Easter Photo 2007

Here we all are on Easter Sunday afternoon.

Historical Family Photos

I have been creating sets of old photos on Flickr, including photos of my mother's trip to Sweden in 1939, upon which my cousin Magnus Persson in Sweden has generously commented and provided extremely useful additional information. I also have a Hendrickson history set and an Olson-Erickson (my mother's side of the family) set. My cousin Jo Anne Swanson and I have put many photos together in a Hendrickson group, and we are hoping that other family members will also decide to contribute. I was absolutely thrilled to discover in Jo Anne's files, pictures of two great-grandmothers (John Hendrickson's mother, Maria Nilsdotter, and Hulda Olson Hendrickson's mother, Johanna Katrina) that I had never seen.

Here is a slightly more recent picture (but still old!) of my brother John and me sitting together in a lawn chair in 1950. This was scanned from a very badly faded color print. I'm still trying to figure out the best way to make these badly faded and yellowed prints more visible. Don't you love the saddle shoes, red socks, and matching hair ribbons, and John's suspenders?

Mexico

We are back from a lovely one week at Hotel Ixtapan de la Sal, Mexico. I highly recommend this hotel and spa. There are many more photos of the trip posted on Flickr.
But, here's one of Ed at an overlook "El Mirador" on the road between Ixtapan de la Sal and Taxco.

Happy Valentine's Day!

Picture taken by my webcam this morning -- schools closed because of snow today! (again!)

Ed Update January

Discussion group at The Bishop's Lodge, January 16.

Ed had his check-up and chemotherapy as scheduled this past Wednesday, January 24. He is doing well – no change in his condition according to the doctor and his reports. This is good news. So far, the effects of Wednesday’s chemo have not hit him – that is good, too. The past couple of times he has felt terrible from Friday afternoon through the Saturday following Wednesday chemo.

We survived our New Year’s weekend with no power for two days, snow piled high and branches down everywhere. Lights came on just after sunset on New Year’s Eve. However, the yard is still full of branches, and there are still snow piles in the shade. We spent the nights of January 16-17 in Santa Fe, where we had a wonderful time meeting friends for delicious meals and an animated discussion of Willa Cather’s “Death Comes for the Archbishop” at The Bishop’s Lodge, the former home of Bishop Lamy (the model for the book’s Bishop Latour). I hope to post a few pictures on Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/manga_mom/

Monday this week the annual ALA children’s book awards were announced – always an exciting occasion, even though this year I was not directly involved. On Tuesday we attended the Metropolitan Opera’s webcast of “The Magic Flute” at the Starport theater at Cottonwood Mall (to be broadcast on PBS stations this Sunday at 1 pm).

We’re looking forward to a visit from Craig Werner at the end of next week, and a trip to Ixtapan, Mexico from February 23-March 3, where we will meet Gloria and Herb Thompson from Pennsylvania, whom we have not seen for many years.

For Additional Photos

For more photos, please click on the following links:

Manga_Mom's photos on Flickr
http://www.flickr.com/photos/manga_mom/


Jesse's Flickr photos
http://www.flickr.com/photos/1shtar/

Albluquerque Snow of the Century Group
http://www.flickr.com/groups/72055175@N00/

Albuquerque New Year's Snow

Saturday MorningSunday afternoon
New Year's Day Sunrise
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Christmas Day

Snow December 19 (Click to See Larger)

Kiss the Joy as It Flies

Christmas Greetings 2006

17 December

Dear Friends and Family,

We wish you the peace and joy of this season. May you cherish each moment of grace.

The amazing news is that Ed has survived yet another year in relatively good health. We have had some scary moments, and he has undergone three changes in chemotherapy protocols. He received a blood transfusion in September, which greatly boosted his energy, and continues to receive injections to boost the red and white blood cells ravaged by the chemo. Overall, the quality of life remains good, although each day is lived in the presence of this illness that governs our every move. If you want to receive occasional updates via email, please us know and we’ll add you to the “Ed Update List.”

