soundboard de cheevo

For the first time in my digital camera experience I have done the equivelent of exposing my film by accidentally deleting a my Thanksgiving photos. Clare has hers that she will be sharing with me later this week. I spent the day in Atlanta with Clare's family, the Vances, that I am practically related to now after our 15 years of friendship. Clare and I cooked collards, her Grandma Rust made the best whipped potatoes and we all went into a food coma around 8 that evening. I think the highlight of the day was hooking up the Atari 2600 to Clare's massive stereo television. It was the ultimate Atari experience and left us all wanting more. I will always have deep love for the primitive video systems no matter how high tech the modern ones become. Clare and I bought one at a yard sale in college that I became so addicted to that Clare had to intervene and got rid of it when I started playing Kangaroo instead of going to class. (Thanks Clarence!) Atari games take me back to a goo...

On this day 60 years ago, Elizabeth Anne Wheeler was born. The rest of the world knows her as Libby (or Libbo as Clare and I nicknamed her back in college), but we know her as Mom or Lou Mama as Dad nicknamed her some time ago. Mom has her special photo blog coming later in the week with pictures from childhood of course some big collar polyester shots from the seventies. Even though the family four is not together today, we are still all focused on Mom --our queen and the hub of our wheel. We would not be the tight knit unit we are without her love as our foundation. She has inspired me to cook, to draw, to love art, music and National Public Radio and through her example has allowed me to create a loving home of my own. I think the most important lessons Mom has taught me is that you should never hold grudges with your family and to always remember the importance of a big bear hug. She is such a blessing to us. I love you Mom and hope you have a wonderful birthday.

This is 17-month-old Anderson Ellis Ritter chilling in his stroller at the UAB waiting room. He looks he is shooting me a bird with a captains wafer. His mom is one of my best friends from growing up in Auburn, Courtney Ellis Ritter. I was supposed to go see the Ritters in Chapel Hill today, but it turns out Courtney, her sister, aunt and cousins are here in Birmingham because Courtney's mother, Susan, is in the hospital at UAB. It's definitely not the happiest of occasions for a reunion as Susan is in between consciousness and no one knows what her outcome will be. However, Courtney and I have really enjoyed getting to see each other again and have some occasional dork out moments with her sister Kim just like we did 18 years back at their house on Cahaba Drive. We all went to the same church and Courtney says her first memory of me was when I was introduced to our age group's Sunday school class so that would probably take us back to 1980 or '81. Kim and Courtney alwa...

Courtney, far right and me dorking out with Kelley Pirnie and Kathryn Elam at LTW (Leadership Training Weekend) at Alabama's episcopal church camp in Winter of 1989.

Andy and Anne Washington, of Chelmsford, Mass., hold their new son, Matthew, and react after hearing the judge finalize their adoption as a part of National Adoption Month in the Brooke Courthouse in Boston, Friday, Nov. 18, 2005. More than 150 children in foster care will be adopted thought Massachusetts. (AP Photo/Eric Rowley) I think I have mentioned ad nauseam how much bad news comes down through the wire in a daily newspaper. Today's offerings include more suicide bombings in Iraq, the ongoing White House war on criticism and continued congressional budget cuts. After my first six months in daily news I learned, like everyone else in the newsroom. to let it all roll off my back or to at least try to. The expression goes that death and taxes are they only things a person can count on, but bad news might as well be another. This being the case, I always search hard through the daily photo server for bits of good news and think this might be the best. I have never heard of Nation...

Anderson's expression say it all and Miles backs it up. It's not so much the blues I have as just this inner need for solitude for the past week. I don't know what it's all about, but I think the time and weather change have something to do with it as well as the mother of dear friend who is very ill and in intensive care. This woman has been a friend of our family for years and it is hard to think of the smart and strong person I knew growing up in Auburn weak and vulnerable in a hospital bed. It just doesn't make sense -- not that these kinds of sad life events ever do. - - K says I get like this every fall when daylight dimenishes. I didn't know that, but I'm not going to argue it. For some reason staying inside and submerging myself in my favorite HBO dramas like "Six Feet Under" and "The Sopranos" seems to scratch the itch. This is why I haven't been posted a whole lot lately . . . a lot to process right now. Some of it is good,...

Like I said last month in the the "Napoleon Dynamite" review, I seem to always be the last one on earth to see the hip new movies, but I do eventually get around to seeing them. "Sideways" is a gem. It combines humor and humility in a beautiful way and illustrates the chemistry behind two people that have been best friends for most of their lives like Miles, played by Paul Giamatti, and Jack, played by Thomas Haden Church. Miles is the wounded bird after divorce and professional rejection and and has salt poured in both wounds during the extended bachelor party California countryside road trip he takes with Jack, who seems to have never doubted himself a day in his life. The polar opposite personality types are very true to many long friendships and in the end, they might still drive each other crazy, but they are still friends. I don't want to give away any more of the movie to those who haven't seen it. It is funny and solid all the way through and has ...

