A Grate Responsibility

The San Francisco Public Utilities Commission established an "Adopt-a-Drain" program "to prevent flooding in neighborhoods by having residents clear away debris that covers drains during storms."  The inspiration came from Boston, where an "Adopt-a-Hydrant" initiative gave volunteers the responsibility to shovel snow and ice off their neighborhood fire hydrants.  

In San Francisco 565 residents have adopted 934 of the city's 25,000 storm drains.  The residents are assigned drains and they get to name them.  The most popular name is "Dwayne." Other names include "No Drain, No Gain," and "The Great Leaf Catcher."

I have a drain across the street from my house.  In the fall leaves from the entire neighborhood fall into the gutter, pass through little tunnels under our neighbors' driveways and descend upon this one drain.  If the drain isn't cleared frequently, the water flows across the street, over the curb, past my cute little cairns and decomposed granite, through my fence and down my front yard, washing away mulch, geraniums, and dirt—that is, unless I clean the drain.  I do this regularly.  I just didn't know I could legally adopt a drain.  Should I include it in my will?

Adopting a drain is a microcosm of everything that we need to do to counteract the malaise following November's election.  Take responsibility.  Do something.  Quit complaining.  No, Facebook doesn't count.  You actually have to do something. Adopt a drain.  Count birds for the Audubon Society.  Pick up the styrofoam left on your neighbor's yard.  Walk slowly across the street by the old lady with the heavy grocery bag.  Better still, carry the damn bag.

Help me name this drain.

The problem is that the drain is at the bottom of two sloped gutters which run under Rugby Avenue's driveways.

Looking up Rugby Avenue to Yale

Leaves caught in the flow clog up the tunnels under the driveways.

And then at the corner of Rugby and Yale is a curve.  Yale runs uphill for another tenth of a mile, and all the water in the gutters on the east side of Yale Avenue takes a turn at Yale and Rugby that's banked like the NASCAR track at Daytona, and runs down to my drain.

Yale Avenue on the left.  Rugby on the right.

It's Christmas Eve.  I'm going out to clean the drain.  Will post an "after" photo to go with the "before."

There.  Bring on the storms.

Cameras I Have Loved...and Destroyed

We seniors have an annoying habit of trying to summarize our lives, to add everything up and see what, if anything,  it all comes to.  For me, well, I thought I'd start by remembering all the cameras I've destroyed in the past, oh, forty-five years or so.  One of the reasons to bring this up now is that I just destroyed one Tuesday, so it's kind of fresh in my mind.  Let's begin.  So many entries.

The workhorse Mamiya RB 67 was my studio camera.  On the day before my first senior high school appointments, I put the camera on my Cullman tripod.  Or thought I did.  As I was walking away the camera followed me.  Or at least it followed me for a couple of inches, at which point, really unsecured at all, it dropped to the floor and exploded.  I borrowed another one from Robert Pierce, then called Adorama Camera in NY and paid to have another one sent overnight to me. That was the first.

When I wasn't in the studio I was out shooting in different locations.  Many of these photographs, (landscapes, mostly), were images that I simply wanted for myself.  I had bought a wonderful Hasselblad 503C, the pinnacle of medium format cameras.   Lighter than the RB 67, the Hasselblad was my "wedding camera", although it was portable and light enough to carry in a backpack and go hiking.

The Hasselblad 503C is a very expensive medium format camera.  Without its lens, viewfinder, or film back, it's pretty boxy, too, but with rounded edges and corners.  It's not very heavy.  If you put one on an uneven rock at the top of a cliff at Tomales Point, it behaves kind of like a ball.  Like the rocks in Death Valley's Race Course, it appears to move by itself.  Sometimes it really does move by itself.  One of my Hasselblads did exactly that.  I quickly reached for it, but knowing that if I took a step closer I might join it in what looked like a 100' drop to the rocks below. Helpless, I watched it turn over and over about three times, then disappear.  Hasselblads are made really well.  Strong enough to go to the moon.  But not survive a 100' fall to rocks.

Last year at this time I had a Nikon D 800 camera.  (I still have it).  For a while, though, I didn't have it.  On Christmas Day I was at Point Lobos, taking photographs of the waves crashing onto the shore.  Suddenly I realized that a really big wave had my name on it, and I found myself standing on a rock, unable to escape what I prayed might just be a little shower.  The split second before my "shower", I took this image:

Jadyne was watching from the shore.  She saw me disappear completely about 1/10th of a second later.  I was drenched.  My D 800 recorded this shot and no other.  I was still standing, but reluctantly gave up the idea of more hiking.  Having been slammed by a Pacific Ocean wave in air temperature just above freezing wasn't the kind of thing that made me say, "No problem; I'm just soaked.  I've destroyed two cameras simultaneously, and I'm freezing.  Let's keep going!"  In my pocket was my Sony RX 100 IV, a wonderful little point and shoot camera that records RAW images with remarkable clarity.  Here it is:

Isn't it cute?

