Lisa Burks Online

This Day in Gramma History

While transferring Gramma's diaries from storage boxes to a bookcase shelf this morning a piece of folded, aged paper fell from one of the journals.  Like the diaries, it was filled with Gramma's handwriting.

Whenever a single sheet of paper distiguishes itself by fluttering away from the pack, I have learned to take notice because more often than not it leads me to an important discovery.  I believe, somehow, it is expressing the desire to be read. This sheet was no exception.

The sheet reads as follows:

Dear Diary,

It is Sept. 30, 1941 and as I sit here filling in the pages marked for each day I can't help wondering what the coming days will bring.  May I write only things that go to make Happiness and health and a true understanding from day to day.  May I write that work is plentiful, colds and sickness scarce, Happy Reunions with my loved ones are frequent.  May I never have to admit to you, dear Diary, that I have failed anyone, especially my loved ones.

We are planning to unite in a Merry Christmas celebration at Dorothy's, may I write it was a success.

Whatever is my duty to write here may I have the honesty and courage to write it truthfully and when I start a New Year may I be able to re-read your pages with glad memories of other days on which the cover closes.

Gramma's diary entries are normally short descriptions of her day-to-day life, so this particular page is unique.  Dated about two months before the attack on Pearl Harbor, I'm certain that World War II was on her mind.  Her regular entry for Sept. 30, 1941 reads:

Tues. Cloudy, trying to rain.  Canned chili-sauce and blue plums for Mom.  Arnold [note: my dad, age 11] home not feeling well.  Barnetts here in eve.

The following day, her sister Jean gave birth to cousin Bill, and Gramma ironed.  Nothing in the surrounding pages give a clue as to what prompted her to write the additional page, her life was recorded as usual including commuting between Detroit, Port Huron and the family farm in Petrolia, Ontario; making curtains, shopping at Sears, writing letters to friends and family, cooking and notes about the weather.

Still, it is a beautiful passage, and I'm glad to have found it - or rather, that it found me.  I love these diaries as much as I loved my Gramma, they are her.  As I read the page, a song about "wishing you were here" was playing on NPR.  I feel like Gramma is here with me, and maybe she wanted to remind me of some values that were important to her. Always, her consistent love of writing about her daily life in journals and letters inspires me.

For fun, I looked at her entry for today's date in the same 1941 diary: Beautiful Day. Sun shining and I have to iron.  To bed early.  It's a beautiful day here today, too, with the sun shining brightly right now.  Cool.

Reading ahead ten years, to an entry dated Oct. 22, 1951, the United States is involved in another war, in Korea.  She notes that it's a Monday, nice but cloudy, she washed and my mom (who was dating my dad at the time) came over in the evening.  The day before, however, on Sunday, Gramma notes that she was disappointed to have missed a call from Dad, who was in the army at the time.

According to her diary entries, he had been drafted on Sept. 4 (Gee, it was tough to tell Arnold that his draft notice came) and left for Fort Custer less than two weeks later on Sept. 13 (A blue day with my Arnie going away.)  In the ensuing days she notes his activities as he prepared to leave.

On Sept. 11 she writes that he went to Bill Williams Studio in Highland Park to have his picture taken.  Mom has told me this story before, that they both went for portraits (although I remembered incorrectly that it was for Valentine's Day) and now I know the exact date:

With all the Franchot Tone research I do, I often feel that I owe as much devotion to my own family's history.  Thanks to Gramma's diaries, I have a plethora of information to draw from.  I can, and have, spent hours pouring over her writing, and have yet to get through all the journals.  Eventually I will read them all, and one day I'd like to try writing a novel based on her life experiences.

Samba the Vote for Carmen Miranda

Carmen Miranda is a Democrat and she's running for Escondido City Council in Southern California.

After Harry flagged me about seeing a believe-it-or-not Vote for Carmen Miranda campaign sign today I chuckled, then did some websearching.  Turns out that while Candidate Miranda obviously isn't that Carmen (1909-1955) she is in fact the tutti-fruitti-hatted Brazilian Bombshell's namesake granddaughter.

Candidate Carmen's goals as a Councilmember include fiscal responsiblity, affordable housing and protection of owner's rights, improvements to schools, parks and road maintenance, senior citizen assistance programs and activities, economic development, community outreach programs for domestic violence and at-risk youths.

