Omaha Pandemic, Friday, July 31, 2020

Another Pandemic week, but this one partially on the road. Saturday started with a day of inside repairs at Abigail’s home as we installed  blinds, hung a TV and installed hanging shelves in Darcy’s room, and painted the former Darcy bedroom in preparation for moving Abigail’s bed into the room. Somewhere in the middle of all this activity, we stopped for the bi-weekly Family Zoom conference, checking in with Jake and Audrey, Ed and Meg, and Clair. The rest of the family participants (with the exception of Spenser who checked in at one point ) opted to skip the meeting. Also during the afternoon, Deb received a text message from one of our neighbors that an unknown auto drove up to our home, parked in front of our Little Free Library, and quickly removed all the books, driving off and leaving the library bare! We can only hope that they were readers starved for learning and not some miscreant bent on making his fortune from these used books.  However, if they need the money that badly, we hope these books help them

Sunday, after a refreshing breakfast of Eggs Benedict, we completed the Sunday papers and trailed back over to Abigail’s to complete the move of her bedroom. By the time we found our way home for bed and rest both girls were ensconced in their new bedrooms, and Abigail had her spare knitting/project room to spend her time knitting and working from home in style.

Monday was a stay at home day, finishing shopping, mowing the lawn, getting ready for our  upcoming road trip. Our friend Glenda Pierce is the current president of the Willa Cather Foundation, whose headquarters are located at the National Willa Cather Center in Red Cloud, Nebraska, Willa Cather’s hometown, and the inspiration for a number of her best known novels, particularly My Antonia and O’ Pioneers.

Glenda had invited us to join her and her husband Jeff Kirkpatrick to stay at one of the Cather Homes in the area, in this case the Willa Cather Second Home, which was the home of Cather’s parents from the 1920’s until their deaths in the late 1930’s.

The  Foundation acquired the home and has restored it beautifully and makes it available as a B & B and for use as a guest house.

We left around noon on Tuesday, taking a leisurely drive on state highways and county roads to the south-central Nebraska town, only some 30 miles north of the Kansas border on the banks of the Republican river. We arrived around 3:45 on a hot and sticky afternoon. We unloaded our vehicle into our first floor bedroom and then joined Glenda, Jeff, and our friend Sharon Kohout, who had driven up from Lubbock Texas, for some wine and conversation in the sitting room of the house. In the evening, we had been invited to the home of New Yorkers Jay Yost and Wade Leak for a patio dinner of lemon chicken, eggplant Parmesan, squash casserole and a cucumber and tomato salad; Mark had made a pair of baguettes this morning to contribute to the spread. All the vegetables were local produce, and we suspect the chicken might have been local also. We enjoyed the meal, followed by Glenda’s homemade carrot cake.  Delicious!  Jay, a Red Cloud native and Wade, from Utah, are both lawyers who live in New York, but, with their ties to Red Cloud, have invested heavily in the rehabilitation of this area. Jay is on the Board of a number of organizations in Red Cloud, and they have, since March, been living out the pandemic in this beautifully restored period home of theirs in Red Cloud rather than stay in the madness of NYC.

Wednesday we went for a walk to downtown Red Cloud (4 blocks away in this community of 1,020) and enjoyed a coffee at the Corner Nook coffee and gift shop; then back to our B & B for a breakfast of egg, ham and cheese English muffins prepared by Mark (think homemade Eggs McMuffin.) We loaded up both cars and headed south some 35 miles to our destination of Lebanon, Kansas. This village of some 100 souls is the site of the geographic center of the contiguous 48 states of the U.S.. There is a monument erected there, together with a 4-seat chapel and a recently planted Cedar of Lebanon donated by some Lebanese immigrants. With the sponsorship of the Ambassador of Lebanon, they imported a cedar tree from Lebanon and planted it, together with a plaque, at this center of the U.S. We also stopped at a roadside cemetery to view the tombstones of some of Sharon Kohout’s ancestors. This small cemetery is surrounded by standing limestone fence posts and enclosed on three sides with acres of corn, planted right to the edge, creating an air of mystery to this place.  The corn here is really as high as an elephant’s eye. Our neighbor Garth Highland, a Kansas native, told us that corn is the only thing allowed to get high in Kansas. Good to know.

