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Back to the United States

So we finished our tour in Africa and returned to the U.S. in the Fall of 1992. We sold the Annandale townhouse and moved back into the Belvedere in 921. The Belvedere was a great location. We were about a five minute walk from the Rosslyn Metro and in a matter of minutes could be anywhere in the DC metropolitan area. Furthermore, I could walk to work. AID had their offices in the new twin towers in downtown Rosslyn right on the Potomac.

 

We finally purchased apartment 1020, which was larger than 921, and had an even more spectacular view from the wrap-around windowed balcony.  We rented 921 to the Post Master General for a time before we sold it.  The view from 1020 was actually from the 15th floor on the south side because there were five floors of parking garages starting at the street level. The view was over the Iwo Jima Memorial in Arlington, to the Potomac River, the Lincoln Memorial Bridge and the Lincoln Memorial on the Washington side. We could see planes landing at National Airport which is now called Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport.

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From apartment 1020 (see < arrow) in the beautiful Belvedere Condominiums, we enjoyed a panoramic view of the Potomac, the Lincoln Memorial, and the Washington Monument (below).

I could walk from the Belvedere to the Twin Towers (above), where AID had it's offices, in less than 10 minutes.  Very convenient.

Retirement and after

So I finished the last years with AID and retired in April, 1995. The plaque below, which I received after retirement, reads: “...in recognition of 28 years of service and dedication to the government of the United States...” The 28 years include 2 years in the military.

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VideoArts - Sole-Proprietorship for Video Production

After retirement, I combined my interest in the arts with my acquired expertise in computers and computer graphics to launch a small enterprise in video production called VideoArts.  My first video was “A Family Album”, a history of the Cottens and Triftshausers.  It's over an hour and quite slow paced, but you can scroll it manually.  There's a video at the end of the whole family at mother's table, and probably one of the only live clips of Jane and Margrit in the kitchen "cooking der food und schlopping down der wine."  Here's the link to the video:

 

https://youtu.be/cawBjqSVlO0

 

​The final production was on VHS tape and copies were sent to the immediate family.  Elmer took a copy in to Hamburg and played it for Ethel Case, the daughter of Aunt Myrtle, who wrote me a letter and filled in some of the Cotten history, especially about Grampa Cotten.  She remembered him and their home in Buffalo, where my father lived until he got married.

Some of the facts she writes about are of interest, so I'll mention them here.  She mentions that Grampa Cotten was born and brought up in Pennsylvania and went to work for the Standard Oil Company in Titusville, Pennsylvania at the age of 12. (Titusville is about 45 miles south of Erie, PA.)  In 1881, he was brought to the Atlas Works in Buffalo, and by dint of his ability and effort worked his way up to become the Superintendent of the Atlas Works, which I knew as the SOCONY Vacuum in Buffalo - SOCONY standing for the Standard Oil Company of New York, whose logo was Pegasus, the Flying Red Horse.

On May 15, 1911, the Supreme Court ordered the dissolution of Standard Oil Company, ruling it was in violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act.  The break-up of Standard Oil into 34 companies, among them those that became Exxon, Amoco, Mobil and Chevron, marked the birth of strong antitrust policy in the United States.  Mobil inherited the Pegasus logo when Standard Oil was broken up.

Ethel also mentions that Grampa and Gramma Cotten lived at 43 Admiral Road in North Buffalo in a lovely neighborhood full of big homes.  She remembered that they had a large living room with a wood-burning fireplace, book shelves full of great books, a beautiful piano, a Victrola (which now sits in my living room where I'm writing this), and oil paintings.  She goes on to say that her mother, that would be my aunt Myrtle, was an excellent pianist and would accompany Gramma Cotten as she treated them to a song. - adding that “she was quite a singer!”  She also said that my father would sometimes play the violin accompanied by her mother on the piano.  That was family entertainment before television – must have been wonderful.

