Well, only one person (my mother!) guessed who the other player on the Wise Cips Team was...and he hasn't mentioned his name so maybe he wants to keep it a secret. In any case, we'll give it another day and after that I'll contact him and ask if it's okay to reveal!
In the summer of 1963 a couple of things happened in the world. Bill Mazeroski was well on his way to becoming an all-time great Yankee target and an alltime great Pirate fan's dream player. I'm not sure which of these he preferred, but I only knew him only as the spoiler. Of all the things that 1963 was famous for like the deaths of Pope John XXII and President John F. Kennedy, I remember it as the year I got metal cleats and a "pitching toe." Where baseball practices with my new team, Wise Chips, and my new coach, Dad, reunited me with my best friend from childhood -Joey - and included "leadoffs" and sliding. It was where the pickoff move from the stretch was practiced incessantly and seriously, and it was the first time that actual girls came to watch the boys show off their skills on the diamond - a fascinating new tool in the player motivation game over which the coaches had no control that I could discern. For myself, a particularly cute freckle-faced young lady (whose name escapes me to this day but whom Tom Rennell must know since she was from the Fox Hill area) always made me run a little faster and try a little harder for the odd pop foul off first base. I loved to hear her intake of breath that sounded like "Ohhhh!" when I slammed into the chain link fence beside the 1st base stands in pursuit of these foul balls.
That season had a little magic and a lot of luck associated with it. We Americans were living our last summer of Camelot innocence and we didn't even know it. A guy, who at 16 played 3rd base for an opposing team that summer, would be dead in a jungle in Viet Nam in less than four years. We were still quite innocent though, except for the never-ending machinations of some of the less morally balanced coaching staffs. A new guy had been imported from outside of town to pitch for one of our opponents, and he was mowing down the best that the National Babe Ruth League of Plattsburgh had to offer. He was unhittable to me (as were most of the pitchers in that league), and all the other teams appeared to have no hope of doing much better against him. We never complained that this was an imported "ringer," and we took our lumps along with the rest of the league. But a nasty rumor was circulating that he had already had his 16th birthday, which made him ineligible to participate at our level.
Wise Chips had had a very good year otherwise, though, and we stood in second place behind the "ringer" and his team. And then, something right happened - the commissioner reviewed the evidence, discovered that our villain was just too old, and enforced a forfeit of every game in which he had played. Was this fair for the boys on his team? Probably not, but it taught a lesson in the necessity of the law and in the consequences of not following the law. In any case, We were suddenly awarded enough wins at the very end of the season to win the National League title and face the American League winner "Merkle's" for the city championship.
In the 1960's, summer baseball was taken seriously in our little town, and this was no excpetion. A three-game series was agreed upon, with the first played at our home feld and the remaining two at the Bailey Avenue Recreation Center field which had lights, stands, wooden fences, and had actually hosted a semi-pro team once - in other words, the big-time! Alas, the first game was rained out and we were forced to play our first game "under the lights" on the home field of our opponents. And we were promptly and thoroughly beaten by the American League champs. Down 1-0, we were forced into needing two wins in a double-header on a hot muggy Saturday. Given how poorly we had played in Game 1, we were not enthusiastic about our chances.
I only remember one play from that double-header, a routine 6-4-3 double play ball that Joey Bebo started and I finished. I remember seeing the ball smack firmly into my glove at first base. It wasn't a game-winner and it wasn't a game-changer. I just remember that we made short work of Merkle's that day and that the newspaper commented on the number of double plays that we turned. We won the city championship and I sometimes wonder what happened to the green Wise Chips logo jacket that I was given for winning that game. I wore it proudly for years. And that young girl, Tom. What ever happened to her?
Friday, May 27, 2011
Thursday, May 26, 2011
City Champs - Part I
I grew up in a world of baseball, the Lone Ranger, cars with enormous fins and idyllic summer evenings where the most wonderful words ever to be heard were "Who'd like to go down to the Altamont for some ice cream?" I grew up in a small town in a small neighborhood in a very large family. Like most families, we had our rituals and routines, and one of my favoritie routines was throwing a baseball aganst a concrete block and catching the rebound while I waited for my father to get home from work. I developed a very robust game from that routine, where I could call balls and strikes, get hits and outs, and generally play a full baseball game. Which allowed me to replay the disastrous final inning of Game 7 of the 1960 World Series over and over again until the baseball gods got it right. Even though I do not root for the Yankees, and haven't since about 1966 when I discovered that Brooks Robinson was quite simply the best player in baseball, I still get riled up when I hear the name Bill Mazeroski. It was at an old-timers game in Washington, DC in the late1980's that I happily and lustily booed Mazeroski when he, by then in his 50's, appeared in support of baseball in DC, a cause that I supported whole-heartedly.
As the school year began to wind down each spring, the boys in our neighborhood would rummage through the backs of numberless closets to retrieve the glove and ball that had been so carefully wrapped and tied at the end of the previous summer. Little league baseball buddies start getting together for pickup games at local sandlots (we actually called them that). This ritual was quickly followed by tryouts for minor league, little league and Babe Ruth League teams. Once you had been selected for a team, you remained with them for your entire career in that league. Teams crossed over cultural, school, religous and social barriers, but never the important geopolitical boundary of Broad Street. Someone from the "south" side of Broad Street was never placed with a team from the other side of town, and I lived on the south side of Broad. So I was assigned to the "Fox Hill" (south side) gang for baseball. All local teams were sponsored by local businesses and some rivalries developed among them, although these rarely meant anything more than good-natured jousting about previous year standings. And the little league teams were not feeder systems for the Babe Ruth teams - today's enemy on the diamond could very well be your teammate next year.
Some of us, though, had a little more "luck" in team assignments than others. As a little leaguer, I was selected by the team sponsored by Champlain Valley Savings & Loan whose bright yellow uniforms were sure to scare you off if it's abysmal record didn't. In my first year on the team (at 8 years old) we lost 20 games and won 0; in our second year we celebrated our first and only win with a pizza party at our young coach Popcorn's house (he had a greek first name that I cannot remember, but we aways called him Popcorn anyways so it didn't matter.) In my third year we went 3-17, and we were clearly improving! By the time I reached the ultimate season with "S&L" as we were called, we had almost no teams quivering in their boots at meeting our offensive juggernaut, and only a few batters (mostly scrawny 8- and 9-year-olds) who feared our left-handed pitching ace (me). So it was clear to the baseball gods that I needed a break...I needed to be with a contender! And so, I became a first-round draft pick for the Wise Potato Chips team - a team at the top of their division. It helped somewhat that my father coached this team, had coached it for years, and that all sons were assigned automatically assigned to their fathers' teams.
Babe Ruth league was where the wheat and the chaff began the process of separation from each other in our little portion of the baseball world. The pitcher's mound was suddenly 60 ft. 6 inches from home plate, we wore real metal spikes, we were learning to steal bases with our cleats up, the basepaths were 90 feet long, a homerun to right field would have to carry 375-400 feet, and the windows in the nun's house behind the left field wall took a regular pounding. The nuns of Our Lady of Victory always loved to hear the crashing of the glass as another homer struck the school since it was one more indicator of how strong the boys' high school team would be this year!
That first year, when I as 13, was magical. And surprisingly, at least two readers of this blog shared that season with me. I'm sure everyone will identify my Dad as one of the current readers who was there...but a rea challenge is telling me who the second was! I'm hoping to describe more of our championship season tomorrow, so unless the person wishes to reveal himself before then,you'll have to wait to find out who it is.
As the school year began to wind down each spring, the boys in our neighborhood would rummage through the backs of numberless closets to retrieve the glove and ball that had been so carefully wrapped and tied at the end of the previous summer. Little league baseball buddies start getting together for pickup games at local sandlots (we actually called them that). This ritual was quickly followed by tryouts for minor league, little league and Babe Ruth League teams. Once you had been selected for a team, you remained with them for your entire career in that league. Teams crossed over cultural, school, religous and social barriers, but never the important geopolitical boundary of Broad Street. Someone from the "south" side of Broad Street was never placed with a team from the other side of town, and I lived on the south side of Broad. So I was assigned to the "Fox Hill" (south side) gang for baseball. All local teams were sponsored by local businesses and some rivalries developed among them, although these rarely meant anything more than good-natured jousting about previous year standings. And the little league teams were not feeder systems for the Babe Ruth teams - today's enemy on the diamond could very well be your teammate next year.
Some of us, though, had a little more "luck" in team assignments than others. As a little leaguer, I was selected by the team sponsored by Champlain Valley Savings & Loan whose bright yellow uniforms were sure to scare you off if it's abysmal record didn't. In my first year on the team (at 8 years old) we lost 20 games and won 0; in our second year we celebrated our first and only win with a pizza party at our young coach Popcorn's house (he had a greek first name that I cannot remember, but we aways called him Popcorn anyways so it didn't matter.) In my third year we went 3-17, and we were clearly improving! By the time I reached the ultimate season with "S&L" as we were called, we had almost no teams quivering in their boots at meeting our offensive juggernaut, and only a few batters (mostly scrawny 8- and 9-year-olds) who feared our left-handed pitching ace (me). So it was clear to the baseball gods that I needed a break...I needed to be with a contender! And so, I became a first-round draft pick for the Wise Potato Chips team - a team at the top of their division. It helped somewhat that my father coached this team, had coached it for years, and that all sons were assigned automatically assigned to their fathers' teams.
Babe Ruth league was where the wheat and the chaff began the process of separation from each other in our little portion of the baseball world. The pitcher's mound was suddenly 60 ft. 6 inches from home plate, we wore real metal spikes, we were learning to steal bases with our cleats up, the basepaths were 90 feet long, a homerun to right field would have to carry 375-400 feet, and the windows in the nun's house behind the left field wall took a regular pounding. The nuns of Our Lady of Victory always loved to hear the crashing of the glass as another homer struck the school since it was one more indicator of how strong the boys' high school team would be this year!
That first year, when I as 13, was magical. And surprisingly, at least two readers of this blog shared that season with me. I'm sure everyone will identify my Dad as one of the current readers who was there...but a rea challenge is telling me who the second was! I'm hoping to describe more of our championship season tomorrow, so unless the person wishes to reveal himself before then,you'll have to wait to find out who it is.
Wednesday, May 25, 2011
Me and the Kinkaku-ji
My wonderful eldest son sent me this picure that I had forgotten about. This was taken about 15 minutes after arriving at the top of my incredble walk up to the Kinkaku-ji. This was taken from a different perspective as the walkway comes up on the left of the picture (my right side). Note the fresh-fallen snow on the rocks in the pond, and also note how reflectivethe surface is, even from this direction.
