5 May 2013

Helen performed in a violin recital on Monday.  She played several pieces as part of a small group and "Ashokan Farewell" as a solo.

 Helen invited our neighbors to a tea party on Tuesday.  As they have 3 boys and 1 girl in their family, this was their first tea party.  Abe and Gib have been to many, many tea parties, thanks to Helen.

 The elementary school held their biannual art fair this week.  Abe wasn't able to attend the art show, but here is a picture of his string art.

 Helen's class displayed 2 projects: colorful cats. . .

 . . . and colorful tulips.

 Gibson painted a frog.  He's pointing to his frog in the photo.  It's the one with the wide open mouth and long tongue.

Sofi memorized the prologue to Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet for her English class this week.  The class requires a lot of memorization and recitation and the class periods where each student recites the assignment can be very tedious.  Sofi invited Abe to come play background music to provide some authentically Elizabethan atmosphere to her recitation.  They made a dynamic show.  To be honest, though, between Abe playing the guitar and Sofi's extra dramatic performance, no one was paying too close attention to whether the words were correct.

 Becky's brother, Joe, is staying in Nevada City, California for three weeks.  We visited him this weekend.  Gold was discovered in a creek near here in 1849.  The town quickly sprung up.  Today it is a delightful tourist destination.  Walking around the charming downtown area, it seemed we were nearly always going uphill.  Abe and Gibson liked watching the motorcycles drive by.  They counted over 20 motorcycles as we ate lunch on the balcony of Joe's hotel.

 Joe, who is a geologist for the BLM, is in California learning how to assess the quality of a mining claim.  He showed us part of the project his team has been working on.  

After sifting through 25 buckets of gravel, they found the few grains of gold shown in the photo below.  Clearly the site they are investigating would not be a profitable mine.  

 The geologists are staying in the National Hotel, one of the oldest continuously operating hotels in the west.  Although famous, the hotel has aged past quaint and is approaching ramshackle.  Helen was not impressed by this antique chair, pretty much unusable because of protruding springs.

Lots of old mining equipment has been relocated for display throughout the town.  The kids are sitting in a Pelton wheel which used water to generate electricity.

 We also visited Empire Mine State park.  The Empire Mine was one of the oldest, largest and richest gold mines in California.  It operated between 1850 and 1956.  Abe is trying to push one of the ore carts used in mining.  It would be much harder when it was loaded with one ton of ore.

 From 1870 on, most of the workforce were immigrants from Cornwall, England.  The buildings at the mine, constructed mostly from waste rock from the mine, looked like they would fit in an English village.

 Next to the mine was a gorgeous "cottage" set in the middle of acres of beautifully landscaped gardens-- the mine owner's house. 

 Becky thought it would have been an exceptionally noisy place to live.  Supposedly you could have heard the mine from 3 miles away.  Joe pointed out that to the mine owner, it would have been the sound of money.  It was a fun weekend-- hanging out with Joe is a mini geology class.