To Think that I Saw it -- Part Two

Edie Thompson

My neighbors did it again--created a Drum Circle in Del Norte Place. This time I got to participate. We gathered, not quite knowing what to expect. Two real drums joined us; one a beautiful puebloan from New Mexico, the other a waist-high ethnic-looking that was played by the hands. I brought a tambourine! The rest were plastic buckets with wood scraps for drumsticks. I've learned just today that a block or so away nearby residents were also beating drums or pots and pans.

The Drum Circle was wondrously therapeutic. Anxiety, frustration, despair, worry, sense of loss, lack of control, all these feelings were confronted and were overcome. Drumsticks and drums, shared with our neighbors, (with 6 feet between us), made a joyful racket and released a bunch of tension!

Vive le tambour!

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Ice, Toasters and Wives

Coreen Boeding

Having some extra time on my hands, and not able to look too far forward, I decided to look back and learn about the history of some of the ordinary things in our lives. I discovered the first icebox was made in 1861 to take advantage of home delivery of ice blocks by merchants, and this permitted the homemaker to store perishables for several days and curtail daily trips to the market for fresh ingredients. In Fort Collins, Mr. Vanderwark cut, stored, and delivered natural ice from his horse-drawn wagon for 40 cents per hundred pounds. He placed this notice in the Fort Collins Weekly Courier, November 22, 1900.

Notice to Skaters

Having had my ice damaged in former winters by skaters getting on the ice when it is too weak to hold their weight, thus irritating the water and causing mud and moss to rise from the bottom and freeze on the ice, and also by throwing rocks and sticks on the ice, I have decided to keep skaters off the ice until I fill my houses and have posted notices to that effect.

After securing my ice I will remove the notices and skaters will be at liberty to go and skate. I hope all skaters will take the warning of the notice and save trouble. JFV

(In 1902, after mechanical cooling systems for manufacturing artificial ice were introduced, Mr. Vanderwark built a commercial ice house on Riverside. He sold the building to the Union Pacific Railroad in 1910 and built a new one at 222 LaPorte Avenue in 1911.)

Then I got curious about the toaster. The 1893 World’s Fair introduced many new electrical inventions, including the British Crompton and Company electric toaster. Later innovations added the reversing side openings. A General Electric inventor patented an early design in 1909, using filament wire wound in coils made of nickel and chromium which could heat a slice of bread to 310º F. without the risk of starting a fire. Westinghouse produced the first successful electric toaster for the home in 1914. As technology evolved, a “pop up” model produced in the United States in 1926 “gave a spectacular performance” by ejecting the bread into the air, often in flames. (Pre-sliced bread was not introduced until the 1920s!)

And finally,”Victorian Match.Com?” The following ad appeared in a newspaper in Boscobel, Wisconsin August 18, 1874:

Wanted: At Fort Collins, Colorado, about 50 unmarried ladies between the ages of 18 and 40, sound of limbs, wind and bustle, by uxorious bachelors and widowers of this city. Husbands and homes guaranteed. No crusaders need apply.

The ad was reprinted our local paper in 1959, entitled, “You’ve missed your chance by 85 years.”

If you have not discovered the Colorado Historic Newspapers website, give it a try. You can lose yourself for hours poking around in our history!

(Here’s a link to the Colorado Historic Newspapers: https://www.coloradohistoricnewspapers.org/ )

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Something Unexpected

Marty Marsh

Today I inadvertently shared a family ritual. My husband Scott and I drove over to a friend’s home where he donned gloves and mask and headed in to fit her computer with a webcam so she can participate in our book club’s upcoming Zoom meeting. I brought my book and sat in the car with windows open reading.

Then I noticed some activity in the yard next door to my friend’s. A mother, father, and son came outside, and there was a woman sitting in the front yard waiting for them. An older man, obviously the grandfather, came from two doors down and entered the yard. The father of the family was holding a small dog in a blanket, and I realized that their dog was very ill, and they were holding a small service before having him put down.

It was a privilege to see this sad, but beautiful, family ritual because, indeed, our pets are important members of families. They walked around the yard and talked with the small dog saying their good byes. Finally, the veterinarian did what was needed and left with the dog.

I cried because all of us know what it is like to lose a pet who has brought so much joy to us. I leaned out of the window and said to the mother, “What I know for sure is that your dog had a wonderful life with a family who loved him very much.” She thanked me, and we both cried. I was thinking of the wonderful animals my husband and I have had over the years, a Cock-a-Poo named Brutus for 15 years, then cats Shelley (for 19 years), Scout (for 16 years), and now a kitten named Patchett.

