"Good Luck" L'Oreal!

L'Oreal has an interview at the Leawood Police Dept. this week!!!!
I thought it'd be appropriate to post some tasty pictures from, what else, "Good Luck"!!! Go get 'em L'Oreal!!

With thanks to Val & Eliza for making their stash-o-caps available!

For Liz & Kathleen

Kathleen - you said your mom wanted to know where this picture was, so here it is! Mrs. Alvezi's 3rd grade class 1972-1973. I'm in the white shirt in the front row with the braids, and your mom is standing behind me in the purple pant suit w/ the white ruffle blouse. That's how long your mom and I have been friends!! Incidentally, I'm still wearing braids, even as I write this post. Here's some trivia about some of the kids in my class:

The two girls sitting next to me on the right, are both named Terry (one's cut off on the edge) & both got pregnant and left school in the 10th grade, and the blonde girl sitting next to me on the left was pregnant when we graduated.

I had a wicked crush on the boy in the back row wearing the green shirt. His name was Jimmy Wood, he took my bus and lived down the road from me.

Nearly all the kids in this picture started kindergarten with me and graduated with me too.

Looking back in time

Practicing for college. ca. summer of 1965, at my parents' house. It's all about the beads and the bling, baby. ca. 1966, taken at my parents' beachhouse at Springhill Beach. My mom says that I was in mid-scream when she shot this....my cousin Skee used to tease me to tears, and I think cousin Jeannie (his wife) gave me her jewelry box to play with to quiet me down.

Cowboys......

....and Indians. OK so it's not very politically correct, but what can I say, it was 1968 or so. The above picture was taken with the field at my parents' house behind me, when it was still a field. By the time my parents sold that lot in 1999, it was completely overgrown with trees and bushes. I played there all the time. Oh, and my mom's kitchen looks exactly like what you see in this photo, over 40 years later. Same melon-coloured counter, same kitchen table & chairs, same stove.

"Queen of the Entire Planet"!! Fall, 1969. My Aunt Stella lived in London and brought me the crown when she visited us. Dig that short hemline. No wonder I have so many pictures with my slip or underwear showing.

For the love of god please get me outta this frilly dress!!! Dontcha love Nana's bouffant hairdo & silver shoes, and my mom's quintessentially 1970's orange outfit? Taken in Yonkers, NY outside Nana's apartment building.

Always the tomboy. I got this football uniform for my 4th birthday in 1968. We spent my birthday in Yonkers because my grandfather had just passed away. This is Nana's apartment. The red "Mary Jane" shoes were my mother's idea.

Finding treasure at Springhill Beach. I still love to beachcomb....I even dream about beachcombing! ca. 1969. It was a badge of honour to be able to walk barefoot on all those rocks; you could always tell the tourists; they were the ones wearing old sneakers or flip flops in the water while the local children ran barefoot across the rocks.

My 10th birthday in 1974. My parents got me those red, white and blue beads for my doorway. They are currently hanging in our den doorway downstairs. I loved this outfit too. Brian, the perv, thinks I look "really hot" in this photo.

Roots

(Cue Italian music)....
This is a picture of my maternal great-great grandparents (center), great grandmother (right), aunt and uncles.
Back left to right: Frank, Vincent, Joe & Salvatore DiMartino
Front left to right: Teresa (DePaulo), Angelina, Sabatino and Filomena DiMartino, although by this time my great-grandmother was married to Giovanni Marganella.

My maternal family hails from the tiny town of Corvara, in the Abruzzi Mountains, on the Adriatic Sea. My grandmother was 5 when she came over from Italy in 1911 with her mother and 6 year old sister. They arrived July 26, 1911 on the ship "Berlin", which departed from Naples about 10-14 days prior. I have no idea how they got from Corvara to Naples, but the entire journey must have been difficult for a woman and her two small daughters, especially since they were only able to afford "steerage" class. Giovanni married Filomena in Italy. He was the caretaker of estates on Park Hill Avenue in Yonkers, New York, and was sponsored to come here by the Celli Family. Like many immigrants, my family was processed at Ellis Island. My mom and I went to Ellis Island in 2004 to take the tour and it was fascinating to me to think that my grandmother walked those same halls as a small child, waiting for entry to the promised land. Her name is on the wall there, as are the names of many of my other relatives.

