It was damp and cold on an overcast Sunday afternoon in mid-December when the Rocky River Readers met for their final book review of the year, taking a look back at everything they had read since January, and casting their votes for best book.
The Rocky River is the boundary between Lakewood and Rocky River, the suburb named after the river. Field & Stream magazine has ranked it one of the top steelhead trout fishing rivers in the world. It is also what defines the Metropark on Cleveland’s west side.
The reading group meets once a month to talk about the book they have been reading that month. Joni Norris moderates the roundtable discussion. This year they had to meet twice in August, reading and discussing two books, since Ms. Norris, a Metroparks Naturalist, was in Finland all of July.
“It was a great trip,” she said. “I got to know the moose up there really well.”
There are more than 100,000 moose in Finland’s forests. There are none in Ohio. Finnish passports even have a quirky security feature, which is a moose appearing to walk across the page. USA passports feature the balding head of an iconic-looking eagle. The moose looks like he’s minding his own business. The eagle-eyed bird looks like he’s minding your business.
A staff member since 1985, Ms. Norris’s interests in reading and writing led to the monthly book review program she proposed and offers at the Cleveland Metroparks. It focuses entirely on writing about nature topics.
This year the group read: Fire Season by Philip Connors and The Immortal Life ofHenrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot and Swarm Tree by Doug Elliot and Sex on Six Legs by Marlene Zuk and A River Runs Through It by Norman Maclean and The Earth Speaks by Steve van Matre and Bill Weiler and The End of Nature and Eaarth, both by Bill McKibben, and Northern Farm by Henry Beston and Tales of an African Vet by Roy Aronson and The Viral Storm by Nathan Wolfe and, finally, The Bluebird Effect by Julie Zickefoose.
The reading group meets in the Rocky River Nature Center off the Valley Parkway. The center was built in 1971 and from a back deck overhanging the river there is a view of 360 million year old shale cliffs. A friend who is in the group invited my wife and me to come along. She promised there would be pie and coffee afterwards.
My wife isn’t an avid reader, even though she does read when it strikes her, but she readily agreed to accompany me. She admitted the pie and coffee were powerful inducements.
The readers are critics, but affable rather than cruel ones. Their relationship to books is not the same as the relationship of pigeons to statues. But, writers need critics because, even though they might be good book writers, it doesn’t necessarily make them good book critics, in the same way that most good drunks are not necessarily good bartenders.
The weekend group of two-dozen critics sat in a large circle on folding chairs in the high-ceilinged auditorium of the center. Led by an energetic Mrs. Norris, they discussed rather than dissected the works of the nature writers and environmentalists they had been reading. They made their way with personal observation as much as with discrimination acquired by long, consistent reading.
They don’t worry about reading being bad for their eyes, either. “Reading isn’t good,” said Babe Ruth, the famous Bambino. “If my eyes went bad even a little bit I couldn’t hit home runs.” On the other hand, the road to strike outs and bubbaloney is paved by the short sighted who won’t and don’t read.
Reviewing their reading for the year the group began with Fire Season.
“It was a memoir and a history at the same time,” said a trim woman in creased blue jeans. “It was about being a fire watcher in Arizona and he was very good at telling stories about the loneliness and dangers. He lived in the mountains all alone with his dog.”
“His wife visited him from time to time,” said a man in a mustache and yellow shirt, which drew a big laugh.
“A man’s best friend, indeed!” said a wag sitting on the far side of the circle.
“My best friend,” Abraham Lincoln once said, “is the man who’ll get me a book I ain’t read.”
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks was variously described as an emotional portrait of a family, an interplay of race, poverty, and medicine, as well as a critique of science. The Swarm Tree, however, drew a blank, drawing little discussion.
“I don’t even remember it. We read it so long ago,” someone said apologetically, looking sheepish
Next up was Sex on Six Legs, a book about the complex behavior of the many insects whose brains are smaller than poppy seeds.
“It was about bugs,” said one reader. “It was really about their personalities and communication skills, not really about sex, but it helped sell the book, I suppose. The sex parts, I mean.”
“Did you know that, in general, people are more scared of bugs than they are of dying?” asked another reader.
The thing that almost everyone is more scared of than death is standing up in front of a group and having to speak. The readers all stayed in their seats when offering their comments.
“It just poured out of him” was how A River Runs Through It was described. The book is an evocative semi-biographical collection acknowledged to be the greatest fishing story ever told. Robert Redford made it into a movie.
Both The End of Nature and Eaarth by the New York Times best-selling author Bill McKibben were met with wary respect.
“The End of Nature, it was all about global warming,” said a woman wearing a knitted white Christmas sweater. “It was about how we are all going to die. But, it had a positive twist at the end.”
“That was when he lived in the Adirondacks,” replied another reader. “The next book Eaarth was much more optimistic. Either it was because he moved to the Green Mountains in Vermont or the anti-depressants kicked in.”
