The Midwest, the plains

But the roads along the corn fields led to relatives: brothers, nieces, nephews, grand nieces, in-laws...relations defined by genetics, culture, law. The landscape intertwined with kinship. One relative in South Bend lives in an apartment in the former Central High that had been converted into flats. She occupies the space of the former swimming pool, but it is now tiled and carpeted...her studio is in the deep end. A ladder leads through the ceiling into the master bedroom. She, Adrienne Werge, has an installation that recently opened at the Figge Art Museum in Davenport...we stopped there on our trek west. Her meditation of self, Vietnam, the war was moving. And the museum was itself a generous work of space and light, overlooking the Mississippi River whose waters seemed to be riding high.



The museum was almost the last one of this trip (the last was the Danish Museum in Elkhorn where we loaded up on Danish Christmas goods (and some Norwegian fiskeboller). When we arrived back in Fort Collins, we had driven some 4500 miles...it's a far piece, Maryland from Colorado. On the way out I was having problems figuring out why it was going to take so long, but then I had forgotten that you had to cross Ohio in addition to Illinois and Indiana and the rest. But each mile had given us time to observe, to talk, to listen to the radio or i-pod, and just to be...a kind of suspended animation across the eastern broadside of the land.

The Road

We traveled different roads on this trip: the interstate highway system (originally built to speed troops from one side of the continent to the other quickly in case of attack)still rocks in its way. The clarity of the grid, except in major cities, provides a logic for moving east-west, north-south, or on a diagonal. But coming from Fort Collins, the scale of its lanes and the rush of its vehicles in the cities is daunting. And then the back roads...trying to respectfully pass the Amish farmer riding in the same rain that our roof shielded us from. The older highways form a kind of intermediary...slowing down through the towns that funnel cars and trucks through their main streets. Any one day had these different types...at least until we hit Iowa. Then it was just mile after mile of I-80, spread like a black belt across the rolling hills and level corn fields.

The Bay

Our house was on Selby Bay, a cove off the South River, an estuary of the Chesapeake. So it's about water, a resource in short supply in Colorado. I spent as much time as temperature would permit on the dock and on the shoreline in early morning. The sun's rays would reflect off the clouds onto the water...leaving the waters not underneath the clouds to their natural blue/grey. Looking east across the cove, the sun had left a narrow band of unreflecting waters...stunning blue in contrast to the clouds pinks. The bands of color played against the benches on the dock. A good beginning to the day ahead.

Hanging Out

So the main idea of Thanksgiving is hanging out and eating. These are sequential in most cases...the big meal, then hanging out...but sometimes there are variations. Such as wine on the deck looking across the bay. Such as playing cards with friends who flew in from Brussels for the holiday.
Such as checking to see if some of apple pie is still available. Such as having a long, intense discussion about Kant (not). Being anthropologists, Charlotte and I have both had long years of training in hanging out...and then writing it up. Hmmmm....like this blog.

Thanksgiving

Of course before the turkey and mashed potatoes and squash and gravy and asparagus and pies, there is the table setting. Itself a work of art and artifice. The tables were set at Margaret and Tony's house, deep in the woods by the Severn River in Annapolis. We had our full families at the meal plus some friends. When we lived in Maryland, we would exchange Thanksgiving and Christmas/Hanukkah holiday meals. Such occasions were filled with good food, laughter, love. They still are.

Bolton Hill

We came back up to Baltimore on Tuesday to have dinner with Elwin Guild, a friend whom we had not seen for some 15 years. Elwin, Charlotte and I worked together and, more important, helped one another get jobs over the course of several years. I got Elwin a job at the Peace Corps where he then went on to be a country director and now does consulting around the world, forming small trade associations, mainly in eastern Europe. Next week, Kosovo. And Elwin got me a job at USDA when I left the Peace Corps, a move that allowed us eventually to relocate to Colorado. And Charlotte had originally hired Elwin when she worked at USDA.

So the connections are old and significant. And now the connections are rewired. Elwin lives in the Bolton Hill neighborhood of Baltimore...an intact neighborhood of town houses and churches built in the 1880s. Elwin and Joan's house is of that era, but he has added decks, gardens, and a rich and eclectic set of art works, rugs, furniture for the light-filled, high ceilinged rooms. We'll be back.

