Morning Folks February 1, 2010

It's February. Did you remember to say your rabbits this morning? If you haven't said anything yet, say them now before you say anything else!

January is always a month of contrasting transitions. The hectic stress of the holidays ends, but so do the family gatherings and gift giving, the music and the pie. The old year's over and any of its regrets can be left behind with resolutions to change things in the new year we begin full of the hope, and perhaps the expectation, that it will be better than the last. The lights and decoration come down, leaving our homes less cheery, but back in order again. The kids go back to school, good for most parents, not so good for most kids. Lots of good sales at the mall, but the Christmas bills arrive, too. We finally accept that winter is truly here and really hunker down, prepared at last, to wait it out, knowing Spring is just on the other side of Easter.

One thing I love about January is that I hang my new calendar. In 2007, my friend Ruth gave me one as a welcome to our new home. It is an art calendar, one of those where each month is a separate print and it hangs on my wall in a frame. The artist's name is Janine Moore and she is an artist from Kennebunkport, Maine. I love these calendars so much, that I have bought one every year since then.

Even the cardboard portfolio it comes in is pretty.

And this year the quote she uses on the portfolio is:

"In this sequestered nook how sweet
To sit upon my orchard seat
And birds and flowers once more to greet..."

That is from a poem by William Wordsworth called the Green Linnet, if you want to read the whole poem. (I did look up what a Greem Linnet is and it is a Greenfinch, found in the UK. )

Janine Moore's subjects in these calendars are flowers and every month is just as pretty as the next. Like I said, each picture would be suitable for framing, and they are much too nice to discard. So, I have all 3 prior years tucked away in a cabinet. Ed asked me why I keep them, but I can't part with them. They don't have a year on each month's page, so I guess I could reuse them when a future year lines up correctly. Remember those perpetual calendars they had so you could look up what years' calendars are the same? http://www.vpcalendar.net/Year_Correlations.html That's a link so you can see when a particular year's dates line up the same way. According to that perpetual calendar, I can reuse 2007's calendar in 2018; 2008's calendar in 2036; and the 2009 calendar can be reused again in 2015. That's certainly doable. And this year's calendar can be used again in 2021. I just hope I know where I have put them.

Now, on to February
"February is merely as long as is needed to pass the time until March." - Dr. J. R. Stockton

It is the month of Fat Tuesday and Ash Wednesday, Presidents' Day and Black History Month, Valentine's Day and Groundhog Day.
 
The birth month of Washington, Reagan, William Henry Harrison and Abe Lincoln; Charles Lindbergh, Queen Elizabeth II,  Mary Queen of Scots and Susan B. Anthony; Felix Mendelssohn, Longfellow, Edison and Galileo, and many more well-known historical figures. It seems February produced a very large number of notables. The birthstone for February is Amethyst. It is the only  month of the year that can go without a full moon.
 
And I learned something new today. February 1 is National Freedom Day, created by  Major Richard Robert Wright, Sr. (1855-1947).

Wright was a former slave, born in Dalton, GA, just a few miles from where I live now.

He wanted all Americans to celebrate freedom and to celebrate President Lincoln signing the 13th Amendment abolishing slavery, on Feb. 1, 1865.

He began to work on advancing the idea in 1941 and, although not an official holiday, it was first observed on February 1, 1942 by laying a wreath at the liberty bell in Philadelphia.  

President Truman signed a bill in June of 1948,  a year after Major Wright died, proclaiming February 1 as National Freedom Day, a day when all Americans should reflect on the freedoms we enjoy. Laying a wreath at the Liberty Bell on National Freedom Day is something that still takes place now.

Wright went from being born into slavery to a man of incredible accomplishments in many areas.

Go to this link to read more about this impressive American. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_R._Wright  

 

I hope you have a nice new calendar to hang this year and that you enjoyed your January, either your calendar page or the actual month, or both.

If you still don't have a calendar,  here is where you can get the one that I have:

 

http://www.artforeveryday.com/

 

 Happy National Freedom Day and Happy February!

