walking in the late afternoon, on a sunny day

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Early in our walk.

Later in our walk.

This makes me smile.  The distortion............

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Happy Anniversary!

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Happy Anniversary, Mom and Dad!

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Happy Mothers' Day

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Happy Mothers' Day!

Happy Mothers' Day to my mom, who loves flowers and gardening.

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December 10, 2018

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Still eating homegrown tomatoes, one by one.....  They have a bit of tomato taste, and they continue to ripen, even at this extremely late date.

We went to the Kellogg Eye Center to order new glasses for my better half.

There is a lot of art on display, including this excellent woven/folded sculpture.

The coating on the lenses of the old glasses is starting to come off, leaving much-less-clear areas.  It will be good when the new ones arrive.

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Happy Holidays

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Cinnamon pecan sweet rolls. 

After rising in the fridge overnight.

 After baking.

After flipping over so the pecans are on top.

And, without nuts for those who prefer them that way. 

May everyone embrace traditions that suit them, while being sensitive to the needs and wants of others. 

May everyone have good things to eat, and congenial others to enjoy them with. 

May we all ramp up our making-the-world-better game just a little bit. 

Together we make all the difference. ✨💕✨

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December 1, 2018

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This was really navy, but my phone neglected to capture the blue.

My brother's initials are CB.  Wasn't it nice of them to make him a cake?

Best wishes for every happiness, Byron and Claire!

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November 29, 2018

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On November 29, we went to Kansas City.  My nephew and his long-time best friend got married on Dec. 1.

My multi-talented sister-in-law is a weaver.  Isn't this gorgeous?

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Happy Birthday, Dad!

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Happy Birthday, Dad!

My dad has been an activist for decades.  Even when the work was tedious and it wasn't clear any impact was made.

I hate (HATE!) cleaning up messes made by other people.

But.  If I don't, who's going to?

So -- I'm following in your footsteps, Dad.  Doing things that seem necessary, regardless of whether the impact is measurable (and nevermind that the impact, if any, will probably never be known)....................

Writing on.  Fighting on.

Thank you, Dad, for all your efforts to make things better for everyone.  ❤️ ❤️ ❤️



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August 9, 2018

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There was a bridge game the afternoon of August 9.  Someone brought cake to honor the conquering heroes (who won their national event at the summer tournament just over a week earlier).  (The other two guys on their team don't live in Ann Arbor, and don't play at this local game.)

Later.  Walking.  The sky caught my eye, and then I noticed the crows.

This is a closer crop of the brightest area of the previous. 

The crows were moving from west to east.  In dozens and hundreds.

We watched for a couple of minutes, and I am sure we saw hundreds go overhead.  I do wonder how they decide where the group will spend the night.  They clearly have intention and decision-making.  And it's all opaque to me.

This is a couple of minutes later.  Again I was looking at the sky, and again there was a crow.....

This is exactly where that school desk was, on August 8.  I'm not entirely surprised that the desk was gone.  And I'm betting this will be less likely to go.....

Looking at the sky one last time on August 9.  I am not aware of any crows in this image.

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August 6, 2018

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The good news on August 6 is my better half came home from Atlanta.  It's pretty miraculous that he could get on a plane in Atlanta, and be on the ground at Detroit Metro in less than two hours!

No pics; I was driving.

He is glad to be home.  I'm glad to have him home.  :-)





"The video signal has been interrupted."  And the internet, too.  This was the second time in less than two weeks.

I hate Comcast......................

I had a landline from AT&T for about 45 years. It was down two (2) times in all that time. Comcast, on the other hand..... Don't get me started.

We switched our internet to them because AT&T was, as far as we could tell, discontinuing wired service (requiring everyone to go with satellite).

Our internet has been down at least for a while two times in the last week. I'm not a big fan of AT&T, but I hate Comcast more. And that's the truth. There are many things not to like about AT&T, but in my experience their reliability was HEAD AND SHOULDERS above Comcast.............


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July 30, 2018

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Exciting news from the bridge tables in Atlanta!   Here is more info......

This image is a screenshot from my phone.  The gray-background messages are incoming text messages, and the green one is outgoing from me.

 Yay!  :-)




Meanwhile, back at the ranch............................




I really do not like calling politicians' offices.  Maybe I'm getting better at it?

I find that the madder I am, the easier it is to call...............

Note that Debbie Stabenow is a "good guy" -- called to say "thank you!" rather than to encourage her to not do bad things................

Tangentially related factoid:  I know the names of more senators than I've known, combined, in the whole rest of my life, I bet......




Sunset.

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July 24, 2018

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On the way to the airport.  My better half was departing for the summer national bridge tournament.  (I declined to go to Atlanta in July.)  (Note that I was NOT driving; he was.)  It looks like it might rain, and, hallelujah, it did.  We got our first measurable rain in weeks that afternoon.  Not much.  Not anything like the inches and inches we need.  But better than 12 drops.

I wrote get-out-the-vote postcards.  Alessandra Biaggi sounds like a super candidate.  I am glad to support her!

It cleared up after our little bit of rain.

Some of the latest day lilies are still blooming.  (Not in my yard.)

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Happy Birthday, Mom!

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Happy Birthday, Mom!

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(a belated) happy solstice

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Celebrating those with the longest necks on the longest day.....  This is Sam.  I fed her romaine when we were in Des Moines two years ago for my brother's coronation.

I put this pic (and the description above) on my Instagram account, and linked to my blog post about the coronation.

Several people from Instagram clicked through to read about coronation day.  Everyone thought it was cool.  And that it was cool that I got to be a very small part of that very excellent day.

