In my memory, she only looks slightly older than her teenage self, in the middle of the back row in this photo of the Janes children taken in 1965:
(You can see some more childhood photos of her under her tag in my Flickr photos at http://www.flickr.com/photos/oddharmoni
Here are the things I want you to know about Joanne Strauch:
She was an Air Force flight nurse after joining the service right out of school.
She had two children born with hip dysplasia and kept in casts from the waist down for the first year of their lives. (My cousins are none the worse for wear and interesting, kind people now.)
She introduced me to cross-stitch when I was a little burrito, which I didn't know at the time would become a lifelong hobby for me. When I was 10, she stitched a monarch butterfly design for me on a sweatshirt that I still have today. (It is really amazing, people ask if they can touch it when I wear it. It's so detailed that it's hard to believe it's stitched.)
She was a tough broad (and I mean that with love and admiration) who always had a ready ear and an open heart.
I'll miss her but it is a relief to know she's not suffering now.
- Mood:
thoughtful
Jamin Buchanan "J.B." Wilson '99 died December 14th in a car accident near Speicher, Germany. He was stationed at Spangdahlem Air Base and was buried in Arlington National Cemetery on Christmas Day. [obituary]
Colorado memorial service:
Saturday, January 6th at 2:00 PM
Southern Gables Church
4001 S. Wadsworth Blvd (Hampden and Wadsworth)
Lakewood, CO 80123
303-986-1527
You were awesome, J.
- Mood:
sympathetic
Girl, 9, Killed By Circus Lion
MENA. Ark. Authorities attempted Wednesday to determine how a circus lion got loose and clawed to death a nine-year old girl in Mena. No one apparently saw the enraged animal grab little Maria de la Luz Tuesday night in the darkness outside the tent. Spectators watching a performance rushed outside upon hearing the screams of the victim, a granddaughter of performers in the Campa Brothers travelling circus. The lion, which is not full-grown, was found holding the girl in his clutches underneath a circus truck. The crowd stood helplessly until the animal trainer pried open the lion's jaws with a stick and led him back to his cage. The girl was dead before medical aid could reach her. There were conflicting reports as to whether the lion had been caged or staked outside on the abandoned airport grounds where the circus was held.
Source: The Newark Advocate, Wednesday, October 31, 1951
For those of your playing along at home, Maria Campa de la Luz was a first cousin to my grandmother, Blanca Campa [later Hall]. The lion was staked outside the cage because he had been hand-raised and considered tame; the animal trainer was the girl's father.
Battle of the Species
Man has reaped many rewards from his dominance of the animal kingdom. But animals are not his loyal followers; and he is still only slightly ahead. Last week the battle of the species was waged from Maine to Alaska.
ΒΆ In Mena, Ark., while the Campa Bros, circus trumpeted through its one-night stand, nine-year-old Maria Campa, granddaughter of one of the circus owners, was clawed and chewed to death by a young lion considered so tame he was tied to a stake outside his cage. Next day, as the Campa circus trundled along the rain-slicked road toward Mount Ida, two trucks overturned. Nine beasts scampered into Ouachita National Forest. A pursuing posse brought down one of two escaped leopards and recaptured a tame black bear and a rhesus monkey. The other leopard prowled all night before being tracked down by a small but heroic cur named Tony, whose owner, Roiston Fair, shot the leopard, but not before it had killed Tony. Still in the forest: a polar bear, a black bear, three monkeys.
...
Source: Time, Monday, November 12, 1951
I can only imagine him laughing in heaven about being remembered for frying balls.
Instead, he called back an hour later to tell me that Grandma passed on while he was on the phone to her hospital room letting his sister know when his flight arrives tonight.
Dad is upset that he wasn't there (he was down there last week and my family spent their spring break in LA last month), but all of her sisters were there, including her closest sister, my tia Irma, who came up from Veracruz to be with her.
Dios te bendilla, Grandma.
 |
 |
 |
Laurel with Grandma Blanca, July 2005 |
Tia Irma and Blanca in Mexico, April 2003 |
My folks, my sister, a family friend and Blanca, early 1980 |
- Mood: sympathetic
/me is silent for a moment
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rssnprobits.- Mood: thoughtful
- In anticipation of my sister and brother-in-law having children, Bobbie G. Designs' Fairy Tale Baby seems to strike a nice balance between something they'd like and quick for me to stitch.
