Category: Family

Happy anniversary to … us!

Published 17 March 2006 by Jason Crane

Today is Jen and my 10th wedding anniversary. Ten years ago today, Jen and I were in the foothills of the Tucson mountains with my grandparents Dot and Bernie Flanders, my aunt Linda and uncle Richard, my two cousins Tammy and Todd, Jen’s brother Sandy, and our friends David Gordon and Priscilla Havlis. We were married by a justice of the peace in front of my aunt and uncle’s house on a beautiful Sonoran Desert afternoon.

The wedding party was small because we were planning to travel back east for two receptions — one in Pennsylvania and one in upstate New York. We got married when we did because were about to move overseas. Or so we hoped.

A small wedding was a fantastic idea. David (my best man) and I had a relaxed morning before the wedding, stopping at Baggins Sandwiches to eat a little food and chat. Then we headed to Michaels Crafts and bought some ribbon to string between chairs so we could create a little aisle to walk down for the wedding. Jen and Priscilla made some flower arrangements at my aunt and uncle’s house.

Shortly before the wedding, Dave and I arrived at the house to change into our wedding clothes. I wore a vintage 1930’s blue pinstriped wool suit. Yup — a wool suit for a desert wedding. That’s macho! And stupid! Jen wore a beatiful cream colored silk outfit with a sleeveless blouse and pants. Her hair was long and flowing and she looked gorgeous.

Dave and I set up chairs for the guests, and hung the ribbon from the chairs to make the aisle. We also set up a semi-circle of rocks, inside of which Jen and I stood during the ceremony. Dave is an artist, and he actually made my gold wedding band. Jen’s wedding ring was a family heirloom given to me by my mother.

We walked down the aisle to a Yo-Yo Ma/Bobby McFerrin tune from their album Hush. The JP did his thing, and we said our vows. Mine included a verse from the song “Sweet Lorraine” — When it’s raining I don’t miss the sun / For that’s when my baby smiles. / And to think that I’m the lucky one / Who will lead her down the aisle. I’m not sure whether Jen heard any of that, because she cried throughout the ceremony. I tried not to take it personally.

Following the ceremony, I walked over to the JP with a check to pay him for his services. He said he only took cash. Dave overheard and went in the house to ask my grandfather whether he had any money. Grandpa came up with the $75, and I avoided going to jail, or whatever happens when you don’t pay the JP.

Then it was off in my grandparents’ white Chevy Corsica (complete with cans hanging off the bumper and the traditional “Just Married” sign) to La Indita, a great Mexican restaurant in downtown Tucson. The whole gang was there, and we had a great dinner on the outdoor patio behind the restaurant. The patio was surrounded by vine-covered trellises filled with singing birds. Dave made a lovely toast, and Jen and I danced our wedding dance to Chet Baker’s recording of “Time After Time.”

When we got back to our apartment (a guest house on Dodge Blvd. that Dave Gordon described fondly as a “hole”), Dave had put flowers on the bed and lit candles around the apartment. Given the dry weather, it’s fairly surprising that the guest house didn’t burn down.

I’m pretty sure that most folks we knew thought the marriage wouldn’t last, but they were wrong. Here we are, 10 years, two kids, five states, and two countries later, more in love than ever.

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We’re home!

Published 15 March 2006 by Jason Crane

Bernie and John Everyone is home safe and sound. I brought Jen and John back from the hospital at 9 p.m. on Monday. My sister, Gretchen, came over to stay with Bernie (who was sound asleep). She took some nice photos, which are now over at the Photos section.

John is doing really well. He’s breastfeeding very successfully. Jen is quite tired, but she’s recovering. We’re all just very happy to be home.

I really need to take a shot of John’s feet. They’re huge!

More soon. For now, take a look at the photos.

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Other folks born on March 11

Published 12 March 2006 by Jason Crane

It can’t be a bad thing when your new boy shares a birthday with Douglas Adams.

