June 1, 2019

The focus of this edition is Memory and Memories

…For instance, June 29

I’ve been thinking about how we learn about our family history that happened before we were born and somehow stays with us our whole lives. My grandmother, Dora Hess Weinberg, died when she was 60.  I was less than a year old so she met me, but I certainly don’t remember her. But, for the first 23 years of my life, every June 29 my father told us, “It’s Grandma Dodo’s birthday.”  It stuck.

Born on June 29 1885, in Chicago, Illinois, to Segel Hess and Marie Hess (born Rieser).

Segel was born March 2 1845, in Hechingen, Hohenzollern, Germany.

Marie was born on May 7 1848, in Germany.

Dora had 2 siblings: Leo Hess and Mollie Hess

Dora married Louis Weinberg.

Louis was born on August 1 1870, in Kassel, Germany.

They had 2 children. Louis Jr. and Max Hess

Dora passed away in 1945, at age 60 at Chicago, Illinois.

Something I didn’t know: She died at the same age as her son, my dad.  So, this month, I’ll have been around 15 years longer than both of them. But, I still have 26 years to equal my mom’s dad.  Not a great bet.

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Be Careful What You Expose Them To

Kids remember so much. Parents frequently have no clue about the stuff their children never forget. Like the memories of a family trip to the desert in California 32 years ago: I only remember where we went and the videos we did together of “Rancho Garage.”  But Jesse and Anna (who were 10 and 3) can describe in detail about how we walked around the wet grass, looking up at the mountains and all got soaked in the unlikely pouring rain.

Same goes for my embedded childhood memory.  I can still picture the book on my parents’ shelf in our “knotty-pine den” when I was six. The book was right at my eye level as I sat in the soft chair for hours watching TV. It was a dark blue book with silver letters on the spine: I Write As I Please. I know exactly where it was but I definitely never opened the book.

Now, with three Google clicks, I can read the first paragraphs of the 1935 book I now know was about Walter Duranty’s multiyear career as a journalist in Russia:

“I FIRST became aware of Russia at the age of four. Perhaps it was symbolic that what I heard, or rather saw, was strange, bloody, and untrue. My nurse took me to a show entitled Herr Parizei’s Penny Novelties at an English country fair. There were three principal items: first, a stout woman in a white nightgown wore a golden crown slightly askew and sang Rock of Ages Cleft for Me, while a screen bore a colored picture of another woman, or was it, I wonder, the same woman, clinging to a black rock surmounted by a white cross in the midst of raging waters…”

Proof that dormant memories can be activated ~70 years later!

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Reminds Me of My Book

Just about everything does these days. I’ve committed to concentrate several hours a day writing a full proposal to get Media Burn: The Book published. I’ve been stashing words and images, writing and rewriting for more than 45 years. My old friend and brilliant collaborator Elan Soltes and I are planning have it ready for a national publisher by mid-summer. Here’s a sneak preview of the current version of the introduction. It seems to be in synch with the theme of this edition of the Weinberg House Organ:

INTRODUCTION

I remember it so vividly…the summer when I was three.  Our family was at the beach. Ours happened to be the Indiana Dunes. Or do I really remember it?  I definitely have an indelible image of that serrated edged 2×2 Brownie photo of my cousin Jimmy, my brother John and me with shovels in the sand.  I know I’ve looked at that picture at least 30 times in the last 70 years.

It’s a visual “remember-when.”

The image is inextricably bound to my internal memories…like Onekas (the penny candy store); Tremont (the train stop); “Taylor and the Trailer” (who brought our stuff from Chicago in a woody-style Jeepster); the hand-painted wood sign that said “Restricted” (which my father explained meant “No Jews Allowed.”)  

The image of us on the beach is the trigger, zapping me back immediately to those associative memories.  It was…

“A Kodak Moment” 

…from the advertising phrase that nailed a universal phenomenon.  It struck a responsive chord and became part of everyone’s vocabulary.

These days, most of those moments are far more likely to be on a TV or computer screen that captures not just one moment, but up to 60 of them every second.  We now live in an age of compounded image power…

(etc. etc. for 200+ pages and dozens more images)

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Yup, Image Power

I can’t remember which of you House Organ subscribers sent this one to me, but it resonates (and thank you for sending).

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Binge Drinking

When I was teaching in college for 12 years starting in 2001, I realized I didn’t know much about the real lifestyles of the students. One thing I was amazed about was the extent of binge drinking. When I asked them, about one in three told me that they drank more than six drinks within a two-hour period over the previous weekend. Many drank lots more.

Maybe I was naïve. Maybe this isn’t a surprise to you. The stats from the National Institutes of Health bear it out. They reported that in 2016, “37.9 percent of college students ages 18–22 reported binge drinking in the past month.” 

I won’t moralize or draw generalized conclusions about the state of this generation or our country. Though I must say it is really disturbing to me that they’re spending their lives this way. And what about the other 65% of 18-24 year olds who are not in college? Do they binge drink less, the same or more?  It seems unlikely that their habits are much different than the college students.

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One More Memory Moment

This is 1973 when Anda Korsts (1942-1991) and I appeared on public television explaining historical importance of black-and-white portable video.  We said that in an era when everyone had the capability to record and playback video, it would affect all of our lives (smart phones were invented in 2000).

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I Can Wait!

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