Nights in White Satin: Forty Years on with the Moody Blues

Ah, the opening night of the Hollywood Bowl, how I love it! I love it especially when the summer weather is perfect, warm and breezy, cerulean blue sky morphing into a cool but comfortable dark evening. Len and I had our concession meal and people watched the baby boomers, like ourselves, though given the range for our generation, 1946 to 1964, some quite a bit older than us, take their seats with greater or lesser ease. The vagaries of physical health have affected us all differently. Yes, there were walkers, and some wobbling on the wide stairs. The man across the aisle from me reminded me of two people, both long gone. He was slim and bald, except for side hair, with glasses, a cross between my very serious late professor, Fr. Francis Canavan, S.J. and a more smiling Lin Kissane, with whom I used to work at the State Bar. It was hard to imagine him a young man, and much easier to remind myself of me as a young woman, beginning my course work at Fordham University, tentative and lacking confidence in my social skills.

The first half was pleasant enough, a yearly presentation of the Youth Orchestra Los Angeles participating with the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra in a Shostakovitch piece. And then three of the original Moody Blues took the stage (I had to look that up, I had no idea who was alive, dead or replaced for other reasons). Voices were several octaves lower in capacity, but with the orchestral support to which the music of the Moody Blues always lent itself, I could have imagined myself and the rest of the white haired crowd back in the long ago day. It was a little incongruous, as such concerts, like the Eagles, or Steely Dan, or whatever the retro band playing usually are, this psychedelic music counterpoised against the harsh reality of time passing not only for us, but the guys on the stage. It is always a bit of a jolt to sense time's passing, but more so when clapping and singing along to the tunes of 40 plus years ago, when possibility was all and there was no sense of finality.

This paradox always moves me, to quiet tears in the darkness. The mind transports us back; the body, well, it stays firmly in the present, with its aches and pains and also with its joys and regrets.

The man across the aisle from me, who had had difficulty navigating the stairs, was singing along and waving his hands. I felt so much warmth for him.

By the time I got to Fordham, in 1972, Nights in White Satin was already an old hit, but a persistent one. The cycle of the day captured in a song. The cycle of lives. What would I be? Would I be a success? Would I love? I was sitting in our college basement restaurant, the Ramskellar, and I worried about how late a bloomer I was, and how inhibited and anxious about pretty much everything. Some things have worked out. Some others have not. Overall, I have developed wisdom enough to be grateful for the good things that have come my way.  And seeing perhaps the things that still may be.

"Isn't Life Strange"

Isn't life strange
A turn of the page
Can read like before
Can we ask for more?
Each day passes by
How hard man will try?
The sea will not wait

You know it makes me want to cry, cry, cry -
Wished I could be in your heart
To be one with your love
Wished I could be in your eyes

Looking back there you were, and here we are.

Isn't love strange
A word we arrange
With no thought or care
Maker of despair
Each breath that we breathe
With love we must weave
To make us as one
You know it makes me want to cry, cry, cry -

Wished I could be in your heart
To be one with your love
Wished I could be in your eyes
Looking back there you were, and here we are.

Isn't life strange
A turn of the page
A book without light
Unless with love we write;
To throw it away
To lose just a day
The quicksand of time
You know it makes me want to cry, cry, cry -

Wished I could be in your heart
To be one with your love
Wished I could be in your eyes
Looking back there you were:

Writer(s): John Charles Lodge 

"Seventh Sojourn" (1972)

Concert at the Hollywood Bowl, Moody Blues, June 17, 2017, Nights in White Satin

A Portrait of the Bronx Girl as a Poet--Ever so Briefly

As I have probably mentioned in these pages, the college radio station at which I volunteered when I was in college, required that the Sunday schedule be "educational" or "religious". When one of the professors, Vivienne Thaul Wechter, an "artist in residence" took a sabbatical from her WFUV-FM, show, during my sophomore year in 1974, there was a half hour opening the students were invited to fill. I proposed a poetry show, though I knew virtually nothing about poetry. So began "Poetry Because I Like It" later to be called "Poetry is for People", a program with a theme of poems ancient and modern. I waxed philosophical with a prepared script on a subject punctuated with poems that characterized the subject, "Love", "Loss", "Friendship", and yes, being who I am, "Cats".  I was reading T.S. Eliot on the feline long before the play ever opening on Broadway. I finally had one or two actual courses in poetry, and despite my many years' long radio show, I never really fell in love with it. But during one year or so, from 1975 until 1976, about a year or two after my mother died,
(though she had lived long enough to hear me at WFUV) too young at 48 or breast cancer, I found myself attempting to write some of my own.