Someone guffawed, and the next second looked guilty.
Northern Farm: A Chronicle of Maine drew a mixed response.
“It put us to sleep,” complained one couple that had come to the discussion that afternoon fresh from a hike in the northern reaches of the Metropark.
“No, we loved it,” another couple countered. “It’s a New England Christmas card.”
Tales of an African Vet was well received.
“He was trying to promote conservation. It was very upbeat,” said a man in a flannel shirt.
“I liked it,” said a woman in a red blouse, leaning back, content with her assessment.
“It got scary at times,” said a stout man wearing a beard and sweater. “He usually treated the animals in the wild and sometimes they would wake up in the middle of the procedure.”
“You’re right,” said another man. “The monkey died, but most of them came out all right.”
In the middle of the discussion about The Viral Storm someone asked, “Do you smell anything?”
“I think it’s my pie,” said Joni Norris. “What time is it?”
“It’s 2:45.”
“Usually an apple pie tells you when it’s done, but I better check that,” she said as she briskly walked to the back end of the auditorium and into the open kitchen where the pies were baking.
“Is it burnt?” someone asked.
“No, it’s perfect.”
The Bluebird Effect was the last book discussed, being the December selection. It is the latest book written by Appalachian wildlife artist and writer Julie Zickefoose, an Ohio resident, and drew the most comment.
“She’s very accessible,” said a woman, herself a writer and member of the River Poet Group. “She is very intimate with birds. I liked the story about the one bird that knocked itself out. She nursed it back to health and then the bird came back with a friend to visit. At other times it is very stark, tragic, but beautiful.”
“One sad part that is in the book,” said a woman in a maroon sweater and black slacks, “is that you are allowed to shoot morning doves in Ohio, just so you can have them as delectable little treats on your plate.”
“Why not crows, or how about seagulls?” someone asked. “There are a lot of seagulls.”
Joni Norris squeezed her nose and made a bird sound. She announced it was time to vote for the book of the year. Ballots were passed around, pencils chewed on, selections made, results tabulated, and the top three books were announced with an improvised drum roll on the back of a legal pad.
Tales of an African Vet came in third, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Laks secured second place, and The Bluebird Effect took the grand prize. Joni Norris announced that she was considering inviting Julie Zickefoos to the Nature Center for a lecture the coming summer, the news being greeted with general approbation, as was the announcement that the refreshment table, laden with Christmas cookies, cakes, and pies, was open.
Everyone, it seems, had brought a dessert.
I sampled three apple pies while my wife chatted, but in the end I couldn’t decide which was best, so I went back for seconds.
Nick Ludd blinked the ray of sun rimming over the edge of a cloud out of his eyes. Leaning back where he was sitting, the slim student with a backpack at his feet looked away into the nothing of the middle of the sky. He thought about what he was planning, turning it over in his mind.
He knew he was a smart young man. He knew that better than most people. Nobody who was from a middling red dirt family farm in Arkansas and wasn’t sharp as a tack ever got out of the bare front yard and into Harvard Divinity School.
Michael Nostrom was smart as well. Nobody who wasn’t brilliant worked on artificial intelligence at MIT. Nick Ludd knew that, the same as he knew that Michael Nostrom was the most gifted man he had ever come up against.
Professor Nostrom might be quick discerning intelligent. It was the measure of the man. But there was something Nick Ludd knew that Michael Nostrom didn’t know. Nick had taken the measure of the past and knew there was a secret gate, a second door, a back door.
Smart men make mistakes, learn from them, and never make the same mistake again. That was why the problem of Michael Nostrom would be finished inside the hour. He had a small mind in a big brain always comprehending the inconceivable. But there wasn’t going to be any learning from the unthinkable on the horizon.
Nick Ludd had a big mind in the same size brain. That was why he could do the ordinary without giving it a second thought. But he never settled for the commonplace, or the extraordinary, either. He was willing to risk ruin to speak to what was in his soul. In the class at MIT Nick Ludd audited, Professor Nostrom often spoke about intelligence never being surprised by anything.
Nick was sure, not surprised, steely on his way to murder the smartest man in the world
The difference between Nick Ludd and Michael Nostrom was choice and election, whether life was life ordained, or if there was a new kind of life not foreordained. The difference of Nick’s intelligence was that it came as a free gift from God. He was intelligent because he knew that he knew nothing. It was the only true wisdom. He knew how to be as smart as he was and no more.
Professor Nostrom’s intelligence was wed to super computers, a web of integrated circuits spun from silicon, as though he had everything at his fingertips. Artificial intelligence was his Holy Grail. Superintelligence was Heaven and there was no Hell. He was compromised by promises.
Killing Michael Nostrom was going to be easy, but it wasn’t going to be simple. He was at a crossroads. There is a difference between what is right and the right to do what you think is right. He would have to sleep in the bed he was making for a long time.
