Soul Mosaic

I mentioned in an earlier post that I am not much of a clothes person, just neither my interest, nor my strength. Mind you, I admire people who make wardrobe an artistic expression of themselves. It’s their talent and I acknowledge and admire it. I do better with paints on a canvas. To each his own. No competition required. Instead, more often now, I just laugh at my foibles here.

Where I can walk into a bookstore and immediately process hundreds of topics and book locations and see order and clarity when hunting what I want, I walk into a clothing store and see chaos and confusion. And we won’t even discuss that I’m no longer 20 so many of the styles I wouldn’t be caught dead in, and I wouldn’t look right in anyway. Over the years I learned to figure out the things I like to wear and how to find them, and shopping online allowed order and quiet.

But even if you take all that out of the equation, the simple fact remains…I am at heart a simple person. Intricate complicated wardrobes are just not me. Even more, I am married to a man who could not care less about my wardrobe, and enjoys and I think, even prefers me in simple attire, relaxed, happy, and focused on enjoying each other.

I have to laugh to remember this, but I am a person who spent 8 years in Catholic grammar school wearing uniforms…and LOVED it. I never admitted it to any of the other girls who always griped about these horrible uniforms and why couldn’t they wear their nice clothes. I was secretly relieved. Uniforms leveled the playing field – it took wardrobe out of the picture. People were more able to react to each other as persons because the artificial concept of what you had on, was removed from the equation. So whether you couldn’t pick out nice clothes, or didn’t have the money for them or preferred T-shirt and jeans….none of it mattered. And I liked it that way. And it was less complicated for a non-morning person. You got up and every day you knew what you were wearing. No struggle to figure out what in God’s name to put on.

Even later in life, after I’d learned to do the high heels and makeup and dresses and got fairly comfortable with it, and was slim enough to wear what I wanted….I was still secretly relieved to work in a hospital for 15 years wearing uniforms because again, no questions of what to wear. Sure I had to decide “dress today? skirt and top? slacks?” But still, uniforms limit the confusing options. And deep down inside, that simple child still would rather be in T-shirts and jeans.

That child was the one who wanted to get home from school, throw on whatever and run out to play. Play – biking, baseball, climbing trees and fences, playing in the dirt, imagining through my play that I was on all kinds of adventures – that was the goal. I wore clothes because you had to.

I always loved that in the Nancy Drew books, her clothes were given one sentence: “Nancy went home and packed for her sleuthing trip, then headed for the airport” and the rest of the 130 or so pages were about finding hidden doors, crawling down dirt tunnels, chasing bad guys down deserted roads, and escaping from being tied up in a basement. I would love to be as dressed up as Nancy Drew (not to mention have her lean frame these days), but only have to devote one sentence to it: Deb went shopping and picked out some clothes that looked nice on her, then went to the bookstore. 🙂

Now in menopause, I find I’ve come back full circle to that child who just wants to play and doesn’t care whether society approves of what I put on. In fact, as I get older, the more I feel society demanding something of me in any area of life, the more inclined I am to tell society to take a flying leap off a short pier. And some things on my body hurt more now – high heels I always looked good in but they kill my toes, heels, and arches, and I’m in pain for days afterward. These days, my biggest priority is not to turn heads as I walk in a room…I prefer to not even be noticed, after all, I’m a writer…writer’s like to be anonymous observers of life….my biggest priority is not to turn my ankle walking in shoes too narrow for my wide foot, or feel abdominal pain because the waistband on my slacks is causing my insides to hurt. I did crab at the man in the shoestore one day about why don’t they carry heels in wide sizes. I said, “don’t you think people with wide feet like to wear nice-looking shoes?” He just shrugged. Not really his problem. I was just frustrated. These days I spend most of my time in very expensive running shoes which make my feet feel good. So much for wide heels. The bottom line is, my biggest priority these days is comfort and doing what I was sent here for in the first place before time runs out.