And with Bobby McFerrin, Ralph Abernathy, and Lawrence Welk. Wacky!

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John Flanders Crane: Day 2

Published 12 March 2006 by Jason Crane

John is out from under the oxygen tent, although he’s still in the special care unit. Jen is doing quite well. We hope to have John in Jen’s room by late tonight, and we really hope to have the whole gang home by tomorrow (Monday).

Jen and John

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Fun with numbers

Published 12 March 2006 by Jason Crane

For those of you keeping score at home, Bernie was born on 11/3, and John was born on 3/11. Coincidence? Yup, but it’s still kinda cool.

We hope to be able to take John out of the O2 tent to feed him around lunchtime today. And we hope to have everyone home tomorrow.

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The new baby! John Flanders Crane joins the world!

Published 12 March 2006 by Jason Crane

Jen and I are thrilled to announce the birth of John Flanders Crane. He came into the world at 6:13 p.m. on Saturday, March 11, 2006. He weighed 6 lbs 11 oz at birth.

He’s already taking after his brother — he has a little problem with his lungs, so he’s in an oxygen tent in the special care nursery until at least tomorrow. Bernie had to do the same thing, and he’s completely fine, so we expect to have John with us very soon.

Jen came through with flying colors. She’s really doing well. As for Bernie — he gets to meet his new baby brother tomorrow!

Here are some photos of the day. More details will come in the days ahead.

Jen with cat Jason and Jen pre-birth

John 1 John 2

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Still no baby

Published 5 March 2006 by Jason Crane

It was back on February 10 that I wrote a post titled “We almost had a baby tonight.” Here it is, the 5th of March, and we still haven’t had the baby!

As happened with Bernie, Jen’s health has been an issue this time around. Her blood pressure has been quite high, which can be a sign of preeclampsia. So she’s been on bed rest for the last three weeks, which is annoying on its own. Why? Well, no two doctors have the same definition of “bed rest.” Doctor #1 said it meant lying in bed and getting up only to go to the bathroom. Doctor #2 said, “Most of my colleagues would prescribe bed rest, but there’s no evidence that it has any effect, so just take it easy.” And Doctor #3? “Bed rest means bed rest, but you shouldn’t just stay in bed. You can move around.” Got it?

Doctor #3 also made a 9-months-pregnant woman on bed rest wait for 45 minutes in his office until he showed up for our appointment on Friday. We’d already been at the hospital for 90 minutes before that for our weekly tests, too. Good stuff all around.

Not to mention that we picked this doctor (after our midwife plan was nixed) because he’s a family practitioner with an OB specialty. That means that he’ll be the guy who actually delivers the baby, rather than just getting whoever is on call. Except that he’s going on vacation on Friday, so he probably won’t be around when the baby’s delivered after all. If we’d had this doctor for the whole pregnancy, that might just be the luck of the draw. But we didn’t even get this guy until two weeks ago, and he knew he’d be on vacation.

This whole thing just needs to end. A nice, healthy baby. A happy, healthy mommy. And a less stressed me.

All that said, it’s still fantastic that the baby has had three more weeks in the womb than we expected. It’s over 7 pounds now, which is also really great. Bernie was 5 lbs 15 oz, and he was three weeks early. At this point, Baby #2 isn’t technically premature (just two weeks early), and the baby’s weight is fine.

Who knew having a baby could be so challenging? What’s that? You say everyone knew? Oh.

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Sedition, Secession & Civil War — It’s Issue #7 of Flanders Family News!

Published 27 February 2006 by Jason Crane

As I’ve mentioned before, I publish the newsletter for the Flanders branch of my family. The newest issue is available now at flandersfamily.org, and you may find it interesting even if you and I aren’t related.

In this issue, we delve into the story of Francis D. Flanders and his brother Joseph R. Flanders. They published a newspaper in Franklin County, New York. They ran for and won elective offices.

