Uptown Radio

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INTRO: We’re all used to hearing stories with words. But commentator Matthew Vann found you don’t always need words to tell them.

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HOST: Jessica Gould got married twice in one year. And she says it took two ceremonies to understand what a wedding is all about.

NARR: Michael proposed in early spring 2009. It was sunset, at the water’s edge in Annapolis Maryland. We kissed and walked the cobble stone streets, hand in hand, peaceful and in love. We knew just what we wanted. A long engagement of about a year and a half with a simple wedding, maybe about 30 people, sometime in the fall.

But my parents had their own ideas. My dad suggested getting hitched at the Harvard Club. My mom filled an accordion file with ads for Amsala dresses, Tiffany wedding bands, All Clad cookware and fine china. It seemed like every day she had a new dish to discuss, but I wasn’t interested. Finally I told her that if she mentioned china one more time, I’d go there and never come back.

You see, Michael and I considered ourselves to be a pretty low-maintenance couple. Our ideal evening involves eating takeout and watching the Bachelor. And yet, as the months wore on, we found ourselves mired in debates over bands versus DJs and chocolate instead of red velvet cake. The guest list ballooned and so did our budget. By winter we had put down money on an old mansion outside D.C. and hired a caterer. We were expecting about 150 guests in October.

Then my grandmother, Nanny found out she had cancer. Nanny and I spoke nearly every day, and she was the first to embrace Michael as part of our family. If she was going to see us get married, we had to do it fast. So the arguments about cake and cutlery melted away as the family swung into action. We began to plan a small pre-wedding wedding, for close relatives, in my uncle’s backyard.

It was a damp day in late April when Nanny and I went to get our hair done by the man who had styled her faux blond bouffant for more than 25 years. Then I slipped on the simple white dress I bought at J. Crew, linked arms with my parents and walked across the grass to meet my husband. Nanny’s 90 year-old friend Jake played a Bach solo on the viola. Nanny read a sonnet by Shakespeare: Let me not to the marriage of true minds admit impediments. Michael and I promised to love each other, in success and failure, illness and health.

Under a small tent on the patio, we drank champagne and sunk our forks into my mother’s homemade blueberry pie. Nanny said she had never been happier or felt better. Maybe her doctors were wrong and she’d make it to the big wedding in October after all. But just three days later, she had a heart attack. And a month later she was gone. After that, there were no more fights over table cards and cake flavors. I didn’t register for fine china and inherited Nanny’s platters instead. And I began to embrace the October wedding as a celebration of and for family and friends.

When Michael and I got engaged in Annapolis four years ago, I thought our wedding was supposed to be about us, our love, our tastes and preferences. But what I learned along the way is that weddings — and even marriages — aren’t just about the couple. They’re about family — the family that came before, the family you build, and the family you leave behind. And that’s the most romantic thing of all.

HOST: Jessica Gould and Michael Pellegrino will celebrate their third anniversary next week. They aren’t planning another wedding. But they haven’t ruled it out.

The nave of the Ave Maria Oratory in Florida. (Jeff Tyson/Uptown Radio)

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Jeff Tyson’s father spent much of his career as an engineer designing ordinary structures.

But after he died at age 50, Jeff saw that his dad had built something timeless and extraordinary.

Narration time (2:49)

I rarely asked my dad about his job. He worked long hours, but when he came home he wouldn’t talk about it with me and my sister. He knew we were more interested in our band concerts and soccer games. What I did know was that he was a structural engineer. He designed common necessities, like trusses for highway bridges, and parking garages. Sometimes he would design the steeples of local churches. I knew he was good at his job, and I was always proud of

what he did, but I wasn’t very interested in what I knew about his work. And he didn’t mind. He would smile when I told him I dreamed of being an archeologist digging up lost treasures, not working with rulers, triangle tools and calculators the way he did. We laughed about our differences.

When I was in middle school, my dad took a job offer from a company two hours away from where we lived. All I really understood at the time was that he took the new job because of a project the company was planning to work on—building a church in Florida or something like that. For five years he commuted two hours each way to and from work. He often wouldn’t come home at night. Moving closer to his new job would have been a lot more convenient, but he worried about forcing me to change schools. I could see his devotion through the sacrifices he made, but during those five years, I asked him more about the audio books he would listen to on his drive than I would about his work once he got to the office.

When I was 18, my dad was diagnosed with cancer. He went through one major surgery, and two years of painful treatments. Eventually he stopped going to work, and before he passed away, my mom, my sister and I spent as much time with him as we could. After his funeral, my dad’s company got the three of us plane tickets to Florida, to see the result of this project my dad had completed shortly before he died—this church he had built over the course of five years.

