I watched the Adele special on TV Sunday night. I have been a “fan” of her voice since I first heard her sing and have bought all of her albums as they came out. I very much enjoyed watching and listening to her, but could have done without most of the interview portions with Oprah. I just don’t have much interest in a celebrity’s personal life and have never understood the imperative that leads people to join fan clubs, for instance.

There are a lot of people whose body of work I admire, but why would I want to meet them? What is there to say other than “I enjoy your work, hope you keep on”? I know, for example, that any movie with Meryl Streep in it is probably going to be worth watching, if only for her performance. But why would I ever want to meet her? I don’t know her; she doesn’t know me. It would be like walking up to some total stranger and expecting there to be some kind of connection between us.

I know for adolescent fans there is often a fantasy sexual component to the adoration of some celebrity or group, but why does this interest in every detail of the celebrity’s life go on into adulthood? I assume that celebrities and their actions provide society with some kind of morality plays, but, again, how does this translate into wanting to meet the star in person?

I can only think of one “notable” person that I could meet and actually envision having a conversation with: John Scalzi, a well-regraded science-fiction writer. But we wouldn’t be having a conversation because of his books. He has had a blog (https://whatever.scalzi.com/) up for years and I have been reading it for almost as long as he’s been writing it. This means that I “know” the public John Scalzi and would be able to talk to him about his favorite tortilla brand and what his dog has been up to lately.

When it comes to most celebrities, I have no such connections. Meeting Adele would be like meeting my gardener or the owner of my favorite local diner outside of their jobs. One provides great service for my car; one serves terrific sandwiches and waffles, and one sings great songs. What would we have to say to each other?

The main difference that I see is that one provider reaches millions of people, while the others reach only a few thousand, at most. But I can’t see how that makes any difference to me as far as my interest in their personal life goes. Is part of the draw being in a club with others with the same preoccupation? Is it because their celebrity puts their personal life in the public realm and therefore readily available?

I was musing about this because the other day I saw a headline about “What your favorite star’s children are doing now!” This struck me as very, very odd. I don’t care what the “star” is up to; why in the world would I care what their children are doing? And what a rotten thing to do to the kids who probably aren’t looking for that kind of attention.

All in all, I just want publicly talented people to offer me whatever their public talent is and then we both go off and enjoy our separate private lives. Of course some people these days are only known because they make their private lives public, but those people don’t seem very interesting to me.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, I only saw my dad’s father once in my life. I believe my brother saw him twice. We did get a few stories about him, though.

My mom’s parents weren’t too sure about having their daughter marry that “Greek boy”. My mom says Grandma didn’t learn to spell the last name until they had been married five years and it appeared the marriage would last. Grandma’s idea was that Grandfather pushed a fruit cart down the street for his living. In actuality, he was chancellor of the Greek embassy in Washington, DC.

Although our last name is unusual in the US it is fairly well known in Greece, although it is not common there either. Back around the beginning of the 20th century one of my greats was President of Greece during a brief democratic period. The family also had a famous admiral who fought against the Turks. There is even a family museum on the island of Hydra. The family was very influential in the shipping business.

The family story is that after WWII, Grandfather used that influence and also a tidy sum of money to help Aristotle Onassis get started in his shipping business. Years later when my Grandfather reminded him of this “handshake” loan, Aristotle professed to have no memory of such a transaction.

My Grandfather retired to the Greek community of Tarpon Springs, Florida. He was born in 1887 and died in 1967, so he was the first of all my grandparents to pass; one of the reasons I only saw him that once.

Here he is in Tarpon Springs with his second wife:

And here are Grandfather, my dad and my aunts, and my brother and I during his only visit to California in 1961:

Nana was my dad’s mother. Nana was the “spoiler” of the bunch. By which I mean she loved to spoil us by indulging us in such things as taking us out to eat and to places such as Knott’s Berry Farm. Her main difficulty in her ability to “spoil us rotten” was that she didn’t have much money. She was constantly offering us sweets and the like: Nana was, of course, the one who introduced us to Pop-Tarts, with butter, naturally (see my earlier post on Pop-Tarts).

Nana worked as a nurse’s aide, so we often saw her in a crisp, white uniform. I know she worked at one of the local hospitals as well as working privately for individuals. Additionally, she and Daisy were often caring for one relative or another: first Nana’s mother, Lulu, and later Daisy’s sister, Myrna.

