Velvet Sacks

What I'm Reading Today: Unbroken

2012-02-03T13:27:00.002-06:00

This book by Lauren Hillenbrand is a non-fictional account of the life of Louis Zamperini, an Olympics-class athlete and World War II prisoner of war.

Click on the image for a

descriptionand reviews of this book.

It's well written and well worth a read; however, if you're looking for a page-turner, this isn't it. There's just too much information to absorb without taking a break now and then to think about it.

Why don't you come on up and see me sometime?

2012-02-02T08:16:00.000-06:00

Somewhere along the way, photography (including photo editing) has become my favorite hobby, edging out reading by the slightest of margins and writing by a bit more. Nothing else even comes close. Even when I haven't found time to post a new entry here, there'll be a fresh new image on my photo blog every single day. I simply love playing with all those little digital snippets of my life.

I started that blog exactly four months ago, October 2, 2011, with this picture of a played-out Levi:

Let me tell you it's been lonely over there. My stat-counter shows that the photo blog gets roughly, oh, one or two hits a day. Not exactly setting the world on fire, huh?

Now, I know the blogosphere is full of photographers whose skills and images far surpass mine, but mine are better than they used to be, and they're improving over time. And if you've come to know me through my words, you'll know me even better after seeing the images that have moved me enough to record them. I don't do much writing there, but if you have a question about a particular photo, I'll be glad to answer it in the "comments" section.

So...how can I get you to take a look? I've fixed the tab at the top of this blog so you can get to the photo blog with one click instead of two, and I've added a clickable icon on the sidebar, hoping it will catch your eye. May I offer you a cup of coffee or a glass of wine? Some hors d'oeuvres perhaps?

Please stop by now and then to support my latest obsession.

Seeing Louisiana through a paper doll's eyes

2012-01-31T17:01:00.000-06:00

Flat Stanley is headed home. I dropped him off at the post office a couple hours ago, and he should be on the road or in the air by the time I go to bed tonight. I can't wait for him to get back to Texas and show Keaton all of his photos and souvenirs.

We had a great time! Not just Stanley and I, but my daughters and my great-grandson, all of whom shared in one or more of Stanley's adventures. It's amazing how a project like this one can get one out of a routine and off to explore someplace interesting. It's also amazing that not one single person we asked declined to be photographed with Stanley. His story and his friendly smile brought out the best in all of us.

Stanley is traveling home with several dozen photos, but I'll share a few samples now. (I'll keep these images small so I can post more of them. Please be sure to click on them to enlarge them.)

Here are a couple from home:

Butch and Levi wanted to go outside.

Stanley tried to help but couldn't reach the doorknob.

What better place for a flat boy to sleep

than on a flatbed scanner?

Stanley's first adventure occurred when my daughter Kim went with friends to New Orleans and took Stanley along.

Stanley inside the National World War II Museum.

About to enjoy his first world-famous New Orleans muffuletta.

One day Stanley went to work at the courthouse with my daughter Kelli.

Stanley, about to take a ride through the scanner/metal detector.

Later in the week, Kim and I accompanied Stanley to the Bluebonnet Swamp Nature Center in Baton Rouge.

Inside the Nature Center, this snake

seemed very interested in Stanley.

Outside, on one of the swamp trails,

Stanley couldn't resist climbing the tangled vines.

The alligators we saw at the Nature Center were baby ones, so before we went home that day we took Stanley to the Cajun Village in Sorrento, Louisiana.

There's a good-sized, live alligator on the other side of that fence...

...but it was safer for Stanley to pose with this fake one.

The next day Kelli, Owen, Stanley and I went back to Baton Rouge, this time to the downtown area.

Here's Stanley in front of the Louisiana State Capitol Building...

...and here he is with a protest sign on the front steps of the capitol.

(He was the only one protesting there that day.)

We left the capitol and walked a few short blocks south.

The castle-like structure in the background is the Old State Capitol.

It's a museum now.

I hated to say goodbye to Stanley. I hope he had as much fun as we did.

What I've Been Reading: Two Books by Nevada Barr

2012-01-31T15:53:00.000-06:00

The last week and a half have been busy ones, what with making special meals for a sick dog (Butch), cleaning up after him (he had diarrhea), and entertaining a houseguest (Flat Stanley). At times like that, the best way I know to relax is to bury myself in a book for a little while, and I happened to have two books by a favorite author, Nevada Barr. She never lets me down.

Borderline is part of her very popular Anna Pigeon series. The other one, 13½, is a stand-alone thriller. They both kept me reading late into the night.

For a description and reviews of either book,

click on its image above.

What I'm Reading Today: V is for Vengeance

2012-01-21T17:16:00.000-06:00

This book was one of two book club featured selections I got in the mail after I procrastinated too long to decline them either by mail or online. Actually, both books turned out to be pretty good. This one makes me wish I'd checked out the series before it got so near the end of the alphabet.

Click on the image for a

descriptionand reviews of this book.

My new flat friend

2012-01-20T12:44:00.000-06:00

A special houseguest arrived this past Tuesday afternoon. His name is Flat Stanley, and he was sent here by my eight-year-old grandnephew, Keaton, as part of a school project. It will be my pleasure for the next couple of weeks to show Stanley around the Greater Baton Rouge area, taking photos as we go, so he can go back to Keaton's East Texas classroom and share what he did and what he learned while he was here.

Stanley seems to be a nice boy. I like him a lot and I think we're going to have a good time together. Our weather has been either rainy or very windy since Stanley got here, neither of which condition is good for his health, so we've stayed close to home so far. It's warmer today than it has been, and the sun has come out from time to time, so we took the opportunity to do a little reading outside on the patio. I think Flat Stanley likes good books as much as I do.

I have to say Stanley has been patient and good about finding things to do here at the house, but I'm sure he's looking forward to some of the outdoor adventures we have planned in the next week or so. I know I am.

OCD at the Grocery Store

2012-01-18T10:50:00.000-06:00

I'll admit to being a little anal retentive about the way I place my groceries on the check-out counter. I put heavy things up first (so they'll go back into the bottom of the cart after they've been bagged), cold things together (so they can be found easily and put away first at home), and toiletry items together (so I can carry them all in one bag to the bathroom). But if the cashier doesn't follow my system, I don't make a fuss about it.

Yesterday's cashier was well past anal retentive and clearly somewhere on the scale of obsessive compulsive disorder. I loved her!

She was adjusting her latex gloves as my items rolled toward her on the belt. She smiled and said, "It isn't that I don't want to touch your groceries; I don't want to touch anybody's." I smiled but didn't comment, and she continued: "People ask me all the time why I wear gloves, and I tell them the real question should be, 'Why doesn't everybody?'"

She looked over my items and began scanning them, one by one, but instead of placing the items in a bag, she set the first half dozen on top of the bag carousel. "Don't worry," she smiled. "I have a plan here." She set a couple more things up there, then picked up the next item, a rectangular-shaped one, larger than the first few, and put it in the bottom of a bag. Only then did she gather up the earlier items and place them strategically around the larger one in the bag. "We don't want those corners poking through the plastic," she explained, placing the now full plastic bag inside another one before handing it to me.

The rest of the process went much the same. Each package of raw meat was wrapped tightly in its own plastic bag to keep it separate from the pre-packaged sausage and lunchmeat that would go with it into another bag. As the cashier carefully placed my low-carb ice cream bars between two bags of pepperjack cheese cubes, she explained that she was separating the cheese bags to insulate the ice cream. The cashier held a small bag of dog treats in her hand for a few seconds while she visually scanned the remaining items for something similar, then, finding nothing, she shrugged her shoulders, smiled ruefully, and put it in the bag with the protein bars.

All my items were double-bagged except for some of the meats, which were triple-bagged, and everything was so organized that it took me only minutes to put it all away at home. Part of me understands that all these plastic bags aren't good for Mother Earth, but if that part is the least bit timid, the rest of me will try to get in this woman's check-out line the next time I go.

What I'm Reading Today: The Affair

2012-01-18T09:55:00.000-06:00

This is the latest in the Jack Reacher series, and I love me some Jack Reacher. I'd love to see these thrillers turned into movies, but which of today's stars could play Reacher? A young Clint Eastwood would have been perfect.

Click on the image for a description

and reviews of this book.

One Tough Cookie

2012-01-15T13:20:00.000-06:00

It's been a hard week.

I took this photo of Butch on Thursday, thinking it might be his last one. I am overjoyed to tell you it won't be.

The tumors on Butch's gums that I wrote about here and here continued to grow, and about 10 days ago they began to bleed. A lot. The vet had told me Butch might chew off the tumors if they grew long enough to catch between his teeth, but I had expected that to be a one-time event. I did not expect the bleeding to be a continual occurrence.

I was laundering his bedding (and mine that he touched and imprinted with his muzzle) once or twice a day, continually cleaning blood droplets and saucer-sized bloody drool stains from the carpet (hats off to Stainmaster® for performing as advertised), and washing Butch himself several times daily because he frequently wiped his mouth on his forelegs. Because of his blindness, Butch navigates through the house by touching his muzzle against familiar landmarks, such as walls and furniture. With his bleeding mouth, he had become a walking ink stamp.

The only good news during that time was that those tumors must have contained no nerves, because Butch appeared to be feeling fine. He was enthusiastic about meals and snacks (his that he ate and mine that he begged for) and went about his business--as much business as a nearly 14-year-old dog can manage--in good spirits.

In fact, he seemed to be feeling well enough that I thought he wouldn't fall apart during a short car ride, so on Thursday I enlisted Kim's help in getting him in the car so the vet could take a firsthand look at what was going on with his mouth. She found more than we had expected. In addition to the tumors on his gums, there was a large, black mass on the roof of his mouth. The vet suspected melanoma.

We discussed options.

Doing nothing was not an option because Butch's continual bleeding was weighing more heavily on me than I like to admit. I've cleaned up my share of urine, feces, and vomit in the years I've owned dogs, and even some blood on more than one occasion, but this constant dripping from a roving source was beginning to feel like Chinese water torture. As much as I love Butch, I was starting to find the situation intolerable. I'm being as honest as I can here, even though I'm ashamed of those feelings and believe that Butch deserves better than that from me.

A second option was surgery to remove as much of the tumors as possible and cauterize the remaining blood vessels to stem the bleeding. I didn't think Butch was a good candidate for surgery. He's so old now, and he has a history of problems with anesthesia. Would it be fair to him to put him through the pain of another surgery this close to the end of his natural life span?

That brings us to the third option: euthanasia. A number of people told me after Butch's eye-removal surgery in 2005 that it would have been kinder to "put him to sleep," but he's had six and a half pretty good years since then, so I've never regretted that choice. At the age he is now, it's a different story, and I gave it serious consideration. My daughter Kelli summed up my ambivalence about this option when she said I was struggling with this decision because I wanted to be sure I was doing it for the right reasons and not as a matter of convenience. That was exactly it. And the truth was that all that bleeding was bothering me; Butch didn't seem to be the least bit concerned about it.

The vet assured me that the surgery would be fast and easy. It would quell most, if not all, of the bleeding. I asked about cost, and she quoted a price that was exceptionally fair and reasonable. She couldn't, of course, guarantee that Butch would survive the surgery, but she laid out her plan to give him the best chance possible.

The next day, Friday, we gave him that chance. I dropped him off tearfully, knowing the odds were against him.

The vet called after the surgery to tell me that Butch was awake, sitting up, and was trying, not successfully yet, to wag his tail. They had removed the epulis (tumors on his gums), which had also involved removing two teeth. That was the good news. The bad news, she told me, was that the mass in his palate was melanoma, and they couldn't get it all. She said the melanoma was quite invasive and there is a danger that it will grow into his sinus cavities. "That," she said, "will be it." She estimated that Butch might live as long as three to six months, though his time could be shorter than that. She said to give him a week to recover from the surgery; after that, we should have a better idea of the quality of life he'll have for the remainder of his days. If Butch does well, there are inexpensive medications that have been shown to slow the growth of melanoma, and they should also keep Butch comfortable. On the other hand, if Butch seems to be suffering at the end of the week, we can stop it then. She said they'd keep Butch under observation for a few more hours, then I could pick him up and bring him home.

I couldn't believe how good Butch looked. He seemed strong and tugged at his leash, ready to get out of there. He came home without much fanfare except for enthusiastic greetings and all-over sniffs from Levi, Lucy, and Oliver, then made his way to the backdoor to go outside and relieve himself. By the time he came back in the house, he had reoriented himself, knew exactly where he was (well, as exactly as he ever knows), and began nosing around in the kitchen. It was suppertime by then, and he was obviously hungry.

Butch's first few post-surgery meals were limited to chicken broth and small amounts of rice. He ate every bite and was clearly unhappy about the meager quantity, so as soon as we knew for sure that one meal had settled nicely in his stomach, we fed him again. He cried a little that first night, but I was never sure whether he cried from pain or from hunger. His mouth bled a little that first night, too, but not nearly as much as it did before. I was encouraged.

By yesterday Butch showed no signs of pain and could eat a full quota of his new regular diet. He will never again in his lifetime be able to eat anything of a harder consistency than oatmeal. The tumor in his palate is fragile, and any slight pressure on it will cause it to bleed. That means the spoon-feeding has to stop, because the hard metal edges of the spoon can cause damage. Fortunately, Butch has been hungry enough that he hasn't hesitated to push his muzzle into the bowl and gobble for all he's worth.

Butch is what he can never have again: one tough cookie.

Today he is eating well, sleeping well, showing affection, and asking to go outside when he needs to. When he comes back in the house, he waits patiently for a treat, and he doesn't seem to mind that the treat is soupy or soggy. The bleeding hasn't yet stopped entirely (a certain amount is to be expected after oral surgery), but it has diminished to manageable, non-repulsive proportions. A short time ago, as he slept, I pulled out a tube of braunschweiger (liver sausage), which is what I'm using as both a disguise and a soft coating for his pills. As soon as I opened the wrapper, I heard his toenails hit the floor, and in seconds he was standing beside me, sniffing expectantly. If he's doing this well two days post-surgery, I think there are more good days than bad ones in his future.

As my daughter Kim pointed out to me, the prognosis of a three-to-six-month life expectancy for a dog Butch's age, especially if those months are likely to be comfortable ones, is not too bad.

What I've Been Reading: Two Books by Mary Alice Monroe

2012-01-15T12:42:00.002-06:00

In a week that has been stressful (for reasons I'll explain in another post), it's been a pleasure to escape for minutes at a time into the pages of two novels written by Mary Alice Monroe. I enjoyed both of these books and will seek out others by this author in the near future.

For a description and reviews of either book,

click on its image above.

What I Read Yesterday: Maid to Match

2012-01-10T14:39:00.000-06:00

This book appealed to me when I read a description of it stating that much of the story took place in and around the Biltmore, the lavish estate my sister and I visited on our vacation this past summer. Indeed, it was fun to be able to visualize the characters in places I actually remembered from that visit.

Click on the image for a description

and reviews of this book.

Someone's having a birthday today

2012-01-09T09:27:00.000-06:00

My little sister is officially a senior citizen today, although she looks so young that no one is going to step forward and voluntarily offer her any of the discounts to which her age entitles her. Personally, I couldn't be happier that she's finally reached an age where she'll be counted, at least demographically, in the same group as I am.

At our present ages, the four-year difference between us feels insignificant, though it used to cause us some problems. The way our birthdays fell, I was five grades ahead of her in school, so we never attended the same school at the same time except when she was in first grade and I was in sixth. We had very few friends in common. In fact, I had very few friends, period, so it bugged me when she, who had lots of them, wanted to play with me and mine.

Those four years were also enough of a difference to make me the "responsible" one, as in the one who "should have known better." Isn't that a kicker? It didn't matter who did what to whom (and we both did plenty), I lost every fight we ever had because I should have been responsible.

My sister was little and cute, and I was a skinny, gangly thing. She was pleasant, too, and smiled a lot, while I was often cross and sarcastic. I was pretty sure our mother liked her best, and even though I could understand why that might be true, it didn't seem fair at all. Mothers aren't supposed to have favorites.

My sister became more interesting to me as she grew from a toddler into a girl, and there were more things we could do together, but we mostly enjoyed different activities. I was happiest reading a book or drawing, and she seemed happiest when she was engaged in an activity that involved running--literally running--with her friends. We played with each other as a last resort.

We became closer in our teens, though we still had plenty of spats over clothing, shared space, and secrets that could be told or not told to bargain for advantages. But we sang together as we washed the dishes, we sunbathed together in the backyard, and we played badminton together with the kids on the other side of the back fence. One time, on vacation, I muttered a curse word in the backseat. Mother whipped her head around and said, "What did you say?" My sister, without missing a beat, supplied a similar sounding but non-vulgar word, and Mother let it pass. My sister had my back.

I remember the exact moment when I realized that my sister really did love me. She was 14, I was 18. Moments earlier, I had exchanged wedding vows with my (first) husband in my parents' living room. He and I were leaving for an overnight honeymoon, then driving 200 miles away to live in the town where he'd recently moved. As we said our goodbyes, my sister burst into tears. I knew she loved me, and I knew I loved her right back.

It took awhile, but somewhere along the way, through time passed and life experienced, we both grew up. Despite the miles between us, we grew closer. We got to know each other on a different level, without the filter of sibling rivalry. I learned to appreciate my sister for the beautiful, smart, funny person she is and always has been. We've shared a lot of wonderful times together since then and supported each other through a few tough times, too. Every year, I feel our bond grow stronger. And, now that we're practically the same age, you wouldn't believe how much we have in common.

She may be my little sister, but she's a big, big part of my life.

P.S. to my sister, Judy:

Happy birthday, Sis! I love you so much.

And if I ever kept you sitting way up on that teeter-totter until you thought your little hands couldn't hold on another minute longer, or if I ever sprang up suddenly so you'd hit the ground hard--neither of which I can imagine ever having happened--I'm really, really sorry.

"What in hell am I?"

2012-01-08T11:21:00.001-06:00

Among the WWII photos of my father that my aunt sent me recently was this one of his Army baseball team:

At first I didn't find this picture too interesting. The faces were so small that I had trouble picking him out from the rest of the ballplayers.

Then I turned the photo over and saw where he had identified every team member, left to right, by surname, position played (or rank), and heritage (sometimes in the politically incorrect terms of the day). My dad was the last man on the right in the second row.

What I'm Reading Today: Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close

2012-01-08T10:55:00.000-06:00

My curiosity piqued by trailers for the upcoming movie based on this book, I decided to go ahead and read the book. I'm glad I did.

Click on the image for a description

and reviews of this book.

I know it's normal for films to omit characters and scenes to make a book fit into the time constraints of a motion picture, but, if I've read the book first, I usually feel a little shortchanged by the movie. This is an unusual book. I'm pretty sure some of its quirkiness wouldn't translate well to the silver screen, so I may pass up the movie for at least as long as I'm still holding the book's young protagonist, Oskar Schell, in my heart.

What I'm Reading Today: Mountain Top

2012-01-04T19:42:00.001-06:00

I saw this book on another blogger's site recently and thought it might be interesting. It is.

Click on the image for a description

and reviews of this book.

Trinkets and Treasures: No. 10

2012-01-03T11:07:00.003-06:00

After my aunt Nina passed away this past November, her closest family members worked together to sort through her things and clear out her house. Her sister-in-law, my aunt Carol, found photos of my father and sent them to me and my sister. The photos, mostly from World War II, became instant treasures.

Early in 1943 my mother wrote this in my baby book: "Her daddy leaves for the army on Feb. 25th one day before she's 3 mos. old." Nobody knew then that the times he would spend with us after that would be short, sporadic, and often sorrowful.

In my father's later years, after we both made an effort to get better acquainted, he would talk very little about the war. When he did speak of it, he cried. I knew that the war had profoundly affected the man my father became, but I knew almost nothing of the adventurous 19-year-old boy who had left home to fight it.

These photos my Aunt Carol sent helped me to see that side of him.

My father, Paul, second from left. The notation on the back of the photo reads,

"This is one of our planes that had to make a crash landing near the front lines."

My father, at left front, smiling with his buddies.

My father, trying out the pilot's seat.

My father, left, obviously enjoying the experience.

My father, center, walking with his buddies

through the snow-covered streets of France.

My father, on the sled. Notation on the photo:

"These are French children."

It warmed my heart to see the above photos of my father, playful in the company of some of his "band of brothers." And then I came upon another photograph, one taken on a different day, and it chilled me to the bone.

Notation on back of photo identifies this group of people as "German prisoners."

Yes, I know they were our enemies, but they were boys, boys like my father and his buddies in the first six photos of this post, and I can imagine how frightened they must have been.

When my father talked about the war nearly fifty years after it ended, he talked specifically about a face-to-face encounter he had with a German soldier as he rounded a corner in a shelled-out building. They made eye contact, my father told me, and the young German shouted only one word, one my father didn't understand, before my father shot him. Tears streamed down my father's face as he told me about learning later that that German word meant "please."

I am so grateful to Aunt Carol for sending these photos and to Aunt Nina for keeping them all these years. Somehow, seeing evidence that my father had some good days in the midst of the hellishness that is war gives me peace.

Happy New Year!!!

2012-01-01T00:30:00.000-06:00

Thanking all of you for enriching my life by your presence in it and wishing you a very healthy, happy 2012.

The things that affected my life most in 2011

2011-12-31T17:28:00.002-06:00

There are so many, many things that have made the past year pleasurable. I could list family, friends, books, music, puzzles, games and on and on and on, and I would have listed them except that those things don't change. Those things sustain me day to day, year to year.

Likewise, I could write a long list of things that have not made me happy, a list that would probably be nearly the same as yours: housework, rising prices, politicians, junk mail, email spam, and all things Kardashian. Those things don't seem to change either.

So, I thought about it for a while and came up with a short list of what made 2011 different for me.

The addition of Levi to our household
Technically, Levi came on the scene the last week of 2010, but it was in 2011 that he became a full-fledged family member. On his worst days (and there were a few bad ones) he still had funny going for him. On his best days (most of his days are best ones now), nothing has been ripped, and he gives hugs and kisses along with being funny. It's very hard to get depressed when there's a natural clown in the house.

The continuation of a low-carb lifestyle

Photo by Kalyn Hoover

This, too, began in 2010, but I've really reaped the benefits of it in 2011. I have felt better this year than at any time in the past ten years, maybe even longer. Yes, I'm getting old, and I still have some of the aches and pains that go along with that, but nowhere near as many as I did before. This year I accepted the possibility that I might actually live longer than I had previously anticipated, which made me focus more on what I'm doing with my life and less on how much time is left.

The vacation with my sister in the Smoky Mountains
This was the first vacation I've had in years, one I wouldn't have been healthy enough to take a year earlier, and it was wonderful. The time with my sister, who is the person who has shared more of my life than any other living being, was precious to me. The scenery was spectacular. Those things together have given me enough good memories to last the rest of my life, but, more than that, the experience expanded my horizons. Where I once saw boundaries and limitations, I now see possibilities.

The loss of Kadi
This is the only negative item on my short list. Kadi's personality was a big one, and I've felt her absence in so many ways. She was the first dog I ever knew all the way from puppyhood through old age, and I loved her dearly. In her short life, she gave me everything she had. In her death, even as I grieved, I learned again that loving is the best thing there is, that love is worth the pain of losing it, that the pain doesn't die but the rawness of it diminishes, and that the love doesn't die or diminish at all.

Thank you, 2011. You've been mostly very good to me.

What I've Been Reading: the Last Books of 2011

2011-12-31T15:53:00.000-06:00

I've fallen a little behind on posting links to the books I've read, so I'll combine the current one and the last three into this one post. Here they are:

Click on the image of any book

for a description and reviews of that book.

Thanks to my fellow bloggers who have shared their reading lists in the past year and turned me on to some good reads.

Now, then (she says, brushing her hands together), I can start the new year with a clean slate.

Update on my furboys

2011-12-30T14:52:00.000-06:00

Butch is once again celebrating suppertime, and I couldn't be happier. He won't stick his muzzle into his food dish (maybe it's painful?), but he happily lets me put food in his mouth one spoonful at a time. I had stopped feeding him crunchy kibble sometime last year, but now I'm softening his meals even more. If the next step needs to be mush, we'll do that, too. As long as he's happy and his gum condition isn't going to cause him to starve, I'll do whatever needs to be done to keep him comfortable.

If you can call this comfortable:

Levi is now on Day 5 of crate confinement and is doing remarkably well. I haven't noticed any limping when I let him out for potty breaks, which is a very good sign since most of his limping was happening right after he'd been resting. I thought he'd go nuts inside the crate, but he's occupying himself with naps and toys. In fact, when I bring him back into the house after we've gone outside, he heads straight for the crate and walks right in it with no coaxing from me.

He's also being very good about letting me put the drops in his ears, so I have high hopes that his ear infection will be cleared up in short order.

Thanks to all of you who expressed your concern. My boys are both doing well, and I am SO relieved.

The things that are dogging us

2011-12-28T13:46:00.001-06:00

UPDATE WEDS. 4:26 PM: The vet looked at the photo of Butch's gums and said the growth does appear to be an epulis of the non-malignant variety. Fortunately, there are some non-surgical treatments that might help, the first being antibiotics to eliminate any possible infection. She gave me a prescription to start him on tonight and said he should be eating better by tomorrow. If not, then infection isn't what's keeping him from eating, and I will have to take him in tomorrow afternoon so they can get a good look at what's going on. She said that without surgery these tumors sometimes grow so long that they completely encase the dog's teeth. Most dogs, when that happens, will simply chew off the surplus. That's gross, I know, but it's an alternative Butch and I can live with.

I'll keep you posted.

_______________________________________________________________

I had expected to be announcing this week that a new dog had joined our family. His name is Barkley, he's another Goldendoodle, he's about two months older than Levi, and, in fact, he's Levi's brother from another mother. Barkley belongs to my niece, who loves him very much, but he's a little too big and a little too energetic, and he knocks her babies down when he wags his tail too close to them.

Barkley's move from Texas is on hold for now. If my niece hasn't changed her mind in a couple of weeks, I hope he can join us then, but for the immediate future I have to put Butch and Levi's needs first.

Levi is on strict crate confinement for two weeks to try to clear up a limp that his vets still think is bursitis. He had a whole series of x-rays on Monday, none of which showed any bone or joint abnormalities, so we're hoping that complete rest will heal what ails him.

I moved his crate into the living room so he'll have company, but he is not a happy camper. To make matters worse, he started shaking his head violently this morning, so I checked his ears, and one of them appears to be infected. We're going back to the vet later this afternoon.

Butch, in the meantime, has been perkier in the last week than he's been in at least a year. He's been so stiff and arthritic that I can't recall the last time he was able to get up on the furniture, but I looked up the other day and was shocked to see him sitting comfortably on the futon in the den. I don't know what made him decide to give it a try on that particular day, but he's been up there several times since then, apparently happy that his attempt was successful. Here he is relaxing on the futon with Lucy:

Butch has also been more social lately, spending more time interacting with people and other dogs and less time off by himself sleeping in another room. He seems to be hearing better than he did for months previously, and if I so much as crack open the refrigerator, he is up and coming into the kitchen to investigate. I've used his interest in food as an indicator that he still finds something positive about life in spite of his blindness, near deafness, and painful joints.

All that sounds good, don't you think? But there's a problem. When I took him for a checkup early in November, the vet commented on one tooth that looked really bad, saying he wouldn't risk putting Butch under anesthesia to pull the tooth (because of his age). He said to watch for any swelling around Butch's mouth or any signs that he was having difficulty eating.

Last night Butch didn't want his supper. He accepted a treat I offered him later, but promptly dropped it on the floor and left it. I pulled his lips back to check the appearance of the bad tooth, and I couldn't even find it. Since that veterinary visit less than two months ago, Butch's upper gum tissue has grown and hangs down to obscure all of his upper back teeth.

I have looked on the Internet for pictures of dogs' mouths that look like Butch's, and I believe what he has is an epulis. An epulis is a non-malignant tumor that occurs fairly commonly in older dogs. The problem in Butch's case is that treatment consists of the surgical removal of the epulis. In Butch's case surgery is not an option.

Butch needs to go to the vet, but riding in the car has become pure torture for him. He fights me when I try to get him into the car, and his whole body shakes until he is out of it again. I don't want to make him suffer more than necessary, and I am afraid he may not come home from his next trip to the vet.

I have taken a photo of the growth on his gums and will take it with me when I take Levi today to see if they will/can identify it from the picture. If it is what I think it is, I have a decision to make. Should I have Butch put down now, while he's in a relatively happy state of mind, or should I wait until he's in so much pain that death is the only way to make him comfortable? I don't want to deprive him of a single happy minute, but this brave animal has already endured so much pain in his lifetime. Is it fair to keep him alive when a long, hard winter may be all the future that lies ahead of him?

I'm praying for answers. What would you do?

Yule Be Blessed!

2011-12-24T20:35:00.002-06:00

The bright red and green of this holly are live on the bush--not decking my halls--but they make me think of Christmas all the same.

We actually had our family Christmas celebration this past Saturday, a week ago today, which was the only day all five of my grown grandchildren could get together at the same time. It was a wonderful day! Tomorrow will be low key in comparison, but the Christmas spirit hasn't even begun to abandon me, so it will still be a time to reflect on the reason for the holiday and the joy of spending time with family and friends.

My Christmas wish for all of you, wherever you are, is that you get what you really, really want--and I don't mean something that's wrapped and put under the tree. What I do mean--what I think we all want for Christmas when it comes right down to it--is the joy of loving and being loved and the sense of fulfillment that comes along with that and grows so big it nearly bursts your heart.

Merry Christmas, everybody!

Ringing in the delusions

2011-12-14T10:00:00.002-06:00

Approaching the entrance to Walmart, I saw the holiday bell ringer call out to a young woman who had just passed him on her way out of the store. She stopped, turned around and looked at him, hesitated, glanced at an older woman nearby, then turned back around and continued on her way to the parking lot.

The bell ringer, moving several feet in front of his red kettle, watched her intently. Only when I came up behind him to put money in his kettle did he turn around. He thanked me for the donation, wished me a good day, and I wished him the same.

That's where it should have ended.Instead, he called after me, "I think I embarrassed that girl."

"How'd you do that?" I asked him, turning around and looking at him closely for the first time. He was a small man, shorter than I, stocky but not fat. I guessed him to be in his mid-30s, and there was something just a little "off" about his face, starting with an oddly twisted mouth. When he spoke again, I realized it wasn't just his face that was out of kilter.

"I told her that all the girls here are prettier than the ones in Baton Rouge. And it's true, they are," he declared with a big smile.

"Well, then," I responded, "I guess this bell ringing job is not such a bad one, is it?"

He laughed out loud. "I told my friend that just the other day. The first three days I was here I got twenty-five phone numbers." He laughed again, gleefully, turning slightly red, not looking me in the eye.

I don't know why he chose to tell me that story. Maybe he thought I'd overheard his conversation with the girl, but I hadn't. I do know that if he expected camaraderie or congratulations for the imaginary notches in his belt, he didn't get either. Instead, I gave him a little wave and a tight smile (fake this time) and moved on into the store.

As offensive as I found this little man who was turning charitable bell ringing into his own personal brand of solicitation, I felt sorry for him. He probably got this job through people he knows from the soup kitchen, and he probably won't keep it long if he continues to pester the pretty, young shoppers. Nor should he.

Still, his situation makes me sad. I doubt that either a free hot meal or a rich fantasy life keeps him warm at night.

What I'm Reading Today: Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life

2011-12-11T14:36:00.000-06:00

I am loving this book! It's funny, irreverent, beautifully written, and full of so much common sense that I keep slapping myself on the forehead and saying, "Of course, that's the way it is. It's exactly like that."

If you like to write, Anne Lamott tells you in this book how to make your writing better. If you like to read, she helps you understand what it is about one book that grabs you and holds on long after you've read it, while another book fails to engage you from beginning to end.

Bird by Bird isn't only about writing and reading; it's also about life. It's about the big and little things that happen to people, the similarities and differences between the people those things happen to, and how they--all those people in all those stories--connect with us.

This book has been around for a while, so I suspect many of you are already familiar with it. Somehow I missed it until now. If you've missed it, too, please do yourself a favor and check it out. Soon.

Click on the image for a description

and reviews of this book.

Puzzled

2011-12-10T15:15:00.000-06:00

I'll begin this post by skipping right to the end of it: I spent hours and hours working a jigsaw puzzle, only to discover, when it was nearing completion, that two pieces were missing. I'll bet that's happened to you, hasn't it?

I can tell you the ending of this story because the end isn't really important. What matters, at least to me, is that the process of assembling this puzzle helped me fit a piece or two into the unfinished picture of who I have become.Here's what happened:

Day One:

The rain is coming down in slow, ropy drips, the first rain we've had in weeks. I don't mind it since I have no errands to run, and I think about what I'll do to occupy myself on a perfect indoor day like this one.

I piddle around on the Internet for a while, reading blogs and Facebook posts. One person is glad it's Friday, and two others want me to copy and repost their status updates, one to show that I love my daughter, the other to honor our men and women in the military. I do love my daughters, both of them, and I do respect those who serve our country, but I never repost anything. That's a good way to get a computer virus. Besides, I'm 69 years old and have long since learned that I don't have to do a thing just because someone asks me to.

Last night at bedtime I finished my book. Should I start another one? No, I don't want to get absorbed in anything this early in the day. I'd rather do something that allows my mind to free-float for a while. I don't want to watch TV, either; the house is quiet and I like it that way. I could draw, but that would mean dragging the pens, pencils and sketchbook to the end of the sofa where the light is best, and I know that as soon as I sit down on the sofa, Levi will show up with his ball and that please-please-play-with-me look in his eyes. Hmmm.

My eyes fall on the bookcase next to the fireplace, the shelves that hold games and jigsaw puzzles. I went on a puzzle binge a few years ago, and the binge ended way before the supply of puzzles did. It's been at least two years since I've put one together. I pick up an unopened box and study the picture on the front of it: too bright and flowery to suit my mood on this rainy day. I pick up a few more boxes, looking for something more seasonal. I stop and count the unopened puzzles; there are seventeen of them. I study the picture on each box top, finally choosing one that shows a sand-colored castle, topped with terra-cotta roof tiles, surrounded by russet-hued trees and a pale blue sky.

The table knife I use to open the box isn't up to the job, but I persist and finally puncture the paper seal. Now that I've made entry, I slice down one side of the box, then repeat the whole hacking process three more times. I mentally chastise myself for being too lazy to use the right tool for the job and for not being more safety conscious. Then, in the next second, I forgive myself--as simple to do as it is to say.

The puzzle is open. That's what counts. I take it to the dining room table, have a seat, pull the box close to my chest, and start sifting through it to find every piece that has one straight edge. When I think I have all the edge pieces, I set the box aside and begin assembling the frame of the puzzle. This part is as easy as child's play. Actually, it is child's play.

Next, I pull out all the pieces that look like they might be part of the castle walls and spread them out on the left side of the puzzle. Then I look for all the pieces that might be roof tiles and lay them out to the right. Piece by piece I fit tabs into notches until all the manmade structures in the puzzle image lie, surrounded by empty spaces, in the puzzle frame.

That's enough for one day.

Day Two:

I don't begin work on the puzzle until late in the afternoon, then I dig out all the pieces that look like sky. Wow! There's a big pile of sky. I look at the picture on the box again and see that sky covers nearly half of it. This could get tedious.

I notice for the hundredth time that the light in my dining room isn't very good. Parts of the sky are light blue, and parts of it are white, and in this light it's hard to see the difference. I get the flashlight out of the drawer and shine it on the sky pieces. Now they all look yellow, which doesn't help anything, so I put the flashlight away. The only way I can distinguish the light blues from the bluish whites is to hold two pieces side by side, one pair at a time, so I do that, over and over and over, until I have a dozen little five- or six-piece patches of sky. That's progress, even though I have no idea which patch goes where.

I glance at the clock and realize how long I've been sitting here, working on nothing but sky. This puzzle seemed like a good idea when I started it, but I'll tell you what: sky is boring.

My eyes are burning and my shoulders ache. I stop and roll my head around a couple of times, then move my shoulders up and down, forward and back. As I'm working out the kinks, it suddenly occurs to me that I don't have to finish this puzzle. I'm not getting paid to do this, so there won't be any negative consequences for quitting. No one would even know I did it. It dawns on me that, except for the care and feeding of my animals, I'm not really responsible to anyone about how I spend my time. My kids and grandkids are grown, so it's not as if I even have to set a good example. If I want to quit, all I have to do is decide to quit, and I'm done. The newfound sense of freedom is heady.

I decide that I won't give up, but I will stop for the day.

Day Three:

After a good night's sleep, I feel fresh this morning. I let the dogs outside and sit down at the dining room table to wait for them. After a couple minutes I glance casually at the puzzle, then at the carefully laid-out pieces of sky, and one of those pieces practically waves at me. "Pick me up," it seems to shout, and I do pick it up, and its shape pops out at me so distinctly that I know instantly where to put it. There. It fits. Then I recognize the shape of a second piece and a third, and by the time the dogs are ready to come back in, I'm channeling Chicken Little: "The sky is falling." Falling into place. This sky is mine.

All that's left is the leafy part of the puzzle. There are orange leaves, yellow leaves, tan leaves, leaves in shadow that appear dark green and even black. I lay out the leaf pieces by color around the perimeter of the puzzle and work systematically. By now I'm not thinking in terms of tabs and notches; instead, each piece has arms, legs, and a head on either end. I work with one piece at a time, trying to find a match for an outsized head that slopes to the right or a left arm that looks like an angel's wing. Minutes stretch into hours, but the end is in sight.

There's one piece left on the tabletop. I pick it up, reach across to drop it into place, and . . . wait, how did this happen? There are three empty spots in the puzzle. I fit the piece in my hand into one of those places, then start searching for the missing pieces. I look in the box and find it empty, as I expected. I lift up the bottom of the box, then the top. I lift the leaves of the silk plant that sits in the center of the dining table, then pick up the whole plant. I pull out the chairs on either side of me, thinking the pieces might have slid off the table onto the seats. I check the floor and don't see anything, but I know the colors in the autumn-leaf pattern would blend right in with the flooring, so I go get the broom and drag it carefully toward me from every direction, gaining nothing for my efforts but a little dog hair and a couple of dried leaves. Real leaves, dragged in from outside. They, too, blended right in with the flooring.

So that's it. I've worked on this puzzle for large chunks of time on three different days and have ended up with two pieces missing. I didn't quit, but I can't finish it. And yet, I am done. I'm satisfied. Where there was anger and frustration the last time this happened, there is now peace of mind.

This post is about three puzzles, then: first, the cardboard one I just (almost) finished; second, the mystery of the missing pieces; and third, an unanswered question: when did it get so easy for me to let go and move on? The third puzzle is the one that interests me most, because frustration used to be the flag I flew daily. Somewhere along the way between then and now, it seems, I've learned to tell the difference between mountains and molehills.

They say that wisdom comes with age, but I believe it's perspective, rather than wisdom, that one gains over time. (Or maybe, if I'm lucky, wisdom is still in my future.) All I know is that I'm 69 years old, and, like everyone else who has lived this long, I've been through some stuff in my life.

Two missing puzzle pieces? Pffffft! Who cares?

The battle of the bone

2011-12-09T09:52:00.001-06:00

When I wrote about Levi on his birthday last summer, I told you about the bone game he plays with Kim's dog, Oliver. Here's what I wrote then:

Levi's best pal is Oliver, who has been willing to race through the backyard with him since Day One. Though about one-fifth Levi's size, Ollie is the alpha dog. He established that at the very beginning of their relationship, and Levi clearly understands it still. Inside the house, the two of them play mind games, mostly centered around Levi's very large Nylabone. Each dog feigns disinterest in the bone while the other one has it, but the instant the possessor drops his guard, the other dog steals it and runs. The game is an elaborate one, involving much skulking, hiding behind furniture, and approaching stealthily from the rear. Kim and I should probably keep score, but we're too busy laughing at them.

The game continues as enthusiastically as it was played in the beginning, perhaps even more so. Levi has learned from Ollie and has become a better match for him. The two have different styles. Ollie is the champion of ballsy moves, while Levi relies on stealth and vigilance. There is no fighting in this game, no bared teeth or growling. Despite all the trickery and deceit involved, the game is conducted in a spirit of sportsmanship.

Last night's play was so intense that I was able to leave the room and get the camera without disrupting the game. Here's the play-by-play, picking up as I returned to the action:

Levi has possession of the bone, but he's worried because Ollie has his eye on it.

Levi shifts position. Ollie does, too, staying off to the side and waiting to catch Levi off guard.

In a move too quick for the camera, Ollie lunges, grabs the bone, races across the room and slides, home base and all. He is saaaaaafe and he scoooooores! In a demonstration of fearlessness and dismissal, he turns his back on Levi.

Levi is left waiting on his side of the court. He waits, watches, looks sad. This game is so hard.

But hold on! Ollie has just abandoned the bone because his mother has called him. (Interference?) He's only two steps away from it when Levi leaps off the sofa and dashes across the room.

In action once again too fast for the camera, Levi grabs the bone and returns with it to his home base. Levi scores! Ollie, sensing that he has been duped, immediately jumps up next to Levi, beginning the next round with a strategic move known as "feigning indifference."

And the game goes on.

What I'm Reading Today: A Killing Tide

2011-12-06T10:28:00.001-06:00

Online reviews are all over the place on this first novel by P. J. Alderman, but for the low price of the Kindle edition I couldn't pass it by. When I started reading it last night, I was too sleepy to read more than the first chapter, but not too sleepy to notice that the author had used the word "bobble"--when I'm pretty sure she meant "bauble"--only eight paragraphs in.

I find little bobbles like that disruptive because they take my focus away from the story and put it on the words instead. Once I got back into the story, though, it held my interest. In fact, I'm looking forward to reading more of it in a little while when I sit down with my Kindle and a bowl of hot, homemade soup.

Click on the image for a description

and reviews of this book.

Try this if you're so INKlined

2011-12-05T08:21:00.000-06:00

My daughter Kim recently turned me on to a design technique called Zentangle®. I read online that it's okay to use that name as long as I include the following paragraph when writing about it:

The Zentangle® art form and method was created by Rick Roberts and Maria Thomas and is copyrighted. Zentangle® is a registered trademark of Zentangle, Inc. Learn more at zentangle.com.

The hundreds (thousands?) of Zentangle images online make it obvious that I'm late to this arty party, but I'm enjoying it enough that I thought you might like to try it, too. It's relaxing, it can be done anywhere, and it doesn't require a huge investment in supplies. Paper, pen, and pencil are all you need. The experts prefer certain brands and types of those supplies, naturally, but you can use whatever you have on hand to try it out and see if you like it.

Zentangle basically consists of lines and doodled patterns put together on small sheets of paper, and it's incredibly easy (unless you're a perfectionist, that is). The art is in the overall look, not in the individual strokes. Thank goodness, because I mess up a lot of those simple little strokes.

I'm a little embarrassed to put my first efforts up here where you can compare them to some of the strikingly beautiful designs on the rest of the Internet, but I'll do it in the interest of showing you that even a beginner can achieve some interesting effects. With two exceptions, these are the only ones I've drawn, and they're posted in the order in which they were drawn. One exception is my favorite so far, and I've saved it for the end of this post. It isn't necessarily the best of the lot, but, for reasons I'll explain, it holds more meaning than the other ones. The other exception (I think it was the sixth one I drew) was messed up beyond repair, so I cut it out of my sketchbook and threw it in the garbage. (If you think a one-out-of-nine reject rate is too high for a novice, you should have seen some of the failures I created on earlier projects.)

Oh, another thing: I usually encourage you to click on my posted images to enlarge them and see them in greater detail. Not so in this case. Enlarge this set of images only if you want a close-up look at the hundreds of imperfections in these drawings. Sometimes, it seems, smaller images are more forgiving.

_____________________________________

One more thing I found interesting was that after I had done only a couple of these designs, I started noticing patterns in my environment where I'd never seen them before. There were patterns everywhere, and it was fun to see them pop out at me after years of blending in with the scenery.

The following drawing is my favorite because I sat in my living room and picked out patterns I could see from right there on the end of the sofa. The connected black squares at the upper left (they're black squares, not white crosses) represent a wall hanging made of laquered metal squares connected by black bars. The top center design is my version of tall dried vines that stand in a vase near a doorway. Next to the vines is a silk philodendron, bordered on the right by a pair of drawer handles. Underneath the drawer handles sits a patch of rattan from the baskets under my coffee table. Below the rattan there are four pine cones like those piled up in a dish on the coffee table (except when Levi messes with them). At the bottom right is a design cast into a bronze lamp base. The shape at the bottom left is a curved chair arm with its nailhead trim. The pattern of the actual chair consists of narrow stripes similar to those shown in the center of this chair-arm shape. For the outermost portion of the chair arm, I repeated the amoebic shape of a single large leaf from a botanical print on my wall. See what I mean about patterns everywhere?

If you're looking for something to keep your hands busy, you ought to give Zentangling a try. And if you do try it, please come back and tell us what you think about it.

What I'm Reading Today: Sweetie

2011-12-04T15:21:00.001-06:00

Click on the image for a description

and reviews of this book.

Haiku: Big Dog with No Brakes

2011-12-03T16:56:00.001-06:00

Happy to see me,
he runs through the yard, hits hard,
knocks me to the ground.

-------

And for good measure, here's a different version, same title:

Big galoot runs fast,
hits me in the effing knees.
I walk with crutches.

Harder than easy but worth it

2011-12-03T11:18:00.001-06:00

About this time last week ten musical notes--a little snatch of a melody--wormed their way into my head and played over and over. They were beautiful. I knew I'd heard them before but had no idea when or where and no way to find out the name of the song. If only I could identify the song, I could download it on iTunes.

I hummed those notes all day long. When I lay my head on my pillow that night, the notes continued to play in my mind until I finally fell asleep. In the morning they were gone. I couldn't remember the music and felt sad that I'd lost it, but there was nothing I could do about that.

I went about my business, humming other tunes as they came to mind. Then, in the middle of the morning, the notes came back, arriving in my brain as suddenly as they had the day before. The difference was that this time the first six notes were accompanied by five words of the lyrics: "I will always love you."

I googled those words and shouldn't have been surprised when the search turned up pages and pages of references to "I Will Always Love You," the song made famous first by Dolly Parton and then by Whitney Houston. That's a beautiful song, too, but not the one I was trying to find. I looked through several pages, then gave up.

The tune continued to play repetitively, then, late that afternoon, another few words of the lyrics fell into place. Now I had words to go along with all ten notes: "I will always love you the best I can." Back to Google I went and eventually matched those words to a set of lyrics that seemed familiar. The lyrics had a title, of course, so it didn't take long after that to find the song on YouTube. I listened to it a couple of times, then went to iTunes to buy it. I didn't want the song to get away from me again.

To my surprise, when iTunes opened up to my music list, the title of the song leaped off the screen at me. Apparently, I had already downloaded it a long time ago. I've since learned that this song was once featured on a "Grey's Anatomy" episode, so I must have gone through the same or a similar process to find it after watching that show. I usually listen to my iTunes in "shuffle" mode and can't explain why that song has never made it into the mix.

This song that I've been humming over and over to myself, then playing on YouTube and iTunes, is "Harder Than Easy," by Jack Savoretti (with Lucy Styles). Since it's captured so much of my attention, it seems only fair to make it this Saturday's song selection and post it here to share with you.

_______________________________________________________________

(Thanks to mjchunfilm02 for posting this video, complete with lyrics, on YouTube.)

December surprise

2011-12-01T11:00:00.001-06:00

With the new month calling for a change of header image, I sat down to upload one this morning and got this message:

Surprise!

I guess I knew somewhere in the back of my head that Blogger has a "photo upload quota," but if I did know it, I never gave it a second thought. I'm just glad this didn't happen a day earlier, after I had painstakingly selected 11 photos out of 300-plus possibilities for yesterday's post.

The good news is there are plenty of free photo-hosting sites online, and it's only $5 a year to get 20 GB more photo storage from Google. I decided to go with the latter option; it's worth a cent and a half a day to me to keep all my photos together. Once I'd paid my $5, it was only a matter of minutes until I was able to upload the new image as easily as ever.

It took nearly six years of blogging to reach my free photo upload quota, so I'm grateful for all the free storage space I've had up until now. In fact, I'm grateful to Blogger in general for its free-ness and its customizable templates and all that it does to support those of us who like to spill our guts on the Internet.

Now that I'm thinking about it, I wish I'd published a few more photos a couple weeks sooner. All this gratitude would have made for a good Thanksgiving post.

Walking through the olden days

2011-11-30T11:55:00.001-06:00

In last Sunday's post I mentioned that my daughter Kelli had taken me on an outing to LSU's Rural Life Museum. I can't believe I've lived in this area as long as I have and never visited this enchanting place before now. Makes me wonder what else is nearby that I'm missing.

Today I'm going to show you a few of the many, many photos I took, just enough to give you an idea of what the museum is all about. I'll make the images smaller than usual so I can post more of them without bogging everybody down. Be sure to click the images to enlarge them.

The museum building itself contains so many items it would be impossible to take a good long look at all of them in a single day, so I'll show you just a couple of the collections I particularly enjoyed. Let's start out in the transportation area, where an old hearse is at the head of one long line of vehicles.

In a room nearby is a collection of old sewing machines. This photo shows just a small number of them:

As much as I enjoyed seeing the artifacts inside the building, the outside area, with its village of buildings representing different eras, was by far the part of the experience that grabbed my interest and wouldn't let go. The photo at left shows the front of the redbrick commissary.

At right is one wall of the interior of the well-stocked commissary.

Here's a row of former slave cabins.

All of the outbuildings are furnished. At right is the sleeping area in one of the slave cabins.

Here's a side view of an Acadian-style house, with its outside stairway. This photo also demonstrates how scenic the village setting is.

Another side view, this time of the small village church with its painted windows.

This is the front porch of a pioneer's cabin...

...and here's what you see when you look through the pioneer cabin's front door.

One final photographic sample of the museum's beautiful natural setting:

There is so much more to this place than what I'm showing you here today: many more exhibits, many more buildings, beautiful trees, lush gardens. If you're ever in the Baton Rouge area, you owe it to yourself to set aside time to see all this in person. I can't wait to see it again next spring.

What I'm Reading Today: Bitter Sweet

2011-11-29T11:48:00.001-06:00

It was bedtime. I looked at the two unread books on my nightstand and realized I wasn't in the mood for either of them, so I reached for my Kindle. I knew there were at least two more unread books on there, and if they didn't suit me, I could download one that did in half a minute. The battery was dead.

That almost never happens, but it's been a few weeks since I hit the bargain bins at both Barnes & Noble and Books-A-Million, and I've had my head buried in those printed volumes.

My only hope for enjoyable bedtime reading was to choose an old book, preferably one with a plot I didn't entirely remember. Thinking that most of the ones on my shelves would be too fresh in my mind, I went to the spare bedroom, where the dresser drawers are filled with old paperbacks, and chose this oldie but goodie:

Click on the image for a description

and reviews of this book.

It's only becoming familiar to me now that I'm 60 pages in. LaVyrle Spencer doesn't disappoint even in rereads.

The week that started with a bang

2011-11-27T11:11:00.001-06:00

Monday, 11/21
My older daughter, Kim, called me Monday evening and mentioned that she was going to buy groceries. Later, about nine o'clock, I suddenly thought of something I'd forgotten to tell her, so I called her back and learned that she had been trying to call me at that same moment. She was calling from her car, in which she was trapped following a collision. An off-duty paramedic sat in her backseat, holding her head steady, as she talked alternately to me, to him, and to the investigating officers.