Heck, if I lived in Escondido I'd vote for her simply because her official website includes a quote about politics by Groucho Marx.  It's nice to see someone running who has a healthy sense of both civic duty and humor.

Good luck, Carmen!

Junk Junkies

Walter and I spent most of the last weekend on an impromptu garage sale world tour of Burbank.

It started innocently enough, with me leaving the house bright and early to get some morning supplies from the grocery store.  Eight doors down the street I spotted a lawn filled with things that I didn't need but must have because they were dirt cheap.

Twenty minutes, groceryless and $2 later I returned to Walter's with an armload of goodies which I dumped on the bed in an eager show-and-tell.  Walter was still sleeping but that didn't stop me, not in my euphoric condition.

His eyes opened at the mention of a mini Revereware frying pan in near-mint condition.  (A passion for this brand was one of the initial things we realized that we had in common when we first met.)  "What else did they have...." he wondered, now wide awake.

Shortly thereafter, coffee in hand, we were in the car and on the road to what turned out to be a bounty weekend despite the rain that morning.  It ended up being my favorite kind of perfect overcast fall weather, and just being out in the fresh air felt great. Additionally, I consider getting in and out and in and out and in and out of the car bonafide exercise.

Burbank normally requires garage salers to get a permit, limiting sales per household to once every six months.  But this weekend, we learned, was permit-free so the junk was selling on lawns and in driveways all over town at-will.  It was like shooting fish in a used barrel.

I ended up spending a total of about $30 between both days which filled up Zeke the Wonder Car.  Yes, we went back out Sunday, too.  Another common passion we discovered in each other: the joy of junking!

Books, an electric potato peeler that I later found out had a short in the wiring, some antique kitchenware, an aerobic step that I probably won't use but hey it was only two bucks, more books, wine glasses from a pair of party ladies in their 80s, a leather dayrunner, a student guitar that I might one day learn to play, clay pots for my new window herb garden, and other assorted goodies.

Now we're contemplating having our own garage sale. Walter has been cleaning his garage out lately anyway, and I have to get rid of junk to make room for all my new junk.

But therein lies the beauty of "junking" to begin with.  Why let something sit in a closet and collect dust when you can set it free back into the world to bring joy to someone else, even if you only get a quarter for it?

In the meantime, garage sale-ing is an excellent way to spend quality time together, to meet new people, get involved in interesting conversations about what the stuff they sell means (or doesn't) to them, and see neighborhoods never explored before.  Can't really put a price on that!

Yahoo! Time Capsule

Not everything is gloomy around the office these days!  While Wall Street action grabbed a lot of attention yesterday, another Y! project rolled out in relatively quiet fashion this week: the Yahoo! Time Capsule 2006 Electronic Anthropology Project.

Anyone from around the world (this means you!) can submit words, pictures, videos, sounds and drawings to the project between now and November 8th.

After that, the data (projected to reach approximately 5 terabytes in size, the equivalent of about 5 million books) will be sealed, presented to The Smithonian Institute who will keep it under wraps for the next 14 years until 2020, Yahoo!'s 25th anniversary year.

Haven't decided what I'll submit yet...stay tuned.

Picture This

Last Saturday Walter and I attended the Hollywood Underground 9th Annual Dinner, held this year at the scenic Castaway Restaurant in Burbank. 

Walter & me in our fancy duds on Saturday night

Prior to the dinner, HU members Ginny and Phil Michaels celebrated their 25th wedding anniversary by renewing their vows at, where else, a cemetery!  Forest Lawn Glendale's Wee Kirk O' The Heather chapel to be exact.  Truly a special event to witness. See more photos from Saturday here.

The best part about these yearly get-togethers is being able to meet people who I've only known online, such as Jim Lacy and his lovely wife Laurie.  Jim and I have corresponded about graving offlist for some time now, and recently we've been working on accounting for famous people buried at Grand View Memorial Park in Glendale, CA.  So it was great fun to chat with him in real life, yay!

I met up with Jim and Laurie at Forest Lawn Glendale the following midday, at the Great Mausoleum.  My mission: to deliver pretty pink Stargazer lillies, which had served as HU Dinner centerpieces, to the crypt of Carole Lombard.  This was in honor of her 98th birthday on Friday, October 6th as requested by an out-of-state HU list member.

