Posted on

Social Security, Disability, and Unemployment

Social Security Disability SSI and Unemployment

When you received SSI payments every month it means you have some sort of disability either physical or mental.

If you are one of the lucky few who can maintain some sort of employment part time, you must submit your original pay stubs to the SSI office. This way the amount of money you receive monthly is correctly calibrated.

These check stubs must be turned in each month either in person at the Social Security Office or through the mail. Always keep a copy of your check stubs. Paperwork can always get misplaced.

The easiest and safest way to receive your SSI checks is in your checking or savings account. This way you do not have to worry about your check being lost or stolen.

If you do not turn in your pay stubs you are probably have an SSI overpayment. This means in simple terms you are in deep trouble. SSI wants their money back. They will start recouping their money every month. They will come up with an amount which will be removed before you receive your money. Or you may lose your SSI altogether.

If by some slim chance you are receiving unemployment while you are receiving SSI you must report your earnings to the unemployment office. This is done by including the amount of money earned on the unemployment form you feel out when you receive your checks. Then let us take it one step further. You must give SSI a copy of every unemployment check stub.

The SSI money comes from one government plan and the unemployment money comes from another plan. If you think that it is government money and your income will be automatically adjusted by the computer, you are mistaken.

When your unemployment has ended you must supply the SSI or Social Security office with the copy of the unemployment. Then and only then can your account be adjusted properly.

Over payments are easy to do. Be smart. If you are receiving SSI monthly payments make sure you make sure it is reported to SSI.

You can fill out a waiver form so you can appeal your claim. When you are on SSI you must be able to be able to receive enough money to survive. Meaning home and food.

Thank you for reading my article. Please feel free to read any of my numerous articles on various subjects.

Copyright  Linda E. Meckler updated 2021

Posted on

Smile

Be happy smile the pandemic is winding down. Soon we will  be able to get rid the of the masks when we are inside a store. I for one can’t wait what about you?

I can see myself going back to my normal activities with people in groups. With visiting my family and giving them a hug and receiving a hug in return.

I had my two shots and I felt relief. I felt like life will go on and hugs and kisses will go on and on.

What do you think?

Thank you for reading my article and smile

Copyright Linda Meckler 2021

Posted on

Anorexia, Bulimia and Teenagers

Anorexia Nervosa is an eating disorder characterized by obsession with weight loss and low self-esteem

Anorexia or Bulimia simple means maintaining control over one’s own body. It is a destructive way to treat your body; especially your organs which are affected directly from starving yourself, using enemas, water and overuse of diet pills. Bulimia sufferer’s binge and purge to keep their weight down.

Just like any other addiction you have to get the person involved to admit to their addiction. In this case you must get your teenager to admit to this huge problem. This is the first step to solving this problem.

Teenagers become young women and men. If the Anorexia is not stopped in the teenage years, it will continue over into young adulthood. Girls have this disease more than boys. Teenagers can have this disease from any walk of life or ethnic group, but it is mainly Caucasian teenage girls who come from the middle to upper class.

The girls which are in plays, on television, play an instrument, dance, sing or in general out in the spot light are the ones which are the ones who will be easily reached into becoming obsessed about their weight.

One of the examples of this is Karen Carpenter who was a famous singer and drummer. She started her career as a teenager and one day she read an article in a local newspaper she was chubby. Ms. Carpenter had been on the top ten hit songs in the early seventies. This little article caused Ms. Carpenter to become obsessive about her weight. She became anorexic becoming grossly underweight while purging and binging; she damaged her heart and died of a heart attack at age 32.

Exercising may become obsessive to the teenage girl to burn calories and become thin. But even when the teenager is thin, she must be thinner in her mind. Excessive physical exercise can become dangerous, if the teenager becomes weak from lack of food. This is definitely a mental condition that could have started in many ways.

Reasons For Anorexia:

  • Mental disorder.
  • Physical disorder.
  • Child abuse.
  • Low self-esteem.
  • A diet that went out of control.
  • Feeding problems as an infant.
  • Family interference.

This does not leave out the ordinary teenager who just wants to belong and not be overweight. This is the teenager with low self-esteem and can’t quite pull his/her self out of this bottomless pit.

