See Me Sea Cruisin'!

Last week the Mister and I enjoyed a cruise to the Bahamas. Our ship was Royal Caribbean's Monarch of the Seas. It sailed out of Port Canaveral on Monday October 19. We enjoyed 4 days and 4 nights of sun, sea, snoozing and snacking. It was a blur of buffets. A dearth of dinners. A litter of lunches.

And a semi comfy bed. Only mermaids and ship's passengers know what it's like to have the sea rock you gently to sleep.

A cruise is easy traveling. You take your hotel with you wherever you go. We docked next to this Norwegian Cruise ship in the Bahamas

Those beautiful resort hotels stay where they are. You have to pack up your stuff and take it with you if you want to go someplace else.

Freeport is not exactly free, but you do save money on essentials - like a years supply of Grand Mariner for example,

A sunny sight as seen from deck 11. Something about those buildings makes me homesick...or maybe thirsty......?....

Ah - a closer look - a Starbuck's! No wonder! Luckily the ship has a coffee shop, Latte-Tudes, so I don't have to leave the ship for a sip of java. But cruising is really all about f-o-o-d. Rumor has it that cruise ships are not allowed to dock back at the home port until all the food is gone. We'll do our part!

So, the Mister and I donned our "smart casual" wear and stopped by to pick up our cruise posse, Bill and Suzanne on our way to Claude's Dining Room

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We weren't the only ones that answered the dinner bell. They're on their way to the Windjammer buffet dinner.
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Our staterooms are just steps away from the elevators! Brilliant planning!

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The mister looks a bit peckish. It's been at least an hour since we last ate.
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We meet our wonderful serving staff. Amit, from India and Sunshine from China. Just two of about 40 nations represented by the ships crew.

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Sunshine showed me how to write "beautiful" in Chinese characters.

Beautiful!

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Amit took our dinner orders.

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Mia, from Great Britain, was traveling with her parents and brothers. She celebrated her birthday and wore this beautiful sea foam mermaid dress for the occasion.

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A first course of roasted garlic soup. Mmmmm!

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And my all time favorite escargot

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Where'd it go? Please Sir, May I have more?

After a wonderful evening of dinner, conversation, donating to slot machines and browsing about the ship we headed for our blankets and pillows
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Our stateroom staff had everything ship shape and left a bunny to watch for our safe return.

The mornings brought breakfast followed by lunch and plenty of activities and naps to keep us busy until dinner.
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Here we go again!

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Happy!


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Menu?


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Sunshine captures Mia for my camera.

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Looking a bit smug and very well fed

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While we were away, Layla the dog caught up on her favorite catalog

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And waited for us to set sail for home.

So, how was the trip?


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Beautiful!

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Postcard Friendship Friday! Pumpkin Seed Charm

Postcard reproduced here with kind permission of http://www.cardcow.com/

Happy Postcard Friendship Friday! We'll celebrate with another Hallowe'en postcard. This one includes a verse that instructs us how to keep black cats - and their associated bad luck -away. The not so menacing Jack o' lantern will keep him at bay as long as he is fortified with a ring of pumpkin seeds.

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Mmmm - pumpkin seeds! For years I was aware only of those store bought seeds that are covered in a salty salted saltish crust of salty salt. The main flavor was salt. I ate so many pumpkin seeds..well.. it's just a wonder I didn't end up like Lot's wife.
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I can almost hear my ankles swelling!
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Only 4 carbs per serving but enough salt to preserve you over the winter.

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I was in my early teens before we had our first home roasted pumpkin seeds fresh out of the Jack-o-lantern.
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Roasted Pumpkin Seeds

1 1/2 cups raw whole pumpkin seeds
2 teaspoons butter, melted
1 pinch salt
DIRECTIONS
Preheat oven to 300 degrees F (150 degrees C).
Toss seeds in a bowl with the melted butter and salt. Spread the seeds in a single layer on a baking sheet and bake for about 45 minutes or until golden brown; stir occasionally.

Delicious!

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The postcard is dated October 31, 1921. There is no stamp, or postmark. Perhaps Grandma tucked it away in his mother's suitcase during their last visit with several reminders of "don't forget to give this card to little Albert on Halloween!

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It reads:

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Hello Albert

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How is Grandma's little boy - what have you been doing since you got home. Love and kisses from Grandma

Sounds like a mighty nice Grandma, doesn't she?

