“How far you go in life depends on you being tender with the young, compassionate with the aged, sympathetic with the striving, and tolerant of the weak and the strong, because someday in life you would have been all of these.”
– George Washington Carver
This is part of Linda’s One-Liner Wednesday: http://lindaghill.wordpress.com/2014/08/13/one-liner-wednesday-now/ Join us! It’s fun!
This was supposed to be the schedule for Thursday.
5 AM: Get up.
5:30: Arrive at my parents’ apartment to get us to the ambulatory surgery unit of the hospital.
6:00: Wait in the waiting room until surgery because only one person is allowed to be with the patient in the unit.
8:00: Dad has laparoscopic hernia repair surgery while Mom and I grab breakfast at the hospital cafeteria.
9:00: Surgery complete. Talk to doctor. Mom waits for him to be brought back to his cubby in the ambulatory surgery unit while I drive to church for
10:00: Millie’s funeral, where my daughter Trinity is singing in the choir. After the funeral, attend the funeral luncheon in the church hall.
1 PM: Check in with my parents by phone to see if there is a release time set for Dad yet. Drop off my daughter at home and get to the hospital to bring my parents home and get them settled, perhaps in time to attend
4:30: Poetry workshop.
6:00: Dinner with my daughter, followed by rest, attending to email, phone call with my husband who is traveling for business this week, television, etc.
We followed the schedule until 7:35 AM.
Dad was all ready to be brought down to the operating room and Mom came to get me from the ambulatory unit waiting room so we could re-locate to the OR waiting room. As we neared Dad’s cubby, Mom got really dizzy, grabbing onto a spare gurney in the hallway for support. We were just outside Dad’s cubby, so we navigated to a recliner next to his gurney. I got her a sip of water from the bottle she had with her, hoping she was just a bit dehydrated, but it didn’t help. She started to zone in and out of responding to my and Dad’s questions and we were becoming alarmed. Just then, a transport person arrives to bring Dad to surgery and he helps me to get nurses there to help Mom.
Suddenly, we have at least half a dozen people in the tiny cubby, so I have to step out into the hall. I hear someone say her pulse is twenty. They put her on oxygen, which seems to help her pulse a bit. Her skin is clammy. She is continuing to zone in and out of awareness. Sometimes, she could answer a question from the medical team, but more often my father would. Yes, she had eaten some breakfast at 5 so she could take her meds. From the hall, I chime in to let people know that I am their daughter, that Mom has a history of TIA. The staff calls for a team to come up from emergency to bring her down for evaluation, as it is clear something is really wrong. Snatches of prayer mixed in with the jumble of thoughts in my head.
Meanwhile, the OR is waiting for my Dad. It has only been about five minutes, I think; my perception of time is distorted by so much happening at once. They ask Dad if he wants to postpone surgery, but I tell him to go, that I would take care of Mom. On a practical level, we had to get Dad’s gurney out of the cubby in order to get the transport gurney in to take Mom to the emergency room and I knew that with Dad under anesthesia in the OR, at least he would not be worrying about Mom for a little while. There really wasn’t anything he could do; we both needed to let the professionals do what they needed to do.
They lift Mom onto the gurney and attach her line to a portable oxygen tank, as they had initially attached it to the central wall unit. They rush her down a patient elevator to the ER – one of the few things my mom remembers between the initial dizziness and being in the ER was that she told them it was a rough ride – and the nursing supervisor takes me down by another route. When I arrive outside the curtained area where they are working on her, Mom is able to answer some questions on her own, but I am able to help with some of the them. Frustratingly, a new computer system had gone in to the hospital in June, so they weren’t able to bring up her information easily. I had to give addresses and contact numbers. I have my mom’s pocketbook in which she carries a complete list of her medications, which was a huge help. Meanwhile, the ER team is getting monitors attached and I hear them tell my mom within a few minutes that she is having a heart attack. I also hear her surprised reaction. She isn’t having chest pain, but does have a pain in her back.
