I Love the Way it Smells...

Boy I love the smell up here. I’m glad all the redwood trees didn’t burn. They have such a distinct tree smell, not just ‘another pine’.

It seemed like a long drive up here yesterday. I’m really glad I did my cross country when I did, as I think I'm going to need something a bit more comfortable in the future. Good news is, it’s always shorter going home. Don’t know why...



Turkeys, coming in from the road. I’ve always seen wild turkeys here, roaming the small lawns in the campground around the cabins. They must get nervous this time of year...



My little cabin. It’s really cute. A bit large for just me, but it was what they had when I called. Here’s a picture of the outside!



This place is going to be &%$#*@# when the winter rains come... it may be really bad even before that. In the places where the fire came down and killed the trees near the highway there will be slides. They are ‘netting’ entire stretches. I imagine this is to keep the debris from coming with the water, which is going to be muddy enough. It will be a difficult winter up here. The road is open to closures (!) even in good years. Here you can see some of this netting happening. The trees are holding back the rocks, but the trees are dead and losing their grip.




I was impressed by the structures that were saved up here, but the locals are pissed because, apparently, the fires were allowed to burn and not stopped at the fire breaks and such. It’s a pretty common feeling up here, and there has been a lot of unfortunate damage to some beautiful foliage.

AND THAT’S PRONOUNCED FO-LEE- AGE not fol-age. I don’t know why anyone ever started mispronouncing this word... I simply don’t know...

sigh...

blame the school system...

and, of course, down the highway..




another fire...

and they say that it might rain this weekend, which is a sort of good news bad news situation.

But I just had a portobello mushroom/cheese/avocado sandwich with butternut squash soup...

and all is just fine in my world.

I've never had butternut squash soup...

sigh...

No Phone, No Pool, No Pets..

The entrance to the campground...

I'm in Big Sur in a cute little cabin. I will post more tomorrow, but right now I need to eat and then sit somewhere. Coming up that road is exhausting.

I am reminded, even tired, how much better camping is than cabins... at least price wise!

I can, however, stand up in it!

Oh yeah.. good thing I didn't bring kitties.. The fires up here have driven things out of the hills... apparently a cougar(?) mountain cat thingy came in the window of some couple's house trying to get their cat. The cat is STILL under the bed...

Marcus VS Hp deskjet

Now this is more what I eventually expect from Baby Kitty... she is a shredder of all things (remember the tablecloth?)..

And people wonder why people with cats have such a difficult time finishing projects..

Kitty versus Printer

Not one of my kitties, but my baby kitty is verrrry interested in the printer. This just cracks me up!

Take A Gander...

I don't want this to be at all flippant, but it was such an easy title (grin)...

I didn't do a blog about September 11th. I will have difficulty doing one now, but have chosen a topic that held me at that time, and seems to be slipping out of memory.

Imagine my surprise to find that my new nephew (in law) was at Gander on September 11th. We didn't know him then. He was on a flight in from Paris with his Mother, and they were diverted as was EVERY NON EMERGENCY FLIGHT IN THE UNTED STATES. I didn't even think know that fact until much after the event.

and then I heard about Gander.

If you know this, skip it... I just love this story because it showed the total opposite of the people who carried out the attacks...

It showed people at their best.

Gander is a small town in Newfoundland. 39 flights were redirected to land in this small town and it's smaller airport. They were taken in and fed and cared for as family for nearly 4 chaotic days as the world around them came to terms with the horrors. As you can see from the picture, the planes were landed and then moved and parked and then another was landed... A town of 10,000 absorbed 6,000 more and did it gracefully.

It helped.

And my nephew was there....

There are no big worlds...

no,

really...

This Beautiful Blue Planet...

When I used to teach, I would occasionally digress (ha! me???) during a regular lesson to add a life lesson...

Kind of like icing...

One of my favorite topics was how, as a child, I had never seen a picture of Earth from 'above', so to speak. We thought we knew what it looked like, and, if I remember, the prevailing theory involved a sort of oatmeal look due to the cloud cover.