It was about a week old.  It was in my fleece pocket when the wave struck, and even after wringing out the fleece I recognized that it would never work again.  I returned it to Best Buy the following week.  "I just bought this camera, and it doesn't work," I complained.  They tried to turn it on.  No luck.  "I think it sustained some water damage," I added, as they examined it more thoroughly, realizing that like the parrot in Monty Python, it wasn't about to do much of anything. "This camera is no more!  He has ceased to be! E's expired and gone to meet 'is maker! E's a stiff!  Bereft of life, E rests in peace!"  The wonderful people at Best Buy agreed that although I had never purchased an insurance policy they would give me another camera, provided that I buy the $99 insurance policy for at least a year.  I did.

And so all was well...until the next month.

Okay, now we're in India.  I've bought a replacement camera for the D 800, a slightly improved version called the D 810. (No need to show the photo; it looks a lot like the D 800). I loved this camera.  We're in Cochin, southern India, choosing to dine at a wonderful rooftop restaurant right above the ferry terminal.  While waiting for our dinners, I placed the D 810 and a 24-70 zoom lens on a little tabletop tripod to do time exposures of the cars driving up and down the street, blurry photographs of the passengers disembarking from the ferry.  It's a beautiful night, and we're enjoying ourselves immensely.  Here's one of those photographs.  No, here's the last photograph that camera and lens ever took.

From the ledge of the rooftop restaurant in Cochin

After taking this image I reached for my camera and lens.  Jadyne heard the noise.  I said nothing. Neither one of us had ever heard the sound a camera makes when it falls two stories to a concrete driveway, but when you hear that sound you don't need much imagination.

Our fish in a basket hadn't arrived.  I sat back down at the table, closed my eyes and was completely silent. I've taken classes in mindfulness.  It was necessary right then to bring up the highlights of all twelve classes and apply them as best I could.  A waiter went down to the driveway and retrieved what was left of my camera and lens.  

Earlier that day I had torn a rather large hole in a pair of pants I brought on the trip.  When we left Cochin I wrapped the camera and the lens in the pants and left all three in the wastebasket in our room.  

All was good for almost a full year!  On Tuesday, however, Jadyne and I and our friend Gail Stern hiked the Tennessee Valley trail, turning at the water's edge to scamper along the bottom of the cliffs, where the water meets the rock.  Sensing that the tide was coming in, we turned to go back.  Here are Jadyne and Gail, sensing that they might get nailed.  "David!" Gail yelled.  "I need your help to get around the slippery rock!"  So, safe to say, this is the last photograph I took with my replacement Sony RX 100 IV camera.  

Yesterday I bought a Sony RX 100 V camera from Best Buy.  Tomorrow I will send off my wave destroyed Sony RX 100 IV to their repair services.  Doubtless, they will dub it destroyed, and because I purchased insurance last January, I will get a refund.  Or so I should say, "I expect to get a refund."  If I were the manager of a Best Buy I wouldn't sell a camera to me.

We're leaving once again in three days for Monterey, Pacific Grove, and Point Lobos.  No doubt I will have both cameras and insurance in hand.  Fortunately, too, I know how to edit and add to my blog.  Stay tuned.

January 1, 2017.  Sometimes good things happen to bad people.  In short, Best Buy not only authorized my camera for replacement, but when I brought it in they gave me their current discounted price, and because it was now an open box camera (opened by me, or course), I received an additional discount.  The upshot?  I have the upgraded camera, a thee year insurance plan, a store credit of $129.  And me?  I'm still a bad person,

The Red State Tour

Yesterday Jadyne and I went to see the San Francisco Gay Men's Chorus annual Christmas Show.  75 of the chorus's more than 275 members put on stirring, beautiful renditions of both traditional and non-traditional Christmas music, including a totally silent verse of "Silent Night", using only sign language.  Seeing them is now officially a tradition for us.

"This October, the San Francisco Gay Men's Chorus will head to many states throughout the Southern US to create awareness of local anti-LGBTQ+ legislation, partner with local non-profits and LGBTQ+ organizations to build infrastructure and raise money, and promote unity through mission-driven activism and song. 

The Chorus will visit North Carolina, South Carolina, Mississippi, Tennessee, Georgia, and Alabama during the nine-day "Lavender Pen Tour.*"

Rather than be frustrated and feel disheartened by recent political turmoil, we are taking this opportunity to marshal our mosaic of powerful, positive voices to empower our fellow LGBTQ+ Americans, especially our LGBTQ+ youth. And equally in a hopeful attempt to offer an outstretched hand and have honest dialogue with fellow Americans." (Text from their web site)

*The murdered San Francisco supervisor Harvey Milk handed mayor George Moscone a lavender pen to sign anti discrimination legislation.

