Signe Lauren

Silo Point

2009-01-10T21:41:00.004-05:00

I went to the lounge area of Silo Point condos today; these condos were created out of the decrepit, grain elevator of Archer Daniels Midland which had not been in operation since around the 1970s; it stood deteriorating for years; then lightning hit it and damaged it further; it was an eyesore; a few years ago, it was announced that a developer bought it and was planning to turn the huge structure into condos; i've often been amazed in the last 35 years at what has been rehabilated from Baltimore's waterfront area of rotting wharves and vacant warehouses and foundries--happily amazed; the redevelopment of this site is beyond remarkable; i was happy to see the lobby entrance and happier to see the Sky Lounge area; it's the community space shared by condo owners which can be used for parties; but----when I walked out onto the deck and looked down over Ft. McHenry and out into the Baltimore Harbor --I was overwhelmed; as many times as I've seen Ft McHenry, it had never been from that perspective; i have detested some of the developers who have ruined a great deal of the brick and mortar history of Baltimore by tearing down architecture that we'll never see again and replacing it with unattractive condos; the redevelopment of this site is the most amazing I've ever seen; the interior of the condo units is stunning; i hope you go see it; buy a condo; if not to live in, buy it for the investment; even in these hard economic times, it is an excellent investment; the history of Ft McHenry isn't going away; the history of Baltimore's Port isnt going away; the amazing reuse of this land and structure isnt going away; you wont regret it; i'd like to take you there and tell you the history;

We're in the money

2009-01-03T20:19:00.001-05:00

This morning (1.3.09) on the Second Cup Cafe (CBS), they played "We're in the Money" as a theme for their segment, Chef on a Shoestring; that song was written in 1929; it was very popular throughout The Great Depression; in 1933, Ginger Rogers sang and danced to "We're in the Money" in a costume made of silver coins in the movie The Golddiggers; it's interesting that in today's economic crisis, a popular song from The Great Depression of 1929 is revived on a popular TV show; has anyone heard, "Buddy, Can You Spare a Dime" lately?

The Shack -- best selling book by Young

2008-12-28T17:57:00.004-05:00

The most interesting sentence in the book, which is a fictional account of a man who spends a weekend with God, Jesus and the Holy Spirt, is Jesus saying, "...I am not a christian..."; the word 'christian' was not coined until after the Ascension into heaven; http://theshackbook.com/read.html

F Scott Fitzgerald

2008-11-11T18:14:00.004-05:00

He lived several places in Baltmore. One was in Bolton Hill at 1307 Park Avenue. He finished "Tender is the Night" in that house. He also lived at what was at the time, Cambridge Arms Apts on 34th Street. The building is now owned by Johns Hopkins University and is student housing. It's one block from my apt. He lived on the top floor; I pass by it everyday.

Kindle -- from Amazon

2008-10-27T17:59:00.003-04:00

the Kindle is amazing; you can read the daily newspaper or any book or any magazine (instead of looking for a newstand or carrying around a cumbersome book); choose from over 180,000 books to download; you buy the book or zine from amazon online and minutes later it's on your Kindle; the Kindle price is cheaper than the paper copy (and no paper is used to produce the book!); if you lose your Kindle, Amazon has a backup for whatever you bought and downloaded; what a great gift;

Nightmare on the Bay--text of newspaper article

2008-08-14T18:29:00.003-04:00

People are telling me that they can't read the newspaper article (below the posts), Nightmare on the Bay; so I'm adding the text here; please read this before you read Almost Orphaned; Almost Orphaned is more of the story that I couldn't include in the newspaper article because of space limitations; this is the text from the article:

In August 1954, my parents and I had a harrowing experience on the Chesapeake Bay that nearly cost us our lives.

It began simply enough. The three of us, as we frequently did, decided to spend a few days at our small waterfront cottage on Cape St Claire.

Our first day there marked my parents' 25th anniversary. We had planned a leisurely day of fishing on the bay. I had never been fishing and The Boss, my father, bought me a beautiful fishing rod that morning. It was just the three of us because my older brother and sister were off doing other activities.

Mother, who didn't know how to swim, had never been in my father's boat because of her fear of the water. But, for some reason, she went that day. As always, before I could put a foot into the boat, I had to have my life jacket completely buckled.

The fiberglass boat was about 12 feet long and it had a seven-horsepower outboard motor. On our outing , we traveled a safe distance for the size of the boat and motor. However, when we stopped to fish, the boat drifted into deep water because we had no anchor.

After about 30 minutes on the water, The Boss was showing me how to hold the rod when the water became choppy. He knew we had to head back to shore. But there was a problem: he couldn't start the motor. Then the sky started turning dark. Initially, I was not afraid. I had been in the boat on family outings many times without incidence, even in the rain.