Ethel's family moved to Hamburg in 1921.  She mentions in her letter that Grampa Cotten often stopped to see them on his way to the oil fields near Olean.  She said he liked Hamburg, and planned to build a home on the lake shore when he retired.  Of course, Gramma Cotten built her home at 166 South Lake Street in Hamburg, when Grampa Cotten died, to be near her daughter Myrtle, Ethel's mother.  She adds, “that's how you Cottens came to be born in Hamburg.”

​Ethel mentions that they did not have a car at the time so they took the train to Buffalo to visit their grandparents.  Grampa Cotten would pick them up at the train station in his big Rio.  She also mentions that Grampa Cotten's parents were Marcellus Leontine Cotten and Amelia Albright.

​[Note:  Dale has done some interesting genealogical research, which you can find at the end of this section, indicating that the name "Albright" is an anglicized version of the German name "Albrecht", and shows that even the "Cotten" side of the family has German roots.]

But I've deviated from the chronology of the story again.  In rereading Ethel's letter I find that it contains so much interesting anecdote, it must be added to the story.  There's more in that five page hand-written letter dated April 30, 1996. Suffice it to say that it is retained as part of the family record.  It was written to thank me for my work in doing the documentary video about the family – A Family Album.

Glen and Niki's Accomplishments

​Before continuing, I also need to pick up the threads of Glen and Niki's lives.  A major event, that is also brought to mind in a letter written by Ethel Case, dated April 24, 1997, thanking me for some pictures I sent her from Niki's wedding to Mike Oldenburg.  She writes: “How beautiful she looked in Gramma's dress! In every way it must have been a very special day for all of you! …. Gramma's dress was just exquisite.  She always dressed beautifully and created many of the gowns herself.  She was a great seamstress. In fact she made me a beautiful chiffon dress which I wore to your parent's wedding.  I was 10 years old and the flower girl. I keep wondering if that dress which Niki wore might not have been the one she wore on that same occasion …... Ethel and Will Case.”

​The events which preceded Niki's marriage are her undergraduate work at UVA and graduation with a BA in 1987; two years (87-89) in the Peace Corp. in Zaire; a year with us in Abidjan; then to UNC from Fall 1990 'til 1992 for her MA; a period of work and then study for her PhD at UNC from 1994 to 1996.  She met Mike Oldenburg at UNC and they were married in Arlington, Virginia in July, 1996.

Glen also got his BA in Anthropology at UVA in 1984.  He then worked on a farm in Maryland for a time and then went to Massachusetts and lived with Jeanee Kendricks in Montague, MA.  He had met the Kendricks during his time at Northfield-Mount Hermon.  From September, 1989 until June 1990, he was a teacher's aide for an Academic Skills Center at Amherst Regional High School, and from October, 1990 until June, 1993 he worked at Community Enterprises, Inc in Northampton, MA as a Supervisor for Developmentally Disabled Adults.  Glen got his MA in Multicultural Education from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst (date?).

From August, 1992 through the Spring of 1994, Glen was involved in planning, organizing and facilitating meetings for an Institute for the Healing of Racism in Northampton, MA, and in February, 1994 he helped plan and facilitate the first New England Gathering of Institutes for the Healing of Racism. In April, 1994 he completed an extensive study of the Northampton Public Schools documenting their response to diversity and efforts to create educational equity from1987 to 1993. The findings and recommendations of this study are being applied in the Northampton Public Schools.

Forest Lawn Cemetery in Buffalo    Cotten Family Plot

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Steve visited Forest Lawn Cemetery and took some pictures of the Cotten Family plot.







At left are the gravestones of Grampa Cotten (Elmer Asa Cotten 1866-1923), my father's father, and Gramma Cotten (Sophia Tamblingson Cotten 1870-1956). 







Here are the gravestone of Marcellus Leontine Cotten 1843-1911 and Amelia Albright 1842-1922, Grampa Cotten's parents - our great grandparents.

