Nonagenarian Surfer

(Title and photos shamelessly "borrowed" from blogger Wilma Scott)

His name is William (Willy) Baker and on Saturday he turned 97. He may be the country's oldest blogger--and he's been at it since 1999. He may also be the oldest person on Facebook. We may never know.

I met him a year ago, when fellow blogger, Wilma Scott, from Ontario, Canada, came to California to help Willy celebrate his 96th birthday. Wilma and I had stayed in touch through e-mail, blogs, and more recently Facebook (don't ever play Lexulous with her...she always wins!) and when she came to California, her first visit to this state, I offered to give her my Grand Tour of San Francisco.

We made that tour a year ago and one of the perks of having made those arrangements was that I got to meet Willy when I picked Wilma up and dropped her off again after our day in San Francisco.

This year we decided to just stay at Willy's house and have lunch there, which would give me the opportunity to visit with him as well. What a delightful afternoon.

His birthday party had been on Saturday and his gift from Wilma was a book of Willy's memories, taken from his blog, which Wilma had collected and had printed and bound for his family and friend. Willy graciously gave me a copy of the nearly 500 page book and it is a fascinating read.

The introduction to the book gives his story, very briefly.

Born June 12, 1914, married 57 years, octogenarian widower as of 3/4/1997, 4 children, 5 grandchildren, 10 great grandchildren.

Log cabin in the Arkansas Ozark mountains at Norfork 3 years, Oklahoma oilfields 16, California San Joaquin valley at Corcoran with aunt and uncle 2, CCC camps 2, San Francisco Bay area since 1936. Electronics engineer with the Lawrence Berkeley lab over 40 years (Staff Senior Scientist rank last years), inventive type, retired since 1980.

My wife was the joy of my life. Wish I had retired earlier so we could have had more fun travelling in our motor home--and visiting far-away places all over the world. We decided on a family life with 4 kids before we got married. The kids have families of their own now. A happy family life is about as close to heaven on earth as it gets.

Random reading of various bits and pieces promise a book that will be entertaining, enlightening and sad in parts, but a wonderful chronicle of a full life. His niece was there when I arrived, helping unload food from his refrigerator because a new one was being delivered today. It was delightful watching her interact with him and blatantly obvious that the two of them love each other very much. They told me about their trip to Turkey together a few years ago.

Thanks, Wilma and Willy. I had a great time and look forward to seeing you again next year!

Blogging the Tonys

It's really silly how much I look forward to the Tonys every year. I have seen exactly one show on Broadway in my life -- Rent, many years ago (that may have been 1996, that horrible trip during which David died at home). I don't know Broadway stars, as a general rule. Not only do I not recognize them, I don't even know their names.

Yet, I love this show. I think it's one of the classiest of the big award shows, and so I was looking forward to the Tonys all week. And, as I did the Oscars, I decided to blog the Tonys. Here goes...

Loved the opening number. Not exactly tongue in cheek...more a statement of fact ("theater isn't for gays any more"). And, face it, Neil Patrick Harris can do anything.

Interesting that most of the nominees for supporting actress came from television. Ellen Barkin gave a wonderful speech. I wonder if The Normal Heart is going to sweep the awards for straight plays (harkening back to the opening number).

LOVED seeing Robert Morse and Matthew Broderick introducing Daniel Radcliffe in the number from How to Succeed.... Talk about the torch being passed! Watching "Brotherhood of Man" makes it clear that Radcliffe can certainly do more than ride a quiddich broom!

Hmmm...I don't remember seeing a stand-up routine in a Tony Show. Not that I don't like John Leguizamo, but aren't shows usually too LONG? Do they really need to pad it?

Yep. John Benjamin Hickey takes the award forThe Normal Heart. (This is a play about the early days of the AIDS epidemic, written by Larry Kramer, who founded ACT UP in 1987 and is credited for "bringing drugs to market that now make it possible for millions of HIV-positive people to live reasonably normal lives"*). With Joel Grey as one of the directors of this production, I guess it's not surprising that it's winning the awards. Hickey also gives an impassioned speech, reminding people that after all these years, "the war is not over."

Lessee...I missed a couple of things while I was getting dinner on the table, but other directors won, not the ones for The Normal Heart. I had to giggle when both forgot to thank their spouses and each did it for the other! Oh yeah--and first win for the directors of The Book of Morman. Is this hinting at a sweep for that favorite?

They say Scottsboro Boys has closed on Bdwy and is going on tour...but it's not on the schedule for our Broadway Series next seasion, darn it.

