The Olympics and the Bulletin Board

Watched the Olympics after going to Church on You Tube. The Church service was excellent and the music, as always, very well done. 

One of our items to do was to create a picture of Edward's Bulletin Board. After he retired in 2004 he set up his Bulletin Board over his desk. Always a calendar in the middle at the bottom for the month where he put all of his activities. He was always very busy. I didn't retire when he did but kept working until 2007 so he took over some of the cleaning and continued with the grocery shopping although would quite often wait until I was home to do that. But his Bulletin Board took on a sort of memory for him of important items in his life. We have kept it as it was but now I decided I wanted to photograph it, have a poster made and laminated because there are some original images on it that need to go to different people principally one Allen image. 

Perhaps the most meaningful picture for him was one that he found in the bottom of his Mother's Hope Chest. It was upside down and on the bottom and he had not noticed it earlier. It is located next to the calendar on the left and is a picture of his parents, older brother and himself as a young child. Although he spent pretty much 24 hours a day with his father he had no memory of him but yet he was the person that gave him ideas on how to live his life simply by the way that he had lived his life. I always thought it was quite remarkable that he did that. I had both parents and two grandparents that I knew very well as well as my six siblings and one maternal uncle and his wife in my life. But for Edward this shadowy person of whom he had no real memory contributed greatly to his life and gave him ideas by the way he had lived his life on how to live his own. Beautiful really (Edward was just two when his father tragically had a fall in the barn). We discovered that the Bulletin Board was not quite exact being slightly shorter on one side than the other which of course really shows up when you square the image and put it into the system for creating a poster. However, we are working around that. 

He had several pictures of me on the bulletin board; to the right above the bottom set is myself at 18 years around the time that we met (Edward took that picture when we were out walking and there is a bridge behind me (I removed my glasses as he thought they might create a light flash); bottom left was after our daughter's graduation from High School and bottom right perhaps a couple of years later I think in 2008 when I needed a picture for something; forgotten what now. It is a picture into the past with a sailing ship such as his ancestors came to the American colonies in the 1600s (there is family lore within the Kip family that Rulof de Kype sailed on this particular ship although Edward did discover a lot of information on the Kip family of New York/New Amsterdam which is in his blog (on his website)), his love of birds showed up clearly. A mat that one of his grandsons made for him a few years ago also. But his calendar was always exactly in the middle showing his activities for the year clearly at a glance (and it was generally a rather busy calendar until COVID). The picture of Hannah Catherine (Parlee) Allen his mother's grandmother on the right half way down. He loved his University and the Western Alumni flag was from one of the every five years reunion that he organized (along with others the last few years). Then a stack of pictures with a red pin through them - the main street of the village of Princeton, Ontario, Canada where he grew up. The rest were pictures that meant a lot to him over the years. 

I think it is more or less ready now for us to have it made into a poster and laminated. Gradually we are getting everything organized so that no original images are lost and having to take down the one image changes it and so we move forward slowly trying to make sure we do not lose anything on the way. 

A lovely evening walk on the beach whilst my daughter kayaked completed a beautiful Sunday in God's world. We are so lucky to have a beautiful world; we must take care of it. It should be front and center in our minds instead of greed, jealousy, envy and actual aggression against people. Whether or not you can defend yourself shouldn't be the question - if you invade another country then you are in the wrong. It is just sad to see the losses that occur because of terrorism being committed against a country. 

Today is cleaning day once again and another beautiful day although here is a weather alert possibly a heat warning I have not yet really looked at the forecast. Keep safe peoples of the world and follow the dream of those who first created the Olympics to bring together the world in sport where fairmindedness is the most important aspect.