tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-54798033146957764992024-03-21T14:39:01.186-07:00Mer's Whatnot......mental and visual bric-a-brac for friends, family, and stumble-uponers.Merhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13153002900480201989noreply@blogger.comBlogger83125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5479803314695776499.post-43804068264373413782012-05-26T12:38:00.000-07:002012-05-26T19:35:39.192-07:00Why I Cried at Two Weddings and Other Musings on Marriage Equality and Being One of The Gays<br />
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I don’t remember a lot about that day just that it was sunny
and warm, the kind of day one hopes for when having a wedding outside, under
the trees somewhere in Northern California wine country. Now weddings are not something I would
normally write about, in fact they are, in general, a bit disconcerting to me,
what with all that heterosexual privilege, taffeta, and bad dancing. But this wedding, for just a few moments, was
special to me.</div>
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<br /></div>
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<o:p></o:p></div>
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Anto was my friend and colleague, a driven student with a
clever mind and we were in graduate school together. She was marrying Chris who had his lesbian
sister serve as “best man.” My girlfriend at the time (Karen) and I went to the
wedding and sat in the back row, squinting and sweating under the mid-day sun
as the officiate began saying the usual stuff you hear at weddings. Back then I had no vision of myself as a
settling-down-gettin’-hitched kind of person, for a variety of reasons. But as I sat there slightly removed, the
officiate suddenly made a sharp turn in a direction I wasn’t expecting.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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She said something to the effect of Anto and Chris hoping
for and looking forward to the day when all people could be legally married in
the US. Now this was the mid-90s, the
post-DOMA world, long before Gavin Newsome started marrying the gays and
before Prop 8 and the Mormon funded campaign supporting it. So this mention of
equality came out of nowhere and hit me like a sneaky emotional kick in the gut. Tears started streaming down my face and I
could not stop them—not even my usual strategy of silently doing math problems in
my head could stop the gush of emotion.
I looked over at Karen and saw that she too was crying. We squeezed each other’s hands and let the
tears come. That was the first
time. <o:p></o:p></div>
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More than a decade later it happened again on the other side
of the country in MA. I was with my then
partner, J-, and we were attending our first <i>legal</i> queer wedding, not long after the MA Supreme Court ruled such
marriages were protected under the Commonwealth’s Constitution. I was in the last gut-wrenching stages of ending of my ten year relationship with J- so I was not really romanticizing
marriage—I was actually downright cynical and profoundly sad. But with J- and a
couple of friends we dressed in our fancy duds and headed east to a small town on Cape Cod. The officiate, Rachel
Maddow, (yes, that Rachel Maddow) started the ceremony and then read from the
MA Court ruling. And motherfucker, here
they came again, the uncontrollable tears.
I looked down the row of seats—all the gays were crying. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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In both the above situations it was not wedding sentiment
that fueled my tears, it was not the “oh they’re so beautiful and in love” sort
of thing that made me cry—I don’t really go for that stuff and I have been to a
lot of weddings. Usually I just feel out
of place until hitting the reception and getting a couple of drinks in me. Weddings are just so NOT queer friendly (in
general). The reason I cried is hard to
put into words. Hearing the simple acknowledgment
in those two situations was a taste of something I never knew I was starving
for—it’s like eating a small piece of bread when you’re starving, it tastes so good,
it gives you something, but it’s not enough and it brings into clearer focus
that you are starving. It’s bittersweet.
<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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Heterosexism is the water I swim in, I know nothing
different. I have never been straight, I
have never been “normal”, and my romantic relationships have never been
institutionally acknowledged let alone celebrated. And Anto and Chris’ wedding is the only
straight wedding I remember hearing any sort of acknowledgement of the marriage
inequality and discrimination faced by queer folks. </div>
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<br /></div>
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Homo discrimination, of
course, is not limited to marriage inequality.
In the course of my adult life, I have seen and read about queer folks being
ridiculed, harassed, beat up, and killed.
I still remember standing on 4<sup>th</sup> Street in Long Beach in
front of a queer restaurant, looking down at the sidewalk, solemnly noting the very
spot where a gay man had recently been stabbed and killed—a hate crime long
before they called it such. I have
dropped my girlfriend’s hand while walking in small towns in the south and in
Texas and Utah. I remember a road trip, driving
around the country and being in some backwoods campsite where some folks
sported confederate flags, and telling my then girlfriend to not be too
familiar with me lest folks figure out we were together—not because I am a
pussy, not because I was ashamed, but because I feared harassment or violence
or both.</div>
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<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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To have any reference of my gayness being acceptable I had
to seek sources of support—the Women’s Center at CSUF, The Center in Long
beach, books and magazines, teachers, feminists, and friends. The mainstream of my experience, the messages
I had always been bombarded with did not validate my experiences, EVER. And I do not mean just the mainstream media
where conservative politicians and preachers ranted about “unnatural acts” and
perversion and inherent pedophilia. I
don’t mean just the lack of representation in movies, magazines, history books,
billboards, and newspapers. I also mean
experiences like the time I was in a crowded theatre watching some chick-flick,
holding my girlfriend’s hand in the dark. In the movie the protagonist had a
gay man for a best friend and neighbor, and in one scene the man was shown in
his bed with his boyfriend, not touching, just reading the paper and drinking
coffee. The audience gasped, gave a
grossed-out “ooh” and then let out an uncomfortable laugh. My heart sank. These people are disgusted by me and they
don’t even know me. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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And beyond the media there were other face-to-face
in-the-street experiences such as my regular encounters with the Reverend Lou
Sheldon and the traditional Values Coalition in Orange County. Lou and his followers were outspoken about
the perils and sinful nature of the gays.
At political rallies, and gay pride parades and festivals, we were
always met by a substantial crew of hostile folks wielding signs quoting the Old
Testament, or sporting more direct assertions, “God Hates Fags” and “Homos will
Burn in Hell,” and the like. No one in
the mainstream media got outraged by their behavior. In Orange County in the 1980s, there was an
implicit tacit tolerance, if not support, for Lou and his ideas and followers. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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The above is just a tiny tiny sample of the messages and
experiences I have had in my life, the first 25 years of which were spent
living in Orange County. And they
represent an incessant and pervasive message: gay is bad, gross,
unacceptable. And what I am describing
here is such a shallow characterization.
The profundity of the affects of heterosexism and homophobia are too
deep and complex to contemplate completely.
And I haven’t even touched on butch-phobia. I could write a dissertation on that
alone. <o:p></o:p></div>
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I have been known to say that the day I moved to San
Francisco I exhaled for the first time.
I had escaped from behind the Orange Curtain (Orange County is one of
the most conservative counties in the country).
In San Francisco I could walk the streets as a butch woman, hold my
girlfriend’s hand and think nothing of it.
And then I spent two and a half years in my Women Studies MA program at
SFSU studying my ass off, shoulder to shoulder with brilliant young feminists
from all over the country and from disparate disciplines. And it precipitated a leap forward in my own
self-acceptance and confidence. Chapter
2, I called it. Things were different
from then on. <o:p></o:p></div>
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Living quietly and homo-ly in the west side of San
Francisco, hunkering down on campus with my head in books and journals,
socializing with feminists and young folks and hanging out in the Mission and
the Castro, I for the first time lived nestled in a hospitable environment. There were no Lou Sheldons to meet me at
demonstrations or SF street fairs—there were gays everywhere and no one gave a
rat’s ass. It was a respite, a relief
from something I didn’t realize how much I needed to be relieved from. And I had a grand time in my new insular
world with my smart and savvy friends, my dyke and feminist mentors in my
academic bubble. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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But nothing like that lasts forever. Things were going to change and it was going
to hurt along the way. In 2000 Prop 22
was on the ballot, an initiative in CA that defined marriage as being between
one man and one woman, ostensibly outlawing same-sex marriage. The vote was 61% in favor of Prop 22. I remember not being surprised, having no
expectation of any other outcome. I had
no optimism that things were going to change anytime soon. And so life went on, and I went to straight
weddings and waited for the drinks and bad dancing, knowing that, usually, few
or none in attendance had any clue of how I felt at such an event. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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Prop 22 was challenged in the courts and finally made it’s
way to the CA Supreme Court where it was ruled unconstitutional on the grounds
that it violated the equal protection clause.
And then San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom, god bless him, started
immediately marrying same sex folks in San Francisco. I couldn’t believe what I
was seeing, thousands of queer folks inundating the steps of SF City Hall. It
was a beautiful thing. But we all knew
it wouldn’t last. And it didn’t. And so it was that Prop 8 was born.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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Two months before the 2008 general election, Prop 8
was losing by 22% points in the polls.
And then some prick Catholic priest from Oakland thought that was
unacceptable and headed south to San Diego, CA, where he galvanized a bunch of rich
evangelicals and Mormons who then dumped 40 million dollars into the “yes on
Prop 8” coffers. In those last two
months before the election, Prop 8 supporters launched a nefarious and
profoundly effective disinformation add campaign—and it worked. We were caught flat-footed, our adds sucked
(Diane Feinstein prattling on about some abstract notion of fairness? Are you kidding me?). The Yes folks went right for the guts, the
emotional response, and they scared the shit out of the complacent conservative
masses. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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November X, 2008, Election Day, was one wrought with
emotion. I spent the day holding “No on
Prop 8” signs at polling stations and on street corners in the relatively
conservative town of Hayward, just south of Oakland. Most folks honked and gave a thumbs up or
said, “don’t worry, I’m voting no.” But
more than a few flipped us off, spat out their windows, or screamed mean
things. After this rollercoaster of a
day I walked into my house at exactly 8pm.
Jimmy was sitting on the couch watching CNN and I stood there, exhausted, and looked at the TV. At exactly 20
seconds after 8pm CNN projected Obama as the winner. I was flooded with emotion and started crying. More than tears of joy, the joy of electing
the first black president (and a brilliant one at that), they were tears of
relief—the Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld years of insanity were over. No matter what happened, it would be better
than that. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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My friends, four queer friends, came over shortly after and
we popped champagne and watched Obama’s acceptance speech. More tears.
Hope. And then about 9:30pm the
preliminary results were being reported, Prop 8 was ahead and the projections
were that it would pass. Karen and
Penny, my friends who were married during the 18 months same sex marriage was
legal in CA, looked stunned. Karen was soon going to give birth to Calder, their first child, and since Penny and she were
legally married, Penny was to be listed on the birth certificate as the legal
guardian. Penny stated the obvious, “I
now don’t know if I am going to be the legal guardian of my child.”* The mood shifted, we were
all torn by emotions, the joy of electing Obama, the sadness and uncertainty of
the passing of Prop 8. We knew it was
just the beginning of more fighting, more debate about the legitimacy of our
relationships, more rants of bigotry and ignorance, more vilification, and,
sometimes, more hate. Oh goody. <o:p></o:p></div>
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In the last several years there have been 34 state
initiatives across the country concerning marriage equality; 33 cases were
successful against the rights of queer folks.
The one pro-gay initiative that passed in Arizona was quickly overturned
by another initiative. I’m going to
state the obvious here, the rights of a minority never get supported when put
to a vote. Rights are rights, they should
not be subject to the whims of the majority.
<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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And then it happened, President Obama, after a long “evolution”
(I think the evolution was more a political one than a personal one), came out
in support of marriage equality. I sat
on my couch and watched hours of the talking heads on cable covering the story,
the occasional tears escaping my eyes. I
never imagined a sitting president, in my lifetime, would cop to such a
thing. I’ll be damned. Things are changing faster than I ever
expected. Shortly after Obama made his
announcement, Benjamin Jealous, President of the NAACP, announced that their Board
of Directors voted 62 to 2 in support of marriage equality. Mr. Jealous was emotional during the press
conference, noting that it was personal for him—his parents, an interracial
couple, had not been allowed to legally marry in the state of Maryland and had
to drive to Washington DC to get hitched.
To the NAACP, this was an equivalent, a civil rights issue through and
through. I think this announcement, this
expression of political will on the part of the NAACP is profound and will have
an influence on it’s constituency and beyond.
And it was damn moving to watch Mr. Jealous make the announcement, teary
interruptions and all. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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And then I heard that the governor of Maryland recently
signed a marriage equality law making it legal for same sex couples to marry in
that state. Ok, good on him, good on the
Maryland State Legislature. But here’s
the amazing part. In a Poll in March of
this year, support for marriage equality was up 8%. Pretty good margin. By May, this had improved by 12% points,
showing a 20% margin of those supporting marriage equality. Wow.
That’s a healthy jump. But
looking deeper into the results showed that within the African American
population there had been a 36% jump in support for marriage equality, from -8%
in March to +19% in May. Damn. Double
damn. Thank you Mr. President. Thank you NAACP. And thank you, folks of Maryland, for seeing
the light.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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Announcements like these, hearing the President acknowledge
the legitimacy of my experience and the romantic relationships in my community,
is something like those early days, at Anto’s wedding, and then years later in MA listening
to Rachel Maddow read from the MA Supreme Court ruling—it’s a bittersweet
feeling. But things are changing. In my
lifetime the discourse has gone from rants about unnatural acts and sins
against nature to more nuanced arguments about tradition and civil unions—still
discriminatory but one is a far long way from the other. And seeing this change feels good. Damn good. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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I still can’t legally marry someone in CA, and there still
is no federal recognition of same sex marriages, which has profound material
impacts on the lives of many queer folks, impacts I am confident most straight
folks are unaware of (immigration law, inter-state marriage recognition, child
guardianship, to name only a few). And I am nervous about the potential for the
US Supreme Court to hear the case currently challenging Prop 8—what with the
majority of jurists being conservative. There are many learned people who conjecture
that if the Court does not rule in favor of equality, it will be at least a
generation before a case is heard again.
If in the US District Court, our attorneys win again, and I trust they
will, there is the chance the Supreme Court will not agree to hear the case and
the District Court ruling will stand--there will be equality at last, across
the US. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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Discrimination hurts. Having the legitimacy of your
constitutional rights debated for decades by bigots, hurts. It hurts in ways I am sure I am not even
aware of or could ever hope to measure. But I never thought I would live to see
this day, this day of so much rapid change in so little time. And I am cautiously optimistic. At 48 years old and single, I don’t know if I
will ever be married, if that is in my cards in this lifetime, but if the day
comes that marriage is finally recognized as one of my constitutional rights,
it will be a moment of profound healing. And it will give me a new hope for the
next generation of LGBT folks who will, hopefully, not know much of the bigotry
I have known, and young dykes will never have to drop their girlfriend’s hand
for fear of harassment or violence. That
is my hope. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<i>*After bouncing up
through the courts, the CA Supreme Court finally ruled, inexplicably, that Prop
8 was constitutional and (or but?) the 18,000 same sex marriages performed
before it passed would remain valid.
Penny, for now, will remain Calder’s legal guardian in the State of CA
without further legal action.<o:p></o:p></i></div>Merhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13153002900480201989noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5479803314695776499.post-22517298430484572702012-05-04T20:57:00.001-07:002012-05-04T20:58:45.652-07:00People Tell Me Things<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Today a sweet middle-aged guy came over to give me an estimate for sanding and resealing my deck. Within fifteen minutes of chatting in my backyard this man had disclosed to me the following: </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">He had a two pound dog that he loved very much and it died in 1999 and the ashes of the beloved dog are buried with his wife whom he accidentally ran over with his truck as the result of a catastrophic brake failure on the trailer he was towing and he was devastated and was tempted to jump off a roof at a job but he had god who helped him through but his adopted daughters don’t talk to him because they think he ran over their mother on purpose but he’s now married to a lovely Chinese woman and they are very happy and go to China twice a year and have been to very remote places there including “Women’s World” where the young folk have walking dates during which they hold hands and if the girl likes the boy she scratches his hand three times and if the boy likes her back he does the same…and the boys are thrown out of their houses at 16 years of age and are given a piece of bread and a knife to use when visiting a girl at night—the knife is to open the sliding gate to the yard and the bread is for the dog and then he must navigate over a cactus which is always planted under the girl’s window. </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Seriously. Within fifteen minutes he shared all this. And there is more. Like how the village folk asked if he could sing a song and he said yes and sang Strangers in the Night and then the girls lifted him up in the air over their heads and several girls scratched his hand but he didn’t scratch back so they started pinching him when he was still up in the air. </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I am not kidding. This is a true story. And this happens to me ALL THE TIME—at the bank, in book stores, at bus stops, in restaurants and in bars. </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">People tell me things. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"></span>Merhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13153002900480201989noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5479803314695776499.post-53539801203646950462012-02-20T20:36:00.000-08:002012-02-20T20:36:08.273-08:00My FatherIt was a Friday night in December, 1998, when my sister Julie and I got the call that my father was dead. She and I and her boyfriend, Ron, were sitting in the living room of our San Francisco house sipping wine and talking when my sister Lauri rang and I answered the phone. Lauri was quick to the point, “Mer, dad died.” Julie looked up when I asked in a serious voice, “what? What happened?” I quickly said to Julie, “dad died” and she let out a gasp and a short sob. I did not. I listened to Lauri’s explanation, how he was found in his condo on the floor next to his bed, how he had apparently been there several days, how his doctor was not surprised and conjectured the cause a heart attack or stroke. I hung up the phone. I was not very sad and only mildly shocked. He was 66 years old. <br />
<br />
There were times over the years when I spelled it out for my father, explained that his lack of ability or apparent desire to relate to his children, his cold and erratic behavior, his indifference and emotional immaturity would eventually lead him to being old and alone. It was a plea of sorts, for his sake and mine, for the sake of my four younger siblings, for the sake of their unborn but planned children, his future grandchildren. It was all to no avail. He asserted that it was his life. And he was right. And so he died alone. And I felt no guilt for that fact. I had done my due diligence, more than once, more than a hundred times. But there is a little more to the story, the story of my father’s end.<br />
<br />
In the fall of 1998, Julie and I had not spoken to my father in five years. It was by tacit agreement, because of his inability to deal with us as adults who wanted to address some of the fucked-up-ness of his parenting and the traumas of our youth. He had no interest in such a thing. Julie and I had discussed it at length and concluded finally that the costs of a relationship with my father were far greater than any benefit. And so we simply made no effort to be in contact with him. That lasted till the fall 1998. <br />
<br />
Earlier that year Julie and Ron had their first child, Devyn, and my sister Lauri and her husband had their son, Ian. Lauri had remained in touch with my father and so he had met Ian, but he had never met Devyn. One afternoon Julie asked me if we might invite my father to thanksgiving dinner, let him meet Devyn, just to be kind, to close that loop if nothing else. I thought for only a moment before saying yes. And so it was arranged, through my sister Lauri, an invitation to James Lee to join us for Thanksgiving. He said yes. <br />
<br />
It was a four hour drive to Lauri’s house on the Central Coast where we all met for Thanksgiving. I remember the drive, being a bit nervous as I contemplated meeting my father for the first time in five years. I thought about the letter I had written him before our split, how I had shared my recollections of his abuse and had made a few simple requests. His response was written and included the line, “I have consulted with my minister and attorney and I am asking you to cease and desist.” My father was not a religious man and I had no idea what minister he was referring to, but his legal assertion made it clear he feared I was planning to sue him. I was not. The thought had never crossed my mind, not once. <br />
<br />
One of the things I had asserted in that letter to my father is that I would never again call him “dad,” that hence forth I would refer to him by his first name, Jim. Although I did not share this in the letter, for me the word “dad” had become deeply marred, perverted beyond redemption. Calling him Jim also signified that I would no longer relate to him as a dependent daughter. I would be something closer to his equal, at the very least, an adult. <br />
<br />
As we pulled up to Lauri’s house early that afternoon on Thanksgiving Day, my heart raced, my adrenaline surged, my breathing was rapid and shallow. I stopped on the porch to take a deep breath, then I opened the door and immediately saw my father sitting across the room. I stepped aside and Julie, Ron, and Devyn entered before me as my other siblings shouted hellos and rushed to the door with smiles and hugs. At last I walked towards my father and was shocked by what I saw. In those five years he had become an old man, thin and pale—his skin sagged and he looked depleted and small. He stood before me, trembling slightly, his eyes watering and filled with fear. I reached out my hand, smiling, and said, “hello Jim.” He shook my hand and said, “hello Marie, nice to see you.” And then he relaxed a little and so did I. <br />
<br />
The rest of the day and evening was a strange kind of normal. We all helped prepare the meal, chit-chatted, joked, drank wine. There was no discussion of the past, of the splits, the abuse, the letters. And then early in the evening my father said he was heading back to his hotel because he wasn’t feeling well. It’s the last time any of us saw my father. Two weeks later, he was dead. <br />
<br />
The day after my sister Lauri called with the news of my father’s death, all four of my siblings met at our house in San Francisco where we rented a minivan and drove towards my father’s home in Reno, Nevada. During the four hour drive we talked and laughed and despite the solemnity of the occasion, we had a good time together. We arrived at our hotel late that evening and settled in before heading to the casino where we parked ourselves at a two-dollar black jack table and played cards until 3am, getting drunk on free beers the waitresses kept coming. My father was a long time compulsive gambler and we thought it a fitting way to bid him farewell. We cracked each other up, laughed with abandon, and we all left the table with more money than we started with. <br />
<br />
The next day we met our Aunt Estelle at our father’s condo. As soon as we opened the door we were smacked with the distinct and overwhelming stench of death. Although my father’s body had been removed, the smell of his death remained in the stained carpet next to his bed where he had fallen. Despite the freezing winter temperatures we immediately scattered to open all the windows to air out the place. And then we started the strange journey of considering the state of our dead father’s home, the place he had lived out his final years.<br />