At this point, they had IVs started and they let me go back to be beside Mom. They give her baby aspirin to chew and administer heparin and plavix. The pain in her back goes away. They tell us there are clots or blockages that need to be cleared in the cath lab, that the cardiologist on emergency call is getting ready to do that, that the aspirin and other blood thinners have relaxed the vessels enough to help the blood circulate better so that the back pain went away, that we are lucky she was already in the hospital when she had the heart attack so that treatment was started very quickly because that tends to lead to better outcomes, although not guarantees. Mom tells me I should still go to the funeral; she is worried about my sisters, who are together on a Florida vacation, and Dad. I tell her that I will handle everything, that she needs to concentrate on herself right now.
She is wheeled up to the heart catheterization lab – on a much cushier and more shock-absorbent ER gurney – and a nurse brings me first to the OR waiting room to tell them what has happened and then to the cardiac waiting room. Although it feels like a long time has passed, it’s not yet 8:30. My dad’s in the OR, my mom’s in the cath lab, and I’m alone. I call my husband, Brent. I guess the first words out of my mouth were, “I need you to come home.” Because I did. I tell him what is going on and that I would call back as I know more. He needs a couple of hours before he can leave anyway. As I wait, I am making lists in my head of how and when to tell people. I knew I couldn’t tell my daughter until after the funeral. I was hoping she wouldn’t get too worried when she realized I wasn’t in the congregation; the choir is in the front of the church, so she would be able to see that I hadn’t arrived. I post a vague Facebook message asking for prayers/good thoughts for my parents. I couldn’t be specific because I didn’t want our older daughter, six hours earlier in time zones so it was still the middle of the night, to see a post that her grandmother had had a heart attack first thing when she woke up in the morning. I needed to make sure that my sisters didn’t find out via social media, too. And I needed to be able to give good news about what I was praying would be successful treatment. As much as I wanted company in the frightened, shocked place where I was, I didn’t want to subject anyone else to it, although I had already, by necessity, dragged my husband into it. And I wasn’t sure if I would need to be the one to tell my father after he was out of recovery. And, more than anything, I needed to have two successful outcomes to report.
Dr. T, my dad’s surgeon comes in at ten of nine. Dad’s surgery had gone well and he is in recovery. Dr. T knew what was going on with my mom and had decided to admit him for a day or two, because he is 89 and because it would be easier for us. Obviously, the plan for him to go home with my mom to look after him was not going to happen. He had tried to see if he could put them in the same hospital room, but my mom would have to go to the cardiac unit, which only has private rooms. Dr. T says that it was very lucky my mom had already been in the hospital when the heart attack happened. I call my husband with the update and resume alternately pacing or sitting, staring into space. I had reading material and my iPad but couldn’t concentrate enough to use them. The CBS morning news on the waiting area television finishes and a repeat of Queen Latifah starts. She is congratulating Boston on the successful marathon. Patriots’ Day in Massachusetts was originally April 19th. My parents’ wedding anniversary. Sixty years. More prayers.
At about 9:25, Dr. K., the on-call cardiologist comes out. Mom had had two blocked arteries that they had opened through angioplasty and that were now being held open with stents. Another report of how lucky she was to have already been in the hospital. I need to wait there and they will come get me when my mom is ready to be moved to her room. I call my husband again with the news. We are so thankful and relieved. Our conversation is brief; he needs to finish getting ready to leave. I am alone again, but feeling an intense need to talk to someone. Someone with whom I am used to sharing personal and spiritual issues. I want to call my friend and spiritual companion Yvonne, but I can’t remember her phone number, which is stored in the cell phone my husband has with him. I use my iPad – and the hospital’s free wifi – to search for her home phone and call. She is home and we speak for about ten minutes, which calms me down a bit, helpful as I have gone from the paralysis of numb anxiety into a phase where I am feeling jittery.
While I was speaking to Yvonne, my sister Kathy had called the cell phone that my husband had, because it is the one I usually carry. She was looking for news on my dad, as she had expected a call by then. He had to tell the story to her. It was a blessing that she hadn’t called until Mom was out of the cath lab, so that he could tell her that she and Dad were both okay. I missed Brent’s call while talking to Yvonne, so I call him, find out that he has spoken to Kathy and call her, using my mom and dad’s cell, which is in my mom’s pocketbook. We only speak briefly because a nurse comes to take me back to my mom, who is being moved to the cardiac care unit.
