Visions of Sugarplums Danced in Her Head

invited for lunch at the market

Hop on a plane for lunch at the market.

Modern life. Ancient life. Always changing. Some of us somehow wandered far from home. Jeannette tried to keep tabs on us, hopped on many planes, lived in different time zones. Now back in the same little town where it all started, watching snow fall, watching ipad for messages from her chicks, dreaming of reunions, reconciliations, wild dancing and laughing.

Jeannette the Actress page 1 of 10

Jeannette as Mother Teresa

 Jeannette as that French "Lady"                  

Jeannette

French "Lady"

Immortality

We could be alimentary canals or animated skeletons carrying for a time a certain arrangement of borrowed characteristics (which we feel very attached to and even think we own in some kind of permanent way). Then, if we are lucky, we scramble that mix up with another (love) and send it into the next generation... thus experiencing immortality.  That's what Dad said and I'm inclined to agree.

And the underlying thing through all this...love.

It 

What happened in 1925?

We are special like snowflakes...each unique...yet inextricably tied to the chains of cause and effect. The times we live in are just as much a part of who we are as the specifics of our DNA. So what was going on around her orbit when Jeannette was born?

In 1925 Mussolini disbanded the Italian parliament and became the fascist dictator of Italy. Hitler published 'Mein Kampf'. The New Yorker Magazine publishes it's first edition. Recently enacted child labor laws were criticized as fostering idleness in children. The first women governors were elected to office in Wyoming and Texas. Tennessee made it illegal to teach evolution in the schools and the Scopes Monkey Trial apparently resolved the issue (oh wait....!) A giant tornado struck Missouri, Illinois and Indiana. There was no Internet.

But what was going on for Nettie Kipping (Vogt) Knoke and her husband Phillip Knoke? Where were they living? What was their day like on August 17 of that year? What thoughts ran through their minds as they contemplated their new little baby girl?  Could they have possibly imagined the 12 children Jeannette would raise with her husband Ken Kelly, now spread all over the globe, spanning 3 continents, multiple languages, full of accomplishments and trials, containing paradoxes with reasonable grace and occasionally dubious pride, never having left humor behind.

I'm curious about details that seem unknowable at this point. But someone out there must have a story or two...some data about Nettie and Phillip and the time when their new baby Jeannette was born. Her mother's full name was very 'French' you know...Marie Antoinette Kipping. (Was Marie Antoinette a vision of something lovely and desirable in Nettie's mother's mind? Like a fairy princess?)

What's your story about this photo?

These drapes journeyed. They made it all the way from this house on Koenigsmark St. when I was possibly just barely born, (or possibly not quite born) to the house on Evansville Ave. They made it even to the days when I would retain the memory of building beautiful fantasy houses out of them by propping them up onto chairs and held down by pillows. The two children journeyed far more...all over the earth in fact.

Blow Bugle Blow!.... let the stories of Amazing Jeannette begin!

Beautiful at 90

Current State of Affairs

Well...not actually current anymore. A selection of offspring from a few years ago.

The Empress of this extensive Kelly clan is looking lovely in pink at the center. All 12 of her children and some butn ot all of her grandchildren gathered in the desert that year in Bill's backyard Palm Desert Caifornia.

The Memory Problem of Memoires

They must be written before you forget.

Time has arrived. Jeannette Elizabeth Kelly Knoke born in Waterloo Illinois in the USA in 1925 is now an honored elder in the 'Third Stage'. The ever popular option of procrastination, rarely advisable, is particularly best bypassed at this point. Memory eludes way too much already. Eventually it will elude all. Better, let's tell the story now.

Here is Jeannette pictured above....near the start (with her beloved brother Bud Knoke her only living sibling) and in recent versions taken in her 90th year. You can imagine there are stories in between.

This blog will be a forum for collecting those stories and eliciting memories from all those who hold pieces. it won't be in chronological order...or any order for that we can now predict. As it arises from our collective conversation, we'll let the memories grow and the stories be told.