Charlie's Angels

Sabrina, Jill, Kelly, and Charlie came over for a short stay while their house gets fumigated.  Katie quickly greeted her new friends.

Comma Cats

Quote: Ira Glass

Descanso Falls

 Friday at 10:00 Teresa and Lee parked by my house and we piled into my car.  We headed east on the 8 to the 67 to go north just a short way to Descanso.  It’s a small hamlet at 3500 feet at the southern tip of the Cuyamaca Rancho State Park.  The road winds around a couple miles to the trail head. 

There was already a pick-up truck with a horse trailer and a couple getting the horses ready for a ride when we parked in the shade of a large tree.  After taking pictures at the trail head we hiked the main trail for a short way up a steep incline and then took a smaller trail down to the spring fed falls.  

I took my boots and socks off to cool my feet, but the water was freezing.  I could only just dip my toes in for a few seconds.  But the cold water kept all of the rocks around it cool and we had a nice time snacking on munchies and talking until we were ready to head back.

*

*

*

*

*

*Thank you Lee Bowman for sharing your photos.

Still I Rise

You may write me down in history
With your bitter, twisted lies,
You may trod me in the very dirt
But still, like dust, I'll rise.

Does my sassiness upset you?
Why are you beset with gloom?
'Cause I walk like I've got oil wells
Pumping in my living room.

Just like moons and like suns,
With the certainty of tides,
Just like hopes springing high,
Still I'll rise.

Did you want to see me broken?
Bowed head and lowered eyes?
Shoulders falling down like teardrops.
Weakened by my soulful cries.

Does my haughtiness offend you?
Don't you take it awful hard
'Cause I laugh like I've got gold mines
Diggin' in my own back yard.

You may shoot me with your words,
You may cut me with your eyes,
You may kill me with your hatefulness,
But still, like air, I'll rise.

Does my sexiness upset you?
Does it come as a surprise
That I dance like I've got diamonds
At the meeting of my thighs?

Out of the huts of history's shame
I rise
Up from a past that's rooted in pain
I rise
I'm a black ocean, leaping and wide,
Welling and swelling I bear in the tide.
Leaving behind nights of terror and fear
I rise
Into a daybreak that's wondrously clear
I rise
Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave,
I am the dream and the hope of the slave.
I rise
I rise
I rise.

Maya Angelou

Timelapse Photography: Yosemite

Yosemite HD from Project Yosemite on Vimeo.

Quote:

It is important that when pursuing our own self-interest we should be “wise selfish” and not “foolish selfish”. Being foolish selfish means pursuing our own interests in a narrow, shortsighted way. Being wise selfish means taking a broader view and recognizing that our own long-term individual interest lies in the welfare of everyone. Being wise selfish means being compassionate.

  -  Dalai Lama

Quote:

The only person we really ever compete against is who we were yesterday.

 “Family isn’t always blood.  It’s the people in your life who want you in theirs; the ones who accept you for who you are.  The ones who would do anything to see you smile and who love you no matter what.”

 - Unknown

Piano Lessons 5

After many years and several different teachers I was assigned to a teacher that was new to the program but not new to teaching music. She had a great ear and a dynamic, encouraging teaching style.  She paid attention more than anyone else every had.  I was very excited.  Working with her would be tough but rewarding.

After a couple weeks I was told that she had decided not to join the program but would teach on her own out of her home.  Years of useless attempts at interactive communication at home had taught me that the answer to every question was “no.”.  Finally, my junior year of high school I walked out of Illinois Wesleyan University’s Music Building and their Piano Pedagogy Department.

At college I met many people my age who could play much more difficult music than I ever tried and would sound better at the first sitting than I would after months of teaching my fingers where to go.  Sometime after college I found out from my mother that she always wanted me to be able to just sit down at the piano and have fun with it; to play like my grandmother played.  My grandmother had a whole notebook full of popular songs going back to the ’30s and would pound them out during holiday get togethers while my aunts sang along.

All those years of classical piano lessons, all those hours of practicing, all that frustration at no support and no way out, all those other things I didn't get to do and none of it was for me.  It didn't raise my mother's esteem for me.  She did not respect me any more for it.  It was just to fulfill her desire to be like her mother that she couldn’t do for herself.

I haven't touched a piano in decades.

Marc Chagall

“When I am finishing a picture I hold some God-made object up to it—a rock, a flower, the branch of a tree or my hand—as a kind of final test. If the painting stands up beside a thing man cannot make, the painting is authentic. If there's a clash between the two, it is bad art.”

 - Marc Chagall

Invisible

My oldest brother, Steve, is 6 years older than I am.  We look like brothers but no one has ever mistaken one of us for the other.  Starting in 7th grade, after every public appearance, my mother would say to me, “You sure looked like Steve up there.” She said this seriously as if I was to take it as a great compliment.  Even though I respected my older brother, it seemed like a non sequitur from the beginning. 

She was completely consistent, saying it after every junior high band concert, Boy Scout awards ceremony, high school marching band performance, concert band performance, piano recital, summer band camp concert, Honor Society ceremony, high school graduation; “You sure looked like Steve up there.”

University of Illinois Marching Band members are given two free season tickets each year to give to their parents.  My parents were long since divorced but I was able to just give them the tickets and they would hand them off between themselves. 

The seats weren’t great.  They were in a corner of the lower deck, far from the action and not up high enough to see very well.  When I was in it, the Marching Illini was 300 strong; almost all wearing the same uniform and brass instruments covered our faces.  After the first game my freshman year; “You sure looked like Steve out there.”

Piano Lessons 4

My teacher recommended me for a special program that was an evaluated performance in front of a judge.  If you received high marks for 10 years in a row you won a college scholarship.  The first year went ok.  The 2nd year I planned to play a challenging Chopin piece. I could play the piece just fine.  I had the technical ability and the musicality.  Chopin is known for having had large hands and wrote music that requires more than an octave reach.  My hands don't seem large but my fingers are long and I could reach all the notes.

But the level of concentration required to memorize the order of the themes and repeats could not be achieved at home and I floundered on stage.  After the director walked up and let me know I had gone over the allowed time I met my mother at the back of the auditorium and we walked home. She mentioned several times how embarrassed she was while I was fumbling at the keyboard.  She found the whole experience very embarrassing. How I felt? She never asked.

Fatherly Advice

I don't know how my brothers learned the facts of life, but I do remember that when the time came my father ignored his usual Depression Era spending plan and gave my older brothers really nice electric shavers.  I waited as long as I could but finally had to teach myself to shave using my mother's leg razor.  That summer at Boy Scout Camp one of the Scoutmasters had a disposable razor and encouraged me to use it.

Not to completely abandon his duties, a couple years later my father said to me, “You know, you're getting to the age where you need to start trimming your nose hairs.”

Gretal

Piano Lessons 3

Each spring the piano pedagogy department gave a recital in the university's nicest music auditorium.  Each student would walk across the stage, play their best piece on the music department's best concert grand, bow, and walk off.

There was a whole system:  All of the kids sat in one section by the stage door.  While one student was playing one would be waiting backstage for their turn to walk out and one would be waiting in their seat for their turn to walk back stage.

One year early in my career my grandmother came down for the spring recital.  Her first name was Mildred.  After the program she and my mother and father were standing around her car talking before she headed back home.  While talking my father called her “Millie.”  Even at that young age, and despite my mother’s and grandmother’s grace at not acknowledging the insult, I could tell that it wasn't right for him to call her by that name.

Several years later, at home after the recital, I picked up my father’s printed program.  He had written a one word review of each of the performers.  Several of the 16 and 17 year old girls were “sexy.”  I was “average.”

Piano Lessons 2

My piano teacher, usually frustrated that I hadn't practiced much, was ecstatic one week when the lesson went really well and said that if I practiced like that every week I'd be the best student in their program.  At home my father didn't have anything to do with me.  He was dismayed that one of his sons, already not the butchest boy on the block, was continuing to take piano lessons.  One of my brothers was openly hostile and my mother considered getting the lessons paid for completed her part and expected me to do the rest.  In the passive-aggressive logic of the Midwest she didn't like it any more than my father did that she had a not-butch son taking piano lessons, but made a great show of disappointment whenever I hinted at possibly doing something else.  

I knew I wasn't the butchest kid on the block because one day the kid next door (we were friends, but not great friends; mostly we were somebody to do stuff outside with for each other) said that the previous evening, while they were all watching television, his father had said that I was a pansy.  He did not say this in a mean or taunting way, just matter-of-factly his father had said that I was a pansy.

Piano Lessons 1

Just as some mothers are determined that one of their sons will grow up to be a priest, my mother was determined that one of her sons would learn to play the piano.  She was able to harass my father into the expense despite his preferred spending plan of acting like it was the Depression, and his complete failure to understand why anyone would need anything that he did not. 

So one summer my two older brothers took piano lessons from this nice lady who had a cute house with a steep gable over the front door.  They, wisely, were horrible at it; trying to learn their pieces at the last minute just before the final recital, one of my brothers breaking out in tears, my father looking on proudly, my mother, not too disappointed, realized this wasn't going to work.

