PhotoStamps — Creative Christmas Giving

Following the model I used for Christmas PhotoStamps in 2009, this year for many of my Christmas presents I used stamps.com (in the USA, and its Canadian counterpart) to create real postage stamps — featuring pictures that I knew would be special to each of my loved ones, mostly borrowed from FaceBook. In my 2009 article I used the “3D cube navigator” for presentation, but since this time I only made four stamps, I think I'll just go with the "flat out" approach.

The stamp on the left shows both Jean and Ellis doing their favorite things - horseback riding and sailing. This was an easy one though I did have to adjust (rotate) Ellis because Photo Stamps have to be square in shape.

Also easy is making stamps for grand-parents, in this case the stamp I made for my sister Nanci on the right. I won't name the grand child 'cept to say that she's the real cutie we got to know this past summer on vacation in Haliburton.

On the right is the stamp I made for my sweetie and I. It features a wooden statue that Lynnie took a fancy to in Montreal, and a shadow selfie of me in my role as Shaman at a recent New England Legacy Discovery.

This year Jillian got engaged to her longtime beau, Mike Nedoroscik. So here they are about to go out zip lining in Costa Rica. The Ring is shown as an inset as is the cake writing from their celebration at The Pig.

I guess it's not something that you can do every year, not to mention that "no one" uses actual postage stamps anymore... but I still think that photo stamps is a good way to put a little creative juice to work and come up with something memorable — especially for people who already have everything you could possibly imagine.

The Season of Joy 2013

There are at least three things that I'm involved with as this end-of-Fall before-Christmas season approaches, and though they're not directly related, I'm just going to talk about them all in this post.

 
The first is when I unwrap the sandwich boards for the Groton Community Christmas Concerts that I keep stored in my shed for most of the year. Then, round about Thanksgiving, I clean them up and rework the dates in preparation for putting them out in early December, around 10 days before the 3 concerts we put on.
The picture on the right — my first published selfie — was my stake in the ground for writing this article, and I used it during the Fall as a place to direct people to when they asked me about the timing of the 3 concerts we give each year in early December.

On the left is the traditional "flyer" that we have for the GCCC every year, citing the names of the songs that we sing in the concerts. And though I don't have many pictures of us singing during the concert itself, I did take this short video clip of our encore, "Down The Bethlehem Rd", as seen from standing on the stage.

The 2^nd Fall tradition for me is that I work with my men's team to take part in an annual community service project called "Operation ELF", where ELF stands for "Everybody Loves Families". The part of ELF that I did with my team this year was to go shopping for needy kids, fulfilling what they'd put on their "Wish Lists" as best we could from the fundraising we do. Click here for a picture I painted of this outing.

As per our Unitarian Universalist tradition, near the beginning of each service someone lights the chalice and speaks about whatever aspect of their Putting Faith Into Action that they want to. So in order to promote the GCCC, I signed up to do the Chalice lighting in our UUC service on Dec 15^th since that was the first day of the performances. In the full text of my Chalice Lighting I linked the GCCC and ELF together in a salute to "the Joy of Giving thru Community Service" and painted this picture of singing in the GCCC: "I stand up on the stage and see all those community faces… They show up tired and worn out from long days… But as the concert unfolds they begin to relax, and before you know it they are beaming with "The Joy of the Season".

Indeed — The Season of Joy 2013 — Let us all count the ways that we are all truly blessed.
 

Palm Sunday In Groton

Great service at our UUC in Groton today. I wanted to capture my palm frond after the service so here's my snapshot from right in front of the church - with about 1' of snow still on the ground.

The other thing that happened today was that I finally got rid of the binder twine I'd been using for our "Pammett" sign, and replaced it with chain that looks a lot better and I hope will require less maintenance.

New England Winter At Its Best — Ice Skating On A Frozen Lake

 
Though it's been really cold in New England for the last 2 weeks or so, today we had a glorious time frolicking on our local lake. Actually, we went out twice. The first time we had no idea we could skate, so we just went to commune with the ice fishermen who told us all about their passion for being out there on days like today, a feeling that we totally shared. We also heard about how they eat whatever they catch (as long as the fish are big enough) unless they catch bass in which case they put them back so as not to offend the Bass Gods. Oh... OK...

And during that walk, our Aussie friends from Down Under took this panorama. This is about a 180° panorama, and is not 'perfect' (because someone allegedly moved at the wrong time). But this is an example of an "easy" panorama because it was produced automagically "with just one sweep, capturing more like video", and I think it's a pretty great example of how far technology has come.

