Grow old along with me

Brother Tim August 12, 2018 Last week we drove north through Michigan, enjoying the forests, the farms, the green crops. Michigan is shaped like a mitten and a hat, called the Lower Peninsula and Upper Peninsula. The hat can only be reached from Michigan by the five mile Mackinac Bridge or through northern Wisconsin. Weird, huh? Our goal driving north through Michigan was to pick up Steve’s sister-in-law, Pam, who was flying into Lansing from Las Vegas, and to get to “The Cabin” by Saturday evening. Some of my family were to join us later in the week. In 2013 my brother Cecil was killed instantly when a tree fell on him while he was sawing up wood for the winter, something he loved to do. I knew he had built a “cabin” in northern Michigan near Cheboygan with some of his friends in 2005. Even though many of my family had been to his cabin several times,   I did not get there until the summer of 2016. That year I came with my other brothers and sisters ...

August 2, 2018 Ever since we picked up the RV in Albany, NY back in February there have been a few things not working perfectly. But none of them made it difficult to live in so we adjusted and had no major problems. But we had planned all along to stop at the Newmar manufacturing and service area in Elkhart, Indiana when we were headed east. Then the day we left Clear Lake State Park, the radio died. Checking fuses did not help. So we were glad to be headed to Indiana. Newmar puts out about 10 RV’s a day. They have a service area for repairs in or out of warranty. The service area was booked until September so they recommended an RV service nearby and they would cover what was under warranty. So we parked at that RV service and had only electric hook-up for 3 nights. During the repair time we took a tour of the Newmar plant and a tour of the RV museum. Newmar manufactures an average of 10 RV’s per day. The RV starts with a chassis and the floo...

Thursday, July 26 th Frequently when I have my coffee in the morning I think of women all around the world having their coffee -especially if I am drinking it outside, as I was this morning. I thought about Mary, the cook at Cabestor (Haiti) who makes the best coffee in the world, out there in the middle of nowhere, where women and children suffer from hunger and lack of all of the things I mostly take for granted. Mary starts a fire about 4 am with some charcoal (made from trees and sold at the market) and then brings water to a boil. I am not sure how she makes the coffee so good; there are no filters or coffee pots to brew it. I know she has this little packet of spices that she buys at the market especially for coffee. In an effort to learn how to make coffee taste the way she makes it, I looked at the packet. It had some star anise and cloves in it and maybe a bit of a cinnamon twig. The translator was no help as he did not know the English term for the ...