Not done yet?

Doug are u done yet?

What shall I call this dessert?

Thanks Doug for the Show & more.

Doug,
You were thoughtful to not leave out anyone's pic, as far as I could see.
Everyone pitched in to cause a wonderful meal & companionship.
Maggie Gibbon Masek was ill with her COPD (breathing issues),
but she is thankful to have been there with loving family.
We are most thankful for the Rive Ladies & Bella for their major
domo efforts to get those birds done just right & all the fixings.

I plan to post the pic of Doug hiding the huge "COMBO DESSERT PLATTER",
that took him 30 mins. to consume.
Doug took the cake on that one.

Our Best to you all for Christmas & the Other Holidays,
Jim Masek (for Maggie Gibbon Masek)

Views from "A Giant"

(thanks L & C!)

Three Dozen Cozens...

...warts 'n all.

turkey gobbling, cider guzzling, teeth cleaning,
cheek glowing and pinching, facemaking,
guffawing, merrymaking!

[it's a slide show... click the Play arrow under
the picture, and start countin cousins!]


[ps >>> (3x12)-3]

Thanksgiving ought ate

Beth and Simon, Zoey, Emma
where to eat is no dilemma.

They'll join Tom and Joy and Nell and Bella
and poor Tom Turkey, most unhappy fella.

Doug and Lynne, Soren and Wyatt
down to try the Sharksmouth diet.

As are Jim and Judy, fresh from Greece,
wouldn't miss it (seconds, please!)

John, Jeanette, EJ and Lias
Manchester is their clear bias.

Schatzie and Mike -- time out from tennis
come to see how tough the hen is.

While Ric and Martha, Annie, Rose
eat this and that and autrechose.

With Mark and Ella, Xave and Nya
from the Barr House -- good to see ya.

Larry and Charlotte, from the Hopkinson tree,
but so far back it's hard to see.

Arthur, Sylvia, Elizabeth and Meggy
from Somerville now (are the drumsticks leggy?)

Jim and Maggie and Charlie (cousin)
and that, dear friends, is our three dozen!

-- CHS --

As promised...

Alright, I guess the awesome spide-o-lantern will do. Here's Hiromi and me at my school's Hallowe'en party. I'm a Sherpa.

And an update to go with

Well, if anyone is wondering what became of the conference I posted about so long ago, it went quite well. My audience was kind and supportive, and asked useful questions. I must say, it was really scary, though. Now I'm applying for graduate school. I'm applying to a couple in Mass., so perhaps I will see some of you more often next school year.

It's Halloween, and I do have a costume but currently no digital camera. So I'll make you a deal: if someone else posts a costume picture of themselves (ideally from this year, but any year will do), I'll post a picture after I get someone else to take one.

My goodness I forgot all about this thing..

So today for the first time in ages I posted to my linguistics undergrads collective blog, and noticed that I apparently had another blog. Wondering whether it was possible to be spammed into a membership in some kind of advertising blog, I clicked on it, with some trepidation. OH RIGHT, I thought, the Manch blog. I don't think I ever posted to this thing.

And then I noticed that there was a tag for linguistics. Linguistics?! I thought, is someone writing about me? So I read the post, and apparently I wrote a little update about my life. And now I'm thinking, you know, my neighbours smoke a fair bit of pot. And the smoke does sneak into my apartment sometimes. Isn't marijuana supposed to be bad for cognition?

Which is all to say, maybe we should send out a reminder to the members of the blog that they belong to it!

OK, everyone knows where this is, right?

Surely... someone...

...recognizes where this was shot. Some may even know when!

a stormy scene...

Curt "Big Daddy" Hollingsworth

Did people know about this?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blanche_Devereaux

I've never seen that tv show but I'd be tempted to watch it now just to see Big Daddy!

So, like, what's up?

Hello everybody! I checked the blog today hoping that for some reason my feed reader just wasn't showing people's posts.. but alas, nobody replied to Hallie's question! Apart from my medium brother, who just added some punctuation.

So I'll do it. Where am I? I'm still in Ireland, living in Dublin and working in Naas, a small town outside Dublin. I finally got a job, I'm working as a geotechnical engineer. I was hired for a specific project looking at the underfloor infill of already-constructed houses, so there isn't much variety in what I do, but I get to go out to site quite often and look at rocks and do a few tests. After 3 months I'm still liking it (moreso right now because the one negative of my job - a certain colleague - is away on holiday!).

