Back Again!

I wasn’t long awake before my phone rang and it was Alice! She was calling from Ohio not from Alaska nor from Chicago where they were so delayed by thunderstorms last night that they were not home until two in the morning……..A l.o.n.g………..journey home, especially for Nathan who was not able to sleep on any of the planes……

Above is a group picture from Juneau………..Lots of relatives!

Because they were so very late getting home, Nathan is not going to school today but will work on more homework and just get used to the new time zone four hours later.

I have always loved traveling, but have also always thought returning home perhaps the best part of every journey.

Read Full Post »

And……….The Wedding! Or at least one photo of it.

We’ve been very busy here with Clara and Sofia visiting while their parents look at houses. But Alice was busy at the Alaska wedding which was in such an amazingly beautiful place. So sorry I can only show you a picture or two.

Read Full Post »

Happy Anniversary, Alice and Mike! And some more pictures from Alaska!

It is rather astonishing to me that Alice and Mike have been married for FIFTEEN YEARS! I remember that day so well………And now, they are celebrating in different parts of the world! But Memorial Day they’ll be back together!

And they can always brag about being married in the last century!

The flower girl in this picture is Ilona who is now in college and at Shelter Island for the wedding. The junior bridesmaid is my niece Casey who now does marketing for the Opera Nightclub in Atlanta. All I could say are cliches about the passage of time…..

Alice and Nathan visited the Mendenhall Glacier, hiking up the West Glacier Trail.

And a photo from Shelter Island, a bit blurry, of Alice swinging on one of the very amazing “swings” one can try there.

Read Full Post »

News from Seattle and Shelter Island

These are Alice’s photos. I’m still here in Bath Township. But in 2005 Paul and I visited Andy during one of his summers in Alaska and spent a few days on Shelter Island, too, where my nephew Rick has an organic farm on raised beds in the Muskeg. It’s an amazing place. Rick has also been, and hosted WWOOFERS, willing workers on organic farms who work for bed and board all over the world.

I can see Alice and Nathan are having a great time….Yesterday my sil Aniko and her granddaughter Ilona, or Illuska as she likes to be called, joined them.

Nathan (in the blue jacket) and Alice during the kayaking to Shelter Island

Alice and Nathan (nine years old) after their two hour kayak paddle out to Shelter Island, Auk Bay, Alaska.

Nathan and Ilona reading in a net high up on Shelter Island…..Besides the raised beds, over the years with lots of help (Andy helped, too) Rick has made a beautiful small cabin, a kitchen, and lots of little areas for sitting and looking at the garden and enjoying a hot tub….All the building material has to be flown in by helicopter, so the projects are carefully planned.

Flowers from the Ballard Farmer’s Market in Seattle.

Nathan visiting the amazing Fremont Troll…….The VW under his foot is an actual car…This is a BIG scupture. You can read more about this troll here: http://fremont.com/about/fremonttroll-html/

The wedding will be off the island this coming Saturday and I’m delighted that Alice has been able to post photos from this rather remoted location.

Read Full Post »

My Extreme but Desultory Week – Take II

I’ve decided to be determined and redo this post which was somehow lost when I wanted to check the already uploaded photos.

I woke up last Saturday in Lexington Park, Maryland. It was the sunny beautiful morning of my granddaughters’ Fairy Tale/Disney dance recital – Once Upon a Time. Clara was Sleeping Beauty and Sofia was Jasmine, and how they loved their glamorous costumes, having their hair in a bun, and wearing stage make-up. I have photos and if the difficulty with my hideous Window 8 computer is somehow overcome, I will post them for you. That same morning, we had to leave early because a realtor was bringing someone to look at their house, but it was not sold. Just as well as they have no place to live as yet. Still, I think they would rather deal with that than not being able to sell this Maryland house which is very nice.

When I returned to Ohio on Monday afternoon, I returned to an evening of weather news on all channels as my part of the world struggled through tornado watches and warnings and extreme storms. Our township was the hardest hit in Summit County, though fortunately there were no tornado touchdowns, just terrible storms. We had two bridges washed away as well as many roadways, lots of basement flooding (yes, our was slightly flooded,too). A mess. Such a mess that school was cancelled next day as the buses couldn’t reroute to pick up everyone.

Amazingly, we did not lose power. Tuesday was warmer and sunny and things dried out a bit, and Wednesday was another evening with all the TV being about possible tornados. More roads washed out. One of the houses Emily and Ingmar had looked at via online Realty sites was nearly destroyed. I’d wondered about whether it was not too low, beside Yellow Creek, but never expected anything like this.

But some people welcome rain and are happy to play outside for hours while the sky falls gently on them. My grandson Stephen is like this! He loves being outside.

Other news on the Stephen Front: I know he has two food loves:black olives and canned fish. He likes sardines straight from the can. So does Alice. She posted on face book this week that her heart melts when Stephen asks if he can have “our special fishy” for breakfast. My heart melts too.

And my last news is that at six this morning, Alice and Nathan left for Alaska for my nephew Bob's wedding in Juneau. They will stop in Seattle for a few days to visit with Alice's dear high school friend, Tania, who will also be going to the wedding. I'll miss them, but they return on the 26th and I hope they have lots of pictures and stories!

Read Full Post »

Throwback Thursday – Remembering Pax Ting

Remember to click on pictures to enlarge them…….

The picture was taken when Alice visited Emily’s patrol’s campsite during Pax Ting.

All of my children were Hungarian Scouts and in 1989 the Girl Scout troops from all over the world celebrated Pax Ting in the American Hungarian Scout Camp in Filmore, New York.
It was the fiftieth anniversary of the original Pax Ting (Peace Gathering or Meeting) held just outside of Budapest, Hungary in 1939.

