This morning, Max came into our bedroom where I was slowly waking to yet another really hot day, and he asked me if I wanted to see something cute. I thought HE was being cute, but he told me to hurry and ran out of the room down the stairs. Bleary-eyed, I followed him into the sunroom, where he was standing looking out the back door, which is glass and is surrounded by more glass. He was watching two little foxes playing with each other! They were frolicking around, gamboling through our monkey grass, doing four-footed jumps onto each other, and rolling around in the back yard. We stood transfixed while they played hide-and-seek around the huge oak tree, peeped at each other through the now very-thick hosta plants and mock orange hedge, and ran back and forth from the monkey grass to the hedge. Max took some pictures with his phone, but we were too far away to capture a really good image.
Finally, one of them took off into the hedge and the other waited for him to come back. He stood very still, intently staring into the hedge, and while he was doing that, the vanished one sneaked up behind him. Before they met in the middle, I noticed some more movement in the hedge. The third little fox appeared! They chased each other around for a while and then rested in the now almost flattened monkey grass. And then, like all young children, they became bored and wandered away.
I think we will be getting up early tomorrow.
Tuesday, July 26, 2011
Saturday, July 16, 2011
Horrible Bosses
I loved this movie. Period. Jason Bateman, Jason Sudeikis, and Charlie Day were absolutely hilarious in a raunchy comedy about how the working man can be subject to the most horrible bosses and humiliation imaginable. I can't really tell you what the movie was about other than how it is to work for someone who has power and is particularly cruel with that power. I have been fortunate in my working life to avoid, for the most part, those kinds of supervisors, but the one person I worked for who was just not very bright made my life miserable. In that way, I could empathize with the three main characters and how their lives were made miserable for at least 40 hours a week.
When I become stressed in a movie, anticipating the next surprise or the next move by a character, I have a tendency to get up, go to the back of the theatre and pace. I did that for most of "A Simple Plan." Today, I really wanted to pace, but the theatre design had no place for my pacing. Instead, I had to sit suffering through the suspense, wondering whether the characters' stupidity would turn out right or wrong. True to my usual feel for plot, I had that part figured out pretty early, but how to get to the end caused me heart palpitations!
The three guys were really well cast and played their parts well. I would love to have known how much of their "schtick" was ad lib, and how much was brilliantly written.
This is one movie I would like to see again to see what I missed while I was pacing in my mind. Maybe tomorrow! Anyway, for those of you who love buddy movies, and movies with interesting plots, and movies with so much stupid that you can't stand it, "Horrible Bosses" is for you.
When I become stressed in a movie, anticipating the next surprise or the next move by a character, I have a tendency to get up, go to the back of the theatre and pace. I did that for most of "A Simple Plan." Today, I really wanted to pace, but the theatre design had no place for my pacing. Instead, I had to sit suffering through the suspense, wondering whether the characters' stupidity would turn out right or wrong. True to my usual feel for plot, I had that part figured out pretty early, but how to get to the end caused me heart palpitations!
The three guys were really well cast and played their parts well. I would love to have known how much of their "schtick" was ad lib, and how much was brilliantly written.
This is one movie I would like to see again to see what I missed while I was pacing in my mind. Maybe tomorrow! Anyway, for those of you who love buddy movies, and movies with interesting plots, and movies with so much stupid that you can't stand it, "Horrible Bosses" is for you.
Sunday, July 10, 2011
Tribute to a friend
My friend Shelley Wuellner died this past week. She was diagnosed last December with a malignant brain tumor, and the past seven months have flown but seem to have lasted forever.
There is no good cancer diagnosis, but the heart-wrenching situation of this one was particularly cruel: Shelley's brother was killed years ago in a hunting accident. Her father had died earlier, and for many of the years I knew Shelley, her mother Buffy lived in Montana, where Shelley grew up. Eventually, Buffy came to live in our town, spending her time with her daughter and her four grandchildren. Shelley was a loving and dutiful daughter, making sure that her mother found friends and a church, integrated well into our little town, and lived in a lovely home. When circumstances eventually dictated that Buffy live with assistance, Shelley took meals to her every day, because, among other things, Shelley was a wonderful cook, and her mother was happier eating the meals Shelley prepared for her.