And they were jailed by Abraham Lincoln.

That fascinating story, plus:

Bunny McLeod Graduates From College … at 65!
Flanders: The Ontario County Connection
The Mystery In Mt. Hope Cemetery
Flanders In Politics
Flanders In The News
…and more!

Please visit flandersfamily.org to download the newsletter.

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Sushi with a 3-year-old boy

Published 20 February 2006 by Jason Crane

Shiki

Bernie and I went out for sushi tonight at Shiki on Clinton Avenue in Rochester, and we had a wonderful time. He was in a great mood, and we really enjoyed every minute of the evening. To see him eat, you’d think he hadn’t been fed in about a week. He had four pieces of tamago sushi (egg sushi), four pieces of tatsuta age (a sort of Japanese fried chicken dish), two pieces of tekka maki (tuna sushi roll), and some miso shiru (miso soup.) Here are a few shots of the boy in action:

Bernie sushi 1

Shiki is Rochester’s best Japanese restaurant. There is no competition. Seriously. There are other Japanese restaurants, but none of them can hold even a tiny candle to Tanaka-san’s little masterpiece of an eatery. It’s probably the best Japanese food I’ve had outside of Japan, and believe me when I tell you that I’ve eaten sushi in big cities and small from coast to coast. Yesterday was Shiki’s second anniversary, so go over there and stuff yourself with some of the best food around.

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Bernie Crane, age 3

Published 15 February 2006 by Jason Crane

It’s been a while since I’ve put any pictures of my son Bernie up on the site. Here he is preparing to make a daring leap on the sofa:

Bernie jumping And here he is playing his favorite drum:

Bernie drumming

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The Valentine’s Day scam

Published 15 February 2006 by Jason Crane

My son Bernie is 3 years old. Two days a week, he goes to a preschool class at the Monroe Avenue YMCA. Today, his class had a Valentine’s Day party, for which Bernie was required to bring in a Valentine card for every kid in the class. So last night, Dear Old Dad is out in the car after the proverbial hard day’s work, looking in vain for the last two packs of Valentine’s cards that aren’t shilling some brain-melting TV show or toy. I finally found just enough cards, although I had to trip an elderly woman to stop her from grabbing them first.

To add insult to injury, it was then up to Dear Old Dad to go home, get out the list of Bernie’s classmates, and sign all the cards and envelopes on his behalf. All while he’s sound asleep, I might add.

Can anyone explain to me what the point of that is?? We’ve already been scammed into a holiday created by the greeting card companies and probably subsidized by government largesse sucked from our pockets by the powerful Heart-Shaped-Box Lobby. Now I have to fill out greeting cards for kids who can’t read, so they can be the imaginary love interests of other kids who can’t read?

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Norm!

Published 12 February 2006 by Jason Crane

The other day, a friend said this to me: “I’ve always run away from putting down roots, I think partly because I’m so desperate to have some.”

Exactly. I’ve moved more than 20 times so far, and I’ve always felt cut off from any particular “hometown,” except for Lenox, Massachusetts, where I lived until I was five. I still feel like I’m home whenever I’m there, even though most of my life has been lived elsewhere. The first person I dated had lived in the same house her entire life (about 15 years at that point). My sister lived in the same house from the age of 5 until she was 24. My parents have lived in the same house for the past 20 years.

All of that seems very odd to me. Or maybe it’s better to say that I can’t really relate to it. I’ve always prided myself on my ability to adapt to new surroundings. I find that I get the itch to move after I’ve lived somewhere for about a year.

I’ve now lived in Rochester for five and a half years. It’s almost impossible for me to leave the house without running into people I know. Every restaurant, every store, every concert, every bike ride. A few of those folks even like me, and more than 1,500 of them voted for me for city council. That’s just weird.