It was a privilege to see this family deal with the grief of losing a dear pet. Then I sat quietly and remembered with gratitude how much each of our pets has meant to us.

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The Company you Keep

Terry Barrett

If you're looking for a good, but little known movie, I recommend The Company You Keep, starring (and directed by) Robert Redford. It's available on Xfinity for $3.99. Redford plays a respected small town lawyer in upstate New York whose long ago activities with the Weatherman faction of the SDS come to light and threaten to result in his arrest for murder. Besides Redford, the cast is top-notch and includes Julie Christie, Nick Nolte, and Chris Cooper, among others. The movie received mediocre reviews on Rotten Tomatoes, but both my wife and I thought it was engrossing, well done, and very underrated. Give it a try if you're looking for something to watch.

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Rome’s Wonderful Ancient Refrigerated Garbage Mountain

Gail McNeill

This information was taken from Cabinet Magazine and was used in the class, “I Didn’t Know That!” in March 2017.

Of all the great Roman archaeological sites dating to the second century, far and away the best preserved has also proven to be one of the least known. It is the ‘eighth hill of Rome.’

For many centuries the most practical and inexpensive way of transporting large quantities of wine was the amphora, a simple earthenware container with two handles, holding around 10½ gallons of almost anything you can think of. Amphorae were easy and cheap to produce, easily stackable, and were perfect transportation for almost everything: grapes, oil, wine, olives, grain, fish, water…you name it and the product probably arrived in amphorae. No one was keener on amphorae as a method of storage and transportation than the Romans. The Romans had an insatiable appetite for olive oil, using it for bathing, as a morning beverage, to nourish hair, as a cleanser, moisturizer, and makeup remover, to polish furniture, as lamp oil, and to shine dinnerware.

However, it did not make economic sense to return them. So the globular shaped vessels favored by the Romans for transporting olive oil were smashed into smaller pieces that were hard to recycle. They were often simply thrown onto an organized kind of rubbish pile. Disposing of 280,000 amphorae every year, as you can imagine, resulted in some pretty considerable rubble piles. While some of the amphorae were recycled, Rome’s most popular rubble pile, Monte Testaccio, accumulated so much carefully stacked amphora debris that it grew to nearly 35 meters high, or debris from nearly 53 million amphorae.

For more than 250 years the ancient Romans methodically piled up broken terracotta amphorae, creating Monte Testaccio. After ‘The fall,’ the hill was largely abandoned. Over time it became just another hill, standing in for Golgotha in passion plays and for picnics. Today it is hollowed out in place and used for wine storage and restaurants because it is so cool inside the hill in the summertime.

All the information gathered by archaeologists from this important hill in determining the extent of trade and trade routes in the ancient world make a fundamental contribution to economic and social history. It all began as a garbage heap.

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Mary Oliver (1935-2018)

Norma Fox

To live in this world you must be able to do three things: to love what is mortal; to hold it against your bones knowing your own life depends on it, and, when the time comes to let it go, to let it go.

Mary Oliver was born and raised in Maple Heights near Cleveland, Ohio. She spent a great deal of her childhood outdoors walking and reading and she began writing poetry when she was 14. She lived much of her adult life in Provincetown, Massachusetts, with her partner Molly Malone, where she continued spending her days outside in nature, now absorbing the beauty of New England.

Spending time in nature instilled Mary Oliver with a sense of wonder which she described thus: “When it’s over, I want to say: all my life, I was a bride married to amazement. I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.”

Mary Oliver was a prolific poet in the Romantic Nature writing tradition. Her word pictures bring the reader into a reality of nature that seems more like fantasy, even spiritual. Oliver was criticized by some for her “dissolution into the natural world” and for not using her popularity as one of America’s best loved poets as a platform for political and social causes. Instead her work was to be in love with the woods, the creatures, trees, and even rocks and wind. She had the gift of bringing nature into the reader’s soul.

I find her poem, Look and See, just delightful. I hope it brings you a smile.

This morning, at waterside, a sparrow flew to a water rock and landed, by error, on the back of an eider duck; it lightly fluttered off, amused. The duck, too, was not provoked, but, you might say, was laughing.

This afternoon a gull sailing over our house was casually scratching its stomach of white feathers with one pink foot as it flew.

Oh Lord, how shining and festive is your gift to us, if we only look, and see.

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Sixty-Two Years Later

Rodger Myers

I am in serious withdrawal because the NCAA College Basketball Tournaments have been canceled because of the coronavirus.

In a few short months I may still be in serious withdrawal if the Little League World Series is cancelled.

My addiction to watching the Little League World Series brings back fond memories from 1958, the year that my hometown all-star team from Darien, Connecticut participated in the LLWS in Williamsport, Pennsylvania.

