Adrian Lewis-Evans

Many years ago, my sister worked with an English lady, Christine Coles, at a bank in our home town. Christine was chic and funny. She was the first person I ever saw wear midnight blue eyeshadow, and sheer dark hose. She was married to another Brit, who had an Austin Powers haircut but a tweedy English country look. It was the 1970s. They moved back to England with their cat, Fred Fanackapan, and got a divorce.

When my mom and dad and I went to England, Ireland and Scotland in 1978 we visited Christine in her new digs. She'd bought a great house that had been standing for centuries, and she rehabbed it in a Medieval / 1970s aesthetic, exposing some beams and plastering other parts. In a room that wasn't finished she showed us how the walls were stuffed with what you had around you, which in this case was horse hair and lavender. It was dreamy.

She took us around to see a friend of hers who had a pottery studio nearby. His name was Adrian Lewis-Evans. He wasn't in, but she happened to have a key to the studio. I saw a mug that I liked, so we took it and tucked some money under a different mug. And we took a business card, which is how I managed to remember the guy's name for so many decades.

When I went off to college, this mug was my favorite. It was barrel shaped, a mottled green, ribbed. And vast. But one day it fell from a height of one foot onto the floor of my room, which was cement covered with thin carpet squares. It broke in two and I really felt the loss. I kept the business card, which is how I managed to keep the artist's name in my head. Until a few months ago.

Could I retrieve that guy's name? Could I find one of his mugs? Both things happened. I now have a mug in a different shape. The handle just *slightly* tilts toward your thumb, making it a comfortable grip for lifting to your lips. And if you're carrying the mug you can put your thumb *into* the mug for an extra secure grip.

It makes me happy.

What? Genealogy Breakthrough

Today we cracked the code. Mrguy and I have been trying to figure out what happened to his grandfather's first wife for decades. Last week he picked up the search again, and today he had an out of the box idea. He researched one of his half aunts in a local paper that is only found in a local history library. It listed one of her survivors as a mrs somebody of Los Angeles.

I took that and found her in the census, under that name, with a grandchild whose name we recognized. It was her. Mrguy's grandfather was a traveling shoe salesman for a while, and his first wife divorced him for desertion. We learned this years ago while researching his second marriage. In the marriage application you had to confess your previous marriages and he stated clearly that he had been divorced. I asked for the divorce decree, and they couldn't find it. Thanks, Doug-who-was-going-to-call-me-back-the-next-day-a-year-ago-and-didn't. At least Doug didn't cash the check.

Anyhoo, we would have never known about his step-grandmother's next life if he hadn't found that obituary today. We spent the whole rest of the day doing genealogy.

I'm headed to the land of my birth tomorrow afternoon, to go to the funeral of that nice guy's mom. Such a lovely obituary. Really interesting. And I know obits. It got me thinking, again. So I spent the last half of the afternoon researching that nice guy's family. Sooooper interesting. On his mom's side they come from Ukraine in the early 20th century. Excellent Eastern European surnames. Fantastic job titles.

That surely cheers a person up. The ability to dive in and imagine the past, retrieve the information?

Love it.

December Blues

This fall I have been punching above my weight for so long that I finally snapped. I've given presentations, been interviewed many times on zoom, on the phone, on camera. With my colleagues I've given tours, pulled material from the archives for visitors. I participated in our company's Halloween, which is a big deal and stressful. And I was invited to submit a form for consideration for the top worldwide forklift association, which was stressful. I created an event that had many parts and was kinda a big deal also -- and I've had increasing feelings of discomfort in my department meetings, in which I blew up a few weeks ago, and I have felt responsible and awful ever since. This week, before I had a chance to talk to my boss about what has been happening, we had an offsite that included a personality test which I flunked, and had a conflict resolution discussion in which I cried. Recently, at the same time, on my off days and sometimes on my on-days I've had to have two hour conversation with my sister or all of my sibs about my mom's complicated estate. And our combined family business. Mrguy, who has cancer and has been feeding me every day and listening to his tear-stained wife. It's a lot. So today I'm going to concentrate on nice things.

I should post this in Calibri.

New York -- Thanksgiving and After

Due to our early call on Thanksgiving, we chose a 3:15 dinner reservation. Our prix fixe dinner was inexpensive and totally rocked!

Pretty sure we slept 12 hours on Thursday.

We went to a great restaurant for breakfast and it was sunny and chill. We were the only people in there. Sorry for them, but it was completely delightful for us.

Then we headed uptown again to see the Nicholas Roerich museum. 

Here's the man himself:

For more on him, please see his wikipedia page. It's complicated. He was born rich in Russia, went to art school, fled, painted a bunch, was friends with Madame Blavatsky, a guy built him a skyscraper, then they fell out.

In 1935 Roerich got FDR to sign a treaty that would make us not blow up places of cultural or scientific importance in case of war. That was kinda cool.

His small drawings are nice. His big paintings are terrible. Once he discovered blue, it was all downhill.

Unfortunate floor detail:

Fascinating!

We went back to the hotel and to the airport. A relatively chill bit of travel ensued. I watched 4 episodes of the first season of Downton Abbey.

So ends our journey to New York to wrangle a balloon in the Macy's Parade.

New York -- Day 3 -- The Big Day

There is good news and bad news here. On Thanksgiving, Neph and I fulfilled my bucket list item of balloon wrangling in the Macy's parade. I will say the minimum because that's what Macy's would like. It is a huge honor and a great experience to participate in this event. Oh my gosh.

We got up super early and headed to the Hammerstein Ballroom. First you stand in lines on the sidewalk organized by call time. Then you are directed to where the costumes are for your balloon or float, and you start getting dressed. The costumes fit over your clothes. Our costume consisted of big coveralls, a hat, gloves, spats to go over your shoes, a dickie and a tabard. The tabard goes over your coveralls, and ties on the sides. Imagine a small tablecloth with a head hole, with side ties. That's your tabard.

Then they take you by bus up to the Upper West Side to get the balloon. You crawl under the net that is holding it down, and grab a rope line. There are many of you under there, along with a vehicle that is in the middle, bearing most of the weight. Weight -- wait? Yes, you wait for an hour or so until it is time to go. Winds were 22 mph, so we weren't going to fly very high that day. The previous year it rained on Thanksgiving, so we lucked out.

Once underway, we navigated a turn onto Central Park West. That's where you get the first inkling of how many people there are out there. But you're also closely following the directions of the balloon leader. There is a lot to remember. Keep your line kinda taut but not too much. Eyes on your leader. Side streets are where the gusts happen, so stay focused. Then there were chants we were saying.

People filled the sidewalks and cheered for us. On the other side of the fence, people filled Central Park, often standing on those boulders that I photographed in the last post. Every window had a face in it. People in high up buildings looked like tiny excited ants.

There were only two problems during our journey. At one point someone lost their line. It got caught in a tree and in that case you stop the balloon and someone cuts that line. Online somewhere there is a video of a point in which wind caught us and the balloon went sideways and the crowd screamed. I have no recollection of this.

This experience, my friends, was fantastic. I could say it was magical, but it's magical on tv. An entire city comes together to make this wild thing happen for the entire world, and on the ground, you can see how many people it takes to manifest the spectacle. It's so darned cool. It's so much bigger than I even knew, and I feel proud to have been a very small part of it.

Once you're at 34th Street you can see the tv crew high above (while trying to make your float look as under control as possible). There was a dance number right before us, and that was the point at which we could pause and reflect on the miles we'd just walked. Once past 34th, you put down your balloon on blankets, deflate and roll it up. It goes to storage until next year, and we go back to the ballroom to return our costumes. I could barely bend after all of that. Someone else had to remove my spats.

We walked as short a distance as humanly possible until we saw a restaurant. I ate matzoh ball soup, rye toast and some cottage cheese. People of many backgrounds surrounded us. It was lovely. 

It was 11:38am on Thanksgiving.

New York 2025 -- Day 2

We had breakfast at Barney Greengrass. It was delightful to sit on their sidewalk seating and take in New York sights and sounds. Our waiter said to every customer "Just to remind you -- we have latkes. It's not on the menu." Of course most of the people eating there have never eaten there before, so we thought it was pretty funny. I had a pumpernickel bagel with sturgeon, which was completely delicious. And Cel Ray and coffee and we had those latkes, which weren't great but we had to have after the performance of our waiter.

Museum of Sex? Yeahnothanks. We had tickets to visit the butterfly room at the Museum of Natural History.

We headed back to the hotel, intending to see the balloons inflated nearby on the way to the museum.

Uh oh! All of New York was there to see the same thing (balloons, floats, museum). Neph overheard someone say, of the line, "It's long, but it moves". Here's the view to the right and left of us. Royal Flush porta potties at the ready.

TRUTH. KNOWLEDGE. VISION

GREEN GIANT

We bailed, and went uptown to Harlem (Sugar Hill!!) to see the place listed on my dad's birth certificate, 291 Edgecombe Ave. While waiting for a Lyft, the Chairman of the Walt Disney Company walked right past us. Santa Pizza Man thought we were looking at *him*, and was pretty jazzed.

Here we are at our destination! I had never seen it in person but our besties had once sent us photos. The building looks fancier on the outside than I believe it is on the inside. My aunt said that when my dad was a baby they had a coin-operated stove, and that they put him in there in a shoe box. My dad's retort was "And that's why you called me your half-baked little brother."

Here's the view from the building. It overlooks what is now Jackie Robinson park. The pool wasn't there when my dad was born.

Getting back home wasn't as easy as getting there. Neph couldn't make contact with the Lyft mothership. I had only 6% battery, and didn't think I had enough to hail the Lyft. So we tried to hail a cab (they do exist, but are infrequent), and met some nice people and their dog Pistol ("with no bullets!") who were waiting for a ride. After a while I decided to try to hail a Lyft. At this point I was at 4%. The Lyft arrived, I immediately tipped, and we were good to go.

Back at the hotel we had some snacks and could both watch Star Wars and see that the fire inspector hasn't been there recently. Can't wait to show this photo to our head of facilities at the factory. She will lose it.

Then we went to see the worst comedy ever, at the New York Comedy Club. There were two or three MCs, who really needed help with their crowd work. We in the audience often gave them something to work with and they'd get stuck on the meaning of a WORD, which is part of one of the guys' schtick (being dumb). One young woman, who we were really rooting for, had just booked a Neutrogena commercial that day and I hope that goes well cause she was really not good at comedy. And one guy talked about how his dad goals were for his daughter not to be a "ho" and that if your kid gets molested by a person in a wheelchair, "that's on them". He was met with absolute silence.

Speaking of "that's on them", several of the comics blamed the audience for themselves not being funny. "You're giving 'preview audience' vibes."

That's on you, babe.

New York 2025 -- Day 1

The neph and I went to New York last week to participate in the Macy's Parade. It did not disappoint.

This was a blitz of a visit.

First, transportation. The Lyft driver got to my house at 4:45. As I was putting my bag in her trunk, she went around the front to hitch up her front bumper with gaffer's tape. I asked her politely to please come to a complete stop at stop signs.

I took Mr. Salty with me as a companion on the plane. Housekeeping put him on my pillows every morning.

Our Lyft driver was a peach compared to our car service from JFK to our hotel. That guy scared me so often that I put my hands over my eyes multiple times. I did not hear him use his turn signal until we were somewhere around 125th.

The hotel was nice. It smelled exactly like Comme des Garcons' Avignon. So good.

We played pub quiz and ate dinner a few blocks from our hotel. The other teams were parties of 6. Our own modest goal was to not come in last. We tied for second to last :)

I had a cherry cola slurpie and found it delicious. Also some felafel and shishito peppers.

I believe that Honey Brains is no longer in business. I wonder why.

End of an Era

I passed by Dr. Wong's office yesterday on my way to the shoe repair to pick up my cowboy boots. Without so much as a howdy-do, our eye doctor has closed up shop. I told my friend and Pilates instructor, yesterday morning while I was working out. 

She went to the same doctor for her whole adult life. She cried. I think this is as much notice as Dr. Wong gave anybody. I hope that his retirement means that he has lots of time in which to see 1970s soul bands.

It Doesn't Get Much Better Than This

From November:

Yesterday was the monthly meeting of my Irish genealogy group. The topic was FindaGrave and other cemetery databases. One of our members showed us a database that you can use to find additional cemetery information that isn't in FindaGrave. For instance, if there was more than one person in a grave before it was moved to a different cemetery, the entry in the new grave might omit one of the names by mistake.

I was kicking the tires on this new (to me) database and not finding what I want. Because my own relatives aren't buried in this cemetery I looked up I don't have people buried in this area other than my grandparents, so I was looking up Colonel Somebody who is my friend's ancestor. 

Did not find.

Did not find.

Did not find.

Finally I used this search "col%" and it brought up Colonel Somebody Else. Or at least his leg. Then I looked up the circumstances of the amputation:

And then I started searching for amputated limb burial. Fascinating!

Michael O'Rourke lost his leg while following orders during his job on a steam ship. His employer claimed it was not liable for negligence caused by one of its employees. A leg was buried. During later removal of all buried persons out of the city limits they did an inventory of each grave. This is the reason that these index cards exist.

Back then, it cost as much to bury a limb as a whole person:

For a comprehensive article about why people had their limbs buried, enjoy this article from the Journal of Foot and Ankle Surgery.