Treasures

When undertaking the decluttering of a house in which you have lived for 43 years, there is no end to the things you will find.  The living room is so full of books right now that Walt says whenever he sits down, he just picks a book at random to read.

This evening he found an article I wrote in about 2003 about the closure of an outdoor stage that Acme Theatre used each summer to present its annual free Shakespeare shows (the stage was being turned into something else).

The article itself was fun to re-read, but what really caught my eye was a little filler over on the left side of the page, obviously written by the then-entertainment editor, Derrick Bang:

Acme gadgets
employed by
Wile E. Coyote,
during his fruitless
pursuit of
The Roadrunner

* Axle grease guaranteed slippery
* Batman’s outfit
* Cactus costume
* Dehydrated boulders (just add water)
* Do-It-Yourself Tornado Kit
* Earthquake pills
* Explosive tennis ball
* Giant Kite Kit
* High speed tonic (contains Vitamins R-P+M)
* Instant icicle maker
* Instant road
* Invisible paint
* Jet Propelled pogo stick
* Jet propelled unicycle
* Lightning bolts (rubber groves included)
* Little Giant Do-It-Yourself rocket Sled Kit
* Little Giant Snow Cloud
* Rocket powered roller skates
* Roller skis (no snow necessary)
* Triple strength battleship steel armor-plate
* Triple strength fortified leg muscle vitamins
* Weather balloon
Bet you didn't know that, did you!

Ned uncovered a stack of periodicals my father saved through the war.  Several newspapers from the early 1940s with banner headlines like INVASION!, PEACE, and FDR DIES!  There is even one from 1921 about a shipwreck of a ship called the Alaska with a list of the dead and injured (the captain was one of the dead).  The 1921 paper is quite fragile and obviously it was my grandparents who saved it, since my father was only 7 years old at the time.

 There are also 3 Life magazines from about 1942.  At one time my father had two HUGE boxes of Life magazines and was devastated when I went through them and cut out all the photos of Judy Garland, but later when there was a leak in our basement and the magazines took a real beating, he didn't mind so much.

Ironically, he always told me that my "inheritance" from him would be his enormous collection of jazz records--and he had a great collection, but by the time he died, remastered CDs of most of those records had come out and when I had someone come out to give me a quote on the records, I practically had to pay him to take them away.  They were not interested at all.

However, I decided to drop off the rest of the Life magazines at a used book store in San Francisco and they paid me something like $200 for them!

The magazines are fun to go through.  My word are there a lot of cigarette ads!  Seems like nearly every page has a cigarette ad with this or that doctor recommending this or that brand of cigarette.  Seems that the worry in the 40s was that you would get an irritated throat from inhaling...I guess nobody had figured out that cigarettes caused lung cancer.

There are also a lot of ads for toothpaste and one that I loved which was nearly a page long talks about someone who is a sweet girl but it's just too bad that she suffers from bad breath.  This was an ad for Listerine toothpaste.

And of course, all the "homemaking" ads are directed at women, who were expected to be nice little Stepford wives.

What do you do with stuff like that when you are trying to downsize? 

I found a site on line for historic newspapers and discovered that there is apparently a big market for them.  I've sent an inquiry.  The papers there all sell in the $30-$100 range (each).  Then I went on eBay and looked for newspapers and found a slew of them there as well, selling for considerably less...with no bids on them whatsoever.

So I don't know if I can make any money off these newspapers.  I just can't throw them away.  If I can't make any money from them, I'd be happy to give them to someone who would appreciate them.  Somewhere in all of the "stuff" around here I have my own box of headlines for things like JFK's assassination and other notable headlines.

I was taking after my father and didn't even realize it.

I'm Back

I am back on my big computer and the problem was exactly what I thought it was, but (a) couldn't articulate, and (b) didn't know how to fix it.  It was essentially operator stupidity.

See, I often move this keyboard to the back of the desk so I can work on something else on the front part of the desk.  In this case it was the heavy book I'm making for Swap Bot.  And as I suspected, I somehow hit some keys that locked the keyboard.

Once my guru connected to my computer and started looking around, he found it right away.  There is no way I could find it again, but within seconds, I was typing again.

NOTE TO SELF:  Don't ever do that again!!!!!

But I now know that I have an on screen keyboard that I can use if I ever do that again.  I needed to use that to give the guru permission to connect to my computer.

