It has finally arrived and it’s going to be a blue, blue summer. Today, it’s the bright blue of the wild spiderwort in my garden.
Spiderwort is a strange plant and its blue color has a strong violet and pink undertone. So often, I take a picture of “blue spiderwort,” but when I post it on my computer, it’s bright violet-pink. No amount of color correction will fix it, either.
They come out blue if I take the picture in shade. Or — mostly shade. It’s something about the spectrum of sunshine that changes its color.
My mother used to tell me how important it is to have ‘inner resources.’ I nodded and agreed but never really understood what she meant. As a retired person, I finally get what she was talking about.
Coincidentally, my husband, Tom, always preached to me that I had to be comfortable living alone. I lived home during college and I spent a total of four months living alone during law school before I moved in with my first husband. That’s it for my entire life. After law school, I was married. Married with kids, divorced with kids, remarried with kids and now retired and married with no kids at home, just dogs.
I didn’t think that Tom’s mantra about being able to live alone, applied to my life.
Now I realize that my Mom’s ‘inner resources’ and Tom’s ‘living alone’ are really the same thing. While retired, I’m technically not alone, but for a good part of each day, Tom and I ‘do our own things.’ Tom loves video games and can play them for hours and hours. He also voraciously reads the news and watches news on TV for hours a day. He has projects around the house and on the boat. He has inner resources and can be alone. In other words, he has the ability to entertain himself, by himself for long periods of time, every day.
I don’t do video games though I watch a lot of Food Network and HGTV shows. I read the news but much less exhaustively than Tom. That leaves a lot of hours each day to be filled while Tom shoots bad guys and solves the problems of the world.
I used to be an avid reader so I could entertain myself endlessly with the books piled up on my nightstand. I always had a tower of books I wanted to read waiting patiently for me to get to them. I didn’t know it until I was recently diagnosed, but I have always had ADD. It has gotten worse since menopause, which is common. So now it’s hard for me to sit for hours and read. It’s hard for me to do anything for hours without getting up and walking around or doing something else for a while.
I’m often antsy.
The ADD medication worked wonderfully and I could sit still and read to my heart’s content. But the medication also kept me up till the wee hours of the morning and I had to stop it if I wanted to sleep normally again. I may go back to taking a pill once or twice a week, but I have other medical issues I have to square away first.
So now I’m left with hours and hours a day of unstructured time I can’t automatically fill with a good book. Writing blogs has occupied a lot of my time as has writing for and promoting my audio theater group.
There are still days that contain periods of ‘nothing to do’. That’s where the inner resources and being able to be alone come into play. I somehow manage to find things to do that don’t just kill time. I come up with projects around the house or errands to run or I spend extra time working with the dogs on their obedience training (sit, down, stay and come is as far as I’ve gotten so far). I text and call friends and stay in closer touch than I used to be able to and I read in short increments.
I actually enjoy days when I don’t have to leave the house. They are comforting in some ways and also prove to myself that I have what my mother worked so hard to instill in me – inner resources!
I’m comfortable with myself and happy in my own company. I can stay occupied by myself when I need to.
I was hoping to get outside and see more lilies today, but instead, we had intermittent storms. Thunder, lightning, hail, rain, sun, gloomy clouds … and each of them more than once. The weather kept rolling around. It certainly was entertaining, but not inviting.
It also was stormy last night, but the thunder today was more impressive this afternoon. Garry heard it when NOT wearing hearing aids.
I took more than 2000 pictures in May, but June, not so many. Part of that was taking down the bird feeders. I really miss the birds. I got a few bird pictures early in June before I emptied the feeders. I didn’t realize how much I counted on being able to take great pictures without driving somewhere or even trekking outside with the camera.
Mourning Dove
But on the other hand, Rich Paschall came to visit from Chicago and it was great. To finally meet someone you’ve known online for many years was a huge treat. Despite it raining the entire time he was here, we still managed to get outside to take some pictures.
Mostly, it has rained. We are hoping to paint our deck. Owen power washed it, but we need two days of dry weather and then a third to do the painting. We have yet to get three non-rainy days in a row. We live in hope.
The pictures which follow are mine and Garry’s, taken whenever and wherever it wasn’t raining. We tried to cover as much territory as we could. Not bad, all the wet weather considered!
Rich, Marilyn, and Garry by the Blackstone Canal
The stone bridge in the rain
More of a summer river
Photo: Garry Armstrong
Photo: Garry Armstrong – Marilyn and Rich along the Canal
The big Canal locks and a couple of bloggers with cameras!
The Blackstone Canal
Rich and Garry
The footbridge
Photo: Garry Armstrong – Blackstone River
By the Blackstone in Smithfield, Rhode Island
Yellow flowers in the river
River reeds
Kayaking in the summer
Tom and Ellin, Marilyn and Garry in the Marina, Connecticut
Photo: Garry Armstrong
Along the dock — Can you spot Tom?
Cleaning the boat
Photo Garry Armstrong
Flowers
Queen Anne’s Lace again
Closeup Columbine
Columbine along the picket fence
Still more buds than flowers, but a very quick movement
Field of flowers
Birds and Squirrels
Cardinal
Lady Cardinal on a branch
Rosefinch
Squirrel
About The Changing Seasons
The Changing Seasons is a monthly challenge where bloggers around the world share what’s been happening in their month.
If you would like to join in, here are the guidelines:
The Changing Seasons Version One (photographic):
Each month, post 5-20 photos in a gallery that you feel represent your month
Don’t use photos from your archive. Only new shots.