I searched for Park Idaho, but found no information to share with you. Zilch. Albert lived one state over, in Leadpoint which is an unincorporated mining area in the far north east of Washington State. When I think of "mining town" I automatically think of coal mine. Leadpoint mines, however, contained galena (which is lead) and other associated minerals and elements:

Leadpoint Mines Mineral List:

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Cerussite also known as white lead
Dolomite sedimentary carbonate rock
Fluorite calcium fluoride -used in smelting process
Galena lead
Limonite an iron ore
Pyrite a carbonate mineral also known as fool's gold
Quartz second most abundant mineral on earth. amethyst and citrine are examples of quartz
Scheelite ore mineral of tungsten
Siderite a valuable iron mineral
Sphalerite zinc ore
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Leadpoint is a hilly or perhaps mountainous area with lots of lakes.
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Speaking of hills:

Royal Caribbean's Monarch of the Seas anchored by some hilly isle.

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Here's where me n' the Mister were this week!

Celebrating our 40th

what a life!

See you later today!

In the meantime, stop by and visit our PFF host, Marie at Voila! Vintage Postcards!

Postcard Friendship Friday With Good Luck Wishes

I've found another early 1900's postcard with unusual good luck wishes for Halloween:


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A message of good luck for you

The best that you could dream

So let us all be merry

On this joyous Halloween.

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Apparently that is a good witch in the picture. Her BFF, the good Blue Fairy is mixing a cauldron of luck to ensure a joyous (?) Halloween.

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The year on the postmark is unreadable. My best guess is October 2o, 1904, 24 or 34. You choose.





It was mailed from Grants Pass in Oregon - another state the rest of us never talk much about. The liberal, Caucasian, gun toting, treehugging, hydroponic residents sandwiched between Washington and California would have moved further west had it not been for the Pacific Ocean.





The written message is like a prehistoric discovery. Cave drawings. Footsteps in the sandstone as it were. The author, Ralph, used the text messaging abbreviation "r u" for "are you"! I should send it to the Smithsonian. I'm thinking this find will surely compete with the Prehistoric Barbie!

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The message reads:

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Dear (unreadable) thithter Ruth,
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How r u and Rose getting along in H. School now. Mrs. Gruber, Marie's sister you know, thought you were doing fine. She used to be a stenographer. She, Mr. Gruber and little "Snookie" are coming down Saturday. "Snookie" or LaVon, rather, is a mighty cute baby and we have great times. She comes to me when she won't to her mother sometimes. Love to all, Ralph.

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Sounds like Ralph is a fun brother to his "thithter" and a great attraction to babies.

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Grants Pass and Medford are located in the Rogue Valley of southwest Oregon. Grant's pass was once a timber town, but now relies on tourism and Medford, once an agricultural area now has healthcare services as the main industry.

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Medford, down in the Rouge Valley

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Meet the Thunder Egg, an agate filled nodule. The Oregon State rock.

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Seed cone of the Douglas Fir, the State Tree of Oregon

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A California Native American myth states that the three-ended bracts in the seed cone are a tail and two tiny legs of the mice who hid inside the scales of the tree's cones during forest fires, and the tree was kind enough to be the enduring sanctuary for them. Beautiful!



The name of the tree honors David Douglas, a Scottish botanist who first cultivated the fir tree in Europe. It is one of the most common trees in North America and a very popular Christmas tree choice.
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A little too early to think about Christmas...it's not even that lucky joyous Halloween yet!
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For more Postcard Friendly Friday fun, stop by and see Marie at Voila! Vintage Postcards.

A Wedding Anniversary - 40 Years!

Today we celebrate 40 years together, my Mister and I

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The years just flew by - at least it seems that way now

Did you know that the 40th Wedding Anniversary....

Is the Ruby Anniversary?

That's what we celebrate today

You know? ....we never did have monogrammed towels... but those we've had through the years, and there have been many...dried us just the same.

We picked an amazing year to marry. That rainy Friday night was just one more day in an amazing year.

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Rob Kirpatrick wrote a book about 1969. He called it 1969 The Year Everything Changed.

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"This was the year that saw Apollo 11 land on the moon, the Cinderella stories of Joe Namath’s Jets and the “Miracle Mets,” the Harvard student strike and armed standoff at Cornell, the People’s Park riots, the first artificial heart transplant and first computer network connection, the Manson family murders and cryptic Zodiac Killer letters, the Woodstock music festival, Easy Rider, Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five, the Battle of Hamburger Hill, the birth of punk music, the invasion of Led Zeppelin, the occupation of Alcatraz, death at Altamont Speedway, and much more. It was a year that pushed boundaries on stage (Oh! Calcutta!), screen (Midnight Cowboy), and the printed page (Everything You Always Wanted to Know about Sex), witnessed the genesis of the gay rights movement at Stonewall, and started the era of the “no fault” divorce. Richard Nixon became president, the New Left squared off against the Silent Majority, William Ayers co-founded the Weatherman Organization, and the nationwide Moratorium provided a unifying force in the peace movement."