Buffy experienced bad health over the past few years, and Dave and Shelley rarely left town for more than a few days at a time because of Buffy's decline. Around Thanksgiving last year, Buffy became ill, and then seemed to recover. However, something went wrong, and she was hospitalized, dying the day after Thanksgiving. We attended Buffy's funeral the next week, and then Shelley and her family left for a "whole family" vacation the next week. They went to Florida, and the report was that everyone had a wonderful time.
Only 12 days prior to Christmas, I was preparing for a difficult cantata and vespers service at my church. The music, though I loved playing it, was hard, and I had to practice. The vespers service went well, and I invited my mother and Don and our friends Kevin and Kim over after the service to have some chili. I received the phone call as I was drinking a glass of wine.
I saw that the caller was Dave, and thought that they might like to come for chili, too, if they were back home. They were not home, and he had something else to tell me. He had noticed, on the vacation, that something was not quite right with Shelley. Usually someone who remembers every number she ever saw or heard, she was becoming confused about airplane departure times for each of the children. She couldn't remember what day which child was leaving for home, and she had felt bad enough on the vacation to spend a whole day in bed. Later, Dave told us that he noticed that the left side of her face didn't look quite right, and while she was walking, he believed he saw her left foot kind of dragging. Obviously, he is quite a diagnostician, but I believe even he was unprepared for the eventual diagnosis: a malignant brain tumor deep in the right side of her frontal lobe, where no surgeon could touch it.
On the telephone, before he told me, he said that he was calling with bad news and asked if I were sitting down. I immediately thought that something was wrong with one of their children - children I had watched grow up. So I sat down, and he told me the news that to this day is stunning in its tragic finality. Two weeks after burying her mother, Shelley was told that her life was coming to an end.
Max and I decided to go to St. Louis to see them the next day, and so we went, hoping that something would be different by the time we got there. But such was not to be. She didn't really want us there, I believe, she herself not having fully come to terms with what she had been told. But that was all right with us, because we were there anyway. I saw her only briefly on that day, and that was the last time I got to see and hear her looking and sounding like Shelley.
I can't even remember how we originally met, but our first real contact was when she and Dave had a party to christen the kitchen that they had redesigned and rebuilt in their house down the street from where we now live. And food was a real connection with us. Our friendship was more a couples' friendship than a "girly-girl" friendship. She and I not only had the connection of food and cooking, we both understood and enjoyed numbers, as well as the fact that our husbands liked each other. We didn't have tea or go get our nails done or other things like that. We met over dinner or brownies and cocktails or wine and talked about what our families were doing and where we would like to go for our next vacation.
In fact, because we so loved food, we all decided to go to New Orleans for an eating vacation. We picked out restaurants and hotels and made reservations six months prior to the trip, but had really no other ideas in mind about what to do for entertainment. The food was enough.
Before that, though, Shelley and Dave had been great support for our infertility. Max and I wanted a baby, but a baby wasn't happening. Parents four times themselves, they gave us encouragement and a place to rant and rave when we were disappointed that I was not pregnant.
And so it is no surprise, that about ten days after we returned from New Orleans, a gorge-fest that took us to Commander's Palace, Pascal's Manale Restaurant, and Brightsen's, Max and I told them first that we would be decorating the small room in our apartment as a nursery. As Max always says, Emily was born nine months and five minutes after we checked into the Fairmont right on the edge of the French Quarter. And when my pregnancy became difficult and high-risk, I called Shelley before I called the doctor when I felt that something wasn't going quite right. Furthermore, Dave and Shelley were there when Emily was born, which was the same day their daughter turned six.
A year or so later, we moved to a house right down the street from Dave and Shelley, and I think we have worn out the sidewalk between the two houses. We have watched their son be the first to be married and now the first to announce that a grandchild is on the way, we will be there when their son Adam will marry Carrie this fall in Chicago, they were here when Emily graduated from high school, and next week, I will cook for Dave the birthday dinner I have made almost every year since the New Orleans trip: Pascal's Manale barbecued shrimp and chocolate pound cake. I add a salad every couple of years or so to make us feel as if we are eating healthy, because the shrimp dish is made with about two pounds of butter.