When we first saw pictures, the world was blown away by how



blue

we were...

and how

beautiful

and then we saw her at night...





and she only became more beautiful, dressed in all her lights




The first picture is listed as the first full photo of the earth from the moon... August 23, 1966. Since we weren't ON the moon until 1969, I'm assuming this was taken as we 'flew by', so to speak. I was 22.

I'm younger than that now....

The Last of My Grandfather's Women...

OK... I found a picture of Marge, my grandfather's last wife. Of course HE'S in the center of the picture. I'm putting this sometime in the mid 60's, judging from the rear end of the car. Someone out there will know what car this is, but I can't put my finger on it right now. They lived in a trailer park, which may account for my 'admiration', as I would love to live in something similar..

It would have to move easily, though.

It's not a great picture of her, but we didn't see a lot of them. I only remember her as older. They got an apartment before he died, which made her feel a bit more secure and settled. I used to go up there and take her to lunch and listen to her tell about the families. She was the keeper of the genealogy. She put together most of what I knew about my family before I started my own research, and gave me the list of my entitlement to be a DAR if I wanted.

hmm...

Can you imagine me as a member of the DAR organization?... It seemed just a little .... well... establishment. Yes?

Of course, I'm OLDER now, so ....

hmm....

My Grandfather's Women... And There Were a Few...

Ok. You are going to have to pay attention in the same manner that you needed in the Ed, Ed, and Eddie post.

My grandfather was, to all accounts and purposes, a charming man...

Unless you were married to him.

I have to give some background information to set up this unfortunate scoundrel. Rake might also be a good word here. And, as an aside, my mother said, in her later years, that he molested her, but would never enlarge on that assertion. In talking with my sweet cousin the other day, he said his mother was always terrified of authority figures, of which my grandfather would have qualified in spades. So, if it sometimes seems as if I think he was a 'good guy', it is tempered by his personality, which wasn't. A good guy.

We are past knowing all the details at this point, but here is what we do know.

He was, if you remember, born in Foo Chow China in 1888. He was an only child and treated like a little king. I don't know if he was a desired child, and I do know that my Great Grandmother was a very busy woman. Neither of these things makes for a child who trusts and loves easily. My grandfather was the 4th Coast Guard Aviator and the 59th Naval Aviator. This puts him at the beginning of Military aviation no matter how you look at it, and if you check the post "Come Josephine in my Flying Machine" you can see the 1917 picture of some of these young men. He kept a 'diary' (in which he talks about himself in the 3rd person (not a good sign)) and talks about losing a man a week to the inadequacies of flying in those days. He retired as a Rear Admiral, so he was no slouch in the 'chosen field' department...

It was just the women. And his inability, apparently, to be alone.

Notice, if you will, his marital record.



He married "the love of his life", Nancy Jamison, in 1911. I love her picture. There is something so uncontemporary about her, and yet she has such a beautiful look. This was taken in 1912. The child was my half uncle, another Eugene. He was the cute one, who resembled Clark Gable and set hearts a flutter wherever he went. This started another trend of my grandfather. His children were born within a year of each other. Two by Nancy, and two by my Grandmother. I suspect, like Henry the VIII, he loved Nannie best because she died before he could tire of her....

Nancy Jamison Coffin died in 1918. I thought I KNEW it was the flu, but that may be an assumption. She left him with the two boys SOOOO he met and married my Grandmother in 1919. Now, notice the timing on this. Nannie died in October, 1918. He met, wooed and married my Grandmother, Peggy Powers, by February, 1919. He told her about the boys just before the wedding, telling her he couldn't wait until they were 'all together". Of course, he wasn't home very often...



Peggy Powers Coffin and Eugene Auguste Coffin...




I love the baby (Mom) in the side car. I believe my grandfather 'built' this motorcycle.




Another picture I love. My grandmother and the two boys. Again, there is something sort of timeless about this picture.





My Mother was born in November 0f 1919, and her sister in October of 1920. A busy man, my grandfather. They had a stormy marriage, and put my Mom and her sister in a boarding school while my Grandmother got a divorce. There are other blogs about these events. The divorce was final on December 26, 1934. He Married "the red headed dancer", Florence "Pat" Cole on December 28, 1934.

