November 11, 2018
Posted on November 14, 2018 1 Comment
First super cold day of the imminent winter at 29 degrees. I’ve been feeling creative bursts every day on and off, however never seem to get myself to the page. Then it flows out of other creative projects like updating house hardware, nest cleaning and redesign and leaf blowing patterns. I’m reaching here.
I am feeling lonesome on and off as well. I wonder if the significant people in my life, both friend and adversary, think of me as I do them. I think of so many of the people I adore past and present on a daily basis. At times I send them notes. Other times I visit them, or I express a desire to visit them or I invite them to visit me. The latter seems never to occur. Not even by my own immediate family. What an estranged life I am living. My tribe has left me as I remain, solitary, in a large, beautiful colonial in a moderately distant valley. I am so very grateful for the beautiful home I have and the immortal husband who supports my trauma-induced daily habits, pointedly, my unemployed, consumer-effusive life. And although I can’t think of myself as not being wasteful, I tell myself it does not define me. Overdrawn but temporary. I’m seeking a new tribe. The meantime is a grating lonesomeness.
The daily moments in which I reflect on my separation from Richard always reveal a sadness in the realization that our union was neither meant to be romantic nor forever. We are not kindred spirits, we are comate’s of convenience living out both ends of the definition, having become mates and subsequently fallen into a coma, tumbling out in hairy tufts like dry tumbleweeds rolling directionless in hot winds. We leave this journey as we entered, each as our own protagonists in both our individual and shared drama, played out in perfect time. It has brought us to our personal awakenings that shakes us at our cores, revealing our naked selves like a Talking Heads tune questioning; “how did I get here?” Shocking how every line of those lyrics personify our joint venture.
We both were aware in our subconscious and occasionally conscious minds, that the big bang which collided our worlds was an epoch event. Time could not hold up and things could never be the same as they ever were for either of us. We were both content allowing the days to go by, same as the next and the next and the next. For a decade. This is when we became the antagonists in our story.
When life was chaos with needy kids and parenting brain fog, love was masked by needs, urges, relief. Our bare bodies an elixir to the incomprehensible. But now the winds have changed, the kids have left, dementia won, the cause has been erased by time and I can’t remain content simply by letting the days go by under the rocks and stones we’ve stacked between us, silent water holding us down. With the swirling clatter of external forces waned, I have felt the well flowing, spraying my toes. “What is this beautiful house? Where does this highway go? Am I right? Am I wrong? My God! What have I done?” I saved myself and him. He did the same. We are saved. We survived. We are each other’s heroes and our own. The war is over. The battle echoes in our heads. Triggers are prevalent. He is restless. I am receding. Searching for a new home, for the one I left two decades ago, has dissipated into the vastness of the memory palace. The further I move along life’s automated sidewalk, the farther those experiences ebb away. I am moving both forward and in retrograde. The memories are my story, and as I align my voice with the life that flutters in my core, I feel the force of movement urging me through mire towards destinies unknown. I am okay with this. I am grateful. I float.
As unsettling as it feels in moments of acuity, when perceived reality brings anxiety, I give myself permission to rage, grieve, hold space and rejoice in what was and what may come. The miracle of unfolding unto potentiality is hope. “Holding Opportunity Perceived as Evolution”. I take full credit for this acronymic conceptualization.
So happy to be writing again.
© 2018 all rights reserved
The Tunnel of Lasts
Posted on September 9, 2018 2 Comments
From the last day of our final, annual vacation together on the fourth Saturday of August, to our final embrace on the second Tuesday of September, I journey through a dark tunnel of lasts. I feel the reality of my decree begin to crack open under my feet, as if a real, physical fissure has opened in the very architecture of the universe, and this is where, entering into the crack, I replay the events precedent to when my life became a vulnerable, gaping maw.
I feel life accelerate with no way to disengage the pedal. The minivan packed with pillows, sandy pails and six ounce drink boxes; the ferry ride to Orient Point and grabbing the brass rings on the antique carousel in Greenport; the last ride on our bowrider and the last Japanese curry with his mom; the last little league award picnic, sunset on the beach, family barbeque; the last splash of aftershave and bowl of cereal shared with little boys before school; the last embrace, kiss, smile, I love you.
As the events replay in my mind, I mourn them all with ardent awe. The doleful reverie is the very evidence that Dave existed and we lived a robust life.
The emptiness of the reflection pools at the end of the tunnel, drills itself into me as I pass through the plaza and run my hands along the smooth, blackened steel, cast with names that gape downward into the abyss. 2,650 husbands, wives, fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters, sons, daughters and friends living the dream are here. And then, they are gone. The emptiness rushes below me in the bedrock, out of sight, but I could feel it flowing through me, its vastness threatening to drown me in its void, to erase us all forever from the memory of what it is to live in the presence of those we love, in the land of opportunity, to be a dreamer, to be American.
