Mary Dessein

May 2, 1898

Posted on May 2, 202510 Comments

Sometimes a minute is longer than you think. When I said that to one of my teen-age kids, I didn’t realize how accurate I was.

Today would be my grandmother’s 127th birthday. Marguerite Pauline Dessein. I was named after her, as were two of my cousins. She was incredibly brave and believed in the future. Born and raised in Langres, France, she fell in love with an American soldier who was stationed in Langres during WWI, Alfred Oliver Evanson. He came back to Langres after the war, they were married there in the centuries old cathedral, and came to Seattle to build a life. Twas a toughie in the early 1920’s.

My mother’s parents, Grandmere and Grandpa Alfred were the portals to my journey here.

There have been times when those long minutes led me to other realizations. There were times when I showed up ready for a fight and realized there was no one there but me. Can you relate to that?

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Grandmere was incredibly stalwart.
She learned English, gave birth to three children, had Norwegian in-laws who I recall her telling me
were not too fond of her as she was French, and then her beloved husband died of tuberculosis after only fourteen years of marriage. There was no cure for TB in 1937. Her children were 13, 9, and 4.
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Her birth family in France did their best to love and support her. Moving back there was not an option for Grandmere at that time.

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Marguerite in Seattle, 1948 (c)MDessein

Oh, to ask her some questions now! I do have cousins in France: their grandmother, Charlotte and Marguerite were sisters. How cool is that? The novel I am nearing completion on (!) has many tidbits Grandmere told me over the years as I was growing up. The novel is historical fiction, yet is fun to have her comments about the cathedral, Denis Diderot and such said by characters in my novel.

You’ll love this. I love remembering it. Grandmere is in the hospital, it is her last days, many family members are there with her: her three children, spouses, teen-age me, a couple cousins. Soon talk moves from whispers to chat about who’s doing what, when and with whom. From her dying bed, my strident Grandmere says, “You should be praying. I’m dying.” Complete silence encircles the group, awkward looks are exchanged, and the rosaries are pulled out.

When I am facing a long minute, or what I perceive as a pending fight, I have learned to pause and ask, “What would my incredibly brave, stalwart, intelligent, strident and so loving Grandmere do?

The Bubbleator~

Posted on April 2, 20256 Comments

Easter falls on April 20 this year. My mother’s 101st birthday would be this year on April 20. She was born on Easter Sunday a century and a year ago! She passed nine years ago, it is fun to remember the connection.

I wonder what her mother, whom I am named

after, thought of having her first child on
Easter Sunday!

In writing my current novel, I am now in 1961 as Seattle prepares for the Century 21 Exposition, also known as the Seattle World’s Fair, which was to open on April 21, 1962.

There were a bazillion amazing things about the World’s Fair. I remember many of them. One of them was the super-duper glass elevator designed for the Fair to amaze those far and near: the Bubbleator.
Perhaps you do, too.

I remember my mom taking me and my sister in the Bubbleator a couple times. Rosie and I were in grade school. What a thrill. That we had to wait nearly an hour for a ride up was a new experience for us kids. Yes, there were stairs and a regular elevator.
Who wanted those when we could ride in the Bubbleator!

Ah, the Bubbleator, the Space Needle, the Food Circus, the International Fountain, the Science Pavilion.
The exhibits from France, Mexico, Thailand, Germany, Italy, China, Sweden, and the Netherlands, to name a few!

So where am I now? Somewhere between 1962 and 2025, yes? And you, as well. Fascinating to think of all that has transpired. And a ton I don’t even know about!

Mom graduated from high school in 1942.
Her teachers suggested she go on to training or a college to be a social worker. She got a job at Western Union, where she rocked them. She could type on the telegraph machines faster and more accurately than anyone in the office! Then she met my dad, and before long it was plans for a wedding and a family, not more education.
Yes, a facet of that was 1944 thinking and what women were supposed to do.

The rides in the Bubbleator, my amazing supportive mom who she and my dad both told me I could do anything.

Many of you are on this page, too, our parents showed us the way to do more than they were able to do.

T.C. Howard created the Bubbleator. Look what you have created.
Woo Hoo, I am still on that path with my novel. May you be on your path too, as you look around your world.

Vangelis

Posted on February 20, 202510 Comments

Evangelos Odysseas Papathanassiou, known in the expansive music world of Oscars,
Grammys, international performances and compositions as Vangelis, composed the
unique and beautiful score for the movie,
‘Chariots of Fire’ in 1981, as well as over a dozen other films.