We have participated in a girls' birthday group and a couples' dinner club. When I hosted the dinner club and wanted a particular dish to be just perfect, I always asked Shelley to make it because she had incredible cooking skills, and I knew I could count on her.
I also enjoyed her tales of her very successful day trading. What a woman! Not only did she take a risk, she capitalized on it! I often felt like Fairchild, the driver in "Sabrina," finding out what good investments would be using her skills and information instead of being industrious on my own.
So this terrible thing has come to pass. The past seven months have been difficult, but the coming months will be difficult as well. I think of the beautiful wedding that will occur in October, and of the new baby who will be born in November, and my heart aches for Shelley, who will not be here to celebrate each event. I know these will be bittersweet times for her family, too, and I pray for their peace during these exciting times, times that will not be quite what they had hoped for or expected.
I also think of the simple fragility and irony of life, and am fearful and awed. I remember the opening line of a poem, although I cannot remember the name or author of the poem: "Oh, world! I cannot hold you close enough!" We talk about someone's being in a better place after that person has died and left this earth, but I find it so difficult to imagine something better than walking down the street for brownies, or waiting for two guests to arrive so that we can dig into butter-laden shrimp, or breaking open a bottle of cabernet and talking about what the kids are doing. My faith says that there is a better place, and I know cancer does not exist there, but I'm sure hoping that enjoying brownies, shrimp, and cabernet with friends does.
Thanks, Shelley, for being my friend, and for giving my life a little bit of you.
There is no good cancer diagnosis, but the heart-wrenching situation of this one was particularly cruel: Shelley's brother was killed years ago in a hunting accident. Her father had died earlier, and for many of the years I knew Shelley, her mother Buffy lived in Montana, where Shelley grew up. Eventually, Buffy came to live in our town, spending her time with her daughter and her four grandchildren. Shelley was a loving and dutiful daughter, making sure that her mother found friends and a church, integrated well into our little town, and lived in a lovely home. When circumstances eventually dictated that Buffy live with assistance, Shelley took meals to her every day, because, among other things, Shelley was a wonderful cook, and her mother was happier eating the meals Shelley prepared for her.
Buffy experienced bad health over the past few years, and Dave and Shelley rarely left town for more than a few days at a time because of Buffy's decline. Around Thanksgiving last year, Buffy became ill, and then seemed to recover. However, something went wrong, and she was hospitalized, dying the day after Thanksgiving. We attended Buffy's funeral the next week, and then Shelley and her family left for a "whole family" vacation the next week. They went to Florida, and the report was that everyone had a wonderful time.
Only 12 days prior to Christmas, I was preparing for a difficult cantata and vespers service at my church. The music, though I loved playing it, was hard, and I had to practice. The vespers service went well, and I invited my mother and Don and our friends Kevin and Kim over after the service to have some chili. I received the phone call as I was drinking a glass of wine.
I saw that the caller was Dave, and thought that they might like to come for chili, too, if they were back home. They were not home, and he had something else to tell me. He had noticed, on the vacation, that something was not quite right with Shelley. Usually someone who remembers every number she ever saw or heard, she was becoming confused about airplane departure times for each of the children. She couldn't remember what day which child was leaving for home, and she had felt bad enough on the vacation to spend a whole day in bed. Later, Dave told us that he noticed that the left side of her face didn't look quite right, and while she was walking, he believed he saw her left foot kind of dragging. Obviously, he is quite a diagnostician, but I believe even he was unprepared for the eventual diagnosis: a malignant brain tumor deep in the right side of her frontal lobe, where no surgeon could touch it.
On the telephone, before he told me, he said that he was calling with bad news and asked if I were sitting down. I immediately thought that something was wrong with one of their children - children I had watched grow up. So I sat down, and he told me the news that to this day is stunning in its tragic finality. Two weeks after burying her mother, Shelley was told that her life was coming to an end.
Max and I decided to go to St. Louis to see them the next day, and so we went, hoping that something would be different by the time we got there. But such was not to be. She didn't really want us there, I believe, she herself not having fully come to terms with what she had been told. But that was all right with us, because we were there anyway. I saw her only briefly on that day, and that was the last time I got to see and hear her looking and sounding like Shelley.