The second most amazing event of this year was the celebration over Memorial Day Weekend of “Ed’s Eighty Trips around the Sun,” with three days and more of visits from friends and family from near and far, good food and fellowship, a digital slide show with music, a piñata, and fireworks.

We stayed closer to home, but did manage to go to Washington, D.C. in March, where we enjoyed the cherry blossoms, museums, memorials, theater, and opera (“Das Rheingold”), and the company of our friend Roz. In July we enjoyed a trip to Tucson, with excursions in the desert and visits with friends, even though it was in the midst of a record-breaking heat wave. October’s excursion was a culture break to Los Angeles, where we attended the opera (“Manon”) and the symphony (in the new Disney Concert Hall designed by Frank Gehry). Our final trip was to Florida during the first week in December, where we enjoyed seeing friends and relatives, museums in St. Petersburg and Sarasota, and beachwalking and birdwatching on Sanibel Island.

Jesse and Psyche are now on their own. Both children have had success in their careers this year. Jesse continues to spend more time doing free-lance work, and he was featured in a new book, Mangaka America: Manga by America’s Hottest Artists, currently ranked #31,762 on Amazon.com (Barack Obama’s The Audacity of Hope is #1 – that gives me hope). Jesse continues to live in his little artist’s house south of downtown, and it is good to have him nearby – he takes care of the house and animals when we are away. You can find links to Jesse’s work (and to Jesse) at www.jessephilips.com.

Psyche changed jobs in September and is now working as an executive assistant at Hellman and Friedman, an international investment firm. She comes home to visit now and then, and leads a busy social life wherever she is. She continues to share her San Francisco apartment in the Mission District with her best friends from college, and still has Ro, whom some of you met at the party, as her boyfriend. We had both Jesse and Psyche together with us for Thanksgiving this year for the first time since we can remember, and we’re looking forward to being together again for Christmas. I am humbled and filled with gratitude when I think that my children have survived to adulthood and become people I’m happy to know. Despite whatever mistakes were made in their upbringing, their parents loved them dearly and still do.

Linnea continues her work as the nominally half-time librarian at Bandelier Elementary School. She actually puts in at least two-thirds time, but loves working with the children, who give her energy and hope (most of the time). The big event this fall was One Book One School in which the entire school read E.B. White’s classic 1952 novel, Charlotte’s Web. On December 13, 376 Bandelier readers joined with half a million other people in a world-wide attempt to break a Guinness World Record for simultaneous reading aloud. We won’t know until sometime in the spring whether the record was broken. For more information see www.walden.com. Writing, research, and teaching children’s literature has taken a back seat to everything else, although she continues to review for Kirkus.

Ed continues to survive cancer, spending quite a lot of time in waiting rooms at the University of New Mexico Cancer Research Center. He also works on genealogy, reads the The New York Times, The New Yorker, and This Week, and still does some of the grocery shopping and cooking. He also keeps the dog, cats, chickens, and sheep from starving. He appreciates all the prayers, love, and good wishes you have continued to send his way, and sends you all his love.

Walking on the beautiful, shell-strewn beaches of Sanibel Island two weeks ago, I was struck by the variety in patterns, and the intricate perfect structures of the shells. Yet I felt sadness, too. The very sands beneath my feet, were made of shells, ground fine over millennia, millions and billions and trillions of skeletons of formerly living creatures. I thought of the vastness and the beauty of our earth, of how small a part we play, of the endless recycling of matter, and perhaps spirit. I was thrilled also to see alligators and an American Crocodile up close – survivors perhaps of the age of dinosaurs – and the birds, too—the long-legged and long-necked herons, wood storks, anhingas and spoonbills. There is also the miracle of the snowflake, those perfect crystal forms – no two alike it is said – but how can we possibly know ? – that sometimes last only for an instant, but sometimes for millennia in the ice of glaciers.

