Highlights

Fran and I spent Villanova fall break (Monday 10/10/ – Sunday 10/16) hiking more than 100 miles (camping at night) with the Right2Know marchers. Marchers arrived at Lafayette Park (opposite the White House) on Sunday and heard speakers such as Vandana Shiva explain how large corporations such as Monsanto are genetically modifying the foods that we eat but refusing to let us know which of our foods contain these GMOs (genetically modified organisms).

Summer vacation in New England had three objectives this year. First, we visited with my Mom and family at my sister’s beach house in Niantic, CN and had a wonderful time there. My three children were there also. After that we attended a treatment-free bee conference in Leominster, MA for four days while tenting nearby. “Treatment-free” has a specific meaning – these are bee keepers who do not use chemicals or antibiotics in their hives, do not feed bees junk to make lots of junk honey, and make a point of using “natural” (not muscled-up modern oversized) bees.

A pound of red wigglers (Eisenia fetida) arrived at our front door today, courtesy of USPS, and they are now settling into their new home – a plastic compost bin Fran assembled at a vermicomposting workshop she recently attended at Scott Arboretum.

We spent most of the first week of August (six days, five nights, to be exact) on a backpacking trip through the Green Mountains of Vermont. We officially began our hike at the Lye Brook Wilderness Area and later joined up with Vermont’s famous Long Trail and the Appalachian Trail.

In 1960 Paul graduated from Mount Hermon School, a boy’s boarding school in western Massachusetts that is situated on old farm land near the Connecticut River. In June 2010 Fran and I returned for my 50th reunion. We saw the sights and people that influenced me during those formative years.

Family members gathered in Connecticut to celebrate my Mom’s 100th birthday on April 16, 2010. We kept her busy, with three parties in all. Events were a great success, and we all had fun.

As soon as we got the news that Villanova would be closed the next day in anticipation of a blizzard, we were on our way out the door with our backpacks on.  We hiked from our house into some nearby woods to our destination squat that is inaccessible to all but the stalwart or/and foolhardy We arrived at our site after a hike through untrodden snow and drifts and streams, just in time to set up our t