December 2021
Volume 28
Riki and Marcus move on up to the east side
2021 was a milestone year for Riki and Marcus. In April, they moved into a house of their own on the east side of town in the Shepard Boulevard neighborhood. There are no sheep in this neighborhood, but it is quiet and peaceful. Just a month and a half after moving, Riki gave birth to a whopping 9-pound, 10-ounce baby boy whom they named Asa. They were able to take the whole summer getting used to being parents before having to go back to work. In late August, when they did have to return to work they were able to find perhaps the best infant care service in all the world— Dale and Cindy Muckerman’s Countryside Estate. Riki still works for Environmental Dynamics, an international company which specializes in the research, development and application of advanced technology aeration and biological treatment solutions...or, in oth- Asa McGuinn er words, wastewater treatment. Riki works sometimes from home and sometimes from the office. Marcus teaches Government at Hickman High School in Columbia. Columbia Schools returned to in-classroom instruction this year, and Marcus has noted that some students have yet to re-acquire the discipline and social savvy needed for inclass learning. Marcus just recently spent his first night away from his home and family. He went pheasant hunting in South Dakota. On his first night away, Riki was startled awake by a large crashing sound. A china cabinet shelf on which Marcus had stored several rare bottles of bourbon broke, and the bottles came tumbling down. Marcus will At MU Homecoming Parade think twice now about spending the night away from home and about storing liquor in a china cabinet. In addition to learning the new skills needed for home ownership and parenting, Riki and Marcus are making sure to expose Asa to a variety of cultural experiences. The new parents have fond memories of attending unique and weird events in their childhood, and they don’t want Asa to miss out on the fun. So far, Asa has enjoyed a rock concert in the park, watched the MR340 river race from Cooper’s Landing, learned about Missouri history at the Missouri 200 bicentennial exhibit, and watched the Mizzou HomeMerry Christmas coming parade. from Asa
Riki & Marcus work hard to provide Asa with unique cultural experiences
Julie and Tyler enjoy work and continue adventures
When we left off with last year’s newsletter, Julie was working in the Boone County Health Department and Tyler had recently quit working at the University Hospital and was seeking other work. All that has changed.
Tyler now works at SuretyBonds.com as a Customer Care Representative. He now knows all about various types of business and tax bonds, and he reports that his employer works hard to treat both customers and employees the right way.
Julie & Tyler
Julie stuck with the Health Department through the roughest part of the pandemic, but then found the work rather too slow for her taste. She left the Health Department and returned to working at the University’s Thompson Center for Autism where something is always happening.
Julie finished her post-graduate studies and graduated in May with a Master’s Degree in Public Health. (Riki, with just an engineering degree, is now the only one in the family without a post-graduate degree, but we still love her.) Julie and Tyler enjoy all sorts of hobbies. They both like biking and cooking. Julie has been learning how to make pottery. Tyler continues to develop his beer, ale, and mead brewing skills. Tyler began playing disc golf, while Julie searched for the best tree grove to hang a hammock in. Tyler also spent his third Halloween in a row perfecting his Elton John impression – this year, he won his work’s costume contest! They celebrated their one-year wedding anniversary this November by traveling all the way to Omaha, Nebraska. While in the capital of the Cornhusker State, they found a café with the largest board game library in the world. They spent hours at the café, and they didn’t even make a dent in the collection, but they could probably win any board game you throw at them.
Julie and Tyler also enjoy walking on trails in Columbia. On their walks, they saw copperhead snakes, barn owls, a bald eagle, plenty of deer, a swimming muskrat, and even a coyote walking on a trail in the middle of the day. They’re pretty much forest animal whisperers at this point.
Extraordinary bikers
Cindy retires but works as much as ever
Though she is only approximately 39 years old and not even close to Medicare age, Cindy wanted to join Dale in grandbabysitting so she officially retired July 1st from her position as the Hallsville School District Speech-Language Pathologist. The district had to hire a whole company to replace her. They also asked Cindy to do speech-language testing on a part-time basis. The part-time position provides Cindy with wages, health insurance, and a chance to see her former students and friends at school. Both Cindy and Dale are excellent babysitters. Cindy knows how to make Asa laugh by just sweeping the porch with a broom. Asa does not laugh at anyone else’s sweeping technique. Cindy also enjoys taking photos of Asa. Cindy on a ledge in Utah Cindy also volunteers at the Central Missouri Food Bank, assisting people who come in to get food. She likes interacting with the variety of people and notes how appreciative and thankful they are. Cindy’s high school class somehow aged much more rapidly than Cindy. They celebrated a 45 year class reunion (a year late) and Cindy (still 39) joined them. While in Akron, Dale and Cindy enjoyed time with the Bell side of the family.
In his spare time, he enjoys exercising, photography, vegan cooking, book binding, hiking, reading, and painting.
In polar wave attire
Cindy had a bit of luck this summer when she scored tickets to the Roots and Blues festival for half-price by listening to the radio. We got to see Brandi Carlile, Sheryl Crowe, and many other performers at the 3-day music festival. Cindy also had some bad luck this year. She was behind the wheel, working on overcoming her fear of driving on curvy mountain roads as we headed towards the continental divide. The sky got progressively darker, Cindy car shopping and soon the rain turned to hail. The temperature dropped 40 degrees, and all we could see were the lights of the car in front of us. Somehow, Cindy guided us to the other side of the storm safely. (Luckily, we had taken a bathroom break shortly before the storm started, so no change of clothes was needed.) Now Cindy feels like she can drive anywhere. Dale, Cindy, and Julie are enrolled in a major scientific study that is researching cognitive decline. They routinely need to go to the computer and participate in excruciating memory tests concerning oddly drawn shapes. So far their brains have been holding up to the rigorous testing. For their contributions to the two year study, they can earn up to $280 and they also get a free Apple Watch. The watch is used somehow to track their physical regimen and their mental autonomy. All in all it is not so bad being a guinea pig. We hope there is no dissection at the end of the experiment.
