Love Letters from Long Ago

There is a letter, undated, to my mother.

My aunt, mother and grandmother

I can narrow it down to 1929-1930, the time my grandmother was in a sanatorium fighting tuberculosis. She lost her battle in June of 1930. This would put my mother's age at the time at either three or four.

Here is what the letter says:

Dear Little Mary Rose,

I wonder how you are? Are you Daddy's little lady? I know you are. You love Mother, too, don't you?

Mother is trying to get well so she can come home to you. Then we will have a time, won't we?

Come up and see Mother when you can. Did you like the paper dolls? 

I must go to bed now, or the nurse will come and scold me. 

Good night, sweetie. I send lots of kisses and hugs.

From Mother

There is so much love and longing in this letter, I wanted to cry. (Okay, maybe I did).

The fact this letter still exists, in my mind, is nothing short of miraculous.

After my grandmother died, my mother and her four siblings were raised by my grandfather, who had help from relatives and neighbors, until my grandfather remarried in 1932.

Someone had to vouchsafe this and the other correspondence, as well as the photographs. Was it my grandfather?

It makes me wonder what will become of our legacy in the hands of the next generation. Will they be as careful to preserve these windows into our souls?

We are such a disposable society. We trust that technology will keep a permanent record of our doings. But as technology becomes outdated and replaced, isn't a fair amount of it lost to old electronic methods of preservation? Is it really better than these nearly 100-year-old letters I'm holding in my hand?

Time will tell. It always does, I suppose.

We Loved You (Yeah, Yeah, Yeah)

John, Paul, George and Ringo, together again in my living room, were performing in their first live American television performance on the Ed Sullivan Show.

Surprise, pleasure, happiness and a bit of cheek, all came through the screen. I don't remember their first appearance per se, although I do have a vague recollection of my older siblings wanting to watch the new sensation from Britain and my folks being less than enthused.

The date was February 4, 1964, and the British Invasion had begun.

When all was said and done, my dad hated them and my mom liked them. So my brothers were allowed to play them in their room, nearly non-stop (it seemed to me) for the next several years.

That's why I'm a Beatles fan. Why I can still sing along to most of their songs. (I Am the Walrus is still a bit sticky for me, I admit.) And why I re-watched that first show last week and felt so much that I could never describe adequately to my son or anyone else who wasn't there.

Here was the playlist, performed in two different sets on the show:

All My Loving

Till There Was You

She Loves You

I Saw Her Standing There

I Want to Hold Your Hand

At one point, they put captions under each mop-topped band member. Beneath John's, it said, "Sorry, girls, he's married."

As well as musical groups, Ed Sullivan showcased comedians, jugglers and all manner of performers. Much like Vaudeville, it really was a mixed bag of "wow" and "not so much."

The Beatles' first appearance was no exception. In fact, it was touch and go whether the upstart British band was even going to get top billing.

One of the other acts was the London cast from the play Oliver, which performed two songs. In the first, the Artful Dodger and his compatriots belt out I'd Do Anything. And whom, you might ask, played the Artful Dodger? None other than Davy Jones, who a few short years later would go on to play one of the Monkees in the hit TV show that started out as a spoof. Then it turned out the Monkees really could play their instruments.

But I digress.

Other fun facts from this first episode...George had tonsillitis and missed the rehearsals for the show. Standing in for him was Neil Aspinall, their road manager in the early days. He didn't play, his guitar wasn't plugged in, but a few days later, an American magazine proclaimed he "played a mean guitar."

Ed Sullivan announced the Beatles had received a telegram from Elvis Presley. In truth, it had been sent from Colonel Tom Parker, who wanted to jump on the Beatles bandwagon early. Elvis did not like the Beatles.

Other performers that night included a pair of comedians, Charlie Brill and Mitzi McCall, who bombed. Fred Kaps, an engaging magician who was quite good, despite having to immediately follow the then-toughest act in show business. (Although, I believe his segment was taped, so that helped.)  Frank Gorshin, soon-to-be TV's The Riddler, then a talented impressionist. (Are there still people who do impressions?) Wells and the Four Fays were "comedic acrobats," who vaulted about the stage, contorting their bodies in ways mine has NEVER been able to.

And then there was Tessie O'Shea, a 50-year-old Welsh singer, whom, on any other night, would have stolen the show. She played a banjolele and sang, Two Ton Tessie from Tennessee (the reference was to her talent, not her weight). I thought Tessie was amazing. Online, I found a picture of Tessie with the four lads, and she autographed it, "Cheers & Love, Tessie O'Shea and her favorite boys."

Mr. Ginley and I went on to watch the remaining Beatles' appearances, which were great, but not quite as fascinating as the first, which was viewed by 73 million Americans in front an audience of 728.

Will we ever again experience something like Beatlemania?

It doesn't seem possible.

French Detection

It's pronounced, "Kay-Dee O-Fay-vor-a," I told Mr. Ginley.

