Sessaonline

The Perfect Man

2011-06-01T02:57:00.000-07:00

I'm thinking about all the men that I have to say good bye to.

If you are lucky you can create the perfect man in your life from a composite of the men you have known and been close to.

I started this train of thought this morning thinking about my Financial Manager. I started my association with him, testing him in 1997. I gave him my inheritance from my mother and my IRA to manage. I thought, "I'll see how he does with this and take it from there."

Well, he did very well and gave me a lot of education about investing at the same time.

When it came time for Ken to retire we went to him for help with our understanding and management of our financial future. He, Jim, came up with a simple but brilliant plan for managing our combined resources.

Another piece of this "Perfect Man" was my husband, protector, provider, father for my children, friend, companion.

Then there have been the friends that have provided the masculine point of view in my life, Jay, Bill, Aram, Tom. Such fun people. Smart, willing to engage in intellectual explorations.

When I put them all together I realize I have been fortunate to have a "Perfect Man" in my life.

On the Trail West

2011-03-08T16:07:00.000-08:00

I’ve Just returned from a trip into the 17^th century. I followed the Hale family west from Concord Massachusetts, through West Concord, Maynard to Stow where our line spent two generations before going west again to Leominster, Massachusetts.

I notice from the Historical Marker it was Pompositticut Plantation, a Wampanogue place name. I will have to ask Jessie Little Doe what it means. 1630 was early! Before King Phillips War. I think the Hales waited until that war was over to move west. They only got to Concord in about 1641.

Fourth generation Hales stayed in Leominster, again, for two generations before picking up and going to Windsor, Vermont. Four of the Hale boys returned from fighting in the Revolution went together to take up farms in Windsor.

I’m wondering what these frequent moves to new pastures says about the economic status, restlessness of the Hale Clan. They didn’t stay anywhere long enough to build a financial success that might have entailed an enterprise or a notable house.

I gather they were subsistence farmers. They built wooden houses that for the most part have not survived to present day.

I did see a banner announcing a concert at the Hale School in Stow.

Mostly I was seeking the grave sites of ancestors I knew had lived and died in Stow. I did find quite a few Hales. Fourteen Hale/Healds in the “Lower Village Cemetery,”

It was identified as the oldest Cemetery in Stow.

The second Cemetery I visited was “Hillside Cemetery”. I found four Hales there. One marker resting against a monument gave me pause. It was the head stone for Sally Wetherbee Hale, who died Feb. 26, 1885, AE 74 years 9 mo.. Sally, what was your life like? Did you initial documents, notes, “S.W. H.”?

Lost Lives, Lost Art

2011-03-05T15:43:00.000-08:00

I picked it off the New Books shelf in the Library. I was initially attracted by the cover. It included the famous painting, Gustav Klimt’s picture, “Woman in Gold”.

Lost Lives, Lost Art; by Melissa Muller and Monika Tatzkow.

Now, there is something I know little about. I aspire to be a collector. It has been different things at different times. My endeavors have always been proscribed by the limits of my purse.

There was the BUTTONS phase. Mostly I looked for antique buttons, in sets of at least six. In 1980, before Antiques Road Show there were a lot of buttons to choose from in New England. I used them in my knitting and sewing.

Next came the HAND CROCHETED lace, knitted lace, tatting, islet trim, and antimacassars. Again there used to be a lot of this stuff around before it caught fire. I used it to make linens. Decorate my quilts. I thought about all the women sitting in the evening, before Television, the light coming over their shoulders, fine cotton and crochet needles in their hands churning out yards of this beautiful stuff.

I found someone’s little cloth pattern book for crochet in an Antique shop. Each “page” had samples of the pattern, to be repeated, stitched to the pages.

I carefully examined the collection of lace displayed in the Isabella Stuart Gardner Museum. If Isabella were to appear we would have something to talk about.

I became enamored with beads. If you are traveling it helps ones focus to have something you are looking for. On a trip to Montreal, with my husband, I hit every antique shop in Antique Alley. I did find some treasures, though I didn’t know it at the time.

I found and bought Red Amber, Moonstone trade beads. Then I had to learn how to string beads. I took a four session class in the evening Adult Education.

Lately my tastes have gotten more pricey. Ceramics and oriental rugs. Clearly I have progressed. Time to read about serious collectors.

Hence the book about “Jewish Collectors, Nazi Art Theft, and the Quest for Justice.”

Is this a cautionary tale?

The book details the experience of sixteen collecting Jewish families in Germany, Austria, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Russia.

The stories take on a painful similarity.

There is the initiating person, an artist or someone fascinated by art. Sometimes it is a couple.

They gather a collection brilliant enough to attract public attention. The collections often contain old masters, but most noticeably they begin to build on new styles. Impressionists, Cubists, beautiful wonderful new art.

Enter the Nazis. They denounce this “degenerate” art. However they lust after the collections.

There are a whole host of “co-conspirators”, “friends”, Art Appraisers, Art Dealers, Museum Directors. It becomes a feeding frenzy. It is the functioning of a Criminal State. Laws are passed that result in expropriation. The owners who can escape with their lives do so. Some wait too long, are too old to move and are ruthlessly sent to Concentration camps.

The Stories continue with the heirs attempts to recover the lost art of their Grandparents, Great Uncles, collections.

They are stone walled, forced into court, stymied in every way known to beaurocracys. Some of these stories continue to this day.

Their stories document what Germany and the World lost from WWII, not only the wonderful art but the wonderful people who appreciated and gathered it.

Station One: Stability

2011-02-20T04:55:00.000-08:00

I am beginning to struggle with the signs and symptoms of aging. They are sneaking up on me. More frequent longer naps. A stiff joint here and there. A contracting vocabulary. For a writer this is the most frustrating. I still understand all the words when I hear them but that word I want, the one that most exactly describes my thought, has dropped out of my vocabulary storage. Very frustrating.

Then there is the “loss of interest”. I can’t raise the energy or enthusiasm to get my self to Tufts and the Osher program, Learning in Retirement. I think,

“It’s a hassle getting over there.”

“That last course wasn’t that interesting.”

“ I can learn more from a book.”

I do feel more isolated but I rationalize,

“Only children know how to entertain themselves.”

“I’m never bored with my own company.”

I stopped going to Church about two years ago. There was a bit of a “dust up” over what I felt was the inadequacy of the “Food Bank” for the town, housed in our building. Two local elderly men ran it as a proprietary enterprise. They depended on voluntary contributions to stock the pantry. (Give what you don’t want, don’t need). This modus operandi does not provide a balanced, adequate diet for anyone. I felt it was totally inadequate to sustain the needs of the poor and jobless in our community during the coming economic crisis.

There was a friendly, supportive meeting after church one Sunday. It was a kind of “I’ll stroke your back, you stroke mine”, sort of meeting. I kept asking questions about why the town of Arlington Food Bank was not affiliated with the Greater Boston Food Bank.

The response was,

“They sent us rotten eggs”.

“ We don’t have freezer space to store the meat.”

I wouldn’t back down. I felt like the jobless and needy had my back. I later heard that the Minister had said I was a “trouble maker”. Fine, I thought, I’d stop giving money to the Church and give it to the Greater Boston Food Bank. At that point it seemed more Christian.

So, there went my weekly socialization at Church.

I have my three times a week exercise group where I check in with friends and acquaintances.

I have my sons, their wives and children, close by, praise be.

It takes more time, planning, gearing up for projects, chores, errands. I program each little trip, to the store, library, the grandchildren. No more dashing out the door spontaneously. Make sure you have everything you need. I am brought up short by omissions, loss of sequence.

Going someplace alone makes me anxious though inside, I know I can do it.

My friend Barbara Benes has just given me a book, My Mother, Your Mother by Dennis McCullough, M. D.. I have started to read it and feel like I have stumbled on the road map for the rest of my life. He calls his approach “Slow Medicine”. It is a caring compassionate journey.

I have sent copies to my sons. I recommend it to you and all my friends.

The Failure of Education

2010-12-27T14:05:00.000-08:00

The news is full of it. "America's Education System is Failing". The United States ranks twentieth in Science, sixteenth in Math, ad nauseaum.

Why is this so? Why are we failing to keep pace? Why are we falling behind?

My thought is, "Have you no eyes?" "Don't you see the young consumed, anchored, preoccupied, in their hand held devises?" That is where their minds are.

These toys do not teach them to think, concentrate, problem solve. They are all being made Attention Deficit Disordered.

Just at the time when they should be learning to concentrate, pursue a line of thought, struggle with solutions, their minds are elsewhere, in overdrive, distracted.

Wake up people. The affluent society has finally hooked the next generation. They are immersed in the moment, unavailable for the serious task at hand.

Processing the Pain

2010-11-04T06:48:00.000-07:00

Occasionally I wake up in the morning under the spell and sadness of the Gillinghams.

They would appear, after an absence of years and do magical things in your life, while their lives remained a secret, a mystery. Mildred always was private, the submarine woman, her periscope up and her life below the surface, out of sight. They tore at me emotionally because I loved them but could never get my love through the perimeter, to envelope them as I desired.

They were three, James, “Gillie”, Mildred and Peter. I called them my Godparents and Peter used to jokingly call me his “God-sister”. We all shared this unique history of the Yoga Colony, the Clarkstown Country Club, in Nyack, New York.

This history started in about 1925 and lasted for my parents and myself, until 1938. The Gillinghams had left earlier and settled in California, Alameda.

Aunt Mildred was a namedropper and I remember “Dan Dana” being mentioned. I felt that they went because there were more glamorous, important people out there.

Our lives intersected on the Gillingham timetable. The first episode was on their little ranch in Canelo Arizona, 1938-39. Next was in Arizona in 1948. Aunt Mildred waved her magic wand and got me a three-year scholarship to Verde Valley School. She convinced my future husband’s parents to send him as well.

Our lives went their separate ways. Peter would appear on my screen periodically; news of his marriage to the “beautiful and talented Molly Scott” from Aunt Mildred; his Graduation from Yale Law School, his work for the Government.

Some times the contacts seemed unreal. My husband, who was a tenured professor at MIT recounted Peter’s suggestion that he, Ken, return to Canelo and dig up this giant bird, and make a name for himself. My mother’s response to this was, “Gillie was always looking for buried treasure.”

Earlier, after college graduation Peter, who had been studying Russian at the Army Language Training School, told Ken that

“They wanted to operate on my eyes, to make them look Asian, and drop me behind enemy lines in Russia.”

Peter’s name appeared as the Director of the new program of Viet Namese Studies at Carbondale, Illinois. Ken and I were actively opposing the Viet Nam War at this point and I knew some of the history of this program, which major universities had refused to host. We thought it tainted and began to wonder if Peter had a CIA connection. I wrote him a long, disparaging letter giving our views on the whole Viet Nam involvement, asking, “how can you be involved with this illegal and immoral war?” I didn’t get an answer then but later he said,

“We knew the Tet Offensive was coming and warned the Military but they didn’t accept our analysis.”

I thought the “we” was an oblique acknowledgement of his CIA status.

In 1989 I visited Nyack and had lunch with Viola Bernard, a former “club” member and then a Psychiatrist, practicing in New York City. I was working as a Psychiatric Nurse at that time. We were recounting what we knew of former Club members, and the Gillinghams came up. Viola said,

“Mildred asked me to see Peter. I did. He was crazy.”

She then looked uncomfortable, realizing that she had violated his confidentiality.

The last time I saw Peter he drove across the country in a pick up truck to wish my mother a Happy Birthday in her 100^th year. It would have been 1995. He stayed with us in Lexington. I remember being struck by him having his own bottle of Scotch along. He brought it in from his truck then took it with him when he left. I thought, “I wonder if he has a problem with alcohol?”

I next heard he had died. He checked himself into the VA Hospital, in the process of a stroke, and it had taken his family ten days to find him.

I was crying and crying. Couldn’t believe he was gone.

Some five or six years ago I had reason to go to Portland Oregon. I remembered Peter saying his son, Ian, lived there. I looked him up, found him, and went to dinner with him, his wife and her parents.

I realized they knew very little of the Gillingham family history, victims of the family style. I recounted what I remembered and enjoyed seeing their interest and surprise.

Ian recounted the sad history of his father's decline. It seemed that all the things that were of Peter got distorted, inflated, out of control. That was hard to hear.

Visit to Hyde Park

2010-10-14T05:25:00.000-07:00

I have just returned from a visit with my friend, Doris Powell, to Hyde Park for the re-dedication of Franklin Roosevelt High School. Doris, "Coxie" was a member of the first graduating class. Seven members of the class survive and five made it to the ceremony.

The ceremony at the re-dedication of the Roosevelt School was very lovely and appropriate. David Roosevelt, Elliot's son, spoke. It was full of meaning for the community and the emphasis on education, supported by both Franklin and Eleanor. The school building has been placed on the list of National Historic Places.

The next day I got up early and went to Valkill, Eleanor's private place. What a beautiful spot. She and two of her friends had built a stone cottage there. Franklin had given them life tenancy on the land. It is the place you see pictured. Eleanor didn't live there. She visited and she and the two friends started a furniture factory right there to train local people and give them work during the depression. It went broke on 1936, Eleanor said she was their main customer, so she closed it and rebuilt it for a residence for herself. it is spacious but modest.

Eleanor lived mostly in one wing, LR, DR, Kitchen, secretary's small apartment down stairs and her bed room, sleeping porch, two guest rooms up stairs. The park service is refurbishing it as it was during her tenancy. John, her son, had given or sold the contents at auction when she died. Luckily the local museum had come and taken pictures of the rooms and they had the records of who had purchased what at the auction. The Park service is tracking things down.

Ken Burns has just completed shooting for a film on the Roosevelts and the Ranger said he came up with a number of pieces. The film will be out in about two years so I'll look for it. I loved his film on Mark Twain.

Being Ken's Wife

2010-09-25T06:22:00.000-07:00

Someone has emailed Ezra and wants to know what it was like to live with Ken Hale.

This inquiry has gotten me thinking.

It must be different to live your life with someone who has a special gift, has a unique ability, recognized by the people with whom he interacts.

I think my realization came gradually because I had known Ken since we were quite young, he twelve and I fourteen. Initially I was attracted to him because I thought him handsome. His special interest just seemed part of him. He was also interested in Gun Smithing and Trapping. So I just thought, "that is who he is."

He seemed very attracted to me and was always there and available as a boyfriend whenever our lives intersected.

He once said to me, “Why did you choose me?”

I said, “No bad vibes.”

He was very hurt by this but I think he didn’t realize how many men there were out there with serious flaws, from a woman’s point of view.

We kind of grew up, went through life, and were separated by death. I’ve had a few dreams about him since he died and feel they are insights into our relationship.

About two weeks after Ken’s death I dreamed I came into our bed room and he was standing on his side of the bed in his robe that I had made him.

He said, “I’m sorry”.

I threw my arms around him and hugged him and said,

“I miss you so.” And he was gone.

5/21/04: I dreamed Ken rode up on a bicycle and dismounted. I threw my arms around him and kissed and kissed him on his cheek.

I said, “I’m so lonely, stay with me.”

He said, “I can’t” and disappeared.

5/16/08 I dreamed I was in a Market and realized I didn’t have the car keys to get myself home.

I started calling, “Ken, Ken”. And was distressed at how weak, and feeble my voice sounded.

