Light My Way

Winter Solstice may have passed, but the dark days of winter are still upon us.  This time of year is associated with light, the lack of it as well as the way we respond to it with candles, sparklers and strings of bulbs. Some use a a menorah to illuminate the night, others an advent wreath or an all-night bonfire for the burning of the Yule log; the list is practically endless.

In these times of question and doubt, we look for understanding, comprehension and compassion.  We look for beacons of light in the darkness, lighthouses to guide our way, to helps us to find truth, illuminating what life could be.  It has been said that when the soul and the brain meet, the truth that is encountered makes sense of the world and you wonder how you could have lived without this discovery.

The lighted candles of an advent wreath were originally designed to signify the persistence of life in the midst of winter; the accumulation of light is now an expression of the growing anticipation of the birth of Jesus Christ, who we Christians see as the light of the world, a beacon of light in the darkness.

Clement of Alexandria is credited to have said that all truth is God’s truth.  Whatever you believe, however you pray, whatever motivates you, allow the light of our humanity to shine bright through your actions.  Don't let the darkness win.

Spirits of Ancient Egypt

Ninety years ago, on November 4, 1922, Howard Carter's excavation group found the steps leading to Tutankhamun's tomb.  This was by far the best preserved and most intact pharaonic tomb ever found in the Valley of the Kings. 

Much of history is lost to us, despite thousands of satellites circling the globe and billions of people living upon this good Earth.  We continue to discover (or rediscover) items that have been hidden for thousands of years.  Some are treasures with monetary value beyond measure, while others have more intrinsic value.  All were of some value to someone in the past, and each bit of history we find reminds us that we too are mere mortals.

What is important is that we keep looking.  Whether it is the Ark of the Covenant, da Vinci's lost mural or my car keys, we don't give up.  Our monkey curiosity propels us forward, wanting to make that connection between the past and the present, and trying to understand what the future brings us.

I recently tracked down the name of my great aunt on my mother's side of the family.  There is certainly no monetary value attached to this, but it fills in a blank in our family tree that has been staring at me for years.  It doesn't appear she had children, so while there are no relatives along that branch to find, discovering that tells me I can stop looking and let my attention drift elsewhere.

While it would take months to fully investigate the chambers and catalog the contents of Tutankhamun's tomb, it all started with a tiny breach to peer into the darkness and gaze upon history, of what Howard Carter indicated were "...wonderful things."  Never give up...keep looking.

Confusion

Gaius Petronius Arbiter was a Roman courtier (attendant) during the reign of Nero and believed to be the author of the Satyricon, a satirical novel. One of his more notable quotes is about our tendency to meet new situations by reorganizing: "...and what a wonderful method it can be for creating the illusion of progress while producing confusion, inefficiency, and demoralization."

Welcome to Reorganization 101; I'm your host, Fred Tabacchi.

Recent weeks have found me reorganizing things along lines that keep shifting and changing, requiring more reorganizing and creating, you guessed it, a sense of confusion, inefficiency and downright depression.

It is not all bad, trust me. It is just...a lot.

A relatively simple project to replace a door on the rear of our house turned into a several thousand dollar repair and a gaping opening in the wall for a few weeks, all for the want of the builder having done it correctly the first time.

I finished my MBA, which is a good thing, but I will admit to the completion of the program did not bring the sense of relief I was expecting. Instead, it was as if I had come to the jarring end of a fast roller coaster ride.

My employment situation is fluid and keeps changing. Lots of deep breaths and happy thoughts will get us through this, I know it, but still it is disheartening and uncertain.

All of this will pass, I am sure of it. And in the overall scheme of things, these are little bumps in the road.  The next great adventure is waiting for us. Until then, I will fight the urge to reorganize and spend less time worrying and more time being thankful.

I'm So Tired

It's been said that writing is hard, that ideas are difficult to come by, that making it all come together is illusive.  Writing is simple; starting may be the most difficult thing, but once you are past the first few words it flows like a broken sprinkler pipe.  Ideas, as Rod Serling once said, “...are born from what is smelled, heard, seen, experienced, felt, emotionalized.”  Putting it together can be tedious, but good things come to those who wait.

I picked up a norovirus or something similar last week and sufferred through the fever/bed/bathroom cycle for a few days.  Once it finally left my body it took another two days before I was able to go back to work.  I am still feeling the ill effects of whatever coursed through my veins.  I tried to complete some light house painting today; what should have been an easy job got the better of me after about three hours.

Writing isn't hard.  Being sick is hard.  Not feeling well is hard.  Being tired all the time with joints that hurt is hard.  And while most of us think we understand what it feels like to struggle through another day when we feel under the weather, we really don't.

Understanding is the key.  May my experiences, however small and limited they be, help me to remember we all have our burdens to carry.
 

Flying East

It is not the destination, but the direction, that is a problem. Flying east seems to vex me, no matter how small the time change.  My body rebels against me with pitiful sleep the night before and no desire to adapt to the time zone.

Flying west, on the other hand, seems so natural.  I fall into step with the time zone with little effort, likely due to spending most of my life in it. 

I look forward to spending the week with my collegues and learning new things, but when it is over I will be heading west again, chasing the sun and looking forward to the sunset over the Pacific.

Garden Party

As residents of Southern Oregon, for years we drove past the "Visit Beautiful Butchart Gardens" billboard in Yreka.  While the gardens beckoned, it was farther out of our reach than our normal travels, except those to Southern California to visit family.  It was a "back burner" item for when we had time, and that never seemed to happen.

Now, as our days as Washingtonians appear to be waning, there is time.  Time to see the sights, time to visit places we didn't expect to, time for strolling around gardens.  This weekend Cindy and I took the ferry through the San Juan Islands to Vancouver Island and made our way to the elusive Butchart Gardens.

The trip through the San Juans was breathtaking.  The weather was near perfect, with the occasional wisp of cloud along the horizons and the sun shining as it is not often want to do in the land of filtered sunshine.  Passing by Lopez, Orcas and San Juan Islands, the ferry made its way steadily towards the line of demarcation in the water that separates the US from Canada.  My cell phone altered me to the transfer, as the warning text regarding the increased cost of data hit the phone just as we crossed into Canadian waters.
 
