Here’s another in a series of posts I’m going to make when I find some of these treasures. Some will be captioned, others will not. The only criteria for posting in this series is that:
a.) I’m in the photo or…
b.) … I took the photo.
While enjoying a ride on the canals in Venice, Italy, we encountered this guy who looks as though he’s enjoying his job piloting a gondola. (May 2008)
I took this on the Piazza San Marco in Venice. This small human was chasing the pigeons and he was adorable. He stopped momentarily and I was able to grab this photo. Always liked this snapshot. (May 2008)
Took this over the weekend. You may have seen it on Facebook already. It’s Nate, of course, Beth’s small human. Dude loves having his picture taken and it shows. Plus, it’s amazing how good cellphone cameras have become! All I did to this was remove the Toad tattoo on his arm and remove some chocolate.
From left to right, Rodney Leitzel, Carl Valente, me and John Scheneman, the drum line of the Valley Forge Military Academy Band circa 1973. I believe this photo came to me from Bill McKibbin, but I am unsure of its origin.
That’s me in the back row fourth one in from the left , this time playing trombone and being conducted by Eugene Ormandy, then the conductor of the Philadelphia Orchestra. Our band appeared on stage with the Philadelphia Orchestra at President Nixon’s second inaugural concert in January, 1973.
Week before last, I got word from my sons, Jon and Andy, that their grandmother and my former mother in law had passed away. She had been in ill health having suffered a stroke some years before and the second one that afflicted her on July 3rd finally ended the life of someone I loved and respected even though we hadn’t communicated in earnest since the first ex Mrs. Me and I divorced a lifetime ago.
I don’t want to concentrate on the loss, though of course I grieve with my sons and the rest of the Ginsburg family. I did want to recount a couple of anecdotes about life with Patty over the years that we interacted. In a nutshell, she was brilliant, articulate, caring and a delight to be around.
Deborah and I lived with her family for about six or seven months at their home in Augusta, GA while I was in the Signal Officers Advanced Course at Fort Gordon. It wasn’t long before we were fully integrated into life with Patty, Deb’s dad, Jack, and the rest of the family. Trying to be the considerate guy, I did what I could to help around the house, though I admit I could have been a much better houseguest.
One day, I was wandering about the house and noticed wet laundry in the washing machine. I says to myself, “Self? You can help out by putting those clothes in the dryer!” So I opened the machines and transferred the goods from the washer to the dryer, set the controls on desert and pushed the “go” button.
Sometime later, I hear this loud gasp from the laundry area. I don’t remember the words that followed – not that there was any profanity involved that I recall, but the next thing I remember is Patty standing in the laundry area holding up a teeny, tiny and particularly luxurious brilliant green cashmere sweater which had once fit her quite nicely. Post drying, it would have been a tight squeeze for my infant son, Jon.
I was horrified.
But I don’t think I was more horrified than Patty was. Here was this really gorgeous, soft, undoubtedly expensive cashmere sweater which had been one of her favorites shrunken down to the size of a dishtowel. Still brilliant green. Still soft as could be. Just a thousand sizes smaller than it had been at the start of the day.
All was quickly forgiven, of course. But I was pretty sure for a while there that I was going to be pitching a tent out in their steeply sloping back yard. It was one of the bigger of many faux pas that I inadvertently perpetrated against the family, but probably the most memorable.
I used to tease her mercilessly for watching reruns of “The Dukes of Hazzard” on cable TV in the evening hours. I know it wasn’t really destination television for her, but somehow I always seemed to catch her sitting in her chair in the family room, feet up on the ottoman and “The Dukes” on the TV. It became a running gag that, upon catching her in the act, that we’d both launch into words of great praise for Bo and Luke Duke, wondering if this were the time they’d finally get nabbed by the law.
When she was watching “The Dukes” or anything else on TV with her feet up, if she wasn’t wearing shoes, she would cross her little toes over the ones next to it. Now while this may seem odd at first to the casual reader, it was a habit I developed myself early in life. I thought I was the only one! I remember the first time I noticed it, I laughed and laughed – so much so that it was a few minutes before I could explain that I was not laughing at her feet per se (I was literally pointing at the time, if memory serves) but rather at the fact that I wasn’t the only one whose little toes got a bit of a workout in front of the TV set.
She was a botanist by interest and training. She was like a kid in a candy store when she came to Belgium to visit us and was able to observe the native foliage that she couldn’t see in the U.S. I remember she had a thick coffee table book on European plants in preparation for her trip.
While in Belgium, she also rearranged our kitchen cabinets and did a superb job. In fact, she did such a good job that when we talked on the phone over the years, I would ask her “Hey Patty, when’re you coming over to rearrange our kitchen cabinets again?” It was my way of saying “We miss you – come visit.” And I’m pretty sure she took it that way.