<br />
The place was a mess. Every available plane was covered with junk mail, magazines, newspapers, and porn. The furniture, the dishes, the towels and bedspreads, almost everything in the condo was familiar. The place was filled with the mundane things of our youth, the simple comforts of our family home, the home we had left years ago, after my mother’s death and before my father bought the condo and retired to Reno. And there was some hint of what my father had done for the past five years. He was apparently a man taking stock, looking back, perhaps trying to make some sense of things. This was quite unexpected. <br />
<br />
Covering the living room wall were cheap picture frames filled with pieces of my father’s life. There were old pictures of family I had never known, pictures of him standing next to airplanes, a lunar capsule, SpaceLab, the projects that he, as an engineer, had contributed to in his 30-year long career in Aerospace. There were pictures of him in the army and as a young man, a teenager, a child. Also framed were his high school diploma, achievement certificates from work, and the BS degree he earned later in life going to night classes at Long Beach State. And there were pictures of us, his children, at various ages—school pictures and sports team pictures, and a few snap shots of family holidays and such. The frames were hung randomly, close together, completely covering the large wall—they were crooked, didn’t match and were cheap like what you find in a Walgreens. I stood there looking at what my father had deemed worthy of his wall, and in some way, I was shocked to see that I had made it up there. It was an irrational response, perhaps, but it was how I felt.<br />
<br />
We were all surprised to see evidence of my father’s apparent self-reflection. In his condo he had never received one of his children as a guest. Not one of us, not once, had visited him. This was not the result of some kind of cruelty on our part. It was simply the logical upshot of the choices my father had made. It was an equation of his making and this scene, his isolation, his lonely death, is what logically followed the equal sign at the end of that equation. <br />
<br />
My father was a veteran having served four years in the army, stationed in Germany during the Korean War, and was therefore eligible for veteran burial benefits. The instructions in his living trust were simple and explicit, he wanted to be buried in the veterans cemetery in Sparks, Neveda, just outside of Reno. We all agreed to cremating his partially decomposed body and then made arrangements for the funeral and his burial at the cemetery. <br />
<br />
The funeral was attended by me and my siblings, our partners, Devyn and Ian, two longtime family friends of my brother’s, and my Aunt Estelle. The only other guests were an older couple who lived in my father’s condo building, and two older women from the Red Cross where my father had volunteered. The service was short with a perfunctory reading of some military stuff, a thank-you-for-serving-your-country kind of thing read by an ancient veteran, and then a 21-gun salute that scared the shit out of Devyn and Ian. One of the vets folded a flag and handed it to my Aunt Estelle indicating that he thought she was my father’s surviving widow. No one stood up and said anything else. And then it was over. <br />
<br />
Soon after the service Julie and I headed back to the condo to continue cleaning and sorting my father’s belongings. The doorbell rang and I answered it and saw the neighbor man who attended the funeral. He stood there, serious, sadness in his eyes and said, “I thought you girls should know this. Your father came home from Thanksgiving very excited because he said he had reconciled with his girls. That’s all. I just thought you should know.” We thanked the man and then he left. Julie and I looked at each other quizzically, “reconciled with his girls?” There was no way for us to know that on that Thanksgiving Day my father was trying, in his own way, to reconcile things in his life, in his waning years and declining health. And perhaps Julie and I had a place in his contemplations, were on some list of things-to-do in his head. And although Julie and I had not considered our meeting with our father any sort of reconciliation, our father had. And I think it interesting that it was only days after that Thanksgiving meeting that he died. <br />
<br />
I do not miss my father. I cried little after he died and this stood in stark contrast to the devastating and protracted grief I experienced when my mother died nine years earlier. But a few months after my father’s death I was punched in the gut by something unexpected. It was sparked by a book I read.<br />
<br />
<em>My Old Man and the Sea</em> is the true story of a father and son who sailed a 25-foot engineless sloop around Cape Horn. The book’s format is an alternating perspective, one chapter written by the son, the next by the father, and so on. It presents an honest and loving relationship between a father and his grown son, including the father’s encouragement and acceptance of his son being the skipper, the two of them working together on a small boat, sharing a challenging adventure, joking and laughing, talking about life, love, women, and sailing. It’s the kind of relationship I would have wanted with a father. And as I finished the book I was overwhelmed with grief. And I sobbed. I realized that somewhere inside me there had still lived a little girl who harbored that dream, the dream of having a kind father, a father who was a mentor and could become a friend, a father who cheered me on and celebrated my success. And as unreasonable as that hope may have been, it was now, finally, crushed by the death of my father. It would never happen. <br />
<br />
I did not mourn my father. I mourned the father I never had.Merhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13153002900480201989noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5479803314695776499.post-20872894435365912732011-11-13T18:12:00.000-08:002012-01-22T11:44:01.784-08:00Why I Support the Occupy MovementRecently someone very close to me, an educated, liberal sympathetic soul who lives in the Bay Area asked me why I support the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) movement, specifically the Occupy Oakland (OO) folks. This person noted that OO is making no specific demands and are causing damage to public property – the person also cited the estimate they read in the paper that it will cost $60.000 to reseed the grass area in Frank Ogowa Plaza once OO is gone (to which my initial response is, dude, me and my friends could do that for like $55,000 dollars less than whoever gave that estimate!). This person is a good person, someone who reads the paper, a few of them actually, and is thoughtful. Nonetheless he could not decipher the importance of OO/OWS. This is my response to his inquiry.<br />
<br />
I am an amateur political junky, have been for many years with varying degrees of intensity. I read papars, magazines, watch the pundits on cable, talk with folks, argue. I feel it is my obligation to be somewhat informed and for the last few years I have watched this country spiral into something that started to scare the hell out of me. <br />
<br />
I watched as an arrogant and insular Bush Administration squandered the post-9/11 sympathy of the world by invading two countries like a reckless cowboy. I watched as Afghanis and Iraqis and American soldiers died day after day, month after month, and then year after year as we all grew numb to the notion of it all. I watched as deregulation fueled the growing economic inequality in this country, the inequality initiated by Reagan’s economic policies and further exacerbated by Bush Sr., Clinton, and George W. I watched as the 2010 mid-term elections produced a radical right surge that precipitated some of the most regressive laws in Wisconsin, Ohio, Maine, Arizona, etc. I watched as the Koch brothers and their astroturf organizations such Americans for Prosperity duped and then fomented the rage of low income, ignorant, racist, white people into Tea Party actions that supported politicians who voted for policies that would severely injure those very same people. I watched as Tea Partiers talked about “taking back our country” as though some crime had been committed because the majority of the US population elected a black president. I watched as the markets crashed and the disgusting greed and criminal behavior of Wall Street was exposed. I watched as the Obama administration made no arrests, made no indictments against those who had clearly violated the law. I watched as the Robert’s court in Citizen United insanely ruled that corporations have the right to free speech. <br />
<br />
Then I watched the mom-and-pop stores in my neighborhood close their doors after 20, 30, 40, 50 years of being in business, because of the economic crash and those criminal banks refusal to give credit to small businesses despite the government bailouts. I watched the foreclosure signs go up in my neighborhood, on my street, and I watched my neighbors solemnly pack their U-Hauls and drive away in shame. I watched as my own property value plummeted, as I got a note from the County Assessor telling me my house was worth a fraction of what it was assessed at only five years ago. I watched as my colleagues working for federal and state agencies had their pay cut, their staff decimated, their hours cut and then were asked to work more for that lower pay. And then I watched as the 2012 Presidential campaign emerged as the most insane, ironic, are-you-fucking-kidding-me farce since Joseph McCarthy was hurling accusations of un-American Activity. <br />
<br />
And what did I do about all this? Nothing. Not one god damn thing. Oh sure, I made my political contributions, money I mean. I bitched at the water cooler, I wrote a tirade or three, a letter or five, I ranted to family and friends, but to what affect? None to little, I would guess. I felt powerless, impotent. And in the past couple of years I started to feel a little hopeless, my usual stalwart optimism began to fade. I, for the first time ever, thought of living abroad. I have studied enough history to be scared by what has happened in this country the last few years, yet nothing I did or said had any material impact on the insane political discourse. Nothing I did or said made the Koch brothers go away or stop buying politicians. Nothing I said or did made Congress enact stricter regulations on Wall Street, or act at all! Nothing I said or did inspired anyone to act, to get up off their asses and march in the streets or demand social justice. Nope. Not one god damn thing did I make happen. <br />
<br />
And then two months ago a small group of young folks, apparently inspired by the actions in Egypt and the Arab Spring, pitched their tents in Zuccoti Park. And then something unimaginable happened. People started pitching tents in cities and small towns across this country and beyond, around the world occupiers took to the streets, town centers, government buildings. In over 90 countries there have been more than 1000 occupy actions. What those kids did in NYC changed the conversation in this country and beyond. Two months ago the Republicans were prattling on about spending cuts and deficit reduction, something every single reputable economist ON BOTH SIDES of the political spectrum agree would be disastrous in our current great recession In state government the newly elected radical Republicans were leading union busting and gross privatization initiatives that would further devastate the middle class in this country. That was the conversation. Now the conversation is the 99%, Wall Street regulation and accountability, income inequality, further exposure of the Koch brothers and the barely imaginable insanity resulting from Citizens United. <br />
<br />
And then the OWS folks inspired an unprecedented move, folks moved their money from big-banks to Credit Unions and community banks, over one billion - that’s one billion dollars – was moved within a month. OWS has sparked demonstrations and marches in cities around the world. My city, Oakland, had it’s first general strike since the 1940s, successfully shutting down the fifth largest port in the country. There were more protesters there than any demonstration in the East Bay (including BEREKELEY!) since the Vietnam Era. And I was there. I saw the people in the streets. They were not, I assure you, just a bunch of hippies. They were teachers, kids, cops, firefighters, Marines, construction workers, bank tellers, students, etc. They were the work-a-day people, middle and working -class casualties of the economic crimes committed by Wall Street, and I dare say, our own government’s inaction. And they have helped changed the conversation. <br />
<br />
I don’t give a fuck about the reseeding of the grass area in Frank Ogowa Plaza when OO is finally over. That is a trivial matter relative to the crises facing the majority of the folks in this country. That is a trivial matter when one considers the state of things in Oakland. This City is notorious for it’s crime, it’s high murder rate, it’s sex-trafficking, it’s blight. That Mayor Jean Quan makes the reseeding of the Plaza grass an issue at all is blatantly political and manipulative. This City has intractable problems, real problems, that SHOULD pale the impacts of those folks camping in Frank Ogawa Plaza. Mayor Quan authorized hundreds of thousands of (some accounts say over a million) City dollars for the police to brutally evict OO and then fire upon non-violent protesters. <br />
<br />
And yes, there have been some anarchists and violent elements at some of the protests, a very small minority. But what does Mayor Quan and the world expect in a City with an impoverished minority population that has been at best ignored and at worst brutalized by the OPD? There is a preexisting rage in this City, a justifiable rage and at times in the OO demonstrations that rage has expressed violently. But this has been the exception, not the rule. And the organizers of OO have stepped in, tried to defuse the tensions, have over and over emphasized non-violence. I have seen this again and again with my own eyes, I have heard it with my own ears. <br />
<br />
I have been to OO and Occupy San Francisco several times and have attended three marches, one in San Francisco and two in Oakland. I have wandered the camps, talked to people, made donations, read the literature. I have seen the homeless there, the Haight Street type kids in their grungy clothes playing angry folk songs on beat up guitars. Those kids who have ALWAYS been at the bottom of the 99% but no one seemed to notice or care enough to change that. Now, for the first time, the clarion call is for ALL of the 99% and they feel part of something. They feel seen. They see that their voices can be part of something bigger than their little cohort of bruised and battered friends begging in the streets and then trying to keep warm in the parks on a winter night. I have also seen the other young folks, the educated folk who are working to keep this thing peaceful and enduring. And they, by and large, have been successful despite the aggressive and sometimes ridiculous actions of the local police. So yes, the hippies, the homeless, the radical and idealistic are some of the people spending the nights in tents pitched on hard concrete or wet grass. But are they not part of the 99%? Is it not the system that privileges the very few at the expense of ALL of the other 99% the point of the Occupy Movement? <br />
<br />
The way I see it, those young people sleeping in tents in Zuccotti Park, Frank Ogowa Plaza, Justin Herman Plaza and in cities and towns around the world, those people did what you and I could not. Those people successfully and nonviolently (for the most part) changed the discourse in this country and the world. They are doing our dirty work. They are doing what the young people should do and so many times in history have done. They are changing the world and we cannot yet know how that will play out, or what good may come. That is why I support the Occupy Movement, even with the homeless patchouli wearing drum beating hippies. And that is why I will continue to march and donate and support how and when I can short of pitching a tent. I encourage you all to do the same.Merhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13153002900480201989noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5479803314695776499.post-8449425494251354922011-08-07T16:50:00.000-07:002011-08-08T19:05:56.088-07:00At Least I am Not Allergic to BeesIt's not the way one wants to wake up from an afternoon nap on one's boat. My subconscious must have processed the information first, someone yelling, "single-hander! single-hander! your bow-line is undone!" I was out of the v-berth and bounding into the cockpit before I was really awake, knowing that I was the only single-handed sailor in the cove. And that voice sounded way too close to be good. But then this day was weird from the start. <br />
<br />
<div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;">This summer the Bay has not been behaving the way I would like. It's been cool, extra foggy with an extra thick marine layer almost everyday, some days it doesn't burn off at all. And I've felt my mood sinking. Grey, grey, grey - it doesn't do me well. But I needed some boat time, have barely sailed this summer compared to years past. So this morning I decided I would head to Angel Island for a day and night alone on my sweet old boat, the Donna Clare. I gathered some provisions (i.e. a steak, some wine, and my new Kindle) and headed to the marina and readied the boat for the sail. The marine layer was thick and the fog was moving quickly in through the Gate towards Berkeley and Angel Island. I headed west out of the marina and the wind picked up a little, building to 20+ knots by the time we were near the island. And then things got weird. </div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"><br />
</div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;">Usually east of the island there is a wind shadow where a sailor can drop sail and motor into Ayala Cove to moor in relative calm. But the wind started shifting, gusting, going from 10 to 20+ knots in seconds, seemingly coming from both north and south of the island, and even over the island itself. Weird. I would set the auto-helm with the boat into the wind and run to the foredeck to furl the jib and then the wind would shift and gust, fill the sails again, forcing me back to the cockpit to reset the auto-helm. I even tried, briefly, to heave-to but it didn't stick. After this game of gust-stall-switch-gust I finally wrestled in the sails and motored into Ayala Cove.</div> <br />
<div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;">It's the weekend, Saturday afternoon, the busiest time of the week on the Bay. The cove was bustling with boats and the mooring lines were a complex web. The wind continued to be fluky and the currents were running strong. I did a couple laps, motoring to the side of the mooring area, surveying the situation. I watched guys in dingies help another two boats moor, grabbing their bow and stern lines and looping them through the mooring buoys and then back to the boats to be tied off in a V-shape. It's how it's done in Ayala Cove, otherwise a boat would swing in circles because of the strong currents that run with the tides (four a day, to be exact). <br />
<br />
After watching for a bit I swallowed hard and humbly asked a man in one of the dingies for help, explaining that I was single-handing and the mooring I was aiming for was a tight fit amongst the already tied up boats. He obliged. After the usual comedic event that is mooring in a crowded cove, with the help of no less than three men in dingies, we tied her off, bow and stern. I finally relaxed. Mostly. </div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"><br />
</div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;">I had to moor between two spread out buoys and so needed more than 100 hundred feet of line on the bow. This required marrying two hundred-foot lines before looping it through the buoy and back to my boat. A man in a dingy and his young son had tied the knot and brought me the line to cleat off on the bow of Donna Clare. After it was all done, I thought about jumping in my dingy and rowing over to check the knot they had tied. I didn't. I should have. I really really should have. </div><br />
<div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;">I settled in, started cleaning up, coiling lines, stowing my gear, making the boat comfy for the afternoon and night. At last I sat in the cockpit to read my Kindle under the little bit of afternoon sun while the fog sat atop the island threatening to spill over into the cove. I am reading Storm Passage: Alone Around Cape Horn, a harrowing tale of a man who completed a single-handed circumnavigation via the capes, the Southern Ocean. It's an extreme thing to do and fraught with barely imaginable challenges, discomforts, and isolation - hundreds of days alone in the most hostile Ocean on Earth. I am always humbled by such stories as single-handing the Bay often scares the hell out of me! I cannot imagine being alone in the southern Ocean.</div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"> </div><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgrgtEVdrZf_EPwRrtsAPl_LPhrzQsFQw62uJRcgUNy3gW4Uz2ZoqHPyuz-zsL08f4XNta9j9f3XssZjk5iOlrx-CUGcWTTIq9ipvvVNh_Sop5IAOCyRokrQ4LvAp-MH7EuZVdvy7Oi_OMl/s1600/Mooring+2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; cssfloat: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgrgtEVdrZf_EPwRrtsAPl_LPhrzQsFQw62uJRcgUNy3gW4Uz2ZoqHPyuz-zsL08f4XNta9j9f3XssZjk5iOlrx-CUGcWTTIq9ipvvVNh_Sop5IAOCyRokrQ4LvAp-MH7EuZVdvy7Oi_OMl/s400/Mooring+2.jpg" t$="true" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Looking over the bow of Donna Clare at the mooring <br />
buoy from which the bow-line came free.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>The wind continued to be fickle and cool so I retired to the v-birth under an open hatch. For some reason I kept looking aft, looking to see that the island was in the same place out the companionway hatch. I thought to myself that I was being a little paranoid. In retrospect, I know it's because I didn't check that knot. I didn't trust it. Always listen to your gut. It knows more than you. Seems I must learn this lesson time and again. <br />
<div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"><br />
</div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;">Then it happened, I heard the yelling for the single-hander. I was jarred from my nap, disoriented, wobbly as I bounded on deck. There we were, no bow-line, swinging towards shore, moving towards the boat moored behind me. I ran to the bow, tried to discern what had happened. I saw both ends of the bow-line were still cleated to the deck of my boat; the knot had failed. Men in dingies came to help, the woman in the boat to my rear helped fend the Donna Clare off her own boat. Everyone was kind and I even heard a man on another boat say, "it could happen to anyone." I was thankful for his comment, but ultimately, this was my fault. I should have checked that knot. </div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"> </div><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="clear: right; cssfloat: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjkkf2IsEDPqrSXFTqMnqNI2eW4lV6vjmNf5Z_w3raXKoRberDUGk21Dog6Wi9Ka3JvuIhBZU99ungEToMmd_DnBAhW6zDDrdxPaSoIVxrQN8KElN6eWtYn_L99wLu5cRv-SFZkIXx3Axfh/s1600/Mooring+1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; cssfloat: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjkkf2IsEDPqrSXFTqMnqNI2eW4lV6vjmNf5Z_w3raXKoRberDUGk21Dog6Wi9Ka3JvuIhBZU99ungEToMmd_DnBAhW6zDDrdxPaSoIVxrQN8KElN6eWtYn_L99wLu5cRv-SFZkIXx3Axfh/s400/Mooring+1.jpg" t$="true" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Looking over the stern of Donna Clare to the<br />
buoy that both Jim and I were moored to. </td></tr>
</tbody></table>After a good 20 minutes and lots of muscling of line we were secure again. Jim, the man skippering the boat behind me, was in his dingy and tied the knot this time. I asked him, "did you secure it, for sure?" "I used a bowline, it will save your life one day" he said with a smile. "I think it already has" I responded, grinning. The bowline is the sailors knot. Strong as hell, easy to undue after use. I could tie it blindfolded. I shook his hand off the bow of my boat, reaching down to him in the dingy. Then I suddenly acknowledged a pain I had been aware of since running up and down my deck barefoot. I finally said "ouch" and looked down to see a bee stinging me on the bottom of my foot between my toes. I flicked it off and checked for a stinger. Jim looked up from his dingy and asked, "are you allergic to bees?" "Not so far" I said. "Well, I have an epi-pen if you start feeling weird" he added. Good to know. <br />
<div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"><br />
</div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;">I trust that Jim tied a good knot. He's motivated to. If the line fails it's his boat that I will swing into. "Time to open a bottle of wine" he said as he climbed back onto his own sailboat now properly behind my boat. I agreed. I am sitting in the cabin working on a glass of Prosecco and I think my heart rate and blood pressure are finally starting to slow. Again, not my preferred way to wake up from an afternoon nap. But at least I am not allergic to bees. Or worse yet, alone on a boat in the Southern Ocean.</div><div class="separator" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; clear: both; text-align: center;"></div>Merhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13153002900480201989noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5479803314695776499.post-65341362997487312272011-02-16T17:17:00.000-08:002011-02-16T17:17:31.698-08:00"Life is Laundry"A million years ago when I was an undergrad at Cal State Fullerton, the Women Studies program decided to assign students in the program a mentor. I was assigned one Dr. S-, a crusty ol' poly-sci prof who rode horses, drank liberally, and smoked enough cigarettes to give her a voice so gravely it rivaled Tom Waitts. She was short, wicked smart, quick on her feet and definitely not warm and fuzzy. To my young self, Prof S- was a fairly intimidating creature, aloof, always looking beyond me, thinking deep professorial thoughts I was certain. Her office was a mess, the typical kind of professor mess, papers stacked high, books everywhere. <br />
<br />
I met with Prof S- only once and I still remember the encounter clearly. I sat down in the windowless office, a little nervous and waited to get "mentored". Prof S- gave me a quick, gruff "hello" and smile and then said to me, "Life is laundry." "Ok" I said, thinking "that's it? life is fucking laundry?" Our meeting was brief and I was on my way. "Life is laundry"? That's what the brilliant Prof S- has for me? I left thinking that was a waste of time and I never made another appointment to see Prof S- and she never again reached out to me. Apparently, that was the extent of the mentoring I needed....or was to be afforded. <br />
<br />
It's been more than 20 years since I sat in Prof S-s office, nervous, waiting for her words of wisdom. And in those 20 years I have come to realize the profound truth and utility in what she chose to say to me that day. Sometimes all your shit's dirty, a mess, the hamper is overflowing and you're wearing that last pair of underwear that you should have tossed 'cause it rides up your ass. And then there are times when all your shit is clean, neatly folded, put away in closets and drawers and you just stepped out of the shower and put on a fresh smelling shirt. And you finally tossed those old underwear AND it's friggin' sunny outside. But the one thing that remains always true, neither one of these states, or any in between, is constant. Ever. That was her point. The older I get, the more I live, the more I see the truth in Prof S-'s little gem. And through my realization and acceptance that life is, in fact, laundry, I have learned how to not stress as much, to not beat myself up as much when my hamper is overflowing and there are the literal and proverbial dirty clothes all over the place.<br />
<br />
