Photoessay #2913 - Cambodia....

My 12 year old granddaughter lives with her Cambodian extended family.  She's always seeking information.  Whenever we go to a museum or library, she wants to know if there's anything about Cambodia.  We looked at the University of Washington library and I was disappointed to see there was only one shelf about Cambodia and most of those books had to do with the Khmer Rouge genocide.  As she matures, she knows more and more about it; her family are Cambodian refugees arriving here in the late 1970s.

We are always looking for materials for her.   Not about the genocide or killing.  About the country and its people.  Sites.  We've found a few things, very few.

Dennis and I previewed this movie, "Cambodia" by Mike Shiley.  Most of it was good, showed the filmmaker traveling through villages, talking to kids, about marketplaces, about the temple complex at Angkor Wat.  All good.

But then, it went right down the rathole.  Amputees, weapons, places where horrible torture took place, the killing fields.

Aaack aaack no.  It started out so promising.

Next week, I will start my new class at UW "Intro to Women's Studies."  But I'm not ready to give up some of things from this last quarter particularly Emanuel Ringelblum and the Oyneg Shabes Archive in the Warsaw Ghetto.

Photoessay #2912 - Lincoln Theater

One of the biggest treats last weekend seeing Mark Lundsten's "The Bath" was discovering the Lincoln Theater in Mount Vernon WA.  We had been through this small town many times, on the way to Anacortes or to Fidalgo Island.  But never stopped.  Turns out to have a cute walkable Main Street.  Too many emptysmall  shops and not much open in the early evening.

Mark had engaged the Lincoln Theater in this small downtown area.  When we walked into the theater proper, we were so pleasantly shocked to find a full size beautifully restored full size theater.  Where did that come from?  The Lincoln Theater was built in 1926 and I'm sure it was the biggest for miles around.  There in the lovely Skagit Valley.

Photo is by Damian Vines.  Used without permission.

Photoessay #2911 - Warmup pics

Here is a suite of pictures that I sent to my out of town family as a warmup for their trip to Seattle.  This is all for my son't wedding on a Saturday.  My cousin and her husband thought that, if they weren't needed, they would sightsee in Seattle on Thursday and Friday.  So they could go down to Pike Place Market, you always start there and then what?

Since that process, we have a bunch of activities going that that various factions (including me) have determined as 'not to be missed'.

So far

A Monday trip to Hurricane Ridge in Olympic National Park

Claire Ginsburgh Memorial trip to Spuds at Alki Beach (my mom insisted on doing this EVERY visit)

Boeing tour in Everett

Dumpling House

I'm beginning to think we won't have time to do all this, but we could but waiddaminute isn't the deal the rather formal downtown wedding of my son Saturday evening?  With picking up granddaughter and following hair and even makeup appointments?

Dennis says we should try to spend time with brides' family.

I dunno, it can all work out.

I sent these pictures earlier

The webcam at Hurricane Ridge 9am this morning

A picture of the 747 line in Everett from today's Seattle Times

A scenic shot off Alki Beach taken from some travel site.

Enjoy!

Photoessay #2910 - Some shots of Jessica

The wedding is coming up so I need to feature more pictures of my future daughter-in-law Jessica.  Readers of the blog know that she's been in the pictures a lot.  She almost always comes to our family activities, has for several years.  Now that she's on a 'regular' work schedule, it's easier to plan.

Regarding other current significant others, Matt S has been on here quite a bit, he even requested his own label.  Megan J, don't know how many pictures but should have some as she's living here with us right now.

But this picture was at xmas, who knows what year, recently.  Though it looks like there's a lot of presents, it's not.  For several years, we've 'picked names'.  So everybody buys one present and everybody gets one present.  And that means mom and dad.  Huge weight off of me.  And I am not a xmas person at all.

Dogs, Maddie and Teddy are in the shot.  Teddy has his head in Ilana's lap (you can see some smidgeons of body parts).  Naomi's face is obscured by her hair.

But everybody looks like they're getting along; relaxed and happy.