Always game for curiosities, we went then on a trek of gravel county roads in search of the Maharishi Yoga American University under construction here on the Great Plains. After many wrong turns and the helpful directions of a woman in a pickup truck who feared we were lost, we finally reached our destination. This collection of some 12 large buildings in every state of construction sits on a hilltop rise surrounded by fields of corn and soybeans.  Only one building appeared to be complete. All others were in various stages of completion.  The only sign of life was a single vehicle parked in front of the completed building. We saw no people, no workers, no saffron robed bald, barefoot people - no signs of life. Very strange vision on the prairie!

We headed back to Red Cloud for an afternoon reconnoiter, a walk to the County Courthouse across from our B & B and then a walk to the City Library. We tried to order a pizza for pick-up for dinner to be enjoyed with our previously ordered frozen daiquiris from the local wine merchant, On The Brix. This store is only open Thursday through Saturday, but the previous day, Wade called them to persuade them to prepare the order and arrange for our pick-up. Unfortunately, the pizza store, Fat Fox, is also on limited schedule. they are only open on weekdays from 11:00 AM until 2:00 PM, and then also Friday and Saturday evening. We were forced to enjoy a heavy hors d’ouerves menu we all contributed to from our traveling supplies: crackers, Brie, corn salsa, hummus, and Gouda cheese slices. More wine was available and Aperol cocktails were also enjoyed.

We ended our evening by again loading into our vehicles and traveling south five miles to set up our camp chairs and view the sun setting over the Willa Cather Native Prairie right on schedule at 8:50 PM. This was quite a sight, the setting so quiet and the visuals so stunning that we sat for over 30 minutes, watching and listening to the sounds of the prairie, trying to imagine how the settlers and pioneers of this land must have marvelled at the landscape they were trying to tame.

This 810 acre native prairie is a protected site, available for walks and photographs - nothing else. This is a highly recommended destination for any one interested in the history and settlement of the plains area while wresting it away from the native tribes and wiping out the local fauna. Well worth the drive, even from Omaha. With the number of B & B lodgings in the Red Cloud area, this is a perfect short-term getaway, especially in this time of pandemic.

Thursday morning was a perfect weather day! Glenda went for a bike ride, Jeff went for a walk, Sharon, who was staying in a cottage on the Yost Farm, about a mile distant from us, drove in and parked her car in downtown, then walking to our B & B. We all congregated on the front porch for morning coffee and a quick snack of monkey bread bites. Then off  on a walk to the Willa Cather National Center for a tour of the Quilt hanging, and some time in the marvelous gift shop and exhibits. This is our third trip to the center and there is always something new to view, new literature to discover and good conversation with the staff, all very knowledgeable about Cather, Central Nebraska history, and the surrounding areas.

We then walked down the block to Fat Fox pizza to place an order for our lunch, which we picked up and took back to the B & B for a leisurely lunch. Deb and Mark packed up and we were back on the road towards York by 1:00. We bid our friends safe travels and headed north to York. We quickly ran into light rain, which accompanied us most of the way into York.

We stopped at the Greenwood Cemetery in York to view the graves of Mark’s maternal ancestors, ten of whom are buried in the Doty-Tucker plot. We took photos to verify birth and death dates, and then headed back to Omaha, following the dreaded but quick I-80 roadway directly to home. We arrived at 4:45, unpacked the car and visited for a few moments with Darcy and Maria who had watched the house, cared for Harry and Sushi, and made great use of the kitchen in our absence.  This was a good, safe road trip in the middle of the Pandemic, a needed break in the middle of an historic year. 

