My Friend Mary

     When we bought our old property up north you could tell just by looking at it that there would be a lot of history there.  A house that was around 100 years old, a barn that was around seventy years old, and bits of old farm equipment abandoned in what was once field but was now forest.  The old Barton Farm had a lot of history and sometimes as I wandered about the property or sat in the house or barn I thought of all of those who had come before us and lived, and died in this very special place.

     Shortly after moving in I was at the Township Office where I met Charles Barton who was related to the Bartons who had homesteaded our place.  I mentioned to him that I was curious about the history of our new home.  Charles mentioned my interest to his Aunt Mary, and that is how I ended up meeting Mary.

     Robin and I were getting ready to go out one day and upon opening our front door we were met by Mary and Lew Holotuk.  Mary was 91 and Lew was 96 at the time.  Mary had been born a Barton, and had written out a page and a half about the history of our property.  What follows is a bit of a story that I have pieced together about my dear friend Mary.  It comes from conversations I have had with her as well as stories about Mary I have picked up along the way.

     Mary tells me that she was born in our house on October 27, 1928, that she made her entrance into the world while the doctor was just pulling into her driveway.  As was often the case in those days she had several brothers and sisters, together they helped their parents look after their farm.  She was ten when she tasted her first beer, taken from where the spring water came out, and where the beer was stored to stay cold.  Before video games kids actually played outside, Mary and her brothers would walk along the peak of the metal roof on the family barn and do lots of other things that would make todays safety experts loose their minds.  

     Mary wanted to continue her schooling but in those days a higher education was something few farm kids got to pursue, and certainly even fewer females.  

     Now this might surprise the younger folk, but there was a time before cell phones, the internet and dating apps.  When the dating pool was rather small compared to what it is today.  You were likely to date and marry someone within a twenty mile radius of where you lived, someone you probably went to school with, and someone whose family was known to yours.  Mary tells me of how she came home from a date and found Lew waiting for her.  Lew had come for a visit and was none too pleased to find out she was out on a date with someone else.  Lew had his eyes set on Mary, 5 1/2 years his junior and stubbornly made it clear that he was the one she should be with.  Sure enough in time Lew convinced Mary of this and they got married when she was 19 in 1948.

     Lew was a mechanic by trade and was in the army serving overseas during WW2.   After the war they opened up Holotuk Service Center in Huntsville which they ran for twenty-eight years.  Lew did the vehicle repairs and drove the tow trucks.  Mary looked after the front of the shop, but she also would drive the tow truck picking vehicles up in Toronto or wherever they were.  They had the towing contract with the OPP so were friendly with the local officers.  It wouldn’t be unusual to find the officers visiting and playing cards with Mary in the shop.

     Over the years Lew and Mary had three children, Ron, Patsy and Ted.  Mary knew exactly when Ted was conceived, she said that Lew had snuck up on her while they were at the hunt camp, then she would laugh with a mischievous smile on her face.  Eventually Lew developed some heart problems and the Service Center was sold and they moved back to Hotham in 1982.  They bought Mary’s sisters out of her parents home after the parents passed away.  At one point in 1986 the hospital didn’t want to release Lew they felt he needed more care than she could provide.  That is when the hospital learned it wasn’t good to rile Mary up, and after the dust settled Mary brought Lew home where she looked after him.  Lew left this world on April 13, 2021 in his 98th year, Lew and Mary had been married almost 73 years by then.

     All the time I’ve known Mary she has been the one doing the driving, even when Lew was still alive.  Mary was pretty well known as a bit of a speed demon.  If the two of us were leaving the legion at the same time I used to wait until she left to avoid slowing her down on her way home.  Now over the last few years Mary has slowed down a lot and no longer drives at night, but just recently she had her licence renewed for another year.

     Now if I was to try to describe Mary, to help you form a picture  your mind I would describe her like this.  I would guess that she would be about five foot four, white curly hair, glasses if not on her face hanging down on her chest with the string running behind her neck, I would say she probably looks about twenty years younger than she is, and she has a lovely smile when she’s not trying to outplay you at Cribbage or Euchre.  She’s a determined lady who knows what she knows, and although I don’t know how far she went in school, she is wise from a life well lived.  Not too much that she hasn’t seen in her days.

