Here's Looking at Us, Kid

Norm's niece Debbie B in Hutchinson has finally exposed our real identities to the world wide web on her blog today. Check us out in true American Gothic Form in this post on her blog.

While you're there, she has a nice feature right below this about the unique museum in Colby. Stick around for a few seconds and check it out. I introduced her to SiteMeter so she'll be looking for you!

Our Neighbor's Dog Needs a Name

Here's our newest neighbor, a golden retriever - poodle mix who came with the name of Ava. She belongs to Barb, our neighbor, but she seems quite at home at our place as well!

From what we read, "doodles" are easy to train, happy, smart dogs and Ava seems to be no exception. She is 8 months old and already knows how to sit. Weighs about 23 pounds and comes to my knees. She is crate trained and well housebroken. Barb wants to give her a new name, though, since Ava just doesn't fit. If you have any suggestions, leave a comment, OK?

Ava's previous human was a 20- something male, and she seems to be especially glad to see Norm every time she comes over to our house. The young man found himself relocating out of the country and couldn't keep her, and through a series of amazing connections, Ava "found" Barb. We can't wait for Barb to take a business trip so that Ava (or Molly, or Sophie, or ??? ) can stay with us!

Ready for Summer at Last

Every year we have an annual ritual of moving most of the house plants outside to the porch for the summer. This year, we didn't get around to it until long after the solstice. But last weekend we finally got things tidy.

This mena- gerie includes three spider plants, a really big rubber tree (thanks, D), an heirloom mother in law tongue from a friend, various geraniums from last year that spent the winter upstairs, and a few others. There are also about 10 pots of amarylli in various sizes and conditions. Anyone need a new bulb? We also got the hummingbird feeders up, although I think we missed the spring arrivals so will maybe not see any until fall. Let the summer festivities begin!

The End of the Weekend

In 2006, we decided to give ourselves an anniversary present and ordered some Red Carpet Lilies from a mail order nursery. They are starting to multiply and become more spectacular in this, their second year in the back garden. They are beginning to be overrun by the day lilies, however, and someone is going to have to move!

When we planted the red lilies, we also moved a lot of day lilies from both the front and back to our side yard, to give our neighbors, the Guys, something more than brick walls to look at. These plants are flourishing, too. All of the lilies seem to be one or two weeks behind this year-- as are all of the insects. We only recently saw fireflies, and the locusts haven't yet started hollering in the trees at dusk. Another part of the evening concert, the tree frogs, often start around July 4. We'll have to see what happens this year.

Our church service this morning was exciting, as we had visitors from Tennessee (Memphis and Nashville) here to see their daughters, and a new member came forward and was welcomed as well. Yesterday we enjoyed a rousing discussion at our book club, even though we hadn't finished the book. Then we went to Left Bank bookstore and bought books for the next two meetings. We hope to get through those in timely fashion! And we are heartened to know that our friend Norma, who moved from home hospice care to St. Anthony's Hospice House on Wednesday (while we were there to sit with her) is much more comfortable and able to visit briefly with members of her family and the church. These are hard days, but made easier by the miracle of hospice care and support.

As for readership, these last few days I've noted a persistent blog visitor from Western Kansas with a location of Monument, although we don't know of anyone there. We do think it could be a branch of family that lives in another town that also has the same ISP as our readers in Colby and Goodland, but we can't be sure. We also had a long visit to both this blog and Compton Cares from a reader in Dallas. We wonder if it could be a friend from Compton who moved to that area the first of this year. Mysteries. Whoever you are, thanks for reading and checking in.

Summer Arrives Quietly

This evening was the Summer Solstice: 6:59 p.m. CDT the weather caster said on TV. Tomorrow will be the first full day of summer for 2008. Today was cool and quiet except for an impromptu thundershower that sprang up in early afternoon but quickly moved away. The hostas at the side of the house are in full bloom and the purple coneflowers will be next.


This morning I had a chance to relax on the front porch, drink coffee, and read the paper. I felt like I was at a spa in the woods. I decided to take photos of the many plantings that are in bloom right now. Soon enough the hot, humid weather will challenge them but for now they are at their peak. The hostas are especially full this year.
We planted the front beds with annual pink burgundy begonias for a contrast with the lime green hosta foliage.


