Within a few years of my father returning from serving in World War II, he and my mother married, had three kids — and bought a modest "Mom and Pop" grocery store in the small town of St. Helens, Oregon. They both pitched in to make this fledgling venture succeed.
And it did. Those were the years when the neighborhood grocery store thrived.
The writer's father outside of his grocery storeThe story of the rise (and fall) of my parents' business pretty much tells the tale of "Mom and Pop" stores everywhere.
A Grocery Store Primer
"Mom and Pop" groceries evolved from the general stores of the 18th and 19th centuries. At those establishments — where you could find everything from flour and molasses to kerosene and tools — customers handed a list of needed items to a clerk who gathered the products and wrapped them up. Early grocery stores — carrying only food — operated much the same way, with customers requesting items from clerks.
"Mom and Pop" groceries evolved from the general stores of the 18th and 19th centuries. 
Then, in 1916, Clarence Saunders in Memphis, Tennessee, came up with the idea of "self-service" stores where the customers roamed the aisles with their handheld "shopping baskets," picking out products. Saunders named his store Piggly Wiggly. (You've gotta LOVE that name!)
In the 1930s and '40s, "chain stores" such as The Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Company, Winn-Dixie, Kroger and Safeway caught on. (Piggly Wiggly had 2,660 stores in 1932.) But "Mom and Pop" stores still dotted the landscape.
Mom and Pop Open Store(s)
This was the environment in which my parents — with three kids under the age of 3 in tow — opened their own "Mom and Pop." They were, in essence, pursuing the American Dream.
Here's the rub: At first, to save money, Mom, Dad and those three kids lived in the back of the store. The total area of the building was just over 4,000 square feet. That included their makeshift living quarters.

Within a few months — I'm sure Mom put her foot down because she was caring for three kids in diapers — they'd moved into a house across the street from the store. They added two more kids while living there.
Everyone Pitches In
Sherlock's Grocery was typical of that era. It had a "full service" meat market where Dad, a butcher by trade, spent most of his time, cutting up beef, lamb and pork "to order" for customers. There was a produce section, a dairy case and four aisles of general grocery items. A checkstand stood in the center of the store near the entrance. You'd find Mom there when she wasn't herding kids.
A checkstand stood in the center of the store near the entrance. You'd find Mom there when she wasn't herding kids.
In the mid-'50s, my dad's younger brother started working at the store. They formed a partnership and soon bought a second store in a neighboring town. Ultimately, I think my dad's dream was to own a chain of stores. Why not? If Piggly Wiggly could go from one store in 1916 to 2,600 in 1932, why couldn't there be a handful of Sherlock's Groceries?
But that didn't happen. By 1960, my dad and uncle had decided that they should run the two stores separately. Dad took over ownership of the second store, in Scappoose, Oregon, population 923.
Treat Neighbors Like Family
That store — where I spent most of my time — was twice the size of the first and carried many more products. Dad would also "special order" anything customers might want; those items could take a non-Amazonesque two or three weeks to come in. But Dad's (unofficial) motto was, "If we don't have it, you don't need it."
That guy was a prophet.
Mom and Dad allowed customers to buy groceries on credit, never charging interest or badgering anyone to pay up. That might not be the best business practice, but it's certainly a sound quality for human beings.
Siblings Do Their Part
While our first task (sweeping floors) probably didn't contribute much to the running of the business, I think all of us kids knew — as we got older — that our help was important, that we were important.
By the time we were 8 or so, we worked in the "bottle shed" — an improvised lean-to behind the store where we sorted bottles, returned for their two-cent deposit, into the appropriate wooden crates labeled Pepsi, Seven-Up, etc.
We began bagging groceries at about age 10 (eggs and bread on top!). Soon we were stocking shelves. Each item had to be priced with an ink "stamper" because there were no barcodes back then.And we had to "face" the cans — so the front of the cans could be seen by customers.
Another child-friendly task — a meat market chore that did not involve sharp knives or electric saws — was wrapping beef, pork and chicken for the meat case. Later on, Dad taught us how to (carefully!) grind hamburger and cut up chickens. We were, essentially, pint-sized butcher's assistants.
I must say that I can't really grasp how my mom tolerated all of us helping out in the meat market. But we all survived. And we learned important life skills in the process.
The Perks of a 'Mom and Pop'
I don't remember being paid for these chores. But there were so many other perks.
One was the vibe of the store. No one rushed — there was always plenty of time to catch up with neighbors and friends. There were constant deliveries of products — from produce and sides of beef to canned goods and bread. You knew what was arriving by which weekday it was.
Sherlock's Grocery delivery vanMy far-and-away favorite day was Tuesday, when the Comic Book Guy came. I'd rush through my chores — and then devour the latest offerings. This was a huge perk for me! I love comic books to this day.
But my fondest memory was just being able to hang out with my dad. He worked such long hours that we rarely saw him at home.
Dad was fun-loving and taught us that work didn't have to be drudgery. When bananas didn't get delivered, he'd put up a sign that read: "Yes, we have no bananas. We have no bananas today!" (a popular song from his youth). In the meat market, he made up names for items. He called chuck steaks "Texas T-Bones" due to their size and said low-cost pork jowl was "Poor Man's Bacon."
The Dream Dies
I learned another important lesson from my parents' store: The road to wealth in America is paved with a ton of good luck — being in the right place at the right time with the right partners.
In the late '60s, Dad had a chance to open a Thriftway store — a popular chain in our area that featured lower prices due to economies of scale. He declined. None of us kids remember why exactly. Most likely he simply didn't have the cash for the buy-in.
The Thriftway opened without Dad, and his business declined. Within a couple of years, he knew it was time to move on. In 1971 he sold his store at a considerable loss.
What Have We Gained?
Dad's small grocery couldn't compete with the lure of more and more products at lower and lower prices. That trend has continued. In the 1930s, a typical grocery might offer 1,000 items. Today Walmart Supercenters average 142,000 different products.
Yikes.
Are we better off now? I'm not sure. I agree with my dad's homespun assessment that we really don't need many of the (overwhelming) options that big-box stores offer. And the lower prices at those mega-stores come at a cost: The sense of community, of neighbors helping neighbors, of knowing where your food comes from have all been lost.
More's the pity.
The Stuff That Matters
My dad's name never made it into the history books — as, say, the owner of a chain of stores that was bought up for millions by Kroger. And our family never rose above our barely-working-class status.
But that's okay with me. I can't imagine having better role models for all of those values that truly matter: kindness, responsibility, community, integrity.
And here's a sweet postscript: That original Sherlock's Grocery, the one Mom and Pop opened in 1949? It still exists today, albeit as a quaint convenience store, harkening back to those earlier, simpler days.


'Mom and Pop' and Me

Marie Sherlock

When the curtain goes up on March 28 for The Who's "Tommy," Ellen Botwin will be there. A retired teacher, Botwin's passion is investing in shows on Broadway in New York City and the West End in London. Working as a co-producer of "Tommy" is a dream come true.
"It's so much fun," she says. "I don't care if I ever make a cent."
Ellen Botwin with her husband, Howard Ignal, at the opening of "Funny Girl"But most of the time, Botwin, 67, along with her husband, Howard Ignal, 77, do make back their investment, and then some.
For Botwin, "Tommy" brings back memories of college, driving to cities along the East Coast and camping out for tickets to The Who. Pete Townshend, the band's cofounder and songwriter, is the composer and book writer of the Broadway musical, which will likely go on tour once the Broadway run has wrapped up. The tour could potentially go on for seven years.
"The stars are grateful to the investors. No investors, no show."
(Even before college, Botwin first "produced" the rock opera in 1974 at Camp Laurelwood in Madison, Connecticut. As a 50th camp reunion, she's arranging Broadway tickets for some 50 to 100 former campers.)
Producers are the money behind the shows. The minimum investment for a Broadway show is generally $50,000, and that person or group is considered "investor" level.
For example, "Tommy" needed roughly $10 million just to open on Broadway. The initial funding goes toward renting a theater, making costumes and paying actors, ushers, lighting people, merchandise, costumes, royalties and more.
In contrast, the upcoming production of "Cabaret" needed $24 million to open because of the $11 million expense to turn the August Wilson Theater in New York City into an authentic version of the fictional Kit Kat Club.
The co-producer level is generally an investment of $250,000 or more. Botwin and Ignal are co-producers of "Tommy" and "Cabaret" with investing partners.
But investing the money is just the beginning. Botwin travels by train from her home in Connecticut to New York City as often as three times a week as opening night approaches. She attends readings, meets the cast, sits in on rehearsal and more. Botwin is often called to Zoom meetings with the lead producer, fellow investors and co-producers, directors and actors to discuss marketing and social media, casting and promotional activities, among other topics. 
Meetings, Marketing and More Money
Botwin also recruits investors for shows, often sending slide decks and audio tracks to friends and acquaintances to pique their interest.
Townshend wrote the music and lyrics for "Tommy," which is the story of a young boy who witnesses his father kill his stepfather and, as a result, becomes psychosomatically deaf, mute and blind. Tommy is a victim of sexual abuse and bullying, but becomes a pinball wizard, eventually regaining his senses and achieving fame.
Co-producer Ellen Botwin with “Tommy,” played by Ali Louis BourzguiProducers say they believe that this latest production will resonate with the audience for its exploration of childhood trauma and the cult of celebrity. "Tommy" first appeared as a double-LP record in 1969.
Last month, Botwin attended the first complete run-through of this stage version of "Tommy."
First Full Run-Through Rocks
"It was impossible to stay still," she said. "People were really rocking in their seats. We broke into applause a few times because the singing, dancing and choreography was so fantastic. People just clapped and screamed at the end of the show. We went nuts."
Botwin and Ignal say they believe the Broadway "Tommy" will be a huge hit. They felt comfortable investing in it because it had already had a successful run at the Goodman Theater in Chicago, attracting young people, parents and grandparents as well as visitors from 21 countries and all 50 states. It was the highest grossing show in the theater's history.
The glory for all this work is the chance to attend opening night and walk the red carpet wearing a gown or a tux. When the show closes, producers are invited to the closing night party with a chance to mingle with the actors.
"The stars are grateful to the investors," she said. "No investors, no show."
"Tommy" and "Cabaret" are two of Botwin's most recent projects. In New York, she's also invested in "Merrily We Roll Along," a 2023 revival of a 1981 musical with music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim, and "Female Troubles," a musical-comedy that is currently in development.
Why Risk So Much Money?
Can Broadway producers lose money? You bet. Recently, Botwin and Ignal invested in a show called "The Sign in Sidney Brustein's Window," by Lorraine Hansberry. Although it won a 2023 Tony for best featured actress, the show closed early and investors lost some money. But ever an optimist, Botwin said that even successful investors need tax write-offs.
What's the attraction of bringing shows to the public?
Investor Ellen Botwin at a Tony after party with actor Matt Doyle who won a Tony for “Company”Producer Brian Lee of AF Creative Media said it goes beyond just supporting the arts. "It's a chance to put stories into the world that we truly believe in," he said. "We began producing theater to champion stories that we felt needed to be told. Theater has always been an amazing place for discourse and now more than ever, it feels like an opportunity to engage in meaningful conversations with audiences."
Botwin is working with Lee and others to bring the Holocaust-themed show "Here There Are Blueberries" on a world-wide tour.
"Ellen is phenomenal," Lee said. "She is tenacious, passionate and most importantly, kind. We love working with her because she cares so deeply about the stories she is telling and what they are saying. Whether it is a show like 'Tommy,' which is bringing back a piece that means so much to so many people, or a new work like 'Here There Are Blueberries' which speaks to anti-Semitism and the culpability of the perpetrators of the Holocaust. Ellen is honest, and her joy is infectious."
Deep Roots in the Theater
Botwin got her start in producing through a connection at Guilford High School in Connecticut, where she was a special education teacher. One of the music teachers there had taught Greg Nobile, now CEO of Seaview Productions and a Tony-award winning producer. Botwin met with Nobile and decided to sign on for an off-Broadway production of "Sweeney Todd" complete with a working pie oven on stage in 2017.
Botwin's husband, Howard Ignal, is a major Stephen Sondheim fan, which sealed the deal. Botwin was also able to invest a relatively modest $11,500. The couple did earn money on that show and even met Sondheim, who died in 2021. A second career was born.
In the weeks leading up to "Tommy," Botwin is spinning plates — promoting "Tommy," courting for investors for "Blueberries" and, having invested in three shows this season, deciding who she'll sit with at the Tony Awards.
"I'm having fun in my retirement, aren't I?"