I tried to call louder, younger. I saw Ken coming toward me wearing a shirt he had of red and white plaid. He was pushing a grocery cart and alternately smiling and looking concerned.

I thought, “There he is. He will get me home.”

I think living with a Polyglot concerns two Domains: one is the Language Gift and the other Personality.

I remember reading J. P. Harrington’s wife’s autobiography with a lot of interest even before I thought of myself as being married to someone with language phenomena.

Her book was titled; Encounter with an Angry God. Now here was a linguist, gifted, who was incredibly difficult. I’ve since learned that he must have been paranoid. He hid his notes and manuscripts in many different places and some were never found.

I realized pretty early in our marriage that Ken had just one interest, languages; all languages. He never ranked them as worthy of study. He did acknowledge that some were more “difficult” to learn than others. (Navajo, Gaelic, Basque).

I think my support of his interest first evolved around my realization that this was how he was going to support us financially. That language work was what he was suited for and what he wanted to do and that teaching this interest could bring in an adequate salary.

As the wife in this marriage it was my obligation to help him succeed in this profession.

This support from me meant going where he wanted to go and freeing him up to do his work while I did the rest, the household, entertaining, finances, children in the family.

This division of labor worked well for us. He worked hard, was successful professionally earned an adequate income for our needs and didn’t second guess my decisions about family matters. I did realize that this gave him what he wanted, time to do his “work”. He did show some initial irritation when I would ask for help that took him away from his work. Usually he would stop what he was doing and “get it over with so that I can get back to work”.

He would do the requested task willingly after expressing the initial irritation with the interruption.

The parts of Ken that I admired were his generosity, his ability to have a unique window into other cultures through their languages. He was a strong and articulate advocate.

Often he was reluctant to defend him self but he would become a Gladiator for the down trodden minority ( Native Americans, Australian Aborigines, indigenous remnant tribes of Nicaragua ) faced with a voracious majority.

I admired his willingness to share his materials and insights. He felt there was such a wealth of language and grammar in the world that he could never do everything he wanted to do in his lifetime.

“I’ve got to interest other people in working on this.” (problem)

In thinking about the existence of God, he said, “I think if there is evidence of the existence of God it is Grammar.”

I think he was puzzled by my lack of interest in Languages. I remember him trying to interest me by saying, “Each new language is like a mystery to be solved.”

He was strongly opposed to the death penalty.

He said, “Imagine being the poor person who everyone wants to die, how alone you would feel.”

That gave me pause and I have felt that I should support his insight.

Before Ken died I said to him:

“I’m going to miss you.”

“I’ll always be around you.”

“If I move will you be able to find me?”

“I have tricks.”

September 23, 2010,

I am missing Ken a lot today. Thinking how time stopped for him and continued for me. I feel like I left him, back there, somewhere, alone.

I remember before he died, when he was unable to leave our room he said, “I’m afraid you are going to go off and leave me here ( abandon me ).”

It seemed such a logical understandable fear. It was the first time he could not physically follow me. I said everything I could think of to reassure him.

“I wouldn’t leave you for anything.”

“I’m not going anywhere.”

September 25, 2010

I am remembering that about one month before he died, when he was pretty much bed bound, I decided to wash Ken’s feet.

I spread the towel on the floor and had him sit on the side of the bed. I brought a large plastic basin (the one I used to make bread in) filled with warm water. I placed his feet in the water to soak then soaped them up and rubbed of the old skin. I dried each one then cut his toenails. We finished up with baby powder.

I remember how he smiled and how pleased he looked. He deeply enjoyed the loving personal touch. I’m so glad I did it and have this memory.

Transcontinental Rail Journey,1940

2010-07-27T08:58:00.000-07:00

Some time in the spring of 1940 my Mother gave up her attempt to establish a new home in Mill Valley California and surrendered to my father’s demands and enticements that she return to cohabit with him in a new community, Patchogue, Long Island, New York. This meant giving up the duplex on which she had put a down payment, closing her bank account, selling our Buick car which had transported us from New York State, a 3-4 month stop in Canelo Arizona at “Turkey Creek Ranch”, and deposited us at the end of the trail, Mill Valley California. I was taken out of school. Good byes were said to a Finnish lady friend, Club Member Marie Krell, Aunt Emily Boyden, Aunt Alice Hatcher.

We mounted the transcontinental train and I entered a new and magic world of travel. The 5-7 days of confinement on our long and narrow traveling hotel passed quickly. I must have had a suitcase with enough cloths for the journey. I don’t remember it. My mother took care of that. What I do remember was my plaid woolen dress, a little scotch cap with a feather and a small purse. I may have had small white gloves too. My mother certainly had white gloves.

We were ensconced in a numbered seat, comfortable, upholstered with a small table fitted into the side of the rail car. There was a large window over our seat and table from which, you could watch the passing towns and countryside. Our meals were taken in the dining car. The railroad gave me some little books with which to entertain my self. I still have some of them. Morning Star: a Little Pueblo Girl, Watlala: An Indian of the Northwest, Gray Bird: A Little Plains Indian, Nigalek: A Little Eskimo Boy. They were little paperbacks, in color, illustrated by Roger Vernam. They were published by the Platt and Munk Co. Inc. Today I notice some coloring of the black and white pictures, with colored pencil, carefully staying in the lines, so they were duel purpose books to be read and colored. I’m sure my Mother also had a deck of playing cards for “Go Fish” and “Old maid”. I don’t think I was up to “Rummy” yet.

The days settled into their own rhythm. Meals in the dining car, the tables set with white linen and polished silver. Black waiters in white jackets took our orders from the presented menus. Tables must have been assigned because for some extended period we sat across the table from two young traveling salesmen in business suits.

One evening when the Waiter presented the check to the businessmen, one of them said, “The young lady is taking care of our check.” Where upon, the Waiter gave it to me. Fortunately I had the old checkbook to my mother’s closed account in my purse. I whipped it out, scribbled something on the blank check, tore it off and gave it to the waiter. At breakfast the next morning the waiter brought my check to our table and said, “Young lady, I have to tell you this check is no good.”

While we were at dinner our car was magically transformed. We left a light spacious car lined with seats and tables, windows on both sides and returned to a long corridor draped top and bottom with dark green curtains. My mother and I slept in an upper bunk. This dropped down above our seat. During the day it was a curved ceiling engaged above our window and the top of the center aisle. We entered our compartment via a ladder moving the curtain aside and landing on a comfortable bed all made up. A mesh hammock was strung along the wall for out cloths. Reverse magic happened while we were at breakfast.
We stopped in Chicago and had a few hours layover while out train was reconfigured. My father had arranged for his Cousin, Howard King, to meet us there and chaperone us for a few hours.

When we arrived in New York City, there was my father to meet us. I must not have seen him for 6 months and was mystified as to how he had known where we were and managed to meet us.

"I know a place."

2010-07-05T05:13:00.000-07:00

It is easy to get anxious, depressed in today's world.

I was drawn to the news on the internet, TV like a moth to a flame. I felt wired. How bad can things get?

I got in my car. My cousins were coming from Oregon for their annual visit to the farm.
The Farm is in Vermont. It has been in the family for over 100 years. I have been visiting on a regular basis since 1968.

Driving into the valley below the farm, I could feel myself beginning to unwind. As I drove up the driveway I took a deep breath.

Here is a place that doesn't change. It restores my soul.

Our Schools are in trouble

2010-06-20T09:08:00.000-07:00

Arlington Massachusetts is having to decrease music and art, foreign language introduction. Class sizes are increasing as well. This is because there is a one million annual short fall in the budget for public education.
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This is the next generation of Americans we're talking about. They come into a culture that is going to demand high math skills, engineers, doctors, teachers, a world view. We need an educated body politic to make wise decisions when they vote.

Where are we spending out treasure, Iraq, Afghanistan, bailing out our excesses from the past, Fanny Mae, Freddy Mac, Goldman Sacks, and Citibank?

The Lunatic Fringe wants less Government, Less Regulation.

It is easy to get depressed these days.

I am grateful that Barrack Obama is willing to serve in this difficult trying time. It is useful to contrast him with Senator Lindsey Graham. I watched him, Graham, display his Idea Fix, convictions from the Bush/Chaney era at the Senate hearings on Afghanistan. After delivering a totally ignorant and stupid line of questioning to General Petraeus, he got up and stomped out of the hearing. God save us from these Senators who are stuck in the past.

Letter to James Carville

2010-06-13T04:50:00.000-07:00

Dear Mr. Carville,

I have been watching you come apart on TV. For me it is one of the most distressing processes related to the Oil catastrophe.

You are an articulate intelligent political man. We need you to make the connection with this event and our modern life style.

Take a breath and think about this in the larger sense. Very few people are making the connection. Please note the adds following the news from the Gulf on CNN. There is Lexus, touting the speed of it's cars, wheels spinning. How insensitive it that!

Obama is between a rock and a hard place. We need to shift the economy away from Coal and Oil, Gas but we can't do it quickly if we want to control the deficit.

People who have the "public ear" need to help people see the connection between our reckless use of energy and the destruction of the Planet. It isn't just BP and the Federal Government, it is ALL OF US.

I have always enjoyed your comments, so "right on". Now you are so upset I can't understand you, speaking so fast. "Time out" to regroup.

Best regards to you. I am so sorry. I know you are watching the death of the life and place you love.

Bern Kilgariff

2010-04-15T10:36:00.000-07:00

Thanks, David. Looking at the picture of Bernie and Aileen I remember one time she loaned me blankets, I think it was when we moved from the Oasis Motel to the little stone house on the Todd, which she had found for us. She asked for them back because, "we have only two blankets for each child."

Their past is ours too. Love, Sally

Overheard at the Diner

2010-02-12T08:24:00.000-08:00

I was sitting in a booth waiting for my Vegtable Omlet.

A man, about mid-fifties in age was in the next booth facing me and talking on his cell phone. I gathered from his conversation, that he was talking to a friend about being out of work. He said he was working part time in the diner, "For something to do."

"I voted for Brown".

"The Republicans were in we were doin great."

"The Democrats are in we're doin terrible."

2009-11-06T19:35:00.000-08:00

Report to Ezra Jabez
Sacketts Harbor, 1996
Grandfather, they are taking the boats out of the water at Navy Point. In 1996. I
walked out there this morning. There was a misty rain and the wind was from the north- west, coming in off the lake. I thought of you and how you would know and expect the seasonal activity of this little harbor, so I am making my report to you.

The harbor is full of pleasure boats, Sail and motor launches. They have names and home "ports", which seem to be the domiciles of their owners, not necessarily on the lake. There was "Empty Pockets", a message I will try to remember when I toy with the idea of boat ownership. Many are for sale, beautiful clean shining hulls, up on pylons, their dimensions, year of launch, and price stuck on their bows. The dollar amount ranges from $19,000 to $176, 000. Your estate, at your death was listed at about $27,000. You would be shocked.

These boats are made of fiberglass, not much wood to be seen. They have tall aluminum masts, now lying side by side like stacked wood, segregated in another part of the boat yard. There are all sorts of navigational aids attached around the cockpit. These electronic navigators communicate with satellites, Grandfather! You can tell your position any where on the earth within a few feet by turning on these gadgets! What happens when the power fails? I hope these sailors still know how to "shoot the stars".

They are predicting a drastic change in temperature tonight. Today, October 2nd it is about 65 degrees and sunny. The flowers are blooming. Tomorrow it is supposed to be 40 F. I'm ready. I know how changeable this place is. I've got my Down Parka along.

Lots of love, your granddaughter, Sessa

The Informant, staring Matt Damon, or Name that Pathology

2009-11-03T17:40:00.000-08:00

I had read of Mark Whitaker’s debacle with Archer Daniels Midland ten, fifteen, years ago in maybe the New Yorker? I had been fascinated and amused so looked forward to seeing the dramatization on screen.

I was not prepared for the “this is your life” experience that unfolded before me. At first I thought, "Wait a minute, this is familiar."

His story was good, believable. But then little things didn’t add up. What’s wrong here?

The main character, Mark Whitaker spins out lies and fabrications with the ease of water pouring from a jug. It became apparent that he was preoccupied with his interior life. At first I thought, “pathological liar.” Then, “He’s paranoid.” Then “to think it is to say it.”

At that point things became uncomfortably familiar. “This guy is like Ian. He can’t help himself. He even lies about his lies."

I began to feel sad and depressed. There it was before me. The charm, the manipulation, the grandiosity.

I have always struggled with my guilt, sadness, frustration trying to make Ian “like other people.” Wanting to shake him and say, “For once, just tell the truth.” I see the same frustration in the FBI handler. He always just gets more lies.

What is this syndrome? There are elements of autism, antisocial personality disorder, paranoia, secretiveness, and manipulation.

I left the theater sad and depressed. Ian was sick, from an early age. A lot of very good people tried to help him. No one really saw or understood the whole picture. It is a tribute to Matt Damon, a fine actor, that he could catch all the nuance and bring it before the audience. In the end how can we understand such complex mental illness? Poor Ian, he was his own worst enemy.

Update the Senario

2009-07-28T10:19:00.000-07:00

Watching movies on TV these days strikes a discordant note.

Bank robbers get all excited about one million dollars

Car thieves go ballistic about Cadillac’s, Hummers, and SUVs.

“What’s wrong with them?” I think.

One million dollars was a big haul twenty years ago. Now a days is it worth risking your life and freedom ?

“Who wants one of those cars?”

How long will the new reality take to get into the story line of the script?

Misstep

2009-06-23T06:47:00.000-07:00

It was totally unexpected. Something was wrapped around my right ankle and arrested my motion to retrieve the small watering can I use to fill my iron. The Iron came flying off the ironing board landing on the cement floor behind me.

I struggled mightily to stay on my feet feeling a terrible twisting pain in my right knee. There was a moment of confusion and reorientation. It hurt to put weight on my right leg but I didn’t go down which might have caused me to hit my head or arm or shoulder. I picked up the Iron and put it back on the ironing board.

Yipes! I was in the basement, the place I feared most of falling. I checked. I had my cell phone in my pocket, my call button around my neck. I remember thinking.

“I hope you can make it up the steps. Go carefully you don’t want to compound this mishap.”

I turned off the light and iron. Slowly and carefully, bending forward left leg up first to lift my weight followed by my right leg to the same step I came out of the basement.

I laid down and had a wee nap. I was due to go to the movies with my friend Eugenia.

“I think I can make it. I don’t want to disappoint her.”

We went but I begged off from the planned restaurant supper after ward. My knee was becoming more painful and less stable. I got home and went to bed.

I had a restless and painful night. The next day I emailed Caleb and Anita to request that they bring me a large ace bandage. Fortunately for me my son, Caleb, who is both a Physical Therapist and an M. D. called me back and said he would be right over.

He went over me carefully and said he didn’t think anything was broken. He thought I had soft tissue damage in the knee that was pretty swollen. He brought a knee support and got me a cane. He put my shower seat in my shower and showed me how to transfer to it.

I had a better night last night and today feel fifty percent better.

Having an incident like this makes you painfully aware of the losses suffered in an injury to a limb. Think of all the things you could do with out having to think about it, before this happened.

Today I’m thinking about Hillary and her broken elbow, all the important meetings she had to cancel. I’m thinking about Sonia Sotomayor and her leg caste, still going to her meetings with the Senators and Representatives. I am thinking about Eugenia and her constant pain from her hip. She is reluctant to risk a replacement after one heart attack as a result of a colonoscopy. I am thinking about the teenagers in Somalia sentenced to having a hand and a leg cut off for stealing.

