NABLOPOMO is almost over. I’ve spent half of it seven time zones to the east and another five days three time zones to the west, so, basically, I haven’t know what time it was all month. Oh – and in part of my head it’s still about…August. I can’t believe how fast this year has gone. We’ve had plenty of ups and downs and I’m sure there will be more, and slowly, over the year and most particularly over this month, I’ve discovered how important this blog has become. It’s not just an outlet or a project, it’s become something of a refuge. I love the freedom to think out loud, to write it all down — sometimes spontaneously with little or no discipline and sometimes with great care. In either case, I’ve reminded myself how much I used to love to write and how glad I am to have returned to the old habit. It’s still a bit premature to bid the big NAB farewell though; we’ve got the 28th, 29th and 30th left. More to come – and then it’ actually the last month of the year. Unbelievable.
Author: Cynthia Samuels
LEAVING SAN FRANCISCO – AND IT’S SAD
I’m in the Red Carpet Room at SFO and very sad. Saying goodbye to my kids is always a wrench – for them, too. I want to write about leaving but it’s the kind of thing that says more about them than I feel fair revealing. Suffice it to say that on this week of Thanksgiving I’m as thankful for them as it’s possible to be.
I was so sad that when we went through security and they took my H20 spray away from me I burst into tears. My sweet husband is on his phone trying to find a way to buy a replacement for me on the web. God bless him — I do, every day. See you in Washington.
I LEFT MY HEART IN SAN FRANCISCO (SORT OF)
This has been a wonderful trip, and by the time this appears I’ll be returning to Washington, the city by the Bay behind us. We’re going back at the end of December so it’s not as sad as sometimes, but when you leave your children it’s bittersweet at best. Most of what we did was more wandering than scenic but here’s a bit of it.
Tour trolley
Balloon gladiator with sword
San Francisco Apple store the Friday after Thanksgiving
It was a mob scene
Apple 2
More when we land. That’s all for now.
REMEMBERING JFK: 44 YEARS AND 2 DAYS AFTER THE KENNEDY ASSASSINATION**
Thanksgiving Day was the 44th anniversary of the assassination of John Kennedy. I didn’t want that to be my holiday post, though, so I’m writing about it today.** I was a senior in high school when our vice-principal, Mr. Hall, a huge scary guy (and football coach) came onto the intercom and announced, his voice breaking, that President Kennedy had been shot, and had died. I remember standing up and just walking out of my creative writing class. No one stopped me – or any of the rest of us. We wandered the halls in tears, then went home, riding the school bus in tears. I remember the next morning, taking the car out and just driving around — running in to my friend Jack Cronin on his drugstore delivery route – and standing on McClellan Drive in his arms as we both wept. I remember, Jewish girl that I was, going to Mass at St. Elizabeth’s Church that Sunday just to be with the people of his faith. I cried for four days.
Years later, working on the TODAY SHOW 20th Anniversary of the funeral, I remember all of it rushing back as we cut tape and realized as adults what a gift Jacqueline Kennedy had given the nation through the dignity and completeness of the funeral. I know that many younger people find the Kennedys a little bit of a joke, thanks partly to the Simpsons, but it’s not possible to describe the grief and trauma of those days. Or the gratitude we all felt for his presence — and the profound nature of the loss.
As a 13-year-old, I had the great good fortune to attend the Kennedy Inauguration, traveling all night on the train with my mom to sit in the stands near the Treasure Building and watch the parade go by. We stood outside the White House at the end of the parade, in the last of the blizzard, and watched him walk into the White House for the first time as president. I’d seen the culmination of all the volunteer hours my 13-year-old self could eke out to go "down town" and stuff envelopes — to respond to the the call to help change the world.
It seems so pathetic now; the loss not only of JFK but of his brother, so beloved by my husband that he’s never been the same since 1968, the loss of Dr. King and Malcolm X, the trauma of Vietnam and all that followed, later of the shooting of John Lennon, even. It seemed that all we’d dreamed about and hoped for – worked for – was gone. How could we have been so romantic – so sure that we could bring change? Believed it again in 1967 and 68 as we worked and marched against the war, for Eugene McCarthy or Bobby Kennedy, for civil rights and for peace, for better education and environmental policies, for rights for women, gay Americans and so much more. Most of us haven’t stopped but the American media obsession with America’s loss of innocence emerges from the pain of those weeks.
