Life Upon the Wicked Stage

In a discussion earlier today, some of us were asked to talk about a time that we performed on stage.  I was immediately back in the 4th or 5th grade again.

It’s amazing to me that our children all had their stints in show biz (and are still having them). True, my father played piano semi-professionally in a piano bar after he retired. And as I have said many times, my grandparents were in vaudeville, so obviously the performing gene is in the family and has passed along to my kids (and I just saw the first video of Bri in performance with her class), but boy it sure skipped over me! I’m terrified of being on stage. I remember when I was in the Girl Scouts, in grammar school. We always ended the year with a performance of some kind.

The Girl Scouts had the use of a rustic cabin in a small park behind a huge wooden fence in the middle of high rise apartments in San Francisco.  It was like a little oasis amid the hustle and bustle of the city, right off the cable car line, and all but invisible unless you knew it was there.  We would have our annual gathering there, with a show to put on, snacks to serve, and the awards to be given out for the year.

On this particular year, I was part of a barbershop quartet. We didn’t sing, but lip synched to recorded music. We were singing "Heart of My Heart."

We were dressed in checked shirts with garters on the sleeve and Styrofoam hats made to look like straw hats (which didn't fit my big head all that well), and the four of us each sported a paper moustache, with tabs that went into our nostrils and the main moustache taped to our upper lip. 

Midway through the song, first my hat started bouncing about on my head and eventually fell onto the stage.  Then my moustache started to slip. But we had choreographed hand movements, so I couldn’t raise my hand to stick it back in place or I would lose what I was supposed to be doing, so I tried to lip synch and twitch my lip to keep the tabs of the moustache in place in my nostrils.

But it was no use. The thing kept tilting at a rakish angle and the audience began to snicker at my plight. Eventually it fell to the floor and I was mortified. I still blush when I think of that performance, which pretty much put me off of performing forever.

I did appear on stage one more time, as the romantic lead in the high school senior play (our school was so small there was no "drama department" -- now the school has, I kid you not, a $6 million theater, just opened a couple of years ago).   There was just one stage show a year and only seniors could perform. 
The play was called "Trish" and I don't know who wrote it, because I can't find it on line.  It was a mystery -- a murder mystery? -- that takes place in a motel in the south west.  I was the owner of the motel and I still remember my first line "Did you wash those dishes clean and put away the silver?"   I never did get that line right.

This being a girls' school, there were three male roles that had to be filled from the boys' schools around San Francisco.  Two of the guys came from nearby Sacred Heart high school, but for the romantic lead, they went to a ... oh horror! ... public school to find Randy Ray Jones, who was in the drama club of Balboa High School  He was shorter than I was, but he was a pretty good actor and it was easy to play off of him.   In fact, his drama teacher came to one performance and said he would have given Randy's performance an A, mine a B- and would have failed everyone else.  That was kind of encouraging, but it was my first and last real role on stage. 

I never again had the opportunity to be on the stage, nor did I want to.  But at least I gave the world a bunch of pretty good performers to take my place!

 

Day 35:  Cursed with an appetite keen I am...and I'll subdue it with cold roast lamb

 

 

(my favorite sandwich)

City Girl

This is another of those "For Our Children's Children" type of entries.

Today I received an e-mail from a woman named Audrey Long who works for a company named Live Oak Legacies, a family history service that helps families capture and preserve the most important family memories, to save for future generations.

A growing number of families are turning to professionals to record their family stories, employing “personal historians” to sit and ask the open-ended questions they don’t have time to ask during the rush of holiday gatherings or the sporadic bursts of long-distance communication.

She wanted to write a brief entry for this journal, but I told her that as for me personally, I've been preserving our own family history for years, in photos, journal entries, videos, and interviews.  I wished her well in her endeavors and I've included a link to her page for those who might be interested in checking it out.

The brief exchange had me thinking of preserving more of my own history.  It's so different from our children's.

We moved here to Davis in 1973.  We are 2-1/2 blocks from the elementary school, it's another 2 blocks to the middle school and two blocks to the high school.  The library and theater (where they performed) are just on the other side of the high school across the street from the Catholic church.

So this was a biking family.  It was before people started being so protective of their kids and from the beginning, the kids rode their bikes to school.   