At Seventy-six I don’t like joining the elderly “physically compromised”. An injury like this exaggerates all the other ageing signs and symptoms I deal with. The future looks more unpleasant this morning.

The Girlfriend Experience: Review

2009-05-22T12:24:00.000-07:00

I just watched “The Girlfriend Experience”, my first venture into “pay for view” on TV.

What an interesting film. So permeated with the angst of modern life, recent history with its references to the Election and the Financial Melt Down. You know both are taking place somewhere off screen but you, the viewer are caught up in the lives of Christine and her boyfriend, both for hire to decorate the lives of the wealthy needy.

Christine has a hard little face that she can almost soften with her youth, at will. Close ups reveal more that is distasteful, a square jaw, a deep crease in one corner of her mouth, a scar on her nose. Your mind jumps ahead. Where is this life going? What will she look like in five years, ten?

Both characters are trying to maximize their earning power.

“Work for the night is coming.”

To wheel and deal, they have to step out of the chameleon mode and reveal themselves, which is distasteful to the people who are casting them in the image that serves their needs. The whole mood changes as you accompany them on these forays into the domain of another level of exploitation. There is the Gym owner who wants the boyfriend, personal trainer, to give up his individuality and wear the packaging of the Gym. There is the Pimp who wants to take Christine to Dubai. These folks are the real scary ones. You can tell they have seen Christine and her Boyfriend before and used them well before tossing them aside.

There is a wealth of thought and comment in this film. Are we really this far of track in modern life? Is this what we have exchanged for the life of a Farmer? Factory worker? Do we live this much in the moment? Magically?

Watch it and see what you feel, think.

The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family by Annette Gordon-Reed

2009-04-12T10:28:00.000-07:00

I’ve just finished this book. I’m not sure if you can ever be finished with this book whether you read it or write it.

Annette Gordon-Reed takes us on her journey of discovery and revelation, a labor of love, into another time, and extended family, in another place. I’m grateful to be carried by her work and effort into this family. It must have been emotionally exhausting to go and be with these people, resurrecting them in body and personality, time travel while writing, then describing what you are seeing, feeling, discovering. I can sense the reluctance to leave your own life and go there to be with them, then leave them suspended until you return.

What a gift Gordon-Reed has given us, so many insights. I found my self thinking,

“Yes, of course.”

The author offers us Thomas Jefferson as he must have been, worts, blemishes, and polish. James Hemmings is fleshed out in all his frustration, anger and final tragedy. You hear Bob Hemmings pleading with Jefferson to understand his primary attachment to his wife and children. Martha Randolph takes form. Only Sally Hemmings remains a mystery, a shadow, a ghost. She was expunged from the written record. You can feel her presence, the importance of her role but you don’t see her or hear her voice.

This must have been deliberate on the part of the other family members. It is so sad that they made her into a “non-person.

The Dionne Quintuplets

2009-02-24T03:56:00.000-08:00

As the Depression of 2008 deepens we survivors of the Depression of 1929 are being encouraged to recount our stories.

I was born in 1932 to an “older” couple whose fortunes were slipping away along with the rest of the country’s.

My parents had met at a Yoga Colony in Nyack New York. The members still made up a group large enough to exert some influence in the Village.

The Nyack Drug Store held a raffle to stimulate business. The prize was a set of Dionne Quintuplet Dolls. Each purchase entitled the patron to one vote. Someone at the Clarkstown Country Club, the yoga colony, organized on my behalf. I think I must have been around three or four years old. I remember seeing the dolls lined up in the store window.

Time passed and like “abra-ka-dabra” the dolls appeared at my house. It all seemed very confusing. I tried to decode what had happened. My mother was my interpreter. As I stared at the five baby dolls all identically dressed I felt very confused. This was a “good” thing, a “special” thing. The bottom line was that I couldn’t figure out how to play with 5 baby dolls at once. I looked at their identical faces, learned their names, tried undressing and dressing them. Then what?

My mother may have sensed my dilemma. She hit on a political solution.

“There are a lot of little girls who don’t have a doll. You have five. I think you should give some to children who have none.”

I remember asking if I had a choice. I had a feeling that five was an important and significant number.

The decision had been made. Two dollies disappeared and I was left with the Dionne Triplets. They seemed less appealing and I think I stopped playing with them.

The depression continued on its downward path and my parents lost their house in 1938. They couldn’t pay even the reduced mortgage they had refinanced with the Federal Housing Authority. Our little family began the series of moves that scattered toys and other possessions leaving them behind in unremembered corners. Only my doll, Sessa and Johnny Bear managed to stick with us. Johnny Bear was the most persistent. I think my mother loved him even more that I did. He is still with me.

Henry Kissinger is Afraid to Die

2008-12-24T06:44:00.000-08:00

New York Times: 12/24/08, pp A14.

April 1972, President Richard Nixon got on the phone with his national security adviser, Henry A. Kissinger.

“They dropped a million pounds of bombs.” Mr. Kissinger said.

“God damn, that must have been a good strike!” Mr. Nixon said.

But then, “Johnson bombed them for years and it didn’t do any good.”

“But, Mr. President, Johnson never had a strategy. He was sort of picking away at them. He would go in with 50 planes, 20 planes. I bet you we will have had more planes over there in one day than Johnson had in a month.”

Add to this the bombing of Cambodia and Laos. The destruction of the democratically elected government of Chili and you have a picture of American terrorists, un-indicted war criminals.

I get sick to my stomach and enraged each time I see the press trot Henry Kissinger out to make a pronouncement on some currant crisis. Why isn’t he in jail? Because he is our War Criminal.

Why is he still alive? I think he is afraid to die.

It is hard to be reminded at this time of the year.

Remembering Whitney Hubbard

2008-11-15T10:32:00.000-08:00

I want to remember Whitney Hubbard and his wife. They were my mother’s friends in Greenport Long Island during the Second World War, 1941-43.

Whitney Hubbard taught my mother watercolor. She included me though I found it boring. The first class was private at our house. I painted, labored over, a picture of the doghouse. I chose it because it related to my dog, King.

One day when we were painting on the pier in the Village of Greenport my mother looked up to see me diving off the end of the pier into the harbor. I had taken advantage of her distraction to beg a dollar to buy a bathing suit and the next thing I was in the water. That was the last time she asked me to paint with the class.

I remember Whitney as grey haired, a small slender frail looking man in a dark suit with hat and tie. He may have had a little mustache. I remember him as being quiet and patient. He and his wife lived in a run down house in the village across from the Episcopal Church and up the street a bit. I went there often with my mother. His wife whose name I will try to remember was probably manic at times but she greatly amused my mother. She was very funny. She was large, with a prominent nose, a bit over weight and had brown hair. They seemed an incongruous couple to me.

Mrs. Hubbard was a musician. One of their sources of income were her engagements to play the piano. She may have played the organ at local churches as well.

I remember her description of one of the “Ladies” clubs in the village. She imitated one of the fat ladies with a big bottom seating herself at the piano bench. My mother and I were in hysterics.

You entered their house through a gate and stepped into an over grown and neglected garden. Kind of like an enchanted forest to my child’s eyes. Their house had a lot of plants. The floors were uneven and it was musty. I remember a green house room along one side with lots of windows and a brick floor. It did look to me at aged eight to ten, like it was about to fall down.

The Hubbards were very poor. Mrs. Hubbard always had tea for us when we stopped by. My mother tried to help them by taking lessons and buying one of Whitney’s paintings

Fire!

2008-11-01T14:16:00.000-07:00

In 1935, when I was three years old my mother took the opportunity to teach me about fire. The Rossiter House in Nyack, New York had burned. The roof was collapsed and the windows were gaping dark holes. There were streaks of smoke across the exterior, a bleak scene indeed.

“This is what happens when children play with matches.” She said.

The scene emerged from the oldest memories stored in the deep recesses of my brain where first traumatic scenes are encoded.

Today I went with my friend Eugenia to view what is left of her condominium association building in Lexington Massachusetts.

“I’ve seen this before,” bubbled up in my minds eye. We stood looking at the big brick historic building, the Hancock School on the National Register. Workmen setting up a Pigeon trap on the roof had ignited the roof with their acetylene torch.

What a sad scene. The thick brick walls and chimneys stood clean, almost new looking, but the slate roof looked like some broken rollercoaster ride created by the "Mad Hatter". It heaved and sagged, gave way to the burned timbers that had supported it these one hundred and ten years. The rough edges of the slates dangled as if still trying to cover and protect that top floor. The fourth floor under the roof was totally burned out. Across the facade the windows of the third floor were dark holes.

Eugie and I stood at the yellow tape looking up to the windows of her unit. She was on the third floor, a home to twenty-five people, four floors, four units on each, twenty-five souls who called this building home. They are now caste upon the waters to find a new berth. No one was hurt. Most residents were at work. Eugenia's bedroom windows are intact but the window to her sitting room was gone. We heard there was only water damage on the third floor.

Eugie had been stopped as she turned into her street.

“There is a fire.”

“At what address?”

“33 Forest Street”

“That’s where I live.”

I have her with me now, in my extra bedroom. We are both in shock.

“I’ve lost everything.” She says.

Slowly, protectively, her mind recalls the material representation of her life.

“Its just things” she says. Then later, “I feel sick to my stomach.”

How do you deal with such a loss, death come early, books, Manuscripts. Photographs, Antiques passed on by your parents.

My twins started kindergarten here. One had suffered from school phobia after the neighboring building where they walked in a line for gym, burned down.

“I always thought it was a fire trap.” He said.

Remember Jane Swift?

2008-08-29T17:54:00.000-07:00

Remember Jane Swift? You would have to be from Massachusetts.

She came to my mind when I saw John McCain choose Sarah Palin to be his vice president.

Jane Swift’s story should be one of caution for Sarah.

You have to go back to William Floyd Weld our Republican Governor who chose Paul Cellucci to be his running mate.

After a couple of years in the Governors Office Weld grew bored and decided he would like it better as American Ambassador in Mexico City.

Now Jessie Helms was the gatekeeper for Ambassadorial Appointments and he did not like William Weld. Weld spent some time sitting in Jessie’s outer office waiting to be interviewed and appointed. It must have been very demeaning and embarrassing for Weld. After and extended period cooling his heals and being ignored he went off to join a law firm in New York City.

Meanwhile back in Massachusetts, Paul Cellucci stepped into the Governorship. When he ran for election on his own merits he felt he needed to carry the western part of the state to win office.

Enter Jane Swift, the unknown mayor of North Adams? Or was it Pittsfield. Jane welcomed the opportunity to take the stage on Beacon Hill.

All went well. She and her husband conceived and bore twins!

Then Paul Cellucci was appointed Ambassador to Canada and there was Jane, Governor! There were the twins still in the Berkshires. She was criticized for taking the State Police helicopter home on the weekends.

Jane was willing to run again on her own merits. I liked her because, by executive decree she shut down the “Filthy Five” power plants that were poisoning coastal Massachusetts, especially Salem.

However along comes Mitt Romney who decided he wanted to be the Governor of Massachusetts. What he and his machine did to Jane was not pretty. I don’t know the details but you could see it in her face that she had, like Daniel, been in the lion’s den.

I recount this as a cautionary tale for Sarah Palin. She doesn’t even know WHAT SHE DOESN’T KNOW!

Twilight at Montecello

2008-07-29T10:12:00.000-07:00

by Alan Pell Crawford

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. Being retired and elderly my self I am interested to see how others reach closure on their lives.

What interested me is the consistency of Jefferson's response to the ebb and flow of his life. Denial was his main ego defense and he honed its use till there was barely a pause between the event and his response.

You realize you are dealing with a good man beset by what he wanted and his ability to deliver for himself and his family. You are saddened by the life he dealt his grandson Jefferson Randolph, then self protectively blaming Jeff for not finishing his education.

Reading about his son in law and his grand daughters husband, Charles Bankhead one wishes that AA had been created 200 years earlier. Jefferson was remarkably insightful in his realization that Alcoholism was a medical illness.

Jefferson spoke to me when he wrote,

"When you and I look back on the country over which we have passed, what a field of slaughter does it exhibit! Where are all the friends who entered it with us, under all the inspiring energies of health and hope? As if pursued by the havoc of war, they are strewed by the way, some earlier, some later, and scarce a few stragglers remain to count the numbers fallen, and to mark yet, by their own fall, the last footsteps of their party. Is it a desirable thing to bear up through the heat of action, to witness the death of all our companions, and merely be the last victim?

I recommend this thoughtful book to you.

Agriculture for Profit

2008-07-14T05:39:00.000-07:00

By a circuitous route I arrived at Vicksburg: a People at War, 1860 to 1865, by Peter R Walker.

This little book is a very interesting read. It presents the experience of a city under siege from the view of the inhabitants. It is a romantic book and glosses over the reality of the pain and suffering with the veneer of heroics. You get the feeling and idea that this was a people of a different era, immune to the suffering depicted in the modern press and literature.

There is no discussion that would lead to a diagnosis of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, though there must have been such symptoms under a different name.

The city endures daily shelling from both the river and Grant’s siege from the surrounding land. People starve and people hoard. They dig into the ground and live in caves.

What caught my attention was the account of the continued production of cotton, in the face of the extreme need for food crops. Plantations continued to plant cotton because of the high price they would get for the crop if they could successfully run the blockade.

Corn for ethanol? Poppies for Opium? This is capitalism as applied to Agriculture. Where is agriculture policy? It is the modern day equivalent to cotton on the national and international scale.

Granted, Afghanistan is a failed state in the hands of drug lords. Afghanistan is headed for a big hunger, addiction and HIV morass. It is spilling over into Iran and all along the delivery routes. Opium is more toxic than cotton.

2008-07-03T08:48:00.000-07:00

Should I be surprised about the New York Times Home Section slobbering over Australian Outback Architecture?
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/03/garden/03australia.html

Some lady who “divorced well” has spared no expense to borrow features and transport them to Sonoma California.
“The interiors of the main house are a shrine to Australian art and craft.”

Now I lived in two out back houses in Alice Springs in 1959 and 1966. I found nothing redeeming about their architecture. Mostly they were tin roofed ovens surrounded by a louvered porch.

One had its septic tank outside the back door between the bathroom and the laundry house. It was covered with sheets of tin for easy access.

Our family roasted in the summer and froze in the winter. I made kangaroo skin inserts for our shoes after getting frostbite standing on the interior floors during the winter.

Our thoughts about how one might improve on “bush” housing revolved around starting a company that built bermed houses.

Ms. Dodwell’s “Art Studio and Massage Room” triggered my memories of the “meat house” at Brunette Downs Station on the Barkley Tablelands, 1960. The shadows and the slats took me back to the time we were offered fresh meat. “Go to the meat house and help your selves. We just butchered a beef.”

We stepped inside the simple structure to see a large table in the middle of the concrete floored room. The table was heaped with pieces of red meat. We took a small piece and cooked it on a shovel over a campfire that night.

What can I say? Money corrupts? Money allows one to indulge whatever crazy enthusiasms one entertains? Waste not. Want not.

Where the Oil Hits the Tank

2008-07-01T13:37:00.000-07:00

My final oil bill for the season arrived today. I had been paying $140.00 a month for 10 months so I was surprised to see that I still owed $458.67.

The office of my Oil Company, Arlington Fuel Oil Co, Inc. is at the end of my street. I thought I would go and get their help understanding my rate of use, success at conserving, in short find out how they think I am doing.

We reviewed my house, new windows, heavy insulation in the ceiling and walls and a programmable thermostat.

After an intra-office struggle with their computers, the Campbells, Father, Mother, and Son got me a print out that showed everything in black and white.

I’ve gotten four deliveries this heating season. Starting with a full tank and ending with a full tank, I used 442 gallons this season for heat and hot water. The first delivery was $2.82 a gallon. The second was $3.45 a gallon. The third was $3.62 and the fourth was $4.69.

“You did very well.” “Most of our customers living on the ground floor of two family homes used about 900 gallons.“

Mrs. Campbell held up a three-inch stack of order slips.
“These are the people who didn’t want us to top them off at the end of the season. Some of them haven’t paid their bill.”

As I went out the door, Mr. Campbell said, “Don’t sell that house.”

Conversations in Retirement

2008-06-24T10:46:00.001-07:00

I have been talking with Kazue Campbell. She is a Scholar of Japanese, now retired from BU. She is busy translating a book from Japanese. The Book is an account of William Wheeler, of Concord Massachusetts and his efforts to improve the Agriculture in the North part of Japan beginning in 1876. Kazue was complaining about loosing steam on the work of translation. I said, “Please keep going. I want to read the book.”

I told her about my Grandfather’s visits to Japan about this time with the U S Navy and sent her pictures of his ship, at the time, the USS Kearsarge. She replied;

“Do you have any idea why did this ship went to Japan in 1874? It was 2 years before William Wheeler went to Japan together with William Clark and David Penhallow to start the first agricultural college in Japan, perhaps in Asia. ( Japan and the U.S.A. had the first commercial treaty in 1858, opening a number of ports. ) I look forward to talking with you on the subject.”

The Kearsarge was a US Navy war ship. If you look closely at the pictures you can imagine being underway at sea, the sails spread, a minimum of smoke from the stack. They would keep the boilers going to enable them to quickly "fire up" and increase speed with the steam driven engine, which was a new innovation in a war ship, increasing maneuverability in a battle encounter. My Grandfather was an "Engineer" in charge of the steam boiler. They probably burned coal which would have dirtied the sails and drifted over the deck. Quarters must have been tight below deck where you shared space with the steam engine, coal, canon balls and black powder, guns, sailors, galley, infirmary. The Officers would have tiny private quarters. My grandfather had a "sea" chest made out of Camphorwood in China. I still have it. It would be loaded on board when he reported to a ship for duty. The mementos he brought back, mostly from China, were small things, buttons, the wood cut print from Hiogo Harbor small pictures, a fan, a couple of daggers, things that wouldn't take up much space in his chest.

Looking at the pictures of the Kearsarge I am filled with awe and nostalgia. The beauty of the ship's lines, the craftsmanship the idea of a self contained community crossing the Pacific to Japan, under sail. It was all wood, with brass and iron fittings, built in Maine. It was the top of technology in its day.

I look forward to reading William Wheeler’s account of his multiple trips to Japan to establish a College of Agriculture. I must say I am more in sympathy with the purpose of his trips though my Grandfather’s mission may have helped William to accomplish his.

Loss of Power

2008-06-11T12:54:00.000-07:00

Virginia and I returned to my house in the midst of a “blackout”. There was no electricity from 12 pm till 8 pm. It was a shock after the air-conditioned coolness of the Museum of Fine Arts and then the secluded, quiet, cool car interior on the way home.

We kept the house closed and it stayed fairly cool inside. There is a lot of insulation. It really makes me understand how dependent I am on our electricity supply. We had no lights, cooking, cooling, refrigerator; telephone, computer, TV, radio, hot water. The house was "dead".

It was such a relief when the power returned at 8pm and the electric clock started flashing. The fan in the kitchen ceiling started turning, the furnace came on to heat up the water. It is all well and good to say we must save oil and gas but how are we to generate the power we have all become dependent on? The scary thing is, that we will be even more dependent on electricity as the earth warms and the summers become hotter. It is a vicious circle.

What happened to the swing in the shade of the front porch? Where is the hand held fan? How long since I’ve seen a pitcher of lemon aid with its sweating glass and floating ice cubes?

Going Green

2008-04-27T12:03:00.000-07:00

I have recently become truly alarmed about Global Warming. The trigger has been my taking a course at the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at Tufts University. The title of the course is “Rescuing an Ailing Planet” taught by a Graduate Student in the Department of Urban and Environmental Policy and Planning. The textbook is Plan B 3.0 : Mobilizing to Save Civilization by Lester R. Brown.

I didn’t consider myself a latecomer to the environmental movement. I had just been passive, contributing to the Nature Conservancy, Environmental Defense Fund, Earth Justice, Conservation Law Foundation, Wildlife Federation, Wilderness Society, Ocean Conservancy, writing the checks and figuring I was doing my part; contribute the money and let someone else do the legwork.

I’ve had a rude awakening. I need to do more. I need to reduce my carbon footprint. So far I’ve reduced my driving. I’m walking and taking the bus and red line more. I have stopped using my dryer. I hang my cloths on lines in the basement near the furnace. I installed a programmable thermostat, replaced my windows and back door with new insulated double paned units. I had more insulation (cellulose) blown into my exterior walls. I’ve replaced all the light bulbs with fluorescents. My next car will be a hybrid.

On the food and eating front I’ve cut out beef and reduced my chicken, fish and turkey to three times a week. I’m eating lower on the food pyramid, more fruit, vegetables, legumes and grains. I’ve learned some cool facts. Beef takes seven bushels of corn(water, fertilizer, oil for tractors and harvesters) to produce one pound of meat. Beef also consumes enormous amounts of fresh water and expels lots of carbon dioxide. To stop eating beef is the equivalent of giving up an SUV and driving a Prius in energy use and CO2 production.

Another cool fact is all this fresh produce we import, like grapes from Chile, bring with them fresh water (often scarce) from the producing country. Grapes are 95% water. We fly that water up here! It makes you think about eating locally or at least domestically.

Our economy and life style are petroleum based. Oil production is like a bell curve and we are already past the peak and on the downward part of the curve. All of the “easy” oil has been discovered. Oil from tar sands, for instance takes two barrels of energy from oil to produce one barrel for other uses. It requires a lot of sand being moved around and a lot of water as well.

Conservation is the way to go and after that we have to make significant life style changes. We should travel less, build smaller energy efficient houses, retrofit the old buildings and housing stock we have, live closer to where we work.

I’m thinking about how communities can get a handle on rental housing, enforcing, encouraging landlords to upgrade energy efficiency. There is a storm brewing for low to middle income tenants who cannot pay high rents and high utility bills too. Gas and Electric bills are in arrears and service will be cut off in May. The bills will have to be paid before service is restored for the next winter. This is the next housing crisis.

Journal of a Secesh Lady

2008-04-03T05:35:00.000-07:00

I have just finished reading Catherine Edmondston’s journal of her life during the Civil War.

I am so grateful to “Kate” for making the effort to record each day, 1860 to 1866 as she experienced it. She recorded the reports, rumors, and her vitriolic response to the hated Yankee depredations. She also found time to record the ebb and flow of the plantation work her personal joys and sorrows. I feel she shared her life with me, a woman of different circumstance in 2008.

It is a hefty book, weighty in both substance and size. Many a night in bed I struggled to hold it upright at an angle harmonious with my bifocals. Reading it from beginning to end is a task of persistence and devotion. I feel rewarded by the effort.

The story offers the opportunity to travel back in time, to be immersed in the thinking and social fabric of the secessionist south.

At times I became impatient with her favorite themes, the gentlemanliness of the Confederate Officers contrasted with the “ill bread” Yankees, her acerbic abuse of Lincoln. Still what would you expect? Do you want social realism or some sanitized romantic novel?

The last entries, after Lee’s surrender, made the whole reading worth while. Catherine and her husband Patrick had three properties and about eighty-six slaves. She continues her entries for another year as they struggle, former master and former slave to work out a new social contract.

Catherine excoriates the “Freeman’s Bureau”, their meddling, rules and general mischief. It is frustration and miscommunication on all sides. The dysfunctional family that was the Plantation hierarchy falls apart before the reader’s eyes. There is a redistribution of power, misread on both sides as the model shifts from Master and Slave to Labor and Management. Kate has a wonderful ear for dialect and dialogue. You can hear the speech and see the participants confronting each other both uncomfortable and on unsure ground. It is the beginning of the transition period in race relations that may devolve into the Presidency of Barack Obama

Loosing Friends As You Get Old

2008-03-21T06:53:00.000-07:00

I am seventy-five now. The end of life losses are beginning to hit home. First was my husband. I thought I wouldn’t survive that one. He was literally my other half. His absence felt like standing next to an abyss. Connections that had been central to our lives together dropped away. My identity as his wife, the wife of a Professor, disappeared. I was floundering. Who was I and where was my place in the larger social context.

Now, seven years later I’ve managed to establish some sort of equilibrium. I’ve created a single life that is comfortable. I am at ease with myself. I think I would find it distasteful to have to accommodate to another persons wishes and decisions.

It has been a process. It was very unnerving to make my own decisions, with out consultation, and know I would have to live alone with the consequences.

The losses have continued. Old friends have died. One disappeared into dementia. And now a new ogre has appeared on the horizon, disengagement through personality change.

Yesterday at lunch I was discussing it with my friend Eugenia. “Some people get angry about getting old. My oldest friend isn’t speaking to me because I support Barack Obama. She thinks he is anti-Semitic and doesn’t support Israel.” I had been discussing it in the context of the loss of one of my old friends who has decided I am “rude” and “parsimonious”. I had been at a loss to explain her anger with me, which had grown and become more intense over a five-year period. When I finally confronted her I got a letter with a long list of my sins of omission and commission going back years. “That is crazy and obsessive.” Said Eugenia.

I had been trying to argue her out of her anger with me. This is the second episode so I think I will give up and let her go. It is a new variety of loss.

I'm Not There; The Bob Dylan Phenomena

2007-12-08T12:26:00.000-08:00

I’ve always thought of Bob Dylan as a cipher who channels culture. It must be a strange driven life to lead. Probably he doesn’t understand it himself. I think that would explain his impatience and frustration with the questioning public.

This movie captures the irrealis of his career. He keeps reinventing himself. A different actor plays each incarnation. There is conflict in the interaction between his public and the metamorphasizing Dylan. The scene where his car is surrounded by needy, rapacious groupies is truly freighting. The faces in the windows look cannibalistic. “You know who we ARE, what we are feeling. Tell us!”

The needs of his audiences are exacerbated by the emptiness of our materialism. He doesn’t have any more answers than anybody else. He is just telling the story.

This is a unique movie. It is certainly worth seeing. It is an impressionist movie form. You may have to see it more than once.

Black and White Film

2007-12-04T07:03:00.000-08:00

I have a picture of myself as a screen saver. I am 18? a full head of brown hair blowing in the wind. I sit astride “Apache” smiling, easy and comfortable in the western saddle. The T Rail Ranch at Patagonia Arizona spreads out around me in black and white film. The detail in the picture is blurred. Not enough pixels for even this small screen. Give me a minute and my memory can provide the details. The tan sandy ground, a rock here and there, a cow plop dried and hard in the sun. The ground is packed hard because this is the area used by cars and trucks to go between the house and the corrals.

The mesquite trees are bare, bent, built by nature for the 13 to 16 inches of rain in a good year. The ground drops off behind me covered with dry bushy growth on into the empty wash that can run fast and muddy when the clouds burst over the mountains. One year during a heavy flash flood ten cows drowned, having gotten caught up in a loose fence of barbed wire strung across the wash, and their bodies were deposited along the banks for a mile or more. One poor unfortunate was beached within easy reach of the ranch house. I was staying there at the time and sleeping in a small bed on the front porch. The ranch puppy shared my bed. He would climb up the stones of the porch, hooking his head around the leg of the bed. One night he managed this maneuver and arrived on my pillow reeking of putrid beef. He had gotten big enough to accompany the other dogs on their nightly scavenge. I quickly lifted him out and deposited him on the floor only to have him return. I solved my problem by getting up and pulling the bed away from the porch wall. He sat on the floor and whimpered plaintively. I complained the next day.
“That puppy keeps climbing into my bed at night and he stinks from the dead cow.” Frank went down and burned up the old carcass. That solved the puppy’s and my problem.

On the other side of the wash the ground begins to rise up a small hill, the last crown of a local range. This hill has a name. It is “Frank Seibold, Jr.”. It’s name sake tells me that Apaches, wandering off the “reservation” repeating their old migration route into Mexico, fired a few shots at the Ranch house from this hill in passing. “You could hear the bullets coming. They were packed poorly into the rifle chamber and came end over end making a flipping sound. It gave you time to take cover.” I can see the Indians on their little mustang ponies, their worn cotton clothing, a spot of red here and there, riding along in single file with stringy bundles of spare supplies hanging from their saddles. A mixture of boredom and resentment trigger the shots.

I have come down from Tucson for the day and my mother has taken this picture. I’m smiling. I’ve been riding with Frank. I remember saddling the horse, happy to have been able to catch Apache who I know is well broken, willing to respond to the reins and a light kick of your heals. I’ve put on a double saddle blanket and Doris’ saddle that is familiar and comfortable. I’ve tightened the cinch and buckled the latigo. Apache wears the simplest bridle, one split ear and no chinstrap. I’m dressed in blue denim frontier pants from “Porter’s”, a red and black flannel shirt over a white blouse. I would happily wear those same cloths now and they would look just as fashionable. They seem timeless.

I arrive at the Ranch with anxiety and hopeful expectation. Will Frank be there? Will he have chores to do that involve riding? Frank doesn’t ride for pleasure, only for work. The pace is always slow and considered.
“You have to save your horse for when you need him”, explains the leisurely pace.
If I hit the jackpot, Frank is there and planning a trip to the “range” and I get invited to go along. The task to be accomplished is not revealed. It becomes apparent, opening its details as the work is done. I don’t dare ask what we are going to do. That seems like taking liberties with my good fortune. I’m not sure how Frank will respond to too many questions. I just saddle up and ride into the unknown.

Today there is a young heifer expecting her first calf. She is small, a two year old, and the bull is big. Frank is concerned about her having difficulty with the birth. She has been hanging out at the furthest windmill up the dry riverbed. We head north east the horses hoofs sinking into the soft sand, dry now, and filled with old foot prints from cattle and horses. Mesquite trees on either side of the wash slip by. It seems a long ride to me and I think about the possibility of knee pain. It is a problem I have as my legs bend around the horse’s ribcage. Roundup is a special problem, spending all day from early morning to sunset in the saddle. One roundup I was riding with one leg hooked around the pommel.
“If you keep doing that you’ll give your horse saddle sores.” Said Frank.
That day I could hardly walk when I finally dismounted.

We plod along at a leisurely pace. The sun is hot and unforgiving but the breeze is cool. I do most of the talking. I’m a chatty young woman. I cover the subjects of rain, the chances of a good rainy season, the supply of dried grass still in place on the range, my classes at the University of Arizona, and what is Frank going to do with the rest of his life?
“I’ll probably spend it pulling reins.” He says

We finally arrive at the windmill. There is the heifer. She is in trouble. The calf’s two front legs and its tongue extend from her vagina. There is a large blister under the tongue. It looks like a hopeless situation to me. Here we are at least 4 miles from the ranch house with its phone. We have nothing but our selves and our horses.

