The Family That Rolls Coins Together. . . Gets a New Big Screen TV Together

One Thankgiving Day in the late 90s, we cut open the blue crayon bank and rolled the coins. I found these photos today and thought I'd share. It took us nearly all day to roll what turned out to be around $1,700. We bought a big, clunky (no flat screens back then) TV. Now its too big and works too well to justify getting rid of it. We hardly ever watch it anyway, now that the baby bird is grown up and lives far away. It's just a fun family memory. Never underestimate the small things. . . like change. 

Keeping the Blog Alive

Hi everyone, I am not shutting this blog down, at least not now; but, I am on hiatus from posting to it. I have been traveling much and continuing to work at the job I retired from a while back. Just setting different priorities for now. I feel so fortunate and blessed to have such a full and rich life.

I am focusing my current efforts on my poetry blog at http://www.n2poetry.com/. Please join me there for a while, at least until I re-energize this site.

Love and Hugs,

Grace Curtis

Adanna Literary Journal: A Collection of Contemporary Love Poems

So excited to be reading at this event on April 8, 7 pm at the College of St. Elizabeth, in Morristown, NJ.

Adanna Literary Journal: A Collection of Contemporary Love Poems:


ADANNA LITERARY JOURNAL CONTEST WINNERS


Founder & Editor, christine redman-waldeyer

assistant editor, david crews


...



Glassblowers at the Museum of Glass in Tahoma, Washington

 from The Seconds--Claude Laurent, Glassblower, 1850

by Linda Bierds

And thinking of seconds--first time, of course, then
the hapless devoted to step from behind
with their handkerchiefs and swords, ready to give shape
to another's passion, as a body gives shape to a soul.

from one of my favorite books of poetry, The Seconds.

Having a 25 year old child -- it's not possible, is it?

This year, our daughter, Sam, turns 25. I have to keep reminding myself that I am old enough to have a child that age, although I could actually have one much older, but that’s another story.

For good reason, I have not shared much with my daughter about the fact that I spent my entire 25th year living onboard a sailboat and actually sailing through the Caribbean during some of that year. My parents could only communicate with me by sending letters to General Delivery Key West, Miami, Nassau, San Juan. . .you get the picture. (You can read my journal entries, presented in weekly installments, in reverse chronological order on my Tumbler site, if you are so inclined. Click on the tag, Ship’s Log to get to all of them). Except for one raging storm that lasted a few days, during which I had to use seasickness suppositories to keep from becoming too dehydrated since I couldn’t keep anything down, it is actually pretty tame stuff. What I am sure was not “tame”, was the angst I caused my parents and family, wondering where I was and what I was doing, or even if I was still alive. I can’t imagine how I would feel if our daughter suddenly left the country and I was not able to get in touch with her easily. Times are different now. I'm not just saying that because I am old (older). When I finally flew home to Ohio, the entire family—orchestrated by my mother, I’m sure—was at the airport to greet me. It was a clear message to me that I was loved and missed. Oh, and by the way, I wouldn’t trade that year for anything.

What brought this to mind was an article that ran in the Dayton Daily News yesterday written by Dayton writer, Sharon Short. It made me think of being a young adult myself, and. . . of having my own young adult who, like Sharon’s daughter, occasionally worries about the parentals! You can read Sharon’s delightful article at the Dayton Daily News Site.

The Truth About Memory

There is a plethora of research on the topic of memory accuracy. One need only search the internet using those terms to find numerous scientific studies discussing theories about it—Gestalt tradition, special memories, schema theory, post-event misinformation, memory for gist….well you get the gist. But, this is not a scholarly article. Instead, it is simply my musings on the fact that I have come to realize my memories of past events might not be as accurate as I have always assumed them to be. 

I am not talking about the kind of memory we are all afraid we might lose one day—how to get to the grocery, for instance, or the name of our spouse. No, I am talking about the good ole memories of past events, the stories out of which we have spun our identity.

This realization--that maybe my memories of past events are not always accurate—feels important to me, not because I am afraid I will start forgetting them, or not because I am going to start questioning the accuracy of everything I think I remember, but rather, because it feels like a more reasonable way of considering past events and by consequence, the way they have shaped my life.  

This must be a big problem for memoirist—the accuracy of the details as they write. I know that when I am recalling events from childhood, like in my last post about life-long friend Noni Wood, many of the details are sketchy—like where an event happened, in what year, at what age, who else was there, who said what exactly, and so forth.  With thought and exploration, I found, I could begin to reconstruct some of the details, but I know that even details I would swear are accurate, can only at best be branded as “my version of the story.” And, my version is important only because of the impact it had on me at the time and the impact, it apparently still has on me because I am recalling it now.

