Remembering Priscilla

Priscilla Dyte Pfenninger

24 January 1948 - 13 October 2011
Buffalo, New York USA
My dear sister
May she find peace and rest and freedom from pain.

While we are mourning the loss of our friend, others are rejoicing to meet him behind the veil. ~John Taylor

Grounded!

Hello friends!

Jim and I expected to be home by now and I would be catching up reading your blogs and completing orders placed while I have been away, but nooooooo!
Jim has an ear infection for which the doctor seeing him has forbidden him from flying until it has cleared. We hope this will be by this coming Sunday, but one never knows. Jim is diabetic and might take a bit longer to heal than the average person.
So our extended stay is in Brooklyn, New York with our daughter and her husband.
Now these two have only been married for two weeks and we feel a bit like the guests who just won't leave, but they seem to be okay with it.


So much has happened!
We were quite busy our first week in America, helping Elizabeth and Joe prepare for their wedding. Then the rehearsal dinner and wedding came in a blink of an eye and we were oh-so-busy with all of it, and then before we knew it, the day was upon us and we were taking part in a beautiful wedding ceremony followed by a reception that was simply gorgeous with splendid food and fabulous company that included finally meeting a second cousin, Ed and his wife Janice, whom I had never met before! So much excitement for one day!


Elizabeth looked just gorgeous and naturally, Joe was at his best, too.
A vintage Rolls Royce delivered Elizabeth, her sister, and me to the church after dressing at the country club where the reception was taking place. Later, the Rolls took Elizabeth and Joe from the church to the famous Brooklyn Bridge for photographs, and then to the country club for the reception.
A five course dinner was prepared and served as well as all the cocktails you might desire, with plenty of appetizers, and desserts, too.


Before we knew it, we were saying goodbye again to the happy couple and heading for North Carolina for a visit with our son, Jonathan, and his partner, Stephanie.
We had a lovely visit with them in the Raleigh area, which is absolutely beautiful, and while there, we also applied for some jobs.
If someone shows an interest in either of us, there may be a move to the US in our future!


Some of you know that Jim was made redundant last February, and despite 'working' everyday at finding a new job, so far, he has been met with disappointment. The recession is so bad in the UK, for each job he has applied for there are at least 200 other candidates. It is depressing.
Jim is a manager of manufacturing, and we all know what has happened to factories in the UK. His years of production management do not seem to matter when there are candidates much younger with degrees, despite their lack of experience.


I am a teacher with a specialty in Educational Technology and never dreamed I would be unemployed. The teacher shortage in our area is high but our council does not accept my teaching credentials from the US despite coming from one of the most respected states in the the US, so it will be necessary for me to return to school or find different work. They won't even allow me to do supply teaching!

So we have been looking for work while visiting here across the pond.

Jonathan smiling at the Raleigh airport at 3:30 AM - he is such a nice guy!

After our visit to North Carolina, we headed northwest to Buffalo to visit family and friends. A dear friend, Jeanne, invited us to stay with her and her lovely daughter, in her beautiful home. She gave up her own bedroom and allowed us to have it during our stay with her.
She even gave us a car to use during our visit - such generosity is rarely found and we love her for it.

Our visit to Buffalo allowed us to visit family, including my sister who is ill in a care facility, and also allowed us to spend some time with another sister and my brother. It was so good to see them both. We had a lovely dinner on the river in Niagara Falls, with most of the family partaking of a Buffalo Friday night speciality - the Fish Fry - which is much like England's fish and chips.

We also had the opportunity to visit friends we hadn't seen in a couple of years. Mike and Judy, my former neighbors and our friends, Bob and Rosanne, too.
But with time running out, we never got to visit many nieces and nephews and more friends, too.
Maybe next year???

We were able to attend another wedding in Wilson, New York (on Lake Ontario). Allison is the daughter of dear friends, Maureen and Randy, and her day was just beautiful.
The church was a true country church and the reception was held at the family farm, outdoors, on a cool September evening. It was a beautiful day and evening with everyone looking gorgeous.

