Window, so good and making its way back home

 - The kitchen window at the mountain house in the Nantahala Forest - taken a couple of weeks ago when I was there.  So much going on in that window:  I like that my sister's late mother-in-law put items in the house with Native American touches, like the artwork on the left, since there are two documented bent trees on the property.  Native Americans used the bent trees as trail markers.  The watermelon and duck tchotchkes on the sill evoke Northern Florida, where the family is from.  And the tree outside the window is a Japanese Maple tree - I loved the sunlight playing across it and it's what made me snap this photo in the first place.

- Friend Leisa and I like to meet at L'Thai, near my home in the Atlanta suburbs, for dinner sometimes.  This plate of shrimp and vegetables in Panang sauce from our last visit was so beautiful that I had to snap a photo of it.  And it was so good!  There are so few patrons there during the week, that we wonder how they stay open, but so glad that they do.

- On a somewhat somber note - my late father was a veteran of World War II, in the US Navy on a minesweeper until the end of the war in 1946.  This photo album was taken from a captured Japanese soldier and considered a "spoil of war", I guess.  My very kind dad and I talked about it before he died.  He said he wanted to see if I could return it to the soldier or his family.

     So the journey to return the album began, but efforts to handle it through the Japanese embassy in Washington failed (long story), until I was watching CBS Sunday Morning two weeks ago and saw a story about similar efforts.  The story focused on the flags (Yosegaki Hinomaru) that Japanese soldiers took with them into battle.  They were signed by their family members and friends before they went off to war and they kept the flags with them in battle.  Many American soldiers found them and took them home.

     The story featured a non-profit organization in Astoria, Oregon, called the Obon Society, that is handling the return of the flags to the families, which sometimes takes time, but they are having some success.  So I contacted them and they most kindly agreed to take the album, warning me that this might take some time, that 67 cities in Japan were burned to the ground during the war, so they are finding that often the families have moved on and can be difficult to trace.  However, they are having some success finding the families if they are / were living in rural areas.  There is a name and address in the front of the album, faded, but legible, so I'm hopeful.  I sent it to the Obon Society on Wednesday.  Keeping my fingers crossed.

Hope you all have a wonderful weekend!