Sunday Midday, June 30

1) Last night, walking to Doyle’s with a friend after drinks chez moi, we were both taken short by the appearance of a young turkey atop the parking lot fence! My friend commented that my neighborhood must be going upscale, as turkeys were being seen in the best ‘hoods these days. One of them, I pointed out, was ye Hahvahde Business School.

1a) It was disconcerting to see a turkey a) suddenly and b) above eye level. Part of me expected to become part of a comic version of . . . of . . . oh, not the Exorcist, but that movie with that boy Damien born as successor to the Devil, and Lee Grant (!) getting eaten by a raven or something.

2) Half-lazy half-busy Sunday morning with both creativity and domesticity. Preparing to entertain the neighbors this evening.

3) I’ve got to get more focused in my reading! July 1914, interesting as it is, isn’t going to prepare me for my week in England, my QMII crossing, or my scheduled talk in September at the Gibson House, “Etiquette of the Brahmin Summer.”

Saturday Morning, June 29

1) A conference on campus caused me to abandon my usual routine. For three days I left the house at 7 AM to go to the east side of campus for conference events at which I had comparatively light duty as a human signpost, tour chaperone, and attendee. This was my last conference of this sort, which several colleagues observed. Conferees from other schools also expressed interest in my new plans, along with some helpful ideas.

1a) Notably, one of the tours I chaperoned was in ye Instytytte’s wind tunnel ca. 1940, which I’d never had occasion to visit in all my years here. Fun as that was, I had a historygasm recognizing original furniture from ye Byrkyre Engineering Library. WANT!

Those three Greek Revivial chairs and that slightly curved table in the background properly belong in the engineering library rotunda.

1b) The other routine I abandoned was checking into ye Fycebykke. I think I was off for over four days . . . and it was beautiful.

2) One 8 AM meeting had nothing to do with the conference. Over at ye Humynne Resources I got some important details about my future healthcare benefits.

3) July will begin with celebration of the Glorious Fourth down the Cape, and then be devoted to winding up my career at ye Instytytte, actively putting an effective, efficient home office into place; and preparing for my English vacation.

Sunday Midday, June 23 - Works in Progress

1) Yesterday I trotted off to the framers with a sketch portrait of Mother that we found in the back of the guest room closet. I have a tentative plan to turn the dining room in a Rogue’s Gallery of family portraits. We have no Romneys or Sargents, but I do have a fine childhood self-portrait of Oldest Nephew Who Must Not Be Tagged (that also needs to be reframed, come to think of it).

1a) This must have been done when she was in college at LSU. There’s something not quite right about her eyes, but I still like it a lot.

1b) John Singer Sargent famously exploded “A paughtrait is something that is not quite right about the mouth!” after a testy conference with the Sassoon family, who didn’t quite like his portrait of one of its ladies.

2) The enormity of my new venture presses on me as I make arrangements. I ordered business cards from ye Vystypryntte this weekend . . .

3) Two months ago today the movers arrived from the homeland, and you’d think it was just yesterday the way everything is heaped around here! I’ve got to arrange that blessed yard sale.

3a) But at least I was able to find a home for this beautiful photograph of my grandmother around the time of her confirmation (I suppose) in this Fauxbergé frame I gave Mother for Christmas one year (and which she didnt end up using).

Thursday Night, June 20

1) The activity of the day was conversation, mostly by phone. And the word of the day was “enervating.” There was a lot of active listening.

1a) Volunteers are finding out about my plans to leave, and for some of them it’s a real shock.

1b) Last year my New Year’s resolution was to become more comfortable with difficult conversations, especially around politics. And no, I’m still not good at that.

2) The estate sale started today. I have really and truly tried not to be a bother - my poor sister has enough to deal with - but I did weaken earlier this week and ask her to take two items out of the sale. Long story short, those two items didn’t sell today, and the agent is going to set them aside for me. I don’t deserve it, but I’m so grateful.

2a) Yesterday, before the announcement of my departure went public, I got a big envelope in the mail from my sister. I was expecting the legal documents that needed my signature. I was not expecting the packet of love letters my parents wrote each other in college, or the biographical sketches they wrote about themselves in their early 30s. Laura thinks the latter are from their attempts to adopt a child before I was born. It was an unexpected, and emotional, look at how my parents saw their early lives, their development as people, and their own relationship.

