Paint Party Friday

This photograph has been passed among my brothers and me after our parents died.  Strange how it resurfaced from the family archives only after they had passed.

It is a favorite because our parents looked so happy in the back of that (probably snazzy) old coupe.  Mom looked like a star with her dotted scarf and round dark sunglasses. It was likely taken in 1941 or '42.   Dad's naval hat in upper right sets the tone and time of the photograph while Mom's dress and smile sets the carefree attitude of a day away from problems.

Over the past two summers I have tried to paint a portion of this. It is still on the work desk. Maybe this summer it will be completed.  Or not.

She does not need too much detail; perhaps defining the lips and making the glasses smaller.  Of course the hands need work.  We shall see.

As usual, linking to Paint Party Friday.  Last week there were 123 links!

Another Birthday

It is my personal (ah hem) opinion that anyone over 11 years should not "celebrate" birthdays with a party. Of course, there are exceptions.  A woman of a certain age can, however, enjoy good wishes sent by others.

And boy-oh-boy, did I love the cards and phone calls checking in.  Thank you friends and family, for the sweet remembrances.  Here are a couple of cards to bring out your smiles in this last week of January.

 (cause we cool chicks gotta stick together)

And one from my friend Sharon that said "I think of you...and give thanks"  Ephesians 1:16.  And one from SIL with a little buck toothed dog on it, just like our Libby Sweetpea!

Some pretty silk scarves my daughter sent me:

And a beautiful bouquet of flowers from SIL and brother:

Don't you love it when somebody makes you something?

A pin cushion with heart pins!! The poppy is felted and the leaves and poppies applied with hand stitching.  So sweet, thank you Natalie.

The Mr. cooked up some snow crab for dinner.  It was yummy. And so another year was added to the lifeline. Grateful.

"There is a calmness to a life lived in gratitude, a quiet joy.” ~ Ralph H. Blum

Today is Epiphany

In Christianity, Epiphany refers to the moment that a person believes that Jesus is the son of God. To symbolize this, Western Christian churches generally celebrate Epiphany with the arrival of the three kings at the birthplace of Jesus 12 days after Christmas, or January 6 on the current calendar.

January 6 is also our wedding anniversary, another memorable personal event. This video was made three years ago by my husband for our 20th anniversary. It bears repeating.

Happy Anniversary, Gene.

Good Bye Summer

good bye to our flowers...

goodbye to summer excursions and a trip to see family...

and hello to fall decorations, golden foliage, hot stews, two new tv dramas, ratatouille, apples and autumn fidget pie!

You Knit Me Together in My Mother's Womb

For the Inspiration Avenue Weekly Challenge on "hearts," my brother tried his best to help me use the basics of Photoshop, but I failed miserably.  He even made me a 13 minute tutorial on layers and how to create images by combining pictures together.

It looked easy when he did it on his video, but there were so many intricacies that I could come up with only one half-way presentable image by combining two heart art clips on top of one image. Then I couldn't save the danged thing except to a .pdf file.

 (Mother and daughter in NIC unit, Kentucky, 1970)

"...You created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother's womb. My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place. When I was woven together in the depths of the earth, your eyes saw my unformed body."  (Psalms 139, verse 13, 15, 16)

So there are a couple of clip art hearts on my daughter and me.  My entry...it certainly won't win any awards, but it was valuable in at least learning a few basics on the software of Photoshop.

Join in Art with Heart and show us some of your favorite heart-y inspirations like these:

                                                                               cianellistudios.blogspot.com

                                                                              Palmarin Merges : In the Studio

Girls Scouts: 100 Years and Nostalgia

One hundred years of Girl Scouting and I have lived over half of those years.  Both facts make me ponder.

Over 50 million girls have been Girl Scouts since Juliette Low founded this opportunity and organization for girls to grow and mature into contributing world citizens.  The oath:

I will do my best to be Honest and Fair, Friendly and Helpful,Considerate and Caring, and Responsible for what I say and do, and to respect myself and others, respect authority, use resources wisely, make the world a better place, and be a sister to every Girl Scout

Being a Brownie myself in the '50's and a Girl Scout in the '60's, then going through the years with my daughter Heidy as a Scout through the 80's and 90's leads to this post.

Skirting the controversies of selling cookies door-to-door (which was the first no-no that I recall) and going all the way to transgender scouts, this post focuses on the positive aspects that scouting brought to our family.

