Oh No! More PE Classes!

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After graduating from Thomas Jefferson High School in Dallas, I headed off to North Texas State University in Denton, Texas.  I was the first person on either side of my parents’ families to go to college.  Sadly in those days there was little or no guidance counseling of any kind.  Girls were expected to become secretaries, teachers, or nurses.  Secretary was definitely out, and I’ve now tried both of the other two.  In my junior year in high school I was part of a huge national testing program for thousands of high school students across the country called Project Talent.  The results of that testing came back saying I should probably go into engineering or medicine.  I still get info from Project Talent every few years. I don’t think they can believe that I am on a different career path every time they contact me!

I really wanted to be a veterinarian, but at that point in my life I didn’t have any guidance on how to go about following that path, so off I went to NTSU.  I have to admit that I was part of the nerdy group in high school.  We were the ones taking Trigonometry, third and fourth year Latin, Organic Chemistry, and the like.  I found most of the usual high school activities, and my fellow students, to be pretty immature.  I was glad to leave high school and on with the next chapter in my life.  With the wonderful clarity of hindsight, I realize I could probably have gotten into any number of more prestigious colleges or universities, but I was perfectly happy just to head off to Denton!  As Robert Frost so aptly put it, “I took the one [road] less traveled by, and that has made all the difference.”

Last week I told you a little about my extreme distaste for softball and volleyball.   You can imagine my dismay when I got to North Texas and learned that the great State of Texas had also decreed in its infinite wisdom that in order to graduate from college in Texas you had to take two years of Physical Education classes.  Here we go again!  In a moment of extreme optimism or stupidity, I am not sure which, I signed up for Tennis 101.  I have already told you about my inability to hit objects with implements.  What in the world was I thinking?

I was always in a hurry to get on with my life, so my master plan included graduating from college as quickly as possible.  My first semester I took 22 hours of classes.  That included seven three-hour classes and the stupid one credit hour tennis class!  I bet you can see where this is going.  I made all A’s in my “real” classes and a C in that horrid tennis class.  All of my friends and family will tell you that I am inherently an optimistic person.  What do I do in the Spring Semester?  Again, I have 22 hours of classes, seven real classes and the one hour PE class.  Being the eternal optimist, I decided to give tennis another try.  Surely, I could learn to hit the damn ball this semester.  I was definitely a slow learner on that one!  Once again seven A’s and a C in tennis.

OK, PE classes, I have learned my lesson.  The following year I took Modern Dance both semesters and got the rest of the PE requirement out of the way.  I can’t say that I particularly liked the Modern Dance classes either, but at least I could make an A in them.  We wore black tights and leotards and pranced around looking dramatic and meaningful.  Have you seen the old Bing Crosby and Danny Kaye movie, White Christmas?  That is one of my all-time favorite movies; Bill and I always watch it at some point over the Christmas season and usually a couple of other random times during the year, sort of a Christmas in July kind of thing.  Do you perhaps remember the song from the movie called “The Theater” with Danny Kaye and a modern dance ensemble?  Every time I see that scene, I have to laugh out loud.  It reminds me so much of my modern dance classes.  Clearly I was not cut out for a career in the theater either!

One day in the dorm at North Texas I got a package from my parents.  It was a manual typewriter in a leather case.  A typewriter?  Really?   I must admit that I was less than gracious in my reaction, but I did sign up for a typing class the next semester.  I never took typing or any kind of business classes in high school.  I thought it was not academic enough, but I sat through a semester of typing.  Most of the people in the class were business majors while I was the lone Arts and Science major.  It was touch and go for a while there, learning to type on those old electric typewriters, but I persevered.  I finally got my speed and accuracy up enough to earn an A in the class.  No more of that tennis ball and racket stuff!  As the years, and decades have flown by, that typing class has proven to be invaluable, even as I sit here today at my keyboard typing!  I at least learned to use all ten fingers and not look at the keyboard as I typed, at least not too often!

©The Eclectic Grandma, 2017

Gym Classes and Other Forms of Torture

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When I was in Junior High School and Senior High School, the Dallas ISD (Independent School District) decreed that all students must have four years of PE in order to graduate.  Funny, in those days we didn’t have the epidemic of childhood obesity that we see today.  I can only recall one person in my entire graduating class of over 500 students at Thomas Jefferson High School who was “fat,” as we so nastily referred to it. In elementary school, we ran ourselves silly with playing Cowboys and Indians, King of the Hill, or Red Rover.  I also stayed active with swim classes, tumbling class, riding my horse, and plenty of outdoor activities.  I was the true tomboy in those days. Interesting, we had no diet sodas, little or no fast food, no computers or tablets.  We entertained ourselves and were generally outside the entire day when we were not in school.

