Zoom #18 convened on June 15, 2023 at 2:00 p.m., Wichita time. Marilyn Tompkins Bellert moderated the discussion of our topic — Plans for Summer 2023. Reflecting the diversity of our interests, our plans ranged from a quiet summer at home, to both domestic and international travel, to “mystery events” with the family.
Participants joined us from across the county – North, South, East, West, and, of course, Midwest — Fred Elder in Madison, WI; Marilyn Bellert, Sycamore, IL; Glenna Stearman Park, Montgomery Village, MD; Diane Zinn, Lawrence, KS; Dan Tontz, Dallas, TX; Skip Granger, Las Vegas, NV; David Robinson, Wichita, KS; Calvin Ross, Johnson City, TN; Linda Soderberg McKay, St. Louis, MO; Lee Ayres, Fresno, CA; Mert Curtis, Stafford County, KS; Tom Tatlock, Appleton, WI.
Part of the following is a summary of our discussion, not a transcript. If your part needs to be revised, please contact Marilyn or Diane.
Glenna Stearman Park – 
I don’t really know what all I’m going to do this summer, but coming up I will be at a birthday party in Connecticut, and for two weeks in July, I will be in Rhode Island with my grandchildren.
Basically, most of my summer will be reading, painting, and staying comfortable in my house. I am doing a series of paintings that make a map of Ukraine. In the past, I have made many maps as artwork. Each major Ukrainian city is getting an abstract painting. Remember the game we played as children, Pick-up Sticks? The Russian bombing has splintered so much of Ukrainian cities and lives. I am using pick-up sticks as a motif for paintings of cities. The are composed of lines of paint, intersecting lines, tangled messes of straight lines. The first one I finished is Mariupol. (Below, right, Mariupol is on an irregularly-shaped canvas.) 
Ukrainians have had to go back into their cities, trying to pick up whatever they can from their homes and their lives. I am showing this recovery process by painting in bright colors over whatever is left on the ground. The next painting will represent Bakhmut, all in dark and muted colors. For that one and some of the others, I am building irregularly-shaped canvases.
Kyiv, at left, may not be finished, but here it is at the moment.
Dan Tontz asked how Glenna was going to color Crimea. Basically, I use red, blue, and yellow and mix all other colors from those three. I am throwing an overlay of color over the destroyed property. Philosophically, I hope to show that the Ukrainians will build something livable out of this destruction. When I finish paintings of all the cities, they will not hang all in a row in a gallery. They will be splattered as geometry across the wall, arranged as they are on the map.
My focus on Ukraine right now relates to my husband Joel’s great-grandparents, who migrated to Kansas. They were Mennonite farmers who brought with them the red winter wheat which thrived in Kansas. They were basically pacifists who moved from country to country, eventually to the U.S., trying to avoid wars.
Diane Zinn added that her grandmother had been part of this group of Mennonite wheat farmers. Glenna added that she thought Jerry Leisy was also related to these Kansas pioneers.
Reading books about the history of Ukraine, I now understand that Russia has been invading Ukraine for at least a hundred years – kidnapping, killing, and abusing children as well as adults. Here we go again.
My goal is to show these paintings to my grandchildren and pass on these books of Ukrainian history, so that they will learn a little about their family.
Diane Zinn – Historically, our summers have been week-long visits with each set of grandchildren. However, two
of them are employed full time and the others are all getting older and have full-time summer jobs. So those visits are not going to take place for the first time in around 20 years. They’re just going to come when they can. We’ll be ready to schedule whenever they say when they will come. We normally have a big trip planned in the summer, but this year we don’t for health reasons, but we are planning a few day trips around Kansas. The rest of the time is basically going to be property maintenance here. Not very exciting, but as long as we’re healthy and happy, that’s what counts.
Dick’s 60th Stanford Reunion is in mid-October. We are hoping to make it to that and see our Wichita friends Lin Lamme and Tim Steele. Then, we are going to Carmel to visit Bob Adams. The guys will be able to play golf and maybe enjoy some wine, too.
