Family news

Vincent scared me Tuesday by saying he had gotten fired – Apparently, he had just gotten off of work early as they had gotten to a starting point. The St. Matthews mall Halloween superstore is now slated to open on Friday, and we’ll see if he has a job still then. He’s getting out of house arrest again Tuesday to go see a movie who’s headed to Day 1 of college at Centre College Wednesday.

Good news from Florida. Florida Blue Cross has cleared Mom to begin taking the expensive medication that may rebuild Mom’s bone strength around her hip bone. Actually taking the medication – which will involve self-administering a shot to the abdomen every day – isn’t going to be easy to learn. Hopefully it will be easy enough eventually. A key part of Mom’s job is assessing standardized test scores, and – more rushed than usual – Mom has come close to completing the task by Tuesday, which was official release day for the SAT scores. And so Mom’s report went out on the Web (along with other recently released reports) Tuesday: http://www.fldoe.org/evaluation/pdf/SAT2009.pdf

I too finished a draft of a report I’ve been working on for several months today – to begin the long editing process. Late Tuesday Stephanie and I will try to cover between us three meetings: Weight Watchers, a consortium of three plus neighboring Presbyterian congregations trying to work with others around the presbytery to start one of 3-4 new English as a new language ministries for immigrants in our area, and a regional Toastmasters-training event.

Monday I also went to the doctor and began my treatment for a skin ailment.

Far away in Virginia, my nephew Jacob went with his parents Monday to an open house and Tuesday started school – 4th grade, I believe – on the first full day of school.

-- Perry

Running from the flood

One of the things I did in my Hollywood (FL) Beach hotel - since I couldn't watch TV and work on the computer - which had to be at the desk to get Internet access - while I worked on work work or blogging was watch music video clips on YouTube. In my sophomore year I taped selections from the records of my 12th grade friend Reece - especially cuts from most of the then record albums he owned by two of the great singer-songwriters of the 1970s: Jackson Browne and Bruce Springsteen (and his E Street Band). My friend Andrew later borrowed one or both of those cassette tapes. Ten years later I lived with my friend Melanie's family in their NYC apartment and sometimes stayed up late to do school work, watch music videos, and listen - in heavy rotation - to my new album "The Joshua Tree," by U2, a band that was one of the greatest of the 80s and whose picture I had framed and put in my room in the apartment. Two months after my Hollywood Beach stay I would be in the land of the Joshua tree, driving by the site of a famous U2 concert and walking down the block where a famous U2 video ended. Also in heavy YouTube rotation in Hollywood was the MTV music video for a U2 album I used to listen during summer 1984 when my college friends and I were house-sitting for various Swarthmore professors in their beautiful but hot, un-air-conditioned houses.

Among the videos I watched and liked the most late those nights was Bruce Springsteen's "Lost in the Flood": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zlpakRAH5JQ

Also, Jackson Browne's "The Pretender": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xhp96VWLEqA&NR=1

And - then, the tour de forces - U2, Running to Stand Still -

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pOcAceyENYI&feature=fvw

And U2, "The Unforgettable Fire": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2yiNqwEAtpkh

Not enough sleep, but some great music and video up in that Westin Diplomat room.

-- Perry

Nice hotel (May 13-17)

I believe the Westin Diplomat, where the American Association for Public Opinion Research conference was in mid-May, was the nicest hotel I've ever stayed in. I sat a lot at the desk, from which I unfortunately couldn't see the TV, a lot. Behind the king-size bed was an opening to the bathroom (which had a conventional door also), with the hot tub (which I have to confuse I never used) on one side and the shower on the far side. Below is the desk and sofa and then the balcony, looking out on the ocean from the 61st floor or so.

Below is the hot tub.

Below is another version of the amazing view from the balcony.

And looking up the beach to the north, away from Miami Beach.

There's the balocny. Unfortunately, I didn't get to sit out there very much - partly because I had wired Internet access, and the Internet connection wouldn't extend out there.

Below is another picture from the balcony, of the hotel's two swimming pools. It looks like three pools, but there is really one lower-level pool, and then the upper-level pool (the very heated one - I always swam in their last) essentially extends on a bridge over the lower-level pool. So you could swim from one side of the lower-level pool, then below the upper-level pool (which had a glass bottom, so you could see up into it) to the other side of the lower-level pool - with fountains coming down also. At the very upper left corner of the photo is a tip of the ocean, with the beach chairs in between.

I swam twice. Below on my way out Friday is the lower-level pool - with the upper-level pool bridge at the top of the picture.

Then, below, is the same view, essentially, from the same view, so you can see most of the southern end of the lower-level pool.

Below is a view of the hotel from the beach, with the palm trees shrouding the southern end of the lower-level pool.

Nice pools in nice hotel.

-- Perry

Still cool

Kentuckiana's arctic summer continued this weekend with temperatures in the 50s at night. We went to an annual Kentucky Seminole Club pool party Sunday, where it was too cold for all but hte kids to swim. Late Friday night after the Heart/Journey concert at the Kentucky State Fair it was almost chilly at the midway as we watched Vincent ride a couple of rides. Stephanie spent several hours this weekend not only in typical outdoor summer chores - mowing, trimming, hedging - but also some typical early fall tasks: sweeping up acorns and berries. Last week's relatively warm summer weather helped motivate to get Frisco this weekend - somewhat belatedly (since the last one was in May) - a short summer haircut, and, instead, while he was watching Stephanie rake Sunday afternoon, he started shivering. Front yard looks great, sweetie! Hope you can stay warm, pooh!

-- Perry

Challenges

We’re starting to tackle several challenges late this week:

I have a looming student loan repayment, and I need to take care of the paperwork to get the monthly payment reduced. I’m starting to talk about this today. This is obviously something that's going to be complex.

Although this morning it was cooler, Frisco has been wilting in the heat, and – since our planned mid-July Point Pleasant haircut for him didn’t work – we need to get a haircut for him, hopefully this weekend.

Our dishwasher continues to give us trouble, and Stephanie has reverted to handwashing dishes, which is really a pain when she’s not on summer vacation and we’re actually cooking. We’re waiting for the appliance repair person before we start the complicated and stressful process of negotiating with the landlord.

Another appliance that's giving us trouble: We can't find the hose that goes with our vacuum cleaner. We've either thrown it out or hidden it in the house or cars somewhere (by mistake), but - either way - we can only use it as an upright right now.

I’m afraid I might be getting athlete’s foot again, and I’m weighing going to the doctor’s this week.

At work, I’m trying to finish another draft report and Stephanie is trying to nail down her schedule and how and whether she’ll teach new programs.

I did probably wrap up my summer Obama-izing last night.

-- Perry

Demonstration and counter-demonstration

Unbeknowst to me, health care reform advocates - particularly the union organizers and Single Payer people - staged a demonstration Tuesday in the same Jeffersonville (IN) park where I heard now Vice President Biden speak almost a year ago (and in the shadow of the office of Vincent's psychiatrist). But on the very next day - it turned out - the "Hands Off my Health Care" bus - apparently moving down from Indianapolis, where 100 rallied - was slated to bring people to the same park, and a counterdemonstration was planned - no doubt with some of the same people from the previous day's rally. Keep in mind that this is in Southern IN where there are key votes - in the House (with Blue Dogs Baron Hill and also Brad Ellsworth) and in the Senate (with Senator Bayh). I had visions of thugs being bussed in - with no local people at the Hands Off rally - and then angry confrontations between them and some of the particularly vociferous Single Payer people (Hill's staff had seemed to dislike both sides). I'm sure that may have been what the 2-3 TV stations that showed up hoped for also - and perhaps in time for the 6 p.m. local news. I got there a little late and headed by the Hands Off rally. There were about 100 people again - and over time I concluded that most were local people - plus whoever came on the bus. I only heard snippets of the speakers - probably an hour's worth of speakers. One addressed an Achilles' heel of the debate for reform advocates - abortion - I did not see people burning effigies of the president or Congressman Hill. I also did not hear anything as coherent as the conservative on National Public Radio Tuesday who made an argument about Medicare undercompensating health care providers and cost shifting due not just to uncompensated care but also due to Medicare undercompensated care (I believe this is an issue the Blue Dogs addressed - protecting low-profit margin rural hospitals in their districts more than the federal treasury - coherent, whether or not it's actually valid. I only saw Anglos over at the Hands Off rally. But, for the most part, the people at that rally and the counterdemonstration - where I shifted over and joined soon, didn't look that different from each other. I had seen some of these people before - at the June Southern Indiana for Change meeting where Organizing for Change activist Abby I thought was going to cry, at the rally in front of Congressman Hill's office, at the rally in front of Senator McConnell's office last week, and (a few people) at health care reform canvassing and phone banking. (I had missed the Tax Day tea party - with a much larger crowd - across the river in front of the courthouse in Louisville - perhaps with a few of the same people at the Hands Off rally.))

The woman on the left below led some of the chanting. (I've got no video because Stephanie had our regular camera at school - I took Mom's old digital camera.)

A handful of Hands Off people wandered over to our demonstration. These would hae been the more confrontational types. I heard the word socialist several times - and one of the Hands Off activists told a TV station that he mainly didn't want to end up working to pay for health care for people who didn't work (most people on Medicaid and Medicare don't work already- ?) - but one of these two men said something about Obama being an imposter - like Obama is an actor - in some "Manchurian candidate" sort of way - and that someone else is the master puppeteer.

I do wish I'd gotten to hear more of the broad anti-reform coalition's argument (I saw a few people identified as Republican activists) - although I guess if I wanted to know that badly I could be reading a friend's anti-reform chain e-mails. I like the juxtposition below of the woman and her sign - a woman I met at Democratic Party HQ in New Albany who volunteered Bruce all 2008 to help Obama win (?) Clark County (IN) and the side of the Hands Off My Health Care bus (which periodically played Credence Clearwater Revival songs- probably partly to try to drown us out - since we were marching in a circle next to the bus - a ways from the rally - although we cleared to another sidewalk when leaders thought the bus riders would be trying to make their way back to the bus).

It was sometimes difficult for folks - even me - to lead cheers - What do we want? Health care! When do we want it? Now! - because of the rift between the Single payer and Obama care/public option folks. We had to design cheers that did not explicitly plug either one.

I left after almost an hour, before the riders had really returned to the bus. Soon there was already some news coverage: http://www.wave3.com/Global/story.asp?S=10960171 But I thought this story may have exaggerated the level of confrontation. I saw no bussed in storm troopers, heard few ugly comments, and witnessed no fist fights. Maybe next time.

-- Perry

Family reunion (July 18)

Stephanie and I left Mason (WV) after that big breakfast and headed towards Point Pleasant, WV. It turns out that the WV State Fair Museum is actually in between Mason and Point Pleasant. All of these drives are along the Ohio River. In a way, it was a good thing we didn't have Frisco, since the place he was scheduled to be while we were at the reunion was at a dog salon in Point Pleasant, which would have been out of the way. He probably could have come with us (you'll recall he was sick and stayed home back in Lousiville at Dr. Kaur's.) The museum complex is adjacent to the Mason County fairgrounds. Family activists had rented an air-conditioned fellowship hall-type building and were ready for us, as we arrived a little late, at about 10:20.



The Schwartz family is Stephanie's paternal grandmother's father's family. Greeting us with Darlene Haer (below left), who had helped organize the retreat, and her mother, Garnet Schwarz, who lives in Point Pleasant (and whose house we once tried to find) and whose husband died a few years ago. Garnet had been married to Stephanie's great-uncle Boyd. Stephanie remembers going to Boyd and Garnet's store on drives with her grandparents between Point Pleasant and Mason and stopping at Boyd and Garnet's house to play with Meg and Ken in one of the upstairs bedrooms when she was much younger.

Both of them were very nice. Cousin Paula sent us newspaper articles not only about the reunion but also about Garnet's quilting club. I believe she's the last person in Stephanie's grandmother's generation - except for Aunt Velma, with whom we stayed in Mason, still alive. Lady, in Texas City, died a couple of years ago, as did Aunt Catherine, Paula's mother.

Stephanie's father, Larry, was already there. He hung out some with Jimmy Schwarz, another 60ish retired Columbus social studies teacher who was nevertheless not exactly Larry's spitting image. Even if Larry isn't massivly into family history, some of the general history thrown in was no doubt interesting. Jimmy took Stehanie's senior pictures when she was in high school. He now does more professional photography with models and weddings, even teaching some photography classes at Columbus State. Jimmy's father owned the large piece of land on Williams road with Stephanie's grandparents. She remembers going there to help with the corn, potatoes, tomatoes, green beans, bell peppers, pigs, and cabbage.

Several people in the extended family have gotten into family history - even visiting places in Germany where ancestors came from. Stephanie remembers hearing about how one of her great uncles got better treatment as a U.S. GI and German POW because of his German roots. Nevertheless, all of these folks suffered because of the anti-German hysteria during the two world wars. Stephanie's grandmother grew up speaking German at home - Appalachican German, in West Virginia - but never spoke it again after WW2.

Here's Jimmy and Larry, sitting outside. We sometimes get holiday cards from Jimmy and his family but I don't think I'd ever meant him. Stephanie hadn't seen some of these people in years, including Garnet, Darlene, and her sister Sharon Pafford. It's amazing that a number of these people have stayed around the area since there are not an infinite number of economic opportunities (although no doubt knowing local people helps.) I believe Darlene's daughter, Becky, is a teacher in the elementary school in Point Pleasant (which she hinted was a tad rough - we eventually deduced that some rich kids - to the extent that there are any in town - go to the Catholic schools.)

Stephanie and I took a break and walked around a few of the farm museum buildings. I think this was the old school, relocated from elsewhere in the state - a la the Ohio Villlege or Sturbridge Village.

We got to walk around all of these old buildings, including the old office of the Point Pleasant newspaper.

We ran into other family reunion folks doing the same thing (plus letting some of their kids run around). This group was partly from Florida. Stephanie remembered many of these people from when they were all kids. The sky turned out to look particularly stunning, including pictured against this cousin's pink top (with the relocated church in the background). Meg and her twin brother, Ken had gone to high school in Miami but now both live in Virginia. Ken wasn't able to get away from his work in D.C. to come to the reunion. John and his wife had their teenage son, Benjamin, at the reunion. Benjamin was the only one in Vincent's generation of the Schwarz family.

The sky kept getting more stunning, as I panned to others in this extended family.

Like Teresa's (John's wife) orange shirt against the sky also.

We checked out the church.

And then the school.

Back at the Fellowship Hall they were doing some family history presentations.

Pictured below is a man who I believe was Ed. He taken some of the trips to Germany, and was well informed but also good natured.

Ed gave some interseting family history, including who were the original immigrants, Fredrika and her sons (Louise) the one that our family goes back to. Darlene was organized enough to have name tags for everyone that had not only our names but also our lineage so that we could tell which branches of the family we were more closely related to.

Below is another man who'd done some family history research, but had to leave early.

Darlene and her sister also talked. They had handsomely reproduced two self-published books - part memoirs/part biography - and we picked up both of them. I've read the shorter one about people more closely related to us, about a couple growing up separately and then meeting, marrying, and growing old togethether in early 20th Century West Virginia. Stephanie remembers reading them when she was younger and both her grandparents were still alive.

We sat near these folks. We also sat near Larry, but he spent most of the time talking with Jimmy. Carrie, in the pink shirt, is Stephanie's great-uncle Frank's granddaughter.

Below Erma joined in with Larry and Jimmy.

Below is Jimmy's wife, Kathy, who was somewhat quieter than he.

Darlene's sister, Sharon, reviewed with us some familiy pictures that Stephanie had put together in a collage frame when she still lived in Westerville (below).

Larry looked at them too.

Stephanie posed with Carrie in front of some of the family history materials.

Larry and Stephanie wound up on opposite sides of these posed big family pictures.

I think this picture below is important, but I couldn't get it to go horizontal. It was a picture of Viva and Erma when they were little.

Stephanie looked at some little shoes that were her grandmother's first pair of shoes.

This posed pictures may exclude people in the family by marriage (I'm in some versions of some of these pictures (probably the bigger ones above) - but not these, the ones I took myself. This is the picture of all people related on the Schwarz side through Louise and Hiram.

Sharon led some more discussion. The group decided to meet next in two years in Marietta (OH) (about 45 minutes up river, where my maternal maternal relatives are from).

Sharon also led a raffle and Kathy (below) won something. We didn't win anything. There were no all-expenses paid trips to Germany, even though we did learn what part of Germany the Schwarz family came from. Ironically it wasn't Schwarzburg, but Thuringia. Schwarz also seems to be a rather common name in Germany since it just means black, so could have been used in ancient times for any blacksmith or smith or some sort. Sharon also shared with us the story about how a "t" got in our name. There are two ways two spell Schwartz or Schwarz. Stephanie's grandmother claimed the name did NOT have a "t". But on some legal documents some of family is Schwartz. It turns out a well meaning family relative (Aunt Pearl's husband Cecil) had added a "t" when he worked with Frank, Ray, and the other brothers at American Standard in the southend of Columbus and filled out the paperwork for social security withholdings.

We got to relax more as all the official business ended and the crowd thinned out a bit. As usual, we were among the last people there, even though we were in a bit of a hurry (and even more than we realized - although you'd never know it - after we started driving).

The lunch food wasn't bad - some cooked by the staff there - some homemade by people there - but not super Weight Watcher-friendly. We saved a piece of pie for Vincent, just in case. We took some pictures of Larry up against the exterior wall of the Fellowship Hall-type building. He smiled less the closer I got with the camera.

I walked a little bit around the farm museum while Stephanie chatted at the end. There were some visitors there for that, not for the family reunion at all (although there appeared to be another family reunion-type event at an open-air but covered picnic table. Below was a relocated barber shop.

Going through some of these houses reminded me of the houses that Mom and I saw in Louisville in May (except this was all self-guided). One of these was the Summer house, associated with a politician from Virginia who President Lincoln apparently offered the 1864 vice presidential slot to. He declined, and East TN War Democrat Andrew Johnson ran with Lincoln on a Union ticket. I wonder if Reconstruction would have turned out differently at all if this man had been vice president, instead of Johnson, when Lincoln was shot.

Pondering these big issues, I left with Stephanie - as scheduled - around 4 p.m.

-- Perry