Privet Memories #WordlessWednesday

 On June 12, I was walking in my neighborhood, and came across this. 

Ah, the scent of privet.  Years ago, I would blog about privet hedges at the end of each June.  They bloom earlier and earlier, and aren't covered by bees the way they used to be.

But still, they bring back a memory of over 60 years ago.
I grew up in the Bronx, a borough of New York City, in a city housing project.  All the green spaces in the project were carefully fenced away behind chain link fences.  We children would get into trouble with the maintenance men who cared for the project if we climbed the fences and dared to play in the greenery.  So, of course, we did it as often as possible.

In June, the privet would bloom. 

It's a scent I love to this day.

The boys would catch the bees the bushes attracted in glass jars.  That's not something we girls got into.  Instead, we would look for ladybugs to catch.

The heady scent from a week ago brought me back over 60 years in a matter of seconds.  I was a little girl once again, climbing chain link fences while we looked out for the project maintenance men, so my playmates and I could have a few minutes of interaction with nature.

Scent and memory. A living time machine.

Joining Sandee at Comedy Plus for her #WordlessWednesday.  

Smoke and Memories on the Catskills #SkywatchFriday

Recently, we were driving through New York's Catskill Mountains.  The morning had been rainy with thunderstorms.  As we drove west, the rain dissipated and where there had been fog or mist, it had cleared except for some patches that were evaporating.

This is not smoke - it is the mist evaporating.  These pictures were taken along NY17.

This is a winding road which eventually will be I-86 (Interstate 86).  Part of NY17 already is.

The Interstate project has been years in the making.  There has been good and bad.   Good is the elimination of some intersections (one in our area was especially dangerous) but there was, for example, the demise of Parksville, New York.  Permit me to share some memories as I share these photos.

Parksville (not pictured) used to have a traffic light that stopped traffic on NY17.  Those days, when we drove this road several times a year to get to downstate) bring back memories for me.  Sadly, Parksville itself was dying before I came to this area in the 1980's but there was a brief revival. We would stop there with our young son to eat lunch or dinner sometimes.  But then Rt 17 being rerouted for the I-86 project bypassed the town and today Parksville is considered a ghost town. 

Parksville had an antique store called Memories, which we visited several times, and is now only a memory.  One day, NY17 may be a memory, too, and it's these Catskills that are holding it up.  Road work still needs to be done in the Catskills stretch on various exits and stretches to bring the road up to Interstate standards.  In the meantime, the motorist is left with the beauty of these mountains.

Finally, here is a sky from yesterday afternoon.

Joining with Yogi and other skywatching bloggers each Friday for #SkywatchFriday.

Memories of Barbie

Somewhere, maybe, still exists a white, blond, bubble cut Barbie with unbendable arms and legs and feet that can't go flat.  This Barbie must wear heels, and it is dressed in a wedding gown.  The last time I saw it, it was lying in my drawer, lying in the embrace of its black stand.

Once beloved, it was put away with other childhood things.  Perhaps it was thrown out after I left home.  I'll never know.

It will never be in a movie.  It will never be famous.  But it isn't forgotten.

I am a senior citizen now.  I can remember my doll, but not the year it was given to me.  I suspect it was 1961 or 1962,  and I loved it.  I played Barbie by myself and with a friend.  I dreamed of the outfits I would dress it (dare I say "her"?) if my Mom could only afford them. 

Needless to say, my Barbie never saw the inside of a Barbie Dreamhouse.  For years, it lived on top of my dresser, on its black wire stand.

I predated all of the career Barbies - the astronaut, the vet, and even the President.  Over 200 of those careers encouraged girls to step out into the world.

I was so thrilled when I got the wedding gown outfit as a gift.  By then, a friend in my apartment building in the Bronx had a Ken, and her Ken became my Barbie's fiancé (whereupon I heard the vocabulary word "fiancé" for the first time).

Now there is a movie, a movie that is on its way-no, wait, it has reached and exceeded- a gross of one billion dollars.  One billion dollars.  For a director who happens to be female. 

At first I thought the movie would be silly but I've changed my mind.  Yes, I'm trying to join the madness, if you can call it that.

