Category Archives: Family and Friends

Five Big Questions – Can You Help?

16 Sunday Sep 2012

Posted by in Family and Friends, The Outer Loop

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I have a long time solicitor friend, Dave Stang (now retired), who is planning a course on “The Five Big Questions.”

As is his wont, he has solicited me, and others, on how we would answer the questions he will present and discuss with the group he and a colleague are ‘conducting’ in October.

So, I thought I’d throw out these questions to MillersTime readers to see if any of you would be willing to take a shot at answering one or two of them, or even all five. I have just sent him my answers to his “Five Big Questions.”

Even if you don’t want to answer these questions, you might have some suggestions for articles, books, films, etc. that Dave might include in his syllabus that speak to one, or more, of these five questions. I’m sure he would appreciate any suggestions you might have along those lines.

If you are interested, I suspect Dave would be willing to send a link to his syllabus, once he has completed it, to any MillersTime reader who wants to see it.

You can write Dave directly (davidpstang@cs.com) with your answers, suggestions, ideas, and/or request for a syllabus.

The Five Big Questions:

1. How do I know what I think I know is actually true?

2. Where did I come from?

3. Who am I?

4. What is my life’s purpose?

5. What happens to me when I die?

Thanx.

Richard Miller

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Cousins in the Media

30 Thursday Aug 2012

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Within the last several weeks there have been two different articles in the media, interviews actually, one featuring daughter Elizabeth Miller and one highlighting her cousin Kate Shapira Latts (our niece).  I’ve seen the two articles in the digital media, tho they may be in the print media too. Both interviews focus on the work of these two young professionals and, to a lesser degree, their personal lives.

With only a slight apology for touting them, I link to them below:

A Quick Word with… (Elizabeth Miller), The Communiciations Network, Aug. 29, 2012

Faces of Louisiville: Kate Latts, Style, Blueprint, Aug 19, 2012

 

 

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…”just be, just be, just be, just be.”

29 Wednesday Aug 2012

Posted by in Escapes and Pleasures, Family and Friends

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Monday night I started Tanya Chernov’s A Real Emotional Girl, A Memoir of Love and Loss.

Tuesday I spent most of the day reading it through to the end.

It is the very personal and very honest recounting of Tanya’s ten-year attempt to come to terms with the loss of her wonderful father Richard Chernov and her painful attempts to find a place in the world without him.

Whether others will find this memoir as emotional wrenching, as insightful, and as wonderful as I did,  I honestly don’t know.

I hope so. I think it’s outstanding.

Know that I know the characters in Tanya’s just published book.

Richard Chernov, her father, is one of the most wonderful persons I have ever known. He is a former lawyer who became a summer camp director and created Birch Trail Camp for Girls, where my daughters and many, many young girls have spent some of the most memorable and important summers of their lives. Tanya will tell you why he was so wonderful. She sees him clearly, and the man she describes is the man I knew.

Barbara Chernov, her mother, is Richard’s long time partner in everything he did. While she plays a smaller role in this memoir, the person Tanya describes is the person I also know.

Dylan and Gabe are her two older brothers. I don’t know either of them very well, but from what I do know of them and from what Tanya writes, Richard and Barbara did a terrific job parenting them.

Tanya herself is the youngest of the three Chernov children and the only girl. She is about 16 when Richard is first diagnosed with cancer and the book covers approximately the next 10+ years of her life (and that of her family too).

Many of the current and not so current memoirs written by women about loss have been about the loss of their fathers, mothers, or husbands. I have not read much where a child, an adolescent, a young woman has written about this kind of loss.

And for me, that is the wonderful thing about A Real Emotional Girl.  Tanya has taken us (and I hope others who do not know the Chernovs or Birch Trail) on her painful and loving odyssey following the loss of her father and on the search for herself.

If you read it, do let me, others know what you think.

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Two Can Play This Game

02 Thursday Aug 2012

Posted by in Family and Friends

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While I await my wife Ellen’s OK to post some of her newest photographs, this time from Nova Scotia, I thought I’d post a couple of pictures I took of her ‘at work.’

From an advanced glance at some of her Nova Scotia pix, you are in for some wonderful pictures.

Be forewarned, however: her photographs may bear no resemblance to the reality of Nova Scotia. They’re even better.

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My Own Fault, Mostly

02 Thursday Aug 2012

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I probably have no one to blame but myself.

Although I am tempted to blame Louise M., who helped get me into the mess in the first place.

I could also blame my wife, my daughters, and all their techie friends who spend so much time on various forms of ‘social media,’ whatever that is, and who include me in their ‘connected’ world, plus those of you who encourage me to continue with MillersTime.

Anyway, I have gotten myself to the point where I am in danger of the ‘iDisorder,’ where my ‘need’ for being ‘connected’ to the Internet, whatever that is, has gotten a bit out of control.

My most recent difficulty began innocently enough, I thought.

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The Child IS the Father of the Man

24 Tuesday Jul 2012

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My heart leaps up when I behold
A rainbow in the sky:
So was it when my life began;
So is it now I am a man;
So be it when I shall grow old,
Or let me die!
The Child is father of the Man;
I could wish my days to be
Bound each to each by natural piety.

