Toast

I "inherited" a toaster similar to this when the estate items of a great uncle and aunt were parceled out to family members before sale of the house. The main thing I remember about this couple was their chihuahua, Ladybug, who spent most of her time in one lap or the other. (I also recall the perpetually plastic-covered furniture in their living room, a decorating touch doubtless inspired by the dog's presence.)

Ladybug was a friendly little dog, which proved a welcome contrast to the chihuahua - Princess - that belonged to the other dog-loving great aunt. Move a finger and Princess would emit a muffled growl. Move an arm or a leg and the growl would become louder and more menacing. Try to stand up and walk and Princess assaulted the offender with a cacophony of barking and growling, all emitted as she sat in my chain-smoking great aunt's lap. (Come to think of it, I believe all of my grandfather's younger sisters - two of them nurses! - smoked like chimneys at some point in their lives.) An evil little dog. This is an unusual admission on my part, because I tend to love all dogs and cats and believe that with patience (and lots of high-pitched baby talk), I can befriend any of them in Doctor Doolittle-esque fashion. Princess, however, seemed beyond salvation, the irredeemable dog sinner bound for doggy hell. She probably died with her face permanently frozen in a snarl. I remember our visits to Richmond involved lots of sitting and talking, with very little movement on our part, lest we invite the wrath of our aunt's lap demon.

But back to the toaster. I always liked the reflectiveness of the bright chrome and hated to see fingerprints on the surface. Still, I didn't enshrine it as a monument to Eisenhower-era toaster technology. I used that toaster regularly, despite the vagaries of its out-of-sync heating elements: One quickly learns which sides of the toast will blacken more readily. 9" x 12", watercolor, brush & ink, pen & ink, Fabriano 140 lb. paper.

Playground

Over the last several years we've spent countless hours at the Bleecker Playground. That time, however, seems to be coming to an end. While the boys were once among the little ones toddling around and climbing tentatively on the equipment, they're now among the oldest, zipping around much smaller children and nervous parents. Still, on a hot day, it's a great place to cool off in the sprinklers, running through the water and pelting each other with water balloons. My favorite time at the playground is late afternoon/early evening, when the low sun shines across the Hudson and gives everything a warm glow. Even the wet detritus of play takes on a luminous quality as the sun begins to disappear behind the buildings of Hudson Street. We'll often picnic in the playground on pleasant summer evenings, grabbing take-out from the chinese restaurant next door, mixing bites of dumplings and fried rice with dashes through the water or a turn at kickball. I'll miss the playground when the boys finally abandon it as a favorite place.

Happy Easter!

For those of you who celebrate the occasion, Happy Easter! (Enjoy the lilies!) As a child I usually associated Easter with the purchase of a new suit appropriate for wearing to church on spring Sunday mornings. I remember a few occasions when we received Easter baskets full of marshmallow and chocolate eggs nestled in that fake green grass. (Don't let your cat your dog swallow this stuff or you're in for a treat. The same rule applies for Christmas tinsel.) But the concept of the "Easter Bunny" was never really heralded in our household in the way Santa was given nearly equal status to the religious iconography of Christmas. I guess it's easier to reconcile Santa and the spirit of giving with the symbolism of Christ's birth. Sure, I've heard some apologists try to sell the idea that the eggs of Easter symbolize the potential of rebirth and resurrection. But it just seems like too great a stretch, trying to convince one's kids of the Easter Bunny's existence, even during the innocence of the toddler years. It reminds me of Jimmy Stewart trying to pass off the idea that Harvey, his unseen 6-foot rabbit companion is just as real. We've never mentioned the Easter Bunny to our kids. Naturally they like the idea of receiving candy for the occasion, but for them there's no association between the candy and a bunny. Indeed, having frequently watched the Veggie Tales episode on "The Promise of Easter," I'm confident they realize that Easter isn't about bunnies or chocolate. Moreover, we've done our best to explain the significance of Easter - and Christmas - within their proper religious contexts. Whether they ultimately choose to accept the standard Christian ideals vis-a-vis Easter will be up to them as they formulate a mature belief system and explore their own spirituality.

Happy Birthday, Part 2

Remember my birthday post on January 31st? I had mentioned a photo of my mother standing in our den, about to leave for the hospital. My father has graciously tracked down the photo and sent along a scanned copy. As I noted before, my parents had only moved into the house two weeks before my birth, so the den - and I'm guessing most of that large house - had a rather spartan appearance. Although the bookshelves are full now and the room is a comfortable haven with numerous family antiques, memorabilia, and newer furniture, some things haven't changed. Indeed, I believe the magazine rack next to the chair in this photo is the same one that now sits next to my father's favorite recliner. So here's the photo. My mother may be smiling, but her eyes say, "Hurry up and take the picture."

"Over the River and Through the Woods" - Christmas Travel

Of my childhood Christmas memories, some of my favorite recollections involve travel to see family. Every year on December 26th we'd pile into the car and drive the 100 miles to see my paternal grandparents on Virginia's "Eastern Shore." This was always an adventure - as was any winter trip to see them - because the bathroom in their house was unheated. (To this day I still don't understand why they didn't keep the door open so some of the heat from other parts of the house could warm the room up. I guess they were trying to keep the main rooms as warm as possible for a house that was underheated and had no insulation.) So any trip to the facilities involved putting on a coat. If you had to sit down, one's rear end was treated to a chilling awakening, perhaps similar to the icy grip of a hospital bedpan. Still, the Arctic bathroom experience couldn't diminish the occasion, an affair defined by a dinner that perennially included my grandmother's seafood recipes, supplemented by piles of buttery cornbread. (The giant pile of clam and oyster shells in the back yard was testimony to decades of delicious meals.) At the end of the day we'd load up the car and drive the two hours back home, with my brother and I usually falling asleep to the rhythmic thump of the car tires bouncing over the Chesapeake Bay Bridge Tunnel's pavement sections.

Within a few days of that trip - at some point before New Year's Eve - we'd bet back in the car to visit my great-grandmother. This excursion, involving a three-and-a-half to four-hour drive, always began in the dark. My maternal grandfather, whose mother we were going to see, would arrive at the house around 5:00 a.m., his Ford Galaxy 500 loaded with food, gifts, and my complaining grandmother. We'd load our car and then start across Route 58, which runs along the southern border of Virginia.


We would drive west through little towns and burgs, finally stopping for breakfast around Emporia or South Hill, finding one of those "mom and pop" family restaurants that once flourished along America's byways before the fast food franchises wiped them from the map. Then off we'd go again, heading for South Boston and eventually Brookneal, in the heart of Virginia's tobacco-growing counties.

My great-grandmother's house in winter was, unfortunately, like my grandmother's house - a study in contrasts between icebox-like rooms into which no heat was allowed, and sweltering rooms that could have doubled for saunas once large pots of food started boiling on the kitchen stove. I remember dashing outside to cool down and breathe fresh air, playing on the giant millstone of pink granite that rested in the front yard, a great stone circle that I guess served as a lawn decoration near the front porch. I would also brave the cold bedrooms upstairs to peruse the nursing textbooks left behind by my great aunts, several of whom had served in the Second World War. For a nine-year old boy, these dusty volumes offered photos of every imaginable medical malady - from cancers to wounded soldiers missing various body parts. Oddly, I'll never forget the photos of goiter patients, something so rarely seen today thanks to our diets rich in iodized salt.