What It’s Like to Be a Broadway Producer

Alix Boyle

The sun sets in a rainbow blaze atop the flatness of Long Island Sound. About 60 of my former high school classmates, black and white yearbook pictures slung around our necks, gathered to catch up on each other's lives. 
One of the organizers, and nicest people I have ever met, walked in gingerly using a cane. Fellow classmates helped him make his way to a pergola with seating by the water. The gritty voice of Bruce Springsteen bellowed "Born to Run," bathing us in nostalgia.
"Westbury offered city kids a freedom we never expected."My high school class of 1975 turned 66 this year, just two years shy of our 50th reunion. In this post-pandemic world, we had already begun to lose those we thought would always be with us. So, when a wealthy classmate made good on a pre-pandemic promise to have a gathering at his Oyster Bay home, we took him up on it.
We rode our bikes on the neighborhood streets, played flashlight tag on our darkening front lawns and reluctantly went home for dinner at dusk, after our commuter fathers returned from "The City."
Growing up in Westbury, Long Island, at the height of the 1960s and 1970s, my classmates and I were keenly aware of the racial tensions that surrounded us. Our town was an early adopter of integration and did so by busing kids to neighborhoods that before were mostly single race communities. 
In 1967, the year my family moved to Westbury from New York City, we were bussed to a new school in a Black neighborhood and were thrust, at the ages of 9 to 11, right into the Civil Rights movement.
Our Diverse Neighborhood 
Westbury offered city kids a freedom we never expected. Our new home was a split level, where my brother and I each had our own rooms, a den and a finished basement. We rode our bikes on the neighborhood streets, played flashlight tag on our darkening front lawns and reluctantly went home for dinner at dusk, after our commuter fathers returned from "The City." To us, it was paradise.
Many of the new Black families that moved in were headed by doctors, lawyers and other professionals creating a diverse school system which at the time was one of the few white areas that sold homes to Black people.
But our suburban paradise had an underbelly which I saw for the first time in a fourth-grade classroom at the Park Avenue School. A man I'd never heard of named Martin Luther King Jr. was shot dead on a balcony at a motel in Memphis on April 3, 1968.  
By the time we reached high school, white flight had begun, and those of us who remained were left to figure out where we fit.
There had been fighting among Black and white students in the middle and high school a couple of days before and the high school was still closed. We were lined up quickly, the fear of those who guided us out was palpable. A classmate recalled one teacher said to another, "We have to get these white kids out of here." The riots never came.
The Ties That Bind 
Thrust into a new school situation, friendships between races developed slowly and early on were mostly school based. By the time we reached high school, white flight had begun, and those of us who remained were left to figure out where we fit. Our reading addressed many different races and backgrounds, and I remember discussing the "Autobiography of Malcolm X" by Alex Haley and "The Diary of Anne Frank" with great enthusiasm.
Our music taste included rock and roll as well as soul and funk which blared from loudspeakers in the school cafeteria and on the PA system. Earth, Wind & Fire, Stevie Wonder, Curtis Mayfield and Kool & the Gang were favorites. Yet the world was what it was. Tales were told about kids who hung out with Black Panthers. 
Arguments between Black and white students weren't usually about color but about what kids fight about – someone taking another's boyfriend, perceived slights and more.
The outside world might be tearing itself apart over race, but we were not going to let it do the same in our school. 
It seemed that while the outside world might be tearing itself apart over race, we were not going to let it do the same in our school. When there was a problem the news media descended, and we would sit on the lawn together ignoring them until they left.
Sports helped build lasting friendships between us. Our basketball coach Ed Krinsky sent many players to colleges that led to the NBA including Dennis Duval who played for the Washington Bullets and Joe Dupre who played for the NY Nets in the 1970s. By the time I got to high school our team was mostly Black and we dubbed the one white student who was good and often played center forward, "The Great White Hope."
There was some interracial dating, but most of it was kept quiet. At one of my high school reunions, a Black friend reminded me about a date we went on in eighth grade with two middle school basketball players. She told me, "You were kissing goodnight while we waited in the car with my mom. My date whispered to me 'I want some of that.'"
Gathering Again 
After we graduated, the well-attended reunions began. A big group of us showed up at the first one, which was the 10-year mark. Some of us had moved to New York City, others still lived on Long Island, some had married, others had rolls of baby pictures. But mostly, it just felt great to see everyone.
We watched the growth of the Black Lives Matter movement and posted things about it, but mostly avoided incendiary discussions. We all still needed each other. 
At early reunions we still clustered around the people we knew best, who were often of the same race. At one, I was sitting at an all-white table, and one of the former basketball players said, "Look at us, we are still segregated." So, we all got up and moved to different tables.
I skipped some reunions, but I did go to the 30th and 40th, the last one we had before the pandemic. There is a photo of a Black friend and I arm in arm on a couch chatting happily with each other. She passed away not long after. We became the poster children for the reunion in Oyster Bay.
Facebook also helped cement our bonds. Class pages popped up before reunions, and many of us migrated onto each others' spaces and stayed there. A good number of our Black classmates had put down roots in Atlanta, where New York transplants could prosper more easily than in other parts of the South. "Westbury in Atlanta" became an annual barbecue and get-together.
When Donald Trump became president, I had a lot of new friend requests from people on Facebook who went to Westbury High School. I did not know them at first, but we thought alike and supported each other as best we could. We watched the growth of the Black Lives Matter movement and posted things about it, but mostly avoided incendiary discussions. We all still needed each other. 
About a week after the Oyster Bay reunion, a message came that our friend who was sick at the reunion had died of cancer. His passing was a great loss, but what a wonderful moment he chose to say good-bye. 


