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My brother took this one. Robert G. Margolis said...


This just knockes the cleverness right out of me (for a second, maybe, but it's long enough!). This is so finely felt and presented, and I, for one, very much appreciate it. I'm sure Lao-Tzu's on his way, on his water buffalo, riding all the way from thousands of years ago, just to get a look at these pictures.
 
Very nice indeed. I have a living father and son and hope to be a link in a similar chain of remembrance. Good people and lives well lived should be recalled and drawn upon for pleasure and inspiration and occasional guidance. Sometimes I wonder about the meaning of life (honest!) and I think about all the millions of people who've lived and died without leaving a shred of lasting evidence or a single remaining memory glowing anywhere. I'll bet most of them had some good times anyway. I guess that's the origin of the headstone. I'm hoping for a bronze statue in the park downtown. Or a son who posts my pictures.

 arthist99 said...

 

Thanks. I'm sure that my father and Lao Tzu met somewhere beyond the pass to the Kunlun Mountains.


When I go, I'm expecting dancing in the streets and a festive parade.


I went mad with the scanner. Mad, I tells ya!
 
I really love old pictures, and these are priceless, as are the memories you shared with them! Thank you for showing us this special part of your life...BTW, I'm new to your Blog from Miss Stephanies Blog :-)
 

As my wife's most ardent Internet stalker, I'm familiar with your posts there. I know that Stephanie appreciates your comments and misses your blog, a blog that I didn't get to as often as I should have.

At any rate, thanks for stopping by. you're always welcome at Chz Len.
 
What a beautiful tribute to your father. I love the old pictures, thank you for sharing them with us.
 
Anon-of-the-Above's mention of "headstone" reminds me of this now sub-legendary family anecdote, which, at the risk of ruining the mood, I here relate:

Less than two weeks before she died, my Mom and I had a conversation about what to put on her grave stone. She said she'd decided, but asked if I had any ideas.

I replied that I did have a few suggestions:

"We Have To Stop Meeting Like This"

"Let He Who Would Cast The First Stone, Use This One!"

and finally...

"Your Ad Here"

My beloved Mom, sick as she was, laughed, and laughed, and laughed some more...I still hear her laughter. And that, of course, is really what's "written" on her grave stone...
 
And, oh yeah, Len: you'll recall some months and conversations ago, we had an exchange about Ezra Pound, and I posted the Pisan Canto that says "What thou lovest well remains, all the rest is dross".

And here you and your photographs are: the living poem.
 

Thanks for stopping by. Stepanie's just proving to me that it pays to advertise.
 

I've always liked the one that W.C. Fields suggested to the old, old Life magazine: "All in all, I'd rather be in Philadephia." In the same feature, Dorothy Parker submitted her famous inscription: "Pardon my dust!" And yet the inscription of remembered shared laughter, the inscription on the soul instead of the stone, is easily the best and wisest.

 
What a nice post and pictures!
My dad died when I was only three and I have only a couple memories of him (Yes, I do have some memories, confirmed by my mom when I told them to her.) And I cling to those memories because they are all I have of him. My brother was only a little over 1 when our dad died so he doesn't even have those memories. I sometimes think if he'd had just a couple memories of our father my brother wouldn't have turned out quite so messed up.
 

My mother confirmed memories for me, too. She confirmed that I watched Jack Ruby shoot Lee Oswald on live TV when I was 4 and a very vague memory I have of playing with one of my cousins in front of a house with a long screened-in porch. It turned out that my aunt and uncle lived in a place like one I described back before we moved from Rhode Island to California. Therefore, I couldn't have been any more than three at the time.

Which is a longwinded, self-involved way of saying, I know what you mean.

That's an interesting speculation about your brother. It is amazing, the power of a memory, not matter how distant or vague.
 Len Cassamas