Although there were less masks in evidence in the “hinterlands” we did not feel uncomfortable when masking up to enter stores, post offices of other public structures. Masks and hand sanitizers were required at the Willa Cather Center, the Webster County Courthouse, and we noted plastic shields in place at cashier points in some of the other local stores.  The awareness is there, although the impact is not nearly as great in these rural areas. As usual, political views are in evidence wherever we were; the feeling of being deep in “Trump Country” was there, but there were also opposition signs noted around.

As always, mask up,  wash your hands and stay safe.

Omaha Pandemic, Friday, July 24, 2020

Let’s start this post with a birthday wish to Marcia Covert Chaves; today is Marcia’s XX birthday and she deserves a shoutout, (yes, it is an undisclosed double digit anniversary.) Marcia broke her hip in February and so spent some time in the hospital, on to rehab and then home just in time for the pandemic to set in. Her daughter has managed to lure her to the beach recently, but quarantine is hard on seniors, particularly those who live on their own.  We are lifting a glass to you tonight Marcia.  Congratulations.

It has been quiet here in Omaha this week. The current White House occupant has not seen fit to send federal officers to our fair city, although he is sending them willy-nilly to the supposed ANTIFA hot spots of Portland, Kansas City, Albuquerque and Chicago. Evidently if one, without legal authority, acts in an authoritarian manner, he believes that will get the idiobase to vote in droves. When he is soundly defeated this November at the polls, we expect to begin hearing clamours of vote rigging. If he thinks there is uprising now, wait until he refuses to leave office - that will be an uprising. Enough politics.

Sunday evening we ordered take-out pizza from a local, well regarded pizza place near home and we were underwhelmed. Flavors were OK, but the crust was as tough as we have ever encountered. Most disappointing, but we will give them another shot in the future just to be fair. For pizza lovers, as we are, this was a let-down. 

We spent a lot of time this week over at Abigail and Darcy’s home, finishing up the vegetable garden, installing a fence and gate on said garden, and putting a hole in the new picnic table for future installation of an umbrella over the table. Next on the agenda was a rebuild of the front retaining wall. Deb bravely pulled down the existing three tiered railroad ties, not realizing their weight. Luckily nothing landed on her toes, although moving them away from where they had fallen took a lot of huffing and puffing of the two of us. We managed to get them neatly lined up in the driveway a good three feet from where they had fallen.

Next we began building of a concrete block retaining wall using the load of 50 wall blocks we had delivered during the drop of the patio stones. By Tuesday afternoon, we had a sort of base laid and determined that Mark needed a new tool, a cold chisel, to complete the job. Who knew that a tool purchase would be part of the process!

We knocked off early Tuesday afternoon, as Deb needed to be in attendance at the first live Tuesday Night Drinks happening since the pandemic. Three of the four Omaha regulars met on Mary Picken’s deck and Glenda dialed in via FaceTime. Better than Zoom, but hard to sneak out for a bathroom break or a refill when you are “live and local.”

Wednesday morning we packed up tools and headed to Glenda and Jeff’s house in Lincoln for a “Little Free Library” repair session and marvelous lunch on their back deck. Last year, Mark constructed two identical Little Free Library structures, one for Glenda and Jeff and one for their own home.  The Lincoln branch required a door stile makeover so the door would stop coming off in the hands of the patrons.  Door, repaired, we toured Jeff’s HUGE vegetable garden and then were treated to a chicken breast and Caesar salad. A wonderful bottle of Portuguese table wine and a finishing dessert of Glenda’s home made rhubarb and berry pie, served ala’mode. (Rhubarb sourced from Deb & Mark’s garden and raspberry/blueberry mix courtesy of Jeff’s never ending berry patch.) Superbly delicious!