The northwest corner of the front garden has a rosebush (currently resting) and a lily and daylily garden. In coming days I'll share more photos of flowers in addition to a view of our new "front porch living room" display: the houseplants have been moved outside, finally!

Update on our week: on Monday the Mazda passed its mechanical inspection and the ominous leak turned out to be a loose heater hose connection. We still have to get its emissions test and 2-year license plate before the end of the month. On Tuesday, Norm's visit to the eye surgeon brought an all-clear. His implants are giving him great distance vision, and he has an appointment to get new reading glasses early in July. All week our news has been mostly floods, floods and more floods--although the town also is in a twitter over the Belgian beer-maker InBev's bid to buy Anheuser-Busch, a St. Louis icon, significant employer and source of much local philanthropy. Even the baseball stadium carries the Busch name! Egads! What happens if Bud is taken over by an international conglomerate? Even though we seldom drink the brew, we are waiting to see. Niece Debbie B in Hutch has redesigned her blog again, and posted some family photos and reflections on the reunion. Cousin Debi B in Tulsa continues the trip through Europe including a nice essay on "Why I take Kids to Europe" that shows why she is such a great teacher. Well, I'm off to sit on the porch and enjoy the cool and see if any fireflies are about. These days don't last long so we have to make the most of them.

Other Family Bloggers Are Busy

Today I've been reading two blogs by family members that have me fascinated.

For a good view of what it's like to work at a disaster site, check out niece Debbie B's blog Updates from Debbie (click on the blog name). She has been working to help coordinate volunteers at the site of an F3 tornado in Chapman, Kansas. Her photos of the destruction are heart rending. This is good work.

And in Oklahoma, cousin Debi B is starting to post photos and accounts of the trip to Europe that she takes her high school seniors and some parents on each year. The first installment is Rome at Night. Beautiful photography. Makes me want to run out and get a passport. Check out Debide's View by clicking on the name.

Write on, ladies.

It's Always Something

I came back from Kansas all set to get really busy updating my blogs, finishing a quilt, reading the book for Book Club, updating the financial information for church, and a hundred other "to do" items. On Wednesday we went to exercise, Norm mowed the too-tall grass, and then that evening we went to Elders Circle at church. There we learned that one of our elders is gravely ill and in hospice care, and volunteers are needed to sit with her. So on Thursday morning, I did that while Norm went to his volunteer work at Isaiah 58 Ministries food pantry. That evening we went to water exercise since we are trying to get back into shape.

Friday we did some household chores and went to the grocery store. Being totally out of milk, bread, and bath tissue among other necessities finally drove us to it. I was up late Friday night creating a display that gives the "before and after" of the Compton Cares accessibility campaign at our church, a project that has occupied both of us for almost two years. If you are interested you can read all about it on the Compton Cares Update blog, by clicking on the name here or in the column on the right side of this blog. Saturday was the celebration and dedication. We helped clean up after the reception and came home to take naps.... then it was read the Sunday school lesson because we thought we were leading on Sunday. (Turns out we lead next week. At least that's one item already DONE!)

Today we were back at church, in charge of coffee fellowship afterwards. Fortunately, enough food was left from Saturday that all we had to do was put things out. After some informal meetings after church we stopped by the Left Bank bookstore in the CWE to get a copy of this month's Reading Circle selection. We have 6 days (and nights) to read it. We finally ate lunch/dinner about 4 p.m. Then I got hooked on watching part of the US Open although I seldom follow golf. The Tiger Woods mystique, I guess. Or maybe Cousin Mike is finally getting through to me.

Normally I wouldn't just dash off this kind of diary style entry but I note that folks have checked in from Garden City, Tulsa, Colby, Mineral Wells, Florida and other points, and I realize you haven't had anything new to read for a couple of days. On Monday we have to get a car repaired and inspected, on Tuesday Norm has an exam at the eye surgeon's. On Wednesday I'm taking another shift sitting with our friend. Thursday is the Quilt Guild salad supper and I have to finish a project before then. Like I said in the headline, it's always something.

