Paul Newman (1925-2008)

Paul Newman's death is sad news for the big world of movie/theater fans, and for the smaller world of Kenyonites. He was a gifted and generous individual, who managed to avoid all the Hollywood pitfalls and have both a successful acting career and a loving family life. Not to mention all the lives he has touched through his philanthropy.

I've never met him, but since he attended my alma mater and lived near my hometown for most of his later life, he was always on the corner of the radar screen, the kind of person you hope you might randomly run into at the gourmet market or at an alumni event. Kenyon has put up a nice tribute to him on its homepage.

I love the photo montage with the image that shows him goofing around with friends on the Peirce Hall stairs during a school dance weekend. How many hundreds of Kenyon students have had their photos taken there, or will in future? Enough have passed through that the stone stair treads are worn down. I always noticed those worn treads as I went up and down. I love that this photo shows that Mr. Newman was once just a regular college kid, with probably no idea of the great things he would go on to achieve. At that point in time, what did he expect to do with his life? Did his dreams of that age come true?

Condolences to the Newman family on their loss. And to Mr. Newman, a big Kokosing Farewell from your fellow alumni. You will be missed.

5Kate

I survived the 5K!

It was definitely a much harder (i.e. hillier) course than the last race 3 years ago (then again, pretty much anything would be hillier than Kelly Drive). Still, it was not nearly as awful as I'd feared. I probably pushed a little too hard with the pacing because of the race excitement and the burning desire to pass at least a few (old, slow) people. I had a hard time regulating my breathing too and had to shut off the iPod a couple of times just to get my breath back in sync. I paid for my initial energy burst about a half-mile before the finish where we had a long, gradual uphill stretch. At this point I became convinced that cardiac arrest/projectile vomiting was imminent, and ended up having to walk a minute or two. Still, I made it in under 39 minutes, which for me is excellent. So all in all, a good day.

Fireside Chats

Well, the party is over and all survived - except our hammock, which was destroyed by a pod of rampaging tweens. But that was our only casualty. It couldn't have gone better. It was a really good night. Nice weather, nice people, nice food. Nice cleaned-up house. Nice locked-up dogs (you scavenge off people's plates, you lose!). We had enough food that people ate most of it but we didn't get to the point of almost running out. We had way too much fruit salad and should buy less in future. We need to have more forks on hand next time, or at least have both of us know where extras are stashed. Athletic equipment for kids = good. Rented wineglasses for adults = good. Wild hammock play for big kids; popsicles for toddlers = bad.

And I really want one of these; our neighbors loaned us theirs and it was heavenly once it got dark. DH put our kids to bed, everyone else with kids went home, and we and our diehard neighbors hung out on the patio enjoying the fire and the beer and the September chill. What an invention - it's like a campfire, a fireplace, and a woodstove all rolled into one. The former Girl Scout in me welcomes any chance to sit by a cozy outdoor fire and look up at the stars. But I'll skip toasting marshmallows. I prefer my s'mores free of marshmallows, kind of like the way DH likes his strawberry shortcake without the strawberries. Beside the point, but still tasty!

Even amid all the laughter and the jokes and stories going around, part of me was reverently standing back and thinking, Ah, yes, this is the best. This is what I've always wanted. Because it was just so easy for me to be part of this group.

I am still socially insecure, don't get me wrong. I suck at small talk and kibitzing. The seemingly endless round of back-to-school events of late has reinforced this as I awkwardly try to make small talk with the parents of my kids' classmates, and worry that everyone knows everyone else better than I do. Even at work events, I still sometimes get that uncomfortable sense of not quite fitting in. It's draining to be social in these situations.

But with most of our friends these days, it's so comfortable that I experience sheer relief and joy in social situations, and actually long for more. For once in my life, I don't feel awkward or left out. I don't feel like I'm competing for position in a hierarchy, or being grudgingly tolerated. I feel unequivocally accepted, appreciated, and sought out. And that is such a gift. I can't even explain what a gift that is for me, just to feel like an insider.