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40 Years!

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The letters of the word "forty" are in alphabetical order; this is the only number that has this linguistic property in English

Life begins at forty"

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forty winks

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40 yard dash

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The back 40

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Days and Nights of Noah's Flood

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the code for direct dial international phone calls to Romania

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hours in a work week

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days of fasting

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years the Israelites wandered in the desert

And the number of years the Mister and I have loved each other and shared our lives.

40

It has a nice ring to it

Postcard Friendship Friday in the Great Northwest!

Posted with kind permission of http://www.cardcow.com/

It's hard to believe this beautiful Art Nouveau style postcard is nearly 100 years old! It's rhythmic leaf pattern and subtle colors are a prime example of the artistic style of "new art" that broke away from the stuffy and cluttered Victorian works. The Art Nouveau movement swept world-wide and was popular for about 15 years in the late 1800's and very early 1900's.

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The verse reads: On this Halloween may your most wished for wish come true. Kind of an odd greeting for Halloween, I think. That would be the last day of the year we should make wishes. We might hiccup in the middle of asking and wind up with a zombie on our doorstep.

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The card is postmarked October, 28 1911 and was mailed from Hazel, Washington to Warden Washington. Hazel lies on the banks of the Stillaguamish (Stilly) River, about 75 miles NE of Seattle (which is NOT the capital of Washington, by the way) and is 295 feet above sea level. The Stilly river flows down from the Cascade mountains into Puget Sound.
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The Stilly River in July

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(all right, all right! January)
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The Cascades are part of the Pacific Ring of Fire, the ring of volcanoes and associated mountains around the Pacific Ocean. All of the known historic eruptions in the contiguous United States have been from Cascade volcanoes. The two most recent were Lassen Peak in 1914 to 1921 and a major eruption of Mount St. Helens in 1980. Minor eruptions of Mount St. Helens have also occurred since, most recently in 2006.

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I'm just sayin'.

Mt. Rainier, Washington State

The postcard was mailed to Miss Lydia Daell in Warden Washington which is in the center of the state. Warden was settled in the late 1800s by immigrants of Russian-German ancestry who homesteaded in the area and farmed dryland wheat. The Milwaukee Railroad arrived in the early 1900s and attracted additional settlers, including Doc Harris who established a drug and sundries store with physician services in Warden about 1905. The town was named after his son Ward. The Town of Warden was officially incorporated June 28, 1910. By 1917 the population of Warden reached 300. Electricity arrived in 1939, but the town's population declined through World War II.

The card, written in pre Starbucks days, reads:

Hazel Wash. October 22, 1911

Dear Lydia,

I had a postal from Miss Jessie McDonald, and she said your school had not started. What is the trouble? I suppose you will soon have a teacher.

Your friend, Louise Vinsonhale

Does Louise sound just a little terse? Is she suffering at the thought of her friend being free from the restraints of school and homework so late in the fall? I'd be falling over dead from the thought I if had to go to school and my friends were on an extended vacation! Perhaps Louise's most wished for wish is that a teacher will show up at Lydia's school -and F-A-S-T!

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What was going on in late 1911?

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Orville Wright remained in the air 9 minutes and 45 seconds in a glider at Kill Devil Hills, North Carolina, setting a new world record that stood for 10 years.
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Gaston Leroux's The Phantom of the Opera was published.

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Suffragettes stormed Parliament in London. All were arrested and all chose prison terms. You go girls!

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The Titanic 's hull was completed.

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Ragtime was the popular music of the day, and Alexander's Ragtime Band by Irving Berlin was just one of a very long list of popular songs for 1911. Mahalia Jackson was born this year.

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David Guterson wrote a wonderful and finely told novel that takes place in Washington. Snow Falling on Cedars is loosely based on real events that took place in Washington during the 1940's and 50's. The story was heavily influenced by Harper Lee's To Kill A Mockingbird and is a must read. The movie by the same name is well done and keeps true to the story. Read, watch - or better yet, do both books and both movies! I'll be watching To Kill A Mockingbird this weekend thanks to Netflix and their timely delivery. Aaahh an evening with our favorite Mr. Peck. Peck n' popcorn. Who could ask for more?

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Enjoy more PFF posts hosted by our friend Marie of Voila! Vintage Postcards!

Postcard Friendship Friday - October Fun One!

Reproduced with permission from www.CardCow.com

I thought I would do a series of Halloween post cards for the October Postcard Friendship Fridays. This colorful little card is a Hallowe'en Series (No. 88) Tucks Post Card.

