Hair cut

Before

Hey, I'm getting pretty good at this. Thanks to Jonna's friend Nikki Reed for showing me the ropes of haircutting. Fortunately, men's hair is easier to cut when it's a bit long, and Ken's hair is very forgiving.

Good lookin' guy, ain't he?

After

Grandpa Bookends Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving day begins when Grandpa arrives. We try to get him over early--around noon for a 3 p.m. meal--so he can sit around and watch football (and his daughter running around in the kitchen, which seems to entertain him).

Our next arrival was Tomi. Her father, who leaves not far from us in Dewitt, dropped her off and stopped in long enough to meet our patriarch and pose for this picture. Toke arrived later with her brother Yomi and a crockpot full of the most delicious greens I'd ever eaten.

This year Adam had to stay in New York as the primary trouble-shooter for infrastructure; this is the first time he's missed being with us. He spent the holiday with his friend Cale. Joe and Ash were with her folks, and the Balcoms dined with the Trimbles. Al and Jerrell were expected but didn't come. Our guest roster: Grandpa, Jonna and Melissa, Tomi, Toke and Yomi.

To view all our Thanksgiving pictures on Flickr, click here. I must have been too busy to take many photos the day of Thanksgiving, but there are some from the Tavern and "Club Stock." I hope others will share their photos as well.

The other "bookend" event with Grandpa was Ben's visit to the River House...

As soon as Grandpa got up to go to the can, Ben occupied Grandpa's electronic recliner and made phone calls on the chair's remote control. Grandpa was happy to sit in the little swivel chair next to the recliner.

Jen brought Grandpa her signature "peanut butter crack pie," prepared especially for him because she knows he loves it. His response: "That will be lunch for the next three days!"

Grandpa and Mike traded smart remarks about...well, pretty much everything.

After a little while the girls showed up for a visit, too. Jonna chased Ben around the big loop of Grandpa's house while Grandpa and Shaina talked trash about college football. By this time, Michigan had already lost to Ohio State and MSU was about to play (they eventually won).

And that's how Grandpa bookends Thanksgiving. 

D.C. Raw

My last visit to D.C. was devoted to election returns and national monuments. This visit was all about high fashion and neighborhood haunts.

Tomi's new shoes...what can I say? How about WOW! I COULD NEVER WALK IN THOSE! Sure, I tried them on, but all things considered I'd rather be strung up by my thumbs.

Although I've only had my eyebrows plucked once in my life, I do understand it is a part of the beauty regime for many. Tomi was a bit too trusting and let me come into the aesthetician's room while she had hers waxed and plucked. Even with her eyes closed she heard the camera shutter click.

"I hate you right now..." she said from the table, giggling. (No she doesn't.)

Walking down the street after we left the beauty shop, I noticed a little shop that might be a place to get something for Ben. It was stacked to the ceiling with all manner of merchandise I suspect may have been....imported. Let's leave it at that.

Along with every kind of hat and scarf imaginable, the shop had an immense case full of body oils mixed to match the scents of famous-name perfumes. Tomi found three or four that met her smelling-good needs.

The National Archive and U.S. Navy Memorial Plaza

Here's the National Archives and the U.S. Navy Memorial Plaza, 9th and Pennsylvania, a short way from the place Tomi took me for dinner the night I arrived back in D.C. for the last leg of my trip.

Mrs. Paroo

I was in Philly the day "The Music Man" opened at the Walnut Street Theater. Mary is not a huge fan of this particular publicity shot, but it does a good job of showing her in full swing as Mrs. Paroo, Marian the Librarian's mother. The gap-toothed little boy playing Winthrop was an audience favorite, with the charm of Alfalfa and the voice of Liza Minnelli. Mary says he's a little terror backstage, but with two casts of 15 children each, the stage parents are worse.

The Walnut Street Theater is the oldest in America, according to its website. Ford and Carter debated here in 1976. Here's some history.

