tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-41713918066814262972024-03-14T10:59:07.728-04:00Postcards From ParadiseIf you can't live in Key West, reading June Keith is the next best thing. Now, this popular writer, described by one critic as being "as deeply embedded in Key West culture as an outsider ever can be", is writing about surviving life-threatening illness as an artist, a mother and a wife, in a tiny society at the end of the American road that she still calls Paradise.June Keithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08171174002983023531noreply@blogger.comBlogger77125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4171391806681426297.post-12643809950857186702017-12-09T14:11:00.000-05:002017-12-11T08:53:54.353-05:00Dying is Easy<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Rock Star & Kathy Foss back in the day</td></tr>
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<span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span>I read a newspaper story about a 70-year-old guy ending up in a Miami hospital emergency room (ER), unconscious, his condition bleak. When the man's chest was exposed a tattoo came into view. "Do not resuscitate" it said, with a line under the "not". </div>
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<span class="Apple-tab-span"></span> What a dilemma! Here is another example of man's relentless pursuit of freedom of expression colliding with society's relentless pursuit of a code of standards applied simply, fairly and reasonably to all. Is any message clearer than the one you have needled onto your own skin? How much more concise do you need to be? In Florida the answer apparently is you need to have "Do Not Resuscitate" written on a piece of paper, signed by you and your doctor, and present at the time you begin to die. Even then, medical people, trained to do any and all things possible to postpone death for as long as humanly possible, have trouble believing anyone would chose to forego rescue efforts - even a dying man at the ripe old age of 70. </div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Naughty and Nice -- Kathy Foss and me (but who's who?)</td></tr>
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<span class="Apple-tab-span"></span> For her 40th birthday my brother Rocky had his girlfriend's name tattooed on his chest. Kathy is a rough and tumble kind of girl, one of the guys when she needs to be, and she is often called by her last name: Foss. </div>
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This is the name Rocky had imprinted over his heart. I think the fact that "Kathy" has one more letter than "Foss" may also have influenced his choice. In any event, Rocky's act of devotion has provided us with lots of laughter, and some sadness, too. Kathy and Rocky are no longer together and through the years the women destined to follow her in and out of Rocky's heart have had to see another woman's name blazed onto his chest whenever he takes his clothes off. I wouldn't like that. Would you? </div>
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<span class="Apple-tab-span"></span> One day Rocky and Kathy's brother Tom Foss were working on the same project in New York. During a break one of the workers asked Tom if he and Rocky were brothers. </div>
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<span class="Apple-tab-span"></span> "No," Tom replied. "Just good friends. Rocky, show him what good friends we are!"</div>
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<span class="Apple-tab-span"></span> Rocky lifted his shirt to display his tattoo, a fat, red heart embossed with Tom's last name: Foss. </div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Earth Mother Kathy Foss</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Rocky juggling</td></tr>
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<span class="Apple-tab-span"></span> Rocky tells me he has no regrets about that tattoo. He still loves Kathy and always will. She is the love of his life. But even a tattoo could not make Kathy stay -- just like that unconscious man's tattoo, "Do Not Resuscitate", did not convince the Miami ER docs of his sincere desire to be spared the drama of bringing his dying heart back from the brink. The man was resuscitated and did survive. But only for a few hours. He died in his hospital bed the following morning and when his heart stopped beating that time, they let him go. Because the ethics committee had met and decided that the man's tattooed living will should be honored. And this, according to other media reports on the story, has set a precedent. In the future, such statements will be taken at skin value. </div>
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<span class="Apple-tab-span"></span> I told Rocky the story and he said that it would be a long and very painful process to have "Do Not Resuscitate" with a line under the word "Not" <span style="text-align: center;">inked into the delicate flesh of the chest. Rocky believes the guy meant what his tattoo said, just as surely as Kathy's name on Rocky's heart is a forever true statement of his real love for her. </span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The philosopher and the romantic Michael and Rocky</td></tr>
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My tattoo-less husband Michael says he would be inclined to not honor that man's tattooed message. He would need to know more. That's a Virgo for you. </div>
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"What if he was joking?" Michael says. "Maybe he was drunk, with friends, and was being crazy and foolhardy; clowning around." </div>
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<span class="Apple-tab-span"></span> "That would certainly be a sad and painfully misguided attempt at humor," I said. </div>
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"Oh yeah," Michael agreed. "A real miscalculation. But dying is easy. Comedy is hard." </div>
June Keithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08171174002983023531noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4171391806681426297.post-61067891198091063402017-11-07T11:02:00.003-05:002017-11-08T01:58:25.985-05:00Nancy Friday's Saturday Sale<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em;"><tbody>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 12.8px; text-align: center;">The house on Southard Street where Bill Manville and Nancy Friday lived, before fame rewrote their love story. </td></tr>
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Nancy Friday's obit appeared in the <i>New York Times </i>yesterday. I was surprised at how sad it made me feel to know she was gone. Of course she will never really be gone. Her books will live on and on. And those stories in <i>Cosmopolitan Magazine</i>, when Nancy Friday nurtured my emerging sexuality, will forever live in my memories.<br />
Nancy is a real icon in American pop culture and I was in great awe of her work. I didn't know her in person, but I knew others who did. I saw her once and was impressed with her power. She swept through a room and didn't hesitate for one instant. She knew where she was going and what she was going there for. <br />
I once heard a story of Nancy being taken out of her house by ambulance when she was stricken with appendicitis. She was very, very sick and had been for a few days before her illness was finally diagnosed and the decision made for her rushed trip to the hospital for surgery. Sick as she was, she managed to walk down the curving staircase from her bedroom. This she insisted upon as she feared that the EMT people and their stretcher would mess up the new paint job. She was a practical gal. Then Alzheimer's.<br />
As I reminisce about the day of Nancy Friday's yard sale in 2011, which I wrote about in the piece that follows, I recall a certain solemnity in the spirit of the place, a sort of sadness that permeated Nancy's no-longer-necessary things. Lamps. Chairs. Hats. CDs. Paintings. Now I maybe understand a bit better why those who managed the sale seemed to be guarding Nancy Friday's things like sentries. It was the beginning of the end. They were paying homage to her giant personality. The best part of Nancy died before her body did. That happened Sunday. The obit follows. RIP Nancy Friday. We won't forget you!<br />
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<b><span style="font-size: large;">Nancy Friday's Saturday Sale</span></b><br />
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The woman-on-top writer Nancy Friday had a yard sale Saturday. It was announced in the <i>Key West Citizen</i>, along with all the other yard sales in the Saturday morning edition. I am a Nancy Friday fan and have been since I began reading her fabulous features in <i>Cosmopolitan</i> <i>Magazine</i> when I was a kid growing up outside of New York City. Heaven to me in those days was the train ride from Katonah depot to Grand Central Station, armed with a <i>Cosmopolitan</i> and a pack of Marlboros. In <i>Cosmo</i> I studied the art of seducing interesting men as told in articles penned by sexy New York writers like Nancy Friday and Bill Manville. Imagine my intense joy when years later fate led me to Key West where my orbit intertwined with Bill Manville’s and we became friends. Bill was married to Nancy Friday, but by that time, Nancy was living in New York, her star rising fast, and their marriage heading for the rocks.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 12.8px; text-align: center;">Hello . . . is this Nancy's yard sale?</td></tr>
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The object of my affection in those days was a classical guitarist who played the dinner hour at a Key West club. Bill was working on a novel at his house on Southard Street. He was very kind and encouraging to me, a wannabe writer without a clue about what to write. Bill was also well versed in romance, and I needed help in that department, too, because things were definitely not going my way with the guitarist. Sometimes Bill took me for drinks to the club where my boyfriend worked (although neither one of us drank alcohol). He said it wasn’t fair that he got the job of entertaining me until my boyfriend, “the banjo player", got off work. Bill told me great stories of his salad days, his life in New York City, where he wrote a column in the <i>Village Voice</i> called Saloon Society. He told me about working for Helen Gurley Brown and the big book of subjects that was kept at the <i>Cosmo</i> office. Writers leafed through the book and chose topics to write about, he explained. He told me about living in Italy and drinking at Harry’s Bar. He described the night he met Nancy Friday and was instantly smitten with her. The very next day he told his girlfriend (a feminist writer whose first big success was a novel I had actually read) it was over between them. She replied: “I know. It's Nancy.” Bill said, “Yes. It's Nancy.” And he walked out the door and never saw her again. Eventually he and Nancy married. But, as I said, Nancy was no longer around when I knew Bill.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 12.8px; text-align: center;">Starving artists in Nancy's secret garden on Southard Street. Ann Lorraine is the mastermind behind the fabulous windows at Fast Buck Freddie's. Her husband is a songwriter, too. That's why we're all starving.</td></tr>
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One night, in his house on Southard Street, after I talked about my boyfriend’s latest offense and Bill agonized over a rough spot in his novel, he told me a secret. He was seeing someone, yet another feminist writer (feminism was almost as big as sex in those days), who (oh, joy!) was a friend to me. I’ll call her Jane Doe. Back then she wintered in Key West.<br />
“When Jane tells you this—and she will tell you this,” Bill said, “you must act surprised, as if it’s news to you.”<br />
I promised. A day or two later Jane Doe told me about Bill, and said that I must never tell. Shortly after that, the news of Bill's and Nancy’s divorce was tearing over the Coconut Telegraph. I told Bill that being in on the secret of his romance with Jane Doe, the tragedy of his megastar wife dumping him and getting his Key West house in the bargain, trumped every tale of sex and the city of Key West I’d ever heard. I felt powerful indeed, as a witness to the scandal du jour. The lives of the real writers! Left homeless, and wifeless, the romance with Jane Doe done, Bill moved to California.<br />
“My God, what intrigue!” I, the fledgling writer, gushed the last time I saw him. “I want to write it. But can I? I mean who owns this story?”<br />
“Whoever gets it into print first,” Bill said, flashing me his sexy sideways glance and dazzling smile. Then, he was gone, and the house on Southard Street became Nancy’s.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 12.8px;">Nancy in 1986</td></tr>
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Saturday, we arrived at Nancy Friday’s yard sale around 9:30 a.m.. People were pouring not in, but out of the house, most of them empty-handed. We learned that a mob had gathered in front of the house well before 9 a.m. and the yard sale organizers had given in to them, opening the doors way earlier than the published start time. The main surge was over and done by the time we got there.<br />
The event was very well planned and executed, with solemn-looking attendants in every room watching shoppers like hawks. There were rules, too, like you couldn’t leave one house (there is a guest house and a main house) carrying merchandise that you hadn’t yet paid for to visit the other house. When you did pay, you received a receipt, which you were to display to prove you were honest. <br />
Clearly, the diva had left the premises. She’d left behind, appropriately enough—considering the nature of her work— a Kama Sutra-ish bed, with an intricately carved platform and dramatic headboard, for sale at $1,000. The bed was in a glass-walled room, overlooking the pool and gardens. Just about everything else, except a display of Nancy Friday’s books in various languages and editions, was gone. I picked up a fresh copy of “My Secret Garden” as my first one is well worn. We bought a brass lamp—had it once lit the way for some steamy prose by our lusty lady of the hour? Also, as described by the sticker price tag: “Nancy’s sun visor, $1.”<br />
The property is sold. Nancy has left Key West. The closing is this week, we heard someone say.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 12.8px; text-align: center;">Wearing Nancy's sun visor. I'm afraid my head is bigger than Nancy's.</td><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 12.8px; text-align: center;"></td><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 12.8px; text-align: center;"></td><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 12.8px; text-align: center;"></td><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 12.8px; text-align: center;"><br /></td><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 12.8px; text-align: center;"><br /></td></tr>
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“It’s the end of an era,” someone else said. (People say that a lot in Key West.)<br />
I put on my visor but it hurt my head. I took it off and checked the label, expecting something fancy like Saks or Henri Bendel. The label said “NO Headaches.” It really did. But it gave me a headache.<br />
We went home and researched Nancy Friday on the Internet. She is divorced from the fabulously successful journalist/editor Norman Pearlstine, ten years her junior, the man she married after Bill. She is 78 years old now, but surely not alone—not with her professed skill at looking, talking and behaving the way a woman should, to attract and seduce interesting men.<br />
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<h3 class="c-base__title text--primary" style="background-color: #f2f2f2; border: 0px; color: #333333; font-family: ddg_proximanova, ddg_proximanova_ui_0, ddg_proximanova_ui_1, ddg_proximanova_ui_2, ddg_proximanova_ui_3, ddg_proximanova_ui_4, ddg_proximanova_ui_5, ddg_proximanova_ui_6, 'proxima nova', 'helvetica neue', helvetica, 'segoe ui', 'nimbus sans l', 'liberation sans', 'open sans', freesans, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 1.31em; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.2; margin: 0px; overflow: hidden; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/05/obituaries/nancy-friday-84-best-selling-student-of-gender-politics-dies.html?smid=pl-share" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 18.864px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/05/obituaries/nancy-friday-84-best-selling-student-of-gender-politics-dies.html?smid=pl-share</a></h3>
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June Keithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08171174002983023531noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4171391806681426297.post-65558637091304833722017-11-04T11:52:00.000-04:002017-11-06T09:59:29.936-05:00Sea Change<div class="p1">
<b><span style="font-size: large;">Sea Change: A marked change; transformation. </span></b><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A rough night in Sebring, Florida. That's us -- at the bottom edge of Irma's red rage. </td></tr>
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<span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span>My journal entry dated July 22, 2017: "We moved to Sebring for good, July 21, 2017. We live here now." This entry is followed by many blank pages. I think I was in shock. If you have moved a tree, dug it out of one location in the earth and buried its roots in another different place, you know transplanting is a perilous business. Roots don't always find new ground hospitable. They sometimes falter. </div>
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<span class="Apple-tab-span"></span> Moving our lives from Key West into a very different sort of town, Sebring, feels something like that. Difficult, delicate, awkward. Of course we are not trees. We are relatively sturdy people, with medications to keep our hearts from breaking and oatmeal to keep us from becoming too full of ourselves. You can buy that stuff anywhere. And in central Florida we are closer to the miracles modern medicine has to offer to those who can afford them. Now that we are seniors, we qualify.</div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="Apple-tab-span"></span> Still, there are adjustments to be made. Moving to Sebring, away from the dangerous coasts, gave us what sadly proved to be a false sense of hurricane security. Hurricanes don't come to the center of the state. Right? Wrong. In September we watched TV weather reports of Irma's stealthy progress as it barreled toward the Keys and then - well, anyone's guess. East Coast? West Coast? Right up the middle? I had tense conversations with my son, Miguel, wherein I begged him to move himself to higher ground and out of the path of Irma. Her reputation was growing more sinister by the hour. Like the true Conch he is he refused to budge from his island home, come what might. </div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="Apple-tab-span"></span> "Stop doing this," he implored. "You're scaring Mia." (His sensible -- or so I thought -- girlfriend.)<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgj7phC1RUH5bmUzb8AQ6OsIufxlVL_qRC1OFiWv1yCcWpubGc3vfOdMFr6WBAg17rbvRG_QpSMjPNZ-E0sJhqou_xT4ZyhjUqaFPMTHeYDPdEngwyKcSJENjWiJoGHcz2CZF3ZuIf6g7E/s1600/IMG_0182.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="419" data-original-width="538" height="311" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgj7phC1RUH5bmUzb8AQ6OsIufxlVL_qRC1OFiWv1yCcWpubGc3vfOdMFr6WBAg17rbvRG_QpSMjPNZ-E0sJhqou_xT4ZyhjUqaFPMTHeYDPdEngwyKcSJENjWiJoGHcz2CZF3ZuIf6g7E/s400/IMG_0182.JPG" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Rob Eggers (escaped from Key West with his family) and Michael Keith, in Sebring, the day before Irma.</td></tr>
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<div class="p1">
<span class="Apple-tab-span"></span> Irma hit Key West on a Sunday morning and and blew into Sebring some 12 hours later. And just like in "The Wizard of Oz" we watched as carport roofs and road signs flew past our windows. Some welcome wagon! We lost power. Everybody did. On the morning after Irma there was not a hot coffee to be had in all of Sebring. So we made instant coffee at home, on an ancient portable BBQ grill. Yummy. Fun! Like camping out!<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhMjkI5meFJ6vt4fHammSe9jsYzs0JRfC5LeiPbxZMrRHFfnzFS-1E-Rc4L_gixkk4X2fBqvkX9yNlIvn2ZsUWyo44Eofxm8bXam2Vf4ehaKokNuWxQwFGhTDTWK17iBEyZtnnzFa0p8Ac/s1600/531004_10151139222131940_456005994_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="607" data-original-width="570" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhMjkI5meFJ6vt4fHammSe9jsYzs0JRfC5LeiPbxZMrRHFfnzFS-1E-Rc4L_gixkk4X2fBqvkX9yNlIvn2ZsUWyo44Eofxm8bXam2Vf4ehaKokNuWxQwFGhTDTWK17iBEyZtnnzFa0p8Ac/s400/531004_10151139222131940_456005994_n.jpg" width="375" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Live TV tells no lies!</td></tr>
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<div class="p1">
<span class="Apple-tab-span"></span> As usually happens after a hurricane, there were sketchy news reports full of terrible and dire reports of damage to Key West. The bridges are all washed out! All 42 of them! Ninety percent of Keys homes are destroyed! We could not get a phone call through to Key West for nearly 24 hours. Meanwhile we received calls from long lost friends and relatives in faraway places, anxious to know we were OK. We were. And no property damage, we guiltily reported. On Monday afternoon Miguel was able to get a 20-second phone call through to say he was safe. In fact, Key West was in pretty good shape, too. Not so the other Keys. </div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="Apple-tab-span"></span> In a conversation with Miguel a few days after the drama had dropped a few notches, I spoke of some breaking political news. Miguel advised me to think twice about believing television news. As a quasi-journalist, this really blew my mind.</div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="Apple-tab-span"></span> "News is real, Son!" I cried. "News can't lie!" </div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="Apple-tab-span"></span> "Mom," he said. "There were news reports after the hurricane that said 90% of Keys homes were destroyed. That was in no way true. Do you have any idea what those kind of rumors do to people?" </div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="Apple-tab-span"></span> He is right! Much as I dread the growing distrust of the media that has lately seriously permeated our society, I have to recognize how this kind of fake news -- and it really was fake -- poisons the pot and gives clear-headed thinkers like my son reason to dismiss any and all news as maybe true, maybe not. Who reported that in the first place? I think rumor mongers on Facebook. And in defense of journalism, that's not news!<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjyE8CGGL4Pz3W3p89CPKd0HyEBuI3X76p-fdj8CgidUhfHs10j1Ad3P0ida6yg1CEwYOZIr3QnmaMy90QLVPwXiBMpTVKspqcBCdiJ7LEVwIroV08tE7uH2M_3nUUYppHLRFKFN6E7OfE/s1600/photo.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="968" data-original-width="1296" height="476" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjyE8CGGL4Pz3W3p89CPKd0HyEBuI3X76p-fdj8CgidUhfHs10j1Ad3P0ida6yg1CEwYOZIr3QnmaMy90QLVPwXiBMpTVKspqcBCdiJ7LEVwIroV08tE7uH2M_3nUUYppHLRFKFN6E7OfE/s640/photo.JPG" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Saturday night in our Key West neighborhood. How did they do that? Nobody knows. The driver didn't speak English.</td></tr>
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<div class="p1">
<span class="Apple-tab-span"></span> Here’s some good news about Sebring. We buy good tomatoes here. Ripe mangoes, too. I think it's because we are closer to places where those things grow. There are farm stands. There are golf carts which people drive around and around the neighborhood just for the pleasure of it. Someone is always mowing a lawn or trimming a hedge. Weekends there are dozens of yard sales. We rarely hear a siren or the sickening sound of screeching brakes. We can see, from the comfort of our living room, a vast and spacious sky, clouds and lots and lots of leafy greenery. There is a screened porch, about the size of half our Key West house. It faces East. At sunrise the birds go nuts, singing and chirping each to each. The other day, just before sunset, I was walking and saw a flock of honking geese cruise by. On some nights the temperature drops to 50 degrees! That’s quilt weather!</div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="Apple-tab-span"></span> Last night I asked Siri, my i-Phone pal: "How cold will it be in Sebring tonight?"</div>
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<span class="Apple-tab-span"></span> "It's 62 degrees," she replied. "I don’t think that’s particularly cold."<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjOtDgk54i2W4NhSt-nKCatsIPgeztwozk_Rnx-5q1VHs-8G075qJZ4HnBrfFSlLS7Y8e3Dt9ZM9LcKpLGka5lCqGdBvXcP7FYW-Jb6SKgqpjj0qPisCs34sgvS9alKTEL8fvEJeuUUOS8/s1600/photo.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="479" data-original-width="640" height="476" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjOtDgk54i2W4NhSt-nKCatsIPgeztwozk_Rnx-5q1VHs-8G075qJZ4HnBrfFSlLS7Y8e3Dt9ZM9LcKpLGka5lCqGdBvXcP7FYW-Jb6SKgqpjj0qPisCs34sgvS9alKTEL8fvEJeuUUOS8/s640/photo.jpeg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Can we really live here? Testing the waters; visiting Sebring. Christmas, 2016 with Tina Kaupe. </td></tr>
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<div class="p1">
<span class="Apple-tab-span"></span> In a matter of weeks our pastoral peace will be shattered with the arrival of our neighbors who live up north but for the 3 or 4 worst months of winter, when they live here. The roads and the restaurants and Publix will be crowded -- but only for a few months -- totally tolerable when you see the light at the end of the tunnel, by which I mean the spring at the end of the winter, and the departure of the snowbirds back to their northern nests. </div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="Apple-tab-span"></span> Sebring is ready for the snowbirds and the happy influx of their snowbird dollars. The last piles of branches and debris have been removed from the sides of the street. Two days ago they came though our neighborhood and scooped them up with little Caterpillar tractors. My neighbor came out of her house to survey the ruts left in her yard after the trash was gone.</div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="Apple-tab-span"></span> "Just look what they've done to my lawn," she said.</div>
