Veterans Day

Armistice Day was important to my great Uncle Burt Clark. He was there at the front when the guns were silenced at the end of World War I. It was on the the "eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month" of 1918. He always wondered why they waited until the exact hour to stop. He always remembered the silence. I remember when Armistice Day was changed to Veterans Day and my Uncle Burt wasn't all that happy about the change. He thought that they should have chosen a different day for Veterans. For awhile Veterans day was changed to the fourth Monday of October to make a long week end. Uncle Burt was even more unhappy about that change. Later it was changed back to the original day. By then he had passed away. Uncle Burt is buried at Fort Rosecrans on Point Loma in San Diego. He always said that was where he wanted to be buried. The cemetary was long closed but they often had openings on a first come first serve basis and the timing was right and he got his place. It is beautiful there.

Pastel Class

Last week I worked on this picture of my old photo of a rose while in class. The painting is not finished but the instructor wanted me to stop working on the rose and finish up the background and put in the leaves. There is more I want to do to this but now am undecided...what to do?

This is a scan of the original photo.

Back in the mid 1990s when I first got on the internet and made my very first home page I used another rose, the one one the left below, on my web site. I took away the background and put that rose on a pink background. Later I made a gif out of that rose and used a transparent background.

This rose was modified using a paint program similar to Photoshop.  I started a section on my web site with other rose photos that I scanned and modified. I upgraded my computer so I could use the Photoshop program that I had bought. I got the PS as an upgrade when my other photo editing program was bought by PS...lucky I had registered it...that program came free when I bought my first scanner. For some reason this photo was stolen by others and put into many photo collections. I used to get upset at that and write to the collectors asking them to take my rose off their pages. Mostly they did.

I have tried to draw that rose several times and have not been happy with my work on it. URF! Anyway I couldn't go to my class this past Wednesday...E R made plans and I needed to pick up Hailey from school.

Three views of the rose put together into one picture.

Protesting Wall Street

Socialism doesn't work. Communism doesn't work. For some reason a few people have forgotten history. They are protesting Wall Street...whatever they think that represents. The catch phrase is corporate greed. What is a corporation? Do they even know? Corporations are owned by anyone who buys stock in that corporation. Hopefully the stockholders will receive some sort of payout when the corporation makes a profit. If the corporation is successful the stockholders may sell their stock for more than they paid for it. It is a way to invest their money. Corporations pay taxes on profits. Then the owners...stockholders that receive a payout, a dividend, again pay taxes on that income. Our government is right there to take a cut of everything. Corporations are regulated by laws that restrict everything they do as a business.

For years businesses have moved out of the country. Most things we buy these days are made in other countries. That means fewer jobs for the people here. We also make it easy for people from other countries to come here illegally to work for low wages and take entry level jobs that in the past would be given to our young people. They come from countries that encourage a high birth rate that their economy cannot support. They come here for a better life, but they are exploited too. Then taxpayers here must make up for the benefits and taxes illegals don't pay. Our laws also make it easy for employers to hire workers and call them independent contractors. Employers don't keep good records of independent contractors and they don't pay for income taxes and benefits for these workers. Most of these employers are small businesses, such as small contractors, restaurants, landscapers, and housekeeping agencies...to name a few. Our government has enabled illegals to come here and bring their children. The children go to our schools and grow up American. Then our country sends these young people back to places they don't know and don't fit into. They don't know how to live in their birth country. We let that happen. I think we owe these children something. Though many of our tax payers may not agree. We let our own children age out of foster care and give them very little help.

We have built an economy based on inflation. The government likes inflation because when wages and costs go up taxes increase. Even in recession we have inflation. The worst example of inflation is the cost of homes. Our government could have stepped in and put a stop to the artificial increases in home prices. They let the scam continue until our banks and financial institutions had loaned millions...billions...on inflated values. Now we have people that owe more on homes than they are worth. Where did the money go? The banks didn't get that money. They are holding the bag when they have to foreclose on property that is worth less than what they are owed. The money in those banks come from depositors. The real estate profits went to real estate brokers and to the lucky folks that sold property for lots more than they paid for it. And a share of those profits went to the government when all that gain was taxed.

It isn't corporate greed we need to worry about. It is individual greed. It is the government...those in power in our government that want to suck the worth out of our country. People in government are looking at Social Security for some way take it away from the people it was promised to as a pension. Employers and employees have paid into Social Security for years and now there are those in government that want to rob it. Social Security does not belong to the government. It belongs to the people that paid for it.

Protesting against big corporation and big banks is silly. The only people that could win in this situation is the socialists that have wanted to take our country down for years. Our government has made some big mistakes but with some common sense we can put things right again.

Green Spider on Pink Rose

David came and told me about the green spider on the rose. So I grabbed my camera and went out. The sun was still hidden by morning clouds so the lighting was very soft. I planned to shoot the pink roses today anyway. But intended to wait for the sun.

Dawn and Sunset

Hummingbirds and Roses

These photos have been posted on pbase, but thought I would add them to my blog. It was a nice day out and I put my Minolta mirror f8 500mm lens on my Oly camera. The old Minolta Rokkor lenses work great with the 4/3rd system cameras. My old film cameras were Minolta. I used my second Minolta for over 25 years. Loved the thing. I was happy that I could use my old lenses on my Oly DSLR cameras. Then added to my trove of Rokkor lenses going on ebay. On of my finds was the mirror lens. When I started checking out ebay the Rokkor lenses were a lot less expensive than they seem to be now. Here are the photos. 

