Friday Family Photo--Leesburg VA

This photo of my mother, sisters and two nieces was taken in October 1986. Mom would have been 74 that year. She always kept herself in good shape with a healthy diet, a positive attitude, helping others and lots of hard work in her garden and yard, walking and sweating for miles behind a lawn mower. She said it was good for the upper arms and solving the problems of the world. Mom died in 2000. She was a blessing to all who knew her.

I'm a bit fuzzy on the details of the location, but I know one of my nieces either owned or rented a farmhouse near Leesburg and the "ladies of the club" must have had a gathering there. I think another niece took the photo.

Poetry Thursday #10

This week’s (completely and totally optional) idea is simply: Red.

I was really stumped. It's not a favorite color. The word makes me think Communist, blood, anger, flag and . . . walls. The walls of our condo when we bought it. High-end, very expensive, Architectural Digest walls. Orange dining room, brown living room and red family room--each with multiple faux glazes, each with matching ceilings. So here's some silliness; just some fun about seeing red.



Decorator Red
by Norma Bruce
March 5, 2007

"Do the walls have to be so red?"
she said.

Decorators, a team,
had a bad color scheme
a bit off the beam,
'twas sometime before
we opened the door.

They’d toned it down with faux,
a touch of gold, just so.
"Why didn’t they know
it reflected pink
in the bathroom sink?"

"The floral drapes are mauve and peach,"
she’d screech.

"Carpet is green and thick,
hearth is a reddish brick.
I just might get sick--
clashes so with red
now hurting my head."

"These walls drive me wacky,"
he mumbled, "By cracky,
Let's paint them khaki."
"Good-bye to the red,"
she agreed and said.

3567

Magnets to the rear, please

An Iraqi national with a green card living in the U.S. tries to board a plane with a magnet in his "body cavity" and wires, but he's not a threat?

"The man, identified by law enforcement officials as Fadhel al-Maliki, 35, set off an alarm during passenger screening at the airport early on Tuesday morning.

A police bomb squad was called to examine what was deemed a suspicious item found during a body cavity search of the man. Local media reports said a magnet was found in his rectum." Story.

You do wonder what he was trying to attract other than attention. I wouldn't want him on my plane.

3566

We sure do need more legal recreational drugs, don't we?

USG (Undergraduate Student Government) at Ohio State University voted to give $1,000 to Students for Sensible Drug Safety to cover security and safety costs at their annual Hempfest, which "is meant to educate the public on current drug policies and issues."

To draw suck the students in, they have at least 50 musical groups. It's a First Amendment Rights issue said their leader. The group also sponsors a bake sale (brownies perhaps?).

I wonder if a Christian group could get $1,000 from USG, invite bands, set up displays on aborted babies, educate the students about the value of abstinence, pass out literature on legislation, recruit for missions organizations and say it's a First Amendment issue (it is actually, but the left really howls about "separation," although that's not in the Constitution or Bill of Rights). I'm not saying they don't--it's possible they do that at Urbana, which draws about 20,000 students interested in missions, and need the crowd control.

And please. Don't give me that line about the money being needed for security not the event itself. In the past, they had to pay for that too out of the money they raised to support legalization. (What? Druggies and rock bands are rowdy?) If you are an alcoholic, and you've spent half your month's paycheck on your habit, and you come to me for money to buy food because you're hungry and broke and the end of the month, am I buying your food or your alcohol at the beginning of the month?

Story from the Lantern.

3565

Deep Vein Thrombosis

If you see a leg on local TV tonight, it's not Dick Cheney's, it's my daughter's. He flew 25,000 miles; all she did was fly to Florida to give a workshop, a two hour trip. There's apparently a number of myths about DVT, because she and I knew them all--like long flights and older people. But her vascular surgeon who told her she shouldn't have ignored the pain, says the cabin pressure, wearing high heels at the workshop, standing on her feet long hours, then getting back on the plane and not enough hydration, had a lot to do with it. He told her he's had a number of patients in their 30s who travel a lot develop pulmonary embolisms and not survive.

