Mother's Day 2013

Katja with J’s flowers (5-11-13)

Dear George,

The delivery man just brought a beautiful Mother’s Day bouquet for Katja that J sent, and it made her beam with delight.  J has always been thoughtful about these things.  I wish I’d done more of that when I had the chance.  My mom died on April 24, 1986, at Marinette General Hospital.  We had some advance notice, and my siblings and I came in from around the country.  Peter and I were in her hospital room when she said her last words: “I’m grateful.”  That’s how mothers are.  My mom was by no means perfect, and I was difficult as a son.  A loss of one’s mother, though, is a powerful experience that takes a long time to recover from.  There’s such a primal connection between mother and child, and, I suspect for most people, there’s no one in one’s life who has such a deep attachment and lifelong sense of caring and concern.  There are many things I wish I’d expressed to my mother and many questions that I wish I’d asked.  However, we make do with what we do and try to learn from it.  Here are some of the wise, interesting, and/or humorous things that people have had to say about mothers:    

• "Every beetle is a gazelle in the eyes of its mother."  (Moorish proverb)
• "It's not easy being a mother.  If it were easy, fathers would do it."  (From the TV show, The Golden Girls)
• "Mirror, mirror on the wall, I am my mother after all."  (Author Unknown)
• "Mothers are all slightly insane."  (J.D. Salinger)
• "Whenever I'm with my mother, I feel as though I have so spend the whole time avoiding land mines."  (Amy Tan)
• "My mother had a great deal of trouble with me, but I think she enjoyed it."  (Mark Twain)
• "Sweater, n.  Garment worn by child when its mother is feeling chilly."  (Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary)
• "She never quite leaves her children at home, even when she doesn't take them along."  (Margaret Culkin Banning)
• "If Mama ain't happy, ain't nobody happy."  (Ferrell Sims)
• "Don't ever tell the mother of a newborn that her baby's smile is just gas."  (Jill Woodhull)
• "The precursor of the mirror is the mother's face."  (D.W. Winnicott)
• "I felt my mother about the place.  I don't think she haunts me, but I wouldn't put it past her."  (Julie Walters)
• "I hope my tongue in prune juice smothers, If I belittle dogs and mothers."  (Ogden Nash)

Our family, of course, has many wonderful mothers, and that goes on across the generations.  Here are some of the mothers we know and love.  Happy Mother’s Day to all!

Love,

Dave

My mom Doris with my sister Vicki (ca. 1949)

Katja with J at Mt. Airy Forest (ca. 1972)

My sister-in-law Margie with Jennifer and J (ca. 1973)

My sister-in-law Faith with Chris (ca. 1978)

My sister Vicki with Jacob (ca. 1973) 

My daughter-in-law K with our grandson L (2012) 

G-mail Comments

-Phyllis S-S (5-12):  Dave,  Enjoyed this a lot.  Have a fun trip to New Orleans - I think you leave before the next Linton and we go to Canada that same day.  All the best,  Phyllis

-Gayle C-L (5-11):  Awesome photos.  Pl give Katya my love and wish her a happy Mother's Day from me!  Take care.    G.  

-Donna D (5-11):  This is really wonderful David :)

Cavorting With Mortimer and Charlie

Dear George,

Believe it or not, the world’s greatest collection of ventriloquist dummies is located across the Ohio River in Northern Kentucky, less than ten miles from our back door.  We’d known about if or a long time but finally got to visit it recently.  The collection was amassed by a Cincinnati businessman and amateur ventriloquist nicknamed W.S. by his friends who bought his first dummy (“Tommy Baloney”) in New York City in 1910.   Over the next half century W.S. accumulated a collection of over 700 dummies, along with photos, posters, books, and other memorabilia.  Lacking heirs in his later years, he created a foundation to make the collection available to the public in perpetuity.

