People have been up to so many different activities this fall! Keep reading to learn all about it.
Memorial Garden Spruce Up
In early September it was a great day to spruce up the Memorial garden after a year of uncontrolled growth! Julie & Jerry Jose, Linda Greene, Bette & Tom Brattebo, Cameryn Flynn, Don Willingham, Doug Deaton, Tom Mosher, Sue Stiritz and Jean Larson showed up to participate. Together they snipped and pruned and sawed and scrubbed and gathered copious pine cones. They dug and pulled and dead-headed and hunted for sprinkler heads. Special commendation to Doug Deaton and Tom Mosher who schlepped out the pond and scraped the columns of accumulated algae, moss and sludge. They said they had a good time! Tom then finished it off with his handy-dandy electric blower. (If you need a gadget, talk to Tom.)
The Memorial garden never looked better!
Proud Grandparents
Karen Dorn Steele and Richard Steele are proud of their 18 year old grandson Henry Robinson-Dorn, who has just entered college at Baldwin-Wallace University in Berea, Ohio, a picturesque town 20 minutes outside of Cleveland. Henry is a June graduate (and a salutatorian) of the Orange County School of the Arts (OCSA) in Santa Ana, California, a public high school with after-school conservatories that offer training in many creative fields, including music and musical theater. Henry had roles in more than a dozen musicals in high school, culminating with the lead singing role of Pierre in “Natasha, Pierre and the Great Comet of 1812.” He will continue his training at Baldwin-Wallace’s Conservatory of Performing Arts while pursuing a liberal arts education. Cleveland has the second largest theater district in America after Broadway, so he will be immersed in theater while studying and honing his piano skills.
Most recently, Henry Robinson-Dorn of Irvine was among more than 500 first-year students welcomed to the Baldwin Wallace University campus this fall who earned more than $9.4 million in merit scholarships. Robinson-Dorn, majoring in music theater, earned a $20,000 Trustees’ Scholarship based on outstanding academic achievements in high school. BW’s merit scholarships are awarded to full-time students and are renewable for up to four years with good academic and social standing. BW offers a wide range of financial support to its students – more than $53.8 million for the 2025–2026 academic year.
A 55th High School Reunion
Nancy Avery shares her recent class reunion:
This year, I went to my 55th high school reunion. I can still picture myself years ago in small-town Cumberland, Wisconsin watching neighbors gather for their 55th reunion and thinking, “They’re so old.” Now here I am — on the other side of that thought — realizing that time has a way of catching up gently but steadily. It’s funny how the years sneak by, transforming the faces in our yearbook into the people we are today, each with stories that stretch far beyond the walls of our old school.
The reunion wasn’t just about looking back; it was about recognizing how far we’ve all come. There was laughter, shared memories, a few tears, and the quiet acknowledgment that we’re part of something bigger than ourselves—a shared history. Age has softened some edges and deepened our appreciation. What once felt like “old” now feels like a gift: the gift of still being here, together, remembering where it all began. I was blessed to grow up on an island joined to the outside with man made bridges, and the relationships we shared were strong, even after all these years.
A Knitting Tour of Iceland
Our church Operations Assistant, Michelle Caldwell went on an 8-day knitting tour of Iceland with her mother, Suzanne. They had a great time. There were 11 women in the tour group. All being knitters, it didn’t take long for them to bond over things they love about knitting and things they hate about knitting, like weaving in the ends or purling.
One of the Icelandic tour guides, Bergrose, is a prolific knitter and is a designer. After many years of designing for a large Icelandic yarn company, she has set out on her own and published her first book of designs. It is a book of shawls. They had a knitting workshop every morning to work on their shawls from her book.
They got a tour of a yarn factory, which culminated in one of the women in the group quipping, “I’ll never complain about the cost of yarn again.” They soaked in a natural hot spring after having the most amazing shellfish soup. There was an opportunity to dip into the ocean on that stop as well, which only the bravest (or craziest) souls of the group opted for.
They met a small batch yarn dyer who specializes in natural dyes that were amazingly vibrant and also met a woman who is part of a collective that works to keep the skills of spinning and dying alive. Meeting Rita and Paull, a couple who emigrated to Iceland 60 years ago from Denmark, was definitely a highlight. They are in their 80s living on their small but vibrant farm and still making buttons from antlers and horns and knitting beautiful items by hand. They also went to a farm owned by the family who is considered to be responsible for saving the Icelandic goat from extinction.
Another highlight was helping with the fall roundup and sorting of sheep, called the réttir. Every year the farmers bring their sheep down from the mountains to sort them for overwintering in barns. It is amazingly organized, but the sheep do their best to throw in elements of chaos. Michelle had no idea sheep could jump!
There were friendly Icelandic ponies that were happy to get a scritch on the nose too. Don’t let the farmers hear you call them ponies though, they are Icelandic horses! Some cheeky seals on the coast showed off for their cameras as they walked the coastal trail that takes you by the house of a famous murder in Iceland. The perpetrators were the last people to be executed (in 1830) in Iceland.
Our other gracious guide, Inga, took them to her farmhouse for a morning of knitting followed by a delicious lunch of home cooked lamb stew. It was made with meat from one of her own lambs and the potatoes were dug out of the ground about an hour before they ate.
They stopped at so many yarn stores that Michelle lost count and everyone’s stash grew by leaps and bounds.
A Note from Sue
As we head into Autumn and watch the spectacular change of the color of the leaves I reminisce over the passing of summer. Digging in the soil to plant my carefully chosen annuals, and daily tending to them to hopefully enjoy their beauty that will grace the warm days. Dead heading, watering, pruning, yes, and talking to them. Now their blooms are fading, if not totally gone. I cut and prune back shrubs, gladly doing my final weeding in the flowerbeds. Nature adds her abundance of giving to brighten each day and I continue to take in the wonder of it all.
Sue will be traveling the month of November so there will not be a Wheel of Life. She asks that you email her at sstiritz@yahoo.com and share your family gatherings, joys, fun, remembrances and sorrows and she will write again when she returns. Many have mentioned how they enjoy hearing each others stories in the Wheel of Life. Thank you for sharing.