I have fought back against the black holes that threaten to suck me into despair, I tell myself that I will keep alive what he believed, in his own words; there are many things to do in life, in the time that is left…and to get a lot of fun. To live is to work, to get what you can in life. If we could keep it alive and warm inside during the years to come, we will be able to return to creating the life we dream, perhaps we can even constitute the America we conceive.
© 2018 all rights reserved
Reinvention is Hell
Posted on July 12, 2018 Leave a Comment
Whether the point of departure is planned or inflicted, the journey to arrival has no clear timeline and feels down right jarring as I fall howling into the unknown. As much as the death of my first husband felt like a dismemberment, and the separation from my current husband feels like an exorcism, the re-invention of self is no immaculate conception. It is a messy, hellish adventure into the repressed known.
The sudden loss of my beloved was akin to the severing of a healthy limb, leaving me with a loss that can never be whole again. Sure a substitute can be strapped on in some cases, but you never get that feeling again and only some of the functions work.
Despite the missing, my brain still sends me random signals that he is here and I move and behave in ways that were unique to us. So much of how I developed as an adult, how I learned to navigate life’s triumphs, and smack-downs, and how I delegated my strengths and weaknesses, had evolved in tandem with my first husband David over the course of twenty years. We developed a love for each other through multi-sensory discoveries in voice, letter, touch and rhythm.
Each of our strengths compensated for the other’s weakness. He walked without the ability to see his periphery and blindly from dusk to dawn. With our fingers clasped, he avoided obstacles that only I could see, by a slight tensing from my palm or a barely audible slowing of my soles on the edge of the pavement. To atone for my dyscalculia, he was adept with mathematical and analytic data, taking care of all financial matters when I struggled to dial phone numbers correctly. Together we navigated obstacles without barely a thought, it was as natural as breath. When the body loses a function, it becomes all the brain can focus on, and seventeen years after the severance my palm still tingles when approaching obstacles in my path.
Separating from my second husband has followed years of performing elaborate rituals for the sake of honoring our nuptial oaths. First came the adrenaline rush of connection, then marital anticipation, invincibility, then resignation. This inter-tribal marriage involved years of practice, on both our part, evicting demons from our individual histories under the elusive guise of raising each other’s children. But when the kids aged-out of the blended nest, the demons resurfaced.
Many days since Rodger’s pre-Valentine exodus, I have felt besieged by spells of negative energy which rattle my emotions with a dissonance of incongruity, threatening my spiritual ardor and physical health. I found my spirits plunging into periods of darkness in the wake of his persistent stonewalling (shutting up and shutting down), facing two choices: attack or retreat, neither of which bridged the widening gap.
It is undeniable that trauma, crisis management and problem-solving are what ignited and framed our relationship, keeping it bubbling along. When I look back, I recognize that we never quite got down the habit of practicing common courtesy with each other. Although I persisted in beginning and ending every encounter with “I Love you”, it seemed like such behavior cramped his style. I have been able to identify three major problems that occurred in our relationship which were evident from the beginning:
1. All along the way, we experienced fits and starts of enthusiasm. In the early years of a long-distance relationship, we would engage in planned rendezvous, then not communicate for several days. Tickets were purchased then plans were changed last minute. We got hooked on the rush of joint projects casting an illusion of what we could be together, causing me to speculate entirely on the future. I banked on hope.
2. Rodger has a circular existence. Work, rotate tires, load the dishwasher, throw in a load of laundry, fall asleep to cable reruns, Friday “date night”, only if I mention it, and total absence of social gatherings with other couples. Perseveration and isolation have a way of sucking the fun from a balloon, and eventually we stopped having fun.
3. Our differences have been more pronounced in the confines of the bedroom. Before we knew it, near five years had gone by without any intimacy at all. Anton Chekhov must have known all about this when he quoted—“If you’re afraid of loneliness don’t get married.”
Being a couple felt like a hindrance, not to mention an illicit dissonance. To our surprise when our intra-marital collusion was revealed to others, they tended to respond with biblical reverence, assigning our union as divine. I even began to believe it myself.
Could it be that my beloved Dave had taken matters into his own wings and planted his brother in our nest, getting us all through the stormy days ahead. But I can’t help to wonder if perhaps we had taken it too far.
I got caught in the undertow and maybe if I hadn’t been overwhelmed with calculating my losses, and claiming bone fragments, I would have recognized the wave breaks. I’ll never know the answer to this question because I can’t go back and re-live the alternative. Despite the relationship ending near two decades later, I have to believe that Rod and I were drawn together to push through the storm of surviving with children, living within the footprints of 9/11, accepting our role in that particular waypoint in human history. There’s a quote that goes like; “People come into your life for a reason, a season or a lifetime.” Sometimes we have to learn to recognize when people may be holding you back in ways that are no longer productive in your life. We have to look in the mirror and ask the big question; is my life moving in the direction I want?