Our daughter and son-in-law were also attending the celebration so we all drove back to New York together, making it in record time - Buffalo to NYC - in only a bit over 6 hours.
It wasn't until the next day that we discovered that Jim's ear had gotten worse so we would need to remain here an extra week. Some vacations just seem to be endless!

xxx
Maggie

In the News

My daughter is safe.
Thank God.
She and her fiancée were going 'home' for the weekend, to Buffalo yesterday.
Her fiancée, Joe, works for Continental airlines, and they typically fly out of Newark, to Buffalo, on the small commuter jets run by the subsidiary company, Colgan. The flight takes about 50 minutes once in the air, and is a very inexpensive and fast way for them to get to Buffalo.

My husband woke me last night at about 5:00 am to break the news to me that one of Continental's planes had crashed in Clarence, just about five miles from the Buffalo airport.
He didn't know that my daughter, Elizabeth, and her fiancée Joe, was traveling to Buffalo for the weekend.

In shock, and disbelief, I was up instantly but without comprehension of what I was doing.
Trying to locate her new mobile phone number and shaking uncontrollably, I stuttered that she and Joe were on the plane.

We take it for granted that the commuter flights are safe; they are so frequent between Buffalo and Newark. I hadn't even asked her which flight she was taking. All I knew was that she said they were leaving late in the day.
There is a late afternoon flight that leaves around 4pm. Being a weekday, it would be full of business persons returning to Buffalo, or, making connections to Toronto.
The kids must fly stand-by and would have been bumped to the doomed flight if the 4:00 flight they wanted was full.
But all this was meaningless; all I could think of was that she and Joe were on the flight that crashed.

My darling Jim remained calm and located the elusive phone number and dialed it for me. I never could have done it - my hands and whole body were shaking.

I was so very frightened that the phone would go immediately to her voice mail.
But when she answered, I was never so happy to hear anyone's voice in my life.
Although relieved, relief would not be instant: my uncontrollable shaking would not stop for another 30 minutes or so.

Elizabeth and Joe had driven to Buffalo from Brooklyn, risking winter weather driving conditions, journeying for over 7 hours when they could have been there in less than an hour.
And I thanked God for that decision.

She knew something was wrong from the sound of my voice, and she immediately panicked thinking it was someone here who was ill.
She hadn't yet heard of the crash and we were breaking the news to her from over 3,000 miles away. We spoke for a little bit and then she had to go as her phone had a call waiting.
She was up most of the evening with people ringing her to check to make sure she was all right.

I was up all night as I just couldn't go back to sleep and I turned to CNN to keep me updated on the events as they unfolded throughout the day.

I understand just how the victims' families feel with a sense of disbelief, pain, and shock at their losses. The only difference is that my experience had a happy ending. But during the moments of panic before I knew she had not boarded the ill fated plane, I was walking in their shoes; unaware of what lay ahead and just how I was going to ever live without my beautiful daughter and her loving fiancée.
My heart truly goes out to all of the families involved, as my prayers are with them, and will remain so as time passes.

Back to My Roots

Guidance counselors expected you to make life altering decisions when you were a mere 14 years old. And, I was just ambitious enough, that I thought I was up to the challenge.

With the entrance examinations passed, I had been accepted, enrolled, and my first tuition deposit paid, to a private, Catholic, all-girls high school.
I thought it was what was expected of me and what I wanted, but then . . .

The lure of being one of the first girls accepted into a previously all-boys school, that had, as a major, Graphic Arts and Photography, was just too much to pass by.
And therein the first fork in the road appeared, taking me on a journey I might otherwise have missed.

For one thing, had I attended Nardin Academy, I would never have met my husband-to-be.
And although the outcome, many years later, was divorce, I wouldn't, today, have my three beautiful children if not for that very first fork in the path of my life.

My decision to attend public school, with boys, photography, and art, instead of private school with girls, church, and nuns, was a good one.

