M is for Memories

 

 

And have I ever got them! We are blessed and lucky. Even with troubles mixed in, we had a fun time and still do, actually. It's great to have cameras, isn't it? The sweet ballerinas are the Big Sisters, and the Little Sisters, well, you can tell who they are. These two pictures are two of my favorite memories.

L is for Lampoon

It's good to live an a country that has freedom of speech because otherwise this love of the lampoon would be dangerous, maybe sinful, and probably part of an underground press. We Americans can still secretly smirk and wink at each other when we happen to look out over our newspapers, which are probably all turned to the comics, but at least it doesn't cost us our heads to indulge in a lampoon of some starchy stuffed shirt who is finally going to be forced out of office.

Goodbye and don't let the door hit you on the way out, Mr. Bush. Cheney, I hope you get what you so richly deserve, which is a REAAAALY bad lobster dinner. tata!



There is nothing that I enjoy more than a good lampoon. The more merciless the better.

K is for Knowledge

Knowledge, at least where I live (in the United States), with it's great library system and mostly great free school system, is an open road that didn't fail me as a seeker of knowledge, even if I didn't get to stick to just the middle. The verges of the road are rich with information as well.

If you survive the trundling mishaps of human nature, and the meanness they have in expressing themselves on your mind and body, you can be filled with a sense of freedom and lightness of spirit that will carry you as far as you want to go in your quest to know all things.

When I was small, armed with the ability to read, I started down this road with all the enthusiasm that a child whose prospects were limited could bring to it. I didn't have much in the way of distractions as TV was not invented yet. Books were my best friends, just as they have been to millions before and since then.

It's been a fine road and full of good things. For that I thank all who have made it possible, either through insight and dedication to the spirit of Love, or those who believed that knowledge should be available to everyone and made laws to create that sort of world. Bless them.

K is for Kitchens

L at the Kitchen table, crafting.

K is for Kitchens. So mundane and practical a topic but still.... Our various kitchens have been so important in the life of my family, as they probably are in any family.

The kitchen at our long time residence used to be more the "heart" of our home. Though, until recently, it was pretty much a hodge-podge, it used to be full of family activities like food preparation, bread making, cooking, baking, and even meal eating, because we had only a tiny eating area for the first 6 years here. Six of us sat around the kitchen table. DH made two 6x10 chunks of wood into booster seats for the little twins.

When the twins were born, shortly after we moved here, DH and I knew we needed more room, and another bathtub! So, after much economy and 6 years later, we remodeled to get just that. There was not enough money for the kitchen but the Great Room took on a new dining room table with eight chairs. It had three leaves and eight chairs! Now, company could come over and we could have dinner parties, and, on the holidays, we could have both sides of the family, too! Yay! Our little kitchen table became smaller, to serve for breakfasts, and as a pie crust rolling, bread kneading, kid's craft, all round workhorse of a table, and still in the kitchen.

In that small area we had a chrome and melamine table and chairs that we bought for $5 from our former landlord, a very kind lady. I wish I still had it! But alas, many years later, it went the way of all things for which there is no room, Off to the Salvation Army to be replaced by something half it's size, which was round.

As the family grew up, "Many hands made light the work" as we made bigger and bigger pans of food to feed our growing girls and ourselves. We made pans of egg rolls, huge stir fries of vegetables and beef or chicken, fried rice, or pizza, tortillas, tacos by the dozen, chili, corn bread, Syrian kibby, hummus, tabooli, and even a few times, delicious time consuming baklava and pastries. My goodness, all this food we have made for our own little army! We even grew mung bean sprouts under the sink, and made cheese with buttermilk - an Indian recipe from Sunset Magazine, and yogurt from another Sunset recipe. It was just brilliant fun!

Kitchens are the best rooms of the house for family gatherings. One bit of family lore is that my mother in law had..has... an incredibly tiny kitchen but somehow all the women would all manage to stuff ourselves into it to talk, laugh and trade stories, while the kids all hung around our feet.