If the answer is “no”, then we have to decide when to let go and continue on our journey. The truth is, I want Rodger to be the sole designer of his future. Any intervention on my part has led to rifts and detachment. We have entered into a long-range emotional deadlock, becoming buried under relationship repression.
But hey, I’m only responsible for half the attitude of this couple. I’ve always measured the depth of my connections by thoughts shared. Every action I’ve taken in the life of our relationship has been yoked to my need for meaning and connection, rather than what it appears; mean and disconnection. Unsaid thoughts and withheld gestures, aka stonewalling, make me panic. Rod has little fear of silence and has never felt responsible for sustained dialogue. I am done being the designer of dialogue. I don’t want an arrangement, I want engagement. I don’t simply want a man who is willing to live with me, I want a man who will not live without me.
In death, the family came together in a strong atmosphere of support, consequently in separation, the extended family has frayed and taken position. It is interesting to note the contrast of the homophonic cousins; Frey referring to the god of peace, prosperity, and marriage and fray referring to fight, battle and noisy quarrel. Some members have declared to reside in Switzerland, but is this really plausible in a banded house of cards?
I feel like I live an alternate universe in my head. I replay what happened, what my role was in the situations that led up to Dave being in the towers on that day, at that time. And the faults that led Richard out the door. And I imagine how things could have turned out differently. I recently learned that there is a psychological term for this mechanism; “counter-factual thinking”.
With regret and pain, we keep rewinding and pressing play, like the day before 9/11, when the sitter finally called back after several days to say she could babysit Tuesday, altering our original plan, which was for David to stay home with the boys on the first day of my new career move.
Dave laid restless in bed that Monday night, repeating “something feels strange, I don’t know what it is, I just want to hold you all night long.” His mind was distant during our intimacy and he made me stop my advances, but the love was intense, as he looked in my eyes and drew me to his chest, saying “I love you dear” over and over, as though he had begun re-writing our story right then.
Sometimes I fantasize of another ending that I want to be true. Had I made another choice…David lives. My world remains intact. But I know I cannot change the facts, nor can I bring my husband back. The more I am alone, my brain struggles to make sense of this. I am uncomfortable, but I cannot alter my story. I can’t bring David back, I can’t make Rodger want me back, but I can conceive myself within the clearing of solitary quietude.
At 54, I have become unframed. The cacophony of activities associated with raising and feeding children, keeping an organized home, planning vacations, making perfect holidays, washing dirty uniforms and pleasing others, has passed through time. The roles that once framed every minute of my days for over forty years have unfurled onto a threshold of solitary bewilderment. Although the lines in my coloring book have faded and the page bears no shape, the colors remain in brilliant afterglow, drawing me into the next page. Perhaps holding onto old frames long past the images within them are relatable, dulls the way in which we conceive our own lives, blocking growth. We hold onto our garbage like empty boxes with no hope to contain what they once had nor fill up with anything new and usable. Just more useless junk.
I wish we could cast out our own internal garbage, the way we do onion skins. Eventually, we might stop crying and get on with it. With progression of the unstoppable years, I feel like my life is becoming condensed. If I could only water it down a bit, stretch it out, reduce the saltiness without compromising integrity, I might feel my soles on the path of my destiny.
I can conceive of only one way to counteract compression, stepping forward and taking action.
© 2018, all rights reserved
Mother Divine
Posted on May 13, 2018 2 Comments
If you were here,
Would we honor this day
Would we call to say hi
Send an e-card or bouquet.
When I was your child
Bubbly and bright
Did you one day imagine
I’d fall from the light.
And when you were ill
Did you pray for my soul,
Did you ask God to keep me
From the pains you were doled?
Would your daughters be close
Would we chat over wine
Things might be different
Perhaps even divine.
Would you have admired my lover,
And baked him sweet bread
Would you have sung to our child
plaited the thread.
And what does God say
To souls wrenched from their babes
You’ve been reassigned
Your love is their spade.
And when I was eight
Your belly was gravid
You had hoped for a son
His name would be David.
But you were off by a twist
A slight arc of fate
You brought forth a third daughter
Divine order is delegate.
And at the cusp of your span,
David came forth on a breeze
He captured my heart
My eternal love he did seize.
Today he’s with you
By senseless decree
Maybe.
His brother came forth
Only in transitory.
Thirty-six years later
On a couch in the sun
Unsure how to feel
I sit here as one.
I’ve lived for our children
and now that they’re grown,
With all whom I’ve loved
I sit here alone.
Mother divine
I wish you were here
To stroll through my garden
And lend me your ear.
I’d say;
Thank you for coming
And giving me life
You fulfilled a great purpose
For this I am blithe.
Brunch in a vineyard
Bellini’s in flutes
Our smiles akin
To you I salute.