A chance comment by the Canadian customs agent let us know there going to be fireworks at the Butchart Gardens that night, so after checking to out hotel and dinner, we headed west in search of our destination.  The abundant signage made it easy to find and we were able to find a place to sit ans watch the fireworks among the things of others present.  Re-admittance the next morning was a scant few dollars and we spent the next four hours visiting the work the Butcharts and their descendants have done over the last 100 plus years.  Among the wonders we saw were The Sunken Gardens in what was originally a used-up limestone quarry, an indicator that anything is possible as long as you are willing and able.

Our return trip was through the northern San Juan Islands, another treat of beautiful sunshine and wonderful weather.  A stop at Tim Hortons for donuts completed this trip to our neighbor to the north.

There is a sense of permanence attached to large gardens, such as the Butchart.  Stone walls, paved paths and statues fill the areas, reminding of estate garden where my maternal grandfather lived and worked when I was a child.  While I haven't seen those gardens in over 40 years, visiting Butchart gives me hope that it still remains and is more beautiful than I can remember.

One More Cup of Coffee

It was bound to happen.  I never followed the recommended instructions, always thinking they were unnecessary and didn't apply to me.  Things went along just fine, and I began to take for granted there would never be an issue.  And then it happened.  At first it was just a minor inconvenience, something to clean up and not talk about.  It became chronic but it was too late to do anything about it and I chose to ignore it just the same.  When it failed completely, I stood there, empty cup in hand, with a mess to clean up.

The Brewstation is dead. Long live the Brewstation.

It happened many years ago when our coffee pot gave up the ghost.  I was going to Costco that day, and there I found the most magnificent coffee maker I had ever seen.  It had no glass pot to break, using a thermal-lined insulated coffee tank instead...you depressed the trigger with a mug for one-hand dispensing.  Completely perfect for the geek that I am, I put it in the cart and took it home.

Guests would stare at it, trying to figure out how to get coffee.  It was, as Cindy said for years to come, what happens when you send me out to buy a coffee pot.  After a few years and a move it began to leak, so we replaced it with yet another version that would make iced coffee as well.  Eventually that one began to leak as well, so we moved to our most recent version, one that was tall enough to fit a travel mug into the dispensing area.  And now it has failed, leaking all over the counter, leaving me wanting one more cup of coffee.

Much like Ahab, I continue to be obsessed with finding my infamous white whale, a pot-less coffeemaker that does not leak.  Perhaps this time, I will go with the Krups or the Cuisinart.  Paraphrasing Melville, the pot-less coffeemaker does not seeks me; rather, it is me that madly seeks it.

The Things We've Handed Down

It is easy to float in and out of tracing your family history.  There have been times where it sat on the sidelines for me, waiting to be revived.  There have also been times (such as now) where it seems to consume most waking moments and spins me up and down rabbit holes, chasing after data that may or may not be helpful.

Each person has eight great grandparents, 16 2nd great-grandparents, 32 3rd great grandparents, 64 4th great grandparents, 128 5th great grandparents, etc.  I currently know of approximately 40 ancestors that I share blood with, so there are still plenty of people to find.

Chasing them down has lead me to over 700 shirttail relatives, such as "father of sister-in-law of 3rd cousin to..." or "great-grandfather's second cousin once removed".  They must have shared common experiences in Italy, Brazil, the United States or wherever they lived.  Some of them show up on ship manifests, others on microfilmed records; many have numerous references or points of certainty, while others appear at the right time to fit into existing trees.  They all had hopes and dreams.

Most of these have no direct relation to my family tree, but finding them means other records may exist and the hope of journeying farther back in time prevails.

Wishing You Were Somehow Here Again

Among the many places we visited in Italy was the cemetery in Crespano Del Grappa.  We were looking for the grave of Alma Angela Rosato Tabacchi, my father's father's mother, who died when my grandfather was 14 years old.   We split up at the entrance and headed in different directions.  The names read like a Santa Barbara telephone directory: Torresan, Zilliotto, Melchiori, Panizzon, Bortolazzo...the list went on and on.

Walking through that cemetery and looking for a specific headstone took me back to an early spring day in the late 1990's in Dunsmuir, CA.  Along with a good friend who was from the area, I was hunting down the grave of Antonio Capovilla, my mother's mother's brother.  There were a significant number of Capovillas in the area, but none that I reached out to could connect the dots.  We walked the Dunsmuir Cemetery, the Evergreen Cemetery in Yreka and struck paydirt in the Winema Cemetary in Weed.  A small weathered upright headstone gave me his dates of birth and death, which eventually lead me to find the manifest from the ship he traveled on to the United States.

Antonio arrived in the United States through Ellis Island on March 20, 1912.  Much like my paternal grandfather, he too left Italy at the age of 18.  Antonio traveled with his cousin Mose', who had previously been in America and worked the coal mines in Thurber, Texas.  Both were bound for Dunsmuir with hopes of a better life.

Antonio's life in the United States was short-lived.  He died during the 1918 flu pandemic (better known as the Spanish influenza).  Between the months of August and November of 1918, this influenza spread quickly around the world, with more people dying of influenza in a single year than in four years of the Black Death Bubonic Plague from 1347 to 1351.

My daydream of the Winema Cemetery was broken by calls and waves, indicating the headstone had been found.  We gazed upon our history, took some photos and returned to the van that would transport us to other places my relatives spoke of, allowing us the opportunity to gaze upon the same sights they did.

Turns out we have had this picture for over thirty years, as I have a scan of a photograph that someone took prior to 1979.  The names weren't very clear, but when compared to the recent photographs we took it is apparent they are the same headstone (with more names added to the family crypt).

Cemeteries are full of stories about the lives of those who rest there; it is up to us to find them and keep those memories alive.

