Donna Todd

Donna Todd

31 March 1940 to 6 August 2014

Sometimes you work with a person for a short time in your life

but you remember and cherish that part of your relationship forever.

Donna was one of those people.

Before she began the last twenty years of her life in Magdalena, New Mexico
and the London Frontier Theatre she spent some time in Utah.

That is where we performed, wrote and laughed together.

She brought with her decades of performance and writing.

Here, I will salute her for a just few of the characters she created during her sojourn in Utah.

Bertolt Brecht's Mother Courage and Her Children

Donna at right as Mother Courage, Nan Weber at left as Kattrin

Paul Zindel's The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds

Cast and crew with Donna second from the left.

 

Ugo Betti's Crime on Goat Island

Donna at center, Nan Weber at left, Richard Scharine at right.

The B. J. Holtkamp Round Barn

The B. J. Holtkamp Round Barn

A ride down a back road in Iowa revealed an historic round barn.

This is the B. J. Holtkamp barn built in 1917.

Take a walk around and inside the barn.

Stone Lions

Stone Lions

There is a public art piece in Lake Park in Milwaukee entitled

Eight Stone Lions.

They guard the ends of two bridges which span the ravines in the park.

They are sculpted from Bedford limestone (some say sandstone).

Designed by Paul Kupper, they were cast and carved by

stonecutter Otto Lachmund.

The bridges, although now narrowed for pedestrian traffic only,

originally hosted carriage and pedestrian traffic.

They were dedicated on 1 November 1897.

Here's Dad on one of them.

(circa 1940s)

Sad news for the pedestrian bridges.
A truck driver, following his GPS directions drove onto them.
Check out the link below.
Truck drives onto bridges.

The Sound of Autumn

The Sound of Autumn

My excellent husband and soul mate has written a song

for the first day of Autumn.

Click below:

The Sound of Autumn

Mattie Shipley Culver's Birthday

Mattie Shipley Culver's Birthday

Today is the anniversary of Mattie Shipley Culver's Birthday in Lowell, Massachusetts.

Her birth was registered in Clinton where the family lived 

but Mattie was born at Martha Platt's house in Lowell.

Mattie was likely named for her aunt.

 
Check out Mattie's facebook Book Page to see more of her life:
Mattie, A Woman's Journey West

North Point Water Tower

North Point Water Tower

Victorian Gothic and Cream Brick

You can't get better than that

Dad took this photo of the water tower at an angle because when he

originally mounted it in his photo album that angle was

aesthetically pleasing for the eye.
[1930s-1940s--Lake Drive and North Avenue, Milwaukee]

Cathedral of St. John the Evangelist 1935

Cathedral of St. John the Evangelist

Milwaukee 1935

Dad took many photos of buildings in Milwaukee.

Here's one he shot just after a fire partially destroyed the church in January 1935.