Teenage Girls

When teenage girls read fashion magazines where the models are pencil thin, this is when the teenage girls think they need to be as thin as the models. This is not true. These women chose this profession and the choice to stay pencil thin to keep their employment.

Now fashion is changing. There are magazines for the normal full to plus size women. They even have fashion magazines with normal to full plus women to show off women’s sizes. When you think about it, how many girls are pencil thin in the real world? This is one of the ways where these girls get idea’s they had to be pencil thin to look like these fashion models. In many cases in the fashion magazines the model’s photos have been photo shopped to make them thinner and their skin blemish free.

Medical Research

The human brain is where research is being conducted. The brain is complex.

Parts Of The Brain

Cerebral hemisphere

Thalamus

Hypothalamus

Pituitary

Pons

Medulla

Midbrain

Cerebellum

Spinal Cord

The hypothalamus is a part of the brain which dysfunctions.

It’s linked closely with the pituitary gland to control many of the body functions.

It monitors and controls your sleep cycle.

Omeostasis means running your body smoothly.

Nutritional Training

This is where the schools, parents, medical people need to start being trained into good nutrition. It should be part of their medical training, where the parents need to take an active interest in their teenagers eating habits.

There are other ways to lose weight and keep it off besides starvation, binging and purging. This is the number one problem in America today, either being anorexic or obese. There is too much junk food flashed in young adults faces from everywhere from television, movies, magazines, and television.

Teenagers think everything they put into their mouths will make them fat. They progress into a state of starvation where they can’t push the food into their mouth’s fast enough. This is what is called binging. This is followed by sticking their finger down their throat and vomiting. This is where the overwhelming medical problems start.

Parents

As a parent you must keep track of your teenagers’ various activities. You must be on the alert for anything out of the ordinary.

Playing with food.

Taking small helpings.

Pushing food around on the plate.

Brittle skin.

Teeth marks on knuckles.

Doesn’t want to eat in public.

Counts every calorie eaten.

As a parent when you realize your teenager is anorexic take immediate action. The teenager’s life is at stake.

Family Intervention

The family and good friends; if necessary, must be present to present their argument.

Talk about their health.

Tell your teenager how much you love him/her.

You must be strong.

Your teenager will protest. There is nothing wrong.

Take Action

Immediate medical attention a physician or Psychiatrist.

Admission to a hospital which specializes in anorexia.

Working with a Psychologist on a one-to-one basis or group therapy.

Group Therapy

Talking in groups of teenagers with the same problem.

Talking with a professional who will lead the group session.

Sports

This is important for all teenagers.

Join a gym.

Running

Aerobics

Walking

Swimming

Baseball

Football

Basketball

Bike riding

Skating

This will build self-esteem, keep weight down meet new people and explore new avenues to find out about themselves. Exercise will burn calories and keep the teenager’s mind off of food. When they reach home, they will be more than ready for a good family meal.

Medical Problems From Binging and Purging

  • Esophagus Is where the food starts in the mouth and travels downward into the stomach this is the tube which connects the mouth and stomach.
  • The bile and acid irritate the lining.
  • Tears can happen and become a life and death situation.
  • Narrowing of the esophagus can prevent food passing through.
  • This causes an inflammation of the stomach lining.
  • Can cause the stomach to rupture.

Medical Problems

  • Heart damage/Heart attack.
  • Loss of fluids and electrolytes.
  • Dehydration
  • Memory Loss
  • Anemia
  • Kidney Disease/Kidney failure.
  • Loss of teeth.
  • Reproduction system – might not be able to have children.
  • Lung complications
  • Osteoporosis
  • Hair loss
  • Depression
  • Low potassium
  • Kidney stones/failure
  • Weakness
  • Constipation
  • Ulcers
  • Death

When you become anorexic, you are not only hurting yourself, mentally and physically but your family and friends as well. There isn’t any easy fix for this mental/medical problem which can be life threatening. Take baby steps.

Family Therapy

This is where you talk with a Psychiatrist or family counselor and ask and answer questions.

  • What happens when you eat lunch in the school cafeteria?
  • Is it the food you don’t like?
  • Is it the way the food is set out for you to pick from?
  • Do you not like the food choices?
  • Do you want to see other food choices?
  • What would you like to eat at school?
  • When you hang out with your friends what do you eat?
  • What kind of food do you eat?
  • Can it be changed?

