For anyone interested in off topic painting of pictures behind the literary discovery, mom moved to acting later in her life, opera was really going nowhere around L.A., better had my parents picked San Francisco when making their choice in the desert of San Bernardino on their first drive west from their verdant, Ohio roots with my 8 m.o. brother crying in the car from the heat before wide adoption of AC, and no child seats, and she was pregnant with me, but L.A. had more construction, and dad knew he could make money at that. He told me once about how his crew would wax nails so that they could be banged in more easily. They'd soak them in a coffee can with a flame beneath it. I always wondered if that affected long term reliability or creakiness of the structures he helped build.
Mom starred in a funny children's short "
Harry and the Lady Next Door," in which she played the opera singer she was, and played the nurse, the lady in the black dress at the party, and the nun who was mysteriously replaced by Bernie Taupin in DejaView's "
A Whiter Shade of Pale" with Harry Dean Stanton. She had bit parts in lots of stuff, including Night Court, where she played another opera singer whose troupe was arrested for starting a food fight. She looked hilariously sheepish in a Wagnerian, horned helm. She died in '98. I'm still so proud, and so humbled. She introduced me to Ram Dass (
Be Here Now) at such a formative age. Beyond her death, my brother shared a book she bought when starting to have health problems,
Healing Into Life and Death, which led me to
Who Dies?: An Investigation of Conscious Living and Conscious Dying, which led me to A Gradual Awakening, all by Stephen Levine, who led me to Buddha’s Brain: The Practical Neuroscience of Happiness, Love & Wisdom by Rick Hanson, PhD, and Richard Mendius, MD, all four totally life changing at a much older age, she still skilled me in absence.
An early mockup of her resume photos before having to change her last name for SAG membership:
An earlier opera role: