Owen and Alison have wed

This past Saturday Owen and Alison were married at Pinewoods. After a wet start on Friday the weather turned beautiful, and the weekend was about as perfect as it could be. Pictures here:

Alison & Owen's wedding

My mother is gone

Dancing with Mom in early 2009

Mom died just shy of three weeks ago. I can't really write about this yet, but here is a copy of the obituary we placed in the Lancaster paper.

Jean L. Myers, 84, of Elizabethtown died Wednesday, November 16, 2011 at the Masonic Village Health Care Center, after a brief illness. She was the loving companion of the late Dr. Zeb Bell, the widow of Dr. Carl Myers, and the former wife of Jerry Callen.

Jean was born in Nanty Glo, PA and grew up in nearby Roaring Spring, the daughter of the late Clarence and Ethel (Lape) Lauer. She received her R.N. from the University of Pennsylvania in 1947 and began a lifelong nursing career. Newlyweds Jean and Jerry settled in Jerry's hometown of Windber, PA, where Jean combined mothering her three children with nursing at the Windber hospital and serving as school nurse at the high school. The family moved to Satellite Beach, FL in 1968, where Jean first worked as a nurse for Melbourne Hospital, and later for Dr. Frederick Remark in his private practice. After she and Jerry parted in 1986, Jean moved to McMurray, PA, near Pittsburgh, where she married Carl Myers and worked at McMurray Hills Manor. When Carl became ill, Jean cared for him at home until his death in 1992. Her subsequent deep friendship with Zeb Bell lasted until Zeb's death in 2002.

Jean moved to the Masonic Village in Elizabethtown in 2008. In addition to her nursing career, Jean was an active, lifelong Lutheran. She taught Sunday school in Windber and played piano for the choir. Most recently, she attended Our Redeemer Lutheran Church in McMurray and Trinity Lutheran Church in Mount Joy. She was also a member of the Order of the Eastern Star, Chartiers Chapter, #97, of Canonsburg.

Jean leaves behind two daughters and a son: Jean A. Ulmer, the wife of Robert Ulmer, of Elizabethtown; Cyndi L. Callen of Bethel Park, PA; and Jerry L. Callen, husband of Katy Petersen, of Cambridge, MA. She remained close to her brother, Jerry Lauer, and his wife, Anne, of Orlando, FL. Visits with her six grandchildren and seven great-grandchildren brought her great joy.

Relatives and friends are invited to attend a celebration of Jean's life at the John S. Sell Memorial Chapel at Masonic Village on Friday, December 9, at 10:30 AM. There will be a time of visitation with the family from 9:30 AM until the time of the service. Another celebration is planned for next spring in McMurray, PA.

Contributions in Jean's memory may be sent to either the Bleiler Caring Cottage at Masonic Village, 1 Masonic Drive, Elizabethtown PA 17022 or Trinity Lutheran Church, 47 W. Main St., Mount Joy, PA 17552.

Utha Graduates

About a month ago RuthAnne was awarded her Associate of Arts from Harvard Extension School; I've finally tracked down my SD flash card reader so I can upload the pictures. I expect complaints about this from RuthAnne...

Owen testing out the cap

See, they can smile!

The cap on its rightful dome

The Goods

So - tell me how...

...you really feel.

A final update: the "official" picture.

From RuthAnne 2011-06-29

Lord of the Dance

I'm a member of of the Pinewoods Morris Men; we dance every year in the Christmas Revels at Sanders Theatre in Cambridge. The traditional ending of the first act is always a performance of the Lord of the Dance, which ends with the Morris dancers leading the audience into the lobby for intermission. Here's a video clip of my teammates Steve and Joe (along with cast member David Coffin) at a recent Revels (not this year):

Well, last night Owen and I had the privilege of performing the dance together, one of the few father/son pairs to do so.

Merry Christmas!

New Year, 2009

My mother and sister came to visit for a few days after the New Year started. RuthAnne was off visiting friends, but here's a picture of the rest of us.

From Christmas 2008

The Journey Home

I'm riding the Acela Express, returning to Boston from a week in Elizabethtown, Pennsylvania with my mother. She had surgery on Tuesday to repair her rotator cuff, damaged in the first of the two bad falls she suffered last winter. Katy and I arrived Sunday night; Katy will still be there for at least another week. The surgery seems to have gone very well, and Mom is recovering much more quickly than I expected her to.



My sister Jeannie also lives in Elizabethtown, and on Saturday we seized the opportunity to visit my home town, Windber. Except for one very short visit in 1969 (for Jeannie's wedding), I haven't been back to Windber since we moved to Florida in 1968.

I have a very mixed bag of memories from Windber, and I haven't been especially eager to reopen that chapter of my life. On the one hand, my family was very close when we lived there. We had some wonderful family vacations, and I had a lot of freedom growing up there. I used to spend my summer days riding my bike all over town, or playing in the woods at the top of the hill we lived on. On the other, I was always an outsider: bookish, unathletic, unattractive. Perhaps everyone's childhood is similarly mixed. In any case, I felt a bit of anxiety as we entered a familiar stretch of road on the way into town.



But I'm getting ahead of myself. It's a long drive from E-town to Windber, and Jeannie and I had a rare opportunity to let our hair down with each other. Jeannie is about 6 years older than me, and our lives separated before we really got to know each other very well. It was a treat to be able to talk with each other as adult friends. We traveled well together, and I look forward to spending similar time with her again.

The first leg of the trip was a long stretch on the Pennsylvania Turnpike. We exited at Bedford and drove northwest towards Hooversville, the town where my father was born. On the way we also passed my mother's mother's childhood home. I don't know how Jeannie found it; it's well off the road and overgrown with brush. Here it is.



