{ this needs to be... }

Scene: A woman with her laptop, notebook, external hard drive and a bowl of pretzels sits grumbling on her sofa.

WOMAN: <grumble grumble grumble> Stupid camera. These pictures looked so much better on the display screen.

She munches a pretzel and clicks some icons and buttons, to no avail.

WOMAN: <grumble grumble grumble> Stupid Photoshop. They create software this complex and try to call it ‘easy’. Ridiculous.

Laptop begins beeping truculently. Rapid fire clicking does not make it cease.

WOMAN: <grumble grumble grumble> I need minions. Minions to make it look amazing. I find the amazing stuff, they make sure it looks amazing.

Woman takes out her frustration on an innocent honey wheat pretzel twist.

After driving myself crazy with Photoshop to attempt editing photos  { I only use it for non-photo graphic design } of merch for my new Etsy shop, I have discovered a simpler method that produces better results using Google+. They bought out Picnik a while back and imported the best parts into their photo-editing abilities directly from any uploaded album.

In short: Google, you make the internet amazing.

Now if only they could make it so you could import on to Etsy directly from a website and not from a hard drive, I’d be golden.

Not that I’m grumbling or anything…

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And in case you were wondering, the image above is a detail shot of a gorgeous Czech rhinestone brooch from the 1950s — emerald hued stones with a gorgeous blue aurora borealis overlay. Once it’s posted on Etsy, I’ll link it here. 

E Pluribus Unum…

From many, one.

From the Revolutionary and Federal Era, Americans seemed to intrinsically understand that this new adventure of democracy held on the tenet that the sum was always going to be bigger than individual parts. That the union of states was to be preserved far above how one would choose, for the most part, to shape their life, with liberty, for the pursuit of happiness.

That principle of unity was reflected in the “Grand Luminary” — a giant constellation of stars on a canon of blue that modified itself over the next hundred years, with the last incarnation shaping up in the 1912 Peace Flag.

On holidays when we pause to thank the men and women who took their lives and individuality to become part of a battalion, division, squadron, platoon… part of the rank and file that gives of all they have, some to the ultimate sacrifice, it humbles me. I struggle to wrap my mind around their experience. What the reality of war looks like when it stares you in the face and isn’t just projected onto a screen in a cinemaplex. Thank you is never enough. Will never be enough. 

When I think of the loved ones of these men and women, the families and communities that do not don fatigues yet send their hearts and peace of mind into combat zones and bases scattered the world over, I feel small. I cannot comprehend what it would be to send that which I loved dear and know that it was willingly walking into harm’s way — for me, for the nation, for the world.

Before being a genealogy nerd was suddenly chic { thanks Henry Louis Gates and Rashida Jones’ twelve pairs of hipster glasses on her episode of Who Do You Think You Are }, I spent childhood summers poring over census records, highlighter in hand. My mother and I would claim a table at some little library in Kentucky, pouring over card catalogs and copying pages from books long out of print. I can still feel my skin prickle at the thought of stepping from the temperature controlled stacks to the August sun. In the following years of research, facts started to get pieced together. Like the first progenitor to come to America. { It was a Scottish surgeon and his wife, who were among the first settlers at Jamestown in 1621. } Generations who were contemporaries of the founding fathers. Captains in the Revolutionary War. Last of the Mohican-esque settlers who formed the early militia in the meadow lands of the native peoples’ Kentake.

One of the most striking things I ever read was about my grandfather’s grandfather, Jerome Bonaparte Morris. { We have no clue where ‘Bonaparte’ came from. }

Jerome enlisted in Company H of the 33rd Ohio Infantry as a musician on 23 Feb 1864. He was 18 years old. He was listed as a POW on 23 Mar 1865 in Goldsboro, North Carolina, and discharged from Company H in Camp Chase, Ohio, on 12 June 1865, after being exchanged and sent North.

The 33rd Ohio Infantry participated in Sherman’s March to the Sea which took place in late 1864. After reaching Savannah, Georgia, Sherman and his men turned north and marched through South Carolina and North Carolina. This is how Jerome ended up a prisoner of war in North Carolina. Jerome’s Application for Invalid Pension completed on June 25, 1889 stated as follows:

“That while a member of the organization aforesaid, [Co. H, 33rd Infantry], in the service and in the line of duty near Graysville in the State of Georgia on or about the first days of May 1864, he contracted maladies which affected him and became chronic and has continued and disabled him from that time to the present, in performance of manual labor. That he was much weaked [sic] and broken down thereby during the ‘Atlanta Campaign,’ where he was occasionally excused from duty on account thereof up to date of about the 20th of March 1865, where he was captured and taken to Richmond, Virginia by the Rebels and there held as a prisoner of war where he was held until about April 4, 1865 at which time he was sent with others North and exchanged and afterward discharged as above set forth. The said disability resulted in weakness, general debility and nervousness, so much as to totally unfit him at times for manual labor.” { emphasis mine }

A little over a year. A thousand or so miles. The disability lasted his entire life. Not half a dozen deployments to the middle east. Not returning from Vietnam to derision and blame. Not storming a beach on D-Day. The scope of it is baffling.

Holidays like this make me cry. Make me smile at the children scrounging candy from the street as the parade passes by. Make me pause to remember the men and women who stepped into the jaws of war… and returned home altered or did not return at all.

From many, one.

It is a principle that a soldier understands and sacrifices everything for. For the people they fight with, the ones at home they fight for, those that support their cause, and even those that don’t. It may cost them everything and yet they still serve. I can only hope and pray that the rest of us, who are protected and provided for by their courage, strive to understand and give of ourselves to the same cause each in our own way.

Because the sum is bigger than all of the parts. Because it allows for all differences — our politics, our personalities, our faiths, our opinions.

Because blood has been shed by so many to establish, reconcile, and protect this one nation.

Under God.

Indivisible.

With liberty and justice for all.

It has been five weeks and four days since I vowed to quit biting my nails. In that time I’ve learned the following:

• Those predisposed to nail biting seem to lack the necessary genes that provide the skills to do one’s own nails well. (Anything other than clear, and I put the polish on too think and smudgy).

• Do not go into a beauty supply place and look at the nail aisles, you will be overwhelmed and inherently suffer buyer’s remorse. (“Orange sticks only cost three cents?! Give me twelve! Oooh, I love this shade of green polish!”) * A professional manicure and polish is great, but be prepared to be hounded the entire time to shellac your polish or get acrylics. Also, try not to breathe because the salon will reek of chemicals.

• There will be times when you look at your hand and not recognize it. This is to be expected and will pass eventually, I think.

When I was little, I used to think that beautiful nails were something my mother and grandmother had but I didn’t. It seems I really did have them, after all…