Tag your posts with #MonthlyPhotoChallenge and #TheChangingSeasons so that others can find them
The Changing Seasons Version Two (you choose the format):
Each month, post a photo, recipe, painting, drawing, video, whatever that you feel says something about your month
Don’t use archive stuff. Only new material!
Tag your posts with #MonthlyPhotoChallenge and #TheChangingSeasons so others can find them.
If you do a ping-back to Su-Leslie’s post, she can update it with links to all of yours.
It was much different then. 1969. There was a “counter culture” that opposed many of society’s norms. There were “love-ins” and music festivals. Hippies made the scene wearing different clothes. Many wore flowers in their hair. Tie-dyed shirts and bell bottoms jeans were the fashion.
It was the summer of Woodstock. It was also the year the Beatles played their last live concert from a rooftop in London.
Woodstock
In the United States, Richard Nixon became president. NASA sent a man to the moon. PBS was established and Sesame Street made its debut. The US Air Force stopped investigating UFOs, having found none since Project Blue Book started in 1952.
It was a time of social unrest. Civil Rights protests. Protests for women’s equality. Students and others protested many political issues. The largest and most frequent were about the “police action” otherwise known as the War in Viet Nam. The Southeast Asian war, the first to be extensively televised, was very unpopular.
Protests at Columbia University in NYC
Homosexuality was illegal in 49 of 50 states. To be arrested meant your life was ruined. You could lose your home, your job, your freedom. To be a known homosexual could put your life at risk. A few gay groups, like the Mattachine Society, tried to depict gay men as just like everyone else in order to be more acceptable to society. Small protests were held each year in Philadelphia and Washington seeking equality. Men wore suits, women wore dresses. No one held hands.
New York had a few gay bars and clubs. Most were owned by the Mafia, who paid off the police. When the bars were to be raided, arresting a few gays, the clubs were tipped off in advance. The police generally came early in the evening so the clubs could reopen later and continue doing business. When the police arrived, the lights went up to tip off the patrons to stop holding hands, touching, and dancing. Men in drag were certainly going to be taken away. Policewomen checked them out to see if they were actually men. No further explanation is needed.
In June of 1969, there were frequent raids on local bars and clubs. Some were closed down. The Stonewall Inn had been raided on a Tuesday but reopened for business. Saturday of that week would be the day the tables were turned.
Stonewall 1969 (Photo Credit: Wikimedia Commons)
Stonewall had tried to present itself as a private club. It had no liquor license and was raided periodically by police. It operated very much like a speakeasy in the Prohibition era.
The windows were covered with plywood so no one could see inside. The door had an opening where a bouncer could look out to see who wanted entrance. If he did not know you or thought you were underage, you would probably be turned away.
In the early hours of a warm night, around 1:20 AM on June 28, 1969, the police raided the Stonewall Inn. It was to be closed permanently. There were perhaps two hundred people inside but only four plainclothes officers, two others in uniform and two detectives arrived. Gays usually put up no resistance, so the police thought they could control the situation.
On this night, they thought wrong.
The usual tactic was to arrest drag queens and anyone under 18, which was then the legal drinking age. The men were lined up and IDs were checked. Events, however, took a different turn from the usual protocol.
The drag queens refused to go and many men were refusing to show IDs. The police decided to arrest anyone who did not cooperate. Things quickly got out of hand.
The ones who had been released did not disperse. Instead, they waited outside. The crowd soon began to grow. The patrol wagons did not arrive and many were forced to wait in line. When a woman was taken outside to be put in a wagon, she fought back.
There’s one well-known picture of the event and virtually no video of what happened. It was before the era of pocket cameras and cell phones. Accounts vary but there are many personal accounts on which to rely.
One thing seems clear. In an era of social unrest, gays were fighting back. They were not going to have the Stonewall taken away, despite the fact that baseball bats were later used like in a Prohibition raid. Activism had come to the gay community in one spontaneous moment.
Only known image of the uprising (Fair use. Photographer: Joseph Ambrosini of the New York Daily News)
Battles with police raged into the night. The ones who had conducted the raid had to barricade themselves in the Stonewall against the growing crowd outside. When police arrived to free Stonewall, the crowd stayed and sang, formed a kickline, threw pennies, did other mischiefs. The people were pushed down the street, only to return behind the police. Garbage was set on fire, some windows were broken.
The next night an even larger crowd returned to Christopher Street. The police tried to disperse them with nightsticks and tear gas. Again garbage was lit on fire and the crowd fought back.
Why are there gay pride parades?
Stonewall is the answer. On a warm summer night in New York in 1969, the gay patrons of Stonewall Inn decided to stop being pushed around. They wanted to be free to be who they were. They would no longer hide in the dark closets or recesses of dives like the Stonewall. They wanted to be proud and to live their own lives.
The following year on June 28, The Christopher Street Liberation Day was held with a march (parade) from Christopher Street to Central Park, an astounding 51 blocks. Organizers desperately hoped for more than a handful of participants to support the event. Thousands came, not just to watch but to march and celebrate. At one point the parade filled the street for 15 blocks. Events were also held in Chicago and Los Angeles to remember Stonewall.
It is likely many young participants in Gay Pride Celebrations do not know why there are such events or how they started. Nevertheless, it has become a worldwide phenomenon. On June 30, 2019 (today if you are reading this when it is first posted) organizations will come together in New York. There will be a 50th-anniversary celebration of the day the lesbian and gay communities battled for Christopher Street and won the right to seek equality in the open.
Stonewall today
Sources: This synopsis is a very condensed version, and you can read events in great detail on Wikipedia. PBS also recently reran the American Experience documentary Stonewall Uprising which you can find at PBS online. Below is just a small excerpt:
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