The Drawer

According to my special dates calendar, today is supposed to be "Clean Up Your Room Day."  Well we all know that isn't going to happen.

But as I was setting this page up I read back over the 2000 entry, "The Drawer."  It was interesting to read the things the drawer that I describe as "Do you have a "drawer" in your house? You know...the place where everything gets stored when it has no other home. I read a journal recently where the writer went through a drawer in his home. It inspired me to look through our "drawer." This is the middle drawer in our kitchen counter. For years whenever someone is looking for something small, the standard response is "look in "the drawer." Even though there are five drawers in that counter, everybody knows which drawer to look in."  A quick check at the drawer now shows that I got rid of a lot of the old stuff and now there is a bnch of new stuff, including a lot of electronic stuff for computers I no longer have.

The first thing on the 2000 entry is this "Adult Perpetual Diary" which I bought umpty-ump years ago to record special annual events. In 2000, i said, 

"I’ve been doing this now for over 30 years. The book itself is a tour through my life."  Since I wrote that 19 years ago, I guess the book is now nearly 50 years old  and still resides in "the drawer." I find the birth dates of people I worked with in the early 1960s, people now dead, people with whom I’ve had a falling out. Each name is a new story.  I haven't added new names in this book for a long time, but I can't throw it away or i will forget when Arthur Conrad's birthday is (he was an actor/choreographer who died in about 1987)

This was an interesting find

At some time I thought I wanted a charm bracelet and started filling it.  I can't remember what all these are, but there is a little Half Dome (from Yosemite), a Skunk Train, a little National Cathedral in DC, both the Empire State Building and the Statue of Liberty and that thing that is on the top there is a drunk on a lamppost, a remembrance of the physics textbook I typed, which used that as an example of the "random walk problem," probably the only thing in that book I actually understood.  I haven't worn the bracelet in a very long time because (a) my wrist is now too big and (b) it bothers me to have anything on my wrist--I don't even wear a watch any more.

I see there are very old tic tacs, an unwrapped little tin of Altoids, 2 knobs from the drawers in the kitchen, a chap stick (which I'm happy to see since my lips have been very chapped this week)

There are three souvenir spoons, two very tarnished.  At one point I collected lots of these spoons, but several years ago, gave them all to my cousin, who wanted to use them to make a project.  These are three that I must have overlooked in collecting them for her.

The one on the left is from "Judy Garland's birthplace"; the one in the middle is from Amsterdam, and the one on the right is from Wales.

I also found something cut off of a box which has a recipe for tilapia.  Since I won't cook tilapia any more, since I found out it is a garbage fish, fed from animal feces, and can't forget the photo I saw, I don't know why I kept the recipe.

There are two and a half pairs of earrings.  I tried putting on the middle pair and couldn't get one to go through my left earlobe.  This pair was made by a woman I used to work with at the ob/gyn office.  I might actually throw away the white one, since it has no mate.

This is a business card holder that I don't know that I ever used.  The cards that are in there now are outdated, since while our phone number is the same, the area code has changed, which I discovered when I found one of these cards to give to Sandy and he tried sending me a text message.  Too bad because I have about 1,000 more of these cards in a box somewhere here in my office!.

Of course there are lots of rubber bands in the drawer.  I think they are left over from when I went through this drawer in 2000, most of them left over from when David delivered newspapers.  He delivered papers in grammar school.  He died in 1996 at age 24.  I still have the rubber bands. Often I drove with him on his route and it was a great time to be together early in the morning. I can remember the times that we would sit on the floor of the family room, at 5 a.m., putting these rubber bands around the newspapers, then loading them into the car and heading off on the route. Once David and Tom got snowed in at Lake Tahoe and I had to deliver the route myself. It nearly killed me. It’s impossible to find house numbers in the dark in Davis. What used to take David 15 minutes took me 2 hours.

This is a splicer leftover from the days when I used to make movies and edit them.  I haven't made a movie since the advent of digital photography and don't have a clue why I have held on to this for decades.

There is also a package of shoelaces which say "made in Australia," which I'm certain pre-date my friendship with Peggy and a plastic thing with Mickey Mouse on it.  I don't know what it was intended t o be, but it is broken and can't be what it was supposed to be.

Maybe I'll throw some of this stuff away...or leave it there for another 10 years so I have another excuse to write an entry entitled "The drawer."

Lost Sock Day

I've been having fun discovering all of the weird dates set aside for weird things.  I missed "no socks day" yesterday, but I wouldn't have celebrated anyway, because I always wear socks.  Always. 

But today I have to finally face a big job waiting for me.  It's "lost sock memorial day" and so it's time to confront this:

 

We all know that when you put a pair of socks in the wash, half the time only one of them survives and the other may or may not reappear at some point.  So I've been collecting all of the solitary socks for a long time now, intending at some point to go through and see if there were actually any pairs in there.  My mis-matched socks filled 2 big bags and Today Was The Day to deal with it all.

I should point out that I started wearing the same kind of socks years ago, when I got too fat to lift my leg to put on other socks easily.  It's too bad because I had a nice collection of interesting designed socks, which are now too small (can one be too small to fit into socks?).  I buy these fluffy socks at the Dollar store, which almost always has a nice assortment.  If I were smart, I'd buy half a dozen of the same design and avoid this particular situation.  I almost always eventually wear a hole in the heel of one of the socks, leaving the other just fine and wearable, but unmatched, which many of the above socks are.

So I laid them all out on the family room floor (to Polly's consternation because it was taking up HER space!) and was surprised to discover how many pairs of socks I actually had in the pile.

I filled an empty drawer with all of those now matched pairs of socks and I don't think I'm going to have to do any sock shopping for awhile  I will start weeding them out as they get holes in the heels, but even at that, it's gonna take awhile before I'm needing new socks!

 

(The drawer is full just from matching up socks in the pile.)

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Brianna's softball team just won their mini tournament and Bri made the winning play!

Lacie (on a different team) also finally got her first hit, which was a big cause for celebration.

 
Lacie has been so uninterested in sports that it's nice to see that she is finally getting interested in playing.  She will never be the athlete that Brianna is, though.  Lacie will publish her first book by the time she's 20.

Be Kind to Animals

 

Apparently the first full week of the month of May is set aside as Be Kind to Animals week.

Don't tell Polly or she'll want even more....

Polly's day runs on a strict schedule.  Now that she's an only dog, she is not as insistent as she used to be, but she does expect us to understand what she wants at all times.

It used to be she woke me up in the morning when she was ready for breakfast.  She doesn't do that any more.  She lets me sleep as long as I want but the minute I start sitting up, she gives me a "yip" to let me know she's ready to eat.  But she also knows that I go to the bathroom first so she stands at the door of the kitchen, silently, and then barks again a couple of times as I come out the door--just in case I've forgotten that she hasn't had her breakfast yet.

If I don't then open the door to the yard while she's eating, she stand there at the door, looking at me to remind me.

She is pretty much on her own during the day, but if her water bowl is empty, she knocks it around bumping it into things so I can hear.  If I sit down to eat something, she sit at my feet, staring at me, demanding her cut when I'm finished.

Sometimes she comes in here to my office and puts her front paws on my knee.  I haven't quite understood what that means.  Usually she has been fed, the door is open she has water, and it's too early for dinner, so I think that she just wants to be petted, but sometimes I realize that she wants a blanket put on the floor for her.

If Walt walks through the family room, she always lets out a "yip" to let him know that he needs to pet her on the head (I love their relationship).

Starting at around 4 p.m., she comes into my office periodically reminding me it's almost dinner time.  I'll say "It's too early; wait 15 minutes" or "not now - wait 30 minutes."  I know it's just coincidence, but in 15 or 30 minutes she will be back.

When we sit down to eat our dinner she sits right by my side, waiting for me to finish my dinner so she can lick my plate.  (If Carolyn or Ashley is reading this they are cringing by now, I'm sure).

Once she--and we--finish dinner, she settles down for the night until Walt gets the mini ice cream bars we have for dessert.  She knows she will get a treat when we have finished the bars and he has taken the wrappers to the garbage.  She is very antsy until we finish--and if Walt finishes first, she may bark at him and he tells her she has to wait until I've finished.

