Gary and I went to the Palm Sunday service at St. Paul’s this morning. It was a lovely, sunny morning, a little cool while the congregation gathered on the church steps for the procession with the palms, but nearing 80 F an hour and a quarter or so later, when the service ended. The sky was a bright, bright blue, the grass green, and it felt like spring had really come, with Easter just around the corner. St. Paul’s is almost directly across the street from the grounds of the University of Virginia, and as I do every year once daffodils, tulips, and flowering trees begin to bloom, I wanted to walk through the hidden gardens behind the brick serpentine walls bordering the Pavilions set on both sides of the Lawn, and soak in the ambiance of these special spaces. With the sudden warmth that has come to Central Virginia, daffodils, tulips, periwinkle,bluebells, hellebores, weeping cherries, redbuds, have all come out almost all at once, although the earlier blooming daffodils are already past their prime. The scent of the old boxwoods bordering these gardens was heady, their dark green foliage inhaling and exhaling the warm spring air. High in a tree we spotted a large robin, singing a variety of melodies, one after the other, seemingly making the most of the bright morning. Driving back home after leaving the idyllic grounds of our Alma Mater, the beauty of our own piece of countryside came into view, leading us to appreciative exclamations. Perhaps that robin felt something similar, moving him to song.
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This past weekend Gary and I visited a garden shop in the middle of urban Charlottesville, on Preston Avenue, half a mile from the Downtown Mall and a mile from the Rotunda. Fifth Season Gardening Company (with stores in Asheville, Carrboro, Greensboro and Raleigh as well) has been in Charlottesville since 2009, but until this weekend we had not been there. It’s a wonderful example of urban repurposing, its location having originally been an automobile dealership and auto repair shop. And in its current incarnation, it turns out to be a large, well-stocked, organic garden shop and nursery, with offerings including hydroponic gardening, beer and wine making, and “Urban D.I.Y,” to quote from its website, http://fifthseasongardening.com/ Having had a couple of weeks now of snowless weather, with warmth trying hard (in two steps forward, one step back fashion) to move into the area, it was exciting to walk through the large and varied indoor spaces of this shop, with its light-filled showroom windows in front, and spaces both small and cavernous leading off to the back, seeds, tools, gloves, décor, beckoning beyond every turning. Most exciting, however, was walking out the opened doors in back and coming upon a well- stocked nursery of flowering plants, trees and bushes. Despite a chilly breeze, it truly felt like spring had come. And in fact, there are signs of spring all around. While it seems like most of our trees and flowers are quite behind this year, the white blossoms of the pear trees on Preston Ave itself flushed out this past week, seemingly overnight. The venerable weeping cherry in Lee Park, across from the McIntire Building where the Albemarle Charlottesville Historical Society is now located, likewise. Daffodils have burst out all over town, and in our yard, and yesterday our first two tulips appeared. Plus, and wonderfully, the grass is greening, various shades of Kelly green, moss green, soft in some areas like fine baby hair, rougher in others. Raking up some lingering leaves from last fall on Saturday afternoon, I uncovered our first violets of the year, white and purple, finely veined. We are going to do a vegetable garden this year, after a long hiatus. We’ll be using raised beds. Gary is building an eight foot fence to ward off our recurrent deer friends. (Just week before last I saw one in the early evening, standing not more than three feet from our living room picture window. He looked at me, I looked at him, and he slowly moved away from the bird feeders that he had probably been
