I signed up for two evening courses, 3 hour sessions twice a week, 7-10 pm. I thought nothing of it. I would work my regular hours at Lockheed and then drive to San Jose. I could swear that I was singing “Do you know the Way to San Jose” with Dionne Warwick as I drove there. I just looked it up and the song was written in 1968 so I must be mistaken. I know I was listening to “ California Dreamin” with the Mamas and the Papas, and the Beach Boys “I Get Around” and Good Vibrations”. I spent a lot of time in the car and KSFO was my favorite station

The four years it took me to earn my MA were four of the happiest years of my life. I was in my mid-twenties. I met my husband in August of 1964 and we married a year and a half later. I gave up piano lessons but kept my job at Lockheed. I studied with far more diligence than I had as an undergrad. I loved it all: Chaucer, Shakespeare, Dickens, Trollope, Thomas hardy, Johnson and Boswell, Emily Dickinson, Mark Twain. (Yes, some American literature was allowed into the curriculum.) They were my heroes. My bookshelves filled up with the classics of English literature. I was still quite shy in class and stuttered when called to read one of my papers. The stutter was something which started in 7th grade. I blame it on Sister Florence Marie, a particularly formidable nun, although there were several stutterers in our family.

I got all A’s when A’s weren’t easy to come by. Oh, except for one course. Final grade: B+. He needn’t have bothered with the +.

The last semester, two of my teachers suggested I go on to seek a PhD. I applied at Stanford and UC-Berkeley. We lived 10 minutes from the Stanford campus, while UC was a good hours drive across the Bay Bridge. Stanford interviewed me and informed me that they didn’t favor women in the program because women tended to marry and start families and abandon their careers. They turned me down. UC/Berkeley accepted me. It was the better school anyway. I was ecstatic, even though, deep down, I knew it was highly impractical.

A week later, my husband lost his job. What had been impractical became impossible. We had purchased our first home, financing it with first and second mortgages. The unexpected loss of my husband’s income was of serious concern. There was no question of my leaving Lockheed for the time being. Frugality became reality as we strove to stay afloat.

I started this with a Beatles song so I might as well wrap things up with one : “We Can Work Things Out”.

To be continued.

I grew up in the cold Northeast, in an environment where the work ethic was strong. Lockheed was like California itself: warm, casual, welcoming, low-keyed, and undemanding. I was well paid with a lot of flexibility in work hours. I became so spoiled that it almost ruined me for any serious job.

I would arrive an hour late for work. Two-hour lunches were common, as we would cram in a quick shopping excursion to the newly opened Stanford Shopping Center in Palo Alto. It became obvious that no one was going to get fired After Sputnik, Lockheed was awash with federal contracts and they couldn’t hire people fast enough.

Then an odd thing happened. I had my handwriting analyzed . All four of us roommates did. We cut an ad out of the paper, filled out the application, including samples of our handwriting, and mailed it to a graphologist, along with our check for $10.

Mine came back with profuse praise. I was multi-talented, my verbal skills were high, as was my cognitive ability. However, I lacked self-confidence. It was like this anonymous handwriting expert was leaping out of the page, chastising me for not having sufficient faith in myself. I will tell you that I kept this glowing handwriting analysis for many years. Sort of like a favorable fortune cookie message that you convince yourself is speaking directly to you.

What was I doing in a job I really didn’t enjoy? Why didn’t I acknowledge that I should have majored in English literature, my real love? I needed to accept that I didn’t want to learn FORTRAN and spend time with a room-sized computer. In truth this had been in my subconscious for a while. My Catholic upbringing made me feel guilty for not treating my job seriously.

so I sent for my college transcripts and applied for the Graduate Record Exams (GRE’s) in English. When I got good results, I applied to San Jose State Graduate School Department of English. Four years after I started at Lockheed, I got accepted into graduate school.

To be continued.

You may be surprised to know that I was once a mathematician. I have a BA from a small private college in the Northeast. Some may observe that it is a BA, not a BS. The implication being that this degree is something less. You might be right. The fact that my course work included courses in Shakespeare, Dostoevsky, Opera Repertoire. History of Philosophy, Arnold, Ruskin, and Meredith (that one was a mistake) does suggest a lack of commitment to a math major. Nevertheless, I did get that BA, major in mathematics.

This worked out quite well when I arrived in California the summer after I graduated. It was intended to be a vacation. My aunt, however, had a pool in her backyard at 1360 Corinne Lane in Menlo Park and my 10 year old cousin, Mary Ellen, begged me to stay so I could play Marco Polo with her.

