Back Up

The other day I mentioned that one of my Pages documents (living in iWork '09) had suddenly hiccupped, wouldn't open and was sending me an error message: "required index.xml file is missing". I never could get it to open properly, even after scouring the internet for advice - which I found, but it still didn’t work. So Chuck retrieved an earlier copy off our external hard drive, which is dedicated to backing up both of our laptops. It worked just fine and dandy. I did lose some work from the intervening days when I hadn’t backed up. But it was just a small percentage of the document.

We use Time Machine, the software which is associated with our Apple computers. It’s very easy to use and very easy to retrieve files via the program. We back up onto a Western Digital external hard drive. (Ours is an older version of the one I linked to.)

The super elegant solution, which I hope to move to some one of these days is Time Capsule. It is the wireless hard drive from Apple which is designed to work automatically with Time Machine. No more having to remember to go back up the laptops. It will happen automatically, behind the scenes.

The next step is off-site back up. Friends of ours have had very good luck with Carbonite. Until recently, it wasn’t available for Mac users. But now Carbonite offers the same remote, automatic backup for Apple Macs that it has been providing to Microsoft based computers for years. And it costs less than $5.00 a month.

So, what have we learned today?
Yes, we must back up our computers!
Backing up our computers will save us from much wailing and gnashing of teeth. It will keep up from curling up into a fetal position and weeping uncontrollably.
You may go to the head of the class - - - but first, go back up your computer!

A Remarkable Life

Sojourner Truth, slave, abolitionist, lecturer and activist (1797 - 1883) was honored today with a statue in Emancipation Hall of the United States Capitol Visitors' Center. Around her statue stood a group of people who appreciated and honored her legacy: First Lady Michelle Obama, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi among many others.

Born in upstate New York as Isabella Baumfree, Sojourner Truth traveled extensively beginning 1843, the same year she took the name she is known by to this day. She spoke at the first Women's Rights Convention in Worcester, Massachusetts and owned a home in Northampton, Massachusetts. In her 86 years, she worked tirelessly for what could most accurately be described as human rights, whether as an abolitionist or as a suffragist.

I mean no disrespect, no flippancy, when I say she spoke truth to power.

Death & Food

We spent the afternoon down in Rhode Island with my Mom. Mom is 85. Last year she had a series of really rough patches with her health. She was one of my obliquely referenced "Elderly Relatives" or "ERs" here on the blog. Thankfully, she had some really good physical therapy and got herself a new MD who truly cares about her - her health and the whole gestalt of who she is. She is doing much better now, but I think the whole thing frightened her and shook the ground she stands on.

So now, Mom spends a lot of time thinking about and talking about "when I'm gone..." To be fair, Mom has always been comfortable talking about death, dying and ordinary versus extraordinary means. As the primary care giver for my Dad during his illness and death from Alzheimer's she had to face some harsh realities. Dad's condition prompted Mom to be abundantly clear about what she did and did not want her final days on earth to be like. She also took care of her mother-in-law and father-in-law and her own Mom and Dad in their last years. Now, she has her only sibling, a younger sister, in troubling health, living in a nursing home. So for Mom, these topics are like breathing.

But lately, nearly every one of our daily phone conversations has some reference to her death. She might have cleaned out a closet and collected some clothing to donate to charity. But in describing the process, it's couched in "so you girls have less to go through after I'm gone." Today, we had lunch over at Panera. She started talking about the fact that they cater. I knew what was coming. She wanted us to know that we could consider hiring Panera to cater the get together after her funeral or memorial service. I knew it was coming because at Carrie's bridal shower last July, Mom picked up one of the business cards the caterer had left and brought it over to us. She wanted to let us know that she thought the food was delicious and that we could hire them. "For what?" we asked innocently. "For after my funeral." she replied. We were only momentarily nonplused. Soon we were in hysterics, laughing uproariously - all of us, including Mom.

As we sat in the booth at Panera, I asked Mom if she realized how often she brought these things up. She laughed a little, then smiled and said "I enjoy planning it." Then she pointed out that the sandwiches from Panera might be too big and therefore too messy. "People would be spilling food all over my carpet." How can I argue with any of that? So the bridal shower caterer is still in the lead.

Happy planning Mom! May you be still be planning it all as you become a centenarian!

Random Thoughts In My Head

: : One of my documents in Pages (living in iWork '09) has suddenly hiccupped, won't open and is sending me an error message: "required index.xml file is missing". I'm trying not to panic.

