Subject: Re: Summer plans
Hi, everyone -

What an interesting thread! Like so many, I prefer to stay close to home in the summer, after years of HAVING to go away then because of children's schedules.

So this summer I'm spending 10 July days in Port Townsend, for the Centrum Writer's Conference. In August I'll go as far east as Walla Walla (center of the fabulous Washington wine country, for all you oenophiles) to attend an adult music camp.

Recently I exhumed my flute from its (figurative) mothballs, encouraged by a French horn-playing son to join a local group - the Ballard Sedentary Sousa Band. This is fun - yesterday we participated in Ballard's most important yearly event, the Norwegian Independence Day (Syttende Mai) parade. "Sedentary" is our motto - for this parade we rode on a school bus, windows down, trombones & clarinets pointed out the windows. We seemed to be the only group in the parade that played the Norwegian national anthem, and it was a delight to see people all along the route breaking into song as they heard us strike it up.

The band plays at various area festivals through the summer - another good reason to stay home. (If you're coming to Seattle, be sure to check out Folk Life Festival - Memorial Day Weekend - and Bumbershoot - Labor Day.)

In late September, I go back to Transylvania, (Romania) to our partner church village, where we will celebrate Thanksgiving (Sept. 25) in a Unitarian church that dates from the 1500s. Gail - we have done some dental health education in this village, and always take big bags of new toothbrushes. The village is too small to have its own doctor or dentist, so medical care is difficult, at best.

Julie in Seattle