I remember one year we drove in the snow and got to the intersection for the country road down which my great-grandmother lived. At that point, the snow became too deep to drive, so my grandfather parked the car right there, grabbed some bags of gifts, and marched a mile to the house to see his mother. We waited - my grandmother and I in the Ford, and my parents and brother in the Dodge. An hour later, my grandfather returned, we all turned around, and drove home. (I don't know why we all didn't get out and walk. If this happened today, I wouldn't hesitate to bundle the kids up and have them march a mile in the snow, particularly if I had just driven three or four hours. As New York City kids they're accustomed to walking long distances in all kinds of weather. I guess my parents thought it would be too much for us.)

Sleepy, and fortified with another incredible holiday meal, we'd pack up the car in late afternoon and start on the long drive home. Passing back through those little Virginia towns, paralleling the old railroad line that once linked these communities. Seeing the little abandoned stations in these towns, I always wondered what it would have been like to take the train out to my great-grandmother's, an experience my mother has always mentioned with fond memories. (Years later I would discover the photography of O. Winston Link, who spent countless hours in the 40s and 50s photographing the last of the great steam trains in this very part of Virginia.)

Now most of my family in that area is gone, most dead, the rest having followed my grandfather's lead and abandoned the life of the tobacco farmer. Still, I have those magical Christmases when we almost literally went "over the river and through the woods" to visit grandparents.

Christmas Spirit?

So here I am at age two, happy and carefree, posing in my little winter suit, doubtless anticipating - eagerly, despite the dubious look on my face - Santa's Christmas visit. (Yes, little boys were dressed up like this in 1966.) I remember being so excited about Christmas that falling asleep on Christmas eve always proved nearly impossible. By December 24th I had watched the litany of Christmas specials - from Charlie Brown to the Grinch - with rapt attention. Santa had been visited and my wishes revealed. All I had to do was wait - albeit impatiently - for the 25th.

Now my kids, at ages seven and eight, are at that stage of Christmas excitement. Every day they ask, "When's the tree going up?" and "When are we visiting Santa?" I enjoy their excitement and naturally see myself as a child mirrored in their behavior. But this year I'm having a hard time feeling that Christmas spirit. Mind you, I'm no Scrooge, awaiting the visit of Marley's ghost. But I'm likewise not "keeping Christmas" in my heart in the manner of Scrooge after the three hauntings. I simply haven't felt "Christmasy" yet, which is an odd feeling for someone who has always enjoyed thoroughly the trappings and rituals of the season. (I also enjoy the realization that many of our Christmas practices tap into that pre-Christian culture of Europe as a source of inspiration.)

Perhaps it's my frustration with the whole commercialization issue, which I've discussed here ad nauseum. There's also the religious hemming and hawing attendant with the season. And the painful fact of sensory overload, from overdone decorations to the never-ending loop of Christmas music blaring at my corner market, likely plays a role as well. The only bit of Advent or Christmas expression that has elicited the joy characteristic of the season has been a piece of music by Paul Manz: "E'en So Lord Jesus, Quickly Come," a modern piece that sounds ancient, like one of the lovely Medieval Christmas hymns many of us invariably sing at Christmas eve services. I know, I know. Isn't that an awfully religious work for someone whose doubts about the "miracles" of Christmas run quite deep?

For me, however, the tune means much more. Ten years ago I spent the week after Thanksgiving lying in a New York hospital, recovering from a bit of gastrointestinal trauma. That first Sunday after Thanksgiving happened to be the first Sunday of Advent. My wife - my fiancee at the time - sang in the choir of an Episcopal church and left my bedside for rehearsal and a church service. Knowing I loved this song, she used her cell phone to call my room during the service, at the moment the choir was singing the Manz piece. So I lay in my hospital bed and listened as she and the choir sang, the phone resting on the bench next to her. It was one of the most amazing things I've ever experienced. I lay there and sobbed through the whole piece. Now, ten years later, this song still grabs me, regardless of the season. More than anything else perhaps - Santas, trees, decorations, or TV specials - this song instills a meager measure of the Advent and Christmas spirit amidst my doubt and uncertainty.

Amo, Amas, Amat

A recent New York Times editorial, "A Vote for Latin," which discusses the value of studying Latin and laments declines in enrollment for the subject, reminded me of my own experience with the language and prompted some reflection on one of the more painful but rewarding episodes in my academic life. I studied Latin in the 8th and 9th grades, having a teacher, Mrs. Hall, who must have been 80 at the time. I even remember how we joked that she must have been alive at the time of the Punic Wars, a popular subject for translations. I also recall, painfully, how those first few months were such a struggle - learning a new vocabulary, cases, conjugation, gender. For an 8th grader it was all a bit overwhelming. And more than once the students in my class would recite that bit of damning doggerel: "Latin is a dead language, it came across the sea. It killed all the Romans, and now it's killing me." But once I had a sense of Latin's structure - and how it behaved - it became fun, like solving a puzzle. Accurately completing a translation was cause for celebration.

Of course, by the time I came along in the late 1970s, Latin was no longer one of those bedrock subjects that defined one's years in school. An education in the Classics, at least in this country, had become a rare thing indeed. Yet as the Times article points out, Latin scholarship proved valuable for several reasons. It taught one academic discipline, a necessity when trying to master any new language. It also exposed one to the history and culture of Rome, and thus offered the student a very different perspective on the world. Studying Latin also gave one a better understanding of our own language, since so many words in English have Latin roots. And finally, tackling Latin made it easier to pick up other languages later. (I remember finding German easy after having trudged through Latin textbooks.)

When I was an editor with the Papers of James K. Polk, I would regularly pick up letters to and from President Polk that were sprinkled with Latin phrases and allusions to classical texts. (Polk himself graduated from UNC with a degree in classics.) A quality often clear in these letters was the authors' broader understanding of history, particularly in the ways their own political experiences reflected the legacies of Athenian democracy and the later Roman Republic. Moreover, they seemed to possess a keener sense of the power of language. In this age before the "lowest common denominator" attitude of radio and television, the printed word could change the world. In our own national experience, for example, just look at the language - and impact - of Jefferson's "Declaration of Independence," the U.S. Constitution, or Thomas Paine's "Common Sense." These were "revolutionary" texts in the full sense of that word.

Recalling the bits and pieces of Latin vocabulary I can still remember, one word sticks out, a word I've remembered from 30 years ago: laudere, the infinitive for the verb "to praise." After reading the Times article, I have to look back and praise Mrs. Hall for having shared that knowledge and experience. And, honestly, I hope my kids have the opportunity to experience that painful epiphany of Latin's beauty.

Thanksgiving Routines

Thanksgiving is a rather bittersweet holiday for me, mainly because I miss the routines and rituals of my childhood . . . that "melancholy nostalgia" I mentioned in an earlier post this week. Until I was in college, Thanksgiving was nearly always defined by dinner at my maternal grandparents' home, with my grandfather doing much of the cooking. I always thought it funny to find my him in an apron - this man who had driven ammunition trucks in World War II and worked as a sheet metal press operator until retirement, with mashed fingers and gnarled hands. Yet here was a man who could make the sweetest desserts in the kitchen and grow the most beautiful flowers in his garden. He possessed a truly renaissance personality, remarkable given his background and education. (I know, I've posted this photo before, but it's a favorite, showing me, my grandfather, mother, and great-grandmother in late 1964.)

