I'm sighing with contentment. Your gorgeous book, the video of Eileen... I am complete. Thank you, Karen, and may your Thanksgiving be blessed with warmth and peace. xox
Happy Thanksgiving Karen! You certainly deserve to have a wonderful warm and homey Thanksgiving.
What a wonderful story and book. It makes me homesick for those books that I read as a child which always helped me to enter into incredible magical worlds where I knew that I belonged. I continued to love those books as an adult and happily read them to children, while I escaped with them. Your books and illustrations are enchanting!
Reflecting on this year filled with ‘tribulation’ for many, I am truly thankful for you! I love your autonomy in thought and deeds.
Your elegant, deeply researched writing, backed with your own experience and recording your history and beliefs through your notes and essays, ranging from Covid, spirituality or your belief in God, your deep care for children/young people, (the story about you son’s best friend struck a sorrowful, yet core place in my heart) your helping, shedding light on their lives and plights, while fighting by your actions for the truly oppressed women of the world, going through this election, along with your pain, thoughts, and outrage about the Holocaust(s) & pogrom(s), (past and current) your sensitive toughness and discipline, as well as willingness to learn and then teach kickboxing, (+ all that goes with that) especially to adolescents and young women, as well as teaching writing, the love and understanding you give for Israel and your courageous willingness to face the fallout (threats included) for standing for Israel, have all made me feel less like a stranger in my world, where I just don’t fit with any “side.” Many have weeded themselves out over the past few years. Your essays have been profoundly validating and if you could hear me reacting to them, you would hear a lot of “YES! She’s saying it perfectly! That exactly what I said!” (And so on).
If I responded in writing to all of your essays, especially since I currently have to use this phone as my “computer,” (my laptop froze last year and my former, now antiquated desk top melted in an AZ fire) it would take hours along with longer workouts to combat or to compensate for the achy spine wanting to freeze into a curve, resulting from using the phone’s keypad.
So THANK YOU Karen and God Bless you and your family! & I have to add 🙏🏼🇮🇱🙏🏼🕊️. Too much activity coming from my Tsofar app.
Several (or more?) years ago, you mentioned this book. I bought it shortly after. A year or so ago, I showed it to my grown daughter who exclaimed at seeing it…she had read it! It was the pictures that triggered her memory. The book looked so familiar to me, now I know why.
That is so nice to hear! So many people tell me how they read these books as children, grandparents tell me how they read them to their children and now to their grandchildren. I cannot tell you how fulfilling that is. I'm glad you were able to find the book, too.
Now godliness with contentment is great gain...1 Timothy 6:6.... Happy Thanksgiving Karen there really is so much to be thankful for especially in this country ...having an attitude of gratitude is the way to walk it out and thanking Jesus for all you have!! Maranatha!!
Happy Thanksgivin' Karen--what a sweet story an' yer delightful illustrations are so perfect ta highlight how we all might get carried away an' fergit how MUCH there is ta be grateful for! I loved the story 'bout dancer Eileen Kramer who just passed away at 110--what an elegant grand dame! She danced until her last days an' was so articulate, gracious, a wonder an' inspiring too!
I dared look inta her history a bit more an' it's even MORE incredible--she did not start dancin' until she was 26 years old!
From the Sydney Morning Herald I found out more...
"Kramer seems to have lived as if knowing she had time at her disposal. Born in 1914 and raised in Sydney's Mosman Bay to an English mother and a father she now thinks may have been Jewish, she didn't take up dance until the unheard-of age of 26. She didn't meet her first de facto husband until she was 42. She didn't return to Australia, after decades in India, Europe and the US, until she was 99. As she likes to say: "I started late but I didn't rush."
(WOW)
Her father (I read elsewhere) Julius Kramer, was born in South Africa, though his family originally came from Germany (fwiw Kramer is often a jooish name) and Eileen studied both piano and singing at "The Conservatory" before seeing a charity concert where she became smitten with dance! From that point onward (havin' no dance experience at all) she danced with a company founded by a woman who fled the Nazis who established Bodenweiser in Australia in 1939. Here's more:
"She (Kramer) had broken off with Want (her analyst! also her boyfriend) by the time her mother offered to take her to a charity concert at the Conservatorium, one life-changing evening in 1940. On the program was the Bodenwieser Viennese Ballet, the first professional modern dance company in Australia. Its founder, Gertrud Bodenwieser, an Austrian Jew, had been a significant figure in the Viennese dance world in the 1920s and '30s, before fleeing Europe in 1938 and ending up here, where her main dance troupe was touring. (Her husband wasn't so fortunate – he would die in Auschwitz.)"
