...and THAT's How You Do A Wedding!

From the moment we walked into the chapel for the ceremony until we said our thank-you’s and good-byes late that night, every aspect of the wedding exuded class. The experience was unforgettable.

Our son-in-law’s sister got married last weekend, and my wife and I were fortunate enough to have been invited. Bride and Groom Lisa and Greg have come to be our friends over the past couple of years. We are blessed that our son-in-law’s big Italian family has included my wife and me in so many get-togethers. They have truly made us feel home in our new surroundings in coastal Connecticut.

The ceremony was held at the O’Byrne Chapel at Manhattanville College, just across the New York state line from us. The bride’s mother and father were married in this beautiful chapel not quite 49 years ago. My wife and I were among the first to enter the chapel, early enough to hear the musicians running through some of the music they’d be performing during the ceremony.

My first career was in music performance. For that reason, I observe a lot of things that other people may not pay attention to. One of the first things I noticed was that the trumpeter was playing a Schilke S-22 horn. An instrument like that will set you back around 8 grand, and it’s for serious players only. As the ensemble was rehearsing “Jesu, Joy”, I turned to my wife and said, “the trumpeter’s low B-flat is a bit sharp.”

She smiles and nods, having put up with this kind of stuff from me for decades. Then, I noticed that as soon as they finished rehearsing that piece, the trumpeter – Ken Tedeschi, a fabulous player and, as I later learned, principal trumpet with the New Haven Symphony – pulled his tuning slide out about a quarter-inch. “He caught it,” I said to my wife. “He’s a real pro,” I added.

Before long, it was time for the main event. Our daughter was one of the bridesmaids and our son-in-law and his brother were the groomsmen. Our darling grandchildren were also members of the wedding party: little Lola was the flower girl, and her brother Joey was the ring bearer. They performed flawlessly!

Here they are with the mother of the bride (aka grandma, or “mamma” to them) in this photo taken by their great-aunt Annemarie.

The ceremony was moving and inspirational; the music was fantastic; the bride and groom were glowing; it was a feast for the eyes and ears, classy, emotional, charming, delightful. Lisa and Gregory’s smiles lit up the chapel as they walked out, now husband and wife.

I must take another personal moment here. For the past couple years, neuropathy has increasingly robbed my sense of balance. I can’t stand without holding onto something. It can be terrifying. I walk easily with the aid of a rollator, but often the rollator impedes rather than assists my mobility. Going out of the chapel, there are three steps – but no railing for me to hang onto to make the descent. As I approached the exit, two of the bride’s cousins, Frank and Paul (Frankie and Paulie to family members) immediately approached me and asked if they could assist me down the stairs. These two “big, strapping young lads,” as my Irish grandpa would say, who were both ushers at the ceremony, came to my aid and helped me navigate the stairs. They are both wonderful young men, a credit to their parents and the extended family.

The reception was held a few miles away at the beautiful and historical Westchester Country Club. We began with cocktails and appetizers on the terrace, overlooking the championship golf course. It was a gorgeous day, sunny and warm, and soon the terrace was filled with the sounds of laughter and conversation. Everyone was having a wonderful time!

Meanwhile, the bridal party was finishing up the wedding photos. Here’s the beautiful bride and her father, with a vintage Rolls-Royce limousine, at the front portico of the Westchester Country Club. Talk about classy and elegant!

Soon it was time for dinner and dancing. We were led into the spacious ballroom, which looked like something out of a Hollywood movie. Fantastic floral arrangements adorning every table; tasteful decorative touches everywhere; a sensory overload of beauty.

And the music? Out of this world! The 11-piece band played a variety of genres, tempos, textures, and styles. And they were really good. The father of the bride, knowing that I’d have a keen ear for the music, came up to me and asked what I thought of the band. “Fabulous!” was one of the superlatives I used, along with others like “exceptional’ and “remarkable.” “How about those horns,” he said, enthusiastically. “You gotta have horns,” he added, smiling broadly. I told him he’d hit it out of the park with the ensemble at the chapel and the band at the reception.

