Archive for 'What Really Matters'

Scanning Your Life

September 15, 2011 by Ronn Ives, under What Really Matters.

 

 

I’ve been scanning my family’s 1940’s-90’s color slides.  The job is far from done.  To date, I’ve probably gone through 3,000 and scanned 1,000.  I’m also making an effort to send specifically related images to family and friends.

How wonderful to suddenly have NEW old photos of your loved ones, your buddies, your homes, your adventures, your life, and yourself.  People will pause over these images of special times with special loves… many now “gone” except in hearts, memories, and consciousness.

It’s a feeling like no other.  A forgotten or new old image comes before you… a huge bubble of quietness envelops you… you pause in a place without the foundations of “now”… you float in emotions released from long-closed cells patiently holding scenes of joy and pain, odors of a lover’s hair or a favorite old car, cells still echoing a best friend’s laugh or the slow breath of a little one’s sleep…  You are there and here and nowhere all at the same time.  Your heart aches with the fullness of great loss, eternal gratitude, and a longing for what was, what could have been, and, once you come back to “now”, what is.

Your life could not be what it is without the others.

Perhaps it’s time to speak aloud a few precious things left too long unsaid.

 

 

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9-11

September 11, 2011 by Ronn Ives, under What Really Matters.

 

September 11, 2011. Sunday. Today, here on the East Coast of America, it is as sunny and the sky is as blue as it was ten years ago.

 

Today, I’m thinking of taking the opportunity to drive my sky blue convertible as I did yesterday… an option many people no longer have.

Today, people will be working at their jobs or in their yards or going to the beach or antiquing in the city or going to their synagogues or local theaters or their favorite coffee shops or public parks. Some will be sliding needles into their arms or pointing guns at Quickie Mart attendants and taxi cab drivers.

Today, we – the survivors – again have the luxurious choice to continue as we are… or change.

Today, with a little luck, we – the living – face only our own self-destructive tendencies and not those of outsiders.

Bless this freedom.

 

 

 

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Trying to Shove the Planets into Position

August 19, 2011 by Ronn Ives, under What Really Matters.

 

Twice now, an older woman has visited FUTURES who I already expect will cause me to perk up upon her every arrival.  She could become a friend.   Elegant, warm, intelligent, alert.   I’m lucky.  I have a number of people in my life about whom I feel this way… and age – “young” or “old” – is never a deciding factor.

I remember being 13 and thinking a 15 year old was much wiser and I was almost unworthy of tagging along with him/her, and someone 11 was a mere child and of no personal interest at all.  Perhaps I exaggerate, but what a terrible limitation that was.  How many people did I miss with such FILTERS in place?

I meet children who seem to have been raised without these filters.  I was not one of them.  These kids are not afraid of nor disrespectful to elders.  They’re prepared to interact in a positive way, come what may.  I don’t know what creates a child like this, but they are the minority.  My younger step daughter, Holly, was that way from the time she was a tiny kid.  Just a few days ago, my wife and I met a 9 year old girl at a party with that same openness.  A few – FEW – of my customers have children like this – open, ready to have a relationship right then and right there.  And, it’s wonderful.

I don’t know all the reasons why, but as I came out of childhood and moved into adolescence, I withdrew from that openness, narrowed my world, and became much more cautious.  (That is NOT to say I then made better choices in people.  The reverse seemed to happen.)  But, I can now see I was on the road to improving my decision making during high school, and by college I was determined to surround myself with [and tried to be one of the] good hearted, intelligent, challenging, and reliable people.  Older folks still intimidated me – but it was then more out of my respect and awe.  I was meeting powerful people who not only held part of my adult future in their hands, but enticed me to become the best person, artist, and educator I could be.  Heady times those, and I’ve done by best to never let go of those priorities.

Instilling a certain self confidence in children must be part of it – giving them good skills in communication, the joy of creative thought, a sense of curiosity, and the pleasure of discovery.  How that is done without creating a feral prima donna monster, I am not sure.  I see way too many of those in my day.  I admit to never feeling capable of managing such a complex, taxing, important job – Parenting – and was not about to try only to fail.  Too much was at stake.  I did not have the Right to experiment with someone else’s eventual life.

I’ll sometimes ask parents with an especially enjoyable child “WHAT are you DOING to cultivate this little human?”.  I’ll usually get standard, unsatisfying answers like “They’re not ALWAYS this way, you know!” (with a laugh), “We have no clue”, or “They ARE??”.