Frank takes the lariat from his saddle and ropes the cow around her neck behind her ears and ties the other end of the rope to a nearby mesquite tree. He removes one rein from his horses bridle, leaving the other rein dropping to the ground, “ground tying” the horse who doesn’t move. He wraps the leather rein securely around the protruding crossed legs of the calf. The heifer sways at the end of the rope her eyes wide with a mixture of fear and exhaustion.
“Now I want you to get back here and catch this calf when it comes out. Don’t let that blister touch the ground and get covered with sand.”
I position my self, arms bent and extended. I’m holding my breath and I’m on my knees. Frank leans back using all his weight and strength. The calf emerges suddenly. I don’t expect the slippery heavy limp body. I fall forward under the unexpected weight. The calf’s head lands in the sandy wash. I feel like I’ve failed. If this was a cowgirl test, I just flunked. Frank is forgiving and accepting.
“That’s OK.”
I block out the rest of the operation. It is a big male calf with a large head. Is the calf going to live? Will the blister subside? Will it be able to nurse? We ride back to the ranch. Frank says he will come back tomorrow and check on the new Mom and baby. I think, “this man can handle anything.” This is what it means to come from a “pioneering ranch family.”

Viewing the picture I’m sure I am is still there in that time somewhere. The people who share that time and place must just be off camera. Surely they are there too. I can see them moving, reserved, unsmiling.

The family consists of the widowed Mom Sy, and the unmarried siblings in their late thirties and early forties, Doris, Helen, and Frank, Jr. Doris is a teacher and keeps her distance from the physical labor of the ranch. Helen is already suffering from “arthuritus” exacerbated by the hard strenuous physical labor of the ranch. Helen and Frank have tanned and creased skin on their faces and hands.

Helen’s travel to school was more difficult than mine. I ride in the car with Doris each morning to the 8th grade in the schoolhouse overlooking the town. Helen had to ride horseback to school every day. Her horse regularly threw her at the same place in the road. She complains to her father, hoping for a different horse.
“Who is going to be the boss? You or the horse?” He asks.

Helen does the evening milking. I am her assistant. After school I go out to the pasture behind the house and collect the milk cows. I drive them toward the corrals and the waiting calves. As time lengthens from the birth of their calves, the cows are farther and farther from the corrals. I drive the cows into the milking stalls where Helen milks them, not trusting me to “strip them.” When she finishes she turns the calves in with the cows to get their nightly ration of milk. Helen returns to the ranch house for dinner and after dinner it is my job to separate the cows and their calves for the night. The dishes are done and Helen says, “ Did you turn out the cows and calves?”
I’ve forgotten and now it is dark.
“ If you leave them together over night we won’t get any milk tomorrow.”
I grab a broom and flashlight and head for the corrals. Jersey, one of the cows has a bad temperament and likes to charge and butt you. I get the calves into their enclosure and turn to see Jersey charging me. The broom swings after the flashlight and hits it. The flashlight goes off.
“Shit”! I say loudly. I hear Frank’s voice coming from the top of the corral fence,
“Now what kind of language is that for a young lady.”
“Jersey is trying to butt me!”

The days blend into each other interspersed with memorable events, the sighting of a mountain lion, the deer hunter found dead on the mountain side, after being gored by the buck deer he thought he had killed. Helen cooks. Doris as the eldest sibling, hands down judgments. Frank takes care of the ranch with Helen’s assistance. He is the “Hand”. I wash and dry dishes. There are three Foremen, Doris, Helen, and Mom Sy. Frank is definitely low man in the pecking order cast there by his youngest sibling status or perhaps ganged up on by the women. Doris says she saved him one winter, aged 4, from drowning when he fell in the horse trough and his heavy clothing held him down.
“Biggest mistake of my life.” She says.
He is the one family member who doesn’t live in the ranch house. He has a small green tar papered cabin on the other side of the wash. I never go over there. It is a male domain. I want them to like me and approve of me more than anything else in my life.

One day I ask Mom Sy how she got to Patagonia. She was one of eight orphaned siblings born in Scotland.
“I came here from Paisley Scotland where I was working in the Mills.” It was about 1890.
“ My brother and one sister were already here. He was a jockey riding in the races in Patagonia and my sister was working in a boarding house for the Miners.”
“ My brother wrote and told me to come, that there was a lot of work in the boarding houses.”
“I started working with my sister.”
“ I met a Miner, Frank Seibold.” “”He was from Minnesota.”
“I married him and we homesteaded this ranch.” In 1895.

The homestead is a quarter section allotted by the Homestead Act. Later it is realized that in this dry desert landscape a quarter section is not sufficient to support a family. They are allowed to add another quarter section. At some point Frank wants to move on to California. Catherine refuses to give up what they have, the first thing she has ever owned.

The firstborn child was Catherine, named after her mother. She died at aged 2. The Seibolds blame visitors who brought a sick child with them. The child later came down with diphtheria. Catherine was infected and died. I’ve visited her grave in the family plot in the cemetery south of town. Her grave has a small white marble lamb with “Catherine” inscribed. It is surrounded by a black iron fence. The other members of the family have spare notation, just names and dates. Doris, the last survivor, has an unmarked grave. Her heir, a distant cousin, did not want the expense of a marker.

I hear the flat slow drawl of their voices. I remember their issues, the internal family struggles. The horses become their surrogate children. Doris breeds a prize winning filly, “Pretty Girl”. The filly is the hero of the family. She starts a quarter horse blood line that gives Doris state wide recognition. Pretty Girl is spoiled like no Seibold has ever been spoiled. She regularly comes into the fenced area around the ranch house and causes mischief. I hear the pans for the milking process being scattered from their shelves near the back door. Helen complains.

Mom Sy starts receiving Social Security. She is also loosing her short term memory. “Doris you don’t have to take my Social Security. You have your own money.”

Now in 2006 they are all gone. Frank’s wife Irene is the last survivor. What they feared most has happened. The Ranch is no longer a functioning operation. The cattle have been sold off along with the horses. The lease on the forest land has been relinquished. The deeded land, the old homestead, is broken up and sold off in ten to forty acre plots. The ranch house went to a buyer this last year. Doris’ cousin and heir, Cookie made promises she didn’t keep. She and her husband bought some “western wear” and stuck around for about 6 months. Then they returned to Florida. They asked Frank’s widow, Irene to run the ranch for them. With the help of a cowboy from Mexico, Irene ran the cattle operation for 3 years. Cookie complained that the cattle sales were not bringing in enough money. Irene was instructed to sell off the remaining cattle and horses. Cookie and her husband presided over the dismantling of the Ranch. In the process they stepped on just about every person they dealt with. I assisted Irene in retrieving a picture from the ranch house that had been left to her by Helen. Cookie swore out a warrant for Irene’s arrest that would be withdrawn only when the picture was returned.

I have been blessed to know this family, their ranch and to share a small period in their lives. My memories of the time with them are precious. They took me in, a confused adolescent girl who didn’t know yet what life was about. Through quiet discipline, work and structure built on economic survival they taught me about life and myself. I am so grateful that they had the patience and energy to accept me. Thank you, Mom Sy, Doris, Helen, Frank. Rest in Peace.

No Country for Old Men

2007-11-26T08:03:00.000-08:00

Two weeks ago I went with my son Caleb, to see “No Country for Old Men”. We had both read the book by Cormac McCarthy and were really looking forward to seeing the film presentation.

Cormac, what has happened to our Southwest? When and how did the border area get so violent and brutal? I remember the “old days” starting for me, in the 1940’s when workers, cowboys, household help flowed easily across the border for seasonal work. If “Juan” couldn’t make it this year he would send a nephew or cousin. This was an informal relationship, taken as a serious commitment. It kept a lot of ranchers on their little spreads in Santa Cruz County, Arizona when the hard physical labor was too much for their old bodies. It also kept a lot of families south of the border solvent while they waited for the harvest.

We always knew there was “Reefer” in Nogales but no one was being killed over it. Demand was low.

It was the drugs that changed everything. “Mules” carrying backpacks loaded with fifty to sixty pounds of contraband are being attacked and killed on the familiar trails north. The killers make off with the drugs. The money in the drug trade attracted criminals with other agenda. “Coyotes” started praying on border crossers. The combination of poverty and anti-social personality makes for a volatile mix.

Cormac, your story is electrifying. The acting and direction of the movie is exceptional. I think you contrast the old timers with the new criminals in a way that leaves the viewer confused and reeling. I sat there transfixed, scratching my head and pulling my hair out. Caleb turned to me at one point and said, “Mom, stop that.”

I looked at the familiar beautiful range country. Met the “old timers” and felt transported to an earlier more gentle time only to be confronted by the scourge of the Devil Incarnate with his air gun.

It is all very scary.

Darjeeling Express

2007-11-11T09:15:00.000-08:00

I hadn’t been to the movies in a theater in a long time. My Friend wanted to see the Darjeeling Express. First we would go to an Indian Restaurant in Waltham for lunch.

We had a good lunch at the buffet and walked to the Movie Theater. I really didn’t know much about the movie we were to see but had heard the title floating around in various media.

The movie opened with Bill Murray running to catch a train in India. The train was leaving the station, “That’s my train”, was a recurrent theme. I like Bill Murray and enjoy his films so I was encouraged by his appearance. Unfortunately for me and the audience it was a “cameo” and that was the last we saw of him until the credits.

The Story, or lack of story, was three brothers who hadn’t grown up, or identified their issues or resolved them, rushing through the vibrant Indian landscape making fools of them selves.

Supposedly they were on a “Spiritual” quest and had some rituals to perform. The Ritual turned out to be blowing on a feather and then burying it. It made me, as a fellow American, want to crawl under my seat and hide. Here they were in a Culture of long spiritual traditions going back thousands of years and this was all they could come up with? Finally they were kicked off one of the trains. What took the train personnel so long?

After and experience with death in an Indian Village, the most rich and interesting part of the film, our end stage adolescents find their mother in a pathetic “convent” populated with native children in uniform who are in the process of being robbed of their language and culture. There is Angela Huston, another cameo, as the mother. Who talked her into taking this part? Did she read the script?

In short I think this movie is the worst I’ve ever seen. No wonder one of the “stars” is suicidal. If this were the best parts I could get I would be thinking about suicide too, or at least changing my profession.

Two Accounts

2007-11-03T13:18:00.000-07:00

I have only recently begun to put together the stories my mother told me about her early life, evidently made up by her relatives to spare her the truth, and the reality as published in the newspaper.
The true story has become available due to Internet Access to the Archives of the Brooklyn Eagle. I am grateful to be able to uncover this. It explains a lot for me. I am also grateful my mother died before I found these articles. I’m glad she was spared.

The story my mother told me:
“My mother met my father in a bowling alley. He was engaged to someone else at the time. She was determined to have him. They were married at St. Ann’s Church in Brooklyn Heights. My mother wore black, to be different.”

Brooklyn Eagle: March 3, 1895
SCHREINER--- MORAN
A quiet Lenten wedding took place Friday evening at the Church of the Messiah, Green and Clermont Avenues, when Miss Edith Moran of 402 Washington avenue was united in marriage to Mr. S. Van B. Schreiner of this city. There were present the bride’s mother who gave her away, Mrs. E. F. Kretzschmar, her grandmother, Mrs. E. C. Lewis; her sister, Miss Ethel Moran; Mrs. Leeds and Mr. Will Watts, who acted as best man. The bride and groom left for an extended wedding tour in the South.

“My mother and father went to Europe on their wedding trip. I was born in Wiesbaden at Great Aunt Sarah’s house. They wrapped me in an American flag so that I would be a citizen.”

“My mother made my father sell the West India Company Stock he had inherited from his Uncle. She didn’t want her husband ‘in trade’. Then the babies started coming. She was pregnant with her third child and she didn’t have enough money. She told my father to go to Holland and buy the stock back. She was so upset while he was gone that her sister and cousins came over and got her drunk. It didn’t help.”
“When my Father got to Holland they laughed at him.”

The story told by the Brooklyn Eagle:

THE BOGUS CHECK TRICK
___________
Said to have been worked by Schreiner
___________
Arrested in Virginia on Complaint of the Clarendon Hotel Proprietors
Well Connected in Brooklyn

Brooklyn Eagle, December 7, 1897, pp. 4.
Detective Sergeant Roche of the headquarters squad and George D Clum, a clerk of the Clarendon Hotel left town last night for Suffolk, Va., to claim as a prisoner S. V. B. Schreiner, alias Vernon Webb, who was arrested in Suffolk at the request of Superintendent McKelvey on a charge of having obtained money from the proprietors of the Clarendon hotel by means of a bogus check. It is not at all unlikely that when Schreiner is brought to trial here will be a number of complaints against him.
Schreiner dresses well and has good manners. He married a stepdaughter of the late Dr. Paul Kretzschmar, once supervisor-at-large. According to the police, the wife soon separated from Schreiner, and is now living with her mother.
Superintendent McKelvey said today that on the strength of his associations on the hill the young man had been successful in passing checks on merchants who, under other conditions, would have been more conservative in their dealings.
The action against the accused was brought by the proprietors of the Clarendon Hotel. He had been living there in style until the hotel people began pressing him for his bill. He disappeared from the city on September. After having induced the clerk at the hotel to give him a receipted bill for $43.15, the amount of his indebtedness and $20.47 in cash in exchange for a check for $63.62, drawn on the Sprague National Bank, it was alleged by R. C. Tucker & Co., to the order of S. V. B. Schreiner. The check was sent to the bank and was returned indorsed “no account”. When the hotel authorities began to look for the young man they found that he had disappeared. The case was given to the police. The local authorities traced him from place to place and finally located him in Suffolk. Va..
Schreiner appeared first in Suffolk on November 8, with letters of introduction to former Mayor Pinner. He was well introduced and seemed to prosper until work came from this city that he was wanted. Then he was placed under arrest, protesting in the meanwhile that he was not the man who was sought for by the local police. He had been selling stock for the Mutual Building and Loan association of Richmond, Va. When arrested he had only 1 cent in his possession and he owed four weeks board at the Commercial Hotel of Suffolk.

Special to The Post
The Washington Post (1877-1954); Dec. 8, 1896; ProQuest Historical Newspapers The Washington Post,(1877-1990) pg. 8
GAY AND CLEVER, BUT A FORGER.

S. V. B. Shriner (sic), Alias Vernon Webb, Was a Social Favorite at Suffolk,
Special to the Post.
Suffolk, Va., Dec 7-- Detective Sergeant James H. Roche, of Brooklyn, arrived today and took charge of S. V. B. Schriner, alias Vernon Webb, who was yesterday arrested on the charge of forgery. Schriner agreed to go without requisition papers. He is accused of flashing bogus checks on the Clarendon and St. George Hotels and several mercantile firms in Brooklyn, where he was once a prosperous broker.
Sergeant Roche says Schriner’s pretty young wife, whose father was Dr. Kretchmaur (sic), former supervisor-at-large in Brooklyn, has a monthly income of $500. Owing to her husband’s love of wine women and sporting life Mrs. Schriner doesn’t live with him any more. Webb, as he was known here, passed as a single man, and his arrest will leave a void in several girls’ hearts. The choir of the First Baptist Church will miss him, too. Schriner was versatile as well as clever.

