Kittens On the Run

While every Day could be Cat Blogging Day at Le Maison du Chat, the kittens are well into the “leaps and bounds” stage, now loose full time in the master bedroom (as if I didn't know already who's in charge here) and fully capable of going from 0 to 60 in 4 seconds. With a camera that takes 3 seconds between pressing the button and the flash going off, I have numerous photos of empty carpet to prove it.

(For instance, in the first photo (above right), Guy Noir is ambushed by Charlie just as Abel reared up into the Godzilla Attack Position when the flash went off. Oh well...)

The other day, Abel discovered if he throws himself at the side of this old stuffed chair in the corner (which actually appeared in that 1947 photo of my dad playing the Hammond organ in our living room – as I said, my mother never threw anything away), he’s like velcro and can climb up the back of the chair with ease.

Here he is (left), having scaled the side of the bed. Abel has become the more adventuresome of the five even though he still hasn't quite mastered the art of eating the adult food Charlie, Blanche and Guy Noir are already enjoying.

And there's nothing like a good relaxing rest after a hard climb (right).

This velcro maneuver does not, unfortunately, work for the highly polished surface of the blonde-wood desk where, much to their surprise, they fall immediately back to the floor, particularly bothersome once you’ve made it all the way to the top of the chair (several kitten-lengths off the ground) and figure you can just throw yourself over onto the desk. Oof!

And, by the way, I’ve discovered it does not work well on my legs, either.

Another discovery they’ve made is what a sweet cave the dark space under the dresser makes, though they will be disappointed in a few weeks when they next discover they will be too big to squeeze their way in. Soon enough, they will be going on-line and running up my bills at iTuna...

And now they’ve been introduced to their first catnip toys, too. I got them kitten-sized catnip mice, hoping it would keep their minds off the phone cord. It works -- for a while.

At one point, after Guy tossed the red catnip mouse, seconds after this picture (left) was taken, a paw suddenly appeared from under the dresser -- Baker, otherwise invisible so far this play period, was perfecting his audition as Thing for the Addams Family musical, and quick as a wink whisked the mouse back into the cave. In a flash, he was gone, mouse and all, and my loud LOL caused the other four to scatter to the four winds (and once again, a picture of empty carpeting).

Baker is still fairly reclusive: though he always comes out to play eventually and romps well with others, I still haven't seen him eat any adult food yet. He spends much of his time curled up in the corner with his mother, Frieda (who still has yet to come out from her corner of the bathroom when I'm around anyway). He's the only one who shies away from me -- and will occasionally hiss at me when I go to pick him up -- so perhaps he has been listening too much to those “Tales from Behind the Toilet” she's been telling them, especially regarding The Big People. Hopefully, time will prove these to be nothing but Old Cat Tales...

Meanwhile, Murphy, the Russian Blue of the Big Three, a cat I took in as a stray almost 12 years ago, plays the perfect hostess, sitting on the planter by the fireplace, enjoying the relative peace and quiet of the living room. She's been wondering what, exactly, is behind that door: she's met one of the kittens and hasn't seemed overly concerned, but that was before they were going 50mph in a 35mph zone... and little does she know there are five of them!

Dr. Dick

Guy Noir & His Lovely Sister Blanche

After much debate and subsequent non-scientific poll, it appears the latest names for the Tortoise-shell and the Cream-Tabby kittens will just be the reverse of the names originally given them at birth, Blanche & Guy Noir. The female Tortoise-shell formerly known as Guy Noir is now Blanche Noir (see right)...
...and the male Cream Tabby formerly known as Blanche (see left) will now be known as Guy Noir. Though it annoys me to name a dark cat "Blanche," perhaps there's a bit of humor in that, but hey... it's still Guy Noir & his lovely sister Blanche.

I had considered Positive and Negative, but then I'm not a photographer (and I have the photos to prove it). I had even toyed with the idea of the "white" one being C Major and the "dark" one F-sharp but then I contemplated how many times I would have to explain where that came from and decided "naaaah..."

The Orange Tabbies, all males, are still Abel, Baker & Charlie, though Abel & Baker are becoming more alike as they get older -- they will be six weeks old on Monday, after all. I suppose I could change their names to Larry, Darryl and the Other Brother Darryl...

Charlie has turned out to be the more adventuresome of these three, though still lagging behind Blanche (formerly Guy Noir) who, the only female, has already circumnavigated the bedroom on her own. She also discovered this neat cave -- the lower shelf of a night-stand in my parents' old '50s-style blonde-wood bedroom suit: I'm not sure she was all that thrilled that Charlie decided to join her but then she figured, "if you can't pick your relatives, at least you can join 'em."

Those three are already quite independent of their mother, Frieda, already eating adult canned food, even the adult dry bits as well as the standard kitten chow. While it's quite a struggle in and out of the adult litter-box, they seem quite proud that they don't have to use the little baking dish set aside for their specific use which they are quickly outgrowing.

The other two -- Abel, somewhat, but Baker mostly -- seem reluctant to leave their mother's side and also walk by the dishes of cat food as if they have no idea yet what it is, even if the other three are busy woofing it down.

Since that first night I brought her inside, I haven't seen Frieda anywhere but lying behind the toilet, facing either direction (not that the scenery changes that much) or occasionally lying on her side in the Buffet Position. She still hisses at me if I get too close to her but she has sat there hissless watching me play with her kittens and even picking them up and holding them. This afternoon, while I was sitting outside the bathroom door watching the kittens play, I saw her start to step out from her corner heading toward the food dishes herself. But she saw me, quickly hissed and disappeared into her lair.

Meanwhile, Blanche has discovered how to play with a ball. The first time I rolled it toward her, she stared at it like "what the heck...?" Two days later, she's batting it around and tossing it in the air, chasing it around the room, just like a normal kitten. The others look at her like she's gone totally, freakingly nuts. Trying to photograph her in motion has proven pointless, but I would caption this one, in the manner of LOLCats, "I HAZZA BALL"...

But then, tired out after a half-hour of rough play (and protecting her ball from the curious Charlie), Blanche disappeared. As, for that matter, had her brother Guy. Getting out the flashlight, I began looking around and found them, curled up side by side at the far end under the bed (see below). Yeah... it's a dark night in a city that knows how to keep its secrets...



Dr. Dick

A Book Break: Reading on Vacation

The vacation’s now taken a recuperative turn, it seems: the challenges of the move and working on the house were put on hold at the beginning of the month with the advent of what turned out to be a “Pulled Muscle” and the consequent discovery of two hernias. While I’m still getting around, I’m not doing that much (and that fairly gingerly) but then there’s nothing wrong with a vacation that’s simply “resting.” The piano isn’t here yet, so it’s not a writing vacation, allowing me time off from work so I can concentrate on composing (which is how I normally spend my spring vacation-time), and the intention of making one last assault on the move has been put off yet a little further.

In fact, it was May 1st – the day the “Pulled Muscle” finalized itself into something needing immediate attention – I began reading Black Swan Green by David Mitchell. I’d seen this when it came out in hardback but decided to wait, considering all the other things on my To Read List, but I couldn’t resist once I saw it in paperback. Last year, I read his much-talked-about “Cloud Atlas” and wrote about it here and here. While that is a rich and complex novel, this one passes on a much simpler level.

But I don’t think it’s possible for David Mitchell to tell a story simply. Given the richness of the allusions in “Cloud Atlas,” there are numerous similar but more subtle allusions in “Black Swan Green” (the title comes from the town, built around a green or park which not only has no black swans but not even any white swans). Many of these might be more self-evident to a wider-read reader than myself who’s never even read “Catcher in the Rye” (how is that possible?!) much less Henri Alain-Fournier’s Les grand Meaulnes (available here in French or in this English translation as ‘The Lost Estate’ in December 2007) which figures in one of the more fantastic chapters as a writing assignment dropped, unfortunately, after the disappearance of the delightfully eccentric character who might otherwise become his mentor.

