Pondering the Imponderables

Since there is not much to talk abou for me in my future I must dwell on the past. I have many things that are unexplained.: Many things that I must wonder about, and ponder.  My Grandmother was a very wise woman and was very quick to speak her mind. "Speak up!" She would urge us as we sat around the dining room table. She was quick to let her feelings be heard but she was willing to listen to your side. When one of my children was diagnosed as having an alergy to milk, she at first phoo phooed the idea but she did not drop it and move on, she wanted dialogue with all of us to get to the bottom of it. She questioned why one member of the family could be allergic while none of the others were.She had never heard the word "allergy". What did it mean, how did it come aboout? We finally did come to some agreement about the word. We all knew that we suffered stomach discomfort when we ate certain foods. People would say that certain foods disagreed with them. Could these be allergens? We just 'stayed away 'from those foods.

We were aware of environmentally triggered allergies. We lived in Ohio where there was a lot of farm land. Every year when it was time to harvest the grains that had been planted people suffered with "hay fever." Perhaps it was termed an allergy in the medical books but the common term for it was 'hey fever'.Again, why did certain people get hey fever while others breathed the same air and nary a sneeze out of them?

    We  have to wonder if all of the radio waves flowing through the air around us cotain some thing that causes us to react to them. Before electricity was invented did we have these problems? It took quite a few years for electricity to be wide spread, and it took quite a few years for allergies to become more and more prevalent. X-rays that could see through body tissue and bones was discovered.

We can now study the brain, the heart and all other parts of the human body with sophistocated testing implements and machines. Think of the effect those machines must have on us. I've had a multitude of scans and every time I see those big machines that my body is going to be exposed to, I cannot help but wonder in what way I'll be affected.

Years ago Autism was hardly ever heard of but now it is so common. They did a study to see if the encrease in autistic kids was caused by the immunation injections that  the children were receiving and they finally agreed that the shots were not the cause. What is?

Is there still residue left from the Atomic bombs that were dropped over Hiroshima floating around in the air messing with our genes?

I guess I  must continue to ponder! Ciao

How to Make a Person

A few years aago Hillary Clinton wrote a book and entitled it "It takes a Village" I bought the book at a book signing event at Books a Million. There were protesters  across the street from the store carrying signs and posters and shouting disparaging remarks about Hillary.They pretty much showed their lack of upbringing and would have benefitted from the book if they had read it. It is a pretty little book and one that I am proud to have on my book shelves.The book 's purpose is to make us aware of the fact that children don't come with instructors manuals. We are pretty much on our own to care and feed them.

The world that I grew up in was not at all like it is today. For one thing there used to be lots of unmarried people in the families of yester year. I for example had three single aunts and two single uncles. I also had two sets of grandparents. All of whom had a hand in my upbringing! We also lived in neighborhoods that interacted with each other and they accepted the responsibility of setting good examples for us to follow.

As we played and moved about in our small world, we felt secure because we knew that the adults would see to it that we behaved and abided by the rules that were established in our community.

As I mentioned above, I hd three single Aunts. Two of them were Mother' s sisters and one was Dad's sister. Dad was the oldest in his family  and his baby sister did not marry until really late in life. She was only 9 years older than my oldest brother , Joe. She was more like a big sister to all of us.(My two brothers and one sister). She was a lot of fun and took us on her dates and  taught us all of the latest songs, "Ja Da, Ja,Da Jada,Jada Jing Jing,Jing She loved us but we had to toe the mark with her! No foolishness and questions. if she said No, we said OK.Aunt Mary Louise was her name. She was Dad's sister. I always wanted her dimples! She was a "flapper":She could dance the Charleston and taught us songs like ,:"It Ain't Gonna Rain no More, No More".All of her  friends loved us too. One of the guy's that she daterd had a car with a rumble seat. My sister Mart and I got to ride in the rumble seat when we went with Aunt Mary Louise. It was so much fun.The two unmarried uncles were Dad's brothers. They were like a comedy team. They kept us all laughing all of the time.


Mother was the only one of her family of ten , that had children. Two uncles married but did not have children. The Aunts never married.. I only mention two of them because the others died before becoming adults. My Aunt Agnus was a twin to Aunt Angela but Angela died before we came to be. Aunt Catherine was the youngest of the ten children and never married.
Aunt Agnus was a school teacher and she was also my God-Mother. She was a gentle, well educated woman. She and Catherine taught us the manners that we needed to live by. We were told not to cut our bread in two but to tear it into two peices. We had to say please pass me... and thank you. We were to sit with our ankles crossed never cross our legs.We took our glove off if someone offered his hand to be shook. We never interrupted when someone else was speaking.We covered our mouth if we had to yawn. However , we were encouraged not yawn in public because it might indicate that we were bored. (We probaly were) We were taught how to eat in public and how to conduct ourselves at all times. I must admit I broke a cardinal rule one time when my Aunt had me out for Icecream and while she was being friendly with one of her friends I licked the dish the ice cream was in. I found out what a big No,No that was!. As I recall, I have never licked a dish again!
We learned some of the other rules of life from our neighbors. If they saw us misbehaving or doing something we shouldn't be doing they were quick to tell us about.it.You may wonder what was left for Mother and Dad. Plenty!We learned respect, compassion, obeydience and what ever else it took to make us good Catholics, and good Americans.

