More from the Family Archives

Digging through the archive of family photos I came across these gems from when I was 2 and 2 1/2. The funny thing about both photos is that 1) my mother saved both of those outfits and still has them, and 2) both the wing chair and the love seat are sitting in the same locations in my parents' home - 41 years later! Can you believe it?!

Although many things have changed in the house over the years, the formal living room, in terms of its furniture, has changed little in four decades. They've simply added oriental rugs to replace the green carpet shown in the photos. But don't fret that they might have thrown out the old rugs; they were recycled and placed in an extra second floor den where they will doubtless lie until my parents are gone and the house is sold.

My boys always get a kick out of these pictures because they just can't imagine that I could have been this young or this small. I look at them and feel really old.

A Fishy Fourth

On July 4th our family - including several cousins, an aunt and uncle, and several small boys that no one wants to claim - converges on Virginia's "Eastern Shore" for a day of visiting and over-eating. If you're not familiar with this area, think of the lower portion of the Delmarva peninsula. If that doesn't jog your memory, you might recall the story of Misty the pony, and her place in the lore of Chincoteague and Assateague Islands. Portions of our family - including Drummonds, Silverthornes, Kilmons, Rues, and Justises - have called Accomac County home since the 1630s. So for us, the annual return is also about returning to one's roots in America, a perfect raison d'etre for our July 4th reunion. (This house, built at the beginning of the 20th century by my great-grandfather, was home to my grandmother and grandfather from the 1960s to the 90s. The wide front porch had a glider at the left end and a porch swing to the right. A daybed under the left window was my father's favorite post-lunch napping spot. Behind the right window there's a parlor with french doors. I remember spending long summer nights here, sweltering in the heat as large fans circulated the humid air.)

The high point of our 4th is a visit to the little Methodist church in which my father was baptised. For about 120 years the congregation has held a seafood feast to celebrate the occasion. We dine on crab cakes, clam fritters, ham, chicken, baked beans, cornbread, and lots of iced tea. (Too enamored with the crab cakes and fritters, I always eschew the salad, dinner rolls and mac-n-cheese.) Then we retreat to the huge porch of a cousin's large, turreted Victorian home in town and spend the afternoon chatting and dozing. Sometimes we take a drive around the countryside, pointing out the various homes and burial grounds that form the tapestry of our family's history in the area.

The town of Parksley itself is quite interesting. Although there are many communities on the Shore that trace their origins to the 17th and 18th centuries, this town was founded when the railroad came through the area in the 1880s. Until the early 1960s this was the primary lifeline for the community. Numerous family members boarded trains here to seek their fortunes elsewhere . . . and some returned at the end of their days to lie in the family plot at the town cemetery. When the Shore was connected to Virginia Beach and the mainland by bridge in 1964, the railroad quickly lost its position of importance. Today the rusty tracks do little more than bisect the Shore, paralleling Rt. 13 most of the way. The little stations that once dotted the route have either been demolished or converted to other uses. The town has at least tried to capitalize on its rail-centric past by starting a railway museum complete with old cars, including some cabooses and some beautiful Pullman cars. This July 4th as we sat on the porch just across the street from the museum and rails, my father and his younger brother recounted occasions when they would walk into town from their little hamlet back on the Bay to greet family members arriving by train.

Happy 10th Internet Anniversary

Ten years ago today I was surfing on one of Match.com's sites and found a personal that sounded interesting. I sent an email to this woman . . . and ten years later we're married (for nine years) with two kids and a cat. Yes, we were one of the early Internet dating success stories! My family still find it odd that I would have chosen a website as the place to meet a potential spouse . . . they even rolled their eyes and shook their heads on July 4th as I related the story to a cousin who hadn't heard the details.

It really was an amazing story, particularly when one realizes how many of these Internet relationships break down with those first face-to-face meetings. We corresponded constantly for a week, writing long missives in which we revealed our likes and dislikes, hopes and dreams, and idiosyncrasies. At that point we figured we should take it to the next level: phone. So we started on the phone, and the chemistry that had developed through emails continued. We also exchanged photos at this point, since neither had posted a photo online. Over several weeks we ran up a ridiculous long distance bill. (I was teaching in Tennessee; she lived in New York City.)

Finally, by the end of July we knew we had to meet. So I booked an early August flight to the Big Apple and she found a place for me to stay near her office in lower Manhattan. Thankfully I had a teaching schedule that allowed long weekends. I flew up on a Friday and she met me at LaGuardia. When I walked up the ramp and saw her waiting in a yellow floral dress, her blond hair highlighted with a bluish-green streak down one side, I knew . . . and she knew, that this was it. We came up for air on Monday and I flew back to Tennessee. For the next eight months I flew to NYC at least one weekend a month and she visited Tennessee a couple of times. We were married at the end of May 98, eleven months after those first emails.