: : I love the opening part of the Amstel Light beer advertisement, when the old man calls out "Ladies and gentlemen, let's begin!" - in Dutch. (See it here) But despite having a pretty good ear, no matter how hard I try, I cannot repeat his call accurately. I've even tried using an online translator but I get something which doesn't scan quite right: "De dames en de heren beginnen!"

: : Using a tripod with my little Canon PowerShot S2 IS always feels like too big a production. I'm thinking a monopod would be better and easier. Suggestions?

: : Any Boston Red Sox vs. the New York Yankees game is exciting. But this home stand has been amazing!

UPDATE: The Red Sox swept the Yankees! And Jacoby Ellsbury STOLE HOME! Andy Pettitte was pitching, Jorge Posada was catching and Jacoby dove in head first and freakin' stole home! Very rare (first time in ten years for the Red Sox - maybe fifteen years for a straight steal) and extra sweet that it happened against the Evil Empire! So Good!

More Lights

On Earth Day I mentioned that we now light our home with mostly compact fluorescent bulbs. I wanted to mention that there still seem to be quality differences between styles and manufacturers. We have been trying compact fluorescents for years, starting way back when they cost a king’s ransom and you could get rebate checks to help defray the cost. Most of those early bulbs were dreadful; oversized, dim and to borrow an indelicate phrase from the film “American Graffiti”, the color of the light was a cross between piss yellow and puke green! Blech!

What we have been using for the last couple of years are the compact fluorescent bulbs from IKEA. The ones we’ve had the best luck with are the “Sparsam”. I feel the ones with the frosted globe over the tubes give the light closest to an incandescent bulb. The drawback is that they do take a couple of moments to warm up. The Sparsam bulbs which have the tubes visible seem to click on faster and warm up a teensy bit faster. The quality of their light is quite close to an incandescent, but not quite as soft and warm as those with the frosted globes.

I grew up in a household where overhead lights were disliked and traditional fluorescent lights were deeply disliked. I really, truly hate traditional, overhead fluorescents. As the saying goes “I didn’t lick it up off the grass”! So for me to happily use and endorse these Sparsam compact fluorescents is high praise indeed!

Saturday Night - With Lights!

Have I mentioned how gosh darn clever my husband is? Yup. And he’s cute as button too! Anyhoo, as planned, we made a quick trip to Radio Shack and $25.00 and a little cable wrangling later, we were watching Friday Night Lights on the “big screen”. For the technically inclined, what we purchased was a VGA/Super VGA Monitor Replacement Cable. I’m pretty sure that’s what I called it yesterday. ;o)

Friday Night - But No Lights

We got hooked on Friday Night Lights when it first launched three seasons ago. (I could listen to the haunting music over the opening credits in a permanent loop!) While we were away in Washington, we missed some episodes. We just caught up with the early March episodes we had stored on our DVR from before our trip. So we headed to the NBC website where we can watch the episodes we missed. But instead of watching the episodes on a laptop, we wanted to hook our laptop up to our television and stream the online video through to it. No dice. We think we are lacking one converter gizmo thingy. Hopefully, a trip to Radio Shack will provide the missing whatnot and solve the problem.

We’ve looked at AppleTV in the Apple stores on a couple of occasions. But it seems as if that is designed to handle just rentals and purchased videos. There must be a “workaround” to stream internet content through the box. But if we can just plug our laptop into the television and stream away, that would be much more affordable.

Right & Wrong

Here in the United States, the news has been filled with reportage, discussions and commentary on torture. Specifically, the focus has been on the role the United States has played in torturing people. It has been overwhelming for me. I find the images are far too powerful; they burn too swiftly and deeply into my mind. As a result, I have been uncharacteristically unwilling to read and listen and learn. Therefore, I am woefully under-informed right now. My sense is that there is a movement afoot to shine a bright light upon what the United States has done wrong, as well as to bring our national moral compass back to constitutional true north.

I know this: torture is wrong, legally and morally. I also know that torture is unsuccessful. The Geneva Conventions are not new and radical concepts, nor are they quaint and outdated constructs. They are what decent people have agreed to as standards of treatment for non-combatants and prisoners of war.

I am not a dove. As the daughter of a World War II veteran, I know that sometimes, far too often, war is absolutely necessary. But I also know that we are better than what some of our leaders have authorized and ordered and that which has been carried out over the last several years in our name.

During this season of remembrance and Yom HaShoah, the lessons are clear and echo harshly down through the decades.

Happy Earth!

Well, the Earth is probably not all that happy even though this is the 39th annual Earth Day. It’s sort of like moms are certainly happy to hear from their kids, but not just on Mother’s Day. They’d like to be remembered and appreciated all year round!