In the old kitchen cupboard, I printed out a poem that I found in a Family Circle Magazine, and it was said to date back to the Great Depression, here it is:

"Thank God for dirty dishes;
They have a tale to tell.
While others may go hungry,
We're eating very well
With home, health, and happiness,
I shouldn't want to fuss;
By the stack of evidence,
God's been very good to us."

K is for Kitchens. Oh how I love this room, in all it's modern beauty, it still remains a kitchen full of memories.

May you enjoy your kitchens as much as I have enjoyed all mine, only one of which I tell you about in this little tale from the way back machine.

J is for Jazz aka Jasper, and LRD

Our Little Brave Heart. He is still plugging along at 12 years and we love him so much. He's a very well traveled dog, but hates snow and he hates the ocean waves.

I've tried and tried to add a video of him playing with his devil (favorite toy since puppyhood), and it just won't stick.. So I will stop trying! lol

Six weeks old and before first haircut

 

Two years old and out camping with our gang

 

Six years old at the Craft Club

 

8 years old and raggimuffin camping in Santa Cruz

 

I is for Imagination

We use Imagination all the time, to project our desires into some future reality, or to create forms that will serve a function in our daily life and our surroundings, perhaps to illustrate our inner feelings for the benefit of others, in a wordless way of combining color and form on paper, or speaking about these feeling so evocatively that they take form in someone else's imagination.

I like little drawing tools found on the web that help people create images from their "imagination" and share them. Here is one I just found:

Imagination Cubed

One of the beauties of Imagination is that we can use it to make a more beautiful and functional life for each other. I'm not sure GE has been at the forefront of such a movement, but we can use their tool anyway. Have fun!

H is for ?

H is for Health, Home, Hell, and Heaven but it's mostly for....
Hope

The old Testament describes Hope as a thief. I can see why this is true, though I like this poem about "Hope", by Emily Dickenson, much better:

Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul,
And sings the tune--without the words,
And never stops at all,

And sweetest in the gale is heard;
And sore must be the storm
That could abash the little bird
That kept so many warm.

I've heard it in the chillest land,
And on the strangest sea;
Yet, never, in extremity,
It asked a crumb of me.

This is the way the whole of nature lives, in a daily renewal that leaves behind what was and lives for the day that has dawned.

I hope (there's that word again!) to learn this completely innocent way of living in the years left to me, years that are fictional at best, but which unfolding to me day by day....As life always has.

Sorry for all the inconvenient spellings! The jeep was hit on the street, by the RV. I'm a little distracted. We are trying to figure out whether this is carma or karma...

G is for Lush and gorgeous Greens

 

 

 

 

The greens of a beautiful yarn, a small surprise of form and color in the garden,all in greens. There are the many, resplendent greens of the Oceans, and of the Tropical Islands,this of Hawaii.

I can never find enough green for my eyes to rest upon. Inside, six rooms of this house are green, and the outside is as well. One last green to come

F is for Freedom

This word is as important as "Family',and "Friends" in my pantheon of "F" words because without it, the enjoyment of both of the former is endangered, as we now see so plainly in our own times. Would that it were not so!

Freedom is a word with many meanings, and this is about it's use as a name for a very special bird. Here is a beautiful story of one lucky American Bald Eaglet, and the people who cared to save her, working day and night to do it.

Her name is Freedom.

Saving a Life

Other words about Freedom ...

"Oh for the wings of a Dove, to fly away and make a new home in the desert."

I've always treasured this quote as one of the most evocative and serene of all biblical references to the freedom we have always seen in the avian world's ability to "fly away."

Real freedom, of the heart, mind, and spirit is rare anywhere in this world. I wish it for you all. Treasure it, as I will also.

May you all, in your lifetime, experience the full expression of the meaning of the word, "Freedom".

E is for Earth, Elegant and Enduring.