I didn't even mention the school, we also learned how to be good students and citizens by obeying our teachers and pastors.When we got in trouble at achool we were in trouble at home ,also They all had our best interest at heart.

It did take a village to make a person. We need to get back to that. We need to get back to raising resilent children that will become strong ,honest,responsible people.CIAO

Loopy New Year

We are well into 2013. We have already had some snow on the ground, ice on the overpasses ,salt all over the city, sunshine, buckets of rain, clouds overhead and even some lightning and it is only the 10th! day of January.It was 30 degrees one day last week and it is 69 today and heading for the eighties.Oh,well .

We are celebrating the birth of Carrie's baby.(Gabe's too)The baby weighed seven lbs.five ozs.and as usual with new babies, he is beautiful. He was born on January 5, at home in Seattle,Washington.His name is Benicio Aloysius Avila -Mooney.  Better known as Beni.I am anxious to meet him. He is the twenty -sixth great grand child.  !                                                                                                     
How sweet it is!


 Happy New year to all of you!!      Ciao

That's a lit of Bull

On many a Christmas Eve little children go to sleep to dream of Santa bringing a pony when he comes down the chimmney. They are not always encouraged by their parents to wish for a pony but Christmas surprises or Christmas miracles have happened before! Dispite the fact that the parents say they have no where to keep a pony or even know what to feed them, these seem to be minor objections to the young one. Hope rests eternal in the mind of the young, of course there is a place for a pony to sleep and they have plenty of food around the house. It would be the greatest of Christmas's to wake up and find a pony under the tree! Eventually the child grows up and does come to the realization that a pony is not the best choice and they think up other things that are more in line with what the parent wants.

Now, I'm pretty sure that the couple I am going to tell you about were not wishing for a pony or any other animal on Christmas  Eve but when they opened the door to their deck on Christmas morning What to their wondering eyes did appear but a full grown bull! He was in a fighting mood and had already chased the two ladies next door.

Not far behind was the new owner of  the bull. He had just purchased it on Christmas Eve and it had pulled a big escape over night. He was there to try to get it back on his property but the bull was in no mood to be fussed with.They had to give up that night and for a few more days. They finally put a ramp up to a trailor and placed grain and hay in the trailor and trapped him.

The owner decided all those steaks and ground beef  were not worth the effort and said he was taking the bull right back where it belonged.

Poor bull blew it. He could have stayed with the owner and endeared himself to him and perhaps escaped the grim reaper but as things stand now he's on his way to the grill. No bull!!Ciao

Over the Years

About thirty years ago a group of people that I worked with at de Paul school decided to join an exercise class. I was the oldest member of the group but I was sure that I could keep up with the "young".Janet, the school secretary was in her twenties, and the others were in their 40's I was in my early sixties and had six children. There were about five or six other members of the group that we did not know. After about three or four weeks of classes mosts of the others dropped out. We worked out at the ballet barr for the first segment of the class. We did basic ballet movements and were so crippled up the next day that we could hardly walk, let alone use the muscles necessary for sitting on the toilet. One of the original classmates that I met was named Toni. She was a newly wed and very enthused about things like makning a perfect dinner for her husband for Valentines's Day and other things of that nature. We listened and made appropriat comments. Through the years other people joined and dropped out at a rapid rate. We vowed not to commit their names to memory until they had lasted through three or four weeks. It was not a 'bunny' exercise course. We did our routines to music and tried to give every muscle a workout. If you were not tired and sore when it was over you know you had slacked off. We spent Lent doing leg lifts to "Put On Your Easter Bonnet". We went through the whole song, when the lady sings near the end we were happy to still be alive. I think we did a total of fifty leg lifts by the time the song was over. We named our routines by the name of the music that was playing. "Sugar, Sugar", "MyGuy", "The Angels Sing", lots of Michael Jackson tunes,a lot of country-western tunes and many, many, more. We had some funny things happen during the years. One girl could absolutely not lift her legs up while lying on her back, so she solved the problem by sewing 'handles' on the sweat pants to help her pull her legs up. In the early years, insted of using 'store bought' dumb bells we would put nickles in a sock and tie the sock around our leg. It worked! We bonded together. We had lots of laughs, many tears and we worked through them together. When we met for the last time, we vowed to stay in touch. Guess what? We did just that, we meet every six or eight weeks and go to dinner together and since I am pretty much home bound we get together at my house and have a great time. Sadly enough, our studio and our blood, sweat and tears has been a victim of progress.Buldozed down, the building but not our spirits.

Merry Christmas is on the Way

I have been challenged once again by my computer. I am so lacking in technological skills that I embarrass myself. I have other skills, I could jump double-dutch, I could do a comlete back-bend, I bake a great pie, I used to have a good alto singing voice and I could go on and on but when it comes to my computer I'm out and out dumb!! I have been writing blogs since about 2004 and getting along just fine with it but 'they, the mysterous dough heads' desided to 'upgrade',there-by losing me totally. I now have blogs that are floating around in cyberspace aimlessly. I have drafts that I wonder if I or anyone else will ever see again. I hate to sound so down this close to Christmas but what's a body to do? I hope that St. Nick sends someone to aid me before the year ends! (I hope Pat reads this) Merry Christmas and Happy New Year Year to all of you. I wish I could hug each and everyone of you and express my true love for you. Ciao~!!!!