And with that, and I am not kidding, I am going to go do some laundry. The literal kind...and maybe even a little of the metaphorical kind. We'll see. Merhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13153002900480201989noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5479803314695776499.post-18461469682826138782010-12-20T15:46:00.000-08:002011-01-10T22:03:39.621-08:00Grief, Travel, Friendship and the Best Bar in the World<i>"There's a crack in everything, that's how the light gets in." </i><br />
<i>Leonard Cohen</i><br />
<br />
Mike and I met in Guatemala when we were both broken hearted, grieving, grappling with the disorienting notion of what our lives might look like after the losses we had just suffered. I had just endured a series of intimate and devastating betrayals that led to the end of a ten year relationship. Mike had just lost his best friend to an abrupt and unexpected illness - John, dead at 42. We were both bewildered and raw. That was December 2007. <br />
<br />
It was late summer 2007 when I hastily decided to take my first solo international trip somewhere, anywhere, someplace no one knew me and I could just be, floating, unattached, where things were different and I had to pay attention to something other than my empty house and the unrelenting ache in my guts....someplace where I didn't belong and nothing was expected of me and every interaction would demand my attention and be fresh and untainted. I needed to get the fuck out of town, out of country, out of my world. <br />
<br />
My first solo trip was to Cabo where I intentionally booked two nights in a modest hotel frequented by Mexicans, not gringos. My trip was a week long and I figured I'd spend a couple days in Cabo and then decide where to go and what to do. I hated Cabo as it was packed with idiot drunk gringos who under-appreciated the Mexicans who served them. I spent one day fishing for dorado on a rough Pacific Ocean catching two fish which I brought to a sweet palapa restaurant where the kindly waiters had the cooks make three preparations for me to try. I gave the rest of the fish to the waiters who were my only friends in that town, a pattern that has often repeated itself in Mexico. <br />
<br />
The second day I rented a car and headed north along the Pacific Coast in the August heat listening to Mexican music and concentrating on keeping the car on the narrow roads that link the towns of southern Baja. I spent a night in Todos Santos and then headed east to La Paz. I stayed in a gorgeous historical building, el Angel Azul, a B&B run by a savvy world travelled Swiss woman named Ester. We immediately liked each other. After an incredibly successful day of fishing on the Sea of Cortes in an 18' panga with my Mexican guide, she and I took my fish to the best restaurant in town where Jesus, a friendly chef from Tijuana, made that fish delicious. I gave the rest of my fish to hard working locals, people Ester knew. I so loved La Paz with it's sweet Mexican waiters, shop-keeps, chefs and guides, that I extended my trip another week. Ester and I sipped Don Julio in the courtyard and discussed her travels, politics, and local gossip. I snorkeled with sea lions, kayaked, ate ceviche on the beach, met friendly vacationing Italians, and walked the <i>malecon</i> in the evenings watching families eating ice cream cones and listening to the bands that played a mix of American cover songs and Mexican pop. <br />
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August days in southern Baja are oppressively hot and I was forced to move slowly, conservatively. I drank glasses of ice water with limes, ate chips and guacamole and obsessively wrote in my journal. My interactions with the locals could only deal with the immediate, the tangible, those things that could be explicitly named, mimed or pointed to...the abstract and conceptual were eclipsed by the language barrier and I was forced to live in the moment. It was perfect and when I returned to the States something had shifted. It was not an end, not a cure for the ache in my guts, the grief, the disorientation, but I had rounded some corner, was looking at some new fuzzy horizon. And I knew after years of traveling in Mexico, I needed to learn some Spanish. Within a month of returning from Baja I had booked five and half weeks in Guatemala over Christmas and New Years. I registered for Spanish classes and arranged boarding with a local family. I had no idea what to expect but I was going to really get the fuck out of town, out of country, out of my world. I was headed to Guate.<br />
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My first time in Antigua, Guatemala, I studied Spanish four hours a day, an exhausting enterprise in one's 40s. I ate my meals with my Spanish speaking and very religious host family. I walked the cobblestone streets alone, sat in cafes reading and studying my Spanish, ordering meals with my nascent skills. I sat in internet cafes and wrote emails and blogged at the request of my family. I read voraciously and slept in a closet room in the most uncomfortable twin bed. On the weekends I travelled alone, Lake Atitlan, Tikal, Rio Dulce, Chi Chi, Copan. I was often nervous, lonely...but I was present, engaged, everything was new and immediate. I watched no TV, read no newspapers, listened only to the music available in the clubs and cafes. I talked to all kinds of people stumbling through Spanglish conversations with smiling locals, swapping stories with traveling Europeans and gringos. Save for the snotty young Europeans in my Spanish school, most folks were friendly and engaging, especially the locals. <br />
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Although people were friendly to me as I travelled alone around Guatemala on the weekends, in Antigua I was starting to get a bit lonely. I was older than most of my fellow students and they were largely indifferent and often unfriendly to me. Then one day I walked into Dyslexia Books on <i>Avenida Primera</i> and met Carlos, a middle-aged sweetheart of a man, a lawyer from Tennessee who tends the store in the time when he's not working for local NGOs. We immediately hit it off talking books and politics and Guatemala. I asked Carlos if I could buy him drinks for the night at the adjacent bar, Cafe No Se. He accepted and we settled into what would become a liqueur soaked evening of disclosure and waxing philosophic. It was that night that I met Mike, shook his hand over the bar he was tending. Mike and I talked and ranted about US politics and who knows what and after a couple of hours I knew he was to be my friend, that I already loved him. It was a strange but comforting feeling. <br />
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Mike and I spent the next night in No Se sipping drinks and sharing our stories. He spoke candidly of John's death, his heartbreak and despair, the disorientation that comes with grieving a profound loss. I shared my stories, the betrayal and loss, the shock and disillusionment of the past year. I also talked about my first experience wrestling with profound grief, the loss of my mother when I was young. We acknowledged that despite its inevitability, death and the resulting grief are not something one can really prepare for. We drank. We talked. We didn’t try to fix each other. We didn’t pretend it was less painful than it was. We didn’t get uncomfortable and change the subject. We didn’t panic and fill the silences. We simply bore witness to each other. Thousands of miles from our lives and histories in the States, we sat together and told the heartbreaking truth in a dimly lit dive bar. And we both knew a profound friendship was being cemented. <br />
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One day walking through town Mike asked me what I was doing for Christmas. I had no plans and he insisted that I come to his house for dinner on Christmas Eve. I spent the evening with an incredibly eclectic group of folks, expats and Guatemalans, do-gooders and vagabonds, radicals and musicians. We told stories and shared poetry and drank rum and sang songs till the sun came up. It was beautiful. My heart was still broken but it was also filled with love....that ineffable paradox that is the human condition, the way the human heart can hold both profound pain and expansive love...the bittersweet feeling of love's return when you have suffered its absence. <br />
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I am in Guatemala for the fourth time since that first holiday season, my fourth Christmas and New Years with Mike and the various souls who land in this quirky little town this time of year. There are the regulars, the expats and Guatemalans who call this place a permanent home, and those who come back just for the holidays, and those just passing through, this place a stop on some journey. Each year we gather around a long table, eat and drink and sing songs till the sun comes up, giving thanks for the love and friendship. And each year Mike and I have grown stronger, let go of some more of the pain of those particular losses and cultivated a little more hope and peace. And we have noted that our friendship is rooted in our willingness to tell the truth when we were crushed and raw. We both knew that to tell those truths is an expression of great strength, the strength of letting go of pretense. <br />
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The other night Mike and I got into a little fight, something stupid and fueled by a little too much tequila. We immediately made up but the tiff threw me for a bit of a loop. Mike and I don't fight. Our relationship is not filled with expectations...it's elastic and spacious, never demanding. And then a wise friend offered, shrugging off my concern, that to fight is a rite of passage of sorts. To make an ass out of oneself, to be petty or ridiculous and then be quickly and sincerely forgiven, to experience that is to know more the truth of the friendship. I realized she was right and I let it all go. As Mike said to me the next day, "all I know is that I love you and that's all that matters and this is just a little blip and it means nothing." He's half right. It once again means letting go of pretense, the pretense that we will always be our best selves. We will not. And to admit that is also an expression of strength. <br />
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Mike recently sent me a draft of an essay he wrote exploring the fragility of life, asserting that: "…occasionally Ye Olde Cycle of Birth and Death grabs us by the lapels and demands our full and undivided. And it does so to shake the comfort out of our heads and remind us that, as fast as gravity, conception or murder, entropy can send your whole world ass over tea-kettle." <br />
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I think Mike is a passionate and talented writer. And as his friend, I know some of the back-story that fuels this particular languaging. I know that in the past year he helped victims of the eruption of the volcano Pacaya, that he was one of the volunteers who helped dig people from the mudslides that Agatha's rains caused in Ciudad Vieja. I know that he returned to the states for the funeral of a friend who was murdered by her husband. And I know an ex lover recently gave birth to another man's baby. After reviewing his draft I wrote to him in an email: "One has to acknowledge all that vulnerability and tenderness in order to live out loud, to love big and generously despite the fact that your heart will be broken, again and again. And then again. People will die, people will betray you, volcanoes will erupt and floods will sweep away villages. No one escapes heartbreak. Life is a heartbreaking enterprise, inherently. Denying that leads to severe and potentially irreparable pussy-ness."<br />
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One of the reasons I love Mike so much is he acknowledges, front and center, without pretense, without a common self delusion, that life is heartbreaking. He names the pain, calls out the insecurities, stares them down, doesn't let them paralyze him. He does all that and then chooses to love generously again and again. In this way he inspires me and I think all those who know him and read his work. <br />
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It's good to be back in Guatemala, with Mike and all the dear friends I have made here. Unlike that first Christmas, I am stronger, happier, healed. I am forever thankful for those early conversations with Mike in that beautiful dive bar on <i>Avenida Primera</i>, because without them and the friendship they birthed, I would not be here today, a better woman, a better friend, a better person.Merhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13153002900480201989noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5479803314695776499.post-14447101655312129172010-11-21T22:08:00.000-08:002010-11-26T22:58:08.066-08:00Mer's Going South, AgainFor my dear 9.23 occasional readers I wanted to let you know I will be hitting the road again, heading south to Costa Rica and Guatemala and who knows where else along the way.<br /><br />As is my custom, I will be writing my sloppy barely edited travel ramblings on my travel blog so that they are not ever confused with my sloppy barely edited random ramblings here. So if you're inclined, click over to track my exploits:<br /><br />merstravelblog.blogspot.com<br /><br />Say a prayer for my health and safety and I will do my best to stay healthy and safe.<br /><br />Salud<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Itinerary </span><br />(For my Family and the Interested)<br /><br />Nov. 27, 2010<br />Oakland to Long Beach<br />Jet Blue<br /><br />Nov. 28<br />Red-eye to Guatemala City<br />Hang out in the airport until the afternoon, super fun that will be. <br /><br />Flight to San Jose, Costa Rica<br />TACA/LACSA Airline for both flights.<br /><br />Dec. 9<br />Back to Guatemala City and on to Antigua<br /><br />Jan. 2, 2011<br />Guatemala City to LA<br /><br />Jan. 3, 2011<br />Long Beach to Oakland<br /><br />Jan. 4, 2011<br />Sleep all day, I am sure.Merhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13153002900480201989noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5479803314695776499.post-77892527621036589532010-11-14T13:36:00.000-08:002010-11-21T01:36:00.292-08:00Conversations with JimmyJimmy and I were sitting at the MacArthur BART station waiting for a train into the City. We were headed to a concert at the Fillmore to see Dean and Britta perform Galaxie 500 songs. As we waited the following conversation occurred.<br /><br />Jimmy: "How many times does 12 go into 500?"<br /><br />Mer: "I don't know. Why?"<br /><br />Jimmy: "I want to figure out how many months are in 500."<br /><br />Mer: " Ok, but why?"<br /><br />Jimmy: "I wanna figure how many years I've waited to see Galaxie 500."<br /><br />Mer: "Jimmy, WTF are you talking about? You are seriously just making that random calculation?"<br /><br />Jimmy: "Yes I am. Didn't you see Rainman?"<span style="font-family:Prelude,Verdana,san-serif;"><br /><br /></span>Merhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13153002900480201989noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5479803314695776499.post-18454548114692498472010-09-15T23:09:00.000-07:002011-01-19T12:43:31.408-08:00Mourning Toby T. and Paying Homage to My Jewish GrandmothersAs a recovering Catholic I am not sure if it is proper or typical that I have joyfully adopted the Jewish grandmothers of my girlfriends, but it's how things have gone for me. It's not that I didn't have grandmothers as such a thing is biologically impossible. It's just they were of a different sort, older, more distant, and frankly, less entertaining. My favorite adopted Jewish grandmother, Toby, died recently and I was very sad for it. So I decided to share a little about her, and Suki, for Suki was my first. I miss them both. <br />
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<span style="font-weight: bold;">Suki (My First)</span><br />
Suki was the grandmother of my first love, T-. Suki was a slight women, thin with white hair cut short and modern. She stood about chest high to me and she always wore sensible shoes. Defying an almost compulsory domesticity for women of her culture and generation, Suki went to school, learned to paint, prioritized these things with some parity to the caring for her husband and the raising of her children. In her younger years such a path was not met with enthusiasm and I spent many hours listening to Suki tell her stories of the olden days in NYC, the neighborhoods in Brooklyn, the brownstone apartment and the sweltering summers, the family gossip...uncle Sal and the gang. There was no compensatory conviction in her manner but rather a matter-of-fact-ness, slightly removed, as if any criticisms of her choices meant nothing. She just did her own damn thing and if anyone had a problem with that, well, that was their problem, not hers.<br />
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I spent several years with the R- family, eating dinners prepared by Suki's daughter Joan, sitting in the living room talking and sipping wine. I watched Joan and Suki's dance, their incessant bickering and banter with all the complexities of their mother daughter relationship....Joan's concomitant resentment and admiration regarding Suki's choices. I heard Joan's stories, her complaints about her mother's spoiling of her older brother, how he got more, like the AC in his room while Joan slept fitfully in the sweltering Brooklyn summer nights. Suki showed no signs of regret, always a wry smile on her face. She lived very much in the present. She was a 70-something year old successful artist living in SoCal. All that other stuff was of the past.<br />
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I was a newcomer, an outsider, someone with no shared baggage, no demands. It's a privileged place to be. I had not known many women like Suki, women who were older and had made their own way in the face of resistance, who were from the then exotic (to me) villages of Manhattan and Brooklyn. I liked Suki immensely and I think she felt the same, grinning at me, including me, always answering my questions.<br />
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I met T- in college, undergrad, and shortly after I lost my mother. I was grieving, broke, struggling to work my way through school when the universe thought to test me even further and I was laid-off from my job. While I doggedly looked for work, Suki, now suffering from carpel tunnel from a lifetime of painting, hired me to help her with things around her house and studio where she had lived alone for some time since her husband had died. I spent many days with Suki helping her stretch canvass, arranging things in her studio, cleaning this or that. She was, in many ways, a stereotypical artist, odd, eccentric. She was often myopic, having me organize this or that in some small corner in the middle of some bigger chaos....or move this canvass there and then, no wait, back again. I could not anticipate her needs, they were not linked, not linear. I just smiled, did what she asked, enjoyed spending time with her without judgment.<br />
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When T- and I broke up, I mourned the loss of Suki, my first adopted Jewish grandmother (Joan too, very much, but this piece is about my Jewish grandmothers). But such is the way of the hyper-mobile modern world where serial monogamy reins supreme. Many of our chosen families are more temporary than we once dreamed. When I broke up with T-, I lost Suki too. Last I heard she was still painting in SoCal. <br />
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<span style="font-weight: bold;">Toby (My Last, So Far)</span><br />
When the old folks die, it is not a tragedy, it's just sad. Sad to say goodbye...I think there is even some sadness for knowing that to ask for any more would be unreasonable. Toby had a good run, a good life, a loving family, tons of friends, money, and an incredible sense of humor.<br />
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Toby exaggerated for sport. If it was hot outside, it was 1000 degrees. If the meal was expensive, then she was spending her last dime, if she had a cold she was near death. She also had a very porous filter, blurting things out that many would think inappropriate. By the time I met Toby she was in her 70s and had dispensed with the reservations to which many younger folks adhere. She had raised two successful and healthy kids, had cared for the love of her life for 12 years while Alzheimer's slowly stole him from this world, and she had watched as friend after friend buried their husbands. I think she was beyond giving a shit about the trivial niceties...she had earned the right to speak her mind and so she did.<br />
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I immediately loved Toby and I like to think she felt the same way. My relationship with J-s immediate family was complicated and often uncomfortable. As J-'s partner I was subject to the evaluations and judgments that often come from parents. Her family was quick to share judgments and opinions but not very forthright with feelings and vulnerabilities, not a very comfortable place for a straight-shooting heart-on-her-sleeve chick like me. Not that I didn't hold my own, I did. It's just we spoke different languages, came from different places, and they leveled judgments on places I had been and would never judge the same way. So I learned their culture and adapted. But with Toby there was less that was unsaid, less pretense, less false politeness. I think she saw, more than J-'s parents, that J and I had a lot of fun together, shared a lot of love and that seemed to be enough for her acceptance.<br />
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J- and I were together for a decade and I spent a lot of time visiting with her family and some my favorite times were those spent with Toby. A couple of stories still make me laugh to recall. <br />
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After A-'s (Toby's husband) funeral we all (J-'s family and Toby) went to dinner, early of course, as this was in Florida and that's a place where folks eat early. Slightly after 6pm the hostess sat the lot of us at a long table and Toby sat next to me. Toby scrutinized the menu and noted that the "early bird" prices only applied until 6:00pm. When the waiter arrived she asked in her high pitched unapologetic New Jersey accent, "can I still get the early-bird prices?" The waiter very politely explained that it was after six so the full prices were in effect. After he left, with a smirk on her face, Toby blurted out, "what if I tell the waiter I just buried my husband, do you think he would give me the early-bird price?" I laughed hard and then assertively said, "Toby, that's it, I am buying you dinner and you better order whatever you want." We ordered, ate, and then I slapped down some $20s to cover mine and Toby's meal while she grinned at me. Toby had been morning the loss of A- for over a decade and now that she had buried him, there was, of course, a deep sadness, but there was a levity too.<br />
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A couple of nights later J- and I took Toby out to dinner again. When we got in the car to head back to the house Toby suddenly exclaimed, "Oh my god, X and X are going to be at the house at 7:30pm! We have to get home before them! I am supposed to be sitting Shiva and they will think I am a terrible widow! Mer, get us home fast!" I was driving Toby's car and as I cranked the engine I turned, looked her in the eye and said, "I'll get you there Tobes, hang on." I sped like a maniac through the wide streets of X Florida while Toby and J- whooped it up, laughing and cheering me on. We skidded into the driveway minutes before her friends arrived, quickly settling into the house, helping Toby look relaxed as though she had been there all evening mourning like a proper Jew. When they left Toby again exclaimed her relief for having saved face. She thanked me again for driving so fast, getting her home in time. I was thrilled to be in service to this woman and thrilled that she had enjoyed my speedily weaving through the slow driving Florida blue-hairs. <br />
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It was last December that I heard Toby was sick. I remember it vividly, sitting at the communal computer in the home of my friends in Guatemala, reading J-s email...bone cancer...months left...chemo...terminal. I hadn't seen Toby in a over two years but always asked about her. She was the one I missed, wished I could see but knew I probably never would. And now it was the beginning of her end. I sank into the chair, I was crying, writing J- back, filled with sadness and far from home. And then a few short months later, Toby was dead. Gone. And from the stories J- shared, she was feisty and bitchy the whole way, never admitting defeat. And I like to think she is with A- now, popping off, spewing her hyperbole, asking for the early bird specials.<br />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>Note: Some names have been changed to respect folks privacy. </i></span>Merhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13153002900480201989noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5479803314695776499.post-2515782805930201722010-09-11T01:27:00.000-07:002010-09-11T19:15:30.797-07:00Tell the Good Truths Now<div>This is a true story, I know because I read it in a book. A man was leading a group encounter kinda thingy in the 1970's. The man asked the participants to challenge themselves by sharing a secret with the group. Folks made their confessions, things that included guilt for putting one's parents in an old-folks home, kicking one's dog, being promiscuous and liking it. The exercise brought the participants the predictable realization that they judged themselves more harshly than anyone else in the room. The group leader noted that many folks shared big secrets while others played it more safe, sharing the less risky. And just when everyone thought the exercise was over the man offered them more. He noted that everyone's secrets were negative, fraught with some degree of embarrassment, shame, or guilt for doing something "wrong." Then he said that our biggest secrets are actually our unexpressed love, our shame, our embarrassment for feeling love or appreciation or affection.
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<br />I remember this story, read so long ago, because it resonated. I remember thinking, "Damn, he's right." I think it was especially poignant for me, having been a closeted homo for 25 years, feeling a certain guilt and perennial perversion for some of my affections. But his point was not limited to a guilty romantic love. His point was that we hold back, don't express so much of the love and appreciation we feel. In that moment I challenged myself to start telling the good truths early and often. I have made it one of my lifetime projects, and over the past couple of decades, I have gotten better and better at doing just that.
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<br />I am a chatty sort by nature and have been most of my life. I will engage waitresses and bus drivers and people waiting in line at the bank. Not always, but more often than many, and usually with some vigor and candor. My sister Juls has often refrained, with a smile, "Mer, stop it, people think you are crazy." I ignore her, smiling, continuing to engage whomever it is that Juls thinks I should leave be. And the thing is, some folks do think I am crazy, or odd, or inappropriate. But I think more than not, by a margin, folks do not. They often respond quite positively, smiling or laughing, or sharing something, often something personal, something unexpected.
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<br />If I meet you and I like you, well, I will probably tell you right quickly. I will literally say, "You're cool, I really like you." If you amuse me, make me laugh, I will tell you, "you're really funny, I like hanging out with you." If you provoke me, make me think, challenge me intellectually, I will tell you. If I think you look pretty in a dress, or have an infectious smile, or I like the way you giggle or make pancakes, I will tell you. I will tell you even if it is a little strange for you to hear something nice said about you, even if someone being direct seems foreign or inappropriate. I will tell you because I have come to believe that to not, is wrong, is a kind of selfishness, and it's chickenshit. I don't want to be selfish or a pussy. And if my sharing the goodness I see, feel, hear makes you uncomfortable for a moment, I am happy to be, hopefully, a small contributor to your getting over that shite.