© 2017 by Deborah Garcia
5/11
Posted on May 11, 2018 Leave a Comment
511 is a nation-wide code for traffic reports. On this date in 1961, David Garcia consummated his journey to life on a mild blue day at 9:10 AM, arriving at Vassar Hospital in Poughkeepsie, NY. 911 is a nation-wide code to summon emergency services. On this date in 2001, David Garcia abruptly exited this life on a mild blue day in a NYC skyscraper at 8:46 AM, in the nation’s greatest emergency call. Today marks the fifty-sixth year since David’s birth. The sixteenth year I will light a wishless candle beside a yellow rose, a tall Sapporo and a small offering of the sushi I dined on in private reverie.
There is something about the number eleven in our fated sphere. On the eleventh of May, 1961, David was born into this life. Two decades later, on the eleventh of September under a bright cerulean sky, in my third week of college, our paths intersected by chance on a campus sidewalk in 1981. On his twenty-third birthday he was randomly assigned the registration number 111 by the American Motocross Association (AMA). Two decades, on the eleventh of September our path was dissected, as I stood on a sidewalk waving our four year old onto a bus for his first day of school, on a mild blue day.
I recall the last birthday we celebrated in his honor as a young family. He had just returned from a rare solo journey to Minnesota for a professional IT training seminar. It had proven to be a challenging journey for him because the seminar was set in a professional building in a rural area, several miles from the motel he stayed in. There were no restaurants or groceries nearby and the best he could do was rent a bike and ride several miles to and from the seminar, one day in the rain. He called feeling down about his inability to drive and access basic necessities as easily as his classmates and missing the warmth and convenience of our company. On his final day in the Land of 10,000 Lakes he had decided it was imperative that he get some fun before boarding a 6PM flight to LaGuardia. So he pedaled near twenty miles one way, with the ferocity of a cowboy chasing a train on a horse, to ride a birthday jet ski in one lake for one hour. At around 8PM our little boys squealed with delight to greet their Daddy ascending the arrivals corridor, carrying a black leather attache and an old khaki-green boy scout duffel on each shoulder. Mommy made ice cream sundaes when we returned home. The following day we would celebrate his (final) birthday with a sushi supper and a tall Sapporo.
Traditions are the magic carpets that carry us through happy and difficult times. They are the shared rituals we inherit and pass on that instruct our engagement in celebrations, observances and mourning. With each generation, many traditions are adapted in ways that suit the times and needs. Some are abandoned in the wake of changes in family migration and modern ways and others are created in their place. Rituals connect us to our ancestors and shape our sense of belonging to each other in the present. When we are welcoming a new life into the family, overwhelmed by the trappings of a wedding or we are too weary to plan a wake, traditions are the understory that inscribe meaning in the rings and draw us up to the canopy, where the sun illuminates our senses.
True to his heritage, David had a discerning palate for Japanese cuisine. While his mother and I prepared many traditional dishes for his pleasure, whenever we celebrated a family occasion, we dined out on shared sushi boats, Sapporo and hot Saki. So for the past sixteen years, the boys and I have continued this tradition, placing a few pieces of sushi from our plates on a dipping dish beside a burning candle. When they were still young, we also launched personalized balloons at the beach. However, had this been our tradition today, we would have had to replace the balloon launching tradition with something more environmentally friendly.
The week leading up to this date is always difficult for me. I experience a subconscious visceral anticipation of the coming which manifests in spontaneous tearful fits triggered by banal stressors. Combine a busted wiper blade with a twisted ankle and spilled coffee and I am off balance. Add a beautiful forget-me-not sky and a nostalgic seventies rock ballad and I am coiled into a sad baby position. This reaction must be inscribed in my limbic script along with the other “traditional” life-markers that are captured in selfie-bombing orbs. In the raw years since our parting, I felt guilt for feeling the comfort of hot water washing my body, the salty pleasure of soy cleansing my palate and the joy of our children’s shrieks as the surf rushes over their toes. Time does not heal what cannot be fixed nor revivify what cannot be replaced but the force of years smooth the sharp incisions and quell the acrid woe. Happiness is not fully realized without sadness. Bliss is unknown without sorrow. Today I celebrate the life that was and the life that continues because of him by setting a sunbeam yellow rose, a dish of nigiri and a beer on the table beside his image and I will light a candle in eternal flame. I will nurture my spirit by cleaning my gardens, filling my flower vase and sharing in a Japanese meal with our son. For this occasion as in the past and for those that follow, I chose to bide these moments resting on the understory.
To my Dear, Kanpai!
Other 9/11 facts: (www.killtown.911review.org)
- 9/11/41 – Construction plans (Groundbreaking) for the Pentagon begin.
- 9/11/90 – President George H.W. Bush proclaimed the “New World Order” where a rule of Law would govern the conduct of diverse nations to achieve universal aspirations of mankind, peace, security, and freedom.
- 10/25/1944 – (My birth-day) The first use of planes in suicide attacks performed by Japanese Kamikaze.