After his death in 1988 the family moved on to other Thanksgiving routines, with larger groups of extended family, more noise, more jockeying for position at the tables, and generally more angst over the preparations for the holiday. At that point I stopped returning to Virginia and adopted a "no travel" rule for Thanksgiving.

In recent years, my wife and I have kept our little family close to the city, even avoiding the Macy's parade, preferring a quiet day capped off by dinner with my wife's mother. But as many of you already know, this Thanksgiving we're dealing with her sudden death of just five months ago. Slowly we're finding our way to new holiday routines, deciding, for example, to gather with friends - "orphans of the storm" my wife calls them - who have decided to eschew travel for Thursday's festivities. We're also going to the Macy's parade for the first time, having scored tickets for grandstand seats. (If you're watching the parade on TV, who knows, you might see us sitting in the stands!) I can't imagine jostling for position on the sidewalks with the hordes of people who will swarm into the city on Thursday morning, so I'm hoping that the bleachers will prove a little more civilized.

And, as I've mentioned before, we leave early Friday morning for Vermont. I'm trying to keep those terrifying thoughts of the Sunday drive back into the city out of my head, and realize I need to learn to let go and just accept the traffic and the hassle. Does anyone know if there's a patron saint of traffic jams? If I put a springy statue of "St. Fordatus" or "St. Chevrolatus" on my dash, will we avoid gridlock? Will "Our Lady of the HOV Lane" intercede on our behalf and grant us peace and clear highways? If only it could be that simple. Wish us luck.

Autumn Wanderings

I was over at Ornamental's site writing a comment, admiring her good fortune to live in the mountains and have nature and solitude at her doorstep, when I recalled for the first time in ages the forest walks I would take as a kid.

I was lucky enough to grow up in a little neighborhood in southeastern Virginia that was surrounded by ample woodlands, water, and fields. Within minutes we could be running through rows of corn and soybeans, picking our way through thick woods, or stepping onto the muddy shores of a sizable river. When not playing sandlot sports, we were stealing wood from home construction sites to build our treehouses in the woods, which in summer were particularly inviting because they provided some shady relief from the Tidewater heat and humidity. Come winter, however, nearly all of my friends stayed out of the woods, returning only in the spring to observe and repair the weathered remains of their treehouse handiwork.

For me, however, this was the season to wander more deeply into the woods, without the hum of mosquitoes and thickets of poison ivy and oak. Summer was fun, mind you, but by November and December, the woods possessed an eerie hush that at least for me proved inviting and comforting. I remember in particular the sound of my feet crunching over the mattress of freshly fallen leaves and the noisy calls of crows that usually patrolled the adjacent fields of brittle corn stalks. If I went far enough I could explore the derelict remains of an old sharecropper cottage whose walls were plastered in old newspapers and scavenged sheets of linoleum. (I remember at the time puzzling about the people who might have lived there. The only clues I had were a few crumbling photos left behind, an African American family gathered for some unknown special occasion, arrayed in what looked like their Sunday best. A funeral? A wedding? Birthday?) I also wondered about the nearby abandoned pickup truck riddled by shotgun blasts, now locked into the woods by the jail-like bars of young trees.

On the rare occasions that we were blessed with snow, I usually tried to make it into the woods while the flakes continued to fall, just to take in that snowy silence that one can even now experience here in New York City. Central Park isn't exactly a fair substitute for the forests of my childhood, but on a snowy morning, it seems hundreds of miles from the traffic and noise of Manhattan, silenced for a few hours by a little winter magic.

Unfortunately much of that childhood setting has been erased for the sake of "progress." Most of the fields are now subdivisions with overpriced cookie-cutter houses sprouting on treeless lawns. The sharecropper cottage is long gone, and much of the surrounding forest has been stripped away to accommodate streets with names that only echo their presence: Sycamore Lane, Beech Circle, Balsam Way. How sad it is that the kids growing up in these homes will rarely see those sycamore or beech trees. I realize one shouldn't wallow in melancholy nostalgia, especially when the memories are indeed happy ones. But for me, tis the season of nostalgia, for the ghosts of Thanksgiving and Christmas past.

Baby Boomers on Social Security

On the news this morning I saw that the first official "Baby Boomer," Kathleen Casey-Kirschling, applied for Social Security benefits yesterday, signaling the start of a new kind of surge - the rush of boomers to tap Social Security. A retired teacher from New Jersey, Casey-Kirschling was born one second past midnight on January 1st, 1946, in Baltimore, MD.

This news got me thinking about my own place in the post-World War II "Baby Boom," which ostensibly lasted from 1946 until 1964. Some historians argue that the boom really applies only to those born prior to 1956, a group that was eligible for the draft during Vietnam. Obviously coming of age in the late 50s and confronting Vietnam on the cusp of adulthood represent significant influences for that generation. But do I, born early in 1964, really have much in common with someone born in 1946 or even the early 50s, for that matter? I don't really have a sense of shared experience with the Vietnam generation.

I guess from a purely statistical standpoint 1964 represented the final peak for the surge in the birthrate that followed World War II. And we all know the extent to which that population explosion changed the United States in every facet of society. But abandoning the demographers' pronouncements, I think experiential reference points perhaps better define the cohort to which we belong. Although I remember Vietnam, vaguely, along with the Apollo moon landings, and, just barely, the assassinations of Martin Luther King, Jr., and Robert Kennedy, I have stronger memories of Watergate, Nixon's resignation, and events of the mid-1970s and after. So maybe those of us born from about 1960 until 1970 represent an altogether different group from the true "Baby Boomers." Indeed, now in our late 30s and late 40s, we seem to be stuck between the "Baby Boomers" and the "Echo Boomers," the children of "Baby Boomers" who were part of a second surge in the birth rate that began in the early 1970s. And we're definitely not a part of the much ballyhooed "Generation X" which is now slogging through their 30s.

Using this experiential model we could include Watergate, the Bicentennial, Carter's election, the Iran Hostage Crisis and the Reagan years as benchmark events in our development. They certainly meant more to me in terms of first-hand experience than the Eisenhower years, Vietnam, JFK, or the Civil Rights Movement. Indeed, the post-1960 crowd only reaped the rewards - beneficial or otherwise - from those events so ascribed as defining elements in the "boomer" experience.

Regardless of how one feels about the semantics of defining the "Baby Boom," it will prove interesting to watch how this generation that so profoundly shaped the country in its youth, will affect the country in its old age. Some analysts are making dire predictions, particularly in the context of the Social Security system and in the field of geriatric medicine. No doubt their experience in old age will determine how I spend my retirement years.