The things I learned at McKinley High School have remained part of me, and have kept me in good stead throughout the intervening years.
The many elements of graphic art and photography have woven their threads into the very fabric of who I am.

A teacher there once said something like: ' as you travel through life, you might think you have left art behind, but you will always come back to it because you love it and it is part of you.'
How right he was!

I have worked as both an amateur and a professional portrait photographer; my home makeovers have allowed me to rekindle all sorts of elements of design; when I had my classroom, I used art to motivate little ones using fabric, paint, and photography to ensure quality outcomes for their work; with the introduction of computers in the classroom, new vistas were found to expand on the traditional, classroom-contained lessons, allowing for publishing to a global audience, that included web design for on-line college applications.

I developed a course for teachers to help them make better use of the websites they had, drawing on information I learned in high school, about print advertising.

And here I am today, in the 21st century, exploring the uses of electronic means for manipulating art that might be 100 years old!
And creating new things from old and offering them to the world.

But this past week, a little bit of my roots came haunting me.
Lessons from the past, the lure of the finished portrait, and the desire to create - to make a beautiful image that will last for a lifetime, all came together to draw me out and away to photograph our granddaughter, Hannah.

And here she is.

I Learned Something Today

The day began much like any other.
I was working on on the computer much of the morning while simultaneously cutting out some sewing projects.
I was anxious to get a Treasury to support craftspeople on Etsy, so that means a lot of waiting.

In between cutting, I was browsing about in the forums on Etsy and came across a title I couldn't resist; something about not bothering to look at the Front Page any more.
Curious about such negativity, I read what the author had to say and it wasn't at all what I had expected to see.

She was saying she was upset that her recently listed products weren't showing up in the little mini-treasury that reveal things recently listed. Of course, I had thought she was going to say she was tired of seeing the same sellers featured on the Front Page over and over again while she languished along with the rest of the thousands of unknowns, ad so would not bother to look to see if her work was there.

Trying to offer support to her, I commented, in the forum, that I never really pay attention to that space on the Front Page, anyway, and that I doubted it would impact her sales one way or another.

She corrected me and said she personally bought many items once she saw the artists work in the tiny space. And she also said she had discovered a lot of new sellers that way, too.
That was the inspiration for a plan set into motion immediately: my new treasury would feature only items from the recently listed window. Fresh and new today, I would see what I could discover if I were more observant.
And wow - I was amazed! She was so right!

I don't know how long I sat there, glued to the ever-changing screen revealing goods just listed from all over the world.

I saw items from the New Zealand, Australia, United States, Canada
Canary Islands_____Italy_______ Finland _______Manila
_

. . . and so many more!

I tried to be quick and not lose what I liked best, which wasn't easy since the items change every 15 seconds! So it was with speed that I clicked on items, scrolled down to copy the item's number, and then click open the tab for my Poster Sketch, whereupon I pasted the item number in the tiny box.
And eventually, the treasury, New Today, was created.

The lesson learned today was to be more open minded about other people's opinions and obeservations. We are not all the same and although we all do things our way and we think it best, sometimes, our way is not the best way.

Halloween Memories: Buffalo & Williamsville New York

It's almost here: Halloween Night!
I can still remember the little poem my children learned in Pre-K:

On Halloween Night
The ghosts come out
Say, "Trick or Treat"
and then they shout-
"Boooooooo"!!!

I can close my eyes and smell what Halloween smells like: all crisp and cold, creating red, dripping noses, with smoke-filled, chilled air, from fireplaces burning wood to keep the chill away from inside rooms.
Stomping through piles of fallen leaves, making crunching, paper-like sounds as we pushed our way through them.
The occasional jump in a neatly piled leaf mountain near the road, and laughing as we made a mess of it all.
Those were simple days and exciting times for the little ones.

Although there is controversy regarding Halloween and many people believe it is an un-Christian-like night, kids only believe in the magic and make-believe of the evening.
All they want is a night to be someone they are not, and to run rampant throughout the neighborhoods, shouting and reveling in the fun of it all.
The eerie nightfall; other costumed characters; the scents and sounds of the evening; and of course, getting all of that candy!