Happy New Year
Posted on January 4, 2018 Leave a Comment
The earliest New Years of my memory was on the birth of my sister, in 1971. I was eight and awakened just before midnight on the 31st by the scent of grandma’s Virginia Slims floating up the tiny hallway, banking a left corner into my room to tickle my nose. There was a family baby-pool that consisted of a case of beer and a 50/50 payout to the one who guessed the correct sex and closest to the date and time of the arrival. Out of the four grandchildren already born to the twins, three were girls. And since this was my parent’s third (and last) child following two girls, my father guessed girl, while most others checked the optimism box investing in the hope for a male child. I can see my father bounding into the house, arms waving in air, with the jubilation of a lottery winner…”It’s a girl, it’s a girl and she was born before midnight, I just knew it. And with the bonus of being able to claim a tax deduction in the final hours. I’ll drink to that. Cheers!” Her doctor had recommended she not have a third child, due to her fragile mental condition, and precautions were taken, as reported by mother. But forty-five years ago disquiet was impassioned.
Hope floats.
I recall flashes of New Year’s Eve celebrations at Grandma’s house with all the aunts, uncles and cousins. We played Battling Tops, Rock-em-Sock-em Robots and uncle’s old Monopoly game with wooden play pieces, while the adults washed blood pressure pills and personal differences with Manhattans and Grasshoppers served from the TV-room bar. There were sparkly paper hats, streamers and whistle blowers. My favorite was the paper blower with the little balloon on the end. Inhaling deep into my chest, with eyes shut tight to inflate the balloon with one quick blow, I pulled the soggy tube from my lips releasing a deflating rush of peppermint candy breath through the whistle. The five of us turned it into a competitive sport of skill and speed that also included releasing the wands directly from our mouths as projectiles, spit flying, towards the faces of our challengers. Despite adult differences throughout the remaining 364 days of the year, for one evening, that wasn’t a wake, with the many woolen coats laid together on grandma’s bed, they made a toast to auld lang syne hoping in a year’s return to raise their glasses one more time.
Hope resounds.
The New Years of my twenties were decorated with friends, kegs and early morning lounges on napping trains in underground city tunnels. Life moved like a jet-stream rush, traveling through time on exhilarating winds of hope and dreams. Tearing through the calendar pages, the party lightened as friends got real jobs, married, had kids and moved out of town. We were carefree, in love and married midway through that decade, and hoped the spirit shared those nights could remain within us long after the train left.
Hope swirls.
Y2K arrived on the tail of a year-long, media-fueled panacea that threatened to expunge the tech-dependent exigencies of the modern world, leaving us all in unlit dark rooms with defunct ATM cards. A media hyper-storm… proclaiming that the computerized data by which the world was ordered was not designed to read years with double zeros… converged as we began to count and wait. So on the eve of my sister’s twenty-eighth birthday the next gen-family gathered in the red house of my girlhood galas. From a bistro table set in place of the old bar, we raised our glasses in a memory of old reverie. With grandma, mother, aunts and uncles passed, faint echoes played in my ears, from the stills behind the glass. Embracing over-tired kids in winter pajamas and balancing sparkly hats on our heads, we raised our glasses to the hope that the lights would remain on into the next century and we would remain, on the outside of the glossy pane. Ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two…one. Happy New Year!
Hope glows.
2001 into 2002 was fuzzy for me. Alone, in our cozy island home, the boys and I ate pizza. I went into the attic and carried down the cardboard box of sparkly hats and noise makers. Minutes felt longer than hours. Wrapped in a blanket we watched the ball descend on Times Square emceed by an aging legend. Now we were three. One of us a reflection in the glass.
Hope descends.
2009 marked a new chapter in our life as a blended family of five with new friends and a change in geography. We welcomed the new year from the top of a snowy mountain in Vermont. Sugar on snow and sparkling cider toasts, secure in his arms on the cannon lit slopes, I said my goodbyes and felt glad to get to be around.
Hope sparkles.
This year’s canon howls to a wolf moon. The midwinter cold and deep snows fracture brittle limbs, and I fold into the dim. The walls are too few to hold all the frames, for the loves I have cherished, I’m glad that they came. I remember the kisses, the laughter, the conversations, and all that’s gone away. All the days that have turned into years offer shiny reflections in which I cannot stay. Each year rolls like the surge of the ocean. It comes from the distance, growing loud in the flow. Then recedes back to the sea in silent reverie. I thank the old years for all they have brought with no mention of the things they’ve taken away. I pull up a blanket, turn down the light, hoping to be around to see another spring arrive on the quay.
Hope is…
© Deborah Garcia, 2018
Hope is
Posted on January 4, 2018 Leave a Comment
Hope Is
Hope is a point of light
That beacons high above
The darkness of a stormy night
With glimmers of her love
And brightest in the fog surround
Her presence but a flash
A pulse of life yet to come ‘round
Sweet salve to fill the gash.