The nurse tells me that my mom and dad have met up in the hallway outside of the recovery area. They got to talk and hold hands for a moment. They got to see that they are both all right. My dad says not to make him laugh because laughing makes his belly hurt, but just saying it makes him chuckle. The nurses all think that they are an amazing couple. I know that they are. Later, my mom, who was only under sedation in the cath lab, will remember this hallway encounter. My dad, who had been under anesthesia, loses the memory from this point in his recovery process.
I ride up in the elevator with my mom and wait in another waiting room while they get her settled in her room and attached to all the monitors. When a nurse comes to get me, I first have to stop at the desk for a phone call. Another nurse is calling to tell me my father’s room number. She had also been witness to their hallway meeting. My parents are adorable and we were so lucky that my mom was already in the hospital when she was stricken. I thank her and tell her that I know how lucky I am to have them.
Other than the fact that my mom is not allowed to move her right leg where the catheter had been threaded from her groin up to her heart and that she needs to keep her head back on the pillow and still, she is amazingly chipper. We talk about everything that has gone on and I let her know of the few people that know what has happened. I need to make more calls and I need to get to church after the funeral to tell Trinity. Mom says that she will make phone calls so I can make a visit to Dad’s room and then head to church, where I can tell Trinity and we can attend the luncheon.
Dad is resting in his room, still a bit groggy from the anesthesia. We talk about how lucky we are that Mom is okay. He says they are the talk of the hospital. They have promised to take him down in a wheelchair to visit her a bit later in the afternoon, after they have both had a chance to rest. I let him rest and head out to the church. It’s a little after 11:00.
As I near the church, I see the funeral procession on its way to the cemetery. I go into the church hall and ask the choir member who had driven Trinity to church for choir warmup before the funeral if she knows where Trinity is. She is still in church. She has a worried look on her face and I tell her that Nana and Paco are both doing fine. Then, I deliver the first of several shortened renditions of the story. Right before Paco was brought down to surgery, Nana had a heart attack. They took her to the ER and then the cath lab and put in two stents. Paco’s surgery went well. Now they are both in the hospital for a couple of days, but everything is fine. We are very lucky her heart attack took place at the hospital. Trinity gives me a long hug, which I definitely needed.
We only told a few people at the funeral luncheon what had happened. Several people that we had known for a long time. Three priests whom we asked for prayers. Most importantly, Millie’s daughter Nancy, our good friend and Trinity’s godmother. I told her I was sorry to have missed the funeral, but, of course, she understood, reminding me that her father, who was sitting close by would not have survived a cerebral hemorrhage years before were it not for the fact that it had happened while he was already in the hospital.
In a way, even though I was not physically present at the funeral, I was there in a spiritual sense. I had written the universal prayer that closes the liturgy of the word before the liturgy of the Eucharist begins. Nancy, all three priests, and a friend who had also participated in reading the petitions thanked me for the words I had written. I was heartened to know that my words enabled me to have a presence in Millie’s funeral in my absence.
Trinity and I leave the luncheon a bit after 1:00, which meant that our older daughter, Beth, would be up and about in Honolulu. While I drove to the hospital, Trinity calls Beth to fill her in. We go to Nana’s room to visit and to Paco’s room. Brent arrives and we alternate rooms for visiting. My dad’s room in particular can’t easily accommodate three visitors at once.
The next two days are filled with visits back and forth to the hospital. My dad gets a couple of visits to my mom’s room, which are good for both of them. They are both discharged on Saturday, a process which winds up taking over five hours.
Last night, they got to sleep in their own beds. They need to take it easy for a few days. Mom has some new meds added to her daily regimen. Follow-up visits need to be scheduled. Dad’s incisions and muscles will heal. Due to the speed of re-opening the arteries, Mom has no damage to her heart. They have very few restrictions and will be able to ease back into their social and exercise routine over the coming days/weeks. We are so thankful that they are doing so well and are very grateful for the care they received.
But my dad still wants to know, as he kept joking, if the hospital gives discounts. He thinks two for the price of one should apply.
