Younger Yarns

Looking Toward Earth Day

2009-04-17T17:59:00.000-07:00

We are called to assist the earth to heal her wounds and in the process heal our own--indeed, to embrace the whole creation in all its diversity, beauty, and wonder.

Wangari Maathai,Kenyan environmentalist, political activist, and 2004 Nobel Peace Prize Laureate

A New Bottom Line

2009-01-30T11:43:00.001-08:00

[We need] to embrace a "new bottom line" in which corporations, social practices, government policies and individual behaviors are judged rational, efficient or productive not only if they maximize money or power, but also to the extent that they maximize love and caring, kindness and generosity, ethical and ecological sensitivity, enhance our capacity to treat others as embodiments of the sacred and to respond with awe, wonder, and radical amazement at the grandeur of the universe. - Rabbi Michael Lerner

Inauguration Day

2009-01-20T21:11:00.000-08:00

Let us mark this day with remembrance, of who we are and how far we have traveled.

In the year of America's birth, in the coldest of months, a small band of patriots huddled by dying campfires on the shores of an icy river. The capital was abandoned. The enemy was advancing. The snow was stained with blood. At a moment when the outcome of our revolution was most in doubt, the father of our nation ordered these words be read to the people:

"Let it be told to the future world ... that in the depth of winter, when nothing but hope and virtue could survive...that the city and the country, alarmed at one common danger, came forth to meet (it)."

America, in the face of our common dangers, in this winter of our hardship, let us remember these timeless words. With hope and virtue, let us brave once more the icy currents, and endure what storms may come. Let it be said by our children's children that when we were tested we refused to let this journey end, that we did not turn back nor did we falter; and with eyes fixed on the horizon and God's grace upon us, we carried forth that great gift of freedom and delivered it safely to future generations.

Barack Hussein Obama
44th president of the United States of America

To Norah Vincent, Who Didn't Vote

2008-11-11T13:51:00.000-08:00

The Los Angeles Times this morning ran an opinion piece by writer Norah Vincent titled, "A Vote Too Late for Obama," in which Vincent confesses that she didn't vote in last week's historic election because she didn't like Obama's tax proposals, found McCain "intellectually brittle" and Palin downright terrifying. But now she's having second thoughts.

"As I've watched the wave of post-election elation rushing over so many people in recent days," Vincent says, "and as I have been unexpectedly and powerfully moved myself, I've started to feel a little, I don't know, out of it."

A hundred and twelve people responded to Vincent's commentary, expressing just about every possible reaction from "You're an idiot" to "Don't worry, Obama will disappoint us all, and then you won't have to feel guilty." But still, I felt moved to toss in my two cents:

How sad, Norah. This past week has been a highlight of my life, a defining moment in U.S. and world history! I'm sorry you passed up the opportunity to be a part of it.

You're brave to share your thoughts and regrets with the public, though, and I hope you can ignore the cruelty in some of these comments. Strange stuff for such a hopeful, magnanimous time as this.

You've explained, quite eloquently, why you didn't vote. Which has inspired me to explain why I do. Why, in fact, I can't not vote.

Voting is such a rare and costly privilege. So few people anywhere, at any time, have ever had a say in who governed them or how. Yet we Americans do. And that's only because so many have sacrificed so much for so long.

When I think of all the soldiers killed or wounded in all the wars fought to establish and preserve this nation, and of all the heartbreak and hardship imposed on their families and communities back home, I can't not vote.

When I think of all the immigrants, including my own Lithuanian grandparents, who left behind forever everything and everyone they knew and loved, all to live in a new world where men were free to determine their own destinies, I can't not vote.

When I think of all the suffragettes who marched through jeering crowds and chained themselves to fences and staged hunger strikes and endured prison forcefeedings so that women, too, could help shape our society, I can't not vote.

When I think of all the African-Americans in my native South having to wait an entire century after Lincoln freed the slaves before their opinions finally counted, I can't not vote.

And when I think of boys just a few years older than I, drafted at age 18, forced to fight, even to die in Vietnam, but not considered old enough to help elect or reject those who sent them there, I can't not vote.

Even when the weather's bad or the lines are long, even when the issues don't seem all that important, or I can't get excited about any of the candidates--even then, I can't not vote. I just can't.

This time of course was different. This time made up for every boring, disappointing election I've ever voted in. This time we made all those sacrifices count for something. I wish you could know how good that feels.

Beyond Words

2008-11-05T17:41:00.000-08:00

Occasionally in life there are those moments of unutterable fulfillment which cannot be completely explained by those symbols called words. Their meanings can only be articulated by the inaudible language of the heart.

Martin Luther King Jr.
Nobel Peace Prize Acceptance Speech, Dec. 11, 1964.

Why I Voted for Barack Obama

2008-11-04T13:21:00.000-08:00

Finally, after two years of campaigning, election day is here. And whatever the outcome, it's going to be historic.

I have long felt this election is the most critical in my lifetime—in no small measure because I am convinced we have now lived through the worst administration in our nation’s history. An administration that squandered the opportunity of national unity imposed by national tragedy, that instead exploited our fears to advance its own twisted agenda. The havoc that George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and their pseudo-Republican crew have wrought upon this country and across the world in little more than seven years is simply stunning. Who would have believed so much could have gone wrong so fast? If it were fiction, no one would buy it. (If only it were fiction.)

No wonder the president’s approval rating has fallen to 22 percent, the lowest since Herbert Hoover. You'd think all this would ensure a Democratic victory. And yet the presidential race is still too close to call. This is how divided we are as a nation. Why? Because people are afraid. Afraid of losing control. Afraid of others they perceive as different from them. Afraid of change. Or the lack of it.

In essence, I have come to see this election as a fundamental choice between the past and the future, between fear and hope.

I have no illusions that a rookie senator from Illinois can fix all our problems. The system is too entrenched; the problems, too dire and widespread. But perhaps he can begin to turn the ship around, to head us in a new direction.

I realize I may have been taken, snookered by a smooth talker, a man of natural eloquence and amazing poise. But his words, however lofty, strike me as genuine. He seems to speak from a quiet center informed by intellect, compassion and faith. He seems to understand that true leadership is all about service, not power. He is, in a word, inspiring.

And so I dare to hope. I hope this nation will not act from fear yet again, but will instead find the courage to change, to embrace a new era of history. I hope Barack Obama will be our next president.

The Arrows That Fly

2008-08-12T09:33:00.000-07:00

The end of summer is already in sight, and for me, it's been a good one, a relaxing, therapeutic break after a long seige of sadness, made sweeter by the tandem triumphs of both daughters. In fact, I have been floating all summer on a happy cloud of maternal pride. I've done little but stand along the sidelines and cheer them on; still, I can't help but feel a flush of vicarious success watching each of my grown-up girls achieve momentous personal and professional goals.

In June, the whole family gathered in Davis, California to watch EK claim her doctor of veterinary medicine degree, the fruit of years of grueling study, punctuated by a number of significant personal challenges. She'd persevered through it all, and now at last she'd achieved her ambitious goal.

It was the great American dream come to life. I thought of my grandparents, Lithuanian immigrants and North Carolina tobacco farmers; my parents, each the first in their families to earn college degrees and a hardwon toehold in the middle-class. It was much the same on Bob's side, shoe salesmen and cafeteria workers sent their children to college and on to solid, respectable lives in education and military service. Bob and I pushed a little further on the education front, each earning a master's degree. And now our daughter was moving far beyond our accomplishments.

It felt right; it felt natural. After all, it's what we expect here in the land of opportunity, the country my Lithuanian grandfather, a bricklayer and shoe factory worker, used to praise with the simple pronouncement, "This is America." Sometimes these days, I am glad Alex Millerskofski isn't here to see how his beloved new world has changed. But this wasn't one of those times. I could only hope that somewhere, he and our other family forerunners were watching this wonderful little American vignette unfold.

Happily, Bob's mother, Mimi to Lauren and EK, was with us to hear the dean introduce her granddaughter as Dr. Erin Kendall Younger, to see her walk across the stage and pause, beaming, as the doctoral hood was lowered over her head, then walk on to accept her diploma from the chancellor of the University of California. All the while those of us in the peanut gallery—Bob, Lauren and I, Mimi, Aunt Terri and Uncle John—clapped and cheered like crazy and wiped away more than a few tears. Look, I whispered to all those watching from beyond. Just look. She's a doctor! That night at dinner, EK made a point of thanking us for our support, and we all raised a glass to those who'd come and gone before us. Those whose love and hard work made our celebration possible. Those who would have loved to be sharing our happiness and no doubt, somewhere just outside our field of perception, were.

My wise and wonderful friend, Martha Bruton, now a grandmother of grown children, called me a few months ago to say, "Sandra, I had a moment." It was in a restaurant over the holidays. She sat down at the end of a long table and looked out at the sight of her entire family--sons, daughter, spouses, grandchildren--all gathered on either side of her. And she thought, “Look. Just look at this family of mine.” Not long after graduation, I called her to say, "Martha, I had a moment, too."

And then came Lauren's moment. After slogging through a debilitating year of personal and career disappointments, not to mention Seattle's perpetual rain and clouds, she'd come close to bailing out of the gloomy Northwest for good, returning home to sunny San Diego and starting over pretty much from scratch. In fact, things looked so dire around the first of this year that we offered our support of that rather drastic decision. But thank goodness Lauren reached down deep, made a few changes in her life and stuck it out a little longer, long enough to experience a total turnaround on every front! The icing on the cake came three weeks ago when her start-up software company was acquired by a big-name tech firm, resulting in all sorts of perks, accolades and positive changes for LL. "Seattle is like a new city to me now," she told me recently. What a great, well-timed and well-deserved reward for her faith, perseverance and resilience. And what beautiful music to a mother's ears.

I wouldn't have believed this 25 years ago, when the girls were baby-faced pre-schoolers, but no matter how old our children may be, how adult, independent and accomplished, mothers are still mothers; fathers, still fathers. We see our progeny as they are, competent and independent adults, but we see them, too, as the babes, the children, the tweens and teens they once were. It all merges together in our minds and hearts, and we love them more and better than ever. We still worry about them when they face tough times. And we still cheer like crazy when they succeed.

Thinking about how beautifully my grown-up girls are meeting the challenges of their own lives, despite the ups and downs they (as everyone) still face, reminds me of a book popular when Bob and I were in college. It was a slim little volume, very new agish for its day, by a Lebanese poet, Kahlil Gibran, and called “The Prophet.” Thirty years ago, reveling in our own burgeoning independence, the passage we zeroed in on was the prophet’s lecture to parents about the importance of letting their little ones go.

"Your children are not your children," Gibran wrote. "They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself. They come through you but not from you, and though they are with you, yet they belong not to you. You may give them your love but not your thoughts, for they have their own thoughts. You may house their bodies but not their souls, for their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams. You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you, for life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday."

Now, of course, I identify more with the next few verses:

"You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth. The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite, and he bends you with his might that his arrows may go swift and far. Let your bending in the archer's hand be for gladness; for even as he loves the arrow that flies, so he loves also the bow that is stable."

At the time, I’m sure we loved the idea of parents bending to ensure our success. We didn’t notice the part about their gladness. We didn’t much care if they were glad about it or not. We just wanted out from under their scrutiny. But now I get it. Now I know where the gladness comes from. Our children’s success is our success. That’s why parents, like the archer himself, love to see the arrows fly swift and far, finding their marks upon the path of the infinite.

Their Poverty Is Relative

2008-07-27T07:02:00.000-07:00

The first week of June, EK and I celebrated her upcoming graduation from vet school with a brief trip to Mexico. Despite living just north of the border for 30 years, I'd never really explored the country, never even been more than a few miles south of Tijuana, and what I'd seen there hadn't exactly piqued my interest in further trips.

But this time we discovered the real Mexico, from ancient Mayan ruins to perfect, unpeopled Caribbean beaches, from underground rivers to open ocean snorkeling among squid, sea turtles and silver schools of fish, from lines of leaf-cutter ants to jungle canopy families of spider and howler monkeys. Not to mention world-class margaritas, guacamole and street tacos. Or the dogs, everywhere dogs, flea-bitten but free and just as eager for affection as our pampered suburban pooches. What a magical shore for both of us to wash up upon after a stormy few months of exams and funerals.

But it was the people we met in the village of Tulum, 80 miles south of Cancun, who made our four days with them such a treat. Janet and Jack, childhood sweethearts reunited after 30 years, now owners and managers of the petite and charming Posada Luna del Sur, These two have mastered the fine art of hospitality. We left feeling we'd gained genuine new friends. And another one, Manuel Galinda, our winsome and fearless guide through watery caves and leafy trails. We found him so delightful we invited him to meet us again at dinner our last night before flying home.

Of all these Mexican memories, it was something Manuel said that most sticks with me. We were deep in the Yucatan jungle, having driven for miles through clouds of butterflies to arrive at the Punta Laguna reserve, home of the wild monkeys. Look, Manuel said and pointed toward a white-washed, thatch-roofed community store near the entrance. In the doorway, a beautiful Mayan baby lay face-down in the grit and germs of the concrete floor, fast asleep. She was a toddler, probably about 18 months old. There were no adults in sight; I could only guess she belonged to the storekeepers.

By the time we'd finished our tour of the reserve, seen the monkey families and canoed across the lagoon and back, the little Mayan girl had finished her nap. She was sitting now just beside the doorway, quietly watching a gaggle of other children wandering to and from the store. They were all a little ragged looking, barefoot and dusty, the older girls carrying the babies on slim young hips. Probably they lived in the humble palapa houses just across the road.

They grew up speaking Mayan, Manuel told us, learning Spanish as a second language when they went to school. "They have schools here then?" I asked. We were so far into the jungle, the few houses we'd seen so scattered, and the little store the only perceptible village center.

"Oh yes," Manuel said. "They go to school."

"But what then?" I asked. "Such extreme poverty. Do these children have any hope of further education, of bettering their situation?"

And Manuel, so kind, so patient, so familiar with gringo thinking, looked at me and smiled. "Their poverty is relative," he said.

I was stupid still. "What do you mean?"

"That little girl we saw," he said. "She was dirty, but her cheeks were full, yes? She was well-fed, healthy."

Suddenly, I got it. "So how arrogant of me, how condescending, to come here, to their home, and assume that because their lifestyle is so different from mine they would even want to change it."

Manuel smiled again, his eyes actually twinkling.

These days, back in the swirl of my oh-so-American life, I think often of our magical visit to Tulum, of my wise new friend Manuel, and of the beautiful Mayan baby, growing up in the midst of a great, green jungle, wild monkeys leaping through the trees above her as she sleeps.

Snake Update

2008-07-09T12:13:00.000-07:00

O.K. This is getting just a little bit old. We're up to three rattlesnakes discovered uncomfortably close to the house so far this summer. The first, another rusty speckled specimen, had layered himself into one of the trenches dug by the landscape contractors putting in our new irrigation system. I fished him out with the snake stick and locked him into my trusty covered bucket, much to the amazement of the landscaping crew. When Bob got home, we moved him farther down the mountain.

The next one, a handsome little Pacific rattler, the fiestier, more potent kind, we found smack dab in the middle of the driveway when we pulled in Friday night from a Fourth of July dinner with friends. Bob almost stepped on it getting out of the car. So it was his turn to wrangle the thing into the bucket. The next morning we relocated him farther down the mountain, too, but he wasn't happy about it. Instead of immediately gliding off into the bushes as all the others have done, he coiled up and rattled at us. I suppose he wanted to make the point that he did not appreciate being held prisoner overnight in a bucket and then dumped out unceremoniously in a strange place.

Then yesterday afternoon, Lilo and I were checking the new plants on the east side of the house when I happened to spy a big gray speckled rattler piled up in a corner of the deck, right next to the house! I hurried Lilo in, garbed up in my snake boots and headed back out with the stick and bucket. It was a little nerve-wracking, being all alone. So for extra security, I called Bob at work and kept him on speaker phone while I went in for the capture.

This particular snake seemed just to be chillin'. He'd casually draped himself into place, his middle looping off the edge of the deck. As soon as he sensed the stick coming his way, he started moving, heading toward the ground by way of the big air conditioner compressor next to the deck. As a result, I could only grab him near the tail, which gave him the advantage of leverage. And either he was a lot heavier than he looked or a lot stronger than I'd imagined or, probably, both, because I could not pull this snake back up. I let go and was able to grab him more in the middle, but still I could not even budge him. I hated to give up, but I had no choice. This boy was anchored into place between the wall and the air conditioner. So I released my grip on the snake stick, and he slithered on down to the ground, taking shelter under the corner of the deck. Unlike me, he seemed totally unperturbed by the whole episode.

"Now what," I asked Bob.

"Well, you could just forget it," he suggested. "He'll leave eventually."

"But he's right here," I said. "I hate to think of him this close with the dogs running around."

"You could kill him," Bob said.

I looked at the snake, calmly waiting for me to leave so he could continue on about his snakey business. He wasn't out to hurt anyone, well, except for a few tasty mice who'd left their calling cards all around the air conditioner, no doubt luring this guy in to begin with.

"I don't think that's gonna be happening either," I decided.

About five minutes later the snake squeezed himself slowly under the air conditioner, showing a lot more intelligence than anyone at this point might have concluded I possessed, and when I went out to look for him an hour or so later he was gone. Let's hope he stays that way. In the meantime, Terra Nova remains on red alert for rattlers.

Chasing Lightning Bugs

2008-06-30T17:41:00.000-07:00

On summer nights, our bodies young and lean, browned by the Southern sun,
my friends and I ran loose and barefoot
on the warm asphalt streets of our quiet little town.
Sometimes we chased the lightning bugs that came out of nowhere
to twinkle in the damp darkness.
One by one,
we plucked them from the air and stuffed them into Mason jars
until we had enough to fashion a sort of living lantern,
Then punched air holes in the lids,
and sometimes added a few drops of water or blades of grass,
just to make everyone more comfortable.
Still, the bugs swarmed up the sides of the jar,
flashing on and off, on and off,
searching for a portal to freedom.
They tended to clump up at the top,
making it tricky to add new bugs
without losing a few others in the process.
At bedtime, when our parents called us in,
we opened our jars
and watched our tiny captives climb out.
Most teetered a bit on the rim
before spreading wings and taking flight.
One by one,
they disappeared into the darkness for a moment or two,
then blinked their goodbyes,
now here,
now there,
now among the trees at the edge of the yard,
until at last we could not tell
which of the lights twinkling against the night were bugs
and which were stars.

August 1, 2007

One of Those (Dog) Days

2008-06-26T18:51:00.001-07:00

You know it's gonna be a bad day when you're hit with three crises before you can even make it out of the bedroom. First it was a daughter calling to say she needed a document from me, like yesterday. Could I possibly Fed Ex it? Sure. I could do that. After a little more sleep. But no, here came another call, one of those recorded messages that try to sound friendly and natural, which of course only makes them more annoying. This one informed me that I needed to have my satellite dish swapped out for a new model asap or I'd lose my HD television programming. I didn't even try to find pen and paper in time to jot down the 800 number, rattled off only once, that I needed to call to set up an appointment. By now, I was more or less awake. Might as well get up.

It was while stumbling to the bathroom that I noticed a brown drop or two on the white, just-scrubbed-yesterday bathroom floor. Not a good sign. Further investigation confirmed my worst fear: a sizable brown puddle smack dab in the middle of the closet floor. Pretty much anywhere else in the house, this wouldn't have presented much of a problem. Because when Bob and I rebuilt Terra Nova, we purposely chose to install tile and wood floors throughout. There was a reason for that--and this was it. We compromised with wall-to-wall carpet in only two places: Bob's studio. And our bedroom closet. So I was looking at a bad situation here. Really bad. There was only one way to deal with it: break out R2D2.

R2D2 is a commercial grade steamer/wet vacuum that looks exactly like the personable little droid from Star Wars. I'd hoped it would make quick and chemical-free work of cleaning all that tile. But alas, R2D2 turned out to be a pain rather than a labor-saver. It bristled with bulky hoses and weird attachments, took forever to heat up, and then had to be disassembled and dumped, not a job for the faint of heart. Eventually, despite its pop culture cache, I'd tired of wrestling with R2 and relegated it to the garage. I'd even pretty well decided to divest it by way of Craig's List. At this particular moment, however, standing in my pajamas, contemplating the puddle in the middle of my closet carpet, I was glad I hadn't.

It would certainly help to have a little coffee before taking on this disaster, but I decided to hold out until afterward when I could better enjoy it. First things first, I needed to get all three Newfs downstairs and outside. Unfortunately, on our way to the door I detected a distinct whiff from the vicinity of the family room. Nooooooo!! I started checking. Tile floors first. Please, please, please. But no, of course not. Wood floors second. Not ideal, but doable. Again, no. The offense had occurred on the family room rug. And this time there were two puddles.

Clearly, this was the work of a master pooper, someone with near-surgical precision. How else can you explain three consecutive bull's-eyes on such a tiny bit of textiles? I already knew who was to blame for this triple catastrophe. Goofy Charter was easily in the clear. He simply does not possess the accuracy or premeditative skills necessary to pull off such a sophisticated stunt. Either Lilo or Terra, however, could easily have been the culprit. Except that only one of my three dogs is capable of shame. And Terra, my sweet princess girl, who usually dances downstairs in the mornings, today was not dancing at all, but slinking, casting occasional furtive glances in my direction as if to say, "Please don't kill me; please don't kill me; and please don't cancel breakfast either." Poor girl. It's so hard to be perfect all the time, yet she suffers such guilt whenever she slips up.

With the dogs outside, I moved the family room furniture, extracted the rug and dragged it out to the deck where I slung it over a railing, hosed it down and left it to dry. Ikea, $150--what did I care? Then I went looking for Terra, who quickly divined my intent and had to be ordered into the dog wash for a thorough sudsing and cursory blow-dry. Next I rummaged through the garage until I'd unearthed R2D2, which I took apart and schlepped upstairs in three separate trips. One for the steam chamber. One for the dirty-water collection chamber. And one for the long and tangling hose.