A couple years later I started piano lessons with Mrs. Schafer who had a piano studio in her finished basement.  Stupidly, I showed some aptitude for it; learning how to read music and the key signatures and the scales fairly quickly.  After a year her husband got a job out of town and I started taking lessons at the university two blocks away.

Quote: Isaac Asimov

“Knowledge is indivisible. When people grow wise in one direction, they are sure to make it easier for themselves to grow wise in other directions as well. On the other hand, when they split up knowledge, concentrate on their own field, and scorn and ignore other fields, they grow less wise—even in their own field.”

Apology

In that letter where my father said he didn't think Mom “would do that” he went on to blame everything that went wrong with our family on our mother.  He didn't mention that, as undisputed head of the household in all things, a role he insisted was his, he might be at least partly at fault. 

In the letter my father justified his blamelessness on being a workaholic and a man of the church, spending time at meetings and classes.  He didn't mention time spent pursuing other women.  One year he took another woman to his office Christmas party.  Another time he had a vasectomy without telling my mother, but she connected the dots of how he was acting when he called in sick to work.

Also in that letter my father expressed his regret at not being around more when I “made my decision.”  My father was a very intelligent man.  It's too bad that he put his intelligence into learning conspiracy theories instead of learning to respect his intelligent son.  After not talking for 2 years he cornered me at my Aunt's funeral, told me I looked sunburnt and skinny and proceeded to expound on the latest theory that being a gay man equaled having AIDS.  I was tan and fit in a room full of pastey, fat people destined to die of heart disease, starting with him.  Seven years later my uncle found him in his apartment.

Tattletale

When I was little my father would spend most evenings working late and leaving my mother to single-handedly manage 3 young, rambunctious boys by herself.  That's not redundant:  I mean single-handedly literally.  She survived polio at the age of 2 but was left with little use of her left arm.

My mother would send me to my father's office to keep him company.  Then she wasn't bothered by my walking nearly a mile across town in the dark by myself.  But one year after the YMCA Halloween Party I watched all of the other kids get picked up by their parents, waited a while longer, then decided walking home alone was better than sitting on a downtown street corner alone.  This was a walk I'd made dozens of times after swim lessons. But this time she was furious that I had set off in the dark by myself.  When she got home she screamed at me and got out the belt.

Those evenings when I got to my father's office he'd let me play on the office machines.  I especially remember the large adding machine with all of the numbers lined up down the front of it and a big handle to pull to make it do the calculation.  One time when I got there the office was dark and the door was locked so I just walked back home.

Holiday Party

Front Door Guardian

San Diego Driving Tips

While exchanging emails with a friend about possible activities in San Diego when visiting family over the holidays I passed along a few driving tips and I thought some of the rest of you might benefit as well.  If you’re visiting Southern California over the Holidays, or anytime for a mid-winter break, there are a few differences between driving here and driving in the Midwest that may surprise you and being aware of them might be enough to avoid something you'd rather didn't happen while on vacation.

First: treat driving in the rain like you would driving in the snow back in the midwest.  Most obviously, because the other cars on the road do.  But don't assume they're idiots and zip around them like a maniac.  There are several good reasons for their caution.

Since there can be up to nine months between rains here, the fluids that leak out of cars and trucks build up instead of getting washed away.  And when it does rain it's usually light, floating the oil residue up but not washing it off.  What's left on the road is something with the consistency of snot.  Not a good surface for high-performance driving.

Even after the main rain slows down or stops, 4 or more lanes of cars kick up a lot of spray.  It's like driving through a dense, low fog with the addition of side-rocker jets like car washes have.  You may be able to look up and see blue sky but not see the tail lights of the car in front of you.  Don't mind the jacked up 4x4 trucks with monster wheels zipping by you in the fast lane.  Their higher vantage point and rugged equipment gives them the advantage over your rental car.  Plus, guys that drive those things are compensating for something. 

Hydroplaning is a real possibility.  A couple years ago a friend completely lost control of her car on a patch of rain sitting on the highway.  Fortunately she didn't careen into anybody else or get seriously injured. Unfortunately her new car was totaled.

If you're approaching water or feel yourself losing steering control, ease off of the accelerator.  Don't jam on the breaks.  Make small controlled adjustments with the steering wheel. Do not over steer.

When changing lanes on a 3 or more lane freeway, look 2 lanes over to make sure no one is about to move into the same space you want.  It's not enough to make sure the lane next to you is clear. 

