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Lucky I’ve been to have had a ten minute conversation with Elanor Roosevelt, to have gotten a phone call from the SS Queen Elizabeth as it pulled away from New York Harbor, flown to a glacier where you would hear a thrilling silence, I stood next to Marlene Dietrich who had just exited the maiden voyage of QE2, seen the most beautiful rose garden in the world which lay in New Zealand… Old memories… from age 2 to be held up to see the town on fire, and to watch a chimney fall. A fire engine that was horse driven, a blacksmith making horseshoes, having traveled to 60 countries around the world, in the days when people still wore their traditional garb. If you scroll down you will see blogs about Bali in the 70s, and the Buddha with the Sapphire eyes in Sri Lanka, and adventures of many places all over thee world. There is no point in repeating them here. This is my 98th blog entry and having reached the age of 98 this will be my farewell post to all you devoted followers. I wish you all well, and god willing we will meet again somewhere somehow.
Lola
March again and another birthday, 98 this time around,so to blog or not? No I have not run out of subjects but perhaps you will excuse me for talking of finally getting my 2nd 3rd and 4th book out the modern way…on Kindle. If interested check out Amazon and you should find my books listed. Or under my husband Robert B Stone’s name as the book we collaborated on for Prentis Hall is titled Hawaiian Polynesian Miracle Health Secrets. My recent ones are The Tickle Brush Tree to be read aloud to the youngest but read alone by early up to 7 year olds : “Come sail away with me, we’ll search for the Tickle Brush Tree. I know where it grows half as high as the top of the sky and half as wide as the sea”. Those who have seen my illustrations have called them charming.
Then there is one book close to my heart which I researched for 10 years despite calling it Historical Fiction. It is “East of the Sun: Adventures With My Father, Maui the Navigator” Here is a summary:
East of the Sun is a tale of adventure on the high seas. An Egyptian fleet seeks to reopen its ancient sea paths into the vast Pacific.
We read of their secret mission and challenges in encountering doldrums, cannibals, mutiny and shipwreck, as well as a sojourn on an idyllic South Seas island.
This story is based on authentic ancient inscriptions deciphered by Harvard professor Dr. Barry Fell, marine scientist and noted Epigrapher who gave me permission to use his research but died before he could fully publish his amazing discovery. All who love ships and the sea will want to read about this authentic ancient Egyptian voyage commanded by Rata with Maui as navigator. (both of whom turn out, like King Arthur, to be historically authentic beings). Find it listed under my name and you can read several pages.
The Love Letters of Sybel X will appeal to all women and to the men who seek to understand them. You can again read the beginning pages. Enjoy!
That is it this time around so I say Adieu.
At the turn of the year I find myself in Seattle, WA. Hopefully my last move.
I am getting better and better after the fall I had and getting accustomed to assisted living at a beautiful facility where my brother Arthur is already living with his Lady Love, which is a delight. I have a chance to see my niece Roz and my nephew Jonathan.
This is the first time I have been back on mainland America in 6 years, having left the warm breezes and ambiance of Thailand. My first day arriving here there was a light snowfall, my first snow in 60 years. On the brink of 98 years old, am wondering if I will live long enough to see the peace that I have dreamed of all my life. I sense a spiritual change coming about whether I shall see it or not is in the hands of the gods. By coming here I have completed my third circumnavigation of Earth, and I find that is quite enough for one lifetime.
Thank all of you for your letters of greeting and good wishes. May the world that I have dreamed of come about before I leave for the next adventure. Peace goodwill and brotherhood amongst us dwellers on earth is my lifelong wish. May it come about soon.
Love and peace,
Lola
Flown in a Cessna up to a glacier in New Zealand and listened to the Voice of the Silence…Been taken as a 10 year old to see the never to be forgotten welcome parade up 5th Ave, for Charles Lindbergh after his first successful solo Atlantic crossing. Then a few years later I find myself on United’s second’s transcontinental flight to California. Here we gave the first and only fashion show, while plane was in motion, with passengers too busy looking out the windows to view the clothes…
I have received a message from the Buddha with the sapphire Eyes and held non drugged pit vipers in my hands at the Temple of the Azure Cloud on Penang… Taken with friends up into the Tamon Nagara wilderness in Malaysia. En route in our motorized dugout canoe seeing native Orang children playing in the river edge and at last we ending up at a British Rest House with an enormous bath tub in which I soaked off the heat in ice cold water. We were served fresh river fish with the wine and cheese we had brought, then slept safe from the jungle beasts whose calls echoes around us. Read the rest of this entry »
When I think of all the notables I have known in my life and become aware of the extent and the variety of people…from top scientists and movie stars, to intellectuals and down to the notorious “Dr. Feel Good”… I feel blessed to have been exposed to such a slice of Life.
Amongst the physicists were Richard Feynman with whom I went to school and was very friendly with his wife once he married. Then the noted astronomer Harlow Shapley with whom I spent an evening atop a hill in Vermont contemplating the stars and what would have topped them both: a near miss with meeting the most noted of all. Here is how it came about. A college chum who lived in Princeton invited me to visit one weekend in the hopes of introducing me to Einstein. She was showing me the University and then as we were driving slowly though the town there was Einstein himself in conversation with a colleague less than 10 ft. away.Not daring to interrupt we drove on. Read the rest of this entry »
Having lived a long time some of what I remember may be of interest to some of you. To start with: I was taken to see Gypsy Rose Lee when I was 15 by one of the Minsky boys aged 16, whose father owned the theater.
Watching her perform was fascinating. She took 20 minutes to remove a long white kid gloves, her way of keeping an audience of men fascinated yet never revealing more than she wished, always aware that concealment is the secret of allure.
A couple of years later future husband Bob Stone would take me to the swanky Meadowbrook Club to watch the Polo Matches played by N.Y. socialites against maharajas, other royals and prominent men from abroad. Read the rest of this entry »
Moving to Hawai’i seems to have stimulated my creativity. I began by writing a love story told through letters and then a book for little kids complete with illustrations. Although you cannot access the look inside page due to some problem, the story and its illustrations are ready. They and other available published writings are at amazon.com/author/lolastone
In the early eighties,we were asked to do a book on Polnesian/Hawiiana Miracle Health Secrets by Prentice Hall. It came out then.
Then I read of a discovery of cave writing that caught and held my interest and lead to my research for many years putting together all the facts and beliefs of the Pacific area. I am referring to “East of the Sun: Adventures with My Father Maui the Navigator”. Here is how it began. One of the first people whom I met in the Islands was an older woman, Ruth Hanner from the island of Kaua’i. She was of the Sinclair family who had settled there many years ago and who were related to the Robinson family, owners of the island of Ni’ihau which they had reserved for Hawaiians only.
Ruth was a scholarly woman who introduced me to the earliest editions of the Epigraphic Society’s publications which had recently then been published. As I recall it was in the 2nd edition that I read about Dr. Barry Fell of Harvard’s translating an ancient Libyan script describing an Egyptian sea voyage that took place in 232 BC, dated by its reporting of a solar eclipse at that time. I began to visualize creating a story like those I enjoyed in my teens: adventures on the high seas facing all sorts of dangers and challenges. Although I would be calling my tale Historical Fiction it would be as true to actual events as possible. Thus began a dozen years of research. Fortunately in that pre-computer era, one of the one hundred top research libraries in the U.S., the Hamilton, was easily accessible at the University of Hawai’i. Read the rest of this entry »
It’s the most popular children’s story ever written. Three hundred years ago, an unmarried Oxford don took three young sisters, children of close friends, out for a boating trip on a lovely summer morning. To keep them quiet so that they wouldn’t get restless and rock the boat, he entertained them with a story he created then and there. But for years afterwards the eldest of the three, Alice, kept after Lewis Carroll (Charles Ludwidge Dodson, math professor) to publish his story. Read the rest of this entry »
When I was in grade school, our geography teacher had us each draw a large map of the United States with the 48 states clearly outlined and then each state marked with its products. For a couple of the northwest states, I broke and glued small twigs to represent logs for they were the lumber producers and for some of southern states, I glued on pieces of cotton (cotton wool) or rice and so forth. I enjoyed that project so much that geography and later geometry and geology also became favorites as did world maps.
