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FEAR No. 028 – Trusting Your Instincts
May 28, 2009 by NaysWay · 2 Comments
Orange Cones by gullevek
I have a little voice in my head. I don’t know what to call it. Some people call it instinct. Some call it a guardian angel. I’m sure everyone has this thing, this little voice. It’s so quiet, you can only hear it in silence. Not the silence found in a library but the silence when all the world around you is on fire with noise and congestion, yet you’ve seemed to find an inner stillness. It is quiet inside you. BFam calls it “changing the station”. My stepdad calls it “blowing out the candle”. You have checked out. Gone off the reserve. Entered the Twilight Zone.
You get the picture.
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FEARless
May 27, 2009 by NaysWay · Leave a Comment
Effects courtesy of Picnik
If I am the master of fear, here is my counterpart. Very few things in life scare this girl. Only recently has she begun to show trepidation, but it’s merely an imitation of her sister’s reaction to things. She’s around her enough to know her sibling is a chicken (like her mother). Booger, on the other hand, will be bungee jumping out of skyscrapers by the time she’s 16.
I love that girl.
Rememories: In Photos (Part Two)
May 26, 2009 by NaysWay · 2 Comments
This is a slide projector. I have no idea how old this projector is, but I’m guessing it’s pretty old.
This slide projector is used to view these slides.
I don’t know how to work this slide projector. In fact, I don’t know if it’s still usable. But it’s old. And so are the slides. Of course, you can always view slides the old fashioned way to see if there’s anything salvageable on them.
This one is of my family outside the church on the steps of the front entryway. We have lots of pictures like this.
From left to right are my great-grandmother (we called her “Grannie”), my mother, my aunt/her sister, and my grandmother.
There are also some shots of the family INSIDE the church, in case you weren’t impressed enough outside. My mother looks alot like Mooter in these shots, especially around the eyes. Spooky.
My great-grandmother and grandmother were very dedicated to the church. Sure, one cursed like a sailor and ran numbers, but you’d better believe they were in the first pew come Sunday.
These are plants. Maybe a greenhouse of some sort? I’m sure they’re relevant to the rest of the slide set, just don’t ask me to explain how yet.
Remember how I mentioned my grandmother having time in her busy schedule to run the local PTA? Well, that’s her front and center on the bottom row. She’s such a showoff, that one. I guarantee she was in the company of women named Myrtle and Hazel and LulaMae. Such fitting names for this time period. And so country given most of them migrated from the South (my grandmother included… she was not a Myrtle, Hazel or LulaMae, thank goodness).
This is my grandmother’s brother, Gene. He died before I was born so I never got to know him. From what I hear in the family rumor mill, I might not have wanted to. The words “pistol” and “ass” are uttered quite a bit. The one story my mother tells me of him is how he got a kick out of scaring the younger children by covering himself in white flour and lying in the empty bathtub of a dark bathroom, waiting for the unsuspecting. The kids laugh about it now that they’re grown, but I don’t think any of them thought it was funny then. I know I don’t.
He and his wife, Marjorie (or Auntie Margie, as we call her) are shown here. They had six (UPDATE: make that seven – thanks Mom!) children. Also not unlikely for this time. Their six children would visit my small, immediate family when they were all children.
Here’s two of them: Cheryl and Carolyn. You’d think they were twins, but they’re not. They look so much alike, it’s scary. Also, my great-Aunt was really into naming all her girls with the letter “c” at the start. There’s one more girl – Concetta. I love that name. Sounds so proper and lady-like.
I mentioned my grandfather serving in the military soon after Pearl Harbor. This isn’t him, but is one of his troop buddies. You’ll see what I mean about his camera. What shoots black and whites like that anymore? Handsome fellow. I wonder what he’s thinking in this shot.
This fabric shop was one of his stops during his tour. Even though it’s black and white, I feel like I’m there. I want to go to there. (Sorry. Had a 30 Rock moment.)
This is Saigon, 1946 (so it says in the photo’s caption). Not sure why a “civilian camp” was necessary in those days. I’m a little nervous looking at this one.
That’s all folks. I have tons more photos floating around in boxes. My hope is to one day take the really good ones and frame them sporadically around my house. While I have fewer family members, my memorabilia far outweighs anything BFam can bring to the table. This makes me feel bad. I don’t want our house to end up as a shrine to just my people. Maybe I can PhotoShop some of their heads onto our stuff. My grandmother would just LOVE that.
Rememories: In Print (Part One)
May 25, 2009 by NaysWay · Leave a Comment
I hope everyone had a restful Memorial Day. I’m doing things a little differently and posting after the day is over instead of at the start. I know this is bad blog/post etiquette, and there are successful sites the world over who would tell me I’ll never get any readers with an end-of-day post. And maybe they’re right. But it’s hard to stop yourself when you spend most of the day in your memories.
Maybe I should explain.