I didn't know it, but ventriloquism originated as a religious practice in ancient Greece.  The word in Latin means "to speak from the stomach" (“venter” = belly; “loqui” = speak).  Noises produced by the stomach were believed to be voices of the deceased, and the ventriloquist would interpret the sounds and use them to predict the future.  By the nineteenth century Spiritualism had spread into stage magic, and ventriloquism became a performance art.  The modern comic approach to ventriloquism started in vaudeville in the late nineteenth century.  Famous vaudeville ventriloquists included Jules Vernon, Fred Russell, Arthur Prince, and the Great Lester.  It was one of the Great Lester's students -- Edgar Bergen -- who (with the help of Charlie McCarthy and Mortimer Snerd) made ventriloquism extremely popular by the middle of the twentieth century.

As you can see from the photos below, the dummies are wonderful, many of them exquisite works of art.  Our tour guides demonstrated their facial expressiveness, not only talking motions, but pursing their lips, wrinkling their foreheads, raising their eyebrows, wiggling their ears, bobbing their Adams’ Apples, winking, smoking, even spitting.  Some dummies were able to walk or scratch their heads, and Baby Snooks could wet her diapers. Made of wood, paper mache, latex, or soft cloth, some figures look like cartoon characters; others are very realistic.  With a little help, of course, the dummies have a lot of opinions about all kinds of things.  None of them spoke to us during our visit, but who knows what happens when the lights go off.  With hundreds of pairs of eyes focused on us during our stay, the scene was a little eerie.  When we next get visitors to Cincinnati, we’ll have to do another trip. 

Love,

Dave

Sources: www.kimn.com (“History of Ventriloquism”); www.wikipedia.org (“Ventriloquism”) 

Who are those dummies in the back row?             

G-mail Comments

-Donna D (5-9): this is fantastic, david.  you were right!

-Linda C (5-8):  This was just great, I'd love to see these dummies, love the last page the best.

-Jennifer M (5-7): Looking at the pics, that place seems creepy! Alice especially.  An interesting experience and entry.

Stepping Out at the Gala

Cocktail hour at the Gala

Dear George,

Katja has loved the opera since she was a little girl and used to listen to the Met on the radio on Saturday afternoons at her grandparents’ house.  I doubt if I ever heard an opera as a kid, but Katja started getting tickets for us when we moved here as a young married couple.  Back then the opera was held at the zoo, and the performers had to compete with noisy elephants and hyenas.  After going to summer opera for many years with her mother or me, Katja joined the Opera League last year, a volunteer organization which does fund-raising, educational programs, etc.  She asked me to join the League too, but, being more of a country music guy and pretty nonsocial, it made me nervous and I didn’t want to do it.  Katja understood and said the only thing she wanted me to do was to go in the spring to the Opera Gala, a formal dinner-dance affair for opera lovers and supporters.  I wasn’t enthused, but it was a long way off, and I reluctantly agreed.   

We haven’t danced for a long time, so we signed up in late February for ballroom dance lessons at the university.  The class meets on Tuesday afternoons, and there are about two dozen members, mostly novices.  We’d taken ballroom dancing years ago, so this was a refresher.  We started with the foxtrot and the rumba; then the waltz and the meringue and an introduction to swing.  We also learned a Latin dance called the bachata which was fun though we’d never heard of it.  After a few weeks we felt like we’d at least be able to foxtrot reasonably well.

The Gala was scheduled for late April.  Katja started shopping for a ballgown a couple of months in advance, but she was disappointed in the stock in local department stores.  She asked if I’d like to drive up to Chicago to shop for a ball gown there, but I responded by pretending to lapse into a coma.  Finally she ordered a ball gown she found in a catalog from an exclusive department store in Texas.  The gown arrived a week later, and it looked pretty elegant to me, but Katja wasn’t certain.  She tried several bridal shops in the suburbs, but they said that they needed three months’ advance notice, and by then it had gotten too late.

Sometime in March we got a letter from the Opera League, describing details of the event.  One line stood out to me:  “for husbands, appropriate dress will be white tie and gloves.”  I read the line aloud to Katja and insisted that I wasn’t wearing a white tie, and I definitely wasn’t wearing gloves.  She just laughed and said that I could wear my gardening gloves.  That was funny, but only slightly.

