tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-60717440190411944962024-02-20T02:05:51.861-08:00Living in the Past A local historian, in Rochester, NY, muses about family history, and life in the 19th and 20th centuries, and urban living, and music, and musicians. Her relatives, the musical Dossenbachs, alive in Rochester from the 1870s till the 1940s, will guide the way through this travelogue into the past. Lisa Klemanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12341298119853180166noreply@blogger.comBlogger21125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6071744019041194496.post-63009458304588151262020-05-15T06:41:00.000-07:002020-05-22T08:25:25.900-07:00Epidemic in Rochester -- 1918 and 2020<div style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>On October 13 of 1918, Hermann Dossenbach, Conductor of the Rochester Orchestra, was still counting on his October 21st concert,</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">with guest soloist Mme Matzenauer, internationally-known prima donna contralto of the Metropolitan Opera House. He was running promos and ads in the <i>Democrat & Chronicle</i>, with photos of his star and tantalizing descriptions of her recent concert in Denver, which was lauded by all. </span><br />
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>But on that same day — October 13th — on the same page as Hermann’s concert ads and write-ups, the <i>D&C</i> also published this headline: </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Still, Hermann remained hopeful because the article suggested that perhaps the concert venues will reopen in a week. Think of all the planning that had gone into this performance, the rehearsals in which 50 - 60 musicians had to be brought together — and paid(!) — let alone the sheer good fortune of getting Mme Matzenauer to stop over in Rochester! The show must — it must go on! </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Hermann felt determined, and so his eyes glazed over the final ominous tone to that 1918 <i>D&C</i> article about the hope of reopening in a week: “This is not at all certain, however, and will depend on the factors in the epidemic situation as they appear during the next few days.” </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Sounds familiar, from the vantage point of the Spring of 2020 — right? — as we watch our COVID-19 pandemic numbers rise and then begin to fall.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>I remember being astounded back in early March when, one by one, venues and places of businesses shut down — the colleges closing for the semester and sending students home, the concerts cancelling, the movie theaters abruptly stopping their schedules, doctors appointments and minor surgeries at hospitals postponed, public schools closed; eventually everything stopped except what was deemed to be essential. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>I remember a feeling of impending panic that week, in the days before the New York State Shutdown was scheduled to take effect on March 22. I shopped at Wegman’s, two days in a row, getting there at 7:00am to avoid the crowds, only to find a packed grocery store. It was disorienting, seeing whole rows of empty shelves where the toilet paper and paper towels should be, where the chicken and beef should be, where the bread should be. Actually, because the bread wasn’t there, I couldn’t recall where it was supposed to be, and wandered and wandered looking for it.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>The general talk amongst friends in the area was that maybe we’d be staying home for a couple of weeks, but who knows, nobody knew what was going on or what was going to happen. I worried that we’d be stuck inside for quite a while, that prices would skyrocket, that more items would become unavailable. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>On the Friday and Saturday mornings before the Sunday shutdown, I filled my cart at Wegman’s. How strange, walking up and down the aisles, trying to stay focused, looking at each and every thing — will we possibly need this? that? Meanwhile, the line of people ready to cash out extended from the checkout counters, snaking around the side of the store and the empty shelves of the toilet paper section, continuing around the back of the empty meat section, and kept growing, growing. First I, and then, one by one, other shoppers incredulously asked those waiting in line: “Is this the line for checkout?” By Day Two of shopping, I was wiser, and when I heard the question being asked, assured the shopper, “Don’t worry, the line goes fast.” </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>On the first day though, when I saw that long line, my panic rose, and I skipped the last few aisles and joined the line. Hearing an older lady behind me say that she forgot to get her bread, I turned to her, saw the same look of disorientation and panic in her eyes, didn’t want to say that there was no bread. Instead, I told her that I’ll watch her cart if she wanted to dash around and grab some items. She replied that she’ll do the same for me. We made eye contact, and I said to her, “yes, let’s help each other.” </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>And that’s what we did. Taking turns, we watched each other’s carts, pulled them along to stay in the line (not easy, pulling two carts). She found bread (where was it? I thought) and bleach and pasta and vegetables, and I got coffee and storage ziplocs and looked for the $2.99 Wegman’s frozen pizzas — no luck on those though. When we reached the checkout counters, and the employee who was monitoring the situation told me to proceed and pay, I turned to her once again, and we thanked each other, and wished each other a good day, and it happened so quickly because everyone was trying to move so quickly to get out of there, and afterwards I wished that we had exchanged telephone numbers so we could check in on each other. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>That was March 20th and 21st. Today is May 14th. We are still staying at home. I have stocked up on groceries once since then, with everyone at the store wearing masks, everyone staying 6 feet apart, employees monitoring how many people go into the store and sometimes wiping down the carts before handing them to customers. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Other than that grocery shopping day, I’ve only been out into the world twice, to buy movie popcorn from the downtown Little Theatre. It’s strange how those little pleasures bring comfort. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">You order online, pay via Paypal, drive up to the theater, call a telephone number and give your name and order number, pop your trunk, and then the masked and gloved employee brings out the covered popcorns and puts them in the trunk. He is a young man, he looks sweet and friendly, we smile and wave and wish each other a good day. We enjoy this little bit of contact. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span> We don’t know how long we’ll be staying at home. I don’t mind it, I have so many projects, I have Bob to spend the time with, I have the dogs to take outside for walks. I worry about others though, those whose home life isn’t happy, those whose situation is precarious, those who are ill or who have family members who are ill. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>It’s a strange, strange world we live in, that’s for sure.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>And Hermann, and everyone else, must also have found it so, in October and November of 1918. The War in Europe was still raging, albeit nearing the end, at least everyone hoped so. And then to deal with an influenza epidemic that was taking their loved ones! </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>On October 7, Rochester’s own First Sergeant Frank F King died at Camp Dix, of pneumonia, a victim of the <table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEho1Z3SkWe8z2HPsZxw4prF065uRk1aX4dCn54JkeTQUJ36IYj3__eAbOfKp5jYqoyP8wGWkXoeRkJh20SCNvEYwFJJLQBJNl-ZoyOsmLlsL7gGwCcfuhFn9H6rzE2G9WUGeYLEAWSj_UQ3/s1600/IMG_1960.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1056" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEho1Z3SkWe8z2HPsZxw4prF065uRk1aX4dCn54JkeTQUJ36IYj3__eAbOfKp5jYqoyP8wGWkXoeRkJh20SCNvEYwFJJLQBJNl-ZoyOsmLlsL7gGwCcfuhFn9H6rzE2G9WUGeYLEAWSj_UQ3/s320/IMG_1960.jpeg" width="211" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Frank F King<br />
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influenza epidemic. His body was brought back to Rochester, his funeral held from his home at 381 Birr Street. He had been a member of the Rochester Park Band, an organist for the Monroe Avenue Methodist Church, a pianist for the Piccadilly Theatre. It is likely that the members of the Park Band played at his funeral, as this was something they did these days. Death was everywhere.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Hermann’s big concert of October 21 was, indeed, cancelled; however, Mme Matzenauer sang for soldiers at Camp Custer in Michigan, lifting their spirits, giving them the oomph to go on. During that week, and continuing into November, Rochester completely shut down. By November 14, the newspapers reported that the flu epidemic was lifting. This was good because a week earlier on November 7, Rochesterians had gathered in the streets to celebrate what they thought was the armistice, but it was false on this day, and they all had to go home and wait some more. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>But not for long — on November 11, the end of the Great European War was announced, and throngs of people amassed in downtown Rochester, feeling the joy, being close to each other, strangers hugging strangers. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Experts still debate about the effect of that event on the waning influenza epidemic. </span></span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>But who can ultimately stop happiness and joy and the need for human connection? </span></span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">November 11, 1918 -- Rochester's Four Corners</td></tr>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;">(NOTE: I'm having trouble with comments in this blog. I can't figure it out -- why comments and replies don't always appear. If anyone has any suggestions, I'd love to hear it. And in the meantime, if you have a comment, feel free to email me -- lisamkleman@gmail.com -- and I'll gladly reply.) </span></span></div>
Lisa Klemanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12341298119853180166noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6071744019041194496.post-42770306557257089302020-05-03T15:30:00.000-07:002020-05-03T15:30:14.896-07:00Ordinary Days are Historic Days<div style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: left;">
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>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.</div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>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 <i>Democrat & Chronicle</i>, 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 . . . </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>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. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>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. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>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.” </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>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. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>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. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>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.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>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. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>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. </span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">George Eastman's Living Room (left courtesy GEM; right courtesy Elizabeth Brayer)</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Dossenbach Quintette (with harpist),<br />Hermann 2nd from left, Theodore 3rd from right<br />(courtesy GEM)</td></tr>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>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. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>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. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“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. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>It wasn’t even a memorable day, until it was. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>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 </span></div>
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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. <br />
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>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?</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>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.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>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? </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Or did they march resolutely ahead, perhaps relishing a fresh start, determined to move into the future?</span></div>
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Lisa Klemanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12341298119853180166noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6071744019041194496.post-80241814901058042932020-03-05T14:08:00.000-08:002020-03-05T14:11:00.753-08:00The Earliest Selfies<div style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>I recently read a fascinating article, “Why Do Selfies Matter? Ask Frederick Douglass,” and watched its accompanying video, “Frederick Douglass: Inventor of the Selfie,” both which you can access here: <a href="https://www.freethink.com/videos/frederick-douglass" target="_blank">Frederick Douglass: Inventor of the Selfie</a> .</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>The writer and video-maker posits that Frederick Douglass, the most photographed man of the 19th century, used photographs much like we use selfies today. Even though he didn’t actually take the photos of himself, he managed them — how he dressed, his facial expressions, the background — to not only influence how people thought of him, but to change the racist mindset of the American people towards black men in general. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>At the same time as I was considering how Frederick Douglass used the new medium of photography to create himself and his image, I was involved in a two-month-long project of scanning all of my family photographs at the Irondequoit Library. Towards the end of that project, I came across a series of contact sheets from photography courses I took in 1985-1986 at Clark University in Worcester, MA (my alma mater). </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>I remembered only a few of those photos, and so it was a thrill to see the whole of them, especially those of forgotten, and now mostly-demolished, places in and around Worcester, the old Worcester State Hospital (insane hospital with its Victorian Kirkbride buildings) and the famous (or infamous) Spags Department Store (“Spags no Bags”). </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>But the images that really captured my attention were the ones of, well, me! One of the assignments in the class was to take a self-portrait. This was a most difficult assignment for me because I had been, for most of my childhood and all of my adulthood, filled with self-shame about my appearance. I tried to avoid being in pictures, and was embarrassed of the ones in which I was captured. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>And this self-shame is evident in the photos I took during that course in 1985-1986, and how I strove to complete the assignment while not actually showing my face.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Attending to the nature of the self-portrait assignment, which should communicate something to the viewer about the person photographed, I incorporated personal themes, </span></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiPHixlTTn2tSunvEC0tcJyNEkxhFNr970XmepWFRl-Oci_aPGlcHZ7OkRWmjeAUP0nKPJ5f3dZ6jZ9THAmp3RljVYB2WQoUK9u_A1ygKjTi_lF5vFX9e_qn16ZNoamlfCESZ17c9_NXbDA/s1600/Image+96.tif" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="843" data-original-width="1600" height="168" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiPHixlTTn2tSunvEC0tcJyNEkxhFNr970XmepWFRl-Oci_aPGlcHZ7OkRWmjeAUP0nKPJ5f3dZ6jZ9THAmp3RljVYB2WQoUK9u_A1ygKjTi_lF5vFX9e_qn16ZNoamlfCESZ17c9_NXbDA/s320/Image+96.tif" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;">i</span></span><span style="font-size: large;">n this </span><span style="font-size: large;">case, my piano — very important to me as a child, when I took lessons and played my piano all day, most days, but always alone in the living room, never in performance. </span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_FisLZWUzDSotFlhbXQ5YKoqtRkXr-BY9wPDubtrHj5TsCs0LOylRJLRzvqlRkUIGtCdqHD5IsTlazrRlyLwWsceiZhQQ-gttXqaeeyLea3YKdXv66YVKwqyamw0c6C41XeFUnTGxUotr/s1600/Image+95.tif" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="843" data-original-width="1600" height="168" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_FisLZWUzDSotFlhbXQ5YKoqtRkXr-BY9wPDubtrHj5TsCs0LOylRJLRzvqlRkUIGtCdqHD5IsTlazrRlyLwWsceiZhQQ-gttXqaeeyLea3YKdXv66YVKwqyamw0c6C41XeFUnTGxUotr/s320/Image+95.tif" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">When people </span><span style="font-size: large;">would visit our house, I always stopped playing as soon as I heard them enter, and then would begin again when they had finally left. I was, in fact, quite good, but was, also, quite shy. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"> I also incorporated the theme of family legacy, genealogy, a</span><span style="font-size: large;">nd my own knowledge that who I was was someone who descended from others, and that I carried my descendants with me, wherever I went, whatever I did.</span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjk5zN3x5b10hFlQJbh4G_p3tEJ2tg-f5nYt-V5aPNezyFqP7Quve94Tkw6RlSbc7NTDnqES8RZABJodHqtwsPaIURo8v1OnKfI2ZdVDlM8u8IqPqZQM0hj6JoMVf-pr246vB136OLY7sac/s1600/Image+91.tif" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="815" data-original-width="1600" height="162" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjk5zN3x5b10hFlQJbh4G_p3tEJ2tg-f5nYt-V5aPNezyFqP7Quve94Tkw6RlSbc7NTDnqES8RZABJodHqtwsPaIURo8v1OnKfI2ZdVDlM8u8IqPqZQM0hj6JoMVf-pr246vB136OLY7sac/s320/Image+91.tif" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;"> But who I really was, the “me” that was setting up these photos, well, I was hiding, wasn’t I. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Sometimes, these photos were quite sad, especially the one where I am sticking out my tongue at my child-self. I was 27 years old at this time, with self-esteem issues which would keep me tangled up until in my 50s, when I at last shed them. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;"> Here’s the one I eventually showed at my final critique. My photography teacher didn’t like it, and I don’t blame him.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>If I had it to do over again, I would show the following three self-portraits, in which I have the courage to look directly into the camera, to be seen, if only, at that time, by myself, and only in the one-inch image in the contact sheet, since I never chose to develop and print these photos into 8x10s. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>These were my earliest selfies. And they tell me much, as all selfies do. </span></span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>And I salute that 27-year-old young woman. I became me because of her. And I thank her for saving the documentation which proved her existence, and for allowing me to see it, again, after all these years. </span></span></div>