Now, to me, even the idea of innocence seems a bit — well — innocent. In our case, innocence came largely from a combination of lack of experience and of knowledge. We didn’t know that we stood for the take over of Central American countries and the support of Franco and Salazar as well as the Marshall Plan and remarkable courage and commitment of World War II. We were too close to the WWII generation to have the historic separation that’s possible today. So was much of the rest of the world: in Europe, South America, Africa — all over the world — the Kennedys had won hearts and minds. It’s almost impossible to imagine in light of our standing in the world today. And that’s part of the grief too. Even though much of the anger at the US outside Iraq is based on a warped version of political correctness, we know the experience of riding from the glory of having "liberated" Europe through the Marshall Plan and the glory of the Kennedy outreach to the rest of the world. Personally and publicly, John Kennedy validated all that we wanted to see in ourselves – all that we wanted ourselves, and our country, to be. And today, despite all the revelations of the years since, 44 years and two days later, that’s still true.
**IN ORDER TO OBSERVE SHABBAT, THIS POST WAS COMPOSED ON NOVEMBER 22ND AND POSTED AUTOMATICALLY ON SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 24TH.
JUST A WORD OR TWO FROM SAN FRANCISCO
It’s almost Shabbos and I have to be quick – I’ll write more tomorrow. This city is so remarkable in its diversity of people, ideas and lifestyles. Our kids thrive in the variety and we’re enjoying seeing them in their element. We got back so late though that that’s all I can write for now. More after Shabbos – tomorrow’s post, like this one, will go up automatically on a timer.
HEY MACY’S – ON THIS THANKSGIVING, THANKS FOR THE MEMORIES
When our kids were little we used to take them, in the freezing Manhattan November, to the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. For the twenty years we lived in New York, from Josh in a carrier on Rick’s back, to Josh on his shoulders and Dan in a Snugli, to the two boys worming their way past the grown-ups to stand in the front of the crowd at 75th and Broadway, to the years we went to our friends’ house overlooking Central Park West on Thanksgiving eve and watched them blow up the balloons — all the years of Columbus Avenue cocoa and popcorn, we were there. When they got older, the boys went together without us; the two of them joining the crowds (the TODAY SHOW just told me that this year there are 3.5 million people along the parade route) with the finesse of New York kids. I cherish those memories; I know they liked it but I don’t think as much as I loved watching them respond to the balloons and the music and the colors and the crowds.
If I weren’t in San Francisco without all our albums I’d scan a photo of the kids waving from the top of a newspaper vending machine, or on their dad’s shoulders, or looking up at the balloons with such magical wonder that I can’t describe it. But we’re here and no such photos inhabit my laptop, so I leave it to your imagination.
We left Manhattan for LA in 1992 and I haven’t been to a Thanksgiving parade since. I don’t even recognize all the balloons. Central Park West belongs to other parents and kids now; nobody who’s only seen it on TV can imagine the excitement, the smells, the noise, the freeeeezing cold and thrill of watching their kids wave to Big Bird and Bob IN PERSON!!!! I’ll always have a deep affection for Macy’s and the gift of that annual celebration of family, joy and, yes, thanks. Nobody can give a gift better than the gift of memories and they certainly have done that. Every single year.
YUP, THAT’S THE GOLDEN GATE BRIDGE AND THAT’S UNION SQUARE AND…
This is far from the prettiest part of this very beautiful city but it’s where we went walking today because it’s near our hotel. I’ll try to have better pix tomorrow. There is certainly lots of beauty here – down by the bay (as Raffi would say), coming in from the airport, atop those remarkable hills — here’s the way up on one of the ones we walked today (not so gorgeous either but for now…. that’s what we’ve got.)
Tomorrow is Thanksgiving – have a wonderful day. I’ll be back before Thursday midnight.