Sidewalk Auguries & the Commodification of Halloween

Since the dawn of human existence we and our antecedents have looked to certain events as omens, divinations, and signs from god. These potential predictors of future events have been evinced in the form of everything from natural phenomena like eclipses and animal sightings, to a turn of tarot cards or a roll of the dice. Today I think I experienced my own augury of the future. As I stepped off the bus at Astor Place to catch the uptown subway I was greeted by a large puddle of Halloween-orange vomit. Surely that is an unwelcome sign that the day is not going to go well, an omen for rough sailing ahead. And sure enough it started off badly and hasn't improved. Let's hope the day brightens.

Speaking of Halloween, does anyone else out there think that retailers and advertisers have gone way overboard in the marketing of Halloween? I remember as a child how Halloween was a pretty low-key holiday. With no days off for school and only "It's the Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown" for kids' TV specials, Halloween seemed like the step-child of the bigger holidays, like a warm-up for Thanksgiving and Christmas, or a teaser for the mayhem of December 25th and Hanukkah. A few weeks before October 31st the candy displays would hit the Woolworth's, Grant's and Rose's (retail mainstays in the age before Wal-Mart and Target) and those crappy costumes with the plastic masks would find their way to the shelves. We would agonize over the "what are you gonna be" question and usually at the last minute we'd buy something from the store - a Frankenstein, Dracula, Casper the Friendly Ghost - or my mom would help us slap together something easy: hobos and football players were perennial favorites in our house. Jack-o-lanterns might appear a week or two before the revelry of trick-or-treating, but lawn decorations were simply non-existent. Occasionally there would be a community Halloween party and in elementary school we'd have a little party in our classroom. The night would arrive and we'd spend several joyous hours marching from house to house in my little subdivision of about 100 homes, and we'd fill our bags with the typical assortment of candy. (In that sense, the holiday has changed little. My kids pretty much get the same kinds of candy I received. And my wife and I always scrounge their bags for our old favorites - Three Musketeers, Nestles Crunch, and Butterfingers!) We didn't really worry about our personal safety or the safety of the candy. It really was a very innocent affair. Even when we were older and had stopped dressing up and trick-or-treating, we didn't engage in some of the nastier rituals associated with Halloween revelry. In such a small community, egging someone's house or toilet-papering their trees would have been foolhardy and the scoundrels pretty quickly rounded up. Our biggest concern always seemed to be the weather. In southeastern Virginia, October 31st could bring either frigid temperatures - necessitating an extra layer of clothes underneath those flimsy costumes - or balmy "Indian Summer" weather with 70 degree temps at trick-or-treat time. Cooler was definitely better, particularly from a psychological standpoint. I always associated the holiday with cool weather and the rustle of dried leaves underfoot as we clomped from door to door. Breaking a sweat in a Frankenstein mask was a long way from fun.

Today the holiday seems so much more complicated. I'm still amazed, for example, when I see the amount of decorations so many people place in their yards: inflatable monsters, elaborate haunted house displays, strings of plastic jack-o-lantern lights hung from trees and porches, and even orange Christmas-like strings of mini-lights. Indeed, Halloween - at least in suburbia - seems to rival Christmas for the sheer volume of stuff with which people adorn their homes. When did this happen? I'm guessing this is another product of the Wal-Martification of America. Cheap, plastic, and "made in China" are temptations simply too powerful to avoid on October 31st. The sheer commodification of the holiday is made all the more worse by the fact that the candy and decorations - even here in the City - start appearing in store as early as August and the beginning of September. (This marketing pattern is no surprise, of course. Christmas decorations will hit the stores on November 1st - if not sooner - and Valentine's candy and cards will appear on shelves by December 26th.)

Equally puzzling is the appeal of so-called elaborate "haunted houses," including some that employ Hollywood-style special effects to scare patrons. I remember "haunted houses" as a kid, but they were always amateurish affairs that were primarily fundraisers for various community groups like the volunteer rescue squad or fire department. Particularly troubling are the insidious "hell houses" run by fundamentalist Christian groups. These concoctions expose kids to the supposed "torments of hell" for those who sin, drink alcohol, engage in premarital sex, seek abortions, or engage in homosexual behavior. In the end, they're merely more tangible expressions of the hate-mongering these groups soft-peddle from the pulpit during the other eleven months of the year. Of course, these are the same people who refuse to let their kids read Harry Potter books or take part in the innocent play of Halloween because they associate these symbols with evil and Satanic worship. I'm still shaking my head over these examples of religious extremism.

Luckily, Halloween in the city is still fairly low-key. Some apartment buildings have trick-or-treating for the kids, with sign-up sheets posted to let everyone know who's taking part. In my neighborhood, West Village businesses along Hudson Street have trick-or-treating on the Saturday or Sunday afternoon closest to Halloween, usually in conjunction with a Halloween party held at the Bleecker Playground the same day. The kids march up and down Hudson Street and most businesses hand out candy to the costumed kids. It's fun, safe, and people in the neighborhood have a good time. Our kids' school will also have a "Monster Mash" Halloween party on the Saturday before Halloween as a big fundraiser for PTA programs.

I do know a few families who take their kids out to suburbia to trick-or-treat with friends so they can experience the more "traditional" door-to-door Halloween ritual, as if they're missing something in the City. Is this holiday really so important that kids need to take part in what some consider a "typical" ritualized experience, as if they're passing on some significant piece of cultural baggage without which their kids would be incomplete? And it's not like the Great Pumpkin is going to fly in and reward kids with toys and presents like poor Linus perennially hopes in the the Peanuts holiday special. It should just be fun, without ideological or philosophical strings attached. I remember no angst-ridden discussion by my fairly conservative parents about the pros and cons of dressing up as monsters or wizards for Halloween. In that sense, one can excuse the garish lawn displays. They're still tacky, but in the name of pure fun, a little tackiness is excusable.

Family Reunion Cancelled

Back in April I wrote about my mother's family and its tradition - stretching back to the 1920s - of having a reunion each year in south-central Virginia. I just learned this past weekend that for only the third time since the 20s they will not have a reunion. Illness has prompted the main organizer to bow out and it's too late for someone else to step up and organize the event. My grandmother, at 93, is understandably disappointed because it represents a lost opportunity to see people she may not see again. My mother, likewise saddened by the cancellation, has offered to step up next year and organize the thing if the same situation presents itself. With that reunion and what it has meant to my family fresh in my mind, I'm reposting the entry from April. Enjoy!
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For southerners, a large-scale family reunion is an event - the Jerry Springer Show and Jeff Foxworthy's redneck family jokes notwithstanding - that can rival a county fair for groaning tables of food and animal exhibits. And whether "Baptist dry" or punctuated by worries over alcohol poisoning, these affairs, particularly when measured out over decades, take on an organic life that echoes the births, deaths, and divorces of the actual participants.

That's certainly true of my mother's family, which has held a yearly late-summer/early fall reunion since the 1920s. (My mother hasn't missed one since 1941.) Started by my great-grandparents' generation but nurtured carefully by my grandparents and a gaggle of nearly two dozen siblings, these day-long spectacles draw family members from the isolated corners of Virginia to Halifax County, an area south of Lynchburg in the heart of one of the oldest tobacco producing regions in the country. (The maternal side of my family has been farming the land there since the 1730s.) We would converge on a local community center or, most often, on the spacious grounds of the home of the lone, openly gay member of the family. His hospitality knew no bounds, nor did his sense of humor, although I think he began to worry some of the family when, in his dotage, he began to take great pleasure in announcing loudly that he wasn't sporting underwear.

I remember all of this because naturally I was dragged to the reunion each year from birth until I left home for college . . . and for most of my childhood the event was a very ritualized affair, as if my grandfather had drafted a liturgy, interspersed with hymns of "when will we get there" and "I need to go to the bathroom." For example, each year he and my grandmother would arrive at our home on the appointed Sunday at 5:00 a.m. sharp, his Ford Galaxy 500 packed like one of those brain-teaser puzzles with coolers and tupperware and plates and everything but the kitchen sink. My parents would pack their car quickly while my brother and I would fight over the best spot to sleep in the Gran Torino station wagon. And off we'd go, a few car lengths apart, in a family caravan of four hours, driving across Route 58 through little towns like Disputanta and Appomattox.

Although far from summer and those cicada Sunday afternoons, I'm reminded of these reunions and their characters because the ancient wife of a long-deceased great-uncle passed away recently, leaving this world in the child-like stupor of Alzheimer's. Aunt IdaMae was famous in family circles for her biscuits and the perpetual uncleanliness of her home. We loved the biscuits but preferred not to contemplate their provenance. IdaMae was also what the elderly ladies of the clan called "pixillated," a term which refers to someone who is overly eccentric or whimsical . . . "inhabited by pixies."

IdaMae's passing reminded me of the more colorful characters who would show up each August to eat and reminisce. No doubt every family has its personalities: the law of averages dictates that all families need to have at least one convicted felon, one "drunk," one "dirty old man," one prankster, one religious zealot, and one suspiciously effeminate uncle. My family, to the great delight of those of us who take note of such things, has managed to cover all of these bases, including the convicted felon, who now arrives in a BMW roadster.

There was Uncle Clyde, for example, who was in charge of lemonade each year. He would arrive with two massive 10-gallon stoneware crocks - one for super sweet and one for pucker-inducing sour - and set about making batch after batch for those who eschewed iced tea for a mason jar full of icy lemonade. He was also renowned for policing the lemonade against dirty hands trying to reach over the lip of the crock to steal ice or lemons. As if swatting insects with a flyswatter, he'd smack the fingers of transgressors with the long aluminum ladles used to fill the glasses. (His son, Clyde, Jr., would delight the boys by removing his glass eye, the product of a July 4th fireworks accident in the 1940s.)

Aunt Nancy, a member of the Pentecostal Holiness Church was the permanent bearer of responsibility to "say grace" and bless the food at the start of each reunion. Nancy would announce her presence with shouts of "Amen!" and "Who loves the Lord?!" Her blessing, offered over tables of rapidly cooling food, took on the character of sermons and one always wondered if she would spice it up with some "speaking in tongues," which happened on quite a few occasions. (One of the more irreverent and colorful cousins would invariably add after Nancy's loudly prayerful disquisition on the resurrection and "saving grace of god": "Good bread, good meat, good god, let's eat." I always chuckled and was always smacked for it. My father, never a keen participant or observer of the more "charismatic" displays of religious fervor, would predictably remember at the start of Nancy's exhortations some item "forgotten in the car."

Finally, we also enjoyed seeing the jovial Uncle Edgar and Aunt Edna, because they always arrived with their little chihuahua "Ladybug" who delighted the children with tricks. Edna always seemed painfully thin and frail, a condition likely exacerbated by the parade of Benson & Hedges cigarettes that passed her lips nonstop from the instant she stepped from her Buick to the late afternoon moment when, rising from her folding chair, she theatrically announced "I'm goin' to the potty one more time before we leave!" Her husband, Edgar, perpetually carried around an erection the way some 8-year olds carry No. 2 pencils, tucked neatly into his pants but clearly visible. We would try in vain not to stare but usually excused ourselves quickly to join other cousins in a game of softball or a clandestine climb through one of the tobacco curing barns on the edge of the estate. Still, despite his evident priapism, Edgar could be counted on for funny anecdotes and mildly dirty jokes acceptable to a largely Baptist crowd.

(As an aside, I remember once visiting their home in South Boston, Virginia. Unlike IdaMae's home, Edna's was spotless. But every piece of furniture in the house, all of it vintage 1950s, was covered in those clear vinyl slipcovers. Edgar and Edna died, childless, about 15 years ago within just a few months of each other, which was probably a blessing given their devotion to each other. As Aunt Nancy liked to say about deceased family members, "They've gone on to glory!" My mother and grandmother were among the family members invited to pick over the remains of Edna's estate before everything was sold in a public auction on the front lawn. I was given a gleaming chrome 50s-style Sunbeam toaster, which I used for years thereafter, invoking the memory of Edgar and Edna on each occasion.)

The family gathered again last September, my 93-year old grandmother the last of the generation that had built up the reunion during the lean years of the 1930s and 40s when the ethos of "close-knit family" actually meant something. Their numbers no longer legion, around 30 people gathered at a cousin's home for another day of eating and storytelling. Mind you, the family is no less numerous than it was 50 or 75 years ago. But the connection to "place" and "history" isn't as strong, nor is the generations-old bond to the land. The family has dispersed, leaving the red clay soil of the Virginia Piedmont for more prosperous climes. Only a few cousins, in fact, still grow tobacco, holding on to some closely-measured Jeffersonian agrarian ideal in a threatened market they no longer understand.

My grandfather, eldest of 10 and tired of being "land rich and cash poor," departed in 1941. I still remember vividly the stark contrast between his prosperity and the privations of his siblings who remained in Halifax County. I've not returned in about 20 years, but plan a visit this July when visiting my parents in Virginia. I won't get to experience the reunion itself, but it will be reunion enough.

Update: I did travel to Virginia in July but was unable to make it back to the area from which my mother migrated.

First Day of School!

Ah, the first day of school in New York City, when one million kids return to classrooms in the largest school system in the U.S. For me, it's always a bittersweet occasion. Sure I'm sorry the summer is ending and we won't have the freedom to jump spontaneously in the car or hop on the subway and go somewhere fun like a ballgame or trip outside the City. But I really do welcome the return of the school routine and the reconnection with friends who have been away most of the summer. Perhaps it's some part of my military school experience that welcomes the predictability of the days and weeks of the school year. (If only this could be one of those public schools that has adopted uniforms, then we wouldn't have to hear the chorus of "I don't want to wear that" each morning.)

For the most part, the boys haven't been upset about the return to school. My older son likes to talk a good game when it comes to registering displeasure over going back to classes, and even this morning he did some posturing and complaining as we walked the several minutes from home to school. (These photos, for example, capture him at the moment of arrival, as he made a half-hearted gesture of defiant resistance to the reimposition of routine.) But I'm pretty sure he's also happy about the return - and has nearly said as much on several occasions.

As the sports junky and hyper-competitive schoolyard athlete, he knows today represents a return to the playing fields, both at school and on weekends. Granted, these are hardly the greenswards of a mythic Eton or Harrow, preparing an entitled elite for society's leadership, but they offer the same baptismal rite in the doctrines of fair play and sportsmanship, albeit under more democratic circumstances. Hardly Tom Brown's School Days, but important life lessons indeed! I only wish the competitive spirit manifest on the soccer pitch or baseball diamond could be carried into the classroom as well. They're to young, however, to really appreciate the competitiveness engendered by time in the classroom.

