Tag: current events

Not the A-list, but the P-list

P is alsoc for purple; I seem to have lots of purple flowers sright now.

How are you? I know it’s been awhile. How’s your summer? Mine is going way too fast. I thought it was time I filled you in on at least some of what’s happening here. 

Years ago Steve and I had neighbors who were always in search of the “A-List.” You know, the one with people who supposedly had more money/power/status. Until they found it, however, they were content to travel along life’s path with the rest of us. I suppose we should have been insulted by this attitude, but they were so blatant they were funny. (And we weren’t the only ones thinking that.) Not surprisingly, the relationship quietly drifted apart. Maybe thy found the A-List? However, the A-List remains a running joke in our household. 

This post has nothing to do with money, power or status, but it is a dump of what I’ve been up to this season and it turns out that it all starts with the letter P. .

First there is the patio

The whole patio is not ready for prime-time, but here’s a slice.

The patio the builder attached to this house was a small cement rectangle that barely held a round dining table and four chairs along with a grill. In fact, if you chose the wrong chair you were the lucky one able to reach out from your seat and flip the burgers. So, a few weeks ago we had that slab removed and a new, much larger one poured to replace it. I am not a fan of cement slabs, but in our really little yard (we have the smallest lot in the subdivision), it seems to ground the landscape and offer some good possibilities for additional landscaping. 

Just to complicate things, our design/decision-making was somewhat delayed by the fact that the house behind us, which actually sits perpendicular to ours, is on a lot that was graded a few feet higher than ours and those of the neighbors on each side. This was probably the fault of the initial developer, but thankfully the new owner in that house — not wanting his lawn, etc., to wash into ours or the neighbors’ — put his foot down with the builder. After weeks of work and readjustments to drains and irrigation, a landscaping company has installed a low, very attractive stone retaining wall. Win, win for all concerned. It looks soooo good.

Meanwhile, Steve and I, along with some extra muscle from our son, softened the cement block look of the patio with some dwarf hydrangeas and perennials. There is more landscaping to come along “the wall” and outside the sunroom, but not until we are out of the worst of this heat. In the meantime, we’re excited to move forward with this and have been having coffee  on the patio most mornings! If there is anything we have missed from our Wheaton home, it’s the mature landscaping, but starting from scratch is an interesting challenge. 

Painting

This is pretty rough. I’d like to think my technique has improved since I painted it, but it is one of my favorite efforts, largely because it’s my own composition as opposed to a painting from a tutorial or class.

I happily admit that I am now totally obsessed with my watercolor efforts. I’m watching YouTube videos, reading, and now trying to do sone sketching or painting every day. And, of course, my class continues to meet. It’s interesting to sample the different watercolor styles of my classmates along with the artists I’ve discovered on YouTube.

I’ve acquired a very cool pocket-sized set of paints to use when painting away from home as well as a small sketch pad to carry with me. Plein air painting is a joy. There is something about being surrounded by Nature that feeds whatever artistic inspiration one has. My goal is to draw or paint a bit each day. But that’s easier said than done, and some days the results are very satisfying, some not so much. I find I look at artwork, scenery, a vase of flowers, or even a vignette of books and candles on a tabletop or shelf differently. 

Postcards

During the last election cycle in 2022 I joined my daughter and daughter-in—law in the postcard project to contact individual registered voters and encourage them to vote in the coming election. Basically we hand write a short, non-partisan “get out the voter” message provided by the project on postcards also provided by the project, address them to individuals from the registration lists provided, and mail the postcards on a specific day in late October. The project does not endorse specific candidates or a party, although it is sponsored by the Progressive Turnout Project whose mission is to rally Democrats to vote. Statistically, the project knows this personal contact significantly improves voter turnout. 

I’m not comfortable ringing doorbells or making phone calls for a specific candidate, but like many people I feel helpless in in the midst of a messy campaign and an election that could completely alter our lives. In fact all of this would give me a monumental headache if I did not feel as though I am at least doing something. If you are interested in learning more about this grassroots project, visit the website, www.turnoutpac.org. 

