Organs I have played: Brevard

The Porter Center at Brevard College is a multi-use concert hall on the main campus. The front of the hall includes a small gallery holding Jaekel opus 43. At 69 ranks it's one of the largest instruments in this region of the state. I played the instrument as part of a hymn festival in 2013. We actually presented the hymn festival at Black Mountain Presbyterian, which our choir leading and then mounted the same production in Brevard, with the local choral society leading the singing a few weeks later. We had brass instrumentalists for both events. They were with me in the gallery for the Porter Center event. With them there was not much room for anything else! Logistics were a bit tricky, but we used closed-circuit monitors for me to see the conductor. The instrument was a delight to play. It fills the room well. I would like to get back down to Brevard soon to play it again at my leisure.

Graduation

Eli may actually make it out of high school. (We know he will, but it's been a struggle, and he is more than ready to be done with school.) He did well on report cards for the current term. He took his senior photo a couple of weeks ago. His graduation swag arrived this week. He's made application to do AmeriCorps this year. Even studying firefighting at the community college, put him off. We are hopeful he can get an outdoorsy placement through VISTA or a similar program.

Grandfather mountain

I was on vacation (post-Easter) last week, and enjoyed some much-needed alone time. Eli went on a camping trip with kids from church Friday-Sunday. Libby and I heard Sam Bush Friday evening (with Martha and Russ) at Isis (standing!!! hated that, but enjoyed the music, including the opening act, Wisewater, and dinner was nice). Sunday I took the younger brothers to Grandfather Mountain, giving Libby some of her own alone-time. We packed a picnic lunch and had a good time. It was a bit chillier up there than it was at home. Briggs may be developing a slight fear of heights: he made it only about 1/3 across the mile-high bridge and then had to turn back.But he did scamper up the split rock near the entrance to the park.

Wildfire

The big news around here happened at the very end of the month. A homeowner burned some debris on Monday evening. On Tuesday a wildfire broke out, supposedly as a result of blowing embers. Whatever, the fire raged in the woods in Ridgecrest, about a mile from us. I saw the smoke from church as I sent the younger brothers home with my mom. Libby got a couple of photos later in the evening. Ultimately the fire burned about 750 acres, one home totally, with a handful of others getting some fire damage. The second photo is a couple of days after the fire was out, right outside our house, looking northwest between Ridgecrest and Montreat.

Libby was in California for a work-related event for a few days in February. She got a couple of cool plane pictures for the boys. She was in Newport Beach, and went to the shore and got videos of a whale cavorting in the surf.

On March 14 I celebrated Pi Day by making a quiche for breakfast, and a spaghetti pie for lunch. The plan was for chicken pot pie for supper, but I was pied-out. I did manage to make my 4th pie, a dessert buttermilk pie to end the day. We had the 3rd pie a day later for supper.

Winter 2015

A couple of random shots from last season. We had very little snow. But there were a couple of really cold snaps. Mostly however it was a mild winter for us. Briggs did manage to cobble together a snowman from the one measurable snow we had. We were stuck inside quite a bit because of the cold, and I caught 2/3 of the brothers behaving nicely at one point.

Calvin's birthday 2015

Like most of our birthday celebrations this one carried over to several days: special meal and dessert one night, presents from us a different time, from Ganny yet another, and from Uncle G even another, plus whatever comes in the mail. Doesn't matter; got presents.

I was pretty proud of the cake. It was store-bought, but I decorated it with stuff Calvin enjoys

and did the lettering.

Gratuitous cat pic

Winter basketball

Both Calvin and Briggs played basketball this winter. Briggs' team had a rough season, not winning anything. The younger teams don't keep score. Both boys seemed to enjoy the season however. Briggs got new shoes from his uncle, so he was very happy about that.  Most often Briggs would go to Calvin's games just to see who else was there. Once we took a buddy of his who had spent the night.

Briggs' birthday

Once again, simple and low-key. We took one of Briggs' friends to Fun Depot for a couple of hours. We had dinner and cake in the evening, and the friends stayed overnight.