Why am I writing this in my blog?  Jadyne and I had already proposed a "Red State Tour", intending to visit those same states to visit both civil war and civil rights sites—Vicksburg, Selma's Edmund Pettus bridge, the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham.  We discarded the whole idea after the election, thinking that we had so little in common with the political and social discourse in those states.  But after seeing that the Gay Men's Chorus, who are among the presumed targets of legislation in those states, wants to "offer an outstretched hand and have honest dialogue with fellow Americans," we were once again inspired.  We need to do the same.  

Whether they need a photographer or not, the thought of watching and photographing them perform in those states, especially in front of the state house in Mississippi, seems like the perfect retirement activity for yours truly.  Stay tuned.  I'm about to offer my services.

WW II, Kennedy, 9/11, the Tech Revolution, Orlando,

How old are you?  If you're a baby boomer, as I am, Kennedy's assassination was the single most dominant event in our lifetime.  But for 2000 people surveyed by the Pew Research Center in collaboration with A & E's History Channel, 76% chose the attacks on 9/11.  The survey found that Americans are primarily united by their age.  My parents probably would have chosen WW II, for blacks and Hispanics Obama's election followed close behind 9/11.  By race whites chose the tech revolution as third; blacks, the civil rights movement, and for Hispanics it was the shootings in Orlando.

Pew found that the response to 9/11 topped the list of positive moments, while Obama's election followed with 14%.

10% believe that Trump's campaign (the survey was taken before the election) made them most disappointed in the nation.

If 10% believe that the campaign disappointed them, how must they feel discovering that the flawed electoral college system will swear him in as president in one month? And if the campaign was disappointing, how about the aftermath, the "election?"  I have little connection to those who used their #2 pencils to fill in the oval by his name.  He is not my president.  Living in California, my neighbors and I all feel adrift.  

Relonch

In a cold January in 1981 I traveled with noted landscape photographer Ed Cooper down Highway 95, the eastern side of the Sierra Nevada Mountain range.  We camped along the way in his Toyota Dolphin RV in temperatures as cold as -25 degrees.  Setting up in the clear winter skies, we captured the full moon setting over Mt,. Whitney, in early morning a frozen stream at Mammoth Lakes, the magnificent sculpted rocks in the Alabama Hills.  Eating only trail mix we pretty much gave up on other comforts, knowing that these were small sacrifices for the pleasures of setting up bulky 4x5 view cameras, then witnessing and capturing on Ektachrome sheet film a magnificent slice of the American West.  

I joked with Ed about a make-believe camera, called a "Composamat."  I thought it would be perfect for amateurs, a camera that wouldn't let you take a photograph until you had composed the scene perfectly.  Some joke.  Relonch has created one that goes much farther than that.

The founder of Relonch simply wants to eliminate all the painstaking stuff that photographers had to learn before they took a photograph—like seeing and understanding light and how it changes or enhances an image, how to compose for the best effect, what aperture and shutter speeds are, and how they can make or break an image.  He said, "Our aim is to eliminate the countless complications associated with photography so we chose to create the camera as a service model rather than just hardware or software. Our service gives members the ability to solely focus on the experience, on the moment itself." You can't even see the image that you take with a Relonch camera.  The photos are automatically uploaded to Relonch's server, where they're edited using an "algorithm-based approach' the company calls, 'Pictured Techology." The company's algorithms take lighting conditions into account, so photos you get from the camera "actually look like what you pictured."

You don't even own the camera.  Relonch does.  You pay them $99 a month, too, to become another Annie Leibovitz.  With their camera. What does she know, anyhow? 

A well-known photographer was being honored with a dinner party at a woman's home who collected his photographs  "What kind of camera do you use?' she asked.  "Your photographs are so lovely."  Later the photographer complimented her on her dinner.  "What kind of oven did you use?" he asked.

Folks, it ain't the oven; it's the chef, not the hammer but the carpenter, not the scalpel but the doctor, not the algorithms. or the camera.  It's the photographer..

Ghost Ship, Oakland, CA December 2, 2016

Perhaps you don't remember the Ghost Ship.  Maybe enough time or distance has elapsed that it's just a vague memory.  Indeed, these tragedies have a way of moving in and out of our consciousness, replaced by news of other events—a 60 point night by Klay Thompson, the Cubs' winning the World Series, the burns on your foot when you accidentally spilled the pot of chili.  But for the families of thirty-six young people—artists, teachers, students, vocalists, musicians—for their friends and relatives, what happened at the Ghost Ship a little after 11:00 the night of December 2nd won't ever be replaced.  The mother of one of the victims woke up Saturday morning and read this haunting text from her daughter, "I'm going to die, mom.  I love you." Facing death many of the victims were found holding on to each other.  The federal inspectors are gone now.  Cleanup has begun.  The car stereo and alarms business next store is open and bustling.  And for the first time the public can see where these thirty-six suffered and died and can offer candles, poems, flowers, letters...and prayers.

For the first time the public is permitted to see the scene close up.

Preschool children leave their hand prints in memory of the victims.

This remaining painted icon says what words can't say.

The light red document prohibits entry into the shell of the building.