I wear clothes because I have to…they arrest you if you don’t 🙂 . And yes, I am a grown-up, sometimes you have to and should dress up…so I can, and I do. And by the way, for anyone out there who loves clothes and it’s your talent in life….that’s wonderful. Indulge and revel in it. It’s your strength, celebrate it. But it’s not mine and I’ve finally reached a place in life where…I am okay with that. I really understand that for me, it doesn’t matter. My body just wants to return to the simple….to the child. And by that I mean “child-like” not childish. Child-like is the ability to retain the knowledge gained in life and have depth, but to keep the open “beginner’s mind and awe” of a child. You drop the weight of answering to society for the reward of discovering joy in everything out there in the world….even just a bunny rabbit at the back yard feeder. Child-like is what Jesus was talking about when He said you had to become like little children to enter heaven. He wasn’t advocating we all start acting like two-year-olds and throwing tantrums, He simply meant, let go of all that is unnecessary and instead, view the world and life again, using the wonder-filled eyes of a child seeing things for the first time. And maybe He knew that at least by menopause, heaven is not forcing wide feet into tiny high heels, which is hell. 🙂

As an aside about dressing up, I have found simple can be elegant – I always admired the actress Stephanie Powers. Very glamorous Hollywood type. Yet, she seemed as at home in Khakis on the African plains with her friend William Holden, as she did in evening gowns at a Hollywood premiere. When she dressed up, she wore simple, classic styles and avoided “trendy.” She chose classic and it worked. So when I do dress up, I look for that ….even though I don’t have her budget. 🙂

So, it was with all this mulling through my head that I came across the May/June 2008 issue of AARP and saw the interview with Jamie Lee Curtis. I have always enjoyed Jamie Lee Curtis in movies, especially the funny ones, such as A Fish Called Wanda or True Lies. It’s not that her other works are bad, just I like her ability as an actress to poke fun at herself. I suspect that’s part of the real her showing.

For whatever reason, someone discovered a few years ago that she is an interesting and intelligent interviewee. In addition to this current article, I have these two others about her – one from 2006, another from 2007. In each I kept underlining and circling things, and finally just tore them out and kept them. They are sort of a progression of installments as she navigates midlife, and the bits of wisdom she’s learned along the way.

In reading each, I found a person I’d enjoy having tea with, many of the same struggles, foibles, questions and insights. And grounded, down-to-earth. No pretense. No BS…even when talking about her flaws….especially when talking about her flaws. From the 2006 article in More magazine she said: “How can I sell a book about self esteem if I’m not willing to acknowledge that I too have self-esteem issues?”

She is on a quest to get real and the evolution over those articles shows. She ditched the golden brown hair and is now silver. In 2004 she did an article with More magazine that included a picture of her – no makeup, unflattering spandex…midriff bulging – her point: A way to make amends for making many women feel less than they were when she was doing movies with a Barbie-thin frame. She wasn’t advocating going after obesity, but rather the point that she does pilates and yoga, exercises, and eats carefully and yet “This is what I look like….I’ve had to accept that part of me.” She even named her midriff “Midge.”

Progressing through the 2007 Ladies Home Journal article and the 2008 AARP article, she continues her quest for real. She speaks of overcoming alcoholism and drug addiction, being a better mom, wife, and human being, and confronting such questions as: “Did I learn to live wisely? Did I love well? Why am I here? Am I nothing but a body?”

In this latest article, she continues the journey and among other things, talks about aging, clothes and paring down: “Getting older means paring yourself down to an essential version of yourself.” She turns 50 November 22nd and sees herself peeling away the layers more and more and notes that “I have not one second of anxiety about turning 50.”

Frankly, neither did I when I turned 50. In fact I found it liberating to be out of my 40s. Something about reaching a milestone and for whatever inexplicable reason, I felt like I could start to let some things go, shed them, be me again and take back that freedom that comes with getting older and knowing you aren’t 30 anymore, you don’t want to be 30 anymore, you’re better than you were at 30 in so many ways, and you’re actually happy to do what you please and make a fool of yourself and the hell with what people say.

