More vacation - in These titles mean nothing.

I should go back and see where I left off last time... but that would require closing this window and opening another and that seems like work and I am on vacation - remember?

I continue to do not much. Vacation? Remember?

Last night Jim and I went to McGregor for the opening of a new show at the Art Center. It was Native American art - including a large collection of Navajo rugs. The collector who was a retired art professor was there and he spoke about them. The unifying theme was letters and numbers. He bought rugs with letters woven into the pattern. He said the weavers didn't read so the words were often from product packaging - CHICAGO, MILK, EGGS, BPOE and other more random collections of letters.

Another man and his wife had brought silver jewelry and embroidery that they do themselves. I somehow missed seeing his silver - he said it was German silver which is not silver at all but a mixture of copper, nickel and zinc, It is a harder metal to work than silver is. His work and his wife's textiles are in demand by Native Americans themselves who use them in their costumes. He referred to them as the Indian people - saying that they refer to themselves as Indians. The wife's work was beautiful, including complex embroidery on shawls and skirts.

For me, the night was a mixture of missed and made contacts. When I walked in, I signed the guest book by the door, and right above my name was the name and address of a woman I had worked with in 1998. Remember the scrapbook/journal that I had looked through the day before? The one I subjected you to the dog column from? It included notes this woman wrote me at work. I'd read them and noted her handwriting. She was a woman of about my age who had an interesting life and who I had kept track of for several years... and there she was at the art center.

Except... she must have signed on her way out because I never saw her. I am awful about knowing or recognizing people but she didn't know me either - so I"m assuming she was not there.

There was another woman though from my long term job - one I'd known from my first day there in 1975 until her retirement - the date of which she was coy about. She is a remarkable woman well up in years. She was there with two of her daughters and their husbands and one of her twin grandsons and his family.

Later when Jim said he hadn't felt like the youngest person there as he had when we went the last time, I said that was because of this woman and her tribe of descendants.

So Dolores and I caught up and introduced family members and had a lovely time. There was a sincere effort to find a lost cat involved in the conversation.

These events have live music and food. The live music was a young woman with a beautiful voice and a stringed instrument that I didn't identify. It's rough being entertainment at a venue where people have come to meet and talk. I should have complimented her and told her I understand the difficulty.

My old writing instructor and his wife came in but somehow we avoided each other.

Afterward we went across the street to Old Man River to be told the kitchen was closed. It was 8 pm on a Friday night that the Art Center had already drawn them a crowd. That was too bad both for the art crowd and for the Old Man as well.

We ate at a dive-ish place that is in an old grain elevator. It is nothing spectacular food-wise but its kitchen was open. We had a brisk efficient young waiter. I told him the Old Man's kitchen was closed and he said "Too bad for them." We sat at a round formica kitchen table beside picture window view of the nearby darkening Mississippi. A set of Canadian locomotives - five I think - went by between the river and the window pulling just a few cars. They must have been putting together a train, leaving cars on the siding, something. On the other side of the restaurant is the highway - with traffic going by as well.

So that was my evening out.

I woke up early this morning and read a fair amount of Daniel Schorr's memoirs. Life is random that way.

Then I took a nap. And then I got up. And then I bought Logger's tickets by phone. And now I'm writing here.

Well, I'm on vacation.

Here's hops pictures.

Corncrib in the background.

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Here are my new pots and pans pictures.

They are on my at least twenty five year old stove that was pretty old when I got it. It was being thrown away in an apartment rehab my husband was involved in.

Note top picture shows the big three counter top appliances: red toaster, little Mr. Coffee, and the corn popper.

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Another dog column from 1999. March 31.

Wait. I like this one better.

It's Happy New Year, and starts out like this:

"In the arms of a dynamic lover.

"Under the Eiffel Tower drinking champagne with a handsome silver-haired man.

"At the south end of the Appalachian Trail.

"Forget about Y2K. It's all a mirage. But just to be on the safe side, bring a flashlight. And a sack lunch.

"The Appalachian Trail is 2,050 miles of mountain trail from Springer Mountain in northern Georgia to Mount Katadin in central Mine. The Wilderness Society put it together in the 1920s using the Great Indian Warparth from Alabama to Pennsylvania.

"Traditionally it is hiked form south to north, chasing spring up the eastern backbone of the continent. Last year a man hiked it who had hiked it fifty years ago. He said it had gotten harder - a surprise? But what he meant was that in keeping it wild in these days of encroaching development, the trail has retreated to really rougher territory. And to keep it pure in these days of worship of nature and the expensive equipment that allows us to get to nature on weekends, the trail avoids small towns. He said it was harder to hike it independently because it was harder for a lone backpacker to get supplies. Still he had a good time. and in his radio interview, he sounded like the kind of tough old bird who might do it again sometime.

"The Appalachian Trail is kind of a sneaky New Year's Eve project for the Millennium because it would either begin in a cozy Motel 10 or more purely on the floor of a haul-it-yourself tent. And then it would continue for the next four or fie months as you battled blisters and black bears and whatever else life threw at you on your trip north. You'd probably need more than a flashlight and a sack lunch, but you'd have to carry it yourself. You would have to duck out of life for a while. - with the risk that it wouldn't be there when you got back - or the risk that you might not come back.

"The evening in Paris isn't as complicated a Y2K project. Just get there a week early to do some shopping - and find your companion. The City of Lights wouldn't dare go out.

"And that dynamic lover? That's the easy one - or maybe the hard one, depending on how you look at things.

"I've never heard the word dynamic used that way. Mainly I think of Oldsmobile Dymanic 88s when I hear the word dynamic. So I went to the dictionary.

"It turns out that dymanic is one of those technically vague words that means about anything involving motion and being ready and able. Following its derivation then to now, first came the Greek dunasthai - power, then still more Greek dunamikos - powerful, then the French word dynamiQue and then the English word dymanic.

"My dictionary gave it four definitions -

"1. Of or relating to energy or objects in motion, of or relating to the study of dynamics,

"2. Characterized by continuous change, activity or progress,

"3. Marked by intensity and vigor, forceful,

"4. Of or relating to variation of intensity, as is musical sound.

"Just in case, remember to bring your flashlight and sack lunch."