Not surprisingly, email and the Internet have always been a focal point in our relationship. In those months before our marriage we continued to email constantly - although we were still talking on the phone each night - and we would send IM's throughout each day. Even now, we'll IM each other during the day, often taking care of important stuff that we just wouldn't have time to tackle with the kids around. My parents can roll their eyes and shake their heads in amused wonderment, but it works. And ten years on, it's a relationship that continues to evolve - with a little help from the Internet each day.

G.I. Ed

Over the years my father has created a pretty substantial archives of family photos, including old black and white snapshots from the 30s and 40s, and even some tintype images from the 19th century. Many of the oldest images he has even scanned and printed to share with widely scattered family members via email. His indexing system would make an archivist at the Library of Congress proud . . . but that's no surprise given his background as an overly anal accountant. (Although I have professional training as a historian and archivist, I'm afraid I must have skipped the line when they handed out the accountant's genes.)

While digging through some of his numerous flash drives and an external hard drive last week, I ran across some humorous photos of his time in the army. He was drafted during the Korean conflict and, thanks to high test scores, spent his entire time in the U.S. Army taking courses for the Signal Corps. He even got to work on some of the early mobile radar systems. Nevertheless, while he likes to talk about his brief stint in the army, particularly the period during which he was stationed at Fort Monmouth, NJ, close to New York City, he rarely has anything nice to say about the experience itself. Given his independent character - and a stubbornness that persists to this day - I'm not surprised! Unlike me, he never would have voluntarily chosen to attend a school like the Virginia Military Institute (VMI), which gave me four "fun-filled" years from which I'm probably still recovering twenty years later. Ed took his two years in the army and never looked back.

This second image, which I haven't seen in a few years, was always a favorite as a kid, primarily because I never could imagine my father riding a scooter. It just didn't mesh with his rather staid accountant's personality. Remember all of those Monty Python jokes about boring "chartered accountants" (the Brit equivalent of our CPA's)? I always thought my dad fit into that category. Time has revealed that he did have a slightly wild streak . . . although it's safe to say that a significant portion of my geek credentials were inherited from him! This photo gave me hope that for at least a brief moment in his early 20s my father was at least slightly cool.

Finally, here's an image of my father with his older brother, who had volunteered for Korea at the start of the war. I don't know the circumstances behind this 1952 meeting, but I'm guessing that they were both on leave and hooked up in El Paso for some fun. (My dad was stationed at Fort Bliss.) By the way, don't you just love the clothing of the 1950s!? I love the cut of the pants.

Back to the Apple

Tomorrow I drive back to New York City with my younger son and I have to say - honestly - that I'll be happy to return to the noise and faster pace. As I've said before, my biggest complaint about living/visiting in the suburbs is the necessity of getting in a car and driving somewhere to get anything! I love the "walkability" of New York and the accessibility of just about everything. Here, one couldn't walk anywhere if one wanted to. I see people walking at the mall near my parents' home and around the neighborhood in which they live . . . but they're never walking to get somewhere. As James Howard Kunstler pointed out in his seminal The Geography of Nowhere, only the poorest people walk in the land of sprawl, because they can afford neither a car nor public transportation.

I'll leave you with this photo of me at age 6, February 1970. Yes, I look pretty goofy, back in the days when little boys wore short pants with coat and tie in warm weather. When my wife looks at this picture she remarks that "it explains a lot" about my personality. How could my parents have let a photographer pose me like this?

"Just don't buy anything 'Made in China.' "

Earlier today I made the requisite visit to Wal-Mart and as usual I had mixed feelings about the trip. This time, as I wandered in the "Health and Beauty" section looking for cheap shampoo and anti-perspirant, I encountered a group of elderly customers, pawing the merchandise looking for deodorant. As they chatted, I heard one woman admonish the others, "Now remember, I don't want to buy anything 'Made in China.' " I barely suppressed a laugh and stifled the urge to reply, "Honey, you're in Wal-Mart; nearly everything in here was manufactured in China!" In the end, my son and I managed to wander the aisles and make it to the checkout lines with only four items . . . a miracle for Wal-Mart, where one is tempted by so much "stuff." You'll notice in one photo that yes, we're back in the land of NASCAR. I have never seen so much junk devoted to guys driving cars in circles. I have yet to figure out the sport's appeal.

