19. Interlude: about cars

I’ve put a lot of miles on our car this July, driving to Colorado where I saw my sister, nephew and family; and driving to San Diego where I saw my brother. On the Colorado trip I listened to a fair bit of Ry Cooder.  Two driving songs I’ll recommend to you: Drive like I…

18. Great Grandmothers Series: Bessie Gross Gulick Gruesbeck

  Bessie Gross Gulick, age 25 (in 1909) [estimated] Bessie may be the most difficult great grandmother for this project, by no intention of her own.  She was the mother to my maternal grandfather. She was born in 1883 in my mother\’s home town of Ithaca, Michigan. She married her first husband, my great grandfather…

17. Great Grandmothers Series: Henrietta Schlesinger Levy

The mother to my paternal grandfather was Henrietta Schlesinger Levy (born November 1872, with her identical twin sister Jeannette \”Jennie\” Schlesinger, in New York City; born to Charles Schlesinger and Hannah Blumenthal; her mother\’s brother Mark Blumenthal was the doctor who signed her birth certificate; the twin daughters were the last of their mother\’s fourteen…

16. Great Grandmothers series: Daisy Pearl Cook Russell

Routines are good; routines supported us through a pandemic; and new routines are really good. The blogger for this blog nonetheless is taking a short time away from keyboards so today, a short minimalist post.  One of my great grandmothers, the mother to my maternal grandmother, is Daisy Pearl Cook Russell (born October 1878, Gratiot…

15. Great Grandmothers series: Mildred Hammond Emanuel Veit

Routines are good; routines supported us through a pandemic; and new routines are really good. The blogger for this blog nonetheless is taking a short hiatus so posts for a bit will be minimalist.  One of my great grandmothers, the mother to my paternal grandmother, is Mildred Hammond Emanuel Veit (born April 1872 in Essex…

14. Fathers and sons and baseball

I’m trying to write posts for the rest of the month about my grandparents; and one tricky thing about that is I never met my actual grandfathers, who both died young.Felix Ury Levy (1902-1944) died when he was only 42.Warren Franklin Gulick (1906-1942) died when he was only 35. But one thing I gather about them…

13. ZOOMED IN – these two

The two lineages outlined broadly in the last post, met in these two, my parents. Lawrences around 1978 They replanted themselves in the Los Angeles basin in the late 1950s, a welcoming time for young families, as the city was burgeoning with change and growth. They were intentionally separating from their families, moving away to…

12. Zoomed Out – broad outlines of the family tree

In this post, a sketch of the overall family tree, inspired by the subject of names. In my mother’s lineage, many of her great grandfathers and grandmothers themselves had great grandfathers and grandmothers who were immigrants to North America. They were Protestants and often more specifically Presbyterian. The first post in this blog features two…

11. NAMING AND UNNAMING (part two)

In the movie Do The Right Thing, Buggin\’ Out questions why pizzeria owner Sal has photos only of Italian Americans on the wall. But Sal insists that he owns the pizzeria, and he owns the wall, and he can decide who is honored there. A clip from Do The Right Thing, viewable on Youtube Names…

10. NAMING AND UNNAMING (part one)

Edward Everett Horton – How would it have altered your life to have such a name? His two colleagues (see earlier post) Frederic March and Florence Eldridge both changed their names for their careers; Horton did not. All three are famous for being well-spoken stage actors who could impress audiences when sound came to movies; and…