From: owner-believers-digest@smoe.org (believers-digest) To: believers-digest@smoe.org Subject: believers-digest V14 #3 Reply-To: believers@smoe.org Sender: owner-believers-digest@smoe.org Errors-To: owner-believers-digest@smoe.org Precedence: bulk believers-digest Friday, April 8 2011 Volume 14 : Number 003 In Today's believer's digest: ----------------- Remembering Ann Werner, Susan's Grandmother [Tim Dunleavy Subject: Remembering Ann Werner, Susan's Grandmother Hey folks - I've been meaning to post about this for the past four weeks, and finally had some free time to mention it. I saw Susan's show on March 11 at World Cafe Live in Philadelphia, and it was a terrific show. Just as good as the first, oh, 45 times I've seen her. (OK, maybe 46 or 47 - I've lost count.) It was my first time hearing songs from the new album, which I think is her best since "New Non-Fiction." The show had a number of highights. Bassist Gail Ann Dorsey, a Philadelphia native, sang a number dedicated to her soon-to-be-90-year-old mother, who was in the audience. And the encore ended with a sweet cover of Neil Sedaka's "Laughter in the Rain" - Susan even got the audience to sing the chorus a cappella at the end. But about halfway through the show, after singing "May I Suggest," Susan got up from the keyboard, walked to her guitar mic (but without her guitar), and announced that she was dedicating the song to the memory of her grandmother, who died the previous week at the age of 101. The audience gasped when Susan announced the death, but then saying the age got a round of applause. (Which might sound weird to read, but I think everyone was just acknowledging how great it was that the Werners got to be with her for so long.) And then she opened up and started telling some sweet stories about her grandmother. She didn't get emotional - she stayed very calm - but about halfway through she suddenly got self-conscious and asked, "Is this OK? Am I talking about this too much?" But the crowd shouted "No" and encouraged her to keep talking. A few of the stories that I remember: Grandma (I *think* that's what Susan called her) was active till the very end. The previous Thursday she had gotten her hair done at noon, then she suddenly died at 3 pm. A couple months earlier she had fallen out of her wheelchair at the nursing home and broken her two front teeth, and she hated the way she looked ("I look like an animal"), so she went to the dentist to get caps put on. So at the viewing she was lying in the casket with her hair done and her teeth fixed, and she looked great even at the end. Susan's dad, who is 78, told Grandma, "When you go, I'm gonna be an orphan." Grandma said dismissively, "Oh, if you haven't gotten used to that by NOW..." At the funeral, her grandsons served as the pallbearers. Somebody told Susan that they had been to funerals where grandsons served as pallbearers before, but they'd never been to a funeral where all the pallbearers were bald! Susan once asked Grandma if she had any advice to give her, or words to live by. Her response: "Marry somebody you can live with. Don't marry somebody you can't live without." Here is an obituary for Ann Werner, along with a photo: http://www.leonardfuneralhomes.com/obit-display.jhtml?DB=update/obits/dbase&DO=display&ID=1299262312_23622 - -Tim HELP! owner-believers@smoe.org Send mail to believers@smoe.org Susan's CD's are available on your desktop at World Cafe CDs http://worldcafecds.com ------------------------------ End of believers-digest V14 #3 ****************************** ------------------------------------------------------------------------- ------------------------- -------------------------- This has been a posting from the Susan Werner believers-digest To unsubscribe send mail to Majordomo@smoe.org with "unsubscribe believers-digest" in the body of the message