Women’s Friendship Month/Day: Part 2

CAROLYN’S COMPOSITIONS

WOMENS FRIENDSHIP MONTH/DAY: Part 2

     Women’s Friendship Month—September—and Women’s Friendship Day, September 28, provides an opportunity to review the long-term women friendships in my life.  This is Part 2 of the post. To read Part 1 click on Women’s Friendship Month/Day: Part 1.

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     At this point in my life my husband decided to change careers. We spent three years in Stone Mountain, Georgia, while he attended seminary.

     It is shared experiences that deepen women’s friendships. Unfortunately, when a woman moves repeatedly the bonds of the friendship tend to soften with distance and time. It is difficult to build depth of relationship when women are separated by miles and miles.

     While in Stone Mountain I picked up my friendship with Shirl, whose family had moved there several years previously. However, it wasn’t quite the same. We knew we’d be separated by hundreds of miles in three years, and that seemed to blanket a slight fog over our renewed in-person relationship.

      Meanwhile, I made no attempt to develop any meaningful women friendships, knowing it takes time to do so, and three years is usually insufficient.

     While living for five years in New Castle, Pennsylvania, I met Colleen. Our common interests pulled us together. I also met Lena, who now lives in Florida.  Our bond is special, having a

Celebrating Good Neighbors in Different Communities

CAROLYN’S COMPOSITIONS

CELEBRATING GOOD NEIGHBORS

IN DIFFERENT COMMUNITIES

Won’t you be my neighbor? —Mr. Rogers

     I did locate a holiday site, which stated that National Good Neighbor Day is always September 28 (initially, it was the fourth Sunday in September).

     The site* informed me that In the early 1970′s, Mrs. Becky Mattson from Lakeside, Montana recognized the importance of good neighbors, and started the effort to make this a National day. With the help of congressman Mike Mansfield, she succeed in getting three presidents (Nixon, Ford, and Carter)  to issue proclamations, along with numerous governors. 

In 2003, the U.S. Senate passed a resolution, sponsored by Montana Senator Max Baucus, making September 28, National Good Neighbor Day. Previously, this day was celebrated on the fourth Sunday of September.

     My husband Monte and I have moved a number of times. Although I can rejoice in many good neighbors we’ve experienced through the years, I can celebrate many good next-door neighbors we’ve had.

     When we moved to Slippery Rock, Pennsylvania, at the close of the 1960s our home we were the only persons not in the silver-haired golden years. My initial reaction was to be friendly with the neighbors, but to choose relationships from Slippery Rock University, where my husband was a physics professor. When our daughter Sandy entered our family, I felt somewhat cheated at not having other

Women’s Friendship Month/Day: Part 1

CAROLYN’S COMPOSITIONS

WOMENS FRIENDSHIP MONTH/DAY: Part 1

     Women’s Friendship Month—September—and Women’s Friendship Day, September 28, provides an opportunity to review the long-term women friendships in my life.  This is Part 1 of a two-part post on this subject.

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Let’s become little old ladies together- we’ll stay up late looking at old pictures, telling “remember when” stories, and laughing till our sides ache.*

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     We’re all growing old as long as we haven’t grasped the alternative. That’s why I so love the Red Hat Ladies, who embrace being at least a half-century old—although the old fifty must be the new sixty-five. Society is changing.

     My women friends have accumulated through a disproportionate number of moves I’ve made during my life. I recall the first of them, ones I had as a young child in Portsmouth, New Hampshire: Kathy Boyle and Rebecca Rice, who lived on Lincoln Avenue, and black-haired alabaster-skinned Penny, who lived on Broad Street.

     I always considered that we lost touch when my mother suddenly moved us from Portsmouth to Buffalo, New York, where her new husband’s family lived. However, thinking back, the ties to these friends were severely frazzled when

Monday Mourning Over All My Children: The Soap Opera

CAROLYN’S COMPOSITIONS

MONDAY MOURNING OVER ALL MY CHILDREN:

The Soap Opera

 

     Forty one years.

     For forty one years it has been a constant in my life.

     That’s how long I’ve watched the soap opera All My Children. That’s how long All My Children has been aired on ABC.

     Now that it’s canceled, what will I do at 1:00 p. m. today?

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      In a sense, the characters have been like an extended family. I know them equally as well as I know some of my siblings. In some cases, I know them better. In other cases, less.  We’ve relocated numerous times. When leaving a community, relationships are broken. When arriving in a new community, new relationships must be made. Both dynamics take time. Meanwhile, the characters on All My Children have followed me, have remained constant, have helped ease each move. And my husband, Monte, who doesn’t watch the program, has had an ongoing

Fresh Apple Cider and a Drunk Moose

CAROLYN’S COMPOSITIONS

FRESH APPLE CIDER AND A DRUNK MOOSE

     Cider making extends back into the history of the United States, as this early 1800s excerpt from a diary written by LA MARQUISE DE LA TOUR DU PIN tells us:

     But to return to our apples. The cider mill was very primitive. It consisted of two pieces of channelled wood which fitted into each other, and was turned by our horse attached to a pole. The apples were fed into a hopper, and when the juice had filled a large tub, it was taken to the cellar and poured into the casks.