Jamie Lee Curtis mirrored my thoughts. She went on to say that “My style is a distillation …I’ve let my hair go gray. I wear only black and white. Every year I buy three or four black dresses that I just keep in rotation. I own one pair of blue jeans. I’ve given away all my jewelry, because I don’t wear it.” She wants to “jettison what no longer serves her.” She noted that she recently got rid of a pair of black boots and no longer wears high heels…. “Too uncomfortable. Don’t need ’em. Gone.” In evolving this way, she becomes new again.

Her first insight into this new simpler approach came years ago when she and her husband attended the Golden Globes. She described herself as “wearing some borrowed dress that wasn’t me, my hair was done in a way that I never wear my hair, and I had earrings on. And my husband said, “You know who is the most beautiful woman in the room?” And I was hoping he would say me. And he pointed across the room at Jessica Tandy. She was sitting at a table wearing a cream-colored silk-shantung pantsuit. Single strand of pearls, short white hair, a little lipstick-nothing else. And I thought, ‘He’s totally right.’ There was none of the pretense, none of the trying so hard.”

She talks about being older and seems to like it, thinking “there’s an incredible amount of self knowledge that comes with getting older. I feel way better now than I did when I was 20…stronger…smarter in every way….less crazy…..” She added that “as we get older, we say goodbye to a lot of people….and discover our capacity to love and communicate and have intimacy–real intimacy, not the superficial intimacy we had in our youth. Strip away all the bulls—; be done with that.” Her goal now is to “jettison what no longer serves her” and she aspires to “essential being. Nothing extraneous.”

In a 2002 article she said that she hoped to someday feel sure enough of herself to “look like just me” and say to magazine editors “This is what I wear, this is how I wear my hair…;I’m going to look the way God intended me to look.” She admits that she’s not a spiritually perfect person. “I’m flawed and contradictory and fraught in many areas. But I’m better. I’m growing, and that’s all I really want.”

I raise my cup of tea to her. She said so many things that I’ve felt and wondered if I was the only one. I embraced her thoughts about “shedding” and “being essential only” and know exactly what she meant about coming to an age where you suddenly realize the amount of power you have inside you to love and to communicate and to want, demand, and give REAL intimacy — soul connection…not that kind from my 20s that left you feeling scared, competitive, inadequate.

So now I will go upstairs to change from my comfortable sweats, and put on my shorts and T-shirt to work through my day, doing work I feel I am being called to do….work that draws on every last experience, failure, mistake, despair, wonder, and love I have internalized over the last 52 and 1/2 years. Later this year, also in November, like Curtis (guess we’re both Scorpios?), I will turn 53, and I will revel in that and take more of my own power back from society.

And I know the questions she asks, and I ask them of myself almost everyday –  Why am I here? Did I learn to live wisely? Did I love well? Good questions.

Well the temperatures have been over 100 degrees F for the last few days. If that isn’t enough to make the lilies in the backyard open their blossoms, nothing will. I’ll post more pics tomorrow, and even give you some new pics of the now “middle-school aged” goslings. Soon they will leave “cute” behind and become “gawky teens” with feathers sticking through fuzz. So for new pics, see tomorrow.

For now, a summer sunshine extra – “Opening Lilies.” Enjoy!

Several months ago, I was invited to join a friend to attend a presentation of the personal effects of a former Burroughs Wellcome scientist who had died. To say she was a scientist, is both a major understatement and a total truth at the same time. In reading the booklet she wrote about her life, it’s obvious that first, foremost, and in her deepest heart places, she was a scientist, and to her, that was her reward. No claim to fame, degree, paycheck, whatever, motivated her. She was motivated by total love of what she did and a passion to do it above anything. So yes she was a scientist to the core.

But she was no ordinary scientist. Gertrude B. Elion. She was born in 1918 and unlike most women then, was fortunate enough to go to college, attending a women’s college in New York City, Hunter College. Unlike most women, even those in college, she pursued a degree in Chemistry. There were other women in that field, most planning to teach, but only a small number, Gertrude included, wanted to become laboratory scientists. She was motivated to pursue this dream after watching a beloved grandfather die a difficult death from stomach cancer. She felt the branch of science with the most potential for medical breakthroughs for cancer, would be chemistry. Thus, her choice.