During my radio show days, I had hundreds of CDs, oral storytellers and music or both. I have kept many
of them, some still packed away. During the recent unsettling chaos at home and around the world, I began looking through my CDs for some relaxing music and found the 25th Anniversary release of the ‘Chariots of Fire’ soundtrack.
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I had forgotten how mystical, how beautiful, and how creative and releasing it is. I have listened to it many times since.
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(c) Intenational Foundation of Greece

In the last few months, I have thought about and talked with friends about how we change the world. Sometimes we intend to by volunteering for an organization or group we support, donating our time and/or money to a cause we believe in, by helping friends who need it, or by joining in a march for a cause. Sometimes we may be employed by a company that pays less than we could get elsewhere, yet we believe in what they are doing.

Sometimes we make the world a better place or perhaps change it by simple life tasks: mowing our neighbor’s lawn, picking up dog poop some one left behind, not saying something snarky when it was
the first thing on our tongue, or assuming that someone is doing their best when we are so not pleased with their action.

Did Vangelis think he was working to make the world a better place? I can’t know. I suspect he was doing what he was compelled to do and driven by and felt achievement in doing, as he learned and grew and worked joyously with other musicians. He was born in Agria, Greece and died in Paris not quite three years ago. Did he change the world? Oh my starz, in my opinion he sure did. He opened the door in so many ways for the musicians who came after him, for those he worked with, for the new horizons he saw and exemplified. And the people like me, who he helped open our hearts and souls with his creativity and visionary music.

You and I change the world, I suspect, in ways we don’t realize. Nor at the moment intend. Hopefully, much of it good! Yet when it is not postive, may we learn and move on. As Maya Angelou said, “When you know better, do better.”

Wondering & Wandering

Posted on January 18, 20256 Comments

Nazca, Peru. Chichen Itza, Mexico. Mont Saint Michel, France.

Listening to Will Hornyak’s great storytelling performance of his year in Peru as a journalist in his early twenties got me thinking of the wonders of the world. Will’s experiences, people he met as well as befriended, events he witnessed and his wondering wanderings were remarkable.

These three places are only three of the stunning, amazing, magnificent wonders in the world that call to me.

The Nazca lines are incredible. Approximately 2,000 years old. How were these huge designs, some miles in size, created so perfectly so long ago? No one knows. Will reported underground irrigation systems have also been discovered!

The Pyramids at Chichen Itza are approximately 1,200 years old. To walk around them, to touch them was amazing. How were these huge structures built with the enormous blocks of rock? No one knows.

Mont Saint Michel. The abbey was begun approximately a thousand years ago.
The island itself has a long history. I am now thinking I want to go back and spend a week or so on Mont Saint Michel, walk where the builders and designers and centuries of people have walked, worked, prayed, wondered, lived.

*Inner courtyard of Mont Saint Michel Abbey. Photo MDessein 2002*

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Lest I go on too long, you get the drift. Amazing things are built and created each day now. Yet the wonders created millenia ago still seem far advanced of us in many ways.

The creativity, imagination, and ability of humans is humbling. However, human’s capacity for harm is stunning. That dichotomy is also millenia old.

When I have some answers, you can be sure I’ll let you know.

(Yup, my book, When I Was a Rock Star is available on Amazon in paperback and e-book. And! getting closer to finishing my novel!)

Deep Roots

Posted on November 19, 20248 Comments

When I was in mid-Oregon recently, in the high desert, I discovered some of the plants there have such deep roots. When it goes over a hundred days without rain and is above 100F degrees, that makes sense. I was weeding an area there at my daughter’s family’s home when I decided to take out this ragweed type plant, that was covering a gorgeous volcanic rock. I tried to pull it up with my hands. Yeah, right! So I went and got a shovel. I dug and dug, all around it. Five minutes later, I got it out. The root turned out to be over a foot and a half long, very thick at the top.

Then I noticed all the sagebrush blown everywhere. No way was the wind going to get this ragweed up either.

What does uproot us?

Family. Jobs. Tragedies. Marriage. Children. Military service. Divorce. College. Illness. Escape. Discontent. Dreams. Religion. Weather. Restlessness. Lifestyle.
Seeking meaning?

What has uprooted you?

How many times?

How far? A few miles? Another state? Another continent?

Fascinating as we review our choices, isn’t it? When and where were we rooted deeply, then again, when and where were our roots slim and ready for transplanting? For me, there were times I did not understand what was going on around me, why people were doing what they were doing. Which way the winds were blowing.

Right now, I am firmly rooted, yet not deeply. Where will I be in five years? I don’t know. Yet I don’t lose any sleep over it. Learning to sense when my roots are deeply implanted and when they are not has helped me a great deal in the last few years. When to let go and move on has taken me a long time to understand and then give myself permission to do so.

My, oh my.

Thanks for reading. Merci beaucoup. Let me know about your roots~

Yup, my book, When I Was a Rock Star is on Amazon in paperback and ebook.

May 2, 1898

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The Bubbleator~

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Vangelis

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Wondering & Wandering

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Deep Roots

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