Once he puts the rappers in the garbage can, he gives her a teeny tiny treat...about 1/2" of a beef jerky and he's amazed at how excited she gets for such a tiny treat.  But that treat is her signal that the day is over and she settles down for the night.  

 

Walt usually goes upstairs for awhile and then comes down to tell me good night.  If he forgets to tell HER goodnight too, she gives him a bark and then looks up while he pets her, then goes back to sleep.

It's amazing that this is our daily routine, and that it is all pretty much dictated by our being kind to Polly.

Her reliance on routine actually works for us.  Should she get out the front door (which she almost never does) and runs down the street, all I have to do is close the door, loudly, and she realizes she is locked out and comes running back instantly.  Sure is a lot easier than trying to chase her which I used to do years ago.

What I'm wondering is how this years-long routine is going to change come the fall, when Ned, Marta and dog Bouncer are going to move in here!

The Bush

I have mentioned my mother's love of trees.  Nature in its entirety, really.  She grew up on a ranch and she comes alive when she gets out into nature (or did). It must have been difficult for her to live in the concrete jungle that is San Francisco.

She also was not quite as passionate about taking photographs as I have been but whenever  there was some sort of "significant" event, she wanted to take pictures.  But we didn't have a flash camera, so the photos had to be taken outside and "greenery" is not always easy to come by in the big city.

Across the street from us was a big apartment building and in front of it was the door to a big garage.  Next to that door there was a bush.  Whenever we were going to have our photos taken, we headed over to the bush.

 

When I think back over the years, I don't ever remember that bush getting bigger.  It was always this hint of "nature" that snuck into many of our photos.  I'm wondering if  this might have been for Karen's first communion, but I don't remember us ever wearing long dresses for that.

 

Hard to find traces of the people who once performed in vaudeville in these photos...

 

Sometimes we took family pictures in other locations -- this was in front of the apartment building where my grandparents lived from the time my father was a young child until my grandfather died, 1675 Clay Street, San Francisco, apartment 6.  I still remember.

 

I'm not sure what year this would have been, but looking at me, I think it would not be too long before the doctor would put me on my first diet.

Ned and I were going to take some of these photos to my mother to show her today, but I woke up with a sore throat.  It's not bad, but things are going so well at Eldervilla that I don't want to risk giving her something.

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Yesterday was a big day for historical events.  In  1889, The Paris Exposition opened with the just completed Eiffel Tower as its centerpiece. 

* The Dirigible Hindenburg exploded into flames at Lakehurst, NJ. (1937) (oh, the humanity!)
* The Chunnel linking England & France officially opened. (1994) (we went through that chunnel once), and
* the Yale Lock was patented

Now don't you feel just a little bit smarter?

Making a Difference

I received the sad news that my friend, Joan Callaway, died this morning.  Joan was a very special woman, who made a difference in the world.  This is an article I wrote about her in 2011:

It was New Year’s Eve, 1970, when Glen and Joan Snodgrass packed up their Soda Springs cabin after a skiing trip and returned to their Davis home on Mulberry Lane.

Joan remembers tucking the covers in around 12-year-old Keith. The family, except for Marci, who had remained at Soda Springs to ski another day, went to bed.

The unthinkable happened. Son Mark shouted that there was a fire in Keith’s room. Glen and Joan rushed to get their children and the dog out. Daughter Laurie shouted that Keith was still in the house. Glen broke a window and, with help from Joan and Laurie, pulled Keith out onto the grass as the fire trucks arrived.

Joan knew Keith was badly burned and he was rushed to the old Davis Community Hospital, against Joan’s wishes. (She wanted him taken to the UC Davis Medical Center in Sacramento, but the firefighters insisted he had to be taken to the nearest hospital.) Joan rode beside her son as they raced to the hospital, and was aware that he had lost consciousness.

This many years later, Joan — now Joan Callaway — remembers little of exactly what happened during that awful night but clearly remembers the days that followed, and the subsequent death of her son and her husband.

She has written a book about her experiences, the story of one woman’s climb out of the abyss after sudden loss, a story of survival, coping and eventual healing of the whole family.

