The Return of Sandra (perhaps)

I used to LOVE this blog, when people used to read it, before everyday news moved to facebook.

I think I'll start using it again. I keep wanting to write something, or keep something, and can't decide where. All around me, over the years, online platforms change or are abandoned. Someday this will go, too. I don't like that. 🙂

Nearly every day, now, I think of something I was to write and can't decide where best to put it, so perhaps I will restore this old truck.

Some of the photos seem missing. They've been moved, and I'll need to change the URLs, one at a time, but that's okay.

Some slide-shows that were easily made with photobucket lived on that site, and the code was abbreviated, so... gone is gone, on those.

Memory, not new, but the topic came up a few times recently.


We had SCA visitors once (date to be added, maybe, someday) and drove them touristing. One of them (Patrick/Padreigh (?)) posted this photo on Facebook in 2020, and I snagged it. There's me in the driver's seat, and if you can zoom in, there's Holly in a car seat and Kirby standing up. The visitors from Tennessee were out to take pictures of something, and our van was part of the something. Cool!!

February 1999, big van (15 passenger '83 Ford) went into the shop for the last time; didn't survive a $1200 repair, too much engine damage

Odd, to pay a bunch of money and have the van pretty much die on the operating table. We had it towed back and Holly used it as a playhouse for a few years. She decorated it hippie-bus style and used to listen to Alice's Restaurant out there.

Keith, me, arguments, peace

I wrote this on facebook in 2018, and I would like for my kids to be able to find it someday. Others might benefit, too.

February 14, 2018

Valentine's Day report
Young love was fun. Longterm love is different—different things are fun. Familiarity. Having a good woodpile. Memories. Projects. Grandchildren.

Our friend André Begnaud commented, "Hair color may change, but those smiles are still the same!" I responded:

We're not always smiling. Some disclosure: Sometimes we start to recite one of our repeat arguments, but we remember it's a re-run, and jump to the end, or trail off. They're about feeding cats (how to), or putting tools up (one of us is too short sometimes, and figures "on the bench" is close enough), how to do laundry (mostly we do our own now, and it pisses me off that his isn't totally ruined for his not following my instructions).

I guess the trick is to know it's about cats, tools, and laundry, and not about the soul of the other person.

Keith and I have been married since 1984, and were a couple for six years before that. It averages out to 40 years, these days. This year, our youngest child turns 30; the oldest will be 35.

Most mornings, we play three games of Dr. Mario. We're evenly matched, and if one of us wins all three, the other is probably unwell somehow. We've joked that it's our Alzheimer's test, but it can be an indicator of smaller problems, too.
"Are you okay?"
"I didn't sleep well," or "I was thinking about..." and then we can help each other.

Most evenings, we play two games of Five Crowns. I do all the shuffling and dealing. That started when Keith was recovering from 13 broken ribs and a broken sternum, after his life was saved in early 2019, and he was revived from cardiac arrest, by SCA friends, and then firemen, and then ICU doctors, all three in one day. So I shuffled and dealt when it was uncomfortable for him, and now I just do it because I do. Keith keeps score. It's a time we can talk, if we need to, and joke if we don't need to talk.

---

The photo above was taken by Rachael Rodgers, in November 2016. She took this one and several others that day:

That photo predates the births of Ivan, Kirby Athena, Tommy and Wynona. I looked better in the other takes, of that arrangement, but others looked beautiful and happy in this one.

Moments pass. Try to keep the peace.

2020 in Review, Christmas-letter style

I have links to the Christmas letter. I sent out lots, thinking partly that it might be my last chance. 2020 was like that.

This is being written afterwards, but I'm backdating it so 2020 has more than one post.

---

2020 Christmas (if you'd rather go to the website version right away)

---

2020 Christmas
Sandra Dodd

(You could skip to the good part about how this whole Christmas card is a picture of the basket.)

BUSINESS:

Please don’t feel bad if you didn’t send me a card. Don’t. It’s stressful. Let it go. Maybe send me a text or e-mail, or you could click “like” on some facebook thing. That’s plenty.

