Leslie's Latest News

Big Brown...

... is sure looking a lot like Big Red!

Big Red was a nickname for Secretariat, the Triple Crown winner in 1973.

I got to visit Secretariat in his retirement at Claiborne Farm, when I was in Kentucky for the 1979 NASFiC. And I have tenuous a four-step connection to Big Brown - Alex's dental hygienist is Big Brown's trainer's sister. Cool.

Heh - just noticed on Wikipedia that Big Brown's great-great grandfather is Round Table - the one other horse I've visited at Claiborne Farm, back in the 60's, when I was at college and my family briefly lived in Kentucky. I used to have a snapshot of me with Round Table, but it's been lost, unfortunately.

Thinking good thoughts for Ted Kennedy

I just heard that Ted Kennedy has been rushed to the hospital on Cape Cod for "stroke-like symptoms". As a man, he has many weaknesses, but he's a great liberal voice in the Senate and I would hate to lose him.

Further news: He's been air-lifted to Mass General.

Even further news: It's sounding better now. Apparently he was conscious and called in himself. It was some sort of seizure, not a stroke. Whew.

Lovely garden tour

I had a lovely garden tour this morning. It was a garden club from the Cape, and they were all really interested in everything and really enjoyed seeing new things and learning about new plants. I just love leading groups like that. At the end, several of them shook my hand and thanked me personally, which is not the usual reaction I get.

And the garden was in a beautiful state. Some things had passed, but lots of things were in bloom. The understory trees - redbuds, dogwoods, and silverbells were at their peak. There were lots of azaleas and woodland phlox and trilliums, and the yellow lady's slippers were just starting.

The redesign of the entry area has been completed. The picture shows the new water feature, which is really cool. The water runs down over the rock surface, then sinks into the ground and gets recirculated. It really gives the feeling that you're entering a special place.

They've also begun the installation of the green roof in the Idea Garden.

After the tour, I just sat for a while drinking it all in. It was like being in a fairyland.

I've decided that next year I'm going to try really hard not to schedule anything I don't have to in May, so I can spend more time outdoors during these wonderful all-too-short weeks of spring bloom.

He was well loved by all who knew him

Grief catches up with you at the oddest times. This morning I got a phone call from the very nice lady at Orchard Hill, the lovely retirement community in Sudbury that I'd been looking at for my father. So I had to explain about his death. She was very sympathetic and we chatted for a bit and that saddened me, but did not evoke the tears. What finally did that was the call to my Dad's car insurance agent. Yeah, I thought that would be pretty routine, too, but you never know. I called and left a message saying that the policyholder had died and that I'd like to talk to his agent about his car insurance. (Auto insurance is insane in Fairfield County, apparently. He's paying close to $300 a month for his two cars and since they're currently not being driven, I was hoping there was some way I could lower the cost until we could sell them.)

Expecting a routine transaction, I was not at all prepared for the agent's reaction when he called me back. He sounded truly upset and said that he had no idea that Dad had died, and he was terribly sorry to hear it. He told me that Dad had been his customer ever since he took over the agency from his father (however far back that was), and he was a lovely man who he liked very much. And he closed saying that if there was anything he could do to help us out, that we shouldn't hesitate to call him because he felt he'd really like to help the family due to his long association with my Dad. He sounded genuinely shocked and saddened.

It's really a testament to the sweetness of my Dad's personality that even his insurance agent was touched by his passing.

(As to the cars, well, he recommended that if we're going to leave them undriven for any length of time we drop the liability portion of the policy. And then if we needed to drive them, we could just call him and he would reinstate it. But can't do any of that until I get the probate letter. Come on probate court, let's get moving...)

Local politics

I have been peripherally involved in a local situation recently which has given me a small taste of why it's so hard to get anything done these days. It involves a clash between multiple community organizations (one of which has a very narrowly-focussed agenda with no room for compromise), a local foundation, a state agency, and several branches of local government. All of the proceedings have been notable for the lack of clarity in communication and confusion over roles and lines of authority. I think the state agency means well (one of the players is notable for moving mountains to produce wonderful results in the past), but is woefully underfunded and somewhat at the whim of various forces we probably know nothing about. The community group I belong to is trying to keep things from totally falling apart, but it's rough sledding.

As I say, it's a wonder anything gets done these days.

Addendum: You can read more on this here.

Good news and too darn much to do

My seven-year follow-up mammogram was normal. Very happy there.