Dylan developing many skills
The Registrar’s Office at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill is lucky enough to still have Dylan working for them. He helps manage the database and develops whatever reports are needed to keep the school running efficiently. Lucky for him, he can do a great deal of his work from his own apartment. Dylan building a stone cow fence
The mental abilities of these three are being studied by scientific researchers
Dylan & Ray He is getting better and better at painting. Quite often the subjects of his paintings are farm animals such as chickens, goats and sheep that he knows personally from his work at the Piedmont Farm Animal Refuge. Dylan serves on the board at the Refuge and has learned many skills while working there. He can drive a tractor, do carpentry, electrical work, and more. This year he even helped build a long stone wall that will be used to keep some cows from running off. Dylan and his partner, Ray, spend a lot of time together hiking, watching movies, cooking, etc. Ray works as a social worker with cancer patients and their families. Tractoring This summer Dylan drove to Missouri so he could see his new nephew, Asa. While here, we went hiking. Somehow Dylan and Cindy got separated from Dale, and it took a long time for us to find each other. Even after that we weren’t quite sure where we were at in the Mark Twain National Forest, but we kept walking until we returned to civilization. People who hike with Dale and Cindy need to learn that getting lost is pretty normal.
On the road again
Capital Reef National Park was the only National Park in Utah that Dale and Cindy had never hiked, so we headed for it this summer. On the way we stopped at Goblin Valley State Park. The “Goblins” are rock formations that look like ET or some other space creature. It was fun hiking among them. One of our hopes was to hike in a slot canyon in Utah. There is a famous slot canyon near Goblin Valley, but thunderstorms were predicted the day we visited. Flash flooding in slot canyons is dangerous so the area was closed. The thunderstorm never showed up that day, but we did get to see a dust storm as we drove out of the area.
In Goblin Valley
Capital Reef National Park is in the middle of nowhere and is the least visited of the 5 major National Parks in Utah. We went on many hikes and saw relatively few other hikers on most of the trails. On one trail the only person we encountered was riding a unicycle on the trail! The longest hike we did was to the top of a mesa that was on top of another mesa. Though we have the All Trails app on our phones with downloadable At Laura Ingalls Wilder’s maps and alarms when you wander off the trail, we house in Mansfield, Mo. still managed to get lost. This added a couple of extra miles to the 7-8 mile trail. The final climb from Cook’s Mesa to Meek’s Mesa was a difficult vertical scramble up rocks, but the view from the top was worth it. While at Capital Reef we did find a small slot canyon to explore. We really had to suck in our guts to squeeze through one part, and it was pretty claustrophobic, but hard to get lost in, even for us.
At Puebloan “House on Fire” After Capital Reef we drove south to Natural Bridges National Monument. The hikes to some of the bridges were steep at times but relatively short. We also explored some ancient Pueblo Indian sites. One site was called House on Fire. If you take a picture of it at the right time of day, the rocks look like flames.
Cindy on top of Cassidy Arch in Capitol Reef National Park
We also did a spring break trip earlier in the year which Julie joined us on. We went to Memphis where we saw the Civil Rights Museum (including the hotel where Martin Luther King, Jr. was shot) and Beale Street. We then went to Gulf Shores, Alabama. There is a nice state park there with free bicycles. We took a nice long bike ride and saw a few alligators and an armadillo.
One of out best hikes this year was on the Katy Trail here in Boone County. A polar wave had caused everything to freeze and then let up a bit only to refreeze again. On the next warming trend, we hiked the trail. The Missouri River was clogged full of ice chunks. An old explosives bunker was covered with a blue ice flow and full of huge icicles.
At Lorraine Motel where MLK was shot
Dale continues war against critters
Dale trapped over a half dozen raccoons and several possums this past year that were attacking either our birdfeeder or our garden. He drives them to a special spot 6 miles away to release them. In the summer, he set out the wire trap to catch something that was stealing tomatoes from the garden. One morning, he noticed the trap was shut, and he saw that the culprit was a possum. He had some business in town, so he had to put off relocating the critter. When he returned to the trap, he saw that he had actually trapped about 5 or 6 possums—a mother and several babies which he had not noticed in the morning. He put the trap in the back of our Toyota Rav4 and drove the 6 miles to the releasing area. When he opened the back of the Rav4, he could see only Natural Bridges National one possum in Monument the trap. Even when the possum ran out, he saw only one possum. Either the babies were inside momma’s pouch or they are still roaming around (or playing dead) in our Rav4. Dale’s scars from the removal of his stage 0 melanoma spots have pretty much cleared up, but his urologist finally did a prostrate biopsy and discovered some prostate cancer growing in him. Since Dale is otherwise pretty healthy with a good chance to live a long time, surgery to remove the prostate appears to be the best course of action since it has the best chance of permanently stopping the cancer from spreading. Surgery is scheduled for mid-January. Hopefully everyone will get Covid shots and there won’t be a bunch of Covid patients In old explosives bunker taking up the beds in the hospital. Dale should only have to stay in the hospital for one night, and he is hoping there will be a bed for him. Again this year Dale harvested more than 400 pounds of produce from his garden and his mushroom foraging treks. Tomatoes, peppers, and eggplant were especially bountiful this year. In addition to 27 pounds of regular purple eggplant, we had 24 pounds of white eggplant. White eggplant, a new Burpee product, are the skinny Japanese style of eggplant. It took 157 of those little white eggplants from just three plants to make 24 pounds.