ISN’T THAT THE GOLDEN GATE BRIDGE?
We leave for San Francisco in the morning, I’m not packed, I have a class tonight and an appointment in 15 minutes. So this is a shortie. I’m so excited to see our kids and, as usual, nervous in advance. Last year I wrote a post called "I Don’t Want To Be a Turkey on Thanksgiving." Sort of the same feelings this year; being considerate of adult kids and their autonomy NOT from things you might do on purpose – those I can control. It’s the stuff that can happen by accident and end up being an issue that I always worry about.
If there’s anything I’m thankful for it’s the gift of these two young men who have grown into such fine people. Even from all the way across the country, they bless my days. Makes Thanksgiving mean a whole lot.
NO POWER (TO THE PEOPLE, THE LAPTOP OR THE MICROWAVE)
This is a boring photo – I know. But I’m not about to post a picture of a dead squirrel (as far as I can tell I could get somewhere around 138,000 different ones on Google Image Search) and the squirrel is the star of this story. Here’s how it went:
Since we’re just back from Israel we’re completely screwed up as far as time is concerned. I woke up at 3, watched the Tivos of the last House and the last two Heroes and then decided that since sleep was out of the question, I’d go to the store to get milk and some stuff for breakfast. Wandering toward my car, I saw, on the street next to the curb, a — yes — dead squirrel. Extremely unattractive — and I wondered how he/she had ended up dead outside our nice, harmless little house. I was tired though — this was too hard to consider — so I got into the car and took off.
When I got home, I opened the front door to dusk — all the lights were off. Wouldn’t turn on. Ditto the coffee maker, the oven, the (GASP) computer and everything else. Checks with PEPCO, our local electric company, produced, after very long hold times, the information that, 45 minutes after their first customer call, they were still in the process of dispatching a crew to figure out what was wrong but "hoped to have things back on line by 10."
The hour drew near. Since I had to decide whether to wait it out or decamp to the local coffee house (free wireless) and write from there, I called again. Got even less information than the first time. BUT – and here’s where it gets really interesting — just as I sat down at my desk and looked out the window, a PEPCO truck pulled up right outside. Or squirrel-side.
Former reporter that I am, I tore out the door to see if the PEPCO guy knew what was up. Boy did he. Our entire neighborhood blackout had been caused by that one dead little rodent. Apparently when a squirrel leaps onto, and subsequently is electrocuted by, a transformer – the transformer responds with great sympathy and, basically, dies too.
He fixed it in about ten minutes — grinning as he explained that "this happens all the time." He had just triangulated all the calls reporting the outage and figured out where the problem was. Cool, huh?
Now I’m here in my office talking to you, the lights are on and I even made soup. Not much meaning here but somehow there’s an oddity about the entire event – reminding me as I returned to our own "natural habitat" from afar that going home to the same old house is no guarantee that things will be the same — there or anyplace else.
IF I KNEW THE WAY, I WOULD TAKE YOU HOME: TEL AVIV TO FRANKFURT AND THEN SOME
When you arrive in Israel this ramp is the entrance to your visit — the gateway to Ben Gurion Airport. When you leave, it’s the way out, too. It’s as good a spot as any to start this final travel post. Just a few last looks around.
This is VAT, where you get refunds on Israeli sales taxes if you live outside the country. Some line, huh?
Our trip went through Frankfurt and we had a long layover – so why now lunch downtown? It’s a quick trip from the airport on the train – for five bucks. Which is relevant – because, right in the center of the first square past the station is this statue of — a EURO!!! There was a sculpture of one, too, further down the street.
The city is growing, too. I love this picture — new being built around the old. Right in the middle of town…
This is the last picture. When I was in Berlin I went to the Stasi Museum, built in the old headquarters of the Stasi secret police in East Germany. It’s a hated memory across the country, so this political poster stuck on a mailbox just seemed a way to tie up this trip too. In Europe and here – and probably most other places, the ghosts of past horrors are how we interpret the present.
That’s why it’s so great to travel — and so great to come home, bearing our lessons with us.