Most were sad, as I tried to sort out the past, and my place in the world. I had been a "lapsed" Catholic since 1970--the reasons having to do with my inability to comply with certain of its precepts, and a view that it made no sense to demand my religion to conform to me rather than me to it, mixed with a bit of irritation that I had to be the one to conform. My mother's death did nothing to inspire me back into the religious fold. I wasn't angry at God. I had enough basic theology not to expect him to act as, what Dennis Prager calls, a "Celestial Butler". Prayer is not always answered, at least in the ways that we human beings dare to demand of God, forgetting that we are not the authors of life, but that He is. But also, I hadn't been enamored of the priest who celebrated my mother's funeral Mass, and who accompanied my father and I to the cemetery some distance away from the Bronx. His example, poor man never realizing it, sitting in the front of the car reading while we mourned in the back, was not likely to encourage me to re-explore my faith. I was silently seething at him. But then, after all, my mother hadn't been to Church for years. What did I expect? He didn't know her. She had never set foot in the parish out of which she was buried, Our Lady of Angels, on Sedgwick Avenue, except in death. My Dad, I think back fondly, nonetheless did the right thing by her, for which I am grateful to this day.



My days as a "poetess" --a name a kind, blind fellow student who was one of our fellow WFUV'ers, Rich Adcock, denominated me--at least one who actually wrote poetry, lasted from December 1975 when I was 21 until about July 1976, just after I graduated from Fordham. I've kept the efforts all these years, along with a myriad of other memories through which I now pour to pare or to dispense to storage of one sort or another. This blog is one place of "storage", the holding of memories.

The first one is undated and I suppose it sets the stage for my brief stint effort at iambic pentameter and other meters I knew not of at the time (like trochees, spondees, anapests and dactyls), so I begin with it.


The Muse poets have.
Not I.
To take thought mundane
Of Love
Of Life
Of Death
And create, with words
carefully arrayed,
a masterpiece of written art.
Philosophy profound.
Human life explained.
Oh, miniscule episodes
of earthbound dwelling
made momentous with
THE PEN!

⧫⧫⧫⧫⧫⧫⧫⧫⧫⧫⧫⧫⧫⧫⧫

Toss and turn.
Almost every night I think
of her,
as my eyes burn with need of sleep.

Toss and turn.
Each night my mind searches for
concrete memory.
A moment caught. . .
No, it escapes too fast.
Wait!
Let me smile awhile
at what was said that day.

⧫

Toss and turn.
I must sleep.
There's time enough for memory.
Concentrate on glorious rest.
What!
The pillow is wet.
The swallowing comes hard.

Toss and turn.
God, I wish we could talk together.
Useless.
It is dark and
there is no one in the room.


⧫

Is this not the same beautiful child who
on a warm morning in May
in that year long forgotten
donned wedding gown and veil and
expectantly walked down the long, dark
aisle in silence, hands folded and head down?

Is this not the same purre girl
who received the Host-God into her heart
promising, publicly and silently, to
love her fellowman and who, in a
child's simple way vowed to live a
life worthy of St. Therese?

Grown now she feels futile frustration.
Did God die an unnoticed death with her
and continue to exist only in other hearts?
No more thinks she of faith that moves mountains.
Seldom thinks she of the Trinity--Father, Son,
or Holy Ghost.
God suited not her needs.
He answered not her needs.
Is that the reason?
No, sometimes it seems that God just faded away.
Didn't He?  Didn't He?

Still, strange force of heart
brings the once-child to walk down
a long dark aisle in silence
hands slightly folded and head down.
Alone in the huge Church
she looks toward the altar and
feels the Presence of God.
Yes.
This is the same beautiful child.