So...where were we when I was so rudely (and stupidly) interrupted?

Well, Ned and I had another good visit with my mother.  Sandy says she still has some "issues," but is doing well.

She was at the kitchen table when we arrived, talking with Jeanie, one of the other residents.  Jeanie loves to sing and sings "Show me the way to go home" all the time.  We sang it several times throughout the hour we were there.

Sandy always wants to give me a report on things.  He showed me a couple of videos he had taken of her, where she is happily engaged in something or other.  Then, since we were singing, he brought out a keyboard and hoped my other would play it (it kind of reminded me of a mother trying to get her kid to perform for the guests).

She didn't seem interested in the keyboard, but Ned started playing "Show me the way to go home" and got her playing too.

He started playing some other songs from the 40s and 50s and got both her and Jeanie singing.  Sandy gave him a flash drive and he is going to record some songs on it so they will have some familiar music to play.

She seems to have accepted that this is her house and at one point was irritated about all the "strangers" who were there.  When we told her they were guests that seemed to mollify her and she seemed to be OK with that notion.

When we left, she came to the door with us, with Sandy behind her, and waved to us, commenting that it was cold outside and she was happy to go back inside.  She has always waved at us from the door when we leave, for years.  It was kind of nice to see her doing something "normal" again.

So once again I am very happy with Eldervilla and I always leave there so grateful to the Psychiatrist for suggesting this place.

They have one empty bed right now and I'm so glad that we got the private room, because I don't think she would be as happy sharing a room.

Last night I cooked pork belly for dinner.  Tom had it at one of his 4th of July parties and I had it for the first time and loved it.  I had never seen it in the stores before but some time ago I found it...and then didn't know what to do with it so put it in the freezer.  Yesterday I found a recipe for the instant pot and tried it.  SO good!  I want to make it again with a fresher piece and see if that makes it even better.  You can't just look up a recipe on the internet any more.  You have to first wade through tons of stuff about the person who made the recipe, why they made it, and what the nutritional information is.  Though pork belly is mostly fat, apparently it is good fat and, according to this recipe, very good for you.  Nice to know!

R.I.P.

Like millions of people around the world, I watched with growing pain, the fire at Notre Dame.

 

It seemed impossible such an historic building could be devoured by fire.  When the spire fell, I actually had a pang in my stomach.

 

I was fortunate to visit Notre Dame twice.  The first time, Walt and I had gone to England and then took the chunnel to Paris for the day with our friend Sian and her friend.  Notre Dame was the first place we went to, but it was closed for the lunch hour, so we found some place for lunch and then went to the Eiffel Tower and finally ended up back at Notre Dame.  

I did not take the most out of our visit.  Compared to the cathedrals of England it seemed so dark and I am sorry now that I didn't spend more time exploring.

I went back several years later when Char and I and our daughters went to France and Italy.  I have to say it was a horrible day.

Our tour guide, Ian, met us at the plane, after we had flown for umpty-ump hours,  Our schedule said we would have the first day to settle in and then would see Notre Dame the next day, but he took us to our hotel and said to meet him in the lobby in 15 minutes.

I think Jeri titled this picture "3 hours after arrival; jet lag; no lunch."  It was beastly hot and Ian stood us at the far end of the plaza in front of the church and gave us a lecture.  A long lecture about the history of the cathedral.

Then we approached and he gave us another long lecture about the figures carved around the doors.  It went on forEVer and we were all tired, bored, and just wanted to see the cathedral.

When he finally finished he said "OK...now go inside and be back out in 15 minutes.  Fifteen minutes????  To see Notre Dame???  That time included standing in the long line to get in.  I honestly remember very little about the interior.  I was concerned about getting out on time.  Ian then generously gave us another 15 minutes to see the flying buttresses outside.

 

About this photo, I wrote in my journal that I would have sold my firstborn for a bit of water, if she weren't being so nice to me.

We were also going to go back to Paris on our last cruise, but that was when Mike died and we ended up canceling our cruise.  So my history with Notre Dame is not stellar, but I've always loved the building and hoped that I would some day be able to give it the attention it deserved.

They hope to rebuild, but I probably won't see that.  I'm just glad that the entire building was not destroyed and that a lot of the treasures were able to be saved.

---

No news on the computer yet.

