Best Wishes for Lorne and Leslie!

 To Leslie and Lorne!

One of the most active members of the ABC Wednesday Team is getting married today!! I chose for the bridal couple some photos of swans, whom are said to be the most faithful birds in the world. They stay together until one of them passes away. They are beautiful and elegant birds. The symbols of eternal love.

Congratulations!

Let Thursday be the happiest day of your life together

Elaine's Passing...

Elaine, dear, kind Elaine passed away.

Elaine Marie Hinchey, of Tampa, joined her mother, Mary A. Hinchey and beloved Daniel A. Maier on January 23, 2008. Elaine was born in Washington, D.C. and was a graduate of Parkdale Senior High School in College Park, MD and was an advocate for the disabled for over twenty-five years. Her life was dedicated to providing a voice for the oppressed whether it be in the pursuit of a united Ireland or advocating for the rights of the disabled and homebound. Elaine is survived by her father, Charles E. Hinchey, her sisters, Elise A. Wilson, Margo T. Valenti, Jennifer L. Hinchey and their families. Elaine’s well-loved extended family included many but her life was made complete with the love and support of Sandy and Martin Maier and her very dear friend, Avery Ceo.
A Memorial Mass will be held at Our Lady of the Rosary Catholic Church, Land O’ Lakes on Thursday, February 7, 2008 at 10 a.m.


Some of you may want to leave memorial messages. Since EFx2 may eventually remove this blog, a permanent guestbook has been set up at http://www.loylessfuneralhome.com/se...76&locid=1.

My Danish Friend Died...

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Yesterday I got an e-mail from Denmark, saying that the last of my Danish friends, whom I wrote about in December, has died. He will be buried next week in the church yard where his parents and brother, who drowned in the Netherlands, are buried. He has very loving and caring relatives. One of his cousins I met in 2002 when I was in Denmark with my sister.
She works at and open air museum, not far from Copenhagen, where all kind of old trades are demonstrated. My Danish friend was a member of the organization that supports this museum. After the funeral there will be a funeral meeting and a meal in one of the buildings of the museum. I can't go as it's too far. Besides I think I should have gone to him when he was still alive.
I shall always remember the many times he and his parents met us, either here in my house or at their farm. The first time I stayed at their house, it was three years after Bent drowned in the Netherlands.
I was hitch hiking with another Dutch girl through Denmark and we were invited at the farm. The Danes are very hospitable. I remember that we had six meals a day. A few hours after breakfast, when the farmers had been working in the field, we were called for "Kaffe" and we had pancakes with of course lots and lots of other lovely cookies and".smørrebrød". Smørrebrød is a thin slice of bread with a lovely salad on it, consisting of a slice of tomato, a piece of lettuce, a slice of meat and all kind of herbs.Anyway we had coffee too and we liked it all very much for we too had been working with the farmers. One of them asked me:" can you drive the tractor?", and without giving it a thought, I said :"Yes". Mind you the only thing I could drive or ride was my bike. Anyway I sat on the thing and drove it. But when I had to stop it, I didn't know how to do it. The farmers ran after the tractor, shouting at me, while I was going round and round until at last one of the Danes jumped on the tractor and stopped it. Afterwards there was a lot of laughter and the story was told over and over again. Between lunch and dinner we had another meal of smørre brød and coffee. After dinner we had coffee and before turning in we got something which was called "rød grød med fløde", a kind of red porridge with red fruit, like cherries or plumbs with double cream or sour cream.That was my first impression of Denmark and since then I often went there with my husband and children and the Danish family stayed with us in Holland. I tried to prepare six meals for them and made coffee for them. The Scandinavians are the greatest coffee drinkers in Europe . They taught me how to make smørrebrød, to say "tak for kaffe"or "takk for maten" (Norwegian) and "tak for mad"(Danish). I shall never forget this Danish family!

My Life...

On a cold Monday morning on 4th December I was born, the eldest of three daughters. My parents had waited for children for a long time and were happy with the three of us. I was born in Rotterdam, but went to live in Indonesia shortly after my birth. We stayed there for five years and during that time my sister was born, then we returned to the Netherlands for a stay of a year and my second sister was born. In 1939 we were again back in Indonesia.
The war broke out , first in Europe and then in Asia. My father was an engineer on board of a merchant ship and sailed between Java, China and Japan.
On 8th March,1942 we saw them coming: Japanese soldiers, marching in the streets. We didn't know what they had in store for us. Sometimes it's better not to know beforehand..
Anyway we were interned in a concentration camp for three years. We lost most of our possessions. Children had no toys, no books and if you were older than ten you had to work in the fields in the burning heat of the tropical climate. Later fortunately, this was not necessary anymore, because most of us were to weak and emaciated to walk, let alone to work.
In August 1945 we were liberated by the British. In January 1946 we returned in Rotterdam and saw my father for the first time after four years. The first time in Holland was difficult : we had to go to school. I was twelve and had to skip three classes and start training for an exam in order that I could be admitted to the secondary school.
My teener time was spoiled by the memories of the war and it was not until I became a teacher that I started to enjoy life again. I married when I was almost 30 and got my first child when I was 33. After her we got another daughter and a son.
My husband died in 1999 after a long period of illness. He had seen his three eldest grandchildren, but not the youngest, who was born in 2002.
The eldest daughter and son live close by, but my youngest daughter lives in Australia

Worse than Death...

We commemorate the dead, but there are victims whose fate is even worse and, though they survived the war, their minds and souls are broken for ever.