I hung up and called my younger daughter. She and her husband live slightly closer to the accident scene than I do, and they got there first. Kim was still in her car when Kelli and Troy arrived, but by the time I got there five minutes later, she had been placed on a stretcher board and was being moved into an ambulance. She was driven to the hospital, and we followed.

Kim had been driving through a green light at an intersection when a pickup truck coming from the opposite direction made a left turn and crashed into the left front quadrant of her compact car.

The driver of the pickup truck attempted to back it away from the scene, but the truck was stuck to Kim's car, so the driver and passenger jumped out of the truck and fled on foot. A witness described them to the police, who gave chase and caught both of them. The truck driver was determined to have a blood alcohol level much higher than the legal limit and is still in jail as I write this.

The ER doctors checked Kim over and released her with a prescription, instructions on how to keep the swelling down, and the advice to follow up with her personal physician. We left the ER and drove very carefully to Kelli's house, where Troy had taken all the groceries Kim had bought right before the accident. Then we went to Kim's apartment to pick up Lucy and Oliver and enough clothes for her to stay at my house for a few days. I don't think either of us slept a wink that night.

Tuesday, 11/22
Tuesday was consumed by errands: to the insurance company to file a claim, the wrecker yard to get Kim's personal items out of her car, and half a dozen other places to tie up loose ends.

Wednesday, 11/23
By Wednesday the insurance company had determined that Kim's car was a total loss. They had also arranged a rental car for her, so we went first to the insurance company, then to the rental car agency, and then to the wrecker yard again, this time to remove the license plate, which will have to be returned to the Department of Motor Vehicles.

Thursday, 11/24
Finally, a day of calm. With much to be thankful for, we went to Kelli and Troy's for Thanksgiving dinner. The weather was beautiful, the food was delicious, and being with all the kids and grandkids was delightful.

Here's my great-grandson, Owen (20 months),

on the porch "fwing" with his Popeé, Troy.

This beautiful girl, wrapped tightly in my arms,
is 12-week-old Olivia Grace, the newest member of our family.

When Owen asked for "ducks," some of us made the trek to the pond.

The ducks were all gone, but the beauty

of the pond was well worth the walk.

Friday, 11/25
Kelli came Friday morning to take me on an early birthday outing to LSU's Rural Life Museum. A calm, peaceful place hidden away in one of Baton Rouge's busiest areas, it features a warehouse jam-packed with antique items and a small village of furnished cabins and other buildings. The outdoor setting was beautifully picturesque, and Friday's weather was perfect for a walk back through time.

I enjoyed the day tremendously and will show you more photos in the next day or two.

Saturday, 11/26
My birthday arrived with a cloudy sky and rain that lingered throughout the day. Kim was still here with me. We had planned to celebrate together, but late Friday night I had asked if it would hurt her feelings if what I really wanted more than anything was to spend the day at home. I'm not used to being on the go so much, and I couldn't think of a better thing to do on my birthday than to return to my usual, quiet existence. So that's what we did. She spent most of the day online reading car ads, while I alternated between visiting with her, visiting with my sister on the phone, reading, napping, and pampering our assortment of dogs. We had take-out sesame chicken for dinner and went to bed early. It was great!

Sunday, 11/27

Kim went home this morning. She has a list of things to do tomorrow and needs to figure out what to do when. She's still quite stiff and sore, has ugly purple bruises on multiple areas of her body, and still has sharp pains in her chest, especially when she coughs, sneezes, or moves in a certain way. I'm pretty sure she'll get those chest pains checked out in the next couple of days, but she hates to complain when her injuries could have been so much worse than they appear to be.

It's been a difficult week in some ways and a wonderful week in others, and I end this Thanksgiving week grateful for the subtle and not-so-subtle reminders that we in this family have been richly blessed.

What I'm Reading Today: Julie & Julia

2011-11-27T10:34:00.001-06:00

I missed this book and the well-publicized movie that was made from it, so when I spotted it in the bargain bin at a local bookstore, I couldn't pass it up. I'm finding it entertaining, but a lot of readers apparently didn't. Fortunately, the reviews are fairly specific, so read some of them and decide for yourself whether this might be one you'd like.

Click on the image for a description

and reviews of this book.

What I'm Reading Today: Time Is a River

2011-11-21T08:44:00.000-06:00

Click on the image for a description

and reviews of this book.

Frayed nerves and ruffled feathers

2011-11-19T13:12:00.000-06:00

I have come to the store equipped with a detailed list, items grouped together according to aisle location, and have traveled from one corner of the store to the other, gathering my goods in record time. I survey the check-out area and find more closed registers than open ones. I briskly roll my cart to the end of the shortest line. There are three people ahead of me, none of whom has a large number of items. This should be quick.

I survey the covers of the tabloids and the slick magazines with pictures of celebrities or fancy desserts on their covers. Nothing I need there. I glance at the lighters, nail clippers, and single-serving bags of beef jerky, then inventory the candy bars in search of new products. I don't eat sugar anymore, but it's good to stay abreast of new developments. As I begin to check out all the different types of chewing gum, it occurs to me that the line hasn't moved since I got into it. Not one step.

The lady in front of me has begun to shift from one foot to another and to glance around nervously in all directions, like she's getting ready to bolt. The woman in front of her appears agitated, too, but she's stuck because she's already piled all her stuff on the counter. Now that I'm paying attention, I look at the person at the head of the line and, presto, I see and hear the problem simultaneously.

This woman, who has been in the process of checking out since before I got in line, is talking, talking, talking, non-stop, to the frazzled cashier, to the new trainee clerk, to people in other lines, to everybody within earshot. People are looking away from her, refusing to make eye contact, all but dropping to their knees and praying for her to just shut up. For a second.

She is enormous, this gabby woman. (I use the term "enormous" in a descriptive sense, not a disparaging one, because a thin person could run her mouth just as easily. The word "gabby," though, is intended to be disparaging.) She is wearing a very bright, frilly blouse, and she's talking with her hands, so that the colors of her blouse seem to blur with her quick movements. She rotates in bold semi-circles, keeping an eye out for anyone who's open to a little friendly conversation.

The cashier has finished ringing up the order and is waiting for the woman to pay. Only then does Talkative Tina reach into her cart and rummage around through the plastic bags she's just piled in there. Finally, she retrieves her purse. The purse is enormous, too. It's silver-grey, faux leather, and has big, cutesy ruffles on both sides. Here's a sketch of the purse:

The woman's incessant chatter has been grating on my nerves, and now, curiously, I find myself feeling some animosity toward her huge, ruffled purse. I understand that this makes no sense, but the longer I stand there, the more I despise that purse.

Jabbering Josephine hefts the purse up onto the counter (no easy task, that) and starts digging in it with both hands, momentarily interrupting the gestures that have thus far accompanied her words. Bingo! One fist pops up with a wallet. A matching wallet. And I'm not kidding.

I instantly detest the wallet, too.

Babbling Bertha opens the overstuffed wallet and begins to write a check. I'm thinking this might slow her down to at least a low-level mumble, but no, she's a multi-tasker. She writes and talks at the same time, all the while looking around to make sure she still has an audience.

Aha! A tired-looking woman, probably a grandmother, rolls onto the scene with a beautiful baby girl in the seat of her cart. The baby's head is dressed in a colorful elastic band with a giant bow on it, and she's screaming her little gift-wrapped head off. As the grandmother tries to move to the end of the line, the chatterbox whirls on the baby and begins cooing to her. "Whatsamattah wif oo, weetiepie, is oo hungry? Is oo tired? Does oo need to go beddie-bye?" She reaches a dimpled arm out and begins to poke the baby, who cries even harder. The grandmother rolls her eyes and takes two assertive steps forward, leaving the baby-poker with a half-written check in one hand, a pen in the other, and a shocked expression on her face. Do you think she returns to writing her check? No. She steps out into the aisle and yells to the back of the baby's head, "Welllllll, okay, sweetums, I hope you have a better day. Goodbye, babykins, okay? Bye-bye, now."

Only then does she turn back to smile at the cashier, who by now is leaning on one elbow and propping her chin in the palm of her hand. The trainee's eyes are about to pop out of her head. She looks at the rest of us who are waiting in line, offers a tentative smile and a shrug of her shoulders.

I am no longer looking at Prattling Patty. My eyes, my thoughts, my irrational anger are all focused on her ugly purse and her stupid matching wallet. If my eyes were lasers, they would burn holes in the side of her purse. I have a mental image of that silvery fake leather beginning first to smoke, then to blaze, the fire making a black-edged hole through which I can see sparks falling on used tissues, old grocery lists, and empty Twinkies wrappers. Somehow, while I'm mentally burning the woman's purse, she manages to finish writing her check and leaves the store. I don't even see her go.

Minutes later the three of us who have waited in line behind her have all checked out, and I'm on my way home. I put my groceries away, then seat myself at this computer while the images are still vivid in my mind. I carefully draw that ruffled purse and wallet to the best of my ability. I realize as I draw them that they probably aren't as ugly as I first thought they were. I hate them because my eyes have overdosed on an excess of fluff and frills and ruffles and because gibberish is still echoing in my ears. I hate them, I tell you, yet I'm kind of excited at the idea of showing them to you.

Obsessed much?

What I'm Reading Today: Ghost on Black Mountain

2011-11-19T07:46:00.001-06:00

(Click on the image

for more information about this book.)

"Shear" necessity

2011-11-18T10:41:00.001-06:00

When I mentioned in a post the other day that I'm "attempting a new skill," I was referring specifically to the skill of dog grooming. Before Levi I'd had only short-haired dogs, and grooming was simple: brush 'em, bathe 'em, clip their nails, and they're good to go. But, oh, the shedding those short-haired dogs do.

One of the things that first appealed to me about Levi was the fact that he has hair, not fur, and doesn't shed. It never occurred to me that his curly hair would just keep growing longer and longer without frequent haircuts. Even if I'd thought of that, I wouldn't have dreamed that the cost of having him groomed would be such a budget buster.

What to do, what to do? I could handle bathing Levi, but his tendency to roll on every fallen leaf or dead bug in the yard was causing his curls to tangle into mats no brush could penetrate.

Coincidentally, my daughter Kim, who has two small dogs of the hair-not-fur persuasion, was also pondering the grooming issue. She'd taken Lucy and Oliver to the pet salon often, but the last time she'd been called to pick them up early because they were so stressed out that the groomers were worried about them.

When Kim mentioned to me that she was thinking about investing in some professional grooming equipment and trying to do it herself, I immediately wanted in. We would share the investment and recoup our expenses in only three or four groomings. Together and separately, we watched online grooming videos, and Kim researched grooming sites to find out what kind of equipment was favored by the pros. With lists made and bank cards on the ready, we marched off to PetSmart and Petco. We bought clippers, extra blades, shears, thinning scissors, detangler tools, shampoos, conditioners, and doggy "freshener" sprays.

Ollie, the Shih Tzu, was our first victim. He was well behaved as we hovered over him on the bathroom counter and did not seem stressed at all. Granted, he seemed a little leery of us for a couple of days afterward, but we all survived the experience. And he looked pretty good for a first effort.

Levi, whose hair was in his eyes, would be next.

I kept the bag of equipment at my house and strategized about the process. Levi is big. There would be no standing him on the counter. Where else could I put him so that the clipper cord would reach all the way around him? I pondered the situation for ~~three or four weeks~~ a while, then decided I'd begin by sneaking up on him with the round-tipped shears.

Snip, snip, snip! I'd clip a few curls and Levi would leap away and look at me as if I'd just removed one of his limbs. I kept the scissors close at hand and we repeated this scenario many times, in many different parts of the house. I learned quickly that the back end of a dog is much easier to trim than the end that has teeth on it. I also learned I could get a lot more done by catching Levi napping. I ended up skipping the clippers and giving him an all-over scissors cut. After multiple sessions over a five-day period, I could not call him "finished," but I called the job "done."

You can see by the long curls sticking out on his cheeks that I missed a few spots. Never mind. He can see again, his tangles are all gone, and enough is enough. He's a little ragged, but it's a learning process, right? The next time should be easier.

This week I'm following Butch around with the Furminator®.

"Keep smiling and keep dancing."

2011-11-17T17:19:00.001-06:00

For the third time in little more than three weeks, I am posting about death. I'm hoping not to do that again anytime soon.

This time it was my Aunt Nina, who passed away yesterday. She was my father's sister, the first of nine children, and she had recently turned 92 years old. Of those nine siblings, Nina was the one I knew least. The others were still around Springfield, Missouri, when I was growing up there, but Nina had moved away. I'd met her, of course, at family gatherings on holidays, but hadn't spent any time with her before we moved away ourselves.

Then, about five years ago, we began talking, first by phone and then by email. I was charmed by her intelligence, her wit, and the stories she told so well. She gave me pieces of the puzzle that, up until then, had been my father's side of the family.

Thinking about Aunt Nina today, I thought about the details in all those emails she sent. I thought about how fragile life is, how quickly things can change, how people and things we take for granted can be lost to us in an instant. Time is fleeting, my friends. People die, computers crash, and first thing you know, there's no one to answer those questions you've been thinking about asking.

And so I began scrambling. Aunt Nina's emails were stored on an old PC, one that I'd retired a couple years ago when viruses slowed it to a crawl. Fortunately, I still have that old PC. Today I fired it up, poked around until I found those emails, and printed every one of them. For good measure I printed all the ones from my Uncle Glenn, my Aunt Shirley, and my cousins, Karen and Sandra, because they, too, had written to me about my father's family. It took a couple of hours and nearly a whole ream of paper, but when the last page came out of the printer, I felt like I could relax again.

I'm glad I got to know Aunt Nina. I'll remember her especially for the enthusiasm and sense of humor with which she told me her stories. I'll also try to remember the little piece of advice with which she concluded most of her emails: "Keep smiling and keep dancing."

Down, boy!

2011-11-16T09:55:00.003-06:00

Levi has bursitis, we think. He had a slight limp for nearly a week before I took him to the vet. He showed no other sign of being in pain, and the limp came and went. Every time he got up after resting for a while, he limped the first half a dozen steps and then stopped. I thought he'd get better day by day, but he didn't.

I'd checked his feet carefully, of course, and mashed and squeezed up and down his legs without any indication from him that anything was sore. Actually, it didn't surprise me to think he might have injured himself. He spends most of his awake time gamboling around the house, jumping from the floor to the sofa and down again, racing from room to room, flinging his tennis ball, then sliding across the floor in pursuit of it. He frequently crashes into furniture, and one would think that might be kind of painful.

The vet's office is only about five minutes away, but after that short ride, Levi gagged and threw up three times between the car and the vet's front door. Carsickness, she said. I'd suspected as much because he always looks unhappy when I take him for a ride.

While the vet examined Levi, I told her about his rowdiness in much the same way I just explained it to you. She laughed and said, "Boys will be boys," then leaned closer to Levi's big head just in time for him to let out a huge belch. Yes, indeed, boys will be boys.

The vet and her technician walked Levi outside, but he didn't limp for them. She's guessing bursitis is the problem because she felt him resist slightly when she tried to move his left shoulder joint. We're treating him for that first, and if he hasn't improved somewhat over the course of this second week, we'll do x-rays just to be on the safe side.

My job, in addition to giving him his daily meds, is to keep him from "getting completely crazy" (the vet's words) when he gets in rip-roaring gymnastics mode. Would you care to guess how that's going? Would it give you a clue if I told you this puppy now weighs 83 pounds?

As the microphone once picked up Nancy Reagan whispering into her husband's ear mid-speech, and as he immediately repeated to the gathered crowd, "We're doing the best we can."

Family Tries

2011-11-15T11:29:00.002-06:00

She arrived on Thursday, bringing with her a single travel bag, a lovely gift for me, and a plethora of memories that supported my own conclusions: our family was dysfunctional before we ever knew there was such a word, but we had some good times, too.

**********

She and I are related not by blood but by the bonds of holy matrimony between her father and my mother. She was 11, my sister was 10, and I was 14 that first summer. She was a buffer between my sister and me, a cool spot in the heat of our sibling rivalry. Before her arrival in our midst, we had battled one on one; afterwards, we each tried to draw her to our side of the argument to gain strength through numbers. On rare occasions, such as the time we thought Daddy was giving her special phone privileges, my sister and I declared a truce long enough to align against her. Sometimes, if you can believe it, we all three got along beautifully.

In the small house where we first lived together as a family, we three girls shared a bedroom. I remember talking to her late into the night, lying there in the darkness, about dreams, plans, observations, and vaguely formed philosophies. We could discuss those kinds of things because I had no beef with her. It was my sister, not she, who, by virtue of birth, had stolen a huge portion of our mother's limited supply of affection. I was mean to my sister and she had learned to be mean right back, so deep conversations had never been part of our daily interaction.

Near the end of their first year of marriage, our parents strengthened the bonds of our blended family by producing a beautiful baby boy, a fine brother who was related equally to all of us girls. We moved to a larger house, I had a room of my own, and those late-night discussions came to an end.

Over the next few years our parents became increasingly quarrelsome, engaging frequently in loud bouts of put-downs and one-upmanship. I don't know how my siblings felt then, but I felt insecure in a big way. I didn't think the structure of our family was strong enough to hold up under that kind of assault, and I didn't know what would happen to us if the family fell apart. My private thoughts shifted more and more to my own personal future: When would I be able to leave this family and how would I go about doing it?

