Draped to the Ankles

Son of Geoffrey Chaucer

I just had to point everyone to this post over at Chaucer's Blog. His son, Lowys, has a review of a Playstation game. What is interesting is that it is very much "like father, like son." Go read it, and see if you can't actually hear this kid talking - I hear my son talk like this all the time. Well, aside from the smatterings of Chaucerian English, that is.

Aunt Stella

I've been pretty busy lately with the resurgence of an old hobby - genealogy. It's all good, though, because it "resurged" as the result of a class I'm taking in Genealogy Sources and Resources for Librarians. This is a very cool class. When I saw they were giving it, I knew I had to sign up, even though it's actually an extra credit. And I also realized that this is what I want to do - genealogy librarianship. Unfortunately, it's harder to get a position in a genealogy library than it is to get one in an art library, so I guess I'm kind of screwed. Still, as library careers go, this would be my dream job. I'll go anywhere for it.

Anyway, I was looking through this little book "Our Marriage Vow" that my father's Aunt Stella had given him. It's chock full of genealogical clues and leads. It also had some pictures, and a very nice one of Aunt Stella as a young girl. I saw this one and knew I had to share it.

This is just so Gibson Girl, don't you think? The family lived in Fort Wayne, IN during the last half of the 19th century, and into the 20th. Stella was probably in her teens when this was taken. She married Raymond Hillary in 1906, when she was 29 (marrying late seems to run in this family). She was a concert pianist and moved to Maryland. She was also the family genealogist, and much of the information I have came from her. I'm sorry I never got to know her.

On an unrelated note, I'm also taking a class on web design for libraries - they call it "The Internet," which is a complete misnomer. But I am learning how to hand code my websites. Woohoo! The picture above is even coded better, though I'm sure you won't notice the difference.

Talking Like Pirates

This is too good to be true. Some of you know my fascination with Wife Swap, and that little niggling desire to actually do it. Well, a like-minded woman with a blog has beat me to it. It's those people who started "Talk Like a Pirate Day" and they switched with - what else - a family who are neat, organized, and superficial. That's about all we can learn from her blog entry. She says she can't give details about the experience until after it airs, but I will certainly head back over there to see what she really has to say after Monday. I can't wait to see "Wench Swap" on Monday night, on ABC. Now I'm wondering if I could get the quilting group to watch it with me.

9/11 Connections: Manuel L. Lopez

I am still angry.

I am usually an even-tempered person, and it takes a lot to get me riled. It takes even more to get my blood boiling the way it did on the morning of September 11, 2001. I remember watching events unfold on TV, and uncharacteristically pacing the floor shouting, "This is it! This is too much! They have really done it this time!" I know I upset my son, who was 8 at the time. I also remember crying at the thought of all those innocent people, killed just because they went to work that day. It still brings tears to my eyes. Mothers, fathers, husbands, wives, sons and daughters. Each single person's death deeply affected a hundred people or more.

That's 299,600 people directly affected by the fall of the World Trade Center. According to the Six Degrees of Separation, every person on earth can find a connection to anyone else within six people (i.e. "a friend of my mother's cousin's girlfriend's sister's friend went to school with Bill Clinton"). Imagine how short that chain is for everyone in America and the people who were murdered in the WTC and the Pentagon.

I know it's very short for me because I still have family on the East Coast. I lived in New York City for a while, and went to school there. I know that I have only to go through one degree of separation to find connections to many of the victims, if not hundreds. I may have even known a few personally in my younger years, though I may never know for sure.

But it doesn't matter. We are all connected. And now I am connected to Manny Lopez, a man who was a husband, a father, a son, living in New Jersey, and killed just because he went to work that day. I didn't know him personally, but I'll bet I know someone who knows someone who did. But since I have not found particular connection yet, I present the words of those who did.

Manuel L. Lopez

Craving Greens and Gadgets

When Manuel Lopez was not putting in long days as a corporate tax manager for Marsh & McLennan in 1 World Trade Center, he liked to tend the big garden he and his wife had in Jersey City. The backyard plot bore beans, tomatoes, mustard greens ‹ the last an important ingredient in sinigang, a tangy soup of Mr. Lopez's native Philippines.

But while Mr. Lopez, 54, liked vegetables, he was crazy about gadgets and electronics. DVD players, laser discs, cameras ‹ "Everything that came out, he had to be the first to get it," said his daughter, Minnie Morison. "We have five or six televisions and there's only three bedrooms in this house."