For the infamous PE classes, we had the most hideous one-piece gym suits ever.  They were a stiff white, muslin type of fabric with an elastic waistband.  Our first name was embroidered in red on the front pocket and our full name on the back.  Maybe that was so that our gym teachers didn’t have to worry with trying to learn our names!  “Hey you, Waldman, get over here!”  Those gym suits would have made Marilyn Monroe look frumpy.  I was a tall skinny beanpole in those days so I looked somewhat like an old flour sack hanging on a flagpole.  I suspect they were designed by someone who flunked out of the New York Academy of Design or some such!  I am quite sure that the designer moved on to another highly successful career designing uniforms for our nation’s jails and prisons!  Maybe it was all a plot to be sure that the boys weren’t looking in our direction.

We only had two regular activities in those awful Gym classes year after year, both of which I detested.  When the weather was warm, which was most of the time in Dallas, we played girls’ softball outside.  Now I have to tell you I hate what I call object-implement games!  This entails any activity where I have to hit an object, such as a ball, shuttlecock, puck, etc., with an implement of any kind.  This would include bats, rackets, golf clubs, or even my own hands or feet.  Before I arrived on this earth, I’m sure God had a good chuckle as he was dishing out the chromosomes.  “Let’s not give this one any hand-eye coordination genes.  That should be amusing!”

The other activity when it was too cold or rainy to be tortured outside with softball, was volleyball inside the girls’ Gym.  Other people did spectacular leaps and hits back and forth over the net.  Not me, I mostly just stood there surreptitiously eyeing the clock on the wall.  Even time stood still for those endless games.  Once in a great while we got to do calisthenics.  That was fine; I loved that!  I probably would have loved and excelled at track and field types of activities or competitive swimming.  It is a shame that those activities were not offered or encouraged.  It was really a toss-up which I hated more, the softball or the volleyball, and I haven’t changed my opinion of either over the years.

Only one good thing in my life ever came out of volleyball.  At the beginning of my second year at NTSU (North Texas State University), now known by the loftier name of the University of North Texas, I went one evening with a couple of friends to the BSU or Baptist Student Union.  Now I was not Baptist or even overly religious, but figured I might meet some cute guys, so it was worth a visit.  With my hair fixed and make-up on, I wore one of my favorite dresses, an orange, two- piece dotted-swiss one.  We arrived at the BSU, and, God protect me, they were having a volleyball game!  Against my better judgement, I was coerced into playing that horrendous game yet again.

Then suddenly, Whap, right in the side of my head!  I got taken out by a spiked ball from some sadistic player across the net.  If I had been a cartoon character, I would have been covered with stars and chirping birds.  The culprit rushed to help me up and ended up walking me back to my dorm later that evening.  He turned out to be a tall, blue-eyed guy with a blond flat top.  We began dating, and the rest is history!  We now have two great looking blue-eyed, blond sons, and two adorable grandsons (and of course, two wonderful daughters-in-law as well).

It wasn’t until after we had been married for several years that Bill finally summed up the courage to tell me that he hated my beloved orange dress and thought it was hideous.  It was probably a good thing he didn’t tell me that sooner, or history might have taken a different path!

©The Eclectic Grandma, 2017

 

Favorite Skinny Dipping

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The past couple of blogs have been a bit heavier in content.  Let’s take a look at a somewhat lighter topic today!  OK.  It’s true confession time!  How many of you will actually admit to having gone skinny dipping?  You do know what that is, right?  It is swimming butt-naked, usually with the connotation of doing it secretly.  Now I guess we have all done things that our parents didn’t know about.  This was one of my little adventures.

Camp Kiwanis YMCA

Somewhere in my mid-teens, my best friend June and I decided to give skinny dipping a try.  Now we were both strong swimmers and often participated in summer swim meets and classes.  She lived about a mile or two from me, and we often spent the night at one another’s house.  She lived in a somewhat more upscale neighborhood than I did with tall shade trees in the back yard and lush, green St. Augustine grass where you could actually walk barefoot outside.   I think I have mentioned before that our yard was a mix of weeds, a bit of Bermuda grass, and lots and lots of goats-head stickers just waiting to puncture anyone stupid enough to go barefoot in the yard.