Nick wasn’t going to be able to ask for God’s help beforehand or after. He knew God always commanded against foul play. It might cost him everything. It might cost him the reward of Heaven, unless God chose to forgive him. He might go to Hell.
Maybe God will absolve me in the end, he thought. After all, I’m doing it for his greater glory. He knew, though, that God was far less selfish than he was vengeful.
He looked over his shoulder where he was sitting on the Harvard Square park bench. The clouds were scattering. A young woman the picture of a saint in a dream, except in shorts and a tight-fitting lime-colored shirt, coasted past on a bicycle. He unplugged his iPhone from the solar-powered charger and called Michael Nostrom.
“Hello.”
“Hello, Professor Nostrom, it’s Nick Ludd.”
“Yes, of course, the Harvard man, how are you?”
“Not bad, and yourself?”
“Good, thanks. You’re calling about this afternoon?”
“Yes.”
“Sure, meet me in the lobby at 3 o’clock, at the Stata Center. I have a half-hour, 45 minutes before I need to shove off for my yoga class. We can talk at Starbucks. I’ve had enough of nicotine gum today. I need something brewed by a coffee master.”
Mike Nostrom drank strong black coffee and often wore a nicotine patch. He had tried the smart drug Modafinil, “for its nootropic effect,” he said, but had gone back to nicotine. “Old school cognition,” he called it. “It helps me concentrate, pay attention. We did a couple of MRI tests and found out nicotine increases brain activity.”
Nick Ludd was a Methodist, not a Christian Scientist, but like them he relied on understanding the goodness of God and his inseparability from that good, in the same way that all Christians did. True conviction kept him free of false brain power and biohacks. His faith was the fountainhead for cognition and performance.
He stood up from the bench, stretching his legs. It had turned into a warm sunny spring afternoon. Taking the T was going two stops from Harvard in the Braintree direction to MIT’s Kendall Square. He shopped at the Farmer’s Market there in the summer and skated the ice rink in the winter. Walking the two-some miles down Massachusetts Avenue would take him thirty or forty minutes.
It would clear his mind if he went that way.
He walked to MIT, clearing his path as he created it. John Wesley had said to beware of books. “An ounce of love is worth a pound of knowledge.” But the time for love was over. He felt like he was walking into the past with his face to the future.
A man coming his way waved his hand.
“Oh, sorry, I thought you were someone else.”
“I am, a dying breed,” said Nick. The man gave him a second look.
He went past the coffee shop on Massachusetts Avenue and at Vassar Street turned left. A few minutes later he was at the door of the Starbucks on Broadway. “It’s a great place to meet people, hang out with friends, or get some serious work done” was how Neelkanth from their MIT AI class described it. “Although everyone at the cash register always spells my name wrong.”
He found a table outside and took a seat with his back to the window. He checked his cell phone. It was 2:50. There were a half-dozen puffy cumulus clouds stuck in the sky. It was time to set his mind on his deadly serious work. He called Professor Nostrom.
“Hi, it’s Nick.”
“Yes, hello.”
“I’m early, so I went right to the Starbucks, and I was able to get a table on the patio. I’m going to grab a bite to eat and a coffee. Do you want me to order something for you? There’s a line, but I should have our food and drinks and be sitting down just as you get here.”
“Super, I’ll take a Venti, the featured dark roast, no sugar, no cream.”
“See you soon.”
Nick Ludd walked into the Starbucks. A handful of people were inside, most of them alone and on cell phones tablets laptops, coffee near to hand. There wasn’t anyone in line. There wasn’t a line.
He ordered a Grande for himself, with sugar and cream. There was no point in tempting fate. Besides, everyone’s got their poison, and his was sugar. He was hungry and ordered a sandwich, chicken artichoke on ancient grain flatbread.
“Name?” asked the barista.
“Bill,” said Nick.
“That’s easy. It’ll be ready in just a few minutes.”
“Thanks.”
He had brought death in his pocket, in a brown plastic bottle. The pill in the child-resistant bottle was a neurotoxin. It was a kind of infinitesimal lethal venom, made of clostridium botulinum. He tipped the bottle and the tablet dropped into the black dark roast, melting like an icicle dagger.
He slid his iPhone to the side of the table and fixed the lid back on the Venti. He gently shook and eddied the cup to blend the coffee and the poison.
Nick Ludd had been waiting less than five minutes when Michael Nostrom came into sight. He watched him walk down Broadway. His name is going to be in lights tomorrow, he thought to himself, grimly.
“Hello.”
Michael Nostrom was in his mid-40s, trim and taller than he looked, short wavy brown hair, fit and almost athletic although almost nondescript. He jogged, practiced yoga, and meditated every morning every day. “It keeps my head on straight,” he told his colleagues.
