Tuesday, June 30, 2009

Hillcreek Studio

One of the delights of being a craftsperson or artisan is working with fine tools. In fact, despite my current fiber addiction, what initially drew me to weaving was the looms, rather that the yarns. The small weaving community is supported by an even smaller community of woodworkers, who keep us equipped to make our creations.

Some years ago I discovered a remarkable technique developed by handweaver Carol Leigh Brack-Kaiser, called Continuous Strand weaving. She practiced this technique on a unique loom that her son Carl Spriggs helped her to invent, the adjustable triangle loom. This technique allows the weaver to create her warp with her weft thread, thus eliminating the time-consuming process of “dressing” the loom (threading all those hundreds or thousands of threads through all those metal posts, or heddles).

In fact, it was my lovely cherry wood triangle loom that I used to create my daughter-in-law Sharon’s bridal shawl, as well as the shawls for her wedding party (this was also the shawl that niece-in-law Andrea used in her shipboard wedding in early June). And it was the Leigh/Spriggs follow-up invention, the rectangle loom, that I used to weave the many-colored wrap that I made to help comfort my mother-in-law Mary Moore in her precious but painful final weeks.

So it is that, as we are driving through Columbia, Missouri, it occurrs to me that these fine looms were invented and manufactured in Columbia. Wouldn’t it be fun to go to the source?!

On impulse, we leave the interstate and venture deep into the heart of Little Bonne Femme Creek Valley, a little bit south of civilization and nestled deep in the woods. Hillcreek Studio is aptly named, situated on the hill by the creek. It’s really an unpretentious little house that is filled to the brim with all things fiber: in the workshop, in the makeshift store, in the kitchen and in the living room of this humble abode. It‘s fun to meet Carol Leigh, and to tell her of the role that her creation has played in our family life.

And of course, I have to pick up a wee bit of yarn, to use on the latest of my continuous strand looms: the travel-size square and triangle looms. And so from there, I will continue to weave my way across country – this time, quite literally.

Saturday, June 27, 2009

The Center of the Country




Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Missouri, Kansas, Nebraska


I grew up near a lake, and not far from the Atlantic Ocean. Consequently, my geographic perspective is always shaped by early experiences on and near the water.

Riding top-down across the prairie, sun on my face and wind in my hair, is not unlike the exhilarating feeling of riding in a sailboat or other ship across the water. Ok, so the fragrance in cattle country is decidedly different from that of the sea. But the visceral feeling is the same. And when I look out at waves upon waves of grassland, as far as the eye can see, it does bring back the primal experience of looking out upon the ocean, seemingly limitless in its scope and in its profundity.

Some who have taken this road-trip cross country remark that by Kansas it gets a bit boring, a whole lot of flat nothing for miles and miles. I disagree. I find a certain kind of liberation in the vastness, the calm. The hues of America’s farmland, with its lovely varieties of green -- interspersed occasionally by the golds and browns of early-cut crops and rotated crops – are truly beautiful. There is certainly a romance in the sensation that Garry and I are the only two people in the world – this world. In that situation, 100% of the people within fifty miles of us are laughing at my jokes. Ok, just some of my jokes.

And then, there are the towns. Don’t blink, or you’ll miss them. A railroad station and a grain elevator. That’s all. Just as it was when we last drove through, 37 years ago.

But then, there are changes, too. Whole towns, interesting places with lovely homes and tourist attractions, in places where we only remember farms and grasses.

In Lebanon, Kansas, we come across a notable spot. This is the center of the 48 contiguous states, the true middle of America. We divert from our planned route to find the marker, the X that marks the spot. It’s a stone marker with an American flag stuck in the middle, and in the middle of – you guessed it – miles and miles of farmland. There is a nice little sign, a welcoming white rooster, and a tiny chapel, no bigger than an outhouse. That’s it – a pretty unpretentious presentation for the very center of this great land. Strains of “This Land is Your Land” fill my head – in the remembered voices of my ESOL students at the Bryant Center and in the voices of my beloved staff, who sang to me, spontaneously, at our last remarkable gathering. This is another memorable moment. Garry and I take pictures of one another (and the rooster) and then, as we prepare to leave this spot, another car with another tourist couple pulls up – this one coming from California. Dang, it’s getting crowded here: tourists from both coasts converging at center.