Even though my marriage to Deborah didn’t last, my respect for Patty did. Even though we didn’t stay in touch, I know through Jon and Andy that she continued to be the amazing woman I knew her to be. I’m sure that the high school students to whom she taught biology for decades would in retrospect also agree.
Patty was unusually kind to me, and for that I am forever in her debt. After all, I still owe her a cashmere sweater.
This is a post from nearly two years ago, but the feelings are still perfectly valid. In honor of Father’s Day, here’s a little more about the two gentlemen who first allowed me the privilege to be called a father.
Long before Instagram…
Long before Picasa…
Long before Google+, Photobucket, Mashable, Tumbr…
…and long before the Internet had a capital “I”, there was WolfeScrapbook.com.
WolfeScrapbook.com was a web site that I started way, way back in the mid 1990’s. You know, the Dark Ages of the internet. (No capital. See?) Back when seeing a Uniform Resource Locator on a TV commercial was rare. Back when dial-up modems screamed at you every time you tried to connect and often didn’t.
The server on which it ran lived in my spare bedroom in California at first. It was built from spare parts gathered from all corners of my world. For a time, the computer case in which WolfeScrapbook lived was from the computer that automated all of E! Entertainment Television’s programming for something close to a decade or so. (To all of my former E! colleagues, remember TAS? I still have a 3 ½” disk with the TAS software on it that my friend and fellow surf tech, Ron Baer presented me with long ago. It’s a cool souvenir.) There were probably some other parts in there from the E! channel, but I only remember the case.
WolfeScrapbook was my family web site on which I posted pictures, coded in HTML by yours truly, so that my family could access them from their computers up in Alaska.
So why am I telling you all this?
I post a lot of photos on Facebook and talk a lot about Nate and Garrett, my significant other, Beth’s kids. From all the attention they get, you’d think they were the only kidlings with whom I’ve had the opportunity to share space.
Well, this isn’t the case.
Circa summer, 1990, in Alaska.
I have two boys of my very own who are now grown up and who I love and miss very much. They don’t get a lot of Facebook time from me because of course, they’re not around for me to photograph and dote over as I would if they were in the same area code. But they’re not, and they suffer from a temporal disparity that allows me to share my experiences with Nate and Garrett far more easily than when this whole Internet thing was still in its commercial infancy.
So anyway, I’m making this opportunity to tell you all about my older boys, and let all of you know that they are ridiculously awesome! And they should be – they’ve been all sorts for awesome for nearly three decades now.
Jonathon Wolfe was born in Belgium while I was stationed there. For a time during high school, he took to all things Japanese like a fish takes to water. Toward the end of his high school career, he decided to go to culinary school and worked as a chef in Portland, Oregon for close to ten years. He’s in the middle of a career switch and is studying Electrical Engineering enroute to a bachelor’s degree. The dude can cook like crazy and the dude can fix PC’s almost as well as dear ol’ Dad can.
Andy, aged significantly since his birth.
Andrew Wolfe was born in Anchorage, Alaska and has remained in his hometown. He is largely self-taught, academically speaking, and writes splendidly about all sorts of thing. He works in the Alaska film industry behind the scenes mostly, but occasionally appearing on camera. His nickname is “Sauce,” and I’m not going to go into the whys and wherefores of that name’s origin. But if you address him as Sauce, he will answer.
Both of them are talented gamers and know their way around their computers. They get that technical stuff from me, I suppose. Then again, some degree of technical savvy is necessary these days just to navigate life, so they are well prepared for that.
Jon is Android. Andy is iPhone.
Jon is a little bit country. Andy’s a little bit rock ‘n roll.
(That’s not true. I just thought it was funny.)
They are as close as brothers can be and I think that’s the thing I love most about them. Even though Jon’s been living in Portland for many years now, they still stay in touch almost every day using Skype. They regularly play together online MMO’s and FPS’s (Massively Multiplayer Online & First Person Shooter for the uninitiated.) And they help each other when their computers malfunction. (They only call me for tech support when things get really bad.)
The bottom line on all of this is that Facebook has given me the opportunity to share fun moments with Nate and Garrett. But I’ve been sharing far more fun moments with Jon and Andy over the years, but without Facebook, y’all never saw it.
To Jon and Andy: You guys rock! You’ve always made me proud. You’ve always kept me laughing. And you’ve always been there when I needed to lean on you – even when you were far too young to be leaned on.
Thank you for all of that. And thank you for being exactly who you are.
You may remember that I wrote about Bella, our Dachshund, who was with us for a very short time. She was by far the sweetest, kindest, most gently affectionate dog in my memory. I never met a dog who was so insistent on violating the laws of physics by occupying the same physical space as you at the same time for as long as she could. Her untimely passing over a year ago was a huge blow to our family.
His Emmettship, relaxing on the back of the couch.
Several months after Bella’s death, Emmett came to live with us. In appearance, Emmett was a carbon copy (another word for “duplicate” for those who may not know what a carbon copy is) of Bella, but in attitude he was Bella’s antithesis.