Quai des Orfèvres is the location of the Police Judiciaire de Paris. It's where our fictional hero, Chief Superintendent Jules Maigret, has his office.

We'd been watching Maigret (pronounced "May-Gray"), a French mystery series starring Bruno Cremer. Since this version was performed with French actors, we were using subtitles, but frankly, they speak so darned fast, you don't always hear the French pronunciation.

Thus, I turned to You Tube so I could properly pronounce Quai des Orfèvres.

Isn't French just the ginchiest language? Although, I've gotta say, I doubt they get anywhere near as much satisfaction from spitting out "merde" as my grandma did saying "shit." (It was her favorite swear word. She said no other expletive felt as good to say when she was really worked up.)

We also noticed the subtitles didn't translate exactly. French is by no means our native tongue, but even we figured out that the actors were saying a lot more than what was showing up in the subtitles. I suppose they captured the gist of it, but we did feel just a little cheated. Who knows what the subtitlist decided wasn't germane to the story? 

It made me think of all those Japanese imports we were exposed to as children. "There goes Tokyo, Go Go Godzilla." The monster would be tearing it up, while the actors stood there reciting what appeared to be the New York City phone directory. But the English words coming out of the dubbed-in actors' mouths were, essentially, "We're screwed, this giant lizard means business."

But I digress.

Once we'd made it through the entire French production of Maigret, we decided to start on the British version. It was fairly well done, but I must admit, it's a little off-putting hearing Parisian arrondissements spoken with a Brit accent. I suppose Michael Gambon did a serviceable job, but we still preferred Bruno Cremer. The French version just captured the whole noir thing beautifully.

Naturally, being the bibliomaniacs we are, the next step was to begin reading the books the two series were based on. There are 75 of them. Thanks to the Downtown Cleveland Library, I believe we will be able to accomplish this task, given the time.

Meanwhile, we will cast about for a new/old series to latch onto. We've watched a couple of Italian mystery series, so it doesn't have to be a PBS production or anything.

We're open to suggestions.

Merci beaucoup!

Woodstock Turns 50

Having watched the Live Aid footage, Mr. Ginley and I decided to give equal time to Woodstock, the granddaddy of music festivals.

We chose the Blue Ray edition of the movie Woodstock. Thankfully, we rented it from the library so we could give it back.

After viewing the first few minutes of the film, we fast-forwarded through the rest. Yes, we can see there are a lot of people (400,000+) flocking to the festival at Yasgur's Farm. Here are a bunch of people climbing over the fence because they don't want to pay. There are the Port-O-Potties, and look, someone left their cane in one of them. Mostly, the film shows lots and lots of 20-somethings milling around, stoned or inebriated. But, for the most part, behaving themselves, mostly happy and enjoying the event. (No guns, imagine that today.)

Some of the participants are bathing in a lake. Oh, look, many of them are naked. See how the camera zooms in on one naked young woman with a nice bod. "Just think," observed Mr. Ginley. "She is probably someone's grandma now."

Also in the lake is a blonde woman, whose body remains underwater, as she talks to the camera about peace, love, etc., while several young men follow her like sharks, hoping to get a look-see at whatever is below the water level.

Fast forwarding to the end of the film, we move on to the acts.

The performances are chopped up and feature lots of annoying special effects. I'm sure they were swell at the time, but now they are just distracting. Weird split screens, zoom zooming in and out and lots of orange lighting. It did help that the disc featured the individual acts under the "special features" section, so you didn't have to sit through Melanie, for example, if you just wanted to see Crosby, Stills & Nash.

We managed to see the performers we were most interested in. I got to watch Janis Joplin, Mr. Ginley got The Who. And we partook of Jimi Hendrix, including his famous rendering of the Star Spangled Banner.

The weirdest was Sha Na Na, doing their usual shtick of 1950s hits. I wondered who thought that was a good idea. Not that they weren't entertaining. It just struck me that it was like Jimi Hendrix opening for the Monkees. (That wasn't a winning idea, either, and it also really happened.)

All in all, I couldn't help but feel sad. So many of the performers would be gone in a few short years. Janis, Jimi, Keith Moon. And when they panned across the hundreds of thousands of fans, I wondered aloud how many of those young men had served and died in Viet Nam, which hadn't yet reached its deadly peak.

In retrospect, the whole thing was quite a feat. Here are some of the numbers:
3 days
32 acts
2 deaths (one insulin usage. the other a tractor ran over a guy who was sleeping in a field)
2 births (one of them in traffic)
4 miscarriages
400,000+ attendees
600-acre venue (dairy farm)
2 hours - duration of Hendrix's performance

And, of course, there were those who were invited but did not participate. Bob Dylan, who lived in Woodstock. Roy Rogers, who was asked to perform Happy Trails at the end of the festival. The Moody Blues because they were performing in Paris.

And Frank Zappa who declined, saying, "A lot of mud at Woodstock."