Having covered the subject in other posts, I won't argue over the problems associated with the Wal-Mart phenomenon. I will note, however, that surveying the crowd and its purchases, one can understand the appeal of Wal-Mart. Given the diminished purchasing power of low-wage Americans, Sam Walton's empire seems a necessary evil. One just wishes that Wal-Mart didn't behave in such a monolithic fashion, particularly with regard to holding down wages, limiting access to health insurance, and preventing unionization of its workforce.

Of course, there were cameras everywhere, no doubt monitoring both customers and "associates." There's probably a "no photos in the store" rule, so I snapped these clandestinely, keeping the camera hidden and snapping only when employees weren't obviously close. Knowing Wal-Mart and its notorious security division (in the news over the last year for its practice of investigating employees, including executives) I would probably be escorted from the store if discovered taking pictures.

Bacon's Castle, Virginia

Yesterday we visited Bacon's Castle, a short drive from my family's house and across the James River from Jamestowne and other early American settlements. A favorite destination for the Sunday drives of my childhood, the "Castle," constructed in 1665, represents one of my first encounters with history and doubtless played a role in my path to becoming a historian. I remember as a child hearing stories about how the house was haunted . . . for example, by the ghost of Nathaniel Bacon, leader of Bacon's Rebellion (1676). The estate is now owned by the Association for the Preservation of Virginia Antiquities and includes beautiful - albeit simple - gardens that are based on print and archaeological evidence. In an area full of colonial-era structures, including those at Jamestowne and Williamsburg and numerous plantation houses, Bacon's Castle is unique architecturally. The chimney's, for example, reflect the influence of Elizabethan-era styles. I don't recall the details behind its construction, but one wonders how a 1665 building ended up looking like a structure built in 1565. Today we're off to Jamestowne to see what's been done to celebrate the 400th anniversary of the founding of Virginia. (By the way, the flowers are hollyhocks, among my favorites.)

Thursday Meme: Has American Culture Ruined You?

No surprise here! I'm off to Virginia and the Red States tomorrow. Pray for my soul in case I'm ambushed by either a right wing militia or wandering band of pentecostals.

You Have Not Been Ruined by American Culture

You're nothing like the typical American. In fact, you may not be American at all. You have a broad view of the world, and you're very well informed. And while you certainly have been influenced by American culture (who hasn't?), it's not your primary influence. You take a more global philosophy with your politics, taste, and life. And you're always expanding and revising what you believe.

Has American Culture Ruined You?

"Nixonian Stonewalling"

From The New York Times today:

WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Bush, moving toward a constitutional showdown with Congress, asserted executive privilege Thursday and rejected lawmakers' demands for documents that could shed light on the firings of federal prosecutors. Bush's attorney told Congress the White House would not turn over subpoenaed documents for former presidential counsel Harriet Miers and former political director Sara Taylor. In reaction, Senate Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy accused the administration of shifting "into Nixonian stonewalling" and revealing "disdain for our system of checks and balances."

The Bush administration's refusal to turn over documents or allow Harriet Miers to testify is tantamount to an admission of guilt. Moreover, Senator Leahy is entirely correct when he suggests that the Bush administration's actions are analogous to the tactics of Nixon during the Watergate scandal. The doctrine of "executive privilege," which has always rested on a shaky legal foundation, is merely a tool employed by the Bush White House to avoid revealing potentially damning evidence. And as for the "disdain for our system of checks and balances," Bush and his cronies have long been explicit in their contempt for Constitutionally-defined limitations on executive power.

With no issues of national security at stake in the fight over federal prosecutors, the Bush administration simply must allow some degree of transparency to preserve Americans' faith in the morality of their government. Unfortunately, Bush and his lap dogs have given the nation a thoroughly amoral government in which the only principle to which there is signal loyalty is the doctrine of power and its aggrandizement. The decisions yielding the fraudulent war in Iraq notwithstanding, the conduct of the White House and attorney general in this case are worthy of the most thorough investigation and articles of impeachment for the president and vice president. (And to think we almost had Harriet Miers as a member of the U.S. Supreme Court. I think we really dodged a bullet on that one!)

Building Restorations

Yesterday I mentioned that in Manhattan - unlike many areas in suburbia - buildings are more often refurbished and restored than torn down. This is particularly true when one is working in an architecturally significant section of the city in which razing a landmark structure in favor of a glass and steel tower would only invite controversy and public outrage. More sensitive developers have realized that by gutting an existing but blighted architectural gem, especially one that has been under-utilized or semi-derelict for years, they can preserve the aesthetic continuity of a neighborhood while banking some goodwill among residents and potential patrons.

