Fireworks, Family, and Times Gone By

Last night I made a little video comparing fireworks and sunsets, posing the musical question, "Which is Better?" Here it is:



Since then, I've been thinking about my memories of past Independence Days. Here are the ones that came to mind:

Awesome fireworks, with shaped displays, on the boardwalk at Seaside Park, NJ with my cousins, circa 1964, while my mom was in the hospital.

Boring fireworks seen from the Suburban Park parking lot with my family, circa 1970.

Fireworks on the beach at Cape Canaveral with my mom, July 4, 1976.

Fireworks at Hi Corbett Field while John collects Tucson Toros autographs, circa 1994. I think I took my mom there one year.

Fireworks at Disneyland, July 4, 2003. Best part was when John took an interesting picture of a kid watching a popcorn cart.

Lots of years in which I tried to photograph distant fireworks that barely clear neighborhood trees, 1998-2018. The one above was a composite from 2006.

A fire-less picnic at Inspiration Rock with John and my dad, 2013.

Photographing A-Mountain fireworks from the car while waiting for my friend, 2017. I actually watched from the convention center once, but mostly we don't bother.

A mediocre sunset at Gates Pass, solo, July 4, 2018.

What I'm realizing is that the memorable part - except maybe Seaside Park - isn't the fireworks at all. It's about where I was, who I was with, and what I was trying to do. I've never managed great fireworks photos, and that's part of it, and also the fact that I find most fireworks pretty boring. But more important has been the human connections. Spending the Bicentennial with my mom. Disneyland with John. Even seeing Spiderman with John this afternoon, and hoping he's started the charcoal for tonight's dinner.

I'm going to post this now, and try to spend some more quality time with John. I hope that whatever you are doing this holiday, it's a) with someone you love, and b) interesting, fun and memorable.

Fireworks optional.

Karen

Son of Jersey, Scholar of Syracuse

My dad, Frank E Funk, was born in Jersey City and raised in New Jersey, the only son in a family with four daughters. A high school graduate, he initially did't go to college, in part because he knew that war was coming:

I'd gotten out of high school in 1940, and you could tell the war was coming. You know, the march into Poland and all kinds of things. And Britain was in it early and so on. So I was saving money to go to college. Nobody else in my family had gone to college. I have four sisters.
So I didn't go to college. I went to work for a valves company and did all kinds of other things. Eventually, after Pearl Harbor, all young men wanted to get into the service, and most of us wanted to be a hot pilot. I went to get a physical and was rejected because of a deviated septum. I went and got it operated on and went back the same day. And I remember the doctor looked at me and pulled the cotton out and said, "I can't even see, but I can tell you've had an operation done on your nose. Accepted." And then you went to basic training, Atlantic City, then to a classification center in Nashville, where you had all kinds of tests. Then you'd go to the bulletin board, and if your name was on it in the right way, you'd go to an officer's school. If it wasn't you'd go to a gunnery school and be a noncom, or an enlisted man, a gunner. I evidently made it to navigation school at Monroe, Louisiana, and the government spent about $87,000 on each of us and taught us to navigate by the stars, celestial navigation, and then they sent us to Europe. And my sextant to do the star sighting was in a polished wooden box at the corner of my muddy tent in Italy. But if they needed to, they could have sent me the Pacific, you see. So that's the way it was.

He first came to Syracuse, NY in March 1943 as part of his training as a navigator for the Army Air Force. He didn't actually get to Europe until 1944, where he flew seven missions before bailing out of a (probably) sabotaged plane and ending up in Stalag Luft 1. When the prison camp was liberated, he was evacuated to France, where he met General Eisenhower:

Yeah, we were in Marseilles, on a chow line, ready to be shipped out. And usually, by boat, which gave them a chance to fatten us up on the way over to the States. Anyway, the story goes like this. We noticed this commotion, and here comes Ike Eisenhower and a whole retinue of people with him. And he stopped and it sounds like I'm making this up, but I swear, I'm not. He stopped the guy next to me and he said, 

"Where are you from, son?"  

And the guy said, "Kansas, sir."  

"Oh, the hell you are. You know, I'm from Kansas too," and they both laughed. And he says, "Got a question to ask you," says Ike. "Would you rather go home quickly, or in style?"  

And this kid, without missing a beat, said, "Both, sir." And he laughed and moved on. And that's a wonderful memory of a world renowned figure and humanizing. And he was that way with the troops, and it was genuine. You know, it wasn't phony. "Oh, the hell you are. I'm from Kansas." You know, it was like-- it made him very human and special.

Eventually, Frank made it back to the States, and went to college on the G.I. Bill:

When I first got in the service, as so many men were going in soon after Pearl Harbor that the classification center was jammed. So what they did was to send you to a campus in a college training detachment, and I went to Syracuse University. And so, I wanted to go, I knew it, and it was a beautiful city, and I wanted to go back to it, and I did. And eventually, you know, got my undergraduate degree there, on the GI bill. Went to Lehigh University in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania as an instructor, working on a master's. Finished my master's, went to Purdue University to get my doctorate in 1955.

He returned to Syracuse University in 1956, this time as Assistant (later Associate) Professor of Speech. I was born the following year. What I remember of his professorial days was my Mom driving me down to the University on the day JFK was shot, and leaving me sitting in a classroom at the Hall of Languages, drawing headstones.

In 1965, Frank became Assistant Dean at S.U.'s University College. About five years after that, he succeeded Cliff Winters as dean of U.C. He finished his 32-year career at Syracuse as Dean of University College and Director of Continuing Education.

In 1988 he retired and moved to Wilmington NC, where he quickly got involved in the community there, at the local NPR station, the Wilmington Railroad Museum and at First Presbyterian Church. He spent the last few years of his life in memory care here in Tucson.

This funny medieval-style outfit is from a Commencement in the 1970s. Is that Melvin Eggers next to him? Eggers was Chancellor at Syracuse for most of my Dad’s time there.

