Happy New Year

Good bye to the year 2006. Welcome to 2007. I always have high hopes at the beginning of a new year, but I never have concrete wishes for anything specific. It’s just a nebulous feeling that the days to come will bring an ease to the country’s difficulties and to quote Porgy and Bess, hope that “living is easy”.

I make resolutions up the kazoo. I make a list of things I should do and things I might want to do. I jot them down on scrap paper until the list numbers between 10 and 15. It may take a day or two to make the list, but by New Year’s Day, the list is complete and I write them out on a nice sheet of paper and put it in a place where I’ll see it from time to time. I actually keep some of the resolutions.

One resolution I make every year and the one I always keep, is DO SOMETHING I HAVE NEVER DONE BEFORE. It doesn’t have to be world shaking, expensive, extraordinary or conformist but without fanfare and accomplished before the year is over. Among these resolutions I’ve had my ears pierced, raised chickens and sold eggs, took up the violin, passed the FCC exam and became a ham radio operator, and started this blog.

For many years I’ve been content to stay home, read a book and watch the TV coverage of fireworks celebrations around the globe while waiting for the ball to fall in New York. As a child of 8, I remember trying to stay awake but was too sleepy to wait until midnight so Mom served me strawberry Jello with whipped cream and helped me to bed.

The year that I was in the 5th grade, my family was at grandma W’s house on New Year’s Eve. H.O., Paul and George, my uncles who were only several years older than I, wanted to see the New Year in while sledding down the hill near grandma’s house. It was a bitterly cold night; the snow was deep and still falling. Every little while one of us would run back to the house to get warmed up a bit, have some hot cocoa and cookies, and then come running back to have turns with the sleds. George and I often did the runs together; one of us steering the sled and the other, running and pushing as hard as they could then jumping on top of the one steering for the icy two block ride down to the bottom of the hill. I still have a scar on my leg from the run that finished the sledding for that night. George and I slammed head long into the telephone pole at the bottom of the hill! George got a bloody nose and was yelling to beat the band. He was helped up the hill by Paul and H.O. who thought he was badly hurt because of all the blood. They left me behind and I had to limp to the house by myself. My leg had been caught between the sled and the pole and I could hardly walk. George and I chatted on the phone yesterday reminiscing about that night and I still lay a guilt trip on him for steering into the pole.

One New Year’s Eve at the Sky Ranch, when Esther and Vern and my husband and I were newly weds, we played a trick on Mom by pretending to have made her a strong alcoholic drink. We had only mixed 7up and ginger ale but told her it had a splash of whisky. Mom rarely if ever drank anything alcoholic but we convinced her that she might get tipsy. As the clock got closer to midnight, Mom actually began to be light hearted and gay and was laughing a lot. We were certain she was drunk, but later she told us that she was pretending to be high so the joke was on us!

Tomorrow afternoon, January 1st 2007, I plan to attend a ‘virtual’ New Years party on my computer. In ‘A Tale in the Desert’, the internet game I play, the avatars, Shuofthefieryheat, Kalateth, and iziz, are throwing a party for members of their guild to celebrate the finished landscaping of their palace gardens and to commemorate the coming year. Gorgeous flowers and banners decorate the rooms and atriums. Fountains and two obelisks make the palace unique. There will be wine tasting, Hookah smoking and much mingling of avatars. We’ll gossip and exchange wishes for a Happy New Year. A large display of fireworks is planned to anoint 2007 and bring it in with style.

I want to wish all my readers a Happy New Year. May all your wishes and good intentions come to fruition and flourish in peace.

December 23, 2006

It’s Saturday, the eve of Christmas Eve, 2006 and I’m looking forward to Christmas day. This year my holiday spirit culminated in a baking spree. Instead of making Sugar Plums this year, I decided to give presents of old fashioned filled cookies, date bars, rum balls, cranberry bread, two kinds of oatmeal cookies, chocolate chip and peanut butter cookies. Still on the baking list is carrot cake with cream cheese frosting, sugar cookies with colored sugar topping, and cherry pie. If I have any energy left I hope to make a lemon crème pie.

The recipes are the same ones Mom used during the years when I, along with my brothers and sisters were growing up and still at home. My sister, Esther, and I have been reminiscing about past Christmases during our instant messaging chats and she reminded me of the Burnt Sugar Cakes, the Devil’s Food Cakes with Boiled Frosting and the Upside Down Pineapple Cakes and the Coconut Cream Pies Mom used to make. We marvel that they were all baked in a wood/coal burning stove, not a gas or electric stove.

Christmas cards always add to my holiday spirit especially when there is news of a new baby in a favorite cousin’s life. Email photos of those near and dear, sent to celebrate the season, bring memories of past Christmases. TV stories of holiday travel delays remind me of long ago when I tramped thru falling snow with presents to put under the tree.

What fun it is to remember the myriad decorated trees I’ve had over the years. One year, when I lived in California, I returned a tree to the Christmas tree lot, demanding a replacement. I had purchased the tree around supper time when the night air was turning cold and misty with dampness, but the lights strung around the enclosure of the tree lot created an ethereal quality as Christmas music played and people laughed and browsed among the trees. I chose a tall, bushy fir and waited for the helper to nail on a wooden stand then went home to trim it.

After the tree had been decorated, it suddenly fell over, scattering decorations in all directions. I stood the tree up again, but before I could finish putting the ornaments back on the tree, it tipped over again. The stand had been nailed on crookedly and I had no way of fixing it. Never the less, I put the tree in a corner with ornaments hanging only on the front branches. When the tree fell over a third time, I removed the tinsel and other trimmings, put the tree in the car and drove back to the tree lot. I gave the tree back to the helper who had sold it to me and demanded another tree with a good stand. I think I must be the only person in the world who ever returned a Christmas tree!

I already know what my presents are but that doesn’t take away my excitement for Christmas day. I’ll be having a wonderful dinner with my son and hear the voices of loved ones as they phone with glad tidings and wish us good cheer. I wish the same for all my readers. May each of you enjoy the season with joy and tranquility. Perhaps the wish we all have in our hearts, Peace and the end to the war in Iraq will be realized.

Update on Miss Mimi

Miss Mimi is leaving kitten hood behind and becoming a cat ‘teenager’. She’s learning to use her wiles and kittenish charms to get her way. I’m not positive that she knows her name, but I suspect she knows it when it suits her. We are learning and adjusting to each other’s routines. I’m becoming familiar with cat behavior which is both amusing and destructive if one isn’t aware that curiosity is a cat’s middle name.

My first awareness came when I discovered the cord used to charge my cell phone had been chewed in two as well as the wires of the house phone. The cost of replacement and repair was a signal to cat proof wires by wrapping them with Radio Shack tape designed for that purpose. Mimi is still teething but chewing is giving way to other pastimes.

Her curiosity knows no bounds. I often catch her eyeing something she has noticed for the first time. She likes to pounce, stalk and wrestle. She is teaching herself how to catch mice and fight off enemies. Her favorite play is jumping in and out of her cardboard boxes or paper bag, and protecting the toys she has placed in them, then jumping out to claim victory over some imagined prey. In the morning after she eats, she gets hyper and likes to race from room to room checking on all the secret nooks and crannies she has found. She lurks around corners for imagined prey and constantly faces danger in the protection of her toys.

Mimi purrs while she sleeps. She likes to be on my lap especially in the morning while I sip coffee and watch the morning TV news. She snuggles into a crook in my arm and purrs away and sleeps until the news is over. If she’s not on my lap while I’m sitting with my feet on the ottoman, she leans against my legs and relaxes into a purring sleep.