⧫

Christmas, 1960

Wide-eyed babe
is readied by mama for the evening to come.
Celebration!
The Lord is born!
This is the reason we go tonight.
Is it?
Six year old knows nothing of this.
Celebration!
Pretty girl child has vivid picture of
dancing, loud music, loud talk, drink,
DRUNKENNESS
Celebration!
Tot in red velvet dress cannot laugh
with the other children.
Off to hide, cry in a large empty room.
No one can hear.
Celebration!
Watch them.
Watch them open old wounds that came
before her time.
Again, the once a year
airing of petty grievances.
Do they know a child listens?
Celebration!
A new morning breaks.
A little lamb inwardly begs for
home and sleep,
sleep with which she will not be blessed.
Not this night.
Celebration!
Quiets descends on the worn family.
Thank you, God.
Leave now. No more
celebration.
Tired tot lies in bed.
Little eyes stare.
Little ears assailed with a deadly sound of silence.
Outburst from her beloved ones.
Celebration!
opened their old wounds.
Seething resentment,
hurts still linger.

A young woman readies herself
for an evening to come.
Celebration!
The Lord is born.
This is the reason she goes tonight.
She remembers tears of old.
In days gone by,
how she hated Christmas and
Celebration!

⧫

Security, blessed security
knowing that mother sleeps
next to father
as she always has.
It is a happy child who hears them breathe
rhythmically, peacefully.
The child smiles and feels the
Security, blessed security.

Change, fearful change
must never touch them
plaguing only others
as it always has.
But now, death comes.
Mother is gone
quickly, unjustly.
A child screams and curses the
Change, damnable change.

⧫

Childhood simplicity
was born
is lost
Left a ruin
amid hard complexity.

Childhood faith
was taught
is shattered
Left a whole
in old dreams.

Childhood dreams
I had
I need
They are remembered
at this moment.

⧫


There is nothing
so fearful
as
not knowing
of the future.

In the dark
so tearful
for
not knowing
of the future.

Closing the eyes
so hopeful
for
ever dreaming
of the future.

To find love
so warm
for
ever embracing
in the future.

⧫


I am sorry, America.

That fellow is laughing under
his breath at the sound of your
patriotic song.
He looks about him to see
if others think it's funny too
to love one's country.

I am sorry, America.

That child has never heard about
the founding of his nation
or its struggles to survive.
He hears that times are changing.
The past is better dead.
Disillusion is a lovely thing.

I am sorry, America.

A philosopher now wisely says
"Your past is an evil sham
perpetrated on the common man."
We must join to build a better future.
This is his joyful aim.
Utopia is the
mighty plan.

I am sorry, America.

That fellow is crying  in his soul.
He hates the sound of the people's song.
He looks about him to see if
others understand the pain of
his submission to oppression.

You have died, America.

⧫

He took a healthy
swig of his straight scotch
and he wheeled around
elbows on the bar
that kept him standing
and he shouted at
the unfeeling crowd,
"This drunk has no dreams!"

"Ya hear me, do you?
I just said somethin'
This drunk has no dreams!"
No one dared to look
but they heard him well.
"Let's get out of here.
These drunks always ruin
a good Friday night."

The barkeep barked now
at the offending creep
who slumped mumbling
and begged for more.
"Come on, old buddy,
just one little more."
Forget it fella.
Out he went, the bum.

Face in the cold snow
he whined and groaned for
the pain of being a nobody brings
slow death to the sould.
He sobbed and slobbered
and cried out in vain
for what might have been.

He took a deep breath
and shouted in rage
at a long-dead God,
"Damn them, it's their fault
this drunk has no dreams!"
He sprawled on the ground
while a late night crowd
stared and crossed the street.

⧫

I could not put my arms around her
and in one earnest time-suspended hug
express the love that overwhelmed me
for I was afraid.

I always had the deep affection
of my parents, given freely,
in a strange and hidden way.
I got what I never had earned,
the best of everything
and that indeed, is love.

But to touch, to speak of it, of love
a family of three
this I never knew.
Affection was implied but
implication is too subtle
for a starving child.

So my mother lay
with a year or less to life
and my heart ached to release
long dammed-up emotions.
I knew I needed her
and there was so little time.