Anyone who pays any attention to growing children knows the old Psych 101 “Blank Slate” Theory is ridiculous.  When teaching, I watched kids who were going to MAKE IT no matter what ANYONE DID to try and hobble them.  I also saw kids who were doomed no matter what ANYONE DID to try and help them.  But, most of us are average people who stumble, fall, laugh or cry, get back up, and move on as best we can.  We have moments of brilliance (which FEW people seem to notice) and moments of absolute stupidity (which MOST people seem to notice).  We succeed when we try AND have help AND all the planets are lined up.  We are in a holding pattern or fail the other times.  I’ve come to doubt AGE has much to do with our success.  It seems to be more about making a conscious effort to sort through our teachings – shed the harmful, encourage the helpful, be aware of but keep a safe distance from the negative, and actively notice and encourage the positive… with the help of others, of course.

 

I challenge you to identify ANY success you had or have in your life and not also identify a chain of people who helped make it happen.

For those of you who acknowledge Your People, feel free to name and thank them here.  Say it out loud – perhaps for the very first time.

 

 

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Stab my Lawn, stab my Heart, INDiana.

August 13, 2011 by Ronn Ives, under What Really Matters.

 

 

Forty eight years ago – August 13th, 1963 – a “For Sale” sign was stabbed into the lawn of my childhood home.

 

I’d just about become a teenager. For me, this was the start of a trauma-filled period in my life as shattering as it was unavoidable. What was set into motion – the “path” about to be laid in front of me – would have lasting effects I can trace back to that moment nearly five decades ago in South Bend Indiana.

Dad and Mom were constantly improving our Home.

We ALL start with a childhood “Home”.  By pure Default, there is a place that takes the grand position of representing much of what we will understand and feel about Home – the World – for better and/or worse.  “Home” isn’t awarded by quality. It’s a first come/first serve situation. Your Roots are where they first dig in.  That’s all. Perspective and its Quality are found from your local viewpoint – no matter where you took root – and IT is the TAP ROOT of ALL ROOTS.

As if The Great Depression AND World War Two hadn’t been enough to threaten my folks’ sense of security, for first time in my Dad’s adult life, he had to find and follow jobs – regular, hard-working, blue-collar man jobs – away from HIS Home Land. There simply wasn’t enough work in northern Indiana. I never felt “poor”, but, looking back, my parents actions imply otherwise.  So, Dad traveled to Colorado – probably on rumors given him by fellow workers who were hearing rumors that others were finding work way out there. After a few months of traveling back and forth, he’d seen enough to decide the family must transplant West.

He and Mom were local kids of the Midwest. They didn’t want to move. I know that. None of us wanted this. No one who loved us wanted us to go. No one was happy about this permanent change… and we ALL KNEW it was permanent.

No one experiences change without reacting, but kids have less practice with it. Change equals insecurity. Change telegraphs the reality of life – “NOTHING IS STABLE – YOU’VE BEEN FLOATING ALONG ON ASSUMPTIONS.” Change can be upsetting. Change can threaten loss. Kids don’t want to lose. By Default, they love what they know. Kids breathe within those calming beliefs.

My home, my family, my routines, the seasons, my life-long friends, my neighborhood, the bird nests, my school, city, river, and woods, the wild fruit, the Lilly of the Valley on the north side of my house in the Spring, my snakes and tree forts in my fields, the fossils I found under the skin of my Earth, the crickets songs through the bedroom screen windows at night, the buzzing grasshoppers in the hot, high noon summer fields, the laughter, screams, and cries of my friends… my Every Day of Normal Life was built within the comfortable confines of what I knew… and I had no urges to leave them. I LOVED THEM. And, I took them for granted – as I SHOULD HAVE.  I’ve come to understand that the strongest love is hidden inside this confident assumption.

I had BEST Friends. I had who and what I wanted. I had a bicycle who knew his way home and would handle brilliantly under my familiar collaboration. I had metal roller skates who left joyous white scars on our cement walk. I had stories – whether or not I thought of them as “stories” – about every thing, creature, and season in my life. They were ALL part of a single tapestry in my little world. It’s all I knew but I knew it INTIMATELY. I knew where the ant hills turned into cities, I knew where the wild food grew – the wild sassafras, wild plums, wild apples, wild grapes, the wild strawberries, wild raspberries, wild mulberries, and wild onion. The trees shaded sacred ground where I’d fallen, where I stroked its bark, where I sat watching birds, where I cooled down from a hot Indiana summer day holding a cold aluminum tumbler of iced Kool-Aid to my forehead, just as the adults taught us and Mom fixed for us. Each house had its own character, with familiar and secret lives and rituals inside… or those rumors of horrific mysteries of undiscovered witches or ax wielding crazy men. No two homes were the same. THAT was impossible. We knew them too well for that sort of simplification… and what we didn’t know, we made up. Timeless Legends were born.

