08 May, 2022

Hi Jodie….man, this is truly unique. It was only 24 hours ago that I wrote your birthday installment, marking the re-energizing of my enthusiasm to write more Chronicles!! (smile) All of a sudden, I’m feeling like there’s another quick installment I should knock out, but I don’t have an idea which collection piece should be my topic.

Without a specific item having a pretty nice story behind it to focus on, I figured I’d just put together a few short thoughts on whatever piece(s) caught my eye. The first group of Miscellaneous Musings was written in 2017 and that’s when it hit me just how much time had passed since I assembled some of these “glass fragments” (if you’ll excuse the pun) into one writing. (smile)

So, I’m browsing photos trying to figure out what would be an interesting item to talk about, and I came across this shot of the little character with the basketball and the three dogs. I guess sometimes timing is indeed everything because I remembered that this character is just 4 years younger than you!! Yes….this little guy I call “Lil Bro”, is a ceramic piece made for me and given to me by a wonderful young lady who was one of my dearest friends when I started working at General Foods in 1974.

Her name was Maria Psaras (she married a few years later and became Maria Ortiz….I attended the wedding!!) and back in the day she and I used to play Tennis sometimes on Friday afternoons when GF (that’s what it was back then….now everyone knows it as Kraft Foods) let out at 1:00PM in Tarrytown, NY (you might remember it because that’s where I used to take you when I played basketball on Friday nights! [smile])

In 1977, she was taking a ceramics class and as a project she made this character for me. Goodness, I wonder where she is today. (smile) When I first got him, ”Lil Bro” was a stand- alone piece on the bookcase inasmuch as he wasn’t glass and had no particular relationship to other stuff….however, when I came across my first crystal dog, I placed the dog with him as sort of the “boy and his dog” theme. Later on, I found two more dogs in different stores at different times and went ahead and photo’d him with all three. Ultimately though, I split up that display and put “Lil Bro” with the sports theme and placed the dogs next to this Cactus. (smile)

The Cactus I found while browsing through a mall, and I wasn’t interested in it for any other reason than I liked the color and the way the rectangles of glass had been put together to form the Plant!! (ha,ha,ha,ha,ha)