Nana just back from work, at our house in 1959:

Nana had a toy poodle named Nicki that she just adored; here they are in 1960:

Nana’s mother, the only great grandparent I ever met:

Nana in 1966; she would have been 75:

A few pictures from earlier times:

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Nana lived to be 79, she died in 1970, the same year I graduated from high school. All my memories of her are only ones of my interactions with her; I know nothing of the woman she was when she wasn’t being my “Nana”. I’d give a lot to be able to go back and talk with her!

My parents actually got the dog first, then had kids. Here she is as a pup:

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My Grandma was my best friend when I was young. I remember more times with her than anyone else. During the summers, up until when we all moved when I was 11, it seems like I must have spent half my time at her house. Even after we all moved away from each other, I spent some vacations at my grandparents house in Loma Linda.

We played “Hide the Thimble”, Parcheesi, and Chinese Checkers.

She taught me to do a bit of crocheting and to make rag rugs.

We did embroidery and liquid embroidery on pillowcases, tablecloths, and napkins.

With her help, I did many paint-by-number kits and mosaic kits. In fact, it’s one of my projects in the background of this picture of her taken in 1964 for their golden wedding anniversary (she made her dress, of course):

And most fun of all, she and I picked the boysenberries she grew in the garden and made boysenberry jelly. Every summer we would slather it on saltines; it was wonderful!

Strangely enough, the one thing I did not learn was sewing. I was warned early on about not letting the needle go through my thumb and was scared of the sewing machine from then on.

Here we are together when I’m 1 and 2:

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Here she is at about 80 years old:

She lived to be 87; she died the year after I finished college. I wish I had had a lot more moments with her, but I love reflecting on the times we did have.

I spent less time with my Grandpa than with my other grandparents because he was always out doing stuff. When my grandparents moved to California they bought some land and built nine houses on it. One they took for themselves, one they sold to my parents, and the rest they rented out. Grandpa was kept busy doing the upkeep and repairs on the rental units.

Here’s an plot of the street I grew up on:

When Grandpa wasn’t fixing things, he was growing things. On his little plot he grew corn, squashes, cucumbers, various fruit trees, and boysenberries. At first, he also raised chickens, but they were gone by the time I was born.

I’ve been back to my old street and his houses have stood up remarkably well. He obviously knew what he was doing as both a farmer and a contractor.

Before moving out to California and becoming a “gentleman farmer”, Grandpa was a chemistry professor at a college in the Washington, DC area. I always had a hard time picturing my overall-clad grandfather in a suit teaching a bunch of premed students, but that is how he supported his family.

During the time I knew him, my Grandpa seemed nearly ageless.

If you want to know more about my Grandpa’s early life and haven’t seen his stories in my previous posts, his adventures are detailed under “Grandpa’s Memoirs” in the menu at the top of the page.

When I took the dog out for her walk the other day, the quail were just exploding out of the underbrush. I found this odd, as they usually don’t pay that much attention to us. A moment later there was a thump as though someone had moved something in a nearby garage. Brindy and I continued our walk and on the way back I noticed something in front of the lobby door of one of our buildings. “How odd”, I thought, “that package is shaped like a hawk”. Of course, as I got closer I found that it really was a hawk that had stunned itself by flying into the window, hence the loud thump.

The hawk was obviously disoriented, but otherwise appeared unharmed. I texted my neighbors to warn them to be careful opening the lobby door. They went out about 20 minutes later and did not see any bird, so it seems to have recovered.

Nice to see one up close, but I didn’t want to upset it too much, so just snapped two pictures:

Here’s a closer look at the mark it left on the window; you can see the bird hit the window with wings spread:

On my dad’s side of the family I had three “grandparents”; two official ones and one unofficial. My dad’s mother was my “Nana”, while his father was “Grandfather”. I’ll get to the third grandparent in a minute.

Like my mom, my dad was also the youngest child in his family; his mother was 33 or so when he was born. He had two older sisters. His father was the Chancellor at the Greek embassy in Washington, DC. I believe Nana worked at the embassy and that’s how his parents met. They divorced when he was 8; apparently Nana couldn’t bring herself to accept the European “custom” that her husband having a mistress on the side was no big deal as long as he was discreet about it.

Nana met Daisy Roth when Nana was in the hospital giving birth to my dad and Daisy was her nurse. Daisy was hired to move in to help Nana take care of the kids; and after Nana’s divorce, they continued living together. As far as I was concerned, then, Daisy was another grandparent. She came to family dinners, went everywhere that Nana did, and often took care of my brother and I when my folks were away.

So for me, my grandparents were “Grandma and Grandpa”, “Nana and Daisy”, and as a distant third, “Grandfather”.