It seems that I'm always using these entries to say how busy we are; and although I might be going to the well once too often, March was REALLY busy! Since Duke's semester started right after the 1st of the year, our Spring Break came during the first full week of March. We had planned to go to Beaufort and look for rental housing for July. Nan will be teaching a course at the Duke Marine Labs in Beaufort this summer. We thought Spring Break would be a perfect time to get ready for the experience. However, we received news that Nan's mom has a terminal illness, so we made arrangements to visit her in Fairfield, Iowa.
The old joke, 'ya can't there from here', applies in this case. There are no direct flights, so we flew to St. Louis and then drove to Fairfield, on the way stopping off in Hannibal, Missouri to see the town where Samuel Clemens got his start. Other than Hannibal there wasn't much else to see.
Fairfield, in south central Iowa, is the home of Maharishi University of Management, founded in 1973. Nan spent a year in Fairfield at the University and later came back as the Artistic Director of a theater company founded in the city. Her mom, brother, and one of her sisters live there. It is an interesting community. We stayed in a development called "Eco Village" where all the houses use some sort of ecologically sound construction. There is a reliance on wind power to generate electricity and the homes of Nan's mom and brother are constructed with thick straw and mud walls. A number of Nan's nephews and their families reside in Fairfield, so a large portion of our time was spent visiting and getting to know them.
We were back in Durham for less than a week, when I left for a week of golfing at Myrtle Beach, SC. Arranged by my friend Tom C. and his high school chum Mike, we played 162 holes of golf in 4 1/2 days.(Actually I only played 157. On our second day, he picked -up a single golfer from Cincinnati. During our round a cold front went through. It poured and a cold wind ripped through. He kept saying we were crazy to keep playing, and finally I took him back to the clubhouse. Frankly, I agreed with him. It wasn't fun.) Anyway, the 5 courses we played were all different and challenging.
The day after I returned from Myrtle Beach, Nan and I hopped into the car and drove to Charlotte, NC, so I could sing at the Southeast District of the Unitarian-Universalist Fellowship Choir Festival. This two day event features a Saturday night concert in which each choir participating in the festival sings a few songs and then there is a cabaret. Much to my surprise, I was asked to help out the Chapel Hill group, which was short of tenors. I'm a pretty good sight reader, but the pieces were in three different languages(when in doubt sing only vowels) On Sunday morning, the choirs all join together to present the numbers we had rehearsed the day before. It was a wonderful experience. My favorite was Sanctus and Benedictus which used the songs of humpback whales to create an imaginative choral work.
While in Charlotte, we stayed with Nan's sister and brother-in-law. They have a lovely home and were very gracious and welcoming. We went for a nice walk with them in a downtown park, where the flowers were just starting to bloom and Spring seemed finally taking hold.
