The Curtis Clan - Spring 2015

Spring Equinox to Summer Solstice

Spring, Summer and Fall of Sienna Discontent

At the end of the winter of 2015, the heater on our Sienna went on the fritz but we didn’t give it too much concern initially as the weather turned warm and the lack of heat wasn’t an immediate issue. On a trip to Edwardsville to try a pizza joint, the Sienna stranded Bethany and the girls on the road on 20 March and got an initial estimate of thousands of dollars from an Edwardsville shop. We had it towed to Steger’s Service in Rock Hill, where they identified the problem as a coolant heater block-off plate was leaking on the side of the motor, a VERY common to aging Siennas ($250 plus $100 for the tow). No problem, right? No! In early May, Bethany was stranded again while Randy was out of town at Clark with Cate and her very large Bass and needing to get her to the orchestra concert that evening. An assist from brother Van solved the immediate issue but the Sienna was back in the shop. This time, the problem was a bad auxiliary transmission cooler, a potential serious problem as it allowed cooling fluid and transmission to mix, potentially killing the transmission. A $200 fix and with crossed fingers we drove it for another month hopping we dodged a bullet and the transmission wasn’t toast. No such luck. $3,500 to replace it in July. Problems done, no. In August, it was back in the shop with computer and wheel cylinder issues blah, blah, blah. September found Bethany stranded again after the starter went out. In early November, the battery went out, causing another round of family anxiety. Much of this is expected in an 11 ½ year old car with 150,000 miles on it (except the transmission). A December 2015 family trip to Kansas City and back allowed a small amount of confidence to resurface but the days of the Sienna being the prime Curtis Family Truckster are likely nearer an end (the 20+ year old Suzuki Sidekick is having enough issues of its own but is OK for an auxiliary vehicle).

20 March and the start of the troubles

Cate turns 11

The Sage clan came over on Sunday the 29th to celebrate Cate’s 11th Birthday with a Harry Potter theme.  As per Cate’s wishes we had vegetarian Indian for dinner which exceeded many people’s expectation.

Sage Clan assembled for Cate's Bday dinner

A Perigrine Falcon delivered Cate's invitation to Hogwarts? (bird of prey perched on the lightpost at Tuxedo & Cornelia)

Pepper sporting Luna Lovegood-esgue glasses and Cate with her radish earrings

A Marader's Map slogan shirt that is perhaps to true for parental comfort (but clearly pleased her)

Cate showing that she's not ALWAYS up to no good.

The following Friday, Cate hosted a Harry Potter Sleepover for a few of her classmates.

Gang from Cate's sleepover

Easter / April

Jane and Cate Easter 2015

George, Cate, & Henry jumping for fun	Hear No Evil, Speak No Evil and See No Evil

Townie Cousins Vertically in a Row	Townie Cousins Horizontally in a Row

Cate and Jane enjoy Happy Hour at Steak and Shake

Bethany and the girls looking nice Georges communion

WGCS Trivia Champions 2015 10 points for Gryffindor!

A robin feathering her nest

Randy at Fort Dade's mine wharf remains

End of School Year Field Trips

Cate and freinds beneath Jefferson at MO Capital	Cate's class (and 4th graders too) on the Capital steps

St. Louis Book Fair Bounty

The girls love the Hi Pointe

WGCS/Clark Murder Mystery Night Women

Emma, Constance and Cate at the GOTR	GOTR Running buddy Aunt RoRo and Cate

Cate runs the sponge relay for the green team	Cate runs the treasure relay

Jane and Sydney oversee the 3-legged race	Jane and team do the board walk

Curti staying dry under the bleachers at the Cardinal game	STL Cousins with Fredbird

Curti at at trip to the History Museum

Cate at 5th grade graduation with classmates

Cate Future Bio

Jane at 5th grade graduation	Cate at 5th Graduation

Randy at the Golden Gate

June

In “celebration” of Pepper’s first year with us and Gussie’s 2nd Birthday, we gifted them a shock collar to help control their barking.  Pepper who came to us as tiny, quivering, timid, noiseless miniature schnauzer found her voice within a couple weeks and developed an true affinity fearlessness, vigor in barking at anybody walking by the house while on the leach or from inside watching by the French Doors (in other words all to frequently).  If anyone besides the immediate family had the turbidity to actually enter the house, this would set her off to barking non-stop the entire time they were here.  Moving her to her crate in the garage as she would sing the alarm of panic from the bowels of our home warning of the impending doom associated with outsiders.  Her passion might have been better appreciated if one could think straight during the incessant yapping (think a scruffy Napoleon on four legs).  Her barking didn’t inspire Gussie to follow suit (yeah), except when they were playing dog tag.  Pepper loves to “tag” and taunt Gussie, then run away with Gussie in pursuit.  Unfortunately this isn’t done in silence but in full voice from the spaniel.  While we’re away, we sure this is a fine game but when we’re trying to watch TV, talking on the phone, think or even breathing came becomes laborious with such racket.   Either situation would frequently cause other members of the family to join in with their own form of barking in response and the whole thing was wrecking serious havoc on the family sanity.  After months of discussion and consideration of the ethics of placing shock collar on such tiny animals, Randy convinced them all it was in the dogs best interest to do so before he acted upon the thoughts immediate means of silencing the pooches in the heat of a moment besides he didn’t want the neighbor kids making up a campfire song about him like that famous Dutchman Johnny Reebeck who made the finest sausages and sauerkraut and speck).

