The Outside After Renovation

This first shot shows the Shutesbury house a couple of months ago. The others give you an idea of what the house looks like, as of today. We finished staining the new siding yesterday! The 7 windows in the original (front) part of the house are now all new and the old fake log siding has all been replaced with rough, cut ship lap boards.

Last Bash at Wendell Rd House

Yesterday we hosted our last big bash at the Wendell Rd house. We have been here 12 years!

We finished putting stain on the new siding of the house a couple of hours before the party. Around 35 people came. Many have lots of memories here....some stretching back the 12 years, some over the past few. There were also 3 newer friends here who had never seen the house. We gave tours of the recent work, had a BBQ and then a roaring camp fire in the fire pit until about 1AM. It was a great way to call it a wrap!

We are looking forward to hosting many more gatherings at the Lessey St. house...which will be easier for everyone to get to, except Williams and Franklins who live up here on top of the hill.

Tomorrow we close on the new house and begin cosmetic renovations in the afternnon. Our kids and some of our tried and true friends will help us yank old carpets, peel wallpaper and other such fun over the next couple of weeks. We are scheduled to move in June 3.

Stay tuned. More to come.

Hanging with emerging church folks, potting plants and other such busy-ness.

This last week brought some new stuff to my plate. I went with Ben, Jess and Sarah to Kairos, a gathering of emergent church types in western MD. Brian McLaren was there, sharing some thoughts, hanging out and chatting with us and the other 50 or so people gathered. It was encouraging to have such a low key and personal time with Brian. He shared some interesting insights and spurred on conversations about spiritual formation, the attonement and other things. I did not say "answers" mind you...but... food for thought, encouragement to explore & lots to more think about. I met some inspiring people as well.

The retrurn to Amherst found me scurrying to catch up on counseling work and teaching stuff. I also stained another side of the house. Then this weekend I divided up some of the plants in my garden, potting up around 100 plants to move to the new house.

Still no offers on the Shutesbury house tho..trying not to panic...

Well..that's it for tonight.

Long Overdue Update

I have not blogged in so long. Guess I have been really busy with work on the house, planning for the Lessey St house, teaching and counseling. Then 3 weeks ago I added gardening back into the mix as I began to clean up the yard in Shutesbury. So, blogging has gone by the wayside for a bit.

No new photos today but here's a few "snapshots":

House stuff:

The Shutesbury house is on the market. It has been shown 4 times plus a big realtors tour came thru. No offers yet.
:-( Hopefully soon.

The financing and other legal details on the Lessey St house are all set and we are moving towards a May 1 closing. I have begun planning out the projects to do there in May. Hopefully all the financial stuff will permit us to do what we need / want to before we move in.

I have booked a U-Haul for the first weekend in June to move the bulk of our stuff down to Amherst.

On other aspects of life's fronts:

Today I helped chaperone the eighth graders from Jess's class (about 100 kids all together I guess) on a field trip at UMass. It was a beautful day and a fun trip. Jess had done a great job planning it all. They were divided into small groups and rotated
around visiting labs (including Baird's Electronica lab) & art galleries, the greenhouses & student businesses, had a treasure hunt & ate lunch. After I had to leave they all went ice skating at the Mullins Ctr. I think they had a great time.

Jess passed her high school biology teacher's exam so now she is certified to teach both grades 5-8 general science and high school life sciences/biology (technically grades 5-12). She is interviewing for Summer jobs and will begin interviewing for Fall teaching jobs later this month. She wil complete her masters in June.

Ben is wrapping up his first year of a 2 years masters in education and working a bunch of part time jobs on campus (info technology stuff) and off campus (carpentry mostly).

Jess & Ben recently got 2 indoor rabbits, Peter & Mopsy. They are really cute and soft.

Aaron is wrapping up his first year at Umass. He's pretty into his sutainable living course and his bioterrorism course. He's taking a communciation course and Portuguese as well and has had a good semseter so far. He also works on campus at People's Market, an organic foods type student business, where Jess and Ben both worked when they were undergrads.

My mom's "companion" Conrad is still in the nursing home but after many months of tremendous spinal pain and immobility, he is now able to walk with a walker. Today my Mom took him out for a ride in her car. I think this is the first time he's been out in 11 months (except for a couple trips to the hospital). Amazing! He turns 92 on Saturday! We are having a little party for him.

On Sunday afternoon Jess and Ben and I will join our pastor, Sarah for a trip to a retreat in MD with author and pastor Brian McLaren with a focus on discussing issues rleated to the "emerging church." Should be an interesting and fun trip. I am really looking forward to it.

My neice, Karen, had a baby boy, Jackson, last week. Yeah!!

Well, that is it for me for tonight. Hope that gives you blog readers a little glimpse of our lives these days.

