More Houston

The Shepard School of Music is only 30 years old.
The Rice campus is really nice. It adjoins Hermann Park which is near the center of Houston. The campus is landscaped with large quadrangles and rows of trees. The building have a Italian renaissance feel to them, mostly red brick with tile roofs. It is very well kept up. The student union has about everything a student would want--a coffee bar, lounges, convenience store, book store etc. My son's apartment is large and well equiped. His kitchen has a dishwasher and disposal, he has a private bath and huge walk-in closet. The music building is new, and seems to be as large as the Eastman School. However, there are far fewer students at Rice. They are very proud that they have become a top conservatory in just 30 years.


David is standing in front of the statue of the founder of Rice.

Down South

I spent the past week in the deep south. Actually 4 days were spent driving. I traveled through several states: Illinois, Missouri, Tennesee, Arkansas, Texas, Mississippi and Louisiana. On the way back, we drove through 6 of them in one day!

This is the biggest bug I saw.
Location: Forrest City Arkansas
It was hot and humid--really hot in Texas and Arkansas, cooler in Louisiana. I was looking forward to seeing really big bugs, I was disapointed to see only two, both in Arkansas. I ate some good local food, barbeque in Arkansas and cajun food in Louisiana. We made a point to eat in non franchise places, and suceeded. I guess you can say that we are becoming foodies.
Some surprises--I found the state of Mississippi to be very nice, great rest areas on the interstate, polite people in the gas station and restaurant. It had the best state welcome place on the trip.
Our destination was Houston, Texas. I learned that Houston has now passed Chicago in population, so it is number 3 in size. It certainly appears that way when you drive around. There is little or no public transportation, so the roads are really crowded. The main streets have 3-4 lanes each way. The smaller streets--the 2 lane ones, have a lot of traffic. The freeways are huge--5 to 6 lanes each way. The freeways are stacked one on top of each other in some places. Most of the shopping is in strip malls. One big exception is the Houston Galleria. That place is huge--think of all of the verticals malls on Michigan ave put together with the street stores and State Street all in one building. It is huge and you couldn't possibly shop all the stores in a day. It has an ice rink and a resturant row. It has all the famous designer's shops and Nordstroms, Saks, Macy's and more. Even the parking decks are huge.



Fiesta Market is a huge ethnic
grocery store. I am in front of
a large pile of jalepeno peppers.
The skating rink at the Houston Galleria. The
food court--or restaurant row is on the other
side.
I can't say that Houston is a pretty city. It has no geographic features--its very flat and has no river or lake. Everything is jumbled together on the main streets and there are signs and more signs. There are some nice areas, the Rice University campus is quite pretty and the residential areas around Rice are very nice. More about that next time.

A beautiful summer day in the garden

Today is one of those perfect summer days, deep blue sky, no wind, only breezes, and not too hot. The air and water show is going on in Chicago, so occasionally I can hear the jets on their way to the location on North Ave beach. The cicadas are much louder. Every few minutes, they start up, looking for a mate. When they stop, the crickets and birds take over. The cicadas are always the loudest creatures in my neighborhood. We did a little bit of yard work, so I decided to take a few pictures. The yard always looks better in person, but these pictures aren't too bad.

My featured plant is a huge hosta. The leaves are over 12 inches wide, and the color is a warm green. My front door has a few container plants, I chose lime green and pink, but a coral fuschia made it into the mix. I decided to include some spider plants who needed a summer home.

My back yard flowers are mostly pink, white and blue. Salvias do the best in my garden. I also have some huge phlox "David" which are thriving. The sedum "Autumn joy" and the New England Asters are not blooming yet. The petunias--wave variety, are the stars this week.

I had a major garden change, I lost a large green ash tree last winter, so now I have much more sun. This hasn't been good for my huecheras or astilbes. So, when it cools off, I will be moving some plants around.

My New Job--back to school again.

