Ranelli, St. Ambrose, East Side, Inheritance

Concettina & Sam Ranelli, 24 Phalen Creek, Swede Hollow; 693 Bedford Street

Gina Ranelli Gregory, 1998. American Birkebeiner, 50 K (32 Miles) 4 hours 5 minutes, 16 sec. # 1 in 16 & Under, Women. This was the first time that age group was allowed to compete in the Birkie, prior to that one had to compete in the Kortellopet, a shorter distance competition, Cable to Hayward, Wisconsin. Co-Captain of Mounds View Cross Country Ski Team, previously received, Most Improved Skier, and Coaches' Award.

I'm the flower girl for my aunt Celia & Uncle Ed Sikorski, probably 1954. My mother Jennie Ranelli is on the far right holding hands with her father Pasquale. My twin brothers, Geno & Mario II, are in white shorts. My yellow satin dress w/ taffeta was made by Mary Monno Zappa of Cumberland, Wisconsin. She made one just like it for my Ginny doll made by Vogue, which I still have over 50 years later. Ginny also had a chartreuse and fuschia cow girl outfit, a black velvet and red tartan plaid outfit, too. I don't buy e-bay, because mine have to BE the ones I used to play with, not LIKE the ones I used to have.

I was 21, a public school education all of the way, except for college at CSC. St. Catherine's, a private Catholic, all girls college where I received the Louis Dorshow Jewish War Veteran's scholarship. Never getting the Unico scholarship for Italians is a sore subject. I needed it, even when tuition was guaranteed at $1100 a year! My best friend, then & now, Jo Ann Puccinelli, was headed there, too. We were day students. Jo had a car but I took the 14A Randolph-Payne
which was a 45 minute ride from the Italian East Side to the Jewish Highland Park. I bought that wedding dress on the Rue d' Rivoli in Paris with the $100 I had left as I was flying home from Paris. I remade it, added a collar from the round plate sized mantilla tht cam ewith it & made the veil and odd numbered Italian cumbits cancy coated almonds( Sulmona, L'Aquila is the confetti capital of the world), confetti = bonbonieri, sp.

I was leaving the country after five weeks of Eurailpassing (wake up, new verb a la Pioneer Press Bulletin Board style twincities.com) during January term with Deb Hoffman & Janet Dolan. I needed 4 credits of philosophy to graduate so I was allowed to design a course which was based on DBAE (Discipline Based Art Education) critiquing the editorial cartoons of European newspapers. It was awesome because concise language in a foreign tongue involving juxtapositions, metaphors & simile are difficult for some in their own language.

