In
Memoriam
Florence
Lenore
Carrasco Langdon
July 16,
1908-July 31, 2006
My
Mother
Kevin
Langdon
My
earliest
memories
are of the terrifying, unknown world in
which
I
found
myself
—
experienced
by
all
infants but
remembered
by
very
few—and the
way
my mother reassured
me
.
I
remember
mom
taking
me
in a stroller to the park.
I
loved
the
fresh
impressions
that
came from being out in the big world.
My
sister Valerie was
born
when
I
was a
little
over three years
old
.
I
remember
mom putting us in the bath together, playing with bath
toys
, talking with her when she was
very
little
, and
telling
her about the world.
I
felt
very
protective
of my
little
sister.
Both
mom and dad
used
to
play
with
me
for hours at a time and
they
both
told
us elaborate stories, with endless sequels.
I
wish
now
that
these stories had been written down, as
they
were
quite
extraordinary, and
fascinating
to my sister and
me
. My mom also
introduced
me
to the world of literature.
I
was
very
strongly
influenced
by the books she
gave
me
, both children’s books and more adult
fare
.
I
attended nursery
school
and kindergarten without
running
into too much difficulty, but by first grade
I
already
hated
school
.
It
was mind-
numbingly
boring, not at
all
like
the
interesting
and
supportive
conditions my mother created at home, and
I
began
to tune out.
I
’ve recently been in
contact
with a teacher
I
had in
one
of the early grades, Miss Rosalie Goldstein (
later
Mrs. Jerry Gayne). She
told
me
that
I
was
very
uncooperative and
used
to hand in
blank
papers when
I
was bored with
an
assignment
. She helped
me
to
connect
with the educational
process
and socialize with the other children.
I
am
very
grateful
to her and to the other good teachers
I
had, because my mom had set a
very
high
standard
and
most
of my teachers were sorely lacking when
it
came to recognizing my
special
needs and
providing
appropriate
stimulation
.
I
was
born
with hip dysplasia.
It
wasn’t noticed by my doctors and
only
came to
light
through
my
great
uncle when
I
was about a year
old
.
I
had several operations at
that
time but
they
were not
very
successful and
I
was
left
with a pronounced limp. My mother helped
me
to
deal
with my disability but
I
often had trouble with the other kids because
I
was
different
—handicapped
physically
but with a mind
they
couldn’t
understand
.
When
I
was seven years
old
,
it
was
decided
that
I
would
need another operation.
I
was
afraid
to go under the knife and on the day the operation was
scheduled
I
ran
away and
hid
for several hours before my mom
finally
found
me
and
took
me
to the hospital. She
understood
how terrified
I
was and helped
me
to
accept
the situation.
Mom
had
lots
of good
friends
. She met with a group of the girls she’d known in
school
for about 70 years, and her “Grattan Girls” were
like
family
members
to us.
I
remember
many
occasions
on
which
our house was
full
of
very
interesting
people,
friends
and relatives of my parents.
I
enjoyed these
opportunities
to converse with adults
very
much.
When
my sister and
I
were
old
enough
to be
left
in the
care
of a babysitter for more
than
an
evening, my mom and dad
took
a
number
of trips. My mom always made up a
grab
bag
for Valerie and
one
for
me
. We each
got
one
present
every day while
they
were away and
that
made having them away a
little
easier
for us.
We
were not always
left
at home,
though
we never accompanied our parents on
their
longer
trips. We were
included
in vacations at Aetna Springs
resort
, Yosemite valley and Tuolumne Meadows in
Yosemite
National
Park
,
Webber
Lake
, and other places in
California
.
It
was
very
interesting
traveling with my parents; we saw many things
that
didn’t exist in our urban life in the San Francisco Bay Area and the
family
interaction was more concentrated and intense when we
took
trips together. Somehow, my mother
usually
managed
to
keep
things
light
and cheerful
despite
the stress
that
being at
close
quarters created.
