Tuesday April 28, 2020; 5:23 PM EDT
- I never really thought of her as an aunt, she and my uncle didn't get married until I was already a teen. I grew up with him, so she was his wife more than an aunt. Ken and Dorothy Kiesler. #
- We called her Little Dot, she liked it, because my grandfather's wife, after he and my grandmother were divorced, was also named Dorothy Kiesler. She was Big Dot. #
- However, even more weird, Ken gave himself a name too -- The Great Va Va Voom, professional wrestler. His story was he'd go down to the beach near where they lived in Florida and pick up chicks with that line. "Hello ma'am," he'd say, as the story goes, "I am the The Great Va Va Voom, professional wrestler, at your service." Of course nothing like that actually ever happened. 💥#
- Ken had one of the very first blogs, along with Dan Gillmor at the SJ Mercury. He was living in Jamaica at the time. We even got him his own domain, which I still maintain for him. #
- He and Dot were married for about 25 years, and in that time, the were together every day except two weeks every summer when Ken went to NYC. #
- In this picture, I'd say Ken and Dot look like they're in their 30s or early 40s -- if so this picture would be from the mid-late 70s? All the cars in the picture were Ken's, and the boat. He loved to work on cars. He built the house they lived in, and a windmill, solar heat, pioneered growing seedless pot, all without being on the electric grid. They had no phone, and this was long before cell phones. #
- They were hippies, refugees from the East Village, living off the land in northeast Florida. I went there a lot when I was in college at Tulane and later Wisconsin. Ken and I used to hang out a lot, he was definitely family, but he was also a friend. Dot died in the late 80s, and Ken in 2003, both of them way too young.#
- PS: This is roughly where their house was, but there was only a dirt road going in there back then, and no services. They owned 25 acres, most of it undeveloped. #
