MOTHER'S DAY IS MANY THINGS.

My mother is gone, but when I think of her, I remember how strong and resilient she was. She was at her mother's bedside through the birth of her 11 siblings. She comforted her at the death of two of those children, one at age 4, another at age 8. She lived through many tragedies but remained her grand children's darling gramma. And, great-grandchildren, too. She was religious, faithful, polite, patient,  always helping others but able to build her own dreams. She had a catering business late in life and made it a whopping success. She did it all with civility and grace. What an example she was to me.

I have many mother's in my life to celebrate, my daughters, my daughter-in-law. And each of them is a wonderful mother with dedication and the values we believe in and share. They too, raise their children and pursue their dreams. They are each unique with varying abilities. Women, as mothers, contribute so much to our culture, our comfort, our love, our greatness as a country, we  stop to salute them today and not forget them tomorrow.

It amuses me that at one time women were considered the weaker sex. I'm grateful my husband never considered me weak. He always recognized and acknowledged my own gifts and I have become the proud matriarch of my clan.  I'm proud to recognize their strengths and revel in my own.

HAPPY MOTHER'S DAY TO ALL AND MAY YOU BE APPRECIATED  AS AN EQUAL PARTNER

BY THE MEN IN YOUR LIVES.

FUNERALS ARE FULL OF LIFE.

I've heard people say, "I hate funerals," I've said it myself. We don't like to face the sadness of a life ending.



Eleanor Darby, (left) lost her best friend and husband Dan,  November 9th, and, a good friend Betty Fitzgerald, November 7th. Eleanor is as beautiful inside as she is on the outside. I took this picture as she stood outside the church yesterday, with her niece, Pam. She and Dan were married 56 years, they lived in Angels Camp their entire lives;  they were married in St. Patricks Catholic Church where the funeral mass was performed. Those necessary rites and rituals have meaning for all of us.
I can identify with the feelings losing a spouse can bring. I lost my husband of 40 years in 2000 and was numb for a year. I couldn't recall later what I had done for Thanksgiving, or Christmas. I couldn't remember some people who attended his service or much of what went on, though I seemed to be in control. With distance, we recognize that death is a part of life. An ending, but much more.
This morning and yesterday, I thought much about Eleanor and Dan, their boys, Mike and Robbie, who shared such wonderful and humorous remembrances of their Dad, from learning to say I Love You, his  dreams, and careers, and his famous chili beans that were cooked for the reception.  Dan's brothers that I knew, Earl and Elda, Jack and Ida, Lloyd and Ruth.  (Eleanor and Elda are sisters who married brothers.) His nephew Rod and Kristi, his grandniece, Nicole and Larry. Friends, Don and Betty Fitzgerald, and so many more from every walk of life.

Relationships have so many patterns and pathways. I met his grandniece, Nicole, first, when she was about three years old and in the same dance class as my daughter, Virginia. We both lived in Fremont at the time, It was 1972 or 3. Her mother Kristi Darby divulged to me that our planned retirement in Murphys was very near where she had liived in Vallecito. Her mother had been the Postmaster there and she and Rod had a house they rented there. Not long after we built our house in Murphys, she ended up my next door neighbor,  two parcels over.



Kristi with son-in-law, Larry, daughter Nicole, grandchildren, Shannon and Garrett. Nicole and Virginia then attended High School together. At the reception, we got to catch up on each other's lives.
I met Eleanor and Dan, and Betty and Don Fitgerald through the high school sports programs, and Quarterback Club. Their kids attended High School with ours.

Dan's father, "Chub" Darby, was a Murphys fixture, and all around character in his nineties, when we met. He participated in the Homecoming Parades, and his cabins are now part of a vacation rental. Darbys hale from gold rush days, two roads are named after them. I remember Chub whenever I cook his watercress potato salad. If I buy the cress in the store it never tastes as good as picking it in a local creek.

Our friendship was strengthened when all of us became a part of AFS, American Field Service, A student exchange program, along with Dutton  and Ben Smith, Carol and Clark Burton...Walli...so many memories and faces, if dis-remembered names.

Nicole went on an exchange to Austrailia. Virginia went to France. Eleanor and Betty took in multiple exchange students over the years.  Betty ran the program with the help of many others, as Kristi and I did in later years.



Linda Djamaludin from Indonesia was our exchange student in 1986-7. They always say you get more from the program than you give, and it is so true. The support at AFS meetings was wonderful. Our girls went in different years.  At each meeting we would read Virginia's and Nicole's letters from their temporarily adopted country.

Eleanor, and Kristi, and I, with all the county exchange students, loaded into our Motor Home and traveled to Pasadena for a special opportunity to work on the floats for the Rose Bowl Parade.  We did it two years in a row with kids representing probably twelve different countries.

