A Collection of Daily Wisdom by Dennis Sylvester Hurd since September 2003.

I was working on cleaning up my email this morning. You know how things can collect if one neglects staying on top of them. Even though Google Mail gives copious storage, I'm not one to archive just anything. The fact I seldom save messages with large attachments is probably due to the fact it was not common in the old days. I could now go into great detail why it's best to keep email data on the Internet rather than on one's hard disk, but I'll take on that topic in a future entry.

Consequently, because of my aversion to attachments, I had marked one email for clean up but hadn't gotten to it. It arrived from my second cousin who I've not seen since childhood. Marti is a bit of a family archivist and was named after my mother. She scanned several pages of photos and attached them to a message sent to me. That was a long time ago, probably at the beginning of the year. Finally, today I copied off the photos and deleted the message. Those scanned images included the one here.

It is my mother as a young girl. I was trying to figure out where it was taken. I think it may have been on Upper Main Street in Sunapee, NH. That building looks like what was called the Community Store when I was in high school. I believe it has all been torn down. If that was indeed the location, I hope mom had good braking ability on skates. Upper Main Street is very steep. The street runs up to Sunapee Harbor. Most people don't think of having to travel up to a lake, so that bit of geography often confuses visitors and summer tourists.

Labels: Google, Mother, New Hampshire, Sunapee

I'm sure there are lots of thoughts about mothers in the blogosphere today as it's Mothers' Day in the Americas. Don't I remember that the British celebrated this on another day? In Los Angeles, we saw Latinos selling lots of special baskets with stuffed animals and assorted items by the side of the streets. We felt that they must have been for Mothers' Day. Actually, after a little research, I found these countries celebrate on the second Sunday in May as well:

Anguilla, Aruba, Australia, Austria, Bahamas, Barbados, Bangladesh, Belgium, Belize, Bermuda, Bonaire, Brazil, Brunei, Canada, Chile, China, Colombia, Cuba, Croatia, Curaçao, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Ecuador, Estonia, Finland, Germany, Ghana, Greece, Grenada, Honduras, Hong Kong, Iceland, India, Bulgaria, Italy, Jamaica, Japan, Latvia, Malta, Malaysia, Myanmar, The Netherlands, New Zealand, Pakistan, Peru, Philippines, Puerto Rico, Singapore, Slovakia, South Africa, St. Lucia, Suriname, Switzerland, Taiwan, Trinidad and Tobago, Turkey, Ukraine, United States, Uruguay, Venezuela, Zimbabwe.

We saw lots of local folks today shuffling around elderly ladies too. It's a nice day for reflection. In my own mind, as my mother passed away the year I finished college, my mother will forever remain young.

Labels: Mother

I like history, especially my own. I also like attempting to clean up old images. In addition, I rather enjoy mysteries.

The photo above was from an old Ektachrome slide. The original wasn't rectangular, so I assume it was shot with an Kodak Instamatic 126 camera. It was in a shoe box of old memorabilia that my dad sent me, so I'd venture that it was from my childhood. It looks like a desert scene, so most probably it was from a road trip to the American southwest. Yet there are places in British Columbia that look like this and we drove an ancient VW-camper from New Hamsphire to Alaska when I was about 6 years old. Might this be from that trip?

The scene is too blurry to really make out anything. Is it just a dirt road? My mom usually took the photos. What was it that prompted her to shoot this scene?

Labels: camera, Mother

It takes time to learn about time. In childhood development, these are the concepts that occur when a kid is four:

"Throughout the year, some children may still be developing their sense of time through their participation in daily activities (e.g., knows the basic sequence of the day). By the end of this year, children should understand daily time concepts like "morning," "afternoon," "night," "earlier," "later," and "soon." Children should also be able to identify basic concepts associated with night/day and seasons, but may still confuse "yesterday," "today," and "tomorrow." During the first half of this year, some children can recite the days of the week and seasons, but cannot tell time. Some children this age also recognize that a specific time is associated with certain events (e.g., favorite TV show comes on at 4:00). The average child understands these things during the second half of this year. Finally, during the second half of this year, some children will have developed a strong sense of time and will know when events close to them take place. They will know the days of the week, the months, and the seasons, but will still be learning how to tell time." - from PBS Parents

Figuring out time is a continuing process though. I remembered that my mother died twenty-five years ago this week. I find it amazing to consider that she'd be in her 60's now. I shall always think of her as a young woman. She was never even as old as I am now.

Labels: Mother

After a hard day teaching, preparing for Sunday's entry generally means dipping into a box of pictures that dad was kind enough to send parcel post.

Here's a precious one, well before my sister came along. Considering the clothes, we were probably at a holiday dinner at my Great Aunt's house in Methuen, Massachusetts. Olive was my grandmother's sister and she married George Krikorian. They moved to Florida when they were still quite young and spent years working and throughout their retirement there. I believe I recall hearing stories that they met in a TB sanitarium. What was that all about? Olive and George both passed on during the decade of the 1990's.



From the photo, just my dad and I are still alive and kicking. Here, my grandmother was to the left and appears quite young. Look at the hairdo and frames my mother was wearing; this was obviously the 1960's! My dad looked a bit bored but somebody must've told me I was quite the handsome and photogenic young man. Don't you think?

Labels: Mother, New Hampshire