Justaskjudy

Comments for this series can be left at the bottom post.

 

 

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Nearly everytime I try to visit a blog today - this is the page I get. And I can tell you, a wait of 30 seconds makes NO difference either.

I'm miffed! Can you get it together soon?

Prior to the start of The Flower Shuttle, all of the arrangements would have been tossed out - or scavenged by the waitstaff and gala patrons. The shuttle has turned that ignominious end into a wonderful solution for everyone involved, as well as the eventual recipients.

At the end of the loooooong night of clean-up and retrieval of our containers and other decor items, I drove home, exhausted and fairly worn to a frazzle (as my mom would have said), at 2:15 am. But though tired, I was once again delighted and gratified at participating.

Don't tell my boss, but seeing just 30 minutes of Cirque du Soleil acrobats and dancers made all the hard work worthwhile (although the check helped too!) Their costumes, the music and lighting were exciting to see, and the acrobatic and balancing arts they practice are thrilling and awe-inspiring. Someday I hope to be able to see an entire production in Las Vegas. I will be like a kid at her first circus!

Mr. kenju says I ought to tell you who Jim Valvano (Jimmy V) was. He was the National Championship winning basketball coach at North Carolina State University, who died of cancer about 14-15 years ago. You can read all about him here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Valvano

 

 

 

I found this on the Astronomy Picture of the Day:
http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap060822.html

It is called a "smoke angel". Go and read about it.

I didn't write this; I got it by email.


Aging, I decided, is a gift.
I am now,
probably for the first time in my life,
the person I have always wanted to be.


Oh, not my body!
I sometimes despair over my body ...
the wrinkles,
the baggy eyes,
and the sagging butt.


And often I am taken aback by that old person
that lives in my mirror,
but I don't agonize over those things for long.


I would never trade my amazing friends,
my wonderful life,
my loving family,
for less gray hair or a flatter belly.


As I've aged,
I've become more kind to myself,
and less critical of myself.
I've become my own friend.
I don't hate myself for eating that extra cookie,
or for not making my bed,
or for buying that silly bobble head turtle that I didn't need,
but looks so perfect on our patio.


I am entitled to overeat,
to be messy,
to be extravagant.
I have seen too many dear friends
leave this world too soon;
before they understood the great freedom
that comes with aging.


Whose business is it
if I choose to read
or play on the computer until 4 a.m.,
and sleep until noon?
I will dance with myself
to those wonderful tunes of the 60's,
and if I,
at the same time,
wish to weep over a lost love...
I will.


I will walk the beach in a swim suit
that is stretched over a bulging body,
and will dive into the waves
with abandon if I choose to,
despite the pitying glances
from the bikini set.
They, too, will get old.

I know I am sometimes forgetful.
But there again,
some of life is just as well forgotten ...
and I eventually remember
the important things.

Sure,
over the years,
my heart has been broken.
How can your heart not break
when you lose a loved one,
or when a child suffers,
or even when a beloved pet dies?

But broken hearts are what give us
strength
and understanding
and compassion.
A heart never broken is
pristine
and sterile
and will never know the joy
of being imperfect.


I am so blessed
to have lived long enough
to have my hair turn gray,
and to have my youthful laughs
be forever etched
into deep grooves on my face.
So many have never laughed,
and so many have died
before their hair could turn silver.
I can say "no", and mean it.
I can say "yes", and mean it.

As you get older,
it is easier to be positive.
You care less about what other people think.


I don't question myself anymore.
I've even earned the right to be wrong.
So,
to answer your question,
I like being old.
It has set me free.
I like the person I have become.
I am not going to live forever,
but while I am still here,
I will not waste time
lamenting what could have been,
or worrying about what will be.
And I shall eat dessert every single day if I choose.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


One of the great mistakes is to judge policies and programs by their intentions rather than their results.

Milton Friedman, economist, Novel laureate (1912- )

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


Criticism, like rain, should be gentle enough to nourish a man's growth without destroying his roots.

Frank A. Clark, writer (1911- )

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

And this may be the best saying yet: A child, like your stomach, doesn't need all you can afford to give it.

Frank A. Clark, writer (1911- )

Miscellaneous New York photos:

1. Brooklyn Bridge

2. View from the top of the apt. building. The Statue of Liberty is behind the brown building on the left.

3. Another view from the top. Almost every building in NYC is beautifully ornamented. If you love architecture and applied ornament, this is the place to be! 4. Another view from the top. The spire
is the one on Trinity Church. The building behind it has four human figures on it, and I was trying to capture them, but I was too far from it to get much detail. Those figures are at about the 18th floor level above ground, so the only people who ever see them are ones who live and work nearby. It is interesting to me that such amazing detail was important to the builders, since it would be seen by so few people. Be sure to scroll down to the other 2 photo posts, just below.