I am starting a new job soon. Last night I went to the new faculty orientation at Oakton Community College. I will be teaching reading and study skills, the same subjects that I have been teaching since I retired from District 65.
I am impressed by several things: first, seeing the new faculty, the staff at Oakton is remarkably diverse in age, race and experience. Second, the meeting wasn't a lot different from meetings at Nichols. There are a lot of proceedural things to do wherever a person works.
I am a little bit overwhelmed by having to produce a syllabus. I have done this before, but not for the entire course. And--it is a legal document. I am being held accountable, by the students, for what I plan to teach. This is a huge difference from my previous life as a teacher.
The most interesting thing is that when I tell anybody that I will be teaching at the community college, they are impressed. Why does college teaching command more respect than teaching in elementary or middle school? Especially when I am teaching exactly the same thing.
I have read the textbook and I have studied all the material from last night's meeting. I have a meeting tonight and another two meetings tomorrow. At least we are paid for attending. So now I will get back to the syllabus.

There was quite a bit of action around here on Saturday night, actually Sunday morning. Sometime after I fell asleep, there was what I thought was a crack of lightening. I thought that it must have struck very close to here since it was so loud. The strange thing about it was--no thunder. I thought about that for a while, and fell back asleep. A few hours later, my husband said that the power was off. There was the low hum of a truck someplace nearby. We got up and looked around and saw that there were two trucks in the alley behind our house, and there was a man working on the utility pole. We decided to take a closer look--it must have been about 4am--so we went out to the back. The men from the power company were just finishing up the installation of a new transformer. The charred old one was on the truck. That was the crack--not lightening--it was the transformer blowing up. The men said that the transformer was too small for the load it was handling--thus it failed. They turned the power to the neighborhood on and drove away. We decided to go back to sleep.

Such a Saturday Night

Maine Pics

The old Coast Guard Station at Popham Beach

Pete and Pauline at Popham Beach


Pete, about to eat his lunch at Morse Lobster.

Check out the next post to read about Maine in a day!

Maine in a Day

The quick trip to Maine was very interesting. It takes about 5 hours to drive from the farm in Ct to Brunswick Maine. We spent a week in Maine when David attended the Bowdoin Festival, and enjoyed it very much. So, as we were driving the Maine turnpike, it was suggested that I call and see if the Brunswick B and B had any rooms, well, they had two, so we booked them. We proceeded to drive out the the Harpswells, South of Brunswick. Destination--Morse Lobster. This place is hard to find. There is a little sign on the main road, then you have to drive down a gravel road, and there it is. It is basically a trailer, a dock and a few tables. The trailer is the kitchen. You order your lobster there, they cook it for you and you eat it at one of the tables. I always order a lobster roll. The two men ordered a lobster. The menu is simple, lobster, scallops, haddock, clams, chips, coleslaw, corn.
We then drove out to Bailey's Island to look at the cribstone bridge and decided to have a beer at Cooks Lobster restaurant. That was nice, sitting on a deck, and looking at all the boats, and at the cribstone bridge. Then on to Lands End, which my brother thought would be a cothing outlet. No, it has a huge shop full of every kind of Maine tourist junk. He bought about $30 worth of refrigerator magnets. I bought a snow globe and some salt water taffy. After we finished there, we checked into the B and B, and drove down to Freeport, so Pete could see the LL Bean. Freeport was shutting down for the day, so we wandered around for a little while. I bought some LL Bean crocks (a kind of plastic shoe) They bought nothing. So, back to Brunswick for dinner. We decided to eat at Morse Lobster's place in Brunswick. They ordered the twin lobsters. I ordered the lobster roll.
The next day we went out to Popham Beach. It's a great beach, and we just walked about 2 miles from the parking lot to the fort. The guys looked around the fort, and then we went for lunch at Spinney's. Guess what we ordered? Lobster rolls! What a bunch of lobster pigs! We walked back to the parking lot and set off to CT.
On the way back, we ran into heavy rain in Wooster. It was bad, couldn't see anything at all. By the time we got to CT, it had stopped. It seems that the storm was very bad in CT. The power was out in Lebanon, so we couldn't stay at the B and B. The lady figured the bill by candle light, and we set off to find a hotel in Norwich. There are a lot more hotels in the Norwich-New London area because of the casinos. We drove around for a while, and several roads were closed because of downed trees. We finally found a Courtyard by Marriot, and took one of the last rooms. It was very expensive, but we didn't want to drive around anymore.

