Please celebrate Becky's birthday as we all share our wonders. I was inspired to share something with you after attending a big arts & crafts show this weekend. It just so happened that at this fair there was a collection of old buggies and wagons and one in particular caught my eye. It inspired me to share my fascination with you.
I have always been fascinated with gypsies. Back during my piano lesson days I know there was a gypsy tune that I loved (and could play) in one of those John W. Schaum piano books. That song and the illustration is surely responsible for my strange fascination with gypsies. My first encounter with a real gypsy was a few years later. When I was in high school I worked at a department store in our hometown mall (a very small mall but a big deal in a small town). Anyway, we had gypsies who lived somewhere in the vicinity so the store manager would tell us when they came in the store (we were supposed to keep our eyes out for shoplifting). He said you will know they are here when the Cadillac pulls up. I remember the day a yellow Cadillac pulled up to the back door of the mall and a clan of five women, all dark haired with olive complexions, piled out of the care and entered the store. To me it was exotic and exciting to observe. I later learned that they were Roma gypsies.
Many years later as I was planning my first trip to Paris when someone warned me to "beware the gypsies." Of course I am thinking to myself, gypsies? Sure enough, within the first 12 hours in Paris, we encountered a gypsy mother with a baby and a toddler begging. We saw gypsies in the train stations, gypsies outside the churches and gypsies on the Champs Elysees.
In the early 90's I saw a movie about the Tinkers and discovered the Irish gypsies. Even though the name is different, they are still gypsies.
Photo of a Tinker wagon
Then in 1997 the most amazing thing appeared in the Atlanta Journal Constitution obituaries. The headline read, "U.S. Gypsies Come to Say Goodbye to Their Chief Justice." It was so unbelievable that a very important gypsy leader had been living right here in the Atlanta area. To this day I remember reading about the white horses and carriage that would carry the gypsy dignitary to his final resting place.
Since that amazing discovery NBC has run a special on the Murphy Village community just north of Augusta. After watching the program I was even more intrigued and fascinated with gypsies, their society and culture. I am just curious if others have had encounters with the gypsy communities.
One of my childhood friends emailed me yesterday from coastal South Carolina. She too has seen plenty of these storms but her viewpoint of the storm is more focused on maintaining shoreline and protecting the coastline.
It doesn't happen often anymore, but this week we had quite a nice surprise. My husband is Lebanese and most of his family lives in many other parts of the world. Just in case you aren't familiar with families from this part of the globe, the families can be large. Not because there are so many siblings but because extended family is just as important as your immediate family. In fact it can sometimes be a little overwhelming when marrying into the family but you eventually get used to it and for me and my kids it has been exciting to be a part of such an extended clan. Back in the '80s and '90s, because of the civil war, many of the younger cousins came to the states to go to boarding schools so our kids had the opportunity to "grow up" with their overseas family over school holidays and breaks. During that time aunts, uncles, cousins and in-laws would come to visit regularly and would stay with us for weeks and sometimes months at at time. It was wonderful - most of the time. But in recent years as family has gotten older and young cousins have started families of their own, the visits have been less frequent. We have taken advantage of Skype and Facebook and Google Talk but it just isn't the same.
