a little red hen

A Baby Girl, Our Newest Addition

Last night a call came from our son-in-law in Portland Oregon.  Our Aries daughter had given birth to her third child, a little girl, another Leo--just like her New York City grandma.  Now I'll always remember Millie Garfield's August 18 birthday.

This morning we talked with the new mom.  She sounds great and it was wonderful to hear  the baby's gurgling.  It's hard to be so far away at a moment like this but we'll be back there in October.

Seems the delivery occurred in her front hall!  Her modest spouse, or maybe there was too much excitement last night, had not told us that he cut the umbilical cord.  In the ambulance on the way to the hospital.  Such drama.  Though we missed it, our son and his family were visiting from NYC, so we'll get more firsthand details.

Our knitted presents are just completed.  Above is Ron's handspun, handknit wool crib quilt...first time he's knit something more evolved than a hat or scarf.  Single crochet around the edge is my work.  To the left are cotton knits.  Purple hat by Ron.

Kimono pattern from Mason-Dixon Knitting, 1824 cotton, same for booties (Maxine at Knitty City).  Kay Gardiner, co-author of the book, approved when I showed it to her last week at Knitty City.  She and Ann Shayne have a new book, will be in Portland on tour about the time we'll be there.  Maybe I'll bring the new girl in her kimono to Powell's for their appearance?

Yes, I'm a little giddy.  You would be too if you started out as a lonely only child and become a matriarch, I guess, to an expanding family...four grandchildren!      

Millie Garfield, Share My Birthday Baloon!

To wish you a happy 83rd birthday, had to find something different for the first member of the famous Society of Little Red Hens.

Was that only two years ago?  Does it feel like much longer?  There are so many questions I'd like to ask you but I can see by your post yesterday at My Mom's Blog that you were already very busy with presents.

Please share the pleasure this unexpected baloon has brought to my space.  First one ever, it was my son-in-law's idea (my daughter tells me) to add it to the birthday flowers sent from Oregon.

For some reason, though the flowers are gone, I've kept the baloon as it moved around my apartment, taken pictures of its ups and downs--cieling to floor.  And here it is two weeks later, ready for YOU!

And for extra-special good wishes for continued good health, good humour, and blogging fun, something more. Saw this rainbow round a fountain in Central Park the other day.   With other older women who live in my co-op, I'm taking a weekly hike as part of  the City's Big Apple Senior Walk effort-- adds steps to Elderexercise too. 

I see that Claude at Blogging in Paris has sent you gorgeous birthday flowers. So many of us are enjoy the chance to travel your way to thank you for the great, good humor you share with all us elders-in-blogs.

Olympics Frenzy: A View from Grandma

Chinese women and men, 8/9/08, Long Beach on Long Island, New York, play volleyball.  Net provided by beach, Chinese flag is their own.  Why so important to them?  Read HERE.

Over at Hattie's Web strong negativity toward the Olympic games.  My inclination would be different, though I agree with her points about organized "sports" in the U.S. as an overblown commercial enterprise.  But, my immodest proposal, is to reframe the conversation around Americans and sports.

Hattie and I are both grandmothers to children who live in the Northwest.  I think it would be useful for us to begin a conversation about the value of chilren's school sports to alleviate troublesome issues in the culture--bullying, obesity, excessive competitiveness.  We could re-visit Mister Roger's Neighborhood and co-op-er-ation, perhaps encourage a revival?

I'd ask local politicians to pay more attention to funding public school sports as a direct line to reducing childhood obesity.  New York's Mayor Bloomberg has made calorie posting on menus his latest public health campaign.  This is the same mayor who made a controversail decision for an exclusive deal with Snapple, sugary, fructose-filled beverage, for NYC schools.    While it did nothing useful for kids' health, it also turned out to be a seriously flawed financial arrangement.

When I taught second grade on New York's  lower east side in 1966, it was not possible to use the glass-littered concrete "playground" next to the school.   No indoor program.    The best I could do was walk us to nearby  Thompkins Square Park,  famous at the time as an encampment for homeless people, a hippie hangout rife with drugs. 