nibbling at, still looking at me, in no real hurry. And this past Sunday morning, I noticed two separate deer families, one in our back yard and one in front, simultaneously trolling for food opportunities.) For the last couple of months I’ve been perusing seed catalogs, and yesterday I went back to Fifth Season and chose some seeds. I hope we can nurture them well. This winter I read “The Murrow Boys: Pioneers on the Front Lines of Broadcast Journalism,” by Stanley Cloud and Lynne Olson (1996.) A friend had recommended it. The book, as encapsulated in its title, tells the story of Edward R. Murrow and the other radio reporters he teamed up with to experience, observe and report on the events, culminating in war, unfolding in Europe in the thirties and forties. Murrow and his “boys” were young, resourceful, and visionary, and they basically invented ways on the fly to tell their stories -- embedding themselves in the events for a first-hand account, recording actual live action, reporting close to the scene, etc. The challenges of finding and using adequate transmission facilities meant that sometimes a story got through, sometimes not. Yet enough got through to make a huge difference in how the war was understood and vicariously experienced by their listeners. Their reporting broke new ground and challenged the former preeminence of the carefully written newspaper narrative. The authors recount how radio was fairly quickly overtaken by television after the war, and how the commercial aspects of both media in short order began to favor entertainment over information sharing. They also describe the challenges that Murrow and the men who worked with him experienced, adapting, with varying levels of success and accommodation, to the exigencies of commercial television after the war. And they discuss Murrow’s arguably late confrontation of Senator Joe McCarthy’s anti-communism campaign in a March 9,1954, episode of his CBS show “See It Now” (later dramatized in George Clooney’s 2005 black and white movie, “Good Night and Good Luck.”) Click the link embedded here for a You Tube clip of Murrow’s final summation in his March 9, 1954 piece. I found “The Murrow Boys” a fascinating read. Its protagonists were true pioneers in using, adapting, and expanding the opportunities posed by what were in fact very new technologies: Radio, recording, and later television. As I thought about the story being told, I started musing on ways that early radio and television intersected with my own life. And that got me thinking about Dad, a sort of television pioneer himself. In 1950, at the age of 20, Dad moved from Chicago, where he had been working as a radio announcer, to Myrtle Beach, SC, to work as a radio announcer at WMRA there. Myrtle Beach at that time was a small beach town, nothing like it has since grown up to be. Mom, also 20 years old, flew to Myrtle Beach to marry him, once he was settled. Subsequently Dad moved to radio station WCOG in Greensboro, and then in 1953 he moved to WFMY-TV, channel 2, in Greensboro, where he became its first news director and on-the-air news announcer. At that time there were only two television stations in the state, the other being WBT-TV in Charlotte. Dad was with WFMY until 1959, when he left broadcasting. In writing this blog post, I waded through a box of career clippings and the like that Dad had kept, and came upon a June 15, 1953, copy of a magazine called “Broadcasting, Publishing” (cover price 35 cents) where a short paragraph appears on p. 98 announcing Robert W. Stroh’s move from WCOG radio to WFMY-TV. (Also of interest in this publication is a story on p. 9, headed “McCarthy Would Make Broadcasters Keep Records,” regarding a bill introduced by Senator McCarthy “to require radio and television studios to make and keep recordings of all broadcasts… Legislation proposed would go further than wartime….” ) Here's a pamphlet from June, 1954, summarizing Dad's first year at WFMY-TV. (Page 3, where the story is continued, goes on to mention that he and Mom had "a girl, Karen, 2 1/2, and a ten month old boy, Robert Francis." Dad and Mom of course would go on to have five more "girls" and two more "boys," but that's another story....) And here's a newspaper clipping from January 2, 1955, mentioning Dad's upcoming summary of events (presumably in North Carolina) of the just-concluded year of 1954. See the bottom of the first column. Also interesting to note near the top of that column a reference to Edward R. Murrow's 1954 retrospective, to air earlier in the day. The headline refers to the opening of a new studio for WFMY: As Dad himself described in a 16 page autobiography he wrote for the family at the age of 71 (four years before he died), the news department at WFMY-TV when he was hired consisted of two people: cameraman Buddy Moore and Dad. Dad served as “the on-the-air talent (a position now called anchorman), reporter, news film editor and copywriter.” A second cameraman, Bill Gordon, later joined the department, but a second reporter was not hired until Dad left in 1959. The picture below shows Sports Director Charlie Harville on the left, and Dad on the right. Here are Charlie Harville, Buddy Moore, and Dad, looking at film: Dad recounts in his autobiography that he, Buddy Moore or Bill Gordon, “[travelled all over the state covering news stories and bringing back film for the newscasts.” Events that Dad touched on in his bio included covering hurricanes (including the historic Hurricane Hazel), a mill workers strike, maneuvers at Fort Bragg and of an aircraft carrier off the coast, a visit of President Eisenhower to Raleigh, the accidental dropping of an atomic bomb on a South Carolina farm, the reconstruction of the Colonial Governor’s mansion in New Bern, a test of architect Buckminster Fuller’s geodesic dome design to see if it could be flown to the Arctic. Bill Gordon (I assume), Dad, and Buddy Moore in this photo: Below, Buddie Moore and Dad reporting on Fort Bragg Army maneuvers, 1955: Election Day: Dad had occasion to interview a number of well-known personages, including “Former President Truman, [then] Senator John F. Kennedy, former First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt (twice), two time presidential candidate Adlai Stevenson, Philippine statesman Carlos Marcos, former movie star Gloria Swanson, CBS news legend Edward R. Murrow, union leader Walter Reuther, [then] ex-moviestar Ronald Reagan, CBS television star Raymond Burr, North Carolina Governor Luther Hodges….” Here he is with Raymond Burr: Among Dad's clippings, a brochure of about 70 pages, called "The Story of WFMY-TV," from December 1957, was fun to see. I found photos of Dad on p. 68, showing election night coverage, and in a large fold-out at the back of the brochure, showing the entire staff at that time. Also interesting was to note a piece on Edward R. Murrow on p. 7: In 1958 Dad became producer/director of live shows at WFMY, while retaining some of his News
Director duties, and in 1959 he was offered an opportunity to change careers and go into theater management, which ultimately landed him here in Charlottesville, and led to an active and varied series of career choices and civic engagement. Until reading “The Murrow Boys,” I hadn’t really internalized the pioneering aspects of Dad’s early career. He was young, bright, well-spoken, intelligent, and driven. And he had a chance both to touch history and to make a little of his own. Today would have been Dad’s 84th birthday. Dad was hyper-cognizant of the logo attached to this date on the calendar. He ended his 16 page autobiography by describing himself as “a very lucky and blest April Fool.” Happy Birthday, Dad !! One of the things I’m really liking about retirement is the way time has opened up for me. During those decades when I had a full-time job, with a 40+ hour workweek (not to mention raising four children), and a prescribed amount of paid vacation time, I always had to think twice about whether I could afford to take off a day, or a part of a day, to do some other activity. If I do such and such, will I have enough hours left for a week at the beach? For holiday time? And so on. What a pleasure to now have time that feels more my own. This past week I took some of that time to attend some events of the Virginia Festival of the Book, described on its website as “a 5-day festival of mostly free literary events that are open to the public as we honor book culture and promote reading and literacy.” This is the festival’s 20th year. I’d read and heard many good things about this event over the years, but had never attended any of its events until now. What a delightful experience it was. Between Thursday and Saturday I sat in on 8 different presentations, representing a variety of authors, a number of different genres, as well as professionals in the print and online publishing world. Thursday afternoon I attended a presentation by author Barbara Perry, a senior fellow at UVA’s Miller Center, on her definitive biography of Rose Kennedy. I was interested in hearing more about Rose Kennedy’s life after having recently watched the 2011 miniseries "The Kennedys," with Greg Kinnear as JFK and Katie Holmes as Jackie, streamed on amazon. I especially enjoyed the slides and video that accompanied Professor Perry’s discussion, and purchased a copy of the book, which she inscribed for me. Very fun. Thursday night Gary and I attended a presentation, complete with gorgeous photos projected on a large screen, by photographer Robert Llewellyn on the inspiration and creation of "Remarkable Trees of Virginia", "Seeing Trees," and "Seeing Flowers." He also spoke about his upcoming "Seeing Seedpods." Mr. Llewellyn's talk was delightful, full of wry anecdote and visually stunning. His enthusiasm for paying attention to nature, both at the macro and micro levels, was contagious. Friday I headed