Fanny Packs and The Taj Mahal

This isn't a very old picture, but it came out of a very old book. I am going to place our time in the late 1980's due to our lovely fanny packs and short shorts that were all the rage in the 80's. Although I see that really short shorts are back in vogue, heaven help us if fanny packs make their way back into the main stream. My apologies to those who still have a loving relationship with their little zippered friend, but I for one would be quite happy if I never see a persons hips covered with those pouches ever again. The Taj Mahal is very cool, however, and our tourists look like they were having a great trip. Oh, I just noticed her fanny pack has little buttons or something on it. It almost makes it kind of cute. Almost.

A Sketch

This is a teeny piece of paper that someone has started to sketch a picture on. Now a skeptic might say that this was a traced picture, but I am here to tell you that this is a thick piece of paper and there is no way you could trace through this thing. The figures look like statues and I get the flag, but what is that creature? It's looking like a lizard or frog or something. It killing the whole nude guys with a flag vibe for me, but I'm still impressed with our artist though and wish there were more to our scene.

Good Dog!

You can just see it. They are sooo close to catching Daisy, or some other cute dog name, on film doing a trick. The ball is in place and Daisy is poised to snatch it right out of the air, likely after an amazing back flip or some other stupendous stunt that is totally worth a roll of film. Aren't we spoiled with digital cameras now. I'm rolling with the theory that our darling Daisy did her fantastically amazing flip and those pictures are framed and hanging in some doggie hall of fame. This picture was taken in August 1978. Yay for Kodak putting dates on the back of their pictures!

Henrick Haar

You have probably never heard of Henrick Haar. He was a school teacher at Horsens school in Denmark and this is announcing his death at the age of 81. It sings his praises as a teacher. It says he was one of Horsens schools most highly esteemed and distinctive teachers and that no one would ever doubt that the school was Professor Haar's one and all. He loved teaching and had his own charming way to make the lessons come alive for the students. He taught German and history. It goes on to talk about when he first started at the school, etc. The paper looks really old, but there is a hand written date on it that says 1960 so I assume we will go with that date. It has also been cut and pasted a bit. You can see when you get a close up of it that it doesn't quite look right. It's interesting to find this article just now as my sixth grade teacher recently passed away. I can remember every book he introduced to our class, the books he read aloud, the authors he thought we should try out, the excitement he built up in me for reading. I can't name all my teachers or even the classes I took in jr. high or high school, but my sixth grade teacher, I can still hear his voice reading to us. I blame him for the stacks of books piled around every corner of my home. Thank you Mr. Pollard, for giving me the love of reading. Yes, you should thank the teacher you are thinking of too. Before they are no longer around to be thanked.

Denmark Corvette

I am sure I have mentioned before that this blog has been very educational for me. For instance, I had no idea that a corvette was a type of warship. I kept trying to translate this little article and it kept giving me corvette and I'm thinking no, this is some sort of a ship, not a car. Ok, I feel humbled, slightly humiliated and completely silly. But on the bright side, I learned something new today! Under our picture of our CORVETTE it says, " Today was the third corvette of Belleona-class, Denmark has been built in Italy to Copenhagen." Ok, translation is not perfect but you get the meaning. It was sailed here under the command of Commander M. H. Bredsdorff. The name of the corvette is Flora and is following the previous corvettes, Diana and Triton. All the ships were built by U.S funds made available as part of the USA's great utility help program. The last of the corvettes were expected to arrive shortly after New Year holidays. This ran in the paper November 1, 1956. I tried to find some info on the US utility program and didn't come up with much. This wasn't too long after WWII so I imagine there were many programs in place at that time. It may be that my translation wasn't perfect. Who knows. Interesting though. If anyone out there has any information on this, please let me know. Very interested over here.

Battle of Kadesh

Now here is an interesting piece. As far as I can tell from translating some of this article, this is part of book that is about to be published that is all about the battle of Kadesh and it is pretty well word for word straight out of the book. I'm not sure the author of the article can take much credit here. It's like something out of a movie. A guy stays out late partying and realizes that he has an article due for printing, oh no, what to do! I'll just write about that history book about to be published and just throw in a chapter to read to get people excited about the book. My editor will think it's brilliant! I'm a genius! Well, maybe that's not how it happened and maybe it was the editor's idea from the beginning, but I still think it's kind of a cheater way to get out of writing an article. I did look up some info on the battle of Kadesh. Pretty cool stuff. Ramses II and the Egyptian Empire and the Hittite Empire battled it out in Kadesh in the year 1274 or 1296 (my sources vary on the year). It was likely the largest chariot battle ever fought, somewhere between 5,000 and 6,000 chariots. In the end most agree it was a marginal victory for Ramses II, but mostly because he was able to hold it together, not because he kicked some butt. If you are into history at all I think you would find it interesting if you looked it up.

A Free Spirit

Where to start on this one. These two pictures are actually from a set of four photos. After serious debate, from which there was no winner, I finally decided to just post two of the four pictures. You see, the other two pictures show this sweet baby's mother in them and she is the free spirit that I named this post after. She is posing nude with her baby and the pictures are actually quite lovely and tasteful. I did all the back and forth about nudity versus art, blah, blah, blah. I see every point for each side and there is no winner, I promise. You can see her knees in one of these pictures. She has long, straight hair and is very pretty. I am guessing we are somewhere in the 60's, hence the free spirit theme. She seems to be in an apartment with hardwood floors and there is a window with some light coming in behind her and the baby. They really are lovely. One of the most amazing things about her, and I speak as someone who has done the whole pregnancy thing, is that she is totally thin. I mean this baby looks really young and she looks like she weighs 110 lbs. and her tummy is totally flat! What gives? Is it that we live in the age of the obese and I am just used to seeing people with the "baby weight"? Did everyone used to look this good right after having a baby? I mean, seriously. I even considered that maybe she wasn't the baby mama. But upon closer inspection I noticed that she still had her linea nigra ( a dark vertical line on the lower abdomen some women get during pregnancy) and that confirmed it. Darn it! Did I ever mention I have my RN?