Dear Family and Friends,
Once again the holiday season is upon us. Thanksgiving, coming this Thursday, blends to 4 weeks of “Commercial Christmas,” culminating in what to me is the “real” part of Christmas – communion and reunion with family and friends as we celebrate the true spirit and meaning of Christmas.
In July I went to the Rasor (my father’s mother) family reunion where family members were asking for copies of Uncle Clem’s biographical diary, written the first half of this century. I mused aloud that my Christmas letters, written and kept since the 1950’s, were sort of the same thing. Dorothy & Irene, having read recent letters, immediately said, “Yes, please compile them into a collection for our family history.” Because of this, the long version of this epistle may become a bit more detailed than usual. If you become bored with a paragraph, just skip it and move on. For friends near and seen more often, you will get a truncated version of some events complete copy on request – or call & chat!
Last year at this time I faced 1992 with great trepidation – and rightly so. Some very wonderful things have happened this year – but some very dark ones, too. Let’s dispense with the dark side first – and quickly (even though it consumed a major portion of the year.)
First, Bill has ended our relationship (I believe the current vernacular is “He dumped me!”) – and it has been a slow, gut wrenching process, taking one full year. One half of my attic was filled with his ‘stuff’ since 1975, and he just finished moving it all out yesterday. So now all concrete, physical ties are cut. He still has not decided if he wants to or can “be a friend” to me or not, but that’s his problem, not mine. If I have given you the impression that I am sort of an ‘irrelevant, passive bystander’ in this whole soap opera of events orchestrated by Bill and what he wants regardless of what I want or feel, you’ve got the picture. I could fill a book about this year. Actually, I have, as I have written close to 100 pages, some only for myself and some as I have gone thru therapy. I worked with one very expensive psychiatrist for six weeks & that was a real waste of money. Then I worked with a psychologist, trained in Transpersonal Communication, May thru October with much progress and insight. I was in depression, sometimes serious, sometimes intermittent, from last Thanksgiving into September. Though not completely “out of the woods” yet, I feel I have ‘passed over to the the other side, pretty much put the past behind me, and can get on with having control over and organizing my life.
An interesting adjunct to all this has been a plethora of ESP experiences occurring over the past year since last Thanksgiving. That’s a whole story in itself, sometimes interesting and exciting, sometimes unsettling, but (skeptics – including Bill – aside) undeniable and far beyond coincidence. It’s all detailed in my “Therapy Book.”
Concurrent with my depression and problems with Bill, I also had aggravating physical problems with my feet all year. I developed “painful heel syndrome” in my left foot the first of January. The malady is very well named. I walked & limped in pain for 6 months until a cortisone shot in June helped reduce the pain, but it’s still not normal or fully healed. Then in Mid-February a defective, uneven floor at Wendy’s caused me to fall and severely sprain my right ankle. I was on crutches 3 weeks & it took 2 months + to heal. Finally, in August, after walking for 2 weeks over cobblestones in Eastern Europe (another chorus trip), I got a spontaneous stress fracture of the 3rd metatarsal, left foot; walked (limped) on it for 2 weeks before it was diagnosed & then spent another 6 weeks in a Velcro walking cast, 4 weeks of that on crutches again. At least I could take the cast off to sleep and bathe. I am just now beginning to walk fairly normally for the first time in a year. So much for the dark side of my year.
I have spent the year attending social events, performances, singing in Immanuel church choir, traveling to Las Vegas and to Eastern Europe, and am now working on reorganizing my house, including painting & new carpet.
I taught speech courses at University of Cincinnati day school again in Winter & Spring quarters until Governor Voinovich’s slash and burn budget cuts on the Ohio higher education budget ended mine and many other jobs. Fortunately, I still have my UC Evening College speech class each Monday, each quarter, September through June. And last June, before UC ended, I started working (teaching) at a Sylvan Learning Center. I work with 3 students an hour 3 hours from 4-7 P.M. Tues thru Thurs. One big advantage to this job is that it contributes toward the 4 Social Security quarters I was short. I now have 2 covered and 2 more to go.