But I’ve read “Cloud Atlas” and immediately recognized this eccentric would-be mentor, an old aristocratic Belgian woman, her imaginative English filtered through her native French, who in Mitchell’s previous novel had been a not very sympathetic would-be love interest, Mme. Eva van Outreyve de Crommelynck, for the young composer whose music also figures prominently in this chapter, Robert Frobisher and his “Cloud Atlas Sextet.” I suspect, given other references that might slip under my imperceptive radar, there must be many more from other works with at least some nodding reference just as Mitchell pastiched his way through the nesting-doll novel “Cloud Atlas” with overt references to numerous styles and plot-lines to create a world-ranging tapestry spanning centuries but here, in “Black Swan Green,” spanning a mere year in an otherwise unremarkable village in the life of a potentially remarkable adolescent who, judging from his exterior life and the perceptions of those around him, would be considered just another unremarkable 13-year-old named Jason Taylor.

Part of the boy’s problem is, he wants to write poetry but he can hardly let the bullies at school know he does this because they’d beat him up for sure. He can’t tell his parents because they’d tell someone else in the village, maybe some kid would overhear them and then tell another kid at school and pretty soon the bullies would find out and it’s all over, so he signs himself “Eliot Bolivar” and publishes them in the parish magazine.

There is a fine line between the boy’s fantasy world and the reality he lives in yet frequently, discursively and usually considerably later do we discover what seemed a fantasy was in fact reality. Since I chose to read it as if it were all reality – in the sense it was all real to the boy as so much of my own life as a 13-year-old was real to me, fantasy or not – I probably missed some of the magic these transitions took.

Like many children, he has several interior personalities – the Unborn Twin (like Evil Twin) who retorts to situations the way he’d want to but knows if he did he’d get the crap beat out of him; Maggot, his image of low self-esteem; and most strikingly, Hangman, the character who lays in wait for him whenever he is about to say a word that would make him stutter. For his biggest shame is being a stutterer which he tries to control by outwitting Hangman, realizing a stutter-word is about to come up so that he can replace it with a better word. This awareness of words – not to mention thinking ahead – plays into his writing poetry. The novel veers back and forth between typically inscrutable teen-age slang and pseudo-Proustian aphorisms, some of which are very poetic and others make you stop and wonder “what 13-year-old would come up with that?” While many of his experiences – like the meetings with Mme. Crommeylinck – go beyond the usual aesthetics of most 13-year-olds, they’re also left incomplete: perhaps, like Mme. Crommeylinck, Jason Taylor will end up in a future novel as a successful (or failed) poet, an adult where these early influences will now be realized.

(By the way, Neal Brose, one of the other school kids and something of a nasty piece of work with a certain gift for financial projects, was introduced as a divorced, failing financier in “Ghostwritten,” one of Mitchell’s earlier novels: if we continue Eva Crommelynck forward in time from “Cloud Atlas,” here we take Neal Brose backward in time.)

There are thirteen unnumbered chapters in “Black Swan Green.” The Golden Section of the book (always difficult to calculate according to numbers of pages or estimated numbers of words) occurs during the 8th chapter, ‘Souvenirs,’ a neatly spanned chapter that begins with his experiences on holiday with his dad in the first part and then with his mum in the second part (the only sections of the book that place Jason outside the claustrophobic village of Black Swan Green). There are seven chapters before ‘Souvenirs’ and five chapters after it. While Jason has numerous interior personalities, the one least typical of a 13-year-old boy is the would-be poet, Eliot Bolivar (5 letters + 7 letters). One of the souvenirs he buys is a series of 13 postcards, each with a different dinosaur "but if you put them end to end in order, the background landscape joins up and forms a frieze." Though the various chapters of the book are self-contained, they do, in the end, form a very neatly done frieze.

And there’s also a bit of a palindrome in the construction here, less overt than the one organizing the various chapters of “Cloud Atlas”: many events in the first segment are referenced or completed (or realized) in the second. The first and last chapters are both called “January Man” and the final line is “That’s because it’s not the end.”

– Dr. Dick

On the Naming of Cats

It has been a quiet vacation so far at Das Hofkathaus. I’ve been scribbling down some ideas for a new piece but not sure what kind of piece it will be – I’d thought of a short choral piece or collection of pieces; other tidbits could turn into an orchestra piece – too soon to tell. I finished reading a book Wednesday night which I highly recommend (and I’ll mention it later). And a great deal of time was spent watching the kittens.

So far, the kittens have explored the bathroom and the immediate periphery of the neighboring bedroom, much to their amazement and delight. As of yet, I have not seen Frieda herself outside the confines of the corner behind the toilet, though I know she must venture forth when she feels it’s safe to eat and use the litter box. Here she is, last week, imparting the Wisdom of the Ages to the three orange tabbies, Abel, Baker and Charlie. “Tales from Behind the Toilet” might not rank up there with, say, “The Silmarillion” but it seems to be helping her kittens make the adjustment to the next stage of their lives.

Already, they have figured out the mysteries of the litter box – theirs, at least (an old baking dish, now retired, pressed like many retirees into new and unusual service). Three of them, so far, have demonstrated they know how to use it and, even better, how to flush. Every now and then, they try to climb into Mamma's and find it a bit of a challenge.

Equally curiously, three of them are already eating adult food, passing up the watered down supposedly kitty-suitable food I’d been putting down for them, soggy-soaked dry bits and watered down canned food. Guy Noir is even eating the adult dry food which surprised me even more, figuring they wouldn’t be ready to eat something like that just yet. Reading all the recipes for post-weaning food, it just seemed like it’d be weeks till they’d get around to real adult food.

Of the five kittens, I have now held all of them, even if only briefly, without any retribution from their mother. Abel, Baker & Charlie are all males, it turns out, but it looks like Blanche and Guy Noir will be undergoing Name Changes soon since I’ve discovered Blanche is a male and Guy is a female and it would just be too confusing to keep explaining that... And since the tortoise-shell isn’t really black-black, maybe I’ll save Guy Noir for some future all-black cat. How many chances are there of having a black and a white cat from the same litter I could call Blanc et Noir? Perhaps I could call these two Alban (which means White or Pale) and Nora (from Noir, meaning Black) – more poetic than the literal German of Weiss und Schwarz...

Hmmm, Blake could mean either light or dark and is considered a non-gender-specific name. Theoretically, I could name them BOTH Blake... but that would just be too confusing, period. Oh wait, how about Alban Blake and his lovely sister, Norah Blake?

In the naming of cats, ordinarily I shy away from actual human names. When I was living in Connecticut, it bothered me to hear my neighbor call after Susie like she was a dog – until I realized Susie actually was a dog (I never did find out what his wife’s name was). I did have one cat named Denise – rescued as a stray kitten probably barely two months old – but that was because one of my other cats was Pastiche and from the same litter as, no doubt, Denise’s mother which then made Pastiche her aunt and Denise logically the, er... uhm, well... you get it...

It’s possible Guy Noir may end up being a non-gender-specific pet name like Gremlin and the angelic-looking Blanche something like... Angel (not that there’s anything especially demonic about the tortoise-shell: she’s so innocent looking, it would be an illogical choice of name – then, too, aside from the fact how many cats have I known named Gizmo, I’d need to keep referencing that 1984 film and I hate having to explain out-dated Pop Culture to the next generation.

A friend had once named his ex-stray “Mephistopheles” except he was pronouncing it “meh-FIST-o’-fleas” which was just too much to explain to people who, like me, felt it needed correcting. An actor friend of mine who had just played Macbeth in college had taken in a stray kitten he named Fleance.

I’d already gotten into trouble with past cats’ names, having to spell Chaumleigh for disbelievers or explain how Roquefort got his name. It was plain to see the blind one who could find her way around a room after one exploration should be named Radar.