A good rule, never be arrogant. Knowledge is immortality, not deity. Our wedding had 2 colors of invitations, olive green & calligraphy for my friends, & formal white for others. The reception was in the basement of St. Casimer's Catholic Church, a Polish enclave on Forest & Edgerton. There were huge pink pillars and a linoleum tiled floor. It was at 7:30 on a Friday evening, July 31, 1970, & no air conditioning. I fainted on the altar, maybe it was the combination of nerves, high humidity & the high, tight neckline which I designed. I am really Miss Havisham, Dicken's Great Expectations, as I have my dress on a form in my spare bedroom with no bed. The cake below has a photo of St. Ambrose Catholic Church, at 711 Bradley, really Burr & Minnehaha. Grandpa Sam owned a garden up the hill on Rivoli Street, where he was self sustained: a wine bottle buried underground for coolness, a 50 gallown drum to catch the rain for his peppers, tomatoes, eggplants, corn, beans, etc. Having started out in Swede Hollow in 1911, 24 Phalen Creek, artesian well water under Hamm's Brewery, 2 children born there, Mario I and Lucy Ranelli Carchasky, Johnny came later at 693 Bedford Street by Payne Avenue. He was born with rickets and went to special Christ Child schools. He never learned to read, write or drive. He could sign only his name. He couldn't make change, and hid this pretty well as he was employed by Northern States Power on Rice Street for 33 years. Your 1984 will divided the estate equally between Mario & Lucy, but as soon as my dad died, not even 4 months after October 26, 1997, NOT EVEN 4 MONTHS to the date, 3 people walked into the lawyer's office and changed the will to give everything to Lucy, the 693 Bedford Street house which had been my grandparents since 1924, almost 70 years! Grandpa's WWI memorabilia which I framed & proudly displayed for the family. His "souvenir" of war, the Nazi helmet with the spike, EVERY LITTLE THING INSIDE, including gifts we had given, baby, family & wedding pictures. You called Jennie in Arizona the day Johnny died on your door step, waiting for you to get home & told her you had to take the safe to your house because Johnny had broken the lock. You never let us into that house the minute after Johnny died, YET HE HAD INVITED ALL OF US FOR CHRISTMAS 3 MONTHS EARLIER TO SHOW HOW MUCH HE HAD IMPROVED IT, NEW EVERYTHING. Mario died Oct. 26, 1997, the will was changed by 3 people on February 26, 1998, 4 months later. Dad got him the disability from NSP, took care of all his business and finances until the day Mario died, and you let the neighbors take what you didn't want, even when Denise asked for the china cabinet and tools. You said in the affidavit that you gave the table to a friend, but you had to ask Lori Jean what the friend's name was. It was Angela's boy friend's mother. You gave him a daily diabetes shot for 20 years because he was mentally handicapped, a paranoid schizophrenic and suffered bipolar depression, & according to the lawyer's notes he came in with 3 people, his sister & HIS brother (was it Uncle Bob whom the lawyer thought was his brother) great lawyers considering they were my dad's lawyers, too. Your lawyers said that Johnny "read" and okayed the new will by himself. Who was that 3rd person with you two, it could not have been Johnny's brother, Mario, as Mario had died 4 months earlier?

Johnny said he needed an eye exam to get glasses so he could drive, but it was noted in the charts that he couldn't identify any letters. Did he have everyone buffalowed, sp, even YOUR lawyer? You called me up and screamed, "I deserve everything. You and your sister have big houses and you go to Italy" and then hung up on me. You are so lucky that Mrs. Sadie Gregory, Mark's mother, died the same week of the court date. You have to live with yourself. I can't believe it still. No one can. Nessun dorma. Why would you let me help you? Meeting w/ Fr. John Malone with you, letting me pick out the his interment plot, the lot, the kind of Holy Family tombstone design, the flowers, the obituary, the eulogy, the music, the designing, typing, & printing of the program, writing the thank yous in your kitchen, the 100's of obit notices from the school pool of newpapers, typing all yet you wouldn't let us clean out his frig. Dio Benedicti! I should have seen it coming when Uncle Bob died, you didn't even list my mother as a survivor. Even Furby the dog was listed. I took Jennie to see Bob the day before his surgery. He said, "Don't buy any green bananas for me." I even painted Knife Lake, in Mora, MN. for you. We only went there one time in my life, when Geno, dad & I were in the boat. I have the picture I took of Geno with the big Northern Pike. He was shaking like a leaf. Thanks for the entire history of Sam Ranelli in America swallowed up by your achievements. Grandpa Sam lived until June 21, 1995. He was 96, dying at the old Veteran's Home by Fort Snelling, wearing his coin of John F Kennedy, praying to La Papa (the Pope) & Padre Pio. I have a video of him on Memorial Day, 3 weeks before he died, calling Gina, "Ginaginetta." He was so proud of Mario, "Numero Uno," and me, "La professoressa, the maestra." He was so proud of his first grandchild, Donna Jean and his first, great grandchild, Gina. Is that why? Numero due, #2 was a girl, and #2. Grandma Concettina died at 93 in 2001. I read wildy funny Italian jokes to her the week before she died. I remember her laughing so hard about the one where your breasts are like melons, cantalopes.

