Tony Bennett

 

I love Tony Bennett.  Almost every day I listen to one of his Youtube videos. In his later years he did duets with some of the finest singers in the world.  And they're all on Youtube. 

This morning I watched, again, Anderson Cooper's 60 Minutes interview with Tony.  The interview took place both before and after Tony's sold out farewell concert at Carnegie Hall, with Lady Gaga, celebrating his 95th birthday.  

Tony has Alzheimer's disease and is barely able to speak.  At the time of the interview he still recognized his wife and children but almost no-one else.  But when the pianist began, he was fully able to burst into song.  And his voice was still the Tony Bennett voice we remember from 50 years ago.  Alzheimer's and other forms of dementia are not only tragic but confounding in how our minds respond to memory triggers.

Anderson Cooper spoke with Lady Gaga, who has been his duet partner for years, about the farewell concert.  She said that Tony had not spoken her name in a very long time, but when she appeared on stage he said "Lady Gaga!" And she was so moved it was difficult to carry on. 

My husband,  Ken, was on dialysis for eight years prior to his death.  During that time he developed dementia.  While I tried to take him out to lunch or to shop (which was his favorite thing to do) most days, he became very upset with me because I would not take him from our home in Florida to his high school reunion in Ohio.  Finally my son John said he would do it. 

It was a nightmare.  Dealing with a person who has an astonishingly high I. Q. along with dementia can only (sarcastically) be described as "Good Times!"  Good time in the airport where he wondered off, and in the hotel room where they shared a bed so Ken couldn't escape out into the hall.  

But here is the totally exasperating part.  The first gathering for the reunion was held in the lobby of  the hotel where they were staying.  John had difficulty getting Ken dressed in suit and tie and then bundling him into the elevator. 

But when they stepped out into the reunion, the light turned on!  Ken was charming.  He was handsome.  As the former president of the graduating class of 1955 he gave a little speech.  Women were saying to John, "Why isn't your mother here?  Is she still living?"  So John had to fend off these women who were turned on by his charming, articulate dad. 

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If you'd like to see the Anderson Cooper, 60 Minutes interview, it's on Youtube.

The Earring Crisis is Over

 

About ten days ago I put on an old pair of earrings and, at the end of the day, was unable to get one of them off.  

At first I thought if I just applied lotion and tugged enough it would open.   After a few days I realized it would not.  

I'm big fan of Youtube videos but they were no help.  There were plenty of Youtube demonstrations but not for this kind of earring.  One young woman had her earring stuck for four years! That was alarming. 

 Next I looked for places to go to have an expert remove the earring.  The most popular places for the Youtube videos were tattoo/piercing establishments.  I have a couple of granddaughters who have tattoos so thought maybe one of them could hook me up. 

Next I thought about friends or relatives I would trust to cut the earring off with a wire cutter.  The only people I could think of, that I would entrust my ear to are my grandson and his wife, but they are having a super busy week  

I was kind of sad about all this yesterday because I always wear my favorite earrings my daughter gave me for special occasions, like church on Mother's Day. 

This morning I was back at it.  I ransacked my tool box trying to find my needle nosed pliers but to no avail.  David used them often to pull the plastic back on  his favorite TV dinners so I knew they existed but no dice finding them.    I finally settled for this extremely dirty, big, scary looking pair.  

So, after cleaning up the pliers, and while pulling my earlobe and half  the earring one direction, I pulled on the other half with the pliers.  This took only about a dozen tries - but then BINGO!

I think I'll make a Youtube video. 

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Following is a blog posting I did for Mother's Day, 2014.  

 When I was a young minister's wife I dreaded Mother's Day.  In our church, as in most churches, we honored the oldest mothers, the youngest mothers and the mothers with the most kids.  Because, apparently, this was something to be proud of. 

Every Mother's Day we started with the process of elimination.  And the same two ladies would stand up and argue about who was the oldest.  Everybody knew they were born in the same year - two months apart.

Then the same process was started for the youngest mom.  Occasionally, when the winner was 17, or younger, I would quietly go berserk. 

