Faces of Cincinnati

This has been a week spent largely beyond our dwelling place in the city of Springdale in north Cincinnati. In spite of our location adjoining a somewhat dated Latino shopping center, with an Hispanic and a Halal grocery store, and a Mexican restaurant, the feel of our neighborhood, and our experience, is distinctly white suburban. This week brought us welcome interchanges with the world beyond.

Impromptu dancing with men and women at World Refugee Day.

On Wednesday we went to Saint Francis de Sales parish on Madison Road near downtown Cincinnati, to participate with others from The Gathering at Northern Hills in preparing and serving a hot lunch to elementary school students who are members of the UpSpring of Cincinnati summer camp enrichment program for homeless children. I am not used to cooking in quantities of 100s, so it's a good thing that I was not in charge of the menu and planning. But I did enjoy chopping more onions that I every had before in a single stretch for sloppy goes, stirring one of six pots of the mixture, and then preparing the plates for the sloppy joes, cole slaw, and tortilla chips. It had been busy with adults  in the kitchen from 10-12, but when the kids came into the dining area after their morning activities, the activity level skyrocketed, as did the decibel level. I went out to check some of the kids in the dining room later in case they wanted seconds, and it was hard hearing above the roar of the crown, even though any child that wanted individual attention from adults stood patiently with hand raised in air to attract attention from one of the teachers or volunteers. We heard details about the work of UpSpring, which sadly has increased the number of people it serves during the summer months in the seven years that this congregation has been performing this service. Shockingly more than  half of all children living in Greater Cincinnati live below the poverty line.

A very young attendee at World Refugee Day.

Friday morning I made a quick stop at the Northminster Presbyterian Church in Finneytown, catching a group of adult refugees at the tail end of their weekly English and citizenship classes, sponsored by Heartfelt Tidbits, a relatively new local non-profit organization that concentrates its efforts on refugee resettlement. I spoke with the executive director, and I am hoping to start some tutoring of adults in this program in the upcoming summer weeks.

Saturday was World Refugee Day, and Catholic Charities Southwestern Ohio had planned a festive event for the refugee families it serves. My volunteer efforts there included the making and sharing of a Vietnamese chicken-cabbage salad and a late pot of South African yellow spiced rice--both these in more customary sized quantities, for a couple families. There were lots of volunteers and lots of other food offerings, too, and some beautiful music and dancing. The large majority of the refugees to Cincinnati now are from Bhutan., but several African and Asian regions are represented. One of the unique experiences I had Saturday as I helped staff the soft drinks table was to hear the Nepali national song and see it interpreted in a graceful dance.

So much joy and grace in this dance! Smiling faces all around!

Danish Connections

Since my sister-in-law arrived from Argentina a month ago, I have been speaking Danish at least half the day. Carmen claims not to speak English (though she manages several words from time to time in social situations, especially those involving shopping, ice cream, and one-on-one with family and close friends). She has been a resident of Argentina since the age of 14, when she emigrated with her parents and her brother (my husband) from Denmark. Theoretically we could speak Spanish together, but her first language and my second is Danish, and that is the language in which we talk best about the little things and the big things.

So busy we have been, talking about past memories and current concerns, that the Nordic dinner at the White House on Friday, May 13 passed by us without notice. It also passed by the U.S. media outlets that we watch without notice. But then there was Facebook and postings from Danish friends to alert me to the speeches made at the state dinner. And later there was email to actually send along the links to listen to the speeches from President Obama, the prime minister of Iceland, and the prime minister of Denmark.

If you read the transcript of the toasts made that evening, you may wonder, as I did, whether there had been a few toasts before we got to Mr. Obama's remarks, and to Mr. Jóhannsson's, and to Mr. Rasmussen's. There were a lot of jokes, but what interested me primarily were two paragraphs from our president's talk.

He spoke of N.F.S. Grundtvig, a Danish pastor and educator, who was a 19th-century proponent of  of the Danish folk high school movement. These folk schools were attended by some youths, but mainly working adults, and provided education on many practical and cultural topics. I knew that the the folk high school idea had achieved some international recognition, but I did not know that there had been a school inspired by the folk high school movement in the U.S., in Tennessee--hardly a bastion of Nordic influence. But the Highlander Folk School in Grundy County, Tennessee traces its roots to Grundtvig, and the Highlander Folk School has played an important part in the civil rights movement in the United States. The Highlander school provided a place, in the segregated south, for blacks and whites to meet together to learn how to resist racism. Rosa Parks attended a 1955 workshop at Highlander four months before refusing to give up her bus seat; Ralph Abernathy and John Lewis were trained there, and Martin Luther King, Jr. spoke at the Highlander's 25th anniversary celebration in 1957. According to a history of Highlander written for children, the song "We Shall Overcome" became a symbol of the civil rights movement at the Highlander School.