Thus followed a period of selecting which collar to purchase.  The ones with a remote seemed ideal but reading comments in the reviews of non-remote versions gave us the chills with possible effects of constant, unmonitored wear (the costs sealed the deal).  We finally selected a moderately priced one that provides a warning buzz twice before sending an unpleasant shock, with a changeable strength setting.  We set it on the lowest setting, as Pepper is a very tiny dog, and waiting until we knew there were guest coming over before putting it on.  The first time Pepper got zapped a couple times turned her into a quivering, sad Tigger that had Jane pleading with her dad to remove it.  Her cold emotionless engineer pop relented but gleefully pointed out that the collar had the desired effect and the barking stopped.  It only took another couple times for her to get the point and all we have to do is show her the collar and she stops yapping.  It had essentially similar effect on Gussie when we’ve used it on her.  What’s amusing is that while they’re both barking and the warning buzz goes off on one, it silences both the one wearing the collar and the one in proximity.  Not a solution that a Dog Whisperer or the Humane Society would embrace, but one that works and is only momentarily unpleasant.

The first weekend in June, Bethany’s Aunt Katie came to town to everyone’s great delight.  On Sunday, we had another splendid Townie Brunch in honor of her visit followed by an afternoon of conversation and a short walk to have dinner at the U-City Pasta House (once again a no picture time to document the happiness).

Jane Freestyle

Jane rejoined her summer swim team the Webster Waves that operates out of the WG Rec Center pool.  Practices occurred four mornings a week at 8 am except for the two weeks Jane had a camp that started at 9 and she shifted to the 7 am practice with the older kids.  She enjoys the camaraderie and team environment and has improved.  As a parent, it’s rather pleasant to sit on the sidelines in the coffee listening to the rhythmic splashing of the swim team practice for an hour in the early morning but the swim meets are another matter.  These are long events that start before normal dinner time and end after normal bedtime (e.g. 5 pm to 10:30 pm).  Standing for that period to time all the races gets boring and is only interrupted b the few minutes when you it’s your kid in the event (about 4 times out of 70+ events).

Jane waiting for her race	Jane on the blocks

Jane’s two week camp was two and a half hour writing workshop put on by her 6th grade English…er…Language Arts teacher Mr. Ibur who invited his most promising pupils to participate (formally called Middle School Writing Class of the Gifted Arts Project http://giftedarts.org/).  Mr. Ibur conducts it with his wife who fields the arts side of the program and there was good buzz from previous folks who sent their kids.  Since Jane does so love to write, it seemed a good idea (her professed adult career is writer except for the moments when her Dad is in ear shot and she provides says she wants to an engineering degree first and then write, like he does).  The “camp” focused on different types of writing and met at different locations throughout the two weeks such as the World’s Fair Pavilion, St. Louis Art Museum, St. Louis Zoo, Webster Christian Church, Meramec Community College, and The Gaslight Theater.  It’s hard to determine if this will have a measurable effect but like most seeds one plants in our youth, it takes a time for them to germinate and visibly sprout.

Jane writing at Worlds Fair Pavilion

About the same time, we sent Cate to two weeks of Camp FRESH, a full day (8am – 5pm) cooking and “exploration of cuisine and culture around the globe” for 4th through 7th graders put on by the Family and Consumer Sciences faculty at Fontbonne University.  The kids got breakfast when they got there, and they prepared their lunch as part of the curriculum.  The campers still had time for lots games crafts and mindless activities throughout the day too.  Cate attended the Asia and Antarctica weeks (the only ones that were let by the time we got around to signing up).  Cate loved it and given that it was such a SUPER value ($175 for the week); a return for summer 2016 is assured (assuming we sign up early enough and the slots haven’t filled up).