And so it was.




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Happy Fathers' Day!

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Happy Fathers' Day, Dad!

Thinking about you as I write get-out-the-vote postcards on Fathers' Day!  :-)

I designed the "Thank you!  Your vote matters." and printed it on the fronts of pre-stamped postcards I bought at the post office.  :-)

www.PostcardsToVoters.org


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Happy Birthday!

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Wishing a very

 

Happy Birthday

to our adventuresome

daughter!

We hope there is lots of cake, 

and lots of sunshine. 
xoxoxo, m & da

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Happy Unicorn Day!

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I just found out it’s Unicorn Day!  At first I thought there wasn’t a unicorn in the house, and then I remembered this one. 

Once upon a time, my grandpa loved to go to age guessers. They always thought he was younger than he was. I was with him one time when I was 10 and he was 76. I think they guessed him at 68.  They thought he was having them on when he told them how old he really was. (I remember the guy turning to Grandma and asking her for confirmation.)  Many years later, I went to an age guesser in memory of Gramps. I think I was 35, and I think the age guesser thought I was 30. 

This unicorn was my prize. A souvenir of successfully carrying on a family tradition.

Remembering Grandpa with a smile.  And a unicorn.

I was having trouble thinking of an appropriate background for a unicorn.  A plain white wall just wasn't cutting it.  Then I thought of my bubbly screen-saver, and what I like to think of as my "dawn over Alaska" computer-monitor wallpaper............  Perfect. 

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October 13

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October 13 is my dad's birthday.

My dad is the best patriot I know.  He has never stopped trying to make life in the USA better for all.

Thank you, Dad, for all you do to make things better for everyone.

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August 21, 2017

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My parents were married on August 21, 1949.  Happy 68th Anniversary, Mom and Dad!

This image was made by my daughter, in Olbrich Park in Madison, WI.  She captioned it this way:  "Happy 68th wedding anniversary to the greatest lovebirds I know, my grandparents, who still hold hands whenever they sit side by side or go for a walk together in the park. ❤️"

Still being friends after more than 68 years is not to be taken for granted!  You are good role models, Mom and Dad!  ❤️



It was great to have a chance to see so many family members in Madison.  I'm glad to have seen my sister and brother-in-law and their daughter.  Nice to see their fabulous living space, and to have seen some of their excellent city.  We visited many interesting spots, and ate in lovely places.

It was so good to see my brother and sister-in-law and my nephew. 

It was very nice to get caught up with my cousins, all of whom are engaged in interesting and satisfying activity.

Organizing this kind of get-together is a big job.  My sister and brother-in-law did a good job with all of that work and the myriad details.  Thank you for making it happen!

On our way home.

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August 20, 2017

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On August 20, 2017, most of the extended family met for breakfast at a restaurant with an extensive buffet.  It was great to have so many different choices, and nice to have a bit more time to chat before people needed to head home.

(Madison has a VERY convenient airport, but it is small-ish and doesn't have direct flights to many places.  Milwaukee has a bigger airport, and is about an hour away from Madison, so flying in and out of Milwaukee is often a better choice.  Detroit is one of the places with direct flights to Madison.  It was a piece of cake to pick up our daughter -- who didn't have two days to spend traveling in a car -- and then to return her to the airport, so she could come and go more quickly than we needed to.)



We did not want to be traveling on eclipse day, so we stayed in Madison for another day and night, and went home on the 21st.


The 20th was a cloudy day.  Disappointing, for those who hoped to see as much eclipse as there was in Madison.

Looking south from my sister and brother-in-law's balcony.

I had picked up a bunch of eclipse glasses in Ann Arbor.

The eclipse glasses did an excellent job of seeing through all but the thickest of clouds!  There were times when we couldn't see anything, but, mostly, we could see the outline of the sun very clearly.

There was never totality in Madison, on August 20, 2017, but most of the sun was obscured for a while.This is an imaginative rendition of what we could see at various times, with an indication of the clouds between us and the sun and moon. 

Looking at the world -- not the sun! -- with naked eyes, it never got dark.  The light got funny, I thought, when most of the sun was behind the moon, but it didn't seem darker than a cloudy day might be.

After the eclipse.  Cool clouds......

Another beautiful sunset over Lake Monona.

Those eclipse glasses were like a miracle.  We wouldn't have seen any eclipse without them.

We did try the usual "shine the sun's light through a small hole onto another surface, and look at that surface" method, but couldn't see anything but circles.  No crescents of sunlight.  Our hypothesis is that the clouds made the light more diffuse [less direct], and that made the "small hole" technique useless.

There's going to be another total eclipse over the USA in 6 years -- when the time comes, I urge you to pick up some eclipse glasses at your local science museum (because the ones in the grocery might not actually work....).  Even without totality (and we were hours and hours drive north of the nearest point of totality) we could enjoy this rare opportunity with the eclipse glasses.

THANK YOU to all scientists and engineers and inventors who made these easy cheap eclipse glasses possible!  The last solar eclipse I experienced was nearly 25 years ago, and in those days there was no safe way to look at the eclipse directly.  Luckily that was a clear day and the "small hole" method worked.  I remember looking down at dappled shade on the sidewalk and seeing hundreds of crescent suns..............

This time I saw pictures someone had taken, holding a colander between the sun and something plain and white.  Dozens of tiny crescent suns were visible on the white surface......  I'm going to try to hold that thought and use a colander (as well as eclipse glasses!) for the next eclipse.  There's going to be totality over Toledo, Ohio, about an hour south of us................. 


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