It’s News to Me

Today is an especially appropriate day for me to pay tribute to mothers, mine and those in my life, and to my father because today, May 14th, is also my dad's birthday. Had he lived he would have been 96 years old today. The title of a song by Fred Fisher from around the beginning of the 20th century, "Daddy, you've been a mother to me," enables me to tie today's holiday celebrating mothers with the fact that it is his birthday, and I can reflect on them both and their contributions to my life.

Honoring your father and mother just isn't what it used to be. As I was searching for the author of the song I mentioned above, I discovered an interesting piece titled, "I'd walk a million miles for one of your smiles," by Charles Marowitz, written ironically on my birthday last year, in which he traces the de-evolution of American attitudes towards motherhood. He says …

Mom's most ebullient champion was Al Jolson who, folded on one knee with a catch in his throat and a tear in his eye, declared that he would "walk a million miles, for one of her smiles" for she was his irreplaceable "mammy."

In today's popular music, one is more likely to encounter "Mother" with a six letter extension added, an inescapable expletive in rap music. In the minds of most kids between 13 and 21, "mother" is simply an abbreviation for that 12-letter obscenity.

Swans Commentary: I'd Walk A Million Miles For One Of Your Smiles, by Charles Marowitz - cmarow31

I am old enough, and perhaps sentimental enough, to be more in tune with the early 20th Century attitude toward motherhood than I am with the current attitudes, so Mother's Day is a day to enjoy the memory of my own mother, whom I called by her first name, Grace. I don't know how to explain that aberration, except perhaps to note that I followed the lead of my father, Willie, who called her that, and she tolerated it. I never discovered whether she wanted it that way or not. Ironically, I called my dad Daddy, so my parents were known to me as Grace and Daddy. I can only observe that families and their customs are strange.

There are a lot of different ways of mothering, each mother having her own style. There are good ones and bad ones and a few who don't have a clue. But all of them, like all the rest of us I suppose, do the best they can. For that I salute them and honor their efforts to guide their children into adulthood. And I hope they (you) all enjoy being recognized and celebrated today.

And as I was taught to close my nightly prayer on bended knee, I'll close this tribute with the last line of that prayer now. "God bless Grace and Daddy wherever they are."

My son, Jeff, and his wife, Deanna, and my grandson, Dustin, are visiting this weekend from Georgia. Blogging will be light, because they are here to help me do some maintenance and rearranging of my house. I'm looking forward to how things will look after all is said and done. I'll return to my life on the Internet at the beginning of next week. 

Downtown Louisville, originally uploaded by Dr Reelgood.

Mike’s family visited Louisville, KY, over the weekend for Madison’s Lacrosse game, and while there, he shot this picture of their most famous product (except perhaps for Cassius Clay, aka Muhammad Ali).

Connor’s Cap, originally uploaded by Dr Reelgood.

Connor Michael Nelson is approaching 10 months old now (on March 1), and he’s already getting into the family tradition of playing with what Carole used to call “the seasonal ball.” If he turns out to be a basketball player, however, he’ll be the first male in the family with any skill at playing that game. However, I think this photo of him is really cute, so I wanted to share it with you.

Googer-Hill Family Easter, 2005, originally uploaded by FEDGIRL55.

My cousin, Pat Hill, posted this picture on her Flickr site of the gathering of the Googer and Hill clans at Easter 2005. It’s good to see her posting some of her pictures on Flickr again. Here’s her identification of the crew (with some additions by me in parentheses):

Sofa, left to right, Patty Hill, Georgia Googer (Hank’s daugher), Jimmy Googer (Hank’s son), Natosha Googer (Patrick’s wife). Standing, left to right, Brad Hill (Pat’s son), Julia Googer (Hank’s wife), Hank Googer, Justice Googer (Patrick and Natosha’s son), Patrick Googer, and Mary Googer (the mother of Hank and Patrick).

The other night I wrote an explanation for Caole, my ex-wife, of Gmail’s labeling capability. If you have a Gmail account, you may find it helpful to you as well, so I am copying the relevant part of my message to her here. If you don’t have a Gmail account and would like one, feel free to email me (my address is in the About Me page) and I’ll be glad to send you an invitation.

Now, for today’s “lesson.”