However, this time The boss' face looked unusually tense. Suddenly, he yelled, "Sit on the bottom of the boat." The sky grew even darker and the waves grew bigger. In what seemed like a matter of minutes, four huge waves poured over us; when the fourth wave was cresting, we knew were going down. Mother told The Boss, "I cant make it." I saw panic in my father's face (I had always thought he wasn't afraid of anything). I was terrified. The boat filled with water and we were thrown into the bay.

It was so dark that I couldn't see my parents. But it wasn't long before the storm ended just as suddenly as it had started; the sky returned to a beautiful blue. We desperately searched the horizon for a boat that might rescue us. but there were no boats around -- except ours which was floating upside down. Whenever we tried to mount the fiberglass hull, it sank.

Though I could now see my parents, I was certain that we were doomed. I cried hysterically. The Boss had a life-preserver cushion under his left arm and his right arm was around Mother's waist; her hands were clenched in a death grip on her own life-preserver cushion. Her life jacket wasn't buckled securely and had been washed off by the water's force. She was paralyzed by fear, unable to speak or even turn her head. The expression on her face scared me so much that I avoided looking at her.

In a calm and authoritative voice, my father said, "Signe, this is no time for crying; this is a time for faith and courage." He didn't look or sound frightened. "I don't have any faith," I shouted with anger. "We cant get out of here!" My father said, "You do have faith, Signe; ask God to help us find a way out of here. Have faith and He wont disappoint you." I said, "I'm not going to do it. I asked Him not to dump us in the water and He did!" The Boss said, "Pray out loud, Signe; have faith and courage." My father was such a disciplinarian that I obeyed.

Over my prayers, The Boss began shouting for help. The storm had swept us to an area past the Bay Bridge that was wooded and unpopulated.

Before long, a Navy ship passed nearby. My father said that he was certain the boat's crew had seen us and would send help.

A short time later, a yacht was headed our way with a father and his two adult daughters aboard. They told us they had heard the Navy's marine-band broadcast of our location. They had jumped into their yacht from Gibson Island and rode right to us.

They pulled me in by a rope first because their ladder couldn't reach the water. Mother's fear made it impossible for her to release her death grip on the life-preserver cushion to grab the rope. My fear returned.

Upon reflection, it's a wonder that my parents survived. By the time of our rescue, my father was exhausted from calling for help and treading water to keep himself and Mother afloat; he had been holding her up with one arm. The boss had been coping with his own fear, Mother's terror and with a panicky and angry-with-God child. But as always, he came up with a solution.

He told Mother he was going to take his arm away from her waist, but not let go completely. The Boss went under the water, put his head under her body, and used his legs to boost her so our rescuers could pull her in. It worked. Then they pulled him in. He was so shaken that he couldn't speak.

Eventually, a large motor boat skippered by a man whose wife had heard The boss' cries for help, arrived at the yacht. The man in the motorboat took us home because we didn't have a pier for the yacht to pull up to. He towed our little fishing boat along, too.

While we decided to spend the rest of the week at the shore as we had originally planned, it took a while for our family life to return to normal. Being just 9 years old. I was the first to bounce back. My parents, however, were another matter. For several days, Mother would dress and eat, then retire to the sofa for the rest of the day; the incident had drained her mentally and physically. The boss wept constantly. I had never seen him like that before.

For years, (particularly in August), my parents, who are now deceased, often reminded me of the incident at the shore. They would say that it was my prayers (said in anger) that saved us.

As for me, I think about the 'what-ifs." If my father hadn't insisted that I buckle my life jacket completely before stepping into the boat, I would not have survived. If I hadn't prayed, I wouldn't be able to say that I asked the Lord for help and He sent me a Navy ship, a yacht and a motor boat.

Almost Orphaned

2008-08-11T12:44:00.005-04:00

Because of space and word limitations, I couldn’t include all the details in my Evening Sun article, Nightmare on the Bay (read the article below). My life jacket had an 18-hour buoyancy. I would have been sighted and picked up way before then. When we were rescued, it was in the nick of time. My parents couldn’t have lasted much longer. If Id seen them go under, Id still be in Shepherd Pratt.

I don’t remember how it went, but when I was older, they both told me that one of them (while we were bobbing in the water with no help in sight) thought I was going to be washed away from them and be orphaned and one thought I was going to drown. It was really horrifying for them, as well for me as a child. During the worst part of the storm, I couldn’t see my parents; everything was black--the rain, the bay water, the sky. And it was all swirling, like a whirlpool. You couldn’t tell what was coming down as rain and what was crashing down on us as waves. When it was over, the bay looked like a sheet of glass and the sky was beautiful like nothing had happened.