Love,

Suz

Morning Folks January 23, 2010

Morning Folks. As some of you know, Ed had surgery on his left shoulder on Thursday. And thanks for all the good wishes you sent. His Orthopod said that his shoulder was a "mess" but that he was able to repair it. So, it's good news that it has been repaired, although he is hurting right now. And he has about 6 weeks in a sling and 6 months before he'll have things back to nearly normal. PT starts on Monday. But at least he will be able to get back to golfing before the season is over.

So, Ed is healing and doing really well, but needs my help even showering. It is amazing how we depend on both of our hands for so much. And, he isn't allowed to move the arm away from his body. He is all strapped in, but has to be reminded to keep his arm close to his side. He can move his lower arm toward the front, but isn't allowed to move it to the left. He was never meant to be a patient and I was never meant to be a nurse. He doesn't like me telling him what to do and I don't like him not following nurse's orders. I have told some of you that all he wanted after he got home from the hospital was coffee ice cream. I thought he was confused and was thinking that he'd had his tonsils out, but that didn't turn out to be the case. He just wanted coffee ice cream and figured I would get him whatever he wanted because he was so miserable. So, I can usually get him to cooperate if I promise him coffee ice cream!
Ed took care of me while I recuperated from the appendectomy and then that nasty root canal I had a couple of weeks ago. Oh, Ed and I haven't been having too much fun, until last night!

We had been talking about getting a dog for a long time. Although, I really am a cat person, I had pretty much resigned myself to the fact that I wouldn't have a cat again, because Ed is allergic to some and I don't know about having a cat box in the trailer. So, we agreed to get a cat-sized dog. I think maybe Ed's drugs are a little stronger than I thought they were because we went to the animal shelter last night to look at the puppies and came home with a cat! Ed, not me, fell in love with this sweet little 7 month old black and tan tabby. She is not an unusually beautiful cat, but has a sweet face and it was her personality that Ed really fell in love with. (As it turns out, Ed uses the same criteria whether he is choosing a cat or a wife, thank goodness!)

A ball of tin foil is currently her favorite toy. She flies around the place, galloping at full tilt, stopping short of the foil ball so she can slide on the hard wood floors.

She is so affectionate, not stand-offish or aloof, like most cats I have owned. I never minded that trait, but it's nice to have one with a different take on her humans. This one really craves attention and follows us around everywhere. The funny thing is that she is very similar to a cat we had for 18 years, named April, who was not fond of people at all. She could be a nasty little spitfire, but she was cute and we did love her.

She clings to me like a baby orangutan and it's hard to get her picture because if I get down to her level, she comes over and rubs on the camera trying to get to my face.

I was able to get this shot quickly, before she came over to me and rubbed her face on the camera. I guess she wanted me to get...

...a close up!

Ed and his little friend watched a movie together and enjoyed each other's company last night.  

They both took a little catnap. I think she made him feel better and forget his shoulder for a while.

She treats both of us like she has known us forever and can't stand it if we go off in two different directions, because she isn't sure who to follow. She didn't spend any time hiding under things or being scared at all. She slept with us last night and never left our sides, which is why I am so exhausted. Evidently, she is an early riser...like 4 AM! I was in a sound sleep and she came up to my pillow and rubbed her face against my cheek. Just when I thought she was about to settle down, she'd get up, turn around and try to get Ed's attention. When she failed to do that, she'd start all over again. So, finally about 5:00, I gave up and she and I got up and let Ed sleep. I made a pot of coffee.

Of course she is sound asleep at my feet right now as I struggle to stay awake while I am writing.

5:00 AM and she is ready to play. That's my sock trying to get her far enough away from me to get a picture.

After the sun came up about 7, I opened the dining room curtains and revealed the bird feeders which were full of all kinds of birds. She sat there for almost an hour without moving. Our window goes almost down to the floor, so she kept trying to hide under the window sill so they wouldn't see her. It was very funny. She was a shelter cat for several months and I think she feels like she's at Disneyworld!

She sat and watched, and watched and...

...watched some more.