Blind Faith - Twice! by Judy Coryell
First off, you need to know, I am a North Country girl, born and bred on the Canadian border in the Northeast corner of New York State…land of mountains and lakes, cool summers from July to August, and double digit below zero winters from September to June. (Well, we might have had an Indian summer once or twice that kept the first snowfall at bay till October, but it was rare!) Nary a tornado one.
Now I live in Kansas. Toto. Red shoes. A Rainbow. TORNADOES! I’ve lived here in the land of Oz for over 20 years, and by the grace of God I have yet to see a tornado touch down in my little slice of the heartland. Furthermore, I am scared to death of the things, and hope to God I NEVER see one!
Now for my story:
A month ago I travelled to Keller, Texas to spend some time with Jerry, my pesky little brother whom I love dearly. Jerry’s fighting a heroic fight with cancer, and at the time was taking part in a targeted trial drug program which necessitated weekly trips to MD Anderson Clinic in Houston, Texas (just a short 4 ½ hour drive from his house). I decided to make the trip with him (three times if anyone is counting), but one of the trips will be forever etched in my mind.
Mind you, when Jerry is in a car, he is ALWAYS the driver, but for the first time in his life he acquiesced in the light of some discomfort he was experiencing. Jer is in the passenger seat and I am at the wheel. Just passing Dallas heading South on I-45 the sky is looking ominous.
“Hmmmm” Jerry says, “looks like we might be in for some weather.”
Oh, yay, just what I need. Albeit, Jerry was not driving, but believe me, he was “at the wheel” and making sure I maintained speed, was in the correct lane, didn’t get too close to the car next to me, yadayadayada…you get the idea.
Sure enough, the sky darkens, the wind whips up, and it starts to rain. Hmmm. Jerry’s really sitting up now, keeping his eyes on the road, or rather, telling ME to keep my eyes on the road, whilst he checks out the weather.
His chariot has one of those intelligent navigation systems, so he brings up the weather map and says “Ah, yes, looks like a tornado, some hail, pretty strong winds……. KEEP YOUR EYES ON THE ROAD JUDY, DON’T LOOK AT THE SCREEN!!!!!!!!”
Geez, I about jumped out of my skin, not to mention the fear that gripped me with the realization that I might be headed into the path of a tornado!!! Now it’s rain, hail, hellacious winds, all the other cars are pulling off the road, you can’t see five feet in front of you.
So I say “Jerry, maybe I’d better pull over and wait this out.”
“NO NO NO, KEEP DRIVING FOR GOD’S SAKE, THE HAIL WILL MAKE WORSE DAMAGE TO THE CAR IF WE’RE SITTING STILL!!!”
Okay, I say to myself, we’re more worried about the car than our lives?????? Well, here’s where I have to tell you how I really feel about this brother of mine----he is much smarter than me, and I’d trust him with my life, I love him that much. Soooo…on we went, and even when Jerry said “oh my God, look, there it is, the tornado, right over there to the east of us!” I steadfastly kept my eyes peeled on the road, mouth dry, knuckles white, praying the “Our Father” and asking God to make sure Jerry knew what he was doing!! (Besides, Jerry was still yelling at me to keep my eyes on the road!)
And, as all weather passes, so did this one. A little further on down the road the sky lightened, the road was dry, and I breathed a sigh of relief, and thought, “yup, bro was right…again.”
An hour later. Hmmmm. Jerry thinks it looks like some weather up ahead. Oh, it couldn’t be…could it??
Progress in the Land of Hospice
This hideous disease has continued to progress for the past several weeks, but the docs seem to have the pain portion of the problem pretty much in control. The biggest issue is extreme shortness of breath which limits more and more normal activities every day and is causing me to be a consumer of morphine at a greater pace than I would have preferred. I now have to be wheeled from my recliner in the family room to the bedroom, and I haven't been outside except on the back patio for more than a week. The shortness of breath is scary and painful in its own right. I can't even dress myself without help from Liz or a Nurse's Aide who comes in once a day. I continue to fight against the depression that amost always accompanies this sort of thing and I'm thinking that, with a lot of help from Liz, I'm doing pretty well. I'm beginning to reconcile myself to the fact that I'll probably have to do Mike & Kris's wedding ceremony while sitting in my wheelchair, but I've concluded that the important thing is that I be there, not that I look pretty.
I'm adding this into the blog today for two reasons: first, I wanted everyone to know where I stand with the progress of my illness; and second, we're going to have a guest columnist today who's going to contribute her perspective on the world.
I hope you enjoy it, and if you do, maybe you should get off your duff and write something. If there's enough interest, I will start a separate blog with more open authorship so that we can collect all these insights in one location! In any case, enjoy!
I'm adding this into the blog today for two reasons: first, I wanted everyone to know where I stand with the progress of my illness; and second, we're going to have a guest columnist today who's going to contribute her perspective on the world.
I hope you enjoy it, and if you do, maybe you should get off your duff and write something. If there's enough interest, I will start a separate blog with more open authorship so that we can collect all these insights in one location! In any case, enjoy!
Tuesday, May 24, 2011
The Kinkaku-ji and the Snow That Fell Upward
I wish this were some mystical fairy tale brimming with magic, hobgoblins and a clear moral from which our children would undoubtedly profit. It isn't. It is the story of a single, tiny insight into the collective thought process of an entire race of people...which on reflection, ain't all that bad.
I've visited about 100 countries over the years, and I've done business in more than 40 of those. I've had logistics meetings about how to protect equipment from "theft" as it is transported from Western Europe into the former Soviet Union--with scary Ex-Colonels in the KGB. I've discussed cocktail party arrangements in former Hapsburg palaces; I've gone to battle for my British employees with arrogant French telecommunications technologists who refused to deliver services to the English on a weekend; I've suffered "American" jokes at the hands of London taxi drivers and have been equally berated for entire taxi rides because I sold out and went to work for "telecomms" (the pejorative term used to describe British Telecom in the old days). I've had dinner with the best friend of a sitting king and heard the "actual price" of access to the king whether a meeting was held or not (I did not avail myself this opportunity, although I continued to get hand-engraved Christmas cards from the friend every year for a decade). I've sat and watched the "Azuri" lose to Germany with an Italian whose passion for bicycle racing has been with him since he was a soldier with Mussolini's army and is surpassed only by his deeply abiding love for the Italian football team.
In short, I've seen quite a few things in this world but none match the incredible sight of the Kinkaku-ji and the snow falling upward around it. First a little explanation. Kyoto (whose name means "capital) is a city that, thankfully, is on the world's list of places that are special to humanity, and is located between Tokyo and Osaka about a one-hour bullet train ride from Kansai Airport. Until the Edo period, when the capital and the Emperor were moved to Tokyo ("northern capital") by the new Shogun, Kyoto was the cultural, military, governmental, and religious center of the Japanses world. It was from here that all laws, rules, trends, and beliefs in Japan were promolguated for nearly a thousand years; and it was here that nearly all military campaigns began or ended. As the center of the country, in its early years Kyoto came to have some extraordinary shrines, temples and torii's donated by the various imperial courtiers. The Kinkaku-ji (Golden Pavilion) dates from 1397 and, although it has been rebuilt an renovated several times over that period, it remains essentially as designed more than 600 years ago. Kyoto, and by extension the Kinkaku-ji, was conciously spared any bombing raids during WWII because of fears that it would be perceived after the war as barbaric cultural desecration of a defeated enemy. (I agree.)
The grounds of the temple were designed to take advantage of the terrain and of the location of the temple in a unique way. To get to the temple you walk up a very peaceful and serene pathway that winds through a woods that appears at first to be endless. As you rise in height, the pathway sweeps around to the right and you realize that you are coming out of the woods at eye-level with a pond that appears to be a huge mirror on its back...it is flat and from your vantage, a perfect cradle of water from which rises the temple pavilion. I have no doubt that this pathway was designed (and is maintained) to present a stunning effect as you pass out of the woods and into the presence of the temple itself--I can report the designer's success from personal experience.
I visited the Kinkaku-ji only once, during an overnight stop in Kyoto on my way to Osaka for a business meeting. This was in April, at the very tail-end of winter, and the weather was raw and cold with light rain as we took a taxi to the temple site. I was less than enthusiastic about this sidetrip since my Osaka meeting was with the Regional President of our client company and I was focused more on business than beauty. When we arrived, my "accompanier" (I never went anywhere in Japan on business without a formal business escort fluent in English and technology) strongly suggested that I take the long pathway up the hill to the shrine rather than the short set of stairs and paved pathway that was the more common "American" alternative. I trusted him and so I followed the path that he indicated.
As our small group made its way up the path, I was struck by how silent the walk was. The ground was simply dirt covered with the remnants of the leaves and small branches that had fallen over the winter, and while the path had obviously been cut out of the woods, it seemed like a natural route that might have been padded out of the forest floor by generations of animals on their way to the pond above us. And during the walk, almost as though it was scripted, the nasty misty cold drizzle turned to a full-bodied, fluffy, pure white fall of snow. As we rounded the last bend in the trail, I realized we had been climbing slowly but steadily upward toward the level of the temple, and the beautiful gold-leaf structure was revealing itself from top to bottom with every additional step we took...and then I noticed an impossible phenomenon: the snow was falling upward! Because of our perspective on the pond and the angle that we were approaching the temple, and the absolute smoothness of the pond, I was able to witness the impossible. As the snow fell downward in the real world, it rebounded upward from an invisible line into a fantasy world of gold temples, gray skies and an improbable glow.
I'm afraid words escape me here. There really is no way that I know to describe the surreal sense of snow rising from the earth into a golden pavilion in the sky. Please take my word, though, that it was simply the most spectacular thing I have ever witnessed short of the births of my children. My young Japanese friends, engineers all, were nearly overcome that I should have experienced this sight while they were with me. It was, I think, more important to them that I had experienced this most mystical and purely Japanese perception, and that they had been privileged to witness it with me. And I was awestruck by the notion that this tableau had been anticipated, analyzed, designed, engineered and constructed on the off chance that over the succeeding hundreds of years, some person would be at a particular place at a particular time during particular conditions and would appreciate what this artist had anticipated.
As an aside, I can't remember the outcome of the meeting the next day, I can't remember the topic discussed, I can't remember the client (except that he was a very inexpensive drunk). But I will never forget the Kinkaku-ji and the snow that fell upward.
