Last Sunday

Jadyne and I woke up at 3:00, drank coffee, then closed down 330 Rugby, climbed in the car and headed to SFO, a drive that can take about thirty minutes, or during rush hours, perhaps four times longer. At 4 am it was a predictable thirty. We parked at a nearby hotel (cheaper), then arrived at SFO well in advance of our 6 am flight to Chicago, a full flight. I had a window seat and saw this as we passed over the Sierra Nevada Mountains, always a thrill in winter.

With our one carry-on bag we were at the Budget rental desk in minutes and heading east from O’Hare and down I-65 towards Indianapolis in lightning, rain, thunder and bumper to bumper traffic. From the window we saw

Family farms, abandoned farms, corporate farms, small farms, farms of every description and size.

Along the “freeway” we passed an endless procession of signs—Jesus is Lord, Experience the Wonder of God, signs advertising the services of attorneys, an electronic sign that read “Plan for the Eclipse. Fuel Up/Arrive Early/Stay Put/Leave Late, American flags on barns on poles, on mailboxes, and just outside of Indianapolis, this, a sign from Mom Nature.

We arrived in Oxford at 8:00 at Paesano’s , a pricey Italian restaurant where we met our friend Bill Laichas and his wife, Ellen. Bill was my best friend in Oxford in the years that I taught at Talawanda HS, 1972-1975. We had met at Miami University when we were both pursuing graduate degrees. He and his wife, Liz, divorced years ago. He and Ellen married in 2016. We’ve not corresponded that much over the past forty-nine years, but we’d both found it important to reconnect. He and Ellen live in Bowling Green, KY, and they were willing to make the trip to Oxford, more to see us than the eclipse.

Seeing Bill and meeting Ellen was the icing on the cake. We went back to Oxford for the first time in perhaps thirty years to reconnect the lives we’re living now with the lives we led fifty years ago. We rented a house near Talawanda HS (now a parking lot) at 714 South College. Jason was born there.

1975

2024

One of the tenants gave us a tour of the house. It has been completely remodeled to accommodate students at Miami University. At $7200 a semester times three students, the owner grosses $43k a year.

It was under the window in the center of the image that I photographed Nixon on our little black and white TV as he resigned the presidency.

Jadyne is standing in the basement, now a bedroom, bathroom and bar. The last time she was there she was holding Jason as 140 tornadoes, including an F5 that leveled the town of Xenia, were striking the Midwest, some touching down between Oxford and Cincinnati.

Bye bye.

When we returned to Ohio for my mother’s 90th birthday it was one month before the presidential election, one that when we left California we thought John Kerry would win hands down. When we saw the Bush signs planted on many of the lawns around Cincinnati we realized that we lived in a bubble, that the sure thing that we thought was Kerry’s win, when faced with flyover states’ countless Bush signs, we lost that confidence.

An Obama volunteer rang a doorbell. When the owner discovered why she was there he responded, “Didn’t you see my American flag? I’m a Republican!”

Along I-65

These are two of the dozens of flags we passed between Chicago and Indianapolis. There were many more flying from houses along the two-lane highways we drove between Richmond and Oxford.

One house displayed both a Trump flag and a Confederate flag, but no American flag.

Although few in the Bay Area fly American flags, they don’t love America the less. Flying a flag doesn’t make you a patriot or an American anymore than going to church makes you a Christian. In Ohio, however, I assume that most of the flag flyers are, like the man the Obama volunteer met, Republicans, and by association, Trump supporters. The irony, of course, is that Trump is no patriot, and although his mailings make liberal use of the word, he and his supporters are strangers to the values prescribed in the Constitution and the law.

Experiencing The Great Divide that is America today was one of the reasons we chose to return to Oxford. We were surprised to see only a few Trump signs, although the election is still more than six months away. Ohio is a red state, and the signs, like the cicadas, are just waiting for the right time to announce their presence. I’ve never seen a Trump sign or a Trump bumper sticker in Kensington. Or a cicada.

The historian Doris Kearns Goodwin spoke about The Great Divide. “We’ve lost our sense of collective identity, what values we’re promoting, humility, people who acknowledge errors and learn from their mistakes, empathy, people who understand others’ points of view, resilience to come through adversity, accountability, kindness, compassion, and ambition for something larger than themselves. So we’ve got to figure a way to come back to understand what truth is, what law is.”

But political differences are only one component of The Great Divide. In Oxford. with the exception of the black student in the front of this image, we only saw white people. No Asians, no Hispanics, no one else of color. Our Kensington neighbors in back and on the side are Panamanian/Mexican; the man across the street is Filipino; Jadyne is one of five Chinese who live on our little street. California, not just the Bay Area, is the true melting pot.

Oxford Square, and the one token black student. Is he the one Trump called “my black friend?”

Americans seemed to really like each other after 9/11. Everyone flew flags. “Je Suis Americaine” wasn’t just the French identifying with us. We had been dealt a royal flush in the world’s collective opinion. We could do no wrong. But we did. Not only did we throw away our cards, but we looked at ourselves and didn’t like all that we saw. Sides were taken. Racial animosity continued. In 2016 Trump brought out the worst of us, and in 2020 he brought out the worst in himself and the Trump cultists who support him and exchange truth for lies.

Jay and I tiptoed into that freezing water when we returned to Oxford, and the wonderful dinner, the spectacular eclipse, reuniting with an old friend, seeing 714 South College, wasn’t enough to warm our little tootsies. We headed back to California, happy to have been there, happier to be home.

Passages

One

Uncle Rowland took Riley Griffiths under his wing the same year I transferred from Whitman College to the University of Cincinnati. Riley was an outstanding college tennis player, and my Uncle Rowland, an outstanding tennis player himself, offered housing to Riley during his last year at UC. Riley and I shared Uncle Rowland’s roof for that year, and although Riley was two years older than I, we became close friends.

It was during that time that Riley and I drove to Florida for spring break in his very hot Pontiac GTO, a true muscle car, the vacation where I began my relationship with Marianne Mesloh, the UC Homecoming Queen. It was during that time that Riley and I met a couple of young ladies, spending the evening with them, adding Paisano (a very cheap red wine) to their dog’s Gravy Train, then arriving at Uncle Rowland’s at dawn with just enough time to cut the lawn with Rowland’s hand mower before he woke up. I was never the tennis player that Riley was, but I was good at table-tennis. We teamed up for the University Intramural Championships. We lost in the finals.

It wasn’t long after that that Riley graduated and married his long time girlfriend, Carolyn (CJ), and we parted ways.

After Jadyne and I were married I tried to enroll in RISD, the Rhode Island School of Design, hoping to make a career in art photography. I failed. Thinking that it was just temporary, I had a year to wait, no job, and a need to get one. Riley offered me a position selling furniture at the Wholesale Furniture Depot, a business that he and a childhood friend, Dan Grubb, were opening in Blue Ball, Ohio, a couple of miles from Middletown, home of Armco Steel and later featured in the book Hillbilly Elegy.

At the Wholesale Furniture Depot…

• Riley and Dan bought .38s in case of a robbery. I took the .38 to the field in back and set up a can on a post and fired it once. Missed. The last time I’ve touched a gun.

• I burned cardboard furniture boxes in a wired frame container in the parking lot. The wind and embers conspired to start a fire in a neighboring field.. Riley called the store, expecting me to answer. A customer picked up. Surprised, Riley asked, “Where’s David?” The customer replied, “He’s outside trying to put the fire out.”

• A little boy came in asking to use the bathroom. When we answered his father said, “No problem, Fat Boy can pee out Door #23.”