Eleanor and Dan visited students they had hosted in Italy, France, Switzerland and Sweden. They are really life changing events.

At the reception, we didn't talk about death and loss. We were witnessing the continuation of life around us. Children, grandchildren, aunts and uncles, nieces and nephews with the DNA and blood of their special inheritance of life everlasting. 
And, then there is always Dan's beans, Chub's salad...Mike's paintings...

A LONG INVOLVED DAY.

Today is Veterans Day, and no matter what your personal feelings about war are, it is important to remember and honor the men and women who have given of themselves to benefit all of us. Amen!! (I get to kiss a veteran today.)
Saturday, is play day for us. I think Jim just likes to get me out and about so I don’t rant on my blog. Anyway…I went for a haircut first.

Sue cut my hair after finishing this gent.

Then we went to the Food Bank, actually, a bus parked at Angels Market accepting donations. I brought Karen’s bag full and our box. And the need is so great, I wrote a check, too. They claim they don’t have the resources to give turkeys to people this year.

Our plan was to photograph some of the old barns and miner’s cabins we see all over the Motherlode. We call them endangered species since so many of them are literally falling apart. I’ve driven past this building for over 30 yeas and always wondered about it but knew nothing about it.

The owner explained to us that it was an old gold era inn called Monte’s Inn. It belonged to the Monte Verde family and the owner is a relative of the Monte Verde’s so it is still in the family. It once faced the highway, which has since been rerouted.  Monte’s Inn  had a bar and restaurant inside. They let rooms and during the depression, built a lean-to on the back to shelter homeless wanderers. I was delighted to learn about this building.

The next barn down the line, headed for San Andreas, is the Spence Ranch Barn. I believe they still run sheep.

The Airola barn is obviously still used in the family cattle ranch.

This feed barn brightly painted and advertising antiques is still an old barn. You can tell by the stacked rock foundation. It belongs to what was once the  Schaner Inn across the highway from this barn. They sell antiques. In horse and buggy days, Inns popped up about every ten miles or so to service travelers.

It was about lunch time when we reached San Andreas and this Mexican Restaurant, under new ownership, I was told has good food.

The restaurant is located right next to the VFW, so we decided to stop in and say hello, first, since the post was open.

And, there we met Don Cuneo, a friend of mine I hadn’t seen since 2001. I told him what we were doing, taking pictures of old barns, etc. and he told me he used to go to dances at Monte Verde’s Inn when he was a young man. There was a big dance hall there then.

For lunch I ordered two tostitas. Jim order chicken in his, I had chili verde in mine. Full of big hunks of meat. We got out of the place for $12.69 for two lunches. No drinks. We had a beer at the VFW.

After lunch, we traveled to Calaveritas and back to Angels Camp, photographing more barns. But, our goal was to return to Murphys by 2:00 for the unveiling of a remodeled master bedroom and bath. My friend and neighbor Jan, if you remember from an earlier blog, I took to the emergency room because she had fallen and injured her leg.

Jan lives in a two story house and shared expenses with a gentleman who lived in her Master bedroom upstairs for over two years. Unfortunately, it was pretty much demolished and a bid to repair it was over $7,000.

Jan decided to do the work herself, but she couldn’t climb the stairs. Her friend Cheryl, pretty much organized the group of friends who volunteered to remodel and refurnish the bedroom under her directions.  Jan was not allowed to know what was going on nor could she peek.

The graphic on the bathroom wall, tells it all. Jan is such a good friend to everyone, when the chips are down, everyone wants to help. Floor tile,bathroom tile, sink, all new.

Everyone came to see the unveiling. Becky hugs a tearful Jan.

We all gaped and oohed and ahhed and had a toast to everyone’s efforts.

And, her friend Leslie, who will move in to the room and share expenses,  couldn’t wait to try out the new bed, with the new mattress. She loved it.

Jan asked for one concession to her surprise decorator. Please don’t change my Dawn wall. She and her daughter Dawn painted the East wall, this golden color which faces the East and meets the dawn.  Cheryl promised. So the room was a complete make-over from tile, to carpet to bedding, furniture, lamps, wall decorations etc. Accomplished with $2,000 and a lot of love. And, Cheryl had so much fun, she decided to get a degree in decorating at Columbia Community College and hang out her shingle.

TIME, LOVE, BEAUTY

Time is:
Too slow for those who Wait,
Too Swift for those who Fear,
Too Long for those who Grieve,
Too short for those who Rejoice;
But for those who Love time is Eternity.  (By Anonymous)
I’m feeling poetic this morning.
Hope you enjoy this beautiful piece as much as I did.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JQ7khO7KHjI&feature=related

I'M THANKFUL I'M THANKFUL.