Mr. Lopez often trawled the Internet in search of hot deals. "There was this DeWalt drill that kept being auctioned on uBid," his daughter said. "He wanted it so bad, but he was stubborn and he was always outbid. I was like, `Why don't you just go to Sears and buy it, and I'll pay the difference?'

"A couple days after the World Trade Center, a drill showed up in the mail. It was really weird for us.

"No one's opened it."
Profile published in THE NEW YORK TIMES on November 4, 2001.

Manuel Lopez, 54, home was his palace

After moving to Jersey City from the Philippines in his mid-20s with his pregnant wife, Manuel Lopez found his passion in creating a comfortable place for his family.

In recent months, he organized the remodeling of the family's duplex, paying close attention to light fixtures and other details. He also filled with house with plenty of electronic gadgets, from DVD players, stereos and cameras to a TV set in each bedroom, his family said.

It was on a morning during which Mr. Lopez, 54, known as Manny, exercised that passion for nesting that his life was cut short. Moments after arriving at work on the 98th floor of Tower One of the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, he called his wife, Rosalia, to go over some details of their remodeling project.

Ten minutes after he hung up, the first jet struck the World Trade Center. His wife, hearing the news on the radio, tried to call back, but she was not able to get through to him.

"He wanted to provide a better life for his future family," said his daughter, Minnie Rose Morison, also of Jersey City.

Mr. Lopez knew hard work would provide a better future for his family, they said. He was vice president of the federal tax department at Marsh & McLennan, his employer for 15 years, and often arrived at work early.

On the fateful morning, Mr. Lopez was driven to the PATH station in Jersey City by his son, Mannie Jay Lopez, who had returned home from an overnight work shift before heading out to a class at New Jersey City University.

"He always had a joke to tell," his son said. Mr. Lopez was fond of electronic gadgets, and was an avid reader of Stereo Review and other magazines to keep up with trends in electronics.

In addition to a new TV in each of three bedrooms, Mr. Lopez kept a classic TV in the kitchen, a Sony from the 1980s, for "sentimental" reasons, his son said.

"He joked a lot and he loved to go shopping," his wife added.

It was the example of hard work, done with a sense of humor, that his son remembered. "He wanted to show me a better life," his son said.

Mr. Lopez's remains were not positively identified until more than two months after the tragedy, on Nov. 16. Officials made the identification using DNA tests, his daughter said.

In addition to his wife, daughter and son, Mr. Lopez also is survived by two sisters, Jovita "Betty" Lozano of New York and Avelina Cabal; and two brothers, Geronimo Montero and Benjamin Montero, all of the Philippines; and other relatives.

Profile by George Berkin published in THE STAR-LEDGER.

(Source:Remember: September 11, 2001 at www.legacy.com)

Manny Lopez, you are missed.

***For links to more tributes, click on the Twin Towers graphic on the side bar.
****WAIT! Don't click that right now. Apparently there was way too much traffic on that website. Just follow the comment trail instead.

Quilting News Network

I recently discovered this great quilting website. It has streaming video of quilting projects and instructions from major names in the business. It's perfect for sitting down and watching while you have your tea or lunch and you don't want to do other computer stuff. QNN also has other interesting things, like a designer challenge, and tips and tricks. I even like the advertising, because I am always looking for another fabric store.

My only problem is that I cannot figure out how to make the streaming video screen full size, or at least larger. I'm sure it would be simple on a PC. But I can't figure out how to do it on my VIRUS-FREE iMac. It's still worth watching.

Library Thing

I discovered Library Thing a while back. I know I blogged it already, but I've been playing with it since then. I started adding more books for a class asignment this summer, and now I've decide to add lots more books.

What I find really interesting is to see what other people have. People who may have the same tastes or interests that you do - or not. You can jump from title to title just by clicking on other books owned by the people who own your books. For example, Turabian's Manual Of Style brings up a lot of high school classics, like 1984 and To Kill a Mockingbird. And Lord of the Rings is always linked to Harry Potter.

It's free to catalog 200 books. I went ahead and paid for a year because I am going to use it for a class this semester. We are building a website for a library, and since I am most intimately acquainted with my own, that's what the website will be for. Perhaps I'll post it here when I'm done.

**Update: I just added a Tag Cloud to the sidebar. I'm assuming it will change as I add more books (it's a Java Script). And I certainly didn't have enough stuff over there, did I?

