SHADOW SHOT SUNDAY

I posted this last Sunday but then forgot to link it to the Shadow Shot site. I'll try again.

SEPIA SATURDAY- Uncle Bob

 

This is my Uncle Bob who was in the orphanage with my father.(see last Sepia Saturday)

They both turned out O.K. after their traumatic experience. My father graduated from the University of Chicago and became an engineer. My Uncle Bob also graduated from there and then joined the Air Force and became a pilot. Unfortunately while on a training mission over the ocean in Alaska his plane went down and he was never found. This was certainly another traumatic experience for my father as they were best friends as well as brothers and had been through so much together.

This is my uncle's desk in Alaska with a picture of me on it.

LOST AND FOUND DOG- HAPPY ENDING

 

She had just run into the street in front of a car. I grabbed her and Nancy brought me a leash that she took off of Tootie who was safely in the car. We asked around the neighborhood and there were stories of her having been wandering around for two days.  I took her home and the next day I put signs near where I found her. 

She was a wonderful dog- sweet and obedient-and knew several commands. She wasn't much trouble at all except for my 6 cats. She liked the cats but most of them didn't like her. Except Abby and Chloe who were quite tolerant.

 

 Abby & Chloe

The next day I was placing an ad in the newspaper and had just hung up when the phone rang. It was the dog's owner. She had been putting up lost dog signs and started putting one on the same telephone pole that I had put mine on.

So I drove Lilly home for a happy reunion.

SHADOW SHOT SUNDAY

SEPIA SATURDAY

I've joined a group called Sepia Saturday http://sepiasaturday.blogspot.com  Every Saturday (when I remember) I'll post a photo from my ancestry.

When my father was 3 yrs. old he was riding in the car with his family. A speeding fire truck drove by, it's tire came apart and hit his father in the face, killing him instantly. His brother, Glenn, who was about 11 years old,  grabbed the wheel and steered the car to the side of the road.

His mother, my grandmother, had to then get a job to support the family.. There were no day care centers for children so she sent the oldest boy, Glenn to live with his aunt. She had no one else to take in the younger boys, my father, Gil, Don and Bob. Her only solution was an orphanage.(Gil and Bob are 4th and 5th from the left in the front row. I don't know which one is Don.)

My father told us sad stories of standing at the front window waiting for his mother to come and take him home. Of course, she visited as much as possible and brought them home as soon as she was able.

My favorite part of this picture is the little boy second from the left in the back row.  I don't know if my father pointed this out to us or we discovered it ourselves but we were astounded to think that that long ago there was such a thing as giving the finger. We loved it! When we should have been feeling sorry for my poor father's predicament.

Shadow Shot Sunday

My blog friend, Elizabeth at theworldexaminingworks shoots beautiful shadow photographs. Someone who was inspired by her started Shadow Shot Sunday with (obviously) shadow photos every Sunday.  Here's mine for this Sunday. You can see more by clicking on the Shadow Shot widget at the right below the blog list.(You can also participate here.)  Or click on Hey Harriet on the blog list.

More Zentangles

Embarrassing travel moments- China 1985 (First in a series)

MING TOMBS-

Oh boy, a place to get your picture taken as a Chinese Empress. Who could resist? I get in line. At last I'm at the front of the line. Excitement mounts! I'm going to be beautiful. I'm prepped for the role by the Wardrobe Master.

A crowd forms to watch the foreigner turn into a Chinese Empress. The director gives directions (in Chinese) . I think he's saying tilt your head a little to the left. The crowd approves (in Chinese). I think they're saying "Isn't she beautiful?" (Is that a pizza I'm holding?)

I stand here like this on a little platform, for a very long time. Somehow I don't think they think I'm beautiful. It starts out as a few gentle giggles then builds to raucous laughter. The lead laughers are my traveling partners- Nancy, Dennis (our sales manager), Dickie Low (our host and benefactor of this trip), and Dickie's assistant (whose name escapes me). 

When are they going to take the picture? Where's the cameraman? It turns out you're supposed to have your own cameraman. No one in my party seems to know this and they all just stand there laughing. Please, somebody take the damn picture. Finally Nancy comes to her senses and snaps a picture.

It wasn't my finest moment. I did manage to smile, though.

Did you want pepperoni on that pizza? 

To see more Sepia Saturday posts go to sepiasaturday.blogspot.com

Travel sketches

My new favorite blogger is Vivian Swift.(vivianswiftblog.com ) She has written a wonderful book called "When Wanderers Cease to Roam." It's her travel journal and it's full of her beautiful little watercolors. I bought it because of the watercolors but as I read it I realized I liked the writing as well as the paintings.  She's so inspirational and full of information on writing,  journaling and painting...and she's funny.  I found myself identifying with her so much that I've emailed her several times and she actually wrote back.

She's inspired me to start writing about my own travels. I've been looking through my sketchbooks to find things I've sketched while traveling. I've done a lot of traveling but surprisingly little sketching. I buy sketchbooks all the time and take them with me but when I look back at them they'll have one or two half finished sketches in them and lots of blank pages.

Nancy, Megan, and I went to Paris and London in 2002.  These are the only sketches I could find although I do remember doing some others.

When we got to our teeny- tiny hotel room in Paris there were three beds jammed together. We thought we could save money by all 3 of us sharing a room. We would have had to walk on the beds to get to the bathroom. So we splurged and I got a separate room. This is Nancy resting before we hit the streets. Nice socks!

We had a friend who lived in London who we hadn't seen in more than 20 years. We called him while in Paris and he insisted we come to London.  So we took the train through the Chunnel. It was a little disappointing because while going through the chunnel you obviously couldn't see a thing. I liked the ferry better.

Our friend, Jim Singer, was an Oriental art dealer. He had specialized in Tibetan art but said it was too picked over now and he had gone on to other Oriental art. His large apartment was full of paintings, prints, textiles and statues.  The one of the Buddha was almost life sized. The smaller one sat on his fireplace.

This was the view from his living room window. (not a very good sketch, but it helps to remember it.)

Jim came to visit us in California a couple of times when he moved from London to Tiburon, Ca.

And then he disappeared. Every time I called I got no answer and no answering machine.

So I googled him and, to my shock, he was dead.

We had just seen him about two weeks before this and he had talked about being depressed. It hadn't seemed that serious, though. He had been recently divorced, both his parents had died and his only sister had died years before.  So he had no family left.  We've never really found out what happened but we assume he committed suicide. Just when we found him after so long we lost him again.

More from our Art-full L.A. trip

 

One of my favorite places in L.A. is the library. When you're there, always look up.

This is the ceiling in the main lobby.

Another ceiling.

One of the many exhibits at the library was of old movie posters. We loved the titles of these two.

 

  

The lobby of the beautiful Biltmore Hotel, just a block away from the library.

The inner courtyard of another of my favorite L.A. buildings- The Bradbury.

  

Nancy snuggles up to Charley Chapman in the Bradbury Building.

On our walk to the Grand Central Market - 

the window of a curandero shop.

All sorts of herbs and potions and religious statues were on sale here.

They promised to cure you of everything from liver to love problems.

Christ on a crutch (or two). 

The window of a shoe store in the art gallery area.