Inside the Walls

We got an unusually solid night's sleep (after a sparse one on the plane) and woke up at 8:30, ready with a plan. Because we knew that Helen's knee was not a walking knee, we thought we should go out and take a walk before we started the day together. It was the perfect temperature, 11 degrees C, and cloudy. The best for walking. We went out the door, took a right, went a half a block to the underground passageway that goes underneath the roundabout, and came up at a gate that goes through the wall.  The wall itself is really two parallel walls, about 20 feet apart, filled in with dirt. This is one of only a few complete city walls in the world, and this one survived because it was built after most of the era of attacking and plundering was over -- they used the Roman and medieval walls as a starting place and did a renovation and expansion in the 16th century. Nowadays the top of the walls make a public park with a 2 1/2 mile circumference.  Lots of people walk on the path, and bikes weave in and out between the walkers. We walked for a while and then came down into the city and wiggled our way back to the gate. 

Top of wall.

View from wall, on right, into the town.

Sluiceway used for cleaning silk in the old days.

Then we continued on and walked to the house where Helen lives with Martino -- when she got a new knee a while ago she could not possibly climb all the stairs to her beloved apartment, and she needed care. She thought she would be back soon but her knee recuperation has been frustrating and slow, completely different from mine. 

Anyway, we saw the house that is like a museum -- Martino's predecessors were artists and the walls are covered with paintings. There are furnishings that have had meaning to their family for generations.  It's not spooky but it's not cozy either. 

Old sturdy furniture and grandfather's paintings.

Lots more sturdy furniture and family paintings. Note settee on left from Hana and Helen's grandparent's house in Virginia.

Helen's space in Martino's house.

We walked back to the apartment and had breakfast and a shower and then it was time to go back inside the walls for lunch. We met Helen and went to a restaurant that was next to many other restaurants, inside the walls of a long ago Roman amphitheater. Everything is repurposed and built around and reconfigured in Lucca. Every view in every direction is postcard-worthy because it is so ancient and the streets are narrow and the buildings crowd out the sky, even though they are probably only four stories high at the most.  After a leisurely lunch, we wandered across the courtyard to a gelato place and had delicious, ample servings of gelato. 

Alley in Lucca. Note picture over doorway. 

Martino picked us up at the gate (parking is impossible) and took us to Sarah's school -- about 3 years ago she started a school with a friend, teaching English and Italian. It has taken her every waking hour and she has a real business now, but she is discovering that she doesn't actually like the work of running a business. But she is in it for now, and she wishes she had one more classroom because that would make it all much more cost-effective. It is super impressive that this young person (I think she is 31) decided to do this really hard thing and she rented space and did the necessary permit work and hired people and found students. Her mother and I agreed that we would never have attempted such a thing.

Then it was time for a nap so we went back to our respective homes. I was so glad to find a napping couch.  

At 5:00 it seemed like we should go out for one more excursion so off we went, back to the city.  We ended up searching for the tower that we had climbed in 2013, only we couldn't quite remember where it was or what it looked like. We vaguely remembered the story that Helen had told us (it was a tower that was built to be a house and then it had a time when someone laid seige to it). After much wandering through streets, and realizing that it was impossible to navigate by looking up because the buildings were all too close, we finally did find the tower. By then my feet were very sore and Jon's back was tired. The other mission of the expedition was to fill Helen's glass bottles with water from the fountain, so Jon had been carrying this rack of bottles with him the whole time. We filled the bottles and straggled home by about 7:00.

Much better view of tower, as created by Helen. Plus you get Hana.

Water from house tap is fine, except for drinking. Many people get mineral water from the mountains through the public foutains.

Helen was cooking a multi-course meal in her kitchen: bruschetta with butternut squash pesto, a risotto with peas and asparagus, braised rabbit and roasted potatoes, ending with a big pan of tiramisu. We had a civilized family dinner with Martino, Sarah and her boyfriend Philippo. Martino speaks no English and Jon and I speak no Italian but the others slipped back and forth between the languages, barely noticing when they were switching, translating for us. Sarah spent a month on the farm five years ago so she knows a lot about our world and her boyfriend is a gardener for a fancy restaurant. Most of the chatter was about family and the upcoming reunion. We will see the Italians in Boston in less than two weeks.