I lived on a steep hill and even if I wanted to ride my bike home, I would have to get off the bike to go either up or down the hill.  It was a concrete world with no trees (now there are trees planted in front of our flat and it looks very strange!)

Grammar school was 0.8 miles from our house.  I don't know how old I was when I started walking to school, but pretty young, I think.  I walked two blocks to my friend Gayle's house.  On the way I passed Macondray Lane, the little alley that Armisted Maupin's "Tales of the City" described as "Barbary Lane." 

From Gayle's house, we walked and picked up Maryanne, who lived a block away, and then Georgette, who lived 3 blocks from there. When we got Georgette we were at the halfway point and we continued on to school.  I carried a metal lunchbox.   I think it was just a plain colored lid--in the early days it may have been in the days before they started putting TV shows on lunch boxes.

My mother always made me a sandwich with balloon bread and it varied among peanutbutter and jelly, bologna with mayonnaise, salami with butter (I never did figure out why no mayo on the salami), or American cheese with mayo.  Never lettuce or tomato on the sandwiches.  Sometimes she made deviled egg or tuna salad.  She always cut the sandwiches into two triangles and wrapped them in waxed paper.  The lunch was rounded out by a piece of fruit and some sort of sweet--cookies or cake or something like that.  I also had a thermos bottle of milk.  I can't begin to count the number of thermos bottles I broke when I dropped it, breaking the glass lining!

If we brought our lunch, we ate in the multi purposes room, where we sat on benches around the side of the room.  I probably bought lunch now and then, but I don't really remember doing that much.  Except that is where I learned to hate canned green beans.  We ate bought lunches in the cafeteria.

Our school was a big concrete block.

The school went from kindergarten to 8th grade and the 7th and 8th graders were on the top floor.  They had their own bathroom because it had Kotex for the girls and we younger kids weren't supposed to know about things like that.

It was a mile and a half to St. Vincent High School and I used public transportation.  The No. 41 Union bus stopped at the top of our hill and I would take that down to Van Ness Ave. (4 blocks) and transfer to the 45 Van Ness and take that to Geary Blvd.  But my alternate route, and my preferred one, was to walk a block to Hyde Street and catch the cable car (at that hour of the day it was tourist-free) and take it dwn to Geary Blvd, and then get on the 38 bus and ride up to the stop right by my school.  We had school bus passes and it cost 15 cents, even for the cable car.

The school didn't look particularly special from the outside.

But inside it was gorgeous.  The students entered by that door behind the car on the left, but if you were coming for the first time, or a parent coming to see the sisters, you entered by the big door on the right, in front of the light colored car.  Inside the building was beautiful wood paneling, with a sweeping staircase on the right that went up to the school chapel (the rounded windows at the top on the right)

That school no longer exists.  It was torn down so the Bishop could build his new cathedral there, forever identified as the washing machine agitator. The old cathedral had burned down (we always suspected the Bishop set it on fire so he could get rid of it) and our school was combined with Sacred Heart School, which was the boys' high school a block away.

Sadly, the new school is "Sacred Heart-Cathedral School" so St. Vincent has disappeared completely. It killed me to think of that beautiful staircase being torn down.

Moving the schools into new buildings and building the church involved tearing down all the slum housing in the neighborhood and putting up high priced high rises.  I have often wondered what happened to all those poor people when they evicted them to erect that monstrosity.  I remember one Chinese family of 8 living in a one room apartment across the street from the school.  The nuns used to bring them food and when the kids were baptized, I was godmother to two of them.

Later, when I graduated from high school and changed my mind about entering the convent, for the six months before I was to start UC Berkeley, I attended night school at the University of San Francisco, where I took French. That commute was fun because I rode the cable car all the way down to the end of the line on Market Street.   Coming back after class, I often watched A Star Is Born, which seemed to run forever at a little theater right where the cable car turns around.   It only cost 50 cents to get in and even if I only saw the last half hour of the movie, that was fine.

My kids have traveled by bus from time to time (obviously more now that they are middle-aged), but as a City Girl I traveled all over San Francisco on public transportation.  I loved to go downtown on a Saturday.  We always dressed up to go downtown...I even wore heels and gloves.  Gloves.  My word!   That seems a very long time ago.