With the FTA inspectors gone, the cleanup begins.

A Most Peculiar Man

The lights are on twenty-four hours a day, the curtains pulled wide.  Until the house was overtaken by rats, a peculiar man inhabited this space.  The house belongs to his parents.  His mother died several years ago, and by all accounts from his neighbors, the peculiar man delivered a heartfelt eulogy.  Since he never talked to anyone in the neighborhood it took his mother's death to put him behind a lectern, to speak to those of us who have seen him for almost fifty years but have never heard so much as a "hello."  His father, a proud former Senior Olympic participant, now in his late nineties, lives in a nearby nursing home, and by all accounts won't be able to return.  By all accounts the three were the only Republicans in Kensington.

For many of those fifty years the peculiar man's next door neighbor put his garbage can on the street each Monday night.  Dismayed that in the morning the can was upended, the garbage strewn across the sidewalk, he was determined to find the animal that singled out his can, foraging for leftovers. The neighbor waited very early one morning and discovered that the peculiar man, then a peculiar boy, ran out of his house, down the stairs, and upended the can. The neighbor collared the peculiar boy and dragged him back home, up the stairs, and warned him not to do this again. This was more than forty years ago.  The peculiar boy, now a man, has never spoken again to the neighbor.  If they find themselves walking down the street the peculiar man will cross to the other side just to avoid the neighbor.

When the peculiar man's mother was in a nursing home his father wanted to spend the day at her side.  I volunteered to walk their housebound airedale (Peggy Sue) in the middle of the day so the father wouldn't have to worry.  He left me a key, and I climbed the stairs, unlocked the front door and opened it, only to find that the peculiar man, who, until that moment I didn't realize even existed, was sitting on a sofa in his underpants.  Startled, he ran out of the room. Plastic garbage bag in hand, I put the leash on Peggy Sue and headed down the street.

I haven't seen the peculiar man in several days.  Neighbors have said that he's sleeping on a sofa somewhere.  We keep waiting for Clark's pest control or a truck from Orkin to park before the house.  Meanwhile, the curtains stay open, the lights remain on, twenty-four hours a day.

Motion and Blur

In the quest to make images sharper, optical engineers have created clearer glass, extra-low dispersion elements coated with fluorine and nano-crystal integrated coatings.  Software engineers continue to develop newer, better ways to take those millions of bytes and turn them into clear images.  But sharpness and clarity aren't everything.  Ansel Adams once said, "There are no rules for good photographs.  There are only good photographs."

There are those times when sharpness gets in the way, when the photographer wishes to express what he sees in a different way.  For me that often includes blur and softness.  Whether it's a portrait photographed at such an aperture that the eyes are all that are in focus, or in the case above, a racing cyclist spinning down Mendocino Avenue, the out-of-focus elements make the image.  The background is unrecognizable; the spokes are a whirling blend of blur.  Only the cyclist's head is sharp.  The feeling of speed comes from the marriage of both sharp and unsharp elements.  

To create such an image the photographer has to be still.  He uses a slow shutter speed, say around 1/10th of a second, and he moves the camera at the same speed as the subject.  If he's lucky, the subject will be sharp and the stationary background blurry caused by the camera moving (panning) as the shutter is depressed.  It's not easy.  

But there are times when blur is created in a camera kept absolutely still.

This Japanese Maple is right across the street from my house.  

I photographed the Japanese maple tree yesterday in a rainstorm, using a telephoto lens, a neutral density filter, and a tripod.  The camera was still, the mirror locked up, and I chose an exposure of two minutes.  The trunk is sharp, the rest a blend of varying sharpnesses.  Leaves farther from the trunk, blown by the wind, are softer.  I wanted to create a painterly like photograph.  You can do this with software, too, but I like this effect better.  

Slow shutter speeds sometimes can create both sharpness and blur at the same time.  In this image there are sharp lines in the blue and white shirts and in the number 22, but the whole photograph is fluid and blurry. 

University of California National Champion Rugby Team

I can't compete with sports photographers, their 12 frame-a-second motor drives, and 600 mm lenses, and primo seats down on the field.  From the stands I can use a moderate lens and a slow shutter speed.  Out of every fifty shots or so I manage to capture the feeling through a photograph that equals through blur and motion the razor sharp faces created by sports photographers.  The image above captures all that I feel when I watch rugby.  So does this one.

Similarly, in football.  Again, at UC Berkeley.

Fourth Down

And one of my favorites.  I entered this in a contest once, and it finished almost dead last.  Digital Photography Review, which sponsored the contest, added a new one for people whose photographs finished close to last in previous contests.  Again, mine was at the bottom.  It doesn't always matter what others think.

CA 1976.  A scan from an Ektachrome slide.

And last...sometimes unintentional softness doesn't ruin an image.  If the photographer is lucky enough, the strength of his subjects transcends all common photographic ailments, including sharpness.  I was riding on a train in England around 1970 when I came across this couple.  I just assumed that they were mother and son.  Their faces, especially the mother's, describe the English in ways my words couldn't.

