Category: Personal

Just Do It!

Interviews are always fascinating to me. Every time I watch a great Charlie Rose interview I say to myself Wow! I would love to have interesting conversations like that. The other day I listened to a Podcast interview that Dan Carlin of Hardcore History did with James Burke and my reaction was the same.

Several years ago my boss at the time had caricature done of each of his managers as a gift. The text of mine was "Just Do It!" which in fact is my motto. Any time I am faced with something I am not sure I want to do or something I don't know how to do  I believe the best thing to do is to just get on with it.

The beauty of the Internet and things like blogs and Podcasts is that with a blog it is very easy to be a writer, and in a similar vein it would be relatively easy to create a Podcast and become an interviewer. I am sure that 30 years ago Charlie Rose was not as good as he is today at creating interesting interviews. And good Podcasts take a lot of hare work and practice too.  So if I really want to be an interviewer I should Do It!

Of course I have lots of ideas like this and my problem/opportunity is actually focusing and doing it?!

Dad is selling his Van

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My Dad's eye sight has deteriorated to the point that he can't drive any more so he is selling his van.
It is  a dark blue 2002 Chrysler Town and Country Limited Mini Van. He is asking $8500. $7900
The van has 67,000 miles on it and is in good condition.

It was just serviced and checked out by the Chrysler dealer.

If you are interested in the van or you have questions please let me know. You can email me at marion.vermazen  at   gmail.com.

It has the following features:

V6 3.8 liter engine,

Front wheel drive,

Automatic transmission,

Seats 7 passengers,

Leather interior,

Air conditioning,

Power sliding doors on both sides,

Cruise control,

Radio, cassette and compact disc player,

dealer installed auxiliary hand brake for handicapped use (can be easily removed),

roof rack,

premium wheels.

Accomplishment in the Second Half of a Life

In the last year and a half since my Mother died I have thought more about my own mortality. Her death has focused my thoughts on what I want to do with the rest of my life.  Even though I am only 55 I think about the fact that I am getting old. I don't want my life accomplishments to be behind me.

 I just finished reading John Marshall – Definer of a Nation by Jean Edward SmithOne of the things that really struck me about Marshall and has struck me about all of the biographies I have read in the past couple of years is how many of the accomplishments of these great people happen in the later years of their lives. Granted, these accomplishments are often a culmination of the work of their whole lives. But they also take on new challenges as they get older.

For example in 1826 when Marshall was 71 he accepted an offer to edit the papers of George Washington.

In the McCullough Biography of John  Adams Abigail Adams wrote about her husband that  "Your father's zeal for books will be one of the last desires which will quit him." …as the 81 year old Adams eagerly embarked on reading a sixteen volume French history."

Adams and Jefferson began an exchange of letters in 1812 when Jefferson was 69 and Adams was 77. Jefferson's biographer R.B. Bernstein describes their correspondence as "one of the great correspondences in the history of American letters". In 1816 Jefferson wrote to Adams, "I steer my bark with Hope in the head, leaving Fear astern."

James Madison was 66 when he worked with Jefferson and Monroe and others to found the University of Virginia.

I like writing, I like history, I like writing this blog. It seems to me that writing the blog is one way to improve my writing through practice. Writing about what I am learning is also a way to learn from my historical reading.  I am almost embarrassed to admit it but my dream is to write a historical book one day. I feel like I am just beginning on the learning but this year I want to write more and read more in order to move me toward that end.

I'd love advice on how to improve my writing and accelerate my learning.

Trip to New York City

Duke and I got back Wednesday night from a week in New York City. The catalyst for the trip was our niece's wedding on January 3rd. Here are a few highlights from the trip.

  • The wedding was beautiful and wonderful. The ceremony, the bride and groom, the wedding party, the reception were all perfect. A lot of family and friends flew in from all over the country. It was held in the chapel at Riverside Church on the upper East side of New York City. What a stunning church. It reminded me of the most beautiful European cathedrals.
To top it all off, sitting across from me at the reception was  a lady who looked very familiar. It turns out she is the wife of a good friend of the groom's family. I worked with her at Sun about 20 years ago and haven't seen her or talked to her since then. Small world!
  • We ate at some wonderful restaurants while we were in New York. Around the corner from our hotel we happened upon a little Italian restaurant that we liked so much that we ate there twice. Mario's Trattoria bills itself as having "New York's best Brick oven pizza and pasta from Napoli" Both times that we ate there we had pizza. Oh was it good! I had never had an egg as an ingredient on my pizza but it added a rich flavor to the pizza. The restaurant was tiny but the service was great and the ambiance was cozy and warm.
The bride and groom sent out a list of some of their favorite restaurants and we tried two of them. The Chow Bar in the West Village serves Asian influenced food. Kathy and Wes recommended the calamari salad and the spring rolls. We tried both. My mouth was very happy.

The Hummus Place was on a narrow little street also in the village. We went there for dinner after jazz at the Blue Note. It was raining out. We sat at a table in the window and ate a sampler of appetizers. It was our last dinner in New York and it was perfect.

  • Most people already have a mental picture of the New York sites so I didn't lug my camera around. Instead I just made my own mental pictures. The highlights include the view from the Empire State building at night. The lines during the day were terrible but at night they weren't so bad and the view at night was stupendous.
The tour of Rockefeller Center. The buildings themselves are works of art and the history and interiors are fascinating. There is a mural on the ceiling of the lobby of the main building that gives you an optical illusion. From one side of the lobby he is standing on his left foot and looking down. From the other side of the lobby he is standing on his right foot and looking down. It is not at all subtle and is very impressive.

We got half price tickets to see the play Speed The Plow on Broadway. I thoroughly enjoyed it. It was also fun to see an actress I really like, Elizabeth Moss who plays the female lead. I love her as Peggy Olson in one of my favorite television shows, Mad Men. I didn't realize it until I read the credits but she also played Zoey Bartlett on West Wing.

We walked everywhere and it was really cold. Luckily it only rained on us as we were walking to Penn Station to get the train to the airport. It was a wonderful packed week. I'm really glad we went and I am really glad to be home.

My Sister’s Christmas Gift to our Family

When I was eleven years old I moved with my family from Bismarck, North Dakota, USA  to Brisbane, Queensland, Australia. My Dad worked for Standard Oil and was working on a project to build an oil refinery in Brisbane. It was an adventure. Before we left I had lived in North Dakota and Minnesota my whole life. I had never seen the ocean, a lizard or a cockroach all of which were commonplace in Brisbane. It is a testament to my Mom and Dad that they were willing to take on such an enormous change with four young kids. I was the oldest and my brother who was three at the time was the youngest.

I had lived a few miles from my grandparents for as long as I could remember. We wrote a lot of letters. The phone was expensive and we rarely talked to my Grandparents or anyone in the states. Grandma and Poppy kept all our letters and  Dad took a lot of pictures chronicling what we were experiencing.

Recently my sister Barbara decide to sort through the letters and pictures and put together a book about our families experiences in 1964. Using Blurb she put together some of the old pictures and excerpts from some of the letters. She created an amazing book. It was a lot of work, she typed all the text, sorted through all the old pictures and added comments and memories. The resulting book is of interest only to our family but for us it is an amazing reminder of that pivotal year in our lives.

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