I established a staging area in the bathroom where I reassembled R2 and steeled myself for the task ahead. It helped knowing that once the droid heated up, it would be only a few minutes more and my closet carpet would be back to normal, clean and stink-free! But then I encountered technical difficulties. I couldn't remove the cap on the steam chamber. It just spun around and around, the way it does when the machine is pressurized, the better to prevent unwary users from accidentally parboiling themselves. R2 wasn't even plugged in yet, so the cap should have unscrewed easily, allowing me to fill the chamber, press the "on" button and wait for steam to happen. I tried everything. Twisting clockwise. Twisting counter clockwise. Twisting while pushing. Twisting while pulling. Nothing worked. So much for an easy Superfund site cleanup. It seemed like a good time to retreat downstairs and have that coffee while I contemplated next steps.

Fortified by caffeine and a little breakfast, I tried again, again without success. So I appealed for help. On R2D2's home-planet website I found a customer service number and thus began my relationship with Analdo, who I've gotta say in all seriousness is one of the most helpful company reps I've ever dealt with. He not only expressed genuine interest in my problem, he dug out an actual R2D2 clone on his end to make sure we were in sync about all the relevant anatomical details. Two or three times he asked me to hold while he consulted his supervisors. Still unable to definitively diagnose R2's problem, he promised to call me back the next day with a solution, and he really did! I heart Analdo and his Jersey boy accent.

In my crude attempts to follow Analdo's suggestions, I employed a number of sophisticated tools, starting with pliers, then quickly devolving to an ice pick, a kitchen knife and a big rubber mallet. After all this I discovered that the defective cap was actually catching and turning momentarily every few spins, so simply by twirling it nonstop for 10 or 15 minutes I finally managed to remove it. But in the process I tilted the steam chamber a little too much and spilled the residual water. It spread across the floor in a mucky white cloud. Whoa. Perhaps I should have drained the clean water as well as the dirty water before sticking R2 away in the garage. I sopped up the mess with a dog towel, rinsed out the steam chamber in the bathtub and refocused on the main event in the closet.

I didn't want to chance refilling the machine and replacing the cap. Who knew if I'd ever get it off again? Better to wait for the new one Analdo was shipping me. So I called Bob for advice. "Well," he said, "the wet vac still works, right?" I didn't like where this was going, but I had to do something. So I ended up handcleaning the carpet (yes, I know) and using R2D2 to suction out as much moisture as possible. By the time I'd finished the job, I'd had to clean and disinfect the entire bathroom floor, R2D2, the sink, the bathtub, the dog towels, my clothes and, oh yes, me. I looked at the clock when I finally came out of the shower. It was 2:30 in the afternoon. And still I had to go to FedEx and call the satellite t.v. people before I could even think about getting any actual work done. Yeah. One of those days. I wonder. How much worse could it have been if I'd just stayed in bed?

Invasion of the Roadrunners

2008-06-23T11:31:00.000-07:00

Finally after 3 years in the new Terra Nova, we’re having landscaping installed. It’s nearly finished now following a couple of weeks of trenching and pipe-laying and digging and planting, and it’s going to be wonderful. No more dirt tracked into the house multiple times a day by our herd of Newfs plus a lovely, tranquil ambiance just outside our windows, complete with the bubbling of fountains front and back.

Already, we’ve noticed an increase in the wildlife. Bees and hummingbirds are buzzing all around. Fluttering clouds of finches dart past on their way to and from the fountains. And Friday night when we first turned the new irrigation system on, we noticed a roadrunner investigating the front yard. Look at that, we said. How cool. We’ve always loved these sleek, swift birds, always trotting intently from one place to another, always seemingly on a mission. It’s not often you seem them, though. We consider it a treat. One day I was sitting at our dining room table, looking out the sliding doors onto the back patio, when a big, gorgeous male roadrunner calmly strutted by. And now this one out front.

Saturday morning I was out watering the new plants when I caught sight of something moving in the bushes down the slope. It was a pair of roadrunners, bowing and fluttering at each other. Later we saw three of them at the same time, leading us to believe we had a whole roadrunner family coming of age somewhere right around the house. The adult birds tend to be solitary, and we’ve never seen more than one at a time. But Saturday we saw them all day. Roadrunners atop nearly every boulder, trotting by nearly every window, some coming right up and peering in for 5, 10 minutes at a time, oblivious to our movements inside.

It was a crazy hot day, over a hundred in the shade, so I turned on a hose out back to create a puddle, which at least one of the birds found and sipped from gratefully until Lilo appeared from around the corner and ran it off. But even then the roadrunner seemed reluctant to leave. It hopped up on the patio table, then spread a wide set of wings, displaying surprisingly blue iridescent tail feathers, and half hopped, half flew off to the other side of the closest boulder, off no doubt to stalk another meal of bugs or lizards. Only one sighting yesterday, and it was a fair way off, sailing from a boulder to the ground where it disappeared into the brush. And today, so far, nada. But for one day, at least, it was coyote paradise around here.

Every Day Is A Blessing

2008-03-14T18:30:00.000-07:00

For Stevie C. who asked me to speak at his homegoing celebration:

This is the day that the Lord has made. Let us rejoice and be glad in it. My brother Steven would want me to share that thought with you this morning. He would want me to remind you that despite our tears and sorrow, we have good reason to celebrate today.

We can celebrate because Steven is home. His long night of suffering is over. And our long night of watching him suffer is over. The body that failed him has died. But Steven himself is more alive than we. And we will see him again. This is the great hope that sustained our brother Steven. This is the great assurance we share as people of faith.

Some will dismiss our belief in things we cannot humanly perceive as quaint, naive, even delusional. But how then will they explain the courage, the perseverance, the unfailing sweetness of spirit that Steven displayed throughout a long and grueling illness he knew would ultimately take his life? What we have witnessed over this past year, in both Steven’s and Craig’s responses to inconceivable hardship, has been nothing short of supernatural. I asked Steven once how he did it, and he said, “In the middle of the storm, in the middle of the typhoon, you just close your eyes and say, thank you.”

We have a saying in our family: It matters how you finish. And what we mean by that is, it really doesn’t matter what you accomplish or accumulate in this life, how high you rise in society or business or government, none of that matters if you throw it all away in the end. And conversely, it doesn’t matter how many mistakes you make along the way if you learn and grow beyond them. Because in the end what matters isn’t what we’ve done, but who we’ve been. What matters is the content of our character.

When I think of Steven, I will think of a man no more perfect than any of us, but a man of character and commitment, an extraordinary father and a wonderful friend. I will think of a man of faith, who died as he lived, counting every day a blessing and every blessing a reason for thanksgiving. When I think of my brother Steven, I will think of a man who finished well.

How Dark the Sky Without His Sun to Light It

2008-03-14T18:23:00.000-07:00

For my father’s funeral service:

Good morning and thank you for joining us today to honor my father, to celebrate his life here with us and to rejoice in his glorious new life. Thank you for being his friends and especially for loving and supporting him and Weyburn during these past few difficult years of illness. It’s good to be back at Holy Trinity. As most of you know and many of you remember, Karen and I grew up here. Life has taken us each in different directions since then, and when we come back to Hickory now, we find so much has changed. Someone else is living in the houses we lived in; they’ve knocked down our old elementary school and turned my old high school into a museum! But here at Holy Trinity we can still feel we’ve come home.

Our father felt at home here, too. And no wonder. He and our mother first joined this congregation when our family moved to Hickory in 1956, more than half a century ago. And I feel safe in saying that few, if any, have loved this body of Christ more or served it more enthusiastically. Did you know he even planted and tended many of the trees and shrubs you see on the grounds outside? It was a special gift of his. He had a way with living things; he understood the natural world as well as anyone I’ve ever known.

He practically grew up in the woods of upstate New York, taking every opportunity to hunt, fish and trap just outside the tiny village of Dolgeville, and in the great Adirondack forests nearby. He claimed he often terrorized his mother by standing on tiptoe in a second-floor window to see if the creek was high enough to ensure a good fishing day. Arthur William Millers was the youngest of eight children in a rollicking Lithuanian immigrant family—and the first to earn a college degree.

After wartime service in the Marine Corps, he cashed in his G.I. Bill benefits and enrolled at North Carolina State College (now NCSU), picking a major—forestry—that would take him back to the woods. In 1950, having acquired not only a degree, but a bride, my mother, Lucille Campbell, he found a job with the North Carolina Forest Service.

Daddy eventually transitioned to a desk job in municipal government, and contributed greatly to his chosen community of Hickory over a 27-year career with the City of Hickory. But he was always happiest out tromping through the woods, preferably with fly rod in hand.

I blame my father for my own love of nature, the reason I live in a California canyon populated by rabbits, rattlesnakes and mountain lions, a place vulnerable to catastrophic wildfires, and a place of spectacular natural beauty where I feel truly at home. It was my father, after all, who took Karen and me hiking and fishing all those Sunday afternoons at our grandparents’ farm down in Iredell County, and on summer Saturdays under leafy canopies alongside his favorite Blue Ridge trout streams.

If we managed to hook any keepers, Karen and I liked to watch Daddy clean our catch. He always took a moment to point out the various organs packed together so neatly inside our fish, glistening in healthy shades of pink, red and brown. Sometimes we’d find a golden sac of eggs wedged in there, too. The lesson was clear. Surely there was purpose behind such perfection. A creator behind such a well-drawn creation.

Everything in my father’s world was like that. Everything fit together, ran in cycles, conformed to a pre-ordained order. Tides rose and ebbed; seasons came and went and came again; trees grew in concentric circles that gave away their age and told what kind of weather they’d seen—a fat ring for a rainy year; a skinny ring for a dry one. Animals were born understanding their destiny and equipped to fulfill it. If everything went as planned, each species found its niche, creating a delicate balance. If not, nature had ways of restoring its own equilibrium.

What my father was really teaching us, I discovered much later, was how to live in harmony with nature rather than in defiance of it. Like him, I grew to sense the raw spirituality of the natural world, the primordial ties that bind us as homo sapiens to every other piece of the planetary puzzle. Like him, I came to understand that wonder leads to worship. And worship makes us whole.

The night before Bob and I got married, right here in this sanctuary, Hickory lay in the path of a lunar eclipse. Daddy and I sat side by side on the back steps of the red brick house where Karen and I had grown up and watched the earth’s shadow steal away the moon, hold it hostage for a while, then give it back. I don’t remember for certain now, more than three decades later, but I imagine my father slipped a sermon in there somewhere. Or maybe, by then, my last night of living in his home, he didn’t need to.

Seen or Unseen, Love Is All

2008-03-14T17:55:00.000-07:00

For the past several months, I've been busy saying goodbye to two of the most important men in my life. On Jan. 9, my incredible father, Arthur W. Millers, slipped away from this life into the unseen reaches of eternity. And last weekend, March 8, my beloved friend and brother in Christ, Steven C. Collins, joined him there. The services that marked their journeys home could not have been more different--or more joyful. The common denominator here was faith. Faith that this life is only a tiny slice of all that is. Faith that despite all we see and experience to the contrary, beyond our human senses, we exist, now and forever, within a benevolent reality.

Deja Vu All Over Again

2007-10-26T23:18:00.000-07:00

CAL FIRE Tanker 71, piloted by Lynne Magrew, drops a load of fire retardant on a burning hillside near Lyon's Canyon while fighting the Harris Fire in San Diego County. (Michael Robinson Chavez/Los Angeles Times) Oct. 26, 2007

What is it about October 26th? Four years ago today, our house burned, and Bob and I almost died escaping the Cedar Fire, supposedly the worst wildfire in California history. A year ago today, I was feeling bouyant about how far we'd come in three years, rebuilding our house and rebooting our lives. Then came news that a vicious new wildfire near Palm Springs had killed four (and eventually five) firefighters. So this year Bob and I decided to make Oct. 26th a good day. We'd planned a party for tonight. Just a few good friends for a backyard barbecue. Instead Bob was manning a booth at one of four local assistance centers for new fire victims, while Terra and I were visiting evacuees at a shelter, listening to heartbreaking stories that make our loss four years ago seem insignificant.

San Diego is once again reeling from a catastrophic, week-long fire seige. This one will push our 2003 holocaust into the footnotes. Multiple fires all across the county. Seven casualties despite an unprecedented half a million people evacuated. Up to 1,500 homes destroyed. Bob and I were among those displaced, forced to watch from afar as fire again threatened Terra Nova. But this time when the roads reopened, we were among the fortunate ones who had a home to come back to. Now all we can think of is those who are just beginning the long road to recovery. We want to help them, to prove by our recovery that life, even a better life, is possible after disaster. It's an uneven mission. One man I talked to yesterday, his name was Cesar, told me I was an angel sent by God. I will not forget him. But today an elderly man whose dog could not be rescued talked and cried and talked and cried some more, and there was nothing I could do for him but listen. I cannot forget him. Or his dog, Schotzi. I can only hope and pray that for them, as for us four years ago, there will be a bobcat leaping out of the smoke to show the way, that is to say, I hope they experience a miracle.

October 26, 2007. The more things change, the more things stay the same.

Global Gore

2007-10-13T21:56:00.000-07:00

Only in America could anyone with a name like Al Gore make good. But boy has the Goracle reached the pinnacle. Since his ignominious defeat by Supreme Court decision after winning the popular vote in the 2000 presidential election, Al has amassed a fortune while working tirelessly to save the world. He's become a Hollywood celebrity, winning both an Emmy and an Oscar for his climate change documentary "An Inconvenient Truth." And now, Al Gore has received the Nobel Peace Prize.

It wasn't that long ago--the day after the 2004 election to be precise--that I interviewed a prominent climate change scientist who was pretty close to despairing over both the re-election of an anti-science, anti-environment administration and the overall lack of public attention being paid to the critical problem of global warming, the topic of his life's work. "What if you got Bill Clinton to spear-head a big media campaign?" I suggested. "He'd listen to you. Or how about Gore? He's already written a book about the environment."

Little did we know Gore was already on the case. It's hard to believe that in only three years, green's become the new black, and Al's become a media darling and Nobel Peace Prize winner for spreading the decidedly unappealing message of climate change. I say more power to him. Now if only some equally passionate and brilliant folks can come up with a few market-friendly ideas to help us turn the problem around. And I don't mean hybrid Harleys or reusable McDonald's wrappers. I mean something really innovative, something drastic, like an anti-doomsday machine. Because I don't think we can recycle enough cans or replace enough light bulbs to make a big enough difference in time. Polar bears are already drowning.

But at least we're figuring that out now. That's progress over where we were even three years ago. And this Nobel business will draw even more global attention to the issue. Good news, all in all. Which we really need after the last couple weeks of the ongoing White House crime saga. Really, what kind of person can justify plunging the nation into multi-generational debt to finance a lost war, then take a mere pittance by comparison from poor children in need of health care? What kind of person merely redefines terms to be able to claim this nation does not torture people, when Abu Ghraib and Gitmo and secret offshore CIA prisons so graphically argue otherwise? It boggles the mind; it grieves the spirit.

So for now, I'm going to be happy for Al and Tipper and feel optimistic, if just for a little while, that change is still possible, and in a good way.

What Happens in Vegas ...

2007-10-02T11:50:00.000-07:00

... so far, isn't much to write home about. I'm ensconced in a posh room 20 stories up in the Mandalay Bay Hotel, with a floor to ceiling window view of the famous (or infamous?) Las Vegas Strip. It was lovely last night, in an artificial sort of way, watching darkness fall and the neon glow rise from here to the faux Eiffel Tower, eclipsing along the way the faux pyramid and sphinx and faux New York skyline. It's just not my kind of town, Vegas, but it was a free ride since Bob is attending a conference here. Sounded like a nice opportunity to veg out by a pool, do a little writing, take a nap, maybe even update my blog.

Enough with the Snakes Already!

2007-09-02T14:19:00.000-07:00

This one was little, only about 14 inches long, and skinny, no bigger around than a magic marker, but a rattlesnake nevertheless, wound up in a perfect coil on the threshold of our front door, pretty much exactly where my foot usually lands first whenever I go out. Plus it was dark and the snake was dark and the threshold is dark. Even when Bob and I went around through the garage with the now-well-used snake stick and covered bucket, Bob couldn't see this Southern Pacific rattler until I pointed it out. Fortunately we've learned to look close for just this sort of thing now before we take a step outside the house. What next though? If this little viper had been any closer he would've been IN the house. And, sorry Steve Irwin, wherever you are, but that's just over the line.

Vick Schmick

2007-08-27T17:53:00.000-07:00

I haven't blogged about the Michael Vick dog-fighting situation for a simple reason: it's entirely unspeakable. But I would like to pass along these pertiment comments by baseball Hall of Famer Hank Aaron, an accomplished man, a decent man, and a board member of Vick's now tenuous employer, the Atlanta Falcons.

“I’ve never seen someone who had so much ability and has fallen so far,” Aaron said. “It’s not what is going to happen as far as his football career is concerned. It’s just him as a man, as a human being, being able to get his life back.”

Well said. But still, Vick at least has a chance of getting his life back, which is more than can be said of the many dogs so brutally dispatched at his dog-fighting facility. For more information about the so-called "sport" of animal fighting, check out http://www.hsus.org/.

Finally!

2007-08-27T06:12:00.000-07:00

First the New York Times and now the Washington Post are reporting that "embattled Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales has resigned from his post, ending a controversial cabinet tenure that included clashes with Congress over the firing of nine U.S. attorneys and the scope of efforts to spy on U.S. citizens.

"Gonzales' resignation marks the loss of another Bush loyalist at a time when his support in public opinion polls has been lagging. Though Bush had voiced continued support for Gonzales, a longtime ally from Texas, the attorney general's support in Congress had withered after a series of run-ins that prompted some lawmakers to allege he had committed perjury."

And then there's this August 30th capsulization of the Gonzales legacy from that excellent British mag, The Economist:

GOING, GOING, GONZALES

The resignation of George Bush's attorney-general leaves the administration in a
pretty ruinous state

BETTER late than never. On August 27th, with his reputation in ruins and the Justice Department in chaos, Alberto Gonzales finally resigned as attorney-general. The immediate cause of his departure was the firing of nine federal prosecutors. The bigger cause was that he embodied most of the things that Mr Bush's critics find intolerable about his presidency.

Mr Gonzales's departure produced predictable cheers from Democrats. More significant was the reaction of his fellow Republicans. Nobody except Mr Bush seemed to have a good word to say for America's first Hispanic attorney-general. For his part, Mr Gonzales said that he was glad to have lived the American dream (he was one of eight children of an itinerant immigrant labourer). He said that even his worst days at the Department of Justice were better than his father's best days.

The battle over Mr Gonzales was one of the most bitter of Mr Bush's second term, inflaming relations between Congress and the White House, eating up weeks of congressional time and leaving the Department of Justice a dysfunctional shell, with several of its top posts empty and the professional staff more demoralised than at any time since Watergate.

Why did the attorney-general prove such a lightning rod? Mr Gonzales is a polite and inoffensive man. He has moderate views on affirmative action and abortion. His various appearances before congressional committees resembled nothing so much as the clubbing of a baby seal. But "Fredo", as the president liked to call him, was at the centre of two of Mr Bush's most controversial policies.

The first was the politicisation of the federal government. Republicans have long complained that the federal government is stuffed full of dyed-in-the-wool lefties who habitually ignore or subvert Republican policies. The Bush administration did more than complain: it increased the number of political jobs by 12% across the government and boosted the number of political jobs that do not require legislative confirmation by 33%.

The danger of this is that the federal government will degenerate into an arm of the Republican Party. This danger is particularly acute with the Justice Department, whose first duty is to implement the law as impartially as possible. Mr Gonzales raised hackles from the first because he was so close to the White House. His decision to fire nine federal prosecutors in 2006 suggested that he might be trying to cajole others into pursuing Republican policies. And his shifting explanations for his decision--from his insistence that he fired them for incompetence to his later descent into amnesia--sealed his fate.

Mr Bush was also determined to give himself the maximum possible latitude in dealing with terrorists. As the president's legal counsel during his first term, Mr Gonzales gave the green light to the Guantanamo prison camp, secret CIA prison camps, the wiretapping of American citizens and the use of torture. He even described some of the Geneva Conventions as "quaint". Mr Gonzales was not the architect of those policies--that honour probably belongs to Dick Cheney and his then chief counsel, David Addington--but he gave them his imprimatur. And his faltering performance as attorney-general provided the left with a chance of revenge.

FAREWELL TO THE TEXAS RAJ

Mr Bush now has the task of finding a new attorney-general. Several names are already circulating in Washington: Michael Chertoff, the secretary of homeland security; Larry Thompson, a senior vice-president at PepsiCo; Ted Olson, a former solicitor-general; Orrin Hatch, a senator. But it is a measure of the difficulty of the decision that the White House did not produce a name immediately.

Mr Bush wants to preserve as much of his anti-terrorism machinery as possible--particularly a surveillance programme that needs to be reauthorised again in five months. He hates the idea of Congress deciding who should get a job in his administration. But his options are limited. Whoever he chooses will face tough confirmation hearings in a Democratic-controlled Congress that has already feasted on Mr Gonzales's flesh--and will then have barely a year to rebuild a dysfunctional department.

Mr Gonzales's departure marks the end of a strange era in Washington politics: the Texas Raj. Mr Bush rode into town in 2001 surrounded by people who had known each other for years in Austin, who were fiercely loyal to "43", and who had little liking for the customs of the Potomac. But now they have almost all gone, the victims of time (Dan Bartlett), excessive partisanship (Karl Rove, the president's chief adviser, who resigned two weeks ago) and incompetence (Harriet Miers and Mr Gonzales). The only remaining members of the original posse are Margaret Spellings, the secretary of education, and Mr Bush himself. The Bush White House is now largely run by Washington insiders such as Joshua Bolten, his chief of staff, and Ed Gillespie.

But might Mr Gonzales's departure also mark the beginning of a new era of good feeling and reconciliation? Some people certainly think so. The departure of Messrs Rove and Gonzales has removed two of the Democrats' top targets, the argument goes, and the ascendancy of Mr Bolten in the White House creates the possibility of at least some co-operation between White House and Congress. Both parties have an interest in getting the farm bill and the energy bill passed; the Democrats have a wider interest in not appearing to be obstructionist. Mr Bush now has an opportunity to revamp his reputation by adopting a more emollient style.

