In early summer of '53, this farm kid who until age 17 had never travelled more than 30 miles from home (gas rationed in W W II), got on a freighter in Los Angeles, bound for Manila and one of the half dozen passengers (limited to that number, or they had to have a doc on board) was a more or less middle-aged woman who taught the rest of us to play Mah Johng. We travelled the great circle route, north of Hawaii, not too far from the Aleutians, for over two weeks, during which time we had quite a lot of time to play it. That sight of nothing but water for 18 days (I think that we did see a small island, and a U.S. ship en route back home from Korea just as the Korean War was ending) gave us a vivid awareness of how large this old world is. Just after skirting a typhoon, we arrived at the Philippines. Entering the Manila Harbour on the west side of Luzon, one of the first sights that we had of Asia was the little rocky island of Corregidor, near the entrance to 30-mile-long Manila Harbour, the last part of the Philippines to fall to the Japanese during World War II. I was rather strongly conscuous of the fact that, had our ship been in those waters 10 years earlier, we'd have been interned in Manila, rather than just visiting it as tourists. After visiting Manila, we travelled to Cebu in the southern Philippines, then back to Legaspi on the east side of Luzon, where we got a good view of the Mayon volcano, if we got up rather early in the morning, as the summit was covered by cloud throughout the rest of the day. Then our ship headed for Hong Kong, and travelling in through the narrows just at sunset was rather thrilling. As we entered the harbour, it looked as though we were entering a huge football field, with little golden lights covering all of the sides surrounding us. After that we came back north to Kobe, where we disembarked, travelled by overnight train to Tokyo, then took the first flight of my life to Seoul, Korea, where I spent the next four years, mainly helping refugees get back on their feet. When modern war has swept across much of your country three or four times, it causes huge disruption, impacting business and industry heavily, with many layoffs ... which was exacerbated in Korea, as their business and industry was pretty rudimentary, prior to the war. Resulting in jobs available for refugees being about as scarce as hens' teeth. One feels called upon to admire the generosity of spirit of the Koreans for not hating both the Americans and the Russians, who caused the division of their country, 65 years ago. Imagine some world power drawing a line down the Mississippi, resulting in no cars, buses, trains or any travel, including on foot, to cross it ... and no phoning ... or mail ... or any means of communication ... for a couple of generations. ole joyful P.S. Interesting ... how one small reference to an item can evoke a flood of memories. o j

"naff" is somewhere between tacky and cutesy. Putting seasonal outfits on the goose garden sculpture on the front porch would be naff. In the last couple of years, I have taught a Cierra, a Deja (whose last name rhymed with Vu), a Jevon, two Skylars, one a girl, and one, with an "er", a boy; two Gages and a Sage, all boys; a Meea, a Tory (boy) and Tori (girl), a Destiny and a Lorelai. Taylors, Tylers, Jordans and Morgans of both genders. My DD is Jillian, often mispelled Julian-for instance, on her letter reminding her she must register for the draft. Speaking of teenagers naming babies- Both my children were required in 9th grade to take "Family and Consumer Science" and one of the units was parenting-and they each brought home the "Think-it-Over" baby doll as a required project. They pick up the doll after school and have the "parent wristband" attached-and you can not take the wristband off-it is removed the next morning at school. This doll is programmed to cry at frequent intervals all night, and the student must figure out what the baby wants-rocking, feeding or changing-place the wristband plug in the baby plug, and start doing whatever it takes to make it stop crying-within 3 minutes. This is all recorded on a computer chip in its little plastic head. I repeat, this goes on all night long. Daughter brought hers home, did the project, returned it-no name, no "how cute"...whatever. Do it, get an A, move on. My son went to pick up his baby and was asked by his teacher if his parents would object to a baby that did not match him ethnically-she told me later he stared at her and said "it's a doll. Why would they care?" and off he and baby went to volleyball practice. (There were 4 of the babies at practice that night-apparently it was riotous and non-stop crying!) He named his J-Qwan and at 2 a.m. the crying woke me up (did I mention that it cries all night long?) I heard him shouting from the bathroom "I'm coming J-Qwan-can't a father even p**?" LOL! His teacher told me later that she had received a blistering phone call from a father whose daughter had come home with a baby that didn't match her ethnically, so she was told to always ask. For pete sake!

It's a form of Canasta. You need a certain number of points in cards to get on the table. All cards have a point value. For example you can't lay down less then a total of 50 points to start. That is pretty easy. But we play in rounds and by the 4th or 5th round you need 150/190 points to get in the game. So at that point we deal 13 cards instead of the usual 11. At the start each player takes cards off the stack and deals out two hands of 11 cards each, one for themselves and one for the person on their left. You tell the person on the left whether the cards you gave them are their hand or their foot. They cannot look at their foot until all of their hand is depleted.

Thank you for your kind words. Meow, I use a free website called Pic2Pat. You upload any photo and it will change it to a cross stitch pattern, with a choice of finished size, material (different counts of Aida or linen) and the number of colours you want to use - mine has 120. I have previously had one project professionally framed. It also had some filament, also many colours had one thread of one colour and one of another, which was a pain, and beads, white work and cut work. The cut work was the scary bit as the rest was finished and I wasn't convinced the whole thing wouldn't fall apart!