FYI: some of the links on here in BLUE go to YouTube recordings of the music I love.
My mother, Winnifred Harriet Hines Hartson Hamblin was born on December 2, 1931 and passed away on Sunday, January 8, 2012.
She mothered six of us children. Winnie was the youngest of six girls, born & raised in Idaho Falls, Idaho. She left home and school while in her teens and went to live with her sisters, Grace & Dolly in the Greater Portland, Oregon area, where she met my father, Navy soldier Eugene"Jerry" Austin Hartson. They married in 1947. Winnie had to get permission to marry, being 15 years old.
In 1948 she gave birth to Kathleen Hartson, divorced Jerry, and married John Jacob Hamblin. She converted to his religion, LDS, and they moved to Medford, Oregon where she gave birth to Grace Hamblin in 1949 and John Jr. in 1951. She & Jack then moved to Ashland, Oregon where she had two more children, Fred & Laurie. In 1956 my folks moved to Portland, Lake Grove and Sherwood, Oregon where we kids attended Sherwood Elementary. The youngest of us, Oliver, of blessed memory, was born at the same hospital as I was, nine years earlier, Emmanuel, in Portland. We moved back to Ashland in 1960.
Mother taught herself to cook and can and sew. I asked her how she was able to teach herself so much and she said she read the patterns and cookbooks and she just taught herself.
She made us many clothes, including some beautiful dresses when we reached our teen years before we started sewing a few of our own clothes. I hope to find the photos I have "somewhere" and post them.
Mother taught us homemaking and we were well blessed in the skills of homemaking which we took with us to raise our families.
Mother never felt she was very smart as she only completed an 8th grade education. However, her penmanship was perfect, as were her spelling, sentence & paragraph structure & writing skills. The basics of an 8th grade education was better in the 1940's than it is now, and for some decades since, depending on where one lives. Mom was actually quite smart, but that was not a value held by our church for women, and definitely not a value held by the Hamblin men, who are predisposed to alcoholism & less than honorable treatment towards women. We all have our flaws, so I don't want to make them out as totally bad, so let's just say, they need improvement, a lot, in this area.
Mom loved Dad, Jack, very much. He had his demons and did not honor his vows but that is something G-d will have to deal with and we needn't concern ourselves with this except to say to my children and their children, that the Hamblin men should be avoided. Then again, so should the Tavenner men, for similar reasons. 'Nuff said.
Mom was not one to harbor grievances for long and she forgave Dad and she moved on, seeing how he would never change. I think if she'd known how to affect him in positive ways without his negatively affecting her to the degree that he did, things may have turned out better, but Jack Hamblin had a very high IQ and Mom simply was not equipped to deal with that IQ being used in evil ways. I'm sure they both did the best they could with the knowledge & skills available to them at that time & place in their lives. Our job is to learn from others' mistakes, in order to avoid some of our own. And to remember the good they did in our lives. We all have negatives we've experienced and learned from our parents. What we do with them is entirely up to us!
I've good memories of Dad, too. How he encouraged us to learn new vocabulary words on a regular basis. How he was protective of us, as good dads should always be. How he cared for me when I was extremely ill with rheumatic fever, twice and hepatitis, all before I was 11. Mom was busy with me and all those six babies she had in nine years, and especially the last baby, Oliver, who was born with lung problems, and who nearly died while an infant because of these health problems. She had to rush him 25 miles into Portland for an emergency tracheotomy while he was still an infant. Dad was at work, out on the job, which meant no phone on the job site.
Mother LOVED music. She exposed us kids while growing in our formative years, to so many kinds of music, from popular, classical, country and cultural music to children's music. I recall her turning up the radio when the Platters sang their hit "When Smoke Gets in Your Eyes," and Marty Robbins' his "El Paso."
Bizet's Carmen, (I have the dvd)
The Three Tenors 1994 in Los Angeles Dodger Stadium
She bought us a set of children's records, 33 1/3 rpms, from a grocery store, of which, somewhere in my packed things, I still have a couple of the albums. And another set of albums purchased from a grocery store of classical music. I also have some of those. I heard & loved the great works by Tchaikovsky, Rachmanifoff, Prokofiev's "Peter and The Wolf" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rGixA8iYOW8,
Dukas' "The Sorcerer's Apprentice" ,
Rimsky-Korsakov's "Scheherazade",
Igor Stravinsky's "The Firebird Suite", and sooo many others.