We have to install a cat door so she can go out to the garage where I want to put her litter box. She is having a grand old time broadcasting litter all over the laundry room, which is the entry into the house from the garage. I think she's so happy to have her own bathroom after having to share in that shelter, it's like she's saying "whoopie" and just having a ball! 
And, I may have to remove the table cloths I have on our tables. She has already put snags in both of them. And I have to get rid of the poinsettias this afternoon. She is way too interested in them and I know those can make her sick. And, Monday, we have to get her to the vet to be checked out. Then, well, who knows?

Ah, parenthood. I had almost forgotten what it was like!

Oh, and one more thing...We are thinking of calling her Maggie May, after two of our Great Grandmothers, and because she has an M on her forehead. But, we haven't totally decided yet. We would love some suggestions! We'll let you know what we end up choosing for her name as soon as we make up our minds.

Have a great day. I am going to go take a nap while the baby is still sleeping!

Love,

Suz

Morning Folks January 6, 2010

Morning Folks. It's Epiphany, January 6. I deliberately left the candles in the windows, a few poinsettias here and there and the tree still remains until tomorrow, when hopefully, I will get to work returning the rest of the decorations to their bins in the basement.

Ed and I put away everything else yesterday.  It took us about 3 hours working non-stop. I am so glad he was there to help. It's like doing a giant jigsaw puzzle to get things back in the bins the way they were before we took them out. And, there are always a few new things for which we need to find room.

Gone are all 78 Santas and the little village, the snowmen and the reindeer all wrapped in paper and stashed away until next year. But, it's worth all the work. The house looked really pretty and I will miss the bright and cheery and, yes, merry, atmosphere that the lights and all the Santas and friends all created.

So, now begins that period between Christmas and the end of winter, that sort of boring non-season when nothing too exciting happens except for a couple of lesser holidays when car dealers use George Washington to sell cars and Whitman's samplers and heartshaped boxes of chocolates finally foil any New Years Resolutuons that might actually still be around in mid-February. There is that certain ennui that settles in right after MLK Day and continues on through that somber Lenten season we Christians "enjoy" right up until Easter when we finally waken with the coming of spring.

Until then, I have decided that the little tree I have on the front stoop, covered in white sparkling lights and pine cones and berries will remain on display. And, as we begin to drag ourselves into January and beyond, the lights on the little Christmas tree on our stoop will brighten the bleak midwinter night just a little bit.

 Oh, and I think I will leave the mistletoe up for a while, too.

After all, you never know who I might find standing underneath it!

Have a great day.

Love,

Suz.

Morning Folks December 30, 2009

Morning Folks. Two more days until 2009 is history. And it was quite a year for most of us. I have had numerous requests to post my blog more frequently in the new year, and I will make a serious effort to do so.

Today's blog, probably the last one in the decade, features the annual Eaton Santa Count, a tradition these last 3  years, during which the grandkids, and the odd adult, count the Santas that I put around the house at Christmas. For those of you unfamiliar with the game, I make up forms listing every room in the house and the kids have to count the Santas in each room and then come up with a total at the end. There are also extra credit points available.

We didn't have a chance to see the kids on Christmas Day, so we had our celebration the Monday after Christmas.

This year, Indigo, the 4 year old, participated for the first time, and although her Dad helped her write down her numbers and add them up at the end, she counted every Santa herself.

Older sister Arabella, 8, has won for the past two years in a row.

Oldest Bro, Zeppelin, 10,

has come close to winning, but was edged out by a hair each time.

Here is a collage of some of the Santas they had to count this year.

And here is a link to a slideshow I posted on Picasa which will let you see a closer look at the Santas and find out who the winner was this year.

Have a great day and Happy New Year! And don't forget your New Year Rabbits!

Love,

Suz

Morning Folks November 1, 2009

TRICK OR TREAT

I never know how much to buy for Halloween each year.

Running out of candy has been my biggest fear.

Who knows how many goblins will be coming to the door

There could be ten or seventeen, or a hundred sixty four.