I walked, ran, rolled, crawled, peddled, climbed, lolled, and fell over every square foot of that world, my Home. I crashed my first two-wheeler HERE. I caught the best snake THERE. I never had a better Wild Apple than up in THAT tree (which carries my name carved into a very high limb… hidden away because my initials were atop a “+” with a girl’s just below. I started liking girls WAY before my other buddies. It was something I needed to keep to myself for the time being…).

I had friends and I was their friend. We were all goofy, honest, stupid, emotional, smart, hard working, funny, and full of excuses and secrets. We were liars, and we were transparent. We were always busy establishing our positions within the Pack. We were creative, obscene, cruel, and innocent. We were loud, covered in dirt, quiet, thoughtful, bathed, and sleepy.

We watched adults with a combination of awe, fascination, confusion, anger, fear, and trust. We heard them utter ideas we would absorb like sponges, ideas we KNEW were wrong, ideas that lost their timeliness, ideas that controlled our lives, ideas that saved our lives. We saw them flush in an anger that seldom rose.  We watched our Dads work at home on a weekend after a week of work somewhere else, and we watched our Moms do their work in the same way in the same places every day. They told us what we wanted, and they asked us what we’d like. They were stronger than us, and they hid their weaknesses as best they could. They were the grown-ups. They held lightning in upraised fists. They carried us on their shoulders. They put their hand on our forehead.  They read to us at bedtime.

Since kindergarten, if not earlier, I was attracted to girls. By fifth grade I began “going steady” with them. I think I was the first boy in our class to “Cross Over”… to come down from The Apple Tree.  Then, after two years of this aberrant, open, girl-liking behavior – these crushes – and only months before the sign was stabbed into our yard – I fell in love. True love. Her name was Diana.

The moment I saw her going back into school – leaving lunch/recess as I came out for mine – I was, like never before, totally, completely, intensely in love with the most beautiful girl I’d ever seen. And, unlike how much of Life finishes its sentences for us (with a painful but useful lesson), Diana stood there staring at me too! From the moment we found the courage to approach one another, we were as inseparable as a boy and girl experiencing powerful new feelings could be.

And, because this was 1960′s Indiana, where change came slower and allowed for fewer decisions to be made (if you preferred) – but before the FOR SALE SIGN – my future was as established as I could imagine and want.  I ASSUMED my family would stay in South Bend, I would find a career, my Best Friends would remain my Best Friends throughout my life, and Diana would become my Wife and the Mother of our children – probably numerous children – since she was raised Catholic. That WOULD’VE been my Indiana life. Guaranteed. When problems arose, Diana and I would face them together.

 

It was then the sign was stabbed into the body of my Home yard and the clock began ticking.

 

Over the years, Dad and Mom made that house a nice Home in a nice Neighborhood. They had no trouble selling it. It happened fast. The “SOLD” sticker was slapped over “FOR SALE” like a pathetic last minute gag award given at a drunken party – with no respect for the seriousness of this event. But, this was no joke.  We would move in August.

Children follow their parents. That’s the way it is. They have no REAL say in such matters.

School was over too soon. Summer began. For a few short weeks us kids went into a special kind of Summer Denial: “This is ‘just another’ of our summers – full of fun like all our other summers!” … but the clock was ticking and we all heard it. For the first time, I began taking MY OWN photos of me with my Best Friends. The adults were using more film. There was extra hugging. We watched Moms cry and Dads shake hands and slap backs. My treasures – my Art, my comic book collection, my butterfly collection, my books, my toys, my fossil collection… everything… was under transport consideration by my parents, but this I did not know.

We – Ken, Ray (my Best Friends-who-were-boys) and Joann (my Best Friend-who-was-a-girl) – exchanged quiet sadness and over-compensating hyper-silliness. How do you say goodbye to the people who have shared your every day since you were born? How, as a child, can you even imagine such losses? I’d never gone through anything remotely like this! None of us had. We were lost as to what to do. The fact is, there was nothing we COULD do. I looked at each of these people whose faces I knew as well as my own – Ken, Ray, Joanne, John, Robbie, Davey, Damien, Tom, Mark, Greg, Ted, Joey, Patty, Dennis, Mikey, Jimmy, others… and Diana… and I could not imagine any such important faces waiting ahead in my future.

Diana was monumentally present. We tried to completely absorb one another like two cells merging. Our parents were amazed at the closeness of our relationship.  We were physically mature for our age. As she and I went for walks – sometimes taking her baby brother Robby in his stroller – we were understood by strangers as a young married couple with their own child. And, for the first recognizable time in either of our lives, our parents treated us as individuals sometimes capable of being independent of the familial bonds, sometimes on our way to becoming mature humans who, in fact, shared our own private bonds and could have ended up as a permanent couple.  And, I felt I was being given my second Family.  Cleta, Frances, Edward, Donna, and Robby were becoming my other brothers and sisters.  Their parents were becoming my other parents.  Here, in our town, it was not unheard of for kids to find each other early, stay together through school, marry upon graduation, and start the next generation a few blocks from the old childhood home.  I wanted Diana to be “my girl” – monumentally and for the rest of our lives.  I would never want anyone else.

There came a day when it appeared everything at home was packed and shipped ahead of us to a place we did not know. MY HOME – everything I had known and loved – was gutted or gone.

I’d never seen such emptiness.  To this day I hate that sight.

I’d never heard such hollow echoes from floors and walls, and it frightened me. When we left at dawn that last Indiana morning, the last things we carried out of what had been our Home were our pillows we would use in the car for the days-long cross-country drive. We stepped out of the house – and found all our neighbors – our friends – our loved ones – quietly waiting for us outside in the gray dew of an Indiana dawn. The lawn looked as though covered in tears. But, there were no more illusions. No poetry. This was it. This really was IT.

The women cried. The men were quiet. The kids were awkward… trying to find words and behaviors that might fit an unfamiliar and terrible event. The clock kept ticking. Boys shook hands as they’d seen their Fathers do. It didn’t work. My Best Friends cried. I cried. Diana cried. Everyone was eventually crying. My family and Diana climbed in our car.  It felt like a death sentence.

Earlier, while morning was still dark, Diana had walked the long distance from her home to be a part of this dawn goodbye. This way we could have more precious Time together.

Dad started the car.  Everyone was crying and trying to say something soothing or happy… something that would “stick”.  Dad slowly drove the car away. Diana watched us wave goodbye to our lives on O’Brien Street. She, like the rest of us, had no helpful points of reference. I’m sure this made her more fearful of it happening to her family.

I thought “This is the last time I will sit next to Diana.  How can this be!? THIS IS NOT RIGHT!!”  At her home, all but my brother climbed back out of the car. Her folks came out and stood chatting with mine. All knew there had been a chance they would become in-laws years down the road despite our current age. They seemed sad for Diana and I, and no doubt watched their two kids standing there… looking into one another…  enveloped in our own foggy bubble of sadness… and the clock moved with heart beats. She gave me a wrapped gift (a shirt I wore until it was rags), and there, in front of our PARENTS, at the age of just-past-twelve, we embraced and kissed – a long, deep kiss no less romantic than in the movies – but this was real.  No act.  No poetry. It was not our first kiss, but it felt like our last.

As Dad pulled away on this damp, gray summer morning, Diana’s image grew smaller and more difficult to see on the other side of the wet rear window of our blue 1960 Chevy Bel Air. The car kept moving… moving AWAY. We were silent. That morning I watched my entire world shrink and vanish behind glass, rain, and teary eyes. My family drove past one familiar place after another – each with our personal memories hidden in them – until we could hold back no longer, and all collapsed into a sobbing mess.

I don’t remember when it stopped. I can’t say it ever did. I felt like my heart and soul had been torn from me. I could not imagine more loss than on that morning… but this I learned:  “NOTHING IS STABLE. WE FLOAT ALONG ON ASSUMPTIONS”.

 

 

 

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A Bright Spot

August 11, 2011 by Ronn Ives, under What Really Matters.

 

You probably know all of this, but I’m bringing it up anyhow.

About three months ago I was contacted about an effort – a bright spot – that might be of interest to you.  On Facebook are discussion groups / meeting places for ex-Elementary Schoolmates, i.e. your friends from your old neighborhood and age range.   “My” blog has grown into quite a community, and we continue to locate more and more people on nearly a daily basis.

“It” is whatever we want it to be, of course.  People post old photos, school publications, news about our old teachers and fellow students, and LOTS of story-swapping – funny, sad, informative, and just plain weird.  Of course, everyone graduated on to other schools, and those may have their own separate blogs.  Some school sites are more inclusive – entire Districts – and they’re interesting but less engaging to me because I didn’t grow up with most of those people.  They’re just names… and I’m not there for them anymore than they are at their blog wanting to meet me.  These efforts are about personal and shared-personal history.

