Monday, September 03, 2012


I have been working on a short story as part of a class I am taking to learn to teach writing to second language learners.  This is a paragraph from that story.

     Envolvió la mano con una camiseta de su mochila, y se tomó un trago largo del agua,  La  pena penetraba por su brazo y se sintió una ligereza envolverle. Su pulso se corría desenfrenado.  Sabía que tenía que alcanzar su coche estacionado al base de este colmo volcánico que él había decidido a subir hace unas semanas habiendo perdido su trabajo de los últimos quince años.  Desde su juventud quería regresar a esta región del desierto del Altar que por su gran dureza y soledad parecía ser el antídoto a la ansiedad y presión integrantes a la vida de la ciudad.  Mientras que pensaba en su hija Mara y como iba a castigarle por este nuevo más reciente aventura,  ahora, como las otras, fracasada.  Pero esta vez  sabía que ella tendría razón, sabía que estaba en verdadero peligro una hora del coche y al punto de desmayarse. 

Sunday, April 22, 2012

Minor Family History

Made weak by time and fate,  but strong in will
To strive, to seek to find, and not to yield.
                                               
                                              Tennyson


I was, on ancestry.com, able to find the census document from 1940 of the street my father grew up on which listed him, 3 brothers and his mother and father as residents.  He was 16 at the time and his best friend "Colley" lived next door.  Colley was killed in the war.

I met with my 83 year old aunt today in Middletown CT.  I asked her for a little family history as she is the last relative I have on my mother's side, the O'Keefe side who was actually born an O'Keefe.  She told me that two of her mother's brothers had been gassed in ww1 and had never been the same after the war.  She also said that her uncle Bob was born 13 years after my grandmother and that he always considered my grandmother as his mother because she had taken care of him.  Frank, the one most severely wounded was an alcoholic.  He had married a women who was heir to some of the Dodge family fortune and had a daughter Rosie born to him.  Rosie was about my aunt's age and they had played together whenenever my aunt and my mother went to Illinois to see the Hickman side of the family.  Rosie's mother died shortly after she was born and because her father would not or could not care for her she stayed for a while with my great grandmother and then was adopted by a family named Fletcher.  The lawyer in charge of the trust left to her by her mother stole most of the money from the trust,  some of the land she had in the trust was sold to create OHare airport.  Rosie's adopted brother was so angered by this that he set out to become a lawyer and bring the man to justice.  He actually did succeed in becoming a lawyer and brought suit against the man who had robbed the trust.  This man committed suicide before the court date.  Rosie did receive some money from the life insurance that the man had.  Interestingly enough he had bought the insurance through my grandfather at my grandmother's urging.  I had never heard this story before.  Rosie had been injured as a child when a large tire fell on her and crushed her hip.  She never married and has since died. 

My grandfather was an accountant for an insurance company in Boston.  I guess he was the head accountant and the firm had offices all over the country.  He also studied for the bar but never took the exam.
On my grandfather's side,  I had asked about his brother Harry who had died when I was a child and I remember my grandparents inherited a cadillac and a collection of cut glass from him.  I believe my grandfather was also the executor of the estate.  Harry had made a fortune providing heavy equipment for the city of Boston.  He was a friend of James Michael Curley. 
Another thing my aunt told me was that my great grandfather OKeefe had been killed when he fell under the wheels of a trolley when my grandfather was 16.

Sunday, March 11, 2012

para esto aperecio el hijo de dios, para deshacer las obras del diablo