So Thankful I Can Post This Morning

I had a great weekend at UGA's Marine Education Center and Aquarium on Skidaway Island near Savannah. I was there to attend a workshop to re-certify as a facilitator for the Project Wild, Project Wet, and Project Learning Tree programs. Sheila tagged along and spent the two days exploring Skidaway and Tybee Islands on her own. 

We were driving home in pretty heavy Saturday evening traffic on I-75 just north of Morrow nearing Tara Boulevard... 

...in the second lane from the left of the four northbound lanes. 

 Unknown to me and two cars ahead, two sixteen year-olds had a tire blowout and managed to stall and come to a complete stop.  The car between us swerved into the left lane and missed it. It took a second to realize the tail-lights now revealed in front of me were not moving. With 80 mph+ traffic on both sides, there was nowhere to go but into the stopped car.  Luckily I was traveling a little under the 65 mph speed limit... 

...and had space to brake, not enough to stop but enough to avoid major injuries. (This picture was taken after the cars had been moved to the right shoulder)

We spent the next ten minutes, as we awaited first responders and the traffic sped by on both sides at high speed, strapped in and bracing for what seemed the inevitable next collision from behind. But it didn't come, thank heavens. 

Sheila was pretty shaken up but was checked out, first in the car then in an ambulance, by the paramedics. They gave her the choice of a hospital visit or not. She chose to be released. She is very sore, and I'm a bit sore too, but we are both intact and very thankful to be comfortably ensconced at Lillian's house, whole and happy.

One last picture of the Camry hooked to the tow truck. One very curious thing to me is that the airbags did not deploy.

Here is Sheila's letter to her side of the family:

Dear Family, 

Terrell and I are counting our blessings this morning. We were in a car crash in I-75 last night about 10 p.m., but no serious injuries, just very stiff and sore (me) and a little sore (Terrell). Our Toyota Camry is totaled, I’m sure.  

A car was stalled in the middle of four lanes of traffic and we crashed into it. The two young men in that car were not hurt, and thankfully no one hit us from behind. We called 911 and  the first emergency vehicle was there in less than 10 minutes. I was really worried about my neck and back, but was checked out by EMTs and they gave me a choice of hospital or not, and I decided not. Ice packs, heating pads and Ibuprophen have helped. This morning I am not as sore as I expected to be. I was afraid I would be too stiff to get out of bed. 

We were driving from Savannah, where Terrell attended a conference for his work at Arrowhead, and were south of Atlanta, between Morrow and Forest Park. 

Police got the cars off the road and took us to a gas station at the closest exit, where Lillian and Jordan picked us up. We are at their house now.

Side note: The back seats of police cars are hard plastic with extremely tight leg room. I hope I don’t have to ride in one again!

We will spend today dealing with insurance, getting a rental car, emptying the Camry, which is at a shop near the site of the accident.

We are glad to be alive. Keep us in your thoughts.  

Love, 

Sheila 

I have had several times in my life to be very thankful for first responders. Never more so than this night. 

The first two YOUNG police officers very calm, professional and efficient. Soon they were joined by two more officers, several firefighters, and several paramedics. At 75 the whole world seems young, I suppose, but these men and women seemed especially so and ALL very professional and kind under stressful and dangerous conditions. 

I stood against that high metal wall that lines the interstate highway awaiting the tow truck, probably 40 minutes after the crash. Suddenly a speeder, despite multiple emergency vehicles with an amazing array of blue and red lights, swerved onto the right shoulder to dodge the police car blocking the right lane then back between it and the next police car into traffic in the second lane from the right. Inches kept that car from causing another terrifying accident that might have killed the police officer in the car -- not to mention near misses with other traffic.

Whew. Yes, I am counting blessings.

Defend Democracy

Poem To Start the Week: America is a Gun

England is a cup of tea.
France, a wheel of ripened brie.
Greece, a short, squat olive tree.
America is a gun.

Brazil is football on the sand.
Argentina, Maradona’s hand.
Germany, an oompah band.
America is a gun.

Holland is a wooden shoe.
Hungary, a goulash stew.
Australia, a kangaroo.
America is a gun.

Japan is a thermal spring.
Scotland is a highland fling.
Oh, better to be anything
than America as a gun.

-Brian Bilston

America is, of course, so much more than a gun. But, oh, we are too much a gun. And how sad that this is how much of the world sees us. How sad, despite the plain language to the contrary of its first phrase, that so many read the Second Amendment as if the second phrase stands alone. And the blood of our children flows from their bodies day after day after day.