On this Father’s Day, I’m thinking of my dad, and wondering why I don’t have the same painful reaction to that holiday as I have to Mother’s Day. Perhaps it’s because my dad had a long, good life, my mom, not so much. In any case, this year I've been thinking about all these connections between Dad and Syracuse, NY, and with Syracuse University in particular. Although I moved away from Syracuse in 1979, the choices my Dad made all those years ago still echo through my own life.

Happy Father’s Day to all who celebrate it, whether or not your father is still around.

Karen

Frank Funk Vs. the Nazis

 A picture someone posted of Allies storming the beaches of Normandy tonight reminded me of my own dad's World War II experiences. He didn't talk about it much, but he spent time in a German POW camp, and saw the actual, historical Nazis close up.

From an interview with my dad, Dr. Frank E. Funk. Randall Library Oral History Collection, 1990 - Present right-pointing arrow Series 2: Southeast North Carolina (SENC) right-pointing arrow Sub-Series 2.10: Volunteers right-pointing arrow Item 7: Interview with Frank Funk, August 14, 2007

(Any typos or mispelling are from the quoted source.)

Frank Funk: As a World War II combat vet, I decided I would go [to a class on World War II]. And what was interesting to me is that while I had experiences during World War II, but I had a narrow view of a war, because of my own experiences., flying out of Italy in a B17 bomber as a navigator. But Wilbur's course gave me more of a global sense of that total war, including the Pacific as well as European war and all that.

I flew out of Foggia, which is north of Naples, as I say, in a B17 bomber. After three missions, I think, our plane went down in Czechoslovakia. We were captured by the old guard and taken to prison.

They took us to an interrogation camp where they tried to squeeze what they can out of you. It was an interesting experience, because they understand, if you get isolated and nobody talks to you, then you can play the good cop, bad cop. Bad cop suggests you might leave feet first. And good cop says, "For you, da var is over. Ve is flyers together. Ve understand these things, und have a zigaretten." And I said, "No thank you." 

So an interrogation camp, and then to an officers' camp. See, under the Geneva Convention, officers were not supposed to have to work, whereas enlisted me had to be in work camps. And so I was in Stalag Luft I north, about 60 miles from Sweden, north of Berlin, for seven months I think, seven or eight month. We eventually were liberated by the Russians, believe it or not, and they were very unhappy with us, because our high command had decided that the would keep us locked in, because if they let us scurry around the countryside, people would get in trouble, easily. We were half starved, and if you overate, you could actually die from acute gastritis and stuff. 

Anyway, I'm coming up to my favorite World War II story. So we were finally, after drinking vodka with the Russian high command and radioing frantically to France, we were flown out from a nearby airport to Marseilles in France. So here we are, ex Krieg Gefangeners, was the German name. Krieg for war, war prisoners, on a chow line, watching German POWs go through the line with their trays piled high with food, and we'd eaten sawdust bread and scooped maggots of the top of stew and so on. So that was not a very good thing for us to see, but we had tried to understand. And there was a commotion at the end of the chow line. You could tell from retinue that somebody important was coming along. By gum, it was Ike Eisenhower.

Yeah, we were in Marseilles, on a chow line, ready to be shipped out. And usually, by boat, which gave them a chance to fatten us up on the way over to the States. Anyway, the story goes like this. We noticed this commotion, and here comes Ike Eisenhower and a whole retinue of people with him. And he stopped and it sounds like I'm making this up, but I swear, I'm not. He stopped the guy next to me and he said, "Where are you from, son?" 

And the guy said, "Kansas, sir." 

"Oh, the hell you are. You know, I'm from Kansas too," and they both laughed. And he says, "Got a question to ask you," says Ike. "Would you rather go home quickly, or in style?" 

And this kid, without missing a beat, said, "Both, sir." And he laughed and moved on. And that's a wonderful memory of a world renowned figure and humanizing. And he was that way with the troops, and it was genuine. You know, it wasn't phony. "Oh, the hell you are. I'm from Kansas." You know, it was like-- it made him very human and special. That's my World War II story.

We had a quick home visit and then went to a convalescent hospital in St. Petersburg, Florida. And they had ex prisoners of war go there. They thought that we might have post traumatic stress syndrome. And so they gave us what is called truth serum, to have us talk about horrible things that happened and so on. Well I read recently, that don't assume that everybody has automatically post traumatic syndrome. I don't think I had a lot of it. I saw a guy get shot through the window, because we weren't supposed to be near the windows during an air raid. And somebody was drawing his picture and wanted him near the window for light. I saw a guy get shot because he went after a ball, and he thought the guard had nodded to say, yes you can get it, and the guard didn't. So, you know, and we were starving and all kinds of things. And we were shot at, as we went over targets and saw planes go down and so on. But anyway, then we talked earlier. We came back and got the GI Bill. I'd gotten out of high school in 1940, and you could tell the war was coming. You know, the march into Poland and all kinds of things. And Britain was in it early and so on. So I was saving money to go to college. Nobody else in my family had gone to college. I have four sisters.

So I didn't go to college. I went to work for a valves company and did all kinds of other things. Eventually, after Pearl Harbor, all young men wanted to get into the service, and most of us wanted to be a hot pilot [makes engine noise]. I went to get a physical and was rejected because of a deviated septum. I went and got it operated on and went back the same day. And I remember the doctor looked at me and pulled the cotton out and said, "I can't even see, but I can tell you've had an operation done on your nose. Accepted." And then you went to basic training, Atlantic City, then to a classification center in Nashville, where you had all kinds of tests. Then you'd go to the bulletin board, and if your name was on it in the right way, you'd go to an officer's school. If it wasn't you'd go to a gunnery school and be a noncom, or an enlisted man, a gunner. I evidently made it to navigation school at Monroe, Louisiana, and the government spent about $87,000 on each of us and taught us to navigate by the stars, celestial navigation, and then they sent us to Europe. And my sextant to do the star sighting was in a polished wooden box at the corner of my muddy tent in Italy. But if they needed to, they could have sent me the Pacific, you see. So that's the way it was.

