Icarus and her little habits are driving me nuts!

Here is the Icarus cat.  As you can see she is helping me write my blog.  She knows I do not need these notes.  I am going to write about her and she is right there in all her glory.  I lay back in my recliner to meditate on life and rest my eyes for a brief moment and she comes out of no where and lands on my chest with her paws on my face.  Then she "kneads" my chest.  I wake up in the night with her perched on my shoulder.  That is a very weird sensation!

Right now I am setting her gripped with terror because I do not know where she is.  I do, however, strongly suspect that she is off hunting.  Soon the doggie door will snap and she will bound in with (hopefully) a dead bird.  Such is not always the case.  Sometimes it is a centipede flailing around in her jaws.  Sometimes a live bird which she lets go and then tries to catch again.  Once it was a snake.  I have had a gopher, grasshoppers, mice, something I can only hope was a mole.  Not as good as Boots who was an avid hunter and once brought me a Hawk!  Do not know whose eyes were bigger that day, mine, Boots' or the Hawk!  I do know the cats hunt for my food because they love me and feel they must take care of me.  I, in turn, furnish this feline with a place to live, a continual supply of cat food, fresh water, dogs to play with and a pillow in the office window so she can watch the birds at play.

Icarus thinks she is a dog and that is good.  She goes out with me to do chores and works in the garden.  She wrestles with Elvira and some times Daisy.  She runs across the yard and lands on Elvira to get a free ride into the house.  Ok, enough about the cat.  I am off to do something that I am sure will be in contrary to what she wants me to do, but such is life.

For sale: A vacation home in Longton, Kansas!

Here is something that might interest you.  I know it interests me.  This is Longton, Kansas kind of down in the Southeast corner of Kansas.  Sort of a little Garden of Eden.  The first shots are just that.  A couple show Longton Main Street with a tree growing out of a roof, the general store and a big red barn.  One is of a vacant house grown up in underbrush that is just for the sake of art.

But the rest of them are of a 3 bedroom, 2 bath house with a 3 car garage and a workshop located on 5 lots two blocks off Main Street.  My daughter Patty, went to an auction and in true Seeger fashion, lost control and bought a  house.  She lives in Western Kansas.  The house is in Eastern Kansas.  The words logical and prudent never were used much in our family.  So here it sets and is used only when someone needs a place to stay while visiting .....nowhere. 

Patty did say she wanted to sell this.  I am sure it could be had for uner $25,000 and would make a very nice retirement home.  Not a lot of jobs in the Longton area so I would not recommend it for a working family.  But I could see me moving there and having a little shop out in that big garage.  But I love Colorado.  But we will see.  If you are at all interested give me a shout out!

Please meet my third daughter, Dona Marie Seeger.

Let me see if I can keep up with this slide show.  Doubt that I can.  But here is a little tip for you; in the lower left corner of the slide show is a white square.  If you click on that it will turn on the captions and you can read who they are.  That Google is so smart!  The first picture will hopefully be my lovely daughter Dona Marie. I think she is the only one of the original 5 that actually stayed a blonde because she is a blonde.  Dona was born on our anniversary, October 30, 1964.  That was the only anniversary Earl ever took me out for.  I was married on October 30, 1960.  (I think)  The plot thickens.  My brother was killed on October 30, 1965, so I missed her first birthday.  And when she turned one year old, she had a new brother who was one month old.  Busy little girl that year, I was!

Patty and Dona were always very close and not just because they were one year apart, but because they just were.  In typical middle child fashion, she was neither a leader, nor a follower.  She always had the sweetest smile of any of my kids.  Just like a little angel.  Since she had to give Sam the bottle when he was born, she was my little thumb sucker.  She would hold a half slip that was some kind of slick material in one hand as she sucked her other thumb.  And the first word she spoke was "lip".  My sister in law thought her mouth was sore until I explained that it was "slip" and not "lip".

Dona was always a little small since she was born about three weeks early. We were living in Garden City, Kansas at the time.  Dona lived with her dad  more than me after we were divorced. But that was alright.