I can't even remember how we originally met, but our first real contact was when she and Dave had a party to christen the kitchen that they had redesigned and rebuilt in their house down the street from where we now live. And food was a real connection with us. Our friendship was more a couples' friendship than a "girly-girl" friendship. She and I not only had the connection of food and cooking, we both understood and enjoyed numbers, as well as the fact that our husbands liked each other. We didn't have tea or go get our nails done or other things like that. We met over dinner or brownies and cocktails or wine and talked about what our families were doing and where we would like to go for our next vacation.
In fact, because we so loved food, we all decided to go to New Orleans for an eating vacation. We picked out restaurants and hotels and made reservations six months prior to the trip, but had really no other ideas in mind about what to do for entertainment. The food was enough.
Before that, though, Shelley and Dave had been great support for our infertility. Max and I wanted a baby, but a baby wasn't happening. Parents four times themselves, they gave us encouragement and a place to rant and rave when we were disappointed that I was not pregnant.
And so it is no surprise, that about ten days after we returned from New Orleans, a gorge-fest that took us to Commander's Palace, Pascal's Manale Restaurant, and Brightsen's, Max and I told them first that we would be decorating the small room in our apartment as a nursery. As Max always says, Emily was born nine months and five minutes after we checked into the Fairmont right on the edge of the French Quarter. And when my pregnancy became difficult and high-risk, I called Shelley before I called the doctor when I felt that something wasn't going quite right. Furthermore, Dave and Shelley were there when Emily was born, which was the same day their daughter turned six.
A year or so later, we moved to a house right down the street from Dave and Shelley, and I think we have worn out the sidewalk between the two houses. We have watched their son be the first to be married and now the first to announce that a grandchild is on the way, we will be there when their son Adam will marry Carrie this fall in Chicago, they were here when Emily graduated from high school, and next week, I will cook for Dave the birthday dinner I have made almost every year since the New Orleans trip: Pascal's Manale barbecued shrimp and chocolate pound cake. I add a salad every couple of years or so to make us feel as if we are eating healthy, because the shrimp dish is made with about two pounds of butter.
We have participated in a girls' birthday group and a couples' dinner club. When I hosted the dinner club and wanted a particular dish to be just perfect, I always asked Shelley to make it because she had incredible cooking skills, and I knew I could count on her.
I also enjoyed her tales of her very successful day trading. What a woman! Not only did she take a risk, she capitalized on it! I often felt like Fairchild, the driver in "Sabrina," finding out what good investments would be using her skills and information instead of being industrious on my own.
So this terrible thing has come to pass. The past seven months have been difficult, but the coming months will be difficult as well. I think of the beautiful wedding that will occur in October, and of the new baby who will be born in November, and my heart aches for Shelley, who will not be here to celebrate each event. I know these will be bittersweet times for her family, too, and I pray for their peace during these exciting times, times that will not be quite what they had hoped for or expected.
I also think of the simple fragility and irony of life, and am fearful and awed. I remember the opening line of a poem, although I cannot remember the name or author of the poem: "Oh, world! I cannot hold you close enough!" We talk about someone's being in a better place after that person has died and left this earth, but I find it so difficult to imagine something better than walking down the street for brownies, or waiting for two guests to arrive so that we can dig into butter-laden shrimp, or breaking open a bottle of cabernet and talking about what the kids are doing. My faith says that there is a better place, and I know cancer does not exist there, but I'm sure hoping that enjoying brownies, shrimp, and cabernet with friends does.
Thanks, Shelley, for being my friend, and for giving my life a little bit of you.
Wednesday, June 29, 2011
Excitement in the house
Today, our daughter found out that after frst being denied admittance to her dream graduate school, her appeal was accepted. She will be attending the Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD) in the fall. This is great news for her - and for me. She is such a talented artist and writer! I want her to use her talent for her life's work, and having a master's degree in Arts Administration will help her stay in the arts.
Another benefit of her schooling is that Savannah is a great place to visit. I will be so excited to go visit her, especially in winter! We went to Savannah a couple of times before she graduated from high school, because she was accepted at SCAD for undergraduate work. Although we loved the town and its proximity to the beach and the food, she decided to get a liberal arts education at Hendrix instead, and then get a graduate degree in the field she wanted to pursue.