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<span class="Apple-tab-span"></span> "Oh dear," I said, commiserating. </div>
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<span class="Apple-tab-span"></span> “What a mess,” she said. </div>
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<span class="Apple-tab-span"></span> “Yeah,” I said. </div>
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<span class="Apple-tab-span"></span> "If they're going to hire someone to clean this mess up why not hire someone who will do the job right?" she asked, rhetorically.</div>
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<span class="Apple-tab-span"></span> "Yeah, really," I said, again trying to be agreeable as I am the new neighbor and want to make a good impression </div>
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<span class="Apple-tab-span"></span> "Well," my neighbor said, "they aren't going to fix it. That's gonna be my problem." </div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="Apple-tab-span"></span> I decided to change tactics. </div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="Apple-tab-span"></span> "BASTARDS" I yelled in outrage.<br />
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The neighbor lady picked up her head and peered over at me, as I sat on my screened porch, sipping coffee. I think she was making sure she'd heard me correctly.</div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="Apple-tab-span"></span> "They did come and clean it up," she said defensively. "At least they came." </div>
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<span class="Apple-tab-span"></span> So there you have it. People are people wherever you go. And wherever you go, there you are. </div>
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June Keithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08171174002983023531noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4171391806681426297.post-50079467642544597302017-03-26T14:20:00.000-04:002017-03-27T04:20:22.771-04:00Happy Birthday Tennessee Williams<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Michael Keith and his daughters in search of Tennessee Williams. </td></tr>
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Recently my husband and his three grown daughters found themselves in St. Louis for the funeral of Michael's brother, David. The girls' beloved Uncle David was a much-respected theologian and professor, as well as a fine musician. David played tuba in a symphony, and in the last decade of his life created the Clyde Pickens bluegrass band, named for his father Clyde and the county where he grew up, Pickens, South Carolina. David was 79-years-old when he died and we can all agree that living to the ripe old age of nearly 80 years is yet another accomplishment in a life well-lived. A funeral is never a pleasant event, but, as funerals often do, it brought together many far-flung members of a family, and a surprise reunion for Michael and his beloved daughters. <br />
No one in the group knew much about St. Louis, but Michael recalled that Tennessee Williams was buried there. Somewhere. The beautiful daughters agreed that finding the grave of America's greatest playwright was a perfect way to spend a sunny day in St. Louis. Out came the phones and consultations with <i>Siri</i>, the magical know-it-all who speaks from within the portable phones of the techno-savvy. <br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgLV4Udi2MSO-C4uFDPP36N53TGQWciH785ZC49UAYZHGyv-EukMQJcevW9zbR6pZh7dKQH8elnWQo8r8CF0NmW6Dk7QJe8vtyCdmVZ0XWB8KhNqcVfruEd0pr4-of-CCoIH8-i7W21Cew/s1600/575122_3805958301126_105348255_n.jpg" 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/AVvXsEgLV4Udi2MSO-C4uFDPP36N53TGQWciH785ZC49UAYZHGyv-EukMQJcevW9zbR6pZh7dKQH8elnWQo8r8CF0NmW6Dk7QJe8vtyCdmVZ0XWB8KhNqcVfruEd0pr4-of-CCoIH8-i7W21Cew/s400/575122_3805958301126_105348255_n.jpg" width="222" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Fifty years ago Michael made his first trip to </td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">St. Louis for the wedding of his brother David to Sue</td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">David with his axe, the tuba</td></tr>
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This <i>Siri </i>business is quite remarkable to Michael, a guy who refuses to even consider the convenience of carrying a cell phone himself. Instead, he suggests that I recruit <i>Siri</i> on my cell phone and share the convenience with him. This is a real bone of contention in our marriage. Don't get me started . . . <br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Tennessee Williams with author Gore Vidal, among others, in a Manhattan garden in 1948 as his fateful adventure with fame began</td></tr>
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In his book, "Memoirs" Tennessee Williams says he'd specified in his will that he wanted to be cremated and buried at sea in the Gulf of Mexico near the probable location of the bones of Hart Crane. Crane was a favorite poet of Williams who died young (32) by jumping to his death from a boat sailing between Mexico and New York. Crane took his own life on a day after he'd made sexual advances to a sailor on the boat. The sailor was offended and beat the poet badly. This sort of thing happened often enough to Williams, too, and he, no doubt, understood the shame related to being homosexual. But instead of jumping ship, as his favorite poet did, metaphorically that is, Williams saw the voyage through. He persevered, he wrote plays and more plays, and in 1944, "The Glass Menagerie" met with huge acclaim. He was 33-years-old. Overnight the lonely and depressive unknown playwright found fame and fortune. He entered the world of the famous and lived out his life plagued by what he called "the tragedy of success." <br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Tennessee Williams house. 1431 Duncan Street, Key West </td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Tennessee, happy, at his home on Duncan Street, circa 1965</td></tr>
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Tennessee Williams had an older sister, Rose, and a younger brother, Dakin. Rose was lobotomized in 1937, when lobotomy was used to treat mental illness. She was dependent on full-time care, financed by Tennessee, for the remainder of her life. Dakin, who was 8 years younger, was an attorney who came to his infamous brother's aid in 1969, by having him hospitalized for alcoholism in St. Louis. Dakin also had Tennessee christened in St. Mary's Star of the Sea Catholic Church in Key West, as repentance for his sins of blatant homosexuality and generally debauched lifestyle. Dakin loved the name of the church and Tennessee thought it a great title for a play. <br />
After Tennessee's death Dakin claimed that the playwright had been murdered. The hows and whys of this intrigue were never quite clear, but Dakin traveled with bodyguards when he attended New Orleans' annual Tennessee Williams Festival, celebrated around the March 26 birthdate of Tennessee Williams. And Dakin always enjoyed being the last link to understanding the playwright's life. He relished the role and claimed himself to be a "professional brother." Toward the end of his life Dakin created a bizarre one-man show in which he dressed in drag to portray Blanche Dubois. The show went through various versions, but always ended with the final speech from "Glass Menagerie." <br />
In spite of Tennessee's stated wishes, upon his death Dakin had his brother's body transported from New York City to St. Louis, Missouri. There the body laid in state for two days and was buried in Calvary Catholic Cemetery. Tennessee's body lies eternally next to his mother, Edwina, and his sister, Rose. When questioned on the matter, Dakin claimed that his brother's will contained no provision for a burial at sea. He added that he would have ignored it if it had. <br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Williams family plot in Calvary Cemetery, St. Louis, Missouri. </td></tr>
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"Tennessee is such a literary personality that his grave should be where people can visit it," Dakin said. "They would have a hard time finding his ashes in the ocean." <br />
And so, on an unseasonably warm and sunny St. Louis afternoon, the group set out to find the graves of Tennessee Williams and his invalid sister Rose. Both had once lived on the island of Key West in the not so distant past, a past that seems ever more hazy as this world speeds into a future where the genius of Tennessee Williams sometimes seems all but forgotten.<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh4yrAYtXzpYYH3_L-L76PkdgtOT-prrld4EPJB88MCZvmN8GDRvxT1rGI7QIHAOv46E-yAQqmfb563T2OJeAIDib44z3v5QBgQ8EjYQ9Vs7QbE6wBaYwSY-ar-5YgGnv-E2tTjuWRHc80/s1600/FullSizeRender.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh4yrAYtXzpYYH3_L-L76PkdgtOT-prrld4EPJB88MCZvmN8GDRvxT1rGI7QIHAOv46E-yAQqmfb563T2OJeAIDib44z3v5QBgQ8EjYQ9Vs7QbE6wBaYwSY-ar-5YgGnv-E2tTjuWRHc80/s320/FullSizeRender.jpg" width="240" /></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiy6RHosMdoDqwD5LWhCCXrWzaH4acv08VelY6cgoBI3-EAvh8BoTOs38HT7n7oGESXXdiLkgGBybfN0ri_AAe8zEAhIeXpYVtD40afZshT0jMaOIvy-cWOQmaDmfQo4Ogt6XsVbi5c8qE/s1600/IMG_8155.JPG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiy6RHosMdoDqwD5LWhCCXrWzaH4acv08VelY6cgoBI3-EAvh8BoTOs38HT7n7oGESXXdiLkgGBybfN0ri_AAe8zEAhIeXpYVtD40afZshT0jMaOIvy-cWOQmaDmfQo4Ogt6XsVbi5c8qE/s320/IMG_8155.JPG" width="320" /></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhfQ_SdNxC3Ztwxr5P2m99KrTeHdM-lTWgVrZ66El2G_PE8JIjzPhXdK1OCNBXwiyHTzqt-vJm2TsO_8podzX23i54xEjbJA-5uWmPdwMZgckkl5wU-OmcHOINbSa5EB6RHQztAcl0k0aM/s1600/FullSizeRender2.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhfQ_SdNxC3Ztwxr5P2m99KrTeHdM-lTWgVrZ66El2G_PE8JIjzPhXdK1OCNBXwiyHTzqt-vJm2TsO_8podzX23i54xEjbJA-5uWmPdwMZgckkl5wU-OmcHOINbSa5EB6RHQztAcl0k0aM/s320/FullSizeRender2.jpg" width="320" /></a> <br />
And Dakin? He's there too, with Tennessee, Rose, and their mother Edwina. But there are no words carved into a stone for Dakin, no way of knowing which grave is his. When you enter the Calvary Cemetery and they give you a map with red circles around the more notable denizens, Dakin's grave is not among them. Why isn't Dakin's gravestone marked? Who can tell us? Maybe someone should ask <i>Siri</i>.June Keithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08171174002983023531noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4171391806681426297.post-10356500699275906002017-02-10T12:50:00.000-05:002017-02-10T14:43:34.131-05:00Put Me In Coach<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/AVvXsEjSTkl8jsHgskh3HklYeNO6_JAcRuOcM1qK9j4_fa7AU7lhHxbMDO_QSAExK2KhXdvXGOKdV3q1Fcgl23IDa3TdYt49_aoisPvlO_UvEAeEetVLTYrF48w5ki2Ao3V4pntwNZeplZeAUYU/s1600/11059672_320649221454691_8836828218496573236_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="230" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjSTkl8jsHgskh3HklYeNO6_JAcRuOcM1qK9j4_fa7AU7lhHxbMDO_QSAExK2KhXdvXGOKdV3q1Fcgl23IDa3TdYt49_aoisPvlO_UvEAeEetVLTYrF48w5ki2Ao3V4pntwNZeplZeAUYU/s400/11059672_320649221454691_8836828218496573236_n.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Merle Miller, on left, performing with Bette Midler and the Harlettes</td></tr>
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My friend Merle was a back-up singer for Bette Midler. Bette's trio of singing and dancing dolls was called the Harlettes and as they rehearsed for their first big show, with Bette's piano man and arranger Barry Manilow, Merle, who had never heard Bette, found herself not particularly impressed with the Divine Miss M. She admired the talents and the beauty of her fellow Harlettes, but the singer, this so-called diva destined for stardom, this Bette Midler, was another story. Yes, she was good. Yes, she had good moves. But, as Merle tells it, "she wasn't all that." Then came the first concert. It was at Carnegie Hall and the place was packed. That's when Merle finally understood just what, exactly, she'd become part of.<br />
"Bette blew the roof off the house," Merle says. "I was so shocked I almost fell over. I realized she didn't use her full voice to rehearse. She only used it to perform. And what a voice it is!" <br />
I think Merle was using that story as an analogy -- something about not showing off everything you've got at the first opportunity, or the wisdom of playing your cards close to your vest. Merle was sharing some of her hard-won wisdom with me. But I wasn't hearing that. I was only hearing about Bette Midler and stories of the Harlettes. <br />
The tales of the great divas resonate for me. I've always wanted to sing, and I have. I played the flute, too. In the 60's, I was the girl who jumped up on stage to sing "Angel Baby" or "Me and Bobby McGee". In the 70's I sang Stevie Wonder's "You are the Sunshine of My Life" in various saloons around New York. For a very short time I sang with a band but never got to sing a solo. Just choruses and a couple of flute riffs. Once I answered an ad for a singer for a band in New York City and came upon a hopeful group of musicians who handed me the sheet music to Van Morris's "Moon Dance" and suggested we start there. I had never heard the song, certainly had no idea how to sing it -- it was jazz and I was a rocker. The audition was over before I even got my flute out of the case. You try singing "Moon Dance", cold. <br />
Then came love. Then came marriage. Then came June with a baby carriage and the happiest,
little boy imaginable.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A happy litter drummer boy who grew up to be my darling Miguel. </td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Miguel, still following the beat</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Miguel, a Montessori teacher, rocking with kids and friends </td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The Band, now disbanded. No back up singers . . . big mistake? Miguel on left looking rock 'n roll-y</td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Miguel with the beautiful Mia and diva wanna-be mom, June</td></tr>
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He loved music, too! My son's brain, heart and
soul are surely tattooed with the music he fell asleep to, the music he
awakened to, and the music we played all day, every day, in the house
were he grew up. We parents were thrilled that we'd received a baby who
slept blissfully at any noise level. When our baby was 4 months old we
took him with us to the Opera House in San Juan, Puerto Rico, and
snuggled in his little carry-around bed, he slept like a lamb.<br />
Later, when Michael Jackson's "Thriller" came on MTV, Miguel would call us to the TV and we dropped whatever we were doing to watch the performance. And later still, when Miguel was too old for the bedtime story, I put a cassette player next to his bed and at bedtime he listened to soft jazz and rock. When the clink of the player sounded, and the music was over, Miguel was asleep. We also frequently listened to "Peter and the Wolf" and Miguel learned to identify the various instruments in the orchestra. <br />
I once told Miguel that although I didn't like spending my hard-earned money on faddish toys that were quickly tossed aside, I would never deny him a book or a CD. It was a vow my son never forgot. And when he got his first job, he bought me a gift with his first paycheck. It was the Prince album, "1999". I remember saying to him "Oh my! This was $20!" and Miguel said to me, "Mom, you're worth it." A cherished memory.<br />
It comes as no surprise that Miguel has become a musician/performer. Music is his passion, his mistress and his reason for getting out of bed every day. At the beginning of his stage career I tried often to show up. Now, the performances are far too many for me to keep up with. But there's something else, too. When Miguel is singing those old songs, the ones I introduced him to, the Rolling Stones "Miss You", Lou Reed's "Walk on the Wild Side" or the Temptations "My Girl, " I want to be up there singing with him, just like in the old, old days of his childhood. Who was there for all those hours of background music and singing along to the radio, or the cassette player, in the car on a thousand miles of car rides? His mama. That's who.<br />
One night Miguel and his guitar man Sweet Matthew were performing at Salute on the beach. It was a breezy night, the air kissed with the familiar mingled scent of the beach and coconut oil. There was a crowd. I sat with friends, sharing antipasto and big chunks of chewy Italian bread when Miguel began to sing Elvis's "Suspicious Minds," one of our favorites. Suddenly he said "You know what? I'm gonna get a lady up here who knows all the words to this song." <br />
A shock of excitement went through my bones like a bolt of lightening. It's happening, I thought. I am going to share the stage with my son, this brilliant boy whose musical talents I have nurtured for over half of my life! But what of the bread in my mouth and the tables and chairs between me and that coveted place on the stage, next to my own baby? I swallowed the bread and hastily wiped my mouth. I quickly planned my route to the front of the room. I sucked in my stomach and pushed out my chest, cleared my throat and prepared to make my move. <br />
"Jada," Miguel yelled. "Come on up here." <br />
A tall, lean, tanned blonde beauty hesitantly rose from a chair and tentatively made her way to the stage. Her friends, <i>their</i> friends, cheering her on. Meanwhile, my heart sank. It turned out Jada didn't know the words to the song and didn't even want to be up there. Everyone laughed as Jada mumbled something to Miguel and hurried back to her seat, covering her pretty face with her hands, shaking her head, feigning embarrassment.<br />
And that was the moment I knew that my role in my son's musical evolution was truly done. And so were my days on the stage and my visions of back-up singing. But I can still dream. And I do. I so shooby shooby do. <br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEibUgQoiWIDF-u2WBveK7komNEL_8MKxrfisMitmuQn7DJoDTp8bt7VE4zR2Pz-IqPsWDjogQ3GHrnF99d6V-UwYFtmYxnmb_Jm92ZXVtBPXKcXICU2wJ7hu-uR6Ieb-wK1TQ3bO-rh0hg/s1600/11695805_320408214812125_3272245536646228770_n.jpg" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="271" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEibUgQoiWIDF-u2WBveK7komNEL_8MKxrfisMitmuQn7DJoDTp8bt7VE4zR2Pz-IqPsWDjogQ3GHrnF99d6V-UwYFtmYxnmb_Jm92ZXVtBPXKcXICU2wJ7hu-uR6Ieb-wK1TQ3bO-rh0hg/s400/11695805_320408214812125_3272245536646228770_n.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">I can do that! (Merle next to Bette, on stage)</td></tr>
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<br />June Keithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08171174002983023531noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4171391806681426297.post-80822924020625865462016-10-15T14:01:00.002-04:002016-10-15T14:02:55.157-04:00Sexual Abuse: Shame and what I wore<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiRCqYAcmEmVCFicElvqd7eWurJbhIqD3AeEcDTsVLNd7fUzSYhU__KWLdPfSlVWuYD1JdoE9gwPPI1DfD5thppvAhn9nKJY0wpohAO4HjZlgPv5k2VZnO2YH8mGD0m-C1YXD2IZTx6crE/s1600/Scan.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiRCqYAcmEmVCFicElvqd7eWurJbhIqD3AeEcDTsVLNd7fUzSYhU__KWLdPfSlVWuYD1JdoE9gwPPI1DfD5thppvAhn9nKJY0wpohAO4HjZlgPv5k2VZnO2YH8mGD0m-C1YXD2IZTx6crE/s320/Scan.jpeg" width="223" /></a></div>
Do you remember the first time you were sexually abused? I do. I was in the fifth grade, at a ballroom dance class. I loved that class. The girls dressed in Sunday-best dresses, white anklets and patent leather shoes. The boys wore ties and sports jackets. Mr. Richards taught the basics of ballroom dancing, the box step, the fox trot, and then, my favorite, the cha cha. The class assembled in a circle in the gym, and every few minutes the music would stop and the boys would move on to the next girl in the circle. That way, everyone spent a few minutes ballroom dancing with everyone else. <br />
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One day my dance partner was Kenny Brown, a kid who was in the sixth grade but should have been in the seventh. He'd stayed back a grade and was older and bigger than the rest of us. We got into position, Kenny's right hand on my back, his left hand in mine, and began following Mr. Richard's instructions. But then Kenny moved his hand from around my back to my front. He rubbed circles on my chest, in the place where my breasts would eventually be, but were not yet. There was nothing there but bone and ribs. This did not deter Kenny. <br />
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Stunned, I pretended not to know what was happening. I looked at Kenny's face for some sign of recognition from him, an explanation of what was going on. Was I imagining this? Would he burst out laughing? No. I watched Kenny's eyes busily scanning the room, over the top of my head, darting from Mr. Richards to the couples around us, making sure no one saw what was he was doing. No one did. Then Mr. Richards announced it was time to change partners and Kenny moved on to the next girl in the circle. <br />
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I did not tell anyone, but shame dogged me for weeks. I searched my mind a thousand ways, trying to understand my part in the thing, and even wondering whether or not it had truly happened. I'd looked forward to the afternoons when my mom helped me get ready for dance class, made me as pretty as I could be. But then I felt guilt at making myself so pretty that Kenny had taken it as an invitation to run his hand all over my chest. <br />
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What haunted me the most throughout those two weeks until the next dance class was the thought of what I would do or say the next time Kenny was my dance partner. I dreaded that moment every night before I went to sleep. I thought of it when I woke up. I thought about it in school. I considered quitting dance class, but I knew if I did my parents would demand to know why. I had no idea how to tell them. I feared they wouldn't believe me, or, if they did, I was afraid my father, who was Italian and a bit rougher than most other fathers I knew, would go after Kenny's father and there would be trouble. The last thing in the world I wanted to do was to make trouble.<br />
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Kenny Brown never came to dance class again. I figured he'd quit. Or maybe he had fondled another girl with far more self-esteem than I, and she'd told her parents. <br />
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This all happened more than 50 years ago! Still I recall distinctly the moment when Kenny Brown robbed me of the girlish pleasure of being pretty in a pink party dress, and replaced that sunny innocence with shame. The memory still has the power to make me cry. <br />
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Today, as the dark subject of sexual bullying has become front and center in this shameful and bleak political season that is the presidential race, I am remembering how much that first episode of sexual bullying -- yes, first, there were more to come as my life went on -- hurt me and even changed my feelings about myself, as well as my sense of who I was in relation to boys and men. <br />
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Yesterday I took a survey. I asked every woman I saw: "Do you remember the first time you were sexually abused?" Their responses were nearly the same, every time I asked. First surprise at the question. Then reflection. Then the answer. <br />
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"Yes, I do."<br />
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"Did you tell anyone?" I asked.<br />
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"No," was the answer. Every time.<br />
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"Why didn't you tell someone?" I asked.<br />
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"Because I thought no one would believe me." June Keithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08171174002983023531noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4171391806681426297.post-67237082074636116162016-04-02T15:14:00.000-04:002016-11-24T10:40:57.067-05:00Make Me Move!<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi1qyTsVoBZIuj89Ui0wSG7LQSfZ21D-GrM6VnCFnY01EqxowjXMVl_wQkL1gpslRelaYClhzDz4ZezS7tmOLpgI6d66-vXuiQrO7b_jBQULe7mdtc_NGidgYweD-VKv8nM5IMnDLV7Zo4/s1600/122660.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="397" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi1qyTsVoBZIuj89Ui0wSG7LQSfZ21D-GrM6VnCFnY01EqxowjXMVl_wQkL1gpslRelaYClhzDz4ZezS7tmOLpgI6d66-vXuiQrO7b_jBQULe7mdtc_NGidgYweD-VKv8nM5IMnDLV7Zo4/s400/122660.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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Is there any more daunting challenge than placing your home on the market? Finding a new owner for your house, your home, your shelter, your nurturing boards and batten, is surely at the top of the list of things that make your nerves feel like downed power lines, hissing and snapping wildly on a wet and windy and lonely street. It feels like being on stage, in a bikini and high heels, in a beauty pageant, flashing a big, phony smile on your face. It feels like trying to please a lover who is a complete stranger. Would they like it this way? Or that way? White walls or green? Blue towels or beige? <br />
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We property sellers are advised to wipe our houses clean of our personalities, so that potential buyers may envision themselves living here, with their own chairs and quilts and paintings. Mementos of living, of children, of friends and many good things that have happened to us, are referred to as "clutter" and "stuff".<br />