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I think the cute little girl is trying to brighten the candles rather than blow them out - in an attempt to stave off the scary pumpkin. She looks like the little Campbell's Soup girl!

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The card was postmarked Dodge, Nebraska, November 13, 1914, and was mailed to West Point, Nebraska. Those of us who are familiar with Nebraska, know that the state is 250 miles long north to south, and 22,347.25 miles wide from east to west. Mostly flat with the following flashing by your car window: corn, corn, hogs, corn, hogs,corn, corn, corn, hogs, corn, hogs...well you get the drift. Literally. You'll note that the sender added the word "had" to the Halloween wishes, since it was a belated greeting.
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West Point, Nebraska, not to be confused with West Point Naval Academy in New York, is in the uppermost north eastern point of Nebraska. So why did they call it West Point? When founded by the Bruner brothers of Philadelphia in 1857 it was called (snore) New Philadelphia (zzzzzzz). The name was changed to West Point because it was, at that time, the westernmost outpost along the Elkhorn valley.

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Pawnee Father and Son - 1912

Historical note: In the spring of 1859, over 4,000 Pawnee natives flooded the Elkhorn Valley during a hunting excursion and, displeased to find white settlers in the valley, burned several homesteads and killed livestock. The Native Americans had a totally different concept of land ownership than the intruders, so who was at fault in this scenario depended mostly on who had pens, paper and printing presses. The population was probably about 700 in 1914.

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If you happen to be in the area, West Point is having a Halloween Bash on Friday, October 30th at 8:00 p.m. - midnight at the Nielsen Center. Doors open at 7:00 Costume Contest,
Door Prizes, other fun & games, bar on premises. Tickets -$8 presale, $10 at the door. Tickets available at:
West Point Banks, Chamber of Commerce, and Nielsen Center Office. Help raise funds for the Nielsen Center.

Dodge Nebraska is a village of 700 in north east Nebraska: The Dodge Daze, held annually in July, is a fun-packed day that features a pancake feed, swim meet, sidewalk sale, classic car poker run, band concert, water fights, sand volleyball and softball tournaments, a street dance and, of course, food!

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What was going on in 1914?

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WWI was in full swing. Jonas Salk (Polio Vaccine) was born, and W. H. Carrier patented the design for the air conditioner. (The people of Florida thank you!)
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One of the many popular songs of 1914 was Aba Daba Honeymoon. In 1964, American novelist Thomas Pynchon referred to the song in a 1964 letter to a friend as "the nadir of all American expression": "Our souls [the world] leaves to whatever obsolescence, bigotries, theories of education workable and un- parental wisdom or lack of it, happen to get in its more or less Brownian (your phrase) pilgrimage between the cord-cutting ceremony and the time they slide you down the chute into the oven, while the guy on the Wurlitzer plays Aba Daba Honeymoon because you had once told somebody it was the nadir of all American expression; only they didn't know what nadir meant but it must be good because of the vehemence with which you expressed yourself."


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Mmmmm! This is the reason for the season!
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It is comforting to know that Candy Corn, having been invented in 1880 was available to our 1914 Halloween celebrants. We have George Renninger of the Wonderle Candy Company to thank for this charming confection. Each year, Americans eat enough Brach's candy corn that if the kernels were laid end to end, they would circle the Earth 4.5 times.
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The card reads:
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Dear Agie
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Rec'd your letter and card both. We are done picking corn 9 weeks ago. We were done the soonest around here. I don't expect to go to the (?) pictures as you said. Would like to see you tho. I am sewing a new winter checkered dress, brown. I got a new coat dress, hat and gloves just lately. I am still engaged but don't know how long it will last. Just imagine me every Sun. on nice big 1915 model overland grey car out in every direction. So your little sister goes to school already. So you worked out too. Do you grow them potatoes out there. My but your (?) wonderfully.
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I can't make out the rest of the card, other than it appears Valeria also got a new touring suit to tour in.
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She also commented that the way Agie pasted the stamp on her last card indicates that she hates Valeria. I recall something about that - the stamp placed sideways, upside down, off to the left or right etc, indicated some latent emotion expressed by the sender to the recipient.
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Valeria made use of every possible inch of the card which is one reason why it is difficult to read even after I enlarged and printed a copy..

This is a 1914 Touring Suit. The hat looks as though it may take off on it's own.

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The silhouette of the day

And a progression of figures

See you next PFF with another Halloween treat! And thank you, Marie at Voila! Vintage Postcards for hosting these fun and friendly Fridays.