"Bodenwieser and many of her dancers were Jewish and in 1938, when the Nazis invaded Austria, the ballet was forced to leave Europe." It appears that Kramer danced with Bodenwieser for 20 years until Gertrud died in 1959 after which Eileen continued to dance. The Bodenwieser Ballet performed in many, diverse venues and situations in Australia. It gave shows to pearl divers in Broome and miners in Kalgoorlie, Coolgardie and Broken Hill. (!)
"In the 1950s, Kramer was living in Paris, working as an artist’s model. One day in 1956, she met Baruch Shadmi, a Polish-Israeli filmmaker six years her junior, who would become her partner for the next three decades. She was 42; he was 36. Kramer and Shadmi moved to New York, where, in the early 1960s, they began collaborating on an animated dance film, with Kramer both dancing and creating hundreds of models for the project. Partway through, Shadmi suffered a stroke. As his health continued to decline, Kramer set aside her own career to care for him. She looked after him for nearly 20 years, until his passing in 1987. In 1988, Kramer moved to Lewisburg, West Virginia, to be near her friend Maryat, where she resumed her work in theater and the arts. She didn’t return to Australia for good until 2013, when she was 99. "
even as an older laydee we learn:
" Kramer doesn't just dance in these works, she also writes the stories, designs the costumes and comes up with the choreography." (this about a performance at 103!)
And at one point as a young gal she rented the apartment of Peter Finch and his professional ballerina wife--before she was a dancer--talk 'bout kismet...
I'm so happy ta know about one more lovely soul that graced this planet--who lived her life ta the fullest with a true LOVE fer all she did!--thereby settin' such a GRAND example fer us all! (110, wow)
I love you so much Karen. I am so so glad I found you.
Thank you. Love you, too. So glad and THANKFUL you're here.
Best Thanksgiving blessing anyone could hear this year!! Thank you Karen, Roy
You're welcome! God bless!
The first of your books I collected!
Oh, that's so nice to hear!
Thanks as always, Karen. I echo what Rosemary B said! ❤️
Thank you!
I'm sighing with contentment. Your gorgeous book, the video of Eileen... I am complete. Thank you, Karen, and may your Thanksgiving be blessed with warmth and peace. xox
🙏
Happy Thanksgiving Karen! You certainly deserve to have a wonderful warm and homey Thanksgiving.
What a wonderful story and book. It makes me homesick for those books that I read as a child which always helped me to enter into incredible magical worlds where I knew that I belonged. I continued to love those books as an adult and happily read them to children, while I escaped with them. Your books and illustrations are enchanting!
Reflecting on this year filled with ‘tribulation’ for many, I am truly thankful for you! I love your autonomy in thought and deeds.
Your elegant, deeply researched writing, backed with your own experience and recording your history and beliefs through your notes and essays, ranging from Covid, spirituality or your belief in God, your deep care for children/young people, (the story about you son’s best friend struck a sorrowful, yet core place in my heart) your helping, shedding light on their lives and plights, while fighting by your actions for the truly oppressed women of the world, going through this election, along with your pain, thoughts, and outrage about the Holocaust(s) & pogrom(s), (past and current) your sensitive toughness and discipline, as well as willingness to learn and then teach kickboxing, (+ all that goes with that) especially to adolescents and young women, as well as teaching writing, the love and understanding you give for Israel and your courageous willingness to face the fallout (threats included) for standing for Israel, have all made me feel less like a stranger in my world, where I just don’t fit with any “side.” Many have weeded themselves out over the past few years. Your essays have been profoundly validating and if you could hear me reacting to them, you would hear a lot of “YES! She’s saying it perfectly! That exactly what I said!” (And so on).
If I responded in writing to all of your essays, especially since I currently have to use this phone as my “computer,” (my laptop froze last year and my former, now antiquated desk top melted in an AZ fire) it would take hours along with longer workouts to combat or to compensate for the achy spine wanting to freeze into a curve, resulting from using the phone’s keypad.
So THANK YOU Karen and God Bless you and your family! & I have to add 🙏🏼🇮🇱🙏🏼🕊️. Too much activity coming from my Tsofar app.
This is so sweet and kind! Thank you. God bless yih and give you a wonderful Thanksgiving. ❤️
Good bless you too Karen
Several (or more?) years ago, you mentioned this book. I bought it shortly after. A year or so ago, I showed it to my grown daughter who exclaimed at seeing it…she had read it! It was the pictures that triggered her memory. The book looked so familiar to me, now I know why.
