This is Joe and Uncle in 1963 in front of St. Madeline Sophie's Church. Uncle, Dad and Joe were on the way to N.Y.C. for injections by an M.D. of cells of unborn lambs. This went on for several months. The process was invented by a Swiss M.D. He claimed it would cure Down's Syndrome.

You can never go home again. Our home no longer exists in York, but many fine memories do. We are engaged in a whirlwind visit to Chuck's parents, to dentist, opticians, a tire shop, and friends. All good during this lovely time of the Year in southcentral Pennsylvania.

We drove Thursday evening and all day Friday from Sylva to Princeton to visit Chuck's sister and our children.All are well. We enjoyed a beer and ice cream in artsy Lambertsville, NJ on the Delaware River with our children.

On Sunday we arrived in York after short stops for birds at Middle Creek Wildlife Mangement Area to see bobolinks, willow flycatchers, and a Pennsylvania eagle. We are enjoying a stay with Mom & Dad Strehl. This morning we will visit the Central Market House to buy some "organic" granola and fixings for a dinner or two. We drove past our old house which looks fine. We still have friends to visit and various chores to accomplish before moving on to near Gettysburg latter in the week to visit our hiking buddies. Saturday we will be returning toward Carolina. Yesterday we accomplished the necessary stop at our storage locker to obtain essentials for our stay in a house the rest of this year.

It looks as if the bluebirds (American Eastern) have nested in one of our boxes and have 3 or 4 hatchlings. We also have two other nests being built, don't know the occupants, and a box with barn swallows (also blue)

Jim is hard at work on the grounds and Susan has done a lot of planting.

Hope all are planning for our cookout on June 24th. Are any bocce players comming?

here is the last part of Peggy Noonan's column today in which she comments on "the Da Vinci code":

"Speaking of the detachment of the elites, the second big news of the week--in some ways it may be bigger--is the apparent critical failure of "The DaVinci Code." After its first screening in Cannes, critics and observers called it tedious, painfully long, bloated, grim, so-so, a jumble, lifeless and talky.
There is a God. Or, as a sophisticated Christian pointed out yesterday, there is an Evil One, and this may be proof he was an uncredited co-producer. The devil loves the common, the stale. He can't use beauty; it undermines him. "Banality is his calling card."

We made it! Yes, we walked 174.5 miles from the south end of Great Smoky Mountains National Park across the Fontana Dam, dozens of peaks and gaps, the border into Georgia, and past the famed Amicalola Falls to the parking lot where we had left our car 20 days ago.

We were blessed with cool to chilly spring weather, an abundance of wildflowers, good company, and good health along the way. We regreted stopping because our bodies are now wonderfully conditioned for backpacking. We hope to keep them that way through this year as we try to finish the A.T. across the Smoky Mountains and to Hot Springs.

Cookout at our place as most of you know. Mary Helen and Mark will be staying with us,(they're going to the Opera Ball with us and Patty and Tom the night before). We just bought a bocce set so we hope Justin will bring his and we can have a tournament! The horse training oval should be perfect for that.

Currently we have at least one beaver in the pond. The golf course folks are a little upset since perhaps it slows down their drainage.

Titan and Lucy, our barn cats, feed outside the kitchen window twice a day.

We've got in some more stones and are building a stone circle. (se

Here is a picture of Dad and his Siena College buddy Johnny Mancini taken in 1942. World War 2 was underway but they were both in college. They were anxious to prepare for their role in the war so they signed up for pilot training. John joined the Army Air Force after further training and was missing in action by 1943. Dad, unable to join the Air Force because of eye problems, joined the Marine Corps Reserve in April 1942 and was commissioned Lieutenant in May 1943 at Quantico.

While we were living in Canton, St. Lawrence County, NY, St. Lawrence University was building a new building on their campus. A sturdy wood structure had been built as an office for the contractor and the Clerk of Works. When the university building was completed, I noticed an ad in the local paper indicating that the wood structure that had been used as offices for the contractor was up for sale. The man advertising it was the Clerk of the Works, Roy Saucier, who had just moved onto our street, Pearl Street. I did not know him at the time.