I've visited about 100 countries over the years, and I've done business in more than 40 of those. I've had logistics meetings about how to protect equipment from "theft" as it is transported from Western Europe into the former Soviet Union--with scary Ex-Colonels in the KGB. I've discussed cocktail party arrangements in former Hapsburg palaces; I've gone to battle for my British employees with arrogant French telecommunications technologists who refused to deliver services to the English on a weekend; I've suffered "American" jokes at the hands of London taxi drivers and have been equally berated for entire taxi rides because I sold out and went to work for "telecomms" (the pejorative term used to describe British Telecom in the old days). I've had dinner with the best friend of a sitting king and heard the "actual price" of access to the king whether a meeting was held or not (I did not avail myself this opportunity, although I continued to get hand-engraved Christmas cards from the friend every year for a decade). I've sat and watched the "Azuri" lose to Germany with an Italian whose passion for bicycle racing has been with him since he was a soldier with Mussolini's army and is surpassed only by his deeply abiding love for the Italian football team.
In short, I've seen quite a few things in this world but none match the incredible sight of the Kinkaku-ji and the snow falling upward around it. First a little explanation. Kyoto (whose name means "capital) is a city that, thankfully, is on the world's list of places that are special to humanity, and is located between Tokyo and Osaka about a one-hour bullet train ride from Kansai Airport. Until the Edo period, when the capital and the Emperor were moved to Tokyo ("northern capital") by the new Shogun, Kyoto was the cultural, military, governmental, and religious center of the Japanses world. It was from here that all laws, rules, trends, and beliefs in Japan were promolguated for nearly a thousand years; and it was here that nearly all military campaigns began or ended. As the center of the country, in its early years Kyoto came to have some extraordinary shrines, temples and torii's donated by the various imperial courtiers. The Kinkaku-ji (Golden Pavilion) dates from 1397 and, although it has been rebuilt an renovated several times over that period, it remains essentially as designed more than 600 years ago. Kyoto, and by extension the Kinkaku-ji, was conciously spared any bombing raids during WWII because of fears that it would be perceived after the war as barbaric cultural desecration of a defeated enemy. (I agree.)
The grounds of the temple were designed to take advantage of the terrain and of the location of the temple in a unique way. To get to the temple you walk up a very peaceful and serene pathway that winds through a woods that appears at first to be endless. As you rise in height, the pathway sweeps around to the right and you realize that you are coming out of the woods at eye-level with a pond that appears to be a huge mirror on its back...it is flat and from your vantage, a perfect cradle of water from which rises the temple pavilion. I have no doubt that this pathway was designed (and is maintained) to present a stunning effect as you pass out of the woods and into the presence of the temple itself--I can report the designer's success from personal experience.
I visited the Kinkaku-ji only once, during an overnight stop in Kyoto on my way to Osaka for a business meeting. This was in April, at the very tail-end of winter, and the weather was raw and cold with light rain as we took a taxi to the temple site. I was less than enthusiastic about this sidetrip since my Osaka meeting was with the Regional President of our client company and I was focused more on business than beauty. When we arrived, my "accompanier" (I never went anywhere in Japan on business without a formal business escort fluent in English and technology) strongly suggested that I take the long pathway up the hill to the shrine rather than the short set of stairs and paved pathway that was the more common "American" alternative. I trusted him and so I followed the path that he indicated.
As our small group made its way up the path, I was struck by how silent the walk was. The ground was simply dirt covered with the remnants of the leaves and small branches that had fallen over the winter, and while the path had obviously been cut out of the woods, it seemed like a natural route that might have been padded out of the forest floor by generations of animals on their way to the pond above us. And during the walk, almost as though it was scripted, the nasty misty cold drizzle turned to a full-bodied, fluffy, pure white fall of snow. As we rounded the last bend in the trail, I realized we had been climbing slowly but steadily upward toward the level of the temple, and the beautiful gold-leaf structure was revealing itself from top to bottom with every additional step we took...and then I noticed an impossible phenomenon: the snow was falling upward! Because of our perspective on the pond and the angle that we were approaching the temple, and the absolute smoothness of the pond, I was able to witness the impossible. As the snow fell downward in the real world, it rebounded upward from an invisible line into a fantasy world of gold temples, gray skies and an improbable glow.
I'm afraid words escape me here. There really is no way that I know to describe the surreal sense of snow rising from the earth into a golden pavilion in the sky. Please take my word, though, that it was simply the most spectacular thing I have ever witnessed short of the births of my children. My young Japanese friends, engineers all, were nearly overcome that I should have experienced this sight while they were with me. It was, I think, more important to them that I had experienced this most mystical and purely Japanese perception, and that they had been privileged to witness it with me. And I was awestruck by the notion that this tableau had been anticipated, analyzed, designed, engineered and constructed on the off chance that over the succeeding hundreds of years, some person would be at a particular place at a particular time during particular conditions and would appreciate what this artist had anticipated.
As an aside, I can't remember the outcome of the meeting the next day, I can't remember the topic discussed, I can't remember the client (except that he was a very inexpensive drunk). But I will never forget the Kinkaku-ji and the snow that fell upward.
Monday, May 23, 2011
Some News from the Lavalley Family (North Richland Hills, Texas Branch)
NOTE: This is not for public dissemination--especially not on Facebook until Valerie releases the embargo.
Matt & Valerie have announced that a new baby Lavalley is due to join the clan in mid-January, 2012! At this point, we don't have names (check Val's facebook page for that discussion, I assume) and it's way too early to tell gender so we're just going to have to wait on that, too. For the perceptive among you, please go back to Saturday's blog post about giving gifts that bring tears of joy!
Matt & Valerie have announced that a new baby Lavalley is due to join the clan in mid-January, 2012! At this point, we don't have names (check Val's facebook page for that discussion, I assume) and it's way too early to tell gender so we're just going to have to wait on that, too. For the perceptive among you, please go back to Saturday's blog post about giving gifts that bring tears of joy!
Mountain Whales and Raccoon Soup
But that February, 1973, trip to Japan was important for my future life for several reasons, only one of which is interesting. It was on this trip that I ate my first bite of Chinese food! or of Japanese food! And an oriental foods fanatic was born. At first, I bravely tried to eat like the locals with chopsticks, and was none too successful. It wasn't until I stared down the process (and got some coaching from some guys stationed there) that I grasped the infinite simplicity of these wonderful little tools. (Hint: think of chopsticks as extensions of the fingers.)
Over the next 30 years, I was to go to Japan more than 100 times, and I visited places like Kyoto with it's Kinkaku-Ji and the snow that falls upward, Tokyo's Meiji Temple where I saw a full-blown Shinto wedding ceremony, Nara,the ancient capital of Japan where I saw a 1,000 year old arrow, and innumerable restaurants all over the country from 4-chair huts to 400-chair unagi-only eateries.
Getting personally close to a Japanese can take a long time and lots of patience. Americans are nearly overwhelming in their (our) personal presence, and our demeanor comes across to the average Japanese as boorish, arrogant, entitled, and generally off-putting. The Japanese heart, they say, is fragile and so is protected by many layers of stalwart defense; while the American heart is itself nearly impenetrable, but readily accessible to the most casual acquaintance. I was lucky enough to have developed a few of these deeper personal relationships over the years, and I have revelled in the fact that I was able, ultimately, to be accepted on the basis of who I am, rather than on who I appear to be. American businessmen who cannot overcome this problem do not last long in business with Japanese, so there's probably a Darwinian aspect to this for me, but that's pretty much farther off point than I'm usually willing to go here.
One of the two closest personal friends I have (I still communicate with them regularly) is a professor at Keio University in Tokyo. Itakura-san, an inveterate chain-smoker, very early in our relationship set himself on a quest which I feared might become his downfall: He decided he would find and get me to try a Japanese food that I didn't like and would thereafter refuse to eat. He knew that the second part of his challenge would be relatively easy, but that the first part would be difficult in the extreme.
He tried the simple things first. Osaka shrimp extracted from boiling water at the exact moment of their death and then popped into the mouth and swallowed so that you and the shrimp can both experience the transition together (I personally never felt this "transition," but the shrimp were damned good). Delicate and unbelievably flavored fugu shashimi, a dish so expensive and so dangerous that, when done correctly can be ecstacy and when done incorrectly, can spell death. That Itakura-san and his entourage refused to eat anything, but focused solely on my reaction to the deadly blowfish speaks volumes. They were not waiting for me to die, of course, but were waiting for me to experience the slight neurologic twinge that release of the neurotoxins in the blowfish cause in the mouth of the consumer so that they could experience it vicariously. He tried a special freshwater eel that lives in a single stream in a northern section of Tokyo and that are edible only 3-4 months of the year. He tried variations of shabu-shabu. He tried almost everthing.
Oddly, he never tried sukiyaki which is my least favorite Japanese dish and probably the most recognized truly Japanese dish in America. (Ever the purest, I will point out to the naive among us that knife-throwing Beni-Hana is an American/Hawaiian dish which is disdainfully called "hibachi style" in Japan. Few Japanese eat food in this style and those who do so have only done it since its import from America. If you are on a business trip to Japan and they serve you dinner in this style, you have just been "dissed."
But ultimately, he got around to inoshishi. Mountain Whale.
The Japanese are a clever group of people who, like the Russians, learned to comply with the decrees of the emperors and shoguns in their faraway capitals while not too severely disrupting their own lives. At about the time of the shogunate of the first Tokugawa (around 400 years ago) the leadership of Japan converted to Buddhism and along with that adopted many Buddhist proscriptions to be the new law--including a modified vegetarianism. Meat was declared off-limits, but birds, fish, fruits, vegetables, nuts, etc. were acceptable. For many of the rural mountain dwellers who lived far from Edo (Tokyo) this new set of rules presented a problem. Being vegetarian was fine, but they couldn't live without their local delicacy--wild boar. A solution that was Solomonic in its simplicity was quickly implemented: the wild boar, it turned out, was actually a whale! a (reclassifed) Mountain Whale! and as a whale--close enough to a fish to count in this little verbal joust--it was fair game for the strict vegetarian who wanted to please Buddha, please the Shogun, and please his belly. He could be content and compliant without pissing off the pope, so to speak.
Itakura-san was certain he had found the winner. Sadly for him, he was wrong about the Mountain Whale...but he was right in the location...he had found the restaurant where, after years of trying he could throw up his hands in a cry of victory. The wild boar was astonishingly good...just the right moisture in a delicate rack of ribs, a savory barbecue-style sauce that was light but enhanced the boar's flavor, and a presentation that succeeded in convincing me that we were still in Japan, albeit in the far mountains, but that this was not your standard bento box meal.
The ultimate worst possible Japanese dish? It was the soup served as a side to the boar...a raccoon soup. The guys struggled with their digital translators to come upwith the word "raccoon" for this animal, but I will assure you that the meat, the broth, and the stench from this wretched dish did not deserve to be on the same table as the inoshishi.
I conceded Itakura-san's victory, and we proceeded to get ritually sloshed on summer sake. I'm not sure Itakura-san has ever learned that I have a near infinite capacity for cold sake, and that my bodymass of 88 kilos is capable of processing far more alcohol than his 55 kilos. But then, why would I give up a betting advantage like that?
 |
| Soviet SuKhoi 7 Interceptor |
I was on my first visit to Asia in February, 1973, when I touched down at Kadena AFB on the southern island of Okinawa. A nineteen day tdy assignment (temporary duty) during which I was apparently expected to do nothing except drink the local beer and sake, and contribute my meager savings to the Wing's poker gods. In fairness, the local boys who were borrowing our plane to fly recon missions over North Viet Nam would happily have let us fly with them, but the impeccable logic of rejecting their pleasantly profferred if not pleasingly received offer was, to my mind, fairly straightforward--What kind of imbecile would volunteer to fly an unarmed Boeing 707 across a war zone where they had missiles, AAA guns, MiG 23's and SuKhoi 7's just looking for a way to impress the local girls with tales of the Americans they've shot down, captured, tortured, etc. I may exaggerate here, but only slightly.
But that February, 1973, trip to Japan was important for my future life for several reasons, only one of which is interesting. It was on this trip that I ate my first bite of Chinese food! or of Japanese food! And an oriental foods fanatic was born. At first, I bravely tried to eat like the locals with chopsticks, and was none too successful. It wasn't until I stared down the process (and got some coaching from some guys stationed there) that I grasped the infinite simplicity of these wonderful little tools. (Hint: think of chopsticks as extensions of the fingers.)
Getting personally close to a Japanese can take a long time and lots of patience. Americans are nearly overwhelming in their (our) personal presence, and our demeanor comes across to the average Japanese as boorish, arrogant, entitled, and generally off-putting. The Japanese heart, they say, is fragile and so is protected by many layers of stalwart defense; while the American heart is itself nearly impenetrable, but readily accessible to the most casual acquaintance. I was lucky enough to have developed a few of these deeper personal relationships over the years, and I have revelled in the fact that I was able, ultimately, to be accepted on the basis of who I am, rather than on who I appear to be. American businessmen who cannot overcome this problem do not last long in business with Japanese, so there's probably a Darwinian aspect to this for me, but that's pretty much farther off point than I'm usually willing to go here.
One of the two closest personal friends I have (I still communicate with them regularly) is a professor at Keio University in Tokyo. Itakura-san, an inveterate chain-smoker, very early in our relationship set himself on a quest which I feared might become his downfall: He decided he would find and get me to try a Japanese food that I didn't like and would thereafter refuse to eat. He knew that the second part of his challenge would be relatively easy, but that the first part would be difficult in the extreme.
He tried the simple things first. Osaka shrimp extracted from boiling water at the exact moment of their death and then popped into the mouth and swallowed so that you and the shrimp can both experience the transition together (I personally never felt this "transition," but the shrimp were damned good). Delicate and unbelievably flavored fugu shashimi, a dish so expensive and so dangerous that, when done correctly can be ecstacy and when done incorrectly, can spell death. That Itakura-san and his entourage refused to eat anything, but focused solely on my reaction to the deadly blowfish speaks volumes. They were not waiting for me to die, of course, but were waiting for me to experience the slight neurologic twinge that release of the neurotoxins in the blowfish cause in the mouth of the consumer so that they could experience it vicariously. He tried a special freshwater eel that lives in a single stream in a northern section of Tokyo and that are edible only 3-4 months of the year. He tried variations of shabu-shabu. He tried almost everthing.
Oddly, he never tried sukiyaki which is my least favorite Japanese dish and probably the most recognized truly Japanese dish in America. (Ever the purest, I will point out to the naive among us that knife-throwing Beni-Hana is an American/Hawaiian dish which is disdainfully called "hibachi style" in Japan. Few Japanese eat food in this style and those who do so have only done it since its import from America. If you are on a business trip to Japan and they serve you dinner in this style, you have just been "dissed."
But ultimately, he got around to inoshishi. Mountain Whale.
 |
| Mountain whale - inoshishi |
Itakura-san was certain he had found the winner. Sadly for him, he was wrong about the Mountain Whale...but he was right in the location...he had found the restaurant where, after years of trying he could throw up his hands in a cry of victory. The wild boar was astonishingly good...just the right moisture in a delicate rack of ribs, a savory barbecue-style sauce that was light but enhanced the boar's flavor, and a presentation that succeeded in convincing me that we were still in Japan, albeit in the far mountains, but that this was not your standard bento box meal.
The ultimate worst possible Japanese dish? It was the soup served as a side to the boar...a raccoon soup. The guys struggled with their digital translators to come upwith the word "raccoon" for this animal, but I will assure you that the meat, the broth, and the stench from this wretched dish did not deserve to be on the same table as the inoshishi.
I conceded Itakura-san's victory, and we proceeded to get ritually sloshed on summer sake. I'm not sure Itakura-san has ever learned that I have a near infinite capacity for cold sake, and that my bodymass of 88 kilos is capable of processing far more alcohol than his 55 kilos. But then, why would I give up a betting advantage like that?
Sunday, May 22, 2011
LEAN! and a Reveal
I was raised a Catholic and we went to church, unfailingly, every Sunday. Since there were a lot of us, the logistics weren't always easy, but generally, the boys were dropped off early at the back of the church where we were expected to proceed to the altar boys' sacristy to get duded out for mass. The boys' sacristy was a locker room of sorts with benches, a table to put your stuff and plenty of floor space for the wrestling and general mayhem that altar boys caused. It also doubled as some additional storage space for the Altar Rosary Society so it wasn't unusual to share space with the Baby Jesus, a few pilgrims and a cornucopia, and various and sundry funeral arrangement leftovers that might be re-usable. Believe it or not, the boys' sacristy was thought to be a neat place by all of the guys at school, almost a clubhouse, and besides, almost nothing illegal took place down there.
The girls, whose preparation time was mysteriously agreed without comment to be much more than the boys' requirement were then picked up and brought to church. I don't really remember any conflict arising on Sunday mornings as we all crammed into the Plymouth, although I'm certain that there must have been some.
Fast forward about about 35-40 years to the time when Liz and I, following the traditions of both of our familys, are dutifully taking our children to church every Sunday. This is evidence of our faith in family traditions more than that of our faith in any divine intevention that would make our children behave. So, let's stop here a minute and talk about adolescent, pre-adolescent, and (apparently) adult behavior. I don't have any idea about your children, but my children quickly grasped the rules of the parent/child game. And they set out with a determination to beat their parents at this game--resoundingly. Of course, the little bastards could've applied this sort of energy to dioramas instead, and have made their parents happier.
Our children would, unfailingly every Sunday, find some method on the way to or from church (about a 15 minute drive) for disrupting the family's peace and tranquility. This usually involved an escalating cycle of pokes, prods, whines, slaps, screams, etc. etc. etc. My personal tolerance level for this kind of behavior is shockingly low. So I would respond in the family psychology version of this Mutually Assured Destruction game, with an ever-escalating series of threats, promises, pleas, and violent-sounding but ultimately meaningless words spewing from my mouth which by now, to the delight of the little bastards, was invariably dribbling spittle (in other words, I was literally foaming at the mouth!).
It was at this point that the ultimate threat of any father was brought to bear--roll out the big guns:
"I'm pulling this car over!"
Not a question. Not a threat. A promise. And, for me, that promise carried the joyous possibility of physical violence accompanied by the wailing and gnashing of teeth in which I expected to be revelling very soon.
But the counter-strategy employed by the little bastards was equally devillish! Where before there had been a chaos of whining, crying, and protestations of innocence, there was now a single purpose, a single mind among the three of them. Matt, the largest, would grab the door handle, Katie would grab Matt, and Megan would grab Katie. And they would pull with all their might to keep the door closed.
"LEAN!" "LEAN!" "LEAN!" the coxswain would call, and lean they did.
By this point, of course, Liz was a complete waste...downed and put completely out of action by the most insidious weapon a child can unleash on its parent--paroxysms of laughter. And then I would see the smiles on all three faces. Delighting in their game. Delighting that they had succeeded in their game to make me so angry that I would jump out of the car on a main thoroughfare and make a total fool of myself, and I would break up too. The rest of the trip--either home or to church--was taken as a family who delighted in the smiles and happiness of each of the others. I don't recall there ever being a second battle in these little wars...at least not until the following week.
And I will now reveal the great secret to my children: Your Mom and I won the game--we won it every week. You just didn't understand what the game was until it was too late, so you had no chance and for that we offer no apologies. You see, having you "lean" together was our real goal. It was through this and other family routines and rituals that you came together irrevocably as a family. We have always felt that no adversity can overcome a family that leans in the same direction. Prove us right.
Fast forward about about 35-40 years to the time when Liz and I, following the traditions of both of our familys, are dutifully taking our children to church every Sunday. This is evidence of our faith in family traditions more than that of our faith in any divine intevention that would make our children behave. So, let's stop here a minute and talk about adolescent, pre-adolescent, and (apparently) adult behavior. I don't have any idea about your children, but my children quickly grasped the rules of the parent/child game. And they set out with a determination to beat their parents at this game--resoundingly. Of course, the little bastards could've applied this sort of energy to dioramas instead, and have made their parents happier.
Our children would, unfailingly every Sunday, find some method on the way to or from church (about a 15 minute drive) for disrupting the family's peace and tranquility. This usually involved an escalating cycle of pokes, prods, whines, slaps, screams, etc. etc. etc. My personal tolerance level for this kind of behavior is shockingly low. So I would respond in the family psychology version of this Mutually Assured Destruction game, with an ever-escalating series of threats, promises, pleas, and violent-sounding but ultimately meaningless words spewing from my mouth which by now, to the delight of the little bastards, was invariably dribbling spittle (in other words, I was literally foaming at the mouth!).
It was at this point that the ultimate threat of any father was brought to bear--roll out the big guns:
"I'm pulling this car over!"
Not a question. Not a threat. A promise. And, for me, that promise carried the joyous possibility of physical violence accompanied by the wailing and gnashing of teeth in which I expected to be revelling very soon.
But the counter-strategy employed by the little bastards was equally devillish! Where before there had been a chaos of whining, crying, and protestations of innocence, there was now a single purpose, a single mind among the three of them. Matt, the largest, would grab the door handle, Katie would grab Matt, and Megan would grab Katie. And they would pull with all their might to keep the door closed.
"LEAN!" "LEAN!" "LEAN!" the coxswain would call, and lean they did.
By this point, of course, Liz was a complete waste...downed and put completely out of action by the most insidious weapon a child can unleash on its parent--paroxysms of laughter. And then I would see the smiles on all three faces. Delighting in their game. Delighting that they had succeeded in their game to make me so angry that I would jump out of the car on a main thoroughfare and make a total fool of myself, and I would break up too. The rest of the trip--either home or to church--was taken as a family who delighted in the smiles and happiness of each of the others. I don't recall there ever being a second battle in these little wars...at least not until the following week.
