The beautiful flowers arrived at my office on Friday, a gift from my father. The occasion? My father sends me flowers every year on October 30 to commemorate my mother's birthday. This year Mom would have turned eighty (she was born the day after the great stock market crash of 1929!) Mom was an extremely talented and beautiful woman, artistically gifted with limitless creativity (who else would have dressed their kid up as Mighty Mouse for Halloween?!). She wrote poetry and double acrostics (!) and made fried chicken and potato salad that people still rave about. But she was also one of those highly versatile and accomplished people who can't live up to their own dreams and expectations, and she died in September 2000. People tell me I inherited her creativity; I know I inherited her romantic view of the world.
Ave atque vale: My mentor, Roger Hornsby, passed away last week. My relationship to Roger goes back many years, even before my birth. The silver Tiffany cup in the photo above was his present to me when I was born. Roger was a tremendous influence, not just academically. He showed me Rome when I graduated from college and years later I showed him Vienna. I last saw Roger in August, and he was still perusing the train time tables for Europe as his bedtime reading. Those who knew him know that there was and will be no one like Roger Hornsby.
Also saying goodbye to Whiskey Widows:
Frances Paula Holliday
Dorothy "Dottie with the Body" Smith
and
Anna Kolder
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