The Pope in My Backyard: Signs and Predictions

Here are some photos from downtown Philadelphia, taken by my daughter, in advance of the Pope's visit. Lots of signs, not so many people yet! Out my way, by St. Charles Seminary, nada. The only signs are "permit parking only". They want to keep everyone very far away.

Water bottles piled up 

Cleaning up Market St. at 8th.

The Pope in My Back Yard: The Signs of Day Two

Photo by Dotty Brown

Everywhere you look, the Pope is in fashion. Check out the Nicole Miller window in Manyunk, a Philadelphia neighborhood.

A sign  that the Pope is coming -- and that U.S. mail is not:

Photo by Naomi Fernald

The Pope in My Backyard: Day One of Countdown

The metal crowd control gates have gone up on the street bordering the side of my house a week ahead of the arrival of Pope Francis in Philadelphia. The gates also  partially block the entry way to my little street, such that one car can barely squeeze through.  The noose is tightening. No one told us about the gates. No one has told us what to expect.
Such is the scene at Ground Zero, my house, across the street from where the Pope will be sleeping one week from now.  When he arrives, we will be prisoners of the event. For that matter, most of Philadelphia will be in lock down, or lock up, depending on your perspective.
Which is why a lot of folks are heading out of town, if they can. We, however, after much thought, are staying put. Is it because we need some excitement in our lives at this certain age? Curiosity?
Or maybe it's history. The last time a pope came to town, we carried our young children on our shoulders down this very street to see him in an open-top Popemobile. It made for a good story.  Having new stories to tell is always good.
This time will surely be different. Today's paper says Pope Francis' visit to Philadelphia "is the largest event security operation ever undertaken by the U.S. Secret Service." Bigger even than the inauguration of President Obama. "This one is more unique because of the amount of travel the pope will do within the city of Philadelphia and the volume of people as well," said Secret Service Director Joe Clancy.
Clearly, the city is getting prepared. Today, during a drive downtown -- probably one of the last I'll be able to make before they close down the highway -- I saw an important sight: three very large 18-wheelers, loaded with Port-a-Pottys.

Before it's too late: Pope Port-a-Pottys en route 

Speaking of which... from my bathroom window, I can look right into some of the campus buildings of St. Charles Seminary, the Pope-motel. But those buildings are about a block from where the Pope's brand new bed will be. More likely, the Secret Service, standing guard at the Seminary and looking into my window as I shower will find more entertainment than I will looking out at them.  

"50 Children" Granddaughter Dies

For those who have followed the recent revelation, in book and film, of one of Philadelphia's most poignant stories -- that of the rescue of 50 children from Vienna, slipping them out of Hitler's deadly grip  -- here's a sad note.
The granddaughter of that daring couple, Gil and Eleanor Kraus, who helped the story come to light, has died. Liz Perle had an important literary career in her own right, as the obituary in the New York Times notes.
Her husband, journalist Steve Pressman, recognized the compelling story in Eleanor Kraus'  diary and produced a movie, 50 Children, the Rescue Mission of Mr. and Mrs. Kraus,  and a book.  Our condolences to Steve.
One of those people who was rescued was Kurt Herman, whom I was able to interview before he passed away last December. You can read his story here.  Time goes by, the stories are lost. Unless people record them. Thanks, Liz and Steve.

Tomas Stern's Unexpected Rescue Mission

The Stupava Synagogue: Undergoing Rescue

Tomas Stern: A Personal Mission

What compulsion drove me to finally visit a small cemetery where my great-grandparents are buried? What could I learn about my heritage, about myself,  from some old headstones? This spring, I acted on my desire to see Stupava in Slovakia (formerly Stampfen in the Austro-Hungarian Empire).
Through serendipity and the Web, however, I learned much more than I expected. Most importantly,  I found someone with no ties to my town, Tomas Stern, who is working to save the heart of it.
My journey is told here, in a story published in the Forward.
What is it about hunting down one's origins that happens at this later time of life? For more on that question, see Phil Goldsmith's quest. 

A Mission to Emulate: Finding Our Family

Phil Goldsmith's new book could be our book: In Search of Self and Family
.

Isn't that the quest so many of us embark on -- or want to embark on -- even if we keep relegating the project to some future time?
At this age, it's not so much about learning about ourselves. We should be comfortable in our skins by now. It's more about taking responsibility for documenting family history for the sake of our children and grandchildren and some day, hopefully, great and greater grandchildren.
Without serious writing or videography, the whisper-down-the-lane stories from generation to generation get ever wispier and more unreliable.
For Phil, the time was now. After leaving the last of his many paid careers, including law, journalism, banking, politics, and his unpaid effort to tighten gun laws at Cease Fire PA, he immersed himself in  history and biography by reading at least one book about every American president, starting with George Washington, and ending with Barack Obama. (See previous blogpost here.)
Then he turned to his own family.

