MERYL STREEP ~ June 22, 1949

Image: nps.gov/calo/park news.image.meryl_streep

Born Mary Louise Streep
June 22, 1949 (1949-06-22) (age 61)
Summit, New Jersey,
United States
Occupation Actress
Years active 1971–present
Spouse(s) Don Gummer (1978–present)
Mary Louise "Meryl" Streep (born June 22, 1949) is an American actress who has worked in theatre, television and film. She is widely regarded as one of the most talented and respected movie actors of the modern era.

Streep made her professional stage debut in 1971's The Playboy of Seville, before her screen debut in the television movie The Deadliest Season in 1977. In that same year, she made her film debut with Julia. Both critical and commercial success came quickly with roles in The Deer Hunter (1978) and Kramer vs. Kramer (1979), the former giving Streep her first Oscar nomination and the latter her first win. She later won an Academy Award for Best Actress for her performance in Sophie's Choice (1982).

Streep has received 16 Academy Award nominations, winning two, and 25 Golden Globe nominations, winning seven, more nominations than any other actor in the history of either award. Her work has also earned her two Emmy Awards, two Screen Actors Guild Awards, a Cannes Film Festival award, four New York Film Critics Circle Awards, five Grammy Award nominations, a BAFTA award, an Australian Film Institute Award and a Tony Award nomination, amongst others.

Text:wikipedia.com

Meryl Streep is one of my all time favorite actors. But who would disagree with that? Although she's been nominated for more Academy Awards than anyone else, before this year she had received only one for Best Actress! By rights she should have at least five by now. Of course, now there has been a partial correction with her winning the Best Actress award as Lady Thatcher the The Iron Lady. In any case, her performance in Sophie's Choice remains one of the most poignant I have ever witnessed. We overlapped in New Haven for a couple of years. I'm sure I saw her in several performances of the the Yale Rep, though at the time she was not one of the principal stars. She sure showed them! Think of the variety of roles she has played from The French Lieutenant's Woman, Out of Africa, The Bridges of Madison County, Postcards from the Edge, The Devil Wears Prada to Mama Mia & Julie and Julia! But my favorite is still Sophie's Choice.

Today is also the birthday of my friend Ju-ling. Best wishes to you today and always!

BLOOMSDAY ~ June 16, 1904

Photo:artsmia.org/mia/e_images/12/mia_12341e.jpg

Bloomsday is a commemoration observed annually on June 16th in Dublin, Ireland, and elsewhere to celebrate the life of Irish writer James Joyce and relive the events in his novel Ulysses, all of which took place on the same day in Dublin in 1904. The name derives from Leopold Bloom, the protagonist of Ulysses. 16 June was the date of Joyce's first outing with his wife-to-be, Nora Barnacle, when they walked to the Dublin village of Ringsend.

I particularly remember one of the earlier chapters entitled "Proteus." It took place at the beach. The character experimented with selective sense deprivation in order to enhance another. So when he covered his eyes, his hearing improved. And when he covered his ears, his vision became more acute. It represents to me how many people who excel in one area may be seriously deficient in another. That's a lesson we frequently forget with our Puritanical standards for politicians.

One of my best courses sophomore year at Yale was a Saybrook seminar on epics with A. Bartlett Giamatti. We read the Iliad, Don Quixote, and James Joyce’ Ulysses among other works. Bart told us that it was essential to organize thoughts on paper. Unlike the popular expression that: “I know what I mean – I just can’t write it down;” he said that if you can’t organize your thoughts on paper, then you really don’t know what you mean. He later became President of Yale, and afterwards, baseball commissioner. He died –literally of a broken heart— during the Pete Rose controversy. I wrote some good papers for his class. Years later I saw him at a reception at the Palace Hotel in San Francisco, when he had just become President of Yale. Before I introduced myself, he said: “I remember you. You’re a good writer.” Perhaps that was merely PR— but it was gracious of him. (By the way he was the father of the actor Paul Giamatti of Sideways fame.)

In May 1996 I visited James Joyce’s home in Dublin now owned by his great nephew. I was part of the entertainment for a group of Texans from Dallas who had rented one of the grand restored and renovated castles on the edge of the Pale, the defensive ring around Dublin; hence the expression “beyond the pale” meaning outside the limits of culture and civilization.

Robert F. Kennedy ~ November 20, 1925 ~ June 6, 1968

Photo:wikipedia.com

Robert Francis "Bobby" Kennedy (November 20, 1925–June 6, 1968), also called RFK, was an American politician. He was United States Attorney General from 1961 to 1964 and a United States Senator from New York from 1965 until his assassination in 1968. He was one of the younger brothers of U.S. President John F. Kennedy and also one of his most trusted advisers, working closely with the president during the Cuban Missile Crisis After his brother's November 1963 assassination, Kennedy continued as Attorney General under President Lyndon B. Johnson for nine months. After breaking with Johnson over the Vietnam War, he resigned in September 1964 and was elected as a Senator from New York that November.

