Photos by Aunt Liz

adventurous

Mom's birthday

The boy (Gideon)

front porch view

Sunday morning

hammock

Easter lamb cake

eggsactly

riverbank fun

s'mores

on Paul's ground

adventurer



Then we had s'mores

Ringing

My grandfather Wilbur Friedrichs made this ring at Marysville High School. You can see his initials inscribed on one side and the year on the other. Mom pulled it out as part of her cleaning and sorting this week. The lettering is faint until you hold it up to the light. Amazing what detail survives over the years. It fits on my pinky, and I need to wear it on non-handwork occasions in the future.

Let me catch you up on dad's projects: planting potatoes and onions, building garden fence, deliving building materials to a neighbor, marking culvert replacements on the rail trail, building a treehouse, planning more Habitat house work, entertaining grandkids, drinking up my hard cider stash, building a raised bed in the garden, incubating chicken eggs, and I'm sure there's more.

The kids here are getting restless even with all our space. The kids at school are bored and actually seemed to enjoy our quick classes this week as we started back up. One girl watched boys talk about video games for ten minutes in a video call because she is so starved for faces outside her family's. Eighth-grade boys posted some memes during open time, and only one high school student swore out loud this week.

We had a great chat with Marian's first cousins. I hope you have relatives as amusing as Robert DiDona and Gregory DiDona. The kids will probably force me to buy a membership to the Cincinnati Zoo after watching all the great livestreams the past week, and I'm already promising extravagant trips next year to see that and the previously mentioned East Coast friends and relations.

I hope you are finding productive ways to pass your days. I've made some cutting boards to sand as a project for students, and I also encouraged them to learn to cook new foods. I'm trying to propogate some berry bushes and trees from cuttings. I love you all. Holler if your bored or lonely or need anything. I'm around.

Rings

Dr. Chad Johanning continues to post great info about the situation in Kansas, and Dr. John Haefele has posted great Marshall County updates. This dispatch from Italy by Greg Soderstrom, former Air Force pilot and Tephanie Soderstrom's husband, struck me: "Italy has been in lock down for weeks. This means social gatherings are limited to one person. When I look at the COVID numbers for various locations as a percentage of the population, and I hear that social gatherings are limited to 10 or to 3 people, I laugh. Limiting gatherings to 10 people is not even a speed bump to exponential growth and expansion. Limiting gatherings to 3 people is the equivalent of 3 speed bumps before rapid and exponential acceleration. No social gatherings is the way to go."

We're trying and learning. People gathered in our cars outside of Bethlehem Lutheran Church today to surprise a bride, daughter of a neighbor, and groom as they walked out from their wedding. Honks and cheers gave them a bit of the crowd love they didn't have inside.

I also made the ring pictured in this post for Pia, who had lost a keyring she was loosely wearing on her finger while we took batting practice in the yard. The goat, meanwhile, doesn't like social distancing and has been jumping out of his pen and wandering about.

My classes are set for next week, although I'm sure we'll all be confused a bit as we figure out new routines. Routines, in fact, will be great and part of what saves us. It will be our second week of remote Mass in the morning, and I hope you have similar opportunities to join with others for messages of faith and hope.

I love you all. I'm not going to make rings for everyone, but I offer whatever I have in assistance if you need it. Don't be a stranger. We video-chatted with the Yonkers family today and continue to call, text, email, and write letters to people.

shampoo

Quick updates: Dad replaced the leaky washer faucet. He broke the PVC line, had to turn off the water in the house for 90 minutes, and had to get a new piece, but it got fixed. I didn't fix the leaky water line. I dug around the broken area, clipped it, and added splices. I crawled under the house and turned the water on. The splices leaked. I crawled out and tried again. It still leaked.

On the plus side, I figured out why the house smelled a bit like the lagoon. The drain line from the kitchen sink and dishwasher had come apart at an elbow in the crawlspace. Drain water has been soaking into the dirt there for an indeterminate amount of time. So I cemented that back together and threw some duck tape on it to hold it while it cures.

Isaiah was in charge of supper, making brownies from a mix with Grandma and chicken strips with mom. Yesterday we took a walk in the evening, checking on last week's willow transplants. Several have leaves and they all look good. I pulled one up, but no roots yet. They're in a tenous position, easily washed away if the river rises and also succeptible to the bank drying out if it doesn't.

If you need some broad-based thinking about the world these days, Andy Obermueller might be of interest. Michael Brendan Dougherty, fomerly of the American Conservative, has cogent thoughts at the National Review. The Harvard Business Review had a great article about grief: "The loss of normalcy; the fear of economic toll; the loss of connection. This is hitting us and we're grieving. Collectively. We are not used to this kind of collective grief in the air." (https://hbr.org/…/03/that-discomfort-youre-feeling-is-grief…)

People are fearful about this virus. They worry about jobs, about futures, about meeting the basic human needs of their families. The uncertainty, the lack of any idea of what is happening beyond the next day or two is unsettling, even paralyzing. Seemingly simple things like grocery shopping involve this involved list of someone else's favored shampoo with no certainty that you'll be able to find it for them.

Still, there is plenty of normalcy. I've been emailing eighth-graders to check on them. Most are OK, although one usually combative and highly intelligent student, after noting that her family was fine and didn't need anything, suggested I should start making toilet paper. Speaking of which, Marian found some today at the store! We're high rollers.

Pia wanted to be sure the stores were only out of food, not toys. Priorities!

I love you all. Holler if need anything (I might even share TP).

pictures

just off the trail

walk