If you visit and join a group, I suggest you read the group entries from the bottom (oldest) up (to the latest).  You’ll see the growth and understand how some issues are being carried along.  Most people are cautious about discussing their family’s pasts when it comes to the serious stuff.  Facebook is set up so members have the option to go off to private, singular “instant message” formats.  All was not sugar and spice in Childhood, not everyone survived, and it becomes clear we all shared a certain collective experience away from home but not IN our homes.  A very supportive aspect is happening for us, and I’m feeling very positive about what “my” site is doing for many of us there.  The fact I feel I hold part “ownership” of this blog tells me it is becoming the new version of the old neighborhood.  (A big thanks again to Rob.)

Trust me.  This is good for the soul.  There is a group of children who are now big, much smarter grownups, and they are the ones who shared more of our world than anyone else on the planet.  I expect there are similar blog sites for nearly everyone.  They seem to form around schools.  It is my experience that the Elementary level is the most positive.  Try to find your school / neighborhood.  If you don’t have one yet, start it yourself!  It will gather its own power in a matter of months.

Please feel free to post your school blog sites here.  It can only help you get the word out, and I want you to have the kind of experiences with which I am now blessed.  We lost one another once.  It doesn’t have to happen anymore.

 

 

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Saint Grampa of the Fishes

July 19, 2011 by Ronn Ives, under What Really Matters.

 

 

Saint Grampa of the Fishes

 

After my recent comments about “losing one’s weather” – one’s surrounding world – I heard from a good friend who watched his Grandfather – a great man – lose everything HE had known to Alzheimer’s disease. This focused my thoughts on my Grandfather – the only Grandfather I ever had – who lived to age 92, and was in my life until I was nearly 50. I love him very much. I remain a lucky Grandson.

Russ Ryker Sr. was born in 1905.

Russ Ryker, c. age 14

He was too YOUNG to enlist in World War I.  He married Elzora Sweezy in 1924. They survived the Great Depression by his [lying about his age and] becoming a manager for Kinney’s Shoes.

 

He became the most successful manager in the region and received an all-expenses paid vacation award to Cuba! When his normal, yearly vacation time came, he and Zora, along with their best friends Walt and Ileen, would drive the dirt roads of 1920′s-30′s America north into Wisconsin, clear into Minnesota, and way up into Canada. When the roads stopped, they canoed deeper into the wilderness, finally hiked further yet – and doing all of this with no real plan – just a sense of adventure. They worked hard, they played hard.

Later, their children joined them on these expeditions. (My Mother had a special red & green plaid corduroy camping over-shirt she wore for these trips. I now have and wear it on occasion.) By World War II, despite his trying four times to become classified for military action, Grampa was now too OLD to join and fight. He sold washers and dryers for Norge while managing a laundromat.  Later, he and Zora created and ran a bed & breakfast with a trailer park – until they decided to “retire” to Florida in 1959.

Russ Ryker Jr., his wife Ruth Ann, Russ Ryker Sr.

1960′s Florida

Of course HE didn’t really retire. His desire to travel was transformed into the practicality of a real estate man crisscrossing the land in that booming state. A man that strong and determined doesn’t lay back. Russ was proud of being a “survivor”.

Many of the mystical days of my childhood were spent with him – moving silently down the middle of Indiana streams, barefoot with pant legs rolled up, stalking the long-grassed banks for frogs and snakes to net, bag, take home, study, and release. We once saw a huge black snake coiled loop after heavy loop, draped and asleep on a tree branch hung low over our heads and the crystalline creek. We saw small eels making “S” shapes in a still, shaded pool near a bridge support. We saw many things. It was often my Grandfather who took me to Nature. It was he, of all the adults in my life, who taught me to love, respect, and feel the magic of Life’s great variety.

By his 80′s, he’d turned into an Official Old Guy – retired from real estate, leading a quiet life with Zora – his first and only love – in a large, manicured “Mobile Home Community”. My visits were now limited to once a year at Christmas when I had time off from my own career. NOW I understand how quickly those years were moving for the both of them, and why they always held my hand and hugged me like they might never see me again. They were right.

A pair of bald eagles nested yearly within view of their home (which backed up to an area of wetland). Because of these protected birds, the desirable land could not be considered for any kind of development, and in Florida, that is a big deal. It was ONLY from Russ and Zora’s yard a good view could be had of the rare eagles and their babies. All the media, needing his permission to film the eagles from his property, gave Grampa the nickname “The Eagle Man”… which he loved.

Of course Russ wanted to know about his Grandson, me, the “College Professor (or as Grandma put it, “Professor Ronnie”) (and, by the way, she was the ONLY person ever allowed to utter such a title), but I was interested in THEM, and would always push and prod them for more of their Stories. Their best friends, Walt & Ileen (the couple who trekked the North with them so many decades ago – the couple who escaped Grizzly bears with them) now lived only two blocks away in the same Florida town. Once we gathered the four of them together and all revved up, they were NOT to be stopped. (I had the good sense to put a tape recorder down on the center of the table and let it go. They quickly forgot they were being recorded.  I guard these tapes with my life.)