And I will now reveal the great secret to my children: Your Mom and I won the game--we won it every week. You just didn't understand what the game was until it was too late, so you had no chance and for that we offer no apologies. You see, having you "lean" together was our real goal. It was through this and other family routines and rituals that you came together irrevocably as a family. We have always felt that no adversity can overcome a family that leans in the same direction. Prove us right.
Administrative Note
For some reason we're having trouble with comments. I have verified that comments are turned on, and I even removed the neccessity for my "approving" every comment.
If anyone has trouble making a comment, please let me know via email. By the way--Helpful notice that comments don't work would be something like: "I get error code Xz435 evey time I try to enter a comment;" unhelpful notice that comments are not working: "Did you know your comments are broken?, When can you get them fixed?"
If anyone has trouble making a comment, please let me know via email. By the way--Helpful notice that comments don't work would be something like: "I get error code Xz435 evey time I try to enter a comment;" unhelpful notice that comments are not working: "Did you know your comments are broken?, When can you get them fixed?"
Saturday, May 21, 2011
"The Best Birthday Present Ever"
It doesn't take an awful lot to bring a human being to tears--tears of pain and agony, or of pure unadulterated joy. It is, however, lots of fun to plan and do something that brings tears of love and joy to another person. The satisfaction that can be derived from watching a face transformed into a quivering mass of happiness is pretty much unparalleled among all of the human experiences. And one day in 2008, Liz and I had the opportunity to deliver the "best birthday present ever" to our son's wife, Val.
Poor Valerie had voluntarily moved to Vermont after marrying our son, who was there to help Liz and me to run the (ill-fated) inn. She had agreed to forgo her beloved Texas for an unspecified period, and that meant also not having any personal contact with her friends and relatives for what eventually became two and a half years in the mountains selling kitchen tiles and shovelling snow. For this, Liz and I love Val (among other reasons too numerous to list...but this one is right up there).
In any event, our little plan began on that cold snowy November day in 2009. If you have to ask how I know that it was cold and snowy, I ask you simply to look at a map of where Vermont is located. Matt had stopped by the house and we were discussing a birthday present for Val, who would be celebrating the passage of yet another year away from home in mid-December. In the midst of a discussion about how much Val missed Texas, we started with an idea that we could fly her down there for a few days to give her a respite, however brief, from the Relentless New England Winter (always capitalized since it is a force of nature onto itself). Only problem was Val's less than accommodating work schedule/boss. But then, it occurred that maybe we could bring a little of Texas to Val in the form of one of her friends.
Val's best friend, Lauren, had grown up with our kids and we knew her and her parents very well. Although I may qualify as an official "geezer," I am not without my technological skills and I quickly was able to acquire Lauren's cellphone number using an advanced social networking technique of which I had become aware--I called my daughter Katie, who was also a friend of Lauren's and I asked her for the number. In any case, I called Lauren and quickly explained the purpose of my call. There's apparently a very fine line between "friend's father" and "creepy stalking old bastard" and a mid-20's girl is not wont to make fine distinctions.
"Hi Lauren, this is Katie Lavalley's dad?" I said, quite tentatively.
"Yeeeesssss....," she replied, dragging it out quite a bit longer than I would've thought would be necessary.
I didn't want to lose her at this critical point with a phone call that would at some future time be described as either a) a creepathon; or b) a really cool idea. No man wants to be dropped into the "creepiest people I know" bucket along with the guy who stalks the girls in the library, or the older man who thinks that his daughter's friends really want him hanging around the pool while they sunbathe. So I plunged onward, ever courageous!
"Ummm...I wanted to know if you'd like to be Valerie's birthday present?"
"Huh?"
The modern translation of "huh?" can encompass several meanings, but the most common is "What in hell is this moron saying???" I'm not sure Lauren had that exact thought, but it sure felt like it. In any case, I proceeded to explain the plan that Liz and I had concocted. We wanted to fly Lauren up to Albany, New York on Val's birthday (a Friday, concidentally), where I would pick her up and deliver her to the inn in Manchester. We would put her up in a suite and she would make a casual appearance at the bar that night where we would all spring the birthday surprise on helpless, lonely little Valerie and they would have a weekend together.
Some plans don't survive first contact with the enemy. This one was a champ of a plan and we were all confident it would do just fine. And it even outdid itself.
Valerie's routine was to work at the tile store until about 6:00 pm and then to come over to the inn where the kitchen crew would prepare her a dinner and she and the chef's wife would function as the "drinks research team" for the inn. On that Friday, I drove to Albany and picked up Lauren without a hitch, and then delivered her to the inn where she unpacked and got cleaned up after the trip. Lauren then came down to the bar where she sat two chairs down our small tavern bar from "Valerie's chair" and waited along with Matt and me.
Mid-December in Manchester is not a particularly busy time and we were easily able to hear Val coming in the front door. Every night, it was Matt's routine to greet Val with a hug and walk with her into the bar where she would sit down in her special chair and start relaxing from her day. This time I went with Matt and we both stood behind Val waiting for a reaction to having her best friend five feet to her right (there was nobody else at the bar).
But no reaction. Not a thing. Because she had not seen Lauren sitting there. But she did know that there was something going on because she was in the middle of the sentence "What's going on with you two?" as she turned and spotted Lauren sitting there smiling at her.
It's that moment. The tears, the disbelief, the hysterical laughter, the simple damned downright unmitigated, unfettered, joy of that moment. It's that moment when the happiest thing you can imagine is that you are standing right where you're standing, doing just what you're doing.
Poor Valerie had voluntarily moved to Vermont after marrying our son, who was there to help Liz and me to run the (ill-fated) inn. She had agreed to forgo her beloved Texas for an unspecified period, and that meant also not having any personal contact with her friends and relatives for what eventually became two and a half years in the mountains selling kitchen tiles and shovelling snow. For this, Liz and I love Val (among other reasons too numerous to list...but this one is right up there).
In any event, our little plan began on that cold snowy November day in 2009. If you have to ask how I know that it was cold and snowy, I ask you simply to look at a map of where Vermont is located. Matt had stopped by the house and we were discussing a birthday present for Val, who would be celebrating the passage of yet another year away from home in mid-December. In the midst of a discussion about how much Val missed Texas, we started with an idea that we could fly her down there for a few days to give her a respite, however brief, from the Relentless New England Winter (always capitalized since it is a force of nature onto itself). Only problem was Val's less than accommodating work schedule/boss. But then, it occurred that maybe we could bring a little of Texas to Val in the form of one of her friends.
Val's best friend, Lauren, had grown up with our kids and we knew her and her parents very well. Although I may qualify as an official "geezer," I am not without my technological skills and I quickly was able to acquire Lauren's cellphone number using an advanced social networking technique of which I had become aware--I called my daughter Katie, who was also a friend of Lauren's and I asked her for the number. In any case, I called Lauren and quickly explained the purpose of my call. There's apparently a very fine line between "friend's father" and "creepy stalking old bastard" and a mid-20's girl is not wont to make fine distinctions.
"Hi Lauren, this is Katie Lavalley's dad?" I said, quite tentatively.
"Yeeeesssss....," she replied, dragging it out quite a bit longer than I would've thought would be necessary.
I didn't want to lose her at this critical point with a phone call that would at some future time be described as either a) a creepathon; or b) a really cool idea. No man wants to be dropped into the "creepiest people I know" bucket along with the guy who stalks the girls in the library, or the older man who thinks that his daughter's friends really want him hanging around the pool while they sunbathe. So I plunged onward, ever courageous!
"Ummm...I wanted to know if you'd like to be Valerie's birthday present?"
"Huh?"
The modern translation of "huh?" can encompass several meanings, but the most common is "What in hell is this moron saying???" I'm not sure Lauren had that exact thought, but it sure felt like it. In any case, I proceeded to explain the plan that Liz and I had concocted. We wanted to fly Lauren up to Albany, New York on Val's birthday (a Friday, concidentally), where I would pick her up and deliver her to the inn in Manchester. We would put her up in a suite and she would make a casual appearance at the bar that night where we would all spring the birthday surprise on helpless, lonely little Valerie and they would have a weekend together.
Some plans don't survive first contact with the enemy. This one was a champ of a plan and we were all confident it would do just fine. And it even outdid itself.
Valerie's routine was to work at the tile store until about 6:00 pm and then to come over to the inn where the kitchen crew would prepare her a dinner and she and the chef's wife would function as the "drinks research team" for the inn. On that Friday, I drove to Albany and picked up Lauren without a hitch, and then delivered her to the inn where she unpacked and got cleaned up after the trip. Lauren then came down to the bar where she sat two chairs down our small tavern bar from "Valerie's chair" and waited along with Matt and me.
Mid-December in Manchester is not a particularly busy time and we were easily able to hear Val coming in the front door. Every night, it was Matt's routine to greet Val with a hug and walk with her into the bar where she would sit down in her special chair and start relaxing from her day. This time I went with Matt and we both stood behind Val waiting for a reaction to having her best friend five feet to her right (there was nobody else at the bar).
But no reaction. Not a thing. Because she had not seen Lauren sitting there. But she did know that there was something going on because she was in the middle of the sentence "What's going on with you two?" as she turned and spotted Lauren sitting there smiling at her.
It's that moment. The tears, the disbelief, the hysterical laughter, the simple damned downright unmitigated, unfettered, joy of that moment. It's that moment when the happiest thing you can imagine is that you are standing right where you're standing, doing just what you're doing.
Friday, May 20, 2011
400 Pound Bomb vs. San Andreas Fault...Who Wins?
My son-in-law is in California playing Pebble Beach with his father right now and it occurred to me that he probably doesn't realize that I used to live right there. It was a pretty cool time to live in California, and an even better time to be in language school--mostly because lots of other guys during that time were learning Vietnamese at the business end of an M-16. As luck would have it, at the completion of basic training, I requested and received the coolest of all language assignments. I was sent to the Presidio of Monterey, California to spend a year learning to speak Russian in a total immersion environment.
The Presidio of Monterey is one of several military districts in California named presidios by the Spanish, and it has been in continuous operation as a military establishment of Spain or America since the 1700's. The grounds are spectacularly beautiful and the small stucco bungalows spread out over "the hill" as we used to call it were an especially popular spot for retired Colonels, Navy Captains, and junior Admirals and Generals of all the services to settle down. In the early 1970's, at least, the Presidio was one of the most laidback military facilities I ever visited.