Lisa Klemanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12341298119853180166noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6071744019041194496.post-28375408828230686952020-01-04T12:16:00.000-08:002020-01-04T12:16:32.549-08:00The Influence of Popular Culture (Part 3 of 3)<div style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>The final part of my Influence of Popular Culture series is easy. It’s really just a giggle. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Back to that first season of the <i>Fargo</i> TV series. There’s a scene in Episode 8 where two FBI Agents have screwed up their assignment — the mobsters they were supposed to be watching get murdered under their watch. Oops. So they get reassigned to what is for them the worst job imaginable. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>They are sent to the filing room. For an indefinite period of time.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>The scene shows them, with their boss, in the elevator, as it goes down and down and down. Then they walk through the long and increasingly dark corridor to where there are no longer any windows and the plumbing pipes are visible on the ceiling.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>They are still trying to talk their boss out of this horrible reassignment. “It was just a mistake.” “We can do better.” The boss says nothing; they reach one of the nondescript doors along the corridor, and he opens it — THE FILE ROOM! </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>File boxes, piled one on top of the other, all neatly labeled, are the only things to be seen. The two agents enter the room; the boss closes the door. As one of the agents tries to figure out how to get out of this situation, and the other one is resigning himself to it, the camera pans around them, up and down the rows and rows and rows of boxes on their metal shelves, seemingly never-ending. This is their worst nightmare!</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Here’s what’s funny, I think.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>If you had glanced at my husband, Bob, during this scene, you’d see his grimace, a look somewhat akin to horror; you’d note how he was pushing himself back into his chair, away from the TV. A reaction fully in line with the intent of the scene.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>If you’d glanced at me, a family and local historian, you’d see my look of pure delight — eyes wide, mouth open; I am leaning forward in my chair; I am almost pointing at the TV — YES! YES! YES! </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>All I could think of was all of the information in that room. All of the details and stories written down on paper, in obscure forms and notes and, oh gosh, photos! With full access to all of it! All one had to do was look. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Oh, and, also, the challenges and joys of trying to get all of this organized! I was already considering the indexes, the abc order, all that lost information of people’s lives found again! </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Yes — put me in this room for a year, I’m thinking! It can’t get better than this!</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>So what’s this all about? Nothin’ really. Just the view from the mind of a historian and erstwhile genealogist, who will never be able to comb through all of the files and records out there, but who is certainly going to try. </span></div>
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Lisa Klemanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12341298119853180166noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6071744019041194496.post-3217785090588030962020-01-03T13:52:00.000-08:002020-01-03T13:52:02.958-08:00The Influence of Popular Culture (Part 2 of 3)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>This week I am reading a biography of the songwriter Paul Simon (Robert Hilburn, <i>Paul Simon: The Life</i>, Simon & Schuster, 2018), which has inspired creative thoughts regarding this business of fiction and nonfiction. In my post yesterday, I suggested that either, or perhaps both, of the following contradictions are true:</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Consider the song, “Like a Bridge Over Troubled Water,” with its sad and soothing, and ultimately hopeful, lyrics. Paul Simon, who was known for being slow in writing and recording new music, describes this song as flowing through him, quickly and beautifully. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>He also states that the opening lines were memoir: “I like the first lines of a song to be truthful, and those were . . . I was feeling weary because of the problems with Artie [Art Garfunkel, Simon & Garfunkel] and other things. I was also feeling small. But then the song goes away from memoir. It comes from my imagination” (143). </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Simon further describes how his own awareness of himself helps him to be empathetic with others: “I’ve always been able to feel what it’s like to be on the outside even though I’ve kind of been at the center of things in my own life” (143). </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><i><span style="font-size: large;">When you’re weary, feeling small</span></i></span></div>
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<i><span style="font-size: large;">When tears are in your eyes</span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-size: large;">I will dry them all</span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-size: large;">I’m on your side</span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-size: large;">When times got rough</span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-size: large;">And friends just can’t be found</span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-size: large;">Like a bridge over troubled water</span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-size: large;">I will lay me down</span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-size: large;">Like a bridge over troubled water</span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-size: large;">I will lay me down</span></i></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><i><span style="font-size: large;">When you’re down and out</span></i></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><i><span style="font-size: large;">When you’re on the street</span></i></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><i><span style="font-size: large;">When evening falls so hard</span></i></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><i><span style="font-size: large;">I will comfort you</span></i></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><i><span style="font-size: large;">I’ll take your part</span></i></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><i><span style="font-size: large;">When darkness comes</span></i></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><i><span style="font-size: large;">And pain is all around</span></i></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><i><span style="font-size: large;">Like a bridge over troubled water</span></i></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><i><span style="font-size: large;">I will lay me down</span></i></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><i><span style="font-size: large;">Like a bridge over troubled water</span></i></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><i><span style="font-size: large;">I will lay me down</span></i></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>All of this is lovely and perfectly understandable. But then he describes the third verse, which came to him, also quickly, but much later in time, just as Simon & Garfunkel were in the studio ready to record the song. This verse is one which has often perplexed listeners. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>In 1970, when I was 12 years old and this song was a hit, I loved Simon & Garfunkel. I played their music on the piano, and sang (for no one, in my living room). That third verse, though — didn’t know what it was about, but it was nice, and fun to sing. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>This week, while reading this book, and learning the autobiographical impetus to that third verse, I’ve reread this verse over and over, and spoken it out loud, and shivered, and felt immense gratitude to Paul Simon. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Here’s what he tells us. The morning before coming into the studio, Paul Simon’s soon-to-be wife found grey hairs in her head and was deeply upset. This experience was on Paul’s mind when he wrote these lyrics: </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><i><span style="font-size: large;">Sail on, silver girl</span></i></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><i><span style="font-size: large;">Sail on by</span></i></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><i><span style="font-size: large;">Your time has come to shine</span></i></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><i><span style="font-size: large;">All your dreams are on their way</span></i></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><i><span style="font-size: large;">See how they shine</span></i></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><i><span style="font-size: large;">If you need a friend</span></i></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><i><span style="font-size: large;">I’m sailing right behind</span></i></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><i><span style="font-size: large;">Like a bridge over troubled water</span></i></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><i><span style="font-size: large;">I will ease your mind. </span></i></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhh. While I loved the song anyways without knowing this meaning, I love it so much more now. It has a story! </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Admittedly, I wouldn’t have identified much with that story in 1970, at 12 years old. However, today, I can’t even begin to describe the beauty. To think that in 1970, a man would have written a song to an aging woman (or, at least, a woman who felt she was aging) to show her that the best part of her life is still to come — gosh, wow. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Well, I think I can say that in 1970, this was not an oft-heard message. And, today, yes, things are much better, but, still, this is a great message to hear. I’m 62 years old, and I can tell you that Paul Simon was right — Our time has come to shine, and our dreams are on their way, and we only have to allow ourselves to see it. And we might not be as alone as we think. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>We don’t always need (or have a right) to know the autobiographical underpinning of a creative piece. But, in this case, knowing it has transformed the song for me. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>But, you might ask: Lisa, is the song nonfiction? Is it fiction? Or is it neither? Or both? </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>And what about our TV Series <i>Fargo </i>(written about in yesterday’s blog post)? Well, that’s easy, that’s fiction, baby, pure fiction. Right? The people are made up and exaggerated; the setting is in a real place but seems fantastical. The plot is not only made up, but is also, in fact, ridiculous. Still, it’s well-written and it’s unbelievably well-filmed and acted. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>And here’s what it’s telling us overall: </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>This writer (Noah Hawley) wanted to say that; he had a reason to say that; that reason certainly springs from real life. If we knew more about his life, we would probably understand what he saw or experienced that caused him to want to write a show which delivers this message. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>It’s a silly thing, really, this effort to try to make something this or that, fiction or nonfiction. And who cares — if we like it, we like it. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>But for those of us writing about real people, it is something we think about all the time.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>I’m writing a book about my ancestors in Rochester. The history of these people, and the places they lived, and the times they lived in, is intensely researched. The backbone of my book is based upon vast historical records. Nonfiction. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>However, I’m drawing these people as characters. I’m attempting to create the characters as close as I can to what I think they were like, based upon the historical information I find. But there’s always an element of guesswork, especially when it comes to character. How can I be sure that they were really like this? Maybe I’ve got it wrong.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Furthermore, I’m creating scenes here and there. In <table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhmaKByFlXnEI1xOQTfWfKzLwekX131OAcaMK8qt-GehXZzi_5lZcQhMAfvwj7NiR9u47eTZwOJznqcEKseWDObL_2RqxjGxjcT49ay2XFNIvf2OyP0qEUsQOr5iOL1B1hgvQHDFEPIYhtm/s1600/IMG_0556.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1316" data-original-width="1600" height="263" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhmaKByFlXnEI1xOQTfWfKzLwekX131OAcaMK8qt-GehXZzi_5lZcQhMAfvwj7NiR9u47eTZwOJznqcEKseWDObL_2RqxjGxjcT49ay2XFNIvf2OyP0qEUsQOr5iOL1B1hgvQHDFEPIYhtm/s320/IMG_0556.jpeg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Otto center, top row, with his family, circa 1905<br />(photo courtesy Gary and Jacque Fraser)</td></tr>
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fact, I’m creating a break-up scene with Otto and Emma, who had a short-lived, tragic marriage, begun in 1887, and over by 1889. I don’t, in fact, know where they broke up or how they broke up. But I know where they lived, and I know what it looked like at that time, and I know the factors that probably led to the breakup (and what happened afterwards), and I know approximately when they must have seen each other for the last time. And so I’m making up a scene, set in NYC, on a specific street and in a specific building. It dramatizes them, helps us to feel them as people who once actually lived. It seems the right thing to do. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>I hope I’ve got it right. But I might be wrong.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Most of the book will be straight from history — history is so fascinating that you really don’t have to add to it or make it up. Most of the book is true (hopefully). But some of it is guesswork.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Am I writing fiction, or nonfiction? </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;"><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WrcwRt6J32o" target="_blank">Have a listen to "Bridge Over Troubled Water," from the 1982 Concert in Central Park. And, btw, I WAS THERE!!!!</a></span></span></div>
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Lisa Klemanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12341298119853180166noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6071744019041194496.post-88497728808045981842020-01-02T11:38:00.001-08:002020-01-02T13:50:51.671-08:00The Influence of Popular Culture (Part 1 of 3)<div style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgbGD34GU0wWJqYAiwoWNOKTJvBzk1dB_zY5rCm_joxg_Xt-6QN8TTt0lWreK7d74f-Mkm-Wg0Np2ML_AhlNenL1lF-_WiseZ6epllpKLV-PfPdxG8q1rRF6qz7tuMybz65AWc9-cgH35jv/s1600/Cartoon+family+memory+is+movie+scene.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1096" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgbGD34GU0wWJqYAiwoWNOKTJvBzk1dB_zY5rCm_joxg_Xt-6QN8TTt0lWreK7d74f-Mkm-Wg0Np2ML_AhlNenL1lF-_WiseZ6epllpKLV-PfPdxG8q1rRF6qz7tuMybz65AWc9-cgH35jv/s400/Cartoon+family+memory+is+movie+scene.jpeg" width="273" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Roger realizes a cherished childhood memory <br />
is actually a scene from an old movie</td></tr>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></b>A couple of years into my full-time pursuit of research and writing about my ancestors and their lives here in Rochester in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, I began to have an idea of what I was about. I knew that I wasn’t really a good genealogist, but that I was a very good family and local historian, with the goal of becoming a very very very good storyteller. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>To my mind, a genealogist looks for historical records to document the people in their family trees, as especially gleaned from vital records — when they were born, baptized, married, had children, died (and more, of course).</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>A Family Historian, who is essentially a Local Historian, aims to find the historical records which tell us about what those people did and what happened during their time period and in the places they lived. </span></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEikUG-w-w4BqRyukxOJGLalCdI2gUkqHmrybZa_an1VdMfxAqwLKpvLhIKEfLWikXy9ctUVomlQba9pDieawmtADZykA1wwqSh9yYgmphC0fS0Jgxh3DaxyhI9q1ad9y2f86x7n4B36gNOe/s1600/Screen+Shot+2020-01-02+at+2.29.14+PM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="242" data-original-width="1252" height="121" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEikUG-w-w4BqRyukxOJGLalCdI2gUkqHmrybZa_an1VdMfxAqwLKpvLhIKEfLWikXy9ctUVomlQba9pDieawmtADZykA1wwqSh9yYgmphC0fS0Jgxh3DaxyhI9q1ad9y2f86x7n4B36gNOe/s640/Screen+Shot+2020-01-02+at+2.29.14+PM.png" width="640" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Historical records — facts — are merely fragments, bits of information (which are all too often incorrect, by the way). As we find these facts, we can’t help but build stories in our minds. We ask ourselves: Why would she do that? Why did they leave Germany? What was he like — was he a nice man? </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>And this movement from genealogy and history towards storytelling causes us to consider the tension between nonfiction (should be true) and fiction (we make it up). Much more can be said about this, of course.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>This week, my husband, Bob, and I are binge-watching the TV Series <i>Fargo</i>, which begins each episode telling us that this story is true, and that it happened in 2006, and that the names of the survivors have been changed, but that otherwise the story is told as it happened. Of course, as you watch the TV show, you know that this is a lie, that it never, in fact, happened. But — it’s a good story, anyways. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span><i>Fargo</i> (the TV series) is, in fact, about storytelling itself. Consider Season 1, Episode 8, and a scene which I call, “How to Build a Story.” </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>The new Chief and Molly (Deputy Solverson) are trying to solve several murders, including those of the former Police Chief and the wife of a local citizen named Lester Nygaard. To do so, they build stories/theories about what happened.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>The Chief grabs his theory quickly and wants to believe in it because it solves problems.<b> </b>He does not enjoy the act of building a story. He becomes frustrated when presented with evidence which potentially negates his theory, and so he holds onto his story even when it doesn’t make any sense.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>His theories are always based upon archetypal stories, which he grabs and misapplies. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>It was a drifter, he says, maybe more than one, who broke into Lester’s house and killed the wife and the chief. There is not only no evidence to support this, but there is evidence to counter this. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>The Chief likes the drifter story, but, eventually, he has to give in and admit that it was wrong.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>What does he do then? The Chief simply believes other archetypal stories. He says that Lester’s brother killed Lester’s wife in a jealous rage because they were having an affair. (The chief just happened to be there, and that’s why he got killed.) And he continues — Lester covered for his brother because he was afraid of his brother’s temper. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Drifter. Jealous lover. Brother fearing brother. Archetypal stories. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Molly is aghast. She tries to present evidence; all she wants is to be reassigned to the case. But the Chief has already celebrated the arrest and so he shuts her down. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>So Molly turns to the other, in her mind related, unsolved case, and asks about it. The Chief has also attached an archetypal story to this murder: Sam Hess was killed by his stripper/prostitute’s jealous boyfriend. It is simply another jealous lover theory, but the problem is that there is no evidence that the stripper/prostitute even had a boyfriend.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Molly is desperate to get back on the case. Not only is she a good police officer and so wants to do a good job and find the real murderer, but the murdered Police Chief was her friend, and his pregnant wife is also her friend — this case personally matters to her. She is invested. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Molly builds her stories from evidence, from the record of facts, for which she doggedly searches. To make sense of her facts, she draws the evidence on white boards (or windows), with boxes and arrows and notes and pictures. And when she tries to explain the evidence, we can see how difficult it is to create a story from fragmentary facts, how to find the relationships, the cause-and-effects, the motivations — the plot that should naturally result from the evidence.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Over time, we see how Molly builds a “working story,” but when presented with new facts which counter, she then has to look again at all the evidence, draw new arrows and boxes, make sense of it all. Bit by bit, she will get to the truth (or at least to a better truth than the Chief’s). </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>And one more interesting scene follows in which Molly is with her friend, the wife of the police chief who has been killed. The wife has been depending upon Molly to “stay on” the case, to make sure that the killer has been found. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;"> The chief is still celebrating his recent arrest of the alleged murderer, and the wife expresses her relief to Molly that it’s all done now. Molly is frustrated and mutters, “But . . . the evidence . . .” She wants to say more, but she sees in her friend’s eyes that her friend needs this story, feels better believing that her husband’s killer has been found and will be punished. So Molly holds back. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Let each of us consider this business of storytelling — (1) how we build our stories, and (2) what these stories mean to others. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>When we write our family stories, we want them to be true; we want to tell what really happened (a goal that perhaps can never really be reached, by the way.) </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>But we also want them to be good stories — entertaining stories, stories with morals perhaps. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>The more I immerse myself in history (nonfiction) and stories (fiction), the more I think that nonfiction either doesn’t exist at all, or that perhaps the opposite is true — all fiction is nonfiction. </span></span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;"> <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>But that’s another story. </span></span></div>
