WHY PHILIPPI? #7 REHASHING TRIP AT HOME IN KITCHEN

So now we are back in Memphis...have been home several days. We decided to get together again this morning to rehash our very 
short but very exciting trip to Greece. So it was so sweet sitting at the kitchen table with Dorothea and Beanie, my old friends from Humes High School. We are all 79, all widows, all treasure each others' friendships.

We drank coffee and passed around postcards and snapshots, commenting on everything we could remember connected with each one.


    

Then I told them I had some fresh news from Larry. Larry graduated from Humes with us. He never knew he was the class
nerd. But no matter. He ended up leading the most exciting life of anyone in our class of 1951 as a CIA agent.
 (I guess the overall winner has to be Elvis but he was not in our class but two years behind us.)

 But Ben and I got to know Larry very well on the Poland and Geneva pretend trips; he was a major character in both. So when we returned, I called him to see if he could find out anything about the victim in our bathroom in Kavala.  As I expected,  he called this morning to tell us he has found news he had gotten from his son who now is following in Larry's footsteps in the CIA.

The victim was a double agent who had been tracked down and eliminated by agents from another country which Larry was not allowed to disclose to us. The assassins were caught and arrested. 

Of course Greece is a fer piece from Memphis, but I feel safer now knowing the case is settled. However, it will be a long time before we can forget that dead body on the floor of our extra bathroom!

But the most important part of our coffee time was that Dorothea brought her love letter from her husband and shared it with us for the first time.
                                 
                                 
                                         June-1972

                                "My  beloved Dorothea,
                     I am having such a wonderful time with my
                     men's study group from church back home.
                    We are learning so much about Paul as we
                     study his mission trips. How I love him and
                     and his books in the Bible. Today we are in
                     Philippi. I find that I miss you so much that 
                     I am writing this as a love letter to you. I will
                     hide it behind a certain stone.  Some day soon
                     we will come here together and enjoy all the wonder
                     of this place and retrieve this love letter to my true 
                     love. You didn't think your old man had it in him.     
                     I love you more than I can ever say and will forever. 
                                   Always your Gleekamoo!"
*****************************************************
As you know already, Blog Friends, her husband died that very day from a heart attack in Philippi. Dorothea received a postcard from him  a week later, telling her he had hidden a love letter. He put an x on this postcard where it was. (x not seen)

But it had been collected and stored at the museum in one of many boxes of things gathered by the grounds keepers. 

How marvelous the three of us feel...that we FOUND IT in one of those boxes just hours before we flew home. !!!
*****************************************************

It was such an honor that Dorothea shared this with Beanie and me.
Now we share it with you. What could be more important than to be loved and to love.

So ends the final entry on WHY PHILIPPI?

Ο Θεός να σας ευλογεί σας

O Theós na sas ev̱logeí sas     God bless you!

With love from Beanie, Dorothea, and annie

****************************************************
                 

HANGING OUT WITH DON QUIXOTE MOVING EVER SO SLOWLY!

 

Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

The Spanish author Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra (1547-1616) is the greatest novelist of the Spanish language. His masterpiece, "Don Quixote," is one of the most important and influential books in the history of the novel.

           
Yesterday I went to the library to see if I could find a copy of Don Quixote with a little larger print than the one I have at 
home. 

A young woman asked if she could help me. I told her about my mission to read the half million words of this book my husband had taught in college. 

 She asked where. I answered University of Memphis. She asked his name. I told her, Dr. William B. Brewer.  She said she had majored in Spanish and he was her teacher and she loved him. She was so happy I brought back a sweet memory for her. We had (what I frequently have) a sweet for the moment bonding!!! That was surely a blessing moment for me.

I love pretending I am invisibly traveling with Don Quixote. His exploits make perfect sense to me, because I am on the weird side myself.

I would say my own "pretend" trips helped to prepare me for this adventure, but actually pretending for fun started back in my childhood. Plike!! (Play like!) was the most fun of anything my friends and I did. We would act out the most complicated stories, making them up as we went along.

It pleases me to know that, although Cervantes was a late bloomer (around 50 before he had a success in writing) this work was enormously popular. Everyone wanted to read it!!

Maybe more, maybe not. Maybe you should just read the book for yourself. It will surprise you to see how this book written in the early l7th century delights you. (1605 and 1615!!) 
Love, annie in memphis

*****************************************************
old7lady9blogger80@gmail.com
*****************************************************

HANGING OUT WITH DON QUIXOTE

                                        
With much excitement I am beginning a new project. 

I am reading DON QUIXOTE!!! Every word.


 I had always thought it would be so intellectual and dry; I find this parody is quite wonderful. And it is easy to see why it is considered a masterpiece and has sold more copies than any book next to the Bible!

Here is why I decided to do this: Beanie "made me do it!"

If you read my pretend trip to Barrow, Alaska, 

     (on annieinmemphis.blogspot.com,)

you met the friend I made up but came to love: Beanie. 

     I put her in three pretend trips:
     Barrow, Alaska, Treasure Hunt
    (Argentina) and most recently 
     Why Philipi?

Anyway she sort of took on a life of her own.

I remember standing by her looking at the Arctic Ocean. She was speaking to the memory of her late husband, Tom.

"Well, I'm here Tom, seeing this wonderful sight you always wished I would come with you to see. Now I'm here and its for you, Tom."

Perhaps somewhere in my subconscious, I put those words in her mouth...because 7 mos later I too, would become a widow like Beanie.

Ben taught Spanish Medieval Literature among other things. DON QUIXOTE was a work he especially loved to teach. I had only read excerpts, but I put off reading the whole work.

Add caption

I thought the only copy in our home was the large book in Spanish. This week I found  one in English. And in it I found notes in pencil suggesting paintings Ben planned to do (and did) from that story. 

So I am reading it now...and like Beanie..doing this tribute with pleasure.

When I can, I will post the paintings Ben did of scenes from Don Quixote. 


I will be on the blog and face book less for the time being, while I am hanging with Don Quixote!!
More later, with love, annie in memphis
*********************************************