A Recurring Dream Within a Dream

"America," written by Paul Simon, includes the poignant lyric "Michigan seems like a dream to me now."  Substitute Italy for Michigan and it sums up how my continent-hopping trip now feels, as if it took place in another lifetime.  This past week I went between the past and the present, trying to decide which was the dream and which was the reality.  Feeling sleepy during the mid-afternoon (when it would be the dead of night in Italy) and feeling hungry at 3:00 am (lunch time half a world away) didn't help.

As the week progressed I was no longer craving the afternoon nap nor waking from a dead sleep to a growling stomach.  The patterns of this life fell back into place, the daily repetition becoming once again familiar, all while the images of Italian towns, landscapes and architecture began to shuffle further back in my memory.

Carl Jung would likely have a few things to say about interpreting my dreams.  I am not worried about what someone else may think they mean, as I know they connect me to that place now so far away.  What is more important, at least to me, is that I dream of distant lands and people and know it was true.

Long Way Home

In the time it took my ancestors to travel by ship from Italy to America, I flew there, visited places I had only heard of, met relatives I had never seen and flew back.  As with most trips, you are excited about going and eventually happy to return home. For me, this trip was no exception.  Plans had been made months in advance, allowing for the anticipation to build.  Tickets were purchased, applying another layer of reality to what seemed like a dream.  We arrived and our passports were stamped, and thus began our adventure.

While I am happy to be home and with my family members in Bellingham, I feel the heart strings of Italy pulling already.  I will miss the meals we took together.  I rise earlier than the rest of the household, so my breakfast will once again be solitary and will no longer consistent primarily of prosciutto and bread. Dinner each night will no longer be like the family gatherings of my youth, with lots of good food and many conversations going on at the same time. 

Mostly, I will miss the new members of my family, the ones recently met but now forever a part of my life.  Mauro, Paolo, Laura Uno and Nadine, you took us into your home with open arms and we felt like we had known each other for years.  We found we shared more things than what separated us, and despite the language difference we talked and understood each other.  For that, I will be eternally grateful.

Arrivederci Roma

According to our cab driver, there are eight thousand taxi cabs in Rome.  Each one may tell a story, as they say in Cash Cab, but the story is in Italian.

Rome, the Eternal City, has a history that spans twenty-five hundred years.  Whether as the capital city of the Roman Kingdom, the Roman Republic, the Roman Empire, the Papal States, the Kingdom of Italy or the Italian Republic, it has been a dominant power in Western Europe and the lands bordering the Mediterranean and is commonly regarded as one of the birthplaces of western civilization.

Imagine New York City or Los Angeles as cities that are thousands of years old, rather than hundreds of years old.  Keep the current traffic and population but add in ruins from previous civilizations.  Keep the current visitor load and add in skillful yet erratic drivers, all in cars half the size of the typical American vehicle.  Keep the public transportation and add in more scooters than you will find motorcycles in Sturgis in August.  Keep the modern skyscrapers and add in both ancient and modern monuments towering far above the ground.

We spent the better part of three days touring Rome, by foot and by subway, by bus and by guided tour.  We could have spent three weeks and would still have barely scratched the surface.  As the English scholar Richard Le Gallienne put it, all roads indeed lead to Rome, but theirs also is a more mystical destination, some bourne of which no traveller knows the name, some city, they all seem to hint, even more eternal.

Travelin' Man

What seemed like so far away is upon me.  Today I get on the flying tube and cross America, the Atlantic Ocean and a good portion of Europe as I head to Italy, the land of my fore-bearers.  Armed with the Italian version of "Speak in a Week" on my iPod, I boldly go where my grandparents came from, the Veneto province in northeastern Italy.

Where is the American consulate?  Dove si trova il consolato Americano?  Hmmm...that might be handy.

It will be the first trip for the generations that were born in the US, and we look forward to finding more of our distant cousins, seeing where our ancestors lived and finding out more about ourselves.  Nothing like a cramped airplane, sleep deprivation and the potential lack of the comforts of home to really show your mettle.

Waiter, my napkin has been soiled. Cameriere, il tovagliolo è stato sporcato.  Somehow I don't think I will need that one, but you never know.

Today is also a celebration of summer, friends and hiding in plain sight.  If you are watching the Summer solstice parade in Santa Barbara, look for something that resembles a wedge of cheese.  If you have an extra bottle of water, find the small slit in the side about eye level and press the bottle through (they'll thank you for it, trust me). Clap when they go by and tell them I love each and every one of them.

The Summer Solstice parade is a celebration to manifest your wildest dreams.  I dream of Santa Barbara, my family and friends who are there, the times of my life spent there and the times yet to be, as well as the adventure before me, the undiscovered country I will visit and the extended family members I have yet to meet.  Today, as with many days, my past meets my future, and I, much like the parade, will go with the flow.

My friends, we've come home.  Amici miei, siamo arrivati ​​a casa.

Everyone I Meet Is From California

Sun.  Family.  Smog.  Family.  Traffic.  Family.  Graduation.  Family.  In-N-Out Burger animal style and a chocolate shake.

Need I say more?  

Cold Wind to Valhalla

In Norse mythology, Valhalla is a majestic, enormous hall located in Asgard, ruled over by the god Odin, where those that die in combat travel to upon death.  It was the heaven of the Vikings, much like Sto'Vo'Kor is to the Klingons or Aman is to the Elves of Middle-Earth. 

You don't expect a true cold wind in June.  Yet, here in the Pacific Northwest, I continue to be surprised by the rapid changes in the weather, the fluctuation in temperature, the fleeting sun even during summer.  Today is no exception.  The bright warm-ish sun of yesterday has given way to a continuous cold blast, an oppressively gray sky, chilling to the bone.

In Ray Bradbury’s “The Cold Wind and the Warm,” the Royal Hibernian Hotel in Dublin is having a dull winter, until a group of “Martians” checks in.  As the story continues, you realize the “Martians” are not aliens at all, but instead homosexuals, whose very presence shocks the locals.  The locals discover an unexpected affinity and both groups move towards understanding each other.