Emmett came to us after a month in foster care. His backstory, as I understand it, was that he was discovered abandoned in a single room with no food or water and was found after at least three days living like that. He was unusually aggressive, though good on a leash, but virtually untouchable. Petting him in those early days was not an option.
You could entice him with a treat or two, but any attempt at physical affection was greeted with the baring of sharp Dachshund teeth and vicious snarling. And I can tell you from personal experience that his bark was decidedly less severe than his bite. On more than one occasion, he sank his teeth up to his gums in my extremities demonstrating unequivocally the boundaries of his personal space.
His “personal space” was roughly the size of a football field.
Shortly after his arrival, I took him to the veterinarian for his new pet checkup. I was terrified how he might behave. He allowed me to hitch up his leash with no problem and hopped in the car willingly – he really loved to go for rides.
Once at the clinic, I checked in at the front desk and sat down. He wandered around on the leash for a bit and then came back and hopped up on the bench next to me, a rather panicked look in his eye and shedding profusely. I gather that the smells of the vet clinic were not new to him and his memory of previous visits spooked him badly.
He tried to climb up my chest and started licking my face and whining pitifully. I did my best to calm him and only after a while did he calm down enough to stop leaving scratch marks on my neck and face.
Once in the exam room, he was muzzled and the exam proceeded without incident. He even let me pick him up un-muzzled and behaved more like a dog and less like a feral beast.
He had actually improved a little in the days prior and his submission to the exam and subsequent friendliness was encouraging. So I took him to the pet store chain closest to me on his leash of course, to get food, toys and such. I was careful to keep him close and warned anyone who came close to stay away because he was not a good dog. Everything was going fine until one person who had been successfully feeding and petting him moments before touched his back unexpectedly and he nailed her hand.
Needless to say, I was horrified.
Home we went and we stayed. Emmett rarely left the house except for routine walks and the like. He still exhibited aggressive tendencies with all of us. I had zero faith that Emmett would be able to live in our home. I was afraid of him. Scared to death. Not just for me but particularly for Nate and Garrett who are less conscientious about how to behave around an aggressive household pet.
But the lovely and talented Beth, who found Emmett on a pet adoption web site and fell immediately in love with him, was convinced that he could be rehabilitated and that he’d eventually be fine. Frankly, I thought she was nuts.
Of course, she was right.
He’s still aggressive towards people he doesn’t know which limits the places we can take him but with those of us he knows and trusts, he’s a completely different pup.
And he’s a complete slave to his routine.
In the evening, post dinner, he waits until I have finished the dishes, plopped down on the couch, put my feet up on the ottoman and opened my laptop before he approaches me. Then he sits up like a circus-trained dog and asks for his evening walk.
“Emmett, do you want to go potty? Do you want to go outside?”
He jumps up on my lap enthusiastically, licks my face furiously and whines excitedly. I take him downstairs, hitch him up and we go for our walk. Once we’ve returned from the walk, at some point in later the evening, he approaches me again, sits up like a circus-trained dog and demands the second event of the evening’s activities.
I am a diabetic and having a snack pre-bedtime helps regulate my overnight blood sugar, keeping it from getting way out of specification. (It’s still out of spec in the morning, but if I don’t have a snack, it’s WAY out of spec.) I started eating a small bowl of cereal before bed to help with this and it seemed to work well. I know – not the ideal snack, but hey, it works.
“Emmett, is it time for cereals?” (How that word became plural, I am not sure.)
Anyway, I go pour myself a small bowl, return to my seat in the living room and he sits upright and waits for me to feed him bites of cereal. And should I forget to let him lick the bowl, he gets apoplectic, stomps his feet and demands it. This all started as a way for me to establish and enhance my relationship with Emmett but now, of course, it’s a requirement. I have to feed him cereals even if I am not having any. It’s our ritual.
Here’s Emmett today – well, a couple of days ago.
Since last week’s vet visit, he’s been particularly affectionate, hopping up next to me on the couch and snuggling in next to me for a quick nap. Occasionally he will crawl up on my lap and attempt to lick my face for no apparent reason at all. And last night before I went upstairs to bed, I picked him up, wrapped him in my arms and gave him a gentle hug for the first time. He responded with a gentle lick to my chin and actually seemed to welcome it.
I was wrong. Beth was right. (Yes, you have it in writing now, Beth.)
And while I still miss Bella, Emmett is my pal now. And Beth’s. And Nate’s and Garrett’s, too. He’s come a long way since those early days in our home. He’s calmed down, accepted us, learned to trust us and integrated himself into our routine.
He’s still completely untrustworthy around other people, though, and I’m terrified to take him to a dog park, though I know he needs more exercise. He tends to be overprotective of the boys when he’s outside with them, and he guards the house with unnecessary vigor. That’s why he’s still a jackass.
But finally after nearly a year, he’s our jackass.