After our all-star team of 14 players was selected by the league's managers, we knew that our Darien team had the ingredients of a special squad: excellent pitching, strong hitting in all nine positions, and skilled defenders at catcher, shortstop and center field.

The first hurdle was Herculean: advancing out of our district in southwest Connecticut. In order to advance we had to defeat three all-star teams from Stamford, the city bordering Darien to the west.

Stamford had a population of 100,000+. Darien's population was 18,000.

Stamford, a baseball city, had won the Little League World Series in 1951.

After defeating the Leone League, the Americans and the Federal League, the Stamford Advocate, the daily newspaper, dubbed us the "Darien Darlings."

Before we knew it we were playing for the Connecticut state championship. Our opponent was East Hartford. The game was to be played in Rockville, about a two and half hour bus ride from Darien. Endless. It took twenty minutes to travel from East Hartford to Rockville.

When we arrived in Rockville we were handed an article from the sports section of that day's Hartford Courant. The article made East Hartford sound like a team of future Babe Ruths.

Final score Darien - 20 East Hartford - 0

Fast forward...after defeating the champions from Pennsylvania and New Jersey, we had qualified to compete in Williamsport. Even today the memories are crystal - clear. Our flight to Williamsport was the first time many of us had been in a plane. Allegheny Airlines...in a plane rejected by the Wright Brothers in 1905. We kissed the earth when we landed.

We were housed in dormitory at Lycoming College. We were 12, but pretended we were 18. Everything was exciting: meeting peers from all over the world, our hosts, the food, our parents were there to cheer us on.

Howard J. Lamade Stadium was (is) first - class.

We defeated the Canadian champion, Valleyfield, Quebec, in our first game in Williamsport, then our run came to an end. The eventual World Champions from Monterrey, Mexico became our Waterloo.

Six decades later the Darien Darlings remain lifelong friends. Our shared experience has been a watershed in all of our lives. As adults we became doctors, dentists, educators, stockbrokers, lobstermen. And one lesson, learned at age 12, has been with all of us for six decades: "We will always find a way..."

Rodger Myers, Third Base, 1958 Darien All-Star Little League Team (Top Row, Second Player from Right)

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And to Think that I Saw it on Del Norte Place!

Edie Thompson

On Wednesday my neighbor told me to go to the front windows promptly at noon on Thursday. Curious, but okay. Twenty-four hours to wonder--what would happen? So, there I stood in obedience at the proper time.

Single file, neighbors came out of next door's garage, turned on a hidden boom box, and danced in the street, scattering soap bubbles and waving pin wheels and colorful batons! They handed me something to wave, and for forty minutes we celebrated life and companionship under a sunny sky ! Of course when the music got to YMCA, they were singing with the appropriate arm signals.

Del Norte Place has no balconies, and no resident opera singers, but we know how to PARTY!

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Geraniums

Edie Thompson

For years I’ve been greeted each morning by smiling exuberant housemates. They’ve showed me how to live. Face the day with joy and expectation; put on a happy face. Wear colorful clothing to celebrate the day.

My friends have taught me forgiveness…They have forgiven me for those times when I’ve forgotten to water them. They’ve taught me to embrace days of rain or snow. They’ve shown me the value of constancy.

They remind me of the pattern of the seasons. In January they respond to the change in the sun’s angle and the lengthening of the days by renewed growth and a proliferation of blossoms. In the summer I send them away to enjoy nature in the raw. Their vacation spot, under the eaves. Allows them to share their color with the neighborhood.

Thanks, geraniums for sharing your lives with me.

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Colorado's Stay at Home Order

Mac McNeill

I try to walk for 30 minutes each day. I have a circle route that takes me from my house, around Twin Silo Park, and back to my house, picking up the mail along the way.

Since schools have been out, trying to stay six feet away from anyone else has been challenging. I’ve had to resort to walking on the street or cutting a corner to avoid kids and their parents. Going anywhere near the playground would certainly have broken social distancing rules.

Today, Thursday, March 26 was very different.

There was no one on the playground. In fact, you can see a temporary orange fence has been erected around the play area.

The large dog park was completely empty.

As were the paddle tennis courts. But, notice that there isn’t a sign saying they’re closed. There isn’t a lock. Most days all the courts are used. People just aren’t using them today.

I didn’t have to worry about social distancing. I shared the park with three or four other walkers, and we all kept our distance.

The greatest reason I heard recently for social distancing is this: “We’ve lost the NBA. We’ve lost the NCAA basketball tournament. Baseball has been postponed. The Olympics have been moved to next year. If we don’t stay home, we risk losing NFL football!”

People, thank you for staying home.

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