When driving on surface streets through a busy neighborhood make a point of looking for pedestrians.  There can be a lot of us and we have the right-of-way in cross-walks.  If you hit someone who's stepped out into the street in the middle of a block you may not get a ticket but your auto insurance will most likely end up paying out on a bodily injury claim.

San Diego County has 511 service.  You can call 511 for traffic updates, mass transit information, and roadside assistance.  I'm guessing it's also available in Orange County and LA County.

On a recent episode the Car Talk guys berated everyone for comprising safety for convenience and just pulling over to the shoulder of the freeway.  That's an extremely dangerous place to be.  Don't worry about saving tires or wheels; drive slowly with the flashers on as far to the right as possible until you get to the next exit.  After calling roadside assistance for help with a flat try not to be embarrassed when rescued by a guy in a Prius.  Just sayin'.

Update:  As Keith reminded me in his comment I should have mentioned that's it's legal, and common, for motorcycles to split lanes with cars in California.  If freeway traffic slows down motorcycles may come up from behind and pass between your car and the vehicle in the next lane.  It's also good to remind yourself to make a point of looking for motorcycles.  On surface streets also look for bicycles, skate boarders, rollerbladers, and pedestrians.  If you only look for cars, you'll only see cars.

Discipline

When I was 3 and 4 years old my mother would get so mad she would whip me with a belt; hard and for a long time.  I have no memory of what, if anything, I did to incite such wrath; probably just trying to get some kind of attention.  I remember trying to talk to her and she’d keep walking away.  At one point I said, “ Mom, I'm trying to talk to you.  Please stop walking away.”  She said I could talk to her but that I would have to follow her around; she had no time to stop.  The beatings were so bad that my father had to take a break from working late to make her stop.  Many years later I got a letter from him saying, “I didn’t think your mother would do that.”

At times both my brothers and both my parents would be yelling at me all at once about how awful, unreasonable, and irresponsible I was.  I’d have to tell them it was completely unfair for all of them to yell at me at once and that if they were going to yell at me they could only do it one at a time.  It was the only point I ever successfully got across.

I do remember wondering why suddenly the beatings stopped and things improved for me at home.  From then on I was more polite and forever more subdued.

Graham Street

We moved into a large, green shingle-sided house on Graham Street 2 blocks from a small Methodist university and 1/2 a block from Franklin Elementary School that had this awesome fire escape. It was an enclosed grey spiral slide down from the 2nd floor that the kids in the upper grades got to slide down during fire drills.  I got through Mrs. Cranberry’s ( Cranapple’s? ) Kindergarten class just in time for the school district to announce that they were closing the school to general education students.  The next year I started walking 9 blocks across town to Bent School.

Bent School is a very nice building that had been built as a high school and then was relegated to lower grades as newer high schools and junior highs were built.  I remember my father nearly yelling at a school board meeting over the closing of Franklin School, saying he'd moved his family to be close to the school they would be attending.  I was the youngest of three so his plan had nearly worked. For my part I was sorely disappointed I never got to go down that fire escape.

Hillary Clinton’s Human Rights Day Speech to the U.N.

I’m not a fan of speeches by politicians or government officials because they rarely have anything meaningful to say and usually talk down to the lowest common denominator in their audience.  However, this speech is full of ground-breaking content and uses straight-forward language that speaks to all of us.  Plus, her delivery is incredible.  There are a few “uh”s at the beginning, but those quickly disappear.

From Rex Wockner
 

Catherine Street

When I was born our family lived in a small house on Catherine Street across from the railroad yard.  I only remember one Christmas having a package in my hands with a toy airplane in it and asking if it was mine before  opening it.  I also remember peeking through the crack of a pair of locked doors to a garage at the car inside and being reprimanded for being where I knew I shouldn't.  We moved when I was three.  Later we would go back to visit the neighbors who I was supposed to remember as these great family friends, even though I wasn't old enough to remember much of anything when we lived there.

Quote

 “The opposite of love is not hate; it’s indifference.” 

                  -  Elie Wiesel

A Great Way to Start the Holidays

Thanks guys for a terrific concert.

Quote: Me

“Show up,

                  Pay attention,

                        Don’t be indifferent.”

Quote

“Sometimes you have to divorce your friends.

 Sometimes you have to divorce your family.”

           -  Oprah Winfrey

 

It’s not that they’re sleeping on my bed; it’s more that I’m crawling into their bed every night.

Quote: George Carlin

“Anyone driving slower than me is an idiot and anyone driving faster is a maniac.”

Quote: Douglas Adams

“I love deadlines.  I love the whooshing noise they make as they go by.”