When
I
was 12 years
old
we
moved
to Terra Linda, across the
Golden Gate
Bridge
and about 30 miles north of
San Francisco
. Mom and dad
wanted
us to have the
experience
of a more rural lifestyle. The
natural
setting
, before the valley was as built-up as
it
became
later
was wonderful, but the cultural
level
was
distinctly
lower
than
in the area we’d lived in in
San Francisco
.
Later
we
moved
to the next valley north,
Lucas
Valley
. Valerie
told
me
recently
that
one
reason
for the
move
was to
get
away from a
family
of screwy neighbors across the street from us—and
that
shortly after our
move
they
moved
to Lucas Valley, too,
just
a
couple
of
blocks
from where we were.
The
early days in Terra Linda were
very
difficult
. Construction was still going on.
I
remember
seeing bulldozers rolling
through
our
back
yard. There was noise and dust everywhere. The builders had cut
some
corners and many things were not
working
properly
. The
school
system
wasn’t
ready
for the influx of children due to this
new
development. My dad actually
ran
for and won a seat on the
school
board because he was
so
alarmed by the state of the
schools
. But
through
it
all
, my mom always made a wonderful,
loving
home for us, and she never complained.
When
I
was in
high
school
, my mom went
back
into
teaching
. She
taught
English at the
Dominican
College
High
School
in
San Rafael
, a girls’
high
school
run
by nuns. We graded the girls’ papers together. We
laid
out 5x5 piles, corresponding to the grades A
through
F, in my mom’s
opinion
and mine,
then
we
argued
about the
essays
that
weren’t on the main diagonal (
I
usually
graded harder
than
mom). Sometimes her multiple-
choice
questions
were
amusing
; e.g.,
one
of the
choices
for the
meaning
of “inkling” was “a printer’s helper.”
I
lived at home on and off into my forties,
even
(briefly) after
I
got
married to my second (
present
) wife, and
I
always felt welcome in my mother’s house.
I
moved
out when she
moved
to the retirement condominium
complex
where she lived for the rest of her life, in her
own
(
nice
but
small
) condo for several years and
then
in the health unit downstairs, after a series of
small
strokes
left
her mentally incapacitated but still
very
much “there” emotionally.
I
feel
enormously
privileged
to have had
such
a mother,
that
she lived
such
a
long
life, and
that
I
remained in
close
contact
with her up until her death.
Eulogy
Valerie
Zukowski
Thank
you
all
for coming today. We are
gathered
to
celebrate
,
remember
and
honor
the life of our mother, Lenore Langdon. Our Mom was a lady; she was
somewhat prim and
proper
and knew
all
about
etiquette
, but what made her a
real
lady was her
gracious
and
loving
nature
. She always was
kind
and
giving
in every situation. She
could
always make other people feel
comfortable
around her. She put others ahead of herself. Certainly no sacrifice
was
enough
when
it
came to caring for her
family
.
Whether
it
was her birth
family
or the
family
she created with my father she was always caring and
giving
, always
ready
to
give
of her time and
energy
and
love
.
I
remember
when
I
was about six years
old
she
told
me
that
now
that
I
was a big girl she
would
no
longer
be able to pick
me
up.
I
was sad, but
I
could
accept
this. Soon
I
fell down the brick front steps of our house.
I
must have screamed
like
a banshee because out she came; she
ran
down the stairs and scooped
me
up and
ran
back
into the house.
It
turned out
I
wasn’t actually
hurt
at
all
. But
I
learned
that
even
if
she
could
no
longer
pick
me
up (big girl
that
I
was) she
would
pick
me
up
anyway
if
I
needed her to.
She
really
tried
to be a
sport
and
humor
my father. When
I
was about nine years
old
he
got
himself a cabin cruiser for cruising around the bay and up the delta. He
would
drive
the boat of
course
, and
it
fell to my mother to leap from the bow onto the dock and tie up. She also
gamely helped him varnish the
decks
.
I
guess she
would
do anything for him. And when
it
came to doing absolutely anything for Kevin—don’t
even
get
me
started
.
She
was also
very
involved
with her birth
family
. When her mother became
very
old
and confused my mother and
I
would
very
often go to see my Granny during the day while my father was at
work
and Kevin was at
school
. Mom
would
organize
things and do the housework.
