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Posts Tagged ‘Family’

IMG_3718When we moved to New Albany in 1996, we planted a small pine tree in our back yard.  At that time, our neighborhood was basically a bare expanse with some houses here and there, and the little conifer was part of an effort to add some texture and definition to our neck of North of Woods.

Every year since then, without fail, the little pine tree has grown a few feet.  Now it is a little tree no longer.  I’m not sure exactly how tall it has grown — 40 feet?  50 feet? — but it is the tallest tree in the ‘hood, and towers over our back yard.  It’s hard to believe it once was little, but time has a way of having that kind of effect on things.

It works with birthdays, too — you remember the little sapling, and the next thing you know it is fully developed, mature, and holding its own in the forest of life.

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For years, we’ve had ground cover in our front beds.  It was some kind of leafy, viney plant that produced little blue flowers during the spring.  It kept the beds covered, looked reasonably good, and — most important of all — was virtually maintenance-free and imposed no significant weeding duties.

IMG_1227Several years ago, however, some grass invaded one of the beds.  It was a gradual invasion at first, and I thought it could be controlled by pulling the grass plants out of the beds.  But I was wrong.  Grass plants apparently establish some kind of intricate below-ground network of roots.  Once grass plants get established, it’s virtually impossible to pull them out one by one, because the roots remain and new blades of grass just grow out.  And it was impossible to identify all of the growing grass, because the shorter, newer blades were hidden by the ground cover.  As a result, my weeding efforts were doomed to failure, and there was no viable alternative.  We couldn’t spray the grass with some kind of powerful herbicide because the grass was mixed with the ground cover, and spraying would just kill the ground cover.

So, despite my best efforts, with each passing year the encroachment got worse and worse.  This year, the beds were totally overgrown with tall grass, making the house look like it had been abandoned.  Because there was no other choice, we finally exercised the nuclear option and decided to strip out all of the plants in the beds, grass and ground cover included.  We had it done today, and I think our neighbors were appreciative.  When I went out to look at the work tonight, our neighbor across the way gave me a thumbs-up and said “looking good!”

Pretty embarrassing.

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IMG_3743One of the items taken from Mom’s basement was this Victor Animatograph Corporation 16 mm Cine Projector, Model 11.  From the design of the machine, and the lettering, I’m guessing it dates from the ’30s.

It’s an impressive device, made with lots of metal and burnished plating and a sturdy wooden base.  It probably weighs between 20 and 30 pounds.  Amazingly, it still seems to work perfectly — with the the original fan, motor, and lens.  Even the original light bulbs haven’t burnt out!  Richard and I had some fun figuring out how to thread the film and marveling at the ingenuity of the design.

Unfortunately, we don’t have any 16 mm film to run through this this well-preserved projector.  The carefully made machine has outlived its form of technology, like a car that still runs perfectly but has no road to drive on.

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I’ve got a bit more information to share about Russell’s participation in the Bushwick Open Studios project.

Russell and his friend Jonathan Donaldson (or JonDon, as Kish likes to call him) will present their show Space Camp in unit 114 on the ground floor of the Loom Building, shown at right, on June 1 and 2 from noon to 7 p.m.  The Loom Building is found at the intersection of Flushing Avenue, Thames Street, and Porter Avenue in Brooklyn.

Their show is described as involving “installation, New Media, painting, Photography, Sculpture, and Works on Paper” and the web page for their show indicates that it will involve “Technology/Electronics/Computers.”  Jon was a classmate of Russell’s at Vassar, and his pieces are really interesting, too.  It goes without saying, of course, that I love Russell’s creative works.

If your orbit puts you in or around NYC on June 1 or 2, I’m sure that a visit to Space Camp would be worth your while.

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When we cleaned out Mom’s condo to get it ready for sale, we removed a bunch of stuff that had been stored in cupboards and closets and ignored for years.  The paraphernalia was distributed among the five kids, to be examined later.

Among the boxes and bags that I received were two very old movie projectors, an old slide projector, slide carousels, a Super 8 hand camera, and lots of old movies from the ’70s.  They are found in two light blue, high-quality plastic American Express World Travel Service bags.

IMG_3727Richard and I are going to have to figure out how to work the projectors, but for now I want to focus on the American Express World Travel Service bags.  They are chock full of maps, passport cases, American Express travel tip booklets (one is entitled “Priceless Travel Secrets” in Laugh-In era typeface) and other items that harken back to a day when travel was a great adventure, something that you dressed up for and anticipated.  In those days, you went to an American Express travel agent to help plan your trip, and the agent gave you “free” stuff that made the impending journey even cooler — stuff like these little blue bags.  They reek of the ’60s and early ’70s, these little blue bags, like props you might see to set the time period on Mad Men.

