About

The Hope Street blog is now retired, after I squeezed everything I had to say out of my grandpa’s calendar entries, photos and other remaining ephemera. The text below is left over from when the blog was active, and explains how it worked.

So what’s this about, anyway?

This is about a guy — my grandfather — who kept month-by-month calendars on which he recorded events that affected him … everything from presidential assassinations to late-season snowstorms.

Fifteen years of his calendars are still in my family’s history collection. And every other Monday, I’m picking an interesting calendar entry and writing something about it.

It might be a reflection on my grandfather’s life … or my family’s history and tradition … or American life of the 1960s and 1970s … or my own life today. (They’ll take my blog-license away if I don’t spend a certain amount of time getting solipsistic, after all.)

So tell me more about your grandfather.

William H. Blumenau (1910-2001.)

German-American. Husband; father; caring son to his elderly, widowed mother. Professional draftsman. Semi-professional artist. Amateur photographer. Nicknamed “Drawing Boy” by his grandchildren, based on his artistic proclivities.

Lover of his family, art, music, tinkering, technological advances, steam-powered trains, neatness, order, and midsized sedans produced by the Ford Motor Company of Detroit, Michigan.

Longtime resident of 1107 Hope St., in the Springdale section of Stamford, Connecticut.

What time period do these calendars cover?

Jan. 1, 1961, to Dec. 31, 1975.

And where did they hang?

What you see here is a rear view of the house at 1107 Hope St.

Walk up the back steps (in your imagination, anyway) and into the kitchen entrance, where my great-grandmother is likely to be peeling apples for fruit salad.

The calendar is either on the wall to your immediate left or hanging over my grandfather’s desk, which is just to the left of the kitchen, around where that first-floor window is.

The house no longer exists; it was torn down in the mid-1980s to make way for condominiums.

Oh, I forgot to ask: Who the hell are you?

My grandfather’s grandson.

But seriously, folks: My name is Kurt Blumenau, and I’m a corporate writer/communicator living in eastern Massachusetts. Welcome. It’s good to meet you.

All blog posts and family photos copyright Kurt Blumenau 2011-2021.

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