In March, I drove to Las Vegas in my car, pulling a U-Haul trailer to take some furniture & articles to my cousin Fred Munier. I had wanted to get these things to Las Vegas for 2 or 3 years, but in Aug, ’91, Bill asked if I could arrange a fall or spring trip to Las Vegas – and he would help drive out so he could go out in the desert in cooler weather & spend all day. WONDERFUL! I made arrangements for Nov., but my role in Grapes of Wrath and Bill’s involvement with Judy killed those plans. In Oct. We agreed to postpone the trip until March. By Dec. Bill was vehemently denying he ever agreed to go – let alone admit it was his idea in the first place. By January Judy had “dumped” Bill (I told you this was a soap opera!), he went into depression, & though he definitely did not want to do it, finally very reluctantly agreed to honor his original commitment to help me drive out and back.
Knowing, as Robert Frost says, that way leads on to way, and I may never take this drive again, I savored every viewing moment I could of the long monotonous, but beautifully expansive great plains in Okla. & Texas, as well as the desert and mountains in New Mexico and Arizona. Springtime in the desert was a whole new experience, so different from my many summer visits to those hot, parched lands. Great expanses of distant alluvial plains reflected a soft soothing green palate. Close up, various varieties of delicate desert flowers and green bushes appeared everywhere among the desert rocks & otherwise barren ground. Needless to say, I took many pictures.
The trip was also a psychological life saver for me to be around supportive family who truly love and care for me; so much so I was able to stop cold turkey the ativan pills I was taking for my depression & sleep less nights. OOPS! that was a mistake as I experienced some negative withdrawal side effects for a few days. Of course, I took my 3 books of photography of our Russian trip for Fred and Robin to see. While they were marveling at the pictures and our adventures on this wonderful trip, Robin wished aloud how she would love to go on a trip like this. I said: “Well, go with me this year to Czechoslovakia, Poland, Hungary, & Vienna, Austria for 2 weeks.” “But I can’t sing.” That’s OK, non singers can accompany chorus members. Fred said: “Yes, Robin, go ahead & go.”, and so she did.
Before I get to our trip, I must tell you about Glenn – another very important piece of the puzzle in this year of dark and light experiences. Glenn Coven has been a ‘theater acquaintance’ of mine for over 20 years. We worked together on a number of musical productions, most especially the opera Amahl and the Night Visitors where I did make up, Bill sang Melchior, & Glenn sang the tenor role of Caspar. In those 22 years, Glenn had raised his family, but got divorced 4 years ago. Bill and I recruited Glenn for the Immanual Church opera production of Amahl 2 years ago, then coincidentally he went on the Russian chorus tour, traveling with Bill & me much of the time. In that year we moved from acquaintances to friends. Then, when we did Amahl last year, & Glenn saw how Bill was treating me, he truly rescued me from the situation by being with me and taking me out after every performance. And so we grew to be closer friends – and now companions during this year. Bill turned down a ‘scholarship’ free trip offer for our Eastern Europe choral tour, but Glenn accepted the offer with gleeful unbounded enthusiasm. And so we traveled Europe together and had a truly wonderful time filled with positive experiences. Robin was my roommate but ended up much of the time as companion of other non-singers on the tour as they had extra time to ‘tourist’ while we rehearsed and performed.
Let me say at the outset that the tour was really wonderful, filled with marvelous experiences, but it was completely different from the Russian tour. A hard, fast-paced, tiring tour, it required much grueling walking over rough, ever present cobblestones. My physical & emotional problems since Nov. left me not in the top physical shape I had been for Russia & the trusty Keds oxfords I had worn as ‘tourist shoes’ for years and years were woefully inadequate to buffer my already ‘aching feet’ from the brutal cobblestones. (Hence the stress fracture occurring the last day of the trip.)
