temperatures up in the high 90s everyday, this has been one of the hottest Junes on record in Charleston. This is a popular way to cool off among natives and tourists alike for the under-8 set. This is downtown, at Waterfront Park.

By the 4th of July, Morris and Christy had been aboard their 36-foot sailboat, Coda, for six weeks. They sailed from New Bern down to Florida, went snorkeling in the Keys, and then stopped in Charleston for several days on their return trip to NC.On Friday, I took off work and Christy and I went and got massages. Ahhhhh

The temperatures miraculously dropped down into the mid 80s and we were able to act like tourists comfortably. They had done historic tours in Savannah and St. Augustine, so we continued with that theme and trouped out to Fort Moultrie on Sullivans Island.

Here you can see a bit of Coda's cabin  I'll never complain about a small kitchen again.  But we managed to pull together a great traditional 4th of July dinner  -- hamburgers on the grill, potato salad, baked beans, watermelon and brownies – and watched fireworks all around us from the dock. We gave the Best Show Award to the ones that erupted over the Joe at the end of the RiverDogs game.

I took this picture on the 4th of July, standing beside Coda and watching the sun set behind the bridge over the Ashley River. You may recognize the round Holiday Inn on the left.

Claire McGuffey, a really special friend of Debbie's, and of our whole family, made this "nap quilt" for me and it just arrived last week. She asked me to choose colors and she knew I love her quilt that is on the back of the couch at GreenPeace. Her note said she chose this pattern to honor the year of mourning that I've just experienced. There are 12 stars – one for each month of the year, held together in a group by the black border. The red and black checked border represents equal parts of  happiness and sadness in life. What a special and beautiful gift this is! And, Claire reminds me, the first person to sleep under a new quilt makes a wish. . .

 This picture was taken downtown on Sunday morning. The heat is back, but we've had more rain than have some places, so the window boxes are looking pretty lush.


Well, those are the highlights of our summer so far -- I'm getting better at remembering to take the camera with me whether or not I think I need it. Coming up, a trip with Mom to Vancouver and Victoria, British Columbia. We'll take an excursion train across the Canadian Rockies and end with a few days around Banff and Lake Louise. We have our passports and packing lists. We'll be leaving Raleigh, July 25.

Prayers for the People and the Fishes in the Deep Blue Sea

We are now officially without a minister at Circular Church. A fellow who lives on Sullivan's Island offered this as our prayer of confession and renewal on Sunday.

I drove to church today
In my car, my beautiful Infiniti G35
With six speed manual and 265 horsepower
And balance weight front to back.
An engineer in Kyoto tuned the exhaust:
It growls; it purrs; it does what I want
It goes where I want and as fast as I want
Dare I say, I love this object?

And the oil seeps into the marshes
Of Martinbox Bayou, Christmas Camp Lake
and Mosquito Bight.
The dead pelican smells rotten and oiled.
Its mirrored black eye accuses.
The tar balls beach on Dry Tortugas
Like runaway balloons around Florida
On their way to the Charleston Gyer
To eddy inshore and pop like paint balls on Sullivans,
At my front door

Just desserts; ironic; reaping what is sown --
such obvious cliche; a sophomore's plot --
a send up of early clint eastwood spaghetti

We are thrust into this world
Organized around hydrocarbons
Six billion sucking on the same straw
Six billion driving the Baja without a spare --
We lack the imagination to envision
Another life that does not require genocide for us
to enjoy.
So shamed by our own culpability
We lack the passion to change.

Dear God, make us mindful
of the sacrifices we have required of others to live as we do
Dear God, give us the strength to forgo our privilege
Dear God, let us live in community with all our fellow
creatures, to apprehend the richness of life that is
available to us.
Amen

I think we'll be OK for another few weeks until the new Interim arrives.

The Best Place to Eat in Calabash - 2010

Duncan has fond memories of going with big crowds from Elizabeth Town to Calabash for huge piles of fried seafood and hushpuppies. We have stopped there to eat several times on our annual trek to Holden Beach and he says it just ain't the same.

That old fish camp ambiance is gone for good, I'm afraid. New restaurants with brightly lighted signs now entice patrons in with dishes like shrimp and liguini with wasabi ginger sauce.

On our trip this week, we stopped for lunch and among all the restaurants there, picked out Tony's Pizza. It was a great little family owned joint -- obviously popular with the locals. Just what you go to Calabash for!

Off to the Beach!

This is my newest home project. I've been looking for something to swap out with my beloved grandmother's crazy quilt over the fireplace because I'm concerned that the strong light in the room is fading it too much. So here's what I've come up with -- also from my grandmother.

This is an enlargement of a envelope she addressed to granddaddy, in 1913, before they were married. When Mom cleaned out the house on Van Dyke she needed to decide what to do with a stack of letters from grandmother that granddaddy had saved -- so I brought them home. Guess when my house is cleaned out, there they will be. Anyway, we haven't found anything terribly compelling in the letters themselves -- they are mostly chit-chat -- but the envelope, enlarged and framed, is enticing, I think.

Our young friend Fiona and her dad are gardening this summer. Tomatoes, beans, squash, melons, herbs. Here she is in her Tilley Hat.

