30 years ago – January 1991

In January 1991 – we went down to the Smithsonian on the 1st. I didn’t note which museums we saw…just that our 16-month-old daughter walked across the mall on her own – stopping to exam interesting pebbles and clumps of grass, etc.

We had more snow that January than we have this year. There are pictures of our daughter sledding down the driveway in a plastic tub; her snowsuit is a little tight and she does not look happy at all…maybe because I forgot to put on her mittens! She was much happier indoors eating spaghetti.

Her new skill was taking off her shoes and socks. Her father called me one morning after I’d gotten to work with the news that I was going to have to do something about her…he had gotten her ready to go to day care and was putting on his coat…turned around to discover that her shoes and socks were not on her feet anymore! Her day care provider said the same thing happened all day long. Once she discovered she could do it – we all had to be patient until the novelty wore off…or her feet grew a little and the shoes were not as easy to pull off. I also started putting her in tights, so she had at least one layer on her feet.

We all enjoyed the Cats musical that we taped from PBS. Our daughter made the connection between the characters of the show and our cat. The cat slept through most of the video viewings.

My husband and it were worried about events in the Middle East (Desert Storm); after the Berlin Wall came down in 1989, there had been such hope that the world was heading toward a better time, but the optimism did not last. I was feeling the physical distance between where I lived in Maryland with the rest of my family in the Dallas just as I am now. Maybe it was a little better in 1991 because I could travel – not something that can happen in January 2021.

30 Years Ago – August 1990

30 years ago – in August 1990 – my daughter and her cousin were getting close to being a year old. My sister’s family traveled from Texas to Maryland so that the girls could spend time together. Both babies were cruising…but not walking yet. We planned outings that they seemed to enjoy. At the Smithsonian’s Air and Space museum the babies interacted with each other as well as their surroundings. They were wheeled around in strollers.

At Brookside, they rode in back packs – taking in the sights and sounds of the gardens.

They enjoyed homemade elephant shaped cookies for a special treat.

After our company left, it was still a busy month with me getting ready to go back to full time work. We bought a new car for me – a Honda Accord – that we owned for long enough that my daughter remembers it.

My parents in Texas were in the process of moving to a new house…trying to get it done before my mother started the school year (teaching middle school).

As I looked at the pictures and read my notes about the month – it was obvious that we were adjusting…getting more acclimated to what it was going to be like with me putting in more hours at work. It still was not easy. I was missing spending as much time with my daughter and my husband was figuring out ways he could help more. We were both experimenting with new routines…but realizing that we’d made positive changes since July.

Unique Activities for Yesterday:

Sweet Potato Sprout. I found a sweet potato sprouting in my pantry…and broke off the sprout before cooking the potato. The first picture is the way it looked on the day I put it in water….2 days later it has roots! I am going to wait until it has a green leaf before planting it out in a cleared place in the front flower bed. It won’t have enough time to make sweet potatoes before frost, but I should get some tender salad greens (leaves and soft stems)!

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30 Years Ago – January 1990

30 years ago this month – my daughter was 4 months old and I was still taking unpaid leave from my career at IBM. We visited the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History on the first day of the year. My husband took pictures of me and the baby near the elephant in the rotunda! She probably couldn’t really see the whole elephant clearly, but she was wide awake for most of the museum (napping in the car on and from).

That January had enough snow and ice that we didn’t get out very much. I had a scary fall on an icy driveway early in the month. It was icy. I thought it was just wet when I headed out to get the mail. My feet slid forward; I fell backward and hit my head. I lay on the driveway for a few seconds assessing….then crawled back up/to the side to the grass…kept to the grass to get the mail before I went back inside.

The view from the front of our house shows a newly planted Bradford Pear near the street (still has stakes on both sides). The neighborhood had organized to plant the trees along the street, and we went along with the idea. Now Bradford Pears have become invasive in our area – coming up everywhere as Callery Pear. Aargh!

In the back of the house we had some larger evergreens. One leaned way over the woodpile. We were using our fireplace more that January than before or since.

Our one PC and keyboards were in the basement. We had a full house upstairs with a bedroom and sitting room for my mother-in-law, a room for the baby, and the master bedroom.

There were two baby milestones during the month: she started eating baby cereals and rolling over. At the beginning of the month the rolling over was occasional and took a lot of extreme effort on her part. By the end of the month it was so easy for her that she rolled until something stopped her…and then figured out that she could roll away in the other direction.  

3 Free eBooks – June 2018

I picked 4 books instead of 3 in June because of the first two were about the same place – New York – and I thought they were interesting history.

Wittemann, Adolph. Select New York. New York: A. Wittemann. 1889. Available from Internet Archive here. This book includes photographs of New York and almost all of them include a tangle of electrical wires…at the beginning of the electrification of the city when there was a lot of chaos and little standardization.

Wittmann, Adolph. New York: An Album of Photographs. Brooklyn: Wittemann. 1900. Available from Internet Archive here. The photographs have been tinted and there are no wires at all. Were the electrical conduits underground by 1900 or did the publisher manage to take them out of the photographs?

Lear, Edward. Illustrations of the family of Psittacidae, or parrots: the greater part of them species hitherto unfigured, containing forty-two lithographic plates, drawn from life, and on stone. London, England: E. Lear. 1832. Available from the Digital Library for the Decorative Arts and Material Culture here. I was surprised to find this book of parrot illustrations…but the same man that wrote the poem ‘The Owl and the Pussycat’ I remember from my childhood!

Wantanabe, Seitei. Seitei kachō gafu v. 2. Okura Mogabe, Toyko, Meije 23. 1890. Available from Smithsonian Libraries here. I enjoyed the Japanese artwork…like the type of nature photography I like to do. I wanted to be in the place seeing a bird walking in a wetland – perhaps it was early morning.

3 Free eBooks – October 2017

I am always thrilled to find a new source of eBooks. This month it was the Smithsonian making 1,000 illustrated Japanese Texts available online. I’ve just started making my way through. Here are three eBooks I’ve enjoyed so far.

Kono, Bairei. Bairei gafu. Yamada Unsodo, Kyoto, Meiji 38 [1905]. Three volumes available from Smithsonian Libraries here. Birds!

Utagawa, Sadahide. Bansho shashin zafu. Sonoharaya Shosuke, Toto, Bunkyu 4 [1864]. Available from Smithsonian Libraries here. Nature and art…a great combo.

Kobayashi, Bunshici. Bansho zukan. Kobayashi Bunshici, Tokyo, Meiji 34 [1901]. Two volumes available from Smithsonian Libraries here. More plants and animals...the bamboo images would make an elegant wallpaper.