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Monday, September 29, 2014

History through family history

I continue with the story of my granparents, Dorothy and Acatius, following through my grandfather's finishing his medical thesis at the University of Geneva in 1933 and then moving to New York.  My father was born in 1938 in Astoria.  Several years later, they moved to Los Angeles, living in Los Feliz, near Hollywood.  We then get into more familiar territory, where I have heard a few stories from my dad about his childhood.  This puts him pre-baby boomer.  I know from some of his poems some of the stories as well.  And I know some of his friends that shared this time with him.

I write out of a need to fill in gaps.  I uncover a fact with a date and I polish it and use it to illuminate its surroundings and act as a tack on which to pin a quilt that creates a fabric that holds.
Today I add a tack for Los Angeles, 1950.  Now I just to fill in the time between then and 2014.
Or perhaps it will be 2020 before this happens.

LA, 1950 is a satisfying tack to place.  It includes my mother who was also living in LA at that time, born in 1943.

The gap includes the civil rights movement (1954-68).  It includes the 60's and the Vietnam War and the hippie movement that developed to some extent in opposition to the war.  There was also the Diggers of 1968 in San Francisco. And I suppose this is the time I was really born out of.