Jun 08

My partner, Vivian and I took Mom to lunch in Shelton on Sunday. I know, her Birthday is on Tuesday this year, but we both work then, so Sunday was the day. We had to get up early anyway to get a friend to her pick-up point for an Alaska cruise, so we took off for Shelton right after that. We like to got to Tacoma to get there as the Tacoma Narrows bridge does not have a westbound toll, and take the ferry back because we only pay for the car eastboud on ferries and we don't have to drive so far. We get to rest most of the way back and have spectacular views to boot.

The green this year is alomost aggressive, with a narrow band of psycotic yellow Scotch Broom along the roads. The rododendrons are quite late this year because its been so cool most of the time. We saw a lot of those as well as irises, flags, roses, etc. The tide was way out, common for this time of year here in the NW. Ferries are having to cancel trips to shallow docks because of the low tides.

We had a nice visit with Mom and Penny, then Vivian, Mom and I left for lunch. Penny decided to stay home and have some time to herself. Mom wanted to eat at either El Serape mexican restaurant or Blondies. We got to Blondies first and it had moved up the street, so we decided to try the new location. They had liver and onions on the menu so Mom was happy. Friends of hers were there and she lkied that as well. We ordered, and waited. And waited. Some more friends of hers came in and they talked. They got their food. We waited. !/2 hour after we ordered, a waitress came by and told us that the stuffed potatoes we had ordered weren't served until after 4 pm. It didn't say that on the menu. She said she would get our waitress to come get our new order. 10 minutes later she showed up. Its a good thing we ordered salad because that came quickly. The rest of our food didn't show up for another 1/2 hour!! Mom's freinds had left by the time we got our dessert, rasberry pie with ice cream. That at least came in a relatively timely manner. We sang "happy birthday" to her, did not sing the birthday dirge mandatory at all Johnston birthdays because I don't think she really likes it much.

We took her back home, 2 1/2 hours later, had a lovely visit with Mom and Penny, and went home to rest.

I wrote this a day or two ago and didn't realize, until Jeanette pointed it out just now in an e-mail, that I apparently did not hit the right button that I thought I hit, so it did not get out there for the family to read. I'll try again.

This may be the easiest way to let the extended family know that Beth and Lyndon and the girls (now 10 and 8) have decided recently to move permanently to NZ, having enjoyed their year there very much. The symphony there voted unanimously for him to stay as assistant concertmaster, and his resignation from the Philharmonic will be effective November 2. Beth has accepted a new job: director of research for the Mary Potter Hospice in Wellington, 20 hours a week, with a patient clientele of about 150 a month, and with prospects for maybe expanding into a consortium of the 36 hospices nationwide for research. She has submitted her resignation to LLU. The girls have been happy in school there and will continue. They like the fact that they can walk to school, whereas in their lovely CA neighborhood it still was not safe to let them go unaccompanied. There have been many pros and cons both ways to weigh, and it was an agonizing decision, but they have thought it through carefully, prayed for guidance, and feel at peace with it.

They all will leave there for CA July 9, to pack, sell their house, visit relatives, and do the Hollywood Bowl season. They'll return to Wellington in September, and she will begin the new job. He will come to CA again for Salonen's final gala concert as music director and to go on their two-week tour of Asia the end of October. Beth and the girls may join him for that. They will see Bob, at least, in Seoul, as he plans to teach there the whole fall semester (if the right papers come through in time). I may or may not go.

They are budgeting for two trips to the States per year, so perhaps we'll see them almost as often as before.

Jeanette left this morning about 8:45. We had a good time together. She arrived Monday night, and most of Tuesday and yesterday she and Bob worked on genealogy. She also showed me how to make entries here (we'll see how much I remember).

She shared with us all the stuff she'd learned and copied and picked up during the eastern part of her present trip, and Bob got out a carton of old family photos from his side that I'd forgotten he had (I think obtained since his parents' deaths). Unfortunately, some years ago, they were stored where some squirrels got in and chewed up some. But yesterday he and Jeanette went through that box, he labeling pictures on the back, and reading old letters, and finding things like his parents' marriage certificate. We tracked down and had some nice e-mail exchanges with a woman history professor at Columbia U. who has done extensive research on Robert Morris, and though she, too, has never come across mention of his daughter Polly's mother, she suggested a couple of leads we might follow. One of our old letters here also suggested that some cousins might have some info on some of the family. We have begun pursuing some of those.

Jeanette considered taking all our pictures home, scanning them, and returning them, but then decided it would be safer to take digital pictures of them all, which she then did. Then she packed up so she could get a reasonably early start this morning. She is still hoping to see Willie before he leaves for a summer in AK.

She also expressed interest in one of the local sites we'd mentioned on her previous visit, so we went there--the little wooden church ,about 20 minutes from here, where "The Old Rugged Cross" was first sung. It is currently being lovingly restored, and we happened to meet the owner and one of the prime movers in the restoration, and he gave us a good tour and a lot of the history.

She plans to put all these pictures into CDs or DVDs for all the family, or at least those who want them. She hopes to do this soon after returning home, while it is fresh in her mind and before she starts a new job--though I can only imagine all the catch-up she will find to do there after 8 months away.

