Furnished Reunion

Urbana, Illinois, June 1981. This was the living room of my furnished apartment.

Saturday Mail Delivery

Urbana, Illinois, June 1981. I lived here for two years.

I return after the first day of classes.

 

Urbana, Illinois, September 1980. I did my most productive studying in this room. The book on the "sliding bed/couchy thing" is for a course about twentieth-century Russian history. (Russian history was one of my four fields in graduate school.) An engaging professor taught that class. I was sorry to learn he recently died.

Poster Reunion

Urbana, Illinois, May 12, 1972. This was the science fair at which Mr. Irene and I could have launched a friendship, but we didn't.

"The choice to leave academia does not have to mean life as a barista."

"So why are humanities Ph.D.s outside academia so invisible? One reason is that within academic departments there is a culture of stigmatizing doctoral candidates who take non-academic posts, making them less inclined to stick around and contribute to debates about the future of the field."

A professor told me if my dissertation were dull, then I would work at an insurance company.

Tastes change.

When I finished my first year of grad school, I left Sherman Hall and moved into an apartment. The apartment was a few miles from campus, and I most often biked or walked to classes. I chose the unit primarily because it was furnished. Back then, I didn't think the furniture was nice.

 

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Urbana, Illinois, June 1981. Now, I wouldn't mind having that dinette set.

A Place to Study

Last year, a commenter identified the "sliding bed/couchy thing" from my graduate dorm, Sherman Hall. When pulled out, the bed touched the back of the desk chair.
 
Today, I ran across two photos of my Sherman Hall room:

Urbana, Illinois, September 1980. I took this photo of the room early in the school year; later, a turntable rested on the end table, and stereo speakers stood on the bed's shelf. The knapsack got a lot of use. (Also: that's not a bong, that's a Dansk candle holder. It's in our kitchen now.)

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Urbana, Illinois, September 1980. Mr. Irene and I still use two Bardelli mugs of the same vintage as the one on the desk. The pillow—and the design on the wall in the previous photo—are from the time when I did a lot of needlepoint.

The Life Box (Part 1)

I though I'd lost the programs from the Rudolph Nureyev performance I attended with my Godmother. I recall having lent the programs to a dear, high-school friend, and I did not remember whether she returned them. She's a do-the-right-thing kind of person—always has been—so it was hard to imagine she didn't give it them back to me.

 

She did return them; I just forgot where they were. 

 

Mr. Irene and I each have "life boxes." The life boxes are oversized plastic bins into which we drop mementos. My life box contains ticket stubs, prom dance cards, menus from restaurants, a little wooden boat Dad carved, an empty can of vending-machine juice that I once threw at a boyfriend when I still lived in Sherman Hall, my First Communion rosary, the tail of a squirrel that Meškė brought home, a few political buttons, and so on. I rifled through the life box last weekend when I wanted to pull out that Verona Morning Star project. At the bottom of the box was a bag in which I'd stored programs and Playbills. 

 

There were the Nureyev programs. I was delighted to see that my Godmother had taken my to see Nureyev not once, but twice.

 

 

Lyric Opera House, Chicago, Illinois, April 7, 1973. I'd forgotten about this performance.

 

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Lyric Opera House, Chicago, Illinois, March 23, 1974. By the time I saw this performance, I wanted an autograph. This was the free program all audience members received.

 

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Lyric Opera House, Chicago, Illinois, March 23, 1974. This was the glossy program my Godmother bought for me. I took it to the stage door after the show. I met Mr. Nureyev, but he declined to sign my program. *Whimpers.*

 

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Lyric Opera House, Chicago, Illinois, March 23, 1974.  Here's my ticket stub and some newspaper clippings. "Admission $7.50."

 

The performance was "Giselle:"

 

 

"Everybody does karaoke."

By now, most people have seen this adorable segment, but I'm posting it here because it makes me smile every time I see it. Mr. Irene and I caught the clip when it aired originally on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno.

Be sure to watch it to the end; my favorite part starts at 3:23

Sherman Hall

Champaign, Illinois, January 1981. A commenter today correctly identified the dorm that housed my first, graduate-school room. The room was on the fifth or sixth floor, on the left. The quarters were small and provided a good place to study.

Splat

When I was an estate planner, I developed the habit of reading obituaries. Estate planning professionals aren't "ambulance chasing" when they open the obituary page. They instead read obituaries because obituaries alert a lawyer to incoming cases. It's a good idea to review a file before a grieving family member arrives in the conference room.