Lisa Klemanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12341298119853180166noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6071744019041194496.post-80497741272198063192019-11-04T16:56:00.001-08:002019-11-04T16:56:18.154-08:00Invitation - Join us at Rundel Library, Saturday, November 9, 1-3pm<div style="font-family: Times; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;">Let us take a moment and notice these photos. Photos of beautiful people. Proud people. Our fellow citizens. </span></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhW7SlWNJkspADtXLymrTwXQFwzx7JQ87cORIhUXW-5nlMYo89DHIS8sHjHFtei3ok07daCU5YNY3hQ7jWryINrNvX__f7poO5jbjmvQ0Rj7wWJkVEvk7pHNMUDZqhzY_lJDjfoku8H7B2i/s1600/Screen+Shot+2019-11-04+at+7.40.58+PM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-size: large;"><img border="0" data-original-height="946" data-original-width="1574" height="384" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhW7SlWNJkspADtXLymrTwXQFwzx7JQ87cORIhUXW-5nlMYo89DHIS8sHjHFtei3ok07daCU5YNY3hQ7jWryINrNvX__f7poO5jbjmvQ0Rj7wWJkVEvk7pHNMUDZqhzY_lJDjfoku8H7B2i/s640/Screen+Shot+2019-11-04+at+7.40.58+PM.png" width="640" /></span></a></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;">These are members of, and relatives of, the Dinkle family, an African-American family who has lived in Rochester for 150 years. And they are the subject of a current exhibit — <i>Everyday People: The Dinkle Family and Rochester’s African-American Past </i>— at Rundel Library’s Local History Department. </span></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjRlryWLk7FFEJDt1CIImN998ZPhfxeMm7mng3Lv0p2DORZrvQzXUDmtghn3KTnfrU3SxkatEjHSXGjE5hEJxR3-upd_cJ_4jta_tEnqPwHN7CRvWvI1JWLveXX9cPcjvCkL1TWBC97wwtL/s1600/Screen+Shot+2019-11-04+at+7.47.19+PM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-size: large;"><img border="0" data-original-height="512" data-original-width="1162" height="280" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjRlryWLk7FFEJDt1CIImN998ZPhfxeMm7mng3Lv0p2DORZrvQzXUDmtghn3KTnfrU3SxkatEjHSXGjE5hEJxR3-upd_cJ_4jta_tEnqPwHN7CRvWvI1JWLveXX9cPcjvCkL1TWBC97wwtL/s640/Screen+Shot+2019-11-04+at+7.47.19+PM.png" width="640" /></span></a></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;">In my most recent post (too long ago -- I apologize -- I'll try to do better), I told you about this family, and this exhibit, and my connections to them and it. Read the blog again, won’t you? Just scroll down a bit and you’ll find it. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">And, then, after you’ve read it, make plans to join us for a Reception celebrating this Exhibit — it is this Saturday afternoon, November 9th, 1-3pm, on the 2nd floor of the Rundel Library. Everyone is welcome!</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;">I’ll be there, and my friends Karen Dinkle Bunton and Jerry Bunton will be there, and members of their family and the wider community. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;">Consider this: the stories of the lives of African-Americans in Rochester over the past 150 years are, sadly, stories that are not told often enough, not recorded often enough, in local histories. It's time for this to be remedied. </span></span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;">Come and join us — for fun! — and to experience the Dinkle Family and their part in the history of the City of Rochester, NY. Everyone is welcome! Make sure you say hello to me! </span></span><br />
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Lisa Klemanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12341298119853180166noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6071744019041194496.post-35412645299654945042019-08-28T09:16:00.000-07:002019-08-28T09:16:38.843-07:00Everyday People -- Exhibit at Rundel Library<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQAyaUInub6GCNyjBPssQFIfl9wTJeqhrC4TaDanF3JGwLXQSC4yoEtNGWpa0qwX0aFQYBE84lmAIxLcV3PP2SCiZ3M7ZJ1jPN1Ygkkg6DCUZPPaLFzDkCFszhCp3HhrrZ-2TxSA5RQo1k/s1600/Screen+Shot+2016-12-10+at+9.31.01+AM.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="964" data-original-width="1284" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQAyaUInub6GCNyjBPssQFIfl9wTJeqhrC4TaDanF3JGwLXQSC4yoEtNGWpa0qwX0aFQYBE84lmAIxLcV3PP2SCiZ3M7ZJ1jPN1Ygkkg6DCUZPPaLFzDkCFszhCp3HhrrZ-2TxSA5RQo1k/s640/Screen+Shot+2016-12-10+at+9.31.01+AM.jpeg" width="640" /></a></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>It is the 1910s, and these boys have recently won cross-country races sponsored by the YMCA. The Rochester photographer, Albert Stone, working for the <i>Rochester Herald</i> at this time, has lined the boys up and taken their photo, and it will be printed in that week’s paper. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span> Notice the proud boy in the middle, standing so straight and tall, looking directly into the camera, looking directly at us. He is Jonathan Theorius Dinkle, and he has won the 1-1/4 mile race for the No. 3 School. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>What will happen to young Jonathan Theorius as the years unfold? Well, I can tell you. In 1918, he will be awarded the Silver Marksman Medal from the Winchester Junior Rifle Corps. In 1919, he will enlist in the United States Navy, probably lying about his age, saying he was born in 1901, making him 18 years old — his birth certificate shows that he was, in fact, born in 1903. Jonathan wanted to serve his country, and to travel, and he didn’t want to wait. </span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Jonathan T. Dinkle, 1930s</td></tr>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>In 1923, he was living on Turpin Street and married Aldean Clemons. Here is Jonathan T. Dinkle in the 1930s — a handsome fellow, to be sure. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"> By the 1940s, he had set up a taxicab business on Clarissa Street, the first such business by an African-American in Rochester. </span>And then, in 1968, Jonathan Theorius Dinkle passed from this world. But he left behind his children, who have also passed from this world, but who also left behind their children. One of them, a granddaughter of Jonathan Theorius Dinkle, is my friend, Karen Dinkle Bunton. </div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Jonathan Dinkle, 1960s</td></tr>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>In 2013, shortly after I moved to Rochester (that story and the strange coincidence involving my apartment is told in this earlier blog posting <a href="https://livinginthepasts.blogspot.com/2019/01/moving-to-rochester-in-2013.html" target="_blank">Living in the Past</a>) with the intention of researching and writing about my ancestors, the musical Dossenbachs, I met Karen’s husband, Jerry Bunton, at a Memoir Writing Course at Rundel Library. Jerry read stories to our class about his African-American family, who had arrived in Rochester during the Great Migration of the 1950s. Jerry told me about his wife’s family, who had lived in Rochester from the 1870s, the same time my own family had settled here. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Soon, Jerry and Karen talked to me about their family stuff — papers, photos, artifacts — which they had packed away in tubs in their cellar. For the next year or so, I badgered them, yes, I did, I badgered them about getting their stuff out of the cellar and letting me look at it with them, so Karen and Jerry could share the stories which their stuff told about the Rochester that I wanted to learn more about. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>In 2015, we began our two-year journey of meeting weekly (mostly), and taking the stuff — we now called it “archives” — out of the tubs. We organized it; I photographed it and catalogued it. Bit by bit, piece by piece, I learned the story of the Dinkle family in Rochester. And a grand, marvelous story it was. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>It is a tale well told at a current exhibit on the 2nd floor of Rundel Library, called “Everyday People: The Dinkle Family and Rochester’s African-American Past.” And this is what this blog post is all about. I urge all of you to visit Rundel Library, which is always a pleasure in and of itself, and to see this exhibit — the posters, the printed information, the photos and artifacts in their glass cases. </span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEivBHdq2m8UaFHLTVeEfSfY1Uf2UWzQ9peDii4XFemCF1IRT1XZIAwZXKfS8UnL_OtUNMqsvtJFNSH_V6TD6SbDfBsp_8Ecqah1W-jCVEAn95G8x5HIlt3GGaiq0b5w-YJtnOx21h08B9mJ/s1600/IMG_1903.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="458" data-original-width="1600" height="182" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEivBHdq2m8UaFHLTVeEfSfY1Uf2UWzQ9peDii4XFemCF1IRT1XZIAwZXKfS8UnL_OtUNMqsvtJFNSH_V6TD6SbDfBsp_8Ecqah1W-jCVEAn95G8x5HIlt3GGaiq0b5w-YJtnOx21h08B9mJ/s640/IMG_1903.jpeg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Exhibit at Central Library, 2nd floor Local History in Rundel</td></tr>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>The Dinkle family was connected to many of Rochester’s important historical events — Rochester servicemen in WWII, the Boy Scouts in the Third Ward, the first bookstore dedicated to selling African-American books, the FIGHT organization, Malcolm X’s visit to Rochester shortly before he was killed, and the silent march after Martin Luther King’s assassination. </span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiGX74fb4dkAFoZDR0XIu4WG26I1wLIE0SF-rEu5HHaB58zCXOF2Ou2FrgkJ9yLYQMuYv5i0AUiMBiDteWPB9rZVvkji_mJ_xz-S3-1ExnL2rkQiv3mEv7JWIJcMYFUGn9zgOW4a7_iBF70/s1600/IMG_1929.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1057" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiGX74fb4dkAFoZDR0XIu4WG26I1wLIE0SF-rEu5HHaB58zCXOF2Ou2FrgkJ9yLYQMuYv5i0AUiMBiDteWPB9rZVvkji_mJ_xz-S3-1ExnL2rkQiv3mEv7JWIJcMYFUGn9zgOW4a7_iBF70/s320/IMG_1929.jpeg" width="211" /></a></td></tr>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>While you ponder the Dinkle family, consider your own family, and the stuff that you or other relatives have stored away somewhere, in boxes or tubs or file cabinets, perhaps in the attic or basement or junk room, perhaps in a rented storage facility. And remind yourself: it isn’t merely “stuff”; it is, in fact, archives. And these archives tell stories not just about your family (although I can guarantee you that your family members did marvelous things, accomplished much, survived tumultuous times), but they also tell stories about places, cities, time periods. Your family archives are the evidence of what happened, what it was like — they remind us of worlds long gone. (Consider this: even our own childhoods happened in worlds long gone now, right?) </span></div>
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In 2018, I showed the photos of the Dinkle/Bunton archives to Christine Ridarsky (City Historian) and Michelle Finn (Deputy City Historian) at the Central Library, and, shortly thereafter, introduced them to Karen and Jerry Bunton. Christine and Michelle were thrilled and fascinated. Since then, Michelle has worked with Karen and Jerry to understand the artifacts, and to clarify the details and the people’s relations to each other, all leading to the current Exhibit, and soon Christine will consider how to store and preserve much of the Dinkle family archives for future historians. </div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhUrsOyBYfVt8a0bJyIRZenSaixUoqGlyJnTI-HfPI1F9xg1coOCwuq-EumuDzxFcGp8_MDpswXrbHkSL_eRxvKWbRwrwEZJDjr9P-VUQc-m0H1xZP0ZPxR1eDzOHLdVIW1D-a3MGstT8l7/s1600/IMG_2355.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1004" data-original-width="1600" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhUrsOyBYfVt8a0bJyIRZenSaixUoqGlyJnTI-HfPI1F9xg1coOCwuq-EumuDzxFcGp8_MDpswXrbHkSL_eRxvKWbRwrwEZJDjr9P-VUQc-m0H1xZP0ZPxR1eDzOHLdVIW1D-a3MGstT8l7/s320/IMG_2355.jpeg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Jerry and Karen Bunton at Lake Ontario in 2014</td></tr>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Many thanks to all of the good people — the Dinkles and the Buntons and your relatives and my relatives — who lived and who left behind evidence of their lives! </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Thank you to Karen Dinkle Bunton and Jerry Bunton for lovingly shepherding their family collection and for all their ongoing efforts to remember their relatives.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>And a great, big thank you to the historians, librarians, and archivists at the Central Library at Rundel for presenting to us the Dinkle Family, everyday people who were part of history. The exhibit was curated by the Local History Exhibits Team: Michelle Finn, Emily Morry (who has written a lovely blog post on the exhibit which you can read at <a href="https://rochistory.wordpress.com/2019/07/30/everyday-people-a-new-exhibit-in-local-history/" target="_blank">Local History ROCS!</a>), Veronica Shaw, and (formerly) Amy Pepe. Corinne Clar (Library Graphics) created the design, and additional support was provided by Arianna Ackerman (Library Graphics), Christine Ridarsky and the library's Local History & Genealogy staff, and Wheatland Town Historian, Barb Chapman. </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;"> Go see it — today! (You don’t want me to badger you about it, now do you? Because I will.) </span></div>
Lisa Klemanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12341298119853180166noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6071744019041194496.post-92000869455877172062019-07-23T14:35:00.001-07:002019-07-23T14:35:42.425-07:00Selfie Autobiography -- Abstract Portraiture at the MAG<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
Well, let's begin with a simply humorous caricature -- May 5th of 2019, Bob Jordan (my husband) and I, on the Massachusetts Turnpike, on our way home from a visit with my daughter and her family. </div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Left: Bob Jordan and Lisa. <br />
Right: Lisa in the NYS Thruway restroom, surprised and pleased with the fresh flowers on the sink.</td></tr>
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We weren't even trying to look funny, well, maybe Bob was (because he is really funny), but I doctored the photo, overwhelming it with some color and contrast. </div>
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And there we are -- two happy, goofy old people. </div>
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Why shouldn't we all have a hearty laugh at ourselves? </div>
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Laugh at us; laugh with us; it's all good.</div>
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But now for a little science fiction, in the form of modernism. At the end of April, I went to the Memorial Art Gallery with my good friend, Paula Marchese. And a trip to the MAG always means a selfie in the blue glass (Josiah McElheny's "Blue Prism Painting I," 2014). </div>
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Gazing at this selfie, for the purposes of this blog, has been a treat because I noticed what I hadn't noticed before, that the mirrors within this art cause pieces of me to appear here and there. </div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiu3_QNjoZ0GjPkyH69wMavguJUGDj28U6tQ8bjFITfcoHZ19yms8_bBM1d_Rp1GJq3Ett_uA2_gLEuPwzMp8Z_ZcbaFHFM7p1lmUIjv1AlflXonxORjyItRnMzSC3cw5VMisA769eFpMXW/s1600/Screen+Shot+2019-07-23+at+7.40.37+AM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiu3_QNjoZ0GjPkyH69wMavguJUGDj28U6tQ8bjFITfcoHZ19yms8_bBM1d_Rp1GJq3Ett_uA2_gLEuPwzMp8Z_ZcbaFHFM7p1lmUIjv1AlflXonxORjyItRnMzSC3cw5VMisA769eFpMXW/s640/Screen+Shot+2019-07-23+at+7.40.37+AM.png" width="584" /></a></div>
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On the left, there are my hands around the camera, inverted from the way they are at center. And in the center, there I am, like an angel (or Iago perhaps), hovering over Paula's shoulder, still clinging to my camera, the instrument of vision. And there I am at far right, with my glasses, another instrument of vision, peeking out from the top of my head. And look above in the center lines, and also at the corners -- my hands, always cradling the camera, dot the blue landscape. </div>
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Cubism, anyone? What began as a simple selfie, turns into abstract portraiture, and I, lucky girl, become the subject of a cubist interpretation, in an art piece reminding us of a blue period, and reflecting art's past with the stained glass (on the right above) reflected from the opposite wall (I think). </div>
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How thrilling. I imagine that I've been a subject for a Picasso painting, without ever having known Picasso. (And not having known Picasso is not such a bad thing, for those who knew him did not always fare well in the aftermath.) </div>
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The places I have been, the things I have seen. You too -- go to the Memorial Art Gallery. Slow down and gaze. To gaze is to see. </div>
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I'll leave you with some earlier visits to the MAG, with the ubiquitous selfies in the blue glass mirror art: </div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhUl3Xo4k8WAd63f9-a0RU4bF6f7i_AeN_3Nfaz5GCRxzxZALD27Lb3jRdxPUzoRhMIL7BnLAS_q9vMH2YrNsE7DWia3ooU3UwCUS2Sxl7c9YvHgO4jPtByjoIsnDyuN81TM_TqqNBCaz5H/s1600/Screen+Shot+2019-07-23+at+7.53.04+AM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="250" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhUl3Xo4k8WAd63f9-a0RU4bF6f7i_AeN_3Nfaz5GCRxzxZALD27Lb3jRdxPUzoRhMIL7BnLAS_q9vMH2YrNsE7DWia3ooU3UwCUS2Sxl7c9YvHgO4jPtByjoIsnDyuN81TM_TqqNBCaz5H/s640/Screen+Shot+2019-07-23+at+7.53.04+AM.png" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Left: in August of 2018, with my cousin Barbara<br />
Right: in January of 2016, the Carl Peters Exhibition on display behind me</td></tr>
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Lisa Klemanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12341298119853180166noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6071744019041194496.post-46921560555016525962019-07-22T16:31:00.001-07:002019-07-23T03:51:49.516-07:00Selfie Autobiography: What the Selfies tell us<br />
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In my last post (yesterday), I admitted to having become a rabid selfie-taker, and I also committed to posting some selfies every day, going backwards in time, and seeing what kinds of stories they tell -- perhaps creating a kind of Selfie Autobiography.<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhbvS6w_pAmHkMC8dImhGtBydB-0Avy2fjHy5TUJoZOn8mypNMY72QQN1rlU-Qu2WfswXFTblzqXpQ_wlZAjeB72HUPPhd5lZuPZJBfE0cIIXhcvTcWOZl9h1GIoYyoa3wI_NFjwoWdPI_d/s1600/Screen+Shot+2019-05-13+at+7.54.03+AM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="115" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhbvS6w_pAmHkMC8dImhGtBydB-0Avy2fjHy5TUJoZOn8mypNMY72QQN1rlU-Qu2WfswXFTblzqXpQ_wlZAjeB72HUPPhd5lZuPZJBfE0cIIXhcvTcWOZl9h1GIoYyoa3wI_NFjwoWdPI_d/s640/Screen+Shot+2019-05-13+at+7.54.03+AM.png" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Lisa's female lineage: great-great grandmother, great-grandmother, grandmother,<br />
mother, me, daughter</td></tr>
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Selfies are, in fact, self-portraits, aren't they? (Okay, it's true, sometimes they are merely, "look at me, look at me, look at me." It is not this aspect of selfies that fascinate me.) <br />