Happy 34th Birthday, Harry Potter! Yes, I do know that July 31st is Harry’s birthday. (It’s also Joanne Rowling’s birthday, although she is a bit older than Harry.) Harry’s birthday is even marked on my calendar because he – or, rather, the books that J.K. Rowling created about him – has been very important to my family.
I bought the first two Harry Potter books on the recommendation of a friend who worked in the children’s department of the bookstore when the books were just starting to be known in my region of the US in 1999. They were an end of school year gift for my younger daughter, who was then in elementary school. She was having trouble getting into the first book, the beginning of which was too reminiscent of Raold Dahl, who was not a favorite of hers – or mine, so my husband began reading the first book aloud to her and soon the whole family was hooked.
Thus began our family tradition of reading Harry Potter books aloud. We read all of the subsequent books as a family, the four of us taking turns reading subsequent chapters. We would receive first day deliveries or go to midnight launch parties as the new books were released. Because release dates of the later books in the series were summer Saturdays, we would embark on marathon weekend reading days, getting through the bulk of the long books over Saturday and Sunday, with the exciting conclusions reserved for after my husband’s return from work on Monday. (We hid the book on a high shelf in our bedroom so no one would read ahead!)
The book launches became important events for us and the later books coincided with times when our family needed the strength of our mutual support. Order of the Phoenix (Book 5) appeared when our older daughter had just been diagnosed with an intractable migraine, after missing most of a semester of high school because she was ill and no one could figure out what was happening. Half-Blood Prince (Book 6) appeared during the three-week span between the death of my father-in-law and his memorial service. The declining health and death of Dumbledore acted as counterpoint to our own family story, as Grandpa had been a long-serving and much-loved school principal with striking white hair. When Deathly Hallows (Book 7) was released, our older daughter had just been diagnosed with fibromyalgia/chronic fatigue syndrome, giving a name to the puzzling assortment of ailments that she had endured for years, including the aforementioned intractable migraine. She was about to start her senior year in college with a semester away in Vienna. The family time we spent reading together was a precious time before she set off into the unknown.
This was especially fitting because the Harry Potter fandom had gifted her with some of her best friends who had sustained her through some of her worst times. As a precocious literary-minded secondary school student, she had joined some of the adult fandom online. She had taught herself some web design to start her own Harry Potter themed website, including an advice column in which she and Snape answered questions about both muggle and wizarding concerns. She wrote some fan fiction and engaged in literary analysis in online groups. When she became ill with what turned out to be the 8-month migraine and couldn’t leave the house, her online friends became her main social outlet outside of our family. It helped that several of her best online HP friends were in different time zones, as she often could not sleep at night and there would nearly always be someone online with whom she could chat, whatever the hour.
These women are still some of her closest friends. She has now met several of them in person. Two came to her senior voice recital in her last semester of college. She met more at a Harry Potter convention and has even spent time travelling and visiting with them in Japan.
In a way, they are even responsible for her current master’s thesis project. Some of her Harry Potter friends were also fans of J-pop (Japanese popular music), in which our daughter also became interested. Her decision to pursue a master’s in ethnomusicology and to study at University of Hawai’i – Manoa were related to this interest. U of HI is known as a center of excellence for Asian studies.
The life of our family was made richer by Harry Potter and Joanne Rowling. Happy Birthday to them both and eternal thanks for everything you have given to our family!
We are getting ready to move our younger daughter into a house she is sharing with friends as she begins grad school in a few weeks. Unlike other places she has lived, this house is unfurnished, so we are sorting out what to send up. In fact – shameless plug! – I wrote about part of that process for last week’s SoCS: Desk Excavation.
This week, we took delivery of a new mattress and box spring, which will be paired with a maple Ethan Allen bedframe that my husband used as a child. A dresser that was a gift from my parents for the birth of our older daughter, who is their first grandchild, is slated to go, too, sans the changing table top that has now spent many years boxed up somewhere in our house but that once was secured to the top of the dresser.
Will this move mark the beginning of permanent “empty nest” for us?