Yet there are endless problems with this rosy scenario. Mr Cheney remains entrenched in the vice-president's office, along with Mr Addington and other hard-liners. The Democrats are determined to get their revenge for six years of brutal treatment at the hands of the Republicans. They will undoubtedly use the confirmation of a new attorney-general to do as much harm to the Bush administration as possible. They may also continue to harass Mr Gonzales for possible perjury during his hearings. There is a strong likelihood that they will demand the appointment of a special prosecutor in exchange for confirming a new attorney-general. This will ensure months of painful and embarrassing legal inquiries.

Mr Bush also has precious little political capital left, even with his own side, and certainly not enough to relaunch his presidency. The Gonzales fiasco has dealt yet another serious blow to his reputation. Mr Bush ("the decider") prides himself on his ability to pick good men and then allow them to get on with things. But Mr Gonzales was a lightweight crony who was out of his depth. Mr Bush also prides himself on his loyalty to his subordinates. But this loyalty has persuaded him to back friends long after they have become liabilities. Messrs Gonzales and Rove and the rest of the Texas posse now have the luxury of spending their retirements in their home state. Mr Bush has no choice but to spend the next 17 months in Washington. He is not in for a pleasant time.

Dog Days of Summer

2007-08-22T22:21:00.000-07:00

I'm celebrating the return of Internet service to Terra Nova tonight with a new blog entry! Yes, we are finally back online in a big way with our own T1, and I have a lot of Web surfing to catch up on after six frustrating weeks of catch as catch can Net availability via Starbucks hot spots and a borrowed Verizon card that worked only on Bob's computer, which meant early morning or after-five Net access only. It was a good thing all in all, kind of a Web diet, or probably more accurate, Web rehab. So here's a summary of where we're at as summer winds to a close.

For starters, we've ramped up to five canines in the house. Yes, five. In addition to our three Newfs--Terra, Charter and Lilo--EK is here for a couple of weeks with Shiloh, a sweet, wiggly yellow lab, and Rory, an impossibly cute Cavalier spaniel with a death wish. It only takes a second without direct supervision for Rory to find a new way to attempt suicide. He's three and a half now, with quite a track record.

From his first visit to Terra Nova at age 4 months when he immediately snorted up a handful of foxtails, necessitating a sleepover at the emergency room, to his latest adventure--breaking into the duffel containing his food and eating himself into a near comatose state--Rory never misses an opportunity to terrify his human caregivers. This time, without knowing what he'd gotten into (he left no evidence, having managed to locate a secret side entrance while leaving everything else zipped up tight) we all panicked, and Rory got to spend the day at the vet's on IV fluids to help his body process all that dry kibble. Last year's big adventure brought him nose to nose with a striking rattlesnake, and only Bob's totally selfless intervention scooped the little scamp out of harm's way a nanosecond ahead of certain death. Of course right now the Rorster is curled up sleeping on the couch, looking ever so angelic.

Speaking of rattlesnakes, we've certainly seen our share of them in the past few weeks. About 10 days after my exciting front-porch encounter, Bob ran across a similar-sized specimen elsewhere on the property. This one we transported farther away, which turned out to be a good decision since the photos we each took of our respective snakes revealed identical markings. We'd both captured the same snake! Even after that, I came across a suspiciously similar-looking fellow crossing our neighbor's dirt driveway. Could it be? Or are we just well populated with 3 foot rattlesnakes? Needless to say, we've learned to watch our step pretty carefully.

Of course, it wouldn't be summer in East San Diego County without a week or so of beastly heat. This year has been nicely temperate until this last week when we spent about four consecutive afternoons in triple-digits, grateful for our solar-powered air conditioning. Today was bearable again, but high temps always raise the spectre of wildfire, and it's been another year of drought, so everything that hasn't burned lately is crackling dry and itching to explode. All we need to ratchet the fire danger all the way up is a good stiff Santa Ana.

In the meantime, the Santa Barbara area is fielding the Zaca Fire, an immense blaze that's been burning for six weeks already. With containment still a ways off, the Zaca has hit 200,000 acres and is beginning to nudge the Cedar Fire's record as possibly the largest fire in California history at 276,000 acres. Thanks to an atmospheric inversion layer, we've even had smoke here the past couple of days. Fortunately, the Zaca Fire has so far kept largely to the Los Padres National Forest, and no homes or human lives have been lost. I would try to come up with a pithy clincher for this post but it's after 11, and time to sleep. Right after I take all the dogs out for one last airing.

Have a Look at This Little Beauty!

2007-07-06T21:26:00.000-07:00

A few times in my life I've actually surprised myself by doing something I really wouldn't have suspected I could do. Having a baby, for example. Driving down a mountain through smoke and fire. Scuba diving with a shark. These were all things that other people did. Not me. Until I did them.

Today I added to that very short list after discovering this Terra Nova visitor right on the front porch, enjoying the wet spot where the fountain spray gathers. I actually picked it up with our snake stick and corraled it in a covered bucket until Bob got home. Then we walked way down the hill and released it. And really, it was a beautiful creature. What a shame most people just kill these guys. They were here first after all. We've intruded on their habitat. Plus, we really need them to keep the rodent population in balance. So this particular Crotalus mitchellii, aka Southwest Speckled Rattlesnake, is off hunting again tonight as usual, after an unusually eventful day. I'd like to think Steve Irwin would be pleased.

Stick a Fork in Mitt Romney; He's Done

2007-07-04T21:59:00.000-07:00

Number of dog owners in the U.S.: 43 million

Number of dog owners in the U.S. likely to vote for a presidential candidate who once drove 12 hours with the family's Irish setter locked into a kennel atop the car, stopping only to hose the dog off when urine and diarrhea started dripping down the car windows, and then rationalizing that good ole Seamus LOVED riding on top the car, really he did: zip, zero, nada

Kessler Flats

2007-06-15T23:50:00.000-07:00

Point to point, as the crow--or the sheriff’s helicopter--flies, it’s only about four miles from where the lost hunter, Sergio Martinez, lit his infamous signal fire to the cul de sac in Ramona’s San Diego Country Estates where the Cedar Fire took the first of more than 2,200 houses in late October, 2003. On the ground, however, it’s literally a long and winding road.

Bob and I set out last Sunday to retrace Sergio’s footprints and in the process we logged nearly 100 miles on the Suburban. We started by driving north up Wildcat Canyon to Ramona, where Hwy. 67 becomes Hwy. 78, and then on past farms, horse ranches and even a camel dairy as we wound into the Laguna mountains all the way to the outskirts of Julian. A mile shy of that quaint little mining village turned tourist mecca, we turned south again on Pine Hills Road.

In most Cedar Fire reports, the fire's point of origin is usually described as four miles south of Pine Hills. I'd never been there before, but it's easy to miss--a tiny community of homes, many decidedly upscale, and all loosely clustered around a dinner theater and a fire station. It was here at the Pine Hills station that some 350 firefighters waited while their bosses drove one dirt road after another, in the darkness, trying to find a way into the fire. They never did, of course, which is why the blaze was able to simmer along until the Santa Ana winds came up in full force at midnight and shot the fire like a cannon ball out of the mountains and eventually all the way into the city of San Diego 50 miles to the west.

Pine Hills Road leads almost immediately to Eagle Peak Road, which turns quickly from asphalt to gravel and dirt. Sure enough, four miles later we came to Kessler Flats, where Sergio pulled off and parked his truck early the morning of October 25, 2003. Then he and his hunting partner, Ron Adkins, headed off into the chaparral in search of deer.

We only found a couple of spots along Eagle Peak Road near Kessler Flats where you can pull off, and certainly no place big enough for a fire engine to park, much less turn around. Think about trying to squeeze in a fleet of trucks and engines, bulldozers and crew buses. And being sure they could all get turned around and make a hasty exit if the fire turned around and headed back in their direction, as wildfires have often been known to do.

In fact, it was in almost this exact location half a century ago when 11 firefighters were killed during an unexpected flash-over in a canyon during the Inaja Fire. We'd even stopped at the Inaja Memorial just before Pine Hills Road and read their names.

As the name implies, Kessler Flats is a broad, grassy break in the rolling hills and corrugated canyons that distinguish this part of San Diego County. It must have been beautiful a couple of months ago when everything was still green. It’s still striking now, a lake of golden grasses bending in the breeze, studded by islands of enormous oaks.

We’d made a point of coming more prepared than Sergio. He’d brought only a rifle and a single canteen. We brought two backpacks full of water, a sheaf of topographical maps and two GPS locaters. We armored ourselves with sunscreen, sunglasses, ball caps and snake boots. And Bob, still my favorite Marine, even strapped on a pistol, just in case some hungry mountain lion thought we looked tasty.

There’s no trail leading from Eagle Peak Road to the point where Sergio ended up after losing track of his hunting buddy and wandering lost and thirsty for nearly 8 hours that scorching hot October Saturday. The map actually shows a bit of trail, just a loop from one point to another on Eagle Peak Road. But on the ground we saw only a few tire tracks, and even they didn’t seem to lead anywhere. Certainly nowhere in the vicinity of the latitude and longitude we needed to find. So it was strictly a cross country hike, a real adventure pointing the GPS in front of us like a water wand.

We’d plugged in the coordinates from the sheriff’s report, which documented exactly where the helicopter had landed when it arrived to extract Sergio from the mess he’d made. And we knew also from the same report where he’d been found and where the fire had been burning. Plus, we’d had help in pinpointing the exact locations from sheriff’s deputy and chopper pilot Dave Weldon, who’d been the one flying that afternoon when he and his partner, Rocky Laws, rescued Martinez.

Past the spreading grassland of Kessler Flats, the terrain drops away down a fairly steep slope and then flattens out again for a bit until it runs into a leafy line of trees growing alongside a little creek. This time of year, it’s narrow enough to step over. Immediately on the other side, we had to scramble up a serious incline to find the tiny level spot where Weldon had perched the helicopter the day of the fire.

No one can know how far Sergio Martinez actually wandered that day trying to find either his buddy or his truck. He told Weldon and Laws he’d been all the way to the bottom of a rugged canyon that falls off precipitously immediately east of where he ended up. Standing out there where Sergio stood, it’s hard to imagine why he would do such a thing. It’s a long way down and ridiculously steep, much steeper than the terrain we’d covered.

I had to wonder why he would choose such a rugged path and think he could possibly be retracing his steps. It doesn’t make sense that he couldn’t have picked out a landmark or two to steer by. But then it’s difficult to imagine, now that the fire has cleared the terrain, what Sergio’s visibility would have been at that time. Judging by Weldon’s report and the remaining black skeletons of once-mature scrub oak, the brush around him towered up to 15 feet.

When they spotted him from the air, led in by the smoke, Sergio was sitting on a low jumble of rocks. Just downwind from him, edging uphill toward the top of a broad knoll, a patch of chaparral about 50 yards square, or roughly half a football field, was burning. And the wind was already blowing at 20 to 30 mph.

Sergio couldn’t have seen the Country Estates from his seat on the rocks. He would’ve been looking east toward Cuyamaca, Middle Peak and North Peak, the heart of the Lagunas where 400 year old conifers had towered over generations of San Diegans drawn to the cool green quiet of Rancho Cuyamaca State Park. A nearly sacred place, a natural cathedral, irreplaceable. Within the week it would be reduced to ash and firewood.

The Country Estates lay to the southwest. You have to walk uphill a little farther to the top of a gentle knoll rising behind Sergio's rock pile. And that day there was a fire in the way. But when we reached the top of the knoll we could see the estates clearly, even the water tank on Thornbush Road where CDF Battalion Chief Kelly Zombro and NFS Division Chief Hal Mortier were waiting and watching that Saturday night to see exactly what this little fire was going to do.

The four miles between Sergio and the two chiefs covers some of the roughest terrain in Southern California: the San Diego River drainage. The mountains are steep here, I’d say 60 to 70 degrees as a general rule, and in some places approaching vertical. The gorge itself is a slash cut deep into nearly barren earth. In the rainy season, 40 foot waterfalls cascade from one notch in the topography to the next below it. A couple of trails wind down to the river itself. One of these bleeds off the end of Eagle Peak Road, two miles of ruts and boulders hugging the side of the mountain like a string of lights on a Christmas tree. One false step and the world falls away. It’s a full two miles in, but getting back out is the part I’d worry about.

I'd often imagined what the terrain was like where Sergio wandered for so long and got so hopelessly lost. That's why I wanted to see it. Perhaps I should've expected it would be different than I'd thought it would be. But still I was surprised to find it much less wild, less intimidating than in my imagination, though definitely on the edge of rugged. A few things do become perfectly clear once you’re out there where Sergio ended his long day’s journey into exhaustion. First, you’re a long way out in the sticks and a healthy hike in from the nearest road. On the other hand, you can turn in a circle and see nearly everyplace the fire went from here, which makes you realize that nothing is really all that far away, not the Country Estates or Barona or Lakeside. Not Poway or Scripps Ranch or Tierrasanta or Miramar. Not Alpine or Crest or even the Lagunas. And certainly not Julian or Wynola, where Firefighter Steve Rucker died fighting the flames.

Fanning out in all directions as it did, running with the wind, first southwest and then due east, when the Santa Anas died and the onshore breezes returned, the Cedar Fire was equally well positioned from this remote spot in the Cleveland National Forest to hit any and all of those locales in a straight run.

It seemed so very far away when we first heard of it. Miles and miles. But distance, like time, is relative. And the journey that took us so long by car and on foot is nothing to a bird, a helicopter or a wildfire.

It's Over. Or Is It?

2007-06-10T20:51:00.000-07:00

The Sopranos has faded into television history, not with a bang, as so many hoped, or a whimper, as so many feared. Instead creator David Chase, whose every episode was stitched together by carefully chosen music, completed his saga of America's favorite mobster with a Soprano family dinner at a wholesome, old-fashioned diner, set to the soundtrack of Journey's tune "Don't Stop Believin'" on the jukebox. After languishing suspiciously on every person in the place, the camera zooms in on Tony looking up--whether at his daughter Meadow, who's just arriving, or a mob assassin stepping out from the crowd, we'll never know for sure, because at that moment the screen goes blank. BLANK! And then the credits roll for the very last time.

So after all the speculation about what would happen to Tony in the end, Chase fooled us all by refusing to end much of anything. Except for top New York mafia man, Phil Leotardo, who did get popped, literally, which not so neatly put an end to the New York/New Jersey rumble that caused so much bloodshed last week. Instead of closure, Chase leaves us with an unmistakable message, via Journey. (Oh, Randy Jackson should be so proud tonight.)

Some will win, some will lose
Some were born to sing the blues
Oh, the movie never ends
It goes on and on and on and on

O.K. David, I get it. I'll admit; I was upset at first. Like everyone else, I expected, I wanted you to wrap things up with a neatly tied ribbon. But I defer to your creative genius. It really is better this way, believin' Tony's still out there somewhere, still doing this thing of his, still venting his mother issues to a therapist (any therapist), still buying his family's love with diamonds and BMWs, still holding it all together despite never knowing which stranger walking through which door will be the one to put a bullet through his brain. Ah, but we'll miss you, T. Salute.

Pomp and Circumstance

2007-05-21T10:34:00.001-07:00

It's graduation time again, and again our family has reasons to be proud. My nephew Luke graduated from the University of Illinois with a degree in computer engineering (yes, he's very brainy!) and immediately afterward was commissioned as an ensign in the U.S. Navy. Anchors aweigh, Lucas! Closer to home, Charter finally earned kudos after five years of playing second fiddle to super-sister Terra. Last week, the big goofy guy graduated from therapy dog prep school! This means he's on his way to becoming credentialed by a national therapy organization and beginning therapy visits. Who knows what sort of therapy work Charter will most enjoy, but it was wonderful seeing him do well in this class. He far surpassed my insulting expectations, and best of all, he loved it. I'd never seen him so happy, as the photo above indicates. By the way, it would be nice if not all doggy caps and gowns were sized for shih tzus!

Recent News Briefs

2007-05-21T10:12:00.000-07:00

1. I was wrong about Alberto Gonzalez. He's surprised me by really hanging in there, although controversy over the fired federal attorneys is still swirling, and he's had to throw another of his underlings to the sharks in a further, though apparently unsuccessful, attempt to end the furor. Bush came out yet again today voicing his support for his fellow Texan, so stay tuned.

2. Bob saw a mountain lion in our front yard! Half the people we've told about this were horrified. This population is best represented by Lauren's response: "Holy shit!" The other half were thrilled, as exemplified by my friend Jeri's "How cool!" Bob and I fall into this latter group. And yet, we don't want to be as naive about this newly manifested reality of life in the chapparal as we were about wildfires. Mountain lions are big, usually hungry predators uniquely equipped to kill big game, deer for example. So they're entirely capable of taking out most any domestic animal or hapless human.

Fortunately, however, mountain lions command a huge territory, whole counties even, so it's likely this one was just passing through and we'll never see him or her again. It's equally likely this was not the first time a lion has visited Terra Nova. They're not often seen after all. It's also comforting that the statistics are in our favor. There have only been about a dozen instances of mountain lions attacking humans in California since 1870. Yes, eighteen seventy. Still, I'm gonna keep my eyes peeled for big stray cats from now on!

3. "American Idol" and "The Sopranos," two of the three t.v. shows I watch every week (House is the third), are spiraling to a close. (Could there be two more disparate examples of television programming?) Idol has been fairly lackluster all season, and with Melinda Doolittle's premature departure last week, who even cares whether Blake or Jordin ends up on top? Jordin is my pick; she's the most Idol-ly. But all four finalists will have music careers after this, so big deal. Go ahead and cue the confetti.

"The Sopranos", however, is getting meatier and more mysterious with each passing week. Now with only two episodes left until the series finale, it's impossible to predict what's going to happen to Tony and his two families. Last night's installment, which portrayed everyone's favorite mafioso at the height of both paternal tenderness and sociopathic brutality, was as brilliant as they come and equally excruciating to watch. It's going to be hard waiting two weeks now for the penultimate episode. (Some HBO special next Sunday night. Gee, thanks, guys.)

4. Here's a recipe for a surefire mood booster. Mix a bunch of long-time friends you don't often get to see with three days off, the natural beauty of Boulder, Colorado, and 450 Newfoundland dogs. I wasn't going to go to this year's Newfoundland National Specialty, especially since I'd gotten to go to Westminster, but I'm glad I did. You just can't stay sad for long in the company of Newfies.

My Father, Myself

2007-04-27T20:34:00.000-07:00

This time a week ago, I was sitting in a hospital waiting room in North Carolina while a doctor rearranged my father’s plumbing. It’s been a faulty system for at least three years now, the victim of rampaging prostate cancer that got away from the doctors almost a decade ago. Since then, it’s been a game of medical chess, a series of moves calculated to outsmart the cellular pawns of a clever and malicious disease. And through it all, my father has chosen to remain remarkably optimistic and upbeat, refusing to give up despite numerous setbacks that had us all bracing for the big good-bye.

“Your father is incredible,” the urologist confirmed last Friday morning in the hallway outside the exam room where he’d just seen Dad. “For every one like him, there are 15 others who would’ve been dead two or three years ago.”

“He’s an incredible person,” I agreed, working to keep my voice even.

Half an hour later, after several unsuccessful attempts to replace the plastic tubing that now substitutes for Dad’s broken plumbing, the doctor looked me straight in the eye. “You came at the right time,” he said.

He went on to explain that since he couldn’t fix the problem in the office, we’d have to reconvene at the hospital—the sooner the better—where he’d attempt a surgical solution. He left the room then to cue his nurses. My father’s wife was already out making phone calls. Daddy and I were alone. He seemed worn out.

“It doesn’t look good, honey,” he said. “There’s something going on in there, some kind of obstruction.”

I reached out and squeezed his knee, tried to look reassuring, tried to keep my eyes from filling. But his knee was all bones. He’s five eleven, “six foot when I’m scared,” he used to joke, and down to 162 pounds. I wondered if he was feeling that extra inch now. But then I couldn’t remember ever in my 54 years seeing my father afraid. Sad, for sure. Frustrated. Weary even. But afraid? I don’t think so. He must’ve hidden it well.

He was Hollywood handsome once, tall and lean, with lush dark hair, blue eyes and a perfect smile. He could hike through the mountains all day in a pair of rubber waders, fly rod in hand, searching for the perfect hole on the perfect trout stream, and not even be disappointed if he didn’t catch anything. Just being out in the woods was what mattered to him.

It’s hard to see him these days, shuffling along in his bathrobe behind a walker, the catheter tube looping down his leg. His hair is white now, thin and fuzzy from chemo. Except for doctor’s appointments, he hardly leaves the house, hardly even gets out of bed except for a late breakfast at the kitchen table or to watch a little T.V. from the comfort of a living room rocker, an afghan spread across his lap, trailing to the floor.

When he checked into the surgery clinic last Friday, I wedged myself into the tiny admissions office behind him and my step-mother while they answered questions and he signed papers. The admitting clerk was a young woman with fiercely teased and shingled hair, brassy blonde in front, orange red behind, topped off by a darker line of roots showing through a center part. She kicked things off by addressing Dad as “sweetheart.”

I wanted to stop her right then and there. Wanted to say, excuse me, let me introduce you to my father. Despite what you seem to think, he is not a child. Not four, but 84 years old, and once upon a time, long before you were born, he ran this city. He is every bit that same person sitting here right now, with the same intelligence, the same capabilities and the same sensibilities, and you should address him with respect.”

I wanted to say that, but another part of me was desperately channeling the Dali Lama, who says in every circumstance of life you have the option of being kind, so be kind, be kind, be kind. And still another part of me, a long-ago part that comes surging back whenever I return to the green trees and red bricks of my hometown, was trying to remind me of something I’ve known since way back then: “Sandra, this is the South. People say those sorts of things here; they don’t mean anything by it.”

I knew I should let it go; two out of three voices agreed. But that third part of me was just too angry, too insulted for my father’s sake. Hadn’t he suffered enough without having to endure the condescension of some tacky redneck tramp? I couldn’t let it go. I had to stand up for him.

So after I’d helped Dad and his wife shuffle out of the tiny room and off to the elevators on their way to the surgical floor, I told them I’d be right there and let the door close behind them. Then I turned back to the admissions clerk, Joyce, her name tag told me.

“Joyce,” I said, trying to keep my voice low and kind enough to placate the Dali Lama. “You called him ‘sweetheart’. That’s so demeaning to an elderly patient. He’s not a toddler.”

Joyce stood behind her desk with her hands stuffed into the pockets of her blue medical smock and smiled at me. “Bitch,” she was probably thinking, but she just kept on smiling. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t realize. I’ll try to do better.” I rambled on for another 30 seconds or so, repeating myself until she repeated her apology, which made me feel embarrassed enough to finally make an awkward exit.

Upstairs I found Dad and his wife and reported that I’d had a little talk with our disrespectful admissions clerk. My father looked confused.

“Why?” my step-mother asked for both of them.

“She called him sweetheart. It’s disrespectful.”

My step-mother looked confused. “Well, people say that,” she said. “Nobody thinks anything of it.”

It’s taken me a week, but I realize now it wasn’t my father’s honor I felt so compelled to protect. It was me. I’m losing him, and I know it. I didn’t want to be reminded, especially not by a stranger with atrocious hair, that my father, my strong, handsome, incredible father, while still all of that, is also old and sick and feeble and dying. Because when I allow myself to think of life without him, I am adrift in sorrow.

Watch Out, Alberto!

2007-03-31T17:31:00.000-07:00

Things are getting stickier and stickier for U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez. New disclosures from his own former chief of staff Kyle Samson--yes, the same guy the White House scapegoated and dumped in hopes of making an ugly issue go away--contradict Alberto's denials that he was in on pre-firing conversations about the eight U.S. attorneys sacked, as we all now know, at the direction of the White House. As a result, the Capitol Hill clamor for the AG's resignation is rising on both sides of the aisle, with Republican Rep. Lee Terry undoubtedly speaking for many of his colleagues in saying, "I trusted him before but can't now."

In the midst of this tumult, President Bush has once again weighed in, calling Gonzalez an "honorable and honest" man who retains his "full confidence." I'm going to gloss right over my inclination to wonder what Bush even knows about the concepts of honor and honesty and instead leap to my point of immediate concern. Hello? Alberto? George W. Bush has gone out of his way a second time now to underscore his support for you. This is the kiss of death. The. Kiss. Of. Death. Can you hear me, Alberto? Alberto?

Well, obviously not. But no doubt you've already figured this out on your own. No doubt you're spending the weekend writing your resignation speech. Something about how you still maintain your integrity and innocence. Consequently, the president is justified in his steadfast support for you. But because this situation has become so controversial and divisive. Because it is sapping energy and attention away from the overarching mandate of our time, i.e., the global war on terror, you have decided, for the good of the country, yea, for the good of the world, to resign your position. You are going back to Texas to spend more time with your family. And the president has graciously, albeit reluctantly, accepted your decision, which by the way, was yours alone and not in any way, not in any way whatsoever, influenced by the White House.

So you go, Alberto. You keep writing. Polish it all up. And go ahead and start practicing your delivery. I predict you've only got a day or so, end of the week at most, until showtime.

Mr. John at the Garden

2007-03-26T08:10:00.000-07:00

I'd forgotten this, but Elton John was also born on March 25. (And Gloria Steinem, my childhood friend Mary Ann Gatwood's father, and my Starbucks partner, Adam, who told me last week with obvious concern that 22 feels so old to him, especially since he's dating a woman of only 20.) No doubt Sir Elton--Mr. John to The New York Times--partied the hardest of all of us, celebrating with a big concert at Madison Square Garden.

Having spent a week at The Garden just last month during Westminster, I can tell you that despite its legendary reputation, the place has the ambiance of . . . . Well, I was going to say a helicopter hanger. But then I remembered I actually visited a helicopter hanger recently, when I interviewed a couple of sheriff's department pilots for my book, and it was much nicer than Madison Square Garden. So I'll just say that The Garden is a dump with a whole lot of history behind it. Kinda like the Alamo. Clearly, however, it holds a special place in Sir Elton's heart, as Times writer Nate Chinen explains:

Elton John never seemed like the kind of guy to shrug off a big occasion. So it was natural, perhaps even inevitable, that he would celebrate his 60th birthday at Madison Square Garden. His sprawling concert on Sunday night featured no onstage candles – not even "Candle in the Wind" – but felt ceremonial enough without them. There were dedications, recollections and a shower of confetti. A banner was unfurled from the rafters, bearing a giant number 60 under Mr. John's name.

That last flourish actually commemorated something other than a birthday: Mr. John's 60th performance in the arena. That's more than any other single artist, as the finer print under the numeral made clear. Small wonder that Mr. John wanted to spend his birthday at the Garden: it's obviously a place where he feels at home.

Obviously. But the real reason I took note of the rocketman's birthday bash was that he seems to share not only my birthdate but also my perspective about getting older. As Chinen notes, one of the evening's final songs was "I'm Still Standing."

The song's lyrics amount to a bitter reprisal, but Mr. John made them sound more jubilant than angry. "Don't you know I'm still standing better than I ever did," he sang. "Looking like a true survivor, feeling like a little kid."

They Say It's Your Birthday

2007-03-25T23:49:00.000-07:00

Well, it's my birthday, too, yeah. And I had a good time. Bob had to leave early this morning for meetings in D.C. But it was still a nice day. Quiet. Relaxing. Just putzing around the house. Enjoying the luxury of a legitimate day off, a day devoted to nothing in particular. I even watched a couple of old Magnum P.I. episodes via DVD. The ultimate in goofing off. And then tonight, a lovely dinner in Del Mar with E.K. and a friend. So I'm 54. Geez. It sounds terrible. But you know something? The older I get, the younger I feel. There's just so much I've already done, so much I don't need to worry about anymore. And so much more to do, so much more to look forward to. I remember being 14 and 24. I was so young, and I felt young. But when I turned 34 and even 44, I'd already begun to worry about getting old. No more. So maybe it's not the Beatles I should be quoting. Maybe it's Dylan. Because I really was so much older then. I'm younger than that now. (No pun intended.)

Political Prediction

2007-03-20T23:08:00.000-07:00

I'm a little worried about U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. He's neck deep in the latest White House scandal: the firing of eight U.S. attorneys, including San Diego's Carol Lam, who built the case against former Republican Congressman, now federal prisoner, Duke Cunningham. Recently revealed evidence suggests these eight public servants lost their jobs not on the basis of poor performance, but because they irritated the president. An e-mail exchange actually published on the front page of The New York Times proves there was even West Wing talk about firing all 93 U.S. attorneys nationwide, just wiping the slate clean, the better to replace them with Bush cronies. None other than Supreme Court justice wannabe Harriet Miers thought up that brilliant idea. But back to Alberto. I'm worried because Bush has been making a big point of saying he has "complete confidence" in him. Normally, if you worked for the president and found yourself in hot water you'd be glad to hear that. But we all know that Bush is a pathological liar. He just can't help it. He lies and lies and lies and seems to naively believe that people still believe him. Well, I don't. And if Alberto Gonzales does, he should do lunch with Michael Brown or Donald Rumsfeld. And then go home and polish up his resume.

My Kingdom for a Cursor

2007-03-20T22:00:00.000-07:00

I'm having technical difficulties. It all started after Lilo went ripping around my study one day when our wireless LAN was on the fritz and I had my laptop cabled to the printer. I came in after the fact to find the laptop on the tile floor and the printer teetering precariously on the edge of disaster. All seemed to be well at first, but upon closer inspection I found a hinge on the laptop had popped out a bit, which causes the screen to flop over backwards once it's pushed past center. O.K. not so great, but not so bad either.

A day or two later, the real nightmare began when I discovered my cursor has taken on a life of its own. Sometimes it drifts to the right or left, all the way across the screen until it hits the edge and disappears. Sometimes it rises like a balloon to the top of the page or falls like a rock to the bottom. Until it disappears. Sometimes it drifts on the diagonal, all the way to a corner. Where it disappears. And sometimes it runs back and forth across the page, like a swimmer doing laps. Before it finally disappears. But mostly it just disappears for no apparent reason. And then I have to experiment with various decidedly low-tech ways of making it reappear.

Intuitively, it seems that tracing big swirly patterns on the track pad should do the trick. When this doesn't work, in other words, about 90 percent of the time, I try repeating these swirly motions while pressing the track pad harder and harder. Which sometimes works. Bob suggested a more macho approach--simply beating on the machine--which actually seems to be the most effective method. So I've been playing a lot of computer bongo lately.

I spend so much time with my computer it feels almost like an extension of myself. Almost human. You know, like HAL or Data. So it seems it should gradually get better, like a person with a bad cold. But it's not getting better. If anything, I'd have to say it's getting worse. Right now, for example, as I type, my cursor is acting totally spastic, jumping up and down the left margin of the screen with every keystroke. When I stop it drops toward the bottom. And disappears. As hard as I try to deny it, this is not the behavior of a healthy cursor.

I wish I knew what it is inside my laptop that controls the cursor, what exactly about its recent unfortunate accident made it go haywire. I have this naive impression that if I only knew what it is, I could fix it myself. I fixed my washing machine once. Took it all apart, put it back together, and it worked just fine. That was 30 years ago, but it still ranks in my mind as a great mechanical moment.

Whatever's going on with this crazy cursor, it's gotta be a hardware problem. Something way, way beyond me. Which means I'm going to have to get a new laptop pretty soon. I've known this day was coming. I knew it the moment I let my "whatever happens, we'll send a guy out to
fix it" extended warranty expire. I hated to do that, but I had to. This little Latitude is almost 3 1/2 years old after all, and since the battery can't hold a charge for more than 11 or 12 seconds anymore, it required constant life support even before this cursor business started up. So it didn't make sense to invest another $250 in Ole Betsy when I can buy a next-generation model for only a thousand or so.

I did hate to drop that warranty though because I really used it. At least three different Dell repair reps have replaced various parts of my computer and some more than once. Motherboards, keyboards, outboards, inboards, whatever. The first of these guys came once to my office and once to the house. I found him a little creepy. Hardly said a word; couldn't be chatted up. All serious and morose. ("He seemed like a nice enough guy," said John Doe, the suspect's neighbor, "kinda quiet though, usually kept to himself.") Plus, he told me my machine was so gritty inside it looked like it had been to Iraq. He meant that literally, having actually worked on computers that had been to Iraq. Or so he said. Now I ask you, how can that be possible? I know I use my computer a lot. O.K., so I use it almost all the time. And I use it everywhere. In bed. On the couch. In the car. Sitting on the floor. Hello? That's the whole beauty of having a laptop. And I leave it open. And there's a lot of dust where I live. I admit all that. But geez, I live in a house. With a roof and walls and a central vacuum. Not a tent in a war zone.

Thank goodness for Dell Guy No. 2, a grandfatherly type who was as outgoing as Guy No. 1 was reserved. And yet he did not feel the need to guilt trip me about the amount of dirt clogging my hard drive. What a breath of fresh air! But after taking my machine all apart and then putting it back together, Guy No. 2 had a couple of screws left over and seemed totally baffled as to why. Uh... yeah. Really. Still, everything worked just fine. And besides, Dell Guy No. 3, who seemed both psychologically sound and technically competent, fixed the problem I'd called him about and then cleaned up No. 2's mistakes to boot.

But that was then, and now my cursor is playing hide and seek on me, and I can't do much of anything without it, and I have no more Dell Guys standing by on retainer, just waiting to come fix it. So I'm afraid the end is near for my faithful D600. Time to start shopping for a replacement. In the meantime, I really think I'd better go run a backup.

Terra Talks About Therapy

2007-03-14T19:24:00.000-07:00

Terra was asked to contribute an article to the newsletter published by Paws'itive Teams, a San Diego organization devoted to training and deploying service and therapy dogs. Here's what she had to say about her work in its new goal-directed therapy program. I hope it gives you a good idea of what therapy dogs do and what an important difference they make in the world--not to mention what a special girl Terra is!

Hi, I’m Terra, a champion Newfoundland, an obedience dog, a water rescue dog, a draft dog—and a therapy dog. Yes, I know, it’s quite a resume, but Newfoundlands are working dogs after all, so we have to stay busy! Some people wonder which of my many jobs is my favorite. Well … I do love the bright lights and glory of the show ring, but honestly? There’s nothing better than being a therapy dog!

Why? Because it’s a win-win situation. As a therapy dog, my job is to make people happy; in return, I get tons of compliments and attention. And usually a few treats, too. Besides, I love seeing people perk up when I walk into a room. They may be sad or grumpy or bored, even sick or hurt, but the minute I show up, they start feeling better.

I began my therapy career as a pup, learning from my big brother, Epic, who worked at a convalescent center. Epic had gone to Paws’itive Team’s Therapy Prep School with my human partner, Sandra, so he knew the drill. “Kid,” he said. “You’re gonna be a natural. Just wag your tail, smile and kiss people.” Epic was right. Therapy was easy for me. And so much fun!

I’ve had lots of therapy jobs since then. At the library. At a family shelter in downtown San Diego. Sometimes I put on my “crisis response dog” vest, and Sandra and I drive to disaster sites to cheer up anyone who’s scared or upset. About 3 months ago, I started a great new job in “goal-directed therapy.” This means I get to visit with people and help them learn new things! Our program is called Paws’itive Animal-Assisted Therapy or PAAT for short. Here’s how it works.

Once a week, Sandra and I go to a special high school, where we meet the other PAAT teams and head off together to the classrooms. First we visit with “transition” students, young adults, ages 18-22, with special challenges like Down’s Syndrome, cerebral palsy or brain injuries. Each dog team works one on one with a student, practicing whatever he or she needs to work on. For example: some students need to learn to use their words and voices better. So their teacher and Sandra teach them my favorite words, and if they can say something I know loudly and clearly enough, I’ll sit or lie down or speak to let them know they got it right. Boy, do they get excited then! They smile and laugh! You can tell they feel proud of themselves. Some students need to exercise their muscles, so I let them brush me. Or they throw one of my toys; I go get it and bring it back so they can throw it again. Sometimes they hold my leash, and we go for a short walk.

Each of us dogs works with one or two students, then we take a break. Next, we visit the “at risk” students—kids who get extra attention at this school to help them succeed in school. Our human partners show these students how to take care of us, help us practice our favorite behaviors and even teach us new things. At first, some of them act like they don’t want to work with us. But pretty soon most of them realize how cool dogs really are, how much we like them and want to play with them. And then they get involved and actually have fun. That’s when the treats start flying. Yes!! So far we’ve taught these kids some of our agility, water rescue and basic obedience moves. They don’t always show it, but inside they feel happy and proud to be our partners for a day. (Dogs just know these things.)

Then it’s time to go home. Sometimes Sandra stops by Rubio’s on the way and buys a treat for us to share. When they’re all gone, I curl up on the back seat and take a nap. Making so many people happy can be exhausting. But for a therapy dog, there’s nothing like a good day’s work to guarantee sweet dreams.

Spring Census

2007-03-09T09:03:00.000-08:00

Terra Nova is conspicuously short on rabbits. Time was, Bob and I would make a game of predicting how many would dart across our path between the main road and our driveway. But lately I've seen just one or two here and there. From this dramatic turn of events, I can deduce only one explanation: all those hawks and kites and owls and eagles soaring over the canyon, all those coyotes skulking from shadow to shadow, the occasional bobcat spiriting its way through the underbrush, must've been dining fairly well all winter.

Fortunately, it's spring. The finches are chirping outside the windows. Lizards are scurrying over the rocks again. The first treefrog has returned to my porch fountain. And though we've yet to see them, neighbors say the snakes are waking up from hibernation, too. This means, no doubt, that any surviving rabbits are busy doing what rabbits do best. I'm expecting to see a resurgence in the population anytime now. I really hope they hurry. Easter is just around the corner.

Oyasumi nasai Laji san

2007-03-06T08:03:00.000-08:00

Yesterday I got the sad news that my good friend Henry Large died last Thursday, and I'm frankly having quite a time adjusting to the idea of a world without Henry in it somewhere. There was no one remotely like him in my life, and never will be. I knew he'd been sick for quite a while; he hadn't been able to get together for our usual Starbucks moments for the last few months.

I'd been calling and e-mailing to check on him, and each time we talked he sounded terribly weak, but each time he assured me he'd gradually regain his characteristic vigor. The doctors said so. "We'll have time together in the future," he wrote me. He didn't tell me, as his wife did yesterday, that he'd recently been diagnosed with cancer on top of his other ailments. And now, just like that it seems, he's gone. My mind can't get past this one question: What will I do without Henry? I honestly haven't figured it out yet.

Henry long ago lost patience with the church, so no services are scheduled. His wife plans to scatter his ashes on a mountain in Montana where they both were born. Henry would definitely like that. But it doesn't seem right to let him fade away from my life without any sort of pomp or circumstance. So I've been wondering what I could do to honor him at his passing. All I've been able to come up with is this excerpt from my manuscript. I hope it gives you even a hint of Henry.

Our friend Henry Large is an acquired taste. I’d met him a decade before, in an extension class on Japanese language and culture where his studious demeanor, arcane grammar questions and brown polyester wardrobe quickly set him apart as the class geek. Eventually, however, I’d learned there was more to Henry. Much more.

He’d grown up during the 40s, a smartass kid in an unusually refined Montana family. His father, a noted opthamologist, responded to his son’s adolescent pranks by banishing him to military school. From there Henry edged west, going to college in Seattle, working in some undefined capacity for the CIA, even moving to Korea with his bride, Wilma, another fearless Montanan.

They’d lived there for a couple of years, time Henry spent learning his first Asian language and collecting a boatload of grisly stories that seemed to come pouring out of him whenever people were trying to eat. Medieval sounding tales about Korean toilet habits, violent street brawls, and severed heads displayed on spikes.

“Laji san,” I said to him once, using the Japanese derivation of his name as we did in class. “Do you just say everything that comes into your mind?”

He cocked his head, and his eyes bored into me with geekish gravity. “Sandra,” he replied. “I have no unexpressed thought.”

Once in the midst of an elaborate sushi dinner at the home of our Japanese teacher, Henry tanked up on sake and launched into such a graphic and distasteful narrative that Bob, seated beside him, laid a firm hand on his arm.

“Henry,” he said, “it’s time for an unexpressed thought.”

Over the years after their return from Korea, Henry and Wilma had owned a number of bars, a fairly substantial cabinet-making operation, and a menagerie of extraordinary animals, including a huge, precocious dog named Goopa and a rather demanding cat named Doo Doo. All at one time or another I heard about over coffee and Japanese lessons, a habit Henry and I continued on our own long after we’d exhausted the extension catalog’s course offerings. By then of course I’d discovered in Henry a brilliant mind, philosophic insight, surprising sensitivity--and a trusted friend.

Recently, Henry had announced he was going into real estate. So when we’d found a likely house just weeks before, we’d ask him to help us make an offer. And when we’d lost it to a higher bidder, Henry had taken it harder than we had.

“Now don’t you let your lip drag the ground over this one, Sandra," he said. “We’ll just keep looking until we find something even better.”

We did. But it took some doing. After I found the online real estate listing for the house that would become our new home, I called Henry, and we arranged to see the place the next day during my lunch hour. Henry met me at the office, and I climbed into his big green pickup truck for the trek to Wildcat Canyon. It was a wild, circuitous ride.

By the time Henry and I finally stumbled upon the right mailbox and turned off the asphalt onto the right dirt road, we’d explored a half dozen others and asked directions from a man on horseback. At the turnoff, the first property we passed was a mess of twisted metal and heavy equipment surrounding a couple of rusted
old house trailers. From there, the gravel road led straight ahead past a neatly kept geodesic dome and then dead-ended against the closed gate of a chain link fence. Our only option now was a sharp left turn that left us looking straight up at what had to be the steepest skinniest sliver of asphalt this side of Nepal. Henry sized it up in a single word. “HELL-o,” he said and slipped the truck into low gear.

So hello, Henry. And goodnight, my friend. But no need for goodbyes. Your stories, your humor, your spirit, your friendship will always be a part of me.

A Winter Gone to the Dogs

2007-03-02T07:33:00.000-08:00

So much has transpired since I last made the effort to update this blog. To those few of you who actually still check once in a while to see if there's anything new to read, I apologize for my long hiatus. But sometimes it's true that the more things change, the more things stay the same, so no one here should be surprised to learn the common denominator in my life for these past 3 months could well be described as dog-related.

All the Youngers spent Christmas in Arizona, surrounded by seven canines, one for every human, and even at that, Lauren's 18-month-old Newfy pup, Lilo, stayed behind in Seattle. (For the time being anyway.) Afterwards, Bob and I left our two Newfs on the ranch with Terri and John, while we drove farther east to Albuquerque. We arrived in sync with the worst winter storm anyone in New Mexico could remember. Within hours, the airport and freeways were shut down, so we spent the next three days snowed in at the Hotel Albuquerque, attending our second Richard Rohr conference. It was tough sledding for some 300 conference registrants who couldn't get there, including four in our own party turned away in mid-air just 5-10 minutes from the airport. (Excuse me, in Albuquerque, they call it "the sunport.") But for those of us already in place, looking out on a winter wonderland from warm, Southwestern style rooms, equipped with broad-band wireless Internet, and just an elevator ride away from a nice restaurant, it was a different story. Personally, I was pretty much in heaven before Father Rohr said a word. But as we've come to expect, he took us a few big steps further in that direction. Funny that a couple of Lutherans should end up looking to a Franciscan priest for spiritual insight, but Rohr has provided exactly what we've found lacking in Protestant circles for the last several years: a deeper way of thinking and talking, a larger way of living. Here's a typical Rohr nugget: we don't think ourselves into new ways of living so much as we live our way into new ways of thinking. In other words, God speaks through our experiences to our inner selves, the real selves that usually can't wedge a word into the incessant mental babbling of our self-made, resume-polishing, public personae.