Thursday was back over to Abigail and Darcy’s to finish the wall. We went early in the day to avoid the late afternoon sun and we were completed (and exhausted) by 2:30. “Home again, Home again, jiggedy jig.” That evening we go to the Needelman’s for another patio dinner from our favorite Asian take-out. Again, a nice, although warm evening with good food, good wine, and good conversation with good friends.

As alway, mask up, wash those hands (repeatedly,) and stay safe.

Omaha Pandemic, Friday, July 17, 2020

A shoutout to Meg Morman on her birthday today, Congratulations. This week is just filled with birthdays, Last Sunday, our granddaughter Avery turned 21 and seemed to have survived; James Bybee, Claire’s husband, celebrated his birthday on Tuesday, the 14th, Deb’s Friend Jan Morrison celebrated hers on the 15th, Glenda Pierce’s son Ryan Kirkpatrick celebrated his on Thursday, the 16th. In addition, today, July 17th has been declared Jeff Kirkpatrick Day in the City of Lincoln. Jeff has served as the City Attorney for Lincoln Nebraska for the past four years and completes this assignment next Monday. In recognition of his service, the City Council of Lincoln has designated today as his day. We’re not sure if he gets to make any grand proclamations or exercise any control over the city on his “day” but think it is a great honor.  Congrats to Jeff. We look forward to hearing of his future endeavors.

 Well, summer is back with a vengeance here in the Midwest. High today of 95º an tomorrow of 100º with humidity in the upper 70% to 85%. We could just as easily be in Washington D.C. with this climate; however that would mean being with Voldemort and his cronies. We are safer in the Midwest.

This week was marked by a lot of physical labor each day. We spent every day over at Abigail and Darcy’s home, finishing up their new 130 square foot raised bed gardens. This will be a joint use vegetable and herb garden. To the existing tomato and chives, we have planted watermelon, zucchini, potatoes, cucumbers, eggplant, peppers and herbs: rosemary, oregano, lavender, thyme. We added fencing around the whole to enclose each of the four separate beds with a walkway between the beds.

The patio we finished last week is now covered by Darcy’s 12 foot circular pool, two and one-half feet deep.  If that weight doesn’t settle the concrete pavers, nothing will. Deb and Abigail are plotting to spend some time floating in the pool during tomorrow’s 100º heat to give it a test. Although a few of the Omaha City public pools have opened for a short season, the coronavirus situation keeps us away from crowds. We have been searching our memory banks for someone we know with a swimming pool we could renew friendship with. Little did we know that our daughter had an inflatable right in her back yard.

We enjoyed a social distance dinner on our patio with our friends Howie and Lee Needelman this past Saturday, once again dining on pizza and a salad that Lee brought. Deb made one of her most delicious peach pies for dessert and all ended the evening well sated. The weather that evening was utterly perfect, making the coming weekend look even more daunting in comparison. There was even some leftover pizza for snacks on Sunday. Sunday morning marked a return of the ever popular and in-demand Eggs Benedict for brunch. We perused the local paper, and tried to assimilate as much of the New York Times as possible, this is always a week long project as there is only so much news that one can assimilate.

We enjoyed our biweekly family Zoom on Saturday but only one grandchild checked in, and then just for a minute to announce his break-up with his girlfriend.Tuesday morning Glenda drove up from Lincoln to see her brother and dropped by our house to chat for a bit. Later, the Tuesday cocktail zoom went off well with only one member missing. Wednesday, the cocktail girls, minus Glenda from Lincoln, met at Deb Duggan's patio to celebrate Jan’s birthday. They snacked on hors d’oevres and birthday cupcakes. It is rumoured that adult beverages were also consumed.

Also on Wednesday, Mark went in for another COVID 19 testing, his second. Deb also has one scheduled for next Monday. We undertake these as a precaution; neither of us feels out of sorts, but it gives us some peace of mind that, at a certain point in time, we are clear. Although the nasal swabbing is not pleasant, it is bearable and much preferable to the alternative.