Superman

Saturday is a terrible night for television.  Absolutely nothing interesting to me on, which is how I happened to watch Superman last night.  The original with Christopher Reed.  So sad to watch that handsome, virile man and realize what would happen to him in just a few years.  But the movie is a good one and I have not seen it in years.

It was over fairly early and the following movie was Supermen II, also with Reeve as the man of steel.  I wasn't going to watch it but it was still kind of early, so I started watching it.

In this movie, Lois Lane finally realizes that Clark Kent is really Superman (by taking off his glasses to clean them).  Not sure how that lady could have been so dumb all those years, but Kent does part his hair on the right and Superman parts HIS hair on the left, so maybe that fooled her.

Now that she knows, he says, he wants to take her to his "home," that land of ice in the far, far north where he communicates with the spirits of his mother.  As Lois wandered around exclaiming about how beautiful it was, I envisioned her trying to "keep house" in this land of ice.  Where would she cook dinner?

Anyway, Superman tells Mama that he has fallen in love and she warns him that to live the rest of his life with Lois, he will have to give up all of his super powers.  Lois is watching with a look of shock on her face, and I wondered if she would love Clark Kent if he didn't have super powers.  But he is determined and he steps into the crystal box that will remove from him all of his super powers.

The only thing I could think of was that they were in the far north, in a place of all ice, surrounded by snow and how would they get home?

By this time, bad guys from Krypton had come to earth and were busy blowing up everything and everybody in attempt to establish a totalitarian regime for...whatever purpose....  It was getting to sound too much like the nightly news, so I turned it off and never did find out how/if Clark and Lois ever made it out of the ice cave.  But there is a Superman III, so I assume they did.

It reminded me of the days when I was involved with The Lamplighters.  When we first started going to shows, it was for the fun of discovering the shows.  By the time we had seen all the Gilbert & Sullivan operettas and knew them well, we continued to go to see our favorite performers in roles that we enjoyed.  When I joined the company and worked there weekly, we continued to see the shows, but now it was to watch my friends on stage.  I don't enjoy the shows as much any more because I rarely know anybody in the cast and after some 30-40 years, the joy of seeing HMS Pinafore one more time just isn't quite the same.

I was thinking about that watching NCIS-LA today (there is a marathon on every Sunday).  I've been watching some series like the various iterations of NCIS for so long that my enjoyment comes from some place other than the plot of a show.

This week they are doing shows from Season 2 when Hetty was more involved than she has been. I think all last season Hetty (Linda Hunt) was off on some private mission.  I recently learned that the actress had been in a bad auto accident and spent a long time in the hospital.  She returned to the show this season, and looks much older...and slower...than she did in Season 2.  (I always check actor's ages and Hunt is 2 years younger than I am).

It makes me wonder about Miguel Ferrer (son of Rosemary Clooney and Jose Ferrer), who died of cancer in 2017.  His very last scene in the show took place in a hospital bed, where he was very weak.  He then sent a note to Hetty that he knew he was dying and had things to do before that.  He was not seen again, but at the conclusion of that show there was an "in memory of Miguel Ferrer"....I wonder how sick he actually was when that scene was filmed.

(it's the same thing I wonder about Spencer Tracy, who died a week after completing Guess Who is Coming to Dinner in which he gives a very moving speech about his love for his family.  Close ups of Katharine Hepburn during the scene show her with tears in her eyes ... was that real, or was that acting...?)

Have you noticed that the bad guys in cop shows are terrible shots? A single person, male or female, with a hand gun, running out of bullets, can take out a group of bad guys with AK-47s and not receive so much as a scratch.

It also makes me wonder if the FBI really breaks down doors on a hunch and shoot whoever happens to be inside "just because."  (He always turns out to be a bad guy, but they don't know that at the time.)  And is everyone taught to go for the kill shot?  Can they never hit someone in the knee or some other place on the body?

And how about Criminal Minds where when they rush a house, they are preceeded by a phalanx of heavily armored people, with helmets, face masks, guns drawn, and all sorts of protction.  They are followed by the stars, who maybe have Kevlar vests, but nothing else.

Have you noticed that all those shows -- NCIS, NCIS-LA, SVU, etc. -- take suspects into interrogation rooms, and then leave them there?  They don't UNlock the door to exit and they don't LOCK the door when they go away.  What keeps the suspect in the room without even trying to leave?

The interrogation room for NCIS-LA is on some "secret" boat in the harbor of wherever they are.  But how "secret" can it be when everyone is taken there?