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Consider this: My selfies (and I presume yours too) fall into genres -- shadow selfies, merging-with-the-art selfies, seen-in-reflections-of-buildings selfies, abstract portraiture.<br />
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And this: the setting of selfies -- the background, the place -- is often more important than the visual they offer of the person.<br />
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<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjUHvESQS-Qe4WkPTkW6_V-uablN-S7kNPzv_qZqfH5qajmBg-LEE8op7ujuZ_0XQkG0fULtNQjIbv723ASHGWFY2MhzEhCK3U9A0F5ej-nEF9jAKEDoIogyJsw41JGGmP7WkKw5XweZGZ0/s1600/100_6373.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="150" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjUHvESQS-Qe4WkPTkW6_V-uablN-S7kNPzv_qZqfH5qajmBg-LEE8op7ujuZ_0XQkG0fULtNQjIbv723ASHGWFY2MhzEhCK3U9A0F5ej-nEF9jAKEDoIogyJsw41JGGmP7WkKw5XweZGZ0/s200/100_6373.jpeg" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Lisa in 2009 in Worcester, MA</td></tr>
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Consider the photo I posted in my previous blog, the first photo I dared to take of myself, a leap of faith at that time. I placed myself in the corner of the photo and made sure that the living room was prominent. I knew exactly why I was doing this -- all of the objects in my living room were expressions of new interests which were taking me in a different place than I had been. In this photo, I'm not only telling the viewer, "here's what I look like at 51 years of age," but also, "I am a flea marketer; I like vintage objects which tell stories of the past; I love art, and I am just starting to love to paint."<br />
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The following selfies, all taken in June of this year (2019), tell a story about that month's Rochester experiences. And this is what is most essential about my selfies -- they are autobiographical; they are a map, a diary of what I have done here in this city which is most important to me. Rochester is my fresh start, my second life. Rochester is where my relatives, the Dossenbachs, lived, where they walked, where they played, where they laughed and cried. Everything I do in Rochester has some relation to them. <br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgzL5z0qh-QoQmYnMJsnk1W1hiZW3RC5g8I7VUSWNpfrVRhPXuHhU4CAZ8zsq3MTiA4qpSbBZZyI7scqttKdAJoCg41YEfL_1jO4nT0lQ7BG7T9K4Yvw0OGEBGm76pT8xUR4IQBsRyQDhMv/s1600/Screen+Shot+2019-07-22+at+7.47.59+AM.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="132" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgzL5z0qh-QoQmYnMJsnk1W1hiZW3RC5g8I7VUSWNpfrVRhPXuHhU4CAZ8zsq3MTiA4qpSbBZZyI7scqttKdAJoCg41YEfL_1jO4nT0lQ7BG7T9K4Yvw0OGEBGm76pT8xUR4IQBsRyQDhMv/s200/Screen+Shot+2019-07-22+at+7.47.59+AM.jpeg" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">6/19 Lisa and Kahlua at Ontario Beach Park</td></tr>
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Here is a shadow selfie, my dog Kahlua and I at Ontario Beach Park. The Dossenbachs and their bands played at Ontario Beach Park from 1902 and throughout the next four decades. In my book, I will tell many marvelous stories of their times in this park, back when it was known as the "Coney Island of the West." <br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.blogger.com/video.g?token=AD6v5dwMcuwiF8dCbI_DX7UHj4F18P-kTfcX0mDJExX6r8VwETS3I_ECtwTNhUIAnFAa1BzaE0LexvLRI-NVYCwlCg' class='b-hbp-video b-uploaded' frameborder='0'></iframe></div>
Above is another shadow selfie, a video. I am in Fairport, a village on the Erie Canal, with a fascinating history. Of course, the Dossenbachs played here (they played everywhere!). In the video, I am walking towards the Perinton Historical Society, where I gave a talk last March, and where I intend to look more closely at their fascinating exhibits and a gorgeous Carl Peters mural.<br />
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<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiEbvZHa0HBq4hOHvZtGdu996GxhRYWcCOqGoDhoEaFT_c2JFey8WdT38oimr1L6Wuvyr0DFMjpztC-wh1kFCNJZ9L6c0ajfXt0cf-s00IcIXXD0u-W5PtwJ1oYEdmWrwh_JRlzEFo1HKst/s1600/Screen+Shot+2019-07-22+at+3.49.59+PM.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiEbvZHa0HBq4hOHvZtGdu996GxhRYWcCOqGoDhoEaFT_c2JFey8WdT38oimr1L6Wuvyr0DFMjpztC-wh1kFCNJZ9L6c0ajfXt0cf-s00IcIXXD0u-W5PtwJ1oYEdmWrwh_JRlzEFo1HKst/s200/Screen+Shot+2019-07-22+at+3.49.59+PM.png" width="195" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">06/2016 Lisa at the <br />
Perinton Historical Society</td></tr>
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I also used the restroom in the Perinton Historical Society, and this is another selfie genre -- restroom photos. These are great, because all restrooms have mirrors, but they are also tricky, because you can only get the photos if there is no one else in the restroom (otherwise, it is decidedly weird). The Perinton Historical Society restroom is a treasure in and of itself, with a gorgeous hanging lamp and a vintage toilet paper holder; I've attached these to the selfie, for your viewing pleasure.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEilVw0PpKn7dr27mqrVAQRaOFqGvXFfxxNy7JZZm9gZaFZO8efmA8S78P9aI5JhZYZo-jqecq2j6kMw65kNqEDaCRnaayrwIkMgZDzExxSYgIqZiZDz8cg1xw3kiKqivomQFF5R_IJgO6n-/s1600/IMG_1473.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="190" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEilVw0PpKn7dr27mqrVAQRaOFqGvXFfxxNy7JZZm9gZaFZO8efmA8S78P9aI5JhZYZo-jqecq2j6kMw65kNqEDaCRnaayrwIkMgZDzExxSYgIqZiZDz8cg1xw3kiKqivomQFF5R_IJgO6n-/s200/IMG_1473.jpeg" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">06/2016 Lisa reflected at bottom<br />
of photo in the Powers Building</td></tr>
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Earlier in June, you could find me getting a tour of the Powers Building, where my Dossenbachs gave concerts and played for important meetings and dinners -- here I am reflected in the glass of a framed photo. Now this is an unplanned selfie in that I only discovered afterwards (and, in that sense, it perhaps doesn't really qualify as a selfie at all, but then, there I am in the photo, anyways).<br />
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Jazz Fest in June, and Bob Jordan and I were downtown. I can prove it because of the photos (below) I took of us reflected in the glass of buildings . (And for the life of me, I can't remember the name of this important building -- please tell me in your comments.)<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgad58yrR33FqFPt22UPSbCOX3d2zlH18oiDaukWPmW3K_SsnEfxD5YTLPcFj_aGGalEy0s9sAVafOuJHYMq6-QDV0sLFLoZrNauzRbdzZ659FKoAbR9AmGNDeyrw0Ld7l-JTbMaEejRLJH/s1600/Screen+Shot+2019-07-22+at+3.45.45+PM.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgad58yrR33FqFPt22UPSbCOX3d2zlH18oiDaukWPmW3K_SsnEfxD5YTLPcFj_aGGalEy0s9sAVafOuJHYMq6-QDV0sLFLoZrNauzRbdzZ659FKoAbR9AmGNDeyrw0Ld7l-JTbMaEejRLJH/s400/Screen+Shot+2019-07-22+at+3.45.45+PM.png" width="300" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">06/2016 Lisa reflected in a downtown Rochester building<br />
-- the insert at the bottom enlarges the Lisa part, <br />
which is seen in the photo just above the right side of the insert </td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj5CIdUk88D8sWLALwH4fshEYGCg6ooKYGVglP8CydWrKwCeYr4c2Px6z74l07qwgY2hfa1dfdUeYFXFjZ9zaKGDyyHoIlhFDLcMNdCvBeVhIli-sGgjfMj61qvwLF5YFnX1Or9s576RvTc/s1600/IMG_8255.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj5CIdUk88D8sWLALwH4fshEYGCg6ooKYGVglP8CydWrKwCeYr4c2Px6z74l07qwgY2hfa1dfdUeYFXFjZ9zaKGDyyHoIlhFDLcMNdCvBeVhIli-sGgjfMj61qvwLF5YFnX1Or9s576RvTc/s400/IMG_8255.jpeg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">06/2016 Lisa reflected on the right<br />
and Bob on the left<br />
during Jazz Fest downtown Rochester</td></tr>
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So this was part of my life last June, as viewed through the selfies I took, a month given towards dogwalking, history-searching, and music. It is a wonderful life, to be sure, for this lucky and grateful local history researcher and writer, living day by day, in this place we call Rochester.<br />
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More tomorrow. <br />
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Lisa Klemanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12341298119853180166noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6071744019041194496.post-81483582049929390622019-07-21T16:27:00.000-07:002019-07-21T16:27:27.096-07:00A Facebook Beginning The story, as I've always thought it to be true, is that I never liked having my picture taken. As an adult, I mean. Avoided the photo opportunity, and hated myself in the picture when it couldn't be avoided. Avoided the camera. <br />
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That is, until digital photography, with its ease of picture-taking, so inexpensive. At that point, I avoided being in the photo by becoming the picture-taker, being behind the camera. A way to see the world. A way to be in the room without being noticed or called upon for that dreaded small talk.<br />
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When facebook came around, which, for me, was in 2009, selfies came with it. What a horrid idea, I thought, how ego-driven, how vain. But, then, I "friended" (how strange it was then to use this word in this way, but how natural it is today) a former college photography teacher, who couldn't quite remember me, and wanted to see what I looked like. Why don't I post a photo of myself, he casually suggested. <br />
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Alone, in my living room, I froze. A photo of myself. Well, even if I was inclined to do so, which I was not, I simply had no recent photos of myself. <br />
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But, daily on Facebook, people were posting their selfies -- eating food, waiting in line at the movie theater, partying with friends, sitting on the couch with their dog or cat. Daily, I gazed at these photos people had taken of themselves and shared with others. <br />
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And, so, I found myself doing this extraordinary thing -- taking a photo of myself. Planning the photo, thinking about the lighting, and my hair, and should I wear my reading glasses? Turning the camera around and aiming it at me. <br />
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And, then, this extraordinary thing happened. I liked the photo. It was me, this is who I was, me in my 50s in my living room. I posted it to my facebook. My first selfie ever (or so I thought, but that's another story). <br />
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Well, that turned out to be a Pandora's Box. I began taking selfies here and there, eventually everywhere. Mirrors, glass, reflections in puddles -- there were selfie opportunities wherever I went. Selfies are our "Kilroy was here" expressions. We are here! We are living day to day! We are not ashamed. <br />
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Today, I had this idea. An autobiography by selfie. What do the accumulated selfies say about me? Am I really there?<br />
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So, every day, for as many days as it takes, until there are no more left, I will post a selfie. And, just for the fun of it, I'm going to go chronologically backwards in time, starting with today, and then finding myself here, there, in the yesterdays of yesterday.<br />
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It's going to take a while, I warn you, so I will also occasionally post the Local History stories too. <br />
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And so we begin at this beginning. Below is the selfie that I posted that day in 2009 . . .<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhoAre1nvNZD6I_ONbvWlFH8W9dc26O7RyG4wx7FgqBbYgeRC5veOAj_u6gwesyO_gJOfDxgReJFcXPL89xCroCTdeKaW4yTPJfTmrmh-IKjsMmZ_C46fCrKu1kHYa_DbcjsjYSovcwZMAe/s1600/100_6373.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="1600" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhoAre1nvNZD6I_ONbvWlFH8W9dc26O7RyG4wx7FgqBbYgeRC5veOAj_u6gwesyO_gJOfDxgReJFcXPL89xCroCTdeKaW4yTPJfTmrmh-IKjsMmZ_C46fCrKu1kHYa_DbcjsjYSovcwZMAe/s320/100_6373.jpeg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Lisa in 2009 in Worcester, MA</td></tr>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjgKk3kYDFDGDxz2k8Ve0dcea1-sisQ5X2RBN_6hyISPy_Y_1aLy9N_OuKMM7nclNSrybvQfuAB2kxQRspwLm2wBF00kJfELFS7jpRM0NSeqo-hzUhKba7PwBnJeYP8UeWMJsQ6e2zElDTr/s1600/IMG_9542.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1200" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjgKk3kYDFDGDxz2k8Ve0dcea1-sisQ5X2RBN_6hyISPy_Y_1aLy9N_OuKMM7nclNSrybvQfuAB2kxQRspwLm2wBF00kJfELFS7jpRM0NSeqo-hzUhKba7PwBnJeYP8UeWMJsQ6e2zElDTr/s200/IMG_9542.jpeg" width="150" /></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg6wX_HnhMeDuLWe6HazXpPAT_iCq1VYgt-ynoQ3Ap4BNgEyde7mx_KArLnYr2M-Zi-MvK-QrAwO94PRR7lvzJ21wMz15LXVDKvp01Ol4T8dWTWBiuGSrmr61TL8bH5JhU-LNiKmupyLjK1/s1600/IMG_9541.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1200" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg6wX_HnhMeDuLWe6HazXpPAT_iCq1VYgt-ynoQ3Ap4BNgEyde7mx_KArLnYr2M-Zi-MvK-QrAwO94PRR7lvzJ21wMz15LXVDKvp01Ol4T8dWTWBiuGSrmr61TL8bH5JhU-LNiKmupyLjK1/s200/IMG_9541.jpeg" width="150" /></a><br />
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. . . along with some selfies which I took this morning (before I thought up this blog posting).<br />
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Here's who I am. Here's my barbaric yawp. <br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Above Center: 2019-07-21 Lisa reflected in a puddle in the parking lot of Mel's Diner<br />Above left and right: 2019-07-21 Lisa reflected in the car door</td></tr>
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Lisa Klemanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12341298119853180166noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6071744019041194496.post-8949613124695043002019-06-03T10:13:00.000-07:002019-06-03T10:13:30.149-07:00The Beginning Of It All<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj4832FUXktWmfpOEjpWXexX-iN_53WvW0KUib10O7y3NeZX_EpkimQFGfhZUv54jjHcy3FeAOuEUyV728nvLhBTM0qiHBPQOekbziL4_AOORqTA9itOzD-f5IXvfJ6FX1YLajuhvtdDQqa/s1600/IMG_2541.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj4832FUXktWmfpOEjpWXexX-iN_53WvW0KUib10O7y3NeZX_EpkimQFGfhZUv54jjHcy3FeAOuEUyV728nvLhBTM0qiHBPQOekbziL4_AOORqTA9itOzD-f5IXvfJ6FX1YLajuhvtdDQqa/s200/IMG_2541.jpeg" width="186" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Lisa, age 19</td></tr>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Perhaps this was the beginning. In 1976, I, a 19-year-old girl from Waterloo, NY, influenced by the TV Miniseries <i>Roots</i> and the national desire for genealogy that it stimulated, walked into the Genealogy Room on the 2nd floor of Rundel Library in downtown Rochester. I was shy, and I didn’t know how to begin. There, by the window, was a busy librarian, with books and papers cradled in one arm, while the other straightened out materials on a table. </span></span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Rundel Library</td></tr>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>I approached her and said in a tiny, high-pitched voice, “Umm, I’m just starting a genealogy, can you help me?” She did not look at me or interrupt her work, but quickly said, “Last name?” </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>I answered, my voice even higher-pitched, because I was unsure how to say it, “Dossenbach?” She stopped immediately, looked directly at me, “The conductor?” </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;"> I replied, “I think.” </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Yes, perhaps that was the beginning.</span></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgrrH5hMdR-K0oey5WkxgUWIWRftaa4DV09qXtU7ZAHJ_i4-n1UobTFyrhZnqPIZW30h5YBsXCWvUuvXmmn9sm3IpiZw3PU_Q1EVmp_poLAZSdJNsyau0MsCzu8mGl8M-sMWcU9VWNt8Zpd/s1600/IMG_7955.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgrrH5hMdR-K0oey5WkxgUWIWRftaa4DV09qXtU7ZAHJ_i4-n1UobTFyrhZnqPIZW30h5YBsXCWvUuvXmmn9sm3IpiZw3PU_Q1EVmp_poLAZSdJNsyau0MsCzu8mGl8M-sMWcU9VWNt8Zpd/s320/IMG_7955.jpeg" width="208" /></a><span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Over the next year, I collected genealogical info, and got a clear idea of what the librarian meant by her question, “The conductor?” Theodore and Hermann and Otto Dossenbach, my great-grandfather and great-granduncles, were famous musicians and conductors in late 19th and early 20th century Rochester. There were two <i>Rochester History </i>papers about them; there were photos and orchestra programs at Rundel. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>But after a short time, all this got pushed aside as I plunged into living life, with all its surges and ups and downs. Throughout the ensuing years, while I was married and raised two children, I studied biographies and storytelling, got some college degrees, wrote my Master’s Thesis on writing autobiographically, taught English and Literature at area colleges. And all along, while my mother told stories about what she remembered of the early days in Rochester, I wrote and wrote and wrote, about this and about that, in notebooks and stray pages. I often thought to myself that I should get back to the genealogy. But between my initial foray into the Rochester Library when I was 19 and the summer of 2013 when I finally decided to return to my Dossenbachs, 36 years flew by. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>So maybe that moment in 1976 was not the beginning. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Maybe the beginning was that summer in 2013, when I sold my house, left my job, took the small inheritance I’d gotten from my mother who had passed away the previous year, and moved to Rochester, to my great-grandmother Nellie Dossenbach’s house, and began my book about the Dossenbachs. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>After first arriving, I allowed myself, and my dogs, to wander all through Rochester, walking and walking and walking, staring in awe at the houses where they lived and the streets where they walked, and photographing and documenting my own experience of this glorious city. I fell in love with the City of Rochester. </span></span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhQi_JfEJiZzSWMatYUsqSn5AvRIml7Ce9Gjrzss6KkcPYDYYGtoABzeLDC0OphGo7bn6wZFgKqmeRsupxnv-In6Uy78G3wZrK7TzT-QShOuHcazC_cVRtaiL9QdN1_yv0L2JS8IdEeFZ9-/s1600/IMG_0564.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhQi_JfEJiZzSWMatYUsqSn5AvRIml7Ce9Gjrzss6KkcPYDYYGtoABzeLDC0OphGo7bn6wZFgKqmeRsupxnv-In6Uy78G3wZrK7TzT-QShOuHcazC_cVRtaiL9QdN1_yv0L2JS8IdEeFZ9-/s320/IMG_0564.jpeg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">George Eastman Museum</td></tr>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>I visited the George Eastman House and discovered thousands of photos and letters to sift through, and I sat in Mr. Eastman’s living room during the Sunday Musicales and imagined that I was listening to Hermann’s and Theodore’s Quintette, which played there, in Mr. Eastman’s home, for his grand parties and twice-weekly musicales from 1905 - 1919. I visited Rundel Library’s Local History Room again, and this time they had three scrapbooks of Hermann Dossenbach’s, donated by his daughter in 1980. I also visited U of R’s Rush Rhees Library, Eastman Theater, Eastman School of Music, Sibley Library, Damascus Temple, and Mount Hope Cemetery where the Dossenbachs are buried. I bought hundreds of local history books and memoirs at library book sales and flea markets, many of which mentioned my relatives. I joined writing groups and began to consider how to package information/stories for listeners. It was exhilarating and daunting all at the same time. My plan to spend a year on this project jumped to two years, then three, four, five, and now here in my sixth year, I am hoping to finish the book soon. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; -webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(102, 102, 102); color: #666666;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span><span style="font-kerning: none;">Eventually, I realized that the story is not just about my family, the Dossenbachs, but it is a much larger story, about the City of Rochester itself, its growth, its promise, its burgeoning musical scene. The Dossenbachs conducted and played in orchestras and bands in the decades before and after the turn of the 20th century, before most people experienced recorded sound, when music was “live,” and when all events had music. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>They performed in Corinthian Hall, Convention Hall, Lyceum Theater, the Powers Building, Cook’s Opera house, to name just a few. They played their music in the living rooms of the wealthy; they taught Susan B. Anthony’s niece and Emily Sibley-Watson’s son; they were friends with David Hochstein. </span></span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhQ9HpfrpU4RQrd1lqDU6a3a_9ALxbt2zkIuS3hOceaEpT_GYPl7fYOR1ppJl5FXrQadGx8EVP3zcQ8SHmzvpRYj6IVPZZmlS70XE6K-0Bx4k4bBwJujaHNgapQHtn7ueFN-J0nH4B6aRdz/s1600/IMG_2887.