She is constantly aware of where I am and follows me from room to room. If I’m in my bedroom working on the computer, she curls up on the bed and sleeps or grooms her long fur. If the light bothers her while sleeping, she moves to the closet and stretches out in the shadow of my granny dresses.

Mimi has several favorite sleeping places if my lap is not available. The higher the look out spot, the happier she is. The window ledge by far is the one chosen most often, but she also likes the glass table near the TV where I keep all manner of things at my finger tips like the ‘whodunnit’ I’m reading, pencils, cell phone, reading glasses, Kleenex and a small bottle of sanitizer. A chair with a stack of pillows is always a favorite. The other day I found her sleeping in the bathroom sink!

December 7, 2006

On waking this morning, I realized that it was December 7th, the anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor. I wondered if any TV news programs would mention it considering the non-stop coverage of the Baker-Hamilton Iraq study that was announced to the public yesterday. The study is a bi-partisan effort to help the administration find a new course in foreign policy that allows our troops to exit Iraq.

This evening NBC did show a minute of the ceremonies in Pearl Harbor. This will be the last observance since so few veterans are still alive to attend. It took me a few moments to comprehend the meaning of that statement. I don’t think of myself as being in that age group, but of course, I am.

We learned of the attack by the Japanese when Dad went to see who was ringing the door bell. It was a boy I had been dating. He was shouting something about the country being attacked and handed Dad a brace of pheasants. He, his father and brother had been pheasant hunting that morning and on their way home they heard the news on the radio. They stopped by the house only long enough to give us the pheasants and tell us the news. When we heard the shouting, most of the family quickly gathered to see what the commotion was about and we stood there with our mouths open, looking from the boy to the pheasants and tried to make sense of what he was saying. They were in a hurry to get home and tell his family, but we kept him from leaving just long enough to tell us again that an island called Pearl was being bombed.

The minute the boy left, we turned on the radio. None of us had ever heard of Pearl Harbor and the only island we knew about was called Hawaii which was in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Why would anyone bomb that? The news was sketchy at most. After President Franklin D Roosevelt spoke to the nation, the situation was clearer but we had no idea how our lives would change from that point on.

Before Pearl Harbor, when we went to movies, we saw newsreels of the war on the Russian front, the fighting in Spain, the Japanese in China, but the attack on Hawaii caused a wave of patriotism that permeated the very soul of this country and lasted until both Hitler and Japan was defeated.

I got a job in an aircraft company and Mom went to work in an ammunition factory. Family members and school friends began to wear uniforms of various branches of service. Rationing of certain food stuffs and gasoline quickly became the norm. War bonds in various denominations were goals that even small school children aspired to own. Women began to fill jobs held by men who went into the army or navy. Suddenly the depression was over and there were jobs with higher wages than before the war. People moved to cities and states where the jobs were. Hitchhiking was common and people went out of their way to give hikers a ride when possible. WW II changed the country in profound ways. Those days of trust and innocent peace no longer exists.

Today the country is obsessed with salvaging some kind of solution to our involvement in Iraq. We can all see the writing on the wall, but we don’t want to accept the decision that seems most practical, which in my opinion is, declare victory and come home. The Iraq war has already lasted longer than WW II. Since this will be the last time WW II veterans will meet, it won’t be long before Iraq veterans can start commemorating their battles until they are too old and too few. Is it possible this country is destined to have an ensuing batch of veterans taking their place?

Shooting Stars

If the sky is clear tonight, the meteor shower known as the Leonids will be visible. I won’t be able to see them but I’ve seen the shower known as the Delta Aquarids which is visible during July 15th to August 15th, and the shower, Perseids which is seen from July 25th to August 18th.

Shortly after the war when Mom and Dad owned the Sky Ranch on King’s Mountain in California, the family, with the exception of my sister who lived with her husband in New York, lived at the Sky Ranch. My husband and I with our baby son lived in a small cabin on the grounds and a sister and her husband and baby daughter lived in another small building we called the ‘Chuck Wagon. Mom and Dad with my younger brothers lived in the main building.

At the end of the day, we usually gathered at Mom and Dad’s to share our day’s experiences. In the winter time we sat around the huge fireplace, but on summer nights we generally sat outdoors until bed time, enjoying the wonderful fragrance of the trees and the soft mountain air.

The meteor shower usually took us by surprise. One of us would spot a shooting star and make a wish. As they began streaking across the sky, we were filled with wonderment at the display. The night sky would be filled with glowing meteors that continued to delight us for several hours before the stunning display would dwindle to only a few. The showers created evenings of magic for us, and we made secret wishes. During the nights of the annual showers, the beauty was repeated each night. The sight of so many flaming meteors in the sky at the same time was always a thrill.

50 Years

50 years and counting! My brother R and his wife F, who live in California, recently celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary. R has the distinction of being the only one of my brothers and sisters to celebrate this anniversary so far. R and F’s daughter A and her husband N, hosted a dinner party at their home in honor of the occasion. I was unable to attend but A sent photos showing everyone having a great time.

R and F are grandparents to J 14 and W 17. I have never met the boys, but they have winning smiles in the photos. A grows more beautiful as the years pass; she and N are blessed to have such handsome sons.

Being the oldest of eight children, I have memories of each sibling as they joined the family. R, the 7th child, was an adorable blond baby. I often changed his diaper when he was a toddler. Because R was always curious, we children helped Mom keep an eye on him so he wouldn’t get into to trouble.

One day, after school, as I walked into the house, I smelled a strange medicinal odor and the house was unusually quiet. As I walked thru the downstairs rooms I thought it strange that Mom was no where to be found. As I started to push back the sliding wooden doors into one of the rooms, Dad came to the door and told me Dr. Wray was with R; there had been an accident. Before he disappeared back inside the room, he asked me to help keep the smaller children quiet until the Dr. was finished.

We sat quietly at the dining room table and shushed each other as we wondered what kind of accident could have happened. After Dr. Wray left the house, the folks told us what had occurred. Mom was doing the laundry and was washing a load in her new Maytag washing machine. It had an electric wringer that squeezed the water out as the clothes were fed thru the rubber rollers. While she was upstairs gathering dirty clothes, R climbed on a chair and got his arm caught in the wringer. His arm had passed thru the rubber rollers all the way to his shoulder. Rather than stopping, the rollers continued to spin. His screams brought Mom, who quickly released the mechanism, but the damage to his soft baby tissue was severe.

The Dr. came every day to change bandages. R was confined to bed for months. When he was well enough to be out of bed, he had to learn to walk all over again. My sister AM and I often took turns with Mom and Dad holding his hand as he tottered around the room. We had to be careful not to let him fall and hurt his arm. As the wounds healed, we kids often asked him to show us his arm. Gradually the scars began to fade and look less hideous. Eventually, R was able to use his arm as naturally as if there had never been an accident.

R was always eager to join in what ever activity the rest of us were involved in. He lived in the swimming pool in the hot Iowa summers and played in the snow during the cold Iowa winters. When we lived on the asparagus farm, he went to a one room country school. During WWll the family moved to California and settled on the San Francisco Peninsula. R and F also chose to make their home in the vicinity, as has A and N.

The years have passed in a flash but it seems only yesterday I attended R and F’s wedding and reception. It’s nice to know they have prospered, enjoy congenial friends and remain in good health. I congratulate and wish them continued happiness as they begin the next 50 years.