Camp Kiwanis Grounds

June and I were inseparable buddies from the fourth grade all the way through high school,  What one of us didn’t think of, the other usually did.  I don’t recall whose idea it was initially, but we decided that we would sneak out of her house in the middle of the night and go swimming.  Her house was about a mile from Bachman Lake in Dallas.  One of our favorite activities was to hike all the way around the lake.  There was a YMCA camp next to the lake, called Camp Kiwanis.   Built in the twenties, it served decades of young kids and teens until it was finally closed and torn down in the nineties.  We used to go to summer camp there.  Activities included games, crafts, canoeing, and my favorite, swimming. We even had occasional swim meets with our peers and other Y groups and camps.

So, it was only natural that when we decided to go swimming au naturel, we should pick the familiar pool at Bachman Lake for our escapade.  I don’t recall the exact time, but somewhere about 2:00 AM or so, we donned our clothes and sneakers, and out we went.  To get over to the lake, we had to cross Northwest Highway, a busy four lane highway even in those days.  Luckily for us, it was very quiet with no traffic in either direction at that hour of the night.  Across the highway we went and then strolled along the grass and under the trees to the Y Camp and pool.  There were no street lights or any kind of security guards on duty.  Once again, lucky for us!

Once there, we quickly scaled the tall fence around the pool.   We discarded our clothes and quickly slipped into the dark, still water.  The total feeling of freedom with the cool water flowing along your body was a delight.  We swam leisurely back and forth the length of the pool multiple times, enjoying the darkness and the water.  When we had our fill of swimming, we dressed again.  We hadn’t bothered to bring any towels, so we just scrambled back into our clothes still dripping and retraced our steps back home again—over the fence again, along the dark quiet lake shore, across the highway, and back to bed.

Site of the old pool

I suppose if her parents had happened to look in on us, they might have wondered why our hair and the pillows were wet!  We didn’t do it again, just the one time.  Those were no doubt safer days with less to worry about!  As the adult looking back several decades later, I am somewhat surprised at myself that we actually did it!

Interesting side note to this story—as I was looking on the internet trying to see if the camp still existed, I actually ran into a Camp Kiwanis Alumni Facebook page with some old photos of that old camp.  Like my old elementary school that I wrote about a couple of months ago, it too is long gone.  The photographs that I have attached show the big old, white camp building, some of the tree-shaded grounds, and the outline of the now filled-in old pool where June and I did our infamous skinny dipping!

Ah!  The wonders of Google!  Isn’t it interesting that google has actually evolved into a verb in today’s lexicon!!

©The Eclectic Grandma, 2017

 

 

 

 

 

Who is John Galt?

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Most of my friends know that I am an avid reader.  Every now and then someone will ask me, “What is your favorite book?”  That question is enough to send my brain into overdrive!  My favorite book?  Fiction?  Literary classics?  Nonfiction?  Spiritual?  What about plays?  And don’t leave out poetry!  The only way I can even hope to answer that question is to tell you a few of my favorites in the various categories. 

I love books, and my house shows it.  They seem to clone on the bookshelves crowding out everything else.  The thrill of opening a new book is a delight with the smell of fresh ink and crisp white pages.  Although I prefer a good hardcopy or even a paperback, I must admit that I have turned to downloading many books onto my iPad.  I have thirty or forty books on my iPad at any one time.  I travel fairly often and lugging around three or four books can be difficult, especially since I read quite rapidly and prefer lengthy books of a thousand or more pages!

Looking at fiction, I tend to like detailed historical fiction.  I have always been deeply attracted to 16th and 17th English history.  Margaret George is a superb historical writer.  Her Autobiography of Henry VIII really brings 16th century England to life.  One of my other favorite writers is Philippa Gregory who also writes detailed novels of this same period in English history.  I can’t list all of her books in this short blog, but do check out The Queen’s Fool and The Other Boleyn Girl for starters.  For a fun read, try the entire Outlander series by Diana Gabaldon; I think there are now seven novels in the series.  She is not quite as historically detailed as the two previous authors, but she has created a wonderful portrait of 18th century Scotland and pre-Revolutionary War America, with plenty of romance and adventure for everyone!

Another old favorite of mine is The Lord of the Rings trilogy.  Many of you have probably seen the movies based on these books, but I wonder how many of you have actually read the books themselves.  I originally read these in the late 1950’s but have reread them a couple of times since then.  I didn’t realize until many years later in graduate school in English literature that J.R.R. Tolkien was actually a literary scholar with numerous journal articles about English literature in the Middle Ages.  The amazing world he created in The Lord of the Rings was actually a great depiction of the world view held by the population in that era, replete with monsters and magical beings.