The movie? It's become more popular than many could have dreamed. 

And me, the person who last went to a movie in December of 2018, wants to see it.

My spouse wants no part of it.  I don't mind.  I don't expect him to understand, although I don't know if my eyes could stand all the pink (you don't need to see much of this video to understand why).  He won't know what Barbie means to millions of girls and grown up women.

Childhood memories can be so strong.  Barbie gave me many hours of happiness.  If I had been born just a handful of years later, it could have been the catalyst for me becoming something untraditional.

After all, one of my aunts (one I barely knew, I should add) became a doctor back in the 1920's.  And my late mother actually encouraged me to go into medicine, although it wasn't my interest.

Yes, Barbie, thank you.  Sisterhood is strong.  Women are making this movie happen. 

Have any of my readers seen the movie?  If so, would you recommend it?

Eclipse Eve and Eclipse Day #AtoZChallenge #SkywatchFriday

Today, for the Blogging from A to Z Challenge, we visit Columbia, South Carolina where spouse, our son, and I visited for the August 21, 2017 Great American Eclipse.

On Eclipse Eve, we visited the State Capitol in Columbia.  The building was closed but we were able to visit the grounds.  We didn't stay long.  I think the temperature was around 95F (35C).  The clouds seemed to be coming out of the top of the building.

Countdown to Totality.

While you were waiting, how about a Total Eclipse FreakShake?

This is (or was) Busted Plug Plaza, which boasted a World's Largest Fire Hydrant art installation.  This has a fascinating history.  It's in storage as of February of this year, but is supposed to be relocated.

The next day, we set up at the state science museum where we were to watch the eclipse.

I forgot what these were skeletons of, but they were huge.

This was taken right as the eclipse began (taken 1:11 pm 8/21/17).

Taken 2:12 pm.  As the eclipse progressed, the sky started to clear up where the sun was shining.  The brutally hot sun got more bearable, too.

Totality!

Looks like sunset but it's only 2:42 pm.  The streetlights were all on.

2:42 pm, totality!  I wish I had a better camera than my iPhone 4S.

Right after the eclipse ended.  In the lower left (hard to see) is a reflection looking like a crescent moon that many saw right before or after the eclipse on sidewalks or other surfaces.

"E" day in the Blogging from A to Z Challenge.  My theme:  Exploring South Carolina and the Eastern United States.

 Joining Yogi and other sky watching bloggers today (Thursday) for #SkywatchFriday.

The Missing Hearts

This past week, I finished a book called "Our Missing Hearts" by Celeste Ng.

This is the first novel by Ms. Ng I've read.  Unlike her other two novels, this is a dystopian novel.  Or perhaps not quite dystopian, because almost everything in this book has happened before, in one form or another.  This happens to be a genre I enjoy but this book hit a little bit too close to home.  It was chilling - a near future United States that is totally believable.

Briefly, this is the plot: Bird (a nickname; his given name is Noah) is a 12 year old boy with an Asian mother and a white father.  He lives with his father in a future United States which was transformed by a terrible economic crisis fifteen years before, called simply The Crisis.  China and South Korea are blamed (correctly or not) for The Crisis and eventually, anyone who is, or looks like, they are of Asian origin bore the brunt of this popular belief. 

PACT (the Preserving American Culture and Traditions Act) is passed by Congress in a bipartisan vote and signed into law 10 years before the events in this novel begins.  Among other things, PACT gives the government the right to remove children from any household not deemed patriotic enough.  Books are censored, eventually removed from libraries, and pulped.  The pulp is then used to manufacture toilet paper.  One such book is a book of poetry called "Our Missing Hearts" written by Bird's mother, the daughter of Chinese immigrants, which inspires those who engage in small acts of rebellion against PACT.

To prevent Bird from being taken, Bird's mother left the family and went into hiding three years before the novel begins.  Bird's father, protectively, denounces his wife and tells his son to forget his mother.  But then a communication comes in the mail....

A memory came back to me.

