Tomorrow is camera day....

I decided once a week to take my camera with me for a day and take photos to inspire me.  I'm sorta excited.  You never know what lies in wait for the amateur photographer who is trying to teach herself composition - something I'm ashamed of saying I suck at in my artwork.  Why paint three figures when one will work.  Still I think this will be a great good thing. So here is s photo of a steam vent in the back or back side of my building.  Not the most interesting but I liked the steam coming out of  it.   I took some others but they were pretty blah. 

Everyday when I come home from the bus I see this hole in the road.  It really looks like a heart so I had to take a snap. I want to sneak out and paint a heart in it for fun and see what happens. Right after I took it we had a rainstorm and the hole filled with water.  I'm going to run down and take another when it happens it was pretty nice looking. Camera Day is going to stick around - if for no other reason than to make me think of painting ideas.

On becoming jobless

So Tuesday I found out eight of us at work would be made redundant.  I was the only one from my section but honestly I knew it was coming.  How could I not.... even though they were trying so hard to be clever.  It's not hard when you and your new boss have totally opposite beliefs on compassion and such.  This blog stands in good evidence how disorganized and scattered I can be.  I've been here at the University for 15 years and am due to get my 15 year pin next week.  I think - to be fair to myself and to the others - I will miss that meeting.  I don't want to find myself shaking hands with one of the people who signed my dismissal paper.  Technically it's for restructuring the School, which is a fancy way of cutting back, keeping people who feel ideologically similar to the current bosses. I'm not angry at any one person in particular just the fact that they didn't try to keep us on somehow. That it was easy to let us go... that hurt... after 15 years told I wasn't needed or important enough to be kept on somehow.  Since then I've had instructors and co-workers go out of their way to check on me or let me know how much they will miss me. More than I thought would say things. LARGE EDITOR"S NOTE: I thought I'd stick this in... the above mentioned feelings as one could guess was based shortly thereafter my termination note. I want to add in that I was totally wrong about my supervisor.  We still think totally opposite from each other about some things (and I could be the one who needs to grow) but she was really supportative and compassionate about stuff.  She went out of her way to help me which I am really grateful. OKAY, so I make mistakes but I at least can admit them.

I do love my work.  I love the people I mostly work with.... students, faculty and staff.  (A few exceptions there.)  So now I'm a lame duck - so to speak since they are giving us dispossessed 60 days to find another job.  The University is trying to help it's dismissed population find new roots.  I attended a meeting on my rights and choices.  I can get help from them on resume writing, interviewing tricks and a slight hire preference request.  I'm working on my resume, my personal and professional references and trying to get going.

I'm choosing to view this in a positive way.  To think that an almost 60 struggling artist can be recognized for the skills and enthusiasms that keep her young and keep people happy to visit and will find a new job quickly and easily.  I will  miss learning the obscure knowledge of science, (hard since I'm an art major).  Early on, working in the Biological Sciences taught me that art and science are similar and satisfy the same need to create.  (I once did an art show with all the people in my section donating a piece of artwork they did for fun.  We had over 50 pieces)  I was amazed that so many scientists could do such beautiful and haunting work.  They were too.

Hopefully I will continue at the University in some other department and find new interests and new conversations.  I miss the people I found a bond with and hope to continue that friendship.  I will learn to forgive the people who thought my contributions weren't good enough to keep.

More on Freda, the mysterious grandmother.

As I posted much earlier, I have this grandmother named Freda who is a difficult hurdle in my genealogy.  Well I found an update on her and now I have to figure out how to get the info.  I might ask one of my Louisiana cousins who I have never met but seems friendly.
Anyway, I found a criminal court agenda from New Orleans from 1880-1918 and there on it were two cases against a Freda Wederstrand.  I couldn't find a date but since my dad was born in 1914 and put into the orphanage by 1920 I figured out that she had these cases from sometime between 1914 to 1918.  (Keeping in mind the cut-off on the list).  Anyway she's listed as having been pulled in (Freda Wederstrand et all) for having a bawdy house and /or a house of disorderly people.
I can't wait to find out.  What kind was it... I mean it could have been a saloon since Prohibition could have been going on.  She could have a honest story.  But I think she was a someone driven woman with a shadowy past.