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="206" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhQ9HpfrpU4RQrd1lqDU6a3a_9ALxbt2zkIuS3hOceaEpT_GYPl7fYOR1ppJl5FXrQadGx8EVP3zcQ8SHmzvpRYj6IVPZZmlS70XE6K-0Bx4k4bBwJujaHNgapQHtn7ueFN-J0nH4B6aRdz/s320/IMG_2887.jpeg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Dossenbach/Rochester Orchestra<br />Conducted by Hermann Dossenbach</td></tr>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Gosh, they also played in the grand department stores of the times — Sibley, Lindsay & Curr, McCurdy & Norwell’s, Duffy-Powers; and in the grand hotels dotting the shores of Lake Ontario and Irondequoit Bay at Manitou Beach, Grand View, Island Cottage, Ontario Beach Park, Summerville, Windsor Beach, Sea Breeze, and Glen Haven. Rochesterians heard the Dossenbachs in Highland and Maplewood and Genesee Valley Parks, and in street dances where they played on a portable bandstand.</span></span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhxbfzmhJodNgf6aNPQOXbPPICCduA6vVg6RlYCep1NiH8I4fXluOwJLg4H7llwleukexSXyG3wVCOshPTIxxZF5XBblf6O4YtJvy1XGuqAUif6qKK1DPTg4euToXKvnPer-uIBkI_NsH1u/s1600/IMG_3641.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhxbfzmhJodNgf6aNPQOXbPPICCduA6vVg6RlYCep1NiH8I4fXluOwJLg4H7llwleukexSXyG3wVCOshPTIxxZF5XBblf6O4YtJvy1XGuqAUif6qKK1DPTg4euToXKvnPer-uIBkI_NsH1u/s320/IMG_3641.jpeg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The Rochester Park Band<br />Directed by Theodore Dossenbach</td></tr>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>The musical Dossenbachs entertained at the Auto Shows, the Lilac and Song & Light and River Festivals, for the orphans on Orphans Day, at the glorious Rochester Shakespeare Pageant with over 3,000 performers. Throughout the summer and fall, they were in all the parades, celebrating workers, and holidays, mourning those soldiers who would not return from WWI, and then celebrating those who did return. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>The Dossenbachs — my Dossenbachs — provided the soundtrack to people’s lives. Their story is the story of the City of Rochester in those exciting, and turbulent, decades before and after the turn of the twentieth century.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>And it occurs to me: Perhaps the beginning is here, right now, in my mind, with the idea as it gels and forms and becomes more and more clear. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Will this “beginning” keep shifting as I learn more and more? </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Well, to begin a story, the storyteller simple chooses a beginning, determines where to start. Of course, there is, in fact, a beginning long before that beginning, and one before that. It goes on and on. </span></span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiPDNXXVkbVBuGYtU-rXrxa_M4Bl1QAFeFs8nTAWuwhNw3wC_SYjBJEpIwHdJyOTo8K9z2AJorN_AW49cP2jhcopeDINBbyn05h0YUEdK069xvhFRA16E4gxPMgd_AK4_Zng2la3DFLh0bQ/s1600/1870+Suspension+Bridge%252C+Niagara+Falls+NY.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="177" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiPDNXXVkbVBuGYtU-rXrxa_M4Bl1QAFeFs8nTAWuwhNw3wC_SYjBJEpIwHdJyOTo8K9z2AJorN_AW49cP2jhcopeDINBbyn05h0YUEdK069xvhFRA16E4gxPMgd_AK4_Zng2la3DFLh0bQ/s320/1870+Suspension+Bridge%252C+Niagara+Falls+NY.jpeg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Suspension Bridge and Village, Niagara Falls, NY</td></tr>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>But, right now, I’m going to choose this particular beginning. It is the year 1872, and there is a family of German immigrants living in a little cottage at Suspension Bridge, Niagara Falls, NY. They are poor; they are musicians; and, at this very moment where we begin, a little boy named Otto, who is very talented with his violin, is about to be discovered by a music conductor and teacher from the City of Rochester, and the family will then be persuaded to move to Rochester.</span></span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>And the rest is history, and it will be told.</span></span></div>
Lisa Klemanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12341298119853180166noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6071744019041194496.post-3625516770484959992019-03-13T15:45:00.000-07:002019-03-13T15:45:29.153-07:00March 12’s of Yesteryear: Family Legacies and Rough Patches<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: center;">
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<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; white-space: pre;"> </span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-size: large;">Yesterday was March 12th.</span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-size: large;"> </span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-size: large;">But with the relentless movement of time, yesterday is already gone, as are the many March 12’s of yesteryear. </span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-size: large;"> </span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhrs5K451CTdiRXDJ3BdCeV5ShHNda3nFYWXBx5sP3D_SwEERDjShoKYjCTSUmdiv2eyiZrnwJwADmb6_CPdaL8dQHDbXk-hpSvm55_3RQiubg4Yi1LuvnL6Q0lUV4RiLHfH5PhDkeLDn2C/s1600/Screen+Shot+2019-03-13+at+6.31.41+PM.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="752" data-original-width="452" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhrs5K451CTdiRXDJ3BdCeV5ShHNda3nFYWXBx5sP3D_SwEERDjShoKYjCTSUmdiv2eyiZrnwJwADmb6_CPdaL8dQHDbXk-hpSvm55_3RQiubg4Yi1LuvnL6Q0lUV4RiLHfH5PhDkeLDn2C/s200/Screen+Shot+2019-03-13+at+6.31.41+PM.png" width="120" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">33 Rundel Park,<br />Duane Haskell's home </td></tr>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>On one of those March 12th’s, eighty years ago, that is to say, March 12 of 1939, a man named Duane Haskell sat down and wrote a letter. It was a thoughtful letter, kind but firm, from a teacher to a student’s mother.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>The letter was written to my mother’s mother, Adeline Dossenbach Wheeler, about my mother, Melley Wheeler, who was 11 years old at that time. In 1939, Mr. Haskell was a full-time music teacher at East High School, and was also Melley’s private violin teacher.* </span></span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiQfu30-pZ5IGIDME7gEK1QR1eW2mHQXY52dHsQ6C2EntWblJg-6lQjdhWpfxRTbBErXBogiWtWWLCEpY6AElqzpan6iapp-ytyL_wZL7r7ALilSPOw2lPw63eJDfJ3UTAMklzAPQ7N0QiG/s1600/Screen+Shot+2019-03-13+at+6.34.17+PM.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="636" data-original-width="562" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiQfu30-pZ5IGIDME7gEK1QR1eW2mHQXY52dHsQ6C2EntWblJg-6lQjdhWpfxRTbBErXBogiWtWWLCEpY6AElqzpan6iapp-ytyL_wZL7r7ALilSPOw2lPw63eJDfJ3UTAMklzAPQ7N0QiG/s200/Screen+Shot+2019-03-13+at+6.34.17+PM.png" width="176" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Above: East High School<br />Below: Charles Carroll School #46</td></tr>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>The letter suggests that Melley was having a difficult year at the Charles Carroll School #46 (this is verified by a report card from that year), and that her teachers feel she is suffering from nervousness, and that they consider the problem to be enormous. It sounds as if the teachers have advised Adeline that Melley should discontinue her musical studies. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Adeline was worried, and so she consulted Mr. Haskell to seek his advice. He, in turn, wrote her this letter. </span></span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgBDTNZxgO3EvSevo1bykOd_B1IUaUcISyEwkWwHySwmFJNH7tnYi6dYgzcLMJPlLTv8ytZ32jwaeei3AeiY_3O1Ax-37K1NqMEe-lwfgsYn5VkOtofbGMRKXyjM-vzWUWfn-ugS-wcaqfA/s1600/1926+Duane+Haskell%252C+Melley%2527s+violin+teacher.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="616" data-original-width="360" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgBDTNZxgO3EvSevo1bykOd_B1IUaUcISyEwkWwHySwmFJNH7tnYi6dYgzcLMJPlLTv8ytZ32jwaeei3AeiY_3O1Ax-37K1NqMEe-lwfgsYn5VkOtofbGMRKXyjM-vzWUWfn-ugS-wcaqfA/s320/1926+Duane+Haskell%252C+Melley%2527s+violin+teacher.jpeg" width="187" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Duane Haskell in 1926<br /></td></tr>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Mr. Haskell soothingly suggested that the problem was not “nearly as complex or enormous as the people at school have led you to believe.” He advised that Melley should continue with her music, but cut back on her piano, and also stop playing the violin at events outside the home. Mr. Haskell offered the common sense that Melley “will do well to do the things that she enjoys most” and that “with spring at hand, more out-of-doors sports will help.” Furthermore, Mr. Haskell recommended that everyone around Melley should stop the constant discussion of her nervousness, as “she probably worries about it and that is bad for her.” </span></span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhQRL2Z0UhIyTXVOn0agqGP9Ruqa2SSNy5vv9HGAfzlIq3Art23EhB3pbF-672QikRxj3dUOlpZP5rbMH4ao-5DMe-Bpk0F9fVToc4pQpHWyBlgGQJtc4pq1FLmq4bFDIMKKbb25KzNpNOb/s1600/IMG_8565.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1272" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhQRL2Z0UhIyTXVOn0agqGP9Ruqa2SSNy5vv9HGAfzlIq3Art23EhB3pbF-672QikRxj3dUOlpZP5rbMH4ao-5DMe-Bpk0F9fVToc4pQpHWyBlgGQJtc4pq1FLmq4bFDIMKKbb25KzNpNOb/s200/IMG_8565.jpeg" width="158" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Melley Wheeler, early 1940s</td></tr>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>What a relief this must have been for Adeline! </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Often, our current worries are a result of things that happened long ago. To better understand why the possibility of Melley being nervous was especially troublesome to Adeline, especially if the nervousness was connected with her violin and piano studies, we can look to the past. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>In this case, there was definitely a family legacy. Adeline had an uncle, Otto Dossenbach, who was a successful child musical prodigy in Rochester in the 1870s and 1880s. He was known as “Rochester’s Wonderful Boy Violinist,” and he played all over Rochester, throughout New York State, as well as in other states and Canada. </span></span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Otto Dossenbach's Press Notices, 1870s-1880s</td></tr>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Otto was successful, which was certainly a result of his being pushed hard at both his violin studies and also his performances which began when he was 11 years old. By 1889, at just 27 years old, Otto was exhausted; he was suddenly pronounced “insane,” and spent the rest of his life as an inmate in the Rochester State Hospital until his death in 1936. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Would Adeline have been thinking of Uncle Otto when she worried about her daughter Melley? Called “Crazy Otto” by some family members, he was certainly the stuff of family stories. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>My mother remembered that her mother, Adeline, used to visit a relative in the State Hospital, while the kids waited in the car. Perhaps as Melley displayed signs of extreme nervousness, Otto’s story loomed large on Adeline’s mind. </span></span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhDWrAoyULl_37J5UHH-KW2OcrRxmHVWO_rsFkKEOvaW3fTx3Hk7lPHZfF4IL-5Esz_PBT1K8wWSmg4g2K4rxGVAvLncpWy3c6gOz0e2KuASMX0HBIgyklgH56qSIhTLYA91If03Kr2XCm9/s1600/1939+Mom%252C+Barbara%252C+Teddy+as+kids.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="559" data-original-width="327" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhDWrAoyULl_37J5UHH-KW2OcrRxmHVWO_rsFkKEOvaW3fTx3Hk7lPHZfF4IL-5Esz_PBT1K8wWSmg4g2K4rxGVAvLncpWy3c6gOz0e2KuASMX0HBIgyklgH56qSIhTLYA91If03Kr2XCm9/s320/1939+Mom%252C+Barbara%252C+Teddy+as+kids.jpeg" width="187" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">1939 Melley, Theodore, <br />and Barbara Wheeler</td></tr>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Indeed, the past is always close behind, but there was most certainly a very different reason why 11-year-old Melley was having a difficult year. The Wheelers were having problems in 1939 which must have affected all of the children — Melley, her older sister Barbara, and her younger brother Theodore. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>The Wheeler family lived with Adeline’s mother, Nellie Eldridge Dossenbach, ever since Nellie’s husband (Adeline’s father) Theodore had passed away in 1924. In 1939, the year of our letter, Nellie filed suit against her daughter Adeline, attempting to take back the deeds to two properties which she had signed over to her daughter some years earlier. The properties were 28 Upton Park, the family homestead where Nellie had happily lived with her husband and daughter for two decades, and also the cottage at Conesus Lake (899 West Lake Road), which Nellie and Theodore had acquired in about 1904 (and which stayed in the family until 1970). </span></span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Nellie Eldridge Dossenbach<br /></td></tr>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Nellie wanted them back. In 1939, the Wheeler family was now living at 415 Yarmouth Road, in the Browncroft neighborhood, and I suspect that Adeline and her husband Marvin were preparing to sell the homestead of 28 Upton Park. Perhaps this is what spurred Nellie to fight for the properties. It was a nasty fight, which ultimately caused Nellie to move out of the house; the legal drama didn’t end until Nellie’s death, four years later, in 1943. </span></span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjRO_Ye9OiRgluZzLCp3tX1ZGOlVMRmreCqankM1jLvq22IsYWJgCXAN_R-_w8gSKBmWHjv5FDP-Ici-A6HptzvJ1pNrV2z7HlhRSsc2AHmLAXlo55ULXekTEclEDeL3Ml5Aq2SB6EffhJq/s1600/10-25-26-2007+033.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1148" data-original-width="1600" height="143" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjRO_Ye9OiRgluZzLCp3tX1ZGOlVMRmreCqankM1jLvq22IsYWJgCXAN_R-_w8gSKBmWHjv5FDP-Ici-A6HptzvJ1pNrV2z7HlhRSsc2AHmLAXlo55ULXekTEclEDeL3Ml5Aq2SB6EffhJq/s200/10-25-26-2007+033.jpeg" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">415 Yarmouth Road</td></tr>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>The Dossenbachs were well-known in Rochester, and this story hit the papers. Surely, it was humiliating, and, surely, there had been much arguing in the family which led up to it. And, surely, much of this was kept secret from the children (as was the custom then), who sensed trouble and anger and sadness, and didn’t know why. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>All families have rough patches, this is true. Theirs, yours, mine — it’s part of our journey through life. Melley remembered how her grandmother Nellie used to sew the children’s clothing, creating matching dresses for the two girls. How confusing it must have been for the children to see their grandma leave and never come back. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>It is no surprise, then, that Melley’s nervousness spilled into her life at school. But Melley was fortunate to have a teacher on her side, a man who believed in her, and a man who exhibited a great deal of common sense. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>I’ll bet that Mr. Haskell saved Melley that year. </span></span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>What did he write? Well, see for yourself. Here is the letter that Duane Haskell wrote to a little girl’s mother on a March 12th of 1939. Thank you, Mr. Haskell! </span></span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-size: 10px;">Note: the letter, as well as a Report Card from 1939, spells her name “Melly,” but it is, in fact, “Melley,” which is the spelling I use here.</span></div>
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Lisa Klemanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12341298119853180166noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6071744019041194496.post-58723331596016624472019-03-04T08:19:00.000-08:002019-03-04T08:19:31.788-08:00The Rochester Park Band At the Opening of Ellison Park in 1927<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Helvetica; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>On October 1, 1927, the Rochester Park Band played for the Dedication and Opening of Ellison Park. Excited visitors arrived from towns throughout the county. People like Mr. and Mrs. O.L. Shult, and Mr. and Mrs. Frank Ginegawa and their daughter, Freda, all from Webster, joyfully attended that day. </span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">1931 Ellison Park, photographer Charles Zoller, courtesy of GEM</td></tr>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Picnickers spread their lunches on the tables and cooked their meats on the fireplaces, scattered thoughtfully along the banks of Irondequoit Creek. As the smell of burning charcoal wafted through the air, children frolicked, shrieking and laughing on this wonderful Opening Day. Though a threat of rain had hovered the previous week, in fact, the day was splendid, with temperatures in the 70s, the rain waiting to fall a couple of days later. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>At 2:15pm, Hermann Dossenbach, Director, picked up his baton, held it in mid air, hesitated for just a few moments, and then — woosh! — the Rochester Park Band, in their handsome cream-colored suits, commenced with the magnificent sounds of the brass instruments - the cornets, trumpets, trombones, tubas<b> </b>filling the air.</span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgWWgVesotpWzD_pJr75Hkwh4nISKiqpdY0WmT4irESQtdoUAdiBMwx2rYXgdlPPeECkasaoE2PKOKf6QIJbdoP1N3_Ppl_X3snvLU9pQHRSxMu9w_KgDhgFGbma7fGNrY3T4cuPhK5DVD1/s1600/1916-07-02+Opening+Day+at+Durand-Eastman+Park+1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="482" data-original-width="640" height="241" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgWWgVesotpWzD_pJr75Hkwh4nISKiqpdY0WmT4irESQtdoUAdiBMwx2rYXgdlPPeECkasaoE2PKOKf6QIJbdoP1N3_Ppl_X3snvLU9pQHRSxMu9w_KgDhgFGbma7fGNrY3T4cuPhK5DVD1/s320/1916-07-02+Opening+Day+at+Durand-Eastman+Park+1.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">1916 Rochester Park Band at Durand-Eastman Opening Day</td></tr>
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<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Helvetica; text-align: center; white-space: pre;"> </span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Helvetica; text-align: center;">Though we don’t know the actual list of selections for this day’s events, the Park Band may have played a piece from Victor Herbert’s well-loved operetta, </span><i style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Helvetica; text-align: center;">The Wizard of the Nile</i><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Helvetica; text-align: center;">, with its signature phrase, “Am I a wiz?”</span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Helvetica; text-align: center;"> </span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Helvetica; text-align: center;">Or the ever popular “Londonderry Air”</span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Helvetica; text-align: center;"> </span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Helvetica; text-align: center;">with the Ellison Park crowd singing along to the “Oh, Danny boy” lyrics.</span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Helvetica; text-align: center;"> </span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Helvetica; text-align: center;">These pieces had been performed by the Park Band earlier in the year at Ontario Beach and for the Lilac Festival at Highland Park.</span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Helvetica; text-align: center;"> </span><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Rochester Park Band</td></tr>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>The Park Band excelled at presenting a mix of classical and popular tunes, and so they may have serenaded the crowd with the Minuet from Mozart’s <i>Don Juan,</i> and then brought a smile to their audience’s faces as they entertained with, “Sam, the Accordion Man” and “After I Say I’m Sorry” — they played all of these tunes the previous August at a street dance on Alexander Street in Rochester, between South and Mount Hope Avenues. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>The Rochester Park Band, begun in 1904, was famous during the early decades of the twentieth century, and not just in Rochester - they played all over the western part of New York State, in Buffalo’s Delaware Park, and to crowds of 10,000-20,000 people in Syracuse’s Burnet Park, and also in Geneva’s Lakeside Park, where the evening event was lit by hundreds of Japanese <table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjGQ9VxdFGUJTLS8GcOskbPdt2cmyyc-PQof4WXrIV5pC_dc-4An-yt4KptaHnLRcTulhsslpc6XLLnLeXDvMRuwll8M9-HPiA_cdnBYZeUVNx7DqcXioC-3mzkA22jMRd56dYRkwNJkquU/s1600/IMG_3251.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="954" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjGQ9VxdFGUJTLS8GcOskbPdt2cmyyc-PQof4WXrIV5pC_dc-4An-yt4KptaHnLRcTulhsslpc6XLLnLeXDvMRuwll8M9-HPiA_cdnBYZeUVNx7DqcXioC-3mzkA22jMRd56dYRkwNJkquU/s200/IMG_3251.jpeg" width="118" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;">Theodore Dossenbach</span></td></tr>