The next little while will be pretty busy, since I'll be moving apartments and going to Denmark to visit mother and mother's mother, and then finally going to Manch at the end of August when the kids all get to hang out!

Oh, I'll add a few photos because I've just learned how to..

This is the site's resident dog keeping me company while all the builders go away on their tea break.

Three pictures from a place called Culmullen. Paused to look at a map and take some pictures, because I was hopelessly lost coming home from my first solo site visit.

I hope others will update, I do like the idea of this blog!

So, like, where IS everybody?

Response from Mark Fischer

Mark sent this to me because he couldn't access Gen 4 and more and nor could he cc this to everybody because I had hidden the names in the e-mail most of you should have received from me. (For some people I had only an old e-address, and the e-mail came back.)

Dear Hallie and all —

For some reason the blogspot didn't even come up when I clicked it — I wonder if there's a technical  problem or is there something about it (our family's liberal leanings perhaps ?)  the Chinese want to censor so I can't bring it up from here in Beijing? :)

The earthquake is quite sad and scary — aftershocks apparently continuing as recently as yesterday — and sitting here in 19th floor office we felt it (actually a reaction to it — a smaller quake closer to Beijing) as the building swayed, making most of us queasy before we all evacuated.  There are a lot of charity efforts ongoing, but otherwise everyone's back about their business here in Beijing. Where meanwhile mixed in with excitement and pride about China's coming out party, there is a growing uneasiness leading up to the Olympics, ie, what else can go wrong before or during the Games?

With love to all from the other side of the world!

Mark

Elias Rive in the News

"Elias Rive, 66, came to Copake from a sister community in Ireland. After close to 40 years working as a dairy farmer, he decided to retire and spoke enthusiastically about courses he has taken this year at Columbia Greene Community College in fly tying and casting. "I have met so many new fishing buddies. When trout season opens we'll go to a number of different creeks. We'll have our exam at the creek," he said. Elias still performs with the Camphill bell choir on Monday nights."

for the rest of the article, go to 

http://www.zwire.com/site/index.cfmnewsid=19379702&BRD=248&PAG=461&dept_id

=46234&rfi=8

Seattle - quickly becoming a new family hub

Seattle - as the title of this post shows - is quickly becoming a new, 'fab' family hub.

Thanks to Torbjorn's "love of the west", and freedom from the laziness-enducing University merely 3 years ago, Torbjorn is finally visiting Seattle as if it is a third - or fourth to fifth - home.

Here's a rather unflattering photo of the 'adults' and Christine (between Elinor and me) at the Rockhold's place.



We as well visited them just last weekend via the Victoria ferry to Pt. Angeles. I don't have photos from the small BBQ that visit, but if someone does I recommend they post them up or provide some links.

The Appels have shown nothing but endless love for Christine and me.

**The End.

NEWS FLASH! THIS JUST IN!

George Appel is running for the position of Judge of the Superior Court of Snohomish County.

His campaign is being ably managed by his wife Hoa.  He is happy to have any and all support.

You can go to georgeappelforjudge.com to read all about him.

Enough Already?

This thing has been up for two months, and has seen very little in the way of either new offerings or interested commentors or lurkers.

I don't think there's any 'harm' in leaving it up there for someone in the outside world to discover, but for some reaon it just doesn't feel like it's being used as intended. Maybe we're just not a blogging kind of family.

Which is okay.

So... I'm going to make a unilateral decision to take this thing down, if there isn't any objection and or significant utilization of this thing... by the 'end of the quarter', which will occur on May 10th, if I'm not mistaken.

!!!NOT!!!

So....... pipe up now, or forever hold your peeps.

Pipe up anyway.... we want to hear from you!

Compression Spring... Extension Winter?

Couple of mechanical jokes. Ha. Ha.

Not much fun entering spring and the first weekend is 15ºF, and the snow's still there, and likely getting deeper.

Has anyone else 'enjoyed' about as much winter as they can stand?

The toboggan is tired of going out there, the bikes are champing at the pedal.

watercolors by majoprie gibbon masek

NEED FOR ACTION

Everyone--we should all be contacting reps or Senators on the Armed Services Committee, Nancy Pelosi, anyone you believe may take action. Time is of the essence. Here's one story:

http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/03/12/7638/

a general change

Something that's changing fast for me is having to deal with actua-scheduling issues - and watch as it effects all those in my generation. Manch has always been a place that we have perhaps taken for granted; not in a bad way, but in going along for the ride kind of way. When there was school there was certainty in scheduling, and anyway, my folks did it for us.

