Is ded from Mal Cute.

HOLY CRAP that kid is TEH CUTEST!

My own are holding their terror levels to a minimum, thank goodness. It's sunny but chilly and if it weren't for my damn back, we'd have made a trip to the park today. As it is, Owen asked to watch "Moolan"--he loves all the songs--and Olivia decides she wants to pet Sam pretty much non-stop.

Up until my parents' house burned down when I was a junior in college, they put up the same artificial tree they bought the year my twin sister and I were born. By then it leaned a little and the colored ends of the branches were worn off so we had to guess which holes to put them in but it still looked pretty good for a 21 year old tree. We had our first real tree in the rental house while my parents home was being rebuilt.

Totally, Nora!

I finally got new candles for the candle holders in the fireplace. We lit it up Sat. and Sun. night and it worked kitty magic yet again on Bianca. She loves to curl up in her cat bed (which she never uses except at this time of year) facing the candles. With her love of candles and yummy smelling bath products, she really found the right home. Loves!

Just got my flu shot.

Shot didn't hurt, but arm getting sore.

I think we are going to get the new iPod shuffles for Tom's niece and nephew in Ireland. That's a good gift for 11-15 year olds, right?

I think that will make you the best aunt and uncle ever.

Shot didn't hurt, but arm getting sore.

When it turns paisley, worry.

I just heard from EM - her Dad is dying. Emmett doesn't really know his grandfather that well - he's in his nineties and been in decline for a while. But my ex FiL was an interesting guy and active participant in American history.

He grew up very poor and Irish in Philadelphia. His father abandoned their family, so his mother raised them. This was in the 1920s. His sister married a rich guy, and suddenly his world opened up. They lived out on Long Island in Gatsby-land, and as a young boy he would go to lawn parties where Gloria Swanson was in attendance (she kissed his cheek), and play tennis with various members of the Algonquin Roundtable.

He was sent to art school where he developed his draftsmanship - his drawings were beautiful and sensitive. While in art school in the 30s he became radicalized and joined the communist party. He moved to Manhattan and married a Jewish girl who was also in the Party and they had three children together - 2 boys and a youngest daughter. Then that marriage broke up, and he married EM's mother.

She was the second child from that marriage and the last of his progeny, but not the last child he would raise.

EM's parents were one of only two white families living in Bed Stuy in the sixties. They were very active in the civil rights movement. Her father was close friends with Paul Robeson - they were roommates for a while, and Robeson stood as his best man. EM's older sister had lullabies crooned to her by Paul Robeson. They also knew W.E.B. Dubois and we had one of his hand-me-down suitcases. When Martin Luther King, Jr. came through Brooklyn, EM (then a toddler) ran into his arms and got a kiss. EM attended the March on Washington as a very young child.

After EM's parents divorced her Dad remarried and helped raise two more kids.

He spent years volunteering as the art director of Freedomways, the leftist arts, culture and politics journal where peolple like Maya Angelou had some of their earliest work published. He was a linotype operator in the printer's union for thirty years. Excellent artist, fine cook, athletic (beat me at tennis when he was 81), a loving father, a rather roguish lover of the ladies.

I'll always remember sitting in his apartment watching an A's game with him and him telling me stories about watching the Philadelphia Athletics in the 20s. "Oh yeah, Al Simmons used to step in the bucket just your Mike Bordick there. Did you know Jimmie Foxx came up as a catcher before they moved him to first? My god, he was strong."

Emmett's full name is Emmett Jack Devine Smay, with the two middle names from his grandfather. Godspeed, Jack Devine.

Robeson stood as his best man

Woah. And the rest of it, too.

I'm so sorry, {{{Hec, EM, and Emmett}}} - you've told me a bit about Jack before, and he struck me as a helluva character. I hope he has the easiest possible time.

Sounds like he's lived a long, full life that made a difference.

Best wishes and sympathies.

What an amazing man, David. What an amazing life. It sounds well lived. I wish none of us ever had to die (moreso lately), particularly the people I love and care about, and by extention the people they love and care about. I wish EM and her dad strength and peace. She's been through too much lately.