Thimble 006 Broadway New York City

This is another thimble brought by daughter Laura and her boyfriend Ivan from their trip to New York to visit a cousin in November, 2010.

Over 35 years ago I got to go to Broadway and see a play. I will never forget it and my dream now is to go back and see The Lion King there.

There are other cities with fine theaters and plays being performed all the time but I think Broadway is still the greatest place to see a play or at least on the same level as London.

Thimble 005 London

Daughter Laura and her boyfriend Ivan brought me this thimble from London in August, 2006. Their trip was quite an adventure but I am sure they agree that the city is fascinating.

But this month the big news is London and the Olympics! What a great time to remember the city. I used to ask my students to compare London and Paris and played the devil's advocate, always saying that I preferred London. Most of them thought Paris was the winner and I think it is truly magnificent but I have to agree with Samuel Johnson who said the following in 1777:

"Why, Sir, you find no man, at all intellectual, who is willing to leave London. No, Sir, when a man is tired of London, he is tired of life; for there is in London all that life can afford."
— Samuel Johnson

There is so much to do and see there, that it would take a lifetime to do it all. How I love the museums and parks, the river Thames and the pubs, the theaters and the street markets, The Tower, Buckingham Palace. The list goes on and on and on.

A few years back a group of students and I went for a weekend and we had a great time!  We took the sightseeing bus all around the city and got an overview of what there is to see. We went to see The Mousetrap by Agatha Christie, the oldest running play in London. We went on a boat on the river and ate fish and chips at a restaurant nearby. We had a beer in a pub and went to a couple of markets. Here we are outside a shop near Picadilly Circus.

Nowadays, these weeks in July and August 2012 everyone has an eye on The Eye and London. The Olympics are in full swing and London 2012 are the first Olympics where all of the countries have a woman competing - a first in history. Michael Phelps has broken the record for the most medals ever won by an athlete. The second basketball dream team is breaking records as well. They won a game by the most points ever.

I am sure there will be more historic moments at the London Olympics. London beat out Madrid for these games but I can't help but hope that Madrid gets the Olympics for the year 2020 and we can talk about great things happening in the city where I live now, with an Olympic stadium just a few miles from my home. Maybe I can even get to see another basketball dream team play in person.

But for now,  I recommend a visit to London. I guarantee you will never get tired of doing things there if you do go.

Thimble 004 Oklahoma

I bought this thimble on one of my many visits back home.

As I said in my first post, I was born in Iowa but many people think of me as being from Oklahoma. We moved to Oklahoma when I was 6 so I lived there most of my youth. Since my father was from there too it seemed natural to feel like we were Okies too.

I started this post around Father's Day and what better way to remember my Dad than to speak about Oklahoma.

No matter where he travelled to, California, Florida, Iowa, Italy or Spain, he always said 'There's no place like home' when he stepped on Okie soil again. When we used to drive over the border from Kansas into Oklahoma, you could almost see his heart jump with joy to be back in 'his' state. He just had that red dirt in his veins and no matter where he was, there was a big ole country boy inside of him, hollering to get back home.

He was born in a town called Friendship. I'm not making that up. It was a little town in southern Oklahoma near Lehigh, Coalgate and Atoka. There were lots of coal mines in the area and it was a boom area in its heyday but when I got to go there in the late fifties, it was pretty small and getting smaller. Nowadays Lehigh appears in some books about ghost towns of Oklahoma, that is how small it has got to be. It's still there though.

Oklahoma is most famous for oil, wheat, cattle and of course nowadays for the Oklahoma City Thunder NBA team. It's also known for its tornadoes. When I lived there I was terrified of them but I have to admit I never saw one 'live', so it must be harder to be in one than it seems.

Thunder, though, is the perfect name for an Oklahoma team. When thunder rolls in Oklahoma, it sounds like a freight train coming up at you, over and over again.

I guess I love Oklahoma because Dad did. Now that I am so faraway from there, I can smell the rain and see the golden, waving wheat in my mind's eye. I do think there are few landscapes that can beat that. I cherish that memory and then I understand why he was always so happy to see 'Welcome to Oklahoma' as he crossed the border and came back to his home.

Thimble 003 Toledo, Spain

This is a thimble I brought back from Spain to my grandmother to add to her collection.

It's made in the typical Toledo gold way called 'Damasquinado'. I will share a link here for you to see how it is made. The video is in Spanish but if you skip to minute 8, you can see how they make it, with 24 k. gold filament that is incrusted into the piece they are making.

Toledo was and is famous for its steel and sword-making as well. In fact, before air travel was so controlled, you could see lots of tourists going back to the States with their Toledo swords in hand as they boarded planes. Nowadays you have to pack them in your bags and can't carry them on. Many swords for movies are also made in Toledo.

Toledo is a magical city with so many sights to see that it is impossible to begin. My favorite places are El Greco's house and the cathedral, which is one of the largest and most important in Spain. The town is on a hill and you can't miss a view of it from the Parador on the other side of the river Tajo. In the link to Toledo, Spain, you can see many photos of how spectacular the city is.