Her grades in high school were good enough to qualify her for free tuition, and she graduated summa cum laude. However, reality awaited her upon graduation, as she noted: “What had made me think that graduating “summa cum laude” would open any doors for me to a research laboratory?” The most common response she received during an entire summer of job-hunting was “We have never had a woman in the laboratory; we think you would be a distracting influence.”

After short stints in secretarial school, and teaching biochemistry in nursing school, she had a reprieve from a young chemist friend who brought her into his lab for free initially, but eventually was able to pay her a small salary. World War II gave her the break she’d been unable to get. As she put it, “it opened the doors for women to work in chemistry laboratories. While the men were away, employers had to take a risk.”

Okay, so she was admirable in that she loved chemistry enough to work for nothing, and to keep trying until she got a real job in it. No question, a great achievement for a woman at that time. And certainly she was in the minority, but still, there were other women who managed to achieve the same thing she did in a difficult time. So what else made her special?

She managed to parlay a number of pharmaceutical jobs and part-time graduate college attendance into a Master’s degree and a job at Burroughs Wellcome. She followed the company when it left New York and moved to some unheard of, at that time, place in North Carolina called Research Triangle Park. She and a few others began to do ground-breaking research with nucleic acids, something very few others were doing at that time, and things even fewer people had ever heard of. Who knew what purines and pyrimidines were in June of 1944? Even she didn’t know.

She stayed with that job and career through the 1950s, described by her as the “golden age of nucleic acid biochemistry.” It was a time of discoveries in various synthesis processes and pathways, and the discovery of the structure of DNA. Her work over the next several years involved developing better treatments for childhood leukemia, delving into the field of immunosuppression and transplantation, developing a new treatment for gout and other chemotherapeutic agents. So again, no question a remarkable career, one anyone could take pride in. But wait…there’s more.

She and her group started into the study of antiviral treatments, again, a new area of research, and began working with the herpes virus. That group of researchers came up with an exciting new antiviral agent, acyclovir. It showed a great deal of activity against herpes viruses and thus began a number of studies to determine just how effective the drug could be. This culminated in the development and eventual FDA approval of the herpes drug: Zovirax. Over time she watched as their drug’s use expanded to include treatment for mucocutaneous, ocular, and oral herpes, genital herpes, herpes encephalitis, shingles, and chicken pox. The drug was also used to protect immunosuppressed patients undergoing bone marrow or organ transplants or cancer chemotherapy, from activation of any latent herpes infection in their bodies.

She retired in 1983 and one would think these achievements would be sufficient for satisfaction for her life’s work. However, retirement was anything but quiet. She was asked to stay on at Burroughs Wellcome as Scientist Emeritus and a consultant. She became president of the American Association for Cancer Research, and served on the National Cancer Advisory Boards, a Steering Committee for Filariasis for the World Health Organization, and continued to work with the team at BW that had brought Zovirax to market. She was there to watch the expansion of the antiviral team and their newest research project, a new antiviral drug called: azidothymidine…also called zidovudine, or Retrovir, or maybe the most wellknown name for the drug by most people: AZT….for the treatment of AIDS.

Finally, in 1988, she and her colleagues George Hitchings and Sir James Black were notified they had been given the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicince. When asked if this wasn’t what she had sought after all her life, Gertrude replied:

“Nothing could be farther from the truth. It never occurred to me that I might be considered for this award. My rewards had already come in seeing children with leukemia survive, meeting patients with long-term kidney transplants, and watching acyclovir save lives and reduce suffering.”

So a Nobel Prize winner, thus an amazing scientist, but at heart, just a true blue scientist.

If all this wasn’t enough to pack into one professional life, retirement and the award brought more. She was now in great demand by the press, television, universities, various boards, and continued to receive even more honors. She was elected to the National Academy of Sciences, National Inventors’ Hall of Fame, and the National Women’s Hall of Fame. She was given the National Medal of Science and many honorary degrees. These last ones gave her the PhD she was never able to get on her own, being too busy with her work. Before her death she mentored students at the Duke University Medical Center as a Research Professor of Pharmacology and Medicine, guiding students through research into brain tumor biochemistry, pharmacology, and chemotherapies of various kinds.