Mom read to us, taught us nursery rhymes and finger plays. I recall when we still living on Orange Street in Ashland, Mom reading us bible stories from the Torah, edited I'm sure, for youthful ears. She read to us of Daniel in the lions den, Shadrach, Meschack & Abedneggo, straight out of the bible, not from children's bible story books. I have that image of us kids sitting on the floor at her feet while she sat in a rocking chair & read to us. That's a powerful image to retain in a child's mind, still there in my mind's eye some nearly 60 years later. Think about the images you create in your children's minds, carefully. There is a reason Jesus & other religious sages tell us to guard what images, sounds and other sensory stimulation we allow into our minds. Mother tried to fill ours with spirituality, good reading, good music, good art, good conversation and good works.
The LDS church is excellent, or used to be ( I left it in 1970), in teaching mothers and children useful skills that help them process and learn information. Memorizing nursery rhymes leads to increasing the brain's capacity for learning, a fact the current, avant garde public education system has totally thrown out as outdated & obsolete, but which smart parents still use.
Judaism is full of memorizing prayers & scriptures and they start when the babies are born. Their children can recite, in Hebrew, the Sh'ma by the time they can talk in sentences.
For two of my children, Farrell and Missy, that would have been before age 1, but we were Christian, so they only learned nursery rhymes & songs sang at church programs, such as "Primary," at very early ages. What a waste of highly intelligent minds! But I just did not know how intelligent I was, nor how intelligent are my children. This blog is help them to know, what several highly intelligent people have told me, and I can tell my children and their children the same, you are way above average intelligence. Don't waste it, please.
A delightful scenario I enjoy remembering is Missy at age two when she attempted to use a BIG word, which would be the sign of a child enchanted with world of words, writing and art. She came out of the bathroom with a big smile and proudly announced to me, "Mommy, I distincted up the bathroom." She knew she had used a big word and was so proud of herself. And I was impressed.
Unfortunately, women being intelligent was not a part of my culture up to that point in my life, so I did not capitalize on it as I would come to do years later.
I have many examples of Missy's artwork which I am remiss to add here, due to I don't know where the pictures are of them. But I will post when I find them. Missy wrote fiction stories, writes prose & poetry, creates phenomenal works of crafted arts, the greatest one I have a picture of somewhere... :( It is a large wall hanging made of symmetrically placed seashells of various sorts, in a circular pattern with a mirror in the center. A work of art that was clearly worth minimum $150. I forgot what she said she did with it, but it is gone. (Oh L-rd please let me find all these pictures, and in good condition.)
Farrell, Giovanni & Dvorah-Yael all have creative gifts. I think they get them from my Mom.
Gio at age 10 would draw on paper, and create with Lego's, ships and planes in exacting detail and perfectly symmetrical. I recognized this above average intelligence and asked around, but I could not determine, not being very educated myself, what type of intelligence this showed. Now I know it represents engineering intelligence and now I know he should have gone to MIT. Gio, at age 3, would ask spiritual questions that even our pastor was unable to answer, showing that early on he had an ability to think deeply in abstract, too. He didn't get that from me...I don't think.
Farrell could draw animals and was very gifted in the art of cartooning, lettering, and graphics. He should have gone to the best graphics school. I hope I have his artwork stashed away. I hope, I hope, I hope! When he was in second grade, in a govt program for disadvantaged kids, (which none of my three oldest kids should have been in because they not only did not learn anything, they regressed), and his teacher complained that he wasn't working to his potential. Now we understand that is an issue of bad teaching and bad curriculum. As a concerned parent, I brought it up at a doctor's appointment with our pediatrician, Dr. Joerns. He said Farrell was particularly bright and was not being challenged at school, in lay terms, the 2nd grader was BORED. Already.
Now we know, decades later, that the "War Against Men" had evolved into the "War Against Boys." This war still goes on, in the name of feminism and promoting female intelligence and opportunity. The false belief here is that we must put down one sex in order to elevate the other sex. One of many false beliefs among the Left, as well as some religious cults, both Christian and Jewish, but especially in the Christian community.
My children: you come from very intelligent stock. We are not inbred as they are in the Mormon and Hasidic communities, so as a legacy to my mother, and your mother, moi, and your bubbe, moi, learn the love of learning and do not allow yourself or anyone else to put limits on you. STRETCH yourselves. I know, from my experiences with Dvorah, that you kids can achieve anything you desire to achieve. You simply need to be very focused, self-disciplined, and goal oriented. I won't lie or even sugar coat achievement. It IS WORK.