Currently, I hear the eliminations of phys ed in public schools across the country.  In New York:

One reason for the lack of physical activity in the city's 673 elementary schools, according to a [2003] study by State Assemblyman Jeff Klein's oversight committee, is that many of them do not have functioning playgrounds; that space is filled with "temporary" trailers for extra classrooms needed for these overcrowded schools. Some of the trailers have been there for as long as eight years.

Today I tried my idea on another grandmother at lunch.  What about elders taking on issues  outside their immediate, personal concerns?  I asked her if we are too ready to accept  our invisibility in the public space.  Are we so anxious for approval from our grown children that we accept the "walking on eggshells attitude," described in this book by Jane Isay as the best way to negotiate these relationships?

Gee, I thought our lifetime of experiences and our perspective as "historians" were meant to be important in the life of a growing family, a community, a nation.  We need to claim our rights as "gatekeepers for the future."   That's the beauty of blogs--to have our say--at least among ourselves.  I have some topics in mind.

What do you think, Hattie, and the rest of you elder-lurkers?

Addendum: It was through our connecting through Time Goes By,  that it was possible for  Claude at Blogging In Paris and me to develop the idea a few months ago for our  online excercise support group,  ELDEREXERCISE.  Going very well, thank you.

We all use Ronni Bennett's  blogposts as a touchstone,  a rich medium.  On my visits to TGB, I often click on one of the sidebar blogs and discover another fresh, Elderblogging voice.  Ronni clearly enjoys being our link  to the content and ideas she generates.  She encourages us to branch out, make our voices heard.  Whenever we do, it's a tribute to her efforts.

Harlem Sky, Storms Racing Northwest

Cigarette Coupons: A Diversion from Ongoing Woman-Abuse in Politics

Three fronts, one back, cigarette coupons.   Purchased in Portland, Oregon, 2008.  First drawn to them by size--3.5 x 6.3 cm--followed by curiosity.  "Where Flax is principally grown" and the colored map, and unknown terms, "Heckling and Scutching Flax."

The small sign next to them, "Japanese cigarette papers, $2.00," explained the writing on the back.  Under the Japanese, light green image, barely visible, "PIRATE Cigarettes W.D. & H.O. Wills, Briston & London."  Appears to be early 20th century.

From the Tobacco Timeline , a must-read for reformed/ anti-smokers, like myself,* I'm reminded of my own smoking mother:

1904 (the year of her birth on the lower East Side) New York: A judge sends a woman to jail for 30 days for smoking in front of her children.... A woman is arrested for smoking a cigarette in an automobile. "You can't do that on Fifth Avenue," the arresting officer says.

1933 (my birth): Chesterfield begins running ads in the New York State Journal of Medicine, "Just as pure as the water you drink . . . and practically untouched by human hands."  My mother must have believed this, collected paper coupons glued to the back of each  Rahleighs pack.    It might have bothered her, a serious leftist politically, that much of the dirty work of tobacco preparation was done for low wages by young women in this Bristol, England, factory (ca. 1920).  But American radical thinking in her time, late 1920s and 1930s, was focused on domestic labor issues. 

Like the lives of coal miners and their families who lived at the edge of poverty, often in company towns.

A feminist lens on the world can get in the way of simple pleasures. Freud or W.C. Fields, "Sometimes a cigar is just a smoke"?  Or a collectible bauble does not have to remind me of North Carolina, source of so many big, bad leaves, home-base of our recently disgraced former Presidential candidate.

At Writerquake, Lydia attacks Friday's sad news, by throwing words at the wall, those of John and Elizabeth Edwards' from their interviews.  Using Wordle, a cloud technique, she offers a creative approach to disperse the anger and sadness many feel toward the couple.

[*For more on the perniciousness of direct marketing, see Trinkets & Trash, "artifacts of the tobacco empire."]