On the day that I and a few new-found friends from the Air Force arrived from San Antonio we heard the astonishing rumor that at 4:00 p.m. on that very day a 400 pound explosive device was to be set off directly over the fault line running through Monterey Bay--the San Andreas Fault. The theory, the geologists pointed out, was that the bomb would set up seismic vibrations that could be measured to help map out the fault. And we were "probably" safe from any cataclysmic event that might result from such cosmic stupidity. And if the theory were not to hold? Well, the Monterey Peninsula isn't that big anyway.
This is not what an unsophisticated poorly educated boy from rural New York would call good odds.
Of course, the geologists were right (this time!) and the slight "whump" we heard at 4:00 p.m. might very well have been an ovezealous dad putting a bit too much lighter fluid on the charcoal. We never did see a ripple on the surface of Monterey Bay that afternoon, but all that staring got us to familiarize ourselves with our position relative to the Bay, California, and North America. Basically, if the USA is a huge barge plowing westward into the Pacific, then Monterey is at it's prow...and Kate Winslett would be hanging off the prow in the arms of Leo, but with her feet firmly ensconced in the Presidio of Monterey.
What my friends and I saw that afternoon and evening was staggeringly beautiful. Because of it's odd placement and the flow of the Japanese Current the weather in Monterey is unusually consistent and highly predictable. The fog comes overnight and drapes the entire peninsula in a cool humid blanket that flowers simply adore. By sunup, the temerature has risen to 62-66 f. and it continues to slowly rise as the morning progresses and the sun, which has burned away the fog by 10:00 - 11:00, continues to warm up the ground delighting the flowers that are eveywhere. The temperature continues to rise into the high 70's and low 80's, but with very low humidity (I think the winds across the hill blow it all out to sea) it feels like a (huge) pleasantly air conditioned room. By sunset, the ground has absorbed the heat of the day so that it can be slowly released overnight as the fog returns. And darkness brings a clear dry air through which the lights of Ft. Ord, 20 miles to the east of us, are distinct but still shimmer and glimmer because of the radically diffent weather pattern there. From my dorm window we look down on the single runway of Monterey Airport where we see the United Airline flights to SFO and LAX, and the military charters headed to points significantly farther west of us. (Yeah, the assignment is so cushy that we have air conditioned dorms, 2 to a room and the only requirement is that you speak Russian to every one you see--which after a while, isn't as difficult as it would seem...I'm not ashamed of my luck, I embrace it.)
The beauty of this assignment is that the entire school is operated on a University model. There is a passing interest among the administrative staff to maintain a military demeanor, but the professional staff care only for the students and how much they learn. There's no need to display or pay attention to rank here, either, and an Army Private is treated the same way as a Navy Lieutenant (at various times, I had members of every service in my classes): All first names, no salutes, no "sir." I will say that there was a bit of arrogance among the students; we thought of ourselves as intellectual elites and sat around drinking beer and playing the same games that college juniors and seniors were playing all over the country (with the notable exception of drugs).
Six one hour classes a day, five days a week. Of course, we studied language, vocabulary, conjugations--all the stuff you would normally study--plus we had Russian History, Russian Culture, Soviet Culture and Politics. We received briefing papers (declassified) from the CIA regarding current events in the USSR, and we received briefings on the Politburo Members and their backgrounds. We were privileged to get weekly updates on Russian and Soviet life from the New York Times Moscow bureau and I think every one of the students read these voraciously.
We developed close personal relationships with several of the instructors, and we naturally gravitated to those who responded to us. An oddity about the Russian department at DLI was that every instructor was native-born to the Russian language. And the lives they had lived were positively fascinating. We had a retired (Soviet) Air Force General who had been purged during WWII; we had the American-raised son of a lawyer who escaped Russia in the 30's and made it here to the USA with his family; we had one woman who was ostracized by the others because her name was, unfortunately, Nadyezhda Krupskaya, the same as Lenin's wife; and we had my mentor, Ivan Ivanovich Kavalenko.
Ivan Ivanovich, as he insisted that we call him, had been a big-name electrical engineer and had been commissioned in the early 1930's to redesign and rebuild Moscow's power system. Apparently Stalin, who had personally awarded him a medal on completion of the design, took a personal dislike to him and Ivan Ivanovich barely made it out of the country without feeling the Makarov at his neck. As with all of our instructors, the hatred for Stalin was a palpable thing that was always present when they taught. One instructor would pound the floor with his cane in a military beat and demand that we conjugate verbs to that beat and that beat alone. Rumor had it that he had served in the White Army and fought against the revolutionaries, but I'm not sure he was old enough.
And then, we had poor old "Boobs Mahoney." Sadly, I find that I can't dig her actual name from the detritus of four decades, but let's say she lived up to her name. She was younger than most of the others, maybe still in her 40's when she taught me, and her story was horrifying. One day while we were walking around campus I asked Ivan Ivanovich about her and her story...so he told me. She and her husband, a young partisan couple living, I think in Petropavlovsk, and fighting guerilla warfare against the Moscow regime during WWII had been discovered and captured somewhere in Siberia. They were put on a train headed east into the Gulag when they stopped at a frozen boarded-up station somewhere along the way. As the prisoners (many of them chained together in a line) got off the train, her husband made a desparate attempt to escape by ramming his head through the window in the train station's door and actively slitting his throat. He had told her that he didn't want to die in Stalin's camps. She was, for some reasons not told to me, released and she "made her way across Russia on her back" trading sex for distance. The remainder of her story I don't know. How she got to America, how she got to Monterey? How she lived with what she had seen and done? all mysteries to me.
I will say that it's far easier to pay attention to someone when you know that their motivation for teaching you has that kind of root system.
The Presidio of Monterey is one of several military districts in California named presidios by the Spanish, and it has been in continuous operation as a military establishment of Spain or America since the 1700's. The grounds are spectacularly beautiful and the small stucco bungalows spread out over "the hill" as we used to call it were an especially popular spot for retired Colonels, Navy Captains, and junior Admirals and Generals of all the services to settle down. In the early 1970's, at least, the Presidio was one of the most laidback military facilities I ever visited.
On the day that I and a few new-found friends from the Air Force arrived from San Antonio we heard the astonishing rumor that at 4:00 p.m. on that very day a 400 pound explosive device was to be set off directly over the fault line running through Monterey Bay--the San Andreas Fault. The theory, the geologists pointed out, was that the bomb would set up seismic vibrations that could be measured to help map out the fault. And we were "probably" safe from any cataclysmic event that might result from such cosmic stupidity. And if the theory were not to hold? Well, the Monterey Peninsula isn't that big anyway.
This is not what an unsophisticated poorly educated boy from rural New York would call good odds.
Of course, the geologists were right (this time!) and the slight "whump" we heard at 4:00 p.m. might very well have been an ovezealous dad putting a bit too much lighter fluid on the charcoal. We never did see a ripple on the surface of Monterey Bay that afternoon, but all that staring got us to familiarize ourselves with our position relative to the Bay, California, and North America. Basically, if the USA is a huge barge plowing westward into the Pacific, then Monterey is at it's prow...and Kate Winslett would be hanging off the prow in the arms of Leo, but with her feet firmly ensconced in the Presidio of Monterey.
What my friends and I saw that afternoon and evening was staggeringly beautiful. Because of it's odd placement and the flow of the Japanese Current the weather in Monterey is unusually consistent and highly predictable. The fog comes overnight and drapes the entire peninsula in a cool humid blanket that flowers simply adore. By sunup, the temerature has risen to 62-66 f. and it continues to slowly rise as the morning progresses and the sun, which has burned away the fog by 10:00 - 11:00, continues to warm up the ground delighting the flowers that are eveywhere. The temperature continues to rise into the high 70's and low 80's, but with very low humidity (I think the winds across the hill blow it all out to sea) it feels like a (huge) pleasantly air conditioned room. By sunset, the ground has absorbed the heat of the day so that it can be slowly released overnight as the fog returns. And darkness brings a clear dry air through which the lights of Ft. Ord, 20 miles to the east of us, are distinct but still shimmer and glimmer because of the radically diffent weather pattern there. From my dorm window we look down on the single runway of Monterey Airport where we see the United Airline flights to SFO and LAX, and the military charters headed to points significantly farther west of us. (Yeah, the assignment is so cushy that we have air conditioned dorms, 2 to a room and the only requirement is that you speak Russian to every one you see--which after a while, isn't as difficult as it would seem...I'm not ashamed of my luck, I embrace it.)
The beauty of this assignment is that the entire school is operated on a University model. There is a passing interest among the administrative staff to maintain a military demeanor, but the professional staff care only for the students and how much they learn. There's no need to display or pay attention to rank here, either, and an Army Private is treated the same way as a Navy Lieutenant (at various times, I had members of every service in my classes): All first names, no salutes, no "sir." I will say that there was a bit of arrogance among the students; we thought of ourselves as intellectual elites and sat around drinking beer and playing the same games that college juniors and seniors were playing all over the country (with the notable exception of drugs).
Six one hour classes a day, five days a week. Of course, we studied language, vocabulary, conjugations--all the stuff you would normally study--plus we had Russian History, Russian Culture, Soviet Culture and Politics. We received briefing papers (declassified) from the CIA regarding current events in the USSR, and we received briefings on the Politburo Members and their backgrounds. We were privileged to get weekly updates on Russian and Soviet life from the New York Times Moscow bureau and I think every one of the students read these voraciously.
We developed close personal relationships with several of the instructors, and we naturally gravitated to those who responded to us. An oddity about the Russian department at DLI was that every instructor was native-born to the Russian language. And the lives they had lived were positively fascinating. We had a retired (Soviet) Air Force General who had been purged during WWII; we had the American-raised son of a lawyer who escaped Russia in the 30's and made it here to the USA with his family; we had one woman who was ostracized by the others because her name was, unfortunately, Nadyezhda Krupskaya, the same as Lenin's wife; and we had my mentor, Ivan Ivanovich Kavalenko.
Ivan Ivanovich, as he insisted that we call him, had been a big-name electrical engineer and had been commissioned in the early 1930's to redesign and rebuild Moscow's power system. Apparently Stalin, who had personally awarded him a medal on completion of the design, took a personal dislike to him and Ivan Ivanovich barely made it out of the country without feeling the Makarov at his neck. As with all of our instructors, the hatred for Stalin was a palpable thing that was always present when they taught. One instructor would pound the floor with his cane in a military beat and demand that we conjugate verbs to that beat and that beat alone. Rumor had it that he had served in the White Army and fought against the revolutionaries, but I'm not sure he was old enough.