     Now some of the Legend that circles around Mary, she is a Cribbage and Euchre Shark, and she is very competitive.  Now having said that she showed me tremendous patience while I was learning the game of Cribbage.  I suspect that Mary has recruited more new members for the Restoule Legion than anyone else.  When she brought me an application for the legion, well I didn’t get the impression it was optional.  I had quickly sensed that Mary was someone that I definitely wanted on my side.  Now there is some talk about some young guy once accusing Mary of cheating at Cards,  well lets just say that there was an altercation after that.  Mary never said too much about that, and I didn’t ask, but she did make mention of talking to a judge once and I suspected those two things might have been connected.  Refer back to the earlier comment about wanting Mary on your side.  Now there also is the stories about Lew running over Mary in the driveway once, and another time where Mary ran over Lew.  Yes after hearing those stories I would have been a little nervous to stand in their driveway when one of them was behind the wheel in their old silver Saturn SUV.  Mary kept her Hunting Licence well into her nineties, not sure when the last time she used it was, but I always considered her armed and dangerous.

     Over the time she lived down the road from me I would drop off the occasional Jigsaw Puzzle for Mary, always the 1,000 piece ones that she and friends would work on.  I would call around sometimes in the afternoon so Mary and I could share cup of tea and get a few Crib games in.  I enjoyed the crib games, although I suspected she went easy on me, but more than that I enjoyed her company and hearing her stories of times gone by.  Mary is a living history book of what had gone on in the Hotham area, and she knows just about everyone, and everyone knows her.  Although she can be as tough as nails, there is also a softer kinder side of her that I don’t think everyone gets to see.

     Sadly an era may be coming to an end.  Mary turns 95 shortly and she is coming to the conclusion that perhaps its time for her to move to move from her home to a seniors residence.  As I type this up she has temporarily moved out of her home into the Trout Creek Senior’s Residence, to try it out for a month.  She likes that they will do her laundry and meals, and I think she is looking forward to having company around her.  Even with all her visitors I think Mary found the days long and she was getting lonely.   When she spoke to me about it she said that if she decides to stay there she will miss her independence.  

     It seemed to me that Mary was the Matriarch of the area, and although I am no longer there I am saddened by the thought of this Matriarch moving away.  She was a large part of the whole experience of us living where we did, she was also one of the many reasons why we loved living there.  Although Mary may not live there anymore her presence will still be felt there for many, many years to come.  She will live on in the stories shared by neighbours around the legion tables on the Friday night pizza nights.  The legend of Mary lives on, and I am fortunate that I get to call her a trusted and well loved friend.

Hitting the slopes at Hotham to check out the Burramys parvus type things formally named by Snakeman a few years back.

Joseph Green and Robert Motherby – Hull Merchants and Kant’s Philosophy

An account of Yorkshire’s medieval trade links with the Baltic. They created a lasting network, not only for businesses and trade, but also for cross-cultural cooperation. The story begins in former German city of Königsberg now called Kaliningrad.

An account of Yorkshire’s medieval trade links with the Baltic. They created a lasting network, not only for businesses and trade, but also for cross-cultural cooperation.The story begins in former German city of Königsberg now called Kaliningrad and is part of the Russian Federation. This is an intriguing account how Yorkshire’s medieval trade links with the Baltic created a lasting network,…

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Dwellingup

Heavy locomotive at Pinjara. Dwellingup is a town nearby. I don't know if it's under restoration, but I hope so

Gonna aim for my irl name let's see if I land it: 785?

(also I have a friend - who's a girl - called Ahlai, so it's a female name in my mind and I'm assuming has feminine roots?)

785 is Hotham. It's a guy's name meaning "seal" and I am super, super curious to know if that's anywhere in the ballpark of your irl name.

There's one Hotham in Scripture, mentioned once. He's one of Asher's grandsons. See 1 Chronicles 7:32.

Very helpful to know about your friend Ahlai! That entry was rather confusing and it's good to know that the name's used for girls in the modern era at least.

This year’s Southern Hemisphere winter solstice will occur at 12:58 am AEST on Thursday, June 22.

Due to the angle of the solar terminator at the winter solstice, Adelaide and Townsville experience sunset within a couple of minutes of each other. For comparison, their sunsets are more than one hour apart on the summer solstice in late December.

Following next week’s winter solstice, days will start to become longer, and nights will get shorter for the next six months, until the date of the summer solstice on December 22.

Got a Skyminds track on the latest Hotham Sound comp, Calliope, to raise money for abortion rights. All proceeds from the release go directly to NARAL Pro Choice America, a non-profit organization that engages in lobbying, political action, and advocacy efforts to oppose restrictions on abortion, to expand access to abortion and birth control, and to support paid parental leave and protection against pregnancy discrimination.

Long exposure of a The Great Alpine road near Hotham 🍂💫✨

Spider-man x Batfam Prompt's

Ok so lately I have seen a lot of "Spidy goes to gotham and gets adopted fics" probably cause of Dark Matter by mysterycyclone cause like, duh, that fic is a goddamn masterpiece. But I feel like a lot of them are sort of the same thing with diffrent fonts ans it feels a bit saturated. Not all of them...but most of them.