My younger son, more eager to acknowledge the pleasures of school's academic challenges, marched confidently in and was reading a book before I had left the room. One suspects that he's inherited my geeky "school is cool" demeanor. And no doubt at some point in his life, he'll be teased mercilessly for his more studious manner.

Equally interesting this morning were the ritually averred "Hellos," awkward hugs, and "air kisses" attendant with the first day of school. It was all so smoothly done - and the lines delivered with such ease - that one might swear the whole thing had been choreographed. "Oh, the kids grew so much!" "You look lovely!" "Did you lose weight over the summer?" "How were the Bahamas?" My favorites were the "perma-tan" moms who looked only slightly darker than they had in January or February. They reminded me of the brown, leathery visages of mummified humans recently found in a European peat bog. No less humorous were the Wall Street dads, not having changed one iota, who looked as if they've been in storage or on "Pause" since school ended in June. This morning their wives pushed "Play" and they rejoined the regimen of drop-offs, pick-ups, and playdates.

In the end, I excused myself through the crowd, rather than engage in the parental post mortem conducted on the sidewalk after all the kids have been locked away, once again temporary wards in the City's care. Today I just couldn't face the chit-chat. Nor could I endure the solicitous grilling about my wife's condition. (She's much improved, by the way, and will be home from the hospital tomorrow.) It will be easier this afternoon at dismissal, I've reassured myself. And easier tomorrow and the day thereafter.

Vacation with the Kids

As I noted in my August 7th post, we're off tomorrow for a short four-day vacation at Great Wolf Lodge with the kids. We've either lost our minds or are in for a treat. To me, traveling to a family resort in the Poconos that features water slides, pools, etc., as the basis for fun seems natural. I went to Water Country USA in Virginia in July and as a kid visited some of the earliest large-scale water slides ever constructed.

I remember, for example, visiting a water slide in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee. (Yes, Pigeon Forge, as awful as that place may seem today as a junior varsity version of Branson, Missouri, with the added bonus of more outlet malls - and examples of America's obesity epidemic - than one could encounter in a lifetime. My grandparents loved the Smokey Mountains, so our annual summer trek with them to Tennessee and western North Carolina always included a stop in Pigeon Forge and Gatlinburg.) But back to the water slide. It was built into the side of a steep hill, with a pair of courses that zipped downward at what my brother and I thought was breakneck speed. The main thing I remember about it is the hardness of the concrete from which the slide was constructed. No smooth plastic chutes or tubes for us. This was a concrete water slide and your body, particularly your knees and ass, paid the price after an hour of sliding downward and running back up the hill to do it all again with pre-teen abandon. Our only protection against occasional rough patches was a thin, rubberized mat from which one often became separated at high speeds.

The other thing I remember about one of our visits was an obviously poor family from rural Ohio who shocked me at the time and in retrospect remind me of photos snapped by Dorothea Lange and her contemporaries. (I can't always remember what I had for lunch last week, but circumstances like this always seem to become lodged in my brain's permanent files. I seem to recall an article in the magazine of the New York Academy of Sciences that explains this phenomenon. Apparently different types of memories are stored in different parts of the brain, depending on whether they were traumatic, happy, sad, etc., and some of those memories have a longer shelf life than others.) The thing I remember most about this family, aside from their thread-bare clothing, was the sheer joy of the brother and sister as they careened down the slide repeatedly, and the unbridled - and loudly vocalized - happiness of the parents, who obviously relished giving this opportunity for fun to their children. My kids will not be wearing threadbare clothes this weekend, but I'm wondering if their experience - indeed, our family's experience - will be as rich as that Ohio family's from thirty years ago.

Throwback Friday: Little League Memories

My kids have spent this week at baseball camp, heading off each morning for at least seven hours of virtually non-stop fun - if you like baseball. And each day they've trudged home exhausted but eager to tell the stories of the day's exploits. Of course I'm prejudiced and believe that they're better than other kids their age.

Certainly in the throwing department some of that prejudice is warranted. We manage to play catch nearly every day (even in cold weather, when we take the game to the basement) and they have amazingly strong and accurate arms for 7- and 8-year old boys. Biases aside, I have no doubt that they're better than I was at that age. I've always been athletic, mind you, having absorbed the enthusiasm of parents who were involved in sports through high school and early adulthood. (My mother, an avid baseball fan to this day, was just as eager to play catch and pitch batting practice to me and my brother. And given my dad's early shoulder problems, she probably had the better arm!)

Watching me play ball, my boys are always full of questions about my time in Little League, sometimes straining my powers of recollection with queries about the minutiae of games I played some 30 years ago. I was a 1st baseman and pitcher, having made all-star teams thanks to an arm that could throw breaking pitches at an early age. So they want to know about how many games I won (I have no idea), how many strikeouts did I record (I have no idea), and whether people hit any home runs while I pitched (I have no idea). But at least they have photographs taken by my parents, showing me circa 1976 decked out in a scratchy double-knit uniform, ready to take on the world - albeit with that mid-70s long hair that screams to be cut above the ears. These photos prove that their ancient dad was indeed a ball player and my boys giggle every time the album of photos is pulled down for close inspection.

Although obsessed with baseball at that time, I was less serious about other sports. Still, I tried my hand at just about anything, from football to basketball. Soccer hadn't reached the South yet - at least not where I grew up - so we never recognized the pleasures of "the simple sport" like my boys do today. The only balls we kicked were in serious school playground kickball battles, fought in some cases over several days of recess when I was in fifth grade.

My older son has dreams of playing Major League baseball and the coaches who watch him note that he does have above average talent. Nevertheless, whether or not he can realize this elusive dream that prolongs the boyhoods of so many men, I hope that when he's my age he can still rediscover that connection to his inner 10-year old the way I do each time we play catch.

Summer Cemeteries

When I was a kid we'd often take road trips with my grandfather in his 1963 Ford Galaxy 500, a two-tone behemoth with an aqua-blue body and white roof. A tall man, he would drive with the wide bench-seat pushed way back, his long legs stretched out to reach the pedals, and usually no more than two or three fingers touching the steering wheel with just enough pressure to keep the car in the road. He never drove fast and he never seemed to be in a hurry. Indeed, driving was a pleasurable exercise, something one did for relaxation. Every drive was a Sunday drive, even in a weekday rush hour, and he doubtless angered many motorists who found themselves trapped behind him on a road that did not encourage bold passing across a solid yellow line.

Oddly, many of his drives included stops at cemeteries, a practice for which he was mercilessly criticized by my grandmother. If a cemetery looked interesting from the road, he'd pull in and hop out, leaving any disinterested passengers to roll down the windows and fan themselves. I, however, always followed closely, marching behind him through the aisles of freshly mowed grass and stone markers. Beckley, WV, Gettysburg, PA, Fredericksburg, VA, Boone, NC: I can still recall these and scores of other towns large and small through which we motored, and in which we stopped and sampled their cemeteries, from walled family plots to stark military burial grounds. He'd point out the ornate monuments, the mausoleums, and the simplest of headstones. Who was enjoying the benefits of "perpetual care" and which families had opted instead for overgrown weeds and grass gone to seed to frame their antecedents' graves? (To be honest, I've always thought the unmowed plots had more character, with clover, grass, chicory, dandelions and wildflowers allowed to encircle a plot. It's far prettier than the Wal-Mart-purchased plastic or silk flowers that grace most of the graves, fading and cracking in the sun.)