Flowers for Mother's 100th

Sheila and I put flowers in the church on Sunday in memory of my Mother, Ruth Baird Shaw, on her 100th birthday. I'd like to save the pictures here.  

I also cut a bunch of daffodils from my yard for a small bouquet 
which was placed in the narthex of the church. The primary reason I have planted so many daffodils in my yard was to have a good supply to cut for my Mother during the late winter and spring.
How I miss seeing her face brighten when I walk in with jonquils.

Gleaning Facebook: Lisette

My niece Sarah Lisette Lewis was born a matter of days after our daughter Brannon. And since their family moved to Rome when she was still a little girl, she and Brannon and a little later their slightly older cousin Amanda (who moved to Rome in the nineties) grew up almost like sisters. Lisette's Mom, my sister Debi, often kept both girls and sometimes all three, along with her boys, at her house while Sheila and I were working. 

We love that girl. Yesterday we had to vicariously enjoy her happiness through her mother's messages and those of her Aunt Jan.  Lisette got married to a fellow named Dan Dill. We just wish her much joy and a long life of love and joy with Dan. 

This screenshot links to the photographers gallery of Lisette and Dan's wedding pictures.

And here are a few other pictures of Lisette from my albums...

Brannon and Lisette in their mothers' laps.

Lisette and Brannon at the beach.

(L-R) Matthew, Benjamin, Brannon, Me, Lisette, Andrew
at the lake at Floyd College (now Georgia Highlands)

Lisette in blue leaning into GrandShaw's lap. With her cousins (L-R) Josh, Matthew, Grandmother, Jessica, Amanda, Lisette, Brannon, GrandShaw, Andrew.

(L-R) Brannon, Amanda, Lisette, Jessica in their matching outfits at Mexico Beach,

(L-R) Lisette, Lillian, Brannon, and Rachel on the swing in our front yard at 608 Cedar Ave., Rome

Trinity's Children's Choir musical. Can you pick out Brannon and Lisette?

Lisette & Brannon

Lisette & Brannon

Brannon, Jessica, & Lisette at Mexico Beach

Mother surrounded by five of her granddaughters: 
(Clockwise from the left) Lisette, Lillian, Amanda, Brannon, and Jessica .

Brannon, Lisette, and Haley at Mother's house.

Lisette with Sheila at Mark & Shawna's wedding.

Lisette with our Clementine

(L-R) Lillian, Lisette, Caroline, and Renee in our backyard on the Fourth of July.

February 19, 1923: One Hundred Years Ago

One hundred years ago today 63-year-old Wilson Baird and his much younger wife, Ieula, welcomed their eleventh child into the world. She was the only one of the eleven born in town. The others had all been born on the farm at Oak Hill before the boll weevil drove Wilson from the farm to the mill. They named the baby Sarah Ruth and would call her Ruth. They had lost a baby after only a few weeks of life back in 1908. So they had nine other children now ranging in age from Grice at 19 down to three year-old Leon.

Their joy would change to terror a few weeks later when a measles epidemic would sweep through their mill town, Porterdale, Georgia. Both of their youngest children, Leon and Ruth, would contract the frightening disease. The baby would manage to survive and live 98 more years. Little Leon's life was snuffed by measles and the resulting pneumonia on April 18, 1923. 

As far as I know, no photograph ever existed of little Leon Baird. These are his scuffed and worn little shoes that my grandmother kept in her cedar chest for the rest of her life.

Ruth is the child at the right.

My Mother often speculated that her parents surely would have preferred that the child they had already loved for more than three years survive, but that they never showed anything but unconditional love to her. 

Her father would only live nine more years himself. Though he died when Ruth was still a child, her Mother kept him alive through stories. She learned to revere the Papa whose healthy days had to have been only a vague memory. He had been completely bedridden his last year. The misty memory of picking wildflowers with him by the Yellow River while her Mother fished nearby was one of the few stored away. But she loved to tell of what she'd heard about him from her mother and siblings. How he and Ieula would sit on the farm porch swing in the evenings in the dusk, talking about the farm and the children and their days' activities, his arm draped around her, her head on his shoulder.

I love this picture of my wife, Sheila, and my Mother Ruth. They are watching a video of my grandchildren on the computer, sharing a pair of earbuds, each with one to her ear.

