Edelweiss

In the summer of 2000, my mother and I spent 2 weeks in Alaska. For 5 days, we were on a little ship that visited Sitka and Glacier Bay and other astonishing fjords, where one night this family from Mississippi entertained us with their version of The Sound of Music. It was right up there with the other musical highlight of that trip: the drunk Australians in a Juneau saloon singing "Bye, Bye, Miss American Pie."

Nobody goes to Alaska for the music.  Among the non-musical highlights: a grizzly bear nursing her cubs,  5-foot-tall rhubarb plants and 2-foot-wide dahlias in Fairbanks, a nice greenschist rock outcrop in Juneau accessible by elevator in a state office building, musk oxen, people catching salmon in a creek under a freeway in Anchorage, and the deep blue crevasses at our feet in Mendenhall Glacier. 

Trompe L'Oeil all over again

This mural is in San Francisco, near the Mission District and Noe Valley. Ted took the picture. His camera did not have a wide-enough-angled lens to capture the whole scene in one shot, so he assembled a panorama from multiple shots. But the paneled effect was actually painted into the mural, giving him lines to try to match when he assembled the panorama. Where's Waldo? Maybe on the horse or in the boat.

Cousins come of age

Next week, Cousin Pete, the baby on Uncle Bob's lap, will turn 13. This entire cousin-cluster, then, will be teenagers or young adults--as Cousin Vinny put it: they're all Utes now.

Standing, from left to right: Cousins Amelia and Maggie Stein and Melissa Koehler, Allen, Hank, and Joe

Note that Hank is wearing a 101 Dalmatians shirt. He used to have a matching blanket.

Deja vu all over again

On Valentine's Day, 2004, during a trip to Winter Carnival in Quebec City (where they'll throw me in jail for leaving off all those accent marks), we wandered down to the old Lower Town, where Grandma Sandy hopped the fence and joined the party in this mural. Docents need to do things like that to enrich their understanding of trompe l'oeil.

Special thanks to Ted for the photoshoppic enhancement.

Tattoo

Three summers ago, on Estonian Independence Day, military drum and bugle corps and bagpipe bands from all over Europe gathered in the central Estonian town of Paide for a tattoo. The President of Estonia spoke, the bands all played, and then Hank and our friend Patrik Maldre posed wearing a highland headdress. The headdress was made of feathers. Over the three years since then, both Hank and Patrik have grown taller.

#2--Sandals

#1--Happy Birthday, Grandpa!!

#2--Sandals was a happy little dog when he lived with Ted, and we hear tell he's still happy.

When Ted moved away from Tuscaloosa about five years ago into an apartment near Boston that didn't allow dogs, he left Sandals in the care of a dog-loving neighbor. This neighbor's girlfriend, now his former girlfriend, claimed Sandals when the couple broke up. Recently, when Norman ran into her in a Tuscaloosa restaurant, she said that under no circumstances would she part with that little black dog; he was a good dog, they had bonded, end of story.

Where's Waldo?

One Saturday in August 2006, Norman and I were sightseeing near South Royalton, VT, where he was visiting that semester at the Vermont Law School. A sign posted on the front porch of a country store in Tunbridge reminded townspeople to come to the fairgrounds at 4 o'clock that afternoon for the taking of the town picture. We decided this was too important an even to miss.

At 4 o'clock, we joined an estimated 800 Turnbridgians (from a population of about  1,800) who had shown up at the fairgrounds and were milling around in fog and drizzle, in front of a big, black 100-year-old camera set up in the back of a pickup track. The sheriff (yellow rainjacket, front and center) yelled at everybody until the photographer was satisfied. The townspeople were posed in front of the property they owned jointly:  their school bus, fire truck, ambulance, road grader, and snow plow. We stood away from the crowd and watched, along with a very unhappy twelve-year-old and his mother; she wouldn't let him pose with the townspeople because they only lived in Tunbridge on weekends.

Several people held up portraits of people who couldn't be there; other people held up babies, flowers, a Cookie Monster puppet, a scythe, and a geologic cross-section of the mountain behind the town. One man draped a black dog around his neck, and a woman was leading a horse. There was the woman in the purple hat. And in back of the man with red kayak paddles were three infant carseats carrying  . . .  triplets.

Town picture day, we learned, is actually not a Vermont tradition, at least not in Tunbridge. It was a twenty-first-century innovation: somebody had found the old camera in a barn, fixed it up, and decided to try taking a town picture. People seemed happy with the event, and with the photo, and there was talk of making a tradition out of it. Did they do it again in August 2007? Google wouldn't tell me.