to the Charlottesville Downtown Mall to attend two discussions located in City Council chambers. The first of the two, “Family, Food, and Community,” was a panel of five incredibly interesting authors -- Cathal Armstrong, Andrea Chessman, Caroline Grant, Ira Wallace, and Joe Yonan -- discussing growing, cooking and eating food, as well as connections between food, family, memories and meaning. Several strands of this discussion especially resonated for me: The importance of cooking, and the mantra "eat what we make.” The importance of the daily family dinner table and the family sharing and conversation that takes place there. Food stories. What food means to us and to our families. The way that even with the instant availability of recipes that the internet now offers, physical cookbooks continue to speak to us, offering context, history, curated collections, and personal experience. I’m hoping to find copies at the JMRL library of each of the books referenced at this discussion, and probably to purchase one or more of them. The second presentation that I attended on Friday, by Philip Greene, Scott Jost, and Ronald Lankford, was called “Eat, Drink, and Be Merry: The Cultural History of Things.” This session cleverly linked several interesting books, with slides from the books’ illustrations. Philip Greene discussed his book, "To Have and Have Another, A Hemingway Cocktail Companion." Scott Jost discussed his "Shenandoah Valley Apples" (releasing in April). And Ronald Lankford discussed his “Sleigh Rides, Jingle Bells and Silent Nights, A Cultural History of American Christmas Songs.” Saturday I spent all day downtown, attending four informative and inspiring sessions hosted at the Omni Hotel. The topic of each related to publishing, and I came away from the day with a lot to think about and process. There were two sessions I especially enjoyed. In the first, Jane Friedman, co-founder and co-editor of Scratch Magazine, editor at the Virginia Quarterly Review, and former publisher of Writer’s Digest, spoke on the Digital Publishing Landscape. I loved her powerpoint, her stats, and her many helpful hints, and plan on following her at http://janefriedman.com/ . At the next session, Jane Friedman, along with author, blogger, and "Washingtonian" editor Bethanne Patrick and children/young adult author Gigi Amateau, discussed “Building an Author’s Platform.” At this presentation I was especially intrigued to hear Ms. Amateau recount how she created a children's app to accompany her book, "Chancey of the Maury River." Another thing that struck me was the panelists' discussion of the importance of “literary citizenship,” (a topic that Ms. Patrick has written on), that is, being contributing, engaged members of the literary community, celebrating other writers, reading and buying their books, and "engaging with people who have ideas." What a delight, and a gift, the Virginia Festival of the Book proved to be. I’m looking forward to next year already. For now, after a few days of warmish, bright, and sunny weather, we’ve got highs in the low 40s, with predictions of snow in the morning. But hopefully the lovely weather of the weekend points to seasonal change to come. Here are a few of the photos I shot on the Mall Friday and Saturday, as I strolled, window shopped, and watched families enjoying the splendor of an antique carousel making a temporary appearance on the Mall – flashing lights, music and all. Signs, I hope, that spring is really almost here. Happy St. Patrick's Day! Here in Central Virginia it’s a cold and snowy one. It started snowing yesterday evening around 4:15 pm, and has been mostly snowing ever since. This is not what we would usually expect for this time of the year, although we had a sizeable snowstorm last year around mid-March as well. Wildlife were out and about early this morning, leaving tracks in their wake. The birds crowded around the feeders, resting on tree limbs and branches between bites. I’ve been musing on St. Patrick’s Day associations over the weekend. Memories and connections have slowly unfurled. My favorite memory from this holiday dates from the second grade. My father had taken me to some sort of school activity. Was my class singing for someone? Doing a presentation? I no longer recall the details. But I do recall a bright blue North Carolina sky; a vivid green carpet of grass; black patent Mary Janes; and a full-skirted dress in soft green cotton. I know I didn't need a coat on that lovely springlike day. I think this may be the dress. I wish there was a magic way to “colorise” this photo. Short of that, here’s a little fifties figurine in green, that somewhat captures