That day is long gone. Wilse Baird has been gone 91 years. Ieula died in 1973. After Leon's death almost 100 years ago, the other siblings continued to grow, some had already married, the rest did. Some moved away; some stayed pretty close. Most had children. Grice would die of a heart attack here in Rome in 1965. Jack in 1988, Gradually, like all of us will, they met their mortality. Now even the majority of the next generation, mine, is gone, including my own sister Beth. Only Grice's Wayne, Tom's Jane, Jack's Sandra, and Ruth's Janice, Joan, Terrell, Carol, Debi, and David remain.

Mother

Mother died at 98 on August 1, 2021. Today is the 100th anniversary of her birth. I am such a lucky man to have had my Mother with me for 74 years and especially to have been able to see or talk with her almost daily for the last 24 of those years. 

When you get to be 75, as I am for a few days yet, you realize that even 98 years is a mighty short time.

I miss my Mama.

This is the last picture of me with my Mother, the day before her death.

Mother on her 98th birthday.

Mother and Me

Mother and Me

Latest Grandgirls Pics

 Screen captures from Instagram. We get to see these rascals in person in less than a month.

Susannah

Ruth

Clementine

Plus one extra pic of Suzie

Susannah

Short Walk

Our northward walk on the Riverwalk was short today.

Just north of the Little Dry Creek bridge the Riverwalk is flooded, so no Mount Berry Trail walk for us today.

A wooden ladder was afloat in the backwater under the bridge..

One brave walker passed us and gave a very narrow and slippery branch an opportunity to throw her into the water. I wanted to watch and video -- expecting a disaster -- but Sheila prevailed upon me to forgo that voyeuristic endeavor. So we turned south. Ended up walking to the John Ross bridge then north across the boardwalk under Fifth Avenue, across the Fifth Avenue bridge and back home from there back along the Riverwalk.

 

In Memoriam: Jean Futral Bray

Jean Bray was an active member of our Ridge & Valley Storytelling Guild. She would occasionally tell us a brief anecdote, sometimes from her 30 year career rubbing shoulders with some of Georgia's most famous politicos and lawyers as legal secretary at King and Spaulding, one of the largest law firms in the world and headquartered in Atlanta.

One month a couple of years ago Jean was our primary storyteller and she came prepared with a beautifully illustrated pasteboard with a group of sayings she had learned from her mother. How I wish I had a photo of that poster and a recording of her entertaining reciting and storytelling about her mother's sayings. 

When the pandemic came along in March of 20920 we ceased our monthly R&V meetings and had not gotten back to them by the time I started taking my Arrowhead animals to The Spires at Berry College, a retirement complex, to tell stories regularly. One day I was pleasantly surprised to find Jean in my audience, and for the last year and a half or so I have seen her fairly regularly. 

Only a few weeks ago she attended one of our storytelling sessions there. She had heard me discussing my political collection with my friend and fellow collector Jack Summerbell, so she had a present for me - a small George McGovern button from 1972. After the session she stood in the hallway with me to tell me a brief story and to give me the button. 

I last saw Jean on January 26. After our program that day she talked to me a bit about the storytelling class she was taking at Berry through their senior scholar program. She said she was working on a story that she might tell -- or maybe read -- to us in February. I was looking forward to that and I hate that we will miss it.

I will truly miss her. 

Here is her obituary from the internet:

Mrs. Jean Futral Bray, 88, of Rome GA passed from our world on February 16, 2023 in a Rome hospital after a brief illness. Mrs. Bray was born in Wadley, Jefferson County, Georgia on March 6, 1934. 

Jean was preceded in death by her husband, Larry E. Bray and sons Ty Harrison Bray and Larry E Bray, Jr. and her brother Eben Futral. She was the daughter of the late Tom Futral and Wilma Moore Futral. 

Jean graduated from Wadley High School and attended business college in Atlanta. She was a legal secretary at King and Spalding in Atlanta for over 30 years. She loved to quilt and was a member of the Lavender Mountain Quilt Guild in Rome GA. 

She was a voracious reader and wrote many stories as well as being a Story Teller at Big Fibbers in Rome. Jean also loved to play cards with her quilting friends. She had an inquisitive mind. Being a life long learner, she enrolled in several classes at Berry College. She was also a very successful gardener. 

Mrs. Bray is survived by her children, Joan (Grover) Holmes, Robin Bray McFalls, Melissa Gould, Tim (Connie) Forbes, Tommie (Paul) Mack, and Robert (Norma) Bray. She had 16 grandchildren and 16 great grandchildren. 