BUT NOW: Wa-wa-woo-wa!! (in the words of Borat) I have to think about all these newbie elements - namely work and that thing I have come to know as "vacation time". What's this?! Having to work around a given amount of vacation time? And coordinating with a partner's work schedule as well?! So different.

Ah yes, it is a reality.

Then, moving on up, I guess retirement allows you to base your schedule ON and AROUND those you want to see, how easy that must be...

Anyhoo, that's just a minor comment I guess as I work with trying to book time/flight/family for an arrival sometime in the early 20's of August of this year.

Poem about IH

Dear blog/relatives, While Arthur's piece on my mother, (Ibby, Aunt Ibby, Granny, etc) was terrific, I also wrote a poem about the burial I thought I could share with you all. I wrote it as part of a poetry workshop and after my submission to the Sharks Mouth. Here it goes.

The Burial

We buried her remains in with the soil
of a new young quince with brittle branches and orange buds,
far above the blue-green sea
and the hard granite New England shore,
where gulls and breaking waves flashed white in the sun,
on a hot July day
one hundred years, two months, and seven days
after her birth in our grandparents’ house
on a nearby hillside.

Here in a small cardboard box were
ashes and tiny pieces of bone,
gritty, easy to sift through our fingers,
all that was left from her past
as daughter, sister, mother, and grand and great of these,
as writer and community activist,
a human creator who always knew what was right to do,
an always engaged participant in a century of life and time.

We mixed her remains in the soil,
where her ancestors dug out the rocks
for the stone walls of their farms centuries ago,
the soil above the sea where her great grandfathers captained
the ships of the new nation,
with the gleaming city on the southern horizon;
in the soil above the never-ceasing to and fro of the waves below,
the constant refrain to all her world,
into the soil to become part
of the bedrock of all her existence, past, now, and hence.

We watered the quince before walking away.


© Charles H. Halsted, January 2008

Shark's Mouth Newsletter

Hooray for Arthur's diligent work on the life of Ibby Halsted.

If some of you are wondering why I wasn't represented in it, it may be because what I gave him was too long. It was a poem some of you have seen or heard, which I read at her Memorial Service in January 07. Here it is (hang on, it's long):

----------------------------------------------------
Ode to Isabella: January 13, 2007

It’s time! Oh yes, it’s time! for me to cast a fulsome rhyme
Toward each attentive pink and shell-like ear;
Let us praise and let us honor, let us shower love upon ‘er
Our late mother, in-law, granny, Ibby dear.

How shall we celebrate this our Isabella late?
We’ve come from near and far to sing hosanna.
To take enormous pleasure in recalling every measure
Of the highs and lows of her life’s panorama.

She was born, sure enough, in a house upon a bluff
In Manchester her wondrous life began.
“It really is uncanny,” said our Grandpa to our Granny,
“It looks like we are carrying out some master plan.

“The world will soon be swimmin’ in a sea of charming women
As our tribe of lovely daughters just increases
It really will be super when just I and Mr. Hooper
Are surrounded here by females of the species.”

Isabella and her sisters grew up among few misters
In that little patch of heaven they called “Manch”
They learned to read and write and reason, enjoying every season
And got a lot of guidance from their Aunts.

They traveled round the world, in Boston’s social life they whirled,
And soon discovered that out there were men!
So then young Isabella set out to find a fella,
And soon caught a handsome doctor in her pen.

So Ibby and her Jim set out to sink or swim
In the sea of opportunities life had fed ‘em
With two daughters and two boys, they experienced the joys
And the challenges of life they found in Dedham.

But along came the War, and soon their marriage was no more,
And she feared, instead of swimming, she would sink.
She was so unhappy when she split up with our Pappy,
But then she had this good news from her shrink:

“You’ll feel much better, dear, if you try a new career,
“Take up typing; it will open many a door.”
Well the rest is history: soon she found BCIV
And began a life she’d never known before.

Why, all across the planet there were folks who thought she ran it,
So surely did she make them all feel blest;
And in welcoming the world, she her own bright flag unfurled,
With skills she never knew that she possessed.

From then on how she grew! there was The Claiming of the Shoe,
That put her name in lights ‘longside the Bard,
And every Sunday people mark just how lovely Riverbend Park
Can be when Mem Drive’s thoroughly dis-carred.