I think 'snake in the grass' was the phrase I was thinking of yesterday.

Nice shot.  I like because it moves to the left and to the right

Photoessay #2909 - Wolf in the grass

My brother, a hobby photographer (or maybe more!) took this picture last week at the Wolf Park in Indiana.  Like me, he got a lot of pictures of the chain link fence.

But this one came out pretty cool.  Truly a wolf in the grass.  I'm thinking that must be an idiomatic expression but can't quite identify it.

I've kept his cropping and highlighting.  When I was there I was amused by the "bratty little brothers" who were always making trouble.  Apparently they've now been separated from the parents wolves.  Probably just a little too bratty.

I'm always happy to feature his work check out his work here.

Naomi is home sorta.  She had to rush home after taking a week of two intensive classes to attend a work training today.  But she's not totally moved out of her apartment suffering from 'lack of subletter' blues.  Megan continues to be around.

So I'm getting my 'hair done' for the wedding.  Dennis kinda likes the sexy high heeled shoes.  He just makes me promise that I will not go up or down stairs.  Should I get my makeup done at Nordstrom?  Just to make it complete?

Photoessay #2908 - Graduation Support

I was up late last night attending a local high school graduation.

At Parent Group, every week we ask if people would like to participate in "Court and Support."  Mostly its for court appearances but can cover other events.  If you have to go to court or go to some other stressful meeting or event, you can ask for support.  Somebody to go with you for personal support.  Most weeks, somebody has an event and others will volunteer to go with them.  Just to be another person present.  And, just about always, one or more people will volunteer to go with them.  Often it's to juvenile court appearances.  It's so simple and so effective.  Many events are during the regular work week so many adults can rarely volunteer.  But everybody can do it once in awhile.

The person doing the support always learns something.  It's a great way to become familiar with juvenile court.  Some parents get embarrassed that everybody has to wait for a long time.  The people volunteering know that.  They know that sometimes you have to sit there for a long time.  It's ok.  You know what you're signing up for.  And, if you can't stay the whole time, that's ok.

The idea is just to mix up the dynamic.  Usually going to something with an acting out kid is truly miserable.  But you can help change it up.  Shows the kid that you have support, you're not isolated.  Sometimes a parent will want somebody else in the car with them.  I've done that.

So a long time member wanted support attending her daughter's high school graduation.  I volunteered.  There were issues with the child's father and other community members that she wanted to avoid.

We did "Think, Plan, Act" planning before the event.  What the parent wanted to get out of the event.  What she wanted to avoid.  What happens if she starts getting sucked into an ugly situation.  Should she try to see her daughter afterwards?  What if this, What if that.  What about pictures?  What about flowers?  We talked a lot about how we would get out of bad situations.  I would say "I have to go," if I saw her getting into a potentially bad situation.

It all worked out beautifully.  The parent felt so glad we went, we carefully made sure that we accomplished the important parts.  The daughter knew mom was there, gave her flowers, took a few pictures.  But not linger.  We got there plenty early, I think several Seattle schools were doing graduations serially, this high school was last, didn't start until 8pm.  I insisted that she have a program.  I like how they do processions at the stadium, the graduates come down a long stairway.  Actually the processional often is most fun part. The music playing those special melodies.  All the families cheer and shout, very happy.  We saw her daughter walk in.  We cheered wildly, as loud as could, when her name was announced.  Afterwards, we went and waved to her showing the flowers.  When we got out, the parent wasn't sure she wanted to go out into the crowd.   But the daughter texted where she was so we went and found her.  Lots of smiling and hugging; we gave her the flowers.  I took some pictures, wow I sure hope they came out but I dunno.  And then we left.

All a success!   Planning carefully about what the mom wanted and how we would do it was extremely important.

THINK  PLAN  ACT   !!!!!!

I didn't have my camera and it was surprisingly hard to find a picture.  Here's a processional for a different school in a different year.  Used without permission.

