What? No Apple??

Aren't students supposed to bring apples for the teacher? I didn't get so much as a strawberry. But I sure got a hefty dose of ego-boosting.

Last night I taught another round of my blogging class. I did this last year and didn't think it went well, though people asked for a follow-up class. I had I think four students who came. All of them seemed to be needing a web site, not really a blog. The only one who was possibly really wanting a blog was going to use it to write a cookbook, but over the year when I checked back on her site, she never did anything with it.

This year I made sure that the course description included a brief explanation of what a blog was, and, more importantly, what it wasn't.

When I checked on the status of sign-ups last weekend, they had nobody signed up and my hopes rose that maybe nobody wanted to come. Maybe blogging was so common now that nobody needed to be "taught" anything about it.

But then I had word that three people had signed up. By the time of the class there were seven people who came to learn about blogging and none of them really needed a web site--they were interested to learn about blogging.

Of course I had performance anxiety. I don't really think of myself as a teacher, but if there is anything I can teach at least fairly, it's blogging. I at least have lots of experience.

Tsui, from DCN, and I went to the lab to meet with one of the tech guys to learn how to set up all the new equipment. Good thing we did, since there were a couple of little glitches that needed to be fixed and he was able to do that for us.

Then we returned at 6 to get all the computers up and running. I put some links into the machine so I wouldn't have to type them over and over again, and we waited for students to arrive.

Seven is a full class (that's all the computers there are), and we had exactly seven students show up. Now performance anxiety sets in.

I had them go around the class and introduce themselves and explain what they hoped to get out of the class. I expected to have the same result I did last time, with people not really being there to learn about blogging, but surprisingly they were, to one degree or another. One guy runs a Mac Users group at the senior center and also wants to start a blog for his Sons of Norway group. Another woman is setting up a blog for deaf users. A woman from Congo has a lot to say on her blog. A gentlemen, who is probably in his 90s, just wanted to find out what it's all about. Another woman was interested in blogging but concerned about privacy issues.

There were all sorts of levels of experitse, from people who knew the lingo to the older man who had difficulty moving his mouse and whose hearing impairment made it difficult for him to understand everything.

I had everyone set up a blog on Blogger, because that's the site I'm most accustomed to, but I also gave them a handout with several other blogging sites and examples of blogs from each of those sites, if they wanted to check them out.

It seemed that everyone had either problems I couldn't solve, or questions I couldn't answer because they dealt with situations I had never considered before.

Tsui was a godsend, because I've learned that you can't do this class in an hour and a half with only one person. Everybody needs individual attention and Tsui was able to handle one side of the room while I took the other.

When we left, everybody had a blog set up, whether they ever use it again or not. They had all asked for a follow-up class, which I agreed to teach. I had promised the older gentleman that I would make a step by step instruction sheet for him, and even offered to come to his house where we could work one on one and he could do it at his own speed. I had also offered to help the woman from Congo by proofreading her writings in English, which she has been looking for some help with.

The ego boost came when the woman from Congo was shocked to learn I was 66...and later referred to me as "Professor."

So I guess it wasn't as bad as I always think it's going to be.

But nobody brought me an apple. (Though, come to think of it, this was a PC class...what did I expect? LOL.)

How Obsessive Am I?

Once upon a time, a long time ago, there was a little place called GeoCities. Steve had a journal called "Living in the Bonus Round" there. When I decided to start writing a journal, I joined GeoCities.

When you joined GeoCities, you were shown a real "virtual neighborhood," a map of roads and houses. You picked the neighborhood you wanted to "live" in and then chose the design of the "house" you were going to fill. Seems all kind of silly now.

I don't remember what my neighborhood was, but it had something to do with theatre, I'm sure. I picked out my house and started to decorate it with journal entries.

It didn't take too long before all those "houses" were bought up and GeoCities dropped the graphical context. Now you just posted things to a web site called GeoCities.

Then Yahoo bought out GeoCities and things continued pretty much as they always had, but somewhere off in the distance, a death knell was sounding. You could still log into GeoCities, but if you wanted to set up a web site, you had to do it through Yahoo.

With GeoCities you had free web space, which was great, but it was limited. So I actually had three sites there. One for beverlysykes, one for bevsykes and one for bevasykes. About the time bevasykes was starting to fill up too, I decided to bite the bullet and get my own domain for Funny the World, which has been the address for many years now, still hosted by Yahoo.

Well, I knew it was coming. I heard rumors. And you can't say that Yahoo didn't give GeoCities members plenty of warning. Steve even wrote about it a couple of days ago. But two days ago, I was putting in the "Today in My History" section, and, as I frequently do, I was clicking through entries for the past ten years.

Imagine my shock when I clicked the entry for 2000 and was told that it didn't exist! All of my beverlysykes, bevsykes, and bevasykes entries were now gone.

As I said, it's not that it took me by surprise, but seeing it there on my screen gave me a strange feeling in the pit of my stomach, as if a beloved friend had died.

Fortunately, though my life is an instruction book for how to live in chaos, there are parts of it which are organized, and, envisioning this possibility several years ago, I have been saving all of my journal entries for many years now. They all get saved to my hard drive and at the end of the year, the entire year is moved to a CD. The entries weren't gone, exactly--they all exist on disk, but they would all have to be reformatted to put on the Funny the World domain.

Did I really want to go through all that work? It took about 5 minutes for me to decide that...yes, I really did. It would be so much better if they were all in one place. I knew it was going to be a horribly time-consuming project, but I couldn't not do it.

I discovered that it takes about 3-4 hours to put one month worth of entries back, so I'm going to be doing one month a day, and at the same time putting in the current year 2000 entry while I am doing the current day's entry. (I.e, I've finished March and April, and also October 28, 29, and 30).

For some reason, when I saved the entries originally, not all of the photos saved with them. Some photos I've had to delete, some I've been able to find elsewhere on my hard drive, and some I just took again. If the photo is essential to the entry and I can't find the original photo, I've left a note explaining that the photo is gone. I'm sure lots of links are wrong, but I'm trying to upgrade them as best I can along the way.

Someone on Facebook introduced me to The Wayback Machine, which was brand new to me, a massive internet archive which has stored over 150 billion pages archived from 1996 on. You enter the old URL and it searches to see if it's still stored. While I have all of my entry pages on disk, I didn't have the table of contents for each month. I checked to see if I could find any through the Wayback Machine and they were all there. I just needed to edit them, not recreate them.

So this will be my activity for the next several weeks, along with all the other stuff. I anticipate that as I complete this project I'm going to find I've missed a lot, so I invite anybody who finds a mistake somewhere to let me know and I'll try to get it finished. (I should really take time to double check all those links to other sites and remove the ones that are dead, but I'm not going to do that at this point.)

I may never dust furniture in my house, but I really do like to have my journal / blog entries as correct as possible!

Be A Clown

Did you ever want to run away and join the circus? I did, when I read "Toby Tyler, or Ten Weeks with the Circus" as a kid. Of course I never would have done it. I was much too inhibited.

My friend and fellow blogger, Mary Wise, did it. She went to clown school and traveled with a circus and even wrote a book about it. The only clowning around she does now-a-days is on line (I think), but she does keep her hand in by meeting with a group of jugglers on a regular basis.

Today I met another clown. His name is Paul Del Bene and he is going to put on a benefit performance for DPNS (Davis Parent Nursery School) next weekend, November 6 and 7.

I would never have known about Paul and would certainly never have thought about going to his show, were it not for my friend / writing buddy / Scrabble partner Joan, who told me about it and suggested that his show might make a good article for the newspaper.

I contacted my editor, who said he had received a press release and had all the information that he needed, really, but if I wanted to do a feature article, go ahead.

So I contacted Paul's mother-in-law (that's how these things go...she's a friend of Joan's which is how Joan found out about the performance), who put me in touch with Paul. And then, in one of those small world moments, when Paul wrote to set up an interview time, he mentioned in passing that he had done a movie in Davis a few years ago and that Jeri had written the music for it.

Back to Mishka's I went, recorder in hand, to have coffee with a clown.

Paul has been a clown for nearly 30 years, but, though he went to Ringling Bros and Barnum & Bailey Clown college, where he graduated top in his class and then worked for them for a year in Japan, but he has performed mostly in Europe, where the tradition of vaudeville and clowns is very lively and it's easy to get work. He speaks several languages and was able to work in France, Germany, Italy, Switzerland and several other countries and supported his family on his work as a professional clown.

But they returned to the states to help care for his ailing mother-in-law and it's not so easy to find work as a clown in this country, which does not have the mindset of going out to see a live show on a weekend, but rather prefers to sit home and watch TV or go to see a movie.

The character Del Bene has created is Olaf, and he is often hired as a comic waiter,

which seems to be where he gets most of his bookings these days. He finds that his ability to relate to his audience, whether a restaurant full of eaters or a theatre audience is what has made him such a success.

At one point, as he talked with intensity about his feelings of frustrations involved with trying to find work, about his "other" job as a fund raiser for a medical company trying to fund research that will aid those with Type 1 Diabetes (a job he convinces me is not all that far removed from what he does on stage), and about his vision for how his kind of performance, and others who would do the same thing, in an area like this, using sustainable technology, local products, etc., would be beneficial for everyone, I had to turn away to take a swig of my coffee. His passion, his body language and everything about him reminded me so much of our own Paul when he was excited about a project that it was hard to watch, for a few moments.

He gave me a videotape, which included the video that he made with Jeri's musical assistance (unfortunately it's not on line, so I can't link to it) and I watched several of his videos, such as this one:

After 10 years of working as a critic, when the weekend comes around and there is no show that I have to review, the very last thing I want to do is go out to the theatre, but I was so taken both with Paul the man, and what I saw on the video, that I've decided I really want to see his show, even though I won't be reviewing it.

No greater praise can I give to anybody that I've interviewed!!!

It sounds like it's going to be a fun show, suitable for all ages, and it will benefit a great cause.

Anybody in the Davis area who is interested in getting more information can check the DPNS web site.

Thursday Thirteen

Thirteen Names I've given foster dogs (or groups of dogs)

1. Higgins, Eliza and Freddie (the My Fair Lady puppies)
2. Chunk (who was "Daisy" until she gained so much weight)
3. Tater & Tot (because when they arrived they looked like little potatoes)
4. Jed, Toby and Leo (the West Wing puppies)
5. Dexter (because he has a skin condition called Demodex)
6. Panda, Blue, Golde and Pinkie (the "Rainbow puppies"--they were all black and white)
7. Half Pint
8. Dakota (because he was found by a guy driving a Dakota)
9. Rupert (named for a fellow vlogger)
10. Google
11. Bissell (named for the steam cleaner I'd just purchased)
12. Gizmo (because he looked like a Gremlin)
13. Poochini and his sister Tosca

Childbirth

Any woman who has given birth knows that if enough time has passed, you begin to forget the pain of the birth process itself and concentrate on the love you feel for the little baby in your arms. It's the only reason why there are families that have more than one child, I suspect! That lovely process of selective memory. We remember that it hurts, but we can't actually feel the pain any more and only remember that we recovered and had something that we loved and were so proud of in our hands.

I've been thinking a lot about that phenomenon since the e-mail arrived yesterday afternoon...and anybody who has known me since the mid 1980s is going to be shocked to hear what I'm about to write.

The letter was from a woman whose name I didn't recognize, but she was telling me that the Lamplighters, which will celebrate its 60th anniversary in 2012, wanted to put out a Volume 3 of the company's history and she wondered if Alison or I would be interested in being involved.

My first reaction was to laugh hysterically, think that there was NO WAY I wanted to put myself through that again, and to forward her message to Alison. I knew Alison, too, wouldn't be in the least interested.

I thought that I had told the story of the Lamplighter histories before, but research shows that it's only come across in bits and pieces, so let me set it all down in one place. The year was about 1975. Walt and I had been attending Lamplighters shows since the 60s, before we were married. We had become Lamplighter groupies, were subscribers, had introduced lots of other folks to the company and we were on the mailing list, receiving company notices.

In one of the notices was a little announcement that a woman named Alison Lewis was going to be working on a book to celebrate the company's 25th anniversary and she was looking for volunteers to help. Two of us wrote to her and showed up to work on the book. It was serendipitous. Carolyn McGovern, Alison and I were all the same age, we all had kids and we were all at a place where our youngest child (in Carolyn's case her only child) had just started school, so suddenly we found ourselves with time on our hands. We all loved the Lamplighters and thought it was important and would be fun to record its history.

I still remember the first day I showed up at the Lamplighter warehouse. It was like Dorothy opening the door into Oz for the first day. It was just this dusty, dingy old storehouse but for me, it was entering the land of Oz. I remember seeing a suit of armor from a production of Yeomen of the Guard as I walked up the rickety stairs to Company Director Spencer Beman's office. I could recognize costumes, props, and all sorts of paraphernalia that I'd seen in shows over the years. It was magic. Of course by the time the book was finished the magic was long gone and you can't go home again, but that first day was really magic.

We worked on the book for months. There were lots and lots of interviews, most of which I transcribed since I was too far away to be part of the live interviews. But I did interview some of my favorite people. We built a humongous roster of everyone who had ever appeared in a Lamplighter program and all of the things that they did (>4000 people and 25 years of shows). We had hundreds, if not thousands, of little slips of paper with information on them that we spent months compiling for the roster. We made a list of every show the Lamplighters had ever done (whether in their own theatre or a guest appearance somewhere else).

We started with two huge garbage bags stuffed full of programs, reviews, and photographs and then scoured everybody's photo albums for missing programs and additional photos to get a complete picture of the company.

And then there was the text. We decided to divide the book into three sections and each of us would write one section of it. But I chickened out. I felt I didn't have the skill to write my section and make it sound as scholarly as the other two women, so Alison ended up writing two sections, and I wrote the first draft of the preface.

Though we had the nominal support of the Board of Directors, the deeper we got into the project the more roadblocks were put up by Spencer Beman, the Company Manager. Spencer hated women, and especially competent women and the more competent we were, the more he made our task difficult. He belittled us at every turn and put up as many roadblocks as he could to thwart the project. In fact, when it came to "acknowledgements" in the book, we were tempted to leave Spencer out completely, but Alison, ever the diplomat, wrote "Because of this history, Spencer Beman suffered numerous distractions from his already monumental job as producer and executive vice president of the Lamplighters; this book could not but become an additional burden for him." It was much kinder than he deserved.

We were not celebrated for our accomplishment when the book was published (except years later), but the board did get together to have a dinner for us. We sat off in a corner feeling like we were intruding on them!

However, despite our bitter feelings after the book was published, I stuck around the Lamplighters and worked off and on as a volunteer for the next ten years, which is when my friendship with Gilbert became very strong. The two of us started what became the permanent company newsletter, "Cock and Bull" and forever changed the course of Lamplighter Galas, when we wrote "Major General Hospital."

When Gilbert died in 1986, I was adamant that we put out a supplement to Book 1. I wanted there to be somewhere where Gilbert's accomplishments could be recorded for posterity. I also wanted MY period of time with the Lamplighters to be recorded.

