Puyallup seniors show how woodcarving keeps them sharp

"One thing we do have is Band Aids." A few of Mom's creations are in the foreground.

My mom Mary is now a local star.  Pierce County News profiled her wood carving class recently in a 4 minute broadcast they titled, "Puyallup seniors show how woodcarving keeps them sharp." That's a pretty clever title. Mom attends the class every Thursday, where participants usually whittle in companionable silence.  They opened up a little for the news reporter and it's a delight.  See the full story on YouTube here.  

Why carve? "It's very relaxing and you can create something."

Getty Villa

Ben poses at the base of the ampitheatre and across from the Getty Villa

Benjamin is home on Spring Break.  He's taking a class on Roman history so it seemed fitting for us to revisit the Getty Villa, built on a hilltop in Malibu to duplicate an ancient Roman villa. The Villa of the Papyri, unearthed in Italy in 1790, was buried under ash in 79 CE when Mount Vesuvius erupted, and has never been fully excavated.  However, it was one of the most luxurious villas in all of Italy and may have been owned by Ceaesar's father-in-law.  The oil baron J. Paul Getty, whose old ranch house sits in the background in the picture above, had been collecting antiquities and wanted to show them off in their proper setting.

The Atrium.  This was the main public room in a Roman house.
Includes it's own "impluvium" where rainwater was collected.  Looks out into the inner courtyard (peristyle).

The Villa is undergoing yet another renovation, so the entire second floor is closed. However, that gave us more time to concentrate on the first floor exhibits (like the Landsdowne Heracles), and attend two docent-led tours.  The second tour highlighted the architecture of the museum.  Did you know that flower petals are painted on the ceiling of the front porch?  That's so visitors will be (figuratively) showered with flowers as they enter the front gate.  All the main doors are in line, so that when all are open, you have a view all the way to the outer court, and the Gulf of Naples. (Or in our case, fog.) Floors and walls are covered in marble in every hue imaginable, and in patterns that would make Escher blush at their complexity.  The villa is itself a work of art, apart from its priceless contents.

Pediatrician extraordinaire - Dr. Lipp

Dr. Lipp and Samuel meet for a final appointment. 

Our boys have been seeing Dr. Lipp since the age of 4 and 7.  He is the type of doctor we read about with nostalgia now.  Dr. Lipp is consistently cheerful, engaged, knowledgeable, and never ever rushed. He was always my favorite doctor, and he wasn't even my doctor.  He always talked the kids through everything. When the kids were younger, he'd pull out his pocket handkerchief and create animals on the fly.  He listened soberly to Benjamin's angst over a hangnail, and told Benjamin the big toenail should always be cut straight, never at an angle. (Good advice for us all.)  So it was a bittersweet day when Samuel went in for his annual physical, having just turned 17, and we learned Dr. Lipp was retiring.  He has no inclination to retire, but his employer says he must go at the age of 75, and though he looks and acts far younger than that, out he goes. He assures us he will stay busy and happy in retirement and get some more fishing in.  All I can say is that we were lucky to have Ben and Sam reach adulthood under Dr. Lipp's excellent care.