Leslie P. Symington dies at 100

Frederick N. Rasmussen, Baltimore Sun

Leslie P. Symington, a Broadway and television actor who had a second career as a curator and an art researcher, died of a swallowing disorder Sept. 20. The Chestnut Avenue resident in West Towson who also maintained a home on East 90th Street in New York, was 100. 

Lislie in 1950's.

 
“She was an extraordinary lady, that’s for sure,” said Mark B. Letzer , former president and CEO of the Maryland Center for History and Culture. “I knew her socially and she lived such a long life and so many different lives. She was a real force.” “I really admired her, particularly when I started writing books because of her generous research skills and I realized what a remarkable woman she truly was,” said Martha Frick Symington “Marty” Sanger, a niece and Baltimore author who has written about the Symington and Hambleton families. “She was smart as crackers and very, very beautiful,” Ms. Sanger said. “She was an elegant woman with a most wonderful facial structure.”

Leslie Paul, daughter of Arthur Paul, an assistant to the Secretary of Commerce, and Betty Walsh Paul Hubbard, an artist, was born and raised in Chestnut Hill, an affluent suburb of Philadelphia. A 1940 graduate of the Dalton School, she attended the old Black Mountain College in Asheville, North Carolina, and earned a bachelor’s degree in literature from what is today the Harvard Radcliffe Institute in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1945. Mrs. Symington began acting during her college years in summer stock and regional theater companies, eventually moving to Broadway where she performed in Tennessee Williams’ “Summer and Smoke” and then toured with the Broadway company of John P. Marquand’s “The Late George Apley.”

It was during the summer of 1949 when Mrs. Symington was company secretary for the first American theater group invited to perform “Hamlet” at the International Hamlet Festival that was held at Kronborg Castle north of Elsinore, Denmark, which is the actual setting for the play. Organized through the American National Theater and Academy in cooperation with the U.S. State Department, the company performed the play in several cities in the U.S. zone of Allied-occupied Germany, an early example of American cultural diplomacy.

On that tour, she met her future husband, Donald Leith Symington, a scion of one of Maryland’s distinguished families, and an assistant stage manager for “Hamlet.” The couple fell in love and married in 1955.

Mrs. Symington did theatrical public relations and was director of drama at the Dalton School in New York from 1953 to 1954. In the early 1950s, she appeared on TV shows such as “Kraft Television Theatre,” “The Ford Television Theatre” and “The Web.”

The couple raised three daughters in New York City, until moving to Brewster, New York, in 1974.

Mr. Symington, who played Diane Keaton’s father in Woody Allen’s “Annie Hall,” died in 2013.

Her professional memberships included the Actors’ Equity Association and the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists. After studying painting at Bowdoin College in Maine in 1974, Mrs. Symington began a second career in the field of art history. From 1974 to 1978, she was curator and then director of the Southeast Museum in Brewster, New York, where she remained a trustee until 1996. She was also a trustee of the old Lower Hudson Conference of Historical Agencies and Museums and a commissioner of Putnam County’s Bicentennial Commission. While living in Manhattan, she was active with the American National Theater and Academy, a member of The Parents League of New York and the Citizens Union, a political action organization.

In 1990, she began to work on genealogy and provenance research as they related to early American portraiture, predominantly for New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art. Her contributions were heralded as “beyond compare,” in the acknowledgments of “American Paintings in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Vol. 1,″ a catalog of works by 19th century artists. “I might add that in the long ago before our robust online research opportunities, a committed volunteer like Leslie Symington had to put in extraordinary amounts of time at libraries diligently researching through card catalogs; reading endless books, articles and manuscripts; and amassing piles of handwritten notes and Xeroxes about the hundreds of artists in the Met’s collection,” wrote Doreen Bolger, former director of the Baltimore Museum of Art and a friend in an email. “She could pull things together — artists and [19th century] furniture makers like Duncan Phyfe — and her files were just incredible,” Mr. Letzer said. “My relationship with Leslie was cerebral and I held her in high regard. She really was a multidimensional person.”

Mrs. Symington was in her 80s when she taught herself how to use the internet and was still pursuing freelance research well into her 90s.

From 1965 to 1966, she was a member of Baltimore Center Stage, and after she and her husband settled in West Towson in 1999, she became a member of the Friends of the American Wing of the Baltimore Museum of Art and the Maryland Center for History and Culture. Mrs. Symington maintained a vigorous lifestyle and did not bow to the passing years. “Her quick wit and agile mind kept everyone on their toes, and her stories from almost a century of engagement with the world of the arts kept young and old returning to her door,” according to a biographical profile submitted by her family. “She engaged her mind and was very independent until the end of her life,” said a daughter, Betty Welsh Symington, of Upperco. “She was an incredible cook and prepared good home-cooked meals.”

In addition to her daughter, Mrs. Symington is survived by two other daughters, Margaret Fife Symington, of Macon, Georgia, and Leslie Leith Symington, of Stavanger, Norway, and five grandchildren.

Tom was born out of Zeus's head

 Jonathan has found our physics family tree

Tung-Mow lineage makes sense. But Tom Kinoshita appears out of nowhere, born out of Zeus's head . Maybe coming out of ruins of firebombed Tokyo is coming out of no place. But not if you read his recollections.

February 2024: somebody has fixed up Tom's "family" tree. Now I'm a descendant of almost anyone who has ever gotten his name on an equation. Though, where are Newton and Leibniz?

Tom: Learning from mistakes

Remembering Tom Kinoshita, I went back and read "Personal recollections, 1945–1960" and "Everyone makes mistakes—including Feynman". Will there ever again be anyone trained to think and calculate with the depth and precision of his generation? I found this 

"[...] provides (hopefully) a useful example of physics as a self-correcting discipline, in which resolution of earlier mistakes serves as a stepping stone for subsequent development." 

so very wise.

The history of science is what one does when one is too old to do science: scientists' historical memoirs are best avoided. Invariably tediously autobiographical and self-serving, no matter what the book's title might say. Of subjects whose history I happen to know intimately,  How Nature Works and Sync come to mind.  It takes the same time to read real literature, so why use time on this?

I -if I were able to write- would follow Tom's dictum, and teach science history as learning by error. Actually, I would teach science as learning by error: chaos is the source of joy of all creation, the rest is endless, stupefying drone work. Or, Henry Miller's words, in Tropic of Cancer

"There is only one thing that interests me vitally now, and that is the recording of all that which is omitted in books. Nobody, so far as I can see, is making use of those elements in the air which give direction and motivation to our lives."

PS Asked ChatGTP to improve my text in the style of Tropic of Cancer. After a few attempts:

I stumbled upon this passage, so fiercely profound it pierced my soul: "[...] offers, if I dare to hope, a shard of physics as a self-correcting discipline, where the mending of prior blunders paves the path for forthcoming metamorphosis."

The kind of wisdom that stings, like a kick to the gut.

The history of science, the refuge of those past their prime in the pursuit of knowledge: scientists' memoirs, tread with caution, my friend. For they're all bloody self-indulgent, no matter how ostensibly objective their bloody titles. Those subjects I know inside out, like "How Nature Works" and "Sync," they're no different. Might as well be wasting time on real literature, same bloody difference.

If I had a shot at writing – and mind you, it's a damn long shot – I'd take a cue from Tom and teach the history of science as history of mistakes. Hell, I'd teach science as nothing but a string of blunders and cock-ups. Chaos, that's the fiery spark that sets creation ablaze, while the rest is just mind-numbing, soul-crushing drudgery.  

 Or in Miller's rousing words from Tropic of Cancer:

"All that grabs me by the balls now is capturing everything they left out in books. None of those bastards fully grasp the intangible forces that drive us, shape our very existence."

Time to learn to shut the hell up, I reckon.

Toichiro Kinoshita makes a transatlantic phone call

How Louise chose a life of crime

How an intelligent Cornell undergrad (schar.gmu.edu/profiles/lshelley) who started out as a major in physics decided that physics is not for her:

"On Kinoshita, I remember him suffering with my physics section of elementary physics.  There were 4 boys and me,  Having such a clearly brilliant "teaching assistant" was an absolutely intimidating experience.  The professor for the course was Dave Cassel.  Kinoshita was not the kind of person to whom one could say, this is not clear to me.  Outcome of all of this,  I am not a physicist.  Probably, a wise decision for all."

Tom made her choose the life of crime for ever after that fateful recitation section.