Bradbury, along with Isaac Asimov, Arthur C. Clarke, Robert Heinlein and countless other authors, created stories that expanded my vocabulary, exercised my mind, exposed to to science fiction and, the greatest gift of all, gave me an appreciation of the written word.  For that, I am forever thankful.

And while the weather may not cooperate, the mind can imagine the brilliance of a summer day, the colors of the Martian landscape or a robotic grandmother, and the heart warms.

Till It Shines

Sun.  When it arrived, we all moved outside, working in the yard, digging and edging and cutting and planting.  We redesigned the yard, moving plants from here to there, taking in an abandoned rhododendron we found along the street, sculpting the straight lines into smooth curves, all the time synthesizing Vitamin D from the sunlight we strain to capture.

And now, the rain...light but persistent, watering in the newly planted items, keeping us at bay from tinkering with plants and bark mulch.

Not yet summer, we wait for drier days, for more sun, for time in the vegetable garden.  We wait...till it shines.

Calling Occupants of Interplanetary Craft

Here in the United States, peanuts are generally associated with the South.  Peanuts originated in South America but came to North America via Africa.  In the 1890s, George Washington Carver began to promote the peanut as a replacement for the cotton crop (which had been decimated by the boll weevil), and by 1903 he had developed hundreds of uses for peanuts in recipes.  Georgia is the leading peanut producing state in the US.  Approximately half of all peanuts produced in the US are grown within a 100 mile radius of Dothan, Alabama, which is home to the National Peanut Festival, established in 1938 and held each fall.

It comes as a surprise to many people that peanuts are a big crop in eastern New Mexico, where growers harvest approximately 46 million pounds of peanuts from 20,000 acres.  The hot, dry weather brings the best yields, and the dry climate and elevation of more than 4,000 feet creates low humidity and low night temperatures, which result in fewer diseases.  And while it sounds like a lot, 46 million pounds is only about 1 percent of all peanuts in the nation.  It is, however, 90% of all Valencia peanuts grown in the US, which make for superior peanut butter than their larger Runner or Virginia counterparts.

A previous employer used Valencia peanuts for the peanut butter they manufactured, which resulted in my traveling to eastern New Mexico on a semi-regular basis.  One trip had a rather long period of time between runs, which was just enough time to visit the source of another of New Mexico's cash crops, Roswell.

The highlight of the trip was visiting the UFO Museum, which opened to visitors in 1992 to educate the general public about all aspects of the UFO phenomenon.  Exhibits include information on Roswell, crop circles, sightings, Area 51, government cover-ups, and alien abductions.  A word to the wise: this is not high tech at all.  Photos and articles from newspapers pepper the walls, along with love notes from those who have disappeared and witnessed UFOs.  It was worth the five bucks just to say I had been there, since, strangely enough, it is really the only thing in town dedicated to UFOs, unless you count the McDonald's in the shape of a saucer or the streetlights shaped like alien heads.

The high point of the trip?  Eating at the Cowboy Cafe; good home cooking, a friendly atmosphere and great biscuits and gravy.

Elvis, it has been said, was fond of a peanut butter, banana and bacon sandwich.  Elvis, it has also been said, was connected to aliens.  However you look at it, New Mexico has a strong Elvis connection.  All you have to do is believe.

Child of Vision

During World War I, Pope Benedict XV made repeated pleas for peace. On May 6, 1917, he made a direct appeal to Mary to intercede for peace in the world. A week later, on May 13, 1917, the first of six appearances by the Blessed Virgin Mary as reported by three shepherd children occurred at Fátima in Portugal.

Do you believe in this? That, of course, is entirely up to you. What is important is that you believe in something. The mental attitude that some proposition is true is a belief.

For each given proposition, individuals either have or do not have the mental attitude that it is true. Belief is different from judgment, which is the evaluation of a proposition as reasonable, misleading, etc. It is up to you to decide what to believe in. It is likely that facts, experience and the opinions of others contradict what you believe. That's why it is called a belief.

"Sometimes the things that may or may not be true are the things a man needs to believe in the most. That people are basically good. That honor, courage and virtue mean everything; that power and money ... money and power mean nothing. That good always triumphs over evil. And I want you to remember this.... that love....true love never dies! Remember that boy ... remember that. Doesn't matter if it is true or not, a man should believe in those things , because those are the things worth believing in...... got that ?" - Secondhand Lions (2003), written and directed by Tim McCanlies.

There comes a time in the journey of life when you need to rise and face the challenges in front of you. It is important to believe in yourself and in your ability. If you don’t believe in yourself, you can't expect others to believe in you; if you can’t convince yourself, you can't convince others of your abilities. Do yourself a favor: believe in yourself. 

Teacher, Teacher

There have been many teachers in my life.  Some taught school, others taught life, and a few taught both.  It was Dorothy Wagner in 8th grade who helped me understand that what sounded like a squeaky voice in my head could be a formidable force that I needed to learn to utilize.  Later, in high school, it was Shirley Alvord who convinced me I could do anything if I put my mind to it.  In college, Klaus Wills cemented my love of science and showed me being a little crazy was okay as long as you were smart about it.

There is only one teacher, however, that I wish I could better emulate.  That person is my sister, Julie Grimes.  Julie has taught hundreds of children and made a difference in every one of their lives.  While I hope to have passed something on to future generations that may make for a better world, I already know Julie has.  She was recently honored by her school, her peers, her friends and her family.  Here is just a brief portion of that they had to say: 

"The La Cumbre Junior High School Foundation is honored to present...to Julie Grimes the La Cumbre Junior High School Teacher of the Year Award.  She has exhibited during her 11 years at La Cumbre Junior High School as a Special Education Teacher the love of her students while at the same time demonstrating a "no nonsense" attitude that students and their parents have come to both admire and respect.  La Cumbre Junior High School, acclaimed as one of the top performing schools in Santa Barbara County, has accomplished this distinction due in part to the exceptional commitment of its teachers and the leadership team established at the school.  Julie exemplifies every day this extraordinary commitment to excellence and dedication in her classroom.  Thank you Julie, for inspiring your students for not wanting to settle for less and for acknowledging the greatness that is in each of them. May your light continue to shine in the hearts and minds of your students."
To my favorite sister...stop crying already!

Empty Cages

Our most recent foray into backyard chickens led us to someone who was moving and needed to reduce the number of chickens in his flock. Chicken George, as we refer to him to this day, treated his chickens to microwave popcorn on many afternoons. He personally drove over the three hens we picked out and placed them on the roost one at a time while re-assuring them everything was going to be fine.

The hens, which we promptly named Miss Marple, Jessica Fletcher and Nancy Drew, provided eggs for our consumption and tilled the yard for theirs. We enjoyed the cooing, clucking and cackling of the girls. Their egg production slowed with their age, but they continued to produce more than we consumed.

It was a good relationship, but like all good things it came to an end. Jessica met the fate of the minor guest star on "Murder, She Wrote", as she contracted an avian illness of some type and we draw the line at taking chickens to the veterinarian. We will be moving from this house in the relatively near future, and the perimeter of the yard, which belonged to the chickens, needs to be landscaped; Miss Marple and Nancy were re-homed yesterday to someone who already had chickens, as well as lambs, ducks and bees (and that was just in the front yard).

The chicken tractor will be next to go. The coop purchased with this set of chickens was transformed into a tractor so it could be wheeled around the yard and the chickens moved from one place to another, allowing time to scratch and peck while eating the grass and looking for bugs. Now vacant, we spent some time making a few repairs and it is ready for the next owner.

Chickens are relatively low-maintenance animals, produce better eggs than you can find in the grocery store, and provide chicken poop, which is great for the garden. Ever let a chicken loose in the yard so they can look around and curiously explore every nook and cranny? It's pretty entertaining.

Someday we will have chickens again, of that I am sure. Until then, I will till the soil myself and thank the hens for starting it for me.

Yesterday's Men

September, 1981.  I arrived at UC Davis, my residence for the next two and a half years.  Up to that time I had never been away from home for more than a few weeks, and never by myself for more than a couple of days.  When I opened the door to my dorm room, there was a pile of clothes on the bed under the window, but I didn't see my roommate for a couple of more days.  The first person I met was from directly across the hallway.  Long straight hair, glasses, three days growth on his face, Birkenstocks without socks, a fan of the Grateful Dead, from Encino, CA, home of the valley girl and "the mall".

Little did I know that Casey and I were to become fast friends.  We went off campus for dinner one night and ended up at a Chinese restaurant, which was the first time had ever had Chinese food.  We both laughed about my inability to use chop sticks and my wanting to know if you really ordered one from column A and two from column B as I had heard on some television show.  The biggest laugh was my trying to make sense of the designs on the tables, which looked like the head of a bull.  Armed with the new knowledge that I liked Chinese food, I wanted to know what the designs meant, so I asked the waiter, who promptly informed me they were steer heads and the restaurant used to be a steak place. What a schmuck I was (something else I learned from Casey).

Casey listened to a wide range of music, and while my tastes were pretty middle of the road, we did have some overlap, reveling in The Concert in Central Park by Simon & Garfunkel, which happened the weekend before we met.  I listened to mainstream pop and British Invasion while he listened to heavy metal and something called ska, the walking bass line accented with rhythms on the upbeat of Madness performing "One Step Beyond" passing through the concrete walls of the dorms.

Birkenstocks.  Chinese food.  Madness.

While I don't wear Birkenstocks, they are familiar to me and no longer unusual.  Chinese food is a staple in our current household, and I remember being home one day from college and talking my parents into Chinese take-out.  And I continue to listen to Madness, which lead to other third-wave bands such as Let's Go Bowling and The Mighty Mighty Bosstones.

"Hey you. Don't watch that watch this." And so began the sheer exuberance of it all.  They were great times.

Second Chance

Dr. Oliver Sacks wrote in "Awakenings" how the philosopher Immanuel Kant spoke of music as "the quickening art". I have written about music before, how it stirs my soul and how I can feel it with my very being and my heart.

Here is your chance to stir the souls of others who need it most. Music & Memory is an organization that trains caretakers on incorporating individually relevant music into therapeutic care and raises funds to help provide the resources for that care. Watch the clips on their web-site and prepared to be moved.

In "The Dry Salvages,” T.S. Eliot wrote "It is not heard at all, but you are the music, while the music lasts." I pray the music lasts forever. Help it last by giving a tiny machine that can bring a spark back to someone's eyes and stir their soul again and again.

Sunshine on My Shoulders

While the rest of the country had unseasonable warm weather in March, we waited, perhaps a bit jealous and envious, for our turn. It was a cold and soggy March, and while appreciated by many (including moles and vampires), we finished the month on the cold side when compared to average temperatures.

Spring is typically a bit cool and unsettled in the Great North Wet, or as I recently discovered, also known as The Zone of Filtered Sunshine.

Written in 1924 to promote economic and demographic growth in Seattle, In the Zone of Filtered Sunshine proposed to investors and immigrants reasons why to make their new home in the Puget Sound, making a virtue out of the cloudy weather of the coastal Northwest. This type of weather apparently had been shown throughout history to be the most conducive to economic prosperity and achievements by civilization. “Filtered sunshine -- sunshine filtered thru the clouds -- and only a moderate degree of intense sunshine, as exists in the Pacific Northwest, is best for all, and vital to the development of the most energetic peoples.”

I always thought it was the coffee that made the people of the Pacific Northwest energetic. Who knew it was filtered sunshine?

Be that as it may, Spring has arrived in Bellingham, just in time for the opening of the Farmer's Market, one of the largest farmers markets in Washington State. Our day in the unfiltered sun has come. I, for one, am happy.

Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood

Several years ago, in Idaho on business with a few hours of free time, my traveling companions and I headed east and came across the Old Idaho State Penitentiary, just outside of Boise. Mary, Sue and I walked the grounds, listening to the docent talk about the history of the prison. Originally built as a territorial prison in 1870, over 13,000 convicts passed through its walls. The living conditions were sub-standard and led to a number of riots by prisoners, the last resulting in damages that lead to its closure on December 3, 1973.

