Royal Farms debate

I have been attending two days of appeals court hearings on the proposed Royal Farms store on Mt. Carmel Road in Hereford.  This picture "kinda sorta" shows the exterior.  The Hereford Community Association asked for architectural details (a porch across the entire front) that are consistent with the Hereford area. It would be located on the Burton property which is next to the Graul's store.

It has been very interesting to hear the attorneys presenting their case and the rebuttal. Although the project had the overwhelming support of the Hereford Community Association, the Sparks-Glencoe Community Association (located 5-6 miles away from the site) decided to appeal. They have deep pockets and generally oppose all new development.

So far, only the plaintiffs have presented their case.  The first day of the hearing before the three judge panel (volunteers, I understand) dwelled on the environmental impact of the project.  Although it already has been approved by the Baltimore County government, they are arguing that the potential for environmental damage is great. Although Royal Farms is promising to build with double-lined tanks and keep the rain water on the property, they don't seem to care.  Some of the testimony was so scary that it left us shaking our heads whether any gas station should be built anywhere...and whether the Exxon should be closed immediately.

The second day of the hearing was a trip down memory lane and was based, in part, on this book "From Marble Hill to Maryland Line".  The testimony consisted of pictures taken of the historic ("old") houses in the Hereford area and a bucolic recitation of the wonders of those old houses. Significantly missing from the testimony was any mention of the modern buildings in Hereford including the Evans Funeral Home, the new veterinary hospital, the Baltimore County Public Library building, the large expansion of the Hereford High School, and the new buildings constructed on the south side of Mt. Carmel Road.  It also failed to mention the large addition to the rear of the Hereford Fire Hall (Summit Manor).  To me, the witness was trapped in some sort of time warp and refused to see what is happening now.

We heard from additional witnesses including the owner of Michael's Pizzeria who lives in Pennsylvania and thinks his business will be hurt (Royal Farms doesn't sell pizza, by the way).  Another witness produced pictures of the Exxon gas station from 4pm until 6pm that she couldn't remember who asked her to shoot the pictures and stopped by for only a few seconds.  They were supposed to show that the Exxon gas station isn't busy at that hour but that isn't surprising since they charge about 15 to 20 cents more than anybody else.

The last witness, Ken Bullen Jr., the manager of the Graul's Supermarket, was in my view the most compelling because he lives behind the Subway building on Mt. Carmel Road and had severe problems with a drain pipe that fed onto his property from Mt. Carmel Road.  It took three years, but the county government eventually ordered changes made by the Subway building owner.  He also has concerns about runoff from the Royal Farms project, but they have maintained that there project will trap all of the rain water on the project.

I'm still waiting for my opportunity to testify in support of the Royal Farms project.  It really upsets me that Exxon charges so much more than the other gas stations.

(Addendum:  the appeals judges approved construction of the Royal Farms project, but it is expected to be appealed again.)

Extreme Weather in West Virginia

Each year, we go to the Land of Canaan Resort in Canaan Valley, West Virginia for two weeks...one in August in the summer...and one week in January when the ski slopes are busy.  We were introduced to "timeshares" by my cousin Gerry Lessey Pas and her husband, Dick Pas, many years ago and we are forever grateful to them.  Canaan Valley is a four season state park that is a seven mile long transplanted piece of Canada only 4 1/2 hours away from our home. At night, the state park makes artificial snow (shown at the left) so that the skiers can enjoy the slopes each day.

Our resort consists of 2 bedroom townhouses that have frequently upgraded, two full baths, a full kitchen, hot tub, thermostatically controlled gas fireplace, beds for six people, and very nice furnishings. Although we are not skiers, we enjoy the change of scenery and spend the time reading, solving jig saw puzzles, spending time on the computer, and traveling to Elkins, WV to see movies.  Oh, yes...a lot of time watching CSI and NCIS on the television. We are just relaxing.

This year, however, saw some wild gyrations in the weather.  When we arrived, it was a balmy 57 degrees and no snow on the ground except for the ski slopes.  We passed through fog banks on the highway on our way to Canaan Valley and it was surreal. However, within a day, an arctic cold air mass moved in and we were facing "below zero" temperatures.  The snow machines (shown left) were hard at work and one day later we got hit with four to five inches of snow and high winds that never stopped. We got what we came for:  real winter.