Also, for rap singers, LL Cool J (NCIS-LA) is a better actor than Ice T (SVU).

---

 

So today is the day I will face the computer problems and call the guru.  I have been so disheartened I haven't wanted to think about it, so I've been doing other things.  But in the meantime I've been getting all-Zen about it.  If I have to reboot Windows and lose the two programs I use most, I can work around.  If I can't find another program like Front Page (which no longer exists) to do this journal, I will just move to Blogger exclusively.  Though today I found a site that may allow me to download a free updated version, if I need to.  I hope.

As for PhotoShop, which I used to use much more for complicated stuff, I now use it mostly for sizing photos and fixing the exposure, and I can find another way to do it.

I will grieve for the loss of the programs, and for Funny the World, if it must happen (and I don't know that it has to happen yet), I can live with that too...not happily, but it can be done.

So, cross fingers, as I prepare to call the guru.

Creativity

Well, I still haven't called the guru.  I think my hesitance is because I'm so afraid of what he's going to tell me.  Once I got the laptop working, the need for the desktop was less, though I still need it, even with only the mouse clicking available.

But yesterday was devoted to creativity.  My order of the double stick tapes arrived, which allowed me to work on the current SwapBot book I'm making.

I love these swaps, but they are often so frustrating. I put a ton of work into them (this particular swap involves filling a composition notebook...the one I chose is huge.  I have designed 70 pages and am just about halfway through the thing!)

When a book is finished, I send it off to someone I've never heard of before and she is supposed to "rate" me with either a "yes I got it" or a "heart," which means it was extra special.  Sometimes they leave a message.  Usually 'thanks.'  And then all my work is finished.

Nobody in my real life is interested in seeing what I'm working on.  I have offered a peek at some, who open a page, say "oh" and then hand it back.  All of my creativity for naught.

I used to take pictures of all the pages I did and post to Flickr, but that got really time consuming.  At least I could look back and enjoy the memory of the books.  But I haven't done that in a long time. 

Today I decided not to photograph the whole book, but some of the pages I like, like this one:

which used a couple of film strips I found, which I made during the time I was learning how to develop film (I can tell this is 1969 because Paul is the baby).  I also thought this one was interesting...

because it is stuff I found in a very old (1961) scrapbook, including a menu from a pancake place and our receipt (cheese cake, I see, was 40 cents!).

I found some stickers with sayings on them and liked this one, which included a Compassion photo.

and I always have something, sometimes several pages, that involve music.

(this one combined a birthday card background, a photo cut from a Compassion magazine, and two different types of Washi tape.  And I liked this one because it's from 1937 (came from the Big Bear Diner menu)

Last night I went through a few magazines and have a bunch of new page ideas I want to create and will probably photograph the ones I like best.  At least I can enjoy them later, then.

I probably won't call the guru today either....

Toothless Joe

I said I would talk about Ned's birthday present to Brianna after she received it.  Here it is:

 

This is a 10 page comic book which tells about Toothless Joe, who gets zapped by some ball of light and develops super powers, and all the good and bad things that result from that (best is turning rocks into salt water taffy).  It ends on a cliffhanger, with promises that the questions raised will be answered next year.

It's just wonderful, so brightly colored and on heavy stock paper.  And it cost a small fortune to get it to her on her birthday (UPS wanted $250 to get it to Santa Barbara overnight.  He did NOT pay that!), but she got it in time and I'm sure sure loves it.

 I'll tell ya, these girls are never going to feel unloved.  Ned did all this work for weeks on this book, Jeri sent a video of her entire class singing happy birthday to Brianna, we sent her a gift from Amazon and then did a Facetime chat with her.  Her birthday celebration has gone on for about four days now.  She's a lucky girl!
 

---

Today I played Holly Homemaker.  I've had a bone from a leg of lamb in the freezer, taking up entirely too much space, so I decided to make one of my favorite soups, Lamb Soup of the Middle East, and do it in the Instant Pot.  The ultimate recipe ended up part Instant Pot cookbook, part soup cookbook (from the days before Instantpots), and part me, compensating for things I didn't have and had to substitute.

But the end result was delicious.

Having done home made soup, it was time to use that dough hook I recently ordered from Amazon and try the Bobby Flay Parker House rolls I've been wanting to make for a long time.  You can tell I got up to my elbows in floury bread dough. But they were delicious...and I have lots in the freezer for later.