- Local public radio show host Glenn Mitchell passed away Sunday. Our lunch hour won't be the same without his show.
- One of my friends from Colorado recently posted an entry on Gifted Children & Bipolar Parents that I found to be both interesting and satisfying to read. (If you want to add the RSS feed of his blog to your Friends view, it's devnulleddotcom.)
- We moved the flattened cardboard boxes worth saving (the rest went to the dumpster) to our storage unit Sunday, so I have a bit of decluttering to do in the less-crowded dining room before we can set up the table (discharged from sewing table duty last month). I'm tempted to make a quick tablecloth and buy flowers after the table's in place so it's less tempting to use it as a work surface, especially since I want to keep sewing activities other than fabric storage limited to the living room.
- Mood:
busy
- Mood: thoughtful
CRAWFORD, ROBERT L.
"CAP'N BOB" U.S. ARMY SPECIAL FORCES, RETIRED U.S.M.C.
Died Thursday, October 27, 2005.
No funeral services. Survived by mother Dorothy Stringer, children Robert and Denise Crawford, granddaughter Laurel Crawford, 2 sisters and extended family.
Published in the Denver Newspaper Agency on 11/2/2005.
- Mood: sympathetic
On Thursday, Himself's mother sent us an e-mail that Captain Bob was in the hospital and not expected to make it. We called the next day to see how things were going and I found out he died Thursday night after staying on life support for six hours to say goodbye to family. There will be a small service at Fort Logan on Monday.
I mostly caught up on laundry on Friday -- folded a load I'd left in the dryer, did and dealt with four more. There's one finished load sitting in the dryer but it's mine, so folding it is low on my priorities at the moment.
We made it up to Hickory Creek Park on Saturday just in time for our dutch ovens to be inducted into Scouting use with dutch oven cobbler. Laurel was thrilled at the playground right across from the covered picnic table our den was using and played there alternately between decorating her mini pumpkin, visiting with a little dog that had come with one of the families in our pack, helping me assemble two foil packs so our den could learn about how to assemble and cook them, and later giving out light sticks for the pumpkins and kids. She behaved beautifully at campfire time, eating peach cobbler and a few bites of my cherry cobbler, and even raised her hand to tell a joke although she got a little nervous in front of everyone. We got home in time for me to catch SNL, but I fell asleep during Weekend Update.
I've got to get back to cleaning now, but I'm not particularly looking forward to it because I've been having a hard time concentrating. Having the noise of two competing TVs and not being able to use my wireless headphones (wearing them exacerbates the psoriasis behind my ears, usually okay but bad now) is going to make doing quality work a challenge. Since I have to replace anything of value I pitch (which contributed significantly to how the kitchen got so cluttered) I've been leaving stuff that's not obviously trash or mine where I find it and now I have to figure out how to neatly rearrange it. Wish me luck, or something.
- Mood: busy
( Why I want to buy ephedrine and purchasing it )
...
In the meanwhile, I love how easy buying music from the iTunes store is -- after buying Sweet Honey In The Rock's children's albums for the midget last week, I bought myself two Laura Cantrell albums (Humming by the Flowered Vine and a 2003 live album originally released on eMusic) over the weekend and I'll be burning backups of them later this week. Biko appears to like "14th Street" as much as I can tell from her reaction -- she also likes the Indigo Girls and definitely dislikes anything with bagpipes.
...
I plan to try this recipe from Susie Bright the next time I remember to buy tomatoes: The Best Spaghetti You Ever Had.
...
Rest in peace, Bob Moog.
- Mood:
sleepy - Music:Laura Cantrell - Churches Off the Interstate [live at Schubas 6/7/03]
A lot of the memorials I've read go to either extreme, but Susie Bright wrote a particularly well-balanced tribute. The Salon.com article "The passion of Andrea Dworkin" is interesting but I found it a bit unsettling to wade through.
When I told Vogon that Andrea Dworkin had died, he replied "Who?". She may be remembered by some as an angry, bitter caricature, but her work is still worth reading at least once.
...