One other series I have to mention is the entire Harry Potter series of books.  Although I disagree with J.K. Rowling’s views on American politics, I do enjoy the wonderful world she created in the various Harry Potter books.  When we visited Scotland a couple of years ago, we saw the school in Edinburgh that gave her the idea for Hogwart’s School.  Out in the Scottish Highlands, we also saw the railroad trestle, the Glenfinnan Viaduct, that featured in the movie versions of the books.  Right behind the Glenfinnan Monument to the Highland clans, along a muddy little path, there it was, the trestle!  In typical low-key Scottish fashion, the site was marked with only a small plaque.

Like many other readers, I also enjoy a good mystery thriller.  Dan Brown is a favorite of mine in this arena, especially the Da Vinci Code.

So, who is John Galt?  Some of you know the answer to this one and are smiling smugly.  Some of you may not have a clue what I am talking about, and I am not going to tell you!  Let me just conclude with naming one of my all-time favorite books, Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand.  If you don’t know the significance of the title, check out your Greek mythology!  Although the book was published in 1957, it is just as timely today as it was when it was initially published.  She advocated a philosophy of strong individual rights and a laissez-faire approach to capitalism, which may have contributed to her lasting popularity.  If you only try one book from the ones I’ve mentioned, I would encourage you to give Atlas Shrugged a try!

©Eclectic Grandma, 2017

Thoughts on Meditation

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Do you meditate?  I have meditated off and on for about forty years.  I always envision meditation as a total calmness of the mind like the still surface of a Maine lake at dawn.  The dark glassy surface of the water is broken only by an occasional ripple, and the very air is suffused with a golden glow.  My meditation, on the other hand is more like a rainstorm hitting a giant mud puddle!  Splat! Splat! Splat!  My mind just cannot seem to be still.  “I need to buy dog food.”  “Did I mail the insurance payment?”  “Where did I put that new tee shirt,” and on and on.

I read somewhere that prayer is when we talk to God, and meditation is when we sit quietly and listen to the reply.  “Be still and know that I am God.”  (Psalm 46: 10).  Deepak Chopra and the late Wayne Dyer, two of my favorite writers, often spoke of being the observer or the watcher of your thoughts and just gently nudging the stray thoughts aside. On those rare moments when you succeed in transcending your own chattering mind, it is indeed a feeling of total peace and oneness with the Universe or the Divine, whatever term you prefer.  I can only liken it to the sensation of peacefully floating in an endless, dark space.

Over the years I have tried any number of meditation methods and techniques, some effective and some not so great.  There was the candle meditation where you sit in the lotus position and stare at a flickering candle.  While it is somewhat hypnotic, I figured I was probably going to singe my hair or burn the house down.  I’ve tried repeating a mantra over and over, but always got bogged down in the words!  I always lost track of the complicated Indian mantras, and the ones I made up myself never quite worked.

Then there was the sound meditation using the ahhhh’s and ohmm’s.  Now that is somewhat satisfying as the sounds echo internally through your head; however, it is hard to do nice resounding ahhhh’s and ohmm’s at home.  Your family thinks you are crazy, and even the dogs are concerned!  “Mom, are you OK?  Here, let me lick your face to make the owie go away.  Maybe I should crawl into your lap?  There, isn’t that better?”  Some people have great success with a rhythmic motion sort of meditation, so I tried the walking meditation.  This is very relaxing with a one-two-three rhythm somewhat like a waltz.  While walking you can do a short mantra.  I liked Peace-Light-Love, nice cadence and movement.  Alas, when you are walking in the woods being tugged along by a 100-pound dog, it can be hazardous, not to mention fallen trees and rocks just waiting to trip you!  I guess the walking meditation is best for people who live next to a golf course or a city park, not for those of us who live in the Colorado mountains.

I’ve tried the breathing sort of practices where you breath in through one nostril (while closing off the other nostril) to a count of four, hold it for a count of four, and then exhale through the other nostril for a count of four and so on.  I always felt as if I were going to suffocate and was never quite coordinated enough to master the opening and closing of each side.  Unfortunately, this method is also not overly effective if you happen to have a stuffy nose either.

So, what do I like and practice today?  I really like the chakra meditations where you focus on the seven chakras.  I may have to do a blog on this sometime in the future; it is too long and complicated to go into in today’s blog!  I also like what is called EFT, the Emotional Freedom Technique, better known as Tapping.  I find that Tapping works really well if I am not feeling well or am in some sort of intense emotional state, but it is not something I practice on a daily basis.  If you find this intriguing, check out Nick Ortner’s great book, The Tapping Solution   This technique has also been adopted by many psychologists and psychotherapists.  (www.thetappingsolution.com)

My favorite these days is what is called binaural sound meditation, also referred to as brain entrainment.  This involves listening to two different sounds in each ear using stereo headphones.  Although you are not consciously aware of hearing two different beats, your brain recognizes the two levels and moves to deeper brain waves.  While you consciously hear only gentle rain or ocean waves, your brain moves to deeper levels, from alpha waves to theta waves, and ultimately to delta waves.  The nice thing here is that the changes in brain waves can actually be shown and documented via EEG readings.  As you may know, our normal wide awake brain state is beta.  Alpha is that half awake-half asleep dream state,  Theta is associated with REM sleep, and delta is deep sleep.

