Sloan Creative

Here’s a pieced together panorama of the front of the house, taken from down the near pond.

More on this house here

Here she is, almost 9 weeks..

Born 2/26/08 10:26am 8.68# 20.5″

Katie and the baby are doing excellently.

See the slide show by clicking below.

080226_Evi_Cristina

Last updated: August 4

Total coming: 36 so far

Yes:
Ellen and Paul
Pete and Joy
Sarah and Doug
Stephen, Katie, Peter, Anna, and Evi
Joyanne, Mason, Chip, and Fiona
Dana, Derek, Matt, Megan, Dylan
Lori, Chris, Madison, Sam
Steven and Jessica
Sean, Valerie, DJ
Sarah, Ben, and the boys
Julia and Andrew
John Mills

No:
Kate Scott- in Africa
Stormy - in Africa with Kate
Moriah- racing
Mary & Pete - on Shallow Bay
Janeen and Valentine
Andrea- recouperating from trip to France. Oooh La La!

The camp is near Ferndale, CA - way up near Eureka

The camp: http://www.mattolecamp.com/ This link may not be working.

Where we’ll stay: TAN Oak Lodge and Sun Up and Sun Down Cabins. Lodge sleeps 18 people; cabins sleep 36. See the camp upclose here

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Arrival departure plan:
Friday 8/15
Afternoon

• Stephen and fam
• Pete and Joy
• Sarah and Doug
• Steven and Jess
• Sarah, Ben, and fam
• Dana and fam

After Dinner

• Lori and fam

Saturday

For lunch

• Sean and fam
• Julia and Andrew

Sunday

After lunch

D- Sarah, Ben, and fam

Monday

Tuesday

Morning- departures

• Stephen and fam
• Pete and Joy
• Sarah and Doug
• Steven and Jess
• Lori and fam
• Dana and fam

The dates: August 15th - August 19th. This is a Fri.Sat. Sun.Mon. and Tues.

The cost: About $100 per person for lodging for the four nights, NOT per night, total. Kids under six are free.

The food: The lodge has a nice commercial kitchen, so we can just buy groceries but should do so before we get to the remote area surrounding the camp. Sarah Larson and Ellen will coordinate the menu, shopping, etc. Special dietary needs should be made known early. Worst case, there is a lot of refrigerator space so you can bring your preferred ingredients.

The activities: Visiting, beach close by, river swimming, large play fields for Sloan Family Olympics- Higher, Faster, Stronger, etc.

Stuff to do:

Reconnect with old jokes you’ve not heard since you saw Doug last.

Talent contest… if you find some talent, bring it!

Redwood coast trip planner

Petrolia and lots of links to nearby activities

The Humbolt County Fair Aug 7-17

Biking

Kayaking - more than we can take on, but interesting

Swimming in the river Will depend on the flow, but could be fun!

Details: The weather should be quite warm, but may also include fog. Bring your own sleeping bags, blankets, pillows etc, and toiletries,[shampoo, soap, towels etc.] TP is supplied.

Menu is being arranged by Sarah and Ellen.  They are currently circulating a proposed menu for comments.  If you have not received a copy, but have comments, please contact them directly.

The goal is to just give ourselves, and all the little cousins, some time to connect. Given the space and time that separates us all, I was thinking it’d be good to invest in staying connected. Grandma Jo would be so pleased…. No guilt though!

Two amazing books about Central Europe in WWII.

The Visible World combines a man’s search into his family’s past in Bohemia followed by a novel that actually gets at the deeper meanings of what he finds. Mark Slouka’s writing often approaches poetry. Highly recommended. I thought it was the best book I’d read all year, until…

Last night, I finished The Book Thief. It’s mis-categorized as youth fiction. It’s actually one of the most moving books I’ve ever read. The loving treatment of the characters, even the narrator, Death, that Markus Zusak makes the ending one of the most moving I’ve ever read. I was actually glad to be ill the last two days so I had an excuse to laze about reading it in a couple of huge gulps. Has just replaced The Visible World as my favorite recent book.

