Writing a book...and celebrating

Just two of our 68 horses

Twenty-five years ago this month, my husband Peter and I flew to a New York auction and bought the former Minnesota State Fair carousel. We carried a letter of credit from US Bank for more than a million dollars; it was a loan to our nonprofit organization backed by the City of St. Paul. If we hadn't pulled off that purchase (and a lot of fundraising to repay the loan), the 75-year-old carousel would have been broken up and its 68 horses sold to private collectors. Instead, our volunteers have restored the carousel and operate it for the public under the name Cafesjian's Carousel. We'll celebrate its 100th birthday in 2014.

By many measures, we should not have been able to succeed.But we did, and now, all these years later, I'm writing a book about the history of the carousel including our campaign to save it. I put off this project for years, but we want the book published before the carousel opens for its centennial season on May 1. So I won't be writing a lot of inspired blog posts in the near future, but I'm trying not to disappear entirely.

for Thanksgiving.

Making pumpkin pie...

So I'm indulging myself with one sweet grandchild story. We picked up the kids after school yesterday (Friday) and brought them to our house, where their parents would pick them up an hour or two later. Both kids do lots of real cooking, but they still enjoy their toy food and make-believe cookware. Augie had decided Wednesday that we would have a tea party Friday afternoon.

Having holiday tea...

In preparation Augie laid out a scarf and a doll blanket near the Christmas tree, and on them he placed our tiny plastic tea party settings. He hauled in the big ceramic pot that he uses as a soup kettle and tossed in toy vegetables, which "cooked" for two days. We cut a real tea cake and brought out some grapes, and we used holiday mugs for individual beverage choices. Augie was so excited to stir the soup and serve the cake and make sure everyone was having a good time.

and dancing The Nutcracker

ViMae decided that her contribution would be to act out part of The Nutcracker, using the big nutcracker from our mantle. She danced with grace and joy, and then Augie joined in as the Toy Soldier and Daddy became the Mouse King. The Toy Soldier lost his sword, "Clara" threw her shoe, and the Mouse King was vanquished. Hurrah!


I relished all of this, knowing that the light was too dim to get good action shots but that the memories will live forever in the hearts of the lucky "audience." Whatever your holiday circumstances, I hope that you will rediscover some sweet memories from the past and make a few new ones to carry you forward. 

Sometimes life gives you a little push...

My trendy new glasses

I am a procrastinator. Not about everything, just about things I don't really want to do or can't quite figure out how to do. Which covers quite a lot, I must admit. Sometimes when I delay making a choice, fate intervenes and does it for me, and most of the time things work out for the best. Or at least it feels that way.

Case in point, I was overdue for an eye exam. My doctor has been monitoring me for potential macular degeneration and potential glaucoma. Once a year he puts me through a lot of tests and says my sight hasn't changed enough for new glasses. This guy is very popular; it takes months to get an appointment with him. So I have wanted to believe I was getting the best care, but something was bugging me.

As I was leaving my appointment last year, I mentioned to the tech that I wasn't given a new prescription for eyeglasses, but I was certain my vision was a little worse. The tech said, "Well, that won't change until you have surgery." Huh? At the time, I didn't even want to know what that meant. My eyes were dilated and I needed to manage to drive home, and I decided I'd think about it "later."

To tell the truth I avoided thinking about it. But I noticed last spring that I couldn't read road signs until I was right upon them...something I'd have taken for granted except that Peter could read them from much farther away. And at the ballpark, he would point out an ad on the outfield fence and I couldn't read it.

I was due for my usual exam in September--a visual field test on one day followed by a dilated exam by The Doctor Himself a few days later. Around that time my clinic sent a letter announcing that they would be adding another doctor in January and I could feel free to set up an appointment with him. I wasn't sure...would he be any good? Should I leave My Doctor? I never got around to deciding.

One morning a couple of weeks ago I got out of the car in the Perkins parking lot, tripped, and fell. On my face. Again. I wasn't badly damaged this time, but my glasses were scratched enough to impair my vision--which, as we know, wasn't that good to begin with. So after breakfast Peter drove me to Lenscrafters. I had never used them, but he has been very impressed with their service and speed, both of which appealed to me at the moment. They couldn't repair the old glasses, but they could get me in the very next day for an eye exam with an eye practice located right there in their shop. I said okay. I thought I'd let them test my vision and get some glasses, and then probably see my regular guy about the bigger problems.

To his credit, the optometrist I saw the next day did a very thorough exam. Moreover, he was using more modern equipment than my regular doctor has, and he was able to show me pictures of a very slight spot in the macula, and slight narrowing of the ocular nerve, sometimes associated with glaucoma. He wants me back in a couple of months to see whether there are changes.