Veteran’s Day

As Mary, my sister-in-law, and I chatted on the phone yesterday, our conversation centered on memories of family and relatives who had fought in American wars. She told me about her father who fought in World War 1. He had been gassed while fighting in the Ardennes. When the gas attack began, he was able to quickly dig a hole under a fallen and decaying tree, crawled in and covered himself as best he could. Later when he thought it safe enough he left the burrow he had made and the first thing he saw was a soldier friend laying near by, killed by the gas. He was taken in by a French family that cared and nursed him for a short time. The family had a small daughter named Bernice and years later, Mary’s father named his first daughter Bernice after the youngster.

Mary, who grew up in Sioux City, Iowa, and I, across the state in Iowa Falls, recalled how we were taught to observe Veteran’s Day. If November 11th was a school day, we were ushered into the assembly hall to stand quietly. When the Principal announced the time as being exactly 11 o’clock, we bowed our heads in total silence for one whole minute. It wasn’t called Veteran’s Day, but Armistice Day. After the silent prayer, students were allowed to go home since school was in session for only half a day.

During WWII my family had members in all services, Army, Navy, Waves, Marines, Air Force and the Merchant Marines. They fought in India, Europe, Germany, France, England, Pacific Islands, and on Atlantic voyages to and from the Soviet Union. War news was constantly on one’s mind. Each time I watch a war movie, I recall memories of anxiety and dread as family and friends waited for war news to be headlined.

Last night I watched the movie Patton on TV. I’ve seen the film many times but last night’s viewing seemed to have romanced the battles for territory as competition for prestige and glory was played out between the ambitious generals, Patton and Montgomery each trying to reach Berlin first. I wondered if jealousy existed between the generals we have in Iraq and if so, how it might be affecting the troops.

To days TV news clips showed impressive ceremonies at Arlington National Cemetery and at the Wall dedicated to those who died in Vietnam. Observances through out the country paid tribute to all the veterans living and dead that have served this country. I was especially moved by a story of a young 15 year old girl who played taps on her bugle during one of the many ceremonies. The 24 notes were played beautifully and perfectly. Afterward she told a reporter she believed those who died fighting for this country were due the honor of a real person playing taps rather than recorded ones.

Miss Mimi

Miss Mimi is a kitten. Her long Persian fur is cream color with dark brown points. Her eyes are blue. She has “come to my house to stay while I wash the cups and saucers and brush the crumbs away.” * Thanks to the Hope Volunteer group, she has been vetted and is ready to be a house cat after being rescued from a degrading future life on the streets, starvation or getting killed by a car.

Miss Mimi is one of 4 kittens born to a calico cat hardly out of kitten hood herself. One day the mother cat appeared in the apartment parking lot during rainy weather and took refuge as best she could. She was obviously in a ‘family way’. Her cries of hunger brought results when ‘B’, a tenant who owned a beautiful dark brown Siamese, took pity on her and put food out for her. Personally, I thought the animal control people should be notified but softer hearts prevailed. Even the landlord thought keeping her around the place to ward off rats and mice was a good idea. ‘B’ named her Suzie Q.

When the kittens, 3 cream colored and 1 black, made their appearance, tenants discussed the future of the mother and the babies. It was decided that spaying was a priority. ‘B’ researched the whys and wherefores and discovered that the Hope Agency would vet the mother and kittens free of charge. I was one of the tenants that chose to adopt a kitten and I chose the alpha female.

Having a pet cat that uses a litter box is a new experience for me. The cats I’ve known have all been indoor/outdoor cats. During the years Dad worked repairing antiques in his wood shop, he often adopted a stray cat that would become his special pet. They would ride on his shoulder half curled around the back of his neck and purr while Dad went about his work.

Miss Mimi has been a house cat for two days and is adjusting nicely to the apartment. Her natural curiosity is leading her to new discoveries. Gone are the trees, shrubs, grass, pavement, bricks and dirt under the building where she hid with the other kittens when people came too close. Now she walks on carpet, is surrounded by television pictures, telephone rings, on and off electric light, pillow cushions, window ledges, and secret dark hiding places behind doors and in closets and most important of all, a litter box. No more little insects to taste or chameleons to catch. Now it’s a ball of yarn, catnip and lots and lots of petting. Time will tell if I own a cat, or if a cat owns me.


* From the poem, Little Orphan Annie by James Whitmore Riley which can be read at the following address: http://www.judyn.trest.com/OrphanAnnie.html

War

Results of War, the threat of War and actual War has lurked in my life for all of my 84 years. From the time I was curious enough to ask ‘what and why’, I’ve heard of War. As a very young child, when I saw men with missing arms or walking with crutches because a leg was missing, I was told they had been in the war. On more than one occasion I saw men without legs sitting on boards similar to the skate boards of today. Being only a few inches above the sidewalk, the men propelled themselves along by pushing with their arms. I never saw them talking to people I knew; they were strangers passing thru town and I never knew from where they came or where they were going.

I have a vivid memory of an ex soldier creating mud sculptures on the river bank under a small bridge. After neighbor children excitedly told of a man making mud figures down by the river, my sister Adeline and I raced to join the crowd watching as the artist created mud soldiers in uniform with guns. The audience whispered appreciative comments about the details of the sculpture as they circled around to get a better view or drop money in a hat. No one asked the man’s name or where he was from. He was another ex- soldier passing thru town.

Adeline and I often visited our Girl Scout leader’s house and saw the photograph of her father in his Army uniform. In the large black and white photo, he stood straight and tall with his gun by his side. The man in the photo was quite different from the man we knew who wore overalls and went to work every day. We were always curious and asked what it had been like when he was in the war. Dad had been too young to fight in the war, but he and his brother showed their patriotism by getting American flag tattoos on their arms. They did so without permission but Grandma and Grandpa A had to accept the ‘fait accompli’.

I was in the third grade when I started reading the newspaper and browsing the photos. A great deal of the news was over my head but I skimmed headlines and read captions under photos. When the war photos of Japan and China began to appear in the paper I studied the pictures with curiosity. When Mom asked me to gather all the old newspapers and bundle them, I took time to sort thru the pages and look at war pictures. I remember asking Mom if she thought we would ever have a war in our own country.

In the lower grades at school we learned about the Civil War. Because Mom came from the North and Dad’s family were Southerners, the drama of freeing the slaves took a prominent place in our imaginations. Our childish perception of the War Between the States came from Abraham Lincoln’s Proclamation Emancipation along with stories of the Underground Railroad and songs like My Darling Nellie Grey.

Comprehension of the Civil War became more profound as we got older. Our family history is deeply rooted in that struggle since we had members fighting on both sides of the conflict. One year, during Dad’s three week vacation, Grandma and Grandpa A. and uncle ‘Bus’ from Middlesboro, Kentucky, took us to see the old family plantation in Virginia. I was 15 years old and in high school at the time. I joined the adults in meandering the grounds and woods while the younger kids headed for a wide creek at the bottom of a small hill. The slave cemetery, enclosed with a wooden railing, was small, only 4 or 5 graves, but it made a big impression on me. Grandma’s father, Caleb, had been born on the place. He had been taken prisoner as a confederate soldier and sent up the Ohio River to a military camp. He later escaped and hid in a cave for three days before getting to safety.

I was still in high school during Italy’s war with Ethiopia and the Spanish Civil War. Volumes have been written about the devouring of Europe by Germany, the attack on Pearl Harbor and the years of WWII. The horrors of war were finally behind us but peace agreements were no sooner signed, than we went to war with Korea, then Vietnam. The first Iraq war was a prelude to the Iraq war we are now embroiled in. The Muslim attack on the World Trade Center in New York was the beginning of our War with Afghanistan which continues as we fight the Iraqis. I would not be at all surprised if there weren’t plans afoot for a war with Iran and another with North Korea. After all these wars, is it any wonder that I have become anti-war?!!