Eventually I started wandering, as I tend to do. I discovered a rose garden, the solitary confinement area (know as Siberia), and then found myself in the prison laundry, face to face with an industrial-sized wringer.

Like many others, my paternal grandmother did other people's laundry, and she had a wringer in the basement. I remember watching her pass a tablecloth through the rollers, pressing it flat after which she carefully folded it and placed in in the basket with other laundry.

I had grown up thinking the wringer was called a mango. While the mango may be one of the most cultivated fruits of the tropical world, it was not a common sight at my house. I had never seen one before, so I had no reason to wonder why a fleshy stone fruit and a clothes press had the same name. When my childhood friends, who occasionally ventured into the basement with me would ask, I would confidently tell them, "That's a mango."

In the prison laundry, I stood, mouth agape. Holy crap, I thought, it was a huge mango! I had never seen one outside of my grandmother's basement. It was enormous. I gazed upon the pictures which hung on the wall showing prisoners using the laundry equipment, at the various pieces of machinery and, as my eyes moved up, to a sign that read "No Loafing, No Sitting on Mangle tables".

Mangle, not mango.

The the UK, it is called a mangle. More commonly known as a wringer here on our side of the pond, it is typically two rollers in a frame and was originally designed to wring water from wet laundry. Mangles are more commonly used to press or flatten sheets, tablecloths, clothing, etc. Mangles are an essential feature of commercial laundries. They are used to press flat items such as sheets or tablecloths, and happen to be faster at removing the majority of water when compared to a clothes dryer. Prisons were, or perhaps are, no exception.

While small domestic pressing mangles are typically not sold in North American home appliance stores or departments, although, as with many things, if you look hard enough you can find them. The Miele Rotary Iron is available for around two grand from Wiliams-Sonoma. And I apparently had missed the 1995 movie The Mangler, which was based on a short story by Stephen King about a large industrial mangle possessed by a demon which, to satisfy its blood lust, claims the lives of many victims.

Lesson learned: mangoes may be mangled, but mangles may not be mangoed.

Reason To Be

My life does not always look exactly like I want it to. That's kinda besides the point, isn't it? Life is what you make of it, regardless of what it looks like.

What does matter is how you feel about that life. Do you choose to smile simply because it feels good? Do you provide kind words when you feel low? Neither of these depend on your situation.

Long-term happiness truly depends on your ability to notice things around you and appreciate the details. Even if you had everything you could want, there will still be highs and lows in life. Learning to enjoy the little things means you can find happiness and peace when something goes wrong, disappointed yet determined, knowing the simple pleasures are really what count and what will help you through to whatever comes next.

Find joy in the moment. It doesn't matter if it is small or inconsequential. We all have goals and dreams, the want of having a meaningful life, to positively affects others with our actions. Happiness is a choice, and while it is not always easy to make that decision, you will be better for it.

Happiness isn't as much about what you have, but rather what you do with what you have. What you have changes; how you decide to work with what you have is up to you.

Vintage Future

In the 1960s, The Jetsons were set one hundred years out in 2062. Not a bad looking future, with flying cars and robot maids. In 1973, Soylent Green warned us that pollution, overpopulation, and the greenhouse effect could send the Western world into a new Dark Age in 2022. In 1982, Blade Runner depicted life in the year 2019, a polluted planet being abandoned for off-world colonies, molded by Philip K. Dick's 1968 novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? Back to the Future II depicted life in 2015, a scant three years away, as a much more pleasant place.

There are no flying cars, no jetpacks, no hoverboards, no robot maids. Of course, we're not eating soylent green, the world isn't entirely polluted and it isn't a police state either, so it isn't all bad.

Back in my day (oh geez...when did that happen?), schools had libraries rather than media centers, with actual books and magazines. What makes more sense as the future of libraries...digitized information or robots getting the book you wanted?

Sometimes the future we imagined wouldn't be better that what we can do now, just different. Cars don't zip through some highway in the sky, but they do have GPS and WiFi built into them. The flying car became the symbol of a future that never was, and one we are likely better off without.

We are not bound by what someone else thought one hundred or fifty or even one year ago. Napoleon Hill said it best: we are what we believe and where we believe we should be. Want to be different or be somewhere else? Change what you believe. The future’s not what it used to be, and that is a good thing.

Sleep's Dark And Silent Gate

Some nights, as I wait to fall asleep, I reflect upon the day; what happened, what it meant for today, what it means for tomorrow. Other nights, I think about love, past friends and good times. This week I have been reflecting on the uncertainty of our lives, how change comes when you least expect it, how forewarned is forearmed, how crystal balls tend to be fuzzy at best, how planning is everything but how plans are nothing.

Change hurts. Change makes us insecure about our abilities, and confused as to why it happened or what will happen. Life is easier when things remain the same. But that's not how life is. Life goes on, regardless of whether or not we control which way it goes, which is precisely why planning is everything and the plan is nothing.

In a few months I will be fortunate enough to visit the areas in Italy where my grandparents came from. What will I find there, who will I meet, what will I see? I could plan my trip down to the minute or hour or even to the day, but all that means is I will likely be constantly changing my plans. What is more important is that I plan to be agile and to be ready for changes. To do that, I will pack my bags what I think I need for the journey and discard the rest. I know my destination and what I would like to see when I arrive. I will head in that direction and work with the surprises that are put in front of me, changing direction as necessary.

As many others have said, it is the journey that shapes our lives, not the destination. It is the past, whether today or many yesterdays ago, that help shape our future, as we learn to react to things based on how we acted before. Fill your bags with things that will help you, not hinder you. Keep planning but be ready to make changes. And most importantly, keep moving.

Carolina In My Mind

Memories. They are enduring because they are so diffused, ingrained in a multitude of connections between numerous cells in our brains. Think of one thing and another comes rushing forward, then another. Relearning some piece of a forgotten memory can result in the unprompted recovery of more and more memories.

