{"id":1002,"date":"2021-02-03T23:11:58","date_gmt":"2021-02-04T03:11:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/aerendel.ca\/aarchives\/?page_id=1002"},"modified":"2021-02-03T23:19:45","modified_gmt":"2021-02-04T03:19:45","slug":"fambly-schtuff","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"http:\/\/aerendel.ca\/aarchives\/fambly-schtuff\/","title":{"rendered":"Fambly “Schtuff”"},"content":{"rendered":"

February 3rd, 2021 – 11:07 pm +1\u02daC \/ +34\u02daF – dark & damp in New Brunswick Canada – This is stuff from the “Latest News From Aerendel” Blog that I’m about to retire-\u00a0 <\/span><\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

{{{ And – I plan to import all the photos the hard way, but right now, I’m just going to plop them here as a copy and paste with links to the photos from the original blog }}}<\/span> <\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

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Fambly \u201cSchtuff\u201d<\/h1>\n<\/header>\n

{ I\u2019m thinkin of re-writing the History of all Creation, but we\u2019ll start out small here 🙂 }<\/p>\n

\"Close
\u2014 Moe \u2014<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u2014 This is Moe \u2013 He ran out into lightly falling snow when I opened the porch door a bit to focus my camera on something interesting or picturesque to pop into a blog one day last February (2016). Then he ran to our half-finished woodshed to investigate \u2013 like it had been bothering him for some time. \u2013 You never know \u2013 There just might be mice out there to play with \u2013 But as much as he wants to be outside \u2013 he used to escape any chance he had, just to run maybe two yards (as in \u2018meters\u2019) from the door, plunk down in the grass, virtually stick his tongue out at us as if he really could say \u201cNyaaa! I got out again -\u201d and then just sit there and smile at the universe as if suddenly everything was right in this world. But stepping in cold white stuff is not his idea of being \u2018outside\u2019 \u2013 \u2018Outside\u2019 is supposed to be warm and soft and have interesting grass to chew on \u2013 maybe even bugs to chase \u2013 not freezing cold white stuff that gets up between your toes and then you have to try to shake it off \u2013 that\u2019s just not right \u2013<\/p>\n

\"Mom,
\u2014 Mom \u2014<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u2014 Dorothy Eleanor Borden Wellington ( October 20, 1923 \u2013 May 8, 2016 )<\/p>\n

\u2014 She was very loving, intelligent, sensitive, talented and sacrificed a lot to bring up her children. She was either the salutorian or came in 2nd to the salutorian of her graduating class, from Stratford High School, class of 1941. She told me the only drawing she ever made that she was happy with was a drawing of Mickey Mouse that she said her friends wanted copies of. She wanted to be a teacher and had worked with young children in a private school or day care in the 1940\u2019s. When she got married she was told she couldn\u2019t be a teacher and raise a family at the same time. After my father died in 1995, she went to visit my sister and her family in Alaska \u2013 came back after a while, then after my niece Maddie died in Vermont in 1996. And After my sister and her husband and children came cross country from Alaska to Maine \u2013 discovered that the job that had been promised to my brother in law had been over hyped \u2013 Mom went back to Alaska with my sister and the kids, they ran out of money and decided to keep Mom until they had enough to send her home \u2013 she volunteered as a \u201cFoster Grandparent\u201d at the same school where my sister was a Teacher\u2019s aide \u2013 She gave kids who needed a little extra attention the attention they craved and made them feel good about themselves and after the school\u2019s principal just about begged her to stay with them, and all the kids in the school surprised her with hand-made birthday cards \u2013 she agreed to stay on \u2013 and worked for a stipend and travel money, but was doing what she truly loved and told us about her life long wish to be a teacher, which was coming true for her. For her 90th birthday somebody up there had a New York Yankees shirt made for her with the name \u201cWellington\u201d and the number \u201c90\u201d on the back. ( My sister was the Yankees fan \u2013 Mom watched the Mets with me when she was in Connecticut and watched whatever my sister watched in Alaska when she was there. )<\/p>\n

\u2014 When I was in second grade, I had a strange \u2013 overly vivid day dream that she had always been my teacher \u2013 I hadn\u2019t heard of reincarnation, but when my first grade teacher had told us about George Washington at Valley Forge I was sure I had been there with him. I don\u2019t know, maybe she was my teacher, or a very positive example through several life times \u2013 I believe she taught us an awful lot about love \u2013 by example.<\/p>\n

\"Grandma,
\u2014 Mom, Nancy and her boys. Bradley Airport \u2013 1996? \u2014<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u2014 I believe\u00a0 this is when Mom came back from her first visit to Alaska \u2013 My youngest sister, Nancy was there to meet her with her sons, Cody in the red jacket and Westley in the striped sweater. (I was there with a camera.)<\/p>\n