Tonight I talked with Janna in Iowa. Her town isn't threatened by flooding (yet) but she has spent a tense couple of weeks of going to her cellar almost every night with tornado warnings. She said Pumpkin the cat is not fond of the cellar. It was good to hear her voice and recall that next week is the 7th anniversary of her new liver and a new lease on life. Congratulations, Janna!

Our thoughts and prayers for everyone along the rivers who has lost property and livelihood and irreplaceable memories. Also for the sandbaggers who are trying heroically to save little towns downsream: Quincy, Clarksville, Winfield, Hannibal, Alton, Grafton. The waters roll on, with crests predicted later this week and the weekend. If it doesn't rain any more.

Reunion Day Three and Heading Home

So many readers have been checking in so I thought I had better get this posted. We did arrive home yesterday evening after a lovely two days of driving. On the way to the reunion, last Thursday, we first encountered this Really Large wind generation farm west of Salina on I-70. Tuesday was a perfect day weather-wise but it was hard to get close enough to them for a photo that truly reflects the scope of this project. We counted some 100 wind turbines that we could see and there undoubtedly are more.

They look like improbably ungainly beasts, rising from the prairie and surrounding hills. About half of them were turning at a leisurely speed. They are part of the Smoky Hills Wind Farm, providing power to Hays-based Sunflower Electric Power, Midwest Energy and the Kansas City Board of Public utilities. (Our nephew Corey works for Sunflower and is involved in the expansion of the coal-fired energy plant near Garden City.) Sunflower expects to have 13 percent of its generation sources from wind farms by the end of this year, according to an article in the June 9 Salina Journal.



This farm will produce at least 1000 megawatts of electricity when it is finished. We could see cranes at work in the distance, erecting additional towers. Also, at the far right of the photo, a super cell thunderstorm is building. Later that night in our hotel in Lawrence, we saw that it dropped a lot of rain and hail in the far northeast corner of Kansas.


Gracie did really well on this trip. Out on the open road, she gets 25 to 26 mpg. It seems that 75 mph (uh, make that 70 mph Mr. State Trooper) is her most efficient speed.


On this trip I got to pursue one of my passions (some would say vices) and visit several quilt fabric stores. At the Quilt Cabin in Colby I found this lovely version of a baby quilt using a pattern I already have called Simon the Puppy and a new pattern I bought, Sally the Kitty. Also on the trip we stopped at Quilter's Harvest in Higginsville, MO and at The Quilt Corner in Warrenton. I now have several new patterns and some more lovely fabric for my "stash."

Another of our favorite stops is at the intersection of the road that leads to Wilson, Kansas. This shop, Kansas Originals, features all kinds of items made in Kansas, from Christmas ornaments, to stained glass, to woodwork and you name it. They also serve free hot coffee and samples of snacks made with sunflower seeds and other Kansas-grown foods.

We thoroughly enjoyed the trip (including last Thursday's tornado sighting) and especially the reunion. We are glad to hear from Texas that Walt did well with his surgery and we wish him a speedy and complete recovery, as well as new ways to manage his situation. Paula and Carla get an A+ for their planning and execution of the reunion weekend. On Day Three of the reunion, some 13 of us trooped into the 8:30 service at Colby United Methodist Church and then descended on the Village Inn for brunch. In the afternoon, several of us visited the Prairie Museum and got together at Harold's to discuss next year's Sib Reunion. We haven't chosen a place yet because we want some input from Walt when he feels like it. Then Norm and I met up with John and Nancy Sanders for supper and 6 hours of non-stop talking and looking at photos and reminiscing. No wonder we didn't get an early start leaving Colby on Monday!

Reunion Day Two

The big day for the Reunion 2008 dawned cool and sunny, a light south breeze, under an incomparably blue Kansas sky. We met from 10-3 at Colby Community College in two spacious rooms that gave us plenty of room for displays and food and general visiting.

One tradition is of course the "Sibs and Spouses" picture and Todd was nice enough to aim my camera for this one. For those of you who aren't Linvilles, left to right are Larry and Dolores, Norm and Judi, Maxine and Roy, Don and Kay and Harold and Jan. Missing are Walt and Carol. Walt, this is for you: Get Well Soon!