And then, we had poor old "Boobs Mahoney." Sadly, I find that I can't dig her actual name from the detritus of four decades, but let's say she lived up to her name. She was younger than most of the others, maybe still in her 40's when she taught me, and her story was horrifying. One day while we were walking around campus I asked Ivan Ivanovich about her and her story...so he told me. She and her husband, a young partisan couple living, I think in Petropavlovsk, and fighting guerilla warfare against the Moscow regime during WWII had been discovered and captured somewhere in Siberia. They were put on a train headed east into the Gulag when they stopped at a frozen boarded-up station somewhere along the way. As the prisoners (many of them chained together in a line) got off the train, her husband made a desparate attempt to escape by ramming his head through the window in the train station's door and actively slitting his throat. He had told her that he didn't want to die in Stalin's camps. She was, for some reasons not told to me, released and she "made her way across Russia on her back" trading sex for distance. The remainder of her story I don't know. How she got to America, how she got to Monterey? How she lived with what she had seen and done? all mysteries to me.
I will say that it's far easier to pay attention to someone when you know that their motivation for teaching you has that kind of root system.
Friday Morning Rainy Day Activity
Joe and his Gampie settle down for some Nickelodeon watching....Joe has his sippy cup and Gampie has his own. It's true: The child is father to the man!
Thursday, May 19, 2011
Pall Mall
I mentioned yestrday that my Dad smoked Pall Mall cigarettes when I was a kid. I'm sure that he has smoked several different kinds over his life (although he quit 45 years ago), and I vaguely remember that there was a battle of sorts during World War II between Lucky Strike and Old Gold that had my dad and presumably the other navy guys that he hung out with all smoking the same brand. Since my Dad is quite lucid and reads this blog regularly I'm going to ask him to drop me an email to fill me in on the details. I'll pass on the story then.
But, back to Pall Mall. I don't know how many of you are old enough to remember, but Pall Mall in the soft pack was one of the filter-less hold-outs. Some others that I recollect were Camel, Lucky Strike, Old Gold Regular--the premiums had a filter, I think. The easily recognizable red packaging was soft and crumpled very satisfyingly once that last cig was pulled. The crinkly cellophane overwrap was marred only by the blue ink tax stamp on the bottom. But one of the oddest things about this brand was that they were clearly and willfully mis-pronouncing the name every time it was spoken on television--they were calling these things "pell mell" versus "paul maul."
Not to try to out-lyricize Bruce Springsteen, but I really was raised in a small town, and the horizons were pretty close in. Our view of a trip was a visit to Albany; a family trip for us was invariably to Montreal to visit relatives; an exotic trip (e.g., a classmate's visit to see her boyfriend in California one summer) was talked about endlessly both in the planning and in the re-telling. And the trip of a lifetime was a local couple's visit to Ireland. We lived these trips and their places vicariously but continued to exist happily in our little Beaver Cleaver hometown. That is, until we left.
My leaving came in 1971 when I (reluctantly) joined the Air Force on the misguided notion that I mightbe stationed at the local base for four years--an extremely unlikely event to say the least. (Actually, this really happened to my brother Joel who enlisted, went to tech school and then returned to Plattsburgh AFB where he spent the remainder of his enlistment...maybe I had had a chance at this ridiculous notion?) I took a slightly different path, getting involved in intelligence work after spending a year in intensive language training. I moved from school to school around the country,and then was assigned to fly reconaissance missions out of Eielson AFB, Alaska for the balance of my time in service.
What, pray tell, does this have to do with Pall Mall (or "pell mell"). Well, it's funny how we learn things and sometimes the dots just connect. For everyone else, this may have been an easy one, but for provincial little me, it was a revelation of sorts. While roaming around London one day in 1972 with a friend who was actually born in London, Kentucky, we were (both) stunned to discover ourselves standing in Pall Mall. The Brits have been butchering their language unceasingly for at least 500 years, and this is no exception...
You got it. Pall Mall is pronounce like "pell mell" except it sounds more correct if you start with a mouth full of marbles and allow them to dribble out as you speak the phrase. Another circle is closed, two more dots connected.
FYI, the squiggly lines in the street are placed there to designate areas where taxis may not pick up or drop off fares and not because the line-painter-guys were "pissed" to use a British saying. An unbelievably civilized way to handle a problem. I'm no Anglophile, but they've done a few things right.
Not to try to out-lyricize Bruce Springsteen, but I really was raised in a small town, and the horizons were pretty close in. Our view of a trip was a visit to Albany; a family trip for us was invariably to Montreal to visit relatives; an exotic trip (e.g., a classmate's visit to see her boyfriend in California one summer) was talked about endlessly both in the planning and in the re-telling. And the trip of a lifetime was a local couple's visit to Ireland. We lived these trips and their places vicariously but continued to exist happily in our little Beaver Cleaver hometown. That is, until we left.
My leaving came in 1971 when I (reluctantly) joined the Air Force on the misguided notion that I mightbe stationed at the local base for four years--an extremely unlikely event to say the least. (Actually, this really happened to my brother Joel who enlisted, went to tech school and then returned to Plattsburgh AFB where he spent the remainder of his enlistment...maybe I had had a chance at this ridiculous notion?) I took a slightly different path, getting involved in intelligence work after spending a year in intensive language training. I moved from school to school around the country,and then was assigned to fly reconaissance missions out of Eielson AFB, Alaska for the balance of my time in service.
What, pray tell, does this have to do with Pall Mall (or "pell mell"). Well, it's funny how we learn things and sometimes the dots just connect. For everyone else, this may have been an easy one, but for provincial little me, it was a revelation of sorts. While roaming around London one day in 1972 with a friend who was actually born in London, Kentucky, we were (both) stunned to discover ourselves standing in Pall Mall. The Brits have been butchering their language unceasingly for at least 500 years, and this is no exception...
You got it. Pall Mall is pronounce like "pell mell" except it sounds more correct if you start with a mouth full of marbles and allow them to dribble out as you speak the phrase. Another circle is closed, two more dots connected.
FYI, the squiggly lines in the street are placed there to designate areas where taxis may not pick up or drop off fares and not because the line-painter-guys were "pissed" to use a British saying. An unbelievably civilized way to handle a problem. I'm no Anglophile, but they've done a few things right.
Wednesday, May 18, 2011
Bullhead and Chalkline
About once every year a few of my siblings get together to spend a weekend reminiscing, raising hell, and just enjoying the company of other memebers of the pack. We've done this in a couple of different places, mostly based upon whose spouse is least likely to throw the crowd out after a day or so. Not everyone attends these little get-togethers, and only a few of us have been to every one (I've missed several ufortunately) and some of us (myself included) have resisted formalizing them too much in the fear that they would become "gotta do's" versus "wanna do's." With a few notable exceptions, most of our time is spent marvelling at two kinds of things: one, that we can all have led such separate lives and still remain so much connected, and two, that we were so close in our childhood experiences, and that we ended up in such different places.
Sometimes we try to relive childhood experiences, like last year in Kansas when fishing in Judy and Tom's ponds was the big treat. I have to admit, seeing Joy get her big catfish brought me straight back to the times when she and I and Judy would visit Champlain and Papa would let us fish for crappies off the back of his little skiff. (Seems like there was a story about Judy and the Ashline?/Castine? boys, but I simply can't remember it at this time.) And seeing Joy struggling with a fouled line in Kansas, she looked just like the gangly teenager that I grew up with. She's a smart educated person, and yes, she's two years older than me, but she'll always be my little sister.
But mostly, being who we are, we just sit around and talk. The routine is that earlier in the evening we talk about who remembers what about whom...like "Was Aunt Tilley's son Georgio the gay priest or was he the one who played shortstop for the Brooklyn Zephyrs?" or "I still love cream treat gravy" (not me!). You get the drift. At some later point someone will introduce the topic of the military (even one of the girls may do this innocently) and the boys rapidly dominate the conversation. Usually at this point, one of the girls shuffles off to take a bath, one pops a nighty-night pill and curls up with a book, and one goes off to bed. The boys have a tendency to stay up most of the night relating stories that may or may not have much to do with the military, but are always revelations of some sort.
One night last year we started talking about bullhead, night fishing, and catching eels, perch and even the odd walleyed pike on that little bend in the Chazy River just below Memiere and Papa's house. By the time you get done one of these talking sessions, you feel utterly immersed in and rejuvenated by the topic. In this case, by the smell of the river, the wetness of the late evening grass, the brittleness of the dried sticks Dad used to build a little fire at the base of the great big oak tree that dominated the bend. You can run your fingers over each other and actually feel the different textures of the bullhead and the perch, the slimeiness of the eel (should you be so unfortunate as to snag one) and the slickness of the chalk line as you cast it out onto the black water. Even the smell of the Pall Mall cigarettes that Dad invariably pulled from the breast pocket of his shirt just before a cast comes back. He flips open a silvery zippo lighter, and the sickly sweet smell of lighter fluid (the kind in the yellow can?)
briefly overwhelms all other senses. But then he flicks the flint wheel in a practised motion and lights his smoke, squats and stares out onto the river, wispy curls of gray-white causing his face to scrunch up on one side in defense. It's almost as though he's challenging the whiskered black bullhead to take the worm he's offering.
I'm not sure there's such a thing as collective memory, but there certainly is shared memory. And every one of us share this memory in some way or another. The beauty of these little get-togethers is that they help us reinforce the memories, and to revel in them along with others who share them.
Bullhead. Chalkline. Pall Mall's. We can give you an entire night of memories if you start the conversation with just those three things.
Sometimes we try to relive childhood experiences, like last year in Kansas when fishing in Judy and Tom's ponds was the big treat. I have to admit, seeing Joy get her big catfish brought me straight back to the times when she and I and Judy would visit Champlain and Papa would let us fish for crappies off the back of his little skiff. (Seems like there was a story about Judy and the Ashline?/Castine? boys, but I simply can't remember it at this time.) And seeing Joy struggling with a fouled line in Kansas, she looked just like the gangly teenager that I grew up with. She's a smart educated person, and yes, she's two years older than me, but she'll always be my little sister.
But mostly, being who we are, we just sit around and talk. The routine is that earlier in the evening we talk about who remembers what about whom...like "Was Aunt Tilley's son Georgio the gay priest or was he the one who played shortstop for the Brooklyn Zephyrs?" or "I still love cream treat gravy" (not me!). You get the drift. At some later point someone will introduce the topic of the military (even one of the girls may do this innocently) and the boys rapidly dominate the conversation. Usually at this point, one of the girls shuffles off to take a bath, one pops a nighty-night pill and curls up with a book, and one goes off to bed. The boys have a tendency to stay up most of the night relating stories that may or may not have much to do with the military, but are always revelations of some sort.