And, of course, this was no chicken-and-mashed potatoes kind of meal. The first course, served hot and efficiently by the uniformed staff, was lobster with parsnip puree and fresh salad. The second course was filet mignon and shrimp fricassee. The presentation was five-star, and everything was delicious!

We were having a wonderful time. There was much merriment and frolicking, particularly by the folks on the dance floor. Granddaughter Lola danced song after song, a bundle of energy and enthusiasm! The bride and groom stopped by, on their tour of the assemblage. I told Lisa how beautiful and poised she was and thanked her for inviting us. Gregory, the groom, leaned down to my ear-level and said, “I swear I’m going to get your ass out on that dance floor” – an inside joke between the two of us.

What a fantastic day, memorable from start to finish. And even as our daughter walked us out of the ballroom to the valet parking stand, we passed by a huge display of fantastic cookies, each individually wrapped and labelled “From Our Favorite New York City Bakery, Lisa and Gregory.” Had to be Levain Bakery on the upper east side of Manhattan, purveyors of outstanding baked goods. We each took one. (Well, OK, at our daughter’s insistence, I took hers, too.)

Congratulations to the bride and groom, and to their parents for the wonderful, unforgettable event they staged. We had a ball!

Classy.

Panning For Gold

Social media has become, in many ways, a sewer of hatred, jealousy, bullying, misinformation, and disinformation. Everyone who used to be an “expert” on contagious diseases and vaccines is now an “expert” on international relations and military strategy.

But social media doesn’t have to be such a cesspool if you can train yourself to ignore the negativity and baiting and political crap. Case on point: the photo above. That’s me, and my neighbor Kay, feeding and petting the tame deer that everybody called “Lucy.” Lucy lived in the woods at the end of our back yards. Kay’s dad took the photo. I think it was 1953, which would make me (and Kay) 4 years old.

I’ve often said I grew up in a Tom Sawyer-like environment, in a small Wisconsin village, with pine forests, a lake, streams, sledding hills, sandlot baseball diamonds, and lots of wonderful playmates like Kay. In our neighborhood, it was pretty much a group of four kids who hung out together when I was a preschooler. Kay was the only girl. Rick and Robbie were the two other guys, neighbors on the other side of Kay’s house.

When we started elementary school, Kay and I went to different schools. As a Catholic, I went to what the non-Catholics called “sister school,” because our teachers were nuns. But Kay and I still played together after school and all summer. Before long, my sister Lynn, four years my junior, joined the group. Kay and I took piano lessons from our neighbor a few houses down the street, Mrs. Kuhn. We even played a duet together at Mrs. Kuhn’s recital for her piano students.

Kay’s dad was a Renaissance man, skilled in a wide variety of disciplines, including music. Her dad had played sax with some of the most famous bands in the region, and when we were in high school, her dad put together a small neighborhood combo that rehearsed and performed in their big living room. At that point, my family had moved to a bigger house on the other end of town, but Kay and I were still friends.

Here’s our high school band, marching down Main Street in the 1965 Homecoming parade. I’m the guy with the big gold Sousaphone toward the center of the photo, and Kay is somewhere in the ranks, in the flute section.

By this time, although Kay and I were in high school band together, we travelled in different circles of friends.  We went to the same college for our undergrad work, but I can recall only one time that our paths crossed on campus. By the time I was in my third year of undergrad, I’d completely lost track of Kay. Our lives were headed in different directions. I hadn’t seen or communicated with her in five decades.

Enter Facebook.

While surfing through the posts one day, I stopped to read a new post in the “You’re Probably From…” Facebook page dedicated to the history of my small hometown. While reading the comments, I noticed one that made me wonder: was this my childhood friend and playmate, with whom I hadn’t had contact in 50 years?

Different surname, but a few clicks later I knew it was the married name of my long-lost friend. Soon we became Facebook friends and exchanged a series of emails, catching up on five decades. Kay was a retired teacher, widowed (at far too young an age), now living in the Pacific Northwest near her son.  We marveled about how two kids from a small village in Wisconsin wound up on opposite ends of the nation, to be close to family and grandkids in our golden years.

Social media is a powerful force, with the potential to create either division or unity. To me, social media is often like panning for gold. A lot of the stuff is meaningless or worse. But there are flashes of gold – like reconnecting with a childhood playmate.

Mila

 

There was excitement in the air as neighbors greeted each other in the hallways or lobby of our apartment building. “Did you see the little dog?” “Someone has a dog!” “Have you seen the dog – it’s so cute!”

The second part of the conversation was usually something like, “I thought they didn’t allow dogs here.” More on that, in a moment.

When my wife Toni and I moved to coastal Connecticut two years ago to spend our golden years close to our daughter and two of our darling grandchildren, the apartment lease made it clear: dogs were strictly verboten. One cat, no dogs.

The timing of our post-retirement move was dependent on the lifespan of our two loyal and loving collies, who lived with us in Madison and patrolled our expansive back yard every day of their lives with us. We weren’t going to move until both dogs had “crossed the rainbow bridge,” as so many dog-lovers say. We figured that would be mid-2022.

Fate had other plans.

Our beloved Shadow passed away of a massive stroke in January of 2019, just before my wife retired. Shadow lived a full and happy 13 years and three months, which is just above average for a collie. Since Shadow and her “sister,” Sunny, had similar bloodlines, we figured Sunny would also live a bit more than 13 years – mid-2022, we estimated. Then, we’d sell the house and move to Connecticut, probably in the summer of 2023.

But, less than a month after Shadow passed, Sunny was diagnosed with an extremely aggressive form of cancer, and she passed in early February 2019. We were devastated. And suddenly, our timetable changed.

Here's one of my favorite photos of our wonderful collies, taken a few years ago. Sunny, on the left, is a purebred Blue Merle Collie, and Shadow, on the right, is a purebred Sable Collie - a Lassie look-alike.

So, here we are, in a very nice apartment, happily retired.  No lawn-mowing, no snow-shoveling, no landscaping maintenance. Plumbing on the fritz? Send a note to Michael, the building super, and it’s fixed the same day. Free to enjoy all our favorite pastimes, free of chores that became tedious as we got older.

But the lifestyle we chose would also be free of dogs – a major trade-off for us. 

Dog-less, until the late fall day that I looked out my office window and saw the most darling little dog, on a leash held by a young woman. The dog was carefully examining with her nose the shrubbery that adorns the north lawn of our building. After she’d completed her nasal inquiries, her “mom” led her – to my amazement – up the sidewalk and into the lobby!

Could the dog be a visitor? Certainly not a resident, given the proscription against canines in the lease. I mentioned the dog sighting to my wife, knowing she’d be curious, too. Over the next couple days, I saw the cute little dog several more times. My wife and I would immediately report sightings to each other, if we happened to be in a different room in our apartment when the dog was sighted.

There are about 60 residents in our building, and I’d estimate that more than half are retired. The younger people are professionals, working from home. They must have good jobs, because this place isn't exactly "affordable housing." So, the hallways and common areas tend to be quiet. It was just a couple days after I first spotted the little dog that when I encountered fellow residents, after the standard greetings, we’d mention the little dog.

I guess it’s a commentary on the status of being retired, that conversations with residents of a similar age tend to center on the weather and similar mundane things. The people who live here respect each other’s privacy, one of the many things we like about living here. So, something as novel as a cute little dog apparently living in our building rapidly supplants the weather as the prime conversation topic. A lot of our new neighbors are also former dog owners.

One morning, while down in the lobby to retrieve our mail, I encountered a woman who said she’d actually petted the little dog. This is headline news! I took the elevator back to our apartment and immediately reported this scoop to my wife. “She PETTED the dog?” my wife said, plaintively.

The mystery of the little dog would be solved the very next morning. Five or six mornings every week, my wife spends an hour in the apartment building’s gym, walking, exercising, working out. That particular morning, on her way down the hallway to the elevator, my wife encountered our friend, Jeri, who had befriended us immediately when we moved in.

