Lavish Ohio continued on Tuesday, but in a slightly unusual way. Ellen, who was on spring break, came with us to CVCA for the day to visit Meredith’s classes. If that were not enough, Meredith even had Ellen speak in her two AP classes on how the AP exam is graded, since Ellen has spent some time grading AP exams.
We did try to make it up to Ellen, at least in part. My running partner Jason knew that Ellen was in town, and as the Vice President of CVCA, he wanted to take her to lunch to pick her brain on how Ellen sees teaching English. CVCA is an excellent school, but we still don’t get (essentially) PhDs coming though every day. As an unexpected bonus, Jason took me and Mer along for lunch as well. We had some excellent Mexican food at Mariachi’s restaurant nearby, and we had about an hour-long conversation about teaching and English and the like. It was a nice time, and productive.
After school, I ran with Jason, and we both had pretty bad runs. We both blamed the late lunch, but it may also have been the 20-mile run on the previous Saturday. At any rate, we ran 8 difficult miles, and then I took a shower.
Mer came home, and so we ate supper and watched more Bleak House. But, since Ellen likes ice cream and has a fondness for custard (rich soft serve), we had arranged to meet Nate and Rachel at their house, and head over for custard at Strickland’s. Strickland’s is a local chain that makes custard; they always have chocolate and vanilla, plus two special flavors that rotate every few days. We drove down to Nate’s, and then followed Nate and Rachel to Strickland’s. While we were reading the menu, some firemen invited Nate’s young son to check out the fire truck, so Nate and his son wandered over. Since I had a decent excuse, I followed along. I like trucks too.
After the truck pulled away, we ordered custard, and Ellen proclaimed hers to be quite good. We all ended up sitting in our car to visit, as the evening was quite cool. The windows fogged up pretty seriously, but the company was fine. Once we finished eating, we said goodbye to Nate and Rachel, and we headed home.
Wednesday was another dissertation-writing day for Ellen. Mer and I went to work, and Ellen stayed home and worked. I had to stay late to coach my improv group, but then Mer and I were able to go home together and collect Ellen (and rescue her from her computer and books). We drove about 15 miles to the Furnace Run metro park, and we hiked along the Daffodil Trail. Ellen likes flowers, so I thought she should see this trail that has lots of daffodils planted along it. The trail itself is easy, and only 0.6 miles long. The daffodils were all up out of the ground, but only about 10% were in bloom – we were about a week early to see them in full bloom. Still, Ellen seemed to like it, and Mer and I are fond of the metro parks, so we had a pleasant walk.
After the tromp through the flowers, we headed into the Valley to the town of Peninsula. Peninsula is a very cute town on a river, in a valley, and so it seems as close to a New England town as I have seen in Ohio. In Peninsula, we parked at the entrance to the Towpath Trail, and then we walked the short distance back into town to the Winking Lizard restaurant. The Winking Lizard is a beer-and-ribs place, but they have lots of good and hearty food. Ellen did tackle some ribs, but we left the brews on tap.
Thursday was the exciting day of Lavish Ohio. A few months ago, I had received an e-mail newsletter from Heather Dale, who is a Canadian folk artist I am very fond of. In the newsletter, she announced she was making up a Midwest U.S. tour, and she was looking for locations to have a house concert. On a whim, I sent in an e-mail saying I was interested, and after a few e-mails back and forth, Heather Dale was coming to my house on April 1st to do a house concert! Amazing.
I took the day off to tidy the house and to cook a ton of food. One of the things I was encouraged to do as a house concert host was to provide snacks, and to provide food for Heather and her partner/guitar player Ben. So, I spent the day making four loaves of bread, a huge pan of chocolate-peanut-butter bars, two pans of brownies, and two pizzas. I also had Mer buy sodas and fruit drinks, and chips and Oreos, and our friend Lesa was bringing stuffed grape leaves. Long after the concert was over, I realized I had forgotten to set out the chips and Oreos. Ooops.
Anyway, Heather and Ben showed up around 5:00, and are wonderfully friendly people. Heather is very gracious, and Ben looked at my instrument collection and offered to make some minor adjustments to my guitar. It turns out that Ben has advanced degrees in English with a focus on medieval studies. So, Ben and Ellen hit it off wonderfully. In an amusing/depressing moment, Ben joked that he left academia for the steady income of a folk singer. Anyway, Mer and Ellen and Ben and Heather and I all had pizza and chatted.
The guests for the concert started arriving at around 7:00 (for a 7:30 concert start). We ultimately had about 27 guests, about 2/3s of which were CVCA folks, and about 1/3 were Heather fans who had seen the concert listed on her website. I was touched that my friends would come out and support me, and I was very pleased to see Craig come at intermission from a service project, with 4 students in tow. The house concert was fairly packed.
Heather and Ben gave a magnificent concert. The music was lyrical, and Heather has a great voice. It turns out that she is also a great storyteller, and she used body language and gestures to act out the song she was singing. She always had a smile on her face, and just glowed with the joy of making music. I was also impressed that as Heather started the concert, she said hi to everyone and then proceeded to rattle off everyone’s name; she had not only made an effort to meet everyone, she had learned everyone’s name as well.
Anyway, the evening was a huge success. Mer and I bought two CDs we did not have, and I also bought a song book so we can play and sing Heather’s music at home. Heather and Ben stayed the night with us (it helps cut their costs), and Heather was gracious enough to sing a duet with Meredith at the table after everyone had gone. It was simply beautiful – Heather and Mer have similar ranges, so they blended beautifully. They sang the Christmas song “Coventry Carol,” which is one of Mer’s favorites and which Heather had recorded on a Christmas CD. After they were done, Heather got out of her chair and gave Mer a big hug and Ben expressed how they should have put that in the show. We talked and laughed (and Ben fixed my guitar) until after 12:00. What a great evening, and I hope that Heather and Ben can come back through Ohio soon.
Lavish Ohio was being lavish indeed.