Morgan suggested we “Do something nice for the planet today.” Then she posed the question: “What did you do?

On this Earth Day Chuck and I continued to:
- Compost our kitchen scraps
- Recycle all our recyclables
- Use fabric instead of paper napkins
- Light our home with mostly compact fluorescent bulbs
- Shop with reusable fabric bags
- Combine errands whenever we use the car

What will you be doing tomorrow?

Happy Anniversary!

Happy third wedding anniversary to Phil and Kate!
May happiness always be yours!

Yom HaShoah

Shoah is the Hebrew word for whirlwind or destruction and has come to be the word which describes the Holocaust of European Jewry from 1933 to 1945. This date was established in Israel in 1951 as a day of remembrance for all the Jews, approximately six million, who were murdered during the Holocaust by the Nazis.

Within the vast horror of the icy cold number ”six million” are individuals: men, women, children, babies, fathers, mothers, sisters, brothers, grandparents, families, friends, neighbors, citizens, laborers, rabbis. Every single person had a life; a past, a present and a future destroyed.

We were first told to undress
clothes on one side, shoes on other
then we entered the room,
naked as the day of our birth.
It was here that we were given a number
and heard the Konzentrationlagerfuehrer 
[Concentration Camp Commandant] say:
“From this day forth, you are all numbers.
You no longer have names.
You have no identities.
You have no nationalities.
All you have is your number,
and besides your number,
you have nothing at all.”

- Excerpt from the diary of Jacob, age 17


During the remembrance services on Yom HaShoah names of the dead are read along with this poem:


Unto Every Person There is a Name

Unto every person there is a name
bestowed on him by God
and given to him by his parents.

Unto every person there is a name
accorded him by his stature
and type of smile
and style of dress.

Unto every person there is a name
conferred by the mountains
and the walls which surround him.

Unto every person there is a name
granted him by Fortune's wheel
or that which neighbors call him.

Unto every person there is a name
assigned him by his failings
or contributed by his yearnings.

Unto every person there is a name
given to him by his enemies
or by his love.

Unto every person there is a name
derived from his celebrations
and his occupation.

Unto every person there is a name
presented him by the seasons
and his blindness.

Unto every person there is a name
which he receives from the sea
and is given to him by his death.

- Zelda (Zelda Schneersohn Mishkovsky, 1914 - 1984)


May we always remember.
May we never forget.


Resources:
Wikipedia Article on Yom HaShoah
The Israeli Knesset on Yom HaShoah
Yad Vashem, The Holocaust Memorial
The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

South Africa Votes!

Tomorrow, Wednesday, April 22nd, South African voters will head to the polls.
Are you wondering why that’s important to more than just the citizens of South Africa?
Then read this Time Magazine article entitled “Why It Matters”. You can also view a slideshow on the elections at the Washington Post.

My thoughts and best wishes are with all my SA blog friends!

I Ran Away...

Yup. I ran away and I took Chuck with me. Actually, we both got that crazy cabin fever meets spring fever meets gotta take a road trip now feeling at the very same time. Then we both started thinking “beach”. The only drawback to living out in the hills of Worcester County is that an ocean beach of any kind is about two hours away by car. For someone like me who grew up just a couple of blocks away from Greenwich Bay, which flowed into Narragansett Bay and had Sand Hill Cove, the best family beach in Rhode Island, just 35 minutes away, two hours for a beach fix is far.

But it’s not too far! We headed out toward the North Shore, finalizing our plans as we drove. Soon we settled on Woodman’s in Essex (home of the first fried clam) for an early dinner. The sun was shining and it was breezy and mild. The food at Woodman’s, as always, was delicious. It was typically busy but not jam packed like a summer weekend. After dinner, Chuck stopped at the little ice cream place at the back of Woodman’s (who has room for dessert after fried seafood?) and asked the gal at the window where we could find a sandy beach nearby. She countered with a sandy beach she could give us the simplest directions to.

So off we went to Singing Beach in Manchester-by-the-Sea. It was fabulous, just what the doctor ordered. We spent a little over an hour walking up and down the beach, so named because when you scuff along the sand, it makes a squeaking or singing sound - very cool. We beachcombed and visited with a couple of dozen dogs romping in the surf and on the sand - taking full advantage of their last few “legal” beach days until next autumn. The tide was approaching high and the seas were light, but I still had a great time trying to catch the perfect wave moment on film: building, curling, cresting, crashing, foaming, rolling, receding and repeat...

Now if we plan to run away again is that really running away or a day trip? I’m not about to jinx it. Running away has a much better ring to it!