After the war, I used-- yeah, I went back to Syracuse. Oh, I forgot. When I first got in the service, as so many men were going in soon after Pearl Harbor that the classification center was jammed. So what they did was to send you to a campus in a college training detachment, and I went to Syracuse University. And so, I wanted to go, I knew it, and it was a beautiful city, and I wanted to go back to it, and I did. And eventually, you know, got my undergraduate degree there, on the GI bill. Went to Lehigh University in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania as an instructor, working on a master's. Finished my master's, went to Purdue University to get my doctorate in 1955.

End quote.

Yes, it was a different time, but the same Nazi regime that imprisoned my dad also killed millions of Jews, gays and others for the crime of merely existing. The Nazis of yesteryear are now being emulated by twenty-somethings and others who carried Nazi flags, torches and guns in Charlottesville last weekend. Anyone who marched and chanted with such people, some carrying Confederate battle flags, some not, is allying himself or herself with evil. Anyone who equates the counter-protesters (many of them clergy, many of them trying to help and protect others, very few of them violent in any way) with armed and violent neo-Nazis and their allies as "equally to blame" for what happened in Charlottesville is giving aid and comfort to the forces of hatred and oppression.

Karen

The Many Obituaries of Dr. Frank E. Funk

If you follow me on Facebook or attend my church, you probably already know that my dad, Dr. Frank E. Funk, died early Friday morning last week. The memorial service in Tucson is this Thursday at 12:30, and the funeral and interment of his ashes will be at First Presbyterian in Wilmington, NC, probably the following Tuesday. even though my dad planned ahead, prepaid his funeral arrangements and had things all organized, there is still a lot to do.

The final arrangements for my dad are an interstate web of communications. My stepsisters are in Vermont and in Phoenix. The cities where people would care that my dad died are Syracuse, Wilmington and (a little bit) Tucson. Tucson obituary ad rates are exorbitant. Even with everything remotely interesting about his life omitted, the Tucson ad will be over $500. The Wilmington one will be much longer, covering his military service, professional career and Wilmington volunteerism. I just sent a  very long, Syracuse-centric version to Syracuse University, where he worked for 32 years, much of it as Dean of University College. And of course, there's always the Internet: my Facebook page, the page of a group dedicated to the 463rd Bomb Group for which my dad was a WW II navigator, this blog, Find-a-Grave and probably my website.

I've lost track of how many versions of the obit my stepsisters and I have labored over these past few days. There were cuts to the Tucson one, to the point at which - oops! - I temporarily left out mention of my stepmother! There was a cut to the Wilmington one to deliberately omit my own mother, who was out of the picture by the time he and Ruth moved there. There were additions to the Wilmington one to mention more of his volunteer and board member work in Wilmington, and to omit all mention of my time with him after he moved to Tucson. And there was a weird hybrid version that I put on Ancestry.com last night, filling in details around the ages of family members at the time of his birth and other genealogical details.

Sometime in the next few days, I'll put together the definitive, kitchen sink tribute to Dad. Watch this space.

Karen

Another Moment at a Light - Good Friday Edition

The Scene: The corner of Carondelet and Wilmot, one light south of St. Michael's. I'm driving my elderly Kia. My friend Kevin is beside me. The light is red. Also stopped at the light is a pickup truck with two guys in the cab. Their passenger window is open, as is my window. The truck's passenger gestures to get my attention.

TRUCK PASSENGER: Got any weed?
KAREN: No. I just came from church, dude!
PASSENGER (laughs): How was church?
KAREN (not about to explain the intricacies of serving as acolyte at a High Church Episcopal Good Friday service): Good.
PASSENGER: Did you pray for me?
KAREN (not about to explain that the dude is bound to qualify under at least one of the petitions prayed during the service): I will.

When I got home, John was watching The Big Lebowski.

God bless the doper at the light!

Karen

Lost and Found at the River's Edge

Art by Sherlock.

This morning I wrote a rant about revising Heirs of Mâvarin.  I wrote it as a series of tweets because I am trying to cultivate my Twitter presence a bit, after a photo I posted from Gallifrey One went viral last week. But for those of you who know about my decades-long struggle with the book, here's a bit more detail.

The whole point of Heirs is an exploration of how changing perceptions of who you are - which may be arbitrarily imposed on you - affect who you actually become. If you're told that everything you knew about yourself was a lie (real world equivalent: learning at age 16 that you were adopted and your original name is Mabel, or that your mother had an affair and your real dad is your Mom's friend Bill), how does that change your priorities and your sense of identity?

So Del and Crel learn separately that they are hidden royalty, a fairly common trope in fantasy, except that in many books the character either knows the truth all along (e.g. Aragorn in The Lord of the Rings) or gets the change of status at the end of the book (e.g. Shasta/Cor in The Horse and His Boy). Heirs is supposed to tackle the psychology of that change in status, which parallels Rani's journey of self-discovery after learning he is a monster (specifically a tengrem) and the son of monsters.

But here's the problem. For all these years I've had Jamek, the twins' supposed uncle, tell Crel the truth about herself the morning after Del runs away. That gives her three days of story time to react to the problem before Del learns the truth from Shela, although he's had a day and a half of entertaining the possibility. With my 150,000+ word novel now broken into three books, the first volume lacks a proper climax unless the twins learn the truth at the same time toward the end, preferably with some physical danger thrown in. This has the added bonus of the reader possibly being surprised at the same time as the characters, instead of being told something the reader knows already. (Mind you, the savvy reader will probably figure it out before the characters do, but there's a self-congratulatory aspect to that which can be almost as good as the surprise.) So everything Crel thinks and says for most of the book needs to change. That's kind of exciting, and necessary, but it makes for a big mess!

Last night I was at a meeting of the Tucson Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers group, which currently is in desperate need of more people who will actually show up. My friend Jan wanted more excitement and emotional reactions to events, more personal danger, and more direct involvement by my main characters. I disagreed with much of what she said, but it was very clear to me that the plot structure of the first third of the story does not work as a stand-alone novel. There are lots of trilogies in which the first volume is not a complete, self-contained story, but it should at least end with a bang and a resolution of sorts, while setting things in motion for the next book. As it stands now, Heirs of Mâvarin, Book One: River's Edge pretty much ends with a whimper. Crel meets a boy, and Del decides to continue his quest. Well, of course he does. Yes, he has to escape from a trap in the house at Liftlabeth, but that's a mere flourish.