Only time will tell.  But it's a little more history on her.

One man's weed...

Found growing in my yard.  We hesitated to cut it down although we knew it was a weed and it was prickly and almost in the way.  We rarely cut down plants until we know what they are and mostly wait until they bloom.  I went searching and found it's a Milk Thistle.  Not only is it used in bird food but it's been used medicinally for about 2000 years. Originally it was a Mediterranean plant, used for liver problems and based on current studies might actually help our poor abused livers. They are also now studying it as a cancer remedy for helping control liver damage form chemo especially in children. It's also good at protecting you from certain kinds of mushroom poisoning.   It's supposed to be edible but honestly it's so prickly I really didn't want to try it.   Ours isn't as tall as most of them - mainly because we walked over it, didn't water it and it was growing in fairly horrible soil.   I'm going to try to collect the seeds and share them with out resident birds and try to encourage the plant to grow in a regular bed.  
Volunteer plants are truly fun.  I've had a number of them in the back yard - not quite as deadly as the milk thistle.  I also, em, help volunteers by collecting seeds in the flower beds at work or near bus stops.  I always follow the gathering rule which is take a few and leave many.  I never strip a plant.  I like to think I encourage plants to reclaim parts of my back yard and of course the birds help. 

On Being Poor.

I am poor.  I admit it. But I don't live in poverty which is a vastly different feeling.  I have lived in poverty... I spent 9 months of my life when young living in the back of a 1967 Ford Mustang.  It was kinda olive green and had bucket front seats.  Michael and I would switch sleeping one night in the front and one night in the back.  During the day we tried to ear money and find food without going to the Salvation Army.  Looking back it was a thing one did in your youth..... we took a car to San Francisco and knew we were going to make it rich.  Landing in SF, we lived well for like a week in a tiny hotel near Chinatown  only to come down to the car one morning and found it broken into and almost everything stolen.  (they left one shoe which still puzzles me and a paint brush from my back pack full of art supplies).  After the hotel we drifted to car living.   We had two spots - in the parking lot of a police storage area and a roadstop in Pacifica.  After almost being killed at the one in Pacifica we realized we needed to come home. 

We couldn't find jobs.  We had no permanent addresses and at that time it was really a death knell to getting established.  (You have to understand that we were a few years after the Summer of Love and the Haight-Ashbury district was suffering from the remains of the whole phenomenon). And both of us we very private and shy people so panhandling, living at shelter and such was not even in the equation.   Michael found a very bad job delivering circulars door to door and I tried to find a job of some sort with no luck. We finally found work picking bell peppers in the farms closer to Santa Cruz which led into our experiences as migrant farm workers.
After that we raised enough money to come back to San Antonio and knowledge of how to get going again. 

As I grew older I always lived between the edge of poor and poverty.  i think that is where a vast number of students live.... You learn to make due on very little and all your friends do anyway so it's normal.  Plus you learn to share.   When I moved to Austin, one late night escaping all the shadows in San Antonio that i had created.... I got real jobs that paid for rents and food and extra - I became more spoiled.  A friend encouraged me to get a credit card and I rapidly fell into debt. It was so easy and I am so easily bequiled by thinking life is simple -- that little card that lets you get things for free.  (And eventually I realised it wasn't really free).  It took me awhile to clear off that debt and while I still have a credit card, it's severely limited and I rarely use it. So now heading to my 'golden years" (as someone once said although I can't imagine why) we (me and my SO) live much more simply. We live on our earnings as much as possible even though the SO thinks he could be the Big Lebowski and could get rich on a quick scheme or two.   I don't normally regret it except I never bought a house which I think I would like and I constantly am trying to figure out where I will be when I truly get old and feeble.

But I don't regret being poor and living simply. After Gene's mom died, we've become better at getting rid of things that clutter our physical house. (Both of us while not officially hoarders can be considered pack rats.) I truly think that as we declutter our house we are decluttering our inner selves as well.  I like that.