After Eugene McCarthy nearly defeated Johnson in the New Hampshire primary in early 1968, Kennedy announced his own campaign for president, seeking the nomination of the Democratic Party. Kennedy defeated McCarthy in the critical California primary but was shot shortly after midnight of June 5, 1968, dying on June 6. On June 9, President Johnson assigned security staff to all Presidential candidates and declared an official day of national mourning in response to the public grief following Kennedy's death. Text:wikipedia.com

At the end of my freshman year at Yale, I returned home to Harrisburg for just a few days, and then went back to New Haven. I was one of three freshmen invited to join the Yale Glee Club on a six-week tour around Latin America.

I never had been very good at writing Mother and Dad on a regular basis– both at Mercersburg and Yale. But when I got the invitation from Fenno Heath, I wrote a very detailed, engaging letter. Even the penmanship was decent. I probably had written two rough drafts. Although, I did not directly say that I would like to go, it was very clear from my careful letter. I think my expenses were about $600. But that was a lot of money then.

Back in New Haven, we rehearsed for the upcoming tour, gave a concert, and sang at the baccalaureate service in Woolsey Hall – for George W. Bush!

Robert Kennedy had been facing a critical primary in California. He had to win to stay in the running. I supported him and had done some volunteer work in his New Haven campaign office. The morning after the primary, I had breakfast at the Yankee Doodle on Elm Street. Somebody mentioned that RFK had been shot – I thought she meant that he had been shot down – had lost the winner-take-all primary. But soon I learned that he had joined his brother, John, and Martin Luther King, Jr.

Yet again!!! The King assassination had been one of the major political events of my freshman year, along with the Tet offensive, McCarthy’s unexpectedly strong showing in New Hampshire, and LBJ’s sudden announcement not to seek another term. Oh how we rejoiced, and thought the war would soon be over. Little did we know that almost half the names on the Vietnam War Memorial— designed by Yalie Maya Lin—would be added after the election of Richard Nixon, who had yet to announce his secret plan to end the war.

SHERRY & IBBY ~ LEAP YEAR 1936

My Mother and Dad met by accident. It was Leap Year 1936. Mother was in her final year at Yale School of Nursing. She had wanted to be a medical doctor; but her Father had insisted she earn a nursing degree first. That, of course, was a mistake. It’s a fork in the road. Once you’re a nurse, you don’t become a doctor: it’s like the chasm between workers and management. And Mother had gone away to boarding school at the age of twelve. By then she was tired of school. I don’t think Mother ever intended to get married. She was a real MHT – Mount Holyoke Type. They were among the first women libbers.

Mother had originally wanted to go to Wellesley, and was accepted. But one of her friends at National Cathedral School, where she took a year’s post-grad after Dickinson Seminary, had had her heart set on Wellesley and was on the waiting list. So Mother turned Wellesley down. Her friend was accepted. Mother hoped that her sacrifice had played a part. Her friend never knew. This story played a part in my psyche and own saga with Stan and the Whiffs. In my case, it was a futile gesture, since Stan had already been selected to be tapped. But I hadn’t known.

Anyway back to 1936. Mother’s roommate asked her to join her on a double date with two Divinity students. Mother really wasn’t interested. Her roommate persisted and persuaded her to go since the younger Divinity student was engaged. Mother had first choice. By selecting the already engaged, younger man, presumably she’d never see him again. Dad had worked a few years as a social worker in Boston before finally deciding to become a minister. And even at the end of his life, at 73, Sherry had something of a baby face. Dad’s classmate had a moustache, which made him look older. So Mother mistakenly chose the younger looking man, who was not engaged.

Elizabeth and Sheridan really didn’t know each other. When they were married on September 1, 1937, they had spent less than an entire week together. And they hadn’t written very often. Mother graduated from Yale School of Nursing in 1936. She taught Chemistry at National Cathedral School in Washington the following year, while Dad finished up his studies at Yale Divinity School.

According to Dad, Mother called the shots. She wrote him to determine his intentions. Perhaps her Father was exerting some pressure for her to get married. They agreed to meet half way in New York City. Dad said he got on the train in New Haven without knowing exactly what he was going to do. They met at the Hotel Pennsylvania. He proposed and she accepted. But they still didn’t know each other.

In many ways Elizabeth was a catch. Her Father was a successful businessman in the middle of the Great Depression and a Congressman to boot. It would clearly be an abuse of power today—perhaps, it wasn’t considered such then— but Grandfather Rich had three of his prospective sons-in-law investigated by the FBI; so if Sheridan W. Bell, Jr. had had any significant skeletons in his closet, they should have been uncovered then. Anyway, it was very useful for a Methodist minister to have a wife. (I later learned from Aunt Julie that Uncle Charlie had been exempted from the background check because his father had gone to Dickinson College, which Baba attended, but from which he did not graduate. Evidently Baba felt that the Dickinson connection was a good enough reference.