the colors I remember. Other childhood associations with this holiday include: Bright green shamrocks, cut from construction paper. Wikipedia has a piece on shamrocks: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shamrock And here’s a linen tea towel with shamrock motif. Rainbows with pots of gold. I’ve not yet stumbled on a pot of gold, but a couple of months ago there was a marvelous display of rainbows in this area. And of course, leprechauns. Thinking of leprechauns brought to mind a favorite movie of Mom’s, “Darby O Gill and the Little People,” a Disney film from 1959. Gary and I watched it on Amazon yesterday evening. I always used to think Mom liked the notion of the leprechauns in this piece, but had overlooked the male lead, a very young, good-looking Sean Connery, several years before his 007 days. Wonder if that was it. Further musings have brought to mind Irish pottery, Celtic art,and Gaelic blessings. In terms of Irish pottery, I have three pieces of Nicholas Mosse. I love the bright colors and stenciled motifs. As for Celtic art, Dad loved reading about illuminated manuscripts and studying images reproduced from their pages. He had a reproduction copy of the 9th century Book of Kells, with its wonderfully complex illuminations of the Gospels, in rich and vibrant hues. Here’s Wikipedia on the Book of Kells: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_of_Kells. The photo below is an image of one of the illuminated pages of this ancient Gospel book, as found in a book that Dad had, "A History of Illuminated Manuscripts," Christopher de Hamel (1986). Here's a museum scarf, found at a yard sale some years ago, with a Book of Kells motif. And as for Gaelic blessings, here are the Cambridge Singers, doing John Rutter’s “A Gaelic Blessing,” also known as “Deep Peace.” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ObrYXo93QYI May the road rise up to meet you.
May the wind be always at your back. May the sun shine warm upon your face, The rains fall soft upon your fields. And until we meet again, May God hold you in the palm of His hand. (Traditional Gaelic blessing) It’s still winter here in Central Virginia. Monday was a frigidly cold day of snow and ice; by the time the storm passed us there were five or six new inches of snow on the ground. Our country road was not plowed until well after dark, and Tuesday morning, when Gary ventured out to work, with the temperature at about 5 F, the roads in county and city were still icy. Having nowhere I needed to go, unwilling to brave the icy roads, and feeling rather cooped up, I decided to do some “spring cleaning.” I’d had my eye on the plates bordering the walls of our kitchen for some time. It was hard to say exactly when I’d last washed them, and I could see they needed it. As did the part of the walls that they hung on. I had been thinking that this would be a two person job. Gary is almost a foot taller than I, and I’d figured he could take down the plates someday for me to wash, while he sponged the walls. I’d been thinking this for at least the past year. My brainwave on Tuesday was that the kitchen step ladder just might allow me to do it all. Sure enough, with some care, and standing on the upper step of the two steps of the ladder, I could access both plates and walls. The plates we have hanging in our kitchen are mainly Blue Ridge pottery plates and saucers, a line of hand decorated dishes made in the 30s to the 50s. We started collecting them in the early 90s, at yard sales, estate sales, and especially at those antique shops and booths that seemed to proliferate around then in former five and dimes and the like. We looked for different patterns, and took special pride in rescuing dinged up plates with lovely colors, enchanting hand done pictures of leaves, fruits and flowers, and coordinating sponge-painted borders – plates with chips, plates with cracks (sometimes lovingly repaired by a former owner), plates with crazing. Along with the Blue Ridge plates we’ve hung a few others that seem to harmonize – A late 19th century Staffordshire turkey plate: An art pottery rabbit signed Jose 1976, that had belonged to Mom: A 40th anniversary plate (Royal Crown, made in Japan) which I found for a dollar or so at a yard sale, a week or two after we celebrated our 40th anniversary in 2011): Once I'd begun, it actually only took me an hour or two to get the plates down, wash both plates and walls, and re-hang the plates. And somehow I found the sponging and shining and re-hanging rather rewarding. It may not be spring here yet (temps in the thirties today, with a potential icy mix early tomorrow), but spring is feeling a bit nearer.
