The Year of Expeditions.

Thursday, March 19, 2015

An Expedition to Appleton, WI - to the old homestead

My father bought this house:

in 1955, shortly before one of my sisters was born. He had three kids at that point, and decided he needed a bigger house. It was 1500 square feet, one and one half baths. Three bedrooms. And it was less than a mile from the house he was living in, a duplex, that he father built. And that he was born in back in 1916. I like to say that had WWII (The Big One) not intervened, he would have never lived outside of Appleton, WI.

The oldest of the three kids he had at the time was seven, the youngest four. So essentially all seven of his kids grew up in this house.

We found some old photos we had not seen before, a favorite being one of my father, which looks like a work photo. Here is brother Matthew, holding up the photo:

Six of the seven kids were up for the weekend. It was, as always, fun to get together with my family, but also sad as we were moving Noey out of the house.

There were a lot of tears as we told old stories and divided up old memorabilia.

But we also had a lot of laughs

Because, well, we are a very close family that loves each other a lot.

It was a good house. It was a great home. We will all miss it.

Tuesday, February 17, 2015

An Expedition in New York City

As you can see from the below post, I flew straight from Oslo to New York City (well, Newark, NJ actually) to meet Doreen for Valentine's Day. After a short delay, I arrived Thursday evening, for what would be the warmest day of this short vacation.

We met Doreen's old college buddy Jack and his husband Bruce at Molyvos, a Greek restaurant that is (thankfully) only about two blocks away from the hotel we have sort of adopted as our own (The oddly named London, NYC). Always a pleasure to see those two, and we had some great food. (Stuffed cabbage! If this were the Year of the Cruciferous Vegetable, then I would have hit a home run)

On Saturday (Valentines Day!) we wandered over to the Met. And boy it was cold! It started out about 14° F, and didn't get much above that all day.

On our way we decided to stop by and see Balto, he of the 1925 serum to Nome run:

That dog was a hero.

All the lakes and ponds in Central Park were frozen:

This reminded me of my youth, where I spent many an hour on frozen lakes. Usually Lake Mendota in Madison, but also Winnebago, Monona, and other less important bodies of water as well. Not fishing, mind you - more likely doing what I am doing above.

When we got to the Met, we were able to get in on the ground floor with no line. We even checked our coats, it was so quiet.

We took our time around the museum, looking mainly at the American collection. Starting with Alaskan and Pacific Northwest artifacts, then heading through meso and south America. It is amazing to see a little statue (a Venus, of course) that is from the third millennium BC! And it was just sitting there without any fanfare. Nobody was even looking at it.

After that, We headed up to the Japanese exhibits, where a new exhibit just opened, showing some of their extensive collection of pieces collected by Americans over the years. Doreen had minored in this period for her Masters in Art History, so it was a great thing to see.

You would recognize many of the pieces:

The above image is really deceiving. This is a large folding screen, probably 5' tall by 15' long. The image does not do it justice.

This image was on display:

it is one of Doreen's favorites. When we were in Japan we went to see the fishing cormorants just because of this image.

Here is my image:

When we left the museum, there was a HUGE line to get in, and quite a line to get out coats. It was a close run thing to get to our lunch reservation at Nobu 57 for a nice Valentine's Day lunch.

When in Central Park, we saw several Red Tail Hawks. One looking suspiciously like Pale Male, of Red-tails in Love fame.

And we saw this as we were leaving the park: