This weekend, I was doing a little de-cluttering and I ran across some music CDs Julia had made for me. She often did that. I particularly remember her copying a bunch of White Stripes CDs she had inherited from her nephew for me. I didn't have any cash for extras at the time and I love The White Stripes, so I was thrilled she'd thought of me.

But yesterday I found some music that is forever associated with Julia for me. A few CDs of Paul Rogers music, including a few CDs he did with Bad Company from back in our high school days.

Julia just loved his voice, and thought he was gorgeous. She did like shortish, dark, and kind of hairy men. She traveled a lot to hear him live in the 90s and 2000s, met him and got autographs. She always referred to him as her "furry friend," So now, I have uploaded them to my phone, so Julia and her furry friend can drive around with me.

I also recall she admired him for being a man who was clearly content with what he had.

I still miss Jules every day and have mental conversations with her about what's going on in the news. But I can never think of anything as good or original to say about it like she could.

I hope you get a chance to listen in.

Julie was very talented at crocheting.  She not only was a perfectionist at creating from the designs and patterns of others, but she also had a great eye for design and would often make up her own patterns, often intricate and difficult ones.  She was an artist in the truest sense and had a high standard for her own creations.  Attached is a photo of a beautiful afghan that she designed and crocheted, along with the counted cross stitch picture that my mom created from the pattern Julie designed.  She loved both pieces greatly and was very proud of them but eventually auctioned them off to benefit one of the many causes that she supported.  

Julie loved art from the time she was a child, and we would spend hours playing a game called "Masterpiece" where you pretended to bid on various famous paintings without knowing their value.  When she grew up and moved to Evanston, one of her favorite places in the world to spend an afternoon was the Chicago Art Insitute.  Some of her favorites there were Monet's Haystacks, "The Golden Wall" by Hans Hoffman, "Sunday on the Isle of La Grande Jatte" by George Seurat, "Nighthawks" by Edward Hopper, and "The Bedroom" by Vincent Van Gogh. 

Marquee at the Vogue Theater in Indianapolis, IN , October 2011. Like watching a show while in the middle of a mob at the congested Vogue Theater, but always one of Julie's faves, drove 400 + miles to Indy on several occasions here and other places in Indy.

Julie requested Bach for her memorial music.  The music playing on the site is "Air on a G String".

Julie requested that memorial donations be made to any of the following organizations in lieu of flowers:

American Diabetes Association
ASPCA
Local Animal Shelters
A favorite Human Rights organization of your choosing
 

As virtuous men pass mildly away,

   And whisper to their souls to go,

Whilst some of their sad friends do say

   The breath goes now, and some say, No:

So let us melt, and make no noise,

   No tear-floods, nor sigh-tempests move;

'Twere profanation of our joys

   To tell the laity our love.

Moving of th' earth brings harms and fears,

   Men reckon what it did, and meant;

But trepidation of the spheres,

   Though greater far, is innocent.

Dull sublunary lovers' love

   (Whose soul is sense) cannot admit

Absence, because it doth remove

   Those things which elemented it.

But we by a love so much refined,

   That our selves know not what it is,

Inter-assured of the mind,

   Care less, eyes, lips, and hands to miss.

Our two souls therefore, which are one,

   Though I must go, endure not yet

A breach, but an expansion,

   Like gold to airy thinness beat.

If they be two, they are two so

   As stiff twin compasses are two;

Thy soul, the fixed foot, makes no show

   To move, but doth, if the other do.

And though it in the center sit,

   Yet when the other far doth roam,

It leans and hearkens after it,

   And grows erect, as that comes home.

Such wilt thou be to me, who must,

   Like th' other foot, obliquely run;

Thy firmness makes my circle just,

   And makes me end 

Death, be not proud, though some have called thee
Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so;
For those whom thou think'st thou dost overthrow
Die not, poor Death, nor yet canst thou kill me.
From rest and sleep, which but thy pictures be,
Much pleasure; then from thee much more must flow,
And soonest our best men with thee do go,
Rest of their bones, and soul's delivery.
Thou art slave to fate, chance, kings, and desperate men,
And dost with poison, war, and sickness dwell,
And poppy or charms can make us sleep as well
And better than thy stroke; why swell'st thou then?
One short sleep past, we wake eternally
And death shall be no more;
Death, thou shalt die.