Jeanette is visiting and is suggesting I start my own entry here, and has shown me how, so I need to try it before my senile mind forgets it all.

The first weekend of May was graduation weekend, both here and where James attended college in TN. Bob needed to stay here to hood a Korean doctoral student who'd worked under him for years; she would have been very disappointed if he were not here for graduation.

So I took Laura, who'd just finished her sophomore year here, and her stuff for the summer, and we drove south. Leaving on that Thursday, we first drove to Gatlinburg, where we found a nice motel room overlooking the river in back. Then we got up early Friday, ate a good motel breakfast, and drove up to Newfound Gap in Great Smoky NP to arrive around dawn. I had figured that we'd been facing south there, which might mean that the rising sun would give us better light for pictures than what I'd experienced a few years ago in my one trip there with Bob, in the afternoon. However, we realized this is, indeed, the "Smokies," rightfully named. Even in early morning it was hazy. Still, we took some pictures and were glad we'd gotten an early start.

Laura asked if it woudl be possible to cross into SC, one of only five states she'd never been in. It looked easy enough. But when I asked at a visitors' center there, a ranger said to plan on two hours to get there--"Down here we don't measure miles by distance, but by time." Still, we had all day to get to the home of friends in Ooltewah who were expecting us for supper, so we did it. The roads through the park and then on down to SC were very scenic, often lined with rhododendrons (though not yet in bloom), with vistas of layers of mountains beyond, and with frequent turnouts--many of which we stopped at to take pictures. Once across the border into SC, we stayed long enough to take pictures by the sign, then headed back to the very scenic Highway 64 that the rangers had recommended. Slow, yes--sometimes 20 mph around curves--but indeed scenic, and it was a gorgeous spring day, and we both enjoyed it to the full. We stopped for lunch in a quaint town along the way, surprised to see that it even had a Kilwin's ice-cream parlor, something I thought was unique to MI.

We were doing fine, and keeping in touch by cell phone with her parents driving from TX, but then toward the end of 64, after stopping at a viewpoint, I somehow got turned around and headed east again without realizing it till I saw a highway sign half an hour later. Only later did Laura tell me she had been sure at the time that I was reentering the highway in the wrong direction. So that cost us a good hour or so. Still, we got to the house in time for a good supper, though quick, before heading to the Friday-evening service in the college gym with Robert and Kathy and James.

Margaret also flew in late that night, rented a car, and stayed with another friend. She joined us the next morning in time for the baccalaureate service, for which the speaker was a colleague from here, who also has a son that was in the graduating class there. And there were two or three other families of long-time friends who were there because of relatives graduating. We were sorry, though, to miss seeing any of Marilyn's family--her son was graduating in absentia for some reason, a nephew we've never yet met!

The friends we stayed with both teach there, and the husband is their main cook, a gourmet chef. We had a wonderful Italian dinner at their home, and by then Kathy's parents also had arrived. That afternoon, we visited in their home, then later went to the home of another teacher that Bob and I have known some over the years, whose family is extremely hospitable and who have invited James to their home lots of times, as he and their son are friends. We enjoyed visiting with them and had a nice supper there.

Sunday morning was commencement. It is held in a civic auditorium in Chattanooga. We had to sit far enough back that we couldn't see everything very well, but James did graduate magna cum laude and as one of 9 in their special honors program, in a class of 250 or more. His dad had feared that he wouldn't graduate at all, because of some tests and papers he had put off, but he did get it all done.

Robert and Kathy then took the family and close friends to an Indian restaurant with a good buffet. We had a very good dinner, and then from there Margaret had to leave to return to her family in OK. We visited some more at the home where we were staying, and a friend I used to work with here came over to chat with me a while.

It was hard to know just when to head home, as I wanted to be of help if needed, and I also still had a false hope that perhaps I could bring James home with me, both for companionship in travel and to help me with a long list of computer woes. He needed to get packed up and moved out of the dorm, and he needed to get a used car, and he needed to find a place to move his stuff to, as he'd promised to stay there for a couple of months to do some computer project for one of his teachers. We were all having a little difficulty getting decisions from him--it was also a time to introduce his sister to his friends and their longboarding, games, etc.--so I finally took Robert's advice to head on home on Monday. It was a good thing. They had to stay till Thursday to find him a reasonable car, and I could not have helped with that. Meanwhile, the friends we were staying with graciously offered also to house him for two months, and he accepted that offer; and once he got the car, his parents and Laura left for TX and he moved his stuff that night.

I drove home alone, but it was a gorgeous spring day, and I enjoyed the profusion of redbuds, rhododendrons, dogwood, and crabapples in bloom as I headed back to MI. I made frequent stops, to avoid sleepiness and muscle problems, getting home that evening after 12 hours on the road. The next night, however, the sciatica that massage had kept at bay for 2 1/2 years came back with a vengeance. Fortunately, with a couple of weeks of medication and massage, it has gone again without any spinal injections or surgery.

We're enjoying having Jeanette here now and catching up on all the genealogical info she uncovered on her trip east.