Tanglewood and our 25th anniversary

We went to Tanglewood in Lenox MA to see our son perform. It was also our 25th wedding anniversary. Everbody went, my Mom, 2 brothers, and my son.
After an uneventful drive from CT, we arrived at the main gate, it was noon, and the concert didn't start until 8:30. The grounds weren't open, but there was a line on people, complete with folding chairs and picnics waiting to get in. My mother's comment was--its just another Ravinia. Well, it might look a little bit like Ravinia, but that's about it. It's much nicer, has a better location, has a beautiful view, large, well kept lawns, old buildings, and a more serious music program. The program we saw was Tanglewood on Parade, which just happened to be the most popular and best attended program of the summer. It was packed. The Boston Symphony played, the Tanglewood fellows orchestra played ( my son is in this orchestra), and then the Boston Pops played. The finale was the 1812 Overture played by the Fellows and the BSO, followed by fireworks. It was spectacular. There were about 7 cannons lined up on the lawn. John Williams, the movie music composer, conducted the 1812. The crowd loved it. We then drove back to CT, and got lost twice. It was past 2am when we finally got to sleep.
We visited Tanglewood again on our way home. David was playing on a chamber music program, which was part of the comtemporary music weekend. His trio played a piece called Brandeli, by Ron Ford. It was made up of 12 very short movements, which could be played in any order, according to the wishes and whims of the musicians. Ford told the trio that they were the first group that chose to do this. The trio was mentioned in today's New York Times Arts section. We went out to lunch, and headed out of town.

Back at Home

Well, did we do enough driving? Does 3,000 miles in 9 days sound like enough? Especially since I had to sit in the back seat, which isn't as fully cushioned as the front.
Our trip: leave Chicago on Sat, drive to Rochester NY, have dinner, go to Wegman's --the best grocery store in the USA, then go to the Finger Lakes region to buy some wine. That was great. Beautiful weather, beautiful scenery. The only bad thing about this leg was the heavy rain between Cleveland and Buffalo. Rain was big theme on this trip. It amazes me that people drive in this heavy rain, so heavy that you can't see anything, without turning on their lights. You can't see them until they are almost on top of you. And, they don't slow down! After a wonderful lunch at the Red Newt winery, we set off on the last leg of the trip--upstate NY to Connecticut.
We arrived in CT around 9 pm. It was dark and we were tired. But, we still had one last driving experience, getting to the B and B in Lebanon--CT, that is. The quickest way was to take Machine Shop Hill road, so off we went. It was dark, very dark and woodsy, actually it was spooky. We had no idea where we were going. We ended up on Kick Hill Road, and passed Babcock Hill Road. When we finally got to Lebanon, we had no idea where to look for the place, except that it was at the intersection of route 89 and 207. After driving around for a while, we just ran into it. So we checked in and went to sleep.
One thing about living in a rural area, no place is close--not the grocery store, not the mall, not the post office, no restaurants, nothing. You have to drive everywhere. This factor certainly added to the 3,000 miles.
On Monday, we helped my mother. We drove to Home Depot and bought some blinds and shades. We were invited to dinner, so we had to drive back to the B and B to change, and then drive some more to get the the people's house. Then, back to Windham Center, and then drive back to the B and B in Lebanon. Machine Shop Hill Road is much nicer during the day. It actually is quite scenic, some woods, some meadows, rolling hills, old houses. Well, this is enough for today. More about the trip tomorrow.