She went to Center Beauty College here in Pueblo and got her license in Cosmetology.  Her dad had been a very good friend of Frank Shultz who founded the school.  When her dad passed she went back to Lakin, Kansas and opened a Beauty Salon that she named Scissorhands.   At that time she had one son, Jason.  Jason is married to Chelsea and they have two little blondies, Jalin and Jaycee.   That makes Dona a grandmother and me a great grandmother.  Her daughter in law, Chelsea works with her and they seem to have a pretty good clientele.       

She remarried and had a second son, Joey.  That husband passed while Joey was quite young.  Joey is still at home and still single and I am very glad of that since he is barely out of puberty.  Soon enough he will be bringing home a little girl and it will be downhill from there.  Or not. 

Dona is named after Duane's sister, Dona, with one "n".  I have a sister named Donna that is spelled with 2 "n's".  Dona enjoys things in life much as her father did.  Fishing, hunting, gardening, and just about anything to do with the

great out doors.  She loves animals and has a plethora of cats.

She and Patty live on ten acres outside Lakin that they inherited from their father.  They have seperate homes, but remain connected by the land.  Lakin is a small town in Western Kansas.

And this is about all I can write about Dona without giving all the secrets away.  I know she is a very good grandmother and has the two girls for the night at least once a week.  She remains friends with her first husband who is Grandpa to the little girls.  I am very proud of the way she has carved out a niche in life and made herself fit right into it.  Very independent and as you can see by this picture, a very lovely young lady and who would guess she is a grandma!

 

Dona Marie Seeger

Eleanor Burns slide show

The slide show for Eleanor Burns is located at the top left of what ever page you are reading.  Please do not ask me how I did that and I bet I could not do it again, but that is where you will find it.  And I bet when I post a new slide show Eleanor will be history.

Peace Pilgrim link.

http://www.peacepilgrim.com/steps1.htm#4prep

Daughter called a bit ago to tell me I had forgotten to put the Peace Pilgrim up as promised.  So rather then write my opionions of this I will let you read and come to your own conclusions.

Let me know what you think!

Eleanor Burns and the Quilters Retreat here in our fair city!

 I am hoping to get a slide show up and running here, but I am not having much luck right now.  So here is the deal, Bret works for Sprinkles Sewing Center.  And so does his girlfriend, Amanda.  It is just one big happy family over there as near as I can tell.  Now Sprinkles is a very successful business and Jerry and Kathy know how to make it pay.  They put the customer first, which is always a good thing.  They have a beautiful store on Eagleridge on the North side of town.  They recently opened a store in Canon City.  Along with the machines they offer personal service and lots of classes.  I have attended the classes and they are great.  Always knowledgeable staff.

   So now they decided to put on a 3 day extravaganza and call it the "Eleanor Burns Quilt Retreat."  Three full days of Eleanor Burns and quilt classes up the wazoo.  An event like this does not throw itself together without a lot of planning.  First arrangements had to be made for the Convention Center.  And that costs a pretty penny to lease that thing for 4 days.  The Convention Center is one of Pueblo's jewels.  In the slide show you will see several shots of the wall of heroes and the statues out front.  Pueblo is the "Home of Heroes" because it has four Congressional Medal of Honor recipients in  its population. http://www.pueblomohfoundation.com/

   Back to the event.  Eleanor Burns has/had a quilting show on PBS for many years and I used to tape her shows back when I had a VCR.  She would pop in every Tuesday afternoon  at 2:00 and teach me how to make a quilt.  She made it look so easy.  And I did actually make a quilt or two from the show.  Wonderful teacher. But I did not sign up for this event because I am just not that into quilting anymore.  I weave now.  But since the kids were on me about just stopping in I thought I might as well.  They have a mini store set up there on the floor and quite a reduction in price on lots of notions, so I thought, why not.

   Well, I must say I was most impressed.  First with Bret and Amanda and the professional manner in which they conducted themselves.  See, I am used to the slobs that live here, not the well mannered, helpful couple I encountered at the event.  There were people everywhere and I took the opportunity to check out the classrooms.  Seems there were three of them.  I did not take time to count the machines, but there must have been 100 machines in those 3 rooms.  And there was some learning going on.  When Amanda asked if I would like to meet Eleanor Burns I jumped all over that!  And I must say, she was as lovely in real life as when I watched her on television.  First thing I told Amanda to take our picture and Eleanor decided to share her pink boa with me.  I just thought that was right neighbourly of her!