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First we made many trips to the Salvation Army Thrift Store. Then we simply put stuff out on the sidewalk, where it was gratefully carried off by passersby, to furnish their houses and dreams. And so we have stripped our house of anything evocative of our many years in Paradise. Our house now resembles a hotel room. Practical. Easy in and out. Temporary. Sensible. Just the facts, Ma'am. At its stuffed and cluttered best, our house is warm, cozy and ever so sweet, so full of the riches of love and laughter and life it should sell for a billion dollars. But, though it feels as if we are, we are not selling our love stories. We are selling a wooden house, a house built way before we were born, a house that will stand long after we are gone.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgYDHXib-HJzyaYo_vXDIdNHA8btCJCmDWAZYEURpsJWqxWJNX9C2Njtf_oYBHn0Cx3VXCrCpfP9midShdAW9UXF5_BbN4NiaCcuBa9utu6N2YHr-Or78kUZCENl3ozLju0bgUnfDwogvc/s1600/Scan+4.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="194" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgYDHXib-HJzyaYo_vXDIdNHA8btCJCmDWAZYEURpsJWqxWJNX9C2Njtf_oYBHn0Cx3VXCrCpfP9midShdAW9UXF5_BbN4NiaCcuBa9utu6N2YHr-Or78kUZCENl3ozLju0bgUnfDwogvc/s320/Scan+4.jpeg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Pregnant with Miguel and a new house. </td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">411 Truman down to her Dade County Pine bones. </td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Then. . . </td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh6K0BRnQ0_z6bSpKK91MNlDL1NMCHVmVIXLnQPxot4m9PnMgD4WvPqeAjq9397wTihRJ6Nq5FJ0KNejxPn2LBjXCtrHAhwakKYTYasAgYYsyDNWG-lTrshBZ94pTtjA7G6mQKu8q_E7CA/s1600/122660_01.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="207" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh6K0BRnQ0_z6bSpKK91MNlDL1NMCHVmVIXLnQPxot4m9PnMgD4WvPqeAjq9397wTihRJ6Nq5FJ0KNejxPn2LBjXCtrHAhwakKYTYasAgYYsyDNWG-lTrshBZ94pTtjA7G6mQKu8q_E7CA/s320/122660_01.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Now! </td></tr>
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Selling a house is hard on a marriage. Even the best marriages, therapists say, are prone to buckle under the weight of complicated fiduciary affairs. Every high-impact window, every appliance, every tile in the bathroom has arrived only when we could afford it. We have worked hard. None of it has come easy. There is pride invested in this place. We did not swoop into this house and make it a home in a week or a month or even a year. Our home has evolved. And evolution is hard-won and very often painful. A wooden house is demanding. Alive. It has needs which must be met. It is old, and a bit crotchety. But with age comes enormous strength and fortitude. This is a sturdy house; safe and sane shelter from the storm. <br />
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In strictly practical terms, our greatest attribute, a feature not to be viewed lightly by potential buyers, is our off-street parking. There is a driveway! Do you have any idea of the value of off-street parking in downtown Key West? It has occurred to us that we might put the driveway on the market and keep the house. <br />
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Our house has central air conditioning, making our lives much more than bearable. On the very occasional cold day, there is heat. No more warming ourselves by sticking our feet into an open oven! Our sweet haven is cool, calm, remarkably quiet and serene. What makes it all the more remarkable is the wonder of having Key West right outside our door. Walk a block in any direction and you will find something worth seeing or doing or just being next to. Or sit on the porch and watch the whole world go by, on their way to the Hemingway House or Blue Heaven. Planes fly overhead and we feel happy for the passengers, some coming home, some coming to visit, all about to bask in the special light that is Key West -- and only Key West. <br />
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There are ads for houses that state: "Make me move!" I want to post an ad that says: "Help me move on!" It has been a long struggle to come to terms with the cold, hard facts about retiring in a town where everyone's biggest problem is finding a cozy place to live, and a place to park a car. <br />
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Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose. Freedom's just another word for not having a mortgage. What we need now is freedom. <br />
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Selling our house is like having an appointment with the dentist to have our wisdom teeth pulled. We are ready. We are scared, but we know it must be done. When it's over, we will be happy, and healthy, and comfortable. Let's just do it! <br />
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From our back deck I can see the tops of Hemingway's trees, swaying in the breeze, and sometimes, his ghost, snickering just above the tourists lining up, with their cameras and their guidebooks, to visit the house he once called his own. When all is said and done, a house is just a house. Creating a story, living the dream, that's up to you.<br />
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For a virtual tour of the home click here:<br />
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http://www.411trumanave.com/#ZILLOW_VIRTUAL_TOUR_INDICATOR<br />
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<a href="http://www.tourbuzz.net/public/vtour/full/449164/"></a><br />
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<br />June Keithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08171174002983023531noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4171391806681426297.post-43771724352276202702016-02-13T11:17:00.000-05:002016-02-14T05:02:29.510-05:00We'll Die For You<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgZCsEFJVN8JlYJTc_lGQ9bAzrABGIDVmBZJnP-hRTjB9y6DH1I91pI5ObOUJiBPS4R_9FeTjXr-srQXtjzuxGyC9NeD7xFFJfc2naIH9FKMrRlT8sg5qXW7NPkrWGgOAEX6VaUbxhjk0w/s1600/00900005.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgZCsEFJVN8JlYJTc_lGQ9bAzrABGIDVmBZJnP-hRTjB9y6DH1I91pI5ObOUJiBPS4R_9FeTjXr-srQXtjzuxGyC9NeD7xFFJfc2naIH9FKMrRlT8sg5qXW7NPkrWGgOAEX6VaUbxhjk0w/s320/00900005.JPG" width="230" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Dilys relishing fresh lobster. Tatamagouche, Nova Scotia. </td></tr>
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Darling I Love You So. That’s how Dilys taught me to remember how to spell her name. Of the hundreds of wonderful, brilliant and creative people we have known and adored during our many years in Key West I would rank Dilys Winn among the all-time greatest. Dilys was a genius, a rebel, and a writer of mystery novels. In New York City she founded the nation's first all-mystery bookstore and called it Murder Ink. In Key West she staged a mystery theatre/bookstore, Miss Marple’s Parlor. After Key West she moved to North Carolina, where her first address was “Mars Lane.” In N.C. she was promptly discovered and hired by a country bed and breakfast inn as a hostess. Her job was to pour tea and entertain the guests, which she did with aplomb. Imagine sitting down to tea with Dorothy Parker! She even looked a bit like Dorothy Parker – not tall, plumpish, and with brown eyes, generally sparkling with amusement. She cut her own hair into a sort of pageboy and preferred drapey, linen clothes with big pockets and buttons. I called Dilys my own private Dorothy Parker. And in honor of that, Dilys presented to me a first edition of Dorothy Parker poems, a prize I will cherish forever. Sometimes I simply called her “Darling I Love You So.” <br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiZlfPDOx9WGu4OI7-q61oIv7-Mp4V_zd_Q0qmYyvjpJ0HSFG7edDq7ls_kQHxSEX8Ha9m9iLq7elmWgxSV_s3KQWsLn6f91-IvvbdP9M5dCRnwdPMzE1K_A1PvymgHJYzg9t4Ubl71peQ/s1600/P4070007.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="326" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiZlfPDOx9WGu4OI7-q61oIv7-Mp4V_zd_Q0qmYyvjpJ0HSFG7edDq7ls_kQHxSEX8Ha9m9iLq7elmWgxSV_s3KQWsLn6f91-IvvbdP9M5dCRnwdPMzE1K_A1PvymgHJYzg9t4Ubl71peQ/s400/P4070007.jpeg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Dilys and June at the beloved lover's desk. Asheville, N. C. </td></tr>
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Dilys lived in interesting places, and in none of them for long. Sometimes she lived in an abandoned building for sale and had to move when the sale happened. Sometimes she lived in a garret in someone’s creaky attic. Sometimes she lived in the backrooms of her shops. Her final residence was in Asheville and it was lovely. Dilys had a vast array of fascinating things that she gathered along the long and winding road of her life. Her favorite possession was a lover's desk, ancient, heavy and unique which she had brought home from England. On the last evening we spent with her, some five years ago, I asked her to pose with me at that desk. And she did.<br />
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There is a prize named after Dilys Winn. At the Mystery Book Writers of America annual Award Night gala the prize is given to the mystery novel that booksellers most enjoy recommending to their customers. It is called “The Dilys.” It honors Dilys Winn's elaborate conversational skills. Start at a mystery book and end up at Freud. Somehow Dilys was able to knit all the pieces together into something whole and brilliant. Her fascination with mysteries was her portal into the vast universe. <br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiaTVtAnZ1V3y1n-t-_02V9zxaXU9tIpGOWq3B1QAC9ee_51t0yHigmWdZ0bAi_duEDaBwubvjba5JSGYPDz4soCKiHKqseWeqjuqCNfpK9lZvigyhk1E3ERL7GKpiVx3ENezgLhXompEI/s1600/00900010_1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="212" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiaTVtAnZ1V3y1n-t-_02V9zxaXU9tIpGOWq3B1QAC9ee_51t0yHigmWdZ0bAi_duEDaBwubvjba5JSGYPDz4soCKiHKqseWeqjuqCNfpK9lZvigyhk1E3ERL7GKpiVx3ENezgLhXompEI/s320/00900010_1.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Nova Scotia morning. Shirley, Suzanne, Dilys, June and Babe. </td></tr>
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In the last five years of our friendship Dilys was housebound, suffering with the kidney disease that finally took her on February 5. We kept in touch with occasional marathon phone calls. An hour with me, and then, what she liked best, an hour with my husband, one of her favorite men. Had we recorded those wild conversations I’m sure we would have something Dilys would have deemed publishable by now. We didn’t, and so we will warm ourselves with memories of Dilys visiting us in Nova Scotia and chasing lobsters and puffins; Dilys treating us to dinner in a fabulous and remote restaurant in Asheville; and, of course, those many crazy days and nights hanging out at Miss Marple’s Parlor.<br />
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The attached column first appeared in the <i>Miami Herald</i>. Pictures would have been a good idea. But who thinks of that when you’re laughing so hard you can barely breathe?<br />
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<h2>
<b>We'll Die For You</b> </h2>
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After watching a couple friends perform in a campy, interactive whodunit parlor game at Miss Marple's Parlor and Mystery Book Shop, I suggested to shop owner Dilys Winn that if she ever needed a big blonde, I was available. Her bright eyes, aglow with a glimmer of lunacy, turned neon when I said my husband would act, too. <br />
Finally, our chance came. Last week Dilys called and asked us to appear in one of her zany dramas. I would play a whorish psychic. Michael would be a nerdy IRS agent. Were two roles ever so clearly ours? All we had to do, Dilys explained, was enter the parlor at 8 p.m., clutch our throats, stagger like poisoned people dying hideous deaths might do, and - die. Easy enough. <br />
"Sure," I told Dilys. 'We'll die for you." <br />
Dilys sent me to the Knot So New Consignment Shop where Ilene, the shop owner, who really is psychic, handed me dress after whorish dress to try, while a salesgirl named Lucy and I discussed the meaning of the word "whore." Does a whore get paid a lot for sex, or simply have a lot of sex? I say the second. Please don't ask me why. <br />
After I'd found my costume, a tight green and gold skirt with a giant flounce in a shimmery fabric, with a matching leopard-skin print jacket, I was to report to Dilys for costume approval. <br />
"Here are my corpses now," Dilys said to someone on the other end of the phone, when Michael and I walked into her shop. <br />
Dilys loved my costume, and was so encouraged by our enthusiasm for acting, she made an impulsive decision to expand our roles. After our death scenes, according to the new script, we were to quickly change into angels' wings and choir robes. Oblivious to anyone else but our ghostly selves, Michael and I were to wander around, discussing bright white lights at the end of a tunnel. We were also to drop occasional clues. <br />
Late Friday afternoon, while I teased my hair and applied a half-pound of makeup, Michael hunted for the gray flannel suit he'd stashed in the back of his closet 10 years ago. While he knotted his tie, I parted his hair down the middle and plastered it with gel. We found his old briefcase. <br />
At 7:30, we headed on foot for the mystery theater, with absolutely no clue of how our appearance on Duval Street would affect sunset pedestrians. Michael, the nerd in the suit and tie carrying a briefcase, and I, his whorish companion in the leopard skin suit, jangley jewelry and cheap perfume, created a bona fide scene. <br />
"Is this your first blind date?" I shrilled to Michael as we passed a group of pedestrians. Some polite types tried hard to not stare. Others glared at me disapprovingly. "How do you like Key West so far?" I shouted gaily, as Michael managed to stay in poker-faced character. <br />
A girl sitting on the sidewalk stared hard, and then when we were past, sighed loudly and gasped "My nerves," as if she'd hallucinated us. <br />
Soon, it was 8 o'clock. Showtime! As we waited in the wings, with the other, more seasoned cast members, Dilys appeared to give us some last minute directions. <br />
"When you do your death scenes, really camp them up," she said to us. "You should really overact, and don't worry about looking foolish."<br />
Then, as a sort of afterthought, Dilys murmured, "I could never do what you're about to do." <br />
But Michael and I had no qualms about looking foolish, and no fears of losing our dignity. Our impromptu dress rehearsal on Duval Street had cured us of all that.<br />
<br />
Here's a video of Dilys' appearance on "To Tell The Truth" in 1972.
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<span id="goog_834476887"></span><span id="goog_834476888"></span>June Keithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08171174002983023531noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4171391806681426297.post-56485956123635027362014-08-25T13:59:00.000-04:002014-08-25T16:44:15.087-04:00Uneasy Rider<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A guy up in Maine -- wish I knew his name -- did this and gave it to Rocky. It's very cool, right? </td></tr>
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A few weeks ago I went to New York and visited with my brother Rocky. One night we went to the Caramoor Center to see Patti LuPone. We rode to the concert on his Harley. Most of the time the thought of riding on the back of a motorcycle scares the hell out of me; so many things can go wrong. But on this night, I ignored that nervous Nelly voice in my head and turned myself over to my brother’s care, and to fate, which seemed friendly and encouraging on that lovely summer evening. I had recently read an essay in a Buddhist magazine about becoming one with whatever you were doing. I decided to become one with my brother, just as he becomes one with his mighty Harley when he rides. For good measure I reminded myself that Rocky, my baby brother who is now in his fifties, has been riding a motorcycle since he was five years old.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Rocky with Mom and me in pre-Harley days. </td></tr>
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Back then he had a mini-bike. He had a trail through our yard. There were ramps and jumps on a ride that took him past the front porch, around two trees, down the driveway and into the back yard, along the edge of woods, and up a grassy hill into the front yard again. The whine of that little engine was background noise to many seasons. <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi9uNZrbCJcKuh3tGSJZw8WLcewD3Hv7MA5kTBmFELJyOHTnk2m56m-pmxBZbhEWObo_8Z4GY0Qkwwm0iAT0uUouPRpeQtMi5XVkTLiaA2gUuOmd-1ibw7_cyoy6WT2mmCv8zsZ01fOB6w/s1600/ps_2011_05_12___12_31_52.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"></a><br />
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Rocky was a neighborhood phenomenon – an adorable little boy in perpetual motion. Who better to trust with my life and my limbs? And although I know fate is an arbitrary thing, on that beautiful sultry night I easily abandoned my absurd notion of having some control over it, and relaxed into the wonder of the scene around me.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Country roads where we grew up. We love them!<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg3APcx1KE4Shsd4pSmrcwpe7bNIwZs4qTmZmly9IE8GxWZeHsAUykZFOrYtft37x0Vss5ztqPAA23NVAahf5Edp8JH7wiKkBynFpOSlmc5CdIurwG47NgsZSgNZegilzIbtpBRLILvgz8/s1600/Scan.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"></a></td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Rocky letting his hair down in Key West. You're so handsome, 'Bro'!</td></tr>
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The ride was spectacular. We roared through the country roads like a jet through the clouds, the trees on the side of the road a blur of greens. It was twilight, and it occurred to me that traveling on a motorcycle was so much more honest than riding in a car. Every curve was a revelation. Sensational. And as I hugged my brother’s back and screamed and laughed with the sloopy joy of freedom, I knew why he loved riding so much, and why he’d ridden thousands and thousands of miles like this, through tree-lined country roads and deserts and mountains, through Indian Reservations and National parks, on steep cliffs far above ocean shores and along the reedy beds of lakes and river. <br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">My best friends. Michael Keith and Rocky Mazza. In Tatamagouche. </td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"> </td></tr>
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After the concert, which was in no way as exhilarating as the journey to it (LuPone did not thrust her arms toward the firmament and belt out “Don’t Cry for Me Argentina”) we climbed back onto the Harley and headed off into a much colder, darker night. <br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Treen Cottage, Malagash. Another Nova Scotia summer with my boys. </td></tr>
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I tried in vain to warm myself on Rocky’s back as we rode, huddling ever closer to him, which only made my helmet butt into his helmet until he finally asked me to please stop. I concentrated on tolerating blasts of moonless night chill waiting at the far side of every curve. No more crazy joy; no more happy memories; just a desperate need to make it back to Rocky's house and between the flannel sheets of my bed. <br />
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“I see why you love it so much,” I told him later, when my teeth stopped chattering. “It’s wonderful! It’s thrilling!”<br />
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“It’s not as thrilling as it used to be,” he said. <br />
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It was like hearing of a divorce, or coming close to the end of a book you were loving reading. I felt sad to hear that something so fundamental to his character had lost its thrall. <br />
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"Don't get me wrong," he said. "I love riding. But nowadays I don’t feel safe. People are in such a hurry. You have to be on the defensive every minute. It's not like it used to be.”<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"> Michael, Susan Pitts (our daughter) and Uncle Rocky. They look so innocent . . . don't believe it! I can't imagine what they're up to, but clearly, they're up to something. </td></tr>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg3APcx1KE4Shsd4pSmrcwpe7bNIwZs4qTmZmly9IE8GxWZeHsAUykZFOrYtft37x0Vss5ztqPAA23NVAahf5Edp8JH7wiKkBynFpOSlmc5CdIurwG47NgsZSgNZegilzIbtpBRLILvgz8/s1600/Scan.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"></a>Last summer Rocky was riding on the Pennsylvania Turnpike, on the final leg of a cross-country trip, almost home, when a truck changed lanes and side-swiped his bike. Amazingly, Rocky stayed upright, but his foot was smashed and so was his Harley. The truck didn’t stop. Maybe, Rocky says, the driver didn’t know that he’d hit someone. An ambulance took Rocky to the hospital where the broken bones in his foot were splinted and wrapped. His Harley was towed away and repaired. It could have been far worse, everybody said. Yes, that is true. But the darker part of that wreck is what it did to his soul. It robbed him of his innocence, a bright and shining thing, that Rocky had managed to hold onto far, far longer than most of us ever dare to. <br />
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June Keithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08171174002983023531noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4171391806681426297.post-73267484336491951262014-01-20T15:09:00.001-05:002014-04-30T09:23:52.493-04:00 Scenes from a Long Good Friday<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Don't mess with my cushions!</td></tr>
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One Thursday morning our neighbor Thea woke up blind. She was understandably freaked out, but maintained her calm as Michael drove her to the local eye doctor, where she was examined. The doctor came into the waiting room, stood before Michael and gravely announced: “She needs to go to the emergency room at the eye clinic in Miami. Right now.” <br />
Michael called me at work to say that he was heading to Miami with Thea. What else could he do? Whoa! On a busy holiday weekend? There had to be a better way! I made a dozen phone calls, to the hospital, to the ambulance company, to the helicopter people. Turns out that waking up blind, as terrible as that is, does not classify as a life-threatening condition. Therefore, the only way to get Thea to Miami was to drive, on the eve of Good Friday. I joined them, and around 2 we headed to Miami. We arrived in the city, and into the maze that is Miami’s hospital district, just after rush hour, and found our way to the clinic by nightfall. <br />
In the waiting room there were others with eye emergencies even worse than Thea’s. A kid on a stretcher with one eye heavily bandaged. (A victim of the famous BB gun incident our parents warned us about?) A baby, wailing, in the arms of his horrified parents. And other, quieter catastrophies. Like Thea’s -- all of them waiting for their turn with the doctor. <br />
By midnight Thea had been examined, her blood tested and her body injected with steroids. She was told to return in the morning, bright and early. Which meant checking into a hotel located somewhere in the maze of dirty streets and tall buildings. <br />
After another day of waiting rooms and treatments, Thea was released from the clinic. The roads were a glut of 3-day-weekend traffic. The source of Thea’s sudden blindness remained a mystery, although a course of treatment had been prescribed. As we made our way out of Miami, the tension, disappointment, and Thea’s fear traveled with us, like an elephant in the back seat. There was little to say, and so we said little. Our relief, at arriving home, was profound. <br />
Sometimes life in Key West is more like a movie than real life, as in you can’t make this stuff up! It was one of those times. And we had one more scene to go.<br />
As Michael eased the car into our narrow driveway we noticed an unfamiliar bicycle propped against our house. Unlocked. Who does that? While I walked Thea home, Michael investigated. He quickly returned to the front door and said, “Call the cops!” The tone of his voice sent chills up my spine. <br />
“Why?” I asked, dialing 911.<br />
“There’s a body on the deck,” he said. <br />
“A body? You mean a dead body?”<br />
“It’s all wrapped up,” he said. “I can’t tell.” <br />
He encouraged me to not look, so I didn’t. A policeman soon arrived. He was all business. With his right hand resting on his gun, he walked through the house with Michael leading the way. He saw the mummy on the deck and agreed that the thing wrapped in a quilt beneath the schefflera tree might be dead. Or alive. <br />
“Hey,” he said, poking the body with his foot. “Hey, you!” <br />
He did this for a minute or two until finally, the thing moved. It was alive. It was a man and the man wanted to be left alone. That’s what he said. <br />
“Leave me alone, please,” he moaned, and as he exhaled this plea fumes of alcohol filled the air. Michael and I staggered back, but not the cop. <br />
“You gotta get out of here,” the cop told the man. “This is private property. You’re trespassing.” <br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Our friends from Up North always get a kick out of our outdoor laundry room. </td></tr>
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I realized that he was wrapped in the heavy quilt we use to cover our washing machine. Beneath his head, I recognized the porch chair cushions. He’d opened the gate, come into our yard, onto the deck, and bundled himself up nice and cozy. He hadn’t been there for long, I knew. Otherwise, that bike would have been gone, like all unlocked bikes in Key West. <br />
“Man, I told you to fix that gate lock,” I hissed at Michael, as the man slowly rose from the floor, moaning gruffly, polluting the air with his barroom breath. <br />
“Can I take this shit with me?” the man asked, clutching the quilt to his chest. <br />
“Yes,” the cop said. “Take it and go.”<br />