 

 

 

 

D is for Daughters

 

 

 

 

In preparing this post I had so much fun going through pictures. The two topmost pictures are of our "Irish Twins", with a little twin being helped by our DD2 to gather Easter eggs at a party at their Auntie's house when they all were young. The next one down is the Twins, brushing their teeth. There's a story about that last picture. That was the night that I found out they were both using the same toothbrush, so they both got brand new ones! Lol, those twins. They shared everything when they were little.

The older I get the richer I feel about having these lovely women in my life. They really are a joy! And, happily, they crochet, quilt, sew and knit, too! All we need is a teleporter. heehee

C is for.....

Credibility

You either have it, are trying for it, or you don't have it by choice.

This isn't a lecture or anything but it's just some thoughts and feelings about what Credibility means to me.

So, here it goes:

If I try to live a life that tells the truth about me, I feel as if I've succeeded in being honest to the world. About the best thing a person can do to make his or her life mean something, in the end, is to be honest about limits, experiences, beliefs, and anything else that might cause one's credibility to be called into question.

To live for the truth and be an honest person, both with others and with oneself, takes a lot of self examination and humility. This does not mean that one must "tell all", but that one can not mislead others in a quest either for approval or for friendship. Nor can one mislead one's self, by ignoring personal faults and, we must face this, outright lies we've told.

I think that I must always strive to see things through someone else's eyes, sort of as a reflection of the affect that I might be having on them. It's always been worth the effort. I'm just going to stay out of the line of fire if they come gunning for me with their versions, I suppose. We're talking Politics here, and friendship as well, even Motherhood, but those insights usually come much too late in life to benefit anyone but the grandchildren. :)

Be Well my friends. Thanks for reading...

B is for Brother

My little brother, the survivor. He's my Brave Rifle. He's been through a whole lot of stuff. I'm just glad that he was injured so badly that he didn't go to Viet Nam, where he was headed when his knee blew out from under him. So many of our friends went and didn't come back, or came back so messed up. Everyone knows about Viet Nam. Nothing more needs to be said.

He's over 60 now and still has those dimples and sparkling star like eyes. We've been pals for a long, long time.

A is for Airplane

I love them, flat out adore Airplanes. And the pilots. Click here for why you should Hug those pilots! And there's even an airplane gas station, from the "Old Gas Stations" picture collection.

ABC=P?

P is for Psychotic. Well, yes, a little of that, too, but Pink is much nicer to talk about. And, I like it very much, this pastel bit of Love.

So. P is for Pink!

Let's see. Without Pink we would have only red. Red is a very strong color, and it's not at all Cuddly. I don't like it in big amounts, only in little heart shapes. Pink gives us an alternative. Softness and something to wave in the face of the Bull (men) and make them sigh, or maybe even Puke, but at least they laugh at us as silly women and leave us the hell alone. It's all in a Psychotic's strategy, Yes?

So I'm in favor of Pink. I have no pink stones handy but there are a few Pinks that I may have used before... Here's a few all in one place now, to make a statement!

Pink!

Lovely Magnolias from a Friend!

Carnations!

Pink!

And one for the road....

Pink!

In my life, Q is for Quilting

Quilt making, actually the patchwork part, is kind of magical, almost like re-creating the brecciated designs in agates and jaspers. Quilting was how I thought I'd be spending most of the time after retirement, but rockhounding took over a large part of my time long before then. You see, I wanted to learn how to make the newer forms of jewelry that rockhounding threw into my path. So, we joined three Gem and Mineral clubs which promoted the sport, and the art, of collecting field trips and Lapidary. As a consequence, the time for quilting evaporated. Poof!

As aging rockhounds gave up the hobby, DH and I went to the backyard sales and gathered up their cast off equipment, rough and slabs of agates and jaspers, fancy small grained rocks like dumorturite and lapiz lazuli, anything that was colorful, hard, cutable and took a great polish. From this we are building a rock shop of our own. A corner of the garage for noisy saws and grinders.

