I was just reading in a book about a man who was the first person in his family to go to college. I have always been sorry that I was the first person in the family to graduate college, because dad attended college for four years, but Wayne State would not accept his credits from Detroit Institute of Technology.
I had always wanted to find out if there was a way to get this changed and get dad his degree.
I was just reading the Wikipedia entry for DIT. I learned three things of interest:
First, DIT was eventually accredited I have no idea if that worked retroactively, but maybe it did.
Second, it shut down for good in 1982.
Third, the "transcripts" are located at Lawrence Technological University. Which is located just across Northwestern from where dad's old office was. My friend Jody Gaber is on the faculty there and her daughter Zoe attends.
Anyone interested in following up on this?
Saturday, March 9, 2013
Monday, November 19, 2012
Not Getting Organized
I'm trying here to give a balanced picture of dad.
I've been going through some of his papers (the notebooks above his easel mainly). Some have had wonderful things in them, but there were a couple of notebooks that made me sad.
I'm reading between the lines here, but in them dad struggled for years--decades--to get himself organized. He sought the Holy Grail of organization from books, magazine articles, audiotapes (mom added that in) and pretty much everything he could find. But he was spending time and effort on how to get organized, filling out charts, writing down ideas, without ever succeeding. Dozens of charts would be filled out, but only once. And while he spent the time on getting organized, he didn't spend the time following up and doing the things that were on the lists he was getting organized to do.
As I know my siblings know, the one thing he just didn't do was exercise. And in the notebooks every list included exercising as a goal. I know he was in pain, and I know that he had his own ideas about what exercise could or couldn't do, but it's so sad to read the evidence of a man who had the best of intentions and the strongest of wills for so many other things spending his time on getting organized about exercising, but not able to follow through. From the way he wrote about it, I know it was eating him up. I suspect our nagging made him feel guilty far more than it motivated him to complete the goals he'd already set for himself, but on the other hand, we literally had no idea. At least I didn't.
I've been going through some of his papers (the notebooks above his easel mainly). Some have had wonderful things in them, but there were a couple of notebooks that made me sad.
I'm reading between the lines here, but in them dad struggled for years--decades--to get himself organized. He sought the Holy Grail of organization from books, magazine articles, audiotapes (mom added that in) and pretty much everything he could find. But he was spending time and effort on how to get organized, filling out charts, writing down ideas, without ever succeeding. Dozens of charts would be filled out, but only once. And while he spent the time on getting organized, he didn't spend the time following up and doing the things that were on the lists he was getting organized to do.
As I know my siblings know, the one thing he just didn't do was exercise. And in the notebooks every list included exercising as a goal. I know he was in pain, and I know that he had his own ideas about what exercise could or couldn't do, but it's so sad to read the evidence of a man who had the best of intentions and the strongest of wills for so many other things spending his time on getting organized about exercising, but not able to follow through. From the way he wrote about it, I know it was eating him up. I suspect our nagging made him feel guilty far more than it motivated him to complete the goals he'd already set for himself, but on the other hand, we literally had no idea. At least I didn't.
Saturday, November 17, 2012
The Phil Silverman Martini Story
I just had a moment, the kind of moment that has to happen, just looking at dad's martini glass and missing him so much.
So I thought I'd write down the Phil Silverman martini story, which I actually told to Phil's two sons in Paris five days before dad died.
By way of background, Phil Silverman was a close friend of mine in high school. He and Peter Morris, both of whom were a year behind me, and I made up the main triumvirate who ran tech in the Little Theater, but unlike the crew when my brother did the same, we all acted as much or more as we did tech. Some shows we actually were running from backstage and climbing up the ladder to do a light cue.
Phil was the best male actor in our group at the time, but he was going through the same growing up travails we all did, only he took things more seriously and was sometimes quite upset or even depressed. One particular day in my senior year, we were talking as we walked from OPHS to my house and it was clear to me he needed something to help him. So when we got home, I offered to fix him a martini.
It was probably four o'clock, a time when no one was home. Carol was off with friends, mom was off shopping, and David was off doing whatever he was doing in his off year between his years of college. I was still 17, Phil was 16, the legal drinking age in Michigan was 18 but I gave it no thought.
So I'm in the kitchen mixing the martini, Phil is sitting in the living room and dad drives up to the house, and walks in on the tableau. He walks into the kitchen and the following dialogue, which I will never forget, occurs.
Me: Hi, dad. Phil is having a tough day so I'm fixing him a martini.
Dad: Would you fix me one, too?
That was dad. He knew he'd taught me to fix a good martini. And he knew there were times when a man, of whatever age, needed one.
So I thought I'd write down the Phil Silverman martini story, which I actually told to Phil's two sons in Paris five days before dad died.
