Just Like Peter Pan...

If you are a dreamer, come in. If you are a dreamer, a wisher, a liar, a hoper, a prayer, a magic bean buyer. If you are a pretender, come sit by my fire, for we have some flax golden tales to spin, Come in! Come in!"

~Shel Silvertein

Uh huh...I am just a big kid at heart. I believe in fairies, Santa Claus, the magic of four leaf clovers, shooting stars and looking for pots of gold at the end of a rainbow.

I talk to puppets, believe that Sesame Street really exists, Mickey Mouse lives in a cottage smack dab in the middle of Disney World and that tea parties with teddy bears are oh so chic.

I believe that laying in the grass, watching clouds drift by, is a perfectly valid

 way to send an afternoon. I believe that dogs and cats talk to one another when we are not around, that thunder is the sound of God bowling

and I believe in the basic inate goodness of all people.

I won't grow up,

I don't want to wear a tie.

And a serious expression

In the middle of July.

And if it means I must prepare

To shoulder burdens with a worried air,

I'll never grow up, never grow up, never grow up

Not me,

Not I,

Not me!

So there!

Cleveland Rocks!

Bill and I just returned from a little getaway to Cleveland. We had such a great time together. We don't often go without at least one or both of the kids in tow so this was especially nice for an old married couple like us. Both Grace and Dan were busy and chose not to go so Dan played babysitter. He and Grace got along just fine. They actually do like one another! MOST of the time! Oh, and they kept the pets alive and well which is an added plus! *smirk*

We stayed in a hotel downtown and wow! It was absolutely gorgeous! I love that Cleveland has preserved their older buildings and this hotel is in one such place. Housed in the old Cleveland National Bank building, it has been rehabbed without losing one whit of it's delicious charm!

Our room was huge! The ceilings were 15 feet tall and we had a small sitting area with the TV, a kitchenette and a large bath. The refinished hardwood floors were beautiful!

Isn't this lobby something?

The ceilings were nothing short of glorious!

Oh did I do a happy dance when I saw these old elevators. This made me so happy!

And yes! I am a geek! *smile*

Just some incredibly beautiful architecture in the downtown area...

Many beautiful churches...

...and Official City buildings.

And their downtown parks are numerous and what wonderful art work...

Then down to the lakeshore...

...where you will find the "Dawg Pound"...

...and a little place called The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame!

No photos allowed beyond the lobby area but believe me...

...the museum is fabulous! We had the best time just looking and listening and reading...

and yup. We got to be there for the big Springsteen event...the opening of the "From Asbury Park to the Promised Land" exhibit. It was incredible.

And your tour is not yet over! Tomorrow I will share with you our visit to the "A Christmas Story" House and Museum, as well as take you along while we dine at a restaurant we saw on "Diners, Dive Ins and Dives" with Guy Fieri. Oh what a great time we had at Geraci's!

More on those tomorrow...

Wishing all of you a sweet, sweet week.

Much love!

City Life

~Dayton's stone-faced

summer visitors'

everyday antics

attract a crowd ~

By Mary McCarty Staff Writer

Dayton Daily News Sunday, June 29, 2008 Ever notice the lengths to which we go any more to avoid contact with real, live people? We e-mail co-workers in the next cubicle. We chat on the cell phone while having lunch with a friend. Kids text friends riding the same school bus. I've even heard some explain their aversion for any form of communication except texting: "I don't like to hear the sound of someone's voice. It's annoying." At first blush, downtown's Invasion of the Sculpture People might seem part of the same disturbing trend. For the second consecutive year, downtown's most popular summer visitors have been the life-sized — and, from a distance, lifelike — sculptures of people at work and play. The 20 sculptures in "CityLife '08: A Downtown Sculpture Walk by J. Seward Johnson" are charming and fun, but they're far from the cutting edge of modern art. With their bronzed complexions and bland expressions, they look a bit like Ken dolls whose owners got a hold of some gold spray paint. They're more likely to end up in a Museum of Kitsch than the Guggenheim or the Dayton's own Visual Arts Center (DVAC). But they've attracted fans in unlikely places — among them DVAC executive director Jane Black. "It encourages people to stop and look around, and to use their eyes in a conscious way," she said. "They make people think, 'What comes next?' It opens them up to things that are a little more challenging and indigenous to our culture here in Dayton." They have succeeded in luring people downtown. "I have seen so many people come downtown to look at the sculptures, and then they stop in at our gallery for the first time," Black said. And then, who knows what could happen? "The next thing you know, they'll be into mixed-media abstract conceptual installations," she said, "but nobody starts with that." When the sculptures arrived last summer, Black experienced many "Is it live or is it Memorex" moments: "I would see someone from far away, and assume it was one of those sculptures. And then they would get up and move away. It was freaky and interesting." I find myself looking more closely at the people on the street, wondering whether they're real or not. And I notice things I don't notice when I view downtowners as an anonymous stream of humanity. The Cooper Park lawn outside the Main Library proved a particular puzzler: Was it the guy snoozing in the grass, a newspaper spread over his face? No, it was the mother and son reading a book, their legs crossed. Longtime friends Phil DeVeny of Columbus and Speed Dillon of Kettering admired the sculpture of a husband and wife birdwatching. "They're neat," DeVeny observed. "They give you something to look at." Dillon chuckled over the spectacle of a woman goosing one of the male sculptures — a liberty she wouldn't take, presumably, with a real-life passerby. "They're so lifelike," Dillon said of the sculptures, "but they don't go anywhere." He and DeVeny were off to the Pine Club with their wives to celebrate wedding anniversaries, an outing the sculptures might well envy. It's easy to picture that, because the figures are so lifelike, with a couple of notable exceptions: They are all actively engaged in life, and with each other. And nobody is carrying a cell phone.

Mom, Bill, Dan and I went to downtown in Dayton to view the City Life sculptures. We enjoyed the experience and even got in on the act a wee bit...

Let ME Push her!

Family Secrets Here Daddy, Let Me Help... Gee Mom, I Don't Know...What IS it?

Daddy's Home!

I hope your week has begun with a smile. I send you all many hugs and lots of love.

Susie Q