Addendum

A week ago, I wrote an entry about my high school reunion and I included this photo of my friend Rose Lewis, who spoke at the lunch...

I mentioned that I didn't know until that time that she had been the very first African American woman to be trained as a plastic surgeon in the United States.

I also included this photo of my friend Ruby Buffin...

and said only that she had read some "class memories," which had been written by another classmate who had been unable to attend. I was vaguely aware of Ruby's career path, but not enough to really add it to my entry. She is justifiably proud of her own accomplishments, and sent me a photo and an explanation, which she hoped I would share:

The photo is from my NCAA Eucharistic Liturgy and Missioning Ceremony when I received certification by the National Association of Catholic Chaplains (NCAA) as a Catholic Chaplain.

The photo is of me and The Most Reverend Dale J. Melczek, DD, Bishop during the certification and missioning liturgy at the annual meeting of the National Association of Catholic Chaplains (NACC) in Portland, Oregon. Bishop Melczek is Bishop of the Diocese of Gary, Indiana, a member and Episcopal Liaison of the Board of the National Association of Catholic Chaplains.

The missioning ceremony by a Catholic Bishop was very moving, and extremely important to me as a lay African-American woman. The prayerful ceremony provided much needed validation and official recognition from the Catholic Church of my response to God's call to do His work and my ministry. The Eucharistic Lliturgy also served as an overall culmination of my Clinical Pastoral Education (CPE) training, and Master of Divinity studies at the Jesuit School of Theology. None of which would have been possible without God's Grace and the Holy Spirit.

Her accomplishments, as well as Rosie's make me embarrassed that I have accomplished so little in my life, when we all came from the same background.

Ruby also mentioned that she would like to have a heart to heart talk some day, adding, "When I read your comment about not knowing about Rose being the 1st African-American female plastic surgeon, sad memories regarding discriminatory experiences at St. Vincent High surfaced for me which I want to share with you at another time. Thank God for civil rights legislation that brought about much needed change in our society."

I found this interesting--and sad--because midway through our lunch at the reunion, I realized that I was sitting at the table with the 3 African American classmates, while everybody else was sitting at other tables. I had chosen the table because Ruby and Rose had been friends in school, and the other women there had merely been acquaintances.

I don't remember, during my years at St. Vincent, mentally categorizing people by race. I was part of two friend groups. One consisted of three Caucasians, one Latina, and one African-American. I don't remember exactly how many were in the other group, but one was African American (Rose), one was Japanese, and there was myself. It never occurred to me that there was anything worth noting that we were of mixed ethnicities, though I do remember that the African American girls often grouped together at lunch time. It makes me feel sad to think they may have experienced discrimination at our school.

It has always, frankly, puzzled me to realize that I grew up so totally unaware of racial differences (so did my sister, at least until she died in 1971). My father preached equality, but he was very prejudiced, especially against Black people. He talked the talk, but he never walked the walk and put up barriers between my sister and a Black friend of hers, going to the young man's place of employment to tell him he was not allowed to go to the movies with Karen. I still laugh when I think of his trying to convince a Black Panther that he wasn't prejudiced by offering to play his beloved Art Tatum records for him!

My mother, whom nobody would accuse of being racist, grew up in a different era and has always lumped all people of a certain race or ethnicity into stereotypical groups. All "xxxs" are such-and such. She doesn't like a neighbor because she is "too ethnic" (for "ethnic" substitute the specific ethnic group to which she belongs. I finally got angry with her lately and said "What does 'too ethnic' mean, exactly?" and she couldnt come up with an answer; she just knew that this woman was "too ethnic" and she didn't like her for it). She always assumes specific characteristics of one ethnic group or that characteristic of another group. I always cringe to listen to her talk. In fairness, however, she also lumps the Scotch, from whom we are descended, into groups by ethnic characterizations too. Her husband always used racial slurs and it was all I could do to be civil to him sometimes, listening to him rant and rave about this or that ethnic group, using language that would not be permitted on television, usually preceded by "the damn..."

