Two more sleeps before I leave for Florida. I'm so happy to be seeing my family again, and the highlight of this trip is seeing my baby grand-niece for the first time since her birth in July. She is the first baby directly connected to me and I am hopelessly besotted with her.

Rubber stamp by Colette Copeland

 I'll see you here again on December 1. Meanwhile, be safe, be happy, be well.


Simplicity is the removal of the useless and the unnecessary--source unknown

 My Irish in-laws in their youth.

Watercolour and gouache on Arches paper.

The clan has grown since they've been gone. In two weeks I'll be there doing the rounds in Wicklow, Wexford and Dublin.

  
Simplicity is the removal of the useless and the unnecessary--source unknown

Usually, I keep my gratitudes to myself. Today I want to voice my gratitude here.

My family is moving from Texas to Cleveland (that's in Ohio) for a couple of years before they re-settle in Florida. That means they will be just south of me and much more accessible. Dallas is very expensive to fly to even though there are countless daily flights from here to there. Since I'm on the subject,  OKC is far more affordable than Dallas which is only an hour away. [I mention OKC because I will be returning in November.]

She's part of my family!

Simplicity is the removal of the useless and the unnecessary--source unknown

Today is a holiday in Ontario called Family Day.

It a sunny cold day and I'm finishing things: a feature article, a small commission, the rest of my house cleaning....

Meanwhile, this is what I'm working on. This is a second piece on vintage book covers, a family "album". This little book is actually antique, and is called Generations. It includes my family photos, spanning three generations.

Simplicity is the removal of the useless and the unnecessary--source unknown

"The affable Irishman"

 My husband and his brothers were all rugby players. Now one of the sons, Robin Copeland, is making his presence felt on the rugby field. Some of the clan travelled to England to watch him play. We're all very proud of him. Robin is the one holding the ball.....

Secret weapon Copeland is sure to attract Premiership interest - Rugby Union - Yorkshire Post

Yorkshire Post, Dec. 8, 2011 -- Of more short-term concern, Copeland's scores on 23 and 26 minutes were enough to secure victory for Rotherham. The affable Irishman is content with that for now, while coach Andre Bester – a seasoned unearther of rough diamonds – thinks there is more ‘balancing out’ of Copeland’s game to be done.

There was still much work to do, but Copeland, who seems destined for the top, does not need opportunities gift-wrapped.

His intervention was decisive. It gave Rotherham a 17-0 lead at half-time that they managed to hold onto in the second half, with Garry Law scoring two penalties and a drop goal.

Simplicity is the removal of the useless and the unnecessary--source unknown

Later is here (see note below). I'm enjoying a fabulous book titled Scrapbooks An American History. Some items were familiar; certainly everything old is new again.

This is an altered book created more than 100 years ago.

And this is a journal

How to start the week on the right note:
Have a sister (like mine, who knows a treasure when she sees one) who finds things that will make you catch your breath.

And the are thick bundles...

More later. I have to go to the Post Office....



Ná bris do loigrín ar stól nach bhfuil i do shlí. (Do not break your shin on a stool that is not in your way.)

I'm a coffee drinker, always have been. Dark, dark roast, black, no sugar. French press. Espresso doppio.

However, in my sister's house they drink tea, and when I'm staying with her, I have my coffee in the morning, but I also have tea the rest of the time. My sister makes a very comforting cup of tea, English style. And when I was there a short while ago, she noticed that I had tea more often than coffee. I explained to her that it just takes someone, preferably her, to make it for me and put it in front of me...

Comfort

All in the family

The Hills are alive with the sound of soccer........

Coach Gordon Hill (an England football Great -- he was in a winning World Cup team in his day) and his talented son, Sam, my nephew and the apple of my eye.

Photo: Marie-Claire Hill

The McKinney, TX, connection

People often ask me why my sister and her family live in McKinney, Texas. Here's the answer from her husband Gordon Hill, former Manchester United star, in an interview in The Times online, London.

"I own and run United FC [Football Club], a youth soccer club in McKinney, about 25 miles from Dallas. I moved out here five years ago after working in Manchester, doing stuff on the radio and hospitality at United and MUTV. So I thought I’d try my hand at coaching. I did all the badges and had spells at Chester City, Hyde United and with Nova Scotia in Canada. My set-up has no official tie-in with Man United, though if I find a little diamond he will be steered towards the club. I’m also planning to set up a Gordon Hill Centre of Excellence. I’m in the UK three or four times a year, helping run soccer schools at Newport and Cardiff. I try to put a little bit back into the game."

The article is here. I don't know much about football/soccer, but I do know that my brother-in-law is the most honest and genuine athlete I've ever heard of. In a world that invites excess and scandal, he has been, and remains, true to the love of the game, which makes him a dream of a coach and teacher.

Gordon Hill in his heydey!!

And this is his son, Sam, the light of my life, in blue and yellow, playing in NZ

Everytime I see this photo, I see my mother's (his grandmother's) face. It's the angle...

