The Sampling

 There has to be something to write about.  We all know already that my dad died.  

So what else?  

What follows is a bulleted list of possible topics:

• Funeral service at end of month. Dad's birthday yesterday.  Almost 95.
• Cleaning out basement. Going well. 
• #1 Son in Indianapolis this week. Jazz Kitchen. Will be there with bells on.  Literally.
•  Played bridge. Never made contract. Got moody after 5th rendition of,  "Oh, you were SO close." 
• Dentist tomorrow. Crown popped off while I was flossing. Never flossing again. 
• My turn to pick the book club book. Need recommendations.
• School carnival this Friday past.  Nancer and I did a bang up job of bagging popcorn. 
• Switchyard Park field trip next week. Working up a history chat. Worried about rain.
• Annoyed with Northern Lights photos everywhere I look. Dream of mine to see NL. Didn't want to get out of bed. Missed opportunity, regrets.
• Heading to school for Penultimate Sunday work session.  Adding Sub-Plans to list due to dental situation.
• Friends and family checking in with love and care this week.  Feeling heartened. 

These are all good topics. That last one is my favorite. 

The Date

 One week ago I was hanging out with my father, talking about my uncles and Franklin Park and Blue Hill Street. Remember when I blogged about that?

 When I left on Sunday evening, my dad wasn't looking good.  He hasn't looked "good" for awhile, but he looked in such a way that I wondered if his situation could possibly get any worse.

Come to find out, his situation did get worse. He can't talk now and is breathing weirdly and isn't eating.

May 11 is his 95th birthday and maybe he'll make it, but if  he doesn't, we'll just say he was 95 when he died because he was basically there, so let's cut him some slack. Come on. 6 days away.  

He could rebound in  his classic DAN HEFFERNAN style.  For the last few years, I've called him (to others) the man who does not die and I've seriously entertained the notion that he may be immortal. 

I remember my dad was sick one weekend when I was about ten or eleven.  He never missed work and was rarely ill.  He had a pad of paper in bed and was working away on something.  He worked a lot.  When I checked in on him in the afternoon, he told me, "I've written my epitaph." He showed me his notepad.

I'm not 100% sure I have this exactly correct, but it was something like, "He strode across the rambling world like a colossus." 

My mom was kind of amused but kind of not.  

Not sure what's going to happen with my Dad, but I'll keep you posted. Please keep him in your thoughts. 

The Testing

 We're in STATE TESTING WEEK.  A nerve-racking time for me and for most of the 3rdLanders.  

 They're working hard.  Bringing honor to their families.  

 The state test is tricky and is regularly updated to be longer and more challenging for our Hoosier children.  Like most children, they're resilient.  They soldier on.  

In contrast, I'm a wee wreck of worrying and woe.  When I was younger, I hoped and worked for an end to standardized testing for young kids. Husbandman and I opted out of testing for our own kiddos, but the anti-testing movement of yore has dwindled away. Testing shows up like a bad penny for even our youngest kiddos all across the land.

3rdLand will finish our 4 mornings of testing tomorrow.  Then we'll get back to learning about hurricanes and wetlands, writing and drawing in our notebooks, reading novels, singing songs, telling stories.  We also have a plan for a field trip to Switchyard Park soon.  

Joke's on you, Testing Testers of Indiana.  We do what we want. Most of the time. 

Blue Hill Street Memories

 I'm visiting my dad. He's sleeping now while I watch baseball and read 3rdLander stories.

Before he fell asleep, we had a good chat about his early life in Boston, Mass (b.1929).   When he was in 4th grade, he lived near Blue Hill Street.   Street cars traveled Blue Hill so it was way busy with humanity --- shops, synagogues,  Yiddish every where you hear. Fun Fact:

.... between 1930 and 1940, the Jewish population in the Dorchester and Roxbury neighborhoods was nearly 80,000, half of Greater Boston’s Jewish population.

Another fun fact:  Boston is currently #7 city in terms of Jewish population in the world. Check that out. 

