Best wishes to you and yours
for a healthy, happy and prosperous New Year from
ShebaMakeda Glass Art!
(graphic from misu / Mikhail Palinchak’s Flickr photostream)
general
Christmas memories 2008…
Have i mentioned i absolutely love, love, LOVE Christmas?
It’s my favourite time of year!
This year's xmas tree (post-gift opening) - My son and I made that star from a pizza box, tissue paper, glitter and gold paint when he was 5.
The turkey turned out fantastic (i slightly burned last year’s)!
Honestly? I only really care about the stuffing... YUM!!
And this Christmas kisses moment was completely priceless – wish i’d gotten it on video…
The Teenager trapped and looking desperately for help...
...no help was forthcoming of course. This pic is blurry cuz i was laughing so hard
…I managed one last picture before we all collapsed laughing!
We could barely tell which screams were coming from the girls vs the Teenager!
Hard to believe these little innocents (3 and 5) could send a swaggering 6′ Teenager screaming and scrambling for cover under the tree!
Brio wooden train track we bought when the Teenager was about 4. Best toy investment EVER! It's pulled out whenever kids under 8 come over...
I hope you and yours had a wonderful Holiday Season!
Remembering our Black veterans…
(Click the pictures to be taken to transcripts of each memo. Thankfully, these very uninformed officials were proven wrong many, many times over.)
A Veteran Affairs Canada (VAC) quote which pretty much sums up a very sad situation:
“Black military heritage in Canada is generally unknown and unwritten.
However, black Canadians have a long and honourable tradition of patriotism, sacrifice and heroism in the British, Canadian and American armed forces.”
I do my best to dig up what i can find but it’s always a struggle to find historically accurate information. Here’s what i could find this year:
My post from Remembrance Day 2007: A Moment of Silence please…
VAC features:
Canada’s Black Contribution and The Second Construction Battalion
Conscription notice
Montreal Gazette (1992): Remembering the other forgotten soldier
Toronto Telegram, 1918: Colored Men are Barred (from enlisting)
Montreal Star, 1975, feature on Black Veteran Seymour who fought in both world wars: Wounded he went back for more
More from LearnQuebec.ca (awesome reference site!): Short summaries of several Black Canadian WWII veterans
We’re not the only community struggling to have our veterans’ past service recognized:
British West Indies Regiment, September 1916
Wikipedia (Caribbean & Africa): British West Indies Regiment
BBC News, 2004 (UK): Black Veterans War Role Highlighted
Channel 4 feature (UK): British West Indian Regiment (BWIR) Veterans
The Gaurdian, 2002 (UK): There Were No Parades for Us
VAC feature: Chinese-Canadian Veterans
From the Flickr group 20th Century Black History: Black Veterans image search results
NPR from 2004 (US): Black WWII Veterans Reunite in Normandy
NPR from 2007 (US): Oral History Captures Black Veterans’ Experiences
Colorado College (US): African Americans in Early American Military History
Magazine excerpt (US): The Black Corps of Engineers and the Construction of the Alaska (ALCAN) Highway
Technology bites…
1. Did you know you can now subscribe to my blog by email? Just click the link in the top box in the column on the right. Once you subscribe, you’ll receive a verification message in your inbox (if you don’t get it, check your spam folder). Be sure to reply in order for your email to be added to my blog feed.
That’s it! No more having to remember to check my site – whenever i post updates, new entries will automatically arrive in your inbox – no further effort required. How cool is that?
2. I replaced the hard drive on my laptop myself. Yup, all by lonesome and it took a screwdriver, 6 screws and about two minutes. Turns out i suffered through those months of corrupted harddrive issues for nothing.
I’m now kicking myself for not doing this sooner and instead listening to the idiot at the bigbox electronics store who told me this was hard to do and i should drop it off at their shop. I didn’t (it’s an old laptop so wasn’t worth the proposed repair bill) and was seriously considering buying a new laptop but then decided to try the repair myself first.
Good thing too – that chunk of cash can now go towards my new torch set up…
3. It’s my ONE YEAR BLOGGING ANNIVERSARY!!! A year ago, i was a fledgling beadmaker who’d just bought a kiln and was tentatively reaching out to the world hoping to find someone out there who didn’t mind listening to me blather on about everything glass.
Twelve months and nearly 12,000 visits later, i feel like i’ve carved out my own little place on the web and want to give a huge THANK YOU to everyone who’s stopped by to order, chat, compliment, comment or email. I can’t even begin to explain how great it feels to have folks from all over the world stop by to visit and share in my passion…
I’ll be doing a complete revamp of this blog shortly and will make a effort to post more frequently. In the meantime, if there’s anything you’d like to see more (or less) of on this site, just let me know either by email or in the comments…
I’d love to hear from you!
One more item off my bucket list!!
My first bungee jump at the Great Canadian Bungee
I’ve maintained a list of “Things to Do Before I Die” since I was a teenager and I’m happy to say every few years I’ve been able to scratch off at least a few items. Bungee jumping has been on my list (as well as a few other equally crazy items) for at least 10 years but delayed since my son was so young. Now that he’s older, I’m feeling a little more free to try the more adventurous items and if they are as amazingly fun as this bungee jump? I may even add more.
The drop (200ft with a 160ft rebound) was amazingly soft – not at all what i expected… if you listen carefully, once I stop screaming you can hear me start laughing and yell “That was fantastic!”. It’s hands down one of the best experiences I have ever had – quite freeing actually – almost felt like i was floating. Afterward, we were all so pumped about our jumps we couldn’t stop laughing and talking about it for a least a week. Valentina later asked me what kind of beads i had made after the jump but to be honest i couldn’t have gone near the torch. I think it took almost a full day before my arms and legs stopped randomly shaking. Would i do it again? ABSOLUTELY.
Oh and btw, if you think I look calm in the video, I wasn’t. I was supposed to jump off, then i took one look down, my knees gave out and my brain kicked in asking me what the HELL did i think i was doing! I really should have just closed my eyes, turned my brain off and leaped…
In all seriousness, if the guys hadn’t just dropped me off the platform mid-sentence (yes, I was ticked, hence the initial angry tone of my screaming), my jump would probably have looked more like this:
(…funniest bungee jump ever!)
Evelyn Duberry - Glass Artist 