Family

He's the father of four bonnie sons, husband to one of my favorite women, and he is my youngest brother-in-law. When I married his older brother, he was a just a young boy, the youngest of four brothers, waiting for me on the steps of Trinity College Chapel, holding the perfect single red rose tied with an elegant trail of ribbons that was to be my bridal "bouquet." That image of him is one I've never forgotten.

Now in his 40s, he is my trusted friend, whom I love and respect. I can just see his face when he gets this collage!

Da

I dreamed I was telling someone that my in-laws' family farm in Wexford, Ireland, supplied milk to Yoplait, who only accepted the highest-grade milk. (This part is true, not a figment of my dream world.) It got me to thinking that so much hard work and pride in one's work would produce the best. And so, I made this collage, as a tribute to the gentle, quiet man I called Da, who, when times were very tough in the 1950s and people emigrated, stuck to the family farm and persevered.

I "inherited" the family photos and ephemera. This piece will end up back at the family farm. I may have lost my husband, but I never lost his family, my family. There are families who drift apart after deaths have occurred, but not this family. They have held me to them all these years.

Failte!

I am back from my fabulous vacation. More to come later.

Copeland dairy farm, Co. Wexford. Photo: (c) Colette Copeland 2007

Vintage goodness

I picked up my package, opened it up, and found all this! My sister had no idea I had begun looking at vintage handkerchiefs. I don't have any, but so many people love them that I had a look around. Not only does she sense my latest interests but she send me two, one of which my niece found, with my name on it. Literally. I've circled it in white (click on the photo for a closer look). What's more, it even looks like the way I sign my name. The melt-your-heart birdie is from Target. The Balzac volume and the hankies are from Clyde's in Downtown McKinney (the "old town"), where we always go when I'm there. Downtown McKinney is a great place for brocantes.

A very Irish day

Another year, another Padraig's Day. In Ireland, they'll have had the St. Patrick's Day parade, but green beer, no, they wouldn't be doing that sort of thing.

I go to pick up some things in the neighborhood, and I cross paths with a Dublin boy. He's already charmed the girls around here by the looks of it, as I watch the giggling Canadian girls blowing him kisses.
He wants to buy somethingorother, but he doesn't know his way around. I help him out.
"Sounds like you just arrived from the ould sod," I say. He nods. And who could miss that broad Dublin accent. "Dublin, right?" I say. "It is," he says.
How do they find me?

I channel-hop and find myself listening to three young men on a stage harmonizing. The song? Danny Boy. But wait! Am I hearing things? Having sung it in English, they're now singing it in....German.

I root around the bookshelves looking for a book and out floats a scrap of paper, yellowed with age. "I'm so sorry, my darling," the note says, written in my Irish MIL's handwriting. The note she slipped into my coat pocket on the day of her eldest son's funeral. Can you imagine a mother doing that in the midst of her unimaginable grief?

A very Irish day, indeed.

Doggie Tales

Cleo is in actual fact Cleo #3. Yes, they were all named Cleo. Not because they replaced each other, because they were/are all unique, but that's just the way it happened. There were two others, my sister being an Old English Sheepdog person. I believe this was the very first Cleo, photographed with my sister and her husband in a field somewhere in England many years ago.

The time between Cleo 1 leaving the planet and Cleo 2 was a few years. As usual, my sister would say, no I can't replace her ( you know how heart wrenching it is to lose your darling doggie), but eventually, Cleo 2 came along.

Then Cleo 2's life ended, and that was to be the end of that. However, years later, in Texas, I was talking to my niece on the phone and she told me my sister had "another Cleo."

When I visited a few months later, there she was, as cute as can be, but very much a puppy and being trained by my Old English Sheepdog expert sister (you cannot drop the Old, I learned). I admit she drove me crazy; everytime I moved, up she would spring and run at me, around me, jumping on me, getting over-excited, scrappy little one that she was. Note the left paw in motion.....

A year later I visited again, and she was calmer, she even stayed still for 2 seconds while I photographed her. She is such a good dog, and she is very loved.

Sheesh! She's still following me around with that camera of hers. This photo makes me giggle; it took me a while to get used to the fact that these doggies don't have tails.

It's hot in Texas, I can't wait for my haircut appointment.
Tuckered out from all that posing. It's a hard life being a top model!

Which reminds me of Carol and Doug, the American friends I met in Germany. He was doing his military service; she was a government employee; me supposedly a German-language student, "supposedly" because I tended to meet anglophones and mostly speak English. We all met at the Frankfurt Playhouse, and before I knew it they decided to get married. I returned to the U.S. some months before they did, and they brought home an Alsatian. When I went to visit them in Brooklyn, they introduced me to the dog. His name was ... Hund. German for dog.

Friday's child

Friday's Child on the steps of her Grandfather's back porch. He fed her grapes instead of popsicles. What an incredible life she has had! I vaguely remember being this small, but I've no idea when the photo was taken.

Her mother started her on piano lessons at about this age; the lessons continued into her late teens but being a concert pianist was not in her heart. She had inherited her Grandfather's love for language, books, and journalism. He showed her how to hold a pen, how to mend a broken book spine, and how to ask relevant questions. He was gone a few years later, but his lessons remained.

Most of all, in the heart of her mother's family, she learned to appreciate beautiful things. Now she makes them!