I just can't keep up with things this week. All I want to do is sit outside and breath in deeply the lovely warm fragrant spring air. But I just have a huge list of thing I'm supposed to do and I just can't get myself motivated to do them. I manage one or two things each day, but it's not enough and they're piling up on me.

The list includes various tasks related to my father's estate, finishing the porch painting, reading and scoring those proposals by Thursday night, making travel plans (both for Nancy's visit at the end of June and Alex and my trip to Colorado in early August), general house and yard cleanup. Not to mention getting back to a regular exercise schedule, walking and reporting on the Charles River Greenway (which I have been neglecting since April), getting my hair cut, doing something about my leaky gutters, fixing my broken doorbell, making more progress on cleaning out my clutter, etc., etc., etc.

Triage. I need to do some triage. Focus on the critical things and put off the others. Except right now it all seems critical.

Ah well, maybe it will all look better in the morning.

Healthy Eating, Round 3

Today's Healthy Eating session went well. One couple from class 1 turned up again - they'd missed last week due to a doctor's appointment. On the other hand, two people from last week didn't come this week. So we still had 8 people.

Now that people have gotten comfortable with us, a lot of the emotional issues around their eating are coming out. One woman is mourning the loss of a companion and can't get herself motivated to prepare meals just for herself. One woman eats compulsively in the evening because she is bored. One woman, who seems very competent, has problems with her self-image and is convinced she will fail. Of course, the program is not really designed to address these sorts of issues, but perhaps just having a chance to talk things out and get some encouragement will help people focus on making changes. There have been many small triumphs. The lonely woman, who can't walk long distances, got herself to a mall and did a series of short walks, sitting in public areas and people-watching in between. She said she felt really good getting herself out of the house. We have the lady who gave up pasta in the first week, and who has continued to be successful in cutting way down. Several have increased their consumption of fruits and vegetables, and others are working on it. One lady who eats out often has started taking home doggie bags. So we may be doing some good.

We're almost done with discussing the various food groups. Next week we will start making plans for the final two classes, which involve the grocery store field trip and preparing our own healthy lunch.

Walking Battle Road

I had brunch with Alex yesterday, and it was such a beautiful day that he suggested that we do something outdoors. I'm saving Garden in the Woods for after Big Bugs is installed, so after a few suggestions were rejected, we ended up going to the Minute Man National Historic Park in Lexington and walked a section of the "Battle Road". Strangely, I don't think I've ever done that before. I've visited sections of it, mostly at the Fiske Hill end and of course the Old North Bridge, but don't remember ever walking a long stretch of it.

We didn't make it all the way, because I haven't been walking much lately and my legs are really out of shape. But we got from the Visitor Center to the Hartwell Tavern, which was probably a couple of miles. We passed several house sites, including the home of Captain William Smith (who was Abigail Adams' brother). Most of the houses had stories about how the residents had fled during the battle and returned to find dying British soldiers on their doorstep. We passed a few British soldiers' gravesites, marked with commemorative flags. And we passed the spot of Paul Revere's capture, where he and William Dawes and Samuel Prescott rode off in different directions and only Prescott managed to ride on to to warn Concord, the night before the battle.

It looks like Hartwell Tavern might be more fun to visit after Memorial Day because it will have "interpretive talks" then, and seems to have some outdoor pens for chickens and other livestock. But yesterday was very beautiful, with flowering trees in bloom and lots of lush green grass in the meadows. The landscape is more wooded now than it was in Colonial times, when most of the land was open farmland, but in most places the road is still bounded by the old stone walls on each side, and it's very moving to be be in a place where such momentous events transpired.

Oops - I volunteered again

I've been pretty good about saying "no" to a number of things that various people have asked me to do over the past several weeks - just because I am entirely too overloaded with previous commitments plus work on my father's estate.

But this week I agreed to do one more thing. It involves giving out money to community groups, so I couldn't resist.

Due to my connections with the Friends of the Watertown Riverfront, I was invited to be on the mini-grant review committee for the Watertown Community Foundation. I have to read and rate 21 proposals by Thursday, when I will attend a dinner meeting that will decide on how to allocate $40,000. The proposals represent about $48,000 in requests, so some will have to be turned down or scaled back, but we should be able to fund most of them. The topics the grants cover include community building, community health, and environmental issues. They're all things I'm interested in, so it should be fun.

I rated 4 proposals this morning and I've got 5 more days, so I should be able to manage it.

