Courage!

Last year I purchased The Little Book Of Virtues perpetual calendar at the Hinesville, GA Goodwill.  I wrote a blog post on this:  The value of a Goodwill book?

I’m trying to keep up with using this perpetual calendar.  I keep it on the hutch of my computer desk, so I can look at it while I BLOGGGGGGG as my husband calls it. When I am a sitting here for hours he will ask me, “Are you working on your BLOGGGGGGG again?”

The little wooden soldier is from that long ago Prague shopping trip.  I had gotten a blue soldier and a red one for each of my sons.   They were never really much into my knickknacks gifts.  However, when we sent our oldest son to Russia for a study abroad he brought back several gifts for me – the red little Khokhloma box in the photo. He also gave me a Russian cookbook and a very beautiful tea-pot:

There is a red bird crystal tray from my time in Pershing in 1980-1981, behind the tea-pot – not sure if this was one from my husband or his friend.  His friend egged on my husband, by giving me pieces of this crystal as thank-you gifts for my husband and I allowing him to stay with us in our apartment.  He had unexpectedly found himself without an apartment, due to a romance gone wrong.  He needed a place to stay until he PCSd back to the States.  Each time the friend gave me a piece of crystal, my husband came home with a fancier piece the next day.  After several days of this, I told both of them to quit with the crystal competition.

In case you couldn’t read the quote for today’s date on my perpetual calendar:

“Without belittling the courage with which men have died, we should not forget those acts of courage with which men… have lived.  The courage of life is often a less dramatic spectacle than the courage of a final moment; but it is no less a magnificent mixture of triumph and tragedy.”

— John F. Kennedy