Philz Coffee

Coffee Lovers around the US.  It's just a matter of time before Philz sets up shop in Bloomington, Peoria, or Poughkeepsie.  

"Philz Coffee is an American coffee company and coffeehouse chain based in San Francisco, California, considered a major player in third wave coffee. Philz Coffee focuses on making drip coffee. Philz Coffee has 36 locations spread amongst the San Francisco Bay Area, Los Angeles, and most recently Washington."  (From Philz Website)

Philz also has long lines and a lengthy menu.  Not for the uninitiated.  Natasha S of Washington D.C. is a typical Philz patron.  "This is the FIRST Philz Coffee I ever tried.  And I will NEVER forget that amazing moment.  It was like falling in love for the first time."  

Today was my first time, too.  And yes, it was amazing.  On a rainy day in Berkeley I went to meet Haoyun Wei, a visiting scholar from Beijing who has one Ph.D in Optical Engineering and will complete his second Ph.D in Chemistry at UC Berkeley this summer. We spend an hour together each week chatting.  By giving Haoyun a chance to speak English he has come to understand the language better.  Today I introduced him to "as the crow flies".  Here he is enjoying his small cup ($3.50) of Philz' Silken Splendor.

Haoyun is 38, married, has a young son.  On Black Friday Haoyun went with friends to the Livermore Outlet Shops to buy a bag for his wife, who is in Beijing.  Haoyun took several photos of the bags, sent them to his wife, who told him exactly which one to get.  It was sometime after midnight.  He stood in line for almost an hour before being able to pay for the bag.  Welcome to America, Haoyun.

Back to Philz.  Why Philz takes so long...here's a barista in midpour.

The baristas always pour from a foot or so above the coffee.  Each cup gets its own filtered pour.

I had a cup of Jacob's Wonderbar.  Had to have cream.  The barista asked me if it was ok.  Perfect! Please come visit.  We'll hang out at Philz, that is, after finals are over, laptops closed, and the students go home for Christmas, the only way we'd ever get a seat.

Four Conversations Between Home and Costco

“Do you just paint here or try to sell your paintings, too?”  Standing on a busy corner between I-80 and Costco, with brush in hand, stood a fifty year old black man in a long coat, applying a little depth to the green and white seas that held up his three-masted schooner.

“I do a little of both,” he said, hoping to make a quick sale on the spot.  “May I take your photograph?” I asked, camera in hand. “I usually only grant one,” he said, no doubt expecting a sales loss, “but go ahead.”  I used to paint on San Pablo Avenue, but no one paid me any attention.”  “Have you had any luck today?” I asked.  “I ran out of luck”, he replied, “after the Oakland fire, but I do accept donations.” A fair trade.

            The check out lines at Costco in December were as long as the word, s-w-e-a-t-e-r, I was adding in Words With Friends when the man behind me asked, “If you call a person who works in tech a ‘techie’, what do you call a person who plays games on his phone?”  I smiled before he finished.  “You’re sharp,” he said.  I feigned amusement.  “I’m a wood carver”, he continued, “and you can use toothpaste on the end of a grinding wheel to polish blades until they shine.” I didn't know that.  “I’ve learned a lot from instructional videos on YouTube”, he said.  I told him how I’d carelessly scratched the wheels of my new car by running over a curb, and that rather than pay $400 for two new wheels I went to YouTube and discovered that 60 grit sandpaper, a file, and a little Dremel grinding wheel could remove a lot of the damage.  I bought the sandpaper, the file, and the grinding wheel.  Just don’t look too close.

            Costco doesn’t carry Honey Wheat Pretzels, so on the way home I stopped at a Lucky Supermarket in El Cerrito.  An elderly Chinese man wearing over-the-ear headphones with a dangling cord came up to me in the snack aisle, holding a box of “Nutter Butter” cookies.  “What’s in the middle?” he asked.  “Peanut butter”, I said, “It’s a creamy kind of peanut butter.”  A moment later he came back, holding a different box.  “In the middle?” he asked.  “It reads, ‘English Tea’, but I have no idea what that means in a cookie.  It’s another cream filling.”  Lucky is remodeling and either they no longer carry Honey Wheat Pretzels, or they weren’t snacky enough to be included among the one hundred different varieties of Oreos and Doritos.  I turned and walked away.  “What’s vanilla?” he yelled.

            Close to home I was surprised to find a Kensington policeman stooped in the middle of Yale and Yale Circle, picking up what in another life had  been a bag of groceries, his black and white Ford Explorer, red and blue lights flashing, parked behind him. Fearing that one of my elderly neighbors had been struck I stopped and asked him if there had been an accident.  “No,” he replied.  “Someone was delivering a bag of groceries, and they were all over the street. I’m trying to figure out who was supposed to get them.  Whoever it is, they’ll be surprised when they’re delivered by their local constable.  If these were supposed  to go to an elderly person who depended upon them I couldn’t live with myself.”  

