Other health

Aunt June and Aunt Sandy called us Tuesday to tell us that Grandpa Beck, 97, is in the hospital, facing undetermined ailments. His blood county and kidney count are low, he has bronchitis, and it's possible he had some mini-strokes. We may visit this weekend. We feel bad that we didn't spend time with him this summer, as we did last summer. This is complex, since Vincent has talked about returning to Ohio this weekend, but we don't necessarily want to encourage that (and all of us going to Ohio would certainly encourage that). I may go alone. This may impact Mom's visit, slated to start in eight days, since we may want to include an Ohio visit, which wasn't originally planned.

This week Mom is taking a two-morning AARP driving class, which hopefully is giving her tips on how to perfect her driving strategies and assess her driving abilities. After trying and failing at participating in a swim class several months ago, Mom engaged in regular one-on-one swim lessons. Her mixed feelings about water, being out of the water for 30 years, and Parkinson's made the in-class experience scary and humiliating. But her general work on stretching, strengthening, and balancing - and her specific work in the pool - made her return to the swim class a success. She's still better at some things than others, but no panic in the pool this time. Good work, Mom!

Our doctor said Tuesday that I have an infection in my inner ear - my stubborn than the more run-of-the-mill infections Vincent and I had last month - and so he put me on a new round of medication. If that doesn't work, I may head off to an ear, nose, and throat specialist, potentially to have the fluid in my inner ear drained though a tube (through my ear drum!). To try to prevent the need for this, I'm also supposed to do things like I do in an ascending or descending plane to clear my ears.

No luck feeding the turtles. We are buying a new heating element to try to get the terrarium at a better temperature (instead of only 77 degrees or 107 degrees). We tried hand feeding Monday and Big Mac tried to bite Stephanie (hope that's a good sign, that he's trying to eat)! It's very hard to get the pieces of food small enough (especially cutting up live worms into small pieces). We were also told we could try fruit.

Heard from Penny Tuesday on how Serge and Jacob's birthday parties went last week. It turns out that she and I will both be in the D.C./Baltimore area - me for a conference for work, her for another round of movement classes - so she may stay with me in Baltimore one night.

P.S. Our Weight Watchers leader and meeting were in the Louisville paper today. Check the article and accompanying pictures out at: http://www.courier-journal.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2010309220035

-- Perry

Atlanta experiences

The presentation I made on behalf of my colleagues Joelle and Ida and me at the Association for the Sociology of Religion (ASR) Annual Meeting earlier this month in Atlanta went OK. Not a lot of feedback until I talked with fellow panelists and others afterwards – who gave advice on an alternative tactic – using hierarchical logistic regression, as a form of multi-level modeling. (So far some web materials almost make it sound like multiple regression – as well as SPSS - is out in academic circles.) There were a few other religion presentations that looked at community involvement/civic skills issues also. We may explore these (other methodological approaches) for our upcoming Religious Research Assiciation Annual Meeting presentation. (Pictured above is the Hyatt Regency hotel, site for the ASR meeting. Pictured below is another of the scholars on Friday morning panel, presenting.)

Rhys Williams’ ASR presidential address on the development of Muslim American identity also dealt with the controversy over the “Ground Zero” mosque, as did at least one other ASR presentation. I thought his speech was good.

The Census Bureau director (pictured below) continued (what he’d started talking about at the American Association for Public Opinion Research Annual Meeting, which I attended last May) to talk about ways the census might shift to using some administrative records, like Social Security files, and some public pressure to do so (don’t you guys already have this info in several other federal government databases?). He also talked about public outcry about various things, including a number of steps that they were sure would enhance response rates (and ultimately save money), including the controversial Super Bowl ad.

The American Sociological Association (ASA) presidential address dealt with efforts to get undocumented non-citizens able to take classes at state universities and colleges and eligible for federal financial aid. Some of the introduction dealt with school segregation for Asian Americans, Latinos/as, and Native Americans, some of which I didn’t know about (“Oriental schools” in California, for example). There were a number of other presentations I heard vaguely related to the Arizona law: administrative, political, and social-movement opposition to immigration, etc.