Sherry visited Betty once in Washington. It was near the end of her year teaching Chemistry. Daddy said it was the messiest lab he had ever seen. That should have been a sign. After they had been married a few months, Grandma Da took Dad aside and quietly suggested that Elizabeth might need some help with housekeeping.

I understand that Grandfather Bell died within the year of my parents wedding. So I suppose none of us at the Bell Reunion in 1994, besides Aunt Claora, had had the opportunity to get to know him well. Just before that reunion I heard a story from Mother, I think, about Grandfather Bell at my parents wedding in 1937. He was, of course, the Minister. On the day of the wedding he got up early and thought he would play a trick (or perhaps conduct a test) on one of my Mother’s relatives, who was helping to prepare the pre-wedding buffet. Grandfather Bell went to the back door and said he was a stranger in need of some food. Remember this was still the Great Depression. Mother’s Aunt said something like: " I can’t possibly help you. I’m having over a hundred people to breakfast this morning."

Can you imagine her chagrin when she went to the wedding and realized she had turned away the Minister and father of the groom! With today’s increasing tragedy of homelessness, it’s important to remember the saying of one tradition that you never know which stranger is an Angel. In words attributed to Christ: "If you do it to the least of these my brethren, you do it unto me." Enough pontificating! But it sounds as though Grandfather Bell had a terrific sense of humor. I know his son, my Dad, certainly did.

HALLOWEEN 1960

(Can this really be more than half a century later?)

1960 was the year of the Kennedy–Nixon Election. I, of course, supported Richard Nixon. I was still too young to think for myself. I came from a strong Republican background. Bob Rich— my maternal grandfather, for whom I was named – after all, had been a Republican member of the House for almost two decades. Furthermore, "Experience Counts!" John Kennedy was nothing but a young whipper-snapper!

In typical fashion, I overplayed my enthusiasm. I wish I had a photograph of it!! For the Halloween parade at Steele Elementary School, I went as a Nixon supporter. No jest intended. I wore black pants with 'NIXON' in white adhesive tape up one leg, and 'LODGE' on the other, an 'N' on one shoe, an 'L' the other, campaign buttons on my sleeves, and a sandwich sign with Nixon-Lodge campaign posters. I carried two other double-sided mounted posters on wooden sticks and, of course, wore a Nixon boater hat with extra buttons on the band.

I was crushed when Nixon lost.

(How quickly …and soundly I changed!)

###

On April 18, 2007 I listened to NPR, and at the end of an obituary for Kitty Carlisle Hart, as she sang Smoke Gets in Your Eyes during the credits, I recalled the autumn of my sophomore year in New Haven. Yale Glee Club conductor Fenno Heath’s secretary was a strikingly elegant blond soprano named Judith (I think), a student in the Music School, and had the female lead in a local production of Roberta at a High School near East Rock. I went to see her in the show. Her principal song was Smoke Gets in Your Eyes. I remember talking with Judith occasionally— particularly the morning after the 1968 election. We were horribly depressed that Nixon had won. Judith commented, however, that maybe it would work out for the best since Nixon evidently wanted the job so badly. (Fenno’s Glee Club office in Hendrie Hall had a moody bust of Sibelius, which I thought rather curious, since Sibelius had been out of favor for several decades. Now, of course, he’s considered one of the greats of the Twentieth Century).

Anyway, on Saturday night 04/21/07 I went to a small, local Spizzwink(?) alumni get-together at Perry’s on Union Street. After a fine lunch with Adam K at the Rotunda in Neiman-Marcus and a too-short nap with Rose and Rupert, I really wasn’t up for the evening—especially with the downpour. I got a taxi with a cell-phone-chatting Asian cab driver, who didn’t seem to pay much attention to the weather conditions, or the traffic. So I was grateful when I managed to get there alive.

On leaving my flat, I had picked up my copy of the Spizzwink(?) song book from 1971. When I opened it I came across a notation on the back of a sheet of music: “Latest Harris Poll H 43 N 40” The night before the ’68 election, it had looked as though Humphrey would win! Devin, one of the newer alums and a graduate student in Poly Sci at UC Berkeley, was fascinated to hear that. He said that it showed you couldn’t depend on polling data then. Of course, 2000 demonstrated that even if Humphrey had received 43 % and Nixon 40 %, that alone would not necessarily have guaranteed election victory for either one.

(Check out my 10/02/08 posting : October Surprise 1980 (1968) for more comments on the ’68 election.)

By the way, the Spizzwink(?) dinner was great fun! I went to our Ninety-Fifth Anniversary Reunion in New Haven two years last April with my friend Mary Ellen.

####

In 1993 I met former President Nixon at a rehearsal for the Low Jinks during the summer encampment at the Grove. I introduced myself as Rob Bell, Robert F. Rich Bell, grandson of Congressman Robert F. Rich, who had served in the Congress with Nixon in the late forty’s and early fifty’s. Nixon said “I remember Bob Rich. He always asked: ‘Where are we going to get the money?’”* To his friends nearby Nixon exclaimed: “I knew this man’s grandfather!!” (This was Nixon’s first and last visit to the Grove after his resignation. For years he had been persona non grata in the Club, and not welcomed to the summer encampment.)

I was impressed – that he would remember after all these years. A few months later I learned from my nephew Sheridan, that Nixon had been at the embassy in Beijing about six months before, and when asked by my nephew –visiting his Dad at the embassy—if he remembered Congressmen Rich, Nixon admitted that he did not. So either Nixon’s memory was jogged by my nephew’s question, or he went back and researched his files. (The internet wouldn’t have been so friendly in 1993. There was no Google.) Either way, it’s still impressive.

###

* One thing about my grandfather: he may have been very stingy with the people’s money, but he was extraordinarily generous with his own.

INDIA PUDDING

Today is October 1st, the Fiscal New Year for the federal government. It’s also the anniversary of Mao Tse-tung’s triumphal entrance into Beijing in 1949, and my nephew Sheridan’s birthday in 1971, just a week before my senior recital at Yale. I called it “Potpourri of Song,” hence foreshadowing the title of this Blog. Amazingly, my brother Sherry came up from Virginia to my recital in the Saybrook Dining Hall just a few days after his son’s birth. But Sherry has always been a great supporter. October 1 also marks the premature end of India Pudding, Dennis’ beloved Blenheim Cavalier King Charles Spaniel. It was only after Dennis died that I think I figured out his original interest in the breed.

Dennis’ first and favorite Cavalier, Nell, had died several years before. When she was failing, we made arrangements with the vet at Pets Unlimited on Fillmore Street to come to the house, so that Nell would not end her life in a cold antiseptic doctor’s office. In a way it paralleled Dennis’ arranging a vet to come to his flat on McAllister when Nell gave birth to her five puppies. As Dennis described it, Nell didn’t need any assistance then. In her basket on the rose patterned window seat in Dennis’ yellow bedroom, she was transformed from a cute and dizzy puppy to the very personification of Earth Mother. “I had puppies…..what have you done?”

Now Nell’s fragile tricolor daughter, Lady St. Albans, was ailing. I called her Winkie or ‘Libet. (When my Mother heard that one of the puppy’s names was ‘Elizabeth Lady St. Albans,’ she exclaimed: “Ah, my namesake!”) Winkie’s end seemed near, but we decided not to call the vet. Everything seemed to be progressing naturally.

One Thursday I went to work and told my fellow supervisor, Dale Ilderton, that one of my dogs appeared to be dying. A few minutes later my boss, Francean Rible, came and told me to go home to be with her. I spent the day holding her in my lap or taking naps with her on the bed. For years ‘Libet had slept next to me and cuddled so close that Dennis remarked you'd have to separate us with a knife.

Late in the afternoon I needed to leave because I was in a Thursday night show at the Bohemian Club. It was Vaudeville Night. Dennis came to dinner and the show. He was dressed in a business suit and appeared to have a good time. On the way home, after getting off BART at 24th Street, Dennis turned right on Bartlett Street and stopped by a front yard rose garden to tell me that Winkie had died fifteen minutes after I had left the house. We wept, then continued home.

Dennis’ Irish side was soon apparent. Lady St. Albans was lying in state in a basket in the middle of the dining room table surrounded by four large silver candlesticks. A white linen napkin covered her body, and on top was a garland of white lilies.

A few days later Dennis had an accident at his temp job. After a cigarette break he rushed in the side entrance to Tiffany’s and slipped on the granite floor and landed on his shoulder. In great pain he went back to work until he started to faint. It turned out he had broken his clavicle. But he didn’t find that out until more than two hours later.

I think he missed only a single day of work, then returned with his arm in a sling. He was not going to lose that job at Tiffany’s. People were so impressed that soon he was offered a permanent position.

Meanwhile my sister Cynthia in Florida was considering sending a plant to honor the memory of ‘Libet. But Cynthia decided that she’d rather give us a puppy. She checked online and learned that puppies were out of her price range, so next she considered two and three year old dogs. Cynthia found a very attractive Blenheim with a breeder north of her, but concluded the dog was rather snooty. Then she visited another three-year-old Blenheim (red and white) with a breeder south of her in Homestead. This dog had a funny looking mouth— slightly undershot— but appeared to have a wonderful personality.

So Cynthia telephoned me to ask if it would be appropriate to give a dog to Dennis. I replied that it was extremely thoughtful and generous of her, but that Dennis was very particular and would want to choose his own dog. Furthermore, he would insist on a puppy because he would want to train the dog from scratch.