The city of St. Paul, MN, was divided by the ghettos of those who chose Minnesota, the immigrants. Native, original people included the Dakotah, Lakotah, Sioux, Ojibwe (Chippewa), Winnebago, Midwankan, & Winnebago to name a few. (We name our cars & trucks these names). Our streets, once derived from cow paths have Indian names...Algonquin, Mendota...We also have Mounds Park, Battle Creek, Hiawatha Park, Minnehaha Falls, & Chippewa Falls. Regentrification along the Mississippi River bluffs wants to reclaim Mounds Park but it is the Indian burial grounds. Cemeteries in Italy are handled a little differently,
if the grave site is not tended by someone, one just buries new bones. I was lucky enough to photograph Pasquale Monno's only sibling's grave site. His sister, Caterina Manna, was buried next to her husband, Domenico Salvadore. It is interesting to note that to this day Italian women keep their birth names. Sometimes I wish I had but the alphabetical hyphenated stuff seemed so complicated that I incorporated my 21 year old identity into everything, as did my sister, since we are the only surviving Ranelli issue carried by the male surname, cognome. What's interesting is that I finally had proof of how our mother's family name was actually spelled: Manna, according to the tombstone near Santa Lucia del Mela, between Messina & Barcellona, on the northeast coast of the island of Sicily. One usually crosses from the toe of the boot, Reggia Calabria on a short ferry ride to get to the island of Siciglia, home of the La Casa Nostra & Mafioso. My sister, Denise & I, were warned by the brother of my Grandma Concettina Di Nino Ranelli, not to ever go there, especially alone. Zio Mario Di Nino, currently of Salerno, & about 80 something had been a carabinieri (military polizia). I call this stream of consciousness writing so don't expect perfection from a retired English teacher when I'm streaming, because my brain has too much info that I must share before it is too late. The baby boomers are having a much harder time staying alive that all four of my grandparents. Longevity favors my genes. Paternal grandfather Salvatore Ranelli left Paterno/Celano in L'Aquila and his 17 brothers & sisters to go to America. The only other one that left was Riccardo, but when the Big War (WWI) broke out, Salvatore stayed & fought for the Americans and Riccardo fought with Italy. The Americanized/English version was now Sam, that is, Sam in America, but Salvatore is Italia. Broken Italian language is the norm. We grew up hearing it, but the dialect depended on the province or region. Salvatore went back to Italy at 27 to find a young 18 year old bride from nearby Corfinio, a few mountains over in Abruzzi. Her mother was from Roccacasale (roughly translated as Rocky Castle) & her father, Antonio Di Nino was from around there, too, I think Roccararso. They fathered (I think that's a Mixed Metaphor for sure) son Rizier, who grew up in Chicago, Concettina (little conch shell) (she was never Concetta, oh no!) Grandma was tiny-boned, a shell that carried the fresh mountain waters of Corfinio, the salty Adriatic Sea crossing, next the salty 3 month Atlantic Ocean crossing & finally landing at Ellis Island, welcomed by the Statue of Liberty, hoping they were one of the lucky ones healthy enough to walk down the 45 degree gangplank. (The Steering, by Alfred Stieglitz). I often wonder if I could pick out my ancestors on that diagonal white gangplank against the chiarascuro ship photographed by the father of mother photography & bold enough to show the first Degas, nude scribbles, Picasso & others that were thought to be revolutionary on this side of the Atlantic.

The good old boys club gallery, 291, at 291 East 5th Street, NY, secretly exhibited Georgia O'Keeffe's work without her knowledge. This tall, gangly looking 30 year old later was a smitten kitten over the older, mature married Jewish photographer. He died in 1946 where they lived in New York & she in 1986 age the age of 98 at Ghost Ranch (a dude ranch), in Abiqui, New Mexico, 70 miles north of Santa Fe, in a mission church with a wood door. It took her 10 years to get it away from the Catholic Church, but she had to have that door with a stone patio, isolated from almost everyone. They had no children, nieces & nephews were sufficient. (I digress, but remember you learn more from the digressions than the main stream).

I know it's confusing, but try to remember the rules, I don't care if you understand my streaming conscious (reread the part about entering at your own risk, cluttered mind, journey), I do this for myself in a public forum (Il Foro Romano). Ok, I sometimes try to make sense, but water flows as freely as my streams. Streams puddle and regroup and sink even deeper into the ground.

