Hi Fam-- I realized as I was cleaning out my in and out boxes that I haven't really sent a newsy letter in a while-- Julie has called faithfully, and Jerry --and I know Mir, you are up to your arse in alligators in various swamps.
It is a gorgeous early fall Labor Day weekend here-- the Gresches have gone to Ashland to load up Elsie's basement with wood for her back-up furnace and to harvest the last berries and vegetables from her gardens. I am at the end of my first week back from Maine and finally feel sort of here.
This week I went to a concert in the square downtown-- polka, folk, cajun--all sorts of music by a very energetic group --the lead female played about 7 instruments and sang, too--the square was FULL-- about 2,000 people--all very social and Wisconsin-looking-- pretty white crowd, too--a few Hmong and other Asians and a very few black persons sprinkled in the happy crowd. I walked with Lily--about a 20 minute walk-- and met the Gresches==Anna was equipped with snacks and Al read the paper while Anna and I visited about the news with music blaring in the background.
Wednesday and today I went to the farmers' market, which is along the river, near downtown. Wednesday it was small-about 12 vendors--all Hmong and Amish-- today it was much bigger-- maybe 30 vendors-- and such riches of gorgeous, truly locally grown vegetables and flowers, honey, maple syrup, cheese, meat and processed meats of grass-fed animals, etc. All for a third of what any of it would cost in a supermarket-=-except the honey and syrup, which are normal prices. But fresh dug potatoes, tomatoes that "swam 5 minutes ago" as we used to say at the farm and other goodies are cheap cheap cheap.
Today I met my friend Mark, the alcoholic welder who works for Al between welding jobs and keeps Lily for me a lot-- he is in LOVE with Lily and she with him-- he asked to have her last night, so we met up at the market to pass her off. Then we went to the back of the market to the flume along the river built for kayakers and watched a lot of kayakers practicing running rapids, turning around, turning over, etc. It was so colorful--the Wisconsin version of colorful lobster boats, as it were.
Then Lily and I walked back, me listening to Rumpole stories which Babbo so nicely provided for me. (Mark is my Wisconsin version of Warren, but not so compliant and companionable--he is usually partially wasted, totally a mess, argumentative and negative. A smart guy who CANNOT get his shit together. His brother, who is way more functional (he is a top-level welder at a plant outside of Milwaukee)--but also lacking a few neural pathways-- got arrested this week for an illegal left turn--AND for having no driver's license--it was suspended a year ago and not reinstated because he did not go to DUI school. A cascade of bad judgments-- Mark is even worse-- finally it gets very tiresome...Al loses patience with the whole scene about once a week. He has to call Mark the night before he wants him to work and remind him not to drink in the AM--and then calls in the AM to remind him again-- rarely works, though....and Lutheran Al is totally disgusted-=-but employs Mark, who appears to have no other idea of how to get work when not welding...)
Last night, while Mark had Lily, I went north about 17 miles to Merrill-- I went to an antique store Anna G introduced me to last week to pick up a bowl for her and one I had put on lay away--a green glass bowl with a lid, sort of like a large refrigerator box-- gorgeous. Then I had the traditional mid-west Friday night fishfry at a local family restaurant--Skippers : "No one sails away hungry." The fish was not QUITE as good a fresh-caught Maine fish, but over all very tasty-- this little frumpy restaurant is special because it has a "patio"--indeed, a cemented empty slot next door with nice wire mesh tables and umbrellas and a little Italian fountain at the end surrounded by large pink petunias. Very pleasant place to read the paper and eat.
I stayed for dinner because I wanted to see Ratatouille, which opened at the little local theater in Merrill last night-- $4.00 senior ticket, too! It isn't as quaint as the Milbridge one-screen theater where I saw Harry Potter this summmer, but almost. Ratatouille is WONDERFUL-- no kid flick, really--and a paeon to good cooking and the restaurant business, if you ask me. Very odd to have rats as heroes--but that is the joy of movies, huh?
Yesterday during the day, since Al was not employing him then Mark and I worked on my patio-- when I moved in, Al had put in a patio door on the south side of my living room to let in more light--it then took months of prodding to get him to put in stairs down from the door to the grass, and by late spring I had decided to add a patio at the bottom of the steps.
There is a NICE patio between the back of the house and the garage and little barn along the alley, but the lady upstairs uses that and her huge pit-bull is tied to the fence beyond it every day and uses the tall grass next to the little barn as his own poopatorium,(and has for 3 years-- he is never walked-just tied out three times a day) so it isn't a very inviting place to sit. The house is sort of long and narrow and has quite a bit of yard along the south ( the long side, which faces a neighboring house), so decided to make the end of that yard, which is where the door from the living room comes out, my own patio area. Mark and I laid weed blocking cloth, then special gravel, then red paving blocks--it will be pretty nice once it is done, but I need more blocks. I'll have my little fountain (the dolphin from Newport--remember, Julie--I had it on the balcony outside my room at Dwight? And behind my house in Columbus.) alongside the patio and will put up a couple of lattice panels to make it a little private--then lots of pots.
The steps are terrific-- I have them filled with flower pots on the side where the door does not open. My gorgeous hibiscus is loving the sun out there, too.
