So I had a few hours to “waste” yesterday. I dug out my handy dandy ION slide and negative scanner, and starting me some scanning.
Here’s one from 1982 of one of my besties, Kevin, and me, on the great wall of China…wearing Mao hats so that we could be like a billion Chinese people, cuz back in 1982 pretty much everyone in China wore a Mao hat…
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An artistic offering in my absence…
I love the art that is created by children.
This one is a particular favorite. It was created by my friend Kevin’s seven year-old nephew, also named Kevin.
Fabulous, really fabulous.
(Have fun in Cali, Clare!)
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(Posted in absentia)
Today’s Photo Friday is entitled:
“Doors, Doorways, & Entries″
I was out of town this week in Wisconsin and Illinois. My father’s oldest brother passed away and I went back to be with my family and for the funeral. I don’t get to see my midwest family often enough, and I very much enjoyed my time with them, despite the circumstances.
Spring was in full glory back there. It was like the Emerald City wherever you looked. It was so beautiful I had to ask myself “Why don’t I live HERE?”. But then I remembered that on one side of this gorgeous spring is a heinous winter, and on the other, an even more heinous summer – HOT and buggy! 
Camera in hand, I had this week’s challenge in my head wherever I went. My dad (originally from Kenosha, WI) and I drove around town and I took pictures of all of the houses he he lived in when he lived there. There are doors in most of those pictures, but nothing sang to me. I also have a pretty cool picture of the door to a lighthouse, but it didn’t sing either.
I left Kenosha after breakfast one morning and decided to drive north to Racine (next town up Lake Michigan) to just wander around the city where my best friend, Connie, had lived when I met her. I don’t know what I was expecting, but I ended up not staying long because I got really sad being there. So I headed south to Chicago. I love Chicago. My plan was to roam around down there and then head over to my friend Kevin’s brother’s house where I would meet up with his parents and we’d all spend the evening together before leaving the following morning. Kevin was in Vegas for work, so he couldn’t be there with us. 
Anyhoo, as I was driving down to Chicago, I saw this coming up in the distance, so I grabbed my camera, turned it on, aimed it through the windshield, and shot this pic at about 80 mph!
This sign always makes my heart beat fast because not too much farther down the road the skyline of Chicago starts to come in to view. The city is vibrant, and busy, and noisy, and crammed with people. And Kevin lives there. And so, it’s always a place of fun and excitement for me.
Only Kevin wasn’t there this time. I drove around town and was amazed at how much it had changed and grown since last I was there. But the more I looked, the more lonely I got.
I don’t know what I was thinking, going to these places where Connie used to be, and Kevin wasn’t, right on the heels of a funeral.
But anyway, my picture is more of an “entry” than anything else…an entry into the best big city in America.
Please visit the other participants’ entries and check out their work!
Idea jump! & Just for fun & A Curious State of Affairs & Sky Windows
Future Photo Friday titles:
Friday 23th May : Title by Julie: Emotion
Friday 30th May : Title by CordieB: Phantasmagoria
Friday 6th June : Title by Author: Diptychs
(or Triptychs if you prefer to use 3 images)
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Last night in Illinois, I went out to dinner with friends…my friend Kevin’s mother, father, brother, and his brother’s two kids. The brother (Kurt) gave me his hand to help me into the SUV to which I commented “chivalry is not dead!”. His son, seven, asked me “what does that word mean”. I told him that chivalry was when boys helped girls do things. Shortly after that, Kurt said something rather off-color to which I responded “I was wrong, chivalry IS dead”. We all laughed. His son asked me “What does it mean that that word you said–meaning chivalry–is dead?”. I explained in the best words I could to a seven year old. He seemed to understand as he told me “sometimes I help my sister, so that word’s not dead”. How CUTE is THAT???
Earlier I had given his little sister, age five, a little purple penguin Peek-a-Pooh, like this one:
It’s about an inch tall and hangs from a thin yellow cord. The two of them were struggling for control of said Peek-a-Pooh in the back seat. It was getting loud back there! Just as their dad had decided they were getting too rowdy and made them knock it off, brother managed to get the toy and it would appear from the timing that he had won the battle. I heard sister’s quiet little voice from the back seat state very matter-of-factly…
“It’s dead”.
Apparently she ALSO grasped the meaning of chivalry and the state of chivalry in the back seat last night!
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This is what happens when you start doing things like scanning stuff into your computer. You run across all kinds of stuff that trigger memories and then I’m compelled to blog on those memories. I have soooo many other things to write about, and yet, I am writing about THIS!
Five or so years ago, my friend Kevin and I took a trip back east. Our primary destination was Houghton College in Houghton, New York. Houghton is a small town about an hour south of Buffalo. We both started out there as freshman back in 1983. I only went for one year, but Kevin went on to graduate. We were going back for our 15 year reunion. I’m not sure how I ended up on the alumni list, but I am, and as such, I get invited to all the alumni stuff, like reunions.