Remembering Siri, my 1-day younger twin

Globalhealth.ku.dk/news/2022/obituary-siri-tellier-2-april-1946--19-october-2022/

Me & Olivia go way back

For some reason I’ve been on top of this one forever (already in Cornell) – Olivia Newton-John as a proud grandchild of Max Born. Also stuck in my mind is a memory -possibly not a fact- that her (Mensa-style measured) IQ is very high. Funny that we would equal a pop star who once sang with ABBA with one of the creators of quantum mechanics, but in a few centuries – if there are few centuries left to us – this will be set right.

Talking about talented  families – another cluster are Kinoshitas, the patriarch is Tom, my PhD adviser. The matriarch just died Masako Kinoshita (August 4, 2022) and I have no one to talk to about it – Joe Serene was the only one who would remember.

The family saga, together with a complete book, comes later in the blog:

June’s “pandemic project” was to translate, edit, write, and produce her aunt’s memoir about her mother’s family. The House of Ben’s Dreams parallels the rise and fall of Japan from the 1860s to 1945. It is the story of ambitious young men and women who set out from remote provinces to build a modern nation, transforming a feudal system that had self-isolated from the world for 250 years into an empire to rival the Western powers. They had harnessed their life dreams to those of their re-born nation, energizing the halls of government, the courtrooms, and stock market and embracing Western food, fashion, and furniture along with progressive ideas about women, democracy, workers’ rights, only to find themselves under a militarist dictatorship for which they toiled with varying degrees of reluctance or enthusiasm. The story arc crashes in flames with Japan’s unconditional surrender in 1945.

View/download The House of Ben’s Dreams (pdf)

I am one of the things that happened once men returned home from that war. Claimed by two fathers, I was raised by a single mother and a gaggle of her art-history studying girlfriends. According to my mother Jackie  I was brought into the world by parthenogenesis. There are documented cases in turkeys, she would say. I bring this up just to say that I was raised to recognize no authority, and especially no older male authority. 

 

 

Tom, however, is so impervious to deviations from patriarchy that he never even noticed that I recognize no authority, in particular not his authority. And thus the Kinoshita daughters, and myself, the graduate student, found ourselves on the same side of history, 1970's America vs. 1930's Japan. The way the three teens, very cute and very American, navigated the two worlds was a source of endless mirth for me. Masako, with her wry smile, knew what they were up to. Their mothers, my mother, your mother - the world has always rested on their shoulders, while men do whatever stupid or sometimes great things they do. And, while I cannot take credit for anything at all, I'm proud of the Kinoshita girls.

 

Teaching starts in 10 days – scarry . This has been a remarkable summer in that while nothing happened, I accomplished absolutely nothing. Probably a quiet depression, or the age. Or both.

Musil. Miller. There is no escape. The weather will not change.

There is much great ongoing work on climate, and one thing that intrigues me are periods of multi-decadal variability, followed by great climactic jumps. This -a major tangent- brings us to the greatest novel of 20th century (in here I'm clipping bits from its Wiki):

Robert Musil "Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften"

The protagonist is a 32-year-old mathematician named Ulrich who is in search of a sense of life and reality but fails to find it. A kind of keenly analytical passivity is his most typical attitude.

The story takes place in 1913 in Vienna, starts this way:

THERE was a depression over the Atlantic. It was travelling eastwards, towards an area of high pressure over Russia, and still showed no tendency to move northwards around it. The isotherms and isotheres were fulfilling their functions. The atmospheric temperature was in proper relation to the average annual temperature, the temperature of the coldest as well as of the hottest month, and the a-periodic monthly variation in temperature. The rising and setting of the sun and of the moon, the phases of the moon, Venus and Saturn’s rings, and many other important phenomena, were in accordance with the forecasts in the astronomical yearbooks.The vapour in the air was at its highest tension, and the moisture in the air was at its lowest. In short, to use an expression that describes the facts pretty satisfactorily, even though it is somewhat old-fashioned: it was a fine August day in the year 1913.

In Part II, Pseudoreality Prevails, Ulrich joins the so-called "Collateral Campaign" or "Parallel Campaign", preparations for a celebration in honor of 70 years of the Austrian Emperor Franz Joseph's reign in year 1918, a committee to explore a suitable way to demonstrate Austria's political, cultural, and philosophical supremacy via a festival which will capture the minds of the Austrian Emperor's subjects and people of the world forever.

Multi-decadal variability rules. Not a hint in more than 1,700 pages that in a year this world will not exist.

Musil was slow - I read a sentence in the original (usually a page), then I read the translation, and I STILL do not get it. Only when you get deep into volume 2 you discover that the book is about something totally different than what you thought it was. Like learning physics. Musil was trained as a physicist, perhaps by Mach.

There are two translations, I have both.

Joni's cat's meow

                                   (colored text is hyperlinks to meow music)
Here is my story so far, since the yesterday's Cross-fit Worldwide group suffering. I had sent an email to 20 close friends of my dead public health friend Katrin Kohl, asking that we meet virtually. So far, 28 hours later, in the spirit of GOP Pandemic, 2 have responded. That brings forth the melody of Joni Mitchell's : "Down to You"

   Old friends seem indifferent
   You must have brought that on
   Old bonds have broken down
   Love is gone
   Ooh, love is gone

So I listen to it, and YouTube continues into Joni's Hejira album, and then; and then I hear cat's meow! meow! And I say to myself "Who know that Joni would play Dan Wei's music!" and return back to the track to send the link to Dan Wei (there is a whole genre of cat's meow Chinese pop music love songs), go back, go forth, and back, and I still have not found it. I did learn that Joni is a cat person, and cat's meow is a thing in "western" pop music too: 

"Now that's what I call meow"

If you find Joni's original, let me know :)

 

Garden State Parkway chase

 At 6am I hear S next to me, she says as clear as a bell:

He is running away and he is in a T-shirt with stripes, that's what I mean.

The rest of S's dream:

Trump had escaped, and she was following the chase on her Twitter feed. He was spotted going south on Garden State Parkway. Then he was spotted driving north on New Jersey Turnpike. Then many sightings were reported - there were Trump doubles driving in different directions. But troopers had no trouble identifying the @realDonaldTrump, they had a device reassembling the thermometer used in airports - you point it at person's forehead, and it tells you whether this is the real Donald Trump, or not.

He was quickly apprehended.

Hundred' mus med haler på

Hver lørdag kl 18:00 laver jeg crossfit med min Melchior/Westenholtz familie, og i dag opdagede jeg noget dybt chokerende:

Ikke en eneste har nogensinde hørt

Hundred' Mus Med Haler På

(version til voksne)

Jeg åd dem alle, hver og en, med hud og hår og museben. 

 

Martin, som nu er dansk diplomat i Indien, og Lysistrata er enige: dårlig opdragelse. Kender man ikke den sang, så skal man spises med hud og hår og museben.

(fortsat fra February 10, 1984)

 

Mads bliver 60: set fra Liliput

for helvede - Toni er allerede 1/4 århundrede????  og det føles som det er et øjeblik siden den hammer, og den høvlebænk. Sidst vi så hinanden var nogle år tilbage, der vi sad ansigt til ansigt i sen og travl lørdags S-tog, han urolig og optaget af teenageres ængstelige tænker, så jeg forstirrede ham ikke.

Men - han kan ikke forestille sig hvordan det gik for mig i Mads fødselsdag. Jeg skulle har skrevet det ned som en Swift's Gulliver kapitel. Jeg var så lille og -efter han forladte mobilen på bordet- helt ubemærket af de unge smukke kvinder som kastede mig rundt som en lille udansk Lilliputaner, i lommer og under underarme og over lårene mens de talte om de ting unge kvinder taler om fordi de faldt dem ikke ind at ind i mobilen lever der et voksent, dansktalende mand. Jeg sang, men de hørte mig ikke:

Hundred' mus med haler på og bittesmå sandaler på gik morgentur med smedens hest mens solen selv gik ned i vest. Hundred' mus fik ømme tæer og købte sig en tømme hver og red af sted i vældig fart til landet, hvor man har det rart. Hundred' mus fik musemad og flødeskum og brusebad og ost og spæk og meget mer' som ikke skal beskrives her. Hundred' mus gik hjem en nat og traf en gammel, gnaven kat der åd dem alle, hver og en med hud og hår og muse ben.

Hr. Kontorchef Aurland, Toni's søn:

 

 

venstre: Toni som teenager, efter demobilisering fra 2den verdenskrig partisanhær;

midten; som dansk businessman (tænk på Georg Madsen in Badehotellet)
højre: pensionist i firserne

Stanisław Lem, "De Impossibilitate Vitae and De Impossibilitate Prognoscendi"

 Bo Sixten Nilsson writes:

I got a message: "The following profile has an autosomal DNA match with your profile:

Hedviga Rakamarić

Estimated Relationship: 3rd to 4th Cousin"

Since I am a Swede living in Lund, south Sweden and believe that my ancestors have lived nearby in southern Sweden forever (at least several hundreds of years) the message is confusing. Do you know of any ancestors of yours that ended up in Sweden long ago?

Most of us have blond hair and blue eyes. Only my father’s mother had dark hair and dark eyes, as well as her mother and her grandparents. They all had Swedish names though, but didn’t really looked Swedish.

Your names indicate that you are living in some part of former Yugoslavia. It’s an interesting coincidence that I have spent several summers there in the 70’s and 80’s. I even managed to learn a bit of the language.

Dear Bo

My brother Radovan Belić maintains and understands our family tree, I defer to him to answer your query. I think Rakamarić's are genetically related to him but not me - no blood relations of mine.

I am Danish, and have visited Sweden often, have had Swedish girlfriends, have worked at Chalmers University, Sep 1984-Aug 1986, speak Swedish (badly, in manner of Danish speakers) so some recent genes left in Sweden are conceivable. No Swedish friend ever mentioned it, but Swedish women do not necessarily bring such details up.

A few centuries ago? That is fascinating. As they surely thought you in school, Swedes were a horrible plague upon whole of Europe, and one of the legends is that Croatian soldiers did the right thing, and killed Gustav II in the battle of Lützen, on 16. November 1632.

VojnaPovijest.vecernji.hr/vojna-povijest/poginuo-svedski-kralj-gustav-ii-adolf-1632-godine

My mother - a Croatian art historian told me about this, so it's very suspect unless there are non-Croatian sources corroborating that.

So Swedish soldiers certainly raped and pillaged in the South.

But immigrating to Sweden no sane male would do in 17th century, so making Swedish babies I find mysterious. A possibility is via my German origins:  docs.google.com Golmajers , Flickr.com Golmajer archive .

Radovan has the correct version, but basically my maternal grandfather's family can be traced to German serfs brought to (today's) Slovenia in 1658 or thereabouts. Don't know where they were before they were "brought" to Slovenia.

The good news is that in his book review "De Impossibilitate Vitae and De Impossibilitate Prognoscendi" Stanisław Lem proves that he (and consequently myself) could not have been born. The recursive genealogy traces him to Pleistocene. Along the way, Lem mentions that "[...] would not have encouraged his niece to marry the Croat for, though a giaour, it was a good and comely youth. In marrying the Croat, the grandmother on Mr. Mdivani’s mother’s side thus increased the chances of Professor Kouska’s birth", so there you have the Croatian connection.

Digging further, a few steps back, Lem notes: "As a result of the mixing of the chromosomes of that lubricious Paleopithecanthropus and that quadrumanous protohuman primatrice, there arose that type of meiosis and that linkage of gene loci which, transmitted through the next thirty thousand generations, produced on the visage of the young lady nurse that very smile, faintly reminiscent of the smile of Mona Lisa, from the canvas of Leonardo, which so enchanted the young surgeon Kouska."

Now, if you peruse this thing called "Google" you will discover that I actually exist, and busy myself with the impossibility of predicting the future. And predicting the past is so much harder. So it all makes sense.

We are talking about getting lost in a major rabbit hole here. If you dig up anything, please let me know...

Greetings to my Lund cousin 17 times removed :)
Predrag Cvitanović

 Bo Sixten Nilsson writes back:

Since my DNA matched with Hedviga Rakamarić (Kolaković) with a suggestion of 3rd to 4th cousin and you are not (DNA)-related to her I guess our common ancestor could very well be some 17 generations back. Some fun or interesting facts to point out:

Hedviga is a Swedish name as far as I know. It was quite common in the 19th century.

After my graduation from LTH (similar to Chalmers) in electronic engineering I worked there for two years, 1980-1982. After that I was mostly involved in running small companies,

I lived together with a woman from former Yugoslavia for 20 years. She grew up in Rijeka but was born in Serbia in the Banat close to the Romanian border. In the late 60’s she moved with her parents to Sweden where I first met her. Up until Yugoslavia blew up I visited all the republics except Macedonia, traveling around by car.