But back to the dogs. We drove home by way of Sierra Vista, where we picked up Terra and Charter, whom Terri had already happily converted into ranch dogs, making for a rather fragrant ride on to California and mandatory baths for both pups before either was allowed into the house. Within the next week, the Newf population at Terra Nova jumped to three when Lilo arrived from Seattle. At first, we considered it an extended visit, just long enough to give Lauren a break from the considerable demands of single puppy-parenting. But seeing Lilo blend seamlessly into our larger "pack" and quickly abandon a number of neurotic behaviors that had really begun to worry Lauren, confirmed her diagnosis of severe separation anxiety and convinced us all that Lilo belonged at Terra Nova for good. Lauren has since been down to visit her "baby girl," and pronounced her happy and well-adjusted, a denouement that helps ease the heartbreak of giving her up. In the meantime, Bob and I have had to adjust to Lilo's impressive repertoire of puppy antics, but we're wowed by her exuberance, intelligence and athleticism. Terra and Charter seem somewhat less in love with Lilo than we are, but they've been good sports about it, and if pressed, might actually admit she's a lot of fun to chase and wrestle with.

Finally, I have this astonishing dog-related news to report. EK and I went to Westminster! Yes, we were there, ringside no less, at the 131st episode of that granddaddy of all dog shows. We were there as the television cameras flashed live coverage from New York City's storied Madison Square Garden, images of the world's best-looking dogs and, in many cases, oddest-looking humans. We were part of the surreal interspecies insanity that inspired Christopher Guest's classic mockumentary, "Best in Show." It is a Camelot moment. An oxymoron of an event that gives people ordinarily consumed by slinging kibble, vacuuming fur, scrubbing slime and scooping poop a chance to don tuxes and sequins and show off their favorite canine companions under a nationwide spotlight.

For the uninitiated, let me try to explain the full glory of this experience. Sitting ringside at Westminster, not to mention partying with the judges and having your photo snapped with James, the dashing English springer spaniel crowned "best in show," is akin to sitting just behind the winning bench at the Superbowl, or midcourt for the NBA finals. And then partying with the triumphant team after the game. It's like sitting in the front row during the Oscars, on the aisle where the winners brush by you on their way to the podium. And then chatting it up with Helen Mirren, Jennifer Hudson and Martin Scorcese over drinks and hors d'ouevres afterward. It's like watching the Kentucky Derby from the owners' booth and then helping adjust the roses just so for the official photographs. I could go on.

Suffice it to say, it was a dream come true for both of us, made even sweeter by EK's own appearance on the green carpet with five other winners of Westminster Kennel Club scholarships for vet students--the reason for our trip and VIP treatment--and only slightly tarnished by our 3-day delay in flying home to California after a Valentine's Day ice storm shut down every New York airport. Snowed in twice in as many months! Hardly a typical winter for a Southerner turned Southern Californian. But a great one, especially for a dog lover.

A Series of Revolting Developments

2006-12-02T18:18:00.000-08:00

My father has this saying that he uses mostly to comment on perceived inconveniences. For example. If your dog looks up from his kibble with disgust as if to say: "Give me a break. You're over there eating filet mignon, and I get cereal? Again?" Or if you sit down to watch your favorite t.v. program only to find it's been pre-empted by the World Series. And you hate baseball. In that kind of situation, my father might say, "What a revolting development!" I'm not sure where this idiom of his came from, probably some old Bob Hope movie. But it's been running through my mind a lot lately, and with a more sinister timbre than my dad ever intended. In fact, it seems we're hip deep in revolting developments these days. It's hard even to decide where to start the list. Oh, wait, I know. How about Iraq? Let's call it Revolting Development No. 1.

The situation "on the ground in Iraq," as White House press secretaries and intrepid reporters love to say, continues to devolve from bad to worse to worst. As the weeks, months and years creep by, things rachet down a few more notches and go right on devolving, descending beyond the boundaries of human imagination into a whole new nightmarish paradigm. A few major U.S. media outlets have finally taken the in-itself-newsworthy step of using heretofore verboten terminology to describe the hell Iraqi citizens and deployed U.S. troops must live--or die--with every day, every hour, every minute. So it's OK now, well, almost OK, to call this Dantean scenario "a civil war."

A few pundits have noted it has already taken us longer to impose our will on the formerly sovereign state of Iraq than to complete the European half of World War II. But still there's no end in sight. Warring insurgent groups are competing to see who can create more havoc and instability. And the fledgling puppet government we've installed, purple thumbs notwithstanding, seems impotent to control the violence. So the bombs just keep exploding, and the body parts just keep flying. At this point, anywhere from 30,000 to 650,000 Iraqi citizens have died in the violence. The first figure even George W. Bush accepts; the second is the conservative midpoint of a recent and respected study. Respected, that is, by everyone except George W. Bush, who immediately dismissed it as "just not credible." Adding to these horrific losses, a goodly proportion of the Iraqi intelligentsia, those most able to lead and sustain a nation, have fled the country rather than join the casualty statistics. Yet in the midst of all this mayhem, we in the U.S. must debate the PC-ness of whispering, much less printing the words "civil war." Revolting Development No. 2.

Of course I'm oversimplifying for effect. The media's real problem with officially declaring Iraq a civil war zone is that the White House refuses to use the term. And the reason for that is the rules of war say third parties should not intervene in family squabbles. So if Iraq really did deteriorate into civil war, which--despite what NBC, the New York Times and the L.A. Times may think--the White House insists it has not, how could we possibly continue our current involvement there without seeming to take sides one way or the other? We couldn't. We'd have to get out instead. Omigod! Revolting Development No. 3? Only to the presidential cowboy and his posse.

More rational minds have long been arguing it's time for us to get out anyway. And of course while the debate rages, we continue to lose American lives. Which, if you believe the president, are much more valuable than Iraqi lives. That's what I conclude anyway from his continual warnings that if we don't fight the terrorists over there, we will end up fighting them over here. Much better then by his calculus for Iraqi children rather than American children to be blown into bits by random explosions in the streets. At least until American kids are old enough to join the military, and then it's OK for us to send them "over there" where they can be blown up, too.

In addition to all the Iraqi lives lost, nearly 3,000 American sons and daughters, husbands and wives, brothers and sisters, grandsons and granddaughters, nieces and nephews, cousins, friends, coworkers and comrades in arms, have died in the violence. Which, just for emphasis, is about the same number the terrorists killed on 9/11. (Revolting Development No. 3.) Add to that 20,000 wounded. Twenty thousand, the population of my hometown, all with some sort of injury, some temporary, some permanent. Lost arms, legs, eyes, mobility, brain function. That kind of thing. No. 4.

Then there are those who return home physically intact, but with shattered psyches. Many Iraq War veterans have now served two or more combat tours. Can you imagine being 18 or 21, even 38 or 51 for that matter, and living in constant, unrelenting mortal danger? There is no front in this war; thus, no behind the lines security, not ever a moment when it's safe to let down your guard. Car bombs, improvised explosive devices and outwardly benign suicide bombers may be lurking in every shadow, around every corner, behind every smile, 24-7, eight days a week. In short, any moment in Iraq could be your last. What kind of toll must that take on the mind, now and for the rest of these young lives? What kind of reverberations must that have in the lives of their friends and families? The damage is simply incalculable. Are we only up to No. 5?

I am not merely humming kum bah yah here. I was a once a Marine wife. So I know a little bit about the way military people think. I know that nearly every one of today's military personnel volunteered for duty. I know most are competent, well-trained and highly principled. Most believe in the mission, believe they are making a difference. And despite the lack of press about the noncombat side of our effort in Iraq, there's no denying the good work American military people have done in terms of "nation-building," trying to put things back together again and helping the Iraqi people regain their footing. The problem is not with the military. The problem is with the White House. Those who volunteer to protect our nation with their very lives should never have been asked to go to Iraq in the first place. Not by a paranoid cadre of power-hungry egomaniacal civilians. Not on the basis of lies. Not without sufficient resources to succeed. Not without a plan beyond an initial triumphant, statue-toppling march into Baghdad. And certainly not over and over and over again. Which brings us to Revolting Development No. 6.

I recently met a young woman, the mother of three small children, whose Marine husband is currently serving his fourth tour in Iraq. His fourth tour. How many times can you roll the dice? No wonder even un-retired generals are starting to say, enough, the U.S. military is simply maxed out. And yet, in his radio address today, President George W. Bush, the same George W. Bush who four weeks ago admitted to a "thumpin" rebuke at the hands of midterm voters and sacrificed his beloved secretary of defense in penance, this same George W. Bush had the gall today to reprise his ragged mantra. The U.S. is committed to staying in Iraq until the job is done, he said, that is, until we've achieved victory. Sure the going is tough, he said, but never doubt that we are leading the Iraqis into a new era of democracy. Yada. Yada. Yada. Let freedom ring.

And there you have No. 7, a particularly revolting development. With all due and genuine respect for the office of the president, please, Mr. Bush, just stop talking. We don't believe you anymore. You've told so many lies I doubt if even Barney or Mrs. Beasley believes you anymore. All that talk about victory and freedom. Staying the course. Beating back the evil empire. All those religious words you throw around to appease big blocks of voters. It all just sounds ridiculous now. Because we're not doing the right thing in Iraq, and the world knows it. We're not accomplishing anything. We're not finishing anything. We're not winning anything. And we're certainly not leading the Iraqis to democracy. If anything, we've led them to slaughter.

Of course, Saddam Hussein was a psychotic despot. Of course, life in the old Iraq was difficult and repressed. Political dissidents were tortured and killed. It was a bad scene. I get it. But have we really improved the situation "over there"? Or have we only made it worse, dramatically worse? Have we really made the American people one bit safer? Or have we betrayed the sacrifices made by past generations to protect our liberties, so many of which we've now traded, in a moment of national vulnerability, for your empty promises of national security? Have we really staunched terrorism at its source? Or have we only confirmed the extremists' accusations of American arrogance, depravity and imperialism? Have we really defanged the evil empire? Or have we at Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo and Haditha, and in countless congressionally approved offshore torture chambers, actually become the evil we once so loudly decried? Which of course would qualify as a truly revolting development.

Today's Headlines

2006-11-08T17:25:00.000-08:00

Dems Win Big
Bush loses majority in Iraq-influenced election
Democrats Take the House
Nancy Pelosi First Woman Speaker of House
Democrat Wins Montana Seat, Ties Senate

Democrats See Surge in Power at State Level

Schwarzenegger victory is Republicans biggest success

Many see Democratic victories as rejection of Bush, start of foreign policy change
Rumsfeld Resigns as Defense Secretary After Big Election Gains for Democrats

I would add one more: America Wakes Up, Finally

Election Time

2006-11-02T09:27:00.000-08:00

The New York Times is mad as hell and with the mid-term election coming up next Tuesday, just not gonna take it anymore. Here's today's editorial, which nicely makes the point. It's so important that I'm going to reprint it in full and beg the Times' copyright indulgence.

Editorial
The Great Divider
Published: November 2, 2006

As President Bush throws himself into the final days of a particularly nasty campaign season, he’s settled into a familiar pattern of ugly behavior. Since he can’t defend the real world created by his policies and his decisions, Mr. Bush is inventing a fantasy world in which to campaign on phony issues against fake enemies.

In Mr. Bush’s world, America is making real progress in Iraq. In the real world, as Michael Gordon reported in yesterday’s Times, the index that generals use to track developments shows an inexorable slide toward chaos. In Mr. Bush’s world, his administration is marching arm in arm with Iraqi officials committed to democracy and to staving off civil war. In the real world, the prime minister of Iraq orders the removal of American checkpoints in Baghdad and abets the sectarian militias that are slicing and dicing their country.

In Mr. Bush’s world, there are only two kinds of Americans: those who are against terrorism, and those who somehow are all right with it. Some Americans want to win in Iraq and some don’t. There are Americans who support the troops and Americans who don’t support the troops. And at the root of it all is the hideously damaging fantasy that there is a gulf between Americans who love their country and those who question his leadership.

Mr. Bush has been pushing these divisive themes all over the nation, offering up the ludicrous notion the other day that if Democrats manage to control even one house of Congress, America will lose and the terrorists will win. But he hit a particularly creepy low when he decided to distort a lame joke lamely delivered by Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts. Mr. Kerry warned college students that the punishment for not learning your lessons was to “get stuck in Iraq.” In context, it was obviously an attempt to disparage Mr. Bush’s intelligence. That’s impolitic and impolite, but it’s not as bad as Mr. Bush’s response. Knowing full well what Mr. Kerry meant, the president and his team cried out that the senator was disparaging the troops. It was a depressing replay of the way the Bush campaign Swift-boated Americans in 2004 into believing that Mr. Kerry, who went to war, was a coward and Mr. Bush, who stayed home, was a hero.

It’s not the least bit surprising or objectionable that Mr. Bush would hit the trail hard at this point, trying to salvage his party’s control of Congress and, by extension, his last two years in office. And we’re not naïve enough to believe that either party has been running a positive campaign that focuses on the issues.

But when candidates for lower office make their opponents out to be friends of Osama bin Laden, or try to turn a minor gaffe into a near felony, that’s just depressing. When the president of the United States gleefully bathes in the muck to divide Americans into those who love their country and those who don’t, it is destructive to the fabric of the nation he is supposed to be leading.

This is hardly the first time that Mr. Bush has played the politics of fear, anger and division; if he’s ever missed a chance to wave the bloody flag of 9/11, we can’t think of when. But Mr. Bush’s latest outbursts go way beyond that. They leave us wondering whether this president will ever be willing or able to make room for bipartisanship, compromise and statesmanship in the two years he has left in office.

Another October 26th

2006-10-28T17:30:00.000-07:00

This year it was going to be a good one. The third anniversary of the Cedar Fire's epic romp through San Diego County. Three years since the deaths of 16 San Diegans, the destruction of more than 2,220 homes, and the beginning of a new chapter in my life. It was also the first birthday of my friend Colleen's son, Zach, who had nicely timed his arrival to lend a new, happier distinction to an otherwise infamous date.

I was thinking about little Zach the birthday boy on Thursday morning. It was a warm, sunny, blue-sky day. I thought about how far Bob and I had come in three years, how whole and healthy we finally felt. In a way, it seemed we had been born only two years before Zach, considering how close we'd come to joining the casualty list. And then I heard the news. A new Southern California fire, begun by an arsonist sometime after midnight in high winds and dry brush. Already, overnight, it had burned 24,000 acres, and destroyed 10 homes. Worst of all, a five-man engine crew had been overrun by a wall of flames. Three fire fighters were dead, four by the end of the day, and it doesn't look at all good for the fifth man. I've felt sick ever since. October 26th. What a day.

Photo: In this NASA image, waves of gray-brown smoke wash over the mountains southeast of Los Angeles and out over the Pacific Ocean on Thursday, Oct. 26, 2006. West of Palm Springs, California, the Esperanza Fire has ballooned under the influence of Santa Ana winds to more than 40,000 acres, according to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection. Fire officials are reporting the cause of the blaze as arson.

Five Years Ago Today...

2006-09-10T08:50:00.000-07:00

Bob and Terra and I were headed home from the annual Northern California Newfoundland water test, enjoying a leisurely drive south via the scenic route: Highway 1. It's a classic road trip, one of the world's most spectacular drives. A twisting, turning ribbon of asphalt, poured into the contours of clifftops along the extreme western edge of a continent. If you're headed south, it's better to be driving. On the passenger side, there's nothing between you and the sea otters below but hundreds of feet of air and salt spray. Still, it was easy to relax that day and count our blessings. Life is good, I said to Bob, and he agreed. Winding along through Big Sur under a perfect blue sky, glittering ocean on our right, tumbling green hills on our left, sweet Terra napping in the back seat, all seemed right with the world. Relatively speaking, it was. Five years ago today. September 10, 2001.

Crikey!

2006-09-04T13:20:00.000-07:00

What a sad day. "Crocodile Hunter" Steve Irwin has been killed in a freak accident with a stingray while filming another of his daring wildlife features in Australia. He was only 44. Stabbed in the heart by the sharp, serrated and toxic tail of a normally docile animal. How ironic and untimely an ending for a man the whole world has known for his enthusiastic encounters with all sorts of deadly, aggressive creatures, from spiders to snakes to Komodo dragons to, of course, crocodiles. When I first heard the news on the radio this morning, I thought it had to be a mistake. Surely Steve Irwin was immortal; if not, he would've been killed long ago. But no, it was all too real. I think of Terri, his wife, co-star and co-conservationist, and their two young children, now deprived of his enormous and passionate presence in their lives. It's just so sad. Not a bit sadder, of course, than the loss of four more U.S. soldiers in Iraq yesterday. We just don't know them. Or even feel like we do.

Summer Recap

2006-08-29T12:25:00.000-07:00

This week marks summer's last gasp and the first anniversary of the Katrina catastrophe. At Terra Nova, it's another scorching day. Five frogs have taken refuge behind the porch fountain, an encouraging upsurge in population following a recent visit from a handsome, doe-eyed garter snake with a species-wide reputation for eating small reptiles and amphibians. The dogs are napping away the day as usual, while I continue to chip away at my writing.

It seems this summer went more quickly than usual, punctuated as it was by travel, the latest junket to North Carolina to visit my dad and attend my 35-year high school reunion. Good grief. It was a trippy experience, like falling into an alternate universe peopled with characters who all vaguely remind you of someone you've known in an alternate life. Lauren met me in N.C. and escorted me to the event where she turned quite a few hoary heads and prompted numerous comments about our resemblance to one another. One woman even mistook her for me. Had I thought of this in advance, I would've just sent her in my place and let everyone believe I still look 27 and fabulous.

EK spent a month in Australia, interning with a vet there and then traveling up and down the eastern coast of the continent. She arrived home laden with gifts, memories and photographs of kangaroos, koalas, wombats and the Sydney Opera House. Fortunately, her little Cavalier spaniel had survived his month with us at Terra Nova, despite ongoing efforts to off himself. (Hello, Mr. Rattlesnake. Wanna play?)

In world news, the globe is still warming; Iraq is still in chaos; Iran is still rattling nuclear sabres; and Israel is awash in bad press following a 3-week war with Hezbollah, which resulted mainly in revealing the faction's real strength, and re-reducing Lebanon to ashes and rubble. Fortunately, according to the White House, none of this is anything to worry about, just the birth pangs of a new Middle East. Thank goodness. Oh, and you can't take your bottled water along or wear a gel-filled bra when you fly anymore because of a foiled Al Queda plot to blow up a few more airplanes with liquid explosives. The Brits figured this one out; it seems their intelligence agencies are still functional. On to autumn!

Fill 'er up ... but where?

2006-07-12T16:41:00.000-07:00

No matter how stringently we conserve, even if we trade in a Suburban for a Prius, most Americans still have to buy gasoline. Conceding this point, the folks at Co-op America--a not-for-profit group out to harness the economic power of consumers, businesses and others to create a socially just and environmentally sustainable society--has done a little research on which companies are doing the best job of honoring environmental and social responsibilities. Here's their conclusion:

"There is no such thing as a "good" gas company. However, some gas and oil companies have taken important first steps toward reforming their business practices. Consumers can use their purchases to applaud these first steps and push for changes in what is still a fairly problematic industry. And consumers can join with investors in calling on companies to disclose fully their environmental and social impacts."

Best options: BP, Sunoco, Citgo
Better option: Shell
Worst options: Chevron, Exxon

For more info, click here.

Haiku for Terra

2006-07-11T09:16:00.000-07:00

Dark, shining beauty,
Your soul is older than mine.
You live just to love.

Ups and Downs

2006-07-10T19:10:00.000-07:00

It's been a wild month so far, full of highs and lows, ups and downs. I spent the first weekend of July on Cape Cod, attending the annual Wampanoag tribal pow wow, meeting new friends and doing research for a project I'm working on. It was my first trip to "the Cape," a beautiful green place, crowded with summer visitors but still mostly free of crass commercialism. (Which is not to say I couldn't find a Starbucks.)

Shrubs and grasses grow almost to the ocean, stopping only at a wavy line of dunes near the water's edge. The surf was warm and the sand coarse and clean, strewn with bits of seaweed and driftwood, little shells and polished rocks, along with a couple of dead jellyfish and a used hypodermic needle. O brave new world, that hath such garbage in it.

Back home again, Bob and I had a great time entertaining family visitors for the Fourth. Terra Nova bustled with people and dogs. By Saturday evening everyone had left except our little Cavalier spaniel "granddog"; we'd seen his mom off to Australia for a month that afternoon.

I won't go into the week's disappointments, except to say sometimes your goals look farther away than ever. But I had a bit of insight into that last week when we took all the dogs to the beach. Neither of my Newfoundland water dogs retrieved the boat cushion we tossed for them, so I had to swim out and get it myself. Between a stiff breeze and a steady current, it would've been smarter to just let the thing go, but by then I was committed to the task.

From my perspective in the water, the farther I swam, the farther away the cushion looked. In the meantime, I could feel the current working against me, which made my progress seem even more illusory. The only way I could tell I was making any headway at all was that the beach kept shrinking away behind me. Finally, I got too tired to keep going, so I flipped over on my back to rest and just kept moving my arms, the old elementary backstroke from childhood swim lessons. And then, miracle of miracles, when I resumed my watery march toward the cushion, I was almost on top of it.

There must be a sermon in here somewhere. You try and try and try, even to the point of exhaustion, and all that time it seems you're not making any progress whatsoever. Then you rest for a little while and, voila, your goal is suddenly within reach. I don't understand this phenomenon, don't know that it's a general rule, but still I find it encouraging. So you lose a little momentum from time to time. Things don't always turn out the way you'd hoped. You have a bad day. Maybe the answer isn't always trying harder. Maybe sometimes it's better just to stop and breathe for a while instead.

Signs of the Times

2006-06-28T09:53:00.000-07:00

Headlines offered without comment:

From the Capitol Hill News, June 28, 2006

GOP bill targets NY Times
House Republican leaders are expected to introduce a resolution today condemning The New York Times for publishing a story last week that exposed government monitoring of banking records.

From the Washington Post, June 29, 2006

News Alert 10:17 a.m. ET Thursday, June 29, 2006 Supreme Court Rejects Guantanamo Tribunals Justices rule that President Bush overstepped his authority by creating military war crimes trials for detainees as part of U.S. anti-terror policies.

