Meeting cousin John

My friend Helen and I drove to Columbia SC a week ago, to see an exhibit of M. C. Escher's works at the Art Museum there. I'll be sharing my photos from that trip over on my art blog "Alchemy in Clay."

Yet I also knew that a cousin lived there and taught at U of SC...music department. His sisters had shared information on FaceBook about some of his compositions. I'd listened to them at that time. But I hadn't been in touch with him for many years.

Actually I hadn't seen John since he was just a boy, a year older than my oldest son. We camped with his father and next older sister when John was about 12...and they were in a camper trailer, while I was in a camper van with my two older sons, somewhere in Wisconsin. We (my sons and I) were beginning a summer of travel all over the west of the country. We started in FL, where we ended up after putting 10,000 miles on the van (and new tires I think.)

John's family lived in Stevens Point, Wisconsin. His oldest 2 sisters had already married and left home. But since then, I've shared comments back and forth sometimes with the 3 sisters who are my friends on FaceBook...but John doesn't do social networking of any kind.

So I timidly asked his sisters if they thought I should email John and see if I could get together or at least have a phone call with him. Since it was already June, I didn't know for sure that he wouldn't be teaching classes. My email was answered positively and we met for lunch.

It was great to spend two hours getting to know this talented young man (well, in his 50s, but young to me!) 

Here is one of Helen and myself after we had a good lunch, and were about to head home again.

We enjoyed our visit, and have continued to email with John since then, making sure he knows we'd love to have him visit Black Mountain NC.

Today's quote:

Real life most often happens during the in-between times, when we are not celebrating a special occasion.

Ducks around the lake

 

A mixed pair of ducks...a mallard male and a female who's white. I've seen them before swimming on the lake. These photos were taken the last week of May. 

Two baby ducks, not apparently with an adult.

A baby swimming and a mom watching from a rock. I don't know who this white duck is.

Two babies swimming along.

The bridge across the stream that feeds the lake.

The view from the dam...my favorite resting point, about halfway around.

We weren't sure what these sweet little blue flowers with white centers were.

Today's quote:

If we really want to be full and generous in spirit, we have no choice but to trust at some level.

RITA DOVE

Simply White

  

We couldn't figure out what these pretty white flowered bushes were.

Another bush with more white flowers...

And at last a white flower I know!~

I used to braid chains and make crowns out of clover flowers when I was very young...ok maybe a preteen.

Today's quote:

When we continually live our life with a safety net, it creates a barrier to our freedom.

The Lakeview Center and more

 

Some really pretty ornamental leaves...I wonder what they are...

The Recreation center will be planning some activities for Seniors soon again, I hope.

Another flower I can't identify.

But I know pansies when I see them!

Actually this photo happened earlier at Ole' Guacamoles Restaurant...where we ate lunch before going to walk around the lake!

Their Hostas are blooming very nicely.

Looking at the lake from the bridge over the stream which feeds the lake.

Looking at the stream which feeds the lake, from the bridge.

Today's quote:

There is no such thing as a right or wrong response, as we all bring our own experience.

Remembering flying

A repost from 2015...and I now know I have a female cousin in Austin TX who has had her pilot's license and flown planes herself! I hope to see more photos and learn more about her life in the air!

======================

I did have a few months of my 21st year flying professionally.  I quit college over a failed romance, and took a job as a Flight Attendant for Pan American World Airways (aka Pan Am).  The jets had recently started flying passengers, and that's where I worked.

We had to carry our flat shoes in our purses while walking to the planes, where we removed our high heels which could perhaps punch holes in the lightweight floors as we trod up and down the aisles serving as waitresses for almost a hundred people.

 I was flying the Latin American routes instead of learning in college, while my sister and her boyfriend here are seeing me off, after I was hired in April 1963. (Yes, we all walked from the Miami terminal out to the planes...passengers as well as crew.)  I flew the 2 jets shown below, learning all the emergency procedures, as well as food service.  I also flew in DC-6 and DC-7's, prop planes that flew shorter flights in the Caribbean.  I'll never forget the live chickens in a straw shopping bag which was included along with several children piled with mom into one seat.

Boeing 707

Wikipedia shares:

"Pan Am was the launch customer of the Boeing 707, placing an order for 20 in October 1955. It also ordered 25 of Douglas's DC-8, which could seat six across.  

The 320 "Intercontinental" series 707 in 1959-60, and the Douglas DC-8 in March 1960, enabled non-stop transatlantic crossings with a viable payload in both directions.

