{"id":15625,"date":"2021-08-02T18:40:04","date_gmt":"2021-08-02T22:40:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/?p=15625"},"modified":"2021-08-02T18:40:04","modified_gmt":"2021-08-02T22:40:04","slug":"memoir-of-a-watershed-weekend","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/?p=15625","title":{"rendered":"Memoir of a watershed weekend"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

As I\u2019m sure you know<\/strong> from news reports, I had another birthday this weekend. I keep waiting for someone to yell \u201cWalker is in his 70s! This is ridiculous! Aren\u2019t we going to do something about this?\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

But no one ever does. It\u2019s almost as if the world doesn\u2019t care.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But aside from that, it was a pretty good weekend. The best birthday I can remember in a long time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Got a free meal from a family member, who drove a considerable distance to be with me. That\u2019s appreciated.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Also took advantage of a couple freebies in restaurants I frequent, over the week.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I heard that translation work may be coming this week. And even that my car part might come in (!).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Also a couple other items I don\u2019t feel free to share publicly. One of them was that a big mistake I thought I\u2019d made turned out to not be nearly as big as I thought. Made my crowded interior life a touch roomier than it\u2019s been.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then on Sunday, I drove down to Kenyon for our every-other-year (I can never remember whether the word is \u201cbiennial\u201d or \u201csemi-annual\u201d) family reunion. A bittersweet one.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We held it in Depot Park, next to the municipal swimming pool and across the road from the bare spot where the old Root Beer stand used to be. The weather was beautiful, unusually so for the beginning of August in Minnesota.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Attendance was down. Scheduling conflicts, Covid fears. I don\u2019t know what all. Perhaps the main reason is that the old mainstays, \u201cthe Cousins,\u201d grandchildren of our immigrant patriarch John Walker, have mostly died off now. It\u2019s become a reunion of second and third cousins. And second and third cousins tend to be less invested in one another than their \u201ccousin\u201d parents.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And, of course, all the families are smaller nowadays.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The word around the picnic tables was that this was likely to be the last Walker reunion ever.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There was a small crisis to handle. Cousin Doris, widow of Cousin Jim, had some family history items she needed to pass on, since she\u2019s moving to an apartment. Among them were a lot of family letters \u2013 significance unknown. And my great-grandmother\u2019s wedding dress from 1890. And Great-Aunt Charlotte\u2019s porcelain doll (possibly valuable). Plus four very large photographic portraits, of my great-grandparents and of their individual parents, in couple shots, dating back to the mid-19th<\/sup> Century.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I took it all, except for the doll (fear not; it found a home). I have no place to display the photos, but I\u2019m the family historian, so they go to me. In my basement for now.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I find it poignant and sort of metaphorical that our family heirlooms, such as they are, should end up in the home of a childless man. After me, who knows what will become of them?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I need to put labels on them.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As I\u2019m sure you know from news reports, I had another birthday this weekend. I keep waiting for someone to yell \u201cWalker is in his 70s! This is ridiculous! Aren\u2019t we going to do something about this?\u201d But no one ever does. It\u2019s almost as if the world doesn\u2019t care. But aside from that, it … Continue reading Memoir of a watershed weekend<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[331,946,1565],"class_list":["post-15625","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-birthdays","tag-family-reunions","tag-kenyon-mn"],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15625","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=15625"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15625\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15627,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15625\/revisions\/15627"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=15625"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=15625"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=15625"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}