By way of background, Phil Silverman was a close friend of mine in high school. He and Peter Morris, both of whom were a year behind me, and I made up the main triumvirate who ran tech in the Little Theater, but unlike the crew when my brother did the same, we all acted as much or more as we did tech. Some shows we actually were running from backstage and climbing up the ladder to do a light cue.
Phil was the best male actor in our group at the time, but he was going through the same growing up travails we all did, only he took things more seriously and was sometimes quite upset or even depressed. One particular day in my senior year, we were talking as we walked from OPHS to my house and it was clear to me he needed something to help him. So when we got home, I offered to fix him a martini.
It was probably four o'clock, a time when no one was home. Carol was off with friends, mom was off shopping, and David was off doing whatever he was doing in his off year between his years of college. I was still 17, Phil was 16, the legal drinking age in Michigan was 18 but I gave it no thought.
So I'm in the kitchen mixing the martini, Phil is sitting in the living room and dad drives up to the house, and walks in on the tableau. He walks into the kitchen and the following dialogue, which I will never forget, occurs.
Me: Hi, dad. Phil is having a tough day so I'm fixing him a martini.
Dad: Would you fix me one, too?
That was dad. He knew he'd taught me to fix a good martini. And he knew there were times when a man, of whatever age, needed one.
Tuesday, November 6, 2012
Nixon
When I was a senior in high school, it was rare we had dinner together as a family. I was often working on shows, either acting or doing tech, at the OPHS Little Theater. My parents were in their period of going out to dinner with friends or clients several nights a week. David was off on his supposed "year off" from college, wandering around with Pam Markus all over the place. Carol was the only person in the family with a set schedule.
But on those few occasions when we did have dinner together as a family, we had, that year, an uninvited and unwelcome guest at dinner almost every night: Richard Nixon. Dad would sit with the paper, or Newsweek, and expound on the latest of Nixon's sins. He was, of course, preaching to the choir, but he would get angrier and angrier, almost to the point where I almost wanted to defend Nixon just to have something to say. As more and more nastiness of Watergate and Nixon's other sins became public, dad's anger only increased. There was so much information out there about how crooked he had become that it led to just longer and louder tirades against Nixon.
Of course, dad was right in his vitriol. But it wasn't doing any of us any good. Dinner became unpleasant. None of us disagreed about Nixon, but I at least didn't need to hear the latest sins at the dinner table. I'd rather eat my salad in peace.
Nixon resigned only about a month before I left for college, which pretty much put an end to the tirades.
Subsequently, and interestingly, one of the ways Marjorie and I bonded as we got to know one another the next year was complaining together about Jerry Ford. But without reading the newspaper at the dinner table.
Sunday, November 4, 2012
Can we stand up?
When we were little, there were no seat belts in cars. Technically, I think they were available, but they weren't standard and they weren't required, and no one had them.
When we would go on long drives, particularly to the cottage or some of the long drives we would take from the cottage, such as to the Cascades in Jackson or to Kellogg's of Battle Creek, David and I would ask for permission to stand up in the back seat. This was the height of favor (and of course, in retrospect, folly). David would stand behind dad in the driver's seat and me behind mom in the passenger seat (mom didn't have her driver's license and in any case, until dad couldn't drive, he always drove). Carol, of course, hadn't been born yet.
When we had the sky blue Bonneville that was the prettiest car we ever had, about a year after we got it, dad had seat belts installed. And one of the consequences of the new seat belts (just lap belts; shoulder belts didn't exist) was that we could no longer stand in the car. Dad made it clear from day one that he had put in the seat belts for the seat belts to be used. And that meant that the boys could no longer stand in the back for love nor money.
But that was dad: if he invested in something, he expected it to be used. By him and by everyone.
Of course, that did instill in us good seat belts habits long before they became mandatory, long before seat belt use was mandatory. But that privilege of standing up in the back was something I certainly missed and I suspect David did, too. We felt like kings when we were standing in the back, plus we were physically that much closer to mom and dad.
When we would go on long drives, particularly to the cottage or some of the long drives we would take from the cottage, such as to the Cascades in Jackson or to Kellogg's of Battle Creek, David and I would ask for permission to stand up in the back seat. This was the height of favor (and of course, in retrospect, folly). David would stand behind dad in the driver's seat and me behind mom in the passenger seat (mom didn't have her driver's license and in any case, until dad couldn't drive, he always drove). Carol, of course, hadn't been born yet.
When we had the sky blue Bonneville that was the prettiest car we ever had, about a year after we got it, dad had seat belts installed. And one of the consequences of the new seat belts (just lap belts; shoulder belts didn't exist) was that we could no longer stand in the car. Dad made it clear from day one that he had put in the seat belts for the seat belts to be used. And that meant that the boys could no longer stand in the back for love nor money.
But that was dad: if he invested in something, he expected it to be used. By him and by everyone.
