Month: October 2018

This is not how I wanted the corner I live on to make the front page of the New York Times. My house is just to the right of these folks.
This is for my folks and friends that don’t live near.  We are always reluctant to evacuate because it can be hard to return. When a hurricane strikes and you are by the water, first the water is pushed in (if you are in the NE quadrant like we were for Florence – the absolute worse position to be in in a hurricane), causing flooding from wind – which is what affects my particular location, then when it goes by then the water goes down but the rain inland causes the rivers to flood away from us cutting New Bern off. We may be high and dry by then but we can’t get back home.   That did happen from Florence but we threaded the needle and got home before we were cut off. Then by the end of the week even Hwy 70 was back open. However it was another week before you could travel south on 17 because the bridge in Pollocksviille was severely damaged.

Anyway I got home and for the first time I almost cried, I could not get my key in the front door. No locksmith answered their phones. I didn’t have a key to the other doors, the electricity was out so I could not get in through the garage door. Spraying air into the lock did not help.

My neighbors Kim and Steven Wynn came to the rescue, Steven came with a spray bottle of water and finally got the key in the door. It took some strength but the door finally opened and we went in. What a mess.

 

You can see where the waterline was. Lucky or good planning that the electric recepticales are higher than the 4′ of water. Everything was covered with muddy slime. Unfortunately only one of my work tables was high enough, The things I put on top of all but one of them got wet – 85% of the stuff below the water line was ruined. Tools rust within a day or two of being submerged, I didn’t know that.

The real heart breaker was the kiln room.

Somewhere is this mess is 3 kilns blown apart. Usually when we have a hurricane the water rises slowly. I expected that to happen this time, instead we were hit with that storm surge they always talk about, that we haven’t had, or at least this much, in the 29 years I’ve lived here. This time the 4 feet of water that came into my house all came at once, like a wall, with waves on top of it. And the fact that it moved so slowly allowed it to pile up much more water than it would have if it was a fast mover, like Michael that just hit Florida.

This was all within a block of my house, areas like Fairfield Harbor and River Bend had a lot of flooding as well, more than has been seen in decades.

We are now a few weeks past Florence, and if you drive around New Bern you’ll still see some piles of peoples belongings along some roads, you’ll see some broken trees and some blue tarps on some roofs, but most of town looks normal. We are so grateful that we didn’t get hit like a 4 like hit Mexico Beach, and completely wiped them off the map.

 

 

I’m trying to catch up on my writing about trips earlier this year. After my clay workshop in Doylestown I drove to Michigan to join my sisters at the church we grew up in for their 150th anniversary. I was glad I made the effort to get there. I saw lots of art, birds, family, and friends.

I spent a few days with my niece at the U of M Biological Station where she works on the Piping Plover Project. This bird is on the federal endangered species list. In the mid 1980s there were only 16 nesting pairs in the Great Lakes Region. This year that number is at 76 pairs, due in no small part to the efforts of this project.

My niece is one of many zoo keepers, students, and other volunteers from around the country that go to the Station each summer to assist in the hatching and raising Plover chicks that for one reason or the other have lost their parents. I was taken with the care that was given to these chicks! Their own outdoor area at the beach, at the lab, indoor and outdoor facilities, heat lamps if necessary and they are fed a varied diet several time a day.

The people working with the birds do try to limit their exposure to humans so when it’s time for them to be released they want to go with the other birds. The three chicks that were there when I was were small for that late in the season. I asked what if they’re not ready to fly south when the others go, the answer was someone may fly them to the gulf coast.

My niece said University of Minnesota Professor and Principle Investigator of the recovery effort Francie Cuthbert says the the Piping Plover is an umbrella species for beach ecosystems, protecting the plover also protects other species of fauna and flora that might otherwise be overlooked.

You could almost see these chick change each day.

I made a quick trip to the bridge, I haven’t seen it in many years. When sorting through my Mom’s papers I read that my grandfather, her dad, was one of the first people to drive over the Mackinaw Bridge when it opened. I can remember before it was built waiting for the ferry to take us to the UP.

Then I was lucky to be at Little Twin Lake near Mancelona to observe the first Loon chicks on that lake in 15 years.

It was fun watching the family and how fast they could cross the lake. Sometimes the 4 would be together and other times one parent and one chick. You probably know this but the loons claim a territory, usually 60-200 acres and will chase off any loon that tries to intrude upon their area. The loon call is haunting.

It was a wonderful week of kayaking, bird watching and sailing.

Even though I’ve been to Charlevoix dozens of times I had never taken time to see the Mushroom Houses –

The builder was Earl Young. He studied architecture for only one year before deciding the regular way to build things was not for him. So over  51 years he built 30 structures in Charlevoix. Each is totally unique, mostly built of stone, and he designed each to fit into the unique landscape upon which it sits. “Earl Young’s houses feature his signature designs, along with wide, wavy eaves, exposed rafter tails; cedar-shake roofs; and a horizontal emphasis in design.”

Of course the flowers were beautiful.

I can’t go to northern lower Michigan without driving around the Lelanau Penninsula and visiting all the little towns and art galleries along the way.

Had to get this new piece from one of my favorite Michigan artist.

If you don’t live in Michigan you may not know that the west coast of the lower peninsula of Michigan is pretty much all sand dunes from Empire south. The largest and best known are the Sleeping Bear Sand Dunes.

And Michigan has about 124 working lighthouses, at one time there were 247! Here are just a few of them.

I made a quick trip to Saugatuck to see my friend Sandra, visiting art galleries and the Federik Meijer Gardens and Sculpture Park. Here the emphasis isn’t on flowers, although there are some beautiful ones, it’s on sculpture set in natural surroundings.

We went to a Paula Poundstone performance at the Saugatuck Center for the Arts, she was so quick and so funny. They also had this amazing show of work by Michelle Stitzlein. She creates art with recycles materials. Garden hoses make up a large portion of her work.

My sisters, nieces, and I went to tea – something I’m not used to doing – and it was really neat. The name of the tea house is Sweet Shalom Tea Room and it’s in Sylvania, Ohio, a suburb of Toledo. They do formal teas on Fridays and Sundays, each month has a different theme with a menu reflecting the theme. When I think of going to a tea I think of tiny bites of something and one type of tea. Not at these teas, we got pots of 8 different teas and when we were finished with the food we were full! Everything is served on vintage dishes, vintage tea pots and they do a short program about the theme of the month. It was really nice.

I got home from this trip just in time to visit Colorado for a week…..  I kind of overbooked this year! But looking back I’m glad I did, not knowing what would come up later in September … Florence.