Skåne (Scania in English) where I live used to be a part of Denmark, but in one of those repeating wars between Sweden and Denmark Scania was occupied by Sweden. After the declaration of peace between these two countries in 1658 the new border remains - we still belong to Sweden. One of the most successful occupations in Europe I’ve heard.

Bornholm, a small Danish island close to the southeast coast of Scania, was also occupied, but the Danes bought it back to Denmark two years later. My grandfather’s mother was from there.

A good friend of mine, Jean Sellem a French guy born in Paris but living in Sweden for more than 50 years, is a former art professor - like your mother.

I do hope we will find some more solid clues about the DNA connection between Sweden and Croatia

On February 23, 2023 Harry Herlin pitches in:

"Howdy, This fellow looks a bit like you. Never knew about him but still …"

Predrag to Harry

My biological father, a red bourgeois (by the fact that his sister had joined partisans, worked in a cave with Tito towards the end of the war), traveled far and wide who after the liberation, was very fond of making (and leaving) babies, but the dates do not quite match. Ronka, handsome as he was (every Belić, but one, is very handsome) was born October 1945 but Germans had already surrendered on 8 May 1945, so a Massachusetts pregnancy would require time travel, "Terminator" style. But we should not give up hope. Can you check if Bo Sixten Nilsson is our common cousin, a few times removed?


Addendum, February 22, 2025
Illuminata to Predrag

Researching how this Not Parent Event (NPE) info impacts folks I stumbled upon some interesting literature: 

Discovering your presumed father is not your biological father: Psychiatric ramifications of independently uncovered non-paternity events resulting from direct-to-consumer DNA testing - ScienceDirect

This is an excellent paper. My comments:

"5% of participants discovered an unexpected biological parent".

"Those who chose to reveal their findings often experienced their difficulties were invalidated by friends and family".

" Mental health diagnosis prior to the discovery" These numbers are high, and to me "Level of distress compared to historical cohorts"  is inexplicable? Seems to say that not being genetically related to your parents doubles you distress, even if you do not know it?

" hiding a misattributed identity by a mother may be considered a severe violation of trust"

A bit of good news: " Protective factors for mental health were the ability to openly discuss the situation with one's social circle (as opposed to keeping it a secret) and acceptance of the discovery"

Discovering Misattributed Paternity After DNA Testing and its Impact on Psychological Well-Being and Identity Formation

“I’m trying to figure out who the hell I am”: Examining the psychosocial and mental health experience of individuals learning “Not Parent Expected” news from a direct-to-consumer DNA ancestry test | BMC Psychiatry | Full Text

Say their names : Berta Kaplan Solla

My mother-in-law Berta Kaplan Solla died the night of June 26, 2020.

In her assisted living home in Buenos Aires 40 seniors tested CVID-19 positive. She also tested CVID-19 positive, but asymptomatic, and was immediately moved to a hospital in Buenos Aires for observation. Technically, the cause of death was probably cardiac failure. She was 95, pretty much bedridden by old-age, but clear-headed to the end, and the morning before her death she was expecting a group phone call with two of her sons and her daughter. There was some technical snafu, and it did not happen.

So it was kind of death that was sudden and perhaps welcome, after a long and eventful life. Her children are at peace with it, but, as we all know, that kind of loss takes years to work through. If ever.

Berta that American  friends remember from many years ago, when she was still coming on her annual visits was a friskier, chain-smoking and excitable Berta.

In Chicago (2003)

In Buenos Aires, with her grandchildren (2005)

Working out the mother-daughter relationship kinks (2010)

Say their names : Vicki Greco

Vicki, mother of my gentle and sweet colleague Ed Greco is dead, after 3 weeks battle, a victim of US government's inaptly handled pandemic. She was 62, active, and in perfect health. She worked as a nurse here in Atlanta screening folks that walked into her clinic. Ed had to remove her off life support after she fought with COVID-19 for almost four weeks. It completely destroyed her healthy lungs. In one of her last conversations with Ed she complained that people wouldn't put on a mask or would lie about their symptoms when they walked into the clinic. "Be really careful everyone and don't trust leadership to make the right decision for you personally" says Ed, who is quietly very very angry.