My grandfather always displayed a particular reverence around the graves of small children and babies, wondering what had taken these souls so early. (As a historian focused on the 19th century, I quickly learned that high childhood mortality was often the norm in an age punctuated by yellow fever, smallpox, scarlet fever, tuberculosis and polio. And my grandfather could always be counted on to tell a story about some cousin or neighbor who had died young, taken by an incurable ailment that now warrants no more than a few minutes with a pediatrician.)

Learning of this habit, one might accuse my grandfather of having possessed an overly morbid personality. That couldn't be farther from the truth, however. He was one of the most jovial persons I ever encountered. And death was not a subject on which he lingered, whether surrounded by headstones or sitting in the comfort of his home. Rather, I think he recognized the natural beauty of cemeteries, the artistry of many monuments, and the poignancy of some of the stories one encountered while stepping carefully from stone to stone. I also think he was perusing these grave sites in the way a tourist samples potential destinations in a travel agent's catalog. What I find disheartening, given his experiences, is the utterly mundane circumstances of his own final resting place. My grandfather now waits out eternity in a nearly treeless "memorial garden" surrounded by bronze urns of fake flowers, his name engraved in a plague bolted to a cement slab on the ground. I'm not suggesting he would have preferred a grandiose monument or elaborately carved stone. A nice view, however, shaded by trees and surrounded by wildflowers would have been perfect and a more accurate reflection of his own interest in natural beauty.

It's no surprise that I inherited his fascination with cemeteries, much to my wife's dismay. And like my grandfather, I'm quick to haul the car off the road if the effort promises an interesting walk through a field of graves, particularly if the stones are from the 18th century or earlier. A headstone's words and the style of its reliefs can say a great deal about how a society in a given age addressed death and eternity. In coastal Massachusetts, early 17th century Puritan stones, for example, often reveal a display of skulls and even demons, torments for the souls of the damned. Their gruesome symbolism reflected the Puritans' Calvinist belief in the uncertainty of one's salvation under a system that preached the predestination of each soul.

Thankfully, my boys are beginning to understand the appeal of a cemetery walk and happily follow me on my jaunts. Honestly, I'm no more morbid than anyone else. Nor do I think that these cemeteries possess the animate spirits of our forbears, at least not spirits that have any interest in the comings and goings of the mortal. If present, these spirits are more likely akin to those that populate the cemetery on the hill overlooking Grovers Corners in Thornton Wilder's Our Town. They've long since lost interest in us, the living, and are focused on the eternal, according to Wilder's Stage Manager. It's at once both a comforting and unsettling vision of death. Nevertheless, I'll continue to visit cemeteries, remembering my grandfather's legacy and passing it along to my sons.

Ball Jar Memory

The last day of July and it's shocking how quickly the summer is passing. One month to go and the kids will be back in school. Two months plus a few days and we'll be in Vermont for our family's annual trek through the mountains. According to Einstein's theories of relativity there's the phenomenon of time dilation in which the passage of time seems to slow down for an object moving near light speed. For example, if one had a twin sibling who rocketed into space at near light speed, upon their return they might perceive the passage of only a year according to their clock, but to the stationary observer ten years might have passed by their clock. It's actually been tested in particle accelerators! My point is . . . as one approaches middle age, doesn't the passage of time seem to move more quickly? In fact, the whole of 2007 feels as if it has just zipped by. Yesterday we were celebrating its start - and I was beginning this blog - and here we are poised to start the eighth month. Wow!

But enough brooding . . . It's time for a final image for July, an image inspired by one of the blogs I read regularly, Chronicles of Me, by BohoGirl. Seeing her photograph of a Ball canning jar and an old patent medicine bottle reminded me of my paternal grandmother's bottle collection and prompted me to paint that image, again tackling the difficult exercise of pulling glass from the paper with a few brushes and watercolors.

Visiting my grandmother in her Eastern Shore home, I remember seeing her collection of antique bottles that she kept on shelves in the windows. Like stained-glass in a church, they would capture the sunlight and scatter the colors in a riot of hues. When the glass was clear, she would fill the bottle with water and add food coloring to continue the patterns of greens, reds, and blues.

The Ball canning jar of course reminds one of a time when families actually canned everything, from produce to meats - yes meats! They've also been appropriated for storing just about anything one can imagine, from paint and motor oil (like my father), to iced tea or formaldehyde-preserved lab specimens. I even remember in the 1980s there was one of those faux-"country" restaurant chains - "The Black-Eyed Pea" - that served all of its drinks in Ball jars. Sadly, the Ball Corporation no longer produces glass jars, having sold off the glass-making arm of the company and moved out of its long-time headquarters in Muncie, Indiana.

In the end, I'm fairly happy with the final product, despite my ever-present misgivings about the quality of scan vis-a-vis color reproduction. In addition, I tried something different this time, tweaking the painting with two photoshop macros just to see how the original would look given a posterized and sepia treatment. Obviously I have too much time on my hands.

That New Car Smell

There's an article in the New York Times this week about the old Auburn, Cord, and Duesenberg autos, marques which fell victim to the economic disaster of the Great Depression. These were impressive cars with designs that still elicit sighs and envious longings at car shows around the country. Held up for comparison against today's more expensive models - just about anything from the BMW, Mercedes, Jaguar, or high-end Japanese automakers - these cars ooze originality and innovation. Even Maybach's, Aston-Martins, and the sportier Bentley's seem flatly boring next to a stylish Duesenberg. And although made in the 1930s, the Duesenberg would have given these new models a run for their money as far as performance is concerned.

Surveying these icons of American auto design, I started thinking about my family's history of car ownership. And, alas, I realized we had never owned anything more exciting and unique than a 1964 Volkswagon Beetle. But chronicling our parade of cars one learns a great deal about our family and its habits, which I'm guessing would be true of most families if one were to write the clan saga based only on car ownership. Looking back I wish I could say that our garage welcomed Beemers and Jags. Yet with only occasional but noteworthy aberrations, we were a Ford family.

The early models of my childhood are really a blur. I can remember a green Rambler station wagon and a white 1970 Dodge Dart (which I've mentioned before simply because my dad brought it home from the dealership with an oil leak). Normally my parents would keep a car for a decade on average and always pass the 100,000 mile mark on the odometer. With the Dodge Dart, however, my parents were so disgusted by the experience that they traded it in after only two years for a brown Gran Torino station wagon. The Gran Torino would prove the dominant car of my childhood - the vehicle for vacations, groceries, hardware, garden supplies, and, in its last years, trips to college. The VW Beetle, purchased new in 1964, was my dad's car for commuting and errands around town. He finally sold it after about 15 years and over 200,000 miles. (I was so sad to see it go before I got my driver's license in 1980.)

