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Yesterday, August 26th, I had lunch with my 2nd cousin, Nany, from the branch of my mother's family that settled in Argentina after World War I. Nany's daughter, Mariana, my 2nd cousin once removed, lives in Brooklyn & found me through the Internet in 2004. Mariana joins us for holidays, comes to our Shore house, and once hosted a delicious Argentinean BBQ in Brooklyn. In 2005, Nany and her husband Guido came to the U.S. to visit Mariana and we gathered for a first-time family gathering at the Shore. Nany--who speaks English, which is good because I don't speak Spanish, although I've tried and will try harder--and I are in our early 60s and it feel as if we've known each other all our lives. Nany and Mariana are both wonderful, loving, vivacious, and smart women!
Linda took this picture at a restauant in Chinatown--Nany and Mariana came by subway from Brooklyn and we drove up from the Shore. I'm holding two beautiful potholders that Nany's mother Dora crocheted for me. Dora is 91 and I remember her trip to the U.S. in about 1959. My mother met me after school one day and said, "Come on, we're driving to New York City to pick up my cousin Doritza." In those days, it was about an 14-hour trip. The way back, I remember, my mother and Doritza talking in a combination of languages--German, Croat, Spanish, and my mother periodically translating for me.
Meeting Nany has finally cleared up a mystery that haunted my mother (she died in 1997)--the identity and fate of her birth mother, a true story I'll write about later.
Twenty years ago I wrote Grand Canyon Magic, an illustrated memoir of my 13-day-white water raft trip down the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon. My husband Bob (we are now divorced) had suggested we take the trip to mark our twentieth wedding anniversary. All together, thirteen people were on the trip--six paying passengers--"peeps" in river guide jargon and seven crew member, a large crew because of additional people training to be guides. The picture is of me in the bow of the raft paddling through a rapid. Note my name on the strip of duct tape on my life jacket; we joked that that was so the guides could identify our body after we capsized and drown! Obviously I survived the trip, although I did capsize and bob/swim through a rapid in forty-eight degree water.It was such an amazing experience that I want to share it with you by periodically posting excerpts from Grand Canyon Magic on my blog. Pictures too. I'll use the title Grand Canyon Magic for the excerpts.
On August 14, 1935, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR) signed the Social Security Act. The woman in the picture is Secretary of Labor Frances Perkins, the subject of my biography A Woman Unafraid: The Achievements of Frances Perkins.
Perkins was the first woman in the United States cabinet and the architect of some of the most far-reaching and important reforms and social legislation ever enacted in America, including the establishment of Social Security. FDR had insisted that Perkins head the committee that created the Social Security Act: "You care about this thing," he told her. "You believe in it. Therefore I know you will put your back to it more than anyone else, and you will drive it through." And she did.
Perkins invited members of Congress who had fought for the bill to attend the signing ceremony, and she had enough pens for FDR to use as he signed the copies of the bill to give one to each person present. Except one for herself.
FDR noticed. "Frances, where is your pen?
"I haven't got one," she replied.
Turning to his secretary, Marvin McIntyre, FDR said, "All right, give me a first class pen for Frances."
"It is a great satisfaction to see the foundation stone laid in a security structure which aims to protect our people against the major hazards of life," Perkins told reporters.
Frances Perkins died at the age of eighty-five on May 14, 1965. Several years before her death, she had talked about the state of the world. "I hear people say that the world is in a crisis . . . . I think crisis has occurred in the world's history many times. I'm glad to say that in those other crises we didn't have radio, television, and the movies to run it up until everybody died of terror. . . . You can't do any of the things we did in the early part of the century if you're afraid. . . . You just can't be afraid . . . if you're going to accomplish anything."
For an NPR segment on Frances Perkins, see the link on the home page at www.pennycolman.com.
Paddling our kayak on Barnegat Bay early Sunday morning (8/12/07) we headed for one of the islands to the north of our bungalow. In a channel on the east side, we saw a company of 26 Mute Swans (white with orange bills) swimming in a group, slightly to the north of that group 2 Mute Swans were feeding, in between swam a Black Swan--gorgeous black feathers with bit of white feather on the wing edges and a bright red bill!!!! We stilled our paddles and watched and watched. According to our Sibley's bird book, Black Swans are an exotic species. They breed in the southeast and southwest regions of Australia (one is depicted on the flag of Western Australia). A prized ornamental waterbird --and it is elegant--Black Swans are found in public and private collections in Europe and the U.S. The one on Barnegat Bay undoubtedly escaped from a public or private collection in the U.S.We continued paddling around the island and observed 6 adult osprey and 2 or 3 young osprey in a nest built on a wood platform on stilts (the largest number we've seen in seven summers). All and all a thrilling journey, except for the green-headed flies that ignored Linda and feasted on me!
Today, we returned to Englewood & took Sophie to the Bronx Zoo (Sophie & her mother are leaving tomorrow to spend a month in Europe visiting family). She surprised me by saying she wanted to ride a camel, so we did--it was fun! Watched several performances by three marvelous actors--Brian, Trevor and Gail who are member of a terrific drama group--Wildlife Theater. We loved their energy, sense of fun, effective environmental lessons, and, of course, their acting and singing.
I'm inching my way forward with shaping the structure of my biography of the friendship between ECS & SBA. Once I get it, I'm thinking I'm going to write in sections instead of starting at the beginning and working my way through to the end. I'll write in section not necessarily in chronological order. Why? Because I'm curious how that would work & curiosity is a good way to keep me & my writing engaged and fresh.
For several days, I've been immersed in figuring out my next book--a biography of the friendship between the legendary fighters for women's rights--Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony. Figuring out for me means finding the structure that ends up as the table of contents. It's about what to put in, what to leave out, what to connect to what, what to highlight, themes, etc. I'm at our bungalow, a really small house, on a barrier island off the coast of NJ--that probably sounds pretension, but it isn't, it's merely descriptive. Our very small house is on a lagoon so I can lift my kayak over the bulkhead into the water and paddle out to Barnegat Bay. To the east, the ocean is just a 5 minute walk. It's great to be here because the lure of outside activities--bike riding, walking, kayaking, swimming--overrides my tendency to forget to exercise when I'm immersed in a writing project. That's what happens when I'm writing at home--I just sitand write and write and write and write. Yesterday during my bike ride a structure came to me--knitting something with a pattern, i.e., I've got two main skeins of yarn--ECS (I'm thinking she's orange) and SBA (perhaps green) and I'll be picking up stitches from other skeins as I go--that's roughly the structure I "saw" as I pedaled along.
