Latest Articles by Sarah Canice Funke
Anna was successfully initiated in the refreshing deliciousness of a frothy mug from A & W's. Ah, that mug evokes much nostalgia for fencing tournaments.
Frau Schrader and Fraulein Maria...
After catching the final two performances of The Sound of Music starring Anna Funke as the boisterous, impetuous, thoughtful, kind and ever musical Maria, I have to say my sister is tops.
A gang of select few celebrated Evan's 24th birthday by attempting to find some 18 year old scotch at Jacob Wirth. It was tradition, as Evan had been there for his 23rd and I had been for my 26th birthdays. But unfortunately the kitchen was in the final throes of closing as we arrived, so we hunted down the excellent Thai restaurant in the vicinity and made do with Lotus wine instead (an amazing white with nearly no tannic bite).
We attempted to find some scotch at Dorchester's own Blarney Stone, but the world was inside the bar attempting to watch the Celtics win the championship. We didn't get our scotch and the Celtics didn't win. But nevermind, Evan and I managed to finish I'm Not There at my place.
I'm none the wiser regarding meaning of the film, but at least I know that Cate Blanchett did an amazing job.
DC was immensely fun, filled with wandering through Williamsburg, catching a bit of a drums and pipes celebration, monument hopping, Vietnamese food and homemade ice cream.
Let them eat cake.
Get away car. Happily decorated by siblings and Christa.
A line of VanderHarts and Voses.
Tripping through the clovers.
Farewell in roses.
Williamsburg.
Drum Corps.
Stocks.
Dreaming on the Lincoln steps.
As close as I got to actually splashing in the pond...
Korea
For our grandfather, who fought in the Korean War.
Colorado!!
Washington Monument
Me and the White House
Jefferson Watching Over the White House
Reflecting on Vietnam
After whiling away the time with bowling, cat-warming parties, Masterpiece Theater and starting a children's book (shh...no one's allowed to look yet), the week of Absent Evan has passed.
Sarah sent her mother a mother's day present.
The post office worker told Sarah that the packaging was really not up to post office par, but remarked "Oh, I wish I was getting a package like this" and helped to make the address more visible. Sarah and post office worker discussed various titles on the box and post office worker conceded that Sarah's mother truly deserved such laudatory epithets.
Sarah hopes her mother will feel well-wished and warmly appreciated this coming May 11.
This year, for our very first Valentine's, Evan and I had similar ideas.
My card for Evan consisted of a hand-sewn book with little cards, envelopes, scrapbook-y things inside. And watercolor on front:
Evan wrote me a lengthy and very amazing letter. He wrapped it in heavy art stock paper. With watercolor on the front:
And he gave me a hydranga bush:
He was a bit nervous that hydrangeas might mean something terrible, but he need not have worried:
The hydrangea’s blossom in the shape of a globe has long attracted many admirers. Japanese legend has it that the emperor once sent a bouquet of hydrangeas to apologize to the family of a girl he loved, his only recorded apology. This radiant flower has come to symbolize earnestness, and is ideal for communicating any heartfelt emotion, from joy to grief.
Finally, I was worried that having a boyfriend this year might mean that my parents wouldn't send me beautiful flowers. But they came! They came!!!
All in all Valentine's was a beautiful day. When I told my sister that Evan and I watched Standing in the Shadow of MoTown, a documentary on The Funk Brothers, or the musicians who made the MoTown sound, she laughed. No chick flicks for us, I suppose. But we watched Paris Je T'aime last week, so we aren't total nerds. :)
Whilst in Pennsylvania, Evan and
It was good. And I've noticed that Evan's nearly caught up to me in the number of entries again...
*I wish we could eat gargantuan pancakes and chocolate shakes while talking loudly over the jukebox tunes of Frank Sinatra every Friday.
**Especially to see Jeannette working on crafty items as we walked in the door--it was like visiting Stonehenge or something. I'd read about it for so long, it had gained mythical properties.
This whole Thanksgiving holiday I have been offline and really didn't miss a moment of cyberly connection. Where have I been, you might ask?