It was one year later when we hopped on a plane to Naples Florida and drove to the Ave Maria Oratory. The pictures we’d seen were impressive, but they didn’t do justice to what we saw in person. My dad had built a Cathedral, more or less,– a 27,000 square foot structure with steel beams intertwining in arches within a towering nave. It won an award for engineering innovation, and a stone plaque near the entrance read, “In Memory of Thomas R. Tyson, Structural Engineer of the Oratory.” In the middle ages, a feat like this was the height of human accomplishment and ingenuity. I realized my dad had built something that people would be able to admire for centuries.

As I walked under the beams my dad had engineered, I tried to picture him laboring over drawings or consulting with architects before a two hour commute back home. I longed to go back to one of those days, so I could wait for him to pull his car into the driveway, sit him down at our kitchen table and ask him all about his day. I’d ask him detailed questions, the way a journalist would, and I wouldn’t let him sleep until he told me everything.

Back announce: Jeff plans to revisit the Ave Maria Oratory, and would go back every year if he could. (5
sec)

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The phone call came on New Years Day — about a year after my mother’s death. I was finally back on my feet. I had found a job, applied to grad school — and started to enjoy life again.

But the woman on the other end of the line said she was a friend of my dad’s and that he was in the hospital. Nothing life-threatening — but he was starting to develop dementia and would be moved to a nursing home.

“Dementia?!” I thought. “Wow.”

My parents split up when I was too young to remember. My dad was an alcoholic and never showed up in family court, so my mom got full custody.

I saw my dad occasionally until I was five or six. But my mother was always fearful.

“If he really wanted to hurt me, he’d hurt you,” she said.

I didn’t know whether to believe that. But … I’d seen my dad curse at my grandfather. I’d heard stories of him angrily ripping phones out of the walls. And according to my mother’s diary, he once blocked her path and told her, “You’re through, unless you deliver Willow to me. You understand?”

So throughout high school and college, I kept my distance.

After my mother’s death, I thought about calling. But I was worried my dad would say something like, “It’s just as well she’s dead.” I’d heard he kept grudges.

So I kept putting off the phone call.

When I found out he was ill, I did  make plans to see him.

But then, another call came. My dad had taken a turn for the worse and had at most a few days left to live. I got right in the car.

When I arrived at the hospital, my father was lying on his back, eyes closed, mouth slightly ajar. An IV tube dripped pain killers into his arm.

Standing by his bed, I felt like a visitor — not a daughter.

Finally, I reached out and touched his hand. “Hi,” I said. “It’s Willow. I came to see you.”

No response.

And the following afternoon, he passed away.

The one attorney in town said my dad had left everything to a friend. There was nothing for me to do — no funeral arrangements to make, no house to clear out, no one to notify.

So I headed back to New York.

Driving home, I thought about how the few memories I had of my dad … were so much nicer than what I’d HEARD about him.

He was a composer and spent most of his time on a little, rocky island in Maine, which he’d bought in his twenties for $500. He built a windmill, and a house that looked like a castle, with a grand piano and harpsichord in the living room. A network of toy trains snaked through the trees and rocks.

Here, my dad was a fascinating playmate. We’d pick out tunes on the harpsichord … explore the castle … and write stories — where I was the main character.

But the visits ended abruptly. My dad kept me too long one day, and my mom called the police.

After that, even the occasional calls and birthday cards stopped.

After his death, I realized I’d been feeling the loss of this dad — the fun dad — for a long time. Now, I was also grieving for someone I didn’t know. The emotions confused me. I didn’t feel I deserved to be so upset.

So I didn’t tell people he died. When friends and colleagues asked why I had left town, I’d say, “Family emergency — but it’s all taken care of.”

But it isn’t. The lack of closure really bothers me. My dad and I both missed an opportunity. And although I think my childhood was happier and more stable without him, I wish we’d had time for me to be the adult and reach out.

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HOST INTRO: In the May issue of Vanity Fair, Nobel Prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz makes an urgent demand for change in a polemic that is wealth disparity in the United States, where one percent of the population earns nearly a quarter of the nation’s income.  Stiglitz’s piece got Uptown Radio’s Juliana Schatz thinking about the place she grew up.

—

My first year of college I worked at Starbucks. I served double shots and skinny lattes to Westport, the land of hedgefunds and captains of industry.