 

Niki's Wedding to Mike Oldenburg

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            Pictures from Niki and Mike's Wedding

            The dress Niki is wearing was made by
           Gramma Cotten and as Ethel says, she 
           thinks it's the same dress Gramma wore
           to our parent's wedding.


            
 

“Studying School Diversity” Daily Hampshire Gazette article about Glen's research on race equity in the Northampton school system. May 15, 1994.

Glen Marries Isik Celme in Haifa

Glen has of course continued to grow.  He got his PhD at UNC, married Isik, whom he met in Haifa, working at the Baha'i World Center.  They traveled together to China to teach in Suzhou and Shanghai and are now back in North Carolina.  Glen has continued to pursue his interest in teaching and curriculum development, and has just now, in 2019, completed a webinar for Wilmette Institute, an online Baha'i educational institution.  Here is a link to that webinar:  https://youtu.be/tU4d3-dSzlA

Marco Island

Don and Louisa Wallace, friends we met when we were in Haiti, lived in Springfield, VA at the time we lived in Burke and Arlington.  We borrowed their pop-up trailer one Summer and took a road trip to Florida.  We drove down the East coast all the way to Key Largo and then back up the West Coast. We visited Bob and Eve Ayling, who then lived on Marco Island. They had moved from their home on a large estate just outside Charlottesville, where the University of Virginia (UVA) is located. While we were on Marco Island, we bought a lot on a canal where we built a house.

 

We moved from Northern Virginia to Marco Island in 1997 and lived in a condo on the beach, while our house at 838 Saturn Court was being built.  Marco Island is one of the largest of the Ten Thousand Islands, a chain of islands and mangrove islets off the coast of southwest Florida. Vast and remote, the Ten Thousand Islands can be explored from Marco Island, Everglades City or neighboring Chokoloskee just south along the coast.  Marco Island was being developed as a resort island with a network of canals providing boaters with access to the Marco river and the Gulf of Mexico.

 

Our house at 838 Saturn Court was on a cul-de-sac with a canal in the back yard.  The pictures below show the house, the lanai and pool, and the canal, where I could launch my kayak and paddle off into the mangroves.

For more pictures of the Marco house you can go here:   https://jqcotten9.wixsite.com/jqcotten/marco-island

Glen went to Haifa, Israel in 1998 to work at the Baha'i World Center.  I went there to visit him. At that time I met Isik Celme, Glen's Turkish girl friend.  Isik was a Baha'i who also worked at the Center on Mount Carmel.  Using the S-VHS video footage I took during that visit, I produced a 30-minute documentary entitled, “The City of God: Mount Carmel and the Baha'i World Center.”   You can view this documentary at the YouTube site below.

Following this initial venture into the world of video production, I decided to undertake a more energetic project, which I mentioned earlier – a history of the first century of the Baha'i Dispensation, entitled, “What Hath God Wrought!”  It is about the millennial expectation that pervaded the religious world of the mid 19th century.  Many Christians believed the return of Christ was at hand, and their Muslim counterparts also expected a new Manifestation.  The documentary tells the amazing story of the fulfillment of these expectations with the declaration of the Bab in 1844, and reveals a profound pattern of connection among the messianic traditions of Judaism, Christianity, Islam and the newly emergent Baha'i Faith. 

 

Research on the subject involved visits to the New York Conference Office of the Seventh Day Adventists and the Millerites in Syracuse, New York; the headquarters of the Templers in Stuttgart, Germany, to gather material about the German pietist group, still in existence, who built the colony at the foot of Mt. Carmel in anticipation of Christs return; several trips to Haifa and the Baha'i World Center on Mount Carmel, as well as Akka and Bahji, where Baha'u'llah, the founder of the Baha'i Faith, was imprisoned and lived out the last years of his life; and also to Jerusalem.