To Lancaster County, PA. A place where one is awakened in the morning to the sound of horses clip-clopping down the street.
Evan's family is not Amish, but they co-exist with the Amish community. And so I enjoyed my time in Pennsylvania, meeting parents, grandfather, and nine million of Evan's friends whom I liked very much and befriended on Facebook in a valiant effort to keep them all straight.
And so I have this to say for myself:
Other shots from our day in Philly:
Trying to find the Art Museum
still elusive
Rocky?
My foot on stair
The Philadelphia Museum of Art was quite an experience. We saw a few of Evan's American landscapes, a few of my Warhol's, and lots of armor, Medieval art, and Mondrian.
We also saw some Ellsworth Kelly, an artist who seemed to paint in pixels before pixels were even invented...
(a sample of Kelly's work, but not among the pieces we saw):
Well, I'm back in Boston, but Evan is gone all day for a conference. Good thing we took a picture so we wouldn't forget what we looked like...
We look kind of drugged out, but our pupils are big because we are in a basement with not so much natural light.
Taken from the church directory...apparently they don't really know what to do with us...
And here we are behaving (I know, they had to snap the camera quick).
I have extended family in Rancho Santa Fe, Poway, and Escondido. My grandfather already evacuated.
Also, for some reason the comments feature on my blog is acting up....
My sister Christa was born! She's the one with the dayplanner memory: not only can she keep track of what she is doing in her life, but remembers what everyone else is up to, too. Who needs Outlook reminders--to tell Christa is to enter it into the super-computer of her brain. She's the administrative, politics-interested, sci-fi-loving, OC-watching, teen-pop-listening, globally-aware sister in the fam. And so I wish her a happy birthday!
(This day also marks my third anniversary of blogging.)
Weddings are such an efficient way to revisit Chattanooga: everyone you want to see is all at the same place at the same time. And if I missed you this time, I'll be back in November for another go-around. Weddings are the only thing bringing me back to Chattanooga these days. People should get married more often, I always say...
The Kaufmann/Moyle wedding was a success. The bridesmaid dresses, the flowers, the hymns were all tastefully simple yet colorful. Maybe that doesn't make sense, but you really had to be there for the aesthetic treat. Since I completely forgot my camera, I'm looking forward to checking My Friend Flick-kah. Brae was everywhere, putting it all down on film, so I anticipate what will show up in her photostream.
The reception was at the zoo, a brilliant stroke of genius, except that I didn't take advantage of the location till it was too dark to really see much of the animals. But I did partake of the dancing.
And then there was much fraternizing with the 5th Northers and more breaking it down at the Last-Ever-Concert-of-Infradig. The crowd surfing was pretty intense, till the bouncers suggested otherwise. And you don't argue with men in shades.
I had to pack it in around midnight, but the show kept going on and on. Like a hobbit road, really.
...was spent at Rondeau Park with the Moerman clan. We went wading in the eerie lake, although Sarah's younger brothers made sure we got more than our feet wet.
I got Sarah to take a Myers-Briggs personality test, and she came out ENTJ. Although the J was only one percent higher than P on the continuum, the description for ENTP doesn't fit Sarah very well. On the other hand, she started chuckling as she read through the ENTJ profile: "do you mysteriously find yourself in charge of a group and you have no idea how it happened?" So now we must call her the Field Marshall.
Tomorrow I defend my thesis. Then we are planning on watching the Bourne Ultimatum. I will be celebrating (I hope).
I think I have a Canadian accent again. But I totally lost the ability to think in Celsius over the summer.
Sarah & Sarah
Aunt Sarah & Nephew Chris
Super Josh
Waves
...or ten or fifteen, please read this and add a signature. At the very least, if you are a Covenant alumna/us, please read the link Evan gives and be thinking about dear old Alma Mater...
I have to admit this Facebook montage screenshot idea is proving to be rather fun. These shots cover a wide slice of my life (albeit only the last two years), bringing back some good memories: fencing, family, bible study, hiking, formals, soup-and-buns, parties, Niagara Falls, and skating.
