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https://connect.natureserve.org/video/why-we-give/loring-labarbera-schwarz

https://connect.natureserve.org/video/why-we-give/loring-labarbera-schwarz

Next Door Neighbors

My sister and I spent much as children with the couple who lived next door. They were an intensely private couple---I will call them merely the C's in deference to that. They must have been in their sixties when I knew them. Mrs. C always said she was the same age as the year was anno domini. 

Mr. C. made a workshop for me downstairs in the concrete basement that still had a coal bin. . It was a wooden box, with a seat, and a cardboard sign on the front that said “Damon's Workshop.” Mr C had drawn it. He has his adult workshop nearby. Arranged on the wall were his various tools, neatly aligned, all propped on metal pegs that stuck out from a board perforated with holes.  He had worked at Bell labs and had many phone patents.

 There was a sort of fenced in area of the basement that  held a modern oil burner. the basement smelled of oil. Mr. C H went in that area now and then now. I wasn't allowed in but could peak through the wooden slats of the crude wall.

We made various things. Simple toys—for example, a wooden stick like a fuselage with little carved corrugations on the bottom and a propeller on the front-- when stroked underneath by another stick the vibrations caused the propeller to turn. The propeller turned one way if you stroked the fusilage front to back, vice versa if you stroked back to front. 

He was a spare man, always dressed in a white shirt, gray pants, and a kind of
plain unadorned black shoe. He had thin arms and gray hair and a kind of mild but intelligent face which in retrospect I see as an aged, thin Nordic face. The couple was German and occasionally alluded to the trials suffered during the second world war when anti German sentiment could be found in our village. The seemed to frequently allude to a butcher in town, a German, who had to close his doors. Occasionally they would give lessons in German to a not very rapt pupil.

Mr. C. would tell me, in the workshop, that when I made a measurement I should check it, then recheck it, then check it again. He had a slide rule which he tried to instruct me on, rather overestimating my interest and ability, or his ability to explain such an instrument on the fly. The middle slide seemed to shoot in and out, and he would arrive at an answer that seemed to me not an answer at all, since then you had to figure out how many zeroes to add.

There was a picture on the wall of his younger version—taken some years back when he essentially looked, minus a few wrinkles, very much alike. I asked for the photograph after his death—his wife at that time disappointed that I had kept up with her during my college days—said I could have it, though I never did receive it.

He was at the beck and call of his wife. They were childless. I suppose that I was their surrogate—myself and my sister. No other children were allowed into the home, although lots stopped by because they gave out candy at the door. We had to take off our shoes and wear some cloth booties so not to dirty the floor. She was herself a formidable woman—a German herself from upstate New York who had an MA in mathematics at a time that was very rare. Mr. C himself had a PhD and worked at Bell labs and kept his telephone patents in the piano stool. The drawings depicted very old style phones—their relegation to this spot, under which she sat to play piano, does in retrospect speak a bit about the subordinate position he seemed to occupy in the home. There were quite a few of those patents.

They had a folie a deux, a rather rare psychiatric condition. I figured this out later. They shared a delusion that my father, who had a new style machine for relieving muscle aches, was sending radio waves to their home. An example, I suppose, of how an obsessive style of thinking, theirs certainly, also has similarities with paranoia, and other craziness. So, despite my parents feuding with them—they even called the FBI—I continued to spend time there, with my sister who perhaps was even more of a favorite than me. Otherwise, they never went out. She had her groceries delivered, hadn't been a block from her home in years.

Mr. C talked about his friends at Bell Labs. One drew his patents in tiny form—an entire diagram on a small square at the bottom of the page. Another fellow insisted on being called “Doctor”, though everyone had a PhD from a good engineering school. When he demanded this, they all complied and called him doctor while continuing to address each other by their Christian names. I always remember that when I see some person with a mail order degree insisting on being called doctor.

We played checkers. Probably thousands of games. He tended to allow me to win. The pieces were Popeye heads. Occasionally he would win, and the look on his face as he made a gleeful last move,, a sort of impulsive rapacious smile was truly alarming. I did not really mind losing, but the sudden glimpse of human rapacity, breaking unexpectedly through the usually bland exterior was alarming. We seldom had a conversation of any sort—the only thing I could ever remember him saying was, “Yes, Dear” to his wife. I suppose, oddly enough in retrospect, that I was the closest person he had in his life.

I lost touch with them when I was in college and I think Ms. C. was very disappointed when I did not acknowledge some Bachman pretzels she had sent. I still have the letter where she expresses, with mock consternation how Bachman could have been negligent about sending me that package. All her letters were with a special typewriter she had ordered with script font and brown ink—everything possible in the house was brown.