Get a Life

2006-06-09T20:07:00.000-07:00

Most people who come to Starbucks know exactly what they want. Usually it's fairly straightforward. Caramel frapaccino. Sugar-free vanilla nonfat latte. Quad-shot espresso. But sometimes it's complicated. Ridiculously complicated. The most ridiculous so far? Tall, decaf, nonfat, peppermint mocha, four pumps peppermint, two pumps mocha, foam, no whip, 165 degrees and stirred well. Really. The woman who ordered it was a serious soul who intoned each direction with a grim face and an air of weariness. When I'd finally scribbled it all on her tiny tall cup, she shot me a warning glance and sighed. "No one ever gets it right," she said, obviously not expecting any better performance from me and my colleagues. Gee, I thought, wonder why?

Words to Live By

2006-06-09T19:57:00.000-07:00

Goals: Obstacles are those frightful things you see when you take your eyes off your goal. Henry Ford

Focus: If you chase two rabbits, both will escape.

Attitude: Our lives are not determined by what happens to us, but by how we react to what happens. A positive attitude is a catalyst . . . a spark that creates extraordinary results.

Success: My first big league game was a huge mental breakthrough for me because, like most of these guys, I thought the big leagues were gonna be 10 times as hard as the minor leagues, as college and high school. When I got there, I realized I could hit a major league fastball, and I could hit a major league curveball. I realized that it wasn't as tough as I thought it was. I could relax and do what I'd always done. . . To me, the sooner you can understand that you belong, that you can have the success you're looking for by doing what you've always done, the rest of it is gonna come. You don't have to try to go out there and get it. Those 200-hit seasons will come, those 100 runs, scores, hits, gold gloves, all of it. All that stuff is a by-product of working hard and believing that you can do what you've always done. Tony Gwynn

And the Winner Is ...

2006-05-26T15:56:00.000-07:00

Taylor Hicks, the prematurely gray self-proclaimed soul man from Birmingham, is the newest American Idol. Thank goodness. With hot rocker Chris Daughtry out of the running much too early in the game, Taylor was our only real choice. Yes, Elliott is a nice guy with a nice voice and he loves his proud mama. Yes, Katherine is both beautiful and talented. Plus she shares her mother's inclination to show off her cleavage, a sure attraction for male viewers, at least in Katherine's case. (Mama McPhee, PLEASE, put on a sweater or something.)

But you gotta love Taylor for his unflinching uniqueness and his obvious love of music. This is a guy who's not afraid to be himself, who didn't listen to the critics who said he was too old at 29 and too gray at any age to be a star. This is a guy who just flat out loves to perform. It's hard not to catch his enthusiasm. And that's why people love him. Chris will also have a brilliant career; he's just too good not to be scooped up by some bigtime band or label. So all in all, I'm happy with the results. But what will I do until January 2007 when Idol returns for another season? Tuesday and Wednesday nights just will not be the same.

Another Anniversary

2006-05-26T13:26:00.000-07:00

It's been a year already since the big Memorial Day 2005 party celebrating the Younger trifecta: Bob's and my 30th anniversary, EK's 25th birthday and the (near)completion of the new Terra Nova. Yesterday marked 31 years for Bob and me, and tomorrow morning we'll pick up EK at the airport for a weekend celebration of her 26th birthday. Lest we forget, Charter, our goofy Newf, also will be in on the festivities. He was born on our anniversary four years ago.

I started this blog on May 25, 2005 as an anniversary gift to Bob. Though my entries have been sporadic and my readers few, it's still satisfying to look back on this record of the past year, even as I'm learning the importance both personally and professionally of living in the present moment. The magazine editor in me also sees this occasion as reason enough for a redesign. Hope you enjoy the new format of Younger Yarns.

Top Ten Ways to Know You're in North Carolina

2006-05-25T08:00:00.000-07:00

10. The trees are so green and most of the birds are either Wolfpack red or Carolina blue.

9. More squirrels than people.

8. Meat with every meal and jello salad on the side.

7. You want your tea unsweetened? What are you, some kind of heathen?

6. It's not hard to spot women who still tease their hair.

5. People talk funny.

4. Your husband calls and doesn't recognize your voice. Says YOU'RE talking funny.

3. Entire population is still mourning native son Chris Daughtry's ouster from American Idol.

2. Giant portrait murals at the Charlotte airport feature local racecar drivers.

And the number one way you know you're in North Carolina:

The marquee in front of the First Assembly of God announces "NASCAR Sunday"

Idol Update

2006-05-12T23:57:00.000-07:00

I am so not over it yet. At least I have a lot of company.

Shock and Awe (Outi, don't read this!)

2006-05-10T22:37:00.000-07:00

Another Idol elimination night and boy, were we all surprised. I won't say who actually got the boot, because my friend Outi in Finland is also an Idol fan, and the show runs a week later there, so I would spoil her fun. But let me just say I am totally depressed. Losing Ace was bad, but tonight was shock and awe, baby. Shock and awe.

Post-Flu Euphoria

2006-05-10T09:35:00.000-07:00

Ah yes. The sun is shining through a misty spring morning here at Terra Nova. The birds are singing; the puppies, sleeping. And I finally seem to be coming out of an 8-day flu-related funk. I won't go into the details, but suffice it to say, I've been fairly sick and pitiful. Today, aside from the usual lingering cough, fatigue and slight fuzziness in the head, I am feeling close to human again. It reminds me of that scene in Shogun when Anjin-san was committing seppuku for some noble reason I can't remember, and at the last instant, as he was already thrusting the knife toward his body, the local daimyo, which is to say the region's military ruler, grabbed his wrist and stopped the blade, and Anjin-san, rushing back from the certainty of death to the raw sweetness of life, sat silent for a moment so that all you could hear was rain falling outside, and then he said, very softly, "The rain is fine, isn't it?"

It is good to feel alive again. What's more, even the morning's New York Times seemed full of good news. First, San Diego's own Fat Man Walking completed his waist-shrinking, soul-searching cross-country hike yesterday by walking right into Manhattan. Along the way he's dropped a hundred pounds and found his bliss, plus a book deal and folk celebrity status. You know, more power to him. He took on a crazy goal and he actually did the thing. That's just inspiring.

Second piece of good news for the day, W's poll numbers have reached record lows, and third, the population of Russia is dropping by 700,000 per year. To some, I realize, especially certain individuals in Washington and Moscow, these latter two headlines would read as bad news. But I see them as hopeful signs that one) the American public is at last regaining its sanity and two) it's actually possible to reduce the planet's burgeoning population without war, pestilence or famine.

Russian President Vladimir Putin, obviously a vodka-glass-half-empty kind of guy, has expressed his alarm about the spectre of economic and military contraction. In fact, he's turned into a procreation cheerleader, talking up the wonders of love, marriage and family, and even offering cash bonuses for each baby produced.

But from the global perspective, more is not always merrier. Sometimes seating fewer guests at the table means everybody gets to eat. As it is, we lose 30,000 kids a day to starvation and malnutrition. Yes, 30,000. So that's why I say, it's a good-news day all-around. Also time for a little more cough syrup.

Charter in Mustard

2006-04-29T18:19:00.000-07:00

Photo by R. E. Younger, Terra Nova Photography

Dear Anonymous

2006-04-26T22:01:00.000-07:00

The thing about posting a blog is you never know if anyone's going to read it or not. Which is nice in a way, because when you write something decent you can feel glad it's out there for the world to see, and when you post something you worry is a bit too revealing or schmaltzy or cynical, you can convince yourself no one's likely to read it anyway.

But then you start to get feedback, comments left in response to your posts, and you realize people really are reading this thing. Cool! Except it seems there's an underworld of characters out there who spend a lot of time surfing around looking for statements of opinion that differ from their own, and then they pounce like an alley cat and eviscerate the poor blogger with a nasty comment or two, usually demonstrating in the process that they've missed the whole point.

That in itself, while not very nice, I can live with. Hey, it's still a free country after all. I can say what I want, and so can you. The problem is these hit and run commentators never leave their names. Or else they leave a stupid made-up name like Piso Mojado. So you wonder. Who really wrote this? Was it anyone I know? Someone who just doesn't want me to know they really have such opposite opinions? Maybe it was someone being paid by the radical right to ferret out dissenters and ambush them right there on their own blog pages? Or was it some angry survivalist holed up somewhere in the middle of the South Dakota prairie, surfing the Web for random blog comments while taking breaks from writing his or her grand manifesto? In the end of course it doesn't really matter who they were, because you already know everything you need to know about them, which is, they're gutless.

So far, these anonymous posters have seemed to pop up most often in response to comments I've made about the Bush Administration. They seem to think I'm a bad American for criticizing the president. They've even accused me of hating my country. This strikes me as bizarre. I don't hate my country. I love my country. What I hate is what George Bush and his posse have done to it--including fostering this crazy idea that conscientious dissent is unpatriotic. On the contrary, this nation was founded on the concept that citizens should be free to think and express their own thoughts, even if they run counter to government policies. Being a "good" American does not mean you must support the government no matter what. That's not democracy; that's totalitarianism. Being a "good" American, I believe, can sometimes compel a citizen to stand up against the government, because the government can be wrong, can lose sight of the goal, can even diminish the liberties America stands for. When that happens, and I believe we are seeing it happen right now, "good" Americans have a patriotic duty to stand up and say so.

By the way, if my anonymous detractors think I'M being harsh on the president, they should read Bob Herbert's column in today's New York Times. Now there is a courageous, concerned American. I salute him for stating our current national dilemma so honestly and so well. Maybe I should send him an anonymous compliment.

Update, May 2, 2006: Turns out the L.A. Times agrees with me about anonymous posters, as one of their Pulitzer-winning reporters has discovered the hard way.

The Truth About Freelancing

2006-04-25T08:12:00.001-07:00

People tend to glamorize the concept of freelance writing as a career. It's an understandable fallacy, stemming from the word itself. The concept of freedom in your work is so appealing when you're committed to the nine to five routine. There are advantages both ways of course. The salaried employee may enjoy less personal freedom, but paychecks arrive on a regular basis, along with paid vacations and sick time, 401Ks and health insurance. Or to put it in the words of the late John Keats, a wildly successful freelancer during the 1950s and 60s and one of my favorite writing teachers, the trade-off for the nine-to-five lifestyle is "all the benefits that slaves enjoy." Keats was a marvel of self-discipline and productivity, who churned out a series of fantastic nonfiction books in addition to all his magazine articles and made enough money to raise a family of four children and even buy an island in the St. Lawrence River between New York and Canada. His philosophy of quitting his job to begin his work has always inspired my inner freelancer, and I've been haunted by his onetime admonition to me: "You should never hold an office job." What he meant by that was he felt I should write. Sometimes, I can believe those long-ago words and take courage in the power of possibilities. But in reality, the writing life is not always so idyllic. Yesterday I came across this piece by the very talented Sarah Hepola that sums it up so well I don't know whether to laugh or cry.

April Is the Greenest Month

2006-04-24T22:26:00.000-07:00

Photo by R.E. Younger, Terra Nova Photography

When in April the sweet showers fall and pierce the drought of March to the root, and all the veins are bathed in liquor of such power as brings about the engendering of the flower, when also Zephyrus with his sweet breath exhales an air in every grove and health upon the tender shoots, and the young sun his half-course in the sign of the ram has run, and the small fowl are making melody that sleep away the night with open eye (So nature pricks them and their heart engages), then people long to go on pilgrimages, and palmers long to seek the stranger strands of far-off saints, hallowed in sundry lands.
Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales

It's my favorite time of year in San Diego. Fresh in the wake of winter rains, the land transforms from dead brown to lush green. The birds are so happy they can't contain themselves. Terra Nova is bathed in song from dawn to dusk. And the crows and raptors are flying with baggage in tow, no doubt taking meals home to their families rather than eating everything themselves in the field. Saturday morning I saw a kite hunting, a magnificent, nearly all white bird that can hover in midair and then drop out of the sky like a stone when it sights its prey.

Between the garage and the road and back, the rabbits cross our paths by two and threes. They've been busy; already I've seen a little one. And amid the jumble of trailers, chicken coops and corrals below us in the canyon to the east, I've been watching a foal trying out its spindly new legs.

All too soon the green will fade, and the world will turn brown again, the lush grasses will become fuel for the coming fire season. But for now the canyon is glorious and verdant and all of us who live here, from the field mice to the redtail hawks to the Newfs and their humans, are reveling in its riotous celebration of spring.

A Good Day

2006-04-20T19:31:00.000-07:00

Let's accentuate the positive, shall we? It was a good day. Perfect spring weather, great progress on "the book," good news on two other projects under way, quality time with the Newfs, phone chats with both daughters and Bob, who's coming home tomorrow from a week-long business trip. All in all, it helped take the sting out of losing Ace on American Idol last night. If you haven't been watching, you can't understand, but the Ace Face will be missed. Oh, and he's a pretty fair singer, too.

Comic Relief Is on the Way

2006-04-13T09:34:00.000-07:00

I know what you're thinking. It's not fun reading Younger Yarns anymore. Sandra has turned into a shrew. It's not that politics is all I think about these days. It's just that Bush and crew make me so mad I have to write about them or explode. Meanwhile, other things in my life--lovely, warm and fuzzy things--go unreported. So I promise to mix it up a little from now on. Stay tuned ...

Mushroom-Clouded Minds

2006-04-11T18:57:00.000-07:00

I really can't believe I'm writing this, but it seems the top leadership of the United States of America have actually been busy drafting plans to "pre-emptively" attack yet another sovereign nation, this time with nuclear weapons. NUCLEAR WEAPONS!!!

The problem: Iran is working toward nuclear capability, a sobering development by anyone's estimation and something the administration believes only big, benevolent, responsible superpowers like us can have. So it only makes sense to stop them by nuking their R&D facilities, which by the way include university laboratories--a strategy inspired, no doubt, by parents who beat their children for hitting each other. Please, someone wake me up and tell me I'm just caught in a sci-fi nightmare.

They've denied it of course. "Wild speculation," the president says. "Fantasyland," Rumsfeld echoes. Oh yeah, like I really believe them. Pinnochio couldn't keep up with this pack of liars. The latest evidence: we've learned the president himself authorized the long-celebrated media leak that led to Valerie Plame Wilson's exposure as a CIA agent. Yes, the same president who told us how much he hated leakers, promised us he would fire this one when he/she turned up, and then ordered a big, fat investigation into the situation. Your tax dollars at work.

If only the news about Iran war plans had come from some third-rate, conspiracy-theorist blogger, but alas, the reporter was none other than the venerable Seymour Hersh of the New Yorker, the same writer who first acquainted us with the atrocities at Abu Ghraib. This guy has some sources.

Surely, I first thought, Bush can't really attack Iran without congressional approval, and Congress won't fall for his scare tactics again. But it turns out he can. We could wake up tomorrow morning, and it could already have happened.

Words fail in describing the lunacy, the immorality, the hyper-hypocrisy of all this. Suffice it to say, we have met the axis of evil, and they is us. The good news is the president's approval ratings have dropped a few more points, indicating more Americans are figuring out he's not the compassionate conservative they thought he was.

Update, May 31, 2006: Some commenters suggested I was seriously over-reacting here. But apparently I wasn't alone. Dozens of prominent physicists have written to President Bush calling U.S. contingency plans to use nuclear weapons against Iran "gravely irresponsible" and warning of "disastrous consequences for the security of the United States and the world." You can see a petition signed by nearly 2,000 physicists, including several Nobel laureates, at http://physics.ucsd.edu/petition/

Puppies in the Sun

2006-03-22T07:36:00.000-08:00

Enough serious stuff. It's a gorgeous sunny day, endless blue overhead, and inside, puppies are busy with their morning naps, each in the usual places. Terra, the princess, is curled up on our bed, a black, furry island in a billowing sea of white pillows and comforters. Charter is stretched out full-length on the floor beside me, framed in sunny squares slanting in from the windows. He is dreaming, feet twitching, eyelids and lips quivering, pink tongue barely peeking out of his mouth. Every now and then one or the other rouses for a moment and looks up at me, hoping I'm ready to go downstairs. As soon as I move, both dogs will jump up to join me, anticipating breakfast or a walk, the mere promise of any sort of adventure. But for now they are content to sleep here with me while I work. My peaceful companions. How I love them.

Thanks, But No Thanks

2006-03-22T06:43:00.000-08:00

Well, now it's Australia digging out from a monster storm. The AP reports this morning that Cyclone Larry was the most powerful cyclone to hit northeastern Australia in decades. Larry destroyed thousands of homes and flattened hundreds of square miles of sugar cane and banana crops. As one resident put it, "The whole bloody place is blown apart."

The Aussies, of course, are rising to the challenge with characteristic elan. The town of Innisfail cleared a spot among the ruins and enjoyed a huge "barbie," with local butchers and restaurateurs donating their inventory rather than let it rot in their freezers until power lines are repaired.

And there was this nicety mentioned in the AP report. "President Bush called Australian Prime Minister John Howard early Tuesday to offer American help if needed." Hmmm. The same President Bush whose appointees failed so utterly when our own Gulf Coast was destroyed by Hurricane Katrina just seven months ago? The same President Bush who's already put that epic tragedy and its still-suffering survivors behind him in his psychotic zeal to end terrorist plots, real or imagined? I'm thinking I could live a long time without that kind of help.

To his everlasting credit, PM Howard responded with admirable courtesy and restraint. "Of course we are able ourselves to look after this," Howard told the AP. "But it was a very generous, thoughtful gesture on his part, and I thank him for it."

Competence and class, too. How refreshing. How about next time a natural disaster strikes the U.S., we corral Bush and his fellow cowboys for the duration and ask Australia to come help us with the clean-up?

Adult Supervision Required

2006-03-08T08:04:00.000-08:00

National Journal reporter Shane Harris provides further proof of the complete and utter leadership vacuum in Washington in an article introducing Douglas L. Hoelscher, the new executive director of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Advisory Committees.

Hoelscher will serve in a key policy-making position as DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff's "primary representative" to more than 20 advisory boards populated by corporate, government and academic heavyweights; he will also provide "strategic counsel" to Chertoff on such vital issues as terrorist threats to infrastructure and potential attacks employing weapons of mass destruction.

It's quite a career coup for a 28-year-old former Bush campaigner with no management experience whose first government job just 5 years ago was a $30,000 low-level White House staff assignment arranging presidential travel. So maybe it was Hoelscher's personal strengths that catapulted him to power. In his Friendster.com profile, he disclosed: "I'm usually fairly quiet in a group setting. I am not a talker but a pretty good listener."

Whatever. DHS certainly seems confident in its newest top executive. "The administration has named a qualified and talented professional to cultivate these partnerships," commented Stewart A. Baker, assistant secretary for policy at the department.

Then again, that's probably what he said about past DHS appointees, including former FEMA director Michael "You're Doing a Heckuva Job Brownie" Brown, a longtime friend of Bush's 2000 campaign director, Joe Allbaugh; Julie Myers, wife of Chertoff's chief of staff, who without benefit of law enforcement experience heads the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Bureau; and Eduardo Aguirre Jr., a Texas banker with Bush family ties who served as director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.

O.K. so not such a great track record. But let's not throw the baby out with the bathwater here. Hoelscher's youth and inexperience aren't necessarily liabilities. Harris reports one DHS staffer assured him: "There's plenty of adult supervision" at the department.

Like a Thunderbolt

2006-02-23T18:11:00.000-08:00

I'm pretty sure I saw a golden eagle soaring above the canyon today. A huge bird, too big for a hawk, but brown, not black like the crows and buzzards. I watched it until it disappeared into the chapparal more than a mile away. Thinking back on the sight of those strong wings sailing and rising effortlessly in the thermals reminds me of Tennyson's wonderful poem, "The Eagle."

He clasps the crag with crooked hands;
Close to the sun in lonely lands,
Ring’d with the azure world, he stands.

The wrinkled sea beneath him crawls;
He watches from his mountain walls,
And like a thunderbolt he falls.

Alfred Tennyson 1851

Power Lunch

2006-02-23T08:36:00.000-08:00

My friend Claire never went to college, had a big career, made a fortune or got famous. But what she did do—raise a family of four children within a lasting marriage and spread the joy of Newfoundland dogs, along with a keen insight into the human heart—has made all the difference in countless lives, mine included. I had a rare chance to visit with her yesterday, and as always, it was a treat. She's in her seventies now, but her embrace was as strong as ever, her personality as vibrant, her intuition as rare. We enjoyed a lunch she had made herself at home in Tennessee and overnight shipped in frozen containers to share with her daughter JoAnn and friends here in San Diego. Lentil soup. Beef and barley. Homemade sandwich spreads and two kinds of cake. It was a small group. Claire and JoAnn, two other Newfoundland lovers and me.

Afterwards, I fired up my laptop and ran through a sampling of photos of the new house, the family, the Newfs. As always, Claire took it all in eagerly, punctuating the show with bits of sage commentary and encouragement. You are an inspiration, I told her as I packed up to leave. I don’t know why, she said, laughing and looking away. But you are, I said. You’re my Yoda. She cupped her hands on either side of her head. Big ears and all? she asked. I nodded. Wise are ye, I said. She looked away again. We hugged good bye, and she waved as I turned to back out of the driveway, feeling, as always when I’ve talked with Claire, that I'm okay, that life is still long and full of meaning, and that anything is possible, especially when you believe in dogs.

Story Time

2006-02-17T02:20:00.000-08:00

Today, well yesterday now since it's 2:20 in the morning, my fire story became part of NPR's current Story Corps project. It just flowed out of me and listening to it myself on the way home via CD gave me goose bumps and made my eyes sting. It is an amazing story, a miracle story. I'm grateful to my friends Lena and Coleen who set up the interview and encouraged me to do it. I'm happy that a story from the Cedar Fire will be documented for posterity in the Library of Congress along with thousands of other stories from American life. And I'm more eager than ever to finish my book.

Update March 2, 2006: KPBS, our local NPR station, aired an excerpt this morning. You can listen to it here.(MP3 4:13min.)

Pot Shots

2006-02-14T06:19:00.000-08:00

Obviously, I've been on a blogging hiatus, despite deep thoughts I wanted to share about marching to the Capitol in Washington on Martin Luther King Day and then Coretta Scott King's triumphant homegoing. My friend Peggy's Newfoundland, Baby, Charter's sister and Lilo's aunt, won big yesterday at Westminster. And, oh yes, remind me to tell you about senior diet cokes.

But this I can't let pass. The vice president of the United States of America, while out enjoying the rich man's sport of quail hunting on vast private ranches, shot a fellow hunter. Fortunately, the guy is okay. Cheney, on the other hand, has made himself fodder for delighted stand-up comedians everywhere. Here's a nice sampling put together by our friends at the AP: TV Joke Writers Take Shots at Cheney.

Major excitement!

2006-01-07T19:21:00.000-08:00

Time spent in the car today with large salivating beast traveling to and from Palm Springs Kennel Club dog show: almost 7 hours
Total distance covered: 325 miles
Value of resulting 3-point major: priceless

Devil Winds

2006-01-06T15:08:00.000-08:00

It's Jan. 6, the Christmas tree's still up, and it's hot. I don't mean unseasonably warm. I mean 92. I mean we had to turn on the air conditioner today. It's dry, too. My skin is stinging, and no amount of lotion seems to help for long. In Southern California, there's only one explanation for these meterological and dermatological phenomena. The Santa Anas are blowing.

Last night they were shrieking; the house was shivering and everything not nailed down outside was banging around. Our kitchen weather center at times registered 40 mph, and a few particularly fierce gusts no doubt kicked it even higher. It was way too noisy and way too reminiscent of Oct. 26, the night of the fire, for either of us to sleep. I knew it wasn't rational, but I'll admit it, I was flat out scared. Bob kept reassuring me; he also kept stepping outside to sniff for smoke.

I used to love the Santa Anas. They cleared the air and brought a few days of warm weather in the middle of a rainy winter. But now I understand why generations of Southern Californians have called them devil winds. For sure, they play a big role in the story of "the wildest fire." Here's an excerpt about the Santa Anas from my manuscript. (And you thought I wasn't working on the book, didn't you?)

"It was still warm when we left the restaurant around 10 that night. All week it had been into the 90s inland, an unusual occurrence in late October—except during Santa Ana weather. Santa Ana winds are a fabled Southern California phenomenon, sweeping in several times each winter through the mountains that separate Los Angeles and San Diego from the vast deserts to the east. And when they come, they do not come gently.

Santa Anas blow hot, dry and strong, sometimes for days, raising temperatures and tempers in their wake. By definition, they’re at least 25 knots (nearly 30 mph) in velocity and often gust to 50, 60 or more, especially at night or early in the morning when onshore ocean breezes subside.

Because they carry so much heat, most people think Santa Anas originate in the deserts, but they actually begin much farther away, as a high pressure system over the Great Basin, that vast plateau sandwiched between the Sierra Nevada and Rocky Mountains. Whenever a low pressure system off the Southern California coast coincides with a prevailing northeast wind, a huge atmospheric pinwheel starts to spin and tumble toward sea level. Picking up speed and heat as it descends and compresses, then drying as it warms, this enormous mass of air eventually collides with the corrugated topography of coastal Southern California, where it surges through narrow passes and canyons and out to sea.

Just such an episode inspired these memorable lines by mystery writer Raymond Chandler in “Red Wind:” "It was one of those hot dry Santa Anas that come down through the mountain passes and curl your hair and make your nerves jump and your skin itch. On nights like that every booze party ends in a fight. Meek little wives feel the edge of the carving knife and study their husbands' necks. Anything can happen."

Aside from triggering bar fights and domestic violence, Santa Anas can also damage structures and endanger travelers caught in high surf or wind shear conditions, not to mention gusts stiff enough to tip over RVs and tractor trailers. But Santa Anas are most notorious for feeding wildfires—lowering humidity, drying plants to tinder and literally fanning the flames. Especially in October, the last month of Southern California’s long, rainless summer season, when vegetation is already brittle dry, a Santa Ana can whip a random spark into a major conflagration. It's no coincidence that nearly every catastrophic wildfire documented here occurred during Santa Ana conditions."

Note to Self

2006-01-05T08:22:00.000-08:00

At Starbucks, kid's hot chocolate and quad-shot espressos both come in the same tiny short cup. So next time, double check before handing them out at the drive through.

Presidential Prior Restraint

2005-12-20T08:38:00.000-08:00

Well, it's hit the fan now. In response to a New York Times story, President Bush has admitted to eavesdropping on suspected Al Qaeda operatives and sympathizers without the proper court-ordered warrants. He has assured us, however, that his actions weren't unlawful, but rather well within the bounds of his presidential privilege and, in fact, part of his sworn duty to protect the country from terrorists.

But controversy is swirling over this latest peek into the Bush White House. Some commentators are even reminding us that "abuse of power" was one of the counts Nixon would have faced back in 1974 had Ford not pardoned him and saved us all the bother of impeachment proceedings. I'm not a lawyer, so I suppose I shouldn't even try to weigh such matters, but it does strike me that spying on people without due process is at least as bad, presidentially speaking, as lying about fooling around with flirty White House interns.

Still, what upsets me most about this whole matter is that Bush was so concerned about keeping it secret he called the publisher and editor of the New York Times to the Oval Office to "ask" them not to tell anyone, as they finally did last week after an entire year. It's time to draw a line. Already, we've heard tales of Bushites planting upbeat stories in the Iraqi press. We know they've paid American journalists to write nice stories about them in U.S. papers and even planted pseudo-journalists in White House press conferences to be sure someone asked the "right" questions. But when a president sits down with the top executives of the nation's No. 1 newspaper and makes it very clear what he does or does not want to see in print, that's what real journalists call prior restraint.

Simply defined, prior restraint is suppression of the truth. It's the status quo in societies ruled by dictators, who must control the media in order to control the citizenry. But it is anethema in a democratic society, governed ultimately by an informed electorate. That's because prior restraint distorts our view of reality. If left uncovered, it will even distort the record of history, leading to untold ramifications as time goes on. In short, prior restraint of the media is a violation of the worst degree. And when it comes directly from the president's office, how else can we interpret it other than as an executive end run around the First Amendment to the Constitution. Which may do us all good to revisit: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances."

So Pointless

2005-12-20T08:30:00.000-08:00

It was another dog show weekend. Not as if I didn't have anything else to do but get up at 5 a.m. Saturday morning to bathe and dry a Newf, then drive to Long Beach and back two days in a row. But I've made a commitment now to pursue Charter's championship, and every show, win or lose, is good practice for the boy. Megan, his junior handler, did a superb job of handling and grooming, and the classes were small, so you'd think with so little competition, my Goliath son would've brought home the points. But alas, we could only manage a couple red ribbons and one reserve, which is to say, the consolation prize of dog shows. I honestly don't get it. No one is more critical than I about my own dogs' chances in the ring, and I say Charter should've won both days. But then I'm not the judge. It's just that for all the effort and expense, to come home essentially empty-handed just seems so, well, pointless.

Christmas is Coming; the Goose Is in the Fridge

2005-12-20T08:08:00.000-08:00

Imagine my surprise yesterday morning to open the refrigerator door and find a big goose sitting among the milk and mustards. Well, not a live goose of course. A bagged, frozen goose, thawing in advance of Christmas dinner. Bob is obviously getting creative with the menu this year. But then I did the same with the tree, went out and bought new ornaments and roll after roll of velvet ribbon. It's amazing what you can find at K-Mart! You should see the results, a vision in burgundy and gold. Then there's the evergreen garland all around the big French doors in the living room, the pointsettias on the front porch, the lighted wreath hung high outside, the scented candles burning inside.

Today I stop by the post office for the last package drop, and tonight we wrap all the gifts the UPS man has been leaving at our doorstep. Tomorrow afternoon we'll be welcoming EK and Jeffrey and their pups. Lauren and Lilo, Margaret, Terri and John all arrive on Friday. The canyon is beautiful this time of year, especially in the long, low afternoon light. And at night it's so clear you can see Tijuana sparkling. We have never experienced this nuance of life in the backcountry. We first arrived in April, and the fire came only seven months later, in late October. So now, two years later, it is our first winter here, our first Christmas at Terra Nova. And we plan to savor every moment.

All We Are Saying ....

2005-12-08T19:02:00.000-08:00

Twenty-five years ago today. He was young and seemingly invincible. One of the Beatles, for crying out loud. But he died anyway. And for no good reason. Shot down at point blank range in front of the New York apartment he shared with his wife, Yoko Ono, and their son.

More than 10 years later, when our Japanese friend Tomoko came to visit, we took her to New York City, and the one place she most wanted to see was the Dakota, site of John Lennon's murder. We had to go there, she said, and stand out front and sing "Imagine." It was a cold, cold day, but we went, we stood, we sang. Across the street, in the section of Central Park known as Strawberry Fields, we found the starburst stone embedded in the earth as a memorial to John, engraved with the one word: "Imagine."

"Imagine all the people, living life in peace." For my parents' generation, the concept of Americans and Japanese, touring New York as friends, would have existed only in the realm of imagination. So there is still hope. But mostly, even after 25 years, we find peace not in the world around us, but only in our imagination. And sometimes, if we are open to it, in our hearts.

Chamberpot of Horrors

2005-12-05T07:15:00.001-08:00

"It matters how you finish." It's a saying Bob and I came up with while watching numerous individuals self-destruct after achieving great success. O. J. Simpson, for instance. Michael Jackson. Various and sundry CEOs, government leaders, members of the clergy. We look at them, at the mess they've made of their once enviable lives, the hurt and embarrassment they've inflicted on their loved ones, and we shake our heads at the needlessness of it all. They had everything going for them, and they threw it all away. Why? Now they'll be remembered not for their accomplishments, but for their lapses in judgment and conduct. It's not a new phenomenon by any means. Shakespeare made note of it in "Julius Caesar." "The evil that men do lives after them," he wrote. "The good is oft interred with their bones."

Our way of putting it isn't quite as literary, but it works for us, both as a commentary on the news and as a solemn reminder. It's human nature, after all, to make mistakes. So easy to rationalize a detour from the straight and narrow. We've all stood at the crossroads more than once. San Diego in particular has turned into a showcase for fallen heroes of late. Over the last year or so, we've discovered our elected and appointed officials have driven the city to the brink of bankruptcy. We've seen our mayor and two councilmen ousted in disgrace. It's gotten so bad the slogan "America's Finest City" has been deleted from the municipal Web site.

But last week we witnessed a public flogging that made all that's come before seem mundane. San Diegan Randy "Duke" Cunningham, a Vietnam era flying ace, Top Gun instructor and 15-year veteran of Congress, fessed up to taking $2.4 million in bribes from defense contractors in return for lucrative government contracts. It was a sorry spectacle to see "The Duke," still known for his fly-boy arrogance and bluster, standing before national news cameras, sobbing his apologies. At age 63, the man who claimed he was once the brash young fighter pilot Tom Cruise portrayed in "Top Gun," now faces up to 10 years in prison. So egregious, so reckless was his corruption that his attorney admitted he'd recommended a plea bargain because his client simply "had no defense."

The details of Cunningham's Humpty Dumpty fall from Capitol Hill are the stuff Leno and Lettermen live for. His take included a house in ultra-chic Rancho Santa Fe, free use of "The Duke-Stir," a yacht moored on the Potomac, a Rolls Royce (albeit a used one), a college graduation party for his daughter and various antiques, including a couple of 200-year-old French commodes. Not surprisingly, these last items have drawn the most attention in the national media, with uncouth AM radio jocks snickering about the Duke's penchant for antique "crappers" and even Newsweek offering the synonym "chamberpot." Isn't anyone going to point out that in design parlance, a commode is not a toilet, but a small chest of drawers?

But it does seem odd that the Dukester, known as a rowdy, fight-picking, cigar-chomping, skeet-shooting son of a gun, would care about antique French commodes of any sort. It makes me wonder what his wife role is in all of this. Maybe I'm just a budget control freak, but if Bob came home driving a Rolls Royce, used or not, pulled a French antique or two out of the trunk and suggested we start looking for property in Rancho Santa Fe, I'd start asking questions. It should be interesting to see how well Nancy Cunningham dodges the fallout from her husband's implosion. Hard to believe this will play well at the country club.

But enough time wasted on idle speculation. I have a deadline to meet, cappuccinos to steam and a book to write. Miles to go, as Frost put it, before I sleep. And I really want to finish well.

Update March 3, 2006: Today, admitting through tears that he'd "torn his life to shreds," Randy Duke Cunningham heard a judge sentence him to 100 months--that's 8 years, 4 months--in prison and then remand him into custody. The denouement made front-page headlines across the country. Hard to imagine being the Dukester tonight.

How Goes the War?

2005-12-01T19:44:00.000-08:00

I was happy to hear yesterday, straight from President Bush himself in a stirring speech presented to a captive audience of midshipmen at the Naval Academy, that the war in Iraq is going really well now, that in fact victory is within our grasp and we will settle for nothing less. The president even unveiled an official document titled "A National Strategy for Victory in Iraq."

All I can figure is that I must've been confused by the liberal media's biased reports from the front, because my own assessment of the situation so far, four years into things, had been far less optimistic. O.K. I'll admit it. All along I'd been thinking of Iraq as one big, fat mess. And as for a national strategy, I didn't even know we had one.

Nobody likes being wrong, but when it comes to victory in Iraq I don't mind being set straight. I imagine the president's report was also very comforting to the friends and families of those 2,000-plus servicemen and women who have died thus far in the Global War on Terrorism, the tens of thousands injured in the conflict, and maybe even in some small way any remaining survivors of the countless Iraqis who have perished in our pursuit of their freedom.

Column Right

2005-11-25T21:59:00.001-08:00

Another place, another time, and it would've been almost cute. Two young boys, one dressed up like a soldier, showing the other how to march like a soldier. The fancy footwork that leads to an abrupt about-face, a sharp column left or right. The slow, gliding steps that create a sense of military precision and pageantry. "This is how we do it in the Corps," he seems to be saying, emphasis on the "we." He demonstrates each move, first in slow motion, then up to speed. The civilian boy seems impressed, which of course was the boy soldier's intent all along.

But this was not child's play unfolding at the next gate as I waited to board my flight to Seattle. The boy soldier was a baby Marine, all spit and polish in his still-unstriped uniform, shiny black shoes. Fresh out of boot camp. And eager to show his friend what he learned there. The Marine's mother walked up then, smiling, seemingly amused by her son's childlike enthusiasm. And proud, too. You could see it in her eyes. If she was worried when she kissed him good-bye, she did not show it. But surely she must have known, as all mothers and sweethearts and wives of young soldiers know, that when he comes back, if he comes back, he will no longer be a boy. And he will never play soldier again.

Wanna Bet?

2005-11-07T06:16:00.000-08:00

Baristas spend a fair amount of time thinking about other ways to make money. This morning, for example, while Bob was making my cappuccino, he happened to mention he'd read about a movement afoot in the state of Vermont to secede from the union. Bush lover that I am, this struck me as a tremendous idea, "with room" for profit.

"Can we move to Vermont?" I asked. I was standing at the kitchen sink, looking out at our spectacular view, south down the canyon all the way to Mexico. Vermont, for all its cows and seasonal color, couldn't top this.

"Can we just move Terra Nova to Vermont?"

Idealogically, it seemed a great idea. But logistically, not so much. So I ran with a different approach.

"How about if we secede from the union?"

Well, why not? Terra Nova, a 5-acre rogue nation with its own well and a killer view. After all, the Barona Band of Mission Indians, only two miles north of us, commands a sovereign nation, and quite a wealthy, successful one, thanks to their vastly popular casino.

"Do you realize," I rambled on, "that every member of the Viejas tribe gets $10,000 a month from casino proceeds? $10,000 a month, for doing nothing."

We thought about this for a few moments as Bob steamed the milk. That's when the opportunity for profit came to me, and I blurted it right out.

"We can start our own casino!"

It was hardly a novel idea, at least in San Diego, aka casino heaven. Just about every Native American family in the county has tracked down a few long-lost cousins, declared itself a tribe and built a casino. From there it takes only a cheesy billboard campaign and a Smothers Brothers concert, and they're pulling in bank. So what could we do to distinguish our casino from all the others?

"I know," I shouted. "We're gonna be billionaires."

At this, Bob woke up. "What?" he asked.

"People can bring their dogs with them to our casino!!! Of course we'll have to provide some sort of doggie respirators, because I don't want them sucking in all that second-hand smoke."

"Do we have to allow smoking?"

"Oh yeah. It's part of the allure. A casino without smoking is like a hamburger without ketchup and mustard. People expect it."

"Yeah, I guess," Bob agreed. But he was on board now. A dog-friendly casino. Yes!

"Think of the product opportunities," he said.

I could see it, too. Bowls with poker-chip designs on the bottom. "Lucky dog" t-shirts. And, of course, a full gallery of dogs-playing-poker velvet artwork.

"I love it!" Bob said, his voice rising. "What redneck, gambling-addicted dog-lover would be able to resist?"

We high fived, our retirement suddenly assured. And then the conversation turned dark.

"Are you gonna allow cats?" Bob asked.

"Hell, no!" I snorted. But just as quickly I realized he'd hit upon the fatal flaw in my brilliant plan. If I allowed cats, all hell would break loose. If I didn't, I'd catch political hell in the form of discrimination lawsuits, bad press, maybe even graffiti. Those cat-lovers can be a fierce and no-doubt litigious lot. I sighed. Bob handed me my cappuccino, and I studied it for a moment.

"Nice foam," I said.

Dog Days

2005-11-01T07:22:00.000-08:00

Socorro's Amerigo (Charter), at right, with handler Kim Griffith

It was a five-day, thousand-mile trip, encompassing the Newfoundland Club of Northern California Regional Specialty on Friday, Oct. 28, followed by Saturday and Sunday Sacramento area dog shows. Quite an investment, but I’d decided it was high time to start working seriously toward Charter’s championship. I’d purposely waited, hoping the boy would grow up and acquire a brain. But with his third birthday already well behind him, I gave up waiting and entered my big, goofy guy in all three shows.

Fellow NCSD member Peggy Lange was also traveling north for the weekend, taking her beautiful Baby, so we agreed to drive up together and split expenses. Baby, of course, is BIS CH Cypress Bay's See Sea Baby, the nation’s reigning No. 1 show Newf. “The Babe’s” resume features numerous best of breed wins, a best in show, and this year's Newfoundland National Specialty. Short of last year's once-in-a-generation best-in-show triumph at Westminster by that most famous of Newfs--BIS CH All Rise Pouch Cove, aka Josh, Baby's accomplishments are pretty much as good as it gets in the dog show world.

Charter, by contrast, has yet to earn a single point toward his CH. When someone asked me what he needs “to finish,” I had to reply, “15 points and two majors,” i.e., exactly the same as the day he came into the world.

Unlikely as it may seem, Baby and Charter are half-siblings by way of their famous dad, CH Pouch Cove's Goliath. Peggy and I like to make much of this confluence of DNA, but in truth, it's not all that special. Goliath is a randy and prolific boy who has sired dozens and dozens of offspring. Check any Newfoundland entry at any big dog show anywhere in the country, and you’re likely to find at least one Goliath kid. Even my friend, Outi, a Newf breeder in Finland, has a Goliath girl. She calls her “Easy,” perhaps in tribute to the old man.

Charter actually started out strong on Friday, looking good, moving well and winning a nice blue rosette in open dogs under the expert guidance of Kim Griffith, Baby’s favorite handler. Yes! Only a few moments later, however, those all-important points were snatched away by a less-than-spectacular Landseer from the “any other color” class whom the judge picked as "winners dog."

Baby, of course, proved a much better bet. After a wildly successful summer campaign on the East Coast, The Babe, escorted once again by Kim, easily reminded West Coast fans why she's top dog. As always, her fluid stride, perfect silhouette and solid free stack made her stand out even among a gleaming group of stellar specials—the best of California and the Pacific Northwest. In the end, it was Baby who took best of breed not only on Friday, but Saturday and Sunday, too. And then first place in the working group on Sunday—a tremendous win that qualified her for the elite seven-dog best-in-show competition.

The only down side to a Group 1 win is that you have to hang around the show grounds all day, waiting for best in show. And let me interject that dog show grounds by the end of three days acquire a certain inimitable funk. Still, the excitement of seeing your favorite compete for the big ribbon makes it worthwhile. The Babe’s flawless performance charmed the crowd as always, but alas the judge's point went to the English Springer Spaniel. Still, as Kim put it later over margaritas and burrito combo plates, it was a weekend for the scrapbook, and we couldn't have been much happier if the girl had taken it all.

As it was, it required Euclidian geometry to wedge dog crates, icechests and suitcases back into Peggy's van along with the enormous mounted silver punch bowl that will grace the Langes’ living room for the next year, elegant testimony to Baby’s 2005 NCNC regional specialty win. What an honor to spend such a memorable weekend with “The Babe.” I'm just so proud to know her!

I did learn, however, that like any celebrity Baby harbors a few embarrassing secrets. For one, she's a thief who'll nose into any unguarded bag looking for treats. In addition, she sometimes sleeps in the uber-undignified upside-down posture we at our house call "the dead-bug position." Finally—please don't let this get out—the nation's No. 1 show Newfoundland, if you don't watch her very carefully, will eat your soap. And that's the rest of the story.

Anniversary

2005-10-26T22:27:00.000-07:00

It's been a normal day. Work, errands, dishes, laundry. Brushing and bathing dogs. Supper and CNN. But that's just fine with me. Two years ago today, as Bob and I, the dogs and the cockatiel ricocheted down Wildcat Canyon in the Acura through smoke and flames, and later as we sat stunned in a downtown hotel room, knowing we'd lost our home to the fire, watching apocalyptic t.v. news reports and wondering where to go, what to do next, on that Oct. 26, we would've given anything for a normal day. It feels good now to be two years down the road and back home at Terra Nova. Though not everything is yet in place, we've come a long, long way toward reclaiming a sense of normalcy. Generally speaking, most people don't appreciate "normal" nearly enough. Sometimes we even confuse it with "boring." But that all changes once you've really experienced "abnormal".

How Do You Spell Relief?