Another ASR theme was unconventional worship and congregational activity (particularly centered around young adults) including a panel discussion mainly among Emerging church movement practitioners. Most of them also tried to be amateur sociologists, but the most interesting presentation was PowerPoint slides and stories from a PC(USA) NCD organizing pastor of a emergent church ministry in SW Atlanta. The pastor talked about an Ash Wednesday event in which folks had burned their own (something?) and then they texted everyone and asked that everyone meet at dinner time at a MARTA (Atlanta subway) stop and they combined their ashes and played music in the subway station. It’s not clear if this was an alternative to conventional worship. He also talked about lunching with the pastor of a black Pentecostal church in the neighborhood and generating ideas for how to help the local neighborhood tackle the problem of child sex work in the neighborhood. Here’s a web presence (though I find the website confusing): http://churchasart.com/blog/neighborsabbeyhome/about/

Afterwards I asked the pastor if he found helping coming up with new ideas for activities all the time both liberating and exhausting. He said - not at all – that’s my personality, as it is for most of the creative class that we’re partly angling towards. These folks control many of the messages that we receive from the culture industry – why wouldn’t we want them in our churches?

Keep in mind that the ASR meeting program coordinator’s books are both studies of congregations catering to young adults: http://praxishabitus.blogspot.com/2009/12/hollywood-faith-holiness-prosperity-and.html).

Monday I had lunch with two friends, including one who formerly worked here (Columbia seminary prof Martha Moore Keish) and her husband, a pastor at Atlanta’s First Presbyterian Church, and we had an interesting conversation, including about the future of the denomination.

-- Perry

First day

First day of school for Stephanie, and first day back for both of us. It's the first day for teachers in her school district (with no big district-wide meeting this year), but no doubt there will be some meetings today and Tuesday at her school. Students arrive Wednesday; Stephanie is supposed to not have students until later, but she now has a classroommate, and her students, and her classroommate spent all last week what Stephanie had planned to do: set up the classroom ("volunteering"), them having both moved over the summer and now sharing a classroom. We'll see what kind of negotiation there is with her (Tiffany) and with their principal (Susie Gahan). Stephanie also doesn't know what she's teaching exactly, who she's teaching, whether she's doing after school activities (she didn't sign up for this), let alone do any lesson planning. You'll recall that the school lost the 5th grade, which Stephanie used to teach, but gained 100 extra students, plus the usual new students, with all of the district-wide school closings. Also, last year, Stephanie started teaching the READ 180 intervention program and sometimes math, in addition to teaching English as a new language, and we'll see what happens with that. You'll also recall that a district-wide ENL administrator got promoted.

(Also: As part of the reorganization, the school district switched the middle school and elementary school times, and now elementary schools start earlier, and so Stephanie must be there at 7:40 a.m., instead of at 8:15 a.m. We both got up at 5 a.m., and I may start coming in to work at 7:30 a.m. instead of more like 8:15 a.m. myself. Even if we're not carpooling, things work better if we leave at around the same time.)

Things are also a little different at my work, where I've also been gone for a week. I had to clear out much of my office before I left (when I thought I was going to meeting in Chicago), for recarpeting and refinishing the desks, etc. This is done, but now I must move back in. I've lost my telephone, which I'll probably have to pay to replace. I have behind with a range of projects and am slated to go to a couple of conferences in Atlanta for five days, starting this Thursday PM, and must prepare a Friday AM presentation for that (plus church meetings this Wednesday). Lots to do while we also try to follow up on this past week's events.

P.S. I did get some good health news for me over the weekend, although some follow-up is needed.

-- Perry

Health and housing

Frisco spent a day at the vet, with vomiting, but was back Monday night, seemingly as good as ever (see above)– though he vomited again Thursday night. The half a dozen eggs Speckles laid late Saturday night continue not to look good, and the one good one she laid earlier this spring has done nothing. The Nissan is still in the shop, undergoing rear axle work. I completed my second week of physical therapy on my right knee. At some points during the day it feels great; other times it does not. I plan to bring my cane to Minnesota and Guatemala. Stephanie (pictured below) came home Tuesday night via the Cincinnati airport (without luggage - it arrived the next day) after a challenging nine days away (in China and elsewhere), jet lagged, exhausted, and with swollen ankles and a bad cold (probably due to exhaustion, too much salt and MSG, and lots of air pollution), but no blood clots. After working on the yard all day Wednesday, she slept all day Thursday. She took something like 1,300 photos while she was away and had an mediocre-to-OK excuse for not calling me from the LA airport and not contacting me by computer once she got to China. Although she did miss having dinner with my father in Koreatown, she did not miss having Peking duck in Peking. My Mother also started one-on-one water exercise classes this week. Although the water is still cold, she's done better at this than she did with the group class, although she may re-join that as she gets used to the water. The exercises she are doing are similar to what she does every morning in the gym, but these under water. She also continues a group exercise class also at the gym, I think twice a week.