In 2020, my spouse and I were supposed to go to my 50th high school reunion. Well, not all of it.  Not the expensive dinner dance that would have taken place in Manhattan (also necessitating a hotel stay). But rather, I looked forward to an Alumni Day at our school.   I ha not set foot in my high school since my graduation, nor had I gone to previous reunions.  No matter.  Thanks to COVID, the 2020 reunion was cancelled.  

There were a handful of people I wanted to see again.  One of them was a woman I shared a locker with for part of my high school years.  We remained in touch during college and for a couple of years after we graduated.  Gradually, we lost touch.

I can't remember what initially attracted us to start a friendship.  We came from totally different backgrounds.  Me - Jewish, with grandparents from Belarus and from Austria-Hungary.  My locker mate was the daughter of Chinese immigrants.  My high school, back then, had a lot of Asian students.  It has many more now.

Today (based on statistics I found online) my high school is about 23% white and 79% "minority".  What would the framers of PACT had felt about that?

I must confess to this: When I started hearing about the large uptick in hate crimes against Asians in 2021, it was just part of the flood of news all of us are subject to.  It's overwhelming, the news, if you pay attention to each and every thing. But then, something caught in my mind.  It was wrong for me to ignore what was happening.

My thoughts turned to my former high school locker mate and college pen pal more than once, as I saw videos of elderly Asians attacked on the street, some fatally.  If she is alive today, my friend has closed in on 70, like me.  If her parents are still alive, they are probably in their 90's.  All of them are vulnerable in a way that I can not fully understand because my experience is not their experience. 

Did my lockermate have children?  Grandchildren?  What has been their experience?

I walk down the street and my face does not provoke hate.  Others walk down the street and face daily harassment or worse.  

Under PACT, all of that would have happening openly, with no recourse.

(I highly recommend Ng's novel, incidentally, although it was hard for me to get through some parts of it, and I had to put the book aside for several days more than once.)

Are we on our way to a similar future United States?  It's up to us.

Fifty Nine Years Later

"Singer" was a canary.  I lived in a New York City housing project which prohibited dogs or cats.  My Mom had brought home various goldfish, but eventually they all went to the large aquarium in the sky.

One of my aunts, who lived a couple of miles from me, had three pets:  two cats and a canary.

Yes, a canary living in the same apartment as two cats.

It was a male and it sang so beautifully.  For me,watching it, it was instant love.  I've always been attracted to birds and started begging Mom for a canary of my own.

At some point, when I was about eight, Mom decided I was old enough to care for a pet, so off to the pet shop we went (at that time, the early 60's, canaries were not expensive the way they are now) and Mom and I came home with a yellow canary.

"Singer" became a friend and companion for me, an only child.  He would sing for me, do little tricks with his seed bell and swing, and entertain me in general with his antics during his weekly bath.  In fact, I was able (with a lot of patience) to train him to sit on my finger, and even to sit on my shoulder.  I have a picture, somewhere of me (in a bathrobe, as I recall), with "Singer" perched on me. 

His songs and company were just what I needed after I broke my leg in three places and had to spend the next two months at home because my elementary school classroom was on the 4th floor and there was no elevator in the school building.  (I was home educated by a teacher sent to my apartment until after my cast was removed.  I blogged about that several years ago. I owe a lot to that teacher, but that's a story for another day).

Sadly, Singer passed away during my recovery.  I remember the date, too, because it was the day before President John F. Kennedy was assassinated.  I was still in my leg cast. 

Yes, people of my generation remember the date November 22, 1963 well.  It was the day that President John F. Kennedy was in a motorcade in Dallas, Texas.  Shot several times, he died shortly after at a local hospital.  

Meanwhile, I was at home, reading or doing homework, perhaps.  My mother had left me to go shopping.  She returned home, and was crying as she opened the door to our Bronx apartment.

Mom turned on the TV, and the next three days were nonstop television coverage.  I had a doctor's appointment the following Monday to have the progress of my healing checked, and I remember watching some of the funeral coverage in the waiting room.

We went to the pet store the day after Kennedy died to buy another canary.  In the pet store cage was a yellow canary with a black spot on top of his head.  My Mom and I agreed the bird had the spot to mourn Kennedy, and that was the bird we took home with us.