Contraband photo: Carole's Lillies

Thanks to Harry Martin for A) choosing the gorgeous lillies to begin with and B) sending them home with me in a beautiful vase on Saturday night.  After decorating Carole's crypt there were enough lillies left over to also leave a nice bunch on the crypt of her hubby Clark Gable and the remainder with vase for my sentimental favorite permanent FLG resident, Jean Harlow.

Here's where the story takes a turn for the worst, not unusal for graving adventures when it comes to FLG.  While leaving flowers for Jean, we were busted by Great Mausoleum security matron, Joan Cortes.  I say busted because according to FLG, her crypt room is deemed a private area, as is Gable/Lombard.

My problem with getting yelled at and tossed out by Joan is that I've been paying respects to Jean Harlow for 18 years, and each time I've been there when Joan was on duty I did so with her knowledge and permission.  She has allowed me to break the rules in the past, so why was today different?

"Our Baby" engraved on Jean Harlow's crypt

I haven't seen Joan in some time now, so long in fact that I wasn't even sure if it was her on duty when we arrived.  She was in the booth with a young lady employee, possibly a trainee.  I have never mentioned Jean Harlow to Joan when others are present as I haven't wanted to get her into trouble.  I said, clearly, when we arrived was that we were here to deliver flowers and she let us through.  Well, after flippantly telling us we could either climb over, crawl under or unhook the rope across the entrance.

So I took offense to Joan scolding us by saying we should be ashamed of ourselves.  Ashamed?  For what, delivering flowers and paying respects when we were inside the building with her knowledge?  Her complaint was that we didn't tell her where we were going with the flowers; I noted to her that she didn't ask.  I think that if it's that important she should be doing her job from the start and making the inquiry not yelling after the fact.

Or, demanding that I erase my camera's memory card.  Um, by that point my response was a firm "no," noting that I had pictures from Ginny and Phil's ceremony at Wee Kirk in particular on the card.

I understand that people have a job to do, but FLG employees, Joan in particular, are way too uptight for a cemetery that prides itself on being a place for the living to memorialize the dead.  They bend the rules when they feel like it, then try to humiliate you for "inappropriate behavior" when they don't.

Famous permanent FLG residents on display

You want to know what I think is inappropriate?  FLG featuring photos of the celebrities they don't want you to know are buried on their property in their current museum exhibit "Icons of L.A" - 100 Years of Forest Lawn and Los Angeles: History in Photography, running August 1, 2006 through January 1, 2007.

The photographs are stunning, and I really enjoyed seeing them.  I enjoyed taking photos of the exhibit until a security guard told me to stop (even though the sign outside stated non-commerical photography was allowed.)

Don't you think it's odd, in light of all this hullabaloo, that they'd whore out Jean Harlow and many others in this publicity stunt then treat the people who care about remembering these same individuals like some sort of cretins?

My *cough* favorite "Oh no, they didn't..." portrait was of birthday girl, Carole Lombard, who died in a tragic plane crash over Las Vegas enroute home from a WWII war bond tour.

Check it out....

Forest Lawn's choice of portrait for Carole

Hundreds of portraits of Carole exist, why this one?  Is Forest Lawn completely clueless?  Talk about inappropriate.

Anyway, see more non-commercial photos from the Icon exhibit here.

Stay-at-Home Date Night

Last night, being a school night and all, Walter and I decided to stay home for dinner. It turned into a date night anyway when he arrived with Trader Joe flowers, wine, salmon stuffed with non-ecoli-laced spinache-n-pesto and fresh brussel sprouts to prepare for our meal.

I didn't know whether to *drool* or *swoon* so I did a bit of both.

Bonus: DVDs of "V" and "The Mask of Zorro" to snuggle up to. A perfect evening with one Walterrific boyfriend.

I am truly blessed. Thanks, God.

Sun Valley Fire

Last night Walter and I were on an errand in Sun Valley when we saw the fire at Sanchez Frame up close and personal, aka Zanchez per the building sign.

Lots of lookieloos, including us. I've never been that near a fire before, it was very dramatic to see the firefighters in action. Walter spoke briefly with the anguished owners of the custom furniture business as they watched their livelihood go up in flames. At least apparently no one was injured.

See more images of the firemen at work at my Flickr page.