There isn’t an August 10th that passes, that I don’t picture it all. It makes me cry. The sadness of it (remembering the fear I felt and remembering the fear I saw in my mother and father's faces) and the beauty of our rescue and how it all came about. My parents reminded me throughut my life, that it was my prayers, said in anger and fear, that saved us.

In the article, the man in the motorboat was the last one to reach us (the last 'leg' of the help chain). He said that he and his wife had 30 people in their yard for a cookout and all had to run inside because the storm came so quickly–they didn’t even have time to carry the food inside.. When they all went back out, his wife was the only one who heard a man yelling H E L P. Everyone else told her they didn’t hear anything. She pestered her husband until he said, "okay, I’ll take the boat out and check around." She told him the man's voice was coming from 'around the bend to the left." She told him not to take anyone with him in the boat because 'you don’t know how many people you might have to pull out of the water and you'll need room in the boat."

When we were all safe on the yacht (the man came aboard), he told that story. He looked at my father, spread eagle on the deck, looking almost like a dead man, "You are the man my wife heard calling for HELP!" He repeated over and over, "My wife was the only one of the 32 of us who heard your cries for HELP. You’re the man she heard."

Now I know God sent an angel to her ear who said HELP in a man's voice. Or God temporarily 'enhanced' her hearing to enable her to hear Daddy. She was the only one.

If my talent were with a brush and oil, I'd paint two pictures–side-by-side. One would be all black. Through the darkness and swirls you'd see a man and woman together--the man holding onto the woman with one arm around her waist and the other arm around a life preserver cushion. And a little girl in a US Coast Guard regulation orange life jacket--all in swirling black chaos--just heads and shoulders. I'd paint another of the bay like a sheet of glass and blue sky like a picture postcard with white fluffy clouds (just the way it was) and for miles, no one, not one boat of any kind as far as the eye could see--just the way it was--and a shore line in dense beautiful trees-- and the little girl with her hands in prayer --and in the clouds, on both paintings, I'd paint Christ and the angels protecting them until human help arrived. Amen

My first publication, All-American Hhhhits

2008-07-06T20:18:00.009-04:00

I published All American Hhhits (it appears below this post) in The Baltimore Evening Sun. It was my first publication; I had submitted a commentary piece about a baltimore doctor who was being sued in District Court by a patient; the editor liked it but had problems with it; i kept 'fixing' whatever he wanted but it just wasnt making it; it was getting close to the Fourth of July; in frustration, I submitted the article about my jewish great grandparents (David Jacob and Bessie Sass) who carried their babies in their arms and ran for their lives from Czarist Russia in the 1880s in order to escape the pogroms (slaughter) against the Jews; had they not fled and left everything behind for freedom in America, I wouldnt exist to write about it; they were willing to come to America with next to nothing and to leave everything they had worked for behind, not knowing the language or the monetary system; i felt that if i couldnt get a piece published in my home town paper around July 4th about my jewish great grandparents fleeing to America to escape death, I wasnt going to try anymore to be published;

the editor of the Commentary Page, Mike Bowler, called me and said he loved it and told me to send him an article once a month about my family and Old Baltimore; that's how I became a contributing writer on the Commentary Page; Mike Bowler was a great editor, but the next month he was switched to the Education Page (he was also teaching in the Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins Univ at that time); 6 short months later, the evening sun went down for good; i was so excited to see All American Hhhhits in print, I didnt realize until a friend pointed out that the article and my name shared space with Art Buchwald's (such a writer!!!!); The Evening Sun was the paper where Russell Baker made a name for himself as a reporter--he's one of my favorite writers;

my great-grandparents only son, Isaac Sass, became my grandfather (my father's father); in 1905, he married Elizabeth Nicholson, a scot presybyterian immigrant from Paterson NJ), who became my grandmother; what happened to Isaac and Elizabeth and to their family--because they were a jew and a christian who married in the prehistoric daze of 1905 , is another story for another day; but----the extended Sass and Nicholson families severed ties forever with Isaac and Elizabeth; I would like to find them so I could wish them well; my great grandmother's name before she married David Jacob Sass was Hirsch;

The Shack

2008-06-28T15:35:00.001-04:00

have you heard about The Shack, a new book by William P. Young? I havent read it yet. it's a novel in which god is an african american woman; it's about god's unconditional and unending love and redemption for his children; two pastors formed a publishing business to publish it; it's becoming a huge hit; http://theshackbook.com , waddaya think? more about it later;

Welcome!

2008-06-27T14:41:00.000-04:00

Welcome to my new blog!