The American Express bags belonged to my grandparents, who loved to travel and paid careful attention to every tip and suggested technique.  I can just imagine them holding this bag stuffed full of cameras, film, itineraries, and booklets as they boarded a Pan Am prop plane for the transAtlantic trip, both wearing hats and dressy attire, passports secure in their passport case in one suit coat pocket, American Express Traveler’s Checks carefully stored in their special holder in another pocket.

It was a different time then.

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It’s Friday night, and we’re waiting to go to the airport to pick up Richard, who is coming home for a visit.  Unfortunately, his flight has been delayed, so we’re biding our time for now.

Normally I would squawk about airlines and their comically frequent flight delays, but I’m too happy about Richard’s visit and the arrival of the weekend and I don’t want to ruin my mood.  So I’m going to go in the opposite direction, dive into some truly vintage rock that takes me back to high school days, follow Joe Walsh’s suggestion, and get into the Rocky Mountain Way insteadAfter all, it is better than the way we had.

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If you’re in the New York City area on June 1 or 2, please drop by the Bushwick neighborhood in Brooklyn and bring your keenest sense of artistic appreciation.

Russell and his friend Jon will be participating in the Bushwick Open Studios free form art show that weekend.  The concept of Bushwick Open Studios is pretty cool.  Artists rent vacant storefronts in the Bushwick neighborhood of Brooklyn and fill them with their art for the weekend.  Visitors then can walk from store to store, checking out the artwork and seeing what the artistic community in Brooklyn has to offer.  Russell and Jon and some of this other artist friends will be displaying their recent work in some of the storefronts.  I’ll post more information about exactly where their storefront will be located as we get closer to the BOS weekend.

Bushwick Open Studios is organized by Arts in Bushwick, “all-volunteer, non-hierarchical” organization in which anyone with time and energy and an interest can take on a leadership role.  Also pretty cool!

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IMG_3705I’ve always refrained from planting flowers until after Mothers’ Day because my mother told me that is what you should do.  This year, that piece of folk wisdom turned out to be wise, indeed, because the overnight temperature on Mothers’ Day dipped below freezing and left a significant layer of frost on the ground and on the boardwalk.  I’m not sure it would have been enough to kill or damage delicate summer flowers, but because I held off on planting I don’t have to worry about it.

Sometimes old sayings are worth crediting.  After our frosty Mothers’ Day experience, I’m now totally resolved not to jump off a cliff just because all of my friends do so.

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Happy Mother’s Day to all of the mothers out there, and to all of the lucky children and spouses who owe so much to the wonderful mothers in their families.

00019749-1I’ve been privileged to be the son of one great mother and the husband of another.  Although great mothers may differ in many respects, I suspect that they all share one crucial quality:  they have opened their hearts to their children, totally and unequivocally, so that their children’s welfare always is their paramount consideration.  Even when they are overwhelmed, or sick, or experiencing their own personal challenges, they are worried that their daughters and sons aren’t eating well, or are working too hard, or aren’t as happy with their lives as they possibly could be.  They are willing to do just about anything to help their children achieve optimal bliss because nothing is more important to them.  They say they don’t want us to worry about them, and they almost always truly mean it because they don’t want to add one scintilla to our everyday burdens.

We’ve all heard stories of mothers who, in moments of extraordinary strain and stress, have done extraordinary things like lifting too-heavy objects off children pinned beneath.  I’m not surprised by those stories.  There is something awesomely powerful about the mother-child bond and the love that bubbles forever in a mother’s heart.  If you are the object of that love, it is an amazing and humbling thing.

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IMG_3689Mom asked for a new batch of cookies — just in time for Mother’s Day — and what dutiful son can refuse his mother?  She had a hankering for some iced sugar cookies, and I tried to choose icing colors that looked like spring, with pastel blues, greens, and pinks.  Of course, some chocolate-flavored icing made with Nestle’s Quik and some sprinkles can’t hurt, either.

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Mom and Dad bought their condo in suburban Columbus more than 20 years ago.  They enjoyed the place, and after Dad’s death Mom has lived there very happily.  Now, however, she has decided that the condo is more house than she really needs or wants, so it is being put up for sale.