 

I have since produced several other documentaries including, "The Lord of Hosts", a comprehensive history of the Bahá'í Faith, told within the context of the turbulent, secular events of the 19th century, a 5 hour and 20 minute video, divided into 12 Episodes; and "The Tablet of Ahmad", the poignant story of Ahmad Yazdi and the Tablet which bears his name.

My most recent documentary is entitled "The Bahá'í Faith and the Science of Complexity",    which draws upon the newly emerging science of Complexity to redefine the sacred and to reinforce the notion  that science and religion are complementary paths to human understanding and progress.  It redefines the "sacred", in an attempt to make it acceptable to both the religious and the non-religious.

You may view all these documentaries on my YouTube website here:

 https://www.youtube.com/user/jqcotten

We built a dock on the canal in the back yard.  It was built with a boat lift, as well as steps down to a platform for launching my kayak.  I spent many happy hours paddling along the canals and out to a beautiful bay to watch the herons and egrets fishing in the mangroves.

We were in Koethen, Germany on 9/11/2001.  We were living on Marco Island at the time, but took a trip to Germany.  We visited Frank in Munich and then went to Koethen with Margrit’s mother.  We were with Otto Walter and family in Koethen when the planes hit the World Trade Center.  We saw it on German TV.  

Eden on the Bay - North Naples, Florida

After seven years on Marco Island, we moved to Eden on the Bay in North Naples.  It was a little less isolated, and we had easy access to white sand beaches to the North and a boat launch at Delnor-Wiggins Pass to the South.  I built myself a little two-wheel trailer to put the kayak on and pull it with my bicycle down to Wiggins Pass to launch it and paddle off into the mangroves and out into the Gulf.

Our lanai at Eden on the Bay.  We put solar panels on the roof to heat the pool.

New pavers added to the lanai

Margrit, Niki and the kids with Tanya de Keller, Mike's aunt.  Tanya was married to Herman de Keller, whose maternal grandfather, Sergei Ivanovich Shchukin, was a famous art collector of French Impressionist paintings in Moscow before the revolution.  As a matter of fact, Shchukin was a friend of Matisse, who decorated their house with his paintings and was commissioned by Shchukin to paint the famous piece called "The Dance", an early version of which hangs in the Museum of Modern Art in NYC.  Here's a link to the story of the great Russian art collector:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergei_Shchukin

 

 

 

 

 

We had a menagerie of water birds around the lake, including Blue Heron, Egrets, Ibis, Cormorants, and a variety of Wood Ducks.

 

 

 

Below, Kirsi and Aila enjoying the beach and the pool

We made many good friends at Eden on the Bay.  There was usually a German connection, since Margrit was more gregarious than I and made most of the connections.  Jan and Gisele Lindberg, lived a few houses down on Eden Bay Drive.  Jan was Swedish and Gisele was German.  Gisele had a beautiful apartment in Wiessbaden, with a huge balcony on the second floor overlooking the Rhine.  It was so pleasant sitting there and watching the boats and barges going by.

 

Jan had a cute house on the island of Sandham, in the so called archipelago of Sweden. Stockholm is one of my favorite cities to visit, and we had more than one opportunity to go there, because Mike and Niki have a house just a couple hours drive north of the city and Margrit and I would take a couple days to sightsee in Stockholm on our way to their place.

 

Two other close friends, living in Eden on the Bay, were Jurgen and Irmi Pflicht.  Jurgen worked for a software company in Waldorf, Germany.  They built a large house just across the lake from us.  He owned a yacht and took us out on the Gulf on several occasions.  We also visited them in Waldorf, Germany, which is not far from Bensheim.  Unfortunately, Jurgen is no longer with us.  He died of cancer. We've seen Irmi since in Germany, and she still keeps in touch via Skype.

