There is no time for me today to compose a new Post but I fel I must say something as I am going to make another attempt at posting something in my blog.

I could talk about Donald Trump and rant and rave about the pros and cons of today's Politics but it is all so'senseless and destructive. I do wonder what comes next? The Media reporters seem to know all about it.Running for President means someone is going to 'dig' deeper than deep for the follies of the past - nothing 's held sacred. Who has not slipped in trying to grow up and learn? Accountability - wow! that is a big word and means somewhat the same as Responsibility - we should learn and practice these two words before we leave home. I planned my day before I crawled out of bed this morning and if I m going to write a new Post I have to say something worthwhile - so bear with me I wil talk to you soon -I will find something interesting to say - I would like to please a few followers. Any suggestions? MIZPAH!

HERE I am\-another year has passed and I am entering a New Post. I must do better than this a new post -once a year I sit at the computer and composeI will try and post at least, A few friends gave me a picnic Birthday party in the park this August. It was lovely and there was laughter and the passing of Picnic fare and of course the opening of presents.There was a terrific West wind but we managed to keep things anchored. At the end of festivities we parted and said our good-byes

It is many years ago when last I remembered celebrating a birthday out of doors - I was 18 years old
and I am ninety-eight now, the name o  f the place was Hungry Hollow and it was a strange hollow right in the middle of a long stretch of the Canadian prairie. Saskatchewan is the ancestral home of the Cree Indian. We called them Indians then,  now it is Aborigines in Canada- Native Americans here which to me seems demeaning in some strange way- at least to me
.Because my family emigrated and we spoke in a tongue familiar in Northern England,Yorkshire, close to the Scottish border and another honored tongue, but was strange and awkward in the prairie
expression.
I have spoken about language and birthdays - nothing very strange. I will write something moe inteesting.

CHANGES

I rolled over in my bed this morning and tried to focus on my digital clock so I could see the time. Through the slits of my sleep filled eyes I managed to discern the numerals - 4:22 - much too early for me to get up for the day. I turned over and pulled up the duvet, my legs were cold. I left my patio door open a crack or two when I retired, as I do every evening. I like to sleep with fresh air in my room. However, the morning breezes sweep up the hall and over my bed and my legs under the covers, which in summer means a sheet and a cotton spread with the duvet rolled up at the bottom.
My body insisted I get out of bed for a drink of water. By this time my brain is fully functional and processing a great deal of information. The chances of going back to sleep grows dimmer by each passing moment.Nevertheless, I did creep back under the covers and the down comforter began to warm my lower extremities.
Changes are coming into my life shortly, in fact things have already been set in motion. Even though I have experienced many changes in my life I am upset at the thought of further downsizing and having to completely re-arrange my life one more time. I am comfortable in my apartment, it has become home to me. I have finally found a place for everything I use in my daily pursuit. I no longer have to stand and ponder the whereabouts of my planner or where I put my stock-pot when I want to make some soup, or the light bulbs I keep in reserve. I have always had a place for everything and every move I make has more or less undone my system and I must begin again. I have always kept my vegetable peeler in a spot of its own so I don't have to rummage for it. I tried several places before I found a spot that would work. Now I will have to find a new place. I like things tidy and organized, although if you could see my Work room you would thing otherwise. Even that space has an organization I can rely on.
So as these thoughts rumbled around in my brain I began to be more awake than asleep but still do not wish to get out of bed. In desperation I propped myself up on my pillow and picked up the book that I am close to finishing and I read until it was done- which was by then seven-thirty. When I closed the covers I was brought back from the post-Victorian era and through the early nineteen -thirtys ending in nineteen-thirty-six when Edward viii of England abdicated the throne to marry the women he loved. I stepped out of bed with the last lines of the former King's parting thoughts ringing in my mind. I remember all that happening just three years before World War Two was declared in Canada against Germany in 1939. Seeing the Academy Award picture: "The King's Speech" I felt as though I wanted to step back into my life and re-visit the Historical past and again view my own changes at the end of the War.
Edward (David Windsor) had to leave behind his English heritage, his siblings and parents, the life he had been trained to lead as Prince of Wales, to serve the British people throughout the British Empire. An immense change. I had to leave my own British heritage behind and denounce my allegiance to the King (David's brother Albert) my parents and my sibling and all that was a part of me in my growing up years, to come to the United States with my husband. Not so drastic for me perhaps but nevertheless unerving, My British Canadian life was suddenly diminished and a new political status in my life begun.
We are all programmed for change so why do I fear it so much? Most of us have need to strive and create,even so it is our inner fear that rests deep within us that resists changes of any consequences. We are comfortable. To be productive builds self-esteem, gives us a persona, validates our lives, gives us good reason to get out of bed in the morning and take up the day - all these things feed on change. We could grow mouldy standing in the same place no matter how comfortable it feels.
Changes challenge us but it should not cause us to fear. Still I feel some anxiety. I check off in my mind all that this change means, I will miss my friends. Life for me will be different in many ways, the climate will be different, it is a rural environment. I must create a new path, new friends, daily life will change. I feel many emotions. I have already lost some freedom due to the aging process but I must move with the flow. As I read the Duke of Windsors Memoirs where he wrote about the events in his life that brought great changes into his life, I decided that whther Kings or ordinary people, life is a long series of changes, were it not so we would not grow in stature or develop our character. The adventure of just living stretches our minds, can deepen our understanding, our intellect and separates the sheep from the goats. All our lives are subject to changes that take place and turns our lives to explore new avenues. Eventually we are all brought to the same Exodus and we should all exit as a different and better person than we once were when we began this life's journey. You will remember the little ditty we used to sing when we were children, at least in my generation- it goes like this -