Mary's House

Mary's house is a sweet little brick job on a quiet street in Merchantville. She says she gets a thrill whenever she drives up her street and sees her cozy little home. This is her living room, all scrumptious shades of cocoa and dark chocolate with kiwi accents. Super comfortable and stylish.

Fall was still in full effect in Philly. This is the beautiful maple in Mary's front yard. There are also a prodigious number of mature Japanese maples in her neighborhood.

Mary, Mary, Jesus, Mary

Mary's home is full of religious iconography, especially images of the Virgin Mary. This one (whose subject is obvious) caught my eye because its muted colors resonated with a nearby vase of flowers and fruit.

Urban Pioneering

Mary's daughter Leigh and her family are loft-dwellers in a rather rough part of Philly that is far from gentrified, but--as these photos attest--rich with opportunities for urban pioneering. Husband Chris designed the space, which includes his home office and two floors of living space. The owners are doing much of the work themselves. 

The space is beautifully uncluttered, yet includes plenty of evidence of its kindergarden-age resident. The living room's landscape includes a soccer net, a bicycle, and two terrariums inhabited by caterpillars and hermit crabs. Classic modern pieces mix with salvage and and seventies-flavored elements.

Son Roman's room is defined by high canvas panels hung from pipes. It must feel like sleeping in a tent. Leigh hand-polished the copper pennies that make up the fanciful mosaic floor in his bathroom.

I loved this display of succulents in the enclosed outdoor courtyard...

 ...and you know I'm a sucker for ripening fruit on a sunny windowsill.

Another favorite: a heavy glass vase on the kitchen counter holds a collection of Pez dispensers.

Jane LaPiazza

If you are friends with Connie Villiers, I urge you to immediately book time to visit her and her fabulous new screened porch. It really is a lovely place to spend some time (and drink some wine) while watching sparrows flock to her trumpet vine and fat fox squirrels empty her bird feeder. As an added bonus, Connie's charming home is quite near the charming home of Mary Martello (in Merchantville, New Jersey, a suburb of Philadelphia).

When porch construction was complete, Connie and her grandson, Owen, discussed a name for the porch with her grandson Owen. Connie favored "La Piazza"; Owen's came back with "Jane." Jane LaPiazza it is.

After Mary picked me up at the bus station in Mt. Laurel, very near her home, we proceeded directly to see Connie and Jane LaPiazza and have a visit with Owen and Karen.

Owen and I entertained ourselves by photographing his open mouth and zooming in on his teeth. We also snapped a couple nose picking shots. Kids love my camera.

Subway Bride

You're liable to see almost anything in a New York subway. After Cyrano, we saw this bride being photographed next to the tracks, looking longingly down the subway tunnel. Did the couple meet here? Marry here? Couldn't tell.

Adam, oblivious to the camera, walked between the photographer and the bride mid-shot, so I'm guessing he appears somewhere in the photo set.

Cyrano de Bergerac Revisted

Pa takes the Monday through Friday editions of the New York Times, and saves the arts section for me. In it I read a positive review of a new Roundabout Theater production of Cyrano de Bergerac, and of course wanted to take that trip down memory lane. It was also a good opportunity for Adam to see the classic play and imagine his much-younger-than-now mother up on the stage playing the clever, beautiful, if blind-to-the-obvious Roxanne (college production at the Power Center in Ann Arbor, 1974).

It did not disappoint. Douglas Hodges was wonderful in the title role; the actress who played Roxanne also played Fleur Delacour in the Harry Potter films.

Bar 89: A Manhattan Visit Tradition

Adam and I discovered Bar 89 on my first visit to New York. We were exploring SoHo, and stopped in for a drink that turned into two. After a long conversation, much laughter, and a visit for each of us to the unique Bar 89 bathrooms (unisex, clear glass doors that fog when you step inside), we stopped into the Alex Beard studio just down the block. Alex, a painter, had moved back to Manhattan after Hurricane Katrina and opened a working studio in SoHo (he has since moved back). We visited with him for quite a while, discussing the intersection of art, science, and religion. One of his hand-colored lithographs now hangs in Adam's apartment.