Dan Tontz – Marilyn and Fred hit the spots – summer trips, new pets, new refrigerators, music festivals. Those hit home with me. The primary thing with me, as you saw before we started, is the new pet, Jimmie, a 4 month old Goldendoodle. My friend Frances made a spur of the moment decision at a stop light where someone was advertising the puppies. Frances lives five blocks away from me, but I’m keeping Jimmie most of the time. As for travel, Frances is the driver and what she says goes; I’m just a passenger, enjoying every moment. So she drives and determines where we’re going. The other thing is we have to stay at pet friendly hotels. We’ve not done that with two dogs before. That also means we can’t drive long distances without stopping for the dogs.
The first thing I’ve learned with the puppy is that he doesn’t understand the meaning of “no.” So, if the dog doesn’t understand that, you are in big trouble. That’s where I’ve been the past few days, and “no” doesn’t phase him a bit. It’s been a learning experience. We do have the senior dog. He’s 12 years old, so it’s the elderly senior dog and the young one. They do a lot of fake fighting, showing their teeth. They don’t hurt each other; they put on quite a floor show. We enjoy that.
The trips we are planning are to the hill country in Texas before it gets any hotter, probably around the 4th of July and that’s a quick, easy drive. Then we are going to Arkansas and just kind of bum around places in the mountains there. It’s ready-made for a car trip. Our big trip is to Idaho and on to Washington state. Frances has a lot of her family up in Boise, so we’ll be visiting there. Plenty of room where the dogs can run around and have a good time there. I was hoping we could get to Santa Fe this year, but the driver said that was going to be too much driving for her. So I saluted and said we would keep that for another year. So that’s our summer plans, and I’m busy with the yard and stuff like that. Frances needs a new refrigerator. So that’s about it.
Skip Granger – My next trip is going to be 3-4 floors above where I am now to a rooftop pool. The nice thing about the
Marriott Chateau is that they have two rooftop pools and the one that is directly above us is more adult. I’ve gone every other day to one of the two pools. I was up at the more adult pool yesterday and there were a bunch of, well, let’s put it this way. I said which one of you is the bride, and one of them said, “I am.” I said thank you for bringing your seven lovely bridesmaids in their bikinis. I was down at the other pool yesterday and they had clip boards and everyone was trying to figure out what music they were playing. I got out of the hot tub, as I always do, and they were playing “Come and Go” by the Dell Vikings, and everyone was mystified. I got up again and said to the good looking ladies, that’s “Come and Go” by the Dell Vikings. Everyone looked at me and asked how would you know that. I said you have to be 80 years old.
Our other plans are to go to Portland for a family wedding and we’re going to fly there. We decided we would also go back to California and see a bunch of our friends. I view it as a farewell tour. I don’t know that I want to do it again. California is not the way it was before. Then we’ll go up to see family. I have a nephew who became a very good surgeon, and I’ve gotten him interested in wine. He gave up his surgery and he now owns a vineyard and is growing grapes and making wine. I’m not sure that the family likes that.
The last trip, I hope it’s not the last trip, is the one we’re taking to Lawrence, Kansas. We’ll go back to see friends in Kansas City, then head over to Lawrence for Homecoming at KU. I tried that for several years during Covid and that didn’t work.
David Robinson – Part of my summer will involve the Frank Lloyd Wright house. We just had a nice presentation today, and we are stepping up things with that. The four of us who are docents there are planning to go to the Eisenhower Museum. The museum is supposed to be doing something in honor of Senator Dole. They have a fabulous big stained window of the American flag that is unbelievable. We’re looking forward to that. It’s in Abilene.
Then a trip to California, probably in fall. We’ll spend a week in the Bay Area where I lived for many years and visit friends there. We want to go to wine country, although they say it’s horrible now. They charge forty bucks for a glass of wine. We’ll also go to Yosemite. They say the falls are unbelievable because of all the snow melt this year . Then down to San Diego and see my best friend. She’ll pick me up, and we may go to Las Vegas and see a couple of shows.
Calvin Ross – Most of my summer will be involved with what I call Poppa taxiing around our three grandsons. Their
parents are working, so I’m asked every once in a while to drive the grandsons around. Probably the most anticipated time during the summer will be with what I call “Mystery Events.” The back story to that is when our kids were young, like elementary age and junior high age, I began creating these mystery events. I would think of something that I thought they would all enjoy doing. I would keep it a secret, but tell them what to wear. We would do two or three events a year.