Quilting sat languishing in drawers, totes and closets. I quit going to fabric sales over time. I quit making any clothing for DH or myself. I started filling up empty plastic restaurant tubs and kitty litter buckets with rocks and slabs from Quartzsite and Tucson, Summer rock shows of various clubs. Many rock shows later, and after collecting at least 1000 lbs of various rocks, I'm starting out again in quilting. It will all restart with the batik quilt for a grand niece. She's a real live doll, and she's been waiting far too long for her very own special quilt.

R is for Round......

In my life, R is for Round. Round is my favorite shape, and in this must be included spherical things. It's true we live in a three dimensional world, though what seems to strike our eye, first, is the usual perfect roundness of anything spherical. I love polka dots and silver dollar pancakes, and the buckeye that my grandfather made into a necklace for me when I was a child.

Happily for lovers of Round, it's all over nature, from the shape of most animals eyes, and the center of daisies and sunflowers, to my favorite round thing in the sky, which is probably everyone else's, the lovely, graceful moon, moving in it's arc above us. The Oceans and other earthly bodies of water have a few truly round (spherical) things in them. One is the Sunfish, though it's only almost round, and the truly round, bubbles, generally spherical if floating freely.

Ah Sunfish! My mother and I were visiting her parents the summer I was four years old. Grandpa took all the grand kids fishing one day at a lake. The first fish I ever caught was during that fishing trip, and it was a freshwater sunfish. I can still see the colors and shape of my beautiful little fish. I carried it all the way home in my hands, on grandpa's burlap bag, because no amount of gentle coaxing could convince me to put it inside the basket with the other fish. I didn't know it was already dead. Perhaps when I found out it wasn't going to live in our very own pond on the farm was when I decided I didn't want to eat fish.

As I got older, I started eating fish again, but I still don't really like to. I do like to look at them, live and swimming, whenever I can. They have such beautiful round eyes! We go to aquariums where ever we visit, and have a really beautiful one near us, called the Birch Aquarium. Perhaps you've been there?

Another favorite round thing is the round or, shall I say, spherical rocks I'm on the look out for. There are so few! I will take a picture of an almost completely round Geode and post it. It's the roundest one I've ever seen and I really don't even want to cut it in half! I've not found a beach cobble yet, in years of looking, that is truly round. Someday, I will look down, and there it will be, right at my feet.

So, celebrate the Round! It's a lovely thing to look for everyday, and you can almost always find it!

S is for Sisters.....

Long before I came to the understanding that all women were sisters in the spirit, my baby sister was born, unique, tiny and perfect. She’s been a joy in my life, and was more like my own daughter than a little sister, since she was born nine and a half years later than I, and at a time when our mother was careworn and a little sad.

I was delighted to have a little sister. My youngest brother was very ill, and my next oldest brother was a little bit of a pain, though we loved each other and watched out for each other, we still had a sort of an adversarial role in each other’s lives. We also had a common enemy, our father,which was the real glue in our relationship. We had a natural ally in each other, and in our mother. She did her best to protect us, and keep peace for us. My sister was a baby, and I was very happy to attend to her, make her laugh, give her a bottle and learn all about the arts of motherhood.

My little sister entered this world of Fierce Dragon versus Villagers-Huddling-Together at a time that would put her at the end of the line of potential victims. She fit herself in by being a quiet, stay-below-the-radar little girl who liked to play, and the Lord knows, we all knew how to play. My brother and I had to help out on the small family farm, from which we were fed well by the expertise and plant wisdom of our mother, and the fact that Mother was frugal, and canned everything that came out of her gardens if we didn’t eat it fresh. But, we learned to play, too, and everything we ever read about we re-enacted.