Mark heard this morning from his second cousin, Sara Chaves Beam. Sara is Marcia Covert Chaves’ eldest daughter. Sara is an instructor at the Chesapeake Bay Governor’s School for Marine and Envrionmental Science in Virginia. If you are interested she also has a blog, designed mainly for her students, but interesting reading nonetheless. The address is sbeamcbgs.blogspot.com. Her work and teaching on behalf of the environment and hence we the citizen’s of this country is very commendable.  Keep up the good work Sara.

As always, stay safe, wear your masks, and keep washing your hands.

Omaha Pandemic, Friday, July 10, 2020

Another Friday, another week.  We would say that monotony has set in, but truthfully, the only real monotony is the blathering of the “great leader” and his constant demands that the pandemic is ended, all school children should attend full day school, pandemic be damned, and the economy should get back to “normal,” when what he really only wants is to get re-elected as king of the world.  When asked what his plans were for a second term, even by his soft-ball friend Hannity, all he could say was that experience is great, although he went on for 15 minutes or more and never said anything else. Way to hold his feet to the fire, Sean.

We on the other hand stay busy and have much to do. All this week, we spent every day at Abigail and Darcy’s house, first finishing the basement room, and then back to the rear yard for the patio. Thursday afternoon, after three false starts of setting and removing pavers during the week, we finally laid the last paver.  Friday is the day to put the finishing edges on and then start completing the raised beds for the vegetable garden; the work is ongoing but it is a great reason for us get up and out in the morning. Notice we didn’t say early in the morning.  Now that we are both virtually retired, we find that we don’t awaken until nearly 7:00 (if you don’t count the 5:00 to 5:30 trip to let Harry out for his morning ritual.) We then are “up and at ‘em” by starting the coffee and stepping out onto the front porch to sit, read the morning paper, take care of the Jumble and Crossword puzzles and say good morning to all the neighbors out walking their dogs. There is a “Neighborhood Watch” sign half a house length up the street from us. Deb tells Mark that he is the Neighborhood Watch, not just a nosy neighbor.  Makes him feel so much better.

It was a quiet week on Pierce Street, as long as you don’t count the long 4th of July weekend. The noise on Saturday night went on until well past midnight. We had our usual 4th of July feast of Deb’s World Famous fried chicken (the secret being overnight soak in buttermilk and frying in bacon grease saved from last years BLTs,) along with her also world famous potato salad (secret ingredient withheld) and her soon to be world famous baked beans. The Duggan seniors joined us (adding a delicious Thai cole slaw to the table) together with Abigail, and for a short time Darcy and Maria. The food was delicious, there was no pressure of lighting fireworks, just sitting back in awe as the area exploded. There was high humidity that evening, the residual smoke hovered over the ground and was still there the next morning. If you owned a dog, who could hear, or you had a PTSD syndrome, no matter how slight, you did not have a good night.  We did have one sour note:  the Buster Bars were a tremendous failure due to chocolate wafers that tasted like RAID.  We saved the ice cream, fudge and whipped cream but the rest had to go.  Our kitchen smelled like a chemistry lab for two days!

This Sunday morning, we broke with our tradition of Eggs Benedict and opted instead to polish off the end of a loaf of Mark’s sourdough bread, toasted and slathered in either peanut butter or plain butter. This was a one time Sunday deviation, and there was a promise that the Hollandaise slathered eggs would appear next week. A solemn promise!

Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday were spent over at Abigails; the zoom cocktail hour on Tuesday went off with nary a hitch, with only one participant being absent due to a family obligation. Wednesday, Deb had her annual appointment with her heart doctor, and came away with an all clear for her to continue as she has been. Her murmur has no change and the heart was no blacker than it has been in the past - good news for Mark!

Friday is a day to finish the garden as noted above, and another evening for our biweekly Arizona cocktail zoom with Tom and Kevin. As Arizona is now a pandemic hotspot, we are always anxious to ascertain that all is well with our Arizona friends, either via zoom or email with Karen and dell in Phoenix. Likewise, we check in regularly with Ed and Meg in LA to make sure that this other hotspot is not getting to our children and they are social distancing and washing their hands.