I’ve seen her in the gravest trench
When all without befell
Tormented soul in shadows blench
A spark within, the lurid quell.
A glint of warmth, a faith untold
She rides the dawn of day
Her sight ablates the icy folds
Hope is the mortal fray.
© Deborah Garcia 2015
Welcome 2017 Citizens of the United States of America
Posted on December 3, 2017 Leave a Comment
November 30, 2017
Thursday, I had the inspiring experience of attending a Naturalization Ceremony in my adopted home of Burlington, Vermont. One may assume that because I have endured a great loss at the hands of terrorist infiltrates who took advantage of our resources and open-door policy, that I might hold reservations about immigration laws and side to close our borders out of fear for future safety. However, my feelings could not be farther from such a claim. I feel grateful for all of the valiant human’s who sacrificed for my life of freedom in this country and for the wonderful people whom I have met in my lifetime, who are themselves hardworking immigrants and sons and daughters of American dreamers, movers and shakers.
Beginning in 1849, mine and my husband’s ancestors have braved turbulent seas from ten countries to become part of the American tapestry. They risked their lives as crusaders for religious freedom. They have forged and developed the North-Western frontier, bore children who fought in great American wars, and were entrepreneurs and who built our small towns and cities and died for our great American pastime of baseball.
In 2016, all six American winners of the Nobel prize in science and economics fields were immigrants. Since 2000, forty percent of Nobel prizes were awarded to United States immigrants in chemistry, medicine and physics, according to research from the National Foundation for American Policy. www.forbes.com.
One of America’s most famous architects, Ieoh Ming Pei was born in Canton, China in 1917 and came to the United States at the age of 18 to study architecture. He attended MIT and Boston. In 1942 he became a concrete designer. He worked as an assistant professor at Harvard and in 1960, started his own architectural office, now Pei, Cobb, Free & Partners. Pei’s designs are famous for their geometric patterns and their characteristic use of glass. Among Pei’s many building designs are the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Co., the east wing of the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., the John F. Kennedy Memorial Library in Boston and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. His accomplishments also include updating the Louvre in Paris.
Our the first female Secretary of State and the highest-ranking woman in the U.S. government, former Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright, was born in Czechoslovakia in 1937 and moved with her family, to the United States in 1948, fleeing the Communist takeover. She graduated from Wellesley College with honors in Political Science, and received her master’s degree and doctorate from Columbia University’s Department of Public Law and Government. Secretary Albright has served as a staff member on the National Security Council, a Senior Fellow at the Center for Strategic Studies, a professor at Georgetown University, President of the Center for National Policy and, finally, as the U.S. Permanent Representative to the United Nations before being confirmed as Secretary of State in 1977.
The world-famous naturalist, John Muir, was born in Dunbar, Scotland in 1838 and moved with his family to Portage, Wisconsin at the age of eleven. He became a creative inventor and studied at the University of Wisconsin. In 1867 he began his travels around America, settling in California where he continued his study of glaciers, and the Sierra. Muir wrote for Century magazine explaining the devastation of open spaces by ranch animals. This exposition led to Congress in 1890 creating Yosemite National Park. He also helped establish Grand Canyon, Sequoia, Petrified Forest and Mount Rainier national parks. Muir founded the Sierra Club to protect these areas, and is today remembered as the Father of Our National Park System.
The son of a Jewish father and Catholic mother, Joseph Pulitzer, set the standards for editorial excellence. Born in Hungary in 1847, he attended private schools in Budapest until age 17. His weak eyesight prevented him from joining the Austrian Army, however, he made his way to America to join the Union Army during the Civil War. Later he was hired by a German language paper in St. Louis and by the age of 25 he was a publisher and eventually owner of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Pulitzer’s paper gained favor among the public for exposing corruption and tax dodgers. His purchase of The New York World, and his brilliance in marketing, including raising public subscriptions for building a pedestal for the Statue of Liberty so it could be shipped from France, made him the publisher of the best-selling newspaper in the country. Pulitzer died in 1911, leaving as his greatest legacy an annual series of journalistic awards, the Pulitzer Prizes.
Felix Frankfurter was born in Vienna, Austria in 1882 and moved with his family to the United States in 1894. He attended the College of the City of New York, and Harvard University. He was appointed as assistant U.S. attorney in New York City in 1906 and moved to the War Department in 1910. In 1914 he became a leading constitutional scholar as a teacher at Harvard Law School. He advised President Roosevelt on the selection of members to lead agencies established during the New Deal. Frankfurter also participated in drawing up the Securities Act (1933), the Securities Exchange Act (1934) and the Public Utility Holding Company Act (1935). In 1935, Frankfurter was nominated by Roosevelt as an associate justice of the Supreme Court, until his retirement in 1962.