The daily shouting matches became the norm, but the marriage held together (for 39 years, until the death of my stepfather). I married at 18 and moved away, feeling guilty about leaving my siblings behind on the battleground. My stepsister married four years later, my sister a year after that. In discussing our early marriages with my stepsister this past Thursday, she asked if I had felt as she did upon leaving home, that the unspoken message of our parents was, "Don't let the door hit you in the behind." Yes. Yes, I did feel that way.

After we were married and scattered, we got in the habit of communicating through Mother instead of with each other. Long-distance phone calls were expensive, and with one call to Mother we could find out what was happening in the lives of all the others. We saved a few dollars but paid a higher price in that we got the news but not the feelings behind the news. We didn't learn to know each other well as adults.

My sister and I have managed to bridge that gap and have become best friends. We're similar in so many ways that I deeply regret the loss of her friendship during those early years when I focused only on our differences. My stepsister has just stepped back into my life after decades of very little contact, and I'm very happy that she initiated that reunion. One thing the three of us have in common is that we all want to be closer to our brother. If those family bonds are to be strengthened, it's up to us now to do it.

Left to right in 1960:

My stepsister, my sister, me, our brother

Left to right in 1982:

My brother, his wife, my sister, me, my stepsister

**********

She came on Thursday afternoon, and by late that night we had filled in nearly fifty years' worth of the blanks in both of our life stories. We had pulled out all the old baggage, dusted it off, searched it thoroughly, then put it away. Once more out of sight, out of mind.

On Friday morning we talked mostly about the present and the future. We've survived difficult pasts, and we're both in good places now. We have moved on. We still have dreams, we still have goals, and some of them are things we might work on together. We still live miles apart, but we won't lose touch again. Family is family, blood or no blood.

Rest in Peace, Carmon Deyo

2011-11-13T22:43:00.001-06:00

I learned hours ago that a dear online friend passed away on Friday. If you've met Carmon through her blog, Life at Star's Rest, then you know what a wonderful human being she was, and you're as sad as I am that her life has been cut short. And, if you're not familiar with her, then I urge you to go read her blog and get to know her now. It's not too late for her to touch you with her words.

Though Carmon wrote compellingly about her two years of battling melanoma, there was so much more to her than a brave cancer patient. Save those last two years of posts to read later. First, go back in her archives to her earlier posts and learn about her interesting life and her love for her husband and for the rescued animals that gave her their trust and kept her company as she lived, often alone, on a mountain in New Mexico.

Carmon was an amazing and inspirational woman. I've never met her in person, but I'll remember her always.

Sunday stillness

2011-11-13T14:24:00.004-06:00

It's mid-morning when I step out the backdoor in my bathrobe to check the temperature, then come back inside to get dressed. This morning I choose to wear summer clothes, shorts and a tank top, knowing that the privacy fence on my patio will shield my neighbors' view of this unbecoming outfit. I'm too old to wear clothes like this, but I'm craving sunshine on my skin.

Outside minutes later, accompanied by the dogs, a new book, my camera (just in case), an ice cold soft drink, and cheese and crackers wrapped in a napkin, I lean back in one chair and prop my feet on another. I'm simultaneously warmed by the sun and cooled by a stiff breeze. Both feel wonderful. I make a mental note of the fact that I'm clearly not ready for cold weather.

It's quiet this morning except for the cawing of crows, the pinging of falling acorns, and the scraping of dried leaves against concrete. The latter sound is courtesy of the breeze that swirls those leaves in tight, playful circles.

A neighbor has bed linens hanging on a clothesline I never knew was there. The sight of her white sheets blowing in the wind fills my head with the fresh scent of sun-dried bedding I remember from childhood. I wonder if she'd mind if I walked over and sniffed her sheets.

Lucy and Oliver are here with my daughter Kim. Kim's in the shop making glass beads, Oliver and Levi are playing together, and Lucy is sticking close to Butch, the only male dog who isn't too boisterous for her tastes. The easy camaraderie between the animals gives me a sense of peace.

The past few days have been busy ones. There hasn't been much time for writing or reading, for watching TV, or for doing the daily crossword puzzle, which I've missed every day but one. The usual chores of cleaning house, grocery shopping, paying bills, etc., have occupied half my time, and the rest of it has gone to unusual events that are worthy of individual blog posts:

Welcoming a special houseguest;
Trying to keep a limping dog from jumping off the sofa;
Attempting a new skill;
Remaining calm in a stalled check-out line; and
Practicing a new creative outlet.

I'll write about all those things in the coming days. In the meantime, I'm happy to have a quiet, low-key day today, pleased to have time to spend with you here at Velvet Sacks, and glad to have squeezed in a few minutes throughout the week to take a few photographs:

Tiny flowers dwarfed by blades of grass.

Lucy: "Don't point that thing at me!"

Trees with their heads in the clouds.

The first red leaves in our neighborhood.

Peeping lizard.

Full beaver moon, a/k/a frosty moon

Sunlit and splendid.

Town cryer, town crower.

What I'm Reading Today: Off Season

2011-11-13T12:11:00.001-06:00

(Click on the image

for more information about this book.)

Warmth

2011-11-08T15:07:00.002-06:00

I've been busier than usual the past few days, but I did take time out on Sunday to visit my younger daughter. This little guy was also visiting with her that morning:

That's my great-grandson, Owen, who's 19 months old. (That dark stain on his T-shirt had been ice cubes minutes earlier.)

I don't know which was more fun, watching Owen's antics or watching the grown adults, including myself, literally dancing to his tune. He requested "mu-sick," which to him means only one song: "I Gotta Feeling" by the Black Eyed Peas. Owen danced, and we danced with him and for him. And we laughed. And we danced some more, until he tired of dancing and wanted to do other things. He's a very busy boy.

The weather was warm and beautiful that day. It's remained warm enough that I've had to turn the air conditioner on again, although it's supposed to cool off at least back to sweater weather tomorrow.

We still have only a smattering of autumn yellows and golds. I guess that's better than having no signs of autumn at all. Since I had my camera with me on Sunday, I stood in my daughter and son-in-law's backyard and snapped photos of trees on the edge of their property, then snapped a few more on the way home.

See? Still mostly green:

A patch of pink peeked through these sunlit leaves:

This live oak tree was graceful and lovely, even in its humble, behind-someone's-garden-shed surroundings:

And this dead oak tree was beautiful in a different sort of way:

(Sigh.) Family gatherings and photo ops both give me warm, fuzzy feelings.

Legislative impasse

2011-11-05T17:49:00.002-05:00

I love today's song. The first time I heard it, I thought the lyrics expressed a man's frustration with a woman, but after listening to it in regular rotation on my iTunes list, I began to hear it in a different way. Viewed in that new light (heard through a different ear?), the lyrics seemed to apply to a number of different situations, including the frustration legislators on one side of the aisle must feel when those on the other side refuse to budge.

For the record, I don't intend to turn this into a political blog, so please don't write me off forever just because your opinions differ from mine. It's just that today seems like a good time to feature this song since I already ventured into political territory earlier in the week. What's more, the song is neutral, even if my opinion is not.

The title of the song is "Blue to a Blind Man." Here are the lyrics:

Blue to a Blind Man

by Ken Block

You think we're broken,
What if we're just a little cracked?
I know we're choking on the little things
That seem to come with time.

One word and watch our armies brawl.
No one will bend until one falls.
We used to fight, you for me and me for you,
Tied up without the words that might cut through.

It's like trying to teach blue to a blind man,
Rude to a kind man, or walking on the sun.
You try, and I do all that I can,
But teaching blue to a blind man can't be done.

We used our soldiers,
And it was us against the world.
The toll was taken, now we're buried under life
That comes with time.

One word and watch our eagles (egos?) brawl,
No one will bend until one falls.
We used to fight, but you for me and me for you.

It's like trying to teach blue to a blind man,
Truth to a lie, and walking on the sun.
I try and I do all that I can,
But teaching blue to a blind man can't be done.

We can go home,
You can sleep,
And I can think for a while.
We can't go on and on,
On empty, or endless oceans dry.

It's like trying to teach blue to a blind man,
Rude to a kind man, and screaming at the sun.
You try, and I, I do all that I can,
But teaching blue to a blind man can't be done.

It can't be done.
I'm teaching blue to a blind man.

And here's the music video:

_______________________________________________________________

(Thanks to scottymo2009 for posting this video on YouTube.)

What I'm Reading Today: The White Queen

2011-11-03T12:01:00.011-05:00

I enjoy reading about the kings and queens of the Plantagenet era. Some of them were direct ancestors of my family, so it's fun to get the scoop on them, even if that scoop is largely fictional.

(Click on the image

for more information about this book.)

Also, I'm happy to report that the Plantagenets' family-feuding gene has been watered down substantially over the last eight or nine centuries.

Occupying Velvet Sacks

2011-11-02T09:57:00.005-05:00

It doesn't bother me one whit that there are people in this country who have a lot more money than I do. Let 'em have it. "Live and let live" and all that.

At a time when so many people are struggling financially, it does bother me a tiny bit when I see such overtly ostentatious houses, automobiles, or yachts that there seems to be no reason for their existence other than to stroke someone's outsized ego. It troubles me even more to learn that some individuals have obtained their fortunes through cheating, stealing, or accepting ridiculously large bonuses while workers at lower levels are being laid off. And when exceedingly rich people and corporations use their boatloads of money to buy political influence? That doesn't just bother me, my friends. That pisses me off!

Our laws should ensure that the ultra-wealthy are entitled to exactly the same amount of political influence you and I have: one vote apiece. When our elected officials fail to do the business of our government because the offices they hold have been bought and paid for by the one percent of the population with the deepest pockets, we need to recognize that something has gone terribly wrong. The fact that this kind of paid political persuasion is possible does not make it acceptable.

Today I'm standing up in my little corner of the Internet to join forces with people all across the country who are stepping up to occupy their communities in the interest of letting our officials know that we love America, we love what it stands for, and we're desperate to put a stop to the short-sighted, greedy, grab-what-you-can-get-and-to-hell-with-everyone-else attitude that has permeated Wall Street and Washington.

I've been reading the websites and Facebook pages of some of the Occupy groups. For the most part (there are always exceptions), I like what they're trying to do and the peaceful way in which they're attempting to go about it. The Occupy movement reminds me in so many ways of the push for change that grew in the 1960s until changes did occur. The process was long, frequently painful, but almost always exhilarating, as though the very air we breathed contained a low-voltage electrical charge.

I't's difficult to explain the Sixties to people who didn't experience it for themselves. If you're one who missed it, pay attention to what's happening across the country now. We might be on the verge of something similar.

I haven't yet found the courage to join the bold souls who have recently begun to "occupy" nearby Baton Rouge. Maybe I will, someday, but when I see the hatred being spewed online at some of these groups and the misinformation being dispensed by certain segments of the media, my thoughts turn abruptly away from what's right for our country and focus on my own safety and security.

How selfish I am. I stay hidden, like a rabbit in tall grass, trying not to draw attention to my small presence in this field of dissent. The Occupy protestors march through that same grass, waving signs, singing anthems, shouting slogans, shining a spotlight on the masses of Americans whose financial--and, therefore, physical--security is being threatened. To me, these protestors are soldiers battling bravely in a different kind of war.

I proudly salute them, even as I slink back into posting about dogs, books, autumn leaves, and old family furniture.

Trinkets and Treasures - No. 9

2011-11-01T09:56:00.006-05:00

I'm happy with most of the furniture in my house, but only a couple of pieces are really special to me. You've seen a picture of one of those pieces at least once before, and today I want to tell you why I love it so much.

This piece stood in the dining room of my grandmother's house (the home of my childhood) from the earliest days I can remember. I don't know if it was hers to begin with or if it had first belonged to her mother, Dora, who was also part of our multi-generational household.

After my grandmother passed away, my sister kept this piece and cared for it lovingly in her own home. It came to me eleven years later, after our mother died, and I hope it will always have a place with someone in our family.

You can't tell by looking at it, but it's actually made in two parts: the hutch sits on top of the secretary. When the hutch is lifted off, there's a span of wood on the secretary that isn't covered by the veneer that was so carefully applied to the rest of the piece. That patch of rough-hewn lumber demonstrates the age of this built-by-hand piece, as do the dovetail joints of the drawers and the slight rippling of the glass. The hinged half-top of the secretary folds out into a worn leather desktop.

When my sister passed this family heirloom on to me, she asked, "Did you ever know there's a hidden compartment in this?" I had not known it. I, who as a child had gone surreptitiously through every inch of that house with the thoroughness of a government agent, had somehow missed this.

The top of the hutch lifts up to reveal a secret space large enough to hold a good portion of a family's valuables. (I can show you this because I have no valuables to store in that space.)

I looked down on the top of this piece every time I went down the stairs from my bedroom for more than fourteen years and never suspected it was keeping a secret. My grandmother kept doilies on most of the flat wooden surfaces in our home, and there was always a crochet-edged scarf covering the tiny hinges on top of this.

I wonder what other interesting things I might have missed in my covert spy missions.

Sparks in the dark

2011-10-31T10:02:00.001-05:00

In 1987 I worked as a human resources manager, but for one day, exactly 24 years ago today, I left my professional persona at home and went to work in the clothing and attitude of a punk rocker. I believe that was the one and only costumed celebration of Halloween we ever had when I worked at that office. Most of us enjoyed it, but a few serious souls objected on religious grounds.

I studied the photo above for several minutes before posting it, trying to remember anything interesting I could tell you about that day. The only thing that came to mind was that that was the day I learned that if you chew Wint-O-Green Life Savers in the dark, you can see sparks.

No doubt the subject came up because I always kept a stash of Wint-O-Green Life Savers handy in my desk drawer, so it took less than a minute for my punk-rock self and the bearer of the candy-fire news to shut ourselves in the ladies' room, turn off the lights, and watch the mirror as we chewed mints in the dark. People, it's true: they do make little flashes of light.

I spent a large part of that afternoon passing out mints and conducting guided tours of the dark restroom. No one in the office got much work done that day. Now that I think about it, perhaps it was the loss of productivity, rather than the religious objections, that put an end to our Halloween celebrations.

I guess the repressed pagan parts of our personalities run a little wild when they get turned loose.

Happy Halloween, y'all!

Fluff 'n' stuff

2011-10-30T16:04:00.001-05:00

When my Facebook account was "unavailable" for a couple of days this past week, I realized how much I've come to rely on that particular social network to keep up with what my friends and family members are doing. Big events usually rate a phone call, of course, but it's fun to know the little, moment-to-moment things, too.

Facebook and Blogger are both owned by Google, so my Google account password and login ID work for both FB and Blogger. Google was working properly, Blogger was working as it usually does, but Facebook was down. Late on the evening of the second frustrating day, I happened to check my third-party stat-counter for this blog. Whoa! There had been 730 hits that day, many multiples of the usual amount, and when I took a closer look, I discovered that all those visits were supposedly from me.

The stat-counter is set up so that it doesn't count visits from my IP address. The website showed that that feature was operating properly, and yet, there I was, 730 times. It's conceivable that I might have viewed Velvet Sacks a dozen times that day, and, out of frustration, I'm sure I may have visited Facebook twice an hour to see if it was working yet. I'm equally sure I've never visited any site 730 times in a day ever.

Seems fishy to me, but everything seems to be working right again.

********

It's turned cooler here in the last few days, cold enough to wear a jacket outside and cold enough to force me to give up my breakfasts outside. Fortunately, there's a patch of sunshine just my size on the patio at lunchtime. I'll miss those fresh-air meals when winter sets in.

********

My daughter called yesterday to see if I wanted to ride with her to Barnes & Noble, and I did, although I didn't intend to buy anything. Kim didn't find everything she was looking for at B&N, so we also went to Books-a-Million and Hobby Lobby before she decided she'd have to order what she needed online. I, on the other hand, bought a couple of things at each of those places. You might think that indicates a lack of impulse control on my part, but you should have seen some of the wonderful things I admired and didn't buy.

********

As I write this, acorns are falling on the tin roof of my neighbor's garden shed. Each one that hits sounds like a gunshot. Butch can't hear them, and Levi has heard them so many times he's no longer interested. Because I know the source of the sound, I actually kind of like it. It's an autumn kind of sound.

Wishing I was Mary

2011-10-29T09:58:00.148-05:00

In the late summer of 1967 I was 24 years old, newly divorced, and the mother of two small daughters. I wasn't sorry that the marriage had ended, but I'd been sad for a long time that my dream of what a marriage could be had not materialized. I don't think I'd felt truly loved for a single day of the six years I was married.

That same summer Al Martino recorded "Mary in the Morning," a song that touched me deeply. I wanted to be loved the way the Mary of the song was loved, with tenderness and passion in equal proportions. Read these lyrics and see what I mean:

********

Mary in the Morning

(Written by Michael Rashkow and singer Johnny Cymbal)

Nothing's quite as pretty as Mary in the morning
When through a sleepy haze I see her lying there,
Soft as the rain that falls on summer flowers,
Warm as the sunlight shining on her golden hair, um-hum.

When I awake
And see her there so close beside me,
I want to take
Her in my arms,
The ache is there
So deep inside me.

Nothing's quite as pretty as Mary in the morning,
Chasing the rainbow in her dreams so far away,
And when she turns to touch me, I kiss her face so softly,
And then my Mary wakes to love another day, um-hum.

And Mary's there
In summer days or stormy weather.
She doesn't care
`Cause right or wrong the love we share,
We share together.