Vincent and his father are awaiting the clean-up of their place-to-be in metro Columbus, while Mother awaits word Friday on the possible sale of her house after three months on the market (including one month - May - which was the worst market for U.S. home sales in years and years).

- Perry

Exercise

It’s easy to blame Mom for some of the physical problems she’s facing, although we also profited from her working many extra years for the Department of Education. Sitting behind a desk all day and being physically active only sporadically in recent years contributed to her physical problems today. One of those problems goes at least back to her knee replacement surgery, when she was not able to do some of the exercises to get back her range of motion and make it easier for her to get up off a chair.

Tuesday I got some of this medicine myself, however. Ten days ago I reinjured an old knee injury – that goes back to running in high school and then a 1994 NYC car accident – when I slammed my knee into a metal barrier I was trying to climb over (something I’ve done several dozen times there) while walking the dog. Not only did the circumstances seem freak/stupid, but – when I got to physical therapy – one thing the therapist asked me to do that I couldn’t do was lower my foot slower from one step to another – and it was clear this was not just due to my injury but due to my failure to work out my leg muscles, as I was to do at home after my 18 months of post-car accident PT. In other words, my recovery from this latest incident might have gone more quickly if I had only exercised my leg muscles more (Mom would be too nice to say: take that, son!).

My knee really hurt after I slammed it into the barrier. Unfortunately, I had a whole long list of activities planned for the rest of the day – including door-to-door canvassing in the mid 90s in New Albany between 2 and 4 in the afternoon – and I did them all. Very late in the weekend I iced my knee and elevated it, and I have taken some somewhat hat baths since then too. Gradually, I’ve gone to some of my whole post-injury routine: using a cane (sometimes) (I didn’t find it until Friday, after we had gotten the trunk fixed), not running at all, wrapping my knee in a Ace bandage, avoiding stairs or going very slowly up and down them, driving with my left foot, etc.

I did 18 months of PT back in 1994-95 partly because I loved it, and I loved going to my physical therapist in Louisville for my neck/back/shoulder injury. So, ten days after the accident, I was finally back up at KORT Spine and Sport (inside pictured above), a few blocks from our house, being diagnosed and then – the next morning – doing an hour of exercises and icing/electrical stimulation. Some of the exercises were surprisingly hard. Periodically after walking the dog in the morning I do about 5-10 minutes worth of exercises: including some I picked up from past yoga classes, some from 1994-95 PT, and some from Louisville PT a couple of years ago. However, I have never been good about using light weights to do leg lifts, which is the kind of exercise I needed so that I could step down from that stair slowly (instead of going . . . plunk!). I also have some electric stimulation device my Dad got me, that I haven’t gotten out for years. I may have to use all of these, as I try to figure out how to do PT for at least a few weeks while I try to negotiate my PT being gone next week and then me being gone to Minneapolis and then Guatemala after that. The big question: will they allow me to take a cane on the plane? It’s going to be an interesting – but sometimes painful – few weeks. And who knows whether Stephanie dodged the blood clot bullet on her elongated (but also spread out) transcontinental flight? She won’t tell.

P.S. Two more Mom connections: Mom and I may even be doing some of the same exercises (she formerly in physical therapy and now at home or at the gym; me in physical therapy). Also, I plan to check with the physical therapist/gym staff about whether Mom could use the facility to do some exercises if she were to visit us for a week or two at some point (so she wouldn't get too far behind with that).

