Petunia rambles on and on….

Now, when I read that, trip to a bay — my first thought is something must be special — like maybe San Francisco Bay or Tampa Bay and their football team.

None of those.  Sorry.

Pop and I had an errand to run, a household repair required a trip to the Home Depot.  While there, Pop splurged and bought himself a new grill for his Weber kettle,  And because we were already out, we took a ride out to see the DELAWARE Bay, not as exciting as my first thoughts, but much closer.

The pier at Woodland Beach, east of Smyrna, juts out into the Delaware Bay.  It’s not a beach in the sense of “Bring a blanket, umbrella and a picnic basket, sit on the sand or go swimming” kind of beach.  There’s fishermen out on the pier.  I don’t know what, if anything, that they catch.  We saw many folks out walking, families with children running ahead, older couples holding hands as they walked.  It’s that kind of beach, a place for a stroll in the evening.

You always see cargo ships out there, northbound up the Delaware River, heading for the ports of Wilmington or Philadelphia.  The ship in the middle is a US Coast Guard vessel.   This far from the ocean there are no waves to speak of, just a gentle lapping of the water on the sand.  And see the faint bit of land visible on the left.  That’s New Jersey, across the Delaware River/Bay.

And look over there, beyond the pier.  Why, it’s New Jersey again, and the Salem Nuclear Power Plant, belching into our air.   What a view!!

And we wandered up the beach for a bit, watching the sea gulls, or “rats with wings” as they’re known here, and looked for shells.   And then we saw an odd-looking piece of driftwood in the sand.

Is it Nessie, so far away from home?

While reading the Wilmington News-Journal online today. I saw an article about the Third Annual Delaware Book Festival.  Always staying on top of everything going on in the local community, I missed the first and second annual festivals.   I’ve been an avid reader since I was a child, and I’m not satisfied with the smaller amount of reading that I do these days.  With knitting and craftwork high on the list of recreational pursuits, and the time alloted for “recreation” sometimes as low as 14 minutes per day, it’s just not working for me very well.  At the end of my small amount of allotted time, I usually fall asleep wherever I am.

Anyway, the idea of a local Book Festival sounds pretty neat.  Nearby equals convenient and little fuel consumption, great pluses these days for entertainment.  It’s on a Saturday, which I can usually do.  The newspaper article gave a link to the site about the Book Festival and I went there to see what other information was provided, and lo and behold!!   There’s a link on the site to the authors who are scheduled to attend.  With somewhat more than “passing interest,” I started scrolling down, reading the list.

And, sure enough, I found two familiar names, familiar faces!!!

Scroll down to

Judith French – red-head, without the fiery temper that supposedly goes with the hair color.  I’m sure of that.  My brother, who is her husband, is also sure.  He ought to be – they reached their 49th wedding anniversary last week.  Few are so fortunate.

Hunter Morgan – Pen name for Colleen, red-head, daughter of author listed above and my brother!!!   My niece!!

I surely hope the Delaware Book Festival does well, is well-received and continues for many years to come, drawing more participants each year.

And see????   There is writing talent in my family.  So there.

I surf the net a lot.  My life would be better organized, I would get more done, my floors would be cleaner, were it not so.

I read quite a few blogs.  This also takes time away from the floor cleaning tasks.   To speed up the process, I use the Google Reader software, and it checks all the blogs that I’ve defined as interesting or relevant, and tells me which ones have updated content.  When I first heard of this Reader, I thought it was the greatest invention since panty hose.  (Hey, I’m old enough to remember when panty hose was a new idea, one we thought at first was most wasteful, because if you got a tear in ONE leg, you had to toss both of them)   I digress.  Mind wandering is a symptom of old age.  Therefore, I don’t wander.  I digress.

My Reader sent me to quite a few craft/knitting blogs today, and I saw several references to the Guided by Love sock pattern just issued at Fiber Fool’s site.  Go there and read the background.  The pattern is also offered for sale on Ravelry.   Proceeds from all sales will benefit The Seeing Eye of Morristown, New Jersey.

The post, and the story, came at me from so many different directions. 

I first heard of The Seeing Eye from my mother, when I was a small child.  When the school was just a teenager, my parents lived in that area (My older brother was born in 1943 in All Soul’s Hospital, which is now Morristown Memorial, I think!!)  Living just outside the “small town” of Morristown, out in the country near Liberty Corners 65 years ago, my mother went to Morristown to do her shopping, and frequently saw guide dogs in training with instructors, crossing streets, stopping at curbs.  Later on in the process, the dogs are paired with visually impaired persons, and the instructors trained the two to work together.  Mom often watched, found the dogs’ performance amazing, and often told us that they behaved better than we did.  This was most likely very accurate.

My mother was diagnosed with Glaucoma in her late 50’s.  One eye responded to treatment.  The other didn’t, and she lost sight in her right eye within a short time.  She coped reasonably well with this, continued to drive and work for years.   Well into her retirement, the left eye started to fail, from Glaucoma and Macular Degeneration.  Gradually, she lost the sight in that eye, and the ability to do most of the things she had loved to do all her life.  She was the knitter, and had to give it up.  She also liked to sew and that went, too.  As did reading, and then watching television became just listening to it.  My mother was at her best in the kitchen, and everyone who ever sat at her table will agree, and then she couldn’t tell whether something was browned enough, not until she smelled it burning.  When she no longer felt safe and competant in the kitchen, well, that was the beginning of the final decline.  In her last decade, she dealt with failing general health much better than with her failing eyesight.  Failing eyesight in the later years is devastating, when folks become increasing less adaptable to technology and assistance. 

And then there’s my eyesight issues. They’ve been varied and many,

And I know folks that are blind.  Some have no sight at all, others are “legally blind;” they have some amount of sight, but below the legal threshold that defines blindness.  This can be because of visual acuity or an extremely narrowed field of vision.  Either way, these folks struggle .

I’m going to buy this pattern.  We’ve all got Summer of Socks coming up.  How many others will chip in, for a fine looking pair of socks, for an important cause, so that people who need the assistance of a guide dog will be able to receive one?