Soon her facile fountain pen produced “The Aunts” and then
She set right out to write another sequel,
And the chuckles she engendered from old songs that she remembered
Brought enchantment it was mighty hard to equal.

Well her life grew simpler then, as she set aside her pen
And traded in her Peugeot for a bed.
Crossword puzzles, games of Boggle, finding words to make you goggle,
These pleasures took up all her time instead.

Then one day Isabella overwhelmed me and Gissela
By announcing that she’d soon be traveling far
To a place she’d never been. “Oh, where’s that?” we both chimed in.
A long pause… “To Cuba!” she replied. “Ha ha ha ha”!

But it wasn’t long thereafter that an end came to her laughter
And she drifted off to sleep beyond recall.
But perhaps some Cuban fella painted “Bienvenida Isabella!”
On old Havana’s Malecón seawall.

So let’s raise our glasses high, let our shouts ring through the sky,
As we toast the one who’s brought us so much pleasure,
We are sad as you depart but you’re forever in our heart
And the memories that we will always treasure.
---------------------

I should add that the "Cuba" anecdote is almost verbatim. Gisella was one of her wonderful loving caregivers. Missing from the poem's description is the twinkle in Ibby's eye as she delivered the punch line.

Except for the occasional telltale reference to going home(e.g., "Show me the way to go home," "Give me a Home by the Sea," etc.), which she would occasionally burst into, she never alluded to her impending death, until I had this conversation with her, as she lay in her bed in the Nusery, some time in September 2006:

Ibby: "Am I a hundred yet?"
Tom: "Not, yet -- but you are in your hundredth year."
Ibby (still trying to compete with Happy, who had died at 101): "Well, I guess that's good enough."

Genealogy...

... on Wikimanchipedia.
very cool indeed, on a speedy compooter. I added a few personal items and corrected the misspelling of Ibby's last name!

Gen 5...

Since Mike's 50th is upcoming, and if I remember correctly he's the eldest of his gen (and just a few years younger than the youngest of the 4th... ME)

a) I'd love to know which day in March... (15th?) and IS he the first of his gen to hit the big L? (or is that Tom?)

b) I'd love to be reminded of the birth order of all members of the 5th gen. Unless I'm mistaken, the count is 29... Elinor, George & John; Nathan, Torbjorn & Katrina (I know, SP, but I can't help myself); Martha, Annie, Eric & Mark; Mike, Jenny & Ben; Jesse; Nathan & Tobias; Sarah & Mark; Tom & Beth; John, Mike & Ellen; Elizabeth & Meggie; Meaghan & Curt; Soren & Wyatt.

c) I'd ALSO love to know the birth order of the 4th gen too! I know who it starts and ends with, and the penultimate is my sister, and I think Edie Jane falls just before that, and then I'm lost... Please, someone, put them in order... Hallie, Lias, John & Edie Jane; Shatzie, Palsie, Johnny & Maggie; Nell, Tom, Chuck & Bella; Arthur & Charlie; Mag & Doug.

d) Now it has become obvious there's a Gen6 to contend with. There's clearly a Simon, and I know there's an Emma and a Zoey and an Ibby (or two?) and a Jacob, but that's about as far as I can stretch.

Can somebody pullleeeeeze help this old brain?

While we're changing names...

... maybe we should change the name of the blog to Aunt Blog (and kin).

: )

Name Change

Goodbye Old Tom, Hello Tom. (I thought Young Tom would sign on as such. Not at all; he seems to be Haraka, which means something grand in Swahili). So, not feeling all that old anyway, I have drunk from the fountain of youth. Tom it is.

Your opinions please

We're in the throes of shopping for a new vehicle. We've narrowed it down to Toyota Rav4 and Nissan Rogue. Does anyone have experience with either or both, and, if so, what do you like, not like, etc?

You're so clever, Doug, ...

... to have discovered how to list recent comments. That was the one thing that was really annoying: trying to remember how many comments each post had the last time I looked. This is great now! Good work.

I need help with the wiki

I can get in to view the sharksmouth wiki, but I can't log on using the id and password that Michael sent us in an email last week. Do I need to sign in to edit, add, etc? If I get my own account, do I have access to the sharksmouth wiki? I'm confused : (

!!! N e w s F l a s h !!!

gen4&more dominated by barrs, rives, and boehms!!!!
(something must be done!)

Sunny Cali..March birthday

Well its another weather post; it is 75F in LA and too dang hot for a long sleeve shirt. It also makes the koi in the backyard pond hungry.

