Time for an update. Lindy has returned from her journey, as you know, and she has completed her journal. We will publish it here as soon as possible. It’s full of wonderful descriptions, insights, and interesting encounters. It is being transcribed from her school teacherish handwriting into digital form appropriate for a blog. But theContinueContinue reading “Lyndie in Limbo”
Category Archives: Lyndie’s Life Story
Home: Safe, Sound and Silent
Lyndie reached home yesterday. Now, no doubt, she is resting in the quiet and the comfort of familiar surroundings. I gave her a hug at her building entrance and said a quick farewell. She was tired and not yet entirely well. I was gratified that she had been able to go, and relieved at herContinueContinue reading “Home: Safe, Sound and Silent”
Lyndie in Budapest: A Glorious Awakening
As an American abroad, she had worried about finding hostility. But she was “warmed, blessed” by her encounters.
8. Troubled Vision, Past and Future
“Guess what?” Lyndie wrote in an email on January 28, barely six weeks before her departure on the Danube cruise. “I have macular degeneration now, like a regular old person!! … Trying not to get depressed. Love, Outrageous Average Older Woman #7659496854602” Macular degeneration is one of the main causes of vision loss in older people.ContinueContinue reading “8. Troubled Vision, Past and Future”
7. Abandoned Penniless in Europe: A Dream Come True?
To appreciate the next episode, it helps to recall who Lyndie always was: An outrageous woman (if not yet “older”). She and Cal left the New York tenement with their toddler daughter and returned to California. Cal got jobs in construction, but there was never regular employment, let alone a career. After 4 years there,ContinueContinue reading “7. Abandoned Penniless in Europe: A Dream Come True?”
6. The Tenement Year
A few years later, newly married to her high school sweetheart and with an infant in tow, Lyndie took off on her next great road trip. They were “escaping” from Stanford University, where her husband had learned that college was not for him, and from what she calls an “over-controlling family.” Carroll (“Cal”) Duff wasContinueContinue reading “6. The Tenement Year”
5. Skylights and Bombs, Nudes and Murders
Bit by bit, in emails, Lyndie shares fragments of the “every-which-way jumble of recollection” that suddenly floods in unbidden, “in full Technicolor,” after I have asked about something else. “Do you know I can draw or describe every detail of the rental house on 26th St. we lived in till 1945? The upstairs bath had green walls,ContinueContinue reading “5. Skylights and Bombs, Nudes and Murders”
3. What Went Wrong
From here, you can either read the history in an account Lyndie wrote herself, or watch the two short videos below, in which she describes what happened to her and her companion. In the first video below, she tells about the start of the journey — a distressing passage from airplanes, to a hotel, toContinueContinue reading “3. What Went Wrong”
2. About Lyndie
Quite some time ago, Lyndie sent me this picture of herself. She often uses the words on that T-shirt as her sign-off on letters to me: OOW# followed up a long nonsensical string of numbers. Taking that journey with her blind friend, both widows in their 80s, was indeed rather outrageous. Whose idea was it,ContinueContinue reading “2. About Lyndie”
Lyndie's Journey 