Along with his brother Jack, Dad delivered ice and milk along Blue Hill Street.  On Shabbat,  day of rest, people would sometimes ask him to turn on a light or turn on the oven for them.  He and his brothers had many Jewish friends. One such friend accidentally shot my Uncle Bob in the leg which is a tangent we can go into later. After a doctor visit, Bob was fine.  No hard feelings.

When he went to Boston Latin School (oldest school in U.S.) in 7th grade, Dad got to school by hopping on the back of the street car, in order to avoid the ten cent fare.  Whenever he was caught, the street car driver would chase him down the street.  It was the danger, not the fare, that riled up the street car staff.  Dad did fall off the streetcar once and hit his head on Blue Hill Street.

"Was it bleeding, Dad?"

"You bet it was.  Went home and my mother patched me up.  I had a bump on my head for years."

Talking with my Dad makes me keen for a trip to Boston, land of my birth (1960).  Blue Hill Street is being renovated right now (2024).  I'm looking forward to walking Blue Hill Street from Roxbury to Dorchester one of these days.  Hopefully sooner rather than later. 

The Friendship

 IU has 51,000 students and I consider these kids darn lucky to study on this beautiful campus with so many things to see and do. Mary and Bob are here for the eclipse and for friendship and we've done a lot so far. We are loving having them here. 

We walked in the Eskenazi Museum. They were hosting a scavenger hunt.  We found everything on the list and I received a small Almond Joy.  On the 3rd Floor,  we saw a Saul Steinberg exhibit. He made the New Yorker covers.  His prints are amazing.

Next door at the Grunwald, you can see the art of graduating MFA students.  These young people are on their way.  So many weird and interesting pieces in the installation.

Across the way, if you head in to the Lilly Library, you can see a fine exhibit about Nadine Gordimer.  I can not recall if I've read any of her books, but she had a quite interesting life.  Plus she won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1991, so she's no slouch.

If you're walking about after these amazing cultural experiences, amble by the IU celebrity sculptures featuring Elinor Ostrom, Ernie Pyle, Herman Wells and Hoagy Carmichael.  You won't regret it.

We've done other stuff too.  I'll tell you more later. 

The Eclipse

Bunnies in a Bucket

We've got an eclipse coming up. 

BONUS! Friends Mary and Bob will travel here from CALIFORNIA, along with hundreds of thousands of people from across this great land. 

Mary and Bob know that Bloomington, Indiana has been described as the "best place in the WORLD" to experience the eclipse.  

We're not only in the Arc of Totality (AofT). In fact,  solar physicists claim that Bloomington lies in a rare POSITION OF PROTRACTION (PoP) where the darkness lingers for 30 to 35 minutes, way longer than anywhere else (mere four minutes). 

Some scientists suggest that PoP has, and can,  produce a "suspension in the progress of time."  

A time warp so to speak. Unfortunately, a time warp can result in people freezing to death before their bodies fly off into space. 

 Even so, into I'm willing to risk it.  

My biggest fear centers around finding enough fun stuff to do in B-town so our friendship continues on its own immortal arc of totality. I'm making a list. 

 

 

The Spirit

 We had Spirit Week at school.  

Monday:  Mismatched Socks.  Tuesday:  Crazy Hair.  Wednesday: School Colors.  Thursday: Hat Day.  Friday:  Pajama Day.

To be honest, Spirit Week wasn't much fun for me.  In fact on Friday afternoon I wrote to #30Something, "Have you ever felt like smashing your head with a brick?"

There's only so much hubbub, chitterchatter, and boisterous elan a person of right mind can take.  5 days straight was tough stuff.  

This weekend, I'm trying to reset.  We drove to the fairgrounds for the FARMTOY sale.  This is the first annual FarmToy Sale we've had in Monroe County.  I eavesdropped on people making comments like, "My daddy used to send me out to work on the L35 and the darn thing would not start.  Could not get it to start..."  and "...had a 4M for years." The old metal tractor toys tempted us, but I ended up with a milk delivery truck and Husbandman nabbed a police car.  We are aware that the police car is not a farm toy per se.  

In the evening we sauntered on over to Comedy Attic to see Sarah Sherman. The crowd loved her, but she reminded me too much of Sprit Week and if a brick had been handy, I would have been a goner. 

Enjoying a quiet morning on High Street.  Way to go, Sunday. 

Spring Break 2024: It's a wrap.

 Home again, home again, jiggityjig.  We were there.  Now we're back here.   

Our final day included a trip to the Pantheon to learn more about the latest patriots to be buried there, a group of underground Armenian resistors who conducted 28 attacks on the Nazis in WWII. They were executed by firing squad when the war was nearly over. I cried to read of their bravery and their love for France, even when France didn't always reciprocate.  Please remember the name of Missak Manouchian. 

In the evening we went to Sainte-Chapelle to listen to some Bach concertos. 

A special end to a lovely dream come true spring break.  

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The porcelain cup here belonged to Moise Camondo whose house became Musee Nissim.  Moise loved to collect art.  He has a little room off his dining room filled with four walls of porcelain china.  Every cup, plate, serving bowl has a beautiful bird on it. I want one of these bird cups a LOT.  Moise Camondo left his house and his collections to Paris to be made into a museum.  He wanted nothing touched, nothing added, nothing taken away.  The guy was a maniac about his stuff. I learned about him from a friend who read Edmund De Waal's book, Letters to Camondo.  de Waal is a ceramicist, so CB... you might want to look into these peeps. 

I stood in Marie Curie's lab and office today.  Both have been decontaminated so have no fear. Curie's work and life story is brilliant and fascinating.  I was sad to read that her husband got hit by a horse drawn carriage and died instantly, but though she was devastated, she carried on without him.  Picked up a 2nd Nobel Prize a few years later. Marie Curie is my hero at this point in time.

The trip has been sensational, but the walking has gotten a bit extreme.  Yesterday my legs hurt so much at the end of the day that I wanted to put them in a guillotine.  

All is well now. Off to dinner.

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Chana Orloff was a Ukrainian artist who lived in Tel Aviv and Paris.  She was friends with Modigliani, Zadkine, Chagall, the usual suspects.  Fun fact: Orloff used 7 year old Ida Chagall as a model for a cool sculpture of a little girl with big hair.  Orloff made figurative sculptures, animal sculptures, mother and child sculptures.  I saw her work at the Zadkine Museum yesterday afternoon. I'm now a big Orloff fan. It's good to remember that women were here and there as well, making cool stuff.  Being ignored by some, but persevering nonetheless. 

On Rue de Fleurus, I ran into Gertrude and Alice on their way home from a walk with their big poodle. We said our bonjours and then I went on my merry way.

Ended the day having dinner with this guy. The one and only Pierre Sang.  We've been to his place before, but this time he was there and it was fun to see him in action.  We had a window table so I could see him taking a break outside, checking his phone and smoking a cigarette.  I wish he wouldn't smoke, but the 7 course dinner he produced was a dream come true.  Merci beaucoup Monsieur Sang!

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 Rainy day Tuesday.  With umbrellas aloft, we headed to Pere Lachaise Cemetery. We first looked for the grave of Balzac.  Took awhile, but we eventually tracked him down.  In addition to being a great writer, he drank over 50 cups of coffee each day.  Then we searched for the mathematician, Gaspard Monge.  After a spell, we gave up and began walking back.  Minutes later, I glanced up to the left and there above me was the miraculous tomb of famed geometer Gaspard Monge! I was elated because I detest mission failures. We ended next to Jim Morrison, who has the only grave surrounded by police barriers. The plethora of fresh flowers and knickknacks atop Jim's body shows these to be mostly ignored. People love him madly. 

We both agreed Pere Lachaise has a lot to offer on a rainy day in Paris.