reminiscing today on the patio Papa told a few entertaining stories about Uncle Lenny, grandpa's brother, who I didn't really know very well, despite his living in syracuse and living longer than my grandfather.
The story goes that Uncle Lenny was extremely intelligent and very quick to learn, but rigorously opposed to showing off. He would answer questions correctly on tests until he got to where he knew he passed and then just stop answering from then on. He passed all his classes with the barest minimum. This kind of behavior got him sent to the army, where, with his academic background, they wanted to make him a lieutenant, but he told them he'd rather be an enlisted man, and begin as a private. He had to learn to drive a tank despite being 6foot five and very broad, and barely fitting in the tank. His team had to learn how to extricate him from the tank in an emergency, by breaking his legs, but that never ended up happening.
His wife, Esther, after having been married for several, perhaps 10 or 15 years, in the family, pointed out one day to my great grandmother, lenny's mother, that she had never heard her play. Her first job was playing for silent films, and there was a piano in the room. Papa was there too, it was just his grandmother, Aunt Esther and him, and his grandmother sat down and said, "these are wildflowers" and played, "not any kind of specific piece, but it sounded like wildflowers."
...
It was a lazy kind of day, except for Brian, who ran 21km round trip in the blistering heat to Auburn, right next to the mass pike, to update his ez-pass, and return our 20 year old transponder that is no longer connected to any account.
I went through old papers in the basement this morning, and stumbled across some photocopies of music that I played with Theodore, Henry and Edward.
Centa was wearing my dress to work, which was a weird thing to see - the one I bought for Danielle's wedding - I guess it's just hanging in the closet.
The wildfire-haze is still hanging over the NE, which just feels weird. The kids played pool and risk and lots of basketball (i was awakened at 7am by dribbling outside the window), and I read the book Phil gave me and took photos, and fell asleep in the greenhouse for 3 hours.
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