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lanterns. Theodore Dossenbach, my great-grandfather, was its first director and was loved by all. Handsome and charming, he was often said to be generous with his encores. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>On many Christmas Eves, Theodore and his Park Band, accompanied by Rochester’s Santa Claus (Frank G. Newell) and other dignitaries, drove in trucks (offered for use by the Rochester Stamping Company) throughout the neighborhoods, playing Christmas carols, pausing at Mr. Eastman’s and<b> </b>Mayor Edgerton’s house and others, visiting the Home for the Friendless and and the Rescue Mission and the hospitals, and delivering presents to the special children at St. Mary’s Orphan Asylum. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Theodore continued as Director of the Park Band until his death, too soon at age 53, in 1924, at which point his brother, Hermann, took over. Hermann was quite famous in his own right, having founded and conducted the Rochester Orchestra, a precursor to today’s Rochester Philharmonic; he also co-founded a little school called the DKG Institute of Musical Art, which George Eastman eventually purchased and made into the Eastman School of Music. Both Hermann and Theodore Dossenbach, children of poor German immigrants, were members of the Dossenbach Quartet/Quintet which played at Mr. Eastman’s East Avenue home for his twice-weekly musicales and big parties from 1905-1919. </span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiqGrhepbhfyU7POGsPgEgSaowJ4CMO1YLy8phyphenhyphen2wx7KQGJSgTfs2635hV9uUAfH9S48v53vutxi8S8hvlqOT2K6vHLLTq-m5jbZ9O8SWYdLhLSG10rY5di9DxpgOFOvuG473jGQsNraytL/s1600/1927-10-02+Opening+of+Ellison+Park+2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="479" data-original-width="640" height="149" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiqGrhepbhfyU7POGsPgEgSaowJ4CMO1YLy8phyphenhyphen2wx7KQGJSgTfs2635hV9uUAfH9S48v53vutxi8S8hvlqOT2K6vHLLTq-m5jbZ9O8SWYdLhLSG10rY5di9DxpgOFOvuG473jGQsNraytL/s200/1927-10-02+Opening+of+Ellison+Park+2.jpg" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Ellison Park Opening Day,<br />Albert Stone, courtesy RMSC</td></tr>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>The crowd at Ellison Park, on this magical Opening Day, would have been thrilled to hear the Rochester Park Band! The concert concluded with a rousing rendition of The National Air (The Star Spangled Banner), during which everyone proudly stood together. </span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; text-align: center;">Now buoyed up by the music, they listened to remarks by Frank T. Ellison, donor of the Park Lands - can you imagine the applause given him for </span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">his generosity? Also, Dr. Arthur T. Parker, former state </span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">archaeologist and director of the Rochester Municipal Museum (eventually to become the Rochester Museum and Science Center) gave an address entitled, “The Red Man’s Gateway to the Genesee Country.” </span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;"> </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Historical pageants then dominated the day. The Boy Scouts presented a picture of La Salle’s first visit to Indian Landing in 1669 - and they were able to do this on the exact spot where it occurred all those years ago. Also near the historic Indian Landing, the Girl Scouts demonstrated pioneering skills in three stone fireplaces. </span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi4PdAIkjv2ty9e036fqr7p3_6X07s2eyRNXMeL-knwmkxYlUJqYvm1hVvvLfiKgn8JpLoAjgtvBonUPu3KN6_sOT4EMPQQ3JV_EoHFEX5gGAkE48CBh7uDqbJrQnelqJJMTjomKKT9Uizs/s1600/1929+Zoller+Ellison+Park+Indian+Dedication+.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1148" data-original-width="1298" height="176" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi4PdAIkjv2ty9e036fqr7p3_6X07s2eyRNXMeL-knwmkxYlUJqYvm1hVvvLfiKgn8JpLoAjgtvBonUPu3KN6_sOT4EMPQQ3JV_EoHFEX5gGAkE48CBh7uDqbJrQnelqJJMTjomKKT9Uizs/s200/1929+Zoller+Ellison+Park+Indian+Dedication+.jpeg" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Chief Freeman Johnson,<br />Photographer Charles Zoller, courtesy GEM</td></tr>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>The Seneca Indians, members of the Tonawanda Reservation, and descendants of the Seneca Iroquois, who once owned all of the Genesee country, proudly took part in the dedication ceremonies. Chief Freeman Johnson was there, as well as his great-aunt </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Go-wat-ha (Nancy Black Squirrel), who was 110 years old. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>It was a great day, to be sure. It had been well-advertised in all the surrounding papers, such as Fairport’s <i>Herald-Mail</i>, the <i>Medina Daily Journal</i>, Rochester’s <i>The Daily Record </i>(covering “Law, Real Estate, Finance and General Intelligence”) and <i>The Democrat and Chronicle</i>, <i>The Troy Times</i>, the <i>Niagara Falls Gazette</i>, and also in the Long Island <i>Nassau Daily Review</i> (even though it was printed a week after the event). </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Next time you visit Ellison Park, think back to this event of the past. As you walk the nature trails, remember Frank Ellison, whose generosity we benefit from to this very day. And, in your imagination, hear the magnificent music of the Rochester Park Band and let their proud strains lift you higher, and then step taller and appreciate all that we have had and still have. </span></div>
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Lisa Klemanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12341298119853180166noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6071744019041194496.post-32060758476225855942019-03-02T05:56:00.000-08:002019-03-02T05:56:43.843-08:00Green Trance: Searching for the Dossenbachs <div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;">Photo Courtesy Polly Smith<br /></span></td></tr>
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<span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">In a Green Trance,</span><span style="font-kerning: none;"></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">I know this —</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>They are here,</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Chattering,</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Clamoring for my attention.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“We are here! See us!</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Find us!” (“Find me!” shouts Nellie.)</span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgdOb0TObA2dS3oRiCpvlgak9iNPoljIuQM2rnZcbU7NreDfh3oezhH67E-ajb9OI9awvyCOk-ldj-Wo6CFDwm-8PteopNLasW-d-aPDeT8YS3C3h0yo8VrNZFKp36sByiYxXUTZ2b_F5Z8/s1600/Screen+Shot+2019-03-02+at+8.37.31+AM.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1258" data-original-width="842" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgdOb0TObA2dS3oRiCpvlgak9iNPoljIuQM2rnZcbU7NreDfh3oezhH67E-ajb9OI9awvyCOk-ldj-Wo6CFDwm-8PteopNLasW-d-aPDeT8YS3C3h0yo8VrNZFKp36sByiYxXUTZ2b_F5Z8/s320/Screen+Shot+2019-03-02+at+8.37.31+AM.png" width="214" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">In the Riverside Blue,</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; text-align: center;">Mind quieted, ready to receive,</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">I walk the shores of Lake Ontario,</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">the paths of the Er-i-e Canal,</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">the banks of the Genesee.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>They whisper to me,</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“We walked here too,</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Long before you.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>We were glorious, you know.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Keep looking, keep searching,</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>we are here with you now.”</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">In the once formal garden on Prince Street</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"> where Hermann taught Emily’s first-born son,</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">On the green grass of Webster’s Forest Lawn,<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;">Photo left courtesy GEM; Photo right courtesy Alma Faroo</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"> Hazel and Elsa and Alma frolic.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">The Song of Summer resounds,</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"> Theodore’s Park Band offering the soundtrack.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">And I walk - in a Green Trance. </span></div>
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Lisa Klemanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12341298119853180166noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6071744019041194496.post-75360945164704979032019-02-12T05:34:00.000-08:002019-02-12T05:34:42.869-08:00My Last Day with Elizabeth Brayer<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Helvetica; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">[NOTE:</span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;"> </span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">Occasionally, I will write about my research experiences — this is a personal reminiscence</span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>It was Thursday, October 26th, 2017, my second day that week to work for Elizabeth (Betsy) Brayer, helping her with her current writing, and organizing her historical archives. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Betsy was an accomplished and successful Rochester writer and historian, with a long list of published books, pamphlets, newspaper articles, and essays, including: <i>150 Years Young: The Story of the Friendly Home; East Avenue Memories; The Eastman Theatre: Fulfilling George Eastman’s Dream; Leading the Way: Eastman and Oral Health; MAGnum Opus, The Story of the Memorial Art Gallery; Margaret Woodbury Strong and the Origin of the Strong Museum; Of Town & the River: A Rochester Guide </i>(with Jean France)<i>; Our Spirit Shows; A Story of the Chatterbox; The Story of the Genesee Valley Club; The Warner Legacy in Western New York; </i>many years of <i>Brighton-Pittsford Post </i>feature articles; and last but definitely not least, her mighty tome, <i>George Eastman: A Biography</i>. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>I was excited to see her that morning because she had received the proof copy of her newly-finished booklet, <i>Kodak Girls and Eastman Ladies</i>. She was thrilled, especially with its glossy pages once again showcasing the glory of the Kodak Girl. </span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_w069X2xSRFgyBPIBi8v7GY2wPE8aWILcLHrsx4Ys0t0W1eG4cf7kEaZANnMN0pBQuTU0hvDxfuhFY944G_clly2qAc2a23aznSzR5Edg77q60wKI8O04IpUF31l1EfXpO-u7sR9R-_sr/s1600/IMG_2966.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1150" data-original-width="1600" height="143" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_w069X2xSRFgyBPIBi8v7GY2wPE8aWILcLHrsx4Ys0t0W1eG4cf7kEaZANnMN0pBQuTU0hvDxfuhFY944G_clly2qAc2a23aznSzR5Edg77q60wKI8O04IpUF31l1EfXpO-u7sR9R-_sr/s200/IMG_2966.jpg" width="200" /></a><span style="font-kerning: none;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>When I first met Betsy, early in 2014, I was amazed at the various booklets strewn around her living room, which she was continuously working on: <i>The George Eastman Story; Grande Dames of Rochester; Boomtown Echoes; George Eastman: In His Own Words; Hiram Sibley in Dits, Dots, and Dashes; Fanny Johnston: Kodak Girl Extraordinaire; Mr. Eastman Builds That House; “My Dear Josephine”; Transformative Technologies in Nineteenth Century Rochester; Eight Portraits and a Glass Eye; George Eastman’s Art Collection; Margaret Woodbury Strong: A Doll Who Would Collect Dolls; Memory Art Gallery: In Nine Volumes; On the Go with George Eastman; the George Eastman Calendar; Snapshots of Diversity</i>. </span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhL45xKT-qhpzGBFt5l13JZv65PV5UwSPOYWCclk7bhKLTRNplzq2qKLsTmLPRzW4BwxlYM1C6xwry09TQIMplRvHVql09xWHnObBhxjFxyYr5dyzbBC4PNI_Yz0InkB-spKUcRL53MAj06/s1600/Bio+Cover.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="720" data-original-width="500" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhL45xKT-qhpzGBFt5l13JZv65PV5UwSPOYWCclk7bhKLTRNplzq2qKLsTmLPRzW4BwxlYM1C6xwry09TQIMplRvHVql09xWHnObBhxjFxyYr5dyzbBC4PNI_Yz0InkB-spKUcRL53MAj06/s320/Bio+Cover.jpeg" width="222" /></a><span style="font-kerning: none;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>In that year — 2014, I was still new to Rochester, having come here the previous year to research and write a book on my relatives, the Dossenbachs, who were locally-famous musicians and conductors, and who played for George Eastman’s twice-weekly musicales and parties from 1905-1919. Betsy discussed them in both her Eastman biography and her Eastman Theatre book. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Thus, one of the first things I did after arriving in Rochester was to purchase and read her biography. It was a moving experience. Betsy made George Eastman come alive; she made readers love him, and miss him, a man we never knew. When I finished the book, I wrote to her and, shortly thereafter, we met for coffee and conversation in her living room. Towards the end of our afternoon, I said, “Mrs. Brayer, please, if there’s anything I can do for you, just let me know.” And she quietly replied, “Well, if you could visit with me regularly, I would like that.” Music to my heart! </span></div>
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<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; white-space: pre;"> </span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">And so began our every-two-weeks get-together at her house, where we discussed local history.</span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;"> </span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">I asked questions; she told me stories of people she’d known, funny stories — Betsy had a dry, wry humor. </span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;"> </span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">And Mr. Eastman was always there in spirit — we talked mostly about him, hashing out theories about why he quit school in his teens (was it to help his mother? or simply because he was bored and already driven to accomplish something?), his relationship with Josephine Dickman (was she his lifelong love?), why he didn’t offer Hermann Dossenbach the conductorship of the new orchestra in 1919, what happened when he fired Henry Myrick in 1931, or what led to his fateful decision in March of 1932. </span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;"> </span><span style="font-kerning: none;"></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Truthfully, we loved loving George Eastman together. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>At each of my visits, Betsy asked me to take home one of her booklets, and “look it over,” tell her what I thought, let her know of changes or edits that should be made. I took this to mean “proofreading” and “editing,” which I did, leaving yellow stick-it notes on many of the pages, all of which she ignored — Betsy was by nature a creative person, and was not a fan of the editing and revising phases of writing. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>In fact, Betsy was a much more dedicated writer than anyone else I’ve known. Every morning, after breakfast, she was in her office, writing; every afternoon, after lunch, she was in her office, writing. Every day. </span><br />
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<span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;"> Her life was not easy as she had many health problems, which others might not have overcome, but Betsy didn’t want to give up.</span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;"> </span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">She had stories still to tell, books still to write and share. </span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;"> </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>In 2017, Betsy asked me to work for her, two days per week, to help her with current writing/researching activities, and to prepare her archives for eventual donation to local research libraries/museums. The office that she had used throughout most of her career was upstairs, where she hadn’t been for a few years. But she remembered what was there (if not where it was exactly), so I was able to find stuff for her, files, information, photos she wanted to re-scan. We discussed what she was working on, and searched the internet for new info, or read together from the Rochester books which I had found all around her house and gathered together on her shelves. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>And so there we were on October 26th, with the <i>Kodak Girls and Eastman Ladies</i> booklet finished — a triumph! When I arrived that morning, Betsy was finishing breakfast at the dining room table.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Sitting with Betsy that morning was fun — the air was filled with excitement and enthusiasm. But, like so many other times, the ideas and facts and questions poured out nonstop, and soon I had to rush for a pen and scrap paper, lest I forget anything. We started with a question about an Archer Gibson organ recital at Mr. Eastman’s house in 1918 — did we have the program for that event? This led us to talk about the musicale programs and invitations, how GE often didn’t save them, but that many of them exist here and there in people’s scrapbooks and papers, archived by the area libraries. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>And one thing led to another. Archer Gibson in 1918 led to Hermann Dossenbach (maybe the program was in his scrapbooks or papers at Rush Rhees or Rundel?). Dossenbach led to GE’s organists — George Fisher and Harold Gleason, which, of course led to Marion Gleason and the Gleasons’ divorce.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Next, Betsy asked me to find a photo of Red Cross nurses sitting around the lily pond in Mr. Eastman’s garden. And GE had given a party to celebrate the Red Cross work — maybe there existed somewhere a program for that event. She remembered how Mr. Eastman had coerced the Home For the Friendless (today it is the Friendly Home) to move from their building on East Avenue and Alexander Street because he wanted it for the Red Cross headquarters. I knew my cue, and asked her — “How did he coerce them?” “Well, he simply bought them a new and better building, of course.” Giggling from us. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Upstairs in Betsy’s old office, I found the Archer Gibson file, found the Dossenbach file, found the Red Cross photos, but still had some unanswered questions. And so this gave the opportunity for a favorite scenario. I said to Betsy, “Well, why don’t we check the Index from that wonderful George Eastman biography written by Betsy Brayer — maybe she knows!” Oh, I smile to think of it, Betsy’s beaming face, and how she’d remind me that she had created that index all by herself. “No professional indexer was hired for that job,” she’d proudly say. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Eventually, she asked me to help her with her morning preparations. We were both missing Kay Polis, her longtime assistant and close friend, who was usually here to help her, but was not able to come today. Kay is a treasure; Betsy deeply loved her, and I love her too. Wanting to help Betsy feel at ease with me, I said to her, “Don’t be embarrassed because someday I’ll be older and need someone to help me.” She softly replied, “I hope you have a good friend to do these kinds of thing for you.” </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Humor was never far from Betsy, and so she then told me a story about how she had injured her foot when her kids were younger. Betsy remembered chopping something at the kitchen counter with a sharp knife, but she didn’t like cooking, and was, as always, distracted. The knife jumped out of her hands, she said, to the floor, piercing her foot. “For years afterwards, my daughter would demonstrate the moment to her friends, using a knife and a hunk of cheese — ‘Now mommy was standing over there by the counter, and then the knife jumped into the air, and then landed on her foot,’ using the cheese of course as a stand-in for my foot.” We laughed and laughed about this, and Betsy again reenacted her daughter reenacting that incident from the past. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>I shall always remember the tenderness of the next moments. She sat in front of her dainty, pretty dressing table, with the windows looking out to the autumn colors in the backyard, framed by the deep blue bottles on the windowsill, creating a lovely light. I had a sense that the little dressing table was special, and so I asked her about it, and, indeed, she replied that she’d had it since she was ten years old. Betsy was combing her hair, and looking in the mirror, and also out the window. And all of it — Betsy, dressing table, window, outdoors — was a precious scene. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“It’s nearly 4:00pm, isn’t it? You’ve got to go,” she said. And I nodded, and asked, “You’ve already done quite a bit of writing today and must be tired, so will you be going out to the living room to watch some television and go through your mail? Should I bring your ice water out there?” She responded, “No, I’m going into the office, I still have a few things I want to finish.” </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>And so she did. I went upstairs to put the files away and noted that there were several sorting projects which I longed to finish — piles of her <i>Brighton-Pittsford Post</i> articles; black and white photos with a note, “For Betsy to identify”; binders of historical pictures to check for doubles and reorganize; and the folders of past talks and honors and writings and correspondence which I’d been placing into a chronology, in an effort to see the whole of Betsy’s career and accomplishments. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Downstairs, I brought her water, with lemon, into her office. And she said she didn’t need anything else. I said, “well, okay, I’ll see you next Monday then.” I made some kind of a little joke, which I can’t remember now, and I heard her giggling as I gathered my things and left. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>This was the last day I saw Betsy, for she passed away soon afterwards. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>It was a good day — a great day in fact — and one which I shall always remember. </span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi4ye4_4OglgA7Q1LbgXilOqc04nwSibHrfVH_jnYyAWoZ-5Sfluhhn05SLXU5SFkaelK5de4tzmlpkifBqgGbBFgNCTJAxTSBJszN8DHWBj0avluDdCsSNRe0_-pvkRAUWfydviBjwCe7t/s1600/2017-08-08+Betsy+and+Lisa+%2528photo+by+Sarah+Brayer%2529+.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1196" data-original-width="1600" height="239" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi4ye4_4OglgA7Q1LbgXilOqc04nwSibHrfVH_jnYyAWoZ-5Sfluhhn05SLXU5SFkaelK5de4tzmlpkifBqgGbBFgNCTJAxTSBJszN8DHWBj0avluDdCsSNRe0_-pvkRAUWfydviBjwCe7t/s320/2017-08-08+Betsy+and+Lisa+%2528photo+by+Sarah+Brayer%2529+.jpeg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Betsy Brayer and Lisa Kleman in 2017 (Photo by Sarah Brayer)</td></tr>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>I am honored to have been able to call Elizabeth Brayer my friend — Betsy, who will be much missed by all. </span><br />