It's been 59 years.  I still find that, in some ways, hard to believe.

The Sleeping Trees of Memory #ThursdayTreeLove

The trees of memory, they are in their winter hibernation.  Because Skywatch Friday is tomorrow, I am writing my Veterans Day post early.

Today, on the 57th anniversary of my mother's passing, I remember the trees.  There was the crabapple tree that was planted just outside the entrance of the apartment building in the Bronx (part of New York City) where I grew up.  Each May, I think of its beautiful blooming in a city of eight million people.

Now, crabapples line the street that intersects the street I live on, and other streets in this area. Bare now, they brighten the streets they are planted on each May.

My father was a veteran of World War II.  He served in non-combat roles as an airplane mechanic and also a military policeman in the Army Air Corp and had various postings, including one in India.  He returned home prematurely due to a head injury that left him suffering from seizures the rest of his life.

Memories...

When I was young, we would get mailings from various organizations, imploring us to send money to plant trees to honor a deceased loved one.

The weeping willows along Seneca Lake near Geneva, New York that commemorate the war casualties of World War I.  In many countries (France, Belgium, Australia, among others) November 11, the anniversary of the ending of that war,which we call Veterans Day here, is called Remembrance Day.

Here is one Canadian blogger's thoughts on Remembrance Day.  We in the United States do not pay enough attention to the fact that many of our allies have suffered in wars where we fought side by side.

Walking in our local park, I saw this oak tree glowing in the setting sun on Sunday.  The color is gone now, but the memory remains.  Soon, this tree will be fast asleep, too.

They bring back memories of snow, cold, and biting winds, the chill of winter that is about to descend upon us after a stretch of beautiful fall weather.

This Northern cardinal (this photo taken last year on Christmas Eve) is a symbol, where I live, of deceased loved ones sending love and positivity to you.  Yesterday, I saw both a male and a female cardinal sitting on this fence looking at me. 

Each Veterans Day (as we call Remembrance Day or Armistice Day in the United States I publish the poem "In Flanders Fields".  This year, I link to our own Veterans Administration for the history of this poem and why poppies have become the Flower of Remembrance.

In Flanders Fields by John McCrae

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly.
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved, and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

Poppy, Riverside Drive, Binghamton, New York

May all our loved ones forever rest in peace-our beloved family members, our friends, and those lost in war. 

Joining Parul at Happiness and Food for #ThursdayTreeLove.

Remembering #AtoZChallenge

We humans are a remembering people.

No matter what our culture, we remember.  Some peoples tell stories of the doings of heroic men and women from generation to generation, or read these epics from long ago.

Some peoples build monuments.

Some peoples write history books.

Some peoples photograph and blog about these things.

All so we remember.

I looked through my phone's photo app and found these rememberings.

A monument in Sanford, Florida, paying tribute to Thomas Jefferson and what he wrote to John Adams on January 11, 1816:  "A nation united can never be conquered."

Virginia Civil Rights Memorial, Richmond, Virginia.

Another panel of the memorial.

In Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, the site of the most important and most famous battle of the United States Civil War, July 1-3, 1863, you walk on the battlefield grounds and you pass monument after monument.  I've visited a number of Civil War (and several Revolutionary War) battle sites but Gettysburg is unique in the number of monuments honoring the soldiers who fought (and died) there those three days.

This is the monument for our local regiment that fought at Gettysburg, and played a pivotal part in the second day of the battle.  26% of the members of the regiment did not survive the war.

Not all monuments and memorials are grim.  This one is at Bethel Woods, New York, where the Woodstock music festival was held in 1969.

Finally, a remembrance of various giraffes who have lived at Animal Adventure Park in Harpursville, New York.  Anyone remember April, the giraffe who gave birth with thousands of people watching online and sparked an interest in giraffe conservation? Alas, she passed away last....April.  

So why do we remember?  So we can be inspired?  So we can learn lessons in how to live from those who preceded us?  So that we learn the mistakes of history and hope we won't repeat them?  I would say "All of the above".

"R" day of the Blogging from A to Z Challenge. My theme: "From Florida to Vermont With Stops In Between".