The book, "It’s an Ill Wind, Indeed, … that blows no good" is available at The Avid Reader, 617 Second St. in downtown Davis or as an eBook through Amazon.com

The book grew out of a writing group Joan joined about eight years ago, with Davis Enterprise columnist Bob Dunning’s mother, Dorothy. Joan intended to write her story in a linear fashion, starting with her birth and childhood, but when Dorothy asked if she was going to write about the fire, she got to work.

"I wrote a little something and then I couldn’t stop,” Joan recalled. “I had to just do it. It was like opening the floodgates. There were a lot of tears and some laughs, but it demanded to be written."

She paints a no-holds-barred picture of the grief following the tragedy — how her friends and neighbors rallied around to take care of the family, how others turned away, embarrassed that they didn’t know what to say.

"I took long, solitary walks in the dark hours of pre-dawn morning trying to come to grips with what was happening to us … anger surfaced again and again. … I kept waking night after night praying that this was a nightmare, hoping against hope to reach over and find Glen there in bed beside me. If only …"

She speaks of the isolation she felt in her circle of married friends, and how she drew away from them. The pain of the "firsts" — first holidays, first birthdays, first anniversaries — all were now part of her family’s new reality.

There were papers to sign, a house to rebuild and sell, legal matters concerning the cause of the fire. Her anger and depression deepened as she began the process of rebuilding a life with her four surviving children.

Slowly, Joan began to come back to life. She worked with psychologist Louise Wilson to start a group that was called Bereavement Outreach.

"There was nothing in Davis except singles groups," she recalls. "Louise was working on grief at Sac State, and she’d been doing a lot of reading and I’d been doing as much reading as I could find and we decided that maybe there was a need."

With help from Herbert and Hanna Bauer, then co-presidents of the Mental Health Association, they started holding meetings.

"We started out with six widowed people," Joan says. "Many of them had been widowed for a long time — like nine, 10, 14 years — and they were still actively grieving and they wouldn’t put in a new chair in the home without thinking about whether their husband have wanted them to do that."

The group eventually expanded to include parents who had lost children.

Realizing her need to make a living, she opened first one, and then another business in town. She helped found Citizens Who Care, an organization which helps the frail elderly and their care givers, and later was instrumental in the opening of All Things Right & Relevant, a thrift store, which benefits a handful of local nonprofit organizations.

She continued to raise children who have become successful in their fields and ultimately found love again, with her marriage to Ed Callaway.

Her story is unforgettable and will serve to inspire and perhaps amaze those who don’t understand how one can rebound after a tragic loss.

Joan was handed lemons and continued to make lemonade. Her book shows how she did it, and heaps praise on the people who helped her all along the way.

One beneficiary of some of the services that Joan helped start wrote, "You have clearly put your life, your losses and your extraordinary energy to good use all your adult years. I believe there are known and unknown angels in every life, and you have been one of the heretofore invisible angels at work in ours."

In these recent years, Joan had worked tirelessly, holding writing groups helping people write their memories. Someone wrote on her page today that she had been inspired by her tenacity. Her " can-do" philosophy.. And her unquestionable love for her fellow man. For Women's Rights. And love of children.

I was part of her occasional lunch group, where our discussions always turned political.  Our group started during the Bush administration, when we called ourselves the "Bush Bashing Babes."  We enjoyed 8 yrs of Obama and lately have been much more active!  She started getting volunteers together to write postcards trying to get people to the polls to vote for Democratic candidates. 

She made a difference in this world and she will be sorely missed.

KIVA

I had a message this morning that two of my Kiva loans had been repaid and so I had money in my account to make another loan.

Many of my Kiva loans have been to people who are raising livestock, or who are from countries where I already have some connection.  (I must have loaned enough for a small cattle herd of my own by now!)

My latest loan was different.  Anna is an experienced agronomist from Ditak village, Armenia, where she lives with her husband, son and daughter. The family owns a farm where they keep pigs and bulls and cultivate cabbage. Thanks to the sales of agri-products, they are able to sustain their living. Anna and her husband always search for ways to improve the productivity levels of the farm.

Having this in mind, Anna applied for financial support. With the provided loan she plans to purchase new seeds and high-quality feed. This will help to keep the farm at a productive level so that they can increase their agri-business income.

Anna and her family are full of hope to achieve their desired outcome so that her son can get full support in the pursuit of his dream of becoming a well-known musician.

Anybody who wants a loan to help her son become a musician (well known or not) is OK in my book!

I first heard of Kiva in the early 2000s from Al Gore, who was describing micro loans in interviews about An Inconvenient Truth.  I love Kiva because each loan is $25, which is eventually paid back, so you can use your original $25 over and over again.  My $25 is added to a bunch of losns by other donors to make one big loan.

Over the 15-20 years I have been involved, I have made 71 loans to people in 27 different countries.  I tend to go for either livestock or oddball things like Rose in Uganda (photo at left), who wanted a loan so she could buy and sell gin.  She has four children of her own and is caring for two others.  No wonder she needs gin.

A check of some of the loans I have made give an idea of what attracts me to someone seeking a loan.

I made a loan to a woman in Uganda who wanted beauty products for her beauty salon.  The first of my Compassion sponsored children who left the program left to open a beauty parlor in Uganda.  I couldn't loan to her, but I could help Annita. 

One woman from Kenya wrote, in her thank you that she was using the money so “I could expand my business, earn some income and contribute to cleaning up Kayaba of flying toilets.”  I was intrigued and looked it up on Wikipedia, "A flying toilet is a facetious name for a plastic bag that is used as a simple collection device for human faeces when there is a lack of proper toilets. The filled and tied plastic bags are then discarded in ditches or on the roadside, or simply thrown as far away as possible."

I also loaned money to an elderly woman who needed the loan to help rebuild her roof and I've made loans to a few women who are trying to pay their children's tuition.

A woman in Indonesia used the money to help build a sanitation facility for her family, as did Teresia in Nairobi, who learned about Fresh Life Toilets through the sales associates at Fresh Life and is determined to join the movement by acquiring one Fresh Life Toilet..

Osmiry in the Dominican Republic needed a loan to help buy a truck as she does long-haul delivery jobs for dry goods.

Kellen in Uganda, who sells juice and water, wanted to build  a home for children.

Rebecca, a professional woman from Kenya, who is helping to care for the four children of her two deceased siblings asked for a loan to help to buy medicine for her paralyzed father, as she is the only employed person in the family

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Rebecca

A widow with 9 children wanted a loan to help with her beekeeping business.

I chose Maria Daniela from Nicaragua, who is a grocer, because of her weight problem.  She is the owner and administrator of several business which include: cutting up pork, sales of chicken and mass consumption products like rice, sugar, beans, oil, candy, bread, vegetables, detergents, etc. She also sells milk products and offers delicious curds, cheese, boronas [a type of bread], and sour milk [a milk product similar to buttermilk]. Maria Daniela has had this business for more than 19 years and makes her purchases from distributors. In addition, on weekends she sells pork that is already cut up as well as her delicious nacatamales, for which she is well-known. One of her dreams is to enable her little granddaughter to get a good education and to be able to have a higher income. The objective of this loan is to invest it in working capital, principally in wholesale chicken. 

 

Vera also has weight problems.  She sells clothing and flowers in Ukraine.

Agatha is a bread maker with 5 children in Kenya.  Another Agatha, in Ghana is another bread maker.

I chose "Karen" in the Philippines because my sister's name was Karen.  She wanted a loan to buy fertilizer and insecticides for her rice fields.

Megi in Georgia wanted a loan to buy "wine trees." 

Mukombogo is a widow in Kenya who has raised poultry for 15 years.  She also has seven children, three of whom are still at home, and wanted a loan to buy chicks and chicken feed so she can eventually have time to spend with her grandchildren.

Margaret is a member of a group in Uganda who wanted a loan to complete the house she has been building for her family for the past seven years.

I even made a couple of loans to people in the US.  One of the few men I loaned to sold baseball caps and is one of the very very few who defaulted on his loan.  But Yolanda makes pesto and sells it from her house and hopes to buy bulk inventory and expand her business.  One must encourage pesto-makers!

Ivone is from Mozambique and is a widow with six children, who also sells various goods and wanted a loan to help pay for things like oil and beans.