She was taking an antibiotic for a sinus infection, and thought this was why she was having leg pain. Also, because of her thyroid cancer of some years back, she is calcium deficient and gets leg pains from that, so thought maybe she just needed some calcium. Then she caught the flu from her husband and was sick over the week-end, and she works in a doctor's office, so you know how those folks are. By today she knew something was really wrong with her leg, but kept thinking it was a muscle or tendon. She finally agreed to a doppler test because the pain was so bad and her ankle was swelling. She was stunned to hear she had a blood clot moving up into her thigh. Her employer/doctor who does a medical story once a week on WSYX was planning to do a story on Cheney's DVT, so I think the film will be my daughter's leg. She's had a blood thinner directly into her abdomen, so we're praying this will eliminate any immediate danger. She'll be on coumadin for some time.

If you're flying, even short trips, pay attention to any unusual leg pain. FAA Safety brochure.

Update: She has finished the round of shots (extremely painful) and now has to wear compression stockings (ca. $180 a pair) to relieve the swelling, can walk upstairs only once a day, and must keep her leg elevated and do nothing physical for awhile. Her doctor told her that if we fly or even if we're just traveling in a car (men or women), we should wear compression stockings (the non-prescription type that only cost about $50).

3564

Running the Numbers

My New Year's Resolution was to read the Bible through, something I've never done. I'm using the One Year Bible, NIV edition, where you get some OT, NT, Psalms and Proverbs all in one sitting. Genesis is pretty interesting--lots of good stories. Leviticus--well, you can see some general principles about being separate from the culture and not hanging out with the bad guys. But Numbers. Oh My! That's why I'm glad to have Pastor Brad. When he talks about the Book of Numbers he throws in some biscuits and gravy.

3563 Kwitcherbitchin

"I would like to be doing a Judy Dench career. But I'm a black American living in the United States so that's not terribly realistic." WSJ story, March 6, 2007, D6.


Oh, please! Ms. Carroll. You've got a "ring with a piece of ice large enough for a skating rink," four ex-husbands, affairs with David Frost and Sidney Poitier, beautiful grandchildren, a face so classic, plastic and fantastic there's not a wrinkle or line to be seen, you've done broadway, TV and movies, and done it your way, and you grew up in a loving nuclear family with a mom and dad who adored you and supported your career.

Come rain
or come shine,
some folks gotta whine.
No one's too hot
to give librarians a shot,
mega-stars we're not.
It's never enough,
oh, life's so tough,
sure got things rough.
Diahann Carroll,
here's a quarter,
from those in the carrel.

3562

Smoking and movies

No matter what you say about violence, sex and dirty language in movies, they aren't going to kill your children (later in life), but cigarette smoking will. And it is on the increase in movies. Over at Facts and Fears, which warned in an op ed about this a few years back they now report a study published in a pediatric journal:

"A new study appearing in this month's Archives of Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine evaluates the relationship between smoking initiation and movie-going habits from a different perspective -- but the results are analogous, to an amazing degree. The authors, from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the Pacific Institute for Research and Evaluation, evaluated 735 youngsters, aged twelve to fourteen, at the beginning of the study, in 2001. One of the key measures they recorded was which of ninety-three popular films they had seen over approximately the past year. Two years later, the researchers re-interviewed the study group to determine how many of them had begun to smoke, and the relationship of smoking to their earlier, self-described moviegoing habits.

White teens who had higher exposures to R-rated movies -- and about two-thirds had such exposures -- had an almost three-fold higher rate of smoking than their peers who had lower or no R-rated movie exposures. (Interestingly, and for no obvious reason, black teens did not have that same increased rate of smoking based upon R-rated movie viewing.) Girls and boys both had higher smoking initiation with increased attendance at R-rated movies.

The authors point out that several other studies -- one of which is the study I discussed in my 2003 op-ed -- have now confirmed that young teen exposure to movies that portray, or are likely to portray, smoking have a significant impact on initiation of smoking by a factor of about three (this degree of elevation was found in all the studies). It should be noted here that approximately 100% of R-rated movies do have smoking scenes."

Personally, I don't know why you are letting your kids see R-rated movies, but maybe you need a heads up here.

3561

Walter Reed Investigation and Shake-up

At first I was shocked. Now I'm just suspicious, very suspicious. Don't we have congressional oversight for this? Why do they need a new hearing? What has that committee been doing? Whenever I've been on a committee we were expected to be doing something besides meet during a crisis. Aren't these the same people who want us all to have national health care supplied and overseen by them? If the medical care is this bad, why would we want that? And what about all those photo ops we've seen of politicians, including the President, with wounded soldiers? Parents and wives. Weren't any of them writing Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton or Deborah Pryce? What about those war protesters (Code Pink?) camped outside Walter Reed? Are they so stupid they would have kept this quiet all these years? Gosh, fire those guys and get some new commies. Is this just one more way to bad mouth the war and embarrass the President? At the expense of our troops and the Iraqi people?

