TWEETY

I used to leave the door open on my parakeet's cage when I was at home and Tweety would come out and fly around the living room and sit on the window sill and enjoy himself.  If he was hungry and needed seed in his feeder he would come fly around my head to let me know.  My Mom came out to San Francisco to help me prepare to move back to Virginia and we'd been so busy doing this and that and I was working off my two weeks notice at Bearing Specialty, Inc. I kinda forgot to feed him.   My ten year old daughter Robin was already in Virginia or she would have remembered.  While I was at work Tweety flew out of his cage and started dive bombing Mom's head and she got down on her hands and knees and crawled in the kitchen and closed the door but remembered what I had said about Tweety being hungry so she got the birdseed out from under the sink and  crawled back into the dining room and just shook the box at the cage.  Tweety, satisfied that his needs had been met went back in his cage.  The way she was describing the scene when I came home from work reminded me of Hitchcock's The Birds.  BTW Tweety traveled across country with us in the middle of the backseat of my yellow '72 Super Beetle in his new little traveling cage between my violets and Christmas cactus and feasted on Christmas cactus all the way.

I got this picture off the internet and I thank whoever took it.  It's what reminded me of the Tweety dive bombs Mom incident.  Also, I just got off the phone with Robin to verify that our bird was Tweety not to be confused with my younger sister Kim's parakeet who was Petey and she reminded me of the Tweety flies out the door story which I'll tell you about another time.  Love, Sandy





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EYE KNOW

I wish I'd written the line "blue eyes crying in the rain".   A simple line and so much emotion.  My eyes are green with envy.

I wish I'd written the line "don't it make my brown eyes blue". Lovely and soulful.  My eyes are green and sad.

I wish I'd written the line "I only have eyes for you, dear."   I love the "dear",  a sentiment that reminds me of holding a dirty martini in one hand and a cigarette in a long black holder in the other, wearing a little cocktail party hat with feathers and netting covering my eyes.  Provocative.  My eyes are green and haughty.

I wish I'd written the line "These eyes are cryin' these eyes have seen a lot of loves but they're never gonna see another one like I had with you".  My eyes are green and knowing.

I wish I'd written the line "There ain't no way to hide your lyin' eyes."  My eyes are green with jealousy.

I wish I'd written the line "When a lovely flame dies smoke gets in your eyes".  Sweet sadness.  My eyes are green with yearning.

Blue eyes in rain and brown eyes are blue and my green eyes can't hide these smokey tears for you.

I wish I'd written the line.
     





              

READ TO ME

.What my daughter wrote:  "On our way to an appointment this morning Ginny spontaneously read me a passage of her book that she thought was funny.  My Mother would do this all the time.  I see so many similarities between the two.  This one really touched my heart."  Ginny is my eight year old granddaughter and what Robin wrote really touched my heart, too.

I'm the first year of the Baby Boom.  After lunch when I was in elementary school in first through third grade our teachers would read to us.  In first grade we curled up on the classroom floor on a blanket left over from our babyhood while the teacher read.  In second and third grade we laid our heads on our desks.

 My second grade teacher, Miss Davis, was southern and she read to us the Uncle Remus stories in her wonderful voice bringing alive the characters of Brer Rabbit and Brer Fox and Uncle Remus.  Please don't throw me in the briar patch you can do anything but please don't through me in the briar patch pleads Brer Rabbit to Brer Fox knowing full well he's home safe in the briars.  Brer Rabbit was a crafty guy.   We had a substitute teacher who finished the book for us but she couldn't read it like our teacher so the next day when Miss Davis came back we all begged her to reread the end to us and she did.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncle_Remus

Miss Davis also read us the Freddy The Pig series.  I don't know how many books were in the series but the ones she read to us were barnyard stories for us country kids.  Freddy had a sidekick named Bertrand, a rooster, who operates from the inside of a boy robot which fascinated me.   I mentioned this series to someone I worked with a few years ago and he had actually bought a Freddy The Pig book online, a new issue of an old story, something about Freddy the Pig in the WWII era.    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freddy_the_Pig
    https://www.google.com/searchq=freddy+the+pig&hl=en&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=Hx5vUZ-nH6jmiALbxYD4CA&sqi=2&ved=0CEQQsAQ&biw=1440&bih=785
            
There was another book in the third grade we loved.  Miss Guladger was our teacher and she came from a farm in Ohio and her Mom would send us homemade cookies.  She's the one who read us a book about a mole who just happens to somehow eat a cereal that, on the assembly line in the cereal factory, gets "fortified" with extra extra vitamins and  extra extra minerals by accident and it causes the mole to grow huge like a person!  I don't remember the name of the book or much more about the story and I tried to Google it with no success.  Thinking back now it occurs to me as an adult how paranoid this story was and perfect for the Cold War 1950's.

The new books for the time that turned into classics were read to us by the Librarian when it was our day to go to the school library.  She read to us Horton Hears A Who by Dr. Seuss when it was first published.   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horton_Hears_a_Who!

