Myles Standish … 1584 to 1656

In my last blog entry I mentioned visiting my brother-in-law in Duxbury, Massachusetts. While there he took me for a ride around the town and we stopped at the homesite of Myles Standish, the English military officer that the Pilgrims of Plymouth Colony hired as an advisor in 1620. Obviously they were pleased with his actions because in 1632 the people of Plymouth settled a nearby area and they named it Duxbury in honor of his English estate Duxbury Hall.

This is the stone memorial that is placed where his house once stood. No buildings remain but you can certainly see why he chose this waterfront property…

…and it was here that he lived for the remainder of his life.

The rest of my vacation …

…was spent with my beautiful daughter and her husband. They had just returned from an amazing 10 days in Barcelona (shown in the background here) and France in celebration of 25 years of marriage. It was wonderful to get caught up and to relive their adventure with them.

Some of you may recall that they have an antique and used furniture business and I always have fun when they let me pick out something to refurbish and, hopefully, make more saleable.

My daughter felt that these two cabinets would lend themselves well to Rosemaling…a type of Norwegian decorative painting , and I agreed. Here are the results:

 

The kids business is only open on Sat. & Sunday so one weekend I decided to put down the paint brush and I ran over to see my brother in law. Since his wife (my sister Peg) died he’s moved to a very nice retirement community in Duxbury, Mass. He has a whole new batch of friends and seems to have relocated very well.I can certainly attest to the good food !

…and speaking of food, tomorrow my son Matt and I head to Tampa, Florida to spend Thanksgiving with his daughter (my granddaughter) and her fiancé. So I’ll sign off for now and wish each and every one of you a safe and Happy Thanksgiving ! 

First weekend up North …

The first days of my three week vacation were spent with my niece Wendy. She lives in NY City but was going to a wedding in Manchester Vermont at that time so we hitched up and had a fun time together. She would have had to rent a car otherwise so, with my driving, it worked well for us both.

I declined to join her for the actual wedding (not knowing any of the participants) but I did join them for brunch Sunday morning.

After a sumptuous meal we headed over to East Dorset because I wanted to show Wendy the Bill Wilson house.

As many of you know he was the co-founder of Alcoholics Anonymous and that is where he was born. It was originally an Inn and is now an historic site. We met with the caretaker and were interested to see that AA meetings are now held in what was originally the livery

That’s not a very good picture but those are license plates that you see on the rafters. A few years back I’d sent them one of mine and I was interested to see if they had it posted.

Sure enough … there it was, my old beat up North Carolina plate !  I have a newer version but it still spells out “Friend of BW” which is like a password to others in the program and I’ve met many AA friends because of it.

So, all in all, it was a fun weekend and a great beginning for the rest of my vacation. 

Hiatus over … missed this by a few days:

This is a picture of my daughter and son-in-laws back yard. It is where I was visiting for the past 3 weeks. I don’t usually visit this late in the year and was very glad that the weather stayed clear while I was there. I have had enough snow to last me a lifetime and, knowing that, they sent me this photo to prove that I came home just in time !

They live in upstate New York, across the river from Albany. Most of my vacation was spent there but I also met with a niece and brother-in-law and that entailed visits to Vermont and Duxbury, Massachusetts. I’ll give details in future blog entries.

Before I got the “snow picture” I was going to open this entry with two photos taken from the same window. Look at the difference …

 

Although I don’t like the snow I have to admit that all three pictures are enticing … just like the memories of my wonderful visit.