A few days went by. Then casually I mentioned Cynthia’s offer to Dennis. He stopped and thought about it for a few minutes, then said that it might not be such a bad idea to have an older dog. Lord Dundee was an older dog himself and might have difficulties adjusting to a rambunctious puppy.

So I called Cynthia back and asked if we could reconsider her offer. Cynthia went to Homestead and bought the dog and brought her home to Stuart. After two days, her husband Bob said they needed to send India to California immediately. He was afraid that Cynthia would bond with the dog and never give her up. So Bob and Cynthia got up at three in the morning to drive to Miami International and put a spunky little red and white dog on a direct flight to San Francisco.

I took the day off work, rented a car, and drove to SFO with my tricolor Lord Dundee in the back seat on December 23rd 1998. I parked on the roof of the parking garage and opened the rear windows a crack so Dundee had air.

At baggage claim I waited for an attendant to bring the airline kennel. I took a photo as he approached. When I opened the grated door, out pranced a happy, assertive— rather comic looking— red and white Blenheim girl. Her mouth was a little undershot. But she had beautiful markings and a luxurious coat.

I carried her in the kennel until we got to the car. Then I put her on a leash, opened the door and introduced her to Lord Dundee. He didn’t know what to think of her at first. I got a good photo of their meeting.

After taking Dundee home, I drove downtown and parked near Union Square. Carrying India in my arms when I got to the front door of Tiffany’s, I walked to the silver room in the back. With India on one arm and a camera in the other hand, I spoke from behind and said: “Mr. Graham” and Dennis turned from his customer and broke into a wonderful grin.

I was home only a few days. This was the day before Christmas Eve. After midnight mass at St. Francis, we celebrated Christmas early in the morning – or, middle of the night, as was our custom— before flying to Pennsylvania to spend a week with Mother at her retirement community, Green Ridge Village, in Newville near Carlisle.

All four children, Julie, Sherry, Cynthia and I, spent several days with Mother to enable her to divide her many possessions among us as she moved from her own retirement house into a single room in a main building for assisted living. She had waited until all of us could be there.

While I was gone, Dennis spent a lot of time with India. Her formal name was Tara’s Miss India. There was a Gone With The Wind theme to her litter. She was named for Scarlett O’Hara’s sister. Indeed, one of her own sisters was named Tara’s Miss Scarlett.

For the first few days Dennis said to her: “You’re not as beautiful as Nell. You’re not as cute… you’re not even as clever as Nell.” But then one day, Dennis picked her up in his arms and said: “You’re not as beautiful as Nell. YOU are as beautiful as INDIA….You are my India Pudding!” From that moment on she was completely his.

My sister Julie used to have a large St. Bernard named Pudding. Partly as a joke, we called our nineteen pound Blenheim Cavalier “India Pudding” and it stuck.

One time Dennis came home from work and greeted Lord Dundee, lying on the edge of the bed (with a pile of pillows leading to the trunk to help him to get up). He was a distinguished senior dog entitled to special privileges. India observed all of this, pranced over, hopped on the bed and whacked Dundee on the head with her paw. She considered that she was entitled to be greeted first!

Dennis used to comment on India Pudding’s assertive personality: “What would you expect from a dog born on Elizabeth II’s birthday, the day after Adolf Hitler’s … with a jaw like Mussolini!”

India loved to spend time with Dennis— in the garden, in the kitchen, especially in the car (when we had one) Of course, all our Cavaliers have had a passion for riding in cars.

When Dennis and I took our Mediterranean cruise from Rome to the Greek isles, ending in Istanbul, we left our three dogs (by that time Dundee had gone and I had bought my black and tan boy Rupert— named for Prince Rupert of the Rhine, nephew of Charles I, and commander of the Royalist cavalry during the English Civil War— and as a fee for his paternity duties, Rupert had ransomed his ruby sister, Rose) with our friend Nijole Adams in Sebastopol. Nijole had seven or eight Cavaliers of her own and slept with all them in a large king-size bed in the middle of her bedroom. Our dogs just joined the crowd.

From Rome, Dennis and I called Nijole to check on the dogs. Nijole said that Rupert was fine. What a sportsman. He loved to play ball. He never stopped! Her arm was about to fall off! And Rose… what a sweetheart. She was rather shy and stayed by herself a lot.

And India…how is Miss India? Nijole paused…….then slowly said: “Everybody knows she’s Queen!”

So India Pudding had joined a household with eight other Cavaliers …….and took over!!

Later when Dennis was let go from Lang Estate Jewelry, he helped out occasionally at our friend Chris Wahlgren’s rug store on 24th St. India loved to spend the time alone with Dennis at the store (since Rose and Rupert had proved unreliable, or rather too predictable with accidents on the rugs.) India romped over the rugs and exalted being with Dennis, whom she adored.