⧫

His broad, strong hand reached out
and ever so gently stroked her cheek.
His two brown eyes searched hers
waiting for her to speak.
No words came but only
her smile to encourage.
His body edged closer
and his arms clasped hers,
and caressed it.
In the peaceful silence
she thrilled to the touch of his hand
in her long, flowing hair.
Certain, yet careful,
he leaned slowly forward
and pressed his lips against her.
She answered.
Warmth consumed them.
From this simple moment
to the final 'good night',
they knew
there would be other times.

Dallying on a Thursday in Central Park

I had a whirlwind week from June 1 till the 9th, until I jetted home on a happily turbulence free flight from New York City. It all began at a wedding in Plymouth, Massachusetts and until my hour or so sojourn in a small corner of the 2 1/2 mile stretch of bucolic oasis that is Central Park in the middle of a wildly busy Manhattan, I had been going non-stop. Nothing wrong with that; I enjoyed it all enormously. But after a late breakfast with my last remaining aunt on either side of my immediate family, at her favorite diner (The Flame) on Columbus Avenue near Lincoln Center, and a couple of hours before my cousin, Carol, was to meet us for a late afternoon visit, I needed to take in something of my environs alone. So much had happened in the preceding days. I hadn't digested most of it. I wanted to take a moment for quiet gratefulness. What better than a respite, as the sun tried hard to peek out, and a slight warming trend (from the 50s and low 60s) began, than in the Conservancy improved Central Park? I entered off 59th Street. I didn't need to go in far to find my spot, one of many benches with memorial plaques for city dwellers of the past.

When I left New York for the milder clime of California in 1981, the Central Park Conservancy was in its infancy and its task was herculean--to restore and preserve the Park which by then was a den for thieves and drug dealing, and brutality to those who would attempt to enter its manicured woods. I had probably gone through one of its gates maybe a handful of times, as a child with my father or some relative to the Children's Zoo, and a ride through on a horse drawn carriage, a requirement for after prom back in high school. Oh there was one time in 1987, by the lake, with a friend, when I was visiting after four years away from the city. I did notice then that there seemed an improvement in the surroundings, a little less fearsome, but I didn't much consider that there was intention behind it.

I didn't actually do much cogitating about my trip up to that moment as I sat on my bench, fat sparrows whisking by me lighting on iron fences or into the trees. A man in a suit accelerated on his skate board. A woman in jogging shorts stretched deliberately across from me. I could not help but note the depth of her bends which brought her ample rump into full view not only of me, but of those who skirted by her.  The horse drawn carriages are still doing their tours. I have never been quite comfortable with seeing the horses and their variously decorated carriages along Central Park West, lonely sentinels awaiting a tourist or two. At least these days they look healthier than I remember. There was a brief time, I seem to recall, when there was talk of getting rid of that New York attraction, because there was some rumor that the horses were ill-treated. I would prefer that they be free to roam in some truly rural atmosphere, but I admit that the park would not be the PARK, without them standing and clacking about. I was surprised, given the $52.00 price tag for a tour, that there were as many takers as passed me, having various landmarks within, and without the park pointed out to them. With Trump International vaulting into the sky directly behind me, I noted that every tour guide pointed out that particular edifice. Added to the tours are bicycle carriages, that must not be as regulated in price, for some offered rides for $3.95 a minute, while others, I suspect the very unsuccessful entrepreneurs offered a similar ride, in a less commodious cart, for one cent a minute.

A set of tourists, speaking French I think, as I picked out a few words, consulted a map regarding their next destination.

"Yes," I thought to myself, "if I still lived in New York, and worked in Manhattan, I'd spend time in here."  I probably wouldn't. I never actually visited, for example, the Statue of Liberty--though I passed it by a few times on the Circle Line.

I felt myself in full relaxation, breathing deeply, the New York air cleaner than it was when I was a child. A good place to meditate. A good place to say, as I did, the Rosary--imperfect pray-er that I am this place made it feel easy. Every once in a while, you have those experiences, sedate, peaceful, as I was in the Park that seem to presage what one hopes Heaven will be. I didn't want to leave, but it was time to move on. I saw a kiosk where I could get a souvenir of the Park, so I could contribute, ever so slightly to the continued maintenance of the space. I bought a T-Shirt, and also a book about the park, since I have never known a thing about it. Until that moment I am ashamed to say I never much cared.  Better late than never to honor those forward thinking men--in this case they were men--who late in the 19th Century orchestrated the creation of what they thought of as "public art", carefully placed trees, buildings, rock and water, that allows the weary New Yorker fuel for the soul and body.