Am I saying that there needs to be less of these fics? Hell no! Keep writing them please. I just feel like there could be more variety is all.

I suggest maybe try one of these ideas out

1: Peter going straight to the Batfam or other heros (dosent always have to be Batfam) and they try to work together on how to get him home, while slowly realizing "omg, your life is terrible! We want to help you, we do, but maybe we shouldnt and try to give you a better life here. Then its just a moral delema on what to do as they get to know the spider child.

2: maybe another Spider-man is the one that goes to Hotham like Andrew or Toby. Insted of being sent home at the end of NWH, they where accidentally sent to the DCU. Or maybe one of the Spider verse characters or a cartoon version of the character. Dosent always need to be Toms Spider-man.

3: on that same note. Please give more love to What If...Zombies Peter. You guys have no Idea the amount of angst and "haha, my world ended and im fine" potental there is. And you can have the other surviving member also be there as they look for eachother (characters that "survived* (no one survived that episode) are Peter, King T'challa, Scott Lang+cape, and Ig Bruce Baner/Hulk, and Bucky Barnes since we never saw them get turned or eaten) just think about Spidey and the Batfam investigating a lab or sometbing and all of a sudden they find floating head Scott in a crate. Everyone if scared shitless while Peter is crying tires of joy as he moves to hug the floating head. Think about that and tell me Im not on to something here.

4: Have the fic start our like halfway through. Maybe skip him getting to Gotham and have him be there for a few months already or something. This will help with adding more crack fics.

5: Maybe have the fic be that Peter is there for a while, he knows everyone, they know him, they might or might not know the identitys but they trust eachother. And Peter has been looking for a way home and he finally finds it! But... he accidentally brings some of the Batfam with him. So now its the Batfams turn to learn to live in the MCU with help of Spidy and they finally understand so much about him, how he lived, and vigilanties he knows (team red!) As they learn the history and pubilc opinion or Spider-man and the world.

6: Just a react to fic. Yk, those fics where they're stuffed in a room and forced to watch something? Yeah. Have the Dark Matter cast stuffed in a room and watch some MCU clips. It dosent even have to be some magic forth wall bull shit if you dont like that. In chapter 44, Peter and co. are said to be going back to the cave, and Peter still have is suit. Canonically, Karen records everything. Maybe Peter ends up so tired he dosent even want to try to explain everything. So he just hooks up Karen to the computer and and has her show them everything from the suits recordings to security cameras and news reports, to the memes and videos spiderman fans have made.

7: have the Justice League get involed cause "Hes to bright to be one of yours Bruce!" And have him be a honorary member of the league of have them put him on Young Justice. Peter gets adopted by Batfam? Yes. Peter becomeing Bffs with the Young Justice kids and actually forming normal relationships with kids his age? Also yes.

Do I have more? Probably but Im too lazy for it rn

If you for some reason use one of my ideas, pls tag me and maybe credit me for the original idea (but I mostly want to be able to find the fic if you do make it ( o_o) )

Who knows, I might just write some of these myself if I ever get the motivation lol

i feel like there are definitely jokes we encounter in our time online that don't ever actually take off and become memes or even viral but that lodge deep enough in our personal psyches that we just assume they do. which is a long way of saying: am i the only one that remembers "wettened hotham"

Elle! I'm coming to you with the magic of the nice ask day fairy 🧚‍♀️ ✨️ 💛 I see your header is of the ski fields - do you ski or snowboard, and how long have you been doing it for? What's your snow origin story 😂

lola i admire your persistence at dragging me into actually interacting with fandom things, even tho i’m shit at it 😂

it is! it’s sunrise at the mt hotham summit from a few years ago. however, there is a distinct lack of snow in the picture, because i cannot in fact ski or snowboard, despite the fact that i lived on that mountain for the ski season in 2021

so i don’t really have a snow origin story - i technically can cross country ski (very poorly), but i only learnt because i was teaching at a primary school on the mountain, and part of the job was to teach the kids cross county. but i was not very good and too injured to be any use so it was lucky that we were still in and out of lockdowns at the time and so i only had to do it once 😂

Relic of empire

Old Steam train boiler at Pinjara

Hotham Valley Railway. On my travels

John Hotham's tomb, south dalton

Winter solstice is commemorated worldwide. But what exactly is it? And why does it happen?

The winter sun sets over Mount Hotham, Victoria.

Put simply, the winter solstice is the shortest day (and longest night) of the year. But there's a lot more to it than that.