Helen, Dorothy and Mildred Jones

Helen, Dorothy and Mildred Jones were the children of Charles Isaac Jones (1859-1940) and Emma Liggett (1861-1949). The photograph is from the Whitley County Historical Museum. Charles is my 1st cousin 4 times removed. Our common ancestors are my 4th great grandparents William B. Jones and Elizabeth Helms. They were Charles' grandparents.

Helen was born May 1, 1888 in Columbia City and married John Albert Menaugh on April 22, 1913 in Whitley County, Indiana. In 1940 and 1949 she lived in Chicago, Illinois.

Dorothy and Mildred were twins, born January 9, 1892 in Columbia City. Dorothy married Russell B. Clapham on June 15, 1919 in Whitley County. According to her mother's obituary in 1949, Mrs. Dorothy Clapham was living in Washington, D. C. Her husband, Russell, died December 28, 1928 in Columbia City of cerebral meningitis. In addition to his wife, Dorothy, he was survived by his 8 year old son, Charles Clapham.

In August 1918, Mildred married Robert Dale Robertson at Peoria, Illinois. In 1940 and 1949 she was living in Washington, D. C.

A fourth child, Lucy, was born to Charles and Emma Liggett Jones in March of 1894. According to her parents obituaries in 1940 and 1949, Lucy was married to Walter Mitchell and lived in Washington, D. C.

Second Life: on Cycling and Aging

Reading On My Own Two Wheels by Malachi O'Doherty*, I am transported from the North Shore of Massachusetts back to the Antrim coast of Northern Ireland, where I spent some weeks on my bike this past Spring. The Belfast-based author describes many of the same roads I traveled on - the same challenging hills, treacherous weather and glorious scenery - making me long to return there even more than I do already.




But the main theme of the book - whose subtitle is Back in the Saddle at 60 - is that of the author's return to cycling after an absence of three decades, and of the relationship between cycling and aging. Overweight and diagnosed with diabetes at 60, Malachi O'Doherty turned to what had been a favourite pastime of his youth in attempts to regain his health and energy. What follows is a complex and engaging personal account that is part memoir, and part commentary on what it is like to ride again as a changed man in a changed world. It is no longer the 1980s and the author is no longer in his 30s. Confronted with a new breed of bicycles, high-traffic roads, newfangled cycling infrastructure, and a society where cycling is far from a normative behaviour, the author finds himself in a state that is a mixture of wonderment, disappointment, frustration, and delight.




On My Own Two Wheels is a personal narrative. It makes no generalisations, gives no advice, offers up no lessons to the reader. But I suspect the experiences described will be widely relatable. I would estimate that as many as a quarter of this blog's readers are middle aged men and women who had cycled in their youth and have recently gotten back into it, or are attempting to do so. I have met many such cyclists riding for transportation in Boston, and more recently at randonneuring and club ride events. I recall reading that the average age of a Paris-Brest-Paris participant is in their 50s.




There are some specifics in Malachi O'Doherty's story that I find intriguing. One is the way he faces changes that have taken place in the bicycle industry during his time off the bike. Of those who return to riding after decades of absence, many gravitate toward the type of bike that had been popular in their youth - seeking out vintage or classic machines, even taking pains to refurbish them with period-correct components. Some want to ride an exact replica of the bicycle they raced or toured on in their 20s or 30s. Others purchase the kind of bike they had dreamed of, but could never afford back in the day. But the author falls into the category that prefers a clean start and turns to contemporary industry standards. He went to a bike shop, asked for advice, and purchased a modern touring bike - fitted with brifters and clipless pedals in leu of the downtube shifters and toe clips he had used three decades earlier. The new aluminium bike is a size smaller than the steel bike of his youth. It handles differently. Far from feeling at home on the alien machine, O'Doherty nonetheless accepts the new technology and the challenges it presents. I get the sense that for him this is part of the deal: As fondly and nostalgically as he recalls the spirited rides and long touring trips of his 30s, reliving the past is not what he is after; he intends to start a new chapter.