Eeek! We're on Display!

The Shutesbury house has begun to be shown. There is not much weirder than having your house on display on short notice. First showing was at 8AM this morning. It is stressful to live in a house without it looking lived in..or at least..not toooo lived in, if you know what I mean. I have to say tho, it is easier than the time in Ipswich when Jess was 21 months old and Aaron 2 months old..... or Florence when they were 1 and 2years old.... or the time in NoHo when they were 8 and 9. Keeping a house ready to show is a bit easier with just two adults.





We had the inspection at 38 Lessey on Monday. Here is a pic of the front door. Nothing really earth shattering showed up in the inspection. The insulation is past its prime. There are a couple of drips in plumbing, some things are a bit tired after 50+ years. Typical house stuff. The only shocker was the HUGE hornets' nest tucked in the eaves of the attic. As you may be able to tell in the pic, it is pretty jumbo. Yikes!! Yes, the current owners will have it exterminated, asap. I don't think the elderly owners had any idea! They'll also give us a bit of a price break to take care of the other odds and ends.

Meanwhile the siding project on the Shutesbury house is essentially done. Yeah! The building inspection on the siding and windows was today. We still have a few interior details to do as well as more cleaning out of basement, etc but it looks pretty good if you ask me.

Well, off to bed.... a bank meeting and a tax meeting tomorrow. Meeting with lawyer for the purchase of Lessey on Friday....it is one huge whirlwind!

It is Official

Yes, it is official. Our house in Shutesbury is now on the market. We listed it on Saturday, with Jones Town and Country's Jaqui Zuzgo. We are praying for a speedy sale since we already have a P & S agreement on a house in Amherst at 38 Lessey Street. We head into town this afternoon for the home inspection on that place. Meanwhile, Glen and Will are scheduled to complete work on the Shutesbury siding project today and & tomorrow. This weekend Baird packed some of his "stuff" into boxes to take to storage and I raked off the back gardens. Ben and I also burned lots of junk out in the firepit. Well, still lots to do! ttfn

Home Encouragement

Getting 2 rooms fairly well resettled this weekend has been an encouragement. Now, if you look toooo closely you will see the yet to be done detials: window grills missing, doors missing, trim missing, lumber in the background, etc BUT if you overlook the hundreds of little detials yet to be completed, you will be afforded a glimpse of what the place is shaping up to be. This is the living room and the new bedroom with the opening to the sitting room (old bedroom). April should bring some nice weather and with it an open house. Soon to come, pics of some of the new art work.

A Surely Perch

Surely has discovered the new wide window sills :-)
Things are beginning to look "normal" again. At least in a couple of rooms.

Advancing Daily

We are advancing daily now on the house projects. Yippe! The new bedroom space is all painted and the carpet will be installed tomorrow, Friday. This week we opened up the wall between the old bedroom and the new room. The old room will become a sitting area and the new space will be the bedroom. Here you can see the wall being taken down. I cut away the yellow wall and took out all the old insulation. YUCK! Then Baird and I cut through to the other side and framed out the opening. I then installed trim and finished painting yesterday and today. I am really looking forward to getting the furniture situated and to eliminating the major clutter of books, chairs, shelves, tables and what not that have been moved about for the past 2 months.

One More Saturday Report

One more Saturday in Shute-ho. This AM I read an on-line guide to installing tile and with more than a bit of fear and trembling, I jumped into the project using tile I had bought a few days ago. Will had put cement board all around the tub for me yesterday. So, it was ready to go. And here it is at 3:30 PM. Tada! The pictures are without grout. That must wait 24 hours. After that comes the trim.... so.... bear all that in mind. The other pic is of the closet I "built" this week. Actually I requisitioned half of an old closet that Ben and Brett removed from the living room corner last Saturday. I re-sized it and re-located it just outside the bathroom. It will house the vacuum, broom and supplies.

Yellow Wall Day

It took 7 hours, but the 2 new pine walls are now sanded, primed and painted. It is light yellow, like most of our living room walls (except the fireplace wall which is 2 tone green). This is the corner where there used to be a closet (under the loft section of the room). The window is one of the 7 new ones. It looks out to the yard and gardens. As you see, my supervising cat fell asleep on the job.

Karen & Tim

Here is a shot of my niece Karen and her husband Tim. Everyone says she looks a lot like me. This is their first baby and it is a boy :-)

House & Shower

Today was a fun and busy day. It stated early with Baird and I finishing what we had begun last night - moving all the living room furniture to one side of the room and covering it all with plastic. That is because Ben and Brett came today and put pickwick pine on the 2 walls that were just old sheetrock. Yup, so the boards are up (except the last 16 inches b/c I did not order quite enough boards..oops). Anyway.... it looks awesome! Tomorrow I will prime and paint them to match the rest of the room.