The temperature on this last day of February was 13 F this morning when I awoke, and several hours later it’s only inched up a degree. Based on past experience, I’ve got to believe that spring will get here eventually, but I’m looking for signs. I haven’t seen any robins yet this year, but this morning, standing at my kitchen window, I saw a feathered creature even more special – a bluebird. He was sitting very still in one of the large cedars in our backyard, so still that for awhile I wondered if the cold had gotten to him. His posture was rather rounded and compact, perhaps using his feathers to capture warmth. And what feathers they were – an incredibly bright sky blue, with rust-red tummy. He sat there for what seemed a good long while. I tried capturing his image through my kitchen window, screen and all. Slowly I began to realize that he was not alone. On a lower branch was another bluebird, less intense in coloration, perhaps his mate. Gary took this shot of the two of them. Seeing these beautiful, special birds brought to memory bluebird sightings of years past. My favorite bluebird memory dates back to a bright Christmas morning, sometime in the late 80s, when our children were all still at home. We were waiting for family to arrive for a Christmas brunch, when I happened to look out the large sliding glass doors of the ranch house we lived in at that time, the house situated at the top of a steep wooded hill leading down to a creek. A large flock of bluebirds flew past the window, their beautiful colors vibrant against the brown trees on the hillside. It was a sighting and a visitation. Wandering around the house on this cold morning, I’ve been in search of bluebird tokens: On the shelves of our 50s kitchen, on either side of the sink, two sets of bluebird salt and peppers, found at various estate or yard sales. In the corner cabinet in our dining room, a bisque bluebird, nestled amongst some Hummels. On the windowsill of the dining room, a glass bluebird, a gift from my mother-in-law, who loved glass birds of all colors. In my study, a Hummel music box that belonged to Mom, with a bluebird pictured on its top. (The song it plays is "Yellow Bird") As for spring, I’ll keep hoping for its ultimate arrival. The large maple in our front yard seems to think it's coming, and is optimistically putting out buds. Can spring really be far behind?
Last Saturday, sitting at my lovely old campaign style desk on a cold morning, a couple of days after our 15 inches of snow, I had an “unfortunate event.” In lifting the cup of coffee sitting next to my one year old laptop, my foot jostled the flimsy desk leg, my hand jostled the coffee cup, and the laptop, as became slowly evident over the next 12 hours or so, died – keys first, followed by ear-splitting noises, culminating in a no longer responsive power button. I felt pretty inept. I was able to console myself with the reminder that I had just backed up several months’ worth of recently downloaded photos to my external hard drive. So other than the loss of time that would now be entailed in securing a new laptop, re-loading various programs and peripherals, re-syncing with apple photo stream, icloud, itunes, amazon cloud player, saved photos, etc., my losses were pretty small – some saved documents and spreadsheets, primarily. (Note to self: Start backing that stuff up.) Sunday after church Gary and I visited Best Buy to browse laptops and desktops and see whether anything looked more compelling, price or feature-wise, than the next generation of the Dell Inspiron I had killed, which Gary had already determined was available on amazon for about $100 less than it had been a year ago. The answer was no. But while Gary browsed a display of wide screen monitors, I came upon a row of digital cameras, powered up and begging to be handled. I had been wishing for some time to be able to get crisper, closer shots of flora and fauna, and was quickly impressed with a Canon digital with a 20X zoom (a PowerShot SX280 HS) that focused very crisply and had a very reasonable price tag. We came home with no new laptop, but with a new monitor for Gary’s desktop and a new camera for me. The Dell Inspiron 15, ordered that afternoon on amazon.com, arrived Wednesday; probably would have come Tuesday except for Presidents’ Day. So as to avoid future laptop mishaps, we’ve moved the handsome desk to a downstairs location, and in its place put a metal and plastic utility table – not as elegant, but much more stable. Also, a mini-table to hold a coffee cup, far from anything electronic. The new laptop is good. Basically plug and play. A slightly wider screen than my last one. A numeric keypad. Had it up and running right away, though it’s taken me a few days to get my various peripherals and programs all back up. I’ve also made some time to start playing with the new camera. This week started out cold, but got quite warm for a few days. There is still snow on the ground, but much less than the 15 inches or so that we had had. The birds