I designed my fireplace based on one of one O'Keeffe's...black tiles, no mantle or stone still upon which to sit, no clutter! I hung Oriental Poppies, 1927, over it. The U of MN, Weisman, has the original but it was catalogued wrong and hung incorrectly for about 50 years. She didn't care, the compostion worked successfully whatever its orientation was. Wish people would allow others of a "different" orientation to work successfully, too. My paper in grad school for Abnormal Psychology was I'm OK, Your'e OK, and Gays are OK, too.

Written in 1970 this was radical thinking but St. Kate's teaches people how to think, not what to think. I think Georgia may have had a same sex experience, as did Frida Kahlo, daughter of Hungarian Jewish father and Mexican mother. She was Frida Calderon who married the womanizer Diego Rivera, a muralist and they were Communists.

I used to show Frida, the unrated Mexican film in Spanish (& French of her love affair with Lenin) because Salma Hayak's version was rated R, and it might get one in trouble with the administration They would protest, not the administration, but the students because they're were no subtitles but I always interjected. Notice my writing style.

Even now, this weekend, I enjoyed 6 hours of Giordana's, the best of youth, (lower case on purpose) in Italian with English subtitles. There are 10 reels of probably 16mm film. Even my husband was transformed and that takes a lot for a man with graduated from St. Thomas in 1968 with a BA in Accounting. He graduated from Cretin in 1964, a boys military prep school.
Numbers were always the only way he interpreted life, a concrete, sequential, linear learner, probably a High Green/Gold. he was the middle of 6 children in an Irish Catholic family that achieved 629 Summit Avenue at Dale, the one with the Queen Ann round turret and wrought iron Stars of David on the double doors. t The draft #'s were imprinted one his brain. It was the Viet Nam war era, and some went to school only to escape the draft, but when school was over the government was still drafting. He graduate in May, 1968, and the draft board called his #. It was time to fight. Read Tim O'Brien, The Things I Carried, and his other books. Tim was from Macalester and a local. We're definitely a hotbed of radicals hiding out here in the Midwest. Anybody who can survive the cold here (-30 degrees Fahrenheit this week, I think that's about 8 degrees Celsius but my Italian-Irish godson is not here to do the math for me) & the high humidity of summer can survive anywhere. We breed resiliency, adaptability and compromise as a way to exist. We breed SURVIVORS.

Mark's # was up for the selective service but he checked the reserves. He had been on an endless waiting list but the list had now grown short as everybody had already been drafted. He signed up in the Army Reserve and got IN. JOY! They noted his BA and made him an accountant. After basic training in Fort Leonard Wood on the Missouri border, he was assigned to an accounting school at Fort Benjamin Harrison in Indiana. He was gone short of 6 months, they make sure you get out, so you won't get Veteran's Benefits, and served 2 weeks in the summer and one weekend a month for the next six years. He wore a military uniform to an all boy's high school for four years, went to an all male college, spent the next 6 months in basic in a uniform, and uninterested with being a CPA after working for CPA's, he achieved one of the big 8, Taylor, McCaskill when we were married in 1970. He then worked for a non-profit, the Wilder Foundation & then decided to be a mailman, where he will retire in June after wearing lots of government issue blue uniforms. No wonder he's so regimented and linear thinking and has difficulty dealing with his two artistic loves, his wife & his daughter, complete opposites to him (both High Oranges in the True Color Scale of Learning & Life), but whom he shares the same core values. I'm not sure what the order of importance in his life is; sometimes I rate The Bike #1, Any Sports #2 & his testosterone/Gregory competitiveness #3, #4 deer hunting. He trains religiously, at the expense of everyone. No, this is not his eulogy, but it could be, the way he drives himself. At age 60 (June 21) he rides with the Twin City Bike Club as if he's Lance Armstrong & the US POSTAL SERVICE. Greg LeMond, a local Minnesotan was and still is his hero. Lance, divorcing your wife after her devotion to you when you were down, doesn't look good. Gina & I enjoyed seeing Armstrong in Hautecam, France, near Lourdes, freezing in the moutain elevation in 2000. We had just survived watching the Feast of San Fermin, the running of the bulls in Pamplona, Spain, and wanted to be in Paris for Bastille Day, at the turn of the millenium. The Eiffel tower was aglow with a big 2000 in lights and the fireworks spit everywhere.