IMG_1197The process of getting the condo ready to sell has been a chance for our family to work together on a single project for the first time in a long time.  Children and grandchildren alike have spent hours cleaning and scrubbing, sweeping and vacuuming, boxing things up and moving things out.  It’s been a good chance for us all to reconnect, and with five kids and spouses and grandkids pitching in to share the workload, it made the cleanup and clean out process manageable . . . and fun, too.  The experience also has been another illustration of how much stuff Americans tend to accumulate — and for what purpose?  Our work at Mom’s condo has caused Kish and me to recommit ourselves to thinning out our collection of boxes and those random, long-unused items stored in closets, the basement, and the garage.

We’ve hired a realtor, and he has guided us through the process of getting the place ready to be shown.  We’ve weighed his comparables information, set a price, and tried to avoid too much second-guessing about it, and this past weekend the condo went on the market.  I stopped over on Saturday to make sure the realtor had everything he needs, and I bumped into some empty nesters being shown through the condo by a different realtor.  They said the condo was lovely, which I appreciated, and I was happy that there was traffic — but seeing them there gave me an odd feeling.  I’m not sure I’ll stop by again.

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IMG_3675Today is Cousin Jeff’s birthday.  I’m not permitted to say how old he is, so I will only observe that his calendar age is irrelevant because he maintains an eternally youthful attitude about things.

Speaking of youthful, Kish recently found this wonderful, slightly blurred Kodak picture of her (at the far right), her sister Heidi (in the classic sailor suit with carefully knotted kerchief) and Cousin Jeff (somehow maintaining his ultra-cool persona despite wearing a short-sleeved rugby shirt buttoned to the collar on a hot summer’s day).  It was taken at Cedar Point on a family outing at some point in the distant past, but the day lives on in memory.

Happy birthday, Jeffrey!  May you have many more!

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For the past few months Russell has been deciding where to go to get a Master’s in Fine Arts degree — and yesterday he decided.

This fall he’ll be going to the Cranbrook Academy of Art in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan.  It’s an interesting place with an interesting history.   The Academy is part of the 315-acre Cranbrook Educational Community that was founded by Detroit newspaper owner George Gough Booth and Finnish architect Eliel Saarinen.  The Academy of Art has been home to many artists who have had a significant impact on modern art and culture.

Cranbrook’s mission statement says it offers “an intense studio-based experience where artists-in-residence mentor students in art, architecture and design to creatively influence contemporary culture.”  The painting program “stresses self-exploration and independent work in an atmosphere of ongoing critical discussion involving social, political, and artistic concerns” and “is grounded in the assumption that each student arrives exceptionally motivated and committed to creating art.”  In short:  “The students themselves give form and vitality to the working environment through their energy, diversity, and interaction.”

Life always brings new challenges, and this fall Russell and his artistic vision will welcome the challenge of Cranbrook.  Such new challenges are what make life interesting — and from the parental viewpoint, the fact that he’ll be much closer and we’ll have the chance to visit him on a campus that is a National Historic Landmark isn’t a bad thing, either.

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IMG_3667I ran across this classic photo recently and had to share it.  It’s a picture of Grandpa Neal’s bowling team, circa the mid-1920s.  That’s him in the middle of the back row — the slender, square-jawed fellow who still had some hair to part.

A pretty somber bunch, aren’t they, with their little bow ties, and long-sleeved, buttoned-up white shirts, and carefully shined shoes?  I doubt if they ever called a beer frame or engaged in any horseplay that might detract from their ability to pick up the ten pin.  Bowling was serious business in those days, when Akron was one of the centers of the bowling universe and dozens of teams competed for bragging rights in the Akron Masonic League.

Grandpa Neal loved bowling, and he participated in the Akron Masonic League for more than 60 years, until well into his 90s.

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During the cold, dank, seemingly endless winter, forces of evil apparently attacked my yard.  Under cover of darkness and blanket of snow, terrible lawn creatures invaded and ruthlessly displaced our attractive carpet of velvety grass.

IMG_1171Spring has brought the unwelcome realization that our front yard appears to have a serious case of lawn mange.  Where tender shoots of pleasant green once grew we now find bare spots, crab grass, spreading sawtoothed dandelion leaves, and other unsightly, weedy characters.  The yard has a distinctly clumpy, uneven look to it.  And in the center of one of our lawn sections there is an angry-looking, purple-topped plant that appears to be the youthful version of the man-devouring miscreant from Little Shop of Horrors.

Having an ugly spring lawn is embarrassing, but it can have its advantages.  Dogs find our yard so appalling that they refuse to even answer the call of nature there.  Rabbits treat our property like a death zone.  And the lawn undoubtedly will increase our interaction with our neighbors, because if things don’t take a turn for the better we can expect a friendly visit from the Civic Association.

It’s time to call the lawn service and encourage them to move immediately to the nuclear option.

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