kuglen.com

Here are some Easter pictures from Las Vegas and Theresa Toplak.  

Theresa, I can see your Dad so clearly in your face.  And you all look so happy! 

I Hope you all had a great holiday and are having a good spring.  Please feel free to send along your own pictures.  I’d like to get pictures of everyone up on the blog.  

Paul and the 2 girls

Theresa & Paul with Eva (r) and Tessa (l)

Theresa, Paul and Tessa

Paul and Tessa

Here are some pictures of John’s daughters in their backyard also enjoying the sun in San Diego.  

Oly, Samantha and Jackie

And here is the link to my videos on Youtube.  

http://www.youtube.com/my_videos        please check them out! 

Finally, here isn Easter picture of Mom, John and me on the front porch at Granada Avenue.  I’d guess it was our first Easter in San Diego, 1966.

Sam, Joan and John in 1966

http://www.youtube.com/my_videos

Send the link to your friends! Add some comments!

My sometime writing partner and friend, Mike Cole, and I recently went through our archives and digitalized some of our old TV performances.  They are now posted on Youtube.

Please stop by and take a look! They are actually funny! 

My favorite is “The WSWF.”  Mike’s performance is fantastic and I think it holds up quite well. 

We are as famous as we were ever going to be for “The Real Boy” which is in 2 different versions on the link.

Here’s another one of me rapping in class – Kuglen is a regular “G.”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v59JfNXmyGo 

Add Comments!

Thanks to David Long for digitalizing, Pat Carman at JBHS for formatting and Russ Barnes for uploading on to YouTube.

Rick and Sam a few years ago, still dressed up and still side by side

This is a good one!  Look at all these great pictures Rick Rigali sent me – just in time for Easter!  He answered the call!  Just about everyone is represented – except there are none of the Salle kids, because they were’t born yet – yes, the rest of us are that much older than you.  Notice how we, the kids, got posed with Bom Bom and Grandpap?  There are Tina and KK, then Sam and Rick, then John and Pat (Rick and I are about the same size, but I didn’t realize that John was that much bigger than Pat), then Terry and Stephen Salle holding Bob Salle’s hand.  Charlotte says this is the only picture she knows of our cousin Stephen, who passed away from leukemia when he was two, which makes the photo even more remarkable and awesome. It would be fun to get in the same pose again.  Some of the pictures might look a little pixilated- but they are old photos that were scanned.  Let me know how they look on your computer screen.

Bob Salle, Grandpap, Bom Bom and kids on Kerwood Ave.

 

Charlotte took several of the color photos with the first camera she ever had, so all the pctures of the Rigalis are taken by Charlotte, except the ones in which she appears.  It’s good to see the faces of the MacDonalds – Gordon, Maureen and Michael.  They were such adorable little kids.  We were fortunate to see Gordon at  Bob and Caroline’s 50th wedding anniversary at the beach, and Maureen, with Rory, live in the San Fernando Valley, not far from where the Rigalis used to live.  Now if we could only see Cousin Michael!  Charlotte took these pictures at Cape Cod in 1965, when the Kuglens visited the MacDonalds.   Here Gordon and Maureen are playing with Fran, Christine and Tom.  

Please scan your old photos and send them along – they will end up on line!  I have had a great time just looking at these old pictures.  I have absolutley no memory of any of the pictures I am in, but it is no less interesting seeing the pictures and marvelling at how young my parents and aunts and uncles look and at how civilized all us kids look.  We cleaned up pretty nicely. 

 

 

 

Young Kuglens and MacDonalds

Another Easter in the SFV

 I got a little artsy with some of the pictures – I went to a great, free website call Picnik.com and there you can fix and sharpen old photos like these, add matting and styles, like I did with all of these, along with printing text directly ovet the pcitures.  It’s a pretty cool website. 

Mary Anita, Bom Bom, Bob, Joan and Caroline

Three things strike me about this picture – Bom Bom ALWAYS posed.  I don’t think I have ever seen her in a picture where she wasn’t posing.  Bob Kuglen and Greg Salle could swap places.  And Aunt Caroline looks like Lynne.  That’s Grandpap’s old car in the background.  I don’t know how long he kept it, but I remember it always smlled like stale cigarette smoke whenever I rode in the car, and the ashtray was always full.  

Easter on Kerwood Ave.

Kuglens and MacDonalds

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Joan receiving a massage in Thailand

from Joan who is Mother, Grandmother, mother-in-law, Aunt, Great(or grand) Aunt, 

and elder in this glorious clan. I loved Charlotte's comparison to "Cheers - where

everybody knows my name" and add to that "And I know their's". 
What a lot of familiar names on this blog. It is impossible to keep 

in touch with so many people so this seems like a great solution. 

I encourage everyone to jump in even if it just an acknowledgement

of reading the posted comments. 

Easter week brings back memories of long, incense infused church services from my youth, St. Michael’s church in Wheeling, W.VA. where the Greene’s and Kuglens attended all of the holy week services.  On Holy Thursday we had a solemn ceremony at the Carmelite Monestary.  The girls wore their first communion dresses and the boys were altar boys carrying big candles. I think it took place at 6:30 am. How did our parents do that? Easter Sunday was the day everyone wore new clothes to church. Women’s hats were elaborate and colorful and all the girls wore gloves and patent leather shoes.  It was a parade of fashion and the favorite song of course was “The Easter Parade” by Bing Crosby (who later attended the same church we did in Los Angeles.) 

And then much later there are the memories of finding secret hiding places for the children’s Easter baskets and easter egg hunts in the Rigali’s back yard.