Angela Lansbury must not be able to read a teleprompter, since she read her information off of cards. And even then stumbled over some of the words.

I can't help it. I just LOVE it when young actresses like Nikki M. James get so excited and emotional about winning (The Book of Mormon).

OK...the Hugh Jackman/Neil P. Harris duet was great. I loved it. I love song parodies anyway.

Oh so glad John Larouquette won the Tony for best supporting actor in a musical. I've liked him ever since the Night Court days.

Sorry, but the song from Spiderman was a yawner. It certainly didn't make me want to pay ridiculous prices to see it (though I did love the 30 seconds of Spiderman jokes that Neil P. Harris delivered!)

Robin Williams: "the only beard here is on my face. What a nice night." LOL.

The scene from Sister Act was fun...I love that scene in the movie, but it was fun to see it with different people in the roles. The woman playing Delores was ok, but no Whoopie Goldberg.

And man...that horse in War Horse almost makes me forget the animals in Lion King. What a magnificent piece of engineering! So glad it won the award as best play (can you imagine the problems people would be having for years and years to come if the award had gone to The Motherf*cker with the Hat?)

No surprise that The Book of Mormon won for best book, or that The Normal Heart won for best revival. Larry Kramer says "To gay people, The Normal Heart is our history. I could not have written it if so many of us had not died." Very touching.

Oh I'm such a emotional person--had to sniffle when the cast of Memphis danced with the students in the aisles of the theater.

As Joel Grey ages, he looks more and more like a perfect leprechaun. Which is a good thing.

Wow...Vanessa Redgrave and James Earl Jones--now THERE's theater royalty for you! and Christie Brinkley does her Farrah Fawcett imitation. :(

I want to know who was in the cast of that great Side by Side number. I saw several familiar faces, including John Cryer and Stephen Colbert.

Anything Goes wins best revival. Still a fun show asfter all these years. Funny thing, but I don't remember that much tap dancing in the Davis Senior High School production that David was in (or, for that matter, in the Davis Musical Theater Company production!) Nice that Sutton Foster won for Best Actress in a musical. Loved her tearful farewell to her dresser for the past 9 years.

Tyne Daly is starting to look like Bea Arthur. Not sure it's such a great idea to have someone long in the tooth introduce the "in memoriam" section, though that section never fails to elicit a few tears.

I just love that Frances McDormand wore a Levi jacket over a formal gown and, perhaps, no make-up. Seems like a very nice human being. Good on her for winning Best Actress.

Well, the Best Actor in a play was certainly a surprise. I figured it would be a toss-up between the guy in The Normal Heart and Al Pacino in Merchant of Venice. But instead it went to a guy I'd never heard of (Mark Rylance) for Jerusalem. Best actor in a musical was also a surprise. Instead of going to the guy from Book of Mormon it went to Leo Butz (another actor I'd never heard of ) for Catch Me If You Can.

Shocking that Daniel Radcliffe wasn't even nominated as best actor for musical, but this L.A. Times article explains the omissions in the nominations. (His was not the only critically acclaimed performce to be ignored by the nominating committee.)

No surprise---Book of Mormon won best musical.

So it's now over (and on TIME too!) and I can post this annual blogging of the Tonys. Now...when are the Emmys...?

---

*from an entry in Steve's Living in the Bonus Round.

Tales

I took my new jacket out for its inaugural spin today.

We (and Walt) went to San Francisco to see the new musical Tales of the City. It was a perfect day for a perfect jacket. There was a cool wind blowing and the jacket was neither too heavy nor too light, but just the right weight. And a woman in the garage elevator on the way back to the car complimented me on my jacket ("Just perfect. Good choice," she said. I resisted the temptation to "place drop" and tell her where I bought it!)

For those who are unfamiliar with the phenomenon that is Tales of the City, in 1976, a then little-known reporter named Armistead Maupin started writing a story for the San Francisco Chronicle. The story appeared in serial form in the newspaper and told of a young woman, Mary Ann Singleton from Cleveland, Ohio, who arrived in San Francisco for a vacation, fell in love with the city, and, on an impulse decided to stay.

She happened upon an eclectic boarding house at 28 Barbary Lane, a fictitious street but whose location was given as across the street from our flat on Leavenworth Street. Barbary Lane was not modeled on the small enclave across the street from us, though, but on Macondry Lane, which was a block away, not really an "alley," but a wooded world with small houses and a wooden walkway that wended its way down to the end of the lane which ran from Leavenworth St. and down a tall set of steps to Jones Street.