Carolyn was so burned by Book 1 that not only was she uninterested in a second book, she refused to ever go to another Lamplighters show. But Alison was willing to work with me on a second book. It was she who convinced the Board to let the project go forth, while I sat waiting for her at a cafe. I suspect many things were said that she protected me from, but ultimately we had our OK.

The second book went easier. People who had joined the company since Book 1 was published felt they had missed out and so were eager to cooperate. They were familiar with what we were capable of producing and there was less skepticism about the project. Again, we did interviews and updated the roster, now including members of the orchestra as well.

By the time the book was underway, Spencer had been eased out as Director and Alan Harvey had taken the job (both men have since died). Alan was wonderfully supportive. Things still did not go smoothly, but with Alan's backing, so much better than the first time around. I was also not only more confident in my writing ability by this time, but it was also important for me to tell Gilbert's story. I did most of the writing, with Alison coming in to help me sound scholarly.

When the book was published in 1987, I felt I had done what I could to preserve Gilbert's legacy, as well as continue the story of The Lamplighters' next ten years, and I was ready to close the door on my involvement with the company.

When the 50th anniversary was coming up, people started hinting that there should be another book and I steadfastly said I was definitely not interested. And so the 50th passed with no updated history.

We have continued to go to Lamplighter shows, but my heart was not with the company the way it was before Gilbert died. I worked on scripts for a few of the annual Galas, Walt worked on the tech crew. We traveled with the company to England for an International competition (which The Lamplighters won).

But as time passed, I was of less and less value to the gala committees as more and more talented people who were there all the time became involved. Walt (and the rest of the tech crew) was eased out when the company started performing in a union house and had to work with union tech people.

We don't see all the shows any more, but we see most of them. We don't have season tickets any more, but buy single tickets, sometimes for a San Francisco performance, sometimes for a Walnut Creek performance, sometimes for a Sonoma performance. Sometimes we don't go at all (I wouldn't mind never seeing HMS Pinafore again, thank you).

After I forwarded the e-mail off to Alison yesterday, I started toying with the idea of working on a book for the 60th and I decided that, to my great surprise, I was interested. It would be completely different from either of the previous two books. It would be like going in cold because I don't know the performers any more--I don't even pay attention to their names any more so with few exceptions I can't tell you who is new and who has actually been around for several years.

Then an even more surprising thing happened...Alison said she was interested too, though didn't want to take a leadership role. So we have let the woman who wrote to me know that we're both in, and that she (or someone else) will have to be the leader 'cause we don't want that responsibility this time around.

We'll all meet next month and map out what needs to happen and who is going to do what. I can't believe I'm actually going to do this again, but...what the heck! It will involve commuting back and forth to San Francisco, and will give me a chance to listen to a lot of audio books!

The Thrill of a Letter

I finally heard from Anjali yesterday. This is the little six year old girl in India that I began sponsoring through Compassion last May. I also sponsor Pedro in Brasil, but heard from him almost immediately after sponsorship began. However, it had been so long without any word from Anjali that, on suggestions from other sponsors, I finally contacted Compassion and found out that a letter was "in process." It finally arrived.

She's only 6, so she can't actually write a letter yet, but did add some words in English, and drawings of flowers

But there was also a long letter from whoever helped her prepare this message, responding to things I'd sent her and telling me about the things she likes. She thought the pictures of the eggheads on the UCD campus, for example, were very funny...

...and she has never eaten an artichoke (which I pretty much didn't think she had, but I thought a photo of an artichoke was an interesting thing to send her).

I also had made tiny little books with pictures of some of our foster dogs in them for each of the kids, which I thought they would like. She said she did.

She told me about her favorite food, which is rice with dal. I remember long, long, long ago Walt and I used to go to an Indian restaurant in San Francisco and I remember eating dal soup, which we always called "gunpowder soup" because it tasted like gunpowder smells.

These are just the early days of establishing a relationship with this little girl and I hope that I get to learn more about her as the time passes. The thing I like about Compassion is the real feeling of community that it creates. It's not just me and these kids, but it's me and hundreds of other people and their sponsored kids. They established a social networking site for Compassion sponsors, where you can exchange good news and bad news and concerns and ask questions. I joined several groups, including a group for people who sponsor kids in Brasil and a group for people who sponsor kids in the same project where Anjali lives.

Compassion sponsors trips for sponsors to meet their sponsored child. I read stories of kids who travel hours (as many as 12 sometimes) to meet their sponsors. Also, sponsors who can't afford to take the trip themselves can hook up with someone else who is going to send bigger gifts to their child--there are wonderful videos on line of some of these meetings.

There seems to be a great transparancy about this organization that I like. You'd like to think that all of your money goes where it says it's going when you donate to an organization, but with some of them you just don't know. But with the opportunity to share experiences with other sponsors and the chance to visit the children and sometimes see the places where they study, you get a better feel about it.

I trusted Christian Children's Fund too, but only because I knew the guy who ran it was a very good guy with whom I'd worked with the Experiment in International Living. I figured if Charlie MacCormack was heading up CCF, it had to be good.

I don't really have a relationship yet with Anjali, Pedro and Fred (a little boy I am not sponsoring, but am writing to because his sponsor doesn't write to him), but I enjoy sending them letters and little gifts (you can include things that are made of paper and are no thicker than 1/4", which allows for things like thin coloring books, puzzles, stickers, patterned bandaids, etc.) and I know that as the time goes on, I will begin to learn about them and then things will get a bit more personal.

And it really is a thrill, after waiting so long, to finally get a message!

---

I also received notification from KIVA that enough money had been repaid from the micro-loans I've made that I could make another loan. I looked through the loans that are active and found a mother of five in Nigeria who sells food and "local gin." How can I not help out a gin-lover?? (And, trust me, if you're the mother of five, you need some gin from time to time!)

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And while we're talking about helping out those less fortunate than ourselves, have you gotten yourself over to the National Association of Free Clinics yet? You can donate money to help sponsor a free clinic day for the nation's uninsured. Keith Olbermann mentioned the group in his eloquent program about health care in America and enough people donated that they were able to sponsor two free clinic days. Other shows are hopping on the bandwagon too (Dr. Oz is one I know of). Not only does it offer people without insurance (many of whom have jobs currently), but it also is an undeniable picture to our legislators of the dire need for health care reform in this country.

Curmudgeon

I guess this entry is the anthesis of yesterday's "feelin' good" entry. I realized this weekend that, my protestations to the contrary, I really am turning into a curmudgeon. I am in danger of turning into my father, hence the need for a "feelin' good" list!

After my mother left my father, he went through his social period, where he went out a lot, dated every woman over a certain age in Marin County (and slept with most of them, if he is to be believed). He had friends who visited regularly. He threw parties. And then, as he was wont to do, he began turning them all away. He would turn on them, get angry with them, have big arguments with them, until there was nobody left to care about him except my mother and me, and then he turned on us too.

There was a sign on his front door that said "if you haven't been invited, you are trespassing on my property."

By the time he died, his world had shrunk down to only himself, and a neighbor he had asked to check in on him if he hadn't opened his window shade in the kitchen in the morning. It was that neighbor who found him, 3 days after he died, in a house that would have qualified for one of those TV news exposes about the clutter in a house. The house was full of empty diet Pepsi cans, the kitchen table piled high with cigarette ash--when his ash tray filled up, he just dumped the butts and ashes on the table and filled it up again. The floor was covered with cotton balls and diabetes test strips and needles he had just dropped after he'd taken his blood sugar reading.

For some reason he turned off the water to the house and so every dish, pot and pan was piled high in the kitchen and, since he fried almost everything he cooked, everything was coated with grease. It killed me to throw away a huge collection of cast iron pots and pans that were just too gross to even try to clean up. (I did save a dutch oven and it took a lot of cleaning and scrubbing to get it to where I could bear cooking in it.)

His closet was piled high with dirty underwear. He once told my mother it was cheaper for him to buy underpants on sale and throw them away than to pay to wash them in the laundromat. So he'd wear his a pair of underpants once and then toss it in the closet.

And because there was no running water in the house, the place was filled with feces, the toilet overflowing, the bed full. My mother spared me that part of the clean up. She and her husband took care of that before I got to the house after his death.

I actually hadn't intended to be quite so graphic, but maybe I did it so I can say "I'm not THAT bad yet!"

But I am becoming a curmudgeon. As you get older, your circle of friends shrink, whether from death or distance or moving in different directions. The smaller it gets, the less you care about a lot of things. What's the point?

I don't think I'm as grumpy as my father. I don't think I've deliberately turned people away by my bad attitude. But then, he probably didn't think he did either.

However, this weekend, my curmudgeonhood rose to the fore.

The high school has just completed this beautiful million dollar sports complex. Since we aren't at the high school, I'm not sure what all it entails, but a new football field is part of it. This was homecoming weekend. There was something Friday night (I saw lots of balloons in the set up as I drove home from the store that afternoon), and a game Saturday during the day.

How do I know? Because the new loudspeaker is so bloody loud that I can hear everything that is announced, though we live four blocks away. I heard who made every touchdown--through closed windows. We would have heard everything that went on Friday night too except we were at a show and only caught the tail end as we got home.

This is a town which cited someone for snoring in her own home because it violated the town noise ordinance and her neighbor complained (imagine the police waking you up out of a sound sleep to give you a ticket for SNORING!). This is the town where the police showed up in our driveway five minutes after 10 p.m. because Walt, who had been building a set cut one last piece of wood at 10 p.m., the cut-off time for the noise ordinance. A neighbor called the police because he was keeping their child awake.

And yet now we have a loudspeaker system which can be heard all over West Davis. In truth, the announcements didn't go on past 10 p.m., but it was damned annoying, especially knowing that we have all of football season to get through.

So I did what any red-blooded curmudgeon would do. I wrote a letter to the editor.

I don't want to be a curmudgeon, and I don't want to begrudge the high school its fancy new sports complex, but it seems incomprehensible that in a town with such a strict noise ordinance that you can be cited for snoring in your own home, the volume level of the sound system in said new complex can be allowed to be so high. I live several blocks away and heard every announcement from Friday's football game, through closed windows. I can't even imagine how terrible it must be for the folks who live across the street.

I don't suppose this is going to win me any fans, especially among the high school football folks, but I'd like to think my father would be very proud!

Feelin' Good

I found a new (to me) web site yesterday. It's actually on the page for some health product (Sam-E). I'm not in the least interested in some kind of supplement, but part of the site is something called the "feel good blog," which seems to be a bunch of entries about uplifting things. In this day and age we can all stand to be uplifted, or to be reminded of how many really good things there are around us.

One of the first entries I read was "Lisa's List of 50 feel-good things," prompted by a blog called 1000 Awesome things (which I really like!). The latter blog is one entry a day about something awesome...which I may try doing some day, but not today. In the meantime, however, I decided to think about 50 things that make me feel good. What makes YOU feel good?

1. Puppy breath

2. Snuggling under a blanket in the recliner, especially on a cold day when it’s storming outside, and watching a really good movie (preferably a tear-jerker!)

3. A phone call from a friend who "just called to chat."

4. Having my PhotoShop project work out just right...or better than I expected.

5. Finishing a writing project and feeling good about the results, knowing I've said just exactly what I wanted to say.

6. Going on a long trip by myself and listening to an audio book.

7. A tall, very cold glass of water.

8. An NCIS marathon on a day when I’m all alone in the house.

9. Finding a parking place close to my destination in San Francisco. (Thank you, Gilbert!)

10. Finding what I think is the perfect Christmas gift for someone, then watching them open it and realizing that I'd chosen right.

11. Cousins Day

12. An unexpected call from any of my children, just to say hello.

13. A new batch of puppies to bottle feed.

14. Trying a new recipe that comes out great.

15. Having someone else clean up the kitchen.

16. Fur-lined slippers on a cold day.

17. Eight hours of (almost) uninterrupted sleep

18. Conducting an interview and not stumbling over my words and actually asking intelligent questions.

19. The sound of a pipe organ in a cavernous church

20. The smell of the ocean, with a sea breeze in my face.

21. A visit with Brianna

22. A thick, fluffy towel that actually wraps all the way around me.

23. Going out to dinner

24. Getting giddy with a friend over nothing in particular

25. Freshly squeezed orange juice

26. Fall color

27. An almond orchard all in bloom

28. Beautiful choral music

29. Bagpipes!

30. The end of a dental appointment when they tell me everything's fine.

31. Running into someone who tells me they've actually read something I've written in the paper and agreed with my opinion of the show I was writing about, or came to see a show because they read what I'd written about it before hand.

32. An interesting conversation that goes on late into the night.

33. The smell of brewing coffee or baking bread

34. A box of See's candy.

35. John Denver

36. A great rainstorm (that doesn't harm anybody)

37. A beautiful sunset, the kind that turns the whole sky red and makes you wish you had remembered to bring your camera along.

38. Making a wish on the first star...and having it come true.

39. A good book.

40. Seeing a movie on the big screen in the theatre.

41. Getting a letter from one of my Compassion-sponsored kids

42. A field of sunflowers

43. Home grown tomatoes

44. Any field or orchard-ripened fruit (especially strawberries)

45. Watching sea lions cavort on the beach or on the piers at Fisherman's Wharf

46. Standing on any tall point in San Francisco and looking at the view

47. The smell of the pages of a magazine when you open it for the first time.

48. A clear, crisp spring day where the temperatures are in the mid 70s, with fluffy clouds in the sky and no pollution in the air.

49. Still-warm donuts

50. Watching my kids do anything that makes my heart swell with pride.

Transitions

The period of transition has started around here.

Yesterday, Cayce, a local dog trainer, took Higgins to visit a family who is looking for a second dog. They need one who is gentle but who is going to be big (that certainly describes Higgins to a "T"). It was a test play date and she brought him back a couple of hours later saying it had been a great success. The family's other dog had been attacked by a big dog some time ago and is very afraid around dogs, but the two dogs seemed to get along well. She thinks this may be the perfect placement for Higgins. So we'll see where this goes.

The puppies are all getting so big. I know it's time for them to find forever homes. They've now been at Petco two Saturdays and it's only a matter of time before they all find new families.

This morning I took this picture. When I'm sleeping in the recliner they all sleep directly in front of me, on the dog bed. When they hear the sound of the footrest on the recliner click down three heads immediately pop up and they sit there staring at me for a few seconds before they come over to me for snuggles. I've been meaning to keep a camera directly next to me so I'm all ready to take a photo as soon as I sit up and today I finally got it.

Higgins, Eliza, Freddie

(Actually, it's not cuddles so much they want as that this is their "OK--you're finally awake...when are you going to feed us?" look!)

At the same time, Dexter has been to the vet's and been neutered. He was gone 3 days (because they go up to UCD and they keep the dogs for a few days to give the students an opportunity to work with them). I swear he doubled his fur while he was there.

Furry Dexter

As you can see, he's well on his way to looking like a real dog again (though extremely nervous being perched on top of my desk!) It won't be too much longer before he's ready to go up for adoption too.

This is always kind of the bittersweet time. It's nice to think of not having the piles of poop to clean up every day and as they start literally eating me out of house and home (Higgins will chew anything, though stops when you tell him to, thank goodness. He decided to chew a wall the other night.) it's nice to think of someone else taking on the task of training them not to chew, but yet these guys have been with me literally since birth, so it's always sad to think of them leaving.