I don't think there is anything necessarily laudible about having friends of various colors or ethnicities, or sexual orientation. I think that's the way we all should be, and am grateful that my life experiences have put me in the position of knowing so many wonderful xxxs and yyyys. I've also known a number of xxxs and yyys who were jerks as well. We're all just....people. And that's the way it should be,

It scares me sometimes to see the pockets of racism that seem more virulent than they have been in years (did you see the grammar school somewhere in the midwest which is teaching Mandarin to its students, over protest by the parents, who don't want their children learning how to be communists. Pulleeze...the scary thing is that they are serious!)

As I watch the growing homogenization of this country, the mixed race couples on television that nobody seems to get up in arms about any more, the mixed race children in the schools, etc., that when the current generation gets to be my age, perhaps there won't be any racial bias or discrimination and we'll all just be one human race.

Nice vision, eh?

Better Late than Never

Apparently old injustices are never forgotten! The very first thing one of the very first women to arrive at the 50th reunion of the St. Vincent High School graduating class of 1960 said to me was to remind me that our yearbooks had arrived late and so she never got her book signed by all of her classmates. She figured she'd remedy that situation by bringing the book to the reunion and having us sign there. One other person had done that too. I've lived with the guilt of that for 50 years and here I was at the start of this event, reminded of it right away!

I signed the book, "Better late than never. Sorry your book was late!"

See, the book was late in arriving because I, as the editor, was terrible at getting anybody to help me. My friend Anne (who did not attend the reunion) and I put it out almost single-handedly, missed most of the print deadlines, and thus it could not be delivered before graduation.

I will never forget that awful day when the printer gave me the bad news over the phone. I still remember that lonely walk back to class, knowing that everyone was going to hate me, and hearing Sister Zoe, our homeroom teacher bawling the class out for their lack of help on the book and telling them that nobody was to give me a hard time about it because they had brought the situation upon themselves.

Sister Zoe, who, it seemed, made it a point to give every single person in her class a hard time during the course of our year in her homeroom, had never been so kind to me and I always actually get very emotional when I remember how I felt on that fateful day.

And nobody did give me a hard time about it. Until yesterday, that is! When the books finally arrived, my friends, Anne, Joyce, Marge and I think Toni all had a great time delivering each book to every senior in the class (not a huge task, as there were only 60 of us). That was when I learned my away around, not just my own neighborhood in San Francisco, but all the other neighborhoods too,.

But yesterday, after 50 years, at least two of the graduating class of 1960 had a chance to get their books signed.

Della, Carol
Carmen

What a wonderful day it was! This was the event to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the class of 1960 from both St. Vincent High School (all girls) and Sacred Heart High School (all boys).

I arrived at the school early. I have no emotional ties to this building, since the school we attended was long ago demolished. Not even the name survived.

It used to be St. Vincent High School, then Cathedral High School (since it was attached to the Cathedral which was built on the site where the original school stood). And then when it merged with the boys' school, it became "Cathedral-Sacred Heart." So the buildings are unfamiliar and the tuition today is definitely unfamiliar--I learned that in our day it was $150 a year, and is now $15,000 a year. A Catholic school education doesn't come cheap these days!

People began arriving. Eleven in all, out of a class of 60. At least two people were unable to come because of health problems and one had a family emergency at the last minute. But those who came thoroughly enjoyed the day. Rose deLuna had flown in from Texas to be there and it was great to see her.

Gail - Carmen - Me - Rose
(It's nice that Gail, Carmen and I were color coordinated!)

Of course I had to answer, more than once, the question I hate most of all: "How many children do you have?" My answer is always "we had five," and hope that nobody picks up on the past tense. This was not the occasion to get into the deaths of David and Paul. I usually deflect follow-up questions with "how about you?" or "How many children do you have?"

The most special part of the day was the presence of Sister Louise, our homeroom teacher, who is one of, I think, only two of the sisters who taught us who are still alive. The other, Sister Mary William, is ill and not able to travel.

Sister Louise told me that she had come because I had convinced her to, and I am happy to hear that! She was always one of my favorite teachers, and had been a good friend to Sister Anne, who was my lifelong friend, and after whom Jeri (Jerilyn Anne) is named.