I was acquiring a nice tan, lounging at poolside, when my uncle came home with a newspaper in his hand. Look, he said, Lockheed is hiring science and math majors. If you are going to stay here, you’d better get a job. Sure enough, there was a full page ad looking for people who were what we now call STEM majors.

The next day Uncle Ted dropped me off at the nearest bus stop to take a bus to Sunnyvale where Lockheed had set up job interviews. My days of leisure playing Marco Polo in the California sun were about to end. I was hired and assigned to an Operations Research department in a satellite office on Middlefield Road in Menlo Park. Which was lucky because I had no car.

I immediately wrote my college friends and told them of my good fortune. Two of them arrived within the month. We rented a two bedroom apartment on Laurel Street and commenced our careers. Meg, another math major, joined me at Lockheed. Nancy got a job at a travel agency. I walked to work, in high heels, a crisp white blouse and a knee length pencil skirt, because I was from a sophisticated school in Westchester County and that was how we were taught to dress.

My department consisted of a department head, Dorn Barclay, 14 male engineers, a female secretary, and me. The secretary was hourly. We were salaried. Which meant that she punched a clock, while we came and went in a less regulated fashion. I was lucky that she didn’t let any resentment she felt show.

Now that I have set the scene, I think I will take a break. I leave you with a bit of information: my small college was Catholic and all girls. My experience with young men was, shall we say, limited. We’ll leave it at that.

Here is my grandmother, Ella McDonnell, at the top of the photo, with her sisters. Delia. Bertha, Kitty, Margaret, and Pauline. C. 1895.

They lived in Fulton, a town in western Oswego County. New York, named after Robert Fulton, inventor of the steamboat.

When I grew up in Rochester, NY, everyone knew of Robert Fulton. Not just Samuel Clemons (Mark Twain), who started his career on a steamboat, but all school kids learned who invented the steamboat. Just as we learned who invented the radio (Marconi: then. Tesla:now. )

Fulton gets 100 inches of snow a year. Its population was 10,480 in 1910. In 2020 the population is 11,389.

It’s not a stretch to think that hair was considered an important part of these six sisters’ attractiveness. Their style reminds me of the Gibson Girls who, in the era 1890-1920, embodied refined beauty as well as athletic activities. It marked the beginning of an increasingly feminist society. Women’s suffrage, finally obtained by the 19th Amendment in 1920, had started in Seneca Falls, New York in 1848. Seneca Falls is 43 miles from Fulton.

To get back to the McDonnell sisters, I like to think of them patiently waiting in the parlor in Fulton. NY in 1895 to be swooped up by a suitor.

When I bought this dish, though, Burlingame was in the doldrums, as evidenced by the fact that a thrift shop occupied storefront space on its Main Street, which I think was called Burlingame Avenue.

The inscription on this dish “Say Little and Think Much” makes me laugh. In the plethora of verbosity one encounters on TV, talk radio, podcasts, and the like, this gentle reminder to pause and reflect before blurting out every thought which pops into one’s head has a certain appeal.

The dish is from Torquay Pottery in Devon, England. The company started producing these whimsical pieces in 1860. It isn’t hard to imagine Agatha Christie placing a dish like this in one of her mystery stories and making its message a key to solving the mystery.

The admonition to “think much” is curious, don’t you think? It sounds antiquated. One can “think too much”or “think much of someone or something.” One can’t “do too much about something.” The terse “think much”, however, seems brief and a bit didactic, which goes with the saying, now that I think about it.

I often find myself trapped in conversations which have turned into monologues. A lengthy, self-referential response to my every comment wears me out. I wish I could thrust this little dish into my loquacious companion’s hand and say, here, read this.

I could then exit and await further developments. Like discovering a body in the library.

Do I date myself? Is balancing a checkbook passé? Friends tell me that they haven’t balanced their checkbook in years. This is what is wrong with the world today! Have we forgotten the basic tenet of our forefathers? ‘Take care of the little things and the big things will take care of themselves.’

This was drilled into me by my husband, the King of Little Things. He would not be offended were he here today to read this (which he would not do because he would be TOO BUSY). Not only did he pay strict attention to the little things, he imposed these strict standards on everyone who worked for him. Might I say, impossible standards. He went through clerical help at a rapid clip. I learned not to get too attached to the current bookkeeper or secretary because they would be gone soon. Usually, they quit. Often in tears.

I had started as his bookkeeper, with an occasional foray into sales. Then sales took over. After the third bookkeeper quit, I added bookkeeping to my chores. He had trained me in double-entry bookkeeping and I knew what he wanted. Data, spread sheets, perfect hand/entry ledgers, trial balances. If you think cursive dates you, try hand-entry bookkeeping.