Family Dinner

  • Turn off the television.
  • Everybody sits around the table.
  • Talk to each other.

This is so important in keeping the communication open between you and your teenagers. Communication is disappearing in today’s world. With texting and e mails, instant messaging the English language is being lost. The teenagers feel it more than we think.

Try to get a dialogue going with your teenage ask your teenager what you can do to help. This won’t be easy since teenagers are usually closed mouthed about their personal life. Don’t give up. Try to find an even balance, you can talk about and win over your teenager’s confidence.

Love, Hugs, Compliments

Hugs can’t be mentioned enough. Hug your teenager every chance you can get. Tell your teenager you love him/her. Compliment him/her every chance you can get even for something you would never have thought of before. Your hair looks great today. I like your new sweater. I can’t do as many sit ups as you.  Build up your teenager’s confidence.

For the teenager daughter dad is probably the most important person in her life next to her mother. If there isn’t a dad a strong male who is important to her, an older brother or an uncle. There is a fierce love between dad and daughter. Dads must be especially aware of this. They can inflict damage to their daughters without realizing with a look or saying something. Teenage girls are very emotional and feel each emotion very strongly.

Even though your teenager has low self-esteem and doesn’t believe in him/herself, don’t stop the hugs, the I love you and the compliments.

Love, education, a good doctor and therapist, who can give nutritional advice, can get your teenager healthy mentally and physically. It will happen never give up. Love can move mountains.

Nutrition

Nutrition is so important. It’s as important as breathing. Yet it is not taught in the school system. When you graduate from high school and are out on your own the choices, we make to eat are sometimes not the best.

Today the way food is grown and processed is completely different from 20 years ago. This was when food was food and not chemicals. It was not loaded with salt, sugar, and fat.

We all must be educated on how to eat and what to eat. Today obesity is running wild though out the school system into adulthood. There is disease on the rampage which were for senior citizens not elementary school age children and older.

Education is the key. We must all be educated on what there is to eat that will not make us sick, make us obese or kill us.

Linda E. Meckler

Copyright 2010 updated 2021

Anorexia, Bulimia and Teenagers

Anorexia Nervosa is an eating disorder characterized by obsession with weight loss and low self-esteem

Anorexia or Bulimia simple means maintaining control over one’s own body. It is a destructive way to treat your body; especially your organs which are affected directly from starving yourself, using enemas, water and overuse of diet pills. Bulimia sufferer’s binge and purge to keep their weight down.

Just like any other addiction you have to get the person involved to admit to their addiction. In this case you must get your teenager to admit to this huge problem. This is the first step to solving this problem.

Teenagers become young women and men. If the Anorexia is not stopped in the teenage years, it will continue over into young adulthood. Girls have this disease more than boys. Teenagers can have this disease from any walk of life or ethnic group, but it is mainly Caucasian teenage girls who come from the middle to upper class.

The girls which are in plays, on television, play an instrument, dance, sing or in general out in the spot light are the ones which are the ones who will be easily reached into becoming obsessed about their weight.

One of the examples of this is Karen Carpenter who was a famous singer and drummer. She started her career as a teenager and one day she read an article in a local newspaper she was chubby. Ms. Carpenter had been on the top ten hit songs in the early seventies. This little article caused Ms. Carpenter to become obsessive about her weight. She became anorexic becoming grossly underweight while purging and binging; she damaged her heart and died of a heart attack at age 32.

Exercising may become obsessive to the teenage girl to burn calories and become thin. But even when the teenager is thin, she must be thinner in her mind. Excessive physical exercise can become dangerous, if the teenager becomes weak from lack of food. This is definitely a mental condition that could have started in many ways.

Reasons For Anorexia:

  • Mental disorder.
  • Physical disorder.
  • Child abuse.
  • Low self-esteem.
  • A diet that went out of control.
  • Feeding problems as an infant.
  • Family interference.

This does not leave out the ordinary teenager who just wants to belong and not be overweight. This is the teenager with low self-esteem and can’t quite pull his/her self out of this bottomless pit.

Teenage Girls

When teenage girls read fashion magazines where the models are pencil thin, this is when the teenage girls think they need to be as thin as the models. This is not true. These women chose this profession and the choice to stay pencil thin to keep their employment.