Another choice the author makes early on is to stay away from the racing and club cycling cultures - or any particular bicycle culture, for that matter. He describes his preferred riding style as "tootling," or simply wandering around by bike. And yet, he notices contradictions in himself - competitive impulses and cravings for speed that seem to come out of nowhere and undermine (or enhance? it's not always clear) his experience of the two-wheeled journey. He relates these paradoxes in cycling to paradoxes in life. Perhaps cycling offers a means of understanding himself better.




At the time of writing this post I am 33 years old. What draws a person to the bicycle at the age of 50, 60, 70 and beyond I can only speculate. Some are motivated by health and fitness-related concerns. Others take it up as a hobby after retirement. For others still it seems to be a matter of nostalgia. But regardless of the motive, a not uncommon result is that cycling becomes more than just an interest, but a way of life. A "second life," as one local cyclist in his 70s put it, throwing a slender muscular leg over the top tube of his racing bike and giving me a meaningful wink: "I am in better shape now than I was thirty years ago and my mind is sharper." I believe him. Riding with some exceptionally strong cyclists in their 60s and 70s has made me look forward to that age in a way I hadn't done before. I'd like to be like them when I grow up.




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*Malachi O'Doherty is an online acquaintance, and I am a great fan of his political books and commentary. A reviewer's copy of On My Own Two Wheels was sent to me by the publisher.

Please be quiet

Sure, she looks cute. But you'd hate it too if you had to be trapped inside with her after she went into heat, and the vet couldn't see her until Thursday.

Of Rabbits and Hares

This was among the first photos taken with the new Nikon P500 camera, which arrived on the 8th. I stepped out the back door on my way to take pictures and this little fellow was sitting across the alley. I got two shots off before he darted away. This is not a cropped image...





This jackrabbit, also known as a hare, was seen in Mountview Cemetery in Billings on the 13th. At first I thought it was a grave decoration, albeit not near a grave, but then I noticed its eyes were moving.





A close-up shot, at the full 36x magnification of the zoom lens.



It was a little wobbly in the hind legs when it stood up – a lot like my legs after I've been sitting for too long!





It looked back at me, then jumped off – literally – covering a distance of five feet or more with each hop as well as a foot or more in height. And it was fast! Sure was fun to watch too. (In a search for info on jackrabbits I found out that they can leap up to 10 feet and reach speeds up to 40 mph. Their young are born furred and with their eyes open.)

Organ Mountains

The Organ Mountains are the most well known of the rugged, mostly rock mountains that seem to circle the Las Cruces and Rio Grande Valley. I didn't get a chance to see them up close. Maybe next time. They are called Organ Mountains because they are supposed to look like the pipes for the old fashioned pipe organs. Someone had a good imagation.

Saturday Night Fun - Wordles!

Randy's Saturday Night Fun for this week is Wordles, which was inspired by John Newmark! What's a Wordle? It is a graphic representation of text that can be created at wordle.net but be forewarned - you can spend a lot of time playing with the various font and directional settings.

These surname Wordles were created back in July of last year for my maternal and fraternal lines, Phend and Wiseman, respectively. (As always, click on the images for a larger version.)


This facebook wordle was also created in July '08

And this one for the Genea-Blogger Group Games was created in August '08

Arches Revisited

Ten days ago I left Hovenweep National Monument and continued north toward Moab. My intention was to stay a few days and spend some time at Arches National Park. I immensely enjoyed my visit there, about a year ago. However, after a stop at the visitor center, where I learned that most of the campgrounds in the area were already full and booked for the weekend, I resumed driving. There is a State Park at Green River about 45 minutes northwest of Moab and, as luck would have it, they still had quite a few campsites available. It was mid-afternoon when I checked in and before the sun set the campground was full.



The next morning (Friday the 13th), I decided to stay at Green River State Park for the weekend. It was a gorgeous day and after doing a few chores in the morning took a drive over to Arches National Park.





One of the numerous formations at Arches. It was late afternoon and nearby formations cast their shadows, slowly creeping ever closer to this formation.





Another formation silhouetted against the skyline.



The snow-capped La Sal mountains rise up in the distance and dominate the horizon



Balancing Rock. From this angle it really does looks like it is doing a balancing act.



