I can’t believe it’s only been a week since I wrote last. I am less intimidated to write an entire musical than I am to attempt to encapsulate the last week in my little odyssey. I’ve had 25 years to percolate on this musical and I only have a touch over an hour to sum up the massiveness of this last week before I hop back on the road to head over to Tampa International Airport to pick Ryan up from the airport! Yes, his visit is a technical violation of the “6 weeks alone in a van” oath that I set for myself, but I think an allowable one and I am super excited to see him. Turns out, I’m a huge fan. 🙂

A word of warning…after finishing this and the day running out of time for editing…I must warn you, this is a long and rambming report. As I believe, Oscar Wilde said, “If I’d had more time, I’d have written you a shorter letter.” Here’s the full brain dump for those interested to dig through it.

It’s been such an adventure this last week, and even though I didn’t cover as many miles as in the first week, I feel as though I’ve traveled so much farther – all the way to 1941 and back. Actually, now that I think about it, I’ve spent hours pouring over American and sometimes global history all the way back to the early 1900’s to create some context for coming into 1941, but I did feel at times that I was so immersed in 1941-1945 that every once in a while I needed to watch a modern comedy just to remind me where, or really when, I’m actually living!

Well, for a proper update of the trip, at some point, there needs to be a little ode to van life. Let’s start there. Turns out, as theorized, hoped for and anticipated, I friggin’ love it. I love everything about it. For starters, here is where I am sitting while writing this post.

And here is where I was this morning.

This is definitely a life that I was built for – while I do love my life at home and miss the joys of family, friends and that big, bountiful garden in the front yard, van life is where everything about me just fits right into place. If you are reading this, you probably know me. And if you know me, you probably know that, due to the amount of activities, goals and aspirations I take on, of the many critiques I’ve taken over my lifetime, “lazy” has not been one of them. At the same time, there is a core and fundamental laziness to my character that makes me oh so blissfully at home in a van. Sure I ran 5 miles this morning (side note – for those privy to the ongoing saga of my ailing shins – I’m back in business baby – running three days a week and tomorrow will be a 7-miler!) – but the fact that I don’t have to walk more than two steps between my bed, my bathroom, my kitchen and my car – I’m in heaven. I actually look forward to my morning cleaning routine in the van, doing the dishes of the day before, sweeping out the fragments of debris that managed to make their way inside – cleaning up the teeny bit of hallway that I have to tend to – it’s all so enjoyable because it is all so doable. It would take me an entire day to clean our house to the level I can clean this van in 20 minutes. And, for those of you wondering, yup, I do my business in the van too – we have the cutest (a term used loosely since I’m describing a toilet) little composting toilet closed up in a cupboard and sealed in place with a bungee chord. It’s easy to use, doesn’t smell and not too terrible to clean. I don’t actively look forward to emptying it and cleaning it, but it’s actually fairly painless. For those interested to see the results of the cleaning process, check out this picture. For those who don’t even want to think of numbers 1 and 2, avert your eyes and jump ahead.

Okay, enough talk of cleaning routines and toilets – I guess I’m trying to warm up to tackling the updates on this last week.

The last entry I wrote was early in the morning on Veteran’s Day. I had made my goal to arrive to New Orleans, the home of the National World War II Museum and also hit my writing goal to finish transcribing my 25 year old red composition notebook and all the little voice recordings I had on my current phone.

I originally planned to be in New Orleans for 2 days, thinking I’d take 2 days at the museum and then, on Monday, I’d turn my focus to the intimidating task of actually writing. In all the years I have been working on this project, Monday would be the first time I worked on it as a matter of focused choice, versus inspiration. I figured a couple of days at the museum would be plenty to provide me a manual influx of inspiration, catalyzing the inspiration process that, previously, would show up every couple of months – time I don’t have on this trip. And, it did. But it turned out 2 days was not nearly enough. Despite New Orleans being a notoriously dangerous city, and one where I wasn’t willing to park the van any old place I could find to park for the night due to safety cautions from various sources, and also one where the handful of places I had identified to stay for free were limited to one night or fairly far from the museum, I decided I would just need to find places to stay, because I was going to take as much time at this museum as I could make use of. So, rather than a weekend at the museum, I ended up staying there for 5 days and probably spent more than 20 hours there pouring over one amazing exhibit after another. I can’t begin to heap enough praise on this museum and the fruits of the efforts of those that created it. It’s an incredible tribute and a powerful, immersive experience. So well done.

The first day, I attended the Veteran’s Day Ceremony and it bowled me over, to say the least. They had 5 World War II era honorees present and they each blew me away. Last year, I believe they had at least 15. I am quite aware that the clock is very much ticking if I hope to have any of the people that I want to honor with this musical left to see it. One of the honorees was a woman named Virginia who had more energy and spryness than I’ve seen in most people my age and younger. She was the only among them that walked unaided, despite her 101 years on this planet! She had been in the Army Nurse Corps during the war. In the middle of the introduction she hopped up from her seat to approach the podium so the woman presenting the tribute could announce what her maiden name was. You couldn’t have seen more enthusiasm in a kid running to chase the skippy truck. It was infectious to the whole crowd. Next to her was another woman whose name I don’t recall, but she had been a riveter and if my memory serves, she was a young 104 years! I wanted to go up and pepper them both with a thousand questions and thank you’s, but also felt it wasn’t the time or the place for me to request their attention even though I don’t know when or if there will even be another opportunity. There was one combat veteran and I don’t recall the roles of the other two that were there. It was a beautiful ceremony and, in pure New Orleans fashion, they ended it with a second line parade down the hall to open the newest exhibit in the museum, “Our War Too: Women in Service”. Until that moment, I didn’t realize that, during World War II, there were 350,000 women that enlisted in the military and served in almost every role you could imagine, short of combat, including pilots, training, nursing, codebreaking and on and on. I walked through the exhibit enthralled, entranced and not less than a bit amazed that I got to be there on it’s day of initiation. In the few short hours I was there, I was already learning so much. That would, of course, continue with each minute, hour and day I spent there.

My evenings were filled with the delights of vanlife. I plowed through as many World War II movies, shows, documentaries as I could. Occasionally, I needed a break and put on a modern comedy. While I have felt inspired, there are many moments where the heaviness and darkness of it all got a bit too encapsulating and I needed to touch base with the wonderful world I get to live in because of what all of these people did to keep this world from turning to such darkness.

On my first day at the museum, after the Veteran’s Day Ceremony and new exhibit, my next stop was to the desk to sign up as a member of the World War II museum and to do so in honor of my Grandpa Irving Cramer, that served as a doctor in the Air Force, first in North Africa, then in Italy and all the way until a few months after the end of the war.

I felt very proud to be able to write my Grandpa’s name. I only got to know my Grandpa Irving and Grandma Helen for the first 10 years of my life – they died within months of each other in 1989 – though they stayed major parts of my life internally as they would show up in my dreams for near a decade after their passing – though I haven’t seen much of them since my dreams turned to other characters. I felt a deep warmth to get to connect with them again in this museum.

I then got a ticket to see a movie shown at the museum, a sort of 4D overview of the war, narrated by Tom Hanks called, “Beyond Boundaries” – it was a striking experience. When bombs dropped on the screen, the seats of the audience would shake. When the cold winter of the Battle of the Bulge was being battled in the movie, snow, or some very convincing replica of it fell from the ceiling of the theater. By that point, it was already mid-afternoon. And, since becoming a member, I was informed that I got 20% off at all of the stores in the museum, but only for that day. Well, my mission was then clear, and I proceeded to spend a ridiculous amount of money as I hopped from store to store buying up books for research, birthday presents for my Dad’s upcoming birthday that will coincide with Thanksgiving this year and that I will unfortunately miss, and I was barely able to contain myself when I went into their vintage 1940s clothing store. Let me tell you, I loved every piece of it and wanted it all, but restricted myself to buying only two pieces as the prices were most certainly 2023 prices and then some. By the time the first day was done, I had seen one exhibit, been part of a wonderful ceremony, seen one movie and spent a bunch of money. At this point, I still thought it possible that I could tackle the rest of the museum on Sunday.