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Women were seized in slave raids,and recruited to work as prostitutes. Japanese officers took considerable pleasure in "breaking in" new girls, who were in shock and pleading for mercy.
Japanese children won't hear anything about it today, because Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe issued a denial that women had ever been forced into sexual slavery under unspeakable conditions to pleasure Japanese troops. His statement reversed an earlier, 1992 acknowledgment from the japanese Government that women had been forced into prostitution against their will. Similarly, Japan still denies the hororific Rape of Nanking, the torture and mass killing of thousands of American, British and Australian POW's, and the use of POW's for biological warfare experiments
After two and a half years in an internment camp, conditions for Jan Ruff took a dramatic turn for the worse when Japanese officers entered the camp and ordered all girls over the age of seventeen( in our camp girls from the age of ten) to line up for inspection. The Japanese officers then physically examined each girl as if she was an animal put up for auction at a cattle sale. When the line had been reduced to ten girls ( in my camp there were 20 girls), the Japanese officers ordered these girls to pack a suitcase and get into a truck waiting at the camp gate. Protests by their mothers were ignored. The truck was then driven to a large house in Semarang, the capital of Middle Java. This house was surrounded by a high fence and guarded by Japanese soldiers. Jan discovered the terrible nature of the ordeal she was about to endure when the Japanese told the girls that they would live in this house and be required to provide sexual services to the Japanese military. Jan felt at the time as if her whole world had collapsed. In response to their protests, the girls were told that the Japanese would treat them in any way that they pleased

I had just turned 9 when I was imprisoned in a concentration camp with my mother( 37 years old) and my two younger sisters( 5 and 3 years old).. In the first camp we still had some toys and books, but there came a day that we had to leave everything behind apart from what we could carry. All that we took were clothes.
After a long train journey we arrived in Semarang and had to find a place to sleep.
We had to share a house with about 25 others. From the very beginning the camp was a night mare. We went to bed on an empty stomach and the next morning we got a kind of porridge cooked in tar drums. It was so dirty and still full of tar that we couldn't swallow it. Finding food was a great problem. We had to grow tomatoes but were not allowed to pick them. Then there were the beatings some women had to endure. One woman(American lady) was much taller than the Jap and was always singled out for a beating. At last she squatted so that the guard couldn't see her.Worst of all was the case of the comfort girls. Twenty girls in the age of 14 till 20 were selected and what happened to them you can read above.
In August 1945 a plane of the British Royal Airforce circled over our camp and dropped flyers which said that the war was over, at least the Japs were defeated.
First we couldn't believe it, but little by little it dawned upon us that it was true. We took away the barbed wire and got all kind of food from the Indonesian people outside. Yet other Indonesians were ready to imprison us again a few months later.
We could leave the camps in October 1945

The stars are crying...

This was a strange week. Last week Friday November,2nd was the anniversary of my father's death in 1959. Today it's been 8 years since my husband,my partner and friend died. On Sunday I went to the cemetry to tidy up the plants on his grave.I took some photos of the rock with his name on it. It's a rock from a glacier in Scandinavia, where we always went for our holidays.
In spite of that's said of marriages and divorce in the previous post, I can say that I am happy to have been married to this loving and caring man. I miss him terribly and in the beginning the evenings and weekend were very lonely.
He was always there when I came home from my work, which was in the evenings from 7 till 9. I taught English to adults. I came home at about 10 o'clock. He always made me a cup of tea and asked about the lessons. Nothing much, but we shared our thoughts and experiences. He told about the things which were important on the telly and in the newspaper. When I come home now it's an empty place, no living soul......even my pets are dead.
The first time alone in a hotelroom was terrible. We always tried the TV set first. I made him coffee or tea while he took a shower. We talked about the trip. We were company. Now the room is empty without life....

My husband died alone. He was in coma,but I should have been with him. Instead I was on the phone, for my daughter's mother-in-law rang me. She didn't know that it was after midnight here in Holland. She cried and so did I. When I came upstairs I saw that my husband had gone. I called my Australian daughter, who was staying with her children at my place. We rang my other daughter who lived in another place, and we rang the doctor. Lateron the undertaker came and asked if we wanted my husband staying at home. We said:" yes, we want him here until the funeral"Lateron the undertaker came and showed us some mourning cards. We had the text ready. It was a verse of a hymn, a saying of my then three-year old grandson:"The stars are crying and the moon is coming down..", and an Aboriginal poem.
All the rest of the weeks we had visitors offering their condolences. We had a cup of coffee and told about the past year, when we knew that he was going to die.
He himself didn't want to talk about his approaching death, and that was very, very difficult...

About marriage and divorce...

~Be a nice person, be a good person~ ~Dalai Lama~
2007-Nov-7 - About marriage and divorce...






And if Christianity is to survive as a dynamic faith and not die of obdurate "static-ness", they'll do so again. The most likely issues where they'll likely eventually give in to common sense are the ideas of women's equality in marriage and to accept same-sex marriage.


I copied this from Libertine's post, because I absolutely agree with this statement!
We cannot take the bible literally as a truth which we have to apply to this day and age. We live in a totally different world compared to that of 2000 years ago. Apart from that we live in a western world and have developped into free independant human beings.
I am a christian, at least I try to be one, but I believe that divorce is sometimes necessary in the cases yoy mentioned: abuse( physically or verbally). Jesus said:" who shall put away his wife,except it be for fornication, and shall marry another, commits adultery and who marries her which is put away commits adultery" At that time women had no right to leave their husbands for the reasons you mentioned, and Jesus was a man of that time and thought like the people of that time. In this day and age he would say it differently. What is meant by "What God has joined together let no man put
asunder"? I think a lot of marriages are not made in "Heaven