>On new year’s eve day we sent to a park just to get out of the house and enjoy the nice weather – though it was a bit cold.
On new year’s day we went for a bike ride to start the year off right. it was very cold, but we had a great ride. We also surprised ourselves by getting home at deepening dusk.
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I love these vintage Christmas cards. Why does that woman in the foreground think that card is so funny? Well, at least she’s happy.
What we have here is a classic American Christmas scene: Nothing religious, nothing Christian, nothing that might offend, just pleasant times with beautiful people enjoying alcohol and a crackling fire. We know baby Jesus is somewhere in the recesses of their memory, but it doesn’t really mean that much to those who have finally overcome the need for Jesus. Right?
>Over the Thanksgiving holiday we were in Portland and went the the Zoo Lights which is, of course, as the zoo.
This video was captured with a Flip HD camera and edited in Windows Movie Maker.
>A poem for the season and other great things:
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Halloween party in Blarney, Ireland, in 1832 by Daniel Maclise.
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Happy Independence Day!
>According to Wikipedia: “[T]he first memorial day was observed by liberated slaves at the Washington Race Course (today the location of Hampton Park) in Charleston, South Carolina. The race course had been used as a temporary Confederate prison camp in 1865 as well as a mass grave for Union soldiers who died there. Immediately after the cessation of hostilities, freed slaves exhumed the bodies from the mass grave and reinterred them properly with individual graves. They built a fence around the graveyard with an entry arch and declared it a Union graveyard. The work was completed in only ten days. On May 1, 1865, the Charleston newspaper reported that a crowd of up to ten thousand, mainly black residents, including 2800 children, processed to the location for a celebration which included sermons, singing, and a picnic on the grounds, thereby creating the first Decoration Day.”
>Written in 1870 by Julia Ward Howe.
Arise, then, women of this day!
Arise, all women who have hearts,
Whether our baptism be of water or of tears!
Say firmly:
“We will not have great questions decided by irrelevant agencies,
Our husbands will not come to us, reeking with carnage, for caresses and applause.
Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn
All that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience.
We, the women of one country, will be too tender of those of another country
To allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs.”
From the bosom of the devastated Earth a voice goes up with our own.
It says: “Disarm! Disarm! The sword of murder is not the balance of justice.”
Blood does not wipe out dishonor, nor violence indicate possession.
As men have often forsaken the plough and the anvil at the summons of war,
Let women now leave all that may be left of home for a great and earnest day of counsel.
Let them meet first, as women, to bewail and commemorate the dead.
Let them solemnly take counsel with each other as to the means
Whereby the great human family can live in peace,
Each bearing after his own time the sacred impress, not of Caesar,
But of God.
In the name of womanhood and humanity, I earnestly ask
That a general congress of women without limit of nationality
May be appointed and held at someplace deemed most convenient
And at the earliest period consistent with its objects,
To promote the alliance of the different nationalities,
The amicable settlement of international questions,
The great and general interests of peace.
pilgrimakimbo 