We continue our glorious trek, on through Kansas and across to Nebraska. Ogallala is our destination for the night. Nighttime comes late: at 10 p.m., the sun is just deciding to go down. Meanwhile, storm clouds are gathering on the formerly perfect blue skies.

Suddenly, there are storms in the distance. We are still top-down, but no longer sun-kissed. Now, we are tempting fate, with rain clouds all around. There is a bolt of lighting streaking across the sky. Then, a flash of light behind this cloud, a responding flash from that one, and a chiming in from a third. Again and again. It reminds us of the dualing flashes between earth and the space ship in the movie Close Encounter of the Third Kind (except, there is no accompanying music). It’s a fabulous light show over the prairie, punctuated occasionally with brilliant bolts of lightning in the spaces between the clouds. But this great celestial light show is a good 40-50 miles away from us, so we can enjoy it, continuing our journey undaunted.

We stair-step our way from Interstate 70, north and west from Kansas through Nebraska, traveling country roads and running through small towns until we’re back on the big highway, I-80, the road that will take us to our one-time home and long-time destination, Cheyenne.

But first, a night’s rest in Ogallala, where the people are friendly but the mosquitoes are fierce.

Wednesday, June 24, 2009

Fire at the Hilton


The Hilton would not necessarily be our accommodation of choice. A little too stuffy, a little too large. And too many employees vying to carry the bags that, thank you very much, we’d rather carry ourselves. But on this trip, we are trying to economize, so end up in the places that hotwire.com finds for us. Sometimes, we tell ourselves, we just gotta tough it out.

So, here we are, this Monday morning in St. Louis, next door to the famed Anheuser-Busch Stadium, and down the street from the mighty Mississippi and the impressive St. Louis Arch, Gateway to the West. At a most luxurious hour, 7 a.m. (Central Time), I am just stepping sleepily out of the shower. Pre-retirement, I had worried that I would have difficult adjusting to a slower pace of life. But because I am beginning my transition to retirement “on vacation”, in hotels and motels and on the road, the changed pace of life is inconsequential.

So on this particular Monday morning at 7 a.m., instead of dashing from my morning cup of coffee to begin my rush-hour commute, I am stepping absent-mindedly out of the shower, when I hear the blare of the morning alarm clock. "Blast it!” I say to myself, “the last customer who stayed in Hilton’s room 610 must have left the alarm clock set.” I wonder why Garry, still abed, isn’t shutting it off. Must be one of those complicated new-fangled do-everything alarm clocks that are too complex to operate without the manual.

“Bon,” I hear him saying as I open the bathroom door, “do you hear that?”

“Yes,” I reply with a bit of impatience, “Why don’t you shut it off?” He looks at me quizzically.

Only then do I realize that this is no mere obnoxious alarm clock buzz that I’m hearing. It’s a fire alarm! The Hilton is on fire!

We throw our clothes on hurriedly and dash to the stairwell. “Good thing”, I think to myself, “we’re only on the second floor: just one flight down, and we’re out of here.”

But as we approach the bottom of the flight of stairs, I see a big and disappointing number 5 on the door. Oh dear, we were on the second floor in Indianapolis. Now we’re in St. Louis. Sixth floor. Still not bad, in a hotel that touches the sky at 24 stories! Could be worse, much worse, I hear my knees whisper to each other.

But as we scurry down the five flights, we notice a smell of smoke that gets stronger and begins to sting the eyes. Downstairs in the vast hotel lobby, guests are lingering, wandering, despite the continuing painful blare of the fire alarm and the slight haze of smoke in the air.

The Starbucks adjoining the hotel lobby is still open for business. Garry and I exchange glances. “Naw,” we both say, in a rare urge to pass up a Starbucks. Instead, we head for the outdoors, where we watch for the fire engines to arrive.

Like us when we came into town last evening, the engine drivers seem a bit confused by the pattern of one-way streets around the hotel. But unlike us, they can enjoy the thrill of blaring their sirens and forging ahead, against traffic, down the one-way streets.

“Traffic” is perhaps an exaggeration in this city. At what would be the thick of rush hour in Northern Virginia, the streets are only speckled with cars here and there.

As we walk around the block, we see three large fire trucks with a passel of firefighters gathered around a garden hose that is spraying a pile of charred pink towels. “Chemical fire,” we’re told. As is often the case, the smoke was more threatening than the fire itself. It makes me think of that misguided old adage, “Where there’s smoke, there’s fire.” Maybe we need to re-orient our concerns.