Anna celebrated her birthday yesterday with 24 candles on her cake. (You probably thought I was going to say something about a popular TV show, didn't you?)
Using Evan's suggestions for a Facebook screenshot, I bring you a special Anna montage. As you can see, she is quite adventuresome and even a trifle silly. We have fun together: we were roommates her freshman year at Covenant. We still make time for special sister dates. And I will miss her this fall when I live forty bazillion miles away.
This site devoted to passive-aggressive notes reminds me of the various ways in which previous roommates of mine have communicated their desires. In one apartment, the tub drain became clogged, causing the tub to fill with about six inches of slippery water. My personal solution was to put Drain-O on the shopping list, but my roommate's solution was to write the landlord a letter filled with a detailed description of how she nearly broke her neck. In a different living situation, a past roommate would occasionally remark, "We should teach our roommates how to turn off the stove." Since I was the only one absent-minded enough to attempt burning the house down while we all gathered for dinner, the addressee of this general observation was never in doubt. My favorite memory of roommate negotiation, however, is the detailed map of our kitchen cabinets that one ex-graphic designer roommate drew up. Sadly, the less engineerishly gifted roommates never could achieve that Ideal pot arrangement. This same roommate also reminded us that the Britta pitcher was not filled by the water fairies, a revelation that completely crushed my world: I was totally into water fairies that magically refilled the pitcher whenever I wasn't looking.
I enjoyed living with these various people from past lives. And the memories keep me laughing, because who can live anywhere without a sense of humor?
Saturday we witnessed the wedding of a long time family friend. This girl does interior design consulting and her wedding was an aesthetic treat with earthtone colors and styles. And the recessional was a Decemberist song: July, July, appropriately enough. (To continue the Decemberist love, the first dance was After the Bomb.) The wedding reception was fairly informal: very few tables, so the guests mingled and danced. The music was run by request, resulting in a spectrum that covered Benny Goodman to Shakira.
Below are a few pictures that highlight Hallie's style.
The colors were chocolate and lime. The flowers were all greenish and jungle-y looking.
Notice the flip-flops.
Bride & Groom
This is Micah's new friend the Salamander.
Smile, Micah!
Note: we released the salamander back to his home, our pond.
Amanda (Micah's mom): Micah, who helped you find the salamander?
Micah: um...Cwista.
Amanda: What is Christa's last name?
Micah: umm...Cwista....Cwista...Garcia!
Kids are just too cute.
Here are a few more pictures of the week with Evan. We had a croquet party Thursday night with a few of my friends here in Colorado Springs. Stephen kindly played the part of the little brother, sending me off into the distant regions of Out-of-Bounds. I kindly played the part of the older sister and soundly beat him. The weather turned rainy, so everyone except Evan, Stephen, and me retired inside, but not before a good number of them were wearing my dad's brown hoodies (you know, the kind with the business logo on them that you give to all your friends and relatives and employees for advertisement purposes).
Stephen, in the lead
Evan demonstrating PA rules
More croquet
Ruth and Sarah
Brown Hoodies
...one shouldn't listen to Sarah Vaughan's "Every Time We Say Good-bye" after returning from the airport...
The guest room is ready. The hours tick away till this afternoon when this person arrives for a visit.
In the meantime, here's some campy 80s stuff to keep you and me entertained...
In the wake of all the recent engagements, one is tempted to start singing "June is busting out all over," despite the fact that it is already July. But congratulations to Rachel and Paul. Congratulations to Jenna and Collin.
And a little theological tidbit to throw out there. Perhaps it will be controversial; perhaps it will simply be old news. But I mention it anyway: what do folks think about women ghost-writing sermons? For example, a pastor's wife probably proof-reads a good many of her husband's sermons. But what about actually writing the whole thing herself?
A story in pictures...
Today we invited this charming lad
over for a game of the following:
Because this person had never played. He won the first round.
These two got a little competitive, but were eliminated in a freak accident of gravity during the second round.