This post is part of Linda’s Stream of Consciousness Saturday. The prompt was to end the post with a question. Visit the link to read more SoCS posts and read the rules and join in, if you are so inclined! http://lindaghill.wordpress.com/2014/07/25/the-friday-reminder-and-prompt-for-socs-july-2514/
I was a feminist before I even knew the word. I grew up in a tiny New England (NE USA) town with two sisters in a house without nearby neighbors. Our school had four grades per room and it happened that my sisters’ grades and mine spent the bulk of our years there with only other girls as classmates. There were boys in the room, of course, but not in our grades. When we went to a high school of about 1200 students in a city twenty miles away, about 80% of the students graduating with honors were girls. I was used to the company of girls, especially academically and artistically oriented ones, and I took it for granted that women of my generation were intelligent, capable, and would succeed in any field in which we had potential. Despite the lack of a federal Equal Rights Amendment, we were too isolated from the wider situation in the country to realize what we would encounter as adults.
I chose to attend Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts, one of the oldest liberal arts colleges for women in the country. I had first visited at the recommendation of my piano/organ teacher and had changed my application to early decision after attending a day on campus that included lunch with current students. The discussion at lunch was so lively and fascinating that I knew I wanted to live and learn in the company of such people. It wasn’t until later in my life that I understood the impact that those people being predominantly women would have on my decisions and worldview.
I was on campus from fall of 1978 through spring of 1982. The student body was reveling in finally having a woman president, Jill Ker Conway, after a century of male presidents. Two pivotal figures in the Second Wave of feminism are Smith alums, Betty Friedan ’42 and Gloria Steinem ’56. Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique was based on a questionnaire to her Smith classmates at their 15th reunion. Steinem, at that time, was still an editor and contributor to Ms. Magazine, which she had co-founded. Feminism on campus was mainstream, not radicalized or shouting from the fringe. It was a surprise to all of us on campus when the Harper’s Bazaar article was published. (Sorry, but I couldn’t find the article archived.) Harper’s was somehow shocked to find out that there were lesbians on campus and asserted that they were very influential as a group. This puzzled those of us on campus because, while there was a student organization called the Lesbian Alliance, they chose to retain a degree of anonymity, even blurring their faces in their group’s yearbook photo. While I had friends who were of lesbian or bisexual orientation, it was not a major issue between us. Most women at Smith were then, and are now, heterosexual in orientation, although generally accepting of the full range of gender expression.
The field of women’s/gender studies was just beginning to coalesce during my years on campus. Because I wanted to participate in this emerging field of study at Smith, I chose to take a course called Women and Philosophy, which became one of the most influential and useful courses to me in later life. We studied some of the classic writings of feminist literature and thought- The Awakening by Kate Chopin, The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, the aforementioned Feminine Mystique, Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex – along with more recent writings, which explored the differing perspectives and predominant issues among subgroups of women in the United States, such as rural women, Latina women, African-American women, lesbians, and women from lower socioeconomic levels. Depending on the circumstances in which women found themselves, they expressed feminism in different ways, giving different issues greater or lesser emphasis.
There are core beliefs of feminism: that girls and women should have equal opportunities for education and jobs; that equal work deserves equal pay and benefits; that laws should be established which prohibit sex discrimination and that those laws should be enforced; that every person deserves to be respected as an individual and that each person should be free to make choices that work best for their own life; that there is no tolerance for sexual violence or any form of abuse; that society needs to be structured to support personal/family life so that children, elders, the sick, and the disabled have their needs met and so that people can have time for each other and for creative/leisure pursuits. Obviously, many men also hold these views. Some will call themselves feminist. Others won’t. Some people prefer to call themselves humanist because they find feminism to be a scary word or won’t use either feminist or humanist because, in the United States, just about any word ending in -ism is misconstrued as extreme.
That some are afraid to be called feminist because they feel it has a negative connotation is a problem. While I define feminism by the mainstream views in the preceding paragraph, too many people tie the word feminism to the most extreme fringes of the movement. Are there feminists who hate men and say society would be better off without them? Yes, but very, very few. The vast majority of feminists love men, as fathers, spouses, brothers, co-workers, neighbors, sons, etc. Some feminists are also lesbians; this does not mean that all feminists become lesbians. I find it laughable that some people think that going to a women’s college will “turn you into a lesbian.” Seriously, people, it does not work that way. Others think that feminism means that signs of respect are outlawed. If a man holds a door open for me, I will smile and thank him. I will also hold the door open for others, regardless of their gender. I will not, however, stand aside waiting for a man to come along and open the door for me when I can jolly well do it myself. The days of that kind of stifling social etiquette are gone.