I wasn't quite ready to return to Lincoln Plaza where my aunt lives, it still being slightly shy of the time to meet up with my cousin, so I got a Strawberry Acai Refresher at one of the ubiquitous (even more than in Los Angeles, if that is possible) Starbucks and sat on a bench in a garden mall on the median on 61st and Broadway, perusing my newly acquired book about Central Park. It was this absurd postage stamp spot smack in the middle of northbound and southbound cross traffic, maintained by the donations of the businesses surrounding the area. The birds were flying into the various spaces of light and other poles. I took in the cacophony.  And enjoyed it. A bird landed on the edge of the bench. It was glorious.

Memory

Another story of dad's that was somehow separated from the rest. I like this one very much. I have the sense that he is combining several memories into a fictional story. There was a girl, but I think she was in Georgia, who had nine brothers. There used to be a photo, but I think it was tossed out with some of dad's books, accidentally, of a blond long haired girl wearing a grass skirt, giving the photographer, whom I assume to have been my father, a come hither look. Then in terms of a cruise, the only cruise (other than the one in World War II, which was not a cruise at all) that he took was when I got him a three day weekend one to Mexico. And I know for a fact there was no old love on that trip. But this is a sweet one, I think.

For a while I stood at the prow and watched the cruise ship pierce the waves  I was bored.  An itinerant bartender coaxed me into buying a Margarita, which I drank quickly without appreciable enhancement of my mood.

I made a brief tour of the gambling room, where a deft fingered young woman dealt me two poker hands that cost me fifty dollars in a trice.

I am a quick learner.  I ceded the field, with celerity.  I then felt that the ship was beginning to toss a little, though I could not be sure it wasn't the lavish dessert served at dinner that caused the feeling of motion.

I made my way to the bar where I felt I could commiserate with my distress over a dram or two. There was only one other patron, an elderly woman, bejeweled, wearing a hat which though elegant, was an accessory of another day.  She was sitting before a tall tropical drink.  I had the feeling she had been observing me since my arrival at the bar with intense curiosity.  I was right.

"Sam," she exclaimed, "Is that you?"

I was startled at the ferocity of this greeting.  Then again.

"By Jesus, it is you!" She then picked up her drink, circled the bar and took the stool next to me and repeated the phrase without the sacrilege.

"It is you, damned if you haven't changed a mite.  You still have that scoundrelly look--Warren, Ohio, 1943.  Sam, how could you have forgotten so soon, a mere fifty years ago?"

"Alma," I said, "it's really you."  It was, truly, even under the erosive wear of half a century.  Her gray eyes the same as they were then, quick to laughter, adventurous, even daring in aspect.  I did not concede the "scoundrelly" description.  As I remembered, I was the innocent one.  In my salad years, there was nothing predatory about my approach to women.  I entered into that fray with the conviction that there were two kinds of women, the good and the bad.  She seemed to me to be in the former category.  What else?  She was Italian and she had nine brothers.

"Let me buy you another drink," she laughed. "Let us celebrate an ancient promise you broke fifty years ago."

"What promise?" I asked.

"You never came back," she replied.

"Alma, there was a war going on.  I was on a priority shipping list."

She smiled, leaned over and kissed me on the cheek.  "You were cute enough to eat," she said.  "A shiny new second lieutenant.  We were alone in the bus.  We started kissing in five minutes and necked all the way to Warren."

I recalled the incident, though I can admit, now there was some doubt I had categorized her correctly.

"Now, Alma, be fair.  I never promised anything.  How could I have?"

She laughed and I recalled that deep-throated sound of her voice. "Anyway," she said, "you were a scoundrel.  Remember you told me you could not get a pass for one of our dates and I found you out with that short-skirted Polish girl.  I gave her 'what for'."

Indeed she did though she never confided in me the message that sent the Polish girl from the restaurant premises, so hurriedly that she left her purse on the table.  I thought it a good time to ask.

"Come on, Alma, you can tell me now. What did you say to her that sent her off so fast?"