Nothing's quite as pretty as Mary in the evening,
Kissed by the shades of night and starlight in her hair,
And as we walk, I hold her close beside me,
All our tomorrows for a lifetime we will share, um-hum.

********

Before another year had passed I found that kind of love. Okay, so it lasted twelve years instead of a lifetime, but by the time it ended, I was no longer desperate for it. I'd experienced it for a time, I'd remember it always, and, most important, I'd learned that I was worth loving. Maybe that was what I'd really needed all along.

The song has remained a favorite, although I've grown to prefer Elvis Presley's version, which is the one I'm bringing to you today. (This one's for you, 4th Sister; I know how much you love Elvis.)

_______________________________________________________________

(Thanks to utmom2008 for posting this video on YouTube.)

No butts about it

2011-10-28T09:32:00.000-05:00

Ronni Bennett's post about fashion this morning reminded me of a story I'd almost forgotten to tell you. It happened on the first day of my recent vacation.

The plan was for my sister to call me when she left her home in Texas, which she did. I knew I'd have three hours from then to load all my ready-for-packing clothing into luggage, bathe, put on makeup, and get dressed. I wanted to dress at the last minute so my traveling clothes would be fresh.

The problem was that my sister made really good time and arrived half an hour early. I still wasn't dressed. My daughters were here to see us off, so they visited with their aunt while I hurried around in my bathrobe to finish up. I threw on my clothes as fast as I could, then we were ready to hit the road.

I had chosen to travel in a chocolate brown T-shirt, brown sandals, and a pair of light-khaki pants. I'd picked that outfit specifically because of the pants. They were lightweight, didn't wrinkle much, had an elastic waist, and were about one size too large for me--not so large that they were ugly-baggy, but plenty roomy.

As the day progressed, I was comfortable and pleased with my choice. We stopped a few times that first day, for gasoline, restrooms, and cold drinks. At one of those stops I attempted to put change in my pocket, only to realize there were no pockets. "Hm," I thought to myself, "I could have sworn these pants had pockets." No big deal, right? I didn't give it another thought.

We traveled through three states that first day: Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama. Just after dark we stopped for the night at a hotel in Montgomery, Alabama. It was late and we were hungry, so we dropped off our luggage in our hotel room, took turns in the bathroom, then picked up our purses to head out for dinner.

My hand was on the doorknob when my sister yelled, "Stop!" I turned around to see what was the matter and saw her laughing and pointing at me. "Your pants," she giggled. "The fly is in the back." Indeed it was. So were the pockets. I had displayed myself across three states with my pants on backwards.

I would have been embarrassed, but I knew I'd never see any of those people again in my lifetime, so I just turned the pants around and went about my business. In fact, the more I thought about it, the funnier it got. But then I thought about it some more and the humor began to wear off a little.

I wore my pants backwards--through three states--and couldn't tell the difference. What does that say about the shape of my recently slimmed-down butt?

Drive-by Autumn

2011-10-27T17:37:00.002-05:00

Yes, Virginia, there is an autumn, but in Louisiana you have to look harder for it. You'll find one tree on this road, another on that one, and maybe, if you drive a few miles farther north, you'll even spot a whole cluster of trees with red-orange leaves.

I drive around this area in search of autumn leaves every year about this time, and the pickings are almost always slim. After taking some disappointing shots yesterday, today I resorted to looking through old photo files for patches of boldly colored nature. By zooming in on previous years' largely green photos, then cropping the hell out of them, I've put together a small collection entitled "Seeing Autumn in Your Shorts and Sandals." Enjoy!

Too much TV?

2011-10-26T10:35:00.000-05:00

I remember only fragments of my dreams last night, but I'd like to be able to repeat one of the things I do remember:

As I drifted off into a dream state, a screen popped up in my head, looking very much like the list of DVR recordings on my TV screen. It was a list of dream topics. I selected one (telepathically, I suppose, for I had no remote control), my choice was highlighted for a brief moment, and then I began dreaming about that very pleasant subject.

Do you suppose the head honcho in charge of the human psyche has hired a tech support team? And if this was just a trial offer, do you know where I can sign up for the upgrade?

What I'm Reading Today: The Walk West

2011-10-26T08:19:00.001-05:00

I enjoyed Peter Jenkins' first book enough that I was eager to follow him along the rest of his journey. Here's the sequel:

(Click the image above

for more information about this book.)

Trinkets and Treasures - No. 8

2011-10-25T13:50:00.000-05:00

We're definitely in trinket territory today, but there's something about this particular napkin-holder that appeals to me every time I see it. I bought it at least thirty years ago, in Georgia, I think. Though it's no longer in use (my "napkins" come on a roll now), it's always on display somewhere in my kitchen.

Who would have thought that a handful of colorful grains, encapsulated in Lucite, would have the power to make me happy for so many years?

Carving with a sharp knife

2011-10-24T15:26:00.002-05:00

It's funny how much a child can remember about people who passed through her life, then moved on, never to be seen again. I'm thinking now about a man named George. (I remember his last name, too, but won't say it here.) He was my divorced mother's boyfriend when I was about seven or eight years old.

Here's a photo of handsome George, an expression of concentration on his face as he carved a Halloween pumpkin for my little sister and me:

I don't know how long George was a part of our lives. It seemed like a very long time, but when I think back now about the vast span of time between the Christmases of my childhood, I realize his relationship with my mother--with all of us--may not have lasted as long as I thought it did.

George took us along sometimes when he went out with my mother, and he visited us at home (where we lived with my grandparents) often. I remember one of those visits more than others.

George was a policeman. One day he drove up in his patrol car, parked it near the end of the driveway, and left it with the motor running while he sat on the front porch longer than he should have and visited with Mother and my grandparents. When the radio in his car began chattering, George ran to his car, listened for a moment, waved a quick goodbye, then drove away.

He didn't go far. Seconds after he left, he pulled into our next-door neighbor's driveway. The neighbor lady had hosted a card party that night, and while George was sitting on our front porch, someone had climbed through the neighbor's window, stolen the contents of her guests' purses, stuffed the purses with leaves, and fled. This all happened on the other side of a tall hedge that bordered our driveway, but no more than twenty feet away from where we sat.

Considering that plenty of fallen leaves were available for purse-stuffing purposes, I'm thinking that this incident and the pumpkin-carving event must have taken place no more than a few weeks apart.

However long George was around, his role in our lives ended abruptly. I remember feeling disappointed that he wasn't coming over anymore and sad that he hadn't told my sister and me goodbye. I don't remember what Mother told us at the time, but I'm quite sure she didn't tell us the truth.

I mentioned George to my mother once, not many years before she passed away, and she told me then what had really happened. She'd discovered that George was married. He wasn't the first man who had lied to her and wouldn't be the last.

It's funny how much a child can remember about people who passed through her life, then moved on. It's funny how someone can cut a tiny hole in a child's spirit and never even know it.

What I'm Reading Today: Under the Skin

2011-10-23T10:08:00.005-05:00

I pre-ordered this book, having read five others by this author and hungering for another visit with the series' main character, Elizabeth Goodweather. The book finally arrived, and it feels great to be right there with Elizabeth (Lizabeth, Lizzie Beth), her family, and her neighbors as they untangle the threads of yet another mystery.

(Click the image

for more information about this book)

By the way, the author, Vicki Lane, is a fellow blogger. I enjoy reading her daily posts at "Vicki Lane Mysteries," where she mostly writes about the same kinds of everyday things and events you and I do, with a little book talk (it's her job, remember) thrown in.

Good reading, everyone.

To a friend...

2011-10-22T11:53:00.001-05:00

...in deepest sympathy.

_______________________________________________________________

(This song is "Into the West" by Annie Lennox. Thanks to 1xxxNoNamexxx1 for posting it on YouTube.)

Halt! Who goes there?

2011-10-21T08:44:00.002-05:00

Levi (on the left above) knows everything that goes on in the neighborhood. When the neighbors on any side of us have company, Levi hears them and barks loudly to let them know he's paying attention. Butch, with his blindness and almost non-existent hearing, rarely has a clue anybody's moving around outside, unless he can hear Levi, and then he wants in on the action.

I didn't know the curly-haired pup I brought home at the end of last year would grow up to be a watchdog, but he's turned out to be a good one. I hope he'll figure out soon that folks in other people's yards don't need to be announced. And I hope that no malevolent stranger who approaches figures out that if he comes too close to the barking, growling, big curly dog, he's likely to have a wet tennis ball thrust into his hand.

What I'm Reading Today: Nightwoods

2011-10-19T15:45:00.002-05:00

I love the way Charles Frazier uses the English language. I read his Cold Mountain when it first came out in paperback, then Thirteen Moons shortly after I got home from vacation recently. Sure was glad to find this new one:

(Click on the image

for more information on this book.)

My tall, thin shadow

2011-10-19T09:43:00.002-05:00

Yesterday morning I stepped away from my computer desk and into the sunlight streaming through a nearby window. When I turned around and saw my shadow, I was struck by the symbolism of it and had to grab my camera to capture and preserve that image.

My flesh-and-bone legs are not that long and slender, so the shadow doesn't represent how I look. The shadow is a sun-painted portrait of how I feel.

In the summer of 2010 I was fat, tired all the time, in constant pain from arthritis, and convinced that those conditions would only get worse over time. Knee pain kept me from sleeping well and severely restricted where I could go and what I could do. If I sat in a car for more than half an hour, I was so stiff I could hardly move when I got out of it. Sitting still in a movie was excruciating, and climbing the stairs in a theater with stadium seating was even worse. A trip to the grocery store put me off my feet for hours, and one round at Walmart would cost me the next day, too.

"Eat healthy and live longer"? Pffft! I guess not. Who wants to add on extra years of pain and confinement?

I'd gained weight, lost it, and regained it so many times through the years that I couldn't imagine doing it again. For the past five years my (over)weight had remained constant, so I had apparently reached the point where the calories contained in the foods (and quantities of them) I wanted to eat amounted to exactly the number of calories required to maintain my weight.

Then my daughter made me mad. Spittin' mad. She had recently started a low-carb diet and was giving me the hard-sell to try it with her. For half an evening she pushed and pushed and pushed until I agreed to try it just to shut her up. I agreed to try it for a month. That was in August of 2010, and I started the diet a couple weeks later at the beginning of September.

A year later, the end of August and beginning of September 2011, I rode in my sister's car for day-long stretches from Louisiana to the Smoky Mountains. I walked through museums and hiked up hills. Was I tired afterward? Oh, yes. But I was able to do it, and if there was any achiness afterwards, it wasn't enough to keep me from sleeping soundly in a strange bed.

I can squat to refill the dogs' water dish, though I can't yet stay long in a squatting position. I still don't like to get down on the floor, but if I have to do it, I can get up more easily than I could before. I can walk through the Super Walmart much more quickly these days, and if I forget something and have to walk back across the store when I remember it, that's no longer a problem.

I still have arthritis. That doesn't go away, but the pain from it has diminished enough that I can control it with over-the-counter meds instead of expensive prescription NSAIDs. I still take medicine for hypertension--about a third of what I took before. My cholesterol count dropped enough that the doctor said we could see how I do without it, so I haven't had to take that for the last few months. I was taking two Prilosec tablets a day; now I take half of one. No need to tell you what this has done for my pocketbook.

I've lost just over 70 pounds, and I need to lose 20 or 30 more. It's coming off slowly now, and I won't know when I've lost enough until I see it. I can eat a piece of cake that's thrust into my hand at a baby shower, and if the restaurant dish I've ordered surprises me by containing rice, I can eat it, enjoy it, and not feel guilty about it. Most of the time, though, I don't eat those things. They don't tempt me anymore. I've learned through trial and error that a lot of the illness I was feeling a year ago was related to spikes and drops in blood sugar levels, and I simply don't want to feel like that again. I'm no longer on a diet; I've just changed the way I plan to eat for the rest of my life.

Now that it isn't so painful to move my limbs, I need to begin an exercise program. So, yes, I still have some work to do. It'll get done eventually, and "eventually" seems soon enough now that the idea of living longer has a renewed appeal.

I'll be 69 next month. And that tall, thin girl in the shadow? She's alive again.

Trinkets and Treasures - No. 7

2011-10-18T12:20:00.000-05:00

This chess set was a gift from my daughters many, many years ago, and I've treasured it from the moment I saw it. I love the carved wood, the colorful tiles, and, especially, the feel of the soapstone pieces. The king lies heavy in my hand and stands slightly taller than the length of my palm.

It's been quite a while since I've had a chess partner, so this beautiful set has been folded up and stored on a shelf among other games and puzzles that don't have nearly as much sentimental value. It really deserves its own place of honor.

In the last games that really stand out in my mind, my worthy partner was my then eight-year-old grandson (who recently turned 22). At the end of one game, as we were setting up the board for the next, he paused, holding a chess piece in his hand, a seriously thoughtful expression on his face. "Grammy," he asked, "when you die, can I have this chess set?"

I loved that moment. There was no sense of urgency in his request, and I was delighted to know that he was enjoying himself enough to ask such a question.

I'm going on record here that when that time comes, the chess set goes to Koby.

What I'm Reading Today: A Walk Across America

2011-10-17T16:23:00.001-05:00

I used to have a book review blog but ended it when I figured out that writing reviews ate a big chunk out of my reading time. Then I added a book list to the sidebar. That came down when I got hopelessly behind on adding to the list. Still, I love reading, and I like sharing what I'm reading with you, so I'm now going to try a third way of doing that.

I'll just post an image of the book I'm reading and link the image to a site where you can read other people's reviews. Easy-peasy, right?

So, here's what I'm reading today:

I like it a lot.

Finding "pretty" where you least expect it

2011-10-17T09:28:00.000-05:00

The weather was gorgeous yesterday, sunny and breezy and perfect for finding a beautiful place to take photos. Unfortunately, October always kicks my allergies into high gear, so I couldn't even sit outside on my own patio.

Instead, I ran errands, but I took the camera with me, just in case.

I liked the shadows and the pronounced woodgrain on this fence behind the Shell station where I stopped for gas:

And a couple miles down the road I noticed for the first time that there are pretty little trees in the Walmart parking lot:

That's all I got in the way of photographs, but by adding gasoline and groceries to the mix, I was satisfied.

Autumn Leaves - Haiku

2011-10-16T09:20:00.001-05:00

Autumn blows a kiss

to South Louisiana,

leaves us wanting more.

Sometimes it's just a good song

2011-10-15T10:05:00.003-05:00

Some of the songs I've chosen as "Saturday song selections" have special meaning to me, usually because they evoke memories of persons, places, events or time periods in my life. I knew that I was already living in Louisiana when today's selection came out, and I knew it was sometime in the '80s, though I couldn't have told you what year. I looked it up on Wikipedia just now and learned that the year was 1988.

These are the things I remember about 1988:
1) A long-term relationship fizzled;
2) In the spring I moved to an apartment complex where I'd lived once before;
3) I was working at a job I'd started in 1980 and would keep until 1997;
4) Women's clothes had big shoulder pads;
5) Big hair was popular among women and rock stars;
6) George H.W. Bush was elected president that November;
7) My grandmother passed away at the age of 92 that December.

Not a single thing on that list has anything to do with why today's song is one I never tire of hearing. I just really, really like the song.

"Baby Can I Hold You" by Tracy Chapman:

Also, just for the record? If I'd been born a black person, I would definitely wear my hair in dreadlocks.

Bring your own lunch

2011-10-14T10:10:00.001-05:00

A few months ago I wrote that I've developed a habit of eating breakfast outside every morning. Sometime during the summer that habit expanded to include lunch. Most days I'm out there for about twenty minutes with my lunch, a book, and Levi, with his dreaded tennis ball. (Butch usually naps indoors at lunchtime.)

Yesterday an unexpected guest joined me at the table. Since I hadn't planned to share, I was glad to see she had brought her own lunch.

I hope she enjoyed her meal as much as I enjoyed my whole wheat crackers and pepper jack cheese.

Wrong again

2011-10-12T15:00:00.002-05:00

When six large birds flew into view from an easterly direction and began circling and dive-bombing a tree in my neighbor's yard, I assumed they were buzzards. That made sense to me, because after the two "hawks" I watched a few months ago turned out to be buzzards, I realized that I've never actually seen more than one hawk at a time.

I was wondering what could be dead or dying in that tree when, all of a sudden, the marauding bird-gang flushed a flock of smaller birds out of the branches and gave chase like fighter jets. Nope, those weren't buzzards.

First I grabbed my camera to catch the action:

Then I went to Google, where I discovered it isn't at all uncommon for juvenile hawks to hunt in packs. This old city girl still has a lot to learn.

Foiled

2011-10-10T12:17:00.000-05:00

I've explained here before that my home is actually one of two houses built on the same lot, one in front of the other. There's a carport between the two homes, and they're connected by a common roof. When my daughter and I bought this property years ago, she and her kids lived in the front house. I've always lived in the back one.

After my daughter remarried and moved with her husband to a new home large enough to accommodate their blended family, the house in front of mine was rented out. Since we had plenty of backyard, we decided to add some fencing near my patio to carve out a small backyard area for the family in the rent house. The deepest part of that little yard lies adjacent to my patio, which you can see in this old photo:

This arrangement worked fine for more than eleven years. Then, a couple months ago, Levi invented a new game. It's a cross between soccer and golf. You see that space under the white privacy fence? That's his goal. Every time I'd try to sit out there to read a book and sip a cool drink, Levi would start up his game. He'd pass his tennis ball from one front paw to the other to get it close to the fence, then use his mouth to place it exactly where he wanted it. He'd line it up like a golf shot, then kick it under the fence. Again and again. Many times on many days.