Where there’s fire, there’s smoke.

Sunday, June 21, 2009

Long Time Coming

This trip was actually 36 years in the making. Garry and I started our life’s journey together with a 2,000 mile August road trip from Massachusetts to Cheyenne. This was, in fact, our honeymoon – travelling to the Air Force base where Garry was stationed at the time. Four and a half months later, we made the trek back, this time in separate cars and with a Virginia destination. We were on a three-year assignment to Fort Belvoir.

As the newness of D.C. began to fade, we dreamed of taking a westward-bound road trip once again. Many late night coffee breaks were spent at Denny’s in those days (open ‘til 2 a.m.!), using their map-placemats to map out possible travel routes, spinning our dreams for leisure time. But first, there were jobs to do, careers to build, degrees to earn. And then, as John Lennon had told us, “Life is that thing that happens while you’re making other plans.” Two a.m. coffees at Denny’s lost their allure, as duties changed, responsibilities grew, and babies were born.

Anyway, Denny’s changed the placemats that they were using.

Chapter 3, Cross-Country Road Trip: The First Leg


Our road trip begins with a dreary, rainy slog through heavy traffic, as we head out of town, bound for our big adventure. But, with a seemingly measured sense of purposefulness, slowly the sun begins to push out from the clouds as we approach the Catoctin Mountains. Serendipitously, the radio is playing road songs, including Beach Boy car songs, as we gain momentum. It’s a watercolor picture – literally – as we look through rain-spotted windows at the lovely pastels of crown vetch dotting the gently sloping Maryland landscape in abundance.

Then suddenly, we find ourselves surrounded by blue skies, with fast-moving clouds scurrying to get out of our way.

Now we’re in the part of Maryland that, like most of Virginia, bears absolutely no resemblance to the fast-paced D.C. metro area: lovely farmland, corn rising, picture postcard rural scenes. Everything looks particularly lush following the rainy early summer. Though we humans have been complaining about the endless rains in the east this year, the vegetation has certainly loved the lingering three-month-long aprilesque weather.

Entering Pennsylvania, a huge heavenly light switch splashes bright, healing sunlight. Looking down over the right side of the car, we see a fabulous bucolic scene. “Pleasant valley” Garry calls it – remembering this landscape as one of the highlights of our frequent forays to Pittsburgh when Tim was at Carnegie-Mellon. “That’s it!” Garry exclaims, as he does whenever he spots a possible Once & Future home for us (Other contenders for that’sits include the majestic farmhouse on a bluff overlooking the Susquehanna River that we always admire on our trips north to New England; and – of course – the perfect house for us, on the banks of the Potomac in Alexandria, aka Mount Vernon).

Our first destination on this leg of the journey is Breezewood, PA, where past trips through PA always led us to water our horses (er, I mean, gas up the car).

Then, back in the car. By the time we get to the vicinity of Donegal in western Pennsylvania, our car top is down and we are basking in the glorious sunlight. We’re driving on I-70 past towns with picturesque names like Pleasant Hill and Scenery Hill and Lover (!). Then, as the sun moves lower on the horizon, we wheel past Wheeling, West Virginia. We wonder aloud why that small finger of territory between Pennsylvania and Ohio was carved out to be part of West Virginia, rather than belonging to either of its neighbor states.

Our ambitions for the first day’s drive seem perhaps a bit too high, as the long road brings us past midnight when we finally arrive at our first night’s stop in Indianapolis. This was to be the high-mileage part of the trip. The rest of our trip to Cheyenne will be taken in shorter doses.

Friday, June 19, 2009

This here Pearl

"If life ain't fun, take this here pearl,
It's never too late to be a cowgirl". -L.D. Burke III

The above quote, hanging on the wall of the ladies' room at Silverado Restaurant ( a few blocks down the street from Plum Center), proved to be just the inspiration I needed during some of my darkest moments this spring.

Yee-haw! I'll write again from the trail...

p.s. For those who don't know this... the "P" in my name is for Pearl...