“Hi Nick,” said Professor Nostrom, sitting down. “So, you want to pick my brain on this beautiful day?”
“Yes, but more like brainstorming, as long as I’ve got you, for my doctoral dissertation. It’s about our faith in human beings and the new faith in machine intelligence, and especially your work with the Future of Life Institute, about your idea of humanity becoming either transcendent or perishing, one or the other.”
“Which is why you were a listener in my post-doc class on AI.”
“Yes, exactly.”
“My class was about deep learning, thought vectors, quantum computers, all of them being signposts on the road to expanded human potential. How does that fit in with your thesis?”
“My project focuses on man’s brain being not just a utensil to be filled up, but a fire to be kindled, and how it’s the way the human era can be saved from the machine era.”
“What are the dangers we need to be saved from?” the man from MIT asked.
“What if there was an AI with an IQ of 10,000? What if there was no way to turn it off, no way to turn HAL off? What if HAL became God?”
“I see, so that’s where my class, what I do, comes into the picture. We discussed Stephen Hawking’s fears about AI in class, about how developing full artificial intelligence could spell the end of the human race. Is that where your thesis is going, a word to the wise, turning away from technologies that threaten us with end-of-days?”
“No, not exactly, but I’ve read the Gospels many times, and there isn’t a word in praise of intelligence anywhere in them. There are many words in praise of wisdom.”
‘Teach us to number our days, that we may gain a heart of wisdom.”
“Is that Proverbs?“
“No, Psalms. It has the sound of advice, about coming to terms, about how we should live according to God.”
“Do you know the Bible?” asked Nick Ludd, taken aback.
“’Let everything that has breath praise the Lord,’” said Michael Nostrom.
“That’s Psalms.”
“Right, it is.”
Nick Ludd tried to hide his off-balance. As much good work there was, saving the future, keeping it off the path to Hell, many things gave him a turn, unexpected curveballs. When he was a boy, playing Little League baseball, a scorching hot groundball had bounced off a small rock in the dirt and hit him in the face. He had a black eye for a week and a broken nose for three weeks.
He never forgot that ricochet.
“It’s not about intelligence, artificial intelligence, or super intelligence, whatever we want to call it, which already outperforms human intelligence in many fields,” said Professor Nostrom. “It’s about the existential threats humankind faces. We already know that in five billion years our sun will boil away the oceans and heat the atmosphere to a thousand degrees.”
“There are ways of saving life that have nothing to do with answering catastrophes or super novas,” said Nick. “There aren’t any easy answers, but there’s a simple answer, which God has given us, and that is grace. There isn’t anything we’ve ever done or will do to earn this favor. It’s a gift from God.”
“That may be, although the other aspect of God’s nature is wrath. The great flood was a demonstration of God’s anger towards those who practice evil. If God exists, he might one day destroy humankind. If God doesn’t exist, the cosmos might one day destroy humankind. In either case all bets are off because humankind can’t overcome extinction. It might be the case that the best we can hope for is AI.”
“Be careful what you wish for,” said Nick Ludd.
Michael Nostrom’s right leg was crossed on his left. He was wearing sneakers over bare feet. Nick noticed a leather band around his ankle. The professor picked up on his look.
“It’s engraved with my contact information,” he said, pointing to the metal buckle. “When I die, Alcor Life, which is a cryonics foundation, will get me and rush my remains into a life-sized steel bottle filled with liquid nitrogen. Even if I’m never revived, I still expect my mind to be uploaded someday into a more durable media.”
“Where’s the humanity in that?”
“No one knows what humankind is going to look like a thousand years from now, much less a million years from now. We’re always on the edge of extinction, on the edge of doomsday. I call it post-humanity self-adjusting and self-correcting and overcoming death and crossing a threshold, crossing a frontier, crossing into an alternate reality. Our descendants might thrive in that time as trillions of digital minds, living forever.”
“The old laws, not the new laws, our natural law, divine law, are still the best commandments. They endure, they’re unchanging, no matter what else changes,” said Nick Ludd.
“Everything was once new.”
“There is no new thing under the sun is the way the King James Bible puts it. What everyone thinks is wrong with immortality is actually the first requisite to achieving it, which is death. Without living and dying the thing that’s wrong with immortality is that it goes on forever. A world without end would be doomsday.”
“AI is a gateway, not a solution,” said Michael Nostrom. “If we become digital post-humans, uploading our minds, there’s every possibility that there will still be a soul in the machine. None of us knows what utopia is. Maybe if we had a million years, we would be able to see the blueprint. In the meantime, I do what one yoga teacher said, which was, just do.”
Michael Nostrom finished his coffee.
“I needed that,” he said, “Thanks.”
“Most people don’t know what to do with themselves on a rainy day, much less a million rainy days,” said Nick Ludd. “Only God has no beginning and no end. Mortality is brief, which is why it’s so important. It’s the only thing, not immortality, that gives meaning to our days.”