The next day I woke up and realized that, in fact, there was no need to be on a tight schedule as this was van life and I could simply enjoy every bit of it. If I needed to stay longer in New Orleans, I would. I found a beautiful park called Audubon Park to go for my 6 mile run, had a long conversation with my friend Polina who volunteered to listen to me pour my heart out with all of my thoughts and feelings about World War II, history and what makes this musical mean so much to me. I was as connected to this endeavor as I have ever been. It was a glorious day. I didn’t actually make it back to the museum after a wonderful day of van life until 3PM and I got to work devouring the exhibit on the homefront. Since the musical is primarily meant to be a story of the homefront during the war, I was in heaven reading every plaque, watching every video and taking in every little bit of information I could. Again, I learned so much. Though it makes so much sense in retrospect, it was amazing to see it all laid out how much the homefront was a massive and decisive part of the war effort and the war victory. I didn’t realize how much logistics had been a huge problem in World War I, leaving thousands and thousands of produced war materials piled up on docks, never getting to the men that needed them. Seeing how those logistical issues were resolved was such an amazing and fascinating part of the concerted effort. It makes so much sense, but I never realized there was a whole section of the military called the Quartermaster Corps entirely dedicated to logistics. Then, of course, the Merchant Marines, who, as I understand it, suffered more losses than any other single branch of the military in the efforts to get the massive amounts of goods so diligently produced by those at home to places that they were needed, shipping them all over the world, to Europe, Russia and out to the Pacific, navigating the U-Boats waiting to blow them up in the Atlantic on the way. What a harrowing effort with so much less recognition and awareness of the incredible sacrifices and bravery they invested. I could go on and on with all that I learned and developed an appreciation for. Some of what I learned I already “knew” from whatever it is I learned and retained from my education as a child, but, I never really understood in the full context or weight of what it meant and what it took. I feel like I’m only barely scratching the surface and doing a terrible job of really articulating what I learned and the impressions that it made…but, there you have it. My meager attempt.

I have been to many museums and seen many that are quite good, I don’t know that I’ve ever been in one that impressed me as much as this one. It could be an issue of “hunger is the best sauce” as I am hungry for this information and hungry to be immersed in it, but every exhibit absolutely blew me away. It is every bit the level of tribute that this time in history commands. The museum closed at 5:00PM sharp and as I was watching the video on The Manhattan Project, it just turned off right in the middle and it was time for me to leave.

The next morning was Monday, the day that I had identified as the day I would start working on actually writing the musical. I had decided that my first step was to write out the scene outline with as much detail as I could – just get everything that is already in my head out. I sat down to write, and, almost as if scripted, I found myself staring at the screen and my head was as blank as the white monitor staring back to me. I got nothing. I had a momentary freak out – reached out to Ryan, my one man cheering squad for this time. He brushed it off so casually with total confidence in my ability to write this thing, that I easily followed suit and decided to just carry on with my day. I have found that the key on this trip is to behave just as I did over the last 25 years, chill out when I want to chill out, and when it is time to write, it will just come. Because I have reduced my distractions to near zero, no texting, no email, and only this 1/week blog post, that timeline has been able to condense itself. So I surrendered in that moment that it just wasn’t time yet, and I moved on with my day.

After a day of tending to the joys of van life and spending many hours watching the Netflix show, The Pacific, I finally got to the museum at 1PM. I thought, great, this time I have four hours. I then spent the first of those hours talking with Ryan about all of the ideas that I had developed just from my short time in the museum already, plus all the World War II movies, documentaries and books I had been taking in. It was a thrilling and productive conversation in which many parts of the show that had holes in it began to fill in. By the time I got to the museum it was 2PM. Okay, I thought, at least I’ve got 3 hours today. Then, I realized that, after all of that time in the van, I had forgotten to charge my phone up and I knew I wanted it while I went to the exhibits to take pictures. So, I stood by an outlet and charged my phone. However, I had brought a treasure with me to use the time well while my phone charged.

My dad and his sister Cathy have put tremendous effort over the last decade to memorialize the history of their parents, my Grandma and Grandpa in some family albums that I keep atop my piano at home. I have waited until this trip to start reading them – starting first with the one that my Aunt Cathy created, about my Grandpa and Grandma during the war years, including a bit of the history of the war and where my Grandpa served, and the love letters they wrote between them. What a gift my Dad and Aunt Cathy have given us members of their posterity to preserve these stories. That morning I had finally started reading it in the wee hours before the sun joined the party and I was in tears not two pages in. Though my grandparents were in my dreams for the second decade of my life, it had been so long since I spent time with them and I miss them. Not to mention, as I read their story, it struck me what amazing human beings they were and how privileged I feel that I am inheritors of some of their genes. And, even more so, it was amazing to think that, these two people, now only present in these two dimensional pages were two more people in my life that loved me – not because of anything I’ve done for them, but because I was a product of one of their life’s dreams – all these love letters that they wrote each other in such a time, talking of their dreams of someday being together and having a family – and here I am – 80 years later – the product of their dreams coming true. It was a profound feeling, and I am very grateful to my dad and my aunt for making these albums.

