I had a bad day yesterday. A terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day! Fortunately, I don’t have many of them; otherwise I think I would just drop off the face of the earth… f o r e v e r!

We arrived yesterday in Florida for our son Jason and his bride Jennifer's wedding.  Yesterday, we spent a wonderful evening sharing time and good food with family and friends.  It's times like this that I miss living so far away from all the boys. Michael and Jessie flew in from LA and Nicholas is coming in this afternoon. The blending of families can be a joyous time, especially when two people are so well matched.

Today will be a fun-filled day with manicures, rehearsal, and a rehearsal dinner outside under the beautiful Florida skies.  I am afraid this time together will be over way too fast and I will have to leave my children to go back to my world of innkeeping in New York.  The kids had obviously taken great pains to plan the wedding of their dreams with lots of themselves intertwined in the festivities. J and J had make their own wedding cake (no surprise since that is what they do - bake cakes!)  The handmade truffles (their own creations) look divine and almost sinful! *she can't wait to indulge in one of those delectable treats* 

Before I know it, tomorrow will be here and we will be at the Baughman Center witnessing the marriage of two wonderful people. I pray their lives together will be loving, fruitful, and blessed. 

I love you  both... mom

     Cooper lay at my feet, licking his furry paws.

     “Cooper, stop licking!” I scold.

     Slurp! Slurp! Slurp!

     “Cooper, I said stop it!”

     Slurp! Slurp! Slurp!

     “What are you doing?” I say as I look down at my feet and Cooper.

     Slurp! Slurp! Slurp!

     Cooper is now licking the floor. His long pink tongue laps at the hardwood floor.

     “Cooper, what are you licking?” I push his head away to see what has his interest.  There under his paws and under his nose are scales. Fish scales. Scales from the little tetra that Sam the Killer Cat had impaled with his claws and devoured for a snack the day before. “Awe, Cooper,” I whine. 

     I get up and go to the kitchen sink to obtain a wet sponge. I wipe up the scales that are dried and spread over a small area of the hardwood floor. I look to the left to see another patch of fish scales. There can be no mistaken. Sam had enjoyed the tetra and left remnants – scales – a little reminder of what was left of the fish.

     I wipe up the other small patch of scales. “All gone, Cooper.” Yes, the little tetra is just that – all gone.

     Today I was nominated and approved as a trustee for our local library. I was very excited about the opportunity to serve on such a prestigious board.  I think the public library system is one way to protect our freedom of speech and access to information.  I always enjoy reading a banned book. It makes me feel empowered. That banned book had something in it that scared a group of people and that group worked very hard to interfere with my right to read whatever it is that I want to read. It doesn’t matter than the subject was not of interest to me or the language was a bit rough. It is still my choice to read that book, if I so choose.  I would hope our libraries are one way to prevent censorship to become rampant in our country.  This is one reason why I love our country. Our rights our protected by a document written so long along but with so much foresight as to protect the rights of our citizens far beyond their wildest dreams.

     So in my ongoing celebration of banned books, here are the “Top 10 Banned Books for the Twentieth Century”:

10. Grapes of Wrath (1939) by John Steinbeck

9.   Lady Chatterley’s Lover (1928) by D.H. Lawrence

8.   Slaughter House Five (1969) by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.

7.   To Kill a Mockingbird (1960) by Harper Lee

6.   Fahrenheit 451 (1953) by Ray Bradbury

5.   The Catcher in the Rye (1951) by J.D. Salinger

4.   Tropic of Cancer (1934) by Henry Miller

3.   The Naked Lunch (1959) by William Burroughs

2.   Ulysses (1922) by James Joyce

1.   1984 (1949) by George Orwell

     Now, of course, this is a very limited number of books that have been banned or challenged. If you go to the American Library Associated at http://www.ala.org/ala/oif/bannedbooksweek/bbwlinks/100mostfrequently.cfm, you can download a list of the 100 most frequently challenged books between 1990-2000.  I say read a banned book.  Go to your public library, borrow a banned book, and read for yourself to understand how their authors successful interpreted life and portrayed issues and concerns in our world. If we do not read, we can not understand.

