Off to the Beach!

This is my newest home project. I've been looking for something to swap out with my beloved grandmother's crazy quilt over the fireplace because I'm concerned that the strong light in the room is fading it too much. So here's what I've come up with -- also from my grandmother.

This is an enlargement of a envelope she addressed to granddaddy, in 1913, before they were married. When Mom cleaned out the house on Van Dyke she needed to decide what to do with a stack of letters from grandmother that granddaddy had saved -- so I brought them home. Guess when my house is cleaned out, there they will be. Anyway, we haven't found anything terribly compelling in the letters themselves -- they are mostly chit-chat -- but the envelope, enlarged and framed, is enticing, I think.

Our young friend Fiona and her dad are gardening this summer. Tomatoes, beans, squash, melons, herbs. Here she is in her Tilley Hat.

We are off to the beach. Duncan's Aunt Emilia from Kansas City rents a house at Holden every year, and gathers as much family in as possible over two weeks. She has three children in three states and this year, a grandchild is bringing his new baby, so there will be four generations.

These are cousins Duncan would otherwise only see at funerals, so it is nice we always get invited and nice that we have always been able to go.

Stray Bits

These are Fire Pinks and they were THE wildflower blooming in the mountains in April when we went for a long hike up the old US 70 roadbed up around Old Fort. What a good, long, but fairly easy walk on a paved road through such wildness it took your breath away. My amazing Mom, a week after her 82nd birthday, kept pace the entire way.

May 5 -- I saw a magnolia tree in full bloom.

I am crazy busy, always working on a list - but all projects are pleasant and interesting, so it is just old habit to complain. Church committees, fiber guild board, a weaving study group, and running back and forth to NC, with some tiny bit of gardening thrown in. Really don't have time to work, but earlier in this very place, I promised never to complain about work again. Ever. So, I won't.

The economy is getting better, the environment is getting worse.

Miners were killed in a mine accident in West Virginia, there's been big earthquakes in Indonesia and Chile,  a volcano erupted in Iceland that spewed so much ash that airports in Europe were shut down for a week and periodically since, and then a BP oil rig collapsed in the Gulf of Mexico and has been gushing thousands of gallons of oil each day into the ocean for four weeks now. Think of it. Thousands of gallons a day for four weeks and no fix in sight. All of this makes me sad and worried for our planet. What to do? Envision a world without cars and air conditioners and WI-FI?

I talked to a woman here who works for NOAA (National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration)  -- she says she working extra hours on oil spill clean-up and has to track her hours like a lawyer because Fed. Govt. is serious about making BP pay. And Claire left to go to her beach house in Florida, planning to take an EPA class for anyone who wants to help prepare their beach for the coming oil. Last night, she wrote and said there's no oil there yet. Yet.

On a more hopeful note, Adam graduated from Wake Forest on Monday. We were in Winston to celebrate with him over the weekend. Check out the much-loved graduate and check out this awesome cake:

I haven't been able to make it to many of the most recent family celebrations so I thoroughly enjoyed being at this one. It was great to see Jeffrey again, too. He's gearing up to enter his doctorate program at Chicago so I expect he'll be pretty busy for the next few years. Chances to see him may become even fewer and further between.

And while I was in Greensboro I stopped in at the Residential College Reunion. Debbie's class entered as freshmen 40 years ago -- Murray and Fran Ardnt were the faculty couple who lived in the dorm. I came along two years later. Fran is retiring this year, so she was roasted and toasted. She is the last faculty person I had any connection to -- so I was glad I could make it. I enjoyed lunch at my favorite Greensboro restaurant; Elizabeth's Pizza, with several others who showed up from my class -- here's Pat Weathers and me, Helen Harris Cryan who's been in Greensboro all these years, Debbie Jones Kenyon, who I've recently reconnected with, and Carol Densmore who came from Boston..

And here's a nice picture of the dorm we lived in from 1973 - 1975.

It's true, time does fly. Why it's almost Bob Dylan's birthday again. You won't believe this. He'll be 69 this year!!

Happy Easter

Debbie sent me this card last Easter. It still cracks me up.

Fried Green Tomatoes has been pretty quiet lately. I've been trying to keep the Fiber Guild's blog somewhat current and interesting -- it's been hard to find time to even do that.

We went to Black Mountain a couple of weeks ago to inter Debbie's ashes at the columbarium at Christmont. Sad, but also good to do that in that way sad things can be good.

