Friday, September 30, 2016

A Nostalgic Weekly Link Round-Up




The water in the pool has chilled to the too-uncomfortable-for-reading point. The tap water is cool when I first turn on the water. Autumn is coming fast to the Sonoran Desert. It's odd, but autumn always makes me a bit nostalgic, and I caught myself going through some photos that I'd scanned to my computer.

This is a photo of my grandmother. One of the last things we did before she was stolen from us by breast cancer was go on a road trip to Kentucky, she, my grandfather, and me. For the first time, I was the one in charge of driving, and it turned out to be eventful when one of the tires on that huge old Buick blew out on the interstate at 70 MPH. (My grandfather was quite impressed that I never lost my cool and got us safely to a gas station.)

For most of my life, my focus had been on my mother and grandfather. They were the ones with the charisma. They were the ones who could draw people to them like moths. They were the ones who could make me laugh so hard that I would have tears rolling down my face. They were the people I wanted to be.

But on this Kentucky trip, I finally began to realize the person I truly was... and that person was more like my tiny grandmother. I may have inherited my height from my father, but I inherited my premature gray hair from my grandmother. I also inherited a love of travel, a love of birds and flowers, a love of creating pretty things, a love of photography from her. I also inherited something much deeper. My grandmother was an introvert, and so am I. I didn't realize all this until it was too late, and it breaks my heart. I hankered after something I could never be while my grandmother probably felt like an outsider in her own family.

Ack! Nostalgia isn't always a good thing, is it? I'm going to head on out to the corral for those links I've been saving for you all. Then I'm going to go outside and take some photos. My grandmother would've loved my camera.


 
►Books, Movies & Other Interesting Tidbits◄

►Channeling My Inner Indiana Jones◄
  • The winter of 1609-1610 was the Starving Time in Jamestown, Virginia. The skeleton of a 14-year-old girl proves how bad things really were that winter. 
  • If people knew their family history, there would be a lot less bigotry, a lot less racism. George Washington's family tree is biracial
  • A Roman bronze wing that was unearthed in Gloucester, England will be going on show. 
  • The greatest shipwrecks that are still out there. 
  • Archaeologists have discovered the world's oldest fishhooks in Okinawa.
  • Archaeologists are restoring the flooring that adorned the Second Temple of Jerusalem
  • A Bronze Age settlement has been found in roadworks excavations for the Norwich bypass in England. (It's in an area where Ruth Galloway could be in charge.
  • They're also unearthing artifacts in roadworks in the Inverness area. 
  • A rare Roman gold coin has been discovered in Jerusalem. 
  • The HMS Terror has been discovered in pristine condition 168 years after its doomed Northwest Passage attempt. 
  • An ancient synagogue mosaic may depict Alexander the Great

►Channeling My Inner Elly Mae Clampett◄
  • They thought they'd rescued a puppy caked in dirt at this construction site, but truth is, it was something else entirely. 
  • Dutch police have demonstrated how they use trained eagles to knock illegal drones out of the sky. Very impressive! 
  • Bark Rangers are helping lick dangerous wildlife encounters in Glacier National Park. 

►Fascinating Folk◄

►I ♥ Lists◄



That's all for this week! Don't forget to stop by next Friday when I'll be sharing a freshly selected batch of links for your surfing pleasure.


Have a great weekend, and read something fabulous!



6 comments:

  1. Thanks for sharing your story (and your grandmother's, too), Cathy. That's the thing about nostalgia, isn't it? The same memories we treasure are those that sometimes can be painful. Thanks, too, for those links. As always, they're fabulous!

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  2. I actually wonder if your grandmother might not have realized exactly how much you were like her, and, therefore, understood why you were so drawn to your mother and grandfather. After all, she did choose to be with your grandfather.

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    1. And that-- unbeknownst to you-- is an understatement. She fell in love with my grandfather while still in high school and never looked at another man. When I was a teenager, Mom and I had to tell her that the man who came to fix the roof was flirting with her. She didn't have a clue.

      I hope she understood. But my blindness still hurts.

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  3. Very touching about your grandmother. I think I'm like both my grammies but I didn't see them enough alone to really know them, or they me. They both had tons of grandchildren and I was at the younger end and they were old and tired. It is interesting about 'inheritance.' We adopted both our kids and yet, they are so much like us. And now I see it in the grandchildren. My granddaughter is a mini-me in quite a few ways. Amazing and miraculous to me. I love the fall reading link which led me to instagram book pics and then to Lauren Graham's new book. One could spend all day at the computer.

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    1. I knew my one grandmother very well. My maternal grandparents had one child who had one child. I got a lot of quality time with both of them.

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