The rest of the DiMartinos settled in Connecticut; Filomena was the only one who settled in New York. I've been told that my great great grandmother, Angelina, was a midwife.

This is my grandfather, Anthony Marsh. His last name was Americanized from either Marsharello or Masciarelli (I have not been able to determine which it was), but he was born in Yonkers, not Italy. This photo was taken when he was 17, in 1914. I have only vague memories of him. He and my grandmother were separated, and he died of lung cancer a day or so before my 4th birthday, in 1968.

This is my grandmother, Mary Marsh. Her name was originally Maria. Her brothers and sisters all had Italian names but most of them were Americanized. Their names were: Ersilia (Celia), Maria (Mary), Anna, Emilio (William but we called him Dick), Angelo (Charlie), Adeline (Lee), Giovanni (John) and Louise. Only my Uncle Dick and Aunt Louise are still living; my Uncle Dick turned 93 this year. My grandmother died in 1989.

Here is a "4 generations" picture, of my grandmother Mary, my great grandmother Filomena, my Aunt Gloria (mom's sister) and cousin Karen, who we call Cookie. Filomena died in 1950 at the age of 67.

My great grandmother was widowed at the age of 37 with 8 children!!! Their youngest, Louise, was only 2 and has no memory of her father. My great grandfather, Giovanni, died in 1922 of throat cancer. My great grandmother did beadwork to support the family, and my grandmother also worked in a bead shop, hand sewing beads to gowns that were later sold in New York City's poshest shops. Small wonder I myself am a bead-a-holic; beads clearly run in my blood.

When I was a kid, in the late 60's and early 70's, I absolutely loved going down to Yonkers to see everyone. We would make the rounds and visit all the aunts and uncles; and boy did we eat!!! Homemade gnocci, lasagna, veal cutlets/parm...bread... and the pastries!!! Plus my grandmother's amazing pizzelle cookies. Those were such fun times and I am blessed to have been so close with such an extended family.

My cousins were all older than me; most of them were born in the late 40's and in the 50's, but I've always maintained contact with them. The only cousins my age are Sharon (1963) and Diane (1965). The next wave of cousins arrived in the 1970's and 80's as my older cousins had kids. I just counted and I presently have approximately 38 cousins!!!!

In the 1980's, my family began to scatter to the four winds. Some went to to Florida & Connecticut, some passed away very young, Aunt Louise has lived in the San Francisco Bay Area since the 1950's. The cousins married and moved as well. Now their children are getting married and having children themselves and I'm really starting to feel OLD!

Yosemite

Just going thru some photo albums and came across my pictures from Yosemite. The first few were taken in August, 1988, when my dad and I went on a 3 week trip to California. When we left Lake Tahoe, we drove on the eastern side of the Sierra Nevada Mountains, hugging the California/Nevada border. I kept seeing these spectacular cliffs off in the distance and I finally pulled over to take a picture. Imagine my surprise when we drove through them, as this is Tioga Pass, the eastern entrance to Yosemite.
We'd just entered Yosemite from Tioga Pass, and this is looking west. This area is called "Tuolumne Meadows". It took me quite awhile to learn how to pronounce "Tuolumne" (Too-ALL-um-nee).This is Half Dome, very popular with rock climbers. This was taken from the Glacier Point overlook, high above the valley. It was hard for me to choose just a few pictures because you really can't get a bad shot from this height. I felt like I was on top of the world up there! We drove to the top, we did not hike!

Looking down at Yosemite Valley from Glacier Point.

This is a good shot of the valley, where you can see how the glacier scoured it out.

The next pics were taken in April, 1992, when my parents came out to visit us. The snow was melting and the waterfalls in the park were amazing. The rock face on the left is El Capitan, and there's Half Dome in the distance on the right.

A serene early morning scene in the valley.