 

So after 15 years in Florida, we decided to move North again.  We explored Wilmington, NC and a new development at Brunswick Forest near there.  We actually put money down on a lot at Brunswick Forest, but decided not to go through with it.  We finally arranged to explore the growing development at Fearrington Village south of Chapel Hill.  Both Glen and Niki had gotten their PhDs at UNC Chapel Hill and we were familiar with the area, having visited when the kids were in school there.  They also have friends in the area.

Fearrington Village, North Carolina

 

Fearrington Village offered to let us stay at the five star Carolina Inn at a reduced rate while we explored new home sites.  On our last day of looking at lots, none of which we liked, we decided to look at some resales closer to the village center.  The first house the realtor showed us, we liked. It was on a pasture with belted cows grazing in it.  It was within an easy walk to the village center.  We were already on our way the next day to Arkansas to see Bob and Nancy as planned, and were negotiating the final price.  Anyway, we bought the house in which we are now living in 2012.

 

We like it at Fearrington Village.  We especially like the gatherings at the Roost. You can buy a local IPA and a great wood-fired oven pizza if you're hungry and listen to some live music.  A different artist or group is there every weekend and plays on the little porch.  The venue is open air, under big shade trees or around a fountain, and the audience is from all over the area.

 

 

 

 

My father built some beautiful rockery gardens in Hamburg and in Eden.

I built the rockery at our house in Fearrington Village.  Adds a nice touch.

For the scroll work against the house, I used quarter inch copper wire, bent it and soldered it on the garage floor and then spray painted it black.  It's attached to the plastic siding with small nails and wire.

These beautiful Japanese Iris were there when we bought the house, but the big boulders I dragged there myself.  I did more stonework to enhance this area, which is at the corner of our lot next to the alley.  The garages of about a dozen houses open onto the alley.

We have a monthly get together,  just for the neighbors adjoining the alley.  We're called the "Alley Cats".

 

 

 

Fearrington Village is known for its belted cows.  Here they are grazing in the pasture which runs right by our house, and was one of the features that endeared us to the place.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There are belted goats too - a big attraction for people visiting the Village.

Family Reunions

Since we've been in North Carolina, we've traveled to Germany several times, and have also gone to some family reunions at Elmer's place up in Fredonia, NY.  The family gets together for a great time of food and music.   Here's Elmer singing one of his ditties at one of the reunions:  https://youtu.be/iJG8mZAXuJw

And here's Paul (my brother and Steve and Pauli's dad) doing his thang on the washtub:

https://goo.gl/photos/U5TM1wtKMM8LU7Q97

We're all getting older now and the reunions have changed.  We celebrated Elmer's 80th, 85th and 90th birthdays there.  Our nephew Pauli has moved in to help take care of Elmer.  He built himself a man cave in the barn, which he calls “The Horny Moose Lodge”. Very inventive.

 

 

 

         Paul, aka

The Horny Moose

The Lodge below.

Pauli's trophies on the wall

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A nice restaurant in Fredonia where we often go for a change of venue.

 

 

 

What's left of my generation of the Cottens at Elmer's 90th birthday.  

Nancy, me, Jack, Elmer, and Paul.

 

Update:

Paul (87) passed away on January 11 and Elmer (92) on January 28, 2019.

 

See obituaries below. 

Elmer and Paul's Passing

Link to Elmer's obituary:

https://obittree.com/obituary/us/new-york/fredonia/larson-timko-funeral-home/elmer-cotten/3707971/index.php

Link to Paul's obituary:

https://laingfuneralhome.com/tribute/details/477/Paul-Cotten/obituary.html

Some words of consolation:

O SON OF THE SUPREME! I have made death a messenger of joy to thee. Wherefore dost thou grieve? I made the light to shed on thee its splendor. Why dost thou veil thyself therefrom?  Baha'u'llah, The Hidden Words

O SON OF LOVE!  Thou art but one step away from the glorious heights above and from the celestial tree of love.  Take thou one pace and with the next advance into the immortal realm and enter the pavilion of eternity…. –  Baha’u’llah, The Hidden Words

And know thou for a certainty that in the divine worlds the spiritual beloved ones will recognize one another, and will seek union with each other, but a spiritual union.  Likewise a love that one may have entertained for anyone will not be forgotten in the world of the Kingdom, nor wilt thou forget there the life that thou hadst in the material world.