3560

Ann Coulter

I've never been a fan of Ann Coulter so I hadn't been following her speaking events, but Jon Swift has summarized this last one at CPAC, and it sounds like she's gone round the bend. Other conservatives are obviously tired of her adolescent behavior. Others can make excuses for her, but I won't. It's ugly.

American Mind taking her to the Pat Robertson woodshed: "Ann Coulter used to serve the movement well. She was telegenic, intelligent, and witty. She was also fearless: saying provocative things to inspire deeper thought and cutting through the haze of competing information has its uses. But Coulter’s fearlessness has become an addiction to shock value. She draws attention to herself, rather than placing the spotlight on conservative ideas.

At the Conservative Political Action Conference in 2006, Coulter referred to Iranians as “ragheads.” She is one of the most prominent women in the conservative movement; for her to employ such reckless language reinforces the stereotype that conservatives are racists.

At CPAC 2007 Coulter decided to turn up the volume by referring to John Edwards, a former U.S. Senator and current Presidential candidate, as a “faggot.” Such offensive language–and the cavalier attitude that lies behind it–is intolerable to us. It may be tolerated on liberal websites but not at the nation’s premier conservative gathering."

3559

Robins who winter here

When I was a girl growing up in Illinois, we always watched for the first robins as a sign of spring. Because I see so many robins in central Ohio all year, I thought it was just our more mild climate. When we had that terrible cold snap a few weeks back I was surprised to see so many dead robins in the street. They didn't seem to be able to get out of the way of the cars, and the streets were snow packed so I wasn't sure why they were in the road. Then in today's Columbus Dispatch I noticed an article about robins staying around because of the spread of the honeysuckle bush. Its red berries provide winter food for them when there are no worms or bugs. The plants are foreign to our area (you might call them illegal immigrants who have gotten out of hand) and have killed off some native species. When I checked Google, I see that robins are also wintering in the western suburbs of Chicago, but those may have come south from Wisconsin.

Whatever is keeping them here in the winter--dried fruit and berries from ornamental trees or invasive species--our terrible cold snap must have been too much for them. It either covered up or iced over their food supply or disoriented them enough that they weren't able to fly.

3558

As seen at Joan's blog

She found this meme--so I decided to try it. Tag, you're it.

1. How often do you shave your legs in the winter? (Guys, I'm expecting this to
be zero, but if it's not, don't hold back) It's rare; slacks and age decrease the need.
2. Do you make your bed every day? No, but my husband does. He's the last one up and I'm usually gone by then.
3. Do you floss every day? No--about 4-5 times a week.
4. Do you eat something sweet every day? Yes, if fruit counts.
5. What is the one routine thing you do every day that you wish you didn't have to or could do without? If I had any routines I didn't need, I would have dumped them.
6. Are routines important to you or do they drive you nuts? Yes; No, I like an orderly life.
7. Do you enjoy driving or is it just a necessity to you? Do you always ask two questions in one? I don't like to drive; it is a necessity of urban living. Our city fathers didn't believe in sidewalks. I get sleepy when driving. See #2 above.
8. Do you make your lunch or buy it on most days? I make my lunch every day.
9. If you could change one thing about your appearance what would it be? I'd change all the time I spent worrying about it in the past. It did no good.
10. Do you believe in spirits crossing over? Gracious no. Crossing over where? I'm a Christian; we are Easter people and believe in the resurrection of the body, not disembodied spirits cavorting here and crossing there.
11. Do you love, like, tolerate, dislike or hate your job? I'm retired; but I loved the job I used to have. Except for meetings. Librarians have way too many meetings.
12. How much wood would a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck would chuck wood? I've never seen a woodchuck chuck anything.
13. Do you watch American Idol? I've never watched an entire show, but have seen some pretty awful auditions.

Joan got it from Irish Church Lady who did it as a Thursday Thirteen.