Marita

On Monday and Tuesday, I was back with Rink and Marita. Marita is beginning to shut down, eating less, less able to communicate, hearing and sight going. The home hospice folks are excellent, especially Sherry, the nurse, who brings a sense of love, focus, humor, activity along with her knowledge of palliative medicines. Rink is the moral compass he always was when we lived down the street in University Park. He is caring, loving, strong, ready to learn what to do in the next step of care.



Also he maintains such an open and welcoming household for the tens of friends, neighbors, co-workers, soccer team members, and family who come to help, to visit, to bring food (check out the refrigerator), to say hello, to say goodbye. Dan came on Tuesday, his regular day, and so I left earlier than usual. But people come all day long...which you can see on http://maketheladyhappy.blogspot.com.


Rink's openness is a gift...Marita's presence in the community is a gift...they have always been so much a part of our family's life. And now they have given us so much more.

Baltimore

Tony, my brother-in-law, drove up to Baltimore on a MILA retreat. MILA stands for "Miller In-Law Association," an organization we founded three decades ago. Its goal is to provide recreational and educational opportunities for in-laws of the Miller siblings to network and share their experience and insight. A highlight of our Baltimore retreat was the discovery of an excellent Indian restaurant on North Charles Street just a few blocks from the Walters Art Gallery...a 19th century mansion turned into a wonderfully complete museum. We caught a few of the exhibits...great medieval collections, including some stunning medalians...and, then, headed back toward Annapolis. An urban MILA retreat...our first.

robwergeontheroad: Marita

robwergeontheroad: Marita

Marita

Most of my time in Maryland has been spent with Marita and Rink, neighbors up our old block in University Park. We moved away nearly 12 years ago, but we have kept in close contact over those years, attending each other's children's weddings, visiting whenever we can, checking in on email and telephone. Breast cancer is creating havoc with Marita's abilities: her hearing and eyesight are failing. A wheelchair has replaced her walking, running, playing soccer. The hospice nurse, social worker, chaplain make their rounds.

Yet Marita is surrounded by the great love of the love of her life, Rink. All day neighbors, friends, co-workers, and family come by and offer their visits, their time, their help. Charlotte came by on Friday and make some good Peruvian ceviche for Rink and did up the time line for his cooking on Thanksgiving. Vanessa brings the grandchildren by; their energies and noise fill the house. The comings and goings and love of these folks pass the hours.

Down to DC

We came down from Pennsylvania past the Cotoctin Mountains. We have fond memories of those hills, having spent long weekends and summers at the Quaker camp belonging to Baltimore Yearly Meeting. The apple trees were heavy with fruit. And pumpkins were set in audacious piles.


Before we knew it, traffic had begun to pile up; population density grew; tall buildings sprung from former wheat fields. We were in the city, the District of Columbia. I was able to catch a small, precise exhibit at the National Gallery: George De Forest Brush. The show covered only his renderings of American Indians…not captured by an ethnographic lens, but by one that emphasized their artistic sensibility…such as a sculptor showing an Aztec lord his recent work.



Outside, away from the quiet of the gallery, traffic jostled in the streets. The night lights came on the vast bureaucratic offices that line the mall

Gettysburg

We came across the mountains of southern Pennsylvania to the town of Gettysburg. In the morning we visited the massive new Visitor's Center with its museum, film and cyclorama which left us with a deepened sense of history and tragedy. We toured a bit of the battlefield and the hundreds of monuments to the regiments, the armies, the men who fought here. The moment seemed particularly fitting, given the election of Obama, and the role the battle and the war played in the end to slavery (not that long ago)and the continuing struggle for freedom.

Yet in a more political sense, the war was about "once in, could you leave the union? like, if you don't like the new president...in that case, Lincoln...could you just go bye-bye?" Well, the answer was "No" and it was delivered at places like Gettysburg. And the monuments, like the one above of the muse writing down the names of the dead from a New York regiment, testify to the cost of that "no."