I carried the album with me to the museum the next two days, wanting to share the experience with them. A few times, I was asked what I was holding, and since the museum was filled with others interested enough in World War II to make the trek to the museum and spend some of their precious time taking in this history, they thought it was pretty special.

On the second day, I wore my Rosie the Riveter “We Can Do It” shirt that I had bought the day before. I stood in front of a bench with a statue of FDR and waited for it to be unoccupied so I could get a picture with the album. There was an older woman sitting on the bench. She was clearly emotional. I wondered what her story was. I wanted to ask her, but also felt that she was clearly having a moment that was for her that I didn’t want to invite myself into. She looked at me and then tugged on her shirt to indicate that she was looking at my shirt. She nodded with a warmth, an approval and was clearly appreciating that I was wearing it. I nodded back to her and smiled. She was welling up with tears and I felt I participated in her moment in whatever way she needed. I was so very curious to hear her story, but let the moment go by, feeling that the communications in silence and gestures was more meaningful than any verbal exchange could be. She and her husband went to get an arriving Uber and I managed to get a spot on the bench and get a few good pictures.

Once I got into the museum, I went to plug in my phone and while I waited for my phone to charge, I traveled with my Grandpa through North Africa, into Italy hearing what he had to share that the censors would allow. It didn’t feel the least bit like wasted time and actually the perfect place to spend time reading this album. By the time I pulled my phone out of the charger and was ready to tour the museum, once again, it was 3PM and I had the same two hours as yesterday. I picked up where I left off in the Homefront Exhibit and then made my way to the D-Day Exhibit, an experience that would take my already total state of awe for what actually happened during this time to a level I didn’t even realize was possible.

There is not one single shred or aspect of World War II that doesn’t merit a level of awe that is beyond words – on both the horrifying and inspiring side of humanity’s capabilities. It is so easy, living in the future of it, to feel that its outcome was inevitable, but it was anything but. That is among the many thoughts that has been with me my whole life, keeping my awe and appreciation for that time an ever present thought and feeling in my life – one that I hope to pay my own humble tribute to with this musical. And when learning the details, and the epic scale of the effort, what it took to make history tell the story it does, is astounding. I couldn’t help but wonder, when walking through these exhibits and seeing the sheer millions upon millions of people that chipped in a hand to an effort who’s coordination alone seems near impossible, I found myself wondering if, in the same circumstances, with the stakes as high as they were, if the same thing happened here in our time, if the people of my generation and those surrounding would be able to step up with the same determination, vigor and coordination as they did then. I don’t know. I hope so, but I do think that generation earned their moniker as the greatest generation. It may sound grandiose if you just look at it from a distance, but the closer up you look and see what they did, the more the moniker seems to not even come close to the level of admiration they deserve, at least as I see it. A lot of them say they just did what needed to be done…but people don’t always do what needs to be done and rarely at a scale of millions in coordinated concert.

It is astounding to me to be living in a generation where prosperity is the norm for enough people (I don’t mean to minimize at all the millions and millions who do not share in such prosperity and all the various societal problems we face today, of which there are many), that only two generations ago, within recent enough history that memories of it’s time are still alive and well and all of us alive were raised by those with first or second-hand experience of some aspect of this, that the world – the whole world – was truly at the brink. And that it saw the edge and through an unbelievable concerted and coordinated effort of tens of millions of souls, didn’t go all the way over it and now, here I am, enjoying such a fruitful, safe, peaceful life – well, I could go on and on. It’s an astounding thing to attempt to wrap one’s head around.

The next day, I decided to give my whole effort to the museum. I showed up at 9:30AM and didn’t leave until 5:10 – as the museum was opened until 5:30 that night. I stopped only for the 20 minutes to go to the van to get a macro bar and get back to it. It was a grueling and emotional day, well, as grueling and emotional as the safety of being a museum attendee can be – which doesn’t even rank on the scale in comparison to those that I was reading about, as I finished out the D-Day exhibit and then went, plaque by plaque through the “Road to Tokyo” and the “Road to Berlin” exhibits, taking museum-goers through the European and Pacific theaters of the war. It is one brutal and heart wrenching story after another. Even the arrivals at “victory” are sober to the reality of what that means, and what it cost. While watching my YouTube videos of World War II Veterans telling their stories, their words brought it all home for me the best. One man, after telling his heroic tale said, “There are no winners in war. They lost, but we didn’t win.” Or the other one that said, “You want to make a man a pacifist, send him to war.”

