Dear family,
Sunday Morning
It’s a Sunday morning at home with the trees waving in the wind, the sumac is turning into it’s stunning fall colors and Forrest’s truck is parked by the carport filled with the detritus of another busy summer at home: aluminum single-pane windows (replaced with modern, double-paned, hermetically sealed fancy-doodley soft gliders), a GE potscubber dishwasher (replaced with a stainless steel, fully magic Kitchen-Aid- a dishwasher like Skye’s -we have now reached the stage where we envy our kids stuff), plastic barrels with vegetable oil (Kyrstyn’s bio-diesel Suburban finally traded for a Honda Civic that gets 40 mpg on real-live gasoline), old tool boxes, discarded soaker hose and other usual unmentionable stuff. It is warm but it feels like Fall.
Kaaren’s Garden
Kaaren’s garden - the one she tends in the new garden boxes I built with Forrest and Bryce - is maturing and she is already clearing some space for a fall garden of peas and cooler growing things. It is a wonderful place to visit. I’ll include some photos of the garden on the Flickr site.
Festival of Faith
Today Kaaren and I are going to a Festival of Faith downtown where several organized and some fairly disorganized religions are represented. Pres. Childs of the Beaverton Stake is supportive of this effort and some of his wards have changed their meeting times to allow members to attend Buddism 101 and similar "classes" for Scientology, Baha'i, Hindu, Mormonism, Judaism, Islam, and Christianity (including representatives from the Lutheran and Seventh-Day Adventist faiths). This should be interesting and helpful. I’m not sure anyone except us in our stake is aware of this.
Ward Barbecue
Yesterday we had a ward barbecue at Nielsens. It was nice to visit with those who came. Courtney’s boys played on the swings and flew kites. They are becoming pretty independent. Logan’s first soccer game was yesterday and he started kindergarten last week. The times they are a changin’.
Sun River and Crater Lake
Two weeks ago, we were at the Sun River cabin. Skye and Jared and Seville visited. Forrest and Kaarina visited via the Butterfly airplane and Bryce visited. Kaaren tried her hand at a painting and I did some writing and reading and fretting in withdrawal over my recent resignation as music director of the West Linn Community Chorus due to chronic acrimony on the Board of Directors about the direction of the chorus. It has been a huge part of my life and passion for six years and very hard to give up. But I need music in my life and I’m sure something good will fill the void.
During part of our vacation at Sun River, Kaaren and I drove up to Crater Lake - a national park we had not seen before. The photos are inadequate to convey the grandeur of the thing. The depth of the lake (almost 2000 feet deep) brings out deep hues of blue and turquoise in the water. While we were there - eating a lunch at the Lodge - a storm came through with massive amounts of hail and rain. Some photos almost capture the drama.
Rescuing Kyrstyn from Burning Man
After we returned from Sun River, I flew down to the Burning Man encampment in the desert north and east of Reno to pick up Kyrstyn. Though I expected to just wait outside the fence at the "airport" for Kyrstn, I quite unexpectely managed to get in to the "city" - Black Rock City, it’s called - and found Kyrstyn in the main pavilion where she performed with Trash Can Joe (Jason Wells and friends). She took me to her camp - called appropriately "The Dump" and I rode with her friends out to the middle of the Playa to watch the burning of the Temple.
A word or two of what I know about Burning Man so far. Some of you may not know much about this thing. It started a number of years ago with a bunch of "hippies" reveling around an 8' stick-man figure they burned on Baker Beach in San Francisco. It has grown and been relocated to the Black Rock desert in Nevada. This year there were 47,600 campers and to accomodate them a huge "city" is laid out in the desert in the shape of a clock face with streets running from 2 o’clock to 10 o’clock and then cross streets in concentric circles with names appropriate to the theme for that year. So a typical address to find your camp would be Aurora Borealis at 5:30 o-clock. People bring their artwork of all kinds to display. Some of it is literally incredible. Part of the art work on display is the people themselves and their outfits run the gamut. People take pictures of each other and professional photographers roam the city looking for subjects to enlarge their portfolio. It has a reputation for being a place where (almost) anything goes, but I found it to be relatively quiet and people were respectful and helpful and kind. It some ways the peaceful hippie utopia was the culture - except for the predictable but only occasional loud yahoos who forgot to leave their spurs at home. I came at the end of the week - after the burning of The Man - and everything and everyone seemed covered with the alkaline playa dust and many were packing up and leaving. The Forest Service has many rangers patroling through the city for help and law enforement, there are medical centers and places where one can buy ice. Otherwise, everyone is instructed they must bring everything they want in and haul everything out leaving no trace. There is no water available but the main pavilion sells coffee and lattes and lemonade.
I rode my bike around the playa in the heat of the day and when I felt heat exhaustion coming on, I returned to the pavilion where I waited a long time in line and bought two lemonades at $3 each because I only had two hands. Later that evening I rode with Kyrstyn’s group to witness the burning of the Temple - which earlier I had visited and found full of people mourning lost loved ones and bedecked with mementoes to those friends who had died. I took some pictures of the artwork on the playa and some people in the pavilion. I camped with the plane, well away from the throb of music coming from the city, and brought Kyrstyn and two friends home the next morning. It was a great flying adventure to get there and land in the middle of the desert, see some part of the Burning Man thing, and return home with Kyrstyn.
Courtney’s Birthday
While we were gone at Sun River, Courtney and Jason and children were at Aspen Grove in Utah for an Atack family reunion. When they returned on Monday, we had a surprise birthday party (Skye’s idea) for Courtney.
Kaaren’s new car
Kaaren bought a "new" car and I’m jealous - or covetous, I should say. It is a forest green 1998 Volvo Cross-Country with all wheel drive. It drives very nicely. She’s needed a better car and now we won’t get stuck here so much in the snow. I loaned the grey station wagon to Jason again and we will sell her 89 wagon. I just replaced the engine last month in my car and am still taking it in every few days with squawks to get it running right.
Photos
I’m going to attach a lot of pictures to this email, hoping that it will be easier for some of you to seem some of this. More are available (or will be shortly) on the flickr web site you can get to from the link on the family web site.
Love,
Dad
