Happy Birthday USA

This is the holiday that always sneaks up on me, and yes Ted Nugent must have posed for this origami instructional...he's a Patriot you know,

I used to dread this holiday when the kids were young, we tried to celebrate at the public displays and cram our huge Ford Van in with everybody else to get a good view of the fireworks show, but the noise and the smoke always put a damper on my fun.

hehe, no I don't live in Boston, but I love this image. Then for a few years we did the neighborhood block party thing and spent hundreds of bucks on fireworks for the kids that all just went up in smoke. Thankfully we never had an accident. And those squirmy charcoal worms are just a mess. 

And here's a fact, what I love about the "1812 Overture" is the Fourth of July. Every time I hear it it just takes me right to bursting stars of sulfurous trails.  Or, uh, maybe every time I hear it, I am viewing those bursting stars of sulfurous trails, I don't know, the devil is in the details.

http://www.celebrate-it.com/patriotic-cakes/

Here is a wonderful article about the 1812 Overature, about Tchaikovsky here,

How a rousing Russian tune took over our July 4th...

"Tchaikovsky knew how to write a barn-burner, and they are really hard to write." lovely dry humor...
http://www.bettermost.net/forum/index.php?topic=36765.0;wap2

http://www.herkybirds.com/forums/showthread.php?p=4852

"With the exception of 'America the Beautiful,' the U.S. is short of patriotic hymns," says Botstein. "'The Star-Spangled Banner' is a tongue-twister; then you have 'America,' which is really the British national anthem."

http://community.babycenter.com/post/a12171815/contest_winners...

 "Being an immigrant nation, we are not offended by using another country's national anthem."

The Declaration of Independence was really signed on the 2nd of July...

Who knew?

" One of the most enduring myths about Independence Day is that Congress signed the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776. The myth had become so firmly established that, decades after the event and nearing the end of their lives, even the elderly Thomas Jefferson and John Adams had come to believe that they and the other delegates had signed the Declaration on the fourth. Most delegates actually signed the Declaration on August 2, 1776. In a remarkable series of coincidences, both John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, two founding fathers of the United States and the only two men who signed the Declaration of Independence to become president, died on the same day: July 4, 1826, which was the United States' 50th anniversary."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Independence_Day_(United_States)

Congress debated and revised the Declaration, finally approving it on July 4.

I support Operation Write Home. They are having an impromptu blog hop this weekend and I will be sure to stop by and show my support to those who make handmade blank cards for the enlisted people to write a letter home on. So many kids in the military have NO ONE who writes to them.

 Operation Write Home has the "Any Hero Letters" idea. You can write to some anonymous soul that you don't know and try to provide a bit of encouragement. I don't get too sappy with the whole thing, but I do want a downhearted person to know they really make a difference in this whole big world.

I always try to include some jokes for them as well. go here to read about how easy is to get involved and take a minute to encourage somebody far away from home.

The dress of Colonial America is just fascinating, starting with the breeches and white hose that the men wore, and then check out the hair that the women were partial to. High maintenance.

http://hoocher.com/Charles_Willson_Peale/Charles_Willson_Peale.htm

"Fashionable" hairstyles for women began their vertical climb in the late 1760s, and with them rose the ire of social critics. Editorials appearing in London periodicals immediately decried the large headdresses that English ladies were all too eager to copy from their French counterparts."

 http://bibliodyssey.blogspot.com/2009/09/waiter-theres-hair-in-my-satire.html

Men’s clothing can be broken down to a few simple components. A suit consisted of a slim-cut, knee-length coat with narrow fitting shoulders and wrists. This was worn over a long, white linen shirt with a high collar and a hip-length waistcoat (called a vest in modern America).

On his lower portions, a man wore close fitting breeches that came to the knee, stockings and black shoes. Everyone wore a hat, the three-cornered, or tri-corner hat being the most fashionable.

Everyone also wore some sort of neck cloth at all times, usually a cravat, which was wrapped around the neck and tied in front. Styles varied from the plain cravat to those edged with lace or fringe.

The style of Women’s garments in the 18th Century reflect the improving status of women in society. While the mantua of the early 18th Century was a rather simple limp garment composed of two lengths of fabric pinch pleated at the waist with wide soft sleeves sewn in, the mantua was gradually stiffened, decorated and expanded with hoops called panniers until, by mid/century it had been stylized into the Robe de Francaise a doll-cake-like structure that insured that a woman took up three times as much space as a man and always presented an imposing and ultra feminine spectacle.

After 1760, women began to expand vertically as well, raising their hair with pads and pomade to a height that only a man on stilts could hope to emulate.

I don't think a blog post about the 4th of July would be complete with out some talk of food.

" A typical comfortably fixed family in the late 1700s probably served two courses for dinner. The first course included several meats plus meat puddings and/or deep meat pies containing fruits and spices, pancakes and fritters, and the ever-present side dishes of sauces, pickles and catsups...

