Remembering, Because We Must

Sunday is the tenth anniversary of the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and a thwarted attack on most likely either the White House or the US Capitol.
I was at work. At the time I had a business partner, I was going through an agonizing and messy divorce, and the kids were of course too young to remember any of it.
We listened to a radio station at work that occasionally did spoofs and played pranks on local people, so when they cut the music and started with the news bulletins I didn't pay a great deal of attention. But the news didn't stop, and soon my business partner and I were sitting at our machines, jaws agape, listening as the broadcaster gave us the play-by-play of the second time in history that America was attacked on its own soil.
Eventually we gave up all pretense of working, and moved the radio out into our lobby, where we sat at the desk and listened.
We kept the shop open, and a few clients came in to pick things up, but I don't remember anyone coming in for a fitting. At closing time I took my children, who came to work with me as they did every day, and went home.
I turned on the tv and saw for the first time what I'd been hearing about all day.
I wondered, when I was listening to the radio, why our Air Force and other military forces seemed to do nothing. I think it was because it all happened so quickly.
I must have watched the video of the towers falling a hundred times, if I watched it once. I remembered flying out of New York City on my way to my new duty station in Turkey back in 1988, and how I marveled at the Twin Towers and how they dominated the skyline. Even now when I see New York City on tv or in a movie, my mind's eye puts the towers back in the picture.
I remember hearing about Todd Beamer and his (and his fellow passengers') selfless act of incredible bravery and patriotism....who knows what would have happened if Flight 93 had not crashed in that field in Shanksville, PA.
I remember realizing that the country I love so much, my home, would never again be the same place, because it takes a special kind of evil to plan and (almost) accomplish what the Muslim al-Qaeda terrorists did - to come into OUR country and attempt to destroy it.

This is the first post of a short series. Stay tuned for the rest of my thoughts.

Class Reunions, and other stuff

Last Friday and Saturday night I attended my 30th high school reunion events in Clarksburg. It was wonderful! I got to reconnect with my best friend from high school (the only person for whom I have ever been a bridesmaid) and lots of other classmates.
Friday night we had a dinner and dance at a banquet center....I got to dress up (which I don't get to do very often) and cut footloose on the dance floor to some good 80s tunes.
Saturday night a bunch of us met at a little bar downtown, but then decided we'd rather go out to the Red Caboose instead. It was a BLAST! I got to talk to more classmates and had some yummy shrimp scampi.
Two great things about the weekend: no one recognized me (and I was told several times that I look great, which made me happy and proved I have a long way to go in the humility department), and I didn't hear anyone complaining about people who like to do fun things that have no other purpose besides being fun. Quite refreshing.
Hopefully the ones of us who are still local will be able to get together more often!
Other random things:
I read somewhere that rickets is on the rise. Makes me glad I don't make my kids smother in those wetsuit-looking suits....I also don't contribute much to the financial success of the sunblock manufacturers.
Oregano and Barbecue are laying regularly every day now. :)
If anyone has any suggestions for dealing with a stubborn, borderline defiant, destructive, disrespectful child who never has any remorse or regret for misdeeds, please share.
I'm reading an interesting book right now about the 1960 Rome Olympic Games. Once I get this Blogger app figured out I'll post a link, but it should be on Amazon.
We have thunderstorms right now, and the wind is from the north which is pretty much opposite of the way it usually comes. We had hail the size of marbles!
I think that's it for now.
Happy Labor Day!

hailstones!

In Which I Ramble Disconnectedly

There's a good point here in this article; I'm one of those Christians who knows about the existence of a LOT of things that make some of my friends cock their heads and go "wha--?"
Things I shouldn’t know exist. | Stuff Christians Like – Jon Acuff
Some of the things I know exist that I probably 'shouldn't' (although I risk being tyrannized by the shoulds) know about?  Pink, Harley-Davidson motorcycles, Harry Potter, Lady Gaga, where to buy a good but relatively inexpensive strapless bra, the purpose of body tape (and where to purchase it), boutique denim.....

And as if that wasn't enough to think about in one blog post, here is a really sad story about what happened to a woman who tried (successfully, but REALLY, what she had to go through) to retrieve her miscarried child's remains from the hospital in order to give the baby a proper burial. That touched me because, way back in a previous life, I was pregnant and the baby died at 20 weeks in utero. The doctors tried all sorts of things to induce labor but nothing worked, so I ended up having a D&C.  I was young and confused at the time, and it never occurred to me to ask either the baby's sex or to have the body released to me so the baby could be buried. I did try not very long ago to see whether the hospital bothered to record whether the baby was a boy or a girl (because in God's Providence I happen to be friends with the wife of a person pretty much a grand poobah at the hospital in question), but records were searched and alas I will never know whether it was a Samuel or a Zoe. I'm not really even sure why that matters, but it does, a little.

I saw a guy running along the side of the road earlier today in Day-Glo green running shoes.

I met a gal for lunch today, with whom I went to high school. We hadn't seen each other in THIRTY YEARS (my heavens, there have been wars that were shorter.....). The server had to come back twice before we quit talking long enough to decide what we wanted to eat, and I'm surprised we ever got anything into our mouths. It was really great to reconnect with her, and I hope to be seeing more of her in the future. She said I haven't changed at all - she's a very good liar, ha ha!