Ed's tribute to his mother:

Victoria Greco, age 62, passed away June 25th 2020 in Atlanta, Georgia after battling COVID-19 for three weeks. Vicki was born into a large Italian-American family in Passaic, NJ just months before she and her extended family relocated to Orlando, Florida. She grew up surrounded by siblings and cousins with grandparents just two houses away. She could be quiet and unassuming just as easily as she could be fierce and indomitable, a contradiction in character that earned her the nickname “rooster”. Vicki had a passion for new adventure and learning. She loved to read and her house is filled with an eclectic collection of books, bottles, and maps. She loved to fish in the surf at dawn, ride motorcycles through the misty mountains and small towns of Appalachia, and explore the ancient paths of our National Parks with her husband. She was the type of person you could call and invite on a trip, exotic or mundane, and the answer would always be an enthusiastic yes!

Vicki lived a life in voluntary service to the well-being of others, often caring for and sheltering the sick and destitute in her home. This was a kindness she and her husband also extended to nature. At home, Vicki would often be found tending to the native plants and pollinators in her yard while her adopted dogs slept lazily nearby. When she turned 50, she realized a lifelong desire to work in medicine and enrolled in nursing school. After graduating, she moved to Atlanta to help raise her granddaughters and began a second career in pediatrics. Her white hair, brown eyes, and silly scrubs brought smiles to many children and their families.

At the core of Vicki was a love for family. Making Christmas cookies with her grandmother, Sunday dinners at her Dad’s, cooking holiday meals with her sisters, sun kissed at the beach with her husband and granddaughters, she was happiest when she was surrounded by those she loved. For those who loved her, she was an unbreakable rock that could shoulder any burden you placed at her feet with grace. Survivors include her husband, Richard Hooker; son and daughter in-law Edwin and K. Elizabeth Greco, mother, Carole Bertone; father and stepmother, Anthony and Sallie Greco; brother, Salvatore Greco; sister, Elizabeth Kulow, sister, Karen Kania; sister, Janice Manley; granddaughters: Madeline, Miranda and Margaret Greco. She was preceded in death by her son, Anthony Hooker. In lieu of flowers, please watch a sunrise, jump feet first into a cold Florida spring, and wear a mask in public.

Do listen to the May 29th NY Times -The Daily "One Hundred Thousand Lives" podcast, commemorating the first 100,000 US victims of the Trump pandemic.

About Ed: storycollider.org Marriage stories about making it work (July 1, 2019)

First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a socialist

First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a socialist.
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out— because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.

Pastor Martin Niemöller

Two nights ago Rayshard Brooks was killed by a Georgia policeman Garrett Rolfe for the crime of sleeping over a hangover in his car. While black. After 40 minutes of polite banter they killed him. Witnesses claimed officers “put on plastic gloves and picked up their shell casings after they killed [Brooks] before rending aid.” And in watching video of the incident, the legal team “counted 2 minutes and 16 seconds before [officers] even checked [Brooks’s] pulse.”

They had came for us. Already. And we did not speak out. Follow my Scout Schultz thread.



And did I mention how important it is to have independent journalism? Were it not for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, all news would be controlled by the State of Georgia, be it through Georgia Tech administration or Georgia State police, and we would have never even known that a student in a moment of mental crisis was killed by police in front of his dorm, to the horror of students watching the killing through dorm windows.

First walk outside

For the first time I exited on foot and walked 5 blocks to CVS to pickup an urgent medication. Glorious day.

2/3 people wear masks. The COVID-19 trends are all downward. The Stay at Home order for Illinois has been lifted and the City of Chicago has entered a new phase: Cautiously Reopen.

State of Georgia Certified Manager

10:30am I had started sometime this morning, only paused to talk to renowned manager Andy Zangwill for moral support, and I’m still at it. I’m staring at a FeeblePoint slide entitled “Safe Harbor Statement”

11:30 As with COVID-19, I fear I’m at the beginning of beginning.

The Great State of Jawja’s self-elected Guvrnr Kemp mandates that I finish something called “SCORM Object” “Introduction to Manager Self-Service “ today (!?), with 80% a passing grade. If I succeed, 9 painful robocall female voice videos away, I should be able to “Add Info to Talent Profile for an Employee.”

