Kim and Michael!

Huge News from the West Coast, Spacers! This edition’s caption provides a strong hint to the perceptive among us but here’s Kim to tell us all about it:

Hi Spacers,

Well, it’s official. The oldest remaining bachelorette cousin is engaged!

When your mom tells you someone is perfect for you… I did what most good daughters do and said “no way”. After several years, I finally figured out she was right. Michael and I have spent the last year commuting 2 hours every weekend and when we decided to move in together, the universe decided it was a good idea and things started falling into place. Within 3 weeks…Michael was hired in my school district (teaching preschool children with autism), we rented a house, and I was re-hired (after another lay-off).

Michael decided to make an honest woman out of me before we moved in. Exactly one year after our first hike together in Big Sur, we hiked up the same trail together. We sat down off the trail to eat lunch and were talking about when we knew this was it..he said he knew then, a year ago, that he wanted to spend the rest of his life with me. He reached into his backpack and pulled out a ring and asked me to marry him.

We are very happy together and I can’t wait for you all to meet him. We will be visiting my Dad and Sharon on the Cape from August 9-16 and would LOVE to see any Spacers.

Love,

Kim

Here’s a photographic message, shot on location in Cape Cod, from senior Spacers to the happy couple.

Next up, a message from Ed, Jr. describing the recent gathering on the Cape and plans for future travels. Here’s Ed:

There may be some overlap between my submission, and those of others who attended the Cape Cod gathering. I was able to get to Brewster to see my father and Sharon, Mary and Fred, Tom and Dana, and Bill and Leslie, a couple of weekends ago. Others were invited as well, but their prior plans got in the way… these things happen. We made it to an antique show/yard sale sort of a gathering, in a beautiful field featuring a huge, picturesque old windmill. We also found time for seafood, beer, a visit to the Cape Cod National Seashore, and a walk down to a local beach, the latter two of which, of course, are always particular highlights to those of us who don’t live near beaches. Beer, it goes without saying, is also always a highlight. Some of us were commenting on various oddities of the plants and trees of Cape Cod… if anyone would like to touch base about that, please e-mail me! I contacted a forestry professor about our questions, and she was very helpful.

At the moment, I am trying to pack for a trip to the left coast, to see various Sugrues who have homesteaded the frontier. I am looking forward to a visit to the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, to catching up with family, and to SEEING KIM’S NEW HOUSE, AND HER NEW LIFE PARTNER. (Capitals mine). Welcome aboard Michael! I am also very much looking forward to enjoying a few more days of what little time may remain to me, in my current supreme exalted lordly status as someone who is taller than both Miss Brady Kate and Miss Keeley-bell Sugrue. I am looking forward to passing along certain books that I always loved, to them, as I have also recently passed them along to Lily of the Shrewsbury Ryans, and to Natalie of the Stowe Doehlas. No hints! They still don’t know what’s coming.

Whew! I made it through a whole submission without saying anything the least bit nervous-sounding about global warming leading to tornadoes annihilating towns in Massachusetts, dust storms swallowing Phoenix, or the fact that hurricane season is just getting started… whoops-a-daisy. Stay safe everyone. Ed out.

Now for a complete change of pace, a visit to the 1950’s – via a short film. This five minute classic was filmed in about 1958 in New Haven at 11 Brownell Street and in nearby Edgewood Park. It stars Betty (about 16 years old), Ed (15), Tom and Bill (14), Mary (11) and Jim (8), our dog Flash and our parents Mary and Ed (47), plus a cameo by our friend from those days Peter Ong. It was the 50’s so there’s dress up. There’s music too so turn up your speakers.

Now back to the 21^st Century and a message from Tom on spinning, the Cape, visiting the West Wing of the White House, and related topics. You’ve got to read it.

Hello,

First a bit of dizzying news. Or, at least, news about being dizzy … and me. The last three weeks or so I have had a case of vertigo. It’s just about gone now and I don’t think I’ll miss it, although it has had a sneaky habit of leaving and then coming back so, if I do miss it, it may not be for long. The medicine I have been taking usually lessens the spinning sensation, but doesn’t make it disappear, and sometimes doesn’t seem to affect it at all. I don’t recommend acquiring vertigo, but if it sounds like something you’d enjoy – “pursuit of happiness” is something Jefferson and the boys would applaud – try spinning around and around as fast and for as long as you can, then sit down quickly and try to read a book or walk down the cellar stairs. Or just have a phone conversation. No fair having somebody dial the number. Try that for three weeks and see how the pursuit goes. As I say, I’m just about over it, I think, but good luck to you.

A few weeks ago, Dana and I had a nice weekend at Ed and Sharon’s place with Bill, Leslie, Mary, Fred and Ed. Yes, that Ed. I spent part of the time spinning, but it was fun getting together. Two weekends ago Dana, her cousin Maryann and I went to Montreal. I spent a good deal of the time flat on the floor, but it was a nice floor and I did go out a couple of times. We came home to a visit by Hilary and Matt. On a good day (balance wise) Matt, Hil and I went to investigate a path I had read about which follows the upper Hammonasset River. I wanted to see if it would be a good place to take Lily Rose, Elizabeth and Drew. It is! Lots of little pools to get wet in. In fact you could pretty much walk the river instead of the trail.