Later
when her mother
died
Mom became the matriarch and
held
holiday
events
for everyone at her home. She
loved
to do
that
. She did
it
graciously
.
My
mother felt
strongly
about many things. She
loved
the mountains; she
loved
to go there and
learned
to ski and
even
mountain climb. She was
very
proud
to be a Sierra Clubber. Whenever we
would
go to the mountains as a
family
, camping or
staying
with
friends
, she was at her
very
happiest
.
Another
thing she
loved
was tennis, or she
kept
saying she did. As far as
I
know she never played
it
during my lifetime.
My
mother
loved
language and literature. She
loved
the
sound
of the English language and enjoyed hearing
it
spoken
well
. When she was a child she
took
elocution lessons
so
that
she herself
could
speak English
beautifully
, and she did. She
loved
poetry and
could
make
it
sound
the
way
you knew
it
should
. For a few years she enjoyed
teaching
high
school
English,
reminding
herself of the many books she
loved
as a young person.
One
of my mother’s
hidden
talents
was dancing. She and my father danced really
beautifully
together and actually won
prizes
for
their
dancing, although
they
did not have many
opportunities
for dancing. She also liked to do
little
arts
and
crafts
projects
like
candle making or mosaics, and she
saved
found supplies for these
endeavors
in jars in the garage. Another thing she
kept
in the garage was stray cats
whom
she enjoyed
taking
care
of and
who
honored
her by
giving
birth to many kittens at her house. Mom
loved
to travel, but she never did until Kevin and
I
were
old
enough
to be
left
for a week or more.
Then
she and my father
started
traveling, and
continued
on,
starting
with
Hawaii
and
moving
on to
Mexico
and Europe and
Africa
. After my father
died
Mom
kept
traveling to
Alaska
and
Peru
and
China
, but
I
think
the thrill was gone when her favorite companion
could
no
longer
accompany her.
They
took
so
many pictures, and we watched interminable slide shows in our living room.
One
thing my mother felt
very
strongly
about was her friendships. She
held
on to many friendships
that
went
back
to her childhood. She met with the Grattan girls, a group of
friends
from elementary
school
,
all
her life until
one
by
one
they
all
died
. Mom
may
have been the
last
of the Grattan girls. She had many other lifelong friendships, and
they
were
very
important
to her. She had
strong
commitments
to these
relationships
, and
they
were
very
fulfilling
to her. For many years she belonged to the PEO, a women’s organization
she enjoyed and
through
which
she strengthened friendships
that
endured
through
many years. Her
friends
were
loyal
to her in the
same
way
, and she
valued
these
relationships
very
much.
My
mother was
proud
of her education and many
abilities
. She was
cultured
and
beautiful
and
charming
. But she is
most
remembered
for her sweet and
loving
nature
. Everyone
who
really knew her
loved
her for these
qualities
.
I
would
like
to read a
portion
of a letter sent to
me
by Susan Fiori,
who
knew my mother here at Villa Marin.
It
’s
so
sad to
think
about your mother not being on the earth any more. Her sweetness was
so
palpable
and
real
. She certainly embodied the
essential
quality
of
love
through
all
her levels of aging and dementia. To be in her company always made
me
feel
calmer
and safer somehow.
I
will
surely
miss her—the
way
she
would
look
right
into my eyes and smile at
me
—
like
an
angel!
The Language of the Poet
Lenore Langdon
Reprinted
from The
New
Thesaurus
,
Volume
1,
Number
9,
May
-June 1979.
The
chief
attribute
of the poet is the creative
energy
or imagination
that
enables him to set forth in a concentrated or heightened form
an
idea
or
emotion
that
others recognize and
share
. The poet
experiences
moods,
emotions
, or
ideas
which
he
then
phrases in
appropriate
words, musical, symbolic, or
thought
-
provoking
,
which
will
most
accurately
reflect
or
express
the
feeling
he
wishes
to
convey
to the reader. The poet perceives
ordinary
events
and things in
an
extraordinary
way
, seeing
meaning
and beauty in them not
usually
apparent
. Not
only
does the poet
possess
this
ability
, but with his fine ear and
powers
of
discrimination
he perceives the
uncommon
meanings and uses for
common
words, as
well
as the
uncommon
words
that
will
most
exactly transmit his
thought
, thus permitting the unusual
way
of
employing
language to make
it
memorable as
well
as
beautiful
.