\"Mom
\u2014 Mom and Nancy \u2014<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u2014 I scanned this from a photo that was \u2018a little worse for wear\u2019 \u2013 It\u2019s Mom and Nancy before the guys got up off the floor for the photo above this one. I think Nancy probably got the boys to get up for the other photo.<\/p>\n

\"large
\u2014 Glenn W. Austin \u2014<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u2014 Glenn Wellington Austin ( December 10, 195o \u2013 Way too early \u2013 2001? )<\/p>\n

\u2014 This is my cousin, Glenn. I might have taken this photo in the late seventies or early eighties. I told a couple people that he picked up the back end of a big old Dodge or Chrysler station wagon with one hand and jammed a new muffler in place with the other. People who knew Glenn didn\u2019t doubt that one bit \u2013 well \u2013 maybe they knew I was stretching just a bit.<\/p>\n

\u2014 I have to check the date he crossed over to the next life. He\u2019s come to me in dreams a lot, shown me things on the other side that he wanted to share \u2013 warehouses where everything was free to anybody who wanted it \u2013 homes on an island in a raging river where he liked to sit and watch the spring runoff curl over his head in double \u2018pipeline\u2019 like curling breaking wave effect that he thought was amazing. He showed me a city where quite a few houses had their entries about ten feet off the ground, so you couldn\u2019t get there if you couldn\u2019t fly \u2013\u00a0 or jump really well.<\/p>\n

\"3
\u2014 Sarah \u2013 with a pigmy horse, her friend Christine and my friend Lora (top) sitting in a barn doorway with kittens (middle) and standing up \u2013 posing with the kittens . (bottom) \u2014<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u2014 Glenn\u2019s daughter Sarah Elizabeth Austin, who is now married with children of her own, on a friend\u2019s farm in Stratford, Connecticut. This was in 1996 I think \u2013 I also think these three photos are together like this because I scanned them all at once and haven\u2019t separated them yet \u2013 In the top photo is Sarah\u2019s friend, Christine, who at 18 years of age, didn\u2019t mind having six or seven year old Sarah around. Christine told me that she\u2019d been diagnosed as being ADD and put on Ritalin as a kid in school before they found out that she was actually Clinically Depressed after family traumas. On the right is my friend, Lora, who spent more time on her friend\u2019s farm than she did at home in those days, with her kids grown up and going to University in Boston. Both \u2018grown ups\u2019 in that photo are probably close to unidentifiable \u2013 bad photograph \u2013 And I don\u2019t know whether Sarah was trying to check out the pigmy horse\u2019s gender or what she was doing. I think I got at least one better shot with my camera, but the OM-1\u2019s sensors were a bit off or maybe I should blame it on \u2018operator error\u2019\/over-confidence. But these are family snapshots, not entries in a photography contest.<\/p>\n

\"Uncle
\u2014 My Uncle Tom on the left, and my sister Diane \u2014 Probably at a New Year\u2019s Day \u2018get together\u2019 at my grandparents home \u2014<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u2014 My uncle, Tom, above, looks like he\u2019s contemplating the physics of smoking a cigarette. My sister, Diane, looks like she would really like to eat her sandwich in peace while pretending to be interested in somebody bragging about their adventures in the real world out of the picture to the right. This is probably from the middle nineteen seventies. And this is probably a New Year\u2019s Day \u2018Get Together\u2019 at my grandparents\u2019 home (Tom\u2019s parents) in Stratford, Connecticut.<\/p>\n

\"Me
\u2014 Me & Mom in Athens, Vermont in July of the year 2000 \u2014<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u2014 A friend at the Cablevision of Southern Connecticut public access video studios in Bridgeport, Connecticut had me put on a suit and dark glasses and pretend to be Billy Gibbons from ZZ Top in an episode of his public access comedy program. I tried to talk slow, didn\u2019t try to put on a Texas drawl \u2013 but the guys who were in the control room told us later that they were doubling over laughing at some of my reactions and answers to off the wall questions that were a trade-mark of this program. One guy told me, \u201cYou sound just like him!\u201d They had me stand in front of a series of that day\u2019s Weather Maps for the area, and dance around and do a couple signature ZZ Top gestures while they played \u201cShe\u2019s got legs \u2013 and she knows how to use them -\u201d as they rolled the credits.<\/p>\n

\u2014 That was not my first fifteen minutes of [ local? ] fame. I used to call my friend at WPKN FM on Monday evenings and read poetry on the air \u2013 stuff that we\u2019d worked on in our local community based creative writing workshop \u2013 Almost got one guy kicked off the air when I read a poem about the 1972 presidential election \u2013 \u201cThey should have held this election on Hallowe\u2019en\u201d \u2013 one of George Carlin\u2019s 7 deadly words was in that. ( Four letter word, begins with \u2018s\u2019 \u2013 has something to do with a stinky bodily function \u2013 or the product of that function. 😉 )<\/p>\n

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