The week of the Gala rolled around, and they gave a short description of the event in the entertainment section of the newspaper.  My heart nearly stopped when I saw that the tickets ran from $250 to $5000 per person.  I worried for a brief moment that we’d spent $10,000, but that didn’t seem realistic.  I was afraid to ask and decided I’d better make a serious effort to enjoy the occasion.  Katja had bought me some new leather shoes for dancing, and I started breaking them in.  She’d wanted me to get a tuxedo, but I said I would make do with the black velvet jacket and black slacks that she’d bought me ten years ago.  On the day of the Gala Katja had an appointment with her hairdresser, Kevin.  Kevin said he could imagine Katja at the Gala, but he couldn’t quite see me at it.  I said Kevin was right on target.  When we got dressed, Katja put on a luxurious multi-level pearl and gold necklace that she’d bought years ago and that she’d never had occasion to wear.  She looked very lovely. 

The Gala was held at a fancy downtown hotel.  The cocktail hour started at 6:30, and we arrived at 6:45, leaving our car in the hands of valet parking.  Roughly five hundred people had gathered in the hotel’s gigantic ballroom which featured 40-foot high mirrors and moving clouds on the ceiling.  All the men were dressed in tuxedos.  I only saw one or two white ties (mainly black bow-ties; a few red, a couple plaid), and I didn’t notice any men wearing gloves.  The women were elegantly dressed in floor-length ball gowns, lots with gold or silver gilt and occasional corsages.  By and large, it was an older crowd – mostly white haired – and it looked like high society to me.  We met up right away with our friends, Molly and Charles, who we’d known were going.  I’d been given an envelope when we checked in, and Charles said I should have two tickets for complimentary drinks.  I couldn’t find them in my envelope so I went back to the registration table to correct the situation.  The woman at the table asked what “level” I was.  I said I didn’t know, but that my friend said I should have gotten two complimentary tickets.  She politely handed me a pair of tickets for drinks, and I got a Manhattan for myself and a white wine for Katja. 

At 7:30 we went upstairs to another huge room and sat down at a table for eight with Charles, Molly, and several strangers.  Looking around, everyone seemed to be having a fine time – lots of smiles and animated conversation.  Katja was chatty and fun; I was pretty quiet.  The waiters were readily available to fill the wine glasses, and I had four or five glasses of white wine in the course of the meal.  Dinner was good except for the sirloin steak entrée which was tough.  Katja couldn’t cut hers, so we traded portions.  I felt bad for the people who paid $5000 for tough steak.  Just before dessert an opera star from the Met came out and did four songs, including “I Could Have Danced All Night” from “My Fair Lady”.  She wore a gold gilt dress, had a beautiful voice, and received an enthusiastic ovation. 

When dinner ended, we went back downstairs to the ballroom for dancing.  A DJ was playing music which a friend later explained was “club music”.  It was very fast, very loud, and had a constant beat.  Molly and Charles listened for a few minutes, then decided it was time to go home.  Katja and I made our way up to the front of the room.  Despite several hundred people being present, only a smallish group were dancing at any given time.  The dancers were mostly younger people in their thirties and forties, doing free-style, no-touch dancing; also a few balding men struggling to keep up with their younger trophy wives.  Katja and I waited for the DJ to play a foxtrot, but that never happened, nor did he ever play a waltz or a rumba.  Given a mostly post-age-65 crowd, the hip DJ’s music selection seemed out of place.  Finally we decided to try the bachata, which you can do to anything that has a steady beat.  That worked o.k., though we were the only bachata dancers in the place.  Then we did some swing dancing too.  We danced for most of the next two hours, and we had as much fun as we’ve had in quite a while.  The party was still going full force at 11:30, but we decided to call it a night.  Katja said she hoped we’d go dancing again in the future. 

When I went to valet parking, I gave the guy our ticket and said we’d been at the Opera Gala.  He asked me if I had a complimentary ticket for parking.  When I said I didn’t have one, he said the parking would cost $15.  That seemed like a terrible mistake, so I went back upstairs to the registration table and told the lady that I hadn’t gotten my complimentary parking ticket.  As she’d done earlier the evening, she asked what level I was.  I said I wasn’t sure, but I thought that I was probably at the $250 level.  Giving me a look that I interpreted as scornful, she said, “That’s why.  You don’t get complimentary parking at the $250 level.”  I think I must have appeared so forlorn that a nicer lady started looking around to see if they had any extra parking passes.  Much to my luck, she finally found one and gave it to me.  I thanked her profusely at least two or three times. 

When we got home, Katja asked me to unhook her necklace.  I fiddled with it for several minutes, but I couldn’t get the clasp undone.  I thought maybe part of it had broken off.  Katja tried for a while, but she couldn’t do it either.  Finally she said I should just break it apart, and she would have it repaired.  I proposed instead that she go to sleep with her necklace on, and we’d find a jeweler the next day.  In the morning I located a mall jewelry store that was open on Sunday, and we drove out.  The clerk at the store took a look at the clasp, pushed on it once, and it popped open.  She smiled; we laughed, both of us a little embarrassed.  I tried it myself while we were there with the clerk.  It popped right open for me too.  Driving home, I thought to myself that we’d managed to get through the Opera Gala unscathed.  But I was happy to be back in reality.

Love,

Dave

G-mail Comments

-Vicki L (5-3):  Hi David,  Your Gala story left me breathless. I just don't know how you do it. In some ways, your marriage to Katja mimics mine to George - the partner consistently pulling us onto our growing (or is that 'groaning') edge.  I'm so glad you had a great time. The finale at the jewelers was a lovely tribute to aging. Sis

Our New Cat Canyon

Dear George,

We’ve belonged to the Cincinnati Zoo for a long time.  When J was a little kid, I’d take him there each Saturday morning while Katja was out doing errands, and it always was exciting.  Now it’s a favorite destination when our grandkids come to town.  The zoo was good back in the 1970’s, but it’s changed dramatically in the 35 or 40 years since.  Nearly 80% of the current exhibition sites didn’t exist when we first started going.  One of the most recent additions is the $3 million Cat Canyon.  It replaced the former Tiger Grotto that had been built in 1934.  The Cat Canyon is divided into several separate areas.  The biggest, designed to simulate a tropical habitat, houses two white tigers: Akere, a male, and Popsuy, a female.  White tigers, of course, are extremely rare – making up only one out of every 10,000 tigers that are born.  Here’s how our handsome zoo pair looks.  

The second Cat Canyon area is occupied by two six-year-old Malayan Tiger brothers, Taj and Who Dey.  Malayan Tigers live in the wilds in Malaysia and southern Thailand, and there are only about 500 left in the world.  The new zoo exhibit includes a pool in which Taj and Who Dey can cool off on hot days.

Three snow leopards live in a third area which is designed with the look of a rocky Himalayan riverbed.  Renji, a three-year-old female, came from the Chattanooga Zoo.  Nobo, a male, is two and a half, and Olga is an older female.  The leopards are about the size of Old English Sheepdogs, live in high mountain areas of central Asia, and are an endangered species.  Their diet in the wilds is mainly blue sheep and ibex.  Now that spring’s in full bloom we’ll stop by and see these babies in the next week or two. 

Love,

Dave

-G-mail Comments

-Vicki L (4-30): Wow David - magnificent photos. I'm thinking you should start working for the Cincinnati Chamber of Commerce - special agent in charge of bringing tourists and settlers to Cincinnati. You make the city come alive…  Much Love, Sis

New Orleans: A Brief and Quirky History

St. Louis Cathedral, Jackson Square

Dear George,

Our family members live in or near lots of special places, e.g., New York City, Seattle, Santa Cruz, Philadelphia, Princeton, San Francisco, Saranac Lake.  But none is more extraordinary than New Orleans.  Our son and daughter-in-law, J and K, moved there in the mid-1990’s, and now our sweet grandchildren draw us there as well.  We’ve gone down at least once a year for quite a while.   I plan to visit in a few weeks, and, as part of my psychic preparation for taking in the city, I’ve assembled a potpourri of informative and fun historical facts.  Here’s a short account of NOLA from its beginnings: 

1541: The region was first visited by Europeans when a Spanish exploration party led by Hernando de Soto discovered the Mississippi River.