So…all this from someone who might be a “distraction in the lab,” couldn’t finish secretarial school, and worked for nothing in her first laboratory job, just because …she wanted to be a scientist. QUITE an AMAZING scientist, but in her heart, she was simply – scientist. Dedicated. Passionate. Successful beyond anyone’s wildest dreams, but still, scientist. That was her biggest reward.

Ah yes, the personal effects. There were many books, framed degrees, posters, papers, awards, etc. on display in a small conference room. Everyone was allowed to select a couple of items if they wanted. My friend and I went, curious about what a Nobel-Prize-winning scientist would have in her office and on her desk. What sorts of things does a Nobel Laureate value, or have to inspire and guide them? Does a Nobel Laureate have the sorts of things an ordinary person would? Or are they beyond the ordinary and more into something amazing and unexpected?

Among all the many amazing degrees and awards, came my answer. Super-scientist she might be, but human to the core. I selected one item and for me, it was most interesting. I would love to know the story behind it. It’s s simple, silver-framed poem by someone I’ve never heard of. I have searched for information on the author of the poem but can find none.

The poem’s title is: Broken Pieces.

For sure, given this blog’s focus, it fits to be mentioned here. And I love it’s words and thoughts and find them inspiring. But I guess it was not the sort of thing I initially expected a Nobel Laureate to have given they are so amazing and famous and why would they need encouragement? But Gertrude, for all her honors, was a humble person who knew who she was at her core. And she spent much of her career studying the tiny broken building block pieces that made up each of us. So maybe there remained a humility and an awe of just what it takes to create a person. Or perhaps it’s a poem written for someone else and she just liked it or it had sentimental value for her. I’ll never know the story behind the piece, but it’s presence in her office, and it’s message intrigued and inspired me. Perhaps it will intrigue and inspire others.

So for all, in today’s Gift post below, the poem: Broken Pieces, from the desk of Gertrude B. Elion, chemist first, famous person second.

From the private effects of Nobel Prize winner: chemist, Gertrude B. Elion, a simple framed poem:

Broken Pieces

Have you ever wondered about
The perfection that you are?
Have you ever, even for one instant,
Contemplated
The intricate network
Of race and color,
Of beliefs through time
That it took to produce
You,
One whole unique and sculptured
You?
Have you ever wondered
In your quiet moments
The collection of priceless
Broken pieces
That it took to have
You
Here in this moment?

– Antonia JoanMarie Catherine Bernard, May 8, 1991

“How much of human life is lost in waiting.”

Professor Oxley, in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull

Today is June 5. Forty years ago, Robert Francis Kennedy won the California primary and was on his way to a likely win for the Democratic Presidential nomination in Chicago. Instead, he never made it there.

From a You Tube video entitled: Robert F. Kennedy Remembered, here are some inspirational quotes nestled in amongst the pictures of him. I realize that many of his words have stayed with me below the surface, my whole life, in some way organically prodding me in a direction and a set of beliefs.

Whether you liked or hated the man, still, the heart in his words had the power to change this country…at least they had the power to change me. And maybe in the end, if words can change a single person, eventually, they can change a country….or a world.

By the way, if this appeals to you, there is a book by his son, Maxwell Taylor Kennedy, who was 3 when RFK was killed. It is the collection of quotes RFK compiled in his life, taken from things he read, Classical Literature, poems, things he and John Kennedy assembled. Maxwell Kennedy arranged the quotes in chapters by topic, as a sort of literary biography of his father. If of interest, the book is:

Make Gentle the Life of This World: The Vision of Robert F. Kennedy, by Maxwell Taylor Kennedy

And now, simply, a sampling of his quotes:

Only those who dare to fail greatly can ever achieve greatly.

The sharpest criticism often goes hand in hand with the deepest idealism and love of country.