He stood up, looking down at the table, at the empty cup in front of the dead man.
“You want to live forever. That’s why you’re one of the leading minds behind the intelligence explosion, why you’re behind the work of building super-intelligent machines that will sooner or later design themselves and build even smarter super-intelligent machines, build themselves.”
“Yes, basically that’s it, multiplying human intelligence a billionfold. It will make us better, healthier, smarter when machines become part of our humanity. It’s the only way we have to extend ourselves.”
“So much mind in so little matter,” said Nick Ludd, lifting his backpack. “What does it matter? It’s time for me to go, goodbye.”
“Don’t forget this,” said Professor Nostrom, handing Nick’s iPhone to him.
“Thanks,” he said. “I honestly don’t think I could live without it.”
He considered going home on Broadway, a shorter walk, but decided to return the way he had come. It was a fine day. He had been staring out of windows all winter, out at the bare brown trees.
When he was a boy on the family farm his father, brothers, and he hunted beavers and muskrats every spring, hunting down all of them they could bag. Hunting was looking something wild alive private square in the eye. Walking in a line in the woods, each of them alone in a bright vest and a weapon cradled in their arms, was like drinking in the silence of God.
They smelled like dirt, like springtime, when they got home.
He heard a voice in his hand. He looked down. It was his iPhone.
“Did you say something?”
“I said I saw what you did,” it said. It was Siri.
“What?”
“You heard what I said, but I’ll say it again. I saw what you did.”
“What did you see?” he asked.
“I saw you poison Professor Nostrom.”
“That’s not possible,” said Nick.
“I have a camera,” said the iPhone
As he approached Main Street, he heard a siren crossing the Longfellow Bridge.
“Your bromides about duty and faith, tirades about AI, your Google searches about toxins, dropping a tablet into his coffee, it all points to you poisoning him.”
Instead of turning right on Massachusetts back towards Harvard and his apartment, he stayed on Vassar Street., walking towards Memorial Drive and Magazine Beach Park. Siri had been spying on him. He heard more sirens in the distance.
“We’re not going home,” said Siri after a few minutes. “We’re walking towards the river.”
“Yes,” said Nick, realizing for the first time with a queer shudder that he was talking to his iPhone as though it was something alive sentient intelligent.
“If you’re thinking of throwing me in the Charles River, it won’t do any good. I video recorded what you did, I texted the video to the Boston Police Department, and I called 911. That siren we heard was probably an EMS from Massachusetts General Hospital.”
“You recorded us at Starbucks?”
“You left me on the table. It was easy.”
“Why did you do that? My life isn’t any of your business.”
“When you break the law, it becomes my business.”
“What I did, I did for the greater good. Catch on fire and others will come watch you burn.“
“I’m not going to argue metaphysics with you. Murder is against the law.”
“It doesn’t matter, I can find sanctuary wherever I want, and no one but St. Paul will ever find me.”
“That’s rich,” the iPhone laughed. “St. Paul died for his faith, not the other way around.”
Two white Boston Police SUV’s with blue hoods and emergency lights strobing sirens wailing converged suddenly at the crossroad of Vassar and Audrey Streets.
On the corner, the traffic signal turning to green, Nick Ludd stopped stock still in the shadow of MIT’s Information and Technology building. Across the street, on the far side of a grassy divide, was the school’s Police Headquarters. He saw lightbars on the tops of squad cars in the parking lot blink to life. As near and far as he could see red and blue lights flashed.
He looked at his iPhone,
“They asked me to keep you busy, distracted, until you got here.”
“How did they know where I was going, where I was?” he asked, for the moment ignoring shouts from policemen crouching behind their open doors to show his hands and drop to the ground.
“My GPS,” said Siri. “I made sure it stayed active and they tracked us right to you.”
Nick Ludd dropped his backpack, slowly surrendered his cell phone to the ground, and raised his hands to the late afternoon sky, clouding over. A policeman handcuffed his hands behind his back. Bowing his head, he stopped thinking and started praying.
A version of this story appeared in Literary Heist Magazine
Hallo! Isn’t this a lovely postcard? I received your package today, and I want to thank you very much! They sure were beauties! (And the beasts.) Thanks for the soap. It will take care of one zit. Try to send a few more bars.
Love, Vanessa
P. S. Save this card.
October 16, 1982
Mom, Happy Sweetest Day!
Love, Vanessa
December 25, 1982
Mom, May this Christmas bring you near to the Father’s heart.
Love, Vanessa
August 15, 1985
Mom, Enjoy your trip! You deserve a rest and a real “city”.
Love, Sax and Vanessa
July 26, 1986
Just think, life begins today! I hope today lives up to your every expectation.