Their claim to fame is the little soup dumpling shown on the business card, above. We had both shrimp and crab dumplings, then sesame chicken and orange beef, two of my favorites. Tsing Tao beer and hot tea rounded out the night's menu.

According to their menu, they have been lauded by such notable sources as The NY Times, Gourmet Magazine, Travel and Leisure, Zagat Survey and NY Magazine. I can see why. The food was excellent, the service good, if a bit frenzied. I would advise you to go early. We got there at about 6:30 pm and the place was already almost full. By the time we left, an hour or so later, the line formed out the door.

Have you heard of American Girl Dolls? Read about them here: http://www.americangirlplace.com/agp_home.php

This production is nearly all music and dancing; with very little dialogue, yet the story is told well without it. I may have to break down and buy the CD from the show; I would love to have the ability to hear "Mysterious Ways" and most of the other songs at any time.

Our seats were in the balcony, dead center. I think we were very lucky to have gotten them, seeing as how the tickets were bought at half-price that morning. The theater was so beautiful, with a gorgeous, huge, crystal chandelier, lots of architectural detail and red velvety seats. Photos are forbidden within the theater, else I would have some.

My granddaughter was not impressed with the show (at least that is what she said). At ten years old, "Beauty and the Beast" or "Lion King" would have suited her better. I would like to see "Lion King" too, but there were no seats offered for that. She sat there like a little trooper, except that she fell asleep in the last 20 minutes or so of the show, and we had to wake her up to go back on the subway for Lower Manhattan. I do hope that in the future, she will come to understand and appreciate what she was privileged to see at so young an age.

1. I am home.
2. I am exhausted.
3. I will have a new post tomorrow (sometime), with photos (a few).

We were supposed to pack yesterday, but not much of that got done. It will be interesting to see what happens when the movers come this morning at 7:30.

I got a big surprise yesterday. In the morning, we walked to South Streeet Seaport and tickets were bought for a Broadway show, which we saw last night, courtesy of my wonderful daughter. I am not telling you which one, because I want to post a photo and the playbill, when I get home. I'll tell you all about it soon.

My granddaughter was not sure she would want to go, but I pointed out to her that she got to see her first show on Broadway at the age of ten, and I had to wait until 65!

Since the computer will be packed up early, I will not be able to post or check email :-/ See you Sunday.

Gone to NYC for 4 days.......back late Saturday night......see you then. I doubt if I will have time on the computer, so don't forget me while I am gone, okay? We're leaving in a car and returning by plane. Wish me luck at the airport!

 