I always say, as each group of puppies looks toward leaving, that these were the best puppies ever. And I always believe that every time. Maybe I just have really good puppies (though there were a couple of litters that I was very happy to see leave). But these guys definitely rank up there among the best. Maybe Tater and Tot were the best, but probably only becuase Tot/Lester has stayed in the family and I see how happy she has made Jeri and Phil.

But I will really always remember the My Fair Lady puppies fondly. Of course it's not like they're all leaving tomorrow. They may still be here for several weeks. But I can see the clock ticking and I know that it's only a matter of time--and someone else recognizing the sweetness that I see in all of them.

There's No Place Like Home

Our writing group met today, for the first time in a very long time. It was so good to see everyone again. I really have grown very fond of those three women. Though we don't often write something -- sometimes we do -- the conversation is always fun and the snack aways delicious.

Today one of the women had brought an essay she had written, at her children's request, about what she and her husband had been doing in the years before the first child was born. They were a military family and her husband was a pilot. I grew dizzy trying to keep up with the number of times they moved. It seemed that they moved more in a year than I have in my entire married life, so I decided to examine the places where I have lived.

Here is where my parents were living when I was born and where I lived for the first 18 years of my life.

This is one of those Google street map pictures. When I lived there, there was no diagonal parking; you had to parallel park (and wasn't THAT fun with a stick shift!). There also were no trees planted on the street when I lived there.

The outlined area is the length of our flat. The windows on the right were in the room that my sister and I shared. There are bars on those windows now and an iron grate on the steps that lead up to the door. It shows you how times have changed since 1943. When I was very young, the landlords lived upstairs in the flat with the door to the right of ours, and the next flat over was occupied by the woman who introduced me to my first boyfriend, and later by my aunt Jean. Between those two flat doors is a light colored door that went into what we laughingly called our "back yard," a square of cement where my mother hung clothes to dry, where we had a teeny plot in which she tried to grow vegetables, where we first learned to roller skate, and back stairs that led up to the other flats, or down into the dirt basement.

There are reports that the man who owned Seabiscuit, who lived in the penthouse of the apartment across the street, would look down into that tiny cement plot, watching my mother, Karen and me and say that was what real happiness was.

I left San Francisco at age 18 when I moved to the dorms at UC Berkley. Some of the dorms had a larger occupancy than my entire high school and I was intimidated by the size, so I chose the smallest one, Smythe Hall, which was at the top of a steep hill and overlooked the campus. It was actually two dorms in one, Smythe and Fernwall and the grad resident in Fernwall was this stern student who didn't seem to like me very much. I was actually afraid of her. Her name was Charlotte--and who knew then that she would end up being one of my best friends for the rest of our lives and share with me most of the craziest things I've ever done in my life.

My first roommate was someone I chose because when we toured the dorm, she was the only other resident there. Her name was Judy and she seemed nice, but she had no roommate, so I requested her. It didn't take long to discover why she had no roommate and it was so unpleasant living with her that I spent most of my time at the Newman Center (where Char and I became friends, and where I met Walt--as well as everyone else in the Pinata group). By the time I changed roommates and had a really nice one, my social life was pretty much centered around Newman Hall and I'm afraid that I wasn't the nice roommate, because I was never home. I never did feel that I "belonged" in the dorms.

I quit the university after a semester and a half and went to work in the Physics Department and had a series of apartments, one across from what is now the site of the new Newman Center. I lived with Gerry, one day to be Ned's godmother, for awhile, then I moved in with Mike and Char while I tried to pay off the bills I ran up on my charge cards. Finally I had another apartment of my own, where I was living when Walt and I got married.

After Walt and I married, we moved into a little upstairs apartment on Prince Street in Berkeley.

(love that Google Earth!)

We had the apartment on the right and there was a big living room in front, then a dining room and one bedroom and kitchen. There was a huge walk-in closet that we converted into a nursery when I was pregnant with Jeri. It was large enough to accomodate a crib, a dresser and a bathinette and still have room for us to hang clothes in the walkway that went off of the closet (in the space that was at one time a Murphy bed).

We moved to Albany, next door to Berkeley, when I was pregnant with Ned and had a wonderful 2-story house, which you can't see from the front in this Google earth photo.

I was interested to see that it's still a double lot. We had this HUGE back yard because it was really intended for there to be two houses on it. The little roof you can see to the left was a shed, which would have made a great office, if I'd ever set that up, but I was too busy with babies to think of it. It backed up onto the grounds of a school and the two properties were separated by a fence and a line of Eucalyptus trees. One night one of the trees crashed down, knocking over the fence. The school paid to have it put back up again, but called the police whenever our dog got out and wandered onto the school property until the work got done! (I always thought that was unfair.)

That house had a front room, a dining room (which became Ned's bedroom), a kitchen and a bedroom downstairs and then something like a "widow's walk" upstairs, where Jeri slept. There was no room for a washing machine in the house, so it was in the basement and we were too poor for a dryer, so I hung clothes out on the line in the back yard and went into apoplexy every time the dog ("Ho Chi Mutt") pulled all of my clean clothes off the line and dragged them around the yard.

I remember that Jeri and I watched the very first Sesame Street in the living room of that house, I remember recording Jeri and me reading Dr. Seuss' ABC book so I could send the recording to Sister Anne, who had sent her the book, and I remember standing over the floor heater in the hall outside the bathroom one morning, opening the newspaper and reading that Bobby Kennedy had been shot. I also remember when we were going to be doing something with the refrigerator and Walt tipped it up onto one side and asked me to hold it there, the weight of it resting on me, while he went to get a tool or something. I was 7 months pregnant at the time. I've never let him forget that!

I also remember having a craving for Italian peppers while being pregnant with Ned and calling Walt at work each day asking him to bring another jar of peppers home for me. I don't think I've eaten Italian peppers since then--but I probably ate a lifetime worth of them during that pregnancy.

When Paul was expected, we had to find a bigger house and figured we were ready to buy our own. Pat and Rich were looking for a house too. Mike and Char were already living over in the Glenview District of Oakland and said there were several houses for sale in their neighborhood, so Pat and I made an appointment with a realtor to look at houses. I think Pat always felt I stole the best house out from under her. We walked into this house and I fell in love with it immediately. I called Walt from the kitchen phone of the house and we arranged to see the realtor that night and I think we agreed to buy it right then and there. Pat and Rich ended up buying a house about three blocks away.

I loved that house. I still love that house, though it would never have accommodated five growing children. Paul, Tom and David were all born while we were living there. David was 18 months old when we moved. The house had a nice big living room with a fireplace, a big dining room that held not only a nice table, but also the piano we recently sold, and a day bed that was always piled high with laundry. It had three bedrooms and a huge kitchen with a big island that I fell in love with. Me being me, the island became a place to stack stuff and it was usually a mess, but it was also a great place to cook. I made all of our bread in those days, buying whole grains from a bulk food store and making wonderful things like cracked wheat bread and lots of things made from sourdough. Char and I baked our famous pumpkin pies in that kitchen. I made all of the babies' solid foods. The kids and I made cookies together. I made soups and stews in the wonderful sunken pot in the stove. I made horrendous messes that drove Walt crazy, but I hope somebody also has some nice memories of that kitchen. I do.

Beyond the kitchen was a back porch where the washer and dryer (we could now afford a dryer) went. I remember the time it flooded. I was ankle deep in water, trying to wring out diapers that I could hang outside (yes, I had cloth diapers). We also had a small yard with a garage that never held a car and a gorgeous brick BBQ that we never used because it was too big (we barbequed on a smaller grill). The yard also had a prolific Meyer lemon tree that I loved and a prolific bottlebrush tree that I hated because it always dropped red needles all over the place.

Upstairs there was an attic that was half finished, so there was a nice small room up there and beyond it space on the rafters to balance boxes and things like that. When we were in the middle of trying to sell the house, I lost my balance, slipped off of one of the rafters, and ended up putting my foot through the ceiling of the living room. After she stopped laughing, the realtor postponed showing the house until Walt had fixed the hole.

Best of all, the house had a tiny little office (it was designed as a sewing room) just inside the front door where I set up my typewriter and both worked and started the journal that would one day evolve into Funny the World. The office looked out on the wonderful front porch where we liked to sit and talk to the neighbors as they walked by...and which was a great place for a baby to get a bit of fresh air, or to raise a turtle in a plastic wading pool.

I was so sorry when Walt was transferred up here to Davis, though we have settled in here and have been in this house for 36 years. so we must like it. But we both miss the front porch and neighborhood camaraderie, which we have never had here.

Things You Can't Live Without

You never know where things are going to lead when you follow a simple link. It started here:

Cheeseburger in a can. I just love the photo, with the fresh lettuce hanging out the side and a bun that is taller than the actual can that the cheeseburger is supposed to come in. I can't think of anything as disgusting as a cheeseburger in a can. But if I found it on a shelf I'd probably buy it just to find out how horrible it really is!

But you know. It's a slippery slope. It wasn't long before I was researching other odd products on the net.

I was amazed to discover this, for example:

I actually found references to placenta shampoo everywhere, including a discussion about whether this was human placenta, animal placenta, or vegetable placenta. I never knew there was such a thing as vegetable placenta.

So when I went looking for a picture of a bottle of placenta shampoo, I came across this.

You probably don't want to know what it is. But it looks like ciabatta bread on the outside.

This looks a little better (but not much)

This aparently is a day's worth of food in one dish, from the eggs to beans to sausage to fruit, all in a lovely mold with mayonnaise tying it together. I may pass. (It gets worse the closer you look at it!)

Here's a lovely invention for the couple that wants to cut the cost of their smoking habit, but don't really want to give up cigarettes entirely. Finish this sentence: "The couple that smokes together....."

For the conservationists, there is a solar powered bra...

which can generate enough electric energy to charge a mobile phone or an iPod. Unfortunately it only works in the sunlight, so unless you want to wear your bra without a shirt, it doesn't really do anything. "But it does send the message of how lingerie could possibly save the planet," the inventor said.

Finally, the Japanese, ever the leaders in really weird products have come up with a camouflage to prevent attack by street muggers.

You just slip on this little costume (bottom right...see the feet?) and everybody thinks you're a vending machine. (I'm not sure how you get home, though...or what happens when someone slips a coin in a slot and expects a coke to appear!) There is apparently a companion ensemble piece which looks like a manhole cover. You slip your valuables in it and toss it onto the street to foil would-be robbers.

I think all this proves that there is no end to the creativity -- or lunacy -- of human beings!

Thursday Thirteen

Thirteen Things that I record on my DVR

1. The Daily Show
2. House
3. NCIS
4. Grey's Anatomy
5. Two and a Half Men
6. Glee
7. Law & Order SVU
8. Private Practice
9. Amazing Race
10. Survivor
11. The Good Wife
12. Monk
13. Three Rivers

Not a Team Player

I've been fortunate throughout my life that I only had to work for a large corporation for a very short period of time because I've discovered, over the years, that I am a lousy team player.

Ned, on the other hand, started his adult working life working for a corporation and has been dealing with "the man" for all of his adult life. We share the same feelings about corporate mentalities, only I was luckier.

My very first job as an adult was a summer job at a tool company. We sold 99-cent tool that were all lumped together in a big bin in hardware stores and other outlets. It is my recollection that the man I worked for was probably just a distributor, because I swear we worked out of his garage and I don't remember there being a lot of tools around. There were only three of us, the guy who hired us, my high school big sister Joycie, and me. I remember very little about that job except that I was a biller clerk and that Joycie and I used to meet every morning before work and go to a cafe and have pastries warmed with a big pat of butter on them and hot chocolate piled high with whipped cream.

(It's amazing how most of the most special memories of my life are connected, in some way, with food!)

My next adult job for six months was as the secretary in the school from which I had just graduated. Then I had a part-time job working for the fund-raiser for Newman Hall on the UC Berkeley campus, in the days when they were getting funding together to build a fancy new church ("Sell Memorials!" was one of the motivational posters on the walls).

And then I got my first "real" adult job with the Physics Department at Berkeley. While it might be true that the University of California is a big corporation, my little corner of it was not. I had my own office from day one and I pretty much did my own thing on my own schedule without much interference from anybody, as long as the work got done. It still is my favorite job. I worked there for four years and only quit because I was pregnant with Jeri.

When I went back to work after the kids were in school, it was for first one and then another typing service. I kept no regular hours and though I had bosses in both places, I pretty much did what I wanted, again on my own schedule.

Then for awhile I was a roaming transcriptionist, filling in for transcriptionists who were sick or on vacation in every medical office in town. I was never part of the office friendships or office politics. I was the anonymous person who slipped in, sat at the typewriter and pounded the keys for a few hours a day and then left. (In the case of a pathology office, I went to work in a basement at about 6 a.m. and sat there until the work was finished. Nobody saw me arrive and nobody saw me leave!)

Finally I ended up in an office where I was hired for that office, but again as a transcriptionist and though I was part of the team, it was a small, usually congenial team. We were noted for being the best medical office in town and our working conditions were pretty amazing (who gives a year of housecleaning to every clerical employee as a Christmas bonus?).

But eventually the Big Bad Corporation came and bought us out, us and 9 other medical offices. I was in my 50s and I was encountering corporate politics for the first time. I was used to being my own boss, doing what I wanted, saying what I wanted. Now I had to watch what I said and had to do things that were against my principles. In very short order, the Big Bad Corporation and I came to the mutual decision that we were not meant for each other (my only real consolation is that 8 other medical office managers came to the same understanding with the Big Bad Corporation in that first year!)

I worked for Dr. G for a year, but again it was just himself and me and I was on my own again.

My life as a volunteer has pretty much followed the same path, though I've begun to see a pattern forming with regard to my ability to follow the rules and be a team player, even on a very small team.

I headed up a group of mothers in Oakland and started the same group when we moved to Davis. I also wrote the newsletter for three states but when the powers that be determined that the perks of the job should go to someone who hadn't lifted a finger in the job for two years, I quit.

I was part of a nation-wide council of people who ran different parts of the organization in their home state. I really enjoyed the work until the policies of the corporation began to change and I began to challenge the things that were happening. In short order I was called to the office of the high and mighty without being given a chance to make any explanation at all, and was dumped.

I took over the newsletter for a local organization when the woman who had been doing it for many years just got tired. I had been doing newsletters for just about every group with which I'd been involved all of my life and this was no challenge, but I enjoyed giving it new life. But the woman I replaced still wanted to hang on to the control. She complained that my newsletter was "riddled with errors" and demanded that she be given the final say on anything I wrote before it was published. A careful scrutiny of the "riddled with errors" newsletter found ONE typo in five pages. But I now had to run everything by the former editor, who went over things with a fine tooth comb. It was demeaning. It drove me nuts and I quit.

I was involved with another newsletter here as well, but this one has a dozen or so people who go through everything with a fine tooth comb before it is approved for print and the process again drove me nuts and I quit.

(Are we seeing a pattern here?)

See, the problem with my not being a team player is that I think that the rules are silly. Maybe I've been listening to Ned too long. I think there are people who take their jobs entirely too seriously, who feel that their company is far more important than it really is. I can't get excited about a lot of the lingo and the rules that go along with it. I have always gone with the "close enough for government work" philosophy (and seeing how our government works these days, that gives me a LOT of leeway!)

