Beate Brigitta Caspari-Rosen, 1910- 5 July, 1995, in memoriam

My dearest mother who was born in Berlin during very troubled times.  Her father was a physician Paul Caspari, her mother, Flora Caspari, a beautiful blond blue-eyed woman who lived for the care of her family. Caught in the ,maelstrom of the Nazi seizure of power, Flora and Paul feared the worst, yet after visiting the United States, returned to Berlin in 1936. He feared that Jews whose ills would be ignored needed care, and even though seriously warned about what might occur returned  to Berlin. He died during an operation in 1936, leaving his wife Flora alone in Berlin. After hesitating for a short time, she fled to the United States where her daughter awaited her. Her daughter was my mother, Atta as she was called by close friends. In 1935, Beate had received her degree in medicine, and became an ophthalmologist. Since she married an American, albeit a Jew too, she was able to become an American citizen, She set off with George Rosen, her husband to the United States. Her life was devoted to her medical practice, to her husband, children Paul Peter and Susan Joan and her mother of course. Flora was  to sicken from colon cancer and breast cancer and died in the summer, when I was about twelve. Few members of my mother's family survived, be it the Caspari or Arnswalder side. (The Arnswalder family as I learned recently went to Isrrael. But this is painting a rosy picture. In fact only two children were sent to Palestine which was not yet divided into two parts, a largely Jewish state, Israel, and a Palestinian state. The children lived though horrors and poverty and wars; now today the younger members of this branch have become learned and active and accepting their full identity. Of course the parents who sent their children to Israel knew that they would never see them again. The Nazis killed them in their vile program of purification.

My mother followed her husband of course to New Haven where he became a professor of Public Health and in the Department of the history of science. His death in England in 1977, was shocking George was barely 67. For years after his death my mother missed him and grieved. They had both been looking forward to his retirement, a retirement that my father saw as giving him more time to carrry on his writing, to travel and to paint. My mother hoped that their life together would give them more time to relax  and enjoy the "oyster of the world." But that was not to be. Yes, my mother did find various opportunities to engage her intellectual capacities, but in time and due to heart disease she was increasingly removed from the active person who she was, a woman who was always curious about what was happening in her world, in the world. She enjoyed life and now that I am approaching her later years myself, I recognize how extraordinary she was in surmounting difficulties due to declining health. She was remarkable. A person to emulate, an idividual with winning laugh and smile, whose mind and heart worked together.
I was recalling her the other day, not even thinking about this anniversary, and wishing that she was still alive and that I could converse with her, tell her what I was doing and also explain some of the difficulties I faced. Her advice was sage; I do wish that I had heard her when she spoke to me so many years ago. But the young do not listen carefully to their elders.
Tomorrwo I set forth to Belgium , to Antwerp, to the city where I learned that she had died in the presence of a childhood friend from Berlin. One moment she was there , the next her soul had fled. To Aranka and Dorothy Kaplan I owe more than this terse statement allows. It was just because they were present that her joy caused her heart to beat to fast and brought her life to a close. Love and joy  it was that snipped her thread.

Some pictures of my mother Beate Caspari and then Beate Caspari-Rosen

molten matter that is in the throes of creation

what once was likely will not reoccur. snowflakes are individual, unique

what was

is this the point of no return? am I there yet or soon to arrive?

the damaged heart; how many times until it finally gives way, and flesh falls away revealing the skeletal structure and from there it is fire and cinder, vapor and a few bone fragments, Aftwards, no heaven, no hell, no purgatory, nowhere erewhon, bla

ck before my eyes, but eyes can not see they are no more. shades wandering aimlessly unable to talk but only an occasional squeak. What a view of mortality. Now only, this instant, gone, irretrievable and the  beads of life sparkle and then the next bead, dimmer yet until finally darkness, no motion, no swirling and wandering , no walking sound, sight, taste, smell, touch no longer exist for that little scintillating little glint and then a mere particle that sinks to the ground or rises in a droplet forever passing through the cycle of nature, earth's nature until the universe explodes and then there is no more perhaps never again or possibling reconfigured. a particle, so small it cannot be seen but it has ways on its unscripted path


 

The New York Public Library , Research Branch, for staters, stags have now been emptied; demotion about to occur

SAVE THE 42ND STREET LIBRARY
The Committee to Save the New York Public Library
SAVE THE 42ND STREET LIBRARY
The Committee to Save the New York Public Library
PLEASE SEE FOLLOWING URL

http://www.savenypl.org

 see above URL for a readable and well designed version of the same material as below. In either case, we-ALL- are about to lose a huge factor in NYC, its principal research Branch. But that is only the beginning. The little branch libraries will be mice for the rats to cat and excrete in the form of slender glass receptacles for the half of one percenters. Why should they care? Did the barbarians, so-call care, when libraries were torched. Remember Bimyan Buddhas? a comparable mindset is at work here.