Fear not the path of truth for the lack of people walking on it.

Every time we turn our heads the other way when we see the law flouted–when we tolerate what we know to be wrong–when we close our eyes and ears to the corrupt because we are too busy, or too frightened–when we fail to speak up and speak out–we strike a blow against freedom and decency and justice.

And the quote of his I most remember him by, and which has most affected my own life:

There are those who look at things the way they are, and ask why….I dream things that never were and ask why not.

“But suppose God is black? What if we go to Heaven and we, all our lives, have treated the Negro as an inferior, and God is there, and we look up and He is not white? What then is our response?”

Robert Francis Kennedy

Today is the 40th anniversary of Robert Kennedy’s assassination. I still feel his loss. In searching for something to honor this day, I came across a You Tube site with roughly 30 videos of various things about Robert Kennedy and his life. Three which I really liked are:

Robert F. Kennedy Speech: Mindless Menace of Violence in America

Bobby Kennedy: Fearless

Robert Kennedy Tribute: Making a Difference

I was particularly drawn to his speech in the video, Robert Kennedy announces the death of Martin Luther King, Jr. :

The video’s pictures of the people, and the times, as well as his delivery, capture the real emotion and essence of that night. I’ve included part of his speech here:

“Martin Luther King dedicated his life to love and to justice between fellow human beings. He died in the cause of that effort. In this difficult day, in this difficult time in the United States, it is perhaps well to ask what kind of a nation we are and in what direction we want to move in.

For those of you who are Black, considering the evidence evidently is that there were White people who were responsible, you can be filled with bitterness and with hatred and a desire for revenge. We can move in that direction as a country and greater polarization, Black people amongst Blacks and White amongst Whites, filled with hatred toward one another. Or we can make an effort, as Martin Luther King did, to understand and to comprehend and replace that violence, that stain of bloodshed that has spread across our land, with an effort to understand, compassion, and love.

For those of you who are Black and are tempted to be filled with hatred and mistrust of the injustice of such an act, against all White people, I would only say that I can also feel within my own heart the same kind of feeling. I had a member of my family killed. And he was killed by a White man. But we have to make an effort in the United States. We have to make an effort to understand, to get beyond or go beyond these rather difficult times. My favorite poem, my favorite poet was Aeschylus:

‘Even in our sleep, pain which cannot forget, falls drop by drop upon the heart, until in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grace of God.’

What we need in the United States is not division. What we need in the United States is not hatred. What we need in the United States is not violence and lawlessness, but is love and wisdom and compassion toward one another, and a feeling of justice toward those who still suffer within our country, whether they be White or they be Black.

So I’d like to ask you tonight, to return home, to say a prayer for the family of Martin Luther King, yeah it’s true, but more importantly, to say a prayer for our own country, which all of us love, a prayer for understanding and that compassion of which I spoke.

We can do well in this country. We will have difficult times. We’ve had difficult times in the past. And we will have difficult times in the future. It is not the end of violence. It is not the end of lawlessness and it’s not the end of disorder. But the vast majority of White people and the vast majority of Black people in this country, want to live together, want to improve the quality of our life, and want justice for all human beings that abide in our land. And dedicate ourselves to what the Greeks wrote so many years ago, ‘To tame the savageness of man and make gentle the life of this world,’ let us dedicate ourselves to that and say a prayer for our country and our people.”

In listening to him speak, and reading his words, I often wonder what might have happened, had both he and Martin Luther King, Jr. lived. Can you imagine politicians today speaking of “understanding….compassion….love?”

The You Tube site also has a number of video tributes, and that classic last speech of his in Los Angeles, at the Ambassador Hotel, that ended with those words I can still hear on that 1968 TV set: “Now it’s on to Chicago, and let’s win there, too.”

Of course he never made it. A reporter that night, who was right behind Kennedy as they made their way through the Ambassador Hotel pantry shows why. That video is on the You Tube site as well, and it captures in real time, the chaos and panic as Kennedy was shot and the reporter stood in front of Sirhan Sirhan, the gun pointed right at him.

