The visit from Virginia on November 12 is coming to an end. I will touch down in Norfolk, from Las Vegas, on this Monday December 8 at noon.

Would any of my Virginia friends be able to give me a ride on that day, any time after 1 pm, from the airport to Cape Charles?

I am writing this from Eugene, Oregon. My youngest son, Seth, dropped me of yesterday on his way back home to Roseburg, Or. He came to visit me and Lisa, my oldest daughter, in Puyallup, Wa., where I have been her guest since November 13. Three wonderful weeks with family and friends.

On Saturday the 22^nd , I participated in the serving of a Thanksgiving meal at the Tacoma Rescue Mission with “Cate’s Catering” the then new friends I joined in the spring of 2022.

Another highlight was a day in Seattle to visit Fisheries Marine Supply my longtime source to stay afloat, a tour of the sprawling campus of Fred Hutch cancer research institute where Lisa is a director, both located on Lake Union. I joined the tourists with a visit to the Pike Place Market.

The Thanksgiving family dinner was hosted for the first time by the younger generation. My youngest grandchild, Olivia Russell-Barker (1996) hosted the event. She and Drew Barker were married this summer. They met in their high school years. She is an elementary school teacher. They traded their condo in Tacoma with Drew’s grandmother’s home, which happens to be two blocks from where she teaches. The family gathering was a success, she made her entrée with her inherited skills from her mother Rose Marie van Ommen. Who served her last terrestrial Thanksgiving meal in 2018. Her good taste remains preserved.

The song: “The bluest skies you’ve ever seen are in Seattle” were invisible, except for last Sunday when I managed to take this picture of the plague we inherited from our northern neighbor, the Canada Geese, gathering to return to their roosts.

 

 

I was the guest, last night, of Evert and Judy Slijper in Eugene. I befriended Evert in 1972 in Eugene when he worked for U.S. Plywood and I had just started my own wood export business. He came to America in the late sixties on an exchange program of the Dutch Nijenrode Business University and the University of the Puget Sound in Tacoma, Wa. He is an avid sailor and has a connection with my Amsterdam yacht club, de Schinkel, were we met again last September in one of his frequent Holland visits.

I made my annual pilgrimage to my home port parish St. Nicholas in Gig Harbor on my first Sunday of this visit. Many familiar faces from before my long voyage departure, twenty years ago have disappeared and new unfamiliar faces have replaced them. Very few empty pews and a fair number of young families. The other two Sundays I attended the All Saints church in Puyallup where God is alive and well, last Sunday I counted at least 15 catechumen, the majority were young men, the new trend in a reawakening from a long hibernation.

This evening many Dutch children will fill their wooden shoes with straw for the horse of Saint Nicholas in front of the fireplace. The good saint will drop some sweets through the chimney into the “klompen”. In the meantime I have arrived in Las Vegas to visit my oldest son John and his wife Jennifer van den Berg and her two daughters. Jen’s father came to America as a 6 year old with his parents. Before John and Jen married in 2014 I showed her where I have, from my mother’s side, a great-great grandmother Maria van Ommen married in 1829 to a Karel van den Berg. Her reaction: “Oh John, we can’t get married now!”

Tomorrow, December 5^th is the annual remembrance eve of the Bishop from Myra, Turkey, who passed away on December 6^th 343 AD. He was one of the delegates to the Nicene Council in 325 AD where our “Credo” or Confession of Faith was formed and remains proclaimed by most Christian denominations.

In my last blog from November 7 I reported that I was expecting to finish the anti-fouling on “Fleetwood IV”, that is accomplished and I expect to be splashed shortly after arrival. There are a number of chores to be done before I can take off for the warmer Caribbean destinations. Including a trip by water or land to Kinsale, Va. and Grassville, Md.