During a casual afternoon in the sun room, Grandpa mentioned something about “his” fish.

Now wait… he didn’t HAVE fish. He’d never even owned an aquarium as far as I knew.

“What are you talking about?” I asked.
“My fish!”
“You don’t have fish.”
“Yes I do… want to see them?”
“Yeh, sure. Let’s have a look…”
“Okay, they’re out back.”

Mind you, he’s getting old, sometimes forgetful, but he’s also my Nature Man, so I’m intrigued with this claim. We slowly walked outside, to the back yard.

“Just wait here”, he said, and strolled the final 10 yards alone to the wetland water’s edge. He knelt down, silently waited, then gently signaled for me to join him.

There at the water’s edge were hundreds of fish, all moving and all looking his direction… and they were NOT about to leave. It was an amazing sight.

“Grampa, what do you do? Feed them all the time?”
“No.”
“Well, what’s going on? I’ll bet they’d come up to me too!”
“Okay Ronn, let’s walk away, wait a few minutes, and you can return alone. Let’s find out…” He was sincerely curious. So we rose and walked off.

When I returned, Grampa stayed quite a distance away. I approached as he had – slowly, quietly, and then knelt. I waited. And waited. And waited. Not one fish arrived.

“Grampa, there are no fish.”
He joined me, and took the forward position. Within moments, the fish began arriving.

This was the day he got another nickname – this time from me: “Saint Grampa of the Fishes”.

He was amused and proud. I was again amazed at this man who looked like every other old guy in Florida… but was incredibly far from anything close to “common”. I am SURE he would disagree with me… which would only prove my point.

He was The Man.

 

 

When Alzheimer’s took all this from him, and him from us, I mourned his death at that time. Later, his body died.

I love my Grampa. I do not forget him. I find myself repeatedly drawn to his shores.

 

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Gray Children

July 19, 2011 by Ronn Ives, under What Really Matters.

 

I had an appointment. It happens a lot. Yesterday, I was given a tip from an interior decorator, and this morning I met him at a solidly middle class 1950′s style home in a nearby city. “Has the Family gone through and removed whatever they want?” I ask. “Yes, this is all up for sale,” he responds, “and only to you.”

I thank him for remembering me, and we spend an hour looking over everything from sofas and stoves, to photographs and potato peelers. EVERY thing was well cared for. It’s a rare sight. Caring for things implies a larger awareness.

We own nothing. We merely rent it. Someone else should appreciate it later.

The home had known only one family. Jewish. The parents were of an age that guaranteed they’d lost family and friends to the Holocaust. When I’m invited into a Home, even if the owners are not there, I feel somewhat uncomfortable. The Home is never empty. Their Life Stories are there even if they have died. I am a always a Guest – and I never forget it.

Look at your own Home. Imagine strangers going through it as it is right now, this very moment… as you left it this morning…

It’s true that I must view things with a cool business eye, but it’s not in me to remain unmoved at a lovely, sepia-toned wedding photo from the 1930′s next to contemporary photos of the same, much older couple… next to bare bottomed babies laughing at the silly face a photographer must be making, toddlers running across one of these very rooms, teens posing to look their awkward, stylish best, young adults graduating from various ceremonies that held great meaning for the Family, children now gray themselves… all clustered together in little zones of Home.

And then it hits me: “Why haven’t the children taken these things away with them?”

It’s a tough one to answer, and I don’t ask. I DO say to my business friend: “Remind the Family there are still photos here…” He said to me “I was told this man was one of the nicest people to have ever walked the earth…” I said “Then I’m sorry I didn’t know him.” “Not many of those left,” he said. “Yeh, and if I’m lucky enough to know one, I try to keep them near,” I answered.

Lamps and spoons, tables, toilettes, tissues and all those photos. It’s all there. To MY eye, the surviving family removed hardly a thing for their own use or memory. I don’t understand, and I don’t ask.

 

 

 

 

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A Huge Fan of Boredom

July 13, 2011 by Ronn Ives, under What Really Matters.

“Hey English, whadya wanna do tonite?”

“I dunno mate, have a pint at the pub?”

“Yeh, or we could have a beer or a coffee at the bar… and don’t call me ‘mate’, pal.”

The more important bonds were made emotionally.  It would happen over a cup of coffee, a football, a routine, a car, art, poker game, or due to a great loss.  It was the deep IMPORTANCE of the CONTENT of that MOMENT.  Once THAT moment exists, it often sticks.

Relationships form from such incidents, BUT also grow and are maintained within that state of boredom.  I do NOT downgrade “boredom” here.  Call boredom the “casual state” if you’d rather.  Whatever.  A plant needs down-time to grow.  24/7 sun or rain would kill it.  I think boredom is important… You’re waiting for me to say I’m joking… but I am not…..  BOREDOM IS IMPORTANT.  Boredom is our fertile ground.  Boredom is where It happens.

 

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The Vinyl Fabric of Life

July 7, 2011 by Ronn Ives, under What Really Matters.

 

Radio man James Duval and I were talking yesterday, and began stumbling over the dates of production with Brian Eno’s work with sound and music.

It apparently put both of us into enough doubt, that we both went to the web within 12 hours, to find answers.  We were both right, and wrong, but James was more right – and I was the guy alive and buying the music (on vinyl) as it premiered in my local music stores!

How can that be?  Well, first there’s the memory issue, but you can trust me here, I’m still good at attaching the arrival of an object to a time and place, and seldom wrong.  So, how is it my dates could be off by as much as 3 – 4 – 5 YEARS???

Putting aside the fact I don’t remember what date is ON the album cover in tiny little print along with the address of the music company, this is what we had in the 60′s and 70′s:

- if you heard about an album, it was because you made the
effort to go to a specialist magazine store, and constantly
leaf through them for information leading to music you
would otherwise NEVER find.

no Web.

- an album wasn’t out until it reached your local music store.
There was no other source for your acquiring music.  Nor
could you “burn” yourself a copy from someone else.
(Even 8 track “burn” tapes could only be made by
selecting cuts off your vinyl.)

no Web.

- if you were interested in obscure and/or foreign import music,
your music stores were trimmed down to one or none, even in
the largest of cities.

no Web.

- there were very few “alternative” radio stations (though FM was
better then than now), but even then, nothing like Brian Eno
was going to be heard on the airwaves.

no Web.

So… music came to you when it was delivered to you – in small doses – from small sources – who were risking their business by not going “pop” – and if you didn’t support them, and keep going back, they didn’t have a commercial chance in hell of continuing on.

You were deeply interwoven with the “mom/pop” specialist stores, and everyone did what they could to keep things moving.

But, music came when it came, and the sort of thing I’m talking about was the last to arrive, especially from foreign shores and small music companies… which explains MY sense of timing compared to James’ dates.  An album may have been created in 1973, but it didn’t arrive
to MY venues until 1978, etc.

NO WEB, NO IMMEDIACY… but certainly more personal involvement.  I LOVED the magic of something finally arriving at a small store in which I had a stake.  I LOVED going to a music store with fellow enthusiasts and having another fellow enthusiast right at the
counter say “The new Eno is IN”.  Life got no better’n that.

Ronn.

PS:  It was over 30 years ago.  The man’s name was Dave, he was about my age, his business was called “Budget Tapes and Records”, and it was
near the corner of Hampden and Broadway in Englewood, CO..  His counter was on the left as you walked in.  There were perhaps 3 twenty foot double sided album aisles in his little store.  It held the best music he could offer – in a small space with the highest monthly rent he could afford.  It was a joy to walk through his door, and he was glad to see us too.

In Tucson, it was “Al Bum’s” music store.

Ah yes.

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Dad

June 20, 2011 by Ronn Ives, under What Really Matters.

Father’s Day.

 

I know a lot of Fathers. I know many better than I ever knew mine.

 

Some of it can be blamed on circumstances if you want to go that route. When I was being raised, the Dads went to an outside job and the Moms stayed at home to do their inside job. Naturally, the kids got to know their Moms better than their Dads. That’s the way it was.  And, the boys were raised to be stoic, quiet, strong…future Men.

 

When Dad WAS home, and WASN’T tired from putting huge, exterior sheets of glass into tall buildings all day from a scaffold… AND hose-watering or push-mowing our lawn & gardens, building and painting the wooden house, building a screened porch onto it, a fence, a patio, a sandbox, or simply assembling a swing set for us kids…yeh, and performing home-maintenance on our one car, the furnace (coal), etc…. he was parked in “his” big old easy chair. LAZY man!

 

If we wanted time with him, that’s pretty much where we’d go… his parking spot. My brother Bruce and I could join him there…scrunch in with him & watch t.v. or listen to him read… He could quiet me by gently pulling on my ear lobe. It had some sort of magical, hypnotic effect. I’d almost slip into a daze. Everyone was pleased with the effect.