Don't answer me

I'm probably crazy to be posting right now, because I have too much to do around the (very dusty and messy) house. We are having our now-annual fall party Saturday, and this year it has grown to 74 attendees. Yep, 43 adults and 31 kids will be joining us for drinks and dinner Saturday night. I'm not insane. Really I'm not.

One of the things that attracted us to this house, along with its 200+-year-old charm, was its eminent suitability for large gatherings. Big yard, big patio, and space to park everyone's cars.

Growing up I always dreamed of having the kind of property where you could have your wedding in the back yard. My grandmother was married in the beautiful shaded back lawn of her parents' house, and later inherited the house. My parents' wedding reception was held in the same place, and the setting was stunning. It was a summer wedding and they had a huge tent and dancing on the lawn under the massive trees, and the band played from a round terrace on the side of the hill above the yard. The whole thing as seen in photos seemed like a fairy tale. The suburban houses I grew up in and my tiny first house in Maryland didn't have such yards. Not even close.

But then we moved to the country. This was the second house we looked at, and I fell in love with the property before I even got out of the car on that hot day in June. Literally the first thing out of my mouth when I climbed out was "Melrose could have her wedding here!" We had found the fairy tale yard! Big trees, big lawn, and even the round stone patio. The house does not have a huge modern kitchen with a granite-topped island and Viking stove (which seems to be essential for today's homebuyers). We don't even have a master bathroom, and our powder room doubles as a pantry. But dang, we have room for parties. And yes, maybe even a wedding.

But getting back to this party, we have learned much about entertaining from the various shindigs we've hosted thus far. For one thing, you can never have too much white wine, and you almost always have too much green salad. But a more startling revelation is that just a few days before any event, there are always a handful of people who haven't RSVP'd.

While hardly a problem on a world scale, I realize this has become a common and chronic complaint among those hosts who care about etiquette. For a casual event like this, I get a little annoyed, and then assume half of them will show up and go about my merry way. More formal events with catering mean this is more than a small problem. We had such an event earlier this year and four days beforehand, we still hadn't heard from some stragglers and we needed to give the caterer our numbers. We called and left messages. We called again. Nothing.

Then DH came up with the brilliantly passive-aggressive idea of including the stragglers in a group e-mail providing directions, as if they had already said yes. That got us the desired response almost immediately. I highly recommend it.

What annoys me more is when, again with a more formal event, people say they are coming, you give the caterer the numbers, and less than 48 hours ahead of time, they bail for some asinine reason. One guy this summer was like "My friend is coming into town and I need to pick her up at the airport." I can understand a medical issue, a family crisis, or a true emergency, but an airport run? Is this really worth our paying for your uneaten meal?

But this thing Saturday is not a formal event. Just hangin' in the back yard, eating, drinking, and catching up with various friends and neighbors of all ages. I am looking forward to it, but I'll be looking forward to it a lot more once I banish the dust bunnies, and the crud in the microwave, and the maple tree detritus all over the patio....

After the hurricane

Follow-up on the balloon saga from the company owner. It appears they are resuming operations, as I noticed last week. I hope they can move forward successfully and keep the balloons flying.

Monkey on my back

To my immense surprise, we spotted Gracie flying over the township on our way home from school. What a happy sight!

Melrose is very busy adjusting to Pre-K at her new school. She has been a line leader, gone to the library and gym, and learned to play a game called Cookie Monster. She is also outraged by the unfairness of the fact that "the big kids" get to be grownups sooner than she does. She has gone from being one of the oldest kids at her old school to one of the youngest kids at her new school, and I imagine that's pretty disconcerting.

Magoo, meanwhile, is fascinated by the fact that we drop Melrose off in a car line in the morning. Having spent my childhood walking to school and milling around on the playground before the bell rang, or being dropped off in front of the school by my parents with nobody watching, the car line concept is pretty weird to me. It's like an invisible red carpet rolled out for each kid - a teacher or administrator is there to greet them and help the younger kids out of the car. The smaller kids are actually escorted to the door. The only thing missing is the paparazzi. Next year Melrose will be eligible to take the bus, which will make the morning routine easier.