Each year, there is "something new". This year, it was the seven dollar "spa sessions" that were offered by a woman who travels from Elkins to meet with large groups (mostly women).  It actually is a sales pitch for the products, but we didn't care.  The various lip balms (seen here), exfoliants, salves, and creams gave us a little feeling of luxury at a very modest price.

Yes, even I participated and shot pictures.  I think it was the foot cream that I liked the best.

November and December went too quickly!

I have much catching up to do on my blog!  The months of November and December went by very quickly as I finished my physical therapy for my bionic left knee, scrambled to get a lot of firewood split for my many customers (including a couple new ones), and attended a bunch of Epworth United Methodist Church events.  Oh, yes!  And we celebrated Christmas.

It is the church events that I am going to write about the most. The Christmas season at Epworth begins with the family style dinner at Friendly Farm Restaurant located in the middle of farm country. It truly is a friendly farm that started doing meals many years ago and it has become a tradition for us at Epworth.  A couple hundred folks turn out for terrific fried chicken and roast beef with all of the fixin's and celebrate with prayers, contests, and prizes. And Santa!

This year, we were blessed with the addition of a new choir director, Elaine Gradowski.  Even though she arrived quite late in the year, she was able to expand the choir and perform a lovely Cantata.  The children's choir sang also. It was truly a highlight of the Christmas season and it dovetailed nicely with the theme selected by our clergy to tell the background stories behind traditional hymns.  It turns out that quite a few of our favorite hymns have very meaningful back stories.

The children performed a family service at 5 p.m. and they told the Christmas story through a narrator, songs, and drama.

And at 11 p.m., we had our traditional candlelight service with communion and we added pre-candlelight service music for 30 minutes featuring several members of our congregation.  We have some very talented musicians in our midst and this was an opportunity to hear them.  The sermon focused on the story behind "Silent Night" which,  if you have never heard about it, has to do with a broken organ...a poem...and the need to have special music quickly for Christmas night.  What a great story.

Finally, on Christmas Day, we went to visit my mother who is in a memory care unit at Symphony Manor in Roland Park.  The care they provide is impressive.  Mom can't remember much these days including that she had been visited by Pegg and Sue earlier in the day, but she was in good spirits and had a ready smile for us. Symphony Manor had a musician with a guitar perform for the clients and a good time was had by all.


But the real highlight of our Christmas was the opportunity to spend time with Matt and Mary Louise and Rob.  And we are hopeful that we will have the opportunity to spend time with Rob's fiance, Vera Alcorn, this summer!

An emotional church men's retreat

I just returned from a men's church retreat at the extraordinarily beautiful Summit Lake Camp in Emmitsburg, Maryland with ten other men from my church, Epworth United Methodist Church.  I'm still trying to wrap my head around everything that was said and experienced at the retreat.  This will be a report in progress.  There can be no doubt that it was a highly emotional, powerful experience for a group of men who previously knew each other casually.

First, there is the matter of the setting at Summit Lake Camp.  We stayed in a unique facility called "Marguerite" that was perfect for small groups.  We were able to have rooms together, but also have our meetings together and recreational time together.  The camp features a lake with paddleboats, ducks, and geese.  There was a large campfire pit where we made s'mores.  Also, there was a large dining hall where our group and other Christian students from five local universities were fed.  The camp has several other cabins and large meeting facilities.

Our assistant pastor, Rev. Bill Jones, had built his three-day program around an independent film called "Courageous" which follows the lives of four police officers in Albany, Georgia who meet life's challenges in various ways.  It culminates in the men taking a "Resolution" together to follow Christ and be the best husbands, fathers, and friends they possibly can be be.  We will be taking the same pledge in church on November 16 as an act of solidarity together.  Our wives and our children will be invited to join us in the ceremony.

