Buon Compleanno Mamma!

Today Evelyn would have celebrated her 83rd birthday. It's hard to believe that it's already almost 4 years since she left us. I took this photo on her 70th birthday, when we went to a spa in North Wales for a few days. It reminds me that whilst the difficulties of our relationship remain in the past and fade, the work we did together to move forward remains foremost in my memory. I look at this image & feel blessed for what we were able to develop. Buon compleanno Mamma!

 

95 Years Ago Today

95 years ago today, my father and his brother were born. Apparently my grandmother had no idea she was having twins, so after the first boy was born, she got out of bed for coffee and a cigarette. The midwife was almost out the door when Mutti called for her once more!

They lived good lives, and were greatly loved. They are missed by so many people. My only regret is that Lior & Albert never got to meet in person. But I know how happy he is that I got to meet her!

May their memories continue to be for a blessing.

Born 81 Years Ago Today

She was never one for parties, but always up for doing something celebratory, I wonder what we might have done today if my mother were still alive. Always a cake (I do wonder if this year I would have dared to try and stretch my newly-developed baking skills and made one?!). In recent years we'd gone to the theatre, had tea at the Wolseley, a visit to Portmerion, a weekend at a charming inn in the Yorkshire Dales, lunch at the Ivy, lots of Chinese food. Whatever she would've been up for I'm sure it would have been elegant and tasty and celebratory. 

In honour of her 81st birthday, here is a contact sheet which was probably in preparation for PR for one of her concerts. Teenage Evelyn, full of energy and passion. May her memory be for a blessing!

 

93rd Birthday for the Twins

93 years ago today in her apartment, my grandmother Sali gave birth to a baby boy. Afterwards, she got up for a cup of coffee and a cigarette, whilst her husband Alex ran to the public phone to call his friends down at the Stube. "I'm a father!" he told them, "I have a son!"

A while later, as the midwife was preparing to leave, Sali felt a bit strange. The midwife examined her and said, "there's another baby coming!" And so my father became a twin. Alex went rushing back to the phone to call his friends again, "I have a son!" he cried. "Alex, you're drunk," they said, "you already told us!" "No, no, no," he replied, "I have another son!"

On what would have been my father and my uncle's 93rd birthday, I think of them with love. This year it happens to coincide with Mother's Day, and so I think also of my grandmother, who lived in an era when twins were a surprise.

Albert with his mother in Cincinnati in 1949

Happy Birthday Omi!

The maternal grandmother of the ravaj was born on this day in Essen in 1913. Hard to believe that was 99 years ago!

The First of September

Things that Wikipedia considers worth mentioning with regard to 1st September include:

Events
1532 – Lady Anne Boleyn is made Marchioness of Pembroke by her fiancé, King Henry VIII of England.
1836 – Narcissa Whitman, one of the first English-speaking white women to settle west of the Rocky Mountains, arrives at Walla Walla, Washington.
1878 – Emma Nutt becomes the world's first female telephone operator when she was recruited by Alexander Graham Bell to the Boston Telephone Dispatch Company.
1914 – The last passenger pigeon, a female named Martha, dies in captivity in the Cincinnati Zoo.
1972 – In Reykjavík, Iceland, American Bobby Fischer beats Russian Boris Spassky and becomes the world chess champion.

Births
1286 – Elisabeth Richeza of Poland, Queen of Poland (d. 1335)
1653 – Johann Pachelbel, German composer (d. 1706)
1896 – A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada, Founder-Acarya of ISKCON, the Hare Krishna Movement (d. 1977)
1906 – Eleanor Burford Hibbert (Jean Plaidy, Victoria Holt, Philippa Carr...), English writer (d. 1993)
1922 – Yvonne De Carlo, Canadian-born actress (d. 2007)
1933 – Ann Richards, American politician (d. 2006)
1935 – Seiji Ozawa, Japanese conductor
1939 – Lily Tomlin, American actress and comedian
1950 – Dr. Phil McGraw, American talk show host
1955 – Bruce Foxton, English bassist (The Jam)
1957 – Gloria Estefan, Cuban/American singer
1962 – Ruud Gullit, Dutch footballer
1970 – Padma Lakshmi, Indian actress

Deaths
1067 – Baldwin V of Flanders
1581 – Guru Ram Das, fourth Sikh Guru (b. 1534)
1838 – William Clark, American explorer, part of the Lewis and Clark Expedition (b. 1770)
1967 – Siegfried Sassoon, English poet (b. 1886)

happy first birthday zhen zhen

the san diego zoo's latest panda bear cub, daughter of bai yun and gao gao, has her first birthday today. you go zhen zhen!

kate bush turns 50

some of my favourite female friends are big fans of the music of kate bush. in their honour, i wish her many happy returns of the day today. i may not be into her kind of performance art, but i do still possess a vinyl 45 of 'wuthering heights'!

it is hard to accept that icons of one's youth are reaching ages that sound so old. especially since their earliest appearances are recorded and available for public viewing. the ravaj has a birthday in, gosh, just about 4 weeks, and refuses to accept that the age she will attain is commensurate with her actions, feelings and thoughts. according to the social rules, she is well into middle-age. according to her self, she is well into at least her third childhood - just one where she is able to drive, vote, and have a debit card. does that make her the woman with the child in her eyes?

birthday greetings ...

... was e-mailing a note to a facebook friend on his birthday to wish him many happy returns of the day, and suddenly wondered what that actually means. i've not heard it here in the states, but it used to be around quite a bit i think when i was growing up in london. anyway, wiki and a couple of other googled sites have this to say:

"Many Happy Returns is a greeting, usually reserved for birthdays. The term itself refers to the passing year. Since the 18th century this has been used as a salutation to offer the hope that a happy day being marked would recur many more times. It is now primarily used on birthdays; prior to the mid 19th century it was used more generally, at any celebratory or festive event.
Current usage is often as a more formal option than 'Happy Birthday'. It is also often to be found on greetings cards.

Its earliest attributable use was by Lady Newdigate in a letter written in 1789 (and published in Newdigate-Newdegate Cheverels in 1898)[1]: "Many happy returns of ye day to us my Dr Love.""

pre-birthday mini-thoughts

did i spell her name right?
o how i hate birthdays and how i love them. i am too old to get excited and yet on the day itself i want everyone to be nice to me because it is my birthday. the way i deal with this is that the week right before the day i mostly actually manage to forget about it, and if it comes to mind i quickly change the subject of my thoughts. so i just had a look at my friend geoff's blog about jewish mysticism (link on the right in the second group). it is really interesting. from that my thoughts turned to gematria and thence came the idea to check out the gematria for my new age. nu - i managed almost 5 minutes of other thoughts. i'm sure i'll get better with practice :-)

anyway, according to the mysticalnet web gematria server, one of the words i get is באלזבב. hmmmmm. time to go to bed i think!

nb bet, aleph, lamed, zayin, bet, bet spell the hebrew word 'ba'al-z'vuv' aka lord of the fly, or beelzebub