Earlier today I wrote about the “Before You Go” CD/DVD that thanks the soldiers for what they have done. Then later, I was upstairs, brushing my teeth of all things, and it occurred to me that we certainly weren’t saying a very good thank you by making crappy cars and losing out to the Japanese and having a bunch of people who are happy to stay on welfare. Let’s get personal: I whine about not losing weight. Well, for Heaven’s Sake, surely I can take off ten pounds. Surely I can keep my lawn in better shape; surely I don’t need to use obscene language; there are lots and lots of “surely’s”.

Rats, AmeliaJake, let’s shape up.

Is it the camera business – and software that brings editing and enhancing to the amateur, not to mention printing – that is behind some blogs today. Well, yes, I would say so. Now, I don’t know what was the chicken and what was the egg with the Pioneer Woman but along with her stories of her life, there is a pictorial place that few of us experience – the Old West, the New West, the prairie, nature and so forth. So, yes, Nikon and Hewitt-Packard would take notice of the potential for marketing. And Adobe Photoshop – hey, is there much difference between being talked through a recipe and talked through photo editing? Probably not. And she is starting a whole new blog devoted to it, along with the Pioneer Woman Cooks blog.

Now, on the upper right sidebar of Confessions of a Pioneer Woman, Beside the Stream is featured – a blog with lots of pictures about the mountains and Colorado. This lady, I think her name is Alice, starts right off telling you she hadn’t really taken pictures until a “professional” camera arrived at her house. And now she has a tutor. I don’t know what brand of camera she has and it probably doesn’t matter. I think the idea is to get people wanting to take more photos and do more things with them and that leads to overall growth in camera sales, software and accessories.

This is okay with me. Perhaps soon I will be looking each day at photos of living in a bayou, in a bunch of cities, in the desert, in the High Plains, in the Sierras, in resorts, and so forth. Well, it should be educational.

Say, anyone want to give me a fancy camera to capture a small Indiana town in photos. I’m from Lagrange County; I can do farms and Amish and Shipshewana. I’m from the pioneer stock of the area – I’ve got old photos that can be resurrected.

Nikon, Canon, Olympus . . . if you’re interested, remember I’m ameliajake@theleaningcow.com

I am in the lucky generation; I am the daughter of those who were young during the Depression and in early adulthood in WWII. My grandmother made my mother a winter coat out of an older one, sprucing it up so it looked nice. When Roosevelt spoke the day after Pearl Harbor, she listened to it over the public address system in the school auditorium. My father went in the service in 1942 and came back to Indiana in late 1945 and was discharged at Fort Benjamin Harrison.

He was in the signal corps and said he never was a “real soldier”. He’s gone now. His hair was white and he had become frail.

I look at these pictures of old men and the pictures of young men in combat and realize they are the same. I feel for them; I feel for me. Something so important, something that reaches so deeply into your soul and it passes in a lifetime. Maybe that is the real reason they made stone and sculptors – because at least there is something to touch, something as strong as they were.

(Well, okay, bronze is good as well.)

A musical and pictorial tribute and thank you in in album form on the Internet now. My husband sent it to me and I send it on to you.