Double Dutch

I was thinking of this double daffodil when I chose the title. But just typing it sends me back to a black-topped playground, wearing a plaid uniform with constantly slipping knee socks and feeling more awkward than usual as I tried not to get hopelessly tangled in the twin jump ropes!

I was much better at the clapping games...

The Early Bird

Alongside our driveway there is a wonderful mass of daffodils, all yellow on yellow. Every year the green leaves push up all at once and later - much later for the impatient among us - the yellow buds unfurl in unison. This year we have an early bird.

And because there has been some discussion of floral versions of fried eggs over on Morgan’s blog, I just had to upload the photo below. (Does that mean the early bird laid an egg? Sorry! I couldn’t resist!)


Layout, photos and text by LMR/Pink Granite. Software: Apple iPhoto ’09 & Adobe Photoshop CS3 for Mac. Font: Helvetica.

Survey & Free Digi-Kit

Jessica Sprague, digital scrapbooking teacher extraordinaire, is conducting a digital scrapbooking survey. Whether you can work in Photoshop Elements or Creative Suite with your eyes closed or you have barely put your toe in the digital scrapbooking water, Jessica wants to hear from you.

If you go and answer a 21 question survey, at the end you can download a FREE Digital Scrapbooking Mini-Kit (image above). Which feels more substantial than the term “mini” implies!

You can click here to take the survey. Then download your kit and start having some digi-scrap fun!

Greater Than 98.6F/37C

Perhaps what I have been describing as my “calendar addled brain” is really just a severe case of spring fever. I like that better than any other explanation I’ve come up with. “Spring fever” has a cheery and mercifully recoverable ring to it! And how long can spring fever last? No later than the first day of summer, which is just a mere 68 days away, right?

Oh...

Actually, we have continued to keep busy ever since we returned home two weeks ago. Little details keep popping up regarding Chuck’s Dad. Happily, Chuck and his sister get along very well (Chuck has said that even if Carol weren’t his sister he would want her as his friend.) and all details are soon sorted out and put to rights. Chuck managed to track down a woman that his Dad had served with in UNRRA (the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration) at the end of World War II. They had kept in touch over the years and we knew she would want to know about Dad’s passing. Turns out she is 98, sharp as a tack and still lives on her own at her farm in the upper midwest. May some of this good health and longevity rub off on us all!

We’ve made two trips to Rhode Island, including Easter Sunday at Carrie and Al’s home. It was a lot of fun to see everyone and also included a valiant effort to keep up with three different sporting events being televised that afternoon - none of which had the desired outcome! (What’s happening with my beloved Boston Red Sox this season?) And the yummy Easter dinner leftovers are continuing to keep us well fed - thank you Al, Carrie and Joan!

We’ve also been taking advantage of the nicer weather and getting out in the genuine, honest to goodness sunshine for our walks over at the track. So other than feeling more disorganized than I would like, this spring fever thing’s not so bad.

Meet Susan Boyle

Do you remember Paul Pott? Well, lightning has struck twice!

Embedding was disabled by YouTube so I couldn’t put the video here on the blog, but PLEASE click this link to listen Susan Boyle sing “I Dreamed A Dream” from Les Miserables.

Oh, grab a hanky first...

Blue Pearl

My taste in music has always been eclectic, as evidenced by this “Radio Me” post. That list showed artists ranging from Edith Piaf to Elvis Costello to Hoobastank to Frank Sinatra. But two albums always place in my top ten: Pearl (more info here) by Janis Joplin and ”Blue” (more info here) by Joni Mitchell.

If I am in good spirits I am likely to sing in the shower - with or without an iPod for accompaniment. Usually, some one of the songs off either of those two albums will make it into that day’s medley. “Pearl” was released in 1971, as was “Blue”. I was about 13 years old. I don’t remember being between 12 and 14 as particularly stellar years for me (she shudders). Yet for about 38 years (Anyone have some smelling salts?) Janis and Joni have contributed to the ongoing soundtrack of my life. A pretty high quality soundtrack, if I do say so myself.

What’s on your soundtrack?

Making Home Affordable

Yesterday, President Obama announced a new website: Making Home Affordable.GOV. It’s part of the overall Financial Stability Plan. It’s designed to help “stabilize our housing market and help up to 7 to 9 million Americans reduce their monthly mortgage payments to more affordable levels”.

If you live here in the United States and you have a mortgage on your home, you may want to swing by and answer a series of questions on the website to see if you are eligible to refinance or possibly modify your mortgage loan.