Labor Day on the water, 2026

On Labor Day Monday, I got up early and found my way to the 24-hour gym in Dennison, where I worked out and then walked back in the early light. By the time I had showered and dressed, breakfast had been delivered. We ate out on the patio and then relaxed on the lower bunk/daybed until it was time to go to lunch. We again had to be flexible but managed to find a Mexican place that was both open on the holiday and served really excellent food (El Rey). The original plan had been to check out Uhrichsville's municipal water park, but online research before we left showed that it had opened late and closed early; a Facebook post referenced human feces on the water slide. Hard pass. Instead we drove to Atwood Lake Park Beach. We had worn our bathing suits, but the air temperature was a little lower than ideal for swimming, so we read / dozed / watched the scenery around us. It was perfect. 

For dinner we drove into New Philadelphia, where we watched sports while we ate at Broadway Brewhouse, then took a stroll around downtown to enjoy the nice evening and some of the public art.

After another peaceful night alone in our train car, we had an easy morning of working out, showering, packing, brunching at Timi's Cafe, and then driving back to Pittsburgh. I'm glad we made the time for an extended stay, because it was so relaxing to have some real time away from our usual labors.

Retreat to Montreat

Dear Husband and I took a working vacation to Montreat this year. Nestled in the mountains of western North Carolina, not far from Asheville, the town of Montreat is home to Montreat College (blue signs) and a Conference Center (green signs) that hosts events associated with the Presbyterian Church (USA). The campus surrounds "Lake Susan"* and is reached by driving under a stone gateway with two arches that could be interpreted as an "m." The name is a contraction of "Mountain Retreat Association."

This was my first visit to the Presbyterian Association of Musicians Worship & Music Conference, and DH's fourth as the Music Director of Sewickley Presbyterian Church. SPC has been sending a contingent of singers, bell ringers, and hangers-on for almost 4 decades, since his predecessor brought the idea with him from Mississippi. It's a Presbyterian version of the United Methodists' Music and Worship Arts Week at Lake Junaluska (less than an hour west of here!), and the SPCers' favorite moment of every day is happy hour on the back patio before dinner.

Flying out after Sunday morning worship via Charlotte to a recently expanded Asheville Regional Airport, where we rented a car for the week, we arrived juuust as the kick-off worship service was starting in Anderson Auditorium (above). It was truly impressive to hear hundreds of people of all ages singing and praying together. The theme of the scriptures, liturgy, and music for the week was "Who'll Be a Witness?"

We shared a room with twin beds in Assembly Inn (pictured from the other side of Lake Susan, top), the main lodging house with a cafeteria that provided all our meals. DH and I both signed up for sessions like a lecture series on hymns, adult Bible study, intermediate bell ringing (him), and movement in worship (me), but I didn't want to burn a vacation day when the fourth Monday of the month is already scheduled for video visits, so I actually worked 10 hours on Monday with meetings and patient visits (after buying a webcam from Best Buy on our way into town) from the lobby (above) and our room. Having missed the first day, and cognizant of a lengthening summer to-do list of lectures, papers, and a book review, I decided to skip all but one hour of class to catch up with this, that, and the other thing.

In between reading, writing, or emailing from a succession of comfy or charming locations, I attended worship at 11am, ate meals with the group, and joined in the evening activities (below, in order): a comedic operetta based on Cinderella, a tree-themed hymn festival, and a brass band concert played outside for us to enjoy around the lake. The weather was cooler and drier than I had anticipated, mostly 60s in the mornings and 70s in the afternoons, with occasional overnight rain.

Tuesday evening a group of us drove into Black Mountain, parked at the visitor's center with its oversized rocking chair (below), and ate dinner al fresco at the bistro next door. Having left room for dessert, DH and I walked over to Kilwins for ice cream (also famous for its fudge), which we ate while walking around the quaint downtown of shops.

Earlier in the day I had "stimulated the economy" by patronizing the Montreat Store and its upstairs affiliate, The Good Steward. My prize find was a pair of glass bubble earrings by a local artist for only $35. I promptly wore them for my 2-hour drive to Charlotte on Wednesday to surprise my 100-year-old grandmother for lunch. I stopped by my aunt and uncle's house to see them and one of my cousins before battling traffic back in time for dinner.

Thursday and Friday, DH played a handbell voluntary before the services (video above), and Friday the service featured two tall flagpoles with doves at the top (above) that I really liked for bringing movement into worship. Friday at lunchtime we ducked into the Presbyterian Heritage Center in Freeland Hall (pictured below, with the kids' ribbon procession practice session barely visible over the stone wall). The small museum held a variety of exhibits: on the origins of Montreat; a well-done exercise applying critical historical skills to the question of the Mecklenburg Declaration of 1775; and Rev. John Mack Walker, Jr.'s carved wooden sculptures of Biblical characters dressed and posed like Appalachian residents in the 20th century. After lunch I came back to look at the other exhibits and to finish this blogpost in the quiet, air-conditioned library / archive.