Of course, since it was my busy season of popping out babies from time to time, I would sometimes win the prize for the MOST children.  Beyond humiliating!

Times have changed.  We no longer measure motherhood in this inane way.  There are good moms and terrible moms and everything in between.  I was sometimes all of these on the same day. 

This morning, in my church, my minister, Jayne, did a different take on Proverbs "Ideal Wife."  It was great.  But prior to that she asked every female in the congregation to stand up.  She mentioned girls and women, married and single, moms or not.  Then she let us know how much God values us.  Just like we are. 

It's not a contest.

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North and South

 

In my book, Florida, A Love Story,  Catherine, a northerner, is puzzled by the lack of acceptance when she and her husband moved to Central Florida in the 1800s.  

She thinks she's won over her neighbors when they're invited to a picnic.  She, in turn, invites Joe Black and Naomi, who work for them, to attend as well.  They decline and tell her why this is a bad idea. 

Catherine couldn't separate the teaching All are acceptable in God's sight" from the realities of who would be acceptable at a cracker picnic. 

Later on she is devastated and confused when the five pies she had brought were not touched, except by her husband, Sam. Her neighbor set her straight by telling her Crackers don't eat food fixed by Yankees.

Fast forward a hundred years or so, to the late 1970s.  My husband, Ken, a United Methodist Minister, had great success serving as an urban minister in South Florida for nine years.  He was recognized as a strong bridge builder.  So he was "rewarded" by being asked to move to Orlando to facilitate a difficult change for two downtown churches, located less than a mile from each other.  One was Broadway, the other was Concord Park.  Both churches had lost members, mostly due to urban flight.  Both church buildings were lovely, especially Broadway.  

Ken's assignment was to merge the churches.  The district superintendent at that time said that it was crazy to do anything else.  There were even folks who lived next door to each other attending different Methodist churches. 

Apparently the districts superintendent had forgotten our nation's and our denomination's history.   For well over 100 years, the Methodists were divided into North and South churches.  The original issue, of course, was slavery. But the Civil War did not change this split.  Many southern congregations were caught between church rules and state law.  

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Within the first few weeks, Ken knew that these congregations would never merge.  Broadway was a "North" church and Concord Park was a "South" church.  The people who lived next to each other  attended different churches for a reason.  

We were at Broadway and Concord Park for four years.  During that time both congregations grew, especially Broadway.  During that time Broadway suffered a devastating fire.  Ken encouraged the Concord Park congregation to invite the Broadway folks to meet with them while the year long repairs were made.  They kindly made the invitation but there was no way they'd meet together.  Concord Park worshiped was at 9:30 and Broadway at 11:00.

Knowing our United Methodist history helps me remain hopeful for our denomination's future as we struggle with the question of  All are acceptable in God's sight" from the realities of who would be acceptable at a cracker picnic or a United Methodist Church.

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"That's Enough Boys"

 

Shecky Greene died last week at age 96.

Who was Shecky Greene?  Early on he was a stand up comic and was frequently Frank Sinatra's opening act.  

Many times, when I was invited to speak at a corporate event of some kind, it would be explained to me that I was to go on first to warm up the audience before the experts in the various fields would do the serious stuff.  

As a way to let that person know that I understood exactly what they wanted from me I would respond by saying.  "Yes, I get it.  You want me to be Shecky Greene to (your company's) Frank Sinatra."  They almost always laughed and said, yes, that's what we want.  Because 40 or 50 years ago, most people knew the reference.  

Most people also knew that Greene and Sinatra had a continuous relationship and how they both hung out with thugs.  And Sinatra was famous for having thugs for body guards.   Sometime, during these decades from long ago, I heard a story about how Frank Sinatra saved Shecky Greene's life in a back alley one night in Miami Beach......by saying "that's enough boys!"

I thought it was hysterically funny and shared this story in my own "stand up" several times.  Most times it went over but, as time passed, much of the the audience didn't get the reference.  

It was an intriging story about Frank Sinatra, who was a genuine movie star in the golden era of Hollywood, and one of the finest singers of his era; but also liked to have his bodyguards beat people up on a regular basis.  