The boarding house at 28 Barbary Lane was run by the pot-growing Anna Madrigal, a middle-aged woman hiding a deep secret that has something to do with an anagram. Mary Ann becomes friends with other tenants of the building: the hippyish bisexual Mona Ramsey; heterosexual lothario Brian Hawkins; the sinister and cagey roof tenant Norman Neal Williams; and Michael Tolliver, a sweet and personable gay man known to friends as Mouse.

Maupin's original serial was wildly popular and he went on to write two more serials for The Chronicle, then turned those three into published book and followed them with five additional books. In the latest, "MaryAnn in Autumn" the Barbara Lane crew are all (or those who did not die of accident, AIDS, or cancer) in their 50s and 60s (and the ageless Mrs. Madrigal is also showing her age), but it was like revisiting friends you just haven't seen in a long time.

In 1993 there was a TV mini series with Laura Linney as Mary Ann and Olympia Dukakis as Mrs. Madrigal

Then they decided to make a musical out of the first book. Tickets have been selling like hotcakes and I ordered our tickets months ago. Sticker shock of having to actually pay for tickets -- $85 each! But there was no way I would have missed it. I had high hopes for it, with music written by the Avenue Q crowd.

I loved it but would probably give it only 3½ stars (out of 5). The music disappoints. There are a couple of blockbuster numbers, but mostly the tunes are forgettable. I don't think anybody will be humming any of them. The set is gorgeous, moving up and down and sideways and some of the lighting effects are wonderful. The story goes in fits and starts, but then so did the original serial, so it follows that course. There's lots of sex (implied rather than explicit), drugs and rock & roll. The first act is a bit long, but the second act hits hard and doesn't let up. I was crying in more than one spot, and joined the standing ovation for the cast at the close of the show.

The SF Chronicle reviewer appears to have agreed with me: "...if it has New York aspirations, as implied by the many Broadway credits behind and in it, it needs to hone its storytelling and develop a more distinctive musical voice."

But I'm so glad we went. I loved it. It was worth every dollar!

Of course, this being the kind of story it is, there were, shall we say "unique" items for sale at the gift shop!

When we left the theater, we decided to stop at Lefty O'Doul's, that old haufbrau a block away from the theater, for a prime rib dinner. It's been a San Francisco institution since 1958, though the last time I was there was 1983, on my 40th birthday. The prime rib was as good as I remembered it!

The dogs, who had been locked up all day, were very happy to see us return!

All in all, a very good day. My jacket liked its first outing.

Judy and Cappy

If she were still alive, Judy Garland would have been 89 years old today. I had a friend, also a Garland fan, who always imagined her becoming a grand diva, like Sophie Tucker, and living a long life. I always knew on some level that she would die early. In fact she died at age 47, when Paul was a baby. I can still remember sitting on the couch in the living room of our Oakland home when my mother called to ask, jokingly, if I were in mourning. It always hurt somewhat that she thought it funny that I would feel so deeply sad at the passing of a performer I had loved since I was 10 years old.

In many ways it's probably good that she died so young. She didn't have to move forward into her later years, with the kinds of plastic surgery that has made such bizarre looking figures out of some of the stars we have loved over the years. None, perhaps, as bad as Joan Rivers, but there are enough of them out there with frozen faces and misshapen faces that I'm glad Garland never reached that point.

Turner Classic Movies always runs marathon movies of stars on their birthdays, and the Garland marathon started around 5:30 with her very first major movie, Everybody Sing. I was aware of it starting, but slept through most of it. I saw more of The Clock, her first grown up, non-singing role in 1945, a very sweet story of a boy and a girl meeting in Grand Central Station in New York, he in town for 2 days on leave from the Army, she on her way to work. Over the course of two days, they fall in love, lose each other, find each other, and marry. I always wondered why they called it The Clock because a clock plays only a very minor role in the story, but I suppose it sounded good as a title.

I noticed for the first time, in the credits, that James Gleason, who plays a milkman in the movie, has a wife...and the wife is played by Gleason's real life wife, Lucille. Just an odd bit of trivia.

The Clock was followed by The Pirate, one of my least favorite Garland movies, which was just as well because I had to leave to go and give blood while it was on.

What's so difficult about taking blood? I have been donating for years at the same place with never a problem. You walk in the door and they greet you by name, the same person takes your blood, it takes me 5-8 minutes to fill a bag, and I'm at the donuts in no time flat. Lately, however, there have been new people and new procedures which involve in-depth examination of the same arm that has given nearly 40 pints of blood already, marking the spot with tape and ink and having you do things that they told me years ago I didn't need to do. Last time, the blood taker tried three different spots on/around the same vein and finally had to call someone to help her. Today's person got the blood started all right, but it wasn't going fast enough and she kept saying she had put the needle "in a bad place." She finally gave up, with the bag "almost half full" after more than 10 minutes. I don't know what they do with not full bags, but I get credit for a "real donation" (she told me).

By the time I got home again (after stopping at Peet's for coffee beans), The Pirate was ending and Summer Stock was just starting. I actually slept through the end of Summer Stock and the beginning of A Star Is Born (it's not like I haven't seen it before!) and when that ended I Could Go on Singing was rounding out the marathon.

I love that movie, not because it's such a good movie -- it's a kind of cheesy story of a mother who gave up her son to his father and is now trying to get him back -- but this seems more like The Judy Garland Story since there is a lot of her giving a concert to a filled Palladium in London and during an emotional scene she utters these words, which sound so much like something Judy Garland herself would have said during moments of stress.

I can't be spread so thin, I'm just one person. I don't want to be rolled out like a pastry so everybody can get a nice big bite of me. I'm just me. I belong to myself. I can do whatever I damn well please with myself and nobody can ask any questions....Well I'm not gonna do it anymore. And that's final! its just not worth all the deaths that I have to die.

So I've wallowed in Judy Garland today and it was a nice way to spend the day.

---

In other news, we have a visitor. Remember Cappuccino?

Cappy was adopted a few months ago and his new Mom is going off on vacation to Hawaii, so she asked if he could spend the next couple of weeks here. I was a little concerned about how Polly would take to having a "new" dog here, but the two of them have been chasing each other around the house ever since Cappy arrived. I think Polly is happy to have someone her own size to play with.

I was also concerned about how having a strange dog here would affect my insomnia, but Polly lets Cappy share my lap and somehow having two dogs on me all night long helped me have the best night of sleep I've had since we got back from China. So all is good.

And besides, they are just so cute together!

Loving Elephants

It's a good thing that we don't have an organization which rescues abused elephants in Davis, or we'd have a small herd in our back yard. (Boy THAT would be something for Mr. McCoy, wouldn't it be!)

I don't know why I have always loved elephants so much. When I used to take the kids to the zoo, I would stand at the gorilla cages and try to apologize to the animals for staring. But it wasn't until we visited Chicago's Lincoln Park Zoo that I did that to an elephant. I took pictures of this elephant which stood fairly near to me, across a deep moat and I looked deep into her eyes and, having by that time been made somewhat aware (though not as much as I am now) of the condition of elephants in zoos and circuses, I just stood there and tried to communicate to her how sad I was that she was locked up in her concrete prison.

(By 2005 the elephant enclosure at the Lincoln Park Zoo was empty, following the death of all three elephants over the previous two years.)

A few years back, I became aware of the Elephant Sanctuary in Hohenwald, Tennessee. I don't check the web site as much now as I once did, but I loved reading of the battle the people who run this sanctuary did to rescue elephants from untenable living conditions and move them into "retirement" in Tennessee, a place which is not open to the public, so they can live a life as close as possible to what they would find in the wild (probably better, since they don't have to travel miles searching for water!)

It was probably Peggy who introduced me to the David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust, which rescues orphaned elephants. The stories are triumphant and heartbreaking. Peggy has been there. Walt's sister will be there in two weeks. I've followed the stories of babies who watched their mothers killed by poachers and who are able to find a home at the Trust and go on to be old enough to be released back into the wild.

And I've cried at the stories of babies who were so traumatized by the circumstances of their mothers' deaths that they could not recover and literally died of grief.

I always watch specials on elephants when they show up on Animal Planet or PBS. I am amazed by elephant society and how they care for each other, help each other, grieve at friends' deaths.

Today I fell in love with an elephant. Well, not the real elephant, the elephant character. I fell in love with Rosie, the elephant in Water for Elephants. I knew I wanted to see the movie when I heard it was going to be made. I was hoping it would not, like so many books-to-movies, ruin a book that I loved.

It did not. In fact, it may have improved upon it. The book was told in two voices, that of an old man in a rest home and the voice of the young man he once was. The scenes go back and forth from the minor circus for which he once worked and how he feels about being warehoused in a home, when his son forgets to come and go with him to the circus that is coming to town. I loved it. It was the first audio book I listened to and I listened to it for the 11 hr train ride from Santa Barbara to Davis, after I had spent the weekend, in part, visiting with Walt's mother, so was acutely aware of old folks homes.