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<br /></div><span style="font-weight: bold;">Besides, Speaking Up Could Change Someone's Life</span>
<br /><div>This isn't a perfect fit with what I am preaching above, but I am inclined to share this story here nonetheless. Long ago when I was a teenager and acutely aware of my not fitting the dominant cultural standards for female attractiveness, I had an experience, a mundane encounter that changed in a moment the way I saw myself.
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<br />I was at the Laguna Beach Sawdust Festival where artisans from all over SoCal come to sell their wares. It was night and I was with friends at a jewelry counter trying on silver rings...I held my hand out considering a particular ring, noting my chewed up fingernails, the more masculine shape and lines, and I said, "I hate my hands." A woman, the jewelry maker behind the display counter suddenly stopped what she was doing, looked at me intently, eyes narrowed in seriousness and said, "do they serve you well?" Startled, I said, "what?" "Your hands, do they serve you well?" she insisted while staring at me, waiting for my answer.
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<br />I thought about it, how with these hands I could draw well, play sports, write, hug my friends, build and fix stuff, a million things I could do well because of the skill and coordination contained in my hands. I looked at my hands again and then at her and answered, "yes." "Then don't hate your hands," she instructed and then she turned away and continued whatever it was that she was doing. In that moment, and through the years when I have reflected on this encounter, I realized the perfunctory dismissal contained in my teenage critique of my hands, the narrowness of my assertion. Never again would I so recklessly and thoughtlessly disparage my parts.
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<br />So there you have it. Some thoughts on telling the good truths early and often. We are all so good at criticizing ourselves and others but we really need to work on the complimenting and expressions of appreciation and love. Now go forth and do it. I'll start, I think you're cool for taking the time to read my silly blog. Your turn...now git!
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<br /></div>Merhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13153002900480201989noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5479803314695776499.post-45134767010045708212010-08-30T19:03:00.000-07:002010-09-11T17:11:38.570-07:00The Indifference of WaterIt was a perfect storm of white water physics, the raft bumping and tilting at just the right moment as I reached out to dig my paddle in hard, right at the seam where the water was raging. The river grabbed my paddle and I was air-born, falling towards the worst possible part of the aptly named rapid, "The Ledge."<br /><br />I landed in the heart of the boiling water and was immediately sucked down, my PFD offering no resistance in the aerated swift water. I had not gotten a full breath and gulped a good amount of water. My paddle was ripped from my hands and I felt myself going down, tumbling across the submerged boulders. My thoughts were surprisingly lucid, "my vest isn't working, I hope I don't get caught on anything down here, I need to relax, conserve my air until I hit green water and my PFD brings me up." I was down a long time, as white water swims go. My crew was worried, they were counting, waiting for my helmeted head to pop up. At last the river let go of me and I popped up facing the boat, gasping for air. "Mer, over here!" Dave yelled, and I could hear he was stressed. He stuck out a paddle for me to grab and I ignored it, swimming to the raft and grabbing the handle. Dave reached down and grabbed the shoulder straps of my PFD and started to haul me up....I was dead weight, I had nothing to give to help. Dave heaved again and I was on board, relieved, coughing violently, spitting water and phlegm, trying to correct the forced swim induced hypoxia, trying not to vomit from all the water I had gulped and choked on.<br /><br />Dave kept asking me if I was ok but I did not want to use any air or energy to answer him. I nodded and held up my hand and I think he finally understood, putting his hand on my knee to calm me, waiting till I could talk. When I recovered my breath I reassured everyone that I was ok and stumbled back to my seat in the front of the raft. We all sorta debriefed on what had happened, me trying to appear good natured about it all for Webster's sake, a 15 year old nervous first time rafter. I think he was pretty freaked out seeing me pulled under for so long and then spit out, coughing and stressed. But such is life when you mess with water, fast water that simply obeys the laws of physics and can't tend to the vulnerabilities of thrill seeking humans. As Dave would say later that day, "it's a numbers game, you can do a run 100 or 1000 times without a hitch and then one day things go terribly wrong."<br /><br />But my dramatic swim had a happy ending, a perfect recovery by Dave and crew, I was healthy with only a few bumps and scrapes and an adrenaline induced case of the shakes. But this same Sunday afternoon, 37 year old Susan K. wasn't as lucky.<br /><br />Dave was strapping kayaks to his trailer when I walked up to hug him goodbye, wish him happy 50th b-day one more time. But he looked up grim faced and said he was just informed there was a kayaker pinned, down stream on the Tobin run. Dave is the west coast coordinator for American Whitewater and is an extremely experienced boater, trained in swift water rescue. I asked something about rescue efforts and Dave shook his head, "I think it's a recovery at this point." I sighed and said I was holding out hope until a fatality was confirmed. I jumped in my truck and headed down the canyon, pensive, trying to muster hope. A siren screamed by as EMS rushed ahead to the scene. Shit. A few minutes later I was passing the location, fire and rescue trucks pulled over on the side of the highway that parallels the river. As I drove past I scrutinized the faces of the boaters walking along the highway...their expressions intimated the situation.<br /><br />I headed west to have dinner with a friend in Chico. I vented my concerns about the kayaker and my own scary swim off The Ledge. The company was a nice distraction but when I got back in my truck for the 2+ hour long drive to Auburn for the night, all I could think about was that kayaker. Did he/she die? Or did they get him/her out and revive him/her. I called Dave thinking he was probably out of the Canyon, back on cell service. I left a supportive message, asking him to call back only if he was up to it, knowing I would see him at a meeting on Monday. He didn't call.<br /><br />Early Monday morning my cell rang and it was Dave. He quickly offered, "It wasn't good Mer." He had gotten there minutes after I passed the scene, had helped with the extraction of the body. "It made no sense, Mer, where she was, how she got trapped...there was nothing there." She was in an inflatable kayak, had come through a Class III rapid, got bumped from her boat but was out of the rapid, in calm water. She held onto her paddle and that appears to have have contributed to her entrapment. Nearby boaters acted quickly, smartly, a guy with a rescue jacket on, rescue rope secured to him, wading out to pull her out. They struggled for 30 minutes, desperately doing all they could to free her. Finally, they got her paddle out and then she floated free. They did CPR for more than 30 minutes...as Dave said, "it's easy to start CPR, it's almost impossible to stop." The medics arrived and worked on her some more, but it was all in vain...after 30 minutes in not-too-cold water, you're dead. You're gone. There's no getting you back. Dave helped them get Susan's body out of the canyon...everyone in shock and disbelief, maybe slightly relieved that on this day it was not them who the river had claimed.<br /><br />At our meeting, Dave and I talked more at a break and he shared how difficult it was to talk with his 12 year old daughter who was in their truck, waiting for her dad to come out of the river with a dead body, a dead kayaker. Kayaking is something Dave and his family do all the time. Dave again said to me, "it's a numbers game, you play the odds, but sometimes you lose." He likened this tragedy to walking down a street and a tree branch falls on you and kills you. You can't prevent it, can't plan for it, shit happens. This woman was not in a rapid, she was in a place that looked safe, benign, but she was dead and those left behind need to make sense of it. Maybe they need to make the story be so random, so distant so they can dare to get back into a raft or a kayak again....even though we all know that if we do, the North Fork Feather might claim any one of us on some Sunday yet to come.<br /><br />My thoughts are with the friends and family of Susan and all those who desperately tried to save her life.<br /><script type="text/javascript"><br /><br /> var _gaq = _gaq || [];<br /> _gaq.push(['_setAccount', 'UA-18488787-1']);<br /> _gaq.push(['_trackPageview']);<br /><br /> (function() {<br /> var ga = document.createElement('script'); ga.type = 'text/javascript'; ga.async = true;<br /> ga.src = ('https:' == document.location.protocol ? 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There is nothing else one can say really, other than to acknowledge the insanity, to acknowledge the horror, to sit with it and hug your brother.<br /><br />That morning I had slept in, rolled out of bed after nine and shuffled into my slippers. I fed Cosmo her kibbles and picked up the papers from the porch, tossing the NY Times on Jimmy's bed, noting that he had not slept there. I knew he and our 12 year old niece Devyn had gone to the Swell Season concert the night before and I thought little of his not coming home, knowing he had probably crashed at our sister Julie's house. I walked into my office, plopped into my desk chair and clicked onto email. "Freaky Experience" read the subject line in an email from my sister Juls to me and my siblings. "Huh?" I thought as I opened it and read:<br /><br />"Well, Jim took Devyn to her first concert last night (Swell Season) at an upscale venue that included a lovely dinner. What a shock that they were forced to witness a suicide by jumper. Thank god Devyn was looking away when the man fell and hit, but Jim saw the bounce."<br /><br />WTF? I was suddenly fully awake and calling Jul's. "WTF Juls, are Jimmy and Dev ok?" "Yeah, but we were up till 1am talking, processing it all. Jimmy walked in the door and I could tell he was freaked. He grabbed a beer and we talked for a couple of hours. Thank god Dev was looking away when the guy hit the stage but Jimmy saw the whole thing."<br /><br />Juls and I talked for some time, she shared some of the details, how two doctors in the audience ran on stage and administered CPR, how folks were sobbing, how several people near Jimmy and Dev fainted, how Dev looked up at Jimmy and said, "Am I going to faint?" "No Dev, you're ok, just breathe normally and you will be fine," Jimmy assured her.<br /><br />Juls explained how they saw the medevac helicopter coming and then suddenly turn around because the man was beyond rescue, he was dead. Juls explained that Glen had been only a few feet away from where the jumper had landed on an amp after bouncing off the lighting scaffolding....how Glenn had startled, then moved towards the man while calling for help. When Jimmy had finished telling the story, Juls turned to Dev, "this is not normal Dev, I want you to know that this is not normal." It was Devyn's first concert....a special night out with her uncle Jim. So it was supposed to be.<br /><br />After I hung up with Juls I called Jimmy, left him a voicemail. "Dude, WTF? Are you doing ok?" I thought about him all day. Six thirty came and I had just laid down in the hammock when Cosmo lept towards the door, tail wagging....Jimmy was home. I saw him through the kitchen and I immediately knew, he was still freaked. "Dude, Juls told me everything, are you ok?" "Not really, you wanna go get a beer?" We went to dinner and Jimmy shared some more of the details, the latest news reports...how they had to stand around for some time while the emergency workers came and went. "Alcohol helps," Jimmy offered, I don't feel so anxious now." "Yeah bud, it's called self-medicating and it's totally cool for a night or two."<br /><br />After dinner we headed to the local dive bar and shot a few games of pool, drank a few beers and laughed at our own ridiculous silliness. I got dissed and slapped on the shoulder (which spilled my beer) by some agro asshole who I subsequently humbled....and Jimmy made friends with an architect who wanted to be a decent pool player but wasn't. It was a typical Mer and Jimmy night out, laughing, drinking one more beer than we should have, over tipping the friendly cabbie. And then Jimmy was at his computer, reading the posts out loud, a little drunk and crying, asking "I'm not fucked up cause I am crying, right?" "No Jimmy" I assured him, "Crying is a healthy response to having seen a man kill himself." We talked some more and then Jimmy declared, "That's it, I am done for now. I gotta sleep." He put his iPod earbuds in and I jokingly tucked him in and then turned off his light. "Good night, and no listening to the Swell Season dude. I will see you for breakfast in the morning."<br /><script type="text/javascript"><br /><br /> var _gaq = _gaq || [];<br /> _gaq.push(['_setAccount', 'UA-18488787-1']);<br /> _gaq.push(['_trackPageview']);<br /><br /> (function() {<br /> var ga = document.createElement('script'); ga.type = 'text/javascript'; ga.async = true;<br /> ga.src = ('https:' == document.location.protocol ? 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Simply put, I am not smart enough to do that topic even superficial justice.<span style=""> </span>Instead, I will restrict this rant to a contemporary rhetorical strategy that just stick in my craw (even though I am not sure what a craw is).</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:100%;">
<br /></span><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style=""> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:100%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:100%;">It is the persistent, unapologetic, ridiculous wielding of, by politicians of every bent, the phrase “the American People.”<span style=""> </span>Incessantly we hear politicians cite what the American People want, think, do.<span style=""> </span>This is done on both sides of the isle and beyond as though this abstraction represents some real population with which the rhetorician is in direct contact.<span style=""> </span>Rarely do politicians employ any qualifiers when referencing “the American People.”<span style=""> </span>We don’t get a “many” or “most” or “a majority” of The American People, we simply get the all inclusive monolithic category.<span style=""> </span>Most often we are told, without apology or irony, that “The American People,” as in ALL of them, all folks, presumably all folks eligible to get one of those US passports, are this or that or think thusly.<span style=""> </span>This retarded* assertion results in a spike in my pulse rate every time I hear it.<span style=""> </span>“The American People”?<span style=""> </span>Who exactly are the American People?<span style=""> </span>Who is this cohesive group of folks that ANYONE is qualified to speak for wholly and completely, with unbridled authority?<span style=""> </span>Seriously?<span style=""> </span>What the fuck?!</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:100%;">
<br /></span><span style="font-size:100%;"><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:100%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:100%;">I know this is stating the obvious but I can’t help myself.<span style=""> </span>So I am going to break it down.<span style=""> </span>According to the US Census Bureau clock, there are currently 308,914,355 people living in the <st1:country-region><st1:place>US</st1:place></st1:country-region>.<span style=""> </span>About a third of these folks identify as racial minorities, a little over half are female, and over 80% live in cities.<span style=""> </span>About 76% identify as “Christian,” with 25% of those identifying as Catholic.<span style=""> </span>Just over 1% identify as Jewish, less than 1% Muslim, and 15% do not identify with any religious tradition.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:100%;">
<br /></span><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style=""> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:100%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:100%;">The median annual household income in the <st1:country-region><st1:place>USA</st1:place></st1:country-region> is about $46,000 with dual earner households being just over $67,000. If you are Asian the median annual household income is $57,000 and if you are in a Black household it’s $30,000, and for Hispanic it’s $34,000.<span style=""> </span>The top 2.5% of the <st1:country-region><st1:place>US </st1:place></st1:country-region>population makes more than $250,000.</span><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style=""> </span>And the national unemployment rate is about 10%.<span style=""> </span>And lastly, according to a 2009 Gallup Pole, 49% of US citizens identify as Democrats and 41% Republicans.<span style=""> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:100%;">
<br /></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:100%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:100%;">I could go on and on citing various statistics that represent the incredible racial, economic, regional, and political diversity in this US of A.<span style=""> </span>But I will stop here and pose this simple question:<span style=""> </span>WHO the fuck are the “American People” that all these politicians are referring to?<span style=""> </span>Are you telling me that a 65 year old Jewish doctor, a democrat living in NYC making over $250,000 a year thinks EXACTLY the same way as a 30 year old high school educated farmer, a republican, living in the heartland making less than $30,000 a year and facing the decline in his traditional livelihood?<span style=""> </span>Can they be singularly represented by anyone asserting “The American People?”<span style=""> </span>Or how about the WASP AIG CEO, a republican making zillions and the Black union factory worker who just lost his job?<span style=""> </span>Give me a fucking break!<span style=""> </span>The rhetoric is simply retarded, condescending, simplistic, patronizing, and absurd and I would really like politicians to stop using it.<span style=""> </span>I know this will never happen, not in my lifetime, but I needed to write it anyway. <span style=""> </span>Just cause.<span style=""> </span>Just cause I am one of those “American People,” and no, John Boehner, Michelle “loop-dee-loop” Bochman, John McCain, and Sarah Palin do NOT speak for me.<span style=""> </span>Hell, Nancy Pelosi and Barack Obama do not completely speak for me.<span style=""> </span>So please, shut the fuck up with the monolithic references to “The American People.” It’s like the tooth fairy or Santa Claus or bipartisanship in DC, a cohesive thing called “The American People” DOES NOT EXIST.<span style=""> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:100%;"><o:p>
<br /></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:85%;">*<span style=""> <span style="font-style: italic;"> </span></span><span style="font-style: italic;">I am reclaiming the word “retarded,” taking it back from being PC’d into oblivion because it is actually a fabulous word with so many appropriate applications in contemporary politics </span></span><span style="font-style: italic;font-size:85%;" >(and I mean no disrespect to those with developmental disabilities). <o:p></o:p><span style=""> </span>My Random House Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary (2nd Edition) offers the following definitions:
<br /></span></p><ul style="font-style: italic;"><li><span style="font-size:85%;">retard- 1: to make slow, delay the development or progress of (an action, process, etc.); hinder.<span style=""> </span>2:<span style=""> </span>to be delayed. 3: a slowing down, diminution, or hindrance, as in a machine.</span></li></ul> <p style="font-style: italic;font-family:arial;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:85%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <ul style="font-style: italic;"><li><span style="font-size:85%;">retardation- 1: the act of retarding or being retarded.<span style=""> </span>2:<span style=""> </span>something that retards; hindrance.<span style=""> </span>3:<span style=""> </span>slowness or limitation in intellectual understanding and awareness, emotional development, academic progress, etc.<span style=""> </span><o:p></o:p></span></li></ul> <p style="font-style: italic;font-family:arial;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:85%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <ul style="font-style: italic;"><li><span style="font-size:85%;">retarded- 1:<span style=""> </span>characterized by retardation.<span style=""> </span>2:<span style=""> </span>mentally retarded persons collectively.</span></li></ul> <p style="font-style: italic;font-family:arial;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:85%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-style: italic;font-size:85%;" >Retarded is a word I NEED these days to describe what goes on in <st1:place><st1:city>Washington</st1:city> <st1:state>DC</st1:state></st1:place>.</span><span style="font-style: italic;font-size:85%;" > </span><span style="font-style: italic;font-size:85%;" >I feel retarded without it.</span></span></p><script type="text/javascript">
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<br /></script><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:100%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:100%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> Merhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13153002900480201989noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5479803314695776499.post-37788144287841832662010-05-11T20:50:00.000-07:002010-05-13T00:12:27.350-07:00The Small Craft Advisory that Wasn’t and the Gale that Was: Highlights from Mer’s 3-Day Micro-Cruise<span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:100%;" ><span style="font-style: italic;">Some folks have asked that I </span></span><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:100%;" ><span style="font-style: italic;">write up</span></span><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:100%;" ><span style="font-style: italic;"> something a</span></span><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:100%;" ><span style="font-style: italic;">bou</span></span><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:100%;" ><span style="font-style: italic;">t my little c</span></span><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:100%;" ><span style="font-style: italic;">ruise, so here it is, some ramblings about what I </span></span><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:100%;" ><span style="font-style: italic;">made happen and what </span></span><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:100%;" ><span style="font-style: italic;">simply happen</span></span><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:100%;" ><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:arial;" >ed to me.<br /><br /></span></span><span style="font-size:100%;"><a style="font-family: arial;" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiETZdjIV6dxlp_7R2_4ToWKMU2qCIHbQKOJ7JDdR5Hj4_aTg-TwPlAwtZjRoJ2fmg_I4olqyEZydzi7xMoTJ3y8IUlvK_dAvn68sdNmxsijmIXjL4-Kayh5LkMJ5h7sa7jv2gQzS4eEB5H/s1600/IMG_2366.JPG"><img style="float: right; margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; cursor: pointer; width: 267px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiETZdjIV6dxlp_7R2_4ToWKMU2qCIHbQKOJ7JDdR5Hj4_aTg-TwPlAwtZjRoJ2fmg_I4olqyEZydzi7xMoTJ3y8IUlvK_dAvn68sdNmxsijmIXjL4-Kayh5LkMJ5h7sa7jv2gQzS4eEB5H/s400/IMG_2366.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5470226570423839618" border="0" /></a></span> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:100%;" ><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:100%;" >“I don’t usually pick up hitchhikers, but </span><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:100%;" >you look safe,” said the 40-something man in the s</span><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:100%;" >panking new black Volvo station wagon.<span style=""> </span>“So do y</span><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:100%;" >ou,” I responded as I clicked into my seat-belt.<span style=""> </span>He wore </span><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:100%;" >a green polo shirt and plaid shorts and he did not scare me one bit.<span style=""> </span>On our short r</span><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:100%;" >ide towards town Mr. Volvo prattled on about how there are no good restaurants in the whole of </span><span style="font-size:100%;"><st1:city><st1:place><span style="font-family:Arial;">San Rafael</span></st1:place></st1:city></span><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:100%;" >, something I found hard to believe.<span style=""> </span>But he finally recommended Sol Food, a Puerto Rican joint with “good energy.”<span style=""> </span>He dropped me off at the edge of town and I made my way to the main drag where I found, to my delight, the farmers market in full swing.<span style=""> </span>I meandered through the crowds of moms, dads, Marin hippies and slow-walking old folks buying fresh berries and kids eating pizza and cotton candy.<span style=""> </span>I stopped and listened to a Jamaican man playing and singing an acoustic version of Amazing Grace.<span style=""> </span>This alone made my night.<span style=""> </span>The rest was just extra goodness.<span style=""> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:100%;" ><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:100%;" >I ate at Sol Food, and Mr. Volvo was right, it had “good energy” with a Puerto Rican band playing outside next to the hodge-podge chairs and tables.