That was a lot of walking on cobblestones. We are not really conditioned for that yet but we will learn our limits. It's just that we only had one full day in this picturesque place and we didn't want to squander it. We never saw Dustin Hoffman anywhere. He must have been taking Sunday off.

From Dulles to Lucca in One Long Swoop

This trip is basically a continuation of the friends-and-family swoop we finished in January. Now we are traveling much bigger distances between stops. But the general idea is the same: the destinations are people-based and the views along the way are a nice backdrop.  It does seem a little crazy but we have been meaning to go to Rome for almost three years, trying to visit friends who have been posted there with the State Department. Time was running out. 

There was nothing remarkable about our air travel between Virginia and Rome except that we changed planes in Lisbon. Never been there, and have never heard Portuguese spoken (and then clearly translated right after, since it was all the flight crew telling us everything in both languages). What an unusual language. Not one of those that you can just pick out the parts you understand.  The planes were very full and the seats were cramped and there was a lot of turbulence. But there were no bad surprises and we got to make some quick observations about the airport in Lisbon (so many planes just sitting out, sprinkled around, and no need to have a gate with a jetway because it seems that the weather is consistent enough that they can just unload the plane anywhere and then put you on a bus, like it used to be in Hawaii before they get all fancy).  The airport was functional, not too high tone except for the area with all the stores selling stuff that we would never want. But I do understand why Rebecca likes airports so much -- they are contained areas with lots of comforts, plenty of food, nothing that has to happen except waiting for the next plane.

We got to Rome at about 4:00 local time and had to figure out the train system. We did not buy the wrong tickets, we did not get on the wrong train, we did not have to run, we did not end up in the wrong town. Everything went just fine, despite Jon's inevitable fretting as soon as he had bought the tickets. But there was a nice customer care person in exactly the right place and all of our connections were smooth. And it is easy to be in a country where tourists are expected and everything is translated into English -- and Italian makes a lot more sense than Portuguese anyway.

My sweet cousin Helen was waiting at the station in Lucca and she drove us the mile to her apartment, admonishing us that we are now plenty old and we should stop buying the cheap tickets and just get a direct flight. Jon is so unlikely to ever do that... but he did say on the train that this trip we are going to get whatever we want without spending a lot of time thinking about the price.  That sounds good to me. He doesn't mean that he won't look for the better deal on a sandwich but he won't skip the sandwich altogether because it costs money.  

When you use a picture from BeReal, you get more than you want in the corner.

Helen had some delicious lentil soup ready for us and a nice loaf of bread. Tomorrow we will start to be in Italy for real. Right now we are at my cousin's apartment and it is so comfortable (I looked in all the drawers and it feels like home to me except that everything comes in smaller packages). The ceilings are certainly over ten feet up and the windows are about seven feet tall, with wooden shutters on the inside. It's nothing like Virginia, actually.

Three weeks ago we would not have predicted that we would actually be able to make this trip, but Jon's health has stabilized and improved enough that there was no question by the time it was time to pack yesterday. He can do it all. We purposely packed very lightly so that we can walk some distances with our bags, and Jon is setting a good pace.

After 24 Days, 23 Nights, We Are Home Again

We had a lazy morning (woke up late again!), drinking tea and reading and writing before we headed to Carrboro for brunch. The town was still fast asleep on a rainy Sunday morning and we were the first ones  at Acme Food and Beverage Company, where Vicki had made a reservation. Cary and his wife Jay met us there and we had one last round of multi-faceted conversation plus some yummy brunch food (mine was poached eggs on top of a fried green tomato with hollandaise sauce on top of bacon and an English muffin). We learned a lot about the frustrations of a public school teacher who has spent her life in special ed. Cary's wife has her resignation letter written and is prepared to hand it in -- in the middle of the year. Cary is a GI doctor who is working on writing his dissertation to finish his PhD. His specialty is the esophagus. There is no end to the work that needs to be done in this world.

