THE SONGS OF A NIGHTINGAIL

  Okay, so it’s a banjo.  It’s still a stringed instrument and the player was very talented.  My husband’s grandfather, Harry Brasier, while on a camping trip with friends in the late 1800s.   My husband with his guitar.  He played with a bluegrass group whose leader went on to play with Bill Monroe in Nashville.  Why he had his guitar positioned this way I’m not sure as he is left-handed, strums left-handed, and the guitar is strung that way. Husband holding his guitar in the correct position, and our son with his wind-up ukulele. Our son with his Dad’s guitar pretending to play. He’s right-handed so his Dad’s left-handed guitar wouldn’t work for him. Son with his own guitar.  He could strum a couple of chords fairly well. Yours truly with my guitar which I bought second hand in 1968.  I could play two songs and not really all that well: “Where Have All the Flowers Gone”, and “Blowin’ in the Wind”.  That was it! My youngest sister and m...

  Me, myself, and I, my brother, middle Sis, youngest Sis, and Mom standing on a bridge over the Merced River in Yosemite National Park in 1956. When I was growing up my bedroom was at the top of our house which was on a hill so I had a wonderful view over all the rooftops below and on down to and across San Francisco Bay.  It was especially beautiful at night as I could see the lights of the City and some of the bridges.  (That’s my little parakeet, “Tweetie”, enjoying some free time outside of his cage in 1960.) I took this picture of my youngest sister while hanging out of one of the windows pictured above.  A couple of years later I wouldn’t have been able to take this picture as my Dad had built a roof over the patio below. My 3 daring idiot kids (top to bottom: son, eldest, & youngest daughters) up a tree in 1986.  When I think of how easily one of those dead branches could have snapped! Whew.  I did, however, take time to run inside & grab my...

  1979 – Lake Tahoe.  Eldest daughter does a nice underwater handstand with her sister looking on.  Now it’s little sis’s turn to go underwater for a handstand with older sis standing by. A few years later in ’83 both sisters doing handstands – or attempting to? – on the beach in Pine Mountain Lake. Eldest sister succeeds rather well. I did commendable cartwheels when I was younger, but I couldn’t balance well (or long) enough to do a handstand. I remember using this bar to hang upside down by the backs of my knees once, but I didn’t like the feeling of being upside down. The only time I felt okay being upside down, more or less, is when I had a stuffy nose and in those days when you were given nose drops you then had to hang your head over the side of the bed for a few minutes.  Somehow I didn’t mind that kind of upside down.  I’d spend the time pretending the ceiling was the floor and imagine how I’d get around on it.  Gosh, I haven’t thought about th...