WAR IS OVER...

19 CHRISTMAS 14

Many years ago I was gifted a crocheted piece made by my grandma, Carrie Ollmann.  I made a frame for it, and it has had a special place in all the houses I have lived in for over 40 years.  This year, marks its 100^th birthday – 2014.

On December 24, 1914, during WWI, British, German and Canadian soldiers in Belgium, in the middle of the war, simply STOPPED, climbed out of their trenches and entered an area identified as “no man’s land.”  There, they exchanged presents and greetings, and after a few hours returned to their respective sides and the war continued.  Also attached to this keepsake are two tiny gold medallions also dated 1914 which were made by a French Medalist.

Many of us recall John and Yoko's poster from many years ago as well as their rally to "Give Peace a Chance."  Can we?

Imagine it!

Imaginary construct of us in our new Great Northern Hot Tub....soon!

“Without leaps of imagination or dreaming, we lose the excitement of possibilities. Dreaming, after all is a form of planning.”  Gloria Steinem

 

“Imagination will often carry us to worlds that never were, but without it we go nowhere.” Carl Sagan 

 
“Stories of imagination tend to upset those without one.”   Terry Pratchett

When we returned home from our visit in February of 2012, we admit to some degree of terror; we had just bought a house on the Big Island of Hawaii -- and we still owned a home in Eureka -- and a 22 year old successful gallery business.  "Oh Shit," doesn't even cover it.  What we saw here, when we made the offer on this house was "potential" not just the house itself -- it was as though the house was a symbol for what we might envision.  Perhaps we had individually thought about what our retirement might look like, but we had not talked about it seriously until our Big Island visit in 2011, and after a year of research we were ready to "imagine it."  Suddenly, the outline of it was there -- in our face -- in the shape of this house.  If you've visited our blog at all, you know much of what we have accomplished in 18 months.   Now we begin the last phase of our creative endeavor. 

This week the materials arrived for construction of a 12x24' lanai on the north side of our house.  The photo is an imaginative construct of us -- in our new hot tub.   As the project begins this week, we will, of course, include some photos of the on-going process -- which we believe will be completed for Lunel's BIRTHDAY mid-August.

"Reality leaves a lot to the imagination."  John Lennon

"Why not go out on a limb?  Isn't that where the fruit is?  Frank Scully