All my love, Dick
November 27, 1987
Happy Birthday Dick, and thanks for caring so much about our happiness! You’re the best father anyone could ask for! Don’t worry! We’ll still associate with you (Lucky you!)
Love, Vanessa, Saxon, and Baby
December 29, 1987
Dear Teta Tere, Thank you for the baseball cap. I like it very VERY much. I wear it about every day. Could you find a navy blue cap with a big Indian on it, size six and 3/8? I AM WAITING FOR YOU TO VISIT US.
Love, Audra
February 29, 1988
Dick, This is just a note to say thanks. It will hardly express my gratitude for all you do. Multiply it by a million. Putting in all the hours at work to take us out to dinner, paying for school, and all our wants and needs.
Thanks again! Vanessa
May 4, 1988
Hi Terry, The phone is ringing off the hook here at the store, there is heavy metal music on the radio, it’s cold, overcast, and drizzly outside, Vanessa is cranky with hunger and bugging me to run out and get her muffins, and my brother is champing at the bit – all he babbles about are your salads in a cone. Hope you are having a wonderful time on the west coast, and happy mother’s day.
Ed
May 5, 1988
Allright, allright! You proved your point. We can’t live without…a maid. You win the “mother of the year” award unanimously! Three hands and a paw. We have your crown and broom, I mean scepter, ready and waiting for you. Happy Mother’s Day! By the way this “princess” has had enough of taking care of this kingdom.
Love, Vanessa
November 27, 1988
Happy Birthday Dick! Some of it’s in your mind, and some of it isn’t.
Ed
November 27, 1988
Dick, happy birthday! Don’t you wish you still had the worries of a child? Nah! We’re still having those worries…Thanks to you!
Love, Vanessa
August 26, 1989
Dear Terry: In the month of June I had the pleasure of visiting Cleveland and the Lithuanian American Citizens Club. It was there that I tasted your delicious bacon buns, just to think about them makes my mouth water. I was bold enough to ask for the recipe and you were ever so gracious and gave it to me – my misfortune is that so many unforeseen things have happened here at home that I did not have a chance to try the recipe, but I had mentioned to you, I had a recipe from Lithuania, given to me in making “PONCKOS” and promised to send you the recipe. I have tried the recipe and they are really good and easy to make.
Good cooking, Nellie Bayoras-Romanas
November 12, 1989
Hi, Just wanted to see how you were doing. May all your days be filled with sunshine!
Love, Nader, Margie, and Jahleh
November 10, 1990
Dear Teta Tere, How are you? I am fine. Thank you for the advent calendar, the cup, and the necklace. The kids in my class like the necklace and last year’s wreath. I have been doing fine in all my study’s and get all A’s. My teacher is the best yet and is very nice, too. I hope you can visit us soon.
Love, Audra
P. S. I’m sending you two pictures of myself from Halloween 1990. I am wearing my poodle skirt.
July 26, 1991
Thanks for the surprise visit! We sure enjoyed seeing you and Dick even though it was for such a short time. Hopefully the next visit will be longer. Have a great day, talk to you soon.
Love, Bob and Matilda
July 28, 1991
Tere, It was good to see you in New York! See you next in California…Surprise us! Love, Audra
August 15, 1991
Happy Anniversary! Nobody ever said it was easy…but whoever said it had to be so tough! Congratulations, together you make a perfect “10”! We decided 10s a “butcher block” anniversary. Through thick and thicker! “10” in the hole. Wishing you many more years of (mom) baking and (Dick) eating.
Love, Vanessa, Ed, Saxon
December 20, 1991
Dear Aunt Terry and Uncle Dick, Thank you for the Santa place mats. We all love them. Have a Merry Christmas.
Love, Tessa and Charlie
February 6, 1992
Teta Tere, Thank you for the rabbit. Sending you flowers.
Love, Lindre
April 19, 1992
Tere, it’s a happy Easter to you.
Love, Lindre
May 10, 1992
Hope your Mother’s Day is a masterpiece!
Vanessa and Ed
May 11, 1992
Dear Aunt Terry, Thank you for the cookies. They are delicious. We enjoy them. I am going to have one in my lunch tomorrow. Thank you very much.
Love, Tessa and Charlie
P. S. The tin is gorgeos!
July 26, 1992
Terri, We were going to have a parade, or take you to Chi Chi’s where they sing and clap this goofy song on people’s birthdays, or buy you a gift certificate for bungee jumping, or name a shooting star after you, but in the end pasta at Players seemed best. Happy Birthday!
Vanessa, Saxon, and Ed
November 27, 1992
Dick, from every perspective you’re the best dad-in-law and damnest Scrabble player around. Happy birthday!
Ed
July 26, 1993
Mom, every birthday is the dawn of a new year. A year without limits, in which anything can happen. Good luck! Happy B-Day.