"Simple.  I said 'If you're not out of here before I count ten, I'll twist your head off and send it to you."

"There, you see," I noted, "You were the aggressive one.  Remember?  In those days a girl did not force herself past a reluctant hotel clerk into a guy's room."

"I never," she protested.

"You did.  Easter morning. The phone rang and the clerk announced, 'There's a young lady who wishes to come up.'  You said you wanted to take me to church for Easter services.  Then you arrayed yourself languorously on the bed.  I was not equipped for 'languorous' in those days.  Besides I wasn't Catholic."

"I did my best,"  She laughed that primordial laugh, "to convert you."

"To Catholicism?"

"That also," she laughed again.

Indeed, she took me to Easter services.  Rather, she paraded me before the faithful, introduced me to the Monsignor and invited me to a home cooked Italian dinner at her aunt's house.

"You said it was a family dinner. But the house was empty except for me and you!"

"How was the dinner?" She laughed.

"Delicious," I said, as indeed it was.

"And the dessert? She laughed once more as surely as Eve must have laughed when she told Adam he surely would not die.

"It was always superb, Alma. I guess there is no harm in a small confession. I really thought seriously about coming back."

She took my hand, held it between her own, and pressed it warmly against her breast. "I waited.  You were a scoundrel.

"Alma," I said, "remember the night you held up your hand to show me your engagement ring?"

"Like it was yesterday," she admitted.

"Whatever happened to the guy?"

"He's downstairs in the cabin," she said.  "He can't stand heights and always gets sick on cruises.  HE came back, so I married him.  It was the proper thing to do."

Matches of Memories

With all my reorganizing of photos (with all that work I only saved one large cubbie in my library cupboard), I have been running into other objects collecting dust.  I have two fancy shoe size storage boxes full of matchbooks I have collected in the last 40 years. Today, you rarely find matchbooks in restaurants. Mostly it is business cards. Somehow it's just not the same. Having matchbooks is a walk through culinary history. And personal history. Out of the like 100 or 200 books I have, with a few repeats, I picked a few that send me back in time. Scandia, Perrino's, Chasen's, The Brown Derby, and the upside down one in the green, (bad scanning) is Carlos and Charlies.

Scandia was on the Strip, one of the last of the hot places, like Ciro's, or Mocambo. I had just ond chance to go there, when I was first working in Los Angeles in the early 1980s. My old boss, a solo practitioner who liked to go to the best places, took a bunch of his staff there. The outside looked like a ski chalet. The inside was fancy, the kind of place where you worried about which fork you used. I don't remember what I ate, but I know it was great. And as with all the other places from which I got my matchbooks, I felt special getting to go there, Bronx girl making good.

I realize that pretty much all these restaurants I went to in the 1980s, when I was working for that lawyer, and maybe in the beginning of my days as a prosecutor at the State Bar. Scandia closed in 1989, and the others weren't far behind, except maybe Kate Mantilini, which only closed a few years ago.

Where Perino's used to stand, on Wilshire Boulevard there is now a boxy apartment building that has taken the name. I went there at least two times, and much like Chasen's, which was on Beverly Boulevard, closed in 1995, and is now the site of Bristol Farms, which incorporated a small part of the Chasen facade, Perino's had luxurious booths and tasteful fixtures. These were places that had waiters of many years service, and moveable trays of food kept warm by sterno. Certain items were prepared right in front of you. We had office parties at one of the few remaining Brown Derby's, this one on Vine Street in Hollywood. Those matches are from a Christmas party that the firm had there. And Carlos and Charlies had he best dip I ever enjoyed, tuna based and addictive. I saw Joan Rivers there. I saw Joan Rivers in lots of venues, including the old Century City Complex that housed the Shubert Theater. When the public was notified that Chasen's was going to close, it became popular again, and I made reservations there for a friend's birthday, someone I knew would appreciate the magic of days past. You could imagine the good old days of after Oscar night late chili dinners.

By the time I got to Hollywood in the 1980s, many of the more glamorous and historical, from a celebrity point of view, places had already closed. I got to experience the tail end of glittering LA.