Road Trips

During Spring Break we went on one of my favorite things -- a road trip.  Texas is full of interesting nooks and crannies and Austin is right in the middle of a diverse geographical area.  Lots of small towns with odd histories and little facts.  Normally we head out into the Hill Country but this time we chose to wander east towards Shiner.  Shiner is where they make Shiner Bock and all it's relatives.  I'm not a big beer drinker but Shiner Bock is a pretty good dark "chewy" beer. 

I always bring my camera but I never just get around to taking photos.  This time I actually took some on the way home.  We meandered down a dirt road to the Sam Houston Oak. The oak tree is famous because in 1836, Sam Houston and his army camped out under it after they set fire to Gonzales (the then capital of the Region of Texas) .  They were in rebellion from Mexico and following the Fight at Goliad and the Battle of the Alamo, the Separatists (as the Texians were called) fled.  They first torched their capital Gonzales and fled to stay at their first camp under this tree.  Eventually they were cornered by Santa Ana and the resulting Battle of San Jacinto occured... establishing The Republic of Texas.  (apologies to the shortened form of history here.) 

The tree is atill alive.  It's a southern live oak, Quercus virginia,  and they tend to be long lived trees.  After live oaks get large enough their branches tend to drop and run along the ground.  They also keep their leaves during the winter making them what's considered an evergreen oak. 

   The oak is on the grounds of what used to be the Braches Plantation.  The two story house is still standing and is quite nice.  Since it's on private property and you were supposed to call ahead to see it we looked across the fence.  The home was built in the 1840's or '50's and was a cultural mecca in teas during that time.  It's actually the McClure-Braches House.  I told my friend Hal, who I consider my big historian and he said the house was also used for the filming of True Women, which was about Texas women. 

You can't help but learn about things when you go driving.  Our history bit bible, so to speak, is a guide book called Hill Country by Richard Zelade.  I've worn out two other earlier copies of it.  I have another book on order and am curious to see what they have in them.

  We saw a ton of buzzards, hawks and a wild turkey this trip. The wild turkey was a bonus. 

The Kitty Girls

I'm always impressed by my cats abilities to sleep in amazing places, especially the Girls, which is what we call Luna and Niobe.  They are a happy pair of sibs, found by Gene when he went for his regular haircut.  At first he was going to bring home just one but how could you separate such cute sisters.  My old cat, Minerva, had just gotten used to being an "only" cat. (Uther,my 18 year old Manx having died about 6 months before.) So she was not happy about the wild Kitty Girls who ran  crazily in the house, playing and generally getting into mischief.  She has reluctantly allowed them to live with her but there are rules.  Luna may lick her head but Niobe never can. We will still have the week-long -"we are not amused" hissing for some unknown (to us non felines) rule breakage or behaviorial issue but generally some sort of truce is maintained.

Oh the Kitty Girls are a wild bunch.  They managed to break out of every screen in the house and then hated the outside world hiding under the ancient and decrepit house, until we managed to lure them out with a cat of cat food.  They are extremely picky about what they eat (not a bit like Minerva who will happily eat anything including cobwebs).  They wake up us almost everyday and Luna, in particular, nags us about time.  She's a very linear thinking cat.  Niobe is much more polite but has the need to make everything a toy and absolutely loves to be stroked with the broom.  Luna just runs and hides for a bit. Still they enliven the house alot and are sweet and loving and I wouldn't trade the Girls for anything.  Niobe tends to like being with us for her naps and doesn't mind sharing the space with work or clutter.  It's more fun that way to her. 

Minerva, as befits her more elderly and hefty size, tends to find more comfortable places though she prefers spots that are sometimes hard for us to understand.  A week was spent napping in the middle of the path to the kitchen and occasionally she will take to sleeping under the table, glowering at anyone who comes near.  Her recent favorite is to come between us and sleep on the sofa.  She manages to drive one or both of us away as she has a terrible snore.  Some nights I can hear her from the bedroom.  I was just informed she has found a box to sleep in - it's about a quarter of her size but she seems to have squeezed herself into it..

Update:  The kitty girls managed to push out another screen (we now have a nice hole) and made the Great Escape.  Niobe tired quickly but Luna went under the house and wouldn't come back.  She ignored food, the food clicker, and the laser mouse.  She finally decided Under the House was boring and came out after a frustrating (for us) wait of 2 hours.