Popular Culture loved Pan Am:

Pan Am held a lofty position in the popular culture of the Cold War era. One of the most famous images in which a Pan Am plane formed a backdrop was The Beatles' 1964 arrival at John F. Kennedy Airport aboard a Pan Am Boeing 707–321, Clipper Defiance.^[136]

From 1964 to 1968 con artist Frank Abagnale, Jr. masqueraded as a Pan Am pilot, dead-heading to many destinations in the cockpit jump seat. He also used Pan Am's preferred hotels, paid the bills with bogus checks, and later cashed fake payroll checks in Pan Am's name. He documented this era in the memoir Catch Me if You Can, which became a distantly related movie in 2002. Abagnale called Pan Am the "Ritz-Carlton of airlines" and noted that the days of luxury in airline travel are over.

Then almost 50 years later... ABC had the TV show, Pan Am.  And it only ran for one season.

Pan Am is an American period drama television series created by writer Jack Orman. Named for the iconic Pan American World Airways, the series features the pilots and stewardesses of the airline as it operated in the early 1960s at the beginning of the commercial Jet Age.

Actresses in the TV Show Pan Am

Pan Am premiered on ABC on September 25, 2011 and ended on February 19, 2012.

The Pilot Show: April 1963. Dean pilots the Clipper Majestic '​s first New York to London flight—his first as a captain—and searches for his girlfriend, Bridget, about whom Dean learns some shocking news. Maggie, a stewardess suspended for not wearing her girdle to work, is unexpectedly reinstated when the scheduled purser, Bridget, does not arrive. Veteran stewardess Kate is revealed to be a CIA courier who was recruited during a layover in Rome three months prior, and she takes her first U.S. intelligence assignment to switch a passenger's passport. Meanwhile, Laura must deal with people asking her if she is the stewardess on the cover of Life magazine, and trying to do her best while not bothering her sister, Kate, who resents Laura's sudden fame. Colette sees a former lover on the flight, only to discover he is accompanied by his wife and son.

Pan Am won the "Best Series" at the Rose d'Or TV awards, Europe's equivalent of the Emmys.

This TV series took place at exactly the time I was flying; same uniforms, same issues (well without the CIA at least) and different routes.

I only flew to Latin (South and Central America) countries, then back to the states.  Portugal was the only European country I visited, but there were lots of trips to Mexico, the Caribbean, Central America, and the east coast of South America as far south as Sao Paolo, Brazil.  I flew over Cuba a few times on the way to Puerto Rico. (This was just after the Cuban Missal Crisis.)

I stayed in various hotels on layovers where Pan Am made contracts, in many Latin cities, and San Francisco once. I wanted to meet an old school friend there, but her husband met me instead...a strange memory, since I'd never met him.  In Caracas, Venezuela there were various political upheavals including armed conflicts, so we stayed out of town at a posh resort.

Not where we stayed, but this is a park near Caracas

I loved Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, and I had 3 days layover there to see the sights.  The flight which I had just worked from New York was a non-stop overnight flight of 12 hours, carrying the Brazilian soccer team.  We really had a strain on the little bathrooms when all those men woke up in the morning wanting to shave before landing and meeting their fans.

 I would often be away from my home in Miami Springs FL (near the airport) for a week to 10 days.  There might be a trip every day, and sleeping in a different bed each night.  Or there might be one trip of 12 hours, then a layover for 3 days.  I had no seniority, so I got the flight schedules that were least desirable. But I initially loved all of them.

Not mine, but a typical Pan Am Crew of Flight Attendants (aka Stewardesses) ready to go to work

The traveling waitress life had a toll on me.  I may have been recovering from my broken romance, but I was also away from home for the first time with no friends to speak of.  I was immersed in a culture of mostly Hispanic women and men, and I felt pretty lonely.

As a stewardess I stretched myself too thin with days and nights of work, then partying much of the time I wasn't working. I think I was having a bit of delayed adolescence.

British Stewardess, Betty Riegel welcoming passengers in the same style uniform which I wore.

Our uniforms were tailored, but with all the good food I was eating, I already was stretched to the limit in mine.  The blue cloth was not as bright a blue as shown in the TV series, either. 

Soon I was so glad to leave the supposedly romantic traveling life of a waitress in a plane to settle down with an old friend who wanted to get married.  At that time stewardesses weren't allowed to get married or have children.  And suddenly that was exactly what I wanted.

Incidentally, my little sister also quit college in her third year and became an Eastern Airlines stewardess.  I don't remember if she flew longer than I did, but she also left flying tp trade in the high flying life to live on a farm in Tennessee as a "back-to-the-land" hippy.  Us two Rogers girls weren't meant to stay in the air that long, I guess. (Our romantic ideals were perhaps inherited from our mom, and reading lots of books, rather than being given good solid down-to-earth advice. It was the 60s after all, which gave us conservative gals permission to go wild.