Think maybe he had that one planned?



I didn't see this picture of Pat Cole until last year, when a cousin (yes, I have many) sent it to me. Pat Cole was much younger than my Grandmother, another trend of my Grandfather. She actually resembles my mother a great deal, which is sort of creepy.

He divorced Pat Cole while he was stationed in Hawaii. The divorce took place sometime around July (?) 1948. He married Marjorie Barber Hite in August, 1948.

She adored him. She was a sweet woman. He was 60 and she was, again, much younger. She took care of him, kept his stories alive and archived his life, and outlived him. He would have been 104 or something when she died. Sometimes it pays to be the last wife.

I don't have a picture of her that I can find right now. She's in that picture with my cute cousin. She's the third from the left, he's the third from the right.

I did the sepia just for the fun of it, and to match the Nancy Jamison one...

Now, admittedly, these are the women I know.

Heaven only knows how many cousins I have due to his many travels all over...

If you think you're one of them...

Check in.....

My Grandfather's Women...

A provocative title...

Stay tuned. I'm gathering pictures and information... and because it's my grandfather, it's gonna take a bit...

Tomorrow....

Check back tomorrow...

Ain't Families Somethin'?

I connected with my cousin yesterday. He's my mother's sister's child... the youngest of all the children born of either my mother or her sister. He's the best of his siblings. I won't go into JUST how much better he is, but it's monumental. He says it's because he was the only one breast fed... (which, if true, would also include him benefitting from more attention from his Mom and may account for the less than stellar brother and sister he rarely sees).

Who knows..

He's the goofy kid in the picture. He must have been left out of some event that the 'other' children were doing, probably because he was so much younger. He looks as if he's pissed about it, that's for certain! Now, let me see...

From the left. Mike, his father; Emily, my father's sister; Marge, my mother's father's last wife ( MUCH more on this later); Sheila, his mother; my father; Bonnie, my father's mother, Eugene, my mother's father;
my mother; 'Poggy', my father's father.

Got that? Well, it's really a unique picture because of all the people who rarely came together.

And this one little pissed off kid in the front.

This is the same kid who has the boat that is in that incredible picture taken September 8,2001 in front of the Towers.

And this is the kid who has offered his mother a place for life with him.

And the incredibly kind child who, on the way to pick up his mother in Seattle, came at least 2,000 miles out of his way just so my mother and her sister, small sisters again, could spend an afternoon... one last afternoon...together.


So if you're ever in doubt about whether or not to breast feed...

Remember this goofy kid....


oh yes...

Coming sooner than needed, in a blog near you...

My Grandfather's Women....

Had Enough?... Maybe Not...

Taken September 3, 2008


To all my friends in the South (and some recent parts of the Midwest), I'm sorry..

But I do recall MOST of you asking for more rain..

No...
you DID..

just think for a minute...

and remember this incredible perfectly horrific example of a hurricane...



Not the one that I traveled through in 1988 ( I had to go up to Dallas to get through it, and still hit the outer bands).. Hurricane Gilbert...

Hurricane Gilbert had the lowest sea level pressure (888 Mb) ever recorded in the Western Hemisphere. Gilbert was a category 5 hurricane when it made landfall over Cozumel, Mexico, then later weakened to a category 3 storm before making it's second landfall over northern Mexico. Gilbert's northeastern track into Texas and Oklahoma caused $40-50 million in damages from the more than 29 tornadoes reported. Coastal regions in Mexico received 5-10 inches of rain. A total 318 people died due to the effects of this storm.


No fun...

I have a picture I found but cannot seem to refind, that shows Gilbert from Space. I know EXACTLY where I was at that time..
following that same old big trucker to break the wind and rain so I could see...

As I've said, do as I say, not as I do...

Cool Gilbert picture, but you've got to go and borrow the 3-D glasses from the kids (grin).

Huracán Gilberto track

Kind of an unusual video of Hurricane Gilbert...