YCGL - Wednesday, May 3, 2023 - Back and Forth, Like Life, through April

The past weeks have been busy and filled with the happy and sad of life.  Its been two weeks since I checked in last and that was longer than I wanted to go, so let's dig in to it.

Saturday, April 22 is a good starting point.  That night was the ARK Regional Services Banquet and Casino night.  ARK is an incredible organization that works with people with intellectual disabilities and acquired brain injuries.  We've had several friends who have been clients there and the services they provide are unbelievable.  They say they "have been facilitating opportunities for people to Live, Learn, Work and Play in Wyoming since 1963."  Two ARK residences were built on our block and a block north soon after we built our house in 1981 and clients walk back and forth between the houses with their supervisors all the time.  The banquet is one of their major fund raisers with live and silent auctions and (obviously) a casino night.  

Actually, it started before that.  In April, I received an email from the director of the Albany County Public Library Foundation asking if I would be willing to join their board.  The timing was incredible, because in the past month, I had three people refer to the library.  (Laramie is in Albany county, WY.)  The first was from Erik.  After he and Eliza checked out of the condo in Steamboat, Erik wrote, "I was in Steamboat library today after checkout and Remembered Mom talking me to the Laramie library.💗."  The second was a good friend who says she listens to audiobooks she checks out of the library's webpage while she does housework.  The third was a friend who says he watches classic movies that he can check out as interlibrary loans from the library.  

Given those, I met with her and I told her I would think about it.  She offered for me to meet some board members and I know several of the members.  I didn't, but, I ran into one at the ARK Banquet.  When she was a student, she was in Mechanical Engineering, so I didn't have her as a student, but worked with her (and her sister) in a number of student activities.  Amy is married to Aaron, who was one of my students and is now the county sheriff.  Aaannnyyyy way, I talked to Amy that night about the board and time commitments and so on, and eventually decided that I would apply for it, which I did last week.  

On Monday of this week, the director sent me an application to fill out.  I started working on it yesterday afternoon and got stumped by the first two questions, i.e., Describe your professional leadership strengths or areas of expertise that will enhance your value as a board member.  and What do you feel are the most important goals for the ACPL Foundation to address to provide significant financial support to the public library?  I passed over them and filled out the rest of the questionnaire and went back.  I finally spent over three hours writing those two.  I don't have any professional leadership skills, though I do have skills and I have led organizations.  And the main goal of a fund raising foundation is to fund raise.  Everything else is secondary. I have an interview next week.  We'll see what happens.

Other things to catch up on are:

Sally's 73 birthday - I very purposely did not schedule anything for April 27.  I drove up into the Snowy's around 3:00 and, because of the snowfall we have had this spring, I knew I wouldn't get very far up the Sand Creek road.  And I was right.  The North Fork Campground near where we buried some of Sally's ashes is about a mile and a half up Sand Creek from highway 130.  Two years ago, the Forest Service paved the first uphill quarter mile because it was so prone to washboarding.  Well, I got about 200 yards up the road and stopped.  Even at that point, the four-wheel drive pickup was sliding across the icy slush.  The tracks ahead were of tires far more rugged than mine.  Which is about where I expected to stop.  And it was OK.  I had a quiet time to be with her, even though she was still too far to get to.  She loved this place so much, even after the Pine Bark Beetle infestation killed a lot of the trees there.  She would go and set up a chair by the creek, the North Fork of the Little Laramie River, and read and contemplate and dose.  

I was pretty sure the highway department had started clearing the closed section of 130 above the Green Mountain picnic ground and over passed Lake Marie and Silver Lake.  They like to have the road open by Memorial Day, which the district maintenance engineer (one of my advisees years ago) said may be a push this year.  I drove up to the turn-around and it was cleared there, but they wouldn't be hitting the 10-12 foot high banks for another mile or so.  This is one of the snow plows with the vertical side cutters to plow the vertical banks of snow.

As you can see, it had started snowing by then, so I drove down to Centennial to have a burger at the Bear Bottom Bar and Grill,  a favorite stop but it was closed.  The sign said they were closed through Spring Mud Season.  Unfortunately, there wasn't anything about that on the webpage.  So the next logical stop was Mexican food at Bernies.  Bernies is an acquired taste.  It is the last family (non-chain) Mexican restaurant in town.  The building is an old grocery store and lightly decorated with Mexican trinkets and a big statue of Elvis Presley at the checkout.  Everything is slow there.  You just have to get used to it.  But the food is really good.  A lot of people say it isn't "real" Mexican, but Bernie still prepares food like his mother did.  For example, all the meat, beef, chicken, pork, is boiled first so that all the fat is removed.  Then it is grilled and spiced like normal.  It is easily the healthiest Mexican food in town.   In all, it was a day that Sally would have enjoyed, up in the mountains, a little snow, and a good meal on the way home.  

Planning on Windom Reunion:  Sally's 55th High School Reunion is scheduled for June 24th with a get-together on the 23rd.  I have a space reserved at the county fairgrounds for the 22nd to the 25th.  Why am I going to Sally's reunion without her?  When I'm not planning on going to either the Conroe or Memorial reunions?  Simple, I know more people from her class than I would at either of mine, I've been involved in planning since the 25th.  I got the ball rolling last year after having dinner with the lady who has been chairwoman for the last three and who wanted some help or someone to take it over.  I reserved the venue for September 9th which was when we had the 50th.  But, the foreign exchange student their junior year is coming to the States in the end of June, so the date was changed to accommodate her.  She is a federal judge in Brazil.  This will be her first reunion and I'm looking forward to meeting her.  I've worked at the registration desk for many of them since the 25th and I am the class photographer.  I have mounted the class pictures from all of the reunions including the 50th, where I've lined up everyone's names.  And I know a lot of people will want to honor Sally, so I want to be there in any case.  

I'm going to stop here and pick up in May.

Other than that, it's been a quiet week in Lake Wobegon.