I've just been entrusted with my Tante Barbel's early diaries and memories and photos.

My Tante Barbel (Barbara Armgart) was my German mother's older sister. She lived from 1926 to 2008. 
I knew her only as being a kindly aunt, whom I got to visit when I was 4 and 12 and 18. She had a modern house in Braunschweig, Germany, with a beautiful backyard, in which I played federball (badminton). I knew that she was the first female dentist in her German town of Braunschweig, in the early 1960s. 

Here's a very brief excerpt from her diary (12 January 1946), when she was 20 years old:
I don't even know his name. I don't want to know his name. I just want to dance with him!!

And an excerpt from 14 January 1946:
My family is of the opinion I was reckless yesterday, and as a result no one speaks to me. And what did I do? I spent an afternoon and an evening dancing. Am I not a grown-up, so why the theatrics? It's not my fault that Mutti can't get over her ridiculous fears. I am not going to beg forgiveness. I can be just as silent as you all, perhaps even better! Have you never been young?!? Nothing but dancing for 6 hours. With Rudi Rummel, Guenter Lieberodt, Maenne Metz, Heinz Schulze, Mr. Klimke, Mr. Behne, and many others. Mr. Behne invited us all to have supper at his farm, and we stayed there until 9:30 pm. That was all, and that's why they are mad at me!

------------------------------------------------------------

I think I just became aware of what I need to document, first and foremost, for the rest of my life. The notebook I received is massive, with multiple pages of text and photos. From a seemingly mild-mannered woman, who, as it turned out, led a quite-interesting internal life! My own mother took the time to translate her diaries and many other documents related to her older sister.

p.s. The innocence of "we stayed there until 9:30 pm" breaks my heart. (And the local mogul is also a bit tender for inviting folks after-hours to have "supper at his farm." I don't think that particular line has ever been used before.)

WHODUNNIT??!!

In the summer of 1976, my family moved from a house in a North Texas suburb outside of Wichita Falls to a house way out in the country (school district at a small town west of Fort Worth).

While living in city areas, my parents seemed able to maintain some surface decorum. Once out in the boonies, though, it was chaos:
We had to burn our own trash out in the country, but "we" started a fire and had to call local fire-fighters.
We decided to buy a horse for me to ride, but once she took off while I was on her, and I refused to ride her again, we sold her off. "Blitz" was her name.
We put our two long-time pet dachshunds in a side-pen, apart from our backyard, so there was very little contact with them after this.

There were 4 neighbor families on our new-found street. Most of us kids participated in softball games, relay races, etc. (My mom and dad never hung out for the games, though the other parents did.)

All of the above to remember this one awful thing that has stuck with me forever, even at age 60. About how much neither of my parents liked me---

One summer evening during a softball game at the next-door neighbor's house: A shout from next door: "STEPHANIE, GET IN HERE!!!!" How fast I left the middle of the game to RUN home----and how I was humiliated in front of everyone. 

When I arrived inside my house, my mother and father presented me with food scattered below the dining-room table. Whatever we'd had for dinner that evening, someone didn't like it, and had thrown bits of it below the table. Problem was: It wasn't ME who'd thrown the food down there. It was my younger brother. When I pointed out what side of the table all the rejected food appeared on, my parents seemed briefly sheepish---"Oh..."  They'd been SUPER-willing to overtly punish ME for something/anything. What to do now, since they'd made a public scene and now didn't have ME to punish? Their solution: "OK...well, um, tell your brother to come in here." Never would they have screamed at my brother to "get in here" in front of the neighbors. 

This is the every-day psychosis I grew up with. Before my father actually tried to shoot my mother in 1977. (Only because we now lived out in the country. He would not have dared do such a thing earlier while we lived in small towns or college towns.)

RE the original story, pre-shooting: Why in the world is any family dinner so traumatic that anyone, much less a 6-year-old, has to throw food on the floor rather than just being able to say he doesn't want to eat it? (Not to mention why a surrogate---ME---was blamed, because someone had to be blamed.)

"Come on movie, make it start!" (Portlandia)

 

Feelin' Stupid

When I was a freshman at 18, living at Jester Center in Austin:
I thought that people hung out on the steps outside the building just to be hanging out. One day, feelin' lonely, I went out there and took my place on the steps... Once the student shuttle bus arrived, everyone left, and I was left sitting there by myself like a dork!  