Shortly thereafter, the Highlander Folk School was accused of being Communist and was closed down by the state of Tennessee. The ideas engendered there survived. Grundtvig knew that knowledge was the best tool to fight for freedom, and so did the people who moved through the Highlander Folk School.

Department Store Shopping Then and Now

When I was a child in the 1950s, shopping was limited in the small town in which I lived, but there were usually four or five trips a year to Columbus or Cincinnati to go to the dentist and to buy new school clothing. The dental excursions invariably took place on Easter Monday, which comprised our spring vacation,  and then once again before school started in the fall. The fall trip also was the major “new school year” outing. These went to Columbus, a two-hour drive from our home in Sidney, over country roads. A special trip once or twice a year took us to Cincinnati, also a two-hour car ride, but with patches of interstate; this trip combined a visit to a family friend, the college roommate of my maternal grandmother. In between the longer trips to Columbus and Cincinnati, we would drive forty miles to Dayton for any shopping needs that we could not fill in Sidney.

Our destination shopping target was not a big-box, one-level, suburban Target department store (the one with a capital T): it was a real multi-level, downtown Department Store (one with a capital D for Department): Lazarus, Shillito’s, or Rike’s. All three of these stores are gone now, and my mind does not make much of a distinction between the three , but walking into any one of them was walking into a special world for the day, with more luxury than I had ever experienced in my young life. 

They had escalators to take you from one floor to another, and there were six or more stories, and even something called a mezzanine. For one of them, you parked and entered in a lower floor and took the escalator “Up to the Basement.” If there was time, we would take the elevator all the way to the top of the store and take the escalators down through each floor, briefly seeing the extent of the offerings. We did not need all the various departments on the several floors; since we were only four girls we could bypass the boys’ and men’s departments easily—but we did span the children’s, teens, and occasionally the women’s clothing departments. And shoes, although we had a decent shoe store in Sidney and found it much more fun to buy shoes there, where we could look through a machine and see whether our feet bones fit nicely into the shoe or were crowded.

I always looked forward to the reward after the clothes-buying was done: the book department, for there was no bookstore in Sidney. I was always allowed to buy the next book in the series that I currently was reading. I went through The Happy Hollisters; Vicki Barr, Flight Stewardess; and Cherry Ames in all her nursing adventures. Notable throughout the stores was the level of service: there was always a person to help you find what you were looking for, whether it was to search to see if the right book was stacked under the counter, or to check on you in the dressing room and run out to get the same thing in a different size  or color so you didn’t have to get dressed and do it yourself.

The very special event, however, was lunch in the department store dining room. I remember the carpeted dining rooms at Rike’s and Lazarus—when we came to Cincinnati we usually had lunch instead with the lawyer husband of Nana’s friend at The Cincinnati Club. The Cincinnati Club was very fancy, almost uncomfortably so for young girls, and there was entertainment in the dining rooms at Rike’s and Lazarus. There were fashion shows! Women would come into the dining room and parade between the tables wearing the newest styles, and either a loudspeaker or the individual models themselves would tell you about what they were wearing as they swirled their skirts or opened their jackets to reveal the matching blouse or sweater underneath. My sisters and I enjoyed watching the models while we waited for our chicken a-la-king in the white ceramic covered chicken dish to be brought to the table. And then after the main course we had to make decisions about dessert—an extra special treat since we did not usually have desserts at our house. Nancy usually had a “snow ball”—a scoop of vanilla ice cream encased in coconut, but I almost always opted for the Baked Alaska pie—peppermint ice cream  on graham cracker crust, with a meringue top with chocolate sauce. 

After lunch we probably still had a few items to search for, but our last stop was invariably Will Call, the department on the parking level where all our purchases from throughout the day had been collected for us so we did not have to carry them around ourselves. We would get in the car, present the receipts which entitled us to free parking for the day, and drive home.

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We have been doing a lot of shopping with my sister-in-law over the past ten days. We have gone to several places that call themselves department stores—Meijer, Kohl’s, Sears, and Macy’s—but none of them can be considered a big “D” Department Store from the old days. They all have multiple departments, and Kohl’s is even on two levels, and Macy’s (at Tri-County) four, but none has the broad selection of the old department stores, and certainly not the style.

Service is noticeably absent; you can look all over for a checkout counter at Sears and Macy’s, and checking out is just about all you can do there. Knowledge of the product does not reside in the head of any sales attendant—whatever knowledge exists is what is printed on the package, which is why we bought underwear from two stores and then returned underwear to two stores when we could not figure out the proper sizing. The only real help from a sales associate came in the intimates department at Macy’s, who did a quick measure above, below, and across (the ladies will know what I am talking about here) before going into the fitting room, then brought the one garment that fit the requirements, and left us on our own. I moved in and out of the fitting room to change sizes for the customer and then expand the purchases to nightwear. Then when we were ready to drop a couple hundred dollars at the checkout desk, we still had to wait for more than ten minutes for attention. They didn’t have the six undergarments we wanted and had to order them to be sent to the house—and that process took at least 10 more minutes.

There is, of course, no quiet, refined, carpeted dining room at the Macy’s in Tri-County. Outside of the store and far down the mall walk there is a food court with at least ten “restaurants” – all with uninspiring choices, all self-service, and all sharing tables in a crowded, noisy, messy hall.

The only advantage that the shopping experience of the 21st century has over the shopping experience of the mid-20th century that I can see is the transportation: virtually every big-box store offers scooters for sitting and navigating around the warehouse-like interior; so does the mall, and even Kohl’s offers rolling shopping carts for those who want support to lean on while they search out, select, and collect their purchases.

Celebrating Phil Henry

I spent this afternoon with many others celebrating the life of my dear brother-in-law Phil Henry, who died March 14 of weak kidneys and a strong will. He asked me to read these words at his memorial service, and I was honored to comply.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

As I write this, I'm 80 years old and know that the pages of my life's book have mostly been written….and when you hear these words, the last page will have been written.

To my family and friends present today, I say "hello" and "goodbye."  I'm sure the irony does not escape you.

First, thank you for being my friends; thank you for being my family.  Each of you has played an important part in the mosaic of my life. 

There are others who have already died; many who have been very important to me.  A double posthumous thanks to:

Debbie,

Big T and Pat,

Rich,

Lee,

Pete,

my sister Marlee,

and so many others who enriched my life.

I'd like to share with you a few of my feelings about life and death. 

Richard Feynman, arguably one of the greatest theoretical physicists of the 20th century, said on his deathbed,

"We are lost in this mysterious universe that has no purpose, which is the way it really is as far as I can tell.  It doesn't frighten me." 

This thought has always resonated with me.

My life has been mostly rewarding, and I want you to know that the main reason for that is my wife Nancy.  She has shared with me most all of the wonderful texture of living.  She has been the love of my life.

I have been fortunate:

I have loved and been loved.

I have experienced victory and defeat.

I have marveled at the natural world.

I have traveled to exotic places on our earth and have had a glimpse of other cultures.

I have lived through different time periods--I call it time travel--and if you think that the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s weren't a different world from the 21st century, think again.

I've said goodbye to all those things now.  I have no illusion about going to "a better (or worse) place." 

I feel lucky to have been able to appreciate on earth the things that, for me, create the proverbial heaven:

A good laugh

The changing seasons

Good music

Nature in all her aspects

Companionship and love

Curiosity

A fine meal.

All who have known me are aware that I think music is transformational. . . 

Do You See What I See?

No, I don't think so. Right now I have three blue marbles dancing around in the lower part of my left eye. They are clustered together until I move my head slightly or blink; then they move. perhaps they scatter. Perhaps they roll, one against another. Perhaps two cling together and the other rotates up or down.

They are blue and bronze marbles: a dark blue center, surrounded, in a diffused way, with red-bronze. One is the size of a contact lens; the other two are the size of a marble, or a very colorful nickel.

How did they get into my eye? They appeared this afternoon, a by-product of a shot of Eylea administered at the Cincinnati Eye Institute. I have been having more-or-less monthly injections for slightly over a year now, to control wet macular bleeding. There were times in the past when I thought I would faint dead away if I had to endure a shot in the eye, but I am now used to it: it goes amazingly quickly, the numbing drops work perfectly to eliminate all sensation except a tiny prick, and the doctor is precise, efficient, and, as I said before, very fast.

Blue marbles in the eye are not a standard outcome of the procedure. I have had them only once before, and the doctor explained, somewhat apologetically, that sometimes air bubbles get into the needle and are transferred unintentionally to the eye. I was enchanted the first time I saw them. After all if you have to get a shot in the eye, isn't it just a bonus to also get treated to a free light show ias part of the bargain?

The last time this happened, there were five marbles; two disappeared sometime in the late evening of the day of the procedure. I still woke up with three but then, suddenly, I noticed they were all gone. I felt bereft.

So, I don't expect my marble game to last much longer; very likely when I wake up in the morning the translucent blue balls will have disappeared, and my vision will be back to what passes as normal for me. In the meantime, I am enjoying twisting and turning and experiencing the effects.  Although they reside in the bottom third of my eye, when I stooped down to get a drink from the water fountain at the institute, they popped upward and "separated" my mouth from the water stream in the fountain. Right now they are floating over my keyboard and covering up some of the letters I need to find. When my husband reached over to kiss me on the couch after we enjoyed a pizza while watching the evening news, I kissed him back and giggled as the balls came between our lips.

A big discovery with this injection: although the balls were shot into my left eye and are presumably swimming around only in that eye, I can close my left eye and still dimly see them with my right eye open! I have no understanding of the neurological connections between the brain and retinas and other parts of the mechanism of eyesight, other than that they are complicated. I don't know how I see what I see right now, but it is entertaining and illuminating.

My Easter Birthday

Easter 1951: Susan Nicklet, Mary (Lewis) Nicklet (mother), and Nancy Nicklet.
Photographed in all likelihood by Robert Nicklet (father).

Here I am in 1951--four years old. The back of the photograph says that it is Easter, and my sister Nancy and I are definitely looking at our Easter baskets from that year, though we don't seem overly impressed. Easter Sunday in 1951, I have just verified, fell on March 25, so I must have actually been four years old minus two days for this picture. I believe the photo must have been taken in the living room of our house on Chestnut Street in Sidney, Ohio, a house of which I have only a handful of real, lasting  memories, for we moved from that home to a new house on Campbell Road within a year or so. 

It was probably a few years later, when I became school age, that I learned that Easter was a movable holiday, dependent on natural forces and religious traditions that I did not understand. Easter did not come again in March until 1959, when it fell on March 29--two days after my birthday. Perhaps it was that year that I found a table that showed when Easter Sunday would fall for years in the future.  It was not as easy then as looking on the Internet. I wanted to find out if my birthday, March 27, would ever coincide with Easter Sunday in my lifetime.

Over the years I forgot the answer, because it wasn't going to happen for a long, long time. This year, Easter Sunday coincided with my birthday--for the first time, I thought--but when I went back to the Easter calendar, I discovered that it had happened once before, as recently as 2005. 

I have no recollection of the 2005 birthday and Easter. We were living in Spain then, in Roquetas de Mar. It was before I started writing my blog Sundays in Spain, and before I had found the handy-dandy Spanish agendas that I used as a datebook and diary (starting in 2006, I discovered to my chagrin when I went looking for them today). Perhaps this was the year that we went to some of the traditional Spanish Semana Santa observances in our small town, or maybe we took a bike ride along the seacoast to Aguadulce that day. At any rate, I am sure that "we" were just my husband and myself, none of my birth family.

Yesterday I was blessed to be in the heart of family; my three sisters and cousins Kathy and Katy and John all assembled at Nancy's for a lovely spring luncheon of quiche, hearty salads, eggs, angel food birthday cake and fruit, and a bunch of other extras, too. Nancy brought forth a handful of old family photos, mostly of her and myself. One was the print of the digitized photo above, now 65 years old. I remember that when as a child I first checked on Easter dates and learned when Easter would fall on my birthday, I had thought, "But I'll be an old lady by then!"

So I guess by my older standard I was an old lady yesterday, and am an even older one today! But I am not yet as old as I will be the next time Easter falls on my birthday: 2027. Now, there is a propitious year for a March 27 Easter birthday. And if I make it that far--I probably will be an old lady by then. 

The Mind Set To Rhythm

Two members of the Cincinnati-based music group The Mind Set To Rhythm did a marvelous thing yesterday. They came to sing and play a private farewell concert for my dear brother-in-law Phil in the hospice facility where he has been since last Monday.

Just two weeks ago three members of the group had shown up at St. John's Unitarian Universalist Church to play "Lady Bird," a modern jazz classic by Tadd Dameron, specially requested by Phil, as the offertory. Phil knows a lot about jazz and its intricate structures, and loves it, and this was the way he chose to say thank you and farewell to the church friends who had been a special part of his life for the last several years. In addition to "Lady Bird" that Sunday, we were treated to Cole Porter's  "Night and Day" after the service, and that got the entire congregation up dancing.

Yesterday there was no dancing, but Will played on the keyboard and Molly sang "All of You," "Embraceable You,"  and "My Funny Valentine," and concluded again with "Night and Day." Phil enjoyed the music more than the lyrics of most pieces, but the lyrics of these classic love songs seemed particularly poignant at this time. Nancy held Phil's hand, while he and Abie (their lovable and loving bundle of dog fur) snuggled quietly together. It truly seemed that Phil could hear the music, and once or twice his feet fluttered on the bedsheets as if in dance.

I had intended to link the songs to their lyrics or to a suitable video, but after much exploration I could not choose among the numerous renditions of these classics. Just as well, as probably no version could compare to the feeling in Phil's room yesterday as a lovely young couple sang for my sister and her husband as they approached the "till death do us part" part of the vows they had made together nearly 40 years earlier.

And I have been playing with the words of the band, The Mind Set To Rhythm. Phil had an incredible mind that he often set to music and rhythm (yesterday we were still trying to figure out his explanation of the "flatted fifth," and Molly helped us). Just as often he set his mind to the question of time and quantum physics, as well as a myriad of other interests, occasionally including history and the social studies that he taught for many years. And as the end approached he set his mind with determination and marched onward, and we are all the richer for having shared a piece of the journey with him.