tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1232112655035482837Wed, 06 Jan 2010 13:10:33 +0000News, Reviews, Travel, and Commentaryhttp://robinchapmannews.blogspot.com/rchapsblog@gmail.com (Robin Chapman)Blogger191125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1232112655035482837.post-8084770761459105192Thu, 31 Dec 2009 19:20:00 +00002009-12-31T22:09:46.226-08:00<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_nIdxfARv44A/Sz0N2M_zf6I/AAAAAAAADjo/uegxyfiEDd4/s1600-h/freeway.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 267px; height: 400px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_nIdxfARv44A/Sz0N2M_zf6I/AAAAAAAADjo/uegxyfiEDd4/s400/freeway.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5421504751276883874" /></a><br /><span style="font-style:italic;">Robin is spending NY's in Los Angeles, stuck on various freeways, but we'll get to that in a minute ...</span><br /><br />One thing nice I'll say for the year '09: I don't think I've heard a peep out of that former U.S. President who has a red nose like Rudolph's. When Prez Obama appointed Rudolph's wife as Secretary of State, do you think they took Mr. Hillary to an Undisclosed Location? Good show ...<br /><span class="fullpost"><br />Speaking of the new administration--I wonder if one of the president's advisors could get him to stop speaking in that monotone, with a drop in tone at the end of every sentence? A little variety in his cadence would be a big help, especially for those of us conservatives in the audience who fondly recall the voice of the Gipper ...<br /><br />And another whacko Muslim tried to blow up an American plane! I'm amazed by this because every time <span style="font-style:italic;">I</span> try to get on an airplane these days, my bilateral hip replacements set off a couple of dozen airport alarms and I, a native-born-American-Lutheran-Practically-a-Senior-Citizen-with-only-one-traffic-ticket-in-twenty-years (and no record of explosive use, except a little explosive language against old boyfriends) am practically strip-searched by the TSA at every airport. They even took away a jar of <span style="font-style:italic;">jam</span> my friend Leslie gave me on one of my most recent trips. Dangerous stuff, jam. And yet, this knucklehead from Nigeria, whose own <span style="font-style:italic;">father</span> turned him in to the CIA, just waltzes onto a plane headed for Detroit with plastic explosives strapped to his pants. "Going to the U.S.? Carrying any explosives? (Sound of visa being stamped.) Next!" I think we should put the Israelis in charge of our airport security, and that would be the end of the problem ...<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_nIdxfARv44A/Sz0WCTTMVHI/AAAAAAAADkI/QWc3I4w6Eo8/s1600-h/traffic.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_nIdxfARv44A/Sz0WCTTMVHI/AAAAAAAADkI/QWc3I4w6Eo8/s320/traffic.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5421513755220268146" /></a> <span style="font-style:italic;">LA freeways: always a barrel of laughs.</span><br /><br />I'm spending NY's Eve in Los Angeles with friends and I find the LA freeway situation so bad it is almost funny if it didn't control the lives of everyone here. "Can't meet you. I don't travel the 405 this time of day ..." is an oft heard refrain. <br /><br />It has, admittedly, been more than three decades since I lived here while getting my Masters Degree at UCLA, and I just looked up the population statistics: from that time to this the population of the LA region has gone from about three million to more than nine million. No wonder the freeways are gridlocked: same freeways, with three times the number of people using them. <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_nIdxfARv44A/Sz0RTnghnVI/AAAAAAAADj4/dfVwt-pZ1nQ/s1600-h/Serveman.jpg"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 180px; height: 235px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_nIdxfARv44A/Sz0RTnghnVI/AAAAAAAADj4/dfVwt-pZ1nQ/s320/Serveman.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5421508555144535378" /></a> When I lived here the freeways were busy except during rush hour and accidents when they were impassable. Now the freeways are impassable, except during rush hour and accidents, when they are impassable, only more so. <br /><br /><span style="font-style:italic;">Aliens "Serving Man" in an old Twilight Zone episode</span>. <br /><br />It reminds me of the old <span style="font-style:italic;">Twilight Zone</span> episode called "To Serve Man" about these aliens who come and befriend Earthlings and have this book with them, the title of which Earth people finally translate as <span style="font-style:italic;">To Serve Man</span>. Hey that's great! It is only later, when Earth people translate the rest of the book that they realize it is a <span style="font-style:italic;">cookbook</span>. Ooops. Thus it is with LA's freeways: at first designed to be at the service of Angelinos, the freeways have now cooked LA's goose ...<br /><br />In 2009, as you know, I lost my mother. It happened shortly after my sister and I had to put our father in skilled nursing care. We had worried so long about how our father would fare when he was separated from our mother, that we hadn't even thought about how <span style="font-style:italic;">she</span> would do without <span style="font-style:italic;">him</span>. He went up to skilled nursing--with numerous terminal diseases--and she stayed in their home. And though he thrived in nursing care, she, living alone for the first time in 65 years, fell apart almost immediately and died. That was the shock we didn't see coming ...<br /><br />I understand now why people believe in ghosts. My sister and I have spent time cleaning the family home where our folks lived for half a century--though like Hercules cleaning out the Augean stables, we have only begun to shovel. And though our mother has been gone now for three weeks, we still except to see her around every corner ... yelling at us for moving her furniture ...<br /><br />Another thing that happens with the death of a loved one--something I learned in 2009--is that with their passing, so passes the bitterness. My mother's last decades were not happy ones and her unhappiness had many sad consequences, though the reasons for this none of us will ever truly know. But we are now free to remember and cherish the happy years, when she was charismatic and full of fun, and celebrate her beauty and her laughter ...<br /><br />Perhaps the greatest joy of 2009, for me, was the chance to be there when both of my parents finally needed me. The last day I spent with my mother was full of sorrow, but I was better able to deal with it when I could bathe her face as the end came, and not just worry at a distance. Fewer regrets, that's for sure ...<br /><br />And my reunion with my father--that has been joyful too. He has spent most of his life as a stoic man and quiet: he served his country and his family without complaint. Did his duty. Expected little in return. Affectionate and warm to my sister and me when we were children, he withdrew from us as we entered the mysterious world of womanhood. This year, as his dementia broke down the barriers, he and I became beloved father and daughter again. "I love you Robin," he said to me the other day. "I hope its not too late." But of course it is never too late when there is life and breath ...<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_nIdxfARv44A/Sz0UfbZJLGI/AAAAAAAADkA/tM2UWqQ2XBA/s1600-h/Robin+dressed+as+Dad.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 214px; height: 320px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_nIdxfARv44A/Sz0UfbZJLGI/AAAAAAAADkA/tM2UWqQ2XBA/s400/Robin+dressed+as+Dad.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5421512056585661538" /></a> <span style="font-style:italic;">Robin dressed in Dad's work clothes, hoping he'll notice how much I love him.</span><br /><br />He does think I'm considerably younger than I am--maybe college age or thereabouts--a lovely side benefit of his dementia. "You are a very pretty girl," he said to me one night as I helped him with his dinner. "Any dating prospects?" (That's so fatherly, isn't it?) It cracked me up, so I smiled and shook my head no, making a pretend sad face, and he said, "Well, you must not be trying." Aside from the love and kindness in his statement, I realized he was probably right. I probably haven't been trying. Note to self: something to work on in 2010 ...<br /><br />So many challenges in this year past and so many joys. And, though I hate to leave it behind, it must be done. On to the New Year ...<br /><br /><span style="font-style:italic;">P.S. I'm being kidnapped and taken to the Rose Bowl on NY's Day. If I survive this giant tailgate party (honestly, they have rented an RV!!! They have a satellite dish and a barbeque!!! They're packing enough food and liquor to feed our troops in Afghanistan!! I'd rather be shopping at Hermes!!!), I'll be sure and report on my safari into this strange land. Perhaps it will be comparable to my last trip up the Limpopo ...</span><br /><br /><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/To_Serve_Man_(The_Twilight_Zone)">Click Here to Learn about the Twilight Zone "To Serve Man" Episode</a><br /><br /><a href="http://video.dot.ca.gov/">Click Here For the Real Time Traffic Info Angelinos Live By</a><br /><br /><p><a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/blogspot/vYqp" rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml">Subscribe to Robin Chapman News</a></p><br /><br /><script src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/blogspot/Eqqi?format=sigpro" type="text/javascript" ></script><noscript><p>Subscribe to RSS headline updates from: <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/blogspot/Eqqi"></a><br/>Powered by FeedBurner</p> </noscript></span><div class="blogger-post-footer">Visit Robin's blog at robinchapmannews.blogspot.com<img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/1232112655035482837-8084770761459105192?l=robinchapmannews.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>http://robinchapmannews.blogspot.com/2009/12/days-of-auld-lange-syne-saying-goodbye.htmlrchapsblog@gmail.com (Robin Chapman)2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1232112655035482837.post-5074706732832046875Fri, 25 Dec 2009 14:56:00 +00002009-12-25T21:32:18.786-08:00<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_nIdxfARv44A/SzTYLPhU5MI/AAAAAAAADjg/1BbgkV84J-M/s1600-h/California+card.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 251px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_nIdxfARv44A/SzTYLPhU5MI/AAAAAAAADjg/1BbgkV84J-M/s400/California+card.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5419193939290023106" /></a><br /><br />Christmas Eve started out so well for my father. I had bought him a new cashmere sweater, I had found a new plaid shirt in his closet at the house, and I gave him a brand new pair of trousers. He looked so handsome, not at all like a man who is dying of about five different diseases.<br /><br />We had breakfast together with a special caregiver I've hired for him and he was chipper and ate well. But at about 11:00 a.m., she called to say he had thrown up. An indication, perhaps, that his pancreatic cancer is beginning to impact his stomach. Not to mention the impact it had on his new cashmere sweater and shirt.<span class="fullpost"><br /><br />When the family arrived to be with him for Christmas Eve dinner, he was angry and paranoid and the nursing assistant was panicked about what to do to get him out of bed and into his wheelchair. He wouldn't budge and looked like he might be violent.<br /><br />It occurred to me, that in losing his breakfast, he had also lost his anti-psychotic medicine. So I asked the nurse to give him his emergency pill and gradually, he calmed down and allowed us to take him in to dinner.<br /><br />The medicine is strong and he gradually grew quiet as we fed him. It was Christmas Eve and we all felt a little down because Dad still can't understand why our mother isn't there, though he often forgets to ask about it--a blessing of his dementia.<br /><br />And then, as he finished up his dessert, my sister suggested we sing a little--something Dad liked to do during the last year he was at home. Songs are stored in some special area of a person's brain. Dementia patients often remember them when they've forgotten everything else. So I wrote the words "Silent Night" on his pad, and he looked at it and quietly began to sing. We joined in. Five voices in our own choir.<br /><br />The dining room grew quiet around us as we finished "Silent Night" and launched into "O Little Town of Bethlehem." These old carols are fixed in Dad's fading memory, like signposts from his childhood. They are fixed in all our memories and bring to mind darkened chapels, burning candles, sparkling trees, and families going home together on this special night.<br /><br />My sister's eyes teared up as we sang, remembering perhaps, all the many Christmases we've spent as a family, the many we've spent not as a family, and the many Christmas Eve's we've marked.<br /><br />We finished up and began to wheel Dad in his chair out into the hall. An older man stood and spoke to us. "That was so lovely," he said. "It sounded like carolers had come to visit us. I always love to hear those songs."<br /><br />For our family, still in mourning this Christmas, it was like a twinkling star in the East on Christmas Eve. Our father's baritone, softly singing these ancient hymns of hope, was the highlight of our evening--reminding us amidst the darkness of that night, that morning would come and we would, one day, be joyful, restored, and united again for the very first time.<br /><br />God bless us every one and Merry Christmas.<br /><br /><p><a href="http://fusion.google.com/add?feedurl=http://feeds.feedburner.com/blogspot/vYqp"><img src="http://buttons.googlesyndication.com/fusion/add.gif<br />" width="104" height="17" style="border:0" alt="Add to <br />Google Reader or Homepage"/></a></p><br /><p><a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/blogspot/vYqp" rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml">Subscribe to Robin Chapman News</a></p><br /><br /><script src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/blogspot/Eqqi?format=sigpro" type="text/javascript" ></script><noscript><p>Subscribe to RSS headline updates from: <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/blogspot/Eqqi"></a><br/>Powered by FeedBurner</p> </noscript></span><div class="blogger-post-footer">Visit Robin's blog at robinchapmannews.blogspot.com<img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/1232112655035482837-5074706732832046875?l=robinchapmannews.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>http://robinchapmannews.blogspot.com/2009/12/christmas-eves-magic.htmlrchapsblog@gmail.com (Robin Chapman)3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1232112655035482837.post-7726039751072946766Thu, 24 Dec 2009 00:27:00 +00002009-12-24T06:24:43.058-08:0090th birthday parties<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_nIdxfARv44A/SzK2pOmTfHI/AAAAAAAADio/Kln4JdGueqU/s1600-h/Dad%27s+90th+014.JPG"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5418594121089776754" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 400px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 300px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_nIdxfARv44A/SzK2pOmTfHI/AAAAAAAADio/Kln4JdGueqU/s400/Dad%27s+90th+014.JPG" border="0" /></a><br /><br />There have been many days in the last year, that I seriously doubted my 89-year-old father would survive to celebrate his 90th birthday. But amidst all those worries, never did I imagine that it would be my mother who would miss the celebration. Since that is what happened, we invited family and friends to the nursing home on Dad's birthday so her absence would not be as obvious to him. He had a wonderful morning.<span class="fullpost"><br /><br /><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_nIdxfARv44A/SzK2Um15vsI/AAAAAAAADig/4qLfarjTN9Y/s1600-h/Dad%27s+90th+1.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5418593766820396738" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 400px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 300px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_nIdxfARv44A/SzK2Um15vsI/AAAAAAAADig/4qLfarjTN9Y/s400/Dad%27s+90th+1.jpg" border="0" /></a> <em>Dad in his Christmas sweater marking his three-days-before-Christmas birthday.</em><br /><br /><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_nIdxfARv44A/SzK6CdLvgFI/AAAAAAAADjA/BSTjyT6gs1Q/s1600-h/Dad%27s+90th+009.JPG"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5418597853036511314" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 400px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 300px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_nIdxfARv44A/SzK6CdLvgFI/AAAAAAAADjA/BSTjyT6gs1Q/s400/Dad%27s+90th+009.JPG" border="0" /></a><em>My sister Kimberly and her youngest daughter Lena, pose with Dad and his birthday cake.</em><br /><br />We put pictures of him from previous decades on the table in the nursing center's library, and he laughed to see photos of him when his hair was its original dark brown. Both of his daughters--me and my sister Kimmy--joined the party, along with his son-in-law Dan, his granddaughter Lena, neighbors, church friends, and even his favorite neighborhood dog Sunny. Sunny is fifteen, and, as my sister pointed out, that is pretty close to ninety in dog years.<br /><br /><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_nIdxfARv44A/SzK4UbhXstI/AAAAAAAADiw/WWOIoc3A1hA/s1600-h/Dad%27s+90th+017.JPG"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5418595962804744914" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 400px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 300px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_nIdxfARv44A/SzK4UbhXstI/AAAAAAAADiw/WWOIoc3A1hA/s400/Dad%27s+90th+017.JPG" border="0" /></a> <em>Neighbors Donna and Mickey P. brought their dog Sunny to visit Dad on his 90th. What a kind thing to do.</em><br /><br /><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_nIdxfARv44A/SzK5pTHB72I/AAAAAAAADi4/82KqTQtcWp8/s1600-h/Dad%27s+90th+6.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5418597420835663714" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 294px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 400px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_nIdxfARv44A/SzK5pTHB72I/AAAAAAAADi4/82KqTQtcWp8/s400/Dad%27s+90th+6.jpg" border="0" /></a><em>Sunny looking up for a treat as my beautiful niece Lena poses with her grandfather.</em><br /><br />We know that each day with Dad is a gift, and though his life isn't easy these days since he can no longer walk nor feed himself, we're doing everything we can to make sure we don't waste the remaining days. I have been the chief instigator of events like this one, and they are events my engineer father used to think of as silly. But nowadays, he survives them with good humor and seems to enjoy seeing the familiar faces. At this event, he recognized everyone.<br /><br /><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_nIdxfARv44A/SzK7sc2GUbI/AAAAAAAADjQ/auPW-hW2rxM/s1600-h/Daddy+on+stool+3.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5418599674011865522" style="FLOAT: right; MARGIN: 0px 0px 10px 10px; WIDTH: 246px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 320px" alt="" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_nIdxfARv44A/SzK7sc2GUbI/AAAAAAAADjQ/auPW-hW2rxM/s320/Daddy+on+stool+3.jpg" border="0" /></a><em>At right is my Dad, almost 90 years ago, in a photo we set out at the party. "I remember I was crying that day," he said. "I think my diaper was wet."</em><br /><br />"No need to ask who planned this," he said with a sigh, looking a me, as if he's been worn down, having spent a lifetime trying to put a lid on my hyperactivity. "It had to be Robin." So I reached out to hug him, and as I did so, he turned to his nurse Alem and said: "And now, I suppose, I am going to get hugged." Which he certainly was and I certainly did. I think he almost smiled.<br /><br /><em>Postscript: I learned twelve hours after I completed the above, that my father's Los Altos, California, flying buddy, Ollie Frasier, has passed away. The two met at the Palo Alto airport one day and discovered they were both from Birmingham, though Ollie attended the University Alabama, and my father was an Auburn grad. They managed to set aside their differences to spend many happy hours together in the air. They discovered later that my father's sister was in Ollie's sister's wedding, proving once again, that six degrees of separation is far too separate for most of us. RIP Ollie Frasier.</em><br /><br /><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_nIdxfARv44A/SzK7gHMYssI/AAAAAAAADjI/a-xTODGAVBg/s1600-h/Dad%27s+90th+3.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5418599462041334466" style="FLOAT: right; MARGIN: 0px 0px 10px 10px; WIDTH: 234px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 320px" alt="" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_nIdxfARv44A/SzK7gHMYssI/AAAAAAAADjI/a-xTODGAVBg/s320/Dad%27s+90th+3.