Unfortunately, I don’t have my own EEG machine at home to measure my own waves, but no matter, the feeling of relaxation and serenity is amazing!  And the changes in the neuro pathways in your brain are permanent, so the benefits continue.  Since I always like to share what works for me, I would encourage you to take a look at Holosync (www.centerpointe.com) for more info.   In almost two years of using Holosync, I have only missed a handful of days doing the meditation, which for me is very unusual, so something must be working!

©The Eclectic Grandma, 2017

 

Big Tex

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big-texWhat little kid doesn’t like a fair?   The Texas State Fair is the Grand-daddy of them all!  Texas always boasted of having the biggest state fair in the U.S., and I suspect this is a true claim. I was fortunate as a little kid to get to go to this attraction every year.  I don’t think my husband, who grew up in west Texas, ever even made it to the fair.  Located on a sprawling, 277 acre campus in southeast Dallas, appropriately named Fair Park, the fairgrounds include the livestock pavilions, museums, exhibit halls, the world-famous Cotton Bowl, and every kid’s favorite, the Midway.   Visitors to the Fair are greeted by Big Tex, a 55′ tall talking and animated statue dressed, of course, in blue jeans and a western shirt.  Imagine a Howdy Doody puppet on steroids, and you get the idea!

The State Fair was so important to Dallas that we even got a day off from school in October to attend.  When we were younger, my parents dutifully took us every year.  By the time I was in 7th or 8th grade, my parents let me take the bus to the Fair.  This entailed a lengthy bus ride from northwest Dallas to downtown and. Transfer to another bus to southeast Dallas.  As I look back at this, I must admit that I am somewhat surprised that they allowed that.  In today’s seemingly more dangerous society, that might be a high risk kind of adventure!

Nonetheless, when my friends and I arrived at the Fair, we dutifully traipsed through the various exhibit halls.  We looked at the cows and horses and even the pigs!  We surveyed the handmade quilts, jars of beautiful jewel toned jams and jellies, and yummy looking pies.  I would have loved to be one of the judges for the pies, but, alas, they never asked me!  One of the first things that used to greet visitors near the front entrance was a little “house” where Elsie the Borden’s Dairy cow lived with her husband Elmer, and their offspring Beulah and Beauregard.  I assume, like Borden’s Dairy, they are all long gone.  It never occurred to me then, but I have to wonder if Elmer was actually a steer rather than a bull? midway

The Midway was, of course, our favorite place to stop.  All of those glorious rides! For .10 or .25 a ride, you could ride endlessly or so it seemed.  Besides the rides, the Midway featured a number of booths where you could win an array of cheap prizes like stuffed animals and little plaster “stuff” of various kinds.  There were also a larger number of side shows being hawked by the carneys!  I wonder if they are still around today as by today’s standard they were so politically incorrect!  There was the bearded lady (Poor thing probably just needed some hormone therapy!), the tattooed man (Today he wouldn’t even get a second glance; just look at professional athletes or many of the visitors in any US mall for tattoos!), and the sad animal examples of anomalies in nature like the two-headed snake and so on.

On one memorable occasion, my little sister was on the kiddie ferris wheel, the kind with little closed cages, when the ride stalled out.  Soon the entire air was permeated with the sounds of wailing little kids!  Much to the consternation of the operators of the ride, my Dad and my uncle, who was visiting us from Philadelphia at the time, climbed up the outer structure of the little wheel and proceeded to hand down the bawling little ones to other father who jumped in to help out.  These days in my adult mode I always wonder if the operators of these rides are sober and haven’t had a few puffs of weed or a quick hit out of a flask and when was the last time the ride was thoroughly checked out for safety!

Then there was the food, of course–sticky cotton candy, greasy corn dogs, drippy ice cream bars, and hot pretzels.  It was a wonder that we didn’t all go home with an upset tummy, or maybe we did, and I just blotted out that memory!  I probably haven’t had cotton candy or a corn dog in over 40 years, but in those days it all tasted pretty good to me.  One of my favorites was a stand that sold a box with a couple of pieces of fried chicken sitting atop some soggy French fries and a very flat slice of white bread.  This delicious box came with a couple of packets of honey, ensuring that we were completely a gooey mess by the time we finished.  Remember this was before Colonel Sanders became a household name!