But as you walk around it, the angle of view and perspective change; it is securely attached to the base rock. In time, the wind and rain will erode the base further and some day, in the distant future, the balancing rock will be no more.





And, of course, the setting sun marked the end of another beautiful day!

The Continuing Evolution of the Patio

The Veranda, as described in a September post, was already there, and except for the steps, its evolution didn’t require hard labor. But more than vision was needed for the Patio at the back of the house – it’s taken two years of muscle and materials, and it’s still evolving. If we had a bigger landscaping budget, lived in a colder climate or owned a house from a different era, we might have chosen other methods or materials, but our plan suited this house, this town and two mature people with time and energy.

This is not a How-to-do-it post – more a What-we-did story.
The patio looked like this when our realtor showed us the house – it was the usual 20’ X 12’ poured concrete rectangle, possibly installed by the builder in the 1970’s. A sidewalk starts at the patio and passes in front of the breakfast room window on its way to the gate. A door from the house opens onto the patio. We were pleased to see that we could fit the table & chairs and the grill on the concrete, with room left for a few pots.
A few pots? We moved here with over 100 container plants in the summer of .., carried from the deck and porch of our previous home. Some of them were supposed to be patio plants but most of them belonged in borders and beds. Since we hadn’t yet made the borders and beds, the patio was wall-to-wall with furniture and terra cotta, genuine and faux, overflowing onto the grass.

We had perennials: clematis, heirloom daylilies, agaves, hibiscus, balloon flowers and Amarcrinums. We had tender plants that moved inside for the winter like the Plumeria. We needed a place near the kitchen for the burgeoning herb and hypertufa collection.
A forest of young trees and shrubs had started out as one-gallon starter plants but many were approaching landscape size: one Southern Wax Myrtle, a Camellia japonica, a 4-foot Osmanthus fragrans/Tea Olive, two ‘Celeste’ Figs, an heirloom Philadelphus/Mock orange, a couple of Boxwoods, a large double-yellow Nerium oleander, a Callicarpa Americana/Beautyberry, a Lady Banks Rose, yards of Carolina Jessamine/Gelsemium sempervirens, a little Vitex, two Lagerstroemia/’Acoma’ crepe myrtles and 6-feet of Loquat/Eriobotrya japonica. We also had a tall metal arch that could work for the long side of the patio.

The front panes of the breakfast room window looked across the lawn to an old metal shed, smothered in Hall’s honeysuckle. Seedling crepe myrtles grew against one side pane of the breakfast window, with the sidewalk and grass below. All this had to go - we wanted to see flowers, herbs, birds, bees and butterflies.

As the first winter approached, I planned my long border, dollying pots with selected plants to their future positions along the back fence. I crammed the remaining pots together right up to the edge of the patio, hung the plants with mini-lights and called it our Bistro.

While I puttered around, Philo measured and planned. He had figured out how to enlarge the patio, not by pouring concrete but by using a gravel-type product called decomposed granite, a technique we’d seen on tours of well-known Austin gardens.
His plan was to delineate an area adjoining the perimeter of the concrete, remove the grass and dig out 6 - 8 inches of soil. Philo would use edging to contain the area, we’d replace the soil with one layer of pea gravel, then top it with several layers of decomposed granite totaling 4” in depth, packing each layer in turn. In this way we could keep the furniture and foot traffic on the concrete surface, while using the gravel pads as transitional areas where container plants could meld the patio to lawn and garden.

The first gravel bed was a test. In spring .. we made an 8-foot quarter-circle on the sunny end, fitting it between patio and sidewalk, so that the rosemary and herb troughs could be seen from the breakfast table. We bought the gravel and granite from a nearby organic materials dealer, shoveling them into reusable 5-gallon bags, and loaded the car with 8 or 10 at a time. The herb bed worked well, drained perfectly and looked good all summer.


When fall arrived, we added a second quarter-circle on the opposite end, where it could function both as a walkway to the far end of the yard, and as a place for semi-shade plants. Earlier in .., we’d taken the Loquat out of its pot and planted this broadleaf evergreen tree near the far end. In time, it should add shade and privacy.
We started work on the next stage in March .., when Philo decided to add a two-foot band across the front edge of the patio. He set the edging and we began to dig, sure that this amount of space would be enough.