Brooklyn Eagle Tuesday Dec. 8, 1896; page 14
SCHRINER SANG IN THE CHOIR
The Fugitive Was Making an Effort to Be Good,
SAYS HE HAD REFORMED
The Local Police Got on His Trail for Passing Bogus Checks in This City and Tracked Him to Virginia, Where He Was Making a Fine Reputation. Married a stepdaughter of the Late Dr. Paul Kretzschmar.

When Detective Sergeant Roche of the headquarters squad reached Suffolk, Va., yesterday in his quest for S. V. B Shriner, alias Vernon Webb, who was wanted in this city on a charge of having obtained money dishonestly by means of bogus checks, he found that the clever young man had so ingratiated himself in the good opinion of the people of Suffolk that no less than three clergymen were interested in him and were willing to declare that he was a much abused man. Schriner is a very clever person. He is well educated, well bred and a very bright young businessman. His marriage to a daughter of the widow of the late Dr. Paul Kretzschmar took place at the Hotel St. George about three years ago. It was in a sense a runaway match and the mother of the bride was very indignant and left the hotel where she had been boarding with her family, angry because she thought that Captain Tumbridge, the proprietor, had know of the engagement and had not told her of it.

There are four complaints against the prisoner. He had resolved to leave the town early in September and, it is alleged, on the day that he left Brooklyn, September 5 last, he placed five of the worthless checks that he had drawn on the Sprague bank. The victims were Balch, Price and Co., the Hotel St George, the Clarendon Hotel, a grocer named Indig and Journeay and Burnham. The latter firm has not as yet made a complaint. When Schreiner had collected all the money he could get he went directly to Richmond, Virginia where he applied to E. B. Thaw, the officer in charge of the agencies of the Mutual Guarantee Building and Loan Association, for employment. He was boarding then with a man named Pierce and he had been in his house but three days.
"I'd like to hire you," said Mr. Thaw, "but I must have references."
"Do you want a man with references or a hustling business man from New York?" Said Schreiner, who introduced himself as Vernon Webb.
The reply pleased Mr. Thaw and he went no further, but engaged Vernon Webb on the spot. He said to the detective yesterday that the young man's business methods were perfect and he proved a model agent. Webb established branches for the company in Covington, Stanton, Norfolk and Suffolk, and they all flourished. He went to Suffolk on the 8th of last month, put up at the Commercial hotel and made many friends in the town. He had been in the habit of drinking, unfortunately, but he gave up that bad habit, joined the Methodist Church of the town and as he was a remarkably good tenor singer, his services in the church choir as a soloist was an acquisition which the members were justly proud. What he did with his money is not exactly known, but the simple fact remains that, while he was making a good salary, he managed to run up a bill of something more than $38. at the hotel.
His arrest as S.V.B. Schreiner, on advises from Superintendent McKelvey, came as a shock to his friends. He denied that he was Schreiner and said to his friends in Suffolk that he would be able to clear himself. The arrival of the Brooklyn detective and the clerk of the Clarendon hotel, who had cashed his bogus check, took all the starch out of him and he relinquished all claims of innocence. When the detective visited him in jail Schreiner was entertaining no less than three clergymen who were interested in his case. When his identification was made complete he said that he was willing to return to 'Brooklyn without a requisition. He was arraigned at 3 o'clock yesterday afternoon before Justice ---ia of Suffolk. The magistrate was unwilling to let him go without a requisition. The Detective said that he was anxious to catch the 4 pm train for the north. "Are you willing to go with me without a requisition?" he asked the prisoner.
"Yes," was the reply; "willing and anxious."
Thereupon he was discharged by the local magistrate and an hour later was on the train for New York. Prisoner, captor and witness reached the city this morning and one of the first persons to meet the fugitive was his wife. The greeting was most affectionate. Schreiner was taken before Justice Walsh, and his lawyer pleaded not guilty in his behalf. By his request hearing was postponed until the 16th inst. He went to jail pending negotiations for his release on bail which will be furnished by his wife. He says that he is glad to be back in Brooklyn.

New York Times file; Dec. 9, 1896, page 2

SCHRINER SANG IN THE CHOIR
The Fugitive Was Making an Effort to Be Good,
SAYS HE HAD REFORMED
The Local Police Got on His Trail for Passing Bogus Checks in This City and Tracked Him to Virginia, Where He Was Making a Fine Reputation. Married a stepdaughter of the Late Dr. Paul Kretzschmar.

When Detective Sergeant Roche of the headquarters squad reached Suffolk, Va., yesterday in his quest for S. V. B Shriner, alias Vernon Webb, who was wanted in this city on a charge of having obtained money dishonestly by means of bogus checks, he found that the clever young man had so ingratiated himself in the good opinion of the people of Suffolk that no less than three clergymen were interested in him and were willing to declare that he was a much abused man. Schriner is a very clever person. He is well educated, well bred and a very bright young business man. His marriage to a daughter of the widow of the late Dr. Paul Kretzschmar took place at the Hotel St. George about three years ago. It was in a sense a runaway match and the mother of the bride was very indignant and left the hotel where she had been boarding with her family, angry because she thought that Captain Tumbridge, the proprietor, had know of the engagement and had not told her of it.

New York Times file; Dec 9, 1896, page 2

Grandmother Goes Bail

Shreiner’s Wife Will Help Him

S. V. B. Schreiner, alias Vernon Webb, who is charged with swindling the Clarendon Hotel, in Brooklyn, was brought back to that city yesterday by Detective Sergeant Roche from Suffolk, Va. There are several complaints against Schreiner. He is a well-educated young man. About three years ago he married a daughter of Dr. Paul Kretschmar at the St. George Hotel. His wife met him upon his arrival in Brooklyn yesterday and gave him an affectionate greeting. She is wealthy in her own right, and has offered to settle a competency on him if he will give up his wild ways. Schreiner spent last night in Raymond Street Jail. His wife will furnish bail today.

Brooklyn Eagle; Monday Oct. 30, 1899
MRS. SCHREINER DIES OF CRIMINAL OPERATION
Made a Deathbed Confession Accusing Dr. Harvey, a Manhattan Practitioner.
CHARGES AGAINST HIM BEFORE
Coroner’s Jury Found Him Guilty of Malpractice on Another Brooklyn Woman Who Died.
Mrs. Edith Schreiner of 331 Park Place died this morning at her home from the result, the attending physician says, of a criminal operation performed, it is alleged, at 144 West Twenty-third Street, Manhattan. The case was reported to Coroner Burger by Dr. Charles H. Goodrich, who later swore to a complaint to the effect that Mrs. Schreiner had confessed to him that the operation which has made her so very ill, had been performed by a man calling himself Dr. Harvey, at the address mentioned. ---------------
The case is of more than usual interest, not only from the prominence of the victim, but because of the fact that it is only a short time since a young woman died in St. Catherine’s Hospital under similar conditions, who before her death identified “Dr. Harvey” as the man who had been responsible for her fatal illness.

“My father died when I was 9 years old,(1905). I didn’t know I had a father. Aunt Ethel dyed all my cloths black. He had been killed in a car crash in San Francisco. He had gone there to live with a friend from his School in Brooklyn. The friend said, “come out here and get a fresh start.” The Friend had one of the first cars in San Francisco and the breaks failed on one of the hills. They crashed and burned. The family of the Friend asked permission to bury them together in their family plot.”

When my mother was dying I said to her, “Mom, would you like to be buried with your mother?” I guess the question came out of my need to reconcile them.
“ Your father and I were never divorced. I want to be buried on top of him. I don’t want to be with my mother. She killed my brother.”

I have been unable to find and official account of my grandfather’s death. Now I understand why my mother and her sister had no contact with their father after their mother’s death. Her family probably cut him off socially and financially.

Ghost Story

2007-11-03T12:10:00.000-07:00

When I was 8 years old my parents and I moved to Greenport, Long Island. My father was involved in the local shipyard as a Naval Architect. They were producing Mine Sweepers for the US Navy to clear German Mines from the shipping channels in the North Atlantic. These boats were one of only two wooden ships produced during WWII. The other wooden boat was the P.T. or "Mosquito Boat". My father was a Wooden boat specialist. Housing was short everywhere in the country and my parents were delighted to procure an antique Farmhouse, the "Cottage" on the Floyd estate. It came complete with furnishings, extensive grounds, a gardener, and a three car garage. The house was in two parts, the oldest part dated from the early 1700s. The kitchen with the old fireplace hearth had a built in "Dutch oven". There was a wood burning stove inserted in the hearth and also an electric stove on another wall. The parlor beyond the kitchen had been turned into a formal dining room with its own fireplace. Upstairs were three tiny bedrooms and a bathroom. Connecting to this oldest part of the house was a new addition, twice the size of the original house. They connected on the ground floor through a den and on the second floor through a door in my bedroom. Each part, new and old had a basement with a separate furnace. In the middle of the first winter, my parents closed off the new half of the house and we moved into the older house, to conserve heat and the expense of oil. When the weather warmed we could open the doors and spread out into the "new" part with its large bedrooms, bathrooms, Living room and sun porch.

I remember our time there as idealic. We quickly added two cats and a large German shepherd, my first pets, to the family. I loved the seasonal thing, the small warm winter bedrooms with one little window each, slanting floors, doors with the old iron latches, Then the spacious summer quarters with many windows, thrown open in the summer to catch the air from the sea, close on both sides of this "North Fork".

Being in the house from aged 8 until 11 years, I am a bit hazy about the time sequence, which year, which winter I began to hear the foot steps crossing the floor in my "summer" room, coming to the door now closed for the winter, to my little winter room. I think it must have happened two or three times before I thought it was noteworthy enough to tell my mother about it. What clinched it in my mind was the behavior of my dog. "King" slept on my bed with me, a narrow old iron cot. He curled up in the hollow of my knees and when I wanted to turn over he had to get up and lie down again on the other side. I can still feel the process, his resistance against the blankets, warm from his body, the final reluctant rising with the rattle of his dog tag, and then waiting till I felt the newly cold sheet warm with his body heat against the back of my knees as we both drifted back to sleep.

I remember hearing the footsteps and feeling King rise and stand over me. His lips were drawn back in a snarl, fangs bared, his hackles raised, and he was shaking so that the whole bed vibrated. Even in my nine or ten year old mind, I knew terror when I saw it. There I lay, watching the dog and the door, wondering what would happen next. He didn't bark, just the constant desperate snarl. Then he stopped, lay down in his usual place, still shaking, and we went to sleep.

I told my mother about our experience. I remember one vivid nightmare of being chased through the upstairs to the back stairway down to the kitchen by a skinny white apparition. I also remember joining a waiting wasp under the covers, being stung, crying loudly and meeting my frantic parents at the back stairs clutching my hip. They had looked at each other said, "the Ghost", and rushed up the stairs to meet me at the top.

One night while my mother was sitting on my bed after tucking me in, the footsteps came toward the door. I thought, "Wow! Now she'll believe me." I couldn't believe "whatever" would be so bold or dumb to "do it" with my mother there, ineptitude or my good luck. King stood over me, next to my mother, facing the closed door, snarling and shaking. We were transfixed. My mother said later, "I was afraid that if I had opened the door, the dog would have dropped dead from fright." I wish I could tell you about how the problem was resolved but we went on living in the house. I accepted whatever reassurance my parents offered and continued to play with my friends, my cats, and my dog. I don't remember hearing the footsteps again and I'm sure that when the summer came, we opened the door as usual and King and I moved into our summer quarters, the room of the footsteps.

Bed Memorys

2007-11-03T11:57:00.000-07:00

When I was about 8 years old ( 1941 ) my parents took a trip and arranged for me to stay with two maiden ladies who lived in an antique house in Orient, further out the North Fork of Long Island. I was to sleep in a “feather bed”, a first for me. It must have been used to entice me to be willing to cooperate with the arrangement. I remember the feeling that they were doing us and me a big favor and that I must be on my best behavior. In retrospect that “spin” was part of the preparation by my mother, I’m sure.

I was deposited in the afternoon, in one of my best dresses. Something felt out of sync. This was the way I was dressed for a party. I knew this wasn’t a party. There must have been a meal, conversation, perhaps a game. I was focused on getting into that feather bed. The two ladies struck me as overly enthusiastic with forced smiles, unreal, probably in their anxiety about taking this responsibility.

I don’t remember the meal or the topics of conversation. What I remember is standing by the bed, hugely mountainous in my eyes. I decided I wanted to depress only the center with my body leaving the sides intact like a nest. I asked to stand on a chair and jumped into the middle. Somehow I cracked my knee or shin in the process. It hurt a lot but I didn’t want to disturb the general joviality or challenge the two ladies to care for an injured child. I really didn’t feel they could handle it. I managed not to cry out or cry. I said I had done just what I planned and was relieved when the pain quickly subsided.. I loved the bed that turned out to be surprisingly hard in the middle where I had landed. I said good night and the ladies withdrew. My parents picked me up after two nights I think, and I never saw the two ladies again. I did make a mental note each time we passed the little house by the side of the road. I understood from my mother that it was special, an Antique, “very old”.

So much of the North Fork was “very old” at that time. We rented the “Cottage” on the old William Floyd estate. My mother told me that the land had been given to William Floyd by George Washington as a reward for his service during the Revolution. The “cottage” was really two houses, Joined. The original part dated from the early 1700s. there was the cooking fireplace with a Dutch oven. The hearth was occupied by a big black stove, wood burning? I think there was another stove, electric?, in the kitchen as well. The other half of the house was a more recent addition with a parlor, sun porch, four bedrooms and two baths. The new part had a noisy ghost. (see my Ghost Story )
We rented from the currant occupant of the estate house, made of stone, with a copula, widows walk, on top. Across the road in an old yellow frame house lived Miss Floyd, whom my mother cultivated, charming her, trying to turn her into a friend. She was old even then. A little wisp of a woman with white hair. She was cared for by a black couple, retainers. I remember them as being very kind to me and friendly. At Easter the old man was sent across the road with an Easter basket for me containing eggs, candy and “real” porcelain German rabbits, the mother and two babies. My mother managed to drop one of the babies and break off an ear which she mended with glue. I still have them, in the chest. I remember entering Miss Floyd's the parlor, a room that occupied the East wing of the house. The floors slopped this way and that and the windows went from ceiling to floor.
I think my mother had concerns about the cleanliness of the kitchen, which was overrun with cats. I was admonished not to eat anything offered there.

Miss Floyd’s complaint was that her niece, not she, had inherited the stone house. This was because Mrs., Robinson, the niece had married. What threw Miss Floyd into a ladylike tantrum was the fact that Mrs. Robinson hadn’t had the expected children and was at that time in a Boston Marriage with a transvestite, Dr. Jennings. I realized that there was something strange going on mainly because Dr. Jennings who was evidently a woman dressed in men’s suits, tie and all. She was reclusive so I didn’t see much of her. At one point she was taking a mail order photography course and needed to do some pictures of a child. Mrs. Robinson asked my mother if I would pose and on the appointed day she arrived in our living room with camera, white screen, lights and I was dressed in two different outfits. The first a red and white stripped dress with my hair braided. The next, a dark red corduroy two piece dress with my hair loose. Unfortunately my mother had assigned me to do my own hair and for at least a month, probably more. I had just been smoothing the top and not re-braiding it. (Mothers don’t let your daughters grow up to be slackers.) My mother couldn’t get a comb through it. There was a snarled mat between the crown of my head and the beginning of the braids. I remember a lot of tugging and painful pulling, threats to cut it off.