On 6th Avenue, for example, from about 18th to 23rd Street, there's an old retail district defined by some architectural beauties that date to the late 19th century. When new they often housed large, multi-floored department stores, one of the mercantile innovations of an era that gave us Montgomery Ward and Sears & Roebuck. Now quite a few have been rescued and redeveloped. Who cares if a model of Victorian design now houses an Old Navy, Bed Bath & Beyond, and a Marshall's? They were constructed originally to house stores and they're certainly preferable to the characterless boxes of the strip mall or bland storefronts of the average mall! (There's a section of Broadway from approximately Ninth Street to Madison Square and the Flatiron Building that is very similar to this part of 6th Avenue. Often referred to as the "Ladies" Mile" because of its retail focus, this area was a focal point of Gilded Age New York . . . the city seen in the works of Edith Wharton, for example.)

I find it interesting how many of these buildings exist as organic structures: they evolve, enjoy good times, fall into disrepair and neglect, are rescued, restored, and rejoin the vibrant life of the city in life cycle that in some cases spans well over 100 years. All too often, buildings in suburbia are bulldozed within less than 20 years of their construction. But this harsh reality isn't surprising when one considers how little thought went into their design. In contrast, this building on 6th Avenue has been used for retail pursuits for more than a century. Most recently its ground floor held shoe and clothing stores, while its rather sad looking upper floors apparently housed a rabbit warren of odd offices and apartments. A couple of years ago a board went up outside the building displaying a developer's plans to return the structure to its Victorian splendor, including restoration of two gold domes that anchored the north and south corners of the facade. Who knew the building had gold domes? I guess at some point several decades ago they had fallen into such a derelict state that they had been removed altogether. Now the restoration is nearly complete. And like so many New York buildings, this will be used for a combination of retail and residential interests. (I suspect that the condos will be astronomically priced, given the skyrocketing prices for housing stock in Chelsea. I think a duplex that includes one of the turreted rooms under the domes would make a nice home studio!)

"Affluenza" and My Red State Adventure

"Dissatisfaction itself becomes a commodity as soon as the economy of affluence develops the capacity to process boredom." Guy Debord, Society of the Spectacle

This Friday I drive down to Virginia for an eight-day visit with the parents and other family members, the first time I've been South since last Thanksgiving. Living in the petri dish that is New York City, I'm always struck by the rapidity of change in the landscape once one enters suburbia.

Sure, New York City changes quickly too: Business start and fail in rapid fire order and slowly but surely some of the institutions most often associated with the exurban milieu creep into the Manhattan landscape. We finally have Olive Garden, Hooters, Red Lobster, Outback and, I believe, Applebee's. Mind you, Manhattanites don't actually patronize these establishments; they were imported for the tourist trade. When scores of waddling visitors from Ohio or Texas are disgorged from their air-conditioned buses, they want to be pleasantly surprised by the realization that there will be no surprises. Rather than take a chance on New York's innumerable non-chain restaurants, tourists prefer the predictable. And after a full day of wandering around no more than a 10-block area from Times Square to Rockefeller Center, taking in the Empire State Building and Madame Tussuad's Wax Museum, they crave the homogeneity that defines their non-vacation lives.

Frankly, it's this homogeneity that scares me a little when I leave New York. Between the cretinization of the media and the paralyzing sameness of our consumer culture, it's not surprising that so many Americans, experiencing something of an existential meltdown, have either run shrieking into the arms of the religious right or immersed themselves fully in the orgiastic worship of the commodity.

Affluenza: The All-Consuming Epidemic defines the condition of "affluenza" in almost medical terms, as "a painful, contagious, socially-transmitted condition of overload, debt, anxiety, and waste resulting from the dogged pursuit of more." And 99.99% of Americans, myself included, suffer from this disease. My weird perspective on this problem is doubtless skewed by the often surreal nature of living in New York City. But when I drive into Virginia - indeed, when I confront the prospect of having to drive everywhere for everything - I just find the obsession with material gain altogether more tangible.

And this brings me back to that theme of rapid change, because I'm invariably shocked at the degree to which our farms, forests, and wetlands are bulldozed to make way for yet more "big box" retailers and strip malls. At least in New York City developers largely recycle and reuse the extant building stock. All too often in suburbia, this is not the case. For example, near my parents' home, there's a vacant Lowe's sitting not more than a mile from a brand new Lowe's, the newer site having been secured because it promised a bigger parking lot and greater square footage. The vacant Lowe's has been sitting for at least three years, and it's just one example among many in that area.

