My summer vacation, Part Three

So after my sister left, I had a number of days free with no particular plans: a "stay-cation," as they say. I did a few things around the place, but mostly I did a lot of reading and relaxing.

Oregon Shakespeare Festival

The final (pretty much) stage of my vacation is my trip to Ashland, Oregon, with my sister-in-law, to see Shakespeare plays. Tonight we'll see MacBeth, aka "the Scottish play." I've read that show people have a superstition that stagings of MacBeth are plagued with bad luck, and so they call it "the Scottish play" to avoid saying the name. I don't know if that's true.

I'm sure I studied MacBeth in high school, and again in college when I took a Shakespeare class (I was an English major), and then I taught it to high schoolers three times. So I'm pretty familiar with it. The other plays we'll see are As You Like It and All's Well That Ends Well. I don't really recall what those are about.

In addition to seeing plays, we'll do some wandering around Ashland, which is a charming town. We arrived yesterday and went to the Tudor Guild Gift Shop. I was in a mood where everything looked good to me. I bought an Ashland sweatshirt, several pairs of socks, and a fridge magnet with a Jane Austen quote.

I had been wanting a non-hoody sweatshirt. I have two hoodies, so I wanted a different option. I found a pale blue-gray sweatshirt on sale, that has "Ashland Oregon" on the front.

Oh, and we had wonderful news on our drive here. The last two years, the Oregon Shakespeare Festival has been plagued with smoke from wildfires, so that sometimes they've had to cancel outdoor performances at the Elizabethan Theater. This year, when I bought my tickets, the plays that earlier in the summer were outdoors were scheduled later in the summer to be indoors in the local high school auditorium, so that even if there were smoke they wouldn't have to be cancelled. I was kind of disappointed by that because going to the outdoor theater is a huge part of the enjoyable experience here. Well, the box office called me and I answered on the bluetooth in my car, and they said they were going to be in the Elizabethan theater after all. My sister-in-law and I both yelled, "Yay!"

It's not smoky here this year, which is great. Yesterday when we got here, it was very hot, well up into the 90s, but today will be a little cooler; a high of 81 is forecast, which is bearable. I'm so glad that tonight I'll be sitting in the theater under the sky as the night falls and the great play starts.

The Allen Elizabethan Theatre. I found this photo online; it originates with the OSF.

My summer vacation, Part Two

The Fair, Continued

From the poffertje stand, my sister and I wandered into the new Expo Building, where we looked at some 4-H displays and at the quilt exhibit. My sister-in-law, who was not with us, is the quilting expert in our family (I refer to my local sister-in-law, but, as it happens, my out-of-state sister-in-law is also an accomplished quilter), and we knew she had a hand in the display.

My sister took this picture.

Next, we set out to look at some of the animal barns. On our way, we were attracted by a raptor exhibit. It was a relatively small shelter, open to the front, where there were seven birds of prey that we could look at. It was put on by the Sardis Raptor Center, and one of the minders told my sister that the birds there were all ones that had some injury or condition that prevented them from being released back into the wild. They were beautiful birds, and we enjoyed looking at them.



Barred Owl



Bald Eagle



Eurasian Eagle Owl



Harris Hawk



Peregrine Falcon



Red Tail Hawk



Turkey Vulture

We went through the dairy cow barn and a few other animal barns.

My sister took this picture, too.

Then we went to look at the draft horses. That barn was closed off because they were harnessing the horses to their vehicles. Those are huge animals, and you wouldn't want to get stomped on or kicked by one of them if things got dicey. We could watch the harnessing from the other side of a chain. We were hoping to see a cousin of ours who married into a family that keeps Belgian horses. We didn't see her, but we did see her husband and one or more of her sons although we did not talk to them. They were busy handling huge horses. So we made our way to the arena, where we knew the teams would be driving. This is a picture of my cousin's family's team:

Shagren's Belgians

After that, we went to our one ride, the Ferris Wheel.



I love to look out over Lynden from the top of the Ferris Wheel. I did not take any pictures while I was on the ride, partly because I wanted to be in the moment, and, more so, because I was afraid I'd drop my phone from a great height.

When we got off the Ferris Wheel, I had reached precisely my point of satiety with the Fair, and my sister felt the same. So that was our outing to the Fair, and that's Part Two of my story.

My summer vacation, Part One

Ah, for the days when summer vacation was all summer. Except, not really, because that was either while I was in school, which I didn't really like from grade 5 through high school, or when I was teaching school, which triggered depression so severe that I needed a full summer to recover.

Anyway, this summer vacation is just a vacation that happens to take place during summer, specifically the last couple weeks of August. I guess I'm about halfway through it.

The first thing was that my sister came to visit. She stayed four days, and we went to the Fair, had coffee with a dear cousin and a dear sister-in-law, went to a family reunion (dear aunts, uncles, and cousins, and cousins once or twice removed), had coffee with a dear aunt who couldn't make the reunion, and had dinner with a dear niece and her dear children and, again, our dear sister-in-law.

The Fair

The Northwest Washington Fair takes place in my home town, Lynden, Washington. The first time I went to this Fair was probably in 1971, when my mom and my siblings and I were living in Lynden while my dad was serving in Viet Nam. At that age (about 10), I was mostly interested in going on rides. I am fortunate in that I don't believe I have ever had motion sickness under any circumstances. I loved rides that spun you around and made you dizzy. (I liked to be dizzy when I was a child. When I visited my dad's office, I would spin around in his desk chair until I worked up some serious vertigo.) I earned money for the Fair by doing household tasks to which my mom had attached prices such as a nickel, a dime, and a quarter. She had a list of them, and if I did one I could claim my reward.

Now I'm older. I earn money by working in an office. I no longer seek out dizziness as a pleasure. There is just one ride I want to go on at the Fair, and that is the Ferris Wheel. My sister and I did go on it, but that was the last thing we did at the Fair.

First, we ate poffertjes. These are a Dutch food, made from batter poured into the indentations of a specialized poffertje griddle. The person making them flips each one over with a fork, so both sides get done.



As their name implies, they are puffy. The Lynden Dutch Bakery serves their poffertjes with some buttery frosting (or some sweetened butter; I don't know which is the correct description) that is truly delicious.



These pictures of poffertjes come from the Dutch Bakery's Facebook page, although I cropped them.

Here is a selfie of our happy faces when we ate poffertjes:



That is Part One of my story. I have a long story with little content. I remind myself of my mom, who worked on her autobiography for years probably, and would comment on her progress: "I'm up to my baptism." FYI, we practice infant baptism in our denomination.