For a long time after its closing, Scandia's bones, the building itself, remained standing. Somehow that was a comfort, though I'm not sure why. Then one day a few months ago I was walking along Sunset and I noticed that where Scandia had stood, contractors were breaking ground on another monstrous probably mixed use facility. I felt surprisingly sad over inanimate architecture, but really its about the passage of time and how so much is lost to us and then forgotten. There are still one or two such places left, like Musso and Frank, on Hollywood Boulevard, and it's nice every once in a while to step into the way way back machine. Then back to the disposable now.

I think it's time to use the matches.






'

When Jimmy Stewart Perked Up My Mood

I have been going through memorabilia. I threw a lot away, and I kept a lot. Photos. Letters. Cards. Yup, still have a few for all the stuff I threw out this weekend. I used to call it the "Memory Drawer" and then one drawer got too full, then another, and my memories were all over the place in various boxes in various cubbies.

One item brought me back to my early days in Los Angeles. I've written about the move, one of two risks I ever took in my life, thus far. It was November, 1981 and I had just moved into my own apartment. I had borrowed some furniture from my uncle's garage stash, bought a two hundred dollar bed, a small color television and some Pier One table and chairs for dining. I alsao adopted the first of my many California cats.

But I had a few days of doubt and loneliness. As the Christmas season approached, movies for the season were being run and I watched, for probably the 50th time, "It's a Wonderful Life", with Jimmy Stewart, Ward Bond, Beulah Bondi, and all those great actors of days gone by. I had always loved Jimmy Stewart and felt there was a depth in the roles he had after World War II. We have come to know that as a pilot in the war, he had come away likely with a case of PTSD. "It's a Wonderful Life" was his first film after the war, released in 1946, and gone is the innocent young man replaced with a man who is solid, good, but itchy for a life other than the one he has in the role of George Bailey. And so responsible, kind a man, that he gives up his dreams to stay in his native community of Bedford Falls. When he is accused of a shortfall in the books he did not cause, he wonders about the life he has led, and the unfairness of someone who did good being targeted by evil, and he considers killing himself, but is intercepted by an angel named Clarence who shows him what the lives of others would have been if George had never existed.

That holiday season in 1981 when I was a 27 year old transplant to Los Angeles, the actor's performance touched me deeply. I knew James Stewart lived somewhere on Rodeo Drive, and I figured that I could send a letter telling him how this movie, this moment, made a particular difference and it would get there. The mail service knew where he lived. He probably got lots of mail over the years there. I hoped it would get to him, and it would make a difference that yet another someone of a later generation still appreciated the movie and his work. I mailed my letter and forgot about it.

A few months later when I picked up my mail, there was a little envelope containing a simple "Thank you" card. I couldn't imagine why anyone would send me a "Thank You".  I hadn't done anything for anyone. I hardly knew anyone in Los Angeles. When I opened it I was touched. Jimmy Stewart, I would hear later, answered all his fan mail, personally, even at this stage of his life, when he was over 70 years old.

For many years, the note was in a frame along with a photo of Mr. Stewart, hung in my kitchen. You can tell. It's a little yellowed at the bottom. Then it found its way back into my memory files, the hard copy ones. Every once in a while I'd come upon it and feel bad that it could end up in a trash bin somewhere when someone cleans out the paper I have collected over the years. It is so small. It could easily be overlooked.

Anyway, I am thinking maybe I ought to go to an auction house with it. So I went on line to see if it could be authenticated other than by provenance, meaning that I sent a letter and I got this back. I thought the handwriting was Mr. Stewart's as somehow or another I recognized it. But in doing the internet research I found other notes he wrote to other people, friends and fans, and as to the fans, it seems he often used much the same language as what he wrote to me, specifically calling the person's correspondence, a "kind and thoughtful letter."  Mine had a little extra, "I want you to know." which I of course take as something more personal. 

Before I got this note, I had seen Mr. Stewart in person, once at the Johnny Carson show, an episode that turns up often on favorite Carson show reels, and twice, at the Jimmy Stewart Relay Marathon that he did yearly for St. John's Hospital, where he did hosting and award giving duties, once along with actor Robert Wagner. 