Cocktail Hour

But, of course, it is not all about the road. Sometimes it's about the evening at the end of the road for that day. We load the coolers into the motel along with the bags of clothes, the computer, the detritus of everyday life. And whilst I go out for a walk, Charlotte cuts the cheese, puts out the crackers, cuts up an apple, opens the wine (vino verde for most of the trip), gets out the wine glasses from their bubble wrap, lowers the lights and it's cocktail time. So is the trip about the road...as Rink calls it "the Obama-Werge-Miller-Canas Victory Tour"...or is it about cocktail time? Ask me after a few glasses.

Off the Highway

So you turn off the highway into the sprawl of a small town in Pennsylvania and your eye catches the sign for "Keilbasa and Kraut $4.95" at the Summit Dinner and man, is it good but way too much for lunch so you spot the county courthouse some blocks away and to walk off the keilbasa and mashed potatoes you head up the hill and the courthouse (once you pass through security) is a gem. Built 1904 and restored in this century. Just blows your socks off. On the journey, it is the surprises, the unexpected discoveries, that so delight.

Across the Missouri, the Mississippi, the Ohio

We crossed the Missouri at Kansas City, the Mississippi at Saint Louis, the Ohio at Wheeling. The sprawl of corporate motels, restaurants, gas stations does not hide the economic decline of these cities and the towns along the way. I-70 parallels the first national highway, well on the first, Interstate 40 whose broad-backed bridge spans the Ohio at Wheeling. We stumble across history...the marker at the Federal Customs House (1795) at Wheeling that housed the convention in 1861 at which West Virginia succeeded from Virginia in the opening days of the Civil War...and the old Victorian houses of North Wheeling that, despite their grandeur, can't seem to resist the wear of time. Nor can the myriad churches, like "The Church of God and Saints of Christ" which even with its classic proportions, do not overcome the need for paint and repair and worshipers. Still details of an earlier, more prosperous, time emerge around corners to delight the senses, to remind us of a more optimistic time along the river.

We arrived in Kansas City...actually Kansas City, Kansas across the Kansas River from Kansas City, Missouri. We had made stops along the way: "The Cathedral of the Plains" a massive church and convent built by Germans from Russia's Volga River. Each family was tasked with bringing 260 stones from a distant quarry to build the edifice. The giant easel in the town of Goodland with a replica of Van Gogh's Sunflowers 24 feet by 32 feet (the easel is 80 feet high). The Huron Cemetery in which the last of the Wyandot Indians (originally from the area of Lake Huron) were buried after being swindled out of lands in Ohio and Michigan. The Wyandots had actually organized themselves into a territorial government and applied for admission into the United States, but Congress had rejected their application because they were Indians.


We spent a few hours at the Nelson-Atkins Art Museum with its new addition built partly underground...world class collections. Oldenberg's shuttlecocks on the lawn...perhaps not that different in concept from Goodland's Van Gogh. One of my favorite paintings was Jacobshaven's scene of the Platte River at sunset. So art, history, the highway miles converge as we move east.

Across the High Plains

We headed east across the high plains two days after the election. Time to reconnect with the landscape; time to reconnect with family and friends back on the east coast. Our first stop, Deep Trail, a small town hanging on for dear life on the side of I-70. The restaurant/bakery we had lunch in was closing down that day. The business was moving west to another town along I-70, closer to the sprawling suburbs of Denver.

Yet we have connections to Deer Trail. The town had once been home to a Friends (Quaker) Meeting. Most of its members had left years ago, but the daughter of one of the members now worships with us in Fort Collins Friends Meeting. This year when the Deer Trail meeting was formally "laid down," Fort Collins Friends received the last of the funds that was being held in the name of Deer Trail.
So we are connected and reconnected again...this prairie and the western foothills.

Election Night

Well were we happy? Yes, along with several hundred Obama and Democratic Party supporters who jammed into the ballroom (well, I'm not sure they actually hold any balls there)of the Fort Collins Marriott to yell, scream, cry, shout, and jump for joy at the results of the election.

God, the lifting of this burden, the feeling that the country had been hijacked by the radical right wing, that the people have been turned over as prey to the corporations, that the values of the country have been turned upside down...over, over, over. At least for now. Now it's just back to eternal vigilance.