Homemade Soup and Homemade rolls.  I felt positively like Holly Homemaker.

In the meantime, the TV has remained off and I have been engrossed in a book.  Ned has set up all the books from upstairs and told us move the ones we want to keep to a table and the rest he will donate somewhere.  I haven't done a lot of sorting, but I came across the book "Forever Restless," that I haven't read.

It was written by our family friend Father Joe O'Looney and my mother typed the original.  He has no publication information on the book, so I can't remember when it was published, but I would guess sometime before 1996.  Interestingly there is nothing when you do a search on Amazon, but when you do a google search, it brings up the book on Amazon.

Fr. Joe and I had a rocky relationship, but for many years at the end of his life he was my mother's best friend.  I never wanted to read the book, so have a copy, but had not read it.  However, I grudgingly admit that it's really a good book.  Perhaps somewhat because I know his family well, I know the places he discusses in San Francisco, and as a product of the Catholic school system, I can relate to his experiences there too.  He was in our lives from about 1950 to his death, at age 88 so I remember (sometimes only vaguely) a lot of what he is writing about -- and my mother is even mentioned in the book.  I am only about halfway through but I am finding it riveting.  Fortunately, he's dead and my mother doesn't remember who he is, so I don't have to admit that to anyone!

A Disappointment

Well, I'm very disappointed but, in truth, not surprised.  The Fred Reif who signed my guestbook and left information on how to contact him, is not the Fred Reif I was writing about.  I was suspicious from the beginning, but did a phone # check and found the number all right, but it was registered to someone else.

I called the number today and the guy who answered didn't sound like Fred (who has a distinctive accent) and didn't recognize the name "Bev" or "Beverly."  Which is unlikely.  A woman kept shouting in the background (and I am pretty sure his wife would not do that) and when I mentioned that he had signed my guestbook, he didn't know what that is.

So probably someone is playing a trick on both me and the guy at that phone number....and shame on you.

Ned and I went to Atria yesterday.  I was so glad when someone I actually KNEW answered the door and told me that since her husband works at Eldervilla, she would go with him sometime to visit my mother.  That made me feel very good.

Trying to get things finished up is as confusing as anything ever is at Atria.  I was told that only a maintenance person could open the display case where the last of my mother's things was and that anybody who worked there could do a "walk through" with us, which apparently had to be done in order to be finished.

Well neither of those things was true.  Turns out anybody can open the display case, but even with the magic key it was NOT easy to open.  It took Ned and this woman a very long time, and the assistance of a kitchen knife to get it done.

 

We also did the "walk through" with her but when we went to make sure we were all finished, we had to wait until (a) a maintenance guy and (b) some other honcho could come and do a walk through (and apparently open the display case).

They found her walker, but nobody mentioned the shower chair I'd asked about several times. A woman on the phone told me they would pay me for it if they couldn't find it, but nobody mentioned that.  Ned said to just leave it.

But it got done, I signed the papers and I never have to go back there ever, ever again.  Atria is a very nice place with a lot of activities, but if you aren't interested in activities it's a huge waste of money.  Some of the aids in the memory unit are wonderful, but the crop that I've seen lately left me less than impressed, and they have had a large turnover of employees.  The "Director" of Atria, someone I'd never heard of, was the person I dealt with last week, but when I called her at the end of the week, she was gone and there was an "interim" person.  I can't remember how many directors there have been in the whole complex since my mother moved in in 6 years ago.  There have been at least three in the memory unit in the past year and there is zero communication about when someone is leaving or who the new person is who has arrived.  At the moment, I don't think there is a director in the memory unit.

But we are out of there and Sandy says my mother is interacting with the others at Eldervilla so I am much encouraged.

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I spent a good part of the day exchanging emails with a guy named "Chris" (who appeared to be a different person each time) at Home Chef.  Because it didn't recognize basykes@dcn.org and bsasykes@dcn.davis.ca.us as the same address, it set me up with a new account and we received two boxes last week (which I thought I'd ordered, since Jeri would be here) and two boxes this week, which I did NOT order.  Every time 'Chris' (whichever iteration) wrote he would give me a link of where to solve the problem and each time it brought me to a page that said my account was suspended.  I could not find any "log out" option so I could log out and log in again with the proper address (which is now g-mail).

I'm not sure how it all got worked out, but it seems to be working now.  But we have the double box from last week still to cook this week.