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Rest in peace, lovely lady — well done! </span></div>
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Lisa Klemanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12341298119853180166noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6071744019041194496.post-50387493389815105082019-01-09T06:18:00.000-08:002019-01-09T06:20:45.372-08:00Moving to Rochester in 2013<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhHISgxv4s80Ln6M-COU6WYI0pJns8qOMQtI-oxTkMGIgPiJ7qqdr61ngc2thTl5yGln4vSd36WE6lso0y8E-5gUPQlbBYbceLr_Ykn55UjMn6pXyoEMFUYahHkcuM3yQ6Nds23JdVpaJEM/s1600/IMG_2727.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1133" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhHISgxv4s80Ln6M-COU6WYI0pJns8qOMQtI-oxTkMGIgPiJ7qqdr61ngc2thTl5yGln4vSd36WE6lso0y8E-5gUPQlbBYbceLr_Ykn55UjMn6pXyoEMFUYahHkcuM3yQ6Nds23JdVpaJEM/s320/IMG_2727.jpeg" width="226" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Nellie Eldridge Dossenbach<br />
(Photo courtesy Lynn Charles)</td></tr>
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<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; white-space: pre;"> </span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">My great-grandmother, Nellie Eldridge Dossenbach, takes credit for bringing me to Rochester.</span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;"> </span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">As well she should.</span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;"></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>It was five and a half years ago, on a hot summer day, in July of 2013. I was 55 years old, the age when one is ready for a change, a new lease in life, as they say, a fresh start. I had been teaching English at Assumption College in Worcester, Massachusetts, for nearly twenty years, and now I wanted to write something, something that others will want to read. And then it hit me. The Big Idea. It hit me. And I said out loud, “You dope! You need to go to Rochester!”</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>It was an instant realization. How right this was. I would move to Rochester, New York, where I would research and eventually write a book about my relatives, the Dossenbachs, who had lived there, who had been locally famous, but whose names had fallen out of current memory.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>I wanted to walk where they walked, see what they saw.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Two weeks later, I was off, once more driving the 6-hour stretch of Massachusetts Turnpike and New York Thruway that I’d driven twice-yearly, for 35 years, to visit my parents (in Waterloo, New York, 45 minutes from Rochester), and that I’d thought was behind me, both parents having passed away. But this time I sped past the Waterloo exit, which felt strange and exciting.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Approaching th</span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">e city of Rochester, on 490, just passing the Goodman Street Exit, suddenly the skies grew dark, the rain poured heavily, and lightning flashed directly ahead. It was magnificent and other-worldly. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Everything felt Big. And Significant.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>And then, almost as soon as the storm began, it ended, and the late afternoon revealed itself as sunny and vibrant, with shiny roads and sidewalks and signs.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>The next day, and it was time to find an apartment. I had five addresses to look at — three potential apartments and two historical addresses where my great-grandparents had once lived.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>I looked at the first two apartments, wasn’t sure, they weren’t quite right. But the third one, well, this one had sounded the best, but I couldn’t find it. Annoyed. I had the number wrong, or perhaps the street. What to do? </span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiTVpbod3SuJ_8mgp_qGvhdn7G_lPyGeXqZCQ0Ay2q3ZOga1lcuNB5o6-XyrYUHzgKz6ZT_7_UjKpri-oK_p0R68Ocg929WNCDq0cUsX4zBzzC2Mw7iHHQ5Ky6fDt3cwI8yvkI_WeIKaj14/s1600/IMG_0594.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1200" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiTVpbod3SuJ_8mgp_qGvhdn7G_lPyGeXqZCQ0Ay2q3ZOga1lcuNB5o6-XyrYUHzgKz6ZT_7_UjKpri-oK_p0R68Ocg929WNCDq0cUsX4zBzzC2Mw7iHHQ5Ky6fDt3cwI8yvkI_WeIKaj14/s320/IMG_0594.jpeg" width="240" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">9 Rowley Street -- the photo I took on that<br />
July 2013 day</td></tr>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Move on. So I looked for the two historical addresses. First was 28 Upton Park, the Theodore and Nellie Dossenbach homestead for the first two decades of the 20th century. Theodore, Nellie’s husband, my great-grandfather, had founded the Rochester Park Band in 1904, but had died in 1924, at the prime of his career, leaving Nellie widowed. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>And then the second address — 9 Rowley Street, where Nellie Dossenbach had gone to live in the late 1930s and early 1940s, after she quarreled with her daughter, my grandmother, Adeline, and moved out of Adeline’s home. 9 Rowley Street was still there, an unaltered, pretty, bright yellow house, with a wide front porch on a tree-lined street. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>I gazed at these places. Took photos. Ooh’ed and aah’ed, imagined the Dossenbachs there, walking out the front door and up the sidewalk. And then, not knowing what else to do, I went back to the hotel room to find the correct address on Craigslist for that third apartment. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Pulling out the printed listing, looking closely to get it right, it said, 9 Rowley Street.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>What? It can’t be. I peered more closely. It couldn’t be. That was Nellie’s house, the house I had just looked at. I verified the printed City Directory from 1942, which showed that 9 Rowley Street was where Nellie had lived. This couldn’t be! </span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgYoOPkd_SxJdfYXu3N9hrKMCcgF_VZN43Go5_pbsNE0_kL53gBxg5FuS-ZgDZtZsTZID1vAcyn1VC5Oh0huZ_3HZrN7X2LtKjdfAfwRrcCdhWtOuiE5m046k7P5UL7U0Z4iZ4gdHzQZ0Ai/s1600/1942+Nellie+at+9+Rowley+.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="95" data-original-width="1600" height="18" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgYoOPkd_SxJdfYXu3N9hrKMCcgF_VZN43Go5_pbsNE0_kL53gBxg5FuS-ZgDZtZsTZID1vAcyn1VC5Oh0huZ_3HZrN7X2LtKjdfAfwRrcCdhWtOuiE5m046k7P5UL7U0Z4iZ4gdHzQZ0Ai/s320/1942+Nellie+at+9+Rowley+.jpeg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">1942 Rochester City Directory</td></tr>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>But it was. I called the landlord. And then I remember the next scene as if in slow motion — he and I walking up the driveway to see the back apartment, he talking about the private back porch and my two parking spots, me wide-eyed and mumbling something about this being my great-grandmother’s house.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Slow motion. We stand on the back steps. He inserts the key into the lock and opens the door which enters into the kitchen, with a view into the living room. And it was exactly — exactly! — as how I’d already pictured my new place. Golden hardwood floors, white walls with architectural details, windows with lace curtains.</span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi5g5uGKipH1sMaDaYQFPAs9B8hGbxdLD4MlSDe8vloVHsqDu-k0pqXhQjX8F7rNCeYQkJx09przcwPUuaKv9J2gWVKNwmp1xr1dqkgrWTynHBLirHl3JPvOjf4uO1dca_Mx79oMUnUWj0B/s1600/IMG_0809.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1200" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi5g5uGKipH1sMaDaYQFPAs9B8hGbxdLD4MlSDe8vloVHsqDu-k0pqXhQjX8F7rNCeYQkJx09przcwPUuaKv9J2gWVKNwmp1xr1dqkgrWTynHBLirHl3JPvOjf4uO1dca_Mx79oMUnUWj0B/s320/IMG_0809.jpeg" width="240" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">9 Rowley Street -- The view from the back door,<br />
(of course, after I'd moved in)</td></tr>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>In a daze, I took the apartment. And this is how I came to live where Nellie had once lived, over 70 years earlier.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Of course, Nellie takes credit for bringing me here. As well she should. She, who had more to fear than the others from how the story would be told. </span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgNDBIGqxIiuYToFfmnWiohlrtiwBkx40JFYit8RtjMSDy0RSh6TJcFYHv-NJjiUsf6UDkRXorbSH58QEkCqugy1-vBIrRs6GaJtz2bB8y8wa1-Br5xfrc6uNCZgRfK59GEtILdnQDCH_Aw/s1600/IMG_7344.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1046" data-original-width="1600" height="209" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgNDBIGqxIiuYToFfmnWiohlrtiwBkx40JFYit8RtjMSDy0RSh6TJcFYHv-NJjiUsf6UDkRXorbSH58QEkCqugy1-vBIrRs6GaJtz2bB8y8wa1-Br5xfrc6uNCZgRfK59GEtILdnQDCH_Aw/s320/IMG_7344.jpeg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">9 Rowley Street - Lace curtains in the living room</td></tr>
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Lisa Klemanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12341298119853180166noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6071744019041194496.post-45984845766776535132019-01-02T08:42:00.000-08:002019-01-02T08:44:24.589-08:00New Year’s Eves of Yesteryear<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><b>NOTE: </b>As you begin reading, click on this Youtube link and listen to Tchaikovsky’s “Andante Cantabile,” which will be referred to later in the piece. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lDQuWlz37iw" target="_blank">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lDQuWlz37iw</a></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><b>On with the dance! </b></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><b>let joy be unconfined; </b></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><b>no sleep ‘till morn, </b></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><b>when Youth and Pleasure meet</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><b>To chase the Glowing Hours </b></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><b>with Flying feet.</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><b><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span> — Byron</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>In the late 19th century, and on into the early decades of the 20th, Hermann Dossenbach was a musician and conductor in Rochester, New York. He is often credited with establishing the musical foundation in Rochester which led to the founding of the Eastman School of Music. </span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhiij4IPQQP_mrW3jqGXwPoWBz5L8VYfyoMDJW4-yv9vf8rmCYd6nJzVY_e39_R-vu94NYdbZqgIIxvgxzNwhhtUs3aPJ0ZLqy0qdYYNjlHE0viDfI9-Kjs3iAn41n_D0MdDADGx9n3IWA5/s1600/Polly+photo+-+Hermann+and+Daisy.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1146" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhiij4IPQQP_mrW3jqGXwPoWBz5L8VYfyoMDJW4-yv9vf8rmCYd6nJzVY_e39_R-vu94NYdbZqgIIxvgxzNwhhtUs3aPJ0ZLqy0qdYYNjlHE0viDfI9-Kjs3iAn41n_D0MdDADGx9n3IWA5/s200/Polly+photo+-+Hermann+and+Daisy.jpeg" width="143" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Early 1890s<br />Hermann Dossenbach and young wife Daisy Chapman<br />(Photo Courtesy of Polly Smith)</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Hermann is my great-granduncle. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>He was the third son of a musical family of poor German immigrants who had settled in Rochester in 1873. His older brothers had had some success as violinists, and his father, Matthias, had great hopes that Hermann would continue the tradition.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>But Hermann wasn’t terribly interested in the violin, and so when he was still a little boy, his father took him to hear the great conductor Theodore Thomas and his orchestra in Rochester’s old Fitzhugh Hall. Hermann remembered: “Then and there I knew what I wanted to do — I wanted to conduct a symphony orchestra.” (<i>D&C</i> 2/5/1924)</span></div>
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When he reached his 20s, and had become a very good violinist, he began to work towards his dream, and organized a dance orchestra, which played in Rochester and towns beyond.</div>
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<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; white-space: pre;"> </span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">In 1894, to celebrate “the departure of the old and the arrival of the new year,” the Dossenbach Orchestra, along with the Jung-Maennerchor, performed at Germania Hall in Rochester on New Year’s Eve, which was still referred to at that time as “Sylvester Eve” by the Germans and German-Americans. At the stroke of midnight, the bells rang, and then the orchestra “struck up a grand march” and several hundred people danced into the wee hours of the morning. (</span><i style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">D&C</i><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;"> 1/1/1894)</span><span style="font-kerning: none;"></span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi81-ktkRLr6wMPMo3QxjqRF6-F018ltEJ5NTtHVIcSmOLo2DoouweaTJjNJF3rROc6-OzAbafZfQWCAdNg5xKC2dCbybnMWbrkJ444eyjQ3NsE4UTndjgZOUvVSTk6ZKZvwS6gYWMrGTkQ/s1600/Screen+Shot+2019-01-02+at+10.11.07+AM.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="682" data-original-width="1188" height="183" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi81-ktkRLr6wMPMo3QxjqRF6-F018ltEJ5NTtHVIcSmOLo2DoouweaTJjNJF3rROc6-OzAbafZfQWCAdNg5xKC2dCbybnMWbrkJ444eyjQ3NsE4UTndjgZOUvVSTk6ZKZvwS6gYWMrGTkQ/s320/Screen+Shot+2019-01-02+at+10.11.07+AM.png" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">This was possibly the Palmyra Masonic Hall</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>And then three years later, on December 30 of 1898, the “celebrated” Dossenbach Orchestra performed at the Ninth Annual Ball and Reception of the Zenobia Commandery, Knights Templar, in the Masonic Hall in Palmyra. Picture the scene. It was a splendid evening and the hall was “a perfect bower of beauty,” having been decorated by Rochester’s Bickford Decorating Company. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>At 9:00pm, “The sir knights in full regalia” performed their templar drill, and then the orchestra played a “perfectly irresistible deux temps” and “the ball room floor was filled by a swaying, joyous assemblage, all mindful of the dictates of the goddess Terpsichore. From that hour, in the language of Byron, ’twas ‘On with the dance, let joy be unconfined; no sleep ‘till morn, when Youth and Pleasure meet.’” </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Food was served at midnight; then dancing was resumed until nearly 4:00am, at which time the “orchestra wafted over the scene the strains of the old but ever popular ‘Home Sweet Home,’ and the guests realized that the ninth annual ball of the Zenobia Commandery was a treasure of their pleasant recollections.” (<i>D&C</i> 12/31/1898)</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Such were the beginnings of Hermann’s orchestral dream.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Jump ahead a few years and we can see the fruits of his labors. In 1905, Hermann’s Dossenbach Quartette performed earlier in the evening of New Year’s Eve, in the grand living room of Mister George Eastman, the Kodak King of Rochester, at his brand new mansion on East Avenue. They played Tchaikovsky’s “Andante Cantabile” (link above) and Schubert’s “Theme-Variations.”</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Hermann and his musicians continued to entertain for Mr. Eastman for the next fourteen years, and Hermann’s orchestra flourished and was loved by the the good citizens of Rochester, New York, throughout the first four decades of the 20th century. </span></div>
