The End of January

January has been an eventful month! Here at Holden (where it is warm and sunny today) the college students are half gone and we're looking forward to a couple quiet days after the bus goes with the rest on Wednesday morning. Thursday will be a Stop Day, which means everyone eats on their own (kitchen gives people food) and there's no work. A very nice thing to do for a very hard-working staff. We still do Vespers in the late afternoon. We had one other Stop Day in the Fall, but this is probably the last opportunity. We do them when there's no boat and the numbers are low.

The first event of January (alluded to in the first 2010 post) was a trip to St. Paul and Luther Seminary where Nancy received the Faithfulness in Ministry Cross, which is like a distinguished alumna award. When we got news of the award in the Fall, we made train reservations right away, which sounded like good fun to us. The train picks up passengers in Wenatchee, which makes it an easy travel option here in North Central Washington. But then came the deep freeze in the Midwest. Amtrak suspended the Empire Builder for three days, which ran right into our departure time. Everything was just too cold for the trains to work! So we put a second mortgage on the farm and bought last minute air tickets. We flew in and out of Wenatchee. Weird to fly into Seattle without going home. (Amtrak was superb in every regard about this, and we'll get a full refund.)

The time in St. Paul was wonderful, made extra special by the presence of so many from the West! Sheryl Schmeling, Wally and Eileen Powelson, and Pam Russell came from Seattle, John and Joan Beck from Portland, Mary Rowe and Mert Johnson from Oakland. Heather Spears was there from Iowa, and Meridith and Jay Wardle tag-teamed it from Edina, MN. Larry and I stayed with Greg and Mary Steeber, and they hosted most of us for dinner on Wednesday night. Larry and I took the whole bunch out to dinner at The Signature Cafe on Thursday (award day). The award ceremony itself was followed by a luncheon. All in all it was a grand time, and I am so thankful for and humbled by all who came all that way for it. Here's a picture of the group in the Chapel of the Incarnation after the award ceremony:

Besides the transportation change, there were some apparel glitches as well. Nancy had ordered a dress. We finally tracked down the late package at the Chelan Post Office the day we left. When we stopped at our friends' apartment in Leavenworth, to which we would return after St. Paul, she tried it on and Larry about fell over he was laughing so hard. It's been returned. But Larry discovered that his black shoes, which he thought were in the green car and were probably in the red car or maybe in Leavenworth, were nowhere that we could ascertain. So, faced with wearing his size 15 Sorel boots with his slacks and sport coat at the award event (it would have been SO mountain), the first thing we did when we landed at MSP was to go to Nordstrom at the egregious Mall of America and find him some shoes. He, being shoe challenged on many fronts, actually found a really nice pair of shoes that are very comfortable to wear. The uses of adversity.

After St. Paul we flew back to Wenatchee on Friday and stayed in Leavenworth a couple nights. (The boat up Lake Chelan only goes on M-W-F in the winter.) On Sunday night we stayed at Campbell's Resort in Chelan, our local historic lake inn, and had a very nice room and meal. This was a gift to us from some Faith members when Nancy left there in August. We'd recommend Campbell's for a nice night's stay on your way in to Holden.

Tomorrow you'll hear about Nancy and Carol Hinderlie's splendid trip to Texas.

Here's a picture from outside The Signature Cafe after dinner on January 14:

Wednesday Book

Last night I finished the first volume in the series about Anglican priest Merrily Watkins by Phil Rickman. The title is Wine of Angels. It's been quite popular here at Holden and, although the books are generally only available in the UK and Canada, they keep them stocked in the bookstore. Rickman is more known for his rather dark suspense books - lots of ghoulies and ghosties and things that go bump in the night. This book brings in the not-so-savory past of a small English village in Herefordshire, a place famous for its cider. He bases his story on some real history that he documents nicely at the end.

It's a long song - 600+ pages. I stuck it out to the end to see what happened. The plot is pretty good, but the character development is weak - some of the evil exposed at the end doesn't seem to be showing up until then - and the characters do things that seem, well, out of character. I'd read something, and then find myself flipping back to see how this action ended up in this person. It just didn't make sense.

Merrily Watkins is rather annoying. She is the priest-in-charge at this village church, but she is just too, as the English would say, "wet." She has angst coming out of every pore, and she messes up so often I can't imagine they'll keep her on after this story. She has an uncle who is part of the the congregation, and he abandons her early on for no good reason that I could ascertain.

So I don't think I'll be reading the next installment. The author says there's no need to read in order, so if you see one around, you might want to give it a shot. Perhaps the others are better, but it seems to me a whole lot of pages for not much fiction.

First Wednesday Book of 2010

I just returned from an Epiphany bonfire. For those of you who know Holden, it was up on the second level almost directly across the river from Koinonia. So it was quite a trudge up across the footbridge then on a newly tracked road along the top of the tailings to the fire. Nice exercise on a winter night! It was lots of fun. We welcomed two J-term groups from Luther College in Decorah, Iowa and Augustana College in Rock Island, Illinois. The Luther group is doing a course on Environmental Ethics. The Augustana group is doing two literature classes. Each student also is assigned to work 5 hours plus dish team, garbo, and stoking the furnaces. They're a very pleasant group of students. It will be fun to have them here.

Now to the books. I just finished the other book Marilyn Anderson gave me in August at the Women's Book Group farewell bash. It's called The Man Who Invented Christmas by Les Standiford. It's about Charles Dickens' writing A Christmas Carol. It certainly isn't in a league with Evening in the Palace of Reason as it's not very well written, I don't think. It's a kind of cut-and-paste book with lots of bits and pieces from here and there. I also don't think he made his case very well about Dickens "inventing" Christmas. It would seem more that Dickens had the right idea at the right time just when the Victorians were really upping the Christmas celebration ante. Some of the most interesting parts of the book were the descriptions of the copyright law discussions on both sides of the Atlantic. I enjoyed those parts very much. Anyway, it was interesting. Thanks, Marilyn.

Now I've started another book to add to my list of novels about clergy. Phil Rickman - who writes sort of other-worldly ghosty kinds of books - has a series about a C of E clergywoman named Merrily Watkins. I've started the first one - Wine of Angels - as it's been recommended by some reliable sources, it was available in the Holden library, and it's a nice, long read - 550+ pages! It seems like the perfect book to start and take with me when we get on the train next Monday evening to go to St. Paul for this award thing at Luther Seminary. I've been putting off, with great difficulty, reading Wolf Hall, Hilary Mantel's Booker winning novel. Bev Christensen just sent a note saying she's reading it and enjoying it, and Paul Hinderlie devoured it. I'll save it for my return from St. Paul.

Going to the bonfire was worth it for the walk back. It's quite beautiful at night to walk into our snow-covered Village in the middle of nowhere.