Now fashion is changing. There are magazines for the normal full to plus size women. They even have fashion magazines with normal to full plus women to show off women’s sizes. When you think about it, how many girls are pencil thin in the real world? This is one of the ways where these girls get idea’s they had to be pencil thin to look like these fashion models. In many cases in the fashion magazines the model’s photos have been photo shopped to make them thinner and their skin blemish free.

Medical Research

The human brain is where research is being conducted. The brain is complex.

Parts Of The Brain

Cerebral hemisphere

Thalamus

Hypothalamus

Pituitary

Pons

Medulla

Midbrain

Cerebellum

Spinal Cord

The hypothalamus is a part of the brain which dysfunctions.

It’s linked closely with the pituitary gland to control many of the body functions.

It monitors and controls your sleep cycle.

Omeostasis means running your body smoothly.

Nutritional Training

This is where the schools, parents, medical people need to start being trained into good nutrition. It should be part of their medical training, where the parents need to take an active interest in their teenagers eating habits.

There are other ways to lose weight and keep it off besides starvation, binging and purging. This is the number one problem in America today, either being anorexic or obese. There is too much junk food flashed in young adults faces from everywhere from television, movies, magazines, and television.

Teenagers think everything they put into their mouths will make them fat. They progress into a state of starvation where they can’t push the food into their mouth’s fast enough. This is what is called binging. This is followed by sticking their finger down their throat and vomiting. This is where the overwhelming medical problems start.

Parents

As a parent you must keep track of your teenagers’ various activities. You must be on the alert for anything out of the ordinary.

Playing with food.

Taking small helpings.

Pushing food around on the plate.

Brittle skin.

Teeth marks on knuckles.

Doesn’t want to eat in public.

Counts every calorie eaten.

As a parent when you realize your teenager is anorexic take immediate action. The teenager’s life is at stake.

Family Intervention

The family and good friends; if necessary, must be present to present their argument.

Talk about their health.

Tell your teenager how much you love him/her.

You must be strong.

Your teenager will protest. There is nothing wrong.

Take Action

Immediate medical attention a physician or Psychiatrist.

Admission to a hospital which specializes in anorexia.

Working with a Psychologist on a one-to-one basis or group therapy.

Group Therapy

Talking in groups of teenagers with the same problem.

Talking with a professional who will lead the group session.

Sports

This is important for all teenagers.

Join a gym.

Running

Aerobics

Walking

Swimming

Baseball

Football

Basketball

Bike riding

Skating

This will build self-esteem, keep weight down meet new people and explore new avenues to find out about themselves. Exercise will burn calories and keep the teenager’s mind off of food. When they reach home, they will be more than ready for a good family meal.

Medical Problems From Binging and Purging

  • Esophagus Is where the food starts in the mouth and travels downward into the stomach this is the tube which connects the mouth and stomach.
  • The bile and acid irritate the lining.
  • Tears can happen and become a life and death situation.
  • Narrowing of the esophagus can prevent food passing through.
  • This causes an inflammation of the stomach lining.
  • Can cause the stomach to rupture.

Medical Problems

  • Heart damage/Heart attack.
  • Loss of fluids and electrolytes.
  • Dehydration
  • Memory Loss
  • Anemia
  • Kidney Disease/Kidney failure.
  • Loss of teeth.
  • Reproduction system – might not be able to have children.
  • Lung complications
  • Osteoporosis
  • Hair loss
  • Depression
  • Low potassium
  • Kidney stones/failure
  • Weakness
  • Constipation
  • Ulcers
  • Death

When you become anorexic, you are not only hurting yourself, mentally and physically but your family and friends as well. There isn’t any easy fix for this mental/medical problem which can be life threatening. Take baby steps.

Family Therapy

This is where you talk with a Psychiatrist or family counselor and ask and answer questions.

  • What happens when you eat lunch in the school cafeteria?
  • Is it the food you don’t like?
  • Is it the way the food is set out for you to pick from?
  • Do you not like the food choices?
  • Do you want to see other food choices?
  • What would you like to eat at school?
  • When you hang out with your friends what do you eat?
  • What kind of food do you eat?
  • Can it be changed?

