It’s only 6:39 and I’m finally doing the morning pages. I’m noticing part of me is resistant to success. Not morning page success, although it worked to go to bed early last night, at least for me, and I’m not waiting to get back in bed. Big victory. Now I have to keep it up and aim to go to bed by 10:30.
Happy International Women’s Day. I’ve been thinking a lot about my grandma Lydia, this before the Russians started their bombing and war on Ukraine. She was born in Odessa in I think 1905. Her mother died when she was 7. At 2 months they fled Ukraine due to the Pogroms. Basically from what I understand groups of people killing Jews. It comes from the word gromit that means to destroy using violence. I imagine people on horseback even though they probably didn’t ride in killing all the Jews.
They fled to Harbin, China, apparently one of the few places in that part of the world to go where you could live without fear of getting killed for being Jewish. The Chinese didn’t care. I wonder if there’s anything more about the Chinese and the Jews. The trans Siberian Railway was in Harbin and I think her dad worked for them.
Anyway she became a concert pianist and was in Berlin during the Roaring 20s which later she said was the happiest time in her life. Maybe she didn’t say that and I’m remembering wrong but who wouldn’t say that with the suffering awaiting her, being married to a not nice person to say the least, having 5 kids, all boys, and being the main breadwinner of the family. My grandfather was a cellist but not easy to work with. She tried once to leave him and took the 4 kids to Harbin. She fell in love with a guy there who unfortunately died. He was kidnapped and his father refused to pay the ransom so they killed him. She went back to my grandfather and continued living in Japan. well I guess I got it wrong. Kaspe’s dad tried to pay them the 100,000 but the authorities told him not to.
“ Again he was advised to not pay the ransom.[4] However, the body of his son was found by the police on December 3, 1933. Simon Kaspé had been starved and beaten by his kidnappers, who cut off his ears, ripped off his fingernails, and forced him to keep his head in a dark, cold hole in the ground as temperatures dropped to 20 and 30 degrees below zero. His captors had killed him with a gunshot to the head.[4]”
Wow. I didn’t know the brutal details. How awful this must have been for my grandmother. She never spoke of it her entire life and I guess refused all questions about it. Looking at it now, her trauma started with the loss of her mother so, what a life. In her later years she and my grandfather moved to Los Angeles. One of my uncles moved there too. His wife is Japanese and they had 3 daughters, my cousins. My grandmother died around age 76 of a heart attack. Everyone was mad at her for not going to the doctor as supposedly she could have avoided dying then.
Oh and the other cool thing is she played piano in a silent film in 1930. You can find 2 recordings of her playing piano with my cello playing grandfather. My dad says he has more recordings of her playing but doesn’t know where they are. That photo of her got 57 likes on Facebook, probably more than any I’ve gotten. She was also beautiful on the outside.
Look what I found: The Reconsideration of the Trial of Simon Kaspe’s Murderers 47 Notes and … To Lydia Shapiro, I leave some of my notebooks and music pages as a keepsake…
6 Impossible Things For Breakfast 