But if Jamek lies to Crel again after Del runs away, then instead of thinking about being the princess while traveling to Thâlemar, Crel spends that time sussing out that Jamek is hiding something, and deducing the truth from hints dropped by tricky old Fayubi. She figures it out the same morning that Del does, and that becomes part of the payoff for River's Edge. I think that's right and necessary, but it completely changes her perspective in what she says and does. It also takes away the one thing that makes my use of the hidden royalty trope less of a cliché. Still, the second and third books will still get to explore the psychology of it all, and this time Crel won't have the advantage of a three day head start on the truth.

Another suggested change, along with several other suggestions I rejected, was to get Del into the action a bit on Day One of  the story, aside from his cameo in the opening scene. That makes sense for his character, since he starts out as a Tom Sawyer to Rani's Huck Finn, always getting in scrapes until events start him on the road to maturity. So last night, when I should have been sleeping and recovering from my cold, I wrote a scene in which Del and Crel argue about Del taking a break from mucking out stalls. It's a decent character bit but it tells us nothing we don't learn elsewhere, and it ends with Del defiantly leaving the stable anyway. My friend wanted me to have Del witness either the end of Rani's fight with the tengrem (somehow without seeing exactly what happened to Rani, the central mystery that drives the plot for another 20 pages), or the body being pulled from the river, with Del thinking it's Rani until later that night. But having him see something and not really see it doesn't quite work, especially since the very next scene reveals that the body is that of a stranger. There isn't any place Del can go on Day One that tells him or the reader anything useful, while holding back other revelations for later. If he can't do anything that advances the plot, he's better off mucking out stalls, with Crel blackmailing him to keep him out of trouble. And I'm not sure we need to see that on the page.

It should be an exciting, frustrating couple of weeks while I sort this all out!  If you have been one of my beta readers, or would like to be, let me know whether you'd like to come along on my journey of rediscovering my characters in the service of a new, improved story.

Karen

Round Robin: The Last Goodbyes, Part Three - Farewell to Manlius

In my previous two entries, Home Again: Part One and Round Robin Challenge: So Many Goodbyes, Part Two, I covered part of my response to the last-ever Round Robin Photo Challenge: Goodbye. I told you about the death of my only brother, Steve, and my trip east to arrange his funeral and burial. I've been saying goodbye to Steve for over a month now, taking care of all those arrangements you don't think of until a loved one dies with no money and no will.

But that's not the only goodbye that's been on my mind recently. Getting Steve into a cemetery in Dewitt, NY meant that I got to go "home" to the Syracuse, NY area, a place I had not visited since a brief stop to see my Dad in February, 1986. I was born in Syracuse, lived in Dewitt until I was four, and lived at 4967 Fayetteville-Manlius Rd, Manlius from the time we left Dewitt until I moved onto campus at Syracuse University. The house was sold that summer in the wake of my parents' divorce. The year was 1976.

Here is a picture I took of that house in 1971. I've tweaked it a number of times over the years.

After the burial, I drove John, Steve's friend Sharon and myself to see some of the sights in Manlius. I knew it had changed a lot since I grew up there.  I figured that the trip to bury Steve was probably my last chance ever to see my old home town, so off I went, with John and S. as my captive fellow travelers. My cousin Vereene tagged along in her own car.

I've always had a complicated relationship with Manlius. It's a place a many bad memories for me - but lots of good ones, too.

In the first of these entries, I identified this photo as my grandmother's old house on Pickwick Drive in Dewitt. It isn't. Apparently I didn't photograph that house. No, this is the old house on F-M Road.

From there we went on into the Village of Manlius, about a mile away. When I was a kid, I took the bus to school, but sometimes I walked home for one reason or another. Across the street from Manlius Elementary was Temple's Dairy Store, which sold penny candy. Tootsie Rolls, fireballs, candy straws and root beer barrels were a powerful inducement to take advantage of the crossing guard's presence and go buy a few treats. Temple's was also a frequent stop for my family, especially in the days of Sunday Blue Laws. Temple's was open on Sundays so one could buy bread and milk, and my two favorite kinds of doughnut: "headlights" and "tail lights." The place burned sometime in the past year or two. Sad.

 

Our first stop in the village was at the legendary ice cream stand known as Sno Top.  Started in 1957, it was where I used to go for a "twist dipped in cherry," and its menu has expanded to an amazing selection in the years since then. It was only steps away from Manlius Elementary (now long gone), the P and C supermarket (also long gone) and not far from the Swan Pond.  Memorial Day was never complete until I had an ice cream from Sno Top after the annual parade. Open seasonally (people don't tend to buy ice cream when it's 11 degrees and snowing), it always had a sign up all winter, "Watch for our humdinger opening next spring!" On my probably-last-ever visit to Sno Top, I was tempted to get my old "twist dipped in cherry," but opted for a Dole Whip, a favorite treat of Disneylanders who visit the Enchanted Tiki Room.

On the glass wall on one side of Sno Top, along with a calendar of special flavors, an ad for Sno Top T-shirts and caps (I got one of each) and other notices, was a series of photos about a factory building that still stands across the street from Sno Top, just north of where Temple's used to be. When I was a kid it was called Stone Machinery. Foolishly, when I was in first to third grade I thought they made machinery of stone! The one thing I knew for sure at the time was that Stone Machinery let off a siren at lunchtime that we called the "noon whistle." It could be heard all the way to my house. It was also used to summon the volunteer fire department.

