honickerfamily: 08.04

Ben Garner's pictures

These are on our family photo website: https://home.comcast.net/~swanpondfarm/oldpics6.htm

Tennessee road

Our boys

This summer, the Brothers Honicker, Myles, Nic, and Conrad (father, Cliff; mother, Jackie) are doing a variety of interesting things. We also have one report from their cousin, Weston father, Russ; mother, Annie).

Myles is working at UT Medical Center, Cardiovascular Institute as a cardiology cath tech, full time, plus "on call" time, and trying to decide whether to commit to going to medical school. He loves his work and we've been told by the cardiologists he works with that he has a real gift. He got his wisdom teeth out this past month, all four, all impacted. Believe it or not, its now a procedure that takes less than an hour in the oral surgeon's chair, all outpatient, then home with instructions not to eat solid food for 12 hours. Of course, Myles threw caution to the wind and ate ramen noodles ("No chewing, mom!) within 4 hrs.

Nic, aka Beckett, is back with us, if briefly, from his northern adventures. Please see www.beckettadventures.blogspot.com for all the winter and spring photos. His AT journey in 2003 is documented at https://home.comcast.net/~swanpondfarm/trailpics.htm. He has been working at an outfitters shop, Earth Traverse, the same one Myles worked at during college. His big news is that he used money saved from his work this winter to buy a 1992 Ford Ranger pick up truck. He wanted a small manual transmission truck, and got it for $1700, then spent another hundred or so on fixing the brake line (important), before taking it on its inaugeral road trip to go rock climbing at New River Gorge in West Virginia. He intends to leave for New Hampshire at the end of August, and will be teaching again at Stone Environmental School of New England, and then as a naturalist at Highland Center at Crawford Notch, NH during the winter. Did I mention snowboarding too? He's playing an acoustic bass (Epiphone), and reading The Chalice and the Blade.

Conrad is a rising 7th grader, and starts back to school in a couple of weeks at Natures Way Montessori, one of just 200 such Montessori middle school programs across the country. He was a junior counselor at Highlander Center's Children's Justice Camp in July, along with Nic, who was a senior counselor. All the boys have gone to and been counselors at the camp for many years. He has also been very active in the Quaker teen organization called Southern Appalachian Young Friends (SAYF), and is on the Nurturing Committee this year. He's been doing his summer reading: And then there were none... by Agatha Christie tops the list, along with Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain.

We hear from Weston, who usually comes south from Cooperstown for his sojourn at Highlander, that he was a Young Interpreter at the Farmer's Museum this summer, as a blacksmith's apprentice. We can't wait to hear his adventures...

Copying pictures

Some of the photos on this blog are stored on Flickr....you can click on those with your mouse and get a bigger image, then copy or download. The ones you can't click to enlarge are stored on this site: http://www.snapfish.com/share/p=46721091499726184/l=31108618 . You can copy, download or order prints.