There was a Mass to start things off. I can't remember the last Mass I attended. It was undoubtedly a funeral a few years ago. As one of the planners of the event (though my participation was definitely minimal), I was invited to participate in a part of the Mass, though given my feelings about the Church (which will probably be a shock for my former classmates to read here), I declined. I debated about taking communion, but then decided that my anger is at the institution of the Catholic Church, not at God and that if my taking communion angered Him, he could smite me. He didn't. He's a loving God after all.

During the course of the Mass, we were given "gold diplomas" and a pin that showed we are now part of the "Gold Club," which entitles us to attend a reunion luncheon each year. We also were given a slide show of memories of our class.

Then there were group photos taken by the professional photographer hired for the event (which will eventually be visible on the schools web site). I handed my camera to the friend of one of my classmates and she took some photos for me.

(my photographer didn't have as good an angle as
the professional did, and two women are hidden)

There was a no host bar...they make money on that for someone like me who doesn't drink. I had half a glass of wine and lots of bottled water!...and a chance to visit and check out the "memories" table.

There was a huge lunch, following which memories were offered by both the male graduates (lots and lots and lots of football stories, which we couldn't relate to at all, along with a singing of their school song, which we didn't know), and then memories by two women in our class, Dr. Rose Lewis, who was asked to talk about her own history, and I learned something I didn't know before. I knew she had retired as a plastic surgeon, but I didn't realize she was the very first African American woman in the United States to be trained as a plastic surgeon.

Rabbi Ruby Buffin read memories of the class of 1960, written by Sonia Guiterrez, who was unable to attend.

And when it was all over, nothing left to do but say our goodbyes.

Rose and I decided that we really need to continue the reminiscing and perhaps have some sort of social event that might be attended by those who came yesterday and those who weren't able to attend. She also pointed out the remarkable volunteer things our classmates have been involved in over the years and felt we needed to record such things. I am trying to figure out how to gather that sort of information...and what to do with it if I am successful!

Basically it was wonderful seeing these women again, remembering our years together in school, and seeing what wonderful women they have become.

All of the photos I took will eventually be available on Flickr (the uploader for Flickr is being very stubborn today (Sunday), and the upload is very, very slow, so they may not all be there if you check them too soon) and the Video can be seen by clicking on the link at the left, here.

(My mouth was open because the door was about

to slam shut and hit the professional photographer!)

A Quick Trip

I snuck out of the house at 8 a.m., not wanting to wake Walt. I was supposed to be in San Francisco to meet some of my former classmates to help call some other of my former classmates about our upcoming reunion, celebration our 50th anniversary. I have been on the fence about whether I want to go or not,since none of my best friends from high school will be going. But I had been nominally on the committee to plan and as yet had done nothing whatsoever, so when the call went out for help with phone calls, I volunteered.

For awhile on the ride down, I thought that I was going to be too late to do anything, since the traffic was bumper-to-bumper, but after about 5 minutes, I came across the reason why.

(the quality of the photo is a testament to my -- again -- forgetting The Prime Directive. At least this time I had the camera on my cell phone.) Once I'd passed the accident, it was clear sailing across the bridge and into the city.

As I approached the school, suddenly there were cars double parked on both sides of the street, tons of people wandering around, some of whom were carrying clothes in bags. I went into the designated parking lot which was not only full, but double parked in some areas, and lots of people driving around looking for somewhere to park. I was lucky that on my second trip through the lot, I found a guy who was pulling out and I was able to grab a great spot, right under the Cathedral's spires (which I always tell everybody look like the agitator of a washing machine.

The woman who is organizing this thing, and who organizes all of the social events at the school, is the energizer bunny. She's been there 13 years, is a graduate (a few years behind our class), but I had to wonder if she'd checked on what else was going on today. Kids were picking up their graduation robes, there was something about Confirmation at the cathedral and other things happening. The room and phones we were supposed to use were needed by a couple of other groups, so she was wandering around trying to find us a place to set up.

It was nice to see my former classmates, Della and Maureen, again.

We were pleased to note that none of us have changed a bit since 1960. And I got the answer to a question I've been asking for decades--whatever happened to my best friend Madelyn. I knew that she married right after graduation and I heard that she "gained a lot of weight" and had a lot of kids. But none of us who were her friends have heard from her. She just disappeared, even though we knew her married name.