It occurs to me I don't know where lots of people are located, but if anyone wants sun we have a nice big house about 3 miles from Venice Beach and relatives are welcome to visit.

As an extra incentive on March 15 we are having a party (I turn 50) with free beer and free tacos plus my band is playing. Sorry, we stopped paying people to listen but we bribe them with food and drink. :-)

Mainly Geezer Rock. Any other musicians or is it the traditional artists and writers that the Hokinson culture seems to produce in droves.

(post examples of what you do in that front please)

E-Nough 'bout Weather, yo.

How about that idea of an 'organic' veggie garden down there by the old raspberry patch? Is that idea still around?

Not to give extra work to our already busy and excellent caretakers, it's about renting out some space to another group. Perhaps I'm not the one to speak, as I'm never around.

Just bringing up the topic - introducing the 'Label'.

Also, Doug, could you perhaps make the 'Labels' list (category list it may be called) available on that right column along with the posts/links. That way we can jump to topics.

While we are talking about snow and wusses....

Today it is -23 here in Ottawa and snowfall for the season is heading towards beating a 1970 record. Something close to an Edmonton experience. With another blizzard scheduled for tomorrow it's just about time to join the wusses....

Profile modifying...

Anybody have any twubbles editing your profile? As 'admin' I could do my own no prob, and clearly some folks have been able to add photos etc no prob. Others not so much. Suggestions? Is the big 'Edit Profile' button, that *I* see, hidden to you non-admin peoples?

City Of Awesome: Re Vancouver

Yes, okay - wusses. But how awesome is it that you get to live in a city where more than a few inches of snow is an actual excuse that one can't make it to work?

From Victoria, city of Hard Knocks.

Now Open to All

Hi All -
I have now changed this blog so Anyone may read it (and comment) but posting is limited to family members only, who choose to register and become 'contributors'.

Perhaps now some of the reluctant folks will take a look and will be enthusiastic enough to join! I'll send one last email out to re-invite them.

I for one am reeeeaaaallllly enjoying the news from afar, and I bet everyone else will too!

Vancouver: City of Wusses

This blog thing is a neat idea. I always kind of envied "Gen 4" for their cousin-filled summers, while I don't really feel that I know my cousins well at all. Perhaps we will discover all sorts of surprising things about one another here. For example, did you know I like to read apocalyptic comic books and I once sat on a shitsu-poodle ("shi-poo") puppy?

If anyone's wondering what I'm up to these days, here it is: First, I finished my undergraduate degree in December. The kind lady at the McGill Administrative-Disaster Recovery Centre says I'm getting "First Class Honours in Linguistics and a Minor Concentration in Philosophy." I'm not sure exactly what that means, but it sounds mildly impressive. As undergraduate degrees go.

That FINALLY finished I moved to Vancouver in late January to live with my boyfriend who has been here for the last 2.5 years working on a BFA. Vancouver is a very pretty and vibrant city of people who think an inch of snow is a five-alarm emergency.

The final interesting thing in my life right now is that for some unknown reason I've been selected to speak on my undergraduate research at this big scary grown-up confrence in Newcastle, England in late March. I will tell them my crazy ideas and they will bombard me with questions, to which I will reply, "I'm sorry, but I'm basically an undergrad. I have no idea what you're talking about" until they get bored and stop asking.

(I'm also painting an unaccountably cheesy landscape. It's not my fault: phthalo blue is EXACTLY the colour of a twilit sky. It's hard to resist.)

Neato!

Hey Folks,

I'm glad this all went up, wiki and blog both. It's what people do now, apparently.

I haven't had the time to scour the wiki and start making it Rive dominated...in due time, due time.

This is Torbjorn, a Rive, by the way. Currently living in Victoria BC, having a great time. Alive, working.

Manch is awesome, always. We're just starting to make the plans for when (if) we'll be showing up for a week or two this summer. I re-heally hope to be seeing some or y'all there!

I'll be back! (p.s - check out my other blog, it's where I'm at).

Welcome eldest and wisest of gen4!!!!

Hi Nell!
Glad to see you here.

I saw your comment at the bottom of another post... NObody should feel that only a comment is warranted, EVERYone has the right to write a new post, which sits at the top of the heap, very visible, instead of being buried out of sight.

Lynne & Scout & I just came from the Cornish caucus, at which a whopping 39 citizens turned out, and of our 3 Cornish dem delegates, 2 will represent Obama, the other Hill. It was 22 to 17, and some very valid reasoned arguments were presented on both sides.

