More About April

Our trip home to Berkeley to renew our Visas coincided with Marda's nephew Daniel and Julie's wedding.  The wedding was planned to take place at the Faculty Club on the UC Berkeley campus.  Coincidentally the 40th Anniversary Celebration Symposium was also being held at the UC Berkeley campus at Wurster Hall, the School for Environmental Design. 

This is a photo of the book table hosted by the OWA Book Club.  My good friend Wendy Bertrand, on the left, published her memoir Enamored With Place to add to the growing collection of books about women architects. 

The Symposium was planned by another good friend, retired lecturer Mui Ho, and featured several women academics discussing topics around the theme, "Gender Matters."  Gender certainly matters in regards the practice of architecture where perspective is everything.

April Came and Went

Suffice to say the weather was terrific in California and we were very busy.  I'll post a photo soon to keep this Blog going.  We are back in Belfast and have overcome our jet lag.
Take a look at Jon Kennedy's Blog which he has faithfully updated some of which is our news too.
Jon Kennedy, C.S. Lewis Writer-in-Residence, The Loom

Chinese New Year's Eve

We went to a poetry reading today at the Ulster Museum sponsored by the wonderful John Hewitt Society and featuring Emma Must a new emerging poet and Michael Longley a world renown poet.  Ward's writing teacher Lynda Tavakoli was there and the program was chaired by our friend Bill Jeffrey.

Afterwards we took our friend New Zealander John Grant to Sun Kee restaurant for "Yim Cha" to celebrate the end of the old year and the beginning of a new one.  John has been doing a marvelous job of pastoral care within our neighborhood including calling in on us on most days.  He gets a hot cup of tea and a respite.

Rev Jack Lamb is away in Turkey this week visiting ancient holy sites which we know nothing about.  We press on building relationships and carrying on the work as it presents itself to us.  Tomorrow is Sunday and the beginning of a new week and a New Year of the Snake on the Chinese lunar calendar.  Prosperity and blessings to all.

Twelfth Survived

The good news is there were no fatalities or serious injuries during the protests on the twelfth. 

This is taken from our third floor dormer in the front of our house.  Up the street is Crumlin Road Presbyterian church and the Edenderry Mill which was converted to condos.  Up beyond that about two blocks is Holy Cross Catholic church and beyond it 100 feet is the Ardoyne roundabout and then the Ardoyne shops, all less than a half mile away.

Since even the local news seemed to confuse the labels I want to clarify that the nationalists and the unionists are political identities having to do with the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, separated into two countries in 1922.  The nationalists and republicans (those wanting to be a part of the Republic of Ireland) and the unionists and loyalists (those wanting to stay with the United Kingdom) are the parallel political identities the latter feel stronger and were willing to take up arms to defend or change the outcomes.  The republican paramilitaries were the IRA and the loyalists paramilitaries were the UVF and the UDA.  The Orange Order is a fraternal organization and they hold parades from April to August with the biggest ones on the Twelfth of July commemorating King William III of Orange defeat of King James II at the Battle of the Boyne in 1690 becoming King and keeping a protestant rule since James had converted to Catholicism.  The vast majority of the people do not want to go back to "the bad old days" of The Troubles but they still hold tight to these identities which separate them.

We continue to help people embrace identities that cross over these old identities like Artist, Irish, Christian, Celtic, European, Men or Women, Human Being and Friends.

EASTER SUNDAY

College Avenue Presbyterian Church has combined the new with the old creating a wonderful worship service of celebration and praise. The old is our suspended cross brought in from the garden and raised in the sanctuary worship space and then the invitation to those bereaved to come to the cross and be comforted by the gathered and by Christ. The new is Monte McClain our new pastor, his guitar, and the children. He leads a time of learning with the children via the secret box to "stump the pastor." Today the Beatty grandchildren joined to make a big group of little ones.

As we head back to Belfast we are encouraged to know our home church is strong and uplifted as they send us back to represent them to the people of Belfast.

You can't make up a skipped month

February is short. I had intended to post but I didn't. It was a wonderful month.

Vidda and I "explored" and took this photo of a pool we swam in as children. It is in the Santa Monica canyon area. We were invited as a family to swim while my granduncle was the cook at this home. I was around 13 years old and mentioned to the owner that I was interested in architecture so he took us all over to a friend of his in the neighborhood. We met an architect and toured his modern house. To view two fabulous custom built houses at that early age set the course of my career journey.

Los Angeles has a rich assemblage of architectural gems. Thank you to the owners who have built, preserved, and allowed us to visit them.

Break from Dinner Party prep

Today is a Saturday and I'm ahead of time in prep for our small dinner party. Other than Thanksgiving this is the first dinner party we have hosted.

This photo is from December. Right now the snow is gone but there is a fog in the yard and the temps are down to freezing.

Our tickets are purchased and we head for California on 9 February. Renew our visas and return for a year or more. We like it here. Why Belfast? Because we can, because there is community, because we have a place to be here.

When we return we will pray, do poetry and pottery, resume visitations, assist the minister, weave relationships and welcome guests. Spring is coming!

Final few thoughts

The red door is ours. Now we have a doorbell too. People do drop over and we are blessed by their visits.

We have prayer time on Monday and Wednesday mornings at 7 a.m. and quiet meditation at 5 p.m. on Wednesdays. An evening visit from the Belfast L'Arche community to inaugurate the prayer room was also held this month.

We had eight days of frozen heater pipes but thankfully none burst and three people came to our rescue with space heaters. This started while Marda was away for a short jaunt to Lebanon while she got delayed in London's Heathrow airport both ways. Ward was worst for the wear and Marda returned with our friend Mui who good naturally suffered with the cold as we did.

We are enjoying the last few days of the millennium's first decade. God's blessings to all of you for 2011.

ThanksGiving

What is this? After 2 1/2 years I have bought a rice cooker! It comes with a steaming rack so I'll have to experiment to see if it will warm or cook anything while the rice is cooking below. I opened my Christmas present to myself early to make a ThanksGiving meal on Saturday. A10# frozen turkey cost $30 here.

We are full of thanks. Grateful. resting, reading, and creating things. Ward is working on a Christmas poem and I am making porcelain pottery.


This photo is us with four children from the 34th African Children's Choir. These four girls and their teacher stayed with us for a night after performing a concert at our church on November 10th. They are from Uganda and Kenya and have been traveling for 14 months in the States and UK. They sing and dance and tour and raise money that supports over 3000 children in African schools. This experience demonstrated what love can do for a child and how infectious that love is. Uncle Ward and Auntie Marda were very much loved by these happy, thankful, and talented girls. We loved it all.

Last bit.

Today is American Thanksgiving and we got our first snowfall of the season here in Belfast.

This photo is taken from our front window.

Home in California

Being here allowed me to help my ADX sister, Alice, finish up some work on the sorority house. Some of you know I own a portion of a house used by the ADX Beta chapter on the CAL campus. Alice replaced the foundation, electrical panel, heating, and painted the exterior. It has a new life and needed a new mortgage. We did our part to keep the building trades going. Over 40 years ago I joined the chapter at UCLA and made lifelong precious friends. This group of Christian women supports us now, and shaped our perspective of serving God with our lives.