Dead Like Me

So I've been watching Dead Like Me on the Sci-Fi channel. This is a Showtime production from just a couple of years ago, but since I don't have Showtime, I never got to see it when it originally aired. I have to say, I am very glad Sci-Fi picked this up.

This has to be one of the best shows on TV. The writing is fantastic. It's witty, funny, sad, thoughtful, scarey, angry, and many things in between. It's about Georgia Lass, a nihilistic young woman of 18 who is killed by a toilet seat falling from a space station. She becomes one of the rare few who are "grim reapers," the undead people who go around taking souls. She and her coleagues are assigned mostly accidental deaths, though they do get murders and suicides every now and then. It is their job to grab the soul just before the body is killed. It's considered a kindness. And the souls of the departed are usually grateful. Once the reapers have the soul, they usually wait around to see the souls off on their final journey. The core of the show revolves around George, who does not want to be a reaper. But then, she never wanted to be much when she was alive. We follow her discovery of what it's like to actually live, now that she's dead.

One thing struck me last night. All these souls have their own unique experience of the afterlife. They all see the light, but the light takes whatever form has the most meaning to them. I don't know if the writers gave this any thought, or if they were just writing fantasy, but I think they have hit on a real truth here. I personally believe that when we die, we go wherever we think we are going. Devout Christians will see God, and devout Muslims will find their virgins (though I have no idea what their women find). When my mother - a Wiccan - died, she was unshaken in her belief in the Goddess. She knew the Goddess was coming for her. The hard part for her was actually leaving this plane of existence, not any fear of the afterlife.

So perhaps there is a heaven, AND rebirth. Perhaps there are different kinds of hells, but I imagine you would have to realize what kind of terrible human being you were in life to go there in death. I guess these thoughts are coming from my "place of tolerance." I'm a Unitarian becuase I accept everyone's belief as valid, although my acceptance and tolerance are stretched thin for Musilms. Their basic beliefs are the same as they are for most religions, be good and treat everyone as you would be treated. But their belief system is corrupt, which is why there are so many Muslims who are willing to slaughter innocent people in the name of their god. Not that there isn't corruption in other belief systems - Christianity has had its share of misguided wars. It's just that more people in other religions are willing to do more to stop the kind of thing that the Islamofascists are so free to do.

Sorry, got off on a tangent there. It's just difficult for a person who is as accepting as I am of other religions - often more so than a lot of the people around me - to deal with an inability to accept. Although, I do draw the line at Satanism. This is a "religion" that promotes evil for evil's sake. Where every other religion encourages us to be kind and compassionate to our neighbors, Satanism says do whatever you want regardless of your effect on others. It's an artificial "religion" anyway, one created by and for angry, misanthropic and misguided individuals. I suppose they are the ones who see the darkness of hell when they die. I wonder if that is ever handled on Dead Like Me?

Mystery Biology

So last night I was cleaning the backroom in preparation for someone to give me an estimate about removing the moldy wallboard when I noticed something living in the cats' water bowl. I couldn't imagine what would grow in the water like that. And in only a couple of days. I called Brian over and we both pondered these tiny wriggling creatures. They didn't swim; they wriggled. And they were about 3-5mm long. I didn't want to kill them until I knew what they were. I've always been one of those people who are scientifically uninclined, but are fascinated by scientific-type stuff. So I poured them into a jar and washed and refilled the water bowl. I wanted a picture, but they are so tiny the camera would not capture them.

It wasn't until I was watching them wriggle about and not eat the tiny bits of catfood I had dropped in there that I had an idea what they were. I had Brian Google "mosquito larvae" and there they were. Ugh! In the cat's water bowl! They really need to drink from that thing every now and then instead of the sink all the time.

Well, I was ready to kill the little buggers at that point, but Brian wanted to see them turn into mosquitos. His father wanted them dead even more than I did. Still, in the interest of science I allowed him to keep them with the lid tightly sealed. I figured if they needed air, too bad. If they made it to mosquito stage, they weren't getting out of that jar alive anyway.

So I checked our science experiment this morning and the little beasts are still growing. And lest you think I would be at all inclined to allow them any kind of advantage, let me say that I sit here at my computer with a bottle of OFF! at the ready because I am always being bit by one of the buggers flying around under the desk. They love my legs! I just hope I don't get West Nile Virus after the unnumerable times they have feasted on me. Gaagh!