Tuesday, June 16, 2009

Romance on the Seas



It was something of a storybook wedding. The Schooner Hindu was a vessel with history, having been deployed in the spice trade in the 1920s. It could only hold about three dozen people on its well-kept though well-traveled deck. Moored* in Provincetown, off the tip of Cape Cod, Massachusetts, the Hindu is now employed to take tourists and other travelers for a spin around the bay. But on the afternoon of June 6, the Hindu took an enthusiastic and slightly misty-eyed throng on a spin into a new chapter of family history, as the dashing Jamie Moore (my nephew) and his gorgeous bride Andrea Adam exchanged vows in a ceremony that was intensely personal, heartwarming, funny, and engaging.

Jamie is a Francophile, having studied French for many years, taught French to American schoolchildren, taught English to French students, and in the process of developing a taste for fine French wines became a wine expert and licensed sommelier. With his language and cultural fluency, Jamie now works as an executive assistant to Professor Elie Wiesel, the Nobel Peace Laureate and Holocaust survivor. Ironically, Andrea is a native of East Germany. She works as the Executive Director of the German University Alliance and is also, by the way, a marathon runner of some distinction, who has been running in marathons throughout the world. Jamie was the person who worked with the White House to coordinate Dr. Wiesel’s journey with President Obama to Buchenwald a couple of weeks ago (just before the wedding!). We first met Andrea at my son Tim’s wedding in San Francisco two years ago. Within, oh, three to five minutes, Andrea had made her way into all our hearts and fit right in with our family.

The wedding was a civil ceremony, officiated by Meg, a high school teacher of Jamie’s who went on to become his mentor and then a close friend. She peppered the serious ceremony with words of wisdom, observations, and amusing anecdotes about Jamie and Andrea.

For her “something borrowed”, Andrea borrowed the wedding shawl that I had woven for my daughter-in-law, Sharon. Sharon and Tim had incorporated the shawl into their wedding ceremony on the beach at Crissy Field, San Francisco, two years ago. It was a generous act for Sharon to pack up the shawl and ship it to Andrea ~ and it certainly made me feel wonderful!

Following this most romantic wedding ceremony, Jamie & Andrea and members of the wedding party walked down the main street of the village to head back to the inn where they were staying. The throngs of tourists in the street parted like the Red Sea in front of Moses, and roundly applauded the beautiful bridal couple – like a scene out of a corny (but nonetheless touching) movie.

This was followed, under perfect summer skies, by a wedding feast in a vineyard in nearby Truro, Maine. Who ever knew that Cape Cod has vineyards??! Last time we were on the Cape, all they were growing was cranberries! The feast was lovely, the fine wine free-flowing, and the assemblage friendly and fascinating. Wedding guests had flown in from all over the world for this happy occasion.

The following afternoon, we all boarded another ship, the Dolphin III, to go on a whale watch. I think they must have paid the whales off to attend this event. Normally on whale watches – and I’ve been on a few – one is delighted and excited at a sighting or two or three, usually at some distance. But this was the mother of all whale watches! Jamie counted 60+ humpback sightings – some nearly within petting distance! They came so close, and stayed so long, that the captain had to cut off his engines. We were in fact over an hour late getting back to shore! The whales had us surrounded. “It’s an ambush!” cried the captain. A mom and her calf on the starboard side of the ship swam under the boat and came up on the port side. All of the watchers ran to the other side of the boat. So the rascally pair dove under the boat again and came up on the starboard side. And of course all the watchers ran back to the other side of the ship. Over and over and over again. What fun we all were having! (Good exercise, too!) Meanwhile, a trio of performers were surfacing and diving, flipping their tails, rolling over, and generally showing off their considerable repertoire of tricks.

That evening on the beach, by the dim light of a cloud-shrouded moon, we lit a big bonfire and exchanged lovely conversation and fun stories. Andrea gave a lesson in German on making that American favorite, s’mores – no English translation necessary!

What a lovely way for Jamie & Andrea to begin their married life together! And what a lovely and inspiring treat for us to be a part of it.


*No pun intended.
Well yeah, maybe it was. Of course a boatful of Moores would be moored in its harbor!

Wednesday, June 10, 2009

Duck Drama

Webster, MA -- June 2, 2009

This entry is for my sons, who for some reason have turned out to be duck fanciers. Must have been all those stops in lovely Mystic, Connecticut, as we made our 400 mile treks from Massachusetts to our home in Virginia through their growing years. Mystic is a charming seaside village with beautiful scenery, a lovely little village of interesting shops and galleries, and the historical sailing ship, the Charles W. Morgan.