Which leads me to my final point: at its base, feminism is about the freedom to live out who you are as an individual without being confined by a preconceived notion of who you are, what you can do, and what you should be doing. It’s about individual people, whatever their gender, following their own heart and mind, developing and using their own abilities without being held back by gender stereotypes. It’s realizing that old expectations/stereotypes don’t apply. Women AND men can be strong, nurturing, tech-savvy, caring, intelligent, intuitive, athletic, contemplative, etc. Aside from a few anatomically based things -sorry, guys, but no nursing of babies for you – it doesn’t make sense to make sweeping statements about how men are this way and women that way. We are all existing along a human continuum where different degrees of different qualities exist in unique combinations and change and develop over time. Unfortunately, in the United States, corporate profits have become such an overwhelmingly important goal, that work only counts as meaningful if it is paid and companies view workers as expenses rather than as assets, so are paying as little as possible, but that could be a whole other post, or series of posts. This situation does, though, highlight to me why we need feminism as much today as we did during the First Wave when women fought for many decades to achieve the right to vote. I don’t believe we can move forward as a civilization without recognizing the importance of and utilizing all the gifts and talents of each person, regardless of their race, spiritual beliefs, gender, ethnicity, or any other factor that has been used to divide or limit people’s potential in the past.
So, I am a feminist, for my own sake, for my mother and sisters and daughters, for my father and husband and nephews, for my friends, and for our society as a whole. I join with many others who believe in the definition of feminism I discuss, whether they call themselves feminist or not. I hope that people will think twice before making sweeping statements against feminism or any belief/philosophy. Don’t discount or vilify the mainstream because of shouting from the fringe.
About this post: There has been a lot of posting/discussion about feminism on OM’s HarsH ReaLiTy blog and he had put out a call for related posts. The impetus to write this post started there, but I realized I couldn’t say everything I needed or wanted to in one post, so I called this Chapter One. Maybe, some day or other, I’ll write more about post-college life and current issues. After fiddling with this post for weeks, I’ve decided to publish it today, despite its imperfectly expressing everything I want to say.
Like many people, I set aside things in various places in my home, including desk drawers.
My daughter is about to head to grad school and, for the first time, will be moving into an unfurnished house. We had an old desk, which has been in our basement since we moved to this house in 1988. The drawers were hard to open, as it is a bit damp in the basement despite the dehumidifier, so we brought it upstairs yesterday and started going through its contents. Well, the contents we could reach.
Several drawers were able to be jiggled enough to take out of the desk totally. Others could be opened a bit so that some contents could be pulled out.
Here are some things we found:
Lots of stamps. A few blocks of four because my father-in-law, and by extension, my husband, used to collect stamps. There was also a huge envelope of cancelled stamps, with more scattered about. I am setting them aside for one of the members of my spirituality class who collects stamps. I’s sure she will be thrilled at a trove of older stamps.
Various desk supplies. Some of the tape is dried out and unusable, but a lot of the other things will still be able to go with current stocks. Other than I don’t think I will ever use a whole box of thumb tacks.
Included in the desk supply category is lots of pens and pencils. Some of the pens had dried out, but others were still good. There were some that related to my dad’s company, New England Power, which doesn’t exist any more. Some commemorated how many hours they had gone without a lost time accident. Up into the millions. I think it got up to over four million before the string was broken. Fortunately, it was after my dad had retired, so not on his watch as superintendent.
Neat boxes of colored pencils, including one from my childhood that my mom had carefully covered with contact paper for strength and durability and which I had then decorated with my name, the letters scattered about on the contact paper flowers.
One of our wedding invitations from 1982, done the old-fashioned way, with my parents issuing the invitation and taking the replies. Double envelopes, tissue paper insert, the whole nine yards, aside from the engraving. We used thermography, which was acceptable etiquette-wise but a bit less expensive.
A letter I wrote to my husband when we were in college, which I did not read – yet. My husband’s high school yearbook photo in a frame, which I had had in my room when I was away at college.
A homemade Valentine, featuring tracings of our older daughter’s then-tiny hands.
