Paula's first 5 children

Photo from 1895, with 5 from my great grand mother's children.

Two girls, the bigger my grand mother and the small one Anna who died soon after that photo. Three of the bigger son's, the two others not yet born.

That means, her husband died at the end of century, as my grand mother was only 14 when that happened.

I will tell Monday evening a story from my great grand mother life at the Canal Cafe Theatre with Spark London. Parts of her life, as I remember her telling me, some I was told by other members of the family.

All my life, she was a model for me, for her courage in face of adversities of her life, her optimism and warmth. She made the best of what was given to her.

From all that brings you down or make you sad, something good will come, Julie, she used to finish thus all her stories.

The only time when she could not finish like that was when she was talking to me about her daughter who died so young, her eyes, blind for 25 years were then humid. Even 50 years later, she cried thinking of the one child of 7 that she lost.

She managed a distillery in a time when very few women were owners and heads of a company, and she did that in a small conservative city. She also brought up alone, after the death of her husband, those six remaining children.

She loved all her children, grand-children, great grand-children.

When I was small child she used to tell me an imaginary story about going to shop to buy gifts for all of them and not being able to come inside - so many gifts she had, so many descendants. Then, she begun telling their names. I remember her telling me, and imagining her trying to go through the door with too many bags.

I must have been only 6 or 7 at the time, or even younger.

The rest of her stories she told me when I was 12 and she 92.

When photography becomes ART

http://www.flickr.com/photos/algo/112054361/in/photostream/
The Wizards convene, by "Algo"

He is English, from The Chiltern Hills, view photostream,
http://www.flickr.com/photos/algo/112054361/in/photostream/
but I did not (yet) meet him.

In person, that is.

He tells me, through comments and emails that he is even older then me.

How can I believe it?

Alex's photography is wonderful and more of Art of showing how one can see, what one can show then 'objective' photo.

This was an 'irresistible tulip on the windowshell in the sun" he tells us. But what he did with it!

Then see this one, as he goes out in the fog.


Fog all the way and the mist is taken here also to the extreme.

And it works!

What a lesson for me!


That was the third I have looked, telling myself that I have seen other sunsets, already, I even tried to take some on the river Thames.

But here again, he stunned me.

Am I right: Alex's (ALGO on Flickr) photography is ART and thus no more photography. Go to admire more of it on his website ALGO

The habit of courage

As I joined this January, my third Toastmaster Club, I received this morning an email confirming my membership.

There were changes on the website of Toastmaster International, so it is only now I had my New Member email.

Of course, when I first joined, I was overwhelmed with all the new material I received, so I did not read or look at many at once, just the first project - now also downloadable from TMI website: The Icebreaker.

I broke the Ice two years ago with a speech called "And the Ice did not break" speaking as Guest Mystery speaker at an Evaluation Contest in Croydon,

Of course, happy that the Ice on Danube when we had to cross it did not break! That speech slowly evolved into the speech delivered in Manchester Townhouse before hundreds, almost two years later.

This cute picture is on the page speaking about the courage, the courage to speak in public. A great advice that is given there is to be "Other centered" while speaking, looking at one member of the audience eye while telling one part, phrase or idea.

As for myself, at the begining I must have done that because I fall in love then with the audience reaction. From time to time the fear comes back, for a minute or more, depending on what I try and whom the audience is. Begining to speak in an environment that expects Humor from me is my latest challenge and suddenly, I feel again as the Superman - as if I had to cross through fire!

Steve Job's Keynote about I pad 2

Of coursem here are only 5 minutes of the more then hour I just listened, Enough to learn some presentaion skill, I think.

Between others the blackboard to be dark and not white... but so much more.
For the whole presentqtion hold yesterday go to Apple.

After you hear Jobs "It is sooo Cool!" one wants to run and buy it... at the end of month in UK

Woolfson&tay Life Stories Cafe

This is the second time that the True Storytelling Event takes place at the life stories cafe of the Woolfson&tay bookshop/cafe/gallery. The first was held on a snowy December day, and I did not dare to put my foot outside.

This time, the theme will be about Time.

Each of us, storytellers, will interpret it in her or his own way. Each using 20 pictures in 10 minutes.

One of us, "did time" in jail. I'll speak about time that stops or flows away, time that lingers in mind, longtime after is finished.

But before, a story in Family theme about the mother of my grandmother (mother of mother) that I also tell sometimes to my grand daughter. Paula 92 when I was 12, like now my grand daughter, had a great influence on my life.

Each time I got into trouble or something bad happens to me, I ask myself, remembering what she taught me "what good can / would come from this?

True, sometimes it takes long for me to be able to realise, but it always does!

It could be also a combination of fate, but also because I never give up and loose faith that something good is lurknig somehow around the corner, even if I am not able to see it now.

I could give so many exemples!

But those are another story, again.

Should I use it as my speech for the Lewisham Toastmasters Contest?

The ultimate offence

A very interesting rehearsal yesterday, and a good time listening to them.

Four together building a spectacle comic, three different men and a young smart looking woman caricaturist. Young, old and black man for "diversity" and friendship around the elegant drawing young woman. Each in its role and interacting with each other.

The impresario organizing it all, the scientist making us sniff each other, the immigrant reading his "role", all well thought. Meanwhile, the caricaturist draws the faces of one from the audience asked to go on stage then reveals the rest, already drawn, ready.

Some were funny, other recognizable, and all went well, until they asked ME to come on stage.

I went, without suspecting what will happen.

I did seem so awful to the caricaturist, that she put on the paper the face of another from the audience while looking as if she make a caricature of my face!

The body was slim. Well, I told myself, I have been in my youth... and it was prepared in advance. But the face! That great open smile may be me, but that broad nose? Mine is sharp and long!

"One wants to flatter the audience not offence it", told me one of them.

The ultimate offence! Not daring even to offence me by drawing what she has seen, I told myself.

Until this morning, that is.

I took a second look at a photo taken by me this Saturday while I was giving a Table Topic speech in the Library: my nose does not look any more long but wide and flattened! Indeed...

How come I did not see that change on my face?

Facebook indeed, now it took a caricaturist to show me the change not age but weight put on me and on my face!

How come a mirror could not have shown me that?

We do not see what our eyes tell us or they do not tell us what we do, indeed see.

I did regret my too narrow too long nose, now without going to the doctor I got a flat wide one.

I had to go to a comic show to show me that.

Bois de Boulogne 1 March 2008

1st March is always a special day for me.

I remember all those days and the sunny warm Bucarest, when no one offered me what is called there 'Martisor' and then a day, when someone did.

A combination of Valentine day perhaps with supperstition and fear of the spring arriving and enchanting and... who knows what doing.

And yes, it was also a springtime as I was approaching already my 25th year that it attracted me to a forest near a lake and in an embrace and then, next Sunday to a small room. He was nice and sunbirned and strong - at the end, he become my childrens father.

But that happened later in the years. Two years later I was married and my daughter arrived as I was 28 and my son as I got to 32. Then much of the charm fall appart between us. Was it the falt of the spring?