Folk Life Shoes

Eye Candy

First US Stamps

This month, 160 years ago, clerks hand cut the first postage stamps which went on sale in New York City in July 1847. A five-cent Ben Franklin and a ten-cent George Washington were the first two stamps. More than 130 other Franklin stamps followed, but Washington holds the record, at 305.

All in This Soup Together...

We humans pop up like weeds all over this earth. It could be in London, Cairo, Hong Cong, Moscow, Sao Paulo, or Carlisle, Pennsylvania. We have no choice where we appear. We just get thrown into the soup.

And we have no choice when we appear – Biblical Times, the Middle Ages, the Roaring Twenties, now. All of a sudden we’re just here.


We don’t choose our parents or our siblings. We don’t choose our skin color. We are born with a nationality (we really don't choose it) and usually keep it. We are taught a religion (again, not really a choice) and usually we keep it. We usually end up proud of our nationality and convinced that our religion is the “right” one.

But despite the fact that people have no choice in so many elements in their lives, we humans still CHOOSE to discriminate and turn horribly savage against other humans based on those very elements.

History has all the evidence:

White against Black
The White Man against the Indian
Protestant against Catholic
Hutu against Tutsis
Sunni against Shia
Indian against Pakistani
Nazi against Jew

Add up the carnage, the suffering, the senseless slaughter.

It’s astonishingly stupid, isn’t it. I can see stupidity winning out in the beginning, but after all these ions - come on - we should be evolving into something nobler, something smarter, something much better.

It’s hard to imagine where this civilization would be had we turned into something smarter, had we used all the time, money and effort spent on stupidity and instead actually tried to make a better world.

After a brief morning rain...

Neighborhood Model

ECJ

"Balmer" Transit

At the Arboretum...

Chateau at the State Arboretum of Virgina

In the Red or in the Black

“Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen six, result: happiness.

Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pound ought and six, result: misery.”

~ Charles Dickens

God, that Annette had a nice pair...

Baubles, Bangles, and

BEADS

Welcome to the semi-precious beaded world of wire-wrapped fancy jasper, Peruvian opal chicklet, vermeil charm with iolite dangles, and lemon chalcedony briolette and ruby & citrine confetti.

Take a look at Alison Baraf’s classy collection. There’s something there for everyone.

THE FACETS COLLECTION

Kittens at the Abbey

Bonfires & Illuminations

"I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated, by succeeding Generations, as the great anniversary Festival. It ought to be commemorated, as the Day of Deliverance by solemn Acts of Devotion to God Almighty. It ought to be solemnized with Pomp and Parade, with Shews, Games, Sports, Guns, Bells, Bonfires and Illuminations from one End of this Continent to the other from this Time forward forever more.

You will think me transported with Enthusiasm but I am not. — I am well aware of the Toil and Blood and Treasure, that it will cost Us to maintain this Declaration, and support and defend these States. — Yet through all the Gloom I can see the Rays of ravishing Light and Glory. I can see that the End is more than worth all the Means. And that Posterity will tryumph in that Days Transaction, even altho We should rue it, which I trust in God We shall not."

~ John Adams, in a letter to his wife, Abigail, July 1776

How Do You Like the Pool?

The Aging of Buddy and Sky

Sky & Buddy

It had been awhile since I’d spent time with the dogs.

Buddy the dog is 11 years old now, and he’s beginning to act his age.

Not long ago he could leap up on the bed almost effortlessly; this time I had to help him up. And now he wheezes, sniffles, snorts, slurps, and farts himself to sleep.

Sky, the Sheltie, once the sleek little herder, is now fat and gimpy. The vet’s put him on a diet and prescribed some pills for an arthritic condition.

And, of course, the sure sign that they’re older is that I couldn’t teach them any new tricks this time.