I love visiting my family . . . but I don't think I could live in that landscape of exit ramps, feeder roads and vast parking lots again. Conversely, my family - and most Americans - would never consent to live in Manhattan. Nevertheless, New York City has been cited as one of the "greenest" cities in the U.S., in part because of the "mixed use" of land by retail and residential entities and the propensity of residents to walk or take public transportation.

One of my plans for this visit to Virginia is a day of snapping photos of the worst examples of sprawl. Given the economic growth around my parents' home, examples will not be hard to find. I'll share the results here!

"The loudest sound in the land was the oink and grunt of private hoggishness;
this was the age of the slob." William V. Shannon, on life in the Eisenhower years

Fire Escape Redux

I know, I know . . . I've painted fire escapes before and posted them to this blog. Like water towers and roof gardens, they're ubiquitous features of New York City architectural landscape and I do enjoy photographing and painting them. Particularly in older buildings like this example on Bond Street at Broadway, they add a nice angular geometry to an already interesting structure. And, in another reflection of "first principles" in my artistic mind, the fire escape acts as a great filter for the light, changing the nature of the image entirely. The carved faces which frame all of the windows on this very large building - probably 1870s or 1880s given the history of development along this section of Broadway - lend it extra character in an area often defined architecturally by neo-classical facades.

Of course, I always wonder if anyone has actually had to use them as an escape route or, in the days before air-conditioning, slept on them to escape the oppressive heat of a stifling apartment. (In this context, I'm always reminded of the 1938 "Heatspell" picture, shown left, by noted photographer Weegee.)

As always, I'm unhappy with the quality of the scan in terms of accurate color reproduction. Still don't know what to do about that issue.

And to think that I was worried about getting a paltry PG rating!

Mingle² - Online Dating

Gay Pride

The largest Gay Pride parade in the world ends about a block from my doorstep here in Greenwich Village, and we're just around the corner from Sheridan Square and the site of the famous June 1969 Stonewall Riots, considered a watershed event in the gay rights movement. To observe that there is a "gay presence" in our neighborhood would be an understatement. Gay and lesbian residents in the West Village are as much a part of the heterogeneous fabric of our community as anyone else . . . African Americans, Hispanics, Asians, or fat WASPs like me. Nearly 40 years after Stonewall, "gay pride" is a daily cause célèbre in our neighborhood, woven into the very fabric of our lives. Life in the West Village - albeit not without its tensions and hot button political issues - reveals just how far our society has come since Stonewall.

Still, for most of America, this is an exception rather than the rule. The popularity of "Will and Grace" or other gay media figures notwithstanding, gay pride in many communities remains a clandestine affair because of the fear of persecution borne of bigotry and intolerance. Religious conservatives in particular still love to rail against the homosexual community, scapegoating it for society's promiscuity, AIDS, alcoholism, violent crime, and just about any other "ill" one can identify in the U.S. When Jerry Falwell suggested that 9/11 was God's punishment for a "sinful" America, he included homosexuals in an enumeration of our sins. Although the front lines in the gay rights movement currently focus on the issues of gay marriage and domestic partnerships with their attendant legal ramifications, for many gay and lesbian Americans, life hasn't progressed much beyond 1969 . . . which brings me back to the issue of the annual Pride Parade in New York City.

Officially the parade is a celebration of Stonewall and the significant gains made since that example of civil disobedience. Unfortunately, the parade itself has degenerated into a Mardis Gras-like orgy of irresponsible behavior. The vast majority of groups marching to Christopher Street take the Pride Parade as an opportunity to participate in the public life of the community, celebrate the significance of Stonewall, and/or support friends and family affected by the gay rights movement and its issues. Unfortunately, there are also numerous participants who assume the occasion gives them a license to be rude or engage in behaviors just not acceptable on city streets, whether the day is about gay, straight, or whatever. Although parade organizers doubtless want to allow participants to express themselves and their "pride" as openly as possible, I don't think my 7 and 8-year old boys need to see a phalanx of scantily clad men dressed to look like penises and hairy scrotums . . . or the drag queen dressed like Marie Antoinette sporting a towering 18th-century French-like wig constructed from tampons.

It's this kind of behavior that has prompted many of our gay and lesbian neighbors - people who have been "out" and "proud" for decades and understand the historic significance of Stonewall - to pack up and leave for the weekend. One friend derisively refers to the parade as "amateur night" because it attracts revelers who are "gay for a day" but have no understanding of the context of the gay rights movement in a post-Stonewall society.