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><p><a href="http://fusion.google.com/add?feedurl=http://feeds.feedburner.com/blogspot/vYqp"><img style="BORDER-RIGHT: 0px; BORDER-TOP: 0px; BORDER-LEFT: 0px; BORDER-BOTTOM: 0px" height="17" alt="Add to Google Reader or Homepage" src="http://buttons.googlesyndication.com/fusion/add.gif" width="104" /></a></p><br /><p><a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/blogspot/vYqp" type="application/rss+xml" rel="alternate">Subscribe to Robin Chapman News</a></p><br /><br /><script src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/blogspot/Eqqi?format=sigpro" type="text/javascript"></script><noscript></noscript></span><div class="blogger-post-footer">Visit Robin's blog at robinchapmannews.blogspot.com<img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/1232112655035482837-7726039751072946766?l=robinchapmannews.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>http://robinchapmannews.blogspot.com/2009/12/william-ashley-chapman-turns-ninety.htmlrchapsblog@gmail.com (Robin Chapman)3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1232112655035482837.post-4974783848030438489Sat, 19 Dec 2009 15:02:00 +00002009-12-22T06:18:14.350-08:00<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_nIdxfARv44A/SyzuwwfLwhI/AAAAAAAADho/aqS2QxE5mEs/s1600-h/Michele%27s+farm.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_nIdxfARv44A/SyzuwwfLwhI/AAAAAAAADho/aqS2QxE5mEs/s400/Michele%27s+farm.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5416966973236691474" /></a> <em>Michele Slung's 18th century farmhouse near Woodstock, New York.</em><br /><br />Robin writes:<br /><em> I've spent a week in tribute to my remarkable mother. Now it is time to return to the world of Christmas, with its annual beauty and its promise of renewal. Thus, I asked my friend, writer and editor Michele Slung, for a guest post from her East Coast farm, which, like Michele, is beautiful, old-fashioned, traditional and warm.</em><br /><br /><strong>Woodstock, New York, December 2009<br />Snow &amp; Commonplace Books</strong><br /><em><br />by Michele Slung</em><br /><br />Last week was the first snowfall of the season in my corner of upstate New York. Here in the Hudson Valley, at the edge of the Catskills, every rise in the roads around my house comprises its own microclimate. Up at my friend Bob’s house --- higher than town but still at the foot of the mountain, Overlook, that looms above it --- where I stopped for a quick visit around 6pm, it looked like your cliché Currier &amp; Ives Christmas scene. The fir trees were tall marshmallow-coated silhouettes in the moonlight, and every bush and stone wall glowed whitely. <span class="fullpost"><br /><br />But such a perfect glimpse of the winter landscape actually wasn’t a sure thing: if you were only a quarter of a mile lower than Bob’s or traveling in a different direction, you were just as likely to be greeted by that old weatherman’s staple, “snow mixed with rain.”<br /><br />Bliss, however, doesn’t accompany a sleety drizzle.<br /><br />The moment of suddenly glimpsing the year’s first snowflakes cascading down outside the windows has been, since I was little, an ecstatic one. The beauty is so transformative: what was banal --- a car, a wooden lawn chair, a forgotten rake, a clothesline, a clay pot holding a dead plant --- becomes simultaneously exciting and hypnotically soothing.<br /><br />What’s taking place is the most basic of earth-magic, and few fail to experience the spiritual as well as the physical line between the pre-snow and post-snow world.<br /><br /><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_nIdxfARv44A/SyzxFQpdq-I/AAAAAAAADh4/BdZzNkwGG-0/s1600-h/Michele+with+cat.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_nIdxfARv44A/SyzxFQpdq-I/AAAAAAAADh4/BdZzNkwGG-0/s400/Michele+with+cat.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5416969524490382306" /></a> <em>Michele, with her 15-year-old friend Minnie</em>. <br /><br />Thus, it bothered me quite a bit, when once, more than twenty years ago, waking to a beautifully blanketed outdoors, I for the first time felt nothing. “I noticed the absence of joy in myself. <em>(I’m very worried, as a consequence.)”</em><br /><br />How do I know exactly my sensations of that morning? The answer’s easy --- I found the above entry recently while browsing in my commonplace book, a personal patchwork of quotations, ideas, phrases, interesting words, observations and other prose bits which to this day I continue, irregularly, to maintain.<br /><br />Different from a diary, a commonplace book is meant to be a compendium of wisdom, and, for centuries, people copied their favorite passages down into these journals. Explains the ever-helpful Wikipedia:<br /><br /><em>"Such books were essentially scrapbooks filled with items of every kind: medical recipes, quotes, letters, poems, tables of weights and measures, proverbs, prayers, legal formulas. Commonplaces were used by readers, writers, students, and humanists as an aid for remembering useful concepts or facts they had learned. Each commonplace book was unique to its creator's particular interests."</em><br /><br />Not unlike a blog, you might say. In fact, my own commmonplace book actually offers the occcasional News from Myself --- bulletins from my state of mind --- along with notable quotations jotted down from books I once was reading. (There’s even a lock of my 40-year-old hair taped in --- and I stare at it sometimes, hoping to find there a glimpse of my former self, as if reconstructing the person I was back then from this DNA-filled snippet.)<br /><br />I learned about the practice of keeping commonplace books from W. H. Auden’s A Certain World: A Commonplace Book, published in 1970. <a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_nIdxfARv44A/SyzvVZE66xI/AAAAAAAADhw/s6dyhKEbxNc/s1600-h/Auden.jpg"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 134px; height: 200px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_nIdxfARv44A/SyzvVZE66xI/AAAAAAAADhw/s6dyhKEbxNc/s200/Auden.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5416967602607680274" /></a>It was, he said, as close as he “would ever come to writing an autobiography,” calling it "a map of my planet." It took a while, though, to begin following his example; my own opens with a line copied from <em>Persuasion</em> in the spring of ’77.<br /><br />Today, on Planet Michele, I’m pleased to report my failure that day to respond to the sweet stimulus of snow was a short-lived phenomenon. It didn’t last til the next winter, although it did signal change. And, meteorologically or otherwise, there’s nothing but inevitability about that.<br /><br />Before I disappear to haul in more wood for the stove, here are just a few samples from my commonplace:<br /><br />“To be free is not the result of a moment’s decisive action but a project constantly to be renewed. More than anything else, freedom requires tenaciousness.”<br />Geoff Dyer, <em>Out of Sheer Rage</em><br /><br />“There is no collection so valuable as a collection of adjectives. Everything depends on adjectives.”<br />Frances Hodgson Burnett, <em>Through One Administration</em><br /><br />“Her peace of mind was dependent on lists . . . “<br />May Sarton, <em>Mrs. Stevens Hears the Mermaids Singing</em><br /><br />“Dreams have always had an importance for me: ‘the finest entertainment known and given rag cheap.’" Graham Greene<br /><br />“To have her meals, and her daily walk, and her fill of novels, and to be left alone, was all that she asked of the gods.” <br />Anthony Trollope, <em>The Eustace Diamonds</em><br /><br />“She had known no one --- but her solitude had had a difference. Then, as she walked about the streets alone, she walked an adventurer.”<br />Olivia Manning, <em>The Doves of Venus</em><br /><br />“It occurred to me as I gave her hands a quick clasp that hell was not, as Sartre had proclaimed, other people. Hell was being obliged to pretend to be someone quite other than one’s true self.”<br />Susan Howatch, <em>Absolute Truths</em><br /><br />“‘But this is something quite new!’ said Mrs. Munt, who collected new ideas as a squirrel collects nuts and was especially attracted by those that are portable.”<br />E. M. Forster, <em>Howard’s End</em><br /><br /><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_nIdxfARv44A/Syz0LFsTMyI/AAAAAAAADiA/O70aFKyrQCc/s1600-h/Michele+on+the+farm.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 365px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_nIdxfARv44A/Syz0LFsTMyI/AAAAAAAADiA/O70aFKyrQCc/s400/Michele+on+the+farm.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5416972923163587362" /></a><br /><em><br />Robin note on 12/19/09: Just after Michele filed her report, a huge snowstorm began to drench the East in snow. We will check in with her, just to make sure she can shovel her way out.</em><br /><br /><p><a href="http://fusion.google.com/add?feedurl=http://feeds.feedburner.com/blogspot/vYqp"><img style="BORDER-RIGHT: 0px; BORDER-TOP: 0px; BORDER-LEFT: 0px; BORDER-BOTTOM: 0px" height="17" alt="Add to Google Reader or Homepage" src="http://buttons.googlesyndication.com/fusion/add.gif" width="104" /></a></p><br /><br /><p><a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/blogspot/vYqp" type="application/rss+xml" rel="alternate">Subscribe to Robin Chapman News</a></p><br /><br /><a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/?ie=UTF8&keywords=michelle+slung&tag=googhydr-20&index=stripbooks&hvadid=4453989075&ref=pd_sl_8ocz5zapgi_b">Read About Michele's Books</a><br /><br /><script src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/blogspot/Eqqi?format=sigpro" type="text/javascript"></script><noscript></noscript> </span><div class="blogger-post-footer">Visit Robin's blog at robinchapmannews.blogspot.com<img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/1232112655035482837-4974783848030438489?l=robinchapmannews.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>http://robinchapmannews.blogspot.com/2009/12/on-snow-and-keeping-notes-non.htmlrchapsblog@gmail.com (Robin Chapman)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1232112655035482837.post-5056615733402980794Fri, 18 Dec 2009 16:46:00 +00002009-12-19T10:00:00.792-08:00Losing a parent<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_nIdxfARv44A/Syux-RF4PDI/AAAAAAAADhI/aXOQ3M9Uxaw/s1600-h/young+Faye.jpg"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 290px; height: 320px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_nIdxfARv44A/Syux-RF4PDI/AAAAAAAADhI/aXOQ3M9Uxaw/s320/young+Faye.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5416618660141218866" /></a> <em>Faye Ellyn Latta in an undated photo, probably about 1942. </em><br /><br />We gave Faye Ellyn Latta Chapman, my mother, a wonderful funeral on Wednesday, December 16, 2009. The rain held off for the graveside service, and many more people came to pay their respects than we had expected. "All my friends are dead," she had taken to saying in recent years. Her service and the reception that followed were testament to the fact that this was not true.<span class="fullpost"><br /><br />I had ordered a blanket of white roses for her casket, having it in my head that it would somehow look like one of those blankets of flowers they put over the saddle of the winner of the Kentucky Derby. I thought that would be subtle and pretty. But the florist had a better idea and turned it into a spray of white roses that reached from one end of the casket to the other. "Tell me there were eighty-eight roses in that tribute," a neighbor said to me, thinking it mirrored my mother's eighty-eight years. No, I told her. That was four hundred roses. And it <em>was</em> stunning. Faye, the thrifty girl who sewed her own wedding dress, would have died again if she knew how much we spent. But you can only go once.<br /><br />We surrounded the casket with red poinsettias and the white and red and green spoke of Christmas and snow and holly and ivy. All the things she, as a gardener, would have loved.<br /><br />And when the ceremony was over, we gave the poinsettias away, one to each family. And people loved that, as they said, because they would have the red and green plant with them and would think of her during the holidays.<br /><br />So many people came to the reception that we would have been overwhelmed, except that three friends from out of the past came to our rescue. My college roommate Phyllis flew up from Los Angeles and took over in the kitchen. My high school friend Leslie brought a wreath for the front door and dessert for all. And our neighbor from childhood, Gene, stayed at the home with my sister and her family and kept things organized. Her mother was a good friend of our mother, and since her mother died some years ago and Gene could not bring herself to have a service for her, we mourned the two women together.<br /><br />(We did not have my father come to the service. We didn't think he could handle it. He was told that my mother was gone, but he doesn't remember this and we've decided not to hammer it into his head.)<br /><br />I was struck by how many people told me my mother had been a mentor to them and such a lovely friend. She always found it so much easier to be kind to people whom she was able to keep at a distance. Intimacy so frightened her, she always found ways--sometimes cruel ones--to keep it at bay.<br /><br />At the heart of all this was such low self esteem that near the end of her life I despaired for her. She was given so many gifts: beauty, brains, a great figure and good legs, pretty blond hair, a stunningly handsome and kind husband, two accomplished and loyal daughters, a strong religious faith, prosperity, longevity, fidelity. The list could go on. But it was never enough to give her the one thing that might have brought her some peace--self confidence.<br /><br />But if she had been watching on Wednesday, she surely would have seen how much she was loved, and how many people thought she was wonderful.<br /><br />"Mom's not there, I know that," my sister said when I asked her if she stayed to watch the casket lowered into the grave. "And now she's young and beautiful forever, just the way she wanted to be." And I guess that's right. It was a long, long road. But she finally reached the place where she will not have to do one more thing to make herself feel good enough. Where someone else, other than her flawed fellow men, will handle the judging part, and where He, if all we believe is true, is bound to be more merciful to her than she was to herself.<br /><br /><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_nIdxfARv44A/Sy0Uc0oQQNI/AAAAAAAADiQ/SM1zIT2EJV0/s1600-h/Faye+and+Ash+in+church2.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 349px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_nIdxfARv44A/Sy0Uc0oQQNI/AAAAAAAADiQ/SM1zIT2EJV0/s400/Faye+and+Ash+in+church2.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5417008412192948434" /></a> <em>Faye and Ash at Peace Lutheran Church in 2007.</em><br /><br /><p><a href="http://fusion.google.com/add?feedurl=http://feeds.feedburner.com/blogspot/vYqp"><img src="http://buttons.googlesyndication.com/fusion/add.gif<br />" width="104" height="17" style="border:0" alt="Add to <br />Google Reader or Homepage"/></a></p><br /><p><a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/blogspot/vYqp" rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml">Subscribe to Robin Chapman News</a></p><br /><br /><script src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/blogspot/Eqqi?format=sigpro" type="text/javascript" ></script><noscript><p>Subscribe to RSS headline updates from: <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/blogspot/Eqqi"></a><br/>Powered by FeedBurner</p> </noscript> </span><div class="blogger-post-footer">Visit Robin's blog at robinchapmannews.blogspot.com<img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/1232112655035482837-5056615733402980794?l=robinchapmannews.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>http://robinchapmannews.blogspot.com/2009/12/saying-goodbye-to-faye.htmlrchapsblog@gmail.com (Robin Chapman)4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1232112655035482837.post-7684232674195083444Mon, 14 Dec 2009 19:56:00 +00002009-12-14T12:04:44.292-08:00Obituary Faye Ellyn Latta Chapman<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_nIdxfARv44A/SyaZhnKB-gI/AAAAAAAADhA/S0Q4-gklPIk/s1600-h/Faye+E.+(Mrs.+William+Ashley)+Chapman.jpg"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 230px; height: 320px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_nIdxfARv44A/SyaZhnKB-gI/AAAAAAAADhA/S0Q4-gklPIk/s320/Faye+E.+(Mrs.+William+Ashley)+Chapman.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5415184404685388290" /></a><br />Long time Los Altos resident, Faye E. Chapman, died December 11, 2009 of pneumonia at the Forum Health Care Center, in Cupertino, California. <span class="fullpost"><br /><br />She was born May 18, 1921, in Spokane, Washington, the second of four children of Lena Verwolf and Harry E. Latta. She attended Washington State College (now Washington State University) and was a member of Alpha Gamma Delta sorority. <br /><br />At a wartime dance in Spokane in 1944, she met Capt. William Ashley Chapman, of Birmingham, Alabama and the couple married that same year. After World War II, they settled first in Palo Alto and then in Los Altos, where in 1949 they built a house on Clark Avenue, now called Echo Drive. For forty years she was active in Peace Lutheran Church in Santa Clara, California. Mrs. Chapman is survived by her husband of 65 years, her daughters Kimberly (Mrs. Daniel D.) Moore of Denver, Colorado, and Robin Chapman of Los Altos, three granddaughters, three great grandchildren, as well as by her brother Jack Latta, a retired Spokane police officer, and her sister Ruth (Mrs. Joseph) Peterson, of Lincoln City, Oregon. Graveside services are planned for 11:00 a.m., Wednesday, December 16, 2009 at Alta Mesa Memorial Park in Palo Alto. <br /><br /><p><a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/blogspot/vYqp" rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml">Subscribe to Robin Chapman News</a></p><br /><br /><script src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/blogspot/Eqqi?format=sigpro" type="text/javascript" ></script><noscript><p>Subscribe to RSS headline updates from: <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/blogspot/Eqqi"></a><br/>Powered by FeedBurner</p> </noscript> <br /></span><div class="blogger-post-footer">Visit Robin's blog at robinchapmannews.blogspot.com<img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/1232112655035482837-7684232674195083444?l=robinchapmannews.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>http://robinchapmannews.blogspot.com/2009/12/obituary-notice-faye-e-chapman.htmlrchapsblog@gmail.com (Robin Chapman)2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1232112655035482837.post-5206555639369408208Sun, 13 Dec 2009 00:12:00 +00002009-12-12T16:22:00.962-08:00<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_nIdxfARv44A/SyQxy__OV_I/AAAAAAAADgg/foQPm8mEqwM/s1600-h/thunderbird.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 396px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_nIdxfARv44A/SyQxy__OV_I/AAAAAAAADgg/foQPm8mEqwM/s400/thunderbird.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5414507404246013938" /></a> <em>Faye and Ashley with the Thunderbird in the 1970s.</em> <span class="fullpost"><br /><br /><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_nIdxfARv44A/SyQyE92aduI/AAAAAAAADgo/tG44bifNJPY/s1600-h/Faye+last+day.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 191px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_nIdxfARv44A/SyQyE92aduI/AAAAAAAADgo/tG44bifNJPY/s320/Faye+last+day.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5414507712909833954" /></a> <em>Ashley holding Faye's hand on the night she died. We don't know if he understands that she is gone. </em><br /><br /><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_nIdxfARv44A/SyQydnJd9vI/AAAAAAAADgw/7Uvgf3f6i3g/s1600-h/Rainbow2.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 318px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_nIdxfARv44A/SyQydnJd9vI/AAAAAAAADgw/7Uvgf3f6i3g/s320/Rainbow2.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5414508136312469234" /></a> <em>This rainbow appeared this afternoon in the hills above the nursing home where my mother died last night. </em><br /><br /><p><a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/blogspot/vYqp" rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml">Subscribe to Robin Chapman News</a></p><br /><br /><script src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/blogspot/Eqqi?format=sigpro" type="text/javascript" ></script><noscript><p>Subscribe to RSS headline updates from: <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/blogspot/Eqqi"></a><br/>Powered by FeedBurner</p> </noscript></span><div class="blogger-post-footer">Visit Robin's blog at robinchapmannews.blogspot.com<img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/1232112655035482837-5206555639369408208?l=robinchapmannews.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>http://robinchapmannews.blogspot.com/2009/12/faye-ellyn-latta-chapman-may-18-1921.htmlrchapsblog@gmail.com (Robin Chapman)2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1232112655035482837.post-5796535941661723930Sat, 12 Dec 2009 06:18:00 +00002009-12-12T09:57:59.577-08:00Loss of a parent<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_nIdxfARv44A/SyNlkHBs4NI/AAAAAAAADgY/UGi8MjP1Ao4/s1600-h/Faye+and+Ruth.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 336px; height: 400px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_nIdxfARv44A/SyNlkHBs4NI/AAAAAAAADgY/UGi8MjP1Ao4/s400/Faye+and+Ruth.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5414282848065347794" /></a> <em>My mom, at right, and my Aunt Ruth, with Reggie, in the summer of 1945.</em><br /><br />My mother has been in the skilled nursing center in a bed next to my father for about ten days, since a fall in the bathroom at our family home. When the physical therapists tried to get her out of bed to exercise, or to walk to meals, she has resisted and has spent much of her time in bed. <span class="fullpost"><br /><br />As a consequence, she has come down with pneumonia. Today she did not eat or drink. I'm not sure she is going to make it.<br /><br />Before dinner, I took Dad to her bedside and he sat and held her hand. I was worried about doing this, because he is so vulnerable right now and his whole life has been built around her. But my sister felt I should do this, and for her I did so. I think it was clear, even to my father in his diminished state, that my mother is very ill. She is on oxygen, gasping for breath, thin beyond belief. She's not conscious. The nurses gave her morphine about midday. <br /><br />After Dad sat there for a while, he asked me what we were going to do, so I told him we were going to dinner. I walked him around in his wheelchair for about ten minutes, as it was a little too early for dinner, and I needed the walk. He appeared to sleep as I pushed him in his chair. When we got to the table, he continued to look as if he were sleeping.<br /><br />I tried to give him his soup and he didn't seem to want to wake up and eat it. I tried to give him his juice and he didn't open his mouth.<br /><br />His nose always runs when he eats so I went to get a box of tissues and when I returned he still appeared to be dozing. I touched him on the head with the box of tissues and he opened his eyes. I asked him if he was okay.<br /><br />"I'm okay," he said, without changing his expression. "I'm just thinking about your mother."<br /><br />It made me think back to a night, long ago, when I was nine. My mother had pneumonia then and had been taken to the hospital. Dad came home from work, rushed my sister and me through a half-cooked chicken dinner and then a neighbor came over to sit with us while we went to bed and Dad went to the hospital.<br /><br />Some time later, I woke up and saw the light on in the hall. And I heard the strangest sound: I heard my father crying in the kitchen. It is the only time in my life I have ever heard him cry and til this day I have never seen him do it.<br /><br />Many years later I learned the doctor had told him he didn't think my mother would last the night. <br /><br />She surprised my father on that night. But I do not think she will surprise us again, lo, these many years later.<br /><br />In the dining room of the nursing home, I began to cry, because I know how much my mother means to my father. I did not want him to see me, but my father's eyes were closed again. I got up from the table. Thad, the CNA from Kenya, has told me many times he would be happy to serve my father his dinner, and tonight I asked him if he would do it for me. I blew my nose and I went to the room to check on my mother.<br /><br />She looked terrible. When we lose her ... my father will be devastated. Although she wasn't conscious, I sat and spoke with her for a few minutes, even though I knew she could not hear me.<br /><br />I kissed her on the forehead and went back to the dining room. I gave my father a hug and kissed him too and then left the nursing home to return to my own home. Each of us must now face this sea of troubles in his own way. I am out of things to give.<br /><br /><em>I wrote the above, and then the call came. My mother died at 11:50 p.m. </em><br /><br /><p><a href="http://fusion.google.com/add?feedurl=http://feeds.feedburner.com/blogspot/vYqp"><img src="http://buttons.googlesyndication.com/fusion/add.gif<br />" width="104" height="17" style="border:0" alt="Add to <br />Google Reader or Homepage"/></a></p><br /><p><a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/blogspot/vYqp" rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml">Subscribe to Robin Chapman News</a></p><br /><br /><script src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/blogspot/Eqqi?format=sigpro" type="text/javascript" ></script><noscript><p>Subscribe to RSS headline updates from: <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/blogspot/Eqqi"></a><br/>Powered by FeedBurner</p> </noscript> </span><div class="blogger-post-footer">Visit Robin's blog at robinchapmannews.blogspot.com<img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/1232112655035482837-5796535941661723930?l=robinchapmannews.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>http://robinchapmannews.blogspot.com/2009/12/friday-update.htmlrchapsblog@gmail.com (Robin Chapman)3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1232112655035482837.post-6083452079938348849Wed, 09 Dec 2009 19:57:00 +00002009-12-10T09:37:44.237-08:00Nursing home characters and careVisiting my parents in the nursing home has given me the chance to see all kinds of sorrow and sweetness in the lives of some of the other patients I have met.<br /><br />I've already written about the woman who cries help. One morning she was sitting across from us at breakfast and she did her "Help!" cries once every few minutes as she generally does. They varied in intensity. Sometimes loud, sometimes soft, and as she cried out, she looked as if she were in a faraway land.<br /><br />Then an old man came up behind her wheelchair and touched her on the shoulder. She came to herself immediately. <span class="fullpost"><br /><br />"Oh Edwin, the love of my life. How are you this morning, dear?"<br /><br />And the two them them trundled off to the other dining room together, Edwin pushing his wife's wheelchair. <br /><br />* * * <br /><br />At the Thanksgiving dinner party I met a Jewish couple who are my parents' age and who both seemed so well I wondered what they were doing there. The husband told me that each came from Vienna at different times: he in 1939, and she in 1941, so I could only imagine their story. She was a nice looking old woman and I asked her about living in America, after a childhood in Vienna. <br /><br />"Yes, ve've been here about vorteen years," she said. So I knew then that she was the patient.<br /><br />One day, soon afterward, she sat across from my father and me at breakfast. That's how I meet most of the people in the nursing center. She was feeling well that morning and her mind was clear, so we had a nice chat.<br /><br />"Why did you leave Vienna in 1941, Mrs. K?" I asked, certain the answer would be interesting. <br /><br />"Ach, it vaz da Nazis," she said. "Dey took our vactory, dey took our house, dey made us lif in one room vith three other vamilies."<br /><br />"But how did you get out?" I asked<br /><br />"Zey didn't vant me. I vas too young. My parents they took, my mama and my papa, and dey died in von of dose camps. It vas da Nazis. It vas da Nazis." She shook her head.<br /><br />I changed the subject to Vienna itself and we talked about the movie <em>The Third Man</em>, filmed in the rubble of post war Vienna.<br /><br />"Ve've been bek many times," she said smiling. "I luf Vienna."<br /><br />Later I heard her in her room, screaming at the nurses: "Don't touch me. You aren't nice." She was treating them as if they were guards in the concentration camps that had taken the lives of her loved ones. Her husband was standing outside her room looking at the floor.<br /><br />I asked him how long his wife had been in the nursing center and what her illness was. She had only been there two weeks.<br /><br />"It's cancer," he said. "Lung cancer. And its spread to her second lung. I'm almost blind so I can't care vor her." At ninety years of age, he stands straight and tall and you can't tell he doesn't see or hear very well. He comes every day, and when his wife is yelling, he stands outside the door of her room.<br /><br />She has grown thinner and quieter by the day and is now on morphine. This morning, she sat across from us at breakfast again, and used enormous concentration to spear the fruit in the dish in front of her so she could get it to her mouth. She didn't speak when I spoke to her. But near the end of breakfast she did speak. She cried out.<br /><br />"Mama!" she said in a plaintiff cry. "Mama!" At eighty-eight and near death, we still seek the things we've lost.<br /><br />* * *<br /><br />There is another couple I've taken note of, perhaps since they don't look too much older than I am. She must have an early-onset neurodegenerative disease, and her husband comes to see her each day, a tall, grey-haired, bearded, Silicon Valley-engineer-type. He wheels her in her wheel chair and sits with her and talks, his laptop nearby. He often smiles at her.<br /><br />He isn't with her at breakfast and everything is very difficult for her then. Sometime she sobs quietly to herself in frustration. She doesn't know what she is supposed to eat, and she keeps arranging and rearranging the napkins. She asks me lots of questions about what she should do and I try to be helpful and kind.<br /><br />One morning, I noticed she was wearing a sweatshirt from the Naval Graduate School in Monterey. My niece is marrying a young man who is studying there, so I asked N. about the sweatshirt and if she had attended the school.<br /><br />"My husband did," she said. And then her eyes looked away from mine. "But, of course, that was a very long time ago."<br /><br />I've often thought what a nice man he is, spending so much time at the nursing center with his wife. She is a plain woman, in a Palo Alto-intellectual sort of way, and she is another patient who is growing thinner by the week. <br /><br />Last night, as I passed her room, I saw her husband changing her socks for her. It was an act of love most of us don't think about when we think about romance. But to me, it was one of the sweetest one's I've ever seen. <br /><br />* * *<br /><br />Today my father spoke again about being ill. Lately, he has noted several times that he knows he isn't well.<br /><br />"I'm coming to the end of the road," he said today. "I've had a good life. I've done lots of interesting things. And I married the girl I loved. " He was looking at the ceiling as he talked. Then he looked at me. I was sitting by his bed and holding onto his hand.<br /><br />"Robin? Will you stay with me during this? Will you? I need you."<br /><br />And I said I would. Then we said a prayer together, and, as he closed his eyes to sleep, he spoke the name of his father, who died more than six deacades ago.<br /><br /><p><a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/blogspot/vYqp" rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml">Subscribe to Robin Chapman News</a></p><br /><br /><script src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/blogspot/Eqqi?format=sigpro" type="text/javascript" ></script><noscript><p>Subscribe to RSS headline updates from: <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/blogspot/Eqqi"></a><br/>Powered by FeedBurner</p> </noscript><br /></span><div class="blogger-post-footer">Visit Robin's blog at robinchapmannews.blogspot.com<img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/1232112655035482837-6083452079938348849?l=robinchapmannews.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>http://robinchapmannews.blogspot.com/2009/12/poignent-moments-in-nursing-care.htmlrchapsblog@gmail.com (Robin Chapman)2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1232112655035482837.post-7618759420177769108Mon, 07 Dec 2009 20:06:00 +00002009-12-07T13:06:35.713-08:00Skyline Boulevard SnowSnow in the San Francisco Bay AreaPage Mill Road SnowAlice's Restaurant<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_nIdxfARv44A/Sx1g5PU8t_I/AAAAAAAADfA/HPiRZ2o5YVs/s1600-h/Snow+on+Skyline+2.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5412588863652411378" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 400px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 300px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_nIdxfARv44A/Sx1g5PU8t_I/AAAAAAAADfA/HPiRZ2o5YVs/s400/Snow+on+Skyline+2.jpg" border="0" /></a> <em>Snow on Skyline Boulevard above San Francisco Bay, December 7, 2009.</em><br /><br />It was raining softly when I arose this morning to a chilly dawn. The forecasters said we could expect snow in the higher elevations above San Francisco Bay. As I headed out to the nursing home at 7:30 this morning, you could see the white stuff in the hills above Palo Alto and Los Altos. <span class="fullpost"><br /><br />I decided to drive up to Skyline Boulevard after breakfast with my father (Mom is still taking a tray in her room) and was dismayed to see very little snow when I got up to Alice's Restaurant at the intersection of Woodside Road, La Honda, and Skyline.<br /><br />"Oh, we had a lot this morning," they told me. "But it is already starting to melt."<br /><br /><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_nIdxfARv44A/Sx1hvqlc2OI/AAAAAAAADfI/_mGjCN9_hFo/s1600-h/Alices+in+Snow+2.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5412589798682319074" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 400px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 300px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_nIdxfARv44A/Sx1hvqlc2OI/AAAAAAAADfI/_mGjCN9_hFo/s400/Alices+in+Snow+2.jpg" border="0" /></a> <em>Alice's Restaurant on Skyline Boulevard with melting snow on the roof and stair rail.</em><br /><br />Alice's Restaurant (named after the place in the song, not the other way around) is a great little joint for big breakfasts, hamburger lunches, and evenings of acoustic guitar and banjo strumming. On the weekends, the place is jammed with rich guys pretending to be bikers who park their Harleys out front, and with their bicycling counterparts. I've learned that on weekdays, it is much less busy and is a fun place to get away from the crowds in the Santa Clara Valley. But where was the snow I could see from down there?<br /><br />"Drive down toward Page Mill," they told me. "It is about five hundred feet higher and they have about half a foot."<br /><br />So off I went in search of the white stuff. Skyline Boulevard runs, as it would suggest, all along the crest of the Coast Range, between the Pacific on one side, and the San Francisco Bay on t'other. It has always been a beautiful road, though I hesitate to say it was originally used by the companies who logged all the redwood trees that used to cover the hills. Today, at one spot, the sky was so clear I could see the Pacific Ocean. And then I got into the snow.<br /><br /><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_nIdxfARv44A/Sx1nBNDAPSI/AAAAAAAADfQ/KEiApfo7YUA/s1600-h/Snow+out+the+car+window+3.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5412595597548993826" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 400px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 300px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_nIdxfARv44A/Sx1nBNDAPSI/AAAAAAAADfQ/KEiApfo7YUA/s400/Snow+out+the+car+window+3.jpg" border="0" /></a> <em>Looking out the windshield of the Swedish Car, into the surprising snow in the Palo Alto Hills.</em><br /><br />Along a stretch between Woodside Road and Page Mill, California's Skyline Boulevard, just five miles from the Pacific as the crow flies, was looking a lot more like Colorado. But it wasn't going to last and the denizens of the hills probably won't have enough left to claim a white Christmas.<br /><br /><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_nIdxfARv44A/Sx1qbHvceKI/AAAAAAAADfw/0vzpSaN71aM/s1600-h/Snow+on+Fence.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5412599341336262818" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 400px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 300px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_nIdxfARv44A/Sx1qbHvceKI/AAAAAAAADfw/0vzpSaN71aM/s400/Snow+on+Fence.jpg" border="0" /></a> <em>Snow is like a big paint brush. Everywhere you look it has left you with a pretty picture in place that looked ordinary the day before.</em><br /><br />I turned on Page Mill, to head back down to Los Altos and caught a glimpse of an animal in the field across the road. I don't have a great camera, so the focus isn't good, but what I saw was a fox, and when I took its picture, I frightened another one nearby. Mr. and Mrs. Fox were out, slyly looking for lunch. <a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_nIdxfARv44A/Sx1ouNud7vI/AAAAAAAADfY/DSw2Eef-kqQ/s1600-h/Fox+in+the+Snow+compressed.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5412597470337036018" style="FLOAT: right; MARGIN: 0px 0px 10px 10px; WIDTH: 200px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 150px" alt="" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_nIdxfARv44A/Sx1ouNud7vI/AAAAAAAADfY/DSw2Eef-kqQ/s200/Fox+in+the+Snow+compressed.jpg" border="0" /></a> I know you'll tell me they were probably coyotes, but I've seen coyotes up there and they're much more scraggly. Believe me, these two foxes are just the thing ladies used to wear on their shoulders. No wonder they decided to trot away when they heard my footsteps. <a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_nIdxfARv44A/Sx1o401haBI/AAAAAAAADfg/rSIg1Depc3g/s1600-h/Second+fox+in+snow..jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5412597652634298386" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 200px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 150px" alt="" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_nIdxfARv44A/Sx1o401haBI/AAAAAAAADfg/rSIg1Depc3g/s200/Second+fox+in+snow..jpg" border="0" /></a> Perhaps they've heard through the grapevine that I shop at Neiman Marcus, the one place they've spent their lives hoping to avoid.<br /><br />It wasn't much, I guess. A little snow above San Francisco Bay and a couple of beautiful animals. But it brought to mind a question my mother asked me when I saw her this morning in the nursing home. "What," she asked me, "did I ever do to deserve this?" I was thinking of responding with a list, but I knew that wouldn't have been nice. I went for a drive instead.<br /><br />And I found myself asking myself the same question (in the obverse) about my morning drive. It was so beautiful, it was (almost) more than I deserved.<br /><br />And it was certainly worth the seven-mile drive on the windy old wagon road. My wagon rode just fine, thanks, and seemed happy to have a brief dip into cold weather, before returning to the sunny valley below.<br /><br /><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_nIdxfARv44A/Sx1qJOpbFdI/AAAAAAAADfo/PJ0LucdDovo/s1600-h/Snow+and+the+Swedish+car..jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5412599033952409042" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 400px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 300px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_nIdxfARv44A/Sx1qJOpbFdI/AAAAAAAADfo/PJ0LucdDovo/s400/Snow+and+the+Swedish+car..jpg" border="0" /></a> <em>The Swedish Car, posing in the sunlight, at just about the snow line on Page Mill Boulevard.</em><br /><br /><p><a href="http://fusion.google.com/add?feedurl=http://feeds.feedburner.com/blogspot/vYqp"><img style="BORDER-RIGHT: 0px; BORDER-TOP: 0px; BORDER-LEFT: 0px; BORDER-BOTTOM: 0px" height="17" alt="Add to Google Reader or Homepage" src="http://buttons.googlesyndication.com/fusion/add.gif" width="104" /></a></p><br /><p><a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/blogspot/vYqp" type="application/rss+xml" rel="alternate">Subscribe to Robin Chapman News</a></p><br /><br /><script src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/blogspot/Eqqi?format=sigpro" type="text/javascript"></script><noscript></noscript><br /></span><div class="blogger-post-footer">Visit Robin's blog at robinchapmannews.blogspot.com<img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/1232112655035482837-7618759420177769108?l=robinchapmannews.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>http://robinchapmannews.blogspot.com/2009/12/snow-in-palo-alto-hills.htmlrchapsblog@gmail.com (Robin Chapman)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1232112655035482837.post-1279224407646709445Sat, 05 Dec 2009 19:08:00 +00002009-12-05T20:51:40.783-08:00Marjorie MargoliesChelsea Clinton engagementKati MartonSherlock Holmes<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_nIdxfARv44A/SxrCmuESRtI/AAAAAAAADeQ/QEQJQqPCAuc/s1600-h/Hound+poster.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5411851872695895762" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 400px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 308px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_nIdxfARv44A/SxrCmuESRtI/AAAAAAAADeQ/QEQJQqPCAuc/s400/Hound+poster.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><em>Just keep reading, I'll have more on the Hound of the Baskervilles later in our story. But first ...</em><br /><br /><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_nIdxfARv44A/Sxq59dZYeuI/AAAAAAAADdg/KWLCMjaa0fU/s1600-h/Kati_marton.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5411842367753321186" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 215px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 229px" alt="" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_nIdxfARv44A/Sxq59dZYeuI/AAAAAAAADdg/KWLCMjaa0fU/s320/Kati_marton.jpg" border="0" /></a><br />... I notice Kati Marton has a new book out. It is called <em>Enemies of the People: My Family's Journey to America</em>, and is about her journalist parents and their escape from Hungary after an imprisonment there. She was raised as a Roman Catholic, but when researching one of her books, discovered she was Jewish and that her grandparents died in the Holocaust. <em>(Kati Marton, above left.)</em><span class="fullpost"><br /><br />I don't know Marton, but everybody in Washington DC knows who she is, since she used to be married to the late ABC anchorman Peter Jennings. Jennings had an eye for the ladies, as they say, and at one point when I was working in DC, the gossip was that she became so disgusted by his behavior she came to Washington from their home in NY and took up with one of Washington's most famous columnists, who was also a very nice man (though there is some dispute about his niceness, says one of my Washington friends.) When Jennings heard about it, so the story goes, he came to DC to get her. We all had this image of mild-mannered Mr. C, cowering as the dapper Jennings grabbed his wife and carried her back to New York.<br /><br />I think she must have returned only briefly as she and Jennings finally divorced and she is now married to Richard Holbrooke. He used to be Diane Sawyer's boyfriend, and is a special envoy in the Obama administration and doesn't need a portfolio as he carries his ego around with him and that is a pretty heavy load ...<br /><br />... Speaking of marriages, I also saw this week that Chelsea Clinton is engaged to Marc Mezvinsky, the son of a the former Iowa congressman who went to jail a few years ago for bank fraud, mail fraud, and wire fraud. I don't know him <a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_nIdxfARv44A/Sxq94RHgU4I/AAAAAAAADeA/9bJe2791q3w/s1600-h/Margolies-Mesvinsky,Marjorie.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5411846676604277634" style="FLOAT: right; MARGIN: 0px 0px 10px 10px; WIDTH: 150px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 200px" alt="" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_nIdxfARv44A/Sxq94RHgU4I/AAAAAAAADeA/9bJe2791q3w/s200/Margolies-Mesvinsky,Marjorie.jpg" border="0" /></a> but I used to know his wife, Marjorie Margolies, who was a reporter for many years at WRC-TV, the NBC station in Washington D.C.<br /><br /><em>At right, Marjorie Margolies-Mezvinsky</em><br /><br />After she married the congressman, she used come down from Philadelphia where they lived, and work part-time for WRC, a deal I thought was pretty sweet. Thus, I used to think she really had it wired. Turns out he was doing the wiring and she was married to a crook, and will now be related by marriage to the Clintons. That will teach me not to envy people ...<br /><br />... and aren't you pleased Congress held those hearings this week into head injuries in the NFL? They were <em>stunned</em> and <em>amazed</em>, as well as <em>very disappointed </em>to learn you could hurt your head really bad playing professional football. Definitely worth a Congressional hearing, I would say. I hope they put a stop to that stuff.<br /><br />... and, more shocking news. News so shocking all of the sports world and even some political commentators are trying to get over it. A famous and very, very, very wealthy, multi-cultural athlete with a blonde-Swedish-model wife has been caught running around on her. And has been in a suspicious car accident. ("Take that you a--hole," I imagine her saying, as she whacked his car with a nine-iron.) This news so startled me I think Congress should hold hearings on the matter. I mean, there oughta be a law and Congress, I hope, will put a stop to that stuff.<br /><br />... Finally, I must confess to being a very big Holmesian, that is, a big fan of all of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's stories about the Great Detective and his Boswell, Dr. Watson.<br /><br /><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_nIdxfARv44A/Sxq72BizZ_I/AAAAAAAADdo/oImSUCOcMxk/s1600-h/basil+as+Sherlock.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5411844439040813042" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 300px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 400px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_nIdxfARv44A/Sxq72BizZ_I/AAAAAAAADdo/oImSUCOcMxk/s400/basil+as+Sherlock.jpg" border="0" /></a> <em>Basil Rathbone as Sherlock Holmes.</em><br /><br />Don't know whether I should look forward to the new movie coming out at Christmas starring Robert Downy Jr. as Sherlock, but I do hope it is true to the Holmes canon. I saw a clip that showed Downy Jr. (as Sherlock) using something that looked like nunchucks against the bad guys, so I hope that doesn't bode ill. Or perhaps this is a skill Sherlock picked up during the years he wandered in Asia after we all thought him dead at Richenback Falls, but I believe this would just be speculation ...<br /><br />... Still, if you wear yourself completely out on Christmas Day and want to get away from all the fuss, you can curl up in front of the television for an entire night of really good Sherlock Holmes movies on Turner Classic Movies, including the 1939, 20th Century Fox version of the <em>Hound of the Baskervilles</em>, starring Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce. <a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_nIdxfARv44A/Sxq8JwP86NI/AAAAAAAADdw/RWfbT4IFvXQ/s1600-h/Hound+poster+2.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5411844777995725010" style="FLOAT: right; MARGIN: 0px 0px 10px 10px; WIDTH: 207px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 320px" alt="" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_nIdxfARv44A/Sxq8JwP86NI/AAAAAAAADdw/RWfbT4IFvXQ/s320/Hound+poster+2.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><br />It is the best movie version of any of the Holmes stories and I'll be watching it for the zillionth time, with a fire burning in the grate and my gas lamps turned down low. So call me Christmas Day, but not Christmas Night, as I plan to be lost in Victorian England where evil walks on the moors by night, but is never a match for the World's Greatest Consulting Detective.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0988045/">New Movie "Sherlock" Starring Robert Downy Jr.</a><br /><br /><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Enemies-People-Familys-Journey-America/dp/1416586121">New Book by Kati Marton </a><br /><br /><p><a href="http://fusion.google.com/add?feedurl=http://feeds.feedburner.com/blogspot/vYqp"><img style="BORDER-RIGHT: 0px; BORDER-TOP: 0px; BORDER-LEFT: 0px; BORDER-BOTTOM: 0px" height="17" alt="Add to Google Reader or Homepage" src="http://buttons.googlesyndication.com/fusion/add.gif" width="104" /></a></p><br /><p><a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/blogspot/vYqp" type="application/rss+xml" rel="alternate">Subscribe to Robin Chapman News</a></p><br /><br /><script src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/blogspot/Eqqi?format=sigpro" type="text/javascript"></script><noscript></noscript><br /><br /></span><div class="blogger-post-footer">Visit Robin's blog at robinchapmannews.blogspot.com<img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/1232112655035482837-1279224407646709445?l=robinchapmannews.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>http://robinchapmannews.blogspot.com/2009/12/saturday-musings-on-sherlock-holmes-and.htmlrchapsblog@gmail.com (Robin Chapman)2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1232112655035482837.post-4793672029959220180Wed, 02 Dec 2009 19:49:00 +00002009-12-02T13:36:12.345-08:00<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_nIdxfARv44A/SxbFsAZL7FI/AAAAAAAADbY/LZ-wGJwX9Sc/s1600-h/Honeymoon+engagement.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5410729362142784594" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 266px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 400px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_nIdxfARv44A/SxbFsAZL7FI/AAAAAAAADbY/LZ-wGJwX9Sc/s400/Honeymoon+engagement.jpg" border="0" /></a> <em>Faye and Ashley together just before they married. The pine tree was on my grandparents' property in Spokane.</em><br /><br />When Capt. Ashley Chapman met Faye Latta in Spokane, Washington during the summer of 1944, how could either of them know what was ahead? We often guess wrong about the future. Captain Chapman knew he was going to Japan and has since confessed that he figured he probably wouldn't come back. He was training at Geiger Field, learning the new specs for the runways he would be building for the new bombers America was turning out.<br /><br />He'd already served in the Atlantic and had money in the bank. He sent to Birmingham, Alabama for his parents and paid their way out West so they could meet the pretty girl he thought he might like to marry before he went off to war and died. <span class="fullpost"><br /><br /><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_nIdxfARv44A/SxbKpU9eZSI/AAAAAAAADbg/Lr4SPnfcNSQ/s1600-h/honeymoon+swimmers.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5410734813682230562" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 217px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 400px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_nIdxfARv44A/SxbKpU9eZSI/AAAAAAAADbg/Lr4SPnfcNSQ/s400/honeymoon+swimmers.jpg" border="0" /></a> <em>Faye and Ashley, swimming at Washington State's Loon Lake, just before they became engaged. Do they look happy, or what? </em><br /><br />His father liked her and that was enough for Capt. Chapman. Their courtship lasted six weeks, their honeymoon was a few months long and then he was off to the bloody battle of Okinawa. The best man at their wedding was killed by shrapnel from a Japanese bomb just a few weeks before the end of the war. But my Dad made it back without a scratch. Waiting for him was the woman he had married in such a fever. Now they had the chance to get to know each other.<br /><br /><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_nIdxfARv44A/SxbLBDt6UcI/AAAAAAAADbo/V3Kygivfn9M/s1600-h/Honeymoon2.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5410735221370409410" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 223px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 400px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_nIdxfARv44A/SxbLBDt6UcI/AAAAAAAADbo/V3Kygivfn9M/s400/Honeymoon2.jpg" border="0" /></a> <em>Honeymooning in Victoria, B.C. before the war divided them again.</em><br /><br />Sixty-five years later, I was walking through the house they lived in for half a century, packing some clothes for my mother to take with her when they transferred her from the hospital to the bed next to my father in the nursing home. The house was cold, eerie, and empty. It always comes to this, for all of us, so why is it such a shock? Each of us must discover it.<br /><br />All of their belongings were neatly stored away in the drawers and cupboards and closets. Accumulated over the years, they are all permeated with the smell of the moth balls my mother puts in all the drawers and closets. And none of the possessions means anything to them anymore.<br /><br />My parents have been so much luckier than most people. Dad made it safely home from the worst war in world history, and he'd married a woman who shared his values so they stuck it out together afterwards, as many did not or could not. They prospered in what became the richest state in the nation and in what became one of the most exclusive towns in their region--a town they built a home in strictly by accident. The house they lived in for most of their lives increased in value sixty times and though my father made many wise investments their house was the best one of all. We haven't had to sell it yet to pay for their care, but if we do it will care for them for a long time. So they've already had the "better" part of their marriage vows.<br /><br />Now comes the worse.<br /><br />When they brought Mother into the skilled nursing facility on a gurney, my father grew very worried. My mother was not very lucid, but when she saw my father she brightened: "Oh, Ashley, I have missed you so much." They held hands and the nurse cried.<br /><br />My father's dementia and his total deafness have limited his understanding and he could see that Mom looked like a very pale and tiny bag of bones. He kept asking me: "Is Faye all right?" Then he started saying: "Am I all right? I'm not all right, am I? Faye's not all right either, is she?" But he calmed down because he was tired and he went to sleep, as she did. They were back in the same room, not quite as they had always been, but together.<br /><br />If you had told me they would both fall apart at the same time I would have laughed at you. A week ago, Mom was balancing the checkbook and doing the crossword puzzle and one day later we had to take her to the hospital, which she told me later was some kind of "Disney ride." She spoke of having conversations with people I know to be dead and "putting things away" when she was lying in the hospital bed. Ga ga? My mother? That is a shock.<br /><br />Together throughout their married life, they are now both ga ga together. Mother's illness was, in a way caused by Dad's. When he had to go to the nursing home, she was alone and though I stopped by every day, I didn't know she had stopped eating and drinking water. The doctor told me this isn't unusual when there is a trauma in a person's life, for them to lose their sense of hunger and thirst. Then I remembered that when I lost my husband, I found myself unable to eat for the first time in my life. I didn't lose him as much as he was mis-laid, if you get my meaning. But it was still a trauma. I got very thin and beautiful and had many other offers, though, so it all came out right in the end.<br /><br />In Mom's case it did not. By the time we got her to the hospital her kidneys were failing from lack of water. And, for some reason, her mind was also affected.<br /><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_nIdxfARv44A/SxbN1MaPEFI/AAAAAAAADbw/Hd7ryD3_S-8/s1600-h/Forumwith+both+2a.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5410738316080255058" style="FLOAT: right; MARGIN: 0px 0px 10px 10px; WIDTH: 279px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 320px" alt="" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_nIdxfARv44A/SxbN1MaPEFI/AAAAAAAADbw/Hd7ryD3_S-8/s320/Forumwith+both+2a.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><br />So there they were this morning after breakfast. Two wheelchairs. Two old people. Holding hands. They had vowed they would stay together until death parted them. And for better and for worse, they have shown they are both making good on the deal.<br /><br /><em>I had to sneak this photo of the two of them sitting together at the nursing home, so the focus isn't great. Mom's hair was wet from a shower, so I put it up in a towel. Dad has reached over to kiss her.</em><br /><br /><p><a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/blogspot/vYqp" type="application/rss+xml" rel="alternate">Subscribe to Robin Chapman News</a></p><br /><br /><script src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/blogspot/Eqqi?format=sigpro" type="text/javascript"></script><noscript></noscript></span><div class="blogger-post-footer">Visit Robin's blog at robinchapmannews.blogspot.com<img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/1232112655035482837-4793672029959220180?l=robinchapmannews.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>http://robinchapmannews.blogspot.com/2009/12/til-death-us-do-part.htmlrchapsblog@gmail.com (Robin Chapman)5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1232112655035482837.post-3629371920699991972Fri, 27 Nov 2009 18:08:00 +00002009-11-27T13:09:46.200-08:00Elderly parentsFaye E. ChapmanCapt. William Ashley Chapman<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_nIdxfARv44A/SxA_uoRlGsI/AAAAAAAADbQ/qR4CzTiQi9c/s1600/~hpa0002.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 267px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_nIdxfARv44A/SxA_uoRlGsI/AAAAAAAADbQ/qR4CzTiQi9c/s400/~hpa0002.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5408893222789651138" /></a> <em>Thanksgiving greetings from my elderly triage center in Northern California.</em><br /><br />I had to take a break from blogging to attend to the latest Crisis of the Elderly Parents: Mom fell at 6:30 Tuesday morning and is now in the hospital.<br /><br />Naturally it is never as simple as that. She called me after she fell and I rushed over and called 911. They took her to the ER and X-Rayed her and said she hadn't broken anything and sent her home. I got her some strong pain pills and put her on the couch and gave her something to eat and a pain pill, with strict instructions to stay put. Then I went up the hill to visit Dad who has pancreatic cancer and lost five pounds last week in nursing care. <span class="fullpost"><br /><br />When I checked back in with Mom, she was in the fetal position, calling out in pain. How could this be, I asked myself? She's always dramatic when she is ill, so I wasn't sure what to think. Her doctor prescribed some even stronger pain pills and said if they didn't work she would have to go to the hospital. On Wednesday morning, since she was still in the fetal position and crying out, I called 911 again and took her to the hospital. After all day in the ER (Such fun! And I could have been defrosting the turkey!) they decided to admit her. She spent Thanksgiving Day on morphine in the hospital.<br /><br />She didn't like visiting Dad in nursing care anyway. <br /><br />"I hope you aren't planning to let her live by herself anymore," the physician said to me on the telephone yesterday. Oh sure, I said to myself. My mother always does exactly as we tell her. Instead of saying this I said to him, "Oh, you are so right. My family wouldn't think of allowing that."<br /><br />We'd like Mom to go from the hospital to the bed next to Dad in the nursing home. Not that Mom will go there. But we continue to dream of the triumph of hope over experience.<br /><br /><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_nIdxfARv44A/SxAc4rc9JBI/AAAAAAAADa4/2Rf6vJQvtLg/s1600/Forum2.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 307px; height: 400px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_nIdxfARv44A/SxAc4rc9JBI/AAAAAAAADa4/2Rf6vJQvtLg/s400/Forum2.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5408854912534389778" /></a> <em>Entrance to skilled nursing center and location of parent #1.</em><br /><br />Meanwhile, back at the nursing home, my father has had a good week. He's been eating well, sleeping well and has gradually adjusted to his new living arrangements and the regular routine we've established. <br /><br />I arrive at 7:40 a.m. to help him with his breakfast. I enter the dining room behind his chair and scratch his back, and, without turning his head he says, "That's Robin."<br /><br />Yesterday he said, "I was hoping you would come. And I said to myself if she doesn't come, I'm going to cut her off."<br /><br />This morning, I kissed him on the cheek and he said, "That's worth a million dollars. Bet you'd like to have it now, too." He hasn't yet heard we're spending his fortune on his care, but oh well. I told him it was raining outside and he smiled and said, "I have a plan." What's that, I asked? "I'm going to let it rain," he said.<br /><br />He may have dementia, total hearing loss, terminal cancer, chronic lymphocytic leukemia, can't walk or feed himself, but he hasn't lost his personality nor the quirky way he looks at the world.<br /><br />Speaking of which, last night at the hospital Mom tried to get out of bed on her own and fell again, then pulled out both of her catheters, which in the case of the Foley catheter was quite a difficult task because it involved both her bladder and a balloon.<br /><br /><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_nIdxfARv44A/SxAXKyvKO-I/AAAAAAAADaw/pINAsiwEwQE/s1600/ElCamino+1.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 349px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_nIdxfARv44A/SxAXKyvKO-I/AAAAAAAADaw/pINAsiwEwQE/s400/ElCamino+1.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5408848626657672162" /></a> <em>A rainy day outside Silicon Valley's newest hospital: location of parent #2.</em><br /><br />"I can't understand why she would behave like this," my sister said to me after speaking with the nurse this morning. "She's being so naughty."<br /><br />"Why should she stop now, just because she is sick," I asked. People don't really change much, no matter their situation. Mom has always had a very strong personality and does not take direction from anyone, especially doctors. She has been very unhappy with Dad in nursing care. She wouldn't agree to move out of the house, but she obviously hated living there alone. She's had one ailment after another in the month he's been gone that has kept her from visiting him. Something is clearly hurting in her--whether it is mind, body, or both we don't yet know.<br /><br />So on Thanksgiving Day, as I shuttled between the two of them, I realized I had a lot to be thankful for. I moved back to California just in time. Just in time to be here when they both fell apart and actually needed me, for the first time in their lives. And though I missed my friends the Seymours and their annual Thanksgiving feast, full of the fascinating and witty characters at their table, I knew I was lucky. Both my parents were safe and having their own kind of fun. Mom, playing Camille and having an audience at Silicon Valley's Newest Hospital (which looks like NY's Four Seasons Hotel inside) and Dad cracking jokes at the world, and imagining his daughter loves him only for his money, which, by the way, the thrifty Scotsman had always planned on taking with him. And which, in a way, is exactly what he is doing.<br /><br /><p><a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/blogspot/vYqp" rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml">Subscribe to Robin Chapman News</a></p><br /><br /><script src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/blogspot/Eqqi?format=sigpro" type="text/javascript" ></script><noscript><p>Subscribe to RSS headline updates from: <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/blogspot/Eqqi"></a><br/>Powered by FeedBurner</p> </noscript> </span><div class="blogger-post-footer">Visit Robin's blog at robinchapmannews.blogspot.com<img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/1232112655035482837-3629371920699991972?l=robinchapmannews.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>http://robinchapmannews.blogspot.com/2009/11/joined-at-hip-elderly-parents-also.htmlrchapsblog@gmail.com (Robin Chapman)3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1232112655035482837.post-1570091271225986457Tue, 17 Nov 2009 17:54:00 +00002009-11-17T10:43:08.288-08:00<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_nIdxfARv44A/SwLkppNCWfI/AAAAAAAADaY/yrAHVRj-AP8/s1600/Daddy+with+Dana+1.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 308px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_nIdxfARv44A/SwLkppNCWfI/AAAAAAAADaY/yrAHVRj-AP8/s400/Daddy+with+Dana+1.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5405133906884319730" /></a> <em>Dad and his granddaughter, Dana, November 2009. That is something very close to a smile on my father's face.</em><br /><br />My sister's middle daughter is moving to Monterey to marry a naval aviator attending the Naval Postgraduate School there. It gave her a chance to stop by and visit her grandfather. She hasn't seen him since he entered the skilled nursing center.<br /><br />He really brightened up when he saw her and the two of them kidded about the Navy (in which she served) versus the Army (my father's branch.)<span class="fullpost"><br /><br />She has been very close to her grandfather over the years. When she was about five years old, she and her older sister, Devon, and her mother (my sister) and her father visited the grandparents in Los Altos from their home in Colorado. When it was time for the family to return home, my father asked Devon, who was eight, if she wanted to stay for a while longer, without her parents, and Devon said she sure would. Dana, younger and shyer, hung back, holding onto her mother's leg, and it was decided she was too young to stay. So Devon stayed behind and spent about four days being pampered by her doting grandfather.<br /><br />The story goes, that when Devon returned to Colorado, she regaled her sister with tales of the fun she had had, and poor Dana burst into tears. Every year after that, until they were in college, the girls spent a week or so sans parents with their grandparents, swimming in the nearby pool, barbecuing hamburger dinners, flying kites and generally having fun with the grandfather they called Pa.<br /><br /><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_nIdxfARv44A/SwLqQc4uclI/AAAAAAAADag/KSklAgy8Hhs/s1600/Young+Lt.+%233.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 271px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_nIdxfARv44A/SwLqQc4uclI/AAAAAAAADag/KSklAgy8Hhs/s400/Young+Lt.+%233.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5405140071150940754" /></a> <em>I took this picture of Dana with Dad when we were all in Spokane, Washington several decades ago for my grandmother's funeral. These rites, both happy and sad, bring families together. </em><br /><br />My father, who has never been really sure of himself with grown-ups, has always loved children, and thus, he has a special bond with his granddaughters.<br /><br />Now, one of them is planning a wedding for December, and we're not sure when we will also be planning a funeral.<br /><br />So it isn't any wonder that Dana got tears in her eyes when she departed from her visit with her grandfather. She said she would be coming back soon, but I saw my father watch her as she walked away.<br /><br />Later that day, after I had sat and helped him eat his dinner, I wheeled him in his chair back to his room.<br /><br />"Robin," he said. "I'm a mess. I'm really sick."<br /><br />I nodded my head that I knew.<br /><br />"I mean not sick to my stomach sick, but really sick."<br /><br />I nodded my head again. This is the first time my father has said this to me. Until that moment, every time I had asked him how he was feeling he said, "I'm fine."<br /><br />But, even though his mind isn't clear these days he does have moments of clarity like this one. I knew he was thinking about Dana and my sister and me and he was letting me know he was going to be leaving us.<br /><br />I have accepted this, because that is all you can do. But when I kissed him goodnight I wondered, as I often do these days, if I would see him again.<br /><br />And now, I know that he wonders too. <br /><br /><p><a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/blogspot/vYqp" type="application/rss+xml" rel="alternate">Subscribe to Robin Chapman News</a></p><br /><br /><script src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/blogspot/Eqqi?format=sigpro" type="text/javascript"></script><noscript></noscript><br /></span><div class="blogger-post-footer">Visit Robin's blog at robinchapmannews.blogspot.com<img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/1232112655035482837-1570091271225986457?l=robinchapmannews.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>http://robinchapmannews.blogspot.com/2009/11/moment-of-clarity-following.htmlrchapsblog@gmail.com (Robin Chapman)3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1232112655035482837.post-9078323572725399182Mon, 09 Nov 2009 19:11:00 +00002009-11-09T11:48:13.862-08:00caregiversnursing homeselder careWe may get old, but inside our heads we must not always see clearly that we are. <br /><br />The other morning I went to the nursing home early to help feed my Dad his breakfast. He can't walk anymore and he can't feed himself and after he has been showered and dressed, the nurses wheel him into the dining-room-for-the-distressed, where he must then wait for his meal and the help he needs to eat it. <span class="fullpost"><br /><br />After I arrived, my father's roommate was wheeled to a spot just across the table from him. Bernie is my father's approximate age and spends most of his time in dialysis. When he was placed at the breakfast table he promptly fell asleep.<br /><br />My Dad raised his ancient, shaking finger and pointed at poor Bernie, snoring away, and then Dad rolled his eyes. "Look at that old guy," he said.<br /><br />As opposed to you? The young guy here? I had to smile, because my Dad was also smiling.<br /><br />On that particular morning, my father told me we were in Al's Barbershop and Al must be giving away breakfast to his customers while they waited.<br /><br />"I'm sick of this," he told me. "All I wanted was a haircut." Still, the breakfast appeared to be free so my father, always both a thrifty and hungry person, partook heartily.<br /><br />One morning he asked me if we were eating a "full English breakfast." I didn't know what to say, so I just nodded that we were. "But, have you told them we are one-hundred-percent Yankee?" <br /><br />He's from Alabama and he only claims to be a Yankee if he finds himself on foreign soil. Like London. Or New York City. <br /><br />When the nice young lady who serves the meals in the dining-room-for-the-distressed appeared with a warm hand towel for my father at the end of his meal, he winked at me.<br /><br />"He knows how to buck for a tip," said Dad, getting his genders mixed up as he frequently does these days. <br /><br />Yesterday I took my mother to the nursing home to see Dad and he was so excited to see her that they sat for a while holding hands near the nurse's station at the end of the hallway.<br /><br /><em>Mom and Dad together at Dad's skilled nursing center.</em><br /><br /><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_nIdxfARv44A/SvhxNVjS_YI/AAAAAAAADZw/RK43dOn_QI0/s1600-h/nursing+home+1.jpg"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 200px; height: 158px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_nIdxfARv44A/SvhxNVjS_YI/AAAAAAAADZw/RK43dOn_QI0/s200/nursing+home+1.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5402192226968337794" /></a><br /><br />One older lady, whom I've described previously as Mrs. Anglo, sat nearby, dozing in her wheelchair.<br /><br />My mother nodded her head toward Mrs. Anglo.<br /><br />"Every time I see her, she looks thinner," she said. This from my mother, now so thin you can practically see the light through her body. <br /><br />The good news is that in both my parents, the will to live on is extremely strong. And the feeling of youthfulness prevails, in spite of all evidence to the contrary.<br /><br />On Saturday my father was complaining about doing his physical therapy and we couldn't seem to talk him out of his bad mood. Then I wrote on a piece of paper for him:<br /><br />"Are you through with life?"<br /><br />He read it. And then without looking at me, he hung his head. Was it disgust that I would ask? Was it shame that I thought he felt that way? I don't know.<br /><br />He looked up and me and smiled. And then he shook his fist at me.<br /><br />And then he did his PT.<br /><br /><p><a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/blogspot/vYqp" rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml">Subscribe to Robin Chapman News</a></p><br /><br /><script src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/blogspot/Eqqi?format=sigpro" type="text/javascript" ></script><noscript><p>Subscribe to RSS headline updates from: <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/blogspot/Eqqi"></a><br/>Powered by FeedBurner</p> </noscript> </span><div class="blogger-post-footer">Visit Robin's blog at robinchapmannews.blogspot.com<img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/1232112655035482837-9078323572725399182?l=robinchapmannews.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>http://robinchapmannews.blogspot.com/2009/11/we-may-get-old-but-inside-our-heads-we.htmlrchapsblog@gmail.com (Robin Chapman)7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1232112655035482837.post-2966768731723124305Tue, 03 Nov 2009 20:56:00 +00002009-11-03T15:38:19.231-08:00fatal illnessesLauren Bacall and Rosemary HarrisElderly parentsWaiting in the Wings by Noel CowardMy father is in a gorgeous facility, up above Los Altos Hills, that includes villas for independent living, apartments for those needing assistance, and the skilled nursing center where he is now installed. I have to admit that there are times, lately, when the place reminds me of the Noel Coward play <em>Waiting in the Wings</em>, which I saw in a revival on Broadway a few years ago, starring Lauren Bacall and Rosemary Harris.<br /><br />That play is about a nursing home for actresses in which stars fade but old rivalries never die.<span class="fullpost"><br /><br />Or, to put it another way, Coward points out that people are just as petty and dysfunctional when they are old and sick as they are when they are young and healthy. Only more so.<br /><br />The place where my father in ensconced proudly announces on its gate that it is a "Smoke Free Facility." And it makes me laugh when I see that, because almost every day I see this cadaverous old man sitting in his car in the parking lot, smoking away, his car door open and his head ducked down beneath the door. In spite of what he imagines, he is not invisible.<br /><br />There is the old woman I'll call Mrs. Anglo, down the hall from my father, who has only recently taken to speaking in Spanish, with a very bad accent. It seems she learned Spanish as a child from a maid, didn't speak it at all during the next eight decades and now, seeing the international cast staffing all the jobs at the nursing home, has suddenly begun speaking to all of them in Spanish. Fortunately, some members of the staff can usually understand her.<br /><br />She has another odd habit I forgot to mention to my sister the first night she came to dinner with my Dad and me at the nursing home. About mid-asparagus, my sister got a funny look on her face and I turned and saw Mrs. Anglo shaking her finger at my sister. She never said anything, not even in Spanish.<br /><br />"I forgot to tell you about that," I said. "She scolds people."<br /><br />There is another woman who always goes to the dining room alone. I suspect no one will sit with her. Every five minutes or so she calls out, "Help!" and then sits quietly for another four minutes and fifty-nine seconds until out pops "Help!" again. One night she did it a lot more than usual and they had to call a security guard.<br /><br />My father's doctors have told us that his time is very limited, but the amazing thing about him is that he looks robust, says he has no pain, and is eating everything that isn't nailed down.<br /><br />Today, however, when the physical therapists tried to get him to stand, he told them he just didn't want to. He was clearly able to do it. He said he felt we didn't understand how sick he was. Believe me, we understand. I've been up there for hours every single day, understanding.<br /><br />"We know," I said. "We just want to see if you can get going a little. It will be good for you." But he just kept complaining and we finally took him back to his room.<br /><br />It has been a contest, for the past couple of weeks, between my father and my mother as to which one of them is the most ill. Even last year, when my father was in the hospital with a broken vertebrae, my mother came down with pneumonia. I'm not saying she intended it, but there you are.<br /><br />This last month, now that my father is in nursing care and getting tons of attention, my mother has had various illnesses that have kept her from visiting. She had nearly fatal stomach flu for a while and now her back is giving her nearly terminal pain. I hate to make fun of it, but the coincidence is worth noting.<br /><br />Sometimes I can't decide which of them is the more spoiled.<br /><br />Which brings me, I suppose, to the famous five stages of grief, first delineated by Elizabeth Kubler-Ross. To wit: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance.<br /><br />I think we can fairly say I'm in the anger stage, and usually that brings me to try to see the funny side of things, in order to dissipate my anger. Which reminds of me of a line Lauren Bacall says in <em>Waiting in the Wings</em>: "I'm just <em>bristling</em> with olive branches."<br /><br />Its hard to be a good daughter-caregiver when you're bristling. With anything. And that is part of the process, too, I guess. Like the old guy smoking in the parking lot, we bring all our baggage with us to aging and dying and caregiving and sometimes, carrying it around is a very heavy load. <br /><br />Makes me understand, completely, why that lady cries "help" every five minutes. I only wonder she pauses so long between cries.<br /><br /><p><a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/blogspot/vYqp" type="application/rss+xml" rel="alternate">Subscribe to Robin Chapman News</a></p><br /><br /><script src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/blogspot/Eqqi?format=sigpro" type="text/javascript"></script><noscript></noscript><br /></span><div class="blogger-post-footer">Visit Robin's blog at robinchapmannews.blogspot.com<img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/1232112655035482837-2966768731723124305?l=robinchapmannews.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>http://robinchapmannews.blogspot.com/2009/11/nursing-home-characters.htmlrchapsblog@gmail.com (Robin Chapman)11tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1232112655035482837.post-645382803153560627Sat, 31 Oct 2009 18:06:00 +00002009-10-31T19:46:50.787-07:00Horror Classic "Jack-O"Latshaw and Fred Ray<strong>A Guest Blog Post <br />by<br />Steve Latshaw</strong><br /><br /><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_nIdxfARv44A/SuyHDT2i2vI/AAAAAAAADYI/0uaio3ollCU/s1600-h/Jacko.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 294px; height: 400px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_nIdxfARv44A/SuyHDT2i2vI/AAAAAAAADYI/0uaio3ollCU/s400/Jacko.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5398838544248789746" /></a><br />"We're going to make another movie. It's called <em>Jack-O-Lantern</em>."<br /><br />My producing partner, Patrick Moran, clicked the line on the other end of the phone. <br /><br />"OK. I'll bite,” he said. “Tell me more." Moran was my partner in crime. Together we'd been cranking out low budget horror movies in Orlando, Florida, shooting on weekends. Pat wrote, produced and acted. I co-produced and directed. Sometimes I helped write. These were real movies. Full length features, in color and in focus and available in your neighborhood video store. <span class="fullpost"> <br /><br />It was the fall of 1994 and we'd done three since the summer of '91. The first, a horror comedy about a bulimic vampire, called <em>Vampire Trailer Park</em>, had finally been picked up by a Swedish distributor (only the Swedes, it seems, "got" the movie). The last two had been done for famed and prolific Hollywood independent producer Fred Olen Ray. Fred had gotten his start in Florida, too. And after directing a staggering number of movies, he'd become a sort of latter day Roger Corman, financing features for aspiring filmmakers, usually in the action, Sci Fi or horror field, and under his strict commercial guidelines. <br /><br />It was like film school, plus he gave us the money to make movies! On actual motion picture film. And with real "name" Hollywood actors. All we had to do was turn in a finished movie. <br /><br />"Oh, one more thing," Fred used to say. "The movies. They have to be good."<br /><br />And so far, they had been. We'd made <em>Dark Universe </em> for Fred, with Joe Estevez. Joe was great. His name value was that he was a dead ringer for his brother, Martin Sheen. <em>Dark Universe </em>had originally been called <em>Swamp Monster</em>, and was about an astronaut in space who mutates into an alien-type creature, then crash-lands his shuttle in the Florida everglades, has flashbacks and kills a bunch of people. <br /><br /><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_nIdxfARv44A/SuypG7_wKzI/AAAAAAAADYY/_T0kZ9IM00Q/s1600-h/dark+Universe.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 278px; height: 400px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_nIdxfARv44A/SuypG7_wKzI/AAAAAAAADYY/_T0kZ9IM00Q/s400/dark+Universe.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5398875989959781170" /></a><br /><br />We shot that one in twelve days (on weekends) plus a couple of second unit "pick-up" days, with what was becoming our Florida stock company of actors and crew: . Bentley Tittle, Paul Sanders, Blake Pickett, John Maynard, Tom Ferguson, Max "Bee Man" Beck (our Director of Photography and camera operator who was called “Bee Man" because he used to appear on the David Letterman show with a beard of bees) and Rich Davis, another Director of Photography/Steadicam Operator/Gaffer, who is now an Emmy Award-winning cameraman and a director, working steadily in network TV.<br /><br />Curb Entertainment picked up <em>Dark Universe </em>for distribution and by the time the dust settled we'd grossed ten times our negative cost. This "little film that could" was released on video, laserdisc and played on Showtime, Cinemax and Turner. We had a hit.<br /><br />We struck gold again with our next effort, <em>Biohazard--The Alien Force</em>. A little more money (not much more--these films were made for about 1% of the cost of an average TV movie) and a slightly longer shooting schedule resulting in what, for us, was an action-packed-mutated-creature-on-the-loose epic with locations as diverse as the fly-in airport community in Daytona Beach (where John Travolta lived at the time) and the Universal Studios back lot. We added more actors to our stock company--Susan Fronsoe, Steve Zurk, Maddisen Krowne—and secured the services of name actor Chris Mitchum to play the villain. I got the best producer notes I'd ever received from Fred on that one. His notes, after screening my first cut, always brief and to the point, were "Good job. Lock it." Which means no changes. And it was another hit.<br /><br />So now we were back in business and this time, it would prove to be a major challenge. We were going to do <em>Jack-O-Lantern</em>, a supernatural horror thriller, new genre for us. And we'd be under the gun, forced to complete the film on a hard and fast deadline.<br /><br />It was then November 1994 and the film had to be in video stories by Halloween 1995. And at that time, it took a minimum of six months for a film to hit stores. You had to edit the trailer, do the final sound mix, and in addition there was marketing, artwork, and much more, which meant we had to deliver the picture, finished, by spring 1995. It was going to take at least a month to develop the script, and another month to prep so we couldn't start shooting until February. Oh, and it was all talk show host Phil Donahue's fault.<br /><br />Phil Donahue?<br /><br />Exactly. For the 1994/95 season of his, then, highly successful show, Phil had decided to do something a little different. He would devote an entire hour to a "Scream Queen Contest." Celebrity judges (including our own Fred Olen Ray) would audition some young actresses for a part as a Jamie Lee Curtis-style "Scream Queen." The winner would be flown to Florida and appear in our movie. They would tape an "audition episode" then send a crew with her to film her filming with us, then do a follow-up taping where she talked about how it all went.<br /><br />I was excited, despite the dangers. Fred's original concept for the film was a horror thriller about a little miniature pumpkin man who ran around rooms like a voodoo doll and killed his victims. I began suggesting animation effects, etc., until Fred gently reminded me that the budget would be very low. He confided that the only reason the film was being done was because of the Donahue show. <br /><br />"If it wasn't for that, we wouldn't be making the movie." <br /><br />Undaunted, I made the deal. This would be the movie that got Pat Moran and me, finally to Hollywood. And besides, Fred was providing something better than big money. He was providing big stars. Our little movie would have more stars than anything we'd done before.<br /><br />So back to Pat. Always a realist, he asks me about the stars. I grinned. "Fred is going to fly down Linnea Quigley for three days!" Pat was excited. We loved Linnea, a genuine Scream Queen from such big hits as; <em>Return of the Living Dead, Night of the Creeps, Creepazoids, Sorority Babes in the Slime Ball Bowl-a-Rama, Nightmare Sisters</em>, and Fred's own <em>Hollywood Chainsaw Hookers</em>. She was also a fine actress and light comedian. A nice girl. And gorgeous. <br /><br />Our movie centered around an all-American family and their young boy, haunted by this century-old demonic, tiny, pumpkin man. My son Ryan would play the little boy. Linnea would play his babysitter. So he'd get to do most of his scenes with this talented beauty.<br /><br />Pat grins. "And the other stars? Who are they?"<br /><br />I puffed myself up, triumphantly. Pat and I were big fans of classic horror and old Hollywood. I announced the next two names. "John Carradine! And Cameron Mitchell!"<br /><br />Pat didn't seem to be excited. <br /><br />"Come on, Pat! John Carradine? He played in the Universal horror thrillers. He was better than Lugosi. He was the huntsman in <em>Bride of Frankenstein</em>. Worked for John Ford. Did all those great movies for Monogram and PRC. And Cameron Mitchell is an Academy Award-winning actor!"<br /><br />Pat nods. "Yeah. But they're both dead."<br /><br />Well, okay, so they were. Carradine had died in Spain, back in 1988. Mr. Mitchell had passed away in the summer of 1994, just a few months earlier. But both men had been close friends of Fred Ray and Fred would periodically bring them into the studio and pay them a tidy sum to shoot some isolated scenes. <br /><br />Some of this footage would find its way into Fred movies like <em>Star Slammer </em> or <em>Alien Within</em>. We would be receiving the last of the footage. Mitchell's scenes consisted of him addressing the camera, smoking a cigarette and talking about "strange tales." So in our movie, which took place during Halloween, he would become a TV horror host, introducing a marathon of horror movies. My son Ryan's character was also a horror movie fan, so he would be watching Cameron Mitchell on screen, in effect, playing his scenes with the great actor. <br /><br />As for John Carradine, Fred had leftover footage of this famous character actor from the mid 1980s. Originally filmed for an unfinished project called <em>Judge Death</em>, the Carradine footage consisted of some silent shots of the great old actor in a wizard outfit, sitting in a clearing, in the woods. We also had some isolated dialog scraps, called "wild lines," of Carradine spouting scary, menacing threats and ominous predictions. We'd make Carradine the reincarnated spirit of an old demon worshipper who has revived the evil Jack-O-Lantern. The family, and my son Ryan, would play all their scenes with him. <br /><br />For reversals over Carradine's shoulder, shooting back at the live actors, we'd have to put an actor in a robe, dressed just like Mr. Carradine. We'd also double Carradine in the wide shots (since all we had were Carradine close-ups). We'd also pepper those wild lines through the film and put framed pictures of Carradine in various shots (and his portrait in the family Bible) just to keep reminding the audience he was in the movie.<br /><br />Pat shook his head. "It's <em>Ed Wood</em>."<br /><br />He was right. Director Ed Wood had done the same thing in <em>Plan 9 From Outer Space</em>--a production often called the worst film ever made. He had some old footage of Bela Lugosi and used it after Lugosi’s death in his movie, calling it: "Bela Lugosi's last and greatest film!" Wood then put his chiropractor--who looked nothing like Lugosi--in a robe to double Lugosi in the long shots. It was all immortalized in Tim Burton's movie <em>Ed Wood</em>. Now <em>we</em> were doing it, too. A point echoed some months later when Fred Ray, interviewed for a national horror movie magazine, referred to our movie as "Plan 9 From Out of State."<br /><br />And so it began. Making a movie about Halloween in the winter and spring. In Florida. We'd need pumpkins. So we started buying, begging and borrowing, any pumpkins we could find. It was long past Halloween so they were tough to find. And most we found were either rotten or would be soon. But there was a cure for that. Somebody told me if you shellacked them, they'd hold. Just don't poke them or they explode. And rotten pumpkins smell really bad. Within weeks my garage began to fill up with old pumpkins. And yes, some of them blew.<br /><br />Script-wise, we hit a wall. As I said, Fred had wanted a little tiny pumpkin man. But the first draft script didn't fit the bill. Fred now decided on a full-sized pumpkin man, something a bit easier to shoot than a midget demon. This would be a guy in a costume, with an outfit like the headless horseman: horrible, with claws and a scary pumpkin head with eyes that lit up. <br /><br />This would be the latest new terror creation—the Jack-O-Lantern--a demonic, man-sized being who swirled a mean scythe and liked to lop peoples’ heads off. Pat went to work on the new draft of the script, probably not encouraged by the fact that he'd also have to <em>play</em> the Jack-O-Lantern, trying to see through those flashing eyes in the pumpkin head as he slashed at our actors and crew with that blood-soaked blade. <br /><br />Pat's wife Cathy joined the cast. An extremely talented actress, she played a witch in our film--a "good" witch who has come to warn young Ryan about the impending arrival of the Jack-O-Lantern (which he is already aware of thanks to some scary dreams). Cathy struck the right balance of mystery and empathy with the part and, together with the comic skills of Maddisen Krowne, rounded out our cast. <br /><br />February hit. Our first weekend was up and rolling. The Donohue crew had arrived with their contest winner, a New York actress named Kelly Lacy. And so, production began.<br /><br />The shoot itself went surprisingly well, at first. Our crew always worked quickly, and we burned through the pages. And then things began to slow, as if we were swimming in molasses. Some of my memories:<br /><br />--Donahue star Kelly Lacy was very good on screen. And quite the trooper. No complaints about this New Yorker, always eager to do anything we asked. Apparently she made a poor impression on our costume designer, who listed a series of complaints, from Kelly, about wardrobe. I sided with Kelly, which may be why I am now divorced all these years later. That costume designer was my wife, later to become my ex. As for Kelly, we lost touch. I hope she is well. She had to do the goriest death scene I ever shot: chased by the pumpkin man through a swamp, falling to her knees in twelve inches of cold water and getting her throat slashed by the creature's scythe.<br /><br />--Our main lighting gaffer, Roy Webb, worked days for a major lighting company, supplying gear for various Florida productions and events. Most of our shoots were at night. I remember Roy working weekend after weekend, with no sleep, barely on his feet, sometimes in tears due to the stress. And Roy is a big tough guy.<br /><br />--We shot most of the film in my neighborhood, in Apopka, Florida. We covered yards and sidewalks up and down the street with rotten pumpkins. Stole shots of our kid actors in front of a local school bus, and used my own home as the home (interior and exterior) of our movie family. By the end of too many night shoots, our neighbors were really mad at us, one night even forcing us to move the production indoors for interior scenes. Imagine that.<br /><br /><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_nIdxfARv44A/SuyrasLyHZI/AAAAAAAADYg/_aBEH6Xd_fo/s1600-h/Jacko+set+more.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 311px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_nIdxfARv44A/SuyrasLyHZI/AAAAAAAADYg/_aBEH6Xd_fo/s400/Jacko+set+more.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5398878528335912338" /></a> <em>Steve Latshaw (at left) directs scenes for Jack-O in Apopka, Florida, 1995.</em><br /><br />--The teddy bear clutched by Ryan as he falls asleep (only to be tormented by nightmares of John Carradine) was the same teddy bear I had as a child. This is not really relevant to the story, though perhaps its presence in the film is an indication of how deeply disturbed I might really be.<br /><br />--A brutal battle between Jack-O-Lantern and Linnea Quigley (who was trying to save young Ryan from the creature) was shot at our neighborhood playground. A long, cold and windy night, with behind-the-scenes footage of same on our tenth anniversary DVD.<br /><br /><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_nIdxfARv44A/Suyr7I71-wI/AAAAAAAADYo/PYHW3O_RVV0/s1600-h/jacko+set.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 298px; height: 216px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_nIdxfARv44A/Suyr7I71-wI/AAAAAAAADYo/PYHW3O_RVV0/s400/jacko+set.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5398879085809498882" /></a> <em>Ryan Latshaw, at right, with Linnea Quigley and the crew on the Jack-O set.</em><br /><br />--Linnea Quigley was the greatest thing that ever happened to us. She was beautiful, friendly, always laughing, and kept the crew in very high spirits for the three days she worked. Part of the deal with <em>Jack-O-Latern </em>was that it had to have an "R" rating. So we had to do a nude shower scene with Linnea (only Linnea was nude: unfortunately we didn't all get naked with her). Apart from that, some other brief nudity of another character and some gore, this film is <em>almost</em> a family movie. And therein, I think, lies its charm. No pretension: just an old fashioned scary fable.<br /><br /><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_nIdxfARv44A/SuysSLibypI/AAAAAAAADYw/tzfsszMkYGA/s1600-h/quigly.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 386px; height: 400px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_nIdxfARv44A/SuysSLibypI/AAAAAAAADYw/tzfsszMkYGA/s400/quigly.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5398879481645222546" /></a> <em>Happy memories</em>.<br /><br />--We have footage somewhere of actor Tom Ferguson, in robe, doubling for the late John Carradine, prancing around with a cape covering his face, just like Bela Lugosi's chiropractor in <em>Plan 9 From Outer Space</em>.<br /><br />--We shot much of the film in the woods on the estate of actor James Best (Dukes of Hazzard's Sheriff Roscoe P. Coltrane), in Ocoee, Florida.<br /><br />--Helen Keeling, playing the wife of a local neighbor in the film, was an extremely talented English actress and terrific in our film. Her character dies quite unusually--electrocuted by a toaster--while her husband is simultaneously gutted by the Jack-O-Lantern just outside. Recently, a horror movie web site called this sequence the "greatest death scene in Hollywood history."<br /><br />--Late in their careers, both John Carradine and Cameron Mitchell were known for appearing in an endless array of low budget horror, Sci Fi, and action movies. Many of these movies were awful, with these two great actors hired to do cameos so the producers could take advantage of their name value. One day on our set, his wry smile perfectly in place, Pat Moran pulled me aside and showed me a book called <em>The Guide to Splatter Films, Volume 2.</em> In it was a list: "Top Ten Reasons You Know This Horror Film is a Piece of Sh-t." And in this book, near the bottom of this top ten list, reason three was: "One of the stars is John Carradine." Above it, reason five: "One of the stars is Cameron Mitchell." We had a two-fer. Hmmm. I'd like to think that means the negatives cancelled each other out.<br /><br />--Son Ryan endured all sorts of trials and tribulations while making the film. But the toughest thing was crawling through dirt. In the film, the creature buries him. We rigged up a fake section of ground, mounted on painter's horses, a section of plastic covered by dirt with a hole in the middle that he could crawl up through. Easy and safe. But of all the stuff we asked him to do this was the one thing he wouldn't. Scared to death. And now he's a proud and tough Petty Officer (3rd Class) in the U.S. Coast Guard! I used to embarrass Ryan with the DVD: every time he had a new girlfriend, I'd wave the disc and ask the girl if she knew Ryan was a movie star. Of course, he'd have to show the movie to the girl, and it was always a hit. Now he's grown up and married and with a young son of his own. He asked me to send him a DVD. He thought his son might like to see it one day. That made me feel real good.<br /><br />--Costume Designer Patricia McKiou had the unenviable task of manhandling Halloween street extras for the Halloween night scenes, as well as supplying and supervising all their costumes.<br /><br />--The entire shoot seemed to go on forever, an unending series of two and three-day weekends, trying to fake Halloween in the cold winter and warm spring of 1995. And all the while, the LA office was pressing us to wrap because of the release schedule. And we were still far behind. And over budget. We had a set budget for the picture, per the contract. Anything else came out of our pockets. And it did. By the end of March we were quite a few thousand in the hole.<br /><br />I turned in my cut to Fred in early April. The response was <em>not:</em> "Good job. Lock it." We had some problems: individual scenes were good but, overall, it didn't hold together as a film. Not enough suspense. Not enough murder and mayhem. Generously, Fred hired an editor back in Los Angeles to do a cut. It was better, but still missing a lot of stuff. And so we began a series of pickup days, shooting additional sequences, additional Jack-O-Lantern attacks, etc. We shot additional dialog and linking footage with Cathy Moran's character, Ryan's character and the family, trying to fill in missing plot points. <br /><br />Everybody came back dutifully for reshoots, though in some cases hair styles had changed, actors who'd believed they were wrapped had gotten cuts or trims. This is particularly obvious in some of Gary Doles' scenes. Gary played Ryan's father.<br /><br />One of the reshoot sequences involved a cable installer, out in a bucket truck at night, trying to repair some cable lines. We had a truck but no Cable Guy. So the director—that would be me—suited up, rode that bucket truck and tried to rescue fair maiden Rachel Carter from the Jack-O-Lantern. I get my throat cut for my trouble. But I worked cheap, so what the heck.<br /><br />At long last the film was finished. I'd put $15,000 of my own money into the production but, I was lucky. I got it back. We ended up with another hit on our hands. <br /><br />We made all the deadlines and our picture hit video stores in mid October 1995, with an all-star cast. In addition to Ryan, Cathy, Pat, Maddisen, Gary and Rachel, our little movie starred the great John Carradine and Cameron Mitchell in their final roles, plus Scream Queen Linnea Quigley and a special guest appearances from another famed Scream Queen Brinke Stevens, appearing in footage from an unfinised Fred Ray movie called <em>The Coven</em>. Brinke--herself an accomplished actress and marine biologist--came in and did some voice over dialog to expand her part. We also had a bit from Dawn Wildsmith, co-star of the David Carradine action thriller <em>Warlords</em>.<br /><br />Andrew Stevens' company Royal Oaks handled distribution for <em>Jack-O-Lantern </em>as its first film. And, at a time when the U.S. home video market was collapsing, the movie sold over 15,000 units nationwide, unheard of video numbers for low budget horror in 1995. The film also had a title change, which, somehow, transformed it and helped to give it the cult status it has today.<br /><br />During production, I was sending video dailies and rough scene edits back to Hollywood so Andrew Stevens' team could edit a promotional trailer. To save time, I labeled the tapes "Jack-O Dailies." Andrew loved the name <em>Jack-O</em> and that became the new title (except on pay TV and overseas, where it still plays as <em>Jack-O-Lantern.</em>)<br /><br />It was the movie that started as an afterthought, a reason to do a special edition of the Phil Donahue Show. It was shot on an incredibly low budget--too low to make a "great" or even "really good" movie. Our only hope was to make something entertainining. It went over schedule and over budget and there were times when we never thought we'd finish. <br /><br />But we did and the movie went on to cult status. It was one of the first movies to hit DVD--and a 2004 "10th Anniversary Edition" also did very well. If you can find it, that's the disc to get. It's packed with "rare footage", outtakes, behind-the-scenes video with Linnea and the cast and crew and a delightful commentary track (if I may say so) provided by Fred Ray and myself. <br /><br />Like that crazy pumpkin Jack-O, the movie never seems to die, as it keeps getting rediscovered. I'm proud of the film and love the memories associated with making it. And except for that shower scene it's a nice little family picture. With gore, of course. Lots of that. <br /><br />I went on Google Earth the other day to take another look at the quaint little Central Florida neighborhood where we shot the film. Nothing seems to have changed. The big oak tree is still in the backyard, towering over my old house. The small oak tree where Jack-O lops off the Biker Guy's head. If you find yourself in Central Florida someday, you can visit the location. The address, in Apopka, is 1764 Waterbeach Court. If you sit quietly you may be able to hear the Jack-O fable whispered on the wind:.<br /><br />"... the pumpkin man will steal your soul... snatch it up... and swallow it whole!"<br /><br />And, if you happen to see any of my old neighbors, don't tell them why you're there. I think they're still mad at me.<br /><br />Steve Latshaw<br />Hollywood, California<br /><br /><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0113449/">More on Jack-O</a><br /><br /><p><a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/blogspot/vYqp" rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml">Subscribe to Robin Chapman News</a></p><br /><br /><script src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/blogspot/Eqqi?format=sigpro" type="text/javascript" ></script><noscript><p>Subscribe to RSS headline updates from: <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/blogspot/Eqqi"></a><br/>Powered by FeedBurner</p> </noscript> </span><div class="blogger-post-footer">Visit Robin's blog at robinchapmannews.blogspot.com<img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/1232112655035482837-645382803153560627?l=robinchapmannews.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>http://robinchapmannews.blogspot.com/2009/10/making-of-jack-o-truly-scary-tale-for.htmlrchapsblog@gmail.com (Robin Chapman)2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1232112655035482837.post-4298957115024936621Tue, 27 Oct 2009 15:10:00 +00002009-10-27T08:30:09.671-07:00<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_nIdxfARv44A/SucNx6xl_eI/AAAAAAAADYA/jJU8p1jjE08/s1600-h/Dad+in+Hospital+2.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 339px; height: 400px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_nIdxfARv44A/SucNx6xl_eI/AAAAAAAADYA/jJU8p1jjE08/s400/Dad+in+Hospital+2.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5397297829668847074" /></a> <em>Old Blue Eyes, wearing a gown to match those azure orbs. Rumors of his demise have been exaggerated</em><br /><br />I stopped by the hospital to see Dad, and after forty-eight hours of IV fluids and antibiotics he was a new man. Or anyway a new old man. He wanted to know what he was doing in the hospital because he didn't feel sick. <span class="fullpost"><br /><br />"You've been asleep for two days," I wrote him on his notebook. And then I did my pantomime of him coming into the hospital: I hung my tongue out of the side of my mouth and sunk my head into my chest and drooped my hands like a dead seal. When he is in a good mood, he loves it when I play pantomime with him, as he has no hearing left and must rely upon his eyes and his sense of humor. <br /><br />"I'll bet you thought I was dead," he said. And then he paused, for effect, like the good comedian he is.<br /><br />"I got news for you," he said. "I ain't dead yet."<br /><br />And he ain't. He has grown mighty perky in the hospital during the last twenty-four hours, for a dead guy. You can see from the picture, he is still looking a bit ethereal. But he is happy and alert and eating all his meals with gusto.<br /><br />He wants to see my Mom, but she has come down with the stomach flu and can't come to the hospital. If she loses any more weight, though, we'll have to get them a double room. Appropriate, since they've been married for sixty five years this month and haven't spent sixty-five minutes apart since World War II.<br /><br />Dad has a "procedure" today to try and uncover what in his system keeps causing him to have infections. I wrote to him that they were going to put a camera down his gullet and he made a face.<br /><br />"Sounds like fun," he said. I wrote that they wouldn't be feeding him breakfast and he shouldn't get mad about that.<br /><br />"Mad? Me? I'm through being mad," he said.<br /><br />But don't you believe it. He awoke in the night and started raising heck and asking for my Mom. Sounds like he's full of the old vinegar. He definitely ain't dead yet.<br /><br /><p><a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/blogspot/vYqp" rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml">Subscribe to Robin Chapman News</a></p><br /><br /><script src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/blogspot/Eqqi?format=sigpro" type="text/javascript" ></script><noscript><p>Subscribe to RSS headline updates from: <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/blogspot/Eqqi"></a><br/>Powered by FeedBurner</p> </noscript> </span><div class="blogger-post-footer">Visit Robin's blog at robinchapmannews.blogspot.com<img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/1232112655035482837-4298957115024936621?l=robinchapmannews.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>http://robinchapmannews.blogspot.com/2009/10/ive-got-news-for-you.htmlrchapsblog@gmail.com (Robin Chapman)2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1232112655035482837.post-9161896269376706489Mon, 26 Oct 2009 17:52:00 +00002009-10-26T12:03:23.071-07:00Coco Before ChanelMovie Review Audrey Tautou<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_nIdxfARv44A/SuXtnVWVTkI/AAAAAAAADXo/3_lhXFwKQcE/s1600-h/coco-avant-chanel1.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 267px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_nIdxfARv44A/SuXtnVWVTkI/AAAAAAAADXo/3_lhXFwKQcE/s400/coco-avant-chanel1.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5396980988474904130" /></a> <em>Coco Before Chanel, with Audrey Tautou in the lead role.</em><br /><br /><em>Director: Anne Fontaine<br />Writers: Edmonde Charles-Roux (book)<br />Anne Fontaine <br />Costumes: Eudald Magri <br />Gabrielle 'Coco' Chanel: Audrey Tautou <br />Étienne Balsan: Benoît Poelvoorde <br />Arthur 'Boy' Capel: Alessandro Nivola <br /><br />Length: 105 Minutes<br />Language: French (with English subtitles)</em> <br /><br />When I saw Audrey Tautou in the film version of Dan Brown's <em>The Da Vinci Code</em>, I was singularly unimpressed. After seeing her in the lead role in <em>Coco Before Chanel</em>, I wonder if <em>Code</em> was just a bad film with a bad part for such a talented performer. In <em>Chanel</em> Tautou is in every scene, and you leave the film still feeling you did not get quite enough of her. <span class="fullpost"><br /><br />The rags-to-riches tale of the early life of Gabrielle "Coco" Chanel has a thoughtful subtext about how those of us not born into a life we want, are sometimes lucky enough to invent for ourselves a life we need. <br /><br />And so it was for Chanel, an orphan who had a genius for seeing the world in a unique way, and who used her vision to rise above a life in which beautiful-but-poor women were handed from man to man, used as objects and discarded.<br /><br />She chose that it would not happen to her. Living in a world on the edge of poverty, she used others to achieve the thing she wanted most--her independence. Unable to compete with the wealthy women of fashion around her, she chose to create a style of her own. If you are a woman, you know how much courage this requires. Women who do it often find themselves laughed at--and then, if they are lucky, find themselves imitated. And this is what happened to Chanel.<br /><br /><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_nIdxfARv44A/SuXt-jH774I/AAAAAAAADXw/cmEO6KpXllM/s1600-h/cocoavantchanel2.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 267px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_nIdxfARv44A/SuXt-jH774I/AAAAAAAADXw/cmEO6KpXllM/s400/cocoavantchanel2.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5396981387309608834" /></a> <em>Chanel with the English lover, Alfred "Boy" Capel, from whom she borrowed the tweeds for some of her signiture suits. Here she wears a simple evening gown she designed that shocked Deauville, a city easily shocked back in the early 20th century.</em><br /><br />Along the way she had help from men, at least one of whom she did not love, and one whom she did.<br /><br />And along the way she had her heart broken, as most of us do. But like a character in a Hemingway novel, she survived and found herself stronger in the broken places. From love and loss she gained the strength to move on and to become the incredible success she later became.<br /><br />Everything about this film is beautiful: the colors, the cinematography, the locations in the French countryside, the costumes, the fabrics, the lighting. Everything looks elongated, like a fashion sketch, and Tautou's eyes take it all in and give little away.<br /><br />If you are an English speaking person turned off by French films, count this film as an unusual one, and one you would like anyway. There is very little dialogue, so the need for subtitles is limited. Chanel, for all her French pomposity, is a character an American can very much understand. If you had arrived with Allied forces to liberate Paris, you might have wished to march up to her shop and say "Chanel, we are here." Of course, as history would tell us, you might likely have found her in the arms of her Nazi officer lover ("collaboration horizontale" ). But she was always a practical woman.<br /><br />When life gives you country linen and cotton instead of silk, there are those who can make linen and cotton the fashion. When the chic discard their frou frou for your plain straw boater, you have won a victory, as did Coco Chanel. She taught us a great deal about beauty and even more about the toughness needed in good fabric if it is to survive over time.<br /><br /><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_nIdxfARv44A/SuXuk1dp_3I/AAAAAAAADX4/bxvHwqgJrWs/s1600-h/coco.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 200px; height: 133px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_nIdxfARv44A/SuXuk1dp_3I/AAAAAAAADX4/bxvHwqgJrWs/s400/coco.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5396982045067575154" /></a> <em>Audrey Tautou even makes a simple fisherman's shirt look fashionable in Coco Before Chanel.</em><br /><br /><br /><p><a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/blogspot/vYqp" rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml">Subscribe to Robin Chapman News</a></p><br /><br /><script src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/blogspot/Eqqi?format=sigpro" type="text/javascript" ></script><noscript><p>Subscribe to RSS headline updates from: <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/blogspot/Eqqi"></a><br/>Powered by FeedBurner</p> </noscript> <br /><br /><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1035736/">Coco Avant Chanel Movie Data</a><br /></span><div class="blogger-post-footer">Visit Robin's blog at robinchapmannews.blogspot.com<img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/1232112655035482837-9161896269376706489?l=robinchapmannews.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>http://robinchapmannews.blogspot.com/2009/10/coco-before-chanel.htmlrchapsblog@gmail.com (Robin Chapman)38tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1232112655035482837.post-8000317317534776893Sat, 24 Oct 2009 18:59:00 +00002009-10-24T18:15:27.346-07:00Aging parentsLosing parents<strong>Dad in the Hospital</strong><br /><br /><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_nIdxfARv44A/SuNWNdxHsbI/AAAAAAAADV4/tydIyeWzFjc/s1600-h/plane+at+covington.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 288px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_nIdxfARv44A/SuNWNdxHsbI/AAAAAAAADV4/tydIyeWzFjc/s400/plane+at+covington.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5396251567848927666" /></a> <em>A picture of Dad my sister took a few years ago. She caught him in motion as he tossed a toy glider at a local park. He was beginning to show his illness then, but he was still vertical and still, as he always had, loved airplanes of all kinds.</em><br /><br />I know, now, why they make ghosts transparent in pictures. When you see someone who is leaving this life, he seems to be dissolving into the ether. Dwindling, a friend of mine calls it.<br /><br />My Dad left the Big Fancy Nursing Home on the Hill late yesterday and is now in the hospital. Whatever it is we've been fighting--an infection?--within him for almost a month has laid him low again. A month ago, he was home, walking with a walker, sitting outside in the sun, and singing "Hail, Hail, The Gang's All Here" every day when I walked in the door. <span class="fullpost"><br /><br />Now he is ethereal. At the local hospital he is in a private room, looking fragile and sleeping quietly. He was unresponsive almost all day yesterday, sick to his stomach, and sleeping all the time. That's why the nursing home sent him to the hospital. <br /><br />Now he's getting hydrated and looks a little better. He awoke when my Mom and I walked in this morning, and when I wrote "We Love You" on a notepad, he read it and tried to clap his hands. I wrote to him that he was in El Camino Hospital and he said "I'm in a private room. That's nice." And, to see if I could get him to smile, I wrote: "No one else could stand you, so they put you in by yourself." He read this very slowly then he looked around to see my face and he cracked a smile. It's the first one I've seen from him in a couple of weeks.<br /><br />He said before we had our reunion party--well, my Mom and I were there, and I guess he figured we must be having a party--he wanted to put on his shoes and use the bathroom. "I have to perform my natural functions, you know," he said, slurring his words but using the careful vocabulary he always uses in spite of his dementia. "I want to ascertain my condition," he said later. "The food here is superior. I plan to eat all day and night," and then he dozed off again, having eaten a crumb or two of a muffin and drinking a little juice.<br /><br />The doctor had a long talk with me about resuscitation and extraordinary measures and I said I couldn't imagine it would come to that, yet. And he just looked at me and said Dad was very sick.<br /><br />I'm trying to remember the days Dad loved when my sister and I were kids and he'd built a model plane and we took it up into the Stanford Hills and flew it all around us in the California sky, above the brown fields and oak trees. No one gave us permission. We just went up there and made sure we didn't annoy the cows. It was freedom of a kind you don't see much anymore and it involved engineering and planes and children and these were all things he loved. <br /><br /><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_nIdxfARv44A/SuNWf7FS_gI/AAAAAAAADWA/Q2KcYavLZb0/s1600-h/Sparky+K+and+Keith.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 393px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_nIdxfARv44A/SuNWf7FS_gI/AAAAAAAADWA/Q2KcYavLZb0/s400/Sparky+K+and+Keith.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5396251884955827714" /></a> <em>Dad and me and a neighbor boy with the "Sparky K" in the Stanford Hills beyond Los Altos. The "Sparky K" was named for my sister and me, Sparky, because my grandad called me "Spark Plug" and "K" for my sister Kimberly. The "Sparky K" had a gasoline engine and we crashed it quite a lot. I guess we were lucky we didn't start any fires.</em><br /><br />He was so happy then. Years later, when he had retired, he flew real planes for fun. He joined a flying club and he and his friends took up the Cessnas and flew from one local airport to another, had lunch, and flew home. He felt so free up there, and there were rules to it that he understood. Unlike life and people, which he almost always found annoying or frustrating.<br /><br />I don't want him dissolving on me or becoming invisible, but that's what happens in life as we come to the end. In the midst of life we are in death. I just haven't wanted it. He's like a Star Trek crew member, being beamed somewhere that I can't follow. I know he'll be free then and somewhere much nicer than here. <br /><br />And wherever it is, I know it will be filled with airplanes, for soaring.<br /><br /><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_nIdxfARv44A/SuNaHXY_AyI/AAAAAAAADWI/ooeWBk4kMi0/s1600-h/Sparky+K.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 392px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_nIdxfARv44A/SuNaHXY_AyI/AAAAAAAADWI/ooeWBk4kMi0/s400/Sparky+K.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5396255861104378658" /></a><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><p><a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/blogspot/vYqp" rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml">Subscribe to Robin Chapman News</a></p><br /><br /><script src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/blogspot/Eqqi?format=sigpro" type="text/javascript" ></script><noscript><p>Subscribe to RSS headline updates from: <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/blogspot/Eqqi"></a><br/>Powered by FeedBurner</p> </noscript> </span><div class="blogger-post-footer">Visit Robin's blog at robinchapmannews.blogspot.com<img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/1232112655035482837-8000317317534776893?l=robinchapmannews.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>http://robinchapmannews.blogspot.com/2009/10/standing-by-for-takeoff.htmlrchapsblog@gmail.com (Robin Chapman)2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1232112655035482837.post-2182020964305258772Sun, 18 Oct 2009 17:57:00 +00002009-10-21T11:01:28.311-07:00Steve Latshaw and Robin Chapman<strong>And Congrats to My Successful Movie Friends</strong><br /><br /><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_nIdxfARv44A/SttXaM2364I/AAAAAAAADUY/ikmCamcITBU/s1600-h/Robin+and+Steve+a1.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_nIdxfARv44A/SttXaM2364I/AAAAAAAADUY/ikmCamcITBU/s400/Robin+and+Steve+a1.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5394001086345898882" /></a> <em>Steve, looking like the big bear he is, and his friend RC.</em><br /><br />Screenwriter Steve Latshaw marked his 50th birthday last night at a party in Sierra Madre, and a whole cadre of his friends, who had all made zero budget movies together with him back in the day, collected around this wonderful man to celebrate.<span class="fullpost"><br /><br />I knew them when I was an anchorwoman in Florida and liked them all because, like me, they loved the movies. However, since I was on my own functioning career track, I thought they were all crazy to imagine they could move to Hollywood and find careers in the movie/television/entertainment biz. <a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_nIdxfARv44A/SttbjVKmc3I/AAAAAAAADUo/OCYs4mUPMeE/s1600-h/RC+in+Orlando.jpg"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 226px; height: 320px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_nIdxfARv44A/SttbjVKmc3I/AAAAAAAADUo/OCYs4mUPMeE/s320/RC+in+Orlando.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5394005641241457522" /></a><br /><br /><em>At right, Robin in her Florida anchorwoman decade. It was at WESH that she met all the characters surrounding the chairman of characterville, Steve Latshaw.</em><br /><br />And boy did they prove me wrong. All of them, to a man and a woman, have found successful niches doing what they dreamed of doing: art directing (shows like "Scrubs" and "Mad TV") scriptwriting (shows like "Tonight" and "Monk"), cinematography (one is working on a new show called "Cougar Town" with Courtney Cox) and finally Steve, who has a long list of credits for writing and directing movies.<br /><br />I was wowed by them all and proud as well. They are all still the funny, nutty, big-hearted, people I loved then and the reunion was a blast.<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_nIdxfARv44A/St1ONYYsTiI/AAAAAAAADVA/O42pTb4unjY/s1600-h/RC+and+BT+October+2009b.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 218px; height: 320px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_nIdxfARv44A/St1ONYYsTiI/AAAAAAAADVA/O42pTb4unjY/s320/RC+and+BT+October+2009b.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5394553920451005986" /></a> <br /><em>RC and BT at Steve's party. May he live long and prosper.</em><br /><br />Beth, one of the group's most talented writers, is still a beauty and has a home full of art. She hosted the party with her writer husband Steve, and they did it with class and style and warmth in the little town of Sierra Madre where Beth truly is its treasure. (Look for her script on the October 30th episode of "Monk".)<br />Steve was quiet all evening. I think he was still stunned and surprised to find so many of us really cared about him. He is so self-deprecating I sometimes wonder how he has managed to do so much.<br /><br />I don't want to say a lot of adult beverages were consumed. But my old friend Bentley, who took the picture at the top of this blog post, also snapped the one at the end. And it is the one I will leave you with. Happy Birthday screenwriter and all around good American gentleman Steve Latshaw, and cheers to his gang, a truly fabulous group of talented friends.<br /><br /><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_nIdxfARv44A/Sttao5XiK1I/AAAAAAAADUg/QxxFcTjBLpo/s1600-h/Robin+and+Steve+photographed+by+Bentley.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_nIdxfARv44A/Sttao5XiK1I/AAAAAAAADUg/QxxFcTjBLpo/s400/Robin+and+Steve+photographed+by+Bentley.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5394004637347097426" /></a> <em>Amateur photographer BT took this picture and I don't want to say he was partying too hard ... let's just say it was dark and my little camera was new to him. The other pictures came out just great BT, you handsome devil. <br /><br /></em><a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0490370/">Steve Latshaw on the Independent Movie Data Base</a><br /><br /><p><a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/blogspot/vYqp" rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml">Subscribe to Robin Chapman News</a></p><br /><br /><script src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/blogspot/Eqqi?format=sigpro" type="text/javascript" ></script><noscript><p>Subscribe to RSS headline updates from: <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/blogspot/Eqqi"></a><br/>Powered by FeedBurner</p> </noscript> </span><div class="blogger-post-footer">Visit Robin's blog at robinchapmannews.blogspot.com<img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/1232112655035482837-2182020964305258772?l=robinchapmannews.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>http://robinchapmannews.blogspot.com/2009/10/happy-birthday-successful-screenwriter.htmlrchapsblog@gmail.com (Robin Chapman)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1232112655035482837.post-6750507331792888221Sat, 17 Oct 2009 15:58:00 +00002009-10-17T14:12:26.670-07:00William Randolph HearstAnnenberg Community Beach HouseMarion DaviesSanta Monica<strong>Santa Monica Remembers Movie Star Marion Davies</strong><br /><br /><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_nIdxfARv44A/Stn-iw9bewI/AAAAAAAADUI/iGkm5MO3uV0/s1600-h/Marion+Davies+1.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 270px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_nIdxfARv44A/Stn-iw9bewI/AAAAAAAADUI/iGkm5MO3uV0/s400/Marion+Davies+1.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5393621901964442370" /></a><br /><em>When I was getting my graduate degree at UCLA, my friends and I used to drive by this enormous, white colonial building that sat right on Santa Monica Beach and looked like a bedraggled bride--it was a white elephant from a previous era that had been badly weathered by wind and water. I read that it had been the beach house of actress Marion Davies, and it appeared to be only slightly smaller than Hearst Castle. The sea battered it and the Northridge earthquake finally did the rest. The big old mansion had to come down. But historic preservation in the 21st century has spared one of the guest houses and rescued the mansion's history. I was able to visit there with the help of a friend who worked on the committee to preserve this fascinating piece of film history.</em><br /><br />Marion Davies (1897-1961) was a pretty, blonde, teenage chorus girl in New York when she met one of the richest men in America--publisher William Randolph Hearst.<span class="fullpost"><br /><br /><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_nIdxfARv44A/Stn0D13D4mI/AAAAAAAADTY/AGyoB-gZOuo/s1600-h/marion+herself+1"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 291px; height: 400px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_nIdxfARv44A/Stn0D13D4mI/AAAAAAAADTY/AGyoB-gZOuo/s400/marion+herself+1" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5393610375587684962" /></a> <em>Marion Davies in a photo probably taken in New York, when she was in her early twenties.</em><br /><br />Hearst (1863-1951) inherited a fortune that his hardscrabble father made in the Nevada silver mines, and he spent his life turning this enormous fortune into a smaller one. By the time he met Marion Davies, Hearst had been married to another showgirl for 15 years and had five sons. But the family man in his fifties was still a stage-door Johnny, and that is how he met Marion. And though he did not divorce his wife, their romance would last the rest of his life.<br /><br />He gave her everything: a film career for one thing. After he got her started in silent films in New York he took his own film company, Cosmopolitan, to Hollywood, where he moved the company (and her 18-room dressing room) onto the MGM lot. Louis B. Mayer was no fool. Having the most powerful newspaper man and his girlfriend working in association with MGM was good for business, even if the Marion Davies pictures didn't make a dime (which they might have if Hearst didn't overspend on every one of them).<br /><br />One of Hearst's gifts to Marion was the house he built for her on Santa Monica beach in the 1920s, the biggest and fanciest house in Hollywoodland. Hearst and Marion gave hundreds of parties there for all the stars. Most of all they loved costume parties: as if the daily work of dressing up for the job wasn't enough! But Hearst and his newspapers were powerful, and when he sent an invitation, even the most important stars trembled and appeared at the appointed hour.<br /><br /><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_nIdxfARv44A/Stn1IXewGrI/AAAAAAAADTg/8rjTD9ogzkA/s1600-h/costume+party.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 306px; height: 400px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_nIdxfARv44A/Stn1IXewGrI/AAAAAAAADTg/8rjTD9ogzkA/s400/costume+party.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5393611552843635378" /></a> <em>Girls gone wild: Gloria Swanson, Marion Davies, Constance Bennett, and Jean Harlow all dressed up for a costume party at the Marion Davies Beach House in the early 1930s. Harlow, for once, looks like the young kid she really was. Bennett was so chic, it appears she said phooey to the whole costume thing and wore her best silk evening gown and ermine cape.</em><br /><br />Marion starred in both silents and talkies, but finally retired in 1937. She was forty by then and a little world weary. She had fourteen more years with Hearst before he died, in another of her homes in Beverly Hills, in 1951.<br /><br />His sons had the body whisked away and Marion was not invited to the funeral. She sold the beach house, finally married one of the gents who had danced attendance 'round her, and died ten years later. She spent her last years using her considerable fortune to help others. She truly was the dame with the heart of gold. The girl who had it all--except the one thing she wanted most from Hearst--his name.<br /><br />When the beach house had to come down, it appeared that Davies' life in Los Angeles would be virtually forgotten. But a committee of preservationists, the City of Santa Monica, and the Annenberg Foundation, stepped in and purchased the site, preserving one of the three guest houses on the beach as a memorial to this woman who led a truly remarkable life. The Annenbergs built a public beach facility on the location of the original home, and it can now be used for parties and events. During the day, the public can use its showers and other facilities for a small fee. They have even preserved Miss Davies' original swimming pool and that too is part of the new beach club. It is a terrific addition to the region and keeps more high-rise condos and other development from polluting the coast line.<br /><br /><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_nIdxfARv44A/Stn5FJYI2NI/AAAAAAAADTo/MtGUdiE7aMY/s1600-h/Annenberg+2.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_nIdxfARv44A/Stn5FJYI2NI/AAAAAAAADTo/MtGUdiE7aMY/s400/Annenberg+2.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5393615895564703954" /></a> <em>The Annenberg Community Beach House on the site of Marion Davies' original home.</em><br /><br /><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_nIdxfARv44A/Stn8D8R2eUI/AAAAAAAADT4/8jddYTWw2W4/s1600-h/marion+Davies+two.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 347px; height: 400px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_nIdxfARv44A/Stn8D8R2eUI/AAAAAAAADT4/8jddYTWw2W4/s400/marion+Davies+two.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5393619173403687234" /></a> <em>The Marion Davies Guest House sits adjacent to the new Annenberg facility. You can see on the hills beyond what development is like in the surrounding region.</em><br /><br />Turner Classic Movies is working to revive interest in the films of Marion Davies. She was a wonderful comedienne and a truly charming hoofer. And now the City of Santa Monica, a group of volunteers, and the Annenberg family, have given her a place in Santa Monica and Los Angeles history. It is the least they can do for the beautiful, funny, and unsophisticated Marion, the Woman Who Almost Had it All. <br /><br /><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_nIdxfARv44A/Stn826JJrpI/AAAAAAAADUA/PswcZHod8N8/s1600-h/marion_davies+herself+2"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 332px; height: 400px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_nIdxfARv44A/Stn826JJrpI/AAAAAAAADUA/PswcZHod8N8/s400/marion_davies+herself+2" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5393620049003654802" /></a> <em>Marion Davies, near the end of her film career, in the late 1930s.</em><br /><br /><em>Docents are available to give tours of the Guest House and though there isn't original furniture in the structure the bathroom tiles are really something to see--and this is just the guest house! To learn more: </em> <br /><br /><a href="http://www.secondstory.com/portfolio/works/marion-davies-guest-house ">Marion Davies Beach House Preservation and Tours</a><br /><br /><a href="http://beachhouse.smgov.net/">The Annenberg Community Beach House</a><br /><br /><a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0203836/">Actress Marion Davies on IMDB</a><br /><br /><p><a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/blogspot/vYqp" rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml">Subscribe to Robin Chapman News</a></p><br /><br /><script src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/blogspot/Eqqi?format=sigpro" type="text/javascript" ></script><noscript><p>Subscribe to RSS headline updates from: <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/blogspot/Eqqi"></a><br/>Powered by FeedBurner</p> </noscript> </span><div class="blogger-post-footer">Visit Robin's blog at robinchapmannews.blogspot.com<img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/1232112655035482837-6750507331792888221?l=robinchapmannews.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>http://robinchapmannews.blogspot.com/2009/10/woman-who-almost-had-it-all.htmlrchapsblog@gmail.com (Robin Chapman)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1232112655035482837.post-5266039381394887193Fri, 16 Oct 2009 05:09:00 +00002009-10-16T08:28:13.432-07:00UCLAvisiting Los AngelesSanta MonicaHighway 101<em>I had a long drive today, from Los Altos, California down to Santa Monica, where I'm spending the weekend decompressing from the stress of getting my father settled in skilled nursing care. Fortunately, I have a great sister and she's taking over support duties in my absence, even though it means she'll miss some of her work back home in Denver.</em><br /><br />I was up early and on my way by 6:30 a.m. I was well ahead of the commuters as I rolled through Gilroy, the Garlic Capital of the World, and Salinas, home of John Steinbeck. In spite of California's population boom, the fields in the Salinas Valley are still large and verdant. They are one of many reasons California has a GNP as large as the entire nation of France.<br /><br /><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_nIdxfARv44A/Stf1IGYICiI/AAAAAAAADS4/nDCVBE5hBOI/s1600-h/DCFC0239.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_nIdxfARv44A/Stf1IGYICiI/AAAAAAAADS4/nDCVBE5hBOI/s400/DCFC0239.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5393048598299019810" /></a> <em>Sunrise near Salinas, California</em> <span class="fullpost"><br /><br />I was almost eighty miles on my way when the sun began coming up. It's the first time I've seen a sunrise in quite a few years. I could say I used to see them more often when I, upon occasion, was on my way home at that hour. But that would be telling. When I stopped near a farm to take a picture of the dawn, I saw a man watching it too. He gave me a wave.<br /><br />One of the nicest surprises of Highway 101 is coming down from the hills of San Luis Obispo, and suddenly descending upon the Pacific at Pismo Beach. I never have liked the name of that town--named after a type of clam--but the view from the highway above the cliffs is stunning.<br /><br /><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_nIdxfARv44A/Stf7RwPEhbI/AAAAAAAADTA/Llc5A8mwkuU/s1600-h/DCFC0247%5B1%5D.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 269px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_nIdxfARv44A/Stf7RwPEhbI/AAAAAAAADTA/Llc5A8mwkuU/s400/DCFC0247%5B1%5D.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5393055361223919026" /></a> <em>A view of the Pacific, from U.S. Highway 101 in California. It's the route the padres took on their way from Mexico north, to set up their chain of missions. If you saw a view like this, you'd keep walking too.</em><br /><br />My Google directions had me take a cutoff from Highway 101 that I've never used before. Not far from Pismo Beach, I turned off onto CA-154 and drove into the mountains over San Marcos Pass. It takes about 20 miles off the drive and puts you into the region of Ronald Reagan's old Rancho del Cielo--the Ranch in the Clouds. He's gone now. Taken by the same disease that is ravaging my father. When you reach the top of the pass, you are reminded of why our 40th president loved this country so much.<br /><br /><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_nIdxfARv44A/Stf886bGUBI/AAAAAAAADTI/0QMP75I0Nqw/s1600-h/DCFC0244%5B2%5D.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_nIdxfARv44A/Stf886bGUBI/AAAAAAAADTI/0QMP75I0Nqw/s400/DCFC0244%5B2%5D.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5393057202204725266" /></a> <em>San Marcos Pass, near Lake Cachuma.</em><br /><br />I arrived in Los Angeles before 2 p.m., found my friend Phyllis' house in Santa Monica, and was in my favorite Chinese robe when she arrived from Costco an hour later. I won't tell you how I got in. I've known Phyllis since we roomed together in college. What's a little breaking and entering between friends?<br /><br />She's living less than a mile from our first apartment on Saltair, the place that was our launch pad into life. Now I'm splashing down again, and I've landed almost exactly where I began.<br /><br /><em>Next up, a visit with screenwriter Steve Latshaw, whom I haven't seen in at least a decade, though he is a contributor to my blog and we correspond regularly. For his big birthday party, he claims to have edited an "outtakes reel" that shows yours truly back when she was a <em>real</em> diva. Saints preserve us. I hope I survive.</em><br /><br /><p><a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/blogspot/vYqp" rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml">Subscribe to Robin Chapman News</a></p><br /><br /><script src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/blogspot/Eqqi?format=sigpro" type="text/javascript" ></script><noscript><p>Subscribe to RSS headline updates from: <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/blogspot/Eqqi"></a><br/>Powered by FeedBurner</p> </noscript></span><div class="blogger-post-footer">Visit Robin's blog at robinchapmannews.blogspot.com<img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/1232112655035482837-5266039381394887193?l=robinchapmannews.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>http://robinchapmannews.blogspot.com/2009/10/take-it-easy-heading-for-la-on-one-oh.htmlrchapsblog@gmail.com (Robin Chapman)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1232112655035482837.post-4973318679404363532Thu, 15 Oct 2009 04:31:00 +00002009-10-14T21:48:17.298-07:00Los Angeles<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_nIdxfARv44A/Stan8OaYzJI/AAAAAAAADSw/rL9EVAA5Jsk/s1600-h/Robin+and+pHyllis+at+Mt.+Lemon.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 399px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_nIdxfARv44A/Stan8OaYzJI/AAAAAAAADSw/rL9EVAA5Jsk/s400/Robin+and+pHyllis+at+Mt.+Lemon.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5392682256925510802" /></a> <em>Robin and Phyllis amidst the snow of Mt. Lemon near Tuscon, Arizona some considerable years ago. She came to visit me in Tucson where I had my first job in television news.</em><br /><br />I think I must feel a need to step back from the intensity of nurturing my ill father. We are now, I realize, preparing to say goodbye to him. He isn't with us the way he has been during this past year. I deny it and then I face it, then deny it again. So, my college friend Phyllis, who lives in L.A., has invited me down for a break. She and her husband John and I have been friends for many years.<br /><span class="fullpost"><br /><br />Also on tap in the Southland: my long-time television/film buff/screenwriter friend Steve Latshaw is celebrating a landmark birthday and his move into grandfatherhood, all in the same year. Some friends and I are putting on a shebang for him. I'll be reporting from his party, which will be filled with a collection of Southern California people so strange, none of them even uses drugs. (Or at least that is what they tell me.)<br /><br />Anyway, I'll be out on Highway 101 early Thursday. And I have hired some big burly guards for my home, so don't even think about using this as an opportunity to visit it while I'm away. Also, my sister is in residence and she is much more fearsome than any big burly guards. And several Old Boyfriends who Owe Me will be staying in all the guest rooms.<br /><br />So don't touch that dial. Next we report from the land of Santana winds. <br /><br /><p><a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/blogspot/vYqp" rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml">Subscribe to Robin Chapman News</a></p><br /><br /><script src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/blogspot/Eqqi?format=sigpro" type="text/javascript" ></script><noscript><p>Subscribe to RSS headline updates from: <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/blogspot/Eqqi"></a><br/>Powered by FeedBurner</p> </noscript> </span><div class="blogger-post-footer">Visit Robin's blog at robinchapmannews.blogspot.com<img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/1232112655035482837-4973318679404363532?l=robinchapmannews.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>http://robinchapmannews.blogspot.com/2009/10/headed-to-los-angeles.htmlrchapsblog@gmail.com (Robin Chapman)7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1232112655035482837.post-7783122408199804326Wed, 14 Oct 2009 02:41:00 +00002009-10-14T07:19:32.167-07:00California October Storm. Los Altos Adobe Creek<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_nIdxfARv44A/StU7JM5Cw7I/AAAAAAAADSI/enk6vEs7Q7A/s1600-h/stormy+day+001a.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 263px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_nIdxfARv44A/StU7JM5Cw7I/AAAAAAAADSI/enk6vEs7Q7A/s400/stormy+day+001a.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5392281158111380402" /></a><em>Umbrellas on parade in downtown Redwood City, California.</em><br /><br />The Internet is abuzz with news of the big storm that is inundating California. People being told to evacuate. Trees falling on roadways. Landslides everywhere. This is from the on-line site MSNBC:<br /><br /><em>"By midday Tuesday, more than 6 inches of rain had fallen in parts of the Santa Cruz Mountains and more than 4 inches in parts of Marin County, according to the National Weather Service. Santa Cruz County issued voluntary evacuation orders affecting about 60 homes near areas burned by the Lockheed Fire, a 7,800-acre blaze ignited in August."</em> <span class="fullpost"><br /><br />It did rain a lot. But it is autumn and California hasn't had a drop of precipitation since June. And we do sit on the edge of the Pacific Ocean. I thought it was nice to see a little moisture for a change. And my windshield wipers, feeling out of shape from their summer vacation, had a chance to stretch their blades.<br /><br /><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_nIdxfARv44A/StU72gSkj9I/AAAAAAAADSQ/78rzOmupRRw/s1600-h/stormy+day+003a.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_nIdxfARv44A/StU72gSkj9I/AAAAAAAADSQ/78rzOmupRRw/s400/stormy+day+003a.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5392281936412839890" /></a> <em>Windshield wipers fight to keep my windshield clear on El Camino Real, near Palo Alto, California.</em><br /><br />My mother, who has been a real trooper this week, during Dad's first week in skilled nursing care, didn't let the storm keep her from her daily visit to the nursing home. She appeared at the back door, ready for the Swedish car to pick her up, sporting her rainy day shoes: a pair of brown-and-white oxfords that go back to World War II--at least--and thus, are even older than I am. They have terrific lug soles that have managed to survive all these decades and that make walking in rainy weather very safe. Ah for the days of American-made shoes with soles by U.S. Rubber that would last a lifetime.<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_nIdxfARv44A/StU9y_TE8WI/AAAAAAAADSg/QFJ6lWkcSm0/s1600-h/stormy+day+shoes+006a.jpg"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 200px; height: 184px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_nIdxfARv44A/StU9y_TE8WI/AAAAAAAADSg/QFJ6lWkcSm0/s200/stormy+day+shoes+006a.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5392284075040239970" /></a><br /><br />The inches of rain swooshed down from the Santa Cruz Mountains and filled Adobe Creek in Los Altos, California. The little riverlet is dry all summer and it is the the place I caught my worst case of poison oak when I used the dry creek bed, one hot summer day, as a path to the grocery store.<br /><br />Today, only a canoe would suffice on Adobe Creek. Like Mom, sporting her rainy days shoes, the little creek has donned its winter wardrobe. We won't be endangered by its poison oak again 'til the dry days of spring roll around again.<br /><br /><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_nIdxfARv44A/StU_nVTQtfI/AAAAAAAADSo/JHUmBo1cU7U/s1600-h/stormy+day+015a.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_nIdxfARv44A/StU_nVTQtfI/AAAAAAAADSo/JHUmBo1cU7U/s400/stormy+day+015a.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5392286073811416562" /></a> <em>The water in Adobe Creek speeds its way into San Francisco Bay.</em><br /><br /><a href="http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/33284343/ns/weather/">Residents Urged to Flee California Storm</a><br /><br /><p><a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/blogspot/vYqp" rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml">Subscribe to Robin Chapman News</a></p><br /><br /><script src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/blogspot/Eqqi?format=sigpro" type="text/javascript" ></script><noscript><p>Subscribe to RSS headline updates from: <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/blogspot/Eqqi"></a><br/>Powered by FeedBurner</p> </noscript> </span><div class="blogger-post-footer">Visit Robin's blog at robinchapmannews.blogspot.com<img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/1232112655035482837-7783122408199804326?l=robinchapmannews.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>http://robinchapmannews.blogspot.com/2009/10/rainy-day-people.htmlrchapsblog@gmail.com (Robin Chapman)4