After a long, fruitful and eye-opening day at the museum, I decided to take myself out to dinner. I had been in New Orleans for 4 days now and hadn’t gone out to eat once, which seemed a bit of a crime. I knew my trip here was not about taking in this iconic city, but just driving through it was enough to get a sense that I was in a place that I was already looking forward to returning to as a proper tourist. Even so, I managed to get two runs in in the French Quarter, running past balconies I remembered from various movies and running down streets that I mostly had images of being filled with crowds deep in the throes of Mardi Gras. For my visit, the streets were quiet, almost empty, peaceful and, at some turns, eerie – which, with all the advertisements for haunted hotels and museums, seemed to be the intention in some spots. Just driving down the street to get to the museum, I spotted a second line or two. It is definitely a town like no other that I know of. So, just after my full day at the museum, I made my way down the street to a restaurant who’s byline mentioned southern cooking

I was seated at a two person table, happy to be accompanied by my most recent purchase from the museum bookstore, “Valiant Women” – a story of the monumental, but lesser known and acknowledged contributions of women to the war effort in the military – and there were two women seated next to me that popped in with a friendly comment here or there about my order, or theirs. At one point, I happened to overhear one of them mention Skaneatles, and then Canandaigua. For a moment, I was totally disoriented and almost forgot where I was. Then, when it registered that I was, in fact, as I remembered, in New Orleans – I excused myself as I interrupted.

”Pardon me, did you just mention Canandaigua?”

Turns out they were both visiting New Orleans for the first time from Texas, but that one of them had lived in Canandaigua for almost 20 years. What a coincidence! Similar to the woman I had met earlier that day in the laundry room at the RV resort I stayed in in the French Quarter who inquired where I was from that I had a Wegman’s bag – she was originally from Buffalo! Anyways, these two lovely ladies and I got to talking about all sorts of things – life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness as it were. They asked me about my trip and I got to talking with them about the musical and they were totally in – it felt nice to have a little support and connection from home. As I matter of fact, I told them about this blog and I see that one of them signed up to get notifications! Hi there! It was a joy to meet them and they were kind enough to escort me down the now nighttime streets of New Orleans to get safely to my van. A lovely chance encounter indeed!

The next day, my goal was to get on the road for somewhere east of New Orleans. Though I had hoped to arrive at the museum by 11 and thought I could be through the last exhibit in 2 hours and on the road by 1 (had I learned nothing!?) I didn’t get there until 12:30 and had to peel myself out of there at 4:30. I could have stayed for hours more! The last day’s visit was a wing they had just opened the week before called the Liberty Pavillion – covering all the elements of the after affects of the war including the soldier’s PTSD experience (then called “battle fatigue” or “shell shock”), the celebrations, the economic and social impact of the war, the post war trials and creations of various standards and institutions of international law and of course, the very sobering and heart wrenching exhibit of the Holocaust and the liberation of the camps. By the time I left, I was a blender of emotions, thoughts and sentiments leaving the exhibit. I felt as if I should have some kind of ceremonious way to exit after 5 days steeped in the halls and memories enshrined in the museum, but when it came time to hit the road, I just got in the car and went.

Well, it’s taken me much longer than the allotted hour I had to write this and it is now dinner time and Ryan is here!

So rather than go through the details of my last few nights stays, I’ll just toss in a couple of pictures of where I landed along the way including the most awesome bbq joint, Cozy Rosie’s in Mississippi, the super backwoods creamery I stayed at just west of Tallahassee, FL and the most beautiful Gulf Coast wildlife refuge, Shell Mound. As for actual writing, I made the most progress after I left New Orleans, finishing one of my barely written songs and waking up one morning at 4AM and in one fell swoop, writing out the entire show outline and multiple scenes of dialogue in one 4-hour non-stop outpouring and with it, accomplishing my writing goal for the week.

My goal, by the next time I update you all, next Saturday is to have a first draft dialogue for the whole play – basically a completed script – all but the uncompleted songs. Then, the next week, the goal will be to finish writing all the songs. And the final week, the goal will be to work on the musical arrangements and compositions of all of the songs. So far, I’m on track. If all continues to go in this way, by the time I get to Normandy, France, I should have a completed, albeit, rough, first draft of Janey’s War.

Today, I listened to a podcast about one of my (and millions of other peoples’!) favorite movies, The Shawshank Redemption. As I stare down the barrel of a lofty but very much within-reach goal, I do believe a Shawshank quote is quite pertinent. “Hope is a good thing. Maybe even the best of things.” So, here’s to hoping and off to the next leg of the adventure!