By now we were totally punch drunk with exhaustion. The situation was suddenly hilarious. <br />
“Wait a minute,” Michael said. “That’s my shit!”<br />
What made it all the more hilarious to me is Michael swearing. Michael does not swear. <br />
“No, you can’t take it. That’s Mr. Keith’s shit!”<br />
And then the cop. More hilarious still. <br />
“How about these pillows?” he asked. <br />
“No!” I yelled. <br />
The drunken man surrendered our stuff. The cop walked him around to the front of the house where he slumped on the steps, and wearily held his head in his hands. He was not a bad man, I thought, just a defeated one. The bike, he said, in response to the cop's questioning, was his. He’d been in Key West for four weeks.<br />
“You want me to run him in?” the policeman asked. “It’s up to you.” <br />
“No, we just want him out of here,” I said, talking as tough as I could muster. “But he’d better not come back here because this is Florida and if I see somebody on my property, behind my gate, I have the right to shoot!” <br />
“Did you hear that?” the cop said to the man. “Mrs. Keith says if you come back here again she’ll blow your head off.” <br />
With that the man rose from the step, and slowly climbed onto his bike, moving as if the effort pained him greatly. <br />
“Hey, he’s riding drunk!” I said, as the man headed toward Duval Street and who knew what next. <br />
“Yeah,” the cop said. “I’ll probably be seeing him again tonight.” <br />
“Just like a western," Michael said. "This is where the cowboy rides into the setting sun.” <br />
Then we three stood silently, watching, and waiting for the credits to roll.<br />
<br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/DCfhoSqJeDw" width="420"></iframe>June Keithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08171174002983023531noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4171391806681426297.post-47598127929191017552013-09-16T20:22:00.000-04:002013-09-16T20:23:14.534-04:00How I Found Enlightenment in the Walmart Parking Lot<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Twenty-four hours after we woke up in the Walmart parking lot look who's still laughing. </td></tr>
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Back in March, as I reserved and paid for plane tickets and a rental car for a trip to Canada Michael and I were planning to take in August, he viewed my early planning as an unattractive symptom of my controlling nature. I am hyper-vigilant, for whatever reason. My school teachers often described me as “high strung,” which seemed to me a good thing. Better high strung than low strung, right?<br />
As our August departure date loomed, I urged Michael to secure our lodging for the Friday night we arrived in Maine. I needed to have a bed waiting for me at the end of a long day of travel. As a high strung person, I need my rest.<br />
“There are lots of motels in Maine,” Michael said, “I want to wait and get one when we get there. Maybe we can get a same-day discount.”<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">There are motels all over the place!! </td></tr>
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“But the motels are selling out,” I said. “I’ve been looking. There aren’t many rooms left! Please choose one now!”<br />
Then came that look and that sigh from Michael. Oh June. Poor, high-strung June. I decided to work on developing a more laid-back attitude about the motel reservation. This is often what I do when these sorts of issues arise in my marriage. Michael is, after all, a far more worldly guy than I. He’s been around, and, as he likes to remind me, been to Georgia on a fast train! He’s educated at Furman, the Harvard of the South. His feet don’t sweat. He is laid back. So I figured Michael was right. We didn’t need reservations. I needed to get ahold of myself and steer clear of stringing myself too high. <br />
On August 2 we flew to Maine. We took possession of our rental car, a sleek, white Sonata. We drove into the cool Portland sunset and all the way to Augusta before stopping for dinner. We asked the waitress if she knew of motels in the area.<br />
“They’re everywhere!” she said. “I mean it’s Augusta, Maine.” She shrugged, shaking free the remote possibility of us finding ourselves without a roof over our heads for the night. But she was wrong. There were no motel rooms in Augusta, Maine that night. Or in Bangor either. Turns out it was the weekend of the Lobster Festival, the state’s biggest tourist event. The motels were full and we were out of luck.<br />
In Brewer, Maine, we found a Walmart open till midnight. The nice clerks told us that we were welcome to spend the night outside along with the other campers in a tree-lined corner of the parking lot. People stayed there every night they assured us. How bad could it be?<br />
A wonderful thing happens when you surrender to the inevitable. It’s a sweet release; the knot in your chest unravels; your breath comes freely and you reclaim your sense of well-being. I jumped off the high wire then. Yes, we’d sleep in the car. We’d buy pillows and quilts and nest for the night, cupped in the soft leather seats of our lux car. Why not?<br />
“Baby,” Michael said, as we wandered the empty store, punch drunk with exhaustion, giggling like fools as we shopped for car camping supplies, “Pick yourself out a nice warm quilt.”<br />
We parked next to a very nice camper. There were a few. A man walked his dog. A stiff breeze whipped the American flag flying over the land of the free. It was 60 degrees. We cracked the car windows for a rush of fresh, clean northern air, wrapped ourselves in our quilts, pushed back our seats and tried to sleep.<br />
Around 2 a.m. a Toyota Corolla pulled into the parking place next to ours. Inside the little car two people unabashedly performed the top ten positions of the Kama Sutra. Every once in a while they turned on the car’s engine, apparently to warm the car. They didn’t have quilts after all. Or curtains. What a show! <br />
Maybe we slept for 2 hours. At 4 a.m. we were awake and chatting and laughing. I got out of the car to pee. Maybe the folks in the fancy campers watched me do it. Maybe they didn’t. At 4 a.m. it was too late to care.<br />
“I peed on my feet,” I told Michael as I jumped back into the car, shivering from the cold, and shimmied back into the warm cocoon of my quilt.<br />
“Too much information,” he said.<br />
At 5 a.m. we drove to the all-night Tim Hortons for real bathrooms and coffee. At 6 a.m. we were on the road to New Brunswick, where we checked into a motel and slept for 18 hours. My equilibrium was shattered but my spirits were high. Bottom line, we survived.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjtR1ME3Z2pp17SYx9DovkWajIhpiqfo9gyBd1R0yTG-BIMLc6sROnP3W5Xi11I9nHdQ7JoeRqioHLFjK5LEorHF9qIbRe-eiNbAG6u51oVJ6Vurm28F4HplObxoIOgujmpuua0GIBwooU/s1600/P5060003.JPG" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjtR1ME3Z2pp17SYx9DovkWajIhpiqfo9gyBd1R0yTG-BIMLc6sROnP3W5Xi11I9nHdQ7JoeRqioHLFjK5LEorHF9qIbRe-eiNbAG6u51oVJ6Vurm28F4HplObxoIOgujmpuua0GIBwooU/s400/P5060003.JPG" width="300" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">This boy has been to Georgia on a fast train, y'all!</td></tr>
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Now that we’re home in Key West, the trip is done, and life is back to routine, I think about that night. It was a fluke for us, but not for all who spend nights in their cars with no place else to go. I think about them. One night of homelessness was very hard on me. It required a difficult period of adjustment, and then a longer period of recovery. I did it, but I don’t want to do it again.<br />
Now I see that flying above all that minutia — my need to control, Michael’s stubbornness, our silly egocentricities — is the clear solution, as obvious as that flag flying wildly in the Maine wind. There is truth in acceptance. I cannot manage every outcome in my life and it is a relief to admit that to myself. Getting older is something I can do nothing about. The tyranny of time overrules our most carefully made plans. But I am lucky enough to be able to buy myself a very nice quilt. And so that’s my new serenity prayer: God, grant me the wherewithall to always have a nice, warm quilt as I surrender to the inevitable passage of time.June Keithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08171174002983023531noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4171391806681426297.post-7168198403160801612013-06-22T15:56:00.000-04:002013-06-22T15:58:48.068-04:00Hoka Hey Hell<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj0iJyWn2a4EtoZ7W8SUKf6NbigNQO_Q4x2Nvne63trklE2tZb5N4a9rlqigFLaIdqbftYWbGKPoidbSWQhH9udEV5OkgzIX4SkB1N0EVQGdGLMHGmYbIZvigSWqN2tiJEDremOo99EjCs/s1600/Scan.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj0iJyWn2a4EtoZ7W8SUKf6NbigNQO_Q4x2Nvne63trklE2tZb5N4a9rlqigFLaIdqbftYWbGKPoidbSWQhH9udEV5OkgzIX4SkB1N0EVQGdGLMHGmYbIZvigSWqN2tiJEDremOo99EjCs/s400/Scan.png" width="331" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Rocky waiting for breakfast in Key West, 2006. </td></tr>
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My adventurous brother Rocky is about to set out on his beloved Harley for the mother of all motorcycle endurance rides, the Hoka Hey. Hoka Hey Challenge 2013 zig zags around the U.S. and Canada, covers 7,000 miles of road, and wraps at a giant survivors party a week or so later. Competitors’ bikes are equipped with tracking devices, so that we, the riders’ anxious friends and/or loved ones may watch their progress on our computer screens. Riders must sleep out-of-doors, if and when they sleep, and are strictly prohibited from using any performance enhancing drugs. Marijuana is taboo, too, and at the end of the race urine tests are administered to check for signs of infractions. Getting a ticket for speeding automatically eliminates challengers from sharing in the winners’ pot. Reportedly, Hoka Hey organizers will know if riders deviate from the rules, and in previous years, just to be sure, lie detector tests have been administered, which many unfortunately failed. Riders are given directions to their next checkpoint at consecutive Harley dealership check-ins along the way. The route is a mystery until the departure time of 6 a.m., Sunday. <br />
The website explains that the Hoka Hey is designed to “test riders’ abilities to navigate, endure and persevere along some of the most technical roads in North America!” <br />
And here I have to ask: what is a “technical road?” <br />
“One with pavement?” Michael, Rocky’s brother-in-law suggests. <br />
Not necessarily, but in as much as that is possible, yes, the route will be on paved highway. Occasionally there may be deviations, however. Previous contestants have reported the instructions to have been very confusing. <br />
Here’s more from the Hoka Hey website: “Join us as we venture north into the ARCTIC WATERSHED! Traveling to places that no other competition has ever gone before!”<br />
“Maybe there’s a reason why no competition has ever gone there before,” Michael suggests.<br />
The Arctic Watershed, for those without a clue – like me, I had to look it up – is way, way, way up in northern Ontario, Canada, at the very lip of the continent. I suspect it will be cold. There are no towns in this area, only outposts. Surely it will be lovely to see. But it’s a good thing Rocky is carrying his food, a series of high-powered nutrition shakes designed by his dietitian. I don’t think he’ll find a McDonald's up there on the tundra.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhR86Jko9h-eZAqvxCCox3bANgERPItuCZ7gTKwqpitVHGPxLLHieYzi6Dm-M_GecLww8-zypGwHx2I2p-4U99WmX9vzk8aMhigH1Yz3bnijjV8ZWEUWd-4CQ2GjqC2C3OcIjAExt1wujE/s1600/Scan+6.jpeg" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="265" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhR86Jko9h-eZAqvxCCox3bANgERPItuCZ7gTKwqpitVHGPxLLHieYzi6Dm-M_GecLww8-zypGwHx2I2p-4U99WmX9vzk8aMhigH1Yz3bnijjV8ZWEUWd-4CQ2GjqC2C3OcIjAExt1wujE/s400/Scan+6.jpeg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Michael, June and Rocky in Malagash, Nova Scotia, 2004.</td></tr>
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The challenge, as it is called, is designed by a South Dakota attorney, Jim Red Cloud, and his wife, Beth Dunham. They do this to bring attention and hopefully money to the plight of Native Americans. In the Lakota language, Hoka Hey means “it’s a good day to die” and is believed to have been the battle cry of legendary Sioux warrior Crazy Horse. Others have interpreted the phrase to mean “it’s a good day to ride.” The philosophy behind this is a belief in living a good life, so that when you die, you are prepared, no regrets. <br />
Sadly, the Hoka Hey has received some seriously negative publicity since its first run in 2010. Key West was the departure point for the trip that year. The finish line was in Alaska. The advertised first prize was $250,000 but that prize was never awarded. Those first over the finish line were plagued by a myriad of disqualifying factors. What those factors were, exactly, is kind of hush-hush. Ultimately, some cash prizes were awarded, just not the entire grand prize to one person. It was divided among those who managed to finish the run in the prescribed amount of time. And those guys aren’t talking. <br />
One hundred and seventy-three riders started the 2011 Hoka Hey endurance race. Of those, 11 finished in time to be eligible for prize money. There is no public record of the 2012 statistics. And reportedly, Jim Red Cloud does not do interviews. You can go on line and read the blogs of the more literary past participants. The stories are interesting, but frightening. A lot of crazy things can go wrong on the road. There are natural disasters, traffic troubles, and fatigue. Riders are expected to cover nearly a thousand miles a day. That leaves little time for napping on the side of the road. Most of the participants are middle-aged, like my brother.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj-yg6YPN3DNjlETcvFVdPkarMq70k4Bl-r8cyQPDNdIOoqlHyM5VSKIe4CAkbtY7pM4ADXwxYzDFYm3h5RP_ONT8TqSpgQ9SkOhDeNZYx9v-0xiirn5Me-BbgiRVEGZTkcgdeV-yR9hZ8/s1600/ps_2011_05_12___12_31_52.jpg" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="371" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj-yg6YPN3DNjlETcvFVdPkarMq70k4Bl-r8cyQPDNdIOoqlHyM5VSKIe4CAkbtY7pM4ADXwxYzDFYm3h5RP_ONT8TqSpgQ9SkOhDeNZYx9v-0xiirn5Me-BbgiRVEGZTkcgdeV-yR9hZ8/s400/ps_2011_05_12___12_31_52.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Key West Heidi and her baby, Rocky. Ft. Taylor, one Thanksgiving.</td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td></tr>
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“The Hoka Hey Motorcycle Challenge is not your local poker run! It will try your tolerance for ambiguity. It will test your determination, your resolve and your stamina,” the Hoka Hey site says. <br />
This is a challenge my brother Rocky is apparently unable to resist. He’s has been bucking the odds since he was a little 5-year-old kid. Back then, to challenge the strength of a toy football helmet, he put the flimsy thing on his head, aimed, and ran as hard and fast as he could into the side of our house. Our mother, who’d been sitting in the kitchen drinking coffee with our Aunt Connie, thought a car had hit us. The women ran outside to find Rocky on the ground, out cold. Years later, when dared to climb up to the roof of the school and jump to the ground, Rocky complied, and broke his leg in several places. He once cut his finger off slicing Italian bread at a clam bake. The doctors sewed it back on. That was their challenge.<br />
Rocky was planning to participate last summer in Hoka Hey 2012. He drove to Las Vegas, the starting line. He partied with the Hoka Hey challengers. He was ready to go. Then he got a call from home that his son Keith had died of a heart attack at age 33. He didn’t do the ride. He went home to attend his son’s funeral. Rocky fell into a depression, made even darker by being laid off from his job. It was a rough time. But through it all, he looked forward to the 2013 Hoka Hey Challenge. He got a new job. Spring came, and with it, riding weather. Now it’s summer. He’s much more like his old, jolly self these days. And now it’s time.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiHA6l5n5TWCKuowT1pQugTaS-K3q9_x1t_SfyfWvBc4b3pKTSs1MoXM3M56P67KC5e30KJ4sUrorFkMNYfit-BImMJYJBOObSbOcWPS3UFS_IWxTarM2I4dZQcJEwF18FtlR-5FMTJhAU/s1600/Scan+1.png" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="267" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiHA6l5n5TWCKuowT1pQugTaS-K3q9_x1t_SfyfWvBc4b3pKTSs1MoXM3M56P67KC5e30KJ4sUrorFkMNYfit-BImMJYJBOObSbOcWPS3UFS_IWxTarM2I4dZQcJEwF18FtlR-5FMTJhAU/s400/Scan+1.png" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Keith, Joey Rock, and Granddaddy Rocky. Connecticut, 2007.</td></tr>
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Today Rocky is camping with the other Hoka Hey contenders at the Senaca Indian Reservation in western New York. His ride is dedicated to the memory of his son. I can think of one hundred other things he could do to honor the memory of his son, none of them involving risking life and limb. But, this is Rocky, a man born to bend the laws of nature and good sense. He promises me he won’t push himself. But that big cash prize at the end of the road is pretty irresistible to my brother. How can he not push himself with his deeply ingrained American need to win? Rocky wants the bragging rights. He wants to prove himself to be shatterproof. (“I’ve already broken most of the bones in my body” he recently reminded me.) <br />
Sometimes I feel proud of my brother’s power, his tenacity, and his dedication to the open road. Lots of times I am very nervous. I once made him promise me were he to meet his end on the highway, he would die happy, no regrets. Hoka Hey! And he did promise. He has covered many thousands of miles on that bike, criss crossed the country a dozen times, and shown up to meet us on our own adventures in Arkansas, Nova Scotia and North Carolina. He truly does love riding, and works hard to support his Harley habit. <br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhlp2-IKC9aetWDoW267m0-_efStacbWP4nmVWRHvgg7iSCFwHiglis6lhROEw9UmoZyDT-RUP9Rneqej0NYmfcGkb4CulxZiGAaZc3G1rm5y2Q_Uzpaf7FTzH_xYF10jU5QQv5XYdNVXg/s1600/024.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhlp2-IKC9aetWDoW267m0-_efStacbWP4nmVWRHvgg7iSCFwHiglis6lhROEw9UmoZyDT-RUP9Rneqej0NYmfcGkb4CulxZiGAaZc3G1rm5y2Q_Uzpaf7FTzH_xYF10jU5QQv5XYdNVXg/s640/024.jpg" width="480" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">One of Rocky's New York friends did this a while ago. </td></tr>
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You can follow his ride on the Hoka Hey website http://hokaheychallenge.com/. His tracking device number is 705. You can also pray for him and visualize him rolling triumphant, on July 1, back onto the Senaca Reservation, in one happy, jolly piece. <br />
I will spend this week thinking of my baby brother, calling him way too often, searching the Internet for weather reports, and dealing with a roller coaster ride of emotions. I will dwell in Hoka Hey Hell, and most certainly will suffer far more than the intrepid Superman, Rocky. <br />
<br />
<br />June Keithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08171174002983023531noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4171391806681426297.post-80314821615123687292013-04-03T14:30:00.002-04:002013-04-08T14:11:19.431-04:00The Dark Side of the Moon<i>
</i>
<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">RIP Victor Latham (1973) </td></tr>
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<i>Victor Latham died on Easter Sunday. I remember Victor well, and we have been Facebook friends for a long time. My ex-husband and Vic played a lot of racketball over at the Key West High School courts back in the day. I wrote this column about the Full Moon Saloon in the Miami Herald in 1993. My husband Michael suggested that we re-print it today. So here it is:</i><br />
<br />
The Dark Side of The Moon <br />
<br />
When I read in the paper that the Full Moon Saloon was closing its doors for good, I felt as if I were reading the obituary of an old friend, an old friend with whom I'd gotten into lots of trouble. True, I hadn't been in the place for years. Nonetheless, I'm sure I'd fulfilled my quota of lost weekends there and certainly qualified as a bonafide "Full Moonie." <br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Full Moon Saloon T-shirt</td></tr>
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I quit the place because I quit drinking 8 years ago, and though it was always a fun place to eat a fish sandwich or make a midnight rendezvous, none of that felt the same as it once had without a couple of the house's overly generous cocktails to guide you 'round the dark side of the Moon. <br />
But sobriety isn't the only thing that has kept me away from the Moon. Some of the darkest moments of my life happened there. <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiq1HU3uXilXKjNCjJ0I6MHKRqmL7gcYxjNDBFgClXgkndn_Sb5PotiSzKEqJnDOJSM5E0Ekn6n8dtPLlhS_5i9W8xpOsvyE9WrCtN2viDyGaXeRLks0R_1fCR4-AfPKLdy0ZfUSQtOtws/s1600/46015_394429877299157_101446495_n.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"></a><br />
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My first marriage ended at the Full Moon eleven years ago. The comedy team of Mack and Jamie was performing that night, and my husband and I had gone there to celebrate our fourth wedding anniversary. I wanted to see the show, but the waitress told us it was sold out. <br />
"Sorry, honey," my husband said, as if he meant it. <br />
Victor Latham, one of the owners of the place heard that we, two of the Moon's most dedicated patrons, wanted tickets to the show. He came to our table and offered us tickets as an anniversary gift. <br />
"No thanks," my husband said. "See, I'm expecting a phone call. We gotta get home." <br />
It was a lie. There was no important phone call expected; I was sure of it. Anger sizzled through me like an electric shock. <br />
"That's it," I said, not quite believing the words suddenly flowing from my mouth.<br />
"I want a divorce. " <br />
"Don't say it if you don't mean it," he said evenly.<br />
I meant it. Two weeks later I moved out of his house.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The Full Moon Saloon fish sandwich. Perfection!!</td></tr>
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A year later I had a new lover. He managed a theater and told me how much he despised working with the actors there, whom he bitterly described as childish, demanding and self-centered. <br />
One night he phoned me to break a date we'd made earlier that day. He said he had to work. My roommate and I walked over to the Full Moon for a late supper. And there, holding the hands across the table and gazing deeply into the eyes of one of those childish self-centered actresses about whom he'd complained so bitterly, sat my overworked lover. <br />
He never saw me standing there. He never saw me crying into my Caesar salad. In fact, he never saw me again. <br />
I was thinking about those sad moments last night, when my husband Michael, his buddy Chuck Krumel and I drove past the darkened Full Moon Saloon. We'd just had a great dinner at El Siboney, and were full of good cheer. <br />
"Boy oh boy, I raised a lot of hell in that place," I said. "And now it's closed." <br />
"They had to close," Chuck said. "All of their customers are either in jail or in recovery!" <br />
"Maybe AA could move into the building," I said. And we laughed.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The songwriting team of Chuck Krumel and Michael Keith</td></tr>
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I told them about the night I decided to divorce my first husband. The memory just didn't seem very sad anymore. It just seemed awfully long ago. <br />
"He wouldn't even see Mack and Jamie with me!" I said. "He wouldn't even let me laugh."<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjT4YTylkqc1FQuNek-DDpOVKoaDSKPBroVLNePw_UbJwsYNQgIDDknF13n7bmfvktf36axWirvm0XOA_4j5HdtN2Eq-ZwCSp1HGQlwbuvRvjXPlHkE658dDoXzfL7qxvEnNE29-QDKWmI/s1600/Scan+2.png" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"></a> Around the time I first met Michael, Mack and Jamie were at the Pier House. I asked him if we could go and see the show. He said “Sure. Let's have some laughs." It was the right answer. So, I married him. <br />
I was in the back seat, and I couldn't see Michael's face, but I knew he was smiling as he drove our car down Simonton Street and I watched the Full Moon disappear into the darkness. <br />
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<i>Update, April, 2013: My-ex husband and I remain great friends. My cheating lover married that actress. They are divorced now, too. Chuck Krumel, who was larger than life, died of lung cancer in 2009, a heart-breaking loss to many. Michael and I are still laughing, and still married. And Vic Latham has gone to the moon. </i><br />
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June Keithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08171174002983023531noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4171391806681426297.post-90240409855189879692013-03-24T13:51:00.000-04:002013-03-26T16:33:23.177-04:00 Happy Easter, Survivors! <table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Reformed cancer survivor with morning smoothie. </td></tr>
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I was shopping in Publix. I was at the deli counter to buy sliced ham. A clerk told me he’d be right with me. I told him to take his time. He was finishing up an order of sliced corned beef, he explained.<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhEDn4g1j4YEe5yd8aXu2uSnaAbOBP638c-rnqmOEUSc12M6OLIQwLPGaZyHsdHwsONY-VodPadXCCqIpoTCMZXeSOhcAqqtqtJkIxNerh9REcNM0alwbJ9g7hPVmBwACscZhM7WWBc5t4/s1600/P9260002.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"></a> “Here,” he said. “Try this corned beef. It’s so lean! No fat at all!”<br />
He laid out two big slices on butcher paper. It was delicious. I don’t eat a lot of meat. I don’t love meat. But he was so joyful, so enthusiastic, I had to eat the corned beef. <br />
“Hey,” another customer said. “Are you giving her samples of my corned beef?” <br />
“Oh! this is your corned beef?” I said. “Thank you. It’s really very good.” <br />
“I’m glad you enjoyed it,” she said, chuckling as she headed off with her cold cuts. <br />