When we were back in Wichita for awhile, for example, a mystery event was an airplane ride. I had a friend who was an executive at Cessna, and the boys, Nancy, and I got into one of the planes he had access to and flew 15 minutes from the Cessna airport to Beaumont, KS. We put down on a dirt runway. There was not another person in sight and the only structure was what looked like an outhouse with a windsock on top. So, my friend turned the plane around to taxi on the county road about a quarter of a mile to the main intersection of Beaumont and came to two stop signs. There was a higher one for airplanes and a lower one for cars. We taxied across the intersection and came to a parking lot of a restaurant. This parking lot had planes on the left and cars on the right. We got out of the plane, went into the restaurant, had eggs and omelettes. We finished breakfast, got back into the plane, taxied back down the county road to the dirt runway and took off to Wichita. That was one of our mystery events.
What I’m doing now is the same thing with our grandsons. I planned an event with our three grandsons who are 9 and 12, and we’re going to the hospital where one of our sons works as an ER physician. He’s going to give us a tour of the hospital and show us his workplace and some of the equipment he uses when we works with emergency patients. Then we’ll probably eat somewhere.
Another mystery event I have in mind for the summer is a pontoon ride. We have some nice TVA lakes around here and on one of them you can rent a pontoon boat. I’m going to do that as a mystery event for the whole family and keep it a secret. We’ll save a certain afternoon, go to Catawba Lake and have a picnic on the pontoon boat.
Linda Soderberg McKay – Marilyn asked whether Linda was dealing with jet lag after returning from France in early June. I 
actually did better going over and coming back than ever before. Jet lag has not been a problem, because I have been getting plenty of rest thanks to an infection that did not respond to antibiotics. I came back and went into the hospital for a few days. I learned about antibodies and treatment of resistant infections, including getting all your medications through a drip, which I’m still doing. But it didn’t ruin my trip one bit. As I shared with you on our last Zoom, I wanted to go to the beaches in Normandy and did. I thought I understood D-Day, but the magnitude was even beyond what I imagined. The French were still so grateful, which surprised me. Then I went to Paris with two of my granddaughters, a wonderful way to visit Paris. After Paris, I visited Mont St. Michel out on the coast of Brittany. For the rest of the summer, I’m trying to figure out what I really want to do. I have an invitation to Nova Scotia that sounds good. But I may be content to stay home until fall, when the weather is better and tourist traffic is less.
Lee Ayres – The one trip we know we will be making is to the San Francisco bay area in August. This will be our first opportunity to
meet our two great-granddaughters. Because of travel restrictions during COVID, we have not been able to see Rosie James and Georgia Ray. David mentioned his plan to visit Yosemite. Getting in there and getting a campsite has been dicey due to flooding. My son was able to get a campsite reservation this week. He and his children will be visiting us today, and we are looking forward to hearing about the spectacular sites in the park. Access to different part of the valley is restricting due to flooding around the Merced River, but otherwise terrific. David – the flooding should not be a problem by the time you arrive in Yosemite. Frankly, due to the season in our lives, our opportunities for visiting with family tend to center around grandchildren, weddings and funerals. Whether that turns out to be none, or one, or two, or three remains to be seen. We are standing by for word on those events, as are many others of us.
Nearly everyone echoed Lee’s observation about grandchildren, weddings, and funerals!
Mert Curtis – Well, I don’t know that I have any big trips even in mind, but I’m always open to suggestions. Tomorrow, I’m going to 
Wichita to see Hamilton with my grandson and stay overnight with him. Saturday, I will drive on to Salina to go to a wedding. At home, I spend about five hours on the lawnmower weekly, mowing the farm. (Diane chimed in, “So do I. And I understand what that’s like!”) Some days when you get off the lawnmower, you think you need to learn how to walk again. Getting the lawn done requires working around the rain, which causes the grass to remain damp until 11 a.m. I’m not complaining about the rain. Coming up, I do have a trip with one of my granddaughters. When she was about three years old, I took the kids to Liberal and then back to Greensburg. My granddaughter’s only memory is that she was too small to go down in the well. What a funny thing to remember. So, my granddaughter, her children and I are going to visit the well this summer while her kids are out of school.