I meet up with Kevin in Chicago and we fly to Buffalo where we rent a car. As we are driving through town, we pass this funenral home that caught my eye. “STOP THE CAR!!” I yelled. “We’ve GOT to take pictures by that sign.” I thought at first it was a joke. But it wasn’t. This funeral home was called Amigone. Am I gone? HA!
This trip also took us to the Anchor Bar for some Buffalo wings where Buffalo wings were invented. (Back in 1983 wings hadn’t yet become ubiquitous, in fact most people didn’t yet know what they were, and I discovered the delicacy in the basement snack bar of our student center.) And we went to Niagara Falls. While in Niagara, we decided to take a spontaneous trip up to Toronto since I’d never been there only to find that we arrived on the same day as the POPE and that it was World Youth Day in Toronto and there were tens of thousands of people in from out of town, and just TRY to find any hotel vacancies! Good timing, huh? Didn’t get to see the pope, but Toronto is sure a lovely town. Had some really good Japanese food there, too.
What a fun trip that was!
Hey! That was five years ago. I guess I missed the 20 year reunion this past summer!
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Twenty five years ago this month I embarked on a journey. I had no idea the profound changes that this journey would bring to my life when I got on a plane and flew to Florida to go on my second Teen Missions team. I would have posted this on the actual anniversary of my first day on that team, but I can’t find my journal or my “scrapbook”, so I’m not exactly sure what day that was! So I am randomly picking today to celebrate that day!
I had gone on a team to Haiti the year before. And I left some business unfinished when I was there. Other than I had a great experience and wanted more, that bit of unfinished business was the primary reason why I was going back on another team. I felt that the Lord had asked me to dedicate my life to His service. I assumed that meant the mission field at the time. But I had resisted making that dedication. And I knew I needed to do it. So, when the brochures came out for the 1982 teams, I immediately started to think about where I should go. There were a half dozen or so teams that caught my attention. But ultimately I wanted to go to Papua New Guinea or South Africa. There was another team though that I couldn’t get out of my head. A team that would take me to the Philippines and Red China. I couldn’t decide. After some thinking and praying, I decided PNG was not the right place. But I couldn’t decide between the other two. So I got a coin. Heads South Africa. Tails the Philippines. The instant that heads came up I knew where I was going. In the brief moment when my eyes first registered it was heads, I was disappointed. So I knew. I was going to the Philippines!
I was the last person on my team to arrive. I had met one of the boys on my team, Matthew, the summer before on the bus from LA to Florida. The team was starting to wonder if I was coming at all, but Matt knew that I was going to be late due to having to take finals, and assured them I was coming. I am told he was dancing through the jungle singing “Linda Lou, where are you?”. So, although no one had ever called me Linda Lou, or Lou, or anything even remotely like that, by the time I arrived, I had a nickname. A nickname with many variations which has stuck to this day.
And I met Connie and Kevin that summer. Actually, I met lots of people. But I never could have dreamed of how important Connie and Kevin would become to me when I first met them. I didn’t even LIKE Connie when I first met her! Who knew that by the end of the summer I would have two best friends in the two of them? Lifelong heart kind of friends.
A woman by the name of Marilyn Lazslo was the boot camp speaker that summer. Oh. My. Gosh. What an amazing woman. In the 60’s she went to the head hunting jungles of New Guinea with Wycliff as a single woman and lived in a village called Huana. She learned the language and translated the Bible. (They called her Mama Marilyn). Over the years I have run into Marilyn here and there. She most recently shared an evening with friends of mine in Pasadena. Boy, was I jealous of them! Another amazing thread which started that summer and has continued through my life to this day.
Our project was to build a church on the beautiful island of Bohol, in the city of Duero.
Here’s CHI PHI. And that’s me, on the scaffolding on the left of the photo, blowing a bubble.
What is CHI PHI? Since the team was going both to CHIna and the PHIlippines, we called it “Chi Phi” for short. (Note: although Chi and Phi are both greek letters, we didn’t pronounce “chi” the Greek way, we prounounced it like it sounds when you pronounce “CHIna”.)
I had the very unusual opportunity to get baptized while I was in the Philippines. Because the church we were working with was my home denomination (Evangelical Free), those of us on the team who belonged to an EV Free church at home were allowed to be baptized if we wanted. And I wanted. So, I was baptized 25 years ago on August 18th in the South China Sea off the coast of Bohol by Reverend Cennit along with three other teammates of mine and a dozen or so church members. God could have led me to be baptized anywhere and at any time. But He made it so I could have the most special baptism experience that I could ever have imagined. And I think that the four of us are the only four TMIers who have ever been baptized while on a team with Teen Missions that didn’t have permission from our parents beforehand. I thank God that Bob Lane was listening to God’s voice that day by allowing US to also listen. That baptism was a turning point in my life. Well, it was my “no turning back point”. God met me that day in Bohol. And He’s continued to meet me in ways I could never have imagined since that day. (If you are a Christian and have not been baptised, do it. Pray about when and where, and listen for the answer and do it.)
