Arhia and Myer and Piano and Christmas Tree

0001736-R1-050-23A
Originally uploaded by Zama Ree Do.

This year for Christmas, Myer brought home a special gift....Arhia. It made Christmas a bigger deal than ever before.

0001736-R1-006-1A

0001736-R1-006-1A
Originally uploaded by Zama Ree Do.

"Ah...come on...I'll show you how to use chop sticks!!" kathryn twists Amy's arm

0001736-R1-038-17A

0001736-R1-038-17A
Originally uploaded by Zama Ree Do.

two zero zero four
in some kind of sign language!

0001736-R1-012-4A

0001736-R1-012-4A
Originally uploaded by Zama Ree Do.

These three friends were celebrating at WindChimes. We rarely get such a nice picture as this. We were really having fun. After all, it was Christmas!

0001736-R1-048-22A

0001736-R1-048-22A
Originally uploaded by Zama Ree Do.

Everyone get in the shot! Is it going? I can't see a beeping red light? Oh, it's ready...hurry! Smile!

Herman Christmas Dinner

0001736-R1-008-2A
Originally uploaded by Zama Ree Do.

Arhia, Myer, Kathryn, and Amy at Windchimes.

Christmas Dinner at Wind Chimes

It was the first time for Matt, Lynne and Amy to meet Ahria. We went to Wind Chimes to eat, then to Herman's for presents.

BEST OF THE BEST #2

BEST CHILDHOOD GAME

During the years from 1962 to 1966 our small town neighborhood had scads of children who were allowed to play the running game of Kick the Can. We loved to play as the sun was going down and way into the dark. Our garage, not yet torn down to make way for landscaping, was BASE. The gravel driveway made for a great rattle-ring rattle-rattle sound when the coffee can was kicked. Then all the caught children yelled and took off running. As one of the youngest in the group, I always took great pleasure in hollering, “Ollie, Ollie, Oxen, Free-eeeee!” when I was fed up of being “it”. Then everyone had to come running to choose someone else to hunt and run and be “it”.

BEST COLLEGE DORM

In 1976, spring semester, I lived in Waterson Towers on Illinois State University Campus in Normal, Illinois. It actually was a grand structure with two dormitory pillars connected in the middle housing the four elevators. My room was on 24^th floor, the penthouse. It was one level below the top floor which held washers & dryers, lounge furniture and TVs. Our plate glass window was enormous, stretching across the entire 4^th wall of the room and had a view overlooking the campus. Our potted plants thrived. I’ve always thought having that much sunlight in the room made dorm life tremendously more positive in the winter months.

BEST SOUVENIR

On my 40^th birthday, I was really bummed. I’d started a new job and had just moved to Lincoln. Consequently, no one knew me and no one remembered my day. It was Thursday, the 7^th of September, 1995. I complained to my friend, Kathryn, from Grand Island. She called me the next day saying she had a birthday surprise for me. She bought two tickets for the RED EYE flight to Chicago for Saturday! She took me to the Chicago Art Institute to see the special Monet exhibit. In the gift shop, we oohed and aahed at all the Monet monogrammed items. I finally splurged and allowed myself to get the four-panel accordion-folding photo folio with water lilies motif on the outside. I filled it with miniature photos of our day together and have always treasured it.

BEST MOVIE WITH A FRIEND

My first semester at Wesleyan in Lincoln, I made some great friends from my dorm. Starship Nine Theatre had not even been built, in fact it is where we parked my car the night Pam, Ginny, Deb and I went to see the movie “The Way We Were.” Robert Redford and Barbara Streisand starred in this 1973 tear-jerker. We sat packed in tight to a full house and passed the package of Kleenex up and down the aisle to console our empathy for Barbara’s character. I was so upset at the end of the show that I left the theatre without my purse and had to go back the next day to retrieve it from under my seat.

BEST DAY OF PLAYING HOOKIE

In my junior year of high school, my sister, Jennifer, was a senior. One gorgeous Friday morning in the spring, my sister asked me to call Mom from the high school and ask Mom to phone the attendance office to get Jennifer “out of school”. I agreed on the condition she tell me what was up. Her boyfriend, Frank Kilmer, had arrived in a station wagon full of teenage boys and they were on a road trip. I made the call but I included myself on the “Parent Request” to leave school so I could ride in this station wagon full of boys going to Callaway. Surprisingly, Betty June allowed us to go. We drove and sang along to the 8 track tapes of Donovan, Alice Cooper, Three Dog Night, Chicago and Stairway to Heaven. We had a flat tire but the guys changed it all right. When we got to Callaway and picked up Deb Leigh, we investigated a railroad trestle bridge and crossed it. I know that I was unaware that a train might come and we would have to jump (70 feet or more) for our lives. Denny the driver, Jake on shotgun, Frank, Jeni, Deb and I slept on the living room floor of another friend’s home in Callaway. We took photos with my 35 mm, never wore our seatbelts and had the best time ever..

Best of the Best

BEST MOMENT
September 6, 1975 Billings, Montana when I was sitting in David Wharton’s childhood home with David. We were sitting across from each other in the living room, right in front of the picture window. I had my camera and of course, I took a picture of the moment.

BEST OUTCOME WHILE TAKING A BIG RISK
While traveling by train from New Jersey to Jamestown, Rhode Island, I met Michael Fogel. He asked me to meet him in New York City at the end of my trip to go to the ballet at Kennedy Center. I said I would love to. When Henriette had to give me a ride to catch a before-dawn train from her place in Vermont, she was very angry because she couldn’t talk me out of it. She was sure he was a mass murderer and I would never be heard from again. She was wrong. (May 1975)

BEST MEAL IN A FANCY RESTAURANT
August ’91, while in Vancouver, British Columbia, Becky Cary, Bob, and I got the best seat on the balcony overlooking the street activity at a Mediterranean restaurant. Everything was so grand. The conversation, the presentation, the weather, the excellent luck at getting the table that we got, and the food was to die for. I even took a picture of our desserts. (This was the first time I shot my food before I ate it)

BEST POEM
Charles Bukowski’s poem, “alone with everybody”, LOVE IS A DOG FROM HELL
The flesh covers the bone/ and they put a mind/ in there and/ sometimes a soul,/ and the women break/ vases against the walls/ and the men drink too/ much and nobody finds the/ one/ but they keep/ looking/ crawling in and out/ of beds./ flesh covers/ the bone and the/ flesh searches/ for more than/ flesh./ there’s no chance/ at all:/ we are all trapped/ by a singular/ fate./ nobody ever finds/ the one./ the city dumps fill/ the junkyards fill/ the madhouses fill/ the hospitals fill/ the graveyards fill/ nothing else/ fills

BEST AFTERNOON
Spring 1974, Wesleyan campus in Lincoln, in the grass, west of Johnson Hall
Pam Peden and I threw down a chenille bedspread over the barely sprouted spring grass and sprawled out with our Norton’s Anthology. We read poems out loud to each other, watched other sunbathers and Frisbee players while the sun heated up the bedspread until it smelled like earth.