So I choose it carefully, the kind I always love-

M & Ms and Hershey’s Bars or anything by Dove-

Hoping that there’d be some left for us to munch upon,

But we are both on diets now and so those days are gone.

This year I just bought Gummy Bears, Bubble Gum and Nerds.

Candy that I’ve always thought was strictly for the birds.

My logic was if some was left I wouldn’t spoil my diet.

But here I sit with basketsful asking “Why’d I buy it”?

Had I known there’d be so few, a count of twenty-nine,

Forget the nerds and Gummy Bears, I should have passed out wine!

How did you do last night? Any good little goblin costumes come to your door? We had very few but they were cute. Not as cute as these guys were in the 80s. Cindy made great costumes for Angie. I am waiting to see this year's pix of her grandkids. She was making Natalie a Princess Costume, but I don't remember what Will's was. My kids usually created their own look and recycled a lot. I made them pirates costumes one year, and actually sewed them. Parts of those costumes were used over and over. In this photo, Bill is some kind of ghoul, using a fake beard from a previous year as a wig. Torn up sheets and makeup finish off the look for both. I think they were about 9 and 10 in this shot.

 Enjoy your day and don't go pillaging in the kids' bags!

Love,

Suz

PS. By the way, did you remember to say:

Not just a 40th Reunion

Most of you know that I attended my 40th high school class reunion a couple of weeks ago. It took a full year of planning, as usual, and was a lot of work but well worth it. Although I live 1,000 miles away, now, I still was able to help out via Internet and telephone. And I was able to attend one meeting up in MA last June. Having worked on every one of them in the past, this one, for me, was the most fun and the most successful.

I have lots of pictures of the event I can post here on the blog, and I will soon. There are so many people who I have had fun getting to know again, and even for the first time via Facebook and email and I will write about them as well. But today, I have one little part of the reunion I want to write about.

We had about 113 people attend, 88 of who were classmates. Some were classmates for only one year; others from first grade all the way through graduation- a wonderful gift of growing up in a small town in a time when people stayed put for a while and everyone knew all their neighbors.

Some of those kids from my neighborhood with whom I shared 12 years of school were at the 40th reunion of Lincoln Sudbury Regional High School's class of 1969. But back in the late 50s, we were lucky to have had the South School, a neighborhood school house with just two classrooms: one for first grade to the left and one for second grade to the right. It was on Massasoit Avenue and is today a private home that I would love to go inside to explore someday.

There, in what we all saw as a looming white building on a hill, we experienced together our first day of first grade. We all walked there, leaving home early so we had time to play before the bell rang, some of us running down the steep hill of Pokonoket, across Indian Ridge Road, cutting through neighbors’ yards. There were lilacs, heavy with purple blossoms hanging over the fence between Mrs. Wynn's and the Downing's house, smelling sweet as we ran by, trying not to alert their barking shepherds. Through woods and across fields and carefully avoiding the Winship’s clay tennis courts, where we had heard older siblings, taking the same short cut in earlier spring times had left behind damaging footprints in the soft and muddy clay. Apple trees, from an old orchard left fragrant memories of blossoms in the spring and apples in the fall as we passed them before entering and crossing the needle-carpeted stand of pine, at last emerging across the street from the school.

Beneath the giant horse chestnut tree at the edge of the schoolyard and near Miss Simonds' house, were hundreds of chestnuts and sharp, prickly pods, always a curiosity worthy of taking the time to stop and examine in the morning if we weren’t late; and again when we left in the afternoon, usually collecting a few to take with us.

The School was perched on the side of a grassy hill, set perpendicular to the street. A circular gravel driveway went halfway up and swooped past the boys' basement entrance and back down around to the road near Mrs. Poe's house. Over on the far side was a spot for the teachers' cars, never more than two.

The swings, near the top of the hill swung higher than any I had ever been on and the jungle gym was a challenge for me. I remember its cold metal bars and wishing I, too, could hang upside down by my knees. The jungle gym was near the girls' basement door. That's where we hung our jackets, on metal hooks lining one wall, our boots and lunch boxes right beneath.