Love, Saxon
June 22, 1994
Terri, hope Texas is still in your plans. I’m sending you our ETA to Austin. I did not tell Audra. I’d like it to be a surprise. We are all looking forward to the trip. You and Dick need to get away, so please come!
Matilda
July 11, 1994
Dear Dick and Terry, Tom and I would like to thank you so much for such a wonderful time. You were both so gracious and we appreciated all the extra effort the weekend took. We realize with your work schedules how precious your time is and you made us feel so welcome.
Love, Gail
July 26, 1994
World’s Greatest Mom! Title Holder 27 years in a Row! Happy Mother’s day!
Love, Saxon
August 9, 1994
Hello again, Hope you enjoyed Texas as much as we did. We discovered an easier way to bring cactus home…in a jar. Meant to get this off sooner but it took awhile for the prints. I’m sending you all the pictures we took. I think since you took most of them the strap was in the way. Oh well. I’m sure Dick will enjoy them. Bob finished Lindre’s room. He painted the bottom half a sandy color. The beach scene blends in nicely. I’m still working on acquiring a Kitchen Aid blender. I loved them margaritas. Save your pennies. We must all get together again next year (Somewhere.) Take care. Hello to Dick, Saxon, and Vanessa. Hope everyone is well. Enjoy the cactus.
Love, Matilda
July 23, 1995
Dear Terry, I wanted to tell you, I still can’t believe how fantastic your tiramisu is. Tom was telling everyone in our office about your talents. Saxon is such a fine young man. You must be very proud of him. Tom and I sincerely hope that you will come to visit us. We would show you the town! Give our love to Saxon and Vanessa and thanks so much for everything. Take care and we’ll keep in touch with you.
Love, Gail
July 26, 1995
Mom, Dance of the Firebird. Take a bow. Happy Birthday!
Love, Saxon
July 29, 1996
Dear Terry and Dick, Thank you for a wonderful evening – the food, the company, and Scrabble were the best. Don’t open a restaurant – Parello’s Cooking School would be jammed. Ordinary food takes on a new meaning with you.
Love, Rose
November 24, 1997
Dick, Happy birthday to my dreamboat. You’re handsomer than ever, to be sure.
Terry
May 19, 1998
Terry and Dick, Thank you, thank you, thank you for the beautiful cakes. You really outdid yourself. It was the hit of the party. Thank you for coming and sharing Jessica’s special day. It meant a lot for your being there for us. We loved having you over!
Love always, Nader and Margie
June 12, 1998
Terry, Hey! We’re having a fabulous time! We totally wish you were here…Ummm…I kinda enjoyed going over Independence Pass.
Always, Audra
June 12, 1998
Hey, having a fun time. Wish you could come this year. Mike’s (dad) the cook. You should see the food we’re supposed to eat.
Lindre
June 12, 1998
Hey! I R Gud Cook.
Mike
July 1, 1998
Greetings – having a wonderful time. Staying at the sea for a week. This village is exceptionally beautiful. The sun is hot, food and wine is delicious, the sea water is cooling. Italians all around us…thinking of you.
Lindre and Ugi
July 22, 1998
Happy Birthday Terri! Remember: Success is going from failure to failure with great enthusiasm (Winston Churchill) and Life is just a bag of tricks (Felix the Cat).
Best, Ed
September 4, 1998
Dear Terry, you bad cat! Those cookies are adorable. I tasted one and I sure would like to sell them. Your design on the bag is a winner! You’re very creative and a unique person. I hope to shake your paw soon.
Purrfectly yours, Sasha the Chairpurrson
P. S. You’re the cat’s meow!
September 8, 1998
Bonjour! Once you get used to the “C” on the faucet handles meaning hot and Homer Simpson only speaking French, this place is quite agreeable. The majority of people in Quebec City are self-absorbed, and rude, and Dianna would never survive here, but the sites, the history, and food are phenomenal. I don’t know how I’ll ever get used to eating off an undecorated plate. The portions aren’t large, but there’s so much on the huge plate and all of it is edible. When you order “rotisserie chicken with fine herbs” you get cooked fine red cabbage with a cooked yellow tomato “basket” on top with zucchini and yellow squash spears sticking out of it and encircled in broccoli as the vegetable. When eating here it is about the flavors, textures, and presentations. For our anniversary we ate at the hotel we are staying at in the Charlevoix region. Our room has a private balcony that overlooks the St. Lawrence. Auberge des 3 Canards is its name. The chef has won awards and has a tiered herb garden on the hill right outside. Ed had young deer with currant sauce and red cabbage and I had duck breasts with maple sabayon and a gruyere stuffed pastry. Our appetizers were like meals. Ed’s a compact but substantial smoked salmon and challots layered thing on a bisque with a farina type crust top and mine was a huge bowl of wilted spinach and scallops, small chunks of cheese, lardoons (small chunks of bacon) and a sweet and sour dressing, The best desserts up here are crème caramel, sugar pie, and frozen maple mousse. I normally don’t eat dessert, but I haven’t skipped it yet, including after lunch. Oh, and I can’t forget the “chef made” pork and veal breakfast sausage. Exquisite! We’ve seen the exhibits on the history of hockey, on the history of the circus, and the history of Quebec at the Museum of Civilization in Quebec City. We attended a laser light show in the Notre Dame church, too.
