A New Release, and a New Year

In another week MURDER SENDS A POSTCARD, the third book in the Haunted Souvenir Shop series, will hit the shelves.  I hope you will all enjoy the latest adventures of Glory and her pals.  I truly appreciate all my readers who have waited patiently while I dealt with all the life issues that knocked me down - but not out!

Later today I will head in to the office to deal with some payroll duties that need to be taken care of, but right now I am enjoying a quiet New Year's Day, watching the end of the Rose Parade.  It's been a great morning, thanks to a local Los Angeles television station.  Let me explain...

With the New Year comes a life-long tradition: The Rose Parade.  In recent years I have become more and more disillusioned and disgusted with the various networks' coverage.  Dozens of bands that we never heard because they talked over them, floats barely glimpsed because the camera was on some "guest" in the broadcast booth (who just happened to be the third lead of one of the network's series), equestrian groups that didn't even get identified, either by the commentators or with a title card.  I missed the PARADE.

Today was different.  I found the KTLA.com website with a live feed of their coverage.  Which was EXCELLENT!!  They shut up and let us hear the bands.  There were no guests, or lingering shots of the commentators, no pre-taped segments to interrupt the actual parade; camera lingered on the floats and the horses.

I was especially grateful because this year I had a personal connection to one of the floats and cared deeply about another.  The personal connection was to Donate Life-one of the pictures was of my son's friend Erich Vogel, a wonderful young man who left a young widow and a toddler son, but saved many lives by his generous organ donation.  The other float was from the Wingtip to Wingtip Association, celebrating the Women Air Force Service Pilots of WWII.

AND I got to hear one of my heroes open the Parade, Grand Marshal Vin Scully-one of the greatest broadcasters who ever lived.  (I was also able to watch the feed on my tablet, which solved the whole issue of "I don't want to get out of bed.")

I grew up in the LA-area.  I've seen the parade in person several times, including the year I could walk from my rental house just five blocks from the parade route down Colorado Boulevard, the year I slept on the sidewalk with college friends, and the year I was in the stands at the Marine Armory at the end of the parade.  President Eisenhower (that year's Grand Marshal) walked within a few feet of where we were sitting, and I remember how much that meant to my mom..  I worked on parade floats as part of a youth-group fundraiser while I was in high school and college.  Before that, as a kid I watched the parade with mom and the other kids.  This parade has been part of my life since, well, forever.

Thank you, KTLA, fir giving me back my parade, and restoring my tradition!

Tell me, friends, what tradition have you lost and found again?