Mattie Miracle Walk 2023 was a $131,249 success!

Mattie Miracle Cancer Foundation Promotional Video

Thank you for keeping Mattie's memory alive!

Dear Mattie Blog Readers,

It means a great deal to us that you take the time to write to us and to share your thoughts, feelings, and reflections on Mattie's battle and death. Your messages are very meaningful to us and help support us through very challenging times. To you we are forever grateful. As my readers know, I promised to write the blog for a year after Mattie's death, which would mean that I could technically stop writing on September 9, 2010. However, at the moment, I feel like our journey with grief still needs to be processed and fortunately I have a willing support network still committed to reading. Therefore, the blog continues on. If I should find the need to stop writing, I assure you I will give you advanced notice. In the mean time, thank you for reading, thank you for having the courage to share this journey with us, and most importantly thank you for keeping Mattie's memory alive.


As Mattie would say, Ooga Booga (meaning, I LOVE YOU)! Vicki and Peter



The Mattie Miracle Cancer Foundation celebrates its 7th anniversary!

The Mattie Miracle Cancer Foundation was created in the honor of Mattie.

We are a 501(c)(3) Public Charity. We are dedicated to increasing childhood cancer awareness, education, advocacy, research and psychosocial support services to children, their families and medical personnel. Children and their families will be supported throughout the cancer treatment journey, to ensure access to quality psychosocial and mental health care, and to enable children to cope with cancer so they can lead happy and productive lives. Please visit the website at: www.mattiemiracle.com and take some time to explore the site.

We have only gotten this far because of people like yourself, who have supported us through thick and thin. So thank you for your continued support and caring, and remember:

.... Let's Make the Miracle Happen and Stomp Out Childhood Cancer!

A Remembrance Video of Mattie

August 11, 2015

Tuesday, August 11, 2015

Tuesday, August 11, 2015 -- Mattie died 309 weeks ago today. 

Tonight's picture was taken in July of 2007. Mattie was outside in my in-law's backyard in Boston. What was he looking for? Mattie was in search of chipmunks. Each day the resident chipmunk came out and Mattie was fascinated by him. Mattie named him, Chippy! 

In fact, this photo of "Chippy" was used by Mattie for a kindergarten class assignment. His teacher asked him to bring in about five or six photos that would inspire him to begin the art of writing. Mattie and I went through several photos together and one of the six we chose was "Chippy." 






Quote of the day: What you allow is what will continue. ~ Unknown



Today we ventured to Salem, Massachusetts and went to the Peabody Essex Museum to see the special exhibit entitled, American Epics: Thomas Hart Benton and Hollywood. I have to admit I really had no idea at first who Thomas Benton was however, as we began touring the exhibit it became clearer that I knew his works from his famous lithographs advertising the Grapes of Wrath and the illustrations in many of Mark Twain's novels. 

This is the first major exhibition on Thomas Hart Benton in more than 25 years and the first to explore important connections between Benton's art and the movies. After working briefly in the silent film industry, Benton became acutely aware of storytelling's shift toward motion pictures and developed a cinematic style of painting that melded European art historical traditions and modern movie production techniques. In paintings, murals, drawings, prints and illustrated books, Benton reinvented national narratives for 20th-century America and captivated the public with his visual storytelling.


Benton wanted to become the major American artist of his time. He trained in Chicago and Paris and was a member of New York's artistic vanguard, but by his mid-20's, Benton had yet to make the kind of defining contribution to the art history of the United States that his ancestors, U.S. Senator Thomas Hart Benton and John Charles Fremont, had made to the nation's political history. Casting about for work and opportunities, Benton became a set painter on silent film productions in Fort Lee, New Jersey - the nation's "first Hollywood." 

"Benton developed a modern cinematic painting style to communicate epic narratives as memorably as the movies of his day," says Austen Barron Bailly, PEM's George Putnam Curator of American Art. "He wanted to capture the feel of motion pictures on canvas: the illusion of three-dimensional space, rhythmic motion and the glow of projected light." To achieve this, Benton adopted techniques used by 16th-century Italian painters to sculpt and illuminate clay models before sketching the forms to work up a final painting. Early filmmakers also adopted these Old Master techniques to study scene composition. Benton's meticulous artistic process parallels the storyboard-to-final-take methods developed by the film industry.

Benton became acutely aware of the motion picture industry's rising influence and mass appeal. Themes of cultural identity, westward expansion, prejudice, tolerance and the American Dream were given epic treatment on movie screens, and Benton sought to paint them. Like the movies, murals are a form of public art, so Benton embarked on a self-commissioned, independently produced mural series, American Historical Epic. This sweeping series painted between 1920 and 1928 runs to more than 60 feet in length and appears in the exhibition. Benton selected episodes from American history familiar from 1920's silent films, but he depicted the nation's past in unconventional ways to engage the hot-button issues of the day: citizenship, race relations and national identity. As Benton explained, "history was not a scholarly study for me but a drama." 

Simultaneously, Benton started traveling regularly around the country in search of distinctly American subject matter. Like Hollywood, he recognized typecasting as a way to transform individuals into a cast of American characters and personalities, among them Yankees, bootleggers, musicians and cotton pickers. Inspired by his characterizations, 20th Century Fox commissioned Benton to create a series of lithographs (as seen here) in 1940 to promote John Ford's filmed adaptation of John Steinbeck's best selling novel The Grapes of Wrath.

After we our our Museum adventure, we then headed to a large warehouse in Salem that featured four floors full of antiques. It literally had something for everyone. It seems to me this particular warehouse is the best kept secret in the area for antique furniture at a wonderful price. I even met the buyer of the pieces and commended him on his prices. All I know is if I had a house and wanted to purchase furniture for it, I would be heading to visit this fellow! Antique desks, tables, dining room sets, and so forth.... all at very reasonable prices! Also in good condition because in many cases he and his business partner recondition them. As I was walking through the warehouse, the fourth floor was like a walk down memory lane. I found things from my own childhood that caught my attention!


I would like to think I am NOT an antique, however, I know when I was a child I had two lamps that were just like this! They were like music boxes. The children sat on a turn table, that could be wound up to play music. I loved these lamps! I did not wind this lamp today, but I would bet you if I did it played the song, "School Days, School Days, dear old golden rule days...." given the fact that over the little boy is a sign that reads, 'School.' 










Now this next photo, I am a bit more sketchy on! These are a pair of roller skates. I know my first pair of skates couldn't have possibly been these, since these skates are from the 50's. So I imagine they probably belonged to a family member of mine. None the less as a kid, I played with them and used them because they were adjustable. Yet I can remember putting them on and rolling all over our house in them!

My last favorite toy find that I spotted today was this cute Fisher Price phone. I loved this phone. Not so much for talking, the dialing, or the noise it made. But I loved its pretty blue eyes, and I can recall walking this phone like a dog. As a child, I would pull the handset like a leash just to watch the pretty blue eyes move along with me. In many ways this was a walk down memory lane today, something that I wasn't expecting to see or experience. But this is the art of antiquing. 

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