I hope you are cool, dry, and enjoying the sweetness of summer. Thank you for stopping by. 

Logical loose ends

“C” was for crosswords in my Instagram Alphabet, though I just as easily could have said Christmas or Charleston or cooking (for starters). Sometimes it was hard to decide!

At first I thought of this is as one of those posts that goes all over, because I had a handful of ideas to share. However, as I was writing I realized they tied together somewhat logically. Read on and you can decide for yourself.

Thanks to all of you who followed my Instagram project, #alphabet2018. (I wrote about it here.) I made it through the alphabet without skipping a day! My posts went from A is for artwork thru Z for zinnia with twenty-four posts in between.

This was fun to envision and fun to finish, and it forced me to think more creatively about my time on Instagram, rather than just scrolling thru (something I do a lot). I think I’ll be approaching at least some of my IG posts more purposefully in the future. And, who knows, perhaps I’ll come up with another challenge.

Maybe not traditional “coffee table books” but certainly something to spark a conversation.

Speaking of Instagram, a number of followers there liked my IG image of Personal History by Katherine Graham and A Good Life by Ben Bradlee. I dug out both books after seeing “The Post,” first because I wanted to re-read what they had written about the Pentagon Papers (and yes their stories mesh with the screenplay), and, second, because the movie and the concept of journalistic freedom are suddenly so very timely.

If you haven’t seen the movie, I hope you do. If you have, I hope you’ll tell me what you thought. Most of the people we know absolutely loved it. The story is worth telling and re-telling. Frankly, I remember Watergate much better than I do the Pentagon Papers (which is probably a function of where I was in my life at the time). Looking back, the Pentagon Papers was a fairly a-political event. The Nixon White House was furious and tried to stop publication, but both republicans and democrats had been signing off on the silence for decades. That’s the point.

Beyond the story, however, is how well Spielberg captured the sixties. There were so many subtle nods to the time: the women were the secretaries; the men were the reporters and editors. Katherine Graham was an anomaly, a Washington hostess who also ran what was becoming an increasingly powerful newspaper. She came before so many others. I found it hard to ignore those subtle messages.

Which is the perfect lead-in for the Women’s March

Heading down Michigan Avenue to the March. This doesn’t  show the crowd, which was much more than expected.

My daughter and I attended the Women’s March in Chicago a few weeks ago. We’re so glad we did! The diverse marchers included little girls and boys as well as great grandmas and grandpas and every age in between. I think that’s one of the key messages of the march. We’re all in this together and we all benefit from the larger message.

Some signs (and marchers) were more strident than others, but I think that’s just the nature of the beast. The freedom to speak out is what makes our democracy special. What a message to participants and bystanders, including those around the world.

There is an inherent sense of camaraderie about events like this. I took the train downtown from my conservative suburb, and the crowd at the station was just a clue of what was to come. There were easily 150 to 200 marchers who boarded at my commuter stop, and the next three stops were the same story. (In fact the train, which already had extra cars, was so full that it skipped the last five stops on its way to Chicago. Another train picked up the riders at those stops.) Although I met a number of friends at my stop, we were all soon friends with everyone in our car.

We loved seeing young girls like this taking part in the March and applauded their parents for giving them a great civics lesson.

Once downtown I caught up with my daughter and another friend and we made our way, with a growing crowd, to the march’s overflowing start point. After a lot of walking and standing, and a few blocks with the march itself, Mag & I broke off for lunch. We were able to reflect on what we had seen and agreed that we loved seeing so many kids at the march, including some elementary school girls enthusiastically leading chants and cheers. They march and we march because others marched before us.

At times like this I think of the suffragettes who marched — and worked — long and hard and at great personal risk to win the vote for women. My grandmother did not have the right to vote until she was well into her twenties. But once she had that right, she never failed to “exercise her franchise” by voting at every opportunity. In fact, one of the last times she voted (in her eighties), she refused to go with my grandfather because they disagreed on the candidates. She went instead with a like-minded lady friend.

Thanks for stopping by. See you next time!