I can't stand nit-picking everything to death. My idea of a nightmare is going on a club retreat to discuss the image the organization wants to convey. I don't really care if our official color is royal blue, dark royal blue or light royal blue...or pink, for that matter.

So I'm not your team player. I'd love to work for what got me interested in the organization to begin with, be it dogs or breastfeeding, or collecting kumquats. But when the job focuses so closely on things that just, in the long run, aren't that important to me, I'm outta there. There are enough people who just love all that nit-picky stuff and, trust me, you really don't want me on your team!

Fifteen Minutes of Fame

I'm so angry about "balloon boy." Oh, not about the hoax perpetrated on television watchers, apparently in the hope of getting a reality show. I'm furious about how much air time the stunt has received.

For some reason, I missed the actual event and only saw the reports after everyone knew that the kid was safe, so I missed all that emotional involvement that many probably felt.

But still the media has gone ballistic over this whole thing. It has featured prominently in every newscast I've seen for several days and been discussed ad nauseam on talk shows. Ed Schultz made it the lead story on his "The Ed Show" on MSNBC and even devoted one segment of it to a psychologist, who never met the kid, never met the family and was basing his assessment solely on news reports. He gave an in-depth analysis of what the family dynamic probably was and how the kid was feeling and what his relationship with his father must be. Talk about a non-story.

Following The Ed Show, when I saw that Chris Matthews was leading off with balloon boy too, I turned off the TV.

When are the newscasters going to understand that you only encourage dumb stunts like this by giving them so much air time. Are we so hungry for 24 hr a day coverage that we have to listen to junk like this? (Notice please that I said I turned the TV off in disgust! I do have some integrity..not much, but some.)

The American viewing public has been so screwed by that writers' strike so many years ago. It spawned the first reality shows and I guess Americans are so fascinated by living vicariously through other people's lives that it has become an entire industry.

I will admit to having watched Jon and Kate Plus Eight a couple of times. I watched the first time because I've been pregnant and know the feel of a pregant belly at term and I just couldn't even begin to imagine carrying six babies. I watched because the show opened each week with shots of Kate and that enormous belly. Then I continued to watch that first episode and the next one because the kids were cute. But I hated Kate who seemed never to smile, who ran the house like a drill sergeant and who browbeat Jon so badly I'm amazed that it's taken him this long to find someone else. I figured they had a strange and unusual relationship that seemed to work for them and I had no right passing judgement.

I gave up on the show the day she fired her nanny for forgetting to dust a small shelf under a table once.

I guess people continued to watch because kids are always cute, but has anybody read how screwed up the lives of the Dionne Quintuplets were, the first "reality show" played out throughout their entire lives in front of the camera?

I wouldn't be caught dead watching any of the camera-in-the-home shows, starting with the Loud family, back in 1973, where cameras followed the family for seven months and 10 million people got to be peeping Toms. I see promos for that show where wives change families for a week and they seem to be so terribly exploitative, though obviously the women and the families have signed an agreement to participate. But am I interested in the resulting train wreck? No way.

But stuff like this, and especially stuff like balloon boy encourage nutcases to go to bigger and better extremes in the hope of getting their 15 minutes of fame. Some go so far as to create mass violence and end their own lives gloriously. That news reports publish their names and photos endlessly only encourages other people with troubles to follow suit. "I may be miserable in this life, so I'll end my life but by God you'll remember my name!"

The sad thing about balloon boy is that someone found a video of him and his brothers on You Tube (which I will not link to) in which they do a rap which appears to be strongly anti-gay and which includes lines like "I hate gay faggots. I hit 'em with a bat." Kids that young don't know enough about life to write lyrics like the ones that appear in this rap video. They obviously have some talent and it's a shame that they are being led in such negative directions.

Frankly, I want the whole family to climb into that balloon and sail off to a place where we never have to hear about them again.

The Lord's Day

As I write this, Sunday is winding down. It started the way it always does, this Lord's day. I sat here at my computer, drinking coffee, puppies sleeping on my feet, and Walt went off to Mass. I haven't attended Mass since the kids were all still living at home. Well, there's been a wedding or a funeral here or there, but "church" hasn't been a part of my life for a long time, which is strange because I was such a church-oriented person when I was growing up.

I hesitate to bring the word "spiritual" into this because I do still think of myself as a spiritual person. I just dropped the organized religion thing.

It was quite different when I was growing up. It seems like it was nothing but organized religion.

Going to a Catholic school meant there were no arguments about whether to have prayer in school or not--it was a given. We had regular religion classes. Our school was on the grounds of our church, which was handy.

We regularly contributed to the support of the missions during our weekly "pagan baby" drives, where we bought "pagan baby stamps." kind of salmon colored with pictures of saints on them, I recall, to fill a book. There were little 10 cent ones and big 50 cent ones. In my mind's eye I can even see, I think, a picture of St. Dominic on one of the larger stamps. Kind of like green stamps. With green stamps, when you filled a book, you got to pick out a prize. When you filled a pagan baby stamp book, you got to name your own personal little black pagan baby and I laugh to think about all the "Tammys" and "Billys" there should be running around Africa these days. (You don't suppose the nuns actually misled us, do you?)

On Sundays we went to the 9 a.m. Mass and all the school kids sat together. We lined up outside the church in two groups, those who were going to receive communion and those who were not. You couldn't receive communion if you had put anything in your mouth that morning. If you accidentally swallowed a bit of water while washing your teeth, it was a sin to receive communion. I still remember the day I got in the wrong line, forgetting that I'd had a glass of water, but being more afraid of Sister than I was of God, so damned my eternal soul by receiving communion with the sip of water in my stomach.

Now you could probably walk up to the communion rail munching a Big Mac and still receive! Despite its rigid adherence to the word of the Bible on homosexuality and how it is absolutely forbidden to go against those ancient and not exactly clear laws, other laws seem to come and go on a whim.

We regularly had religious events that involved the little kids dressing in white and carrying chrysanthemums in their hands (I always think of Church when I smell chrysanthemums) and processing into the church until we lined the outside aisle. I'm not too clear on which events required processions, but we seem to have had a lot of them. I remember lining up in the church basement, my stomach in knots, waiting for the procession to start. I had performance anxiety even then.

There were novenas, 9 days of prayer, where we gathered together in the church every day (or night) for 9 days. I remember being at a novena at St. Dominic's church, a big tall Gothic thing one night, with my mother, when an earthquake struck. I still remember the priest reassuring us that we couldn't be in a better place....but I dunno. I think I would have preferred to have been somewhere that wasn't in danger of raining thousands of pounds of stone down on me!

Every Friday afternoon we were marched over to the church to go to confession. We stood in line waiting our turn in the black box where I confessed the same 3 sins each week because I couldn't think of anything else: I disobeyed my mother and father, fought with my sister, and told three lies. (Even as a kid, I had no ability to create a more interesting plot!) And the priest always gave the same penance: 5 Our Fathers and 5 Hail Marys. If I had to confess anything else, I got so nervous standing in line that invariably I wet my pants.

During Lent we went to the Stations of the Cross on Friday afternoons, when we sat, stood, knelt or genuflected as the priest prayed his way around the 13 stops which represented Jesus' processing from his trial to his death and being taken down off the cross.

When we were in the older grades of grammar school, we sang in the choir, climbing the tall steps to cluster around the big pipe organ and sing Gregorian chant. I can't pull one of those chants out of the top of my head, but if someone were to start one, I know I could sing it flawlessly. I remember being jealous of one of my friends once when she felt faint and got to leave Mass to get some fresh air. I decided to get faint the next week, but Sister knew I was faking and I had to stay and sing anyway.

I wanted to be a Carmelite nun when I was in grammar school. I read lots and lots of biographies of saints and I was particularly drawn to St. Therese of Lisieux. I think I liked her picture on the holy card. Or maybe because she was a modern saint (well, late 1800s) and this was an actual photograph, not an artist's representation of some of the earlier saints. Or it might have been her sad childhood and tragic death from tuberculosis. I don't know what it was, but I was determined to be just like St. Therese. I think I even visited a Carmelite monestary in San Francisco once.

By the time we got to high school, my school had its in-house chapel and we frequently had Mass in the chapel. At noon a group of us went to the chapel to say the rosary together. I belonged to the Sodality and the Legion of Mary. And we had retreats. A retreat was a period of time -- usually a weekend -- where we had talks by the priest, prayed a lot, went to Mass, did not speak to anybody and at the end, when we could finally speak, we got to ask the priest any questions about religions that we wanted. Most of them involved how far you could go with a boy before it started to enter the territory of "sin."

Also, by the time I was in high school, I was a bit more social and didn't need the "safety" of a cloistered order of nuns, so I was more attracted to the Daughters of Charity, "God's geese." The Daughters didn't have to stay locked in a convent, but went out and did stuff. They ministered to the poor, they taught school, they were nurses. And besides, Sister Anne was a Daughter of Charity and I felt I would be able to work with her if I joined up. My father wasn't too happy that they were never allowed to visit their home after they joined the order, but I was determined I was going to become a Daughter of Charity.

Cooler heads prevailed, specifically Sister Anne, who talked me into waiting and thinking it over, so I did...and then I didn't go and went to UC Berkeley instead, where I became active with the Newman Club, where I spent most of my time. There was choir and Mass and more retreats...and no religious order to join this time.

After we got married, we continued to go to Mass at the Newman Center, or then to our parish churches (where I sang in the choir). I took a Bible Study class with Char, which was fascinating.

But somehow when we got here, things slowly started slipping away. I began questioning the teachings that I'd taken for granted for all of my life. I saw people hurt by the beliefs of the Catholic Church. There were several contributing factors, but the straw that broke the camel's back was when a priest and nun were forbidden from ministering to the gay community. If that had been a single incident, I could have gotten past it, but it was just too much. And when the College of Cardinals elected Cardinal Ratzinberger, the most homophobic man in the Catholic Church to be the new pope, I knew there was no going back. Ever.

Sometimes on Sunday morning when Walt leaves for Mass, I feel a little guilty. You don't go through a lifetime of indoctrination about the sin you are committing by not going to Mass without it sinking in. The problem with having been raised a Catholic is that you don't feel comfortable looking for another church (that's a sin too). If we lived in San Francisco and I could attend the Metropolitan Community Church, I'd be there every week, but I'm not into church shopping.

So I keep the Lord's day in my own way. I minister to God's creatures, who cuddle in my lap, give me puppy kisses and don't judge anybody for anything other than how well they skritch behind the ears.

The Snake Pit

I remember seeing the movie The Snake Pit, made in 1948. It stars Olivia deHavilland as a woman who finds herself in an insane asylum and doesn't know how she got there. I don't really remember anything else about it except the final scene, which is an overhead shot of the women in the exercise yard and it looks like...a snake pit.

I thought about that today when I took the puppies up to Petco. They were all there today, all the puppies.

(See the video of the day to get a better feel for what it was like).

I packed our four up and stuck them in the car. They weren't sure what to make of it all.

Dexter (the hairy one with the big ears :)) came along, but wasn't going up for adoption. Instead, he was going to UCD to be neutered. I had to pack him and his medicine, since he's on a special blend that is helping him regrow all that fur. He looks like a dog, now, doesn't he!

The MFL puppies seemed to blend in ok with their siblings, but I noticed that whenever I looked at the cage, they seemed to be hanging out together. And at the end of the day there were fewer puppies--at least one was adopted and another family was filling out paperwork to adopt another, but all three of mine came home again, which I was happy about.

I do miss Dexter, though, and wonder how he's handling the trauma of being in a cage. He's been glued to my body ever since he came here and I know that he is definitely not a happy puppy tonight. I'll also miss having him sleep in my lap tonight.

---

So this evening I decided to be a good guy and we have, unfortunately, suffered the consequences. Several weeks ago, my editor forwarded a message from a guy who wanted The Enterprise to review a show. I thought, from his message, that this was a new theatre company starting up, and I was going to do a story about it and also review his show. (As it turns out, this company has been in existence for quite a long time, but it was the premiere of this musical.)

Well, I never did get around to the story and I actually forgot the opening performance and the second weekend I already had two shows to review and besides, Derrick was loaded with stuff and had no space to put a review. I apologized profusely to the guy and promised him that I would give plenty of space to their next production.

He was very sad because apparently no newspaper had shown any interest. He said that people had expressed sentiments like: "I expected community theater -- this is Broadway quality." and "This play should be running indefinitely in downtown Sacramento." He himself (the author) describes it as "This ambitious world premiere production of a big-cast, big-stage musical, by a local writing team with established reputations, would seem to merit a review, just to provide an assessment of the work." He also said he was 77 years old and probably this would be his very last play.

There was literally nothing I could do to get him reviewed in our paper, but I felt so bad about it all that I told him about my review blog and said that if it would make him feel better, I would review it for the blog. He was thrilled. It meant, of course, that I wasn't being paid to write the review. All I would get were tickets to the show, but at least my guilt would be assuaged. We went to the show tonight. It was held at a high school gymnasium and seats were hard back chairs that killed my back. That was just for starters.

Because I'm not being paid, I was sorely tempted to leave at intermission, but there were only 20 in the audience, and our absence would have been noted. I was also tempted to write and ask him if he's SURE he wants this review. I am reminded of a gawdawful play I saw years ago, written by the late Larry Linville, of M*A*S*H fame. He may have been a good actor, but he was a terrible playwright and not even the red carpet and the presence of his family and his friend Garry Berghoff in the audience could make it a good play.

This one isn't that bad, but let's just say that it's definitely not "Broadway quality"! Because it's amateur theatre, I will be kind in my review, but it may not be what he was hoping for.

And I'll never, ever, ever volunteer to do a freebee just to be a good guy again!

The Travel Bug

Now that he's retired, Walt has a perpetual itch to travel (though now that he's gone back to work for pay 2 days a week, I don't know how that will work exactly). He was happy to drive back to Boston with Phil and Lester after my mother's 90th birthday party and especially to spend a week wandering around Boston. It's his favorite thing--just go somewhere in a new town and walk around exploring.

He was all excited about the prospect of going with some of the 1st generation Pinata people on a tour of Turkey next year. Pat suggested it and we were discussing the pros and cons of taking a bus tour vs. a boat tour (where we wouldn't have to keep changing hotels every night).

Plans had not progressed all that far when word came that the woman organizing the tour we were talking about joining had postponed her tour for a year.

Char suggested that instead we look at the waterways of China or Russia, trading whirling dervishes for the Impressionists at the Hermitage, perhaps. Now the talk is about that trip.

It's such a strange feeling. Never in my wildest dreams did I ever think I'd see another country. That was what rich people did. People like me certainly never traveled.

To compensate for not being able to travel worldwide, we brought the world to us, in the form of all those foreign students who shared their lives, their foods, their music, and their culture with us over 10 years.

There was a bit of a crack in the "people like us can't afford to travel" when we sent Ned to Brasil. He was having a difficult time socially in school and seemed miserable and angry all the time. At the same time, our first exchange student, 22 year old Eduardo, with whom Ned had developed a very close relationship, invited him to come to Brasil for a visit. We discussed it and thought that if Ned could take a break from all of his tormentors, it might be the best thing for him.