   Of course when I told her I was Bret's mom she was most impressed and had to tell me how much she liked him and what a fine boy he was.  And how handsome.  And how much she liked Amanda and "oh, they are a couple!  How nice."

   Well, by then I had pretty well shot my wad so I wandered on outside.  What had started off as a fairly normal day had sure turned into a bright spot for me. Little story I can share with my grand kids.  Like they will have any idea who Eleanor Burns is.  Maybe I will dig out my VCR tapes.  Can I play those on a DVD player?

   Any way, I met a lovely lady today and shared her boa.  Had lunch with my friend, Tim.  Visited briefly with my friend Andy.  Pulled a few weeds.  Watched the geese swim in the new stock tank and made a batch of soap. Touched bases with my friend back East.  And now I am ready for bed.  Kind of makes me think I might have happy dreams tonight.

  

Peter, Paul and Mary

Well, I got up this morning with Peter, Paul and Mary on my mind.  Do you remember them?  Some women might dream about Fabio or some such nonsense, but here is what happened.  I was given a link for Peace Pilgrim and I started reading that.  This is/was a very wise woman who gave up everything to search for inner peace.  I will give you the link at the end of this, so watch for it.  It is well worth a little more then a cursory glance.  I am going to try to follow some of her teachings, but I can not foresee giving up my home and car and all that and walking off across the country hoping some one will feed me and give me a bed for the night. But the basic truths look very promising.

  Back to Peter, Paul and Mary.  These three people came to prominence in a coffee shop in Greenwich Village way back in the early 60's.  Remember the 60's?  Sure you do!  I recall like it was yesterday.  I was newly married and hopelessly in love with life.  Hubby was a tree trimmer and moved around a lot, but there were dreams and hopes.  And pretty soon there were babies.  That slowed the moving around down to a crawl.  We were in Garden City, Kansas when I realized that Viet Nam was more than the government was telling us.  How long had it been going on and what was it?  Did we ever really know the depth of that era?  How much was covered up and for how many years?  I talk to old timers now who still know and refuse to talk about Cambodia and wht went on there.  Peter, Paul and Mary knew.  They sang about it and we marched about it.  Civil Rights?  They were there.  So was I.

  Where were you when Oswald shot Kennedy?  When Ruby shot Oswald?  Did you hear Martin Luther King, Jr's I have a dream speech?  Did you see him fall?  Tommy Cash sings a song that covers that era.  If you can listen to this  and not reflect, you are probably one of my very young readers.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3uGc62RWIkc

   But through it all Peter, Paul and Mary were singing the folk songs.  I did not know at the time that they were folk songs, only that they expressed what I was feeling along with a whole nation.  And I think they really believed in what they sang about.  If I  Had a Hammer!  This Land is My Land!  Where Have all the Flowers Gone? Blowin' in the Wind.

  After Mary was gone Peter and Paul still continued to fight for what they had believed in  for so long.  In 2010 they sent a letter to the National Organization for Marriage (who campaigns to stop gay marriage and civil unions) telling them to stop using their song This Land is My Land in their rallies because it was " directly contrary to our advocacy position. "  Principled people, especially in the entertainment industry are sometimes hard to find.

   But what really makes me sad is that there will never be an era like that and there are not words in my vocabulary to describe how we felt.  Music is the one medium that comes closest and Peter, Paul and Mary were the icons of the time.  But Mary is gone and while we get out the old guitar and sing the old songs at the Peace Flotilla and in the coffee shop, it is pure nostalgia.  Sort of the Don Quixote and the whole tilting at windmills thing.  The dragons have all been slain.   We now our government would never lie to us and that the printed word is the one we can believe.  Oh, wait.  Seems I see some Senator hanging his head and saying "Sorry.  I lied."  And I see a crumbling Newspaper Empire because someone hacked the phones and got caught.

   But it is still different.  In this day and age information is instantly at our fingertips.  We do not have to wait for a trio to pick up a guitar and tell us about the wrongs in the world.  And I am going to save Peace Pilgrim for another day.  Today I am going to listen to Peter, Paul and Mary and relive my lost youth.