Dvorah, like Missy, had her own unique and "different" style of art, enchantingly eye appealing. I do have examples & will post. However, having gone the route of Judaism, adopting their values regarding learning (we already had the work ethic value), I encouraged her mental development however and not her artistic side. Even so, she is a gifted fiction writer. Currently, after two years of community college with honors, PTK, from Olympic College in Bremerton Washington,
In the short 9.5 months we had Missy's daughter Belinda "Bunny" in our lives, it was clearly obvious this child LOVED MUSIC. Having learned from my mother the importance of exposing children, EARLY, to music, and my experiences regarding Gio and Dvorah, I exposed Bunny to much music. Thankfully when it was necessary to have her adopted, Missy wisely chose a college educated mother with a degree in....MUSIC! So I'm certain that talent from her father, Tommy, and from our side, is being fully developed. Baruch HaShem.
The experience with Gio is this: There was a song by Jerry Butler, "Playing On You", which to this day, I still love!! that I played OCD, throughout the pregnancy with Gio. His Abba, papa, "Sonny" William Henry Grimes, of blessed memory, neglected to tell me his blood type was AB & not compatible with mine. So, at 24 hours, when the nurse brought G to me for nursing, I asked her if his color was kinda orange. She took him immediately from me. Turns out that Rh factor was causing him jaundice. So we stayed an extra few days in the hospital while G was treated under ultraviolet light, five days total stay.
We got him home finally and I was having Jerry Butler withdrawals, so you know the first thing I did was to put on the 45 rpm vinyl & play it. Sonny had sat down in my rocking chair---the same one I used to rock Missy & Farrell in, one on each side of me, which chair is in the possession of Missy--
...and Sonny was holding Gio on his arm, with G upright, like when you're going to burp a baby. I kid you not, at the moment I started my record playing on the phonograph, Gio---five days old--started moving his body up & down in rhythm to the music!! His daddy made some wry funny remark about my possibly listening to that song a bit much. Ya think? :)
We were astounded!! So, daddys, talk to those babies, sing to them, read to them, while they are in the womb. They do hear you. Mommies already do this. And play your babies the most uplifting, great music by great composers, as well as some popular, uplifting music.
There's another story, which I've probably told already on here, but it underscores the importance of playing good music, showing good movies to kids. I'd happened upon a VHS video of Walt Disney's cartoon feature of Peter and The Wolf. IF you can ever get a hold of this video, GET IT! It's that valuable! Dvorah had watched it so often I guess--I was working full time driving those inner city buses for Pierce Transit---that one day...
We were attending messianic services on Shabbat, so Sunday was my day to do EVERYTHING in the house before going back to work on Mondays. It was the day I played classical music from Seattle radio station, KING Classic. I must have been real focused because I didn't hear it until...
...all of sudden Dvorah, age 3, runs into the kitchen and with raised, excited voice starts telling me that is Peter & The Wolf playing on the radio! But the next thing is what is amazing! She began telling me in detail what was happening, as she had seen it in the video! "Ohhh, that bad Ivan (the cat) is hiding in the bushes, and he's going to pounce on Sasha ( a little bird)..." I just stood there amazed at how this little girl was able to describe the scenes and events as we listened to the music coming from the radio. Needless to say, I told Gio, her babysitter, to make sure she saw the video regularly, to ensure it was imprinted in her mind forever.
We learn so many things using music that I wonder when the self-important education elites will start teaching using music. Even the ABC's we teach our babies in song! Just think of all the things we've learned and taught using music!
Memories as sung by Susan Erens in Homecoming with Andre Rieu.
GOOD music of all kinds, self-learning, are some of the legacies our Mother, Grandmother, has left us. I just want you kids to know where I got them from...so you'll know a little more about me, about her, about yourselves and what talents, gifts, and blessings you have inherited, so that you may be encouraged to make the most out of your lives, giving glory to G-d, and making me proud of you.
I love you. Go with G-d. He loves you with an everlasting love.
Dream big my children. You never know..."It could happen." 3 yo Akim plays with Andre Rieu
Is he beautiful or what?!
This little one is amazing. And we think we are blessed!! Blessed Little One
I love the self confidence of seven year old boys. Here's one playing Rachmaninoff's "Flight of The Bumblebee."
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