As an outside observer familiar with the movement's issues - and the charges leveled against it by conservatives - I have to conclude that the Pride Parade is detrimental to the success of the larger movement. Film crews from some of the hate-mongering groups in this country attend the parade just so they can "confirm" what they've been preaching from their pulpits for decades. They select the most controversial elements of the spectacle, pull them from the context of the larger event, and use these vignettes in their propaganda campaign to incite homophobia in those media markets that have not experienced the effects of Stonewall and the mainstreaming of gay and lesbian society.

Since the 1960s spokespersons for the gay rights movement have justifiably drawn parallels between their cause and that of African Americans in the civil rights movement. Yet what if some of those marching with Dr. King in Alabama had donned minstrel costumes or pantomimed the Hollywood stereotypes of the day in an effort to draw attention to their actions? Would so many Americans have recognized the justness of their cause or accepted the moral leadership of Dr. King? One suspects that civil rights leaders would have very quickly recognized the disconnect in such tactics and moved to preserve the dignity of their marches. Organizers of the Pride Parade in New York City need to do the same, recognizing the seriousness of their cause while still celebrating the progress made since 1969. And, by toning down some of the more sexually overt behavior of the occasion, they'll likely succeed in restoring the support of those older members of the gay and lesbian community who can actually remember Stonewall (or even participated in the event) but feel alienated by the current "Carnivale" character of the parade.

Mstislav Dobuzhinsky (1875-1957)

Back in early May I had shared a post on the early 20th century Russian artist, Anna Ostroumova-Lebedeva. Again, I've been doing some reading on 20th century Russian art history and have stumbled upon a painter, Mstislav Dobuzhinsky (self portrait, left), whose images really resonate for me. His early works tended to focus on urban scenes, particularly in and around St. Petersburg. His urban paintings usually depicted the bleakness and ugliness of urban life, sometimes offered in contrast to the beauty of surrounding neo-classical architecture. In addition, Dobuzhinsky provided illustrations for many books and magazines (including images for an edition of Dostoyevsky's White Nights). In 1924 he immigrated to Lithuania, and in 1939 to the U.S., where he worked primarily as a stage designer (with which he had experience during his time in Russia and Lithuania). I've included works below which illustrate the breadth of his work.

Courtyard in St. Petersburg. 1920. Blacklead on paper.

Illustration for Dostoyevsky's White Nights.


Man with Spectacles. Portrait of the Art Critic and Poet Constantin Sunnerberg. 1905-06. Charcoal and watercolor on paper.

Omnibus in Vilno. 1907. Pastel on paper.


Vitebsk. 1919. Watercolor, ink on paper.

"A Grief Observed"

My mother-in-law passed away suddenly Wednesday night. To say that our family was devastated by the news would be an understatement. After the initial shock my wife has been amazingly strong, in part to lessen the trauma for our boys. In private, however, she lets it out and I've had to assume this new role in our marriage, grief counselor. Telling the kids was arguably the most difficult part of the process, because they were close to Grandma and, having never experienced it quite so close to home, will have a more difficult time understanding death. Still, I was surprised at their resilience after the initial moments of crying and loss.

(I actually shed more tears over the prospect of telling the kids than anything else. As an adult I can take the news and compartmentalize it, addressing it within the parameters of my own belief system and past experiences with grief and the loss of a loved one. But trying to measure emotionally how they might handle the news was just too much for the barrier I had erected against tears. I was particularly saddened for my older son who had spent a great deal of time with Grandma, including week-long visits to her home in Connecticut. Having had a similar relationship with my maternal grandfather, I knew this would be difficult for my son. In that sense, I guess, my tears were as much a product of my own loss of a grandparent twenty years ago.)

Thankfully we have a strong support network of friends and family who have stepped up with offers of food, help, you name it. For that we are very lucky - and very grateful. My wife in particular, always the "people person" and much more outgoing than me, has an army of friends who stand ready to assist. I think for her the most difficult time will come later, during the months in which she will have to address the myriad legal questions, as well as figuring out what to do about Grandma's house and possessions. Luckily there's no rush to deal with any of that, no internal family battles over wills and property.

At times like this I tend to return to some of the more sage voices on the subject of death and grief. C.S. Lewis's examination of his own grief following the death of his wife, A Grief Observed (the book that inspired the play and film Shadowlands), stands as the "thinking person's" self-study on loss, albeit in a Christian context. At a more visceral level is Act 3 from Thornton Wilder's Our Town, a play which occupies a critical position in the canon of American literature. Not relying explicitly on Christian symbolism in his treatment of death, Wilder instead seems more universalist in perspective.

What does this all mean in terms of our own family's loss? It's too early to tell. But if we're like most people, eventually the wound will heal over and we'll recall the happy memories of Grandma and recognize how lucky we were to have her with us. For now, however, my usual tendency towards verbosity escapes me.