1718: New Orleans (Nouvelle-Orléans), just a trading camp at the time, was founded by Jean-Baptiste Le Moyne de Bienville on the first crescent of high ground above the Mississippi’s mouth (a hundred miles from the Gulf).

1718: The first St. Louis Cathedral building was erected, and now it’s the oldest continually operating cathedral in the U.S.

1721:  Priest-chronicler Pierre François Xavier de Charlevoix described New Orleans as “a place of a hundred wretched hovels in a malarious wet thicket of willows and dwarf palmettos, infested by serpents and alligators.”

1727: The Urusuline nuns braved five months of high seas, pirates, shipwreck, and sickness to come to New Orleans.  Their convent was finally completed seven years later.

1762 and 1763: France signed treaties ceding Lousiana to Spain, making New Orleans a Spanish city for the next 40 years, trading heavily with Cuba and Mexico and adopting Spanish racial rules that allowed for a class of free people of color.

1765: Following the French and Indian War, Acadian immigrants from Canada (Cajuns) began settling in French-colonized Louisiana, including New Orleans.

1788 and 1794: The city was ravaged by fires that destroyed 80% of its buildings, then was rebuilt with brick buildings and a cathedral that are still standing today.

1789: New Orleans' earliest cemetery, St. Louis No. 1 at 3421 Esplanade Ave., was established.

1791:  With a population nearing 10,000, New Orleans had twice as many tavern keepers as it did merchants. 

1796: The first opera in the U.S., Ernest Grétry's Sylvain, was performed in New Orleans on May 22.

1803: To gain control of the vital Port of New Orleans, Thomas Jefferson negotiated the Louisiana Purchase with Napoleon I of France for $23 million, thereby doubling the land area of the United States. 

1805: New Orleans was incorporated as a city.

1805:  A New Orleans census (probably under-counted) showed a population made up of 3551 whites, 1556 free blacks, and 3105 slaves.

 1806: Named for its showy gardens, the Garden District was laid out by Bathelemy Lafon as an open, semi-urban system of interrelated parks with basins, fountains, and canals. 

1813: Governor Claiborne offered a $500 reward for the capture of legendary pirate Jean Lafitte, whereupon Laffitte countered with a $1,500 reward for the capture of Governor Claiborne.

1815: Colonel Andrew Jackson led a coalition of free blacks, pirates, and Tennessee Volunteers to defeat a British force outside the city in the final battle of the War of 1812.

1815: Charity Hospital was built.

1823:  The first permanent theater in the U.S., the American Theatre, was established in New Orleans by James Caldwell.

1823: What is now the oldest existing pharmacy in America was built at 514 Chartres Street in the French Quarter.  

1827: New Orleans'  first Mardi Gras ("Fat Tuesday" in French) was celebrated. 

1830: Most New Orleans residents still spoke French. 

1834: Tulane University was founded in 1834 as the Medical College of Louisiana. 

1835: The New Orleans & Carrollton Line opened and remains the oldest street railway line still in operation in the country.

1837: The Picayune newspaper began its publication.

1840: Antoine's Restaurant opened for business.

1850s:  New Orleans was the third largest city in the nation with a population of 166,375.

1853:  City Park was established. 

1862: The city was captured and occupied by Union forces during the Civil War.

1862: Cafe du Monde opened for business at the French Market. 

1866: New Orleans successfully operated a racially integrated public school system during the Reconstruction era.

1871: Santa became the first Mardi Gras thrower when he rode in the Twelfth Night Revelers parade and passed out gifts to the children in the crowd. 

