August 14, 2012: Today, my elder daughter Joanna Marie Solkoff became engaged to be married to Jade Kosmos Phillips. Jade proposed on his knees at the mouth of a volcano in Hawaii on Joanna‘s birthday.
August 15, 2012: Jade called from Hawaii at 11:35 Eastern Daylight Savings Time. Jade asked for Joanna’s hand in marriage. I said Joanna and he would have a great marriage; he is her anchor windward. [Note 1. Watch Facebook for the formal announcement.] [Note 2. I have been on both sides now: asking and answering. Answering is better.]
August 18, 2012: Facebook notification. Joanna Solkoff is engaged to Jade K. Phillips.
Frequently asked questions:
1 When will the wedding take place? In the Fall of 3013 after Joanna graduates from nursing school.
2. Where will the wedding take place? In a horse barn in Chatham County, NC. A special guest will be Joanna‘s beloved horse George, no longer capable of enduring a rider, in attendance. The bride plans to wear a wedding gown patterned after a Ginger Rogers outfit in the film Lucky Partners. She will arrive at the ceremony riding side-saddle on Scarlet, the only horse ever to throw her off.
3. How do I obtain driving directions to the wedding at Baywood Farms Equestrian Center in Apex, NC at a date yet to be determined? http://www.mapquest.com/maps?zipcode=27502#a7ca199086f84f6bb05916de
{Caveat lector! A shameless pitch for expenses in getting home from Joanna and Jade’s Engagement Party that still continues after the bar closed at 11 PM on September 29, 2012 at Chapel Hill NC on this link: Caveat lector!}
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[This space is reserved for biographical sketches of Joanna and Jade, photographs and additional material.]
Footnote 1: Technically there is no Footnote 1.
Footnote 2:
This is the Lucky Partners review Joanna and I published at amazon.com:
“Lucky Partners” is one of a small list of ALL TIME FAVORITE MOVIES. My daughters Joanna, Amelia and I have watched this movie together for decades. I think Amelia was one when she first saw it; Joanna was seven.
Joanna, now 28, just told me she plans to design her wedding gown based on an outfit Ginger Rogers wore in “Lucky Partners.”
I had thought myself capable of writing this review myself. This is an urbane romantic comedy. Joanna says it is a satire on morality within a [cell phone static] within a comedy. As the battery on her phone dies, she starts quoting from the incredibly funny and brilliant lines from “Lucky Partners.” There is, for example, the opening meeting between Ronald Coleman and Ginger Rogers.
Ronald Coleman plays the role of a brilliant artist who aristocratically refuses to continue painting in Ronald-Coleman-incredible-diction. (I will never forget Ronald Coleman, in that incredible scene just before they cut off his head in Charles Dickens’ Tale of Two Cities: “It is a far far better thing I do than I have ever ever done. It is a far far better world I go to than I have ever ever known.” [Boy, I wish I could talk like that.]
Coleman also has eccentric ideas about the institution of matrimony and honeymoons in particular (which he explains to his art dealer who is trying to convince Ronald Coleman to return to painting).
Instead, Coleman then leaves the building, walks down the street and passes the adorable [astonishingly adorable] Ginger Rogers. For no apparent reason, Ronald Coleman wishes Ginger Rogers, a total stranger, “Good luck.” “Did you just wish me luck for no apparent reason?”
As Joanna‘s cell phone dies as she drives home with her fiance Jade Kosmos Phillips, Joanna says, “Did you just wish me luck for no apparent reason?”
—Joanna Solkoff and Joel Solkoff