-- Perry

Countdown

Four more days of work for two people in our family: till the end of the school year for Stephanie (who will take all but the last week of summer off, because the school district couldn’t afford to have summer school, and is currently spending part of her time at work packing up her books, files, and so on, since she'll be moving to a former closet, which she'll share with a colleague, over the summer); and – apparently – for the rest of her life for my Mother. Mom is trying to finish two projects at home and to go in to work (in the Florida Education Center - or Turlington Building - pictured above) to go through more of her files. A couple of months ago she gave her manager June 4 as the date. Mom is not advertising the end of her 35 years with the Florida Department of Education as much as she might because she has mixed feelings about wrapping things up, as her health really pressed her to do it. Jacob has another week and a half of school. This weekend I may see Penny, Jacob, and Serge, as I head through there on my way to or from a college reunion in Pennsylvania. At this point, Stephanie is slated to stay home, as Vincent will be back with his own little one-year reunion and a doctor’s appointment.

-- Perry

Opryland Hotel

Late last July Stephanie and a colleague broadly construed who teaches middle school English as a new language in New Albany (Laura Martin) stayed in the sprawling Opryland Hotel in Nasvhille, where a READ 180 - the reading program both of them have taught this year to ENl and non-ENL students alike - was held.



Nine months later Laura is recovering from a very serious winter car accident but still plans to teach in the fall. And the hotel lies in ruins, thanks to the Cumberland River flooding.



There's no money this year for the school district to send people to conferences. But it's not clear this one will happen. Unless perhaps it moves to Louisville, and then maybe Stephanie can participate affordably. Another friend named Laura (Laura Chambers) watched much her Bellevue (TN) neighborhood submerge and is rallying people to help her neighbors move the water and repair their homes. We're thinking of all of you.

Indian Lake

Click on the arrow below to see Indian Lake (from Lakeside, OH) on a cloudy April morning (where we stayed and then awoke two weeks ago tonight)

Mid-week musings

Good news and bad news: Our church had been wavering on whether to go ahead with a Guatemala mission trip in July, with dwindling numbers on our end, and Tuesday we determined that we have 5-6 people going and we would go ahead and go. A surprise late addition was the Guatemalan American daughter of the man who was a guest pastor for us for six weeks several years ago (her first chance to go home in 3 ½ years). The bad news is that now I have to finish organizing the mission trip (which helps me avoid paying much).

Tuesday I also got my first speeding ticket in 10 years, and in a school zone (I don’t know how I missed that blinking light), which means I can’t just mail in a check and must also go to three-hour traffic school and be even more careful in the future. A fellow church member who is a lawyer contacted me via Facebook and phone and is going to try to help me get the court fee waived (and maybe get out of making an appearance).

On his birthday, Vincent commented on my Facebook page for the first time ever. He was slated to go to see the movie Kick Ass with his father for his birthday. (We celebrated his birthday this past Friday and then went to Thunder Over Louisville Saturday with him.) Vincent said he was slated to start his Bob Evans job later this week. I didn’t ask him about starting his classes (clearly he’d been on the computer) and he continued his hermit line which may mask that he’s bored and depressed and has got no non-family friends in Ohio (and for that matter doesn’t see his relatives on Stephanie or my sides of the family – he seems dead set on boycotting Corey’s wedding this Saturday). Stephanie wasn’t really able to reach him on his birthday.

One of my first assignments at the Presbyterian Center was to write a report for a Presbyterian Panel survey that I had not authored – about attitudes towards reparations. Later on I had gotten assigned a second Panel report – for which I had drafted a small part of the survey – which I’d never finished. More than a year ago I got the transfer/promotion that made me administrator of the Presbyterian Panel (random samples of Presbyterian church elders, other members, and ministers whom we send questionnaires about various topics four times a year), and yet I had not finished that report or any for the three or four surveys that I have worked on since becoming an administrator – something my managers were not happy about and was not good given the impending layoff date (May 14). This week final hard-copy versions of two Panel reports (the long delayed one and one for the first Panel survey I wrote entirely – the May 2009 survey on the Environment) came out and I distributed them. If I can just finish two more Panel reports before May 14 . . .

--Perry

More big days

(Written Friday afternoon) Friday is a big day. Mom goes to her doctor for the appointment that will help determine whether Westminster Oaks lets her in to independent living. In her phone interview earlier this week with the long-term care insurance nurse, Mom had belatedly volunteered that she might be asking Dr. Kepper for a walker prescription. The nurse stopped her and said that if Mom said anything about this to Dr. Kepper and the long-term care insurance company got wind of it, there’s no way she’d get long-term care insurance. We’ll see how Mom has done today. It probably helps that she’s seeing her doctor of 30 years.

