My Nook

I've been reading my way through Tony Hillerman's Leaphorn-Chee books on my Nook. I first read some of these back in the early 1980s though the first book in the series was published in 1970. This series is first great mystery fiction and second an insight into the Navajo of the southwest. The first books I read were borrowed and returned so over the years I didn't get the chance to re read them. So it was a treat to read them again. Almost as if for the first time. I'm getting old and my memory isn't always that good. Two of the later books I had in hardback from Costco...but they are packed away somewhere so now they too are downloaded onto my Nook. I didn't start at the beginning with the first book so the continuing story of Joe Leaphorn and Jim Chee was not chronological. I would suggest that anyone reading this series for the first time start at the beginning with the first book and then read them in squence.

There was a movie made of one of the books in 1991 that to me was disappointing. Then PBS filmed three of the books and this series was very well done.

A critic writing on the web had some hard criticism for some of the last of the books in this series. Re reading them I like them just fine. One book, "The Wailing Wind," was sad and a bit hard to re read. I think that is my only criticism of these wonderful books. Tony Hillerman wasn't an author that put out several books in a year. So there are just 18 in the series that covers a period of 26 years. The lives of Joe and Jim changed and grew and aged over these years. It is sad to think that the last in this series really is the last. Tony Hillerman died in 2008.

Kitty House

A few days ago I posted this on facebook.

 

"Last evening when I was using my laptop to surf, I saw a web site about a kitty house. I watched the video...there was a link to see more so thinking I had remembered it I typed thecathouse into my browser. URF! Never type thecathouse in your browser! There is supposed to be an s after cat...catshouse...anyway I got a virus. The darn thing redirected what ever I searched for to sales sites. Guess ...the sites are reasonable OK but so annoying. And I wasn't getting what I wanted. Hopefully I got rid of the virus. And the kitty house is in San Diego and I had read about it a few years ago in our Sunday paper. The couple have put in ramps and stairs and holes for their cats to travel through the rooms of their home. Worth seeing...just don't type cathouse in your browser."

 

The link http://www.thecatshouse.com Just make sure you use this link or if you type the link type, "cats," with an s or you will see something you most likely wouldn't want to see.

Faith

Guess there is supposed to be a lot of people giving up on religion. Someone is saying that more atheists are out there these days than there were in the past. I haven't heard that the Jews as a whole have lost faith. Muslims have become stronger and more important. It must be Christians that are loosing ground. In past years many people became born again Christians. I wasn't raised going to church. In fact I was never in a church with my mother or my father. They both would have called themselves Christian. Some church people stopped by and took my sister and I to church for a few weeks one year. That came to an end when my foot was swollen with a red ant bite and I couldn't get my foot into a shoe. The church lady got upset with my mother because I wasn't ready to go with her...my sister was ready but after a few words were exchanged between the lady and my mama she left and was told not to come back. After that my church experience was going with friends a few times. Then in the 1980s I joined a church that my friend Janey took me too. I wasn't born again though. After a few years I stopped. Not because I lost faith. I've always had faith. I had faith before that childhood experience with the church lady. I guess my mama did raise us to have faith in God. So my faith has always been there.

Mama taught me to say the prayer, "Now I lie me down to sleep. With angels at my head and feet. If I should die before I wake. I pray the lord my soul to take." Thinking about this prayer...It could be scary for a child. I was too young to understand about death though. Anyway my father came in one time and changed the last line to, "O bury me in jelly cake." I thought that was so funny and I laughed and laughed. After that I wouldn't say the prayer the way it was supposed to be. My mama gave up having me say my prayers.

My parents got divorced when I was four. I wasn't as happy after that. Something was missing. I remember looking across the road at my Daddy's house hoping to see him. We were at my Uncle Burt's house then. Sometimes I would walk across the road. Wasn't supposed to do that and if I got caught I got spanked. I would do it anyway. Most of the time I never saw my father there. Later I learned that he had rented the house to other people.

My first stepfather built my Mama a little brick house down the road. My Uncle Burt gave my Mama a small piece of his property for the house. They were going to build a big house and only got the concrete foundation done. My sister and I used to play on the foundation. We lived in the little house when I was six and I remember thinking about God and I knew he existed. I only felt that I might not be good enough to go to heaven. My sister and I got spanked a lot. My mother's marriage to Bob was done and she wasn't happy. Guess it was hard. I don't know how I had faith. Years later I found out that my sister didn't have any faith in God and grew up not believing. Most of all I found out that my Uncle Burt didn't believe there was a God. Would knowing this when I was a child have made a difference in my faith. I know it would not have. We are what we are.

More 1940

Found my husband's family. They lived in Knott County KY. It took a little time but there they were. I used the information from the 1930 census to find them. The last name is his grandmother. She passed in 1949. This was the family in 1940.

1940 Census

The 1940 census is now public. I wasn't born in time to get counted but it didn't take me all that long to find the names of my mother and father. I found the right pages right away and then it was just reading through them one by one. My family was on page 50. I recognized many names of people my family knew along the way. My great grandfather is there with my great uncle. Name spelled wrong...they put an e on the end of Clark. They did get their first names spelled right. Something earlier census takers often did not do. And they mixed up their places of birth. Oh well.

My father's house was right across the road from Grandpa Clark. My mother wanted to go to school so when her mother and step father went back to Washington state my mother stayed behind. She kept house and went to school and married the boy next door...well across the road.

June was my cousin and Russell a family friend. It is strange to see these names on this list and know what was ahead in life for them. They have all passed on and though I wasn't listed I really was there and now I'm the only one left.