According to the info up at Sno Top, the Stone Machinery building was originally Remington Foundry, circa 1825, which made plows and reapers. Over the years, under different names and ownerships, they made faucets for molasses barrels, sleds and the Yankee Flyer, knife blades, high speed cutting tools, some of them diamond studded (so Stone Machinery did make machinery using stones!), and eventually flameless candles. The factory currently stands empty, but at least it's still there. In one of the photos shown above you can see the Lincoln-Mercury dealership next door to Stone Machinery, which belonged to one of my neighbors on F-M Road. That's not there any more, either.

Fayette Street, where Sno Top is, dead ends into the other main drag, Seneca Turnpike. It was nice to see Manlius Cinema still there and showing movies. Growing up I saw at least three films there: The Incredible Journey, a terrible Disney film called The World's Greatest Athlete, and Woody Allen's Bananas. Describing a scene from the latter film to my friend Joel resulted in my parents making a rule not to close my bedroom door when there was a boy in the room. Manlius Cinema is now an art house of sorts.

A few doors down from the Manlius Cinema used to be Weber's Department Store, a three room establishment I used to visit often. Nowadays, one third of it is a cupcake shop, and the rest is a restaurant that serves wood-fired pizza. They were just opening up when we stopped there for a late lunch/early dinner, sitting at a wrought iron table outside.

Here is the inside of the restaurant, where a band was setting up to perform later. The room on the left was where Weber's used to sell clothing, especially underwear, jeans and, early on, girl scout uniforms. The room on the right was for greeting cards, china animals, Breyer Horses and (I think) candy. The room that is now a cupcake shop was for school supplies, a few toys and other items. That's where I bought my mom some Evening in Paris cologne sometime during elementary school.

After dinner, I quickly tracked down St. Ann's Church but didn't linger. It was a long and dangerous drive back to Cleveland, through construction and heavy rain on the New York State Thruway, which had nearly invisible lines between the lanes at times. The next day we shipped home some of Steve's stuff and ours, dropped other stuff off at Goodwill, bought a carry-on bag, returned the rental car, flew to Phoenix and drove home. Long day!

Back in May, 2004, the early days of my first blog on AOL, Musings From Mavarin, I wrote a piece called Seven Ancient Wonders of Manlius, NY. I got email about that entry for years. I followed it up with a bunch of school reminiscences in August 2004 and an entry called Manlius On My Mind in August, 2005. AOL Journals are long gone, but the entries still exist on Blogger. When I got on Facebook, I connected with a number of former classmates, most of whom were no more than acquaintances back in the day. And that's okay. Somehow, this social media stuff keeps me connected to a place I never expected to love, and will probably never see again. Farewell, Manlius!

Now, here's a pop quiz: what was the first topic for the very first Round Robin Photo Challenge? It came from this email from Carly:

Hi Karen  
I think for your photo challenge I would like to see you photograph your hometown. The place where you feel your best. A favorite coffeehouse or restaurant, park...wherever you find yourself feeling really good. Or to be different maybe a place in town you have always meant to go, but for some reason just never found the time. Any place. A clothing store, grocery store, theater...let your imagination run wild here. I can't wait to see what you come up with.  
Love, Carly :)

Unable to go to Manlius for this, I instead posted several days of pictures from Mount Lemmon outside Tucson, and followed it up with a few entries about Arizona souvenirs. It's fitting that tonight, on my last response to the last Round Robin Photo Challenge, I finally get to post pictures of the "real" hometown.

Please see the list below this one to check out the other Robins' entries, one last time. And many thanks to every single person who ever posted a Round Robin entry over the past 9+ years.

Karen

Linking List
as of Monday, October 14th, 12:35 AM

Karen Funk Blocher - Posted!
Outpost Mâvarin
http://outmavarin.blogspot.com

Freda - Posted!
Day One
http://fredamans.blogspot.ca

Ellen - Posted!
Ellen's Phlog
http://ellensphlog.blogspot.com

Carly - Posted!
Ellipsis
http://ellipsissuddenlycarly.blogspot.com

Sylvia D. - Posted!
SMD Paper Arts
www.smdgreetings.blogspot.ca

Round Robin Challenge: So Many Goodbyes, Part Two

(This is sort of a continuation of my previous entry: Home Again: Part One)

For the last-ever Round Robin Photo Challenge: Goodbye, I asked people to post pictures that convey the theme of saying goodbye - to a person, a place, a stage of life, even to this meme.  As you probably know by now, my brother Steve died on Saturday, September 6th, so I have been saying my goodbyes to him. Beyond that, my trip back East for his burial included a little side trip to the town where I grew up, a place I will probably never see again. And finally, I should say a proper goodbye to this meme, which has been part of my life since 2005.

 

This is the last picture I took of my brother Steve when he was alive. It was December, 2012, and we were in Wilmington, NC. My stepmother had died six months earlier, and it had become evident that my Dad could no longer live safely in his condo, even with round-the-clock unskilled home care. He had been in the hospital in November and almost died. So we four heirs - Steve, my two stepsisters and I - had gathered to make decisions, sign papers in a lawyer's office and close up Dad's place, taking an equal share of its contents and selling the rest to pay for Dad's care. This picture was taken as we visited Dad in a rehab facility. I don't think Dad knew who Steve was that day.

As for Steve, he had spent a good chunk of 2012 in hospitals and a rehab facility himself. He suffered from heart failure, kidney trouble, sleep apnea and edema. The spring of 2014 was sort of a rerun of Steve's 2012 troubles, with a serious leg infection (cellulitis with a bit of gangrene) as an added bonus. But he came through ICU and many rough moments, did his rehab and eventually got to go home. He even had a cataract operation. He was nervous about it before hand, but delighted with the results.

Here is the last photo Steve took with his Canon EOS. At the end, he was sitting in his apartment, enjoying his newly-restored vision and waiting for a pacemaker operation that never happened. Meanwhile, he used his great camera to take pictures off of the TV. 

This was the view from Steve's balcony. We grew up visiting Lake Ontario every summer, with occasional trips to Cape Cod or some other beach spot. I know he loved listening to the waves crashing into the shore of Lake Erie.