Before I was finished chewing the beef, the joyful man pushed another sample toward me. It was ham; two big slices on another piece of butcher paper.<br />
“Try it,” he said. “See if it’s what you want.” <br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhEDn4g1j4YEe5yd8aXu2uSnaAbOBP638c-rnqmOEUSc12M6OLIQwLPGaZyHsdHwsONY-VodPadXCCqIpoTCMZXeSOhcAqqtqtJkIxNerh9REcNM0alwbJ9g7hPVmBwACscZhM7WWBc5t4/s1600/P9260002.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"></a> In truth, I’d had enough. I was buying the ham for my husband, Michael, the Southern-bred meat eater in the family. But, again, the guy was so sweet and happy, like an old time butcher in a little town grocery store. So, with my other hand, I picked up a piece of ham. Now I was a two-fisted meat eater.<br />
“Are you June Keith?” a woman new to the scene asked. <br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Easter, 2011. Puleeese let my hair grow back! </td></tr>
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I know this woman slightly. She is a nutritional consultant, a guru of what to eat for maximum health, often in the local press. I think she has a radio show, too. She is a great advertisement for her brand of healthy eating. She is bright-eyed, lean, and youthful. And there I stood before her, with two fists and a mouth full of meat. <br />
“How are you?” I mumbled, through the salty beef. <br />
“I have cancer,” she said. “I just found out.” <br />
Dear reader, I hope you are seeing the tragedy and the comedy in this little slice-of-life drama. I, a cancer survivor, am stuffing my face with nitrate-laden, fat-streaked, carcinogenic meat, while this lovely woman who probably last tasted meat in 1968, tells me she has cancer. <br />
It seemed wrong to eat that meat as she told me her story. She is going on an extreme diet, she said, a diet that eliminates any carbohydrates whatsoever, because carbohydrates turn into sugar in the body, and cancer feeds on sugar. <br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">My beautiful, young and healthy Mennonite neighbors in Nova Scotia, picking strawberries. </td></tr>
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I become very nervous when people tell me they plan to cure themselves of cancer with a severe diet. If only it worked that way! But that isn’t her plan, thank goodness. She only wants to do what she can to discourage the cancer. She’s going to doctors to handle the job of killing the cancer cells. I told her I’m sure that’s her best chance for a cure. <br />
“I’m cured now,” I said. I told her it’s rough. My oncologist told me, at the very beginning of my treatment, it would be “no walk in the park.” No, it was a walk in the valley of the shadow of death. But I survived. And she will, too. I’m sure. We will both live on to die of something other than cancer. <br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">This opera singer lived to be 99 years and 9 months old. Smoking Chesterfields. Go figure. </td></tr>
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At home, when I told the story of our meeting to Michael, I told him that I am often amused at how arrogant we humans are in the face of our destiny. Before there was chemotherapy and radiation and PET scans, there was nothing but a person becoming sick, then sicker still, and then dying. This is how we’re made. Like a flower, that with enough water and sun, flourishes on earth. Till it doesn’t. And so it is with humans. <br />
I had a big checkup the other day with the oncologist. I thought it would be bigger than it actually was. He felt my neck. Looked down my throat. Studied my blood test results, my lung X-ray and my PAP smear, and told me to call him if I found any hard lumps in my lymph nodes. No more scans. No more tests. No more regular six-month checkups. Today, I am cancer free, and beyond the reach of anything more modern medicine can do to me. <br />
The doctor did tell me that since I’ve had cancer once, I have a greater chance of getting cancer again. But hopefully, he added, the cancer will never come back and I will die of something else. <br />
Like what? Being hit by a bus? A heart attack? Old age? Stress brought on by worrying about my cancer returning? <br />
“The good news,” Michael said, “is you’re too old to die young.” <br />
I’ve already performed the miracle of rising from the dead. And very soon the burden of my medical bills will be turned over to Medicare. So pass the ham. And the marshmallow Peeps. And the chocolate bunny. And the Cadbury eggs. ‘Cause nobody dies on Easter Sunday.<br />
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June Keithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08171174002983023531noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4171391806681426297.post-69838658058508827392013-03-07T12:49:00.001-05:002013-03-21T10:36:17.897-04:00How To Live Forever<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Tennessee Williams with his beloved bulldogs</td></tr>
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The other day Michael ruefully commented that the 30th anniversary of Tennessee Williams’ death had come and gone without fanfare in Key West, the town where Williams found solace and retreat. This does not sit well with Michael, for whom Tennessee Williams represents all that is holy in theater. On the day the news of Williams’s demise burned across the newsroom teletype machines of America, Michael was in Key West, rehearsing a play at a local theater. Some of the actors beside him that day had worked with Williams, and, some had even known him, at least peripherally. “Peripherally” seems to have been the only way that anyone knew Tennessee Williams in those final years of his life.<br />
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Williams’ reputation was as great a presence in Key West back then as Williams himself. There was the story of Tennessee Williams going to the dentist, in a state of extreme paranoia, to be fitted for a partial plate that he never wore because he died before it was ready. The dentist kept the plate as a souvenir, pulling it out of his pocket at cocktail parties, and recounting the stories of the great playwright's visits to his office. There was the story of the Tennessee Williams painting auctioned off at a Historical Society fund-raiser, a little sketch delivered to Richard Heyman’s Gingerbread Square Gallery, where Williams’ paintings were sold. The work, donated for the auction, featured Williams’ trademark signature, “TW.” It sold to a Miami couple for $750. After the auction Williams, who’d been out of town and missed the auction, raged that the painting was a forgery, created by his friend, the great artist Henry Faulkner. Williams demanded to have it back. Richard Heyman, who’d brokered the deal, explained the story to the Miamians. Henry Faulkner?! That made it even better, they said. But Williams wanted the painting returned. So Heyman refunded the $750 out of his own pocket. The Miamians reluctantly returned it to Heyman who returned it to Williams, and the painting was never seen again.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Quintessential Henry Faulkner</td></tr>
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There were sightings of Williams and Truman Capote at the Pier House, and at Captain Tony’s Saloon. One night, as he wobbled down Duval Street with a friend, drunk, singing hymns, he was shoved around a bit by late-night locals. Within 24 hours the greatly exaggerated reports of the aging playwright’s vicious beating circled the globe, as the world, always ready for dirt, hungrily gobbled up the news of another fallen idol. When asked by a reporter about the scuffle months later, Williams wryly suggested that the Duval Street ruffians had probably been a pair of New York drama critics.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Henry Faulkner with sailors </td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Williams named this "Fairy in a Wicker Chair"</td></tr>
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On an island of Tom Wingfields, Stella Kowalskis, Big Daddys, and hot tin roofs, Tennessee Williams, and, for a while, his lobotomized sister Rose, easily fit in. In his later years, when drugs and alcohol fueled his terrible decline, and he only coasted on the fumes of the dazzling success of his youth, Williams devoted himself to exploring Key West’s seedy underbelly. Henry Faulkner gave him painting lessons in exchange for Williams coaching him in poetry writing. Faulkner was also a procurer, who delivered hopeful young men to Williams’ Duncan Street cottage where they would pose for Williams’ paintings and deliver sexual favors, in exchange for a boozy dinner or two and the chance to say they’d been a lover of Tennessee Williams.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Frankie and Tennessee at cocktail time. Who do you suppose received this photo and message?</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Merlo and Williams at 1431 Duncan St. Check out the body language . . .</td></tr>
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I knew one such man. His name was Douglas. He met Tennessee Williams when he was sent by writer Dotson Rader to meet Williams’ plane at LaGuardia and deliver him to his apartment at the Hotel Elysee, where the welcoming party was well underway. Douglas recalled that Williams seemed frightened, disoriented, and gobbled pills from the pocket of his tweed jacket on the drive from the airport into the city. Few young men, Douglas explained, spent more than an hour or two in Williams’ bed. And fewer still were invited for a second visit. There was one special person in Tennessee Williams’ life. That was Frank Merlo, a handsome Italian he met in Provincetown. For many years Merlo was Williams’ devoted caregiver, friend and lover. But the crazier Williams became, the more he detached himself from the people who most cared for him. After nearly twenty years, the years he called the happiest of his life, he dumped Merlo altogether. A year later, as Merlo lay dying of lung cancer, Williams wept at his bedside, crying, “I want my goodness back.”<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">"Frankie" by Tennessee Williams</td></tr>
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There was a reading by Tennessee Williams at David Wolkowsky’s Sands Beach Club in the winter of 1982. I went with a group of friends to see Tennessee Williams. It was a cool night and the beach was packed with fans. I remember the fantastic excitement, the shivery thrill of being on that beach, waiting for all to be in place – the microphone, the chair, the script, his glasses – so the reading could begin. The wind was blowing off the ocean and Williams was perched on a pier, many feet from his audience. Finally he began to read in a thin, soft voice that was impossible to hear. He stopped. The microphone was adjusted. He tried again. But minutes after the reading had begun, it was over. Williams was led off of the pier. He appeared to be unsteady, with people, one on each side, holding his arms. It brought to mind memories of Carl Sandburg reading at Kennedy’s inauguration, on a bitterly cold day. Or the Pope visiting Manhattan, so insulated by his handlers it was impossible to see the real man in all the throngs of people crowding around him. How can one aging human being, albeit a genius human being, satisfy the longings of so many? Is it so difficult to imagine this mass adoration driving a person mad?<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Burt and Anna in Key West</td></tr>
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A year or so after that night on the beach came the news of Williams’ death. On that day the Key West Picture Show theater on Duval Street, in a show of enormous respect and compassion, offered ‘round the clock free showings of <i>The Rose Tattoo</i>, Williams’ one and only happy-ending play, made into a film here in Key West in 1955, when Williams was at the height of his success, before he became victim to what he called “the tragedy of success.” Michael was there at the theater that day. And so was I. But we had not yet met. That happened a few years later. And when we met, we found common ground in our mutual love of Tennessee Williams’ plays, and in our worshipful study of his life and times. The genius of Tennessee Williams is like a diamond in candlelight, every glint and glimmer translating into a new slant on ... everything.<br />
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It’s all so delicious, picking over the bones of Williams, the salacious and the sentimental details of his nomadic life, made all the more tasty because we have in common with him this island that he called, and we call, home base. Tennessee Williams, his sister Rose, Henry Faulkner, my friend Douglas, are all dead now. Soon all of us who remember the tales of Williams, the Key West citizen, will be gone, too. But those born of the bright light of Williams' genius – Maggie the Cat, Blanche DuBois, Chance Wayne, Heavenly Finley, Alexandra Del Lago, Sebastian Venable, Val and his snakeskin jacket, (a character all its own!) live on forever. Ageless, as truth is ageless. And Tennessee Williams, the playwright, lives forever, too, right along with them.June Keithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08171174002983023531noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4171391806681426297.post-254764163115849072013-01-26T15:42:00.001-05:002013-01-28T21:42:29.251-05:00Eyewitness To History<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;">Michael Keith checking out his platter collection at WGST</td></tr>
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Back in the early '60s I was a kid in junior high school in New York and my future husband, Michael, was working at Atlanta’s Radio WGST. In addition to his music program, he created a daily half-hour news show. It changed his life. Michael had grown up in Greenville, South Carolina, in a world with very clear boundaries, in a segregated society. And while my world contained people of color, and the civil rights movement was something happening far away that we only knew from the six ‘o clock news, Michael did not go to school or even to church with people of color. The only black people he knew were the maids who worked for his family, and sometimes, the children of those women.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The Varsity Drive-in: WGST news team's favorite lunch spot in 1963. </td></tr>
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Do you remember where you were when you heard the news of JFK’s assassination? Michael does. He’d just had lunch with fellow radio man Dan Akens, at the Varsity, a drive-in joint on the Georgia Tech campus. The Varsity, which exists to this day, featured car-hops with big personalities, like the one who for fifty years sang the menu to his customers, and the young Nipsy Russell who wore crazy outfits and entertained his customers and later became famous as a comedian.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">President Obama ordering a burger at the Varsity today</td></tr>
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With President Kennedy’s election came awareness of the civil rights movement. It was the central theme of the local news in Atlanta. And Michael found a way to make it pay. The ABC Network paid for "actualities," short clips of newsmakers like Dr. Martin Luther King and Julian Bond expressing their views via the media. Naturally civil rights leaders like King made themselves available for reporters. And Michael, who received a tidy fee from the ABC network for each actuality used, was happy to help the civil rights leaders like King and Julian Bond get their message out. He spoke with them, and recorded their comments, regularly. Of course Michael also interviewed the Grand Dragon of the Ku Klux Klan, because it was his job to balance his reports. And ABC News paid him for those remarks, too. <br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgwj4Aqma5zJB21N4iUPGckrlDwXHI81GuLogG-JLfWu-9F-97PFOpBTo9Ua_lbGmhuCPp5pKy7waIhpMFSqP2KiyuPD9hL-Qdl2T1EgK0QMwtj-ognBlVPlRULbZxCP06qrLZ-Z0w2-yk/s1600/02-martin-king-010909_14070_600x450.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="204" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgwj4Aqma5zJB21N4iUPGckrlDwXHI81GuLogG-JLfWu-9F-97PFOpBTo9Ua_lbGmhuCPp5pKy7waIhpMFSqP2KiyuPD9hL-Qdl2T1EgK0QMwtj-ognBlVPlRULbZxCP06qrLZ-Z0w2-yk/s320/02-martin-king-010909_14070_600x450.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The house in Atlanta where Martin Luther King, Jr. was born and raised. </td></tr>
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Michael was very naive then, though smart and ambitious, and possessed of an amazingly mellifluous voice just made for announcing. In Atlanta, reporting the news, he began to question the core beliefs of the society in which he’d been raised. Eugene Patterson, editor at the <i>Atlanta Constitution</i>, who died last week, wrote stirring editorials on the subject. Michael read them, and was swayed. After the Birmingham church bombing, in 1963, Patterson wrote an editorial so powerful that Walter Cronkite invited him to read it on the national TV news. <br />
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“Patterson and others like him were taking the lead in standing up to the extremists who endorsed violence to maintain segregation,” Michael remembers. “It made you start to think. How can we allow discrimination to go on? How can people kill children? This isn’t America. The scales began to fall from my eyes when I read Patterson. I watched King’s "I Have a Dream" speech live on television, and I thought how can we deny people their right to the American dream because of the color of their skin? I decided it wasn’t right. I wouldn’t be that way.”<br />
Then came the ah-ha moment. <br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgs7c2DBcyTxPtjed6dL8jeh3WcScff4xzJAIrnnM9hjHVRCMAxOi9HTjItJ_6wHt1v26UZ1PtJDgowqsWYiQMFRWfPlxADccvA-9ThphEQrpGX499CKCLkLSx1yBo0ISMZwItGM9zC1FQ/s1600/08-martin-king-010909_14099_600x450.jpg" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="204" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgs7c2DBcyTxPtjed6dL8jeh3WcScff4xzJAIrnnM9hjHVRCMAxOi9HTjItJ_6wHt1v26UZ1PtJDgowqsWYiQMFRWfPlxADccvA-9ThphEQrpGX499CKCLkLSx1yBo0ISMZwItGM9zC1FQ/s320/08-martin-king-010909_14099_600x450.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">"....explain to your six-year-old daughter why she can't go to the public amusement park that has just been advertised on television, and see the tears welling up in her little eyes when she is told that Funtown is closed to colored children." (from <i>Letter from a Birmingham Jail</i>) </td></tr>
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"One day on the radio in Atlanta I heard a black preacher describe prejudice as 'that blind vampire of the mind that sucks the red blood of healthy hopes.' Today, I can't recall that preacher's name. But his words stuck with me. I thought: how can people who are just like me, wanting to get ahead in the world, be put down and disadvantaged all of their lives for something they cannot control, and are not responsible for — the color of their skin? The injustice of it was brought home to me by that preacher’s graphic words."<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg9K8KyfhEOCKkpe5RTFMH9zZkuBQSpQ3ONLBFEljWaZeWHEnqylpaxFJreIQX8I-SFIBkzgbwSOpO44olLhou1QI0OVzpqwkeRcK30im690tZhVYO6yUXys9cyaxSsZEGgxKU8kL-Kc4o/s1600/220px-Lester_Maddox.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><br /></a></div>
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjzK0msyF_5I2Lx0YhtUSKJ5Eap1k1Vkxl-86BnpZFm5IHEh8aoPctI_Ji7bFWxRCfCgFV8rQRdLJ73B5wI5fUeoTMip7pKeeAsRLIh9pB2R-Vk5sXgWSbspzdK6H-UqtAm70gbtRFctig/s1600/D_Julian_Bond_portrait_Special-Collections_1.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"></a> Michael wasn’t a leader, and he didn’t aim to be a hero; he was a just a cub reporter, with a wife and two kids to support. But he knew where he stood. <br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg9K8KyfhEOCKkpe5RTFMH9zZkuBQSpQ3ONLBFEljWaZeWHEnqylpaxFJreIQX8I-SFIBkzgbwSOpO44olLhou1QI0OVzpqwkeRcK30im690tZhVYO6yUXys9cyaxSsZEGgxKU8kL-Kc4o/s1600/220px-Lester_Maddox.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"></a><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">On his many years of teaching Julian Bond, (shown here) recently had this to say about his students: "I hope they learned that the civil rights movement was a movement of ordinary people, many of them just like these young people who were sitting in my class." </td></tr>
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Michael was on the scene in 1964 when three black high school boys decided to force their way into the Pickrick Cafeteria in Atlanta. The Pickrick’s owner, Lester Maddox, adamantly refused to allow black people into his restaurant, in spite of the newly passed Civil Rights Act. The media had been alerted to the planned confrontation. A mob of angry segregationists had assembled. Michael approached the three young men and said to them “You need to think this through. You’re gonna get hurt. This isn’t the way to do this.” The students retreated. And on the front page of the <i>Atlanta Times</i> the next day, there was a photo of Michael, microphone in hand, speaking to the black students. He wasn’t being a hero. He was being practical, he says today. <br />
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“I knew those guys were gonna get hurt,” he says. "It was as simple as that.” Weeks later a better organized group of college students hired an attorney to challenge the illegal segregation of the Pickrick. And they won. Rather than integrate, Maddox closed his restaurant. On the wave of that publicity, he was elected governor of Georgia. <br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg9K8KyfhEOCKkpe5RTFMH9zZkuBQSpQ3ONLBFEljWaZeWHEnqylpaxFJreIQX8I-SFIBkzgbwSOpO44olLhou1QI0OVzpqwkeRcK30im690tZhVYO6yUXys9cyaxSsZEGgxKU8kL-Kc4o/s1600/220px-Lester_Maddox.jpg" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="317" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg9K8KyfhEOCKkpe5RTFMH9zZkuBQSpQ3ONLBFEljWaZeWHEnqylpaxFJreIQX8I-SFIBkzgbwSOpO44olLhou1QI0OVzpqwkeRcK30im690tZhVYO6yUXys9cyaxSsZEGgxKU8kL-Kc4o/s320/220px-Lester_Maddox.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"> He didn't go to jail. He went to the Governor's mansion. </td></tr>
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On one occasion Michael interviewed Martin Luther King in person. King had piercing eyes, Michael remembers. King was very angry that he was being criticized for his opposition to the Vietnam War. Michael recalls King’s anguish, and also the absolute courage of his convictions. <br />
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Recently I spoke with Reverend Robinson of the Big Coppitt Baptist Church. When the pastor mentioned Reverend King, I told him that my husband had interviewed the man in the '60s. <br />
“I bet that is a day he will never forget,” Reverend Robinson said. <br />
I told Michael at dinner that night. <br />
“He’s right,” Michael said. "Who could?"<br />
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I love talking with Michael about those times. Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated a few months before I graduated from high school. By then Michael was out of the news business, and a student of history at Furman University. He was no longer naive. He knew how he felt and how he wanted to live. <br />
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Martin Luther King, Jr. is a hero in our home. Our son Miguel, who shares a birthday with King, has grown up knowing that. When Miguel was a little kid he and Michael sometimes talked about those days before the Civil Rights Act, when black people were not allowed in stores, restaurants, schools and churches. It was astonishing to Miguel, a kid born and raised in Key West, to know that his parents had lived in those times and witnessed that world.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The speech heard 'round the world: I Have a Dream. Washington, D.C. 1963. Fifty years ago!</td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td></tr>
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“You know,” Michael said, “someday Miguel will tell his children about a time when people were discriminated against because of their sexual orientation. That they fought for the right to marry the person they love. And you know what? Miguel’s children will be astonished to hear that.”<br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/5jzx98t_V7w" width="420"></iframe>June Keithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08171174002983023531noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4171391806681426297.post-16516506574974249622013-01-10T18:21:00.000-05:002013-01-10T18:35:02.435-05:00Coma, Part 3<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Jennifer: A very fun girlfriend.</td></tr>
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My dear friend Jennifer turns 44 years old this month. But I’m not sure this birthday truly counts. She hasn’t been fully engaged in the activities of living for some time now. Over two years ago Jennifer suffered an aneurism in her brain. She survived, but was in a coma for a long, long time. We who love Jennifer waited for days, weeks and months to know if she would come back to us. And nearly five months later, just around the time of her January birthday, she opened her eyes, eyes that had last viewed a warm September evening in Key West. She knew us. She came back to smile and wave and do something I call the Jenny Shrug. I know this because Jennifer and I have spent countless hours talking about our lives, the lives of our children, and the meaning of it all. I know the precise hue of resignation the Jenny Shrug implies. When she did it again after five months in a Sleeping Beauty-like coma, I cried with relief to see her personality unmistakably present.<br />