Wikipedia has this to say about that special event:

“Pax Ting was the first Girl Guide and Girl Scout World Camp held after the formation of the World Association of Girl Guides and Girl Scouts. It was held in Gödöllő, Hungary from July 25 to August 7, 1939, and attended by some 5,800 Girl Guides from around the world.

At the 10th World Conference of Girl Guides which was held in Adelboden, Switzerland, it was decided to hold a world meeting for Girl Guides in 1939, following the example of the World Scout Jamborees. The site was chosen as Gödöllő in Hungary, where in 1933, the 4th World Scout Jamboree had been held. It was suggested calling the camp “Jamborina”, but consultations had to be held with the World Organization of the Scout Movement about using this as the official name. Later, on the advice of Olave Baden-Powell the name Pax Ting (meeting of peace) was chosen. It was decided that 120 Girl Guides and 12 leaders from every country could take part. The minimum age for participation was 14 years, and the Girl Guides had to have achieved second class and a camping badge. The leaders had to have a camping diploma. In the year preceding the camp, Hungarian Girl Guides had learned foreign languages so as to be able to act as a guides and interpreters. Archduchess Anna of Hungary, Prince Gustaf Adolf and Princess Sybilla of Sweden were also present at Pax Ting. Due to the threat of World War II, which broke out a month later, there were only 5800 girls from 32 countries present.

A set of four postage stamps was issued to celebrate Pax Ting. The 2f stamp has a hand raised in salute with an olive branch in background. The 6f stamp features the Hungarian Girl Guide insignia, composed of the Shield of Hungary, the Crown of St. Stephen and Lily. The 10f stamp shows the heads of two women. The 10f stamp features a dove with olive branch in front of a banner.”

At the camp in Filmore there were Hungarian Girl Scouts from all over the US and Canada as well as Europe, Australia, and South America. Ethnic Scouts from other countries also attended. I remember Lithuanian Scouts and German Scouts and I know there were others…. It made a great impression on my daughters. They just loved it. Paul and I camped out there in the parents section for a few days at the end of the camp. Andy was there too, and our dear poodle Csapi.

This image is of an old flag from Gödöllő, though I am not sure it was flown at Pax Ting.

Read Full Post »

Angel Pie and Memories of Angel Pie

When I was still living in the home where I grew up, my mother often made Angel Pie for my birthday. I loved it more than any cake, though her chocolate cake with toasted walnuts sprinkled on top was a close favorite. Angel Pie has no pie crust in it. That is made of meringue and baked separately. Then one makes a very intense lemon filling, and last whips up a lot of heavy whipping cream. They are layered and chilled.

When I talked to Alice about what she would like me to bake for her birthday, she confessed that she didn’t really care for cake that much. We both recalled the Angel Pie I made for her 17th birthday in Budapest during our 92 sabbatical. (I remembered that it had been impossible to find cream of tartar in Hungary. No one understood what I was talking about, though I did finally discover the name is tisztított borkő, which means “cleaned wine stone”, the purified mineral deposits left on the inside of wine barrels. Actually Potassium bitartrate.) However, I made Angel Pie without that stabilizing help and it was just fine.

Yesterday I made it for Alice and was a bit overwhelmed with the enthusiastic response. I used the recipe from The Joy of Cooking, but added a little of the whipped cream into the lemon filling. There are many online recipes. Alice took a photo with her phone. It’s actually a picture of the last piece. Andy has requested it for his birthday in June.

Read Full Post »

My Wonderful News which doesn’t have to be a secret anymore……..

I have been nearly exploding with my desire to share this here. However, Emily didn’t want me to until the contract was actually signed.

And the news is – fanfares and drum rolls – Emily has signed a contract to be a tenure track professor of ecology at Cleveland State University, the school where her father was a professor of computer science for 31 years, from 1976 until 2007…….(How I wish he were here with us to celebrate!) She really enjoyed her time at St. Mary’s College in southern Maryland and made good friends there, and so did the rest of the family. It is always difficult to leave. However, it was so far that visiting back and forth was very difficult. I could fly but Alice and her family would have needed to pay four full fares. It’s a little too much for one weekend. So Michael ended up taking vacation days and they drove. But it is a good eight hours……Now Emily and Ingmar are madly looking for a house in this area, perhaps in the same school system she attended up to 8th grade, the one where Nathan is a student now…Or else something close. Of course I am very happy, even though I know the summer will be a little crazy with moving and all that will be going on.

It has been growing and changing ever since it began in ’64. (Previously it was Fenn College.) The areas where Paul taught are greatly changed. The building his office was first in, the old student center called “the cage” has been torn down and a new one built. A new building was also constructed for the Business College. Emily’s College is a newly formed College of Science…..It’s all rather different from the CSU I knew, and all to the good, I think. Most of our friends are retired now. “Time’s winged chariot” and all that. I graduated from CSU and so did Alice and Andy. Emily was a National Merit Scholar and attended Western Reserve.

The new student center, Julka Hall, is impressive though I liked the old one. Lots of memories there. You can read more about it here: http://blog.cleveland.com/architecture/2010/10/new_student_center_and_julka_h.html

Paul’s department moved to this new building in the 90s.

Euclid Avenue, where the university is mainly located used to be called Millionaire’s row because many wealthy citizen had imposing homes there during the end of the 1800s and early 1900s, among them John D. Rockefeller. There is little of that left, but the University owns the Mather Mansion and holds events there. It has quite a different look than other area of the campus.

But enough of that. It is an excellent school and I wish Emily many happy and successful years there.

Read Full Post »