Then, while they were doing that, Jess and I went to NH to my niece Karen's baby shower. It was great to see a lot of the family there and to see her before the baby arrives. I hope we will be able to go up this spring and see the little guy. He's due to arrive in about 5 or 6 weeks. My sister and her daughter and granddaughter came to the shower via Dalton and picked up my mom. It was great that my mom (age 82) could be there. All 3 of her children, 5 of her 7 grandchildren and all 4 of her great grandchildren were there. I took several shots but the wriggling kids caused a number of them to be blurry. I got a few good ones tho.

Other thoughts going thru my mind.....

Alright.. down to the deeper things. I promised the other day I would find some time to blog about something other than house projects. Seriously, I have not turned into an HGTV clone...throwing myself 100% into home improvement projects while the rest of my mind turns to jello. I am reading about 4 books, grading papers (well, I should be) prepping for the Spring Dean's Book Course on Poverty/Homelessness and getting ready for the Dead Sea Cafe this Saturday where I will attempt to present an overview of the Politics and Spirituality Conference I attended 2 weeks ago in DC.

So, let's have at it...... here are a few of the thots running thru my mind tonight.... (besides thots about the painting and trim work I have to do in the AM)

Ok... the latest thing first.....

Rick Warren (Purpose Driven Life) was just on CNN, as the voice of the evangelical community, to repsond to the State of the Union adress last night. He was singing Bush's praises for a program to fight AIDS in Rawanda. Seems Rick has just returned from a tour of 3 African countries. He also said he has families in his congregation who want to adopt African babies with AIDS but that US immigration doens't allow it. So, Rick has spoken to people in our government. He expects the policy to change within the year. After all, the only other country to have such a ban on AIDS immigration is Lybia! He also announced that there has been a shift in evangelical churches in that they are now ackowledging the societal values issues more broadly... things like poverty and justice. Golly Gee, I am really glad to hear that.

Meanwhile, I had just been doing research about the U.S.'s rankings in foreign aid... we're right up there with the world's best. HA! gotcha! No...we are... not... we are on the bottom of the heap. But... a bit more about that Sat. PM as the DSC.

Then there is the book I am reading for the second half of my Spring Dean's Book Course: Ordinary Ressurections (Kozol). It is a fairly up close and personal look at children from the South Bronx. The kids are participants in an after school program at an Episcopal Church. The book is actually very hopeful in an odd sort of way. BUT....here's one of the things that got me: here within our own country, the inequalities are so brutal. Kozol says that in So Bronx the per child expenditure for education is $5,200 per year. In NYC itself it is $8,000, in the burbs it is $12,000 and in the elite Long Island communities...around $18,000 (mid1990's figures). This is unimaginable to me. I could see such disparities if one was comparing a developing or third world country to the U.S., but such disparities between communties within the U.S. and all within 45 minutes of one another? Something is terribly wrong. Terribly, terribly, terribly wrong. Education is absolutely critical to one's future... most every aspect of one's future. This disparity is just another form of slavery I think.

Last thing running thru my mind worth reporting on: President Carter was on Larry King tonight. He mentioned a number of interesting things but here is one: When he became Pres. the U.S. was using 8B barrels of oil per year. He initiated strict useage restrictions and by the time he left office we were using only 4B. We presently use 12B. Augh!! I think our whole freakin' nation has ADHD. Well, anyway, relief from this insanity is evidently on the way! I am so glad to see in the headlines that Bush spoke up against the U.S.'s addiction to oil in his speech last night. Wow........... what a progressive and insightful, and revolutionary leader we have. Now I can sleep in peace... to the warmth of my woodstove. Go Bush!

The Chairs & more...

Ok...for the sake of "Jet" who is dying to see and can't get up here right way.... here are the chairs. There are two of the beige , "aztec" color and two of the basil print. The living room is totally askew with items from various other rooms crowded in so, don't look at the backdrop. The pics give a general idea, but it is hard to capture the scale, etc. Once we get this place cleaned back up, we'll have some sort of a bash and everyone can get a look-see & sit and relax. Also included is a current pic of the bathroom in progress. The toilet is installed and right now the new vanity is sitting on top of the toilet! Quite funny. The next couple of days should see marked progress there. Boy will I be glad to have that bathroom back!

Daily Progress

This blog, of late, has become a bit of a log about our latest house projects. Not what I originally intended but, alas, this is what is taking a lot of my energy right now.... sooooo... for those of you who are interested, here's the latest. For those not so interested, sorry check back in a couple of weeks... I should be onto other things by then (maybe). OK. Scatch that. I'll try to blog about something else before then. I do have many of other things going on that I could be blogging about.