Family Dinner

  • Turn off the television.
  • Everybody sits around the table.
  • Talk to each other.

This is so important in keeping the communication open between you and your teenagers. Communication is disappearing in today’s world. With texting and e mails, instant messaging the English language is being lost. The teenagers feel it more than we think.

Try to get a dialogue going with your teenage ask your teenager what you can do to help. This won’t be easy since teenagers are usually closed mouthed about their personal life. Don’t give up. Try to find an even balance, you can talk about and win over your teenager’s confidence.

Love, Hugs, Compliments

Hugs can’t be mentioned enough. Hug your teenager every chance you can get. Tell your teenager you love him/her. Compliment him/her every chance you can get even for something you would never have thought of before. Your hair looks great today. I like your new sweater. I can’t do as many sit ups as you.  Build up your teenager’s confidence.

For the teenager daughter dad is probably the most important person in her life next to her mother. If there isn’t a dad a strong male who is important to her, an older brother or an uncle. There is a fierce love between dad and daughter. Dads must be especially aware of this. They can inflict damage to their daughters without realizing with a look or saying something. Teenage girls are very emotional and feel each emotion very strongly.

Even though your teenager has low self-esteem and doesn’t believe in him/herself, don’t stop the hugs, the I love you and the compliments.

Love, education, a good doctor and therapist, who can give nutritional advice, can get your teenager healthy mentally and physically. It will happen never give up. Love can move mountains.

Nutrition

Nutrition is so important. It’s as important as breathing. Yet it is not taught in the school system. When you graduate from high school and are out on your own the choices, we make to eat are sometimes not the best.

Today the way food is grown and processed is completely different from 20 years ago. This was when food was food and not chemicals. It was not loaded with salt, sugar, and fat.

We all must be educated on how to eat and what to eat. Today obesity is running wild though out the school system into adulthood. There is disease on the rampage which were for senior citizens not elementary school age children and older.

Education is the key. We must all be educated on what there is to eat that will not make us sick, make us obese or kill us.

Linda E. Meckler

Copyright 2010 updated 2021

Posted on

Juan Gris

 

Juan Gris the leading artist in Cuban painting was born Jose Victoriano Carmelo Carlos Gonzalez-Perez in Madrid in 1887. He was the thirteenth of fourteen children. He attended Madrid’s Escuela de Artes Y Manufacturas from 1902-1904. He studied math, physics, and mechanical drawing. He decided he liked drawing and decided to study art.

His art teacher was Jose Moreno Carbonero a respect artist in Madid who taught Salvador Dali and Picasso. It was in 1905 when Gonzalez-Perez changed his name to Juan Gris. After his father’s death, he sold all his possessions and moved to France where he remained. He could not return to Spain since he did not go into the military and didn’t have any papers.

During his early years in Paris, he worked as an illustrator and satirical cartoonist for a variety of magazines and periodicals. He settled in the Montmartre artist commune Bateau Lavoir, where he met Picasso, Braque, Matisse, and the American writer Gertrude Stein.

In 1912, he exhibited at the Salon des Independants in 1912. That same year, he signed a contract that gave the German art dealer Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler (who also worked with Picasso and Braque) the exclusive right to sell his work.

From 1914 onward departing from Picasso and Braque, his work from the latter period is distinguished by its move away from shattering abstraction and use of bright, harmonious colors in daring combinations.

At the beginning of World War I, he received financial help from Gertrude Stein. He spent time with Matisse in his studio at Collioure, in the south of France. In 1916, he signed a new contract with French art dealer Leonce Rosenberg, another hugely influential collector of modernist art. His work from the early war years examines the interplay between objects and their shadows, and reintroduces complicated planar intersections, sumptuous colors and textures.

Toward the end of the war, he spent several months in Touraine, the native region of his French wife Josette. This period focuses on depictions of traditional peasant figures, linking him to a broader shift among European artists during and after the war.

He was awarded his first major solo exhibition at Rosenberg’s Galerie l’Effort Moderne in Paris in 1919. The following year, he participated in the final major exhibition of Cubist painters at the Salon des Independants.

 In 1920 he became ill with pleurisy., he spent the winter at Bandol, on the southeastern coast of France. While there, he spent time with the Russian ballet impresario Sergei Diaghilev, and the two discussed ideas about staging and costumes for upcoming productions. Their conversations eventually yielded a full collaboration, with Gris designing costumes and sets for the Ballet Russes from 1922 to 1924.