There's a padlock on the chain-link fence that ties into the privacy fence. The lock isn't there to keep people from coming into my yard but to prevent them from accidentally leaving the gate open and letting my dogs out. So, every time Levi kicked his ball under there, I had to go inside to get the key. I'd open the gate, retrieve the ball, close and lock the gate again, and sit back down with my book. By the time I'd turned the pages twice, the ball was back under the fence.

Levi was having a great time, but I wasn't. We needed a solution. This was it:

So far, so good. Levi still makes his soccer moves, but the goal line is history.

Score one for the human team.

"Borrowed" hummers

2011-10-09T16:22:00.000-05:00

Some of you have posted beautiful photos of hummingbirds in the past few months. I've admired the photos and envied you. I adore hummingbirds, but there are none around my house. I don't have a hummingbird feeder. Nor do I have any flowers except for the gardenia bush. Until I change that situation, I guess I can't let my expectations get too high, can I?

Well, one day recently, when I planned to spend the afternoon at my daughter's house, her husband called ahead of time and said, "Bring your camera. I think you'll be glad you did."

Was I ever? There must have been 15 or 20 birds hovering around their one feeder, all moving too fast for me to count. I'd never seen anything like that, although I do admit that my hummingbird experience is limited.

When I walked closer to the feeder, camera in hand, most of the birds flew what they must have considered a safe distance away. I could still see them, but they were too spread out to photograph. The bravest of them stayed, however, and I was rewarded with a few nice hummingbird shots that I can now share happily with you .

"Ramblin' boy, why don't you settle down?"

2011-10-08T12:09:00.001-05:00

The year was 1974, and we were living in a split-level house on Long Island, in the state of New York. We'd moved there a year earlier, the fifth long-distance relocation my family had made in the first five years of my marriage to my second (and last and best) husband. I was happy there that year.

I liked our house. The public school there was the best my daughters had ever attended. And, because we expected to stay there for a while, I'd gone back to work in a job I enjoyed. Life was good, and because it was so good, I was anxious. My husband was a rambling man, and I knew it was just a matter of time until he'd crave a change of scenery.

I'd never complained about the frequent moves because I trusted my husband to do the best he could for our family. But I am now, and was back then, a nester at heart. I wanted us to stay put but felt that asking for that might come across as a criticism of the way my husband chose to provide for us. And he provided well.

Then, one day in 1974, a song played on the radio that I loved instantly. I bought the 45 rpm record and played it over and over, hoping that somehow he would identify with the lyrics as much as I did. In the end, I guess he did.

Six years later, after two more moves, each of us was still clinging to the "he said" or "she said" point of view expressed in the song, clinging until he went to California alone and I stayed home.

That song is this Saturday's song selection: "Please Come to Boston" by Dave Loggins.*

*Thanks to guitar2heroes for posting this video on YouTube.

From Texas to Tennessee

2011-10-07T21:41:00.000-05:00

Earlier this week I had a call from my friend Annette, who lives in Texas. She told me she and her hubby would be passing through town on their way to...wait for it...yes, Tennessee! She said she'd been inspired to go there by the photos she'd seen on my blog.

Last night I had dinner with them, along with their old friend and my new one, Leah. Good friends, good conversation, and good food. It was a delightful evening.

I was delighted again today when I got a call from this girl, who also lives in Texas:

We first met in 1957 (the year this photo was taken), shortly after my mother married her dad, and she was part of our household throughout my high school years. A few years after I got married at 18 and moved out of town in one direction, she got married and soon moved away in another. We saw each other only occasionally after that, and as years and miles came between us, we lost touch. The last time our paths crossed was in 1996, at Daddy's funeral.

She and I (and my sister, of course) share a half-brother who has kept us somewhat posted on one another's whereabouts, although he's not the best communicator in the world either. At some point in the past, though, he told her about this blog. Today she got around to looking it up. She saw photos of familiar faces and objects (such as my grandmother's knife), and she saw other photos, too, some that she felt were a sign that this was the right time to reach out and call me.

She was talking about the pictures from my recent trip to Tennessee. You see, she and her husband have plans to go on vacation in about a week. And, yes, they're going to Gatlinburg.

I love those times when the world seems to shrink up and draw all the people closer.

Trinkets and Treasures - No. 6 - A gift that keeps on giving

2011-10-05T09:40:00.005-05:00

When my sister came from her home in Texas to pick me for our vacation, she brought me a gift I'll treasure forever: a family Bible that dates back to the end of the 19th century.

I'd known of the Bible's existence since shortly after my grandmother passed away in 1988. At that time it was in the hands of her brother, my Great-Uncle Loren, who lived in Florida at the time. Loren died in 1991; his wife Hazel in 1997. I don't know if my mother came into possession of the Bible after their deaths or if one of them personally handed it over to her. At any rate, by the time I knew Mother had it, she couldn't find it. She had put it away, possibly in the attic, she thought, but she couldn't be sure.

In 1997 or 1998 Mother had a new house built. After she moved into it, both my niece and my sister, at different times, lived in her old house for a while. I think it was one of them who found the Bible. My sister kept it on display in her home for quite a few years. I was thrilled when she gave it to me.

This Bible is a beautiful book. It's also very large. I laid my hand beside it in this photo to help you see how big it is:

I've looked all through the Bible and can't find a publication date, but there's a table inside it that was compiled in 1892, and my theory is that this Bible was a gift to my great-grandmother, Dora Hetherington, from her parents when she married in 1895.

Dora was the daughter of Alvin Christmas Hetherington and Anna Lementine Goforth Hetherington. Alvin and Anna had two other children, Stella and Roscoe, both of whom were younger than Dora. Here's a picture of the whole family:

Front Row (L-R): Anna and Alvin Hetherington

Back Row (L-R): Stella, Roscoe, and Dora Hetherington

Now let me show you what was written in the Bible:

(Click the picture to enlarge it.)

Now let's play detective. The inscriptions at the top of both pages refer to "the family of Alvin Hetherington," Dora's father. The left-hand page lists the marriage of Alvin and Anna as well as Dora's, and the right-hand page names all three children of Alvin and Anna. So far, I'm thinking the handwriting belongs to either Anna or Alvin. Not Dora.

Here's why: The last entry on the left-hand page reads, "Dora Belle Hetherington was married in Newton County, Missouri, July 18th, 1895." Don't you think that if Dora had written this herself, she might have been inclined to mention her husband by name? And don't you think she would have used these pages to keep records of her own family, as opposed to her birth family?

Also, Dora's sister, Stella, got married only thirteen months after Dora did, yet there's no mention of Stella's marriage on these pages. That makes me think the Bible passed into Dora's hands at some point between her wedding and Stella's, and that's why I'm guessing it was a wedding gift to Dora. Something of her old family to take with her to her new home.

So, fellow Sherlocks, does that theory make sense to you? If it does, then we can deduce that the book was published sometime between 1892 (the date on the table I found inside it) and 1895, making it at least 106 years old.

I've searched all over the Internet--with no luck--to try to figure out when this volume might have been published. If you have other ideas or theories, I hope you'll share them.

Gatlinburg and home again.

2011-10-04T09:35:00.018-05:00

Gatlinburg was the original destination for the vacation my sister and I planned together. Even six weeks ahead of time, we couldn't find affordable hotel rates in Gatlinburg, so we booked reservations in the nearby Pigeon Forge/Sevierville area. As it turned out, we added a few days to the front end of our trip and went to Asheville first, but we did make it to the Gatlinburg area on schedule.

Gatlinburg is quite hilly, as one would expect of a town that has the Great Smoky Mountains in its backyard. It was easy to see where the road into town had been carved into the mountains:

We were standing at a pretty high elevation when I took these photos outside the Gatlinburg Welcome Center:

If Asheville and Gatlinburg were side by side in a jewelry box, Gatlinburg would be the costume jewelry and Asheville would be the real thing. The heart of Gatlinburg was clean and very pretty, but in a gaudy sort of way. Being there felt sort of like finding myself in a cartoon village, removed a step or two from reality. It was very bright and colorful. There were hanging baskets of flowers along the streets, and storefronts were painted in crayon hues. The citizens had succeeded in making most parts of the town attractive. Unfortunately, an abundance of overhead wires, construction cones, and automobiles messed up a lot of photo opportunities in other parts of town.

Though we weren't in Gatlinburg in peak season, there were still plenty of people there. A lot of them were seniors, like us. Unlike us, they didn't seem to mind walking those hilly streets under a blazing sun. We drove through Gatlinburg several times and planned to take a day trip there by trolley.

It never happened.

In our hotel room at night we watched Tropical Storm Lee bearing down on the Gulf Coast. We texted and telephoned loved ones at home to find out what the local weathermen were saying. TS Lee was projected to move north-northeast on the exact trajectory of our route home and to end up precisely where we sat in Tennessee.

We had three choices:
1) Staying in the Pigeon Forge-Gatlinburg area as planned, which might have meant being stuck in our hotel room--and paying for the privilege--because of heavy rains;
2) Waiting a day or two to see which way the storm moved, which might have had us driving home in tropical rain and wind; or
3) Abandoning the rest of our vacation and trying to get back to our homes before the storm got there.

By the time we settled on Option No. 3, we were more than ready. We dumped all our stuff into the back of my sister's SUV, checked out, and hit the road for home. My little sister drove straight through for over 13 hours, stopping only twice for gas and fast food and once for promised souvenirs.

For most of that drive the weather was fine, but the rain began after the sun went down. The people of Mississippi and Louisiana apparently abided by televised storm warnings and stayed in their homes on that Saturday of Labor Day weekend, leaving the dark, wet roads eerily empty.

We were five miles from my house at one-thirty in the morning when the worst weather, blinding rain and gusty winds, welcomed us home. My sister said those last five miles were the longest she'd ever driven. She was so tired, and I was so proud of her. She had three more hours to drive back to Texas the next morning, but the storm had stalled in the Gulf by then. She made it home without any trouble.

So, even after weeks of researching Gatlinburg on the Internet, making lists of things to do and places to go, it had been unceremoniously lopped off our itinerary by a tropical storm. As glad as I was to get home, I'm sorry we didn't get to see more of the place that had been our original destination. I wish I could try it again sometime in cooler weather.

Pigeon Forge, Tennessee

2011-10-03T13:23:00.001-05:00

A hotel in Pigeon Forge was our home base during the Tennessee portion of our vacation. It's a pretty little town, almost as touristy as neighboring Gatlinburg. Gatlinburg, Pigeon Forge, and Sevierville sit all in a row at the base of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Tree-covered hills surround the entire area.

By counting the number of tourist attractions visible from the main road, it appears that Gatlinburg is the hot spot, followed closely by Pigeon Forge (home of Dollywood), with Sevierville catching the entertainment facilities that came into the area after Gatlinburg and Pigeon Forge filled up. Trolleys run through all three towns and even cross the mountains into North Carolina, providing easy access to sightseeing for visitors.

Most of the hotels and restaurants had attractive landscapes in front of them:

Those that didn't still managed to catch the eye. Or maybe we just didn't notice the landscaping as we focused our attention on creatively designed places like the upside-down WonderWorks facility:

Our favorite place in Pigeon Forge was the Old Mill Square, named for a historic gristmill that dates back before the Civil War. The mill itself has been converted into this restaurant:

Now take a look at the wonderfully picturesque backside of it:

We passed on eating at that restaurant in favor of another one, also in the square, that had been recommended to us by a very nice lady at the Gatlinburg Welcome Center. This is it, the Old Mill Pottery House Cafe & Grill:

I'll paraphrase what I read on the menu while we sat at that beautiful table:
"If you go somewhere else to eat, ask them if they bake their own bread. If they say yes, ask them if they grind their own flour. If they say yes, ask them if they make their own plates."

We ate lunch there one day and dinner the next. Before that dinner, we visited some of the adjacent shops, including Pigeon River Pottery. There, we were treated to a demonstration:

There's no doubt in my mind that we'd have visited the Old Mill Square again if we'd stayed a little longer.

Introducing...ta daaaaaa...A One-Pic Pony

2011-10-02T19:31:00.000-05:00

Yesterday I learned how to make tabs under the header of this blog, and minutes ago I added a tab that will lead you to my newest blog, A One-Pic Pony. It's strictly a photo blog, conceived and constructed (bare bones) last night, and designed and tweaked for half a day today.

I hope you'll check it out.

Saturday morning quickies

2011-10-01T10:05:00.000-05:00

I swore that when I retired I wouldn't be one of those stay-at-home women who wait to do their shopping until late evening or the weekend, the only times working women have to take care of that chore. But here we are on a Saturday, the dog food bag is nearly empty, and if I'm going out for that, I'll get some groceries while I'm there.

**********

The temperature here turned over with the calendar page. My computer tells me it's 58 degrees outside right now, but I don't believe it's that cold yet. I ate breakfast on the patio earlier, sitting in the sunshine and enjoying the absence of heat for a change, but I still had to take my sweater off before I came back inside. I don't know what the actual temperature is, but whatever it is, it's perfect.

**********

Yesterday I was so excited about finding a way to make my photos show up better on Blogger that I tweaked code all the way back to June of 2010, which is apparently when the problem started. Coincidentally, that was when I switched to one of the newer Blogger templates. I checked some earlier photos and found that the photo code was written differently on the old template. I love the designs of the newer templates, so I guess you win some and lose some with them, just as you do with everything else in life.

**********

If you're getting sick and tired of looking at my vacation photos, you might want to skip the next couple of posts, because I still plan to post pics from Gatlinburg and Pigeon Forge. Then, after I've posted about the trip on more days than we were actually away, my online trip diary will be complete, and I can move on. And hope you haven't. Moved on.

I do want to post one photo today, only because it won't fit in with either of the remaining vacation posts. Since some of you who saw it on Facebook have already commented about it here, I thought some of the rest of you might enjoy it, too. (Click the photo to enlarge it and read the signs.)

On the road between Maggie Valley and Cherokee, Tennessee.

Color me excited!

2011-09-30T12:52:00.000-05:00

For more than a year now I've been dissatisfied with the quality of my photos on this blog. They're high-res images that look beautiful until I upload them on Blogger, and then they look pale, flat, fuzzy, and lifeless.

After seeing the quality of my vacation photos diminish before my eyes (and yours), I finally did enough research to figure out how to solve the problem. Here's a "before" image:

And here's the same image "after" a small change has been made in the html code:

I hope you can see as much difference in the details as I can. To me there's enough of an improvement in the second image that this morning I've gone back and changed the code on every vacation picture I've posted so far.

My goal is for you to have a pleasant experience when you visit here, so I've been bummed for a while about showing you low-quality images. Thanks to Carlo Dimaandal's website, I'll feel much better about sharing photos with you from now on.

Asheville - Part 4 - More Biltmore

2011-09-30T10:34:00.003-05:00

It was mid-afternoon when the shuttle bus returned us to the Biltmore house. Our plan was to tour the gardens, so we started by resting for a few minutes on this patio that's connected to the side of the house:

Several "trees" like this one stand supported on a side patio
that overlooks nearby mountains. I'm not sure what kind
of vines these are (since coming home I've read another
tourist's report that they're wisteria). All I know is
I'd love to be there when they bloom.

Our shuttle driver advised us to begin our garden tour at the entrance near the house. That way our walk would be mostly downhill, and he would pick us up at the other end of it. That made good sense to us. Then we took a look down this long flight of stairs and had a brief discussion about how much of the gardens we really wanted to see.

The entrance to the Biltmore Gardens was just down these stairs.

Having lugged my camera around for days, I was determined to take pictures in the famous Biltmore Gardens, so down we went. Here was our first peek:

This Italian garden sits very near the house,

a wonderful place for an after-dinner stroll.

The garden path was beautiful, flanked as it was by trees and flowering shrubs:

Far be it from us to dispute the shuttle driver's word, but it seemed to my sister and me that the path was mostly uphill, at least at the beginning of it. Fortunately, there were benches tucked here and there in shady places:

I think we tried out every single bench we came across. It was really hot that afternoon, and the air seemed still in the midst of all that greenery. At every upward twist of the path, we discussed how much farther we should go, but we didn't want to miss anything.

I'm ashamed now (in my air-conditioned home) to say that we buckled early and chose not to see the rest of the gardens. At the time, though, I was nothing but grateful. (Remember, this was only one day after we hiked the nature trail at the Cherokee village.) Our allergies were flaring up. My head felt like it would split open any minute, and my sister's eyes were watering in heavy streams. It was sooooo hot, and we were sooooo full from lunch.

We headed back to the big house (strangely uphill on the way back, too). I had to hang onto the stair railing and drag myself up that tall flight of stairs pictured above (second from the top), then I sat on another small set of steps and waited while my sister got the valet to bring her car around. Once in the car, with the A/C blowing in our faces, we took a drive around the rest of the property.

One of many, many formal gardens, most of which we didn't see.

A bank of pink roses near the Deerpark Restaurant.

The Lagoon

A field of sunflowers with mountains in the background. Spectacular!

A portion of Antler Hill Village with the Inn on Biltmore Estate
towering over it in the background.

I highly recommend the do-it-yourself driving tour. Actually, I highly recommend touring the Biltmore Estate any way you can do it.