One night last year we started talking about bullhead, night fishing, and catching eels, perch and even the odd walleyed pike on that little bend in the Chazy River just below Memiere and Papa's house. By the time you get done one of these talking sessions, you feel utterly immersed in and rejuvenated by the topic. In this case, by the smell of the river, the wetness of the late evening grass, the brittleness of the dried sticks Dad used to build a little fire at the base of the great big oak tree that dominated the bend. You can run your fingers over each other and actually feel the different textures of the bullhead and the perch, the slimeiness of the eel (should you be so unfortunate as to snag one) and the slickness of the chalk line as you cast it out onto the black water. Even the smell of the Pall Mall cigarettes that Dad invariably pulled from the breast pocket of his shirt just before a cast comes back. He flips open a silvery zippo lighter, and the sickly sweet smell of lighter fluid (the kind in the yellow can?)
briefly overwhelms all other senses. But then he flicks the flint wheel in a practised motion and lights his smoke, squats and stares out onto the river, wispy curls of gray-white causing his face to scrunch up on one side in defense. It's almost as though he's challenging the whiskered black bullhead to take the worm he's offering.
I'm not sure there's such a thing as collective memory, but there certainly is shared memory. And every one of us share this memory in some way or another. The beauty of these little get-togethers is that they help us reinforce the memories, and to revel in them along with others who share them.
Bullhead. Chalkline. Pall Mall's. We can give you an entire night of memories if you start the conversation with just those three things.
A Dog-Eared Complaint
Okay. So what's up with dogs and gardens? Liz and Megan spend days clearing out flower beds and planting beautiful new flowers in anticipation of Mike & Kris's wedding (I know because I've watched them from my perch on the patio). The morons whose sole job in this house is to bark when a stranger appears then proceed to dig under, burrow in, and settle down for a long nap in the same flower beds This is not productive! It gets Liz angry and causes all sorts of family discord. Where's the Dog Whisperer now? I need a little warning about consequences whispered in a few floppy ears.
Tuesday, May 17, 2011
OOOOOOOhhhhhh I wish!
Noogies! Liz won't allow me to talk about politics or religion on this blog. There's a CNN story about John Kerry that just cries for a pithy commentary from someone with an acerbic wit.
I love Liz, therefore:
I...Will...Not...Comment...On...This!
(Librarians can correct spelling errors is so very subtle ways! ascerbic indeed...although my mother actually beat you to it.))
I love Liz, therefore:
I...Will...Not...Comment...On...This!
(Librarians can correct spelling errors is so very subtle ways! ascerbic indeed...although my mother actually beat you to it.))
Ramblin' Rose
Where's Nat King Cole when you really need him?
One of the things that shocks me about my situation is how extremely difficult it is to take a shower. The shower takes 10 minutes and the recovery takes half an hour and is pretty painful. So, it's pretty clear I need some help. The nurse's aide assigned to my support team came today and she made things a little easier, but it was still no walk in the park. Sigh. New realities, new realities.
A big celebration day at our house! The handyman came and was able to replace the floodlights in the high ceiling of the front porch. These bulbs have needed to be replaced since Christ was a corporal, and I'd love to lay the entire delay off on my invalid status...but...not so much! I never met a procrastination strategy that I didn't like. ("How great the hazard of such procrastination is, has been demonstrated by better pens.") Apologies only go so far, but excuses can be stretched out for a lifetime!
Just heard that Jeff and Barb are coming down for a visit in a few weeks. Barb, my sole advice to you is not to feed him any beans at the beginning of the trip. Oh, and he likes crawfish etouffe from Pappa Deaux. If you need an explanation, call Judy.
The doggie bus is due to arrive late this week assuming that Joel can find the place again. I'm hoping that he and Jean can spend some time out here in Keller in between Cheer's runs.
REAL ESTATE FOR SALE: One slightly used house in Manchester Center, Vermont. Comes with lots of acres of land and great memories of our dogs chasing tennis balls until they dropped. There were times when they were so tired from tennis balls, I swear that the bunny rabbit next door could be seen jogging in place simply to get his exercise. That rabbit, who was fond of torturing all four dogs at the limit of the electronic fence, has written several postcards since we left asking when the dogs would return! Apparently, he prefers exercise and a healthy diet to Lipitor!
REAL ESTATE FOR SALE: (cont.) One nearly new home on 80 acres in the lower right corner of Kansas (they appear not to have more specific addresses out there?!?!). This property comes complete with game trails, blinds, salt licks and on enormous garage with an arrow-hole through the side. Not, as local legend would have it, the result of an Indian attack, but rather from an errant speed-test arrow by the current resident on his newest super-duper 18-wheeled, 4 speed, gold-plated re-re-re-curved bow as he prepared to demonstrate his prowess with said bow to some brothers-in-law who weren't skeptical in the first place.
Dove Bar. White Bermuda shorts. Klutz. Anyone care to guess at the results of that little close encounter of the three kinds?
One of the things that shocks me about my situation is how extremely difficult it is to take a shower. The shower takes 10 minutes and the recovery takes half an hour and is pretty painful. So, it's pretty clear I need some help. The nurse's aide assigned to my support team came today and she made things a little easier, but it was still no walk in the park. Sigh. New realities, new realities.
A big celebration day at our house! The handyman came and was able to replace the floodlights in the high ceiling of the front porch. These bulbs have needed to be replaced since Christ was a corporal, and I'd love to lay the entire delay off on my invalid status...but...not so much! I never met a procrastination strategy that I didn't like. ("How great the hazard of such procrastination is, has been demonstrated by better pens.") Apologies only go so far, but excuses can be stretched out for a lifetime!
Just heard that Jeff and Barb are coming down for a visit in a few weeks. Barb, my sole advice to you is not to feed him any beans at the beginning of the trip. Oh, and he likes crawfish etouffe from Pappa Deaux. If you need an explanation, call Judy.
The doggie bus is due to arrive late this week assuming that Joel can find the place again. I'm hoping that he and Jean can spend some time out here in Keller in between Cheer's runs.
REAL ESTATE FOR SALE: One slightly used house in Manchester Center, Vermont. Comes with lots of acres of land and great memories of our dogs chasing tennis balls until they dropped. There were times when they were so tired from tennis balls, I swear that the bunny rabbit next door could be seen jogging in place simply to get his exercise. That rabbit, who was fond of torturing all four dogs at the limit of the electronic fence, has written several postcards since we left asking when the dogs would return! Apparently, he prefers exercise and a healthy diet to Lipitor!
REAL ESTATE FOR SALE: (cont.) One nearly new home on 80 acres in the lower right corner of Kansas (they appear not to have more specific addresses out there?!?!). This property comes complete with game trails, blinds, salt licks and on enormous garage with an arrow-hole through the side. Not, as local legend would have it, the result of an Indian attack, but rather from an errant speed-test arrow by the current resident on his newest super-duper 18-wheeled, 4 speed, gold-plated re-re-re-curved bow as he prepared to demonstrate his prowess with said bow to some brothers-in-law who weren't skeptical in the first place.
Dove Bar. White Bermuda shorts. Klutz. Anyone care to guess at the results of that little close encounter of the three kinds?
Monday, May 16, 2011
An Afternoon in the Sun
Today was another of those glorious gifts that only Texas can deliver. Cloudless, mid-70's, no humidity, flowers in bloom waving under a slight breeze. Liz and Megan have taken advantage of the gift and have spent the afternoon planting flowers in anticipation of Mike & Kris's wedding. While I, slug that I am, have taken advantage by sitting in an outdoor rocking recliner taking in the beautiful weather, the beautiful gardners, and the beauty of shamelessly calling out "Good job!" periodically to keep the girls working. I think that a pair of native females, one wielding a huge palm frond to shoo away the flies and another a bowl of grapes (which she helpfully peels for me so I don't have to expend the effort) is all that's missing from my little tableau.
I've often heard people over the years describing their fight with cancer.
"I have good days and bad days," they always say.
I don't know about that. I've been privileged to have mostly good days over the past ten years and my string seems to be continuing.
Like today. How can I complain?
I've often heard people over the years describing their fight with cancer.
"I have good days and bad days," they always say.
I don't know about that. I've been privileged to have mostly good days over the past ten years and my string seems to be continuing.
Like today. How can I complain?
Sunday, May 15, 2011
Paying it forward
I'm not quite sure how to explain this. I received several comments about my "this is not a bus" posting but then came an email from my father (via my mother). Yes, my father will be 95 years old in a few months, and yes, it is a bit unusual to communicate with two nonagenerians regularly via email, but I leave that to a different day.
In any event, my father passed along a story about a marine and a bus from WWII that I must say, left me wondering about mystical closure, etc. It seems that my father's ship was in Argencia, Nova Scotia at some point during the war and was docked about 8 miles from the USO club which was apparently a very desirable destination for sailors (not entirely clear why, but I suspect Canadian girls had something to do with this). The bus from the docks to the USO was run, of course, by the marines and through a little inter-service coooperation, I guess the Navy guys were allowed to ride over as well.
Onto the bus jumps a particularly feisty yeoman who greets the marine driver with "Hello, Bellboy!"
Inter-service cooperation is quickly topped by inter-service rivalry, and the marine calmly responds "Walk!" Which the yeoman did--all 8 miles of it.
I would love to think of the cosmic symmetry of the whole thing that would be fulfilled if only that marine later fathered a boy who grew up to be a marine who met a mustang Lieutenant son of the yeoman who declares in the middle of a jungle, and despite all evidence to the contrary, that the big blue bus isn't a bus. And just think of the possibilities for today...a Navy Seal on a secret mission in Pakistan to rid the world of a hideous human being is offered a place on a stealth "bus" after his ride has "technical failures." Wouldn't THAT make a story?
In any event, my father passed along a story about a marine and a bus from WWII that I must say, left me wondering about mystical closure, etc. It seems that my father's ship was in Argencia, Nova Scotia at some point during the war and was docked about 8 miles from the USO club which was apparently a very desirable destination for sailors (not entirely clear why, but I suspect Canadian girls had something to do with this). The bus from the docks to the USO was run, of course, by the marines and through a little inter-service coooperation, I guess the Navy guys were allowed to ride over as well.
Onto the bus jumps a particularly feisty yeoman who greets the marine driver with "Hello, Bellboy!"
Inter-service cooperation is quickly topped by inter-service rivalry, and the marine calmly responds "Walk!" Which the yeoman did--all 8 miles of it.
I would love to think of the cosmic symmetry of the whole thing that would be fulfilled if only that marine later fathered a boy who grew up to be a marine who met a mustang Lieutenant son of the yeoman who declares in the middle of a jungle, and despite all evidence to the contrary, that the big blue bus isn't a bus. And just think of the possibilities for today...a Navy Seal on a secret mission in Pakistan to rid the world of a hideous human being is offered a place on a stealth "bus" after his ride has "technical failures." Wouldn't THAT make a story?
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)