Saturday, April 15, 2017

He's gone home

Four years ago, the daughter of one of my best friends growing up called because her Dad was in a dark place on a mountain two thousand miles away. He wasn’t answering his cell phone, and she was desperate. Although I had never met her, and I still haven’t, we connected.

I called Clarke and surprisingly, he answered. It was a very awkward conversation as we just drifted away from each other more than forty years earlier. I listened as he unloaded years of pent-up bitterness about people in his childhood and issues in his life. I was aware of some of the events, but that night I heard it all and why. Some of his bitterness that night was even directed at me, but I listened. It was not a time to impose judgement, defend anyones actions, or come up with a fix. It was a time to just listen.

He came down from the mountain, and soon moved to join his three children in Missouri. Not long after reconciling with his children, his oldest daughter died leaving Renee and her brother. I spoke with Clarke a couple of times over the course of the past three years. Mostly we talked about our exploits as kids growing up in two super conservative Christian homes. We spent many Sunday afternoons at each other houses. He always seemed to have the cool stuff like the biggest stereo, the latest Stallion cap pistol, a CO2 fired pellet gun and a BB rifle. We even poked our fingers with a Swiss Army Knife and pressed them together to become blood brothers.

He was a skilled sketch artist and had a real flare for design. After spending three years in the Navy and serving in Vietnam, he joined Beattie Jewelers, an old reputable jewelry design firm in Cleveland. His smooth mannerisms, low mellow voice, and his ability to charm customers were natural assets that complimented his ability to sketch and produce the kind of custom jewelry that made Beattie Jewelers famous. One of my first photography projects was to photograph more than a million dollars worth of jewelry in the design studio above the store. They thought it might be safer to show customers slides of their work rather than carry it around in the trunks of their cars to show some of their more affluent customers. We have never handled so much bling since!

Renee contacted me last year to ask me to write a letter regarding our memories. He had been selected for a seat on an Honor Flight from Missouri to Washington to visit the war memorials. It was difficult considering the forty year gap in our very divergent lives, and I had no idea how it would be received, but I had an emotional hour and a half conversation shortly after he returned. In that deep resonate voice, he expanded on some of the exploits that I had brought to mind. He told me he had only a few months to live as cancer was eating away inside of him, but best of all, he told me how he had restored his relationship with Jesus Christ, or in his words, “I got right with God again.” 

John Alexander Clarke Beattie passed away this week. He has gone home.  

Sunday, October 9, 2016

Skuttle-Butt

So I was out for a walk today and overheard three zebras talking.

Z 1: Hey, I got a phone call asking me to ref team Hillary’s locker room chatter before tonight’s political debate.

Z 2: They called me to ref team Donald’s locker room chatter.

Z 3: Yeah, me too. I called P.E.T.A. and told them that was cruel and unusual punishment and filed a complaint against both of them.

Z 1: Let's just go to the Giants vs. Packers game tonight instead. It's all the same - offsides, unnecessary roughness, delay of game, unsportsmanlike conduct, and a host of calls both sides will disagree with.

Thursday, September 15, 2016

Round and round we go, again.

Four years ago almost to the day, I posted: 
Now that both political conventions are over, it's time for the spin to stop. We have been deluged with a barrage of "He said," She said," and "it's the other guy's fault," statements for months. "Their plan does this and takes from that while our plan takes from that and does this." 
And you say, "What?" 
Give us a break, please. Each campaign has been reduced to a plethora of put-downs rather than a platform of plans.
Stop the spin, look at the facts, show your cards, and let us chose who we want to be our next President.

So what has changed?

Saturday, January 26, 2013

Lady of the House

Imagination is a wonderful attribute, especially in a child. For centuries dollhouses have been used not only to stimulate creativity in the minds of children. With a dollhouse, children become the "ruler of their own domain," as they develop stories about people and situations around people, in their own lives.

But, dollhouses also give us a glimpse into the historic culture of our nation. The Gunn Memorial Library and Museum, in Washington Connecticut, is hosting an exhibit of dollhouses from private collections that spans three hundred years. There are room vignettes built to a miniature aficionado's traditional scale of 1 inch to 1 foot, but then it's easy to find the houses where a child's imagination trumped scale in order to tell a story. There are miniature utensils, appliances, dishes, bathroom fixtures, furniture, carpets, lights, books, wallpaper, food, in fact everything you could imagine in a house but built to 1/12 scale.

Why me? Is it because I have a "Boy named Sue" complex? Not really. You see, in my former life back in Cleveland, Ohio, I was actually president of the Cleveland Miniaturia Society, the second oldest miniaturist organization in the country. I was fascinated with the detail of so many skilled artisans as they created intricate scale replicas of everything imaginable, often from everything imaginable. There were even some who created scale dollhouses for their dollhouses, yes, 1/144 scale.

I still have a room vignette that I spent hundreds of hours creating. Someday, I will clean it up and pass it along to one of my grands so they will have an idea of what life was like back in the roaring 70s. Who knows, maybe I will even put a "Ken" doll in the rocking chair for someone to make up stories about me - - or not.

The "It's a Small, Small World: Dollhouses and Miniatures," exhibit will be at the Gunn Memorial Library and Museum through February 17, 2013. There is no admission fee, and yes, you can take pictures.

Thursday, January 17, 2013

Mom's point of view

It's one thing to photograph an expectant mom a month before delivery, but it's a very different picture from her point of view. This is the belly of our third daughter from her perspective, as we all await the grand emergence of our sixth grandchild.

She is a distance runner whose miles have been shortened in the past couple of months, so feet are important. It's just that she hasn't seen them for a while.

This will mean each of our daughters will have two kids, and whether any will go for round three, or not, is up to them. Our part is easy.

Friday, October 19, 2012

' been a while.

Time sure flies, regardless of whether you are having fun, or not. We found this clock and picture hanging together at the Toymakers Cafe, in Falls Village, CT. The combination really caught our attention in a quirky sort of way as I think back to this past summer and try to think of all the fun things we did, but overall, I don't know where time went. Do you?

It seems all spring we made lists and plans as to what we wanted or needed to do during the warm summer months. Some people planned great vacations, and others planned, or perhaps over planned, major home improvement projects. Sometimes our plans are interrupted by events that we didn't see coming. They seem to slow the progress of time, and take forever to end. After months of planning and anticipation, happy occasions fly by and are over before we realize it.

But no matter how we use our time, it is unstoppable and always moves at the same pace. It's our perception of time that changes. I mean, it seems only a week has passed since I last posted a blog. Instead, it has been a while, nearly six weeks, in fact. I guess time really does fly, especially when you're having fun.

Saturday, September 8, 2012

The spin stops here, or does it?

Now that both political conventions are over, it's time for the spin to stop. We have been deluged with a barrage of "He said," She said," and "it's the other guy's fault," statements for months. "Their plan does this and takes from that while our plan takes from that and does this."

And you say, "What?"

Give us a break, please. Each campaign has been reduced to a plethora of put-downs rather than a platform of plans.

Stop the spin, look at the facts, show your cards, and let us chose who we want to be our next President.