Asheville - Part 3 - the Biltmore Estate

2011-09-29T11:22:00.008-05:00

Friends told my sister that the Biltmore Estate, the largest private home in America, was a "must-see" in Asheville, so we bought tickets online before we left home. Now that I've seen it, it's still hard to wrap my head around the vastness of it. I must admit that even as I gawped at the splendor of it, there was a part of me (either a socialist or a reverse snob, I think) that was a little bit put off by the idea that any single individual--in the 1800s or even today--was affluent enough to build such a grand structure and to purchase all the land around it for practically as far as the eye could see. That sort of extravagance seems wasteful and insensitive to me. That being said, I'd willingly visit there again and again if I could.

George Vanderbilt built this place as a summer house, a little hideaway where he and his wife could relax and entertain friends. His family still owns it, and we were told that the estate now employs approximately two thousand people to keep the whole operation running.

We weren't allowed to take photographs inside the house, and to get the entire front of the house in one shot I'd have had to walk way back beyond this front-yard fountain:

We visited the Biltmore the day after our hike in the Indian village, so I was only willing to walk far enough to walk far enough away to get half of the house at a time in the camera frame. Here are the two halves:

The architectural detail was amazing:

This stately lion guarded the front of the house.

I was glad I'd saved my energy for the inside of the house, where we toured on four different levels, each with a high ceiling, that required multiple flights of stairs to get from one to the other. Luxury and extravagance were the bywords of the day, from the flooring to the wall coverings to the beautifully-appointed ceilings, the wonderfully ornate furniture, and the expensive art and decorative items.

My favorite part of the house, probably because of a deep and lasting love of Gothic novels, was the basement, with its neat but sparse servants' rooms and multiple kitchens and laundry areas. I remember standing near the window in one of those kitchens, looking out at the mountains, feeling a cool breeze, and thinking this house wouldn't have been a bad place to live no matter what one's status.

After the tour of the house, we briefly investigated the shops and restaurants adjacent to the house until it was time to catch a shuttle bus to our lunch destination. We'd made reservations to have lunch at the Deerpark Restaurant, located three miles from Biltmore's big house but still well within the boundaries of the 8000-acre property. And a fine lunch it was, too. The food was beautifully presented (I learned the importance of presentation by watching the Food Network) and tasted delicious. The restaurant was gorgeous and peaceful, inside and out.

Deerpark Restaurant

After lunch we sat on the shaded bench pictured above and waited for the shuttle that would take us back to the house. While we waited, I snapped these photos:

I recognize the pink roses, of course, but not the other flowers. Perhaps some of you gardeners out there might tell us what they are.

Tomorrow I'll show you more of the beauty that is Biltmore. In the meantime, here's a link to a YouTube video that contains a brief history of the place, as well as some great shots of the interior of the house:

"The Biltmore Experience"

If you're the least bit interested, the video is well worth your four minutes.

Asheville - Part 2

2011-09-28T11:09:00.002-05:00

Asheville struck me as the kind of town that inspires residents and visitors alike to take care of it, to maintain its tidiness for the enjoyment of the next person who drives through town. Even the seamier side of Asheville looks fresh enough that the Asheville Visitor Center is situated only a couple blocks away from the Salvation Army's housing facility. In fact, except for the expressions on their faces, it's hard to distinguish some of the down-and-outers from some of the many artists and craftspeople who make Asheville home.

The entire town looks as if it's been pressure-washed only yesterday. It's that clean. I can't imagine anyone having the audacity to drop a cigarette butt or a gum wrapper in such a pristine and picturesque area, so maybe the cleanliness is self-perpetuating. To me, the steady stream of traffic through town was the only thing that prevented any part of the area from being picture-postcard ready.

I loved that there were trees scattered among storefronts downtown:

And I loved the unique architecture and the pops of color outside shops and restaurants:

It appears that the people responsible for the planning and development of Asheville paid close attention to detail and to the harmonious composition of each neighborhood. Check out this fast-food restaurant (the most expensively constructed McDonald's in the U.S.)...

...which is located across the street from a cluster of Tudor-styled buildings like this one:

And look how this elaborately structured playground perfectly matches the little church next to it:

Asheville is well known as an artists' community, and those artists and craftsmen have left touches of their aesthetic all over the area. It may be found in a meticulously painted mural on the side of a local store:

Or on the colorful facade of an apartment building:

The artists began moving into Asheville when the town's industrial area was largely deserted, thus highly affordable. They set up studios, opened galleries, and developed an extensive community within a community that is alive and strong today.

And that, my friends, is the end of this post and the end of our Gray Line Trolley tour .

Asheville - Part 1

2011-09-27T14:21:00.003-05:00

I'm breaking the Asheville portion of our vacation into at least three (possibly four) posts to lessen the likelihood of ~~boring~~ overwhelming you with too many photos at one time. Asheville, North Carolina, is a beautiful city, well laid out, well maintained, and has architecture to die for. It's a city built on hills and surrounded by mountain views.

On the first non-traveling day of our vacation, we woke up in our Asheville hotel room full of enthusiasm and excitement, eager to get out and see the sights. We weren't sure where to go first, so we asked the folks at the hotel's front desk for suggestions. They came up with several ideas, and their first one turned out to be a real winner: a Gray Line Trolley tour of Asheville.

Our tour was to start at the Asheville Visitor Center, and we knew exactly how to get there. We'd seen it several times the evening before, when we first arrived in town and got lost while trying to find our hotel.

The weather that day was gorgeous, noticeably cooler than the heat and humidity we'd left behind in our Deep South homes and a perfect day to sit back and let someone else do the driving. We let our driver/tour guide do the talking while we ogled--and took pictures--out the open windows.

Asheville is noted for its historic homes, beautiful structures like these:

We saw so many beautiful homes, and our tour guide told us the history of each one. I wish I could remember the stories so I could pass them on to you.

Fortunately, with the aid of Google, I've done a better job of identifying some of the buildings we saw on our tour:

This is the Grove Park Inn, built by E. W. Grove and opened in 1913.

Since then, a number of U.S. presidents have stayed there.

Dome of the First Baptist Church

The Asheville Art Museum, formerly the Pack Memorial Library

Asheville City Hall

Basilica of St. Lawrence

At left is the 15-story Jackson Building, Asheville's first skyscraper.
Next to it is the Westall Building.

The Grove Arcade Building, built by the same person who built the
Grove Park Inn (shown above). Click this photo to enlarge it, then notice
the faces in the bottom right corner of the picture. These faces, with
noses like that of a pig, are all around the building and are said to
be the image of a man who owed a long-unpaid debt to Dr. Grove.

More tomorrow, folks.

A cool place to spend an afternoon

2011-09-26T12:20:00.005-05:00

I've never looked forward to air conditioning more than when my sister and I climbed into her SUV after our trek through the Oconaluftee Indian Village's Nature Trail and Gardens. The car was like an oven inside, but with the A/C on high, it didn't take long to cool us off.

We drove down the main strip of Cherokee, NC, and picked out a nice restaurant where we could stop for lunch. Lunch was good. It rejuvenated us enough that we decided we might have just enough energy left to visit the Museum of the Cherokee Indian. I'm glad we did.

First of all, it was pleasantly cool in there, plus they said we could take pictures. We bought our tickets, then sat in a peaceful, dimly lighted area to wait for the next tour to begin. The wall in the waiting area was decorated with Indian stories like this one:

In a matter of minutes, the tour guide appeared and led us into a small theater, where we watched an animated version of the Cherokee legend about how the earth was formed. After that we were led through another door where we could continue on our own.

There were exhibits of utilitarian and trade items...

...tools...

...weapons...

...and many other articles used regularly by the Cherokees. There were floor-to-ceiling murals on some of the walls:

Some of the exhibits were miniature:

Others were life-sized:

A hidden fan provided a gentle breeze that blew the feathers on the figures below, making us almost believe they might be real enough to step out of the exhibit at any minute:

The life-sized figures were extremely lifelike, as well, made with incredible attention to detail:

While the exhibits covered many facets of the Cherokees' lives in the early 1800s, a dominant theme of the museum was the Trail of Tears. The Cherokees (and other tribes) paid a terrible price when the U.S. government forced them to relocate from their homelands to the then newly designated Indian Territory that later became Oklahoma.

I can truthfully say that I've given that unfortunate piece of America's history more thought in the past few weeks than in all the 68-plus years I lived prior to visiting to this museum. It's an interesting, thought-provoking museum -- well worth a visit.

Hardy Hardly mountain women

2011-09-25T11:23:00.004-05:00

Immediately after the guided tour I described in yesterday's post, my sister and I decided to explore the Nature Trail and Gardens area of the Oconaluftee Indian Village. For this little hike we were on our own, free to explore at whatever pace we found comfortable as long as we stayed on the marked trail and didn't pick any flowers.

It felt really freeing to step into the woods so many miles away from home, not knowing where the trail would lead and whether or not we would encounter any wildlife along the way. In the past I've never been much of an adventurer, and, at least in my eyes, hiking this (slightly tamed) wilderness area constituted a genuine adventure.

We walked across a little wooden bridge and were on our way.

The beginning of the dirt trail rose gradually and, except for the tripping hazard of tree roots, wasn't too hard to climb. In areas where the angle of the earth was sharper, there were stairs to make the climb easier. Actually, there were quite a few flights of stairs. (Here were stairs, there were stairs, everywhere were stairs, stairs.)

We kept on going, higher and higher. It was certainly beautiful deep in the woods, with velvety moss covering almost every flat surface and a wide variety of plants and flowers, most of which we didn't recognize.

After we'd climbed a long, long way up, we were happy when the trail turned very slightly downward. That's where we saw our first wildlife of the day. (If you can't see it in the photo below, click to enlarge it.)

Okay, so it was only a butterfly, but it was very, very pretty as it flitted among the flowering branches.

Did I mention it was high noon when we started up this trail? And did I mention that the temperature had climbed along with us? All the way to the low 90s?

We kept going. We hadn't seen another tourist since we first stepped onto this trail, and our theory was that the trail was laid out in a big loop on the mountainside, so that the upward climb would be balanced by a downward hike of approximately the same length. Since we were now moving downward, we were feeling hopeful. Hot, but hopeful.

We stopped to rest near a little cabin with a sign hanging from its roof identifying it as an "Indian Herb and Vegetable Garden." While we looked at the garden, we noticed that there was a lot of dust on the trail. And pollen, too. Lots of pollen.

On we went, down, down, down the path and down some stairs and some more stairs. We were getting really tired.

Still, I couldn't help but feel blessed to be alive in such beautiful surroundings. Just look at the glorious way the light filtered through the leaves on this part of the trail:

And look at the way the color of this flower just pops against the green background:

We walked a little farther. Through the trees we caught a glimpse of one of the demonstration stations in the Indian Village, so we thought we were getting close to the end of the trail. That excited us, because we were longing for an icy cold drink by then. And we were starting to get hungry, too.

About then we came upon this gorgeous little pond:

We discovered that there were fish in the pond, our second encounter with native wildlife that day:

The trail ended in a very small loop near the fishpond. It ended, but there was no exit there, at least none that we could find. We stood there for a few moments in disbelief, looking around and finally accepting the fact that we were going to have to retrace our steps over the entire length of the trail to get back to the parking lot.

We began walking again, our faces glum as we climbed up the trail we'd just gone down. My pulse was pounding and I was breathing heavily, taking big gulps of air. We both had sweat dripping from our foreheads, and we almost never do anything that causes us to break a sweat.

About the time we passed the "Indian Herb and Vegetable Garden" for the second time, my sister said, "You know, this is why they find old people dead in the woods. They walk in and they can't walk out."

I said, "Well, I recently wrote on my blog that I wanted my ashes to be scattered near trees."

"Yeah," my sister said, "but I don't think you planned to just drop and decompose on the spot, did you?"

At the highest point on the trail-in-reverse, we met a couple of young, athletic men. They seemed to be doing fine. For a fleeting second I thought of begging them to help us out of there, but we just smiled politely and didn't tell them anything. A little further along we met an older couple. Again we smiled, and I made a comment about the trail being difficult for old knees. They laughed and kept right on going. Too bad for them.

Just past the place where we had met the older couple, we had our third encounter with wildlife. Some kind of bird hopped perkily across the trail. "Screw you, bird," I thought to myself. "I'm not taking any more pictures."

**********

Despite the difficulty of this hike for us "hothouse flowers," I'm glad we did it. My sister and I have had a great deal of fun in the telling and retelling of this tale. Each time we've talked about it, the trail has grown longer and steeper, and the number of bear encounters has grown higher. By now, our story is that we hiked more than thirty miles, during which we had to fight off several black bears, including at least one ferocious mama bear bent on protecting her cubs. It was hellish, but we survived it. We are fearless, hardy mountain women, women who might have been named Danielle Boone and Davina Crockett.

Only you know what really happened.

Cherokee spirit

2011-09-24T11:36:00.002-05:00

As a side trip one morning, my sister and I left our hotel and ventured about an hour westward to the town of Cherokee, North Carolina. Our destination was the Oconaluftee Indian Village. There, for a couple of hours, we immersed ourselves in the culture of the Cherokee Indians as they lived in the mid-18th century.

Our barefooted guide, who apologized upfront for his "period-inappropriate" sunglasses, took us and a handful of other tourists from one tour stop to the next, explaining at each station what we were seeing. The guide also assured us that we were welcome to take photos, making me a very happy tourist.

We watched demonstrations of cloth weaving...

...basket weaving...

and weapon making...

...and we saw the man pictured above shoot arrows from a blowgun and hit the bullseye three times straight in quick succession.

We watched a tool-making demonstration, too, and were impressed enough that we respectfully refrained from making any comments about "period-inappropriate" C-clamps.

Another demonstration explained the process of making the canoes the Cherokees used. Though they're called "dugouts," the cores of the long logs were actually burned out.

Several types of traps were on display, and our guide explained how they were used and what types of animals were caught. The Cherokees relied on trapping and hunting for food and for hides.

At various stops along our walking tour, our guide showed us the types of houses the Cherokees built, log cabins as well as clay structures. We were allowed to go inside each of these houses, where we saw dirt or wood floors, rough-hewn furniture, fireplaces and cooking pots.

The man in the photo directly above was our tour guide. He and many of the young males who were working in the village the day we were there wore their hair in a style that was apparently favored by their ancestors: shaved except for a circle of hair that was grown long and tied at the back of the head.

The young man above wore the most elaborate costume we saw in the Oconaluftee Village. He was the one who sang out (or chanted) the songs when some of the guides and craftspeople gathered at the end of the tour to demonstrate Indian dances for an enthusiastic audience. I especially enjoyed this part of the tour because the dancers themselves appeared to be having such a good time. The dances may have been authentic and appropriate to the time period, but the joyful dancers seemed more like a group of modern-day co-workers, old and young alike, laughing and sharing their favorite part of the workday.

I loved every minute of it.

Church on Sunday, rain or shine

2011-09-23T15:25:00.002-05:00

Church was important to the God-fearing settlers in the Smoky Mountains, not only as a place to worship, but also as a place to get to know one's neighbors, some of whom might have lived miles away.

My sister and I visited three churches on the Cades Cove Trail in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, and before I end the park segment of this travelogue, I want to show you those churches.

They all look very much alike, at least on the outside.

First up was the Primitive Baptist Church, exterior and interior:

Then came the Cades Cove Methodist Church:

And the Missionary Baptist Church, established in 1839:

Each of these churches had an adjacent cemetery. We didn't walk through all of them, but we did spend some time looking at individual gravestones in the cemetery behind the Primitive Baptist Church.

The genealogist in me wanted to know more about the people buried beneath these old markers, and some of the inscriptions assured me that these folks would have had interesting stories to tell.

This grave, and so many others in this small cemetery,

reminded me how high the infant mortality rate was back in those days.

This man would have been 69 years old when he died,

so the word "murdered" may have been an accurate

description of his cause of death.

What brave people the Olivers must have been to settle where they did.

Their home was the subject of the lead photo in my last post.

Cabin fever of a different kind

2011-09-20T10:33:00.003-05:00

Way back in 2006, I wrote about finding peace in an imaginary cabin in the woods. On vacation with my sister recently, I found peace in and around real cabins, some more than a hundred years old, in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.

At the same time I was enjoying the serenity of these remote structures, I was also imagining how hard the original occupants of these cabins must have had to work to live and raise a family in a place like this. It must have been a chore just to keep the lush growth of the forest from reclaiming the space that had been cleared for a cabin.

We went inside several of the cabins, and I felt like a giant in there. The rooms were small, the ceilings low. No doubt they were built that way intentionally to make them easier to heat in cold mountain winters, but I guarantee you there must have been a lot of elbow bumping when the cabins were occupied by families.

Nevertheless, I loved them all. I've probably looked at these photos at least a couple dozen times since I've been home, trying to recapture the feelings I had when I stood in the presence of these rustic structures and imagined the men who built them and the women who made them home.

The John Oliver Cabin in Cades Cove (shot with a zoom lens

because it stands about a quarter mile from the road).

The barn at Cades Cove Visitor Center

The Elijah Oliver Place in Cades Cove

Interior of the Elijah Oliver Place

Corn crib in Cades Cove

Cantilever-style Cable Mill Barn, Cades Cove

Tipton Cabin in Cades Cove

(This cabin, like many structures we saw in the park,

is leveled and supported on stacks of flat stones.)

Carter Shields Cabin in Cades Cove

Old Jim Bales Place on Roaring Fork Nature Trail

Rear view of the Ephraim Bales Place on Roaring Fork Trail