(Years later, when I lived in New York City: I saw that people did, indeed, hang out in outdoor spaces! Union Square, for one. I wasn't crazy, after all!)

Before I lived in NYC, was just visiting:
I sat atop a Tourist Bus. A man in a park that we passed seemed to be waving... I, the dork, waved back. (Turned out he was doing Tai Chi, not "saying Hi". Whoops.)

Garth Brooks in Ireland (1998): Friends in Low Places

Blame it all on my roots
I showed up in boots
And ruined your black-tie affair
The last one to know
The last one to show
I was the last one you thought you'd see there

And I saw the surprise
And the fear in his eyes
When I took his glass of champagne
And I toasted you
Said, "Honey, we may be through,
But you'll never hear me complain."

'Cause I've got friends in low places
Where the whiskey drowns
And the beer chases
My blues away
And I'll be okay
I'm not big on social graces
Think I'll slip on down to the Oasis
Oh, I've got friends in low places

Well, I guess I was wrong
I just don't belong
But then I've been there before
Everything's all right
I'll just say goodnight
And I'll show myself to the door

Hey, I didn't mean
To cause a big scene
Just give me an hour and then
Well, I'll be as high
As that ivory tower
That you're livin' in

'Cause I've got friends in low places
Where the whiskey drowns
And the beer chases
My blues away
And I'll be okay
I'm not big on social graces
Think I'll slip on down to the Oasis
Oh, I've got friends in low places...

Garth Brooks: The Dance (1990)

I hadn't heard this song for at least 30 years. 
A local country radio station played it today as I was driving around.

"How could I have known that you'd ever say goodbye..."

The voice of Garth was never profound, but, nonetheless, hearing this song on the radio made me cry!

It also flashed me back to when I was in grad school in San Francisco in the mid-90s---
after years of keeping up with mid-90s rock and rap, I was finally sick of it.
I think a mediocre Courtney Love album and a Warren G album were the final dull straws.
At the time, there was the "BMG Club," where you could order 12 CDs for a dollar, and then only have to buy 2 full-price CDs in the next year.
I ordered a bunch of Country CDs for the first time: Tammy Wynette Greatest, Johnny Cash, Garth Brooks, Waylon, Willie.
The Tammy CD, which had duets with George Jones, led me to buying George Jones for the first time. He's since become my favorite male singer.

The Garth Brooks CD was "The Hits," released in December 1994. Nearly everything on this is very good. (The most famous/greatest song being "Friends in Low Places." But here's "The Dance.")

I never went on to be a Garth Brooks fan. (From the Hits, I could tell that he wasn't going to get any more "soulful" or anything on any individual album! But this is a great "party" and/or "'90s memories album.")

Looking back on the memory of
The dance we shared 'neath the stars above
For a moment all the world was right
How could I have known that you'd ever say goodbye

And now I'm glad I didn't know
The way it all would end, the way it all would go
Our lives are better left to chance
I could have missed the pain
But I'd have had to miss the dance

Holding you I held everything
For a moment wasn't I a king
But if I'd only known how the king would fall
Hey who's to say you know I might have changed it all

And now I'm glad I didn't know
The way it all would end the way it all would go
Our lives are better left to chance
I could have missed the pain
But I'd have had to miss the dance

"I Wanna Be Sedated": Go-Gos in Central Park, 2001

 

"I Wanna Be Sedated": Return of Jackie/Judy in LA (July 2026)

 Thanks, Carrie and Fred. Nice of you to allow Corinne to participate...
And then there's your random DEI hire... There's no JOY in your version.
This song can't really go wrong, regardless of who does it.
Though the Go-Gos, above, do actually do it much better.

Deep Thoughts by Not-Jack-Handey

Life is like "The After Hours." It's a 1963 "Twilight Zone" episode. I saw it for the first time around 15 years ago or so. In a depressed state, but still: When I watched this, I felt a sense of epiphany: This is exactly how life is: We're part of the ether, then briefly, in cycles, get a chance at acting out in physical form. (The woman in the story was chastised for not wanting to go back.)

As for "black holes": Each black hole is kind of like an hour-glass in the universe. They draw stuff in, and then spit stuff out. The stuff they draw in: Where does it go? As with an hour-glass, to be sifted out/recycled into another universe.

Oh, and what is the "Dark Energy" that astrophysicists cannot explain? 
Says AI: "Dark energy and dark matter are two mysterious components of the universe. Dark matter makes up about 27% of the universe and exerts gravitational pull, while dark energy accounts for 68% and drives the accelerated expansion of the universe."

Souls? According to "Science": "Energy cannot be created or destroyed; it can only be transformed or transferred from one form to another."

I once knew a woman who thought she was the reincarnation of the Black Dahlia. Pretty much the saddest thing I've ever heard. When I think of my own reincarnation, I think of the real-life story of the horse being transported in a trailer whose leg was stuck outside a window of the trailer. The humans didn't have time to unload the trailer and re-adjust the horses within, so someone just sawed off the horse's leg that was sticking out of the window.

As EVERY religion in the world teaches you: Don't rely on the physical life for happiness. Now---if only one or another of dozens of cultures taught this, I might think it was just a shallow, cultural thing. But, going back thousands of years: The root of EVERY SINGLE CULTURE has taught to focus on the SOUL and the afterlife. Why is that? Was each and every one of these civilizations just stupid? Was it ALL a hoax concocted by those in power to subjugate the masses, as the Marxists later claimed?

The early Christians, for example, initially had ZERO power. They were complete low-lifes and outcasts, yet somehow later convinced major potentates like Justinian, for example, to accept their views. Why is that? What happened? Why are millions around the world following these beliefs today if there were not something to it?
 
Back in the mid-1990s, I travelled from Texas to California, and was stunned/awed by the barrenness of the landscape. "It looks like the bottom of the sea," I thought. As it turned out, that's exactly what this landscape had once been. 

Mars is known to have once had water. What if Earthlings are refugees from Mars as it ran out of resources? (Would that explain the dichotomy between advanced people and aborigines?) Or what if we were criminal outcasts from some other planetary society, given the Old Testament as a guide-post to our past history and how we should construct the new one?

It's all very mysterious. So thinks Not-Jack-Handey.

-----------------------------------

Addendum: I'm a "Portlandia" fan and was doing a search on Reddit, coming across a 12-year-old open forum from Fred Armisen and Carrie Brownstein, I think upon the release of their latest season of the show. Armisen asked the Reddit audience (paraphrased): "Which do you think is more accurate? What people of the time say, or what historians come up with centuries later?" If I remember right, he was referring specifically to the Egyptian pyramids. (And what a great question, though why ask it on Reddit, of all low-info places?) I was way-too-late to respond, but if I'd been there on Reddit:
People at the time. Because someone's dad or cousin or friend-of-a-friend would have been working on the pyramids and would have been able to tell you exactly how they hauled all of those rocks and what they ate for lunch. Centuries-later, only academics guessing.

German TV (1977): It's a Game / Rock-n-Roll Love Letter

 I was a 12-year-old BCR fan from the US in Germany this summer 
and saw this actual TV show!
(And, at the time, took Polaroids of the TV screen at my German aunt's house!)
While in Deutschland, my mom bought me the German version of 
Shaun Cassidy's debut album, plus the newly released "It's a Game" by the BCR---
much fancier than the US version, as I later discovered.

The Beatles: Happiness Is a Warm Gun (1968)

 

George and Tammy: We're Not the Jet Set (1973 on "Hee-Haw")

 

By a fountain back in Rome
I fell in love with you
In a small cafe in Athens
You said you loved me too

And it was April in Paris
When I first held you close to me
Rome, Georgia, Athens, Texas
And Paris, Tennessee

No, we're not the Jet Set
We're the old Chevrolet Set
There's no Riviera in Festus, Missouri
And you won't find Onassis in Mullinville, Kansas
No, we're not the Jet Set
We're the old Chevrolet Set
But ain't we got love?

No, we're not the Jet Set
We're the old Chevrolet Set
Our steak and martinis
Is draft beer with weinies

Our Bach and Tchaikovsky ("who's that?")
Is Haggard and Husky
No, we're not the Jet Set
We're the old Chevrolet Set
But ain't we got love?

No, we're not the Jet Set
We're the old Chevrolet Set
The Jones and Wynette set
Ain't the flamin' suzette set...

