Monday, April 9, 2012

My Life Mantra

Can you guess where this china is from? I'll give you a hint...somebody was eating their dinner on this china, 100 years ago today...April 1912...

That's right -- these are the actual dishes from the wreckage of the Titanic -- which sank 100 years ago this month. Last summer, I was lucky enough to visit this traveling exhibit. It was at the Putnam museum in Davenport, Iowa.

They did a wonderful job giving a sense of what it must have been like to be a passenger. The Titanic was the best-of-the-best. It was the state-of-the-art luxury liner and you were lucky to have a ticket...


My sister Ronda and I went to the exhibition...

With her daugher Amy and the boys. Garrett, Cale and Cash...We had such a wonderful time. Looking at the pictdures again reminds me that I need to get busy planning some "Aunt Rita Adventures" for my great-nephews (and Memphis). Those little day trips are the highlight of my summer...

One of the things the actual "Exhibit" did was to give each of us, as we were entering, an actual "ticket" --with information about one of the REAL Titanic passengers. At the end of the tour, you had to look up your passenger to see whether or not they survived.

There were so many stories on that day -- like this one...

There was another French family traveling second class. Michel Navratil, a French tailor who had kidnapped his two young sons, Michel Jr. and Edmond from his estranged wife, assumed the name Louis M. Hoffman. He was taking the children to the United States. Michel Sr. died in the sinking and photographs of the boys were circulated throughout the world in the hopes that their mother or another relative could identify the French toddlers, who became known as "The Titanic Orphans." [15] After arriving in New York, the children were cared for by Titanic survivor Margaret Hays until their mother, Marcelle Navratil traveled from Nice, France to claim them.

Here's the picture that appeared in the New York Times -- the caption was "Titanic Orphans"..
If the ship hadn't sunk -- that mother may never have known what happened to her boys.
The story of the Titanic always reminds me of one of my life mantras..."most days, you can't tell your good luck from your bad".

If you go to the movies to see the re-release of the "Titanic" -- you'll see that Jack won his Titanic ticket in a card game.

The man who lost the ticket cursed his bad luck....

See what I mean??

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