Everyone Should Have A Moleskine

 Hi Dear Folk,

Well I guess Blogger went and did it, now you cannot even revert back to the old interface.  First of all my labels are gone and I guess I'll have to enter them back in manually, why have they always got to try and fix what was not broken, really.   Blah! Blah! Blah!

Do you have a Moleskine? I have one, it's small, red, has a ribbon marker and a wrap around elastic, where I write down all sorts of odd things, statistics, meanings of words, crochet patterns, what makeup to buy after watching one of those You Tube videos on how to do your makeup when you're older, and so on and so forth. I thought I'd share with you a few of the random things written in my Moleskine.

Crochet Japanese Flower Pattern

The Face of Age

Job 26:14  Look!  These are just the fringes of his ways:  Only a faint whisper has been heard of him!  So who can understand his mighty thunder?

Average age of a woman in USA 78, Man 71

Road to Hani.  Waianapanapa State Park.  Black Beach

If invited to a good meal.  Do we send a thank you note saying "Dear pots and pans, spaghetti and meatballs.  No, so where does our praise and thank you go?"

King Ferry, NY.  A Wobbly Reisling is good.

Shalwar kameez, Indian tunic and trousers.  Dupatta, head scarf

It's a pity the Hun prefers fighting to fun - Noel Coward

I refuse to join a club that would have me as it's member - Grocho Marx

Whether you think you can or you think you can't, you are right - Henry Ford

Daniel 5:24  Mene, Mene, Tekel and Parsin.  May have said mene twice to show the fall of both father and son - Nabonidus and Belshazzar.

Imposter - from the Latin impose

Gutsy Gorgeous.

People are as happy as they make up their minds to be - Abraham Lincoln

Learned behavior - 

1.  Identify the thought that produces negative thinking

2.  Talk back rationally

3.  Short circuit thought

4.  Consciously replace bad thought

Miss Grief, cost $15.99 left out in the rain.  Pay the library.

Evolution - Irreducible complexity, cannot come about in a gradual manner, useless unless all in place.

PNES Psychogenic seizures.  Stress, Anxiety, trauma, depression.

NES Nonpilectic seizures.  

Progress and Poverty by Henry George

To give birth in Italian, to give to the light.  Clare alla luce.

Longly School of Music Project, BC, Canada.  1978  Kids singing, Hans Fenger, teacher, recorded his students.

Evil in the absence of empathy.

Irish Gaelic - Senility - duino le dia.  A person of God.

Lord Vestey, who's estate was just down the road from where I grew up, owned huge holdings of land in Australia.  Who knew.

Life is freedom, dying is a denial of freedom.  Vasily Grossman

Seersuckeer, from the Persian, milk and sugar

Crochet, Bonni Lass Capelet

Tour of British Museum, 2 Kings 10:31 -32 Assyrian King Shalmanezar III, 2nd panel, man bowing, Jehu son of Israel.

Mosquito yard spray

Old age like being increasingly penalized for a crime you never committed.

Herd Immunity, 60% of world 4.7 billion people out of 8 billion would need vacination.  Have only ever made 100s of millions of vaccinations, over decades of time.

Russia's economy the size of Texas.

COVID in USA has killed twice as many people as have been killed in the Korean War and all the wars that American has been in since then.

Abrunt, one whose behavior departs substantially from the norm of a group.

Regiments No 166409 N Somerset Yeoman, private Henry Reginald Sansom

The Body Keeps the Score, by Bessel Van Der Kolk

Passing of time should not be detrimental to the solving of crime.

French say, not a cat in sight - pas un amerce de chat

Fibula - Latin, means to fasten.  Tunisian Berber Fibula

Object Trouve - A natural or discarded object found by chance and held to have aesthetic value.

Rising tide carries all ships.  When things go up all rise.

Love makes the world go round, hatred stops it dead in it's tracks.

Just a cross section of my Molskine.  Now you have a cross section of my brain under the microscope.

Take care, Christine

PS I found my labels, hurrah!!!

From Australia

Hi Dear Folk,

I like to share what I find on the Internet and feel is really worth a look and a listen.  This is from Australia the website "Dispatch to a Friend" You must listen to their podcasts, delightful.  They took me back to a gentler time, made me think of my youth, sitting in front of the Rayburn in the kitchen, listening to the BBC, feeling cosy.

Have a wonderful weekend.  You've got Sunday to listen and let me know what you think.

Christine

My Australian Haul

Hi Dear Folk,

I don't know where the days go.  I did get out in the garden on Saturday.  It started off cloudy and cool, but by the end of the day the sun was out.  Sunday it poured and was in the fifties for the better part of the day.

Saturday I spent all day at the back of the house, bringing my two small patios to order and weeding two gardens that run either side of my back path.  All the paving stones had weeds between, all the pots needed cleaning up and bringing to order. Pots which I winter over on the basement steps were brought out.  The little water tub was cleaned out and replenished, connected up to Mr. Frog and  the pump, it's very soothing listening to the water running when sitting on the patio.  The gardens weeded.  We have a grill by our backdoor which we use summer and winter, that needed pulling out and weeding behind there.  It's most rewarding to see it done, sit down and have a cup of tea out there.

Monday I took off as a PTO day, ran over and got my photo license done, you cannot do it on a weekend.  Again more time in the garden.  Mr. B. and I stacked wood, he mowed the lawn and I raked leaves. Have you any idea of how many leaves fall off one very tall oak tree?

Cleaned up by my front door, and a little bit of the gardens and path in that front area.  If I said I was by anyway done in my garden, would not be true.  Planting well, three little plants potted.  It might not happen this year just so late.  It can all seem a bit overwhelming.  It is gradually getting to the point where I can enjoy the journey.