• A gravel parking lot surrounded the Depot. When Shannon was born she had trouble sleeping, so CJ drove in circles in her black Studebaker Lark, waiting for Shannon to fall asleep.

• Jadyne and I ordered a Flexsteel chair from a catalogue. When it arrived Dan took it off the truck and exclaimed, “Who ordered this? It’s hideous.” I was there, too. “I did,” I said, embarrassed, as it was, indeed, hideous. “I can’t take it,” I said. “I had no idea that it would be this ugly.” “We’ll never sell it,” Dan responded, disgustedly. A week went by. Two, maybe two more. The chair on the floor stayed. A customer came in and said, “Oh my, that’s so beautiful!” I was on the floor. “Yes, it is,” I agreed. “It’s Dan’s favorite piece of furniture!” I added, as Dan was standing next to me. “Isn’t it, Dan?” I asked. “Won’t you be sorry to see it go?” Smirks can last a long time.

• One day a customer came in, sat down on a sofa. “How can I help you?” I asked. “I’m waiting for my sofa,” he replied. “It was promised in six weeks, and today is the sixth week.”

• I was a good salesman, so good in fact that a couple who had bought furniture from me came in and apologized for trying to hire me away from WFD. “We’d like to offer you the manager’s position at our bait shop in Franklin,” the woman said. Touched, I told her that I was pursuing my Masters degree at Miami, but I appreciated the offer.

• Bleeding heart CJ went to a Christmas tree lot and asked for the most pitiful tree on the lot. Amazed, the attendant showed her one. He said, “I’ve never heard anyone ask for that!” Jadyne and I went back to the lot the next day and found the salesman. “I want the most pathetic tree on the lot,” I said.

• One night Jadyne and I went to an upscale restaurant with a men’s jacket requirement. Although they had a selection of sports coats to offer me I had come directly from my gig at the Wholesale Furniture Depot, and I had my light gray warehouse jacket with big blue letters emblazoned on the back that read in three lines, “Wholesale Furniture Depot.” We were seated in a corner.

The thoroughly remodeled Wholesale Furniture Depot, Blue Ball, Ohio

Riley is wearing that beautiful jacket, apropos for a gentleman to wear at a fine dining establishment.

After working there for a year, failing to get into RISD for the second time, getting a Master’s Degree, teaching for three years at Talawanda HS, having a son, Jadyne and I decided that our proposed one year stay in Ohio, now five years, was enough. I left the Wholesale Furniture Depot, Middletown, Hamilton, Oxford, Talawanda HS, and Ohio in 1975, and with Greg’s help, packed up a U-Haul truck, attached a Volvo station wagon to the back, stuffed two basset hounds in the Volvo, and headed across the country to Santa Rosa, and a new position teaching English at Cardinal Newman HS in Santa Rosa in 1975.

I only saw Riley one more time, at Rowland’s funeral in 2000. We talked briefly. He had parted ways with Dan, closed the Depot, opened a new store called “Gracious Living” and stayed in the business in Monroe, Ohio, a few miles north of Cincinnati. He renamed it “Riley’s Furniture and Mattress.”

Jadyne and I just returned from a brief trip to Oxford to see the solar eclipse, touching base with a life we once led more than fifty years ago. “Whatever happened to Riley Griffiths?” Jadyne asked. “I don’t know,” I replied. “I suppose he’s still selling furniture.” He isn’t. She found his obituary in the local newspaper, The Journal News.

Riley was a friend, someone I admired. By offering me a position in his first venture he was instrumental in shaping the direction my life would take over the next fifty-four years. One thing often leads to another—the job, my failed attempts to get into RISD, my subsequent master’s degree, my three years teaching in Ohio, my move back to California, five more years teaching, and finally, my willingness to be as adventurous as Riley was, leaving all that behind and making a career and a life in a new career, photography, as a one-man band, succeeding because of my own adventurous spirit, supported with love from my wife and family.

Riley died five years ago. I wish I had known.

I can barely make out the Riley I remember in this photo from his obituary.

Two

Mary Wellman was Jerry Wellman’s wife. Jerry and I taught together at Cardinal Newman HS in the seventies. Jerry and Mary moved to Cherie Way, close to our house on Dutton Avenue. We saw them both from time to time, invited them to dinner once. We were eating when we heard a dreadful noise over our heads. “What’s that?” Mary asked, alarmed. “Oh, it’s probably just John falling down the stairs,” I replied nonchalantly, taking another bite. “Unless he cries he’s probably okay.” He didn’t. He was.

When Mary died, Linda Kammer called her “sweet.” She was that. Jadyne agreed, adding that “if anyone called me ‘sweet’ I’d bust em’.” We didn’t see the Wellmans much after I left teaching. I saw Jerry occasionally at breakfasts that Frank Guillen hosted for retired teachers at Cardinal Newman. We didn’t know until Jerry texted me that Mary had died that she had been battling cancer for twelve years. I photographed their wedding in 1981.

I won’t write again about Joel’s passing. I have a link to the blog entry I posted about both Joel and Linda Kammer

Three

A college friend, a fellow teacher, the wife of another teacher, three people who were a part of my life in the seventy-seven years I’ve been living it. By hiring me to work at the Wholesale Furniture Depot Riley was instrumental in shaping the direction my life took; Joel and Mary’s friendships added to it.

Getting back to Uncle Rowland. At a birthday party for him and his twin brother Andrew I asked Rowland how he was doing. “The shadows are lengthening,” he said. Indeed.

Four

Elizabeth Jovel was a neighbor and friend. The Jovel’s fence abutted ours in Santa Rosa, and their three kids often climbed over the fence into our backyard for evening summer games of soccer or baseball. I photographed the girls’ senior pictures, attended their weddings. We weren’t just neighbors, we were friends. Elizabeth was from Guatemala, and her third child, a son, either lives there now or in El Salvador, the home country of her husband, Efrain. They weren’t accountants, but America’s Income Tax, their business, was the place to go to have your taxes completed if you were Hispanic. We went to the daughters’ weddings. We’ll attend the mother’s funeral.

Easter Saturday

My friend and racquetball partner John Holden once said to me, “I’m sorry that I won’t see you in the afterlife.” John was a devout church-going Christian, believing in the traditional concepts of heaven and hell. Because he accepted the King James version of the Bible with John’s words, “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life,” he figured we wouldn’t be sitting on the clouds together in the great by and by. Without embracing Jesus as a personal savior death leads either to oblivion or hell. He knew which way he was going. He believed he knew, too, which way I was going.

I was raised by a devout churchgoing mother and an Episcopal minister. I was confirmed in the Episcopal church in my teens. I wrote about it last December.

What my Christian upbringing has brought me are feelings of guilt— guilt that I don’t go to church, guilt that I didn’t raise my children to be devout Christians, guilt that I didn’t tithe, guilt that I have harbored lascivious thoughts, coveted my neighbor’s wife, guilt that I have behaved in less than good Christian ways, guilt that I didn’t turn my other cheek, guilt, guilt, and a bit more guilt.

Some of this guilt has a religious component, some not. I deserve the feelings of guilt when I have behaved in less than honorable ways, when as a kid I stole stuff, when I disrespected others, when I threw raw eggs into an unlocked car on Halloween. This stuff has stayed with me. If I could undo them all I would, not just to expiate the guilt that has followed me all my life, but because it was simply wrong. Youth was the culprit but not the excuse. There is no excuse.

Do I believe in God? A Jewish woman in Gaza came home to find her family murdered by Hamas. She no longer believes in God. We just finished watching the 1961 movie, Judgment at Nuremberg. It incorporates film footage of the Holocaust. Could anyone experiencing the horrors of that time believe in God? The constant parade of injustice that surrounds the news today threatens our belief that some higher power is in charge. Still, I believe that there is a method behind the madness. I don‘t know what it is. I don’t believe John Holden knows either.