<span style=""> </span>Dinner was a heaping pile </span><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:100%;" >of rice, onions, and spiced meat, a yummy salad, and water with lime.<span style=""> </span>I couldn’t help but wiggle in my seat to the beat of the band.<span style=""> </span>Then like a sliver of iron grabbed by a powerful magnet, I made my way across the street to the local dive bar and ordered a Stella and sat contentedly and listened to more local musicians play folk songs and blues, a scrappy ol’ gent skillfully commanding a slide guitar, a lead singer with an Irish brogue.<span style=""> </span>I talked to no one, but was happy as a clam and finally grabbed a cab back to the marina and snuggled into my v-berth with my alarm set for </span><span style="font-size:100%;"><st1:time minute="0" hour="7"><span style="font-family:Arial;">7am</span></st1:time></span><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:100%;" >.<span style=""> </span>I needed to be in the channel out of the marina at </span><span style="font-size:100%;"><st1:time minute="0" hour="8"><span style="font-family:Arial;">8am</span></st1:time></span><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:100%;" > to ride the hig</span><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:100%;" >h tide out to deeper waters.<span style=""> </span>So ended my first day.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:100%;" ><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:100%;" >The day had begun with a NOAA marine forecast for a “small craft advisory, winds 15-25 knots.”<span style=""> </span>After a big breakfast (as there could be no lunch underway), I packed the Mini with a cooler and gear, cruised to the marina, hauled my shite onto the boat, and reefed the main sail before cranking the engine.<span style=""> </span>The sail north through the San Francisco Bay to San Rafael was uneventful and the winds were calm, 10 knots tops, no 15-25 as predicted.<span style=""> </span>I finally relaxed a little and sho</span><span style="font-size:100%;"><a style="font-family: arial;" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgkOPJBkckuPg3ptg4VLoDtxLryMMj09rnRfb9NRcQrOnbfXDBRNnVofA59zBJoFMBPQkNbOGnZmwF6ug2eoGDtKC8997ES7KE9eLEbVXAAHIquoySscNorwFHA0eiL9wP4RSvsYgfog3NW/s1600/IMG_2520.JPG"><img style="float: right; margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; cursor: pointer; width: 305px; height: 203px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgkOPJBkckuPg3ptg4VLoDtxLryMMj09rnRfb9NRcQrOnbfXDBRNnVofA59zBJoFMBPQkNbOGnZmwF6ug2eoGDtKC8997ES7KE9eLEbVXAAHIquoySscNorwFHA0eiL9wP4RSvsYgfog3NW/s400/IMG_2520.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5470227176155632178" border="0" /></a></span><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:100%;" >ok out the reef to get the Donna Clare moving another knot through the water.<span style=""> </span>It was a peaceful afternoon as I made my way some 12 nautical miles north through the Bay.<span style=""> </span>After </span><span style="font-size:100%;"><st1:time minute="0" hour="15"><span style="font-family:Arial;">3pm</span></st1:time></span><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:100%;" > I was motoring up the </span><span style="font-size:100%;"><st1:city><st1:place><span style="font-family:Arial;">San Rafael</span></st1:place></st1:city></span><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:100%;" > channel where the water was too shallow for comfort, the depth sounder showing 4’8” at one point, the exact depth of my keel.<span style=""> </span>I didn’t hit the mud (thank Poseidon!) and finally crept up to the dock where John from the Loch Lomond Yacht Club caught my lines and we moored the Donna Clare.<span style=""> </span>John insisted I come into the club so he could buy me a beer and we talked boats, marine engines, and how the channel desperately needed dredging.<span style=""> </span><span style=""> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:100%;" ><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:100%;" >Coming to Loch Lomond was a sort of full circle thin</span><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:100%;" >g for me as this is where my boat was docked when I bought her 12 years ago, the place I lived aboard for a year and a half.<span style=""> </span>I asked John about Bobby’s Fo’c’sle Café where I would eat greasy eggs and bacon on the weekends and listen to all the old salts yimmer-yammer, some of them drinking their first Coors of the day with breakfast.<span style=""> </span>John explained that Bobby’s was gone, suffered a fire, couldn’t get things sorted with the landlord and had moved to town, and a month ago had closed, becoming another casualty of the recession.<span style=""> </span>I was sad to hear it.<span style=""> </span>I had planned on greasy eggs and bacon for breakfast, for old time’s sake, listening to the locals and whatnot.<span style=""> </span>It had been about ten years since I had been back to this place.<span style=""> </span>Things change.<span style=""> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:100%;" ><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:100%;" >Back on the boat, I did the usual coiling of lines and cleaning up, putting my gear away.<span style=""> </span>I then attempted to make dinner but the winds had kicked up and I couldn’t keep the BBQ lit.<span style=""> </span>So I threw on my jeans and walked to the highway, stuck out my </span><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:100%;" >thumb, and hitchhiked into town.<span style=""> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:100%;" ><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:100%;" >The next morning was still, cool and crisp, and the water was glassy.<span style=""> </span>I quickly readied the boat and cranked the Yanmar and we were off with plenty of water, the depth sounder reading ten feet.<span style=""> </span>With no wind I decided to motor straight to </span><span style="font-size:100%;"><st1:place><st1:placename><span style="font-family:Arial;">Angel</span></st1:placename><span style="font-family:Arial;"> </span><st1:placename><span style="font-family:Arial;">Island</span></st1:placename></st1:place></span><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:100%;" > and tie up to a mooring ball in Ayala Cove and have a restful day.<span style=""> </span>Whenever anyone shows up to loop into a mooring ball in this little cove, the other folks in already securely moored boats, sit in their cockpits and wait for the show.<span style=""> </span>The way the wind and currents work in this cove, mooring is always a challenge, even more so when you’re alone.<span style=""> </span>I made two unsuccessful passes on the mooring ball, trying to secure my bow first only to be blown off it before I could loop the line.<span style=""> </span>I finally got it looped on the stern and then jumped in the dinghy to get the bow tied off.<span style=""> </span>I got tangled in the long line, had to undo knots, got blown around a bit, rowed in circles, but finally got the old gal tied off and had a good laugh at my</span><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:100%;" >self…mine was a decent show, although not the most dramatic by any stretch.<span style=""> </span>I have seen much more entertaining.<span style=""> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:100%;" ><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:100%;" >After tidying the boat and coiling my lines, I jumped into Chicken, the dinghy, and rowed to the island for a late breakfast at the Cove Café.<span style=""> </span>There were groups of school kids excitedly yelling and horsing around on the docks as teachers scrambled to keep them focused as they came off the ferry.<span style=""> </span>After paying my mooring fee and chatting up the Ranger about State Park budget stuff and the incompetence of the </span><span style="font-size:100%;"><st1:state><st1:place><span style="font-family:Arial;">California</span></st1:place></st1:state></span><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:100%;" > state legislature, I headed back to the boat for some reading and hammock time.<span style=""> </span>I hoisted the hammock up my forestay and shroud and settled in.<span style=""> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:100%;" ><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:100%;" >In the afternoon I rowed back to the island and hiked the perimeter trail which offers some of the best views in the whole Bay Area.<span style=""> </span>I sat and shelled and ate peanuts at a vista point offering a stunning panoramic view of the </span><span style="font-size:100%;"><st1:place><st1:placename><span style="font-family:Arial;">Golden Gate</span></st1:placename><span style="font-family:Arial;"> </span><st1:placetype><span style="font-family:Arial;">Bridge</span></st1:placetype></st1:place></span><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:100%;" >, the </span><span style="font-size:100%;"><st1:place><st1:placetype><span style="font-family:Arial;">Bay</span></st1:placetype><span style="font-family:Arial;"> </span><st1:placetype><span style="font-family:Arial;">Bridge</span></st1:placetype></st1:place></span><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:100%;" >, </span><span style="font-size:100%;"><st1:city><st1:place><span style="font-family:Arial;">San Francisco</span></st1:place></st1:city></span><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:100%;" >, </span><span style="font-size:100%;"><st1:city><st1:place><span style="font-family:Arial;">Oakland</span></st1:place></st1:city></span><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:100%;" >, and the Berkeley Hills.<span style=""> </span>There was no one else on the trail, I had the whole south side of the island to myself, far as I could tell.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:100%;" ><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:100%;" >Because I had, while packing up at </span><span style="font-size:100%;"><st1:place><span style="font-family:Arial;">Loch Lomond</span></st1:place></span><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:100%;" >, inadvertently thrown the propane regulator to my BBQ overboard into the bay water (hey, it happens, more than one likes to admit) I had to improvise dinner.<span style=""> </span>I sautéed potatoes and yellow peppers on the stove in olive oil and butter (I am not afraid of butter) and then added the chicken.<span style=""> </span>I sat in the cockpit at sunset eating my unexpectedly awesome dinner.<span style=""> </span>I somehow lost my corkscrew so I had to use a screwdriver and channel lock pliers (as a hammer) to punch the cork into my bottle of pinot.<span style=""> </span><span style=""> </span>After dinner I retired to the hammock once again and watched the lights emerge on the Tiburon peninsula.<span style=""> </span>Words fail me in trying to describe the lighting and peace at anchor in calm water after dusk.<span style=""> </span>I am sure, if it exists, this is what heaven is like.<span style=""> </span>I heard some guy in the distance on another boat, say with delight to his wife, “hey honey, look at that guy, in the hammock.”<span style=""> </span>People readily assume if you are single handing a sailboat you have a penis.<span style=""> </span>I smiled, knowin</span><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:100%;" >g that I do not.<span style=""> </span>Silly man.<span style=""> </span><span style=""> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:100%;" ><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:100%;" >A pair of sailors on another boat cruised in and moored next to me as I enjoyed their show, watching them scramble, hearing the skipper bark orders and the first mate yell that he was out of line, they regrouped, added extra line, another sailor came over in a dinghy to help and within 10 minutes they were secure and coiling their lines.<span style=""> </span>I lit the paraffin anchor lamp and hung it on the end of the boom and settled into the cabin for the night, listening to and singing along with my favorite sad songs (that don’t make me sad) and writing in the ships log. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:100%;" ><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:100%;" >I read all the old entries and smiled, laughing at the one my old pal John had made years ago after he panicked at the helm when I was at the mast.<span style=""> </span>He back winded the jib in 25 knots, suddenly heeling the boat and nearly flinging me into the Bay near </span><span style="font-size:100%;"><st1:place><span style="font-family:Arial;">Alcatraz</span></st1:place></span><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:100%;" >.<span style=""> </span>I remember hugging the mast, screaming at him to steer into the wind as he looked at me terrifi</span><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:100%;" >ed and saucer-eyed.<span style=""> </span>He copped to the fuck-up in the ships log and we laughed about it all over beers, anchored up at the island.<span style=""> </span>John and I spent a lot of time together, fishing, floating rivers, on boats in the </span><span style="font-size:100%;"><st1:place><span style="font-family:Arial;">Caribbean</span></st1:place></span><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:100%;" > and </span><span style="font-size:100%;"><st1:country-region><st1:place><span style="font-family:Arial;">Mexico</span></st1:place></st1:country-region></span><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:100%;" >.<span style=""> </span>John was a good mate and I felt a little sad as I thought about losing him in the divorce, him being Jordie’s brother-in-law. Neither of us made contact after Jordie and I split and I know with certainty in my heart it’s because it would just be too damn sad.<span style=""> </span>Better to just hold the memories and love, and let go.<span style=""> </span>I loved him like a brother and perhaps someday we’ll find our way onto a boat together again.<span style=""> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:100%;" ><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:100%;" >I brought my harmonica (which I play very poorly and only when I am alone) and played a few songs and then finally snuggled into the v-berth for a boaty nights sleep under an open hatch and a clear sky.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:100%;" ><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:100%;" >Morning was warm, calm, and clear, and I boiled water for some instant coffee and had a cranberry scone and fresh strawberries in the cockpit.<span style=""> </span>As often happens, occupants on nearby boats noticed me, a woman alone on a boat, an anomaly.<span style=""> </span>They watched me reef the main sail and ready my lines, tie off the dinghy, tidy-up the cockpit.<span style=""> </span>I put on my foulies an</span><span style="font-size:100%;"><a style="font-family: arial;" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhSPZV-4_6iFm7MHLNE1QWoI__IJvqp-X0WqNPFE55IJmyjhy0FuHYHlst5v9ILRp3Zkpe8O_rr_JAnv6jhlgFG3qh0gYNxReZ_7b6iRRl2Mnq1kpVYavnPLe78DKH0N5KmLOfabE5N7aw6/s1600/IMG_2537.JPG"><img style="float: right; margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 267px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhSPZV-4_6iFm7MHLNE1QWoI__IJvqp-X0WqNPFE55IJmyjhy0FuHYHlst5v9ILRp3Zkpe8O_rr_JAnv6jhlgFG3qh0gYNxReZ_7b6iRRl2Mnq1kpVYavnPLe78DKH0N5KmLOfabE5N7aw6/s400/IMG_2537.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5470226956672831330" border="0" /></a></span><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:100%;" >d listened to the NOAA marine forecast which predicted 10-20 knots of wind.<span style=""> </span>I had a gut feeling they were under-predicting and I was more right than I wanted to be. <span style=""> </span>I headed east around the island and hoisted my sails in the lee and got ready to shoot the slot, the unobstructed area of water where the winds barrel in through the </span><span style="font-size:100%;"><st1:place><span style="font-family:Arial;">Golden Gate</span></st1:place></span><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:100%;" >.<span style=""> </span>As I passed Point Blunt Angel Island, the windiest place on the Bay, the gusts came big and hard.<span style=""> </span>Over 25 knots and we were off, bucking across the slot.<span style=""> </span>I was committed and held on as the wind and waves built.<span style=""> </span>After about an hour and a half of spirited sailing, we got behind the City and things settled down, although there was still good wind (see pic of sailing by the City on a calmer day).<span style=""> </span>I kept south under sunny skies and enjoyed the city skyline, getting spanked by an occasional ferry wake.<span style=""> </span>After a couple of hours of mellow sailing I turned north again with the intention o</span><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:100%;" >f taking the easy way back under the temporary shelter of </span><span style="font-size:100%;"><st1:place><st1:placename><span style="font-family:Arial;">Yurba</span></st1:placename><span style="font-family:Arial;"> </span><st1:placename><span style="font-family:Arial;">Buena</span></st1:placename><span style="font-family:Arial;"> </span><st1:placetype><span style="font-family:Arial;">Island</span></st1:placetype></st1:place></span><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:100%;" >.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:100%;" ><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:100%;" >As we approached the island the winds increased dramatically and I grabbed the binoculars and could see the slot was a mess, big white caps and all the boats were heeled hard under reefed or short sails.<span style=""> </span>I knew things would be messy after I cleared the other side of the island back into the slot, so I decided to drop my sails in the wind shadow and motor home.<span style=""> </span>Taking down sails on my boat alone in high winds is an adrenaline pumping experience.<span style=""> </span>When I crossed under the </span><span style="font-size:100%;"><st1:place><st1:placetype><span style="font-family:Arial;">Bay</span></st1:placetype><span style="font-family:Arial;"> </span><st1:placetype><span style="font-family:Arial;">Bridge</span></st1:placetype></st1:place></span><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:100%;" > and cleared the island I got pushed east to the edge of the shallows by a yacht race.<span style=""> </span>This meant I was more exposed to the dramatically increasing winds which I had to take on my beam, the most uncomfortable way to get pummeled by the 4-5 foot waves which were hitting hard and crashing into the cockpit.<span style=""> </span>Helming was tough and after I cleared the racers I turned a bit into the wind to quarter the waves and get some relief.<span style=""> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:100%;" ><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:100%;" >The winds were howling.<span style=""> </span>Ten to 20 knots my ass, I knew I was seeing winds near 30 knots (later I learned the winds were gusting to 35 at Point Blunt).<span style=""> </span>Without the sails up the boat was not counter balanced and we were tossed around like a cork.<span style=""> </span>Finally clear of the shallows I headed east toward the marina channel which was still a half an hour away.<span style=""> </span>I thought about the fact that I had less than a half of a tank of diesel, a condition that increases condensation and the chance of the fuel lines getting clogged, especially with the boat (and tank) getting violently tossed about in the waves.<span style=""> </span>I had drained a good deal of water off the separator that morning and prayed she wouldn’t fill and stall the engine before I got to the marina.<span style=""> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:100%;" ><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:100%;" >The winds continued to build and the waves kept coming bigger and faster.<span style=""> </span>At one point, I noticed Chicken, the trusted dinghy that I was towing behind the boat, was riding up on my quarter to the port side of the boat.<span style=""> </span>The violence of the waves had snapped off one of the towing-sling lines so she was off balance.<span style=""> </span>I grabbed the safety line and pulled with a lot of muscle to cleat her off.<span style=""> </span>She settled in line and I hoped she would not capsize with only one line towing her.<span style=""> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:100%;" ><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:100%;" >Now here’s the truth, in these situations, I get scared when I am sailing alone.<span style=""> </span>Not a curl-up-in-a-ball-and-cry scared, but a scared that acknowledges that if I fuck up it could go real bad, real quick.<span style=""> </span>A few small fuck ups have gotten sailors dead in the Bay.<span style=""> </span>I know enough about what might happen if things go wrong, if the engine stalls at the wrong moment, if the waves get too violent and crash the keel into a shallow unseen shoal.<span style=""> </span>Fear is a relative thing.<span style=""> </span>I know many other sailors would think me a pussy, yet I know many folks who think I am crazy to sail my boat alone, my old boat with no roller furling or lines leading aft.<span style=""> </span>But my truth is that in these situations I am pumped and scared, not just by the conditions, and I have seen worse, but the having to deal with it all alone, no one to bark an order to, no one to notice if I go overboard or hit my head.<span style=""> </span>So I held onto the helm, dampened the waves with the rudder best I could, and prayed that my fuel lines stayed clear and my Yanmar kept kickin’.<span style=""> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:100%;" ><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:100%;" >After the wild ride into the channel, we made the last turn towards the marina, the short stretch where we were again abeam to the waves and winds before the relative calm of the harbor.<span style=""> </span>Engine dies here, and there’s about 10 yards to the lee shore and going aground, not much time to react.<span style=""> </span>The last 100 yards of vulnerability but we made it.<span style=""> </span>I backed off the throttle and let out a couple of “fuck yeah”s and putted towards my slip.<span style=""> </span>My muscles relaxed and I became aware of just how jacked-up I had been.<span style=""> </span>I was exhausted as I pulled out the boat hook and grabbed my mooring lines off the dock.<span style=""> </span>Home sweet fucking home. <span style=""> </span>Me and the Donna Clare had made it safely back to port one more time.<span style=""> </span>I jumped out of my foulies, put on my shorts and plopped down in the cabin for a “holy fuck” moment with myself.<span style=""> </span>I laughed, laughed with relief.<span style=""> </span>And then I cranked the stereo and cleaned up the boat and rinsed her off.<span style=""> </span>I collected my stuff and headed home, feeling part triumphant sailor and part lucky fool.<span style=""> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:100%;" ><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:100%;" >All sailors know humility and any sailor who tells you otherwise, is a liar.<span style=""> </span><span style=""> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:100%;" ><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p style="font-style: italic;" class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:100%;" >NOTE:<span style=""> </span>The next day I watched a couple of episodes of The Deadliest Catch and felt even wimpier!<span style=""> </span>It’s all relative.<span style=""> </span></span></p>Merhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13153002900480201989noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5479803314695776499.post-34532653822943550212010-04-16T08:55:00.000-07:002010-04-17T14:49:58.485-07:00NYC WaiterDuring a recent trip to NYC Jimmy and I ate dinner at a midtown restaurant where my brother Jimmy ordered mushroom soup and I ordered a salad. When the waiter cleared our plates he asked Jimmy, "How did you like the soup?" Jimmy responded with, "it was too mushroom-y." The waiter turned to me and said, "How was your salad? Too lettuce-y?" Then our steaks arrived. We ate them. The waiter came back and said, "How were the steaks? Too steak-y?" He got a good tip.<br /><br />I love New Yorkers.Merhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13153002900480201989noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5479803314695776499.post-1320616048875460792010-02-19T20:13:00.000-08:002010-04-20T23:17:14.809-07:00Some Stories of the Rich, the Famous, and the Ridiculous<span style=";font-family:arial;font-size:100%;" ><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh4wBthyphenhyphenuRqYx4hBIrCItOrnBegtOCmLVtZa143OR58pWPxLv3aiB66eirfSqnZnAVv3LoAWDEedNcY3Jn9e1x9XAHL3VpE5QAlVv_UAl42VMW0Po_CZt3mR1lstOyAS1mRXUA8A3GH2KWp/s1600-h/beverly_hills_sign.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 276px; height: 276px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh4wBthyphenhyphenuRqYx4hBIrCItOrnBegtOCmLVtZa143OR58pWPxLv3aiB66eirfSqnZnAVv3LoAWDEedNcY3Jn9e1x9XAHL3VpE5QAlVv_UAl42VMW0Po_CZt3mR1lstOyAS1mRXUA8A3GH2KWp/s400/beverly_hills_sign.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5440175824443194962" border="0" /></a></span><span style=";font-family:arial;font-size:100%;" ><b style=""><span style="">Officer Rainwater </span></b></span><span style=";font-family:arial;font-size:100%;" ><br />It was seminal to my early informal education and surely informs any minuscule claim I might have to a smidgen of worldliness, having seen in some intimate way the lives of the </span><span style=";font-family:arial;font-size:100%;" ><st1:city><st1:place><span style="">Los Angeles</span></st1:place></st1:city></span><span style=";font-family:arial;font-size:100%;" > rich and famous.