In his twittier moments, Dennis called India Pudding by the sobriquet “Contessa Zuppa Inglese” a special Italian pudding. How he loved her!

On October 1, 2003, my nephew Sheridan’s Birthday (eleven months before my own heart attack) early in the morning about 5:30, India hopped off the bed… and threw up on the rug. She tried to clean it up herself. I got out of bed and immediately became alarmed. I woke up Dennis. India was gone. She was only eight years old.

Her heart had burst. Dennis felt as if his heart had broken. I tried to comfort him by saying that at least it was fast. She didn’t seem to suffer.

“But,” Dennis, in great agony, cried out: “I didn’t have a chance to say good-bye!!!”

(Thankfully, that was not the case for me with Dennis.)

I took the day off work. We drove India to Pets’ Rest Cemetery in Colma for cremation as we had done for Nell, ‘Libet and Dundee. She joined the other boxes in our home Buddhist temple (eventually joined with Dennis’).

When Dennis died I had a custom urn made to the dimensions specified for the columbarium at Grace Cathedral. When I filled it with his ashes, I included three heaping spoonfuls of Nell and India, so he’d spend eternity with his two favorite dogs.

But then plenty of his ashes were left. I filled one small box to join the dogs in the Buddha box, another on grandfather’s chest in the Venetian bedroom, a third, which I took to his hometown Tipton, Iowa to be buried between his parents in the Catholic Cemetery, and still there was some left— even after scattering his ashes in two rose gardens in Harrisburg and under an azalea bush at Helen Heisey’s Hill House. He’s now under multiple rose bushes in England, France, Italy and Turkey (and in another box in the Frari in Venice).

A few months after India died, Dennis commissioned Alberto Tropea in Rome to paint a portrait of her from several photographs taken by Jeffrey Hardy when he stayed with us a few weeks before she died It’s a marvelous portrait that really captures her personality. It’s a little like the upward, adoring pose of Titian’s portrait of Mary Magdalene.

Only after Dennis died, did I figure out the probable origin of his interest in Cavalier King Charles Spaniels, particularly Blenheims. (He had been a member of the Cavalier Club for several years even before owning a dog.) Watching a DVD of the First Churchill’s, I learned that the Battle of Blenheim was fought in 1704 on August 13th – Dennis’ birthday!

September 29 ~ Stan Ziegler

Today is my friend Stan Ziegler’s birthday.

Stan played a role in the psychodrama that was my second junior-year Whiffenpoof tap. (They audition today.) Admittedly, it was a very difficult choice that year. Ironically, I may have ended up creating the formula they reportedly used. The problem was there were too many musically qualified Spizzwinks. I think we had nine. And my changing classes had made it even worse than it would have been.

Today there are many more informal singing groups at Yale. But then there were seven all-male groups, I believe. The unwritten rule, was that at least one singer would be selected from each group. Since there were fourteen Whiffs, if all nine Spizzwinks were tapped that would exclude one of the other groups. It was a politically impossible situation.

I remember Jon Nygaard came to see me in my dorm room, to use me as a sounding board. I said it was obvious: the highest number of Spizzwinks they could select would be seven. They couldn't take all. And it would be cruel to take all but one.

Then I casually let drop: “If it came to a choice between Stan Ziegler and me, I would prefer they take Stan.”

I figured I was the most obvious choice to be tapped as a Whiffenpoof. After all, the people selecting were from my own original class. And I had previously been pre-tapped to be pitchpipe (director) of that group. I thought I had sufficient leverage to make a difference.

When Marie Bronson (my 79 year old friend and summer landlord, whose husband Clarence had been Yale Class of 1900) heard what I had said, she implored: "Don't do that Rob. It will impact all your class reunions. You'll end up regretting it for the rest of your life."

I thought I had leverage. They heard: I really wasn't interested. I had taken them off the hook—and inadvertently ended up sinking George Hardy’s chances too.

The reason I said what I did about Stan was that he was out of the country and needed, I felt, to be connected with some organization on his return. Stan was taking a Junior Year Abroad, studying with Anna Freud in London and with another woman psychologist in Norway. Yale didn't have a Junior Year Abroad Program for credit. As my brother Sherry had studied in Paris for a year on his own, and then had to continue for two more years at Princeton, so Stan would normally have been required to take two more years at Yale. But Stan –as anybody who knew him—had chutzpah up the kazoo. He had a New York State disability scholarship for his asthma. He used to run around the block before his annual interview, in order to be sufficiently winded. When he was accepted at Cornell –and should have been required to attend to get the New York Scholarship— he got his sister –who was a senior at Cornell, and a student member of the admissions committee— to get him unselected. He then pleaded his case to the scholarship board, and talked his way to a New York sponsored scholarship out of state. I should have known Stan could take care of himself. He ended up getting full credit for his year in Norway (where he also learned how to knit – I still have mufflers and mittens he designed and knit for me).