Tom Tatlock – I’m going to Texas to visit 
some good friends. My son Scott lives in Fairfax, Virginia. One of my grandsons is flying to Washington to participate in an 8-week summer program in the DC area, so I am going to Fairfax to spend five nights with Scott and visit with my grandkids. That’s my big plan for the summer.
Fred Elder – (Fred could not participate in this Zoom session, but 
he also left a message to share with you about his summer plans.)
I still plan to hike in Colorado in August. This means doubling down on physical therapy between now and then. Meanwhile, I plan to spend more time with Ardith, my partner in travel and other adventures.
Marilyn Tompkins Bellert – Like Linda, I returned from France earlier this month. We also visited the Normandy beaches. Standing 
at the bottom of Omaha Beach, I could hardly imagine how the Americans ever got up that cliff, as they had to get over so many obstacles while being fired on from three sides. Also like Linda, I was amazed by the scale of the invasion. What a gigantic enterprise that was! We stayed four days in Normandy and really enjoyed visiting the battlefields and museums at our own pace. In July, I am going to the Arctic, spending time in Norway, Greenland and Iceland. We are hoping to see polar bears. Sometimes, the staff on the ship will spot polar bears during the night, so we are instructed to sleep in our long underwear so we can jump into our parkas and boots to dash on deck to see the bears. Since it’s July in the Arctic, there will be light all night long.
In August, my brothers and I are having a family reunion in Overland Park for about 30 of our kids and grandkids. Visiting the WWI Museum in Kansas City is part of our plan. We decided that only seeing each other at weddings and funerals was not enough. Otherwise, I’ll be at home, keeping busy as usual.
Jane Thompson Olson – (Jane is traveling to a funeral today, but sent a note about her summer plans.) We are looking forward to spending the Fourth of July in Salida, Colorado with our little
grandchildren, Claire (8) and Ben (4). Also in July we are taking our Madison grandchildren to Grandparents University at University of Wisconsin. Liam (13) and Etta (10) went last year and loved it. Probably their favorite part was eating in the cafeteria- type dining hall where they could choose anything and as much as they wanted to eat. In August we are going camping with those children and their parents in Iowa. We’re taking our RV and they will be tent camping. In September we will be in Northern Wisconsin on the shores of Lake Superior for an RV rally, a get-together with owners of the same RV as we have.
Last Words
Skip observed that Las Vegas has changed almost completely since he began coming here annually long ago. The group wished Skip and Mary Ann Granger a happy anniversary, their 49th.
Lee – (Marilyn asked whether he had been working at Allensworth this year.) I have not worked there recently, but offered assistance as they try to figure out how to respond to flooding. I was gratified to see that stormwater management is now of interest to the community. Allensworth is an historic Black community, built originally by a Black Civil War Veteran who was born into slavery. It is a state historical site. Having now attracted the attention of Gov. Newsom and President Biden, Allensworth is receiving some of the funding it needs to survive and thrive.
Calvin – in addition to providing taxi service for my grandchildren and going on some mystery events, my wife and I expect to travel to Asheville, NC, not far away, to stay in a favorite resort and visit the Biltmore home. We enjoy Asheville.
David – I would just like to say that I have really enjoyed reconnecting – and connecting – with my 1960 classmates. It has been really enjoyable and I thank everybody for participating.
Skip – Our summers have changed because of COVID. We always used to travel north in the summer, but not now.
Dan – I am struck by the variety of experiences we have heard about in the last hour. It’s been exciting to hear what you all are doing. Who knew that this is how we would turn out? Who knew where all we would go?
Diane – You may be interested to know that Johnny Stevens’ grandson Sam is playing in the U.S. Open starting this weekend.
Glenna – My best experience of the summer so far is that I avoided heart surgery. A hospital team recommended that I have an implant to deal with serious A-fib. I was unenthused. My cardiologist disagreed with the hospital team, so I happily went home.
Marilyn and Diane asked that people in the Zoom session to write about their plans and expand them into stories for the website. There were quite a few good stories today, not all of which are included in this summary.
Join us on July 20 at 2 p.m. Wichita time for the next session of Zooming with the Aces.
