The Young Pope – The Prime Minister of Greenland visits Vatican

Cheryl Lowe Ferguson Ransijn.......

I met Cheryl Lowe in 1963, when I was a student in Nashville... Her brother Johnny and I became friends on the first day of 'orientation', when we discovered that we shared a love for contract bridge, classical piano music and 19th C. Novels.....Johnny 'took me home' to meet his parents, grandmother, two brothers and his sister, Cheryl...then, a high school majorette, in love with a Spanish-speaking teenager, her age....(she seemed attracted to men who spoke 'other languages')......After high school, she moved to Atlanta to study Political Science at Emory University, where she met a man that I'd attended University with, and that was now in Emory Medical School.....Cheryl's brother, Johnny, corralled her into marrying the 'Doctor', that he had a crush on!.....and she did...even though I thought the marriage would be a disaster, since I'd known her new 'love' during my college days, years before......Cheryl supported her marriage, working as a legal aid or something like that, and later moved to Soest Holland with her new husband, while he was interning at the American Air Force Base there...After Cheryl informed me that she was pregnant, and knowing about some difficulties that her mother, 'Bird' had experienced during her pregnancies....losing a few fetuses.....I flew to Holland and stayed with Cheryl during the last month or so of her pregnancy, and was with her in the delivery room when she, too, lost her child during birthing......Afterwards, having separated from her husband, she moved to Amsterdam to get a Doctorate....and, there, met a young student, Hans and fell in love with a man who actually loved her, too......A single photograph brings so much to mind...so many associations.........Here, Cheryl...looking happy.....with her new boyfriend, Hans, whom she later married......There's a 'Book' in our history together.......Chapter 6 of the manuscript that I tossed into the back of the garbage truck a few years ago........Now, I'm 'working' from even vaguer memory modules, stored for half a century in some seldom-called upon neurons that are 'firing' right now.....

A Man's a MAN, whatever 'that' 'IS".......

the 'compromise' long earring.......after being 'called out' for my 'lobe decor' at a conservative party..........just some more 'gender bias'.... I remember, well, being sent to the Store Manager's office for wearing a simple diamond ear stud while employed by Saks 5th Avenue....almost a half century ago.....and sent to 'the Principal's office' in 1962, for wearing a 3mm gold 'ball' in my left lobe...... I asked the Principal if he would have sent Marilyn Monroe 'home' for wearing a big earring!......"But she's a 'woman'" he shouted at me!.....I called a cab and went home! What about Burt Lancaster!!!?? what about those Maharajahs? "We're Americans!" I was told "So...what is Marilyn Monroe?", I thought.....