I took comfort when I read somewhere that “going to church doesn’t make you a Christian any more than standing in a garage makes you a car.” My memories growing up centered around attending church, not in learning and practicing compassion, the behaviors that the rabbi described. That came later. It’s still a work in progress. I question myself at the Dorothy Day Center, wondering whether volunteering there is simply satisfying a moral duty, or whether I really feel for the unfortunates that we serve.

When they thank us, when they appreciate that we are just volunteers, that our assistance brings them much-needed food, I feel good. When they’re surly, demanding, angry, or even threatening, I feel bad, indifferent at best to their situation. One of the homeless asked me for a spoon. I replied “There’s one in the box.” He saw the extra spoons and said, “I can be a nice guy or a real prick,” indicating that by not giving him a second spoon I was soon to be the victim of a “real prick.” Hard to forget, hard to forgive, hard to be compassionate.

So tomorrow is Easter Sunday. We won’t go to church. We won’t be celebrating Easter in the traditional sense. We will express gratitude for the many wonderful blessings that have come our way, for our lives, family, friends, good fortune, and each other. All without guilt.

Movies

With all the rain this winter Jadyne and I made it to four movies—Origin, Zone of Interest, American Fiction, and on Saturday, Poor Things. Emma Stone was beyond good.  She was a worthy Oscar winner for Best Actress.  And yes, it was surreal.  Her portrayal of Bella and the transformation she went through from beginning to end was exhausting, a real tour de force for an actress.

And even though I liked the movie it made me a bit uncomfortable, especially during the whoring scenes in Paris.  I think it bordered on pornographic.  I tried to imagine how much Emma had to put away of who she (Emma) was as a person to become Bella.  I know that’s the nature of the job.  It still left me uncomfortable.  

I reacted to City Lights as I used to remember responding to movies from years ago.  Laughter, surprise, empathy, and a host of other emotions that Chaplin’s brilliance was able to pull off. And I think that that’s where the genius lies—making the audience feel real emotions.  I “appreciated” Poor Things.  I loved City Lights.

Connections

Betty Reid Soskin (now retired) was America’s oldest park ranger. She retired from active service in 2022 at age 100. This September she’ll be 103. We were fortunate to meet her and hear of her experiences during WW II at the Rosie the Riveter Monument in Richmond, CA.

Betty was not only connected to World War II, but she remembers her grandmother telling her that she was standing in Washington DC when Abraham Lincoln read the Emancipation Proclamation, freeing Betty’s grandmother from slavery—that connection.

Today I finished the 1143rd and final page of William Shirer’s The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich. In the last ten or so pages of the book accounts describe Hitler and his wife of one day, Eva Braun, retiring to his room in his underground bunker in Berlin on April 30, 1945 in the afternoon. Hitler puts a revolver in his mouth and Eva bites into a cyanide capsule. And my brother Bill is celebrated by his family on his second birthday.

Random Thoughts

I stopped along #101 in Santa Rosa forty-five years ago to photograph a partial solar eclipse, then headed to Sutter Hospital where Jadyne was to be induced.

John Rowland Buchholz, 45

Fourteen years ago I repeated the process with a different passenger. Jennifer wasn’t induced, but she did give birth on February 26th to Susanto. The whole event was captured by Rachel, who broadcast it through Skype to Andrew, who was sitting on a sofa in Kathmandu.

Jennifer and Susanto Tise Geen, 14

Both birthdays were non-events for the principals yesterday. Susanto and family were exhausted from having contracted the norovirus while in Rome; Kim’s plans for John were curtailed by her sickness. too.

And me? As anniversaries pass I am reminded that many years have gone by, that time has its way with us. My friend Gail Bray posted this on FB, a reminder to appreciate the here and now.

I am “embracing the journey,” noting that adding swimming, walking, gardening, exercise of any kind, into my day feels good. I appreciate the friendships I have with people who are on that same journey. I try to focus on whatever I’m doing, from spending two minutes brushing my teeth, sweeping leaves off the sidewalk, savoring the first sips of Peets Major Dickason blend in the morning, solving Wordle, editing an image, relishing a well-crafted sentence or two in a book, enjoying Saul Steinberg’s New Yorker cartoons, brushing Stella, putting on a clean pair of LL Bean flannel-lined jeans straight from the dryer, taking a minute to sit quietly, listen to Molly Tuttle’s “Goodbye Girl,” writing stuff like this in my blog, and avoiding all “coulda, woulda, and shouldas.”

I’m also enjoying doing something I’m not doing. Drinking. For many years I’ve had at least one alcoholic drink a day. Often more than one. Jadyne and I occasionally drank a bottle of wine in one sitting, beginning before dinner. In February we began to have one drink every other night. We’ve both cut down the drinking. I feel better when I don’t drink. I also don’t need the feeling that alcohol gives me.

Two weeks ago we were charging the Tesla at 99 Ranch and I wandered across the street to a cannabis dispensary and bought ten gummies, thinking that maybe having one of those would bring back the feelings that alcohol brought without drinking the alcohol. I asked for a low dosage beginner’s pack, which contained ten gummies at 10 mg each of THC. I ate one last week. Mistake. I hadn’t smoked in almost forty years, and the good feelings I remembered from a hit or two from a joint were replaced by something unfamiliar—incoherence and compromised physical abilities. I wanted to get off the train. Not enjoying this. It led me to tying the two, alcohol and cannabis, together. They both alter perceptions, provide an escape of some kind, or in train terms a siding, a departure from that part of me that I can manage well enough and enjoy.

From Walden, “Shams and delusions are esteemed for soundest truths, while reality is fabulous. If men would steadily observe realities only, and not allow themselves to be deluded, life, to compare it with such things as we know, would be like a fairy tale and the Arabian Nights’ Entertainments.”

Other bits and pieces. Daffodils, hellebore flowers, ribes buds, rain, promises of spring.

When we picked up Jennifer, Andrew, and family from SFO Jadyne climbed into their van. “It won’t go,” she wailed. “I can only coast.” I walked over. “You need the key,” I said, “to turn the engine on.” (That’s what six years with an electric car does to you). Beyond that we’re flummoxed by much of new technology. We wanted to buy a baby gift at Target yesterday. We couldn’t find the mother’s name on the registry. “Did you scan the bar code on your email?” said the helpful Target lady. “????” “Where were the instructions?”

Do other people just simply know to do this? How did they learn?

(Oh, they’re just old, thought helpful Target lady. We don’t expect old people to know stuff like this. That’s why we’re here.)

And we got invited to the baby shower from neighbors we don’t even know, couldn’t pick out of a lineup. Why? Miss Manners, help!

Over the last couple of years I’ve rediscovered the pleasures of reading. The last twelve months I’ve tackled some biggies—Moby Dick, Anna Karenina, War and Peace, Don Quixote, and to punish me further, am now engaged in 1250 pages of The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich.

Reading has taken the place of shooting. I’m editing photographs that I’ve taken, but during Covid I spent hours at Aquatic Park, in gardens, learning new techniques, experimenting with upgraded software. And I didn’t read that much. Now I am.