We decided as we were getting in the car that we would take the slower route home, on the smaller roads, even though we could have been home in under five hours taking the interstates. When we crossed into Virginia, that was the first time in 24 days, not even kidding, that we had seen another car with Virginia plates.  The people of Virginia were not traveling where we were going in January. Because we always intend to do it and we never really manage it, we stopped for soft serve ice cream even though it was still a little bit rainy. The Dillwyn Dairy Freeze was the perfect place to finish off our checklist for this trip.

Home in time for family dinner at Anna and Gordon's with a full table of cousins and grandparents and aunts and uncles. Ahhhh.

Here are some of the numbers from the trip:

Total miles: 8384
Households/family units visited: 30
Highest elevation: 7200 feet
Diesel fuel used: 215 gallons
Average fuel consumption: 38 mpg
Average price: $3.46  (highest: $4.799, lowest: $2.959)
Gave away eastbound: 2 crates spinach, 1/2 crate arugula, 1 crate bok choy, 1/2 crate carrots
Gave away westbound: sweet potatoes, butterkin, honey, grains and beans
All along the way: 40 jars canned tomatoes: soup, sauce, stewed
Motel nights: 4
States: 20
Times we stopped at a Maverik gas station: 4
Most nights spent in one place: 4 (Denver) 
Most hours driving in one state: Kansas (two directions, very long state) 
Most miles in one day: 851 (hard and snowy)
Hours left on our audio book still not finished: 10 hours, 47 minutes
Surprise treat: Leila in the car with us for two days of travel
Surprise triumph: replacing a flat tire in one hour on a Sunday afternoon
Oldest people visited: Paul and Mary in Albuquerque, about 89
Youngest people visited: several college students of indeterminate age -- Storm, Kira, Annie
Total spent: $2182

The car did great the whole way, even though it didn't get the same mileage as our last VW Jetta -- but that's because this car is one of those that got caught up in the cheating scandal and now is engineered to lower the emissions of the diesel engine. It ran beautifully, no complaints.

Jon and I did great the whole way, not making each other crazy (after we ironed out a few things on the first leg of the trip), agreeing on all the various choices we had to make, enjoying all the visits and sharing in the storytelling. We have traveled together for 40 years now and we have learned how to keep me happy by planning where we will be sleeping every night and how to keep Jon happy by staying off the toll roads and using the smaller roads whenever possible. We ate all the food we need to eat for a long time. People fed us, generously and well, every day. We stayed healthy, which is pretty amazing.

It was so very nice to see so many people we haven't seen in such a long time, and to find out how everyone is doing, and to be reassured that even though the world seems to be in dire straits in so many ways, all of the people we saw are doing good work, taking care of each other, growing older and having a good time of it. That was a LOT of talking and we are all talked out now.  

Asheville to Chapel Hill

When we are at home, I cannot sleep more than about seven hours at the most. But somehow on this trip, I am waking up later and later. It can't only be the steady march through the time changes. At David and Bernice's house, the curtains are so effective that it was dark as night when we finally checked the clock. It was 8:30!  By this time, the markets would have been open for half an hour already. I was shocked. Being on vacation has reminded me how to sleep late.

We had delicious gluten-free pancakes, expertly made by Dave. This whole trip, we have been on the receiving end of endless generosity. Of course, we would make pancakes for a guest too, but day after day, week after week, people have been feeding us, buying our dinners, giving us their time. I don't think we have ever planned a trip where the visits were so brief and so intensively close together (except for when we go to Boston) but we have been so warmly welcomed everywhere we go. We have not had one visit that felt lukewarm. We have had serious, fast-paced, wide-ranging conversations at each stop. Many of the same themes and topics, but each time with a different set of people who have lived different lives, but who at some time have overlapped with our lives for enough time that we still know each other well. I still think of it as a kaleidoscope of This Is Your Life, where we dip into a different place and time that we shared with someone and then we just start catching up. As Adria said back in Santa Fe, Jon has been "positively loquacious."