I was a minor hero when the couple locked themselves out of the home, and I got up on a ladder and cut the screen to open a window. What they seemed to amaze and impress them was that the incision in I made in the screen was a perfect tiny square which then I stitched up with thread—their idea of heroism.

In graduate school, Mr. C. already deceased, I went to her home and knocked many times. I anticipated with some dread a meeting with her—I had changed somewhat, probably adopted values she disapproved of, and further, disliked the idea of the polite, formal conversation that would ensue, recalling distant events with a sense of feigned nostalgia. I knocked many times. No answer. I went to the window and saw her sitting, staring ahead, deafened and oblivious. I knocked on the window once or twice, then left. I did not disturb her, or, rather, I chose to walk away, partly out of laziness—I was full of youth and in college, but also because I knew she had a revolver, a frightening object I had once discovered in her side table before she nearly leaped to close it. I didn’t want to get shot as a burglar.

I lost touch after that completely until learning she died. She had various medical crisis and with great ambivalence accepted help from my father. They were adherents of Marry Baker Eddy, another reason for the ongoing strain with my father—yet nonetheless he treated them—the animosity years in the past. The people who acquired much of her stuff—family of an attorney who had helped her in her later days, asked if I wanted anything. I took a pair of calipers that had hung on the wall of the workshop, and an old fashioned oil tin like the Tin Man's in Wizard of Oz,. Ms. Coyne had given enormous amount of Bell Telephone stock, that had split dozens of times and appreciated over 60 years to various people, but my legacy was much greater.

matchbook

On Grace Ave

My favorite coin

Didn't notice the trapped flies inside when I took the photo of the pod of a pitcher plant. 

Dad graduation from Columbia Med School. His own Dad was born on the boat, went to Carnegie Mellon, retired at 45 and collected art after that--lots of Art Nouveau stuff.

Writing editorials about things I knew essentially nothing about. I pretty much wrote what theeditor wanted me to write--a libertarian viewpoint.  Basically though, I had as much knowledge about the subject matter as any one who happened to bone up on the subject for an hour or two.

Gerry's nickname is Geronimo--now studying art in Prage

Hibiscus photographed along Grace Ave

My grandfather prior to theatre opening with Steichen, Carl Sandburg

My grandad, Gary Piccione far right, with Mr. Steichen, whose photographs of Marlene Dietrich, John Paul Getty, etc are below.  Robert Frost, poet laureate of the United States,is to left. Individual in middle is set designer whose name escapes me, unidentified individual to the far left. It seems they have lined people up by height. like they did in Catholic School.  This was at the opening of some theatre in New York City. Born in Italy, my grandad got a degree in engineering from Columbia, then started in the theatre business. 

Steichen's Photographs of  Marlene Dietrich, abstract, Gary Cooper, JP Morgan, Gretta Garbo

Saturday Musings

Ellen Terhune

The ride  to NY to visit my mother and brother was pleasant. The connections were fast, the planes roomy, the stewards on the plane friendly and even guardedly conversational, and the limousine ride to RVC uneventfully and gratifyingly bland with a chauffeur who had no interest in making small talk. Merely in collecting his fare which, incidentally, was higher than he quoted on the phone.   He earned his tip though, by his personification, up there in the front seat, of perfect silent non-existence. In contrast  to last trip, of which I wrote a critical blog of Southwest, this one went well.  I slept most of this trip--its strange how a plane induces sleep.

Why so easy to sleep on planes? Maybe because there is not much else to do, nothing to read except flight  magazines hawking expensive, extravagantly upper class technology and gadgets of the Hammacher Schlemmer type. Or is it the comforting pressure of a seat strap and hum of the engines. 

A pretty  woman sat next to me on the longest flight and I maintained a non-invasive Tutankhamen like posture with both arms folded, though somewhat lower on my chest than the Pharoanic lad .  Best to avoid the petty, banal, or meaningless conversation--the kind of exhaustively polite and ritualistic talk one makes with strangers in a public place and which are really words thrown into the void. The enjoyment of privacy and enforced rest  on flights is truly a delicacy. It; an acquired taste.

 Incidentally, after reading my blog a few months ago, Southwest sent me an encouraging note and 100 dollars as a sort of compensation for my pain of  various inconveniences, But, even without the bribe, today's trip would have been pleasant.  Being high above clouds can't  help but induce a sort of philosophical mood. And seeing a landscape unfold as one descends to land also forces a strange  perspective.  The houses grow identifiable. The sheer massiveness of the world becomes plain. The tiny-ness of our lives when compared with that of the sum of  the multitudinous lives and  dramas that in the expansive landscape below intimidate.

