Dear everyone,
It’s been a busy couple of weeks, and the next few look busy
as well. We started off a week ago
Monday with a bang; we finally bit the bullet, and had a contract to get our
25+ year old roof replaced. In the early
morning the roofers arrived with a big crane to lift the shingles onto the
roof, and the rest of the day was spent de-shingling. The new shingles were almost completely done
by Tuesday evening (they would have finished except they ran out of shingles), the
remaining went up on Wednesday morning. Another day was spent putting in gutter
guards and doing the flashing. Just in
time, as we had some large tornado causing thunderstorms a day or so later, and
then even bigger and worse storms last week (they were so bad on Thursday
that 15% of the people on our flight to Baltimore Friday morning had been rescheduled
from the day before—apparently the control tower was even evacuated for a bit).
Last weekend I participated in a 4-hour tai chi seminar led
by Steven Vasilakas. I may have linked to his website previously,
as he ran a seminar at my dojo last month, and plans to continue once a month
at my aikido dojo, but also once a month at my Monday tai chi class at a nearby
church. He has a lot of experience, and
I can’t fathom what he is doing to me when we do a two-person practice. It’s hard to explain, but I feel trapped even
though he is not using much strength or movement. I hope I will figure it out.
The big event of the past weekend was travelling to
Maryland/Virginia for Charlie and Katie’s wedding. We left Friday morning and flew to BWI. After getting our car, we drove to Cindy’s
sister Cheryl’s house in Ellicott city.
We had dinner at the EC Diner (crab
cakes as big as a baseball with no filler) and really too much food. Afterwards Cindy and Cheryl watched the US
Men’s soccer team trounce Paraguay 4-0.
So far, the US is leading their group.
Saturday morning, we planned on going to another nearby
restaurant called Shannons, but they did not open until 11:30, so we went back
to the EC Diner for breakfast. I had cheesy shrimp and grits in a red sauce with andouille sausage. In early afternoon we
packed up and drove to Leesburg (in a surprising amount of traffic just outside
of Leesburg) to the Hampton Inn and Suites, which shares an address with
another Hilton property - - we initially went to the wrong one.
We changed into our wedding duds. The dress code was ‘creative black tie’. I wore a bolo (complemented several times)
and Cindy had a black outfit with a pink/purple shawl she borrowed from Cheryl. The wedding and dinner were held at the Rust Manor
House. The non-sectarian ceremony
was in the hot sun, even at 5 pm, officiated by Katie’s aunt, with a special
guest appearance by Katie’s pug, Periwinkle.
I could hear Great Crested Flycatchers and catbirds in the nearby woods.
It reminded others a bit of Cindy and my ceremony, although I think Katie and Charlie's was
more formal. We will have to unearth our
vows! Then there was a cocktail hour,
with two signature drinks (a French 75 from Katie and
a bourbon sour
from Charlie. There were plenty of
nibbles, and we enjoyed talking with many relatives. Afterwards we had dinner under
a tent and shared a table with Robin and John Letchinger.
Sunday, we left our hotel and drove to Clyde’s Willow Creek
Farm for brunch with Bill and Laurel Watkins.
Bill, as you may know, has recently retired, and they are planning to
move to New Haven to be close to their younger daughter, Emma, who is expecting their first grandchild in December. Owen and Alison joined us later after their
post-wedding brunch with the Russes.
(Andy and Gail had also intended to have brunch with us, but there was a
scheduling snafu, and they ended up at Ambar in Arlington).
Clyde’s is an interesting venue, composed of several old
buildings that were saved from demolition and reconstructed and mashed
together. There is an internal courtyard
to eat outside and several large rooms (and smaller meeting rooms) that serve
food. The interior is full of old, large
tchotchkes and Audubon prints. The food
was pretty good, we shared a fun cheese plate, and I saved half of my chicken sandwich for dinner on the
return plane.
Our drive back to BWI was a bit stressful - - I was unexpectedly
directed to the Dulles toll road (I ended up paying about $10 for under 20
miles of tollway driving.) We tried to
get off the toll before hitting the 495 Beltway, and ended up driving through
some hoity-toity areas along the Georgetown Pike. I must say that whenever I drive around
Maryland and Virginia, I am astonished by the size of the roads and how well
kept up they are. I’m sure the weather
helps, but so does proximity to money and federal power!
Entertainment wise, I insisted that we watch the movie Out
of Africa with Meryl Streep and Robert Redford.
We borrowed an old DVD from the library, and the playback stuttered just
at the most romantic scenes. Of course, I
was really watching it because much was filmed on location in Kenya, and it was
fun to see how well they captured the Blixen house as well as the natural environment. It won a lot of Oscars, but I would only rate
it as ‘OK’; other than the African setting, there isn’t much of a story.
I’ve read two very interesting non-fiction books
recently. Invisible
Rivals. As cooperative as humans are (and we are very cooperative),
evolution has also pushed us to be individually opportunistic when we can get
away with it. So, our societies are
always rife with cheaters that we don’t know about (hence invisible rivals).
Studies have shown that overly punitive societies are actually worse off that
those that let non-egregious rival be free riders. The trick for our complex, apocalypse-approaching
worldwide society in the future is how to set the thermostat between punishment
and lenience.
Every
Living Thing. This book is about two
famous, yet little known enlightenment era biologists, Buffon
and Linnaeus. Of course, in high school, you probably
learnt that Linnaeus championed binomial taxonomy,
but I had heard very little of Buffon, who is considered a
proto-Darwinist. Cindy and I actually
went past Buffon’s estate in Montbard, Burgundy many
years ago on a French canal trip, but unfortunately did not have time to visit. The author of the book makes Linnaeus out to
be a self-promoting fraud (perhaps I am a bit harsh), and Buffon
underappreciated by the greater public, in large part because his legacy was
trashed by the revolutionists of 1789.
Two others I did not like as much, King
of Kings, about the fall of the last Shah of Iran, Mohammad Pahlavi;
and The
Secret Life of Houdini (about Harry Houdini). Both of these suffered from an excess of
detail - - perhaps good for the expert, or someone (a middle east wonk or a
magician) with a lot of amateur interest, but too much for the casual reader.
Nothing so spectacular in fiction that warrants a mention.
The next letter will see Wes and Nicola married!
Love, H
1 comment:
Hey now: King of Kings is really good! It doesn't have too much detail at all. Very complex characters and circumstances! Every Little Thing is excellent too if History of Science interests you.
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