Little things I’ve learned over the past weeks:

• If you lightly spray coffee beans before you grind them the coffee is richer

• If you leave your bed unmade for a couple of hours, the freshly made bed becomes more sanitary

• Wait thirty minutes after your last bite before brushing your teeth, giving saliva a chance to break down and soften food left in your mouth

I’ve been thinking about me and my body. Religions talk about body and soul. I’m not thinking of the me as a soul. It’s just the me that my body carries around inside it. A line from a poem that awakened me to this: The poet is taking a bath. She says about her body, “I look down at it from inside my face.” From inside her face. Her face is part of her body. The looking isn’t. It comes from somewhere else, the part of her that the body carries.

We have love-hate relationships with our bodies. Advertisers focus on the latter and make things that lead us to believe will make our bodies better looking, more sexually appealing. Hint: It’s a scam. Of course there are things that do make our body better—eating the right foods, exercise, sleep, and bathing. Those do work. Better than extensions, false eyelashes.

I’m not tackling beauty products, although I’m grateful that Jadyne has never used them. However, if applying makeup or coloring your hair or the host of other things you can do to your body makes you feel better about yourself, then I have no quarrel with that.

I don’t like to wear clothes with advertisers’ names on them, but I have worn Giants hats and jerseys. I don’t put bumper stickers on my car. I’ve never thought of my body as a billboard, either, or a moving canvas. No tattoos.

I have come to appreciate my body. It takes me where I want to go, including up and down hills, flights of stairs, into and out of cars. It swims a mile a couple of times a week, I refer to it in the third person, as me is carried around inside it. I’m glad it knows how to swim. It knows how to eat. I treat its teeth with floss, toothpaste, caring for it as best I know how. Not always. I give it too much ultra processed food—Kettle chips, Dots pretzels.

My body knows how to adjust to changes. “The New Normal” is a fluid expression, one that Chris Anderson used when one morning I woke up with tinnitus. That new normal continued with a hip replacement, plastic surgery, a broken ankle, psoriasis, various cuts, bruises, and blood blisters. There are many more new normals to come, adjustments to make, accommodations to accept. My body is doing the best it can, and for that I am grateful.

Yesterday

I currently have 106,645 photographs in a folder titled “My Lightroom Photos.” Thousands more were taken on film but not scanned, invisible witnesses to what I saw. I divided the images into categories, then subdivided them. “Travel” is one folder; under it are the places we’ve gone, say Turkey, Seville, Bhutan, etc. Several weeks ago I began to examine, discard, scan, and improve previously unseen and unremembered photographs of my family. Some are of Jadyne Jeung, my fianceé.

I posted about 100 of them on my website under the title, Yesterday. The images date from before we were married, each of our three children at various stages of life, focussing on the years we lived on either Brush Creek Road or Dutton Avenue in Santa Rosa. The latest are two from John’s UC Berkeley days, rugby games. Most end in middle school.

Jason in a crib, our four dogs, Jennifer and her blanket, Jason wrestling, Jennifer cheering, John in Tang Soo Do, kids reading and being read to, on playgrounds, in the studio, smearing spaghetti on their faces, spraying hoses, laughing, crying, looking sad, pensive, playful, and happy.

They haven’t seen most of these images. I’ve shown them hundreds more, but I wanted them to see these in particular, hoping that at their ages (John turns 45, Jennifer, 48, and Jason 50), they will see something that reminds them of what I hope they remember as a joyful, loving, and happy childhood, and remember that the adults in these photos (Jay, me, Teeny, and our mothers), loved them.

There are other adults that should be there, but I don’t have images of them with the kids—Al, Greg, Sean, and my brothers Jack and Bill, all who loved them as we did. In no particular order you can see them at…

P.S. More than thirty of these were taken when I was either selling furniture in Middletown, Ohio, getting a Masters’ Degree from Miami University in Oxford, or teaching at either Oxford’s Talawanda HS or Santa Rosa’s Cardinal Newman HS, years before I hung out my shingle as a professional photographer. Photography has been my life. Still is.

Headed to the White House

The three people photographed below are Congressman Doug Bosco, Senator and Democratic Presidential Nominee Walter Mondale, and Unknown.

Forty years ago Doug Bosco hosted a private meeting for California donors to Walter Mondale’s campaign. I was hired to photograph Mondale with the big money donors. I thought that this would be a wonderful opportunity to impress Mondale with the high quality of my images that when he beat Reagan he would consider me for White House photographer.

I arrived at Bosco’s beautiful home overlooking the Russian River early and set up a couple of strobes with photographic umbrellas, thinking that on camera flash photographs, such as the one above, wouldn’t allow for the quality of images that I imagined. Shortly afterwards one of Mondale’s staff saw the umbrellas and said, “Get this shit out of here.” So much for that.

I had hoped that Jadyne would have been able to accompany me as my assistant. She could help change film backs, but the Secret Service wouldn’t give her permission. Nevertheless, I was able to acquit myself alone with images, prints, all that was expected.

Two moments stand out forty years later. Not having an assistant meant that the time-consuming process of winding film, then loading a new roll into the camera was a challenge to do quickly. I turned to a man leaning against a wall and asked, “Could you hold my camera while I change film?” He replied, “I have to keep my hands free.” I thought, “Of course you do. You have an AR-15 tucked into your waist band.”

Later in the evening, when all the photographs had been taken, I stood out on the deck taking in the summer breeze. Mondale walked out by himself, and began talking to me about his boyhood growing up in Minnesota. I forget what he said, but I remember enjoying this unexpected conversation, and thinking, “I love my job.”

P.S. As far as the White House photographer job went…After the election the Washington Post reported, “Mondale’s defeat at the hands of the incumbent Republican, Ronald Reagan, was a historic whupping. Reagan won 49 of the 50 states, a total of 525 electoral college votes, leaving only 13 for Mondale, from his home state and the District.” Later Mondale said, “I wanted to run for President in the worst way. And I did.”

Synopsis

I just discovered slides that document how I photographed high school seniors in our Santa Rosa home at the end of the last century. These are copies of prints, unretouched, absent Photoshop embellishment, but they represent how I spent much of twenty-six years of Julys, Augusts, Septembers, and Octobers when June graduating classes want to create the “Memories that Last a Lifetime.” Or not.

Our backyard. Stump, autumn leaves, barefoot girl, photogtapher.

This is pretty much how it worked. I'm behind my manual focus Mamiya RB67 with a lens hood, Kodak film, tripod, kitchen stepladder, and significantly more hair. My assistant is holding a white fabric reflector, taking ambient light and reflecting it into the face of the victim, or subject. Whatever. I will take ten different images of her outside, and ten in more traditional clothes, usually a drape or a tuxedo, inside. She’ll receive twelve 4x5 color prints from which she’ll choose her portrait package.

Photographs were presented in folios made by Art Leather. Available for purchase.

Seniors could include friends or relatives for a couple of the images. This is typical of the lighting I used inside. All strobe lights and film. Strobes were measured with a light meter. It was like flying with instruments. I had to rely on the light readings, knowing that each light was producing a predictable amount of light balanced with the others. I didn’t see this image (or any other) until the film was developed, the prints made, and then returned to 1524 Dutton Avenue.

A main light through an umbrella (soffbox) provided the main illumination. A fill light, again through an umbrella, lightens the shadows cast by the main light. A third light with a colored gel strikes a black background. A fourth light in a boom over the heads of the subjects illuminates the hair. A fifth light strikes an edge of illumination on the girl’s hair to the right.

If he plays the drums he brings his drums. If he raises pigs, he brings his pigs. If he drives a Ferrari he brings his Ferrari.

And if he’s a volunteer fireman, her brings (what else?) his dalmatian.

Most people chose Sitting 3. Ten shots indoors, ten outdoors. Always hoping for good weather. Hey, it’s California in the summer. Not a problem.