Weather

The weather has always been a topic of conversation; probably because it affects us generally as well as personally. It’s always with us, there’s no getting away from it. You can’t change it. It just IS. Weather comes in cycles and I think about it the same way. It certainly has my attention when warning reports of severe climate changes are due, but I barely acknowledge it when days of pleasant weather continue repeating.

I do take notice of particularly fine days when the air is soft and breezes balmy. I enjoy brisk, cold but sunny days that seduce one into long walks. Fog can be spell binding and mysterious while fresh fallen snow is often a delight.

Floods, cyclones, hurricanes, sand storms, drought and ice storms are the dreaded weather patterns of destruction. I’ve never been in a flood, but I remember how concerned my parents were in 1936 when the Ohio flooded Louisville, Kentucky where Dad’s parents and other family members lived. From Iowa where we lived, we listened intently during each radio broadcast describing the situation. Fortunately, none of the family suffered direct flooding. Later when we visited Grandma and Grandpa A., aunts, uncles and cousins in Louisville, Uncle Alvin showed us water marks on buildings in the flooded area indicating how high the water reached.

Back about the time I was in the 3rd or 4th grade, I woke one morning to find Mom and Dad along with several neighbors looking at Mom’s new ringer washing machine lying on the grass in the back yard. It had been on the back porch, but during the night, a cyclone blew thru the area. The wind took off the porch roof and one of the side walls and pushed the washing machine almost into the neighbor’s yard. Cyclone became a new word in my vocabulary.

I once experienced a sand storm when my daughter and I were driving toward a border crossing on our way to Mexico. The pinging sound of sand against the metal and windshield of the Corvair van I was driving grew louder as the sand got thicker. I had heard stories uncle Chester told of sand pitting the windshield and taking paint off his vehicle, and I worried that it would happen to the van if we continued driving. I looked for a safe place to park the van so the windshield could be pointed in the opposite direction of the blowing sand, but there weren’t any places to pull off the highway. Obscured vision required driving slowly, but eventually we passed thru the sand storm with little damage to either paint or glass.

The drought during the depression certainly helped to give my early years a universality of understanding the human condition. Day after day the sun shone with never a rain cloud in sight. The radio news of weather was anxiously awaited by farmers and town people alike. Newspaper accounts and photos of withering corn and wheat fields, of dirt clouds blotting out the sun and farmers pulling up stakes and leaving behind what they couldn’t strap to their model T fords as they headed west to better climes, are childhood memories still vivid in my mind.

Ice storms are exquisitely beautiful. The brilliance of sun reflecting off ice crystals is so sharp it’s brittle. Where fog obscures and hides, ice coats and delineates shape and size. When the weight of ice on tree branches make them break, the cracking sound is like a gun shot, quick and piercing. The freeze often causes undo hardship when there are broken water pipes, downed electrical and phone wires and icy highways. A few years ago I lived thru an ice storm in Texas that caused an eight day electrical outage. I don’t know which is worse, an outage of long duration or broken water pipes and being last on a plumber’s ‘fix it’ list.

I have saved old letters from family members who lived on farms in the Midwest and in the south. Along with their state of health, they always mentioned weather, the state of the crops and the wish that good harvest weather would hold. Aunt Lily, who lived in Nebraska, also described her kitchen garden and told how many jars of fruit and veggies she was canning.

Because the family is so far flung, I have devised a way of using daily weather temps to let me know how those near and dear to me start their day. On my computer home page I have a long list of the following cities with daily a.m. temps: Houston, TX; Hollister, CA; Baton Rouge, LA; Groesbeck, TX; Santa Clara, CA; Oskaloosa, IA; Canton, GA; Yuma, AR; Paulden, AR; Mt. View, CA; Long Beach, CA; Buena Park, CA; Norwood, MO; Lancaster, CA; Loma Linda, CA

Bees

There was a news story on TV last night about a small child having her birthday party ruined by a swarm of bees settling in the midst of the invited guests. A photograph showed a large swarm of approximately 20, 000 bees. I wouldn’t have been able to guess the number of bees, but I thought the swarm looked enormous in the picture.

When our family lived on the asparagus farm, Dad was always sending for the free government booklets on subjects he was interested in and the whole family enjoyed reading them as much as he did. After reading a booklet on bees, Mom and Dad decided raising bees was a plausible endeavor since we lived in the country and had acres of red raspberries, black berries, and strawberries as well as fields of corn and the huge gardens we planted every year.

Dad began reading and studying how to raise bees. He sent for catalogs offering queen bees and related equipment for sale, and as he thumbed thru he pages, he got all of us children involved in the project of choosing which strain of queen bee we should buy. We became quite knowledgeable about bees and how to care for them.

The first bees were purchased from a South Carolina company and it wasn’t long before the several hives we started with increased to a dozen or more. Every evening when Dad got home from the office, we kids helped him check the hives. He wore long sleeves and a hat with gauze draped over it that protected him from bee stings, but as time passed, he became comfortable working with the bees using only the smoker. A few puffs of smoke caused the bees to keep their distance when he checked the honey frames inside the hives.

Dad did get stung on occasion but the bees were quite docile unless provoked. Even the smallest children walked along side dad as he used the smoker and rarely got a bee sting.
I don’t remember how many frames were in each hive but when one was filled with honey it was replaced with an empty frame for the bees to fill. The hives were placed some distance in back of the house and beyond the long rows of berry bushes separating the asparagus fields from the field corn. The ground inclined slightly and we could see the hives from one corner of the back yard.

One summer day one of the smaller children spotted bees starting to swarm and sounded the alarm. We all raced up the hill hoping to catch it. Dad had told us that tossing clods of dirt into the air among the bees would often cause them to settle near the old hive and we might be able to retrieve it. In that case, he would be able to move it into a hive when he came home from the office.

We three older ones, Adeline, Mickey and I, tossed clods and yelled instructions to each other. Suddenly, Charles, who was about 12 or 13 years old, stuck his arm out. Low and behold, the swarm landed on it! You can imagine the excitement! Someone ran to get the smoker, but before it came, Charles calmly shook the bees off his arm into an empty hive without a single sting. You can imagine how proud he was when Dad heard how the swarm was caught! Later, as an adult, Charles found that he was allergic to bees. His Dr. warned him of the danger and he spent the rest of his life avoiding bees and hornets.

Computers and Telephones

I am constantly amazed at the magic of computers and telephones. I realize they are objects made of materials with qualities that transform frequencies, magnetism and, god only knows what else, into wonderful machines that control and regulate all manner of things; electricity, graphics, and fuel consumption. They even control space. As tools of business and governments, today’s computerized phones have a capacity for knowledge and communication that seems endless. Videos, music, games and calculators, can all be encapsulated inside a mini phone that can be held in one’s hand.

I remember when my sister Adeline and I had play conversations using old wooden wall phones with bells that Dad brought home from the telephone office where he worked. They were beyond repair, but made wonderful toys. From time to time he would also bring insulators that were used to attach wires to telephone poles. They were solid, heavy pieces of colored blue or green glass, about the size of a man’s fist.

When we lived in the old Victorian house on Bliss Blvd in Iowa Falls, the phone was a black wall model in the dining room next to the entrance to the kitchen. I could stand on tip toe to talk into the mouth piece but Adeline had to stand on a stool. When Mom let us phone the grocery store with an order for the morning or afternoon delivery, we raced to be the first one to the phone, because the winner often had permission to add a treat to the order.

Our house phones were usually black wall phones, centrally located on the first floor of the various houses we lived in. The ringing of the bell was loud enough to be heard from anywhere in the house or yard. If the phone rang during the night, one had to go down stairs to answer it. The only way to keep a conversation from being overheard was to talk very softly or use the phone when no one was around.