Soups seem to have been served before of in conjunction with the first course.

Desserts appeared with the second course. An assortment of fresh, cooked, or dried fruits, custards, tarts and sweetmeats was usually available. "Sallats," (salads) though more popular at supper, sometimes were served at dinner and occasionally provided decoration in the center of the table...

Cakes were of many varieties: pound, gingerbread, spice and cheese."

I hope you have a grand and glorious 4th of July no matter what you are serving on the menu, or which pair of breeches you don. I will be in my customary natural white coif, duly flat and un powdered!

The halo around my son

There are days when you are just amazingly surprised!

By noon yesterday, I was basking in my amazement.

But not everymoment is pure awe...

 ...yesterday i woke with extreme sadness

... 6/23 is the anniversary of my son's death.

when you lose a child, you are forever changed.

you, the former, simply cease to exist.

 you, the former, are replaced

...with unbearable grief and disbelief and your broken heart settles heavy on your head like a helmet ever present, that cannot be removed.

what was once solid ground beneath your feet has turned into quicksand

 your entire being is undermined and the new you even welcomes the topple to earth that you know will come, so that you can be buried too.

the entire life that you were striving to create has disintegrated right before your very eyes despite every living moment that you try to create.

your very breath is shattered and failure reigns in your heart instead of hope. for me, the evil simply hung in the air at eye level like clouds breathing sorrow in and out with every breath.

the new me lived with the helmet of grief and the broken heart for well over 2 years.

there came a day when i woke up and my heart did not hurt.
 it is the body's attempt to do it's job, the striving for balance.

then i was able to think and i had the thought, something dumb like,
son why did you leave us. and that thought hurt

but not like the broken heart.

time is a river, you can't stop it. it rolls and rolls.

we were blessed with the birth of our first grandson and i was blessed with my first healing moment. i can remember the feeling exactly when i looked into our grand baby's perfectly perfect face.

when we would baby sit for the new mom, we (dear hubby and me) would not put grand baby down. even when he was sleeping, we would not put him down.

we simply gazed at him. 

i can't  put into words the feelings and why it was so healing, but it was holy, and i guess that is the reason why it was so healing.

because there was a knowledge that it was a gift we were holding not a squirmy baby. we knew a different meaning for the term' new life' not just an infant, but but for us a breath of life, not death as we had been living with.

and yes time is a river,

so yesterday i was out in my backyard with my grand baby, (now grand son) five years after that first healing moment and he said grandma! there's a rainbow around the sun, look!

and in fact there was.

they call it a halo around the sun and i am thinking as i unload these pictures how amazing and mighty and absolutely huge is my God in heaven, that he would allow this amazing moment in my life to occur.

 on the 7th anniversary of my son's death, to give me a halo around the sun.

my mind leaps to the fact that my son now has a halo.
... and because my grandson, my new breath of life,
...because my grandson said 'look grandma', i didn't miss it.
i was told once (once? many times) there are no coincidences.

we are all in this river and God alone knows what is around the next bend.

and i do pray for Grace on a daily basis.

 unmerited favor from God,

to get me through the times of quicksand when i am sinking fast.

And He is always faithful to answer that prayer.

Can you believe these pictures!! So amazing, I love the orbs and the anomalies in them. There's a little pink cloud that shows us in a few, and lots of refractions of the camera lens. They will all click to become larger for a closer look.

Lately,

What have I been up to lately...well dreaming some,

Just a bid in. Haven't won. Won't win, already got out bid, pro-lly won't spend what it will take to get these.

But you know, I love to dream. hehe.

Speaking of dreaming, here's a rude awakening...

There are thousands millions billions of computers to choose from if you happen to need a new one like I do.

The rude awakening is I will need to go to college to understand what it is that I need. It is amazing. And time consuming. And frustrating. But I need one, so I plod on.

This one in the picture above, top of the line in 02:

"This extremely fast, new HP computer uses a 1.8 Gigahertz Intel Pentium 4 processor. It comes with 256 Mb of memory, expandable to 1 Gb of memory. It has an 80 Gigabyte hard drive, and a CD ROM reader/burner and DVD reader.

This machine, without the monitor, sold for less than $1,000 in May 2002   

  http://www.computermuseum.li/Testpage/HP751nComputer2002.htm

I laugh, as do you, at how different computers are today.

And it makes me wonder what is in store for us bloggers in 2020. But you know there will be something, even if the world ends in 2012, because we all love to blog. Maybe it will be cave blogging...

The weather has been so delicious here in Southern Oregon...

Usually you can fry eggs on the sidewalk by now,

but for some strange reason it has been moderately under 80degrees every day for the month of June

and quite a bit of rainfall included in that weather report.

My husband said "you need some more flowers".

And I said

"By Jove,

I think you're right!"

Hope you are in the middle of a wonderful morning noon or night wherever you are, I am off to make pancakes for my wonderful clan of men. We had a sleepover last night!