Hi Everyone,
Maybe this area can be our own "living room," as Tom put it, in which to share stories and mmories about Dad. I feel certain that he would love this idea and would participate fully if he were here!
I'll kick things off with a memory about Dad's sartorial style. Do you recall when he was taken by Lee Majors ($6 Million Dollar Man) during the mid-70s? I recall a number of oddly-colored leisure suits...
Dad was also the master of scruffy clothing for fishing and camping. Simple, timeless items like the grey, wool pants.
We were at a cooking class here in Florence earlier this week and one part involved crepes. I asked if I could try to flit the crepe in the pan. Flipping a pancake from the pan while camping was a skill on which Ted prided himself. I have at least one picture of him taken by the Bogachiel River in Olympic National Park flipping a pancake he was cooking over a green Coleman Stove! I flipped my crepe poorly but this let to everyone else trying and by the end of the cooking time there were some first rate flippers!
ReplyDeleteI agree that Ted would like the idea of a virtual space for printing stories and memories. In the past two years, he and I shared various links and printed articles about social networking and I invited him to join my classroom on NING when I assisted two profs with a "communicating science" course. Thanks for getting this started.
ReplyDeleteKate
The stove would have been great gear, if he'd had the food to go with it! You see, when Dad and I hiked through Tuolomne Meadows during the difficult 90's, we separated on the way to Lyle Canyon. I was just setting too breakneck a pace and he was almost sixty. We had agreed to meet up, later, one of us stopping farther down the trail. But...
ReplyDeleteWe never met up, because I just didn't leave him enough daylight to catch up to me. We celebrated our reunion without exchanging vitriol, only cheese, pancake mix and canteen water. That was breakfast the next morning (he had been humping the gear, and I had carried the supplies). We hiked up into the notch and out of the Canyon that day, talking about fresh-caught fish, but pulled the silver-blue Saab 900 over at the first steakhouse in the park that we could find.
NBA Finals
ReplyDeleteDad loved the NBA finals and would have enjoyed this coming series between Celtics and LA. I will never forget going out to dinner in New Orleans at some fancy place and we kept running into the kitchen to check on the Celtics/Rockets(?) score.
This will be similar to what we are doing on 7/11 with the WC!!!
Tom
Do you recall the Robert Ludlum phase? He would polish off an average of one Michener-sized paperback per month.
ReplyDeleteThe whole episode of indulging in guilty pleasures had kicked off with Ken Follett and John Le Carre spy novels, but Jason Bourne arrived in the nick of time to carry the concept through to its conclusion. Day of the Jackal, Smiley's People, The Eye of The Needle and The Matarese Circle. NOT included in the great books series, I am sure.
Our "book club" it's actually a spoof of a book club read "Day of the Jackel" as our first book and I must say it is a classic. Also I was dragged along in the Ludlum phase (I must have been the right age, maybe 8th 9th grade.) It was also during this time I went on a lot of fishing excursions with Dad. We would drive out to some river in NH or VT and Dad would drop me off with the instruction "fish up (or down) river until you meet me." He would then drive off and start fishing the other direction. One memorable time it was nearly dark before we met up and I had just been walking along the river for about 1 hour. Then we had a 45 minute walk back to the car. I hadn't brought any change of clothes (I didn't have waders so just wet-waded) and we went to some diner for dinner (the Third Rail?.) I sat there in my wet shorts, sneakers, etc. feeling like a very self-conscious 14 year old.
ReplyDeleteTom
From Kate:
ReplyDeleteThis link:
http://www.dhslides.org/mgr/mgr060410f/f.htm
includes an excellent tribute to Ted. Chandler and Sarah sent it to Tom.
After describing some of Ted's achievements and his strengths as a mentor as well as a researcher and physician, this doctor described Ted's commitment to live life fully in the last years of his life--- despite how much his face and speech and energy had changed --- and he emphasized that this was unique and was particularly brave, perhaps especially for a man who knew medicine so well. What struck me is that being strong and brilliant and self-assured seemed to come so naturally to Ted, he barely skipped a step. I thought, between tears of course, how true this man's words were.
I also thought of the countless tributes going out to Ted that I am not aware of, and I want to thank Sarah and Chan for giving us this one.
Kate