A Visit With Sarah

Sarah and her daughter drove down to stay the night at Barona. Sarah lives in Hemet. Hailey and I met them at  Marieta's in Santee. Wonderful Mexican food. Hailey ate all of her cheese and bean burrito. Then Sarah's daughter left us and Sarah and Hailey and I drove up to Summer's Past so Sarah could take photos. She got some wonderful photos. I took a few photos too and caught a couple of butterflies. It was a great day...though Hailey was a bit bored. She was really good about it all though. I would have left here here at home but David was having a bad day. That seems to happen a lot. E.R. is back east visiting his brother.

Where Were You?

I was still at the storage in Santee. My stepmom, Marlise had passed away the year before, July 2000, and the storage was being sold. I still managed it for the estate and the trustees were not talking to me. I began to manage the storage in 1979 for my Dad. My children finished growing up there. My dad used to stop by to talk almost every day. In 1983 my marriage broke up and in 1985 my father passed away. Marlise and I became close friends. She would come by to talk almost every day and we would go to lunch. When I got Hailey we took her with us out to lunch. Fun times.

The house was old and had been there before the storage was built, E.R. and I lived in the house when our oldest, David, was a baby and we took in Jeff when we lived there. Jeff was our nephew. Later we moved to our own house and we adopted Jeff.

Marlise had open heart surgery in 1998. I drove her to her appointments and then to the hospital. We took Hailey along on the doctor appointments. Hailey was almost four then. Marlise was supposed to get well but they found cancer in her airway...just a small spot. For some reason they decided against chemo. They decided on radiation and a stint. Maybe because she was still recovering from the heart surgery. I put Hailey in day care near here so I could drive Marlise to her appointments. The next two years were total stress. Then Marlise died and my sister turned against me. She was one of the trustees and the other trustee also was a total bitch to me. The first thing they did was cut off my ability to pay bills for the storage and then they both went on vacation. URF! Looking back I don't know how I kept it together. Hailey had gone to day care and then to the kindergarten at Creative Child for over two years. It was time to take her out. E.R. was living up here in Eucalyptus Hills so I but Hailey into first grade at the small school here. It meant a trip up here every morning for us both. Hailey would have breakfast at E.R.'s and then he would drive her down the road to the school. I went back to the storage and coped the best I could.

On the morning of September 11th I got Hailey ready and we were ready to go out the door. I went to shut off the TV when I saw the first tower burning and they said a plane had hit it. I thought it was a terrible accident. Then another plane flew into the second tower. Maybe it was all the stress I had been living with, I felt numb. My mind couldn't process something so dreadful. We had to leave to get Hailey to school. The first thing we did at E.R.s was look at the TV! I thought about my parents hearing about Pearl Harbor on the radio. My young life was filled with war news. I was a little girl when the war was over but people talked about it for years.

As everyone else did, I kept the TV on and saw the people running and the towers falling. Nothing will ever be the same and then again most everything is the same. This country is big and the loss of the two towers is a tragedy that we should never forget. We have been at war with Muslims ever since too and now the US is broke. The US has been broke before. We have been attacked before. We survived. If anything is learned by the loss of the towers and so many lives, and the wars that followed, terrorism doesn't work. It only makes people want to fight back.

Blacked Out

Yesterday was really hot! I drove down the hill to pick Hailey up from school and it was 104 F. That had gone up a degree by the time I got over to El Cajon. Then we drove through Lakeside to stop for some fast food and it was 107. URF! I bought a cup of iced coffee for me. Back home I turned on the TV to watch the Closer. Right in the middle of the drama the power went out. I thought that someone had hit a power poll. That happens on our curvy narrow roads up here. So after a few minutes Hailey, Dave, and I, decided to drive around. We learned from the car radio that there was a county wide blackout. The small stores at the bottom of the hill both closed and couldn't get any ice. Lots of traffic on the roads. We found out later it was because so many people left work when the electricity went out.

We came back home and found a small radio. That kept us updated on the black out. The house was too hot to stay in and even though it was still hot outside the wind was blowing and it was the better choice. We sat in the shade on the front patio. Hailey worked on a project for class. She needed pictures. So she drew them. That kept her busy. It went dark and cooled off. I brought out candles and flashlights and Hailey kept working on the pictures. We talked and the time went by. I told her that she could now say that she had done homework by candle light.

About 9:30 we decided to go in. Hailey started reading using a flashlight. I went to sleep. Then at 12:40 am the lights came on and woke me up. The blackout was over.

A Favorite Place

Yesterday we went to Summer's Past. Hailey, Jackie, and me. I love that place and can always find new things to take photos of. The snack bar was open, but the place was not as crowded as it has become on weekends. We sat and drank some iced tea and then Jackie and Hailey went to the gift shop. That usually gives me some time to walk around and take photos. It was only a little while when they were back ready to leave. I think I've burned them out on the place and they were bored. I did get a few photos and even some while they waited on me to hurry up...though not anything I want to post. Darn.

We had a lovely lunch after in Alpine. A resturant there makes the best BLT I've eaten in years. We sat outside on the patio and the lunch was totally enjoyable. On the way up to Alpine we had noticed a place with cactus for sale and had planned to stop on the way back but both Jackie and Hailey were ready to go home. Naps were mentioned. So we didn't stop at the cactus place...saving that for next time.