 Abdu’l-Baha 

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Ancestry DNA results:

I recently had my DNA researched by Ancestry.  Here are the updated estimates:

England, Wales & Northwestern Europe                 59%

Germanic Europe                                                      27%

Ireland & Scotland                                                     14%

Dale, Jane's daughter, has done some very interesting genealogical research recently which shows that there are German ancestors in our paternal (Cotten) lineage as well as in our maternal lineage.  The names Albrecht, Schürler, Väth and Rausch are obviously of German origin. The name of my great grandmother, Amelia Albright, mother of grampa Cotten (Elmer Asa Cotten) is the anglicized version of Albrecht, her forebears from Angeltürn and ILmspan, towns in the Main-Tauber-Kreis, in what used to be the Grand Duchy of Baden, now a Landkreis (district) in the northeast of Baden-Württemberg, Germany.
Here's some of that data on our paternal ancestry:
Georg Peter Albrecht, Sr. (born circa 1779) and Anna Maria Schürler (born 1781) are born in Angeltürn, Main-Tauber-Kreis, Grand Duchy of Baden. They married in 1799, ages 20 and 18 respectively. There is no record of Anna Maria after 1801 and no record of Georg Peter after 1802.

Georg Peter Albrecht, Jr. is born March 26, 1801 in Angeltürn, Main-Tauber-Kreis, in the Grand Duchy of Baden. He is christened “Georgius Petrus Albrecht" in the Catholic Church in Angeltürn.

 

Anna Maria Väth, his wife, is born May 28, 1808 in Ilmspan, Main-Tauber-Kreis. She is the daughter of Leonard Väth (1772-1822) and Maria Eva Rausch (1774-1810), both of Ilmspan.

 

Georg Peter Albrecht, Jr. (age 30) and Anna Maria Väth (age 23) are married in Angeltürn on January 11, 1831 in the Catholic Church. (Source: “Germany, Marriages, 1558-1929”)  Their first living child, Eva Barbara, is born in Angeltürn in 1836.   Georg (age 40) and Anna Maria (32) emigrate to the U.S.  They are on the Ellis Island Passenger List for 1840.  George is listed as a “Farmer.”

 

The Albrechts now go by the names “George and Maria Albright.”  The couple’s second child,  Amelia, my great grandmother, is born in 1842 in Delaware Township, Mercer County, in North Westrn Pennsylvania.  Four more daughters – Margaret (1845), Susan (1847), Mary (1849) and Catherine/”Cassie” (1851) – are also born in Mercer County.  In the U.S. Census for 1850, the Albrights are listed as ‘farmers’.

Maria Albright died in 1870 in Mercer County at the age of 62.  George Albright died in 1880 in Mercer County at the age of 79.

The Tamblingsons, forebears of Gramma Cotten (Sophia Julia Tamblingson), were sailors and wholesale merchants who originally came from Cornwall, in the British Isles. Some of the family did business in Canada and the American colonies before the Revolutionary War. Others remained in England or sailed around the world with the British Royal Navy. The last of the Tamblingsons to serve in the B.R.N. was Albert Augustus, my great-grandfather. He left naval service in 1862 and came first to Quebec, then to Rochester, New York, where he married a young Scots-Irish woman, Sarah Keating, and finally moved to Buffalo.

Albert and Sarah Tamblingson’s story is a particularly tragic one. Four of the couple’s six children died, either in infancy or before they had reached the age of nine. Another daughter died at age 18. The only child to survive to adulthood was my grandmother, Sophia, who lived to be 85 years old.  Albert himself died young, at age 45. His wife, Sarah, though only 39 when she was widowed, never remarried.