<span style=""> </span>I was 19 years old when I got the job at Westec Security, a </span><span style=";font-family:arial;font-size:100%;" >company based in </span><span style=";font-family:arial;font-size:100%;" ><st1:place><st1:city><span style="">Santa Monic</span></st1:city></st1:place></span><span style=";font-family:arial;font-size:100%;" ><st1:place><st1:city><span style="">a</span></st1:city><span style="">, </span><st1:state><span style="">California</span></st1:state></st1:place></span><span style=";font-family:arial;font-size:100%;" >, serving the rich, famous, and bourgeoisie of western </span><span style=";font-family:arial;font-size:100%;" ><st1:city><st1:place><span style="">Los Angeles</span></st1:place></st1:city></span><span style=";font-family:arial;font-size:100%;" >. <span style=""> </span>I wore a slate gray uniform, carried a .38 revolver, wore a ballistic vest and drove a patrol car responding to various types of calls including burglary and robbery alarms, reports of suspicious vehicles/persons, domestic disputes, prowlers, and the occasional shots fired.<span style=""> </span>Although this job was quite thrilling at times, terrifying actually, it was more often boring, waiting for something to happen, responding to routine alarm calls and such.<span style=""> </span>And in between the exciting, the terrifying, and the boring, some strange and funny things happened.<span style=""> </span>It is a few of those stories that I am going to share here. </span><span style=";font-family:arial;font-size:100%;" ><br /><br />The beats I worked included Beverly Hills, West Hollywood, Bell Air, Pacific Palisades, Brentwood, Venice Beach and Playa Del Ray.<span style=""> </span>If you don’t know LA, that’s TMZ territory, E-News, True Hollywood Story and the like.<span style=""> </span>It’s where the “stars” call home, as well as those with enough money and the desire to rub elbows with such folks.<span style=""> </span>So here you go, a few tales from my days working to protec</span><span style=";font-family:arial;font-size:100%;" >t the rich, the famous, the odd, and the crazy.<span style=""> </span><o:p></o:p></span> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:100%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p><span style=";font-family:arial;font-size:100%;" ><b style=""><span style="">What Scared Me Most</span></b><span style="font-weight: bold;"></span></span><span style=";font-family:arial;font-size:100%;" ><br />What scared me most doing this job was not being shot or beaten by burglars, robbers, or crazies (and that did scare me quite a bit), but rather the very distinct possibility of being shot by the residents I was serving. <span style=""> </span>W</span><span style=";font-family:arial;font-size:100%;" >hy this was so will quickly become apparent.<span style=""> </span><o:p></o:p></span> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:100%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p><span style=";font-family:arial;font-size:100%;" ><b style=""><span style="">The First Uzi Story<o:p></o:p></span></b></span><span style=";font-family:arial;font-size:100%;" ><br />It was the mid 1980’s and the hills were peppered with rich Iranians who had fled their country after the 1979 revolution.<span style=""> </span>Their houses were often opulent, ornate, decorated in light colors, gold accents, large statues in the cavernous rooms of huge buildings sitting on sprawling lots that were fenced and gated.<span style=""> </span>One late night my partner Keith and I responded to a report of a “prowler there now” made by an Iranian woman who was home alone in such a place.</span><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:100%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p><span style=";font-family:arial;font-size:100%;" >Keith and arrived at the property at the same time and quickly noted the high perimeter wall and locked iron gate across the driveway.<span style=""> </span>We pulled one of the patrol cars up to the gate to step on in order to climb into the yard. We walked up a steep and winding driveway through the dimly lit grounds which were heavily vegetated with bushes and trees.<span style=""> </span>The property was huge.<span style=""> </span><o:p></o:p></span> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:100%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p><span style=";font-family:arial;font-size:100%;" >When we reached the top of the driveway we saw an enormous house out of which came running a hysterical 40-ish woman holding something we could not at first see.<span style=""> </span>She was yelling “Thank god!<span style=""> </span>Thank god you are here!”<span style=""> </span>Before Keith and I knew what was happening the woman ran up to me and suddenly dangled an Uzi in my face, holding it between her thumb and forefinger like it was a smelly diaper, “Here, take this! I don’t want it anymore.”<span style=""> </span>Then with her other hand she dangled a fully loaded amo clip in my face and said, “This too.”<span style=""> </span>I grabbed the weapon and clip, stunned, and said, “Ma'am, I can’t keep your gun.”<span style=""> </span>She responded, “You must!<span style=""> </span>Please take it back.”<span style=""> </span></span><span style=";font-family:arial;font-size:100%;" >“Take it back?” I said incredulously.<span style=""> </span>“To the gun store.<span style=""> </span>On </span><span style=";font-family:arial;font-size:100%;" ><st1:street><st1:address><span style="">Pico Avenue</span></st1:address></st1:street></span><span style=";font-family:arial;font-size:100%;" >,” she explained with utter sincerity.<span style=""> </span><span style=""> </span>Despite the fact that </span><span style=";font-family:arial;font-size:100%;" ><st1:street><st1:address><span style="">Pico Avenue</span></st1:address></st1:street></span><span style=";font-family:arial;font-size:100%;" > runs the width of LA and the description “the gun store” was hardly sufficient, this request was ridiculous.<span style=""> </span><o:p></o:p></span> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:100%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p><span style=";font-family:arial;font-size:100%;" >We instructed the hysterical woman to lock herself in the house and I held onto the Uzi while Keith and</span><span style=";font-family:arial;font-size:100%;" > I checked the property.<span style=""> </span>We found no prowler.<span style=""> </span>The woman’s husband arrived shortly after and I gave him the Uzi and amo clip and explained that I would not be returning it to “the gun store” on </span><span style=";font-family:arial;font-size:100%;" ><st1:street><st1:address><span style="">Pico Avenue</span></st1:address></st1:street></span><span style=";font-family:arial;font-size:100%;" >.<span style=""> </span><o:p></o:p></span> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:100%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p><span style=";font-family:arial;font-size:100%;" ><b style=""><span style="">The Second Uzi Story<o:p></o:p></span></b></span><span style=";font-family:arial;font-size:100%;" ><br />It was Christmas day and I was working swing shift, sitting alone in my cold patrol unit, feeling a little blue and lonely.<span style=""> </span>It was dusk when I received the call of a prowler seen in the rear yard of a house.<span style=""> </span>I knocked loudly and when the resident opened the door I could see through the house to a glass door leading to the backyard.<span style=""> </span>In the yard stood a large Doberman pincher and I immediately relaxed.<span style=""> </span>If there was a prowler in the yard that dog would not be standing there looking into the house wagging it’s tail.<span style=""> </span><o:p></o:p></span> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:100%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p><span style=";font-family:arial;font-size:100%;" >But the man, an Iranian with a thick accent, insisted there was someone in his yard.<span style=""> </span>I asked him to bring his dog into the house and said I would check the perimeter.<span style=""> </span>I walked along the side of the house, hand on my gun, looking intently (in case the Doberman pincher was deaf or a little touched in his doggie head).<span style=""> </span>I reached the corner of the house and turned to look into the backyard when suddenly the man, looking out from a rear window right next to me, screamed “There he is! There he is! In the bushes! Honey get my Uzi!”<span style=""> </span>I jumped back be</span><span style=";font-family:arial;font-size:100%;" >hind the corner of the house for cover with my hand still on my gun ready to draw as I looked intently at the bushes.<span style=""> </span>I saw nothing.<span style=""> </span>I immediately said in a loud and commanding voice, “Sir, keep your Uzi put away.”<span style=""> </span>The man said, “Ok, ok, but can you see him?<span style=""> </span>He’s right there, right there in the bushes along the fence!” <o:p></o:p></span> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:100%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p><span style=";font-family:arial;font-size:100%;" >The fence was made of wooden planks and behind it was the heavily traveled </span><span style=";font-family:arial;font-size:100%;" ><st1:street><st1:address><span style="">Benedict Canyon Road</span></st1:address></st1:street></span><span style=";font-family:arial;font-size:100%;" >, not a safe backdrop for Uzi fire.<span style=""> </span>The “bushes” were hedges that were neatly trimmed with skinny trunks sticking out the bottom where I would have seen someone’s legs had they been standing there.<span style=""> </span>I walked over to the hedges with my baton in hand and jabbed around the branches demonstrating to the Uzi owner that there was no one there.<span style=""> </span>After a thorough beating of the bushes, so to speak, the man was finally convinced.<span style=""> </span>I then impressed upon him the importance of NOT having his honey get his Uzi when an armed officer was checking his property.<span style=""> </span>He thanked me and wished me a Merry Christmas.<span style=""> </span><o:p></o:p></span> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:100%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p><span style=";font-family:arial;font-size:100%;" >I think some of the rich Iranians who left </span><span style=";font-family:arial;font-size:100%;" ><st1:country-region><st1:place><span style="">Iran</span></st1:place></st1:country-region></span><span style=";font-family:arial;font-size:100%;" > after the revolution were a bit traumatized. <span style=""> </span>And some were w</span><span style=";font-family:arial;font-size:100%;" >ell armed.<span style=""> </span><o:p></o:p></span> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:100%;"><b style=""><span style=""><o:p> </o:p></span></b></span></p><span style=";font-family:arial;font-size:100%;" ><b style=""><span style="">Charo<o:p></o:p></span></b></span><span style=";font-family:arial;font-size:100%;" ><br />Tom Petty had lived in the house for years and then Charo and her handsome young husband had bought the place.<span style=""> </span>The call came in “prowler there now seen in the backyard.”<span style=""> </span>My partner Keith and I responded, arriving minutes after we received the call.<span style=""> </span>Charo’s husband, before opening the door, explained that he had a gun.<span style=""> </span>I thanked him for telling us and asked him to put the gun away.<span style=""> </span>He opened the door and showed us the gun and the amo clip he had removed, and then he respectfully put the gun in a drawer. <o:p></o:p></span> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:100%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p><span style=";font-family:arial;font-size:100%;" >He explained that his wife had seen a prowler and that she was currently locked in the bed</span><span style=";font-family:arial;font-size:100%;" >room very frightened and upset.<span style=""> </span>Keith and I checked the property and found no one, any prowler she had seen was long gone.<span style=""> </span>Keith and I stood in the living room with Charo’s husband assuring him there was no one on the property when he picked up the phone and called his wife in the bedroom.<span style=""> </span>We could hear the muffled sounds of Charo through the door, her thick Spanish accent, talking a million words a minute.<span style=""> </span>Her husband repeatedly assured her that the property had been checked thoroughly and that the prowler was gone.<span style=""> </span><o:p></o:p></span> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:100%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p><span style=";font-family:arial;font-size:100%;" >Finally convinced she was safe, and wearing only a thick white terrycloth bathrobe, Charo burst into the living room exclaiming her thanks to Keith and me.<span style=""> </span>She quickly walked up to me, grabbed my hand and vigorously s</span><span style=";font-family:arial;font-size:100%;" >hook it for what seemed minutes, while she exclaimed things like, “thank you so much you are so brave I am so very thankful that you are here to protect me (the lack of punctuation here is intentional and more representative of her manner of speech).” She went on and on, and yes, she talks as fast in person as she does on the TV, and she is not much taller than a lawn gnome.<span style=""> </span>I smiled, looking down at her, saying “you’re welcome” several times while she shook my hand.<span style=""> </span>At last she let go of me and Keith and I made our way out of the house with that sweet tiny woman thanking us the whole time.<span style=""> </span><o:p></o:p></span> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:100%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p><span style=";font-family:arial;font-size:100%;" ><b style=""><span style="">Dinner <em><span style="font-style: normal;">Interruptus<o:p></o:p></span></em></span></b></span><span style=";font-family:arial;font-size:100%;" ><em><span style="font-style: normal;"><br />When responding to a burglary alarm, it was standard procedure to first check the perime</span></em></span><span style=";font-family:arial;font-size:100%;" ><em><span style="font-style: normal;">ter of the house or building to see if there was any sign of forced entry.<span style=""> </span>If an unsecured door or window was found, an interior check was conducted.<span style=""> </span>I responded to such a call one summer evening in the neat and tidy neighborhood of </span></em><st1:place><em><span style="font-style: normal;">Brentwood</span></em></st1:place><em><span style="font-style: normal;">.<span style=""> </span>I found an open door and so began walking through the house, hand on my gun, checking each room, closets, pantries, anyplace a human being might be hiding. <span style=""> </span><o:p></o:p></span></em></span> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:100%;"><em><span style="font-style: normal;"><o:p> </o:p></span></em></span></p><span style=";font-family:arial;font-size:100%;" ><em><span style="font-style: normal;">Half way through the house I poked my head around a corner and looked into the dining room where I found a table set for four with a meal apparently half eaten.<span style=""> </span>There was no one in the room.<span style=""> </span>My heart raced and the adrenaline surged. <span style=""> </span>What the fuck?<span style=""> </span>What’s going on here?<span style=""> </span>Where are the diners?<span style=""> </span>Something’s not right.<span style=""> </span>What horror ha</span></em></span><span style=";font-family:arial;font-size:100%;" ><em><span style="font-style: normal;">ve a stumbled into?<span style=""> </span>I narrowed my eyes and scrutinized the scene looking for any sign of struggle, foul play, anything that might indicate what had happened, or was happening.<span style=""> </span>Then I noticed the food looked weird, unnatural.<span style=""> </span>Wait a minute, it looks fake.<span style=""> </span>I slowly walked up to the table and realized it was fake.<span style=""> </span>I picked up a half eaten baked potato and turned it over, “$250” read the price tag.<span style=""> </span>Art.<span style=""> </span>This was someone’s idea of art.<span style=""> </span>Fake food made of wax.<span style=""> </span>Expensive half eaten fake food placed on a dining room table.<span style=""> </span>I finished checking the house, no burglars, just the fake food.<span style=""> </span>And who the hell would want to steal that?<span style=""> </span><o:p></o:p></span></em></span> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:100%;"><em><span style="font-style: normal;"><o:p> </o:p></span></em></span></p><span style=";font-family:arial;font-size:100%;" ><b style=""><span style="">Sasquatch<o:p></o:p></span></b></span><span style=";font-family:arial;font-size:100%;" ><br />It was a dark and stormy night.<span style=""> </span>Seriously, it was.<span style=""> </span>High winds, some rain, and as a result, there were a lot of false</span><span style=";font-family:arial;font-size:100%;" > burglary alarms as unsecured doors and windows were blown open.<span style=""> </span>It was late, one or two in the morning when I responded </span><span style=";font-family:arial;font-size:100%;" >to a burglary alarm at a house on a tiny little street off </span><span style=";font-family:arial;font-size:100%;" ><st1:street><st1:address><span style="">Mulholland Drive</span></st1:address></st1:street></span><span style=";font-family:arial;font-size:100%;" >.<span style=""> </span></span><span style=";font-family:arial;font-size:100%;" ><st1:street><st1:address><span style="">Mulholland Drive</span></st1:address></st1:street></span><span style=";font-family:arial;font-size:100%;" > is a mini continental divide of sorts running miles along the ridge of the hills that separate the </span><span style=";font-family:arial;font-size:100%;" ><st1:place><span style="">San Fernando Valley</span></st1:place></span><span style=";font-family:arial;font-size:100%;" > to the north from the rest of LA and </span><span style=";font-family:arial;font-size:100%;" ><st1:city><st1:place><span style="">Beverly Hills</span></st1:place></st1:city></span><span style=";font-family:arial;font-size:100%;" > to the south.<span style=""> </span>It’s got an improbable feeling of remoteness, or so it was in the 1980s (see pic, a view from the ridge).</span><span style=";font-family:arial;font-size:100%;" ><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhrJhISpXahn59QO2p2yNF1RR7RwhfmzMAdn2TH7xPcR0eWI6zHDC-GG1WlIBfuoPer2PENnH4m3MVcBlAtdzEoZIz9RbXtX443TlNpzPSzRa9cArqvQPzULLMQF7euX32CJyMBc6xFh8ct/s1600-h/mulholland-drive-view3-800w.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 211px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhrJhISpXahn59QO2p2yNF1RR7RwhfmzMAdn2TH7xPcR0eWI6zHDC-GG1WlIBfuoPer2PENnH4m3MVcBlAtdzEoZIz9RbXtX443TlNpzPSzRa9cArqvQPzULLMQF7euX32CJyMBc6xFh8ct/s400/mulholland-drive-view3-800w.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5440176149480911682" border="0" /></a></span> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:100%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p><span style=";font-family:arial;font-size:100%;" >I arrived at the scene and began to check the perimeter of the dark mansion that was built on the steep slope of a hill.<span style=""> </span>I trudged through the bushes, slid down the gravelly slopes, walked through spider webs, and kept an out eye for snakes.<span style=""> </span>The wind was howling up the canyons and the ambiance was very <leo_highlight style="border-bottom: 2px solid rgb(255, 255, 150); background-color: transparent; background-image: none; background-repeat: repeat; background-attachment: scroll; background-position: 0% 50%; -moz-background-size: auto auto; cursor: pointer; display: inline; -moz-background-clip: -moz-initial; -moz-background-origin: -moz-initial; -moz-background-inline-policy: -moz-initial;" id="leoHighlights_Underline_0" onclick="leoHighlightsHandleClick('leoHighlights_Underline_0')" onmouseover="leoHighlightsHandleMouseOver('leoHighlights_Underline_0')" onmouseout="leoHighlightsHandleMouseOut('leoHighlights_Underline_0')" leohighlights_keywords="alfred%20hitchcock" leohighlights_url_top="http%3A//shortcuts.thebrowserhighlighter.com/leonardo/plugin/highlights/3_1/tbh_highlightsTop.jsp?keywords%3Dalfred%2520hitchcock%26domain%3Dwww.blogger.com" leohighlights_url_bottom="http%3A//shortcuts.thebrowserhighlighter.com/leonardo/plugin/highlights/3_1/tbh_highlightsBottom.jsp?keywords%3Dalfred%2520hitchcock%26domain%3Dwww.blogger.com" leohighlights_underline="true">Alfred Hitchcock</leo_highlight>-y.<span style=""> </span>Then I rounded a corner of the house and saw it!<span style=""> </span>Sasquatch standing tall, it’s hand held above it’s head as though ready to strike.<span style=""> </span>Gasping I stumbled backwards, tripped and fell on my ass.<span style=""> </span>Reaching for my gun and pointing my flashlight up at the figure I quickly realized it was behind glass, inside the house.<span style=""> </span>And it wasn’t moving.<span style=""> </span>Art.<span style=""> </span>More fucking </span><span style=";font-family:arial;font-size:100%;" >crazy rich people’s art.<span style=""> </span>After catching my breath, I let out an ironic chuckle, dusted myself off and finished checking the property.<span style=""> </span>I don’t think I shared that story with my fellow officers, about how I almost shot a Sasquatch looking character standing in the window looking out over the lights of LA on a dark and stormy night.<span style=""> </span><o:p></o:p></span> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:100%;"><em><span style="font-style: normal;"><o:p> </o:p></span></em></span></p><span style=";font-family:arial;font-size:100%;" ><em><b style=""><span style="font-style: normal;">Fuck Art, I Want that Ten Bucks<o:p></o:p></span></b></em></span><span style=";font-family:arial;font-size:100%;" ><em><span style="font-style: normal;"><br />The house had been ransacked and the usual stuff was missing, electronics, jewelry, cash.<span style=""> </span><span style=""> </span>Also missing was a very special ten dollar bill.<span style=""> </span>The bill had been incorporated into a panting, a large multimedia thingy that was framed and hung in the living room.<span style=""> </span>When I arrived I saw it smashed, laying on the carpet, mangled in the center of the canvas where the ten dollar bill had been removed.<span style=""> </span>The purchase price of the painting?<span style=""> </span>Ten thousand dollars.<span style=""> </span><o:p></o:p></span></em></span> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:100%;"><em><span style="font-style: normal;"><o:p> </o:p></span></em></span></p><span style=";font-family:arial;font-size:100%;" ><em><b style=""><span style="font-style: normal;">The Giant Poodle Statue Attack<o:p></o:p></span></b></em></span><span style=";font-family:arial;font-size:100%;" ><em><span style="font-style: normal;"><br />It was a routine burglary call on a sunny afternoon at a moderate sized home (by LA standards).<span style=""> </span>I started my perimeter check and as I rounded a corner I saw, through the bushes and over a large porch area, about 30 yards away, the black head of a standard poodle.<span style=""> </span>Being attacked by dogs was a real occupational threat.<span style=""> </span>Like mail carriers and cops, most doggies don’t like uniformed folks poking around in their territory.<span style=""> </span>I stared at the figure for some time and it did not move.<span style=""> </span>I waved my hands, trying to provoke a response, to help me determine if this was anoth</span></em></span><span style=";font-family:arial;font-size:100%;" ><em><span style="font-style: normal;">er piece of crazy rich people art or a real dog.<span style=""> </span>The figure still didn’t move.<span style=""> </span><o:p></o:p></span></em></span> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:100%;"><em><span style="font-style: normal;"><o:p> </o:p></span></em></span></p><span style=";font-family:arial;font-size:100%;" ><em><span style="font-style: normal;">My view of the figure was blocked for a minute as I made my way through the yard around the landscaping.<span style=""> </span>Then I could see it again and it had still not moved.<span style=""> </span>I waved some more, nothing.<span style=""> </span>I started walking again and then it happened.<span style=""> </span>Suddenly the poodle statue was running at me!<span style=""> </span>I turned and ran towards the iron gate I had come in, slamming it behind me just in time to thwart the giant barking poodle.<span style=""> </span>After catching my breathe, I reached down to retrieve the keys to my patrol car which I always stuck in the crease of my gun belt.<span style=""> </span>They weren’t there.<span style=""> </span>I looked back and saw them laying about 10 yards away in the yard behind the gate, behind the giant barking poodle.<span style=""> </span>Fuck.<span style=""> </span><o:p></o:p></span></em></span> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:100%;"><em><span style="font-style: normal;"><o:p> </o:p></span></em></span></p><span style=";font-family:arial;font-size:100%;" ><em><span style="font-style: normal;">I contemplated my options.<span style=""> </span>I could call for backup but I would be the laughing stock of my colleagues, very rough, mostly sexist men with a penchant for brutal heckling.<span style=""> </span>So I pulled out my baton in one hand and my little tazer in the other and went in.<span style=""> </span>I yelled at the poodle to get back, swinging my baton, activating the tazer, as I inched my way towards my keys.<span style=""> </span>The dog backed up, barking and growling only a couple fee</span></em></span><span style=";font-family:arial;font-size:100%;" ><em><span style="font-style: normal;">t in front of me. <span style=""> </span>At last I grabbed my keys and retreated. <o:p></o:p></span></em></span> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:100%;"><em><span style="font-style: normal;"><o:p> </o:p></span></em></span></p><span style=";font-family:arial;font-size:100%;" ><em><span style="font-style: normal;">As I was sitting in my patrol car doing the paperwork for the call, the residents came home and approached me, asking what had happened.<span style=""> </span>They asked me to come into the house with them to make sure everything was ok.<span style=""> </span>Then they let in Hobbes and introduced me, explaining that he was an eleven month old puppy.