Does the mystique of a State Fair still enchant new generations of kids who have grown up with Disney World, Universal Studios, and Six Flags over Texas?  I hope the fun of going to a State Fair still entrances them!  This is truly a little slice of the American heritage that we need to hang on to!

©The Eclectic Grandma, 2016

The Moments of our Lives

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Have you ever looked back at your life and the monumental events therein?  We all have the personal events–the weddings, the births, the deaths, the crises, the tragedies of life– but we also have the massive overlay of world events that occur during our lifetime.  We have the endless chatter of politics, the ongoing ebb and flow of the economy, and, sadly, the never-ceasing wars and conflicts.  As I look back over my own life, I see three major life-changing events, two tragedies and one totally positive.  One of the measures of a truly world-changing event is that you remember exactly where you were and what you were doing when it occurred.

For my parents’ generation, I suspect that the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941 was one of those moments.  Shortly after that horrific event, my father enlisted in the US Army as the United States was drawn into World War II.   He also talked about jumping into his car with some friends and going to see the fiery crash of the Hindenburg in 1937.  Obviously, both of these events were before my time, but I can only surmise what kind of an impact they must have had on people then.

The first earth-shaking event of my own life had to have been the assassination of President John F Kennedy on November 22, 1963.  I was in college at what was then called North Texas State University before getting the loftier name of the University of North Texas.  Word of the shooting of the President spread across the campus like a raging wildfire.  Most professors cancelled classes that awful afternoon.  Not mine!  I was in a class on Greek Drama.  I still remember how resentful I felt sitting in class talking about Antigone while there was such a tragedy occurring only an hour’s drive away.

Once that interminable class was finally over, Bill and I headed to Dallas to my parents’ home.  He was my boyfriend and fiancée in those days.  We all spent the rest of the weekend mesmerized in front of the black and white television set watching the endless news coverage of the national tragedy.  All of Dallas was in stunned shock at the events.  There was a collective sense of guilt that something this awful could have happened in our city.

We saw the swearing-in of Lyndon Johnson as President and a short time later that sad funeral cortège in Washington with little John F. Kennedy, Jr., John John as he was called, solemnly saluting his father’s casket.  When I think about Kennedy’s assassination, I am always reminded of the wonderful poem by Walt Whitman “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloomed,” that beautiful elegy he wrote for another assassinated President, Abraham Lincoln, a century earlier.

A short six years later on July 21, 1969, we had another monumental event of a much more positive nature.  As Neil Armstrong stepped out on to the lunar surface at Tranquility Bay, he uttered that famous line, “One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.”  We were especially interested in the progress of the space program as Bill worked for NASA throughout his doctoral studies.  His work in visual pattern recognition with a mock-up of the lunar excursion module (LEM) and a Gemini capsule right in his lab helped to contribute to that momentous day!

By chance Bill’s parents and his grandmother were visiting us that day.  Once again we all huddled around a black and white television set watching live as Neil Armstrong stepped foot on the moon.  I remember Grandma Ruth asking us, “Is that real?  Is he really on the moon?”  Born in 1894, her lifetime spanned the original  flight of the Wright brothers in 1903 and now a successful landing on the moon!  That truly reflects an amazing progression for human ingenuity and accomplishment in a little over sixty years.

The third major event in our life thus far was the September 11, 2001 attack on the World Trade Towers and the Pentagon by Islamic terrorists, using our own aircraft as the vehicle for this destruction.  Once again Bill and I watched in stunned shock, along with the rest of the country and the world.  We had just turned on the morning news and poured a cup of coffee when the first plane hit.  For several days thereafter the world saw the replays over and over again of that carnage.

I suspect that future generations will come to view this horrific day as the Pearl Harbor of the twenty-first century, a second Day of Infamy in US history.  That attack by the Japanese forced the entry of the United States into World War II.  This attack forced us into a far different kind of war which continues to this day.  When my Dad entered the military in WW II, we knew who the enemy was, and fortunately the war ended four short years later.  Today’s war against Islamic jihad continues with no end in sight.

Ironically, as I write this blog, it is another September 11, and as a nation we once again recall and commemorate that awful day.  I saw an interesting fact on Facebook the other day.  Freshmen entering high school this fall will be the first generation of high schoolers who weren’t even born when 9/11 occurred.  We can only wonder what events these kids will have for the memorable world events of their lifetimes!