In the next blog post, I am certain there will be a series of summaries, because that is the Groisser tradition. But while I am thinking of it, this is a list of the sorts of things we have talked about in the last three weeks:

our children
their children
my mother
grandchildren
my siblings
their family members
farm succession plans
politics and current events
Israel and the war
Jon's work
their work
the farm, past and present
retirement
thoughts on what comes next in life
passions and projects

Interestingly, we have not spent a lot of time on health issues, although there is always some catching up to do. But just about everyone we have visited has been a senior citizen of some age and everyone is in reasonably good health, or is managing whatever is going on. 

Even though it was raining a little bit, we went to the tailgate market (which we would call a farmers market, but that name means something different in Asheville: a farmers market is where large wholesale truckloads get distributed to commercial customers). Asheville has a lot of small farmers and artisans and this market looked very familiar as a mid-winter destination. Meat, eggs, some produce (but not as much variety as we bring to Falls Church in February, to my surprise), herbs and cultures, bread. Tons of customers for not very many vendors. In the summer, this market is three times as big. Every single vendor uses a pop-up tent, most of them are 10x10. Even in this counter-cultural place, our farm would stick out with our tarp frames and tables.

We stopped for only our second picnic table lunch on this trip. By now, we have eaten just about every sort of restaurant/take-out meal we want and eating from our supplies, while not exciting, felt just fine. It was about 60 degrees and I have been looking longingly at picnic tables at every rest area.

We got to Pittsboro pretty much on time, a little bit late because we missed an exit while we were on the family zoom call. The news from Israel is that Liana crawled yesterday for the first time, and that Mika has been grumpy for a few days after being sick and at home. When Benjamin asked Mika why she has been so grumpy with her parents, she corrected him, "I am grumpy with Liana." She continues to be one self-aware and articulate two-year-old. Benjamin's current analysis of the situation in Israel is that this war is speeding up/compressing the events that were inevitably unfolding with the current government and with the historical response to the unfinished questions of existence/co-existence. He might not have said it exactly like that, but that is my one sentence summary.

John and Laurie have lived in their house, on their farm that they created, for about 35 years, I think. Laurie has been the primary farmer and John has been the tractor driver with an ongoing job as an antri-trust lawyer. Like the John we visited in Nashville, this John has been working on local issues (including climate change) the whole time he has been in North Carolina. This John, a friend of my parents from Oberlin, is now 86 and says it is time for his face to stop being on Zoom at all these meetings because it is time for younger folks to step up and take a turn at leadership. Laurie has cut her farming season down to focusing on growing seedlings for gardeners in spring and fall, plus the necessary tomato season. She has been going to the Carrboro Farmers Market (a very rules-based market that honors seniority) for so long that she now has managed to adjust her season down to just 17 weeks of selling, which is the minimum number of weeks to keep your eligibility. We only had a couple of hours to spend over tea and pumpkin bread, but we could have talked for much longer. John was one of the original purchasers of the 400 acres in Wheatland that have become so important to all of us. We need to go back and hear more stories. In his spare time, he plays a lot of tennis and piano -- with a special interest in 20th century composers. 

Our next visit was with Ed and Beth in Durham. They just had a house built for their retirement years because they couldn't find anything they wanted to buy and they wanted to be in Durham. We got there just as they were arriving from Pittsburgh with a carload of stuff (they are in the process of moving). It was pouring down rain and we helped them move the most important stuff inside before having a grand tour of their brand new house. We learned what kinds of new blinds we need to buy to replace all the ones that are worn out in our 24 year old house. We walked to dinner at a cool taco place. They don't live in the city, exactly, they live on a street that is being developed right now -- there were workers still scrambling in the dark and the rain to finish something because these houses are going up fast. But they live within walking distance of plenty of interesting restaurants. Ed and Jon were roommates in college and we have seen him at least once a year for the last 40 years so they can tal02k, fast and furious, without a lot of need for backstory. We will go back to see them sooner than later, I am sure.

And then on to Chapel Hill to see Vicki who used to be a neighbor in Great Falls, the mother of one of Benjamin's good friends in elementary and middle school, a lady I have always liked but never known very well. We visited her once a long time ago and learned how comfortable she is with people like us just dropping by. Her husband died about three years ago and one of their three kids moved in with her, which has been good for both of them. She lives in another one of these houses that are unimaginably large and fancy. I haven't counted the chairs, but I bet the number is closer to the house in Oak Park than any other.