Monday Mom has another hoop to job through. The marketing person from the retirement center called and said Mom has to go for a short appointment with the retirement center nurse – again to get into independent living – on top of today’s doctor appointment – and Mom will go for that Monday afternoon. It’s possible that the long-term care insurance company may ask Mom to go to one of their doctors later too, as she tries to accomplish two goals: getting in to Westminster Oaks independent living and getting long-term care insurance.

I think I’ve already written about how Mom suddenly is going to try to move the week of February 1, since that’s when Penny is available to visit.

Today is also a big day for us – We’re going to the Cincinnati area (actually Covington – scene of our wedding - rendezvous location pictured above) – to pick Vincent up for his long weekend visit to Louisville. We’ve seen him 2-3 times in Columbus, but at some points he has said he might not come back to Louisville for 10 years. We’ll see how things go, as he and Stephanie got into an argument on the phone Tuesday, and she was suddenly less enthusiastic. At times this week he’s also hinted that he might spend most of his time out with his friends, though we’ve invited him to a church potluck and Korean lunar New Year’s event Sunday afternoon. He’s been used to smoking inside and going to bed late, and so we’ll see how things go. When we saw him last weekend in Ohio, he said his grandparents had just left after a month of staying with his father and him in their one-bedroom apartment.

One reason why Vincent is even coming for a long weekend is that he and his job parted ways last weekend – on Sunday, while we were there. We had planned to pick him up from work but it turns out he was home as he had You can’t fire me – Iquit quit earlier in the day, after a visiting manager found him slow at a new responsibility: making hamburgers.

The official reason for Vincent’s visit is to go to his psychiatrist in southern Indiana – hopefully, to get renewals for the three prescriptions he has. I tried to get him set up with our old doctor in Ohio, but he nixed it and made it possible for him to return. After watching some of the PBS miniseries on psychology and its segment on depression, I felt it was even more important to give him the opportunity to stay on as even more important to give him the opportunity to stay on medication. Now, we have a complex day set up for Tuesday, which Stephanie will take off from work. First, I’ll go with them to Vincent’s 7:45 a.m. psychiatrist appointment. Then I got Stephanie in to a 9:00 a.m. dentist appointment back in Louisville (she has a tooth bothering her), and then Vincent has his regular dental cleaning appointment (two months late – recall also that we rushed him to one of Grandpa’s dentists in December to clean his gums). They may go out to lunch and get Vincent a haircut. Then at 3:00 p.m. Vincent has an appointment with his counselor (who we’ve talked about him doing phone appointments with, but he’s never done it – he used to see her weekly). Even though at times we’ve hoped Vincent would stay longer, Stephanie then may miss Weight Watchers again and drive Vincent probably to meet his father in Cincinnati. I’ll probably stay home not just for Weight Watchers but for my Spanish class.

Monday is also a big day for me, as at 2 p.m. is my Annual Review, when I’ll find out how much my manager will downgrade me for missing a bunch of 2010 goals. Today wasn’t a good day at work. Besides the fact that I got stuck trying to find a new president for our employee association, I suddenly had a client for the February Panel survey try to drop out. After my manager pushed me, I pushed her, and she agreed to keep her two pages- through we’re going to try to replace some of her questions with questions from her colleagues – but she was not happy. The whole thing did not reflect great on me – as I should have been finishing up the February survey earlier in the month, and I should have been staying in touch with her more since we last talked about it back in October (her budget has been slashed since then, after the One Great Hour of Sharing offering receipts from this spring came in low). We’ll see how that and Mom’s appointment go and how the whole Vincent at home in Louisville visit goes. We’ve been cleaning up a bit – including his room and his bathroom, which the dog has been staying in during the day, in his crate during the week. No vacuuming and dusting just for Vincent, but some straightening up. Next Saturday the Guatemala group is supposed to be back at our house, and so we’ll have to clean up for that too. Wednesday I have a session (church board) meeting and then I may go and watch the President’s State of the Union address with some Obama folks.

P.S. Sunday I also have to speak to the congregation twice – once to start out worship, and the second time as part of a congregational meeting – and Monday Mom has an Advanced Placement or AP meeting she’s scheduled – maybe one of the last of the standardized test meetings that she’s helped lead over the years.

