Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall in To Have and Have Not.

Old Hollywood Tales with My Mom, Humphrey Bogart & Lauren Bacall

Jeff Vonder Schmidt
17 September 2017

I purposefully launched my blog four years ago on September 17th. Choosing my mom’s birthday seemed the best way to bring my writing long term good luck. Month in and month out my global readership continues to increase, so I know she’s helping from heaven. To celebrate the anniversary of these posts, I’d like to remember her 99th birthday today. Her first name was Louise, and I want to share her best stories from working as a waitress in Golden Era Hollywood. I hope you enjoy the first story involving her two favorites, Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall.

A lavender door in Cartagena, a UNESCO World Heritage City.

Love & Food in the Time of Cartagena

Jeff Vonder Schmidt
16 April 2016

“The very life of the colonial city was an illusion of memory.” Gabriel García Márquez Love in the Time of Cholera.

My first impression of Cartagena de Indias was of its doors. Some were closed, others open, but they were all beautiful, redolent of a deceased Spanish power that was ultimately unable to control the collision of races and cultures populating its New World and that still search for ways to share life together. In Cartagena, Beethoven’s Fate slams on doors with weighty brass knockers, ancient Janus opens both ways, while Márquez’s dogmatic Bishop in Love and Other Demons conducts his exorcisms with the eternal pounding of sinister fear.

La Casa Azul in Coyoacan of Kahlo and Rivera.

The Blue & Red Houses of Frida Kahlo & Leon Trotsky

Jeff Vonder Schmidt

17 September 2015

I’m very much in two worlds simultaneously right now. I’ve recently returned from an amazing week in Coyoacan with Gabriela Ortiz, following up with her and other friends in Mexico City on the success of our Los Angeles International New Music Festival this past July and planning next steps for the future. At the same time I’m also wrapping my head around my new post as artistic advisor to the Hanoi Philharmonic Orchestra and planning the first concerts of the Hanoi New Music Ensemble (probably its working title for now).

My Journey to the Eas / In Search of Hermann Hesse, W. Somerset Maugham & The Singapore Sling

A puppet shop in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

My Journey to the East: In Search of Hermann Hesse, W. Somerset Maugham & The Singapore Sling

Jeff Vonder Schmidt

17 August 2016

I do not bring back from a journey quite the same self that I took. W. Somerset Maugham The Gentleman in the Parlour

I can now easily locate my fascination with Asia when I remember certain events and people of my childhood. I’ve already written about Harry Woo of Hong Kong, who worked for my parents, reading to me in Chinese while pointing to his calligraphy. My first memory of a world outside of my family is of being taken to Chinatown for dinner in Los Angeles. I doubt I’ve ever forgotten the blue silk dress and lavish blue mascara of the server. And my pediatrician’s nurse was Japanese and the kindest soul on earth to me whenever I was a sick child.