Two small organ pipes and a piano hammer – a stack of programs from my senior organ recital – all remnants of my (former) musical life.
A folded, somewhat tattered drawing of a Viking ship that my husband had done in elementary school. I swear that I have no recollection of having ever seen this before.
An article about apple computers that my father-in-law sent to use from a magazine, back in the days when we were the proud owners of an apple 2c and no one thought we would ever need more than 128k.
Computer programming stuff. A book on Pascal with notebook papers inserted with my attempts at learning to program written out. Some notes of my husband’s, who actually can program, from his college days. Operating systems course. Some notes from courses he took at the Watson School of Engineering at SUNY-Binghamton early in his career, when he was at Link for 8 years before moving to IBM. A computer printout of code for a Star Trek game.
Visible but not yet able to be extracted from its drawer, my cassette player from childhood, which we could still use early in our marriage, when tapes were the main way to have music that travelled with you.
A viewer for slides, so that you could look at them without having to haul out the projector and screen.
The desk itself was in the first house we bought. It had only had one owner. The husband had died and the wife was sinking into dementia when the house was sold to help pay for her care. We could buy some of the furniture and needed a desk, so we bought this one. Wood veneer with drawers on each side, including a deep file drawer on each bank. Very sturdily made with dovetailed drawers, decorative metal drawer pulls, and some decorative details around the edges of the desk top. Dark finish.
We used it for the six years we lived in that little two bedroom house, as a desk, as storage space, and as a home for the aforementioned apple 2c. When we moved to our current house, it moved into the basement/family room, which has over time morphed into just a basement. I used things from it for a while, but it hadn’t been opened in many years when we started dealing with it yesterday. We think we can sand the drawers to make it usable in our daughter’s new place.
For now, it is an inadvertent time capsule.
Part of Stream of Consciousness Saturday with the prompt “side” which became set a”side” for this post. http://lindaghill.wordpress.com/2014/07/18/the-friday-reminder-and-prompt-for-socs-july-1914/
This post is part of SoCS: http://lindaghill.wordpress.com/2014/07/11/the-friday-reminder-and-prompt-for-socs-july-1214/ This week’s prompt is “getting away or getting out.”
It’s important to get away. The schedule/responsibilities/routines/demands get to be too much after a while. Without a break, it is hard to keep going effectively.
My favorite getaways are with my husband, heading out somewhere scenic with places to stroll, fun shops to browse in, cultural sites like historic homes or museums, a bed and breakfast or small inn to stay in, and the hardest decision of the day being which great restaurant to choose for dinner. Somewhere like Skaneateles in the Finger Lakes or Lenox in the Berkshires.
When we come home from a getaway, it is back to reality and the usual stuff, but it’s easier to think clearly after the break.
Maybe we should get away more often…
Because I was up and posting, I checked my stats and found out that the only person to visit my blog so far today was in Australia and reached this post because they searched for “raining on volcano.”
This is slightly mind-boggling to me. Someone on the other hemisphere from me – times two – visited my blog due to the power of a search engine.
I don’t know if s/he read my post. They may have been looking for science, rather than travelogue/musings. Just the concept of global connection is enough to make me ponder.
Little me and mystery person half a world away brought together for at least a moment.
*****
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This post is part of SoCS:http://lindaghill.wordpress.com/2014/07/04/the-friday-reminder-and-prompt-for-socs-july-514/ . If you visit the link, there are rules for joining in. Please do – and share!
There are “extra points” for linking this post with Independence Day yesterday, so the first thing that comes to mind is the body politic.
Ours in the US is very messed up right now. I wrote a post about it yesterday – (Happy) Independence Day!
There is also body of work, of which this post is a very small sample.
Small, and rambling, but that is how the conscious streams!
At the moment, my body is settled into my maroon recliner and feeling a bit tired, as it is 3:24 AM. I did sleep some and hope to sleep a bit more before other people start to get up.
Hope every”body” else has a good day!
Part of Linda’s Life in Progress blog: http://lindaghill.wordpress.com/2014/07/02/one-liner-wednesday-quite-witty/
Rather than short-term happiness, I seek long-term contentment.
Joanne Corey 