Grandmother Mara Louise Burt Beese's Memorial Altar

Grandmother Mara Louise Burt Beese's Memorial Altar

My maternal grandmother, Mara Louise (Burt) Beese passed away this fine morning at 11:25a CST. My little family built a memorial altar dedicated to her and I wanted to share it with you. She will be cremated and her memorial service will be sometime in January.

I will always remember her laughter and the tears that poured out of her beautiful green eyes as she laughed and laughed and laughed. She was a witty person. Extremely intelligent and very headstrong in her own way. She was a redhead to the core. Beautiful, gracious, inspiring and a cornerstone in her community.

She was 89 when she passed into the hands and heart of God.

She loved the Song of Solomon and Ecclesiastes Chapter 3. Here is the latter quoted for you and for her.

1 To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven:

2 A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted;

3 A time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up;

4 A time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance;

5 A time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing;

6 A time to get, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to cast away;

7 A time to rend, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak;

8 A time to love, and a time to hate; a time of war, and a time of peace.

I love you, Grandmother. You have traveled your long road and now you go gently into the night. You created much beauty as you passed through. Take care of all of those special childhood memories of mine. I will miss you. Forever.

Love, Andrea.

Some of My Favorite Fantasy Authors

In no particular order:

Terry Pratchett (over 30 books, very funny, satirical, wonderful)
Jasper Fforde (Tuesday Next series, Nursery Crime series)
Neil Gaiman (you probably already read his work, Neverwhere & American Gods are favs)
Garth Nix (in particular, The Abhorsen series & Keys to the Kingdom series)
Charles DeLint (Into the Green, The Blue Girl, any of them really)
Kim Harrison (start at the beginning and give her a chance)
Tanya Huff (her occult series)
Holly Black (Tithe, Valiant, Ironside)
Kelley Armstrong (Women of the Other World series)
Lilith Saint Crow (anything she writes is good)
Melissa Marr (Wicked Lovely, Ink Exchange)
Tamora Pierce (anything she writes)
Laurell K Hamilton (anything she writes)
Jaqueline Carey (Kushiel's Trilogies)
Simon Green (Dark Side series)
Jim Butcher (Dresden Files)

People ask. So there it is. Searchable, even. ;)

Picture by RavenJack23

Latest news... because obviously I've been busy living instead of blogging. I'm getting that middle-aged "WTF??? I don't have time for that! I'm busy juggling my tween, aging parents, dying grandparents and the Holidaze! Go read something else. Hey, at least I'm on gMail now...And don't tell me it's so last minute."

(I do have an iPod, and I'm not afraid to use it...remotes are starting to baffle me tho'. ;)

Okay, so latest news... It's all about Moi, but of course! And it's all online stuff, so I guess I am living in the virtual world instead of out here in the material world. From Madonna to Bill Gates to Android. Booyah.

I've updated my YouTube channel. (Who the heck knew I even had one? Not me until a few days ago. Turns out you get one when you sign up. Huh. Whodathunkit?) It's at http://www.youtube.com/user/CopperCorn24 . For your viewing pleasure, I rearranged my amazing collection of Tribal bellydance videos (so far only 92 of them). You can view them below at the bottom of this page.

I just managed to update my Amazon Wish List. Apparently, I'm into tea, bellydance, strange music selections, and a little bit of knitting. And oddball reading. No DVDs cuz I download my movies on my DVR, capiche? Haven't upgraded my DVD player because the one I have is about 10 years old, it still works, and I really think Blue Ray isn't going to last that long. I agree with John that it's going to go the wayside and downloading will be the way to go. So green too, yeah? ;)

I've updated my hair and my eyeglasses. You can tell from my scowling countenance over there on the right. Ah, self-portraits with the SLR in the sunshine. It was about 70F that day. Last week. Poor you. (Hey, it's freakin' cold today. We're at 39F right now. Brrrr!) I now have my version of Fray's hair (Joss, I love ya, man. It's that simple. Oh, that I could have your baby. Wait. That would be bad. There'd be two of you. The world can only take so much genius.) The glasses are so cool people only see them coming and not me. (It's why my hair is purple, pink, green, blue, etc. LOL) You can see more of me (because I'm cool and have a Picasa account now) at http://picasaweb.google.com/dragnonfly24/PicturesOfMe# .

I'm going to the FatChanceBellyDance General Skills Intensive in Carrollton TX in February 2009!!! I'm excited. (You can tell because I never use multiple bangs at the end of a sentence.) If you want to know what that's all about, check out FatChance's web site for the details. Our tribe has been bustin' our hips for the past 3 or 4 months coming up to speed on FCBD Vol 7. We're now drilling drilling drilling. We're picking every FCBD YouTube video apart and poor Devyani is also under the microscope ;). We're totally YouTube stalkers! (And now you begin to see the mad mandala that is my life...)

Due to a massive crash of both drives on my computer, I decided that Outlook can bite me and I've transferred everything over to gMail. And boy, was I missing out! My calendar is kickas*; I can access everything anywhere from my laptop at any time; and I can edit documents with John without sending it through eMail and having to have Word installed on my laptop (which I don't have because I'm mad at MicroSquish... see above about Outlook).

I am anxiously awaiting a phone from ATT that will support Android. Until then, it's my old pre-G3 Motorola flip-fone. Hey, I finally figured out the maxy moxy predictive texting option. I'm not supah-old yet ;). Besides, I doubt there are very many 40+ who can do the crazy things I can do with mah belly and arms and hips... [G]

I'm even more up to speed w/ the Google Reader. I was having the devil of a time keeping up with Tribe.net! Now if FCBD would just feed their tribe page, I'd be all set ;). I also figured out Picasa, which rocks. Man, does Google ever suck? Not that I can tell.

So far, my parenting hasn't slipped too far down the ladder. My daughter is a totally cool fun-to-be-with pre-teen. I guess I still don't know what I'm talking about because I really love being around her. She just got her palate spreader off and is waiting for her teeth to rest so she can go with the mouth bling everyone else is getting (braces... woo. hoo.).

All of this cyber stuff and I'm still totally plugged into my home tribe. I finally have let go of Yule/Xmas enough to enjoy it as an adult. The plunge in the economy didn't hurt that effort at all! Yay dismal stock market! };`>

We're off to Taos for a while and I'm sure there will be breathtaking photos. Hopefully, there will be more posting and less feeling guilty like I do with the spring break pics I have yet to work on from Big Bend. Wah. And I really need to get cracking on a bellydance show review for the ABA's OPA! I went to Mirage's big holiday blow out extravaganza and it was funfun!

So, Merry Holidays to you from me, Mara & John and our 5 cats. (Nope, no tree this year. I'm not that crazy.)

Blessings to you all!

Andrea.

P.S. Look for a new review of Zanbaka's latest installment, Vol 2: Shapes, Patterns & Layers sometime in January or February.