While I loved sharing it, I never knew if this particular story was true.  That is until last week when I read the following words of  Shecky Greene in his obituary. 

Frank Sinatra?  Heck of a guy - real prince.  Saved my life once.  We were doing a show at the Sands, and between sets, I took a break in the parking lot.  Next thing I know three guys are working me over real good.  Then I hear Frank say, "OK, boys, that's enough."

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Real Stories

It's been a joy to have discussions about my new book Florida, A Love Story.

Set in the 1800s, it is an exciting, fast paced story of old Florida.  The history is real but the story is fiction. 

Or is it?

Many of the events in Florida, A Love Story happened to me - but not all in Florida.  In the late 1960s my husband, Ken, and I, and our two preschool children, left Florida and headed to Georgia where he attended Candler School of Theology at Emory University.  For the first two years Ken was a "student" pastor in North Georgia. We had a circuit of three churches, Bold Spring, Trinity and Liberty.  Yes, Ken was a circuit rider.   

We were life long urbanites with a civil rights background one week and the next week were were living in a church parsonage in the deep south.  And Ken's new name was "Preacher."

This experience was truly like stepping back in history. 

The very first day we arrived we visited a home where a man had died the day before.  Not only were we greeted by family members in the parlor but he was there as well, in a home made coffin in the middle of the room.  No funeral home.  They buried him the next day in the graveyard next to the church - after the "preacher" said a few words.  

It was on the back porch of the parsonage that I discovered a bag of beans and had no idea what to do with it until I discovered it was black eyed peas (just like Catherine did in the book.)  

Sometime during that two years a racist (his description) ax wielding Lester Maddox was running for governor against Bo Calloway.  We voted in the church building.  There was absolutely no privacy. Every person knew how we voted.  But if that wasn't enough, when the weekly paper came out they recorded the count.  87 votes for Maddox, 2 for Calloway.  (Just like the experience Sam had in the book.)

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The two year experience of living in North Georgia was good for us.  We learned to love these people - with whom we had very little in common and they were very excepting of us.  However I'm sure they thought of us much like the community of Oconee thought of Catherine and Sam.  "It's like the dang king and queen of England decided to take up ranching' in the middle of the swamp! They don't know nothin' about nothin'."

When we visited the smallest of the three churches on the circuit, Liberty, we made sure we went to the bathroom before leaving home because Liberty had no running water, and only an outhouse for those in need.  The kids and I entered the church when we arrived and sat on the right with the rest of the women.  Ken stayed outside with the men who were hanging around their old trucks, plus one family always came in a horse drawn buggy.  At the beginning of the last hymn, that we sang by "lining," the men entered and sat on the left.  

Yes, this is exactly the same situation Cole encountered  during his short stent as a circuit riding preacher in the 1800s. 

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Cowboy Movies

 

When I was a kid my little brother, Paul, and I went to the movies every Saturday and sometimes Sunday as well.  We were each given 25 cents.  15 cents for a ticket, and 5 cents for a bag of popcorn; one for each feature.  We both loved cowboy movies.  And that's mostly what we saw. The movies were called Westerns.  Cowboys were in the West; Texas, Wyoming or Utah mostly.  And there was the "Gunfight at the OK Coral' that took place in Tombstone, Arizona.  These were serious cowboys.  But our favorites were Roy Rogers and Gene Autry who were singing cowboys.  

But in my new book, Florida, A Love Story, we learn that:  

Orange County in Central Florida was the largest cattle-raising area in the United States, including Texas. And during the last quarter of the nineteenth century, cattle raising continued to grow in importance....Florida, a cattle baron's magnet with its open ranges, would be one of the last cattle states to adopt fencing laws. 

Who knew?

We've had fun promoting the book.  My publisher, editor, and I were recently invited to speak on a podcast.  Our editor, Trish, told about how, when she was little, she and her brother would go to see cowboy movies every Saturday, like Paul and I did, only with a little different twist.  Trish's brother had a horse so she and her brother rode the horse every Saturday to see the cowboy movies.

A nice added touch. 

Thanks to all of you who've bought the book.  If you'd like a copy, the easiest place find it is on Amazon. 

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