The metal arch was set into the decomposed granite, a large precast concrete square was set in front of the arch and large containers were placed on each side. I bought our Lady Banks Rose in .., bumping it up to a larger container every year. That’s Lady Banks in bloom on the left side of the arch. This spring I bought a native Coral Honeysuckle/Lonicera sempervirens for the pot on the right. The honeysuckle was very small, and I wanted some scent so I added a second small plant, labeled fragrant Corkscrew vine. I figured they’d be okay together.

Wrong! Although it looked good at first, the non-fragrant vine, now recognized as a Snail Vine, tried to murder the honeysuckle. Another Snail vine was thriving elsewhere, so this one was expendable. After I cut the Snail down to a clump & potted it for adoption, DivaAnnie, who liked its flowers, let it come to her garden. Philo added two more precast squares to make an entrance walk, the rose and honeysuckle did reasonably well, and an annual Cypress Vine was accepted by the main characters for the rest of the summer. But something looked wrong - the shapes of the pots and the arch resembled security barriers guarding an entrance.
Last week we added more gravel to make a curving sort of apron for the arch and took the honeysuckle and rose out of their containers, planting them directly into the ground. The whole area was mulched with the decomposed granite.
So far, it seems to work. The patio looks less blocky with the arch moved forward, no longer in line with the large containers along the front edge. I like the way the vine shapes join the trellis nearer to ground level rather than at the top of the containers. Both the Lady Banks rose and the Coral honeysuckle had minor damage from the move, but they’re recovering, and should do well.

Now I can rework the large patio containers, make better combinations, and transplant more of the plants into the beds and borders. Having a transitional area can be handy as plants grow and change! The Loquat is already making the far end shadier, but we’ll have options, because the gravel areas are mutable and the containers are moveable.



About the frequently used ‘we’ in these posts… it’s not an Editorial 'We' or a Royal 'We'. No other word seems to work for a couple with years of experience in working together on house & garden projects. In this case, it’s Philo who swings the mattock to break up rock layers, and does most of the heavy digging, the heavy thinking, and puts in the edges. I help to fill and haul the granite at the U-Dig place & do most of the plant wrangling and planting. I also do a pretty good imitation of Lucy stomping the grapes to compact the layers of gravel.

Redbud Tree Blossoms

the redbud tree is one of my favorite trees. They have these tiny, pinkish-purple blossoms in late spring. There are clusters of thousands of the pretty little blooms that sort of look like tiny orchids. The bees flock to them so they must be very sweet and loaded with pollen.

Spring rainbow at Gooseberry Falls

After photographing the high water on the Beaver River I continued down the shore to Gooseberry Falls State Park. Gooseberry is a park that is absolutely loaded with photographic potential. In a relatively short stretch of river there are numerous waterfalls with endless photo possibilities. I spent about an hour and a half at the park and not only was the river nice and high but the clouds were very cool which really added interest to the photos I took. I also saw several rainbows but my favorite was the one at the base of the main waterfall.





































Check out the photo below, I think it's fascinating. To me the water looked like caramel. This is the spring run-off at Upper Falls on the Gooseberry River in northeast Minnesota. A 1/4 second shutter speed smoothed out the appearance of the water and added to the "caramel" look.

Blue Dragon Balloon

One of my favorites of the special shapes.

Cuties

Recovering nicely from their operations.

Ginger (L) is the boy and George is the girl. Clearly, sexing kittens is not among our talents. They laugh at us at the vet's office.

"Ginger Baker!" I want to yell. "George Sand! Rebel cats who'll never conform to your archaic provincial notions of gender roles!"

Anyway, now they are both "fixed".

Looks like I'll be really busy between now and Christmas, filling soap orders. My dreams are filled with boxes and tape. Visions of shrinkwrap, bubble fill and packing peanuts dance in my head.

It doesn't feel normal, not having the time to write here or to visit other blogs. I miss being able to record the small things. It's been dry... it rained... but not enough... the swamp area is almost completely drained... there were four huge male turkeys in the backyard... I snuck out of the craft show to see part of the Veteran's Day parade and was surprised to become so emotional... Mom's been here, helping me wrap soap. See you later.