The same thing happens with thoughts and feelings. All it takes is a memory to trigger your thoughts and feelings, and you will find yourself in a familiar place.

Memories make up the continuing experience of life. They are what makes us comfortable with people and surroundings that are familiar to us, tie the past to the present and the present to the future. Who we are, how we act, what we think, are all due to our collective set of memories.

While memories do not recognize the boundaries of time or space, time, much like memories, can be fleeting. Make some memories today.

Early Morning Rain

The grass is green and needs to be mowed, the weeds are getting tall and need pulling, the garage is cluttered and needs to be cleaned out. The weather, however, has other plans. It rained yesterday, and on into the night. The forecast for today is cloudy and chilly with showers, perhaps mixed with snow late.

Today will be a day to stay inside for many of us. The warmth of the fireplace, the smell of a good book, the companionship of our loved ones all draw us inside on blustery days like today. While the chickens peck around on the wet ground, the cat sleeps on the heater vent.

As much as I bemoan our lack of sun and heat here in the Pacific Northwest, I have (in general) learned to appreciate the rain. Not today, mind you, but some day when it isn't raining, I will appreciate it.

Where My Heart Will Take Me

The space shuttle Enterprise had its maiden "flight" on on this day in 1977. Anchored atop an extensively modified Boeing 747 airliner, it was the first of eight captive flights where Enterprise would remain secured to the plane during the trip.

It was 1976, and NASA had picked the name Constitution for this first orbiter as a celebration of the US bicentennial. Bjo Trimble, unquestionably the most famous and influential fan in Star Trek history, launched a letter writing campaign, asking fans to send letters and petitions asking that the name be changed to Enterprise.

The White House was soon flooded with thousands of letters asking that the orbiter be named Enterprise. Yes, I readily admit it. My letter was among those sent to Washington D.C. Although President Gerald Ford never mentioned the campaign, the president said that he was "partial to the name" because he had served aboard the carrier USS Monterey that served with USS Enterprise and overrode NASA officials.

Letter writing campaigns allow you to speak your mind, to encourage and inspire others, to display your passion and ideas. Take Sarah Hale as an example. Prior to the US Civil War, she promoted a letter writing campaign to Presidents Pierce and Buchanan (as well as other local, state and national politicians) declaring that a Day of Thanksgiving might be the way to avoid a war. She didn't stop writing until President Lincoln declared Thanksgiving Day an annual federal holiday, 17 years after her first letter.

There would be five more flights where Enterprise was carried to a launch height and then jettisoned through the use of explosive bolts, allowed to glide to a landing on the runways at Edwards AFB under its own control. These flights were intended to test the flight characteristics of the orbiter on a typical approach and landing profile from orbit. For those of us who were part of the letter writing campaign to name the shuttle Enterprise, the flights were not merely tests, but rather a testament to a vision of a future based on cooperation and harmony.

Whatever your passion, whatever your desire, whatever you feel strongly about, write about it. Let it become your testament to the future.

The Turn of a Friendly Card

According to Live Casino Direct.com, black jack is the most widely played of all casino games. Based upon the straightforward (yet not entirely easy) principle of getting your cards to amount as close to 21 as possible (without going over), blackjack can produce high payouts and has relatively decent chances of winning.

Still, even armed with that knowledge, I was surprised to find this recent posting on Bellingham Craigslist:

"We are looking for a blackjack dealer with appropriate attire to deal at our wedding! It would be a fun game for prizes. No real cash. We need you August 11 from 8-midnight. Please email if you are interested!"

Location of wedding - check. Caterer - check. Music - check. Someone to watch Aunt Esmeralda who drinks too much and tends to wander away - check. Blackjack, poker, slot machines, craps and roulette tables with play money so no one loses their life savings and gets into drunken fights - check.

Another business opportunity lost to my inability to understand what people really want.

Is getting married a gamble? The current statistics for all marriages say about 50% end in divorce. Of those, 6 to 8 years is the typical range before the couple divorces. Those are the odds.

In gambling, the odds are heavily in the favor of the casinos, yet individuals spend billions of dollars on gambling every year. Compared to a little ball randomly slamming around a roulette wheel with about a 6% shot at winning, a 50-50 chance starts to look pretty good.

Unlike gambling, however, in a marriage you can stack the odds in your favor. There are factors that are out of your control but the majority of the factors in a marriage that have the biggest impact are in your hands. Much like anything else, if you are willing to work at it your life experience will help stack the odds in your favor. Once you do that, it is no longer a gamble.

Perhaps it is fitting, after all, to play blackjack at your wedding, as it is a good example of what your marriage will not be: against the odds. Deal me in.

Song For Guy

Ask not for whom the wayback machine calls; it call for thee. Mixing John Donne and Mr. Peabody is a fitting segue into Space Pirate Radio.

A good friend recently came upon The Melting Watchtowre, the official page of Guy Guden and Space Pirate Radio. I was only a casual listener and not among the diehard fans who spent Sunday night from midnight until 6:00 am on Monday morning listening to electronic music with some of Guy's original comedy pieces (sometimes brief but always sharp) thrown in for color.

Still, this chance encounter with the past stirred many a memory for me. The giant ants on the side of the Granada Theater is easily the most vivid visual remembrance. I would typically listen to the first and last 30 or so minutes, as sleep would call and win, despite my best efforts and willingness to blow off the 7:00 am calculus class at SBCC. To paraphrase Guy, it was night music for night people. "Sponsored" by the Nippon Gin Company of Tokyo, the ads included Godzilla Stout Malt Liquor and the infamous Rodan Light White ("One sip, and you too will say...BANZAI!").

Despite the years, there are a number of threads across this vast electronic playground that focus on SPR and/or Guy, and at least two Facebook pages. I last thought about both when I was selling off my vinyl collection a few years back and found someone who wanted my copy of his 1978 release. The fan base still exists and it is good to know he is alive and well out there, somewhere.

Alvin Toeffler said “The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn.” I relish in Guy's ability to re-invent himself again and again.