Survivor Mind Tricks

If you don't watch Survivor, this won't make much sense, but I just want to observe that this season's Survivor has been one of the best ever. And not just because four women have made it to the finals. It's that every one of the last several episodes has featured some sort of amazing mind game. There were two episodes where people who were actually holding the hidden immunity idol failed to play it and were voted out. This was after someone played a fake immunity idol (which she was pretty sure was a fake, but what the hell, it was her only chance.) Then there was one where someone had the hidden immunity idol but managed to convince everyone that she didn't, including acting sad and despondent at tribal council, then producing the idol at the last minute. And last night's classic, where Cirie and Amanda played amazing Jedi mind tricks on poor, sweet, naive Erick and convinced him to give up his immunity so they could vote him out. Watching the reaction of the jury every week has been priceless. And last night Alex and I were laughing so hard we had to pause the TiVo to get a chance to recover. My only regret is that too many good players have been forced out due to injuries. But so it goes. I'm hoping Cirie will win. She's come so far from that woman who was afraid of grass during her first season on the show.

Truth

Or how the "gas tax holiday" pander backfired for Clinton.

This is so cool.

In the recent Indiana primary, Clinton copied McCain yet again and started promising a "gas tax holiday" to voters, a position that every economist denounced as a short-term pander that would do no good and a lot of harm. Obama stood his ground and did not follow suit, which many people felt was political suicide.

But what really happened is that Obama relished the chance to take the focus off distractions like the manufactured Rev. Wright controversy and start actually talking about policy. He produced this masterful ad on the gas tax issue which ran for the last 6 days in Indiana.

Fantastic!

Maybe the American voter isn't as stupid as I have been fearing.

Pink dogwoods

It was another gorgeous day. For some reason I'm noticing pink dogwoods everywhere this week. Lovely.

In the morning, I went to the Diabetes Prevention Program for the "Spring Boost" - a meeting designed to get us back into weight-loss mode. Unfortunately, they only allow 3 weeks between the kickoff and the final weigh-in, so there's not enough time to really do much. But I'll see what I can do.

Today was fun because my original nutritionist, who has since moved on to bigger and better things, came back to meet with us. Sharon supported me through my whole 2-year, 60-pound weight loss process, so it was great to see her again and have a chance to chat. She particularly enjoyed hearing about my new venture into teaching nutrition.

In the afternoon, I made some progress in getting more work done on my porch painting project. I've now completed the primer coat and am ready to start the final coat.

I got the estimate for moving the oil tank at my Dad's house, wrote some letters pertaining to his IRAs, paid some of his bills, and experimented (not entirely successfully) with scanning one of the family photos. Also exchanged some email with my brother about expected dates that he will be in Stratford. He has just learned that he will need cataract surgery, unfortunately, so he won't be ready to come up until early June. Which is fine, there's no huge rush. I just need to consider whether to put the house on sale while it's still filled with stuff or wait until we've done most of the clearing out.

My living room is filled with boxes from my Dad's house. I need to do something about that...

Heathy Eating, Round 2

The second meeting of Healthy Eating was much easier than the first one. For one thing, the two problematic couples decided not to return. I'm sorry about that, of course, but they weren't really into the course, and with their absence things are going much more smoothly. Everyone else came back, plus one person who had been sick last week, so we now have 8 participants. This is a better number, since it gives us more time to address each individual's concerns, and we're not lured off course by people who are not committed to trying to make changes.

We had some very good feedback from the "weekly change" exercise. Everyone gave it a good try, and although not everyone succeeded, most at least managed some improvement. One person commented that the exercise of writing things down was very illuminating. The pasta lady, who had been eating pasta for just about every meal, made a massive change and just had pasta for one meal last week. I was worried that she had gone too far, but she was so happy and proud of herself that I just went with the flow.

Today's exercise topic was "Endurance". I introduced the concept of using a step counter and passed around some cheap ones to let people try them out. (I'd ordered 6 @ $2.75 each from the internet last week). Even my co-leader took one. So it will be interesting to see how that works out.

After the class I checked out local supermarkets to see where we might be able to have our field trip scheduled for the 5th session. It looks like Sudbury Farms is the best bet, since the Roche Brothers is a bit small and crowded.

So I'm feeling better than I did after the first class. Onward!

Tra la! It's May! The lusty month of May!

And I have finally gotten outside on a lovely day. I can feel the stress just melting away. I spent a lot of time on Sunday working on Dad's 2007 taxes, so I was really ready for something different.

I had an informal garden tour at 11 this morning. Only 2 people were there, and I sort of had to twist their arms to do the tour because they were on their way from Vermont to Rhode Island and just stopping by. But they ended up having a lovely time and every time I gave them the option to cut the tour short, they decided to keep on, so we did the full tour after all.