 

What I am not talking about is the inaccuracy of such details, like whether or not someone really was a drug addict and went to rehab. I know the big things are accurate. I am talking about some of the finer points that don’t alter the impact of the event as life-shaping but lose their sharper focus over the years. For instance, I recently heard a couple arguing over whether it was 2000 or 2001 that they went on a particular cruise. It was ridiculous discussion because what they were concerned about didn’t alter the point of the story which was that the husband almost missed getting back onto the boat at one of the ports-of-call. 

Memory and Salvador Dalí

What made me start thinking about this topic was a recent trip I made to the Salvador Dalí Museum in St. Petersburg, Florida. The Dalí is a wonderful place to visit. It is a mecca for those interested in his work and in American Surrealism in general. While there, I picked up the museum catalog, something I always do because I love the words used to describe art. The day following the visit, I read the catalog and happened upon this passage in reference to a Portrait of My Sister, (1923), about Dalí and his sister, Ana María. (I have found another references to this work, that shows its titles as, Portrait of My First Cousin, 1923.) Here is what the catalog says of this work:

Another interpretation of the over-painting is that it reveals the tension growing between the artist and his sister. Close during their youth, Dalí and his sister grew distant once Gala, his future wife entered his life. The two women disliked each other from the start. When Dalí published his creative biography, The Secret Life of Salvador Dalí, in 1941, filled with outrageous and shocking stories about his behavior as a boy, Ana María felt compelled to challenge his carefully orchestrated stories. In 1950 she published  Salvador Dalí as Seen by His Sister, presenting his youth in far more ordinary terms. Instead of a monstrous child, she presents her brother  simply a spoiled child, and she blames Gala and the Surrealists for encouraging his aberrant fantasies. (34)

This painting which is actually two portraits, can be seen as an early (Dalí at age 19) example of Dalí’s propensity to compose work that is not simply a retelling of the visual image but rather an exploration of life’s complexities and possibilities. The original portrait—the one that is considered to be right-side up, is more neo-classic in its conception while the second portrait—the one that is upside down—is  described by the catalog as Cubist. The catalog suggests, the version of Ana María painted upside down, is most likely a reflection more of new artistic influences in the young painter's life although it is not entirely out of the question that the very different portrayal was a reflection of their changing relationship.

The point of this story is to highlight how different the two versions of Dalí’s early life are—his memories of his early life presented in his autobiography, versus his sister’s memories of his early life as presented in her biography of him. Dalí chose to tell his story of being an outrageous child because it suited his self-image. Ana María chose to portray him as merely spoiled because that suited her purpose of getting back at Dalí for abandoning her as his model and confident in favor of Gala Éluard, new life-long model and wife. I haven’t read the two books so, I can’t say which feels more believable to me. Unless you are testifying as an eye-witness in court—it’s pretty much irrelevant; but it illustrates my point perfectly. I would likely have a different, though close, version of an event—say, the time when as a child, I bit a hole in my sister’s red sweater—than my sister would have, or than, say a friend would have, or than my husband might have of some other shared event.  I believe, we create (or rather recreate) and cling to memories that support the image we have of ourselves, or at the very least are versions of a truth about ouselves we have come to believe in or want to believe in.  

I don’t think I have always understood that. Instead, I have been more inclined to believe my version of the important stories of my life is accurate, or at least, more accurate than anyone else’s version. Interestingly, doesn’t this suggest that there might be a reason for things, like forgiving and reconciliation since there is the possibility we might be seeing the event wrong? Or, might this be reason to put some things where they belong, firmly in the past and not a part of our present? The catalog says that Dalí and Ana María never reconciled. Clearly memories are tied to something deep and life-shaping in us.

Capturing the Facts in Photographs and Journals

On my trip to the museum and to St. Petersburg, I took a lot of pictures. I always do and that got me to thinking that maybe it is this problem with memory and its inaccuracy that drives me to take pictures and to keep a journal. I want to remember a sunset, to remember what someone’s face looked like at a specific moment—my daughter’s face, my husband’s face, for example, or perhaps a sunrise behind a bridge.

On the first day of 2012, the sun rose at 7:35 a.m. just behind the bridge that crosses the cut from the Gulf of Mexico into Clearwater Harbor above Sand Key. The sky was layered with pinks, corals, yellows and blues. I was there with my husband. The view from our hotel room was beautiful. I am sure I will remember it vividly for the rest of my life, but I took a picture of it just to be sure.