Tammy Wynette: Til I Can Make It On My Own (1976)

 

Tammy Wynette: It's Just a Matter of Time (1970)

 

Sleater-Kinney: A New Wave (2015 on Letterman)

 

Well every day I throw a little party
But a fit would be more fitting, fitting
And every time I come a little higher
Should I leap or go on living, living?
Hear the voices venomous and thrilling
In my head they're always calling, calling
But I wanna gotta go the way my blood beats
So I'm not fodder for their folly

No one here is taking notice
No outline will ever hold us
It's not a new wave, it's just you and me
Eyes are the only witness
Die to prove we ever lived this
Invent our own kind of obscurity

Let's destroy a room with this love
We can drain out all the power, power
Steal from the makers who unmade us
Leave them nothing to devour, devour
Well I am raw material
Make me plastic, make me fuel
I can be, I can be
I can be all

No one here is taking notice
No outline will ever hold us
It's not a new wave, it's just you and me
Eyes are the only witness
Die to prove we ever lived this
Invent our own kind of obscurity

No one here is taking notice
No outline will ever hold us
It's not a new wave, it's just you and me
Eyes are the only witness
Die to prove we ever lived this
Invent our own kind of obscurity

Sinead O'Connor: The Emperor's New Clothes (1990)

 Incredibly sad how bold and confident she sounded in 1990, yet how she ended up. 
By 2010, she was an oft-married, religion-switching, drug-addled nut-case 
who'd lost her kids, appearing on US talk shows and on the Internet 
discussing her mental problems. She died in 2023 at age 56.

Sinead O'Connor: Mandinka (from "The Lion and the Cobra," 1987)

 I have the below 1987 album cover on a T-shirt that I wore today.



(This was the European cover for the "Lion and the Cobra" album; 
the US album had a more demure shot, as shown on the video below.)

While doing errands today in my Sinead T: 

A 20-something homeless guy hanging around outside the post office as I left said: 
"Ma'am, I really like your shirt." 
(I love it! Now that I'm over 50, street-dudes and mechanics tend to call me "Ma'am" 
instead of giving me a hard time!)

And, later, in the UPS Store, the 30-something gay clerk said only: "Mandinka!"

This album came out a whopping 40 years ago!! 
And it's still known---among old ladies, gay store-clerks, random homeless guys!

 

I'm dancing the seven veils
Want you to pick up my scarf
See how the black moon fades
Soon I can give you my heart

I don't know no shame
I feel no pain
I can't see the flame
But I do know Man-din-ka
I do know Man-din-ka
I do know Man-din-ka

They're throwing it all this way
Dragging it back to the start
And they say, "See how the glass is raised?"
I have refused to take part
I told them, "Drink something new"
Please let me pull something through

I don't know no shame
I feel no pain
I can't see the flame
But I do know Man-din-ka
I do know Man-din-ka
I do know Man-din-ka

Merle Haggard + Tammy Wynette: Wembley Stadium UK (1988)

 I love Merle, but... TAMMY'S VOICE!!

George Jones: On the Back Row (1972)

 

Here I sit on the back row in a church down the street
Not too far from the place where we used to meet
And it's finally getting through to me, you found someone to love
But I'll go back to the place that I keep thinking of

It's not a fancy place just a tavern in the lonely part of town
Where lonely people find someone and hope to settle down
They tell me to go and I can't understand
Here I sit on the back row while you wed another man.

You'd never dream but after many years I may still be sittin' there
With just a bottle and two glasses right next to your favorite chair
And who knows, you might outlive him, and he might even do you wrong
There I'll sit in a tavern waiting for you all alone.

And it's not a fancy place just a tavern in the lonely part of town
Where lonely people find someone and hope to settle down
They tell me to go and I can't understand
Here I sit on the back row while you wed another man

George Jones: Moments of Brilliance (1987)

 

I wasn't the smart one in class
And I wasn't the one who ran fast
I begin things then I don't follow through
But I have moments of brilliance with you.

There are times when I'm flawless perfection itself
There are times when I'm even amazed at myself
I'll admit it my talents are few
But I have moments of brilliance with you.

I can't draw lines that look straight
I live life a half hour late
As a lover, I'm average, it's true
But I have moments of brilliance with you.

There are times when I'm flawless perfection itself
There are times when I'm even amazed at myself
I'll admit it my talents are few
But I have moments of brilliance with you.