Tichu

First a real quick introduction for those of you that don't play Tichu.  It's a card game with 52 cards very much like playing cards plus four special cards. The general principle is similar to Scum aka President where the object is to get rid of your cards before anyone else by laying higher ranking cards on the current cards being played. You can play single cards or sets of cards like Scum but you score somewhat like Rook. For those of you that haven't played Tichu, I highly recommend it. Our children brought it home from Goshen College.

So tonight was our third Thursday night playing with our two renters that are Goshen College seniors, one of whom is Lois' nephew Ted. The other is Lucas Nafziger - no relation to me.  In Tichu you play with set partners so Lois and I have been playing against them.  Even if you know nothing about Tichu you will appreciate the rarity of Lois starting the first two rounds having all four Ace's in each round and in the final round I had all four Ace's! But in between Ted had two sequence bombs and Lucas had consecutive King bombs.

The game ends when either team scores 1000 points.  We started off by my being set (down 100) then we surged to a 550 to 50 lead but near the end they managed claw back to an 850 to 750 lead.  Then I Grand Tichued (basically double bet I was going to go out first) and made it plus got all the points so we won 1050 to 850.  Overall we've won 2 of our 3 games.  If we keep beating them I think we'll still have them coming back for more because we always feed them something.  Actually it's very unlikely we'll continue to win. They are both good players.

This is the first we've ever had so much fun with renters.

Happy palindrome day!

Several weeks ago I noticed (or maybe read) that today's date would be a palindrome when written mmddyyyy 11022011.  The next one will be Feb. 2, 2020. Cool eh? I looked up Palindrome on Google and found a Wikipedia article noting that "the most recent palindrome date was 11/2/2011". I also found many other references to this extraordinary date.  It's so hard to be in front of the curve these days.

Biking in Seattle

I didn't get to bike as much as I hoped in Seattle even though Alex's father Kim graciously loaned me his mountain bike and Abby let us borrow the bike we bought her for her birthday. There were just too many other interesting things to do. Seattle is very bike friendly. Lois and I rode about 23 miles one of the first days on the Burke Gilman trail. It's a rails to trail path.  It supposedly went a good bit further but we were about done biking for the day.

One highlight on the bike though was successfully biking up Dravus Street. Alex had introduced it to us the night before in the car. He said locals know it as Hill of Death. I know this is a little hard to see in the accompanying picture but this is my iPhone with the app that acts as a level showing the slope on the street as 16.5%.  It probably wasn't quite that steep averaged over a foot. I biked up with the mountain bike in the "granny" ring in front and the lowest in back. It felt like I was ratcheting up the hill as each down stroke took me a bit farther up and I nearly stopped in between each stroke. I wished for my road bike several times but I don't think I would have made it up this hill as it isn't geared low enough.

The additional picture to the right shows a garage opening on to the street. You can't see from the picture that there is a bit of distance between the street and the garage door but it still looked like a challenge to get a car in there.

Going down I felt like if I braked hard I would fly right over the handlebars so I was pretty cautious and didn't let it gain much speed. The steepest part was only one or two short blocks long but the whole hill was at least 6 or 8 blocks.  I might not have been able to control the bike on the nearly level cross streets if I let it to to full speed.

Seattle trip

As I start this post we are on Amtrak Empire Builder about an hour from Chicago returning 17 days after leaving on the same train the other direction to Seattle.  Because travel time is about exactly 2 days each way, we had just one day short of two weeks there. We had a great time.  Abby took off the middle Friday and we rented a car to spend the weekend on San Juan Islands. This is a group of islands in the Puget Sound about 2 hours north of Seattle.  


While we spent most other evenings with her, the rest of the time we were exploring on our own.  Abby had helped us create a list of things to see.  Also the last meal on the train before arriving in Seattle we happened to sit across the table from a couple from Seattle. When they found out we were about to spend two weeks there, they created a whole list of things not to miss.  They overlapped with Abby's list a lot. We got to most of them.  


One highlight for me was getting to spend an evening with my first cousin Rich Nafziger (uncle Ezra's son), his wife Kristen and Ez's widow Margie. They live in Olympia about an hour south of Seattle. I don't remember ever meeting Rich before. Some time ago Eldon suggested him as a friend on Facebook.  I contacted him a couple weeks before leaving. I was surprised to hear that he spent a term with MCC in Washington DC.  He also connected more with Melville but also had fond memories of Dad. He said Dad took him back to college one time when Dad was visiting uncle Ez while Ez was battling cancer. Interestingly, Abby met someone at a conference while we were out there that knew him. He teaches economics at Seattle University.

