If Only

Thanks to a column by Margie Boule in today's Oregonian I came across an interesting blog. The owner of the blog is writing a book that is a collection of letters sent to her by people writing the things they would have said to someone. So many letters, some funny, some revengeful, some amazingly touching. If only you had the chance to go back in time and say something you should have said would you? This blog gives you a chance to do just that.

http://www.thethingsyouwouldhavesaid.blogspot.com/

It has been a fun but busy day. That is why I am a late posting today's entry, to mcuh work, to little time. The day started out with me getting Mom's breakfast together. Then I went home and did a few some things. Next on the agenda was Mom's grocery shopping. Then it was checking out hotels with Mom, Bev, and Belva. The later two are cousins from Albany. We are planning a cousin reunion in July of next year and I have been designated the point person. Of course we stopped and had lunch. The hotels we visted were the Northwind Best Western, The Century Hotel, and The Courtyard by Marriot in Tigard. I think we are all leaning towards the Best Western. While we were out and about we chose July 29-30-21 of 2010 as the date for the reunion. I have great cousins. They were willing to make a two hundred mile round trip just to help me choose a hotel! They also offered to help. I'm really very thankful for and to them.

Only a couple of questions for the day. Is there anyone that you would like to write to, to say the things you should have said at some point in the past? And what would you look for in a hotel, if you were the point person on a reunion that might have forty people in attendance and you needed fifteen rooms?

TODAY'S TRIVIA:

Yesterday's answer: Antoinette Brown Blackwell, first woman to be ordained as a minister in the U.S.

I was born in 1907 and died much to young in 1954. My works have been said to articulate my own pain and sexuality. I was born in a different country than my father and mother. My mother and father married shortly after the death of my father's first wife. Although my parents were in a unhappy marriage they had four daughters, I was the third. I also had two half sisters. I often lied about the year of my birth so that people would associate my birth with the beginning of the Mexican Revolution. I contact polio at age six, which let my right leg smaller than my right. Despite my handicap I participated in boxing and other sports, In 1922 I enrolled on of Mexico's premier schools were I was on of thirty-five girls. During school I witnessed armed struggles in the street as the Mexican Revolution continued. In 1925 I was riding a bus that was in an accident. I suffered a broken spinal column, a broken collarbone, broken ribs, a broken pelvis, eleven fractures in my right leg, a dislocated shoulder and other injuries. After the accident I turned away from the study of medicine and began a career as a painter. The accident left me in a full body cast and I painted to occupy my time. I painted myself because I was often alone and I am the subject that I know the best. My mom had a special easel made for her so I could paint in bed and dad lent my brushes and oil paints. My miscarriages, numerous operations, and my marriage my works are characterized as stark portrayals of pain. Of my 143 paintings 55 are self-portraits incorporating symbolic images of physical and psychological wounds. I never painted dreams, I painted reality. I married my mentor in 1929 we divorced after my husband had an affair with my sister but remarried in 1940. I was a communist sympathizer and Trotsky once stayed in my home. Despite my talents my works were not widely recognized until years after my death. In became prominent in the early 1980s after the artistic movement known as Neomexicanismo began. On June 21, 2001 I became the first Hispanic woman to be honored with a stamp. Who Am 1?