There's a Garage Sale in here Somewhere!

“LOST MUSKET DIARY” Wednesday August 20, 2014

Sunny 85F/29C in Rancho Las Musket

Buon giorno,

                The year is just zipping past me. I’ve been a resident of “Lost Musket” now for eight months, coming up on a year where my life has been on “fast forward.” I’ve pretty well settled in to my new digs and reacquainted myself with a part of California that I had been away from for almost 15 years. One of my ongoing projects is sifting through the boxes and cartons of the personal possessions that I’ve accumulated throughout my lifetime. One carton gave up some china and silver that my mother had collected over the years. In it was the tiny silver cup with my name engraved on it that had been a gift to my parents when I was born. In it was one of my very own baby teeth that my young mother had saved. That little silver cup had become a genuine antique during my lifetime. So, I followed my mom’s example and placed the wisdom tooth that Dr. Isola had extracted just before I left Northern California. “Book ends,” I thought at that moment. “Baby tooth and wisdom tooth,” I thought again, “separated by a lifetime.”

                My goal in all of this is to sort through my personal effects and family photos and documents, keepsakes, and any valuables and distill a small mountain of “stuff,” into a coherent collection to pass along to my son and daughter and their families. It is no small task. I’ve been at it since January and I fully expect to be still at it come next spring. In the back of my mind is the experience that my younger brother and I shared when our father passed away suddenly in 1965. Both of us had been on our own for several years. Dad was a widower, living alone in a house filled with a lifetime’s accumulation of everything you can imagine. My brother and I had less than two weeks to arrange to store what we could so the house could be readied for sale, as dad had stipulated in his will.  Years later, when I related that experience to a family counselor friend of mine, she said that what we had to deal with was what other families experience when they lose everything they own in a house fire, hurricane or earthquake. I vowed that I would never put my own family through that experience if I could help it.

                This project is also good therapy for me. It even ties in with the study goals that I set when I went back to college a few years ago and decided to change my major from communications to history. I thank my main history professor, Wes Swanson, for that advice. We had a special sub-category of study that was devoted to how to conduct research and how to document the facts in the papers we were required to write. This was all knowledge that I was eager to use when I started researching my pet family project, an account of the U-boat attack on my dad’s convoy. Who knows, I may even write a book.

                Well, that’s my story for today. Let’s see what occurred on this date in years gone by:

Historical Events

2CE - Venus and Jupiter in conjunction - possible astrological explanation for Star of Bethlehem
1000 - The foundation of the Hungarian state, Hungary is established as a Christian kingdom by Stephen I of Hungary.
1191 - Crusader King Richard I kills 3,000 Muslim prisoners in Akko
1391 - Konrad von Wallenrode becomes the 24th Hochmeister of the Teutonic Order. Wow! He got to be Hochmeister!
1566 - Iconoclasm reaches Antwerp, Belgium
1597 - 1st Dutch East India Company ships returned from Far East
1619 - 1st Black slaves brought by Dutch to colony of Jamestown Virginia
1641 - England & Scotland sign Treaty of Pacification
Famous Birthdays

1833 -23rd US President Benjamin Harrison 

Weddings 

1939 - "Rebecca" actress Joan Fontaine (21) weds actor Brian Aherne (37)
1992 - Rocker Sting weds Trudie Styler at an 11th century chapel in Wiltshire, England
2011 - Socialite and model Kim Kardashian (30) weds basketball player Kris Humphries (26) at a private estate in Montecito, California

And, on that note, I’ll say –

Ciao!

MikeBo