Sittings were Tuesday-Fridays. I often photographed weddings on Saturday. Sunday and Monday off. Working from our home brought its own problems. Clients figured that they could come whenever they chose “because you live there.”

None of this could have been done without Jadyne She answered the phone, booked appointments, greeted clients at the door, helped them with clothes, makeup and hair, dressed boys in the tux, helped girls in the drape, sorted through proofs, created folios, sent postcards, encouraged orders, took checks, credit cards, and endured both ill-mannered students, parents, and animals. She did all without complaint, recognizing that David Buchholz Photography was providing us with the ability to pay for three college educations, take one international trip a year, and save enough money to pay for the life we’re living today in our seventies.

DBP photographed high school proms, homecomings, winter formals, and father-daughter events (where I photographed Joe Montana). Eric Sedletsky, an airbrush artist, sold me on painting trompe l’oeil airbrushed backgrounds on 16’ x 8’ muslins, and a new business was born. I not only used these backgrounds, but Jadyne and I created a business that still exists today. I knew that they were unique and desirable, and that other photographers would like them as well, so we rented them and made more copies of popular ones. Eric quit. Enter Uttiya, my connection in India. We went to Delhi twice. At the turn of the century we recognized that the background rentals could support us in retirement. They did. We have about 600 backgrounds in inventory.

One of Eric’s best. And most popular.

I have nothing to do with the day-to-day operation of the business. Jason runs it. I just own it.

Running a business from home had its pluses and minuses. On the plus side, with Jadyne as the office manager and the studio at home, we saved on two of the biggest expenses. The downside can be summarized in this episode on Thanksgiving.

A student came to our door while we were celebrating a family Thanksgiving dinner. He asked, “Are you open?” I replied, “It’s Thanksgiving”, giving him the opportunity to answer his own question. Time to leave 1524 Dutton Avenue, Santa Rosa, and David Buchholz Photography behind.*

*Footnotes. Memorable moments that I’ve taken with me. Photographing Walter Mondale, the Democratic nominee for President in 1980, Joe Montana and his daughters, an evening with Tommy Smothers, and having the only camera permitted in a memorial service for first fatality of the Gulf War. I met and mixed with people who were in different social strata than I was, a mixed bag, especially when I was stiffed by Fred Furth, an attorney and winemaker, who insisted that he would only pay me if I gave him the original negatives. I didn’t. He didn’t either.

"Thanks for the Tip, Everybody!" (2)

‘I’m not getting peer pressured by a tablet anymore’: Woman picks out greeting card at grocery store and heads to self-checkout. The register asks for a tip

'I booked a hotel room ONLINE and it ask for a tip. Like who am I tipping? A website?'

Gotts is a popular fast-food (think burgers) restaurant in the Bay Area. The first Gotts was a roadside stand in Napa, which still exists, but now Gotts has a presence in SF’s ferry building. The burgers are pricey, but good. We went to one in San Rafael recently. A lighted screen reveals the menu. Customers stand in front of what used to be called a “cash register” and give their orders to an employee, who presents a card reader. It also displays potential tip amounts. Subjoined to those are comments ranging from nothing to “Wow!” depending on how much tip the customer chooses. To be fair, there is a smaller box with the words “No Tip” that the customer can choose. The employee stands in front of the customer, watching what he chooses.

Tipping for what?

The cashier gives the customer a vibrating device that is activated when the order is complete. At that time the customer walks to another part of the restaurant, picks up his order, napkins, catsup, plasticware, salt, pepper, added condiments (think tabasco), water, and returns a time or two more because he can’t carry it all at once, sits down and consumes his meal, then carries papers, containers, and wrappers to the garbage can. Some wet napkins and wipe down the table before leaving. No employee interaction whatsoever.

Tipping for what?

I have always tipped because I received service, more than normal if it was good, less if it wasn’t. Gotts didn’t serve me anything. The employees did the absolute minimum that their job required, and there was no interaction with the customer. This is becoming a rule, not an exception called “tipflation.”

"It's a relatively new phenomenon," said Dipayan Biswas, a marketing and business professor at the University of South Florida. "I see it becoming more widespread."

“If you thought airplanes were a tip-free zone, you might want to grab some singles before boarding. Consumer Reports say budget carrier Frontier Airlines is now giving passengers the option to tip flight attendants for serving refreshments. "In the drive through and they've been asking for a tip," said another TikTok poster.”

More

1. A waitress’s breast size correlates positively with tip size.

2. Husbands tip more when dining with other women than their wife.

3. A butcher’s daughter’s car was impounded for a parking violation. After paying nine hundred dollars, including a “convenience fee” additional gratuity options showed on the screen when he inserted his card.

4. Tip prompts have been spotted at a Boy Scout popcorn sale, Sonic Drive-Ins, a UPS Dtore, and self-checkout kiosks at Newark International Airport.

Final Words

A well-regarded black East Bay restaurateur had this to say:

"We use the service charge to pay a really consistent wage, and I just think that tipping has a really nasty history that we just don't want to continue," he said. "Tipping in the United States started as a way to not pay newly freed slaves ... It started with the railroad system in the 1880s ... It spread into restaurants and hotels next, where there were a lot of Black people working that they didn't view as skilled workers who should be paid a wage. So, it's basically a continuation of slavery."

Instead, Davis instituted a 20% service charge, a move that almost 50% of diners polled about tipping would prefer.

At a New York coffee shop the owner said, “Wages should be a fair trade for work. Tipping is sort of like pity for somebody who’s not making a decent wage. It’s clearly just a way to shift more power into the hands of the people who already hold power.”

The Times I Didn't Die

The first time I didn’t die was at Camp Matrena. I was a candy-loving little boy, sucking on a butterscotch ball. Still love butterscotch. My mother told me that it had gotten caught in my throat, that I couldn’t swallow, couldn’t breathe. I was turning blue. A counselor picked me up by my legs and held me upside down while he smacked me across the back. Butterscotch ball flew out. From that point on, my mother would strike the balls through the paper with a blunt instrument, breaking the candy into small pieces.

The second time I didn’t die is one that I remember. I was on my bike, crossing Ridge Avenue near the Montgomery Road traffic light. Cars were stopped for the light, so I darted out on my bike in between two waiting cars and into the left turn lane. A driver pulling up to make that turn slammed on her brakes, stopping just in time. I didn’t see her because, well, I don’t think I even looked. “You stupid shit!” I screamed to myself.

The third time I didn’t die was when I held up the Pleasant Ridge Post Office with my Mattell Burp Gun, which held roll caps. I opened one door, began firing, then ran to the other door, still blasting away. I proudly told my brother Jack about my criminal episode, and he replied, “You dumb shit! They could have killed you!”

The fourth time I didn’t die* was during my freshman year in college. Whitman College in Walla Walla, Washington is about eight hundred miles north of Millbrae, where I was living with my parents. A Bay Area student arranged a charter flight back to San Francisco for Thanksgiving on a Vance International Airways plane, a DC-3. (According to Wikipedia, “As of April 1967, the company's fleet was itemized as one Douglas DC-3 (N57131),[3] one Douglas DC-7, and one Curtiss C-46, with two DC-7s on order.” It was my first time on an airplane.

Here’s a photo of a DC-3.

The difference between this DC-3, and good old N57131 is that this one’s engines are both working, both propellers are turning.

The flight from Walla Walla to SFO was uneventful. According to Apple Maps the distance takes about 11 hours to drive. The flight took a couple of hours less. I remember flying over a freeway, thinking that we were in an unsponsored race with a Volkswagen we followed. I could make it out down below.