I find it really odd that all the schools have these 15MPH zones out front when nobody walks to school anymore, there are no pedestrians, and often there are no sidewalks. So what is the point? I can understand lowering the speed limit to 20 or 25 in a school zone, but 15 seems excessive, given that everyone enters and leaves by car or bus, and there are no pedestrians to mow down.

Many kids don't even walk to the bus stop. All the smaller developments around here have stops at the entrance, and even if they have a bus shelter for the kids, nobody uses it. In the more spread-out developments, the kids get driven from their cul-de-sacs to the stop. You'll go by and all the parents and kids are parked in their running SUVs waiting for the bus; sometimes you'll see a few of the moms getting out of the cars and hanging out together with their coffee mugs once the bus has passed. They'd probably sue the school districts if their little darlings had to (gasp!) walk to the end of the (very quiet) street and wait (horrors!) all by themselves along a busy road for the bus to come.

Hey, I did it. I survived. And I am officially one of those old curmudgeons who snipes to their kids: "When I was your age, we didn't have car lines. We didn't have buses. I had to WALK to school. Almost a mile. In the heat, cold, rain, snow. With menacing dogs, rushing traffic, mutilated roadkill in the gutter, and occasional harassment from bullies. Carrying my backpack, lunch box, social-studies diorama and violin case. And when I got to school I was minimally supervised until we had to line up to go inside!"

Helicopter parenting and liability issues aside, I have one theory about the reasoning behind today's aggressively-non-pedestrian elementary school commute. It is a single word: backpacks. These things are huge! I can't believe all the stuff these little kids have to haul around. When I was a kid, it seemed like our backpacks were proportional to our sizes. Now most kids have the appearance of Santa Claus with this outsized thing on their backs. Maybe the reason nobody walks to school or more than a few houses to the bus stop is that the backpack weighs as much as the kid carrying it!

More details

Further info on the balloon accident. I don't even want to imagine how terrifying this experience must have been, after a peaceful sail on a beautiful night. What a heroic man. Those people truly owe him their lives. I wish Mr. MacPherson the most glorious eternal flight imaginable.

Over the rainbow

Some truly sad news from my neighborhood: one of the two AirVentures hot air balloons shown in my earlier post landed and burst into flames last night, in a field a few miles from my house. I'm not sure which of the two was involved, but I know it was one of them because we saw them aloft over the neighborhood about 15 minutes beforehand. Melrose and I were coming home from an errand when she spotted them some distance away. As we came closer and drove down our street, the blue one with the butterflies was just a little ahead of us, off to the left. We lost sight of it as we got to the house. Little did we know what would happen just a few minutes later.

The pilot of the balloon, Earl MacPherson of New Jersey, was killed and the seven passengers sustained burns and were hospitalized. All are expected to survive. At least one passenger may have been saved because MacPherson was standing between her and the fire. My heart, thoughts, and prayers go out to his family, friends, and fellow pilots; to the passengers aboard last night; to the owner and employees of AirVentures; and to the homeowners and witnesses who were part of the aftermath and undoubtedly traumatized by the experience. I've seen Mr. MacPherson several times preparing for launch and climbing aboard the balloons, and always marveled at the careful and professional efficiency of the balloon crews in rolling out and inflating these gigantic things.

I'm also grieving because these beautiful creations are, in a way, our balloons. They launched and landed in and around our neighborhood and in-season we'd see them most evenings as we headed home. The blue balloon Butterfly has been flying for a few years with a checkerboard companion, and the green balloon Gracie was new this year, replacing the checkerboard one. They usually flew as a pair. My kids and I have watched them take off many times and are familiar with their usual trajectory. No matter how used we are to seeing them, we are invariably thrilled when we spot them. One of them, we will never see again. The other is probably grounded for the time being.

Although I'm hoping for the best, I worry about what will happen to AirVentures. First of all, the loss of a pilot is devastating. Add to that the loss of costly equipment and a season's revenue, and the time needed for an investigation, etc. I truly hope they can continue their business, which has made our county an even more beautiful place. For the meantime, I guess, there will be no magical hot air balloons drifting over our corner of Chester County. The sight of these colorful and enchanting spheres soaring overhead brought us untold pleasure, and they, along with their pilot, will be missed by many. Adults and children alike.