And so there she will be - farther away from home than she has ever been for an extended period of time, except for an 8-week period she spent in Italy in the summer of 2009. I don't know if I will be able to take it. I will miss her like crazy. This parenting thing is very difficult. I wouldn't change it, but being a mother really is like letting my heart walk around outside my body.
I am so proud of her, and admire her sense of self and her talent. Were I to have had those abilities when I was but 22! Go, Emily!
Another benefit of her schooling is that Savannah is a great place to visit. I will be so excited to go visit her, especially in winter! We went to Savannah a couple of times before she graduated from high school, because she was accepted at SCAD for undergraduate work. Although we loved the town and its proximity to the beach and the food, she decided to get a liberal arts education at Hendrix instead, and then get a graduate degree in the field she wanted to pursue.
And so there she will be - farther away from home than she has ever been for an extended period of time, except for an 8-week period she spent in Italy in the summer of 2009. I don't know if I will be able to take it. I will miss her like crazy. This parenting thing is very difficult. I wouldn't change it, but being a mother really is like letting my heart walk around outside my body.
I am so proud of her, and admire her sense of self and her talent. Were I to have had those abilities when I was but 22! Go, Emily!
Tuesday, June 28, 2011
Life
Trite phrases all: "Live each day to the fullest;" "Don't take anything for granted;" "None of knows when it will be our turn;" and my personal favorite, "Life is too short to (fill in the blank)."
And yet every one of these stupid statements is great advice. We don't know how long we have. We should live each day to the fullest. But our own personal protection devices prevent us from doing just those things. We don't think that we are going to die tomorrow. We don't think that today may be the last. We think that our lives stretch out in front of us ad infinitum and that we have all the time in the world to do what we want, to reach our goals, to enjoy life, to make things right, to stop and smell the roses.
The truth is, of course, that we don't. This week, I am surrounded by the abruptness of life, the fragility of life, the admonition, "In the midst of life we are in death."
Logically, my Sunday School teachers told me, we begin dying the moment we are born. Our progress is through life and toward death, and toward what waits for us. It sounded fine when I was untouched by sadness, when all I knew and loved were living and vital and joyous and part of my days. It sounded as if what would happen would be far away. It wasn't real. It wasn't tangible. And when death finally occurred, we would be gently taken to something better than what we were experiencing here on this earth. That was fine with me then.
It continued being fine, because all I knew and loved continued to live and be vital and joyous and part of my days. My parents, my grandparents, even my great-grandmother and great-uncle lived their days, and because I was fine with life's progression toward death, a long time away, I treated those I knew and loved the way Emily told the Stage Manager I did, and everyone else on earth treats those they know and love: I didn't look at them, I didn't treasure each day with them, I didn't hold them close enough.
And then, death began touching my life, first my grandmother, whose demise came not from her Parkinson's Disease, but from a fall she took as she was walking for exercise. A few years later, my great-grandmother decided that 102 years was all she wanted to stay here. And then within a short three years, my grandfather stopped wanting to live in three centuries, my father succumbed to his years of cigarette smoking, and my maternal grandmother, after a massive brain stem stroke, finally gave up after 26 days of trying not to.
I didn't see, anymore, that death seemed this inanimate, benign thing that we all approached as a natural part of what happened from the moment we are born. It became insidious, vile, intruding on all I knew and loved, making me hurt in a way I had not before. Even then, however, it was coming in some sort of logical order - those I lost had spent long periods of time on this earth, they were falling in the expected order: Oldest, older, old.
And then, it started invading other parts of my life: a friend from law school, the husband of another friend, and then another, and then another, a friend's daughter - how unfair is that! - siblings of friends, and friends. My life, by measurement, became shorter and shorter. My expectations became worrisome and fearful. But then, of course, my personal protection devices kicked in, and life became uneventful for a while, lulling me back into the false security that all is well, all will continue to be well, and all will always be well. My husband was well. My daughter was well. The rest of my family was well. I could look past those horrid events and focus on looking at my family and friends, holding them close, treasuring them.
Until death, that dark shadowy figure that probably smirks most of the time, started lurking around again, hiding around corners, in alleys, finding more of those who mean much to me, and those whose lives are my life's measurements. "Begone!" I say."Begone!" He doesn't go.