I have a small family. I’m sure my extended members would beg to differ, but I don’t know them very well nor do I see them often. For all immediate members, we are small and few. BFam’s side is large enough to fit a state park. This is the yin and yang he and I experience often, and one of the things that drew me to him. They say opposites attract, and he and his family are about as opposite mine as you can get.
In my college days, I wanted desperately to take up a camera and enroll in the University’s photography classes. My life had been filled with a family member, a camera and some locale. Pictures surrounded me and I loved it. As luck would have it, the curriculum wait list was out the door each and every quarter I’d attempt to enroll. If I ever wanted to take my chances and wait it out, I’d be one of those career students who made a life out of the college experience with some five, six, sometimes seven years under their belts. I was not a five, six or seven-year type of gal. Four years seemed long enough for me. Alas, photography classes would elude me.
My family, being as small as they are, are also very tight-lipped about our history. Not many of them are willing to share their past experiences. I’m not sure why. Maybe I’m related to a bunch of gypsies or ex-cons and don’t know it. Either way, our pictures told stories words could or willingly would not. I still have a desire to learn the structure of a good picture. These days, there are plenty of sites full of professional photographers and amateurs eager to share their tricks of the trade. And, boy, am I ever glad there is such a thing as the Internet if for no other reason than this. I am also fortunate to have given birth to specimens brave enough to let their mother bother them with whatever new thing she’s learned. Honestly, they’re a little TOO eager. Especially that oldest one. Girl came into this world going “GOUDA!”.
Today, instead of visiting grave sites or reading the headlines of the mournful (sure to send me into a state of depression), I tried getting a glimpse into my family’s past through old scrapbooks and memories of the unspoken. At first, I perused photos. Like I said, we have plenty. I’d forgotten about the things we harbor in print which are just as exciting and memorable as the pictures I’d found. For this reason, I’ll post this as a two-part series: print (part one) and photos (part two). I may have cheated a little by taking photos of the print material, but this is some pretty old stuff and I don’t want to demolish the structural integrity more than the elements of age and oxygen already have with a scan.
My family was really big into giving bibles to their loved ones. Jewish people have bar/bat mitzvahs. Black people have bibles. I guess.
This one was to my grandmother from her father. Legend has it this wasn’t the best of father-daughter relationships. I like to think the opposite since… well, since I have no idea what the story really is.
Have you ever smelled a really old bible? Or just any old book? I used to work in library stacks archiving old books as a summer job when I was a teenager, and this smell used to make me happy for some reason. No idea why. Guess I’ve always been weird.
They don’t do this anymore, and I wish they did, but older bibles used to have oil painted illustrations as their centerfold. I could sit and stare at these all day. And smell them. (Don’t forget the smell.) I’m sure this would be a collector’s item to someone. I’ll never know. It’s been in our family for generations, and it’s so personal I couldn’t bear to part with it. That and Mooter was close by while I snapped these shots. To say she was infatuated would be an understatement.
My grandmother is the family pack rat. She got it honest. Her mother was the same. When BFam and I moved out of her house last summer, we packed our things which weren’t much. We’d known of my grandmother’s need to hoard, and I wasn’t looking forward to pillaging the nooks in her house. Nooks I was sure would hold the secret of life if we searched hard enough. Although we didn’t have much to pack, I didn’t want to make matters worse by adding on. We had no idea what would happen to the house once we moved out, and we were the only things keeping her legacy alive. Seemed a no-brainer to try and preserve as much of her and, ultimately, my memories as possible. So we packed up what we could carry in storage boxes. Now her memories are in the nooks of our new house, taking up residence and smelling of epoxy and paper fibers.
She liked scrapbooks. At one time, she was a fervent scrapbook maker. With age and the pace of life getting in the way, her intentions to scrapbook soon became more scraps than books. Old obituaries. Yellowed and faded headlines. Sometimes, whole newspapers. Like this one. Do you remember what happened in history, November 22, 1963? I’ll bet you do.
Talk about a headline. I feel like I’m in an episode of Quantum Leap. The Cleveland Press is a defunct newspaper. I could be wrong, but I don’t think it lasted long enough to meet my birth. By then, The Cleveland Plain Dealer was our only main newspaper outlet. It’s interesting to see whole editions kept like this. More interesting with the prospect of newspapers going the way of the dinosaur.
This is definitely a time warp. She has other collectable print material. One being the Jet Magazine coverage of the Emmit Till execution in the 50′s. That one takes a little more stomach to witness. The open casket photo is the stuff of Civil Rights folklore. (I’ll spare you the link due to its graphic nature, but in the wide world web of information it is not hard to find.)
My grandfather served in the Army after the Pearl Harbor incident. He’d spend time in Hawaii close to the landmarks where most of the enemy fire was received. The photos he’d take seemed like postcards. Just unreal stuff. Good stuff. I’d love to get my hands on the camera he used. I’m sure it’s no longer in working order, but wow. Good stuff nonetheless. He wasn’t as much of a pack rat like my grandmother, but he did collect a few things in his travels. This money is probably worth more than our American dollar right now.