This person did not win the second round:
But this person did...
The End
Abbie got accepted to med school. We are happy for her.
Med school is in Michigan. She leaves us Tuesday. We are sad.
But we will always be cool. Blue Steel cool.
I've always said that I want to be like Abbie when I grow up.
The Late Greats has compiled a list of Father's Day songs, although most of them are really depressing. Aren't there any good songs about fatherhood? Besides Butterfly Kisses, I mean?
PS I hate to break it to the Late Great blogger, but um...My Heart Belongs to Daddy is NOT a Father's Day song...
Taken from the Washington/Oregon coastline. Extra points for guessing the artists/paintings we are referencing....
...and I can't figure out why Anna has nightmares involving me and youtube...
...don't worry, express permission was asked and granted...although the target audience for this video is definitely family and really close friends...but hey, blogging gives YOU the viewer the power of choice...gone are the days when one never knew if one was going to be pinned to the wall and forced to watch countless hours of home videos in the discomfort of one's not home...
The Funke family broke bread with the Baran family this evening. Rather than go into minute descriptions of the evening's festivities, I will simply show this video, set to one of my favorite M. Ward songs. Simple, down-homey, and maybe a trifle silly--that pretty much sums up our 20-year relationship.
I also have to add that it might have been a mistake to let Stephen borrow my camera for some of the video-ing, but it just adds to the rather "homegrown" quality of the film...
Anna has been attending a swing club at the USAFA and tonight was themed "Sock Hop." Accordingly Anna and I raided my mom's costume bins for suitable outfits....
We were the only ones in poodle skirts, but at least we were together...the guys did the typical "white shirt, rolled pants" look. My mom noted that nobody ever dresses in the vests and Buddy Holly glasses. "Everybody wants to be a Jet," was my conclusion.
Anna: Sarah, aren't you tired yet?
Sarah: No, I have a reserve battery for dancing.
That's how much I love dancing...two hours straight with small breathers only for water and a little conversation. I love dancing so much that I will just make stuff up in the corner if no one has the time to show me the "real" steps. Anna laughed at me trying to do disco to "Fun, Fun, Fun."
The party wasn't all swing and jive: they danced the polka to "Be Our Guest." And some sort of tango to rather dramatic music. I had to dance the tango with Anna. After all, it's about the only dance I remember from the Dr. Partain ballroom days, and Anna knew the same steps that I did.
And the music wasn't all Johnny B. Goode and Great Balls of Fire, either. We got a little Queen and....Destiny's Child? What the heck? But it was all good. I learned how to do the basic Shag and the Swivel. And I got to wear a fedora. So I felt cool for all of five minutes.
The most dramatic moment of the evening was the "dance-off" done to Sing, Sing, Sing. All of us "novices" made a largish circle on the dance floor and two by two, the advanced couples would break in and strut their stuff: doing flips, jumps, and lifts. The only (apparent) rules were that 1) only one couple in the center at a time and 2) the next couple had to enter as soon as the previous couple finished.
I have to say that one leg is more sore than the other (that rock-step). You can always tell a swing master....they walk in circles...
I love finding music that so perfectly captures the video. Yes, I did do a bit of Mickey Mousing, but for the most part, this video makes me smile...
Song: "Beautiful, Beautiful World" (from The Apple Tree, sung by Alan Alda)
Now that I've met you, would you object to never seeing each other again?
So tragic and beautiful all at the same time. Like the Magnolia flowers we found.
Warm weather calls for Sunday hiking. So a few of us answered the call.
Oh to be 19 and reckless again. I came in my own vehicle because I live "down the mountain" already. But the others all piled in the truck. Notice how Jim threw the frisbee right as I captured their suspicious activities on film.
"How Firm a Foundation...."
Some cool ruins. A Canadian house from the 19th century.
Walking over the bridge.
"Who wants to catch the frisbee at the bottom!" says Dan....
"Sarah, going for naked Canadians now, eh?" says Elizabeth. Sarah just blushes.
