First Monday with Characters

Edited by Morris Dean

Dawn Burke, at Decoration

I went to Decoration with my two daughters. Two of my three brothers went together, and my third brother took our Mum, since he and she would be staying a shorter amount of time than the rest of us. Mum only went to visit Pa’s grave; otherwise she would have stayed home.
    It wasn’t as hot as usual, Hallelujah! The girls and I got there right before 10 a.m., and the others arrived soon thereafter. I put our flowers out first. Then we took a shady spot and got our chairs out of the van and set up for visiting. It wasn’t too long before André Duvall’s parents and his Aunt Lisa arrived and joined us. We had a real good visit with them and others, including cousin Ernest Story, whose dad died in a water well with his brother when they were overcome by a pocket of natural gas they hit while digging the well. Ernest never knew his Dad. His mom was around seven months pregnant with him when this happened. So tragic and sad! This happened on August 21, 1936.

Brother Bruce, Ernest, and me

Mum

    I also visited Appleton cemetery and put flowers on the graves of Pa’s mother’s side of the family. I love Hector & Appleton [small towns in Arkansas] very much – so small, country, and peaceful.
    And I also go every year now to the graves of the Great Grandparents Dean, in Dover, and put flowers on their grave. I didn’t even know until 2005 that they were buried there. No one had ever told me or taken me there. I learned their graves were there during the Dean Reunion of 2005. William Lousian Dean died on February 24, 1931, and his wife (my great grandmother) Effie Dickie Dean died on October 26, 1951. Aunt Sue had told me during the reunion how her dad had died the day after her birthday, another very sad and tragic event in our family.

Ralph Earle,
in honoring a late uncle

Here’s a poem for June, in honor of my Uncle Jack, who died on April 21 at the age of 96:

Pressure Cooker

What happened to the clunky thick aluminum pot
with the pressure gauge up top like an afterthought
that your mother told you never to leave
alone on the stove because it might explode?

Everything else was replaced by a better version:
cell phones, CDs, GPS, satellite radio.
Nobody needs a better pressure cooker.
Everyone who cooked in those days is gone

except my Uncle Jack, who raised
seven children on a suburban lagoon
in the shadow of San Francisco
and brushed my Aunt Annie’s hair

until her last day. He still keeps watch
on the roads back into love
as his children and grandchildren
gather for their noisy brunches.

I mean genuine love, the kind
that doesn’t reflect on itself but comes
from nowhere and goes back nowhere.
There’s nothing to replace it with.

André Duvall,
in Arkadelphia, Little Rock, & Memphis

May is one of my favorite months of the year. I enjoy seeing the rapid growth of foliage, spring rain showers, and flowers, and I look forward to attending several of the musical and cultural festivals that occur this time of year. I recently attended the Sunset Symphony, which is traditionally the final event for the Memphis-in-May Festival, which is spread out over the month. The Memphis Symphony Orchestra performs an outdoor concert on the banks of the Mississippi River as the sun sets. I was fortunate to be invited to a party hosted at a home that sits on the bluffs overlooking the river park, so I had a unique perspective to see the sunset and enjoy the music.

    A spring thundershower ensued halfway through the concert, making me very glad that I was at this person’s home and not caught in the storm in the park below, surrounded by thousands of people. The host of the party treated us to live bagpipe music (she’s a member of the Wolf River Pipes and Drums Band) on the covered patio. Once people moved indoors, many of the guests who were musicians offered one or two musical selections on various instruments, often with song.

    Earlier this month, I performed a solo piano recital to dedicate the complete restoration of a 1923 Steinway Model O grand piano in Arkadelphia, Arkansas. The restoration was completed over a period of six months by a single master rebuilder. My concert featured the works of Brahms, Chopin, Allende, Debussy, and Bolcom. This piano now resides in the United Methodist Church in that town, but originally belonged to my undergraduate piano professor.
    The following week, I performed a set of Faure songs with soprano Sabrina Lanely Warren, as well as few solo works, as part of a “potpourri” concert at the Beethoven Club of Memphis featuring various performers and composers of music written after 1900.
    Last week, I traveled to Little Rock to play the organ at the commencement ceremonies of the Arkansas School for the Blind and Visually Impaired. This is my twelfth year to play in this ceremony. Each year I keep thinking I’ll probably end up having a conflict that will not allow me to travel to Little Rock, but it always seems to work out that I have those couple of days available. I am always inspired and motivated by this event, hearing the stories and accomplishments of each of the graduates.
    I am closing out the month with a chess blitz-a-thon: 19 rounds of blitz games (in which each player is allotted 5 minutes to make all of his or her moves per round).

Geoffrey Dean,
in Kyustendil

Just concluded my fourth stint as a cello faculty member at the International Chamber Music Academy in Kyustendil, a Bulgarian city just east of the border with Macedonia. Each year the program leaders, Nina Gordon and Lisa Nelson, both music professors at Illinois Wesleyan University, bring a group of American university students to Bulgaria for immersion in the local culture and a series of chamber music performances throughout the Kyustendil region. Music lessons, coachings, and masterclasses take place at the Bratsvto Community Center, one of the oldest cultural centers in Bulgaria and certainly one of the most active, thanks to the vision and persistence of director Ivan Andonov, himself a well-known classical guitarist.
    During our time in Kyustendil, we got an inside look at the kinds of events and activities such a center hosts, including a high school graduation ceremony, folk dance rehearsals, a performance of the local tamboura orchestra, and art and language classes. Language instructor Valeria Idakieva is also our cultural guide, leading us on strenuous mountain hikes that she calls walks and taking us to the historical landmarks of this part of the country.
    A large part of this year’s group consisted of aspiring cellists, so IWU cello professor Nina Gordon brought in her gifted assistant, Christa Saeger, and had me do new cello ensemble transcriptions of Bulgarian music. Learning music by Bulgarian composers is another important aspect of the program, as is the interaction between American and Bulgarian participants.
    For me, it was also a delight to meet and experience the artistry of two musicians from the Balkans now resident in the US – Romanian violinist Mihai Craioveanu and Bulgarian pianist Ilia Radoslavov.

Tom Lowe, in cat situ

My most enjoyable activity of the month has been house sitting up in the Oakland hills, which I refer to as my “cat therapy,” in a house filled with art from around the world, with a great view of San Francisco Bay. The cat’s name is Katy, and here’s one of the earliest photos I made of her.

Her owner likes this picture so much that it has joined the other art in the house, to my delight. In the Spring the yard is rich with flowers. Here are four shots from this visit (as you can see, bees enjoy it too).

[Click to enlarge]

James Knudsen,
in new acquaintance

I’ve been getting acquainted with one of those new-fangled DSLRs (Digital Single Lens Reflex cameras). In my youth I was known to tote...lug two, metal-bodied SLRs on backpacking trips along with at least three lenses. I even learned my way around the darkroom. Now, I point and shoot, click and drag. Should be an interesting summer.
 

Vic Midyett, in Strathalbyn

We've been about a week in Strathalbyn, pronounced Strath albin, in South Australia, about 70km southeast of Adelaide. We decided to stay here long enough for our mail to catch up with us.
    It's a very neat and quaint town of about 5,000. After noticing how many antique stores the town has, we inquired and learned that Strathalbyn is considered the antique capital of the state. Also, a dozen or more vineyards can be found roundabout the town. The park shown below is the town's Anzac memorial reflective park for fallen soldiers.

    The pink flowers shown below were growing about my knee level and facing down. I lay on the ground and took the pic looking up into them.

    In the photo below, the ornate building front behind Shirley is the entrance to a large grocery store.

    Finally, Strathalbyn's Uniting Church:

The Rogers, on the upside

This month has been taken up with dealing with my wife’s Parkinson’s disease. When in a 3rd world country, communication is a challenge. The information on the box of pills is in Spanish. For two weeks it appeared that Janie’s disease was getting much worse and at a very fast pace. We had gone from a shaking right hand to a full-blown jerking, with hands and body bouncing all over the place.
    I then did what I should have done in the beginning – I went to the internet. One of the drugs the doctor had given her had a side-effect of uncontrollable jerking and twisting. I stopped giving her the drug and told our doctor I needed to see a neurologist as soon as possible.
    Three days later, Janie was getting a little better. The neurologist could not tell us about her Parkinson’s or even if she had it until the drugs were out of her system. He did confirm that the jerking and twisting was a reaction from one of the drugs and told her not to take any of the Parkinson’s medicine, and come back in a week.
    The real upside to our visit to the neurologist was that he gave her a pill which she took once we were home and the next morning all the shaking, twisting. and jerking were gone. It was hard to believe, but she was like a new person.
    The bottom line is that a GP doctor knows very little about the brain and can do more harm than good. Here there is no suing the doctors or drug companies, so sometimes they play fast and loose in hopes it will help, but in truth they are rolling the dice with your money on the table. I have learned to question everything told or given to us.
    I guess I could go into a rant about tort reform, but better save that for another day.
                                 —Pura Vida from Ed & Janie

Paul Clark,
aka motomynd,
on the lanai

Once again, not much character in this character update, as the Motomynd world continues to be more of an experiment in sleep deprivation than the pursuit of a formerly active lifestyle. Now that my son Caelen is nearly five months old and finally starting to sleep a rational schedule, and I am actually able to sometimes achieve 4-5 hours of mostly continuous sleep instead of 2-3 hour shifts, my brain seems to be wanting to occasionally tackle something extra, instead of just dealing with essentials. This seems to indicate that four hours of continuous sleep per day is the minimum a person should strive for if forced to maintain life for an extended period on greatly reduced sleep. After more than four months of living as little more than a sleep-deprived lab rat, I will happily leave it to others to further test the hypothesis.
    Not meaning to reduce my son to lab-rat status, but for me, a college-educated biologist, one of the most interesting aspects of raising a first child is watching and learning firsthand what is real, versus what “experts” proclaim to be real. A most glaring example: Educational videos that are all the rage today, and are supposedly designed by highly educated professionals to stimulate the infant brain. Closely observing my test subject leads me to believe such videos may be a scam. He will watch them briefly before either falling asleep or creating such a fuss I have to pick him up to calm him. Other than being either bored or irritated he shows no reaction to the videos allegedly expertly designed for his four-month-old brain.
    Show him certain videos by dancing classical violinist Lindsey Stirling, however, and he is attentive and animated for 45 minutes to an hour at a time. Ditto for Lady Gaga videos, and, frightening though it may be, those by Lana Del Ray as well. Not that he is enthralled by all videos; even a four-month old can apparently have a discerning palette when it comes to entertainment. In the case of Lindsey Stirling, his obvious favorites are “Crystallize” and “Elements,” with her “Phantom of the Opera” video running a close third. Stirling’s “Stars Align” and “Shatter Me” lose him in less than 30 seconds. “The Edge of Glory” and “Applause” are likewise his clear-cut Lady Gaga favorites, while “Marry the Night” induces the same immediate bored wail as the educational videos. Since Lana Del Ray portrays herself as living in a mentally downtrodden state that seems a leftover of the quaalude generation, it is a bit alarming that a four-month-old child would even take notice of her work, but he is wild about her “Blue Jeans” video and will even watch her electronic mini-novella “National Anthem” from start to finish.
    Speaking of alarming...Caelen pays minimal attention to MotoGP motorcycle racing, but on a trip to his grandparents we discovered he was enraptured by NASCAR. Now having done very scientifically controlled tests on three different weekends, from age two months through four, I must sadly report that he will watch a NASCAR race on a big-screen TV for more than an hour at a time, but notices MotoGP for only a few minutes. On the bright side, he did show much excitement during the recent Formula One race broadcast from Monaco.

Mayhem on the Lanai: Caelen relaxing
while cats no doubt try to figure
out how to order live mice online

    Caelen may at some point voice disagreement, but for me the most exciting part of our evolving father-son schedule is our current pre-dawn ritual. Most mornings I crawl out of bed by 4 a.m. for a quick breakfast and a brief check into our online businesses before feeding him sometime around 5:00. By 5:30 we are on the lanai, him wide awake in his “bouncy seat” trying to talk to the birds calling from the surrounding darkness, and me doing my dumbbell workout and pushups workout before I go for a run. We have more than 35 species of birds that live within 100 feet of our North Carolina house, and they all seem to sound off between 5:30 and 6:00 a.m. It is at least a bit like waking in a tent in Africa, or a Central American rain forest, and I hope it is instilling in him a sense of awe and curiosity and love of nature. He naps with his mother while I run, then I give him a two-mile stroller ride on our quiet country road when I return.
    Having done this routine for weeks, I have discovered two badly needed mods for the otherwise fairly high-tech stroller. First, it needs a real steering wheel, not one of those fake plastic ones, so Caelen can get an early start on learning to drive. Secondly, it needs a “step-up” plate of some sort on the back, so I can push on the uphills then glide on the back of the stroller on the downhills. If we can work that out over the next few months, I may finally again have some “character” to report.

Chuck Smythe, getting back to normal

Esther is back home and walking a little. Life is slowly returning to normal.

Morris Dean, in night light

For months and months, I'd let our yard lighting languish. Individual fixtures went out, whole sections.
    Bulbs burn out, of course. Lines get cut. Connectors disengage.
    As June loomed – a fine month for enjoying landscape lighting – and, I have to confess, as my wife's promptings mounted, I finally went out, readjusted some suspected connectors, pulled up some suspected sections of cable (and replaced one), installed some new bulbs, and voilà! There be light again...all bulbs shining! These half-minute photos were taken after dark with a mounted Nikon DSLR:

    And these were taken at dusk the next day, with a hand-held Nikon Coolpix:

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Copyright © 2014 by Morris Dean

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