3557

Up and Running Again

For a week or two, I haven't been able to update two of my blogs, and had developed a queue which I stored at a blog that I had finished in November 2005. But being somewhat forgetful, I discovered today when Blogger finally restored them, that I had written some entries twice. Anyway, the class reunion blog has now been updated with some Girl Scout stuff in February and March, our 8th grade trip to Chicago, and a Christmas party in December. All the stories and photos are from the 1950s, contributed by classmates. As everyone knows from watching Happy Days reruns, the 50s was an era of no problems, Elvis Presley, I like Ike, and all the children were thoughtful, well behaved, and never caused any trouble. Oh yeah! Enjoy.

3556

Talking to a Democrat

There is a talkative mid-life lawyer at the coffee shop who will deign to chat with me, a lowly, female retiree of a different faith and party, if there's no one else for him to talk to at. He's also trying to practice his Russian, so that makes for a pretty small group, plus he thinks all the men there are bigots and idiots (he told me one time) because they're talking sports. Anyway, today I made him the same offer that I did Chuck, as he scarfed down one of their fabulous muffins (he's put on a few pounds this winter). He could have my calories I wasn't using and they wouldn't count on him. He could eat with impunity knowing I wasn't. He didn't understand the Gore carbon footprint/exchange so I tried to explain it. I think his legal mind realized it is a scam, but he right away switched the topic to Gore's movie.

But when I said something about Clinton not signing the Kyoto Treaty, he went ballistic. Thought I'd have to scrape him off the ceiling. "You Republicans blame Clinton for everything!" he bellowed (I think he's a defense attorney and tries intimidation.) The fact that it just happened to be true and that Kyoto hasn't done a thing for those countries that did sign it, and that I had been a Democrat who voted for Clinton, also did little to defuse him. His mouth was like the roaring lion in the book of Daniel (no sinister allusions to Satan here--I know he is a liberal Catholic and has a good heart).

Since I'm probably 15 years older, I did a little history review with him and asked him to cite a single program proposed by the liberals in the last 20-30 years that had been defeated by the conservatives. Couldn't do it of course, because liberals try to put up conservatives, particularly Christian conservatives, as some sort of powerhouse bringing down the government. No one has been a bigger spender on social programs than the Bush administration. Medicare. Biggest gains under Republicans. Illegal immigration. Huge muck job by Republicans--who was president in 1986 for IRCA? Social Security. Reagan was President when I lost mine. Legal abortion. Last time I checked, we're still killing babies--what--25-35 million since Roe v. Wade? If Christian conservatives manage to roll back a week or two in a sparsely populated rural state, the Dems go crazy (oh no, a baby's made it out alive), but the law's still there. DDT. Last time I ran the numbers, we'd killed more Africans with malaria in the last 30 years than died being shipped across the Atlantic as slaves in the 18th century, but not a single bird, let alone human, ever died from spraying DDT on mosquito eggs in standing pools of swamp water. Rich Americans like Bill Gates are using their billions to buy mosquito netting and print brochures instead of reversing that disaster. Clean air laws. We've got bunches of empty factories in Ohio that have no smoke belching from the chimneys--the jobs went first to the southern U.S.A., then to Asia. Women's Rights. Leading cause of poverty in the U.S.A. is unmarried women having sex and babies before finishing school. The poverty gap is no longer racial, it is marital. And Dems have a fainting spell if someone introduces an abstinence program or a chastity pledge.

But he was so old-school-liberal in his views he only was willing to concede that blacks weren't being lynched and had moved a little closer to the front of the bus. Actually, I didn't get to bring up all these points for him--old Democrats wouldn't sit for that. His patronizing attitude for everything the liberals my age accomplished over the years is a real turn off--makes me think that nothing I did or supported for forty years mattered because it is never enough for them until we turn the country over and under.

3555

Bluffton University Tragedy

Last night I watched CBS News (Couric) which I rarely do (please, someone have a heart and move her back to her comfort zone) because I wanted to see an update on the bus tragedy that killed and injured so many Ohio young people. I wasn't terribly familiar with this school near Toledo, and knew little about it. Then I switched to Fox News and saw a totally different report. Yes, they talked about the tragedy, the family, had interviews, etc., but featured the information that Bluffton was a school affiliated with the Mennonite Church. Fox even had footage of the prayer vigil, held BEFORE the team left. Then I realized that often when I request books of a religious nature (not available at my public library because they don't collect in that area, or Ohio State University) they usually come from either Bluffton or Ashland, a Brethren college and seminary.