Miss Floyd was the source of my two cats. Mittsey and Spot. Mittsey was killed on the road in front of the house but Spot managed to live to have two kittens, Cream Puff and Grey Boy. I loved them deliriously. We also added a German Shepard, King, to our family. I remember Spot bringing her kittens and depositing them between King’s paws and he trying to raise his muzzle out of the reach of their playful mits without getting up and disturbing them.

It was a happy time. My mother loved the house and the life of a country lady. We had visitors. Gigi and Uncle Bob, my mother’s Aunt and Uncle. They were driven over by Aunt Edith’s chauffer, Smith, in a big impressive gray Packard. Smith was in Livery and caused quite a stir in the Village of Greenport. Friends from the Clarkstown Country Club came. MK Krell and Roysey, her son, from Scarsdale. “Aunt” Truman Lovelace. Louise Whitaker, “my father’s first wife”.

I don’t know when or why things began to deteriorate between my parents. My mother said it was because she was worried that my father was getting older and they had nothing saved for the time when he must retire.

I came home from school one day and found my trunk packed and my mother saying we were going to Nyack to the Clarkstown Country Club. She left my father a note, put me in the car and we left.

That was the beginning of a very bad time. I found my self mostly alone, except for Mr. Powers and his Elephants, the only child on the club grounds. My mother and I shared a bed in our room in the clubhouse. I cried at night for my father and my pets. It must have made my mother feel guilty because I remember her crossly telling me to stop crying. Things didn’t go well for her there. PA took over her car. She had to work for our board and room. My father was furious and threatening to sue her for my custody. I remember him coming to see us and how angry he looked. I thought I had done something wrong. I didn’t understand how my life could become so confusing in such a short time.

My mother realized she had made a mistake and we packed surreptitiously, she became paranoid about taking the car back from PA and we crept out at 4 am, me being sworn to secrecy and with the help of Eddy Evans, got our car and were on the road to return to Greenport, my Father and my pets.

Addenda: I visited the North Fork in 1986 about. Mrs. Robinson’s property was being subdivided into Condominiums. Miss Floyd’s house was restored and redecorated by a new owner from New York City. It was “Victorian” in overly plush decor. Miss Floyd would have been upset. The Cottage had burned down a few years before. The little cemetery was still on the corner across the lane from the Cottage and across the road from Miss Floyd’s. I found her grave and paid my respects

You Come Under An Exclusion

2007-10-10T15:00:00.000-07:00

I had marked it down on my desk calendar and set my alarm. I was to be at the Lowell District Juvenile Court today at eight am. I had been summoned for jury duty for the third time in my life. The first two times, my “pool” was excused the evening before I was to report.

The vibes were good. I called the evening before and was told, “ All jurors are to report.”

“ I think I’ll make it this time.”

I filled my coffee pot the night before. I awoke before the alarm went off. I chose my cloths carefully, formal enough but also casual. I wanted to look like I took it seriously but not look scary to whatever juvenile I might be facing. I was on the road by 6:45 and in the “jury” parking lot by 7:15 am.

There was one other person there in his car. After a short wait we got out at the same time and started walking toward the courthouse. I’ve always enjoyed being in Lowell. The old buildings, narrow streets, canals give the small city the charm of a time past.

My juror-walking companion and I located the front entrance to the gray stone court building and went in. We had to pass through metal detectors and were instructed to sit on the wooden benches until the jury pool was called to come down stairs. We filed down the stairs, through various assorted rooms. One was some sort of probation office. I was pleased to see the areas in good repair, new paint on the stairs and walls. It looks like Massachusetts is trying to keep up with things.

We entered the jury room and were interviewed by a court officer at the entry. I handed in my questionnaire. It looked to me like I would qualify, never having been a defendant, a victim, having no family members in law enforcement.

“You meet the criteria for an exclusion.”

“How? What exclusion.”

He pointed to my age, seventy-four, plainly written in my hand in the upper right corner.

“What’s the cut-off?”

“Seventy. You don’t have to stay but you can if you want.”

“Will I be called? I don’t want to sit here if I’m not going to be used.”

He said something ambiguous about staying for the introduction, explanation of the process. I sat down in one of the chairs, confused, slightly upset and read through the explanatory material looking for a statement about age limits. My mind was a jumble.
I’ll be 75 in four days. My walking friend to whom I turned for commiseration said.

“Happy Birthday.” “You certainly don’t look seventy-five.”

I decided the best approach was to sit still and see what happens.

A film with our Supreme Court Justice, Margaret Marshall, was played explaining the constitutional basis for the court system, the importance and civic duty of the Juror. I noticed her hair was white and wondered how old she was.

The justice, in who’s Court we might serve, came downstairs to greet us and thank us for our service. Her hair was brown. I wondered if she dyed it. The thought flitted through my mind that if I had known about the “exclusion”, I might have lied about my age.

Justice Flynn said that just our being there made the system work more smoothly, that if there were no juries all the plaintiffs would be demanding a jury trial. The system would get backed up and be overwhelmed.

After the end of the film we were sent for a coffee break and told to report back at 10:20 am. We filed back through the rooms and up the stairs to the street. All the benches in the public areas were now filled with adults accompanying adolescents. The adults looked angry, perturbed, frustrated. The youngsters, whom I took to be the potential plaintives looked bored and as though their thoughts were elsewhere.

I remembered the disrupted home life of our own little family when Ian, our second son, was acting out and enjoying the drama of the courtroom. My husband, Ken, spent one day a week in the Woburn District Court and on alternative weeks in the Concord District Court. This went on for months. Ian had always enjoyed the attention of others and when he discovered he could hold the attention of a whole courtroom, he managed to get repeatedly arrested in both towns. This ended for us when he went into foster care. It ended for him when he turned eighteen and I gave him the ownership of a policy on his life. He almost immediately borrowed the cash value and hired a lawyer for his first arrest as an adult.

My husband and I decided to attend the trial. I can’t remember exactly why. Perhaps because Ian was on his own. We had had some respite while he was in Foster Care and probably thought he had no one else to be there for him. His accuser was his Employer. The accusation was the theft of silver that was found under his bed. He became quite grandiose when he took the stand, denying everything. The Prosecutor was relentless, finally becoming sarcastic. The sarcasm was lost on Ian. Ian’s lawyer had no questions, pocketed the $1,800. Dollars. Ian lost the case and his money.

Back in Lowell we were told that many cases had been resolved and there remained only one that might go to trial. We would know by 11:00 am.

At 11:00 am the court officer said he had “good news and bad”. Someone asked for the bad news first. It was that Friday’s Red Sox game would probably be rained out. The good news was that the remaining case had been resolved and our services wouldn’t be needed. I briefly felt like part of the group again, the discharged, the un-needed.

I guess everyone has that sentinel moment when you confront the number that is your age. Mine happened today. How do you deal with being put on the shelf before you feel ready?

All Over Again

2007-09-16T13:53:00.000-07:00

I had the fortune or misfortune to sit within range of a luncheon meeting probably arranged by a dating service, in Arlington Center today.

The late 30s something woman was there alone, shortly joined by a late 40s man apologizing for being late.

It was interesting to see how these meetings proceed. What are the formalities? What information is passed first? Professional credentials, it seems are early in the order of business. I learned that she was working on a MS in Nursing, Pediatrics, at MGH. He was working teaching music to children, ostensibly, but claimed that the parents needed the most work. Music therapy, it turned out. He said he hadn’t had a job that paid benefits for two years. He was also getting a Ph. D. from an obscure mail order College in Florida. Only the Thesis left to be accepted.

Next came places they had lived, he on the south shore of Massachusetts, she in New York State. Some where in there she mentioned a sister who was having twins. “Bait”, I thought. He didn’t pick up on it but shifted to currant living arrangements. Turns out he had lived in cooperative housing for a long time. That was when my ears seriously perked up. His first house ruptured after two of the residents decided to get pregnant, with out consulting the others. After the initial feelings of being ignored were processed some of the original members decided they were willing to live with a child and some not. He went with the child accepting group and he and another resident bought a house in Dorchester. The mother-to-be didn’t want to be on the Deed because she was a tax resistor and was afraid the IRS would go after the house. He alluded to ways she manages to hide her money. Actually they have done it again. They are having a second child, again, with out consulting the other residents. He is also a tax resister and was fined $500.00 last year for filing a “frivolous” tax return, even though he had sent a letter with the return explaining his stand.

I had a short image of the IRS bureaucrat opening the return with the letter prominently fixed to the form.

From there he launched into the currant political scene in Massachusetts. He is Green but must re-register as a Democrat so that he can have some impact in the primary. He has “issues” with Duval Patrick and thinks Riley isn’t “too bad”, which surprised me.

I could have been listening to the conversation in the early 70’s. I didn’t know these folks were still around. Oppositional Personality Disorder, I thought. I hope he is independently wealthy. Does he plan to receive Social Security? Medicare?

I paid my bill and left

Last Winter

2007-09-10T13:45:00.000-07:00

It is cold as ‘Billy be Dammed’ here today, Eighteen degrees and a good stiff wind. I was checking my front door for leaks and managed to lock myself out. I was in my slippers and there is a glaze on all the snow, everything frozen up tight and very slippery. I had a key hidden in a ceramic elephant in the back yard. The gate was frozen shut so I had to climb over the picket fence, a tricky maneuver. I had my plastic snow shovel and proceeded to try to chip the elephant out of the snow, it turned out to be ice. No luck getting it free to access the key. Luckily it was warmer in the sun in the back yard and I had on my long underwear. I thought of the metal garden tools hanging in a bag by the front door. I climbed back over the picket fence, ouch ouch ouch, and went for a pair of pruners when I spotted a rock I had brought back from Long Island as a memento. I picked up the rock, climbed back over the fence, ouch ouch ouch, and smashed the elephant with the rock. There was the key. My glasses fell off and both lenses fell out on the snow. Luckily I saw them, put the lenses in one pocket and the frames in another. I left the rock with the pieces of the former elephant, took the key. By this time my hands were very cold, climbed over the fence, ouch ouch, I'm getting better at it, went to the front door. I had a hard time getting the key in the lock. My hands weren't working too well and as it opened I was greeted by a blast of warm air. I dropped the spare key in the bag with the garden tools. Enough of this clever hiding places caper. Enough adventures for one day.

Hospitalized

2007-09-06T06:30:00.000-07:00

I was relieved to be admitted. I was beginning to doubt my ability to care for myself at home. The downward trajectory of my health had been very gradual. At aged 74 I thought it was “old age”. Morning naps, afternoon naps that evolved to most of the day in bed sleeping.

The chills and fever started after six to eight weeks into my decline. My fever would go up about 11:30 am and break about 4:00 am. Not high fevers, 100.2 rising to 101.4 by the end of the week.

I saw my nurse practitioner on Thursday. She called on Friday asking me to go in for a chest x-ray. Then she left another message asking me to get “Blood Cultures” at Urgent Care. I didn’t get the blood culture message until I returned home. I was too tired and it was too late to return to the Infirmary. I checked with my Doctor son and we thought I could wait until Monday.

By Sunday afternoon I was feeling sick enough to call my son and ask him to take me to the Emergency Room.

When we arrived it became apparent that we were in for a long wait. I told him to go home and I would let him know whether to pick me up or bring my suitcase back.

It was about 2:00 pm.
“ You won’t get to your bed until 11:00 pm.” He said.
“ That’s OK. I don’t have anything else to do.”

I was placed in a cubical and a Nurse started by doing my vital signs. An ER Doctor interviewed me. Blood was drawn and I was told I was being admitted. I was told my lungs were clear but that I had a low platelet count and that they were doing blood cultures.

I was placed in a room with two other women, both in their 90’s. I looked at them, one non-responsive and the other diagnosed with Lung Cancer.

“I don’t want to end up like this.”

I was having blood drawn 4-6 times a day and being wheeled on a gurney to the basement for Ultra-sounds, X-ray, a CAT scan, with contrast.

The hospital is a teaching hospital so I had a team of Doctors, an Intern, an “Attending” then the two specialists, from Hematology and Infectious Diseases.

The Hematologist mentioned drawing a “bone marrow” referring to my history of Breast Cancer, Chemo therapy and radiation. The ID guy wanted to know if I had been any place that had endemic Malaria.

By this time my son Caleb, a doctor at Beth Israel Hospital was consulting with my Doctors and telling me what was going on.

I had an enlarged spleen, very low platelets and the blood smears showed a parasite in my red blood cells. The Infectious Disease Doctor Tully started me on two antibiotics. I began to feel better the next day. My fever was gone. I could get a deep breath. One complaint I had had for more than a month was the feeling that I couldn’t get a “full” breath.
I thought I would be going home soon and asked to be transferred to the infirmary at MIT, my choice for any recovery.

My Intern, Dr. Cox, appeared and said they were transferring me to “Telemetry”. It seems my Atrial Fibrillation was not well controlled and Caleb told me I had some “inverted T waves” and they were afraid I was having a heart attack. They wanted to monitor me and do “six sets of Cardiac Enzymes”. My poor left arm looked like a war zone from all the times I had been “stuck”. My right arm was off limits because of some edema in my right hand, a result of surgery for breast CA.

I was packed up. Put in a wheelchair and taken down to the 4th floor. Dr. Cox said he had tried to get me on the 3d floor but there were no beds. I was wheeled into a room with one empty bed, the other two were occupied by Alzheimer’s patients. One was quiet and docile sitting in her chair. The other was being watched by a woman, hired for the purpose, who had the TV over my bed going full blast and talking to another “Watcher” from across the hall, whose patient was down stairs for tests.

It was as though I had landed in a mad house. The patient across from me kept saying loudly, “Why am I here? What’s wrong with me.” She had pulled her IV out at least twice and so had to be watched.” She didn’t get much attention from her caretaker until her son and husband arrived.

She turned her attention to them. “You just want to get rid of me. You have a girlfriend and just wanted me out of the house. What’s wrong with me? Why am I here?”

I wanted to shout, “You have Alzheimer’s!”

My Doctor son, Caleb came in and Dr. Cox came down to talk with him.

“ Get me out of here. This is a nightmare.” I said.
“ We’ll see what we can do. This is the time people go home.”

Within 10 minutes a nurse appeared and said, “We’re moving you. It is a private room with a view of the Charles River.”

I felt there had been an intercession by God. She had reached down and saved me.

It was decided that I had contracted Babesia a tick born parasite related to Malaria. My Cardiac enzymes were negative. My Cardiologist adjusted my medications and my heart rate slowed down. I had been in the hospital for a week and in the MIT Infirmary for three days.

This was my first experience with my own mortality, very frightening and humbling. I was stunned with how suddenly you can go from feeling competent and strong to thinking about Assisted Living.

I have made my peace with my primary job, taking care of myself. I’m feeling stronger every day. I am in touch with my Gratitude.