     The whole operation was very simple and, as we had very fine weather, this harvest was a charming recreation. My son who rode the horse during the day was convinced that without him nothing could have been done.

     When the work was finished, we found ourselves provided with eight or ten barrels to sell, in addition to what we had reserved for ourselves.

     Our reputation for honesty was so great that people had confidence that we would not put any water into our cider. This enabled us to sell it at double the ordinary price, and all was sold at once. As for that which we had reserved for ourselves, we treated it exactly as we would have done with our white wine at Le Bouilh.*

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     Although my husband and I no longer amass up gallons of apple cider, there was a time we canned seventy gallons of the stuff.

     We gathered the gallons of golden liquid in two ways.

•      Most of the time, we would collect apples from any place we could. The park in Slippery Rock, Pennsylvania, where we lived, was a gold mine. It had the remains of what

An Undisclosed Party Guest Turns 70 in 2011

CAROLYN’S COMPOSITIONS

AN UNDISCLOSED PARTY GUEST TURNS 70 IN 2011

     On September 20, 2011, my husband and I osted Mellow Mike, a Ligonier Pennsylvania) creative group that celebrates life with music, poetry/prose readings, and friendship.

     I had spread the word that we would nclude a birthday party for an undisclosed guest. During the wonderful early autumn evening I presented persons present with the following quiz that offered clues to the undisclosed guest’s identity. See if you can identify the undisclosed birthday guest from the clues.

QUIZ

Our guest turned 70 this year.

• No, it’s not Gogi Grant, 1950’s singer of The Wayward Wind and voted the most popular female vocalist of 1956. She was born in 1924, making her 87 years old today.

Our guest was born in Buffalo, New York.

• I went to Kensington High School and the University of Buffalo in Buffalo in that city. I met my husband Monte there—he was a physics professor at the University, and I was a science research technician on campus, preparing to return to college. However, we didn’t meet on campus. We met at

A House Frau Loses the Soap All My Children

CAROLYN’S COMPOSITIONS

A HOUSE FRAU LOSES THE SOAP ALL MY CHILDREN

A Skit

     Hi y’all. Surprised?

     I entered the “stage” dressed in my maroon, faux fur robe and tan faux leather slippers. My head was encircled with a tan tie that had white polka-dots. I was carrying a dark olive green coverlet, a romance book, a corked partially-full bottle of white wine, and a folded-up lounge lawn chair.

     You usually see me dressed nicely, but this is my typical look.

     I tried to open up the chair, but it was contorted and wouldn’t cooperate. A kind man in the audience fixed it for me, before I fell into it, raising the bottle in the air.

     I bet you thought I was always working. Boy, do I have you fooled.

     I nested into the lounge chair, spreading the blanket over my lap. The kind man pulled it over my feet as I looked around.

     What? No TV????

     Actually, I’m just your typical house-frau, laying on my living room couch in my bathrobe, eating chocolate covered

Pittsburgh Penguins Practice Hockey

CAROLYN’S COMPOSITIONS

PITTSBURGH PENGUINS PRACTICE HOCKEY

Monte W. Holland

Consol Energy Center: Pittsburgh, PA

     Early Saturday morning a friend and I ventured to the Consol Energy Center in downtown Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, to watch an open-to-the-public Pittsburgh Penguin practice. A few thousand people gathered there with us.

     Yes, practice! The hockey players were separated into Group A, Group B, and Group C.  At 9:00 a.m. we watched group Group A practice. At 10:00 a.m. Group A played a game against Group B. At 11:00 a.m. Group B practiced.

  Finally, at noon players in Group C began to arrive. First, there were cheers for Arron Asham and Matt Cooke as they came down the tunnel. Then Sidney Crosby appeared and the arena broke loose in a standing ovation—a standing ovation for showing up to the first day of practice!

     However, Sidney has been out of the game since he experienced two concussions in January games. Some people, including myself, wondered

Constitution Day: September 17, 2011

CAROLYN’S COMPOSITIONS

CONSTITUTION DAY: SEPTEMBER 17, 2011

     Are there any readers of this blog who can list the five freedoms in the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America?

      This was one challenging question in today’s newspaper, in which there were several articles on the Constitution—after all, today is Constitution Day.

     Columnist Craig Smith asked this question of lawyers, public officials, and police officers. He discovered that lawyers don’t

Memories of Fayette County, Pennsylvania

CAROLYN’S COMPOSITIONS

MEMORIES OF FAYETTE COUNTY, PENNSYLVANIA

     It was a hot and muggy day…and so the weather was on the July day we moved to Connellsville, Pennsylvania.

     My husband Monte always insisted moving himself, using a rented van. When he backed up to the front porch to unload the van, he accidentally ran the tires over the neighbor’s grassy patch between the sidewalk and the street. The irate woman approached him, calming down some when he said he would repair the damage. As time went on, we developed a pretty good friendship.

     Over time our friendships on that block of West Washington Avenue grew strong. Eventually the neighbors across the street joined with us to sponsor a foreign exchange student (we had the space, they had the teenage activities and fixed family meals). There were several years where we had the police barricade our block from traffic so we could enjoy block parties.

     Speaking of police, I must mention the wooden