But for Tim, Brad, & Greg, Mystic was famous not for these features, but for the duck pond full of animated ducklings that never failed to perform, please, and delight, as chortling tourists tossed crackers and bread and popcorn in terrible abundance into the duck pool.

Today's drama, however, took place not at a tourist haven but at quiet Memorial Beach, along the banks of Lake Chargoggagoggmanchauggagoggchaubunagungamaugg. This lake has the distinction of carrying the longest name for a geographical feature in the United States. Formerly home to the Nipmuck Indians, the lake -- according to local lore -- was named to mean You fish on your side, I fish on my side, and nobody fish in the middle (Note: the veracity of this translation has been hotly contested).

No longer home to the natives who were here first, the lake now is no longer even home to the majority of local residents, except for the tiny strip of public beach, designated as a "memorial" to World War II veterans. The rest of the lakefront has been divided up into small expensive parcels, available only to the very wealthy, while the mostly blue-collar townspeople are forced to squeeze into the small bit of beach that still belongs to the town.

But on this mild morning in early June, we have the beach practically to ourselves. We take a side-trip through the woods, along a spit that separates the lake proper from a swampy inlet, and cross a foot bridge that runs over that inlet.

There, we stand witness to an emerging drama. The water is covered with hundreds of little round lily pads popping with long-necked yellow lily blossoms. With delight, we inhale the spicy fresh fragrance of the flora and fauna; we tune in to the humorous sound of the bullfrogs; and we delight in the sight of a graceful mama duck gliding seemingly effortlessly through the calm waters. She's a lovely sight, her dignified but drab brown and white feathers accessorized by feathers of white and royal blue (same shade of blue as my car) which she keeps deftly hidden while blending in with the drab colors atop the lake. Also nearly hidden from sight by their clever camouflage are three little brown mounds which turn out to be her downy ducklings. They paddle and glide behind her, now aligned in a perfect little parade behind mama, then separating to do their duty to find tiny morsels of lunch on and among the lilies.

Suddenly, mama duck's calm demeanor is upset. The beautiful mallard of teal iridescence, which we had just been admiring on the footbridge, has dived into the water and is suddenly an intruder on this scene of domestic duck tranquility. Suddenly, he is chasing mama duck, who takes quick and rather frantic flight, leaving her three little ones to continue to find their lunch.

Lurking in the dark waters nearby is another female duck, who comes close to the trio of babies but looks the other way, as if disinterested in them as well as the whole drama before her.

Time and again, mama duck rejoins her little charges, only to be chased repeatedly by the obnoxious mallard. Two of the wee ones mind their own business, looking for snacks but not looking for trouble. A precocious third, however, seems to understand that something is amiss, and each time the mallard meanie starts in mama's direction, the Cautious Quacker flaps his tiny webbed feet as fast as he can, to go join or warn his mom.

Like so many things, we never did learn the intentions of the aggressor, the thoughts of the oppressed, or the outcome of this drama. When we returned to the scene two days later, there was a whole new set of ducks and geese, with different issues of their own.

Chapter 2, Massachusetts, The Little Road Trip

On May 31, we journeyed up to Massachusetts to visit with Garry's family and to attend the wedding our our nephew Jamie and his bride, Andrea. Garry's hometown, Webster, Massachusetts, is, like so much of the country, seeing tough times. Webster was born during the great Industrial Revolution, and was the location where Samuel Slater established his legendary textile factory. In its heyday, Webster was on its way to becoming a small city, based on its vibrant textile industry. But as factories moved from North to South in the middle of the last century, the lifeblood of Webster flowed away.

When I started going to Webster in the late 1960s/early 1970s, the town and its environs still hummed with a number of major textile factories. In 1984, I began to take up handweaving as an avocation, and with that new interest came a new fascination with the factories in Webster and the neighboring town of Uxbridge. But in the subsequent three decades, those factories too went elsewhere, and with them the wonderful outlet stores that helped me to build my fiber stash -- and, more importantly, the factory jobs that kept so many of the townspeople gainfully employed.

During this visit in late May/early June 2009, I read with dismay the front-page headlines that cried out the sad news that the last of the giant factories, Cranston Print Works, was closing that week. Downtown Webster was a sad place, as so many American main streets are today, with boarded up buildings and vacant storefronts. Cranston's work is being shipped to China. Bad for Webster, bad for America. 