The reason I made my offer was that just before spring break, Stan's father had committed suicide on the second anniversary of Stan's mother's natural, if painful and unexpected death. I thought it absolutely essential that Stan not be alone his senior year. As it turned out, Stan already had other people advocating for him. My offer was a futile and unnecessary gesture. He even had one of the slots in Skull and Bones.

Then senior year he was so busy…I never saw him.

But after college, he became one of my best friends and maintained that special relationship with Mrs. Bronson until her death at the age of ninety-seven.

Stan later became a successful teen psychologist with a celebrity clientele, which included Jason Gould and Greg Louganis. (Once he talked to me about autistic patients. Not familiar with the term, I thought: can there be art without neurosis?) He was a friend of Paul Petersen, who had been Jeff on the Donna Reed Show. Paul had formed a support group for former movie and TV child stars—a group for which Stan was a consultant. He also had been a guest on several TV talk shows, including Oprah. The last time I saw Stan, I visited him at his new home in West Hollywood, when he took a group of troubled teens to Tippi Hedren's Big Cat Shambala Preserve. The final time we talked was Christmas Eve 1994, when I was home between services.

Stan and I were friends until his death – can it be?—nearly seventeen years ago. I went to his memorial service in West Hollywood. George and I were asked to join the Whiffs there in singing the Whiffenpoof song. It was only the second time I had ever sung it. (At Yale, only Whiffs sing it.) The first was back in the summer of 1969, on the first Spizzwink tour to California. It was in a VW bug with Russ Thomas and Bill Correll, who had just been tapped for the Whiffs of 1970, and Jon Nygaard, who along with me was considered likely for the Whiffs of ‘71. We realized that we had a quartet, so up in the hills above Saratoga, we sang: "To the tables down at Morys……"

(BTW I finally became a member of the Whiffs of '72 when I went back to my 40th Class Reunion in New Haven last June. My official Whiff name now is Rob "More Cow" Bell -- a reference to a classic Saturday Night Live skit.)

Stan had been very sick for years with Crohn’s disease. I think it had originally manifested after his mother's death. He was valiant, and put up with excruciating pain. At his memorial service, his own therapist implied that Stan had committed a passive form of suicide. Evidently, he had had a major attack, and decided not to call for help. He had been in the hospital so many times, he just didn't want to go through it again. I can't begrudge him that.

At the memorial service, I saw his sister and met his nephew. Stan had had a troubled relationship with his only nephew. Both parents were brilliant. The boy was rather dull. Stan's sister was a deputy district attorney in Brooklyn and a law professor. Her ex-husband had been the chief prosecutor in the ABSCAM case, and had worked on the defense team for Claus von Bulow.

Only a few weeks after Stan's service, I heard from John Rouse, I think, that tragedy had struck again. Stan's nephew had been learning how to drive with his father at the Westport, Connecticut Yacht Club. Evidently, he put the car in reverse by mistake, and backed off the dock. His dad got out. He drowned. I wrote a note to Stan's sister. But what can you say?

NATHAN HALE ~ June 6, 1755 ~ September 22, 1776

Nathan Hale (June 6, 1755 – September 22, 1776) was a soldier for the Continental Army during the American Revolutionary War. Widely considered America's first spy, he volunteered for an intelligence-gathering mission, but was captured by the British. He is best remembered for his speech before being hanged following the Battle of Long Island, in which he said, "I only regret that I have but one life to give my country." Hale has long been considered an American hero and, in 1985, he was officially designated the state hero of Connecticut. A statue of Nathan Hale is located at the headquarters of the CIA in Langley, Fairfax County, Virginia.

Image &Text:wikipedia.com

Nathan Hale had gone to Yale College. There's a handsome life-size bronze statue of him outside Connecticut Hall, the sole surviving brick building from the original campus in New Haven.

KENT STATE MASSACRE ~ MAY 4, 1970

Photo: wikipedia.com

Description: Mary Ann Vecchio gestures and screams as she kneels by the body of a student, Jeffrey Miller, lying face down on the campus of Kent State University, in Kent, Ohio. On publication, the image was retouched to remove the fencepost above Vecchio's head.

Source: © 1970 Valley News-Dispatch
Date: 1970-05-04

Forty-three years ago, I had dropped out of college for a semester and was working in a small family grocery store next to the Yale Co-op. Yale was already on strike in support of the Black Panthers on trial at the courthouse by the New Haven Green. It was a strange time. I had a completely different perspective on things now that I wasn't living on campus. I was staying with a seventy-eight year old widow, Marie Bronson, Mrs. Clarence Bronson, whose husband had been Yale Class of 1900. Two of Mrs. B's daughters had been friends of my father when he was at Yale Divinity in the 1930's. Marie became one of my best friends.