Charlotte spent most of the past year working on one campaign or another. A favorite? Betsy Markey finally overthrew Marilyn (constitutional amendment against single-sex marriage) Musgrave. After six long years. Still waiting to hear a concession call from Marilyn...sore loser? It's been amazing to watch the transformation of Colorado over the past twelve years...moving beyond the strangle hold of the right wing of the Republican party to something more moderate, something reasonable. Something that reflects the values of the country.

Iron City Cemetery

The Aspen are gold; the days sunny; the nights cool. I stayed two nights at a campground at the foot of Mt. Princeton, just up the road from the hot springs. On Saturday I set out on the bike to ride to St. Elmo, an old mining town at the end of Chaulk Cliff canyon, taking the old road along the north side of the Chaulk Creek.
Iron City Cemetery has been lovingly restored by volunteers with the Forest Service. At the entrance, a sign lists the names of persons buried in the cemetery and the dates and cause of death. The brief notes tell of hard times, hard lives. Puts the ache in my legs and back into perspective.


After breaking camp, I rode over Poncha Pass to the Orient Land Trust. Had rented a cabin at the hot springs for a few days. Explored parts of the valley, hiked up Black Canyon (black, I guess, because it is so narrow the sun seldom reaches the path), got some massage work (I mean "work") from Apple (aka David Baker), hung out in Saguache at a place where Apple was having car work done and where the unfolding news of the day concerned the murder of a local woman, her violent demise, and the arrest of a suspect...all while the daily work of fixing vehicles, trading work jobs, finding value in someone's trash, and drinking beer goes on.

So I sit by the window and process my experience through the blog. And then head back to town.

Ingrid's Wedding

We went out to Rhoade Island in early September for Ingrid and Geoff's wedding. The weekend event was held by a small lake in the still deep forest of New England, not far from the sea. We stayed with friends and family in large cabins, taking walks and rowboat rides when the sun was out, hanging out in lounges and rooms when rain was falling. Hanging out led to the invention of a variant of Ingrid and Geoff's favorite sport...the variation coming from the use of rolling chairs to play ultimate as in "Ultimate Deskchair Frisbee" We ventured into downtown Providence to their favorite brewpub, drinking beer being a second favorite sport. The ceremonies were laced with informality a la Quaker meeting with lots to drink and eat and dance to afterwards. Fireworks above the lake around 3:00 am (was that the conclusion or just a midway point?) And yet in my mind's eye, a little girl plays in a playground (was it the brief months we spent in Atlanta?) and an older girl carries the dog Llana around the living room on a pillow on her head. Hmmm...who knows where the time goes. I guess it is all just part of the mathematical dimensions of spacetime. But not getting bogged down in theories, Ingrid and Geoff headed off to Banff to the mountains, lakes and open meadows that they love. May they have many more days, years, and lots of spacetime to engage together those environs.

Boston

Rode up to Boston on the train from Providence where preparations were in full swing for Ingrid and Geoff's wedding (I interpreted my job as one of "getting out of the way.") I walked from the South Side station over to the new Institute of Contemporary Art...the last time I had been in Boston it is was not yet finished. The building is cantilevered out over the waterfront of Boston Harbour. Yet more remarkable for me was the exhibit of sculpture by Anish Kapoor. His work with mirrors, voids, reflecting and refracting surfaces creates an interactive environment in which the viewer creates the art by becoming part of it. His best known work is the Bean in Millennium Park in Chicago but the enclosed museum walls provides a more intimate way of exploring his concepts of space. One of his most impressive works "Sky" was installed at Rockefeller Center in New York...again Anish plays with the sense of scale and the mystery of who we are, where we are, where are we going.
After that museum I just wondered the city...visiting the Athenaeum (founded 1807 as a subscription library and art museum). Besides its art works, it has about half the known collection of Washington's personal papers and Bibles which King George sent to the colonies to try to turn them from revolution to religion. Didn't work. So somewhat stunned by history and heat, I continued through the Boston Commons to the Public Library whose courtyard offered a shaded colonnade, sculpture, fountains and that sense of a secular/sacred space which is only found in cities.