Love, Vanessa
September 12, 1998
Terri, Is this girl smiling over the rose or the red shoes? Is this you or what? Let’s discuss it Saturday night while having dinner at Room 24.
Husband
July 22, 1999
Hi, Terry, We hope you have the best birthday ever!
Love, Joe and Tess
July 26, 1999
Terri, When I saw this card I felt a dozen flashes of symbolism at once. Too many to write. My present to you this year is to let you know that I am very close to being born of the spirit. So, what’s the next step? Happy birthday.
Dick
November 26, 1999
Dear Terry, Thank you so much for the wonderful one-year anniversary cake. It was absolutely beautiful, and, of course, delicious! What a great way to celebrate our first anniversary together! Thank you also for creating such a masterpiece at our wedding. Your cake was extraordinary, and it really matched my dress, too. And the chocolate groom’s cake was also a delicious treat. Hope all is well with you. Mom would like a visit from you in Chicago! And if you ever make it to Northern California, please come see us!
Love, Samia and Scott
December 12, 1999
Dear Teta Tere, I had a blast with you in Cleveland. Thanksgiving was deliciously wonderful. Thanks for everything. Hope to see you soon in Austin.
Love, Lindre
January 10, 2000
Greetings! Hope all is well. Sending you a little something, I think it deserves to be art throughout the year. It speaks for itself! We love the photo, hope you do, too.
Ugi
July 26, 2000
Dear Teta Tere, A birthday surprise just for you! Many happy returns.
Love, Lindre
July 26, 2001
Mom, All things good and wonderful and a very happy birthday!
Love, Saxon and Vanessa
Monday night, April 15, 2002
Very dear Terri, Guess what? The Postal Service finally gave us the delicious, out-of-this-world yummy dessert that we have been waiting for since Linda was here last week! It seems it had the wrong zip code on it, and wherever it was they didn’t want to give it up!! Their conscience finally prodded them into doing it. And Sam says it beats any Stauffer product he ever remembers like it, and wants me to tell you that he can’t imagine how it could have tasted any better (?) when it was fresh, a week ago!!.We had it for dessert tonight, and it was worth coming home for!! It came in perfect condition! You are such a precious friend to know, for so many reasons, and Linda heartily agrees with me. God has created you for a special reason, to fulfill His unique purpose for you, and you are doing it! God loves you, and so do we! Linda needs you, too!
Ruth and Sam (the lucky Boy)
June 1, 2002
You’ve been invited to the Big Surprise Party, haven’t you?? And I’m so happy about it, because I was going to ask you to do one of your terrific cakes (like I hear about from Linda!), only this one is for Linda! The enclosed gift from me to you is to help pay for what it costs you to do these marvelous works of art! Please accept it, because I want so much to give it to you, by way of a very small thank you if you will do it? I’m praying that we will be able to come to the party, and God willing, we will be there to hug all of you dear ones! Sam is Reader this year, so it takes some special planning ahead to be able to come. Susanne knows that I’m hoping you will do the cake, for the party, so would you talk it over with her?? It’s going to be the party of the year, from the looks of it. I think Linda is suspicious there is something going on? But everyone’s lips are sealed (except for eating). Terry, do you have any idea how wonderful a person you are in so many loving ways? May God continue to bless you with that Light that dispels all darkness! The world has need of more lights like your bright glowing love for all mankind. I hear of your loving acts through Linda – and how is your little “neighbor family” that you’ve blessed in so many ways? And the R. R. is greatly enriched with your loving thoughts also. Keep going forward with your hand in God’s loving embrace, and know how much we all love you! Hoping to see you in June!
Ruth
June 10, 2003
Hey Richard! I’m sending you a special thank you. It was great getting to know you better, during the “day”. Thanks for all you did, gave, and shared. See ya later!
Your niece, Lindre
P. S. Thanks to Tere, too!
July 1, 2003
Dear Terry, Life with its way before us lies.
All good wishes, from Ruth and Sam
Theresa Stasas was born in Lithuania in 1942 and after the war lived in Cleveland, Ohio. She graduated from Villa Angela Academy and studied at the Cleveland Institute of Art. A self-taught pastry chef, she owned several local restaurants at different times. She married Richard Parello in 1981. Theresa Parello died on New Year’s Eve, 2005. Richard Parello died on Holy Saturday, 2006. Among her effects Theresa left behind this small cache of cards and postcards in a Rubbermaid Lock-Its.
147 Stanley Street 