This is my only autograph. I rarely write to celebrities. The only other was to Peter O'Toole after I saw him in Pygmalion in New York. I admired him for his acting prowess and his passion. I admired Mr. Stewart for his grounded goodness and his quiet strong presence. I do wish I had had the chance to speak to him and get his take on his own life.  But I have always been impressed that he took the time tor write to a lonely young woman just starting out on her new life in an unfamiliar place. It only made me appreciate him more, as a human being, not merely an actor. 

Remembering Archbishop George Hugh Niederauer

He was a literate, witty, kind man, who dearly loved the Church he served. We never had the chance to have an extended or deep conversation, but I did know him sufficiently to consider him a friend. And, once again, this blessing was all because of St. Victor's Church, where I have been parishioner since 1983.

At the time I first met him, along with the several remaining "old timer's" of our parish, he was rector of St. John's Seminary, teacher and spiritual director. This was sometime around the late 1980s. He had well known friends in the California area, like the man who would become Cardinal William Levada and Archbishop/Cardinal Roger Mahony. Those two men had been at St. John's with him, when they all were students. But he also was a friend to our then pastor, Monsignor George Parnassus, something of a big brother, at nine years older, and when he was available during his tenure as rector, he'd come down from Camarillo some Sundays, and celebrate Mass for us, as well as often to join in parish celebrations. When his five year term as rector ended, he became involved in the House of Prayer, in Los Angeles, but now could spend more Sundays and other occasions with us at St. Victor.

He was one of the few people who could jest about Monsignor's formal, professorial way of being. At the time they were both Monsignors, and when someone would run in the sacristy and say, "I'm looking for the Monsignor!", he'd say that he was just "a" Monsignor, but that our pastor was "the" Monsignor.

He could call up quotes from prose and poetry. He was an old movie fan, and we often talked about the classics.  He was a fan of and expert about Flannery O'Connor. Because of him, I made another stab at reading her short stories in order to understand how her grotesque tales were in fact optimistic about Catholic theology and the meaning of redemption in a fallen world. I never quite warmed up to O'Connor's fiction, but I did become an admirer of her letters, and thought, and her stoicism.

He even got to know my father, then a non-practicing Greek Orthodox who appreciated the intellects of my pastor and his friend. Though Dad was not a regular Churchgoer until 2003 when he finally decided he would convert to Catholicism,  he was very much part of our parish through all the years that the two Monsignors were together at St. Victor. But that didn't last terribly long.

When he was designated to become the Bishop of Salt Lake City, I have a vague memory of some conversation in the sacristy before Mass among the lector (me) and the servers and one or more of us asking how he felt about the new position. He responded in a priestly fashion, that it was apparently the Will of God that he do this. I could only imagine how hard it would be to go to an unfamiliar place where he knew few if anyone inside or outside of the Church.  I was among the lucky invitees, along with my father, to the Cathedral of the Madeleine in Salt Lake to attend his installation in 1995. I had lunch with him, once, on a second trip to Salt Lake, along with a friend who had moved there in 1995.

It was hard to stay in touch, but occasionally I would send a note, and he always sent Christmas cards to Dad and to me and his other friends at St. Victor's. Then in 2006, he would be coming back to California, to become the Archbishop of San Francisco. I was able to go the Cathedral to see that installation, although this time, I didn't get to talk to him afterward. I let him know when my dad died in 2008. When his friend Monsignor Parnassus died in 2013, I got to speak with him a few times, to get some advice I needed at the time, but far too much in passing on a personal level. I never got to speak with him after the funeral. He had already retired as Archbishop by then, likely because of health issues that had been thrust upon him by circumstances. Still I got a Christmas card as did his friends and acquaintances at St. Victor, and I wrote him a note in early 2017 to say that I hadn't sent any cards in 2016, and that I was however thinking of him.

I heard that he was having new health issues and he was residing somewhere where he could be cared for, but somehow, despite all the losses of this past year, it didn't occur to me that he was on the precipice of death. I realize I had that feeling about dad even when he was in extremis at Cedars. He had had so many close calls and he always came back. But just as it had for my dad, the time had come for the Archbishop (funny I still think of him as he was, Monsignor Niederauer) and I found out he was gone as I read the intentions for the dead on Sunday.  He had already been dead six days.

I have prayed for his eternal rest. I will pray for it again, and for that of the friends and mentors who have died who contributed to my life, and for whom I am grateful.