It's fun going around with just one family group, because you can just have a conversation and let them lead you where their interests take you. In this case, they were a lovely retired couple interested in learning about shade perennials they could plant in their garden, and they were also entranced (and very knowledgeable about) all the wildlife, so we observed a lot of turtles and frogs and birds.

I had been planning to finish painting my back porch before starting to plant, but the events of the past few weeks put a stop to the painting. So I gave in and bought a few plants anyway.

After lunch, I stopped by the Waltham Social Security office, but decided to leave and return another day when I saw how slowly the line was moving. It was too nice a day to spend it inside. (I submitted my request to start SS retirement payments online in the morning, and just needed to show them my birth certificate. I can do that anytime in the next few months, so there is no rush.)

I also went by Springwell to copy some of the materials for the healthy eating class tomorrow. I happened to see the Springwell director while I was there and we had a chat about how things were going. She suggested that I could be considered in the future for a position I think she called "master trainer" or something like that, which would be essentially training the trainers, depending on how the grant money was available. I told her I would be interested, if it worked out.

Then I got home and had a chance to try to catch up on some of the work needed in my garden. I propped up a trellis that had fallen down, and starting clearing out some grass in the new area that I'm planning to plant in front of the porch. I also attempted to dig up a Callicarpa shrub that had gotten buried by some other shrubs it had been planted too near. I don't know if I got enough of the roots, so I might have killed it, but it was worth a try to move it and see if it revives. It was hard work, though.

Lots of things are in bloom - too many to list them all. Pink and white quince all over the back fence, a pale yellow magnolia and white crabapple in the side yard. Pink dogwood just starting. Bright blue pulmonaria and yellow Celandine poppy. Graceful yellow trout lilies. Wild blue phlox and white bleeding heart where the birch used to be.

You've got to enjoy it when it's here, because it doesn't last nearly long enough.

Slept in

I got home late last night, after going by Alex's to watch another two episodes of Battlestar Galactica. I think I may have slept through the second one, though. I was really tired. So I slept in this morning and have just started opening mail and starting to catch up with stuff.

Yesterday was very productive, as Geri and Elaine came down to help me for most of the day. The main thing we worked on was packing and moving 4 bookshelves full of my Dad's hobby memorabilia from the front wall of the basement, to clear the area where the new oil tank will have to go. We got through it all, which was a great relief, because now I can tell the tank guys to go ahead whenever they're ready (assuming their quote is acceptable - I'm still waiting to get the final written estimate).

Mostly I just tried to sort and label. We threw out things that were obviously junk, but saved anything that appeared to have meaning, so I can go over it with my brother later and decide what to do. I made a list of my Dad's interests, as evidenced by what we found, and it's a long list. There is stuff from his Customs job, including boxes of things from his travels in the Far East. Records from his consulting work with Timex. A lot of stamp stuff - catalogs and newsletters and historical information about his specialized collection of WWII stamps from the South Pacific. Old radio magazines, including a couple of 1930's Gernsback magazines. The old carrying case that he used to store TV-repair vacuum tubes (still filled with 50's-era tubes). Lots of maps. Stuff about time, including a design for a sundial. Ship models and ship prints. Piles of family genealogical research. Books, brochures, articles, and magazines about Slovakia. Correspondence with people in Slovakia, and Slovaks in the U.S. working with him on genealogical studies. Information about the Carpatho-Rusyn church. Many maps, and some historical information about places he'd lived. Opera books, tapes, and programs from The Met. A big collection of jazz and swing books and tapes. A desk full of ham radio equipment and records of his contacts. A workshop full of tools, and files of home maintenance info and designs. Gardening books and equipment left from my mother, as well as her bowling equipment, tournament records, and trophies. His pilot school stuff, including his flight log book. Piles of computer equipment and software, including handwritten notes about how to edit video and make DVDs. Some sort of research project on revolutionary war people and munitions (I'm hoping my brother knows something about this.) And I'm probably leaving something out.

I'm not sure when I'm going down again. I'll try to go when one of the following things happen, but I'm not sure which will happen first: I get the probate letter (so I can start visiting banks and other financial institutions), my brother decides to come for a visit, or I need to go down to supervise the tank operation (my cousin has agreed to try to do this if I can't make it, but I'd rather try to be there). In the meantime, there's still a lot of useful sorting to do, so if I can free up another 2-day stretch I might go for another session.