And, at debrief, in Cebu, I took care of that unfinished business I was talking about. I dedicated my life to full-time ministry. And the funny thing is, God hasn’t taken me up on that promise I made to him. At least not in a vocational way. Perhaps someday He will! I’m still willing!
So, unbelievably, it has been 25 years since the above picture was taken. We had a ten-year reunion to which fifteen or so people came. But I have lost touch with most everybody on this team over the years. This picture is on my bookcase in my bedroom so I think often of “Chi Phi”. And I wonder where Don is and if he and Narges have children. I wonder what ever happened to Stacey. I wonder why Matt is so elusive. And Judy? Where’d life take her? Eric. And Roby. They lived then not far from where I live now. Last I knew of him, Roby was married and had a bunch of kids. And Eric was living in Los Angeles being an actor, or something. Cricky. I’d sure love to see her. And freak-me-green Gordy? What did he grow up to be? And I wonder if any of them besides Matt and Kevin, and Bob and Betty, know that Connie died.
My head leaders that summer were Bob and Betty. They were pretty new to the Teen Missions organization back then and had only been staffers for a year or two. They were soooo strict! At least it seemed then like they were. I had such a chip on my shoulder back then that I think I wrote that Bob and Betty should never be allowed to lead a team again! Well, Bob and Betty are still with Teen Missions. I’m glad TMI didn’t take MY advice! Time has mellowed Bob and Betty, as it has mellowed me. I enjoyed every minute I shared with them at boot camp last summer and I’m certain I’m enjoying seeing them again this summer. I guess they’ve forgiven my rashness.
I was seventeen back then. Twenty five years have absolutely flown past since then. That summer, the people I met, and the experiences I had resonates throughout my life stronger and stronger every day. What a summer that was.
What a summer that was…
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(posted in absentia)
On top of being other frustrated things (photographer, writer, etc.), I am a frustrated artist.
When I was in the second grade, one of the upper grade teachers, Mrs. Jamieson, came to my classroom and saw a picture I had painted. It was a picture of an airplane, painted on that huge blue paper with those awful tempura paints, but something about it made her think I had some sort of aptitude for art. Mrs. Jamieson was the resident artist at Center Street School and taught sixth grade. And she arranged it with my teacher, Mrs. Wilkerson, to have me come to her class weekly to make art with her kids. And she arranged that to happen for the next four years until I was in her class as a sixth grader. She was an amazing teacher. I have been trying to find her so that I can thank her for being the teacher who most profoundly affected my life. She was a strong believer in “divergent thinking”. (More on sixth grade and divergent thinking in a later posting.)
I continued to take the occasional artsy sort of classes. Jewelry making in junior high, color theory in high school. But never really did anything after high school in the art arena. After taking a few years off from higher education, in 1987 I returned to school attending Saddleback College in Orange County. I took all sorts of classes there that tickled my fancy…like Spanish, and Japanese, and Music Appreciation. I also decided I’d take a beginning drawing class. On the first day we had to draw a simple still life. I picked an old tea pot and a pump sprayer. And we drew in pencil. Something about that drawing made the professor think I had some sort of aptitude for art and told me “no matter what it is you are studying here, you need to change your focus to art.” I told him I was studying to be a nurse and hoped to someday take my nursing skills to third world countries. Looking rather crestfallen, he told me that this aspiration of mine was much more important than art, but encouraged me to continue to persue it as a hobby if nothing else.
One of our art projects in the class was to create something using the pointillism technique. That is where the entire work is done using dots. Our assignment was to do something in simple black and white. I found a picture of a handsome older gentleman in an ad for Dewar’s (is that whiskey?) and turned it into this:
And it sat, with all of my other projects from that class in a black cardboard portfolio for years. In the mid 1990’s I was working for a center that performed joint replacement surgery. We had an annual fund raising event which included a silent auction. I was asked to donate something for one of these auctions and I decided that it might just be the right time to see if I could fulfill one of things on the List of 50 and sell a work of art. So I entered “Dewar’s” into the auction and it sold, for (I think) about $475. Probably purchased by someone who thought it looked like their grandpa, but that didn’t matter. I did it!
The last work of art I ever completed was in that class, back in 1987. It was my final project, which when I turned it in, again made my professor sigh and wish that I’d take up art as a career. My project was a picture of my friend Kevin building a truss in the Philippines:
Lately I have been thinking how much I’d like to return to my artsy roots and start creating again. I have a project in mind. For Connie and Phil’s wedding present they requested that I create something for them. I never did. For months I have been thinking of creating something in Connie’s memory for Phil. And interestingly enough, on my last visit to California while out to dinner with my brother, he reminded me that I still “owed” him that wedding present and that he is going to hold me to it, even though Connie is gone.
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Given to me by Larry of the blog "Hallelujahs"
What Did You Say?