There will be pictures

Nothing, but nothing irritates me more than a “bored” child. Had we tried that line on our parents we would have been spading gardens or setting up a croquet game or any of the stuff parents had in reserve. 

I’m good at finding jobs, and these kids have turned out to be quite cheerful job tacklers. No one has tried the bored line, yet.

Way back in early spring the high school sent out a notice of Summa taking applications for summer “interns.”  So you relate to that at once, in our day they were “candy strippers”, and Summa is one of the two major hospital systems in the greater Akron area.

The screening process may have been rigorous back then; it certainly is now. A multi page application, complete with an essay.  Screening meetings, orientation meetings, TB testing, ID badges.  Teenagers with ID badges, for crying out loud.  It’s a new world; I shake my head. It’s the way it is for them. And, it is a hospital.

For the first screening meeting I told Hamilton and Emily they needed tan khaki trousers and nice shirts. That was OK with Hamilton, but Emily is a little too fond of “skinny” jeans and tees.  There was a bit of persuasion required.  Then the directive from Summa, business casual required.  Emily double checked at school to confirm business casual, and she and Hamilton went shopping.

My heart went pitty pat when I dropped them for the screening and my two business casual grand kids walked away.  I cursed forgetting my camera (this before I knew how to take pictures on my phone!).

Today is their first day, noon to four.  Hamilton will be calling out-patients to remind them of appointments; Emily will be filing in “Wound Management.” Driving them to St. Thomas I warned them, “There will be pictures.” Yea, we know, gramma.

“Well, I’ll just be the grandmother who ruined your teenage years, because there will be pictures.”

And Emily, bless her little heart, said “It’s not like ‘this is a picture moment’, and you whip out the camera. You tell a story.  Like that biography you found of your great grandfather and I took it to school for my genealogy project.”

Now, if they just stop saying “like!”

My Aunt Ruth, IHM, was a nurse, and worked at St. Thomas long, long ago, when it was the Catholic hospital.  Emily’s middle name is Ruth.  Aunt Ruth would be proud.

So, our summer is settling out.  Emily has lots of library volunteering and Summa.  Hamilton has being commandeered by his sister, Summa, and McDonalds, to pay his car insurance.  Laura makes bird houses with Uncle Tom and goes to the library.

In July Emily is going to State College, Pennsylvania, to help Linda at a major art show at Penn State.  Hamilton is going to church camp.  Band camp at the end of July, and then school starts in August.  Hard to believe, and there will be pictures.

Stand over there

Turn around and smile.

What goes around…

Twenty odd years ago, when I was thick with Peninsula merchants, we invented Python Days.  Peninsula’s python has a long history, and we helped revive it.  A Cleveland reporter, on a slow news day in the depths of World War II, thought he’d lighten spirits a bit by enhancing on local folklore he overheard, probably at the Peninsula Nite Club. The python became legend, as much as a small town python can become legend.

I remember writing the press releases promoting Peninsula’s python.  Our efforts sputtered and fizzed along for a few years, and almost passed into history, until Harry Potter days arrived in town.  You recall the frenzy around the release of the last book.  Peninsula had, at the time, an independent book store, and the owner, together with the other merchants in the Peninsula Chamber, held a two week-end extravaganza.  If you were a parent or child, what excitement.  If you weren't, detour town.

Town merchants, being in business to make money, reserved that weekend for the revival of Peninsula’s own python, intending to build on the crowds that came for Harry Potter. I doubt the street closing crowds of Harry Potter days have recurred since, but the streets are closed and there is a parade, and games, and contests all over town. Peninsula Python Day!

All that lead up to leaving for the library and work this morning.  I thought Emily was bringing her guitar for this morning’s Kid Wrangler activities.  Instead she brought her brother.

Around the supper table we got the rest of the story.  Hamilton was brought along to be introduced to Sue, the coordinator of kid games for Python Days on July 20^th.  On her first day as Kid Wrangler Emily was asked to help with Python Days.  When she realized the scope of the activity she decided a Kid Wrangler assistant would be very useful, and brought Hamilton along to have judgment passed.  Her plan worked out as she intended; Hamilton has been asked to be Kid Wrangler Assistant.