Obituaries are complicated pieces. How can a life be summed up in a few, expensive lines? What if the newspaper permits "Discussion" or "Comments" on an online obituary page? Can a family decline that option? Why don't obituaries usually cite the cause of death? People want to know. We know a decedent loved his family, but what did he love about his life?

A lovely woman asked me today if I have a "Caring Bridge" page. I replied "no," and I explained the blog. The blog accents what is important to me, and who mattered. Like any edited, selective work, it's the modified truth. I try not to embellish that truth. One of my favorite sayings is, "I want to get it right; I don't want to be right." I do, however, edit: sometimes people and things cut themselves out. Corners of drama and bags of anger weary my shunted patience.

About fifteen years ago, I was shopping in a "Marshall's" department store, and I caught a glimpse of my image in a mirror that wrapped one of the building supports. I was startled. For a second, I didn't think that I was the person in the mirror. I thought of myself as a spry twenty-two-year old who could earn the 1980s equivalent of "chili peppers" on ratemyprofessors.com. What I saw was a preoccupied, middle-aged woman in a shirt-waist dress.

That memory returned today when I read the piece about people trying to reconstruct family recipes. Will it taste as good as you remember it? (Ask any Lithuanian immigrant who's been in this country for more that twenty years to go back and taste the delectable Lithuanian chocolate of her youth. Blech. It tastes like a chocolated laxative!)

Can I align the past that lives in my memory with the history that the photos reveal?

When I "shake my legs," as Lithuanians say, my obituary will have one line: a link to this blog.

Champaign, Illinois, January 1981. This is the "Irene" that lives in my head: the graduate student, sitting in her monastic dorm room.

Desk

Urbana, Illinois, September 1985. This is the place at which I sat and wrote a dissertation.

The Eighth-Grade Science Fair

Although Mr. Irene and I grew up in the same Chicago suburb, we attended different grade schools. Both schools were Catholic insitutions, run by nuns, but they stood at opposite ends of the town, about eleven blocks apart.

Mr. Irene and I each enrolled in our grade schools' Eighth-Grade Science Fairs. Participating schools sent two or three "winners" to the Illinois State Science Fair. The Illinois State Science Fair took place at Assembly Hall, on the campus of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Coincidentally, both Mr. Irene and I were sent to the Illinois State Science Fair by our respective grade schools. That's the first time we officially intersected, even though our families had known of each other since the Displaced Persons days back in Seligenstadt.

Urbana, Illinois, May 11, 1972. We arrive at Assembly Hall. Did most land-grant universities build such mushroom-cloud structures?

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Urbana, Illinois, May 11-12, 1972. Mr. Irene stands next to his science project. His patterned shirt complements the plaid jacket.

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Urbana, Illinois, May 11-12, 1972. My poster looks more professional, no? I sewed that dress. It was a pink-and-white polyster piece.

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Urbana, Illinois, May 12, 1972. It's the awards ceremony. My Dad had a wicked sense of humor.

Gary

My friend Phyllis called me today. Her husband, Gary, died on January 1.

Phyllis met Gary when she and I were History grad students at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Gary, a blind English professor, was crossing a busy street. His seeing-eye dog, the Golden Retriever "Spar," was about to lead Gary into traffic. Phyllis, a bystander, jumped into the lane and pulled Gary (and Spar) to safety. And so began the romance.

I spent many evenings with Phyllis and Gary. Phyllis used to say that when I was in Champaign, away from my own home, I could get my "dog fix" by visiting them and Spar.

I went to Phyllis and Gary's wedding, and they came to ours.

 
Suburban Chicago, June 1989. Phyllis—in the rose bridesmaid's dress—and Gary dance at our wedding.

UPDATE: Here's a tribute published in the Champaign-Urbana newspaper, The News-Gazette.

A New Path

In 1980, I enrolled in a graduate program in the History Department at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. I studied there for six years. It was during that interval that I also moved to Venice, Italy, to gather research at the archives for my dissertation.

When I arrived at Illinois, I feared that I would be overwhelmed by the demands and expectations. I'd never worked as hard as I did there.

I had a great time!

Wright Street, Urbana (on the left) and Champaign (on the right), Illinois, June 1983. I took this photo at about the time when I was studying for prelims.