Okay, it's a nostalgia post, I can't help it. Here's what we used to look like back in the day. My sisters were (and still) are absolutely beautiful!
And here is my beloved dog, Hieronymus! He was so smart. I do miss him!
And here he is with his baby cousin, Tyro.
Here's my husband. He looks so German somehow! (Or maybe Dutch! He does have Dutch roots!)
And here is a really old picture of me.
One more from The Three Penny Opera:
I DO understand that we as a public are struggling to understand how someone could suddenly shoot a judge and a congresswoman and I DO understand our desire for new information, but for me today's New York Times piece "Police Say They Visited Tucson Suspect's Home Even Before The Rampage" goes too far. In this age permeated by psychology I know we want to know why: why such a senseless act happened, why an innocent judge had to die, why a 22 year-old boy could be so bitter.
Nonetheless, do we really have to know how many hours a week the mother spent managing ponds in Agua Caliente Park? Is it our business to know the suspect's father's business? What does it really mean that they built a privacy wall on one side of their property?
So turn the situation around. What would the press be saying about you if one of your family members suddenly decided to take violent action based on his or her peculiar beliefs. (And yes, you know we all have those relatives with those secret rages. The uncle that despises the postal bureau for unfair raises in postage, the second cousin angry with buses that cut him off during morning drives, the sister-in-law who is convinced that the entire staff of the local five and dime are out to get her. Not to mention those even closer to home.) So what would the paper be printing about you, if, god forbid, your child should suddenly decide to take out the customers and staff of your local convenience store?
Were some kids in the neighborhood afraid once to go into your yard and get their ball after you yelled at them for having to retrieve it for a 6th time? Did your neighbors ever hear you yelling loudly in anger? Do you have a collection of Kenyan masks hanging in your house that makes you religiously suspicious? Maybe you collect odd-shaped rocks and display them in a china cabinet or have a room that you painted black and is always closed up (never mind that you use it to develop film and print photographs - that's pretty bizarre that you haven't moved to digital yet.) Maybe you have a blog that has a bizarre title that no one understands. How would you like your personality to be summed up in a 7 word sentence, one of which by requirement has to be the word weird?
I think the Loughner family is in enough pain without having to be dissected for every questionable action or every poor choice that they ever made, so turn that spotlight back on yourself and think about how our judgments of others causes them pain. And we know that pain can lead to anger and of course we can see where anger gets us. Articles like this certainly don't make us want to talk to our neighbors. They are not like us, they are strange and of course we certainly don't want them to think weird things about us! It's like more fuel to the fire, and yet it is isolation that allows things like the recent shootings to happen. What can one do? I think shutting ourselves up in our houses and wondering will only make the problem worse, so if you really want to do something about it, my advice is, go out and have a cordial talk with your neighbors today. You could save a reputation and maybe even a life.
Some people may be wondering about that Dogi I started a million months ago (Maybe April or May). I just haven't had the hear t to knit since my knitting buddy Dana died. I do pick at it sometime, but the Dogi has been going very slowly. It is actually done, except that I decided that I didn't like it as a vest and so I decided to add sleeves. Here is what it is supposed to look like. Fuzzy Karen(http://www.flickr.com/photos/fuzzykaren/4154984880/sizes/o/in/photostream/) knit a lovely version:
(Go check out her totally cool crocheted ball and it's sun costume!!)
Anyway - mine didn't look cool like hers, (I had made it longer) and I just felt it needed arms., so I borrowed a meshy type stitch from the Komon and added its sleeves to the Dogi's body. Here is a detail. It shows the sleeve texture (on the right) and the vest texture on the left. You can see the vertical button stitch design much better on Karen's photo:
Here is the larger shot. (Yes, I gained weight over the holidays, but I didn't take off my sweater before modeling, so I think it's not as bad as it looks. Nevermind that the right sleeve isn't there! That will be the next step!)
How can this still be up on Sarah Palin's facebook page? It was in poor taste when she put it up and it is in even poorer taste now that one of the people on her list has actually been shot. I invite you NOT to go there and give her additional hits.
This is my version of the parade with all the flowers. Bear in mind that my version of things is always a little bit different than the typical one. My sister actually got to go and see the rose bowl parade and of course I watched the parade in order to try and find her in the crowd of 90,000 people. I missed the first 2/3s of the parade because I was so busy scanning the crowd. I had to watch on TV and evidently they edited out a lot of the featured floats. I know I didn't see a "Cirque de Soleil Comes to Los Angeles" float. California newspapers reported on it and had images like this:
...and like this (from KTLA.com)
Of course I don't have pictures of the most beautiful float - the Chinese racing dragons float. Nor do I have images of the Dole float which won one of the big prizes, but the press drawing looks like this:
I was also able to find an artist's rendering of the Natural Balance float on line. (Why do I care, you ask?) Because it features Tillman the most famous bull dog in the world, of course!!
