More Random Thoughts

To look at the weather outside, you'd never guess that an old-fashioned, mountain-type Winter Stom Watch is in place for the entire state of Hawaii. That means blizzard conditions at the summits of Mauna Loa and Mauna Kea on the island of Hawaii. No, they do NOT expect snow levels to drop below about 13,000 feet.

While my brother, who lives on the opposite end of the island both geographically and weather-wise, wakes to early morning rains, it has been dry here. At 7:00 a.m. everything was absolutely still. As soon as the wind kicked up, I did a load of wash to ensure things like clean underwear for the rest of the week. This "solar dryer" stuff may save on electricity, but it means that all your laundry is dependent on Mother Nature and her whims.

Why the long absence of posts? Not enough hands. They have been occupied in a hand-quilting a Christmas gift. The quilting is now done, with binding to be added later today. Then on to another. As a matter of expediency, the second one will be machine quilted! It is impossible to quilt or knit or even crochet while writing....

Last weekend was the annual Fall Festival at my church. I volunteered to help for a portion of a morning with the set-up. As it turns out, it is really a Christmas festival. The ladies who operate the thrift shop save the best of the best, as well as everything that has anything to do with Christmas, all year and then lay them out in the gym for a day of concentrated selling. That gym was built just over 50 years ago while I was in high school. It has aged very gracefully.

Set-up involves a team of custodians setting up the old, heavy folding tables -- with a square of carpet set under each leg to protect the floor; covering the tables first with white and then red or green cloths; then adding merchandise carried up from its storage space below the stage. The photo above shows the space early in the sale day. Try clicking on the image. A larger version should pop up. You can recognize the workers: the uniform of the day was red above, white below. Somewhere in that crowd my mother was browsing. She came home with a few things, and enjoyed herself immensely.

After years of twice-yearly rummage sales at our church in Palo Alto, where we even moved out the day school and took over every available space in the 5-acre complex, this seemed a low-key effort. Nevertheless, the camaraderie that develops among the volunteers is the same. I had several friends in Palo Alto that I saw only during rummage sale week. One was the mother of a well-behaved toddler daughter who actually wore freshly polished leather high-top shoes every day. When her second child, a boy, was about a year old, Ginny said to me, "Sons like ours are punishment for mothers like us who start out with well-behaved daughters and criticize mothers of rowdy boys!" I will never forget her! I don't know which of my co-workers from that set-up day will become friends, but I do know that there were many more friendly greetings in church after the sale.

Give thanks for a specific opportunity taken (be sure to name which one!) to reach out into your own community. Like the Girl Scout song, "Make new friends, but keep the old ..." Pray for friends, far and near. ....