Life is Four Days Long

La Pedrera, photo taken October 2005

Touring Barcelona was not on the itinerary. We had arrival time and sailing time, and we were resigned to wait.
The airline gave us something to do at the airport; our checked luggage did not arrive. Reporting lost luggage is bad enough because the questions make me aware that I didn't know enough to be helpful. I know it was black and it holds the stuff I packed. What kind of suitcase? What manufacturer? What contents in which of the two bags? My name and address are inside and outside. It has Royal Caribbean Cruise Line tags on it. We decorated it with red and green ribbons. The airline put barcode labels on it and here are the copies of the barcodes. Why didn't they get it where it was supposed to be? We weren't the only ones with lost luggage as every one who had a connecting flight before this transAtlantic flight had to report at least one bag missing. I've reported lost luggage before so I felt anxious about Husband and I being understood in Barcelona. The woman who took our information may have English as a second language, but she understood us a lot better than the guy from my same state who took my first lost luggage report and never found a pirate flag from Disney World.
The RCCL representative waited for all the expected early arrival passengers to get on the bus. Then she announced the happy news that she and the driver would give us a tour of Barcelona while the ship prepares for our arrival. Yes, much of it was quick, drive-by touring that whets our curiosity for exploring. They picked sites that we Americans are likely to associate with Barcelona from watching television: the Olympics and background footage used on the Travel Channel.
She gives us some of its 2,000 year history and tells of the pride and confidence in their economy and urban renewal since 1975 and the 1992 Olympic games. Today is a rare day because a solar eclipse occurs while we are walking in a park that overlooks the city and the Mediterranean Sea. The guide apologizes for not having as many viewing glasses as she has people.
Back on the bus, the RCCL representative tells us the Catalonians have an expression that translates, "Life is four days long." I waited for more of an explantation but the bus turns onto l'Eixample and she has lots to say about the Modernist architecture of the buildings on this road. The building depicted at the top of this post is La Pedrera has no single straight line or sharp corner, and it was the last secular work done by the architect Antoni Gaudi.
Gaudi spent more than forty years of his life working on what the locals call the Unfinished Church. An expiatory temple was envisioned by Bocabella in 1872, a different architect drew up plans in 1877, and the first stone was placed in 1882. The 31-year old Gaudi took over the project in 1884 and worked until his death in 1926. Construction continues on the magnificent Temple Expiatori de la Sagrada Familia and may continue for another twenty years. Yes, this drive-by of a building that is an acre in size and has been in the works for 133 years provoked enough curiosity that I did further research and learning upon my return home.
If we travel to Barcelona again, we are scheduling even more time to sightsee inside these beautiful buildings in this beautiful city and to ask how the expression, Life is four days long, translates into the daily lives of the people of Barcelona.

The morning view from our porch

Sometimes the morning view from our porch is magical, the way sunlight captures my imagination and suggests a portal to another time and place. "Once upon a time" is a great way to start a fairy tale. "Reminds me of the time" is a great way to start family stories because that is the way I remember the stories being started by my great-uncles and grandparents. Great-aunts told stories too. They told stories in the kitchen that started, "Did you hear about?" and ended in a hush when they realized a young child, who repeated without censorship, was present.
My mother collected this recipe in her cookbook (copyright 2001) as a memory of one of those great-aunts.
Helen B. Dunn's Butterscotch Pie
1/4 Cup butter
1Cup brown sugar, firmly packed
4 Tablespoons flour
Pinch salt
2 egg yolks
2 Cups Milk
1 Teaspoonful vanilla
Place butter and brown sugar in a heavy skillet over medium heat until it gets bubbly all over. Mix flour and salt: add slightly beaten egg yolks and milk slowly, mixing well. Add to the butter and brown sugar, a little at a time: mix well. Cook until thick. Remove from heat. Add vanilla. Cool slightly. Fill baked pie shell. Top with meringue and brown.

As you can tell from those directions that a lot of skill and art went into making those pies. That baked pie shell had to be ready before you started. When is bubbly all over? Why won't it work if you just dump it all in together? Why? Why?

Whether it is a story that begins, "Reminds me of the time" or "This is how you make butterscotch pie, the unspoken beginning is "This is what experience taught me".

Eighty Years Ago

The reading I have been doing recommends that no genealogical information be posted that is newer than what happened eighty years ago. That stumped me as I started to question how best to share the family stories that will become our record of history.

The reasoning for the eighty years deadline is that census records are made public at that time and so that information is public records. Yes, the fourth generation ago may be deceased but that eighty-year old public information exposes private information of the generation of our parents. I've read that AARP may even ask that census records be kept private longer as the population of centenarians increase.

I'm looking for stories of my great-grandparents' generation to post. The stories from our ancestors born in the last half of the nineteenth century, these ancestors who are sixteen or higher on our pedigree charts that have my children as 1 and me as 3. I know their names: David Smith Chesnut, Sara Adeline Harvey, John G. Lauerman, Clara Wittkugle, Theodore Lincoln Rogers, Altazera Sayers, Albert Kinder, Lettie Rusk, William F. White, Eliza White, Henry Beasley, Martha Jane Pease, Albert Lester Powell, Lora Mae Anthony, Taylor Elwood Dunn and Ida Mae Waitman. My curiosity got me that far, and yet I want to know more about what their lives were like and how that influenced their choices and opinions.

I mean, these people were born before James Naismith invented basketball. What did these people do in March before basketball?