On a completely unrelated note, I am moderately cranky about my feet. It's been two weeks since I finished the course of antibiotics and they're still covered in itchy spots/splotches (they were fading but flared up like a mofo last weekend), extremely sensitive and swollen. They hurt whenever I stand, walk or sit without putting them up and go numb on the soles when I lie down.
My regular sandals (Teva Pretty Rugged Leather) are starting to cut into my feet when I wear them and my spare sandals with extra wiggle room (Birkenstock Milano, seen in the userpic for this post) are in Colorado. I'm debating asking someone to send them my way 'cause I don't have anything else to wear here without socks.
What color nail polish would play down the splotching on my feet?
- Mood:
tired - Music:Indigo Girls - Get Out The Map
Laurel and I were washing up in her bathroom after lunch when Vogon called me from the master bedroom. When I saw the handle of the fish net sticking out of the sink, I knew something had died.
Neither of us know how to break it to Laurel, but we agreed to dispose of her remains without her watching. He said he'd flush her, but he was worried she might not clear the drain because of her size (3 1/2" long); I replied that if she got stuck, I could plunge the fish, which we agreed sounded like a euphemism for sex after we stopped laughing.
While I was sitting down to blog that, he went into the kitchen for a bag to wrap her in and we laughed again when the bag he pulled out of the bag holder was from Petsmart. Since it was at the bottom, it may well have been the bag we brought her home in back in September.
On the bright side, now we have more time to get around to cycling one of the smaller tanks, which we'd been planning to do for her since she was significantly larger than everything else after the recent additions to the large freshwater tank.
- Mood:
macabre
I think he'll share my dismay that the Dead Milkmen's bassist committed suicide Wednesday, but at least he'll be braced for Bad News since I was sick when he left this afternoon.
In better news, he feels his interview went well. We'll know whether he got the position within the next few weeks; I'm hoping for a phone call (positive) instead of a letter (negative).
How much is the going rate for a babysitter for a three-year old? Little sister watched Laurel for three hours tonight and fed her dinner while I was sick and Mom was in class. She witnessed Laurel's l33t self-changing ability for the first time tonight, so now she doesn't think we're joking about it. (Instead of sitting on her potty, Laurel changes her own Pull-Up after soiling herself.)
Once my stomach settles enough to pass the half-hour interval between revolting, I'm taking one of my last phenergan and catching some sleep.
- Mood:
sick - Music:[TV] Futurama on Adult Swim
It must be a bad week now that Robert McCloskey's passed on too. He's always been one of my favorite authors, and between Make Way for Ducklings (which I own in both English and Spanish versions; if anyone knows of a Latin edition I'd buy it) and his wonderful Maine books (Blueberries for Sal, One Morning in Maine, Time of Wonder) I have such a hard time choosing a favorite.
My favorite duck crossing is not in Boston, though -- it's the one on Union Boulevard in Lakewood (south of 6th Ave). I'd always seen the signs on Union but had never seen the ducks until MileHiCon 1999, when I took a walk down Union and spotted the wonderful little ponds where they hang out. I highly recommend walking from 6th to Alameda along Union to anyone in the Denver area. Ducks make me happy.
- Location:35.405063,-77.902218
- Mood: nostalgic
- Music:[radio] All Things Considered
Forgot to turn the TV off at the end of NBC Nightly News and one of those entertainment news shows that follows it surprised me with the news that actor Michael Jeter died Sunday.
This is a bad year for children's shows -- Mister Rogers, Lynne Thigpen (the voice of Luna on Bear in the Big Blue House) and now Michael Jeter.
- Location:35.405063,-77.902218
- Mood:
shocked
( Minor rambling about Mister Rogers and NPR )
Going to my copy of his book You Are Special reminded me it's normal to mourn: "We need time to miss the people and the things we lose, no matter whether the loss is temporary or permanent" (100).
Fellow NPR listeners, a rebroadcast of two of his past interviews will be on Fresh Air tomorrow night.
- Location:35.405063,-77.902218
- Mood:
melancholy
( More details for the interested... )
Even if I wasn't aspiring to be a force of nature when I grow up, a little part of me wants to think that the earthquake today in Mexico was because of his passing. There. Now I feel better.
- Location:35.405063,-77.902218
- Mood: thoughtful
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