Chapter 1, The End of a Career

Not to be unoriginal, but it was, indeed, the best of times -- and indeed the worst of times. My dedicated team of educators and support staff were working with me to create and nurture one of the largest and finest adult and community education programs in the nation. We worked hard, with a peace corps mentality and an urgency to make the American dream accessible to all who wanted it, to make a rich life of the mind approachable to all who had the energy to pursue it.

And then, with reasoning that defied logic, my organization and my position were gone, with the stroke of a pen. It was not a money thing. It was a political thing. At a time when our country and our community needed adult education more than ever, the decision was made to discontinue this organization that had stood so proudly, accomplished so much, and built such a strong sense of community.

Here are the remarks that I delivered at the retirement celebration which my wonderful staff held for me on May 29, 2009...

I stand, truly, on the shoulders of giants. If you were inclined to the lowest form of humor -- punnery -- you might say that I took a Plum* program and tried to make it Moore. I stepped into a program that was already great, built by the likes of Jane Cruz, Elaine Baush, and Ellen Carlos, scores of program specialists, hundreds of staff members, thousands of teachers and volunteers, and hundreds of thousands of learners.

And I have been in this great work for fully half of my life. And more than half of ACE's life, too.

And it is great work.

Adult education is not a profession for the faint of heart. It is a profession for the good of heart. In the United States, adult ed continues to be marginalized, underfunded and undervalued, poorly understood and poorly promoted.

There are always wolves scratching at our doors, threatening loss of funding loss of facilities space, loss of respect.

Partly this is because of our mission and the people whom we serve. We serve the displaced, the misplaced, the misguided, and the misunderstood; those who are down in the dumps or down on their luck; the dropouts, stopouts, locked up, messed up, dragged down, beaten down; and... the frivolous learners who only want to expand their minds, develop their skills, broaden their perspective, enrich their lives, improve their businesses, and build their communities.

But ACE** is about more than adult learners. We teach children of all ages, before and after school, on weekends and throughout the summer. We teach in businesses, community agencies, county offices. We teach school bus drivers and custodians and office workers and teachers. We promote lifelong learning in its purest sense. And we live what we promote.

And that's very important to us ACErs, to live what we promote, to be lifelong learners ourselves, to value ourselves and one another as we want our customers to value themselves.

And we are all teachers. Whether at the head of a classroom or the front of a registration line, a voice on the phone or a smiling face in the corridor, ACE staff and building coordinators and volunteers, as well as our instructors, teach and inform and guide our learners and customers.

This work has been a gift, given to us by our learners, our customers, our public. It's been a great run -- not without its bumps and wrinkles, frustrations, and challenges. But what an amazing group I have been running with. For so many years, we have laughed together, cried together, dreamed together, faced seemingly insurmountable challenges together -- and conquered those challenges.

But the time has come for me to take a different path. My traveling companion*** and I will be heading on a road trip, a sentimental journey of sorts, heading west top-down in my royal blue convertible. We'll be stopping for a few days in Cheyenne, Wyoming, where I will re-discover my inner cowgirl -- a few days in Boulder, Colorado, where I will rediscover my inner hippie -- mosey across the great Continental Divide -- and then spend some time in the San Francisco area visiting two of our sons, who are on their own grand adventures in the city by the bay. Then we'll head down the California coastal highway, meander along the southern route, and take our time getting home.

And you, dear ACErs, have much work left to do. This is a time of big changes, and change isn't easy. Despite the change in organization, the need for our services will not abate, the opportunities for coming up with creative solutions will not decrease, and the importance of your work will not be diminished. Remember that the work that you do is a gift -- a gift that you receive, and a gift that you give. Every time that you hear that hackneyed expression, "It is what it is", remember this: It is not (yet) what it could be. But you have the power to make it so.

And, those of you who cruised with me on the Good Ship Dandy earlier this month, please remember -- and tell the others -- you have got to keep the children together.
__________________________________

*Refers to Delegate Kenneth R. Plum, longtime Director of Adult & Community Education in Fairfax County. Ken built the program over a period of nearly 30 years, making an immeasurable contribution to the residents of Fairfax County, Virginia. It is in his honor that the Plum Center for Lifelong Learning was named.

**ACE stands for Adult & Community Education.

***My traveling companion is my husband of nearly 37 years, Garrett Moore. We have traveled many wonderful years and miles together.