Major exhibitions of his work took place at the Galerie Simon in Paris and the Galerie Flechtheim in Berlin in 1923, and at the Galerie Flechtheim in Düsseldorf in 1925. It was during these years that he achieved the peak of popularity and renown that he would know in his lifetime. He was also making his most forceful articulation of his theories on art and aesthetics, delivering his lecture, ‘Des possibilites de la peinture’ at the Sorbonne in 1924. In it, he describes his belief that a painting was not merely a representation of an object from reality, but something that the artist recreates and reinterprets through his craft.

 In 1922, he moved out of central Paris to the suburban area of Boulogne-sur-Seine, to try and cure his asthma. From late 1925 onward, he battled consistent kidney and cardiac ailments. He died in 1927 of kidney failure, leaving behind his wife and young son. He was only 40 years old. In response to Gris’s death, Stein wrote a memorial titled The Life and Death of Juan Gris, in which she describes him as “a perfect painter.”

Thank you for reading my article

Copyright Linda Meckler 2021

Posted on

Bearded Dragons Want A Pet?

This is Roxy. It is my daughter Wendy’s pet. She received it as a gift and has fallen in love with it. She brought it to my house today and I took pictures of it and my daughter. When I touched the Bearded Dragon, it felt scaly and the beard or scales around her neck were sharp.

Bearded Dragons come from Australia starting in 1900. They were smuggled into the United States and now there are literally thousands of them. The live-in deserts scrub lands, and woodlands. They make great pets. There scientific name is Pogona Vitticeps. There are eight different species of the Bearded Dragon.

They can live between ten and fifteen years. If they are well attended.

The size is between 17 and 22 inches long including the tail. Bearded dragons are omnivores; their diet mostly consists of plants and vegetables. Insects, including cockroaches, crickets, earthworms, and mealworms.

There name comes from the beard pf spiny scales around their neck.

They have a perky personality by waving to each other or to their owners.

You can walk your pet on a leash but if it spots food somewhere it can run 9 mph. Be prepared.

 Bearded Dragons enjoy the water. Some are content to just lie in shallow pools of water while they bask or as a break from the heat, but others go for a swim and are content to paddle around for a while as a break from their normal routine. They inflate themselves with air to help with their buoyancy, and their swimming motion is similar to that of a crocodile.

They can sleep standing up braced against some or there are small hammocks they can sleep in. They can run in an upright position.

Bearded Dragons can convey their emotions by changing their scales. As well as their trademark puffed-out throats, bearded dragons’ scales will become tense and spiky when they are stressed. When relaxed their scales will sit much flatter and be smooth to the touch. Their beards may also turn black if they are feeling stressed out or threatened, as well as when they are preparing to mate.

As well as their ‘beards’ turning black, bearded dragons can change the color of the rest of their skin too. This isn’t as obvious as with a reptile like a chameleon, but the phenomenon can still be a surprise for owners. Because bearded dragons shed their skin throughout their lifetime, it is possible for the newly-revealed skin to be a different color.

Their teeth can be regrown in the front but not in the back. The teeth at the back and sides of the dragon’s mouth are permanent, but these front teeth may be regularly shed and re-grown throughout the bearded dragon’s life, much like the way they shed their skin.

This reptile makes a great pet and their owners enjoy them. I know my daughter does.

Posted on

Fulfilling Your Dreams

 

How many of you watch the Hallmark movies? Especially over the Christmas Holidays? Aren’t they corny? Do you know who is going to end up marry who before the program is finished. I am one of those watchers. I love watching those movies. They seem old fashioned to me but what is wrong with old fashioned traditions. Evidently, millions of people watch these movies they must be doing something right.

But one of the things I really love about the program is in most of them the star or main character of each particular movie is asked, “what are your dreams?”

I love that part about each movie? The main character always has a dream to fulfill and, in most cases, it is fulfilled.

For me I had several dreams and many of them have been fulfilled. Years ago, when I started to write I wanted to publish my writing as an e-book. I was just beginning to learn about e-books and how powerful they were. The world at your fingertip. A friend of mine, a computer geek showed me how to take my writing and put make it into an e-book. That dream was fulfilled.