Cousin Amelia

This was a few years ago. Amelia is now a senior at Waynflete School in Portland and captain of the Waynflete Flyers field hockey team.

Man On!

Perhaps John just wasn't experienced enough yet with the ways of younger brothers. Time took care of that.

I accidentally hit Send a couple of days ago when I was intending to Save one of these emails until this morning. So even though y'all have already seen a picture labeled Sunday, I did not want the morning to go by without a greeting in your mailbox. Good Morning Again!

Two Grandmothers and Forty Years

Here is my Grandma Rose (Blumenthal Horowitz) in 1956, with my baby brother Charles; in the other picture is the kids' Grandma Helen (Ruskin Stein Behr) in 1996, with Allen and Hank.

Disneyworld

Late in 1980 or early in 1981, Aunt Arleigh,  Uncle Richard , and Cousin Lindeigh stopped by to visit us in Jacksonville, FL, on their way to Disney World. We had two babies at the time: Ted was about 18 months old and John was right around three. Arleigh and Richard volunteered--volunteered!!--to take John along for the trip to Disney World, even though he was still so young he wasn't clear on the difference between Mickey Mouse and Jimmy Carter. And while he no longer wore diapers, he wasn't yet a completely independent bathroom-going sort of person.

Nonetheless, they strapped John's carseat into their car and headed for Orlando. John and Lindeigh had a wonderful time, and Arleigh and Richard were awarded super-duper extra credit in the family-generosity account. A few months ago, they moved to New Zealand (except for Lindeigh, who's still in Seattle), where they are in the process of buying a house with three sheep, but that doesn't change the accounting: we still owe them big-time.

The truth is: we owe just about everybody. When it comes to kind, generous family and friends, we lucked out big-time.

Richard also lucked out soon after this picture was taken, when fashions changed and he could get a haircut.

The Stone Age

Three years ago, Grandpa Bob's 80th birthday was celebrated on Peaks Island, Maine, where there are lots of rocks. The rocks are older than Grandpa Bob--roughly 400 million years older. The human species evolved in an environment where rocks were plentiful, and these young male humanoids demonstrate that we are hard-wired to make forts and stuff out of stone.

Also, some among us are hard-wired to knock down the forts that other people make. Hank recalls that he had to rebuild this whole thing all by himself.

Left to right: Ted, Hank, Allen, Joe, and Cousin Nick Horowitz. Not shown is John, who was hiding behind a camera.

P.S. Grandpa will be 83 next week. He's already beyond the stone age.

Hogwarts on the Chesapeake

The statue of Harry Potter in front of the Naval Academy dorm got a fresh coat of paint this past weekend. Usually, it's a statue of the Indian chief Tecumseh, but last weekend, it looked like Harry Potter. On the base of the statue, the Naval Academy was identified as the "School of Character and Command." Around back was the crest for Hufflebill, the house of the Midshipmen--well, of course they're in Hufflebill, on account of their mascot, Bill the Goat. The cardinal in the crest was a nod to Saturday's football opponent, the Ball State Cardinals, who...won.

One of the 30 midshipmen companies is responsible for painting Tecumseh, who is also known as "God of 2.0." The special occasion this time was parents' weekend for the senior class.

Happ

Twenty-six years ago today, Joe weighed in at about 6 and a half pounds.

"Stein on the Danube"

Painted by Egon Schiele in 1913.

Blue Angels

Today I'm scheduled to work as a volunteer cook in a concession tent at the last Great State of Maine Air Show, at the Brunswick Naval Air Station. There will be no more air shows in future years because the Naval Air Station is closing down. Back in June, at a picnic honoring the six plebes-to-be from Maine, the Maine Naval Academy Parents Club passed around a sign-up sheet for this project--I don't yet know what this organization does with any money it raises (the picnic was potluck), but I guess I've got a mindless sort of sign-up habit.

Headlining the show will be the Blue Angels team of precision fighter pilots. If you google them, you may come across this bit of nonsense from the Navy Public Affairs Office:

How do the Blue Angels deal with stress?
The squadron focuses stress by exercising; weight training, cardiovascular programs, and flexibility training; and by eating a healthy diet. 

Personally, I think they deal with stress by making a lot of sick jokes and flying very fast.