And So It Goes

In "Slaughterhouse 5", Chaplain's Assistant Billy Pilgrim is kidnapped by Tralfamadorians, extraterrestrial aliens who can see in four dimensions and have already seen every moment of their lives. While they cannot change anything about their destiny, they can choose to focus upon any moment in their lives. All time is fixed, but each moment is instantaneously accessible, which means each moment basically exists forever.

As they do not understand free will, the concept of free will and change is hard for a Tralfamadorian to understand. They believe it to be a bizarre fiction of Earth, where individuals who cannot see in four dimensions need an explanation to why things happen. In this scenario, there is little incentive to live life well (however you choose to define well), for as long as each life has a few good moments to re-visit eternally, you could be eternally content.

Billy latches on to this belief, and he becomes "unstuck in time", experiencing past and future events. As he "travels" backward and forward in time, he relives occasions of his life, including his death. Billy does not have the control these alien’s possess, as he can not control his time travel or choose to remember only what he wants to choose, and he relives happiness as much as he relives sadness. Without free will, there is no time wasted on blame, guilt or punishment. Billy accepts that things happen as they happen and does not blame anyone for what he experiences in the war, for the death of his wife, or for...anything.

While I am sure the Tralfamadorians would disagree, our lives are a series of things, our minds playing a critical role in how our many experiences shape us. On the outside chance I won't run into any aliens who can teach me to focus for an eternity on one single thing, I choose to acknowledge I do not and cannot know what the future holds. We are who we are because of what we have done, intentionally or unintentionally, successfully or or through defeat. We attract and repel along the way, forces of physics and psychics, our most profound truths found unexpectedly through experience.

So it goes.

(Just Like) Romeo & Juliet

Cave drawings, clay tablets, papyrus, wax tablets, parchment, paper, the printing press, bound books, paperbacks, audio books, e-readers. For centuries humanity has used linguistic symbols to transmit and conserve information. From silk in China to dried palm tree leaves in India, various materials have been used for recording and transmitting information.

With the proliferation of books came the need to study them. When time and resources are in short supply, readers look for a summary, an abstract, a condensed version, the "Reader's Digest" format: short, sweet, and to the point. As a student, I reveled in the existence of Cliffs Notes, guides that present and explain literary and other works in short order. Cliffs Notes owe their start to Coles Notes, published in Canada. Nebraska native Cliff Hillegass obtained the American rights in 1958 and the rest, as they say, is history, spawning an entire genre that includes Spark Notes, For Dummies, Complete Idiot's Guides and now...Shakespeare via short cartoons with Elizabethan English translated into contemporary slang in just about seven minutes, courtesy of Cliffs Notes.

Oh, the wonders of the modern age.

And yes, just to clarify, I am here to praise CliffsNotes Films, not to bury them, for this good will live after them.

Things evolve; it is the way of the world. There are those who will find these versions of the work of the Bard of Avon blasphemous and insulting. Is it Shakespeare if it isn't done in Elizabethan English? Is is still Shakespeare when is it made into a movie, or made into a movie and contemporized? Does it matter how the message gets out? As Marshall McLuhan famously said, "The medium is the message." The form of the medium tends to embed itself in the message, creating a relationship whereby the medium influences the perception of the message. I readily admit I recall Polonius' advice to Laertes about "Neither a borrower nor a lender be" best by remembering the musical version of Hamlet from Gilligan's Island. Does it make the message of Hamlet any less important that it was delivered through a comic medium?

Each of us has a marvelous approach to storytelling, and we all do it differently. CliffsNotes Films is using this technology to reach out to audiences in a new and entertaining way. Does it matter how the story is told, as long as it is told? After all, "All the world's a stage..." (As You Like It, Act II, Scene VII).

Help!

CQD is one of the first distress signals adopted for radio use. It was announced on January 7, 1904, by the Marconi International Marine Communication Company. Telegraphs used "CQ" ("sécu" of sécurité) to help identify messages to all stations along a telegraph line, and CQ had been adopted as a "general call" for maritime radio use. Telegraphs had no general emergency signal, so the Marconi company added a "D" ("distress") to CQ in order to create the distress call. CQD was understood by wireless operators to mean, "All stations: distress."

Used worldwide by Marconi operators, CQD was never adopted as an international standard, as it could be mistaken for CQ when reception was poor. In 1906, Germany's Notzeichen distress signal of three-dots/three-dashes/three-dots was adopted as the international Morse code distress signal and became known for the letters it spelled out, SOS.

In 1923, a senior radio officer at Croydon Airport in London by the name of Frederick Stanley Mockford was asked to come up with a word that would indicate distress and was easily understood by all pilots and ground staff in an emergency. Much of the traffic at that time was between London and Paris, so he proposed the word "Mayday" from the French m’aider, where "venez m'aider" means "come help me."

Emergency telephone numbers such as 911 (in the US), 112 (in the EU) and 999 (in the UK) put you in contact with local emergency services for assistance.

As CQD, SOS, Mayday and the rest of the cornucopia of options indicate, we know how to ask for help in emergency situations. However, asking for non-emergency help is something many people have trouble doing. There is no hesitation to call for medical assistance when a person is injured, but we are much less likely to reach out and ask for help with work assignments, child care or the like.

Some believe it is a sign of weakness, so we try do to it ourselves and sometime do nothing instead, allowing the problem to grow into a crisis. We are a society largely based on helping ourselves. If you doubt that, take a good look at the self-help section the next time you are in a bookstore or library.

Despite the self-help mantra, the biggest mistake we can make is thinking we have to do everything ourselves. If we want it done right, we don't have to do it ourselves. Asking for help can boost our happiness; the assistance makes our life easier and it shows we have a supportive social network we can rely on in times of need. Not only does it increase our happiness, but also the happiness of who you are asking for help, as giving support is just as important as getting support. Think about it: asking someone for help means you have a positive relationship with that person and trust them to support you. Who wouldn't feel good about that?

It was Mark Twain who said "The best way to cheer yourself is to try to cheer somebody else up." When you ask for help, your call will be answered, and both of you will feel better. All you have to do is ask.