I started thinking of this today when I was at Palermo’s Meat & Food Market on Culver and Norton. Guy, the owner of the store, knows my family and me by name, as do several of the employees. While Bernie and I were in there today, we ran into my good friend Otto (don’t forget to check out his new site) and his son Frankie. A few minutes later, Otto’s brother came in. Everybody was chatting, laughing, telling jokes, ordering food from the deli counter, and just generally behaving in the way I always imagined adult life would be.

So what does that all mean? Does it need to mean anything? For one thing, it means that I have roots here in Rochester. I never expected that to happen. It also means that it’s still possible — if I make the effort — to live life meaningfully in a circle of people who care about me. That’s a great feeling. When we had our near-baby-event yesterday, we had friends and family close at hand who were willing to drop everything to help out.

I didn’t expect our life here to be like this, and I’m still trying to figure it all out. In the meantime, it’s cool to have friends.

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We almost had a baby tonight

Published 11 February 2006 by Jason Crane

As Mark Twain didn’t actually say: “History doesn’t repeat itself, but it rhymes.” What began as a routine check-up at the midwife’s office turned into a 6-hour saga complete with hospital visit, much like our 2002 experience with Bernie.

Bernie was born three weeks early because Jen had to be induced due to complications from preeclampsia — a pregnancy-only disorder that results in dangerously high blood pressure.

This time around, Jen’s blood pressure had been normal for the first eight months of her pregnancy. Recently, though, her blood pressure has begun to creep up, and today it really spiked. Our midwife called a doctor, who sent us to Highland Hospital. The doctor said that a reading as high as Jen’s was almost a guarantee that they’d induce labor — tonight.

I scrambled to get someone to watch Bernie — first our friends Pamela and Dan, who took him for a couple hours, then my sister Gretchen, who took over from there. I had met Jen at the midwife’s office, so we were driving two cars. Jen and Bernie headed over to Pamela and Dan’s, and I followed close behind. About a half-mile from their house, I was stopped at a red light … and I got rear-ended by a minivan! It was unreal. Luckily, the guy didn’t do enough damage to my car to make it impossible to drive, so we exchanged information and he left. I called the insurance company to file a quick claim, and then met Jen at home so we could head to the hospital.

Off we went to Highland Hospital, where we waited for about three hours while Jen had blood work done and had her blood pressure routinely checked. Her blood pressure was high, though not as high as the initial reading by the midwife. When her blood work finally came back, it was perfect, and the doctor diagnosed gestational hypertension — high blood pressure caused by pregnancy, but not as serious as preeclampsia. We have to keep monitoring it, and Jen has to reduce her workload (read: Bernie) around the house.

The weird part of it all is that I was psychologically prepared to have the baby tonight. The initial opinion of two different doctors was that we’d be giving birth to Crane Baby #2 before we left the hospital. At first, that was a shock. We quickly calmed down, though, and prepared ourselves for the process. Then, three hours later, we were sitting at the kitchen table as if nothing had happened.

That’s all for the best, of course. It’s better for mother and baby to get closer to the due date (March 17), and it’s still our plan to do a home birth with our midwife if that’s possible. One nice element of the hospital stay was that Jen was hooked up to a baby monitor for about 90 minutes, and the baby’s heartbeat was rock solid at 140 beats per minute, or as I like to call it, Techno Tempo.

So now we’re home. Jen is fine, the baby is fine, and we’re proceeding toward our expected delivery date. I’ll keep you posted.

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Nursery rhymes from my Great-Uncle Jack

Published 5 February 2006 by Jason Crane

My grandmother’s brother, Jack Coughlin (1912-2000), was quite the character. He served in the Marines during WWII as a cook in Hawaii. When he came home, he and his first wife, Evelyn, lived in the apartment above my grandparents on Main Street in Lenox, Massachusetts. He worked at the post office, and he knew everyone in town. Before police scanners were readily available, he’d wake the entire family at the sound of the fire bell and race off to watch the firemen at work. Later in life, he bought a police scanner and listened to it constantly.