Why I Go to My High School Reunions

Aimee L. Stern

The early 1960's. I couldn't have been more than six or seven when I first heard that unique sound filling our kitchen. My older sister had the radio tuned to the Boston AM station that had begun pumping out those early Motown hits. I was just old enough to get my first taste of Smokey Robinson and the Miracles' "Shop Around," then the Marvelettes' "Please Mr. Postman" and a bit later, Little Steve Wonder's "Fingertips." And I would soon be hooked.  
Berry Gordy Jr., Otis Williams and Shelly Berger at the Broadway opening of 'Ain't Too Proud'What I couldn't have known at the time was that I was listening to the first wave of a music juggernaut that fused soul, rhythm and blues and vocal harmonies with hints of gospel and jazz, records that eventually got played on Black and white radio stations alike.
Just a few years earlier, a young songwriter/producer in Detroit named Berry Gordy Jr. with an eye for local talent, borrowed $800 from the family savings fund and launched a music company that would soon dominate the R&B and pop charts.  
"Berry never thought about just making Black music. He wanted music to be colorless." 
From 1961 to 1971, Motown would churn out 110 top 10 hits on the Billboard Top 100. Twelve of Motown's number one hits came from the Supremes, who in the fall of 1969, performed at my sister's college campus in Massachusetts just months before Diana Ross left the group for her solo career. For the princely sum of $3.50, my sister was able to snag a ticket for me.  
More than 60 years after he created Motown, Gordy is among the five honorees of the 44th Kennedy Center Honors, along with Joni Mitchell, Bette Midler, "Saturday Night Live" creator and producer Lorne Michaels and operatic bass-baritone Justino Díaz. Taped earlier this month, it airs Wednesday evening, December 22, on CBS at 9 pm ET.
The broadcast showcases the breadth of contributions Gordy made to the culture — from Stevie Wonder to the Broadway cast of The Temptations musical "Ain't Too Proud" to Gordy's first venture into film, Lady Sings the Blues, the story of jazz legend Billie Holiday. Andra Day's soulful "God Bless the Child" is not to be missed.
'He Wanted to Make Music That Would Appeal to All' 
For a glimpse into the Gordy magic, and life on the road, especially the South during the turbulent sixties, I turned to two men who combined have had more than a 100-year association with Motown: Otis Williams, the baritone founder of The Temptations and last surviving member of the group's 'classic five' of the sixties and early seventies, and Shelly Berger, the longtime manager of The Temptations.
In his 1994 autobiography "To Be Loved," Berry Gordy explains the lesson he learned as a 14-year-old selling the Michigan Chronicle, the Black newspaper. A born entrepreneur, Gordy went into Detroit's white neighborhood and sold more copies of the Michigan Chronicle than he ever had sold before.  
The 44th Annual Kennedy Center Honorees, from left to right, Lorne Michaels and Bette Midler, Justino Diaz, Joni Mitchell and Berry GordyBut when he brought his younger brother to help him sell in the white neighborhood the next week, they sold nothing. "I realized that one Black kid in the white neighborhood was cute, but two Black kids are a threat," he wrote.
So I asked Williams, if that experience affected Gordy at Motown?  
"Yeah, he wanted to make music that would appeal to all. Berry never thought about just making Black music. He wanted music to be colorless."  
Gordy's first few Motown albums had no Black faces on them and they were all hit albums. So the lesson Gordy says he drew is that you can't tell a book by its cover.
The Ugliness of Racism 
But as much as Gordy wished everyone didn't see color, Williams recalled one moment when The Temptations played Columbia, S.C., around 1964 and confronted the reality of the times.  
"They had a rope right down the center of the auditorium — Blacks on one side, whites on the other. We went out and performed anyway, but after Shelly Berger became our manager in 1966, he demanded we only perform for integrated audiences," said Williams.
"We cannot play in front of a segregated audience," Berger explained. "We are the sound of young America. And Motown was powerful enough, even then, where I inserted in all the contracts that we will not play before a segregated audience, and if we arrive and the audience is segregated, we will not play and you must pay us."
And Williams was emotional the next time The Temptations returned to that same South Carolina venue.
"There was no rope down the center of the aisle, Blacks and whites were just sitting side by side, enjoying the music. And if it wasn't for the sweat while we were performing, you would have seen five guys crying on stage," Williams said. 
"You're talking about a unique human being. He's a person with a huge ego who has great humility." 
Asked if he ever confronted the ugliness of racism when he was on the road with the Supremes or The Temptations, Berger doesn't hesitate to tell this story: 
"I almost got killed in Nashville in 1967. I was with Diana Ross and the kitchen at the Holiday Inn we were staying at was already closed. Diana saw a pizza joint across the highway from the hotel and said, 'Let's get a pizza to go.'
So we go in. Diana heads to the jukebox and all of a sudden a man came up to me and said, 'Don't you see that table? Those six guys are coming to beat you up and don't fight them because they're going to kill you.' And Diana heard this, and she said, 'Let them come.' 
I said, 'Diana, you didn't hear the operative word. ME, not you. So let's get the F out of here. And we went running out and jumped into the limousine and got out of there. Yeah, it was a little touch and go."
The Stories Behind 'Cloud Nine' and 'What's Going On'
Gordy was always protective of his label and the company he built. So when Otis Williams was in New York in the late sixties and heard this new sound — Sly and the Family Stone's "Dance to the Music" — he returned to Detroit and shared the music with longtime Motown producer Norman Whitfield, whose first response was: "No, we're not going to do this sh*t."  
But when The Temptations were on the road, he cut the track to "Cloud Nine." At first, Gordy thought it was a song about getting high. ("On Cloud Nine, you're as free as a bird in flight/There's no difference between day and night.") But Gordy only released it when he was convinced it wasn't about drugs.  
Gordy and Motown were on cloud nine when the song reached No. 2 on the R&B chart and No. 6 on the pop charts and went on to capture Motown's and The Temptations' first Grammy Award in 1969, ushering in the psychedelic soul chapter for The Temptations.
Perhaps the most public dispute between Gordy and one of his artists came in 1970 when Marvin Gaye was determined to record some protest songs. Gaye's brother, a radio operator in Vietnam, wrote him letters saying the Vietnam War was wrong and unjust and when he returned home, he seemed a changed man.
Smokey Robinson at the 44th Annual Kennedy Center HonorsIn his book, Gordy writes about a call he got from Gaye saying he wanted to do a protest album about "Vietnam, police brutality, social conditions, a lot of stuff."
Gordy said, "Marvin, don't be ridiculous. That's taking things too far." Gaye's response: "I'm not happy with the world. I'm angry. I have to sing about it. I have to protest." 
Marvin Gaye recorded "What's Going On" but Gordy worried it was too political for the label and sat on it for months. Gaye reportedly threatened not to record for Motown again.  
But Gordy told Marvin, "We learn from everything. That's what life's all about. I don't think you're right, but if you really want to do it, do it. And if it doesn't work you'll learn something; and if it does, I'll learn something."
As Gordy wrote, "The album was called 'What's Going On.' I learned something."
Both the single and album shot to the top of the charts. And "What's Going On," now 50 years old, became the best-selling Motown album to that point and is often cited as one of the greatest albums of all time.
A New Album By The Temptations to Mark a Milestone
There've been 25 members of The Temptations over the past 60 years. Otis Williams deserves much of the credit for its stability. It's why Smokey Robinson calls him "Oak."  
And on this 60th anniversary of The Temptations, a new album of nearly all-original songs, "Temptations 60," will be released next month.
The first single from the album dropped in September, "Is It Gonna Be Yes or No."  It marks the first time Smokey Robinson sings a duet with The Temptations since a 1989 recording of "The Christmas Song." It's also the 81-year-old Robinson's latest Top 40 single, 61 years after "Shop Around," Robinson's and Motown's first million-seller in 1960.
The Power of Music is Still Going Strong 
Motown may have moved to Los Angeles in 1972, but Detroit is still best known for the Big Three automakers and the original Motown studio, now a museum on West Grand Blvd., that produced so much of the soundtrack of our youth.  
In fact, Berry Gordy worked a few years on a Lincoln-Mercury assembly line and took that experience to Motown, where he created a hit factory.  
"That's how he built Motown," Berger said. "Before a record was released, it had to go through the quality control department."
"You'd have to put Berry Gordy in the same class as Jack Warner and Louis B. Mayer, people who started with an idea and knew how to convey that idea and make it work," Berger continued. "You're talking about a unique human being. He's a person with a huge ego who has great humility. He's my best friend."
It's been 20 years since Williams revised and updated his memoir "Temptations," the book that inspired the hit Broadway musical "Ain't Too Proud."  Here's an excerpt: 
As I write this [in 2001] I'm on the road for a series of one-nighters. I'm starting my seventh decade, and while I love the performing, I have to admit, sixty ain't thirty. I do get tired of the traveling sometimes. Every time our plane lands, [longtime vocalist] Ron Tyson and I shake hands and people look at us like we're crazy, but as I remind them, just because you take off doesn't necessarily mean you're going to land. You can't take anything in this life for granted.
Two decades later, Williams is now in his ninth decade, having turned 80 in October. He and The Temptations are still doing one-nighters; they have a national and European tour scheduled for 2022.
"I still love performing. All we ever wanted to do was sing," said Williams, adding "God brought Motown along during the sixties for a reason. We were like a soothing ointment to a troubled soul at the time."  
And given all the problems still in the world, Williams reminds us "the wonderful thing about music is it's so powerful. It can do something politicians cannot do: bring people together." 