Jeri is of a similar age, retired, but she puts in a half-day of work every weekday, keeping the common areas of the building vacuumed, polished, and sparkling clean. For this, she gets a big break on her monthly rent. Since Jeri’s routine takes her to every part of the building, she knows all the residents and just about everything that’s going on.

She explained to my wife that the little dog – Mila is her name – belongs to a young couple who just moved in. They both work from home. Mila is a therapy animal. Jeri explained that the young couple had to jump through a bunch of hoops with the New York City company that owns our building, filing paperwork from their doctor and therapist, attesting that Mila was more than just a pet.

Mila's "mom" explained that Mila is an Australian Shepherd. Mila looks just like the dog pictured at the top of this post.

My wife got to meet Mila a few days later, in the lobby of the building. Toni was returning home after running some errands, and she was coming into the building as Mila and her “mom” were heading out. Toni told me about meeting Mila, petting her, and talking with one of Mila’s owners.

My chance to meet Mila came a few days later. We’d just returned from grocery shopping and were dragging the groceries into the building when Mila and her “mom” came out of the building. Mila was very excited and happy to interact with us. She sniffed my hand, putting my scent into her memory banks, and then soaked in some serious pets from me. Her coat was, as advertised, soft and fluffy. She's a happy, peppy little dog.

A few days later, we discovered that Mila and her people live on the same floor, at the other end of our wing of the building. It may seem silly to people who have never had a dog as a pet, but we are happier now that we know there’s a dog living just down the hallway from us.

Take A Listen: Breaking Overnight – Your Family Is Not Safe

 

Is there anything more contrived and stupid than the current trend of TV reporters and anchors introducing a blathering politician or some other video clip by preceding it with the asinine comment “take a listen?”

Centuries ago, when English was the preferred language of American news presenters (before NewsSpeak supplanted English), the presenter would introduce a video file directly, by saying something like “…and the mayor came out strongly against a wheel tax.” Then the video would play. Now, for reasons I don’t pretend to understand, it’s become “…and the mayor came out strongly against a wheel tax. Take a listen:”

Having been in the business of broadcasting for much of my pre-retirement life, I observed decades ago that stupid vocal frills like “take a listen” generally start on either coast and then move inland. If they’re saying it in LA or New York, it quickly works its way in to Omaha and Chicago. After all, if you want to be a member of the club, you’ve got to know and use the jargon.

Like sportscasters who now invariably say “welcome in to the broadcast” and constantly mistake prolific for proficient.

Another important element of NewsSpeak is the use of the word “giant” on second reference to some corporate entity in the news. For the uninitiated, an example: “Breaking overnight: Costco announces mass layoffs. The retail giant says…” or “Facebook is introducing a new ‘thumbs down’ icon. The social media giant says…”  It’s like there’s some arcane NewsSpeak grammar that forbids the use of the company’s name except in the opening line of a story.

Kinda like “budget” becomes “spending plan” and “snow” becomes “the white stuff” on second reference. And the use of unnecessary auxiliary words like “price point” for “price.” Not to mention the frequent use of “hone in on” rather than the correct “home in on.” (Even my auto-correct flagged the incorrect usage!)

I don’t need to expound on the bogus use of “breaking overnight” by morning news presenters, even though the “breaking” news broke 24 to 36 hours before.

Or the implication, sometimes couched in less inflammatory language, that your family is not safe unless you watch our newscast. “Fire kills three in east-side conflagration – firefighters say the origin of the fire was in an appliance which you may have in your home right now. The frightening details on the 6 o’clock news.”

Ever notice how even the most insignificant events – like a game show contestant on a long winning streak – become “historic?” History books won’t mention Ken Jennings’ long win streak on Jeopardy. Similarly, “amazing” is now regularly used to describe mundane events, and “hero” is anyone who does anything challenging or moderately difficult.

I know. I’m a dinosaur, a throwback to the days when English was the preferred language of news presenters, jargon was to be avoided, and auxiliary verbs were always used when appropriate.