Early in his presentation.

3) In the early evening I attended a campaign event for Mayor Pete in the club room at Fenway Park. I wish I’d recorded everything both he, and Jack Connors, our host, had to say. After this enervating day, I felt a feeling of hope just watching a candidate who could behave like a gentleman. Whether he wins or not, I want him to play a larger part in the national discussion about the future of our nation.

3a) I’d been advised that a couple friends of friends were attending this event. I never found them, but a former office colleague was there with a friend, and we ended up talking for a bit at the start.

4) I was vibrating with fatigue by the time I got home. Oddly enough, I was sleeping fine before I gave my notice . . . but not now! :-/

Wednesday, June 19 - What? You're Doing WHAT?!

An announcement has been made at the office, so I’m now at liberty to share some news.

1) It’s been no secret for awhile that “Daddy needs a change” at the office. And it has become clearer to me over the last two years that, if change was going to come into my life, it wasn’t going to come at ye Instytytte.

1a) Looking back, I’ve spent a total of 19 years on reunions! I’ve been doing this so long I remember how we did it before the internet, before cell phones, when everything was triplicate carbonless paper forms and, if you had to get a message someplace, you walked there. Don’t you think I should be doing something else now?

2) Mother’s death in February also caused me to reevaluate a lot. She always regretted that she hadn’t written her book, which she intended to write up to the end. I told her more than once (in the nicest possible way) that I would not be writing her book - but I haven’t written my book yet, either.

2a) Mother’s first cardiac event took place at age 59. Her father died at age 57 of a heart attack. I found out at Mother’s funeral from my parents’ old friend Joe Miller that my grandfather, as a good Christian Scientist, would not allow them to put him in the ambulance to go to the hospital.

2b) I will be 56 in October.

3) So, I made the decision to leave MIT after 25 total years and spend my time instead on Etiquetteer.

3a) It’s exciting and terrifying all at the same time! I feel like I have no blessed idea what I’m doing. But since the change was not coming to me, I brought the change to myself. ONWARD!

4) I’ve not only consulted some wise people around me (you know who you are, and thank you!), and unsurprisingly, the tarot. (You knew I read cards, didn’t you?) The first card to come up in the first reading, the Fool (see above), underscored the enormity of choice facing me. (The Fool always indicates that there’s a choice involved.) And the results of both readings made clear that for this venture to succeed, I actually have to do the work and not just sit around eating bonbons and playing online solitaire. It’s on me, baby!

5) Response so far has been surprised and supportive, with a tinge of shock. It seems that no one expected this possibility. I am very grateful that I have had so many wonderful people to work with in my time at ye Instytytte - truly a special group working to make beautiful experiences for alumni.

6) My “new life” will really begin in mid-August after I return from my trip to England on the Queen Mary II and have no office to return to but the one I create in my own home. In the meantime, there are all sorts of plans to flesh out.

7) WISH ME LUCK! This is a seismic change.

A Quick Primer on Marlene Dietrich

Texting with a friend earlier today, Marlene Dietrich came up as I’d just seen her famous white tie and tails in an exhibition at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. He asked “I assume she was a star?” The answer, of course, is “One of the greatest of her day, and she knew how to work her lighting!” While I am far from an expert on La Dietrich, I want to set forth a few aspects of her career that I love and enjoy.

First, Marlene was THE first woman to wear men’s evening clothes, which she did famously in Morocco (which I’ve never seen). This is the best footage I could find on YouTube.

The director Josef von Sternberg taught her everything she knew, especially about lighting. Their films together show to her marvelous advantage. A favorite of mine has always been Shanghai Express, which has the added advantage of including Anna Mae Wong, Warner Oland, and a fantastic ensemble cast.

Then there’s The Scarlet Empress of 1934 (not to be confused with The Rise of Catherine the Great, also of 1934), which is one mightily insane film. I gather it didn’t do well at the box office at the time. This scene of Catherine, ahem, “reviewing the troops” will give you an idea of her Marlene’s special quality.

During World War II she did a lot for the troops, and her song “Lili Marlene” became her theme song. She filmed in in the 1960s during her touring act.

After the war, one of her best film appearances was in A Foreign Affair, filmed in the ruins of Berlin. This scene with Jean Arthur is one of the best.

She sings “Illusions” in this film, which just electrifies me when I see it in the movie. Alas, the footage is no longer on YouTube!