©The Eclectic Grandma, 2016

 

 

 

 

 

 

Popcorn Balls

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After my last somewhat somber blog about the election, it’s time for a lighter note!  Today’s blog is dedicated to my wonderful, loving husband.  A couple of weeks ago I wrote a blog recalling the Halloween celebrations of my childhood.  A friend of mine mentioned that it made her recall her Mother’s yummy popcorn balls when she was a kid, which in turn reminded me of a long-forgotten (or suppressed) incident.

popcorn-balls

When we first got married, my hubby used to rave about his Mother’s popcorn balls.  One day I decided I would surprise him with some homemade popcorn balls.  I bought popcorn, white Karo syrup, sugar.  I was ready to roll!  Now today I would just google “popcorn balls” on my iPad and up would pop 20 or 30 recipes for popcorn balls.  In those days, of course, no one had ever heard of iPads or smart phones!  How difficult could it be?

Humming happily in the kitchen, I popped the popcorn, mixed up the Karo and sugar, and got ready to form those tasty, crunchy balls.  I had squares of cellophane ready to wrap them up.  But wait–something was wrong!  The balls just weren’t holding together properly.  Finally in desperation I took Bill a large bowl of very sticky popcorn along with a spoon to eat it with.  Somehow, he wisely managed to keep a completely straight face and asked me if I had cooked the sugar-syrup mixture long enough.

Cook it?  Slowly the light dawned.  I had left out one very crucial step in the process!  I must confess that was my first and last venture into homemade popcorn balls.  I don’t even particularly like them anyway, and if we get the urge for some Halloween popcorn balls today, there is always the Popcorn Factory!

©The Eclectic Grandma, 2016

Reflections on the Election

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Thiamerican-flags time last week we were all awaiting Election Day, probably with a mixture of apprehension and anticipation.  Now at long last the seemingly endless campaign is over, and we have the results.  Sadly, we remain a divided nation with about half of us highly pleased and the other half sorely disappointed.  As you have probably surmised from other posts of mine, I am a dyed in the wool conservative, or perhaps I should qualify that a bit.  I am a political and fiscal conservative and a social moderate.  A friend expressed concern that many of us conservatives were “gloating” over the results.  I don’t think that gloating is the right word; I think a collective sigh of relief is more like it!

This election showed clearly how disenchanted both the Left and the Right are with the political elite of both parties, with a totally biased media, and with the scornful disregard toward the average American.  Both parties need to do some serious soul-searching and reorganizing.  I won’t even begin to tell you how I feel about most of the media!

Now, as I have noted before, President-Elect Trump was not my first choice as the Republican candidate, but once he was selected, I threw my support wholeheartedly behind him.  Many of us have not been happy with the direction our country has been taking for the past eight years, and we dreaded the thought of another four or eight years of the same course.  Now that Mr. Trump is our elected President, we all need to offer him our support.  His success is the success of our country.  I pray that God guides him and that he surrounds himself with wise and capable staff.

After every election, we hear the usual grumblings about the Electoral College.  I think the creation of the Electoral College was one of the most brilliant political compromises ever devised.  Struggling with how to unify thirteen disparate colonies into a single nation, our Founding Fathers created the Electoral College as a way to ensure that the smaller, less populated states continued to have a voice and not be overwhelmed by the more heavily populated states, in those days, of Pennsylvania, New York, and Massachusetts.  If you look at the election map from this election and see the sea of red with the pockets of blue, you can again see the inherent wisdom of our forefathers.  I for one do not care to have my future determined by the states of California, Illinois, and New York and by people who are so diametrically opposed to many of my values!

I have to conclude with a few comments to some of you who are so upset about the election results.  To the spoiled, Hollywood elite, most of us really don’t care whether you stay or go; in fact, some of us don’t even know who you are or watch your stupid shows and movies!  Why should we care about the opinions of a bunch of overpaid and under-educated bunch of pretty boys (and girls)?  Many of us are far better educated and knowledgeable than you, and guess what, we work at real jobs for a living!  We worry about making ends meets, paying the bills, getting our kids through college, and planning for retirement.  Instead of buying millions of dollars in jewelry, why don’t you build housing for wounded veterans, support shelters for the homeless, or contribute to a local animal shelter?

And, to all of you sobbing little college students who are too distraught to take your midterm exams, get over it!  If having your candidate lose is the worst thing that ever happens to you in this life, you are leading a charmed life and are better off than 99.9% of the people in the world. The real world doesn’t have a safe zone for you.  You don’t always get the coveted job, the big raise, and the first place ribbon and live happily ever after.  So dry your eyes, blow your nose, and go study for those exams!