Monday's child is full of grace
Tuesday's child is fair of face
Wednesday's child is full of woe
THURSDAY'S child has far to go
Friday's child is loving and giving
Saturday's child must work for his living
But thed child that is born on the Sabbath day
Is bonnie, and fair, happy and gay (meaning hoyful)

I am a Thursday's child. I have never really understood what is meant by "far to go'
but it sounds like a lot of change is involved. Have a happy day!

Photo: Chelsea Fuss.

A WALKERS REFLECTIONS

It is six oclock in the morning. The sun has not yet shown its shining face over the highest point of Lewis Peak, the mountain whose benchland we lived on in Utah. By this time I was all the way along Polk street and headed down the walking path that ran between the Ogden River and the Dinosaur Park. The walking traffic was at its peak a little later. I could stride out at my usual fast pace without slowing down for the walkers who came in clusters or the stray bicycle. This was the perfect time of day. The air was crisp, with just a little warmth in the breeze that drifted out of the sunlit canyon. It was this time of day I loved to walk the cobwebs out of my mind and think about what I was going to do with the day ahead. At this time of which I speak the Walkman played tapes and I had a large collection from which to choose - Frank Sinatra, his voice crooning a sultry love song, or a string quartette interpreting a Mozart Concerti to which I must step lively. Or I might listen to something in between these two depending on my mood. The river played over pebbles and fallen limbs from overhanging Willows, splashing a melody of its own. I didn't always need to click on the Walkman for companionship, I could listen to the river. Sometimes a very early fisherman could be seen hunched on the rocks that ran out into the water, his fishing rod bobbing idly hoping that a small trout might swim his way and snag the worm. In minutes the fish could be sizzling in a hot frying pan providing a hearty riverside breakfast. I walked briskly. My mother once told me that the neighbors liked to watch me coming down the street when I was about eight or nine years old, my head and shoulders pushed out in front of me, my feet pumping away like Lewis Carroll's scurrying rabbit - heading somewhere in a hurry. That was the pace I loved the best. Only age and an unfortunate accident to my left foot slowed me down at all. One morning as I was walking along the river path, my ear plugs hanging from the Walkman hugging my waist, I heard a roar at close range and I jumped, startled by this unfamiliar animal sound, I glanced warily to my left and saw the fearsome head of Dinosaur gazing at me over the tops of the trees. If I had not been through the newly opened Dinosaur Park a week or two before I may have jumped into the river. The Park was full of these prehistoric creatures, all equipped with authentic sounds and in the environment they were to have believed to have lived in. However, even knowing this, it had an instant frightening effect on a lone walker early in the morning and THAT dinosaur was gazing at ME while he roared. Someone must have left the tapes on because my journey alongside the Park that morning was filled with with such believable noises that ones instincts were to set a rapid flight in the opposite direction. When I worked on the Switchboard at the State Highway Department, District Three Office in Tumwater, near Olympia, Washington - not being a Coffee drinker. I would walk on my 'rest breaks'. One afternoon I was stopped by a four year old boy and his dog- a handsome brown and gold 'mutt'. He informed me that his dog's name was 'Rusty: I told him that I had a dog by the same name. The next question he posed was, "Does your dog have babies in his stomach?" I replied , "No, my Rusty is a different kind of a dog." I offered the most meager information hoping that I was not getting myself into a difficult position where I might be asked to explain how they, the puppies, got there. However, he simply beamed at me and declared with much pride, - "Well mine has." I offered my congratulations and we discussed briefly the possibility of boy or girl puppies and just when they might be expected to arrive. As I left this wise and informed four year old, I thought how marvelous the simple things of life are. Too often in this fast paced world we miss the little, unobtrusive events in our daily lives that are truly meaningful and search for the spectacular, the sort of things that "stir up the blood" causing us to miss the subtleties. I had come to the end of the block and knew that I must use my fastest pace to get back to the office by the end of my break. I felt I had been rewarded in my afternoons walk. The little boy had informed me that he would watch for me on my walks and let me know about the puppies. In turn I had something to look forward to each day on my walk, to the event of a birth, a litter of round, fat puppies. This was such an occasion in a child's life but one we could share in and be a child again for just a little while. time is so precious. What fills it is equally so. I recall the story of a farmer who plowed around a rock in one of his fields for five years because he felt he couldn't spare the time it would take to pry and dig up this great rock. He was afraid of breaking any more mowing machine knives against it. He left the rock alone so that patch of land was unyielding in crop value. One day the farmer thought that he might break his cultivator against it as he plowed, so he took a crow bar and poked around it. Much to his surprise he found that it was actually little more than two feet long and standing on edge. It was as light as a feather and he could lift it into his wagon without help. It only looked like a large rock sticking up in the soil. The way I see it we need to take more time to investigate what is worthwhile in life as we live it day by day. The farmer let the land lay becaause he didn't have his priorities straight. He didn't percieve that it would be worth the time to investigate the task involved in removing the rock. If he had he would have benefited financially over the five years. He wouldn't have done all that worrying about breaking his machines. There would not have been the exasperation it caused him to think about that unyielding patch of field. This subject of time was brought to mind on this particular walk as I thought about the importance of time each day. I was a working mother so utilizing time was a priority in my daily life. I didn't wish to miss any of the precious moments with my children if I could help it. I don't think of myself as old but the years have passed and piled up. I have been forced to make some unwanted changes. I can no longer walk briskly and some inclines can be challenging. Instead I remember the joys of walking when it was taken for granted as a daily occurrence in every kind of weather. Memories of the small, unobtrusive events I have experienced in more than eighty years of a serious, brisk walking practice. If my left foot has not been broken, changing the patterns of my life, I would still be stretching my legs on a morning walk. However, there is always the chance in my trots to the mail-boxes, that I will come across a child with something to tell me, or see a 'make believe' dinosaur peeking at me from behing a hedge.