 In every house  below--in the tracks of identical working class homes there, in the what must be wealthy homes  overlooking wate thataway, in the office buildings,even the small buildings on the docks, are  a million separate dramas. No, billions of dramas, billions upon billions of fights, romances, plots, job stresses, children being born. Trillions upon trillions of repeating episodes of joy, grieving, television watching, whatever, each participant imagining  they are the center of the world's drama. Despite our sense of independent identity we are, alas, pretty much part of a larger whole, governed by the same rules. What seems singularly poignant in our own lives is being re-enacted a hundred times over somewhere else. 

And when further descending we can discern people that looks like ants--wait, they are ants. We already have landed.

Jokes aside, I am glad the trip was joke less.  Regarding Southwest, they may have eliminated the rule to make the safety instructions at the beginning of the flight funny. Now, one doesn't have to listen to would be comedians, or serious aircraft personnell coerced by policy into forcing jokes against their natural  propensity. Humor is pretty subjective, so best not to foist funniness on people.  I don't know, maybe I would enjoy flight instructions by F. Scott Fitzgerald or Sigmund Freud--a dry description of air masks or flotation devices with accompanying commentary. 

Anyway, at my mothers home,  I sleep tonight in the room that was my father's old office. I am inhabiting the same space that my father inhabited some 50 or 60 years ago. No doubt there are bits of his DNA still floating around. I am below a wooden cabinet   that many many years ago had a small bottle marked Ritalin, amongst other medications, in it. The shelf now is full of binders of family photographs--what was then an office is now a storage room-- and my bedroom.

Time is indeed a mystery.  In fact, Dad could appear in a mist by the side of the bed, some modern Hamlet, removing a wart from a similarly spectral patient's foot, or digging gravel out of my elbow, or laying out fresh white  paper from a massive role on the examining table. No wonder people believe in ghosts. Occasionally in the house I find animpromptu repair he made with white medical adhesive tape--parts of an electrical circuit, or a couple of wires,  held together by white stuff, seeming melted by the years into a sticky black lump.

What would I make of seeing his or other ghosts of the past in this house, if they were suddenly to reappear. Emma Terhune, part of Edmund Wilson's masterful work, Memoirs of Hecate County, has a house come to life with the past. How would I react to seeing grandparents or uncles gone to great reward reappear. What I would make of the odd clothing, the shoes and pants of 1970, or 1950, the rolling eyes at the crazy changing world of the 1960's.

It is odd how our memories do not record their absurdity. Oour memories do not make record of the out of style pants, the lack of computers, the fact that the carpet is outdated shag--only what we registered at the time when those oddities were not odd, when they were consistent with the present.The dramas of memory are really Hamlet in modern dress,.

On a thoughtful note, or, really, on another topic altogether, my rule for aging is, first, to simply keep moving forward despite whatever nuisances the body imposes--poorer sight, poorer hearing, disease, despite whatever accumulated emotional insults occur as first this then another relatives succumbs to age and dies, as this, then another trying event occurs, as this or that financial or family or auto mishap hits us like short jabs. Just keep moving on and not make too much of a fuss about things No one likes a complainer. And when older people complain about age, youth have no idea what they are talking about. Or they find it funny.

Being able to visit my family in the same home I grew up is indeed a treat--an interesting sense of continuity is provided, and there are multiple layers of memory from every era of my life. I am sitting below a chandelier my parents bought in New Orleans about 1948. f the walls could talk-- as time passes all the proverbs begin to make sense. And, if one is fortunate or better yet, unfortunate, in love, how all the rock and roll songs make sense. I am not alone.  Indeed, it is better to be unfortunate, in terms of learning.. To be fortunate teaches nothing--joy is a strangely uninformed emotion, and creates the fatuous belief that your success is somehow because you have done everything right. Failure, pain--that is where the insight comes.

From pain arises enormous insight, and introspection and sense of solidarity with others. Hearing today of the death of Sylvester Stallone's son, one can only imagine that this individual, from the heights of his Olympian wealth and fame and talent (even if one disputes the talent) experiences the same torment as every-man, reels from the same intense torture that the person on the street would feel.  The fame and money and achievement don't prevent him from the same tragedies, and, indeed, victories, that the rest of us suffer more privately.

Of course, it would be unhealthy to court pain simply to gain insight. Best is to have nice long periods of rest, enjoyment, satisfaction, praise, flattery, and success as background against which the painful episodes can supply their insight. And so, off to a local restaurant which supposedly has very good manicotti! And then Starbucks or the computer store.