<span style=""> </span>He wagged his whole body and licked my hand.<span style=""> </span>I didn’t share the details of mine and Hobbes earlier introduction, how I thought he was a statue, how I dropped my keys running from him, how I waved my baton and tazer at him.<span style=""> </span>I just pet the ginormous dog and then took my leave.<span style=""> </span><o:p></o:p></span></em></span> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:100%;"><em><span style="font-style: normal;"><o:p> </o:p></span></em></span></p><span style=";font-family:arial;font-size:100%;" ><em><b style=""><span style="font-style: normal;">A Little Pink Poodle and my Naiveté<o:p></o:p></span></b></em></span><span style=";font-family:arial;font-size:100%;" ><em><span style="font-style: normal;"><br />She had accidentally set off her burglary alarm but was surprised to see me walking across her yard.<span style=""> </span>She invited me in and I verified that she was the authorized resident.<span style=""> </span>She was white and plump with platinum hair coiffed and teased big and high, and her house was garish, decorated Vegas-like by my estimation.<span style=""> </span>Then I saw her little dog, a pink poodle.<span style=""> </span>I mean that its fur was actually pink.<span style=""> </span>I knelt down and petted the little thing, noting its cuteness and then looked up at the woman and asked, “Did it come this way?<span style=""> </span>Do they breed them pink?”<span style=""> </span>She smiled and explained that she had her little dog dyed pink.<span style=""> </span>Apparently, they don’t get born that way.<span style=""> </span>How would I know?<span style=""> </span>I was 20 years old and it was the first pink poodle I had ever seen.<span style=""> </span>Come to think of it, it’s still the only real life pink poodle I have ever seen.<span style=""> </span><o:p></o:p></span></em></span> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:100%;"><em><span style="font-style: normal;"><o:p> </o:p></span></em></span></p><span style=";font-family:arial;font-size:100%;" ><em><b style=""><span style="font-style: normal;">The Giant Hissing Rat<o:p></o:p></span></b></em></span><span style=";font-family:arial;font-size:100%;" ><em><span style="font-style: normal;"><br />It was dark but not late when the call came in, “415 giant rat will not let the resident take out his garbage” (415 is the California Penal Code section for disturbing the peace).<span style=""> </span>The dispatcher was straining not to laugh and I gave a 10-4 doing the same. <span style=""> </span>When I arrived at the house a middle-aged man, with the most serious and concerned demeanor, carefully explained to me that a giant rat was guarding his trashcan.<span style=""> </span>He then took me to the side of the house to show me.<span style=""> </span>I pointed my flashlight at the trashcan and saw two giant eyes peering back.<span style=""> </span>Suppressing an almost overwhelming urge to laugh, I delicately explained to the man that this was not a giant rat but a wild possum and that he would need to call animal control or simply wait for the little beast to move on.<span style=""> </span>Killing possum was not pa</span></em></span><span style=";font-family:arial;font-size:100%;" ><em><span style="font-style: normal;">rt of my job description.<span style=""> </span><o:p></o:p></span></em></span> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:100%;"><em><span style="font-style: normal;"><o:p> </o:p></span></em></span></p><span style=";font-family:arial;font-size:100%;" ><em><b style=""><span style="font-style: normal;">Observing the </span></b></em><st1:place><st1:placename><em><b style=""><span style="font-style: normal;">Sabbath</span></b></em></st1:placename><em><b style=""><span style="font-style: normal;"> </span></b></em><st1:placename><em><b style=""><span style="font-style: normal;">Hancock</span></b></em></st1:placename><em><b style=""><span style="font-style: normal;"> </span></b></em><st1:placetype><em><b style=""><span style="font-style: normal;">Park</span></b></em></st1:placetype></st1:place><em><b style=""><span style="font-style: normal;"> Style<o:p></o:p></span></b></em></span><span style=";font-family:arial;font-size:100%;" ><em><span style="font-style: normal;"><br />The </span></em><st1:place><st1:placename><em><span style="font-style: normal;">Hancock</span></em></st1:placename><em><span style="font-style: normal;"> </span></em><st1:placetype><em><span style="font-style: normal;">Park</span></em></st1:placetype></st1:place><em><span style="font-style: normal;"> neighborhood is a mostly Jewish enclave in mid-Wilshire LA.<span style=""> </span>The more orthodox Jews in the neighborhood observed the tradition that one should not work on Saturdays, the Jewish Sabbath.<span style=""> </span>This also included not using any mechanical devices such as cars and home appliances and the like.<span style=""> </span>It was common on Saturdays, throughout the neighborhood, to see groups of Jewish folk walking to synagogue.<span style=""> </span>One Saturday I was working in </span></em><st1:place><st1:placename><em><span style="font-style: normal;">Hancock</span></em></st1:placename><em><span style="font-style: normal;"> </span></em><st1:placetype><em><span style="font-style: normal;">Park</span></em></st1:placetype></st1:place><em><span style="font-style: normal;"> when the dispatcher, again straining not laugh, said a resident had requested that an officer come by and start his dishwasher.<span style=""> </span>Apparently it made complete sense to this man that the goyim be directed to use the appliances in the stead of observant Jews.<span style=""> </span>A sergeant came on the radio and pointedly explained to the dispatcher that no officer would be sent to do such a thing.<span style=""> </span>The dirty dishes would have to sit until Sunday.<span style=""> </span><o:p></o:p></span></em></span> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:100%;"><em><span style="font-style: normal;"><o:p> </o:p></span></em></span></p><span style=";font-family:arial;font-size:100%;" ><em><b style=""><span style="font-style: normal;">In Conclusion, for Now<o:p></o:p></span></b></em></span><span style=";font-family:arial;font-size:100%;" ><em><span style="font-style: normal;"><br />Throughout the six years I worked those west LA streets and those Hills of Beverly, I had many interesting experiences.<span style=""> </span>I met the famous, saw the rich, and had access to a world most never see but in magazines and on TV.<span style=""> </span>I saw opulence I could never have imagined, giant estates with closets as big as small houses and maids quarters as small as closets.<span style=""> </span>I met the stars, and although I was never once star-struck or impressed, I helped to protect them and their property.<span style=""> </span>I was positioned on the perimeter around Penny Marshall’s house when she was held hostag</span></em><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg1AtFPpeUqmh3DorqHdRjEMzRUOUSoBL8-fwq-bXgeNzW4dyVIx613daZpJInDb505aHm5IFVHwa0R1tIUarzg5FT3eNEExvwzTTY_RQ8sdjikPOCXReWlZYNULvvM8rMq0HNx-7S5XJWI/s1600-h/phyllis_diller1242053970.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 200px; height: 200px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg1AtFPpeUqmh3DorqHdRjEMzRUOUSoBL8-fwq-bXgeNzW4dyVIx613daZpJInDb505aHm5IFVHwa0R1tIUarzg5FT3eNEExvwzTTY_RQ8sdjikPOCXReWlZYNULvvM8rMq0HNx-7S5XJWI/s400/phyllis_diller1242053970.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5440176283337233218" border="0" /></a></span><span style=";font-family:arial;font-size:100%;" ><em><span style="font-style: normal;">e by a mad gunman. <span style=""> </span>I repeatedly checked the property of Priscilla Presley when her then young daughter, Lisa, was home alone and frightened.<span style=""> </span>I responded to false alarms set off by the drunk and the lonely who wanted only to see someone in the night.<span style=""> </span>I worked to mediate domestic disputes between the coked-up and dramatic, the crazy and the spoiled.<span style=""> </span>I have held an Oscar, an Emmy, and a Golden Globe in my hands (they are very heavy).<span style=""> </span>I accidentally drew my gun on Sydney Sheldon’s maid while checking his sprawling estate after a late-night alarm.<span style=""> </span>I watched Harrison Ford eat an apple wearing only a pair of jeans and I spent 45 minutes talking about Russian art with John Candy as he sipped vodka neat. <span style=""> </span>Several times I met Jermaine Jackson and really liked him.<span style=""> </span>I learned that Phyllis Diller can be quite the cranky bitch and that Harry Hamlin is so slight I could easily have kicked his ass.<span style=""> </span>I also got shot at once, heard the round go by my head, and once I almost had to shoot a man, but thank god, he did everything I told him to do and didn’t reach for his gun.<span style=""> </span>All this before I was 25 years old.<span style=""> </span>Like I said, it was part of my real life education.<span style=""> </span>And it was this early experience that largely compelled me to go back to college, to get educated, to not become a cop.<span style=""> </span>And for this, I am forever grateful.<span style=""> </span><o:p></o:p></span></em></span> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:100%;"><em><span style="font-style: normal;"><o:p> </o:p></span></em></span></p><span style=";font-family:arial;font-size:100%;" ><em><span style="font-style: normal;">Plus, I have a bunch of good stories.<span style=""> </span><o:p></o:p></span></em></span> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:100%;"><em><span style="font-style: normal;"><o:p> </o:p></span></em></span></p><span style=";font-family:arial;font-size:100%;" ><em></em></span><span style=";font-family:arial;font-size:100%;" ><span style="font-style: italic;">NOTE: I have shared the funny and ridiculous here…but there was a dark side to the job. The abuses, shootings, racism, sexism, crimes, dead bodies and the three officers who committed suicide during my six year </span><em style="font-style: italic;"></em><span style="font-style: italic;">tenure. 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</script> </span><input id="gwProxy" type="hidden"><!--Session data--><input onclick="jsCall();" id="jsProxy" type="hidden"><div id="refHTML"></div><input id="gwProxy" type="hidden"><!--Session data--><input onclick="jsCall();" id="jsProxy" type="hidden"><div id="refHTML"></div><input id="gwProxy" type="hidden"><!--Session data--><input onclick="jsCall();" id="jsProxy" type="hidden"><div id="refHTML"></div><input id="gwProxy" type="hidden"><!--Session data--><input onclick="jsCall();" id="jsProxy" type="hidden"><div id="refHTML"></div><input id="gwProxy" type="hidden"><!--Session data--><input onclick="jsCall();" id="jsProxy" type="hidden"><div id="refHTML"></div><input id="gwProxy" type="hidden"><!--Session data--><input onclick="jsCall();" id="jsProxy" type="hidden"><div id="refHTML"></div><input id="gwProxy" type="hidden"><!--Session data--><input onclick="jsCall();" id="jsProxy" type="hidden"><div id="refHTML"></div><input id="gwProxy" type="hidden"><!--Session data--><input onclick="jsCall();" id="jsProxy" type="hidden"><div id="refHTML"></div>Merhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13153002900480201989noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5479803314695776499.post-78468657935581365852010-02-06T13:22:00.000-08:002010-03-01T17:29:00.263-08:00Jimmy's Emergency PlanJimmy and I sat at a local tapas restaurant eating our Spanish eggs and toasted baguette, reading the NY Times and babbling about this and that. Somehow the topic turned to having emergency stores in the event of a disaster . I told Jimmy I have a stash of canned goods and bottled water in the basement should a disaster hit. I noted that Jimmy and I should have an emergency plan to which he responded, "Oh I already have an emergency plan." "Really Jimmy, what is your plan?" His response, "Roll up in a ball and wait." <input id="gwProxy" type="hidden"><!--Session data--><input onclick="jsCall();" id="jsProxy" type="hidden"><div id="refHTML"></div><input id="gwProxy" type="hidden"><!--Session data--><input onclick="jsCall();" id="jsProxy" type="hidden"><div id="refHTML"></div><input id="gwProxy" type="hidden"><!--Session data--><input onclick="jsCall();" id="jsProxy" type="hidden"><div id="refHTML"></div>Merhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13153002900480201989noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5479803314695776499.post-26419179258667200842010-01-15T22:05:00.000-08:002012-07-26T23:49:43.872-07:00Travel Goals for 2010I am middle-aged, single, able bodied, and I make a decent living and have a somewhat flexible schedule....so it is all about traveling these days. Has been for the past two years. 2009 was a good year in this regard and I have set even loftier goals for the coming 300+ days. They are:<br />
<ul>
<li>Eat oysters and drink champagne in Paris with my "literate drunk" friend Catherine...and then hit a couple of dyke bars! <span style="color: #3333ff;">(<b>DONE, mostly, Fall 2011)</b></span></li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>Pet whales in San Ignacio Lagoon, Baja, Mexico...and arrive by vintage plane flying out of Tijuana (see pic of plane...this one is already booked! Celebrating Catherine's big 50.) <span style="color: #3333ff; font-weight: bold;">(DONE!! AND IT WAS AWESOME!!)</span><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjLjNVr4b6z57bO7eFvE0RHPn4a5ssTv4dybss20ozhvpafB2pKsgxDE_5-Jg2CNeY_aOA9efDleWhpJOnq7oEDNDk31veAZoJGBOvbyFSdEvCeR4LEnNlHK7riYnuzq95Lm5d6bUTz64Hc/s1600-h/baja+plane+2.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5427256886220640418" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjLjNVr4b6z57bO7eFvE0RHPn4a5ssTv4dybss20ozhvpafB2pKsgxDE_5-Jg2CNeY_aOA9efDleWhpJOnq7oEDNDk31veAZoJGBOvbyFSdEvCeR4LEnNlHK7riYnuzq95Lm5d6bUTz64Hc/s400/baja+plane+2.jpg" style="cursor: pointer; float: right; height: 265px; margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; width: 400px;" /></a></li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>Paint the Big Apple red! A long spring weekend in NYC with Jimmy. Watch out! <span style="color: #3333ff; font-weight: bold;">(DONE! HILARIOUS FUN!) </span></li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>Kayak fish on Mission bay, San Diego...got my new rod holders ready to go. Then head to Deb's place in Baja...K-74 here I come again!</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>Shark cage in Hawaii with my kid sis? Could this be the year we make it happen? </li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>Guate Guate Guate again but of course! Got too many damn friends down there now (too bad Jimmy is afraid of developing countries and will never ever come with me....not after the stories he's heard, from me. Guns, robberies, rapes, and drunk hit-men and the like...oh well).<b><span style="color: blue;"> (DONE, as usual)</span></b></li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>Dave has a new raft and I have told him I plan on running class 3 & 4 all over California and casting for rainbows...his response? "I insist!" <span style="color: #3333ff; font-weight: bold;">(DONE!)</span></li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>And the usual trips south to surf and be lazy on the beach and eat salmon at Walt's Warf and laugh with Marcy and Jonald. <span style="color: #3333ff; font-weight: bold;">(DONE!)</span></li>
</ul>
That's my story and I am going to try really damn hard to stick to it!!<br />
<br />
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</div>Merhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13153002900480201989noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5479803314695776499.post-63087302918948682822009-12-04T21:52:00.000-08:002010-01-10T22:37:18.908-08:00Environmental Clean-Up with Chain Saws and Birthday Cakes<span style="font-style: italic;">I wrote the following after reading the article "The General Electric Superfraud: Why the Hudson River Will Never Run Clean" in Harper's Magazine, December 2009 (link provided below). It´s a depressing account of the environmental cluster-fuck that is the Hudson River, a place with a long history of abuse and exploitation, ignorant and intentional. The article highlights, in part, the struggles with elemental questions in contemporary environmental clean-up. These questions include: how clean is clean? what is an acceptable risk? how much confidence is there in the current characterization of the contamination? </span><br /><br />I have, since 1995, moved in the world of environmental science, clean-up, regulation, Superfund, the National Priorities List (NPL) and the like, serving as a mediator/facilitator and public involvement specialist. I have been privy to, and often facilitated, discussions on "how clean is clean?" - technological and financial feasibility, and deciding on what is an acceptable human health risk based on human health risk assessments. Ultimately, the experience I have has left me with hoards more questions than answers, and frankly, an ever waning confidence in much of modern environmental science. And this is not primarily because of the competency or good intentions of regulators and scientists, but rather the complexity of the problems and the limitations of our current technology and understanding of things.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">How Clean is Clean? What risk is acceptable?</span><br />These questions are fundamental in deciding how and what to what degree a contaminated site will be cleaned. At first glance, these questions may seem like a no-brainers. How clean is clean? Totally fucking clean is clean, right? What is an acceptable risk to human health and the environment? Zero risk is the knee-jerk-answer. But things aren´t quite that simple. There are many confounding factors in considering the question of "how clean is clean?" First, there are technological limits for detecting many constituents deemed harmful to human health and the environment. Contemporary technologies all have a threshold of detection ability, but depending on the particular chemical constituent, this may be above or below levels believed to pose a significant risk to humans and/or the environment. There are some constituents, such as radioactive isotopes, that are considered by many scientists to present a no-threshold risk. In other words, there is no exposure that is considered safe to humans, all exposure´is thought to increase, to some degree, an individuals cancer risk. Yet our technology is limited in it´s ability to thoroughly detect the presence of many such constituents. So how much dirt should be dug up and hauled to a landfill? The answers to these questions can have huge financial impacts...and in the case of NPL sites, can mean 100s of millions of taxpayer dollars....a resource that is finite. These questions are far from easy to answer. <br /><br /><div style="font-weight: bold;">The Cosmos Are Naturally Dirty and We Helped Fuck it Up Some More</div>Another confounding factor is that there are many naturally occurring substances, such as radioactivity, arsenic, etc., that pose a risk to human health and the environment. In the case of radioactivity, there is also ubiquitous man-made radioactive material resulting, mainly, from decades of above ground nuclear testing. Other naturally occurring substances have been mined, concentrated, and accumulated by humans and now pose a risks. Scientists and regulators are challenged to determined what is naturally occurring and what has been cause by human actions. Suddenly, the question of "how clean is clean?" becomes much more complicated. And concomitantly, the question of what is an acceptable risk becomes, although uncomfortable to most, very relevant. I feel for the regulators and scientists that must answer these never thoroughly answerable questions.<br /><br /><br /><div style="font-weight: bold;">Human Health Risk Assessments (for Cancer)</div>I have casually in the above paragraphs tossed out references to "human health risk assessment" with no explanation which is misleading as there is nothing casual about them. HHRAs are a primary tool in deciding "how clean is clean'", and yet, they are quite limited in many ways. HHRA are probabilistic models, statistical models based on existing information about known carcinogens and they include very conservative assumptions about exposure pathways built into the models. These models are not predictive, a very important point. They simply provide relative information on the risk based on model parameters. They do not predict whether people will develop cancer. The distinction is often difficult for people to understand and thus HHRA results can scare the shit outta people. Perfectly clear, right? I´ll try to break it down a little more.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Clear as Mud</span><br />Some contaminants have a lot of data about their carcinogenic affects on humans while others do not, many have only data from exposure to rats or other similar lab animals. The data going into the HHRA can vary greatly in it´s robustness depending on the contaminant. The second key factor that is plugged into the model is the assumed land use of the contaminated site. If it is residential use, the models make conservative assumptions such as a person will live on the site for thirty years, spend the majority of their time at home, eat vegetables grown in their yard, their children will incidentally ingest X pounds of soil a year, and so on. The logic is to assume the worst case exposure to off-set some of the uncertainty in the modeling. For industrial and recreational land use scenarios, the assumptions are less conservative, such as assuming people will not be on the site day and night and children will not be playing in the dirt, etc. Then a calculation is made and a cancer risk number is popped out. Remember, some contaminants are naturally occurring and pose a risk at any exposure. And there is a baseline cancer risk for all human beings just by being alive in this world.<br /><br />All clear now? Ok, here´s another confounding issue in determining the risk at a given location. How the contamination is characterized and quantified impacts the outcome of the HHRS. Does the modeler use a high concentration sample at a local sample site or a composite sample that more evenly distributes the risk? Is it fair to assume the modeled child will eat dirt from only the dirtiest location at the site? What if the contamination is extremely heterogeneous and contains locations with high concentrations and locations that are non-detect when sampled? And if scientists are dealing with a large site with multiple contaminants, do you parcel the areas and calculate the risk or combine the entire area into one risk assessment? These are not simple questions and they do not lend themselves to simple answers. The real bummer about these questions is that there seems to be no single right answer. Judgments have to be made, compromises are inevitable, and no one is sure what the ultimate affect of these decisions will be.<br /><br /><br /><div style="font-weight: bold;">Chain Saws and Birthday Cakes<br /></div>When I first started working in the environmental field I was eager to learn about everything as I was lost beyond belief in this complex world of science, regulations, and a new vocabulary that appeared to have no words, only acronyms. So one day I cornered a toxicologist, a woman with extensive experience in conducting HHRAs, and I asked her to explain it to me. She patiently went through the processes in layman's terms and answered my questions. After about an hour, I cocked my head and said, "well, I gotta tell ya, this all does not sound very certain or clear cut." My colleague candidly responded with, "It isn´t. Ít´s very crude. I liken doing a HHRA to cutting a birthday cake with a chain saw....but it´s the best tool we have." I have quoted this clever woman many times through the years...her candor and use of metaphor made a huge impression on me.<br /><br />So how do people answer these fundamental questions regarding environmental cleanup? Well, some of the answer lies in regulatory standards that have been developed through protracted and complicated processes and then established either through regulation or precedent. There are some benchmarks for decision makers to use, but they are far from comprehensive. Even with these benchmarks and regulations, the kinds of questions I have described above are often still extremely difficult to answer. They are fraught with all the social factors one could conceive of....understandable fear from those living on or near a site, degrees of financial impact/feasibility, political posturing and advocating, and the sometimes talented and informed (and sometimes not) scrutiny of environmental advocates and watchdog groups. The decision making often involves all of these stakeholders participating in, and/or contributing to, the decision making process (and I haven´t even touched on the fact that there is often a great diversity of opinion on these issues within the scientific community). And this is where I join the fray.<br /><br /><br /><div style="font-weight: bold;">Born to Help....So I Like to Think</div>In my work I try my hardest to help these various stakeholders have productive yet difficult conversations and make the difficult decisions. My job is not to make any technical or policy decisions and I never opine on content, only process. I have often explained my job as such, "I help other people make difficult decisions." For most of my projects, past and present, these conversations are almost always messy, often unwieldy, and inherently complicated. But the folks at the table show up, start sorting through the complexity and slowly move through the various options and required decisions. Some sites are forever starting and stopping and re-evaluating, some blow-up politically, and others are more straightforward. Almost all major environmental clean-ups take decades.<br /><br /><br /><div style="font-weight: bold;">Am I a Big Wimp? Maybe.