Terezin, Czechia

On our second day in Prague we took a bus tour through the lovely Czech countryside to the small town of Terezin. It was built in 1780 as a military fortress by Hapsburg Emperor Joseph II and named for his mother, Empress Maria Theresa. In German it is known as Theresienstadt (Theresa's City).

It was never attacked by the Prussians and later became a camp for political prisoners.

In 1940 the Nazis converted it into a Gestapo prison and in 1941 a Jewish ‘ghetto’ was established there. Although it wasn’t an extermination camp, over 33,000 people died there from horrible overcrowding, disease, and starvation. In all, 150,000 people were sent there, including 15,000 children. About 88,000 were later transported to Auschwitz and other extermination camps.

Our guide emphasized that although it wasn’t a ‘death camp,’ it was full of unspeakable misery and terror. I was touched by a display of children’s drawings. Some were stark depictions of the camp, others hopeful, happy drawings of their lives before imprisonment. The adults in the camp worked tirelessly to make the children’s lives as normal as possible in a grotesquely abnormal setting. They would teach school, prepared to stop in an instant if a guard appeared.

Sobering is too weak a word to describe the feelings while visiting Terezin. When I was in high school, we would glibly parrot, “Man’s inhumanity to man” as the most likely theme of any serious work of literature. Can such horror be adequately described?

The Moldau in Prague

23 Jun 2022

 

I love “The Moldau” by Bedrich Smetana. It’s a symphonic poem, the second movement of Má Vlast and a rich depiction of the river from its source in the Bohemian forest to the city of Prague. Moldau is the German name: in Czech it’s the Vltava.

I’ve played the piece in two different orchestras over the years.

Years ago I went to Education Week at Brigham Young University. It’s a week of free college courses for grownups. Michael Ballam, a professional musician and celebrity from Logan, Utah, gave an inspirational talk in the huge Marriott Center. He spoke of the immense power of music and recommended that we all make a musical first aid kit on an audio cassette. (yeah, this was 1993). I’ve never done it, but in case you are around when I fall into a coma, "The Moldau" and Gustav Holst’s "Jupiter" from The Planets are my top two choices. I guess at this point you could just pull them up on YouTube. (I just did.)

Michael Ballam told a moving story about an elderly German woman in a nursing home in Utah. He came to play the piano and lead a Christmas carol sing-along. The woman typically sat huddled in her wheelchair, mute and unresponsive. As Ballam sang a carol in German, someone noticed the woman’s lips moving: she was softly singing: her first words in years. Music can reach into our depths.

We left Boston Wednesday evening and arrived in Frankfurt, Germany around 7 a.m. Thursday. Since we lost 6 hours in the time zone adjustment, I only got 3 hours of sleep, sitting upright in economy. It’s now 8 p.m. and we’re at our hotel in Prague. I’m not sleepy. That would be great news for most normal humans but for me, it’s okay to feel good, but not too good. I monitor my sleep daily to avoid hypomania.

Nothing to do right now but hope I can sleep tonight.

In the meanwhile, I’ll savor our day. When we arrived in Prague, I realized that I was woefully unprepared. Our introductory walking tour wasn’t until Friday. We got a map and directions to the downtown shopping mall. But Prague streets are not at all at right angles, even less than Boston. We eventually found the mall, but then what’s the word for bookstore? There was Gap and Armani, Puma and Foot Locker. No Barnes & Noble. We did find it (Luxor) and bought a tour book (in English).

Back out on the streets and sidewalks of diminutive square paving stones, we happened upon the Municipal Hall. The clerk at the box office was skeptical that we would enjoy the concert of singing in Czech. Turned out it was sold out anyway.

We ate delicious borscht at Pekny Bistro, charming and quiet at two in the afternoon. We walked along the Moldau. I seemed to hear the woodwinds burble upstream in the Bohemian forest and the ‘cellos pound out the country beat of the exuberant wedding festivities.

24 June 2022

This evening I sat in St. Salvador Church near Charles Bridge in Prague, listening to the opening notes of "The Moldau." Satisfying, even though it was just a six-piece string orchestra.

After the concert we sat outside to eat traditional Czech food (dumplings are featured prominently). It began to rain and we were grateful for the restaurant's awning. I had bought a black umbrella decorated with sheet music at the Lobkowicz Palace. A great investment for our half-hour walk back to the hotel.

By the way, I slept 10 hours last night, a total of 13 over two nights. That will do.

Negative Review

 Jim and I have planned an ambitious travel year. In the rush to make up for two and a half years of staying home (mostly), we’ve planned more trips than ever.

Last week was our East Coast trip. In one day we drove 960 miles: Lexington, MA, to Charleston, SC. Jim’s sister and her husband live there and since 2016, the year after David died, we’ve come to Charleston to stay with them and attend Spoleto Festival USA. It’s an immersion into the world of chamber music, opera, dance, and performance art.

Spoleto was cancelled in 2020 and last year Jim flew down on his own. I was deep into my garden: supervising Jim’s nephew Caleb and a teenaged gardener I’d hired to rebuild raised beds with granite pavers from the bottom of our driveway. While creating a new sidewalk in front of our house, workers uncovered them. How long ago was our street was paved in granite block?

This year at Spoleto, we attended a ballet performance that swept me away with the grace of a well-trained human body. We also saw a creative retelling of the classic Puccini opera La Boheme and several chamber concerts hosted by the inimitable Geoff Nuttall at the Dock St. Theater.

A concert featuring Stevie Wonder music had a last minute change when the tenor got sick. Johnny Felder, a local young man and opera chorus member, filled in and had us audience members eating out of his hands.

The day before our last chamber concert a violinist tested positive for covid, so at 11 p.m. the night before, Geoff asked a pianist friend of his what he could play. What we experienced was a breathtaking performance of a Brahms' Variations on a Theme by Handel (not to be confused with his Variations on a Theme by Haydn). Twenty-five variations and then a fugue: played masterfully with no sheet music.

I can’t begin to imagine the skill and talent such a feat requires.

Although I agreed to the crazy itinerary of a one-day 960-mile drive to Charleston, I decided that the ride back should be broken up. Thursday we drove a mere 633 miles. Truth be told, Jim did 85% of the driving that day. On his sister’s recommendation we stopped in Richmond. She had been charmed by the city years before. We walked along a cobblestone street and found City Dogs, a little grill with themed hot dogs, burgers, and Philly cheesesteaks.

After supper we wandered around trying to find the “Canal Walk”. After one dead end we found our way under the interstate and down some stairs to the canal. It was dark and deserted but we pressed on. Later, safe in our motel, we admitted to each other that we were grateful that our walk ended uneventfully.

After our Richmond evening, we checked into a motel in Short Pump, VA. I inexplicably love that name. It has an earthy down-to-earth tone to it. Named for a short pump (what’s a long pump?) under a tavern’s porch, it was on the Richmond Turnpike, which connected that city to Charlottesville, VA.

Our motel room prompted me to write my first negative review. (I have low standards: I’ve slept in my car on more than one occasion: a private bath is deluxe.) The fridge leaked onto the floor, the bathroom door was water-damaged and so swollen that it couldn’t be pushed closed. The kitchenette floor was sticky and the shower and bathtub wall wasn’t clean. But, as Jim said, philosophically, “I’ve seen worse.”

In 2001, we took our six kids, ages 10 to 20, to France, Italy, and the United Kingdom. I had booked rooms in a hotel in London for our first night there. All that night I wished I'd used a travel agent! I hardly slept. It was a three-story walk-up with a shared bathtub (yes, just a tub) which was filthy. The only positive was the price, but even my frugality was strained to breaking. We were definitely in a high crime area. The next day was Sunday and while the kids and I waited outside the Hyde Park Chapel, Jim sallied forth in search of better accommodations. He found a hotel within a row of charming hotels, each featuring an “English breakfast” of eggs, fatty sausage, and toast. It became a comfortable landing place during our London adventures.

Post-script: next morning in Short Pump, Jim gave the list of 'improvements needed' to the motel clerk. He received a 60% refund. I mentioned that in my review.

Chemist or Fool

 A few months ago, I did a very foolish thing. I spied little chunky white grains on the kitchen counter. My mouth watered, and to satisfy the sudden sweets craving, I licked my finger, touched a few grains and put them on my tongue. I immediately spit out the dishwasher detergent. But it had looked so inviting! I gained new understanding of poisoning among roving toddlers.

My mom broke her hip in 1984. (I realize with a shock that at 61, she was younger than I am now) I went to New Jersey with little R’el and one-year-old Peter to help her.

One evening I walked into Mom’s kitchen and found Peter under the sink, a plastic container of dishwasher detergent open beside him.

We called poison control and were told not to induce vomiting. Dishwasher detergent is very caustic and further tissue damage could be caused by vomiting it back up.

I was touched when 24 hours later I received a callback, checking on Peter. He was fine, no worse for the experience. As a young mother, I appreciated the thoughtfulness and care.

Norry and Sunbury memories

 Jim gave me a tremendous gift last Thursday. We spent the week in Maryland and Virginia, visiting my brother and his wife, my niece, and four presidential houses (Mount Vernon, Monticello, Montpelier, and Highlands) in Virginia.

Thursday night he booked us at the charming Stained Glass Inn in Sunbury, PA, kitty-cornered from my old elementary school, St. Michael Archangel. (It’s now called Saint Monica.)

Friday morning Jim had a business phone call and I took a ‘walk’ with R’el: talking on the phone as she walked home from Bellevue Hospital and I explored the south side of Sunbury. When Jim was free we walked along the sea wall dividing Sunbury from the Susquehanna River. I don’t know why we always called it the sea wall, it must have been my dad’s name for it.

I read that the ‘flood wall’ was conceived after a disastrous flood in March 1936. Native Americans had told British colonists that Sunbury flooded every 14 years. Built near the confluence of the north and west branches of the Susquehanna River, it has suffered many floods over the years. The flood wall was officially finished in 1951 but was already protecting the city from flood in 1950. I remember in 1960 my dad telling us that the river had flooded: I was about four years old.

After the walk along the wall and seeing the profile of Shikellamy, we drove to Northumberland, the town across the river where I lived until I was nine. We called it Norry. I felt like Scrooge in Mister Magoo’s Christmas Carol, every sight bringing up memories: there’s where the pond was where we ice skated; there’s the street sign that I would swing around calling, “Annnnniiiiieeeee! Can you come out and pla-aaayyyyy? I wasn’t allowed to cross the street and Annie Scully lived across King Street and Seventh Street. So many memories came rushing back and I savored each one.

679 King Street was vacant with a notice in the window. We learned from some people on Eighth Street that a doctor lived there and that perhaps he had died. Since the house was unoccupied,  I peered in the back porch window and remembered practicing piano and meeting the washer repairman. I felt free to walk in the yard, pointing out to Jim where the forsythia, lilacs, magnolia, apple trees, grape arbor, peonies, cherry tree, and sandbox (with plentiful splinters) were. It’s mostly grass now, with one large evergreen to the side. The peach tree, which always looked sickly, was surprisingly healthy. The yard is small; how does it hold so many memories?

What a gift. Thank you, Jim. 

Home-making

 Today Jim and I drove to the home on the “little mountain” that Thomas Jefferson developed over 40 years of his life.

As a teenaged girl I was infatuated with the Thomas Jefferson of the movie, 1776, which was released as I was turning 16. Thomas Jefferson was tall (no boys in my junior high school were as tall as I was) and boyishly handsome with his red ponytail and knickers. Now I prefer the piercing blue eyes of William Daniels (John Adams), but in my girlish eyes it was all about Thomas and how he played the violin for his beautiful and beloved wife. 

Living in Massachusetts for the past 20 years, and influenced by my Adams-phil husband, my feelings for Jefferson had waned.

But Monticello rekindled my appreciation of the man. Jefferson designed so many thoughtful touches to his home. I love how he filled his entry hall with maps and objects of interest. He placed his bed in the wall, opening into both his study and bedroom, so convenient. And his books: he owned about 10,000. We moved closer to that number, buying four books in the gift shop at Monticello along with three at Mt. Vernon.

Both the tours of Mt. Vernon and Monticello emphasize the tremendous work that enslaved people were forced to do to create and maintain these plantations. I’m grateful for the ongoing work to document and bring to light the efforts of countless unnamed people and the need to live up to the ideals of American liberty for all people.

On a lighter note, I’m thinking about house decoration and home. We attended the Washington DC Temple open house with Xiomara and our grandchildren. Jim and I started our marriage there 43 years ago. We stayed with my oldest brother and his wife. Visiting my niece, a busy mother of five children, reminded both of us of raising our children. When R’el was about four, I helped her paint the alphabet, one upper-case and one lower-case letter on twenty-six manilla folders. We taped them together and posted them around the kitchen wall above our heads. We had no living room in those days, just a dedicated playroom with toy shelves and bookcases. How did we ever manage?

When younger moms have asked, I usually say, well, you only have 24 hours in a day. You do what you can and move forward.

But now we don’t have such a busy, demanding life. We can tour Virginia and let others raise children, focus on careers, sustain life. “Sustain life” is a phrase I latched on to in southern Indiana back in the eighties. At a church meeting a woman used it to describe her role as a mother of young children. There were certainly days where that was my goal. I hope I accomplished more; I know I tried.

As I sit here in Gordonsville, Virginia, listening to Bach on YouTube, I’m savoring the memory of our lunch today at La Michoacana restaurant we happened upon in Charlottesville and the sunshine on the mountaintop.

I’m looking forward to returning home and making it ever more of a home. Washington and Jefferson were gardeners: it’s time to plant mine.

My subconscious is my friend!

 I woke up Tuesday thinking, 'my subconscious is my friend.' Actually, I woke up remembering that I’d had a fitful night of sleep, waking several times during the night and realizing each time that I had been dreaming of editing DBSA Boston board meeting minutes. I didn’t remember details of the dreams, just the impression of spending all night puzzling out how to organize the minutes from the raw notes I had typed during the meeting as I struggled to keep up with the lively discussion.

But instead of adding the fact of my dreams to my stress level, I considered them in a different light. All night my subconscious was working on the minutes in many ways: multitasking in a way I could literally only dream of.

My minute-editing career had come to a crisis the week before. Through a series of events, 95% of which were of my own creating, I had to send a 4-month backlog of minutes to the board a few days prior to Monday’s monthly meeting.

Each month for several now I’ve promised myself to edit the minutes within two days of the meeting, while the discussions are fresh in my mind. With my current memory abilities, recall becomes much tougher as time passes.

And each month for several I’ve procrastinated and sent the minutes days before the next meeting rather than days after the previous.

Arising Tuesday morning with the new thought, that my subconscious is my friend, freed me to work on the edits of the Monday meeting with energy and confidence. My subconscious had attended that meeting and was hard at work processing it, not only the actual notes and memories but the emotional baggage and stress I've chosen to carry: all the resistances I have to sitting down and doing the task.

By Tuesday night I had emailed the draft of the minutes to my board members. And now I have 25 days to relax and enjoy and savor the experience of having a dreaded task completely, entirely, and utterly done. (And hope no one sends back any edits, I chuckle to myself.)