He was the first vegetarian I ever heard of. If memory serves, he became a vegetarian after a visit to a chicken farm.

He also had quite a sense of humor. What I remember best are his twisted takes on classic nursery rhymes. Here are a few for your enjoyment:

Hickory dickory dock,
Two mice ran up the clock,
The clock struck one,
And the other escaped with minor injuries.

Mary, Mary, quite contrary,
How does your garden grow?
With silver bells and cockle shells,
And one stinkin’ petunia.

Little Miss Muffet sat on her tuffet,
Eating her curds and whey.
Along came a spider and sat down beside her,
And said, “Is this seat taken?”

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Grab-bag of Craneish goodies

Published 3 February 2006 by Jason Crane

Yoikes! It’s been way too long since I posted something here. Work has been crazy recently. As you know, I work as a labor union organizer, and that’s not a 9 to 5 job. I worked every night last week, and almost every night this week (in addition to every day).

Despite all that, I have had a bit of time to read, watch and listen to some cool stuff. In the reading department: I just checked out Scurvy Dogs, a pirate comic written by Andrew Boyd and Ryan Yount. The premise? Classic pirates (Yar! and all that) try to get jobs and find love in the modern city. It’s hilarious, and the preceeding description can’t hope to do it justice. Get it today. You can thank me later.

I also had a conversation in my local comic shop (Comics, Etc.) the other day about the big crossovers of the 1980s. I was buying some back issues to fill in my collection of DC’s Millennium crossover, and the guys and I got to talking about how “the kids these days are reading Infinite Crisis without ever having read the original Crisis On Infinite Earths.” Before I go on, I’d just like to reiterate: I’m married, and I’ve fathered two children. Thank you.

The point is that some of those old crossovers were really hip. OK, they were also shameless attempts to get you to drop a whole month’s allowance in one trip to the comic shop, but still…

In defense of “these kids today,” the big comics companies (DC and Marvel, primarily) haven’t made it easy to get into the back-catalog material. It seems like they reset their entire universes about every six months, and most of the changes that take place in the big crossovers don’t last. Robin died — now he’s back. Superman died — he’s back, too. In Millennium, the parents and friends of many of the DC universe’s biggest heroes were revealed to be Manhunters bent on destroying the universe. All those people are still in their respective comics, and it’s as if the whole Millennium series never happened. Oy!

On the listening tip: My friend Otto Bruno is host of the fantastic Sunday Music Festa program on my favorite jazz station, Jazz90.1. He recently loaded me up with more than 400 episodes of the Jack Benny radio show from the 1930s and 1940s. I’ve been collecting old radio shows since I was a kid. This was quite a haul! I’ve been listening to them in cronological order. I’m still in 1933. It’s great to hear Jack make jokes about current events, just like Letterman or Leno (except funny, unlike the latter example). For example, one 1933 monologue contained jokes about Greta Garbo, King Kong, and Gandhi. That’s right, Gandhi. The sound quality is all over the place on these recordings, but they’re a priceless snapshot of that time. You can check out a big collection of Old-Time Radio mp3 CDs at OTRCAT.com.

Back to the reading list for a moment: In combination with these radio shows, I’m reading a biography of Jack Benny written by his wife, Mary Livingstone, with the help of her brother (and former Benny writer) Hilliard Marks. It’s a fun read, and a touching look at the life of a great entertainer. As far as I know, it’s long out of print. I found a first edition of it this week at the Yankee Peddler Bookshop here in Rochester, NY.

Finally, the watching list. Jen and I have been catching up on the TV show Scrubs. My sister gave Jen the first two seasons for her birthday and Xmas. It amazes me that a show this good even made it on to TV, let alone that it has survived for several years. Brilliant!

A final note: If you’d like to know more about my family than you could ever imagine, you can head over to The Flanders Family Blog and download the latest edition of Flanders Family News, the monthly newsletter I publish. Enjoy!

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