Happy Holidays!

Hope this finds most getting ready for the holidays. We are enjoying the snow of Mackinaw City as we gained about six or seven inches of the white stuff over the weekend. I figure this is good practice for Moldova, that is suppose to have a "temperate " climate like Minnesota? But is good testing for clothes.

I have started packing as we will be heading south first to Chicago and then on to southeastern Michigan until after the holiday's.

I have down loaded a Moldovan language program that was on my Peace Corps tool kit, on line. It seems that Moldovan is similar to Romanian but has many distinctions of its own.

While south, I have to dig out summer clothing to pack and most likely will have to cut down on the winter stuff I have. It is hard since we are suffering winter here I want to pack too much. But stay tuned for the packing saga.

We have been supporting the Mackinaw Historical Society's effort to get a handle on the artifacts they have. First job seems to be deciding what is actually of the period of the village where most of these artifacts will eventually be displayed. We spend the morning organizing the heated part of the artifact building so there was space for the new material. We had to park across the road when we first got there and walk into the village as the snow was a good foot deep. But while we were there the road crew folks plowed out the road to the village. It is nice to have snow that stays and does not turn into slush. That means good cold weather.

The invite arrived!!!!

Moldova in February!!!


My invitation from the Peace Corps arrived on Tuesday, October 16th and If I accept, which at this point I plan on accepting, I will be leaving late in February. Moldova.org is a good site to visit for info.


Britt and I went flying today with Jus as we stopped by Kalamazoo on our round about way from Mackinaw City to the Residential College anniversary celebration in Ann Arbor. The winds (notice the clouds building in the background) had come up so we did a touch and go and circled again to land.

I have heard!!

Friday, Yesterday, I got the call from the Peace Corps and on Tuesday I should be receiving a FedEx with my invitation from the PC. The only stuff I was told was that it will be Eastern Europe and if I accept I will be leaving for stagging and a few days later the country on February 18th. So stay tuned and I should be posting early next week.

Meanwhile, we have become docents on the Ice Breaker Mackinaw that has become a museum anchored here in Mackinaw City. Since Labor Day the tours are only offered on the weekends.

Stay tuned!

Moving On

This past week has brought much into the world of this homeless but not shelter less pair.

Tuesday night I resigned from the Oakland Schools Board as we will be spending much of our time before we leave for where ever in the Peace Corps up here in Mackinaw City. I had originally tried to resign in May before we spend the summer in France etc. but my fellow board members asked me to wait until this fall. This is only the second time in the last twenty years that I have not held elected office.

But we returned to Mackinaw City to find our hammers and crowbars and we went back to ripping out ceilings, walls and in the course have filled at least one dumpster.

On Saturday we ventured up to Sault Saint Marie, Ontario to sign Susie up for Ti Chi and get registered for classes that begin this week. We had little trouble crossing the boarder and are now the proud owners of bridge passes or tokens for both the Mackinac Bridge and the international bridge at the Soo. The club had a welcome back class Saturday morning and invited us for lunch. They are starting a class in Sault Saint Marie, Michigan next week. We will try to attend that one on Tuesdays and go to Ontario for the Thursday night classes.

Sunday, Dick, Sandy, Susan and I took off at about 10 for Saint Helena Island and the lightstation to close up for the season. We were hoping to go on Monday but the weather was too good to pass up on Sunday. When you have good weather at this time of year and that includes the size of the waves, you have to be ready to use it. When we left in July we had closed most stuff up but the last boarding of doors, etc. had not been done. We have to make the lightstation pretty tight to discourage visitors in the winter.

We returned to an invitation to become docents on the Icebreaker Mackinaw, that has been decommissioned and now resides in Mackinaw City, its namesake. They had lots of volunteers during the summer but now that we are past Labor Day there are still tourists but most summer folks have left town for their winter digs. So Susan and I are boning up on all the facts and figures about the sixty-three years of the ship's service keeping the Great Lakes open to shipping in the winter.

As to the Peace Corps.... They are still coming up with things they want Susan to add to her medical, frankly it seems rather excessive. But I have been cleared medically. But I think that they are still working on getting out their last volunteers of September. It should be maybe a couple of months before we hear. So stay tuned.

