I looked for some quotes about Thanksgiving - but they all seemed trite to me. They didn't really express what is in my heart. The holiday feels a bit strange this year. I guess that is because we are in a new place. It makes me think back to other Thanksgiving celebrations I've known.
I can't remember Thanksgiving as a child, for some reason. I'm sure we had them...but I don't remember the family gathering anywhere. But, when I was an adult, I remember that my Dad said it was his favorite holiday. Perhaps it had always been that way - but as an adult, I started to pay attention to my parents as "people"...not just as my parents. When my Mom got leukemia, Dad would insist on the family all going out to eat...and he paid the bill. It was a way for him to give to us...but I didn't really see it then. Honestly, I kind of dreaded the whole thing...getting dressed up to eat in a restaurant seemed like a "forced" holiday. Now I see it differently, and I wish I had been more grateful at the time. We went for several years to Graves Mountain Lodge. Funny - I think about how much I hated walking up the hill in the parking lot in heels! Of course, now - that I am in a wheelchair, I would love to have that problem again! After Mom died, we went to the Boar's Head Inn in Charlottesville a few times. Daddy was sad then - and would always bring up how much Mom would have loved to be there. As the family dwindled...my grandmother died....my great aunt died...and soon it was just my sister and her family - along with my family - and Dad. And, even then, I still didn't "get it."
They say that with age comes wisdom....and that is certainly true with me. Now I see that Dad's greatest gift was not paying the bill for a Thanksgiving feast. His greatest gift was a sense of family. My sister and I are so close - and I think those dinners paved the way for the relationship we have now. It has made me re-evaluate what it means to be grateful.
This year it will be a small "celebration" - just George, Marilyn and me. But, I am so grateful for love in my life...for this little relaxed gathering in our new home in Pennsylvania. I am grateful that my son, Ben, and his wife, Heidi, are happy and safe in Oregon, and that they can have dinner with her parents - without experiencing the nightmare of air travel! I am grateful that my sister is well and that we were able to spend time together last week (she came for a visit - will write about that on another day). I am grateful that I have weekly phone conversations with my uncle, Weber. He keeps that little thread of childhood family alive for me. I am grateful that I am as mobile as I am, considering everything - and my life is full and active.
And, mostly, I am grateful for age - that transition in life that opens our eyes to what is really important, and what is not. Everyday, I am grateful for the opportunity to learn something new - and to perhaps look at things with new eyes.
I hope you have a wonderful holiday - and that you find that place in your heart where true gratitude resides.
Wednesday, November 24, 2010
Tuesday, November 9, 2010
THERE IS MAGIC TO BE FOUND....WE ONLY HAVE TO IMAGINE IT
"Of course there are fairies - just as there is Father Christmas." George Crawley
George Crawley died this year, on October 29th. Perhaps you have never heard of him...I hadn't. But I had heard of the incident that started the mystery he attempted to solve: the mystery of the Cottingley fairies.
On a summer day in 1917, in Cottingley- a West Yorkshire village- two cousins, Elsie Wright (age 16) and Frances Griffiths (age 10) borrowed Elsie's father's glass-plate camera and took pictures of fairies they claimed to see in the glen near their house. Once developed, the photograph showed Frances surrounded by whitish forms that resembled bits of paper. Their families dismissed the images as a childish prank, but the girls stuck to their story. Later that summer, they took another photo, this time of Elsie confronting what appeared to be a gnome. The families remained skeptical, but kept the photos as private curiosities - and they would have stayed that way, except two very influential men entered the picture.
The first was Edward L. Gardner, who was a leader of the Theosophical Society in Britain. He heard of the photos in 1920 and knew that if they were genuine, it would greatly advance his cause in the belief of the existence of spirit life. After examining the photos, he concluded that they were real - and wanted to use them as illustrations in his lectures. So, he made new prints, using an advanced dark-room technique, which showed the fairies clearly.
The second man was Arthur Conan Doyle. That name is familiar because he is the author of Sherlock Holmes. Doyle was a skilled photographer, and a devoted spiritualist as well. Mr. Gardner enlisted his help, and together they began to promote the photos.
There was no turning back now for Elsie and Frances. In 1920, using cameras supplied by Gardner and Doyle, they took three more fairy photos. Doyle later wrote a book defending the photos. (The Coming of the Fairies)
For the next 60 years, interest in the Cottingley fairies never went away. For decades the girls - now grown- were interviewed in the British Press and on television and they did not recant the story. In the late 70's and early 80's an investigation began in earnest, and Mr. Crawley was one of the investigators. He was a chemist and the editor-in-chief of the magazine British Journal of Photography. His 10-part series exposing the photos as fakes appeared in 1982 and 1983. He used a type of photographic forensics to show that the photos used by Gardner and Doyle could not have been produced by the cameras used by the girls without a little bit of darkroom manipulation (I suppose the forerunner of Photoshop!)