Finally, there are videos showing the funeral, the eulogy by his brother Sen. Ted Kennedy in St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York City, and most intense for me – a video of the journey of his funeral train, from New York City to Washington – RFK – Final Journey.

I was only 13, and you’d expect I’d be out with friends. Instead, I spent the entire day watching his train crawl down the eastern seaboard. THAT video haunts me most and I remember to this day, watching all those people choking the tracks, waiting for hours in the June heat, just to see his casket go by. SUCH a sense of loss by millions. That journey normally took 4 hours by train. Instead, it took 8 hours, resulted in the deaths of two people in New Jersey, and disrupted train service throughout the east, as noted in an entry from steamlocomotive.com :

“On June 8, 1968, the 21 car funeral train of Robert F. Kennedy left New York City for Washington, DC. The train was led by GG1 number 4901 with number 4903 trailing, and ended with Penn Central open-platform business car number 120 carrying the body of the late Senator.

A three car pilot train pulled by GG1 number 4932 ran ahead of the funeral train and GG1s numbers 4900 and 4910 followed light as back-up motive power.

At Elizabeth, NJ, the crowd moved onto the tracks to get a view of the special train, just as “The Admiral”, heading to New York City from Chicago, was rounding a curve. “The Admiral’s” GG1 sounded its horn, but some of the people in the crowd did not clear the track in time and sadly two were killed and four seriously injured.

After the tragic accident the Penn Central ordered all train movement stopped until the special train passed. The funeral train arrived in Washington’s Union Station four hours behind schedule and had caused disruption to the entire railroad.”

The remainder of the journey was described in an excerpt from Robert Kennedy: His Life, by Evan Thomas, on the Washington Post website:

I watched it all, the whole morning, afternoon, evening, and night. I watched, just blown away by the faces along those tracks…and by the impact of the realization that one man’s life could make such a difference to so many. And for 40 years, I have felt that man’s loss.

There is a book, RFK Funeral Train by Paul Fusco, that contains photos along that train’s journey. Even now, looking at all those people, I choke up. The description from this UK website, Foto 8, shows the worldwide appeal of those photos…and the man:

“RFK Funeral Train
by Paul Fusco
Softcover -Signed Copy

A uniquely profound record of one of the defining moments of the twentieth century. These emotional photographs depict the track-side scenes as hundred of thousands of people stood patiently in the searing heat of June 8th 1968 to watch the funeral train carrying RFK’s body passed by.

This set of photographs by Fusco lay undiscovered for 30 years, never published until first appearing as an exhibition in the late 1990s.

Now out of print the original Softcover book is a collector’s item, sold here as a rare signed copy.”

Wanting that book, I checked around and it’s only available as “collector’s copies” that run anywhere from $75-250 or 100 pounds on the UK site. So, not in my budget. But if you click here, that will take you to the Digital Journalist’s website entry for the RFK Funeral train. There you’ll see 15 thumbnail pictures from the book that you can click on and enlarge. At least to me, those pictures say it all, and keep the memory alive in my heart.

I leave you with a last quote, another one I try to remember as I live my life, and the answer when anyone thinks they alone cannot make a difference to another… or to this world:

“Each time a man stands for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring, those ripples build a current which can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance.”

My earlier posts had photos of the New England seascape I’ve been painting for my sister. And for whatever reason, the Photoshop demon that plagued some of the intermediate photos of this painting, did not raise its ugly head for these. So, my final photos of this painting. If you want to compare these to earlier photos, just click here for the page that has all the previous links for the New England seascape photos.

And now, the first is a shot of the whole:

Then some closer shots of the left, middle, and right sides of the painting:

Some shots of the tide pool, rock and seaweed details, and foamy surf:

A couple shots of the pier and town (note my attempt at a Corvette for my brother-in-law in the town picture):

And last but not least, a hermit crab on the rocks, a nod to my Under the Pier main animal character!

So, now it will be on to other seascapes, paintings of my story’s diner (inside and out), and some pen and ink drawings with color washes of the various animal characters under the pier! Stay tuned.