Edit: Please note, I did not write this, and it is not about my family. I received this as email, and thought you might enjoy the story.

~~~~~~~~~~~By Michael Gartner ~~~~~~~~~

Michael Gartner has been editor of newspapers large and small and president of NBC News. In 1997, he won the Pulitzer Prize for editorial writing.


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----!" 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 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, have her keep the engine running so he could listen to the Cubs game on the radio.
(In the evening, then, 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 took no left turns ...

Be sure to scroll down to see the photo below!

Rub-a-dub-dub.....











~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The dissenter is every human being at those moments of his life when he resigns momentarily from the herd and thinks for himself.

Archibald MacLeish, poet and librarian (1892-1982)

 

Have you ever smelled one of these blossoms? Heaven on earth. 

A blond lady motorist was about two hours from San Diego when she was flagged down by a man whose truck had broken down. The man walked up
to the car and asked, "Are you going to San Diego?"

"Sure," answered the blonde, "do you need a lift?"

"Not for me. I'll be spending the next three hours fixing my truck. My problem is I've got two chimpanzees in the back which have to be taken to the San Diego Zoo. They're a bit stressed already so I don't want to keep them on the road all day. Could you possibly take them to the zoo for me? I' ll give you $100 for your trouble."

"I'd be happy to," said the blonde.

So the two chimpanzees were ushered into the back seat of the blonde's car and carefully strapped into their seat belts. Off they went.

Five hours later, the truck driver was driving through the heart of San Diego when suddenly he was horrified!! There was the blonde walking down the street and holding hands with the two chimps, much to the amusement of a big crowd. With a screech of brakes he pulled off the road and ran over to the blonde.

What the heck are you doing here?" he demanded, "I gave you $100 to take these chimpanzees to the zoo."

"Yes, I know you did," said the blonde," but we had money left over---so now we're going to Sea World."

The saying on the back of mr. kenju's bathrobe was captured in embroidery for all time - or at least for the life of the robe, thanks to our daughter-in-law, who decided this would make a great Christmas present for her husband's father. And it did!

You should understand that this phrase is very apropos of mr. kenju. He does act, occasionally, like a man who used to be a dictator and has lost his country - but doesn't know it yet - or refuses to accept it. Another caption that fits him well is "Righteous Indignation". In the way of older men whom we call "curmudgeons", he rants and raves to anyone who will listen, about politics, religion, the war, taxes, gas prices, the weather and anything else that comes to mind. The captions on his side of the photo read:

"The irresistable force meets the immovable object" (me)

"I'm trying to make the bliss of ignorance last as long as possible."

"Is my glass-half empty or half-full?"

"Who's Mr. Tickle?" (the name of my business is Tickle Your Fancy)

"He's severely Ticklergic."

"I'll be the judge of that!"

"I've found moral outrage to be so invigorating."

"I've come to the conclusion that anyone who disagrees with me is stupid."

"Manual labor falls outside the area of my core interests."

"I got a bad case of ergophobia. It's an abnormal and persistent fear of work."

"Well, I say BALDERDASH!"

"Why, that's POPPYCOCK!"

"The center for finding offense in just about everything."

"And I find mockery of my being offended offensive."

"And what manner of jackassery must we put up with today?"

And on MY side of the photo, only two captions:

"NIH" (which, according to mr. kenju stands for "Not invented here". He says that if it isn't my idea - I pooh-pooh it from the start......LOL

and the last one: "I could use a little neck rub to ease the tension."

Now before you decide that this practice is demeaning or mean-spirited, I would ask you to remember that we have been married for 42 years, and such tension-easing stuff as this may be partly responsible for our long life together.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


I've learned that you shouldn't go through life with a catcher's mitt on both hands. You need to be able to throw something back.

Maya Angelou, poet (1928- )

Or maybe the guys on which that story was based?

 

I have been trying to leave comments tonight and Blogger is not letting me do it! Just so you'll all know......I was there....I just couldn't post a comment.

My father (the baby) and his big sister (yes, it is a girl), circa 1907.


A relative of mr. kenju's, from way back when!
Mr. kenju's family Thanksgiving, circa 1948-9. He is the second child on the left.

Terri, of http://www.islandwriter.net/ tapped me for this meme about books. This kind of thing is hard for me, because I have read many books over the years and it is difficult to narrow it down to one choice for each category. But I gave it some thought - and here it is:


One book that changed my life . . .Anthony Adverse by Hervey Allen

One book that I've read more than once . . .The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann

One book I'd want on a deserted island . . .The Encyclopedia Britannica (any volume) and/or The Bible.

One book that made me laugh . . . anything by Fannie Flagg.

One book that made me cry . . . Marley and Me by John Grogan (Terri and I share that one.)

One book I wish I'd written . . .I wish I had written any book - but I'll say Cane River by Lalita Tademy.

One book I wish had never been written . . .all books have some value to someone!

One book I'm currently reading . . . The Hundred Secret Senses by Amy Tan (the print is so small I am having a hard time with it. I always finish a book if I start it - but this one may get tossed aside).

One book I've been meaning to read . . .the latest James Patterson book.... Judge & Jury.

So there you are. I must admit that if you ask me again in 3 months to do this meme, you might get very different answers for most of them........LOL

http://cgi.ebay.com/1939-THE-BRIMFUL-BOOK-BY-PLATT-MUNK_W0QQitemZ220011423716QQcmdZViewItem#ebayphotohosting

I have been fortunate enough to help in the decorating of the mansion about 6-7 times over the years. One of my favorite memories is sitting at that dining room table at midnight, eating pizza with the design team and 5-6 of the "Trustys" as they are called. The trustys are inmates of the NC State Prison, whose job it is to work at the mansion in various capacities. Some do yard work and gardening, some clean the house, some cook and some act as porters and aides to the staff.

No one is supposed to ask a trusty why he is in prison, but we are always curious. Most of them hardly seem like inmates. They are extremely polite, to the point of being obsequious. If you are in need of something, you have only to ask. We are treated as if we are honored guests - not laborers. The food is great, as well.

My boss is in preparation for the 2006 decorations at the Mansion. I will post photos of that in early December. We didn't get to decorate in 2005 because the mansion was being renovated and treated for mold, so we are all happy to be going back there to decorate for this season. Getting to go there is one of the perks of the business!