Life is a grand party and I’m thankful for the liberties we have, the protections we enjoy, our ability to pursue happiness; those things that deserve a lifetime of giving thanks. Closer to home, I’m thankful for my children, home and family. Home most likely for us is  four square walls, but it can be a hut in the wild, a place on the grass, a cave near a beach or any place the heart can rest,  but one essential component for me is best expressed by the  poet, Charles Swain:

Home’s not merely four square walls,
It needs something to endear it;
Home is where the heart can bloom,
Where there’s some kind lip to cheer it!
What is home with none to meet,
None to welcome, none to greet us?
Home is where there’s one to love!
Home is where  there’s one to love us.
HAPPY THANKSGIVING.

HAPPY NEW YEAR FROM FAR AND NEAR

As a kid, growing up in rural Michigan, I never thought I'd become a world traveler. It still boggles my mind.
And looking back at this wonderful year of traveling across the United States and back, the wonderful experiences I've had, the amazing places and things I've seen, I'm in awe of my great good fortune to have met a ramblin' man who seeks to be an adventurer and pulled out of the ruts of life to follow his dreams.

I mentioned being a world traveler as well. Before I retired, I was interested in the world, other cultures, other peoples, other customs. It was my good fortune to become acquainted with the Republic of Indonesia via an exchange student who became an integral part of my life and introduced me to a whole new world of experiences. And, today I received greetings from Linda Djamaludin, one of the nicest, most interesting women I've ever met.

This is Linda, third from left, in costume, with some of her friends.
Below is Linda experiencing snow for the first time, at Bear Valley, something rather rare in Indonesia. (Photo from 1986).
Linda, who is muslim, also sent me the words to a song, Stand Up For Love.  There are words worth repeating:
     There are times I find it hard to sleep at night,
     We are living through such troubling times.
     And every child that reaches out for someone to hold,
     For one moment they become my own.
     If we all stand together this one time
     Then no one will get left behind.
     Stand up for life
     Stand up for love. 

If we could see the world as a world full of people who all want basically the same thing. Love, friendship, family, good health and the ability to have free choices, what a peaceable world this would be. Which is, by the way, my wish for the New Year. A WORLD FULL OF PEACE AND LOVE.       

LIFE HAS AN EXPIRATION DATE

I got this piece Michael Gartner wrote in my email. Its a great piece and I hope you enjoy it.