Feral Pines

            In late summer 1970 Jadyne and I had just been married, and we were living in a small apartment in San Francisco.   We were without direction or income, and we needed the latter before we could focus on the former.  A college friend opened a business in Blue Ball, Ohio called the “Wholesale Furniture Depot," transforming a former unheated trucking warehouse into an unheated furniture warehouse, selling sofas, armoires, and the like for 1/3 below retail.  Desperate, I took a job selling furniture to provide the income that would pay rent in our basement studio apartment in nearby Middletown, but could also pay Jadyne’s tuition at Miami University while she pursued a Master’s Degree. We packed up our lone piece of furniture (a wooden rocking chair), placed it in the back of a U-Haul van (securing it with ropes because there was nothing else but clothes in the van), and headed east to Ohio.  On the way we stopped to see another of our Peace Corps friends, Jim Yee, who was serving as a Vista volunteer in Grand Island, Nebraska.

            In our Peace Corps training group, Jadyne and Jim were affectionately know as “Big Yellow” and “Little Yellow”.   Jadyne and I met Jim for Sunday brunch in a restaurant filled with churchgoers, treating themselves to stacks of Krusteaz hot cakes, bacon and eggs, and waffles, dripping with Aunt Jemima maple syrup.  Church was over.  The place was filled, and the three of us waited until a table could be made available.  Jim and Jadyne had been best of friends in the Peace Corps, and as we walked in the restaurant, past the noisy Nebraskans in their Sunday best, I followed Jim and Jadyne to the back of the restaurant.

            After breakfast we walked out, only this time, check in hand, Jim walked by himself to the cashier.  The newlyweds, Jadyne and I, followed behind, holding hands.  The restaurant, which seconds earlier was a joyous, cacophonous circus of laughter, fell silent.  Nervous and surprised, we looked into the eyes of the patrons, who, caught in mid-sentence or perhaps even mid-swallow, stared silently and uncomfortably at this Chinese woman holding hands with a white man.  I don’t remember anyone’s ever staring at me before.

            We continued out the door and over to our brightly-painted white and orange U-Haul van with its huge green numbers, $19.95 In-Town Plus Mileage.  Below in black italics, “Rent This Van!  Call 1-800-Go-U-Haul.”  We bid goodbye to Jim and continued east.

            I remembered this story because one of the victims of the Oakland fire, Riley Fritz, 29, who also went by the name “Feral Pines”, was a transgender woman who had moved from out of state to Oakland in September “to be part of the trans community where she was more comfortable,” said her brother. 

            Riley was trans, different, unusual, the uncomfortable subject of stares.  Jadyne and I were different, unusual, the uncomfortable subject of stares, part of an invisible vanguard of racially-mixed marriages in the late sixties and early seventies.  Riley left one of the Carolinas to be where she would be more accepted.   Jadyne and I left Grand Island, a bit shaken, suddenly aware that, as Dorothy discovered when she found herself in Oz, that we weren’t in California anymore. Ohio, even Cincinnati, more cosmopolitan than Grand Island, had its own take.  Driving home after a Reds game Jadyne was in tears.   One of the fans had said, “I killed me a bunch of them in ‘Nam”, gesturing to Jadyne.  I missed it.  When we left Nebraska and Ohio, though, and headed back to California, we didn’t miss the stares, the gestures, the discomfort, the suddenly silent restaurants.

The Birthday Ending with a Zero (Part 2)

 Tom Ehrich is a writer, church consultant and Episcopal priest based in New York .  He wrote an essay on aging, parts of which I have copied below:

That digit, that 7, makes many things seem different. That simple change in the tens place might not have been accompanied by ominous health issues. But it did ask to be noticed and taken seriously.

I see no gain in trying to outguess aging. Things will proceed as they proceed. My work, it seems to me, is to live as well as I can in whatever number of years or decades remain to me. So far, 70 feels like 50 to me. But I am conscious of that 7 yelling out, “Pay attention! Don’t take any of this for granted! Give it your best!” That’s sound self-advice at any age, of course. But who in their 20s or 50s is thinking about time running out?

 It isn’t maudlin or defeatist, or a sign of hypochondria, to experience 70 as a wakeup call to take life seriously. I think it is a gift. Seeing the end gives encouragement to notice the journey. Imagining a limited number of days remaining gives added meaning to the pouring out of this one day. I am asking different questions. I am still concerned with accomplishment and achievement. I want to do “important” things.  But I also ask if I used today wisely. Was I as kind to my wife as I could be? Did I try to make a difference in my world?

 If the answers are negative, I don’t kiss it off. I vow to do better tomorrow. I know my flaws and shortcomings. I don’t expect to surmount them entirely. But neither will I let them win. The point isn’t to have a grand finale that compensates for a life marred by mistakes, shortcomings and regrets. The point is to make the journey forward as much as it can be. Today’s chapter – illuminated by the digit 7 – is the passage I can take seriously. Whether or not I was the world’s greatest husband at 40 is immaterial. I can be a good husband now.