We boarded the return flight to Walla Walla at dusk, took off over the Bay when I, sitting on the left side of the plane in one of the first seats, noticed that the propeller was spinning so quickly that it looked as if it wasn’t moving at all. I looked more closely. It wasn’t an illusion. I mentioned to the one flight attendant that this was a piece of information I thought the pilot should have, and she looked, too, apparently agreeing, then entered the cockpit. The plane banked steeply to the left, leaving us sideways and vertical. At the end of the wing I could see the water of San Francisco Bay, the darkened waves, the whitecaps. We were returning to SFO, flying on one engine. As we landed I noticed the many fire engines lining both sides of the runway.

We spent the night in the airport while the lone DC-7 was summoned to pick us up. A much larger plane, it gave us whole rows to stretch out in on the shorter flight back. When we landed in Walla Walla there were no portable ramps that could reach the passenger door of the DC-7, so we shinnied down poles attached to luggage carts that could almost reach the door.

The Fifth Time I didn’t die was shortly after Jadyne and I were married. I had accepted a temporary position with a college friend who was opening a wholesale furniture store. I could sell furniture. Jadyne would pursue a Master’s Degree. I would work on bolstering a virtually non-existent photography portfolio that the Rhode Island School of Design might look favorably enough on to grant me an admission the next fall.

We rented a U-Haul van (we had no car), and filled it with next-to-nothing—a wooden rocking chair, some clothes, a couple of guitars, and some other miscellaneous gifts and stuff that were generously given us, as we had only begun our lives together a month or two earlier.

Our first night found us at a motel in Wendover, Nevada. The next morning we headed down the grade and began the forty mile straight-as-an-arrow drive past the Bonneville Salt Flats and into Utah. I was driving 70 mph.

Looking west. Wendover is tucked into the mountains about ten miles from where this image was taken.

Jadyne was talking. Suddenly we both realized that although we hadn’t slowed a bit we were now facing perpendicularly to the highway. The road had a sheen of moisture on it, the result of either humidity or a brief shower the previous night. Jadyne stopped talking. I took my foot off the accelerator and began turning in the opposite direction, into the skid. The van swung around 180 degrees. I turned the wheel the other way. Again the swing. We were slowing down. This continued until we came to a stop, still upright, off the road on the shoulder, facing the highway. In the moments that followed we both remember the face of a man who had been behind us on the highway, as he turned and scowled at us as he passed.

It looked like this. The engine was in the front between the two seats. There was little weight in the back, so as Ralph Nader might have said, it was “unsafe at any speed.”

We were both okay. We spent that night in Rawlins, Wyoming, and we both offered prayers for our safety. We remembered the occasion by naming our first pet, a basset hound, Rawlins, Wyoming.

For many years after that I didn’t die. Jadyne almost did when she failed to realize that Rawlins, Wyoming (the dog) had fallen ninety feet off a cliff onto a sandy beach. Jay didn’t realize that we were only a few feet away from the cliff, which was disguised by a row of trees at the edge. She grabbed a tree at the same time she discovered the cliff, holding on so she wouldn’t follow Rawlins. We took a trail down, found a dog with just a broken rib, and sat down, breathing deeply, counting blessings.

Jadyne was sitting about ten feet away from me. At her feet was a coiled snake, perhaps a rattler, as they are common in the area. She hadn’t seen the snake. I said to her in a calm, level voice. “Listen to me. Do exactly as I say. Stand up slowly, turn, and walk over to me.” She did, a puzzled look on her face. I pointed to the snake. She broke down, tears, yes, but she didn’t die.

The sixth time I didn’t die was near the Appling cottage at Kennedy Meadows. Situated on the side of the Stanislaus river, the cottage that the Applings owned came through a sweetheart deal, costing 1$ a year for the right to be in a private secluded spot high in the mountains at the bottom of Sonora Pass. We honeymooned there.

A padlocked gate barred the riff-raff from crossing a bridge to the side of the river where the Applings’ cottage sat. Household garbage had to be carried out. I had the bag. Instead of unlocking the padlock and opening the gate, it was customary to grab one of the poles that held the gate, then swing around over the river and step to the other side. I did that, except I lost my grip on the pole and fell backwards towards the boulders below that lined the edge of the river. A kindly tree reached out and intercepted my falling body and held me suspended two or three feet below the bridge and ten feet above the rocks. I was okay. I dropped the garbage.

The seventh time I didn’t die was a year or two after we moved to Santa Rosa. Jadyne and I were sound asleep when two stoned card dealers, coming home from the Pastime Bar tried to light a joint in their car as they rounded a curve by out house. They hit a mound of dirt in front of my neighbor Duffy’s house, were thrown out of the car, which continued, its accelerator stuck, into our house, stopping while the rear wheels spun into the lawn by the front door, the racing engine belching smoke. I ran to the car. “Turn the engine off!” I screamed. Nothing. I opened the driver’s door. No driver. I fumbled in the darkness for the keys. No luck. I thought that the car was going to explode. I went back inside, grabbed a flashlight, ran back to the car, all the time expecting an explosion. I turned the engine off, turned and looked across the yard, finding one body on the lawn and another on Brush Creek Road.

When the ambulance arrived for the two card dealers the firemen wanted to take me to the hospital. Jay knew that I was in a state of shock, otherwise okay. That was the beginning of my sleep issues. Not fatal, not this time. And the card dealers? Survived.

The eighth time I didn’t die took place on the Rogue River, (John remembers that it was the Upper Klamath) this time with my whole family. The thrilling rafting adventure we were promised in Ashland understated what we were to go through. The size of the rapids along the river is determined by the outflow from a reservoir above. Too much water and the rapids are smaller. Too little, and they go from threes to fours, or in the case of the first rapid, four to five. We were in the last boat among four or five as we stared down the first rapid.

The raft hit a rock, and I can see Jason flying out backwards into the river. Moments later the boat flipped, and we were all thrown into the water at the top of a lengthy, raging Class Four (perhaps five?) rapid. Although wearing a helmet and a life jacket I suffered a concussion. As I struggled against the current I remember thinking that someone in my family was likely going to die. Jason and Jennifer managed okay. . Jadyne was bobbing up and down, searching for John, who was young, a poor swimmer. John’s face was bloodied. He was hysterical, but okay. And me? I was drowning, and I knew it. A strange sense of acceptance swept over me. Moments later someone from the first boats plucked us out. I didn’t die then only because it takes a little more time to drown, and I wasn’t in long enough to finish the job. I had a concussion and severe headaches for several months.

The ninth, and possibly the most recent time I didn’t die, took place on Grizzly Peak Road in Berkeley. I was riding my bike just south of Euclid when a lady turned into her driveway right in front of me. My bike hit her right front tire, I flew over the handlebars, my head smashing into her windshield. I bounced off the hood and onto the street. I moved my fingers, toes, took inventory, realized that I wasn’t badly hurt. “I didn’t see you,” she said. Duh.

A little plastic surgery, that’s all. When cyclists and cars meet in motion the cyclist usually loses. But I didn’t die.

There were probably other times I didn’t die in these last seventy-seven and a half years, when head-on collisions took place moments after I drove by, when lightning struck trees, not me, when through chance, luck, fate, genetics, or some other unforeseeable reason I’ve managed to stay alive. I have countless reasons to be grateful. Countless.

*I was reminded about these multiple escapes while reading Cutting for Stone, a novel by Abraham Verghese. In it is this passage:

“But just at the moment she was thinking these thoughts, anticipating her arrival in Addis Ababa…she found herself suddenly invoking Lord Shiva’s name: the plane, the DC-3, the trustworthy camel of the frontier sky, was shuddering as if mortally wounded. She looked out. The propeller on her side fluttered to a stop, and a puff of smoke came out of the beefy engine cowling.”