2005-10-13T16:38:00.000-07:00

With headlines shouting louder day by day, warning of an impending bird-flu pandemic projected to kill 50-150 million homo sapiens (not to mention what it would do to chickens and cockatiels), it's been a real relief to learn that the U.S. government is already on the case. In fact, President Bush himself has studied the threat and delegated our protection from the deadly H5N1 virus to that peerless team of civil servants at the Department of Homeland Security. You know, the same bunch that did such a stellar job in the Gulf States during the recent hurricanes. Washington's defense squad has hit the field just in time. According to this morning's news, H5N1 has now traveled from Asia to Turkey and perhaps Romania. From there it's only a sneeze or two away from Western Europe, where it's likely to hop a redeye from Heathrow, de Gaulle or Frankfurt to JFK, Dulles or O'Hare. Thank goodness DHS is standing guard. Otherwise, I don't think I'd be able to sleep at night.

Training Days

2005-10-06T20:50:00.000-07:00

After three weeks of intensive Starbucks training, I'd like to report that being a barista is a lot harder than it looks. It turns out that making lattes and chatting with customers is only part of the gig. There's also spinning (Starbucks-speak for wiping tables, dumping ashtrays and sweeping up muffin crumbs), hauling big buckets of ice, mixing up pitchers of mocha and Frappuccino base, even mopping and cleaning bathrooms.

And then there's the lingo to learn. Having taken years of Japanese, a high-memorization pursuit if ever there was one, I've been surprised and downright humbled by the subtleties of cup-marking. For example. You'd think by now I'd remember that CRM is caramel mocha, not caramel macchiato, which is simply CM.

It's challenging, too, to learn all those buttons on the video register. Screen after screen of buttons. Oh sure, they're all laid out in semi-alphabetical order, but somehow that doesn't seem to help when you're facing a line of eight people, all desperate for their morning caffeine fix, and somebody orders a triple grande 140-degree half-caf tuxedo with 3 splendas, no whip. So then you toggle back and forth among the beverage, syrup/milk and modifiers screens, hunting and pecking like mad to enter all that before you forget it. You forget it anyway, of course, and then you have to ask again. Sometimes more than once. This is ridiculous. Granted, Starbucks is built on the concept of custom drinks and legendary customer service, but it seems to me that in drinking coffee, as in writing fine prose, modifiers should be kept to an absolute minimum.

Baristas also have to learn dozens of drink recipes and be able to recall them almost instinctively while juggling two, three or even a half dozen orders at once. This ability alone immediately separates the veterans from the novices. While my colleagues are whirring around, filling rows of Frappuccino cups, I'm moving in slow motion, trying to remember whether it's one or two pumps of mocha in a grande. At times like this, a simple spinning assignment comes as welcome relief.

Of course, I am being paid for my efforts. In fact, my first paycheck, covering my initial 16.25- hour week, topped a hundred dollars. Two more like that, and I'll have my initial investment in black Dockers and white polo shirts covered. But at least I can drink like a La Jolla socialite. From half an hour before a shift until half an hour after, my usual grande, decaf, nonfat lattes--or anything else I can dream up--are free. Which makes it tempting to splurge. Today, for example, I think I'll ask for organic milk.

Amphibian Update

2005-09-20T23:38:00.000-07:00

A week ago, we were up to four frogs in the fountain. But for the last few days, there's been only one. I worry about the others. Have they just moved or have they been in some kind of terrible accident? The good news is that whatever has become of them, this time I didn't have anything to do with it. (At least not that I know of.)

Starbucks Nation

2005-09-17T22:09:00.000-07:00

Every now and then it's fun to surprise those who know you best. Keeps the mystery alive as they say. Last week I shocked my friends and relatives by getting a job as a barista at Starbucks. "No, you did not!" my daughter Lauren responded when I called her to share the news. She's almost 27 now, the same age as my new boss. "Shut up!" echoed her boyfriend Ryan. EK, always the maverick, thought it was funny, in a good way. "That's really cool, Mom!" she said, which was nice to hear. Friends also expressed mixed emotions. "Are you serious?" "That's so cute!" "Keep telling yourself it's only 4 hours a day." "I think it's fantastic!"

It was just an idea at first. Something to counter the isolation of writing and boost the cash flow a bit. Somewhere three of my favorite things--coffee, chocolate and people--came together. The company Web site listed a Starbucks job fair coming up nearby, so I went to investigate the possibilities and ended up filling out an application, which included the question, "What do you like about coffee?", and participating in a group interview that began with "Tell us your name and your favorite Starbucks drink."

I felt kind of odd sitting there with four twenty-somethings: a store manager and three other job applicants, but I tried not to let it show and felt I held my own in the interview. Except maybe for one question: What would you do if you had to be late for work? I gave the expected answer--call your supervisor and explain--plus what I thought was a little extra apple polishing: "And then what I do is stay longer at the end of the day and make up the work." Too bad I went first on that one. "Well, I've never been late, so I can't say from personal experience," the next interviewee answered, and the other two took the cue. "I've never been later either." "Me either." "Hey!" I wanted to butt in. "I was a manager. Managers can be late." But under the circumstances, that would've sounded kind of pathetic, in a Tennessee Williams has-been heroine kind of way, so I just let it go.

Two days later, I got the call they'd said would come within the week, if at all. A job offer from Starbucks! And not only that, but I'd been hand-picked by my interviewer to join his staff at a new store slated to open in three weeks. "It's going to be a drive-through," he said, "which means a little faster pace. Are you up for it?" Yes, of course I was. In fact, I was actually excited. We agreed I would start Monday at a nearby store where I'd train until the new one opened. Wow, I thought. Five days from application to W-4. Not bad. And to think I'd been worried I might be considered too old to get another job.

Then on Monday my interviewer/new boss mentioned that he was really happy with the crew he'd found at the job fair, especially because of our diversity. Huh? Well, one of our group was Japanese, but the rest of us looked to be garden-variety Caucasians. Unless... Could it be that being at least twice as old as the typical Starbucks employee might actually have worked in my favor? It reminded me of something my grandfather said once when he learned he was eligible for a senior discount on tickets to the Hell Drivers grandstand show at the North Carolina State Fair. "Well, I guess there is some advantage to getting old."

Dream Venti: http://www.starbucks.com/aboutus/jobcenter.asp

A Little Good News for a Change

2005-09-09T13:16:00.000-07:00

The Natural Resources Defense Council reports that the U. S. Senate recently passed a resolution recognizing global warming as an enormous problem and declaring that the nation must enact mandatory limits on the pollution that causes it. This bipartisan breakthrough marks a desperately needed shift in national policy, reversing the Senate's 1997 vote against mandatory pollution limits, a decision the White House has since used to justify its refusal to address the issue of climate change. I find this latest action particularly significant in light of Katrina, which revved up to Category 4 by feeding on the unusually warm (90+ degree) water in the Gulf of Mexico.

Left Behind

2005-09-06T13:37:00.000-07:00

As if they hadn't been through enough, Katrina evacuees were forced to relinquish their pets in order to board a bus out of New Orleans. Of course, many more animals were lost or abandoned during the storm and prior evacuation. Many probably survived though their human families drowned and now are on their own. Fortunately, many animal welfare groups have been working around the clock to rescue them. You can help both the animals and their owners by supporting the Humane Society in these efforts. Donate online at www.hsus.org.

Eye Of The Storm

2005-09-06T10:07:00.000-07:00

For a riveting look at Katrina's aftermath in Pass Christian, Miss. through the eyes of a journalist, take a look at this blog: Eye Of The Storm

Overcome by Events

2005-09-04T21:09:00.000-07:00

I wanted to finish my funny story about the trip to North Carolina. Really. But the events of this past week, the horrific images from the Gulf Coast, have just flattened me. Maybe in a few days I'll be able to muster up a comic mood and tell you about the long wait at the Chicago airport, the funny-talking Southerners traveling with us, the chewing gum episode and all the rest of it. But for now, I can't stop thinking about New Orleans and Biloxi, Waveland and Slidell, can't quite get my mind around the reality that we've lost an entire major city and a slew of small towns. I can't believe that people had to wait, trapped in their own attics, standing in contaminated water up to their necks, day after day after day, and still no one came to rescue them. I can't fathom that tens of thousands of people, from infants to the elderly, were stranded without food or even water for nearly a week while bureaucrats bungled an emergency response they could have launched even before the storm arrived. I don't understand how anyone can support a president who has inflicted such grievous injuries on the nation, done so much damage in so short a time. I can't comprehend why some of my own family still think he's just what America needs. The lies, the paranoia of this administration make Nixon and his band of burglars look quaint. I am sick when I think of it, the religious hypocrisy, the liberties we've lost in the name of national security, the lives wasted in Iraq, and now the bodies floating in the streets of New Orleans, the homes and histories lost, and mostly, mostly, those desperate dark faces in the attics, waiting, praying, ebbing, dying for help that never comes. God forgive us.

Presidential Priorities

2005-08-30T09:27:00.000-07:00

New Orleans is under water. Biloxi is trashed. Gulfport is gone. Scores of people are dead, tens of thousands homeless as a result of Hurricane Katrina. And where is our president? Here in San Diego, rehearsing a speech he plans to give at North Island Naval Base. His topic? Not the unprecedented destruction and human misery ongoing in the Gulf of Mexico, but a rallying cry for his increasingly unpopular jihad in the Gulf of Arabia. Advance reports indicate he actually plans to compare the "global war on terrorism" to World War II.

This development has reminded me of a pithy quote, which I think offers particular insight into our current national climate:

"Naturally, the common people don't want war, but they can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. Tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and endangering the country. It works the same in every country."

Herman Goering
Reichsmarschall, Third Reich
At the Nuremberg Trials

You Can Go Home Again, But Why Would You Want To?

2005-08-29T20:59:00.000-07:00

Part I: Flying the Friendly Skies

August and summer's last hurrah, a trip to North Carolina to see my father and his wife, Weyburn. EK met me en route, accompanied by her adorable Cavalier King Charles spaniel, Rory, and the three of us flew together from Chicago to Raleigh.

When Bob travels on business, and I ask him how his flight went, he usually answers with a single word. Uneventful. Let me just begin by saying my trip to North Carolina was not uneventful.

The first clue came before we’d even left the gate in San Diego when the pilot announced that storms were rolling through the Chicago area, causing a “ground stop” at O’Hare. As a result, we wouldn’t be leaving San Diego for another hour. I wondered if EK had already taken off from Sacramento, but within a few minutes she text-messaged me to say her departure also had been delayed. So I kicked back and struck up a conversation with my seatmate, a vacationing Italian accountant. Eventually, we took off and everyone settled in with their books and headphones.

About an hour later, a woman a few rows in front of us suddenly broke into our quiet flight routines. “Sir!" she began shouting. "Wake up, sir!” She was standing in the aisle, next to her empty seat, and bending over a man in the middle seat. “Sir! Sir!” And then, looking around at row after row of startled faces. “Is there a doctor on the plane?”

For the next 15 minutes or so, my new Italian friend and I watched in stunned silence as a full-blown medical emergency unfolded around us. “I need some oxygen here,” the woman was broadcasting to the flight attendants, who started bustling up and down the aisle, opening overhead compartments and breaking out a series of navy blue medical bags. The woman in the aisle kept shouting. “I can’t find a pulse. I think we’re going to have to defib him. Let’s go, people, we need to move.”

The unconscious passenger must have heard this even through his stupor, because he came around just for a moment, prompting his rescuer to change tactics. “We need to start an i.v.,” she announced. “I’m a nurse. I can do it.”

By this time, another woman had come to her aid, presumably answering the call for a doctor. But unlike the nurse she didn't seem to have a clue what to do for the patient beyond re-checking his pulse and looking worried. Fortunately a second doctor came rushing up from first class and took over, much to the visible relief of the pulse-checker. "I'm a dermatologist," she apologized and then hurried back to her seat.

"Let's move him so we can lay him down," the first-class doc suggested. The nurse agreed. “I need some men here,” she shouted. Several guys jumped up to help, but the aisle was so narrow and our victim so wide that only a couple of them could really get hold of him, which made it all the harder for them to squeeze his considerable dead weight to the back of the plane where they laid him out on the floor between the lavatories and the food service units. Within seconds, the doctor, the nurse and at least three flight attendants were swarming around the poor guy, opening his shirt, unzipping his pants, pulling out medical equipment and making phone calls. Soon, one of the pilots came back to check out the situation.

My new Italian friend and I conferred. Both of us expected we’d have to land somewhere short of Chicago to offload the patient. Instead, the pilot returned to the cockpit, acknowledged a medical emergency on board but noted that "things are looking positive for our customer," making it possible for us to continue on to Chicago. He then thanked us for our patience and signed off with a cheery, “You hang on back there, Jesse!”

By the time we landed in Chicago, the doctor had returned to first class, and Jesse was propped up in a back-row seat, a la Weekend at Bernie’s, conscious but tethered to an i.v. bag hanging from the overhead compartment, his personal Florence Nightingale still by his side.

Let this be a lesson to us all. If ever you feel the need to lapse into unconsciousness at 35,000 feet, do be sure there’s a crackerjack nurse seated right next to you. Or at least someone who plays one on t.v.

Next: Korean kids and Raleigh rednecks

Another Tiny Tragedy

2005-08-09T23:16:00.000-07:00

I'm just not sure I have the emotional stamina to handle much more frog drama. And yet the saga continues. This evening I was on the back patio, repotting some herbs Bob brought home yesterday. They'd been sitting outside in an open plastic bag since. The sage went well. Nothing unusual with the oregano either. But when I turned the peppermint out of its plastic pot, a frog came with it.

"What are you doing in there?" I asked it. "You should be in the front-porch fountain with your friends." The frog didn't answer of course, but I think it understood, because it allowed me to catch it and deposit it in the fountain, where it took a quick dip, then climbed up on the rim and sat there, breathing very fast.

I left it to recover from its adventure, went back to my pots and stuffed the empties in the plastic bag they'd come in. Just as I started to toss the whole wad into the trash, I felt the bag move in my hand. It couldn't be! But yes, there was a frog in the bag. I tried to get a fix on him and discovered he had a friend! A little incredulous now, I made a second trip to the fountain and dumped in both of the bagged frogs. One seemed happy enough in the water; the other immediately leaped out onto the porch wall and stuck there. To each his own.

Back again to the patio, where the herbs were now nicely bunched in two big, heavy pots, which I thought needed a little rearranging. As I pulled one in front of the other, a fourth frog flipped out from somewhere underneath and landed on its back, one tiny front leg mangled and dangling. Even after managing to right itself, it looked a little crumpled. This struck me as a horrific development, even worse than finding a flattened frog in the hinge of the front door Saturday morning. That frog at least went instantly. This frog was irreparably wounded and probably dying a miserable death. That is, if frogs experience pain.

I wasn't sure about this. I tried to think back to college zoology class, which unfortunately involved the dissection of quite a few frogs, mostly pre-deceased and pickled. But in one lab session, we were supposed to take a pair of scissors and cut off the top of a living frog's head, right through the hinge of its jaw. I couldn't do it of course; my lab partner had to take over. Afterwards, the poor creature continued to hop around, apparently oblivious to its mortal injury. This barbaric exercise was intended to demonstrate something unusual and, I think, primitive about the way a frog's brain works, something I forgot immediately after finals and never really needed to know anyway. Until now, 34 years later.

Frogs do have nerves; I was sure of that much. We had to find them in our pickled projects, woven in amongst other inner frog parts. But did our hapless, headless frog victim feel pain? It didn't seem like it. The whole point of the experiment was that the frog continued to act fairly normally, at least until it died, which, blessedly, happened fairly quickly.

I could only hope now that my tiny victim didn't feel as bad as he looked. I briefly entertained the thought of taking him to a veterinarian, but in all seriousness couldn't think of anything to do for him except carry him to the fountain and slip him gently into the water. But he couldn't swim very well, and I was afraid he was going to drown, so I skimmed him out and left him sitting on the porch, looking almost okay except for that one sad little leg. I tried to convince myself that he was going to recover, that his bad leg would simply dry up and fall off, that a three-legged frog could still have a good life. But the truth is I feel rotten.

I remember finding that first little frog in our fountain. Was it only last week? Such a happy, innocent moment. Since then, despite all my warm, fuzzy feelings toward the frogs, I have managed to taint the entire experience by mindlessly causing the death of one little friend and the mutilation of another. Now I'm hesitant to close a door, move heavy objects or even take an unstudied step for fear of smushing someone else. Just imagine how paranoid the frogs must be.

Three Frog Night

2005-08-04T19:58:00.000-07:00

As of tonight, we have three frogs in the fountain. Did I mention it's a small fountain? Stay tuned. This could get interesting.

Update 8/6/05: I regret to report that the frog population fell by one last night. It was a tragic incident, and I'm still too traumatized to talk about it. On the positive side, by this afternoon another tiny tenant had already filled the vacancy, which cheered me up quite a bit.

Politics and Religion

2005-08-04T10:00:00.000-07:00

O.K. Let's get down to it. Let's get controversial. Thus far, although these blog entries have, I hope, reflected my faith, I've purposely been fairly oblique about it. No specifics. No sermons. But, in fact, re-evaluating my beliefs in the wake of a life-altering, near-death experience like the fire has been an ongoing inner pursuit these past 21 months.

Actually, it's a journey that began well before that, accelerated by external issues in the church and society--the narrowing of evangelical Christian thinking to a few hot-button topics and the trend toward the merger of politics and religion. If I remember my U.S. history correctly, the Pilgrims would see this latter shift as alarming.

The pendulum swing hits me personally when people assume that my Christianity implies I am also a right-wing Republican. Which I'm not. (I'm not a Democrat either, by the way.) Other Christians, for example, have been surprised to learn I'm not a Bush/Cheney fan. From my perspective, I'm surprised they can support a man who claims to be a Christian while waging vengeful, unwarranted war. I'm pretty sure this is not what Jesus would do.

But I've felt a little lonely out here on the left bank of Christianity, so I've been searching for other Christians who believe the concept of an omnipotent, yet personal God is just too big, too radical to cram into tiny red or blue boxes. I've discovered a few brave forerunners. One is Jim Wallis, editor of Sojourners magazine and author of "God's Politics: Why the Right Gets It Wrong and the Left Doesn't Get It."

Today, the New York Times published an op-ed piece by Wallis, which struck me as hugely encouraging. Here's an excerpt:

"Because the Republicans, with the help of the religious right, have captured the language of values and religion (narrowly conceived as only abortion and gay marriage), the Democrats have also been asking how to 'take back the faith.' But that means far more than throwing a few Bible verses into policy discussions, offering candidates some good lines from famous hymns, or teaching them how to clap at the right times in black churches. Democrats need to focus on the content of religious convictions and the values that underlie them.

"The discussion that shapes our political future should be one about moral values, but the questions to ask are these: Whose values? Which values? And how broadly and deeply will our political values be defined? Democrats must offer new ideas and a fresh agenda, rather than linguistic strategies to sell an old set of ideologies and interest group demands."

Wallis goes on to suggest five planks of a new Democratic platform, which right away tells you he's come up with at least three important issues other than abortion and homosexuality. If you'd like to read the entire Wallis piece, you can find it on The New York Times Web site: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/04/opinion/04wallis.html.

Hogwarts Expressed

2005-07-31T23:22:00.000-07:00

Best part of the weekend: finishing Harry Potter, Vol. VI. Worst part of the weekend: finishing Harry Potter Vol. VI. As usual, J.K. leaves you stunned, stumped by lingering questions, and doomed to suffer another three years of withdrawal back in Muggleland. Meanwhile, Voldemort is still lurking out there somewhere and up to no good whatsoever.

Family Ties

2005-07-31T22:56:00.000-07:00

A first order of business since leaving my job to begin my work has been catching up on important matters too long deferred. And what's more important than spending time with family? First it was my sister, her husband and son who came out from Ohio for a week. This was truly an event. Karen hadn't been to California since our daughter Erin's wedding nearly three years ago. Denny hadn't been since completing grad school in L.A. almost 20 years ago. And it was a first for my nephew, Justin. We had a great time, and it was a good excuse for me to revisit those San Diego sites we natives usually abandon to the tourists--the zoo, the wild animal park, the traditional scenic spots, etc.

Two days after Karen and crew left, I headed to the airport again. This time I was the one standing in the security line, on my way to visit daughter Lauren and her boyfriend Ryan in Seattle. Lately, visits to Lauren have been prompted by an emergency of some kind, but this time was just for fun. We indulged in the usual girl stuff--shopping, getting pedicures, going out for lunch. And when Ryan could join us we branched out to see the traditional scenic spots, etc. Next on the calendar is a trip back East with Erin to see my dad and his wife, Weyburn. Technology is a wondrous thing. Reaching out and touching someone via phone or e-mail does keep us connected. But virtual hugs leave much to be desired. There's just no substitute for a real visit.

A Frog in Our Fountain

2005-07-26T15:37:00.000-07:00

Among the many delights Bob and I discovered during our initial sojourn at Terra Nova before the fire was a tiny tree frog who hopped out of a hibiscus plant one day while I was watering. I scooped him up carefully and took him inside for a few minutes to show Bob. He was a wonderful and wiggly little thing who promptly escaped my fingers and scaled our kitchen window a la Spiderman.

After the fire, looking around at charred terrain as far as could be seen in every direction, I thought often about our little frog. Surely he and all his kind must have perished in the cataclysm. And even if a few lucky Kermit cousins had survived, how could they possibly repopulate without any apparent source of water? With all the fire took from us, it seemed especially cruel that we would likely never again find a frog in our flowers.

You know where this is going, of course, so here's the denouement. Our daughter Lauren gave us a beautiful copper wall fountain for our anniversary. It arrived just as we were moving into the new house, and we decided the front porch was the perfect place to hang it. What a lovely addition to Terra Nova. We found its burbling such a soothing sound that we took to leaving the door ajar just to listen to it. Apparently, we weren't the only ones enjoying our fountain. One evening I discovered a tiny tree frog perched on its rim. Reason enough, Bob and I decided, to call our recovery from the fire complete.

P.S. Update 7/31/05. Make that two frogs in our fountain. Here are a few photos of Pacific tree frogs: http://www.npwrc.usgs.gov/narcam/idguide/hylareg.htm