Markus left Monday afternoon and Bob and I were alone in Tunkhannock. We stayed in the Cottage and would work part of most days. We finished the following jobs:
1. Placed rocks as steps at the opposite end of the pond from the beach. Since the pond had to be lowered to repair the leak this is the only time these rocks could be placed.
2. Repaired a portion of the drive that had eroded with large rocks and gravel.
3. Finished installing the south window and door in the living room and put foam around the west facing windows.
4. Removed the wood frames from around the concrete slabs in the Carriage House.
5. Moved almost all the tools and supplies from the porch to the basement and organized them.
6. Raked and shoveled dirt around the door slabs on the back of the house.
7. Put more gravel into the Carriage House next to the GARN slab so there is a flat surface to walk on to place wood.
8. Painted two coats (primer and enamel) on the roof of the Horse Shed.
It turns out that Markus and I egg each other on into a frenzy of work. When Bob and I left Tunkhannock, we were exhausted (as was Markus). I was trying to keep up with Markus and he was trying to keep up with me. Bad combination. We understand that we have to slow down in the future. Without Markus around, Bob and I rarely worked more than 3-4 hours a day, a much more reasonable pace. We also had to slow down due to three days of steady rain.
As a result, we also did a lot of fun things. We visited Steamtown National Historic Site in Scranton. This is a working steam engine repair facility with a working round table and repaired steam trains and a great museum. Since it was mid-week and after school started, there were not a lot of people. We took a tour to the repair facility, which was really interesting. The facility has collected lots of machines necessary for repair of steam engines and cars and they are actively repairing engines. The top two photos are of the UP engine (25 of the largest steam engines in the world were built for UP to go over the Rockies) with a little switch engine and the turn table in the round house operating. We spent most of a day at Steamtown. There is also an electric trolley museum next door that we didn't visit.
The Deiterich Theater in Tunkhannock has a film festival in the fall. We went to one movie every day. We saw the following films:
American Teen - A documentary of HS seniors in NE Indiana, including the most popular girl, her cohort and various outcasts. It is an amazingly frank look at the lives of teen agers, sex, drugs, depression, etc. The movie also uses animation to express some of the dreams of the teens. Highly recommended.
The Children of Huang Shi (starring Johathan Rhys-Meyers) - A true story of an English journalist who sneaks into China to cover the Sino-Japanese war who ends up running an orphanage. The orphans are all boys and to avoid conscription into the army, he takes them on a 500 mile trek through the mountains in winter. It's called the Mini Long March. The scenery is fabulous, the story amazing, and there is great acting. Highly recommended.
Elsa and Fred (in Spanish) - A love story among septagenarians. A very sweep film which we enjoyed immensely.
Encounters at the End of the World (by Werner Herzog who directed Grizzly Man) - A story about McMurdo Station in Antarctica and all the strange people, inveterate travellers, who end up there. The photography is stunning, the science being conducted on volcanos, penguins, under ice organisms, etc. is really interesting and the interviews with the people are quirky. Highly recommended.
The Last Mistress (in French) - This was the one movie we didn't really like. It is beautifully photographed, but is about a young man who has a long-term liaison with a mistress. There was lots of sex and sexually explicit discussions, but it left us cold.
Mongol (in Mongolian) - This is the story of Ghengis Khan and gives one a different perspective on this man's life. The photography is gorgeous and the battle scenes are like some of those epic battle scenes in the Tolkein trilogy. Apparently he was a very devoted husband and father, though he spent more time away from his family than with it and his wife was almost as amazing as he was. Highly recommended.
Transsiberian (with Woody Harrelson, Emily Mortimer and Ben Kingsly) - This is a thriller set on the Transsiberian RR. It was the first movie we saw, and though there is some violence, the story is gripping. Highly recommended.
Up the Yangtse (in Chinese) - This is a movie about the effect of the construction of the Three Gorges Dam and the people in its wake, seen partly through the eyes of tourists riding up-river on a boat. There are haunting pictures of these markers along the river showing where the flooding will rise to. The movie is seen partly through the experiences of two people who work on the boat, one a self-centered young man who speaks good English and the other a very poor girl who wants to go to school but whose parents need her to work and send money home. The photography is beautiful and the effects of this dam on the people is brought out through the two stories. Highly recommended.
Vicky Cristina Barcelona (Woody Allen's latest film) - This is a truly funny film about love in Spain. It's better than a lot of Woody Allen's recent films, but I'm not a total fan. Recommended.
The Visitor - This is a fabulous film about the interaction between a widowed economics professor from Connecticutt who comes back to his Greenwich Village apartment to find an African couple living there. The man plays drums and teaches the professor. The women makes jewelry and sells it on the streets. It was the best movie we saw; investigating the problems of illegal immigrants and the US policy about them.
Ann and Vern arrived on Sunday for two days and we walked around Tunkhannock looking at the historic houses. We also drove out to Nicholson to show them the Nicholson viaduct (the longest cement bridge in the world). It was built to shorten, straighten and remove track crossings on the railroad in the 1920's. The owner of the Lackawanna RR spent the equivalent of $1B to make all sorts of repairs and improvements to the RR to move freight faster, and thus earn more money. We also walked out to the overlook 500' above the Susquehanna (Bob hadn't seen that either).
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