One of my favorite Hitchcock films is Stage Fright, in which Marlene appears essentially as herself.

And this!

Tired Old Queen at the Movies gives a fab review of Stage Fright.

In her later years, she toured. When I was working at the Vendome in college, one of the “confirmed bachelors” who lived there told me that when he was young he saw her in concert. “The first five rows were filled up with sisters,” he told me, “but that night the sixth row was reserved just for her family, and she sang to them all night.”

This song, “Falling in Love Again,” was from her first film, The Blue Angel (which I just can’t bring myself to see. Downward trajectories bring me down.) But you can see why I forget which reviewer said that she was “pelted with shrubbery by epicene maniacs.”

So, that’s what I know about Marlene Dietrich. Go forth and explore on your own!

Thursday Morning, June 13

1) Yesterday afternoon while the team celebrated the end of Reunions in a pop-up wine bar on the Greenway, I suddenly said “I’ve been waiting for summer all this time, and now we’re in it!”

1a) But when you think about it, summer is 12 weekends - which means the time to take action is NOW. Later I remembered this passage from Gone With the Wind: “[Scarlett] saw a long vista of picnics by the bubbling waters of Peachtree Creek and barbecues at Stone Mountain, receptions andballs, afternoon danceables, buggy rides and Sunday-night buffet suppers. She would be there, right in the heart of things, right in the center of a crowd . . .”

1b) I was able to continue the theme on Boston Spirit magazine’s annual harbor cruise for Fenway Health, at which I was able to reconnect with a few folks I haven’t seen in ages and enjoy being out on the harbor on a perfect evening.

2) Beginning a four-day weekend of rest and rejuvenation today.

3) Peonies are blooming at last. Mother loved peonies, but they didn’t grow in Louisiana. She was so pleased when I planted mine back in 2005 or 2006, saying how much she loved their delicate scent.

Off the stern of the harbor cruise.

Wednesday, June 12 - Uncle Bill's Birthday

1) Today would have been Uncle Bill’s 94th birthday. I did not remember to observe it during his lifetime as much as I should have.

2) Bill was a talented amateur phoographer - what I would call an abstract photographer. So many of his compositions involved near microscopic details in pieces of slag glass or other unusual items. I remember he did some beautiful dune-like photos using a fake tortoiseshell box I’d given him one Christmas. I also remember, more rarely, some beautiful photos of dogwood blossoms from a tree in their yard. Those I remember encouraging him to frame specially as a triptych in a maple frame, but he always used those cheap black and gold frames from the dime store.

2a) We found ribbons he’d won in photography contests.

3) I have sometimes described alumni as people who “want to be at the party but don’t know how to be at the party,” and there were occasions where Bill fit that description, too. His contribution to family occasions was to dry the dishes, and Mother was always very grateful for his help.

4) When the movers arrived April 23, I was surprised that one drawer of the tallboy still had some things in it, including some things of Uncle Bill’s that were among his most treasured possessions. One of them is a baseball autographed by every member of the 1944 Ridgewood High School baseball team, of which Bill was the manager. He, like me, was no athlete, but he did what he was able to do for the good of the team. And I guess he had happy memories of that, because perhaps he wouldn’t have kept that baseball all his life if he hadn’t.

5) When you think about it, “He did what he was able to do for the good of the team” is a pretty good epitaph. Wish I’d thought of it earlier that this very moment.

Monday Morning, June 10

That period I thought would never get here is here: the period after Reunions. Now I should have to time to focus, and to think. Should. How am I going to manage it?

1) There are the prosaic, domestic things to take care of: getting the rugs sent out to clean, repairing my grandmother’s bed (badly assembled by the movers, the blessed thing won’t hold together; I’ve been sleeping in the study for a month or so), adding the running of the condo association into my monthly routine, and at last, organizing a blessed yard sale to offload my junk, so I can make room for all the family junk that’s just come up!

1a) Long term, renovating the kitchen begins to loom on the horizon . . .

2) There are the summer things: ferry and train tickets, cocktail meetups, cleaning up my back porch for impromptu gatherings, the planning of weekend excursions.

2a) Then there’s all the details of my summer vacation to flesh out and reconfirm: things to do and see over two days in London, trains to Kenilworth (where I’ll stay with friends for a week), and what on earth am I going to wear for a week on board the Queen Mary II?! Can I lose 20 pounds in six weeks?

3) Creatively I have to return to my Etiquetteer schedule (just got a question about the President’s white tie waistcoat, but it’s probably too late to write about it now), start preparing for next September’s talk at the Gibson House (“The Etiquette of the Brahmin Summer”), and lay a foundation under plans for new projects.

4) This morning’s reading from The Art of Worldly Wisdom helped me focus: “Take the measure of your luck: in order to act, and in order to commit yourself . . . If [Fortune] has favored you, proceed with boldness, for she often loves the daring and, like a dazzling woman, the young. If you are unlucky, act not. Withdraw and save yourself from failing twice. If you master her, you have taken a great step forward.”

Sunday, June 9 - The End of Reunions

Lo, all our pomp of yesterday
  Is one with Nineveh and Tyre!

— Rudyard Kipling

1) Reunions have ended for this year., one of the smoothest ever. Physically, and unusually, I don’t feel like a broken-down old nag at the end of all this activity - but I’m still wiped out. Emotionally, I’ll confess I’m all over the place.

An award in the spotlight at the Commencement Luncheon.

2) This year, among other things, I got to meet an astronaut, call the campus police, help run audio-visual for three programs, wear seersucker, learn new features of a software program under pressure, enjoy the weather, and be reminded on many occasions how talented and awesome my colleagues are.

One of my 60th reunion alumni dancing with the ballroom dance team.

3) Pops has been my particular program since 2007, and this year, finalmente, I got to have a couple minute’s conversation with the maestro after the (fantastic) performance (see above). I do love getting to work on Pops!

Ready for the red tide.

3a) The more logistical aspect of working on Pops is running the box office, and because of a busing change directing most attendees to another entrance, this year was much less chaotic than usual. That said, we always get compliments from the staff at the Hall for how well we run our operation. :-)

4) My 50th co-chairs have been wonderful to work with this year, and I was really glad we got to have a photo together this morning near the end of their brunch.

Sunday Midday, June 2

1) It must be Whore with a Heart of Gold Day here at Maison Robaire, as I’ve gotten through Camille with Greta Garbo and Shanghai Express with Marlene Dietrich and Anna Mae Wong. The logical next step is Stagecoach with Claire Trevor, but I’m not sure I’ll take it.

2) This is my Traditional Day of Rest before the onset of Reunions, so I’m not going into the office. As it happens, my new neighbor is coming to pay a call at 3, so I have some important cleaning to do.

3) Kid Sister has been texting me photos of the house staged for the estate sale (end of June) and of a few surprises along the way. One of them floored me: the LP of Joan Crawford’s Torch Song (with vocals by India Adams, of course)! What on EARTH were my parents doing with that? It must have been a gift. Daddy once told me he didn’t much like Joan Crawford, though he had Humoresque among his DVDs.

3a) Why didn’t my father and I bond more over the movies? We were both interested in the same period, and in some of the same films. I suppose he was far more interested in Westerns and war movies, and I’m more inclined to murder, musicals, and “women’s pictures” as they were called. Frederic March was one of his favorite actors, and he introduced me to both Seven Days in May and Inherit the Wind.

Saturday Morning, June 1

1) In the onrushing torrent of reunion preparation, I still get snagged on items outside my professional life. Yesterday morning my third-floor neighbors moved out after seven years and three children. We have gotten along so well, especially the last four years, and I delayed my (early) departure for the office so I could say goodbye.

1a) On my (late) return home, a note from my new neighbor was in my mailbox, which made me feel absentminded for not having left a note of greeting for them, which would have been more Perfectly Proper.

2) Yesterday was Walt Whitman’s 200th birthday, which I observed by watching half of Now, Voyager after I got home.

2a) Some day I really must read all of Leaves of Grass. I have the Calamus poems on my rack of devotional books, but I’ve never read the whole thing.

3) Usually at the Most Wonderful Time of the Year my recreational reading is murder, but this year it’s a biography of Edward VII. Right now “Kingy” is ill in Biarritz, which means The End is approaching.

Memorial Day 2019 - Professional, Political, Personal

1) As usual, Memorial Day is a work day for those of us who do Reunions. This year I made it to the office at 9 and left at 4:45 after a good and productive day. And a good thing, too, ‘cause tomorrow will be a very early and a very busy day. And may I say - I WORK WITH GREAT PEOPLE. Not everyone can say that!

2) Three political items have dominated the parts of my mind not concentrated on work:

• First off, the President is in Japan on Memorial Day. Others have pointed out that the Opposition News Network would be having a field day if any other President had chosen this particular time to go. (That said, Japan is our ally now, of course.) And really, who cares what the NK dictator thinks about Biden or other candidates?!

• Second, and MOST alarming, is the administration’s attack on Knowledge by altering the terms of future climate studies. This is nothing short of outrageous! These bullies are trying to restrict what we know and how we learn in a way I can only consider Soviet. Is this what we want America to be?!

• Lastly, antigay/totally gay disgraced Republican Congressman Aaron Schock has been even further disgraced by the leak of - how shall I say this? - video of him engaged in his own pleasure. I am tempted to see in this a gay remake of Edith Wharton’s The House of Mirth with Mr. Schocker as Lily Bart. It could totally work! Instead of a house party, he’s off to CPAC. His constant flirting with his “true nature” leads to his downfall among the Conservatives, and he ends up a drug-addicted pole dancer.

3) Personally, I am feeling good. How rare right before Reunions! My Libra horoscope this morning said “Let your optimism permeate the day.” And, unusually, this has been easy to do.

3a) My wonderful sister has successfully engaged an estate agent to sell off the remaining contents of the house, and the first pictures were posted today on ye Fycebykke. Resolutely putting it all in the past; it’s time for this uncertain chapter to come to an end.

Sunday Morning, May 26

1) Back porch coffee (really the first of the year) and devotional. It’s a bit too cool but I’m wearing my office fleece zipped high to prevent a chill.

1a) I looked over the porch rail and saw the rhododendrons in bloom! The grand courtyard of ye Instytytte has been ringed with rhododendrons for generations. When a former colleague would see them, they’d fill her with fear; they were the physical manifestation of REUNIONS. It’s been over ten years since she worked on our team, but I always think of her when I see the rhododendrons.

1b) The somewhat horrifying knowledge from chapter 1 of Daniel that God wants us to be vegetarians.

2) Friday night I had a particularly bad night’s sleep, made worse by pain across my upper back and shoulders. Saturday morning’s devotional readings from How Artists Work highlighted “working in the interstices of the day,” snatching bits of productivity between other things. My original schedule called for a needed haircut at 11:30, after which I was going to grab lunch and go to the office until 7ish. Instead I toted my laptop with me and got other (needed) work done over lunch between noon and a 2PM massage appointment. (Daddy was just not going to make it without resolving all that shoulder pain.) I then made it to the office by 4:45, and left at 9:30 having accomplished my needed objective - and without feeling tired or anxious.

3) The outgoing neighbors are coming down in about an hour for a Transfer of Power for the condo association - I will now be custodian of the files and checkbook, God save us - after which I’m headed back to the office for the day and evening. This morning, even with everything going on, I feel - dare I say it? - happy.

3a) How long will it last?! Please, help me cultivate this rare plant!

Saturday Morning, May 25

1) It is most definitely the Most Wonderful Time of the Year, featuring long days and late nights and Memorial Day Weekend at the office. This is not a complaint, just a statement of fact. It’s always been a part of the job, and always will be.

1a) As my responsibilities have changed, I no longer have to spend part of this week in creating printing, perforating, and sorting placecards with names and entrées on them. But I was the one who insisted on this necessary and helpful bit of table stationery 15 years ago, and I am so proud that good placecards continue to be a part of our events.

2) Time changes, too. Long days pass in a flash, but last Monday feels like it happened years ago.

3) And last Monday was not easy. I was present, while waiting for my bus, when someone fell to his/her death from the parking garage at Ruggles. I didn’t see anything, as I was seated facing the other direction and reading a Times article on my phone. But there was a loud sound - I can’t describe it except to say that it was not vocal - and then I noticed people near me standing and turning. And I stood and turned and saw someone lying at the base of a lamppost and understood that that person was dead. Everyone did. There was no screaming or panic - just shock. The police were there in minutes, followed by the fire department. A woman came up to me to talk; she seemed upset an ambulance wasn’t the first emergency vehicle there. And then my bus came, and there was talk on the bus among people who had been there and people who weren’t.

3a) Nothing about this has appeared in the papers. I can’t understand that. The T hasn’t responded to my inquiry with any information, just that my concern has been shared with the legal department and transit police.

4) I have certainly not had a daily devotional very consistently in the last couple weeks, but this morning I did. Proverbs 15 starts with one of Mother’s favorite instructions: “A soft answer turneth away wrath.” In the Lamsa Bible it’s “A soft word turns away wrath.” But then the verse continues: “But a harsh word stirs up anger.” And verse 2: “The tongue of the wise uses knowledge aright; but the mouth of the fool pours out curses.” Instantly I thought of yesterday evening’s outrageous news about the President being party to circulating a fake video about the Speaker of the House. “The mouth of the fool pours out curses.” Indeed it does!

4a) I am so glad I was able to take Mother’s Bible. The binding has been firmly taped together after much use, and it is filled with her marginalia and bookmarks. At the funeral the preacher commented on her inquisitive mind, and this is just one evidence of it.

Thursday Night, May 23

1) Long story short, there is just more going on than I can tell you right now, on every front.

2) Today I spent so much time at my desk I walked from the office to Mass. Ave. Station - a good half hour - just to get the blood pumping.

3) Oh my God, people, I need the software to work! All I need is obedience, resources, and working software.

Object Memories: Historic Houses of Early America

Back when Mother died in early February you may remember me envisioning everything in her house crying out “Do you remember why I’m important? What are you going to do with me?” That’s led me to believe that you can tell the story of a life by what you remember about things - which inspires what may be an occasional series of recollections prompted by things.

Here we have the convergence of college, genealogy, books, architecture, and gratitude in Elise Lathrop’s boxed first edition of Historic Houses of Early America. How did I acquire this volume?

In the summer of 1984 I got my first apartment away from home, a fourth floor walkup on the backside of Beacon Hill that I shared with a straight dude from college (who was almost never there) and his Roman alley cat named for a television detective (who was always there, and my unwilling responsibility when roommate was not). It was not a very happy summer for a few reasons, but one of the happiest things was getting hired at the Vendome in Back Bay as a concierge in July. That began two and half years working there, ideal fo an English major because all you had to do was sit there, open the door, announce guests, be nice to people, and read all those Jacobean revenge tragedies for class. In some ways it’s been my favorite job ever.

Junior year I was on the 7-midnight shift Monday - Friday. Sometimes if a resident was bored they’d come down and chat with me, but that kind of socializing usually ceased about 10 PM and I could read undisturbed. A family moved in who’d been burnt out of their home in another Boston neighborhood: husband, wife, and young daughter. She couldn’t have been more than ten years old. In that first two weeks or so she’d come down, shyly, to talk with me. It was her way of getting acclimated to her new home, I guess.

So along comes Christmas, and one evening all three of them show up with a box for me. I knew the husband dealt in rare books, and in fact, the box revealed Historic Houses of Early America. “We were trying to guess your interests,” the wife said, “and we decided on Architecture.” Of course I was delighted and thanked them enthusiastically. Later, returning from an errand or something, the wife told me privately how very much they appreciated my being so friendly and patient with their daughter; it helped her adjust to new circumstances, and it sure made me feel good to find out I’d made a positive difference.

Well … Architecture wasn’t really an interest at that time. Genealogy was. Which made Historic Houses of Early America the perfect gift for me. Surprise!

This was the period when I was mad for genealogy and uncovering more of my family history. My Aunt Betty had reams of information already, and I was able to fill in some blanks for her in research as NEHGS. One of my closest friends at this time was a genealogist on their staff, in fact. Already far too comfortable knowing I was descended (somehow) from the Champions of kings of England, I then discovered Governor John Winthrop was an ancestor, along with a guy named Benjamin Drowne who was buried at Old North Church burial ground. I even made the discovery that my father’s parents were 15th cousins. (“You know the Wilkeses always marry their cousins!”)

My Granny Dimmick set a great store by all this ancestry. Even more important than the Dymoke connection (which was Grampa’s family anyway, not hers) was her descent from Fielding Lewis, who married George Washington’s sister Betty and sacrificed his fortune for the Revolution by running the foundry in Fredericksburg, Virginia. Granny’s ancestor was Fielding’s son John by his first wife, Catherine Washington, whose first cousin was the Father of Our Country. Granny cared enormously about claiming George as a cousin, and had reproductions of the Washington-Lewis and Dymoke coat of arms hanging in her dining room. (Come to think of it, Aunt Kate and Aunt Lal had small portraits of George and Martha hanging in the front hall of their big house on Moss Street.)