Puff the Magic Dragon

Yesterday started out nostalgic.  Lois decided to rake out last fall's leaves from our front entrance way. The only reasonable way to get them to the leaf pile behind the house was by wheelbarrow going between the garage and the wood pile north of the house but that area was completely blocked with used lumber and pieces of a raft Jonathan built with some college (or maybe late high school) friends.  It was in disarray because a couple weeks ago I plundered parts of the raft to make a post for a bluebird house. The raft was crafted with now rotted pallets on top of quality treated lumber nicely sawed to fit over four 55 gallon drums. My stash of used lumber was on top of it.  I think it had one voyage after the maiden one.  It was great fun watching them build it and although I never saw it floating in the dam pond, neighbors reported that it was a majestic sight. Well maybe they didn't say majestic - probably more like hilarious.  Part of what contributed to it's quick demise was that it was a major chore to get it down to the pond from our house.  They used our min-van but parts of it stuck out the back and the side.  So as I was cleaning up I found the accompanying black pirate flag (a piece of garbage bag folded in a square and held together with duct tape) and the lyrics of Puff the Magic Dragon floated through my head.  In case you decide not to listen to the humorous rendition on YouTube in the link above, here's the most apropos lines.
A dragon lives forever but not so little boys 
Painted wings and giant rings make way for other toys. 
One grey night it happened, Jackie paper came no more 
And puff that mighty dragon, he ceased his fearless roar. 


Another thing that contributed to my nostalgic mood was the fact that yesterday afternoon Abby was having an "I scream" ice cream going away party at her house in Evanston. Lois and I were invited but we just weren't quite willing to do the 6 hour round trip drive for a 2 hour party.  Abby will leave for Seattle by way of Florida for several day's training this week so it will be the last time for who knows how long that Abby will be within reasonable driving distance.  


This week we bought round-trip Amtrak tickets to visit her in early October. We bought roomettes again which more than doubles the price of the tickets but we count it part of the vacation and really enjoy this mode of travel.

Aunt Ada

Last weekend we were in PA. Lois and Mary were heading in for their third annual Hess sisters weekend gathering and I decided to tag along since I hadn't been in since November. I spent most of Saturday with Grammy and thought I'd write a bit about my aunt Ada. This is especially for the next generation who never met aunt Ada since she died in 1977. For the bare facts, here's the obituary from the Gospel Herald:

Kennel, Ada E., daughter of John A. and Emma (Kauffman) Kennel, was born near Atglen, Pa., Aug. 17, 1913; died of emphysema Lancaster Osteopathic Hospital, Aug. 28, 1977; aged 64 y. Surviving are 4 sisters (Lena, Minerva, Rebecca ­ Mrs. Elmer Beiler, and Mary Emma ­ Mrs. Ephraim Nafziger), and one brother (John A., Jr.). She was a member of Millwood Mennonite Church, where funeral services were held on Sept. 1, in charge of Reuben Stoltzfus, Noah Hershey, and Aaron Kauffman; interment in Millwood Cemetery.

Grammy said she had emphysema as a result of a bout of pneumonia when she was two.

I don't remember ever talking to aunt Ada about her education and adventures. What struck me in my conversation with Grammy is how different aunt Ada was than her sisters. Some time in the late 30's or 40's she went to EMC for a term or two. There were a few others from Millwood young people at the time who went but she's the only one of bishop John Kennel's daughters to go for a whole term. These were winter six week terms I believe and were mostly Bible courses but Grammy said aunt Ada took German.

I'm almost sure it would have been after her time at EMC she started corresponding with a woman from Germany. The reason I think that would have been later is that I imagine that starting up after WWII not before or during the war.

Then most astounding of all, this diminutive Chester county Amish - Mennonite with a constant thick cough from her emphysema who had probably never been to more than 4 or 5 states outside PA all her life decided to visit this pen-pal in Germany. It was some time in the late 50's because I distinctly remember going along with my parents and siblings to New York City to see aunt Ada board a ship to Germany. No one she knew went with her on the ship so I wonder what kind of conversations she had with fellow passengers. Did her host meet her at the dock in Germany or did she have to board a train there to get to where her host was from?

During the course of our conversation, Grammy reported that when aunt Ada returned from EMC Papa Kennel said never again. He had had too much anxiety. When I returned to that a bit later in the conversation she changed her mind and said that it was after aunt Ada's return from Germany that he said she shouldn't do it again. Quite often on the anniversary of Papa Kennel's father's suicide Papa Kennel would have some kind of mental weakness or anxiety.