It was so difficult to send him all the way to Brasil, but Eduardo and I communicated weekly, sometimes twice a week, trying to help him get through homesickness. I would write and tell Ned when I'd call and that I couldn't call often because it was so expensive. At the same time I'd call Eduardo when Ned was away at school and find out how he was really doing.

In the end, he stayed for a year and it seemed to have been the right decision, as by the time he returned, he had grown tall enough that the conflict with his fellow students just wasn't there any more. He also had a bit of self esteem that came with being fluent in a second language and taking a class in Portuguese at the University. You never know, as a parent, if you're making the right decision, but we did what seemed best.

But that trip opened the way to other kids traveling. Tom spent a summer in Brasil with our student Caico and his family. Jeri did a 6 week exchange with a girl in Germany in high school.

When Jeri graduated from college, with a degree in theatre, we thought we would send her to London to visit our friend Jane, and see The Phantom of the Opera in the theatre for which it was written. Then, when my father's estate settled and I had some money that I never wanted we decided that rather than do something sensible with the money we would take Jeri to London...and bring everybody else too. We had the best family vacation ever, with 2 weeks in London and a week in Ireland and the kids staying for another couple of weeks to travel around on a Eurail pass.

I still remember arriving at Heathrow, standing outside the airport waiting for a bus to take us to our hotel and thinking "I'm really in another country!" It seemed impossible to believe. (We had gone to Canada for our honeymoon, but somehow that didn't really qualify as "another country" because at that time we didn't need a passport to enter the country.)

Now we are "people who travel," I guess. We've been to England several times, to Ireland, to Scotland. I've been to Australia, France and Italy. Walt and I went to Paris for a day. And now we're talking about Russia or China and the next year maybe Turkey. I still want to do the cruise up the inland passage to Alaska and ride the train across the Canadian rockies, something we said we wanted to do nearly 45 years ago!)

But first, we're going to New York next month to see Jim Brochu open "Zero Hour" off Broadway. We've seen the play several times, but the chance to see his NY opening is just too good to pass up. And, since it's November, we're also going to see the Radio City Music Hall Christmas show, as we will probably never be in New York during the holiday time ever, ever again.

We spent last night trying to find affordable plane tickets, which, at this late date, is not exactly easy. We finally did find something relatively affordable, but it means leaving New York at 6:30 in the morning for the return flight and we don't have a clue what we have to do to make that happen. Walt finally found a couple of motels near La Guardia and thought we might book a room in one of those the night before so we can get to the airport on time without having to worry about leaving the city and encountering traffic on a Tuesday morning.

Priceline only had 4 seats left at the cheaper rate and I just know we will have middle seats, which is going to be very awkward because I'm always aware of making seatmates uncomfortable. But...it's only 8 hours, right? (that's one flight with a layover and then a second flight)

Obsessions and Other Silly Things

I found this a long time ago on Laquet

What are your current obsessions?

Facebook, I guess. The 365 Project on Flickr, especially now that I've started taking a photo representing a different holiday each day. The iTouch Kindle app, which is helping me to read so much more than I have in the last five years. And, of course, this blog.

Which item from your wardrobe do you wear most often?

That's easy--sweat pants and t-shirts. I wear them almost every day. Sweat pants are all black and t-shirts vary, depending on which is clean.

What's for dinner?

Lamb chops and veggies of some sort.

Last thing you bought?

$100 worth of miscellaneous sundries at Target, which included such frivolous things as socks, yogurt, and toilet paper.

What are you listening to?

Survivor is on in the background. I've been half watching it. But I hate "eat something really gross" day, so I'm trying not to watch too carefully!

If you were a god/goddess who would you be?

The Goddess of Wilendorf. The Goddess of Willendorf, great-bellied giver of life and great-breasted source of nourishment, was also called the Venus of Willendorf. Discovered in Austria by archeologists, she is both the earliest depiction (estimated at 30,000 - 25,000 BCE) of the human form and the first known religious image of the Mother Goddess in all her raw and fertile splendor. Art historians intensely debate the sophistication of her detail, her unknowable face, the dynamism of her braided hair, and her profoundly regal posture.

(And besides, she looks like me!)

Reading right now?

Diana Gabaldon's "Dragonfly in Amber" is one I'm alternatively reading and listening to in the car; I'm also reading Pat Conroy's "South of Broad," which is proving to be another winner by an author I enjoy. And I just got Judy Shepard's "The Meaning of Matthew" for my Kindle App and plan to start reading that.

4 words to describe yourself.

Fat, lazy, big-hearted, compassionate

Guilty pleasure?

Anything bad for me.

Who or what makes you laugh until you’re weak?

I don't think I've "laughed until I was weak" since I left Australia, but a lot of Ned's videos can certainly leave me giggling a lot.

First spring thing?

Blossom buds.

Planning to travel to next?

New York City, next month, to see the opening of Jimmy's play, "Zero Hour." We're also going to see the Radio City Music Hall Christmas Show too, since I've never seen it and probably will never be in New York in November again.

Best thing you ate or drank lately?

A fabulous Crab Louis salad at The Spinnaker restaurant in Sausalito.

Flower of the moment?

Yellow roses.

Favourite ever film?

Is anybody surprised to hear me say A Star Is Born?

Care to share some wisdom?

When you need to buy airplane tickets, buy early.

Thursday Thirteen

Thirteen things I can touch from where I'm sitting

1. A goddess statue
2. A stack of CDs
3. A sticker from the Human Rights Campaign
4. My coffee cup
5. A box of Ziplock bags
6. My godmother's honeymoon diary (written in 1923)
7. A postcard of an Emu
8. A labeler
9. My blood glucose meter
10. An empty Tupperware container
11. A stack of PhotoShop tutorials
12. A rhyming dictionary
13. A whining puppy

When Fantasy Touches Reality

I'm working on a feature story this week, and actually, off and on since about April this year.

About two years ago, I did a feature on a production taking place at the University, one which for some reason or other I was unable to review, but which was directed by Jade McCutcheon, whom I liked immediately because she was from Australia. She is a fascinating person who seems to have done everything all over the world.

I've kind of kept track of her since that article came out because she had several irons in the fire and I was curious to see which would ultimately be produced.

In April we got together for coffee and "catch up" and she told me about a project she was in the process of writing, which would be produced in October. It's called The Elephants' Graveyard and would center around aging and end of life issues. At the time she was still trying to clarify how the work would ultimately look. She wanted to involve a older woman, preferably 70-80 years old who "wasn't terrified to walk on stage" who would be the center of the piece, but who wouldn't have to actually speak. She would have a "soul" who would be her voice but the action would revolve around her. The character would be named Esme.

When I left her, she was on a hunt for her Esme.

As it turned out, she had better luck than she ever anticipated. She spoke with a group of women, aged 60-80-something and found not one, but 8 different women who were interested in participating in the project, including an Esme who was not only not terrified to be on stage, but who was willing to learn lines. A group of friends for Esme were added to the cast.

In September, I visited the "elders" at their rehearsal space during one of their sessions with the choreographer and found them all delightful women, who were learning how to project the look of the dejected, abandoned older patient in a nursing home. But these women were anything but dejected and they sparkled with delight as they talked with me about their backgrounds and their excitement at being involved with the play (none had any prior acting experience beyond maybe a grammar school or high school production).

I went to a rehearsal of the show a week ago and saw it in bits and pieces, as well as interviewed some of the actors. The young woman who plays Esme's daughter is a professor of acting. Her character is a research scientist working in a corporation called "The Never Die Institute," trying to find ways to prolong life. The character hopes she can find the key to keep her mother alive for many more years, despite the mother's assurance that she's led a full life and is ready to die when her time comes.

It was strange that 66 year old me was talking with this young woman who seemed herself to be excited about the prospect of prolonging life, while I identified more with Esme. Who in the world wants to live to 150...or, for that matter, "never die." There is truly a time to live and a time to die...and besides, I've seen that Star Trek episode, "The Mark of Gideon," where Kirk is brought to a planet so crowded with people there is no room to do anything but walk, shoulder to shoulder...they are hoping that he will introduce a strain of virus to make some of them sick so they can start dying off!

But last night there was even more of a cross-over between fantasy and reality and I actually found myself getting a little teary as I watched the run-through of the play. In one of the early scenes, Esme is in a nursing home and the doctor is trying to get through to her too-busy-to-visit-mom daughter that Mom is "not doing very well."

Just before I left for rehearsal, Walt had a call from his sister. Their mother is back in the hospital with another bout of breathing problems. I don't know if they've diagnosed it as pneumonia this time, but her lungs were working at only 10% capacity. It doesn't seem to be as bad as last time, and she may actually be able to come home in a couple of days and avoid that recovery time in the rest home, which always confuses her so much. Walt's brother is going to Santa Barbara and will be able to stay for a week and then we'll see whether Walt needs to go back again so soon or not.

The parallels between the reality of dealing with Alice in the hospital and dealing with Esme in the nursing home just hit me in a way I hadn't anticipated. Of course, Alice is surrounded by people who love her and visit her often, whether her kids or grandkids (Jeri had some frequent flyer miles to use and flew out from Boston last weekend to spend some time with Grandma), and even her nephew in Long Beach, who comes regularly with his wife to keep her supplied with Sees candy.

Alice's time doesn't seem to be "imminent," but at 95, it's definitely on the horizon. So many of us are dealing with aging parents and after watching the entire rehearsal for The Elephants' Graveyard, I think the audience is going to go home and maybe at least give Mom or Dad a call to see how they're doing.

Neither Snow nor Sleet...

We don't actually get snow or sleet here, but apparently rain has defeated our mail carrier. It's the first storm of the season and yes, it's a big one, but we've had worse and still had our mail delivered. But it's 5 p.m. as I write this and there is no sign of our mail carrier. The mail usually arrives around noon here.

The rain has been a big surprise for the puppies. I saw Higgins go outside, look up quizically, wander out under a tree and then run back, shaking water off his back. Eliza just sits at the back door wondering what has turned her playground into a swimming pool.

But their day started out as a big surprise anyway. I have been sleeping in the recliner since I saw the nerve conduction doctor. She suggested keeping my arm straight as much as possible, including sleeping with my arm outstretched and that is much easier to do in the recliner than it is on the couch. It's too early to know if it's helping or not. If it doesn't help, no biggie, as long as the condition doesn't get worse, but I figure I'll give it a fighting chance.

Anyway, since we are one "pack," the puppies, who had started sleeping in the living room when I slept there, are now sleeping on the big dog bed which is right in front of the recliner. So when I woke up this morning, I could hear the quiet whimpering sounds of hungry puppies. When I sat up I was greeted with delighted wriggling bodies, tails wagging, tongues lapping and everybody telling me that I had slept so long that they were sure they were going to die of starvation.

I got up out of the chair, stood up and they went into a frenzy of excitement.

"She's Up! She's Up! She will feed us!!!" as the puppies all galloped off down the hall ahead of me.

When we got to the doorway into the kitchen, they took a sharp right and then came to a screetching stop when I kept on going down the hall into the bathroom. There are some things that have to take place before puppies get fed, but you could just see the "WFT?????" look on the face of all of them. "She's UP? And she's not FEEDING us????" They way they spun around and galloped down the hall following me was like something straight out of a Disney cartoon.

With all the rain, the puppies, who have been spending a lot of time outside, have, as Walt predicted, gone into "full poop mode," and I have "flushed the living room" several times throughout the day. I can't really complain about these guys because they have been doing a lot of their business -- well over half, I am assuming (based on how much I've cleaned up today) outside instead of inside. And who can blame them for not wanting to go poop outside when not even the mailman wants to walk the streets in the rain!

They've also discovered all sorts of wonderful new things to play with. It actually started last night when they somehow got hold of the earphones for my iPod and chewed off one of the buds.

And then today, it was full assault on The Wall.

Now, again in fairness to the puppies, this is a hole that Paul kicked in the wall in one of his angry outbursts some 20 years ago that we just never have gotten around to fixing. But the puppies discovered that it was something new to chew on and they ripped off part of the paint-covered wall and dug out some more of the insides of the wall as well. We may actually have to do something about finally getting the hole fixed, though by now it has become the "Paul Sykes Memorial Hole" and perhaps we'll just put up a plaque instead.

The puppies also continue to tear away at a strip in the middle of the living room rug. I'm of the feeling that this is a GREAT play toy for them because (a) they are having such fun working on it and (b) we will be tearing up the rug after they leave anyway, in preparation for eventually putting in the new floor and the the more time they spend tearing up the rug, the less time they are spending finding something else to tear up.

They are growing like weeds these days and eating me out of house and home. I got two medium size bags of large dog puppy kibble from the SPCA on Saturday and they have already finished over half of the first bag. They eat 2-3 times a day and take about 4 cups of kibble at a feeding...and scarf it down almost instantly (no wonder they are such pooping machines).

But the surprises for the boys will continue this week, as they are going to the vet on Thursday to be neutered. If my walk to the bathroom prompted a "WTF" look, you can just imagine what they are going to think when they wake from anesthesia with their barely formed manhood missing!

---

P.S. The mail was finally delivered at 6 p.m.

Bullseye

After months...nay years...of argument, votes, debate, and finally resignation (not unlike the stages of grief!), Davis recently celebrated the opening of a new Target store out by the railroad tracks.

I have to admit that I really found it difficult to get incensed about it, one way or the other. The only thing that I don't like about stores like Target and Borders moving into town is that it takes us further and further from individualization as a town, and more subject to what I have come to call the "USA Today-ing of America," that syndrome where people can hop on a plane, get off at an airport, stay at a Holiday Inn without having the leave the airport grounds, have dinner at Denny's or Applebees, pick up their USA Today in the morning, attend their meetings, get back on the plane and head home again without knowing whether they were in Seattle or Houston or New Orleans.

But that's what we are becoming. A homogenized nation where mom and pop stores are being replaced by big box stores and the individual is looked at as some weirdo.

That having been said, once the big boxes establish themselves, I become a devotee just like the rest of the townsfolk. I am nothing if not a pod person ready to follow my leaders wherever they lead me. Most of the time.

And so today being a holiday (not that that means much when you are retired!), I decided to take the opportunity to check out the new store. Besides, I was running low on "miscellaneous sundries."

My first thought is that you definitely know you're in a university town when you sit at the intersection of "Target Main Driveway" and "Fermi Place."

Call me a snob, but I don't somehow equate Enrico Fermi with the average Target customer. But this is Davis, after all...and it's the boutique winery that is on Fermi Place anyway.

As I turned into the parking lot, I wasn't sure if I was going to a store or to the Sacramento Airport. The parking lot stretched as far as the eye could see in all directions. And as I got out of the car and looked up, I wasn't sure if I felt safe, or like I was living in a George Orwell envisioned world.

I parked so far from the entrance that I halfway expected there to be a bus stop where I could wait for transportation, but no. I walked to the entrance and entered a world about the size that the town of Davis was when we first moved here. The place is enormous. It makes Costco seem tiny.

The check-out stands start where I am standing and go back so far this photo does not show the end of the row. And remember that for every stand you can actually see, there is another cash register to the right of the one showing in this photo.