About those grandparents... 

Fortunately, for those of us who don't know Phil or are not a relative, his book is filled with fascinating characters. (The nut does not fall far from the tree...). Phil himself did not realize how fascinating they were until he started really learning about them. For instance,  a  grandfather and great uncle were one of the nation's largest manufacturers of handbags. Newspapers and trade publications wrote about them -- and they held patents for newfangled closures. Phil also learned why -- as a kid  --  he and his family had moved so often: family discord had broken up the company, where his father also had worked.  Another grandfather was a country lawyer who became an important civic leader in Allentown, PA.
As he connected with dozens of living relatives, Phil also discovered papers long stashed in trunks and attics -- moving letters, written almost daily, from a son serving in the Pacific during World War II to his parents;  tender letters from a grandfather urging a grandson (Phil actually) to stay in college; the poetry of a mother who suffered lifelong depression.
From the trove, Phil was able to glean insights into the generosity of his ancestors, a trait he surely inherited. For instance, one day his (lawyer) grandfather offered a stranger a ride to a job interview. Ten days later he writes to the man (and keeps a carbon copy): "Dear Mr. Roberts, You will recollect that... I gave you a ride to the Taylor-Wharton plant where you were trying to get a job. I am anxious to know whether you got your job and whether it was a good one."

Phil Goldsmith

His book, while meant mostly for his children and grandchildren, resonates with anyone whose ancestors arrived from abroad to these shores, struggled, moved, married, divorced, succeeded, failed, and in the end became  a piece of the American quilt.
Which is most of us. It's also a voyage through history, as he cloaks his family's stories in the broader circumstances of their times.

While Phil -- fueled by curiosity and adept at research-- is particularly suited to writing memoir, so much material is out there now that his book is also a blueprint for anyone who might embark on a similar journey into the past  Through arrival records at Ellis Island and flight and ship manifests, it's just a click of a name to discover who arrived where and when and what city or shtetl they came from. (I was surprised to discover in ship records that my grandmother had traveled from Vienna to New York and back again in the 1930s well before she and her husband --and my mother -- actually had to flee.)  Through Census records -- open now to 1940 -- you can know who lived on your grandparents' block, what they did for a living and where they, too, came from.

But Phil's was not just a kitchen table exercise. He reached out to family members who hadn't talked to each other in decades -- some because of hurts or insults that no one remembers anymore. They graciously turned over to him letters and diaries that form the backbone of his book, eloquent gifts that resonate from the past. (Will Facebook and email offer us this wealth of history? Maybe, if we leave each other our passwords. And remember to delve into the "sent" box. )
Phil's writing --and resources -- get richer and richer as he gets closer to the present. And by the book's end, I found myself crying. Forgive me if I give away the ending:
As I have spent many hours of my life walking along the beach... I have watched and heard the splashing of the waves come and go, just as generations of family come and go--one after another, some big, some small some rough, some calm, some throwing off a spray of salt water that is sometimes high enough to reflect the brilliance of the sunlight and others barely perceptible....Amidst the variety of size and strength of the waves is their constancy, regardless of year, month or day. Wave after wave -- like generation after generation...But with this continuity of life is the parade of the impermanence of individual life. Like footsteps on the wet, hard-packed sands of the beach, our own lives -- regardless of how large they once were-- quietly disappear. The waves flow over them, one after another, erasing our imprint and awaiting the mark of new ones.
No, Phil. You made sure your family's imprint will not be erased.

Living vs Loving or Is It All the Same?

When  I type  (or try to type) the word "love" on my iPhone, it often comes out "live"! So on an almost daily basis, I find myself thinking about the relationship between live and love, between living and loving, Sometimes I let the accidental "live" remain in an email  because it makes just as much sense  ... As in: "I am living your gift". Or simply and more frequently:
"Live, Dotty."

The living and the living ( I mean loving. It happened again!!) of this week or so has included Father's Day, the birth of a grandchild, the birthday of my husband, the arrival of lots of family and today Independence Day. And while I wouldn't mind independence from the cooking and dishes, we remain in our now-too-big home as the gathering spot for our ever-growing family. This, and a book I am writing, hasve kept me from this blog for awhile. But stay tuned. I'll be back...  I'm living what I'm doing...I mean I'm loving what I'm living...

Question: How Old is Computer Dating?

As I approach my (or should I say, "as we approach our") 46th wedding anniversary, I had to laugh this morning at a story on the first dating service in America. That was -- hard to believe -- 50 years ago! And I was a part of it.
A group of guys at Harvard -- at a time when I was at nearby Wellesley College -- came up with the idea. They called it "Operation Match."
"We'll provide the match. You provide the spark," was their pitch.
Recognizing -- even while I was  still in my late teens --that this would be remembered as a seminal moment in history,  I kept a copy of the questionnaire.
The story by one of my favorite reporters, Michael Vitez, would make it appear that the questions were fairly comprehensive.  Actually they were straight forward, pairing couples up largely on the basis of such basic things as location, religion, depth of religious belief, sex -- and height.
One of my Wellesley friends, Susan, was matched with Harvard medical student, Fred. They weren't particularly surprised.  Both were already dating, and both are particularly short for their respective genders. Height probably played a huge part in the match algorhythm. They married. And are still married!!
I was matched with five guys, all living within a couple miles of my dorm. I vaguely remember meeting a couple of them. They must have been forgettable. None stuck.
Mixers were the more typical way of meeting in those days. Then, at least, you could size up the person quickly. (A bit like what one dating service touts today: "It's only lunch." ) Wellesley, an all-women's college (still), needed to lure guys to campus. I remember at one dorm mixer being asked to dance by a very tall guy. He must have been 6-foot-three or four. I'm five-foot-one.
After a song or two, I looked up from somewhere around his armpit and asked him: "What's it like to dance with someone so short?"
"It's great," he said, looking down at the top of my head. "You don't have to talk with them."
I met my husband the old-fashioned way: blind date. His college friend and my college friend decided we would get along. A lot more than getting along, of course, is involved in 46 years of marriage. And, too, more than those Operation Match questions could possibly fathom back in 1965.
There's that thing, though, they did identify but could not quantify or capture:
The spark.

Fulltime or No Time grandparenting?

On Mother's Day, one might wonder who needs a mother most. Your own children and grandchildren or a lot of parentless children in Uganda?
Where would you spend your time?
Mama Arlene had an epiphany in her 70s.

Bored with traveling, she took off to live in Uganda and follow through with her vision. Hers is an inspiring story that few of us will replicate. She's now 84 and still mostly working in Uganda.
On the other hand ---and isn't there always an other hand ? – Melissa Dribben, a long time reporter and columnist has quit her job, no, her career, to be the full time caretaker for her grandchild while her daughter works. Read that story here.
 I respect the commitment that these women have made but their choices stir up other feelings in me.  Questions like-- did I spend enough time with my children when they were little and I was pursuing career.? Is Melissa now generously giving back or making up for what she herself may have missed? On the other hand, I'm shocked that mama Arlene Brown could at this stage of life want to remove herself so entirely from her own  family.Where is the balance? How much do grandkids need you and how much do you need them? And where is that balance?

Shoulberg at 76: Going Just Swimmingly

Dick Shoulberg, master coach -- Phila. Inquirer, Clem Murray

Dick Shoulberg, the renowned Germantown Academy swim coach who hurtfully lost his job in 2013 to a huge national outcry, is doing just fine, thank you.  Hazing had been hinted at, an allegation that many of the youths he had coached even to the Olympics  could not believe, nor did their parents. His age at the time, 74, was another theory. The school backtracked months later and called him back as "coach emeritus," with reduced responsibilities.
Shoulberg, 76,  who finally 'was retired'  from the school earlier this year, has clearly not retired.
As this swim coach extraordinaire says:
"As long as there is water and kids, I'm going to do it as long as the guy upstairs says I can."
He recently traveled to Mumbai to teach young swimmers in India. He's been out to Colorado to help coach the US swim team in advance of the 2016 Olympics in Brazil. He's setting up a local swim camp. He has kids from around the world coming to train with him.
A fine interview by Jessica Parks in the Philadelphia Inquirer catches us up with Shoulberg.   With age has come wisdom and he has plenty of Shoulberg-isms to share, mostly on what young people need. Parents should take heed.
On why to push kids hard:
 "What I've found is, the higher you raise the bar, the higher the kids will reach."
On their need for structure:
"Kids wanted structure in 1958, and they want structure in 2015. They want to know where they stand with you. They want consistency."

To read my previous blogs on Dick Shoulberg:
About his ouster.
Then the outcry that followed.
And his reinstatement.