  

Here's a link to a Google map of the location of Angeltürn where the Albrechts lived.  If you expand the map you can see its proximity to Bensheim, between Darmstadt and Heidelberg, only a little over 100km to the West:

 

 https://www.google.com/maps/place/Angelt%C3%BCrn,+97944+Boxberg,+Germany/@49.4903298,8.2485567,8z/data=!4m5!3m4!1s0x47980d1828b90ac7:0x8c55113a62e03ec2!8m2!3d49.4860061!4d9.5976541


 

Our Granddaughter Kirsi's Graduation from Highschool and College

We went to Minneapolis to help celebrate Kirsi's graduation from High School in June, 2016.  Kirsi was the Valedictorian of her High School class.  Below right is a picture of Kirsi when she graduated with honors from UNC in 2020.  She took a year off before graduate school and worked as a research assistant at MUSC in Charleston, SC. 

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The pictures above are from Kirsi's graduation from Medical School at Minneapolis

She completed Medical School in 3 and 1/2 years and is now applying for residency.  Her chosen specialty is Radiation Oncology.

 

Our Granddaughter Aila's High School Graduation

We went to Minneapolis to help celebrate Aila's graduation from High School in June, 2019.  Her class included over 400 students.  The ceremony was held in a huge hockey stadium near the Univ of Minnesota campus in Minneapolis.

Here are more pictures from the celebration.  We went to a beautiful restaurant afterwards.  Mike's brothers also flew in.  Alf from Sweden and Kaj from Florida, on left and right respectively in the picture below right.

     Niki, Aila and Mike

  At the restaurant.  Kaj, Alf, me, Niki, Mike, Aila and Margrit.

A Visit to NYC

Aila was accepted at the Parsons School of Art and Design, part of the New School, located in Greenwich Village in NYC.  In November, 2019 we bought tickets to take Aila to see La Boheme at the Met at Lincoln Center, and flew to NYC for a 5-day visit.  Here are some pictures from that trip.

We stayed at the Marlton Hotel near Washington Square, the Highline and Aila's dorm.  Aila took us to some great restaurants, of which there were many.  La Boheme at the Met at Lincoln Center was, of course, the highlight of the visit.

Aila has created a website to to display her paintings and to provide a contact for anyone wishing to commission a work of art.  Here's the link to her website:

https://www.ailaoldenburg.com

It is now May 2025 and Aila has just completed a very successful art show in New York City and has sold a number of her paintings including to Sotheby's.  Here are some pictures of Aila at her show with her parents, Niki Cotten-Oldenburg (our daughter) and Mike Oldenburg, her father.

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Isik sent me this link which I want to share with you.  This short YouTube video is an interview with NYT Best Selling author, Amanda Ripley, talking about the Baha'i Faith which she had just learned about while doing research for her new book.

Here's the link:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1bkhXxd2yI8

I'd like to share a new book about the history of the Baha'i Faith entitled "175 Years of Persecution.  A History of the Babis and Baha'is of Iran." by Fereydun Vahman
Here's the link:

https://read.amazon.com/?asin=B07HRNLV44&language=en-US

This website is, and will continue to be, a work in progress, as I find other photos and think of other events, people and ideas that should be included in "A Cotten Tale".   As members of the family read this, I would appreciate it if they would inform me of any corrections or additions, including photos, they would like to see incorporated into the story.

I'll be happy to make any changes.  Here's my website:  jqcotten@spectrum.net

 

I actually started another WIX website to do my memoirs before this one.  It contains additional content.   Rather than redo the pages here,  just click this link to read more   https://jqcotten9.wixsite.com/jqcotten

https://jqcotten9.wixsite.com/jqcotten/foreign-service-travels

Click on the above link for additional pictures of VietNam and El Salvador.
During this period I was carrying the Diplomatic Passport shown below.











 

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To be cited when we abandon the physical garment   . . .     

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