I hope you stopped to read something about the Peninsula Python. Way back when we revived it we asked Honore Guilbeau, a Peninsula artist whose name some may recognize, to design a logo.  You can see it back there on the Python Day website.  Ms. Gilbeau also designed the front of the Peninsula Library, seen in today’s picture.   The façade depicts both the Cuyahoga (Crooked, in original Native American) River and life in the valley.

We made banners featuring the logo, way back when, and participating merchants hung them outside stores.  I’ll find ours and hang it up on Python Day.  It’s one of only two remaining, and I won’t part with it.  The library has the other banner.

Kid wrangler

The Peninsula Library offers summer programs for children twice a week. I’ve known this for years; the parking lot overflows Tuesdays and Thursdays in the summer.

My grandchildren love libraries and seem especially fond of the Peninsula library.  They all have been in to transfer their ClevNet cards to the library and be introduced around to the staff. 

I’m in the library at least every two weeks, on township business (a public place to post township minutes [Ohio Revised Code]) and I’m often stopped at the desk by “I have books on hold for Emily (Laura, Hamilton)” and I leave with a sack of books.  In between I return sacks of books.

Earlier this spring the librarian in charge of children’s programs stopped me and asked if Emily would be interested in volunteering for the summer.  “Of course she would,” her grandmother replied.  And, she was.

The job is keeping small children interested, involved, focused and fed, all in ninety minutes.   It starts half an hour earlier, set up, and ends half an hour later, clean up. The director of the library says the job title is Kid Wrangler.

Last week there was a magician.  Today the Akron Zoo was there with half a dozen animals for the children to admire.  Laura told me all the names, but, of course, I can’t remember. Emily said they put out fifty cups and used forty seven plus one kid who didn't have a snack, and that's how they count kids.

In two weeks Emily has been asked to help out at another volunteer job, and given a library job application to have on file in the event a paying summer job opens.

I drop them on my way to work.  They walk two blocks to the town hall when Emily is done, and we come home for lunch.

The kid wrangler and her skippy little sister; one to work and one to be in the audience.

Short sighted

Laura planted a row of sunflowers in a plot Uncle Tom turned over for her.

Saturday night the deer came through 

and bit off half the tops.

They still have not seen the salad bowl.

Saturday afternoon felt class

I enrolled Emily and Laura for a small object felting class at the Art Academy, Saturday.

We arrived right on time, noon.

The girls went in.  I stopped for a picture.

The front doors are flanked with pots of hosta  and violas.

Inside I found everyone confused. The class is next week.

 Back outside and another picture of a table and chair grouping I admire.

Comfortable?

We passed sandwich boards on the way announcing

Skip's Peninsula Junction.

There are only two Skips in town and I know both.  So which one?

This used to be a junk yard and transfer station.  

Now it's clean enough to please your grandmother.

This is one side of the yard.  The retaining wall blocks have a history.

When concrete trucks come back from a job the extra concrete is dumped into waiting forms.

I've seen these kinds of blocks in many applications; now I know how they come to be.

This is a business on the other side of Skip's yard.

I'm sure it makes a lot of people smile.

Skip hopes to turn his yard into a weekend market.

There was one vendor when we arrived, shortly after noon.

Nina's husband, Wayne. The man who slipped the money plant seeds into my car.

And one food vendor, Pierogies.  

Wayne had a bird house I coveted, but I only had $20 of the $30 in my wallet.

And two little girls departed for pierogies with $10.

Not a problem.  We would go home for the check book.

When we returned Wayne, on the right, was refusing to sell my bird house to the nice couple.

Skip, he didn't say nothin', although he was appealed to, also, to change Wayne's mind.

This fellow I see around town stopped to say hello, and let me take a picture.

We left Skip's Peninsula Junction, with the birdhouse and change.

Why go home; we could go the other way and buy ice cream.

This vehicle had a fine mud patina and says on the window

So you like mud, Huh?

Finally heading home, we passed this fellow on Truxell Road.

Thanks to Emily for the fine picture.

I pass him often; I use Truxell to go to work.

Linda wants a bicycle like this.

The bird house.  That old barn board is at least 18" wide.

No trees like that left around here.

See the eyes and the nose?

No wonder that other fellow wanted it.

Thanks, Wayne.

Hamilton hung it about six feet up, across from the wren nest in the studio window.

That wren is so polygamous; he supports nests all over our back 40.

So, here's a double decker for him.

Slate roof and everything.