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But Jennifer cannot walk, and she loved to walk. She cannot swim, and she loved to swim. She cannot cook and she loved to cook. She cannot talk and she loved to talk. She cannot write for hours each day in her tiny, precise print journaling the nuances of her days like a miner panning for nuggets of gold, hiding in plain sight. Jennifer cannot dress her beautiful sleek body or drive her children to school. She is hostage to bed and chair. And house. Outside of her house there are germs and cars and curious eyes to be protected from. In the lovely, light-filled house she shares with her husband Joe and her daughters Sophie and Tessa there is comfort and safety. There is shelter, too, for their big dog, and their books and their piano, their computers, their hopes and dreams. There is a perfect garden, too, where Jennifer toiled happily and often, nurturing her plants just as she so carefully nurtured her family and her work.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Jennifer: A wonderful mother.</td></tr>
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The last thing I heard from Jennifer, before IT happened, was an email in which she asked me to write a letter of recommendation for her grad school application. I was in Nova Scotia when I read it. Two days later, Jennifer was in Miami, in a trauma center, far from her safe place, entranced in the most awful kind of way.<br />
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How in the world does this happen? How does a beautiful and stately and thoughtful woman, indeed a fine specimen of our species, suffer such a thing as a brain bleed? How does God let this horror befall a good Catholic woman, so deeply devout, when an ambulance approaches she pulls off the road to say a prayer for the suffering? We were told there had been a malformation in her brain, and that it had been there, stealthy, like a ticking time bomb for all those years of her life. This is fantastically rare. This makes no sense at all. The weight of it, if you think about it long enough, can suffocate you. The injustice of it can make you angry as hell, and vengeful. But upon whom do you wreak your revenge? Who is to blame?<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhrdkFZubFfqsRVM5eKw8unTndRAtyB39qNXbF4x0l_B9MriGT8Orhsds8uJ4ko8_TM1dgvOFvdGRKlwrtkKOtZuaXJNIecv2FaflYFKf2XuMVGiKis-JhMcOdwp3F-FnqhTR_B-wRbrFI/s1600/08640005.JPG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"></a><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiPPCOB_GTgnQtyije9fIprjTpRMoAM4PuCaJg2HUxBuWR4mqFRB20D5k_ymrO8hp82PBoJpfz6ILpaFBhw3Dpcc9gM1pJidt7CWK6cUwIdTgkvs4VxVfsCzOUqTixaCuEVlGHUzNHjNm0/s1600/021_5.JPG" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="315" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiPPCOB_GTgnQtyije9fIprjTpRMoAM4PuCaJg2HUxBuWR4mqFRB20D5k_ymrO8hp82PBoJpfz6ILpaFBhw3Dpcc9gM1pJidt7CWK6cUwIdTgkvs4VxVfsCzOUqTixaCuEVlGHUzNHjNm0/s320/021_5.JPG" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Jen & Fam: Trick-or-Treating with Stella, the Dog</td></tr>
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I remember a time when we were in a motel in Ft. Lauderdale where we’d gone to escape a hurricane bearing down on Key West. For Jennifer’s little girls it was an adventure. One morning, before the sun was up, I heard the girls stirring. Jennifer was asleep. Tessa gently shook her mother’s shoulders, and asked her to read to them. And so Jennifer read the book as the two little girls snuggled against her, one on each side. I remember thinking at the time how extrodinarily patient she was, how giving, how kind, to immediately respond to her babies. In the same situation, I know I would have said to my own little one: “I will read later. When I wake up. When I pee. When I am ready.”<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEihX1Klan5c_p7MzHlGiUbacdH2GO8o2UlQ-1XERJsTQNprJCSrv6N098G2vzN_UzLdZwDDmtBUW7Qz7GzEcoTJiigcKOOkyT6F6UoEj4Ok42NAzfeIYMOWPcfIZ3gmbiwk6NR_gxWIAC8/s1600/Scan.jpeg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"></a><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhrdkFZubFfqsRVM5eKw8unTndRAtyB39qNXbF4x0l_B9MriGT8Orhsds8uJ4ko8_TM1dgvOFvdGRKlwrtkKOtZuaXJNIecv2FaflYFKf2XuMVGiKis-JhMcOdwp3F-FnqhTR_B-wRbrFI/s1600/08640005.JPG" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="238" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhrdkFZubFfqsRVM5eKw8unTndRAtyB39qNXbF4x0l_B9MriGT8Orhsds8uJ4ko8_TM1dgvOFvdGRKlwrtkKOtZuaXJNIecv2FaflYFKf2XuMVGiKis-JhMcOdwp3F-FnqhTR_B-wRbrFI/s320/08640005.JPG" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A favorite picture: Tessa and Michael Keith</td></tr>
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When I was very ill Jennifer often took me to the hospital for my treatments. Afterwards, woozy with shock and pain, I would climb back into the car, and immediately begin to chat, as if I didn’t have cancer, as if my life was not upside down. I'd try to say something funny, to make Jennifer laugh. And she would say: “June, you don’t have to talk.” I remember the time that finally sank in, the cool, clean feeling of deflating, of surrendering that heavy burden of responsibility for keeping the world on its axis. And soon, I understood that with Jennifer, it was OK to be quiet with my suffering. And in the quiet we shared, there was a wordless and loving peace. I healed.<br />
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The shock of witnessing a loved one dealing with brain injury is in many ways worse than losing a loved one to death. Jennifer is here, but not fully here. She is here in spirit, in intellect, but locked in a strangely abeyant state, like a broken doll. That I cannot wake her from this half-sleep, that we can’t talk deeply the way we used to, makes me crazy with anger and grief. And fear. And guilt. I should be there by Jenny’s side more often, I think. I should learn to better endure my pain, as she has learned to endure hers.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEihX1Klan5c_p7MzHlGiUbacdH2GO8o2UlQ-1XERJsTQNprJCSrv6N098G2vzN_UzLdZwDDmtBUW7Qz7GzEcoTJiigcKOOkyT6F6UoEj4Ok42NAzfeIYMOWPcfIZ3gmbiwk6NR_gxWIAC8/s1600/Scan.jpeg" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="361" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEihX1Klan5c_p7MzHlGiUbacdH2GO8o2UlQ-1XERJsTQNprJCSrv6N098G2vzN_UzLdZwDDmtBUW7Qz7GzEcoTJiigcKOOkyT6F6UoEj4Ok42NAzfeIYMOWPcfIZ3gmbiwk6NR_gxWIAC8/s400/Scan.jpeg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Jennifer calls her daughters "The Bunnies." </td></tr>
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Lately, I’ve been trying hard to work through my anguish and my grief over what has happened to Jennifer. When I imagine how it is for her daughters, for her husband, for her parents – for all the people who so love Jennifer – I am breathless with the agony. The other day I recalled that long ago time when I was sick and she was well. I remembered what she said: “You don’t have to say anything.” And now I get it. Sometimes there is nothing to say. Or do. But be here now. Not waiting, but knowing, that healing will come.June Keithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08171174002983023531noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4171391806681426297.post-15184992732314681192012-11-08T12:56:00.000-05:002012-11-10T10:37:20.361-05:00A Good Dog is Lost<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Ron Hynes: A good voice is lost.</td></tr>
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Lately Michael and I have been listening to a great album by a wonderful songwriter/singer named Ron Hynes. Hynes lives in a dying part of the world, St. John’s, Newfoundland, a remote city on a far-flung province north of Nova Scotia, Canada. He is being treated for throat cancer, the curse of too many cigarettes, drinks, drugs and lost nights. The cancer will take away his voice before it takes away his breath, which makes it all the more tragic. Ron’s voice is his fortune and his fame, the vehicle for the stark poetry of his songs. This is a beautiful voice to silence! This is a gentle soul to subject to the torments of terrible illness. And finally, this is an awful way to get laid off. <br />
I was born in Nova Scotia, another place where the ability to make a living isn't easy. The scenery is lovely; the air is clear. Jobs are scarce. That’s why there are no traffic jams or long lines for anything. There are artists, with the ability to live on nothing. There is music everywhere, fiddlers, singers and crowds to appreciate them. But sooner or later, most people become entangled in the messy truths of life: the babies, the bills, the day after this one. That’s the kind of guy I think Ron Hynes is. That’s the kind of guy I think my father was. <br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh6jLdNvUiVHBioDbhI5jd37H-TPR4xCAZVxh0SucWH_oQfCStmpjDvJ5tQWJWjvIJCqoBs2AmRH2RYRf0Dfyx6ec7Ry8Gdh7tXssSH_ndf7tRjld7X27XiPP8G_SekX1gabhSLJK879Bk/s1600/Scan.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh6jLdNvUiVHBioDbhI5jd37H-TPR4xCAZVxh0SucWH_oQfCStmpjDvJ5tQWJWjvIJCqoBs2AmRH2RYRf0Dfyx6ec7Ry8Gdh7tXssSH_ndf7tRjld7X27XiPP8G_SekX1gabhSLJK879Bk/s320/Scan.png" width="226" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">My father Donald. I love him . . . I think. </td></tr>
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There is a belief that in the moment you die your life flashes before you, every twist and turn, at the speed of lightning. And if that is true I wonder if my father, who died in an uranium mine disaster, reviewed his life in that breath, and recognized regret. My father and eleven other young men far from home, in a Quebec mine, working for paychecks to send home to their loved ones back in remote places in Nova Scotia like Cape Breton Island, perished when a scaffold collapsed. They died instantly, we're told. On that day my grandmother heard on the radio news of miners dying in Quebec she told her family that she knew for sure her son was one of the dead. She felt it, she told them. And she was right.<br />
I wonder what my father saw in that final flash? Did he see me, his first-born child, suffering under the rough hand of a stepfather who resented my existence? Did he see a baby boy still asleep in the womb of his mother, my father’s wife, who would grow up to be his namesake, my brother Donald? Did he see his sweet wife, she with the strict father who forbade her to be alone with my father till their wedding night on her 18th birthday? Did he see his baby sons, Keith, the contemplative one? Or Floyd, the romantic? Did he think of how it was for my mother when he told her he regretted her unfortunate pregnancy but that he was bound to marry his intended, the virginal one who waited in her father’s house. Did he forsee those three boys growing up fatherless and poor, and the girl, who was me, growing up in America with another stepfather, and a pained heart, piecing together in a thousand ways, on a thousand days, the puzzle of her life? Could he have imagined my mother, living in New York, married to an Italian, reading the news of his death in a breezy letter from home, written by someone unaware of my parents' secrets?<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjM7tisQkbBADo2mWQgeO5UFhDh_xCFmRgz0Y_8KqgzzUYn-13PZ9HnMeX02CwetCkOOZ76DUDVagaSIsZqSOBs284irnwDgbyCdnfge_qiJsfzwceUBOR16tuDTC8FcJCmr0SnbfS1hUM/s1600/Scan+1.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="268" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjM7tisQkbBADo2mWQgeO5UFhDh_xCFmRgz0Y_8KqgzzUYn-13PZ9HnMeX02CwetCkOOZ76DUDVagaSIsZqSOBs284irnwDgbyCdnfge_qiJsfzwceUBOR16tuDTC8FcJCmr0SnbfS1hUM/s400/Scan+1.png" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Aunt Marge, left. Bertha, my father's widow, right. </td></tr>
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I don’t know the answer to these questions. But I know that Ron Hynes understands the part of me that remains a thick scar on my heart. He put the same scar on the heart of his own daughter, born outside of marriage, raised by a stepfather far away from Canada and her parents' secrets. I was four years old when my father died. I was forty when I met my Nova Scotia brothers for the first time. <br />
My aunt, my father’s sister, was in her 70s by the time I got around to meeting her. The years between my birth and today provide insulation and a salve on the shame of my beginnings. Our connection is familial, comfortable as if it’s always been a part of our lives. Aunt Marge tells me stories of my father, a man I never knew. He was a character, she says. My favorite story is this one. My aunt designed clothes. She was living in Montreal and my father, a merchant marine, was in town for the night. He called her to meet him for dinner. She told him she’d just washed her hair. He told her to throw a turban on her head and meet him at a restaurant. When my very glamorous aunt arrived, he told her to not utter a single word. My aunt was quickly seated, wined and dined. My father shared in the bounty. Eventually he told her that he’d convinced the owner of the restaurant that a very famous, and very shy, opera singer was arriving for dinner. She could not speak, my father told them, because she was resting her voice for an upcoming performance. And she was not to be approached by fans, because of her painful shyness. The charade worked, Aunt Marge says, and they ate and drank like royalty all night long. <br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhDHGP2kelimPxR024ZCFs6c61I7SLqTHtWPWSeZQYbFXiOJNLRIM0riJdqJ8szfxt4QuxKZBmg9sD6DCVvGqx5p5TU3AGuoSBZmfsnQrF2z6pbhlzk7YZX4yab73IzNpsLLqen5UUQ39Q/s1600/Scan+2.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="336" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhDHGP2kelimPxR024ZCFs6c61I7SLqTHtWPWSeZQYbFXiOJNLRIM0riJdqJ8szfxt4QuxKZBmg9sD6DCVvGqx5p5TU3AGuoSBZmfsnQrF2z6pbhlzk7YZX4yab73IzNpsLLqen5UUQ39Q/s640/Scan+2.png" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Family. Blood is thicker than water. </td></tr>
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My favorite Hynes song, "A Good Dog is Lost," is so full of regret, so full of pain, it feels good to listen to it time after time. It’s a refreshing sort of pain. I hear my father and so many Canadian fathers and children in that song. I hear him talking about being lost, how quickly it can happen, how wide the ripples spread from its center of one lost soul. <br />
Michael and I listen to Ron Hynes and imagine him alive and well, because artists live forever. Michael loves the songs because Michael loves songwriting. But I love the songs because they remind me of my father, and of the tragedy of those destined to be born in beautiful and bleak places.<br />
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"A Good Dog is Lost" written and performed by Ron Hynes.<br />
<iframe width="420" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/3UmTjckkAVQ" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>June Keithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08171174002983023531noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4171391806681426297.post-65974877967658263582012-09-21T18:19:00.000-04:002013-01-11T04:37:09.903-05:00The Tata House<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/AVvXsEg3Sedkq7rIzmIDsaa2gTZYcYhwwXj1pesGlvGTDv4QIvsrREsfa9ZdpZcLb8OiM9dmqRYQvONUEd2r285-oBvYM0gelYFB08dKjEhQpPUTHURMvifUibnxiL2bWCgK-i1j4CJbWxEYep8/s1600/13+Maple+Ave.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg3Sedkq7rIzmIDsaa2gTZYcYhwwXj1pesGlvGTDv4QIvsrREsfa9ZdpZcLb8OiM9dmqRYQvONUEd2r285-oBvYM0gelYFB08dKjEhQpPUTHURMvifUibnxiL2bWCgK-i1j4CJbWxEYep8/s1600/13+Maple+Ave.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The Tata House in September</td></tr>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj038jfAt99G_f16sP3W-DFHV0f1U61Oc_u_fl8NMo8WBEfg-gqmyR-4jS-ZXKLJoJFXHvuQVTUA_I5trQ0FRldidmR41DA3s0UtYXBGi5DVxSgG4Ipup20yuNKFB8kkgNoEZ53Z2OxOrE/s1600/01520001.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"></a>We almost sold our house. It’s a house in Nova Scotia my husband and I purchased online, one hot Key West night, dreaming of the green and the cool and the lobster and the yeast rolls of Canada. We had accumulated a bit of extra money through some miraculous alignment of the moon and stars and at the exchange rate of the time our American money was worth 33% more when it crossed the Canadian border. </div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg9VGsPynUAGp0tiPFuyWSjQVuMZtEHNv-jXOKYkDwAEtLwbxMA1TcES-oj9PQgh0CZlbITGwRHjSkB654_2G4kISGxOWlpWOjuKT-VXQI4L2g6DK2CG6mVpPpbJWExqLkHd9tr7OdtorA/s1600/June+%2526+Genie.jpg" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg9VGsPynUAGp0tiPFuyWSjQVuMZtEHNv-jXOKYkDwAEtLwbxMA1TcES-oj9PQgh0CZlbITGwRHjSkB654_2G4kISGxOWlpWOjuKT-VXQI4L2g6DK2CG6mVpPpbJWExqLkHd9tr7OdtorA/s320/June+%2526+Genie.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">June with concert pianist and great friend Genie Malek</td></tr>
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Our house, more than twice the size of our Key West cottage, is in the tiny village of Tatamagouche, where I was born. The address is 13 Maple Avenue. The locals call it Post Office Hill. Our post office box number is 413, my birthday. From the house you can walk to the butcher, the baker and the tourist shop candlestick maker. There is a grocery store called “Mike’s” where lots of high school kids work. There is a pork shop that sells bacon that leaves no fat behind when you cook it to crispy perfection in a black iron skillet. On Saturdays there is a farmer’s market. Just outside of town there is a lavender farm and a sheep farm with a retail wool shop. A winery. Several beaches. The Transcanadian Hiking Trail, built on abandoned railway beds, skirts the shore of the Tatamagouche Bay. In fall, when the trees are bare, you see the waters of the bay from our upstairs bedroom window. In the summertime a forest of ancient maple trees block the view.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhOxA_2OpH7CRykGaxTUvAoaIG3xExNMXi_QJ49XzP1SqgP35FPl2fRCo-16qhCuDWQR0GYg4PxyZBQOXBZ1fxqkkJpmWNMJ9s-OxHi6-pDs7iXJsnmTHqbzaaEn0bBbrJo_Re6v9m9Km8/s1600/00900005.JPG" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhOxA_2OpH7CRykGaxTUvAoaIG3xExNMXi_QJ49XzP1SqgP35FPl2fRCo-16qhCuDWQR0GYg4PxyZBQOXBZ1fxqkkJpmWNMJ9s-OxHi6-pDs7iXJsnmTHqbzaaEn0bBbrJo_Re6v9m9Km8/s320/00900005.JPG" width="230" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Mystery writer Dilys Winn eating Nova Scotia lobster</td></tr>
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The house is almost grand, with a circular driveway and verdant green lawn, a sumptuous array of flower beds, a Japanese Maple tree, a blossoming crabapple tree, a huge garden plot, a tiny greenhouse, and a grape arbor. The grapes aren’t ready till the fall, long after we’ve left for the islands. But still . . . grapes! Rhubarb! Raspberries. Pear trees. And apple trees yielding plump green and red apples perfect for pies. There are raccoons that come out at night with the unbelievable pluck to attempt to push a huge Tupperware garbage bin, secured with bungee cords, across the driveway and into the woods for an attempt at tearing it open. A neighbor once told us she’d seen a black bear amble down our driveway, past a rusty old pump at the edge of the property that yields icy cold spring water if you have the power and the patience to pump the handle long enough. There is a clothesline strung from a tree to the corner of an old garage, where we love hanging out our freshly laundered sheets to sweeten and dry in the summer sun. There is a backyard big enough to hold a great circle of chairs to seat several generations of my Canadian family.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhHa3g6cPcoT26vS2q-VREYjlZMRE-31IM-WThyphenhyphenuRi1L4RSEl5fb2Dp5KnUy5XWoecsyW0xlAljmnvERHtCTwn64iu7HcQMR7RlfHWh6HbXBgLMkYpRXTlH40NSpB3SKKwC-JEb2YL8_1Q/s1600/Scan.png" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="268" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhHa3g6cPcoT26vS2q-VREYjlZMRE-31IM-WThyphenhyphenuRi1L4RSEl5fb2Dp5KnUy5XWoecsyW0xlAljmnvERHtCTwn64iu7HcQMR7RlfHWh6HbXBgLMkYpRXTlH40NSpB3SKKwC-JEb2YL8_1Q/s400/Scan.png" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Michael and "Beautiful Sandy" Arena at Skinner's Beach</td></tr>
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We bought our Nova Scotia house because we fell in love with it. Love has nothing to do with reason of course. That’s Love 101. Anyone with any sense at all might have requested an inspection. But we were too far gone for that, rendered senseless with adoration. She was such a beauty. We figured her bones must be strong, too. And they were. Built by shipbuilders a century earlier, you can see their craftsmanship in the thick chiseled beams in the basement. It was her systems that were failing. The wiring and the heating and the insulation were weak. But you can’t see that in pictures. And so we signed the documents and breathlessly faxed them on their way to Nova Scotia. We’d read of the Bohemian writers who summered in seaside towns of the northeast and wintered in the south and we wanted that sort of life for ourselves. Somehow we’d make it all work, we figured, and somehow, for a while anyway, we did.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj038jfAt99G_f16sP3W-DFHV0f1U61Oc_u_fl8NMo8WBEfg-gqmyR-4jS-ZXKLJoJFXHvuQVTUA_I5trQ0FRldidmR41DA3s0UtYXBGi5DVxSgG4Ipup20yuNKFB8kkgNoEZ53Z2OxOrE/s1600/01520001.jpg" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj038jfAt99G_f16sP3W-DFHV0f1U61Oc_u_fl8NMo8WBEfg-gqmyR-4jS-ZXKLJoJFXHvuQVTUA_I5trQ0FRldidmR41DA3s0UtYXBGi5DVxSgG4Ipup20yuNKFB8kkgNoEZ53Z2OxOrE/s320/01520001.jpg" width="246" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Crazy lady waltzing with maple syrup</td></tr>
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<br />
The closing was in April. In those days it was around $1000 for Michael and me to fly to Halifax. Today it’s twice that. On the morning we took possession of our house it snowed, thick and wet. I pulled out my camera to bear witness but the shutter was frozen shut. It was cold in the house, too. But we were in love, so we bundled up in many layers of sweaters and slowly explored the space that was finally ours to touch. Making our way through that big old house for the first time was like making love to one you have desired for a long, long while. We bought a card table and chairs at a thrift shop and set it up in the cavernous, farmhouse kitchen. We covered the table with an Indian bedspread and boiled water for tea. Then we went back to our motel room, which was also cold, and prepared for the trip home, a pre-dawn ninety-mile drive up and over a mountain to the Halifax Airport, and a day of little and big planes, in and out of the sky to land in Key West at dusk.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjFqzVhiQxOdfna7wDQEYCjrqbnT8TeVbA8PpHaTetcOSGSH1cAPSCRVCMOAp9yBHggz2Q6ITlWXfT9Oyic0wlbhyphenhyphen-NJSd8v10tJgGgfAhKOfM2D6s8tsYm5fK5-RGVah0bkE8oCMdAtYA/s1600/IMG_6753.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjFqzVhiQxOdfna7wDQEYCjrqbnT8TeVbA8PpHaTetcOSGSH1cAPSCRVCMOAp9yBHggz2Q6ITlWXfT9Oyic0wlbhyphenhyphen-NJSd8v10tJgGgfAhKOfM2D6s8tsYm5fK5-RGVah0bkE8oCMdAtYA/s320/IMG_6753.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Bouquet from Tata House gardens</td></tr>
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<br />
Have you seen a movie called <i>The Money Pit</i>? That was our story, too. The<br />
electrical system needed to be replaced before it was safe to sleep in the house. We needed all new wiring. No negotiating there, but we hoped for some wiggle room in evaluating the ancient furnace. My brother Rocky, an ace furnace repair man, advised that furnaces were unpredictable things. Our furnace might run another 30 years without a problem, or it might expire in an hour. But surely, he told us, were it to die in the dead of winter, our water pipes would freeze, burst and destroy virtually every floor and wall. So obviously, we needed to buy a new furnace, too. The water heater eventually exploded, but that was a bit later. I bought the book “This Old House” which is all about rehabbing ancient domiciles such as ours. We hired a carpenter. “Would you please throw that damned book away!” he said to me, with a conspiratorial wink to my husband that ignited in me a red rage many frustrating months in the making.<br />
<br />
Through the years we’ve made our Tata House into a place warm and cozy. We’ve made friends of our wonderful and fascinating Tata neighbors. My mother, who had grown up in Nova Scotia before marrying her New York Italian husband, was able to spend a last summer there, before a fatal degenerative brain disease robbed her of her vision and her ability to eat solid food. That summer we ate like royalty, with Mom, the queen, at the head of the table each night. We wandered a bit, too, with Mom on her walker and her constant companion Pekingese dog ever by her side. I could probably write a book about driving from Florida to Nova Scotia and back with my mother and her<br />
dog and her needs and the thousand ditties and poems she recited at the slightest provocation. Every time we saw a crow it was this one:<br />
<br />
<i> One crow sorrow</i><br />
<i> Two crows joy</i><br />
<i> Three crows a letter</i><br />
<i> Four crows a boy</i><br />
<i> Five crows silver</i><br />
<i> Six crows gold,</i><br />
<i> Seven crows a secret, never to be told.</i><br />
<br />
I’ll tell you a secret: there are a whole lot of crows on the long road between Florida and Nova Scotia. <br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhm2dkickjNcqS8BMOaDcjMYNFEB1aqpjvdBBAZRkPO_0iGbkVMxH6QbNpMzU2WoSLPQcN9Bn7Xym-yJa1TEEkAJv3YKHFrFqk92VLOE6pP82IkTcz4jDwPBHGZL1SMZW6dTqeCQu_KLms/s1600/00900020.jpg" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhm2dkickjNcqS8BMOaDcjMYNFEB1aqpjvdBBAZRkPO_0iGbkVMxH6QbNpMzU2WoSLPQcN9Bn7Xym-yJa1TEEkAJv3YKHFrFqk92VLOE6pP82IkTcz4jDwPBHGZL1SMZW6dTqeCQu_KLms/s320/00900020.jpg" width="212" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Queen Mom and Babe, the princess dog</td></tr>
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<br />
There is a Buddhist retreat in Tatamagouche and from there we have found student renters to inhabit our house during the winter months. But not every winter. Often our house sits empty. The last time we were there, two years ago, it was to scatter Mom’s ashes. This summer, another season in which our lives have kept us tethered to this house, we hired a realtor and hung a “For Sale” sign. Saturday the realtor called and said she had an offer. Someone wanted to buy our house, but for far less than our asking price. <br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEigIO5EwN3QDJgWaFy6HwzT-BNovG_rh3sK8HqKXmSfbseXiOQKpSa_xSpo0NDlwa4WlwA_DSgovRH4iSnayiyvcS6jLCcq38ou6EyvDiD89AstRx_IjiQgQQ2DTeIw-Z5HENbszwC_CA4/s1600/01520022.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="424" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEigIO5EwN3QDJgWaFy6HwzT-BNovG_rh3sK8HqKXmSfbseXiOQKpSa_xSpo0NDlwa4WlwA_DSgovRH4iSnayiyvcS6jLCcq38ou6EyvDiD89AstRx_IjiQgQQ2DTeIw-Z5HENbszwC_CA4/s640/01520022.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The secret to a great garden? A great scarecrow of course. Dig those apple trees!</td></tr>