Janet Macpherson, (1941-2011) The Girl Scout troop leader for my daughter's years in scouting, had a profound effect on many lives.  Janet was the mother of our younger daughter's best friend Melinda.  She was a good friend and a strong support to our family during difficult times, and Heidy spent many a night at the Macpherson home while I was at Children's Hospital with Julie.

Janet and I also shared many a good book and glass of wine during the years we commiserated over our young families during book club evenings and family dinners.

As families, Janet and we traveled to Washington, DC together to share an historic view of the city and to visit the Smithsonian Museums in the mid '80's.

Then there were Girl Scout activities Janet and I and our daughters shared, including two overnight trips to mountains and one to the Air Force Academy and a long ... very long... weekend in the mountains using three llamas as pack animals for the girls' gear.  And throughout it all, Janet was a good humored role model for all the girls whom she shepherded.

So for all those years in Scouting which brought us together, I am extremely grateful.  Her family, friends, beloved dogs and the bees she kept over the years are all so proud of you.  Janet kept the Girl Scout Promise and Law  close to her heart and acted accordingly.

Thank you, Janet, for your friendship and rest in peace.

Elusive Secret of Happiness

Remembering the good times is so important that researchers in the UK have found a clue that

The elusive secret of happiness could be as simple as remembering the good times and forgetting the regrets, a new university study reported

Valentine's Day, 1997 when daughter Julie and SIL Jack married:

Just look at the smiles on all our faces as Julie sets forth on a new journey with her husband Jack! It brings tears to my eyes remembering that joy.

1997, Jack and Julie enjoying their wedding cake on Valentine's Day after their marriage ceremony

Update: Julie has completed her second round of chemotherapy and had a PET scan yesterday in order to better target radiation that begins next week.  She is happy, upbeat, sweet and a joy to have as a daughter.  (Further links to Julie written by her mama can be found here, here, here, and here.)

Further: For people who look at the past through rose-tinted glasses are happier than those who focus on negative past experiences and regrets, according to a new study published in the journal Personality and Individual Differences.

The study helps explain why personality has such a strong influence on a person's happiness and the findings suggest that people with certain personality traits are happier than others because of the way they think about their past, present and future.

The study examined how peoples' ratings on the "Big Five" personality traits relates to their approach to time and life satisfaction.

The "Big Five" model assesses how extroverted, neurotic, open, conscientious and agreeable a person is, and rates individuals as high or low on each personality trait rather than assigning them a personality type.

"We found that highly extraverted people are happier with their lives because they tend to hold a positive, nostalgic view of the past and are less likely to have negative thoughts and regrets.

Becoming a Pensioner

These articles are worth a look.  I became an early pensioner today, so everything is not all bad.

Pensions in the United States  Thank you, Sisters of Charity, for my pension plan

Study Hints That Statins Might Fight Breast Cancer  (more advances in breast cancer research)

The Upside Benefit for Women of Guaranteed Income in Retirement  (women do live longer than men)

and finally, just for a chuckle, here is one of the cards daughter Julie sent me for my birthday:

Happy Birthday to me, just another old broad :o)  And thank you, Gene, for my new red leather loveseat where I can plot, plan, knit, read, converse, watch tv, and generally thoroughly enjoy my retirement.

Reminiscences from Pearl Harbor Day, 1941

My dad wrote his memoirs about ten years ago, spending many hours at his computer thinking and reminiscing about his past.  My brother captured it all, making a book from his writings.  Dad is now 93 and living in a care center with Alzheimer's, so today he could not tell us anything about his years in the navy or what he recalled about being a test pilot in the 1940's.  But he did write his memoirs when his mind was sharp.

This morning after listening to the news, I thought about when Dad was in the navy and a part of The Greatest Generation.  I wondered if he had written anything about Pearl Harbor Day in 1941, so I looked into his book.  Sure enough, he did write a short piece about what he remembered on Pearl Harbor Day in 1941. Here it is.

On December 7, 1941…

The U. S. Navy accepted me as a candidate to be an Aviation Cadet. I was assigned to the Elimination Base at the Naval Air Station at Dallas. I reported on October 1, 1941, and completed primary flight training. I received orders to report to the N. A. S. Corpus Christi and to a pool of future Aviation Cadets. 