Carla and Paula had signs everywhere so we would know which buildings to enter and where to go. They had many little touches such as ribbons on the tables, reprints of family photos, an updated Linville-Williams genealogy and even commemorative reunion Hershey bars.

The college campus is always a green oasis on South Range in Colby. The building was comfortable, accessible and convenient.



And the catering was tasty, too. Things got quiet as we sat down to enjoy roast beef, country ham, potatoes and gravy, green beans, Aunt Esther's broccoli salad, rolls, and homemade pie including peach, pecan and cherry.

Of course this is the Linville- Williams family reunion, and we were so pleased that Mildred, Mark and Wilbur were able to join us. Mildred and Wilbur gave us updates about what they have been doing and where their children are. Wilbur brought many old photos and some family history items to share, as well.


Since no party is complete without that second slice of pie, one of Larry's daughters made sure I snapped a photo of him enjoying dessert.










Each of the sibs gave an update about their families as well, sometimes to the amusement or embarrassment of the younger generation. Scott and Todd traveled from Denver, where Todd had flown in from LA. Colby is not the easiest place to reach by air and we appreciated their effort to join in the family hilarity.

This biennial gathering of descend- ants of Leslie and Bertha Linville brought almost 40 to Colby this year, including 9 of their 19 grandchildren. Debbie came from Hutchinson, Keith and Dinah from Dighton, Carla and Eric from North Platte, Doug from Colorado, Paula and Gene from Goodland, Aleta from Pratt and April from Anthony, as well as their assorted children and some children's friends. Many others wanted to come but had conflicting schedules or were prevented by illness. Our silent auction of family related items raised over $200 for seed money for the next reunion in 2010, and also redistributed some of the treasures collected and inherited through the years. We hope many of the cousins and grandchildren and great-grandchildren will be able to join us in the future.

Reunion Day One

The reunion officially opened on Friday evening with a picnic in Fike Park. Larry arrived in his latest pride and joy, a 1948 Plymouth.

Of course, it had to be inspected by Don and Roy while Larry and Norm super-
vised.




This year's reunion has been planned by the now grown- up Linville grand- children. Carla, Aleta and Paula, along with April, are the new generation of reunion organizers, and the Sibs are glad!


The gazebo in the park provided tables and seats and shade, but not much respite from a stiff breeze. Norm visits with Maxine and Roy while April and Billy add their two cents.

Harold and Jan cooked the food and trucked everything over to the park. Traditionally this picnic has been in their yard, but they lost a shade tree since the last reunion. Debbie got home from her trip to Atlanta in time to join us for the reunion this year.

Aleta's youngest daughter, Rebecca, stopped taking photos long enough to pose for this one with her aunt Kay and uncle Don.
Festivities will resume today at the College. We can't wait to see who else we will see after a long time.

Signs Along the Road

As we drove west this week, we noticed a few signs that made us pause and think, or in at least one case, left us puzzled.

1. In Missouri, we saw an ad for vacation home properties. The lots being sold are "oversize acres." We thought about that for several miles. When is an acre more than an acre--how do you oversize one?

2. In Kansas, near the first rest stop on I-70 after Topeka, there is a perennial sign about the productivity of Kansas farms. In 2008, we learned, "one Kansas farmer feeds 128 people + you!" For those who made it through basic math, that's 129 people. The first year we made this trip, 40 years ago, that Kansas farmer fed "57 people + you." We have to wonder if this kind of inflation is due to the same kinds of forces that have led to increased farm mechanization, the disappearance of the small family farm, etc. Or is it merely Better Farming Through Chemistry? If we could find that One Kansas Farmer, we would ask him.

3. Also on the road (we forget where) we saw a series of billboards entreating motorists to kindly share the road with motorcyclists, and not run over them. The billboard slogan I've been pondering for the last few days advised us:

Be Aware
Motorcycles
Are Everywhere!