I do still enjoy a flight now and then...squeezed usually against some giant person or another...but I really enjoy a take off which feels so grand to the bottom of my shoes.  Glad I never really had a lot of "G's" like an astronaut, or this might be chicken feed.

--------------------------------
 

Read Betty Riegel's story I Lived the High Life as A Pan Am Stewardess HERE.

Wikipedia is my source for most quoted materials and photos.

Images of the two advertisements are from PanAmAir.org.

Information about Pan Am the TV Show comes also from Wikipedia HERE.

-----------------------------

Sharing this post with Sepia Saturday (perhaps again) because these are young people in uniforms as well...and it's been more than 50 years ago that I flew the skies for Pan Am.

An infrequent book recommendation (or two)

 

"Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants"

A friend recommended this and I knew I wanted to read it. She had checked it out of the library, and when I put it on hold, I asked for the audio version. They usually come in faster than the print ones. Fortunately it only took a couple of months, and I loved listening to the author, Kimmerer read her own creation.

But before I was halfway through, I knew I wanted to read it again, and ordered my own hardback copy. My friend was buying it also, so she could underline passages!

I don't have good details to give of my appreciation of it. I defer to another blogger, educator, Janelle Bailey, who reviewed this book on Tues. June 1. Here's the link to her review, but since I know some folks don't like to click links (I always wonder why) I want to quote a paragraph or 2 of Janelle's review.

Incidentally, this review is on Wendy Welch's blog, author and educator herself, "Wendy Welch: Books, Yarn, Cats, Opioids."

"This is a long, dense, thoughtful book…quiet and poetically beautiful in its stories and the tellings of them, and Kimmerer’s heart and mind are working on restoring the people’s relationship with the land and its non-people, and she has just a beautiful way with the words and urging she does with readers to see what is wrong–even, perhaps, with their individual practices–in hopes of reconnecting the masses to a reciprocal relationship with not just sweetgrass but allllllllllll that sweetgrass represents here, that which grows naturally and in a system that worked…before humans got involved and manipulated it and/or dismissed that the relationship was supposed to be mutual, not just one of exploitation and/or destruction.

"All that Kimmerer presents here about returning to a peace of restored relationship with nature, and its avenue being along the lines of the indigenous and native people is heartwork as well as mindwork and physical labor and making changes to how we do some things, and I value all that she says and how rationally she presents it. I will very happily plant the Three Sisters myself this spring…and have already made a batch of Indian pudding for dessert one evening last week. Kimmerer has touched me in all sorts of rich, thoughtful ways. And I am grateful for her and her sharing of all of this wisdom here.

I had postponed my own review and recommendation, because there really was so much that touched me while I listened to "Braiding Sweetgrass."  Living in an apartment and my physical limitations keep me from doing a lot on this land I have chosen as my environment. I still enjoy it, and take walks a lot, and also take photos to share on my blog, and talk about the plants and trees and rivers. I have accepted my limitations, and that my main contribution to environmental heart work must be in sharing photos and words. 

I also was finally ready to invest more in books, and bought another one which I haven't even opened yet, but have heard the author speak in on-line presentations, and lectures to classes in England. It's name is "Scatterlings: Getting Claimed in the Age of Amnesia" by Dr. Martin Shaw. He promotes (I think this describes the tip of his philosophy) going closer to the land we live upon, and becoming more aware and attentive, and even looking into myths and stories to see the environment more richly, and perhaps writing our own stories.

Thank you for wading through all of these thoughts. I'm very honored to read about the lives of authors on their blogs.

By the Lake

 Thanks to gardeners who put pretty flowers near public walkways...here are some pretty iris, I don't know the kind, but they are all the same.

I wish I could have kneeled down and had the iris as a foreground that captured the mountains too. It would have been a real bend, since this is a slope down to the water...would have meant practically lying down.

There are the sleepy ducks. They seem to feel safe under these trees.

Today's quote:

Courage doesn’t always roar. Sometimes courage is the little voice at the end of the day saying "I'll try again tomorrow."

MARY ANNE RADMACHER

Happy June First!!

 Do you know of the Oyster Plant? My friend who has a much better understanding of plants, told me she'd been helping it to spread in the daylily bed near the parking lot.

It's the tall spears and the fuzzball seed pod, much bigger  than dandelion fuzz balls.

It's not these yellow flowers, which must be a long stemmed variety of dandelion.

The long spears will open into flowers...strange yellow flower with a green spear off the edges of each petal. 

A close up of an oyster plant flower...the one with the spikes extending from the flower. the tall spears are before the flowers open.

Today's quote:

Practicing contentment is a radical act in a consumption-driven society.

ROBIN WALL KIMMERER