It was Sunday morning, December 7. 1941, after reveille, I dropped from my top bunk and dressed in khaki for a full day ashore in Corpus Christi. Mother and Dad were visiting the Ward Terrells, friends from Junction. I met them for church services and then we visited with Maurine Motley, a distant cousin from Hollis, OK. She was a teacher. We drove around the city and returned to her apartment. A lady came out a door and told us to turn on the car radio for the NEWS! The announcement and description of the Pearl Harbor attack was a shock to us. The sun was low in the sky in Texas but it was morning in Hawaii. 

I returned to the base by bus and was prepared for some drastic changes, but I noticed nothing different. We still drilled, had musters and formations. I remained in the Pool until after Christmas. My orders were to report to Pensacola N.A.S. as an Aviation Cadet.

The Way It Was... Recollections and Reflections of Charles Wilson McCarroll, Jr.

Charles W. McCarroll in 1941

Charles W. McCarroll, 2011

From The Greatest Generation by Tom Brokaw:

These men and women came of age in the Great Depression, when economic despair hovered over the land like a plague. They had watched their parents lose their businesses, their farms, their jobs, their hopes. They had learned to accept a future that played out one day at a time Then, just as there was a glimmer of economic recovery, war exploded across Europe and Asia. When Pearl Harbor made it irrefutably clear that America was not a fortress, this generation was summoned to the parade ground and told to train for war. They left their ranches in Sully County, South Dakota, their jobs on the main street of Americus, Georgia, they gave up their place on the assembly lines in Detroit and in the ranks of Wall Street, they quit school or went from cap and gown directly into uniform. 

They answered the call to save the world from the two most powerful and ruthless military machines ever assembled, instruments of conquest in the hands of fascist maniacs. 

They faced great odds and a late start, but they did not protest. At a time in their lives when their days and nights should have been filled with innocent adventure, love, and the lessons of the workaday world, they were fighting, often hand to hand, in the most primitive conditions possible, across the bloodied landscape of France, Belgium, Italy, Austria. They fought their way up a necklace of South Pacific islands few had ever heard of before and made them a fixed part of American history: islands with names like Iwo Jima, Guadalcanal, Okinawa. They were in the air every day, in skies filled with terror, and they went to sea on hostile waters far removed from the shores of their homeland. 

When the war was over, the men and women who had been involved, in uniform and in civilian capacities, joined in joyous and short-lived celebrations, then immediately began the task of rebuilding their lives and the world they wanted. They were mature beyond their years, tempered by what they had been through, disciplined by their military training and sacrifices. They married in record numbers and gave birth to another distinctive generation, the Baby Boomers. They stayed true to their values of personal responsibility, duty, honor, and faith. 

They were a new kind of army now, moving onto the landscapes of industry, science, art, public policy, all the fields of American life, bringing to them the same passions and discipline that had served them so well during the war. 

They were not perfect. They made mistakes. They allowed McCarthy-ism and racism to go unchallenged for too long. Women of the World War II generation, who had demonstrated so convincingly that they had so much more to offer beyond their traditional work, were the under-pinning for the liberation of their gender, even as many of their husbands resisted the idea. When a new war broke out, many of the veterans initially failed to recognize the differences between their war and the one in Vietnam.

It may be historically premature to judge the greatness of a whole generation, but indisputably, there are common traits that cannot be denied. It is a generation that, by and large, made no demands of homage from those who followed and prospered economically, politically, and culturally because of its sacrifices. It is a generation of towering achievement and modest demeanor, a legacy of their formative years when they were participants in and witness to sacrifices of the highest order.

Rainbow Cake At a Family Picnic

The husband's brother, his daughter and grandson came for a visit. Granny hosted a family party.  You can tell from the pictures that the kids had their pictures taken several times over and had good times.

It was just the right occasion to have a rainbow cake that Cakity on Blogger first featured.

This is her colorful cake:

  Using two white cake mixes, four round pans, three cans of prepared white frosting and food dyes in four colors along with one tsp. vinegar for each dye batch, I came up with this cake, sprinkles courtesy of Michael's.  

The kids liked it.

Breast Cancer Update on Julie

Just an update on Julie to say she will have three tumors removed from her left breast next week.

After several months chemotherapy, the tumors have shrunk enough to facilitate their removal. The largest is one inch, and the smallest is 1/6 of an inch.  A mastectomy is not a viable option for her due to complications from VA shunt tubing that goes to her heart

Then following surgery, Julie will go back on chemotherapy for an undetermined length of time.

She and her husband face many trials, with cancer being the most recent hurdle to wheel through.

From a fellow blogger comes this motivational sign.