Later on that day, once I discovered that I could dust off my old hand-me-down ice skates, my sweetie and I went back for another couple of hours — gliding across the ice with ease, and warming ourselves on a bonfire that we made alongside the shore. I have some other pictures from the afternoon and will likely post those tomorrow.

Truly, this is New England Winter at its best.
 

Using My Creative Energies To Promote Unitarian Universalism

 
The story behind the webApp whose image you see below started when a set of very colorful and inspirational posters or "banners" suddenly appeared in the sanctuary of our Church, the First Parish Church of Groton, in Groton, Ma. I'm sure they were long in the works for those who created them, but at that point they were all new to me and I admit I was quite taken by them. They were the inspiration for what I describe in this posting. 

What fun — and what a learning experience — it has been creating the page that I call: http://bit.ly/WhatIsUU. From the beginning, I dreamed of having a web page where you could just see each of those banners as an animation because that's exactly how I 'see' these values and principles playing out in our UUC community.  

A secondary motivation that I had for WhatIsUU is that I was looking for an excuse to brush up on my JavaScript because it has been a while since I used the technology and because I wanted this to be a standalone page — using client-side scripting, if necessary — but otherwise not needing any special support from the web server.  

And then there were the end-user requirements: I wanted someone to be able to really read the page, so that meant that I had to do more than just have it be a picture annimation — because people read at different speeds. Hence "next / prev" vs. slide show modes which are mutually-exclusive and intended to support both reading models. To add a little flexability to the slide show there is a DropDown where you can chose how long the WebApp waits before it shows you the next UU banner.  

A final JavaScript challenge was to see if I could provide a search capability on the page where the thing that you end up searching for is a function of which banner you're looking at. For that one I tried several different techniques, and although each one of them quickly led to a solution for one browser, typically it wouldn't work with other common browsers. That's why I ended up with what you see on the lower right-hand part of the page where it says "Find Out More".
 

Auntie '•' & Uncle Buster — May You Rest In Peace

 
Tomorrow in Southern Mass we'll be having the memorial service for a great lady whom I've had the privilege of knowing for some 35 years now — my wife's Auntie '•' — as she liked to call herself.

In this picture you can really see Auntie Dot's spirit — the “I see you” fire in her eyes. She looked at you with a kind gentle love, a sense of genuine interest in you. I always remember talking to her and getting a real sense that she cared about me and really wanted to know who I was. She had a great smile and a warm, genuine way of being. For a more recent picture of Auntie '•' along with some of her extended family, click here for my blog article about when Auntie Dot turned 100 years old.

Sept 2nd : As it turns out, the memorial service was to celebrate the lives of both Auntie '•' and her beloved husband, Uncle Buster. Though he passed away in Jan 2002, she kept his urn with her for more than a decade because of their commitment to be laid to rest together. It was very sweet. To the right, above, one of the great granddaughters sings “Somewhere Over The Rainbow” as her Dad accompanies her on guitar. Below that the Chadwick gravestone holds an amazing testimonial about this family : Buster's name does not appear on the stone so that the name of a dearly beloved family friend would have a place of honor for eternity. We sang beloved hymns, prayed together, and many more family stories were told during the service. It was very inspirational. It left me with an intense feeling of pride just being part of a family whose legacy of Faith and Strong Family Values goes (literally) back to immigrants who came over on the Mayflower. As '•' clearly documented in her monumental genealogy “Hold High The Torch — The Genealogy of 350 Years of OUR REDFIELDS in America”, the grand children with us now are the 14th generation. She also published a truly amazing book about her place on the Redfield family tree : “The Last Twig”, among others.

The impressive Chadwick gravestone, dating from 1887, is just one of the name markers at the site where they held the memorial service. Several others names — including Buster (Frank Goddard Chadwick, Jr.) and '•' (Doris Redfield Chadwick) — are on flat markers visible on the ground.

I have posted some more pictures that Ruth gave us after the memorial service so click here for snapshots (or the SlideShow) of these treasured images of (mostly) the Alexander side of the extended Chadwick / Redfield family.

In closing, let us all be grateful… and remember the responsibility that comes with belonging to such an amazing family — to live those family values in our own lives as we pass them on to our future generations.
 

KevLyn at Casa Cecchi in Italy

So far, all I've done is create this picture for my blog story. And/but I will get to writing this... soon.