Lisa Klemanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12341298119853180166noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6071744019041194496.post-30362897137584792142017-10-25T07:58:00.000-07:002017-10-25T07:58:30.989-07:00Now and Then -- October 25 <span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> It is a glorious October 25th, in the year of 2017, and we -- all of us now reading this -- are alive! </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> Someday in years hence, when we are no longer here, there just might be someone we don't know reading these words, and remembering us. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> It is a comfort, to be sure, this business of believing in remembrance.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> I woke up this morning with the Musical Dossenbachs on my mind, my great-granduncle Hermann (brother to my great-grandfather Theodore), and their sister Bertha, and of course Otto, the oldest brother, the child performer.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> They weren't so very different from us -- they woke up on various October 25ths, and felt the crispness of Fall and noticed the brilliant colors, accompanied by the memory of a summer now past.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> In the year of 1878, Otto Dossenbach awoke on October 25, and probably had music on his mind as he was scheduled to perform that night at a grand concert for Utica's St. Elizabeth Hospital, which had been founded only 12 years earlier, in 1866. It was the first hospital in Oneida County. and so they were trying to do something new and important and bold.</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiDXAl4Uus-NMVi07ujiq21bLtfdl6B11rh8HRAJCVa19Cchj4lquoaRusbfeRMiG1zTf876waTnHyinmvIasidwEVmjIU_g440QG6lyfpg-yp_Kbpj7z8RXQ9HEECBQMF3PwRCjw17w5y0/s1600/Screen+Shot+2017-10-25+at+10.16.47+AM.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><img border="0" data-original-height="864" data-original-width="776" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiDXAl4Uus-NMVi07ujiq21bLtfdl6B11rh8HRAJCVa19Cchj4lquoaRusbfeRMiG1zTf876waTnHyinmvIasidwEVmjIU_g440QG6lyfpg-yp_Kbpj7z8RXQ9HEECBQMF3PwRCjw17w5y0/s320/Screen+Shot+2017-10-25+at+10.16.47+AM.png" width="287" /></span></a><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> After paying 35 cents for their ticket, over 1000 people attended this charity performance at St John's Church, a magnificent building which still stands today.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> Concertgoers heard Irish melodies and a cornet solo and a flute solo. But most exciting was the performance of the Utica Philharmonics orchestra, led by the youthful Otto Dossenbach.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> In 1878, Otto was 18 years old. He was known as "Rochester's wonderful boy violinist," and for the previous 5 years, he had been touring all over New York State and also Indianapolis, Cincinnati, and St Louis.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> The previous August, he had become the leader of the Utica Philharmonics orchestra, and on this night, they "surprised even the most enthusiastic admirers." "The Philharmonics never did better than on this occasion, and they give promise of still better efforts."</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> But it was Otto himself who stole the show. "The large audience had quite a revelation in Otto Dossenbach's remarkable violin solos. He gave one of Mozart's souvenirs, and received the heartiest applause of the evening. This was acknowledged by the Carnival of Venice, and still his hearers were not content, so another admirably executed air was given in fine style. <b>There was some peculiar charm in his instrument last evening</b>, and the young gentleman never handled his bow with such good effect. Utica is proud to claim Otto Dossenbach as one of its citizens and the leader of its best orchestra."</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> Otto would spend a few years in Utica, and then tour again until his career was tragically cut short in 1889, but that's another story.</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJXQ34BXcganiTE-jfqqhGVHA6GCHlFO0oIEOXANBTRPS3-QBKBgHdPj2TBwnHz1un6PwYE26uLwDkRJcDKcRRJXvyQOwCRmc91ZpZukv_yVLTJbcQ-zM7z3I6bdyGHwqHFGB-4x6pBOwC/s1600/Screen+Shot+2017-10-25+at+9.24.05+AM.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><img border="0" data-original-height="500" data-original-width="778" height="205" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJXQ34BXcganiTE-jfqqhGVHA6GCHlFO0oIEOXANBTRPS3-QBKBgHdPj2TBwnHz1un6PwYE26uLwDkRJcDKcRRJXvyQOwCRmc91ZpZukv_yVLTJbcQ-zM7z3I6bdyGHwqHFGB-4x6pBOwC/s320/Screen+Shot+2017-10-25+at+9.24.05+AM.png" width="320" /></span></a><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> Moving ahead in time, to the year of 1907, Otto's youngest sister Bertha celebrated a friend's birthday in Churchille on October 25th. The friend was given a new piano for her birthday present. Pianos were popular back then. It was common for friends and family to play music together, and sing together, in their parlors, as this was a time before recorded music (the phonograph was still new and not everyone had one) or radio or television<span id="goog_1042199159"></span><span id="goog_1042199160"></span>. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> Keeping up with the relentless forward movement of time, in 1943, Otto's younger brother and Bertha's older brother, Hermann, directed the Damascus Temple Band on October 25 -- it was Shrine night and the circus was in town! </span><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A Shrine Circus Ad from the 1936 book "<i>What's New" in Damascus Temple</i></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> Tonight's performance was solely for the orphans and the underprivileged children, who were the first to witness the "daring aerial feats" and the wild animals, and "to eat to their hearts' content of peanuts and popcorn, and fluffy pink candy." Their hearts' content! What a beautiful sentiment. </span><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Damascus Shrine Band in Atlanta in 1936 from <i>"What's New" in Damascus Temple </i></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> <b>OCTOBER 25 -- always a grand and glorious day. </b></span></div>
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<br />Lisa Klemanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12341298119853180166noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6071744019041194496.post-25806107016947607062017-06-01T13:28:00.000-07:002017-06-01T13:28:44.190-07:00Postcard History: Living in an Online World <div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Helvetica; line-height: normal; min-height: 13px;">
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small;">The table today</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Flesh and blood, I sit now at my kitchen table. It is a round, oak table, with a center pedestal — I call it an “old farmer’s table,” but I don’t know if that’s true; perhaps I’m making it up. What I do know is that this was my mother’s table, rescued from a friend’s cellar and then lovingly refinished. This is the same table where I sat as a child and teenager in the 1960s/70s, where we all ate dinner, my sisters and brothers and I, my mother and father. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Where sometimes after dinner we laughed and wadded up napkins and threw them into each other’s water glasses. </span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small;">1990s - My daughter at the table<br />in the house where I grew up in<br />Waterloo, NY</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">It is a scene clear in my mind, replayed over and over again. And, once upon a time, it happened — we were there, alive, eating potato salad, and throwing our napkins, while my mom laughed and screeched, “Stop it! Stop it!” Poor mother — of course, she was the one who had to clean up the mess afterwards. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">That scene is clear in my mind, but it is, in fact, nearly gone, not memorialized in a photo or video or audio. When my brothers and sisters and I pass away, that family scene will be totally gone from this world. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Except that I’ve written about it. My words will bring back the scene, recreated in the minds of readers, who will blend my story with their own memories of their own family scenes. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">In writing about it, I’ve created an object, a thing, an artifact, which will, hopefully, last over some time period. Like a photo, or newspaper, or a tape recording. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">In my first blog post, I wrote about an experience with a particular artifact — a century-old postcard which preserved the words and experience of a young woman in her 20s whose mother was dying. Being a curious human, I then looked for other artifacts — in this case, historical documents — which could tell me more about this woman and her mother. And so I discovered mother Rose and daughter Nina. </span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small;">Nina in 1991, and the postcard in 1909 </span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Nina and Rose could probably never imagine our world today in which there are not only material artifacts, but virtual ones as well. We live in an online world, and it is both strange and wonderful. </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">In an online world, we can connect with people over time and distance.</span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;"> </span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">One strange and wonderful result of my blog post was that I connected with living relatives of Nina — Tim and Steve (the grandsons of Nina’s brother).</span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;"> </span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">And, remarkably, Tim provided a link to an audio recording of my postcard-writer, Nina. </span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;"> </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Connecting over time with Nina via postcard. Connecting over distance with Tim via email and internet. And then, via a partnership of past and present, listening to Nina’s actual voice. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Nina’s voice was firm, clear, and sometimes insistent, giving emphasis to her important words and sentiments. Sweet too, and loving. And nostalgic - when she remembers herself as a “little 9 year old girl,” she giggles and we can almost hear that little girl in her. And, while I can’t see her while she’s speaking, I know she’s smiling because I can hear it in her voice. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Nina spoke of young people just starting out in their lives, who are going to “face a world which is so different from the life that they were used to when they were living at home with their family.” </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">She offered advice: “Keep a diary from the time they’re young. I think it would be good if parents would encourage the children to do that. I remember when I was young, I think I was, well, I was about 9 years old, and my brother Leigh was 6 years older. And that Christmas, Father brought each of us a diary. And mine didn’t have, oh, ‘bout, maybe a couple inches of writing space, not very much room, but that was enough for a little 9 year old girl. And I kept it for quite a while, and wrote every day, or if I’d forget, I’d catch up and remember for a day or two if I got behind.” </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Leave artifacts behind! she’s telling us. I think Nina would love to know that her postcard, which she probably had forgotten about fairly soon after it was written, lasted through time, and was still being read and discovered. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">I felt as if Nina was speaking to me when she said, “Well, I hope that you can visualize me, here, sittin’ in my room . . . and having a cup of coffee and cookies. But I’ll be out there pretty soon and takin’ my place with the rest of ‘em. And I guess it’s time for me to say goodbye, and I hope I see you sometime.”</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">She then remarked to Tim and his sister (both who interviewed her shortly before she passed away): “And I’m so glad that you could get to see your oldest as often as you do. You’ve got a wonderful family and I love every one of them.”</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">I thought about my family, the family I’ve known in real life, and the family from the past who I’ve researched and come to know. It’s true, I love each and every one of them, who made and make their mark, who uttered and utter their individual sounds, who left and leave things behind.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">I wonder: Do you visit your “oldest” relative as often as you can? </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">I’d like to close this, my second blog post, with Nina’s simple words, Nina who knew that she would soon leave this world, and who simply said: </span></div>
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Lisa Klemanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12341298119853180166noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6071744019041194496.post-37667822997505256662017-05-08T09:34:00.002-07:002017-05-08T09:34:45.357-07:00Postcard History: Rose Daley Mudge, gone in 1910, but remembered today<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Helvetica; line-height: normal; text-align: center;">
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>I'm a local historian, and every day I check Ebay for new listings of Rochester, NY. I look for postcards which make the late 19th or early 20th century in Rochester come alive, and documents which might tell me something I didn’t know about my relatives, the Dossenbachs. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>I do this every morning, much like my parents used to read the newspaper every morning. I suppose this is the way I get my news, but my news is often 100 years old. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>This morning, I saw postcards of the Genesee River Brewer’s Dock in 1908, the Hotel Eggleston on Main and Stone Sts in 1916, Edgerton Park in the 1920s, and then this one — Dr. Lee’s Hospital at Lake and Jones Avenues, a sprawling Victorian building which is, unfortunately, no longer there: </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; white-space: pre;"> </span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">As always, I checked the back of the postcard for a postmark, and read this sad writing from Nina in Lima, NY, to her cousin, Mrs. Alice Shaw, in Mansfield, PA. </span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">“Mama is in this hospital recovering from an operation which was performed Saturday. She has a cancer, yes, tumor, just below the abdomen on the liver. It was thought best not to remove it. We may not have mama with us long but hope she can come home in three or four weeks. She is getting along nicely, and is very brave.” </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; line-height: normal;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span><span style="font-kerning: none;">Reading this, I am stopped in my tracks. I feel Nina’s sorrow. I wonder about Mama — how long did she live? </span></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjsPh8kD5j2nqx8D3WrxIBAmDKsJgcrgNQ6KvVo4s3RZ9kvl3oQCSNz_MScvTe1qUf0LvSptrOd9ZNb4IqUM27zMmoRoVSIKlYoKrmNZjb66w_rKoCD4vDCNfE8BqoB_TbkqoRWl0b1Qfgj/s1600/Screen+Shot+2017-05-08+at+8.02.52+AM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="414" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjsPh8kD5j2nqx8D3WrxIBAmDKsJgcrgNQ6KvVo4s3RZ9kvl3oQCSNz_MScvTe1qUf0LvSptrOd9ZNb4IqUM27zMmoRoVSIKlYoKrmNZjb66w_rKoCD4vDCNfE8BqoB_TbkqoRWl0b1Qfgj/s640/Screen+Shot+2017-05-08+at+8.02.52+AM.png" width="640" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Well, I’m alive in the year 2017, and during the course of my lifetime, I’ve witnessed the growth of this thing called the Internet, offering the opportunity to know things — almost anything. And I love it. I wonder for a bit — should I divert my attention from my Dossenbachs and find out more about Nina and Mama? Is it even possible?</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Over to Ancestry where I look up cousin Alice Shaw in 1909 in Mansfield. Of course, there are many Alice Shaw’s. Eliminate those whose birth dates are incompatible, then click on a possible source, discover her maiden name and then her parents’ names, and then her parents’ siblings. One of these siblings, Alice’s aunts and uncles, is Nina’s mother or father. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>And here’s how one learns a little bit about life in the mid-1800s. Alice’s mother’s oldest brother, Wilford, died in 1861, at age 22, of “army fever,” and then the next oldest brother, Charles, died in 1864, at age 13, of tuberculosis. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;"> Those who were alive in the mid-1800s knew much about death. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>And then I see her, Alice’s mother’s sister, Rocelia Aurilla Dailey, born in 1853 and died in 1910 in Lima, NY. And Rocelia has a daughter named Nina. That’s her. That’s Mama. And here she is: </span></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjcDpRZHmT10LZXgIAju48efDP1ifZduzdsIlPkK8CMQ2fegt-eRtZ2DU3c4pFlXQD4jx8Pk5dTq9djVLy0bO0p8MMgjQe2UgWUO2LwcrPU92rmDsueZaWWa88jJJqVNI8N2iSydqmHY1J2/s1600/Screen+Shot+2017-05-08+at+8.28.50+AM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjcDpRZHmT10LZXgIAju48efDP1ifZduzdsIlPkK8CMQ2fegt-eRtZ2DU3c4pFlXQD4jx8Pk5dTq9djVLy0bO0p8MMgjQe2UgWUO2LwcrPU92rmDsueZaWWa88jJJqVNI8N2iSydqmHY1J2/s320/Screen+Shot+2017-05-08+at+8.28.50+AM.png" width="250" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; line-height: normal;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Daughter </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">Nina was born in 1885, so she was only 25 years old when mama died. </span></span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-size: large;">Mama was 57. This is Rose’s home, the Mudge home, near Mansfield, PA. </span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgdKs5l-ykvk8EhxRsoVjOj_iW81JkWR2-18yAT0hch9zoIxWhEbGOpcH0JwCzMw-gmFL9aphE_4WX7TPHFFoCYGqSD0IIhURt7B-5VuZtYhwVZrl6EY45brRNesTEx4V1cyZFQg2s5c0oU/s1600/Screen+Shot+2017-05-08+at+9.08.24+AM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="428" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgdKs5l-ykvk8EhxRsoVjOj_iW81JkWR2-18yAT0hch9zoIxWhEbGOpcH0JwCzMw-gmFL9aphE_4WX7TPHFFoCYGqSD0IIhURt7B-5VuZtYhwVZrl6EY45brRNesTEx4V1cyZFQg2s5c0oU/s640/Screen+Shot+2017-05-08+at+9.08.24+AM.png" width="640" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Rose and her husband, Clint, first lived in Pennsylvania, where they had three children.</span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; line-height: normal;"><b> </b></span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">The 1900 federal census tells us that Clint was a clergyman, but in censuses before and after, Clint is a farmer. By 1900, they are living in Lima, NY, where Rose passed away in 1910, but at some point after she died, Clint returned to Pennsylvania, where he lived a long life, passing away in 1942 at the age of 91. </span><span style="font-kerning: none;"></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; white-space: pre;"> </span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">Rose and Clint’s daughter, Nina — our postcard writer, who knew in 1909, when she was 24 years old, that her mama wouldn’t be around very long —</span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;"> </span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">also lived a long life, passing away in 1993 at the age of 108!</span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;"> </span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">Nina appears not to have had children, but married twice, first to an Englishman, named Raymond Dinan, no apparent record what happened to him, and then to Floyd Sills, who died in 1960.</span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;"> </span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">Nina outlived all of them — her mother, father, two husbands, and two brothers. </span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; white-space: pre;"> </span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">Here is Nina at age 106.</span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;"> </span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">She was blind at this time, but played the piano every day and recited a poem that she had learned at 12 years old.</span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;"> </span></span><span style="font-kerning: none;"></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiZPD2ea5qrVVjKvvHzsUL_PCHenNW2-qENmYrP3OKA_bHjSbQ304-gF0gMkdC30D-OFjTXLAlPsnZ-4Au8z4I9kAzphbwZsqBwXzp5X1zjuLhYtMWk5wjIgRlgu846kQ8-MsO79fIfRXvN/s1600/Screen+Shot+2017-05-08+at+9.46.01+AM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiZPD2ea5qrVVjKvvHzsUL_PCHenNW2-qENmYrP3OKA_bHjSbQ304-gF0gMkdC30D-OFjTXLAlPsnZ-4Au8z4I9kAzphbwZsqBwXzp5X1zjuLhYtMWk5wjIgRlgu846kQ8-MsO79fIfRXvN/s320/Screen+Shot+2017-05-08+at+9.46.01+AM.png" width="273" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; white-space: pre;"> </span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">Why do we care about people we never knew, people who we are not related to?</span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;"> </span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">Why do they matter? </span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;"> </span><span style="font-kerning: none;"></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; white-space: pre;"> </span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">Well, because they wrote words, and those words lasted over time, and came to us. </span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;"> </span><span style="font-kerning: none;"></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; white-space: pre;"> </span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">They were here once, on this very earth, where we are today as we read this brief history of their lives.</span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;"> </span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">Their voices resounded; their tears fell; their lives came and went.</span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;"> </span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">As will mine.</span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;"> </span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">And yours.</span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;"> </span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">And much that we know will also pass.</span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;"> The things we leave behind will tell our stories.</span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;"> </span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">And perhaps someone will think about us someday. </span></span><span style="font-kerning: none;"></span></div>
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Lisa Klemanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12341298119853180166noreply@blogger.com7