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<br />
So much has changed since we bought that house. Money isn’t flowing as it used to. Our Canadian property taxes have risen quite dramatically and the American dollar is worth a whole lot less today than it was when we became summer residents of Tatamagouche. None of our four adult kids have been to the house. It’s just so darned far away, and now, it costs like the dickens to get up there. Renting a car is prohibitively expensive, and there is a sales tax of 18% on everything. So the dream of sleeping beneath the quilt my grandmother made, in our flowered bedroom in the Tata House, seems to loom ever further beyond our reach. <br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgjH82X33yCrv2_zgkNTmGQPxmhJBpZ4ilbc5xetSQ7KXrayHmdHt1xq_QyRlebv5PynArJye8SwZxDmYLdxpA9nLxGXEKa3y7c9DONSafT_0mkAhXQoEtwZzM9IAsvpXb4s5B7juN3nrM/s1600/00980001.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="265" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgjH82X33yCrv2_zgkNTmGQPxmhJBpZ4ilbc5xetSQ7KXrayHmdHt1xq_QyRlebv5PynArJye8SwZxDmYLdxpA9nLxGXEKa3y7c9DONSafT_0mkAhXQoEtwZzM9IAsvpXb4s5B7juN3nrM/s400/00980001.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Michael and Rocky cooking in the Tata House yard</td></tr>
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<br />
When the offer came on Saturday Michael and I sat down together and talked about what it meant. I was surprised to find myself crying. It was not a good offer, and when we considered what we’d invested in that house, the money, the work, the years, the love, well, we just couldn’t do it. We couldn’t let our Tata House go. We called back the realtor to tell her what we’d decided. The people offered more money, but not much more. We refused again, and hoped the realtor wouldn’t call again. She didn’t. <br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjb7mTYZbFGmiSNPo6iQm7EBZq2ZBmQvo5R6KngfYMdZvBhF9g8IcyFD-ndOA_QPIhB4NtMu2pLRgUkcn4qu7Ydp28V5dILsTGKgAlvSFCxnLfUKjrU5WZTX-f4ChEKgjCqPYxy9FYzFUg/s1600/DSCN0030.JPG" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjb7mTYZbFGmiSNPo6iQm7EBZq2ZBmQvo5R6KngfYMdZvBhF9g8IcyFD-ndOA_QPIhB4NtMu2pLRgUkcn4qu7Ydp28V5dILsTGKgAlvSFCxnLfUKjrU5WZTX-f4ChEKgjCqPYxy9FYzFUg/s400/DSCN0030.JPG" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Tata House in winter</td></tr>
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<br />
Our contract with the real estate company is up in two months. Should we renew it? Or should we take that For Sale sign down? Will it be the white elephant Canada house of our children and our children’s children? Forever at the top of Post Office Hill, an ever empty house, owned by, as one villager once described us, “a nice older couple from the States”? Or should we call that realtor back and let the young family with two little boys pay an apallingly low price for it and cut our losses? I wish I knew what to do. I need a sign. I need a crow or two.<br />
<br />June Keithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08171174002983023531noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4171391806681426297.post-24101455101230538532012-09-08T10:37:00.000-04:002012-09-08T13:11:15.585-04:00Saturday Morning Fever<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/AVvXsEigkTrqTz_nxh2iXnFpcQ4r_HiA4RHmEA8zlvkVgumkKC3BPorDH7pJxzqh5D3DYW2m_fQLVK4jIpko_drJAlqfOxDQAbjxrB-fB_zieenDbZjjGzespodzlh-57kWvmLt1C7pNg9QrJUg/s1600/P4220017.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEigkTrqTz_nxh2iXnFpcQ4r_HiA4RHmEA8zlvkVgumkKC3BPorDH7pJxzqh5D3DYW2m_fQLVK4jIpko_drJAlqfOxDQAbjxrB-fB_zieenDbZjjGzespodzlh-57kWvmLt1C7pNg9QrJUg/s400/P4220017.JPG" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Sandy's Cafe. 6 a.m. on a quintessential Saturday morning. A girl running. A girl in shorts. A girl in pajamas. And ER Nurse Susie, heading to the hospital for the day shift, with a con leche almost as big as her, and a thermos. I think maybe Susie, who was riding her bike to work, may live on cafe con leche . . . </td></tr>
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For the past three years I have worked a weekend job with the unimaginable start time of 7 a.m. I don’t even want to guess how many yard sales I have missed in those three terrible years. The Saturday morning Key West yard sale is an institution, a happy combination of meet and greet and shop till you drop. Quit showing up at yard sales and people begin to assume the worst: that you’ve moved Up North.<br />
<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiRXXrYEg1eQL1q6OEJJFlO_sCaQ-RUdYjwLjY9F7uTcJjfEKf6CS7ZMMUco88u9RaAMSww14-P3d-0Bor1I1wQJzkXNKWO05M_U2VI5Wa9I3r7AsM-OVmEpm04L1fjNOADjAfvwhwDgew/s1600/P4220015.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiRXXrYEg1eQL1q6OEJJFlO_sCaQ-RUdYjwLjY9F7uTcJjfEKf6CS7ZMMUco88u9RaAMSww14-P3d-0Bor1I1wQJzkXNKWO05M_U2VI5Wa9I3r7AsM-OVmEpm04L1fjNOADjAfvwhwDgew/s320/P4220015.JPG" width="240" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Sandy's. Predawn. </td></tr>
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I have been so starved for secondhand deals I’ve become a regular at the thrift shops, which is not at all the same thing. A thrift shop has its charms, sure, but a thrift shop has nowhere near the charm of the well-mounted yard sale. At a thrift shop you can’t nickel and dime prices down the way you can at a yard sale. At a thrift shop you can’t chat about the history of an interesting piece of merchandise with the good people who once cherished and paid big bucks for the thing you are about to make your very own for a mere pittance. At thrift shops you are not likely to run into the stylish people you can count on seeing at the Saturday morning yard sales.<br />
<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh20tTdhSBZjgSp5f_reGoi2WaOsWuAhDI5qV-XD1YndvhmXPZmCjVDhAG7SWv8gCSucCdk-gJlMXeggvxzWy9vJ7oTTWFet40HsY26ZyJRmS4rc9Cmef-ne1ZraZ-RelOc3SMGFiEgqbU/s1600/P4220021.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh20tTdhSBZjgSp5f_reGoi2WaOsWuAhDI5qV-XD1YndvhmXPZmCjVDhAG7SWv8gCSucCdk-gJlMXeggvxzWy9vJ7oTTWFet40HsY26ZyJRmS4rc9Cmef-ne1ZraZ-RelOc3SMGFiEgqbU/s320/P4220021.JPG" width="196" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The managers: Rob and Stacie</td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td></tr>
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No. Nothing at all compares to a great, rollicking yard sale, where you encounter all the yard sale regulars. There are the tool and jewelry folks, who yell “got any tools or jewelry?” from the windows<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhsl2TnPP2HhoGS2kzCINNjQJ8rQfjAS5mvnG-osLT9JB9olkN3yM929HwHdi7Zop33dZUJGtQwBfulYmyskZKFlsqYPkS248u0VL4V4OzjbF1_oCxeZkWM4qLvN1akAMff6mDTc8cA7Wo/s1600/P4220022.JPG" 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/AVvXsEhsl2TnPP2HhoGS2kzCINNjQJ8rQfjAS5mvnG-osLT9JB9olkN3yM929HwHdi7Zop33dZUJGtQwBfulYmyskZKFlsqYPkS248u0VL4V4OzjbF1_oCxeZkWM4qLvN1akAMff6mDTc8cA7Wo/s320/P4220022.JPG" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Do you think that early bird in plaid shorts will buy anything?</td></tr>
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of their trucks, through the pre-dawn haze, hours before your sale is advertised to begin. (They make me wonder: what are they looking for? A solid gold screwdriver? On a chain?) The merchandisers arrive early, too. They come to pick up stuff at bargain prices which they will sell in their own shops at retail prices. In every town there is a shoal of sharks, sleek and smiley. They examine the goods, find their target, and then, dart in for the kill with lightning quick offers of take it or leave it. Always there are yard sale observers, who walk around with their hands in their pockets, looking, asking questions, but never buying. And there are tag-alongs, people accompanying the serious shoppers. They watch and wait and appear to be very uncomfortable, standing around in strangers’ yards amid displays of other peoples’ leftovers.<br />
<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEimi_cXTVWibQ1sQ7JDo4f89a7bTi0BFoOkvtWLtRf-2749dUoa2l-Ym1KKxdUlBXUEzvwmaDA4ODVQDTANMMX2DskOpKkxepfT1QbyRr45MfYQwf8HJWgvCd3HbaFGrUmtwWtKxu2zE2c/s1600/photo.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEimi_cXTVWibQ1sQ7JDo4f89a7bTi0BFoOkvtWLtRf-2749dUoa2l-Ym1KKxdUlBXUEzvwmaDA4ODVQDTANMMX2DskOpKkxepfT1QbyRr45MfYQwf8HJWgvCd3HbaFGrUmtwWtKxu2zE2c/s640/photo.jpg" width="476" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The Minister of Sobriety and Secretary General of the Conch Republic stage an impromptu joint task force meeting in the Conch RepublicMobile. That's coffee in those cups. I swear. </td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td></tr>
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Nowadays I am working nine-to-five, weekdays. So when my great friends Stacie and Rob announced that they were staging a Saturday yard sale in their gated front yard, I asked if I might share in the party. They even advertised the sale in the Citizen, scheduling it for 7 a.m. till 11 a.m. The first customers, the tool and jewelry folks, arrived at 6:20. That gate came in handy.<br />
<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_QbN5YXr-bi2lm2h6uRdpsN4Avdi0paE_h4mS1xDVMYM0LdsbGRsaxTnMT_RCybM77Hoi3MqLviF0Uz2YHDp7XbejCSZsULEMEpwNeyfBLmT0mA892GlfHuROnCPBVPZocwX5rXcV4_4/s1600/P4220020.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_QbN5YXr-bi2lm2h6uRdpsN4Avdi0paE_h4mS1xDVMYM0LdsbGRsaxTnMT_RCybM77Hoi3MqLviF0Uz2YHDp7XbejCSZsULEMEpwNeyfBLmT0mA892GlfHuROnCPBVPZocwX5rXcV4_4/s400/P4220020.JPG" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The earliest birds: the shopkeepers. </td></tr>
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Among the usual yard sale mavens on that day I met a lady who told me she liked my writing. Her name was Lynn and I’d like to shout out a hello to her now. As she walked through our yard sale, Lynn clutched to her chest a sweet little watercolor painting in a lovely frame she’d purchased at a previous sale. She did not want to risk leaving her find in her bicycle basket outside the gate while she shopped at our sale. She told me she’d paid $3 for it and I wanted it bad. I told her many times how much I liked the painting. I followed her around the yard as she shopped. I complimented her on her good looks and her fine taste in books. (She bought five. All mine.) I told her that the only thing I collected at all anymore is art. I hinted in every way I could imagine, but Lynn did not offer me that painting. Finally she told me that her family had decided to exchange Christmas gifts of stuff they found at yard sales or thrift shops. So I forgive you, Lynn, for holding onto that painting for dear life. And I envy whoever in your family gets it for Christmas.<br />
<br />
We had a lot of stuff to sell, and lots buyers to take it off our hands. We had clothes, shoes, books, and the assorted accumulation of five kids, assorted parents and their crazy Aunt June. We sold out of<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Eggers Junior Division, Lev and Georgie. </td></tr>
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shoes quickly. It was amazing! Whenever someone examined our shoe collection, which went from size 1 – 10, Rob announced: “Shoes are two dollars apiece, the whole pair for $3.” People tried on clothes and bought lots of those, too. Our sale had nothing big and extravagant, save a push lawnmower that would have been the very first thing to go in our Nova Scotia village. The mower didn’t sell! Nonetheless, by selling a thousand (or so it seemed) fifty-cent items, we made enough money to feel quite successful by lunchtime. Our yard sale was hot, exhausting, fun, and possibly easier than loading everything into the car and delivering it to the thrift shop. But I’m not quite sure about that.<br />
<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZyDAa204dxlKXvh79xEA0XBVgtg_sNWbtrlFm9FR57bIleMg-kTLn0E0B3Xem-_7x8-QO3mOoHPPZ-fIIFM44sDXCZ-jyceNenjeEAxkatxmO6zzcvMvAJp76O1d-MAgOCKTI1ClZ-Ns/s1600/P4220024.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZyDAa204dxlKXvh79xEA0XBVgtg_sNWbtrlFm9FR57bIleMg-kTLn0E0B3Xem-_7x8-QO3mOoHPPZ-fIIFM44sDXCZ-jyceNenjeEAxkatxmO6zzcvMvAJp76O1d-MAgOCKTI1ClZ-Ns/s400/P4220024.JPG" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">My beautiful friend Stacie and me, counting up the loot. </td></tr>
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Here in Key West, it’s the end-of-summer, paring down season. Unburdening is a healthy response to belt-tightening times. When the going gets tough, the tough go yard sale-ing, because women must shop. My long-suffering husband explains that shopping, for women, is a physiological imperative, programmed into the female gene. And on an island 130 miles from the nearest mall, yard sales are a Big Thing.<br />
<br />
My husband also suggests that a truly great yard sale should begin around 5 a.m., so as to accommodate the earliest of early birds. But I think the ultimate yard sale begins on Saturday morning, or you might say the after-midnight side of Friday night. Open the gates at 3 a.m. for a nice headstart on the other sales. Offer complimentary mimosas. Brew a pot of coffee. Buy a box of sugary donuts. Crank up the rock ‘n roll. Turn your yard sale into a happening, a party! Offer deep discounts to whoever carries away the most junk. Label your most desirable items with post-it notes revealing some titillating fact about them. For example, you might note, on that old blue dress: “Once worn at the Clinton White House.” There! That’s a conversation starter!<br />
<br />
Here is our son Miguel Perez's homage to Sandy's Cafe, filmed at 4 a.m. -- of course!!
<iframe allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen" frameborder="0" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/OJUIS4JI3_Q" width="560"></iframe> June Keithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08171174002983023531noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4171391806681426297.post-80073685862585204572012-08-19T15:14:00.000-04:002012-08-20T09:55:12.039-04:00Waccabuc Wedding<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Hanging out at Mead Chapel</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"> Wedding Day. Arthur Miller and Marilyn Monroe, July 1956 </td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiS-wVHmMMVQJ8atAEFZ1U-ntx0J7_vj-4O50rP9Y2WioBRJz1CAOXa25nAkTY1Yzw5jrMkCFNC6RO57hBrq4w0ijK7ggavQ6PMF8jY0hOj8b9nEStJOLpJq-ALZOzOojGMJnYLENm0v3A/s1600/566269_orig.jpg" 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/AVvXsEiS-wVHmMMVQJ8atAEFZ1U-ntx0J7_vj-4O50rP9Y2WioBRJz1CAOXa25nAkTY1Yzw5jrMkCFNC6RO57hBrq4w0ijK7ggavQ6PMF8jY0hOj8b9nEStJOLpJq-ALZOzOojGMJnYLENm0v3A/s320/566269_orig.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">My happy place. Lake Waccabuc</td></tr>
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When I was a very little kid Marilyn Monroe and Arthur Miller showed
up in New York, in search of a setting for their wedding. A small,
family-owned chapel near our house at Lake Waccabuc was considered.
But the good people in charge of the lovely Mead Chapel vetoed the Miller/Monroe bid to wed in that breathtakingly beautiful place
because of the event’s attaché of friends and family, fans,
reporters, photographers and assorted rubber-neckers. Who could resist
the chance of a glimpse of America’s most famous sexpot? None of our
neighbors wanted that kind of a circus going on in our back yards. It
was probably a wise decision. On the day of their civil wedding
ceremony, a young reporter from <i>Paris-Match</i> magazine was killed when
her car, racing along a curving country road toward the Monroe/Miller
pre-nup press conference, crashed into a tree. And so the couple
slipped into the White Plains County Court House and quietly married.
Two days later, July 1, 1956, there was a small and private Jewish
ceremony in the Waccabuc home of Miller’s literary agent, Kay Brown.
Those are the facts. But, as I said, I was a wee thing then and
somehow I got it into my head that the wedding had actually happened
at the Mead Chapel. Many times I hiked past that sweet spot and
thought of Marilyn, who died her infamous death just six summers
later. For years I took visitors to see the chapel where, I told them,
Marilyn Monroe married. I posed for pictures there. I meditated there.
I had schoolgirl dreams of having my own wedding there. Perhaps if Marilyn's wedding had happened in that beautiful chapel a brighter light
might have shone on Marilyn’s marriage, and on the rest of her sad
life.<br />
Marilyn was 30 years old when she married Arthur Miller. I think it
was her finest hour. In photos taken at the time, Marilyn seems at the
very height of her spectacular luminescence, clutching the arm of her
husband like a grateful survivor plucked from an icy sea after a shipwreck. I once read that on the back of one of those wedding pictures
she’d written “Hope. Hope. Hope.”<br />
Would it be too melodramatic to say I felt some of my finest hours
there at Waccabuc? I remember when my parents were happy there. I
remember the monstrous groans of the lake when it was frozen over
with ice on full-mooned winter nights. I remember the first delicious
dip into the lake on warm days in late May. My friend Tina Kaupe, who
also lived in Waccabuc as a child, and I sometimes talk about
Waccabuc, of how much we loved growing up there, of how we love it
still, and of how, if one of us were to hit the lottery, the first
thing we would surely do is buy a house there.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhdIseRiKZ2WW0cZZFRE2eXwG8I4w57b5Z9joXxruLjfwY4CipL7AXv0qmZBD4bXOeNJTYwxx8fBsvOMTY5GEoVxrHV1b8Z9cel5R_iXY2jfjOZQImqOQvfI0jtfDyLWv8KnT_pVOYnePI/s1600/Scan+1.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="335" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgTGH7zzp5FL8YoxT9mnQN5xjNWeHi8c-RtL59cvRTxhE7toMdxWsl_O3dbokFJ1zlNQ1kcL62gyJGPgSgOVLvW_jsl2cMmS76kL6JoHm8Sk2Ob7XPGm0sLeje9CCUb3aIylJbNfgqrRW8/s400/111107_magnum-05_p465.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Producer Frank Taylor is the guy holding up the ladder. On the set of <i>The Misfits</i>. 1960. </td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>The Misfits</i> was Clark Gable's last film. Marilyn's last, too. </td></tr>
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Remembering Marilyn is a trek along a marshy trail of historic images,
movie stars, black and white TV, neurosis, champagne, pills, erotica,
expectations, sex-pectations, literature, film, profound hunger,
horror, greed, but also, fun. I have a Marilyn Monroe Museum in my
head and I visit it often, lifting each bitter and sweet truth up to
the light like a diamond with a thousand glittering facets. I never
tire of turning the prism of Marilyn’s light this way and that.
I have a shelf bulging with Marilyn books, a collection that grows
with each birthday and Christmas. I have Marilyn knic-knaks, a
magnet on my fridge, a postcard on permanent display on my dresser, an
Andy Warhol print of Marilyn on my bedroom wall.<br />
“How many times did you think of Marilyn Monroe today?” I asked my
husband, as I was writing this.<br />
“Um . . . not once,” he answered. “Why? Is something going on with her?”<br />
<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/AVvXsEhHGElWe7DUlia7C_risOGNNYiEqnjACn4iJBOopZu881vIPnEWntgsnsvr7gS6hEMVsHw-FgnXl8XNFlhYwCnNd3e86HbAxb91wQu1b-Mk9_01Nlqz3WaXMNsc2x2q9kdNSNxpSc1jIlA/s1600/sjff_01_img0326.jpg" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="302" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhHGElWe7DUlia7C_risOGNNYiEqnjACn4iJBOopZu881vIPnEWntgsnsvr7gS6hEMVsHw-FgnXl8XNFlhYwCnNd3e86HbAxb91wQu1b-Mk9_01Nlqz3WaXMNsc2x2q9kdNSNxpSc1jIlA/s400/sjff_01_img0326.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">My friend, Key West writer Alyson Crean, grew up in Nevada and remembers drinking with her father at this Dayton, Nevada bar, used as a setting in <i>The Misfits</i>. </td></tr>
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Something is always going on with her! Marilyn is a template, a role
model and a cautionary tale. Marilyn is every woman, realized, failed,
reinvented, loved, adored, maimed and murdered. And finally, a legend.
I was in a store the other day examining a display of Marilyn Monroe clocks. A young girl was looking at them, too.<br />
“I love Marilyn,” she sighed. “I’m gonna see if my mom will buy this for me.”<br />
“What do you like about Marilyn,” I asked her.<br />
“I love her self-confidence,” she said, testifying to Marilyn’s
remarkable skill as a model.<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhdIseRiKZ2WW0cZZFRE2eXwG8I4w57b5Z9joXxruLjfwY4CipL7AXv0qmZBD4bXOeNJTYwxx8fBsvOMTY5GEoVxrHV1b8Z9cel5R_iXY2jfjOZQImqOQvfI0jtfDyLWv8KnT_pVOYnePI/s1600/Scan+1.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"></a>I was greatly impressed by the film, <i>My Week with Marilyn</i>. As a major
Marilyn fan, I didn’t expect much from it. I can’t think of any movie
about Marilyn that justly portrays Marilyn as I understand her, till now. I was
mesmerized. Actress Michelle Williams creates a very real Marilyn, the
very woman I believe Marilyn Monroe to have been. I believe Marilyn
was that forlorn and lost beauty portrayed by Williams, who surely
studied Marilyn and nailed her character better than anyone ever
before. In that film Marilyn is portrayed as a user and a self-abuser, luscious as
a ripe piece of fruit, and clearly destined, as we all are, to lose.
Williams gave us a glimpse into the frail heart and simpering soul of
a very sad woman. Indeed, Marilyn had lost so much by the time she was
36 years old that the normal course of human events became too heavy a
burden for her to bear, well before it does for most of us.
Frank Taylor, producer of the film, <i>The Misfits</i>, lived in Key West. The
film was written by Arthur Miller as a homage to his famous wife. Of
course I asked Taylor to tell me about Marilyn, as she was when he
knew her, near the end of her remarkable life.<br />
“She had a need to seduce every man, woman and child she ever met,”
Frank said. “And it worked. Everyone fell in love with her. She used
the story of her horrible childhood for sympathy. You wanted to
protect her."<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhdIseRiKZ2WW0cZZFRE2eXwG8I4w57b5Z9joXxruLjfwY4CipL7AXv0qmZBD4bXOeNJTYwxx8fBsvOMTY5GEoVxrHV1b8Z9cel5R_iXY2jfjOZQImqOQvfI0jtfDyLWv8KnT_pVOYnePI/s1600/Scan+1.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"></a><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhdIseRiKZ2WW0cZZFRE2eXwG8I4w57b5Z9joXxruLjfwY4CipL7AXv0qmZBD4bXOeNJTYwxx8fBsvOMTY5GEoVxrHV1b8Z9cel5R_iXY2jfjOZQImqOQvfI0jtfDyLWv8KnT_pVOYnePI/s1600/Scan+1.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="" border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhdIseRiKZ2WW0cZZFRE2eXwG8I4w57b5Z9joXxruLjfwY4CipL7AXv0qmZBD4bXOeNJTYwxx8fBsvOMTY5GEoVxrHV1b8Z9cel5R_iXY2jfjOZQImqOQvfI0jtfDyLWv8KnT_pVOYnePI/s640/Scan+1.jpg" title="" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">After the fall . . . Marilyn seems small, drained of vitality, in this June, 1962 photo. Weeks later, she was dead. </td></tr>
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Frank went on to explain how once Marilyn had someone securely in her
thrall, her warm charm could quickly turn to cold contempt. And so she
was not to be trusted. And she trusted no one.<br />
There is a scene in <i>The Misfits</i> where Marilyn’s character celebrates
newly constructed stairs, built for her by her lover Clark Gable. The
three steps enable her to easily enter or exit their very modest
shack. Marilyn goes up and down those stairs, gleeful, childlike,
saying: “I can go in. I can go out. I can go in. I can go out.”
And so she lived her life. Going in. Going out. Going in. Going out.
And going out. <iframe allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen" frameborder="0" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/WQIvhotZSUw" width="420"></iframe>June Keithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08171174002983023531noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4171391806681426297.post-89578900139992051972012-07-27T13:31:00.000-04:002012-11-18T22:54:31.620-05:00What, Me Worry?<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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This week the hilariously funny man Tom Davis, half of the <i>Saturday Night Live</i> writing team of Franken and Davis, died of throat cancer. He was diagnosed around the same time I was. He fought the good fight, but ended up succumbing to a fatal tumor that lodged in the bones of his spine and pelvis. I’ve been told that my throat cancer, currently in
happy remission, might reappear in my lungs, or liver, but no one said anything about tumors down there.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEikuc-t_FdKtqQ9skz_ha18QOVB2bmUtnCzSBfsCkB2LTwN0IJsLxgqvLNIAggSrGoR7b-iiPyUI2sk2CjBslApxm8Spun0ao6tkgwAC8m5HDZM5IWNzqune_93-q9L9rd6lnODjwiWW5w/s1600/120720010809-tom-davis-story-top.jpg" 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/AVvXsEikuc-t_FdKtqQ9skz_ha18QOVB2bmUtnCzSBfsCkB2LTwN0IJsLxgqvLNIAggSrGoR7b-iiPyUI2sk2CjBslApxm8Spun0ao6tkgwAC8m5HDZM5IWNzqune_93-q9L9rd6lnODjwiWW5w/s400/120720010809-tom-davis-story-top.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Franken and Davis, insanely funny guys. “I wake up in the morning, delighted to be waking up, read, write, feed the birds, watch sports on TV, accepting the fact that in the foreseeable future I will be a dead person,” Davis wrote. “I want to remind you that dead people are people too.”</td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"></td></tr>
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Robin Roberts of <i>Good Morning America</i> fought her own cancer
battle five or so years ago, only to learn recently the chemo
treatments that arrested her breast cancer had planted the seeds for a new
version, this time in her bone marrow. So she’s back in Cancer Land.
