April 25, 1946...My Parent's Wedding Day

This would be their 70th Anniversary. Together in Arlington Cemetery now. Married in Le Havre France, just after WW2.

Two Amazing Novels by Michael Chabon

First, I read a slim volume titled "The Final Solution"; a classic novel of detection in the style of an old fashion Sherlock Holmes-esque piece. Normally, I find this format a little annoying, but the story around the mystery was enthralling with a heart rending situation of a small Jewish boy and his pet parrot, evacuated from the Nazi-ridden continent to Britain. The boy and the bird are placed in a boarding house in the country, where the murder takes place, the bird is stolen from the boy; eventually the puzzle is solved--with the help of the intelligent parrot and an elderly retired detective (who keeps bees). This author is capable was relating "Holocaust" horror without ever taking the reader near a concentration camp; the last few pages of this book sends chills up the spine and tears down the face.

After reading "The Final Solution", I plunged ahead into a mega-sized volume,
"The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay". This is a rich, spicy and powerful stew of imaginative imagery. (It reminded me of "Refiner's Fire" by Mark Helprin). A complicated tale of escape from the Nazis, resettlement in New York of the late 1930's, invention of a successful comic book character and lots of interesting history, an delectible love triangle, the most original story of WWII military service I ever encountered. One character evolves through the book as an avowed homosexual man 1950's America; that process seemed eloquently and sympathetically portrayed. There are ghostly mystical happenings; again, the reader feels the enormous monster of the Holocaust chewing up human populations in Europe, while Joe Kavalier attempts to rescue his trapped family and fight Hitler with a comic book. And in the last few pages, an unforgettable image is delivered with skill.

A Wonderful, Interesting Beagle has Gone to the Rainbow Bridge....Sympathy to her Family!

What a pretty girl! Maggie, the "boyhood puppy pal" of a beloved family, departed with cruel suddenness on Saturday! Yes, she was an older dog; but came down with a condition making it hard for her to breathe and no cure in sight. She will be missed.

It is too soon for funny stories about Maggie, I guess; but innocent as she looks in this fine photo (pinched from her "mom's" facebook page for this eulogy), Maggie was full of wanderlust; many times, family members were out trying to find the dog, as she followed her nose and chased squirrels through as much of Grays Lake, IL as she could manage.

At First Glance...

Impressionist painting? An inferno with lava? No, the side of a train engine, with peeling paint. Taken in 2014 on one of the Kentucky trips.

Photos Taken "Before the Blog"

 On a trip in 2008 to Colorado, on the way home in Kansas near a family cemetery in Gorham, KS; detail of fossils in limestone...on fence posts!

As most of us know, there were few trees in Kansas when farmers arrived to put up fences for their cattle, so they found it easier to fashion the posts from the local stone...

These posts were probably installed in the 1880's?

Around Camp Tamahay, Akeley MN from 2005

 I wonder if this barn is still standing.

 Northern Minnesota in the Autumn.

 Rare photos of my late sister-in-law, Jane with her lovely horse, Daisy.

Some never-before-posted items from a decade ago.