-- Perry

Surprise visit

We knew on the eve of my Aunt June's key doctor's visit that June and son Dustin - and, it turns out, Dustin's aunt on his father's side, Brenda - traveled to Missouri so that Dustin could meet his biological father for the first time. June called from the road - traveling from Missouri to Ohio in one day - to say hello and said they couldn't stop - but then Brenda helped change her mind. We met Brenda and heard about the trip - where Dustin spent a couple of days with his father and was emotional on the way back.



June has lost some weight and was about to find out that her illness has not grown worse but not grown better. June, Mom's youngest sister, has been eating partly through a feeding tube through her stomach and showed us some of this. This is another health issue, since it has not been working properly.

After June got home, the doctors put her on an IV, in hopes that she would gain weight. A week later June spent several hours at home - with her son and sister at home but not noticing her discomfort - with a blinding headache and vomiting. Eventually, son-in-law Jay called 911 and the squad took her to Mt. Carmel East hospital. Blood pressure spikes sometimes precede the headaches, but health care providers have never figured out what might be behind the headaches. Days later Stephanie actually drove June home, and she got to see Dustin again, as well as Barb, Diana, and Jay. Although we gave June, Dustin, and Brenda no grand tour, Stephanie had just put up a bunch of Christmas paraphernalia (see "Christmas preparation") and I had been cleaning the house. I feared that no one would see the Christmas paraphernalia - since Vincent was gone and we'd be gone for 2-3 weeks at Christmas - but June et al.'s visit - plus those by our plantsitter Jessi and her family - assured that someone would see our handiwork.

-- Perry

New job

Since Stephanie’s mother helped Vincent get his now repaired cell phone back last week, Stephanie and I have talked with him periodically by cell phone. Stephanie heard distressing news about Vincent’s phone calls to his former prom date and former girlfriend, Jessi, and his hairbrained scheme to come back someday to Louisville to live with a different woman. Vincent landed a new job Thursday, at the Five Guys restaurant in Easton (which Mom and I ironically noticed a Tallahassee version of earlier this week), the gigantic mixed-use residential, shopping, and entertainment district, about a mile from where Vincent and his father lived. He won’t tell us how he’s been getting back and forth. But today he started as a French fry specialist at the restaurant, also helping prepare hamburgers and so on. He burned or cut himself on the first day and Stephanie said Vincent said it was hard work. The work reminds me a little of that of what we called a “fry boy” when I worked as a waiter at Ouy Lin Chinese Restaurant in Tallahassee. (Landing the job makes it very unlikely he’ll go with us to Florida and likely he’ll be staying in Ohio for at least a while into the new year.) Stephanie has been trying to arrange connecting with Vincent and both of her parents this weekend. Stephanie may head to Ohio Saturday morning, hopefully see Vincent after work both nights and then leave for Florida Monday morning. In the mean time, my sister and her family, slated to leave for Florida next Saturday, may have some plans change because the very bad winter weather has already changed their weekend. Good luck to them dealing with the weather, to Vincent cooking those fries this weekend, and to Stephanie traveling this weekend.

For more on Vincent’s restaurant chain, click here: http://www.fiveguys.com/home.aspx

-- Perry

Denmark in New Albany

Stephanie had hoped that like last year Vincent could come to talk with her after-school Culture Club when they dealt with Denmark. With Vincent unavailable, Stephanie tried to of Vincent's friends who had gone to Denmark. Nathan is the son of friends of ours, a current Brown School senior, whose family had (like us) twice hosted Danish exchange students. I picked Nathan up from his mother's school and he came with about a dozen pictures from his time there last summer (same summer Vincent was there, I believe). With a majority of time devoted to questions and answers, Nathan - who, thanks to me, was late - talked for about 30 minutes. Stephanie had hoped to show a Denmark video and also have the students make Viking helmets. But the video had yet to arrive and few students had brought in the plastic gallon milk containers to make the helmets. So they talked with Nathan and colored Viking sheets afterwards. Perhaps the video (which now has arrived) and helmets next Monday.

-- Perry

Zombie walk

A week ago Saturday night in Denver, I more or less happened upon this event. Thousands of - mainly young people - descended upon downtown Denver's 16th Street outdoor mall and environs, clad in all manner of outrageous zombie outfits, those undead creatures from such recent movies as "I Am Legend" and "Zombieland." Unfortunately, with my new camera, I took no video, and so didn't get the many kids with the halting zombie gait, growling "Brainzzz" (apparently zombies' favorite food), or the occasional time a group of them would chase oen of their friends or hapless passerbys (yikes!).

