lost and found

Occasionally, when looking through the books that come into the library from our various donors, I find stuff that people have left in books, probably as bookmarks. I have found a couple of dollar bills, tissues, etc., but this is by far the best thing that I've found yet.

defeating small oil

Over the past few months Henderson Settlement has been in talks with a local oil company about the possibility of drilling oil on part of the 1600 acres here at the settlement. They were prepared to give a donation of $10,000 up front and a percentage (12.5) of profits, which would go to GBGM as they are the land owners and could choose to give us all or some or none. They would essentially build a road to the site of drilling and have tanks on site that a tractor trailer would come to daily...weekly depending on how much of a gusher it was.

Mike Tupper who is on the board took it upon himself to investigate the location itself, where an access road would have to go and spoke to other gas and oil companies about their operations and how this work progressed. He and I spoke many times about the benefits and drawbacks of this. As a self admitted tree hugger I was worried about contamination and what happens after the oil is gone or not worth drilling anymore. There were also questions of how much oil this would produce and its a gamble even according to the oil man.

In the end the board voted to not accept their offer after not much debate and a good argument put forward by Mike. So here is to defeating small oil and not taking 10 grand that we could really use at the expense of our land and community.

photos from Knoxville

Hi friends!

Eric and I went to Knoxville this past Saturday. I had to get my allergy shot, and Eric wanted to see a baseball game, so we wandered around downtown in the meantime. You can see our photos here--they're in the Knoxville album.

great finds

We haven't done this in a little while but here is the latest installment of great finds at the thrift store.

I found a vintage camera bag for Sarah, and her new camera even fits in it.

I found two shirts like this, western shirts with flowers and pearl buttons, Sarah likes them, so do I.

I found this jacket for the River Oaks Soccer Club, on the back it has embroidered the name Ambrosio, which makes me look like a great Italian soccer player.

camping in the wilderness

Last weekend Mike and I decided it would be a good night to hike into the mountains here at the Settlement and spend the night. We packed our tent and food for dinner and enough stuff to last us a week but we were going for less than 24 hours. With our packs loaded down we went out here. (The blue is our campsite, red is our apartment). We got there in time to see the sunset and then made some pizza sandwiches but Mike had forgotten the sauce so they were really like grilled cheese, but they were good anyway. It was nice to be so far away from everything and just relax out in the woods.

what's the plan?

We have talked to many of you about this, but for those who haven't been in on the discussions, here's what we've been thinking about and talking about:

We committed to spending a year at Henderson Settlement, and that year will be completed at the end of September. Although they'd like us to stay indefinitely (isn't that nice of them?), we're feeling like it's time to move on and time to be closer to what feels like our true home. Plus, our student loans are calling our names, and although they might be able to be pushed back, they won't go away on their own.

We've started applying for jobs in the Binghamton area, but we've not really heard anything yet. We've decided that we'll stay here 'til one of us finds something, so it's looking right now as if we'll be here past the end of September. Eric is determined to be back up north by Christmas, though, job or no job.

And the grand plan? Well, the long-term plan involves us both getting jobs, using one salary to live on and one to pay off the loans, and being pretty much free of debt in about five years (or less, depending on how things go). Then we hope to be able to back into full-time volunteer/mission work. The details of that are still in the very fuzzy stages, but we will be exploring some programs through the United Methodist Church and probably some others, as well.

So pray for us as we start this new leg of the journey. And let us know if you have any job leads!

oh, and....

I've updated our picture page again...this is current as of today!

sunny day

We've had a string of bright sunshiny days, including a few days with high temperatures only reaching the low- to mid-eighties.

This is our kind of weather.

Eric was lifeguarding last Saturday, and I went to hang out with him for a while, and I took my camera. Mike was there, hanging out with a couple of the local kids, and he mentioned that he missed seeing himself pictured on our blog...so here you go, Mike!

mural

At the beginning of the year, Jerry and Harry came around and asked if there were any projects that I'd like done in the library. Right inside the door of the library was a blue wall:

Nice but not interesting. I asked if they could put a mural on the project list, and so they did.

When I got back from being up north in May, I had a message to call a woman named Peggy in Michigan about a mural. I phoned her, and we talked for a while about possibilities. I suggested book characters, and she said, "Oh, like Tom Sawyer?" That wasn't what I had in mind, but after she said it, I knew that's what we should have: book characters that are not known by Disney cartoons, but only in the imagination of the reader.

So I made a [very rough] sketch of what I had in mind:

When she got it, she called, and we talked some more. It turned out that she'd be here with her work team during the week that we were up north in July. I was excited to see what would be on the wall. When I got to the library, I was blown away. The mural far exceeded my expectations.

As you can see, Peggy is an incredible artist. There have been several people who have stopped in to see the mural, and they've all commented on how wonderful it is. My favorite reaction, however, came from a little boy who stood and looked at it for a minute and then walked over and reached out his hand and touched the lion, as if he meant to pet it on the head. It looked so real and friendly to him.

I'm so grateful to Peggy for sharing her amazing gift with us. This mural makes the library so much more inviting and interesting! Thank you, Peggy!

camping debacle

So this weekend we went camping at Cumberland Falls.

The campsites there are close together. By "close together," I mean "on top of each other." Our neighbor's tent was about eight feet from our tent. This wasn't a problem 'til we wanted to go to bed.

But I'm getting ahead of myself.

We got to the campsite early in the afternoon and set up and were relaxing when a trailer backed up to the site on the other side of our neighbors, and three men and two junior-high-age boys got out and started unloading. We didn't pay them too much attention, as we were reading in the shade of a giant tree, but after a while, Eric looked up and commented, "They're building a city." As more men and boys had arrived, he decided to call this city "Manville." They ended up with about fourteen or so guys spread over two or three campsites in about seven tents. They had coolers full of meat and polished off a #10 can full of baked beans for dinner. It was pretty impressive.

We gained neighbors, and we went swimming, and after we returned from the night swim, I began to be ready to climb in the tent to sleep. So we did, but our neighbors didn't. This wouldn't have been a problem except that they were only a few yards from us, playing poker. Also, being August in Kentucky, it was quite warm out and rather stuffy in the tent. Neither of us could fall asleep. I freaked out for a while and then dozed off, and I woke up a little while later to Eric freaking out. So we decided to go for a drive.

We drove the twenty-five minutes into Corbin, and pretty much everything was closed except for Waffle House, and being fans of Waffle House, we decided that it was a good option. As we pulled into the parking lot, we noticed that it was pretty full for 12:30am, and we walked in to find the place packed. It was noisy and rowdy, and we pretty soon realized that the bars must've closed at midnight, and everyone went right to Waffle House. There were bikers there and sorority-type girls and cuddly couples and even a elementary-aged girl who was dragged there by what I assume were her slightly drunk parents. It was a wild experience.

By the time we got back to our campsite, our neighbors were in bed, meaning that we could do the same. But the next morning we decided that we'd skip the second night at the campground and go home after seeing the falls. We had already gone swimming, got a slight sunburn, and cooked over a campfire twice, and we were planning to go to a park ranger talk that afternoon. Our mini-vacation was complete.

The morals of the story:
1. Don't go camping in the south in the summer.
2. Do a little more research on the size and spacing of campsites before committing to a campground.

The falls were quite impressive since it's been rather rainy the past couple of weeks. Although you can't tell from this picture, the water falls sixty-eight feet. It's the largest waterfall south of Niagra Falls and east of the Rockies.