     I am reminded of a quote by one of my favorite authors, Ray Bradbury. He said, “You don’t have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them.” Reader’s Digest, January 1994.

    This year, Banned Books Week is September 27 to October 4, 2008. But don’t wait until then. There are too many really good books that need to be read. Start now. You will surprised what you discover about yourself and the world around you!

     Boy, did I sleep well last night! I think it's because I had already decided that buying a new car was not a necessity.  RJ did a little more investigating and came up with the same conclusion. So now that is behind us and we are on to the next thing.  He'll be back to working at the Inn staining and painting and I'll be doing the marketing.  I still have a newsletter to finish and a brochure to write. We are running all these specials and hope that guests will take advantage of all these discounted rates.
     Today we went to Buffalo to visit Auntie Arlene and my sister. Auntie Arlene, RJ and I had a great time visiting and enjoyed Ted's Hot Dogs for dinner. How can anyone go to Buffalo and not have a Ted's hot dog?  I love their hot chili sauce with ketchup, mustard, onion, relish, and a pickle. Great stuff! Auntie Arlene found some old pictures of me as a kid. In one, I'm dressed in my communion dress and I'm kneeling in prayer. Very angelic! I acutally look cute. The other one was of me as a baby. I couldn't have been more than 10-12 months sitting on a blanket with a big smile across my face. It made me think of happy times as a child growing up in Buffalo on Bailey Avenue. 
     While I was visiting with Auntie Arlene, she started to tell stories from long ago when she was growing up. I've started to record them so they will not be lost. She told a story about a porter that worked at the tavern for my grandfather. He retired from his work on January 1, 1949 before he went to work for my grandfather.He was an immigrant from Poland and spoke very little English, but my grandfather offered him room and board for work around the bar. As a Porter, he would take care of moving cases of beer, alcohol, kegs of beer, or cans of food to their proper stops when deliveries were made.  He paid for driving lessons for my aunt because she was afraid to drive. Thank you, George.
    

I’ve been thinking about when I actually said the words "I am a writer." The journey has been long and at times arduous. Still I question those words. "I am a writer." Do we say them to believe them, or do we believe them; therefore we say them. My need to write, to record my words, to be heard, goes back to when I was a kid.

My family is first generation in this country. Mom and dad’s parents came from Poland in the early 1900’s to begin a new life here in America. My dad’s parents, Grandpa Benny and Grandma Mary, opened a business, a tavern and restaurant, on Broadway in Buffalo. They raised three children working that tavern.  My mom’s dad, Grandpa John, worked at the machine plant in Buffalo and her mom, Grandma Josephine, stayed home with seven children.  Work is what they knew and they did it well in order to make a life. Eventually Grandpa John bought a confectionary store and then a garage to support his family.

My mom was a letter writer. She had beautiful penmanship and her voice was very strong. When she wrote, it was just like listening to her speak. I don’t recall her writing stories or poetry, or anything like that, but I do remember the letters. I’m not sure who she wrote them to, but she did write frequently and received many. After her death, the only letters I found were seven years of letters that I wrote to her while I lived in Massachusetts.  She was an avid reader and always had a book around. They were usually hard covered books with beautiful paper bookmarks to mark her place.  She would read to my sister and me frequently. I remember the first real novel that my mom read to me. It was 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne.  I couldn’t wait for the next exciting chapter to be read. Oh how I wanted to know all about Captain Nemo and his adventure. I would sit at my mom’s feet and hang on every word as she would read.  My dad, on the other hand, worked. He worked all the time at the tavern. It was the family business and that is where he was needed. He read the newspaper daily and thoroughly and meticulously wrote down the proceeds from the day’s take, but rarely wrote anything else. He was more a, I guess you could call him, a jotter. He jotted lots of notes.

Paper was plentiful in my house. Paper and pencils. Just pull out the drawer under the telephone and there was paper: note paper, lined paper, unlined paper, scrap paper. And to write: Ticonderoga #2 pencils plus a few pens were scattered the neatly stacked pieces of paper.  The desk held colored pencils, easers, markers, and more pens and pencils. On my tenth birthday, my mom bought me a diary with a little gold lock and key.  The cover was brightly-colored, soft, and cushy. Each page was lined and the page was neatly printed at the top of the page.