Amazing Gracing, 4th verse

11 months ago I was sitting in a waiting room when I saw an elderly lady in much worse shape than I was in.  She taught me that if I wrote down every blessing in my life I could be at it forever, and after all that time I wouldn't be any closer to being done than when I started. Since then the number of angels in my life has increased exponentially.  Since then I see something to be grateful for in everything.

“When we've been here ten thousand years
     Bright shining as the sun,
We've no less days to sing God's praise
     Than when we'd first begun.”

Sluts

Recently my friend Keith did the Slutwalk in Seattle to reinforce that the cause of rape is the rapist and not women who might dress in a way some may disapprove.  It got me thinking about the word and the way we use it.

For a while I've thought ‘slut’ to be a worthless word.  It implies guilt and shame, which are worthless emotions.  And it's impossible to pin down exactly what it means.

Where's the line between virtue and sin?  

The Catholic Church considers anyone who's had sex with more than one person, ever, to be a slut.  That's most of us.

Most folks consider middle-age to be some indistinct number of years older than they are and they think sluts are people who've slept with more people than they have according to some obscure algorithm they've justified in their heads.

A co-worker once told me she was starting to get worried because she could no longer count the number of men she'd been with on one hand.  I refused to tell her how many I'd been with because I could tell from the look on her face and her tone of voice that she would judge my double-digit number negatively.  But compared to my friends that are well into triple digits, I'm a prude.

So does that mean that 5 is virtuous but 6 puts you on a slippery slope?  When I reach 8 that's kind of a lot, but when you reach 8 that really isn't all that many?  9 you're fine, but 10 is just too much?  99?  Well, ok, but 100 puts you in Madonna territory.  And is that bad?

The people I admire most are the ones that are super comfortable in their own skin, know themselves well, and proudly label themselves sluts; and they take away anyone else's power to hurt them.

I truly think that God doesn't count how many.  She knows, but is more concerned with how we treat ourselves and our partners.

If you think God is adding demerits as your list gets longer, then the opposite must also be true. I imagine that when I get to the Pearly Gates St. Peter is going to scowl down at me and say, “We sent you all these nice guys to bring joy to your life and you ran away from most of them.  Downstairs!”

Thought for the day:

Do not start to think of us as less than
     because we fail to live up to your expectations of more than.

We are.  Love us for that or get out of our way.

MCC: It Gets Better

Kitten Family Photo

Sweet Pea, 3rd cat from the left, went to his new home yesterday afternoon and Steve took Bubba, far left, this morning.  Jeff wanted a picture of all the kids before they scattered to the four corners of the earth San Diego.  We're giving Katie extra treats, but she still seems kind of depressed.  I suggested taking her to visit them all in a couple weeks.

Test Photos

How much are the kittens in the window?

They've grown SO MUCH!  They seem to get bigger by the hour.  They got their first shot and a clean bill of health from the vet this morning.  They still nurse a little but the vet said this is the perfect time for them to go to their new homes.  All of them are spoken for unless someone backs out at the last minute. Or you can try to sweet talk someone out of theirs.

Guy Tunes

SDGMC, I did not know how you could do a show as fun as your ABBA show last summer, but you out did yourselves.  We had so much fun watching it.  Thank you Dan & Peter for the extra ticket.  Paul & Ellen, always a treat to see you guys. 

Kryptonite

_

Bubba: “Don’t You Mess with My Shoestring”!

_

Seattle

Friday the 15th I boarded Alaska Airlines to Seattle to see Keith and Glen.  Keith and I were roommates for 2 years until he fled the relentless sun of San Diego to return to the lush green of Puget Sound. 

Friday evening we boarded the ferry to Bremerton to meet Jessica and Larry for drinks.  Jessica and I have known each other since Junior High Regional Band Concerts where we played French Horn.  We both ended up at the University of Illinois in the Marching Illini.  Jessica is a rare friend who can make 26 years seem like yesterday.

Saturday we went to the Fish Market and the fresh produce stands where we got fresh nectarines so juicy we had to be hosed off afterwards, and fresh blueberries for pancakes Sunday morning.  Then up the Space Needle just as the sun came out to give us spectacular views.  Sunday we drove around to different neighborhoods and parks, my favorite being the troll under the bridge on Troll St.  I was actually happy to see the clouds and have some rain after a heat wave at home.

Kitty Chaos

To see larger slideshow, click on it, and then find the full screen button in the upper left.

Diablo

Update 8/20/11:  When we found out that she is a he, we changed her name to Debbie because she's such a  snack cake.  This morning the vet said she's the smartest one of the group.  She's such a snake cake!