Brian and I went on a hell-hike to Mirror Lake, while my parents had a lovely time browsing in the museum. It was a hell-hike because I was deathly ill with bronchitus. Before we went on the hike, I had to go to the Yosemite Valley Health Clinic to be seen by a doctor because I was so sick with fever, earache (which ain't no picnic when you are in the mountains and constantly changing elevations) and bronchitus. Still, we went on the hike. At the time, California was about 6 years into a drought, and Mirror Lake had all but dried up. It was very anti-climatic, but I managed to get one good shot while there. Upper Yosemite Falls and a herd of mule deer in the meadow.

Unfortunately, Yosemite is in danger of being loved to death by the tourists. The trash is disgusting. Brian and I would veer off to pick up discarded pop cans and napkins. When my dad and I went in the summer, there was so much traffic in the Valley that it was hard to get from one place to another, and the river was choked with people on inner tubes and floats. There has been talk of having a yearly lottery to only allow a certain amount of visitors in each year, they'd have to leave their cars at the entrances of the park and take a shuttle to see the sites. It's a good idea. I would give anything to see Yosemite in it's natural, pristine state like John Muir did in the 1800's.

"I'm an Upstart!"

Val wanted to see some pics of me when I was really into punk rock. The date on the back of these photos is Oct. 14, 1981. I was a senior in High School, and age 16. My b-day was not for another month. As you can see, I was "juggylicious", yet I still had no boyfriends!! Why my family harangued me about my weight I'll never understand because I look back on these pictures and I was not fat. Mom never could take a picture w/o cutting off the top of someone's head.

Here I am with the full-on "cat eye" makeup, including bright purple eye shadow. And my beloved army jacket which I think my mother tossed out after removing the pins and patches.I did an incredibly stupid & immature thing. In Feb. 1982, I started going out with a punk rock dude from the next town over; he too was a senior in high school. We were really tight for those first six months; we fell in love right away, and he'd even asked me to marry him about 2 months into our relationship. Then I went off to college in Maine in August, 1982, and our relationship completely fell apart. He dumped me in Feb. 1983. I was so heartbroken that I destroyed every single photograph of us, him, our friends, etc. I even destroyed the negatives. I wanted no reminders of my time with him. So my photo albums have a huge gap, from late 1981 to the fall of 1982 at St. Joe's. These 3 photos are all that survived of my punk days.

Ol' Man Winter Ain't Done With Us Yet!

This was the scene yesterday, Feb. 28, on Interstate 90 at Snoqualmie Pass, in the Cascade Mountains.

40-50 cars and semi's were involved.....the highway was closed for hours. Most of the highway was compact snow and ice, but this elevated section was frozen solid and the chain reaction accident occurred when the cars and trucks hit the ice.

Fortunately there were only minor injuries and no one was killed.

The North Puget Sound area was walloped with snow overnight and most of the schools were closed in the Everett and Snohomish area. We had a lot of snow flurries down here, but fortunately it didn't stick, although I did drive part of the way home in near-whiteout conditions, last night.

The last of the B&W's

Some of these scanned kind of crooked, despite my best efforts to get the lid shut before they slid!! Lamp post on Pacific Avenue, Tacoma, WA - 2000

Quinault, WA - 2005 (the cemetery itself was very small but very picturesque and peaceful)

The sign had been knocked askew, but I decided to frame it to make Boston look crooked. 1985.

Nantasket, Massachusetts - 1988. I call this one "Stairway to Heaven".

This was painted on an old, run down building in West Berkeley, CA - 1996.

An alley off O'Farrell Street, near Union Square, San Francisco, CA - 1992.

Napier Lane, San Francisco's only wooden street, located on the back side of Telegraph Hill - 1995.

In the wild Barbary Coast days of the late 1800's, stories are told of men being lured to the cottages on Napier Lane by ladies of the night and drugged. They'd wake up well out to sea on a ship headed for the Orient. Thus, the term "Shanghai'ed" was born. The tourists have no idea that this part of T-graph Hill exists.

BC Legislative Buildings, Victoria, BC - 2005.

I loved how the sun was hitting the side of her face, but I confess, I don't know who the statue is supposed to be. It's on the top of Parliament in Victoria. I have another photo of this same statue, but with a seagull on its head, so the statue is looking up at the bird, as if to say, "please don't crap on my head!" Unfortunately, I think that ship has sailed.