In
the words of Matthew Arnold, “Poetry is simply the
most
beautiful
,
impressive
, and widely
effective
mode
of saying things; and hence
its
importance
.” This is
only
one
of a
great
many definitions
given
by a
great
many poets of
equal
stature.
I
like
it
because of
its
directness and simplicity.
According
to T.S. Eliot,
emotion
and
feeling
are best
expressed
“in the
common
language of the people—
that
is, in the language
common
to
all
classes. The structure, the
rhythm
, the
sound
, the
idiom
of a language
expresses
the
personality
of the people
which
speaks
it
.” He feels
that
the
duty
of a poet is to his language—to preserve,
extend
and
improve
it
. This is
important
for the continuity of language
so
that
the best
will
not be
lost
and
so
that
the
quality
will
not deteriorate. He also believes
that
poetry has a social
function
—“
that
in proportion to
its
excellence and vigor,
it
affects
the speech and sensibility of the
whole
nation.”
As
an
example
of the poet’s
ability
to
choose
just
the
right
language to
express
his
thought
consider
the
following
poem:
The
Lake
Isle
of Innisfree
by
William
Butler
Yeats
I
will
arise
and go now, and go to Innisfree,
And a
small
cabin build there, of clay and wattle make.
Nine bean now
will
I
have there, a hive for the honey bee,
And live
alone
in the bee-
loud
glade.
And
I
shall
have
some
peace there, for peace comes dropping
slow
,
Dropping from the veils of morning to where the cricket sings;
There midnight’s
all
a
glimmer
, and noon a purple glow,
And evening
full
of the linnet’s wings.
I
will
arise
and go now, for always night and day
I
hear lake water lapping with
low
sounds by the shore;
While
I
stand
on the roadway, or on the pavement
gray
,
I
hear
it
in the
deep
heart’s core.
In
this poem Yeats has
expressed
his
desire
for and dream of peace. He
recalls
a lake he has seen and imagines how he
will
enjoy the
peaceful
home he
will
make there. The auditory
effects
of the “bee-
loud
glade” and “lake water lapping with
low
sounds by the shore” are
famous
for
their
evocative music. No
less
evocative are the images of the
simple
home as
it
changes
with the
changing
hours of the day. His
desire
for this serenity is
so
intense
that
even
in the city streets he hears
its
music in his heart always. How
beautifully
he chooses his
rhythm
, rhymes, and the build-up to the
final
intensity of
feeling
is easily
appreciated
as
one
attempts
a paraphrase in
prose
. The
spareness
in his
choice
of
items
in the first stanza demonstrates economy of
example
and exclusion of irrelevant
detail
.
It
is
possible
to see in this poem the
importance
of tempo.
It
starts
out briskly, with his determination of what to do, and
slows
down with the
use
of
long
vowel sounds of the fourth line. The second stanza continues these
long
slow
sounds and allows
full
savoring of the
charm
of the place. The third stanza stresses the
strength
of his need to
effect
his dream.
Robert
Hillyer in his First
Principles
of Verse stresses the
importance
of
using
words in
their
natural
order
—not to
force
an
unnatural
or
inverted
order
to
meet
the requirements of meter or rhyme, but rather to
alter
the poem
altogether
if
necessary
to find
felicitous
ways
to
express
the
thought
without
awkward
and self-
conscious
forcing
of the words into a
given
pattern
.
An
understanding
of poetic language must
include
an
appreciation of the intricacies of verse structure,
involving
the
use
of a multiplicity of
tools
. Thus the poet has to be
an
accomplished
craftsman as
well
as a speaker of unusual
thoughts
.