So I am particularly relieved that my husband is not around to see me struggle to balance my checkbook.

I think it must be my vision. I just got a new prescription and yet I have trouble distinguishing a 3 from a 9 or a 1 from a 7. Every time I run a balance I get a different number. Shall I give in and call it quits? That is not how I was trained.

Thankfully, I finally succeeded in getting it balanced. This may seem like a small thing but I think that even Emily Dickinson, who probably never balanced a checkbook in her life, would understand its importance.

◦ I’ve decided not to describe the game of duplicate bridge. Even when someone appears interested, I find they get bored very quickly.

◦ Just one story, then, about the time I travelled to Bermuda and played in the Bermuda Regional ACBL tournament.

◦ In 2017 i was working towards becoming a Life Master. So was one of my regular partners, Bee. She asked me to go to Bermuda in January for the tournament and I agreed.

◦ Even though I had a gold charm shaped like Bermuda on my charm bracelet, a gift from my brother, I had never been to Bermuda. I was excited to visit the island and play in one of the most prestigious tournaments

◦ The day of departure. Bee came by my house and parked her car in the driveway. We transferred her luggage to my car and headed up to the airport. On the way. Bee discovered she didn’t have her passport. I u-turned and we went to her house. She found the passport and we set out again.

◦ Bee was quite a self-confident Southern belle. She had grown up in Virginia Beach and informed me, importantly, that she was a Gindler. Apparently this was an important family name in Virginia Beach. I got a kick out of her pride and her spunk.

◦ She had been married twice: divorced snd then widowed. The first husband was the most handsome men she had ever met and the second was the kindest. She had been the apple of her Daddy’s eye and was quite a handful in high school and college. I believe she was the prettiest girl in high school. She bragged that she had dated every boy in the most popular fraternity at college.

◦ I learned a lot of Bee’s history on this trip.

◦ We took a flight into Washington Dulles and had a bit of a wait before the flight to Bermuda. After boarding was announced, Bee decided she wanted a coffee. She came back in the middle of the boarding process and proceeded to bring the unlidded coffee with her on board, along with a carry-on and the teeniest handbag you have ever seen. It was the kind of handbag you would bring to a formal dance. Wallet, passport, lipstick, glasses, etc, were all jammed in and overflowing. We had booked too late for adjoining seats but had seats across the aisle from each other.

◦ Bee’s walk was a cross between a strut and a half-stumble and she often bumped into things. This carreening movement was especially precarious in the narrow aisle of a plane. I had preceded her and had already taken my seat when she erratically approached, banging people along the way. She threw her carry-on onto an interior seat , while attempting to balance her full cup of coffee. Her wallet, keys, loose change, passport all fell out of her open handbag and, as she bent over to gather up things, the coffee spilled onto the seat next to her. I helped her try to retrieve things and put them back into that tiny little bag. She sat down with an emphatic punctuation. When she made no acknowledgment of the spilled coffee on the seat next to her, I called it to her attention. This was met with an annoyed grimace. She took out a tiny handkerchief and did a perfunctory and unsuccessful attempt to swish the coffee off the seat and onto the floor.

◦ I turned away and opened my book. Bee was a bit hard of hearing and I knew that conversation would be loud and, probably, embarrassing. I was already sufficiently embarrassed.

◦ The flight was uneventful and we were greeted by bright sunshine and balmy air in Bermuda. The tournament was held at the Fairmont Southampton, everything you would want in a classic, beautiful hotel.

◦ There were lots of people walking around the lobby and corridors. It was a well dressed crowd. Many of he top players in the world were there and I was excited just to be in the same room with them. There were several lectures and panel discussions scheduled in between games. Many of the participants seemed to know each other. The pros were from all over the world. The Russians knew the Poles who knew the New Yorkers who knew the experts from Clearwater, Florida. They were all friendly.

◦ We sat in on panel discussion with Jeff Meckstroth and Jade Barrett and Mike Cappelletti, three of the top players in the world. It was moderated by David Ezekiel, “The Prophet” as he referred to himself.

◦ They were all quick and smart with comments punctuated by dry wit and playful putdowns. Everyone laughed a lot. I enjoyed laughing right along with them, even though I didn’t always get the joke. The discussion was often way over my head, as a fairly new intermediate player. It didn’t matter. I was in bridge heaven.

◦ Afterwards, I would pass one of them in the hall and say hi and they would sometimes smile back as if we were in the same group. Onetime I got in the elevator with Eric Rodwell and said hi Eric and he nodded curiously. I play piano too, I wanted to say to him but, in a quick decision, I opted not to.

◦

◦ Our first day didn’t go well. Bee was lecturing me in between hands and authoritatively criticizing my bidding. It was not helping. In between criticizing me, she took it upon herself to criticize the opponents at the table, questioning why they had bid the way they did and offering advice as to how they should have bid or played a hand.

◦ The second day was more of the same. By this time the other players in our field were aware of Bee and had started to defend me, challenging Bee’s criticism. They would give me sympathetic looks as we left each table. I started to dread each new round. I suppose a little passive hostility crept into my attitude.

◦ Toward the end of the second day things came to a head. Bee criticized my play, the opposing pair came to my defense. Bee raised her voice. I left the table and stepped into the hall. Bee stomped over and confronted me. I know what you are doing, Vah-gin-ya. Making fun of me behind my back. Trying to gain sympathy from the opponents. I felt angry, dizzy, and more than a little intimidated by her intensity. Let’s just get through the game I said.

◦ We finished about 9 pm and went directly to our rooms. I wondered if I could just change plans and leave but I decided that wasn’t feasible.

◦ An hour later there was a knock on my door. It was Bee. In her nightgown. She was holding something behind her back. She looked as intense as she had when we left the game. I was reluctant to invite her into my room. Then she pulled out something and thrust it at me. Here! She said. It was a pink souvenir cup from Bermuda. I’m sorry. I was out of line. I want to be friends. I thanked her and said I was sorry too. We decided to take the next day off and hire a driver to tour the island.

◦ I awoke to a sunny morning with a new attitude. We headed out on our tour. Bee had been to Bermuda once before, a long time ago, on a school trip. She remembered the name of a famous tavern (Tom Moore’s) and the driver said it was still in operation. Bee asked if he could drive by it. She was so excited as we pulled in. She made me get out with her and have the driver take our picture in front of the building. When we got back in the car she proudly informed us that this was where she had lost her virginity.

◦ The next day we decided to team up with a local pair, a husband and wife, and play in a Swiss game. We came in first in our section. They took a picture of the four of us and put it on the front page of the daily bulletin. I still have the picture somewhere. I look tired but happy. Bee looks triumphant.

◦ We got home without any mishaps. At least none I can recall. Frankly, I was counting the minutes till I could rid myself of my difficult travelling companion. We found my car in the airport and headed to my house. It was already dark. Maybe 8 pm or so. I hope my car starts says Bee. It was a Prius. It turns out Bee had neglected to turn something off. I don’t recalll the details. Sure enough, the battery was dead. I’ll just stay with you tonight and deal with it in the morning, she informed me.

◦ It’s funny. In a time of crisis, one sometimes gets a superhuman burst of energy. Oh no, I said In a voice so emphatic that Bee turned abruptly to make sure she had heard me correctly . I belong to AAA. We can call and get someone here to recharge your battery in no time. I belong to AAA also, she grumbled.

◦ For this one battle Miss Meekness had prevailed over Miss Pushy. The car charged, Bee was on her way.

◦

◦ Sometimes being by oneself can be a blessing

◦

Today I would like to talk about obsessions. Some of us can get a bit obsessive about things which interest us. I have gone through many obsessions in my life. There was the time when I got obsessed with tap dancing. I had been working with my husband selling real estate. I turned 40. Shortly thereafter I was traveling when I discovered, in an airport ladies room, as I viewed myself in a full-length mirror, that my ankles were getting fat.

I had never had a weight problem in my life. Yet, there they were. I told my friend, Jean, a young real estate friend. You need to come to tap class. So off I went. I had had tap dance lessons as a child. This would be a piece of cake. In a twist of fate, it WAS a piece of cake! In a few months, I was tapping better than Jean. I caught on to the combinations easily. I became the teacher’s pet. I signed up for 2 classes: one Friday morning and one Monday night. Then we had our first recital. We were an adult class of 12 in a studio with lots of children and a few adult jazz and ballet dancers. We appeared in the second act of a marathon recital. Costumes. A big high school stage. It was fantastic.

Then I decided ( at my teacher’s urging, or so I thought) to take up ballet. Then jazz. My husband tolerated it. Then he got annoyed. Then he refused to go to any more recitals. This went on for 10 years. Every two years there would be a huge recital. We talked each other into signing up. Our husbands stopped coming. Those who had children ( and grand-children) noticed that their loved ones were too busy to attend. It didn’t matter. We laughed as we approached the stage to perform and we laughed as soon as we came off the stage. We were worse than the teenage dancers. We took tons of funny pictures of ourselves in our costumes.