Hakeem Olajuwon, born in Lagos, Nigeria in 1963, is considered by some to be the most famous continental African to have played in any sport in the entire American continent. At age 15, Olajuwon was 6’9″ and soon became the center for the Nigerian national team. From 1981-84 he attended the University of Houston, where he led his team to three consecutive NCAA Final Four appearances. In 1984, the Houston Rockets of the National Basketball Association (NBA) drafted Olajuwon, and he developed into one of the dominant big men in the league. Nicknamed, “The Dream,” Olajuwon led the Rockets to the NBA championship in 1994 and 1995, and was voted the league’s most valuable player for the 1993-94 season. During the 1990s, sportswriters and fans considered him, and Shaquille O’Neal, as the NBA’s best centers. Olajuwon retired in 2002 after signing with the Toronto Raptors the previous year. “The Dream” became an American citizen in 1993.
The 1983 Nobel laureate for Physics, Subranhmanyan Chandrasekhar, was born in Lahore, India in 1910. He studied at Madras University in India and at Cambridge University, where he received his doctorate in 1933. While at Cambridge he submitted a paper to The Astrophysical Journal on the upper limit to the mass of white dwarf stars. He joined the University of Chicago in 1937 and spent his career there, publishing a number of books. During the 1940s, Chandrasekhar drove 100 miles from Yerkes Observatory in Williams Bay, Wisconsin to Chicago for many weeks to teach a class of only two students. Some wondered why he bothered. Ten years later, his entire class won the Nobel Prize in Physics. Chandrasekhar’s 1983 prize was for his studies of the physical processes of importance to the structure and evolution of stars.
Born in Russia in 1888, Irving Berlin’s family moved to New York city when he was four years old. As a young man, he found work as a singing bus boy in the Bowery before publishing his first song in 1911. He went on to write eight hundred more, many of which would become some of the best loved American songs of all time, including “White Christmas,” “Easter Parade” and “God Bless America.” Among his stage productions are; There’s No Business Like Show Business, Top Hat and Annie Get Your Gun.
When David Ho was 12 years old, his father sent for the family to join him in a new land where an unfamiliar language was spoken. Despite being laughed at by classmates who thought he was stupid because he couldn’t speak English, he graduated summa cum laude from Cal Tech, earning a scholarship to Harvard Medical School. As a young physician he saw some of the first known cases of AIDS. His pioneering work with “cocktails” of protease inhibitors and other antiviral drugs has brought about remarkable recoveries, and raised hope that the virus may someday be eliminated. Now Dr. David Ho is Director of the Aaron Diamond AIDS Research Center. He was chosen by Time Magazine as its 1996 “Man of the Year” for his discoveries.
Among the unexhaustive list of other immigrant notables are Albert Einstein, Germany (1879-1955), the greatest Physicist of the twentieth century, Mary Harris Jones, Ireland (1837-1937) organized labor representative who fought for the rights of coal miners, steel workers and children until her death at nearly 100., Rita M. Rodriguez, Cuba (1942-) who became one of five directors of Ex-Import Bank, an independent bank whose chief purpose is to improve U.S. trade with other countries an author of numerous books and articles on international finance.
(Immigrant update.wordpress.com)
Immigration laws matter, particularly in determining whether the United States gains from increased globalization and rising educational achievement in foreign nations. A greater openness to immigration has helped make the United States the leading global destination for research in many different science and technology fields, including computers and cancer research. Sir J. Fraser Stoddart, a Scottish-born Anerican citizen and winner of the Nobel Prize in chemistry in 2016, notes that “his research group at Northwestern University has students and scientists from a dozen countries. His work on molecular machines has helped take chemistry to epoch heights.
Immigrants are not only an integral part of American culture and society but also important contributors to the United States economy. Immigrants work and pay taxes and also create new products, businesses, and technologies that lead to jobs for all Americans.
Immigrants tend to be highly entrepreneurial, creating jobs here in the United States. Research from the Small Business Administration suggests that immigrants are more likely to start a business than are non immigrants. A recent study found that between 1990 and 2005, immigrants started 25 percent of venture backed U.S. public companies, employing more than 200,000 U.S. workers. And some of the companies at the forefront of the digital revolution were co-founded by immigrants: Intel, Sun Microsystems, eBay, Google, and Yahoo to name a few examples.
Immigrants are an important part of our international competitiveness, especially in technology-intensive and service industries. Compared to U.S.-born Americans, immigrants are more likely to hold an advanced degree and are almost twice as likely to hold a Ph.D.
The positive economic effects of immigrants are not just limited to individuals with advanced degrees. Immigrants also play an important role in the economy by filling niches where the domestic supply of workers is limited. In many cases, these immigrants do not compete directly with other domestic workers, but instead complement the work of U.S.-born workers. Immigrant workers also increase the affordability and availability of services such as child care, cleaning services, and gardening. These services in turn increase standards of living and free up time for consumers to devote to alternative economic activity.