Part of our discussion was the nature of men's friendships.  I told the story of Dr. Geoffrey Greif's book,  Buddy System, which examined male friendships. Dr. Greif is a professor in the University of Maryland School of Social Work and explains that men have "shoulder to shoulder" relationships whereas women have "face to face" relationships.  Men are good at working side by side on projects or watching sporting events side by side, but women are able to relate to each other "face to face" and are much more able to express themselves emotionally. He writes that men have must, trust, just,and rust friends. A must friend is the best friend a man absolutely must call with earthshaking news. A trust friend is liked and trusted but not necessarily held as close as a must friend. Just friends are casual acquaintances, while rust friends have a long history together and can drift in and out of each other's lives, essentially picking up where they last left off.

Rev. Jones had asked a series of men from our group to give presentations and they were all excellent.  Sometimes, they were very emotional as the men told their stories of growing up and what they had experienced.  Since returning, I also wrote on our Facebook web site about the difficulty of older men (Baby Boomers) being able to open up because of the experiences they had when they were growing up and the stoic nature of their fathers who were the products of the Depression and World War Two.

While I was deeply moved by the things I heard this weekend and will greatly value my insights into my "brothers", there is still a large part of me that is distrustful of things that are too emotional.  I have yearned for greater spiritualism.  But I find myself studying spiritualism and not fully embracing it. The lessons of "Star Trek" find myself still siding with Spock and his Vulcan reasoning and not Captain Kirk and his hot-blooded human emotions.  I still have a way to go.

My 68th Birthday

Today, October 12, is my birthday and it has been exactly one month since I wrote my last blog entry. It seems like a good time to do an update.

Tomorrow marks five weeks since I had my full knee replacement on my left knee.  The surgery went well, but the return home was difficult as I had problems with my pain medication.  Eventually, those problems got resolved and these days I am just taking Tylenol for the pain and using ice packs three times a day for 30 minutes each.  My sister Pegg lent me a recliner chair and it has been perfect for using the ice treatments. Thanks, Pegg!

I am resuming many of my traditional activities, but I don’t have the stamina that I once had.  For example, I will use the log splitter for 45 minutes and then I’m exhausted and have to come inside.  I’ve been trimming back some apple trees in our back yard and, similarly, I find I can work for 45 minutes and then I need to take a break.

The other thing that has changed is my sleep patterns.  I just can’t find a way to make the knee comfortable at night and allow myself to go to sleep.  I end up taking cat naps instead.  This morning, as an example, I was awake all night and then when it was time to go to church, I laid down on our bed for a brief nap and several hours later I awoke and realized that I had missed church entirely.

I am in my second week at the Hereford Physical Therapy Center and I have discovered several friends are there also including my neighbor’s granddaughter who is training to become a physical therapist.  They have a bunch of folks who push you to the limit, but they are very nice about it.  I go three times a week for an hour and we have seen substantial progress in the two weeks that I have been attending.

Meantime, there is the matter of the missed 50^th Catonsville High School reunion.  I really wanted to go but it took two months to get on the surgeon’s schedule and I needed the surgery.  None the less, several of my classmates did things to help me “experience” the reunion in various ways.  The biggest event was a dinner organized by my friend Paulette Geisenkotter Hammond in which she invited several other classmates who also missed the reunion.  And then there was the concluding meeting of our reunion committee which Rick Webb organized at a Hunt Valley eatery for my convenience.

These are memories that I will cherish forever.

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My left knee replacement

I normally try to illustrate my blog with pictures.  I'll skip that this time and just use words.

On Monday, September 8, 2014, I entered the University of Maryland St. Joseph's Hospital at 1:30 p.m. to have my left knee replaced.  The surgery was scheduled for 3:30 p.m. but actually occurred closer to :4:30 p.m. and was performed by Dr. Scott Tarantino.  He already was pretty special in my mind because he remembered everything I said from my first appointment until my second appointment two months later without looking at his notes.

I had injured my knee, ironically, while using the treadmill at the Maryland Athletic Club.  My knee was sadly deteriorated and the meniscus, in the middle of the knee, was in really bad shape.

Everything about my treatment at St. Joseph's Hospital went well...especially my experience in the operating room.  A long time ago, I had spent several summers as an operating room technician (scrub nurse who hands instruments to the doctor), so I knew what to expect.  I just don't remember any of it.  I went into the OR, sat the table sideways, and that's the last thing I remember before being awakened by two angels in the recovery room. It was amazing.

