Blog number 3000

 This is the 3000th, at least in this blog series, not counting my other blogs!

Someone might say I have a lot to say...

Rabbit Rabbit! Wishing good things come in this new beginning of a month!

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How about "Portraits, old and new"

Alfred Stieglitz and Georgia O’Keeffe, 1939 Photo by Ansel Adams

Frida Kahlo's painting, Diego and me. It shows exactly how much he was on her mind.

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Please forgive me for family portraits...they are what's in the files!

Cinnamon, the mother of two of my grandchildren. I still count her as a good friend, though she and my son, Marty, divorced several years ago.

More "Way Back" photos. Here we lived in Thompsonville CT, and my young sailor Marty was about 4, while little Russ was at least 13 months old, with my husband Doug, and myself getting leafy knees.

A bit later, son Marty sported a crew cut, I had some blond highlights, and Russ had most of his glorious blond curls cut off (which didn't last long!)

Fast forward to after my 1971 divorce from Doug, and here's Russ (around 5-6) in front of our mobile home. Below he's on Doug's lap as the 70s hairstyles allowed long locks for boys and men. Russ may have had a comb and brush, but a lot of good it did!

And yes, Russ is the son who grew up to have the wedding portrait leaning into a kiss and holding up his bride Michelle (used as header for the week of July 13)

Marty's second wife is Barbara, and here's their wedding picture. (used as header the week of July 20) (I don't have a photo of his wedding to Cinnamon, as it was before digital cameras!)

A young man (my youngest son Tai) that doesn't mind wearing a flower crown. They were making these. Not sure what the fair/function might have been, but flowers are always uplifting!

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Today's quote:

“Every important social movement reconfigures the world in the imagination. What was obscure comes forward, lies are revealed, memory shaken, new delineations drawn over the old maps: it is from this new way of seeing the present that hope emerges for the future...Let us begin to imagine the worlds we would like to inhabit, the long lives we will share, and the many futures in our hands.” ― Susan Griffin

Painting by Helena Nelson Reed

Happy Lammas, first harvest gives grains for bread making!

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Sharing with Sepia Saturday for tomorrow. A big thank you to Alan who puts together this meme. Stop on over to add your own old favorite photos, or just check out those who do!

Sepia Saturday says:

It is summer. We are sat on the pier. We have our overcoats on because it is Britain and it is cold. Everything is all right and everything is as it should be .... except the world seems to be tilting to the left. For those who like to look for themes for their Sepia Saturday offerings, there are themes a plenty here - from flat caps to straw baskets. For those who just like sharing old photographs why not get yourself off your seat and share your photos on or around Saturday 2nd August 2025 and add a link to the list below. 

Lakeview Center today

 

This is what remains of the downstairs of the Lakeview Center...flooded from Hurricane Helen, but needing much more repair than just the flood damage due to inadequate repairs after a fire years ago. The reflections as I looked through the door were pretty strong, sorry.

There were still two mallards in the swimming pool.

Various Black Mountain town employees have made the lunch site upstairs into open offices since their own offices haven't been repaired from flooding yet. All this falls into the city's budget, while the fire house also needs to be updated.

But many seniors come to pick up a lunch still just inside the door.

Malinda (who didn't want her photo taken) hands out the lunches most of the time.

Many of us from the western North Carolina mountains are wearing shirts and jackets to encourage each other as the long haul of rebuilding after the hurricane continues.

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Personal update:

If you missed my replies to comments, or visits to blogs, it's because I was dealing with pneumonia, which came on suddenly Wednesday night, then to hospital for 2 nights. I came home Saturday afternoon, a bit weaker, but still getting more meds and lots of rest, then rebuilding energy! It's a job sometimes

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Today's quote:

To have and not to give is often worse than to steal. -Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach, writer (1830-1916)

Today's Art:

Frida Kahlo, with Diego Rivera painting the mural Nightmare of war, Dream of peace, Mexico, 1952

Family Album:

Zulieka Granger Swasey, "Dear Nan," Gummy's mother 1858-1935. My great grandmother.

Frida Kahlo - Women's History Month - 13

 Frida Kahlo

 “I used to think I was the strangest person in the world but then I thought there are so many people in the world, there must be someone just like me who feels bizarre and flawed in the same ways I do. I would imagine her, and imagine that she must be out there thinking of me too. Well, I hope that if you are out there and read this and know that, yes, it's true I'm here, and I'm just as strange as you.”

Frida Kahlo - Xochimilco,Mexico City (1936).

Frida Kahlo, photographed (below) in 1944 by American photographer, Sylvia Salmi (1909-1977). Sylvia Ester Salmi was a prominent and highly respected American photographer who, during the 1930s and 1940s, took portraits of numerous great artists and intellectuals of the time, including Bertrand Russell, Albert Einstein and, in Mexico, Diego Rivera, Frida Kahlo, José Clemente Orozco and Leon Trotsky.

Britannica says this:

Frida Kahlo de Rivera, original name Magdalena Carmen Frieda Kahlo y Calderón, (born July 6, 1907, Coyoacán, Mexico—died July 13, 1954, Coyoacán), Mexican painter best known for her uncompromising and brilliantly coloured self-portraits that deal with such themes as identity, the human body, and death. 

In addition to her work, Kahlo was known for her tumultuous relationship with muralist Diego Rivera (married 1929, divorced 1939, remarried 1940).

In 1925 Kahlo was involved in a bus accident, which so seriously injured her that she had to undergo more than 30 medical operations in her lifetime. During her slow recovery, Kahlo taught herself to paint, and she read frequently, studying the art of the Old Masters. 

She was considered a surrealist.

Frida Kahlo, the communist

"The Two Fridas "

A mural of Frida in Bali