December 1988

December 1988: Cousins gather in Chevy Chase for Grandma and Grandpa Horowitz's 40th anniversary. Jessica clearly is queen of the festivities. Baby Allen's head is hiding the bears on Ted's sweater--they were either pandas or koalas, but I can't remember which. The bear on Jessica's sweater, of course, is a proper teddy.

Shortly after this picture was taken, Grandma and Grandpa moved to their condo in Bethesda. The gold chair moved to Alabama, where it served us well for the rest of the twentieth century.

Is it interesting that nobody in this picture is showing any red-eye?

Sailors in Trees

Dr. Bobo, Federal Poppycock, and our Green Truck

Last month on one of these mornings, we noted the acquittal of Tuscaloosa's Dr. Bobo, after two trials and seven years of legal battles concerning charges of bid-rigging state medical-service contracts. His close friend, former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman, was convicted of related charges and is now in prison. This month, their stories were the focus of hearings on Capitol Hill in the widening Congressional probe of politicization of Justice Department prosecutions. 

Back in Alabama, the Tuscaloosa News recently published several letters to the editor such as this one:

"God bless Dr. Bobo. God bless the jury for seeing through the federal prosecutor’s poppycock, and God bless Tuscaloosa through Dr. Bobo’s hands. He’s the best in town, and we sorely need his expertise in his continued practice of medicine."

            For our last word on this affair, we turn to Ted Stein, who has a different take on Dr. Bobo: "His whole family," writes Ted, "had an almost mafia like belief in their own entitlement and their ability to buy whatever and whomever they want, including the ability to get out of trouble for whatever they do.

            "[At a party one night] his son was drunk off his ass and slammed his brand new BMW into your green truck, which was parked in front of his car.

            "His car was severely damaged -- radiator, front right fender, hood, bumper, grill, etc.. The truck had a tiny bit of white paint and a negligible dent. 

            "He drove off.

            "Dr. Bobo called me minutes later and told me that he would pay for everything and something for my troubles if I didn't call the police. Like an idiot, I told him, honestly, that there was no meaningful damage and I had no troubles. He asked if I was going to call the police and I told him no. He thanked me and, I'll bet, promptly forgot about me. 

            "The BMW was brand new again a few days later.”

Superman's Neighborhood

I was three years old when we moved to Silver Spring, Maryland; this picture was probably taken a few months later, in the spring of 1955.

All the houses in the neighborhood were brand new. All the families in them were young like ours, and the houses were financed with GI mortgages; all the fathers had fought in World War II. There were so many kids that the new school they built just for us was overcrowded the day it opened, and we kindergartners took turns being absent from school on purpose, to reduce class size; my "drop day" was Wednesday.

In the house just behind us in the picture lived a family named Clark, and they had six children, the oldest of whom was Kent Clark. This was confusing to me, because Superman was Clark Kent. In the other house visible in the background of this picture lived a family named Lane, whose children included Peggy and Skippy, but oddly, no Lois. When my mother went back to school at the University of Maryland, Peggy Lane used to babysit for me and my brother and sister, and our family shared a lawn mower with them

In 1961, we moved to a larger house in another neighborhood . Last summer, my parents and I returned to Benson Terrace to look around. The houses were well cared for, and many had been added onto over the years. There were large shade trees. All the "parking strips" had been paved over to make driveways. Most of the homeowners now are Vietnamese, and the nearby shopping centers feature stores and restaurants with signs in Vietnamese.

The neighborhood school has been closed for years; enrollment plummeted after we baby boomers grew up, and these houses were never again so densely packed with kids.

Keeping Us Safe

Third-grader John, wearing his baseball cap, soccer shirt, and basketball shoes, holds up a notebook bearing a slogan from a 1988 Maryland campaign to require seatbelt use. The notebook says, "Please buckle up. I care."

John's grandpa Bob had editorialized on behalf of the seatbelt law, and when it passed, he was given a metal road sign similar to the thousands that were to be posted around the state warning people that buckling up was now the law. We took the sign to Alabama and presented it to the principal of Uniersity Place Elementary School, who posted it in the school driveway, even though buckling up was not yet the law in Alabama.

We are safer today than we were before seatbelts. Keep on bucklin'.

Go Rams!

The concept of a Portland Ram is confusing in this part of Maine, where Portland High School teams are Bulldogs, and Portland's cross-town rival Deering is the school of the Rams (and the Lady Rams...). However, in England, there is a breed of sheep called Portland, and here we see the #1 champion  Portland ram in all of England, posed with his owner for a formal portrait taken by Yann Arthus-Bertrand, the French photographer known for his "Earth From Above" exhibits of aerial photos. Before Arthus-Bertrand became a famous artiste, he made his living as a livestock photographer.