We also spotted a set of wind turbines; this turned out to be the Green Mountain Wind Farm in Garrett, PA.



Hooversville is not a place I remember well at all, but Jeannie does. There is a small suspension bridge in the center of town that evidently terrified us as kids. It's down the street from the house where my father was born. Here are the bridge and the house.





We headed north from Hooversville and arrived a short time later in Windber. Our first stop was my father's parents' house on Stockholm Avenue, next to the Bestform factory and across the street from what was, back then, a very active train switchyard. The trains are gone now.



From there we went past the old playground (now a church parking lot), up over the 17th street bridge and on to Baumgardner Avenue, and my childhood home.



The house is almost exactly as I remembered it. There are a few obvious changes; the huge pussy willow bush in the back yard is gone, as are the two pine trees that used to flank the front walk. We had a nice chat with the man now living in the house. His parents bought it from my family in 1968 and lived there until their deaths. It's hard to imagine a house in America with only two owners in over 50 years.

From there we went "downtown" - a much smaller area than I recalled. Visiting the building that once held the Callen Baking Company was hard. It's boarded up and unoccupied, and through the windows we could see that the roof in the back is gone, evidently to a fire. I don't expect the building to be there the next time I visit.



Some of the other buildings, though, are pretty much as I remember them, such as the Arcadia Theater...



...the fire station...


...and the building that held the town library.



We came across this amusing juxtaposition as we walked up Graham Avenue.



We then visited the section of town that held many of the town's churches, including First Lutheran, where I was baptised.



It looks like the congregation no longer occupies the church; the sign out front mentioned a "closing service" in December, and the building was locked. We were able to peek in through some side windows at the sanctuary; it remains as I remembered it, a beautiful, peaceful place. I wonder what will become of it?

We drove around and visited a few more places - the town pool, the hospital, the schools - and then began winding our way over the mountains to Roaring Spring, where my mother's parents lived. We passed this funny road sign on the way.



Roaring Spring is aptly named. My grandparents lived right beside the spring itself, in an apartment over the Chrysler/Plymouth dealership ("L & L Motors") that my Grandpa Lauer owned. Sadly, the garage and apartment are no more; in their place is a parking lot. I used to spend several weeks each summer there, and I have very pleasant memories of feeding the fish and ducks (Grandpa kept a bin of feed corn in the garage for this purpose), watching the fountain, and playing at the edge of the water.







A short walk from the spring is St. Luke's Lutheran Church, where my parents were married. Like the Lutheran Church in Winder, St. Luke's appears to have stopped functioning as a church.



Down the street from the church is the paper mill, whose smell I will always associate with visiting my grandparents.



Roaring Spring also has a beautiful, though inactive, train station, a block away from the spring. It's a reminder of the days when trains connected most of the northeast with the rest of the country.



By this time the sun was setting and we turned south toward Bedford and the turnpike back to Elizabethtown. The trip back was a little quieter; I don't know about Jeannie, but I had a lot on my mind. I find it remarkable that we can retain so many memories for so long, and that they can be triggered so vividly by the right conditions. I'm glad I went back to Windber, and I hope to return again soon for a longer visit.

There are many more pictures from this trip in this album:

The Journey Home

Katy discovers Picasa

I've been after Katy to start using Picasa, instead of sending me pictures as email attachments. Well, she has - yea! Her initial albums include among many other things, some lovely shots of our garden in Cambridge and an amazing series of a praying mantis preying on a butterfly.

Wish I were there...

...to deliver this in person.

Going Quiet

I used the same title earlier today in my "work" blog at IBM. Tomorrow night I will be taken to the airport, plopped onto a Lufthansa A-320 and flown to Frankfurt for breakfast. After a delighful meal, back in the bosom of the west, I'll board another rigorously-maintained German airplane and fly to Boston. Katy will meet me at terminal E, international arrivals, and we'll go the Cape for a night. I'll spend Friday night curled up with the woman I love in a soft, familiar bed and awaken at one of my favorite places in the world, probably in time to watch the sun come up over Waquoit Bay. Sunday we'll pack, and on Monday we'll all fly off to Wyoming for two weeks of hiking with Dan, Sue, Rebecca and Alex. Omygod, HOME!

This blog will pause for those two weeks; no doubt I'll dump another half gig or so of pictures into Picasa when we get back, but it may take a few days.

Leaving India this time is weird. On the one hand, I can't WAIT to get out of here (American readers who've been to India will know EXACTLY what I mean). Frankly, I'm exhausted. India is hopelessly overstimulating to a homebody like me. Curiously, India is is an incredibly easygoing place, I think, to most of its residents. When I'm cruising thru the bustees on my bike, no one seems to be in a hurry, and there are people just lounging around everywhere (although, to be fair, the women seem a lot busier than the men...). But this doesn't translate to a middle-class Westerner here on business - not even one who cruises the bustees on a bike.

On the other hand - this has, to some extent, become home. My life here has acquired rhythm. Weekdays - up by 6:30, exercise or browse, maybe call Katy, shower, eat breakfast, go to work. Arrive at the office at 9:15 or so after walking the last bit in from the road, a little sweaty and ready for water and coffee. Read mail, catch up on blogs, do some work. Lunch with Anil. More work, more coffee, maybe chat with Dan late in the day. Fill my water bottles for the night, go home, perhaps via a restaurant. Depending on the hour, play a game of backgammon with Feroz. Then home to mail, more blogs, some browsing and/or reading and then bed.

Weekends: laundry, then hop on the bike in search of something new. Come home and blog about it, go get chaat, come home and stretch and go to bed.

Wash, rinse, repeat.

I'll miss India when I'm gone - and I can't wait to go.