Harmony With Heart And Spirit

Many times in our life when we least expect it, we meet someone in person or via the internet that impresses us with their unique or interesting story of their life now or when they were young. I have met a few recently and would like to elaborate on things of quality and engrossing incidents they have encountered during their lifetime.

A few months back, I wrote about a lady who restored broken porcelain pieces and brought them back to their natural state. You could not tell they were fixed, they looked brand new. Her name is Nancy Price and she refers to herself as a conservator of museum type decorative plates or statues. When I was young and had no television set yet in our family home, mom and I every Tuesday night would go to her friend’s house. There many friends and relatives would gather in her small row house and watch the Milton Berle variety show. This was one of television’s finest comedy ensembles with Milton as the leader. If you would listen or watch it now, you would think the jokes silly, the costumes very cheap looking and the themes even crazier than things on now. Consider the time then was 1946 or thereabouts and our level of comedic shows displayed our different state of mind in those days. Everyone wore on television non revealing dresses or bathing suits. Nothing hung out, no naughty words were spoken. Even when Lucille Ball back in 1948 became pregnant in real life with her first child, they wrote it in the storyline. Desi and her slept in twin beds with a night table in between them and she was said to be ‘with child.’ The word pregnant was not spoken and it was a wonder, we even saw her with her protruding belly.

Many years later, my husband and I went to a movie and for the first time in movie history the F word was used by Barbra Streisand. The whole movie was startled even though we had read about it being in there. You could hear a pin drop; we were quite shocked and talked about it for weeks after viewing it.I believe the movie was called The Owl and The Pussycat.

Now days, any word is acceptable and is usually used many times in the same movie because everyone wants to tempt the audience. I would prefer to use words and actions to display good and interesting people and that is what I try to feature in these stories and articles.

I have met two new to me interesting people that have exciting jobs. One is Neva Krauss. She is a wife, a mom and works at a job called Standardized Patient Trainer. Her job includes casting the standardized patients training program where she trains people to be actors and act out scenes to test medical students, nursing students and residents in different departments on their clinical skills and interpersonal skills. This is how they learn to deal with people in real life when they are out in the medical world. She says”this is very rewarding work.” She has taught acting and modeling for over seventeen years and acting is her passion.

She started to model at age six and acting at age eleven. She has done theatre, commercials, television, major motion pictures, print work, fashion shows etc. She is very competent at her work place and it is nice to see someone who loves their job. She works on a simulation center located in the outpatient center of Johns Hopkins and works for the university. She also casts medical videos and print work.

It is delightful to meet a person who really enjoys their current job and gets paid for what they do. We met in a jewelry store called Littmans in Towsontown Mall and we started to talk because she had just bought the same ring I had bought a few weeks before. We have become email and Facebook pals. She is a beautiful young woman and full of charm and personality. Bravo to us meeting and corresponding via the internet.

It has been said “gather your strengths, not your weaknesses.” Also Christie Brinkley said “my garden is a garden of good seeds.” And an anonymous person summed it up well. He or she said “Strengths are consciousness.” So to use all three in our lives, no matter what job we worked at or what we do at home with our family; we all must gather our strengths and forget about our weaknesses. My mom’s older brother Michael had hearing and speech when he was born. A few years later, he lost both due to an illness diagnosed incorrectly. He was to remain hearing denied and speech no longer there. He learned to use speaking with his hands called sign language and he excelled at the job he performed. He became a printer in a plant and did well at his job. He was even allowed to drive a car though he could not hear a horn honking or sirens. In his home, he had a device setup that when the doorbell rang and he could not hear it, a light flashed and he saw it and knew to open the door. He even enjoyed the new adventure back in those days called television and by just viewing it, he enjoyed it. Later on, during some shows, they would have a device and he could see written across the screen what words were being said. Uncle Mike gathered his remaining strengths and did not let his double handicap deter him from life. He married, had his own home, and had two children and several grandchildren. Mom use to converse with him when she learned sign language. It was slow going with the fingers, when it is new to you; but she was able to be a part of his life and him her life by using hugs and hand language.

We all try to handle what is given to us and to make the most of that, and then we become heroes to our self.

There is another person I want to write about. His name is Brian StAugust and he is an actor. He and I came across each other through Neva’s Facebook. He is a friend of hers. I contacted him and found out that he had done an acting part on my favorite soap opera As The World Turns. He is making me a DVD copy of his several times on that show and mailing it to me. So I will have a friend (new) who was an actor on my fifty year watch television show. It went off the air eighteen months ago and I and its many viewers who watched it like I did for over fifty years still miss it. Knowing Brian is bringing it back alive to this devoted fan. In those days, there were no DVD players or video recorders. When I left home and the story was on and I had to pick up my children at school, I devised my own invention. I turned the TV on to the station regardless of the time, usually about one hour before the show started. I took a light timer and hooked it up to a small audio recorder. When the timer went on at 130 PM or so, the show was recorded audio only from the on TV, I had left running. When I came home, it had recorded the thirty minute show of ATWT and at night I could ‘listen’ to the audio and not miss my delightful adventure into Oakdale, USA where the show was about. I was ahead of my own time, ahead of video recorders or the now DVD recorders.

My new friend Brian StAugust had an emergency multiple heart bypass operation. He had a 90 percent blockage and he survived and decided to experience things that he often thought about doing. He committed himself then to conquer his shyness and he was going to in the last stage of his life to complete harmony with his heart and spirit. He began to play music at a historic dive bar in downtown Baltimore and felt comfortable doing so. He developed his stage presence. His son and daughter are both theatre bred actors; he was not then. In a play his daughter was in, they needed a guy to play a sheriff in a principal role. His daughter suggested her dad, Brian. Jaime felt her dad good for the part and he won the part and had a great time. That was his first acting role in an independent movie being shot that time. He appeared in two episodes of As The World Turns and had an absolutely magnificent experience. Brian is sending me today a copy of the DVD of his great performances. It was challenging work because the soap operas shoot two one hour episodes in an eight hour day and he worked with great actors and was a breakthrough opportunity for him in 2009. He also played in a movie called Reunion and he required a German accent and his real life son played him when they shot the younger part of the movie and his character. He has played in so many films and too numerous but wonderful to write in this short story. He is constantly on demand for parts and is excelling in all of them. They are Early Retirement, The Color of Rain in Red and The Driver yet to be released He is also a gifted song-writer and has been doing that since age thirteen. He is truly a gifted man and a magnificent actor. I will write more about him in another article.

His life saving operation spurred and inspired him to do what he loved even if it was at a somewhat later age. Bravo to him and his dreams coming true.

True for all of us, Brian, Elita who writes at age seventy-seven and doing so since 1990, my late brother Herbert who became a pharmacist at age forty-two and Neva who does her job at a much younger age, but not as a twenty something. There is room and time for everyone to do what they have always dreamed of doing, accomplishing, attaining and becoming happier. Even my uncle Mike was a winner in his life with a deaf handicap.

This is what life is all about. As was quoted above, “gather your strengths, not your weaknesses. We mentioned above have had our desires appreciated by others and we gain in our heart as Brian said “harmony with his heart and spirit.”