Last night I mentioned the concept of Labels to you. Labels are Gmail’s way of letting you apply some organization to the email you receive. Most email programs permit you to move messages from your inbox into a folder, analogous to putting a piece of correspondence into a folder and sticking it in a file drawer. Gmail’s approach is superior to that because messages often belong in more than one folder and, while you can make a copy of messages and put them into multiple folders, doing so takes up more storage space. So Gmail uses Labels instead, which means that you can apply as many labels as you think you need to each message.

When I set up your account I created a few labels (to get you started), three of them if I recall. There was Family Correspondence, Instructional, and Travel, again if memory serves. (I also set up a couple of filters which I’ll cover in another message at some time, but for now a filter is a way of applying labels or taking other actions automatically, based on some predetermined rules that you set up . But more about that later.)

It’s easy to apply a label to a message. Just look above this message and you’ll see a “drop down box” that says More Actions. If you click the down arrow beside that, you’ll see the labels that have already been defined in the list. For instance, for this message, you would choose “Instructional.” Do that now to see what I mean. Now notice that this message has two labels applied to it — Family Correspondence (that was applied by the filter) and Instructional. Those labels are indicated by the green text at the top of the message. Do you see that? Good.

At the moment you only have three labels defined, the ones that I created to begin with, but you can create as many labels as are meaningful to you. In that same drop down box, one of the choices is “New Label.” So when you choose that, you can define a new label and thereafter it will appear in the drop down list for you to choose and apply as needed. Don’t worry about applying too many labels to a message. You can add as many as you need, and then you can look for the message under that label. Just click on the label name in the list of labels on the left, and there you’ll find all the messages identified by that label. Clever, huh?

So now that you’ve applied all the labels you think you need to this message, you can get it out of your inbox. You do that by clicking on the Archive button at the top of it. That will remove it from the inbox, but it won’t be lost. It will be in the All Mail list, and it will also be listed under each of the labels it has.

technorati tags: Gmail, tutorial, labels

I have just gotten off the phone with Carole, my ex-wife, who just yesterday completed the last of her 33 radiation treatments for breast cancer. She had the radiation after completing chemotherapy, so all of the immediate treatments related to the cancer that was discovered and removed surgically from her left breast have now been completed.

She is doing well and will now embark on a 5-year course of treatment with an experimental drug to prevent a recurrence. Since she is participating in an experimental treatment program, she won’t know whether she is receiving the experimental drug or Tamoxifen, but she does know that she will not be receiving a placebo.

I would like to thank all of you who have expressed your concern and interest in her progress both for your interest and for your prayers, as I’m sure she would too. She has an appointment this coming Monday with her oncologist to assess her progress at the 60-day point after having completed chemotherapy. She will, of course, maintain contact and regular checkups with her physicians to monitor her progress and her health.

I am certainly thankful that she has tolerated the treatments as well as she has and that she is beyond what I hope will be the worst part of this experience.

Fall Color 11-08-05 001, originally uploaded by Dr Reelgood.

Mike got this picture just in time, because today the winds have picked up and the leaves on many of the trees around here are being blown off and onto the ground. The temperature in Knoxville today is supposed to reach 80 degrees. It’s a stange November day here.

Night Drive 11-06-05 006, originally uploaded by Dr Reelgood.

My son, Mike, who has been doing digital photography since May of this year, has begun to stretch his abilities by experimenting with his photographic skills, such as in this photo. I’m pleased with his results so far. His Flickr photostream contains 1192 photos, as of this morning, but not all of them are publicly visible because he chooses to limit some of them to only “family and friends” who have Flickr accounts.

Connor at 6 months, originally uploaded by CaptQuirk.

On November 1st, Connor, my grandson, became six months old. His dad, Mike, is doing a good job of photographing him on the first day of each month, and Connor is in the running for one of the most photographed babies in history. A friend, Brian Parton, recently commented that “Connor seems to be really comfortable with being photographed.” It’s not surprising.

As you can see from the photo, he is growing nicely and making real efforts to learn to crawl. What you can’t see from the picture is that he recently acquired his first tooth. We’re all quite proud of him and he seems to be a happy and healthy baby who is getting all sorts of attention from his three older sisters.

You can bet I’ll keep you advised of his progress.