In the mid-70s my parents made one of those car purchases that still leaves some members of the family puzzled: a white Ford Pinto. It was such a cheap and craptacular model that it didn't even have carpet; the floor was covered in that black vinyl that was given a pebbled surface to resemble carpet. If there ever was car that embodied the wisdom that white cars show dirt more readily, this was it. Within days of leaving the showroom it looked like one of my dad's dingy t-shirts. Still it was the car on which I learned to drive a manual transmission.

The next twenty years gave us a parade of Ford Tauruses, Mercury Sables, an Escort (which I inherited after completing college), and a Windstar minivan. The only oddity in the group was a used, yellow Datsun 710, bought for my mother as a commuter car. This vehicle holds special memories for me because it's the car in which I learned to drive, first went 100 m.p.h., and had sex. It also occupies a humorous place in family lore because of my dad's decision to have the Datsun repainted. No, Earl Scheib's claims that he could paint a car for only $39.99 weren't cheap enough for my father. He went to the hardware store, bought several cans of yellow Krylon and spray painted the car! My mother was mortified but continued to drive the Datsun to her office each day.

One thing is clear from this catalog of family transportation: cars were viewed in strictly utilitarian terms. Anything flashy, sporty or performance-oriented simply wasn't considered. My father's most recent car purchase? A beige Ford Focus. I vowed that when I was old enough to afford a car, I'd have at least one fun vehicle . . . while sticking to more practical cars for daily driving. (I at least learned that important lesson from my accountant parents.) Since buying my first new car in 1990 I've stuck with Hondas which have been nearly flawless. Still, I managed to pick up an MG while I was in grad school (a fantastic car to drive and not nearly as unreliable as their reputation), and a BMW 2002 before I moved to New York City. Although I don't have a fun car right now - parenthood and practicality winning the day - I'm already thinking about what kind of sports car I can pick up when my sons are older. It can be our project car, something we tinker with on weekends and through which they learn about the basic mechanical systems of a car. I'm thinking perhaps an old Triumph, MG, or possibly Porsche. My younger son in particular has started to show an interest in auto aesthetics and his tastes thankfully mirror my own. If I'm lucky in just a few years we'll be adjusting a pair of Zenith-Stromberg carburetors under the hood of an MG.

The Passing of Tammy Faye, Patron Saint of Religious Kitsch

The death of Tammy Faye on Friday prompted me to pause and recall one of the most colorful personalities of American popular culture in the last 40 years. Most people only remember Tammy Faye for her connection to Jim Bakker, the PTL Network, and the scandal that destroyed their Heritage USA amusement park scheme. And even if one managed to miss her turn as a prima facie icon of 80s greed and religious cynicism, one could scarcely have avoided her role as mascara-challenged patron saint of vacuous kitsch in recent years.

Yet growing up in the Norfolk/Virginia Beach area I more vividly remember Tammy and her simpering husband from their first television endeavor, "The Jim and Tammy Show," which aired on Pat Robertson's fledgling CBN network from 1968 until 1973. Broadcast on a weak UHF signal at the time, CBN featured little more than Robertson's signature "700 Club" program, bad reruns, cartoons, and "The Jim and Tammy Show." A children's program constructed around a Christian message, "The Jim and Tammy Show" resembled a televised Sunday School class and spotlighted Tammy's "talents" as a singer and puppeteer.

Nearly 40 years later I can still recall Tammy singing a song that began "One, two, three, the devil's after me," as she used her puppets Allie the Alligator and Susie Moppet (pictured, right). Filmed daily in front of a live audience, kids sat on small bleachers, arranged like an evangelical answer to Howdy Doody's "Peanut Gallery." I remember that the children would receive a gift of Marva-Maid milk at the end of each show. When I was in first grade (1971) one of my classmates attended a taping of the show. The next day he arrived at school displaying his little Marva-Maid carton to the collective "ooohhhs" and "aaahhhs" of our class. There was even a club one could join from which one received coloring pages, photos, and encoded Christian messages from Jim and Tammy.

A couple of years ago I saw a clip from one of these programs and was amazed that a show like that could have been so wildly popular. And it's hard to believe that at the height of its popularity, ca. 1970, Jim and Tammy were receiving up to 1,000 fan letters a week! It's no surprise that they left CBN in 1973 for "bigger and better" opportunities. Nevertheless, watching those clips one can see in Tammy the earnest, small-town Minnesota girl before the makeup, orgiastic excess, scandal, and downfall.

Having encountered that first incarnation of Tammy's onscreen persona, I'm just a little saddened by the news of her death, in part because one has to wonder how she would have fared away from the attention and spotlights, stationed in Minnesota for the duration. In that sense, one finds a resonant similarity between Tammy Faye and that other symbol of celebrity tragicomedy, fellow Minnesotan Judy Garland.

Still, Tammy Faye did embody much that is misguided and corrupt in the culture of Christian televangelism and will forever be linked to the scandalous PTL empire. To the masses who blindly pledged their meager dollars and "widow's mite" to the construction of Jim and Tammy's dream, the eulogizing that has accompanied Tammy's demise has probably served to reopen old wounds. To be fair, however, she seemed a bit more tolerant and forgiving than some of her peers. For example, I would never include her in the company of more malevolent figures like Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell, to whom she was linked at critical times in her public life. In the end, given our Dickensian fascination with the grotesque, I'm guessing that society's long-term memory of Tammy Faye will be shaped primarily by the final act in the drama of her sordid life. We'll likely forget the scandals and remember the mascara and the bravura.

Self-Portrait Friday?

I always marvel at the number of self-portraits in the blogging world: There's "self-portrait Friday" and "self-portrait Monday" and some self-portraits that beg a "not safe for work" warning or "explicit content advisory." Although some critics of the practice may argue that vanity drives this compulsion to turn our digital cameras back at ourselves, for the great majority of self-portraits displayed on blogs, I have to disagree with the conclusion.

These aren't people vamping for the camera, pouting, striking languidly casual poses, and smiling for Annie Liebovitz or Lord Snowdon. They're not shouting, "Look at me - Here I am at my latest book signing/gallery opening/movie premier!" More often than not, they're chronicling their mood, marking a birthday, or simply capturing their evolution as a person. They're scarcely different from the plethora of vintage documentary snapshots that now crowd into "found photo" websites. They tell a story. (The first two photos here were taken from my favorite "found" photo site, "Look at Me.")

Of the myriad blogs I regularly check on, Chronicles of Me by Bohemian Girl has really struck a chord of late with its openness and the quality of self-portraits. She's beautiful in a very natural way, "easy on the eyes" one could say, and I'm particularly captivated by how remarkably different one person can look in so many photos. In that sense, her self-portraits do seem to be about evolution and growth.

To date I haven't been a participant in these self-portrait exercises beyond the obligatory profile photo. Still, I've managed to toss in a few childhood photos that give one a sense of my development over the years . . . from geeky child to geeky teen to geeky adult. One could argue that these photos represent an elegiac exercise in mourning the passage of one's youth. There are certainly days when I feel that way. Nevertheless, I'm starting to think it might be "ok" if I upload the occasional self-portrait. After I'm gone, they'll give my kids additional fodder for laughter in the way they now chuckle over my childhood photos. So consider yourselves forewarned; the occasional self-portrait may find its way into these pages. (For now, here I am on the way to my high school graduation in 1982. Can you believe that patchwork madras jacket?!)