They are fixed mount. But Aldina watches them as if they are alive. Sigrid says Aldina is paying her quiet dog respects to the family infrastructure. Sigrid is right. Aldina is 14 now.
She has been with us since 2011. She knew my parents. She has herded approximately 3,000 quail and four desert tortoises across the upper pasture over the years. She is the most careful working dog I have ever lived with. She also, in her old age, has begun to climb onto the kitchen rug under the dining room table during meals and quietly steal food from anyone whose plate is at her reach height.
Edith calls this behavior Aldina's solar tariff. Aldina is unmoved. Aldina collects her tariff. Some retirements are good for dogs. Edith and Inga drove up for the family Thanksgiving dinner the year after the case closed.
They brought Inga's mother, Astrid Vandermeer, up from Albuquerque to join us. Astrid was 82 and had been a Sandia secretary for 38 years before retiring in 2010. Astrid had not known about the Cunningham case until the Albuquerque Journal article in February. She had read the article three times. She had come to dinner with a small wrapped gift for me.
The gift was a hand-knit wool scarf in deep navy with a small white pattern she had embroidered along the edge. The pattern was a stylized solar panel array. Astrid had spent four months knitting the scarf in evening sessions at her Albuquerque retirement community. She had not told Inga or Edith. She handed me the gift across the kitchen table.
I unwrapped it. I cried for almost a minute. Astrid had said, in her careful Sandia secretary voice, "Otto, my late husband Eldred was an electrical engineer at the Albuquerque utility for 41 years. He retired in 2003. He passed in 2014.
He would have been honored to meet you. He would have been honored by the work you did with the inverter. I wanted to make you something that he would have wanted me to make. I made the scarf for him as much as for you. Thank you for doing the work that he would have done."
I have not been able to wear the scarf in public yet. The scarf is too important to wear in public. The scarf hangs on a cedar peg in the inverter cabinet hallway. I touch it every morning when I check the system logs. Some gifts arrive late.
Some gifts arrive on time. Astrid's scarf was on time. Sigrid finished the intaglio print series for the Museum of Art Show in September. The show opened on the 12th of October to a small Santa Fe opening reception. The reception drew approximately 90 guests.
Edith and Inga drove up from Albuquerque. Maren came from Santa Fe with her husband Otis. Wendell Bouchard came with Renata. The Albuquerque Journal sent a reporter. The show ran four weeks.