When making a call, operators asked “number please” and made the connection. You could hear the phone ringing at the other end but after so many rings, the operator would come on line and tell you there was no answer. Many times we didn’t bother to use a phone number; we just told the operator who or what business we wanted. The intimacy of a small town was lost in the larger cities but you could call ‘information’ to ask the operator to look up the number and to ring it for you. In old movies you often see and hear people making phone calls like we used to.

Eventually we graduated to black table phones with 25 foot cords, which let us walk around as we talked or carried it to a comfortable place to sit while talking. The first colored phone I saw was Grandma A’s pink princess phone. It wasn’t much more than a receiver resting on a base of the same size.

At Hillcrest, our house in Redwood City, the phone was in a private booth paneled in mahogany wood. It was located in the middle of a long hall dividing the day rooms from bedrooms. If the conversation was a long one, it got rather stuffy with the door closed. If anyone was using the phone when a call had to be made, a knock on the door was a signal to finish.

I remember sitting in that booth for hours talking to my husband. He was in New York waiting to be shipped over seas during WWII. We never knew if our conversation would be the last until the end of the war, but as the week progressed, he was able to phone me 3 or 4 more times. During those evenings I monopolized the phone. It was difficult to make phone connections from the east coast to west coast; consequently, I was on pins and needles until the phone rang. The family was very considerate and gave me total use of the phone when he called.

Telephones became such a part of daily life after the war families began to have more than one phone in the house; bedrooms, kitchens and even bathrooms. A late night phone call no longer indicated an emergency or bad news. Long distance calls were no longer limited to holidays and teens got their own phones.

Now you can leave a message if the party you are calling isn’t home or doesn’t want to answer the phone. In fact you don’t even have to use a phone to chat. You can use your computer and choose Instant Messaging or Voice mail. I have a cell phone that has every bell and whistle imaginable. It’s private, and I can wear it around my neck on a ribbon. I don’t know if I have a computer with a phone inside or a telephone with a computer inside. It’s all magic to me!

Puzzle Solution

Puzzles

Here is a puzzle for those who like to solve them:

Arrange eight squares so there are four rows of three squares each.

I accidentally did this when I was trying to develop a design pattern. Not being a puzzle person, I was rather astonished to see what I had done. This may not qualify as a real puzzle if there is a criterion for such.

The Sunday morning PBS radio program usually has a few minutes devoted to puzzles and word games interspersed among their current news and book reviews that I like to listen to, but I rarely have success solving them.

My dear sister-in-law, Mary, got me started on crossword puzzles, but I only do those advertised as ‘Easy, No Dictionary Required’. Even so, I cheat by checking the spelling; ‘el’ or ‘le’. When stumped, I wait about 10 seconds for a brain wave to kick in, but if it doesn’t, I peek at the answers. Mary is a real crossword puzzle person. For years she has done the daily crossword in the newspaper and finishes them before her second cup of coffee!

All forms of math puzzles are enigmas to me. I do try simple Sudoku problems but scanning for the solution is tedious and I get impatient. I prefer the more visual puzzles like Tangrams or Mazes. Fractals and jigsaws are classes unto themselves. Puzzles are problems posed as entertainment AND, they are also diabolically clever and frustratingly tricky.

The Diamond 16 puzzle can be seen at: http://finitegeometry.org/sc/16/puzzle

For a tamgram go to: http://www.enchantedmind.com/puzzles/tangram/tangram.html

(editor's note: solution will be shown in a few days)

Coffee

I’ve purchased an automatic, 12 cup coffee maker. It’s the first one I’ve ever owned. I do drink coffee but have used other methods of brewing it. For many years I’ve used a Melita filter basket with Melita filters, No 6. The original Pyrex carafe was broken ages ago and I currently use a Corning ware tea pot with blue corn flowers. I actually started to make coffee with the Melita filters many years ago after Mom and Dad returned from a visit with family in Kentucky. Because they enjoyed the coffee Uncle Ernest had served, they switched from using a percolator to the Melita drip and, I too, began using the Melita filters.

I’m not a coffee connoisseur. I do not know how to make a ‘good’ cup of coffee. My brews range from medium strong to one so diluted only the color suggests coffee. It’s a matter of trial and error because I don’t take coffee making seriously. During the hot days of summer I like iced coffee when I wake up, but when the weather is cold, a mug of hot, steaming coffee is a priority.

One of the nicest morning rituals of morning coffee that I ever enjoyed was while visiting at Mesa Tessa’s in Arizona. Shortly after her rising at 6:00 o’clock every morning, the delicious aroma of hazelnut coffee wafted down the hall and into my bedroom. What fun those early morning chats and gossips were as we filled our mugs a second time.

Once upon a time I enjoyed sipping my morning coffee from a beautiful bone china cup and saucer that my daughter had given me for Christmas, but they have long since been packed away in storage. Currently, I have several favorite mugs; a colorful lady bug mug from the Houston Pyramids my niece, Cindy, gave me, and a Starbucks mug from San Francisco, that Olga, a friend of my daughter’s, gave me during my sojourn in California after the Rita Hurricane.

Coffee is an acquired taste for me. As a child I disliked the odor of brewing coffee but during my adult travels, I became accustomed to an occasional after dinner coffee as I lingered at the table with friends. I didn’t start drinking coffee daily until after I reached the age of thirty. Over the years, there have been long periods when I have stopped drinking coffee altogether. I never suffered a ‘coffee headache’ when I quit, but that’s probably because I was used to drinking a weak brew.

I used to attend the monthly town council meetings where I lived before my move to Houston, Texas. During intermission I’d grab a paper cup and help myself to coffee the council members served. It would be so strong I could only take a few sips, but that was enough to keep me awake until dawn.

Many years ago, Mom developed a taste for coffee ice cream and coffee milk shakes which became family favorites. She often baked cake recipes calling for coffee as one of the ingredients. One of her recipes, from a Dear Abby column, was for a beef roast made with coffee. I made that recipe once. It took five hours and was labor intensive. I was cured from ever making it a second time.

When I traveled through Houston before the Rita Hurricane, the espressos my son made for me were delightful interludes until time for him to drive me to the airport. Now that I live in Houston, I start my day drinking coffee and having IM chats with my son in his apartment in the building next to mine, and my sister, Esther, in Baton Rouge who drinks the kind of coffee served in New Orleans. I’ve never cared for her kind of coffee, but regardless, when she comes to visit, she can use the new coffee maker to brew her coffee and have her morning coffee the way she likes it.

Birthdays

Yesterday was my daughter’s birthday. As each of my children’s birthdays roll around, I take great delight in those precious memories of them as newborns and the circumstances of their birth. In my thoughts I enjoy tracing their progress from babyhood to childhood to adulthood and count myself truly blessed to have a son and a daughter.

I grew up as the oldest of eight children, five boys and three girls and have always remembered their respective birthdays. On more than one occasion though, I’ve forgotten my own and realized it days later.

I’m looking forward to my sister’s visit in a few days when we will have a small memorial birthday celebration for our mother who passed away at the age of one hundred. Dad was a hundred and one when he passed away. Assuming we have their pioneer genes, we will be celebrating our own birthdays for a few more years!

Occasionally we have read and been amused at horoscopes that flatter and predict great events in our lives. If perchance a fortune in a Chinese cookie agrees with thoughts of our own self esteem, we pretend to believe. My daughter and mother shared the same Zodiac sign, Leo the Lion. Sometimes their horoscopes seem to be right on the button about their personalities and activities and never failed to bring a smile and add fun to their special day.

