Looking Back

Some things I remember about this year, 2010:

• The cold, snowy month of February which sent me...
  
• Fleeing to Florida in March just as the snow started to melt!
  
• The sorta photo workshop in the Blue Ridge
  
• Laura and BG's visit to London
  
• The hilliest GOBA ever in SE Ohio... loved the residential area of Marietta
  
• The 3 week, 6000 mile car trip west (and we only drove two of them!)
  
• The week with the Oregon Reas
  
• My photo show at the gallery that I mostly missed
  
• Joe's Irish wolfhounds, especially Dragon.
  
• The 50th reunion of my high school class
  
• The 50th reunion of the start of the annex crew at Alpha Phi at Michigan
  
• The blue skies of the one week I worked on the farm
  
• The fall with little color
  
• The cold and snow of December
  
• The laughter and support and help of friends and family
  
• The grandchildren
  

Happy Next Year!

Appalling at Best

Here is the results of those people who volunteer for the armed services between the ages of 17 and 24. 75% are ineligible to take the test to see if they can join the military. They are ineligible because the were not high school graduates, have a criminal record or physically unfit. One third of these are obese(25%).

Of the 25% who are eligible to take the test, one fourth of them cannot pass the test. And they are all high school graduates! These numbers do not paint a pretty picture.

More astonishing is that those who fail blame the schools for not making them learn! Clearly they were never exposed to the saying I grew up hearing all the time: You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink. How in the world do you MAKE somebody learn?

I claim shananigans!

Emma (and Ethan's) Lunch with Mama

The shocking thing was that Mama's borrowed T shirt was big, but not THAT big!

My Birth Day

Grant Wood's last painting was published In Saturday Evening Post on my birth day. Enjoy this gift I found. The magazine wrote:

"Grant Wood died February 12th. Spring in Town, this week's Post cover, was the last finished painting of this greatest of America's regionalists. Iowa born and Iowa bred, Grant Wood first realized his integration with the American scene while studying with the postwar neomeditationists of the School of Paris. Of this he has written: 'After all, I lived in Paris a couple of years myself and grew a very spectacular* beard that didn't match my face or hair and read Mencken and was convinced that the Middle Wast was inhibited and barren. But I came back because I learned that French painting is very fine for French people and not necessarily for us, and because I started to analyze what I really knew. I found out. It's Iowa.

'I'd found out the answer when I joined a school of painters in Paris after the war. They believed an artist had to wait for inspiration, very quietly, and the did most of their waiting at the Dome, with brandy. It was then that I realized that all really good ideas I'd ever had came to me while I was milking a cow. So I went back to Iowa'

Of Spring in Town and Spring in the Country, a companion piece, Mr. Wood wrote shortly before his death: ' In making these painting, as you have have guessed, I had in mind something which I hope to convey to a fairly wide audience in America - the picture of a country rich in the arts of peace; a homely, lovable nation, infinitely worth any sacrifice necessary to its preservation.'

Spring in the Country is now in the Cornelius V. Whitney collection. The original of Spring in Town will hang in Terre Haute's new Swope Art Museum."

* His beard was pink!

Emma, Emma