The stockings were hung by the chimney with care, In  hopes that St. Nicholas soon would be there;

 

 

What Does Christmas Mean to YOU?

 I was thinking about Christmas and what my daughter said on her personal web site today. It was a picture of one of her Christmas trees from a couple of years ago. Underneath the picture she said; "I love Christmas! “It’s all about Jesus and children!"

I thought and asked myself "What does Christmas mean to me?" To ME it reminds me of my childhood, when my Mom would take us downtown to shop on State Street here in Chicago. Back then they didn't have any shopping malls so you had to shop downtown for presents. Just to go down there and see the window displays got me excited because I knew Santa was coming soon.

Christmas Eve was always the BIG day for me because my Mom and Dad and my sister and I would all go over to my Grandmother's house. Everybody was there, all my aunts and uncles and all of my cousins. You could hardly see the tree for the presents were stacked so high. My cousins and I would wait for my uncle Bill to bring down HIS presents. At the last moment when everybody was there, he would put his presents under the tree. They were always the biggest and the best and were all covered in the same green holiday wrapping paper. The fun came when we got to open our presents. The adults would sit back and watch us kids. "Mommy Look at What I Got!" I yelled out to her. I loved the smiles on my parent’s faces when I showed them what I had gotten. It was the one time of the year when everybody was together and everybody was happy. Yeah, Christmas to ME is about family and happiness.

The years have gone by and now I am the Grandfather. All of my grandparents, uncles, aunts and especially my parents are all gone now. I sit here all alone in my apartment and think about how wonderful it would be if suddenly they were all here with me again on Christmas. But sadly they can only be with me in my mind.

 This Christmas I will happily drive 6 hours to my daughter's home for Christmas that is if it doesn’t snow and watch my grandchildren open their presents. Unlike my parents before me, I'll get down on the floor with my grandchildren and help them play with their toys. I guess I'm trying to recapture my childhood but who cares. I have fun playing with my grand kids and their toys.

 I would love to hear from everybody and tell us "What Does Christmas mean to YOU"

Merry Christmas Everybody

Oprah Published One of My Photos

BEAUTY IS WHERE THE TALL GRASS GROWS

I was thrilled when I sent in one of my photos and found that she had published it on her Super Soul Sunday  web site. Cool, Thank You!

 Here is a link to the photo:

Beauty-is-Where-the-Tall-Grass-Grows
http://www.oprah.com/own-supersoulsunday/blogs/Beauty-is-Where-the-Tall-Grass-Grows

                                              OCTOBER

This week has been the best week of the whole year as far as the weather goes. Fall is here and the trees are turning all sorts of colors. I put a link below to show all the pictures I have taken so far. It's kind of like a story or keeping a diary of each day I go out. Read my comments at the bottom of each photo to follow along.

https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.2206079189145.2113175.1162363051&l=35cc4617c8&type=1

We Went to the Rosie Show

Last Friday I was on the computer and I went to Oprah’s OWN web site. I saw that Rosie O’Donnel is taking over for Oprah at Harpo Studios here in Chicago. I looked at Rosie’s page http://www.oprah.com/rosie/rosie.html

 and noticed that they had last minute tickets available that you could sign up for. So I filled out the form and sent it to them. Last minute tickets are the way to go if you want to be in the audience. That’s how I got on Oprah’s show twice before she went off the air. But she still owns Harpo Studios and Rosie works for Oprah.

  Well two days later I get an email to attend a test show for Rosie’s new show. I didn’t know what a test show was but I wanted to go. I thought it would be better than sitting around in this stupid apartment. On Tuesday I went to my disability meeting at the township. I told the people about it and I said that I was allowed to bring one guest with me. “Does anybody want to go with me?” I said. Out of the five other people that were there at the meeting, one girl said she would love to go. That was cool because I didn’t want to go alone. It’s always so much more fun to share a fun experience like the Rosie Show with someone else.

 We had to be down there at 12:30 in the afternoon. She picked me up a little earlier than normal, just in case we ran into traffic or some other problem. We had a pleasant ride downtown. We were really running early so she showed me around her old neighborhood that she grew up in. It was on the way to Harpo Studios anyway. 

 When we got down there we couldn’t find a place to park. We kept driving around and around. Finally we found this valet parking for some restaurant and asked them if they could help us since my guest was handicapped and couldn’t walk very far on her cane. They were very nice and helped us park our car. 

 The line at Harpo Studios to get in was getting long and we still had to wait another 45 minutes. I knew my guest couldn’t stand that long so I went to the front entrance and told them about her problem. They quickly got a chair for her and she sat down. We were at the head of the line. When it was time to go inside, we were the first two people to go in. We had to sit around for about an hour waiting. It wasn’t a bad wait because my guest was excited and we were having fun. They had had a morning show and we had to wait for them to clear out first. In the meantime they had given us a card to fill out. It had three questions that you could ask Rosie. Just before we went into the studio itself, the people working for the Harpo’s Studio went through the cards we had to fill out and they selected about a dozen people from those cards. They were the first ones to get seated along with a few other people.