September is sheep-shearing season in New Zealand, where Richard and Arleigh, Norman's brother and sister-in-law, are in the midst of negotiations for a house that comes with three sheep on the lawn. They have named the three sheep, which were sheared yesterday, Curly, Lari, and Mow. The half-sheared Merino ram in the bottom picture here was also photographed by Arthus-Bertrand.

Call it four misses and a maybe.

Call it four misses and a maybe.

This guy does not play football for Navy. And these pictures weren't taken during football season, but on a warm afternoon last spring on the campus of Wyoming Seminary in Pennsylvania. On the last play of the afternoon, Allen was taken down by a brick wall that came out of nowhere.

Nurse Pavarotti

I intend no offense toward the late tenor, may he rest in peace, and I'm not certain but I want to believe that the people in this photo also intended no offense. It's just that seeing his name in the news reminded me of this scene from our trip to Estonia two summers ago.

England must not be a very fun country; groups of Brits seem to like to fly off for party weekends in other European countries. I'm told that Prague was a hot spot for a while, but recently the party scene has shifted to Tallinn, the capital of Estonia, which is a little (very little) like New Orleans or Las Vegas in the United States. Swarms of partying Englishmen--many in t-shirts custom-printed for the occasion--mobbed the ferry between Tallinn and Helsinki. In Tallinn's Old Town, which is something like New Orleans' French Quarter, only about six hundred years older--some of the revelers wore party clothes and, in this case, party wigs. Here we see Nurse Alf and Nurse Pavarotti, out for an evening stroll (it was midsummer, so the evening was still quite sunny).

Below is a picture from a Midsummer Eve festival near Tallinn. Sadly, that's me, trying and failing at a traditional folk game. Part of the tradition is the cognac that precedes the game....

Twenty-nine

Norman is holding Ted, who looks to be a few months shy of his first birthday. The picture must have taken, then, in the spring of 1980--right around the time of Norman's 29th birthday. Next summer, when Ted turns 29, maybe we can get them to pose for a remake. Or maybe not.

Labor Day Labor

This weekend we painted the trim on the front of the house. Hank's friend Ryan supervised from on high while Hank took care of the finishing touches. Later, while the two of them sat on the roof polishing off a box of cookies, Joe came along and made off with the ladder....

Viking Laundry

Once upon a time, Vikings set sail in a wicker laundry basket. Then it got dark and they had to brush their teeth and go to bed. The End.

Back to School

The new school year started today in Portland. Seventeen years ago,  Joe sat in the front row and helped hold up the sign for the class picture of Miss Brandon's third grade  at University Place School in Tuscaloosa. That same year, Miss Brandon went to J.C. Penney's at the mall to have her eyes checked for a new pair of glasses, and she wound up marrying the optician.

Home from the War #1

In 1945, back in New York after wartime duty aboard a minesweeper, Norman's father, Joseph Stein, posed for a picture with his family. His younger brother Jack, who was about 14 years old in 1945, had grown taller than Joe while he was away.

Linkuva

My father's mother--whose maiden name was Rose Blumenthal--grew up in the small town of Linkuva in Lithuania, near the Latvian border. She left for America in 1900. Many, perhaps most, Jews emigrated from that region in the late 19th or early 20th century; those who stayed were all murdered during World War II.

The first two pictures show a main street in town, as it looked near the end and near the beginning of the 20th century. During the intervening 100 years, the only visible change is that the street is now paved. The political-economic-social-military-cultural upheaval and tragedy that characterized life in Eastern Europe throughout the century seem to have left no mark.

This house was home to a Jewish family in Linkuva in 1924.

The Blumsohn family of Linkuva posed for a photo in 1916.

Market Day in Linkuva, ca. 1916. Peasants from nearby farms would come to Linkuva to buy food and goods from the
Jewish merchants. The Blumenthal family had cows and sold the milk.

Little Cahaba

The Little Cahaba River flows through Bibb County, Alabama, about 30 miles south of Tuscaloosa. The water is fast but shallow, supporting knee-high clumps of white flowers in the springtime, Cahaba Lilies, which grow from cracks in the rocks of the riverbottom. Alabamians sometimes claim that these lilies are unique to the Cahaba watershed, but this is apparently incorrect; they also grow in a river in Georgia. Maybe with global warming they will soon follow us to Maine.

The Little Cahaba River in the wintertime.