  (If you go to her website, you can download the slogan in various formats.)

For sure, Julie and Jack are examples for accomplishing hard things.

Your prayers for her well being are appreciated.

York, South Carolina

The weekend was spent with our daughter and SIL in York, SC.  Julie is feeling just fine, thank you, and is visited at home three times a week by an RN, and less than a dozen times a week by a CNA.  Her CA prognosis is up in the air, as a PET scan will be reviewed by the tumor board this week.  Her chemo has been suspended for a while as her tumors have responded well to the drugs.

We celebrated her birthday with presents, a lunch in Rock Hill, SC and champagne.  This is Julie:

Julie, Jack, Gene and Jack's dad on their porch...very hot and very humid!

Historic York and its ancient cemetery and tombstones gave a glimpse into the past and occupied some of our hot and humid time in the outdoors.  Next time, I will take pencil and paper for rubbings so I can get the oldest dates on the marble that have been obscured by moss and the ravages of weather.

Engraving on the stone above shows that Isabella Davis died in 1834, a consort of the Reverend William C. Davis.  A consort?  That was odd wording, but she would have been born in 1767, so terms were different back then.  (Mrs. Davis would certainly not know what a microwave, airplane, digital clock, battery or the internet was, so why do I think the term "consort" is odd?)

To round out the history of the graveyard, a Civil War veteran's stone:

Kudzu, originally imported from the Orient to prevent soil erosition, is an invasive species in the South, growing a foot a day under optimal conditions.  This picture showing kudzu covering both land and power lines is around the corner from Julie and Jack's house:

\
Historic homes abound in York, SC, population of about 10,000 people.  Here are a few old homes on Congress Avenue:

Now we are home.  The brief interruption in the South did allow one visit to a Pineville, NC yarn shop.  Yes,  the credit card was used for some pettable and pretty fibers at The Yarn Shop by Rainy Day Creations in Pineville.

Texas Road Trip over Holiday

It was time to see family.  So by air and automobile, Texas was the destination.  From Colorado, where our temperatures were in the 40's (F) to Austin with high humidity in the 95+ (F) degree range, it was a definite change of scenery.

From Austin to College Station, from College Station to Waco, from Waco to Austin again: nothing but troubles driving.  I got lost more than a few times, but I surely went past many little cemeteries along the way.  And the scenic drive to College Station was lovely.  It is all in how you look at it. Listening to Mazie Dobbs and Pardonable Lies made the drive time shorter.

NEVER trust the Bing maps! The Bing map was ten exits off just in my first venture out from the airport to Round Rock, Texas to visit the parents at Parkview Meadows where they recently moved. An hour wasted on I 35 just trying to find the correct roads. Grrr.

I took lots of pictures.  Just a few here..

My brother Chuck and sweet SIL Karen McCarroll

Chuck has his own blog that you can reference at this link.  He calls it I'm Not Drinking O'bama's Koolaid, so if you are also in this mind frame, you might get a kick out of his editorial snippets and cartoons displayed.  He  is the brother with all that artistic talent that I previously referenced on this blog post

. 

a picture of their east Texas evening skyline in College Station, TX

Aunt Mary Mays who lives in Waco, TX

Above is an oil painting of Texas bluebonnets that I remember from my earliest childhood that Aunt Mary has in her newly remodeled apartment where she now lives with her grandson and his family.

In all, I got to see both brothers and SIL, one nephew and his darling young family, my father and his wife, my sister, my aunt and various distant cousins, the youngest of whom was six months and an absolute doll.

Remember the blanket knit for him?  (Ravelry reference is on the bottom of the post)
It was good to visit and catch up on family issues.  It was even better getting home.  You know what I mean.

William and Kate: How about their Future?

There are mixed reviews as for the future of William and Kate's life.

Here is China's Report from fortune telling prognosticators: (bleak)

What will they name their children? (Harry, Rose)

Will Princess Diana affect their marriage? (she will)

How much will the wedding cost? ($15 M)

What is the benefit to the UK in monetary terms relating to this union? (620 M pounds...over $100 M)

It is no wonder that Prime Minister David Cameron was thrilled at the news stating that: "This is a great day for our country, a great day for the Royal Family and obviously a great day for Prince William and Kate. As well as this being a great moment for national celebration”

Cha Ching!

When Princess Diane and Prince Charles married thirty years ago, daughter Julie stayed up all night to watch their televised wedding.  I wonder if she will do the same for William and Catherine.