We kids WEREN’T angels… nor were we evil, nasty, crazy kids… but we, especially me, challenged our parents a lot. I’d say we were good-hearted, fairly smart, had a healthy curiosity, loved the school year, loved the summer vacation, loved each season, loved playing hard AND playing quietly, and, kept our room pretty clean. Dad made shelving systems for all of our toys & collections so they all could be on view, yet out of the way.  LAZY man.

 

When still small and dirty from a day of, well, playing IN the DIRT (and puddles, trees, hills, undergrowth, fields, ditches, unpaved roads…), Mom’s last nightly job with her boys was to get us (at the same time) into the tub and clean (I can still remember looking at that BROWN water in the tub, and laughing at how much dirt came off of us!). Then, clean, dry, & combed, we could go back downstairs, put away any last toys, etc., and be TAKEN back UP to bed by playing “GIANT STEPS!” From behind, (with one of us at a time), Dad would hook his hands into our pajama’d arm pits, and lift us up 4 steps at a time – it was like FLYING to our beds. GLORIOUS.

 

Above both beds hung our “yearly” watercolors made “to order” by Dad. We could choose ANY thing we wanted (I was prone to comic book super heroes. Bruce was more interested in monsters. I’d choose Superman, he’d choose Bizarro, if you see my point.) Then Dad, a hobbyist artist, would make them for us.  LAZY man.
THEY would tuck us in, Dad would always say “Goodnight, sleep tight, don’t let the bed bugs bite”, and I remember seldom laying awake for long, even with THAT odd bed bug threat, and even on a hot, sultry Indiana summer night when there was no such thing as home air-conditioning – at least not in OUR world.

 

We kids played and worked hard all day. Sunrise to sunset. Nonstop. As night fell, the windows were open and the crickets chirped.  From this upper floor, I could lay my pillow at the foot of my mattress and look out into the darkening outline of Maple leaves fluttering against the late dusk of a starry, moonlit summer night sky. Laying still, I could hear the lush green leaves touch one another with a soft, living sound, and, if I redirected my attention, I heard the sounds of a home conversation through the floor below us. Each and every sound, even if unintelligible, was a comfort. It was Home.

 

Still, I said what I did, at the top, for a reason. Neither of us knew Dad well enough to ever confidently describe him. He was a secret wrapped in a disguise covered in layers of diversions with extra camouflage. I CAN say that no one really knew him, or, at the very most, a few people maybe knew a small part of the real, accidentally discovered version of him.

 

He didn’t talk about his family life, WWII, or much of anything from his past except playing football and baseball (and meeting Babe Ruth), along with working as an usher at a vaudeville theater, where he met damned near everyone who was anyone in the thirties and forties – from Frank Sinatra and Cab Calloway, to Lawrence Welk and Chico Marx. I think he saw his “Brushes with Greatness” as his legacy. The one thing he passed on to me was his collection of autographed photos, plus his war medals and a few family photos.

 

Before he died in the hospital (he knew he was dying but didn’t reveal it to my brother and I) and, sensing he may not return to his apartment, “sanitized” his place by destroying anything that created any links to anyone else in his life… he destroyed his address books, correspondence, cards, most photographs… but… all the legal paperwork was sitting out and signed to make easier his sons jobs of dealing with his banks, Social Security, labor unions, military cemetery, etc.. The apartment was entirely groomed.

 

Still, I saw then that no one, NO ONE, hides their entire life away from those close enough to deal with that final “business”. Bruce knew he had a woman friend. (Our folks were divorced years earlier.) We felt she was the best recipient of many items in his apartment, and in doing this, she and I met for the first time, and, in doing this, we chatted, and in doing THIS, we discovered many moments in which he’d told her ONE thing and me ANOTHER – as a way to make sure we couldn’t meet, etc..   He maintained VERY separate worlds… spent energy doing so.  Why? He had his secrets, some of which I did uncover, and some of those deserve to die with me. It would benefit no one to share in this knowledge. As the eldest son, I’m somewhat stuck making these solo judgment calls.

 

Every single person on the planet has their secrets. Some secrets don’t deserve such a grandiose status. They were born of a misguided sense of guilt in the first place, and pretend to be so uncommon as to be shameful, even a sin. Some secrets DO deserve to be locked away until they turn to unreadable dust. It’s my personal opinion, coming from experiences like I’ve tried to describe here, that KNOWING – REALLY KNOWING – your parents, teachers, and mentors – is seldom a bad thing. Unhidden, the Truth of Things is where we give our loved ones understanding, tolerance, patience, forgiveness, acceptance, and even pride….over a lifetime.  YOUR willingness to allow your younger ones to see the real you is, in the long run, a blessing not a curse. It is done FOR them, for their future.

 

Happy Father’s Day. Happy Guardian, Guide, Friend, Mentor, Teacher.

 

 

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