Our Church in Arizona

The first trip down here Marie started looking for a church, and guessing every town had a First Presbyterian Church, she did that search on Google -- where else? The web site for First Church in Mesa really caught her attention --- WOW!! What a music program -- check it out.

http://www.fpcmesa.org/music.htm

Well, we drove to the address one afternoon to find how to get there and on the way into the church office we followed a woman who turned out to be JoAnne Throckmorton, previously JoAnne Lancaster. I went to high school with JoAnne's brother, Raymond, and her husband's brother, Bob. Small world --- it happens again.

Again, I digress. Anyway, it turned out the church was about 20 minutes from our place and we quickly got involved in the chancel choir, two bell choirs ( a 3 octave and a 5 octave ), and a small study group. It is such a comfortable congregation and it reminds us of the churches where we grew up with a traditional service, real hymns, and the liturgy of the Southern Presbyterian tradition. We joined as Associate Members which is a designation allowed for long-term visitors who, like us, are members in another Presbyterian Church and do not wish to formally transfer membership.

We have become good friends with the Director of Music and his wife, and we have sung several times in a quartet with them. A typical service has a choir anthem, three congregational hymns, one contemporary praise song with guitars, bass, piano and drums. In addition there is special music of either a solo, duet, quartet, quintet, or instrumental. The bell choirs ( 4 of them ) each play once a month except for the little kids who play twice a year. Mark Ramsey, the Director of Music, has his PhD in organ performance and makes the $0.6MM pipe organ jump. It's easy to see why this church caught Marie's eye.

link to photos

Potty Training - Geezer Style

You will recall I call this place a geezer camp, and with good reason. It's full of geezers and it's like going to camp when you were a kid. The place is full of talented artists who are more than willing to teach others their skills. And to make things easy, the park provides space and equipment in which to learn and use those talents. I was a semi-talented woodworker before coming here, but the shop equipment here is only to be dreamed about in the average home workshop.

So, I get to practice my woodworking skills and have taken classes to pick up a few more in the process. To illustrate the point, I have learned Intarsa, which is the woodworking technique in which art is made with wood. I also learned elementary bowl turning, a skill I had not tried at home due to not owning the jigs necessary for the lathe.

But I digress --- the subject of this posting is supposed to be about potting, something I had never tried before and Marie had done much earlier in life. Her dad was a master potter, a fact to which members of her family can attest by virtue of having many samples of his work.

Because of the family propensity for getting your hands in mud, we went to the pottery room our first winter here and have been potting ever since. The Southwestern Plate shown here was one of Marie's early projects. You can get more detail on this or any other picture by double clicking on the picture to get a full screen view. Pretty good, huh?

She has done several other pieces since that first year and you will find pictures of some of them in the link below. I have done a few things in clay myself, but not to the level of Marie --- it must be in the blood. The facilities of the park have made this opportunity a reality for folks like us. Besides having talented people to teach, the cost of the kilns for firing the clay projects would be prohibitive for most amateur potters, not to mention the huge electric bills for running them.

pottery pictures

Our Southern Home

We started coming to Arizona in the winter of 2005-06 and staying in what I call a Geezer Camp and Marie calls an "over 55 gated resort". It's one of the 50,000+ such resorts in Mesa -- one of Phoenix's many suburbs. Our particular geezer camp has 1500 sites for RV's, taken by large 5th wheels, motor homes, or park model RV's with an added stick-built room which are called, interesting enough, Arizona Rooms. That first winter, we were in our 34 foot 5th wheel trailer and stayed for a little over 4 months. We also decided we liked it enough to come back and live in something larger than the 5th wheel --- duh! If you have ever spent over 4 months in a trailer, you know the feeling. So, we bought the park model. All in all, the house is almost 900 sq ft which is plenty for the two of us. It has a "sitting room" with windows on 3 sides which Marie uses as her studio ( more about that later ), a small eating area that is used for cards and other games, a kitchen, bath, a master bedroom - queen size, and the large Arizona room where we do our relaxing. The Arizona room, with our comfy chairs, is the library ( one 3 shelf bookshelf jam-packed ), the music room ( a killer Sony CD player and about 50-60 CD's ), the home theater ( large Sony TV with DVD player and a double digital recorder ), and a couch hide-a-bed for company. The back of the Arizona room is partitioned into a second bath, laundry facilities, and a small office/studio/workbench for me.

Follow the link below for some extra pictures of the park and our winter home. The name plate hanging on the front porch was made by me in the pottery craft room. That's Phil in the picture for those of you who haven't met him.

to more photos