Dave — Page 4

Day Fifty-Four

May 6, 2020 at 9:34 am by Claudia

Yesterday was a beautifully sunny day. We mowed the front of the property, tag-teaming some of it. I love mowing so I was in my element. Later in the day, when I realized we had a frost advisory (!!) Don helped me haul in some of the porch plants. We also moved the secret garden pots (with coleus and vines) back on the porch until this week of nighttime lows in the thirties ends. Honestly, we’ve lived out here for 19 years and I’ve never seen temperatures this low in May. Kudos to my husband for moving the heavy antique pots after mowing and moving tarps full of debris and leaves in the morning. We were sore at the end of the day, but all in all, it was a satisfying day. Today, we’ll take it easy. Tomorrow, we’ll mow the rest of the property

I didn’t have much spare time, but I did do this:

I truly loved doing this one because I adore these original book jackets.

The period clothing and hats, the beautifully rendered work of Russell H. Tandy, are right up my alley. And I own every one of these after collecting them over the course of a few years.

Then I pondered how I was going to save this since I’d assembled it on the breadboard. I went upstairs to the office and found a piece of foam board that I used to use as a backdrop when I shot photos for my Etsy shop. With some trepidation I aligned it with the breadboard and gently pushed the puzzle off the wooden surface and onto the foam board. It worked! I guess I’ll put it on my desk upstairs until I glue it and have it framed – or make a frame, which would better suit my budget.

Next up:

This beautiful work by Kano Yoshinobu – Peonies. I’m wondering if it will be more of a challenge. Having the book titles to assemble on all the previous puzzles helped enormously in finding the structure.

It’s all good. I’m up for it. I have two more puzzles on the way that should be arriving toward the end of the week.

Today is cloudy and cool. It sure doesn’t look like we’ll see the sun today.

Happy Birthday to my brother Dave who died in 1991. He would have been 73 years old today. It is also the birthday of his son Eric.

Stay safe.

Happy Wednesday.

Recapping

September 6, 2016 at 9:44 am by Claudia

I’m thinking it’s Monday, of course. But it’s Tuesday. And so goes a week where I will continue to question what day it is.

Oh, goodness, I was melancholy yesterday. It was due, I think, to a number of things: the seasonal change, which seems to affect me more and more the older I get, the anniversary of my brother’s passing and the awareness that it will soon be a year since my father died. I finished A Great Reckoning. If you want to know my thoughts on this extraordinary novel, scroll down to yesterday’s post. I finished A Fine Romance by Susan Branch. And we took a little drive to shake off my melancholy.

A recap of the past several days (some of these photos were on Instagram so I’m sharing them with everyone today):

9-6 donlawnmower

We sent this photo in a text to Little Z because he couldn’t grasp the fact that our lawnmower is the kind you push, not the kind you sit on (as is used on his lawn).

9-6 deninmorning

The den in the morning. It’s darker outside when I first get up. Soon it will be completely dark at 6 or 7 am. Not sure how I feel about that.

I had a lovely two hour phone conversation with my dear friend Christine (a fellow voice and speech coach who I met when I worked in Wisconsin five years ago). My favorite quote from Christine during that conversation: “You can’t make somebody not nuts.” It’s a quote she read a while back and boy, do I need to remind myself of this at times.

9-6 royrogersguitar

We took at trip to Saugerties, where we had lunch at a Mexican restaurant (Mexitarian – our new word for vegetarian Mexican food) and saw this vintage Roy Rogers guitar in an antique shop. (You know I love to get Don anything Roy Rogers, but this was $200!)

9-4 RosevilleIxia

This came in the mail. Be still my heart. And it still sits on this cabinet because I haven’t decided where it should go. It’s 8 inches high and several inches wide. Am I running out of room?

9-3 longview1

And this is complete. Sigh of happiness.

9-6 giftfromdavid

The twenty-fifth anniversary of my brother David’s death was on September 4th. The sheer magnitude of that number is too much for me to handle. Dave gave me this brooch during his fight against the lymphoma that would ultimately take him from us. I wore it for a couple of years but I placed it in a shadow box after he died and it sits on my desk.

9-6 flowersontable

We took a drive to Rosendale yesterday and ate at our favorite vegetarian restaurant. These cheery flowers were on the table.

9-6 bookstoresign

Of course a visit to Rosendale means a visit to my favorite independent bookstore.

9-6 bookstoreplanter

This planter is outside the shop.

9-6 bookstoreceiling

Would I love to have a ceiling like this one? Yes.

9-6 bookstore

We had a lovely chat with Jesse and Maggie, talked about books and reading, perused their offerings (I bought Mycroft Holmes by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and some pretty notebooks by Rifle Paper Co.) and watched an adorable little girl run in the shop with her dad, all set to pick out a book. Later on, she went up to Don and said, “Are you an old man?” He answered, “Yes.” And then we laughed. To that little moppet, Don is an old man. To me? Nah.

The sugar maple is dropping leaves like nobody’s business (it’s always the first tree to start the change.) I read up on bird migration yesterday because I’m missing my birds – I don’t see them anymore. But at the end of the day, my mourning dove appeared to drink some water from the birdbath. That made me happy.

Happy Tuesday.

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On Louise Penny, Labor Unions, and My Brother

September 5, 2016 at 11:15 am by Claudia

I didn’t feel like writing a post this morning. Maybe because it’s a holiday, maybe because I’m feeling a bit melancholy. Anyway, I figured I could take a day off on Labor Day of all days.

I allowed myself the rare luxury of losing myself in a book that I had already started and reading through to the end. It was A Great Reckoning by Louise Penny.

And here I sit, shaken, tears in my eyes, stunned by the beauty and complexity with which she writes. I shouldn’t be. I’ve read every one of her extraordinary novels. But I am.

There’s no one like her. She is my favorite living writer. Because not only does she write incredibly complex mysteries with detailed plots and an ending that I can never figure out ahead of time, she weaves all of those threads together in a way I cannot predict and leaves me both sad and happy. I stay there, after closing the book, examining the human heart. Because this is the most important thing: Penny writes of evil, of the possibility for evil within each and every one of us. She doesn’t back off from it. She also writes about the goodness we have within us, and of the choices we make at any given juncture in our lives. Where do we choose to go? Which path do we take?

And, above all, she writes of the power of redemption. The power of a new path taken. The power of love, which always trumps hate. Of finding a way to love ourselves despite what we’ve been and what we’ve done. Of forgiveness. Of healing.

The story of Armand Gamache, his family, his friends, the village of Three Pines, the Sûreté – a story she has written over the course of 12 books – is deep, complex, and ultimately life-affirming.

Many of you have read and are reading her books. For those of you who haven’t yet had this pleasure, I urge you to start with Still Life, her first book in the series, and read them all the way through. You need to read them in order. You will be changed for the better, I promise you.

On this Labor Day, which was originally a creation of the Labor Movement, I stop to honor my father, who was a union member, my brother, also a union member, and my husband, member of three unions. In a time where unions are in danger, we must remember what they have given us: a fair wage, protections that were not available to workers for many years, overtime pay, minimum age requirements so that child labor abuse could be stopped, minimum wage laws, collective bargaining over wages, benefits (including pensions) and working conditions.

They gave workers rights, something they didn’t have before.

And I stop to honor my brother, who died on September 4th, twenty-five years ago yesterday.

Happy Monday.

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Recapping

On Louise Penny, Labor Unions, and My Brother

claudiahillsparks

Lambs Like to Party

A Note

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