Kansas, Missouri, Arkansas, Tennessee, Mississippi, Tennessee, North Carolina

Or to put it another way -- Wednesday, Thursday, Friday.

A lot of driving, a lot of fog, my pants don't really fit anymore, we are still on schedule.

It took about 10 hours to get from Manhattan to Memphis. Nothing very interesting happened but we did drive on some hilly roads going through the Ozarks. A while ago I asked Jon to look up where Laura Ingalls Wilder lived and we learned that her museum house is closed in the winter, but we did get within 1 3/4 miles of the house, which is kind of cool. Someday when we have a chance to travel during the months between Memorial Day and Labor Day, we will get to see all the places that are closed during the other months.

We met my cousin Howard and his wife Sarah and their son Alex at the Memphis Barbecue Co, their favorite barbecue restaurant. I don't know what we were thinking but we ordered the giant sampler that arrived on a garbage can lid. 

Everything was delicious and we ate way too much. They are gracious, generous hosts, Howard never reveals anything about his political beliefs, we talked about our families and the farm and grandchildren and memories. I am probably the only person who would ever say this, but to me Howard looks so much like my mother's cousin Richert, son of Uncle Norman. It was a lovely visit, the last of the cousin stops. Every one of them was worth the drive.

The next day everyone got up early to go to work or hit the road again in the pouring rain. It was warm and very wet. We went south to Oxford MS to see James and Jordan on their recently-established farm. We could see most of it through the windows of their house. They have been farming for a little over a season and there were still some things we could learn from them. James describes himself as always having YouTube in one hand, and a tool in the other. They are in Mississippi because Jordan's grandmother has a lot of land and there was an empty house to fix up and she was willing to let them come to farm. I asked James how it was to be the new guy in the family and he said it was a work in progress -- he has two counts against him: he is male and he is a Yankee. Jordan comes from a line of matriarchs who are business owners. The grandmother is the tractor driver. If they want some tractor work done, she will do it. James probably came to the right farm for his training when he decided to work at PVF for a year. We were very impressed by all the infrastructure and adaptations and work-arounds they have managed. Their whole market load crams into a Honda Fit. That can't last long. But they do grow a lot of lettuce and leafy stuff. There was a picture of some giant watermelons that barely fit into the Fit.

After a little while on I-40, I asked Jon if we could switch to a smaller road. It was raining, foggy, and there were so many big trucks. When we got onto lesser highway, it was much nicer. We got to John and Rebecca's house on the hill at about 4:30 and had a long evening of catching up with all the BBH gossip, and then I think John and Jon had a lot of sports talk while Rebecca and I talked about a million things that I can barely remember. All I know is that she is working really hard doing a five year project that she got a big grant for, John is very busy in local politics and they are both immersed in the ongoing project of getting a new cohousing community established. It is super ambitious to start a cohousing project from scratch, from finding the land to finding the people to getting it all designed to rounding up the money to getting it built. We had so many advantages when we started to build Blueberry Hill (land, family) and we were only in our 30s. These folks are thirty years older and extremely busy.

This morning we went with John to see the land that will hopefully one day become Burns Village and Farm. He wanted us to tell him if he had missed anything. Like our site, it is rolling and hilly, with trees. But their road access will be much easier and better. I made some suggestions about the farm part. We didn't have anything particularly insightful to say about the cohousing part -- Jack and Patricia have been consulting with them about that.

We forgot to get a picture of Rebecca from the night before.

Next stop: Parnassus Books.  I think this is at least our third visit to this independent bookstore. It is twice as big as the last time we were here. A very nice place. I have been waiting to buy the latest Ann Patchett novel from her store. I wanted a signed copy and there was a whole wall full. 