Finally, we said this was our last recital. By this time we needed costumes with sleeves, jackets with more coverup. We applied our makeup as if we were pro dancers. It was one of the best experiences I have ever had.

Then, we moved to Virginia, leaving my tap class behind. I tried every dance class in town. I finally found Bonnie, a teacher I loved. It was 10 more years before I realized I was no longer best in the class.

Meanwhile, my next obsession was lurking. Piano. I already had a nice piano. I had studied 2 years in middle school, 1 year in high school. and two years after college. Then there was a 30+ year gap. I found a great teacher who specialized in adults. I jumped in. Private lessons, workshops, piano groups. One group of approximately 15 students met once a month. That wasn’t enough. So we started a group of 4 friends. We met twice a month. I started playing duets. Recitals. This went on for years. My husband would come into the living room where I was practicing and say. Wow, you are really determined. I guess the notion of practicing to go from horrible to mediocre was foreign to him.

I got to Advanced Intermediate. I could play some Beethoven, a lot of Clementi, Kuhlau, and Haydn, a fair amount of Mozart (and fair would probably be an objective assessment of the performance). Bach was my favorite. I bought lots of sheet music and collections. I purchased from friends, used bookstores, online. I bought a music cabinet to hold all the music. I bought recordings of various artists performing the music I was studying: Schnabel, Gould, Schiff. When a pianist came to town, I attended the concert.

Then, about 12 years into it, my fellow student came into our small music group and asked Have any of you ever played bridge? (Can you guess where this is going?)

It is getting a bit late so I will have to continue this history of obsessions in our next chapter. In the meantime, don’t judge. It’s my life!

Acquiring books has been one of the great joys of my life. I still have a couple of books from my childhood, with inscriptions like “ To Virginia, with love from Dad, Christmas, 1948.” That one was The Arabian Nights. Another was A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens.

Although I purchased a few books in college, I didn’t have the means to substantially increase the books I owned. That changed by the time I got to graduate school. I was single, working full time, going to school at night. I had the money to purchase my school books (rather than buying used copies and then selling them at the end of the year). That was really the beginning of my library. I didn’t have a bookcase. I stacked them on the floor against a wall.

How times have changed! In my last home I had bookcases in the living room and my office. In the finished terrace-level greatroom, I had moved 4 large bookcases which my husband built for our previous house and they were filled with books. When I ran out of shelf space, I had more shelves built in my bedroom. To me, the height of luxury was to have built-in bookshelves in a bedroom. Before my recent move, I estimated the number of books at 1800.

As you can imagine, finding homes for these books has been a challenge. I had this unrealistic wish to find good homes for them. Homes where they were wanted. I asked friends. For the most part, they declined, explaining that they already had too many. I found one, younger friend who was adding a large room onto their house with a wall of built-in shelves. She took boxes full. It hardly made a dent. I sorted out books on composers and music and offered them to a young pianist friend. He smiled broadly when he saw them. I gave him a lot of piano music as well. He never turned anything down. This gave me a bit of encouragement. I thought I would cull first editions and signed copies and bring them to a bookseller. I never did. Although a lot of them are sitting in cartons. waiting until I have more time. I started giving individual favorites to friends. I put the drama books together and donated them to the Drama department. My cousin ( first cousin thrice removed!) took many full cartons. Gradually the collection dwindled.

It’s painful parting with these old friends. I wanted to include a picture of the volumes on their shelves but I couldn’t find one. So I have included a picture of a collection of very fine old books on great Men and Famous Women published around 1900. I bought it an a yard sale in Palo Alto. It has very fine engraved pictures of the subjects. I don’t recognize any of them. Not their faces, not their names. They are neither great nor famous. Sic transit gloria mundi. I am amused that men are described as great while the best they can do for women is call us famous. That is probably one of the rare feminist remarks you will hear from me. I am usually a masculinist. Remember, I am a contrarian.

My intention when I started this was to write about books I have loved, with the hope of inspiring you to run out and get these books and read them. It hasn’t turned out that way. The collection has taken over the discussion. Collecting and then disposing. Sort of the way our mind works. When we are young we drink it all in. Boundless capacity to learn new things, take in new ideas, make new friends. In old age we start to shed. The new is the enemy as we cling to the old and familiar We find ourselves wearing the old, comfortable shoes, driving the old car, narrowing the kinds of food we eat, gravitating to the people we already know. We shed a lot of the baggage we have been carrying around. We opt out of attending a lecture or concert or party. I guess the ebb and flow is natural. It feels natural to me.