Well, sadly, we learned that she died in 2007 and at the time of her death, she was living with one of her children in Tennessee. I was sad to hear of her death and sad for all the years that we knew nothing about each other.

The number of volunteers for this job was overkill. There were three of us from the girls' school and 30 people to call. We were finished in less than 10 minutes, since most of the people we called weren't at home anyway. But the experience made me decide that I do want to attend the event.

When I left, it was around lunch time and I was trying to decide where I was going to stop to eat. Walt and I watch a local PBS show called "Check Please, Bay Area," where people sit around and compare notes on each other's favorite restaurant. A fun show, even though we don't live in the Bay Area, so aren't near any of the recommended restaurants (many of which are way out of our price range). But one that they recommended this week was Bette's Oceanview Diner, in Berkeley. I realized I could stop there, so I did.

The one thing about Bette's "Oceanview" diner is that it's nowhere near an ocean. It's close to San Francisco Bay, but there are a couple of blocks of buildings between it and water. Apparently the area where it is built used to be called Oceanview--and the the place has been there since the 1930s.

The pancakes were recommended enthusiastically, so when I learned that the special of the day was lemon ricotta pancakes, I ordered them. They were delicious, and the scrambled eggs came exactly as I like them (moist) and it was fun sitting at the counter watching the guys working at the grill.

I was home six hours after I left it, with a list of people I need to call again. Kind of a silly day, all things considered, but it did help me decide whether I was going to go to the reunion or not.

Uncharacteristically Sociable

The invitation came about two weeks ago. It was the kind of invitation I would normally not even think twice about. Rose, a woman I had gone to high school with, was inviting us to her birthday party. Now I haven't seen Rose in about 40 years. The last time was one of my most embarrassing moments. I had invited classmates to our house for the afternoon to celebrate the 10th anniversary of our graduation. About 5 or 6 turned up. I had just given birth about a week before and my intention was to give them drinks and hors d'oeuvres, but apparently I had somehow given them the impression that I was inviting them for dinner.

Rather than be honest, I threw some godawful thing together. I don't know what, but I remember it included the driest ham I have ever eaten. You just don't have a full stocked larder right after you've given birth!

Not surprisingly, I haven't heard from any of them in the intervening 40 years. But the school is now planning our 50th anniversary and that has put me back in touch with a few of my former classmates, Rose among them.

Not being a social butterfly, I would normally make an excuse why we couldn't attend -- it did involve driving to San Francisco, after all. I hadn't attended our 40th anniversary because I was too embarrassed about my weight. But my "big sister" Joycie has convinced me that I'll be sorry if I miss this one and so I'm planning on going (even attending the Mass, I guess).

When Rose's invitation arrived, I decided that I was going to force myself to go. It would be good to see her, she must surely have invited at least a couple of others of our classmates and I needed to get out in social situations more. I RSVPd. Remember that other than parties involving family or the Pinata family, I go through the mental tortures of the damned before almost any social situation. I'm always convinced I'm going to make a fool of myself, or feel like a wallflower stuck off in a corner with nobody to talk to me.

Rose is retired now, but she had a long career as a physician and she owns a lovely home in an incredibly gorgeous location in San Francisco. This is the view from her balcony.

It overlooks Golden Gate park and beyond it the Golden Gate bridge. This was one of those rare crystal clear San Francisco days that I love and so it was the best of all possible conditions.

We climbed up to the living room and I poked my head in. I didn't recognize anyone. Then Rose came out from the kitchen and it took her a minute to recognize me under all this flab. We talked a bit and she took me to the kitchen to get me set up to have some of her home made chili. I was afraid I'd be a klutz and spill it on her white carpet. There was nowhere to sit with the group, so I sat in a chair off to the side, in the wallflower position. And, of course, I proceeded to spill a bit of chili on myself, but fortunately I'd worn black and it didn't get on the carpet. I did not spill my lemonade (score one for me).

The conversation was interesting. These were all fascinating, successful people, with a heavy emphasis on the medical profession. They were discussing ballet and post-traumatic stress syndrome, and the Oscars, and Obama's health plan. I couldn't participate because I was being a wallflower again, but one guy got up to leave and I took his seat on the fireplace, which put me smack dab in the middle of the conversation.