It was only about five hours from Nashville to Asheville and it wasn't raining. I-40 was fine today.  We got to David and Bernice's by 7:00, crossing back into Eastern Standard Time. They are in good spirits, good health, they see their two grandsons a lot and that is wonderful, they are trying to figure out where they want to spend the next part of their lives. Where they live right now might not be the answer. Dave is still hoping to build his dream house, and that could happen. Honestly, everyone is so ambitious. I keep thinking it is time to ask people what they are planning/thinking about for the next phase of life and they are thinking about building and moving and creating community, or changing jobs (that was Howard). I am always trying to learn what people want to do when they get old, but no one seems to be quite that old yet.

373 Miles on Monday, 469 on Tuesday

We were in Santa Fe yesterday morning and tonight we are back in Manhattan, KS. Not a lot to report in between because I am not that good at describing scenery. All the words from my geology classes keep coming back to me, though, as we zoom through these different landscapes, and I wonder how much of this used to be a lake bed, long long ago. I don't really understand how these mountains are laid out, as so often we seem to be in a bowl, surrounded by mountains, and the highway is headed for the easiest way past or over the next ridge. We were at about 7000 feet when we started out and by the time we got to Denver we had dropped down to 5280. Lots of dry, toasty, scrubby scenery. Lots of places that are ready for water whenever it comes thundering through -- ditches and swales and culverts that probably rarely see water these days.

It took a fair amount of planning and calculating for Jon to find us the right place for us to stop and have simultaneous Zoom calls. Mine was scheduled a month ago, a little randomly since I didn't know exactly where we would be. Jon planned his work call to line up with mine. We crossed the Colorado border and went into a Western-looking town called Trinidad. Found the coffee shop that he had selected, parked on the street right in front (a small town) and got ourselves organized in a dark little side alcove with video games and black light.  I was talking about CSA stuff with Becky and our guy from Local Food Marketplace and I looked pretty spooky in the dark, with a psychodelic poster behind my head. After our calls we drove down the street to the Safeway and shopped for lunch stuff. It is always amazing to find every Safeway in the country looking exactly the same -- we never shop there at home, but the fonts and house brands are reassuring and familiar from my childhood. It seems that butterscotch pudding is no longer something that you can find in the deli section: that was the cross country treat that I remember when we took a break crossing long and boring Texas or Wyoming, all those years ago.

We got to Dena's house exactly as planned at 5 PM. She was completely prepared with dinner. Charles and Lee Lee and Jacob's girlfriend Emily joined us. We used all the chairs in the house, eating appetizers in the kitchen and dinner on the couches. I think Dena's house is a 13 chair house. Cozy and comfortable and not too big at all. We talked about online dating, our various driving perspectives (Lee Lee says she is just like me, Charles says he learned a lot from Jon long ago), our trip, my cousins. Jacob arrived after work, just before we all started to fade.

This morning I talked myself into going out for a walk. It was about 25 degrees and sunny and I knew we would be sitting in the car for eight hours or more. I definitely felt like I was working hard because I am soft and out of shape and we are still a mile up from sea level, but it was a good city walk. I got sweaty, even just marching along on level sidewalks. That was Solo Walk #2 on my new knee. One in the Sierras, one in Denver. When we get back home, it will be less interesting but so much easier at a lower elevation.

After much debating with himself, Jon decided we could take I-70 instead of the smaller roads that he prefers. In the end, it was a good choice because we momentarily forgot we were crossing a time zone and we lost an hour. We had to hustle to get to the barbecue place to pick up dinner before it closed at 7:00. And the last half of the trip was in fog. We could only see the bottom parts of the wind turbines, and the tips of the fins that were closest to the ground. Are they fins? Rotors? Wings? When is the last time anyone saw hundreds of miles of fog? At least the road was straight and not too crowded, and there was no ice. I was not nervous as we hurtled along at 70+ mph.

We got to Paul's house (same Paul as before, in Kansas) where we found the table set, waiting. Jon had made good choices and we ate happily. For some reason, Paul and Jon got all carried away talking about mechanical things while Dan and I listened, halfway. They had left our bed just as we left it (so did Dena) -- it's like coming back home again. We have a load of laundry going, even though we are only five days from home.

Albuquerque and Santa Fe

The motel mornings give us a chance to start slow, read the paper, take showers, write, work, drink something hot. We don't rush.