Much of Bethany’s free time continued to be occupied by volunteering for a number of organizations like the Webster Groves Library Board and Women's Voices Raised for Social Justice.  At their 10th Anniversary celebration for the latter in May, Bethany was recognized for her three years at the helm of their monthly newsletter Loud and Clear, which she was able to pass on to the able hands of a like minded and enthused member.  She also started her second year as President of the Pi Beta Phi St. Louis Alumnae Club and has been very active the various committees and activities such as the Young Alumnae Interest Group.  She also volunteers a couple times a month at the Pi Phi philanthropic retail needlepoint and gift shop, the Sign of the Arrow.  

Bethany Pi Phi St. Louis Alumnae Chapter President

In June, Randy completed a professional milestone, nearly two years in the making, as he traveled to Providence, Rhode Island to testify as an “Expert” witness on behalf of the government in the Centredale Manor Restoration Project Superfund site case.  The ~9 acres Centredale site had previously been the location of a chemical company and a 55 gallon drum reconditioning facility that had been identified as the source of dioxin found in fish collected from the Woonasquatucket River in 1996, a couple decades after the facilities were destroyed in a fire.  The legacy companies became defendants in the Department of Justice Environment and Natural Resources Division (ENRD) litigation to recoup the EPA’s clean-up costs.  In an attempt to share the blame and hence the payouts, the defendants agued (speculated?) that it was actually the Department of Defense that was responsible for the dioxin based on 4,800 drums that came from the salvage yards of the Naval Air Station Quonset Point and the Otis Air Force Base that they speculated contained residual amounts of the herbicide Agent Orange, known to have been contaminated with dioxins (choosing to ignore that one of the chemicals produced at the plant would frequently also produce dioxins as a contaminate as well).  A bit of a “Hail Mary” argument but one that could not be ignored and putting the DOD in the always difficult position of proving the negative.  So how did Randy get involved? He became an expert on the Army’s Research, Development, Testing and Evaluation (RDT&E) of herbicides for military tactical use as part of his team’s environmental characterization of Fort Detrick which was the center of such investigations.  He was to readily able to inform the DOJ that there was no evidence for either New England location being involved in the RDT&E program.  His formal declaration were further expanded to provide facts on whether either location may have used the dioxin contaminated herbicide (or its commercial equivalent) in the suggested quantities or if either installation was used storage and shipping for drums of Orange to Southeast Asia.  After a fair amount of research, analysis and completion of a long and detailed report, the answer was a clear no but none-the-less that portion of the case went to trial, even after days of being deposed on the topic as well.  In preparation for the trial, the DOJ attorneys conducted hours of practice sessions with Randy with their questions and expected questions from the other side.  Surprisingly to him, most were simply questions getting me to regurgitate the findings of the report, frequently paragraph by paragraph.  Painfully tedious and unnecessary to his non-legal way of thinking as it was all in the heavily endnoted report with stacks of references for the facts.  Still it took practice to break him of his habit of giving full and complete answers to explain things (aka long and meandering diatribes) to short, sweet responses that only spoke to the question asked.  He was only on the stand for a couple hours, which was much shorter than anticipated.  The reduction in effort had much to do with the strength of the arguments and the opposing side ALMOST conceding it was a baseless proposition.  

The experience provided him with a great deal of respect for the competence and appreciation of duty for the DOJ ENRD.  The DOJ team worked very long days and weekends for month on the case with no extra pay or comp time; just dedication to doing a good job.  It was an honor to work with them but perhaps that's getting too cheesy.

Before catching a flight home, Randy was able to explore a bit of downtown on foot for an hour or so: walking along the Woonsocket River and crossing the Providence River to go up College Hill through the RI School of Design, breakfast at Brown University Student Union and back.  Probably an hour and a half but an excellent use of time.

The Curti new "Lime Green" kitchen	Cornelia "front door"

In mid-June, Bethany completed a couple home improvements.  She painted the formerly bright yellow kitchen “Lime Green”, a change we were all quite pleased with.   Bethany’s Week 2 home project was paint the doors on side porch, which only took 11 1/2 years after “finishing” our home addition.  

Another major change came courtesy of the gift of her dad of his prized office credenza and lighted hutch.  We had been storing the shelves in our basement for her folks for awhile but as they became more serious about downsizing their home in U-City on putting it on the market, the credenza base came our way too on a permanent basis through the help of many family and neighbors to move it into place.  We placed the massive piece of furniture along wall of the house’s original living room, moving our bookcases to the basement.  The lighted hutch provides a perfect way to display much of our extensive Wedgewood collection / museum which came to us courtesy of Randy’s father.  We were both tickled that it was all the result of our Father’s gifts that may it possible and that it came together on Father’s Day.  With the up scaling of the space, we ’re considering to stop calling it the “old living room” as referring to it as the “conservatory” as that where the piano and cello practice occurs as well.  

Curti Wedgewood Museum