Tonight is Halloween

   Be safe everyone.

Wool of Bat

   Kind of speaks for itself don't you think? Had a little fun with this Halloween greeting sponging clouds on dark grey card stock and embossing/cutting out bats. Hope you're brewing up something fun for the weekend.

Destination: Happiness

   Making some large birthday cards to send out west to college daughter. I like this sentiment for young people since we seem to be expecting an awful lot out of them in a competitive world. So many of them are stressed out before they ever get to higher education, and are having trouble enjoying what should be the times of their lives. I'm glad we could give our own children an environment where learning for learning's sake was the goal of the day. It makes for a special kind of happiness, appreciation, and wonder for our human abilities. May you make some happiness of your own today.

Literary Halloween

   I've been busy making quotes and printing them out for cards. A grown-up Halloween style this year. We're not much into ghoulish and garish, but I did have some fun with a literary license…darling daughter will have fun handing these out next week I should think?

   And what's halloween without something from Mr. Poe?

   I have definitely been feeling Krafty lately--and plan on entering the Simon Says Blog Wednesday Challenge! Hero Arts is sponsoring this week, and I found another use for the Stamp Your Story My Favorite feather image here. Do check it out for yourselves--and put your own stamp on it!

Imagination

   imagination |iˌmajəˈnāSHən|nounthe faculty or action of forming new ideas, or images or concepts of external objects not present to thesenses: she'd never been blessed with a vivid imagination.• the ability of the mind to be creative or resourceful: technology gives workers the chance to use their imagination.• the part of the mind that imagines things: a girl who existed only in my imagination.ORIGIN Middle English: via Old French from Latin imaginatio(n-), from the verb imaginari‘picture to oneself,’ from imago, imagin- ‘image.'

   Sometimes it's just enough to define something. I'll leave the rest to your….. 

October Eves

 Happy October days friends. I'm finally inspired to start making my own quotes after admiring the ones on Pinterest for months. You're welcome to print and share this autumn sentiment, and I would love to see how you put your own stamp on it! Leave me a comment with a link to your project won't you?

   Here's the printable page link

Time Travel

Imagine you are a young crew member on an Allied B-17 bomber safely--no small task--airborne on your way to enemy territory with thousands of pounds of munitions. You can barely see your own plane much less what may be lurking in the clouds near you; wondering what the next emerging shadow will be and if you will be ready to defend your air ship. Wondering if you will make it to the target, wondering if you will avoid the flak--on the way there and on the way back, wondering if the fighters will miss you, wondering if you will be able to see the target when you get there--if you get there, and wondering if you will make it back home. Oh my.

 

   I show you this photo since it was in that missing section in the nose where I filmed the video above. It also shows the hatch where the pilots accessed the plane, and from where Mr. H--from yesterday's post--was the first to bail out of their failing aircraft. If you are interested in seeing for yourself how sturdily these were built, search for B-17 damage photos on the internet. You will be amazed. Here's another doozy:

Please go read the story of the All American. I was sitting just aft of the waist gunner window--right underneath where this spot of damage would have been. I can only imagine....

Aluminum Overcast

   My son and I had a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to experience a bit of history first hand last week. Flying on a B-17 from the WWII era. The Experimental Aircraft Association, has restored this beautiful old girl and keeps her flying for new generations to enjoy and share in a unique machine and time. I don't know what was more inspiring and joyful--meeting some of the veterans of WWII B-17 crews or riding in the plane itself and feeling just a little bit of what it might have been like back in the day.
   It was amazing to talk with a gentleman and his family who came to the media day of the tour stop. He was a radioman and I was mesmerized watching him climb back to his station and seeing his face transform as he touched things, telling us where they should have been and how they were used:

My son at the radio station

   To be allowed to experience some of his and his children's emotions as they toured the aircraft was a rare privilege I will always cherish. He told us that he safely completed 40+ missions, but that he witnessed several crews that didn't make it. Describing the 30-second take-off intervals, the forming up of large numbers of planes from several surrounding airfields; I'd never realized how dangerous it was just getting airborne without crashing into another plane! The day they took off for Berlin the plane in front of them went off the end of the runway bursting into flames killing the entire crew, yet they had to take off right after them, careful to avoid the wrecked fireball; and once in the air prayed they didn't collide with another plane as they formed up--all this peril before flying into the flak and enemy fighter planes to and from their targets. Mr. L was lucky, and Mr. H was not.
   Mr. H was a top turret gunner on a mission headed over Germany when their plane was shot down. He was the first to have to bail out--having to go out the pilot's hatch in the front of the plane because the other exits were on fire. He tells the story about being trained to count to ten before pulling his parachute ripcord, "I was a little anxious, so I counted 2-4-6-8-10." He blacked out at high altitude and woke up in the tops of trees being cut down by local farmers. He was taken to the German officer in the village who looked him up by name in his intelligence file, and spoke excellent English having been educated in Chicago. Mr. H was sent by train to a Polish prison camp, and later marched 600 miles back through Germany at the end of the war. He was finally liberated by the RAF and came home to America via troop ship. His buddy told him he should ask for duty in the bakery on board ship--which he did--and arrived home having regained much of the weight he lost in captivity on that long march out of Poland. 
   The Greatest Generation is passing rapidly and we don't seem to be teaching much about their sacrifice anymore. I hope we can make a little time to appreciate that time in history. If you have any B-17 connections please share them with us!
   Thanks for reading along today--more tomorrow! 
   

Happy

   Just a thought for the day, and a way to use some stamps you might not have imagined before. These Hero Arts Brushstroke circles would make beautiful roses too…will have to give that a try sometime. Hope you are finding something to be happy about right now! I'm sending this off to a stamping friend who treated me to a lovely prize recently. Here's another variation I sent off to my daughter:

   If you try something different with these stamps do share it with us won't you? Thanks, and make it a great day!