War Bride,1955

2007-07-28T05:56:00.000-07:00

Last night I remembered a woman I had known during out first year of Graduate School at Indiana University.
We both lived in “married student housing” which consisted of row on row of trailers, placed on one of the old athletic fields on the Campus.
These accommodations had been installed to house army personnel during the Second World War and were still in use in 1955, the year of our arrival.
My husband and I had a “single”, one room with no running water. The only utilities we had were electricity and a kerosene heater. All bathing, toilet and gray water disposal took place at a common expanded trailer centrally located to serve about ten occupied trailers. The community also had a "Peeping Tom". A neighbor told me he had seen him looking in one of our windows at night and advised me to draw our curtains.
It was a hard year and I got very depressed as the year went on. It was our first year of marriage. My husband was preoccupied with his studies and his frustrating struggle with his Major Professor. I was trying to find work in a small community with more people looking, than jobs available.
I don’t remember how we met or why we connected but I became aware of a Japanese woman in an “expanded” trailer near mine. Perhaps we met in the bathroom. I was drawn to her feeling her isolation and sadness, perhaps common to us both.
I started to visit her in her trailer, for tea and conversation. She was a War Bride, meeting her husband during the American Occupation. It was a terrible mismatch, her husband a provincial, prejudiced, hick. When he was at home I was appalled by his treatment and attitude toward his wife. He seemed perpetually angry, dismissive, treating her like a servant. I thought he was ashamed of her.
The couple had two children, a girl about four years old and a large baby boy.
I wish I could remember her name but it is so long ago. Many months later she was still bleeding from the birth of the boy. She implied that he had been too large for her and had damaged her, inside during the birth process.
I began to get her history.
“Why did you marry him?”
“After the war there was no food.
He had access to food supplies. He had a Jeep. My family was hungry. My father said, 'Perhaps you should marry him'”.
Her family was educated. Her father had been a Japanese Diplomat in Spain. She had a good education, spoke three or four languages and played classical piano.
The tragedy of her situation became more and more apparent. It was a terrible situation. His family treated her as an embarrassment. There was no kindness, acceptance or support there. Her husband had given all their furniture to his family in preparation for their entering the University.
“Why don’t you go home?”
“These children would never be accepted in Japan. They would be treated like the children of a prostitute”
“ When I was leaving Japan my father became very apprehensive about the ocean voyage to America. He gave me a long red ribbon to attach to my waist in case the boat sank. He said the sharks would think I was a larger animal and not attack me.”

Hiking the Old Hills

2007-07-27T09:01:00.000-07:00

On Tuesday, two days after my arrival in Tucson, I joined my hiking group to walk the Arizona Trail, north from the Madera Canyon Road in the foothills of the Santa Rita Mountains in Santa Cruz County.
It was sunny but in the 40’s with a good wind blowing from the east. I was hoping for the best in my ability to keep up with the group. This part of the trail is at about 5000+ feet. I did have to stop on the long upgrades to get my breath.
The country at that altitude is grassland, forest service land leased for cattle grazing to local ranchers. The grass was kneehigh, yellow in its dried winter dress. There are Juniper, Cedar and Live Oak Trees growing on the slopes and in the draws of the rolling land. There has been a three year drought. About 20 percent of the Oak trees have died, shedding their leaves and taking on an oxford grey appearance. The Arizona Trail is plainly marked with small iron gates through the barbed wire fences. Some of the markers are numbered and I memorized one number as we passed. 4072 it said. Under foot the trail was rough with loose small rocks scattered about.
It was soon evident that this trail serves other purposes. It is a highway for illegal migrants from Mexico. My companions remarked on the footprints that preceded us. “Worn tennis shoes, almost smooth.” Both sides of the trail were littered with empty water bottled, tin cans and here and there a discarded back pack. I tried to ascertain if the bottles and cans were fresh. They weren’t. The cans were beginning to rust and the bottles had settled into their places in the grass and had a film of dust on them.
We continued along, winding below the tops of the hillocks, trying to avoid the wind at the summits. There was a lot of discussion about the possible location of a new open pit mine that a Canadian Company is seeking to exploit for the Copper deposit.
“Are those the mine buildings?” Said Elka, pointing off to the northwest.
So far they have been delayed with the need to get forestland access and probably some acreage to use for necessary expansion of the deeded land containing the mineral claim. Arizona never gave mineral rights to individual property owners. So it is possible for a Mine to claim the minerals under your property and go ahead and dig for them. The Forest Service land is a different proposition, necessitating permission from the Department of the Interior to disturb and alter the land. Herein lies the hope of the population of the Sonoita Valley to
“Save the Santa Ritas”.
I felt pretty pessimistic, knowing the history of the Forest Service’s failure to protect public lands from economic exploitation. Also the price of Copper is very high now. I thought ‘It will be decided in Washington. We will want something from Canada and this wee precious corner of the earth will be given up in a trade of interests.’
Up ahead I saw a large rusted tank lying on its side, the open bottom facing the trail. I walked into it. There was a layer of sand and stones on the bottom about four or five inches deep in the center. Tossed in the back was a mixed pile of cloths, a blanket, a piece of blue tarp. The entrance was surrounded by empty water bottles, energy drink bottles. Nearby there was an old water well and some newer poles for an electric line, probably to supply the mine buildings in the distance.
“An immigrant bed and breakfast.” Said Faith.
I was beginning to wonder what we would do if someone said,
“We’ve got company.”
I thought about my cell phone resting in my left pocket, “I’ll dial 911 and give them the number of the nearest Arizona Trail marker, 4072.”
On the return I picked up a discarded red Jansport backpack and we filled it with bottles and cans in about one half mile. Molly said that on her last ride with Della they filled two black trash bags with litter and she carried them back on her mule.
“They were rattling and banging on either side of the saddle and she didn’t mind.”
The horses would have none of it. The only problem she had was when they came across a burro standing near a fence and her mule didn’t want to leave him.
“I went back and forth along that fence. Finally we went on.”

Ghost Story

2007-07-17T04:33:00.000-07:00

When I was eight years old my parents and I moved to Greenport, Long Island. My father was involved in the local shipyard as a Naval Architect. They were producing Mine Sweepers for the US Navy to clear German Mines from the shipping channels in the North Atlantic. These boats were one of only two wooden ships produced during WWII. The other wooden boat was the P.T. or "Mosquito Boat". My father was a Wooden boat specialist. Housing was short everywhere in the country and my parents were delighted to procure an antique Farmhouse, the "Cottage" on the Floyd estate. It came complete with furnishings, extensive grounds, a gardener, and a three car garage. The house was in two parts, the oldest part dated from the early 1700s. The kitchen with the old fireplace hearth had a built in "Dutch oven". There was a wood burning stove inserted in the hearth and also an electric stove on another wall. The parlor beyond the kitchen had been turned into a formal dining room with its own fireplace. Upstairs were three tiny bedrooms and a bathroom. Connecting to this oldest part of the house was a new addition, twice the size of the original house. They connected on the ground floor through a den and on the second floor through a door in my bedroom. Each part, new and old had a basement with a separate furnace. In the middle of the first winter, my parents closed off the new half of the house and we moved into the older house, to conserve heat and the expense of oil. When the weather warmed we could open the doors and spread out into the "new" part with its large bedrooms, bathrooms, Living room and sun porch.

I remember our time there as idealic. We quickly added two cats and a large German shepherd, my first pets, to the family. I loved the seasonal thing, the small warm winter bedrooms with one little window each, slanting floors, doors with the old iron latches, Then the spacious summer quarters with many windows, thrown open in the summer to catch the air from the sea, close on both sides of this "North Fork".
Being in the house from aged eight until eleven years, I am a bit hazy about the time sequence, which year, which winter I began to hear the foot steps crossing the floor in my "summer" room, coming to the door now closed for the winter, to my little winter room. I think it must have happened two or three times before I thought it was noteworthy enough to tell my mother about it. What clinched it in my mind was the behavior of my dog. "King" slept on my bed with me, a narrow old iron cot. He curled up in the hollow of my knees and when I wanted to turn over he had to get up and lie down again on the other side. I can still feel the process, his resistance against the blankets, warm from his body, the final reluctant rising with the rattle of his dog tag, and then waiting till I felt the newly cold sheet warm with his body heat against the back of my knees as we both drifted back to sleep.
I remember hearing the footsteps and feeling King rise and stand over me. His lips were drawn back in a snarl, fangs bared, his hackles raised, and he was shaking so that the whole bed vibrated. Even in my nine or ten year old mind, I knew terror when I saw it. There I lay, watching the dog and the door, wondering what would happen next. He didn't bark, just the constant desperate snarl. Then he stopped, lay down in his usual place, still shaking, and we went to sleep.
I told my mother about our experience. I remember one vivid nightmare of being chased through the upstairs to the back stairway down to the kitchen by a skinny white apparition. I also remember joining a waiting wasp under the covers, being stung, crying loudly and meeting my frantic parents at the back stairs clutching my hip. They had looked at each other said, "the Ghost", and rushed up the stairs to meet me at the top.
One night while my mother was sitting on my bed after tucking me in, the footsteps came toward the door. I thought, "Wow! Now she'll believe me." I couldn't believe "whatever" would be so bold or dumb to "do it" with my mother there, ineptitude or my good luck. King stood over me, next to my mother, facing the closed door, snarling and shaking. We were transfixed. My mother said later, "I was afraid that if I had opened the door, the dog would have dropped dead from fright." I wish I could tell you about how the problem was resolved but we went on living in the house. I accepted whatever reassurance my parents offered and continued to play with my friends, my cats, and my dog. I don't remember hearing the footsteps again and I'm sure that when the summer came, we opened the door as usual and King and I moved into our summer quarters, the room of the footsteps.

Saving Glory's Storage Box

2007-07-12T09:51:00.000-07:00

This little storage box was made for Granny’s friend Glory Lovelace by her second husband Charles Vermillion. He was a violin maker and made this box for her to store her woolens during the summer.

Granny loved Glory, without reservation. She was the only person I knew of that Granny loved in this way. Glory certainly was a good sweet person. I remember her as always being sunny and smiling. She was in the Lovelace compound on Fontana Ave. in Tucson when my mother and I went there for a new start in 1947. There were four Lovelace siblings there, Olin, Law, Glory and Truman Grace and “the old mother”. The other sister, Willow used to visit from Texas. They were decedents of Daniel Boone who had gone to Texas after the Civil War. The Father who led the migration was a former “Slave Driver” in the south.

They got to the Mississippi and the rest of the wagon train decided to postpone their departure due to information about Indian raids and attacks in Texas. (probably due to the preoccupation of the Federal Army with the Civil War) The Tribes through out the southwest had a reprieve from Army reprisals and were attacking migrants. I heard this at Ft. Bowie and concerning the Butterick Stage route through the Chirichuas and Apache Pass. The Lovelace family decided to continue on to Texas alone. A cattleman asked them to take a herd of cattle with them and they would divide the herd upon delivery of the Cattle in Texas. They delivered the Cattle and were told that they would “settle up” in the morning. In the morning the cattle and the receivers were gone. The Lovelace clan was afraid to pursue the “rustlers”.

The family lived a hard scrabble life. The mother, a daughter of the original settler, was a sort of matriarch in the family, reading and teaching her own interpretation of the bible to the the family. My mother was kind of fascinated with her interpretation. I remember the reference she made to “blood and water” associating the bible reference to childbirth, where there is both blood and water. She was in her 90s when we got to Tucson and bed ridden. Truman and Glory cared for her, turning her every two hours day and night and working full time too.

They were all very good to me. Helen, Law’s wife taught me to iron shirts and to sew, using a pattern. I played with their 3 little girls, Carol, Genowyn, and Dorothy. My mother taught all 3 the piano and said they were excellent pupils.

I have held on to this little box, given me by Truman to help furnish the “Little House on the Prairie”. Glory always said how much she loved Charles. A real sunset years love story. If you have a corner, hang on to it.

The Gem and Mineral Show

2007-07-12T07:21:00.000-07:00

Gem and Mineral Show, 2007

The Gem and Mineral Show in Tucson Arizona is getting under way. The weather has warmed up, the sun is bright and the sky a cloudless blue. It is a scene unique in the USA. Vendors from all over the country and the world take over whole motels turning the guest rooms and lobbies into temporary shops filled with beads, stone artifacts, and rugs. This is the largest Gem and Mineral show in the world. I have been attending annually for about 10 years. Hanging around my neck is a buyer’s pass, supplied by my friend through her business. It allows me entrance into the “wholesale” shows.

The show attracts the foot loose wanderers, the flotsam and jetsam of the world wearing dreadlocks, carrying backpacks, skateboards, and guitars, led by a nondescript dog on a leash. Sometimes they are single males but also can be couples, the girls in their tie-dyed skirts, sandals, sleeveless knit tops. I look at them thinking, “Your parents are worried about you. This life has no future.”

The vendors have their own look. The men greet each other, ready to exchange small talk or arrange a trade of goods. Almost all appear to have spent too much time in the sun for the good of their skin. Often there is the red flush of the smoker or alcoholic on their faces. Most are middle age or older, their pants too tight, a small to medium size stomach hanging over a fancy belt buckle. The men sport ponytails and I saw one black pompadour, an attempt to add two to three inches in height, over intense blue eyes.

I have my favorite “shops” to visit. Abdul is a must. He is Afghani and has a shop in Berkeley. He has a wonderful collection of ancient and merely old beads. I head to him first, wanting to get some findings to fasten my necklaces. The ones he has are made in India and are simple and beautiful. While I am in his shop I check the prices of some of his antiquities. A small string of gold beads catches my eye. “How much are the gold beads?” I asked.

“One hundred dollars a piece.” There are at least twenty of them. They glow as if warming each other. A small gold ring with a flat, but real diamond at its center is $325.00. My friend bought one from him about three years ago and I always admire it on her finger.

A dealer is bargaining for a selection of amulets. “You have $450.00 there but for you $420.00.” The dealer demurs and Abdul says that prices have “gone out of sight in the last year”. Abdul looks stressed and not as affable as usual. Oh well, we’re all getting older. Mrs. Abdul sits smiling in her usual seat behind the counter. She doesn’t speak much English but is unusually effusive this year. There is a beautiful young woman sitting outside the door to their “shop” motel room.

“My wife made three trips to Pakistan this last year,” says Abdul. Slowly it dawns on us that this is a new daughter-in-law, an arranged marriage for their son. “ She has been here 22 days.” The teenaged daughter-in-law looks like a doll, just out of the box. She has elaborate eye and face make-up, a scarf wrapped around her head, expensive French boots sticking out beneath her long skirt. She has an expression of anxiety and boredom, a strange mixture. Their son, waiting on customers from behind the counter looks disoriented, his hair awry. He isn’t paying much attention to his new bride.

“We should bring them a gift,” says my friend. In years past we have brought a large bag of fragrant Minneolas from the tree in her back yard. This year the crew from the landscaper service took every one from the tree. We settle on a Valentine box of chocolates.

There are the women too. They remember me from previous years. My favorites are the Nepalese women. They are setting up today but greet me saying “You’re alone?” They still remember my son Caleb and his wife Anita, a handsome couple who were with me two years ago.

The African village is unpacking. It is a city block with about 60 booths. I hope to find wastebaskets there, beauties from Burkina Faso. African merchants bring cloth, baskets, beads, carvings, and masks and spread them out on tables and the ground. Two women have set up a kitchen that caters to the vendors. They stand in bright cloth wrapped around their hips and heads, stirring large kettles of stew. I suspect it contains goat meat. There are large pools of grease floating on the top. There is a good aroma of spices in the air. I’ll go to the vegan concession in the next block north and buy a vegetable filled buckwheat crêpe.

If you hope to go, be sure to make reservations at least 6 months in advance. This includes airline tickets, accommodations and rental cars. The start is usually the last weekend in January and it runs for about 10 days.