But for all its size, there is one area in which it is sorely lacking. The photo below shows about a quarter of the size of the area where ladies go to look for clothes. The other side of the aisle contains the rest of the clothing for ladies.

And the photo below is the complete fat lady section. The outlined portion, not the entire photo--the clothes on the right of the white box are maternity clothes.

Not only that but the style of clothes shows that Target has given no thought whatsoever to the kind of clothes that fat women want to wear.

While this may be a lovely looking top, I am here to tell you that no fat woman wants to wear a top with an elasticized lower edge. It may look cute on the hanger, but if you put it on, it's going to ride up over your fat hips and look just awful.

They did have one rack of hoodies that actually went up to size 4 (one). That's larger than I wear, but I decided to try on a size 4, which wouldn't even zip up in front of me.

In fairness, the thing was made in Cambodia and I've seen Cambodian women and I think they probably can't even conceive of someone my size. Yet a fair number of your average Target shoppers, especially those my age, are closer to my size than to the petite size, I suspect.

The whole fat lady department was entirely too depressing, so I decided to check out the rest of the store which is, as I have said, enormous.

I passed through the baby section, which is even larger than the ladies' section, and did a zig zag through the aisles of various foodstuffs, picking up things that looked interesting, like cocoa roast almonds and jalapeno tortillas. I was just starting to think that you could buy all of your foods here if only they had fresh produce, when I came upon the fresh produce section. Of course, their potatoes, for example, were $1.29 each (because they were individually wrapped), so it was not exactly someplace you would regularly come for your food stuffs, but they did have Yoplait yogurt on sale for 50 cents a container, nearly half of what I pay in the stores where I normally shop.

I went through the kitchen gadgets section to see if there was anything there I couldn't live without. I was intrigued to see this "batter dispenser" for use with pancake batter.

I have one of those gadgets too. I call it "a spoon." Amazing what people will pay $15 for! I decided I could live without the batter dispenser.

By the time I'd seen most of the store, I had walked farther than I usually do on the treadmill, so I figured it was a good exercise if nothing else. But I had also managed to find nearly $100 worth of miscellaneous sundries, so I had something to show for my hour walking around the big box store.

And best of all, I had dinner not only for tonight, but for tomorrow night as well, so I don't have to think about what to cook for two whole nights. That's always a good day.

...And a Good Time was Had by All

The Ice Cream social was a great success.

I had things mostly set up by about 1:30.

(Note the puppies in the pen at the left)

Then it was just a question of waiting for the folks to arrive. Ashley arrived early so she could give Eliza her vaccinations and she took the "down" time to give Dexter a manicure.

The first neighborhood guy arrived right on the dot at 2 p.m. (he was also the last to leave--and had four different cups of ice cream!). He brought a bowl of sliced strawberries and a container of hot fudge sauce. Yum! Then others started straggling in.

Even the Don Saylor, Davis's Mayor Pro Tem showed up, and had a chat with Ned, who also came, with Marta.

Don also took this picture to post to Facebook, along with all the photos he took at all the other neighborhood parties he attended, from ours at 2 p.m. until after dark.

The puppies were a big hit.

This little girl in particular loved all the puppies, but especially loved Dexter (who was more her size than the others)

At the height, we may have had about 20 people, which was about double the number who came last year.

I ran out of vanilla ice cream, but had plenty of chocolate, strawberry and blackberry left over at the end of the day. I feel very good about how it all went and think that we went out on a real high.

I'll Never Do THAT Again

I'm glad that I already decided this would be our last year to host the Neighborhood Night Out. Last year it had an OK attendance, but I thought that by having it in the afternoon this year and making it an ice cream social, more people might come. (So far I've had 3 RSVPs...nobody officially responded last year, I don't think, and about a dozen people showed up)

It really sounds like a nice, neighborly, sociable thing to do. There are more than 100 parties this year all around the city, a significant rise from last year (when there were 60-some parties). The city gives you lots of goodies, most of which will ultimately end up in the garbage, I'm sure, but they include refrigerator magnets with city phone numbers, booklets about fire safety, information on H1N1, balloons, glowsticks and a big sign to put on the lawn. Last year there were a couple dozen pens so people could sign a sign-up sheet, but this year they didn't include the pens, just gave us the sign-up sheets.

But packet also included a gift certificate to the Davis Food Co-op for $25 to help purchase supplies for the party. I think that was about what I spent last year, as I bought ingredients and made my own hors d'oeuvres and people also brought stuff.

Well...I've discovered that ice cream for a neighborhood ain't cheap (especially at the co-op, which has "good" stuff, not cheap stuff)! Just four large containers (48 oz) of ice cream alone is more than $25 (and I'm not sure if 4 containers is going to be enough--but it has to be). But add to that cups, cones, chocolate syrup, nuts, and whipped cream and we're getting into real money for people I don't even know at all.

The final tally -- and this included a few things for us, that won't be at the party, like dinner tonight and tomorrow night) was over $80. The gift certificate helped, but by no means did it begin to cover the cost. We still have go buy ice in the morning. I had intended to buy more ice cream somewhere else where I could get a vat cheaper, but we're going to have to go with what I have.

Now I did ask for this to be a pot luck, and it's entirely possible that people are going to bring ice cream to contribute. One person offered to bring ice cream and I told her to bring some sort of topping and maybe cookies to go with the ice cream.

But bottom line is it ain't cheap and while I knew going into this that I would be spending money on it, as I said earlier, I'm glad this is the last year we'll be hosting. Time for someone else to step up to the plate and have a turn.

Realizing that there was a very good possibility that Higgins and/or Freddie might be adopted today, I tried taking some better pictures. I wasn't able to corner Freddie, but I really like this one of Higgins.

At the appointed hour, we drove the boys up to Petco (finding out later that Ashley had misunderstood me and thought I was asking when the puppies were going to be neutered--the boys this week and Eliza next week. I thought she said she only wanted boys at Petco this week and I could bring Eliza next week...so we left Eliza home).

When we got there, all the other siblings were already in the cage--and what a sight it was!

I'm not sure how many were in the cage--but I think it was 8 or 9. There was, of course, no grand reunion. They could all care less about the two "strangers" added to the pile. We came on home and awaited news of our babies.

When we got back to PETCO at 3:30, none of the puppies had been adopted, so we were happy to bring them both back home again, none the worse for their experiences. So they're here again for at least another week.

I'm glad.

Counting Down the Days

Look! Look!

It's fur!!! It's real fur!!!!! I was running my hands along Dexter's back last night and realized I was no longer feeling scabs, but stubble. In the one spot on his body where he had a hint of fur when we first got him, there is actual visible FUR growing. Of course I needed a close up lens to take this picture, but he's really finally starting to grow fur! When I give him his medicine each day I say what my father used to say to me, "It will put hair on your chest." Only in his case, it actually does.

As for the other guys, the are just getting bigger and bigger, especially Higgins, who is almost too heavy to pick up these days.

I wrote to Ashley last night to find out how soon they would be going up for adoption. As I told her, it's not that I'm eager to be rid of them, but I knew that the time was fast approaching.

Faster approaching than I realized. The boys are now listed on Petfinder and will make their first trip to Petco on Saturday. Eliza will go up on Petfinder next week and go to Petco next Saturday.

There is, of course, no guarantee that they will be adopted right away. After all,there are a dozen of these cuties looking for homes, but naturally I think I have the cutest of them :) so am sure everyone will instantly fall in love with them before their siblings.

In the meantime, I continue to be "Mom" to these little guys. Wherever I am, they are.

When I come in here to my office to work while they are off sleeping somewhere, pretty soon, one will stagger in and flop down at my feet, then another, then another, until all four are here. When I get up quietly and move to another room, I begin to hear whimpering and pretty soon the four start straggling out of my office, looking still half asleep, and looking for me.

Dexter must be in my lap at all times, if I'm sitting down or not. Eliza is the next most demanding, with Freddie third. Higgins is pretty much a loner, though once in awhile he, too, demands his turn in my lap--but it doesn't last long. For one reason he's just too darn big.

Dexter will be here for a long time yet, waiting for his fur to grow out far enough to have him start looking like a real dog, but I suspect that I am spending my last days with the My Fair Lady puppies. This has been a real sweet group of puppies and once again, I am so glad that we have been a part of their lives.

Perle Mesta is at it Again

It's time for this year's Neighbor's Night Out again, coming up this Sunday. Remember last year I hosted an hors d'oeuvre reception in our carport at the ridiculous hour of 7 p.m. (Our party was the latest of the 60-some parties that were held city-wide.) I decided to host the event for one more year, but this time do it in the afternoon and have an ice cream social, figuring more of the parents with children would come.

And, no dummy I, I can buy tons of ice cream and if nobody shows up, well, gosh--gee whiz--somebody has to eat it all, right?

The folks at the city dropped off my package, which includes little reminders to put on everybody's doorknob, so I went out this morning and walked the street, putting reminders on all the doors. It took about 45 minutes to do, so I've had my exercise for the day too. I only ran into two neighbors on the route, one an old man I'd never seen before. We didn't chat. But the other was a woman who has lived here as long as we have and we talked for a long time. She says she makes a "killer hot fudge sauce" and will see if she can send some with her husband (since she can't come).

I also spent most of the time I was walking trying to remember the name of our next door neighbor. I remember HIS name, but I cannot for the life of me remember hers. This is not so much an Alzheimers thing as it is that we have not spoken in probably more than 20 years. No reason that I am aware of why we don't speak, but we just don't. She never even sent a note of sympathy (or made eye contact) after Paul's or David's deaths. (But that's ok--she wasn't alone. Most of our neighbors didn't, including people whose kids had gone to school with them. But who's bitter...?)

Anyway, the invitations are out, the plans are made and on Sunday at 2 p.m., we will gather together for ice cream and hope that not very many people show up, so I can have an excuse to eat the leftovers.

The one thing I noticed on my walk around the neighborhood was how many houses are decked out for Halloween. I assume these are either houses with children, or houses of people who have grandchildren who are expected to visit during the month.

It reminded me that Halloween is my very least favorite holiday. I have always had trouble with Halloween on so many levels. First is the costumes. I always felt that I should be The Good Mom and make my kids' costumes, not just buy tacky store-bought plastic costume. Of course the flaw in this plan is that (a) I do not have a creative bone in my body, and (b) I can't sew a button, much less a costume. I remember one year all the boys were super heroes, which was easy because we could use towels for capes and Tom went as Diaper Man (the cutest superhero you ever saw!), dressed in pink and blue, if I remember correctly.

But no matter what kind of costume they wore, we would get to the school parade and I'd feel about 2" tall because there were kids who looked like they were ready for the stage in Vegas, the costumes were so gorgeous. Mine were made with love...and very little else!

I also loved making my own treats for trick or treaters. I'd make rice krispie treats or cookies nicely packaged in individual bags. I think I even did candied apples one year. But then the sickos started putting razors in apples and poisoning cookies, so nobody would take your home made goodies and you had to go with store bought.

Then there was the candy problem. It's a no-win situation. Either you give in and let them dive into their stash immediately and make themselves sick from gorging on candy, or you go through the daily, sometimes hourly fight over how much candy they can have and why they can't have it before dinner. We generally went with the "eat it all now and make yourself sick and then we'll throw out the rest" until the kids got old enough to become territorial about their candy (this was also the age when they could if Mom had stolen a Snickers out of their bag, so it stopped being fun for me completely!)

The kids continued to get older and we had a few fun years where we decorated the house and they helped with a haunted house that the city ran for little kids and they also did most of the giving out of candy here at home. But eventually they moved out and now it's just Walt and me at home.

Ever try giving out trick or treat candy and appreciating the costumes of little kids while trying to keep several dogs from licking the trick or treaters or rushing out into the street? I ended up turning the trick or treat task over to Walt completely and I manned the dogs. But there was the problem of my buying way too much candy, so I could eat it myself after the little kids had gone.

Soon, we had fewer and fewer little kids, as there were more dangers for little kids trick or treating. Now they do it at businesses downtown and the older kids have parties at the school. Mostly the only kids out trying to get candy come dressed as surly teens, taller than I am, with pillow sacks they are trying to fill.

Now I pretty much ignore Halloween entirely. I turn out all the lights in the front room and the carport and stay in the back of the house and if someone should decide to check and see if just maybe there is somebody home, I don't answer the doorbell.

I suppose I'm ripe for having my windows soaped, but I don't think anybody "tricks" any more.

At least I hope not.

Thursday Thirteen

Thirteen beautiful places I've seen (in no particular order)...

1. The Cliffs of Mohr in Ireland
2. The Indian Ocean viewed from Western Australia
3. A wildflower covered hill somewhere in California
4. The Golden Gate Bridge (always a favorite--and how lucky I am that it's in my home town!)
5. The Grand Canyon
6. Banff, British Columbia
7. Kalbarri National Park, Western Australia
8. The Ring of Kerry (Ireland)
9. Southern Utah (who knew it was so scenic?)
10. Manhattan from the top of the World Trade Center (sigh)
11. Any scenic view of San Francisco
12. Niagara Falls
13. Kauai

Simply Shocking

I was electrocuted today. Deliberately. With my permission.

When I saw the doctor a couple of weeks ago, I mentioned the numbness in my little finger. I know that peripheral neuropathy is one of the possible side effects of diabetes and was concerned. She dangled the carrot of possible ulnar nerve impingement in front of me and suggested I have a nerve conduction study just to check it out.

They don't do that in Davis, or even in Sacramento, so I had to drive farther up the foothills to Roseville to meet with the delightful Dr. Lai, whom I assumed was a man,but who definitely was not. She proceeded to spend 15 minutes electrocuting me.

It's not the most pleasant test you can take...given my choice, I might choose another sigmoidoscopy over having this done again, but I once again gave thanks for all that training in LaMaze breathing that I took during my birthin' babies years, which I used a lot, trying to concentrate on muscle relaxation, and not on the jolts of electricity surging through various parts of my hand. On a scale of 1-10, I'd put the discomfort level at about a 3-4, though, so it really wasn't all that bad. Just not much fun.

And guess what? I have an inflammation of the ulnar nerve. Who knew I'd be happy to have what amounts to carpal tunnel of the elbow? They can do surgery, but given that this is not impacting on my life there seemed no point, and I, for one, was certainly not going to demand it. She suggested keeping my right arm extended straight out whenever possible in hopes of easing the pressure on the nerve, which is a little difficult when you spend so many hours at the keyboard. But for the moment, I'm just going to leave it alone and see if it gets worse...and keep the arm straightened out whenever I can (I just noticed that I was resting my head in my hand, with elbow bent on the desk as I was re-reading this. Must change that habit!)

After my appointment, I spent an absolutely delightful afternoon visiting my "big sister," Joycie.

When I entered St. Vincent High School, everyone in the freshman class was assigned a big sister, who would put us through a silly initiation ritual and then help us adjust to the school.

Most of the big sisters never had anything to do with their little sisters once initiation was over, but Joycie and I have remained friends all of our lives, as the photo on the left shows. The first picture is from my initiation in 1956, the second is in 1966, both of us holding our daughters (Jeri is just a few months older than Robin), and the bottom photo was from today. (Note that my hair style has not changed in 53years!!!)