Elizabeth, profile
Shadows in the creek
My sandaled foot
Corrinne and Sarah
A Two Part Saga, or an Essay in Traditional Tropes
Part the First
Men wander the earth, conquering unexplored territories
Part the Second
Women steal their shoes and soak them in water....
Falls
Dundas Peak, me looking as if I am about to fall over the edge as I take my own picture ("just a little further baaaaaaa......")
The Group: Jim, Corrinne, Jaret, Elizabeth, Leanne, Dan, Wayne, and Conrad
Though others call Conrad "the Hobbit," I personally felt the towel made him look like Mr. Tumnus...
Mia: Don't you hate that?
Vincent: What?
Mia: Uncomfortable silences. Why do we feel it's necessary to yak about b***s*** in order to be comfortable?
Vincent: I don't know. That's a good question.
Mia: That's when you know you've found somebody special. When you can just shut the f*** up for a minute and comfortably enjoy the silence.
~Pulp Fiction
In the midst of packing, I uncovered a long lost letter...the past reminds me of the present.
Dear R-----,
I was re-reading your letter from earlier in May because I was attacking a mound of stuff that had accumulated on my desk. I was about to go out and buy a machete in disgust, when I found your letter and all other activities got put on hold. My desk can hold another 5-10 pounds of paper junk, I'm sure.
Anyway, the line that caught my eye was your concerned warning about my abandoned philosophy papers. Yes, the papers with "Larry King dispenses absolution from sin on CBN" are mine, and yes, Dr. McLelland did say that in class, so I dutifully noted it down. I think T.H. had borrowed my notes and returned them after I packed or something like that. If you'd care to benefit from Dr. M's sage wisdom, feel free to peruse the papers. However, I can't promise that the Tractatus will be rapid reading. Better stick with something light such as Moore's Arguments Against Idealism (or something creative like that).
And then comments about the upcoming GRE. My goodness this was a while ago...
one of the advantages of having out-of-town guests is that you are prompted to go do things that you never get around to doing by yourself. so yesterday, walking downtown in the beautiful sunshine that came to us instead of the snow, evan noticed a trendy asian (japanese?) restaurant that advertised fruit yogurt drinks on its front door. so we went inside and got some. we were the only non-asians inside. as we sat waiting for our drinks, we noticed the scripture verses on the wall. and in the corner was a large mural depicting a cross spanning a fiery crevice and stretching upwards to heaven. perhaps campy if found in a church, but a moment of color and life in the midst of a dingy downtown.
the drinks, which really didn't taste yogurty, were fruit-filled refreshing, passion fruit and orange. The lids were like saran-wrap, printed with roundish cartoon characters and beautiful (japanese?) script. the straw pierced the plastic wherever you decided. no limitations due to pre-ordained holes, as in the lids that prevent hot coffee from spilling on western civilization.
the sunshine liquid cooled throats parched by sunshine skies.
So, if you haven't figured it out already from the somewhat random previous entry, Evan is here visiting from Boston. He is getting the true Dutch-Canadian experience by staying with a bunch of Redeemer fourth year students, half of whom are named Jon.
Anyway, I let him use my computer to check his email and he hacked into my blog. In the interests of preventing people from thinking I was a complete schizophrenic, I made him link his own blog as a clue to what happened.
The weather here has been amazing. The forecast was for snow and rain and we have had brilliant sunshine yesterday and today.
I have decided that one of the things I am not gifted at in this life (besides parking) is taking self-portraits. But this one turned out okay, by which I mean, we both ended up in the picture.
...just for one night, to send me to Covenant...dang it. Covenant always puts on the best plays. And I want to go see that.
"So, like, do you guys call them Zed Zed Top??"*
~Ashley the American
*Provoked by the Canadian insistence on pronouncing "zee" as "zed"
The hilarious thing was that the other girls in the car had no idea who ZZ Top was, but I nearly drove off the road in laughter.
I tried to sing this White Stripes song for Ashley, since her last name is Rattner, and there are some that know her as "The Ratt." However, it is harder to sing than you might imagine...I think I did a better job pulling off the guitar part...
White Stripes: I Think I Smell A Rat
Ashley and I decided that we were the same person because
1) We both like Radiohead
2) We are both American
3) We both play the ukelele (sort of)
4) We both fence
5) We both have llamas
6) We were both president of our 4-H club
We could really be the yin-yang of the same basic personality: she is the loud me. Or I am the quiet her.
Her parents were Dead Heads. Her goal in life is to see Guster in concert more times than her parents saw the Deads. She is only halfway there yet.
There are quite a few Americans in Rehoboth's Young Adults bible study. There's Kimber-I'm-from-Michigan-and-hunt-bears, there's Ashley-let's-hang-david-bowie-pictures-on-the-wall-with-the-scripture-verses-and-oh-by-the-way-I'm-from-Richmond, and then there's me-and-yes-I-do-know-the-capital-of-Canada-now. Even the Sarah twin is half American. So the Stars and Stripes are adequately represented in the frigid north.
But here are a few pictures of the Dutch-Canadianness that forms the bulk of my social life north-of-the-border.
Kimber-who-took-these-pictures-and-put-them-on-facebook says "It's interesting that when I tag Sarah and Sarah, all I have to type in is Fun and Moe, and it tags them..." All I can say is that we are just Moe' Fun than you know what to do with...
Ashley-I-kill-bunnies-because-I'm-an-epeeist-and-not-a-foilist
Isaac-I'm-an-irrepressibly-enthusiastic-philosophy-first-year-student
Moe-Fun-on-a-couch-
probably-talking-about-Neerlandia-with-
William-I-only-listen-to-music-composed-
before-the-French-Revolution-destroyed-Western-Civilization-:)
Crazy Yanks: Kimber and Ashley are making Nancy spill her pie.
Rebecca-I'm-a-dignified-school-teacher
Amanda and Corinne: Dutch smiles...
Cute couple: Corinne's younger sister Elizabeth and boyfriend Arend
Only in Canada would the foosball tables actually be hockey...Jim and Jon take each other on.
Michelle, my belle (right).
Do you ever get the urge to sing Beatles songs at people whenever you see them? I do. But only for people named Rita, Nancy, Julia, Michelle, or Strawberry Fields.
Since Abbie is a cool science teacher, she has been attending the Space Symposium being held this week at the Broadmoor Hotel. So she invited me to see a private screening of The Shadow of the Moon, which is a documentary of the US space race, with tons of original footage and interviews from the nine men who have walked on the moon.
The film was in the Broadmoor's little cinema. And...wait for it....Buzz Aldrin introduced the film! He was the second person to walk on the moon, after Neil Armstrong. In the documentary, he explains why footage of his descent shows him pausing on the ladder before he hops down onto the moon's surface: "I was relieving myself."
So, Abbie and I laughed afterwards, we just saw the first person to pee on the moon. I have to say that everything exciting in my life has happened because of Abbie. Because of her, I have a picture of me and Matt Friedberger. Because of her, I shook Lee Ranaldo's hand. And now, because of Abbie, I have seen the first man to pee on the moon. What excitement.
I also have to say that I find coffee shops that play music to be horribly distracting. Especially when I get the distinct impression that Neil Young is singing Knives Out, but I don't want to tune out the person I am talking to so I am left in a daze of confusion, punctuated intermittently by vague snatches of Postal Service and The New Pornographers. I just don't multi-task very well.
Jon, aka Cochepa, if you are reading blogs again because you are back in the states....
Welcome Home!!!
Thanks for your seven months of service in Iraq. We are thankful you are back safely. 
It's funny how messaging systems are geographic for me. The CoSpgs have AIM, the Covenant people have Google Talk, and the Canadians all have MSN...
Of course there are those rare few like Carrie who have all three...
Philip, currently doing mission work in Serbia with Campus Crusade, sent me a video of his trip to Spain. Or rather he sent me a video of his impression of flamenco dancing th