Pat and the Poem

It's turned into another dreary day in the Southern Tier of New York.

We have a warm front moving in, but it will only be temporary - tomorrow morning, a cold front will come through.  But, in the meantime, the sun has deserted us once again.

When it's dreary, I lose ambition.  I'm stuck in the grey blahs.  And I couldn't think of anything to blog about today, so I turned to some blog sites I like for inspiration.

Dorothy, whose blog I've read for years, publishes a poem every Sunday. This Sunday, her selected poem was "Warning" by the Scottish poet Jenny Joseph.  It was written back in 1961, and it was a favorite poem of one of my co workers, Pat.  She had a copy of the poem at her desk for the several years I worked with her.  They were good years.

Although she's been gone nearly 24 years, her memory remains a treasured part of my life.  She wasn't granted old age - she died at the age of 58, from cancer.

She would tell me to lift myself out of those grey blahs, and I am going to do that.  We are granted a certain number of days, and most of us do not know when they will end.  The thought of Pat makes me smile today.

Here is Jenny Joseph (who died in 2018), reading the poem "Warning".

Smile

Memories, of the way things were.

I think I've finally overcome the problem of deleting photos (backed up on a UBS drive) from my iPhone.  I was deleting photos and they kept showing up again.  I think it had to do something with iCloud, and now, I can't even turn iCloud on again.

But, being a digital hoarder, it's hard to delete.  The photos bring back so many memories.  Even though they are safe on a PC (one hopes), it's still hard to hit the trash can icon.  Daffodils, flowering trees, azaleas, all now deleted.

I'm still working on 2017.

Sometimes, those photos make me smile, like this one taken in July 2017, at Cutler Botanic Gardens in Binghamton.

Painted rocks, as I've blogged about recently, can be hazardous to the environment  But combined with these zinnias...

...well, it made me smile.

I hope it makes you smile, too.

Happy Sunday!

The Scent of Childhood

Today, spouse and I took a walk through a neighborhood in Binghamton, New York, admiring the late spring flowers.

At some point, I started to detect something familiar, a scent of my childhood.

Then, I saw it.  A privet hedge, starting to bloom.

I need to explain about my childhood, because it is so far removed from my life now.

I grew up in the Bronx, a borough of New York City, in a city housing project. The project was on two main business streets.  Above, an elevated train rumbled by every few minutes.

Our project's houses were oriented so that half faced the other half, with green spaces in front and back of the buildings, and in the middle, sidewalk and lawn interspersed with small play areas and benches. 

All the green spaces in the project were carefully fenced away behind chain link fences.  We children would get into trouble with the maintenance men who cared for the project if we climbed the fences and dared to play in the greenery.  So, of course, we did it as often as possible.

It was wonderful, being in the greenery.  Part of the greenery consisted of privet hedges.  When they bloomed, the bees would show up, too.  Back then, in the late 50's and early 60's, bees had not yet started to die out.  They buzzed in happiness in the hot, humid New York City June air.

The boys would catch the bees in glass jars.  That's not something we girls really got into.  Instead, we would look for ladybugs to catch.

I love it when the privet hedges bloom.

The heady scent always brings me back over 50 years in a matter of seconds.  I am a little girl once again, climbing chain link fences while we look out for the project maintenance men, so my playmates and I could have a few minutes of interaction with nature.

But now, the memory is mixed with sadness, because I know some of what happened during the COVID surge of last year.  The Bronx was hit badly.  Maintenance workers in city housing projects were hit, with a number dying.  I know none of the workers I interacted with would still be working by now, but I still wonder.   I also wonder how many of the 1400 plus residents of the project got COVID, and how many died.

I doubt I'll ever know. I can only hope things get better for those who live where I grew up.

Scent and memory. A living time machine, now mixed in with the shadow of the recent past.

Remember #MusicMovesMe

It's that time to join up with other music bloggers for #MusicMovesMe.

Who are the #MusicMovesMe bloggers? We are bloggers who blog about music each Monday and if you have music to share with us, you are most welcome to join! (Music Posts Only , please!)   First, there is XmasDolly,   Her co-hosts are: Stacy of Stacy Uncorked, Cathy from Curious as a Cathy, and me. Xmas Dolly continues to have issues with her blog, but I hope she is able to join us today.