Been there. Done that.

January 10, 1988

Sunday. Kids are home from school. We drove to Berkeley to the Lawrence Hall of Science for what was a typical weekend family “excursion.” Driving the unfamiliar streets of Berkeley, I saw a pedestrian, a man crossing the street in front of me, as he hurled a rock at our car right below the back seat window where Jennifer was sitting, causing a dent, knocking some paint off. Thirty-six years ago. I remember his face.

We stopped for lunch at Nation’s, a restaurant on San Pablo and Central Avenues, and ordered burgers. The waitress brought us the wrong order. And the wrong bill. We straightened everything out, finished, and headed up 101 to Santa Rosa. Jadyne took the car and drove the three kids to Books Inc., in Cottingtown Shopping Center. I stayed home.

A few minutes after she left Greg called. “Teeny’s dead,” he cried, “ She was killed in an avalanche near Pearl Pass where she and Roy were cross-country skiing. Roy (her boyfriend) was killed, too. They’ve found him, but they haven’t found her.” “Are you sure?” I questioned, stunned. We had just spent ten days with her at her home in Glenwood Springs over the Christmas holidays, and we knew that she was looking forward to this trip.

Knowing that the ski huts that they would stay in have to be booked months in advance, Teeny, Roy, and a group of skiers disregarded avalanche warnings and took to the mountains. Teeny, an expert skier, was in front. Roy was with her. John, a friend from Denver and Teeny’s dog, Pooh, were all buried in the snow. Roy was found because Teeny had given him her avalanche beacon, and the signal alerted rescuers to his body.

January 1, 1988. The snow that’s falling in this photograph was falling at Pearl Pass, too.

I poured myself a very stiff drink, called Books, Inc., and asked the clerk, “Is there a Chinese woman there with three children?” “Yes,”he replied. “Please tell them to come home immediately,” I said, unable to disguise the urgency in my voice.

“Teeny was killed in an avalanche today,” I said to all four, and the immediate avalanche of tears and grief was immeasurable. I felt so bad for them. They loved her so much. I loved Teeny, too. I felt bad for Greg and Alyce, too, yet Alyce didn’t even know yet. My job.

As we climbed aboard the Amtrak Zephyr that New Year’s Day evening I shouted, “All Chinks on the Tracks!” And this was the last time we saw her, nine days before the avalanche.

Maroon Bells. This is the country where Teeny was headed, the entrance to Pearl Pass whee the avalanche occurred.

Alyce was with Al in Oceanside. Al answered the phone and handed it to Alyce. The words came out again, the tears and grief followed, too. This was just the beginning. We went to bed, turned on the TV, watched the news, numbed by the day. The story of the avalanche was on KTVU 10:00 news with Elaine Corral and Dennis Richmond. I can see the TV story as I’m typing this. Elaine is reporting about the avalanche.

(The memory clings to unexpected and unscripted choices. John remembers the book he bought, “George’s Marvelous Medicine,” and that he had asked if had to go to school the next day. Jennifer remembers that I told Jadyne first, then shared it with them. Jason remembers Jadyne clutching John.)

Song and Charles. Everybody called him “Booboo.”

The next day I went to the Jam Kee restaurant, owned and operated by Song and Charles Bourbeau, Teeny, Greg, and Jadyne’s godparents. I found them as the restaurant closed, cleaning up after the last customers left. The words again. Charles said, “I have no reason to live anymore.” I left. Charles was admitted to the hospital later that week and died a few days later.

(Song and Charles were married in Reno the first time, as it was illegal to marry across racial lines in California. They remarried after the laws changed.

When Song died John took possession of their 1964 Chevrolet, which he named “Hagfubr” for “Hoopty Ass Ghetto Funk Bomb Ride.”)

The days following were a blur. We all returned to Colorado. Aspen Search and Rescue continued to look for Teeny. The high school gym was reserved for her memorial service, the only auditorium large enough to accommodate the many who loved her. We put on the service. We all spoke. In this photograph taken by the Glenwood Springs Post-Independent photographer, Jason, age 13, is reading his piece; Greg is comforting Jennifer and John.

Aspen Search and Rescue continued to look for her every weekend. We came back to Colorado in the summer and had a picnic at the avalanche site on the Fourth of July. The poles used by rescuers to probe for a body were still there. We traipsed through the snow, poking holes here and there. No luck.

On the path to Pearl Pass.

Using the probes in the snow. She was under there somewhere.

She was found over Labor Day, nine months after she died. A triathlon was named in her honor, a bench placed on a hiking trail, and the Emergency Room in the hospital, named for her, shows her photograph. And thirty-six years later we all still wish we could turn the clock back.

P.S. The more things change the more they stay the same…Another January 10th, another avalanche, another loss…

The Caretaker

The Former Guy published a video on his social media platform, Truth Social, which is neither. As a camera pans in to the earth from space a narrator says this

Before we address the “thought” let’s look at the grammar. Perhaps God had finished a couple of Pabst Blue Ribbon beers before he messed up the parallelism implied in “stay past midnight” followed by “a meeting of the heads of state.” “Stay” requires a second verb, not the noun “meeting.” What God wrote doesn’t make sense. I’m taking all the Pabst out of his fridge.

And why would he want to fight one Marxist? Which one? What about all the other Marxists? Wouldn’t he want to fight them, too? After all, he’s a caretaker.

The Thought Behind the Quote

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It Was A Very Good Year

For me, yes. I have my health (I weighed in this morning at 148.7 lbs), I have Jadyne (weight not a consideration, and don’t count the word “have” as misogynistic. I don’t “have” her. Actually she has herself), and to quote a friend, this morning “I woke up!” Hoping to keep doing that in 2024. I’m hoping to swim a hundred miles this year.

It isn’t an exciting New Year’s Eve. It never is for us. Steve Rubenstein, a former writer for the SF Chronicle, once compared it to watching the numbers turn over on an odometer. And speaking of that, we do have a new odometer, one that hasn’t hit 100 miles yet. After Jennifer was t-boned we sold her and Andrew “Sparky,” our beloved Tesla 3, then bought a new one for ourselves.

I had cataract surgery last February and now have 20-20 vision, but need glasses to read. I have my family. Three kids, two spouses, six grandchildren, all well, healthy, and thriving. The garden thrives. Stuff that I’ve planted is still alive. The Helleborus is blooming. The rains of 2023 have filled our reservoirs. No more saving shower water. A wonderful trip to Turkey last spring. The healthy economy has preserved much of our savings. Joy that the lives of our friends and family brings us. The gratitude we have that we are with them at this time and at this place.

If all that is so good what could possibly be bad? The virus that is MAGA, challenges in the health of close friends, the continuous difficulties facing our clients at Dorothy Day, an 18 month presence of a port-o-let outside our driveway. Its absence over Christmas was a gift.

Democracy is on the table in 2024. Never have Americans faced the very real prospect that a Trump victory will end the democratic experiment we’ve been enjoying, say, for the last 248 years. Fascism and ignorance is on our doorstep. That’s what’s bad. The writing is on the wall. I just can’t read it. Yet. Even with 20-20 vision.

Two Deaths

Lian

Lillian Sing passed at 4:00 yesterday. Lian, as everyone called her. was a beautiful 90+ year old woman, a cousin of Jadyne’s. One of eight children, she was the oldest. Two are left, Jeanette and Larry. Larry was a child movie star, “Ducky Louie” who in Back to Bataan, died in John Wayne’s arms.

Lian at her sister Eve’s bedside, 2017, days before Eve died.