12:30pm: I’m learning much about things I did not know existed:
               “All prior transactions which would require a PSF form will now be initiated and completed in Manager Self Service. 
                Many of these transactions will now be found in the My Team tile”.
                WTF is PSF?
2pm: The only rub is – the videos show some Oracle product on something called “OneUSG Connect”.
               But I have no idea what is it that I’m supposed to log into.
2:30pm: Aha. It’s still techworks.gatech.edu – but it does not respond to login attempts.
               Time to take a lunch break.
3:30pm: Did not like FireFox, even after flushing the cache, rebooting etc. But it opened in Opera.
3:45pm: I’m in! Figured out the drop-down “manager self-service.” Finally, the wool has fallen from my eyes - I’m a manager because:
                “My Team” has 14 people (!?) and 4 unfilled positions. Of course!
                No wonder I am such an important manager. I’m a big cog in the Board of Regents mill.
                OK, some of them I remember from 2001. One of my anno 2020 grad students is on "My Team," the second one is not.
                But the two manage themselves. Sensible enough not to entrust themselves to their adviser’s “management”.
           Now I understand why Shaun addresses every seminar announcement to “You and your teams”. She’s so ahead of the curve.

I’m taking a l-o-o-n-g break to gather strength for the next click.

4:20pm: I’m ready for [Assessment]. Ten multiple-choice questions.
                I understand nothing. Humbling to be an undergraduate.
                I click resolutely on, guided –POTUS like- by my infallible undergraduate intuition.
                Wow!
                I aced it in the first try! 90/100!

I am now a fully qualified and empowered Jawja Board of Regents manager. Give way.

 5:30pm:  I am fried for the week. Hope to regain strength by the Friday's Happy Hour.

if 2020 only were cancelled.... COVID-19

To Sir M.:

the testimonials from the surviors (or those who have since died) are horrific, make dying from COVID-19 appear much worse than dying from a flu-induced pneumonia. Here are a few, worth listening to

NYTimes.com/2020/03/30/podcasts/the-daily/coronavirus-new-jersey.html

I do not mind dying, but this is exceptionally miserable, protracted way to die, provided there is oxygen (8 cylinders, each of the size you know from physics labs, per patient per day) and a ventialtor. Without, death is quicker.

In addition, when you live in a 3rd world country without a universal health system, and without a functioning government, this happens:

NYTimes.com/2020/03/29/podcasts/the-daily/the-sunday-read-what-i-learned-when-my-husband-got-coronavirus.html

After a few weeks of sending sick back to their families to be cared for, Chinese government understood that they will never stop this until they isolate the sick in government run field hospitals. US is letting the pandemic come in waves, starting physical separation in different states only when the next wave had already taken of with the same exponential doubling rate (today Detroit, Chicago, ...) to make it all more protracted. We still -today!- have states in the Murdoch la-la land with no shelter-in-place order, and this very Sunday megachurches are still packed, exempt, by GOP governors, from physical separation rules.



(Carlos Amato, SA)

One could argue that death rates as a percentage of the population are lower now. Still, that we are letting COVID-19 give Spanish flu run for money is mind-boggling a century later, for an entirely preventable pandemic, with public health measures not only known, but already proven to work for this very same virus in South Korea, Singapore, China, etc.

Das Leben in den Zeiten von COVID-19

Ich habe keinen meiner Schüler beim LESEN beobachtet, aber für diejenigen, die es tun, empfehle ich es - das funktioniert mit 100%iger Sicherheit.
https://twitter.com/ethicistforhire/status/1237319901880168449

Dank Gottes habe ich auch Wittgenstein zur Hand, falls ein zusätzlicher Schutz erforderlich ist.

Liebe zu allen, ob groß oder klein
Meister der Sozialen Distanzierung

The entire 2020 will be cancelled

if the memo has not reached you yet -

By the power vested in me by my mother, and following the recommendations of CDC, WHO and Drs. Birx and Fauci, I hereby declare, that my 2020 birthday is rescheduled as 74th birthday to take place in 2021 at a safe location, with all dancing virtual, and all social distancing strictly enforced.

To remind you of what you are missing:https://youtu.be/xxfT4q55AhU

As a matter of fact, the entire 2020 will be cancelled - it will be erased from our collective memories, and we'll start 2020 afresh, but just call it 2021.

We are safe in our Chicago cocoon.

Getting to Chicago seems like eons ago, so I have to write the date down: March 17, 2020.