I was sent a few more hearts. TY so much!

Ha! My long time liberal (w derp roots in) Texas friend snarked up the "God's Army" truck caravan on my FB feed!

Just letting you know they're out there. Good on ya', girlfriend! 👍

Baaahahahahaaaaa! 😄😄😄


(In 2020 she posted - 'I'd be dancing in the street [about Biden winning], but I might get shot!'. [egads!] )

News about Perseverance's new findings...

From space.com

News about Perseverance's new findings...

From space.com

Is (duh?) the text in daylight mode supposed to be blue? (yeah, I know we're Dems, but...) Black text* where art thou?!

I did go to Settings to see if I missed something!
[*now mysterious fixed see eta 2]
ETA:
Wth?! Seems all my text on all (or most? -not- awake enough to totaly describe) things everywhere or at least what I've looked at (ie Google Mail) are in blue! Grrrrrrr!
Goes to look at phone settings, etc

ETA 2
Well, everything text-wise (which is where the problem was [manefesting as ?]) went back to normal: while I did nothing (since I couldn't find anything in "Settings" to alter font color) at some point between 3AM+ and nowish since I just looked at phone (slept past lunch NYC time) 3PM.
Yay!

(lemme tell ya -feels a bit weird bc I didn't even realize it now at first glance [black type face color being the norm] then I went "wait?! The type face went all blue(!), and now it's back to (normal) black!".
Feels a bit alternate universey to me.)

Wow, was I annoyed we had rain - when we could have seen the Pleiades right near the Moon.

I haven't gone looking for them in decades.

I once saw them looking up from my first floor window - they were just clear of the sixth floor's roof edge!

But now I had a digital camera with a zoom lens! Even a zoom on my smart phone! Bah! : (

Anyone Lucky enough to see them?!

Cantonese Dim Sum! YUM! 🥢 😁

I don't know if any other region has dim sum. I love it, at least what I've had.

Roast pork buns, steamed roast pork buns, steamed chicken and veggies buns, fried pork dumplings w the soy, garlic, ginger sauce, pork & chives, spring rolls, turnip cakes (w bits of ham) and ?oyster, or hoisin sauce, shrimp rolled in translucent rice noodle rolls. Little ?pork ribs w black bean sauce.
Might be forgetting a few. It's been a long time.

And one of my absolute favorites -
Sticky rice in lotus leaf!
Has bits of pork, chicken, shitake musrooms, 🤔 ?what else, maybe peanuts. The lotus leaf imparts a green, and mild sort of smokey taste which I like really makes it extra interesting.
For the mildly adventurous give it a try! 🙂

Must get to Chinatown before the snowy season! Haven't been since Covid. I'll pick up stuff to take home. 👍

UPDATE & THANKS Re: my sister Helen...

Please pray/send good wishes to my sister Helen...

My sister (only sib) thought she was miserable bc of getting covid/flu vax together as some du'rs have reported. Went to doctor.

Unfortunately she was informed.. she's got a deep skin infection that she went and got antibiotics for yesterday.
She hopes to wake up feeling better - but probably will go to ER (doc recommended if esp no change etc) in the morning for
intravenous medicine.

So please pray that she, and her blood stays free from sespis (a possibility, looked up) and that she recovers fully . Sooner I hope than later.

TIA

My mom's 100th (in heaven) Birthday: An Uncommon Woman (long!)

My mom was both a conventional, and unconventional person. I, her family were so blessed to have her for as long as we did (86 yrs).

She, and her 1 sister, 3 brothers lived both in Manhattan's bustling, somewhat infamous (movie stars, and gansters[!] ) Hell's Kitchen, and waaaay uptown in Inwood the northernmost neighborhood of Manhattan. They were 1st Gen Greek-Americans.

In their earlier years there she told me that after her mom's (our yia-yia/grandma) admonishment, "don't cross the street!" her siblings opened (?pried 😄 ) some barrier, and clambered down into the then long cut out areas below street level - that would become part of ( " ) [Take] The A Train ( " )* Subway line! Thus they did "not cross the street" yet scampered around down there for several blocks.

She also began to show her prowness in sports by hitting in stickball what was called back then a "two sewer home run."! A very good basketball player in HS, she also exceled at tennis. Her school coach said she could "go pro" if she wanted to. But she didn't. (Way later she'd make me take free tennis lessons in Central Park. Oh, I enjoyed playing sports: but I never had very strong upper arm strength so I wasn't exactly thrilled. [my cousins could always climb higher in the trees bc of that]. Why I loved badmiton, instead; a lightweight racket!)

After HS she went to the the Traphegan School of Design to become an ace dressmaker (designer, and seamstress). And a darn excellent one! Our clothes often looked like they came from Sak's 5th Ave! She even made our dad a shirt. The NY Times, and several other prominent NYC newspapers sponsored a clothes for the special WW2 women (factories & farm) workers Contest. My mom participated in it.

At some point soon after she moved away to California to live with roommates. Worked with a fashion designer for a while. Told me of sewing on beads, or sequins on a dress**. She also became a really unique "Rosie the Riveter" woman.

At then Howard Hughes Aircraft Company she was (and I didn't find out about the premier aspect till a cousin told us back in '09) not only a draftswoman (think old fashioned T-Square, Triangle, Drawing board), but the head draftsperson in that area of the company during the WW2 effort. She had at least 25 drafters if not at least double that number where she'd review, and sign off on their plans!