That was the way we were...Viet Nam Memorial & Birds are photos of Thomas Abel

What is art? Art & Sports...Social Landscapes

Charlize, "North Country" portrays sex discrimination in the MN Iron Range. She represents ALL WOMEN (not just the feminists, think latent image) trying to get equality & the ERA (Equal Rights Amendment) passed. Even black men got to vote before women (1920). Again, Black Male vs White Female.

My Title IX class action lawsuit in 1977 against SPPS & Principal Big Mac was a farce. First it was bogged down by making the mistake of filing it with the State Department of Human Rights, then naively thinking that the Federal Department of Health, Education, and Welfare would also consider it. Ha! Both buried it for years, never to be heard from again. $150 pay difference, but the world to me. The boys Black male assistant coach got the HEAD coach position of the new CO-ED track team; think: submerged, not merged, because he was an athlete in high school & college. The results of who got the head coach position was published before the interview even took place & even though we were the only 2 who applied in September for a March 1st opening, the interview took place on Feb 28th. I was advised to seek a job at a local college if I wanted to coach so badly, but no, I stayed with that program for five years. It was 1982, I was 33, 9 months pregnant, coaching 2 sports, working the finish line judge for state. I took a semester leave of teaching but continued coaching. I had a student baby sit in the locker room (she was only 2 months old, hate those indefinite articles, the baby not the babysitter); continued nursing for 6 months. No infections for that child, she got the first taste of food when Aunt Michele unknowingly gave her a banana. It was time for me to go back to work.

The Title IX lawsuit resulted in SPPS revamping the interview process for hiring coaches. I won the battle, but not the war. We had 9 high schools, 27 possible coaching positions and only 5 women got any of the positions, all asst coaches. Good ol Boys Club. Think: I was a product of SPPS, they didn't even offer girls athletics, nor did St. Kate's, my college. I did win the phy ed class timed races. I did the 50 yard dash in 6 sec at Hazel Park. What were they hiring, a person who had proved themselves as a coach or a jock. Who ever said jocks made good coaches? Yes their is a correlation but it isn't a given. Coaching was my expertise, not being an athlete. No matter what, we all remained friends to the end, each respecting each other. We agreed to disagree, no blackballing me for what I stood for. Well, maybe those character values weren't held by everyone. My volleyball history is even more exciting. My stellar performance as an athlete in intramural homeroom co-ed volleyball, all 9 players on the court at once. My homeroom won! Next chance was 1972. Saint Paul Public Schools were mandated to offer sports for women. They did, but they offered only ONE...volleyball. Rod Magnuson suggested that I apply. I was 3 years older than my students when I started teaching. I got my coaching certification, 30 quarter credits, completing USVBA Level I & II. Immediate success, City Champs were determined by end of season play offs, a Twin City Title in 1973, beating Minneapolis Roosevelt and glory for women in sports! 30 seasons later, City & Twin City titles in 1979 & 1995, and Cretin-Derham Hall's coach telling me he had a 77-1 record in St. Paul, Como being the only City school to beat CDH. I beamed with pride as my peers celebrated me. I walked out of the AP's office as he told me to teach & coach after I retired, walked 10 yards to the AD's office & Billy White Shoes tells me, "It's time for a change." I felt like I had been slapped & cried inside. He had told me that it was time for young blood, that there was too much grey hair on the bench. When questioned later about it, he said he couldn't remember saying it, but immediately added "But change is good." It was documented in the principal's file, but I chose not to invoke it. He was a former English teacher so I figured he knew the precise meaning of what he said. To be politically correct, he should have said, "You have the right to reapply for any coaching position." Mysteriously, I "lost my last hour prep." The new head football coach in the building got it, 2 special ed teacher's got it, a gymnastics coach got it who didn't even want it, the tennis coach got it, but not I, the only one who requested it, lost it, after having it since 1979. Maybe should have applied for Athletic Director instead since "it's time for a change" and "change is good."