Joycie and her husband Bob used to live in San Diego, but moved up to this area several years ago to be near daughter Robin. For all these years we have been "going" to get together, but it just never happened. But with my appointment being only about half an hour from their house, it would have been silly not to stop by and see them.

I called Joycie from Kaiser and she gave me directions on getting to their house, but I write down lousy directions and once I'd gotten off the freeway I was hopelessly lost, but then remembered I had a perfectly good GPS in the trunk of the car, so I got that out and used it for the very first time--and it unerringly took me right to their door.

I got a tour of their "new" home (as well as an introduction to the wild turkey wandering around in the back yard) in the foothills. We had a nice lunch and talked over old times and new times. We discussed politics (fortunately we agree on everything) and television programs (we like all the same things) and computers (we are all addicted).

I was amused to see the line of Sponge Bobs on top of Bob's computer.

We took the inevitable photos, with her camera and with mine, and then I got ready to go, with promises of coming back with Walt again next time. Though, given how long it's taken to get this meeting accomplished, some of us may be dead before that happens!

Still, it was just a wonderful afternoon. It's really nice when you reunite with someone who has known you for almost your whole life and discover that the friendship is as strong now as it always was, despite time and distance.

I Can't Even Imagine

As will come as no surprise to anybody who has read this journal for any length of time, I've been on the edges of the fight for equality for gay people for many years. During the periods of fights in California for gay couples to win equality under the law, I was out there at rallies and demonstrations. I handed out literature and actually talked with (some) voters.

I suppose I should be ashamed to say that since Ellen and Shelly and a host of other people got (legally) married here in California and since the courts upheld their right to be married (while denying everybody else in the state of California that same right), my involvement in the continuing fight has diminished somewhat.

Partly this is due to the absolute deluge of material from the folks who are continuing the fight. For awhile there I would get requests for money once or twice a day from various Equality groups. I eventually put most of them on my spam filter and I don't even read them any more.

This is really bad of me because there are still so many couples who are working so hard to be granted the same rights that Walt and I ... and Ellen and Shelly ... now have.

This point was brought home to me this morning when I read the shocking story of Janice and Lisa and their four children.

Janice and Lisa met in 1989 and were united in a ceremony in Washington State in 1991 (not a marriage, of course, because Washington does not recognize gay marriage). They became foster parents for the state of Washington and fostered some 25 children, many with special needs, and eventually adopted four of them. There were plans to open their home to more foster children in the summer of 2007 because "there's always room for one more."

In February of 2007, the family decided to take a cruise and flew to Miami to board their cruise ship. Before the ship left port, Lisa collapsed. Janice, who has been a medical social worker for many years, knew her partner was in trouble and so she called for help and Lisa was loaded into an ambulance and rushed to a Jackson Memorial Hospital in Dade County. As she was being loaded into the ambulance, she flashed the "I love you" sign to her family. They had no way of knowing that would be their last sight of her.

Janice and Lisa had taken all the proper precautions for their family, which included the proper paperwork allowing each to have medical power of attorney for each other, yet when Janice arrived at the hospital she was denied permission to enter the room with her partner of 18 years. She was told, “you are in an anti-gay city and state. And without a health care proxy you will not see Lisa nor know of her condition."

Janice got on the phone and had her health care proxy faxed to the hospital.

Janice describes what was happening:

I never imagined as I paced that tiny waiting room that I would not see Lisa’s bright blue eyes again or hold her warm, loving hands. Feeling helpless as I continued to wait, I attempted to sneak back into the trauma bay but all the doors to the trauma area had key codes, preventing me from entering. Sitting alone with our luggage, our children and my thoughts, I watched numbly as other families were invited back into the trauma center to visit with loved ones. I was still waiting to hear what was happening with Lisa, realizing as the time passed that I was not being allowed to see her and if the social worker’s words were any indication it was because we were gay.

Hours later a surgeon came to tell her that Lisa had suffered massive bleeding from a brain aneurysm.

A short while later, two more surgeons appeared and explained the massive bleed in Lisa’s brain gave her little chance to survive and if she did it would be in a persistent vegetative state. Lisa had made me promise to her over and over in our 18 years together to never allow this to happen to her. I let the surgeons know Lisa wishes, which were also spelled out in her Living Wills and Advance Directive. I was then promised by the doctors that I would be brought to see Lisa as “soon as she was cleaned up”. At that point all life saving measures ceased and I asked that she be prepared for organ donation.

More hours passed. Janice showed the children's birth certificates to the admitting clerk begging that if they wouldn't let her be with her partner, that at least the children be permitted to say goodbye to their mother. She was told the children were too young.

In nearly eight hours, Lisa lay at Ryder Trauma Center moving toward brain death – completely alone and I continue to this day to feel like a failure for not being there to hold her hand to tell her how much we loved her, to comfort her and to sign in her hand “I love you”. All my pleas fell on deaf ears.

Janice was not given any say in her partners care or permitted to see her until the transplant coordinator showed up to ask which organs she wanted to be donated. I can't even imagine the pain that the family went through during those long hours when a door separated them from the woman they loved, who was dying without her loving family around her.

Janice brought charges against the hospital and last week Judge Adalberto Jordan dismissed the case, essentially finding that the Jackson Memorial Hospital was within its rights to leave a dying woman alone while denying her present and immediate family to visit her, be updated on her condition, or even to provide the hospital with medically necessary information.

In the article about this case, the writer, ends by saying, "Explain to me again how a straight couple would have been split like this even for five minutes, let alone hours. Explain to me how three children would have been kept from their straight mother’s side, how a dying straight person would be treated in such an cruel, vicious, I-don’t-have-enough-words way.

"Tell me again why the word “marriage” doesn’t matter. Tell me again that we should just be patient and not rock the boat.

"Better yet, tell it to Lisa Pond’s partner and children.

"Yesterday a judge shrugged his shoulders and left LGBT victims unprotected. When will Americans demand better? Will Americans demand better?"

Maybe it's time to un-spam some of those Equality mailings again...

Ten Songs

I read this on Facebook this morning, and I really liked the idea of making this list. Here are ten songs that give me the chills no matter how many times I hear them. They are not in order, merely in the order I thought of them.

1. In the Arms of the Angel, by Sarah McLaughlin

This was the song that Marta and Audra sang at Paul's memorial. I had never heard it before, but the lyrics alone ripped my heart out

In the arms of an Angel far away from here
From this dark, cold hotel room, and the endlessness that you fear
You are pulled from the wreckage of your silent reverie
In the arms of an Angel; may you find some comfort here

and then to have it sung by Marta and Audra...well...I tear up just remembering it. It used to play regularly on the radio station that was playing in Dr. G's office and every time it came on, I had to stop and compose myself for a moment.

2. For Good, from the cast recording of Wicked.

This song just hit me for its truth about friendship and the indelible effect that relationships between people can have on each of them. It's still one of my favorites.

3. Stormy Weather, the Judy Garland recording

When I lived alone, shortly after the Carnegie Hall album came out in 1960, I would come home from work, lie on the floor in front of the speaker, turn the volume up and just listen to that song over and over again. It's not the song itself that does it for me, it's Garland's version of it.

4. All This Joy, by John Denver.

There are several John Denver songs that give me chills and this one is the least likely. I swear someone gave him the words: joy, sorrow, promise, pain, life, being, spirit and love and dared him to write a song just using those words. The lyrics are very simple

All this joy, All this sorrow
All this promise, All this pain
Such is life, such is being
Such is spirit, such is love

But each time the lyrics are repeated, there is a building of voices. It starts with Denver singing one stanza, then some more voices and then more until it builds to a full chorus and then starts backing down again until it's Denver singing the last line. It's brilliant and beautiful.

5. Non Je Ne Regrette Rien by Edith Piaf

A defiantly unapologetic song by a woman who lived a hard life, but lived life to the fullest. Nobody can sing that song like Piaf.

6. If These Shadows Have Offended by The Lamplighters

For one of the Lamplighter Galas, the committee took Puck's final speech from Midsummer Night's Dream and set it to the melody "Eagle High" from Gilbert & Sullivan's Utopia, Ltd. Sung a capella with a full chorus it will take your breath away.

7. The Flower that Shattered the Stone by John Denver

This is a very nice song, very sweet and I liked it. But then I heard a version where John is joined by Kosetsu Minami, who is known as the Japanese John Denver. The places where it's a duet are just...chilling. I've heard it many times and I always have the same reaction to it.

8. Funny by Lawsuit

It's the song for which this journal is named, it's a song that had a special connection between Paul and me after David's death because in the middle of it there is an instrumental break and Paul would often get off the stage and come and hug me and we'd both cry before he had to go back on stage and finish the show. The only line from it that kept going through my head over and over again after David died was there's a broken soldier who's going home. Sometimes I can't listen to it because it just hurts too much.

9. Empty Chairs at Empty Tables from Les Miserables

This song kind of became the anthem sung at memorials for AIDS victims. It always reminds me, mostly of people I love who have died of AIDS, but also for anybody I loved who died for any reason.

10. I Am What I Am from La Cage Aux Folles

Another unapologetic, defiant, triumph acknowledgement of self. I will never forget the first time I saw it performed and am always moved by it whenever I hear it again.

Making this list evoked lots of memories of lots of songs and I could go on and on, but I won't. Music has been a huge part of my life, ever since birth and there are countless songs which remind me of special places and special times and special people but this enough for you for today!

Let's Make a Movie

I've said before that there are some nice perks that come with the job of being the theatre critic for the newspaper. One is good seats for all the shows you review (though sometimes that's a mixed blessing) and sometimes you get free stuff.

I interviewed a young film maker the other day. His movie, which has received critical acclaim at local film festivals, is now in release through Netflix, Amazon, iTunes, and some mom-and-pop types of video outlets, as well as in some Blockbuster franchises in the south.

We talked for about an hour and I was quite intrigued with his film, which nicely meshes his background playing college sports with his studies in science (at one point he had intended to go into some allied field of medicine) to produce a film which is primarily about relationships, sexual dysfunction, and the issue of steroids -- did the hero use them, or not?

It all sounded quite good and the comments from the film festivals were glowing (but, as a former publicist, I know how you can manipulate such things, so I took that with a grain of salt). I was thrilled that he gave me a copy of the newly released DVD, which looked very slick. The bits that I had seen on the web site also looked quite good, so I rushed right home from the interview to watch it before writing my article about his film.

You'll notice that I have not mentioned the film maker's name, nor the name of his film. There is a good reason for this. I did not like the movie. I thought the directing was poor in many spots, the acting sometimes mediocre and the script in places made me uncomfortable. And though its production values were overall quite high, there were places where I wanted to whup him upside the head for glaring minor cinematographic problems, such as specks of dust on a car's window, which showed up whenever one of the characters was speaking, one long gray hair in the middle of the heroine's head which stuck out like a sore thumb, and odd lighting which gave another character two different colored eyes, which was extremely distracting. They worked on this film for at least four years, and one would think that in that time those problems could have been addressed!

I would have turned it off but I felt I should watch it through to the end.

Fortunately, my task in writing the article was not to review the film, but to write about the young film maker and his road from being a college theatre student to producing his first film and getting it into the hands of viewers. It was quite enlightening and after hearing his story, it's a wonder that any film makes it to the screen these days!

He says that you hear about movies like Robert Rodriguez's El Mariachi being shot for only $7,000 (a pittance!). "But," he says, "Rodriguez won’t tell you about the $450,000 that got put into sound and visual effects before it hit the DVD shelf much less the millions of dollars that went into marketing and advertising. That’s the myth that’s perpetuated. Nobody talks about the exploitation of the independent film maker."

This particular young film maker started this project in 2004 after graduating from film school. He set up a small real estate business to finance the project and was lucky enough to sell it before the bubble burst. But one of his co-producers backed out of the project, and left him holding a $60,000 bill for music at a time when he had only $200 himself, and no job. He had to put everything aside, move home with his parents, and get two jobs waiting tables, one during the day, and one at night, and work on the film until 2 or 3 in the morning, but by that time he was so far into this movie financially that there was no backing out.

When they finally had a film, they began to shop it around to film festivals. He learned the hard way that everybody wants to be shown at one of the big festivals (I'll let you use your imagination as to which one), but nobody tells you that the choices for that festival are made up to 9 months in advance, though they continue to take entry fees of $50-$100 from "young, green independent film makers" and may take in up to half a million dollars for films that are never going to be chosen. "It's all based on personal relationships," he says, having learned his lesson.

He spent close to $5,000 just in festival submissions, but it did earn him some nice quotes to put in his publicity.

He managed to get some critics to review the film and then set about finding a producer's rep who found a distributor and from there things pretty much are out of his hands, with respect to how the film is marketed.

The packaging for this particular movie is designed to catch the eye, but really is misleading as to what the film is all about, and when the distributor sent it around to various video rental outlets it was not a good selling point when they pointed out that the cover misrepresented the contents of the film.

I found his description how a marketing scheme is worked out simply fascinating:

They say pull up 75-100 movies that are similar to your film. You come up with those 100 movies and they say, OK–now we haven’t read the script yet, we haven’t seen the movie because we’re not going to green light you to shoot the movie but basically what we’re going to do is we’re going to put a 30 sec TV spot and you send that to us. So you create a 30 second TV spot and they say ok this 30 sec TV spot has 10 action beats 2 romance beats, 1 risque beat and so they say let’s look at these other 100 movies that you think are comparable and then they take a look at the six that have 30 TV spots that get broken down by marketing beats that are closest to yours and they say OK these 6 films made x amount of money. This is how we’re going to market the film, this is how much money we project you’re going to make and this is how much we project you’ll make domestically, overseas, cable, television, theatre and DVD and oftentimes they are accurate to within 1%. That’s exactly how that works and so basically that’s why you see regurgitation of the same formula product over and over again.

People are laying out hundreds of millions of dollars, and it’s more science than art than people really want to realize.

So if you want to know why there are so few new plots being developed, this might give you a bit of an insight!

He already has the plot for his next movie laid out, though he freely admits that he will never make back the money he put in on this one. I told him that a great plot would be an expose of the exploitation of the independent film maker.

Now there's a project that would be impossible to market!!

The Sweet Smell of...

I read something recently where the writer was reminiscing and waxing poetic about the smell of freshly mimeographed pages. It's not the first time that something I've read makes that mistake.

Has everyone forgotten ditto machines?

In high school, I was the queen of both the mimeograph machine and the ditto machine and, trust me, there was no high that could be gotten from that black glopy goop that caused black print to appear on the pages from a mimeograph machine.

With a mimeograph machine, you had a kind of thin blue greasy-feeling master that you typed on and as you typed, it cut letters into the master. Then you put the master on the machine and the black goop in the machine oozed out through the holes in the master and produced your finished product. But it really didn't smell like much. You also got a lot more copies out of a mimeograph machine and the masters could be saved and re-used, as long as you carefully put backing sheets between the masters so they didn't stick together.

