Our yard has been an official wildlife habitat long enough for our sign to fade to the point of being unreadable, so we just got a new one.
And right now we have the wildlife to prove it. Squirrels, opossums, rabbits, and raccoons. The skunks are around as well, but not seen this week.
Nearly 22 years later Ben and I finally have our picture taken on the summit of Mount Washington. We climbed it by way of Tuckerman’s Ravine and descended by way of Davis and Boott Spur trails. Our most memorable hike which of course means the most painful and poorly executed one. The bear, appropriately named Tucker, was a gift after and sports a t-shirt that says: I Did It – 8-17-02. We did not take a summit photo at the time because waiting in a long line of tourists who had driven up or ridden the cog railway seemed pointless. The fatigue of hours of climbing may have been a factor as well. In this picture we are two of the cog railway tourists.
I did these some time ago but just discover the photo which I don’t believe was posted. I woodburned my wrens onto boxes I bought. The small one has compartments for all kinds of art supplies and the other folds out into a table easel with a drawer for supplies.
I took a class at Mennonite Life, formerly the Lancaster Mennonite Historical Society, to create a copy of an historic folk art rabbit in a grain painted frame. Of course adding to Jolene’s rabbit collection was one motivation for taking the class. I was particularly enamored by the grain painting and can’t wait to do some to accompany projects in the print shop like the cover I made from the practice papers we did in the class for the ring notepad below..
Early this morning we traveled to Myerstown to observe the Grundsau Lodsch Nummer Siwwezeh am Union Kanaal (Groundhog Lodge Number 17 on the Union Canal) consult with their groundhog “Uni” (named for the “Uni”on Canal) make his fearless prognostication on the arrival of Spring.
In the video above the forecast is given in Pennsylvania German, which all local groundhogs appear to be fluent in. For the language challenged the video below is presented in English.
The Christmas bat is on the tree. We’re ready!!!
Our bat actually comes from the Brandywine Art Museum when we visited the other month. Looks like the sale is over but it’s an annual event they have each year. I don’t know how we were lucky enough to find them on sale earlier, but here’s the post about the sale.
The first project of the new year was accomplished due to unseasonably warm temperatures allowing not only work in the shop, but even outside on the picnic table. I had this pepper mill, and another for some time to turn a base for, but ran into problems with the blanks that I got for them. They were too small even though I bought them in a set to go with the grinders. Instead, I found this piece from the pine tree Ben planted as a seed in kindergarten a perfect match for the size needed.
Happy New Year, now the count begins again. Despite my love of books I haven’t always read that much. I started keeping track in November of 1982 shortly after reading an Agatha Christie mystery for the second time and not realizing it until the big reveal at the end. Upon writing them all down I started counting. 1983, the first complete year recorded was 13. In the eighties the top was 20 and the lowest 5. The nineties were almost completely in the single digits except for a 13 and a year with 17. I don’t know what I was doing in 1995, but there were only 3.
By 2000 my indexing in the back of the journal and the journal itself was filling up so I had to start another. Still it wasn’t until 2014 that I broke out of the ingle digits with 12 that year, which seems like a reasonable goal I set for most of the years, even those where I fell very short. In 2013 I started counting audio books which I increasing listened to thanks to many hours on the road for my work. 2021 I recorded that I didn’t listen to any books. 2020 my traveling for work ended due to COVID19 and I read 16 books, a number only matched or exceeded three times before.
I track pages too. I read a wide variety of fiction and nonfiction and some books are very short and others very long. Years range from a low of 300 to 4,371. Both the number of books and the number of pages were beaten in 2022 with 30 books for a total of 7680 pages. they were:
One of the highlights of my attending the Thoreau Society Annual Gatherings was meeting D. B. Johnson, author and illustrator of the Henry books for children, Henry Builds a Cabin, Henry Hikes to Fitchburg, Henry Climbs a Mountain, and others. I was actually walking a short while on a guided saunter from Fairhaven Bay to Walden Pond with him and other attendees when another asked him what he did and when he replied he was a writer asked him, “What do you write?” He responded and I went into full fan mode for the rest of the walk. I mustn’t have been too over the top though because after the walk we accidentally met at a coffee shop in Concord (no, I wasn’t stalking him, really) and from there went together to hear the keynote speaker Terry Tempest Williams. Unfortunately the books seem to mostly be difficult to find now.
For some time, however, he has been treating us all to a comic strip with his bear, Henry, taking us all on new adventures in nature in true Thoreauvian style. They are free to read and I guess kids might like them too. I find myself looking forward to each Wednesday when they are posted to my email, and yours too if you subscribe. You can also read them on his site, Lost Woods, the title of the strip.
By the way, I was exited to hear he was presented wuth the Walter Harding Distinguished Service Award at the Annual Gathering of The Thoreau Society this past summer. (I was attending virtually and missed it.)
You can explore his works and other fun things at https://www.dbjohnsonart.com/index.html.
ABRAHAM K. NEWCOMER, one of the prosperous and best known farmers in Manor township, ·Lancaster county, Pa., and residing two miles south of Mountville, was born July 8, 1842, and was reared on the old homestead. He was educated in the public schools, and. at nineteen years of age began learning the carpenter’s trade with Jacob Sneath; this trade he followed for eight years, and then began farming near Safe Harbor on a tract of thirty-seven acres. Seven years later he purchased forty-two acres of the Lehman farm, to which he at once removed, having sold his farm at Safe Harbor. He passed eighteen years on this new property, then without selling it, returned to the old Newcomer homestead in 1896, on which he lived until the spring of 1899, when he located on his present farm, south of Mountville. He now owns the forty-two-acre Lehman farm, forty acres of the Newcomer homestead, and six and a half acres where he resides near Mountville. In conjunction with general farming he has done considerable carpenter work and has erected all his own buildings as occasion required.
Mr. Newcomer married, Nov. 19, 1868, Miss Mary Ann Rutt, a native of Lancaster county, and a daughter of David Rutt. To this union have been born nine children, in the following order: Alice, wife of Frank Hershey, of West Hempfield township; Amos, farming on his father’s place and married to Clara Witmer; Martha, wife of Milton Millhouse, a farmer of Manor township ; Abraham, also a farmer in Manor township and married to Ellen Dombauch; Mary; Ellen, Elizabeth, David and
Annie.
Mr. Newcomer has been an active member of the Mennonite church about twenty-three years, and for a long time has been a member of the official board; in April, 1899, he was made a deacon, and his life has been one of quiet usefulness and industry. The family stand among the county’s most worthy and respected citizens, and although unassuming in deportment, ‘are effective in their usefulness.
Biographical Annals of Lancaster County,1903. pp 335-336.