Family Photographs

My mother took lots of photos of my sister and I. She had a nice little camera...a bit better than a box camera. She used it for years. I used that same camera to take photos for my high school photography class. Later I took lots of photos of my children too. My sister got our photo album but I took my baby photos out of it first. A few years before my mother died I took her negatives to the drug store and had them printed and made an album so it was right for Barb to have the original album...except for my baby photos. My mother didn't have the negatives for those. I also kept the few photos my mother had from her childhood. Her mother and father also took many photos and kept an album. After the divorce and my grandmother married Sam Dotolo the girls would ask their mother if they could look through the album. One time was too much for Sam. He started yelling at my grandmother and in anger my grandmother threw the album into the fire. The few photos my mother had she got from friends later on.

Mama had many extra photos that didn't go into the album so she separated them and gave them to Barb and I. So with those and the copies I had made I have most of the old photos from my childhood. Now the sad part. My son with the mental problems took my old photos out to a shed on our property and went through them. Some of them were ruined. Some of them were thrown on the ground. I thought they were safe in a closet in the house. It was looking for something else that we found out what had happened. Hailey and my daughter Elizabeth worked very hard to gather them and save them. Now I plan to scan as many as I can to further save them.

This is my great grand father Dexter Clark and his son George Clark. Grandpa Clark was over 40 when he married. He had five children. My great uncle Burt Clark was the oldest. Then there was a girl named Mable then George and then a boy named Lew. Last of all was my grandmother Grace Clark. George was in the Navy during the first word war. He was in an observation balloon that came loose from it moorings and he landed in the sea. A ship rescued him and brought him back to America. George caught the flu on the ship. He had been exposed to TB as a child and he came down sick with that and never recovered. My Uncle Burt had been very close to George. Their mother died of TB when my grandmother was a baby. The youngest children Lew and Grace were put into a children's home. Mable lived with her grandparents and Burt and George stayed with Dexter. Uncle Burt was never sure what happened to his baby brother, he wasn't ever sure what his name was. I found his name and death information on Ancestry.com. Lew died at two years old of pneumonia. My grandmother was taken home by a childless couple who had come to the home to adopt a boy. My grandmother was very sick and the family took her home so she could die in a good christian home.

Junk Mail

I posted this on facebook and think it is worth putting it here too. I use every filter I can think of so seldom get risque or downright icky spam any more. It is surprising how many words needed to filter this stupid stuff. They keep trying. Lately there has been a lot of, useless because I can't read it, foreign language spam. ...anyway here is the post:

Junk mail is something that gets through the filters so we live with it. Sometimes it is worth a laugh...often I just zap it to the spam file. Got this one today supposedly from "INTERNATIONAL POLICE AUTHORITY" that says, "YOUR FUNDS IS HELD AT JFK AIRPORT BY THE INTERPOL" As if! I always wonder if these spammers think they are fooling anyone. Usually the spam says I won money in some contest I never heard of. This one did make me laugh so thanks to whoever is hoping they will get some of my non existant money. LOL

Sunrise Highway

The Sunrise Highway is the place thousands of San Diego's people head for when there is snow in the mountains. It snowed on Tuesday and Wednesday and some on Thursday too. We drove up hoping to see snow in Pine Valley but the snow was gone. It must have rained over night. So we drove up to the Sunrise Highway. There was snow along to road and on the hills. Lots of cars parked along the roads where parking is allowed and people with small children playing in the snow. We stopped at a lodge and had lunch. The lunch choices were skimpy. Grilled cheese and hamburgers. The price was high. Oh well!

We were going to head back to Pine Valley but Jackie mentioned pie so we drove toward Julian. The Julian Pie Company has some wonderful pies.

Years ago the Sunrise Highway had a section of road cut into the side of Mount Laguna that over looked the desert down below. Thirty years or more ago that streatch of road was deemed unsafe for auto traffic and the road was by passed and closed. I miss being able to travel that section of road. This is a view that shows the closed road and some of the desert view.

It looks narrow and like cars couldn't travel over it but once-upon a time we did. Then I took a photo of the view toward the desert. I think the snow covered mountains are the San Jacinto Mountains.

We took a side trip to Cuyamaca Lake and then headed back toward Julian.

Cuyamaca Lake is man made. When we lived in Ramona in the 1970s we often took our children fishing there. Lots of fun.

Julian was crowded for a Friday. Probably lots of people looking for snow. Last year we found snow in Julian and I got some nice photos. We drove down to Santa Ysabel to buy the pies and then headed home.

Snow in Mountains...Hoping to get up there...

It is mostly cloudy today and supposed to rain again tonight.  It is cold too. And this storm is supposed to bring more snow to the mountains. I so want to get up there with my camera. Hailey said that there was lots of students missing from her classes. I think that they all headed up to the snow. I can remember back when I was in high school and snow in the mountains meant that we had half empty classrooms.

Whitney

I posted this on facebook...

The only think I can think about this is how sad it all is. Whitney was one of my daughter's favorite singers. Whitney had so much talent. She let drugs bring her down.

I have a son that did drugs and no matter how many chances he had, he couldn't stay off drugs. His first sentence was probation and he had to pass drug tests. He failed the tests and they put him in a rehab. He failed again and finally they sent him to prison. He got out on parole several times and continued to fail drug tests and back into prison. Finally he finished his prison time and was out and not on parole. He couldn't stay off drugs. Meth is his drug and meth causes user's teeth to fall out. He had not lost any teeth up to this last time out and then I heard that he has lost some teeth. He started borrowing friends cars and ran into a neighbors fence and made that into a hit and run. His friend turned him in for stealing their cars. He couldn't work and wrote some bad checks. He is back in prison. There are people that have done really bad crimes and have done less time than my son. It may not be fair but while he is inside he is off drugs. I always pray that God will keep my children safe. Maybe all that prison time is keeping my son safe.

I wish someone or something could have kept Whitney safe.