Since that first visit, many a pleasant hour has been spent in Bar 89. Whenever anyone visits Adam, it is only of question of when--not if--they will go to Bar 89.

Back to today. The man in the photo above is Miles, the Bar 89 doorman (it's kind of a swanky place). He is a dear man and somehow manages to remember our names (he calls me Mom but that's not cheating as far as I'm concerned). This visit included Jason Miller, as is often the case when I am in town.

Superstorm trash

This is a common sight these days in Lower Manhattan, and I suspect in the other boroughs as well. Bags and bags of trash and garbage--food spoiled by lack of refrigeration during Superstorm Sandy power outages. They've been here since I arrived on Thursday; I suspect the city will pick it all up at some point. Even without the storm trash, this city poops out a staggering volume of trash every day of the year. Where does it all go??

National War Memorials

Beginning with the Lincoln Memorial, Tomi and I visited the war memorials on the National Mall. The inscription in the photo above (part of the Korean War Memorial) sums up their messages.

Even though the monuments are stone and bronze, they call up in my mind--as they are intended to--pictures of the human beings who served in these too-many wars and the flesh and blood moments they all had in common. The Viet Nam Memorial in particular moves me, as it is the war of my generation. The wall carries the names of my contemporaries; my reflection on its black granite surface brings us together.

A ceremony--apparently in honor of the park service volunteers who serve at the monument--was just concluding as we approached, and photographers were focusing in on several men of a certain age in full dress uniforms. I wonder who they were.

I hadn't seen the Korean War Memorial close-up until today, although we saw it under wraps when we visited D.C. with the kids. I really like this one; the faces of the soldiers as they cross what is meant to simulate rugged terrain are at once alert and exhausted, determined and resigned. You get a clear sense of the hardship they faced.

In addition to the steel figures, the monument includes a black granite wall etched with faces of people of the times. I photographed this one because the faces reminded me of my parents.

I found the Martin Luther King, Jr. memorial somewhat cold; not reflective of the passion of the man. To each his/her own taste. The best part of the monument, in my opinion, was the wall of quotations that inscribed a long curve behind the big statue. The grounds surrounding the monument would be lovely in spring, summer, and earlier in fall.

When I told him I would be visiting the Korean and WWII memorials, Pa said he liked the Korean memorial but found the WWII memorial "a bit much." I have to agree. While the Korean memorial has a clear theme and message, the WWII memorial has too many different elements and lacks focus. It was as if the memorial committee couldn't decide which proposal to use, and rather than omit anything, used them all. Gateways, plazas, pillars, dozens of inscriptions, a wall of bronze stars, fountains, waterfalls, bas reliefs, names of states and names of battles in both the Atlantic and Pacific. Its individual elements are beautiful, and the placement between the Lincoln Memorial and Washington Monument is fitting, but the memorial could have benefited from some editing.

 

Reading Lincoln's second inaugural address

It was the Lincoln Memorial--unexpectedly, since I'd visited it more than once before--that really made me swell with patriotism. Maybe it was being there with Tomi; maybe because it was the day after the election. Maybe it was because that monument does what a really effective monument is meant to do: provide a sacred space to stand in the presence of a great moment in history and honor those who lived, fought, and died so you could be standing there.

What a day!

What a great kick-off to my vacation out east! Having voted absentee, I was able to spend election day in Washington D.C. with Tomi and her friends. We watched the returns on MSNBC at Yodit's house, and once the media called the election for Obama, we hit the streets, whooping and laughing along with hundreds of others. We walked past a guy with an Obama cut out and crowded in around it for a photo opportunity.

In the bar where we watched Obama's speech, we met a nice couple from Australia, Nicolette and Dan, who had come down from New York City on the last day of their U.S. vacation just to be in D.C. for election day.

I also broke my no-shots rule in honor of the President's victory. There's a story behind the ordering of the shots I'd rather not commit to print.