Greetings from the foothills of the Connecticut Berkshires!
Since writing our April general email update, our volunteering at Silver Lake Conference Center in Sharon CT is keeping us more than busy as well as productive.
THIS WEEK both of our granddaughters have captured our special attention.
-Our PRAYERS are for Ashley who is undergoing a second emergency shunt surgery on June 28 (details at www.thestatus.com Patient=Ruth, Password=Ashley3) in Charlotte. She is resting comfortably and Ashley’s other grandparents have traveled to be with them. Mary is flying there on July 3.
-Our CONGRATULATIONS are for Brynne who placed 6th for ‘under 10 year old’ 3 minute speed at a National Jump Roping event in Galveston.
NEXT WEEK begins the summer season at Silver Lake! We’re enjoying the energy and enthusiasm of more than 40 high school and college age recently hired summer staff. Their jobs include kitchen, mowing, waterfront, ropes challenge course, arts and crafts, music, maintenance, cleaning, and photography. We’re also getting to see year ‘round staff colleagues teaching teamwork, building community and inspiring Christian service. Summer conferee registrations seem to be as good as ever (the price is right thanks to church support). Our responsibilities continue to center around inventory and friend-raising.
VOLUNTEERING at Silver Lake gives us opportunities to meet new people interested in knowing more about our calling as volunteers but we also spend a great deal of time using computers for database work for inventory (50 buildings!) and mailings like this just published newsletter (www.silverlakect.org/alum/newsletter). There is always plenty to do so we help out with tours, family picnic day, retreat groups, a Golf Tournament fund raiser, data entry, camp fairs, meetings, printing reports, filing, and collecting/recording forms.
LIVING ‘on site’ eliminates any commuting and having a Culinary Institute Chef on staff is a special treat. Our heated cottage also came with a little wood stove and now, with summer upon us, gives us cooling comfort from shade trees. We are reading local library books faster than ever, using Netflix, playing cards and games and doing some jig saw puzzles as we have no TV reception or internet distractions at the cottage. This is peaceful living but it’s a definite treat to get 1080 WTIC AM radio reception to listen to the Red Sox!
RELATING to Silver Lake is not difficult. Mary was a conferee here in the late 50’s and then had a paid internship at Silver Lake in the summer of 1965 for her Elon College Religious Education major. Bill, who was working a college summer job in NJ, was dating Mary at that time and came to visit her at Silver Lake. Pat, Mary’s Silver Lake roommate and camp nurse, became a bridesmaid in our 1966 wedding and now will return this summer to be the nurse for a week in July—we recruited her! In the 1980’s our children each attended a Silver Lake conference, Mary was a hiking conference counselor and Bill was a counselor with our minister from Hebron. Silver Lake, then and now owned by the Connecticut Conference United Church of Christ, is a top notch church camp.
EXPLORING the area is a favorite pastime of ours. On days off we are visiting places such as: Hyde Park, Stony Point and Ft Montgomery in NY; Hancock Shaker Village, Norman Rockwell museum and Calvin Coolidge library in MA; and local trips to Sharon Audubon Society, Beckley Furnace, Kent Falls State Park, and the Cornwall Covered Bridge. We are in the middle of nowhere, deep in the woods and our cottage is only six miles from New York State. The rolling hills and the remoteness certainly has its appeal so the area has many country summer estates owned by people from the New York City area. We are getting used to 70 miles taking 2 hours no matter which direction we go!
TRAVELING out of state helps us stay in touch with loved ones. In April we drove to Baltimore for a week to be with David and family for Ashley’s leg surgery and had some special bonding time with baby Drew. In June we flew to Texas to be with Cindi and family for a long weekend family visit. Brynne went with us to a local ‘theater in the round’ and we all went to the Motocross races to watch Sawyer, Mike and Luke– who won a 2nd place trophy. Sometimes it was 100 degrees so we all enjoyed our times in the swimming pool.
VOLUNTEERING at Silver Lake gives us opportunities to meet new people interested in knowing more about our calling as volunteers but we also spend a great deal of time using computers for database work for inventory (50 buildings!) and mailings like this just published newsletter (www.silverlakect.org/alum/newsletter). There is always plenty to do so we help out with tours, family picnic day, retreat groups, a Golf Tournament fund raiser, data entry, camp fairs, meetings, printing reports, filing, and collecting/recording forms.
