Monthly Archives: February 2021

The Death of a Great Man

I’m going to talk about Rush Limbaugh today. People either loved him or hated him. Kind of like President Trump.  I always wonder about people who hate others so easily, but that’s another blog for another day.   Hate comes easy for some people, I know.  But today there is not going to be any hate here.

Years ago David and I started a little vacuum cleaner and sewing machine repair store.  We sold sewing machines and vacuum cleaners and David did the repairs on ones brought to our store.  I was the only one in the store all day as David worked for the National Guard during the day and was only in the store at night after I went home.   Some days seemed pretty long so I started listening to talk radio.  I listened to Mike McConnell on WLW out of Cincinnati.  He was a really good talk show host and was very interesting. But one day, he was talking about sports, something which didn’t interest me at all, so I started searching through the channels to see if I could find something else to listen to.  Suddenly, I heard this man talking on our local radio station and he was saying things that I believed in.  He had a very compelling voice and made me think  of an elder professor giving a lecture.   He was also very funny and played great music.  That man was Rush Limbaugh.  Sorry to Mike McConnell, but I started to listen to Rush every day.  At that time there were Rush rooms at businesses where people could go and listen to Rush.  My store became a Rush room.  Our customers had to listen to him whether they wanted to or not. No one ever complained  and I’m pretty sure if they did I would have not turned Rush off.

At that time in the eighties, Rush wrote books and did Rush to excellence tours all over the country to packed auditoriums.   I bought his first book and was surprised at how he looked because I had this distinguished older man in my mind, and there he was a chubby, younger man.

I listened to Rush in our store for ten years. After we closed the store, I listened to him at home.  He got me through some years in our nation’s history when things weren’t going so well. The Clinton years were horrible and if not for Rush’s sense of humor and fun parodies, I would have been been upset all the time.  But he showed us the humor in all the things that were happening.  I listened to him after 911.  He calmed his listeners when it seemed that nothing would be right again.  He got me through the Obama years. I always believed Obama was the worst president we have ever had.  Then President Trump was elected and all was right with the world and our country blossomed into what it was meant to be.  Both President Trump and Rush wanted our country to be the best it could be and we were for four years.  Then Rush made a tragic announcement. He had stage 4 lung cancer.  He hadn’t smoked for years, but cancer got him.  He kept on talking through his treatments and when he couldn’t be there he had some excellent people to replace him, Mark Stein and Todd Herman being two of them.  At the State of the Union, President Trump gave Rush the Medal of Freedom. A very high honor. Those watching saw Nancy Pelosi make a fool of herself behind Trump, going so far as to tear up his speech after he was done. Very sorry to see such a tantrum.  Then the 2020 election came.   Sadly, people’s hate ruled out any thought and we got not the president Biden.  Not sure he’s legal, but he’s in the White House now. And our country is bleeding again.  So sad. I wished that Rush would get us through the next four horrible years, but it was not to be. This week when I turned on my radio I heard a woman’s voice and wondered who it was taking over for Rush that day, but it was his wife announcing that Rush had died. How hard that must have been for her.  Millions of people cried that day.

I can’t imagine not hearing Rush’s voice on the radio any more. He was the voice of reason in a very chaotic and angry time. People are so angry all the time now it seems.  And the hate. It was hard to understand how people could hold so much hate inside themselves for two men.  I don’t know who will fill his space, but I hope it will be somebody with the same love of our country that Rush had.  He truly felt like we lived in the best country on earth.  A beacon to other people.  So many people want to come here, legally and illegally.  Rush and President Trump both knew the treasure we have here in the United States. They talked about it every day.

Now they will run reruns of Rush’s shows for a time, but one day his voice will not be heard.  Good-bye, Rush.  You were and are a treasure that is gone too soon. Rest in Peace.  One day, I hope to hear your voice again.

 

Living Through the Decades

I’ve been around a while. I was born smack dab in the middle of the Twentieth Century. A very eventful century to be sure.  One that has a lot of memorable newsworthy events in it. We went from the horse and buggy to the space rocket in that century.  We watched Davy Crockett, The Mickey Mouse Club and the assassination of John F. Kennedy.  We went from having milk and bread delivered to big box stores that carried everything.  We had our feet measured before we tried on shoes, sometime our feet were even X-rayed beforehand.  Now, no one helps you with your shoes.  Gas went from 21 cents a gallon to over two dollars a gallon and during the Obama administration in the 21st century, gas almost went to five dollars a gallon.

Of course, back in the earlier part of the twentieth century salaries were much lower. When David and I got married, we were making about five thousands dollars a year.  If someone had told me we would be making what we are making now I would have told them they were talking crazy, but with inflation, salaries rose also.  Government intervention rose also which made a lot of things cost more, like college. When I went to college it cost me $130 a quarter.  I made enough waitressing to pay for my first year in college. Then government started offering “free” Pell grants and other things to “help” us and college tuition went up into the low to high thousands per year.  Don’t tell me government doesn’t cost us money in everything.

I knew people who were born in the nineteenth century. Who were alive when horses and buggies were the norm.  These same people lived through two world wars and the Great Depression.   David’s Grandmother learned how to be frugal after that and she was frugal the rest of her life.  She saved everything.  My mother also lived during the roaring twenties, through two world wars, the Great Depression and the Viet Nam war and saw the first man to walk on the moon.  David’s grandmother lived to be 93 years old. She saw a lot of change in her lifetime, some good, some not so good.  My mother and daddy were married at the very beginning of the Great Depression, but my daddy was a farmer so they never went hungry and wanted for nothing.  It certainly wasn’t easy for them, but they made it through and raised six children through the thirties and into the seventies when their last son graduated from high school.  I wish my mother had had a blog back then so I could read more about her life. When you are a kid, you don’t think about asking your parents about their lives.