Golden Fortune Cookie

editors note: MrsBizzyB recently celebrated her 84th birthday... I'd say she has those Pioneer Genes for sure!

Fishing

Last night I took my game character fishing. Some of the game characters have phenomenal success and catch quantities of fish in a short period of time, but my character doesn’t. She always has high hopes though and continues to take the long walk to the lakes in good spirits on the chance that fishing will be better than the last time.

It has been many years since I went fishing, but like my game character, my fishing experiences ended with mixed results. One of my earliest memories of fishing was when I was about 4 years old. My sister and I played in the shallow water at the edge of the lake while Mom and Dad stood in the water fishing a little further from shore. There were large boulders in the water that my sister and I could climb on as we splashed and waded.

When we left the water to sit on the boulders, leeches would be attached to our legs. I was too squeamish to pull them off and whined for Mom or Dad to stop fishing and remove them for me. My sister wasn’t at all perturbed about the leeches and pulled them off her legs without qualms. As I whined and cried, my sister would climb on the rock where I sat and remove the leeches from my legs. I would squeal and scream each time one was stretched into a long, slimy mass before it popped loose. Of course I got back into the water to play again, and each time my sister would remove the leeches.

Vern, one of my brother-in-laws, was an expert at catching big mouth bass. I once had the privilege of fishing in the private lake his family owned in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Many years ago, daughter and several of her cousins piled into my van and we drove across the pastures to the lake for a picnic and an afternoon of fishing. As the afternoon wore on, the children deserted me one by one and hiked back to the house but I continued baiting the hook and tossing the line into the water as far as I could.

With light fading and dusk edging into night, I hadn’t a nibble for my efforts. I had decided to quit when Vern came to see how I was doing. With nary a fish to show, I handed him the pole so he could try his luck while I put the picnic things in the van. On his first cast, he caught what turned out to be the biggest fish I had ever seen! It was a big mouth bass. I had never seen one and was astonished at the size. We ate it for supper that night and had great fun laughing at my fishing failure and Vern’s instant fishing success!

Iziz with Big Fish

Green Jell-O Tomorrow

My son has had minor eye surgery and spent a night in the hospital. He’s back home now but he has to keep ice packs on his eyes for a day or so. He will soon well and back to his normal activities. While he’s recuperating, I take him little care packages of foods and munchies that I make for him such as egg salad spread for mini tortilla rounds, black bean relish, cucumber and tomato salad and strawberry Jell-O.

When I was a child I liked to stir Jell-O after my mother poured the boiling water over the powder. As I moved the spoon back and forth to melt the sugar crystals, the pretty colored fluid made ripples and spirals.

Jell-O was always a favorite dessert as a child. One year I begged to stay up until midnight to see the New Year in but didn’t quite make it. I got too sleepy to stay up so around 11:00 pm I was given some of the midnight party food which included red Jell-O with whipped cream.

As we weathered all the childhood diseases, tapioca and Jell-O was given to us on our bed trays. Sometimes fruit or a combination of vegetables was in the gelatin but no matter the flavor, I loved the jewel like colors.

I followed the same pattern that my mother did when my children were ill; Jell-O was part of their treatment. So I find it quite natural to make Jell-O for my adult son while he’s recuperating.

He gets green Jell-O tomorrow.

Fantasy World

Playing the internet game, A Tale in the Desert (http://www.atitd.com ), can be insidiously absorbing! Role playing is taken to the max! Every activity in the make believe era of ancient Egypt is controlled by time. A fee for membership ($13.95/month) allots internet playing time while the sequencing of mouse clicks for each activity also revolves around time.

Not being accomplished in the art of computer wizardry, there was a lot for me to learn and I was quite frustrated trying to get the hang of playing a computer game. One day I suddenly realized I was actually paying to have myself tortured!

The complexity of the game is almost overwhelming. The ‘how to’ wiki pages (http://wiki.atitd.net/tale3 ) helped me tremendously as did the mentoring from so many other players. There are chat lines in the game to IM other players, privately or publicly. Unlimited telephone service has allowed players to put phones on speakers and converse with each other for hours while playing the game. Players come from many different countries: Belgium, France, Australia, U.S and other parts of the world. Avatar names are used when players contact each other and conversations ensue around game activities as if they were real life. If players know each other in real-life (RL) then they often refer to each other by their avatar names instead of their RL name!

When joining player friends for lunch or dinner in a favorite restaurant, comments about the game dominates the discussion. Difficulties and successes in activities like mining for various ores and having a mine shut down, growing flax in quantity, or how to grow onions, archeological digs, good fishing spots, trading guilds, raising sheep and which trees give the most wood are topics seriously talked about. We mention game icons we’ve noticed as we are out and about the town and then friends in turn give us locations of other interesting ones. If people dining at a nearby table over hear us, they must be quite amused if not perplexed.

Frustration comes in cycles as I try valiantly to move from beginner (growing flax), to the next level (I am now at Level 4) which will let me grow onions. There are serious gamers who know how to use macros (automated programs that repetitively click the mouse for you) and achieve great success in all aspects of the game but regardless of the level achieved, the reward is the same for all of us--- a highly developed skill in mouse clicking. We sit in front of our computers and willingly click so many times per game minute until we log off in either frustration or fatigue. I’m sure the game uses the same technique as the gambling industry: click x number of times for a reward, and then randomly change the frequency of the reward so you will keep clicking like Pavlov’s Dog. It quickly becomes an obsession! The developers of the game are very clever and getting wealthy because of our stupidity but the absurdity of it all doesn’t prevent us from continuing to play.

Iziz with flax

On-Line Gaming - Going Native

I’ve joined the cyber world of on-line gaming. It’s the last thing I thought I’d ever do! I am playing A TALE IN THE DESERT III (see http://www.atitd.com/ and http://www.atitd.net/). Friends told me about the game and urged me to play the trial version (24 hours of on-line playing) to learn more about the game, but Chess is my game of choice and I wasn’t interested.

One day, in a weak moment, I ran out of lies and excuses for not wanting to play and agreed to see what it was all about. I’m not proficient in ‘computerese’, but it took only a few mouse clicks for the game to grab my attention, and I quickly became a player.

You can read the Wikipedia explanation of the game at (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ATITD). At the bottom of that page, there are several underlined references giving details. There is a player maintained Wiki just for A TALE IN THE DESERT which explains how to do everything in the game (http://wiki.atitd.net/tale3) . There are levels which players achieve, (or not) as they choose but regardless of the level, all the players are great about mentoring and helping others.

After choosing a user name, and passing several simple tests, one becomes a citizen of Ancient Egypt. There is absolutely no violence in this game. No guns or killing allowed. It’s a culture based on creating the kind of community all the players decide they want. As each player learns new skills, they share, trade and join guilds.

There are levels of achievement earned by learning and developing projects. Players advance at their own pace, but all players vote on laws, and approve works of art and sculpture. I am now at Level 2 and have built my house, and learned the skills of mining iron ore, sowing and harvesting flax seeds and making and firing clay pottery. I have also learned to fish and am busy trading with other players for items I need for projects of my own.

Iziz, Kalateth and ShuoftheFieryHeat growing Flax near the lake with the Ferry and SHANNARA Guild Hall in the background.

There are many activities where multiple players band together to do a common task. Working in concert they achieve special goals like “digging for stones” or learning “acro (acrobatic)” moves from each other and from advanced players like Acro Masters. Last night I went on my first dig for stones. There were 60 other players there and we all took turns digging the hole. I signed in with the Dig Master and then we gathered around a “dig hole”. Each player has an internal game timer which dictates how fast or how often he can “dig”. Digging ensemble allows players to “uncover” more and more stones. At then end of the dig (a time set by the Dig Master) the stones and other wealth are divvied up among all the diggers. There are multiple chat windows in the game and lots of chatting and greeting and directions are passed around the group. It’s a fun way to meet the other players.

Time, day and night, follow realistically in a 24 hour pattern with 20 real-time minutes = 1 hour passing in the game day cycle. I’m amazed at the way the day goes from sunrise to night time with the sky full of stars and phases of the moon. I’ve never played other computer games so I have no way of comparing, but I’m amazed at the figures range and smoothness of motion as they walk, run, sit down or fish. The sounds are fun too. Bees buzz , frogs croak and crickets chirp. Even when I’m fishing on the bank of the lake and not catching a single fish, I’m still fascinated enough to keep casting to hear the sound of the hook plopping in the water and the croaking of frogs.

Iziz and ShuoftheFieryHeat turning Jugs on the Pottery Wheels and Firing Jugs in the Kiln at SHANNARA Guild Hall.

May Baskets

This year, May, 2006, spring was observed by illegal Latinos, in the largest work boycott ever seen in this country, demanding citizenship in the United States.

How different the culture is today compared to that of my childhood years. Dancing round a May Pole and giving May Baskets to friends on May 1st are charming customs no longer in vogue. When I was a child we celebrated spring by making small baskets from paper and ribbons. After folding paper into little boxes or curling them into cones with ribbon handles, we filled them with flowers and candies to give as presents to school mates, teachers and neighbors.

Part of the fun was to secretly put them on door steps or hang them on door knobs, then dart out of sight after ringing the door bell or knocking on the door. When the recipient answered the door they would find the basket and wonder who gave it.

My sister Adeline and I competed with each other in making our baskets prettier than the ones we received. We filled them with wild violets and daises and a few after dinner mints in pastel colors, raisins and shelled peanuts. We had as much fun making them as giving them away. After delivering a basket, sometimes we would watch from behind a shrub or tree to see the surprised reaction on a recipient’s face as they discovered our basket.

Of our neighbors, Mrs. Jones, who lived two doors from us, received the most May Baskets. Because we could hide more easily after ringing her door bell, many of the kids in the neighborhood including all my brothers and sisters, took turns leaving baskets on her door step. For several hours after school until dark, on the first day of May, she was kept busy answering her doorbell. At the time, we assumed her surprise and delight in finding the baskets, but today, I wonder if she was as good a sport as we believed. In any case, we never had a hint of annoyance or frustration. I would like to think she had as much fun receiving them as we did giving them.

Radios

It has occurred to me that I’m a ‘radioholic’. I have a surplus of radios. They are of various sizes, shapes and colors. Most work with a combination of electricity and/or batteries; some play only with batteries. I rarely discard one so I have a collection that is unique. One of them is a bright yellow AM- FM flashlight with a siren sound. An old favorite is the size of a deck of cards that uses a 9 volt battery, but I have to remove the case and jiggle wires to make it play. One is a General Electric shortwave AM- FM radio the size of a book that has a broken tuning knob. It can be tuned using fingers, but the little lever that selects AM or FM won’t lock into place. There is a set of radio headphones in the shape of hamburgers from Burger King. Another is an advertisement for Radio Shack batteries and is shaped like one.


The kitchen and bedroom radios have plain black plastic cases. My small combination CD, tape, AM- FM radio has an elegant design of silver, gray and black. My single tape player with AM-FM is silver and blue. My most expensive radio dubs tapes and cost $75 from Radio Shack. The commercials for Bose radios promise great sound for listening, but I am satisfied with my less expensive radios and only get frustrated when the stations drift. The kitchen radio is tuned to public radio 24/7 but I listen to an AM news station in the bedroom when I’m not watching TV.

During my childhood, an early family radio had a large megaphone speaker with a picture of a dog on it. That was supplanted with a table model with a curved wooden case which sat on a shelf in the dining room where we gathered to listen to news, favorite programs and the President. At the time of the Lindberg kidnapping, all the room chatter stopped as the radio announcer reported the latest news. My grandparents lived with us during that period of time and my grandfather got upset with the ranting of Father Coglin.

After school my sister and I listened to soap operas like Stella Dallas before the children’s programs, Jack Armstrong and Orphan Annie came on. After supper, we children would pull our chairs up around Dad’s, or sit on the floor at his feet as we listened to a program called The Black Lagoon. We older children had our ears glued to the radio along with Dad when The Brown Bomber fought in the ring. I heard discussions about NRA in the news broadcasts but only knew it had something to do with the depression.

Our imaginations enhanced the scripts of the broadcasts with color and emotion. My mother was so taken with a singing cowboy’s voice, she wrote for his advertised photograph costing a dollar, but was terribly disappointed when he was not as handsome as she mentally had pictured him.

During the depression my father became an amateur Ham radio operator and built his own radios using vacuum tubes. As each succeeding radio was more powerful, shelves were added to hold the additional tubes. The tubes created a lot of heat, so the intricate wiring and tubes were left exposed. We children were not allowed to touch any of the tubes or wires but were allowed to watch as Dad tinkered with them.

One evening Mom and Dad went to visit friends and left instructions to disconnect the radio from the wall socket if it started to rain. The storm started with thunder and lightening and suddenly there were loud popping, crackling noises with streaks of electricity jumping all over the exposed radio shelves. We kids were too terrified to go near enough to pull the plug. H.O., an uncle who had been left in charge, (and was only a few years old than I), had the courage to pull the plug which stopped the sizzling flashes. From that time on, He had our total admiration and devotion. And he got credit for saving Dad’s radio which was in use until the war came and the government suspended all ham licenses.

Years later, I emulated my father and got a General License at age 80. But that's another story...

Rita Damage Repaired

Except for painting inside and out, the hurricane damage to my house has been repaired. Light at the end of the tunnel is iridescent and glowing brighter every day! The job of finding a bone fide contractor seemed almost insurmountable after listening to TV news coverage of scams, rip offs, and shoddy work, but I did not experience any of those horrors reported by neighbors or news coverage of the area.

I had to learn how insurance companies work as well as how to check qualifications of persons claiming to be in the business of repairing hurricane damage. The operative word was PATIENCE, and I was forced to practice it.

I telephoned the Better Business Bureau of southeast Texas for a list of contractors working in the area. They also gave me a detailed list of things to check before signing a contract with any person advertising such repairs. First on the list was the requirement for a ‘bond’ and checking to make certain the person was actually bonded by phoning the city hall where the work was to be done and requesting a copy of the registered bond with the amount of insurance carried. The next step was to check with the surrounding county courthouses for any liens or law suits against any of the contractors being considered and contacting at least two referrals.

I added names from the internet and newspapers to the BBB list and started telephoning them, but I soon had so many scraps of paper with notes, and pertinent information the clutter became too much to cope with. My son’s suggestion of using manila folders for each contractor was so practical I had a mini filing system up and running in short order.

From my apartment in Houston, I started a routine of phoning, leaving messages, waiting for return calls with bids contingent on seeing inside of the house, and talking to references. My insurance adjuster in Florida was my security blanket, giving me tips on how contractors work and what questions to ask.

Before meeting with individuals at the house for final bids, I phoned my brother, a retired contractor who lives in the Dallas area, and asked if he would take the time to help me choose a contractor and supervise repairs. When he said yes, I was delighted! Motel Six had only one room with two king size beds with cable TV coming available the next afternoon so we reserved it for a week with the possibility of continuing for as many days as needed.