Our world is a place both beautiful and terrible. I will quote again from E.B. White’s passage from Charlotte’s Web (183):“Life in the barn was very good – night and day, winter and summer, spring and fall, dull days and bright days. It was the best place to be, thought Wilbur, this warm delicious cellar, with the garrulous geese, the changing seasons, the heat of the sun, the passage of swallows, the nearness of rats, the sameness of sheep, the love of spiders, the smell of manure, and the glory of everything.”

But, I’m also reminded of “Eternity” by William Blake who wrote elsewhere, “To see the world in a grain of sand…”

He who bends to himself a joy

Does the winged life destroy;

But he who kisses the joy as it flies

Lives in eternity’s sun rise.

May each of us “kiss the joy as it flies” this year. Time is all we have.

A Link to Old-Man-Ed

http://www.old-man-ed.blogspot.com/

Thanksgiving Afternoon Walk

Road Runner on Los Arboles













Psyche and Jesse




















Bert
















Nature Center Field

Webcam Mug Shot!

Happy Halloween!

Mangaka

Jesse came over yesterday with a beautiful new book in which he is one of the featured artists:

Mangaka America: Manga by America's Hottest Artists.




The book is available on Amazon, and probably other places as well.

Congratulations, Jesse, on being one of America's hottest artists! There is a section on Jesse's work, accompanied by autogiographical comments on how he became interested in manga, followed by a tutorial that explains how he creates his robot images.

For Jesse's art click on:

www.jessephilips.com

Almost Halloween

Trip to Los Angeles, October 10-14

We spent most of our time in downtown Los Angeles, where we stayed at the Millennium Biltmore Hotel. We went to Massenet's Manon, performed by the Los Angles Opera, and conducted by Placido Domingo at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion on Wednesday. It was a gorgeous production -- quite Hollywood -- with colorful costumes, and beautiful young singers, including Anna Netrebko. On Thursday night we went to The Los Angeles Philharmonic in Frank Gehry's marvelous new Disney Concert Hall, where we heard Pictures at an Exhibition and other works. And on Friday we went to see Lynn Redgrave in Nightingale. We visited the Norton Simon Museum in Pasadena, explored some of the downtown area, including the new cathedral, and also got to the Armand Hammer Museum and the sculpture garden on the UCLA campus. We enjoyed some interesting meals, ranging from Asian food in paper containers at the bustling Central Market, to an elegant lunch at the Water Grill.

Here are two pictures: of Ed in front of the Concert Hall, and the "Peace on Earth" fountain with the Los Angeles City Hall in the background. I am having to edit my previous posts, cutting out some of the photos since I've exceeded my limits for photos.

September Garden

Here are a few photos I took today in the garden, trying out various settings on the A620.

Family Portrait, Labor Day 2006

Here we all are at Jesse's house to get a group picture (thanks, Sam!) before dropping Psyche at the airport this noon.

Julia and Carrie, August 2006

Alfresco at the Flying Star and the Santa Fe Opera

August 18-19, we had some
dramatic outdoor dining
experiences. On Friday
at Albuquerque's Flying Star
on Rio Grande, while sitting
on the dog patio with
Jeanne and Ross Burkhardt,we were treated to a few raindrops (see Ross and Ed under the blue umbrella), followed bya spectacular double rainbow and then a gorgeous sunset.

On Saturday, Ross drove us
through pouring rain on the way
to the opera in Santa Fe.

Clouds, still hovering in patches below the mountains, cleared as we set up our tailgate picnic: salmorejo, chicken, olives, eggs, fresh tomatoes with basil, prosciutto, cheese, salsa,
chutney, a baguette, blue corn chips, champagne, and tea and plum cake for dessert.

Then we attended a fabulous
production of Carmen,
with Anne Sofie Van Otter
singing the title role --
I called it "a thinking woman's Carmen."

As you can see, it was chilly -- we bundled up in everything we had.

(Click on the pictures if you want to see them larger.)