and squirrels continue to come to our trees, our foliage and our feeders. Here are a few images I’ve been able to capture this week. I’ve been spending some time over the last week or so reminiscing about Valentine’s Days gone by. My memories of this holiday are in vivid color – Vivid reds, pastel pinks, lacy whites, chocolate browns. The dollhouse in this photo, built by Dad, reminds me of the pinks and whites of the holiday. I wish I could see the colors in this snapshot, or rather, I wish it was in color. For that matter, I wish I could remember the day itself; it must have been Valentine’s Day 1953, I think. I have some memories almost that old, but this is not one of them. I do remember the paper cutout Valentines, in their little white envelopes, that we exchanged with classmates in grade school. Sweet Dick and Jane sort of pictures, very fifties in dress and attitude. I no longer have any of mine, but I do have an example of a late forties or early fifties Valentine of this sort, signed to Terry from Bob XXXXX. Wonder what Mom thought of the verse on the card: If my tricycle were built for two, the one on the back would be you! And I wish I had one of the mailboxes made of cardboard and construction paper, that we put our valentines in when we got to school, before they were distributed to our classmates. I remember the pleasure of carrying those valentines home from school and reading them again, and again. I have three sweet Valentine’s Day memories from third grade. One, walking with Dad past a lighted drugstore window, filled with hearts and chocolates, on a cold February evening. Another, a visit to a warm, sugar-scented old fashioned bakery with lighted glass display cases, and cookies, cakes and sweets on the shelves. Mom bought a small personal size heart-shaped cake, just for me. I took it home in a small white cardboard box, and it lasted for at least two days. This picture I took on Tuesday at Chancellor’s Bakery in Albemarle Square, here in Charlottesville. Very much like the bakeries of the past. The third, a heart- shaped box with chocolates, given to me by the boy next door. A first for me. Thinking of chocolate, I recall the brownies I made in grade 12 for my then boyfriend Gary, an easy recipe melting chocolate chips into carnation milk, and once solid, cut into hearts using one of Mom’s shiny metal cooky cutters. I will need to ask Gary if he still remembers that Valentine’s Day in 1970, a year and a half before we married; I think he will say yes. Flowers feature in my Valentine’s memories. Green-wrapped bouquets, long white cardboard boxes, carnations, tulips, roses, baby’s breath. I remember the fresh, moist scent of florist shops with large cooled glass-enclosed shelves, filled with cut flowers of all sorts. The flower pictures I also took on Tuesday, at the Fresh Market in Albemarle Square. A different venue than the florist shops of my memory, perhaps, but what beautiful flowers. I don’t seem to have many pictures of Valentine’s Days while we were raising our children. For me, at least, digital photography has made picture-taking so much easier, not to mention eliminating the costs of buying film and getting it printed, an important consideration for a young family. It would have been fun to have had digital technology then. But I do have this snapshot that we took on Valentine’s Day, sometime in the mid eighties, with all four of our children seated around the formica-topped table in our kitchen, displaying Valentine-themed gingerbread houses they had made using graham crackers, icing, red hots, conversation hearts . A warm memory for sure. What is it about holidays and the abundance of memories they provide? I could spend hours (well, actually, I have spent hours over the last week or so) calling Valentine's Day memories slowly back to consciousness, each memory leading to another, and the past melding into the present, year after year. I’ve been managing this winter to get to the gym (ACAC, here in Charlottesville) 3 or 4 times a week, and each time I go I'm so glad I have. I like watching the local news or doing the virtual Expresso courses on the stationary bicycle. I love the rhythmic motion of the rowing machine, and the satisfying resistance in the rowing motion. And I love walking around the track, listening to music. Right now I’ve got Al Green's "Let's Stay Together," the soundtrack to "Love Actually," Adele’s "21," and Jason Mraz's "We Sing. We Dance. We Steal Things" on my ishuffle. I’m also trying an Egoscue class. There is something so life-affirming about moving, breathing, walking, pedaling, rowing, lifting, stretching. When I walk around the track, or pedal, or row, I feel both solitary and in tandem with the many other folks doing similar activities. It sort of reminds me of the side by side play of toddlers – enjoying the company, while focused on my own goals (x number of miles of biking, y number of meters of rowing, z number of laps around the track). One of the pleasures of taking a class of course