A funny thing from that weekend was that we asked our neighbors Dennis and Becky to feed Eloise while we were gone. Of course, Eloise wouldn't come in the house when we were ready to leave, so Duncan called Dennis and told him she was outside, but would probably be waiting on the step when they went to feed her. After we had been home for a few days, Dennis admitted to Duncan that he came over and there was a cat on the steps, but he realized he didn't know what Eloise looked like! This first cat ran off along the creek bank and then Eloise appeared and somehow acted enough like she owned the place for Dennis to let her in. We'll have to start leaving a picture on the refrigerator. This is a nice one.

Mom came back to Charleston with us after the weekend in the mountains. We didn't do much to show her the town, but she spruced up my flower pots and ferns, cooked some wonderful meals, and had a taste of early spring before leaving yesterday in time to see early spring in Cary.

I'm hoping we'll get to Person County in late April and maybe get to see early spring there as well. There is a method to our madness.

Happy Birthday Jeffrey

Today is Jeffrey's 25th birthday and that brings to mind our family's story of global warming.

The story was told over and over again of Wilson driving to the hospital on the day Jeffrey was born, twenty-five years ago, and miraculously seeing a daffodil in bloom. A daffodil in February! Surely a good omen for new life blossoming!

Now, daffodils bloom all over the place in January and February. By the middle of March, they're done with. The leaves haven't even come out and the daffodils are here and gone.

I liked it better when daffodils were part of spring and spring was a big splash of tulips and hyacinths, and redbud trees, azaleas, and dogwoods. And if there was a rare daffodil sighting in the depths of winter, it really was a harbinger of good things to come -- as it was on February 27, 1985.

Old and Out of It

The Grammys were last week and remind me I am clueless about popular culture. There is a singer named Pink and a Lady GaGa that I gather you either love or hate. I heard something about Ringo Starr reading the nominees for an award and apparently Elton John is still banging around in weird glasses but otherwise, it's a whole new generation with a whole new apocalyptic, slutty look.

This "left behind" state actually began for me when I started graduate school while working full-time. I didn't have time for anything but classes and papers and work for four years. I later became aware that my mother-in-law, at the time, was very worried about a health issue and I was completely oblivious to it. I've always felt bad about that, but really, I don't think it's unreasonable to think a man will keep up with health threats to his own mother. Do I have to do everything?

So, I blinked and Rap had gone mainstream, Grunge had become fashionable, and the standby response had become "Whatever" with "Google it" a close second. And I was just done to death with television. When I left my marriage and moved to my own apartment, one of my goals was to live my life in such a way that I would never see another Will & Grace rerun again. So far, I've been successful.

Music and TV have just gotten completely away from me, and I hang by a frayed thread to movies. The good news is we've seen Julie and Julia, Invictus and Young Victoria in the theatre recently and it really doesn't bother me to wait to get them from Netflix. The bad news is they're getting ready to announce the nominees for this year's Oscars and I still haven't seen Slumdog Millionaire.

Blindside and Up in the Air are still here and Crazyheart opens this weekend. Maybe we'll go a little crazy and see all of them back to back.

Best Places to be When Disaster Strikes

For the last week, everytime I've been in the car, I've listened to the radio coverage of the devastation in Haiti and usually arrived at my distination in tears. Today, I heard a story that made me smile. Yesterday, a husband a wife were found alive in the rubble of a grocery store that collapsed around them while they were shopping. They survived by eating food that was piled all around them.

What aisle do you want to be on when the earthquake strikes? Not pet food. Not baking goods. Lunch meats would work -- how far away is a bread display?

January Starts

We started the year with a record-breaking cold snap -- 13 or 14 nights in a row with temperatures below freezing. People around here don't have any stamina for these bitter days and in this, I have become one of them.

Finally, yesterday Duncan and I took a walk after work and watched the sky go light pink as the sun faded and it was a great relief to be outside and think it was pleasant. And to notice that it was after work and not dark yet. The days get longer by nearly a minute every day, I heard. It's beginning to make a difference.

Claire gave me a wonderful book for my birthday -- When Wanderers Cease to Roam by Vivian Swift. It is a creative woman's journal notations and water color sketches for a year. Vivian says January is the Warrior month because it takes a warrior to soldier through these cold, dark, harsh January days. She goes on to say this must be why the Romans put January at the head of the calendar, the better to teach the most important lesson of the year, that: What it takes to get through January is what it takes to get through Life.

That may well be, but it was Duncan who saved my bacon on Sunday morning when we woke up with frozen pipes. He used a heat gun (who knew we even had a heat gun?) and thawed them out in about 10 minutes.

Tuesday a strong earthquake erupted in Port-au-Prince in Haiti. Most of the island is in rubble. That is all the news and heartbreaking.