What your student's produce reflects what you teach. Please don't hold me accountable for that anymore. I'd flunk, just kidding; they're are some who try, just not the ones I get in SWS, Read 180, Minority Encourgement Program MEP & Reg 9th grade English.

The bottom line: I was a white female coaching 33 girls at Washington with no track and no parking lot, either. I was the only coach because it was the "girls" team, the boys had 2 coaches and just a few athletes. We made it to state & placed, thanks to Sandy Strehlow for Fosbury flopping. I called our training Russian down hill sprinting as we raced up & down the hilly quadrangle of 4 inner city blocks, no paglio here, just my starter flags. Macalester's Roy Griak felt sorry for me and let us on the all weather tracks, God, we never trained on any track in those days, come to think of it, maybe that's why we made in in a field event: the high jump! Sorry, Sandy, that you lost your brother as he was cutting across the cemetery on Dale & Larpenteur. Stop by & visit Byron Dennis Jones, he's by the fence on Larp. They found him this summer in the Mississippi River. You did a good job sending him off at Morningstar Baptist Church even though no one recognized his art teacher from the Class of 1984. I love you, Byron, always did; thanks for being in my MAS, Mutual Admiration Society.

An artist works with HER/HIS HANDS, HEART, and MIND to arrange the elements of art: line, shape,...using the principles of design into an expression that is aesthetic. That was my written answer to my 7th grade art teacher when asked, "What is art?"

Now I know that only humans can make art, eliminating rainbows & sunsets. I know that the Native American vocabulary has no WORD for art, because art is inherent & ethereal in the work itself.

Art (or Beauty) as some would naively call it, is NOT superficial, the frosting on the cake, the frivolous arts & crafts projects, the first budget cut because it is non-essential, fun, anyone can produce. The mandatory art requirement to graduate frustrated the Internation Baccalaureate types, the Advance Placements, the Honors Only variety, the CIS College in the School types because it leveled the playing field. There were no honor points to be earned, and it was hard to find the juxtaposition. The camera is just a machine, a vehicle, like a pencil, computer, or potter's wheel, or paintbrush. There is no one correct answer, which bothered many of those high Green or Golds (True Colors Learning Style, me, a High Orange, 24/24 yes!) Random, spatial abstracts have difficulty teaching concrete, sequential linear learners.

So I compromised: develop lesson playersDevelop a pinhole camera photo. Use a Hypothesis, Collect data, Record results, Analyze, interpret using the vocab of art: Elements of art..color, line, shape Principles of design. Critique it. Mount it. Title it. Write your artistic vision statement. Exhibit. Prepare to defend. Autograph your work with excellence. Yes, you'll probably be like Ralph Ellison, "Invisible Man," but you won't need someone to notice you, because you will be satisfied in knowing yourself. Live life as if each day is a gift and that it might be your last. Be thankful you breathe.

Living wills, DNR? I want to be alive when I die, said Margaret Bourke-White to Erskine Caldwell in their 1937 collaboration "You have Seen Their Faces," my rare original edition which was "borrowed" from my art room, Bermuda Triangle Room 164, as were MANY things, too numerous to list, but I will name a few: my keys (taken by 9th grader and returned by same when a 12th grader, thank you, Billy Barthol); my keys (taken by L. but returned mysteriously by S. who really said that she was someone else, damn, I shouldn't have paid her the $25 cash but with a check made out to the ficticious name she had given me.). Everybody was going to Valley Fair on a field trip that day. L, I forgive you, I know you're in Irag today saving us; B, honesty will & social justice WILL make the world a better place. My keys, to the nth power... you see, the keys always had a lanyard & whistle on them, but I would trust everybody, and eventually pay to get my keys back, which was a good deal for me as school would charge me $20 @key to replace them, and God knows, having been there since the school opened in 1979, I had the keys to the kingdom. Another one who stole my keys, stole them except they took them for the wrong reason. We had mag locks on the exterior doors and I had a mag lock key so we could go outside and extend the perimeters of my art room. A mag lock key looks identical to a computer security key. It was one of the last days of my school career, the weather was gorgeous, my students had permission to go out of the room, but not out of the school to photograph. But they "borrowed" the wrong key. They thought by taking the mag lock key they could let themselves out of the building. Having my computer security key instead they discovered it would not work so they busted the fire alarm. The parent was a lawyer and I begged him to get back my keys as I couldn't secure the computer without it, but that didn't work. WHAT is the matter with SOME parents these days?