That probably says as much about the culture as it does about the man that he would tell his 40 something daughter not to travel overseas anymore.

I'd love to hear any memories you siblings have of aunt Ada or any corrections or additions you have. My memories of aunt Ada are mostly her coughing and sitting by her sewing machine sewing head coverings. As far as I know that was her only source of income as an adult. There was a retail store close to route 30 on the way to Lancaster where they were sold.

Scrabble

Tonight goes down in our history book - we scored 1,095 in Scrabble. That beats our previous high of 1,061 set in 2007. Lois laid all her letters down in one turn 3 times (waterer, boasted and louting) and I did it twice (ignores and echoing). We only cheated a little. The word te on the right hand side is not in the Scrabble dictionary but it is in the chromatic scale: do, ti, te, la, le etc. We use those "words" fairly frequently. Obviously, Merriam-Webster, the publisher of the Official Scrabble dictionary, doesn't know the English language as well as we do :)
We also play with the rule that allows us to pick up the blank if we have the letter it stands for so we use the blanks multiple times in a game which greatly increases the odds of being able to lay them all down at once. In all 5 of the times we laid them all down at once, we used a blank. The 8 letter word quintals across the top was done in 4 turns: quint, quinta, quintal and quintals. All of those are in the official Scrabble dictionary. With the triple word score going across and the double letter score going down, it allowed us to score the q nine times.
I called Grammy with the news tonight which allowed me to credit her and Pappy for the way we play. Although Pappy would not have had the patience for the time we take to maximize our scores. Grammy and Pappy also didn't play quite as cooperatively as we do. I reminisced with her about the expression Pappy would get on his face when he had one or two tiles left in his hand. As I remember, it was the one time in the game when they got a bit competitive to see if they could stick the other person with a few points.

Movie reviews

Sometimes in the summer we go a month without watching a movie but we watched three in the last week. Each one was in a completely different genre. Starting last Sunday we watched Wit. It's a story of a 48 year old woman fighting a losing battle with ovarian cancer. It didn't put a syrupy coating on what it's like to live the last days of one's life in chemo treatment. I loved the honesty of the movie and would highly recommend it if you don't have to have every story turn out right. It might also help you think about writing advance directives.

Last night we watched City Island. A movie about a New York family where each member is holding some secret from the others and the total mess it's making of their lives. It's comedy. Don't look for any transcendent truths - just some good laughs and a feel good redemptive ending. Totally the other end of the spectrum from Wit.

Tonight we watched No Impact Man. A documentary about a couple in New York who along with their 1.5 year old(?) daughter, decide to live a year attempting to make no impact on the environment. They progress into parts of it but at points are without electricity, toilet paper, garbage production, any kind of fossil fuel burning transportation and a host of other "necessities". All food they eat has to be grown within 250 miles of New York. At the end of it they've lived so much better that they decide to only go part way back to their old ways.

So there you go. The first movie reviews you've ever gotten on this blog and probably the last.

Yesterday I decided it was time to clean up the cupboard where my stereo from 1971 is stored. As I recall I paid in the range of $500 for the system. Taking inflation into account that's like spending $2250 for a stereo system now which seems extravagant and unreasonable to me. The amplifier, tuner and turntable are still intact but what's left of the speakers are above the garage. The woofers have long since gone the way of all flesh.

Some years afterward I bought an 8-track player/recorder to go with it and then when 8-track tapes went extinct, I bought a nice cassette player but it quit and they too have pretty much disappeared. So the question is, should be buy a CD player to play music through this system or
shall we forgo hardware based music media entirely and skip directly to some kind of mp3 player?

Back to the system, I knew the amplifier was working because Jonathan uses it to play his music over the built-in speakers this house has. I tried getting the tuner to work but without success. However I got the turntable to work reasonably well and yesterday I listened to the Mitzelfelt Chorale album titled "Anthems of Praise and Rejoicing"* that I haven't heard for probably 30 years. For you sibs, it's the one with "O Divine Redeemer", "God So Loved the World" and other classics. I've loved this set for a long time. I wondered why Mom and Dad might have bought this album because none of the hymns are ones we would have known from church. I asked Mom this morning not expecting her to remember but she thought maybe it came with that set of used records Dad bought at the neighbor's sale in Cochranville.

Now I'm listening to the Mennonite Hour doing such numbers as "To Love someone more dearly everyday..." and songs by a men's quartet that includes Earl Maust who was Dennis Maust's father.

Eldon, I have one of your albums in my possession by New Creation called "The Folk Sound of Freedom".

*If you click on this link you'll see a picture of the album cover that I just uploaded. I joined Discog just so I could upload that picture.