Calla Lily

A good friend recently asked if I ever paint flowers, given my penchant for photographing them. At this point, I have to offer an emphatic "no." I tried, of course, during the earliest period of my self-imposed apprenticeship with brushes and tubes of color. I usually attempted roses, but my last effort was the calla lily, a favorite since having grown them in my Tennessee gardens. They're fairly idiot proof and the results are always so incredible . . . the subtlety of their colors, the graceful taper of their long stems, fading from green into the dominant color of each bloom. With that shape they're very elegant. Alas, I was not happy with the results, primarily because I just didn't feel as if I had captured their grace. So thereafter I abandoned flowers for the hard-edged reality of architecture and urban scenes.

Normally I wouldn't photograph flowers in a shop window. But these callas (and an interesting rose of variegated red and white) were just too stunning to pass up. We're lucky that one of the best flower shops in the city (not counting the wholesale places in the west side's "flower district") is right around the corner from our home. Their regular displays of flowers are always stunning - and no doubt expensive. So we admire from afar. I'm surprised these images turned out ok, since they were shot at night, through the glass windows of the shop.

Homer simpson and steak

Growing up on Virginia's Eastern Shore, my father attended a little Methodist Church that for about 120 years has held an annual 4th of July seafood dinner. It's the church's primary fundraiser for the year and attracts people from a pretty wide area, including many former residents and members like my father.

Every summer I drive down to VA for the holiday and we always end up making the pilgrimage back to the church to enjoy some of the best seafood I've ever had. Of course, it's all you can eat, which is an incredible proposition when one is in the presence of limitless crabcakes, oyster and clam fritters, fried chicken, and groaning tables of side dishes. Each year as I pile my plate high with all of that fried seafood bounty, my mother always asks, "Brian, don't you want some of the other things?" . . . the other things being cornbread, salad, dinner rolls, mac'n'cheese, baked beans, and a table full of desserts. Whenever she asks that, I'm reminded of the great "Simpsons" episode in which Homer, having just started a steak-eating contest, is admonished by Marge, "Don't fill up on bread." That's the way I feel every year on July 4th.

"Brian, don't fill up on bread," is sage advice if one has a choice between ordinary dinner fare and crab cakes. Obviously I love those other things. To be honest, I never met a starch I didn't like. But dinner rolls or macaroni versus seafood is no contest. Perhaps the only thing that could make me cut back on the crab cakes on this occasion would be another southern favorite - deep-fried biscuits. Haven't heard of them? Take a can of regular Pillsbury biscuits, fire up the "Fry Daddy" and drop each biscuit in the boiling oil for a few seconds until it's golden brown. Now I do consider myself a hush-puppy connoisseur; it's hard-wired into one's southern gastronomic DNA. But in a contest with fried biscuits, hush-puppies just don't stand a chance. At this point I'm salivating like Homer Simpson . . . and waiting eagerly for July 4th. I'll report on the experience during my 8-day "red state" adventure.

Monday Flowers

As usual, here are Monday flowers, found over the Father's Day weekend. My younger son and I discovered this hibiscus and sunflower during a brief walk yesterday. I'm especially fond of sunflowers for both their beauty and the memories they induce. They're likely the first thing I ever tried to grow . . . What school child hasn't tried to grow a sunflower that was started in a paper cup with a measure of dirt and way too much water? They're also pretty sturdy as cut flowers and brighten any room in which they're displayed. Of course, I prefer them uncut, anchoring the back of a vegetable garden (which is how my grandmother grew them, along with gourds and cucumbers, on the Eastern Shore) or rising up along quiet back roads in the Virginia Tidewater where I grew up. Now there are so many hybridized varieties of sunflowers that one can find everything from miniatures to the more traditional giants, and bright yellow to variegated types with stripes of yellow, orange and red. One day I'd like to see the vast fields of sunflowers in a place like Spain, where they sometimes grow as far as one can see . . . for example, along the pilgrimage route to Santiago de Compostela.

Volkswagon Observatories and Telescope Dreams

My father had a 1964 Volkswagon Beetle, purchased new just a couple of months after I was born. (The fact that he selected a VW bug in an age of cars still characterized by the gas-guzzling behemoths of Detroit says a lot about his personality and is worthy of its own blog entry.) If you're familiar with the old Bugs, you'll recall a small area - ostensibly for storage - just behind the back seat. No doubt this tiny area, carpeted in a fabric comparable to a penitent's hair shirt, was a product of the VW's rear-engine design. Actually, however, I think the designers had the storage of small children in mind when they added that space to the Bug's layout. For me, at an early age, it was a perfect retreat on lengthy car trips. I recall many hours prostrate back their, lulled to sleep by the characteristic noise and vibration of that air-cooled engine.