Below is something like an alien zombie.

And below - a zombie couple outside of Taco Bell!

Two zombie victims (?). At one point the Ghostbusters stationwagon drove by. The one bus line that sends buses up and down 16th Street actually had police escorts - police cars cruising in front of the buses.

These two young women - zombie victims? - stayed perfectly still throughout the whole time I could see them.

This young zombie was apparently eating through a victim's neck to get to the victim's brainzzz (yech!).

The zombie bride outfit was one of the favorite costumes.

I looked out for a slice of pizza and finally wound up on Market Street, where I had to wait quite a while for them to make slice to order - after making whole pizzas that came before it. There were a number of zombies in there, and so I was essentially having a slice of zombie pizza!

-- Perry

A tale of two cities

On the left, above, is the Duke Energy Center, home of an anime convention Vincent attended several years ago and home of lunch and the exhibit hall for the Mission Celebration (of which the Guatemala Mission and Amigos de K'eckhi were part). Below, down Elm Street, is Riverfront Stadium, where the Bengals crushed the Bears later that weekend (on Sunday).



Below - looking up the 16th Street mall in Denver. It turns out that Mom was in Denver in fall 2001 for a conference, and she (then) and I both out at the same subway resturant.



The clock tower is near the corner of the 16th street mall and another street (just around the corner from our hotel).

At the far end from my hotel was a melange of government buildings and parks . . .

. . . including the Colorado state capitol building.

-- Perry

Fiesta Latina 2009

You might recall that at least twice a year we're in or around New Albany's St. Mary's Roman Catholic Church, scene of one of Southern IN's few Latino Catholic ministries. In the spring we're there for mass with first communion for many of Stephanie's students. In the fall we're there for the Fiesta Latina - sometimes with Stephanie's colleagues and sometimes with our own church members. A year ago Saturday by days of the week Vincent had run away from home hours earlier and so he was not there. Stephanie has started having students not only graduate - by leaving intensive English as a new language instruction - but also going onto middle school. Above is a favorite student of Stephanie - Maria - who's done both. She's no longer in intensive ENL instruction, and she's in middle school now (she was in Stephanie's first class of students at Mt. Tabor elementary). Below is a 5th grade student whose work I'm told is improving. We like Benji - all the more so when he's doing his homework. He gave us some food suggestions. The scene was slightly different from usual - more tables - less space for dancing, maybe cooler weather, no Father Thomas in charge (instead he was taking pictures)- but lots of people and lots of food to choose from as usual - and good dancing!



Father Tom (below) - the priest to the ministry (and a parallel ministry in Louisville) - was still there of course - just not MC-ing.



Stephanie had gone out with her colleagues the night before - to Fourth Street Live - and none of them appeared - maybe still sleeping - but her principal and most of her family (more than usual were there) (not great picture). Susie hinted that she might have liked to have gone the previous evening.

Stephanie talked with another former student, Karen (below). She talked with some younger kids too (and a few parents).

Pictured below is one of the good dances - this one with little kids. Stephanie saw none of her students among any of the dancers.

Maria and her familiy - including her Mom - were selling fruit, corn, and tamales. We tried some of these. We tried to buy things we want and things most of her students' families were selling - although we missed some. The authentic Mexican tacos (very different from Taco Bell) were good. We checked in briefly twice with the extended family of Saul, who we visited after the May 2009 first communion. Below was the woman who helped persuade me to drink tequila back in May who sold me some sweet tamales and some pistachio pudding. I was a little shy about talking in Spanish with these folks we had talked with at great length in their houses in May.

Below was soem of the extended family - including Susanna, our hostess in May - and the playground where one of Susie's daughters eventually played with Benji.

These are two of the dancers we saw dancing - informally, with others - to the music of the Mexican band at World Fest last weekend.

The four-person dancing group danced as we left. Alas, we didn't get to talk with Susanna and Saul or see any of Stephanie's colleagues but Susie or see Stephanie's former colleague Annabell - here or at World Fest - with her husband and their new baby. Maybe next time.

-- Perry