Some years ago a friend lent me the most fascinating book on maps, MAPS OF THE ANCIENT SEA KINGS by Charles Hapgood. Reading it you learn that long ago there were map makers who had obviously explored much of Earth’s surface and had marked the outline of Antarctica which has not been ice-free for 6,000 years. Also displayed was the east coast of South America with the name, Brazilia on it.
One of the things that fascinated me most as I read further was learning that these early map makers had used trigonometry (which the Greeks seemed to have invented although there were earlier forms of it in Egyptian and Babylonian calculations). In their ignorance of trigonometry, .the earliest map makers in historic times marked their discoveries onto the remnants of these ancient maps, despite ignorance of their trigonometry. Read the rest of this entry »
I fail to understand why we of the so-called white race who for centuries have felt the superior ones despite the remarkable achievements of so-called people of color: Martin Luther King, Gandhi, Nelson Mandela and Aung San Suu Kyi who have been able to achieve miracles of transformation of their societies through their sacrifices and examples of love, compassion and personal suffering that have brought about these much needed changes in their societies and in the world at large. Yet those of us who consider ourselves superior resort in the face of these same challenges with wars and all its disasters that leave us wounded, depleted and unchanged as we continue striving to achieve our ends through old failed methods. Despite knowing better we go on as before in the same pattern seemingly helplessly unable to bring about needed changes. Why are we left where we started despite such examples given us for the last two thousand years…examples of love and caring for fellow dwellers on our planet? It is obvious that one is not born with fear or hatred of others and we know that since we can be taught to hate we can also be taught to love and care for those outside our families and friends. Why then does humanity go stumbling onward, falling into wars that destroy the good with the bad, when we should by now know better?
We praise those remarkable men and women who come to earth now and then to remind us of who and what we really are and can be and yet the majority of us go on almost unchanged. Isn’t it time we all make the efforts needed to overcome our seemingly defective selves and try to begin to live now to follow the examples of those who really care about others? All through the ages we have been sent examples of what it means to be a true human being, of remarkable men and women to show us the way, yet we remain stuck seemingly unable to break old patterns.
Today there are stirrings of change in the air, a new generation of humanity is arriving on Earth. Check out pictures of new-born babies who from moment of birth arrive with eyes open staring with wonder and awareness. Why wait for them to grow up and make the necessary changes in our world? We have been given our time now. Let us use these precious moments to do something to make not only our world better but ourselves and all those around us beginning today.
How to begin? We might start off by forgiving all whom you feel have harmed you intentionally or not. It is not easy as I’ve learned but it is a necessary first step to peaceful living. Merely achieving that, you are then ready to truly appreciate all the gifts we have been so lovingly given. As a second step, being thankful for all those who have been kind and an asset in our life helps lead to inner peace. There is much more each one of us can do now no matter how little, starting with ourselves that will add to the well-being of others and eventually to peace on our Earth. Who am I, some of you may wonder, who makes these statements? Just an ordinary woman who has lived almost a century with open eyes and a caring heart.
To my surprise I find unintentionally that I have written an end of the year letter at this auspicious time when people of all religions or none feel an inner urge towards good will and sharing a special kinship with others. A perfect opportunity to make the resolution to becoming kinder, more thoughtful and more loving towards others everywhere. Isn’t this what those mentioned earlier, who sacrificed so much for the rest of us, would hope for us all now and for all time?
So whoever or wherever you are who read these words, surely you realize how much all of us need, at this special time in our shared history, not only to send forth words of cheer and hope to all the world but to receive them. Hereby I give all of you my greeting of love and prayers for the peace so long waiting for us to claim. May this new year see us earthlings move closer to becoming more caring humans as were and are those who have set such noble examples.
Happy Holidays and a peaceful New Year! Lola
thoughtsoflola 