First
of his
tools
to be
considered
is
rhythm
,
which
consists of the repetition of stresses and unstressed syllables, creating a
unit known as a foot. In English there are four basic
patterns
of feet: the iambic and anapestic, of two and three syllables respectively,
with the accent falling on the
last
syllable, and the trochaic and dactylic, of two and three syllables
respectively, with the accent falling on the first syllable. Each of these feet
conveys a
different
tone to the matter of the poem, the iambic and anapestic
giving
a
rising
feeling
and the trochaic and dactylic a falling
one
.
Each
line of poetry
contains
a
certain
number
of feet,
according
to the poet’s need or
desire
. The five foot verse or pentameter is the
one
most
frequently
used
, since
it
is the
one
that
gives the
most
natural
expression in English, particularly when
used
with the iambic foot. Iambic pentameter is the
rhythm
of Shakespeare’s
plays
and
Milton
’s Paradise
Lost
and is a
suitable
vehicle for
noble
and
elevated
thought
.
It
must not be
thought
that
the poet must
stay
slavishly
within the
limits
of his
chosen
metrical form. For this
reason
devices are
employed
to
lend
variety. The poet
may
occasionally
change
the stress in a line, he
may
use
the pause, known as a caesura, in place of a syllable, or he
may
use
the
run
-on line or enjambment.
All
of these devices,
if
used
with
skill
, enhance the enjoyment and
prevent
the dealiness of a jingly or sing-song delivery.
The
sounds of poetry are of
especial
importance
in
achieving
the musical
effects
that
are central to poetic
value
. For these the poet depends on many devices, the
most
easily recognized being: Rhyme is the recurrence of sounds
between
two or more words,
such
as the
familiar
moon-June, night-
bright
, etc. Refrain,
recalled
from
old
songs and ballads, is a
common
ploy. Assonance, the repetition of vowel sounds
that
need not be
identical
, but
close
in
sound
, is often
used
. Alliteration, the repetition of sounds either at the
beginning
or
concealed
within two or more words, is the
oldest
and
most
common
device of
sound
, going
back
to Anglo-Saxon times.
Onomatopoeia
is the
attempt
to make a world by
simulating
the
sound
of
its
referent—for
example
: buzz, ring, twitter, clang, etc.
Among
other techniques the poet finds useful are those for
purposes
of comparison. The
most
common
is the
simile
,
containing
the words ‘
like
’ or ‘as’, as when Byron says, “She walks in beauty
like
the night/Of cloudless climes and starry skies.” The
metaphor
, omitting the words ‘
like
’ or ‘as’, is
stronger
than
the
simile
. “There is a garden in her face,” by
Compton
, gives a
sudden
vivid
picture. The mind of the poet leaps to a comparison
that
is
ordinarily
not
thought
of, but is instantly recognized when the poet
expresses
it
.
According
to Lawrence Zillman, “poetic devices are the
‘embroidery’ of poetry. On or into the cloth of language these sounds are
applied or woven.
They
give
color, life, and often
great
beauty to the poems in
which
they
are
used
.”
The
true poet has a
natural
ear for
sound
which
makes his
choice
among
the
great
number
of poetic devices
easier
than
it
would
be for
one
not
so
gifted. However,
even
in the appreciation of poetry
some
form of
natural
ear is
necessary
.
Thus
we see
that
the poet’s
choice
of form and device has a
great
effect
on the language he
employs
.
It
must
constantly
be
borne
in mind
that
he has a
thought
he
wishes
to
convey
that
must in no
way
be subordinated to the mechanics or versification. Indeed in every
case
the
reverse
must be true. He particularly
wishes
to
avoid
stilted or
archaic
expressions,
forced
rhymes or fillers. “The poet,”
according
to Zillman, “must be master of his technique . .
.
so
the poet must select
wisely
the
elements
of form with
which
he
works
.
All
elements
must
work
together to make the poem: the mood of the poet, the
nature
of the
subject
, and the infinite variety of
effects
.”
The
poet enjoys a thrill of recognition in finding the words or phrases to
express
his
ideas
in a
fresh
way
. As Robert Frost puts
it
, “For
me
the initial delight is in the
surprise
of
remembering
something
I
didn’t know
I
knew.”
All of the above was published in Noesis, the journal
of the Mega Society, #182, September
2006.
Kevin
Langdon Biographical Data
Polymath
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