Looking for the bunny prints our neighbors the Bianchi’s painstakingly made with powder puffs up and down Granada Avenue on late Saturday night.

Times have changed and so have I, but the memories are sweet . 

Wishing you all a Happy Easter and/or a well deserved spring break. Love to each and all, Joan, Joanie, Grandma and Aunt Joan

Phuket, Thailand, 2005

I have a book of poems that Bom Bom received when she graduated from high school for essay writing.  (being the 12th grade English teacher I am, and knowing how much Bom Bom loved to be dramatic in everything she did, I am sure I would have referred her to the Strunk and White Manual of Style and asked her not to overwrite.)  I have had the book for a while and there is a lot of rain damage and many of the pages are following out.  The book was illustrated by Maxfield Parrish, a well-know illustrator of the 1910′s, 20′s and 30′s.  I was looking through a book of his work and noticed that some of the color plates looked familiar – I went to Bom Bom’s book and found original MP plates from the 1910′s!  Oh, the edges were water damaged (not while with me, but while in the basement of our house on Granada) but the plates themselves are not.  I took them and scanned them into my computer (gotta love the scanner).  They are remarkable on my computer screen – the ink and the colors are thick and lush and the images are clean and clear.  I thought I would put one up, then if I get feedback from anyone who is interested, I will post some of the others.  I have no idea if the quality they show on my screen will transfer on line, but I hope they do so you can see for yourselves how charming and evocative these illustrations are.  I am pretty sure they aren’t worth much – there is too much water damage and they would probably also loose value if I removed them from the book (can you tell I watch “Antiques Roadshow?”) 

Hello everyone! 

It looks like slowly but surely word is getting out there about this blog.  So far you have all been complimentary and supportive, and a few of you – shout out to Tom and Theresa Toplak – have sent pictures and notes that I am posting.  Please send me stuff – pictures, links to youtube or other videos (I’ll figure out how to post them), news you want everyone to know, and anything else you’d like to write about.  I am mulling over some ideas for writing a piece along the lines of what Char suggested.  I know from long coversations I have has with my sister, KK, that she has an amazing memory for all kinds of incidents and events that happened to us while we were growing up, and there are a few that I have, which are completely different than hers, which are pretty vivid which I am trying to figure out how to add to the blog.

Don’t be afraid to send some writing - people want to hear from you, and i will do what I need to do to get it added. 

I have heard from my Mom, Joan, my sister, Joanie, Tom and Christine Kuglen, their mom, Aunt Sally, Julie Kuglen, Charlotte Carniero, my friend from high school Barbara Tarlau, and from the Greene side of my mom’s family, Theresa Toplak, who is Uncle Jack’s oldest child and who lives in Las Vegas!  I also showed the blog to my student tutor this year, Keaton Savage, who thinks  it is a very cool idea, but mistook me for John (!?!?!?!?) when I showed him the old Christmas picture from the first posting. 

Yahoo!!!!!!!  I am glad the Greenes are on board.  I hope to hear from more of you soon.   Here are some pictures of Theresa’s 2 kids, Tessa Grace, the cute baby, and Eva, the cute toddler.  I can definetly see Uncle Jack in both their smiles.  And check out the date in the corner – the girls are celebrating their Irish heritage.  The pciture was probably taken before they had corned beef and cabbage. 

here’s what Theresa has to say:

I am Teresa Greene Toplak.  My dad was Jack Greene.  I live in Las Vegas with my wonderful husband Paul and my 2 beautiful daughters Eva (2 1/2) and Tessa Grace  (6 months).  I am a full time mom and part time yoga teacher.  My two girls definitely keep me busy.  I am so happy to catch up with family I only see once every 5-10 years (if that).  Thanks Sammy for putting this together.

Here’s what Christine Kuglen, who lives in San Diego, has to say:

Sam,
I am putting something together for my family. What a great idea. I can’t wait to see it grow. Thanks for taking the initiative. It is coincidental but the day I recieved the first email about this my husband had said, what ever happened to your family? He was talking not about my brothers and sisters but about my cousins etc. And then, voila…you came through.

Keeping busy,
Christine Kuglen

 I am in the process of posting some videos to youtube and once they are up and running, I’ll post a link on the blog so you can catch some of my earlier comedy performances.  Check them out…..PLEASE!!

Here’s a letter to editor of an Ohio newspaper my Dad had published back in the 50′s.

 The letter paints, in words, a different picture of Dad than the one I remember.  Here he is showing concern for equality in sports, back in the 50′s, during a time when the accepted practice was still to segregate players and in most cases, not allow black athletes to play at all. 

I was unaware of this aspect of my father until my mother told me about it and mentioned that she had this letter to the editor that he wrote.  She sent me a hard copy of the letter, which I then scanned into my computer – and I am adding it to the blog as an example of the kind of information we can add to the text.  I didn’t know he was aware of the burgeoning Civil Rights movement – especially in Ohio – and I had no idea he was a fan of college basketball. 

I know if my mom has this stuffed in a box somewhere, there are probably lots of other bits and pieces of family history which adds detail + deepens our understanding of our backgrounds – that I would like to include.  For the Kuglens, our cousins Gordon, Maureen, and Michael MacDonald grew up with few memories of their mother, Aunt Marcelline.  Maybe we can add pictures and memories of Aunt Marce, for those of us who remember her, that can fill in gaps of knowledge that they have about their mother.  And Theresa Greene Toplak, and her siblings, Christine and Aaron, have no authentic memory of Grandma Greene (I don’t even know if they have any pictures of her).  We can give them at least a feeling of inclusion into parts of our lives that we take for granted.