Now I am the grandmother of five grandchildren.  One born in the twentieth century and the rest in the twenty-first century.  If they live long enough, they could see the twenty-second century.   When I was young, I never thought I would become this old, but I did and pretty quickly, too.  Young people think think they will be young all their lives. I remember thinking that. I also remember thinking maybe my children would not grow up. I really did think that. That I would get to keep my children little forever. Well, it doesn’t and didn’t work out that way and now they are the age I think I am or would like to be.   In all honesty, though, I would not want to have to repeat all those years again.

What will my grandchildren see in their lifetime?  I hope they don’t see their country turn into a socialist one or worse a communist one. It seems at the time we have an administration who would like nothing better than to take away our rights given to us by our Creator. I fear for my grandchildren more and more and pray every day that things will change.  Things seem all upside down. What’s wrong is called right, what’s right is called wrong. Then I wonder if that is how my parents felt, how my grandparents felt in their day about the direction the country was going.  Maybe it’s a generational thing. I just want my grandchildren to know I fought as hard as I could to keep the country our founders began way back centuries ago. Wise men wrote the Constitution and gave us the Bill of Rights and if we are a moral and good country, we may be able to keep it. At least that is what one of the founders said at the signing.

I do wonder what is in the future.  What will people be using as fuel since the powers that be want to get rid of gas and oil products.  What will people be driving at the end of this century?  Will the pandemic still be going on? It seems like it’s gone on forever. I’m to the point I don’t want to participate any longer. Throw all masks away and take my risks. The school children are getting the worse end of the deal. They are losing their childhood experiences having school every day and being with children their age.  The not the  president says he will open schools one day a week!  What good is that?  Couldn’t one catch the virus on that one day as well as on five?  It’s really confusing what we hear from government. I don’t think they know what they are doing and are throwing stuff on the wall hoping it sticks.  I really miss President Trump because he always had a plan and he knew what he was doing.

Yes, things have changed through the years.  Remember when you had to get up off your seat and go change the channel on your television set?  Or you had to be within a couple of feet of your phone because the cord was too short to go far?  I remember dinners around the table every evening. My mother was the best cook and you didn’t want to miss one of her meals. I’m really hoping that this pandemic has brought families closer together and they are eating at the table with each other again.  Maybe this pandemic has taught us to slow down a bit.  Maybe God thought our lives were getting too hectic and we were losing our way.  We needed to have time for one another.  I hope so. 

I won’t see another century, but I know some people who probably will.   What have you seen in your lifetime?   We all are put here at certain times for a reason or a time like this as Esther in the Bible was.  She had one job God gave her and she accomplished it.  If she hadn’t many Jews would have been killed.  Are you ready for such a time as this?  I hope I am.  I pray I am.  Bye.

 

 

 

 

Back to the Brontes

I watched a movie about the Bronte Sisters that was shown first on PBS. It is called To Walk Invisible, which is what the Bronte girls had to do when they were writing and getting their works published. They had to publish under a man’s name for a time.  I found this movie very interesting, but what I really loved seeing were the clothes.

In my previous post I talked about how people really wore colorful clothes back in the 1800’s.  I’m sure the people at PBS tried to be as historically accurate as they could be while making this movie about the Brontes.  The clothes were just beautiful. Now the Brontes were not rich by any means, but the clothes they wore were still beautiful.

I would love to see women dressed like this coming down the street. Look at the rich colors, the plaids, the florals.  The wonderful capes in such beautiful colors.

Kidskin gloves. Tight bodices.

Tiny, corseted waistlines.

Even the hats had pretty, bright ribbons and look at the floral fabric in her dress.  I have some reproduction material that almost looks like this fabric.

The Brontes were trying so hard to get their poetry and books published.  They had to pretend to be something they were not. To be invisible. It was a man’s world and women just did not do something like write a book. How silly that sounds now with all the women authors we have now. I can’t imagine what it must have been like back then to know you could write and really wanted to write, but it was discouraged at every turn. These women were so brave and ahead of their time.

But back to the clothes, here the sisters come walking down the street all dressed up in their gorgeous dresses, capes and scarves.   The actresses who played the Bronte sisters were excellent.  The sisters had to deal with their brother’s drug and alcohol abuse and he had an affair with a married woman which was quite the scandal back then.

I’m in love with this dress. If only I could go back in time for just a while and dress like this.

Not a good picture of it, but this dress looked like it was made of satin. Very dressy to be an every day dress.

I love this shawl.   And there is that floral fabric again.

I’m going to watch this again and really look at the clothes.

I may just get a pattern and some reproduction material and try making a Summer dress. I haven’t sewn clothes in a long time.

This book has been keeping me busy.

Sewing little 4 1/2 inch blocks. Seventy-two of them, plus I sewed nine extra to go in the center. The pattern calls for a center medallion, but I didn’t like it so I sewed eight flying geese blocks and one log cabin block and I will call my quilt, “Geese Around the Cabin.”

Here is the center of the quilt.

And here it is, almost done.

I still have a sawed tooth border to go around it and then a six and 1/2 inch border around that and then it will be ready to be sandwiched and quilted. I think I may quilt this one by hand. I have another one almost done with the same patterns in Christmas greens and reds.

This quilt has come together surprisingly easily and I really have enjoyed making it.  It’s going to have to be hung on a wall somewhere after it’s done.

Here’s to the Brontes and all brave girls everywhere. Bye.