Gail's Blog

This was quite an evening. Sue and I walked our usual four miles along the Spring Lake Boardwalk, while thunderstorms raged out over the ocean, up near north Jersey and New York. When this sight greeted our eyes I pulled out my phone and snapped this picture. I love the guard stand laying on its side right in the middle. This sight says home and peace to me.

A few years ago my daughter Katie and I went down to W. 14th St. in Cleveland to visit the Greek Orthodox church where I was baptised. Across the street from the church was a kafenion, or coffee shop, where the men congregated when the service became too long for them! On this visit, the coffee shop being in the same place it was when I was born, Katie and I ventured in. There were three men drinking that thick brew known as Greek (or Turkish, if you want to be difficult) coffee, smoking and gabbing. The only other person there was the woman making the coffee. Katie and I might have been the first women customers in 75 years! We drank our coffee, and talked with the customers. A little while later we scurried out, having made our "statement". Recently I learned that this institution had closed. I am glad the two of us had the chance to "integrate" it first!

This is a snapshot (remember that word?) I recently scanned into my computer. It is of my extended family on my father's side, before a few other children were born. I am on the right, on the floor, sitting pretty in my black and white (really) window pane plaid, sleeveless dress that I loved, a flower in my hair. I was probably 5. My brother, Bob, sits on my Grandpa's lap. On the left is my grandmother, Elizabeth. I barely knew her because besides being more at home in Greek than English, she was also schizophrenic, and was often in the hospital. Grandpa paid for it out of his own pocket, because he had no hospitalization (they didn't call it health insurance, then). She must have been in her early 50's in this picture, younger than I am now. And yet she was an old Greek lady, in a housedress, hair pulled back. She would smoke, sitting on the back stoop, legs apart, just like I saw women in Greece do when I visited there 27 years later. It was an embarrassment to her

She grew up loving animals. She trained guinea pigs to jump over DVD boxes set up steeple-chase style. She was central to the training of our two poodles. Now she is an office manager training people. Her biggest challenge to date: Trying to train her boyfriend to eat healthfully. Will she succeed?

It is Saturday, 5:30 PM. Ginger (one of our poodles) and I arrived here and started opening windows. This house doesn't have AC, so the windows, and their are plenty of them, are crucial. So is the ceiling fan in the dining room, and all the other fans we have here. It never gets as hot as DC--okay, it did get to 103 degrees quite a few summers ago over July 4th when we had house guests who subsequently never came back, but that was when the whole east coast was broiling. I have sent up my laptop in the dining room. Ridge is due shortly. We take two cars so we can go separately when we desire. He isn't as enamored with the factory outlet stores as I am,and he doesn't go dancing on the Boardwalk! We will be going to sing the Brahms Requiem with the Shrewsbury Chorale on Tuesday (dancing night, I'm afraid--can't do everything). We do their sing-along every year and it is always some long piece that we practically know by heart. I'm looking forward to it. Our frien

Teaching children: My mother as child http://my.clevelandclinic.org/disorders/Depression/hic_Treatment_Options_for_Depression.aspx

The girl is my mother when she was in elementary school. The dog and boy were neighbors. I scanned this photo recently, though I've had it on the mantle in a pewter frame for years. Photoshop is miraculous! I can see the detail, now. Looking at a photograph is like looking through a tunnel to the past, with the path traveled since etched on the walls. I see her as a bright-faced child and yet also see the pains and pleasures on the path she took since then. I know my mother's life wasn't a happy one, with a pedophile for a father, and job descrimination as a Jew in WWII era Cleveland. She quit school before high school to work, and then quit a dry-cleaning job where she was referred to as "The Jew girl". She afterwards wrote "Protestant" where it asked for religion on job applications. When she was fifteen, my mother moved to "The Projects", as both my parents called it, and met my father, who was not Jewish, but a handsome boy whose first lan