Hanging Around in the Past

I realize that I have been spending most of my time in the past.

Not in any morbid, longing for things gone by, way.

It's just how things have worked out.

Other than being from the past, this photo doesn't have

anything to do with the rest of the blog. I just like it!

This is my aunt and uncle, Leonard and Bess Sauble, at

Mother's house in July 1991. Don't know how I caught

them in a big laugh, but it is a wonderfully happy picture.

For example:

I am still working on my great photo project. Although I'm about up to 1949 (many undated photos) and Mother's old photo book I'm re-doing ends with a few scattered pictures from the early '50s, I have many more photos that need rebooked.

I am more than halfway through the Irish History for Dummies book I've been working on for a few months. I just read two or three pages a day. It is a pretty depressing saga of constant fighting--first Irish clans against each other for dominance and territory, then, struggles with the English. The English takeover of Ireland took several hundred years of biting off more and more pieces of land, giving it to English or Scots settlers, and trying to make the native Irish quit being so Irish and become good Englishmen. There are rebellions after rebellions, but the English soldiers are better equipped, better trained, and have greater numbers. It always ends with a lot of dead Irish and more land grabbed by the English. History is usually told in the recounting of power struggles. Not much is heard of the effects all this has on the lives, suffering, and deaths of the ordinary folk.

I am also reading a book titled Ladies of Liberty by Cokie Roberts. It is really interesting, being the stories of women in the early days of our country, beginning during the John Adams presidency. People communicated through long letters and saved those precious letters. There were some amazing women, who had great influence, both politically and in social work, in a time when no women could vote and married women could hold no property on their own. When a woman married every thing she owned, right down to the clothes on her back, became her husband's property. Most of these women bore many children and often saw half of them die before they reached adulthood. Still they soldiered on. I would recommend this book to anyone. I'm learning a lot and it is Interesting!

And, then, of course, in our Tuesday Bible Study we are in the books of the Old Testament. That is really ancient history.

One thing that always strikes me in any history I read is that, no matter when it is, human nature doesn't change. Fashions change, governments change, equipment and technology change, but human nature is the same.

I do come up for air in the present. And today I hope to find some great flowers that will soon be blooming in my deck pots!