But the ditto machine....ah.... Now there was something to bury your nose in. Those awful, awful purple master sheets where you typed on white and it picked up gel from the purple backing sheet. Then you separated the backing sheet from the white sheet, put the white sheet on the drum and ran it through an acetone solution. It produced pages of purple material and the bonus was that as the pages came off the machine, you could pretend to be spending a lot of time organizing them into a neat stack, when really what you were doing was burying your nose in the paper and sniffing the acetone.

I wonder now if maybe I didn't have a bit of a high through most of my last two years of high school from all the acetone sniffing I did.

When I think about it, a lot of things about the act of sharing thoughts with others has changed from when I was in school. Starting in grammar school, we learned beautiful penmanship, using The Palmer Method of handwriting.

The Palmer alphabet was posted across the wall of the front of every classroom in grammar school and we routinely had handwriting classes, where we had to be sure to make the letters perfectly, making certain that the lower case letters were only exactly as high as the upper case letters and that all of the letters had the proper slant to the right.

Handwriting class was awful for left handers. I never got good grades in handwriting because my work was always smeared. You can't hold your hand properly and slant your letters to the right without running the palm across the letters you have just written. Nobody ever made allowances for left handers and there was no "Palmer method" for people who write with their left hand. My handwriting doesn't look like the stereotypical left-handers. It slants to the right the way "normal" people write, but it's never been the neat, tidy handwriting that my mother has, for example.

But who writes any more anyway? More and more you see people doing a kind of mixture of writing and printing instead of the old fashioned cursive.

Once I learned to type, my handwriting pretty much went down the tubes. I typed everything. I did a lot of typing for UC Berkeley students, typing theses. Typing theses. Before computers. Before electric typewriters. It was the day of carbon paper and erasers and white-out, but no white-out on theses, please. If you made a mistake you re-typed the page. When they came out with easy-erase paper, I thought I'd died and gone to heaven...and when someone figured out lift-off tape after electric typewriters came along, I knew I had died and gone to heaven. Now I didn't have to erase any more, but I could just backspace, retype the wrong letters using the lift-off tape and it was good as new...but I still had to erase the carbon copies. And if someone needed more than one carbon copy, you had to put a piece of paper or cardboard behind copy #1 so you didn't screw up copy #2.

Now it just all gets typed on the computer and transmitted electronically and it's all very neat and tidy. Nobody hand writes anything, but you also don't get a chance to take a moment to smell the acetone!

Gangrene

Every time I get my blood pressure taken at the doctor's office, I'm convinced I'm going to develop gangrene and my arm will fall off. Not really, but the cuff is so tight that it cuts off all circulation (which is, of course, the whole point!).

As I said a few entries ago, when it comes to doctors, I'm far worse than my mother. It has nothing to do with fear of doctors...I love doctors. I work for doctors. I've been watching doctor shows on TV since the days of Ben Casey, Dr. Kildaire and Marcus Welby. Some of my best friends are doctors.

It's embarrassment.

Look at the 20 years I went without dental care. Was it because of fear of dentists or of pain of fixing cavities? No. It was embarrassment because I didn't want the dentist to yell at me again for not flossing. It wasn't not flossing that kept me from a dentist, it was fear of the dentist finding out that I wasn't flossing that kept me from dentist.

Everybody is scared when they get pregnant for the first time. I was too, but my fear had nothing to do with pain. Well, maybe a little bit to do with pain, but not for the usual reason. My mother had such easy labors that I really felt my labors would be too (and basically they were). But my fear came out of all of those movies and TV scenes of mothers in labor, screaming, crying, yelling things at their husbands, etc. I didn't want to be one of "those" women and that was my biggest fear. (Consequently, I didn't scream, cry, or call Walt names, I'm proud to say.)

So if I was nervous about my stress test today, it had nothing to do with worry about what they might find about the condition of my heart, but everything to do with concern that I might embarrass myself on the treadmill.

How could that happen? I can walk on a treadmill. I know what it's like. But for the two weeks prior to my appointment, my concern was strictly concerned with not embarrassing myself.

But today was the day. I presented myself to the cardiology wing and signed in for a stress test. The first thing you are given is a consent for the test. It reads like all of those medicines advertised on television, letting you know of all the problems that can come up, including the possibility of death. "The possibility of certain changes during the exercise test exists. These possibilities include abnormal blood pressure, or very slow heart beat and very rare instances of heart attack with all of its ramifications...." ("all of its ramifications," I knew, meaning "possible death.")

But that didn't scare me. I just didn't want to make a fool of myself by falling off the treadmill.

So I went into this little room with two lovely women, one of whom sat at a computer and took my history, very gently reminding me of the things I should be doing for my health and, more importantly, why I should be doing them.

They attached a blood pressure cuff and took several readings, each one convincing me that I was going to start suffering from gangrene.

The other woman dressed me in this huge gown, after sticking electrodes all over my bare chest and attaching them to cords that attached to the machine where woman #1 was sitting. She tied the bottom of the gown up around my waist, to prevent me from tripping on it while standing on the treadmill.

Now it was time for the treadmill. With visions of contestants from Biggest Loser, falling all over themselves on the treadmill, sweating like pigs and gasping for breath, I got on the treadmill and started walking.

I hadn't intended to, but I asked the helper tech if she could go into my purse and find my camera and take my picture. Everybody thought this was very funny...but then you have to admit that having a visual makes it all better...too bad the woman who does mammograms doesn't have an assistant!

She started me at 1.7 mph with a slight incline and asked me to walk for 3 minutes. Heck, that was nothing. I do faster than that on my own treadmill all the time. She took my blood pressure again and then increased the speed to 2.5 mph and a significant incline, but even that wasn't bad. Before 10 minutes from the start of the test had passed, she told me we had reached the end of the test. I wasn't panting. I could still talk (with only slight breathing difficulty) and was only just starting to sweat. It was a piece o'cake.

There were more blood pressure readings and then they told me it was all over. They hadn't found anything that would require my being whisked off to the hospital instantly. I don't have the final report but she did tell me that I'm doing OK right now, but she could see that if changes aren't made problems could come along in the future.

It also felt good to hear that she hadn't expected me to last nearly as long as I did (10 minutes??) and was surprised at how little trouble I had with the test.

I don't know why I get so fearful of embarrassing myself at appointments like this. Everyone was wonderfully kind, gentle, understanding and helpful. One more test to go (a nerve conduction study) and a gynecology appointment in a couple of weeks and then I'm finally all caught up on all the health things that need to be take care of and I'm good for the next year.

Guilty Secrets and Disappointments

Every once in awhile you come across questions that ask what your "guilty secret" movie is. I can never think of one, but yesterday I did.

I really like both versions of Legally Blonde. Something just very endearing about Reese Witherspoon's character as she morphs from sorority airhead into a surprising effective attorney, without losing her addiction to the color pink, her obsession with fashion and hair products and, of course, little Bruiser, the dog who is the star of Legally Blonde 2.

When they made the movie into a big Broadway musical, I had my misgivings, and from rumors I'd heard from the theatrical cognoscenti my misgivings were well founded.

Unfortunately, we are in an age without writers like Rodgers and Hammerstein or any of the teams who gave us the golden age of the Broadway musical. Now it seems that the new shows are reworking of movies, with Disney dominating the scene. Or Andrew Lloyd Webber, who has his moments, but despite his fame, can't match the Masters. (Sondheim is an acquired taste for many.)

So I wasn't really excited to be going to review the touring production of the stage show last night. Walt was at a meeting, so I went with my colleague, Jeff, who would be writing a review for another publication.

Neither of us was really very excited about being there. Jeff wondered if, given the type of show that it was, the Sacramento audience would be the same type that we usually saw for other musicals.

That question was answered pretty quickly when a woman sat down next to me, reeking of cheap perfume (I know it was cheap because I recognized it from the days long, long ago when I used to wear scents) and hauled a huge box of licorice red vines out of her purse and began to share them with her companion. Fortunately she got the cellophane on the box all opened before the overture started. And at least she didn't have popcorn in her purse!

As for the show...well, let's just say that if Jeff and I weren't conscientious, principled critics, we would have gladly left at intermission. I sent Walt a text message saying "You bettah off..." A group meeting was probably more enjoyable than this production.

Jeff said he was going to call it "Forgettably Blonde," and I described it in Gertrude Stein's terms: "There's no there there."

Oh, I won't say it wasn't terrible. The performances were quite good and the audience seemed to really be liking it (but then my seat mate was eating red vines by the handful--what can you expect?) but the songs were distinctly forgettable, with one or two exceptions. As I said in my review, it's like they got all the scenes of the movie into the stage show, but left out the heart. And the two dogs in the show were like afterthoughts. "Oh we need to have the dog in here somewhere. Let's have him run on here..."

There were also what I found to be offensive gay stereotypes and the expected jokes as a result. The audience laughed uproariously, but I was distinctly uncomfortable (and said so in my review).

Whenever anybody tells me how lucky I am to have this job, I tell them that the plus side of being a critic is that you get to see all the shows that come to town. The negative side is that you have to see every show that comes to town! I could easily have passed on this one. I'm sure there is an audience out there for it, but I'd rather watch the movie, thank you.

---

However, we are going to have another theatre experience in New York next month. We have been debating whether or not to go to the opening night of Jimmy's Zero Hour next month. It's not like we haven't already seen the show several times...but this is New York for heaven's sake, so I finally bit the bullet and sent money for tickets.

And as we will probably never have a reason to go to New York during the holiday season ever, ever again, I also paid a king's ransom and got tickets for the Christmas Show at Radio City Music Hall. Everyone tells me you should see this show at least once in your life.

Jimmy is coming off a successful run of Zero Hour in Washington, DC, where he seems to have had universally outstanding reviews. One can only hope he will take New York by storm as well. I have every expectation that he will.

Thursday Thirteen

My first thirteen list. Taking an idea from "Thoughts from Miller Manor," and listing 13 technological gizmos I could live without, but would prefer not to.

1. Digital Camera. It goes everywhere with me, whether I ever use it or not.
2. iTouch. Never dreamed I would enjoy it as much as I do. I have read twice as many books using the Kindle App than I have in the past four years.
3. External Hard Drive. I would love to get one of those multi terabyte ones, but this one has extended the storage of my computer significantly.
4. Caller ID. I don't answer 800 numbers and sometimes don't answer the calls of people I just don't feel like talking to at that time. I don't want to be a slave to the telephone.
5. Cell Phone. I could live without my cell phone. I don't use it that much, but I do appreciate it when I want to text someone or make a call without having to find a pay phone.
6. My computer, of course. Where would I be without the computer. So much more than simply a "technical gizmo."
7. iPod. Different from the iTouch. My iPod has 30 gig storage and is where I keep all my music and download recordings of the radio show "Says You" each week.
8. Digital Card Reader. It's so much easier than having to connect the camera to the computer when I want to download photos.
9. Flip Video. I don't use it all that much, but really like the quality of the photos, which are much better than the video I can take on my digital camera.
10. Individual fan. So nice to have it by my side where I can reach it when I'm hot. I'm very spoiled.
11. Remote control. They say you should get exercise getting up and changing the channel on the TV, but I discovered that you can't change the channel on a Comcast box without the remote. Unless you want to go from Channel 3 to Channel 999 one channel at a time! I have become the Queen of the Remote Control.
12. Flash Drive(s). Makes it so much easier to move between desktop and laptop.
13. Cassette. I'm actually not sure what you call it, but it's the faux cassette that goes into the casette player in the car that will let me play stuff on my iPod through the car speakers.
    

Yes, Sister

1 October 2009

The California Musical Theatre opened a new cabaret show a week ago. It's called "Late Night Catechism" and was created and performed by Chicago-born Maripat Donovan, who makes the perfect nun.

For those of us who were raised Catholic and especially those who attended Catholic schools, it's a very funny show. She had us all sitting up straight, answering with "Yes, Sister" and reciting long-forgotten questions from the Baltimore Catechism, word for word.

Ned's colleague Walter (whose last name I don't know) and his wife of 41 years were the stars of the show because Walter's wife correctly answered the question "What is a sacrament?" with the proper catechism answer "A sacrament is an outward sign, instituted by Christ to give grace." High fives all around. Amazing how it all comes back to you.

But for those with no Catholic experience, it can be deadly dull, as I found out from my colleague, who attended the show with us and who said the jokes went way over his head, confirmed by a Jewish man he spoke with at intermission who also wasn't getting it.

I enjoyed it more than I expected to, but gave it a luke warm review, mainly because of what seems to be a limited appeal to non-Catholics.

However, Donovan also uses this show as a fund-raiser. After all the laughs and the applause, she talks about how much money the show has raised for retired nuns. She brought out a fact I didn't know, that the Catholic church opted out of including nuns in the Social Security system and so when they retire, there is...nothing for them.

In my day, the day when I was going to be a nun myself, there were convents and nuns looked like "Sister" above. When my lifelong friend, Sister Anne, was dying of non-Hodgkins Lymphoma, she went to the retirement home for the Daughters of Charity in Indiana, which is where she was cared for and where she died. Now many nuns don't wear habits, live in apartments by themselves, work in the community and receive a salary. But at the end of their career, there is nothing to support them.

I also didn't realize that the median age for nuns in this country is 73 (according to Donovan).

We were discussing this at Richard's house yesterday and Char talked about a nun who worked in her office. She was in her mid-70s and had been a teacher at a Catholic school in San Francisco, but was let go from that job and just left to her own devices--no support whatsoever from the Catholic church for her lifetime of service, no source of income and the church just expected that her family would care for her. They didn't, so at an age when the rest of us were looking at retirement, she had to get a job to support herself. As Char explained it, at the time that Char retired, the nun had long since ceased to be able to handle the job for which she was originally hired, but the office didn't want to fire her, as they would any other person, because she had nowhere to go and no way to support herself.

This is an outrage!!! How the Catholic church treats women is a sin. When I think of all the support given to pedophile priests vs. the disdain with which women are treated, it makes me realize even more why I consider myself a "recovering Catholic."

Mercy Sister Theresa Kane recently criticized the church hierarchy re its continuing treatment of women in general and women religious in particular in an article in the National Catholic Reporter.

"I think the male hierarchy is truly impotent, incapable of equality, co-responsibility in adult behavior,” she said, not mincing any words. “In the church today, we are experiencing a dictatorial mindset and spiritual violence," she says.

“Why do we hope and why do we endure?” she asked. “I have one chance, one life, and therefore I have a responsibility to criticize. Our hope comes from solidarity between women religious and laywomen.”

“If we do not get angry, we won’t make change,” she said. And change can come, she noted. Years back, she recalled, women were required to cover their heads when in church — “even using tissue paper, if necessary.” After a while women simply stopped the practice and the requirement ended. She called it a “silent revolution.”

Lord, I remember the "tissue paper" days, when if you forgot to bring something with which to cover your head, you took a bobbie pin and a Kleenex tissue and pinned it to your head in order to enter a Catholic church.

I also remember the days when I served as an "altar girl" at our high school chapel. But as a mere female, I was not permitted to actually go ON the altar. I had to kneel outside the alter, on the other side of the communion railing.

Sooner or later the Catholic church has to recognize that women have their place in the religion. I won't be there to see it, of course, but this inequality of women in the Catholic church is just ridiculous. I hope change comes in time for the older nuns struggling to make ends meet after being ignored by the church they served so loyally for so many years.