OK - masks up, hands washed, stay distanced and keep safe.

Omaha Pandemic, Friday, July 3, 2020

July 3, the penultimate day before the 244th celebration of our run to Independence from King George III.  As proud as we are to be Americans, we are not real proud of our country right now.  We are failing at reining in this pandemic, we are hitting new heights of sickness and death, and all our ruling politicians can talk about is getting the economy running and getting re-elected. Why not solve part of the unemployment by training thousands of contact trackers, and new testers so the nation can get a handle on this? New Zealand has wiped out the disease. Even China, with 1.5 billion people reported only two new cases this past week. We need a cohesive Federal response, but, given the current leadership, cohesive response is not in the cards.

We finished our west garden this week, all done but the planting, and the plants are sitting there, ready to be put in the soil.  It turned out just as we had envisioned it.  We are surely too proud and looking for the proverbial fall to bring us down to earth. We sit in the evenings on our front porch, sipping our glass of red wine or trying out a dirty martini and a G & T and marvel at our good luck and the wonderful life we have built. Then we think of how our white privilege has benefited us and think of all those not so privileged. The world is changing and we are trying to awaken to the plight of our fellow citizens and all they have endured.

This past week we had a cocktail Zoom with Tom & Kevin, and a family zoom with most of the Coverts.  John of course was off not practicing social distancing at a gun shoot, but eventually Lynn and Jessy realized they had to pull the camera cover off of the computer so we all could see them, and were able to join us. The only grandkids in the mix were Emily in Lincoln and Milo in Omaha.

On Saturday, Deb’s book club (Women With Spines) organized a garden walk to view some of the members’ gardens. We looked at four (if we include our own) and ended at Char’s home to view the garden and then enjoy snacks on her rear patio.  Very enjoyable way to get out and to see other gardens.

Deb’s original plan to have her Tuesday Night Drinks on someone’s deck for an in-person chat fell apart due to the constant 90º heat that we have been experiencing. It is almost like living in Arizona, each day starts out in the mid 70’s with humidity at 70-85% and then peaks out at 90º to 93º in the late afternoon.  No rain, no clouds, just sun and heat.

Marcia and Ted stopped by on Sunday with luscious strawberries and peaches. The purpose of the visit was ostensibly to trade brands of toilet paper, but evolved to a nice conversation with some iced tea on the patio; the fresh fruit was a bonus. Again we dined with our friends the Needelmans on their patio, enjoying a fine Chinese Take-out meal.  Thanks Lee & Howie, we treasure our times together. We also this week journeyed around the block to have cocktails with our neighbors Garth & Zoe Highland; fortunately for them but unfortunately for us, their two little treasures, Iris and Esme’ were down for the count and we couldn’t grab and hug them. But Mom and Dad enjoyed some adult time so it was worth it.

Also this week, we completed the remodel of Abigail’s basement so that Darcy can now move down and have a space of her own.  We made huge progress on the patio we are building in their backyard and we expect we will have that completed in the coming week, along with the raised beds for the garden.  How we have time to relax is becoming a real question. Bread was baked, hundreds of pictures have been sorted in an effort to purge stuff from our basement and the projects just keep coming.

Deb seems to be getting the hang of her “forced” retirement and it may become permanent if traveling is suspended into next year.  Maybe that is why she has decided that it is time to go through box after box after box of photos from the last 6 decades.  She has found letters from and pictures of old boyfriends which she says she is keeping just so that she can be reminded of how lucky she is to have survived the 70’s!  She has thrown thousands of duplicate, triplicate and just plain bad pictures away but still has lots of little piles for many of you reading this so look out!  Memories and detritus coming your way!

As always, keep washing your hands, mask up, and stay safe.