The 60′s were an interesting time for my family. Living in Cleveland, we were considered too Northern to experience the racial tensions brought on my segregation and the Civil Rights movement. This is not to say there weren’t incidents of injustice because there were. But my family did pretty well for themselves. They were the modern example of the now-extinct middle class family. Dad worked two jobs. Mom worked and tended to the household. My grandmother was not like most women today, but was a common example of women in her day. The job and family were challenging roles to juggle, but add a flair for power and politics and there you’d have our matriarch. She could wear the pants, throw back a stiff Beefeater and smoke cigars better than most big boys. In the midst of all this, she still found time to head up the local PTA. She was very involved in the local scene of her city. Needless to say, this is one of the reasons the woman does not take weakness and excuses kindly.
I enjoyed spending most of my day strolling down memory lane. I hope your Memorial Day brought happy glimpses into the past to offset any bad ones.
Tomorrow – photos! … The real definition of photos, anyway.
FEAR Feature: Summer Thinking
May 22, 2009 by NaysWay · Leave a Comment
I know. This is an odd thing to feature. Why highlight the one thing everyone does?
Because everyone DOESN’T DO IT. You’d be surprised. Maybe.
I love TV. You know this. I’ve written about a few shows I like here and there. I am not quite a slave to it, yet we have a mutual understanding that it rules my leisure time, what little I have, in exchange for precious brain cells and time I could/should be spending on my writing. I also love LOST. It is my favorite Fall/Winter show. Ever. The title of the show alone means so many things. The characters stranded on the island are lost. The viewers watching at home are lost. ‘Tis a conundrum. It makes your nose bleed with the thinking (not the time traveling, although that would be pretty cool). I love TV because, on top of my insatiable desire to be entertained, I love escapism. Anything that takes my mind somewhere – anywhere – but here is awesome. I also love good writing. LOST is all those things. But what puts LOST in the upper echelon of any other program in my repertoire is its ability to make you think. And, boy, does it ever. I’ve never been witness to a show that, long after the credits roll and screen goes black, I am still sitting there. Thinking. I am taking my shower. Thinking. I am getting ready for bed. Thinking. I AM DREAMING ABOUT THE SHOW! Thinking. I wake up. Thinking. What am I thinking about? What am I NOT thinking about?! Seriously, have you seen this show? Hooked since DAY. ONE.
Thinking is underrated. Here’s a real-life example: I am tasked with dropping of Booger at daycare before venturing into the city. This isn’t far from my house, so the trek is short. Not five minutes from my house, I am stopped at an intersection by a traffic light. There is the sedan in front of me and the SUV behind me. We sit for all of one minute. In my peripherals, I see a boy on a bike riding into the crosswalk. The light turns green and the sedan *WHAP* smacks into the boy on the bike. In full view, his older brother is not more than ten feet behind him and has, by now, caught up to the scene. His brother, dazed for sure, is assisted up by the girl driving the sedan who is now tussling his hair as if to say, “Oh, you scamp. Look at you. You be more careful crossing the street and watching where you’re going SO I DON’T HIT YOU AGAIN. Because, you know, who knows what speck of dust will capture my attention the next time I’m sitting at a traffic light.” The boy is fine. His brother guides him out of the road and into the sidewalk. By this time, my car is in park. So is the SUV behind me. The driver of the sedan? After seeing the boy is fine, DRIVES OFF! So, now, you’re dumb on two counts: 1) Hitting a kid on a bike in broad daylight because HELLO? DID YOU CHECK OUT?!, and 2) fleeing the scene. You ass. If it weren’t for Amber alerts and the possibility I might seem more crazy than helpful, I would have put the kid, his bike AND his brother in my car and driven to the nearest hospital, all the while dialing 9-1-1 for the crazy bitch who drove off because, officer, we have a problem. But I don’t. Booger is in the car and I don’t want her to have to see her Momma go to jail. Instead, I roll down my window and ask the little boy if he’s alright. He assures me he is. As does his brother when I repeat the question as a mother would who not only cares for their child but is set to BEAT THE ASS of the perpetrator.
Whoo! OK. Woosa. Happy thoughts, happy thoughts, happy thoughts. What was I saying? Oh…
Thinking. A lighter example of underrated thinking would be Summer TV viewing. Summer TV viewing promotes something called “summer thinking”. You remember being a kid, school lets out for Summer break, you go to camp, you come back to school and what’s 2+2? You have no idea. Why? Summer thinking. Congratulations. You have just been the victim of a brain wipe.
Have you seen Wipeout? Next to my infatuation with Hole In The Wall (because nothing is funnier than prat falls and the idiocy of watching people do anything for a buck), I am sure this will be my next favorite in mindless entertainment. I love LOST. I love shows like LOST that make you think… wait. What am I saying? THERE IS NO SHOW LIKE LOST. But if there were, it would make you think. A lot. And that’s a good thing. But it’s summer. Who wants to think?
I’d excuse this lack of exercising the medulla ob-lon-ga-ta (name that movie) faster than I would a woman hitting a kid on a bike.
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