We began our tour in Mikolov, Czechoslovakia, a small rural town in Czech grape country. It had an ancient town square with the ever present grotesque plague column (c. 1400-1500 erected to ‘commemorate the plague’). The ever present Castle on the Hill here had been burned and destroyed by the retreating Nazi’s in WWII, but was lovingly rebuilt in exact replica and is now the historical museum for the area. Plague columns, castles and churches on the hill, and accurate restoration of buildings, art, etc. destroyed by the Nazis are themes repeated throughout most of the towns touched by our tour.
The finer subtleties of the English language were often not grasped by the Czechs. We were the very first guests in a charming brand new hotel in Mikolov. Its name was translated to us by our guide, Tomas, as The Horny Crocodile. He laughed with us as we explained the difference between horned and horny. — And a sign in the upstairs hall urged guests to “Please close the door silently. Maybe somebody sleeps around.”
In Bruno, a medium sized industrial town about 70 miles north of Vienna, we spent 2 days with much rehearsing with the Bruno Symphony Orchestra that played for 4 of our 5 concerts. We had to walk everywhere, and Robin, I and 2 others got lost trying to find the rehearsal hall the first time. We got rescued by the police from a seamy part of town and they drove us to the rehearsal hall. We may have been late, but were the only ones to get there with a police escort!
I loved Prague. It gave me the feeling of being back in the middle ages with its multitude of wonderful, unique towers and steeples, and the Charles Bridge. Built 1200-1300, it is still in use though as a pedestrian bridge only. But we also rode in old time trolley cars on tracks to get around town, and on a modern high speed clean subway to get out to our hotel. After a Sunday night concert in Smetana Hall, we got to ‘tourist’ Monday and on Tues. Glenn’s daughter Denise came to Prague from her home in England with her new husband for a belated honeymoon & a wonderful visit with Glenn. I felt privileged to share their joy.
Back on the bus to Olomouc (pronounced Oh’-low-moats’!) for overnight in a medium Small university town with much charm and an interesting town square, town hall & plague column (again). But Wed & Thurs in Poland held the deepest meaning for me. Our visit to Auschwitz concentration camp was a very moving experience. I reverently tried to capture the essence of this monument to horror in my photography. The stark contrast of an elegant formal lunch at our Krakow hotel immediately after our visit rather left me with chills.
Our concert in Krakow took place in St. Mary’s Basilica, an all brick church built 1290–1397. It was home church for the Polish Cardinal who is now Pope John Paul. Krakow and St. Mary’s was my favorite as you can see by my pictures. I had to have 3 pictures so you could see the exterior and interior setting for the glorious 36×42 foot hand carved wood altar. (You also get a “personal postcard” from my packs of print doubles.) Unlike Warsaw & other Polish cities that were practically leveled by WWII, Krakow suffered relatively little war damage. Wawel Cathedral & Castle on the hill (above the town, of course) reflects all that is medieval, Gothic and Baroque in art and architecture. Wawel was the seat of Polish Kings until the govt. moved to Warsaw in 1600’s, but continued as the mausoleum and center for coronation of royalty. 24 hours was not enough time in Poland, but we had to press on to Budapest, Hungary.
The atmosphere of Budapest is more 19th century. Most Romanesque & Gothic structures are newly rebuilt. Genuine “old” buildings are from the 18th & 19th cent, and even the tenor of the city seems more modern Western. Our bus pulled into a modern Mobil Gas station that could just as easily have been outside Chicago as in Gyor, North Central Hungary – food mart and all! That is until you tried to buy something and needed Forints (not dollars or Krona) to do it. But Budapest, too, has its castle and cathedral (where we sang) on the hill in Buda, overlooking the Danube River.
