the end of summer?

It was a windy, rainy, cold, sometimes half-warm day here in Hof. The temperature was around 53 degrees at its warmest and I saw people wearing jackets as in Autumn weather. The front page of the local paperhad an article that read like this . The word for Brr in German is the same as brr in English. It means the same thing. Remember that it is computer translated German and the last sentence reads that people in the alps area had to have chains for their cars in order to negotiate the roads. The people told me that after the hot July was over the entire August has been cold and unseasonable. I took a quick picture of my garden today as I brought an umbrella to make shade that we really needed in July, in order to sit outside in the sweltering heat and sun. Not today however. The tomatoes are mostly still green including those in the greenhouse but the plums and blackberries are in full array needing only a few days of further ripening before picking. Maya my garden partner has been working the entire summer while I have been away in the States and had two bags full of preserves in jars for me. They consisted of green tomatoes, blackberries, gooseberries, red currants, zucchini, and cucumbers. She picked the first plums including some pretty golden plums that are in a tree near our garden belonging to no one and some fresh cukes that are so tender you don`t need to peel them for salads. We have a brown/green salad growing in the garden since early spring which is starting to shoot but what a great source of salad well into the summer. I recommended that we always plant this type as it doesn`t bolt..

All this seems important but it pales to yesterday`s call from my son Nate that his wife Kellie had delivered a beautiful baby girl named lauren Eva and here is her picture

Here is also a picture of mom and dad with their new baby carriage about a week before the birth.

getting to the end of vacation

It is that time of the summer when I am getting ready to go back to Germany after a long pause here in the States. I traveled over 4000 miles from New Jersey to almost upstate Minnesota.
It is always interesting to come from Germany to see what is happening here and my reactions to what I see and feel. I get a different perspective each time I come here and it is mostly positive.

In Germany we can drive as fast as we want on certain stretches of the Autobahn. We are also able when necessary to drive to some point therefore twice as fast. Here on the Interstate highways there is a steady monotony of speed and it is difficult to cover 60 miles in less than an hour, mostly only 50 miles in an hour. The good part is that I noticed when traveling on the Garden State Parkway in New Jersey for example is that thousands of cars are proceeding orderly on 4 to 6 lanes at any given time and there is a surprising lack of accidents. I don´t think I saw more than 2 or 3 fenderbenders in the entire 2 week trip. The truck drivers are more dangerously aggressive here on certain stretches of the interstates, but all in all the roads are a safer way to travel than in Europe. The negative side is the danger of wandering into a small town off the thruways and encountering revenue hungry local speed enforcement police. I mentioned to my travel companion who is from Germany that they are like bandits lurking behind every tree waiting for unsuspecting out of state motorists. This is not the case in Germany where "Blitz" cameras take care of speeders notifying them in the mail after the fact. The police concentrate more on a variety of offenses including east block country thieves trying to shlepp off German cars or trucks with contraband etc. The German police are a national para-military organization much like our state police and not revenue gatherers for the small backwater towns.

update in August

It has been a long time since my last letter but here it goes. I arrived in the States at the end of July and then right down to San Antonio Texas for a Vietnam Vet reunion with my Company brothers that I served with in 'Nam. We stayed at the Menger Hotel and ate good texas Steaks. I will be returning to Texas in October to sing a Mozart opera in Houston
I have visited the family in Columbus and Chillicothe, Ohio and then on to Ken andLillian Rubin in Burlington, Iowa . We took some side trips with Ken and Lillian to Navou Ilinois and Amana Iowa.
At present we are at Brainerd, Minnesota visiting Ross and Dixie Boring and their 2 "Children", the two dogs, Rowdy and the Captain....