Yet I also remember lying in the rear looking up at the stars through the VW's oval window, a site made more spectacular on those monthly occasions when we'd visit my grandparents on the Eastern Shore. We would stay until dark, and then head for home on what was usually a 2 or 2 1/2 hour drive, down the Shore and across the Chesapeake Bay. With so little light pollution, the view was always striking.

My parents have noted that these occasions usually sparked a barrage of questions about planets, stars and astronauts. Remember, this was a golden age for NASA and our space program, years punctuated by the successes of the Apollo program. And as I noted in a previous entry, my homage to the late Wally Schirra, these guys were my heroes! Sure, I was interested in the usual 7-year old stuff: G.I. Joes, Matchbox cars, and baseball. But already I was establishing my geek credentials with an interest in history and astronomy.

The interest in history was not a surprise, given our family habit of taking Sunday drives to Williamsburg, Jamestown, and local Civil War battlefields. Frequent trips to Washington, D.C. only solidified this passion. When the Smithsonian opened its new Air and Space Museum I was hooked. If one had asked me at 10, "What do you want to be when you grow up, Brian," I would have answered either an "astronomer" or "archaeologist." Upon reflection I realize that I was also starting to ask questions about the "nature" of the universe and its creation, and wondering if it would be possible to reach any of these celestial objects if one had a rocket fast enough. I'm still fascinated by those questions today, hence my continued interest in astrophysics, quantum mechanics, and space travel. (Polling my 7 and 8-year old sons recently I learned that they both want to be professional baseball players. My younger son added that he also wants to be a children's book illustrator. My older son wants to sing in musicals when he's not playing ball. Faced with that range of interests, I have no doubts about their paternity!)

It wasn't long before I started begging for a telescope so I could see first-hand some of the wonders encountered in dog-eared issues of Sky and Telescope. At 11 I took my first earnings from a summer of cutting lawns and purchased a 3-inch refractor. It was ok; I had incredible views of the moon, could see the rings of Saturn and resolve some of the fuzziness of the Orion nebula. Like countless generations of amateur astronomers before me, I would note the changing positions of Jupiter's Galilean moons from night to night. Nevertheless, I had already set my sights on bigger scopes, and remember leafing through copies of Astronomy magazine, salivating over the latest Celestron and Meade scopes, usually the big Schmidt-Cassegrain reflectors on fork mounts. But at well over $1,000, I knew these were out of reach. So I waited, and waited, until 1994, when I decided to reward myself for completing my Ph.D. by purchasing my dream telescope. I scanned the ads at Astromart for a used 8-inch Celestron (like the one pictured above), found one I liked, and spent the money without hesitation.

All too often long-deferred dreams are tempered by the reality of experience. Desire clouds our judgment and the adrenaline-fueled anticipation sets us up for a letdown. At 30 I had the awe and giddiness of a child and, thankfully, was not disappointed on this occasion. The reality matched the anticipation. After pointing the telescope at some pretty obvious naked-eye objects like the moon and Jupiter, I set the scope up to find an object so faint that one had to rely only on coordinates to locate it. Much to my surprise, I succeeded in finding the Ring Nebula, which even in an 8-inch scope appears as a faint, donut-like gaseous cloud. (The false-color image of the Ring Nebula above was taken by the Hubble Space Telescope. The colors correspond to the presence of different gasses. For example, blue indicates helium, while green indicates oxygen.) From there I trained my sights on galaxies, globular clusters, and other nebulae. Galaxies are particularly stunning because I'm always compelled to reflect on their immensity, with billions of stars swirling in a beautiful elliptical pattern, while contemplating our minuscule size in the universe. The Andromeda Galaxy (pictured below), visible as a faint smudge with binoculars, is particularly arresting because it is thought to be similar in size and shape to our own galactic home. It's the astronmer's equivalent of gazing in a mirror.

When I moved to New York City I had to sell the telescope, realizing that I would have neither the space for it nor viewing conditions worthy of such an instrument. I still look skyward, picking out constellations when they're visible and, under the right conditions, pointing out fuzzy patches that would reveal themselves as nebulae or clusters even with binoculars. And again I'm waiting . . . waiting for an opportunity to share the hobby with my boys and purchase a new telescope. This time I doubt it will be as serious a setup as my Celestron. So now I salivate over 8 and 10-inch Newtonians on Dobsonian mounts, biding my time.