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STOP THE CENTRAL LIBRARY PLAN

SAVE THE 42ND STREET LIBRARY
The Committee to Save the New York Public Library

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DON’T GUT THE 42nd STREET LIBRARY!
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3:30-5:30PM Rain or Shine More info

STOP THE CENTRAL LIBRARY PLAN



 SearchMain menu
Skip to primary content
Skip to secondary content
Home
The Truth About the Central Library Plan
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DON’T GUT THE 42nd STREET LIBRARY!
Rally at the 42nd Street Library Wednesday May 8th!
3:30-5:30PM Rain or Shine More info

STOP THE CENTRAL LIBRARY PLAN

The Central Library Plan (CLP), at enormous cost to New York City and its taxpayers, would irreparably damage the 42nd Street Research Library – one of the world’s great reference libraries and a historic landmark. The CLP would demolish the library’s historic seven-story book stacks, install a circulating library in their stead, and displace 1.5 million books to central New Jersey. The new circulating library would replace the Mid-Manhattan Library (at 40th and 5th Avenue) and SIBL (Science, Industry and Business Library, at 34th and Madison), which would both be sold off.

• It will be hugely expensive, costing a minimum of $300 million (probably much more), of which $150 million will come from New York City taxpayers. There is great concern that the Library’s focus on a highly-complex construction project will absorb desperately-needed funds which might otherwise pay for renovations of branch libraries, and replenish slashed curatorial and acquisitions budgets.

• It will radically reduce the space available for the Mid-Manhattan and SIBL.

• It will threaten the 42nd Street Library’s status as one of the world’s great research libraries.

• It will threaten the architectural integrity of the landmarked 42nd Street building.

• It does not take into consideration more efficient and less destructive alternatives, such as combining SIBL and the Mid-Manhattan into a rehabilitated and expanded building on the Mid-Manhattan site.

Underlying the widespread concern is the closed process through which the Library administration has made its decisions. Despite the fact that the 42nd Street building is owned by the city and is one of our most iconic structures, the plan was formulated with minimal public notification and no public input. The $150 million that the city has earmarked for the project was awarded without oversight by the City Council and with no public hearings. If alternatives have been considered they have never been disclosed, and no cost-benefit analysis or detailed budget has ever been presented.

Famed architecture critic Ada Louise Huxtable, writing in the Wall Street Journal, attacked the Central LIbrary Plan as

a plan devised out of a profound ignorance of or willful disregard for not only the library’s original concept and design, but also the folly of altering its meaning and mission and compromising its historical and architectural integrity. You don’t ‘update’ a masterpiece.

New York Times architecture critic Michael Kimmelman derided the design for the new circulating library which would replace the book stacks in the 42nd Street building as having “all the elegance and distinction of a suburban mall,” and called it an

awkward, cramped, banal pastiche of tiers facing claustrophobia-inducing windows, built around a space-wasting atrium with a curved staircase more suited to a Las Vegas hotel.

The Committee to Save the NYPL calls for a halt to the CLP until an independent agency can conduct a detailed cost analysis. This analysis should also evaluate the costs of an alternative proposal suggested by both Huxtable and Kimmelman that the 42nd Street building be left intact and attention directed instead to a renovation of the Mid-Manhattan building. As Kimmelman writes, “A new Mid-Manhattan branch should cost a fraction of gutting the stacks and could produce much better architecture.”

For an in-depth analysis of the Central Library Plan, please see The Truth About the Central Library Plan.

We are investigating all avenues of opposition to the Central Library Plan and we need your help! All donations are fully tax-deductable.




It has become increasingly apparent that the CLP is part of a larger effort by New York City’s public library systems to shrink their capacity and sell off valuable real estate, which started with the controversial sale in 2008 of the beloved Donnell Library to real estate developers.  For more information, visit the site of our allies at Citizens Defending Libraries: http://citizensdefendinglibraries.blogspot.com/

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April 1st, 2013: The Feast of Fools

"The Ship of Fools," 

Sebastian Brant
in the year 2013, the fools rushed to the ship heading to Narragonia; one fool called out the other: "The Ship is leaving, the ship is leaving." Some managed to swim and some took taxis, but all the fools in the world could not fit into the glorious ship which had already taken off to its destination.
Poor fools.
Does anyone recognize a fool anymore?
Doubtful.  

Richard Brignoli: in memoriam, 1-29-1939--2-14-2006

entering into the unknown

the endless order

 the spirit lives but  the finest is transmuted into gold

the sun sets

light is weightless

Richard and the book of life