Anyway, we all thought he was doing very well, but on September 6th he fell in his tiny bathroom. He managed to call 911, when when the EMTs arrived he had a heart attack in front of them and died. It became my responsibility to fly to Cleveland, arrange for his funeral, sort out his papers, dispose of his furniture and other possessions, and arrange for his burial in Syracuse before returning to Cleveland for the flight home. And that is what I did. I also wrote a brief obituary:

STEVEN ERIC FUNK was "born in Bethlehem" - Pennsylvania, that is, to Frank E. Funk and Ruth Anne Johnson. Steve grew up outside Syracuse, NY, where he earned a Bachelor's degree from Syracuse University. A computer programmer-analyst, he also had a lifelong love of Turkish Angora cats. Heart disease led to several hospitalizations before his death from a heart attack after a fall at his home on Saturday, September 6. Steve is survived by his father, his sister, Karen Funk Blocher (husband John) and numerous cousins. In lieu of flowers, the family requests contributions to the National Wildlife Federation or the cat shelter of your choice. Funeral Mass was Saturday, September 13, 2014 at St. Francis of Assisi Church, Gates Mills, OH. Interment was Monday, Sept. 15, 2014 at St. Mary's Cemetery, DeWitt, NY. Buried next to his grandfather, Ambrose Alexis Johnson (1891-1950). Please sign obituary guest book on Cleveland.com.

Here is a Google+ "story" that covers my trip Back East in detail. Warning: it contains a few shots taken at the funeral home, and a few taken at the burial.

Beyond all that, Steve was my big brother, my friend and protector when I was young. Later in life I mostly tried to return the favor. Seven years my senior, at one point as we were growing up he liked the idea of having me call him Jem while he called me Scout. We both read To Kill a Mockingbird that year. Occasionally he even let me hang out with him and his friends. If my parents were fighting, he tried to cheer me up by playing with my stuffed animals. 

As an adult, Steve lived far away from my parents and me. In fact, the four of us lived in four different states, hundreds or thousands of miles apart. Steve did his best to hang onto family connections as best he could. He was the family genealogist, and he kept in touch with Dad's sisters (particularly Aunt Marie, the only one who is still alive) and our cousins. Politically, he drifted to the right as I drifted to the left, which made for a few uncomfortable emails.But there was never any doubt that we loved each other. He was my brother! My only sibling, irreplaceable.

Steve believed in the Rainbow Bridge idea, the story that dead pets hang around in a beautiful meadow, waiting to be reunited with their people when they die. If anything like that is true, Steve is hanging out with a number of beloved cats about now.

I have at least one more entry to do here at the Outpost to finish up, probably two. I'll get that done on Monday, and make my rounds. Meanwhile, check out the other Round Robin entrees:

Linking Listas of Monday, October 14th, 12:35 AM

Karen Funk Blocher - Posted!
Outpost Mâvarin
http://outmavarin.blogspot.com

Freda - Posted!
Day One
http://fredamans.blogspot.ca

Ellen - Posted!
Ellen's Phlog
http://ellensphlog.blogspot.com

Carly - Posted!
Ellipsis
http://ellipsissuddenlycarly.blogspot.com

Sylvia D. - Posted!
SMD Paper Arts
www.smdgreetings.blogspot.ca

Karen

Home Again: Part One

Where is home? Is it this house, where we've lived for about twenty years, only to frequently revisit the question of whether to fix it up or move to a better house? Is it Tucson, Arizona generally, where we've lived since 1986, after driving around the country looking for someplace it wasn't winter? Do we go back to Manlius, NY, where I lived from age 4 through age 18, or still further, to Dewitt, NY, where I lived before Manlius?

Whichever option you choose, I've been there this month - plus Ohio, a state I lived in from 1979 to January 1986. I didn't get to Columbus, where I actually lived at that time, but still. Ohio.

This was not some lighthearted nostalgic tour. Well, it was toward the end, a bit.

This was me arranging my only sibling's funeral and burial.

I'll have a proper write-up about Steve in two weeks, as part of my last-ever Round Robin Photo Challenge entry. For now, I'll just point you toward his obituary, his listing on my family tree on Ancestry.com, his Find A Grave listing and his Facebook page. I've put in a bit of time today, adding listings and photos and facts. None of those web pages tell the story of my trip, though: the slog through flooded streets to get to Sky Harbor Airport, the rescheduled flights, heartbreaking days spent sorting papers and disposing of medical equipment, and so on. I'll get to all that later. Some of it I've already mentioned on Facebook and Google+.

But after the funeral in Gates Mills, Ohio and a seven hour drive through an unreasonable number of construction zones to Dewitt, NY for the burial, I did insist on going "home" for probably the last time.

First stop: the old house on York Road in Dewitt.

I'm not sure this is the house Steve picked out years ago as being the right one, but it's the one that matches my memories. There's an odd-shaped architectural detail over the door that I found intriguing, even at age 4. The house used to be white with black trim, I'm pretty sure.

Second stop: Pickwick Road.

Again, I was mostly going by my memories from childhood, but my source confirms: this was the house my Grandmother and Aunt Flora lived in in the 1960s, before moving to Fairfax, VA. The house used to be red. My grandmother, Flora Missellier DuFour Johnson Ballantyne, was a real estate agent who ran for Congress twice in the 1940s. She also once stayed at the same flooded hotel in Venice as Thornton Wilder. Her Cream of Wheat wasn't lumpy like Mom's, and consequently wasn't as good. She kept dog biscuits in her kitchen for the Cocker spaniel next door, Candy. Candy once got so excited that she accidentally tried me to a tree in the neighbor's back yard.

My aunt, Flora M. Johnson, was an engineer who lived briefly in Guam and later helped to design the Interstate Highway System before retiring early due to migraines. She gave up a child for adoption, a fact I didn't learn until the mid 1970s. Her daughter did not learn her relationship to Flora until well after that. I finally got to meet my cousin Vereene at Steve's burial, which is the main reason we made a pilgrimage to this house.

Next stop: Manlius. But not tonight.

Karen

Round Robin: These Eyes

For the Round Robin Challenge: Where'd You Get Those Eyes?, I asked to see  "one or more close-up photographs of any eyes you like." I have a mixture of old photos and new to show you, although I'm running a bit late in posting them. Apparently the latest update to iTunes did something nasty to my firewall, and neither Chrome nor Firefox would let me online until I found a way to fix it!

So anyway, here are the latest, not necessarily the greatest:

Cayenne: one eye has a scar beside it that predates her coming to us. The other has a mole that the vet will remove if she ever has surgery for some other reason. It's not worth the expense otherwise.

Kito: I'm frequently asked whether he is blind in that pale blue eye, and some people even think it's a glass eye! Nope! Some dogs just have two different colored eyes, both fully functional. The trait is called heterochromia.

Karen: Note the scar above my eye, an artifact from my header into a sidewalk a year ago.

And here are a few shots from 2006:

 I must have been tired. As usual.

 An edit to turn myself into an alien. I tweaked it a little bit tonight.

And finally, here is a shot from an eye exam in 2008. This was probably when I was told that I was at risk for retinal detachment. I had a retinal tear in June, 2013, but I don't seem to have photographed anything but the eye surgeon's waiting room on that occasion. That was a scary weekend!

Karen

Linking List
as of Saturday, August 9th, 1:40 AM MST

Karen - Posted!
Outpost Mâvarin
http://outmavarin.blogspot.com

Carly - Posted!
Ellipsis
http://ellipsissuddenlycarly.blogspot.com Karen

Round Robin: Wild Night with Wolfie

I admit it. This week's Round Robin Challenge: Wild Ways wasn't the most straightforward one we've had. I asked to see pictures of "the wild ways of any living thing." It could be an actual wild animal, a wild plant, or even a pet or a human being wild in their behavior. I was kind of expecting to post archived photos of wild animals. whether found out in the desert, up a mountain or in the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum.

I wasn't expecting to meet Wolfie.

 

She's not really a wolf, and her name isn't Wolfie. It may be Izzy, but that was just a name in a Facebook comment that may or may not have been from someone who knows her. She came into my life at 7 PM on Monday, and left it about 1 PM on Tuesday.

What happened was this: I was coming home from seeing my Dad when I saw a coyote - no, a dog - wandering up a street near my home. I stopped the car, and she stood in front of it, out of sight from me, but I knew she was there. I rolled down my window, and she came and put her paws on the window. I got out and opened the car door, and she jumped in. I figured any dog with that little fear of strange cars would be in danger on the street overnight, so I took her home. She happily followed me into the house, much to the consternation of Cayenne and Kito!

 

Next thing to do was to place a "found" ad on Craigslist, something I've done once before after finding a dog in the street. It was free; that wasn't the problem. The problem was getting a picture of her. This dog would not stand still for two seconds for the first few hours she was with us! She was constantly exploring, or trying to play with Cayenne and Kito - much more energetically than they were willing to do.

 

 She was quite friendly and affectionate, which also didn't sit well with Kito...

..or Cayenne.

I eventually got an acceptable photo and placed my ad:

This friendly young dog came up to my car about 7 PM Monday, 6/23. Sweet female, very dusty, hungry, no collar, tags, etc. Have her at my house a block or two from where I found her. Identify to claim. Thanks! (Sorry for the poor picture quality; she hasn't stopped moving since she got into the house!)

 I also wrote her up on Facebook. It was about this time that I settled on Wolfie as a temporary name.

Between her exploring (including sniffing at household poisons, so we moved them) and pestering the other dogs, there was no way she could be left unsupervised. I put her on a leash and walked her around the neighborhood, hoping she would lead me to her home, but the house she liked (near where I found her) had no doorbell and nobody answered my knock. I took her back to our house.

We put her outside a few times, but she would scratch on the laundry room door, to the point where I worried she might destroy it. So I left her on the leash and kept her by me all night. Eventually I managed to get about 90 minutes of sleep, sitting up on the couch with her leash still tightly in my possession. This dog was absolutely exhausting!

By morning I had not heard from the owner, and there was no "lost" ad for her yet on Craigslist. But I did have an email from a group called Lost Dogs Arizona. They have a Facebook page for helping to reunite dogs with their owners, helpful FAQ pages for lost dog owners and finders, and even a reward poster generator. 

I took Wolfie for another walk, but got no closer to finding the right house. None of the neighbors I spoke with knew where she belonged. And that one house still had nobody answering the door.

By this time it was clear that we could not wait for the owner to find my ad or the Facebook listing. I updated the listings to indicate that I would have to take her to a shelter if her owner did not get in touch soon. Next I took Wolfie to St. Michael's while I printed out the poster. She came with me as I stapled five of them up around the neighborhood. Then I drove her to the Humane Society of Tucson.

The block the Humane Society was on had a Street Closed sign and barriers in front of it, due to sewer repair by the city. I eventually found an alternate route and took her inside, having failed to reach them on the phone. I had read online that one needs an appointment to give up a dog to them, but I figured that I could make the appointment in person.

The people there were very nice and helpful, except that they couldn't help me. The first available appointment to turn her in was not until Monday the 30th. There was a $35 ($30?) fee, and she would need her DAP (Diphtheria/Parvo) shot first. The alternative was to take her to Pima Animal Care Center, better known as "the pound." They assured me that Wolfie was a year-old purebred Husky, highly desirable and extremely unlikely to be euthanized if her owner didn't claim her. When I said she was too much dog for me to care for, I was told that huskies are too much dog for most people, being high-energy escape artists, bred to be able to run in front of a sled all day. Sometimes they go through several owners before finding one capable of hanging onto them. I also learned that Wolfie had recently been groomed, a good indication of an owner who cared. However, she still had no collar, no locator chip, and no sign of obedience training. I kept thinking about Jack London and The Call of the Wild.

So Wolfie and I went across town to PACC. We had to wait outside in the 90+ degree shade for about 40 minutes for our turn to come in, during which time a dog waiting in a car after having been hit by someone else died for lack of immediate medical attention. So sad! I turned Wolfie in, gave the PACC person info to complete the paperwork, took note of the dog's ID number, collected my collar, bandana and leash, and left.