Of course, like composers coming up with titles for their more abstract pieces, I suppose I could just call them Cat No. 12 & Cat No. 13...

So, as Abel, Baker & Charlie all begin to grow into something less distinct from each other, I watch them all scrambling around the floor and wonder if they will soon earn their names? Until then, I guess, these two’re still Blanche and Guy. And “One of the Orange Tabbies” (or perhaps Larry, Darryl and the other brother, Darryl)... Though of course, Blake & Gaia Noir... has a ring to it...

For everything else, there’s LOLCats...

Dr. Dick

One Small Step for a Cat, One Giant Step for Kittenhood

The kittens have reached the Month Milestone – actually, today was Day 32. So far, they’ve been shambling and shuffling around their bathroom world for the last few days, getting their sea-legs ready and practicing their wrestling moves (which also means wrestling with anything that moves, including my foot). But last night another milestone was reached: I had left the door open to the master bedroom and turned around to capture the moment from perhaps the wrong angle, rather than capturing what might be thought of as the wonder in their eyes:

Here’s one of the orange tabbies (Baker, I think) looking out at this whole new world they’ve just discovered. For a while, they stayed fairly close to Mom – in fact, one time when she hissed (presumably at me), they all went shuffling back to her as if she’d said “Get back here, NOW!” This time, their sense of adventure won out.

But it was another of the orange tabbies – Charlie (left) – who actually crossed over the threshold and was the first to explore the carpet in the bedroom. He went about two feet, then turned and ran back into the safe and familiar bathroom. His eyes were big like he couldn’t wait to tell everybody else: “you won’t believe what’s out there!” Huge, to those who’s spent all their lives so far underneath a toilet tank...

In a way, I feel a bit of that same excitement and uncertainty, moving back into the house I grew up in, getting my childhood bedroom ready to be my composer’s studio.

There are many reasons I’m glad to be leaving midtown Harrisburg behind me, after 24½ years of living in the same neighborhood – certainly before Break-In Season has gotten underway – but I’m not keen on Suburbia, myself, never was even when I was a kid. Still, the older I get and the more reclusive I become – especially when I want to compose – it’s preferable to the noise and inconsiderateness of city living. It’s not ideally quiet, here: the kids across the street have some fairly noisy motorcycles but they’re not bad; more of a problem is the constant whine of the highway 1/4-mile away which never seems to let up, 24/7. The traffic around the mall is absurd and at times it’s like Christmas Shopping even in April, but I’m used to shopping after work, doing my groceries around midnight even if I detest those self-scanning aisles you have to use then (“please put the item back in the bag...”)

I’m not sorry to no longer be renting, after my latest experience with landlords – the hole in my bathroom ceiling from last December still has the plywood patch over it and the pipes upstairs still leak; the back yard has been mowed once since LAST May – but I have concerns about being a home-owner, now, the financial responsibilities aside.

So, like the kittens, I tend to look around with a sense of awe, especially moving from a small apartment into a house three times as big. I wonder what big changes will be happening in my life, now, two hours before I turn another year older, experiencing my first birthday without my mother here to remind me that I had kept her awake that night until 2am.

There’s a tiny remnant of a red peony in the back yard, the only plant left from the ones that she had brought to the new house from the old one when we moved in 1960. I know those peonies existed in the back yard when I was a year old because I’ve seen them in old photographs. The story has it they were originally my grandmother’s peonies and Mother had transplanted these from her parents’ old house when they moved after World War II because they had been an important part of her own childhood back yard. That could make this plant, at least originally, almost 88 years old if my grandparents planted them when they bought their first house in 1919, the year my mother was born. There had been three plants – the pink one and the white one died over the years, but the red one is still hanging in there. One flower opened this afternoon, so tomorrow I will cut it and put it on her grave.

Change does not have to mean better, nor does it have to imply it could be worse: it just means things will be different. And the challenge is to accept it with the sense of wonder as if you’re discovering it all for the first time, and contemplating the possibilities.


Dr. Dick

One of those Epiphanies

This is a picture I’ve known for a while, perhaps years ago when I didn’t really think too much about it. This is my dad playing the Hammond Organ in the living room of the house I was born in, before I was born. I knew the organ was one that belonged to a friend of the family’s, Jack M, who after the War was building a house in Lemoyne and who’d ordered a Hammond organ from J.H. Troup, the best known music store in town, located on the south end of the square opposite the church.

Also part of the legend was how the organ was supposed to be delivered but Jack’s house wasn’t ready yet, so he asked my dad if he’d be willing to “give it a temporary home” because if Jack said no, the organ would go to the next person on the list and Jack would be moved to the bottom.
My dad, who’d learned to play the piano when he was a kid by watching a player piano and figuring out where to put his fingers when the keys went down, was delighted to help out. During the war, he had had a chance to play a Hammond in the base’s chapel and fell in love with it.

What I didn’t know until I was going through one of my mother’s ubiquitous calendars which she kept like a diary, was when the organ arrived and when it left for Jack’s now-completed house. I would have assumed months but it was only a short time – weeks, really – which puts a more definitive time on when this picture was taken.

Friday: April 18th – Organ [underlined several times] delivered in morning
Thursday: May 8th – Organ being taken to Jack’s

But in the week’s following this brief 3-week visit, there are about fifteen references to my dad going over to Jack’s, several times specifically “to play the organ.”

Then there was a week’s vacation in early August – on Monday, “Jack’s for supper – ball game... appt 8:00 to see Wayne Wiegle at Pueblo - organ” followed by a blank Tuesday and then, on Wednesday, “Jack’s at 12:30 - Wayne to audition Curly [my dad’s family nickname] at organ & sign papers for rental” [presumably for an organ at the Pueblo]. The next day, after my mother canned pickles during the afternoon and took my brother (then almost 6) down to my dad’s folks who were going to babysit him, my folks went to the Pueblo at 9:00 for my dad’s “debut at the organ.”

The first time he played as a “professional” musician. She added this note on the opposite page: August 7th, 1947, Norm had his debut playing the organ at the new night club “Pueblo” [then mentioning a friend who stopped in as a customer]. August 8, 1947 – went over much better. Received his first tip ($1.00) from a gentleman who requested ‘Trees.’”

And so my dad’s second career began: he would play at several clubs and restaurants in the area for the next 17 years or so, before the rheumatoid arthritis made it impossible for him to play. When he would go into the hospital for frequent treatments, he talked J.H. Troup’s into bringing in a Hammond so he could play every night for the other patients after dinner, leading them in sing-alongs and playing requests. It was as much therapy for him as it was for them and the room was always packed.

Today, my dad’s birthday, I looked at this picture of him playing Jack’s Hammond in our living room – a defining moment in his life – and realized, if it was taken between April 18th and May 8th, 1947, a month or less before he turned 29, that next week I will turn twice the age my father was in this picture.

Happy Mother's Day from Frieda's Five

Mother’s Day, last week, had been a little more difficult than I’d thought even though much of the day was spent trying to get two short posts up on “Dr. Dick’s [Other] Blog,” thanks to major issues logging in (and staying in) to blogger... There were lots of things I wanted to do that day but just didn’t get around to any of it, given the blogging frustrations. Finally, after several hours of foiled and failed attempts, I managed to get them posted but I also wanted to do a quick one here: who has that kind of time? It’s not been completely resolved and it seems to be an issue with THIS computer (which is where I do most of my blogging, anyway). The next day, I tried again to post some pictures of the kittens, but even though by then I was able to log in (and stay in) alright, the photo up-loader kept saying “sorry, loser...” So forgive me if I haven’t been posting a lot here.

One of these days, I’m going to get back to composing again, but I have to get my piano out here and that just hasn’t been in the cards: though it turns out the hernia is really two hernias (herniae? hernii?), the problem basically is a pulled muscle in my weakened abdominable wall which is keeping the packing and moving down to – well, nothing, at this point.

Meanwhile, some of Mother’s Day was spent with the new mother in my mom’s house: Frieda the Ex-Stray whom I’ve started calling Frieda Farrell with her five kittens. As of May 14th, they were 3 weeks old. So here are a bunch of pictures I took this past week.

This is a typical group shot. Frieda had them in the right corner behind the toilet of the “turquoise bathroom,” one of 2½ bathrooms in the house, then more recently moved them to the left corner which seems a little more spacious. She still hasn’t gotten used to me and hisses if I get too close to them. After all, not only is she a stray, she’s a new mother, defending her babies. Here they are, lined up (from left to right) Abel, Baker, Guy Noir (the dark one) and Blanche (the cream tabby) and Charlie.

Here they are, trying to get a meeting organized to wish Frieda a happy Mother’s Day, but Baker seems to be having a little trouble getting them called to order. Guy Noir & Blanche are wondering what’s going on with the guy and the camera and Abel is just easily distracted. That’s Charlie hiding under Guy Noir, trying to pretend he’s AWOL...

Here’s a close-up of Guy Noir: who, more and more, is beginning to look like those gremlins you’re not supposed to feed after midnight... Originally, I thought this one was solid black but in the first week or so, all you saw were butts and back legs while they body-surfed into nursing positions. It was only later that, after the eyes opened up, he (or she) began showing more specific signs of orange tabbiness mixed in among the black -- and dig the white bib! Technically, I imagine this is a tortoise-shell which means, like calicos, most likely a female and hence not likely a Guy, and not really Noir enough, either. But for now, it works...

Abel and Charlie (left) have begun working on their wrasslin’ moves... Originally, the three orange tabbies looked identical but even now, as their personalities start surfacing, it's sometimes difficult to tell them apart. Abel is paler with more prominent stripes; Charlie is darker, generally, and more subdued.

Baker, right, probably wondering about life beyond the toilet bowl... This one probably has the greatest sense of curiosity and not surprisingly, a few days later, was the first one to be seen testing her sea-legs in the vast space in front of the toilet! But she soon scampered back into the corner and Mother's protective presence. It's a big, scary world out there.

Apparenly, Blanche has doubts about the wider world, too. She and Charlie are the quietest of the litter. And I'm not sure who wins the Cutest Face Award, Blanche or Baker...

Beethoven Writes a Gut-Wrenching Chord

Another in a series of somewhat surreal stories from the collection, Stravinsky's Tavern.
*** ***** ******** ***** ***

Ludwig van Beethoven sat at his desk, surrounded by papers and pens, the rug underneath (much to his landlord’s dismay) stained by spilled ink. If only he could figure out how to use one of the computer programs all his colleagues talked about using.

The way they explained how it works, you could write a passage, then sequence it in a different key just by hitting a button – it could even play it back to you so you could hear what it sounded like. Beethoven thought this was a cop out: what composer worth his salt needed to have a machine play it back to him? If he couldn’t hear it in his head, should he be composing in the first place? And if he needed to work it out on a “machine,” wasn’t a piano good enough?

No, he shook his head, this new-fangled technology only made it possible for people of little talent to fancy themselves “composers.” It made it too easy. Why, if Vivaldi didn’t have that cut-and-paste function available to him, he might come up with something more interesting than all those endlessly repeated figures in his accompaniments. And that Glass guy – Philip or whatever his name was – it’s just copy-paste paste paste paste paste paste paste...

He turned to his piano and took a typical Glass figure, singing “dah-doo-dee, dah-doo-dee” over and over while he played:
But then he heard, in his inner ear (the true test of anyone’s creative genius), this:

“Hmmm,” he reconsidered, “I should put that aside, that might come in handy some time...”

But today he was supposed to be working on the last movement of his 9th Symphony and it had been giving him an immense amount of trouble, not just figuring out how to begin but where it should go. He had given up the light-hearted finales of his teacher Haydn – too “lah-dee-dah” for him: Mozart had seen to that. A finale needed to be a summing-up, not a cutesy kind of waving bye-bye. He shuddered at the thought, after these first three intense movements he’d struggled with for so long.

No, this needed to start... to start with... uhm... he pondered a while. He wracked his brain a while longer. He sipped his coffee in between ponderings and wrackings. He paced the floor in between sippings. He looked out the window onto the street below in between pacings. After this long, gorgeous, luxuriously unfolding slow movement, he needed to get the listener’s attention, but how?

He sat down heavily at the piano – his poor battered, long-suffering Broadwood piano given to him by a London piano-maker – and crashed his hands down onto the keys in exasperation.

If his downstairs neighbor had been in, she would’ve thought Herr Beethoven had completely lost it, perhaps even passed out, falling across the keyboard, dead on the spot. “Ja ja, I heard it – he collapsed just like that – bang – like a body-slam in wrestling, ja!” She was always watching wrestling on TV – a big fan of Hulk Hoffmeister, she was, too – one of those times Beethoven didn’t mind being deaf, he thought, not having to listen to that racket seeping up through the floor of his music room. People pitied poor Beethoven who couldn’t hear the roar of the traffic outside his apartment or listen to those rock-star wannabees crooning on TV without an ounce of self-respect. The guy next door, who watched every episode of “Austrian Idol,” often wondered what Beethoven had to talk about with his friends if he couldn’t hear what was going on on TV. Pity, that...

But Beethoven felt something. He tried to play that same chord again, just bringing his hands down without really thinking about what they were playing. Yes, he thought, yes! Something deep inside him stirred from the discovery: this was IT – the chord he was looking for!

When he hurried over to his desk to write it down, he felt something else stirring deep inside him: something that snapped and hurt just a little, at first. He hurriedly scribbled down this chord
then felt along the right side of his abdomen... there, just above the belt. Damn... it felt like... well, he’d never had one before, but he figured it had to be one.

A hernia!

He tried to keep working on this chord but the pain in his side distracted him. He was used to being ill but he always hated it. Worse was going to the doctor’s – they’re always bleeding you for something or other, but he figured “what if I just pulled a muscle? What if it’s actually a badly timed attack of appendicitis?” One of his neighbors had a friend who thought he’d had a little gas but when the pain got worse, he went to the hospital only to discover that his appendix was about to explode. Such a silly little thing, an appendix, yet it could kill you if you weren’t observant.

Beethoven kept feeling his side. It hurt when he pressed on it, it hurt when he tried walking but not so bad when he sat down. So it wasn’t continuous – hmm, probably not the appendix. But just in case, he grabbed his coat and shuffled off toward his doctor whose office was a couple streets over, just by the post-office, and he had some things to drop off there, anyway. Off he went, annoyed by the interruption when he was on the cusp of inspiration...

Unfortunately, the nurse he disliked the most was on-duty. Brunnhilde Waffenschlagen had no time for patients and she let them know it. It was her job to keep the office in line with all the government regulations and she did it with the heartlessness and precision of a Prussian field-marshall.

“Ach, Herr Beethoven,” she preened with barely disguised contempt, “vhat zeemz to be bozzering you today, ja?”

“I must see the doctor – I hurt myself... uhm, here,” he said, putting his hand gingerly against his side, “and I’m not sure if it’s a hernia or perhaps appendicitis. Could he take just a few moments to check this out for me?” He hesitated adding “please” for fear it would sound more like he were begging. And Beethoven didn’t beg.

“Und zis pain, ja,” she said, looking down over the glasses resting near the tip of her otherworldly nose, refusing even to glance where Beethoven had placed his hand, “zis happened vhile you vere vorking, ja?”

“Ja,” and he began telling her how he was composing and came up with this incredible chord – well, he wasn’t even sure it was a real chord, because it sounded like a pile-up of dissonances and he hadn’t had a chance to work out how it would all resolve just yet.

Nurse Waffenschlagen’s eyes glazed over. She hated when he started going all technical on her. She would remember to use as much medical jargon on him as her training would allow.

“Zo, zis did not happen vhen you vere valking along ze shtreet or doingk ze dishess – but vhile you vere... compozingk?”

Annoyed to have to explain it all over again, he simply shouted, “Ja!” Then mumbled something he hoped was sufficiently under his breath. Judging from the arch suddenly appearing in Nurse Waffenschlagen’s right eyebrow, it was not.

“Zen, in zat case, ze doctor cannot zee you yet because zis vill be a Vorkman’s Composer Insurance Claim und zat vill reqvire a whole different series of protocols vhich must be followed TO ZE LETTER und zo you must contact your composer’s union representative” – she tapped this out syllable by syllable as if marked staccato molto, her voice becoming more and more shrill – “in order to obtain ze appropriate claim account number for ze file, und zen, ja – und ZEN... ve can talk about setting up ze appointment.” She was clearly enjoying every minute of this.

“But I just want to find out if this is indeed a hernia or something more serious like appendicitis!” Beethoven was close to roaring.

“If zis turns out to be a... khhhhhernia” – she spat this out with a rolling, guttural “h” so thick Beethoven would need to clean his glasses – “zen it vill be covered under ze Vorkman’s Composer Insurance Regulations. If not, zen your own insurances vill cover it, but zat, I am afrrrraidt, vill be a different processss completely, do you underschtand mich?” By now, she had traversed her full range from below the staff to several lines above.

With that she slammed the window shut, stood up to her full 5'2" height and turned toward the photocopier to continue processing insurance forms from last month’s patients.

Beethoven was simply furious. It was not a good start to his day.



- - - - - - -
Dr. Dick
© 2007

Just a Moment in Time

At three minutes and four seconds past 2:00am today, it will be

02:03:04 05/06/07

which will never happen again in our lifetimes unless you plan on being around in a hundred years.

At the moment, however, a quick glimpse into an important moment in the life of a kitten: Day 13 and the eyes are beginning to open. And in this photograph, the first time I really get to glimpse some faces! Mother and the Mighty Handful are doing well -- tentatively Frieda's kittens are named Abel, Baker and Charlie (for the three orange tabbies; though one is darker than the other two, they're basically so far indestinguishable), and, pending gender identifications, Blanche and Guy Noir for the cream-colored tabby and the black one (which may, I think, turn out to be a tortiseshell and therefore likely a female).

Meanwhile plans for completing the move have been put on hold by the arrival of my new side-kick, Hermie the Hernia, who will preclude a great deal of packing much less anything else: I think there may be a new comic short-story in the making dealing with workman's comp insurance regulations, perhaps something Wagnerian...

As we approach Mother's Day next week, I find myself reading Joyce Carol Oates' Missing Mom which I figured would prove cathartic rather than just purely entertaining, now that I find myself living alone in the same house my mom lived alone in, reading her 1,000-plus mysteries, for the past nearly 22 years. More on the book, later.

Moving back to the house I grew up in, I have to admit some of the things I've been finding, sifting through my own stuff that has been stored here (either by me or by my mother) have been surprising to unearth: an interview with me about my compositions when I was having works played by the Harrisburg Symphony in my mid-teens, talking about creativity issues and finding myself almost the exact opposite, now; and what may well be the first piece of my music I ever tried to write down, embarrassingly infantile considering I was just learning the basics of theory and notation, but hey, I was 8 years old... But that's for a later post, too.

But it's now closing in on 02:03:04 05/06/07 and I doubt I'll be around in 2107 to note its passing once again: perhaps a toast from me, the cats... and Hermie... Then we can all gather 'round and do this again next year in June -- at 3:04:05, 06/07/08! (But without Hermie...)

Dr. Dick

A Kaboodle of Kittens: Day 6

Some years ago, a friend of mine, adopting a stray kitten that had only recently been weaned, told me she had often had cats but had never started one “from scratch.” Several of my cats over the years came to me as kittens or ‘teen-aged’ cats (and all but the first two, strays), yet even though I may have missed the exact “miracle of birth” only by minutes, I have never had the chance to watch kittens grow up from Day One. It has been amazing!

And the opportunities for catblogging on a grand scale!

This morning is “Kittens: Day 6." Of course, I’ve been taking pictures of them every day, documenting their growth even though it’s been a little difficult trying not to disturb them. Frieda, the proud and wary mother of five, is still not used to me or to being in a house. Compared to her last litter, I wonder how this one is faring: with food placed twice a day in a bowl a few feet from her, she at least doesn’t have to wander far to forage and leave the kittens unattended for very long. I also had hoped she would have moved them over to a section of the floor covered with a towel since I imagine the bathroom tiles must be chilly for little kittens, but she chose this corner (which hadn’t occurred to the resident human) just because of its security and basic inaccessibility (at least as far as the resident human is concerned).
So far, everything seems to be going well. While I was sure there had been two black ones, perhaps the darkest of the three orange tabbies looked even darker on those first two days. On the other hand, perhaps there had been two black ones and one didn’t make it. I was more concerned about not spooking the mother than counting how many furballs surrounded her that Monday morning. I certainly haven’t tried examining them – with my scent on them, it’s possible the mother may refuse to nurse them any more – so I don’t know what genders they may be.

The cream-colored tabby and the black one (which one night, in the flash light, didn’t look all that black – could it be a black tabby? I haven’t noticed that he (or she) has any white anywhere) are the ones I’ve thought about keeping (once before, I’d adopted a mother and her one surviving kitten – the kitten is now 12). If the genders are right, they could end up being named Blanche and Guy Noir.

It seems appropriate starting off life in the house (not a new house to me but a new chapter in my life in it) with an arm-load of kittens. My mother would be fascinated to observe this (at least for a while) if not mighty peeved to realize they’ve taken over her bathroom (as in “they’re so cute, but do they have to be there?”).

The other cats, filtered from them by the space of the bedroom as well, have not registered any curiosity beyond wondering why I keep disappearing behind this door with a can of food. It will be a challenge, introducing Frieda to the three cats already here, but I want to hold off on that little surprise until the kittens are old enough she won’t feel they’re quite so vulnerable: who knows how many of her kittens were killed before by other stray tomcats? It’s not an easy world out there for newborn cats on the street, all the more reason to consider spaying and neutering your pets!!

But meanwhile, there’s work to do and I must head into it. I think I’m ready, now, to start moving my stuff in – the scores and CDs, the books and OMG the piano, how I miss having that piano!

On Wednesday afternoon, seeing WITF’s nine-foot grand open in the studio, I went in and practiced – well, played through a couple of stock pieces that had been in my repertoire since college days, perhaps, but rarely practiced (I think the last time I seriously practiced was maybe a year and five months ago) – a few Scarlatti sonatas, a few pieces by Schumann (the Arabesque, the Romance in F-sharp, the last movement of the Fantasy in C), some Chopin (selected mazurkas, nocturnes and preludes), some of the Beethoven bagatelles from Op.126.

While I don’t think I’m going to be ready to be performing in public any time soon, at this rate, it was good to know the wounds on my index fingers – incurred last week while snagging a certain stray cat flying around the kitchen – didn’t keep me from getting around the keys. Oh, the scales were rough and the voicing maybe a little more uneven than usual, but at least they were still moving. With signs of arthritis developing, playing the piano more regularly will be good therapy if not for the soul at least for the hands.

And there’s a new piece working its way into my head: I need to start jotting down ideas (some of which I can do without a piano) but I also need to finish these violin and piano pieces I’d stopped working on in December. John Clare and I had talked about having them ready to perform in May but that’s not going to happen...

And tomorrow is Family Day at WITF – I can’t wait for “Take Your Kittens to Work Day”!

Dr. Dick

Photo credits: from Dr. Dick's collection -- (top) Day 4; (center) Day 5; (bottom) Day 6...

A House-Warming Present

With all the usual joys of moving, one of the things I determined would be going with me would be the Stray Cat.

Last summer, perhaps even in early June, a small orange tabby appeared on my back porch in town, clearly a feral street-born cat. Naturally, I put food out for it and after it had kept coming back every night, I decided I should probably try rescuing it except I already had three cats in a small, already cramped one-bedroom apartment. Regardless, this cat was immediately named Farrell. And they say when you start naming the strays, the next step is to adopt them.

One night the cat showed up twice, which was unusual: “but I just fed you,” I argued. Still, my cats had not eaten everything of theirs, so I put some ‘left-overs’ out thinking this cat was really really hungry.

The next night, there were TWO cats on my porch, identical, side by side like bookends! Apparently they were from the same litter. As the summer wore on, they would both appear either together or fairly close together and I realized there was a pattern here: the one would head out to the street in front of my house; the other one would always head out through my back yard and across the neighbor’s lot toward 2nd Street. Later, it turned out one was pregnant. So I named her Frieda and was wondering if Farrell was going to be Uncle Dad...

No matter how much I fed them or stayed out on the porch with them while they ate – and they always were waiting for me and ran to the door when I’d come home from work – they never allowed me to get close to them. I had to be at least four feet away from the bowl before they’d come in closer to eat. Thoughts of catching either of them were pretty slim and what was I going to do with TWO cats and a litter of kittens?

Sometime toward the end of July, the female stopped coming around. I assumed Frieda may have gone off to have her litter and she’d be back. At the end of August, she returned but now I was afraid to catch her for fear the kittens, though probably weaned, may not be ready to be on their own. It was over Labor Day weekend that she stopped coming around again: Farrell kept coming by until 10 nights later, then I saw him for the last time. Small as he was, he bushed himself up as much as he could and chased a big black bruiser of a tomcat off the porch. Once chasing him off, he turned right when the tom turned left and just kept going. Never saw him again.

All through the fall and winter, I wondered if they’d ever come back. What is the shelf-life of a city stray cat? I figured someone may have caught them, or they may have been killed by other, larger cats or perhaps the dogs that kids sometimes sic on street-cats (I rescued one stray from that fate in 1985 and had her for 15 years) - or perhaps they had become road-kill on a city street. I preferred thinking the first option.

So it was much to my surprise that a not-quite-as-small orange tabby appeared at my back-door, waiting to be fed, in early March just a week or so after my mother’s funeral. I immediately put food out for it and recognized the scar on its tail, though I couldn’t remember if that was the way I could tell which one was Farrell or which one was Frieda. She came by, often greeting me on my porch, every night when I’d get home.

Well, I figured out it was the female – she was getting a little fuller around the belly, clearly pregnant again. I hadn’t noticed she’d been in heat at any time, so I don’t know when she might have gotten “hit” but she was still the same, wary street-wise cat she’d been before. Sometimes she’d dash in to start eating if I sat beside the food bowl but I still couldn’t touch her: she’d turn and run, even run away without eating if she thought I was trying to catch her. She’d come back minutes later, waiting until I was safely inside before she’d approach the bowl.

Fair enough.

Then, when I started moving out of the apartment and into the house, now that I’d taken my own cats with me, I could try just leaving the kitchen door open in hopes she’d come inside to eat. Every night after work, I’d come into town just to feed her (and do a little sorting and packing) and finally she’d hop up on the step and eat there... then maybe inside as far as the doormat but no farther.

I had caught one stray years ago by making a bread-crumb trail of ground-beef which I’d happened to be cooking at the time, and that cat was so hungry, despite any misgivings, she followed the trail into the center of my kitchen before I shut the door behind her (I had her for 15 years, also).

Frieda, however, turned out not to like ground beef. She became warier and ran off. The next night she wouldn’t even come close to the door and even ran off before I put the food outside for her (the ‘possum got that dishful).

Which brings me to last Friday night – and I had decided (a) maybe I’m not supposed to have this cat even though I’ve now got room for her and (b) I’d wait until Sunday night because I knew with the symphony’s pre-concert talks, I’d probably be too busy with everything else to deal with settling a stray cat into a spare bathroom.

But Friday night, she decided to come in. She hadn’t eaten much the past two nights and it seems like she hardly eats anything anywhere else, for all I know. She looked longingly at the dish. I moved it in further – far enough to be able to shut the door behind her. I was able to block off the hallway out of the kitchen: once the door was closed, she’d be trapped. Then I’d grab her and put her in the carrier, already waiting for her.

It took maybe 20 minutes but she worked up enough courage to come in – first a bite, then a dash back to the porch... then another bite or two, then a retreat to the step. Then she settled down to eat. That’s when I shut the door behind her, hoping I’d be faster than she’d be and that I wouldn’t cut her in half in the process.

Slam! Bam! Gotcha, ma’am!

After she took two laps around the kitchen, during which I was afraid she might start spitting out kittens left and right, I managed to corral her. I have the bite-marks on both index fingers to prove it. Once in the carrier, she was quiet – wide-eyed but quiet, no yowling or crying. In fact, I didn’t hear a peep from her all the way out to the house (which is more than I could say for two of my long-domesticated cats). I stopped to buy some band-aids and peroxide, having already taken some time to wash out the wounds and add a little Neosporin.

But Frieda was now mine. I’m not sure either of us were really ready for this.

I figured I couldn’t put this off any longer because I didn’t know when she’d have the kittens: after they’d be born, I would be long gone from the apartment if she should return. I would never see her again.

I put her in a spare bathroom at the back of the house, out of the way from general traffic and isolated from the other cats. Once out of the carrier, she immediately flew up the wall and hung (by one claw) from the curtains. Then she settled down on the counter-top. She sat in front of the mirror (see picture, left), finding some comfort, apparently, in this other cat. Did she think it was Farrell? She actually allowed me to pet her and I spent a few minutes nuzzling her behind her ears and down her neck, under the chin, down over the back but not too close to the mound of kittens deep inside her. She eventually curled up in the sink (see picture, below). After sitting with her for a while, it was now past 3am and I decided to get some sleep.


When I checked her in the morning, she settled into a corner under the counter. She would not let me pet her – and I have claw-marks to prove it – and I figured, okay, she’s pregnant and she’s very defensive, so I’d just let her alone. It might take a week for her to adapt. Okay, I could handle that.

On Sunday, she’d moved over to a different corner, even more inaccessible: behind the toilet.

The plan was to try catching her again to take her out to the vets, have her checked out, get her what shots she could have, given her condition, and see how the kittens are progressing.

Monday morning, when I woke up around 8:45, I discovered she had no intention of going to the vets. She had just given birth to what will be her last litter of kittens.

She was still licking one off. They were all soaking wet, looked more like hairballs with rat-tails except they were squirming and mewing. I wasn’t sure but I think there were four or five. I decided she needed to be left alone: the more I check in on her, she might feel threatened and destroy them.

About an hour later, I cleaned the litter box (so relieved to discover she actually was using it) and put down fresh water, trying to be quiet and non-aggressive. She was now on her other side and the kittens were out-of-view behind her. There was a pile of dark something-or-other about six inches from her which I took to mean one of them didn’t make it but I wasn’t about to reach back and try taking it away.

Meanwhile, I had called the vets, asked “OMG WHAT NOW?!” and they said basically just let her raise them, I don’t need to do anything except make sure she has lots of food and water and to clean the litter box a couple times a day. And then wait until they're weaned – uhm, maybe 4-6 weeks.

If this had happened at the old apartment, she would’ve been in the only bathroom I have which would be a real disaster trying to accommodate her. Fortunately, I’d gotten her out to the house in time where it won’t be anywhere near the inconvenience. But still...

Out of cat food, I made a quick dash to the store, then just put a can of food down for her, the kittens mewing and crawling around. They were now dried-off and looking more like cats than drowned mice. Earlier, I thought there were two dark ones, one orange tabby like her and another one kind of nondescript but partly hidden. But now I could see three orange tabbies and one so pale it looked like a white kitten with pale orange tabby markings (I decided, okay, if everything works out, I’m keeping that one). And the one I thought was dead may be the dark one I now see nursing from her. By the time I got the camera, I could now see only three (or maybe four) of them.

So there you have it – Frieda Plus Four, Maybe Five. The excitement continues to build!

Dr. Dick

The Past as a Present

Since this was intended as a "creativity" blog and I haven't been very creative recently, following my mother's death, there hasn't been anything to write about except I am very agitated about not being able to compose right now which I guess is a good sign. In the past, going a few months without feeling like writing made me question whether I was a composer or not.

Back in December, nearly finished with three of the pieces for violin and piano I'd been working on, I decided to take a break and write something else. Since it was Christmastime, a Christmas piece seemed logical, but that came to a halt on January 16th (and that after three days of inactivity) because of numerous distractions mostly related to the apartment and the constantly barking doberneighborman. I had decided it was time to move -- a hateful occupation of time that is sure to destroy the creative impulse as everything else falls before it.

The question was where? It would be a spring-time project.

In the past, most of my moves came toward the end of summer: in fact, the last move took place over the hottest week of the summer of 2001 and I refuse to get stuck with that again.

And not in winter: a former co-worker told me stories of moving into Central PA during the Blizzards of January 1996 -- she moved the weekend of the Flood, however, the one with the ice jam that took out the Walnut Street Bridge -- and I didn't want to risk scheduling movers only to tempt Mother Nature into coming up with something equally memorable in this otherwise unmemorable winter.

Since my mother's death in February, much of the time has been spent dealing with the grief and the changes one senses, even at my age, in losing one's mother. It has not been a weepy, mournful grief (trying to avoid those who've been weepy and mournful has helped) but a quiet, contemplative one that at times is sad and wistful, at others joyful and humorous, mostly depending on the memory of the moment or something I may have found as we clean through the stuff-congested house with its accumulation of not only my parents' lifetime but their parents as well.

A few weeks ago, a friend showed me a book he had just gotten back after loaning it out and I said I had to read it: it was called "When I'm Dead All This Will Be Yours!" by Teller, the shorter, quiet half of the master magicians Penn & Teller, a portrait of his dad (primarily) and the memories he discovered going through some of their stuff while, fortunately, both his parents were alive to tell him its significance. Through this "stuff" the son discovers aspects of his parents' lives he was unaware of before.

The cover shows a very wary Teller sitting in the midst of his dad's shop, a dusty broken victrola on his lap, his father emphatically expounding on the importance of some rusted contraption he's handing him. They're surrounded by tools, mops, jars full of nails, a porcelain pitcher, what looks like a stuffed raven but also paintings and what may be the cartoons Joe Teller had drawn in 1939 which become the focus of the book: these cartoons are The Discovery, something the son never even knew existed, and this leads to letters and reminiscences about the years his dad had gone tramping across the country (quite literally) before becoming an artist, meeting his future wife at an art school, then getting married just before World War II. After the war, Joe Teller settled into the world of commercial art, primarily as a "letter man" doing the wording for ads in the Philadelphia newspapers.

So far, I have not found a box of cartoons, but I did just find a box of india inks and paints, brushes and pen-nibs my dad used when he'd do the lettering for the ads he designed for "The Boston Store," one of the Greenberg stores in Harrisburg where he'd worked since graduating from high school (or perhaps even before) and had long been the manager. I found a card he had made for my mom's 60th birthday in which he wrote about how they met:

"It was the summer of '38 at Hershey Park when I saw 'Ginny' Hartman for the first time. I didn't know then that God had a plan for everyone's life from beginning to end, so on this special day I didn't know I was looking at the girl God had chosen for my life!

A few days later, in Pomeroy's Department Store, I saw the most beautiful, wholesome-looking girl I had ever seen. It was Ginny Hartman!! My heart 'pounded with excitement' on June 17, 1938 when I asked her for a date and she accepted. And on March 17, 1940, her name became Ginny Strawser."

As I remember the story, my dad, two years out of Hummelstown High School, was working at Greenberg's clothing store at 5th & Market in downtown Harrisburg. My mother, a '37 graduate of John Harris High School, was working at Pomeroy's at 4th & Market. The story goes that dad went back to Greenberg's, told a co-worker named Duke about the girl he'd just seen and wanted him to go back and find out her name: "she's wearing a white blouse and black skirt." When Duke got there, it turned out ALL the sales clerks wore white blouses and black skirts. It must've worked out okay, though: Duke's in the wedding photo as Best Man.

My dad was a natural-born musician, teaching himself to play the piano and eventually the Hammond organ. He couldn't read music but had perfect pitch and could play a thousand songs if you could hum a few bars. I found dozens of reel-to-reel tapes made in 1954 when my dad had a 15-minute radio show once a week, broadcast live from the Blue Mountain Hotel (now Felicita). I was 5 years old and thought everybody's dad had a radio show. Funny how I've just passed my 17th anniversary working at WITF-FM...

But I also knew somewhere there was a record. We have many recordings -- 45s, 78s and then the long-playing 33s. But this one was different: my dad made this recording and it was a song he wrote and sang while he was in San Diego during the War and sent to Mom back home. It was one of those things where servicemen could go to this studio and record greetings their loved ones back home could listen to -- think about it: they were on the verge of being shipped off to the Pacific Front -- but my dad wrote a song and performed it himself.

Last night, I found the record.

It was unmarked, just a blank label in a blank sleeve but I just knew it had to be that song. I haven't listened to it yet because I'm afraid one time may be the last time it would play or I'd break it. I want to wait till I can transfer it onto a CD just to make sure I can hear it again. It may not have been a box of cartoons, but it was a discovery all the same.

There was a story my mother told me shortly after Dad died in 1985. When he was in San Diego, he and a bunch of his Navy buddies were on a train that had an old piano on it. If there was a piano in a room, my dad wanted to play it, so he and his friends went over to the piano and he played while they all sang along to the popular songs of the day.

One of the passengers in that car was the wife of actor Raymond Massey who went up and complimented him, introducing herself and saying she had some "connections" (some guy named Crosby, I believe) if he'd be interested in playing in a band for Hollywood.

My dad, a Hollywood studio musician!

I wonder how different things would've been if he'd followed up on that. The war was over not long after that and the first thought in his mind was getting home to his family -- not just his wife but also his 4-year-old son, my older brother. He remembered the problems his parents had had, his father a trumpet player in numerous bands in the area and as family legend has it subbed in the Sousa band for part of a year. This became a bone of contention with my grandmother who didn't want to be stuck home with the kids while he travelled around playing music all over the place, so he gave it up.

My dad didn't "give it up," though. He stayed here in Harrisburg and became a well-known musician "on the side," maintaining his day job (one newspaper article about him when he was active in the Uptown Business Men's Association, described him as "shoe salesman to the poor") earning a kind of fame. True, it was not without its issues: if my folks went out on their anniversary, it was always a St. Patrick's Day party where Dad was playing the organ and Mom would sit there and listen to him. New Years Eve, she was always alone with the kids, ushering in the new year with a toast of homemade egg nog.

My parents built this house and we moved into it in March of 1960, around the time of their 20th wedding anniversary.

Now 47 years later, I will be moving into it myself. It's not a "new" place because I grew up here, though now it's "my" place even if it is still (and will always be to an extent) "their" place. It is not perfect -- there are aspects of "deferred maintenance" to contend with -- but it is a far cry from the cramped little apartments I have been renting all my life.

Once the piano is back in my old childhood bedroom, I can compose again. I won't have to worry about the sleeping (or fighting) schedules of upstairs neighbors, the noise of boom-boxes from the street, the loud music pounding through the walls from next door, the doberneighborman barking all day long as I'm trying to write. I can play the piano when I want and compose whenever I feel like it.

And I already have some pieces in mind to work on. But more of that, later.

Dr. Dick

Loss & Remembrance

We are creatures of habit, building up a routine over the years of what is comfortable and anticipated. And though we might adapt as schedules and expectations evolve, for some reason of presumed invincibility we think things will never change, or perhaps hope they never will, even when change is inevitable. Because we expect people to always be there for us – with us – things go unsaid (but hopefully understood) and plans are put off because there’s always another day. Until we realize that, however it happened, there are no more days to procrastinate with. Now, instead, we look back to find consolation in memories.

In the week since my mother’s death, I have found boxes of pictures that I knew she had been sorting through and sometimes labeling, scanning pictures to e-mail to my brother and I or her sister on the computer we’d gotten her when she turned 80, including lots of photos from the 1920s to the 1940s as well as her parents’ wedding picture from 1911 and family photographs of her mother taken before they left England.

There were some with vague historical details that I only remember from what she had told me, then: a heavily bearded gentleman was her grandfather whom no one in the family seemed to know much about. All the known pictures of her grandmother show her in “widow’s black” which leads us to believe he died when she was not yet middle-aged. By association, she must be the young woman with her hand leaning demurely on her older husband’s shoulder in a carefully choreographed family portrait taken after his own father’s death, his mother (my great-great-grandmother) seated amidst her children looking very much like Queen Victoria who spent much of her own life wearing widow’s black. Looking at it, I’m not sure I can explain why I dated this picture to the 1870s, now, but it’s the start of a long line of family photographs – using this old technology – that ends with a photograph taken a year or so ago of my mother, then in her mid-80s, with her great-granddaughter. I will scan many of these onto a CD and hope that, when she grows up, my great-niece will have the technology available to view a CD-Rom, if looking at the sadness on the face of her great-great-great-great grandmother (whose name I do not even know) will connect her with a past she never knew existed.

But I also found other boxes that I had never seen before and which maybe Mother had forgotten she’d placed on a top shelf in a closet. Many of them were recognizable – this aunt, that uncle, though taken before I was born – and others may not really matter as long as I can tell they are part of her father’s large collection of friends and siblings.

In an album that had only a few pages of mounted photographs which my father had generously captioned – followed by several pages with fistfuls of unsorted, usually uncaptioned photos intended for later inclusion – I saw a series taken on a mild December day in 1940 with my Uncle Marlin who had died later in World War II. There was my mother, not quite 10 months a bride, standing with my uncle who looked proud and spiffy in his army uniform. Then I saw my dad in his army uniform and thought, “wait, he wasn’t in the army” before I realized he – and then my Uncle Bob too – were all having their pictures taken wearing Uncle Marlin’s jacket!

Some lack dates which might be helpful, others lack clues if you don’t know what to look for (one couple’s wedding photo she helpfully labeled “not a clue”).

It was good to find pictures of her that erase the pain of seeing her those final days. It was amazing to read through old calendars, some stored in boxes in her office (on a desk that her father had bought when he graduated from high school in 1905) that were kind of like journals where I could fill in the details, knowing an anecdote from the family history or discovering a day in June marked “1st Anniv of 1st Date” with my dad and pictures taken on her grandfather’s farm (see photo at left) in upper Dauphin County.

One anecdote I knew from early in my childhood: how Dad got his first Hammond organ. Well, not really his... He had played the piano since he was in grade school – he had perfect pitch but never took lessons from anyone, just figuring everything out by ear – and he learned how to play the organ much the same way during The War, sneaking into the base’s chapel though he was primarily playing the popular songs of the day to entertain his friends and anyone who’d listen. After the war, a friend of his, Jack, was building his own house and the Hammond organ he’d ordered was going to be delivered before the house was ready: would my folks mind if he’d have it delivered to their place in Paxtang so he wouldn’t lose the option on it (it would go to the next person on the list and he’d be bumped to the bottom, otherwise). Well, sure! Paging through a 1947-1948 ‘engagement’ book, my mother wrote down the day Jack’s Hammond was delivered (see photo at right). Later that summer, my dad made his debut at the Pueblo, a night-spot in Harrisburg, as a “cocktail organist” (the second night, she noted, went better than the first; a few days later, she also mentions his first tip, $1.00). Throughout the book were annotations of “Jack over for dinner” or “dinner at Jack’s” and frequent games of pinochle with Jack and other friends. On March 17th, 1948, she writes “Our 8th Wedding Anniversary.”

There was a box of her father’s early record-keeping, too: rent receipts he’d paid for apartments before they bought their first house the year my mother was born ($15/month rent – not bad) or lists of furniture they’d bought (including a piano for $420), lists of books he’d read, lists of facts he thought were important to remember, and a string of medallions he wore as a member of the Philadelphia branch of the Knights of Malta in 1918. Ironically, I realized, last Friday sitting there amidst these boxes of papers and pictures we were sorting through on the floor, looking up at the desk I often looked up at when I was a child, that that Friday was my grandfather’s birthday and so we went out for dinner to celebrate the past.

My mother had become a keeper of lists herself: the gene is apparently inherited from her father. There are ledger books with every book she read since 1985 when my father died and piles of books that she’d not yet logged but which had post-it notes on them indicating when she’d finished reading them. There’s a ledger itemizing every piece of clothing she bought between 1984 and 1994. There are bundles of notes listing every visitor and phone call she received and made since 1993 (and I suspect I will find previous years tucked away somewhere else). Her more recent calendars, while devoid of highlights like she noted in 1947, may have contained less interesting information – the high and low temperatures for every day or when the Lawn Guy mowed the grass (highlighted in green). She was, if anything, a meticulously organized packrat. I have inherited the packrat gene but unfortunately not her organizational skills: my laissez-faire approach to clutter is something I inherited from my dad.

There are bundles of letters still to be sorted and read, though fewer than I would’ve thought. But that is for another day. In this age of e-mail and instant messaging – and yes, I found print-outs my mother had made of several of the chat sessions we’d had when she first got her computer – what will be left for families to reminisce over in the future? I can hold a 130-year-old photograph in my hand and feel the connection with my family’s distant English roots, but what of all those jpg’s locked in some already out-dated computer software program or storage format? What about all those reel-to-reel audio tapes she’d made from the radio broadcasts when my dad had a weekly 15-minute show, live from the Blue Mountain Hotel in the mid-1950s? We had often talked about trying to resurrect them so she could hear them again before she died, but it kept getting put off, too involved a process, perhaps, and even at 87½ we still felt there was time.

One of my rituals these past 15 years or so was to call my mother, however often I may have talked to her the rest of the week, Sunday nights following the 11:00 news. Even though she was expecting it, she said it always made her jump when the phone rang and she would worry if I was a few minutes late. We would talk, maybe, for an hour or more, both of us night-owls (I was born, according to my baby calendar in which she annotated every event and illness that first year, at 2:58 a.m.). But tonight was the first Sunday night since the funeral that I know she’s not there for me to call on the phone.

Years ago, I had found a quote – mentioned in one of May Sarton’s journals – attributed to St. John Chrysostom:

He whom we have loved and lost
Is no longer where he once was.
He is now wherever we are.

And I also know that, after 21 years, my mother and my father are together again. And these two understandings help me considerably in dealing with her loss.

-- Dr. Dick

Photo credits: all from family collections - (1) Mother in a black dress taken by my dad in early-1940s; (2) Mom & Dad on the Hartman Farm in Williamstown PA, 1939, the year before they married; (3) My dad, Norm Strawser, playing Jack's Hammond organ in the living room of our house in Paxtang (two years before I was born); (4) Mom & Dad in 1944, a photograph I found in her wallet the day she died, February 23rd, 2007.