There was the dark woods that made monster shapes at night in the moonlight. There was a small river that ran all year and in which were crawdaddies and tiny fish, a sandbar with willows. And, there was the Dragon’s Lair, the small two bedroom strangely constructed outcropping called the “House”. It was not built for human habitation, but for chickens. The Dragon had Skills of the Carpenter, and he began tranforming it into something humans could live in- as long as the authorities were never informed. One thing I can say about Dragon, was that he was a very good carpenter.

The House had a Dutch door, and a dirt floor smoothed over and covering an incredible mixture of said dirt, tar paper, red tiles meant for carrying water around below ground and not as a sub-floor and over all was spread a couple layers of steadfast linoleum. House had a library of huge proportions for a poor family, one whole wall of books that Mother amassed from God knows where, along with the Dragon’s Law books. We had a treasure trove of Classics that smelled only a little bit mildewed.

From our readings we constructed whole worlds for ourselves. We played Pirates, Cowboys, Indians, and lived on Secret Islands and in Submarines. Our Kingdoms where mother was the Queen, though she never played our games, of course were rich and full of riches we brought back from India and the Orient. When I go through my old photos, I remember those days. I still have photos of Mother sitting in an armchair we dragged out onto the lawns. We are bowing, one by one, to her. She was a very gracious Queen.

We grew up, the forest was bulldozed, the little river channelized and the magic all went away. We move away, too, forever, to the base of the far away mountains, and my sister started school. I would still take her to see free movies at my college and other events, because I had the use of a real car. We got away into the mountains, all of us, and had picnics and nature walks. My mother made her gardens and became more and more quiet. She never lost her mind but she didn’t share it with us much, not until she was older and free from the tight grip of Dragon.

I went away to school, got married, and my sister grew up to be the rebel, and finally found her voice. She paid the Dragon back, and he, being old and losing his scales, did nothing much about it. That’s the beauty of being the last born. You can get even with Dragons if you are of a mind to. Now she has a different Dragon to fight and prevail over. I love her so much I wish I could kill this one for her.

T is for Trash, or maybe .. Treasure

Most people probably wouldn't admit this, but I'm not proud. I used to pick through other people's offerings at the curb, and along with weekly browsing at the thrift stores, flea markets, and garage sales, furnished my first home, sometimes with remarkable objects. I once found a lovely framed oil painting of a fishing boat. It's truly amazing what was being let go of in the early sixties. It was a fabulous cast off world out there.

I liken it to the Oregon trail, being just slightly behind all the other folks going West, and having a big empty wagon to fill up. A person would be able to pick up whatever the people on ahead weren't able to haul any farther. This was way WAY before the so called shabby chic business ever was a concept. This was survival with style, grace and aplomb. Most of the people I knew did it because we sure didn't have enough money in those days. Money is an M word. It's hopefully not THE most important M word, but it's really hard to get by without enough of it. But, that's a story for another time.

U is for Umber, Ubiquitous pigment of the Centuries

I am a fan of a much ignored color team. So I'm making a midnight wramble through some silliness about a color of undervalued beauty.

Behold! Umber, in it's glory! Let's celebrate it and all it's close cousins, raw or burnt, Sienna or Ochre, tan or brown.

But mostly Umber. we really couldn't live without it. Much of the earth is gradient shades of umber. Many birds species have some shade of umber on their feathered little bodies. So many animals, including the reptiles, have umber colors on the patterns on their fur and skins, as a disguise from preditors, or to slip unnoticed upon their prey. Wingless neon animals are hardly ever seen these days. Dun colored cows have a claim to practicality as well as to beauty. Holsteins stand out on a dusty hill, but the little Jersey just blends right in.

In the world of art, no old world master could have painted masterpieces without Umber, even "Night Watch" needed it.

I'm happy to be seeing yarn that is made with umber colors running through it, with deep sea blues and lovely almost sea greens trotting right behind. Umber might be the color that gets ignored, or even despised, but it is no less important in the scheme of things. Umber is a serious piece of our contentment, when we think about it correctly. It's a rest for the eyes.