New restaurant opens finally

 It's called the Pure and Proper...named after the building, the old gas station, Pure Oil.

And someone had a "then and now" photo also...

It looked like this for the 15 years I've lived here...and obviously it closed long before that!

I posted about the rennovations several times last year, but here's my first post about it, with a more detailed photo.

I followed many months this summer and fall as it changed into...

The final design.

Yes, a small dining room, but for better weather, there are also some outdoor tables. And I would guess those white fuzzy chair covers will be soiled within a week.

 

Pretty classy, as Pure and Proper should be!

Today's quote:

The mark of the educated man is not in his boast that he has built his mountain of facts and stood on the top of it, but in his admission that there may be other peaks in the same range with men on the top of them, and that, though their views of the landscape may be different from his, they are nonetheless legitimate. -E.J. Pratt, poet (1882-1964)

My version of Holly Jolly

 

I was greeted as I came through the door "Hi Barbara Rogers!" One of my old friends thus introduced me to everyone else. I'd spent 12 years as a member of the Community Clay Studio there, so I did know a lot of people!

Loved these outside decorations. I didn't go through all the shops which stayed open late, offering free drinks and cookies in lots of them. I had had a full day and was running out of steam.

A favorite flower which keeps showing up everywhere!

Friend, Fred Feldman made the "don't sit on me chair." He has worked in wood for many years, after retiring as a ceramics teacher...and now makes some clay things still.

There were many beautiful pottery objects for sale in the downstairs auditorium. And then the upstairs gallery had a great show of student's work. I'll feature that over on Alchemy of Clay for the next few days.

Today's quote: 

Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength, 

while loving someone deeply gives you courage.

—Lao Tzu

Welcome to Black Mountain

 

I think my friend Mary Soyenova made all these welcome signs. But this is the season to decorate around them by the Beautification Committee. Many thanks for their volunteer work!

This sign is at the light when you exit I-40 going east...Black Mountain shops are to the left up NC 9.

Another welcome where the shopping district starts, just after crossing the tracks...going north now on NC-9.

This welcome is for people coming off I-40 going west...the first exit for Black Mountain. I don't think there's any sign for people who go to the second exit into Black Mountain. Ha ha. This sign is on US 70 which is the main road through Black Mountain.

Linking to Tom's Signs2

Today's quote:

Every increased possession loads us with new weariness.

 -John Ruskin, author, art critic, and social reformer (1819-1900)

Parades

 There was a parade here...which I missed. 

I saw the ones on TV for Thanksgiving. None of the balloons that flew above the parade was recognizable except Snoopy.

I haven't watched a cartoon show, nor an animated movie for several years.

Anyway here're photos from our other photographers to let you know Black Mountain had a parade last Saturday Dec, 3,

This is a different parade than the one on Halloween with pets dressed alike with their owners!

 Today's quote:

I'd put my money on the sun and solar energy. What a source of power! I hope we don't have to wait until oil and coal run out before we tackle that.

-Thomas Edison, inventor (1847-1931)

A difficult but worthy read

 Another blogger suggested I read this, a true accounting of a family which were impacted by WW II...living in Czechoslovakia and Germany.

I had just blogged a novel which looked at the lives of a German soldier and his wife during the war. So when I moved into the reality of this book, I had to take it in small doses.

It started out without much of the brutality which happened later in the war. A modern day woman starts looking into her father's history. She finds a lot. She connects with many distant relatives. And they fill in many of the blanks of her father's and grandparent's lives before and during WW II.

I have never been able to read or watch much about the holocaust. It's as if I've seen and heard many voices of those who suffered, and I have to turn them off so I can go about my days. I also hate horror movies.

So I slowly went through this book. And I am amazed at how much material the author was able to find. Fortunately there were descendents of other members of the family who also had stories and documents that fit together to make a whole. As a geneaologist, I am in awe. As a human, I'm again so very touched by how war makes everyone crazy.

I give it five stars and my recommendation.

Today's quote:

What is laid down, ordered, factual is never enough to embrace the whole truth: life always spills over the rim of every cup. 

-Boris Pasternak, poet, novelist, Nobel laureate (1890-1960)

Sunday funnies

 When I was a little girl, my daddy would read the funnies to me in the paper. I loved Sundays best because they were in color, and there were more of them!

Me!

Japanese cats.

Any dog will chose whether to sniff or pull along with his little cousin!

Honoring Native Americans

The music and the psychedelic colors!

M. C. Escher

OK, I didn't find as many funny things as I thought! Maybe by next Sunday!

Today's quote:

No one is useless in this world who lightens the burden of it for anyone else. -Charles Dickens, novelist (1812-1870)

Goofing off families vs. Victorian seriousness

 Another Sepia Saturday at Barbara's blog...

From FB, "Father and son goofing off, 1910s."

The women who worked in the kitchen for Thanksgiving (in CT) - goofing off.

More of my family, the BIG armed son and his wife (FL)

My big head and my son (from CO)

My three grands (from FL) looking amazingly normal!

My son (from OH) and three quarters of one of his daughters.

Another leg of my family who met for a wedding a few years back (FL). My grandson had to make a face!!

A couple of my granddaughters and their cousin...a grand-cousin?

Daughter-in-law with 2 of her daughters as bookends. (OH)

Son and daughter-in-law (CO).

The prompt photo has a serious family gathered for their portrait...as well as that unbelievable beard on the patriarch. But I like my series of family photos better, though my own family isn't quite as old as this one! And notice I didn't call a one of these photos a selfie. I've gotten to hate that term!

Today's quote:

For one human being to love another: that is perhaps the most difficult of all our tasks, the ultimate, the last test and proof, the work for which all other work is but preparation. -Rainer Maria Rilke, poet and novelist (1875-1926)

A short walk

 The warm weather beckons me outside. I love feeling the land beneath my feet, rather than concrete or asphalt, even rather than my own floors inside.

The pavillion has lights hung. Now I just need to come by some evening to see them,

This would be a great photo for reflections, or Fences make good Neighbors. I wonder if those memes still happen somewhere.

Then there's this welcoming bench...

If you wish to wade, or fly to sit upon it!

Just another place to acknowledge that nature, in the form of wet mud and waddling feet of ducks and geese, will make their ways where no person might tread.

Today's Quote:

We are like tenant farmers chopping down the fence around our house for fuel when we should be using Nature's inexhaustible sources of energy -- sun, wind, and tide. ..David Abram, Becoming Animal: An Earthly Cosmology.

Hello December

 The count-down towards an event...whether Solstice, or Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanza, or the next new year beginning...this is a month of preparations for that chosen event.

Gift giving is a wonderful way to remember those we love. It can also become the root of hectic shopping. I hope we can all forget that for a moment, sigh and maybe consider how to do it more consciously. Just have in mind the person you are giving it to...imaging their face as they open that present from you. It is the season.

A friend's decorations for Christmas.

Ann Baily won the gingerbread contest this year at the Grove Park Inn in Asheville. "When Dreams have Wings." The display is up until the beginning of January.

Governor's Plaza, Santa Fe NM with Holiday lights!

And speaking of holiday lights...here's one of my favorite displays in Black Mountain NC. (There will be more coming this month!)

On E. Cotton Ave...don't miss the bears!

Today's quote:

Magic doesn't sweep you away; it gathers you up into the body of the present moment so thoroughly that all your explanations fall away: the ordinary, in all its plain and simple outrageousness, begins to shine -- to become luminously, impossibly so. Every facet of the world is awake, and you within it.

David Abram, Becoming Animal: An Earthly Cosmology