Now that's vaguely disturbing, even threatening it seems to me. Our experience was that there weren't that many motor cycles on the trip, (we saw maybe 10) but plenty of other items to be aware of, including detours for construction. One amazing sight (again no pictures, but will try on the way home) was a giant wind turbine farm in central Kansas. Huge towers and immense propellers gleaming white in the sun, marching across ridges for at least 10 miles. They looked oddly menacing even though they weren't turning, and I finally understood why Don Quixote was so disturbed by those windmills he saw. Apparently these farms are all over the West as well as Texas, but they aren't in Missouri and two years ago, they weren't in this spot in Kansas, either. So on Thursday morning as we drove, I was thinking: Be Aware: Wind Turbines are Everywhere!

Of course by Thursday afternoon the slogan had changed: Be Aware, Tornadoes are Everywhere! So create your own slogan. But motorcycles were a minor part of the stimulating sights we saw along the highway this week.

I'll post some photos from Part I of the LInville reunion in the morning. At this point, I need to get iPhoto fired up and "develop" them.

I Saw My First Tornado Today

Unfortunately, I don't have pictures (I was too busy driving at 75 mph away from the thing) but I did see the first tornado on the ground I've ever seen, that wasn't in a movie or on TV. This afternoon, west of Hays, the car radio crackling with tornado warnings for counties to our south and somewhere in Gove (or maybe Trego...it's all a blur, now) County we had been watching this big rain cloud and suddenly THERE IT WAS. So yes, it was an adventure. We outran it easily but heard that it crossed the Interstate about 20 minutes behind us, near Wakeeney. (That's where two circus elephants escaped and ran around the town, spooked by the tornado, according to cable TV reports.)

*Update: The tornado we saw actually crossed the Interstate between Quinter and Park, which is where we were when we originally saw it. WaKeeney is further east, and was brushed by a separate storm. No major damage was reported in western Kansas on Thursday despite the plethora of tornado cloud sightings and warnings.

Things are calm here in Colby. We arrived in late afternoon, unpacked, took a nap, went out for an ice cream cone, and then stopped in at both Larry's and Harold's houses for a while. Now we are looking forward to a calm night's sleep.

Hi, there, readers in Rotterdam! Greg, I got your e-mail and will answer it shortly! Garden City and Hutch, thanks for checking us out. We are OK and look forward to seeing you this weekend! Hi to readers back in St. Louie, too. Hope to have something interesting, with pictures, tomorrow!

Heading West for Reunion

Well, we are on our way to the reunion. In keeping with our resolution to spend at least some of each trip off the Interstate, we took a detour to tiny Rocheport, Mo., pop. 208, site of an access point on the Katy Bike/Hiking Trail and also home to a winery and restaurant popular in these parts. We ate our packed lunch in a shady spot in a park near the trail. (No, that's not our car there. Gracie was parked in the shade on the other side of this lot.)

About 6 hours after leaving home, we arrived at our hotel in Lawrence, KS. It is next to a lovely rolling- hill park popular with frisbee players. We took a walk here after supper.

Our hotel is an older one that has been renovated. It still has '50s style balconies and we enjoyed sitting out in the evening breeze, reading the paper and sipping a cool soda. Tomorrow there is a "moderate" risk of severe weather in central Kansas in the afternoon, so we will probably get on the road early and take the direct route instead of the scenic route through Council Grove that we had tentatively planned.

We are looking forward to seeing everyone and maybe even finding out who our Mystery Reader in Levant is.

In praise of yellow flowers

Sometimes a flower can capture sunshine. Such is the case with Norm's favorite yellow rose bush, which is at its peak right now. Although it is an ever bloomer and will bloom again. It glows in the back garden even on a rainy day.


The yellow columbine blooms in the rock garden out front, long after most columbines have gone to seed. It, too, is a perfect yellow that gives a sunny greeting every time we enter the driveway.

Despite being 13 inches over "normal" in rainfall, our blooming plants have brought us a lot of joy this year. Today Norm mowed the grass and cleaned out the van in preparation for our upcoming trip to the Linville reunion. We are sad that Walt won't be able to attend but our thoughts and prayers are with him for his back surgery, scheduled for next week. May this procedure give him relief from pain without any more complications. As the reunion progresses, we will post updates as we are able.