So, for now....... Here goes with the pics. Aaron, Ben and Brett have been working on the porch enclosure project (which will become and extention of our bedroom). It is down to the last few things. I can see it coming into being now. Glen has been working on the outside soffits (sorry, no recent pics to post). Will is begining to work on the bathroom stuff but we ran into a leaky shut off and 2 rotting boards so that process has a few new steps added to it. Also, the other day UPS delivered 4 big boxes with 4 new living room chairs. No pics of the chairs yet..but.. the boxes seen here filled the whole dining area. Surely the cat was delighted with them and was not at all pleased when I flattened them for recycling. That's it for tonight.

Week In Review

Been a busy week here....work on the new room (former porch) was accomplished by Aaron, Ben and Brett. Aaron also gutted the bathroom vanity and sanded the bathroom floor. All of the new windows are in and Glen has been working on the outside eaves and soffits. Hopefully tomorrow Will is coming to work on a sill and repair a leaky cold water shut off. All this despite the snow storm Monday. Ben and Brett actually worked that day and Cowls delivered lumber, despite the 8"+ of white stuff. Another 3" fell tonight...beautiful..but with significant outside work to be done, I am still hoping no major storm hits for just a bit longer.

Learned Something New Today

In the spirit of always stretching myself and gaining knowledge to apply to my life (and to share with others) allow me to share something I learned just today: you cannot take the Target carts out into the mall. There is some funky mechanism that trips when you go over the threshold and it locks the wheels, thereby stopping you straightaway or catapulting you into your cart if you are cruising. No kidding!

I thought I would share this fact with all of you so that you can avoid the embarassment of hurling yourself into a cart laden with cases of Coke.

Oh yeah.. I went to a conference in Washington DC this past weekend called : Politics and Spirituality. There were tons of great things to chew on and share from that too.... but I have to gather my scattered thoughts first and have not had a chance to do so. One thing I recall: "We are the ones we have been waiting for!" WE ARE ?! Wow... seems WE have a lot to do then!

Masked Men

Anybody know these masked men?

Ha! Well..all 4 of them were here today and as a result we have 3 more new windows installed (only 1 to go) and the "porch" has insulation all around and one wall sheetrocked. Another week and we should be "looking good."

Meanwhile, I am off to DC with Laura D to hear Jim Wallis and Anne Lamott expound upon Politics and Contemplation. Nice!

Hmong

Teaching a January Dean's Book is a new experience for me in a few ways. First of all it is crammed into 3 weeks. Second, it is all three levels of the course in one class. Yikes! Third, I was allowed to choose my own book.

We are doing The Spirit Comes and You Fall Down by Anne Fadiman. I found out after choosing it that she lives locally, and teaches creative non fiction (?) writing at Smith and maybe My Holyoke on occasion. Hmmm.

Anyway, the book gives the reader a lot to think about. It follows 2 related tracks. One is about a Hmong refugee family living in CA. Their baby has epilepsy. There is a long and complicated thread of difficulty and misunderstanding and conflict over her treatment. Very disquieting and sad as she ends in a vegatative state, cared for by her dedicated, loving parents in their traditional way (as the medical community has finally given up..no more they can do). According to the publisher's web site, now 20 some years laler, she continues to survive, living with her mother in their home. Her father died 2 years ago.

The second track of the book (every other chapter) deals with the history of the Hmong people. In the 60's they were living in Laos, separate unto themsoleves, mostly in the Plain of Jars. This was a key area in the Vietnam War as the supply route for the North Vietnamese, the Ho Che Min Trail, went thru there. Hence, in secret, the CIA recruited thousands of Hmong to fight for us. They died in huge numbers (many more than US soldiers!) and when we lost the war, the Hmong were driven out by the communists. They walked 30-40 days to Thailand and lived in refugee camps. Many came to the US....believing they had been promised by the CIA that they would be taken care of if we lost the war. Of ocurse...we were never going to loose so one wonders how sicere suchg apromise ecver was. We airlifted very few of them out. The rest half killed themselves escaping to Thailand (many did die trying to escape and many were saughtered).....

Many themes are raised in this book. Too many to enumerate here.... but for one thing the Hmong are a people group extremely resistant to assimilation. Their community, their families, their traditions, their religion play a huge role in their life and they are not interested in giving that up, at least. This has produced many difficulties over the years. We, as Amercians, tend to assume (expect) that our ways are preferable (perhaps evne superior) and that immigrants and refugees will want to adopt our culture and will subscribe to our definitons of success, etc. The Hmong resistance to this, as well as their "otherness" has apparently been exasperating to many Americans with whom they have come into contact.

It is not clear to me, at this time, how this may be changing with second or third generation Hmong but, at least for the first generation, some of their ways & their values combined with the fact most of them suffered from multiple and severe trauma experiences provide a compelling and intensely soul searching text.