Last Monday night was the university's Fall Fest thingy - they have bands come in and do concerts on the plaza of the student union, yada yada. Normally we can't get to bed until it's all over with, because we are about a quarter mile as the crow flies from the stage.  So our tradition the past three years is that we have Movie Night!  This year's movie was Soul Surfer, suggested to me by one of my Facebook (and real life) friends.  It's the true story of Brittany Hamilton, a young surfer whose arm was bitten off in a shark attack.  A really good movie!  My big thing about movies I let my kids watch is 'is it a movie that shows that perseverance, honesty and hard work are VIRTUES, and that doing the right thing is always THE RIGHT THING even though it's difficult?' This movie has that and more. Great scenery, good acting

'scuse me, there is a chicken in my dining room

now she is in the living room

and a wonderful story (even if the part where she gets attacked by the shark shows a LOT of blood, but it's all highly relevant to the story).

(Oregano has been escorted back out to the yard where she belongs.  I have no idea who let her in.)

Speaking of chickens, we've gotten three eggs every day for three days straight, and Drumstick has developed a limp.  We don't know what's the matter with her, so we have her in the puny ward (dog crate next to the coop with a tarp covering it) to keep her from running around and perhaps injuring it further.  We're giving her yogurt as a treat for the extra protein. She hasn't laid a good egg in a couple of months, one of the limitations of this breed of chickens - they lay extremely well but their 'career' is rather shorter than that of heritage or non-production breeds. We'll always have a couple of Red Stars, but I'd eventually like to have six hens and the other four will be heritage dual-purpose breeds - Dominiques and either Leghorns or Orpingtons (most likely Leghorns because they lay white eggs and we've had some requests for those).

I have more randomness but I think I've blathered enough! One last thing: Birdman turned 14 on Wednesday (yikes).

Where Are YOU From?

I am from the top of a hill with a glorious view of both cityscape and countryside, from Dairy Mart, pepperoni rolls and Bad Cat wine.

I am from the city house in the middle of a farmyard, hens competing with robins, cardinals and chickadees for my ear, tall maple trees in the yard and evergreens by the front porch.

I am from peonies and coltsfoot, ramps and rhododendrons.

I am from Bible-believing, four-part-harmony hymn-singing Maudie, Elizabeth, Marguerite and Uncle George.

I am also from Great-Aunt Blanche, who took a nap every day so she'd be rested if anything urgent required her attention.

From thrift, honesty, hard work and perseverance, and of course the snow at the North Pole smells like baby powder.

I'm from Jesus Makes My Heart Rejoice, Now Thank We All Our God, and Holy God, We Praise Thy Name.

I am from the cornfields and racetracks of the Racing Capital of the World, from Walnut Grove and the home of the Mountaineers.

I am from the charming dandy in the zoot suit, the flapper with marcelled hair, the satellite-dish mogul and tobacco bootlegger.

I am from the doctor who could diagnose without even seeing his patient, a stone fireplace in a cabin on a hillside on a road named for my family, from generations of soldiers and sailors, and the embarrassment of not having shoes to wear for a family portrait.

I am from stacks of scrapbooks and disjointed memories, piles of Kodak prints tossed haphazard in a basket, the Family Bible and the World Wide Web, and I'm proud to claim it all.


Inspiration from this.  Want to play along?  Write your own and come back and leave a link to your contribution!

Memories.......

All of a sudden I have a full two weeks' worth of work to do in about four days, so I should really be upstairs in the workroom sewing, but I thought I'd post here instead, go to bed early tomorrow night and get a really early start on Monday morning.

When I was in junior high school my parents got the brilliant (really) idea to save DIMES for a super family vacation.  We decided we wanted to go to Chicago.  It took over a year to save up enough dimes, but we did it!

One of the highlights of our trip was a visit to the Museum of Science and Industry.  There were lots of cool things to see!  There was one hall about human development and they had an egg cell mounted in a display somehow and you could SEE it!  There was a separate display case for each week in the development of a baby from this point all the way to 40 weeks, when the baby is ready to be born.

There was also a thing about sound waves, where you could stand at one end of a tunnel thingy and whisper and a person with his back to you could hear you all the way on the other end, about 30 feet away.

And a mockup of a coal mine (but after having been to a working face I can say that the real thing is much more interesting, even if your guides fib and make you walk the slope out).

But the thing I remember most is the captured Nazi U-boat.  You could climb down through the hatch and walk through it; all the signage and lettering was in German.  It was interesting in a creepy sort of way (or is that the other way around?  Anyway it was very fascinating).

Fast forward to sometime last year when, at a used book sale, I picked up a copy of Clear the Decks! by a retired Adm. Gallery, who was the skipper of a "baby flattop" aircraft carrier, the USS Guadalcanal during World War II.  Anyone who has even a passing interest in military history, World War II history, the US Navy, or military anecdotes would LOVE this book. Admiral (ret.) Gallery tells how they trained the pilots to fly at night and many other facts about the Atlantic theater of the war that most of us don't have any direct knowledge of.

The last part of the book details how the Guadalcanal captures and tows home a Nazi U-boat!!!!  When I first realized what was going to happen in this part of the book, I started reading really slowly and carefully, absorbing all the details, wondering all the while if this would end up being the same submarine I'd walked through so many years ago.  What do you know, it is the same one (actually it's the ONLY U-boat ever captured by the Allies during the entire War).  At the very end of the chapter it tells how the U-boat was towed to Chicago and placed on exhibit at the Museum of Science and Industry.

Some other time - with pictures, if I can find them and get them scanned into the computer - I'll tell about my visit to a REAL working coal mine.  Hope you enjoyed this brief trip down Memory Lane with me!