Right past the jungle gym and next to the swings, was a path through a small opening in the fence. It was the short cut to Robin's and Laura's and our church, the library and my Dad's office.

On the downhill side of the school yard, near the back fence of the Harpin's house, was a huge tree, probably an elm. I have a very clear memory of 4 or 5 of us walking around and around that tree, one hand brushing the trunk as we circled it, singing "Whistle while you work. Stevenson's a jerk. Eisenhower’s got the power. Whistle while you work."

Mrs. Stanley was our teacher in first grade. She was young and pretty and blonde and wore her hair in a French twist. I remember high heels and a smart black dress. She left us part way through the year to have a baby so Mrs. Bennet was the substitute for the rest of the year. She was a grandmotherly type who had taught some of our parents at the little red school house near the Wayside Inn, before she retired. Some first grade memories are putting our heads down on our desks for a nap each afternoon; mid-morning milk, not always cold; and sandwiches in wax paper for lunch; sun streaming through the huge windows that went all the way to the high ceiling, just like church.

My brother Chuck and I, 1958

But then, for second grade we had the most loved of all teachers: the legendary Mrs. Mary O'Connor. She was all my brother had ever talked about the year before and finally I was in her class. What a thrill! Who could forget Good Work Slips on Fridays? They were simple strips of construction paper she had cut and then she placed a gold star or sticker on the top. I remember sometimes we would get seasonal stickers like a cornucopia or a Christmas tree. They were handed out the last thing of Friday afternoon with much ceremony, individually calling the name of each child who had earned one that week. We didn’t get one every week, but boy, when we did, it was something to be proud of. She expected us to do our best, and so we tried to do that. She made us believe that we were smart and nothing was too hard for us. She always called us 'dear' and we knew she meant it.

Mrs. O'Connor had a hand puppet called Hazel the Witch and she wrote vocabulary lists on the tall thin blackboard in the back of the room. Phonics was her passion and my favorite thing. We memorized Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening in her class and that was my introduction to poetry, something I love still. She showed us pictures of famous paintings and we listened to music and sometimes we put on plays right there in the classroom, memorizing our lines of course. I played Mrs. Claus in the Christmas play. Santa, played by Bruce Larson, had lost his spirit that year. I still remember the line I had. "Why Santa, why do you sit there idle?" I had no idea what the word Idle meant and needed quite a bit of direction to get the inflection just right. To paraphrase Frank Sinatra, ‘When I was seven, it was a very good year’.

And so two weeks ago, while we reunited with high school classmates from 40 years ago, we managed to have a reunion within a reunion and a handful of those kids who 50 years earlier had that unique connection of spending two years in that small but special schoolhouse, gathered in a room and had our picture taken. These are the people I look for at every reunion. I have some wonderful friends from later years in elementary and high school and even from reunion committees over the years. I love them all and I have stayed in touch with some and I am always excited to see them and reminisce and catch up. But these people-who I have known since before we ever read our first Dick and Jane-these are the folks I really hope to see every 10 years because when I do, I really feel like I am home.

Seated: Betsy Medowski Gately, (retired after 30 years as a 2nd grade teacher.) Robyn Long Reel, Cathy Marsh Finan
Standing: Laura Jewett Corcoran, Larry Morisson, Brian Maurer, Peter Mercury, Suzanne Hall Eaton











Patty Ide and Robin Long, Bluebirds c. 1958

I do wish there had been a few more of them there that night and maybe next time there will be. I know of only one, Patty Ide, who sadly is no longer with us.

Peter Mercury and Betsy Medowski Gately at the class reunion, stand next to the Memory board made in honor of our 22 classmates, gone too soon.

And my oldest and dearest friend, Sue, couldn’t make it this year, but I will personally get her there somehow for the next one.

For now, I have the photo of the eight of us from that night a couple of weeks ago, a few snapshots and a couple of home movies from those years when we were all growing up in the neighborhood and all those memories that only we South School alumni from Mrs. O'Connor's class of 1959 can share.

Have a great day!

Love,

Suz

Note-The quality of some of the photos is not the best because they are taken from old home movies from 1957-1958.