The Gypsies

One of my resolutions for this new year is to post on my blog. I am still interested in any comments you wish to make. I never thought I would be this busy at this point in my life but I am grateful that I can enjoy the involvement. Here is a piece that I wrote for my third volume of Memoirs.
" We were warned not to speak to the Gypsies, "They carry little girls away" my mother spoke emphatically. I was fearful but their glorious apparel beckoned to me, the bright scarf wrapped tight around the long black hair, the ends of it flying in the breeze as they gypsy girl walked down our street. Her long voluminous skirt made a swishing sound as she seemed to float airily toward me. The Gypsies of my childhood in England brought their painted caravans with their hooded roofs and scattered into our streets with their wares. I don't know what they were selling I only know that they were beautiful to me and they were enveloped in an air of mystery that caught my fancy. I wouldn't mind so much if they carried me away in their decorative caravans, I thought, if I could wrap a red kerchief around my bobbed haur and swish a long patterned skirt around my ankles. Mother spoke of them as though they were 'bad' and I felt afraid so I sat in the worn hollow of our stone step, my eyes filled with longing, spellbound by these bewitching gypsies so out of place midst the concret and brick - the reality of my child's world.

They were woodland creatures I was sure, dancing where the fairies danced. Once I heard the melodic streams of music, bouncing off the houses, emanating from a caravan at the end of the street. I knew by instinct it was the kind of music my gypsies danced to, the kind you could twirl a skirt with, faster and faster as the music rose. Later I learned it was a concertina with perhaps a fiddle. Forever afterward in my mind equating the two as isepersble with my gypsies.

"Don't speak to the gypsies they steal little children away" I can hear my mother's voice, it forbad me to follow my yearning, to feel, just for a little whilw, like a gypsy girl in a long rustling skirt with and with quick twinkling feet in flat red slippers. In that repositary where my memories reside, lies that image still - I can see her - my gypsy girl, so lovely in her dark beauty. I wonder what would have happened if I had not yielded to my mother's warning voice. I feel myself beginning to drift into a cloud of memories and i hear the gypsy music and the voice of the concertina; my world of fantasy, perhaps not wishing to leave the gypsies behind me. I hear my mother's voice and listen.

Photo via Crazy 4 me. Original source from Gypsy Wagons UK.

MIZPAH

This name is taken from the King James edition of the bible - Genesis 31:verse 49 and reads -"(May) the Lord watch between thee and me when we are absent one from another." In the story of Laban , Jacob's father in-law, and his dealings with Jacob, they meet and make a covenant. They each gather stones and make a 'pile' and they ate there together. Laban said, "This heap is a witness between me and thee this day." They called it 'mizpah' They swore to one another that they would not pass over the heap to do the other harm. This was the pact they made between them. And each went their own way. The story is much longer and more complicated than what I have told. You can read it for yourself.

Why I have chosen this story and the name "Mizpah" is a simple one. When my parents left England to settle on the Saskatchewan prairies of Mid-western Canada, we left behind two grandmothers and a host of Aunts, Uncles and Cousins and school friends. In those times we had only letters to communicate with each other. Telephone cables were set on the ocean floor and it was costly to telephone to England so that many letters came by ship - and the Air mail service. At the end of all her letters my maternal grandmother, Sarah Hebden, wrote MIZPAH - sending a wish and a prayer to her daughter and granddaughters that the good Lord would watch over us while we were 'absent one from another'. We use that same name at the end of communications when we write to members of our family, and close friends - whether by e-mail or letter, the pact is the same - "May the lord watch between me and thee when we are absent one from another."

Maybe you have family customs similar to this that has been passed down. Our grandmother Hebden has passed on long ago but when we write or receive a communication with 'Mizpah"
written at the end of it, we know it comes with much love and a blessing and it also can also trigger our memories of times past and people who remain dear to our hearts.