LIVING ‘on site’ eliminates any commuting and having a Culinary Institute Chef on staff is a special treat. Our heated cottage also came with a little wood stove and now, with summer upon us, gives us cooling comfort from shade trees. We are reading local library books faster than ever, using Netflix, playing cards and games and doing some jig saw puzzles as we have no TV reception or internet distractions at the cottage. This is peaceful living but it’s a definite treat to get 1080 WTIC AM radio reception to listen to the Red Sox!
RELATING to Silver Lake is not difficult. Mary was a conferee here in the late 50’s and then had a paid internship at Silver Lake in the summer of 1965 for her Elon College Religious Education major. Bill, who was working a college summer job in NJ, was dating Mary at that time and came to visit her at Silver Lake. Pat, Mary’s Silver Lake roommate and camp nurse, became a bridesmaid in our 1966 wedding and now will return this summer to be the nurse for a week in July—we recruited her! In the 1980’s our children each attended a Silver Lake conference, Mary was a hiking conference counselor and Bill was a counselor with our minister from Hebron. Silver Lake, then and now owned by the Connecticut Conference United Church of Christ, is a top notch church camp.
EXPLORING the area is a favorite pastime of ours. On days off we are visiting places such as: Hyde Park, Stony Point and Ft Montgomery in NY; Hancock Shaker Village, Norman Rockwell museum and Calvin Coolidge library in MA; and local trips to Sharon Audubon Society, Beckley Furnace, Kent Falls State Park, and the Cornwall Covered Bridge. We are in the middle of nowhere, deep in the woods and our cottage is only six miles from New York State. The rolling hills and the remoteness certainly has its appeal so the area has many country summer estates owned by people from the New York City area. We are getting used to 70 miles taking 2 hours no matter which direction we go!
TRAVELING out of state helps us stay in touch with loved ones. In April we drove to Baltimore for a week to be with David and family for Ashley’s leg surgery and had some special bonding time with baby Drew. In June we flew to Texas to be with Cindi and family for a long weekend family visit. Brynne went with us to a local ‘theater in the round’ and we all went to the Motocross races to watch Sawyer, Mike and Luke– who won a 2nd place trophy. Sometimes it was 100 degrees so we all enjoyed our times in the swimming pool.
CELEBRATING recent holidays in New England with family and friends is one of our ‘perks’ for volunteering in CT.
-Easter weekend we stayed in Lebanon at Victoria’s Crossing B&B, went to the sunrise service on Lebanon Green, and worshipped with old friends (or is that friends from long ago?) at the Gilead Church.
-Memorial Day weekend we drove to Westford cemetery to plant flowers at Mary’s parents’ graves. While there we fondly remembered our last visit a year ago, with Florence, Mary’s dad’s second wife, who passed away in February at age 95. We continued our journey to stay a few days at “Haven of Peace”, a family cottage in Jamaica, Vermont, owned by our cousin Jan, whose generous hospitality had 13 ‘distant cousins’ gathered for the weekend.
-Father’s Day weekend had us at a Golf Tournament in Greenfield MA meeting Mary’s brother Cal, who undergoes major carcenoid cancer surgery in New Orleans on July 2, (www.thestatus.com Patient= Coolidge, password= sea-six). The three of us drove to Athol to visit our 85 year old Uncle and his family and then to Petersham where we have many happy memories of time spent with our grandparents.
HOSTING visitors at our Silver Lake cottage is something we particularly enjoy and have already welcomed family from MA, friends from Maine and West Virginia, as well as CT folks from West Haven and Collinsville. We’re looking forward to getting together with others in the CT area as dates and places to meet are selected. For the summer we get Tuesdays and Saturdays off and like to ‘get off site’ — let us know when and where to meet you and we’ll be there!
HOME, in North Carolina, will be a late August trip for us. When this conference center goes on furlough for a week we’ll make the trip to ‘check in’ with friends in NC and take care of a few things like renew our licenses etc. Then we’ll return to Silver Lake until our assignment here concludes in November.
Thanks for reading this and staying in touch with us. Our collection of ‘updates’ provides us with impressions of our volunteering and writing them for you helps us focus our thoughts. We find it especially interesting to read an update written early on during an assignment and then compare it to a final assignment update and see where we’ve grown in understanding the culture and the agency and what changes we see in ourselves. As always, we are looking forward to hearing from you soon.