He approaches.
Live life anyway. Love, hold, treasure. Live.
And yet every one of these stupid statements is great advice. We don't know how long we have. We should live each day to the fullest. But our own personal protection devices prevent us from doing just those things. We don't think that we are going to die tomorrow. We don't think that today may be the last. We think that our lives stretch out in front of us ad infinitum and that we have all the time in the world to do what we want, to reach our goals, to enjoy life, to make things right, to stop and smell the roses.
The truth is, of course, that we don't. This week, I am surrounded by the abruptness of life, the fragility of life, the admonition, "In the midst of life we are in death."
Logically, my Sunday School teachers told me, we begin dying the moment we are born. Our progress is through life and toward death, and toward what waits for us. It sounded fine when I was untouched by sadness, when all I knew and loved were living and vital and joyous and part of my days. It sounded as if what would happen would be far away. It wasn't real. It wasn't tangible. And when death finally occurred, we would be gently taken to something better than what we were experiencing here on this earth. That was fine with me then.
It continued being fine, because all I knew and loved continued to live and be vital and joyous and part of my days. My parents, my grandparents, even my great-grandmother and great-uncle lived their days, and because I was fine with life's progression toward death, a long time away, I treated those I knew and loved the way Emily told the Stage Manager I did, and everyone else on earth treats those they know and love: I didn't look at them, I didn't treasure each day with them, I didn't hold them close enough.
And then, death began touching my life, first my grandmother, whose demise came not from her Parkinson's Disease, but from a fall she took as she was walking for exercise. A few years later, my great-grandmother decided that 102 years was all she wanted to stay here. And then within a short three years, my grandfather stopped wanting to live in three centuries, my father succumbed to his years of cigarette smoking, and my maternal grandmother, after a massive brain stem stroke, finally gave up after 26 days of trying not to.
I didn't see, anymore, that death seemed this inanimate, benign thing that we all approached as a natural part of what happened from the moment we are born. It became insidious, vile, intruding on all I knew and loved, making me hurt in a way I had not before. Even then, however, it was coming in some sort of logical order - those I lost had spent long periods of time on this earth, they were falling in the expected order: Oldest, older, old.
And then, it started invading other parts of my life: a friend from law school, the husband of another friend, and then another, and then another, a friend's daughter - how unfair is that! - siblings of friends, and friends. My life, by measurement, became shorter and shorter. My expectations became worrisome and fearful. But then, of course, my personal protection devices kicked in, and life became uneventful for a while, lulling me back into the false security that all is well, all will continue to be well, and all will always be well. My husband was well. My daughter was well. The rest of my family was well. I could look past those horrid events and focus on looking at my family and friends, holding them close, treasuring them.
Until death, that dark shadowy figure that probably smirks most of the time, started lurking around again, hiding around corners, in alleys, finding more of those who mean much to me, and those whose lives are my life's measurements. "Begone!" I say."Begone!" He doesn't go.
He approaches.
Live life anyway. Love, hold, treasure. Live.
Thursday, June 23, 2011
Going to a baseball game!
I had forgotten the thrill of walking up the steps toward the plaza where Polish dogs and beer wait for me. I had forgotten the feeling of a soft summer night at the ball park, hearing the crack of a bat, watching the players trot to their places on the playing field, the taste of the aforesaid Polish, kraut, and beer, and the simple pleasure of feeling the warm air on my skin under the baseball lights. We went to a Royals game last night, and though they lost, I felt happy just to be there.
Thanks to a friend, we sat on the second row back from the visitors' dugout, close to the field, close to the little kids who swarmed down the aisle at the end of each inning, hoping against hope to snag a ball thrown by a member of the visiting team into the crowd. We cheered with the crowd when someone made a good play, became disgruntled with the umpire when he continued to allow a low strike zone, and just felt as if nothing in the world could be wrong because we were at Royals Stadium (I cannot to this day denigrate Mr. Kauffman by calling it "The K"). What a night!
I also remembered wondering, all those years ago, when I went to a game about every other day, what it would be like to be paid to play a game that I loved. At some point, I recalled the day my mother told me that my father could no longer afford to buy the season tickets that had made him feel so successful, and I recalled feeling as if somehow, life would not be quite the same. I felt sad, too, when I remembered seeing Paul Splittorff pitch in game after game, and then I recalled my anger when Whitey Herzog took him out of one of the Yankees-Royals playoff games. I knew he would have been able to get them out, but Whitey didn't trust him. We lost that game.