Photoessay #2907 - The Bath

Last night we went to the 'hometown' screening of "The Bath," a short film by our friend Mark Lundsten.  In the fabulous Lincoln theater in Mount Vernon which deserves its own blog post.  Mark's second film.  Twice as long (25 minutes) as his first film "A priest walks into a bar" and a cut above.  Neither of these films are 'amateur' production, he uses professional services throughout.  He wrote as well as directed this film. 


The film portrays an elderly woman suffering from dementia and its effect on her family memgbers.  It inspired some difficult discussions between Dennis and myself, regarding the transition of his mother Lanaya from the care of his father into a care facility.  Dennis' father was determined to care for his wife for how long it would take.  But it had long gotten past the time when he was able to do it.  By the time she entered a care facility, she was in a state of neglect.  What could we have done differently?  We, including myself, were complicit.  Dennis urged his father to 'get help' but did so respectfully leaving the choice up to him.  Rather than ordering it.  Was that the right thing?

Part of the plot line involves the elderly mother refusing to take a bath or to change her clothes.  That happened in our family also.

One fun piece I learned was that the house scenes were filmed in an older home owned by CB who makes her home available for films.  Whoa, I know her!  And she was in the same group several years ago where I met Mark.  Mark laughingly told me that they had figured that out.

Dennis said when he got home that he would love to be part of a film production.  Maybe to be on the set next time.  "I take direction well," he says, "I could help somehow."

I found this picture from the funding site showing filmaking in action.  Mark is standing at center left.

Could happen!

Photoessay #2906 - Danny on beach

My adult son Danny walks on the beach at Harstene Island in 2011.  He has Teddy and Dennis' aunt Eliza's dog accompany him.  This would be on one of the summer family get togethers held at the waterfront cabin on Pickering Passage in the south sound.  I think Melina was supposed to come and cancelled at the last minute.  Danny was going to take Melina especially but he came anyway.

This is an example of a picture that I had in all my zillion files which I had disregarded.  I discovered it during out madcap collection of Danny pictures for a slideshow for the wedding.  I wondered, why don't we go more often?  There's actually a lot of reasons, too far away, too much interference.  It doesn't speak to me usually but this picture does.

If you look, you can identify the bridge that links the Island to, to, to, it's not really the 'mainland'.  Northwest Washignton geography is so confusing.  You connect to what could be called the lower Kitsap peninsula north of Shelton.  No, maybe the lower Olympic peninsual, I dunno.  You can drive to Tacoma, cross the Narrows bridge and kind of screw around through those little places and come from the north.  Usually we just stay on I5, all the way to Olympia, go around the South Sound and up to Shelton from the south.  Confused, yeah, me too.

Even after all this time, earlier this month we passed our 35th anniversary of living in Western Washington.  It was June 1, the day that the Sonics won the NBA title.  How do I know?  We had a U-haul truck, Dennis was driving that, Charl and I were following in the car.  Dennis kept getting off the freeway, getting out and walking around the truck.  Why was he doing that.  On the third time, I got it.  People were driving around honking their horns to celebrate the championship.  He didn't have a car radio so he thought they were honking at him.

I still get confused about the geography.

Danny has some quiet time on the beach; hope he enjoyed it.

Photoessay - Those strappy heels

Remember these cute strappy sandals that actually look good on me? That I got for Danny's wedding (I'm the mother of the groom). I knew I would have to wear them around.  Get used to them.

Now, I haven't worn any shoes like these since ... well never, I can't even remember.  What did I wear when I got married in 1976?  They weren't like this.

So, today, I tried to walk around in them, not so bad.  But then I ran up the stairsto answer the phone and I want it on record that I did not fall.

It was my doctor about the crazy set of symptoms that I have blah blah boring.  She heard about the shoes.  Considering the general state of my back, um, she's not going for it.  She's really not going for it.

I took off the shoes and it hurt places that I didn't even know I had places, you know?

I look good in these shoes.  But I don't think I can wear them.  It would be too nuts especially in a high stress situation like the wedding.

Just not going to work.  Wahhhhh!