Our trip ended with a concert in Baden, Austria, a spa 15 miles south of Vienna, and a day to see Vienna. but Glenn & I & 2 friends got 1 2/3 days in Vienna because we rented a car & went off from the tour on our own. Was that FUN! Such adventures-like starting to drive up on the pedestrian mall where cars are VERBOTTEN!! We sure got yelled at in German for that. I did all the driving and since driving in Vienna is a lot like driving in New York City, my past experience there was a big help. The library & bookstores have excellent pictorial books on Prague, Budapest & Vienna (tho none on Krakow) that you can get to see and read the usual tourist detail. This tour, so different from Russia, whisked us from small towns to the modern metropolis of Vienna, from the medieval 1200’s through various ages and back again into the almost 21st Century. I would like to go back and savor the medieval flavor of Czechoslovakia and Poland before the fast paced commercialism of the 21st century and our western culture sweeps in to destroy it.
Finally, two exciting events happened this fall: Tall Stacks and an election adventure.’ Cincinnati once again hosted a Tall Stacks festival Oct 15–18 and I attended 3 days. Seventeen river boats, most of them paddle wheelers, converged on our Ohio River shores and took us back 150 years in time. Lunch, dinner, and harbor cruises were sold out weeks in advance & a Civil War encampment was reconstructed in Newport, Kentucky. Seeing all those paddle wheel riverboats docking and traversing the Ohio all at one time was a sight to behold.
I must share my “Dan Quayle election story” with you. I went to Huntington the weekend before the election. On Sat. I heard that at 9:30 AM Sunday, Dan Quayle was going to go to Portsmouth, Ohio – where he had been born & raised – for an election rally & to attend church. That’s exactly the time I wanted to leave Huntington & go home thru Portsmouth. So Sun. morning I drove on to Rt. 52 where it starts at Chesapeake, Ohio for 46 miles of divided, 4 lane highway with many crossroads and a few limited access exchanges. At the first stoplight & crossroad, about 3 miles down the road, there was a state police car guarding the intersection, lights flashing. But all cars were proceeding normally on the highway. A state police car, local police, ambulance – whatever they could round up – was guarding every single crossroad from Huntington to Portsmouth. Then, a few miles down the road near South Point, I caught up with another state police car driving the road. Needless to say by this time I had my cruise control EXACTLY on the 55 mph speed limit, but I still passed the cop & another truck. Then the cop passed me – and we played leap frog until the Ashland Bridge as he sped up, slowed down, & doubled back to check on his crossroad guards. I had a private police escort for 2/3 the distance to Portsmouth. Later, I began to notice that as I passed each crossroad, the police car pulled around to block the entrance to the road – I was now a marked car! At the Ashland bridge I saw a couple of cars ahead of me drive on to the bridge & disappear, and my police escort roared off down the road.
In a few minutes I looked at eastbound traffic across the barrier. There were lots of cars in a normal traffic pattern. Then I looked at my westbound lanes on a long stretch ahead and behind me — and there was no one on this highway! I was completely alone. I got a real ‘twilight zone’ sensation from the isolation and silence. Really Weird!! Why were they keeping everybody else off the highway but me??? But I kept on driving my steady 55 and began to realize that by now I must be the “lead car” to the Dan Quayle motorcade – I with my Clinton/Gore sticker boldly shining out the back window! Approaching more crossroads near Portsmouth, all were now blocked with 3–10 cars held off the highway – but on I drove.
If you know Portsmouth, it’s a long bottleneck town with 2 east/west thru streets, each one way & many stop lights that take 20-25 minutes to get through. But not today! I went from one end to the other in less than 5 minutes, cops pulling cars over and off the road ahead of me & waving me on with gestures to run lights & even speed up. By now I could see the flashing lights of the motorcade behind me – and by the time I reached the other end of town where I continued West, and Quayle turned left down into town, they were less than 500 feet behind me. I’ll never understand how I got the “lead car” privilege – and never got stopped, but it certainly was an eerie, interesting and exciting adventure unfolding and playing out moment by moment before my very eyes & my curious anticipation of the next event.
And so the year is almost ended & I anticipate, on this Thanksgiving eve, a much happier day, shared with Glenn. I also anticipate, by extension, a much happier year to come; certainly one more stable, calm and organized. And in turn, I wish you, too, much happiness, joy and stability in the year to come.