</div>I have often considered that maybe I am a big wimp in that I have chosen a profession that doesn´t put me in the decision-making seat. I don´t advocate for anything but a productive process and moving towards a stated goal of consensus among some or all parties. But I love my work. I absolutely get off on helping these folks make progress on issues and questions that can´t and should not be ignored. And I hope to do it in such a way that at the end of the day they can all shake hands and go home and not kick their dogs and yell at their kids because their work is so frustrating. I think I succeed in many instances and I am certain I fail in some.<br /><br />A few years ago an article in the respected journal Conflict Resolution Quarterly (CRQ) did an analysis and literature review of research on multi-stakeholder decision making processes and the efficacy of ADR professionals like myself who provide facilitation and mediation support. The upshot was that there is no way to conclusively assess whether the contributions of folks like me actually help to produce better outcomes. The question, they concluded, is currently unanswerable as there are too many variables and the processes are too complex....they likened it to the weather. The only data on the efficacy of facilitators/mediators in complex multi-stakeholder processes are from stakeholder´s self-reporting. This is an inherently problematic method as it lacks any controlled reference.<br /><br />In the early days of my career I privately set a goal to at least do more good than harm in my contributions to a proceeding or meeting. I have always felt that I achieved that by whatever margin...and I think, overall, my ratio has improved through the years. But I got nothing to back that up...except, generally, more satisfied stakeholders than pissed off ones. But trust me, there are ALWAYS pissed off stakeholders.<br /><br />http://harpers.org/archive/2009/12/page/0001<input id="gwProxy" type="hidden"><!--Session data--><input onclick="jsCall();" id="jsProxy" type="hidden"><div id="refHTML"></div>Merhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13153002900480201989noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5479803314695776499.post-10602108916220071392009-12-02T18:58:00.000-08:002009-12-02T19:02:00.171-08:00In Guatemala....Again!For some reason, I like to keep my sloppy ramblings while traveling seperate from my sloppy ramblings while at home. Those curious about my travels and exploits in Central America can read about them at-<br /><br />merstravelblog.blogspot.comMerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13153002900480201989noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5479803314695776499.post-21273169441258655852009-11-24T13:00:00.000-08:002009-11-24T15:15:51.044-08:00Giving Thanks in 2009 and Remembering Donna Clare Rainwater“I am thankful for my family,” a “no dah” assertion made often in this US holiday season. An assertion that sometimes rings cliché, hackneyed, trite. So I offer the following as an antidote to that vulnerability.<br /><br />November 30, 1989, Donna Clare Rainwater shuffled off this mortal coil, checked out one week after thanksgiving, five days after her 52nd birthday, 18 years after giving birth to my youngest sister Marcy, and approximately 3 hours after I last saw her alive. It was a dramatic day, a tumultuous time, a reckoning of sorts. My mother’s death was a defining event forcing five young Rainwater’s (me and my four siblings) to confront some heavy shit about mortality, family, our emotionally stunted and clueless father, and each other. It was the end of my mother’s life on earth, the end of a certain innocence and familial definition. My mother was the glue that, in many ways, had kept us together. But when she died, something happened as a result, a rebirth of sorts, something sublimely good. Her death helped solidify the bonds between the five of us. I offer the most superficial explanation.<br /><br />If I had a nickel for every time someone has said to me, with disbelief in their voice, “it’s amazing how close you all are” I would be a rich woman. Seriously. People are almost always amazed when I share that my best friends are my siblings. Many cite the turbulent relationships in their own families, explaining that they love their brothers or sisters but they are not close. I nod, smile, and shrug. Closeness with my sibs is all I know. They are my family. In every good definition of the word.<br /><br />Juls is my Irish twin, which means she was born 11 months after I arrived. I was a crying, colicky first born to an exhausted young Donna, a practicing Irish Catholic who was boinking my dad without birth control 2 months after giving birth (she was also, by all apparent evidence, very fertile). I have zero recollection of my life before Juls…so we are in effect, twins, Irish or otherwise.<br /><br />Juls and I are, at first glance, night and day. She has always been a skinny, bookish, relatively shy soul with a sober intellect and an aptitude for math and the analytical. I am not skinny, not shy, not bookish, and I failed college algebra, twice. In our youth Juls preferred reading her books and holing-up in her room alone singing along to Karen Carpenter albums while using her hairbrush as a microphone proxy. She followed the rules, got As, was in MGM, kept a low profile and saved her rebellions for later and was then much more sophisticated and surreptitious in their implementation. This all stood in stark contrast to my kinetic, brash, rebellious ways and grossly unsatisfactory grades. We were opposites. And though this might seem an equation for discord, that was not the case. We have ALWAYS been friends. In fact I call Juls my soul mate. She has been my confidant, counselor, supporter, my constant companion on this emotional, intellectual and spiritual journey through life. She and I have such a cultivated common language that previous considerations, contemplations, and histories need only the slightest allusion to be conjured. No one knows me better than Julie Ann Rainwater. And still, she always sees the good in me. That, to me, is family.<br /><br />Then came the twins, James Clark and Lauri Jean, two little 3+ pounders born six weeks early. Suddenly there were four. In some ways these two were an analog to Juls and I. Jimmy was loud and nutty, Laurs was sweet and hardworking, and Juls and I took them under our wings accordingly. I was rough and tumble with little Jimbo and Laurs and Juls focused on the proper coordination of their respective Barbie’s outfits. We all, for the most part, got along fabulously (saving for some dramatic fights between Jimmy and I).<br /><br />Then came the sweet surprise, Marcy Jane, the youngest, the little jock of all jocks, the quiet grounded one with a tough exterior and a mushy heart. Marcy entertained us with her youthful antics and later was left to deal with things on her own while the four of us ventured out into the world. She has always had a wisdom beyond her years. And then there were five. Five little Rainwaters and it seems like only minutes passed and then we were all peers. And as we all got older, we ended up going to the same parties and drinking the same cheap kegger beer and eating SuperMex and going to the beach the morning after.<br /><br />That fateful November in 1989 when our mom up and died, something began to happened, something new was cemented. Of course we all dealt with things in our own way…diving into our preferred flavors of distraction. But we also talked. We shared. We grilled our sister Marcy about the details of the day as she was with my mother when she had the heart attack. We went over and over in detail everyone’s experience of finding out, of going to the hospital, of getting the call. We pondered the unbelievable, the inconceivable, the impossibility of it all. We contemplated life without Donna and we did it openly and often. We cried together, drank together, sat through that Catholic mass funeral together, and together we ate the ten frozen lasagnas delivered by friends and neighbors. And a few weeks later, together we bore the pain of that first Christmas and New Years without the woman who had always made those days special for us all. We were, at that young age, forced to deal with something that most of our friends could not even conceive of…suddenly the value of our relationships to each other came into clearer focus, the fragility of life was no longer conceptual but the nasty fact of one less plate at the Christmas dinner table.<br /><br />Through the years it has only gotten better, even with all the distractions and girlfriends and boyfriends and dramas. We have continued to become better friends, better siblings, better family to each other. When one of us has stumbled, the phone calls and conversations among the others have been filled with ideas for how to help, how to console, how to cheer up. If money was needed, money was collected. If a pep-talk was needed, four were given. If a ride, a plane ticket, or a birth coach were needed, all were arranged. Never has the response to a challenge been derision or harsh judgment. Not to my knowledge. Not ever. Every conversation, every strategy, every potential intervention has been fueled by caring, love and respect. We truly truly wish the best for each other. We truly are there for one another.<br /><br />It’s been 20 years this November since our mother died. We are now all growed up and have added John, Ron and Jon and five youngin’s to the clan. And even though I am for the third year in a row skipping off to Central America for Christmas and New Years, I think I have only missed one family Thanksgiving dinner in the 20 years since my mother’s death. Most years we gather at Laur’s house where we laugh and laugh and drink and play stupid games and laugh some more. Our histories are so intermingled, our humor so relentless, our common language so present and enduring, our loyalty so proven again and again, there is no denying that we are, by every good definition, family. And so I say again, not only in this US holiday season, but every single day, I am thankful for my siblings, my best friends, my family.<br /><br />And lastly, mom, wherever you are, thanks for having us, raising us, and instilling something good in us that has endured and is being passed to the next generation. This Thanksgiving there will be a plate set at the table in your honor. And we will speak of you to those youngin’s and partners who never got the chance to meet you. You will never be forgotten.<br /><br />Love,<br />Mer<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">NOTE: My family has grown to include more than my siblings, John, Ron, and Jon, and the five new youngin's, but I have chosen to focus on my mom and bio-sibs here. I am also TRULY grateful, everyday, for my larger chosen family.</span>Merhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13153002900480201989noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5479803314695776499.post-40174568495547685372009-11-16T15:18:00.000-08:002009-11-17T22:55:41.566-08:00Tales from the Bungalow: Jimmy's TV Goes on the Attack!<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiDujCjfo-cZBhcCw9E8E-Tdp7NVT4_5HNRqFoB_c72N4kssH5P7O_rgvNKeHWW7clxyZjTBfufVkDXuNy-s-T-hDRQTf8815J_8Ty3e0AER4hPCSmxvBqq0k2Nz_MfkDqRyYioaf6-x1wg/s1600/Jimmy+TV+with+text.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 300px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiDujCjfo-cZBhcCw9E8E-Tdp7NVT4_5HNRqFoB_c72N4kssH5P7O_rgvNKeHWW7clxyZjTBfufVkDXuNy-s-T-hDRQTf8815J_8Ty3e0AER4hPCSmxvBqq0k2Nz_MfkDqRyYioaf6-x1wg/s400/Jimmy+TV+with+text.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5404880233216184258" border="0" /></a>Jimmy and I have matching flat screen TVs, although mine is admittedly, a bit larger. Jimmy purchased his about 8 months ago and has been watching it with regularity ever since. The other night we were driving when Jimmy suddenly asked, "You know that little blue light on our TVs, does that bug you?" My response was what it so often is when Jimmy asks such questions, "What are you talking about?" Jimmy described the little blue light that is centered on the lower part of the TV below the screen. The light, when blue, indicates that the TV is on. Ok Jimmy. I know the light you're talking about.<br /><br />Jimmy went on to explain that the light, when he finally noticed it after EIGHT MONTHS had passed, was driving him crazy. I looked at him astonished and noted that it was a very small light and that the one on my TV did not bother me one iota. I started ribbing him and laughing at him when he suddenly blurted out, "But it was lasering me! It was lasering me!" Apparently, this light, after 8 months of being ignored, took it upon itself to start torturing my brother (as he watched Ultimate Fighting) by "lasering" him in the eyes.<br /><br />So distraught by this sudden "lasering" attack, my brother immediately began looking for ways to cover up the "laser" light and protect his assaulted eyes. He started with a post-it-note but explained that the "laser" light still shone through. So he went into the bathroom and got a band-aid to cover it up. Apparently a thin layer of gauze and rubber was enough to stop the "lasering" my poor brother had been suffering. Seriously. Every part of this story is absolutely true.Merhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13153002900480201989noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5479803314695776499.post-31630554517817091732009-10-19T17:35:00.000-07:002009-11-23T00:39:25.615-08:00There ARE Seasons in California<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhwrIRpVfC23D6fsArenyCGX2N6cRdNSDjoAzaw0SUhiJZhnSN6erWuSz6-r4_ENfQenzE3IkBj5a9xreqg-hIka_F1vEE9vQJ8QI069kkpi5KhfsqWp7qCNOZZnYo-AinFKfHJ4tDygVoT/s1600-h/car+donner+1941.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5400137100286931330" style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; width: 214px; cursor: pointer; height: 209px;" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhwrIRpVfC23D6fsArenyCGX2N6cRdNSDjoAzaw0SUhiJZhnSN6erWuSz6-r4_ENfQenzE3IkBj5a9xreqg-hIka_F1vEE9vQJ8QI069kkpi5KhfsqWp7qCNOZZnYo-AinFKfHJ4tDygVoT/s320/car+donner+1941.jpg" border="0" /></a>I recently asked a very bright and observant woman, who has lived in many places in the USA, if she thinks there are distinct seasons in California. She paused thoughtfully, then responded with a 'yes" and a "why do you ask?" I explained that so many folks from places east and north of here do not think there is such a thing as seasons in the Golden State. She cleverly observed, "you don't need to be beaten over the head with it for it to be distinct." Touche! I am tired of my more eastern-and-northern-state living friends popping off about how California doesn't have any seasons. With all due respect, they, are wrong. <div><br />There are even places in California where a season <span style="font-style: italic;">will</span> "beat you over the head" should you not be prepared. And sometimes, even then. If one January you chose to hang out on Donner Pass (see pic) in the Sierra Nevada, which boasts some of the heaviest snowfall in the US, you had better be prepared for some damn cold winter weather or you will end up loosing some digits to frostbite, or worse, dying of hypothermia (or starvation like the Donner party, the infamous tragedy of the mid-19th century that lent the pass it's current name). And if you were at that same locale on a sunny August day, you had better be lathered with sunscreen and have a water bottle in hand. There are great seasonal variations in temperature and precipitation in many parts of California. And as a young explorer, I learned this lesson, in part, the hard way.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">An Early Lesson in Cold</span><br />Death Valley is an almost inconceivably expansive desert region boasting the lowest point in North America, 282 feet below sea-level, with the perennially snow capped 11,000 foot Telescope peak standing sentry to the west. It is a land of extremes with some of the hottest recorded summer temperatures in North America, a place where nighttime temperatures can plummet 35-40 degrees.<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgWJk3IetI9e4G9LaAZsnAZM2njV8pn_VWdt4MVfC6AgmyrqlvpaAcdQAFCVBS26-mjtKcb6HhL34NtlrECdgG_TBmp7WWdqyshuSNpkSnQL9Ibm5rIOiePJeeJk0cpLR__-WpMYzF5esfR/s1600-h/MCDI-death-valley-multisport.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5400138183148948066" style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; width: 275px; cursor: pointer; height: 157px;" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgWJk3IetI9e4G9LaAZsnAZM2njV8pn_VWdt4MVfC6AgmyrqlvpaAcdQAFCVBS26-mjtKcb6HhL34NtlrECdgG_TBmp7WWdqyshuSNpkSnQL9Ibm5rIOiePJeeJk0cpLR__-WpMYzF5esfR/s320/MCDI-death-valley-multisport.jpg" border="0" /></a><br />In my younger days I spent a fair amount of time exploring this region in 4X4 trucks and on motorcycles with stiff suspensions and torquey 2-stroke engines. One of my earliest trips to Death Valley started with a long day riding a motorcycle over mule trails and hoary mining roads followed by a few beers around a roaring campfire. Tuckered, at last I took my leave and snuggled into my cheap sleeping bag which I had spread out on a folding lawn chair inside my little A-frame tent. A Colman lantern hissed as I read a book on desert fauna and waited to get warm. It didn't happen.<br /><br />The temperature continued to plummet as the night came on and I started to shiver, my teeth chattered...my body trying to warm itself. I grabbed some more clothes and stuffed them into the bottom of my bag to warm them before wiggling into the sweatshirt, sweats and hoody while trying to keep the cold air out. It was a bandaid on a big cold wound. I spent a miserable night in hallucinogenic half sleep curled up in a fetal position. The temperature was below freezing and I was dreadfully unprepared. A month later I put my entire teenage fortune towards a North Face mummy bag with a 15 degree comfort rating. Skimping on a sleeping bag was not an option when winter camping in Death Valley. I was learning that all of California did not sport the relatively moderate temperatures of coastal SoCal. Check.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">The Distortions of Living on the SoCal Coast</span><br />I grew up about ten miles inland from the coast in Southern California, a place that IS known for its Mediterranean climate with dry hot summers and mild, slightly rainy winters. The winters could bring some cooler temps, some morning frost on lawns and north facing windshields. But these bits of cold were short lived and the days were often sunny and mild. When I lived in SoCal I welcomed the rain and the snow it brought to the local mountains. "Winter," I remember thinking, "is cool...I like the rain." Well, when I lived in SoCal where the average annual rainfall is 13 inches and the average number of rainy days is 35, I DID enjoy the rain. In those small doses.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">El Nino and the SAD Years</span><br />Fast forward to San Francisco, 1997-98, a winter when el Nino paid a visit. San Francisco typically has about 62 days of rain totaling about 22 inches annually. In 1997-98 we saw rain for 119 days totaling 47 inches. We got hammered. Our weather typically comes from the northern jet-stream which often hangs out over Alaska before spinning fronts towards our coast. But in 1997, there was a huge front from the south, the Pineapple express, which dumped a ton of warm water on the deep snow-packed Sierras. The result was that much of the "spring" run-off, which usually takes most of spring to occur, happened in a couple of days. The western Sierran rivers became raging torrents knocking down bridges, ripping out trees, demolishing houses, breaking levees and inundating subdivisions across the valley floor. This flood is often referenced as a benchmark....there's the drought of 1976-77 and the 50-100 year flood of 1997-98. This is the year that I realized, I need sun. And I need it regular like. </div><br /><div>I was living in Ingleside, a neighborhood in western San Francisco, a place known for cold and fog. That winter people had calendars out, hanging in shops, office cubicles, the corner store, where they X'd each day that it rained, logging consecutive weeks of cold wet darkness without a peep from the sun. We would have a cloudy rainless day or two, and then more weeks of uninterrupted rain. After a month or so of no sun, I started to slump through the world, shoulders low and head down while riding Muni downtown, staring off into space during meetings, sleeping more than I needed. What the hell is wrong with me I pondered. Slowly I realized I need to see the fucking sun without three months passing!<br /></div><br /><div>I started reading up on SADs, seasonal affective disorder, the contemporary diagnosis for "the winter blues." Research shows that many inhabitants in northern countries/states experience varying degrees of depression associated with less seasonal light, when the sun's visits are shortened and the angle of the rays more oblique. And SAD rates tend to be higher in women and people of Irish decent...umm, guilty, on both counts. I'm a women with a fair amount of Irish blood. Bummer.</div><br /><div>So, I got me a light. A full spectrum light box that I sat in front of for a couple of hours a day. It helped. I also made a concerted effort to sit in the sun for as long as possible when it made appearances in the winter. This too helped. But the Bay Area, even when not a particularly rainy year, can have a lot of gray days. And I didn't always get a lot of time soaking in the rays in the winter. And every year, come February, the cumulative affects were acute, I was a little nuts, stir crazy, blue, not particularly motivated, and generally a bit cranky. So I announced to my friends and family that it was hence forth necessary for me to have mid-winter "sun-trips." To the south I must go for a few days, before February, before I started picking up cutlery and saying "here's Johnny!"<br /><br /></div><span style="font-weight: bold;">Heading South for Sanity</span><br /><div>Two years ago I took it all a little farther. I spent five weeks in Central America traveling all around Guatemala and into Honduras. By the time I got home I had been drenched in sun, tropical sun, higher altitude sun, walking around the streets of Antigua sun, and I did not get depressed one iota. In fact, when spring came and the rains abated (granted these past few years have been low water years) I actually craved some rain. I have found the cure, I thought. Spend December abroad, south, and avoid the winter blues. So I went back to Central America the next year and it worked again. It was like my SoCal days, where I appreciated the bit of winter instead of slumping through my life looking for a place to nap. </div><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">So Listen Here Folks!</span><br /><div>Here by the coast we may not be hip-deep in the white stuff, huffing and puffing as we dig ourselves to the sidewalk or the car. And we may have a lot more spring, summer and fall, and it may blend a little more, be a little less defined than the winters you nor'easterners or mid-westerners face...and granted, in the Oakland hills most of the turning leaves of fall seem to be poison oak. But we have our seasons and to the trained eye they present their own subtle beauty. And every once in awhile the unbelievable happens.<br /></div><br />One winter day in San Francisco I was walking down Ocean Avenue having just gotten off the K train. It was cold and raining and I walked with my head down, collar up, scarf pulled snug around my neck...and then it happened. I saw little white flakes falling gently onto the greasy sidewalk in front of me. They disappeared on impact so I blinked hard and focused, thinking I might be hallucinating. Then I looked up in astonishment. It was snowing on me! In San Francisco California! I walked dazed, head up, grinning as snow fell on my face and all around me. Ocean Avenue is 60 feet above sea level. The snow level got that low in coastal CA. Unbelievable! Of course none of the snow stuck, the flakes disappeared immediately upon impact with anything, including my jacket...but it was still fucking snowing in San Francisco! And this, I readily admit, DOES NOT happen very often. And no wellies or shovels needed.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgqUGgrhIE-hhp6hHS9OPTxl_Si04HIAVeeuG7l4dL_E-TyQlJCzw53Qq15WUbC_TJCI7VLkBJdm302Vjb8jzkHRJZ6zGTzUULxnYbNSk9hNIn3OjFU7M_sV_bXl8srg8sLqsAvz8urp0WX/s1600-h/Pamela-anderson-baywatch-1_4631f35278aa1.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5400145172814335458" style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; width: 144px; cursor: pointer; height: 200px;" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgqUGgrhIE-hhp6hHS9OPTxl_Si04HIAVeeuG7l4dL_E-TyQlJCzw53Qq15WUbC_TJCI7VLkBJdm302Vjb8jzkHRJZ6zGTzUULxnYbNSk9hNIn3OjFU7M_sV_bXl8srg8sLqsAvz8urp0WX/s200/Pamela-anderson-baywatch-1_4631f35278aa1.jpg" border="0" /></a>I have lived in California most of my life and through the years I have driven in white-out blizzards in the San Bernardino Mountains and the Sierras. I have been trapped in a tent in teen-degree weather half way up Mount Whitney while hurricane force winds blew on the summit. I have baked in desert heat over 115 degrees Fahrenheit when my lungs felt like they might ignite. I have seen the destruction of small tornadoes touching down in Anaheim and I have hiked through snow in July on mountains over 10,000 feet high! I've watched this state burn in the summer and fall, and then slide into the sea in the winter rains. So back off folks. California does have distinct seasons. And in some places those seasons WILL beat you over the head. We are not all Pamela Anderson running around on the beach, boobs a flailing all winter long. I promise.<br /><div></div>Merhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13153002900480201989noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5479803314695776499.post-18654112454173517572009-10-12T11:09:00.000-07:002009-10-12T11:19:31.898-07:00Hilarious-ness Unbridled!Jimmy would not let me post this on my facebook page but gave permission for me to post it here. It's a small sampling of the never ending amusement (and shamelessness) that is my brother. <br /><iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.blogger.com/video.g?token=AD6v5dweod0ZRJc3tJYpsK_Jz5JclcpsVewPtAJpvpwJwicreWa6LnWGy1gnoSsd6OWK5yNXBsGN9PPGirqYa2Zw_w' class='b-hbp-video b-uploaded' frameborder='0'></iframe>Merhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13153002900480201989noreply@blogger.com3