{"id":919,"date":"2010-12-20T08:43:57","date_gmt":"2010-12-20T16:43:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/larryeifert.com\/wordpress\/?p=919"},"modified":"2010-12-20T08:43:57","modified_gmt":"2010-12-20T16:43:57","slug":"happy-solstice-from-larry-nancy-and-virginia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/larryeifert.com\/wordpress\/2010\/12\/happy-solstice-from-larry-nancy-and-virginia\/","title":{"rendered":"Happy Solstice from Larry, Nancy &#8211; and Virginia"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/larryeifert.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/12\/Green_Chickadee.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-920\" style=\"border: 0px initial initial;\" title=\"Green_Chickadee\" src=\"http:\/\/larryeifert.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/12\/Green_Chickadee.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"247\" height=\"337\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">Here&#8217;s a little solstice story to read while you&#8217;re awaiting the big eclipse tonight. If you miss it or it&#8217;s cloudy, there&#8217;s another one in 2094.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">Each Christmas between about 1940 until her death in 1966, my mom, Virginia, would hand-paint Christmas cards. A lucky hundred people would received these little watercolor and ink gems with her poetry inside. Each was slightly different, each a gift from someone who really couldn&#8217;t spare a moment of her short life. Books and articles waited, speaking engagements waited, her family waited &#8211; buying MY Christmas goodies waited &#8211; while she lined the cards up in rows on her painting table. I did the same thing too, until a few decades ago I realized I just couldn&#8217;t paint 100 of the same anything.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">I occasionally hear from someone who still has a few of these &#8211; the most ancient would now be 70 years old. Sometimes they&#8217;re framed and hanging like a real painting &#8211; which, of course, they are. I think she would be amazed at that, because, for Virginia, they were just little Christmas expressions of her love for nature and her friends. For me, they&#8217;ve always been an example of how to be an artist. Here&#8217;s a link to a few more of her\u00a0<a title=\"Virginia's cards\" href=\"http:\/\/www.virginia.larryeifert.com\/Paintings\/Christmas_Cards.html\" target=\"_blank\">cards<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">And here&#8217;s one of the verses, our Winter Solstice message for you.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>How shall I wish you strength?<br \/>\nA trees says &#8220;strength&#8221; so silently.<br \/>\nHow shall I wish you joy?<br \/>\nA bird sings joy and needs no words.<br \/>\nHow shall I wish you peace,<br \/>\nWhen snow breathes peace so perfectly?<br \/>\nYet these are the gifts I wish to you<br \/>\nAt Christmas time.<br \/>\nAnd in the year to come.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">Thanks for reading this week.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">Larry and Nancy Cherry Eifert<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/larryeifert.com\/wordpress\">Click <\/a>here to go to the online blog this was to.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/larryeifert.com\">Click <\/a>here to go to our main website &#8211; packed with jigsaw puzzles, prints, interpretive portfolios and lots of other stuff.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/nancycherryeifert.com\">Click<\/a> here to check out what Nancy&#8217;s currently working on with her photography.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Here&#8217;s a little solstice story to read while you&#8217;re awaiting the big eclipse tonight. If you miss it or it&#8217;s cloudy, there&#8217;s another one in 2094. Each Christmas between about 1940 until her death in 1966, my mom, Virginia, would hand-paint Christmas cards. A lucky hundred people would received these little watercolor and ink gems &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/larryeifert.com\/wordpress\/2010\/12\/happy-solstice-from-larry-nancy-and-virginia\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Happy Solstice from Larry, Nancy &#8211; and Virginia<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3],"tags":[111,117,118],"class_list":["post-919","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-new-painting-post","tag-solstice","tag-virginia-eifert","tag-watercolor"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/larryeifert.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/919","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/larryeifert.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/larryeifert.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/larryeifert.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/larryeifert.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=919"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/larryeifert.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/919\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/larryeifert.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=919"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/larryeifert.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=919"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/larryeifert.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=919"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}