That is so nice to hear! So many people tell me how they read these books as children, grandparents tell me how they read them to their children and now to their grandchildren. I cannot tell you how fulfilling that is. I'm glad you were able to find the book, too.
Now godliness with contentment is great gain...1 Timothy 6:6.... Happy Thanksgiving Karen there really is so much to be thankful for especially in this country ...having an attitude of gratitude is the way to walk it out and thanking Jesus for all you have!! Maranatha!!
Beautiful story and beautiful ending with the video. I haven’t shown my gratefulness today, thank you for reminding me. ❤️
Happy Thanksgivin' Karen--what a sweet story an' yer delightful illustrations are so perfect ta highlight how we all might get carried away an' fergit how MUCH there is ta be grateful for! I loved the story 'bout dancer Eileen Kramer who just passed away at 110--what an elegant grand dame! She danced until her last days an' was so articulate, gracious, a wonder an' inspiring too!
I dared look inta her history a bit more an' it's even MORE incredible--she did not start dancin' until she was 26 years old!
From the Sydney Morning Herald I found out more...
"Kramer seems to have lived as if knowing she had time at her disposal. Born in 1914 and raised in Sydney's Mosman Bay to an English mother and a father she now thinks may have been Jewish, she didn't take up dance until the unheard-of age of 26. She didn't meet her first de facto husband until she was 42. She didn't return to Australia, after decades in India, Europe and the US, until she was 99. As she likes to say: "I started late but I didn't rush."
(WOW)
Her father (I read elsewhere) Julius Kramer, was born in South Africa, though his family originally came from Germany (fwiw Kramer is often a jooish name) and Eileen studied both piano and singing at "The Conservatory" before seeing a charity concert where she became smitten with dance! From that point onward (havin' no dance experience at all) she danced with a company founded by a woman who fled the Nazis who established Bodenweiser in Australia in 1939. Here's more:
"She (Kramer) had broken off with Want (her analyst! also her boyfriend) by the time her mother offered to take her to a charity concert at the Conservatorium, one life-changing evening in 1940. On the program was the Bodenwieser Viennese Ballet, the first professional modern dance company in Australia. Its founder, Gertrud Bodenwieser, an Austrian Jew, had been a significant figure in the Viennese dance world in the 1920s and '30s, before fleeing Europe in 1938 and ending up here, where her main dance troupe was touring. (Her husband wasn't so fortunate – he would die in Auschwitz.)"
"Bodenwieser and many of her dancers were Jewish and in 1938, when the Nazis invaded Austria, the ballet was forced to leave Europe." It appears that Kramer danced with Bodenwieser for 20 years until Gertrud died in 1959 after which Eileen continued to dance. The Bodenwieser Ballet performed in many, diverse venues and situations in Australia. It gave shows to pearl divers in Broome and miners in Kalgoorlie, Coolgardie and Broken Hill. (!)
more here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gertrud_Bodenwieser
Apart from dancin' I read she designed costumes and was an artist's model--living in Paris--here's more from this site:
https://longeviquest.com/2024/11/australian-dancer-eileen-kramer-passes-away-at-110/
"In the 1950s, Kramer was living in Paris, working as an artist’s model. One day in 1956, she met Baruch Shadmi, a Polish-Israeli filmmaker six years her junior, who would become her partner for the next three decades. She was 42; he was 36. Kramer and Shadmi moved to New York, where, in the early 1960s, they began collaborating on an animated dance film, with Kramer both dancing and creating hundreds of models for the project. Partway through, Shadmi suffered a stroke. As his health continued to decline, Kramer set aside her own career to care for him. She looked after him for nearly 20 years, until his passing in 1987. In 1988, Kramer moved to Lewisburg, West Virginia, to be near her friend Maryat, where she resumed her work in theater and the arts. She didn’t return to Australia for good until 2013, when she was 99. "
even as an older laydee we learn:
" Kramer doesn't just dance in these works, she also writes the stories, designs the costumes and comes up with the choreography." (this about a performance at 103!)
And at one point as a young gal she rented the apartment of Peter Finch and his professional ballerina wife--before she was a dancer--talk 'bout kismet...
I'm so happy ta know about one more lovely soul that graced this planet--who lived her life ta the fullest with a true LOVE fer all she did!--thereby settin' such a GRAND example fer us all! (110, wow)
Thank God, it is a post not praising Israel. Nice to see something different and good.