This is the fireplace mantel that Cousin George designed.

Well . . . Fielding Lewis had a beautiful estate in (or near?) Fredericksburg called Kenmore. And wouldn’t you know it, there’s a lovely write-up of it in Historic Houses of Early America! The house is significant not only for itself (it’s a beautiful house; we visited in 1980) but also for its association with Cousin George. In fact, he designed the plaster mantelpiece.

So, that was one house. Wouldn’t you know it, another family house also appears in this book. My research revealed to me a lot of Massachusetts ancestors, the first being Thomas Dimmock, who helped settle Barnstable and who (they say) deliberately changed the spelling of his name to disassociate himself from the family in England. At any rate, Rev. John Lothrop was another big deal in Barnstable and one of the Shubael Dimmocks (there were three of them in a row: father, son, grandson) married a Tabetha Lathrop, who was a descendant of Rev. Lothrop.

And surprise, surprise, the Lothrop House also shows up in the book! A few years later, in 1994, Mother and Daddy and I got to visit the Lothrop House, which has been the Barnstable Public Library for ages and ages now. Daddy and I got to sign the descendant’s book.

I’ve never read any of Historic Houses of Early America in almost 35 years of its being in my library. And it’s time to move it forward into the world. It has been special to me all this time because of its family associations, because it was a gift to me from people who said I made a difference to their family, and as a remembrance of my time at the Vendome, and of that time in my life.

The book itself.

Friday Evening, May 17

1) Surely there are some Russian Yankee bicycling drag queens out there named Anya Left and Anya Wright, yes?

2) The sun! After this gray day, the sun came out, and I was able to see the lilacs drooping with moisture in my garden.

3) The future! What’s that going to be like?

Wednesday, May 15

1) Happiness. This was one of those very rare days that, when the alarm went off, I was happy to get out of bed and start the day. I got my Straw Hat Day post up - you’ve seen it, yes? - and was very pleased with it. I left the house for work grinning so wide I was nearly laughing. That never happens!

1a) The weather was much better than forecast, too.

1b) Wednesdays a former employee comes to the office to lead meditation at noon; today I made the time to go, and I was so glad I did.

2) Then I read the terrifying news from Alabama about their new abortion laws, and it just illustrated to me all over again why social conservatives should never be put in charge. Just look at the Prohibition era! The Women’s Christian Temperance Union and other crusaders got it all wrong. Drinking alcohol wasn’t the problem - alcoholism was! And the suffering that came out of it, and the alteration of American morals that was the reverse of what the crusaders wanted. I tremble to think what’s coming next.

2a) Daniel Okrent’s Last Call is such a colorful read on the subject. Find it. Read it. There’s a lot in there about how the conservatives organized - and how the Republicans repealed Prohibition.

3) This evening, seeing all the reactions to the photo I posted of Mother from last Christmas, reading the list of names. That really touched me.

Saturday Afternoon, May 11 - Screw This Screw!

1) On the plus side: did all my errands at the dry cleaners, drugstore, hardware store, and bank, and even bought two new straw hats since Straw Hat Day is coming next Wednesday.

1a) And I sent out some long-overdue Lovely Notes, so I am feeling less guilty than hitherto.

2) BUT . . . one of my most important assignments this weekend is to figure out what’s wrong with my grandmother’s bed. Since it arrived and the movers put it together about three weeks ago, the the right front bedpost has been leaning in and the left rear bedpost keeps leaning away and has to be readjusted to fit back into the headboard. I heaved off the box spring and the mattress a bit ago, and sure enough, it looks like the mover forced the screws in at angles not flush with that L-shaped bracket thingy. And wouldn’t you know it, one of them was screwed in so tight that any further attempts on my part will strip both my Phillips head screwdriver and the head of the screw.

2a) Last night chatting with the outgoing neighbors I mentioned this project and he expressed regret at not being able to help since he is installing new flooring at their new home. But I have put out the call for his electric drill and I hope I can borrow it before bedtime.

3) In the meantime it is imperative to make some sense out of this chaotic household! My next task is to clean out the study and shelve the remaining unshelved books (of which there are a great many).