 Aging isn’t a death sentence. If there is a death sentence, it is life itself. Aging is a new, promising and, yes, challenging portion of the path. It ends where all of life ends. But the portion itself seems brilliant with possibilities. Not the same possibilities that arrived at age 16, and yet just as exciting. The intoxicating taste of freedom, for example. Not unlike the freedom that came with my first driver’s license. I treasure the freedom to say exactly what I want to say, to write what I want to write, to allocate time to things that seem to matter, whether or not they are productive, applause-worthy or even reasonable. I treasure sitting in front of six computer screens – knowing that one would do, but not caring whether anyone thinks six is too many.

 The gift of seeing the end says, Don’t waste time trying to please people. Just live. So the 7 is a gift. If it takes a “creak,” or even a “groan,” to signal that gift, so be it.

Denver International Airport 10:00 PM, August 5th- 8:00 AM, August 6th

When Aspen Airport was so fogged in that our San Francisco-Aspen plane was unable to land, we were diverted to the Denver International Airport, about a four or five hour drive from Aspen.  Arriving at 10:30 PM we stood in United Airlines "Customer Service Line" for almost two hours before being able to rebook another flight at 8:00 am, but discovering at the same time that there were no hotel rooms remaining in the Western United States for Friday, August 5th, 2016.  However, if we could find a way to get to Poughkeepsie, NY, we were assured of a good night's rest.

United Airlines gifted us with totally useless $60 food vouchers, which, even if there were any restaurants open, would have only been able to serve microwaved omelets or deep-fried peaches..  So, at 12:30 am, having booked a flight to Aspen, and knowing that we had only to "hang out" at the airport for seven more hours or so, I took my leave of the refrigerated carpeted area where we had chosen to lie down, move away from the recorded voices urging us to report any suspicious activity, and began to see just what happens at an airport between the last flight of the night and the first flight of the day.  Here it is:

12:30 am.  Glass is squeegeed.

1:00 am.  Chrome by the moving sidewalks is buffed.

1:30 UPS brings in stuff.

2:00 am.  Carpets are cleaned.

2:30 am.  Moving sidewalks get the Royal Treatment.  The worker doesn't move.

3:00 am.  Bathrooms are cleaned and vacuumed.

3:30 am.  The USA Today arrives at bookstores and newsstands.

4:00 am.  The last carpets in the departure lounges are cleaned, and the cans are all emptied.

4;30 am.  The tile and marble floors are polished.

4:45 a.m.  Dusting continues.

4:50 am.  The shoe shine man begins reading.

4:55 am.  The finishing touches on the recently refurbished and remanufactured Egg McMuffins are applied.

At 5:00 am the first Egg McMuffins were distributed, someone showed up to have his shoes shined, Caribou Coffee received the first of our $10 vouchers, and the buffers, squeegeers, the polishers, the bathroom cleaners, the trash emptiers, the deliverymen, and all the other faceless minorities (almost all Hispanics) disappeared so that both flights and Big Macs could resume under the veil of cleanliness and efficiency.  As for us, we climbed aboard a tiny plane for a bumpy ride through clouds over the Rockies, and landed 25 minutes later, safe and exhausted.

Serendipity August 8, 2016

"Rows and floes of angel hair

And ice cream castles in the air

And feather canyons everywhere

I've looked at clouds that way..."

3:22 Mountain Time, feeling a bit guilty about waking Sean and Greg, who drove us to downtown Glenwood Springs so we could board the bus to Aspen, arriving at 6 am, an hour before our scheduled Aspen-SF flight.  Thunder and lightning lit up the early morning Colorado skies.  Aspen's airport is tucked into the Rockies, and fog and rainy weather had prevented our landing there four days ago, so leaving in a storm wasn't a given.  The skies lightened, the storm passed, and we boarded our little United Express jet, and with our tray tables stowed and our seatbacks in a locked and upright position, we left the gate, then Aspen.

I sat on the right side of the plane, my iPhone in hand as the plane hurtled down the runway just as the sun broke through the clouds.  For the next ten minutes or so we were treated to the most amazing cloud formations which I'm sharing in this blog.

Sitting in Seat 17D and pressing my iPhone 6S plus against the window...

I've looked at clouds from both sides now

From up and down, and still somehow

It's cloud illusions i recall

I really don't know clouds at all...Joni Mitchell

After passing through security, I saw this through the windows of Gate #2, a three photo panorama of the mountains around Aspen.

A Birthday Ending in a Zero

A New Yorker cartoon several years showed a despondent young man leaning against a fence.  Off to the side one of his friends asked another, "What's the matter with Jason?"  The friend  answered, "He's sad because today he hit the big One O."  Well, shortly I'll hit a big "O", too, and I've navigated my way through the One O, the Two O, the Three O, the Four O, the Five O (played Pebble Beach for that one), Six O (greatest thrill of all time with daughter and son-in-law returning from Nepal for that one), and now in a few days, the big—and yes, it does seem really big to me— Seven O.  