Almost all colleges in the U.S. founded in the 18th and 19th century were established by Christians. Some long ago left their roots and rootedness, like Harvard and Yale, and some keep the flavor and tone of the denomination with trustee appointments, faculty statements, contributions from churches, but only enroll about 20% of the faithful among their students. This includes Bluffton, Ashland, Wittenburg and Capital(Lutheran). The Columbus Dispatch reported that after the accident phone trees for the 75 Mennonite churches that make of the 11,000 membership of the Ohio Conference of Mennonite Church USA went into action for a prayer line.

I'm not sure why CBS skipped it (or possibly I was out of the room), or why Fox included it. Sure sounds like one was a bit more fair and balanced than the other.

3554

Friday Family Photo--The wedding

This handsome young couple, Edna and Jesse Weybright, were married December 25, 1911. Jesse was the 2nd cousin of my mother and her siblings--which means they had the same great grandfather, who came to Ohio from Pennsylvania around 1803. So the groom is my 2nd cousin once removed. He was about 21 years old here, and my mother hadn't been born yet. We didn’t know any of these people because our branch stayed in Ohio (near Dayton) until about 1894 (some longer), then on to Illinois, and this group moved on to Colorado and the family has been there over 100 years.

Isn’t that just the most wonderful hat you ever saw?

The minutes of our lives

This is the title of a WSJ feature on blogging. I saw it advertised but haven't seen it yet--not sure if it's due Friday or for the week-end edition. Based on the advert:

The Minutes of our Lives
by Norma Bruce
March 2, 2007

No experience is
too personal is
too sacred
not to be shared
immediately.

Chronicling
milestones, meetings,
weddings, births,
divorces and dinners.
Displaying
libraries, bodies,
vacations, toilets,
knowhow and knitters.

Blog and snog
MyFace, MySpace,
MyMoBlo or YouTube,
let's all vlog.

Download, edit,
scan or IM-it;
text-it, phone-it,
block, chop and drop it,
record, tag and
upload your snippet.

No experience is
too personal is
too boring
not to be shared
immediately.

Watching me,
Watching you.

Poetry Thursday #9

This week for Poetry Thursday, we are invited to write about something beautiful without using its name. This feels like it is still in draft stage--changing right up through Wednesday night.


In my unformed thoughts,
in my wildest dreams,
when this mattered
(and it doesn't so much now),
I never expected we’d meet.

You were so distant and aloof,
a prisoner of your past,
corrupt and sinful
(yet charming and alluring),
Did I even want us to meet?

Now that I’ve seen you,
heard your velvet voice,
minor and sad
(but dark eyed and lovely),
I know I’ll never forget us.

Are we allowed to leave a hint? (Очи страстные и прекрасные)

3552

Gore-ge yourself, be my guest

Today I passed up the samples of the peanut butter banana crunch bagel at Panera's (I'm assuming this is in honor of Elvis Presley, but I didn't see a note). So using the theory of carbon credits, you can now eat 200-300 extra calories today because I didn't, and therefore your calories won't count, make you fat, or hurt your heart. Al Gore is doing it the other way around. He's using massive amounts of energy to heat his home and swimming pool, but it is OK because he is rich and "buying" credits to do this from some place that scams tracks the public use of energy. So he's using what someone else isn't or didn't need. I'm not using those calories today, so you can be my guest. And I won't even charge you anything.

3551

Albums, scrapbooks and memories

Last night we searched the nooks and crannies of the house looking for photo cards people send at Christmas and the art cards we save from artistic friends. This turned out to be a much bigger job than we thought--might be a week instead of an evening.



The album in the back holds the work of a number of different artists, several of whom have died since we started the album. Our good friend Erkki Alanen died about 2 years ago--he was from Finland, lived in El Paso, and was a cartoonist, graphic artist, and architect who lived with us in the 1970s.

The album in the foreground is dedicated just to one artist, my college roommate, Dora. She was born in China and her parents immigrated to Brazil to escape the Communists. We both married architects who paint watercolors in retirement, so some of our 40+ years of Christmas cards reflect his art as well as hers. Then a few years ago they became grandparents. Now. . .

We decided to take some of the photo cards (usually family pictures) and add them to the pages with the art work.

Dora and I at the U. of Illinois