 My favorite though is the classic for any age Charlotte's Web which she read to us over several weeks.  E. B. White wasn't afraid to let a much loved character die and it broke our hearts when, at the end of the book, Charlotte dies.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlotte's_Web

My own childtime reading was the funny papers every day in The Washington Post Times Herald.  Until I could read myself I used to get Daddy to read me the funnies.  My favorites were Li'l Abner, Smilin' Jack, Brenda Starr, The Phantom, Dick Tracey, Mark Trail, Mary Worth, Little Orphan Annie, The Katzenjammer Kids, Blondie, and Barnie Google and Snuffy Smith.  I know there were others I just can't fully visualize them on the tip of my memory.

I read to Robin when she was little.  Her favorite book was Never Talk To Strangers a long rhyming poem which made children aware in a fun way of danger.

"If you are hanging from a trapeze
And up sneaks a camel with bony knees.
Remember this rule, if you please-
Never talk to strangers."
http://books.google.com/books/about/Never_Talk_to_Strangers.html?id=siZpHjMbeZ0C

 It was lost but Robin found it again as an adult.  Robin collected children's books at one time before she was married.  I read 101 Dalmations, Alice in Wonderland, and I tried reading the original Raggedy Ann books but my tongue wouldn't turn in the British accent it was written in.  Winnie The Pooh was easier to read.

I have to admit I've read more to my grandchildren than I did to Robin.  Ally and Jimmy had a favorite book that was an alphabet book with Sesame Street Characters forming the letters and as I read it Jimmy and Ally would act out the letters and we'd laugh.  Then I bought a Fun With Dick and Jane reader for Ally when she was three, a reissue of the same reader I had in second grade, and she could already read when she started school and was grade levels ahead in reading.  Our favorite story was Baby Sally at her mother's dresser getting into her mother's powder and it's all over her and Spot and Puff and Tim.  She was four when she started kindergarten her birthday is in November.  In the country they let her go ahead and start.

 From the time the girls could crawl Rick and Robin read to Ginny and Evie.  Every night after bathtime a special book, chosen by the girls, would be read and then they were tucked in bed.  When Ginny was five and Evie three Rod and I babysat while Rick and Robin went to Hawaii.  Every night Ginny wanted  Raven read to her.  It was a tale of the Northwest where a raven turns itself into a baby, gets adopted by the chief 's daughter, then steals the sun and puts it in the heavens for all the people.  http://www.geraldmcdermott.com/raven.htm

Robin's friend Sally who is a librarian found a great book for Robin.  The book is titled Ginnie and Geneva.  Evie is short for Geneva because we couldn't have two Ginny's now could we.  http://www.amazon.com/Ginnie-Geneva-Book-Series-through/dp/B0030TVZIY
It turns out it's a whole series.

 I loved all the young kids books, especially Good Night Moon and Good Night Gorilla.  Robin says Evie's favorite is The Big Red Barn.  Evie is six years old now.  http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/401730.Big_Red_Barn.

Books are my favorite gift to give.

Read to me.

ABOLD ESSENCE

 In the late 1990's and early  2000's Rod started making wine. His teacher was a good friend he worked with at United Airlines, Nick Borg, who is from Malta and whose family have been winemakers for centuries.  The first season Rod chose Barbera grapes and got them from an old vineyard near The University of California at Davis which is an agricultural school.  A thousand pounds of grapes makes about 70-80 gallons of wine enough to fill a big oak barrel or a couple of smaller ones.  Barrels run 15, 30, and 60 gallons.  Barbera grapes are piquant think of pomegranates and are native to northern Italy.  Year two and three Rod made Cabernet and this is the wine we served at my daughter Robin's wedding in 2004.

This water color I did in 1977 reminded me of the way Barbara Streisand looked in A Star Is Born so when Rod made the Barbera wine I couldn't help but think this would make a good label for his wine even if it was only me who was in on the joke.  Abold Essence is an obvious play on our name and how good we thought the wine was.  Abold Essence, you'll only find it on our shelves.

DADDY'S PEN

I have my father's fountain pen that he used to pay bills with and write letters with when he was a young man.  He always used blue ink not black.  I used to use it to do my homework in the sixth grade.  I loved the way it wrote so smoothly on my lined school girl paper...I loved to lift the lever on the side and stick the nib in the bottle and draw in the ink to fill the pen.  It is black with a gold cap and the nib is 14k gold.  I don't know how or where he got it.  Was it a graduation present from high school...or a gift he bought himself as a adult?  He kept it in the bottom drawer of the buffet in the dining room and he'd sit at the dining table to do his record keeping.  Later he would have a beautiful desk his sister gave him and he'd sit there to do the work of the day.  It was a Shaeffer made in the USA.

When I was in my early thirties I gave him a Cross pen that was gold plated and worked with ink cartridges...modern.  I have that also.  He took it to work with him at Dowty Rotol the British firm he worked for after he retired from United Airlines.  He was a landing gear inspector and someone etched his name on the side...Curt Pearson.  The etching is somewhat faded now so I know he used it every day.  In his early eighties he told me he couldn't find ink cartridges for it anymore so I took it back with me to San Francisco and found a place that had the cartridges and bought five and installed one.  I took it back to Virginia and he was so happy to have his pen again.

After Dad passed I found the Cross pen.  The cartridge was dry.  There were four brand new cartridges in his desk.  I miss him so much.