I just returned from a high school reunion in Cincinnati where everyone present either hit or will hit the big Seven O this year.  We had a wonderful time, and I reconnected with my high school rock n' roll band to play songs of the early sixties, the time when we last played together.  We remembered and played them faultlessly, knowing each other's musicianship as well fifty-three years later as well as we did when we played in the Battle of the Bands in Covington, Kentucky in 1962.  

It was a wonderful three days, reconnecting with old friends, and recognizing that although most of us are retired and closing in on the end of our lives there is much that brings us happiness, love, gratitude, and joy.  

I took a class last year called "A Year to Live", in which we studied and practiced not being here.  We did exercises that involved giving up things we cherished, writing our eulogies, even discussing the words we'd like to have on our tombstones.  Our final exercise was to spend a half hour or so on a busy street imagining that everything we saw and experienced could—and was—taking place whether we were there or not.  And when we're no longer there, people will still line up in Starbucks, cross the street in front of Andronico's, and put coins in the meters along Solano Avenue.  Nothing will change, except that we won't be there.  We're all a part of this great fabric of life, and the fabric will be there whether our thread is part of it or not.

So this is a time for me to look back on the last sixty-nine years and three hundred and some odd days and celebrate all the richness in my life—my loving wife, my three children, my five grandchildren, the wonderful home and community in which I live, the soft blowing summer fog and the deep rich colors of the winter sunsets over the Golden Gate Bridge.  

Oliver Sacks, after learning that he had terminal cancer, wrote this:  

"I cannot pretend I am without fear. But my predominant feeling is one of gratitude. I have loved and been loved; I have been given much and I have given something in return; I have read and traveled and thought and written. I have had an intercourse with the world, the special intercourse of writers and readers.

Above all, I have been a sentient being, a thinking animal, on this beautiful planet, and that in itself has been an enormous privilege and adventure."

I haven't written nor have I read nearly as much as I should have.  But I have been a sentient being, a thinking animal on this beautiful planet, and for the privilege of sitting in the front seat of this roller coaster the whole time I cannot express my gratitude and appreciation deeply enough.

188 Miles on a raft, May 22-28

Jadyne and I just returned from a six day raft trip down the Colorado and through the Grand Canyon.  The piece de resistance on day six was Lava Falls, a treacherous journey not more than a mile above our final campsite.  The rapids on the Colorado are all numbered.  One is the easiest.  Ten is the most dangerous.  Lava Falls is off the charts.  Even one of our three guides, seated in the bow of the raft, was almost tossed into the turbulent frigid waters as the raft ducked, buckled, and bounced its way down river.  We were all soaked, laughing, and grateful.  It was the perfect ending to a perfect trip.  Dozens of rapids, hikes, side canyons, and the warmer waters of the rivers that flow into the Colorado—the bluish "Little Colorado" the waters of the Havasu, countless waterfalls, slot canyons, steep hikes, and gourmet food—grilled ribeye steaks and even Eggs Benedict. 

The next day we floated one more mile, climbed aboard a helicopter, then rode a short shuttle ride to a small paved runway, flew eighty miles to Boulder City, took another bus to Las Vegas, Virgin America to SFO, then Uber to Kensington.  Last night Jadyne woke up and went to put her sandals on so she could walk to the toilet by the river.  Readjustment may take another day or two.  The sand was finer than dust.  Getting rid of it will take a lot longer.

No internet, no news, no contact, no cell phones (cameras only).  If "less is more", then "nothing is even better than more," as we slept in sleeping bags on cots under the clear star-filled sky, watching shooting stars and satellites before nodding off, then repeating it all again. the next day. Fearing damage to my DSLR I managed to squeeze off a few hundred photos with my Point n' Shoot, a few of which I'm posting below.  

The only four mile nearly straight stretch on the Colorado.  We climbed up 600' to the "Granary", a place where the natives stored grains a thousand years ago.

Lunch break in a cave that could hold thousands

Cameras

They all do the same thing—take a three-dimensional scene, remove one dimension and arrest all movement.  Whether you use a Hasselblad ($40,000) or an iPhone (a whole lot less), the photographer's responsibility is to see the world as it is, to recognize that by arresting movement and removing a dimension. he has the capacity to remake what he sees in a new way, one that the rest of might not see.  When Picasso took a bicycle seat and handlebars and reassembled them he found a bull's head. Discovering how the camera transforms light and movement, the things that are known and visible,  into something new and exciting is endlessly pleasing.  That's why I always carry a camera.  And it's more likely to be an iPhone, not a Hasselblad.

Lillian and Isla, cousins, were captured as they are by my daughter-in-law, Rachel McGraw, using her iPhone.  Even Annie Leibovitz suggests that most of us won't ever need anything more..