Celebrating the Music of Motown

Richard Harris

"Heavy Metal Parking Lot" is a time machine that works for 15 minutes.
The documentary, filmed on the last day of May in 1986, consists of brief interviews with exuberant and largely inebriated adolescent fans outside the Capital Centre arena in Landover, Maryland, before a show by the English heavy metal band Judas Priest.
What ensues is a whirlwind of sight and sound — kids from Maryland, the District of Columbia and Virginia doing and saying crazy things for a camera whose presence they were clearly not accustomed to in daily life.
Nearly 40 years later, the film, which circulated widely as a bootleg during the 1990s before becoming an internet staple in the 21st century, offers a unique window into the 1980s metal subculture and remains absolutely hilarious.
Teenage Id Unleashed
Stars of the film include "Zebraman," a vulgar young fella in a black-and-white, zebra-print catsuit. After declaring "Heavy metal rules!" he shares vulgar personal views on other music of the day: "All that punk s— sucks. It doesn't belong in this world. It should be on f——g Mars." He was equally vulgar and disdainful of Madonna.
"It was a carefree time in our lives, no responsibilities."
"Graham" is another fan favorite. A shirtless teenager holding a bottle of beer, he tells the interviewer that his name is "Graham, like gram of dope." Graham then calls for the legalization of narcotics and the construction of a joint that stoners can hold from coast to coast in the fashion of "Hands Across America," a one-day stunt earlier in the month to raise money for hungry families.
A redhaired young woman known as "Glen Burnie Girl" is another scene stealer. After announcing that she's from the Baltimore suburb, she answers several questions with enthusiastic "Hell yeahs." When asked about Judas Priest frontman Rob Halford, she intones that she'd like to "jump his bones" in a quintessential "Bawlmer" accent, elongating and shifting vowels without mercy.
A Cultural Mirror
For millions of people now in their 50s and early 60s, the parking lot scene that co-directors John Heyn and Jeff Krulik captured is instantly relatable.
"I think the reason the film has such staying power is that so many people can relate to this," Krulik said. "You were either at that concert or sat next to somebody in homeroom who was."
"It was a carefree time in our lives, no responsibilities," said Eileen Zelaya, who appears in the film. She was 18 at the time and attended the show with her friend Kelly. The pair remain close.
Eileen delivers one of the classic lines of the film. When asked what she's drinking, Eileen says "Jack Daniels and Coke, what else?" Zelaya grew up in Rockville, Maryland, listening to everything from Tom Jones to Motown but remains a self-professed Metal Head to this day.
Graham of DopeEven Judas Priest frontman Rob Halford sings the film's praises. "I loved the way that there were so many larger-than-life characters that just leapt off the screen and they were having the times of their lives," he wrote in "Biblical," his 2022 memoir.
Capturing a Moment
"It captured how [heavy metal] fans looked, dressed, spoke, and thought," he added. Clips from the film were even shown during the band's 2022 induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
Before "Heavy Metal Parking Lot" became part of the music documentary canon, viewed by millions each year on YouTube and Vimeo, discussed at academic conferences, and even the subject of a year-long exhibit at the University of Maryland's libraries, it started as the marriage of an idea and some easily accessible equipment.
John Heyn went to film school at Northwestern and Jeff Krulik studied English at the University of Maryland. Heyn, a Baltimore native, and Krulik, who grew up in the Maryland suburbs, met in 1985 and became fast friends.
"I loved the way that there were so many larger-than-life characters that just leapt off the screen and they were having the times of their lives."
"We had similar sensibilities and interests," Krulik said. "We both were interested in music, culture, subcultures and eccentricities." He worked as the community television director for a cable company in Prince George's County, Maryland, just to the east of Washington, D.C. His job gave him entrée to public access television cameras and equipment.
"One day, John had this idea that we go videotape heavy metal fans before a concert," Krulik said. "The studio I ran was near the Capital Centre."
At the time, heavy metal was a major subculture among young people across the country, and the next metal act booked to perform at the Capital Centre — home of the NBA Washington Bullets and NHL Washington Capitals — was Judas Priest. At the time, the band had seven consecutive albums certified as gold, platinum or higher by the Recording Industry Association of America. (It eventually extended the streak to 11.)
Neither Heyn nor Krulik were metal fans and they didn't even attend the show. They simply paid to park and walked around the lot for two hours on a hot, late Spring Saturday night, taking turns holding the shoebox-sized camera and clunky microphone.
Krulik says it was just dumb luck that they chose to attend a concert by Judas Priest, whose anthemic songs are among metal's most enduring classics. Heyn and Krulik now consider themselves fans of Priest. It was further dumb luck that they ran into the people that they did in such a short film shoot.
Dumb Luck and Smart Editing
"It's a little deceiving in a way because it makes you think there is non-stop chaos and bacchanalia going on in that parking lot but John whittled it down and took the most entertaining, lively footage," Krulik said. Some of the attendees that night weren't even sure who they were going to see. One of the interviewees thought they were there to see the band Metallica.
"People went to concerts, period. It was kind of like a tribal gathering," Krulik said. Writer Craig Giffen, a longtime fan of the film, cataloged the band T-shirts that concert goers wore in "Heavy Metal Parking Lot," finding a significant number of ZZ Top shirts in large part because the group had played the Capital Centre the previous weekend.
After filming, Heyn and Krulik went back to Krulik's office to look at the tapes. Krulik came up with the title that night. Finding a place to show the film was a challenge. Few film festivals in 1986 were equipped to show movies only on videotape. The first screening of "Heavy Metal Parking Lot" took place in October 1986 at D.C. Space, a venue that held a monthly event where budding filmmakers could show their work.
Ready to Mothball the Project
Over the next four years, Heyn and Krulik screened "Heavy Metal Parking Lot" on other occasions, including twice at the video-equipped Kennedy Center, home of the American Film Institute. At that point, they were ready to "put it in moth balls."
But the film slowly took on a second life, becoming arguably the first viral video — albeit one spread by copying grainy second- and third-generation videotapes, primarily on the West Coast. A copy of "Heavy Metal Parking Lot" became de rigueur on alternative rock tour buses, including those of Nirvana and Sonic Youth.
Los Angeles' Mondo Video, the epicenter of cult video in the 1990s, rented out copies of it to people in the entertainment business. Sofia Coppola rented the film from Mondo and then called up Heyn out of the blue, asking if she could use it for a show on Comedy Central (it never aired).
The sudden enthusiasm for "Heavy Metal Parking Lot" on the West Coast was the product of a college friend of Krulik's named Mike Heath, the film's "Johnny Appleseed."
Nirvana Roadie to the Rescue
"Mike was moving out west and he came by my new job at the Discovery Channel," Krulik recalled. "He tells me he's moving to San Francisco and asks for copies of 'Heavy Metal Parking Lot.'  I ran him off like four or six copies. He got it into people's hands who were well connected, including a roadie of Nirvana's."
"I was a pretty typical suburban heavy metal fan, very awkward at that phase in my life, and I found solace through heavy music and the community around it."
Not long after "Heavy Metal Parking Lot" resurfaced in the mid 90s as a cult classic, the film's directors started hearing from people who appeared in the film.
The first was Jay Hughen, known in the "Heavy Metal Parking Lot" Family as "Alumnus 001." Hughen was part of a group of friends from Reston, Virginia, who appeared in the film. His friend Michelle Jackson characterized Reston as "Mayberry, U.S.A."
"That was senior year of high school, I was a pretty typical suburban heavy metal fan, very awkward at that phase in my life, and I found solace through heavy music and the community around it," Hughen said. He went to shows at the Capital Centre all the time, busing tables at restaurants so he could buy concert tickets.
Discovering Their Celebrity
"I remember being the one that organized the road trips down there almost every time. Every time Iron Maiden or Judas Priest or Deep Purple or somebody rolled into town, we'd go and we'd bring the party with us."
After college, Hughen moved to California and got into the record business, working at A&M Records and later Warner Brothers. Now, he works in the live music business for Nederlander.
"Someone told me in the mid-90s that they just watched this hilarious bootleg film that was a documentary about some kids at a Judas Priest show in Maryland somewhere and it was the funniest thing they'd ever seen," Hughen said.
Hughen, living in Los Angeles at the time, said he attended virtually every D.C.-area Priest show in the '80s and vaguely remembered being filmed. He trekked over to Mondo Video, the natural habitat for just such a film.
"I told the guy behind the counter at Mondo that I think I'm in this video and he thought that was hilarious," Hughen said. "This guy behind the counter at Mondo had apparently turned on a lot of LA subculture to this film in the '90s. His head almost exploded."
"That's one of the first times that I understood that this isn't just a movie. This is a cultural moment that a lot of people know about, so I better embrace this and not be embarrassed by it."
Roughly a year later, Hughen was the guest of honor at a screening of "Heavy Metal Parking Lot" and subsequent Q&A session at Mondo Video.
"That's one of the first times that I understood that this isn't just a movie," he said. "This is a cultural moment that a lot of people know about, so I better embrace this and not be embarrassed by it."
He soon learned that Sonic Youth's Thurston Moore was a huge fan of the film and often recited lines from it. After reaching out to Moore, he received a copy of the film and a handwritten note from the Sonic Youth guitarist. A couple of years later, Hughen emailed Heyn and Krulik to let them know that he'd seen their film.
"John still has the original email I sent him," Hughen said. "It says something along the lines of 'Hey man, You have a movie called "Heavy Metal Parking Lot" and I'm in it and I just wanted to say hello.' They had never heard from anyone who was in it."
Hughen's email kickstarted the creation of a community of connected "Heavy Metal Parking Lot" alumni that now numbers nearly 30.
Alumni Reunions
"The internet was very helpful in connecting with our alumni, our family, if you will," Krulik said. The group now holds reunions both in person and online (during the pandemic) to commemorate different anniversaries of the film.
"Zebraman" attended the 30th reunion, finally embracing his Heavy Metal legacy. Graham Owens of "Gram of Dope" fame even wrote a fascinating memoir that piggybacked on his minute of screen time in the film. Sadly, Owens is one of several "Heavy Metal Parking Lot" alums that have died.
Zebraman Holds CourtEileen Zelaya remembers being filmed that warm May afternoon but wasn't aware of "Heavy Metal Parking Lot" until years later, when a cousin of her husband called to say he'd seen her in the film. "At first it freaked me out," Zelaya said. "I had to get it myself and see what it was all about."
She thinks she sounds "ridiculous" but has enjoyed being part of the "Heavy Metal Parking Lot" family, viewing it as a window back to the "crazy good times" of the 1980s.
Remarkable Transformation
"Ian Hill, I'm a former bass player, you're an inspiration of mine," yells a smiling, shirtless young man with long hair, striped suspenders, a Star of David necklace and a second necklace bearing his name in Hebrew. That young man is Zev Zalman "Z.Z." Ludwick, one of the film's most fascinating alumni.
Z.Z. was 22 at the time. Back then, he was called Robbie (his English name), managed a pizza shop by day and played bass in a heavy metal band by night. He grew up in Silver Spring, Maryland, the son of Holocaust survivors.
ZZ RobbieThough secular at the time, he displayed pride in his background in a manner similar to many of his Christian friends. His parents brought him back the gold Jewish star necklace from a trip they made to Israel.
"I was completely trying to live a decadent lifestyle," Ludwick said, describing himself as under the influence of a variety of substances that evening. When describing himself as a "former bass player," Ludwick meant to say, "fellow bass player."
Z.Z. estimates that he attended between 200 and 300 shows at the Capital Centre.
"I thought I was a stupor-laden idiot. I was sort of embarrassed, but it was funny at the same time. I had no recollection of what I said."
"It was like that several times a month. It was the place to go and it was always packed. We always had that tailgating thing going on. The tailgating was as important as the concert," he said. "They could have shown up at any concert at that time and it would be the same people, same attitude, same everything."
Ludwick's main recollections of the evening include George Lynch, the guitarist for opening act Dokken, having to leave the stage after three songs due to illness. He, too, remembers being cold in the air-conditioned venue and wishing he'd worn a shirt.
A couple of years later, Ludwick learned of "Heavy Metal Parking Lot" from a bandmate and saw himself in action at the Capital Centre.
"I thought I was a stupor-laden idiot," he said. "I was sort of embarrassed but it was funny at the same time. I had no recollection of what I said."
Embraces Hasidism
Several years later, Ludwick turned away from the decadent lifestyle. Ludwick embraced Hasidism, a tradition-bound religious movement within Judaism, and gave up the substances that had clouded his life. He apprenticed at a violin shop and became a luthier, a skilled artisan who repairs stringed instruments. Currently, he runs Ludwick's House of Violin in Silver Spring, where he sells, repairs and adjusts stringed instruments.
During the 1990s, he embraced bluegrass music and has played in several bands. He befriended Jeff Krulik and the pair have done several videos documenting his change of direction.
"And I stopped going by Robbie and started going by my Hebrew name, Zev Zalman, but my brother started calling me ZZ. I've been ZZ for the last 15 years or so," he said. "Robbie has left the building. ZZ is a spiritual guy who gets his high now from playing instruments and doing spiritual meditation."
Heavy Metal Spinoffs
Heyn and Krulik worked in the 2000s to further establish the "Heavy Metal Parking Lot" brand. In 2006, "Heavy Metal Parking Lot" received its first official DVD release, which featured a "Where are They Now?" companion documentary, including a brief interaction with a notably sedate "Zebraman," who had settled into a calm, suburban life.
The popularity of "Heavy Metal Parking Lot" spawned a short-lived series on cable television station Trio called "Parking Lot" in which Jeff and John produced similar films, talking with Phish and Yanni concert goers, soap opera fans waiting to meet stars outside the Daytime Emmys, and Civil War reenactors.
"Heavy Metal Parking Lot" enjoyed a 30th anniversary screening at the South by Southwest film and music festival in Austin, Texas, and a year-long exhibit at the University of Maryland libraries. During the pandemic, Krulik hosted a 35th anniversary "Heavy Metal Parking Lot" Family Reunion on Zoom. Much of the "Heavy Metal Parking Lot" content is available on the movie's website and on Vimeo.
"We're appalled by the language if we're screening it somewhere and we don't give a disclaimer, like at an academic conference."
There have been many more screenings of the film too, including at academic conferences, where scholars attest to the anthropological significance of this 15-minute artifact.
"We're appalled by the language if we're screening it somewhere and we don't give a disclaimer, like at an academic conference," Krulik said.
An Era in American Culture
For a certain group of enthusiasts (me included), "Heavy Metal Parking Lot" has become a regular part of their vocabulary. For a broader audience, the film is shorthand for an increasingly distant but hardly forgotten era in the history of American culture.
"It was a little more free-flowing then, free of blowback," Hughen said of the moment that Krulik and Heyn captured. Certainly, the directors captured what writer Greil Marcus called the "old, weird America," the eerie and ordinary sensibilities of people that have been mediated into obscurity by the understanding that everything people say or do is being recorded.
For those who lived "Heavy Metal Parking Lot," the movie has become a "badge of honor" in Hughen's words.
"I'm really heartened by the fact that so many people relate to it," he added. "It was a cultural snapshot, pre-internet, pre-social media. It was a moment in time that a lot of other people experienced. It has been a great shock but a lot of fun to have people recognize the movie, know it and revere it. I'm proud of its place in a lot of people's hearts and minds."


A Rock Documentary That Won't Die

Clayton Trutor

Revivals of interest in vinyl records have become a fixture of popular culture over the past four decades. It could easily be argued that 33⅓ record revivalism has now lasted significantly longer than the vinyl album's actual reign as the most popular medium for listening to recorded sounds.
"Having a cassette you could record on easily or make mixes on freed up people's ability to access music they weren't able to before," Music journalist Marc Masters has announced a revival of a less-mythologized medium in his new book, "High Bias: The Distorted History of the Cassette Tape." Masters, whose work has appeared on NPR and in the Washington Post and Rolling Stone, traces the unfamiliar history of cassette tapes from their invention in the early 1960s to their peak in the 1980s and beyond.
Cassette Tapes' Lingering Appeal
And there is a beyond. Despite cassette tapes' status as a dinosaur technology, they have continued to flourish just below the surface of popular culture as a means of recording and listening to music.
"Tape isn't dead," Masters said in the aftermath of a brief and well-received East Coast tour in support of the book. "There are lot of young people interested in tapes for the same reason we were interested in them growing up."
"Almost everyone I spoke with on the tour said that the book made them think of some stories that had with tapes that they hadn't thought of in 20 or 30 years."
Just like the vibrant "lo-fi" (low fidelity) recording communities that emerged on both sides of the Atlantic in the 1980s, contemporary cassette enthusiasts appreciate the easy access the medium provides to making, programming and distributing music. A host of tape-only, independent labels such as Astral Spirits, Crash Symbols, and Geographic North thrive in a world where the behemoth record business of old is a shell of its late-20th century self.
Masters, in fact, worked with these and other tape labels to create a cassette that accompanies the book. This doesn't mean that interest in tapes is the domain simply of an esoteric music subculture. It remains there for everyone.
"It's such a universal subject in a weird way," Masters said of the appeal of cassette tapes. "So many people either grew up using tapes or found tapes in their parents' closet. Almost everyone I spoke with on the tour said that the book made them think of some stories that had with tapes that they hadn't thought of in 20 or 30 years."
Cassettes Made Some Genres Thrive
"High Bias" traffics in both thoughtful cultural analysis and nostalgia, offering readers a look back into a shared past and a series of new windows through which to think about cassette tapes.
"I didn't want it just to be a trip down memory lane. I wanted that to be part of it, for sure, but I wanted the history part of it to be things that people might not know about even if they were around for tapes," Masters said. "Maybe people didn't know how crucial they were to hip hop or to heavy metal or how crucial they were to people internationally who couldn't record otherwise."
One of the book's most substantive contributions is its thoroughgoing description of the ways in which the cassette tape democratized music consumption, production and distribution.
"Before cassettes came along, there wasn't a cheap, easy, affordable way to control the music you listened to," Masters said. For the lion's share of listeners, the choices of radio station programmers and record labels determined what they listened to and in what sequence they heard it. Virtually every high school student of the 1980s and 1990s was the creator, recipient or inspiration for a homemade cassette mixtape or possibly all three.
The Grateful Dead Influence
"Having a cassette you could record on easily or make mixes on freed up people's ability to access music they weren't able to before," Masters said. "It was democratizing for artists who didn't have the connections to get on a record label or the money to record at an expensive studio. They could record it on tape, pass it around or even sell it on tape."
Marc MastersFans of the Grateful Dead created a vibrant tape-trading culture built around the recording of the band's shows in the 1970s and 1980s. The centrality of tape trading to Grateful Dead fandom became so pronounced that the group eventually created a sanctioned space at their shows where tapers could plug into the band's soundboard to get the best quality recordings.
Masters unpacks the many layered world of Grateful Dead tapers in one of the book's best chapters.
Enter the Walkman
The portability of cassettes, particularly after the introduction of the Walkman portable cassette player in the early 1980s, freed listeners to bring their music with them. It also expanded the possibilities of music shaping the interior life of listeners, in much the same way that the emergence of the novel in the 18th century provided readers with a new, unspoken relationship with texts.
"Early Walkman users are quoted in newspapers as saying, 'This is my own soundtrack. I get to block out the world and listen to what I want to and be who I want to be,' " Masters said. Some early listeners even described their experiences as nearly sublime — an opportunity to inhabit the world while experiencing music only you could hear.
For artists, cassettes served as an easy entry point into recording their music, particularly in the 1980s.
For hip-hop artists, the cassette mixtape became the means by which new performers developed followings. Heavy Metal acts of the late 1970s and early 1980s such as Iron Maiden had trouble getting an audience with major record labels until homemade cassette recordings won them a cult following.
Lo-Fi Becomes High Art
For punk, alternative and indie acts, the low fidelity or "lo-fi" sound of cassette recordings became as much an aesthetic choice as a matter of financial necessity.
"Cassettes helped create the lo-fi aesthetic because it started as this thing that's cheaper and easier to use."
"I don't think one could have happened without the other, so there's a kind of interdependence," Masters said of the interplay between "lo-fi" artists such as Guided by Voices, Beat Happening and Daniel Johnston and the devices they used to record their music.
"There were certainly people interested before in home recordings," he added. "For those people, cassette tapes came along at the right time. But I also think cassettes helped create the lo-fi aesthetic because it started as this thing that's cheaper and easier to use. Eventually some artists realized, 'Hey, this is making my music sound a certain way, it has a certain aesthetic itself and I'm going to lean into that.' "
In the early '80s, major record labels tried to curb consumers' myriad uses of cassettes with their heavy-handed "Home Taping Is Killing Music" campaign. There's little to no evidence that taping songs off the radio or making mixtapes actually hurt the record business. Equally scarce is evidence that the "Home Taping Is Killing Music" slogan had much of an impact on consumer behavior.
"The industry has proven time and again that their first line of defense against piracy is to try to shame their own customers into not doing it," Masters said. He was speaking of both the early '80s "Home Taping is Killing Music" push as well as the major labels' campaign against file-sharing software in the 2000s. In both instances, the industry's multiyear efforts to shame fans were in vain.
The same cannot be said for Masters' multiyear effort on his book. He began "High Bias" in 2019 but took a year-and-a-half hiatus so he could safely guide his children's education at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. He returned to the book with a fresh perspective on the subject — one that shines through in the concise and thoughtful way in which its diverse material is presented.


Remember Music Cassette Tapes? They’re Back.

For the better part of a half century, Ken Burns has been on a mission to tell America's story, warts and all, taking us on a deep dive through the Civil War, Country Music and the U.S. and the Holocaust, among his more than three dozen documentaries and series. But to understand why he's been scratching this itch since the seventies, all you need to do is read the introduction to his new coffee table book, fifteen years in the making, "Our America: A Photographic History."
Ken Burns and his father in 1958Burns will tell you that his love affair with the still photograph — what he calls the DNA of his life's work — began in his dad's Delaware darkroom when he was three. There, in his earliest memory, he recalls being held in his father's "strong left arm, watching a wonderful alchemy take place, as an image began to slowly emerge from a blank piece of photographic paper immersed in a tray of strong-smelling chemicals, under a dim eerie red light, my father's right hand agitating the newborn print with metal tongs. To a three-year-old it seemed like magic."
"At the end of the day, we've tried to retain the miraculous, we've tried to keep the mystery and the unknowing as not something that's frustrating but something to be welcomed and celebrated."
By his teenage years, Burns had locked in his career path, thanks to an evening watching a film with his father called "Odd Man Out "about the Irish Troubles. While his father hadn't cried during what he calls his mother's "long, excruciating illness nor at her death, nor at her funeral," Burns saw his father crying for the first time at the end of the film. "I vowed to myself, right then and there, that I would become a filmmaker," Burns declared.  
In the book's dedication, Burns writes: "My father [Robert K. Burns Jr.] who introduced me to the magic of the photographic process, gave me my first camera and also gave me my love of films." 
Smitten with the American story since his days at Hampshire College in west central Massachusetts, Burns' passion to make films with a reverence for the still photograph was fueled by his mentor Jerome Liebling, who received top billing in the book's dedication. Burns writes that he "instilled in me a love and respect for the still image and the great power it has to convey the most complex information about us."
You could make a case that 69-year-old Ken Burns has, more than anyone, made history come alive in America's living rooms, on computer screens and in its classrooms. His Civil War epic was seen by more eyeballs than any series in the history of public television. Burns is not slowing down. He's in production with four new documentaries ranging from The American Revolution to The American Buffalo to LBJ & The Great Society.
Burns spoke with Next Avenue from his home in Walpole, New Hampshire.
Next Avenue: It's hard enough to deeply research a single-topic documentary series. But how did you whittle down to 251 the photographs [from 1839 to 2019] that are now between the hardcovers of your book, representing what you call Our America?  
Ken Burns: It's interesting. I collect quilts. And no amount of research can really reveal the story behind each quilt. Each has a unique provenance that will remain unknown. How old was Hannah, the girl who may have signed it — 12, 18, 21? Was she married? What is the story behind this quilt? You're just left with this magnificent piece of art.
Ken BurnsI spent all of my professional life, seven days a week, investigating and finding out what the facts are, what the truth is about certain events, and then trying to fashion them into stories that reflect that. This book, born over years and years and years of evenings and weekends, was like the quilts, an ability to go back to the DNA of all my work, which is the still photograph. 
I wanted to produce a volume that treated each photograph as an event — one photograph per page with the most minimal captions, then in relationship to the other photograph across the page, whether there's compositional similarities or thematic similarities or where there's just kind of architectural similarities, they begin to speak to each other. And then in the back of the book, you're able to look at a thumbnail of that photograph with a prose description of it. It gives you another dimension to the story, and I just love it.
At the end of the day, we've tried to retain the miraculous, we've tried to keep the mystery and the unknowing as not something that's frustrating but something to be welcomed and celebrated. This is the great gift of art where one and one equals three and in an improbable calculus — bridges don't stand, and houses don't stand unless one and one is always two. But what we look for in our faith, in our art, in our relationships, in so much is this improbable calculus that any art can do. And I think photography does extraordinarily well. 
The first photo in the book from 1839  has a pedigree all its own.
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 1839The book begins with the first photograph ever taken in the United States, appropriately as an American story, a self-portrait. [of 30-year-old Robert Cornelius who took what amounted to the first selfie using a wooden box fitted with a lens from an opera glass for the camera.]      
And the book ends more or less in the present, as historians are a little bit leery of trying to set the near past and the present in any sort of firm opinions.
Was part of your mission here to authentically represent the gory and the glory of this multifaceted country?
Let's take the easiest part first. "Our America" is an attempt to celebrate in the divided world we live in now, regardless of those divisions and the myopia that it promotes and helps to foster, that we are all connected, good and bad, dark and light. And so this book represents this phenomenal glory of our natural world. Some of the photographers are famous, like Matthew Brady and Lewis Hine, some of them are unknown. Some of them are just, regular folks. But they all have in common a sense of their totality of us. Each of the fifty states is represented. Every film I've worked on is represented, even if that photograph wasn't used in the film. They are just amazing photographs of America that got included. So, it was an adventure, an exploration. The discoveries were new and novel, and yet it has some old friends on it.
In fact, the cover is a young boy standing in front of a car in 1949 in New York City, holding his coat between his arms with a rakish hat, untied shoes and a hockey shirt with an amazing attitude — looking right at the camera in the fullness of his being.
And that was taken by Jerome Liebling, my professor at Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts, who was primarily a still photographer, even though he was a professor of film and photography. And to realize, even in what seems to us today as simple, and perhaps because of the billions being taken on our phones — the degraded act of making a photograph — that there was a kind of huge responsibility, a kind of reciprocity. Look into the eyes of the kid and you will see that that he met Jerry with the same quality. There's no communication except among equals. And Jerry reduced what could have been something that was appropriated, something that was taken, into a marvelous exchange with the full humanity of this kid on display. It is for us then the fact that we have a permanent record of that humanity and the value of his individuality in the face of all of the pressures of deciding who someone is in advance of actually finding out who they are, and even through race or gender or through religion or through dress or all of the things that impose upon us the biases that we, more often than not, are completely unaware of.
And what was it about Liebling that motivated you to become the person you became? 
Well, I don't recognize the person who came  into Hampshire College in September of 1971 and the person who left in June of '75. It just rearranged all my molecules. And part of that is the secret sauce of Hampshire and how they do things differently. Higher education has become extraordinarily transactional. Hampshire was always, and still remains to this day, phenomenally transformational. So let me credit Hampshire, but Jerry was something special. It was a true mentor situation. And he brought a sense of the work in the classroom that was important, but it was a 24-hour-a-day thing. As I said in my intro to the book, he would say, "Go. See. Do. Be."  Meaning get out in the world. Look with fresh eyes, be present. And in between that, do something, take a photograph, make a film, just engage. And so, all of us, we're following that dictum with a kind of fervor.
One of the earliest photos in the book from 1863 is called "Harvest of Death," and it depicts rotting corpses awaiting burial at the bloodiest single battle of the Civil War: Gettysburg. It was taken by Timothy O'Sullivan and displayed in Alexander Gardner's "Photographic Sketchbook of the War" with a caption saying this photo "conveys a useful moral: It shows the blank horror and reality of war in opposition to the pageantry. Here are the dreadful details, let them aid in preventing another calamity falling upon the nation." Is there any evidence this photo was circulated widely enough that it may have indeed prevented future war on American soil? Or is that too much to ask of a photo?
Gettysburg, Pennsylvania 1863It's way too much to ask. It is, of course, what we hope it will do. But Ecclesiastes said, 'What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again. There's nothing new under the sun,' which suggests that human nature doesn't change. And that, of course, imposes a kind of a pessimism on people, but not necessarily, it's just possibility. That's why people say history repeats itself. It never does. There's no event that's happened twice. But Mark Twain is supposed to have said that history doesn't repeat itself, but it rhymes. And I haven't made a film that doesn't rhyme in the present with what's going on. And yes, this Gettysburg photo was widely circulated, and it caused people great pause. But we wax and wane about this. Sometimes we credit the photograph of the assassination of the North Vietnamese spy on the streets of Saigon by a South Vietnamese Army official as helping to bring an end to the [Vietnam] war, just as the Napalm Girl also did that. And it may have, but our willingness to commit humanity to that is nearly always short lived. And we find out later another enthusiasm or rationale why we should go to war and kill other human beings. 
I've lived in the Washington, D.C. area for 44 years now. And when I saw the 1925 photo of the Ku Klux Klan demonstration at the U.S. Capitol — the giant 48-star American flag covering the Capitol steps being held by hooded Klansmen and women — I quickly realized it had taken place only about 50 years before I moved to Washington. It was the heyday of the Klan. There were 30,000 members of the Klan parading down Pennsylvania Avenue, but no sign of police in the photo. It almost seemed as though the Klan ran the Capital City at the time. 
Washington DC 1925They weren't considered a threat. And that speaks volumes about where we were. The Klan was a homegrown terrorist organization that had focused on terrorizing Black people after the emancipation in the period known as Reconstruction, and particularly afterwards. And they had a resurgence where they had millions and millions of followers. And that's because they added to their portfolio not just the racism at the height of their founding, but the anti-Catholic, anti-immigrant and anti-Semitic stuff. The Klan ran the whole southern half of Indiana. In fact, you can go ahead in my book to 1986 and there's another dramatic photograph of the Klan with a cross burning. And what is so terrifying is that the caption says it's in Connecticut.
East Windsor, Connecticut 1986Just like in our recent film on the US and the Holocaust, there are thousands of people parading in Nazi uniforms and brown shirts with American flags and Nazi flags. And it's in New Jersey. It's a picnic. It's a rally. It's a jamboree.
Recall Charlottesville five years ago? The chant: 'Jews will not replace us'?
Yeah, why the Klan is in Washington, D.C. [in 1925] is that they're essentially celebrating the fact that we've shut the door. We used to have open immigration from 1870 to 1920, despite the Chinese Exclusion Act of the 1880s. But just about everybody came in and that caused that replacement fear. And the backlash was to corrode. But eugenics was promoting this idea of a hierarchy of race in which the general anti-Semitism of the country was raised to a fever pitch by industrialists like Henry Ford, and later in the America First Committee by Charles Lindbergh, but many other people. And so the Klan is celebrating the centrality of their anti-Black, anti-Catholic, anti-Jewish ideas. 
Lest people think that the photos in this book present a totally dark cast on America, there are some fun glimpses of life at different times that seem unrecognizable today. One of them was the women on the beach in Jamestown, Rhode Island, in 1897, in their knee-length puff sleeve wool dresses. Why was it important to show these types of photos? 
Jamestown, Rhode Island 1897Because that's our America. There's a huge preponderance of photographs that show the beauty of the United States from the national parks. There's kids playing, picnics, baseball games, there's all of that stuff and there's lots of light. I love those girls on the beach with their idea of racy bathing suits with bloomers and leggings. They're having a good time.
There's another shot of girls from the early 20th century stealing a cigarette. And the photograph just gloriously captures the kind of sneaking around that this represented, and kind of a liberation that it would later represent for women. You know, there's lots of kids there, they're just people doing their lives.
Virginia or North Carolina 1909This is the problem with our world today. It says they only paint the dark side. There are no sides. There's only one race, and that's the human race. And no one people, no one pigmentation of skin is any way is different than anybody else. Somebody from Uganda loves their children the way you love your children, period. Full stop. Are there thieves? Yes, but there are thieves among us. Are there murderers? Yes, there are murderers among us. This is human nature. What I realized is that I have been making films for nearly fifty years about the U.S., but I've also been making films about us. That is to say the lowercase two-letter, plural pronoun, all of the intimacy of us and also all of the complexity, the majesty, the contradiction, and even the controversy of the United States. That's the space I've always operated in. And this book is made in the spirit of that. It is at once celebratory of an exceptional people and also full of grief and loss and pain.
I remember first meeting you nearly 30 years ago on a baseball field in Virginia for a Nightline episode when you were promoting your baseball documentary. I was shocked, but not really surprised to read that the 2022 World Series just ended was the first since 1950 with no U.S.-born African American players. The percentage of Black players in the Major League has been steadily falling. It's now down to about seven percent. Your photograph of Jackie Robinson made me think he must be spinning in his grave right now. 
No, no, that's a limited view of it. When Jackie Robinson was rounding first base with the number 42, his back faced to us, baseball was by far the dominant sport. College football was a distant second. Baseball was it. And Jackie Robinson didn't just open the door to African Americans who flooded in and changed the game dramatically. But he also opened it up to Hispanics and then later, by extension, to the Asians that are in the game. African Americans gravitated to other sports for the reason there was room. We're in the middle of the football season and can on many teams find a defense that doesn't have any other people but African Americans. You might find a white linebacker. And the same is true in professional basketball, in which the percentage of African Americans is even higher than in the National Football League. So that African Americans are dominating in these other sports represent choice. And the void has been filled with predominantly Hispanic baseball players that Jackie Robinson also brought in. So, you know, he's not spinning in his grave. He understands it's progress. Now, could baseball do a better job of selling itself to African Americans? You bet.
New York City 1956The last photo in the book of the late Rep. John Lewis was taken in 2019. You quote him saying, "Democracy is not a state, it is an act and each generation must do its part to help build what we call the beloved community, a nation and world society at peace with itself." But two years after the attack on the U.S. Capitol, the symbol of our democracy, I wonder if your book had extended into 2020 and 2021, would you have added a photograph of the January 6th insurrection?  
Capitol Hill, Washington DC 2016No, I would not unless I made the book in 2030. And then, of course, it would. You've got to get far away from the events. John Lewis represents both the hope and the pain of our struggles to live out, as Dr. King said, the true meaning of our creed. And that's why Lewis ended the book. He was a personal hero of mine. I knew him. He was beautiful. The photograph was taken by Michael Avedon, who also took the jacket cover of me and is the grandson of Richard Avedon, the great photographer. So there's a wonderful kind of synergy that came along. And I'm very proud to put my friend and more importantly, one of the greatest Americans, John Lewis, as the last photograph of this and say, you know what? There's work to be done. And boy, is there, right?  And so, "Our America" is an attempt to say, look, if you self-select the information you get, then you see out of only one eye and there's no dimension to it.
I heard you quote Martin Luther King, Jr. from the Birmingham jail in an interview last year and noticed the same quote in the introduction to this book, so perhaps it's the note to end on.
What King said is: "All life is interrelated. All people are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be, and you can never be until I am what I ought  to be."
Which photograph from the book evokes the garment of destiny King spoke of?
There's no one photograph there that represents it because nothing can represent it. And that's why it's a plural. Our America. It's not this is America. That garment is tattered, as it has been at various times in our past, and it will probably be made whole again through patches and restoration. But this is our challenge.
The only way this democracy fails is if good people do not come to the aid of their country.


Ken Burns on 'Our America'

We celebrated our 39th wedding anniversary recently. If there is a thread that runs through our relationship, we've been getting lost together since 1977, when we met. Our life together has been filled with joy and wonder and heartbreak and devastation. And no matter where we go, we get lost — every time. We are the two dumbest people in the world.
"I might not recommend getting lost as a strategy for marriage success," but it does have its advantages.I attended a college yearbook workshop at Athens, Ohio University. I met my fellow workshopper at our college's journalism building that Sunday morning. He was also to be my driver to the Ohio University workshop.
Our little detour through Indy added four hours to the trip. My bad.
He wore all white, his long, thick black hair jetting out from a white cap like Bob Denver wore in "Gilligan's Island." Dirty white sneakers, white jeans and a white shirt finished the ensemble. I was not impressed. The Brooks Brothers or Bobbie Brooks of the 1970s influenced neither of us. I wore jeans, a wrinkled shirt and a red bandana over my less-than-tidy hair. We were the freaks in the Eagles' song "The Greeks Don't Want No Freaks."
His car was a 1960s model black Caddy the size of Montana. He asked me if I knew how to get to Athens, Ohio.
I mumbled, "Go through Indianapolis."
I crawled into the comfortable red leather backseat and immediately fell asleep. Through Indianapolis we went, the Caddy rolling on the open road, heading southwest to go southeast. Our little detour through Indy added four hours to the trip. My bad.
I woke up to find our driver standing outside the car, looking across the Hocking River. We had ended up on a dirt-covered access road. Across the river was the campus of Ohio University, our destination.
So close and yet so far away.
Ten minutes later, we arrived at the campus; a yearbook friend I knew yelled out the window, wondering what had taken us so long.
I shouted back, "I never want to see this S.O.B. ever again," a lovely story about my triple X vocabulary that did not impress my betrothed family when someone told this story at our wedding rehearsal dinner. And this is the edited version.
Looking for America Together
Like the Simon and Garfunkel song, we married our fortunes together and spent the next four decades looking for America:
On the way to and from our honeymoon in Key West, we managed to get lost in Miami in our 1981 Chevette, landing at the same intersection twice. Or is there a Burger King at every intersection?Shuttles are the only means of transportation on Cape Canaveral tours, with multiple buses headed to the highly secure launch pad. We boarded our bus for the return trip to the entrance and took the last two seats. An exceedingly pregnant woman and her partner boarded after us and dawdled in the front, lacking seats. The driver came on the squawk box, looked directly at us, and said, "Two of you have boarded the wrong bus. Please get off and board your correct shuttle." We looked around and at each other. Did we behave graciously and leave? Of course not. We sat like the pyramids of Giza, unmoved."Do not miss the cutoff for Bedford, or you'll end up on the Big Dig," my husband said to me repeatedly as we drove to the Boston area on a late 1990s visit to my aunt and family in our hideous white Ford Windstar mini-van that was identical to the Bunny Bread mobile. Of course, I missed the exit during Friday afternoon rush hour traffic and headed right into the heart of Big Dig construction. Being distracted by the construction noise was no issue for me as the driver, but the distraught screaming from my husband and child did bother me.Lacking a Sense of Direction 
When our son brought his partner home to meet us for the first time, my husband got lost coming out of the Indianapolis airport, missed the northern cutoff, and part of Interstate 70 was redirected out on the southeast side of town about halfway to Cincinnati. The drive from the airport to the northeast side of Indy took about two hours. 
This poor woman, my son's girlfriend, had only met us on Zoom; our airport meeting was our first real introduction. What an impression we made on the new girlfriend as we screamed at other cars, at each other, circling roundabouts, many roundabouts, on the way.
We've been lost together in fifteen countries, about thirty states, and some of your finer cities.
Humans vary in their capabilities; neither my husband nor I have a good sense of direction, rather, any sense of direction. When we had an empty nest, we started traveling in Europe. We've been lost together in fifteen countries, about thirty states, and some of your finer cities: Toronto, New York, Amsterdam, Barcelona, Paris, Dublin and Milan. We've been lost in our little town. (Never volunteer to take home extra children at a Boy Scout meeting.)
We made the mistake of leaving our Bruges, Belgium tour to see Michaelangelo's Madonna, the one hidden from the Nazis and memorialized in "The Monuments Men." The sun was so bright that we couldn't see the maps on our phones (some people don't know enough to get out of the sun.) We accidentally found the group with minutes to spare before the bus left.
Getting lost does occasionally have its advantages. Looking for a pharmacia on a rainy Venice afternoon, we saw much more of the real Venice than our tour. We crossed the same bridges twice and had an incredible lunch in a place that didn't seat more than ten.
I might not recommend getting lost as a strategy for marriage success, but here's what I've learned. Couples face many problems and challenges. Dig in together and figure it out, sometimes with screaming, sometimes with crying, sometimes with laughter. 
When we married, we were in our twenties and couldn't see farther than our next paychecks. There was no G.P.S. for marriage; we worked together and figured it out.


Lost in Love and I Don't Know Much

Amy McVay Abbott

Celebrating milestone birthdays often brings mixed emotions — excitement about new privileges and fear about new responsibilities. As a special gift for my daughter's 18th birthday, I decided to share the financial life of a legal adult. Oh, what a joy it is for her to have a financial planner as a parent!
Writer Lazetta Rainey Braxton's daughter, Karis BraxtonTogether, we explored the following four exciting financial adventures to officially launch her adult years. You are welcome to use them yourself, whether you are a Gen Zer or not!
My daughter's excitement for making money sparked her interest in investing $1,000 from her graduation gifts and contributing $25 monthly.
Earn easy money with a high-yield savings account
Although my daughter's checking and savings accounts serve her daily lifestyle well, she opened a high-yield savings account to hold her emergency fund and achieve short-term goals. Together, we researched financial institutions with competitive rates on Bankrate.com. While yields fluctuate often based on market conditions, an account that pays, say, 3% will let her earn $30 annually on a $1,000 deposit without any effort.
Take advantage of compounded growth with a taxable brokerage account
My daughter's excitement for making money sparked her interest in investing $1,000 from her graduation gifts and contributing $25 monthly. If she realizes an average annualized return of 6% on a diversified portfolio, her investment balance at age 62 would be approximately $134,000. Imagine her balance if she increases her one-time and monthly investments. Compounded growth would be her new BFF!
Although she has an in-house financial planner and investment manager (her real other BFF), she can explore selecting and managing low-cost investment portfolios held at financial institutions (Vanguard, Fidelity and Schwab being among the best-known examples) or with robo-advisors (such as Wealthfront and Betterment), which use algorithms to offer financial planning and investing services with little or no human input.
Enjoy the tax benefits of retirement accounts
Speaking of BFFs, Uncle Sam and Auntie IRS (pronounced eye-ris for good tax humor!) will enjoy getting their portion of the interest and dividends my daughter earns on her high-yield savings and brokerage accounts. As an employee, she can shelter these taxes by contributing to retirement accounts during her working years, such as Roth IRAs, Traditional IRAs, and 401ks, as a tax-advantaged strategy to support her future goals. IRAs are held at financial institutions and robo-advisors, while an employer sponsors 401ks.
Know you can't escape taxes and death
Adulting comes with the realization that you're not immune to paying taxes or slowing down aging. While my daughter is a full-time college student, she'll be listed as a dependent on my married-filing-joint tax return with my husband.
So, we will pay the kiddie tax on her investment earnings at our marginal rate, sheltering her investment income from taxes above the IRS threshold. Income she earns at a job will be taxed at a rate based on an IRS computation that considers her total income and the standard deduction.
With a portfolio of assets, she selects and changes beneficiaries at her discretion using the financial institutions' payable-on-death or transfer-on-death options. When her assets include property and other tangible assets, she may opt for a will or trust for more detailed instructions and additional protection.
If she is hospitalized or unable to care for herself, a Financial Power of Attorney and Health Care Power of Attorney will allow me and her dad to execute financial transactions and make health care decisions on her behalf. 
Adulting comes with the realization that you're not immune to paying taxes or slowing down aging. 
She is also encouraged to share her end-of-life preferences in a Living Will. Online providers, such as Rocket Lawyer, Legal Zoom, and Trust & Will, offer affordable primary documents. Estate planning attorneys are encouraged as her assets grow. Gone are the days of making these financial decisions as a parent of a minor child.
As I reflect on guiding my daughter in launching her financial future, I am more convinced than ever of the importance of starting early with financial education and empowerment.
I marvel at the time ahead of her to live her dreams and grow wealth. I hope that her 18th birthday is one to remember and cherish.


Teach Your Children Well

Lazetta Rainey Braxton

As a young person, I rebelled against what I thought was my destiny as a Mexican American youngest daughter, which was to take care of my mother in her old age. At that time, I thought old age was 50, and caring for her meant I would never leave my hometown of Tucson.
"Suddenly, after all the years I'd spent wishing I could do something meaningful for her, it was happening."I imagined endless days with the sun beating down on my sweaty body as I chased after the kids I didn't want, wondering why the husband I didn't like never came home the night before. In my mind, marriage was a trap, and if I stayed too close to home and my mother, I might fall into it.
I did everything I could to make sure that didn't happen. I put myself through college, took the first job offered a thousand miles away, and vowed never to get married or have kids. Flash forward to today: I'm 52, married with two kids, and my mom lives with us. I'm shocked to say that it's not terrible. It's nice.
Once I left home and grew up a little, I understood it wasn't easy. 
Rebelling Against the Wrong Thing
My parents didn't have a good marriage, and I thought my dad would be killed in a drunk driving accident, leaving me to take care of my mom. It was frustrating and painful to watch how he chipped away at her self-esteem and would constantly let her down with promises that he'd quit drinking. At the time, I blamed both of them.
"Get a divorce!" I shouted at her more than once. She would leave or kick him out every couple of years; eventually, they'd end up back together. Once I left home and grew up a little, I understood it wasn't easy. 
My childhood anger turned to guilt for leaving her in that situation. I imagined what it would be like to rescue her, but I was barely keeping my head above water and in no position to save anyone.
I imagined what it would be like to rescue her, but I was barely keeping my head above water and in no position to save anyone.
It wasn't until I had my two boys, who became tweens and teens, that I fully understood how crappy I was to my mom growing up. I'm embarrassed when I think about how I talked to her then. I wouldn't learn to cook because I didn't want to serve a man, and I said as much.
When I did start cooking for my family, I wanted all of those recipes I grew up with and would call her so she could walk me through how to make albondigas, carne con chile, and her lemon/limeade cheesecake that she had doctored from a recipe found in a magazine from the 1970s. She didn't save the cake recipe, and I've never been able to recreate it. If only I'd stopped for a minute to help and listen.
I Am Still Not a Good Listener
My husband, boys and I went to Italy for a fabulous 10-day vacation a few years ago. I thought about asking my mom to accompany us, but our vacations can be intense. We visited five cities during that trip and walked an average of 6 miles daily. 
When we returned, my mom asked what it was like to be in the Sistine Chapel and look up at Michelangelo's fresco. It turns out that visiting Italy has always been a dream of hers. Eighty years old at the time, she'd never been out of the country other than to Mexico, where she was born. 
The guilt that it was my second trip to Europe and my mom had never been gnawed on me, so I saved some money to buy us airline tickets and a cruise through Italy. It was scheduled for May 2020, which seemed like perfect timing.
Living With My Mom 
She'd experienced years of stress dealing with my dad's declining Alzheimer's and eventual guilt for agreeing to put him in a nursing home when she couldn't care for him anymore because "Mexicans don't do that."
We never made it to Italy. Instead of drinking Aperol spritz with me at a café in Piazza Venezia, my mom sat in her one-bedroom apartment watching news reports of the pandemic. My husband and I couldn't stand the thought of her alone, so we invited her to live with us.
After my dad passed away that summer, my mom packed up her things, left the city she'd lived in for 60 years, and moved in with us in Los Angeles. Suddenly, after all the years I'd spent wishing I could do something meaningful for her, it was happening.
Honestly, I mostly feared that she would drive me crazy.
But in all my savior delusions, I didn't think about what would happen the day after she lived with us. Or any of the days after that. Would she be homesick? Would she miss her life in the desert with family and friends? Would she drive me insane?
Honestly, I mostly feared that she would drive me crazy. And I know she thought I would use my proximity to tell her how to live her life. While both things have happened, her living here has allowed us to get to know each other differently.
I had forgotten how smart and funny she was and how much she knew about history and movies. While I was worried that she would be too isolated living in a new city, I'm delighted that she went out of her comfort zone and found fun activities every week. And when I bite into one of her chicken tacos, I remember that her cooking is much better than mine.
My mom living here helped me see that in those years when I thought she needed saving, what she needed was for me to be kind and supportive. To listen instead of judging her every move and to accept that I don't know everything. But I know she still dreams of visiting Italy, so for her 85th birthday, we'll be celebrating in Rome.


The Thing I Feared Most Happened — And It’s Not So Bad

Yvonne Condes

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