The mysterious K

Hello all! I think this is great, and I'm on the blog side of the blog/wiki fence.  At first glance it seems much simpler to read (the new stuff is right there in front of you) and to contribute to (click "New Post" and start typing away).

So here's my first contribution. I'm K. Kathrine (Rive).

I started that other blog [http://tinkerwoman.blogspot.com] which I assume is where some of you saw the photo of Elias. It was started as a roadtrip blog for a 2 month trip with my boyfriend and another friend across the US and some of Canada.  We visited Lias at Camphill and had a great time. 

I wasn't very good at updating that one obviously, but I think with so many contributors on this one it's much more likely to carry on, even if it's just to post a quick note about a trip or some other news snippet.  

Oh and as an update for my life: I'm back in Dublin now, having graduated last June.  So I'm officially an engineer, but haven't found engineering work yet in the month that I've been here. So I'm currently working as a temp, my days filled with filing and envelope stuffing -- and my hands covered with papercuts and ink stains.

Thanks Doug for starting this!

gen4 outta the closet!

If it's acceptable to the few folks who have become contributors, I'd like to change the access permissions to 'Anyone can Read', but 'Write only with Permission'.

This would allow Hallie or Jim&Maggie or anyone else with reservations to see what's going on. None of us have said anything that *I* consider personal in here yet, and as said somewhere previously, that's not the intent here anyway.

So...

May I remove 'Read Protection'?

bytheway... I've been all through the Wiki site Mike set up, which is pretty neat as a library, but has what I (on dialup) consider to be slow performance (Mark&Chantiel's two photos took 10 minutes to load, unlike most others which are immediate) and I think Blogger's setup automatically optimizes uploaded photos, which Wiki may not do.

I also wonder if the Nav Tree in Wiki is customizable, so perhaps one could see the entire listing of family pages without going into that page first. The nav tree should show it all, imo.

I do find the Wiki kind of static, and when Mark says 'We're currently living in...' I wonder when he wrote that, which in a blog is immediately ID-able.

Not wishing to be a complainer, and not tooting the bloghorn, I'm sure both can be improved!

Boca de Tiburon

Thanks, Doug, for doing the heavy lifting with this project. I look forward to learning more about what my extended family and relatives are up to!

I still like the security options, although nothing is perfect. Even with the Gen 4 security, much of our Blogger profiles is public (Photo, Interests, Hometown, etc.). For instance, I poked around and learned how many other bloggers list "B-Ham, WA" as their hometown.

I'll catch up with y'all later.

-t

This needs to be documented. The first well planned attempt to move the rocks at the bathing rocks by Doug Barr... Result: Unsuccessful...

Curtis Fowlie

My travel blog.

Hello all! This is such a great idea!

I am laying in bed after a long long day yesterday. I worked until 3:30 am at Suede Lounge, where I work as a bartender... Even though I have never been drunk, I am pretty sure that the way I feel when I wake up after a long day like that is kind of the way people feel after consuming too much of the product I am serving.

Some people were asking about my trip to Singapore, Australia, New Zealand and Thailand that I took last year. Here is the link to my travel blog. www.curtisfowlie.blogspot.com Feel free to have a look! There should also be a couple of links on the right side of the page for my myspace music page which has some of my music on there, as well as a link to some of the pictures from the latter part of my trip on a picture site called, "Flickr". I actually met up with Edie Jane fow a week and did some great sight seeing up to the North tip of the North Island in New Zealand!

Curtis Fowlie

About new posts...and passwords...

Everyone should note that there's a button top right for making a 'New Post' (like this one) and you can add photos, or text files within that post.

I set this blog up so that we'd all need a 'blogger account' and have to 'log in' with our username and password, since a few folks were concerned about public access. This is currently needed even if you only want to read. Personally I find it a drag to have to log in this way... it really slows the process down, and I would love peoples' comments in that regard. To me, this place isn't for deep personal confessions or naked pictures, so what's the fear?

I can remove the login procedure at any time, at which time those people who might not want to join as writers can at least see what this is all about. Maybe once they're comfortable they'll join the conversation as well!

In the beginning...

There was a vacuum. And not just any vacuum, it was a bagless vacuum. At first there was just one person... the person invited others to join. There was also a photograph in the beginning.



The photo was new, and it was good. Depending on your tude.
But whatever.