PERSONAL:

I made this letter from me, because Keith didn’t want to tell people he had another “cardiac episode,” but because it’s my story, I will tell you that we learned this much, on August 9: an implanted defibrillator can wake a guy up and put him back on schedule, heartbeatwise. Keith is well, swimming, splitting wood, playing music (more info at the link below).

Grandchildren review/news (all are well, as are their parents):

Devyn (2009)
Ivan (2017)
Kirby Athena (2018)
Tommy Kore Lynn (2019)
Wynona/Wynnie (2020)

I am informed that this is to be the full set, forever, including by Holly, who has recently moved into her own home, much nearer to the artsy vegetable farm where she works. I’m happy that all of our kids and kid-in-laws are employed, all from home except for Holly.

THE GOOD PART:

The card is a picture of a basket. Gerard David apparently owned a basket, five hundred years ago, and worked it into at least three paintings. In this one it is clearly a diaper bag—rolls of swaddling cloths are showing.

TIME OUT: I've put this letter online with links and images, if you'd rather.
sandradodd.com/2020

A few years ago I read a book called Vermeer's Hat, by Timothy Brook. It’s about connections among people and places, and how the Dutch East India company traded with China, which led to the blue-and-white ceramic magnet of a windmill that I (and many others) own. But in between those things were stories of ships and Spanish silver mined in South America, and how the travel and exchanges of goods were working. History and connections, technology and art.

Many of Vermeer’s paintings were made in the same room, with the same window, sometimes the same props, art, or map. Vermeer’s Hat is about his stuff. I enjoyed the whole story, and all the images.

So time passed, and I had one Gerard David image on my website. A few years later, I found a second one, out in the wild. Same basket. I got excited and did web searches for discussions of that, but I didn’t find anything. Cool!

This year I happened to see an SCA-related discussion of baskets somewhere, and there, right there, was the same basket. Another Gerard David! There was some artistic license in the color, but still…

As if that weren’t exciting enough, when I went to look for Christmas cards this year, what pops up but Gerard David and his basket.

Thanks to Julie and Adam, I got to see a Gerard David painting in London. No basket there. I was a little disappointed that he wasn’t Spanish, as I had first guessed. When I was a kid, the two male neighbors closest to my age were Gerard Vigil, to the southeast, and David Sanchez to the north, so the name was easy for me to remember. Gerard David was not Spanish, but Dutch, as was Vermeer. He lived in Italy a while, and ended up in Brugge until his death, all before Vermeer was born.

These connections are a reminder that even from home, we can explore the world, thanks to other people’s clues and unintentional gifts, and the wonders of the internet these days, with so many detailed photos.

I could be sad at home, or I can be happy. I have years of practice at conjuring and sharing happiness. Keith knows that sometimes I fail. I get scared, or have a bad dream, or feel sorry for myself, but I revive and recover and put out one more Just Add Light and Stir, where people can peek into moments in other families, viewpoints of other people, and sightings of birds or lizards on other continents, in other seasons. There are words and ideas people can take in for a moment, or an hour, or to keep. Then I feel better.

I hope next year is easier and sweeter for all of us. If it is, your memories of an expansive world should allow you to jump on and ride it.

Best wishes for peace and health!

---

If you got this far without going to the letter with images and links, here are previews (which are links, too).

Three in armor

Though I'm missing it (by choice), today for the first time Keith, Kirby and Marty are all in armor at the same time, off at a "war practice" in preparation for the Estrella War which is near Phoenix in February. I sent the camera with Marty and will try to link to some photos soon or eventually. When they're armored up they're not Keith/Kirby/Marty, they're Jarl Gunwaldt, Lord Magnus and Bardolf. For most of my adult life I really cared, and now that I'm not doing SCA myself but just being the supply officer back at the barracks, as it were, I still know a landmark moment when it comes, and today is one of those. There's a photo of Kirby in his armor which can be seen by those with myspace accounts http://myspace.com/kirbydodd (click "view more photos" under his main photo) and there are photos of both of them in costume, when they were much younger, here: http://sandradodd.com/duckford/children Fifteen years ago This week (Larger images are at flickr.com/photos/sandradodd)