This past weekend Dana and I made a lightening strike trip to D. C. to have a tour of the West Wing of the White House conducted by my old friend Jay Resnick. Jay works at the White House and is able to conduct small, private, group tours. Bill, Mandy and Jay’s daughter Anna and her husband Abe joined us. The Oval Office looked smaller than I had pictured it. The halls were surprisingly narrow and, as Bill commented, the place had the smell of an old house turned into a museum or antique shop. Teddy Roosevelt still casts a large shadow on the place. It seems his pictures are everywhere and his Congressional Medal of Honor and Nobel Peace Prize (an odd combination of honors for one man to achieve) are on display in, you guessed it, the Roosevelt Room. Our tour included the Eisenhower Executive Office Building (adjacent to the White House), which almost stole the show. Beautiful on the outside, it is simply dazzling on the inside. Thanks, Jay.

Since this submission is being submitted several days late, I’m feeling a little submissive in the imagined glow of the editor’s ire, so I think I better stop here and submit. So, …

Love, Tom

Here’s Mandy and your editor at the entrance to the West Wing. (No photos allowed inside.)

Tom, Jay, and Bill

The entire group (minus Jay, the photographer) in the old War Dept in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building. It was intended to dazzle visitors and it did.

Now we hear from Rosemary with update from Baltimore:

Hi family and friends,

Summer is so far rather uneventful here in Baltimore and that is a good thing especially in Baltimore.

Chirantan and I were recently in CT for a week-end and made it to beautiful Woodbury just 45 minutes from New Haven for the day, but did not have the time to visit the Cape Cod contingent of the family although we would have really enjoyed doing so.

Chirantan heard while in CT that he had a trip to Mali in West Africa ahead of him. Airport design issues – I have heard from him several times and it seems like clients are pleased he is there, and work may well move forward. He said it reminds him of India minus all the people. He will be home this Sunday evening July 10.

I went to Wellesley, MA to help Eva Claire with some furniture selections for her apartment in an old home. The area is so lovely and we accomplished much in two very full days. Wellesley is SO charming that they don’t have public trash pick-up so she takes her trash to the town dump which has very limited hours. She also has to separate her paper into 6 categories! Imagine getting people in Baltimore to do that!

It is pool time here and between our neighborhood pool and Lee and Sonia’s neighborhood pool, Akira and Sloane will stay cool in their many very cute swimsuits. It was hard to be away from them for even a week.

Chirantan and I plan to be in CT much of August and Lee and Sonia plan to visit us there with the girls August 17-21 when Sloane will turn two. We will keep them busy and they will do the same to us! Can’t wait.

Stay cool all and be well-

Love,

Rosemary

Here are a couple pictures sent in by Rosemary:

Akira and the Hydrangea

Sonia and Sloane

Well, since we’re on the subject of Baltimore, why not stay there – sort of – with a message from Matt. Here goes:

Hello Spacers,

It’s been some time since I last submitted, and the time just feels right to send something in.

Since May, I’ve been spending some time in Baltimore visiting with Hil who’s down from Montreal for her internship with the Johns Hopkins Physical Medicine and Neuro-rehabilitation Center.

Having Hil only one hour away has been great, instead of having to venture the normal 12 hours north (usually traveling to visit feels like embarking on a smaller version of the Lewis and Clark expedition). As an added benefit, I get to see Emily just about every weekend and it’s been fun catching up and just hanging out with her. Except when she goes out of town for the weekend to visit people who are not family, an action that frankly I don’t understand, and drops off her lovely, yet apparently incontinent, pit-bull named “Manly”. But I digress.

It’s always touching to see how visitors from America’s top hat (i.e. Canada) really blossom when they are able to throw off the shackles of the Queen in England and be experience a truly free society like ours. Of course, sometimes they find the feeling of true freedom so heady that they play fun little practical jokes, such as locking Emily and I on the back patio of a Baltimore apartment, at night, and alone with the cockroaches and two dwindling bottles of Raid.

Luckily, some quick thinking led Emily to climb on a patio chair and me to erratically dance in a circle, thus saving ourselves until a kind soul took pity on two poor wretches and unlocked the door. Thankfully no one was hurt; although, US-Canadian mistrust did run a little high for the next few hours.

International incidents aside, it really has been fun to see Baltimore with Hil. It’s a fantastic city for food and hole-in-the-wall restaurants. Even taking care of Manly was good fun, since it led directly to a situation where I engaged in a five minute conversation about pit-bulls with a large bearded man whose sternum the top of my head just about reached.

Anyway, that’s all for now.

Love,

Matt

An action shot of Matt and Emily.

Now, to almost close out this edition, here are a couple of photos of Massachusetts athletes just after the Foxboro Against Diabetes 5km road race. No definitive word on their times, but SiS Sports Staff analyzed the photos they way they do and estimated that the groups depicted here crossed the finish line at, or very near the front of the pack.