El Greco lived in Toledo and painted the view of the city as well as his famous elongated figures that you can see in the Prado Museum in Madrid and in Toledo itself. My favorite is the Burial of the Count of Orgaz, which you can see in the Church of Santo Tomé in Toledo.

Walking through the streets of Toledo you can almost feel the magic of how it must have felt hundreds of years ago when it was a city inhabited by the Christians, the Jewish and the Muslim people. It has so many little shops that if you stopped in even half of them, you would need a month to do it.

During one week in June there is a contest where the inner courtyards compete to decide which one is the most beautiful. If you are lucky enough to be in Toledo then, I highly recommend seeing the patios. They are usually closed to the public but during this week, you can see how they are decorated with flowers and fountains. Do watch the video about the patios with music by Paco de Lucia in the link on the right!

Don't forget to take your best, most comfortable walking shoes! You will be glad you did.

Once again, this little thimble holds a whole world in it: the world of a city so steeped in history and beauty, that my words can never do it justice.

Thimble 002 Paris

My colleague and fellow teacher Nick brought me this thimble in the summer of 2010. Thanks to family, students and friends, my thimble collection is a work in progress.

My first visit to Paris was when I celebrated my 17th birthday there on a tour with AIMS International, out of Oklahoma City. On that trip we went to London, Paris, Barcelona, Madrid and Lisbon.

That was the beginning of my love affair with Spain and Madrid.

But back to Paris...

What a city! Who can compare it to anything else? Oops! An English teacher can! I make my students choose between Paris and London to practice the comparative adjectives. Which city is more beautiful I ask. And I also defend London as part of my devil's advocate role. By the way, I always lose.

For people with kids, Paris has wonderful theme parks. You have Disneyland Paris of course but also the Asterix Park, which is really fun. The roller coaster Goudurix is one of the best, with 7 great loops! Not that I would ever go on it again in my life - once is enough for me. But kids love those things so if you do ever go there, it's worth the ride.

Of course you also have the great museums like the Louvre but my favorite is the D'Orsay Museum. It's an old train station turned into a museum and you can see Monet, Manet, Degas, Gauguin and lots of other Impressionist painters' works there.

A little mind game: can you imagine walking around Paris at night and suddenly running into Cole Porter, Ernest Hemingway, Salvador Dali, Gertrude Stein, F. Scott Fitzgerald or other greats of the 20th century? Woody Allen managed to make it possible in Midnight in Paris and shows how it might have been to be a part of their lives in Paris in the 20s. If you want to see what it was like, it's a must see.

There are other films where Paris is one of the main characters: An American in Paris, Forget Paris and French Kiss and even Casablanca includes Paris as the beginning of Rick and Ilsa's love affair.

It's romantic and beautiful, full of magic and history.

It's amazing as one of the commenters says on this blog, how one little object can generate so many ideas! Look how many things fit into one little Paris thimble! And I haven't even mentioned the Eiffel Tower, Notre Dame cathedral. the river Seine, the Pompidou Center and so on...

Speaking of commenters, I'd love to hear from anyone else who has been there and what their favorite parts of the city are. Or from anyone who dreams of going there one day and what they would like to see. As they say in Spanish 'To dream is free' - it doesn't cost a penny! Here's our chance to dream of Paris!

Thimble 001 Iowa

It all started in Iowa! My grandmother was born near Cedar Rapids, Iowa. My mother was born in Cedar Rapids, Iowa and I was born there too. So this thimble is a fitting start for this blog.

My grandmother, Bess Zach, started a thimble collection many years ago. She had several wooden stands where she displayed them in her living-room on a farm near Rowley, Iowa.

She put small papers inside each one to identify who gave them to her and when. I have copied this practice but in a move we made a few years back some of the papers fell out and so not all of them are identifiable today.

But this one is obvious and as today is Mother's Day, 2012, it's a perfect start for my blog.

A few thoughts on Iowa.

I have to laugh when I remember how the famous Iowan writer Bill Bryson wrote, 'I come from Des Moines. Someone had to.' Cedar Rapids is even smaller so someone had to come from there too I suppose.

Another laugh I had several years ago was when a student told me she had learned English 'in the boondocks - Cedar Rapids, Iowa'. I then told her I was born 'in the boondocks'.

But joking aside, for me Iowa was paradise.

We moved away from there when I was 6 years old and it was always my lost paradise. We went back to visit many times and my grandparent's home was the one that was always there for us.  Going back to Iowa was a constant and remained a special place for my brothers and me all our lives.

To this day my memories are warm: pheasants alongside the road, soft rains and green fields, pigs and corn, feeding the chickens with my grandmother.

There are the cold memories too: my brothers and cousins making snow tunnels in the four foot high snow, freezing as I walked to the park to ice skate and never putting on the skates because it was so cold and returning home.

Then there are the Czech heritage memories of kolaches, and rolickies and all those goodies we loved so much, visiting all our relatives and talking to them in their gardens and living-rooms.

So Iowa is and will remain paradise to me: childhood, family and fun.

And I dedicate this blog to my Iowa heritage and Grandma and Mom.

And to my children for encouraging me to do a blog about the thimbles I have collected over the years.

Happy Mother's Day to all the mothers out there.