Firefighter

The firefighter is probably the largest of the wooden sculptures in the little park at the Pueblo Montano Trailhead. The sculptures were made byMark Chavez, who was one of the firefighters who fought the Albuquerque Bosque Fire of ... I have seen a lot of things made from wood using chainsaws (mostly bears) but the sculptures in the park are really unique. The tell the story of the fire, and the wildlife that live in the Bosque. The Bosque is the nature trails and native lands that border the Rio Grande River where it runs through Albuquerque, NM. During the fire many of the beautiful cottonwood trees along this section of the river were killed. Instead of cutting down the dead trees to use them as firewood or hauling them to the dump Mark Chavez turned these tree stumps into fanstatic sculptures. More information at http://www.examiner.com/x-1972-Albuquerque-Travel-Examiner~y..m9d10-Hidden-Albuquerque-Pueblo-Montano-park-and-the-wood-carvings-of-Mark-Chavez

Tangled Roots :: Time for a Change

Saturday, September 29th - - The sign at Beverly Beach State Park in Oregon states that this is an Ancient Stump that goes...

“Back to the dawn of the bronze age! This root mass was one of many buried beneath the beaches along the Oregon Coast between Newport and Neskowin. It once supported a spruce tree, which was buried when the land suddenly dropped into the sea. It remained preserved beneath the sand for 4,100 years before surfacing and breaking free in 1998. Violent winter storms washed it into the mouth of Spencer Creek in 1999.”

The root mass was quite large, perhaps 25-30 feet in diameter and appeared to be of one piece. An amazing thing, regardless of its age, with roots going off in all directions and twisting and curving around each other.



Monday, October 3rd - - The few days I had here on the coast of Oregon were incredibly nice. The weather forecast was as nice as was predicted, and as predicted the clouds and rain returned. It's time for a change...



After a great deal of thought, and realizing (among other things) that I'm just plain tired after being "on the road" for most of the last two years, I've decided to take a break from the travels for a while. I'm not saying the journey is at an end, in some regards it may just be beginning! Yes, that's rather cryptic. Sort of follows the mood I'm in at the moment.



I've been heading east for the last two days, but not back to Indiana, at least not just yet. I'll be making a stop in Salt Lake City to do some research (for an undetermined, indefinite period of time). The ancestors have been calling me and I think the time has come that more of them will reveal themselves to me! That's what I'm hoping for... The answers are out there, somewhere, the very least I can do is go and look for them. Perhaps I can make my way through the maze of tangled roots in my family tree and expose them for their descendants to see...

Dynamite M6 First Ascent

Putting work into Dynamite M6

Recently I wrote about a mixed climb that I had top roped last season. It was a fun line that I thought was worth investing some time and effort into. In recent days I spent some time equipping the route and giving it a few tries with State College climber and friend Joel Torretti. Early season and tired arms shut me down several times. With a night of rest I managed to get it. This new climb at Irishtown crag in Dunbar is now officially named Dynamite and is roughly M6. Yesterday my faithful partner Laura accompanied me to video, belay and motivate me for the send. With several days pump and some sheer determination I sent. I decided to put a short clip together to show everyone the climb. I hope this motivates more folks to come join in the great winter climbing that Southwestern PA has to offer. This is my first ever attempt at doing any video work, so any feedback is appreciated. click here and enjoy the clip!

My newly created helmet art

Tomorrowshould be an incredible day. Its Laura and myfirst day back at the local big ice playground. Laura and I are so excited to get our first pure ice day in (maybe). Rumor has it thatice climbing hardmanand old buddy Chip Kamin will be joining us for some tool swinging at some of the biggest local ice he's ever climbed. Dr. Bob, Regina, Felipe, Laura and myself are planning for some big fun on the best looking early season ice in 10 years.Of note, last yearI witnessedan incredible mixed lineform that I hadn't seen in otheryears. If its in tomorrow, I think I may have to investigate. Stay tuned for the details!

Projected corner line (last season) - Ohhhh, Ahhhhhhhh!