I am not going to plant so many pots with flowers this year, a lot of old tack I chucked out.  Well put out back to see if someone else wanted it and it's gone.  Just simplifying it all a bit.

My neighbor across the street is retired and their garden always looks lovely, but he potters out there every day, I'm looking forward to doing that.

What has this got to do with my heading My Australian Haul, absolutely nothing.  I wanted to share just a minor portion of my haul from the NSH Yard Sale.  I will post more extensively on this later, in the mean time I wanted to share a very lovely find, these Australian linen tea towels.

Too good for dish drying, I like to use these on a picnic, to put across your lap, or set things out on, brings me great joy.

Maybe these were a gift for someone, or maybe they took a trip to Australia and bought them back and there they sat in the draw, never used.  There is something so poignantly sad about it and I promise myself to use them.

I love the designs especially the koalas and the colour in them.  Isn't there something special about linen?

I had a descussion the other day with my sister about bamboo yarn, which led into cotton and linen.  Bamboo is actually a grass. Linen is also made from a grass, flax.  In fact before cotton was introduced the cloth of choice was linen.

I had to relinquish the thought that my "Dress Like Your Grandmother" sewing contest entry would be accomplished, because along the way I was hijacked by my son, who wanted some sewing done for an interactive film/theater showing presentation that he was going to while in London.  Which included raking through my old sheepskin off cut bag of pieces I had bought on the Isle of Skye years ago and never used.  This shop sold sheep skin coats and hats, plus throws, beautiful but very pricey, I came out with a bag of pieces, knowing one day I would use them.

The project included the buying and applying of black shiny and silver fabric to a black trench coat and trousers, edging with the sheepskins.  Also an old sixties silk tie, cut up and applied to the collar.  Lots and lots of hand stitching, not easy through sheep skins.

The off cut strips were different colours from a number of different sheep, and what was interesting was feeling and working with the different texture of the wool and also of the skin.  One skin was thinner but much harder to sew through, the other skin was thicker, but much easier to sew through.

Well off to work today.

Christine

A Town Like Alice

Hi Dear Folk,

The thunder is rolling around, It rained fiercely but is now gently raining, and I'm happy because I do not need to go out and water the garden, and it is deliciously cooler again.

I have been immersing myself in A Town Like Alice, I found the full 1980 series on YouTube, it is one of my most favorite stories.  So after watching that I had to go and read the book.  It seems appropriate to read it in the heat of summer, because so much of the story is based in warmer climates, Malaya and the Gulf Coast, Queensland.

The series has a lot of verbiage right out of the book and follows it quite closely with a few minor changes.  The book fills you in on more mundane story line, but still very interesting.  In the series Joe Harmon was played by Bryan Brown, he is tall and dark haired, where as in the book Joe Harmon is described as five foot ten and stocky, with blond hair, clear skin and very blue eyes, which would be a fair description of my father when young.  So all through reading the book it was easy to visualize my father,  who was a very down to earth man and good to have around in a bad situation.  Jean Paget was played by Helen Morse and I think she fits the description.

Jean and Joe meet in Malaya during WWII when it was under Japanese rule.  Joe is an Australian prisoner of war driving the trucks transporting metal rails used to build the infamous railway lines they built during their occupation, with one prisoner of war dying for every sleeper laid.  Jean is with a group of English women and children being walked all over Malaya, because the Japanese do not know what to do with them.  Eating very little and getting no medical attention.  Joe thinks that Jean is married as she always has a baby with her and Jean thinks that he was executed by the Japanese for stealing the commandants black chickens, to give them a square meal.  Six years later 1948, both find out that the later is incorrect, so they both go looking for each other, and that's the very basics of the story.

Joe is a ringer in the Gulf Coast managing a thousand square miles cattle station, but it is very remote, not the place for a women, straight from England.  Willstown the nearest town has nothing to it, just the usual hotel and bar, few businesses of necessity.  The description in the book, of the house that he lives in on Midhurst homestead, is actually so much nicer than was depicted in the series, more like the house depicted in Road from Coorain if you ever watched that, which I cannot find on YouTube and wish I could.

The homestead was a fairly large building that stood high off the ground on posts, so that you climbed eight feet up a flight of steps to reach the veranda and the one floor of the house.

Since the book was written in 1950 by Neville Shute, some expressions I do not think would be politically correct now, or may not even be used anymore, obviously such as Jap and Abo, but other terms are "Too right," "Crook place," and one which Joe says frequently is "Oh my word." And other such Australian terms.

Last week I visited my friend Candyce, her MIL was from Australia, and we went through her photo album, which came into their possession after her FIL died.  He was in the American Army Air force as it was called in WWII, stationed in Australia and that is where they met.  So it has been a WWII Australian era immersion over the past couple of weeks.

Today I got a blood test, as I was bit by a tick and unfortunately in this day and age you can catch all sorts of nasty things from tick bites.  I asked for two tests one to show if I have recently been exposed to Lyme disease and the other to show if I've ever been in contact with it.  There is a lot of controversial thought as to how one should treat past exposure.  Current exposure is treated with a one month course of antibiotics, but past exposure is not treated.

A pot of tea on the patio with my book.

We haven't been away on vacation this year, so last Saturday treated ourselves to a South American meal.  The restaurant here Tierra Columbiana was recommended by a friend.  It is in an area of Philly that one would not want to be in after dark.  But the restaurant is very nice.

Rob had a Columbian meal.  Rob had a sunny up fried egg on his meal, which rather reminded me of the outback Australian breakfast of eggs and steak.

Bob had Cuban.

I had Dominican Republic.

I wore my Indian jewelry, which seemed appropriate with such a meal, if jewelry actually goes with a meal.

We treated The Boy to dinner and he treated us to Mango Marguerites, which he said were the best he had tasted.  Portions are good so we all had left overs to take home.  Yummy!

Christy