Jon had chosen a place in Old Town, in case we wanted to walk around and be tourists. It was a little grey and rainy and we were lazy so we just drove around the square (no one was out) and remembered what it all looked like. It looks just the same as it did when we came through when the kids were very small -- a town square surrounded on all sides by gift shops, the buildings all made of a dark adobe, the sidewalks with a roof over them for the people who sit on blankets with all their wares in front of them. There was no one sitting on blankets today.

We met Steve at a restaurant that seems to be a local chain -- Flying Star -- with a long line waiting to order and many tables full. We stayed in our corner booth and talked for a few hours. Steve is completely up to date on all current events, has a lot of opinions about everything, has a few rants, and is the kind of person who does the research when he doesn't understand something. He told us he had gone back just this morning and read the original Dred Scott decision because it is always interpreted for us through the media and he wanted to understand it for himself, now that there is the question of whether our country has ever been a racist country, as a matter of policy (Nikki Haley claimed it has not). He was amazed to find the level of detail in that ruling, documenting the Court's decision that Black people were not citizens and not entitled to the rights and privileges of White people. Then he kept on looking to see how that case came to be in front of the Supreme Court. It was an effort to avoid the Civil War, clarifying what the national policy was. And he also found plenty of historical evidence that, contrary to Trump's uneducated thought that the Civil War could have been avoided through negotiation, that there were intense efforts to negotiate and the South would not entertain the idea of abolishing slavery.  Anyway, there was plenty to talk about. He said he once took a long survey that was on some morning show and at the end his score showed him as 100% a traditional liberal. We haven't had a chance to talk to Steve like that for many years. It was great.

A short drive out of town to Corrales where our family has stopped to visit a friends-from-Oberlin family for over 50 years. They bought a lot on an empty road and they proceeded to build a passive solar house, a little bit at a time. Every time we came to visit as we went cross country, we would find their house one room bigger. They always had a grand plan, and now it is finished. A south-facing house with a wonderful view of the flat valley and a mountain in the middle distance, although there are now many houses built all the way up the hill to their house and beyond. Paul was an English professor at UNM and Mary has been a local preservationist/historian. They are my mother's age and they still have projects to finish. They are glad to be in good health and we had a lively visit. Mary said, "This time might be the last time we see you. Next time you come by we might be dead." It certainly doesn't feel like that right now. They are still pretty ambulatory, taking care of themselves, wrestling with technology, and their daughter lives in the house right next door. They didn't like the retirement places they visited. They don't have a plan but they would love to just melt away in place. Their hearing is not as good as it was but their personalities and senses of humor are completely and hilariously intact. They say that their three kids are discouraged about their work lives because, while they are all successful and have good jobs, they work for big corporations and that is getting worse and worse.

We continued on through the scenic New Mexico landscape up to Santa Fe. We are alternating between Jon's podcasts of "If Books Could Kill" and the new book by Abraham Verghese, "The Covenant of Water." In fact, we haven't been listening all that much because we have plenty to look at and talk about, but these have been the soundtracks of this trip.

We got to Adria's house at the same time as her mom was arriving to join us all for dinner. The last time we came to visit was 13 years ago, and we know this because it was the winter before Harper was born. Adria and David have three lively, friendly, gorgeous, super sharp children who are now teenagers. They sat down to dinner with us, staying in the conversation even though they all had things they would rather be doing, I am sure. Finn is at home these days, homeschooling himself as he prepares to take the GED (high school was no good for him) and reading The Odyssey. Delilah is in the ninth grade and completely self-sufficient in her studies, Harper is a sweet sixth grader who could be 17 except that she still has limits on her screen time, carefully monitored by her parents. They all have chores to do in the house (we never managed that) and there is a small amount of complaining but mostly they just do them quickly and effectively -- putting away dishes, washing dishes, laundry. Adria has always been an amazing mother. David was away this weekend so we missed him. Adria gave us their bedroom, she slept in Delilah's bed and Delilah slept on the couch. Delilah reminds me completely of her aunt Diana, in looks and speech patterns. It was nice to be in the middle of their lives for an evening.