On May 1st, President Nixon ordered the invasion of Cambodia (which ended up completely destabilizing that country). There were demonstrations and strikes on campuses all around the U.S. On May 4th the Ohio National Guard overreacted to demonstrations at Kent State University. The result is shown in the photograph above.

THE GAME ~ November 23, 1968

Frank O’Brien/Kino International

Sport was not listed as one of the various subjects of this blog. But occasionally, even I will delve into the topic, particularly when it has an historical or personal connection. When I started my freshman year at Yale College in the autumn of 1967, Yale hadn’t had a claim to football glory for at least several decades. We asserted that we were above it all, and didn’t care. Of course, that attitude lasted just until we had a winning team.

I recall one torchlight parade up Hillhouse Avenue to President Kingman Brewster’s handsome brick Georgian-style mansion (a re-facing of an earlier staid Victorian). It was just before the Princeton game in 1967 (or was it ’68?). Our team had had a great season. President Brewster stepped out of his front door, held up a large naval orange, squeezed it, spiked it, and stomped on it, and then proclaimed: “Fuck Princeton!!” The crowd went delirious. I was rather shocked. (Prude that I was, it took another two and a half years for me to utter that crude Anglo-Saxon expletive even to myself— and that was at the prompting of a psychiatric nurse.) But this is an example of how even Yalies of my era picked up football fever. That’s one reason why the Yale-Harvard Game in 1968 was so traumatic. I didn’t go to The Game in Cambridge, but many of my friends did, and I clearly remember the anticipation before and the somber brooding afterwards.

A documentary about The Game opened in New York three years ago. I can’t improve upon the review in the New York Times, so I quote it below.

Back in 1968, When a Tie Was No Tie

By MANOHLA DARGIS

Published: November 19, 2008

For most of the world, I suspect, the year 1968 signifies upheaval, revolution, power to the people, Vietnam and My Lai, Paris in flames, Martin and Bobby, Nixon versus Humphrey. Another great rivalry played out that year in the form of a college football game. And while it seems absurd to include such a picayune event in the annals, the filmmaker Kevin Rafferty makes the case for remembrance and for the art of the story in his preposterously entertaining documentary “Harvard Beats Yale 29-29,” preposterous at least for those of us who routinely shun that pagan sacrament.

True gridiron believers doubtless know every unlikely, heart-skipping minute of this showdown. (The schools, like some others, honor their football rivalry with vainglorious capitalization, calling each matchup The Game.) On Nov. 23, 1968, the undefeated Yale team and its two glittering stars — the quarterback Brian Dowling and the running back Calvin Hill — went helmet to helmet against its longtime rival, Harvard, also undefeated. Mr. Dowling, a legendary figure whom grown men still call god (and the inspiration for Garry Trudeau’s Doonesbury character B. D.), had not lost a game he started since the sixth grade, a record that well into the fourth quarter, with Yale leading by 16 points, seemed safe.

Everything changed in the final 42 seconds as all the forces of the universe, or so it seemed, shifted and one player after another either rose to the occasion or stumbled with agonizing frailty. Gods became men as the ball was lost and found and one improbable pass after another was completed. In front of the increasingly raucous packed stadium, each play became an epic battle in miniature with every second stretching into an eternity. As in film, time in football doesn’t tick, it races and oozes, a fact that Mr. Rafferty, working as his own editor and using the simplest visual material — talking-head interviews and game footage — exploits for a narrative that pulses with the artful, exciting beats of a thriller.

What’s most surprising about this consistently surprising movie is how forcefully those beats resonate, even though you know how the story ends from the start. (Take another look at the coyly, cleverly enigmatic title, borrowed from the famous headline in The Harvard Crimson.) One reason for the excitement is the game, of course, which remains a nail-biter despite the visual quality of the footage, which is so unadorned and so humble — and almost entirely in long shot — it looks like a dispatch from a foreign land. And in some ways it was: Football fans still wore raccoon coats to games and the women in the stands cheering for Yale could not attend the college. The same month, Yale announced it was (finally) opening that door.

This history helps explain why there are no women here, at least in close-up. “Harvard Beats Yale 29-29” is very much about men, triumphant, regretful, defiant, sentimental, touchingly vulnerable men who are made all the more poignant with each image of them as young players. For some, the game was and remains the greatest moment of their lives — even better than sex, one volunteers, prompting Mr. Rafferty to ask off-camera if the man had then been a virgin (no). Mr. Rafferty, himself a Harvard man, films his subjects (Tommy Lee Jones, a Harvard lineman, included) with a lack of fuss in plain kitchens and cluttered offices. He lets them roam around their memories and, for a time, gives them back sweet youth.

As reviewer Manohla Dargis alluded to, Garry Trudeau’s comic strip Doonesbury started in the Yale Daily News and featured B.D., Brian Dowling, our star quarterback. Running back Calvin Hill actually had a decent football career after Yale, while Brian Dowling’s legacy remains in the annals of New Haven and on the comic page.