The Walk to Emmaus (1961) won an award from the North Carolina Museum of Art for its depiction of mountain people. When classes let out, we bundled two seminarians and all our stuff into the rental car and drove to the airport. We were sad to miss the big closing service / concert Friday evening, but I got scheduled to round with the brand-new hospital interns Saturday morning. May the Spirit of the Lord interrupt my work as often as my work interrupts my leisure. Amen!

*Lake Susan was created in 1910 when the creek was dammed. It is named for the niece, sister, mother, grandmother, and great grandmother of the man who donated the wood. It's now made of stone and has a waterfall that can be enjoyed from a rocking chair or bench on the three decks of the Moore Center, which hosts a cafe (I was made the Duchess of The Huckleberry Cafe on Yelp after checking in only twice!), two shops, and classrooms.

On a Saturday in June

On a Saturday in June, we celebrated and natural and man-made beauty with two activities: a musical nature walk and a museum visit. Tomorrow is the summer solstice, so in the morning we gathered with the East End Song Studio at Nine Mile Creek* Trail to sing, to play movement games and circle dances, and use our imaginations. We set off like treasure hunters with a hand-drawn map. *The other side of the road, leading off the larger parking lot, is the Nine Mile Run Trail--easy to confuse!

I catalogued the different colors we saw: orange, white, periwinkle, and purple flowers; orange and blue butterflies or moths; and dragonflies with electric blue or green bodies. And of course, many shades of green. The creek even smelled like moss--a very green smell.

Jett’s programming appeals to children of all ages, including an elderly man named Pete who was walking the trail and joined in for one of them. Then we had brunch under the trees, and the cool green-ness of it all reminded me of nothing so much as the Central European hygienic habit of “forest bathing,” except we were fully clothed.

Next Dear Husband went to church to play a wedding, and I went home to do this and that. We reunited in the late afternoon at the Frick Museum, where we met a friend who has lived in Pittsburgh for a quarter century and had never been before. Our object was the opening of a traveling exhibition from the Brooklyn Museum of Art on French modernist painters.

Sold as "French Moderns: Matisse / Renoir / Degas," we saw works by Paul Cézanne, Marc Chagall, Camille Corot, Gustave Courbet, Jean-Léon Gérôme, Henri Matisse, Berthe Morisot, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, and Auguste Rodin. Also Gabriele Münter, I think the only female painter, who had lived a couple of years in Koblenz(?), the village our guest is from. The style of the paintings and sculptures included realism, impressionism, post-impressionism, symbolism, Fauvism, cubism, and surrealism, spanning the century from the 1850s to the 1940s. 

Goustave Courbert's The Wave was one of my favorite paintings, because it reminded me of one of my favorite works of glass art, a solid hunk of clear glass that nevertheless gave the feeling of movement.

I feel as though I have seen a similar vita in Frick Park, with a high path overlooking a tree-filled valley and buildings in the distance.

This one was large and stunning in person. The fact that you can tell the artist painted her left arm multiple times to get the angle right gives the painting a sense of movement.

I thought the curator(s) had done an excellent job choosing and staging the works so that we could appreciate multiple landscapes together, portraits (backlit peasants in fields, humble figures rich and poor, full-length middle-class icons), still lifes (including a painting of a basket of freshly caught fish, still bloody from having the hooks removed), and another set of portraits they entitled “Bodies” that mostly consisted of nude female bathers. 

Left: a Cardinal smelling flowers--the level of detail without visible brushstrokes was captivating.

Right: The Philosopher. reading a newspaper. He was displayed amid bathing women. I think the only other nude male was a half-life-sized bronze by Rodin made after the Franco-Prussian War.

As a historian, I find it valuable to be familiar with the culture of the time that I study, and attending an exhibit such as this helps me recalibrate my mental timeline of. I/We? have a tendency to think of modernity coming with the world wars in the 20th century, but artists were already challenging norms and perceptions in the second half of the 19th century. 

Before the museum closed, we sped through a couple of the free, permanent-collection galleries, although these are updated with some regularity. For instance, I don't remember seeing this peeved St. Catherine of Sienna with her  tortured expression before.

I was tickled by the juxtaposition of the painted wig on the left and the photographed "wig" of shaving cream on the artist's daughter on the right.

Magnificent composition of the painter's studio, in front of a room filled with ceramics:

Then we dodged the raindrops back to our cars and reconvened at a local French restaurant to eat and catch up. It was a wonderful way to celebrate the midpoint of the year.