is the additional interaction with others, learning names, comparing notes, moving or stretching at the same time. Almost feels like a bit of a graduation from the parallel play. I started going to the gym in the mid 80s, several years after my daughter was born, after realizing that at age 30 something the baby weight I’d put on during that pregnancy was proving harder to lose than the weight I’d gained as a 20 something with each of my 3 boys. This was what I think of as the Jane Fonda era of exercise, and in fact I sort of cringe to recall the yellow leotard and tights I wore to aerobics classes then. The classes were fun though. My daughter may recall that sometimes on a weekend afternoon I’d take her with me; I’d do my class, and she would visit the play room. Somehow, I let the press of other demands override aerobics, though, and I dropped the gym membership, starting it up again for a year or two in the early or mid 90s, this time with a 40 something body and a routine more solitary, less able to keep up with the fairly rigorous aerobics on offer. In my mid 50s I joined the gym once again, and other than a couple of brief breaks have kept with it ever since. Exercise routines were minimal to non-existent in my childhood. I may be mistaken, but I have no memory of phys ed at all through grade seven, in the several different parochial schools I attended. Recess in grade school meant walking around the schoolyard, or on the blacktop, chatting with classmates, watching the clouds. There may have been jump rope, and hopscotch, I think, child-led activities both. I recall in the fifth or sixth grade using recess to sew clothes for our little troll dolls, and making them shoe box houses, an activity that was popular at that time. I have hardly any recollection of gym or phys ed activity in 8th and 9th grade either. Due to new school construction (all those baby boomers, I guess), my 8th grade in Charlottesville 1965-1966 was a half day affair (junior high students being squeezed into either a morning or an afternoon school day, sharing the same space, while two new schools were being built.) What I mainly recall were organized sports, such as soft ball and dodge ball. I did not really learn much, and can still remember standing on the blacktop, watching the action, hoping I wouldn’t have to try to do something. In 10th grade, at Lane High School in the handsome 1939 brick building that now serves as Albemarle County’s office building, there was mandatory phys ed. The main thing I remember about that class was the gym suits that we girls were required to wear – made of a heavy, navy blue cotton material, with snaps and a bloomer effect. What were they thinking? And how times have changed. Here’s an article I found via Google that actually pictures something close to what I recall. Check out the upper right-hand image. The color is wrong but the outfit looks pretty much like what I remember: http://www.loti.com/then_now/Gym_Uniforms_of_the_50s_and_60s.htm While I don’t have a lot of memories of 10th grade phys ed activities, I do have some recollection of a sort of unstructured free-form dance type session, and I recall running around the track, breathing in fresh air, under a sunny blue sky. In my first semester of college, I took a swimming course, thus satisfying the last formal phys ed requirement of my school career. I do recall this course with some pleasure. I had learned to swim by virtue of two summer sessions between 5th and 6th grade that my brother and I took at the old basement pool in Memorial Gym. (Photo by Greenstat – public domain, all rights released - from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memorial_Gymnasium_(Virginia). In my college swimming course, I learned additional strokes and techniques that have stayed with me. Not a strong swimmer, but not totally clueless either. Somehow over this cold winter I have not been very tempted to swim at ACAC. I swam for a while this fall after spraining a foot (missed a stair), as swimming, especially in their warm water pool, seemed like a good choice. Not to mention the whirling bubbly water in the hot tub after. I imagine I’ll be trying the pool again sometime soon. But with two winter weather events predicted for this upcoming week, I’m liking the notion of something less watery at present. I don’t know what school children’s phys ed experiences and activities are like now, but reflecting on my own not very edifying schoolchild exposure to satisfying exercise activities, as well as the pleasure and benefit that I find in exercise as an adult, I hope that these things are not given totally short shrift in schools now, either on account of budgetary challenges or academic pressures. Moving, breathing, walking, stretching, seem too precious to shortchange. |
AuthorI am a 63 year old wife, mother, and grandmother, retired at the end of June 2013 from a 35 year career, and loving this new phase of my life. Archives
December 2015
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