Sunday, October 16, 2016

A little of this and a little of that

I found some old family photographs in an envelope and tossed them onto the bed in the spare room. In olden times this photo might have been called Still Life: Blue and Yellow Quilts with Photographs.


All of the photos except my passport photo were taken way back when in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, probably between 1925 and 1948. My passport photo, which I showed you a couple of posts back, was made much more recently in Boca Raton, Florida, in 1969. This also may sound like way back when to some of you younger readers, but it really isn't in the overall scheme of things.

The following photo is definitely from the 1920s. My dad, Ted Brague, the youngest of the five Brague brothers, is on the left. His brother Dan, the fourth Brague son, is on the right. The fellow in the middle is an unidentified friend. You must deal with the fact that the photo is cattywampus on your own; no one ever said that reading a post by moi would be easy. The preceding sentence illustrates perfectly the use of the semicolon.


Mrs. RWP and I find ourselves in deepest Alabamistan once again after a long absence. Yesterday afternoon we sat in the sun in the high school football stadium in Pell City watching a marching band competition. It was worth it; not only were our two grandsons featured in a trumpet and mellophone* duet of "Desperado" during their school's performance, their band received Superior ratings and were named Best Band in Class (AAA). We were also treated to two trains passing by during the afternoon just behind the opposite-side stands, one a very, very, very long freight train and the other an Amtrak passenger train enroute from New Orleans to Atlanta, a rare sighting in today's world unless one lives in the Boston-New York-Washington corridor where Amtrak trains are as thick as thieves pandas in China kookaburras in Australia.

When we get back home I shall attempt to show you a video of the band's performance. As it will be my first attempt in nine years of blogging to embed a video in a post, I fervently hope it will appear right side up.

T.T.F.N.

*A mellophone is the instrument a French Horn player uses during marching season. It looks like a trumpet with a larger bell and produces a lower, mid-range (and therefore mellower) sound.

13 comments:

  1. I wish kookaburras were thicker here than they are. Much thicker. I love their laugh, admire their beauty, and appreciate the snake control they provide.
    I am fond of trains too - particularly steam trains.
    Good luck with the video inclusion. It is something I don't often do. And dread.
    Congratulations to your grandsons. Marching bands (let alone marching band competitons) are largely alien to us here.

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  2. EC/Sue, did I say kookaburras? Silly me, I meant kangaroos, er, koalas, er, cockatoos, er, rosellas. Just insert your favorite abundant Australian fauna.

    I regret to inform you that these were not steam trains. They were diesel engines with VERY LOUD HORNS or maybe they are WHISTLES. Whatever they were, they were ear-splitting.

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  3. You must have been so happy to watch your grandchildren perform. It does my grandma heart good to watch my grandchildren.

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  4. I enjoyed this post. I hope you haven't encountered any Islamic militants in Alabamistan... or even worse Donald Trump supporters. I notice that President Obama's popularity ratings have increased dramatically during the recent soap opera/reality TV show that is currently masquerading as the race for the presidency.

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  5. Emma/Emma, seeing any of our grandchildren perform (we have six and I remember that you have seven) is something Mrs. RWP and I could do all day long every day. I will try to remember to include a photo of us with our only granddaughter after one of the performances of Thornton Wilder's Our Town recently in which she had the role of Emily.

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  6. Yorkshire Pudding/Whatever Your Name Is, saying you enjoyed this post should please me but instead it is rather like being damned with faint praise. I think peace may have come finally to Alabamistan. Nowhere amongst all those hordes of musical high schoolers did we ever spot a BMD* and for Alabama that is both significant and laudatory.

    I never speak of President Obama and the less said about The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse** the better.

    *Banjo of Mass Destruction
    **the Messrs. Trump and Johnson and the Mmes. Clinton and Stein, 2016 presidential candidates of the Republican, Libertarian, Democrat, and Green parties, respectively

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  7. "As it will be my first attempt in nine years of blogging to embed a video in a post, I fervently hope it will appear right side up." - Good luck, I know you can do it, we're behind you all the way! And looking forward to it too for that matter.

    Love the old photos, I have quite a collection mysself that span back to the early 1900's of our family, scanned them all into the computer too, so at least there's a copy of them somewhere for the future.

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  8. I've been going through old photos for several years now (there are many tens of thousands of them) and it's amazing what one manages to find. As for politics I keep well out of it. All I can say is that for those who say that Trump (of Hebridean extraction I regret to say) is a US matter and that the rest of the world should mind its own business the leader of the most powerful nation in the world (for a short while anyway until China succeeds to the title) is our business: he has his finger on all the buttons.

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  9. I love the name 'mellophone' Wish someone could invent a telephone which had a mellowing effect on all calls.

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  10. All Consuming, I have not been successful with the video embedding, drat it all. But I do plan to trot out some more old photos.

    there is practically nothing but politics on the telly these days.

    Patsy, what a great idea! I hope someone will figure out how to do just that. Better register your idea with the patent office just in case so they'll know where to send royalty payments.

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  11. That second response was intended for Graham Edwards.

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  12. “Alabamistan”…I guess that would translate into Oregonistan here, but that doesn’t have as good a ring as Alabamistan, plus it comes uncomfortably close to Orgasmistan. Maybe the “People’s Republic of Oregon” would be preferable. So you live in where, Georgianistan?

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  13. Snowbrush, no, I don't live in where, Georgianistan. I live in beautiful north Georgia, east of the sun and west of the moon, comfortably north of the gnat line, and not far from the great and terrible city of Atlanta, which daily becomes more and more like John F. Kennedy's description of Washington, D.C., "a combination of southern efficiency and northern charm."

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<b>Always true to you, darlin’, in my fashion</b>

We are bombarded daily by abbreviations in everyday life, abbreviations that are never explained, only assumed to be understood by everyone...