Amid all the hoopla of the 1980's the "girls" finally came clean, admitting the hoax in the Times of London. They said that they never had any intention of doing anything other than playing a trick on their family. They used fairy illustrations from a book - cut out and taped on hatpins and then stuck in the ground.
However - while Elsie, who died in 1988, confessed that all the photos were fakes, Frances, who died in 1986, maintained that the fifth photo was real.
Two of the three cameras the girls used are on display at the National Media Museum in Bradford.
I suppose because sometimes this world is an ugly place, there is a part of us all that likes to escape into fantasy. Yes, there is the magic of Santa Claus....and the playfulness of fairies...but more importantly - there is the wonder and gift of imagination. So - Mr. Crawley put a glaring spotlight on what everyone actually knew, even if they didn't want to admit it...the fairies weren't real. At least not real enough to photograph. But they did exist in the endless world of imagination - where they could scamper through the glen, hide behind the trees and dance in the moonlight.
At least, that is how I choose to see them.
George Crawley died this year, on October 29th. Perhaps you have never heard of him...I hadn't. But I had heard of the incident that started the mystery he attempted to solve: the mystery of the Cottingley fairies.
On a summer day in 1917, in Cottingley- a West Yorkshire village- two cousins, Elsie Wright (age 16) and Frances Griffiths (age 10) borrowed Elsie's father's glass-plate camera and took pictures of fairies they claimed to see in the glen near their house. Once developed, the photograph showed Frances surrounded by whitish forms that resembled bits of paper. Their families dismissed the images as a childish prank, but the girls stuck to their story. Later that summer, they took another photo, this time of Elsie confronting what appeared to be a gnome. The families remained skeptical, but kept the photos as private curiosities - and they would have stayed that way, except two very influential men entered the picture.
The first was Edward L. Gardner, who was a leader of the Theosophical Society in Britain. He heard of the photos in 1920 and knew that if they were genuine, it would greatly advance his cause in the belief of the existence of spirit life. After examining the photos, he concluded that they were real - and wanted to use them as illustrations in his lectures. So, he made new prints, using an advanced dark-room technique, which showed the fairies clearly.
The second man was Arthur Conan Doyle. That name is familiar because he is the author of Sherlock Holmes. Doyle was a skilled photographer, and a devoted spiritualist as well. Mr. Gardner enlisted his help, and together they began to promote the photos.
There was no turning back now for Elsie and Frances. In 1920, using cameras supplied by Gardner and Doyle, they took three more fairy photos. Doyle later wrote a book defending the photos. (The Coming of the Fairies)
For the next 60 years, interest in the Cottingley fairies never went away. For decades the girls - now grown- were interviewed in the British Press and on television and they did not recant the story. In the late 70's and early 80's an investigation began in earnest, and Mr. Crawley was one of the investigators. He was a chemist and the editor-in-chief of the magazine British Journal of Photography. His 10-part series exposing the photos as fakes appeared in 1982 and 1983. He used a type of photographic forensics to show that the photos used by Gardner and Doyle could not have been produced by the cameras used by the girls without a little bit of darkroom manipulation (I suppose the forerunner of Photoshop!)
Amid all the hoopla of the 1980's the "girls" finally came clean, admitting the hoax in the Times of London. They said that they never had any intention of doing anything other than playing a trick on their family. They used fairy illustrations from a book - cut out and taped on hatpins and then stuck in the ground.
However - while Elsie, who died in 1988, confessed that all the photos were fakes, Frances, who died in 1986, maintained that the fifth photo was real.
Two of the three cameras the girls used are on display at the National Media Museum in Bradford.
I suppose because sometimes this world is an ugly place, there is a part of us all that likes to escape into fantasy. Yes, there is the magic of Santa Claus....and the playfulness of fairies...but more importantly - there is the wonder and gift of imagination. So - Mr. Crawley put a glaring spotlight on what everyone actually knew, even if they didn't want to admit it...the fairies weren't real. At least not real enough to photograph. But they did exist in the endless world of imagination - where they could scamper through the glen, hide behind the trees and dance in the moonlight.
At least, that is how I choose to see them.
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