A brain surgeon with a furrowed brow and loosened tie, always barreled in as our first customer.  He demanded his scone be handed to him in the wax paper, no bag – even if it was against code. “I paid you 3 bucks, give me the scone,” he’d say.  A few hours after rush hour was the Stepford babe, clad in expensive work out gear who very urgently demanded her  ”¾ Equal latte – ORGANIC, right? – I’m in a hurry and I’m gonna miss my spin class – latte.”

My weekends coworker was in high school and only worked because her dad, an NFL exec, thought she needed some responsibility in her life. That and gas was pricey for her Barbie pink Hummer.

My second day on the job one of the regulars noticed I was new.

You’re not from around here?

That’s right. Just moved here for school. I’m from East Hartford.

Did you go to East Catholic?

I said no.  I went to the public school with a subpar reputation;  And then,  he leaned over and whispered across the counter.

“I’m surprised you’d even admit you’re from there.”

And my thought then as it is now was, So what? I mean – I’d always known we were a little scrappy- but it was it really all that bad?

Before college, it never occurred to me that I was from the wrong side of the track. Who even knows what that means? Both of my parents had steady jobs – mom worked as a laundry worker and dad was a factory worker -  I was rich. Other kids I knew lived in much rougher conditions: in projects, on food stamps or some other government assistance.

There were about 2000 kids at school. An eight person security staff and two full time police officers kept the peace at school

By the time we graduated, in a class hundreds less than what it was our freshman year, I knew nearly ten girls who had gotten pregnant. Handful of kids served time in prison. For some reason my close circle of friends avoided the undertow that caught some of the kids I knew. We went off to college, not stopping to see what we left behind.

I’ve traveled world, I am getting a masters degree at an Ivy League university and I’ve produced television.

But I still hear about how things are back home from friends and family. And what I’ve heard isn’t good.

When I read the piece by Joseph Stiglitz, it reminded me that America is still very much a “pick yourself up by your bootstraps” kind of place.  Stiglitz is right on one side – it’s not as easy for lower middle class – a growing majority in America.

But it’s not as black or white as taxes or policy.  Because if that’s the case, why did I get out and others not? As I get further away from the place I grew up, I feel conflicted about all of this. It’s nuanced; it’s not black or white. There’s no doubt I want an equal distribution of wealth for our country, who wouldn’t? But I think it’s easy for academics to get to feeling a little guilt about this. To me – it’s a little more about hutzpah and a little less than holding our hand.

—

Juliana Schatz is a graduate student living in New York City and if you’re wondering,  is a broke and happy.

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Host Intro: Our commentator Joe Danielewicz went back to school recently. And he’s finding its staggered deadlines, multiple bosses and always-present social environment have awakened a childhood problem he thought he’d licked: procrastination. Finally, he says, he’ s finding the time to deal with it.

—

I’ve been an expert procrastinator since grade school. I went from “reading” Clifford the Big Red Dog in front of the TV to pulling all-nighters in my dorm room.

And then I chose a field that is all about deadlines: news, where putting things off is not allowed. Producing a TV newscast, I couldn’t tell my boss “I need 15 more minutes” to finish the show.

I figured a professional work cured me. But being a student again—in journalism school, –means the lines between work and school are blurry.

I’ve fallen into the trap of starting and finishing an article in the 36 hours before it’s due. I realized this dicey method finally caught up with me, when a professor emailed saying: “did you run spell-check before handing this in?”

Squeaking by wasn’t cutting it. I had to make a change. So I signed up for a procrastination workshop on campus.

I’ve since learned my formerly successful work practices are bad ones for school.

Constantly checking emails on my blackberry used to mean I was “on top of my work.” Now, that’s procrastination.

So is reading the news to know what’s going on in the world. It’s a “must-do” in a newsroom setting…but at school, it’s a way to avoid working when a deadline looms.

The freedom of being a grad student also means more opportunities—to put things off – like socializing

As long as I feel the work will probably, possibly, most-likely get done, it SEEMS okay…But it’s not.

My workshop instructor says procrastination is a defense mechanism to avoid work or unpleasant tasks. He also says it stems from a fear of both failure AND success. He said it helps avoid “dreadful and uncomfortable feelings.”

I know those feelings—like when I have to call a source for a story I know nothing about. Street reporting can also stir them up.

That work puts me outside my comfort zone. But it’s also why I came to journalism school.

Knowing all this doesn’t always trigger action though.

That’s been the real struggle. And why I’m determined to press forward with the lessons from the workshop.

And even though we just had our last session, I know I won’t put off the homework.

—

Back announce: Joe Danielewicz will get right back to you—just as soon as he finishes a couple emails…and gets a cup of coffee.