I stuffed my contractor files in a briefcase, packed a cooler with water and lots of munchies, clothes to last a week and waited for my brother to pick me up in Houston and head for Rita territory. I scheduled 4 interviews and every thing was on track!

After checking into the motel, we drove to the house so my brother could see the damage. While we discussed what had to be done, we saw a crew putting new shingles on the house across the street. They were going 90 to nothing and my brother said that was the kind of workers we needed.

As we watched the work being done, a woman and a man were picking up junk as soon as the roofers tossed it on the ground and put it in the back of a pickup truck. The woman waved to us and I walked over to talk to her while my brother went inside the house. The woman said her husband was doing the work. His name was Scot and I asked if he could talk to us when took a work break.

In the meantime, the owner of the house came by and told us he hired Scot after seeing what a great job he had done for a friend of his. After my brother interviewed him, we hired him on the spot. Scot was from San Antonio and did not have a registered bond, but my brother said it wasn’t necessary. We had found the right person to repair my house.

We chose the option of buying the material and Scot went to the lumber yard with us to make certain the materials were the best and delivery would be when needed. Because the structural damage was not as extensive as originally thought, the length of time to complete the repairs was lessened by three days. My brother was extremely pleased and gave a substantial bonus for a job well done. Fortune truly smiled on us when our chance encounter with Scot ended my Rita saga so happily.

March Madness

March Madness usually refers to the end of season basketball games. My March Madness is studying French from a free, online, beginning French class that can be found on iTunes The FrenchPodClass (http://www.frenchpodclass.com/ ) .

It’s a delightful and fun way to learn French and allows one to choose the degree of seriousness that suits best. I download the weekly lessons which are short, varied and not dependent on previous lessons. My approach is quite haphazard. I listen to the audio lesson while I skim thru the pdf pages. I enjoy the music selections, especially the songs by Edith Piaf. I love the way she rolls the French ‘r’.

This week we had three sentences to translate. I submitted my translations, (guesses), of the following three sentences. Sebastian, the instructor, will show us the correct translation next week. Perhaps some of my readers already know what the sentences say.

Taille tôt, taille tard, toujours en mars.
Sème tes poi à la saint Patrice, tu en auras tout ton caprice.
Quand mars se déguise en été, avril prend ses habits fourres.

(update : The game is now over and the results can be found at : http://www.frenchpodclass.com/index.php?post_id=68661&comments=on )

I’ve also discovered ‘widgets’’. There is a small widget engine that’s free which is required for the widgets to work. The FrenchPodClass has a widget of quotes in both French and English which I downloaded to my computer desktop. The widget has a timer that you can adjust that controls the display frequency of the quotations and sayings. It’ll show the quotation for a while then fade away and reappear later with a new quotation. If you get impatient you can lick on the triangle icon and get another quotation right away. There are proverbs based on the calendar year in French and there are idioms with English-French translations. You can also select different color backgrounds like white and green and even a transparent background so your desktop theme shows through! You can learn all about widgets from Yahoo since they have a great number for people to enjoy. They explain what they are and how to use them and they will help you create one if you are in the mood to do so. You can even share your widget with others if you choose.

(To download the Yahoo! Widget Engine go here: http://widgets.yahoo.com/ and The FrenchPodClass_Quotations Widget can be found here: http://www.widgetgallery.com/view.php?widget=38958 )

I really don’t have an ear for languages. I was painfully aware of this in high school when I took Latin as a freshman. The only thing enjoyable in that class was a toga party. My attempt at learning other languages has yielded meager success at best. I have rarely gotten past ‘Hello’ and ‘Goodbye’, along with an occasional phrase about cost, direction, food or weather.

Many years ago I listened to some German language records but never got past the question, “Where is the train station?” The mother of a friend once volunteered to teach me French but the only thing I learned was how to pronounce the word, ‘elephant’. When I studied Russian in college I learned how to say, ‘thank you’ and the first two words of the song, ‘Volga Boatmen’, (which is not an acceptable song since the communist revolution). The only thing in Spanish I know is, ‘My casa is your casa’.

All verbs in another language are irregular as far as I’m concerned. Word endings denoting masculine and feminine gender is beyond me. Pronunciation and writing French is proving difficult so I’m not spending a lot of time on that part of the course. The transcripts of the lessons have both French and English translations on the same page so I can fool myself into believing I’m truly learning the language!

À bientôt !

In Transition

I’m betwixt and between. I’ve temporarily re-located to Houston until my house in Orange is habitable and the damage caused by hurricane Rita, is repaired. Putting the house furnishings into a Houston storage unit was a major move and accomplished by family, friends and hired help.

My sister Esther, her daughter, Cindy and her husband, Arthur, came from Baton Rouge to help. Seeing them and getting hugs helped to assuage the anguish of down sizing. Selecting which things to keep was a challenge! I chose to give Esther many of my treasures since “The time has come to talk of other things…. Of shoes and ships and sealing wax, of cabbages and kings….”

The move was made over a long four day weekend, Thursday thru Sunday. Motel rooms in Orange were at a premium, but with luck and perseverance rooms for 8 people were reserved for the four days. Renting a U-haul truck and hiring men to load it was even more difficult. The company finally located a truck in Beaumont that would be available on Saturday morning. They were unable to deliver it to Orange or provide helpers, so my son took Cindy with him to pick it up. She drove his car back to Orange while he drove the truck. As for helpers, a friend from Houston that planned to help from Friday night thru Sunday brought her son and a friend of his to do the heavy lifting.

The motel was undergoing extensive repairs. Although the usual amenities were lacking, all available rooms were booked by workmen. The front desk was inundated with requests for toilet paper, towels, missing pieces of coffee pots, coffee packets and shampoo. Serving a continental breakfast for tenants was out of the question. To get to and from our rooms, we traversed corridors filled with cement dust and sawed lumber. Long hoses and bundles of wiring snaked around corners while the echo of hammering and buzzing of saws reverberated throughout large open areas that used to be lobbies and dining areas.

Storage was unavailable in Orange. Deciding to rent a storage unit in Houston was an emotional decision, but one that I finally had to make. After weighing pros and cons as constructively as I could, I knew the time had come. The weather was warming and work on the house could be done before temperatures reached the famous ‘highs’ of Texas and before another hurricane season started.

My son did the organizing with suggestions coming long distance from my daughter. He said it was like herding cats, but he managed to keep the project schedules on track from beginning to end. Considering the conditions and situation, he did a masterful job!

We didn’t have electricity or water at the house but we had brought enough bottles of water, fruit and snacks for munching as we worked. Breakfast was at MacDonald’s, the only eating place open for business between 8 and 9 in the morning. Wendy’s, near Wal-Mart’s parking area, was our choice for coffee, lunch and bathroom breaks. At dusk when we quit work, we either ordered pizza delivered to our motel rooms or stopped at fast food places to get ‘take out’ for eating at the motel. We planned to relax after supper playing our favorite card game, Spite and Malice, but we were too tired to do anything but shower and go to sleep. The routines of each day and evening were a repetition of the day before.

Cindy had towed a trailer to Orange so she could get the furniture pieces she had stored at my house. The men loaded her trailer at the same time they loaded the U-haul truck. By the time we were all ready to get the show on the road to Baton Rouge and Houston, I felt like I had run an Iroquois gauntlet!!!



I’m now in the process of finding a general contractor who can work with metal roofs. I have high hopes since talking on the phone with two contractors working in the area and hope they send me bids. Thank heaven I’m beginning to see a light at the end of the tunnel. My admiration of family members, who survived and adapted from untold crises more difficult than mine, increases daily. I marvel at the way they over came. I hope I can show the same spirit as I start a new facet of living in Texas!