Last but not least, to those of you out protesting in the streets, my my, you are really accomplishing a lot, aren’t you?  You’re certainly helping your friends and neighbors by destroying their small businesses.  I have to wonder how much alcohol is involved in all these riots.  Let’s have a few beers and go burn a couple of police cars!  Why don’t you put all that angry energy to some constructive use?  Go volunteer at a local soup kitchen; go home and scrub the kitchen floor, and do the baseboards too while you’re at it; or sign up for a history class at the community college in your area.

The good news is that our country will survive.  The sun still rose last Wednesday morning, and the earth didn’t tilt on its axis.  Like a sailboat that tacks with the wind and follows a zigzag path to its destination, our country swings back and forth from Left to Right, from Democrat to Republican, and so on.  This is a natural path of correction and growth.  God bless and guide our country!

Right now I have to admit that I am tired of politics, the media, and all the so-called pundits!  I’m ready to watch the Broncos, plan Thanksgiving, and get started on my Christmas shopping.  I may even have to swear off of social media for the time being!

©The Eclectic Grandma, 2016

Why I Write

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Why now, at my age, do I suddenly have this compulsion to write?  Actually, I’m not sure why.  For better or worse, the words just keep swishing around in my head, sort of like the waves pounding on the beach.  I learned that if I want to be able to sleep at night, I had better write for at least a while during the day!  At one point in my life I thought I would love to write a novel, but the thought of creating complex characters and a detailed plot always seemed to drive out the prospect of actually tackling a full-blown novel.  I’ve done a few children’s stories and a couple of poems, but neither seems to be my niche.

I just enjoy playing with words and phrases and have turned to the memoir, non-fiction type of writing as my preferred genre, at least for now.   As I reflect back, Erma Bombeck and Dave Barry are two of my favorite memoir, human interest writers.  The ability to find humor in everyday life is a special talent and one I would love to emulate.  Would I like to be published?  Well, of course I would.  That is one of the reasons I have tried a blog format (and why I keep asking everyone to sign up for my blog!).  It never hurts to have a cadre of loyal followers when you seek out a publisher!

Nothing pleases me more than when someone tells me that my latest blog reminded them of some experience in their own life or childhood.  That is really the lure of writing, whether fiction or non-fiction.  It is to draw the reader into your world, at least for a moment.  The writer just becomes the vehicle to draw the reader into his world.

Maybe part of the reason I didn’t start writing sooner was that I was subconsciously waiting for technology to catch up.  When I read about how Thomas Wolfe wrote his lengthy novels by hand on endless sheets of paper, it truly amazes me.  We’re not even teaching kids how to write in cursive these days, which I think is a great loss.  As my dusty memory recalls, I think we got to start learning cursive in 5th or 6th grade.  That was so exciting, and we got to use real fountain pens with ink cartridges.  I think there were several months there where my fingers were permanently stained with blue ink.  Obviously learning to write in cursive with a fountain pen and doing it neatly were two entirely different skills.  Contrary to popular opinion, I did not learn to write with a quill pen!

We have it so easy today.  I can use my PC, my laptop, my iPad, and even my iPhone to get my thoughts down before they flit away out of reach.  Since I have been trying to blog on a quasi-regular basis, my poor little leather bound journal has suffered from my neglect.  I have journaled for years for my own entertainment.  When I pass, all my friends and relatives had better decide whether they want to peruse all those little volumes, or just toss them into a big bonfire while quaffing a nice glass of chardonnay in my memory.  I may be too frank for my own good!   As I looked through several of those old journals, I noticed a rather disheartening trend.  Every new year I had virtually the same New Year’s resolutions!  One of those resolutions was always to write more and to get a book published.  Well, I’m not published yet, but I am definitely doing the writing.  As I get more sheer quantity, I will be ready to tackle the scary world of sending our query letters and trying to find a publisher.

When I decided it was time to get a bit more serious about writing, I did buy myself a new Webster’s College Dictionary, a new Roget’s Super Thesaurus, and Common Errors in English Usage.  Sure, I could probably do all of those functions on-line, but there is something inherently more satisfying in just thumbing through the pages of a crisp, new dictionary.   I told you I was a bit strange, didn’t I?  Also, I continue to be amazed at the number of spelling and usage errors in the autocorrect functions in Microsoft, the Apple apps, and even in Word Press!  I wonder who puts those together.  I think they could use a little help.

In the meantime, I hope you enjoy my little essays.  Please feel free to share and definitely give me your feedback.

©The Eclectic Grandma, 2016