How I'd missed this! Sitting around with intelligent people talking about current events and nobody getting angry, but everyone offering fascinating insights into so many different topics. It was like the breakfasts Nancy, Joan and I have once or twice a year, only multiplied to a larger group.

At some point Rose's 11 year old nephew asked me, innocently, if I knew how to play Chess. I told him I didn't really, but I remembered how the pieces moved, at least, and would be willing to have a game with him. He wiped the board with my bloody carcass after he "chased me all over the board" (which is how Rose described his method of play), but it was fun.

A latecomer was a larger than life orthopedist who was an absolutely fascinating man who showed us pictures of his adopted Siberian son (now 12, adopted in infancy) and talked about working in 3rd world countries with Doctors without Borders, and the mess that health care is in in this country right now. It was like being back at Women's Health in the good old days.

No other former classmates showed up and I didn't ask if any had been invited, but I just had a fabulous time (so did Walt). I'm so glad I talked myself into overcoming my normal reticence for social events like this. I'm also feeling more comfortable about the upcoming reunion, having taken my flab at least part way out of the closet.

We stopped on the way home for dinner at a Chinese buffet which offered "all you can eat crab." Now you KNOW that's gonna grab me...and it did. Walt was intrigued by the blue jello and had to have some for dessert. He said it tasted like Mr. Clean (I'm not sure when he last tasted Mr. Clean.)

When we got home there were two messages from our neighbor, left 15 minutes apart, complaining about Spencer's barking. Ashley says some folks are coming to look at him next weekend...I sure hope this ends up being a forever family for him.

Reunions

Reunions are a great time to find out whatever happened to your former classmates and teachers. Sometimes it's not all good news.

We are planning the 50th anniversary of my high school class of 1960. How I can go to a 50th anniversary when I'm only about 35 years old myself, I don't understand, but such are the vagaries of time and memory.

I've been in contact with the woman who apparently is the principal organizer of such events for my school. My school, of course, is a misnomer, since "my school" was bulldozed back in the 1960s. In my day, we were punished if caught fraternizing with the boys in the high school a block away. Now they have combined the two schools into one giant co-ed Catholic school. "St. Vincent" no longer exists, but Cathedral Sacred Heart is its new name.

The organizer asked me if I would like to help with plans for our big 5-0 and I said yes, though I am pesimistic about how many people will show up. We were a class of sixty and I always say we were the least spirited class in the history of the school. Nobody ever wanted to do anything and that seems to have carried over into post-graduation. I think five people showed up at our 25th, and one of those said her curiosity had been satisfied and she didn't think she'd be back.

Five more (a different five--not me this time) showed up at the 40th and it will be interesting to see who showed up this time. I didn't go to the 40th, quite frankly, because I was embarrassed about my weight. But now the hell with it. It's the 50th and what the heck--let it all hang out.

The interesting thing about talking with the organizer (or should I say listening to the organizer, since she's really a talker!) was hearing about old teachers, most of whom are dead.

My Freshman homeroom teacher, it turns out, lives in Los Angeles and I was able to get her address and dashed off a quick note to her, updating her on my life, sending her photos, and thanking her for the good influence she was on me in the two years I spent with her in that school.

There were the sisters (Daughters of Charity are "sisters" not "nuns." I used to know the distinction, but I don't any more!) who have died, many of them. They were all 95 years old (or so I thought) back in 1960, so that didn't surprise me.

But the big shock was about one of my favorite teachers, a lay teacher (whose name -- and the subject she taught -- I will not mention, in case her family would be embarrassed by it). She was always one of my favorites and I took classes from her for two or three years. I think I also was in contact with her at least once after graduation. I knew her address and probably wrote to her.

Many years ago, I happened to come across her obituary. The cause of death was not given, but as her son's obituary was also in the paper that day, I just assumed that it had been an auto accident. I sent a note of condolence to her family and received a kind of a strangely terse reply.

It wasn't until today that I discovered that this woman killed her son and then killed herself. I'm still in shock by that. If you could have lined up all of the teachers I have had throughout my life and would be one of the last I would think would snap like that. What a sad thing. She had shared other sadnesses in her life with us once, because it was necessary for a project we were preparing. But she seemed to have overcome that and gotten on with her life.