Since we had tickets number 1 and 2 we went into the studio next. This time we got to sit up front in the studio with the band right in back of us. That was cool. We found out by talking to the people next to us that Henry Winkler, ”The Fonz” was going to be one of the guest on the show. Cool!  My guest and I didn’t have any idea what was going to happen at this “Test Show,” So it was thrilling when The Fonz walked on stage. He was funny and Rosie and Henry Winkler joked around.

 The Rosie Show turned out to be very funny and everybody was laughing and thoroughly entertained throughout the show. Rosie’s next guests were two policemen that appeared on some other show where they were carp fishing with their hands. I didn’t follow that mainly because I couldn’t hear them. Maybe that’s the testing part of the show. Stage hands were always doing something trying to get the look of the show just right.

 They changed the set and took away Rosie’s desk that she was using to interview her guest and cleared the stage. A microphone and stand went up with a couple of speakers. Alright, someone was going to sing. Josh Kelly walked out and everybody cheered. He brought his guitar and sang. 

 In between guests when they were changing sets on the stage, Rosie would come down and ask if anybody had any questions. I couldn’t  think of any so I just enjoyed Rosie’s humor. 

 The last thing they did was to set up the stage to look like a quiz show with two podiums. I don’t know how they selected the two young girls to answer the questions. Rosie would read several peoples first names and the contestants would have to guess what their families last name were. The winner won something but we didn’t find out what it was. 

 That was the end of the show. On our way out they gave a gift bag. We got a copy of Josh Kelly’s CD,  a bag of some kind of potato chips, a bag of Garrett’s popcorn, a gift certificate for a sample of some kind of cupcake that you had to go downtown to get and a Rosie Key chain. But the good thing is that we are going to get to come back in December for a live on air show. I hope they give out Christmas presents for that show. That would really be great if we got that lucky.

  I thought Rosie was funny and everybody in the audience had fun. I’m sure glad that my guest had a lot of fun too. It was so nice to be able to share the fun we had at the show with each other.

 Bill

  

A Poem by Mona Morrison

A Poem by Mona Morrison

If I could bottle spring

I would grab the buds that just come out on the trees

I would catch a breeze of fresh light air from the cloudless day

I would capture the colors of the hints of flowers and promises to come

If I could bottle summer

I would catch the colors of a Monarch butterfly and the red hot colors of sunsets

I would collect the smells from the fresh cut grass and lazy flowers following the sun

I would take a hint of the soft hot summer breeze on a slow hazy evening

If I could bottle autumn

I would grab a palette and take the colors from the leaves

I would bottle the slight change in temperature that makes you want to grab a sweater

I would remember the kiss of fall upon the cheek

If I could bottle winter

I would capture the first snow flakes and its purity of nature

I would bottle the smells of baked bread and the calorie latent cookies and cakes

I would capture the sounds of children enjoying the holiday season with its many surprises

Just Me On The 4th of July

It was so hot that I stayed indoors until the sun started to set. That’s when I got dressed and headed for the local fireworks show. This year I brought my tripod to use with my camera. I didn’t bring my tripod last year and all of my pictures turned out blurry. My hands shake and I don’t know why, all I know is that it seems to be getting worse.

I found a nice spot in the grass and sat down waiting for the fireworks to start. I had a friend that I use to take with me but she died in a car accident 9 years ago. So I go all by myself now. I don’t know why I still go to these things. As I sat there, I started thinking about my friend and I.

My mind wondered as I watched all of the families sitting on the green grass around me. Their children were running around laughing and having fun playing while we waited for it to get dark. Pretty soon I was regressing and in my mind I was a little boy again, sitting there next to my Mom and Dad. I wish I could turn back time.
I have two children, a boy and a girl. We use to go to the fireworks shows every year. They acted just like all the other kids that were with their families that were sitting around me waiting for the fireworks to start. Yeah, I thought of them too, but now my children along with their mother have moved away. You know how that goes and now they too are all grown up and have children of their own. So now I sit here all alone on the green grass reminiscing about my family and my friend wishing they were all here with me. SUDDENLY…. BANG,BANG, 

the fireworks had begun. I started taking pictures of all the beautiful sky rockets going off above me. Somehow I didn’t feel alone anymore. I was too busy trying to capture the moment on my camera. The sky rockets kept going off one right after the other. I wanted to get some good pictures. 

When I got back to my apartment, I loaded up the pictures on my computer. I had taken 77 shots and the best ones out of all of them in my opinion were the pictures I took of all the families sitting there on the green grass looking up as the sky lit up in a gorgeous dazzling display of colors. Yeah, it was all about the families watching the fireworks that turned out to be the most stunning pictures of all of them.