One day my cell phone was taken by K. NOT one of MY GOOD students but by a 9th grade earth science student of Gosse's who taught in my room. I rarely had the luxury of being in my class during my prep period. But I met great young teachers, like Gosse & Kate, who would float or travel to other classes to teach. This assignment was usually given to "new" teachers.
Gosse's K, takes my cell, makes a string of calls, & hands it off to another student when she knew I was looking for her. Well, I couldn't prove who had a taken it so I called all of the #'s
she had called and finally convinced a voice that this call was made from my stolen phone & I needed help to prove who took it. Turned out this voice was a former student, Washington Class of '74, and that he agreed to help me. It was not his daughter but she knew who had given it to her so she could make the call. Nailed her, but there's still a warrant out for her arrest as
said thief never showed up for the court appearance.

I often went to the local pawn shop to buy back the exact item which was taken. It was a fraction of its replacement cost. I used my own money. Cameras properly signed out would not be returned because there were never any consequences that could be enforced. My philosophy, you do the crime, you do the time. My personal supply diminished & so did those of all my friends who donated antiquated equipment, SLRs, Twin Lens Reflex, Principal Sorenson's Nikon, science teacher Kathy Kahn's Canon, sister Denise Ranelli's Canon, an underwater Canon, Charlie's Nikon equiment, the counselor's Zeiss, and numerous Gregory vintage collections including a Rolleicord, Leica, Polaroid, Panoramic, Pinhole & Dollar Dianas (it didn't matter what they were worth, they got stolen no matter what). It didn't matter that they were signed out, and that I knew who had them or destroyed them, the bottom line was they possession was 9/10ths of the law. I knew who stole my keys, except they took them for the wrong reason. We had mag locks on the exterior doors and I had a mag lock key so we could go outside and extend the perimeters of my art room.

Sherlock Holmes I became. It got easier when they stole digital. One returned them with the memory of the date & what time the photos were taken. I'd get the camera back when I recognized a person's shoes & bedroom.

The best story was the time the camera was "found" in a store the "day" after it was missing. That worked until I showed everyone that the thief and the returnee was the same person. He had pictures of his home, pet, & truck, dated before the time he said he'd found the camera. And he was my trusted school service.

My other school service had computer & equipment stuffed in the her duffel with her hat, on the last day of school. Never saw her again but I had photographed her wedding with camera grip, Trina, my clone, Como Park Class of 1980. It was in FrogTown & they had a limo. I shot & developed the pictures, one hour developed them, put them in albums, and charged her $30, but I never got paid.

More than the cameras though were my archives of vintage memorabilia, like Leica mags, Aperture, National Geographics from the black & white days, cases full of them. & especially the Aperture of Edward Weston's Green Pepper #30. I remember the U of MN thief who would go into the Archives with a razor and slice out Weston photos, the photographer who he, himself, scratched every neg. His heirs burned them, not to be photoshopped.

Art evokes emotion, passion, action & can be as brutally graphic as a photo by Manual Alvarez-Bravo or as haunting as the veiled Sicilian woman by William Albert Allard.

The introduction of Luis Gonzales Palma was a gift to me from numero uno, aka birkiebabe, photogurl, sportyspice, the bard's date, Nonna Salvatore's ginagianetta. She herself was a gift to me from someone I still want to grow old with, something that I sensed the day we met & still believe today, a relationship that is not possessive, but always under construction with room to grow. Need to see Gail Sheehy who's in Mpls Tues 2/21, author of Passages.