Of course, that did instill in us good seat belts habits long before they became mandatory, long before seat belt use was mandatory. But that privilege of standing up in the back was something I certainly missed and I suspect David did, too. We felt like kings when we were standing in the back, plus we were physically that much closer to mom and dad.
Dad and Art
I was in Vienna two days after dad's funeral, and my last day there I went to the Lower Belvedere Palace, which was Prince Eugene's home, now turned into an art museum. The Upper Palace includes the famous Klimt "Kiss", but the Lower Palace contains rotating exhibits. In this particular exhibit there were, among other things, a lot of seascapes, and a lot of 19th century Viennese art. Unfortunately, the museum doesn't have any photos of the exhibit.
The seascapes reminded me so much of dad's big seascape, a painting that he changed numerous times before finally adding the rocks that really transformed its look. Originally, it was entirely waves and water, with no real focal point to it, and he altered it again and again, changing the size and period of the waves, struggling to get a look I assume he had in his head. Dad, after all, had sailed in large, empty spaces of the ocean while in the Navy, and he knew what he was looking for. But he was never satisfied with the painting until he added the rocks. I remember it going up on the wall, then being taken down and being put back on the easel, time after time.
But what the exhibit really reminded me is that I'd neglected an important part of the story in dad's eulogy: his love of art itself. When we were kids, I remember being dragged (that is not too harsh a word, in part because before I got my glasses I could hardly see anything) to the Detroit Institute of Arts, as well as the Toledo museum on occasion (possibly including the time I famously asked if they spoke Ohioan in Toledo), to see traveling exhibits. In particular there were spectacular (in retrospect) exhibits of Van Gogh and Rembrandt at the DIA. I remember going to the former at least a couple of times. By the end, I started to get a little of what dad's (and mom's) love of art was about, but I must admit to a lot of resistance and a lot of misunderstanding.
As I walked through the exhibit at the Belvedere, I thought of which pieces dad would love, which he would not care for much and which he would likely hate (the video of a penis turning on a light switch, I think I can safely safe he would not have wanted to take home).
There was one sculpture, a nineteenth century white marble of a sleeping baby (I think entitled "Sleeping Infant") by Eugene Robert, per my memory part of the Belvedere's own collection, that I know he would have adored, as would, I hope, we all. It is very much in the style of the plaster bas-reliefs on the wall in the breakfast nook in Delray Beach. And the face, I swear, is basically my own. I couldn't find a postcard of it, and there was no open copy of the catalogue of the exhibit (which was not cheap; it's a hardback, full-color book) that would allow me to see if it was included in the catalogue. Of course, photos were not allowed. I haven't been able to find it online, in part because the name Eugene Robert is rather hard to search, since there are a lot of people who had both those names. If someone can find it, I'd be most grateful.
The seascapes reminded me so much of dad's big seascape, a painting that he changed numerous times before finally adding the rocks that really transformed its look. Originally, it was entirely waves and water, with no real focal point to it, and he altered it again and again, changing the size and period of the waves, struggling to get a look I assume he had in his head. Dad, after all, had sailed in large, empty spaces of the ocean while in the Navy, and he knew what he was looking for. But he was never satisfied with the painting until he added the rocks. I remember it going up on the wall, then being taken down and being put back on the easel, time after time.
But what the exhibit really reminded me is that I'd neglected an important part of the story in dad's eulogy: his love of art itself. When we were kids, I remember being dragged (that is not too harsh a word, in part because before I got my glasses I could hardly see anything) to the Detroit Institute of Arts, as well as the Toledo museum on occasion (possibly including the time I famously asked if they spoke Ohioan in Toledo), to see traveling exhibits. In particular there were spectacular (in retrospect) exhibits of Van Gogh and Rembrandt at the DIA. I remember going to the former at least a couple of times. By the end, I started to get a little of what dad's (and mom's) love of art was about, but I must admit to a lot of resistance and a lot of misunderstanding.
As I walked through the exhibit at the Belvedere, I thought of which pieces dad would love, which he would not care for much and which he would likely hate (the video of a penis turning on a light switch, I think I can safely safe he would not have wanted to take home).
There was one sculpture, a nineteenth century white marble of a sleeping baby (I think entitled "Sleeping Infant") by Eugene Robert, per my memory part of the Belvedere's own collection, that I know he would have adored, as would, I hope, we all. It is very much in the style of the plaster bas-reliefs on the wall in the breakfast nook in Delray Beach. And the face, I swear, is basically my own. I couldn't find a postcard of it, and there was no open copy of the catalogue of the exhibit (which was not cheap; it's a hardback, full-color book) that would allow me to see if it was included in the catalogue. Of course, photos were not allowed. I haven't been able to find it online, in part because the name Eugene Robert is rather hard to search, since there are a lot of people who had both those names. If someone can find it, I'd be most grateful.
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