About 45 minutes or an hour later, I was transported to the 6th floor recovery wing and arrived at Room 608B.  That was about 8 p.m. or so.  I can't remember all of the names of the nurses and the techs who cared for me, but I remember the high level of care that I got from all of them and how many of them attended community colleges to get their degrees.  It was virtually all of them...Harford Community College, Carroll Community College, Baltimore County Community College, and so forth.  They must have been doing something right at those community college levels.

And then there was the matter of the pain. Oh, boy, was it painful but the staff did their best to keep me comfortable and I was very grateful.  One of their tricks was to run cold water over the knee to keep down the swelling and the sensitivity to pain.  They had a little pump that ran the cold water over the knee in a series of pipes in a pad. Very effective.

Two days later, after I had proven to the satisfaction of the physical therapists that I knew how to get in and out of bed, in and out of the bathroom, and various other tasks,  I was discharged on Wednesday morning at 11 a.m.  I was very happy to go.

UPDATE: the return home did not go well at first.  I was taking a narcotic for pain relief and it was making me nauseous and loopy.  I stopped doing my physical therapy. I was a mess.  Finally, my home nurse (Doug) and my physical therapist (Bob) both recognized that I needed to switch to a different pain killer and things have improved greatly.  I missed my 50th reunion, but at least I know that I am on the road to recovery.

50th Catonsville High School reunion

In just a few weeks, on September 12 through September 14, my Catonsville High School class will be having its 50th reunion. There is something really special about the 50th reunion.

Our reunion committee, chaired by Rick Webb and our class president Richards Steinboch, has had eight meetings over the last eight months to prepare for event.  The planning started when Rick discovered that Catonsville would have a home football game Friday night (against Dulaney) on September 12 and that got the ball rolling.  Where could we have a "before and after" reception, we asked?  After much serious research, we settled on Matthews 1600 on Frederick Road.  It was the first of many decisions that turned out very well.

Friday is also the day we traditionally held a little golf tournament and this year, the ladies are fielding more golfers than the men!  Thank you, Barbara Sheetz Kight, for making that happen.  The main event will be a Saturday night dinner at the Rolling Road Golf Course and Barbara is a member.  But I got a little bit ahead of myself.

One of our traditions is a tour of the high school provided by the Honor Society.  Paulette Geisenkotter Hammond organizes these tours and they are always terrific...and sometimes a little embarrassing for the high school students as we tell them that this is what they are going to look like in 50 years.  It's all in good fun and we get to see our classrooms again and the library and gymnasium.  All have been kept in good condition and its a pleasure to visit.

Saturday evening is the main event, the reunion dinner at the Rolling Road Golf Club from 6 p.m. until 11 p.m.  We will have hors d'oeuvres from 6 until 7 p.m. and then a lavish buffet with two carving stations the rest of the evening.  A professional DJ is providing quiet music during the first three hours, but after our president, Richard Steinbock, has his remarks at 9 p.m.,  we will crank up the volume for the dancing.  A professional photographer has been hired to take pictures of each individual when they arrive and then lots of pictures when the reunion really gets underway. The cost of this is $100 per classmate and $75 for their guest and that's why it has worked out so well that we have multiple events at various locations and that classmates can attend many of these events for free.

The weekend will conclude with a farewell brunch at Dmitri's International Grille, also in Catonsville.  Our president, called "Steiny", is a professional graphics artist and he has put together an awesome book for the reunion that includes high school pictures and updated information about our classmates. There is a memorial section for the nearly 60 classmates who have passed away from our class of approximately 530 students.  Too many have been lost.

My role in the reunion has been as a communicator;  setting up the e-mail and US postal mail systems to be in contact with our classmates.  There are so many classmates that I have gotten to know through the reunion activity that I didn't know before.  It's been demanding, but very rewarding.

And finally there is an ironic note to all of this.  I have needed to have my left knee replaced for a long time and incidents over the last three months have caused the surgery to become imminent.  So, I'm having the surgery on Monday, just six days before the reunion dinner.  I've been warned about the pain, but I wouldn't miss the dinner.  It just means no dancing by me.