A Celebration of Life will be held summer of 2023. In lieu of flowers the family suggests memorial contributions be sent to Lifelink of Georgia.

It was through Jean's connection to the Lavendar Mountain Quilt Club 
that we had beautiful quilt displays for the stage at several 
of our Big Fibbers Storytelling Festivals.

 

History Warts and All

 

 Be careful teachers, especially those in Florida. Your Governor might prosecute you for sharing history like this with your students. 

History is full of good and bad and indifferent. It is history. Every age has hard lessons for us all. WE love our purple mountains' majesty and our alabaster cities' gleam. But other nations' skies are as blue and mountains even higher, and cities' as teeming and fauna as diverse. We revere America for the lofty goals of the Declaration and Constitution - above its beauty and in spite of its Constitutionally noted imperfections, recognized and not, that soil our history from before Christopher Columbus's toes touched Caribbean sand till today.

Slavery, Native American slaughters, sexism, homophobia, gilded age serfdom, fascism, eugenics, segregation, internment camps --- all these and other horrors have found root in our beloved America despite our noble goals. Our children need to know our history. One of the public education goals, stated in our standards and gladly accepted by me, was to instill a love of America's republican heritage and admiration for our founders. But all that within the basic standard of truth.

AnnaGrace and Zachary

Sheila and I drove over to Leesburg, Alabama this Super Bowl afternoon to Dry Creek Chapel wedding venue, near the mouth of Little River Canyon for an unusual and beautiful wedding.

I knew the chapel was open-air, so I wore my long-johns. And no one was gonna take my cap; I like to keep my noggin warm!

Before things got started Sheila and I posed with my sister and brother-in-law, Joan and Jim Turrentine, grandparents of the bride.

Next to the table that held the printed programs at the entrance were tubs of blankets to help folks keep warm. Still Sheila sent me back to the car to get the warmer poncho/throw that Mother gave us years ago. That helped. It was physically a chilly wedding. But emotionally it was quite warm and very beautiful and downright playful at times
 
I am not usually a fan of recorded music at weddings and funerals, but there was obviously a lot of thought put into the songs played as each group of folks entered. As the flower girls and (a new form of wedding attendant in my book) bubblebearer entered they played "Kiss he Girl" from The Little Mermaid.

As little brother, uncle, great-uncle, or great-great-uncle to some of the folks who came down that aisle, my thoughts drifted to years ago. 

The bride is the little girl who accompanied me and Sheila and her grandparents, on a gorgeous March day in 2008, on Georgia's most beautiful spring wildflower walk. Click this picture from that day to see more. 

*The bride and groom with his father. 

*This little guy is my first great-great-nephew.  He was the BubbleBearer or perhaps he should be dubbed the BubbleGunner. As the flower girls strew petals about he followed in his miniature tux wreaking havoc with his BubbleGun. 

One of the playful moments came at the time for the couple's kiss. I noticed my nephew Ricky pull something from under the bench and pass it to Steve, the father of the bride. Something was up. The groom's father, Rev. Daniel,  was the officiant and told the story of how Anna Grace had dreamed as a child of a seaside wedding. She had made up a romantic scenario of sharing her first kiss with her groom as two dolphins would leap from the sea to kiss simultaneously over their heads. At that point Steve walked up with a beautiful glass sculpture of a pair of dolphins leaping toward one another, and Daniel held it over the heads of AnnaGrace and Zachary as he proclaimed that Zachary could kiss his bride. I'll have to wait for the pro photos to add that picture.!

The program asked that we not take pictures during the service so I managed to withstand the temptation. Here is the big wedding party posing for photos afterwards. It includes four lovely great-nieces, two great-nephews, three great-nephews-in-law, one great-niece-in-law, and one soon-to-be-great-nephew-in-law.

The bride and groom enjoy a first dance as husband and wife.

AnnaGrace dances with her Dad, my nephew Steve.

*AnnaGrace's cousin attendants.

Elijah the BubbleBearer daces with his Mom and GrandMom.

An added treat was seeing Kelly Osborn, my little McHenry fifth-grader from the 1970s, now mom to one of my great-nieces-in-law. We are practically kin!  As you can see over my shoulder, the Super Bowl was just incorporated right into the celebration.

Thanks, AnnaGrace and Zachary, for allowing us to be there for your lovely wedding. We wish you many many  happy years together.

*The photos marked with asterisks were taken by my sister Joan.