What a mixture of feelings at such a special event! I had forgotten. I am glad to have remembered.
Thanks to a friend, we sat on the second row back from the visitors' dugout, close to the field, close to the little kids who swarmed down the aisle at the end of each inning, hoping against hope to snag a ball thrown by a member of the visiting team into the crowd. We cheered with the crowd when someone made a good play, became disgruntled with the umpire when he continued to allow a low strike zone, and just felt as if nothing in the world could be wrong because we were at Royals Stadium (I cannot to this day denigrate Mr. Kauffman by calling it "The K"). What a night!
I also remembered wondering, all those years ago, when I went to a game about every other day, what it would be like to be paid to play a game that I loved. At some point, I recalled the day my mother told me that my father could no longer afford to buy the season tickets that had made him feel so successful, and I recalled feeling as if somehow, life would not be quite the same. I felt sad, too, when I remembered seeing Paul Splittorff pitch in game after game, and then I recalled my anger when Whitey Herzog took him out of one of the Yankees-Royals playoff games. I knew he would have been able to get them out, but Whitey didn't trust him. We lost that game.
What a mixture of feelings at such a special event! I had forgotten. I am glad to have remembered.
Tuesday, June 21, 2011
Traveling
We have returned from spending 10 hours in the car in order to spend about 5 hours with our daughter! Who but a parent would do such a thing?
We decided to go to Conway to see Emily for dinner on Father's Day. All the way down, we listened to the Open, hoping that Rory McIlroy would win the thing, which he did. My iPhone applications are remarkable things - this one actually simulcast with the radio, and we heard the tournament as it happened.
On the way back, however, we passed through Harrison, Arkansas, and I remembered that I hadn't told you about 1929 Hotel Seville, where we stayed when we went to see Emily receive the Bennett Prize, a cash award for the best paper dealing with business ethics. We couldn't leave for Conway until after choir practice at 8 on that Wednesday, and could not drive the whole 5 hours fully awake, so we decided to try to find a hotel about halfway there. Because all the chains were full, we looked at the Seville and decided to give it a try. What a delight!
Our room was very small, but adequate, and most important, the bathroom had been renovated so that it was the best space in the room. We had a walk-in shower and the whole bathroom was completely tiled. Best, the price we paid for the room, which I don't remember right now, was very reasonable. We also had covered parking, and I slept through the night in the very comfortable bed. The hotel has a restaurant in the lobby, where at least breakfast is served, and presumably, so is lunch and dinner. The bar is gorgeous, but all were closed by the time we arrived that night.
So if you are on the road in northwest Arkansas and need a place to stop for the night, remember the 1929 Hotel Seville in Harrison.
We decided to go to Conway to see Emily for dinner on Father's Day. All the way down, we listened to the Open, hoping that Rory McIlroy would win the thing, which he did. My iPhone applications are remarkable things - this one actually simulcast with the radio, and we heard the tournament as it happened.
On the way back, however, we passed through Harrison, Arkansas, and I remembered that I hadn't told you about 1929 Hotel Seville, where we stayed when we went to see Emily receive the Bennett Prize, a cash award for the best paper dealing with business ethics. We couldn't leave for Conway until after choir practice at 8 on that Wednesday, and could not drive the whole 5 hours fully awake, so we decided to try to find a hotel about halfway there. Because all the chains were full, we looked at the Seville and decided to give it a try. What a delight!
Our room was very small, but adequate, and most important, the bathroom had been renovated so that it was the best space in the room. We had a walk-in shower and the whole bathroom was completely tiled. Best, the price we paid for the room, which I don't remember right now, was very reasonable. We also had covered parking, and I slept through the night in the very comfortable bed. The hotel has a restaurant in the lobby, where at least breakfast is served, and presumably, so is lunch and dinner. The bar is gorgeous, but all were closed by the time we arrived that night.
So if you are on the road in northwest Arkansas and need a place to stop for the night, remember the 1929 Hotel Seville in Harrison.
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