This float broke a record for weight and advertised itself that way. The back half of the float had diving dogs jumping into a huge (heated) pool of water, but the star was Tillman and friends who water boarded down a slide on the float's fore.
Yes, I did take a few photos once I got through gawking at the crowds. Mine are details of this and that.
There were a lot of houses and buildings in the parade. I have already forgotten which float is which. This one clearly has a Western theme.
This one is the Uno float. Somewhere in those bleachers are my sister and brother-in-law.
They are both wearing black, so I'm sure you can spot them right away!
Here are a couple of closer shots so you can see them better.
See, they are in the middle under the presenter's booth.
This was a pretty nice float:
but not as exciting as Tillman.
My favorite part was this guy on the bull.
And what is a parade without Pacman?
Pacman not only had his friends with him, but also shot out streamers which can be seen at the sides of the picture.
It's not a parade without marching bands and there were many. I graded them all on how they turned the corner. I think this is TCU and as you can see, they did an excellent job. There were bands from far away Wisconsin and Pennsylvania (who almost didn't make it because of the weather and even from Hokkaido.
This float had a western theme too, the ponies were colored with ground coffee beans (among other plant materials). I just couldn't bare to include the float devoted to Ronald Reagan, sorry.
Here's another perfect marching band. Ya gotta love the feathered hats!
This is a shot of the rose bowl from the blimp.
I liked this float about Tea with Friends. I can't remember who sponsored it, but the dragons were the stars of this years parade.
I hadn't given up looking for my sister. She had to be in those stands somewhere.
These were firemen with old-time fire equipment.
The horses were gorgeous.
This final float was dedicated to the firefighters of 911.
Of course I had to look for my sister one last time. I'm pretty sure she is in this shot. See her next to the guy with the beard?
New Years is a time to look back at one's past mistakes and adventures, to thank those who have been there for us and to look forward to the days ahead as we try to be better people.
I hope you all had your black eyed peas and collards this year! We could all use some luck in the year ahead!
As most of you who follow this blog know, every other year we tend to go down to Texas to visit the family. This means that it gets harder and harder to find new and exciting sights to visit in the Corpus area. I know some people could see the Lexington every year for the rest of their lives, but my martial interests don't extend much beyond the development of air technology via hot air balloon.
I very proudly wrote my friend Popeye-x in San Antonio that I had located the Alamo, but for some reason he seemed dubious.
I was sure my Alamo was better than his. After all, his alamo couldn't possibly have such a wonderful decor ... such as classically clad Grecian (well um - pseudo-Grecian) beauties....
And does his silly old San Antonio Alamo have....
gargoyles? I think not. So I was quite confident that I had won the argument until he sent me this:
For those of you that know me, you will have immediately realized that I was totally conquered. Mick Jagger and I go way back and of course what could possibly trump Bill Wyman in a Coon Skin Davy Crockett cap?
I would need to find another stupendous sight. One of my sisters (the one who told me that Austin was bigger than Chicago) told me there was a really cool rhinoceros in Corpus, so she drove me around all over the place only to let me know at the end that we'd missed it somehow. Evidently Corpus is rapidly approaching Chicagoan size too.
We did however find this rhino:
I was quite surprised when my other sister told me there was indeed a rhino in Corpus and she would take me to see it. She then proceeded to drive around in the same aimless pattern the other sister had. After turning back she informed me we had missed it somehow. (I don't know why that sounded familiar, but I was beginning to suspect a conspiracy.)
Well, on the way home she got very excited. I was fully prepared to be made the buffoon victim of yet another Chicago joke. The rhinoceros, I was told, had to be behind that fence.
I was supposed to walk into some wealthy person's yard and look through the holes in the fence. Note the slits in the wall. Because it was private property, I gingerly snuck over to the slit on the far left. I looked quickly preparing to scamper back if I should see people out sunbathing by the pool or a shot gun pointed in my general direction. I looked again. I wasn't sure what I was supposed to say. Were they pulling my leg, or did they really think that this was a rhinoceros?
There was no shot gun and no sunbathing, thank goodness, but in that whole walled enclosure, do you see anything resembling a rhinoceros? Okay, so just to be sure, I moved over to a slit on the right. Hmmm... okay, well, maybe... or I really was the butt of some elaborate and large joke?
As I found yet another slit, it was confirmed - this indeed looked like a rhinoceros.
Running around the corner to the left, I peeked through a slit on the street side and there it was in full splendor.
Austin was indeed as big as Chicago and all was right with the world. On the way home we gave a busker some money to share our holiday joy.