My children were no different: they adored Halloween night. They were dressed-up in costumes I made for them, and carried flashlights and glow sticks and little pumpkin pails in which to collect their candy.
Tradition in our family had it that a pillowcase was used for candy collection, so I always carried three pillowcases and periodically, dumped the tiny collection pails into them, all through the evening.
We would walk in a safe neighborhood, usually where my sister lived, as we joined her children and the other cousins to trick-or-treat, all in the same area.
The older kids would take off on their own, while we strolled along with the younger children.
Sometimes, kind adults would offer the parents liquid refreshments to help keep them 'warm' on the cold, cold nights.
Those beverages were anything from wine, to mulled cider, to hot chocolate or coffee and all were welcomed by us! Since we weren't doing all the running our kids were engaged in, our older bones needed a little boost!

Throughout the years, my children were cats and pumpkins, prisoners and boxed Christmas gifts; fairies and skeletons, Princesses and chefs, but never a ghost. Not one of my children ever wanted to be a ghost, but oh how much I wanted one of them to be one!

When I was little ghost 'costumes' were standard fare! We would raid our mother's linens and steal white pillowcases, cut out two eyes, drop the cases over our heads, and we were off for a night of fun and frolic.
I don't remember mom ever chastising us for our indiscretions with her linens, but I know if my children had done that I would have been very angry, to say the least!
But I loved the ghosts in their simplicity and total coverage for anonymity!
And how much they reminded me of my own youth.

Ours was a different sort of Halloween from that of my children.
The costumes were mostly home-made and they represented inanimate objects, like TV sets, or spaceships. Or simple things like dogs, cats or teddy bears or babies, dolls, or Indians. Or scary things like witches, vampires, devils, and ghosts.
The closest thing you would see to an overly commercialized movie or TV character might be kids dressed up as Raggedy Ann an Andy dolls.
When compared to the costumes my childrens' friends had, costumes of my youth, were innocent and for the most part, non-controversial.
Schools didn't have to resort to limiting costumes to characters found in literature books.
Pretty much, that was all we had anyway.

We carried soap with us to soap the doors and windows of people who didn't offer candy.
Our parents forbid us from carrying the soap, but we sneaked it out of the house anyway.
We rarely used it though - we were too afraid of getting caught!
Some bad kids carried eggs and egged houses that were not offering treats.
They believed that was their 'trick,' I guess. We never did anything like that.

"Trick or Treat," we would shout as we pounded on doors or as we rang bells of the unsuspecting victims of the fright we believed we were causing.
They would open their doors and drop candy into our pillowcase sacks. Some were acting frightened, and some would question us, and all were friendly.

There were some families that actually invited you into their homes for warmed, mulled cider and a donut. I can remember a family who did that on Lexington Avenue in the city of Buffalo, New York and another one Norwood Avenue.
The ladies on Norwood opened-up their enclosed porch and served cider from a punch bowl and Freddies donuts.

Some people gave out candy corn, and some gave out smaller versions of our favorite candy bars: Reeses Peanut Butter Cups; Milky Way bars; Butterfinger; Heath; Snickers; Clark bars.

And some gave out our favorite candies: Good and Plenty; Milk Duds; Licorice, red and black; Dots; Mike and Ikes; fireballs; Tootsie Roll Pops; Safety suckers; peach stones; candy lipsticks. Some families gave pennies, or apples, or popcorn balls, and some gave gum.
But our favorite houses were the houses giving full sized candy bars.
The word would spread from group to group of kids: we all knew where the good candy was being given out and would race to get there before it was all gone!

It wasn't all a selfish, gluttonous evening. We also carried little milk cartons for UNICEF, into which the charitable would drop coins which we would carry to school with us to give back to our teachers.
We'd walk for blocks and blocks, unsupervised by adults, coming home tired and cold but all too ready to dump our sacks onto the floor and take a good long look at our loot.