1872:  In order to entertain Grand Duke Alexis Romanoff of Russia, Rex became the city's first krewe to stage an elaborate daytime parade. 

1873: The first parade constructed entirely in New Orleans was Comus 1873, built by George Soulé.  Earlier New Orleans parade floats in the 1860s were built partially in Paris and finished in New Orleans.

1874:  Armed forces led by White League segregationists defeated the racially integrated metropolitan police and their allies in an intense battle in the French quarter and along Canal Street, forcing the temporary flight of the governor and his administration.   

1877: Buddy Bolden was born, an early jazz musician who music historians credit as the inventor and first bandleader of jazz from 1895-1907.

1881:  Voodoo priestess Marie Laveau died at age 98 after influencing tens of thousands of multiracial followers since the early 1830s through her legendary rites.

1884: The city hosted the 1884 World's Fair, called the World Cotton Centennial. Though a financial failure, the event marked the beginning of the city's tourist economy. 

1886:  New Orleans philanthropist Josephine Louise Le Monnier Newcomb created Newcomb College, the first degree-granting university for women in the U.S.

1897: City alderman Sidney Story wrote legislation setting up the legalized red-light district known as Storyville in order to limit prostitution to one area of town.  Storyville's black and white brothels, venues for many of the era’s great jazz musicians, flourished until shut down in 1917.

1919:  Louis Armstrong, age 18, replaced King Joe Oliver in Kid Ory's jazz band.

1933: Pat O'Brien's Bar opened on St. Peter Street at the end of Prohibition. 

1934:  The Live Oak Society was founded.  Composed entirely of trees with the exception of an honorary human chairman, each member tree is required to pay dues of 25 acorns per year.

1938: Tennessee Williams arrived in New Orleans, and less than a decade later "A Streetcar Named Desire" became the most famous New Orleans literary work.

1950:  Fats Domino Jr., born in New Orleans in 1928, had his first major hit with “The Fat Man” (Imperial Records).

1953: Café Lafitte in Exile opened on Bourbon Street, the oldest gay bar in the country.

1956:  LSU-New Orleans was established.

1960: The school desegration crisis branded the city as a stronghold of racism, and whites began relocating to the suburbs in huge numbers.

1967: The New Orleans Saints football team was formed. 

1970: Jazz Fest had its first season.

1975: The Superdome opened, the largest fixed dome structure in the world. 

1977: Tipitina’s music club, which has hosted the likes of the Neville Brothers, Kermit Ruffins, James Brown, Bonnie Raitt, Pearl Jam, and innumerable other artists, opened on Napoleon Ave. in Uptown.   

1978:  City Councilman Ernest N. Morial became New Orleans’ first African-American mayor. 

2005: Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans, 80% of the city was flooded after the city's levees failed, and total economic losses in the region were estimated at $100 billion. 

2010: The city's population rebounded to 343,829 after a post-Katrina low of about 223,000 in 2006. 

All in all, New Orleans’ history offers a portrait that testifies to its uniqueness among American cities: ethnic and cultural diversity, European heritage, extremes of wealth and poverty, Deep South elegance mixed with cosmopolitanism and tolerance, abundant nightlife, jazz, booze and drugs, sex, crime and corruption, racial conflict, Catholicism, voodoo, gay-lesbian culture, literature and the arts, theater, international commerce, ghost and vampire stories, and a legendary past.  I’m eager to be off on my trip and will file a travel report when I get back.

Love,

Dave

Selected Sources:  www.answers.com (“New Orleans”); www.encyclopedia.com (“New Orleans”); www.experienceneworleans.com; www.funtrivia.com ("New Orleans"); www.history.com (“New Orleans”); www.neworleans.about.com;  www.neworleansonline; www.wikipedia.org (“History of New Orleans”; “Timeline of New Orleans History”) 

G-mail Comments

-Donna D (5-1): david, this is great!  as your psychic compadreista i can't wait to hear about your adventures!   donna

-Linda C (4-23): Thanks , send pics and have a great time.