As someone interested in history, I really appreciated the view Zusak gives us into the lives of poor German citizens just trying to get by and remain human during the war years. That he then ties in the power of words to comfort or control makes it all the more interesting.

I highly recommend both of these books.

I buy many books used. Why not when you buy a lot of especially older titles? However, these books I’ll buy new in hardback, after having read Heather’s copies, because I want to vote with my dollars and give a tiny bit of money to these authors and their publishers.

These titles are what books can and should be about. They look into our collective stories, our histories, and shine light on the best and worst in us all. Only by authors thoughtfully, lovingly shining this light for us and we as readers looking clearly and honestly at what’s illuminated can our civilization heal itself by connecting us to one another across physical, cultural, and temporal distance.

What a summer it has been for reading. Our time in Port Townsend was full of lazy days at the beach and at home reading as the kids played and Katie gestated.

Thanks again to Heather for these and so many other great recommendations and the loan of so many bound treasures.

I tighten the tarp; Maxi stomps and rustles her bridal.
Cool morning, nice for driving.
Our eyes meet, welling, there’s far too much to say;
Just another turn of history’s wheel, I’ve left before, ahead of fevers and hot rebellions.

Today, harvest in, house ready for destruction, Anni and the girls safely ahead.
If I don’t turn and go now, the centuries of stories
And now Jóska’s embrace will hold me here forever,
Until my life hangs at the end of a red-eyed, young peasant’s barrel, or a revenge court’s decision that I am an enemy of the people.

I flick the reins, the horses strength creaks the leather, the tongue, the wagon,
Onto the road and turn east, facing the red masses over the Tisza river who are starting west this morning; killing this way for another day.

By noon, I’ll be turning west, toward the Duna, my first watery protector, and a future anywhere but here.

Today, I write, at my grandfather’s age that day, trying to unravel the darkly poetic forces driving his story and mine, knowing

“that the dead can live only with the exact intensity and quality of life imparted to them by the living.”*

Can the living live with anything but the exact intensity and quality of life imparted to them by the dead?

Today, I wonder.

In the first days of October 1944, as the Russian army approached, my grandfather Zoltan Bárczay packed what he could into a horse-drawn wagon and left the family farm in the Hernad Valley, family seat for the last 800 years. He had sent his wife and daughters ahead towards safety the day before.

*Quote from Joseph Conrad, Under Western Eyes

I set up a wiki for our family history project.

I invite viewers and any contributions. Eventually, we hope to create a print version from the information we collect here.

• How to find right livelihood after selling a 12 year business.
• Is Emerson right about history? “… there is properly no history; only biography.” “All that Shakespeare says of the King, yonder slip of a boy that reads in the corner feels to be true of himself. We sympathize and the great moments of history, in the great discoveries, the great resistances, the great propensities of man; — because there law was enacted, the sea was searched, the land was found, or the blow was struck for us, as we ourselves in that place would have done or applauded.”
• How ideas roll and distort across geography and time. I’m especially interested in how the ideas of the Enlightenment, Nietzsche, and Karl Marx rolled across Europe into Hungary, forcing my family from the Hernad valley, near Miskolc, Hungary, in which they had lived for over 800 years.
• I’m curious about democracy and education and the manipulation of masses that has led to so much destruction and waste in the last hundred years. Even longer if you count the Crusades. Of course, the subject is extremely timely both here in the United States with so much manipulation apparent from the current administration and in Hungary with the recent admissions of manipulation of the elections and lies.
• How do mass movements start? Eric Hoffer says lack of self respect is a contributing factor.
• Reading the tea leaves of current events and the swirling historical forces arranging them to see if we are going to be engulfed by another era of tragedy as our grandparents were. Fanaticism unleashed by inequality and systemic failure in the age of Revolution and the Great Depression.