I know you can recall people in your life who’ve gone in and out
of Cancer Land a few times. It’s not unusual to hear of warriors with multiple tours in Cancer Land. Like my friend Dr. Sandy
Shultz once told me: cancer is an adversary every bit as cunning as
Al Qaeda. When you understand that, you gain the ability to sit back
and relax. It really does no good to imagine what might or might not
happen next. And even if nothing at all untoward happens cancerwise,
there’s still the specter of old age and, inevitable death, the final
chapter on everyone’s horizon.<br />
<br />
My husband Michael visited Cancer Land nearly fifteen years ago. All
these years later he enjoys a cozy and practical relationship with the
reality of death. This is good for me, the recently reprieved, the
tentatively hopeful. Such intelligent rationale and healthy fatalism
is ultimately comforting. <br />
<br />
Last Sunday, a mostly gray day punctuated with angry squalls of rain,
thunder and lightning, Michael noticed a break in the weather around 5
p.m. and suggested a walk on the wide, breezy promenade at Smathers
Beach. I picked my head up out of the book I’d been reading, and told
him I was afraid of being struck by lightning. So, no.<br />
<br />
“Oh don’t worry about that,” he said. “If that happened you’d never
even know it. And it wouldn’t necessarily be a bad thing. Think of all
the misery you might miss. You’d avoid the risk dying a lingering
death of cancer or of drying up of old age.”<br />
<br />
I came out from under my quilt, sneakered up and followed him out the
door. By the time we arrived at the beach I sort of hoped I would be
struck by lightning. What a great line for my obituary!<br />
<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi2J_0CBGpKpsGvdREWA-PFT6HU5sr4n-u8D0PjHgNfEkyO6C26OUT1PStnDC__aC7vRTE14OrUTcOyw6L8O_rZnSHhmPDMSsy0KHEHzP2akTcXit4IMB4h7aVjwRU-kreOPUTxYjH1hR0/s1600/PC140007.jpg" 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/AVvXsEi2J_0CBGpKpsGvdREWA-PFT6HU5sr4n-u8D0PjHgNfEkyO6C26OUT1PStnDC__aC7vRTE14OrUTcOyw6L8O_rZnSHhmPDMSsy0KHEHzP2akTcXit4IMB4h7aVjwRU-kreOPUTxYjH1hR0/s200/PC140007.jpg" width="188" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Who would notice this?</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
My old friend Lois Kline celebrated her surrender to cancer with a
huge party for family and fans. She was 86 years old. Lois and I
shared a friendship of the sort that transcends time and space. We bumped
into each other every two or three years. It never mattered how much time or
circumstance separated us between visits. We had rapport. Lois had rapport with life. She was a fan
of my writing, and she always let me know. I was a fan of her joie
de vive. She was the kind of woman you call “real.” A few weeks after her big party she died. Her obituary, which she wrote, appeared in the paper. It made you feel happy to read that obituary. It also made you wonder about yourself: have I done everything I wanted to do with this brief appearance on Earth?<br />
<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjLEV74mggRAwdHSMWwC4NK0yYwJpg-mrTh8V-0nadHMioMOqVC6bDkWJ5thfsOZ_JQcaHxTRuphuC8lN7TuwbJr4RbTHjRosRz8IfODzWzUbNJQ7hfO4EVHxxA99rGisfJu-hkQlNIf3o/s1600/306755_10151121769591228_1907348762_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="298" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjLEV74mggRAwdHSMWwC4NK0yYwJpg-mrTh8V-0nadHMioMOqVC6bDkWJ5thfsOZ_JQcaHxTRuphuC8lN7TuwbJr4RbTHjRosRz8IfODzWzUbNJQ7hfO4EVHxxA99rGisfJu-hkQlNIf3o/s400/306755_10151121769591228_1907348762_n.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Two years down the road from Cancer Land. (Thanks, Alyson, for the happy picture,)</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
The last time I saw Lois, just a few months ago, we chatted merrily,
as we have dozens of times before, and she mentioned she’d been
terribly sick with gall bladder disease. I now surmise it was the
prologue to the pancreatic cancer that took her life shortly after
that. On that day, she did not know she was terminally ill. Nonetheless, said she was thankful to have lived for 86 years. She said being old was rough. She
said she had begun to be curious and ready for what comes next. After
a few minutes Lois paused for a beat or two and then, cocked her head
to the side and demanded: “What in the world happened to your neck, woman?”<br />
<br />
She’d apparently not heard of my visit to Cancer Land. Surgery on my
neck has left me somewhat rearranged. Cancer treatment, after all, is always a
deal with the devil. So I’m not the same as I used to be, but who
is? In any event, since that surgery, husband, family, friends, and
coworkers have all assured me my scar and tissue deficit is barely
noticeable, unremarkable, and certainly no one meeting me for the
first time would suspect from my appearance that any bad
thing had ever befallen me. But Lois, with the spirit of a soaring
eagle, and the keen eyes to match, noticed.
I laughed out loud. Thank you, Lois, for your unerring honesty. And
thanks for acknowledging those hard-won battle scars. Thanks for reminding me to live till I can't. <br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhN0GqWhbQUoXfU8QFKgJu6fxFlbiiZydqZQuDlG_dNdAOveCB4G-79i-PgH_4N4rmJPC629F5Y6t4k0asG8PBOtbwp2NwAQzDJ-DUIDIMpRtd-S_QUvOeXB07tQuWgKdhfNkaKNhRFaUg/s1600/51930010_1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="277" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhN0GqWhbQUoXfU8QFKgJu6fxFlbiiZydqZQuDlG_dNdAOveCB4G-79i-PgH_4N4rmJPC629F5Y6t4k0asG8PBOtbwp2NwAQzDJ-DUIDIMpRtd-S_QUvOeXB07tQuWgKdhfNkaKNhRFaUg/s320/51930010_1.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Miguel Perez and his grandfather, Miguel Perez. </td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
My ex-father-in-law is absurdly healthy, also is in his mid-80’s. He
doesn’t do much anymore. He lives quietly, and often consults his
doctors with health issues that have so far turned out to be not
life-threatening. Still, his patience is wearing thin.<br />
“How’s your life going, Grampa,” my son, his grandson, might ask him.<br />
“It’s taking forever!” Grampa always answers.<br />
<br />
One of these days I’m going to write myself a brilliant obituary. It
will be long, and probably expensive, because the <i>Key West Citizen</i>
charges by the inch for obituaries. But that bill won’t be my
problem. And right there, you’ve got something else to like about
being dead!June Keithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08171174002983023531noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4171391806681426297.post-49678620810005272332012-07-16T20:03:00.001-04:002012-08-09T10:38:20.149-04:00Hemingway Reconsidered<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Antonio Gattorno, a Cuban artist, sketched Hemingway in 1934</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
When it comes to Hemingway it seems we just can’t get enough. I have been this way forever, more caught up in the Hemingway legend and lore than that of any other writer. And I am not alone in this. Every day of the week we bump into pedestrian tourists from every corner of the world en route to the Hemingway House and Museum, Key West’s number one tourist attraction, located just around the corner. When I moved into this house, I hopefully envisioned that a molecule or two of Hemingway’s genius might survive in the air I breathed, or that his magnificent mojo might linger on the lazy tradewinds buffeting our neighborhood just below the Key West Lighthouse.<br />
<br />
Hemingway’s star burns brightly fifty years after he shot himself to death while his wife Mary slept. He was 61 years old and burned out, emotionally, mentally, and physically. He was done with this life and he apparently knew it, not surprising to imagine in a writer described by his biographers as being self-absorbed and delicately strung. Controlling, too. Hemingway began calling the shots long before that final, fatal one.<br />
<br />
It is amazing to consider how Hemingway single mindedly paved the way to his fame and fortune, dependent for years on funds provided by his wives’ trusts and their willingness to keep his path cleared of impediments like pesky journalism jobs, mortgage payments, unwanted pregnancies, crying babies, and histrionic reactions to his outrageously selfish nature. They believed in him and he believed in him and he made it work — with their supremely significant support.<br />
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In spite of all the bravado associated with Hemingway in Paris, in Spain, in Africa, and at sea, the man was actually rather clumsy, the books say. He adored truly brave men who fought bulls and won boxing matches. Those were his heroes. But he met his physical challenges in the wild armed with a gun or a fast boat, and a sturdy rod and reel or a hefty pair of boxing gloves. He had deep contempt for F. Scott Fitzgerald, a great writer, because he was unmannishly incapable of holding his liquor. He was jealous of others' success, friends or not. He discouraged his wives from having interests or deep friendships outside of the marriage. His first wife Hadley, whose legacy lived on in the lovely, high cheek-boned beauty of her granddaughters Margeaux and Mariel Hemingway, was an accomplished pianist. But when Mrs. Hemingway scheduled a concert in Paris, her husband didn’t show up. Hadley lost her nerve. The concert never happened and Hadley’s great talent goes largely unrecognized. Did you know?<br />
<br />
Hemingway kept track of Hadley’s periods in a little notebook he carried in his pocket. When her period was late, he despaired. Babies were a bother in any number of ways — the division of their mother’s affections primarily, and then, it was difficult to travel with them. Sadly, Hemingway’s three children all spent much of their childhoods without the presence of their famous father, often with caretakers while their parents traveled for months at a time. Remember the story “Hills Like White Elephants”? Well it ain’t just about a couple having a conversation over a beer at a train station. Just ask the critics.<br />
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Hemingway’s second wife, whose family purchased for her as a wedding gift the house that is today Key West’s Hemingway House, was a writer. Her writing career ended on the day she married Hemingway. Pauline was pretty and fashionable and modern. Hadley was earthy and substantial. With single mindedness of purpose, somewhat akin to Hemingway’s blind dedication to his talent, Pauline cunningly befriended Hadley, and then took Hemingway from her, setting aside her strict Catholic scruples (she never missed Sunday mass) because she just couldn’t help herself. Hemingway, whose vanity was a flimsy and pliable thing, rued the theft till the day he died, writing often of Hadley’s feminine perfection and ultimately holding Pauline in contempt.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh9d0NcHJC79_VYJPWUyRRNPDcZdYul1PSkmpabrdBIuNc9-g7ZnGt7BBMLimeVNnXd64d7ZJSuRY-FuWQ4-rnpk27l81tsCGFs8lUospzTPjcVw7YK8ptPMuVH2BcNBiQ8oBK9x3zB7tA/s1600/Scan+4.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh9d0NcHJC79_VYJPWUyRRNPDcZdYul1PSkmpabrdBIuNc9-g7ZnGt7BBMLimeVNnXd64d7ZJSuRY-FuWQ4-rnpk27l81tsCGFs8lUospzTPjcVw7YK8ptPMuVH2BcNBiQ8oBK9x3zB7tA/s320/Scan+4.png" width="201" /></a> Then came Martha Gellhorn, who calculatedly posed herself on a bar stool at Key West’s Sloppy Joe’s Bar one day in 1936. She planned on knowing Hemingway, who was by then well-published and much publicized. He was also growing restless with life on Whitehead Street, beneath the lighthouse. The address of the grand house of Hemingway, far more splendid than any other in the neighborhood then and now, was listed as a tourist attraction in a 1935 guidebook published by the city. It was not unusual after that for his curious fans to wander into the Hemingway’s yard. Meanwhile, Pauline was growing weary of keeping the children quiet and their menagerie of pets fed and watered while Hemingway holed up in his studio pursuing his art by day, patronizing downtown bars by night. Martha Gellhorn was hot, more attractive than Hadley or Pauline, younger, and a fine writer. She was accomplished, too, as a war correspondent. Always up for a catastrophic scene, Hemingway got himself hired as a correspondent and followed Gellhorn into the Spanish Civil War. Imagine the excitement of those times for wartime writers — living in hotels, ducking bombs, never knowing if the next rendezvous would be their last. The strange aphrodisia of wartime cemented their relationship, and, only weeks after divorcing Pauline, Hemingway married Martha. After the war they settled on a farm in Cuba, and entertained other notable personalities of the day. But it was not a happy marriage. Hemingway was growing grizzly and fat, while Gellhorn was reaching her brilliant and long-legged professional stride. They parted with animosity, and Gellhorn later famously wrote that after the wartime dust had settled, she recognized Hemingway as a brute and a lousy lay to boot.<br />
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Hemingway’s last wife, also a writer, was Mary Welsh. They met just as his and Martha’s marriage was collapsing, and on their third date, Hemingway proposed. Mary was married to another, but wasted no time in freeing herself up for Hemingway, whose need for a woman to love him and provide him with unwavering support, was deep and profound. Mary stood by her man as he clamored into the sloppiest days of his life. He began to frequently injure himself in ways both mundane and dramatic. There were burns from drunken falls into campfires, plane crashes, gashes and infections. His liver was failing. His blood pressure was up. He suffered diabetes. He endured depression. The hostility he'd kept mostly covert for so many years became blaringly obvious. He was noticeably abusive to his wife.<br />
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And in the middle of all that, with the ever-faithful and long-suffering Mary responsive to his every beck and call, he wrote the novel that put him squarely on the world’s literary map forever. It was <i>The Old Man and the Sea</i>. He wrote it in a blast of clarity, in a kind of fever, and knew, as he wrote, that it was his finest work, that he had reached the sure pinnacle of his success. And as scalers of the highest peaks know, getting down the mountain is often far more arduous than the climb to the top. And so it was for Hemingway.<br />
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<i> The</i> <i>Old Man and the Sea</i> changed me. It opened my 14-year-old eyes to the possibility of words telling so much more than just a story, blowing the lid off my conscripted little world. I wrote an English paper on the book. I got it! And the teacher got it that I got it and gave me a big fat A Plus. I watched the same thing happen to my son when he read Hemingway’s greatest hit. He told me he wanted a tattoo in homage to Hemingway. I discouraged him. I told him that although Hemingway’s work was great, Hemingway the man had been a creep and certainly no one to be emulated.<br />
<br />
Many years ago when a cherished hero of my childhood came to Key West to participate in the Hemingway Look-Alike contest, I was horrified to witness the high esteem in which he held Hemingway, the man. I felt it was a sacrilege that he, who truly was a magnificent and even noble man, was interested in aligning himself with the fat, white-haired, bearded middle-aged Hemingway wannabes who assembled on the stage of Sloppy Joe’s bar to be judged in a competition that had absolutely nothing to do with art. It was a celebration of the middle-aged Hemingway, a man who, in one way or another, had trashed the lives of just about every person he’d met, man, woman or child.<br />
What’s to celebrate about that? I wrote a newspaper column at the time, and in it I ridiculed him for his folly. His family has held me in contempt ever since. But before he died, he forgave me. Because he was a noble man.<br />
<br />
Now that I am older, older in fact than Hemingway when he died, I can sometimes consider the Hemingway phenomenon in a different light. I understand that Ernest Hemingway was driven to create, to strive for greatness, to live forever, no matter the cost. And though it is true he was not a very nice guy, he inspired us well beyond nicely. He inspired us spectacularly. I envy him his dedication, his unshakable faith in his talent. Every July Key West celebrates Hemingway with running races, arm wrestling, a look-alike contest, fishing tourneys, walking tours, trivia contests, and lots and lots of drinks. Hemingway lives on, long after the blood and bones of him are dust, he endures, because he lived his life as an endurance contest, always believing what the old man Santiago did: that "a man can be destroyed but not defeated."<br />
<iframe width="560" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/DUoN72ny13Q" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>June Keithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08171174002983023531noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4171391806681426297.post-55932212081337179272012-07-06T10:42:00.001-04:002012-07-06T12:06:19.410-04:00Dying For Affordable HealthcareThree years ago I was diagnosed with cancer of the throat. It’s a nasty business, cancer, and when you hear the news you think: “what do I do now?” and then “let’s start doing it, now.” In a little town like Key West, people being treated for cancer get to know each other. In waiting rooms we swap remedies for the horrific burns, sores and weakness that come of treatment. I paid 37 visits to the radiology clinic, and there I was friended by two men dealing with the same cancer. The younger one, Jeff, was an independent contractor house painter, around 40 years old. The other, Cecil, about my age, was a musician. Neither had health insurance, so, in addition to being stripped of any and all energy, and thus the ability to work at their jobs, they both struggled to find ways of paying for their treatments. Cecil had a wife. Mrs. Cecil was bright and personable and devoted to her husband’s recovery. She also worked fulltime, as a bartender. Her job offered no benefits like insurance. Cecil’s treatments were paid for by Medicaid. And all of their savings. Not long after we three started, the radiation ruined Cecil’s teeth. Mrs. Cecil talked of her frustration in searching for a dentist to perform the indignity of pulling his teeth and fitting him with dentures at a price they could afford. They finally found him in Miami, and were forced to pay for it out of pocket. Medicaid did not help with that expense. It was a real hardship. Less than a year later, Cecil’s cancer returned and he died.<br />
<br />
Jeff, the youngest in our throat cancer trio, was surprisingly chipper during our radiation treatments. Aside from a rosy hue to the skin on his neck, he did not seem to be as horribly affected as Cecil and me. The standard treatment for throat cancer is chemotherapy and radiation, both at the same time. It’s quite gruesome. It’s chemo in the morning and radiation in the afternoon with breakfast, lunch and dinner served through a tube implanted in the stomach. One day I asked Jeff how he was doing with the chemo. He told me that he wasn’t having chemotherapy yet because he was waiting for Medicaid to approve it. Rather than wait for the go-ahead from Medicaid for standard treatment, his doctors had advised him to go ahead with the radiation, to do at least something to keep the cancer from spreading. And so he did. He had half the treatment, and waited for the slow-moving wheels of Medicaid to grind out an approval to pay for the other half of the life-saving equation, which was chemotherapy.<br />
<br />
Five months after I finished radiation and chemo, my cancer returned. I had surgery and more chemotherapy, and finally the cancer was arrested. Meanwhile, Jeff gave up the struggle of being treated for cancer in Florida and returned to his family home in Connecticut. I read his obituary in the <i>Key West Citizen</i> a few months later. Somewhere in that horrible season another local man was diagnosed with throat cancer. He’d been gainfully employed, and health insured, for many, many years. The economy had changed all that, his insurance had run out, and he was back in school to learn a new trade when the cancer diagnosis came. He had a wife, a car, a home, grown kids, a life rich in years well spent, most notably as a beloved, volunteer soccer coach. In spite of all he and his artist wife had done right, they were without health insurance. They scrambled to rearrange their lives and their savings to make themselves eligible for Medicaid. There were fundraising parties. There was much sympathy and horror all around. After all, we are a community of artists and hand-to-mouth living citizens – the coach brought the truth sharply into focus; this could happen to any of us. Not long after his shocking diagnosis, and just before he dove into the real hard and nasty part of his treatment, the beloved coach died. Why he died is unclear. One morning he just didn’t wake up. Heart attack? Or broken heart?<br />
<br />
I was working for a national corporation when I was diagnosed with cancer, but I’d only been working there for a few months and the insurance company questioned whether or not my cancer had been pre-existing. Ultimately I was able to prove that I’d not surreptitiously gotten myself hired in order to have health insurance and be treated for cancer. My husband mercifully spared me from the bills around my cancer. But I did take a peek at the year-end statement from my insurance company. It said my cancer had cost them over $100,000.<br />
The last time I saw my oncologist he said he would make no promises about how long my remission would last. But he did tell me this: “Cancer returns on the day your health insurance runs out. Do not be without health insurance.” And so I work a job that provides health insurance because I am quite literally terrified of being without it. Dying for lack of health insurance seems to me like drowning just off Mallory Pier, at Sunset, with crowds of American tourists watching you, sorry for your struggle, but too frightened of drowning themselves, too concerned with their own survival, to dive in and help.<br />
<br />
What the world needs now is love:<br />
<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/KoNtj27a6Rk" width="420"></iframe>June Keithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08171174002983023531noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4171391806681426297.post-74236115121758387272012-06-22T13:33:00.001-04:002012-07-22T08:59:12.463-04:00No One's in the Kitchen with Johnny<div style="text-align: justify;">
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The old man and the sea: Johnny Conte in his kitchen in Rockland, Maine. Summer, 2010.</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The junk pile outside of Conte's. Not everyone finds it charming . . .</td></tr>
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If you are in Maine this summer, you should go to Rockland and pay a visit to my old boyfriend John Conte’s seafood restaurant. It’s called Conte’s Fish Market, or at least it was the last time I looked. It may have changed by now. But not to worry. Whatever the name, you can’t miss the place. It’s right on Main Street. It's an institution. Although nothing stays the same at Conte’s, because Johnny Conte’s point of view and philosophy of living are pretty constantly in flux, I can promise you the dining experience at Conte's like no other. Eating there is kind of like going to the principal’s office for dinner. You’re in trouble, suspect, merely for showing up. Go there knowing that you will be subjected to a bizarre presentation. You could compare John Conte to <i>Seinfeld’s</i> Soup Nazi. Ask for ziti instead of spaghetti, or shrimp instead of scallops, and you risk the wrath of Johnny’s generally gnarly mood. Your waitress will advise you on Johnny's shade of gloom that evening. Generally, the report is not sunny. The menu is handwritten on a chalkboard, at the door, and patrons must decide, before being seated, what it is they want for dinner. No lingering over the menu. No cocktail hour. Don't ask questions! You make a commitment at the start, which is so strange because making a commitment is something Johnny Conte could never do. He is a lifelong bachelor. That John has never married gives me some satisfaction. Back in the day I loved Johnny desperately, and surely would have married him. But he would not marry, then or ever. Me or anyone. His restaurant is his fish wife, his own Molly Malone.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">We were young and we were merry. N.Y. 1971</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Kathy & June at the chalkboard menu. Rockland, 2007.</td></tr>
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My brother Rocky, who was once Johnny’s best friend, has for many years been in love with Kathy, a woman who followed me on Johnny’s long list of romantic conquests, way back when. Rocky and Kathy have been lovers for many years, sometimes taking long breaks from each other, then reuniting for fresh attempts at harmonic bliss. But Kathy (who works at L.L. Bean, another Maine institution) is just an aside here. The point of this story is Johnny Conte, who might be a genius, and is definitely quite mad. And not in a particularly charming way.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The menu.</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Aw shucks. Johnny being interviewed by Tony Bourdain. Rockland. 2010.</td></tr>
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When food writer Anthony Bourdain’s television crew showed up at Conte’s, they were advised that Johnny did not come out of the kitchen for anybody. Ever. And in my experience this is true. Once John sent out to the table of my husband Michael and me a lobster clutching in its claw a postcard from Key West I’d sent him years earlier. Michael got a kick out of that. But Johnny has never appeared to meet my husband. Nonetheless, Michael is one of the reclusive Conte's most ardent fans. Bourdain was granted an interview with the infamously kooky Chef Conte. Later, in his blog, Bourdain spoke disparagingly of Johnny’s haughty attitude. It is difficult to imagine two bigger egos.<br />
One time when we dined at Conte’s Johnny told me he’d been taking painting classes in New York City. He showed me a framed painting of a simple bedroom. Raw. Achingly lonely. I was awestruck. I knew Johnny loved to paint, but I’d had no idea he was so good. Had I made a big mistake? Maybe I should have hung on a bit longer. Had I missed out on being the great artist’s muse?<br />
The next day Michael and I wandered through a bookstore. I came upon a picture book of Van Gogh’s greatest hits. I leafed through it. And there, on page 27, was Johnny’s painting. Precisely the same image Johnny had shown me in his restaurant a day earlier. Years later I took a painting class with Rick Worth here in Key West. Rick’s teaching technique is brilliant. He instructs his students, step by step, on how to mix colors and use technique to create a duplicate of a genuine work of art mounted before them at the front of the room. The results are quite extraordinary. Everybody walks away with a great little painting, and you can see how the amateur might think the work is actually their work. And that’s how, I assume, Johnny Conte came to pass off Van Gogh’s, "Bedroom at Arles" as his own.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Van Gogh's famous, "Bedroom at Arles." 1888.</td></tr>
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But that was such a long time ago. When all is said and done I must confess I owe a great debt of gratitude to that man. I learned from him how to make a divine marinara sauce. He is why I came to Key West. I came here after Johnny broke my heart. And, as I said before, the trail of broken hearts is bloody and long.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Miguel wearing his Conte's T-shirt, circa 1975.</td></tr>
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When he was around ten years old I took my son with me when I visited with Johnny Conte. As Johnny and I talked over old times, Miguel played in the crazy/chic junktique collection in the yard of his (at that time) New York restaurant. Johnny drank many glasses of wine. Miguel dubbed my first great love “Johnny Chianti.”<br />
Now my son is a grown man, with a girlfriend from Maine. This summer he’s going there, and we’ve told Miguel that anyone who goes to Maine must visit Conte’s Fish Market restaurant in Rockland. Go for the incredible food. Go for the outrageousness. I’ve told him to be sure to announce his presence to John Conte, because I like to think my son is someone Johnny would come out of the kitchen to see. It's a common mistake, over-estimating John Conte's interest in you and yours. President Harry Truman famously said: "if you can't stand the heat stay out of the kitchen." But in John Conte's world, I think it's the other way around, as things often are for the eccentric chef. I think John stays in the kitchen precisely because he can't stand the heat.<br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/bBlRuGFT7Ew" width="420"></iframe>June Keithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08171174002983023531noreply@blogger.com2