Scientific research and economic growth will remain strong in America as long as we don’t enter an era where we turn our backs on immigration. I support legal immigration. I welcome humanitarian refuge and asylum. “One nation, under God, Indivisible, for liberty and justice for all.”
Welcome 2017 citizens of the United States of America.
November 30, 2017
Birthdays
Posted on November 5, 2017 Leave a Comment
Friday’s child is Loving and Giving
October, 1971
8th birthday Oct 1971
Long Island Advance. November , 1971
A nurse, a ballerina, a pirate, an Indian princess, one witch and an assortment of fairy princesses and superheroes assembled in a dark walnut paneled, gold and orange hued kitchen accented with avocado appliances. A harvest yellow enameled casserole pot, filled with water and whole apples is set on a Newsday-lined counter top beside a table-top rotary telephone. A dozen boys and girls spent an afternoon in “make-believe”, wearing Woolworth costumes that came in cardboard boxes with clear plastic windows. I am Pocahontas. Dressed in faux deerskin with a rainbow of feathers reaching up from a headband. As my mother gripped my two blonde braids, I aspired to dunk for the McIntosh holding the prize coin (an unsanitary group activity by today’s standards). Seven months pregnant, she threw me a costume party for my eighth birthday and baked a jack-o-lantern decorated orange chiffon cake surrounded by chocolate cupcakes. I still have an appetence for the orange essence of my youth. “…a good time was had by all dunking for apples.” (Long Island Advance, Nov. 4, 1971)
My 50th Heroes, October 2013
A nurse, a teacher, a computer programmer, one three year old princess and an assortment of retirees, divorcees and college students assembled in a neo-Mediterranean theme restaurant highlighted in swirls of varying shades of golds and dark wood tones. A paper bag filled with apples from my own apple tree is set upon a shiny lacquered table. Beside it sits three neat rows of quart-size Ball jars containing stewed apple slices adorned in pinking sheared squares of fall-inspired fabrics. An assortment of friends and relatives spend an afternoon in “live reality”, wearing Levi, Ralph Lorene Polo and Vera Wang purchased online and from designer factory outlet malls. I am wearing a “Zaras” costume consisting of a mid-thigh, satin fitted dress, splashed in bright tones resembling blurred computer pixels. Blonde highlights fall freely to my shoulders. I am feeling fabulous at fifty as I stand among the real super heroes in my life. Everyone wins the prize, simply by surviving the decades, showing up and taking home the apples….
…Favor tags: “Thank you for Sharing Debbie’s 50th… October 27, 2013”.
Several people have passed since that photo was taken forty-six years ago, including my mother. Others have moved in different directions as we all became consumed building our lives. Despite my home being vacant of children, this year I brought myself to the occasion of my 54 th, returning to New York to visit family, see a show, eat great food and finding new friendship with a recently discovered DNA cousin.
Fall has always been my favorite time of year. With cooling thermals and foliage alighting the landscape with sunset hues, field mice scramble to warm indoor nooks as growing things relinquish their vigor to long dark days. And I am compelled to feel nostalgic. I reminisce of leaping into crisp leaf piles and licking sticky candy apples on popsicle sticks. Smoky scents of maple and oak fill the evening air and aromas of cinnamon and allspice emanating from bubbling apple crisps and pumpkin custard, spice my Vermont home just the same as the kitchens of my childhood. It is as though the memories that invigorate our senses and make us feel nostalgic, are carried along the generations on a single ethereal stream of fondness. As with the passing of recipes, comforting redolence is carried from the kitchens of the ancestors we’ve never met but have always known. The change of seasons reminds us that nothing remains as it is for too long, all things living must rest. Winter will drape a white coat over the fallen, preserving the seeds underneath until the next change inspires new growth. We are akin to these cycles and also need to allow ourselves to rest, breath steady in the dark, and wait it out. Each one of us is significant in infinite ways. Every birthday is your gift.
David had a running annual riddle he wrote in every birthday card he gave me. Being a numbers person, he’d calculate the shrinking distance between our ages in the form of a fraction. Joking that we were getting closer in age as the years progressed, with the distance between us decreasing, bringing us closer. “When I was 4 and you were 2, you were 2/4 (of ½) of my age. Then when I was 8 and you were 6, you were 6/8 (or ¾) of my age. Then I was 16 and you were 14, you were 14/16 (or 7/8) of my age… See, you are catching up! With Love & getting younger, your Dear.” October 25, 2001, I would have been 38/40 (or 19/20 or .95 = 5% difference) of his age. He was right.
“To everything, there is a season, And a time to every purpose, under Heaven”(Byrds, “Turn! Turn! Turn!”, 1965)
Three cake ball cheer for 54 years!, NYC October 2017
What’s your story?
Posted on September 10, 2017 Leave a Comment
Everyone has a story that begs to be told. What’s yours? Share the day in your life.