Luisa in the Philippines has a store and wanted a loan to help her save money so she can send her seven children to college.

And how could I not loan money to Atta in Ghana, who sells donuts?

I chose this woman in the Philippines after I saw her photo and read why she wanted money.

Dulcisima is 67 years old and lives in Sinacaban. She is married with 8 children. She has a motorcycle repair business and earns approximately $230 each month doing this type of work.

She has requested a loan to purchase materials for her motorcycle repair business.

I'm so glad I found Kiva.  My original $25 has done amazing stuff.  Over the years I have made one or two other new loans, but this entry represents only some of the loans I have made and I have not spent as much as $100.  So many ways to help people around the world that don't cost a lot of money!

Happenings

Davis is a good place for local "happenings."

Several years ago, we went to a gala unveiling of an exterior wall on the public bathroom in Central Park.  The wall had been designed by local artist Heidi Bekebrede and the event came with musicians, speeches, and refreshments.

 

Heidi is a beloved local artist, who creates "Cuteware," very distinctive looking pieces of ceramics.  I was once thrilled to get one at a Christmas white elephant gift exchange.  The person who brought it had no idea what she had, nor did anyone else there, so I carefully guarded it and at the end of the evening brought it home.  It is one of my prized possessions.

There was also an all-town celebration for the completion of a toad tunnel under a newly built overpass, and the little village created by the father of the postmaster for the toads waiting to cross the road from the post office to the dog park on the other side.  The buildings even have solar paneling.

(actual tunnel circled)

 

Wikipedia reports that the tunnel cost $14,000, while the book "Northern California Curiosities" reports $12,000. The book "Weird California" claims it was $30,000.  In any event, it was a lot and there is, to date (a couple of decades later, I believe) there is no recorded evidence that it has ever been used by any toads and the houses designed for them are now falling into disrepair.

But the grand opening included closing the overpass, which was predicted to cause the demise of frogs trying to cross the road, and having a party on it, including a band and dancing.

Davis is a town ready to party.  There is a portable stage that can be moved to wherever you want to have your party, even if it's in your own back yard (we went to such a gathering) and there is an inflatable movie screen which can be set up in the park to show movies on warm summer nights.

And, of course, there is Picnic Day, the biggest event in town.  It's like your kid's school's open house, only the "house" is the campus of the University of California and many departments find things to put on display, from a cow with a hole in its stomach (so students can study the digestive process), to daschund races to a battle of bands from several UC campuses.

There are parades whenever an event warrants one.  When our kids were little, we took them to see the Christmas parade and the Easter parade and discovered that there were more people IN the parades than actually watching them.  Anybody with a truck and a group of happy revelers can join the parade and if you have an unusual bicycle, even better.

 

Tonight we went to another "happening."  Many years ago, our kids were in school with the Kalisky kids.  We continued to have nodding acquaintance with their parents, Mo and Trudy, for the next 40-some-odd years.  Some time ago, they opened a bakery called "Upper Crust."  I don't think they sold anything out of the bakery but you could always see them at farmers' markets.  Whenever I ran into Trudy, she was full of stories about her kids and gave me some of her baked goods.

Recently, they took over the old spot where Radio Shack used to be and turned it into a bakery.  Today was their "Grand Opening" and I expected to find a small crowd.  I didn't realize it was going to be a huge deal.

 

There was a huge crowd and Trudy told me we missed the ribbon cutting, but there was lots of food...and was there ever, starting with a huge challah bread, sliced thick, that a boy was slathering with whipped butter from a vat.

 

They served pizza and paella (chicken and vegetarian), had tons of drinks and some sweet things to taste.  It was just...incredible.

 

The one thing missing was familiar faces.  20-30 years ago if we went to something like this, we'd know most of the people there.  I only knew one person, and a guy I didn't know came to ask me whether I was reviewing the opening or not.

But it was fun, and when I went into the store to buy some challah to take home, I saw a page from a book which showed Mo, Trudy and probably their son Loren.

 
This particular strip mall has been death to most businesses which set up there, especially food places.  But based on the people who were there tonight, and the long history of the Upper Crust, I suspect this is a business that is going to last.  I already want to go back and try some of the other breads, after we finish our challah.