Key West 1: The People

Brigitte, the Birthday Child

Monique

John

Barbara and Michelle

Hillery

Max

Stella

Malcolm

Henry

Arsen, your reporter here

We harvested, as a family 1,143 photographs in our trip to the Florida Keys to commemorte Brigitte's 80th birthday. Such riches, while welcome, create some problems too--of selection and arrangement. I've decided to solve by producing multiple posts. This, the first, will introduce the cast--at least the major characters. In future will come posts titled Our Place, The Scenery, More People, and Our Doings. That last may have to be subdivided in turn. For now, here is a little glimpse of the actors, and some of the things we did...

For relatives a little too distant to keep up, Hillery belongs to Barbara (and, at her age, to herself!!!). Max, Stella, Henry, and Malcolm belong to Michelle. You behold three generations here although a fourth one is already present: Hillery could not bring her children, Kyle and Kobe, but they were with us in spirit. Arsen, of course, belongs to Brigitte.

For the record, the vacation extended from February 18 through March 3 of this year.

Easter 2011

Thanks to Monique, here are two pictures of our wonderful Easter get-together on the shores of Lake Wolverine. The men took the pictures for a change. The meal was ham, scalloped potatoes (Okay, gourmets, gratin dauphinois), asparagus with sauce of your choice, baguettes, lemon cake and ice cream, and all seasoned with home-made mead for the liquid refreshment.

The first picture shows Wendy, Brigitte, Arsen, and Monique. Wendy is virtual family for us as we are virtual family for her. Anna and Lexi were spending time with their father this year and made an entrance too late to be included in the photos, but they were present, pictorially I mean, despite that. See later:

The second photo features John, Monique, Wendy, and Brigitte—and I was pleased that I managed to squeeze them all into the frame.

Wendy brought a real photograph of her girls when she arrived. You may have heard of these. They’re images on specially treated paper. You hold them in your hand to view them. You can actually take them into better light—and turn them around to see if there is some annotation on the back. Amazing, the new technology!

John (the men were doing all techy stuff) managed to use an HP scanner to turn this modern novelty into an old-fashioned JPEG. Herewith then the girls, Lexi and Anna, dressed in the green of Spring:

Pot Rack

Tra-ra! A new pot rack has been mounted on the shores of Wulverine lake, a Christmas present that will be an almost daily reminder.

Funny thing about these objects. At our house, on the shores of Lake St. Claire, a venerable iron pot rack chose to detach from the wall by night and to rain its load onto the kitchen floor just a few weeks ago. Then came painting of that little kitchen-addition, and the rack is still not back up. But at Monique's house, a new one now provides convenience and delight!

November Shopping Trip

The men try on hats...

The ladies try everything, not least—well, you find the object in this pic...

The place was Loehman's on Orchard Lake Road. The challenge was to find the right sizes...

A Michigan Halloween on Wolverine Lake

A few pictures of our annual pumpkin carving get-together, a favorite event around here. This year we combined this event with birthday cake and gifts for Monique's birthday. However, as she was the photographer, a roll she likes, there aren't any pictures of the birthday portion of the evening. It was fun!

We'll start with pictures of the finished pumpkins.


In the dark....


and in the daylight.

These were carved, clockwise, starting on top, Monique, Anna, Arsen, John, Wendy, and John. Busy knife, there, John! The hearts, we think, have it!

And here are a few of the artists at work.











Hummnn... looks like we have mostly pictures of the cleaning of the pumpkins, which was fun. Let's see, any of actual pumpkin carving?

Ah, here are a couple of the artists really carving away:






And there was chili too. It really wasn't very spicy as Monique made it to be enjoyed by people who have varying levels of tolerance to spiciness. John decided to spice up his bowl a bit and then forgot to stir before eating so that first bite was... HOT.



In addition to chili and two beautiful and tasty cakes—yes TWO cakes!—there were...



COOKIES!

A very fun evening, indeed. And, we can not conclude a Halloween posting without a picture of some costumes. Here are Anna and Lexi in their trick-or-treating duds, Anna the Avatar and Lexi the butterfly fairy.



All for now.
Cheers!

Three in Opus Two

Having introduced a certain famous canine a couple of posts back, I thought I'd add this famous family picture showing Winston engaged, as always, in worshipping his Three Muses.

Michelle, Brigitte, Monique.

The picture was taken in Minnesota Anno Long Ago at the office park where I worked and where we, as a family, often went on walks in all seasons. The place was called Opus Two by its developer, a man with some wit. I got to know him and learned his reasoning for the name of the place. Opus One, according to that gentleman, was what God created. Only Opus Two belong to his own humble self, his first ever venture. It was a great park, as you can see, 90 percent wild, 10 percent occupied by very nice office structures.

The picture was taken again, call that opus two, by yours truly yesterday—to render it from paper to JPG. One finds the strangest things when giving the dying garage its most thorough going-over in this century.

Wolverine Lake Cruise

Monique and John

A big storm the day before upended a good-size tree...

Anne Jutte, Wendy's mother, and Brigitte.

Memorial Day Memories

Herewith some pictures from Monique showing the Memorial Day atmosphere and views we all enjoyed at Wolvering Lake, where Monique and John live every day as if it was vacation day. Commentaries by Monique....

Snow in May. Well, you can’t really see it very clearly but if you look closely, you’ll see that the air is full of white, fluffy cotton seeds. Taken May 26 or 27, 2010. The rest of the pictures in this post come from May 29th. Clicking on an image enlarges it a little.

Monique with her new toy, a borrowed pressure washer. Look closely now, one chair has been cleaned and the other, not yet…

John and Lexi testing the newly hung hammock. It was a weekend of getting things ready for summer, and it was a pleasure to be able to do so in such summery weather. Lexi belong next door (there it is, up and left) and to Wendy, whose picture follows.

After a lot of yard work, nothing like a little float… Wendy and Anna floating and Lady about to jump into the lake, again.

Here's one of the back channels of Wolverine Lake. If you look closely you’ll see a duck with her little babies right behind crossing the canal behind me. They were staying in the shade (see them hiding, slightly left of center) so that a better photo was hard to get.

Water lilies and cattails on the canals of Wolverine Lake.

View of the lake from behind a wonderful old droopy tree. I was going to call it a weeping willow but I now see that the leaves aren’t those of a willow… It’s right across the lake from us on that point, past the island.

— Monique

Magee Family Display

We are connected to the Magees through Monique. A grand family reunion last summer in August provides us with a way to introduce this extended family with a group shot, but, as sometimes happens, this photo by no means equals a census of Magees. Even our rather limited survey of people we know tells us that lots of individuals are missing. But the Magee branch of fictional Ghulf Genes will serve us to introuce other such arrays of humanity, the drops, you might say, of society. First we show the picture of those assembled. The people arranged themselves, fortunately for our purposes, in such a way that we are able to capture, in an enlarged rectangle, those best known to us of those who are here present. That picture follows, with commentaries on the names beneath.

John is the person whom, in this context, we would call our John. He is part of our innermost circle since his marriage to Monique, who is our flesh and blood. Dick Nason is John's stepfather and stands immediately behind John's mother, Sheila. To Dick's left and our right is Susan Riordan, John's sister. And last, his face partially obscured (like Dick's), is Jim Magee, father of Susan and John. Not shown is Michael, Susan's and John's brother--nor the three Nason children by Dick's previous marriage, Katrina and Eric ("the twins") and Bobby. As we noted, not everyone is present--or our aging eyes can't quite see them all in this large assembly.

I would here draw special attention to Susan. She is, you might say, The Mother of Blogs. Her initial ventures into blogging (Gettysburg Family, accessible from this site), inspired John's Patioboat and then, in sequence Ghulf Genes and others, not least Michelle's Pontoon Pirates, a blog that Monique started as a summer's lark and which has sprouted like the legendary beanstalk into the French sensation. As in all family matters, it's difficult to sort out the lineages, genetic or other. But Susan is easy to identify as the generatrix of our blogging.

The setting? The Adirondacks.

Archive Digging

This photo goes back to April 28th and shows three employees of ECDI, one retired, resting from mysterious labors at an undisclosed location. Brigitte, Monique, and Joyce.

In the Wake of Mother's Day

Here is a picture of the lilac bush that features in the picture that follows--where, still unplanted, it served today as a recreational space for a triplet of Monarch butterflies. Monique and John took Brigitte to Wiegand's Nursery and Garden Center on M-Day, and the present was the lilac bush, our very own.

And, oh, by the way. We made this blog to serve as a place for pictures that should be accessible to family far and wide. We won't announce its existence, except to the family, but it is a public space. Postings here will be on a catch-as-catch can basis. There are too many photos on Brigitte's and my hard drives, and accessibility to them is difficult. Therefore a photoalbum in the modern style is, finally, indicated... Herewith, then, the Monarch:

The picture of which the above is an edited enlargement follows:

Mechanical reality intrudes: electric lines, phone, and cable. The poor lilac can barely hold its own against so much brick. But if the weather favors us, you'll soon see it actually planted.