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.