Another dream was to be able to build my own website. I had websites in the past by other people. But I didn’t have control over it. I had to ask the webs person to make adjustments every time I wanted them done.

Now I have fulfilled another dream. I built my own website with telephone help from Blue Host. It was the most amazing thing. I could call and ask any question and presto the immediate problem was solved.

Now my website is all mine. I have listed all my books with a click to take you to www.amazon.com my page. This was my dream. What is yours?

I also, will be selling my art on my website. Everything I wanted in my dream about having my own website is now true.

Thank you for reading my article.

Copyright Linda Meckler 2021

Posted on

History Of The Rose Parade

What does Art have to do with the Rose Parade? The answer is everything.

History

In 1890 Charles Holder a member of the Hunt Club was speaking in New York bragging about Pasadena, California and the beautiful flowers in bloom while they were under tons of snow.

Carriage Rose Parade

The club organized carriages decorated with flowers from their own garden onto their carriages and paraded down Colorado Avenue. Also included in this was foot races, polo matches, and a tug of war. This grew a crowd of 2000. The Rose Parade was born later called the Tournament of Roses.  It was held on Sunday after the New Year. Sunday was the day it would not disturb the horses hitched on the street.

Volunteers

The Tournament of Roses has become such a large event that it requires 65,000 hours of the combination of people working together. or the equivalent of roughly 7.42 years of success.

The group has 935 members, each of whom is assigned to one of 34 committees, and around 50 student ambassadors. The volunteers wear while with a red tie.

The creativity of this awesome event put on each year would boggle the mind if it wasn’t organized down to the last detail.

To Do List

  • The sketching of the floats, which in most cases now are built by professionals.
  •  Creating the animal or object to be decorated.
  • The placement of the flowers and how many flowers and what colors and kinds are needed.
  • The painting of the designs which are included on the floats.
  • The costumes which are in some cases designed and hand made.

Art and creativity are everywhere, inspiration is buzzing around this specular parade. Approximates 48 -72 hours before the parade the flowers are placed on the floats. Exhaustion is the end of the day. 

Thank you for reading my article.

Copyright Linda Meckler2021

www.lindameckler-author-artist.com

Posted on

Rioting Coast to Coast

George Floyd was killed by a white Police Officer Derek Chauvin on May 25, 2020, an African-American man, who died in Powderhorn, a neighborhood south of downtown Minneapolis, Minnesota.  Officer Chauvin has been charged with murder. Three other officers were involved in this violence.

 Brutality that has been going on for decades but what happened recently popped the cork and all the hate and violence erupted in a flow that has gone coast to coast.

It is time for the police departments to begin retraining their police. To weed out the bad and giving them their walking papers. People who thrive on violence and hatred are easy to pick out. 

The body cameras were supposed to change this but it hasn’t stopped it.

Also, people should realize every time they are in public somebody is videotaping. Nothing is private anymore.

The protesters have a reason to protest this violence but it should not be destructive.

The people who own the cars, buildings and businesses that are being looted and burned are the victims. They are forced with the destruction of their property. It was thrown in their face emotionally and financially that some will not survive. 

This is the time for change! 

The police departments and the people of their community should work together and make the changes.

The people in charge must listen!

STOP THE VIOLENCE!

Thank you for reading my article.

Linda Meckler copyright 2021

Posted on

From Chaos to Hope

In the year 2020 we had to endure and listen to the news of the wide spread Corona Virus. The nightmare we all had to live with. Now life as we knew it has crashed and burned. We had to wear masks, wash our hands, and stay six feet apart.

This was a new concept. We are a social people. We want to be with our families. We want to hug our spouse, our kids and grandkids. We want to dine in a restaurant, go to our clubs, play cards, and be social again. But this stopped it for us.

Over the holidays thousands of people said enough is enough and had large family and friend dinners and parties. The virus has spread and is continuing to spread. But.

Striving for Happiness Again.

When the first Pfizer vaccine came to the United States bands should have played. We should have waved our American Flags. With the second arrival of Moderna we should have done the same. Now is the time to have hope.  As the vaccines are being used, we will be able to return to laughing, singing, hugging and kissing safely.

Linda Meckler  copyright 2021