In the movie the old man wanders into the grounds of the circus, when they are tearing the tents down and is taken to the office of the manager, who is going to call "the home" and get someone to pick him up. He starts talking about his days with the circus and so it becomes a linear story that goes from point A to point Z in a wonderful fashion.

Reese Witherspoon is sparkly as the star of the show, Christopher Waltz is absolutely riveting as the ringmaster/owner of the circus, and Robert Pattinson will make you forget he was once a vampire in the Twilight series.

But it is Rosie, the elephant who is the real star. There is a soul there and she dominates whatever scene she is in, not only by her size, but by her ... humanity.

I'm officially a Rosie fan. And if you haven't seen the movie, by all means go and see it. There's enough sex and violence that it's probably not good for little kids, but the story is just wonderful and the movie definitely does it justice.

Thursday Thirteen

Movie Musicals

1. Sound of Music
2. Oliver
3. Annie
4. Singing in the Rain
5. My Fair Lady
6. Brigadoon
7. Seven Brides for Seven Brothers
8. Rocky Horror
9. The Wizard of Oz
10. Show Boat
11. Fiddler on the Roof
12. The Court Jester
13. West Side Story

"Day Sleeping"

Throughout all of my growing-up years, a sign was attached to the doorbell of our flat in San Francisco. It said "Please knock. Day sleeping."

As I have explained before, my father worked as a railway mail clerk, in the days when they carried mail on special cars on the train. He would go to work in the afternoon of one day, work the mail through the night as the train ("The Lark") traveled from San Francisco to Los Angeles, then spend the night at the Figueroa hotel in Los Angeles, near the train station, eat at The Pantry greasy spoon restaurant, get back n the train the next night and work the mail all the way back to San Francisco ("work the mail" means sorting it into various bags so it could be taken to the post office in LA and further sorted for delivery.) His job required that he stand up all night.

generic railway mail photo--not my father

Figueroa Hotel

The Pantry

He would get home around 9 in the morning, having worked all night, and would then go to bed for his 'night' of sleep.

He didn't do this every night. After a trip to LA he would be off for 2 days and then do it again, so it was two or three days a week when the sign was on the door.

But "day sleeping" meant not being able to be a kid. You didn't have friends over, you didn't play music, you didn't play anything but quiet games, you were hustled outside to play as often as possible. You prayed the phone didn't ring. And you hated the people who ignored the sign and rang the doorbell anyway.

"Day sleeping" meant that no matter what woke him up, it was somehow your fault ("your" being my mother, sister and myself) and there would be hell to pay, in the rage, followed by the silences (which were worse than the rages). The government didn't bring an end to the railway mail service until after I went away to college, so I lived my whole life with "day sleeping."

I can't imagine what hell it must have been for my mother having two children too young to understand the need to be quiet. A 4 year old and a newborn must have been great fun for her! I'm sure we spent a lot of time going for walks to the park!

As I continue to struggle with the effects of jet lag, I begin to understand ....a little... what it was like to be a "day sleeper." Last night I fell asleep sometime before 10 p.m., which meant I was wide awake at midnight. I then could not get back to sleep to save my soul until 5 a.m., which meant that by 10, I was ready for a nap. And then, waking up a bit after noon, I was only functional for half an hour and then back to sleep until 4 p.m. Essentially, I have slept the "night" away, yet it is 6 p.m. and my "morning" should be starting now. In fact, I was just out at the grocery store, along with all the students wandering aimlessly among the aisles wondering where canned lychees are, doing the week's shopping that I should have done in the morning with all the other stay at home parents and retired men and women.

The problem with "day sleeping" is that everybody else is going about their business normally and people who wouldn't dare call you at midnight think nothing of calling you sometime during the day. I have long said that I am convinced that there is some sort of connection between my eyelids and the telephone. All I have to do is doze off and the phone rings. There is one guy who seems to have ESP regarding my day sleeping. Invariably he calls just as I've begun my sleep. Or someone will call asking me to help save the musk ox or donate to the Society for the Heartbreak of Psoriasis.

When I am awakened after only 5-10 minutes of sleep, I get grouchy. And it takes me awhile to get back to sleep again. I am hoping that I am going to be able to kick this jet lag thing over the next two weeks. I am having lunch with a friend in Sacramento tomorrow and lunch with 3 more friends three days next week, as well as a dental appointment, a show in San Francisco (that I don't have to review!), and a show to review on Friday. Hopefully by then, my body will be back on track again, since it will have to give up its afternoon nap in order for me to get everything done.

Being a day sleeper awakened doesn't justify getting angry with everyone who is working hard to keep the house quiet, of course, but at least I now now how my father must have felt all those years.