I have lots of weeding to do in the beds I planted before I left for Maine, but thanks to my neighbors, who watered, almost every thing I planted survived. The garden and patio keep Anna G's hopes up that I will stay in this house a while-- til the end of the blinkin' degree anyway.
Anna has had a tough couple of weeks-- she has had light vaginal and urinary bleeding since mid-July and lots of pain in her lower back--she has been undergoing zillions of tests and fortunately for her, the doctors seem to be really paying attention and doing all they can to figure it out. The urologist ruled out anything at all worrisome in that system this week, so she was very relieved-=-but there is more to discover in the other system. She has never been so close to a breakdown before--- she calls all the time and we are together a lot. It is what she dearly wanted- a sister, as it were.
Her friend Jan--whom Babbo and Miriam know-- still has no job and is slipping further into serious depression--it has been almost two full years now since she lost her job in Chicago.(She is the one whose mother has slipped far into dementia, too--Jan keeps her at home because they live off the mother's SSI benefits). Anna tries her darndest (and that is pretty good, as you know) to keep Jan busy and fed and distracted, but finally Jan is resisting. Very sad to see. Jan did a wonderful job keeping my houseplants alive while I was in Maine--but she will not socialize or call or do anything she is not prodded into doing.
I have a list a mile long of work I am pushing away at. September will be busy travel-wise-- the 12th I go to Rochester, NY to start a new project with ESOL teachers there (it will be the second night of Rosh Hashanah; maybe I will do a dinner here for friends on Tuesday)-- I expect to go back several times this year to visit the teachers.
Then to Florida in the last week of Sept for a couple days at an adult literacy conference. I will also confer with a wonderful lady who is a researcher at U Fl -Gainesville-- she wants me to be expert consultant on a huge federal grant she has to study non-literate adult ESOL learners---couldn't be better for my doctoral work! They will pay me to design tests for these learners and then study the results!
At the end of Sept. I go to Madison to the Wisconsin TESOL Conference, where I will present and will facilitate a panel for the people from the tech college here. They have a wonderful project to help older ESOL teens transition to career or college courses out of high school, where they did not have enough time to do the ESOL they need for college. This will launch my year of involvement in Wisconsin--the same man who arranged for so many workshops for me to do last year will pay me to do this, and then we will plan with programs what other professional development they want me to do.
Soon after that, I head off to S.Dakota to do a keynote at a conference, then a couple of sessions for them--next to DC to keep going on my work at the charter ESOL school--that will be the 9th 10 and 11th-- as you know, I will head back home through Detroit, for Moji's Nikki's huge birthday/celebratory bash.
I am scheduled to go to Mid-state NY on the 24th of October--and am planning to either be in Maine before that or to go to Maine after that for a couple of weeks. Take note, Miriam-- maybe you and a few friends could come up.
Meanwhile, I am writing stuff like crazy-- articles, courses, and lit-review chapters. It is a rich time for me. I tried hard to get that lady from Salem State College in MA to consider being on my doctoral committee, but she turned out to be a fizzle--she answered e-mails three weeks late, and was languid about setting up a personal encounter or a telephone conference, so I told her to forget it. My co-author from U of Minn, who is an ESOL person herself, suggested a lady at U-Mass Amherst, whose publishing at least, seems to coincide amazingly with my work. I am going to contact her this week to see if she will consider it.
On the home front I have been plagued by failure of Charter Communications to figure out how to reinstate my bundled services after a vacation interruption , which THEY suggested and implemented!! Over 8 days, I have called 11 times and spoken to now l7 people--quite of few of whom promised to have service up and running in "the next 24 hours". Since it is now Saturday and I have no service, they were all unsuccessful. I keep reminding them when they put me on hold for another 30 minutes, that I am calling them on MY Time on MY cell phone plan--that only serves to make them apologize more for putting me on hold. I was unfailingly polite-- really, Julie, I was-- until yesterday, when I got extremely testy when that 17th person started asking for my name, address, phone # SSN etc-- AGAIN.
Today I will just go to their voice menu and instead of bullying through by pushing 0 over and over until I get a human, I will select the option to disconnect service-- and go to Verizon--surely they cannot be WORSE than this-- I have to say, Al warned me heartily about this last fall, but until now I had no real reason to complain.
In the meantime, as you know, I have been able to grab a weak, but usable free signal from some neighbor and usually can do e-mail or internet work with little problem--sometimes the signal fades and sometimes connection is slow, but mostly it works.
I have resorted to DVD's for rare entertainment interludes-- or the live movie, like last night. So maybe I will go the Maine route and have NO external services at all!
Well--must buckle down to some work--- please do write or call when you can. Wisconsin seems far more remote than Downest Maine ever did. I asked Charlie and Barb what they were doing for Labor Day but they are busy--and decided not to invite myself to my aunt's house--and the Robinson's are busy helping their neighbor, who is just back home finally after a terrible accident in Colorado in June left him a paraplegic. The neighbors--60 of them, including Jim, built him a new accessible bedroom and bathroom-- that is community, huh?
Love to you, my fam. Mama
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