I had a happy moment today when I found a CD of family photos that had been missing for over a year. My cousin Stephanie has become the Brown family curator and she has found some real gems like this one. The curly-headed baby is my father and the man holding him is his big brother John Tollie Brown with his wife Sarah Reeves Brown. Tollie probably in his mid-twenties when this photo was taken. Uncle Tollie and Aunt Sarah had their own family soon after this photo was taken starting with their first son, Jim, and four sons followed him. My sister and I have never seen many baby pictures of our dad so seeing this for the first time really brought a smile to my face. Like baby Ben, Jerry Elijah Brown got lots of attention as a baby and, come to think of it, he still gets lots of attention.

My aunts Christine, Lucille, Eloise, Georgia, Chinky (Marie) and Alice. In front with the curly head is little Napoleon also known as my father. Missing Brown children are uncles Elmore, Tollie, Roy, Henry and Bobby and aunts Pauline and Dot. The older sisters and brothers were married with their own families. My Dad became an uncle at age 1 when his sister Pauline had her first child.

I am sure this photo was taken sometime in the early 1940s. Doris Kathryn Brown Downey (Dot) was my grandparents second daughter and my dad always called her the commander of Granny Brown's army. She called the shots and she still does as the queen of her own family. Dad says of all the daughters, she is the most like my grandmother. I love the Brown trait of dark brown curly hair, blue eyes and fair skin. Aunt Dot was and will always be very beautiful to me.

This is the Granny Brown that I first remember as a child. In the pink blouse in Aunt Pauline and next to Granny is my Aunt Elizabeth. Granny had a framed print of a man that I always thought looked just like Uncle Jesse from "The Dukes of Hazzard" on her kitchen wall (above her head in this photo) and she always had colored aluminum cups and thick green drinking glasses. She also had 1960s and 70s tupperware throughout her kitchen. The funny thing is that K and I have the aluminum glasses and two versions of the green drinking glasses in our house. I also have a decent collection of vintage tupperware. These might sound like simple inclusions to a kitchen of decent size, but to both K and I they are pleasant memories of my Granny Brown and her Granny Iris -- two smart and headstrong Alabama women who we loved and admired.

I never knew my Grandaddy Brown. He died in 1970 when my parents were newlyweds. I have heard many so many stories about him from Dad, Mom, aunts, uncles and cousins. I knew Granny well and her fiestiness and temper are two traits she was known for and that I always admired. Granny was known to throw her hand of cards across a room after losing a game of Rook and one time had a loaded double-barrell shotgun on her bed when we came down to Jackson, Ala. from Auburn for a visit. She explained with no apologies that she had heard people outside her house and she had fired a few warning shots in the sky to let them know she meant business. Granny died in 1988 when she was 84. There are so many Granny stories that I love to tell and hope I get to share with my own children.

I never saw this photo until last year at our family reunion. It was the 100th anniversary of my grandmother's birth. These are my two aunts Chinky and Alice, my first cousin Ann Overton and my Granny Brown. Dad says when Ann, daughter of my Aunt Georgie, was a baby, they made a crib for her out of a fruit box that sat on the kitchen table.

Here is Alliene Etheredge as a child with her little brother Gavin. She had beautiful browish red curly hair that she passed along to many of her 14 children and 44 grandchildren (22 girls and 22 boys). I remember Uncle Gavin when I was a child. He lost a pinky in a factory work accident as a younger man and told me that the same would happen to me if I continued to suck my thumb. I was four or five years old at the time so needless to say, I don't have the best memories of my great Uncle Gavin. If memory serves, he died in 1981.

After the Halloween craziness died down a bit, we had a much tamer party at the house honoring my mom's arrival into Birmingham (see pictures with Mom and Ben -- the stars of the party). Mom and my sister, Lindsay, went down to Auburn for the wedding of the youngest child of some of our oldest and dearest friends from our years in Auburn. Mom spend the rest of the week with us and we had a good time -- more pictures to come from Ruffner Mountain. Check out the party here at http://echeevodemadre.blogspot.com/

The 2005 Halloween page is posted. Sorry for the delay. Enjoy and post away! http://freakdecheevo.blogspot.com/

What a week. I have had a whole lot going on and will post photos and accounts. I have had a bevy of visitors including my mom from Montana and the excellent Clare. Many great photos and accounts are coming. I have been away from the computer with so much going on in the outside world of the past week, but I will catch up with bloggerville in the next couple of days. There are some amazing photos to come.