Each month we have a guest host who picks themes for the month, and this month we are featuring our very own founder and head host, Xmas Dolly. 

The theme for today is "You Pick".

I've been doing so much remembering this month that I decided my theme for today would be songs about remembering.

One of the best remembering songs ever (in my most humble of opinions) comes from my childhood.  

This first song has an interesting origin story.  Originally, it was some seven minutes in length (outtakes are available on You Tube) and a certain then unknown session musician by the name of Billy Joel played the piano in this and another subsequent hit's demo versions.  (In research, I've read that Billy Joel is not sure if his playing made it to the master version of the song.)  The recording had to be cut to under three minutes, per the norms of Top 40 radio at the time, and that is the reason for the fade at the very end.

The Shangri-La's and Remember (Walking in the Sand) from 1964.

This next song was recorded by one of my mother's favorite musicians, Frank Sinatra. It was a cover of a song released in 1961 by Bob Shane with the Kingston Trio.  For Sinatra, it became a hit in 1966.  As it happens, a CBS crew was on the spot when Sinatra recorded this in 1965, and it's a peek back in time - for that reason I am featuring the You Tube video of that recording session.  

Elton John's 1973 hit (released in 1972) "Crocodile Rock".  I found this live performance from some years back at Madison Square Garden in New York City, which is posted as a fundraiser on You Tube right now.  Here are some observations from Elton John in an interview.

 "The Boys of Summer" by former Eagles drummer Don Henley uses, as its theme, a young man remembering a former love that he still has feelings for.

Speaking of summer, my final song is Bryan Adams' "Summer of 69" where we learn that nothing lasts forever.

That's a wrap.

You know how it goes - see you next Monday!

Remembering the Ordinary

Last week, my spouse and I were idly talking when we found ourselves wondering when "the last time...." was.  The March trip we cancelled, the last time we went to a party, the last time we shopped in a grocery with full shelves, the last time we did so many once-ordinary things.

I took out my phone.  I like taking pictures, and those pictures, of course, are tagged with dates, times, and locations.

The memories came back, of the days before the mid-March shutdown.

Other memories followed - the last ordinary memories we would have for who knows how long.

A grand opening party of a downtown jewelry store.   Some food and a glass of wine was offered as we walked in.  I took a couple of pictures of the interior of the historic building it was in, and the date of the party was captured.

A sunrise over downtown Binghamton, New York, as I walked  to my office.

An ordinary lunch period, spent in the Broome County library garden.

A magnolia tree, its fuzzy buds awaiting the signal to open.

Crocuses blooming.

And then things, as the expression goes, took a sudden turn to the south. 

Signs everywhere, warning us to wash our hands.

There was the day we went to the supermarket for some bagels.  We walked into the store not expecting what we saw - people leaving with carts full of toilet paper and paper towels.   A store full of empty shelves stripped of paper goods, milk, and even frozen food greeted us.  I took pictures.

A cafeteria downtown posted signs announcing seating was closed, and only "grab and go" permitted.

Finally, the photos of the back of my work computer, the photos our IT department asked me to take as they unhooked me so I could go home with my equipment.  In that way I would know how to hook myself back up at home.  I was expecting it but not so soon.

The date and time stamp for that said Thursday, March 19, 2020 at 9:36 a.m.  I barely had time to say goodbye.  I've only seen a handful of them since that day.  The people I used to interact with five days a week are disembodied voices and emails now.

I've been to downtown Binghamton perhaps five times since that day.  It used to be five days a week.

Ordinary memories are on my phone.  Ordinary memories from another world.

Some people ask why I have so many photos on my phone (over 11,000, currently.)

My phone acts as a memory of sorts.  But I never thought that the ordinary things my phone recorded would be so precious to me.

Our memories are precious.  Right now, we have two options:  living in the past and remembering the ordinary.  Or living in the present, as painful as it is, and moving forward each day towards better times.

I will move forward.

But today, I remember.