Michael Gartner, editor of newspapers large and small and president of NBC News won the Pulitzer Prize for editorial writing. This piece is well worth reading, and a few good chuckles are guaranteed. Here goes.   My father never drove a car. Well, that's not quite right. I should say I never saw him drive a car.  He quit driving in 1927 when he was 25 years old, and the last car he drove was a 1926 Whippet.    "In those days," he told me when he was in his 90s, "to drive a car you had to do things with your hands, and do things with your feet, and look every which way, and I decided you could walk through life and enjoy it or drive through life and miss it."   At which point my mother, a sometimes salty Irishwoman, chimed in: "Oh, bull sh*t!" she said. "He hit a horse."   "Well," my father said, "there was that, too."    So my brother and I grew up in a household without a car. The neighbors all had cars -- the Kollingses next door had a green 1941 Dodge, the VanLaninghams across the street a gray 1936 Plymouth, the Hopsons two doors down a black 1941 Ford -- but we had none.    My father, a newspaperman in Des Moines, would take the streetcar to work and; often as not, walk the 3 miles home. If he took the streetcar home, my mother and brother and I would walk the three blocks to the streetcar stop, meet him, and walk home together.    My brother, David, was born in 1935, and I was born in 1938; and sometimes, at dinner, we'd ask how come all the neighbors had cars but we had none. "No one in the family drives," my mother would explain, and that was that.    But, sometimes, my father would say, "But as soon as one of you boys turns 16, we'll get one." It was as if he wasn't sure which one of us would turn 16 first.    But, sure enough, my brother turned 16 before I did. So in 1951 my parents bought a used 1950 Chevrolet from a friend who ran the parts department at a Chevy dealership downtown.   It was a four-door, white model, stick shift, fender skirts, loaded with everything; and, since my parents didn't drive, it more or less became my brother's car.   Having a car but not being able to drive didn't bother my father, but it didn't make sense to my mother.   So in 1952, when she was 43 years old, she asked a friend to teach her to drive. She learned in a nearby cemetery, the place where I learned to drive the following year and where, a generation later, I took my two sons to practice driving. The cemetery probably was my father's idea. "Who can your mother hurt in the cemetery?" I remember him saying more than once.    For the next 45 years or so, until she was 90, my mother was the driver in the family. Neither she nor my father had any sense of direction, but he loaded up on maps -- though they seldom left the city limits -- and appointed himself navigator. It seemed to work.   Still, they both continued to walk a lot. My mother was a devout Catholic, and my father an equally devout agnostic, an arrangement that didn't seem to bother either of them through their 75 years of marriage.   (Yes, 75 years, and they were deeply in love the entire time.)  He retired when he was 70, and nearly every morning for the next 20 years or so, he would walk with her the mile to St. Augustin's Church.   She would walk down and sit in the front pew, and he would wait in the back until he saw which of the parish's two priests was on duty that morning. If it was the pastor, my father then would go out and take a 2-mile walk, meeting my mother at the end of the service and walking her home.   If it was the assistant pastor, he'd take just a 1-mile walk and then head back to the church. He called the priests "Father Fast" and "Father Slow."    After he retired, my father almost always accompanied my mother whenever she drove anywhere, even if he had no reason to go along. If she were going to the beauty parlor, he'd sit in the car and read, or go take a stroll or; if it was summer, she would keep the engine running so he could listen to the Cubs game on the radio. In the evening when I'd stop by he'd explain: "The Cubs lost again. The millionaire on second base made a bad throw to the millionaire on first base, so the multimillionaire on third base scored."    If she were going to the grocery store, he would go along to carry the bags out -- and to make sure she loaded up on ice cream. As I said, he was always the navigator; and once, when he was 95 and she was 88 and still driving, he said to me, "Do you want to know the secret of a long life?"    "I guess so," I said, knowing it probably would be something bizarre.    "No left turns," he said.    "What?" I asked.    "No left turns," he repeated. "Several years ago, your mother and I read an article that said most accidents that old people are in happen when they turn left in front of oncoming traffic.   As you get older, your eyesight worsens, and you can lose your depth perception, it said. So your mother and I decided never again to make a left turn."   "What?" I said again.    "No left turns," he said. "Think about it. Three rights are the same as a left, and that's a lot safer.  So we always make three rights."    "You're kidding!" I said, and I turned to my mother for support.    "No," she said, "your father is right. We make three rights. It works."    But then she added: "Except when your father loses count."    I was driving at the time, and I almost drove off the road as I started laughing.    "Loses count?" I asked.    "Yes," my father admitted, "that sometimes happens. But it's not a problem. You just make seven rights, and you're okay again."    I couldn't resist. "Do you ever go for 11?" I asked.   "No," he said " If we miss it at seven, we just come home and call it a bad day.  Besides, nothing in life is so important it can't be put off another day or another week."    My mother was never in an accident, but one evening she handed me her car keys and said she had decided to quit driving. That was in 1999 when she was 90.  She lived four more years, until 2003. My father died the next year, at 102.  They both died in the bungalow they had moved into in 1937 and bought a few years later for $3,000. (Sixty years later, my brother and I paid $8,000 to have a shower put in the tiny bathroom -- the house had never had one. My father would have died then and there if he knew the shower cost nearly three times what he paid for the house.)    He continued to walk daily -- he had me get him a treadmill when he was 101 because he was afraid he'd fall on the icy sidewalks but wanted to keep exercising -- and he was of sound mind and sound body until the moment he died.   One September afternoon in 2004, he and my son went with me when I had to give a talk in a neighboring town; and it was clear to all three of us that he was wearing out, though we had the usual wide-ranging conversation about politics and newspapers and things in the news.   A few weeks earlier, he had told my son, "You know, Mike, the first hundred years are a lot easier than the second hundred." At one point in our drive that Saturday, he said, "You know, I'm probably not going to live much longer."    "You're probably right," I said.    "Why would you say that?" He countered, somewhat irritated.    "Because you're 102 years old," I said.    "Yes," he said, "you're right." He stayed in bed all the next day.    That night, I suggested to my son and daughter that we sit up with him through the night.    He appreciated it, he said, though at one point, apparently seeing us look gloomy, he said:    "I would like to make an announcement. No one in this room is dead yet"     An hour or so later, he spoke his last words:    "I want you to know," he said, clearly and lucidly, "that I am in no pain. I am very comfortable. And I have had as happy a life as anyone on this earth could ever have."   A short time later, he died.   I miss him a lot, and I think about him a lot. I've wondered now and then how it was that my family and I were so lucky that he lived so long.   I can't figure out if it was because he walked through life, or because he quit taking left turns."   Life is too short to wake up with regrets.    So love the people who treat you right.    Forget about the ones who don't.    Believe everything happens for a reason.    If you get a chance,take it; and if it changes your life, let it.  Nobody said life would be easy, they just promised it would most likely be worth it."  ENJOY LIFE NOW - IT HAS AN EXPIRATION DATE!

Happy Thanksgiving!