She returned to NYC still during the war. Helped out at the bottom of Mahattan's set up medical tents for the returning WW2 wounded. Got another drafting job at a firm called Maxin's. One of my uncle's thought they found out she'd been a dressmaker, perhaps asking her to create something war clothing related. My very sporadic research has not turned up anything.

I don't know where she worked after that job.

Then she did the typical things for women - she got married some years later, and had kids (me, my sister). Unfortunately, she was waylaid by severe asthma when I was 5 1/2 yrs old; while my sister at 1+ yrs old has no memories of her at full health.

I watched her go from this vital person to often seeing her hunched over on her side of the bed fighting for breath. Inhalers, and a second line of defense nebulizer which was the size of a medium suitcase back then (!) were the implements that kept her alive, and healthier. I still have the very useful hollow aluminum tubing hand cart we used to transport it in our car when visiting her siblings' families, and our cousins in NJ. However, we would walk around on eggshells when any of us got a even a cold, let alone, like, the flu.

These medical devices helped her gain back her strength. For a while we had several nannies during the day when we were young, and our dad was at work. Eventually again she'd cook, sew clothes, participate in grade school activities at home, make wonderful craft items, was an excellent, along with her mom - embroiderer, occasional crocheter. She also told me one of her first knitting projects were gloves. Gloves, not easier mittens - gloves! On a rare occasion she knitted.

When I learned to cook in my early twenties she helped me, along with my own research later when I went mostly vegetarian. She was (very lucky us!) an excellent cook, including some of the traditional yummy Greek dishes. She, years later, eventually went to our local Green Market. Since she'd spent a bit of her summer time at a farm (The Fresh Air Fund) she new what fresh vegetables were like. Even later she'd experiment; learning to use Chinese wrappers for non Chinese items, even making risotto one time.

One of her more unique crafting skills pre marriage was making copper enamaled jewelry, and little plates. I eventually learned to do it, as did my sister.

This renewed activeness became even more so after she spent half a year in Denver, CO at the National Jewish Health Hospital, (and Research center) when I was in HS. A famous medical center for treating certain particular illnesses, and conditions including Respiratory illnesses, and issues.

She was a fierce believer in equality, justice and taught us that. Years later as a tennis lover she cheered on the Venus Sisters. My dad believed those things, as well, but we were around her that much more.

She loved art, crafts, creative culture from all over the world, nature, music, and enjoyed some science, too. She and her sibs attended Hartley House. One of the Settlement Houses in NYC (often, now, called Neighborhood Houses). These helped immigrant families Americanize, had actual schools earlier on, after school activities. HH had a countryside camp where we'd go often with our cousins, stay over a few days. Usually fun times.

One of the fun/funniest things was she kept what we called "the Concert 50" (50$) for us. My dad hated Rock but he would drive me/us on rare occasions to places too far away, or me too young (early teens), or "too dangerous" (like the East Village - The Filmore East) to go to at night.

The $ was for when concert tickets were around $4.50 - 7.50. This way we also could get tickets for our friends! No ATMs back then. These were announced often on a Sunday to go on sale then, or next day Monday. Either we had to run downtown to a box office, Ticketmaster, or to get a money order to send off - which luckily we had a pharmacy open that did them on Sunday. Because we got a bit of a jump, we often got good to very good seats.

Anyway, through her life she kept up with her crafting, took a local cloisinaé class, keot up with news affairs local, state, country, international by TV, and radio. Found NPR, and our own WNYC-AM/FM probably around '90, and introduced it to me.

She, and my dad were blessed to take a group vacation to the Southwest: an area they both loved, in their later 50's. They got me interested in it at a young age. Oh, how the colors, sculptural forms of the high desert - rocks, mesas, and buttes mesmerized me. (Yes, I was able to go, and visit twice in my late 20's!)

Way later eventually my dad, then her went to a mostly quite good nursing home. She learned to use e-mail, and the internet there: leaning back on her bed one visit, she said to me "Do you Yahoo?" I practically screamed with delight; "Mom, you're learning the internet?!!!" 😄🥰 She did the enamel jewelry class (donated her supplies), enjoyed (as we all did) their wonderful art collection, and the big, beautiful 🧡 green grounds.

She passed in May '08 from kind of a freaky confluence of things: a major done & done surgical event over ?2 decades earlier from a freak infection whose consequence then, now "collided" with a fairly sudden current illness. Ugh! What a terrible week that was. Thanks to my sister who I think had her go on a ventilator, we were as awful as it was spend about 5+ days with her - instead of losing her possibly without saying goodbye.

Miss her still. *Cherish* a whole lot!
--------------------------------

*Everytime I seemed to put a * next to a parentheses in that spot - It kept getting an emoji! Thus the extra spacing.

**Snip- from Haute History UK
"If you have even a passing interest in haute couture you’ll likely have come across the term ‘les petites main’. Literally translated from the French as ‘the little hands’ - as a signifier of their incredible dexterity and the light and elegance of their work - the term actually refers to the highly skilled craftspeople who execute haute couture designs.
Accordingly, these are not your average seamstresses..."

I only know this term bc of later on having a description like this at one of The Met Museum's Fashion Institution (you know the May Gala that's in the news, the one Colbert talks about) Exhibitions.