We decided not to tell the kids (ages 2 and 4) what had happened, and distracted them when it showed up on the local news during breakfast. As Magoo and I drove to school this morning, he asked, completely randomly, "Mommy, we see the doggie balloon today?" (Gracie, the green balloon, has a pattern of flowers and a brown and white dog).

"No, sweetie, there won't be any more balloons for awhile."

"Are they sleeping?"

"Yes, sweetie. They're sleeping."

And I wish with all my heart they could wake up today.

UPDATE:

This story is getting picked up by national news media. If AOL counts as such. Oddly, the AOL piece has more details on what caused the fire than the Philly-area stories published this morning. Unlike earlier reports that said it caught fire and crashed, they're now saying it landed and then caught fire.

Rolling, rolling, rolling...

Somehow we survived the weekend without drowning in Hurricane Hanna's intense rainfall. Our official DBRM (dog bowl rainfall measurement) shows about 3.5 inches. I'm just glad our trip to the shore was last weekend and not this one. And our plants are happier than they've been in weeks.

It's been a crazy week with Melrose starting at her new school (and getting sick and sent home on Day 2) and Mommy and Daddy struggling (Mommy rather unsuccessfully) to overcome post-vacation fatigue and dig out from piles of work. Knock wood Melrose seems to be over her illness, I caught up on some of my sleep deficit this weekend, and hopefully we will all have a better week. Mommy needs to be better about concentrating and staying motivated, along with being better about eating lightly and exercising diligently. She hasn't been good about any of this in some time, except the exercise.

Back to first person. I have been working hard with the running lately. Other than racing to catch a train, I'd never run on purpose in my life until 4 years ago, when I tried it in desperation to lose some baby weight and successfully ran a 5K. I kind of fell off the wagon after that, and one more kid didn't help matters. I tried to gear up for a 5K last summer but we ended up going out of town the weekend of the race and I slacked off afterward.

Right now I am getting ready to run a 5K in three weeks. I don't care about my time, just about finishing. My goal is to do the entire thing running, but I went over to check out the course and they weren't kidding when they mentioned "rolling hills." Covered bridge notwithstanding, this has me a little concerned. Also, I haven't built up to running more than 1.75 miles straight. This has me a lot concerned.

I've done one 5K before. This was in 2005, when Melrose was 1, and I was about 15 pounds lighter (despite all the exercise, this number appears to be climbing, sad to say). I used this awesome program, which I can tell you works, since I am the ultimate couch potato (in more ways than one, as my college friends will attest). It was also a flat course. Completely flat, and along the Schuylkill riverfront with a nice view of Boathouse Row. The road I run on near here is rural but more or less flat - a couple of small rises here and there, but not "rolling."

Adding to my insecurity is the fact that my brother is a triathlete and my brother-in-law a marathoner. The latter has been a very kind and patient mentor, and has even offered to join me on my little races as motivation, but given my 13-minute miles, I hate to put him through the torture.

The key after this 5K is to keep signing up for subsequent 5Ks, just to force myself to keep in shape. Assuming I don't have a heart attack on the covered bridge, my next goal is to run in the Valley Forge Revolutionary Run 5-miler next spring, and maybe a 10K after that. The following year, if I really am a glutton for punishment, I would like to work up to the 10-mile Broad Street Run, if only because it would be really cool to run through the city holding up traffic all over downtown Philly. But that's as far as I could go. And for a person who has never been an athlete, completing any race at all is pretty darn good.

To keep in shape and maybe take off some of this blubber, I'd like to be able to run 3-4 miles as a regular workout. Then I could be like this enviably petite, skinny, smug mom at one of Melrose's friends' birthday parties who accepted a small slice of pizza, saying airily "I think I deserve this - I ran six miles this morning."

Don't worry. If I could do a six-mile run just for the heck of it, I wouldn't mention it later at the party. Probably because I'd be too busy beating people away from the pizza with a stick while inhaling as many slices as possible.

The sweetest thing

There are many reasons to love living in Chesco, but this is my favorite: