Ordinary Days are Historic Days

I am aware that I am alive.  What an odd statement.  One is always alive (until one isn’t), but one isn’t generally aware of that fact.  However, in these strange days of the COVID-19 shutdown, I am often aware —I am alive! — living during what everyone acknowledges is a particularly historic situation — businesses closed, events cancelled.  Someday people will want to know what it was like to live during these times.

Well, all times are historic, aren’t they?  All times are particular, right?  And that is my segue to another train of thoughts.  I begin to wonder, again, about times past, times when I wasn’t alive, but Hermann and Daisy were.  It was the summer and fall of 1919, and on this particular day, September 27, a historic day even if no one thought of it as such, Hermann and Daisy had placed a Classified Ad in the Democrat & Chronicle, selling their household belongings — their dishes, pictures, upholstered chairs, their golden oak dining room suite and dressing table and library table, their iron bed and mahogany bookcase . . . 

I had already researched and analyzed the large events which altered the shape of their lives — the Great War, the 1918 influenza epidemic which shut down events and gatherings in Rochester, George Eastman’s big plans for a new music school and theatre and orchestra — and how all of this led to Hermann’s exit from the music scene in Rochester which he had largely created.  

But this morning, when I came across that little Classified Ad, well, it stopped me cold.  It was this notice which caused me to remember that “history” happens to actual people, who are alive, and who are dealing, moment to moment and day to day, with the changes brought by larger events — selling their family home, choosing what to keep and what to shred, preparing to move on and into the future.  

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Suddenly, I am jolted back into the present day of my own ordinary life.  What time is it?  Ah, 11:30am, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo is giving his press conference — what’s happening with the virus today.  Cuomo is like a preacher, persuading, urging, hands and arms gesturing — “Stay home and save lives.”  

I paint while watching, using acrylics, bright colors decorating little shelves and wooden animals.  The action of the painting is soothing, and it is the best way to take in the disturbing news coming out of the press conference — the numbers of those tested positive, the numbers of those hospitalized, the numbers of those who have died, all the daily numbers, juxtaposed by the tactile feeling of the paint brush swaying back and forth, back and forth, each layer of paint bringing out the color and texture of the wood.  

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And as I paint, the Governor recedes into the distance, and 1919 zooms into the foreground of my mind.  Hermann Dossenbach, older brother to my great-grandfather, had been the Big Daddy of music in Rochester for two decades.  It was his world — Conductor of the Rochester Orchestra, Cofounder of the music school on Prince Street right next to the University, and Hermann and his musicians performing all over the city and beyond.  

It was an exciting world and it was his.  But then, suddenly, in the summer of 1919, that world was gone.  Supplanted by the super-talented violinists and musicians and conductors from Europe, who, during WWI, had fled their countries and flocked to the United States, especially to New York, looking for gigs and tours and more fame.  Some might call them carpetbaggers, but no matter, their music was heavenly, and many of them were attracted to Rochester by Mr. George Eastman’s promise of a world-class music school and orchestra, neither of which was to be led by the merely-locally-famous Hermann Dossenbach.   Hermann had been a big fish in smallish pond, but now that pond had widened, and there were much larger fish.  It was their world now.

On June 22 of 1919, three months before Hermann and Daisy chose to sell their household belongings, Hermann had walked out the side door of Mr. Eastman’s home on East Avenue, for the last time.  Violin in hand, music in his case, he left the place where he had been performing for small and large gatherings, of truly important people, for fourteen years.   Now that was a historic day, indeed.  I wonder — as Hermann strode down the driveway, did he turn and look back at the house?  Feel wistful?  Or did he forge straight ahead — Never let them see you cry.  

June 22nd was the final Quintette concert in Mr. Eastman’s living room.  Twice each week, from September through June, for fourteen years, violinist Hermann and his brother Theodore, playing the stand-up bass, had entered the side door through the portico, walked up the side stairs, and then again up to the 3rd floor, where they, and three other musicians (forming the Quintette) had rehearsed.  Twice weekly, for fourteen years, they would then stride down the curving, main staircase, instruments in hand and wearing tuxes so they looked grand, to the living room or the conservatory, where they played chamber music for the good folk gathered at Mr. Eastman’s invitation.  

George Eastman's Living Room (left courtesy GEM; right courtesy Elizabeth Brayer)

Dossenbach Quintette (with harpist),
Hermann 2nd from left, Theodore 3rd from right
(courtesy GEM)

Sometimes there would be a break and supper and then more music.  Now and then there was a big party, with Hermann’s full orchestra and Theodore’s Rochester Park Band providing the dance music or accompaniment to fireworks in the garden.  It was life as they knew it.  And who could ever have thought it would come to an end?

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Jolt!  The mind moves swiftly and I am pulled back into the present.  Cuomo has finished; the shutdown has been extended into mid-May and the schools will stay closed through the school year; the numbers of those hospitalized and dead are dropping, but Cuomo says we can’t know if this trend will continue.  What will happen if all the people gather together again, at outdoor festivals, or at jobs, or at family gatherings?  Will the numbers jump back up again?  Fear for the future will keep everyone at home, communicating only through the computer, connecting through Facebook and video meetings. 

How strange.  Life, as we had known it, suddenly halted, changed course.  And there was nothing we could do about it.  What was once ordinary now seems a part of the past, like that day when I was shopping at Wegmans, just a few months ago, just an ordinary and everyday kind of day that I didn’t think much about, experiencing the Rochesterians’ love of their grocery store — Wegmans! — people smiling, being polite, idly chatting with strangers.  

“What is the best way to know if a cantaloupe is ripe?” I asked an elderly lady who was picking up cantaloupes and feeling them and putting them down until she found just the right one.  I was standing right next to this woman — can you imagine that? — and the woman gladly answered, something about the weight of the cantaloupe and whether it was too soft or too firm, whether with a gentle shake she could sense the inner contents moving about.  The woman smiled at me, and then walked away with her chosen cantaloupe in hand, and then I picked up one after another, but couldn’t sense any difference between them.  

It wasn’t even a memorable day, until it was.  

This morning, for the first time in four weeks, I ventured out again to Wegmans, which has been allowed to stay open as an essential business.   A very different experience

today.  Mask on, gloves on, keeping at least six feet apart from other human beings.  Painted directions on the floors with arrows showing where shoppers could walk, all aisles one-way only.  Gosh, I was so focused on my list and finding ingredients, and how the mask felt hot and scratchy, that I forgot to follow the arrows, and another shopper, from an ultra safe 10-foot distance, stopped short and squeezed right into the shelves and haughtily told me that I was going the wrong way.  The woman gestured towards the painted arrow on the floor.  “Oh, sorry,” I said, and turned my cart around.  The item I had wanted was right there on the shelf, just ahead, but I walked back down the half-length of the aisle, and up the full length of the next (the middle sections were blocked off, so there was no cutting through), and back around again to get my jar of green olives.  Green olives makes the shutdown a little easier, I remind myself.

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On the ride home, I again thought about Hermann and Daisy and that summer and fall of 1919.  Three months after leaving Mr. Eastman’s home, Hermann and Daisy placed their Ad in the newspaper.  I wonder — did they gaze at their possessions as the new owners carried them out of their house?  Will they miss the green Saxony rug which must have looked so chic next to the green davenport sofa?

One month after that, at the end of October of 1919, their home was sold, 261 Dartmouth Street, where they had been the first owners of the newly-built house in a new development, just off Monroe Avenue.  In 1906, they’d moved in, soon after Hermann began playing, with his quintette, at Mr. Eastman’s house, in 1905.

It was a historic day when they walked away, at least it was historic for Hermann and Daisy.  Did they go out through the front door and across the grand porch and down the wide stairs?  Did they linger on the sidewalk, and gaze at the home where they had raised children, where two of their daughters had gotten married, where Hermann had taught violin and rehearsed with his brother Theodore?  

Or did they march resolutely ahead, perhaps relishing a fresh start, determined to move into the future?