#108 Musings Beyond the Bunker (Wednesday August 4)
Good morning and Happy Birthday, Andrea!
Thirty years ago, I married the MUCH younger Andrea Blau. As plans for the big event progressed, Howard and Sue Kroll decided we needed help choosing “our song” to be played at the wedding. So, true to the nerdiness that makes Howard so endearing, he prepared a cassette tape of options, accompanied by a written analysis of the plusses and minuses of each tune. That said, the choice was pretty quickly apparent. And after all these years, our love is here to stay (courtesy Curtis Stigers):
Then there’s the incomparable Rosemary Clooney, with the Glenn Miller Orchestra:
And finally, the Chairman of the Board, recorded in 1956:
When we were married, my parents noted that, unbeknownst to any of us, we had picked the same song as they did for their wedding.
As I think about our wedding, I think it’s time to watch it again. My kids still can’t believe I had the “70s porn star” moustache back then. Don’t they realize it was a “thing”?
The other day, I came across a movie of my parents’ wedding back in 1955. It of course doesn’t have sound but it is a great time capsule to a world 66 years ago, back when Ike was president and intellectuals couldn’t believe that the “intellectual candidate” didn’t win in ’52 (Stevenson would run again in 1956, again unsuccessfully). Seeing these people “come back to life” these many years since was a remarkable gift provided by my grandfather. Eddie Abrahams (my mother’s father) was a first adopter. He was taking family photos in the 30s and 40s and was among the first to film home movies. For all the many, many, many hours of videos we took when our children were growing up, we probably all should consider curating a few minutes of a seminal life moments to preserve, culled from all the hours no one after us will want to plow through. This short “time capsule” of our lives on film is likely all our grandchildren and great-grandchildren will have to remember us 50 years hence.
Anyway, back to the importance of today…
Happy birthday, Andrea. Still a kid in my mind’s eye, you haven’t lost your youthful glow.
Love, Glenn
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