We are off to the beach. Duncan's Aunt Emilia from Kansas City rents a house at Holden every year, and gathers as much family in as possible over two weeks. She has three children in three states and this year, a grandchild is bringing his new baby, so there will be four generations.

These are cousins Duncan would otherwise only see at funerals, so it is nice we always get invited and nice that we have always been able to go.

Stray Bits

These are Fire Pinks and they were THE wildflower blooming in the mountains in April when we went for a long hike up the old US 70 roadbed up around Old Fort. What a good, long, but fairly easy walk on a paved road through such wildness it took your breath away. My amazing Mom, a week after her 82nd birthday, kept pace the entire way.

May 5 -- I saw a magnolia tree in full bloom.

I am crazy busy, always working on a list - but all projects are pleasant and interesting, so it is just old habit to complain. Church committees, fiber guild board, a weaving study group, and running back and forth to NC, with some tiny bit of gardening thrown in. Really don't have time to work, but earlier in this very place, I promised never to complain about work again. Ever. So, I won't.

The economy is getting better, the environment is getting worse.

Miners were killed in a mine accident in West Virginia, there's been big earthquakes in Indonesia and Chile,  a volcano erupted in Iceland that spewed so much ash that airports in Europe were shut down for a week and periodically since, and then a BP oil rig collapsed in the Gulf of Mexico and has been gushing thousands of gallons of oil each day into the ocean for four weeks now. Think of it. Thousands of gallons a day for four weeks and no fix in sight. All of this makes me sad and worried for our planet. What to do? Envision a world without cars and air conditioners and WI-FI?

I talked to a woman here who works for NOAA (National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration)  -- she says she working extra hours on oil spill clean-up and has to track her hours like a lawyer because Fed. Govt. is serious about making BP pay. And Claire left to go to her beach house in Florida, planning to take an EPA class for anyone who wants to help prepare their beach for the coming oil. Last night, she wrote and said there's no oil there yet. Yet.

On a more hopeful note, Adam graduated from Wake Forest on Monday. We were in Winston to celebrate with him over the weekend. Check out the much-loved graduate and check out this awesome cake:

I haven't been able to make it to many of the most recent family celebrations so I thoroughly enjoyed being at this one. It was great to see Jeffrey again, too. He's gearing up to enter his doctorate program at Chicago so I expect he'll be pretty busy for the next few years. Chances to see him may become even fewer and further between.

And while I was in Greensboro I stopped in at the Residential College Reunion. Debbie's class entered as freshmen 40 years ago -- Murray and Fran Ardnt were the faculty couple who lived in the dorm. I came along two years later. Fran is retiring this year, so she was roasted and toasted. She is the last faculty person I had any connection to -- so I was glad I could make it. I enjoyed lunch at my favorite Greensboro restaurant; Elizabeth's Pizza, with several others who showed up from my class -- here's Pat Weathers and me, Helen Harris Cryan who's been in Greensboro all these years, Debbie Jones Kenyon, who I've recently reconnected with, and Carol Densmore who came from Boston..

And here's a nice picture of the dorm we lived in from 1973 - 1975.

It's true, time does fly. Why it's almost Bob Dylan's birthday again. You won't believe this. He'll be 69 this year!!

Happy Easter

Debbie sent me this card last Easter. It still cracks me up.

Fried Green Tomatoes has been pretty quiet lately. I've been trying to keep the Fiber Guild's blog somewhat current and interesting -- it's been hard to find time to even do that.

We went to Black Mountain a couple of weeks ago to inter Debbie's ashes at the columbarium at Christmont. Sad, but also good to do that in that way sad things can be good.

A funny thing from that weekend was that we asked our neighbors Dennis and Becky to feed Eloise while we were gone. Of course, Eloise wouldn't come in the house when we were ready to leave, so Duncan called Dennis and told him she was outside, but would probably be waiting on the step when they went to feed her. After we had been home for a few days, Dennis admitted to Duncan that he came over and there was a cat on the steps, but he realized he didn't know what Eloise looked like! This first cat ran off along the creek bank and then Eloise appeared and somehow acted enough like she owned the place for Dennis to let her in. We'll have to start leaving a picture on the refrigerator. This is a nice one.

Mom came back to Charleston with us after the weekend in the mountains. We didn't do much to show her the town, but she spruced up my flower pots and ferns, cooked some wonderful meals, and had a taste of early spring before leaving yesterday in time to see early spring in Cary.

I'm hoping we'll get to Person County in late April and maybe get to see early spring there as well. There is a method to our madness.

Happy Birthday Jeffrey

Today is Jeffrey's 25th birthday and that brings to mind our family's story of global warming.

The story was told over and over again of Wilson driving to the hospital on the day Jeffrey was born, twenty-five years ago, and miraculously seeing a daffodil in bloom. A daffodil in February! Surely a good omen for new life blossoming!

Now, daffodils bloom all over the place in January and February. By the middle of March, they're done with. The leaves haven't even come out and the daffodils are here and gone.

I liked it better when daffodils were part of spring and spring was a big splash of tulips and hyacinths, and redbud trees, azaleas, and dogwoods. And if there was a rare daffodil sighting in the depths of winter, it really was a harbinger of good things to come -- as it was on February 27, 1985.