By the way the picture at the top of this blog is looking down from the tower at St. Helena lightstation at the area we usually eat our meals in good weather.

We have moved north!

We have moved north to Mackinaw City where we are trading housing for work with the Great Lakes Lighthouse Keepers Association. We have become destruction experts as we are helping pull out the insides of a former restaurant that GLLKA will use as offices and gift shop.

Both Susan and I have heard from the Peace Corps on our medical stuff. I have been cleared medically but the letter is in Birmingham and I have not read it yet. Susan heard today that again they needed more material.

The recent returned Peace Corps mag had a piece or rather several pieces on their effort to attract more over 50 PC volunteers. One of the comments that they got from those older volunteers surveyed was the incredible need for medical material. It is one thing if you are twenty-something there are not too many things that you have experienced medically in your short life but us oldsters have more of a record that in most cases does not exist on paper any more. As I mentioned in my last blog entry I had to have two more tests. I am not sure if this had anything to do with my doc wanting to make perfectly sure that nothing would go wrong or what. Both Susan and I are starting to think there must be something wrong with us medically. But before this PC application we both thought we were in pretty good shape.

Tomorrow we head off to Orangeville, Ontario for awareness day with the Taoist Ti Chi folks. Then it is back to Birmingham as I have a board meeting. It is good we have some place else to go as we have put in some long days pulling off paneling and ripping off celling tile. There is not much left on our bodies that does not hurt!

I have a picture of the Mackinac Bridge at the top of this piece because for the first time on Labor Day, Susan, Jus and I walked the bridge. Something that is real Michigan but none of us had ever accomplished. It was a beautiful day. We started early with the Governor and some 5,000 other people at 7 AM. There were still folks walking at 4 PM. The estimates are well over 50,000 in total walking this year. Labor Day is the only day that anyone is allowed to walk over Big Mac.

Not in the Peace Corps yet but on the road to getting there. Susan has completed her medical material but almost a month after she was sent material to fill in some blanks on her medical profile I received a call from the medical review person for my medical profile only to learn there were some blanks in mine also. This week I have two more medical tests to complete and then both our profiles should be complete. From what we understand, if in fact they are complete, our application along with these medical records will proceed to the next stage of matching us with a program.

Meanwhile we have found someone to take care of our house while we are in the PC. One of the problems of volunteering at our age is you have possessions preventing you from just getting up and leaving. As luck would have it, Susan's daughter and son-in-law need a place to live while he attends law school. The challenge here is the fact that law school starts next week and most likely we will not leave the country in the PC until the beginning of next year. So as of last week we have become what we call homeless but not shelter less as friends are taking us in. Just before Labor Day we will be heading to Mackinaw City for much of the fall to work with the Great Lakes Lighthouse Keepers Association. Trading shelter for work.

But stay tuned as we wait to hear from PC.

We're back.

We have returned from our wonderful month in France. It is a joy to be back to our keyboard as the French keyboard has several letters in different places causing rather slow keyboarding for one use to the "s" and "m" in other places. The trip was a good mix of "on our own" and tour. The Elderhostel tour taking a look at how women and Impressionism interacted was fun. The week in our villa in south central France with Peace Corps friends was as if we had not been apart for more then a payday.

The picture above was taken at a beautiful garden that had been created with flats and elevated plots, in the open space next to the Hotel de Ville in Paris. It was a display of all the wonderful things an urban garden can be. Reminded me of the Impressionists.

We returned home to much mail and immediately headed north to St. Helena Lightstation, paint buckets and our volunteer light keepers duties.

For those of you following our PC application process: Susie has some more medical stuff to get back, I have not heard if I have to do a similar follow-up. Otherwise we are waiting to hear what opportunity we will be offered.

The begining

It has been several months since the decision was made to see what the Peace Corps could do with us. We have now completed the on-line application, that was obviously created for 22-year-olds. Since I have passed the 22 year mark many years past, filling out this original application was a chore. But that was quite a few months ago and today we took our medical examination papers to the post office. If I had to guess it will months until we hear as I would guess that the medical folks at Peace Corps are concerned with getting those that want to be out this fall, completed. We have business in the fall and are willing to wait until late in the fall or next year for an assignment.

We are off to France in the morning for the month of June and then off to St. Helena Lighthouse Station in upper Lake Michigan.