-William Wordsworth

Some of you may remember I wrote last year (Like Father, Like Son, Like Daughter) about a trip my daughter Elizabeth and I made to Las Vegas and how it reminded me of trips I had made there with my father 50 & 37 years ago.

Well, Elizabeth and I went to Vegas again last weekend, once again Elizabeth did all the planning. Of course, we had another wonderful time.

We played Black Jack together (both of us winning), we had a number of wonderful meals (L’atelier de joel robuchon, Jean Georges Steakhouse, & BARMASA), we were mesmerized by Cirque du Soliel’s Mystere, we drove to Hoover Dam and spent time marveling at the Red Rocks Canyon area, and we even stopped in at Freed’s Bakery to see what all the foodie fuss was about.

However, as I flew home Sunday, I began to realize that there was one aspect of these trips that I’m not sure I like.

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Pictures from Santa Fe

04 Wednesday Jul 2012

Posted by in Escapes and Pleasures, Family and Friends

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I’m often struck by how many people have never been to Santa Fe.

When I mention that we’re headed there, which we’ve done every few years since the early 70s, the two most common reactions I hear are “we’ve never been there,” or “that’s one of our favorite places.”

Whether you want to explore a city and an area that is unlike any other place in the US, or if you just want to relax and enjoy some place quite different from your usual daily haunts, I suspect you’ll be delighted with Santa Fe and its surrounding area.

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Taking Care of Grand Children: Anyone Can Do It

02 Monday Jul 2012

Posted by in Family and Friends

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Many months ago, Ellen and I agreed to take care of our grand kids for the weekend of June 29-July 1.  Annie and Edan, our daughter and son-in-law, claimed they were going to a wedding in Boston and thought they could trust us with their two most precious possessions.

Well, promises have a way of coming due, and so this past weekend, we were faced with three days of Eli (3 1/2) and Abby (1 1/2).

Nothing to it.

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Can Women Have It All?

21 Thursday Jun 2012

Posted by in Family and Friends, The Outer Loop

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A little less than a year ago, The Atlantic Magazine published Kate Bolek’s All The Single Ladies. That article argued, among other things, that “it’s time to embrace new ideas about romance and family—and to acknowledge the end of “traditional” marriage as society’s highest ideal.”

Now, in its July/Aug. edition The Atlantic has published a new article that I think will be equally read and discussed, Why Women Still Can’t Have It All by Anne-Marie Slaughter. This article, like the previous one, seeks to break through some of the ‘accepted myths’ that society has heaped upon women.

In fact, I suspect Slaughter’s article will receive more attention and create more conversation than did Bolek’s as it will speak to even more women, and hopefully men, women of a variety of ages, across several generations.

Rather than spend your time reading about this new article, read it for yourself. It’s a bit long, but worthy.

Let MillersTime readers know what you think of what Slaughter writes.

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How Do You Remember Your Father?

17 Sunday Jun 2012

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How do you remember your father?

Here are two very different remembrances I read recently, along with a link to one I posted about my own father.

1. A Father’s Last Words, Mark Warren, Esquire, June 8, 2012

2. A Five-Year Old’s First Fenway Game, Steve Richards, ESPN.com

3. Remembering Sam Miller in Words & in Pictures, Richard Miller, MillersTime.net.

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How Come She Doesn’t Give Up?

14 Thursday Jun 2012

Posted by in Family and Friends, The Outer Loop

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Now and then folks ask me what my wife Ellen is doing.

Or, if they know something about what she has done, they ask, “How can she continue to do that after all these years? Doesn’t she get discouraged.”

Well, if you have 12 minutes and 18 seconds and want to understand what Ellen does, what her Sunlight Foundation is doing, and why she believes so passionately in her work, check out this YouTube video from a speech she gave the other day at the Personal Democracy Forum in New York City.

 

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“I Blame You”

13 Wednesday Jun 2012

Posted by in Escapes and Pleasures, Family and Friends, Go Sox

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So last night I had this IM exchange with daughter Elizabeth after an excruciating three hour, 2-1 Sox victory over the Marlins:

Elizabeth: Get home OK?
Richard: Almost. You?
E: Yup!
R: Home, finally.
E: Did you get lost? Easier to sit in traffic when it’s a win.
R. Not lost. Took forever to get out of the garage. I was thinking the same thing about it being easier to sit…Why do we care so much about them (i.e., the wins, the Sox, etc.)?
E: I blame you.
R: ☺

I admit to committing this transgression on my daughter(s).

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Remembering Sam Miller, in Words & Pictures

05 Tuesday Jun 2012

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As our family heads to Boston for the unveiling of my dad’s headstone, I thought I’d repost the eulogy from a year ago and a slide gallery of pictures.

from MillersTime, July, 13, 2011…

Sam died, as he requested, peacefully and without pain, in his own bed, in his apartment, surrounded in the last months, weeks, days, and hours by three generations of his family. His daughter, son, son-in law, daughter-in-law, four grand children and their spouses, four great grand children, and of course his wonderful caretaker all were able to spend time with him at the end of his life.

Eulogy

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