Woman Around Town’s Editor Charlene Giannetti and writers for the website talk with the women and men making news in New York, Washington, D.C., and other cities around the world. Thanks to Ian Herman for his wonderful piano introduction.
On the first Sunday of August 2016, I made my way to the cul de sac at East 72nd Street to catch a glimpse of a parade that set off in 1844 and was scheduled to pass my viewing point around 10 that morning. For such a rare sight there were very few members of my urban village gathered to watch. But then, there are so many rarities and amazements in our every day. And many of them free to behold.
But first, let me answer the predictable questions in your mind: no it was not the passing of a ghost ship. And no, I wasn’t watching it courtesy of a time machine.
I had come to wave at some neighbors participating in the New York Yacht Club’s (NYYC) 160th cruise from New York City to Newport, RI, with additional stops in Oyster Bay on Long Island, Thimble Islands, CT, Fishers Island off the southeast coast of Connecticut, and Block Island, RI. Because one of those neighbors is as good a photographer as she is a sailor, you can join me here for a few visual/virtual highlights of one of New York’s continuing legends.
The annual custom began in 1844 and, accounting for this year’s being marked as the 160th, there were a few historic interruptions. The website of NYYC lists those as the Civil War, the Spanish American War, World Wars I and II, and the assassination of New York Senator Robert Kennedy.
For the week that began this August 7, the participants were 137 yachts that traveled from harbor to harbor, stopping each night at a different location, living on the water. My neighbors explained to this landlubber that the yachts are rafted to each other, or to a mother ship, that provides them with meals, beverages, showers, laundry, clean towels, and other amenities the sea itself does not provide. Dinghies were their point to point transportation.
Some of the photos I saw when they were able to transmit them included two large buildings on green lawns, both of them iconic yacht clubs. The first in Oyster Bay and the second the NYYC’s “home port” in Newport. The modern house on Fishers Island, is owned by the Armstrong family. A friend of my neighbors arranged for them to visit that home’s spectacular gardens. So they had an additional “up close and personal” experience of the twin glories of land and sea.
From my vantage point on 72nd Street, I could not guess all the adventures that lay in store for the “sailors.” And because I was at a high point on land as the first vessels passed, I could not tell whether these neighbors could see me and some fellow urban villagers waving them off. (They could, and did.)
I had been told that the parade that started at the end of “my” island and made its initial way up the East River was arranged with a careful plan to accommodate sailing vessels, smaller and larger vessels capable of using either sail or motorized travel. Since the East River is a salt water tidal estuary with strong currents, all began the parade using motors. In fact, the U.S. Coast Guard requires all boats: sailboats, even canoes and kayaks, to use their engines, motors that allow them to travel at a speed of at least five miles per hour while navigating that river.
To my amazement, a large barge of the sort one sees every day on this river blocked my view as it made its way in the opposite direction, creating what I could only guess was a significant challenge for some of the parade’s smaller vessels.
But one of the things I learned from my “day at the parade” is that sailors are a hardy lot. And I learned too that I want to learn more of the venerable NYYC. I hope we can explore its history as portrayed in the unique West 44th Street Club House with its Beaux-Arts architecture featuring repeated images of a yacht’s stern, its art treasures, and relationship to the iconic America’s Cup.
All photos by Maureen C. Koeppel. Parade map by Brad Dellenbaugh
As Labor Day looms on the horizon it puts a spotlight on the new rules for wardrobe choices, and their correctness (or not) and together with memories of the just-ended Olympics reminds us how little clothing it now takes to be a winner. It seems the right time to take a fresh look at the quaint expression “Sunday Best.” It used to mean the “dress up clothes” you could wear to Church and be more or less assured that you would not stand out like a pesky weed in a garden of elegant predictability. Those whose worship was on a different, designated day of the week have traditionally been tolerant of the fact that the said “Best” was a no less demanding set of requirements for them and their fellow worshippers. A matter more of correctness than calendar, you might say.
Some of the genteel elements of the “Sunday Best” might have included a large hair bow, a collar and tie (remember when those weren’t just for weekdays, minus Friday, at your job in a corporate office that included both bricks and mortar?). Gloves, not the kind you use for warmth but ones made of cotton (preferably white) or kid (Look it up!) or crochet linen were musts. The dresses (unless you were Katherine Hepburn and had been given a pass on wearing skirts) were to be tailored, elegant (not too) and cover the knees. The Shoes were wing tips for him and closed and not too high of heel for her. Crocks were spelled with a K and used for storing pickles and children were definitely not to wear the plastic foot coverings that leave out the “k” as an acceptable “Sunday Best’ wardrobe selection. Hats, presumably were recommended (or not) with a nod to gender. Men’s hats were seemingly synonymous with a range from Fedora to Irish Walking Hat (especially if you were the late, great Patrick J. Moynihan) to Derbys and other styles made of felt. The “Sunday Bests” in this category did not include baseball caps or otherwise designated promotional items that identified you with cause or sporting loyalty.
In houses of worship from which the Aretha Franklins and Mahalia Jacksons of the world emerged into the vocal halls of fame, hats, I believe, remain an absolute requirement. It was not by accident that the musical based on this fashion statement was called “Crowns.” Purses were not to be confused with backpacks or similarly luggage grade carriers suited to accommodating the majority of one’s earthly possessions.
If you are wondering why a mention of Labor Day set off this train of thought, it’s because the rules of costuming have calendar standards that are probably mostly “honored in the breach” of late. Not so long ago, the white shoes that were not to be brought out before Memorial Day were also scrupulously to be retired after Labor Day. The same general rule applied to white trousers as worn by both males and females and suits (unless you happened to be the writer of Bonfire of the Vanities and named Tom Wolfe.) Then there came the vogue for “winter white” and in its fashion wake, all bets were off for the whole universe of white garments.
While waiting to speak with the buyer for a nicely managed super market in my urban village, I observed a note on the bulletin board recommending certain wardrobe choices for the men and women employed there. It included the recommendation to avoid wearing “openwork” denim trousers, see-through tops and other clothing and footwear items. That gave me yet another reason to add to my own puzzlement as to how price tags seem to rise in proportion to the removal of fabric. When, I can’t help but wonder, did deliberate destruction become a winning design inspiration coveted by fashion directors from K-Mart to Bergdorf. I recall when “casual Fridays” emerged as a viable fashion option. At first it might have been that losing a tie was somehow a bold choice. But that predated virtual commuting that made it a matter of no concern as to Friday garb.
Now that exercise regimens have taken on the status of semi-sacred obligations no one should be surprised that what were once referred to as “gym clothes” go with confidence to any and every destination. I need to Google a story reported recently on one of the innumerable electronic modes of communication and be reminded of what it said about the impact of casual clothing on the level of one’s happiness.
Maybe “Sunday Best” refers to mood and not garb. So as Labor Day nears, just smile, and stay tuned.
Don’t take this personally. Remember when that phrase was usually followed by …..but……?
By that point the speaker might have confessed to preferring girls with blonde hair (though yours was black); or to being a total believer in the superiority of the Mets (though you were a loyal supporter of the Bronx Bombers.) These were differences you could live with. They might have created a passing sense of puzzlement but they did not usually engender a sense of insult or betrayal or disdain. Why? As best I can understand, it was because there was a recognizable distinction between what was personal and what was public. But in this past, interminable election season, I look back to that earlier time with feelings ranging from wistful to downright sad.
The bitter voices of accusation, innuendo and disagreement remind me that in a world of compulsive tweeting and Facebook friending and unfriending, and, and, and, personal may well have lost its meaning. Or more accurately it is all too easy to be desensitized to the fact that there is no productive reason for some things to be made public. I recall the comment of a book reviewer who once damned an author with faint praise when he said, “he never had an unpublished thought.”
I turned these musings over in my mind while lamenting the cruel assessments of human beings that confront me at every turn. I wonder if social media and mass and massively interactive communications have robbed us of the luxury of the personal opinion. The one you may hold, measure, weigh, retain or reject. In the course of that process you may seek the advice of a person you deem wise or objective or with a track record of balanced judgment: someone you have reason to admire. Might an epidemic of rush to judgment be setting our society on the path of the lemming rushing to the sea, and so simultaneously to its destruction?
I don’t want to dwell on the morbid spectacle of child and adolescent suicides, seemingly triggered by social media. Too many seem to have resulted from the fact that hasty judgments based on hysteria like that of the Salem witch hunts or the last century’s McCarthy hearings proved to be fatally indigestible. In my own life I have come to realize that until I had some credible level of self-knowledge I was not really able to balance what others thought of me with what I had come to recognize about myself.
Humor can often be the great antidote that prevents being poisoned by judgments about one or other quality or action. That is because laughter is a response to what is incongruous. You just know that it’s laughable to suggest that 40 clowns are getting out of one miniature car. Once you get that straight you recognize the joke. But first you had to understand a couple of real things about clowns and cars and how they relate to each other. Victims of social media bullying might be rescued by catching on to the fact that someone is trying to sell them a bill of goods that doesn’t stand up to a simple reality test. The bully is counting on his or her target suspending common sense and failing to ask, “What are your credentials for passing judgment on me? What exactly do you mean by applying that title to me?”
But back to the world of the so-called grownups. They/we are also at risk. Just this week I heard a word being used that I am betting will show up as one of the “new words’ identified in the Oxford Dictionary’s year-end survey. It was “over-sharing.” Think about it. What is the knife-edge between openness and the absence of standards? What is the timing that needs to be observed between having a thought or impulse and broadcasting it in its instant and unedited form? It seems that the big challenge is to recognize the distinction between the social and the personal. Social media may be exactly the right platform on which to display reactions to what is properly social, namely open to all the members of a society to be noted/or not; embraced/or not; taken seriously/or not. This may be just the setting in which to recycle the old warning, “Don’t take this personally.”
Annette Cunningham’s Street Seens appears every Sunday.
Last week we explored An Ark Built of Respect flourishing in Toronto. Not far from there in the town of Erie, Pennsylvania a name forever associated with a modern miracle of transportation, another Ark had set out in 1972. On November 22, 1972, just eight years after Jean Vanier had established the first L’Arche in France, two similarly visionary planners, Benedictine Sister Barbara Ann and Father George Strohmeyer of Gannon College committed to “do something together for God,” and L’Arche USA was born. They recognized the need and the potential to adopt the model of the shared community to Erie. They brought together Intellectually challenged individuals and those who would assist them to live in the style of a family and this shared home enriched both. Jean Vanier’s dream had been communicated to Sister Barbara Ann in a conference when she heard him describe the power of mutual respect as the basis for a healing community modeled on the family.
L’Arche Home in Atlanta
By 1982, the consummate planner Sister Barbara Ann died at the time of an international gathering of the L’Arche Federation. Jean Vanier had come to the US to address the group and her passing seemed to come as a reassurance to all that the dream would continue. Steve Washek, the current Vice National Director of L’Arche USA refers to the Erie foundation as “the Mothership.”(of L’Arche USA) As he told the story of Sister Barbara Ann’s death it is easy to imagine that she went with a peaceful certainty that the ship was on course to carry Jean Vanier’s dream towards new horizons.
Now in 2016, Gannon has become a University and L’Arche a national phenomenon stretching from Long Island to Seattle, 20 communities comprising 64 homes (57 houses and 7 apartments) in 15 states and the District of Columbia. Each community is a 501 (c) (3) nonprofit corporation governed by its own board of directors and managed by a caring professional staff. They are united by their membership in L’Arche USA and the International Federation of L’Arche.
Christianne and Rebecca of Chicago L’Arche
Groups called “Friends of L’Arche” are actively engaged in the process of nurturing emerging communities. Each L’Arche house or community serves the needs of intellectually challenged persons who live and grow along without such challenges in what Steve describes as “honesty, forgiveness and authentic relationship.” Both are similarly transformed by the daily discovery of what can happen when a myopic view of disability is replaced by a wider vision of ability that is based on creativity, hope and mutual respect.
Steve Washek began his L’Arche voyage of discovery as a college student in his native Erie in the Spring of 1980. Like so many, he came to help people living with intellectual disabilities. And as he shared a daily life of the commonplace: chores, decisions, reflection, assessments, meetings and celebrations, concern for each other with a special emphasis on care for the most vulnerable, a job became a life. In 1980, he had met his wife Vicki who shared his commitment to the daring social experiment that is L’Arche and is now a Community Leader. At present, their three adult children exemplify the ideal of living lives transformed by meeting and sharing life with people L’Arche understands are partners in the building of a humane society and not just recipients of care. Jamie is a husband and a student pursuing his Doctorate of Physical Therapy; Meghan, a Mother of four and House leader; and Matthew living and assisting in one of L’Arche’s 7 homes and 4 Life Sharing arrangements.
St. Louis L’Arche at a Cardinals Game
As the population of intellectually disabled becomes older, more diverse and independent, L’Arche is expanding its horizons to integrate single individuals into existing families. Steve and Vicki, for example have invited Leroy to live with them. He will celebrate his upcoming 79th birthday in their home as a member of their extended family.
There has never been any question as to the value of the L’Arche philosophy for any of this Pennsylvania family. The challenge for them, and especially for Steve in his administrative role, is to find ways to ensure that the L’Arche vision is sustainable. Its nonprofit status and respectful relationships with various sources of public and government funding can help ensure that their funding follows members of its core communities. Development programs are designed to capture the imagination and good will of donors who want to support this brave social experiment. All of this converges at a point where people of realism, hope and good will choose in the words of the L’Arche website to become involved in the building of a more humane world.
You will meet three principal characters in today’s time together.
Their stories are stories of listening. And what they heard, changed not just themselves and each other, but the larger worlds in which they live. Each is an eloquent statement of the movement the world knows as L’Arche. Although this is the French world for Ark, their stories will illustrate that this “Ark” is not built of wood and according to a pattern. Instead it appears and grows organically as people are brave enough simply to listen. It is a model for what occurs when people who have listened respectfully, respond with courage born of that respect.
L’Arche is a triumph of hope over despair, faith over skepticism, and love in the beauty of its utter simplicity. Listening to the stories of these three first recounted to me by one of them has been for me like looking through a small hole in a wall and seeing that it reveals a wide and miraculous world.
Jean, the son of Canada’s Governor General who served from 1957-69. Although this child of privilege lived in many countries his life was transformed by a landscape of the heart he first glimpsed at a hospital at Val Fleuri in France. He listened, invited two intellectually challenged friends he met there to live as his family in that small farm home in nearby Trosly. Listening, he heard the challenge to his faith and creativity that has so far transformed lives in 140 countries on five continents.
John, the charmer and instinctive ladies’ man whose eventual life in a home thousands of miles away from Jean’s farm in France invested him with the dignity and the joy that might otherwise have eluded him.
Denyse, the founder of Madison Burns, a brilliant New York City-based Executive Coach and Leadership Development Trainer to Forbes 100 corporations who returned to her native Ontario in 2010.There she heard a call to apply her experience in a new way to find new ways to expand and enrich 21st century models for assisted living.
Jean is Jean Vanier. Born in 1928 as the child of a diplomat, he was a world citizen from the start. Accepted at England’s Royal Naval College at Dartmouth in England at age 13 he joined the forces in the midst of World War II. With a career in the British and Canadian Naval Forces well assured, he left the world of the military in 1950 to pursue the even more demanding lifelong search for spiritual enlightenment. That led him to Val Fleuri in Trosly where his spiritual director and mentor was working at a community that included a hospital for the mentally disabled. There, in what some refer to as “a chance encounter,” he met two patients classified as having intellectual disabilities. Hearing their challenges and recognizing that the hospital was not able to address them, he invited them to join him in the small home he had bought in La Ferme Trosly. Living there in the style of a family, this small community of people embracing two with intellectual disabilities, and others without, became a model of acceptance and inclusion. It became the prototype for L’Arche. A recent reviewer of his newest book, Logician of the Heart, described Vanier, his life and his work as responding to a call to live “outside one’s comfort zone” in order to create genuine human community. By 1964, L’Arche had begun as a unique way to address a widening spectrum of intellectual disabilities.
John Samson
John is John Samson. When he was born in 1957 in Sudbury, Ontario, based on their diagnosis of Down Syndrome, doctors recommended that John be institutionalized. His parents and family disagreed. Beginning then, John and parents and family listened. What they heard was that John lived with them demonstrating his abilities quite as clearly as his disabilities until the early 1980s. By that time L’Arche had become an international movement and John was invited to become a Core Community member of the newly formed L’Arche home in a suburb of Sudbury. He lived there, until his death in 2008, with the community of persons that included those with intellectual disabilities and three or four resident associates. It was in this family of mutual respect that they turned a four-bedroom bungalow into a family home where he lived and thrived for the rest of his life. There John made and maintained his reputation as a “one-man charm offensive” thanks to his sunny disposition and his genius for making those he met feel admired. The long list of interests he continued to pursue ranged from dancing to travel, bowling, and camping.
Denyse is Denyse Samson-Burns and she is John’s sister. With her brother established in his own caring community, she pursued a multinational life as wife, mother and founder of the consulting practice Madison-Burns, based in New York City and supporting clients from the US to Finland and back. She must have heard the echoes of John’s joy and laughter so that they became part of the magnet that drew her to return to establish a corporate footprint in her native Canada. She did that in 2010 and immediately began to be nourished by the roots she and her brother shared. Soon after she must have heard a call to honor her parents and their youngest son by using her skills to ensure that many others would have the consolation and reassurance they had known as the grew older. Their intellectually challenged son had found the wider family and supportive community called L’Arche.
Soon after her 2010 return, Denyse successively became volunteer, board member and, in 2013, Chairperson of L’Arche Toronto. In the collaborative spirit of L’Arche she applies her experience of business and community building to take on the unique challenge of growing L’Arche with its unique combination of a religious/spiritual inspiration lived out in a secular setting. As the society grows more fluid and diverse she works with the core communities, staff, families, board members, service providers and their partners in government. If she has a motto it is never to stop listening for:
those who need the help
those who want to help
those called to be part of the growth.
It is a mission embedded at the heart of L’Arche International, which has succeeded dramatically in the 52 years to become a worldwide movement building communities of respect and inclusion in147 communities in 35 countries on 5 continents. In every one, can be heard the calling of Vanier in 1964.
Mary Anne, Gillian and Karen of a L’Arche Community
Today, in Toronto and likely around the world, Denyse notes that the challenges include the bricks and mortar issues. Identifying, affording and adapting homes suited to the increasingly diverse and accomplished core communities is a huge challenge. Currently this population is more emancipated, self-accepting. So too is honoring the preferences of assistants who may prefer the “live–out” to the “live-in” pattern of participating in the home community. And the skills and ambitions of core community members whose involvements outside their shared homes are valuable additions to their local communities. L’Arche’s relationships with governments: local, county, state and federal are modeled on the collaboration of respect. There are currently 29 L’Arche communities across Canada with 9 in Ontario, including 5 homes in Toronto. L’Arche Toronto’s Sol Express program is designed to provide a creative platform to persons with intellectual disabilities who love to perform. Like so many of L’Arche’s programs it illustrates the diversity and vibrancy of the communities’ members.
Sol Express
Last month the annual general meeting of L’Arche Toronto was convened at “The Gathering Place.” This aptly named community space was established to welcome the various constituencies and their guests who meet for business, social, and educational events. The presence, the voices, the needs and hopes of core community members were well represented in dialogue with members of the board, assistants and service providers who are a vital part of the lives of the entire community.
The agenda items were practical, focused and ambitious. And while looking to a challenging future, they were no doubt addressed while listening to and hearing the words of Founder Jean Vanier echoed in the website of L’Arche USA: “the art of living together is born in the creative welcome of the diversity and fragility of humanity.”
Please return to this space next week, when we will share the amazements of the US communities of L’Arche USA. From the first foundation in Erie, PA in 1972 there are now 17 communities and communities in formation from Long Island to Seattle. Vice National Leader Steve Washek summarizes the sort of listening that epitomizes its growth in the US. “The calling of L’Arche is to BE WITH, not just to BE FOR; to welcome the extended family of all those with intellectual disabilities and those who live and learn with them.” Come back next Sunday as an Ark built of respect sails on.
One person’s perfectionism is the other’s neurosis. So let’s stop quibbling over how to label it and figure out how to fix it.
It seems that naming something gives the namer some sort of power over it: think for example of the Bogey Man, much less scary when you call it that. We can start by looking at some of the attitudes and actions (or inactions) suggested by the polite term “perfectionism.” These can occur across a spectrum that ranges from hesitation to complete paralysis and includes: chronic indecision, procrastination, anxiety in the face of options and a wide variety of the sorts of behaviors the British call “dithering.”
Once you’ve diagnosed yourself as a ditherer (or worse) and before you begin budgeting for the psychotherapist, try tapping into some of the resources that are easily at hand, and free. Well, that is if lingering student loans don’t continue to keep a price tag on your course in Philosophy 101.
Take the times when I have still not written the thank you note, because I don’t have time to write the whole and memorable letter I want it to be. Or I’ve taken a pass on Weight Watchers because I know I must and can lose much more than two pounds per week without group intervention. I know it’s time to recall the advice of my brother who used wisely to nudge me on with the reminder, “Remember, honey, the perfect is the enemy of the good.” Uncommonly good common sense that applies to the situation.
And if that doesn’t work, I have learned that a fellow named Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz is also a very convincing counselor. Remember Leibniz from late night cramming for the History of Philosophy exam? The shorthand reminder about his theory that the principle of reality was something called a “Monad.” His tag line was, “This is the best of all possible worlds.”
Voltaire had a heyday with that phrase which he parodied in the story of the starry eyed optimist Candide. Leonard Bernstein kept the joke going into the 20th Century with his musical of the same name. But it turns out that their joke at the expense of Leibniz may have obscured the very practical insight at the heart of his philosophy. To understand how that happened just change the emphasis before repeating the phrase. Instead of saying “This is the best of all possible worlds,” say “This is the best of all possible worlds.” See the difference?
If at this point you find yourself recalling that the academic pigeonhole for Leibniz was “rationalist” and that his talk of the “best of all possible worlds” sounds like a classic rationalization of bad times, it may be wise to take a second look. His was not just the reflection of someone who took a look at his 17th century Europe and decided that it was a perfect paradise. I think it was the world view of one who very hardheadedly grasped that all the abstract, theoretical worlds of “might have beens” or “should have beens” or “could bes” were just so many distractions and that the real business of living lies in coming to terms with the gritty marvel of what really is.
Leibniz’s phrase appears in an essay that considers the goodness of God, the freedom of the human person and the origin of evil. In it he takes the position that the very roadblocks of life, the stones in the road en route to the great good things that live as theoretical possibilities actually make the world better and more tolerable by eliciting good human responses like courage. He had the unusual (and I think highly realistic) view that an entirely perfect world would be not only impossible but even intolerable.
For him the problem of evil is the problem of sorting out what is life-enhancing and what is life-diminishing. That sort of insight and attitude can be a very enabling tool to use in the work of making sense of the experience of limitation and of suffering. It is not simply the stoic, grit your teeth attitude expressed by those who say, “What doesn’t kill you can make you stronger.” It is more like the understanding of why it is that people who have weathered some of life’s storms are often more attractive human beings and more desirable friends than the “golden ones” who seem to sail through life without ever experiencing a setback.
It is far too easy to relegate the study of philosophy, and even more the philosophers themselves, to a mental museum. In that museum everything is bigger than life, like a hall of dinosaurs that it is hard to connect with any animal life we have actually experienced. In that context, the “problems” are the sorts that are much too big ever to get solved. The theories are much too abstract ever to intersect with life as most of us live it.
In a way, that’s not surprising. There is the distance of history and of linguistic style that separates us from many of the greatest philosophers. And then there is the simple matter of trying to put an insight into words, in any age or language. Think for a moment of the last time you tried to explain one of your own “lightbulb moments,” one of those insights when for a moment something that was impossibly complex appeared remarkably simple and sorted out. Chances are that trying to capture that moment in language may often obscure rather than reveal the meaning you saw for a moment.
That process reminds me of a wonderful definition of poetry that I remember as being Poetry is the opening and closing of a door, leaving those behind to reflect on what was seen in a moment. It may be that the great philosophers are best understood and appreciated when one of the catch phrases associated with them connects with and illuminates a very specific moment of living. In that moment, a path is opened, a connection is made and both the very particular experience and the insight that makes sense of it are joined by an association that provides the path that firmly connects them. In that moment, it becomes evident what it means to say “philosophy is a system of ideas for making sense of experience.”
In this process of partnering with philosophers in the enterprise of making sense of one’s experience, experience is both the stimulus and the common ground. It can become productive in both directions, viewing one’s own experience from the vantage point of the philosopher’s insight and vice versa. The philosopher’s view illuminates the experience and seeing the philosophy in relation to common human experience gives it a reality and a utility it may never have had as an academic course.
Basic human experience can make much more sense of the philosophy and vice versa. In the light of that every day experience it “makes sense” in a way no theory can. So my advice is to see the “perfect” for what it often is in daily life. And don’t let it distract you from understanding life as a journey to be savored today, more than an impossible goal to be achieved sometime in the dim, distant future. I think Uncle Leibniz would agree.
Have you noticed how the image of Grandma has changed? Lesley Stahl is doing her best to remind you. Gone are the days when Marlene Dietrich was a singular amazement as she morphed the image of the sweet lady on the rocker, slinking on stage in a cloud of beads and furs to the throaty tones of “Falling in Love Again.”
The move from “come sit with me on the front porch” to “meet me at the gym” is pretty much an epidemic as cozy gives place to chic. A dynamic woman with whom I rode the M103 last week was a case in point. Having had both knees replaced in the not too distant past, she declared that she simply wouldn’t allow her grandchildren to feel they needed to take care of her. So, off they went to China. Where, she reported, travelling with children provides perfect assurance that the citizens of your host country will engage you in conversation.
GlamourGram Judy Loeb (bottom, far right) with Aunt Erica (right)
If I needed any reminder of the new world of Granny, it came when ordering brunch at a neighborhood restaurant one recent weekend. Noting our shared taste for french toast, the woman’s husband remarked that for his wife it was a bon voyage as she prepared to set off on a long-planned trip to Paris.
The plan began 12 years before when Judy Loeb became the grandmother of twin girls. Their mother’s name suggested French roots, and so triggered the idea that became a promise: that she would take the girls to Paris one day in the future. The future arrived when a quartet of adventurers were greeted by the owner of the apartment they had selected on the Ile St. Louis.
So when GlamourGram, the twins, and their Aunt Erica, who acccompanied them on the first leg of their journey from California, had enjoyed the very French breakfast their landlady had provided before she set off, their first sight and sounds of Paris happened at the nearby Notre Dame. The beauty of the Cathedral, the stories told in its legendary stained glass and the voices of a visiting choir created an impact that guaranteed that the girls were already in touch with the atmosphere that had moved their Grandmother to happy tears. They “got it.”
The Twins in front of Monet’s Water Lilies at L’Orangerie
Louis Vuitton. For some visitors to Paris it means shopping. For them it meant the Fondation Louis Vuitton in the Bois de Boulogne with its signature structure by Frank Gehry. The day they visited, the futuristic structure was itself transformed into a geometry of red and green by the artist who overlaid its panels in those colors. Within, there was an exhibition of contemporary Chinese art. But taste was not confined to the visual alone. Before they left the Bois the twins met Angelina, Paris’ legendary cathedral of chocolate, which established an outpost there allowing the visiting Americans to propose a toast to their amazing day with similarly amazing hot chocolate.
At the nearby Jardin d’Acclamation, the twins were introduced to the 19th century origins of the landmark/sometime zoo established in 1860. The trampolines they found there gave them the chance to express exhilaration. But the literal high point of discovery came when they spied the Jardin’s contemporary roller coaster. Having paid the 12-year old’s entry charge and preparing to wave them off on their ride, GlamourGram and Aunt Erica were urged by the attendant to ride along, at no cost. The scary moment of truth could not be avoided. With audible gulps the entire foursome was buckled in. The screams of the adults were equaled only by the giggles of the preteens. Being the foursome they were, you can guess which pair was most grateful to embrace the return to solid ground.
Meals delivered french classics unencumbered by the hauteur of the 5-star premises. They regularly elevated the stature of state of the art french bread and cheese, moutarde and gherkins shared in the “plein air” of the Luxembourg Garden.
Judy Loeb didn’t have to wait for grandmotherhood to become a poster-person for surprising innovation. As the daughter of a respected maker of men’s shirts she created a new blend, putting her college study of design into a successful turn as designer of a fashion-forward line of women’s shirts. This evolved into a career in fashion design.
Marriage and pregnancy brought her a fresh focus. She became a trend setter by creating a fashion T-shirt that featured the word “Baby” in large letters and with an arrow pointing to the evidence that this was a design born of reality. When requests and demands for her bold design increased, not just the baby was born, but also an innovative maternity-wear label called Sweet Mama.
After a brief sojourn in California, Judy returned to her native New York and a career in candidate advocacy with Emily’s List.
The day may come when GlamourGram’s twin girls take it for granted that their father’s mother is the accurate and expected definition of grandmother. But in their hearts, and in their memories of spring 2016 they will probably know better. And I hesitate to guess what surprising memories they will hatch for future children of the later 21st century.
One day soon, I will rush back to the neighborhood restaurant where Skip’s humorous observation about french toast set me on a delightful voyage of discovery. If you have any bright ideas of what I should order, be sure to let me know.
Photo credit: Judy Loeb. Of the opening photo, Loeb says, “Came upon this bakery just at the right moment. Bought pastries and bread here for our picnic in the Jardin Luxembourg.”
Annette Cunningham’s Street Seens appears every Sunday
Forgive me, Grandparents and Uncles, for focusing today on another segment of the Street Seeners who walk with us weekly. But as a card-carrying expert in the ranks of “Aunting” I couldn’t resist sharing a preview chapter of Aunts, the Best Supporting Actresses set to come to updated life soon, and probably online, now that I own the rights to its literary “roots” planted in the last days of the 20th Century.
I am confronted and amazed daily with the dwellers in our urban village. They move through the coffee houses, markets, buses and playgrounds with the grace of ballerinas, marshalling their children and enough equipment to accommodate the Fifth Army. Amateurs at these feats need an alert. Aunts need to know the challenges.
It begins when someone who has yet to spend two full years on earth looks at you indulgently, takes pity on you and your obvious bewilderment and shows you how to buckle/unbuckle his/her car seat. Welcome to the gear gap.
It’s the equipment equivalent of the generation gap which separates childless Aunts, not only from their nieces/nephews and their parents but also from married-with-children Aunts who have resumes to prove that they have cracked the code of Aunt-resistant car seats, folding strollers, flip top changing tables and child-proof aspirin caps.
Fortunately, children turn out to be a lot more compassionate than most adults and will often bail you out when it becomes clear that the umbrella style collapsible stroller cannot, in fact, be folded wafer thin using the one hand that is not occupied with holding onto a little one, fishing for the MetroCard and beating off the assault of the benign-looking person whose sympathy with your plight seems to have deserted her.
Like golf and yachting, being an Aunt is a hobby that requires you to own and/or operate huge amounts of challenging and complicated equipment. It is wise to know that and to be on the look-out for certain of the most threatening elements of “the gear trap.”
Advice to Aunts from “The Gear Trap”
Strollers –These supposedly benign, even helpful pieces of equipment are really designed to test the new Aunt’s mental acumen, patience, humility, brute strength, cunning and ability to withstand the temptation to use undeleted expletives. And what cruel jokester came up with a name that suggests leisurely walking?
To meet these tests be aware of these points:
Collapsible used to describe these vehicles does not refer to the stroller itself, but to the Aunt who is likely to collapse before she figures out how to reduce said stroller to a size that permits it to fit: through normal, domestic-sized doors; into the trunk of an automobile not purchased for use by groups the size of baseball teams or larger; aboard any type of public transportation.
Be aware that there are distinctly different forms of collapsibility, deceptively described in the sales and product enclosure literature with terms related to equipment you think you know how to operate. “Umbrella-Style,” for example, hints that the stroller can be whipped from fully assembled to easily tote-able as effortlessly as one raises or lowers an umbrella. In your dreams!
There are also inward-folding and outward-folding styles. The former is designed to snap shut on one or more of your outer garments as you try to reduce its unwieldy bulk; the latter requires that you have a width of arm spread and a degree of strength in your (fully extended) fingertips that would excite envy in a Marvel Comics Super-hero. As for the front-to-back collapsers, they are apparently designed to be dropped from an upper story window so that they can be collected, neatly compacted, by the time you and your Niece/Nephew have walked down the stairs and also reached ground level.
Double is a designation you are likely to be looking for and dealing with in this era of fertility drugs and rampant multiple birthing. Don’t let your commitment to fair play and desire to avoid putting the twin nieces/nephews into situations where one must be “first” and the other “second,” fool you into thinking there is a redeeming social value in a two-abreast stroller. While it ensures that both the children get a first and unobstructed view of everything that falls in their path, it severely limits the places you can actually take them and the stroller in order to get even one, unobstructed view. They’re great in ballrooms and ballparks, but only if the first is otherwise empty and the second can be reached via helicopter drop. So opt for the single file model and change the babies’ positions to insure that baby #2 sees more than just the back of baby #1’s head. And remember that revolving doors are completely out of bounds and that you need to stay three times further away from the oncoming traffic when you cross the street by foot.
Braking Systems on strollers are more complicated than those on the most eccentric Italian sports car. Locking and unlocking them and doing so for one, two, three or four wheels at a time is no easy matter. Failure to do so, at the right time and in the right order, will leave you pushing the firmly fixed wheels over:
-sidewalks (if you’re lucky) or
-pea stones (if your worst nightmare comes to life) or
-cobblestones Manhattan has left in place and always at the entry point to MTA buses; or
-pushing the hysterically laughing Niece/Nephew around in tight little circles which he/she is kind enough to think you are doing on purpose. Diapers –If you still remember the dear, long-gone days when the only varieties of these were unused and used, you are in for a seismic shock. So if you belong to the school of thought that says, “I love my Niece/Nephew unconditionally, except for changing,” then read no further. You can keep your consciousness unencumbered, at least until you, too, reproduce or adopt.
Cloth or Disposable seems like a pretty straightforward option. But you would have to have the sophistication of a Ph.D. in ecological sciences and the obsessive/compulsive commitment to detail of an efficiency expert to weigh all the pros and cons of this seemingly simple choice. And besides, once you’ve made that choice, it’s only the beginning. Size is no simple matter of “about this long” (said with arms extended to the appropriate dimension.) If you are asked to “pick up some Pampers on your way over,” don’t leave home, or the telephone, without determining the current weight in pounds of the small person in need of underpinnings. You need to know this within a range so exact you think it was designed for measuring gold bullion or you risk dropping the baby through the oversized leg opening of a wrong-sized diaper.
Style issues include: newborn or not; decorated with pictures of Dora or Princess Sofia the First or Mickey Mouse or McQueen, the Car or a Marvel Comics Super-Hero or Doc McStuffins. Are they to be for night or day wear; and with or without self-adhesive tabs? Note that if they are opened before the baby is changed they will stick to the changing table and, if afterward, stick (resolutely) to you. Be warned that your Niece/Nephew’s style preferences develop at a frighteningly early moment in his/her life and that long before the first phrase is spoken, he/she will not be fooled if you try to substitute a Minnie diaper for a Mickey. And remember too that this is one of the oases of non-PC designations. There really is a difference between male and female Pull-Ups and you risk ignoring them at your own peril.
By the time Niece/Nephew reaches what used to be called “the age of reason” the gear gets easier, but the highly developed preferences and peer pressures are building up. So, it’s wise for an Aunt to know that if the Niece/Nephew asks for a J. Crewcut or American Girl style or something by Justice (girls) or Under Armour (boys/girls athletes) and gets something else, your stock drops so far and fast that Wall Street would call it an unquestionable crash.
When the Niece/Nephew is heading for college, the technical nuances of sound equipment, computer hard and software and all wheeled vehicles are more surely within his/her grasp than music on CDs was to you at their age.
It’s enough to say that sooner, rather than later, living in the world of Niece/Nephew gear gets to be as challenging as, well…., as a stroller.
Annette Cunningham’s Street Seens appears every Sunday.
The annual custom began in 1844 and, accounting for this year’s being marked as the 160th, there were a few historic interruptions. The website of NYYC lists those as the Civil War, the Spanish American War, World Wars I and II, and the assassination of New York Senator Robert Kennedy.
Some of the photos I saw when they were able to transmit them included two large buildings on green lawns, both of them iconic yacht clubs. The first in Oyster Bay and the second the NYYC’s “home port” in Newport. The modern house on Fishers Island, is owned by the Armstrong family. A friend of my neighbors arranged for them to visit that home’s spectacular gardens. So they had an additional “up close and personal” experience of the twin glories of land and sea.
I had been told that the parade that started at the end of “my” island and made its initial way up the East River was arranged with a careful plan to accommodate sailing vessels, smaller and larger vessels capable of using either sail or motorized travel. Since the East River is a salt water tidal estuary with strong currents, all began the parade using motors. In fact, the U.S. Coast Guard requires all boats: sailboats, even canoes and kayaks, to use their engines, motors that allow them to travel at a speed of at least five miles per hour while navigating that river.
The Twins in front of Monet’s Water Lilies at L’Orangerie
Meals delivered french classics unencumbered by the hauteur of the 5-star premises. They regularly elevated the stature of state of the art french bread and cheese, moutarde and gherkins shared in the “plein air” of the Luxembourg Garden.
Diapers –If you still remember the dear, long-gone days when the only varieties of these were unused and used, you are in for a seismic shock. So if you belong to the school of thought that says, “I love my Niece/Nephew unconditionally, except for changing,” then read no further. You can keep your consciousness unencumbered, at least until you, too, reproduce or adopt.