Shortly after I got back across town, I got an email from someone directing me to a Craigslist ad that had finally been placed for the lost dog. That was definitely Wolfie's picture! I called the owner, and asked what part of town the dog had been lost from. "Uh, actually, I just got her back, here at the pound."

I told her I was the one who took her to PACC, said I was glad she had her back, and wished her a pleasant week. I don't think she said thank you. She may not have believed I was the one who helped her dog. Maybe she felt that Wolfie would have been better off left to wander home on her own. Maybe she was annoyed at the steep fee PACC charges if you let your dog go missing and it's turned in there.

But I still think I did the right thing.

Someone asked on Facebook what the dog's real name was. I had not asked. But someone posted another comment. All it said was, "Izzy."

Karen

Linking List
as of Saturday, 6/28/2014, 2:30 AM MST

Karen - Posted!
Outpost Mâvarin
http://outmavarin.blogspot.com

Teri - Posted!
A Creative Walkabout
http://a-creative-gonewalkabout.blogspot.com/

Round Robin: Age Is Relative

For the Round Robin Challenge: Really Old, I asked to see photos of people, places or things at least 60 years old, and preferably at least a century old. I think I had some idea of photographic historic buildings or old ruins, that sort of thing. But it's been a busy couple of weeks for me, and who am I kidding? When I think of great age these days, I think of my Dad. He turned 91 years old this past February. He probably won't make it to the century mark, but who knows?

My Dad has dementia, and week by week he loses a little more of who he was.  May 10th was National Train Day, and I took him down to the Historic Depot, where an N-scale model railroad layout had been set up in the vintage Amtrak waiting room. This should have been a neat thing for him, because a) he used to be an avid model railroader, working in N-scale, b) he used to be president of the Wilmington Railroad Museum, and c) even in the past month or two he has shown interest in tiny scale models of things. But on that day, he declined to go up to the model train setup and take a look.

 I thought it was because he was tired (and he was), but we were there at least an hour, and he never did agree to get up and look at the trains.

He's also losing his ability to remember some fairly basic concepts we take for granted. On Train Day we also stopped at the Kon Tiki for lunch. He doesn't focus on the menu well enough any more to really choose his own food, and even before this he tended to make bad food decisions, solely on the basis of lowest price. ("No, Dad, that's the wine list. Look at this page where the sandwiches are.") So on that particular Saturday I ordered him a chicken sandwich(?) and a dinner salad. At first he was eating croutons and cucumber slices with his fingers, not having put the salad dressing on it. Thinking he might not want the Italian dressing I'd ordered for his salad, I gave him my leftover thousand island dressing. He promptly spread this on a slice of banana bread and ate it. More recently, I showed him how to crack open a peanut, and more recently still, he didn't understand how to consume a root beer float. He kept stirring and stirring it with both the straw and the spoon, and ultimately ate and drank very little of it.

Some things are still in his head, though, including what a red light means, and the idea that he should sit in the driver's seat. Last Saturday I drove him up to the top of Mount Lemmon - not to Marshall Gulch past the village of Summerhaven, but taking the right fork past Ski Valley and continuing until we reached a road block a few miles later. I don't think I'd been that far up the mountain in 20 years, if ever. We parked in a little lot up there, and Dad chose to get out, only to return to the car after about two minutes - it was too chilly up there for him, and the air was too thin. I was taking pictures and not paying close attention, and when I reached the car, there he was on the driver's side. I told him his was NOT going to drive down the mountain, and fortunately he acquiesced. It's a good thing that I am careful nowadays not to leave the car running or the keys in the car when he's with me and I'm not actively driving.

I found something else last weekend that is also very old. In our library was a food storage bag containing stuff of Dad's that I'd never seen before, presumably out of one of his boxes of keepsakes that we packed up in December 2012. Along with his Bachelor's and Master's diplomas, a very old kid's book, his childhood autograph book (signed by family and classmates) and two pocket New Testaments, I found a pocket memo notebook. In it I found a list of family birthdays, several lists of addresses, and a two-page timeline of Dad's service in World War II. Apparently in 1943 he wrote down when he was sworn in (Dec. 15, 1942), began active duty (Feb. 23, 1943, two days after his 20th birthday), and the four places he was assigned to Stateside in 1943 (Atlantic City, Syracuse, Nashville and finally Monroe LA for flight school). His handwriting is different on the next page, where he recorded that he entered advanced navigation school at Selman Field, LA on Feb. 27, 1944 ("approx," he says), graduated July 3, 1944 as a Navigator-Flight Officer, experienced a Delay en Route, and finally reported to Lincoln Army Air Base, Lincoln NB, July 14, 1944.

He never got around to recording in this memo book when he got to Foggia, Italy, his seven missions, his capture and imprisonment at Stalag Luft One, his liberation in mid-May 1945, his return, hospitalization and discharge. I know from his Library of Congress Veteran's History Project page that he was with the 772nd Squadron, 463rd Bomb Group, but it's not something he ever talked about in my presence except on one memorable (for me!) day in January 2011. He also did a long interview and a living history recording around 2010, so there are some records of what my Dad did all those years ago. Which is good, because he mostly doesn't remember being a veteran at all.

As old as Dad is, he's not the oldest person I've known. My friend Margaret is two weeks older and in much better shape cognitively, and years ago my other friend Eva made it to age 104. But even that great age is pretty ephemeral compared with the mountains I love to drive on, or this planet we keep endangering.

But human life has meaning, and each individual life has meaning, even after 91 years, when brain function falters and much of who the person was has been lost. He's still my Dad, and he still is glad to see me each day. And I still love him.

Karen

You know what? I bet Carly's entry this week is much more cheerful than mine....

Linking List
as of May 31st, 2014, 2:53 AM MST

Karen - Posted!
Outpost Mâvarin
http://outmavarin.blogspot.com

Carly - Posted!
Ellipsis
http://ellipsissuddenlycarly.blogspot.com