Sometimes it's not entirely wonderful to find out what happened to people in your distant past! I also discovered that 7 of my classmates have died, which I suppose is not surprising, but sad nonetheless.

---

We've had storms passing through here all day, including one with torrential rain and hail (which fortunately didn't last more than 10 minutes). It's been very exciting. Fortunately, I finished the song-writing project that has been plaguing me for a week (Oh how I understand poets who are so proud of having written one line in a day!) and my next project is to prepare for an interview with an old acquaintance of mine, who has recently written a book. So when you see me curled up in the recliner, with two happy dogs on my lap and a book in my hands, know that I am hard at work.

Tish

"Did you wash those dishes clean and polish the silverware, Charita?"

I've been trying to get that line right since 1960.

It's the first line of our senior class play, "Tish" and I was to deliver it. I never felt comfortable reciting the line and I'm still not comfortable with the emphasis on the word "clean" that our director, Robert Bell, stressed.

Somewhere, behind the cupboard that holds my printer, supply of paper, and other junk is the script for the play, which fell off of the bookshelf above it many years ago. However, the cupboard is not able to be moved without emptying half the furniture out of the office, so I can't refer to it.

Why am I suddenly talking about "Tish"? Well, because I received a package of photos from my friend Helene (pictured at left, in the title role) today. Helene and I have reconnected on Facebook after all these years. She had come across these pictures of our play and thought I might like to have them.

The package has brought up a bunch of memories of the time around that play.

We were a very small Catholic girls' high school (total enrollment 200 students; our class graduated 60). There was not a big emphasis on acting. There were no drama classes (though we were big on music).

The school presented one play a year, and it was performed only by the seniors. They brought in Mr. Bell each year to direct, and they recruited boys from the nearby Sacred Heart High School to play the male roles.

I remember that the play was a mystery and that I had the romantic lead (if you can believe that). I ran a motel somewhere in the west (why is it that when you think of "the west" you think of Arizona or New Mexico or Colorado when we live in California, which is even farther west?)

The girl in the middle is (I assume the former) Rose DeLuna. I don't remember what her role was, but Joe Twyman (who died recently) was the sheriff. That's me over on the right under the sign which you can't read but which says "Possum Stew." I was thin and not that difficult to look at in those days.

A crime is committed at the motel and Tish, the Miss Marple-like character is hot on the trail of the perpetrator.

I guess the bad guy was the tall guy, Joe Padilla (I believe I recently saw his obituary, though he is not shown as deceased on the alumni roles). But I don't remember what crime he committed. The guy on the right is Randy Jones, who was recruited from a ...gasp!!!... public (non-catholic) school when we couldn't find enough boys at Sacred Heart to handle all three of the male roles! Randy was actually studying acting and hoping for a career in show biz (you can see him as an extra in three scenes of the movie Experiment in Terror).

I was obviously the warm, caring type who was willing to listen and offer advice.

I believe this is the moment of denoument, when all is revealed. Obviously Judy Brady and Rose Lewis were shocked, I tell you...shocked!

(I don't know what Judy is doing now, but Rose is a plastic surgeon in San Francisco.)

Being part of this play was really a great experinece, my only time on stage in any sort of entertainment capacity. My friends Joyce and Anne worked behind the scenes and we had a real "group" that formed as a result of the friendships we formed during that time.

Randy and I dated until I went to Berkeley to go to school. Then I kind of dumped him. But I don't think he minded because he was always more interested in his male friend anyway.

I've always been very happy that our kids had such great theatre opportunities here in Davis. They were involved with performing since grammar school and some of the productions were pretty sophisticated.

We didn't have "sophistication" back at St. Vincent's. "Tish" was probably a play that made the high school drama circuit. Here in Davis they were doing Shakespeare, Thornton Wilder, and well known musicals (like Bye Bye Birdie).

But at least I had my moment in the spotlight -- my hour and a half of fame, as it were. And I'm really glad that Helene found these photos and passed them along.

(Can you tell Randy and I were dating in real life by the time the play ended?)