Meanwhile, though, he asked whether my regular doctor had ever mentioned cataracts. And there it was. No, I said, he never mentioned them but his tech said something about surgery.

"I recommend you get at least your left eye done within a couple of months. I'm referring you to a surgeon; her office will call you."

He wasn't even going to prescribe new glasses, since the scrip will change after surgery. But I needed them, and I already had learned that Lenscrafters will replace your lenses free if your prescription changes within three months. So I'm sporting new glasses (which marginally improve my vision and aren't all scratched up and besides, I like them) and I'll be having cataract surgery before long. Friends tell me it's not a big deal, though I will be nervous about the chance of something going wrong. On the other hand, there is a big chance that my vision will be a whole lot better!

This new doctor said the macular degeneration shouldn't be an issue, at least for a long time yet. And if glaucoma seems to be a threat, he'll start medication.

Maybe if I had seen my regular eye doctor I'd have learned all this and be in the same situation I'm in now. But I've made the change and I'm not looking back. The new doctor and the surgeon are both covered under my health insurance plan, I'm moving forward, and with any luck I'll see even better one of these days. I thank the universe for pushing me into this, but I'd rather not fall again for a while, if you don't mind.

One more thing...Lenscrafters employees are unusually helpful and personable, but that's not why I wrote this. They were just a supporting cast in this particular little drama. Still, they could teach all businesses a few things about customer relations. :)

Happy Thanksgivukkah...

Two of my favorite people built a menorah from a Lego kit. They also made the pumpkin pies for today's dinner. They lead my list of things for which I am thankful today. Sending warm wishes your way.

Fifty years ago today

I was coming out of a journalism class at Marquette University when a couple of classmates bounded up the stairs shouting, “The President has been shot!”

I don’t think they said the word “dead,” or if they did I wasn’t going to believe it without knowing more. The students in question were editors of the campus newspaper, and they were headed for the closet where a venerable teletype machine clattered out breaking news. As soon as new information came across the wire, they would be able to rip the story off the machine. But I didn’t wait around.

I walked in a daze to my dorm. I looked—maybe stared—at every person I passed, wondering whether they had heard the news. It didn’t seem that anyone had. I turned on my radio—it never occurred to me to go downstairs to the TV lounge where a group was gathering.. I listened, wanting answers that never came. How could this happen, in this country, in this day and age? That was the day my generation lost its innocence.

I left early Friday evening for a religious retreat, where we spent the weekend in prayer and silent meditation. By the time I got back to my dorm Sunday, Lyndon Johnson was president, Lee Harvey Oswald was dead, and Marquette had decided to close early for Thanksgiving. So I boarded a Greyhound for an overnight 14-hour trip home. The rest of the world had been watching television, absorbing heart-wrenching scenes and shocking details, and dealing with their thoughts and emotions. But I had been in two alternate universes—a retreat and a bus trip.

When I got home, the television was on. I saw JFK’s casket lying in state as people filed by in tears. I watched the funeral, learned the word cortege, was haunted by the riderless horse. I saw Jackie, Bobby, and Teddy striding down the street looking grimly determined and, I thought, angry. And why shouldn’t they be? Within days, Life magazine brought out a special issue; I rushed to buy it and I paged through it again and again, soaking in the photos. At a church bazaar the Saturday after Thanksgiving I heard some women talking about Jackie—how she had been so brave, how she hadn’t seemed to cry, how when you looked at the pictures you could see her sadness and you knew she had indeed cried. They were relieved to know she was real.

Through it all, for days and weeks, it stayed with me, a sense that something was terribly wrong. I know now that it was grief, pure and simple. Grief for a president I didn’t appreciate until he was gone, grief for his family whose beauty could not protect them from tragic loss, and grief for our nation, which no longer seemed so shiny and promising.

At the time, I thought something had changed. Today I would say Camelot was an illusion, that ugliness and privilege and corruption and violence were present behind the gauzy curtains and JFK’s death merely showed us what was possible. Pearl Harbor had been a shock for my parents’ generation, and the attacks of 9/11 would have a similar effect on my daughter’s generation. But that doesn’t change the fact that I was profoundly sad.

Today as I write this I recall details from 1963 and I recall how I was again brought to tears just a few years ago by exhibits and films at the Sixth Floor Museum at the old Texas Book Depository. Fifty years after John Kennedy’s assassination, I am feeling that same grief again. I am wishing that my grandchildren would never have to learn that the unthinkable can indeed happen right here in the USA. And I know that wish will not come true.