Most of the time Halloween was icy cold and sometimes even snow was on the ground. The snow was the worst. You had to wear a coat over your costume and oh no, BOOTS too!
And you would be freezing and wet and it just wasn't the same as Halloween nights without snow. But either way, the scheme was the same; you were in it for as much as you could get!

When my children were young, someone was alway on hand to give out our own candy. This usually meant that the dads had all the fun of greeting the trick-or-treaters, while moms went out with the kids.

In order to have both parents go out with the kids, some families had grandparents man the doors and some trusting people simply left bowls of candy on their doorsteps with a note of instruction to help yourself to one treat and leave the rest to share with others.

When I was young, our parents remained at home, answering the door for the Halloween revelers, and we went out alone. As years went by, my older sisters stopped going out (except Debbie) and they helped with the door.
I think I stopped going out about the age of 12. I think Deb carried on right through High School!
In those days, kids teased you if you were still trick-or-treating at ages much above 11.

My own kids carried on as long as they had breath in their bodies!
I do believe Katie kept going the longest - maybe until she was about 20!

Preparation for the giving of treats began with a trip to the farmers of Western New York.
Our parents would take us out to the countryside to select our own pumpkins.
We weren't wealthy, but there was always enough money for each of us to have our own pumpkin to carve.
We would carve them in time for 'Beggars' Night.' This was traditionally the evening of the 30th of October - a night for brave young children with a thirst for rejection to try to get some extra treats.
The brave ones would go door-to-door, trick-or-treating, with the audacity of a Wall Street risk-taker: they knew the rewards could be good, if they got lucky!
They appeared on your doorstep asking for candy the night before the actual event.
In our house, we didn't give candy out on Beggars' Night. We would politely ask them to return the next evening.
But since we answered the door, they would simply scurry off.

They were luckier in homes where people were afraid of retaliation: soaped windows, et all, if they didn't hand out the goods. Those frightened people gave candy out on beggars night only to find they had none left for Halloween - so they would need to buy more or take a risk of getting soaped - or worse - egged.

Sometimes older kids used toilet paper to toss in trees which left eerie shreds of thin paper flying about on Halloween night.
In our neighborhood, since Halloween was very near to Election Day, the temporary voting booths were set out in places between the street curb and the public sidewalk.
(Do you remember them?)
We had one set in its rightful spot on the corner of Ashland and Highland Avenues.
One neighbor teenage boy climbed upon its roof and hurled water and worse on unsuspecting trick-or-treaters walking past.
Oh the merriment and tricks that were had on Beggar's Night!

But with out pumpkins carved, we would set about doing other traditions to prepare for the big night.
My mom and dad bought the candy, and with all of us sitting around the big harvest table, we sorted and packed; making tiny treat sacks for other kids to have from us.
We spread out white napkins and filled them with candy corn and other treats. Then we tied them securely with curling ribbon and made mini ghosts of the bundles.
The white bundles filled massive bowls and were set near the door awaiting the arrival of fiendish visitors.

Part of the fun of Halloween in those days was the preparation and anticipation of it all.

Here in England, Halloween used to be celebrated when my husband was a child, but it went out of favor for a while. Now, it is beginning a comeback and each year more and more shops are carrying items to decorate homes, and costumes, and candy.

I brought some of my decorations with me, and some, I have purchased since my arrival here two years ago.


This Halloween, we again have some candy from home, courtesy of our friends, Esther and Don. We have some candy corn and some mello creme pumpkins, and some Hershey's Kisses in the Hugs style.
I also purchased some candy bars with familiar American brands: Mars bars, (really Milky Way bars in disguise) and Twix.

Tonight, Jim, Katie, and I will wrap small bundles of candy in napkins, the same way we always did at our house when I was a girl, and fill a bowl with the precious bundles.
We'll carve our pumpkins and prepare for our little 'guest' tomorrow evening.
And the traditions carry on.