Lian was my favorite. She and her late husband Joe, lived in a magnificent four story home in Point Richmond from which one could see all four bridges. Joe, an architect, designed the house. After Joe died Lillian lived alone for a while, then sold the house and moved in close to her son, Mark, who was paralyzed in a diving accident in his youth. When I worked at the Berkeley Food Pantry Jadyne often stopped by to see her, as her apartment was along the way. She and Joe were consummate hosts and excellent cooks. An evening overlooking the bay at their house and in their company was a family high point. We celebrated Lian’s ninetieth birthday four or five years ago at the Brazil building in Tilden Park. That was the last time I saw her.

Tommy

Tommy Smothers was one half of one of America’s best-loved musical comedians. Google the Smothers Brothers, and look at any of their skits on YouTube. His brother Dick played the straight man. Tommy was the funny one. Their comedy was based on their sibling rivalry, although even known mostly for their comedy, they were both skilled musicians.

Beyond that Tom and Dick Smothers were kicked off CBS, even though the Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour was their top-rated TV show. They were activists, protesting the Vietnam War, advocating for Civil Rights, and either publicly criticizing or advocating support for other controversial subjects, causes that shook up right wing corporate America.

Tommy lived near Santa Rosa. He grew grapes (doesn’t everybody?) and Richard Arrowood, a winemaker, produced wine under the Smothers Brothers own label. I photographed Richard’s daughter’s wedding; Tommy was the entertainment. The minister who performed the ceremony directed me not to take photographs, as it would destroy the sanctity of the occasion. Although I said I wouldn’t be visible, would have a tripod, wouldn’t use a flash, she insisted. Meanwhile, as I fumed, unable to do my job, people popped up and down with cell phone cameras, snapping away.

At the reception Tommy and I were seated by ourselves for dinner. He was aware of what I had just gone through, and he told me this story. “When my brother was to be married the minister warned me not to disrupt the service, too. So as the best man, the lights were turned down as I entered the church. I had a suit that was covered with flashing colored lights, like a Christmas tree, and I had a yo-yo in each hand. (Tommy was a yo-yo master). Having seen him so many times on TV in the sixties and seventies, I could easily imagine. He gave me his phone number. “Call me,” he said, “Let’s play golf.” I didn’t. We didn’t.

In this sketch Dick Smothers is on the set of Johnny Carson’s show. Tommy comes on dressed as Johnny Carson. His ability to ape Carson is hilarious. People of later generations, those who didn’t know Carson, might not relate to it as much, but his comedic genius shines.

Church

My father, Carl Kennedy, was a Presbyterian minister. His church was in Circleville, Ohio (renamed from Roundtown), but I never saw it. He died months after I was born, and my mother moved in with his parents in Cincinnati. She remained a widow for six years, marrying the only man I knew as a father, Gustavus William Buchholz, in 1952. GWB was an Episcopal minister, looking over his flock at All Saints Church in Pleasant Ridge, just down the street from the only house I’d ever known, Elsie and John’s home on the appropriately named street, Grand Vista Avenue.

So, from that moment on I was raised as an Episcopalian. Baptized as a Presbyterian, (my mother’s church), then later confirmed as an Episcopalian. I had no understanding then of the differences between the two. I have no idea now, either. I remember going to the 11:00 service every Sunday morning, then leaving right before the sermon for Sunday school, taught by a volunteer member of the parish. Some years later I became an acolyte, the boy (always a boy), who led the choir into the church, carrying a staff topped with a cross. After the service I led them out.. We gathered together by the organist, who committed suicide at some point, then parted a curtain and walked down one side, crossed to the center, then up the steps to the sanctuary.

The church held memorable moments, like the time my baseball heroes, Ted Kluszewski, Johnny Temple, and Roy McMillan met our cub scout troupe in the auditorium. I remember the ancient Coke machine in the basement which yielded a 6.5 oz bottle for. $.05. I remember standing, kneeling, praying, singing, and listening. I also remember uninvited pornographic thoughts sneaking into my consciousness, often when Dad was preaching.

A black and white photograph shows me, Dad, and Bishop Blanchard smiling at my confirmation. The confirmation rite supposes that candidates "express a mature commitment to Christ, and receive strength from the Holy Spirit through prayer and the laying on of hands by a bishop.” Stop at “mature.” I was perhaps twelve? A mature commitment to Christ? No, just another stop along the Highway of Guilt, reinforced throughout my youth when my father caught me with a Playboy, when he sternly approached a friend and me when were looking at a book with a photograph of a little girl’s vagina.

I attended church regularly, dropped bills in the collection plate, asked for forgiveness and lamented my sins. It never took. I enjoyed the stories, especially the parables. In college I took courses on the New and Old Testament.

The stories, the history were intriguing. I didn’t go to church in college, but I hadn’t given it up completely. When Jadyne and I were married, a Catholic priest joined my father for the nuptials. Jay and I both assumed that we would find a church that met our needs. We attended one, then another, then a third, then skipped the next week, the week after, and then never.

Dad was disappointed that we didn’t take our children to church. They were baptized, but that’s where the train paused, just another stop on the Highway of Guilt. When we visited Mom and Dad in Oxford we all attended church, but when we returned to California, we didn’t.

I felt guilty about this for years. I still do, I suppose. My friend John Holden, a devout Christian, once said, “David, I feel bad that I won’t see you in the afterlife.” He knew exactly where the train was headed, and he expected to get off at a different stop. And how thoughtful he was to wish that I could join him in heaven, not burn in Hell.

I’ve tried to justify my religiosity in different ways. If believing in Christ is the only way to attain everlasting life, what happens to Jews, Muslims, Hindus,? There are about four thousand religions, all of which proclaim the truth. Someone’s got to be mistaken.

Your church life is mostly dependent on where you were born. Not many Christians in Iran. Not many Hindus in Nebraska. I’ve severed my spiritual life from my church life. The former is active; the latter, in remission. On Christmas morning Jadyne and I helped prepare 125 breakfasts at Dorothy Day Center. I wrote about it earlier in my blog…

I felt closer to God while I was packing styrofoam boxes with bacon than I ever did kneeling, with reels of pornographic images running through the theater of my mind. I have pages of sunsets and clearing storms from a favorite lookout in Kensington. I feel closer to God there in my t-shirt and blue jeans than I ever did in my suit and tie. And best of all, the Guilt Train doesn’t run there at all.

So Hard to Believe...

…that so many people who live in what many believe to be the greatest country on earth, endorse, support, and for many, idolize, a man running for President whose Christmas message yesterday was:

And the “Greatest Country on Earth?” I believed that at one time. A country is really just its people, and presumably those people subscribe to common principles that govern behavior, principles that have led many to sacrifice their lives to preserve. That so many people would vote for a man whose entire life flies in the face of those principles clearly reveals that we are not that country anymore, if we ever really were. I believe in the principles. They don’t. I believe in an America that no longer exists, or perhaps never existed. Disheartening.

Christmas 2023

5:21 am. Christmas morning. The tree is still up, but all the boxes have already been opened, the gifts distributed, the “thank yous” tendered, the rockets launched and lost from the mobile rocket launcher, cookies gone accompanying the laughter, noise, and a slice of my honey-baked ham into Maple Bacon’s mouth.

Maple Bacon

Saturday madness.

Two days later, Christmas morning. It’s time for church. Jadyne and I bundle up, head down the Maryland steps and turn south on Arlington in the 5:45 silence and darkness of Christmas morning.

We pass the fountain, down the steps to Henry Street, then Shattuck. The man who sits in front of the Cheeseboard is awake, grateful for the bill I press into his hand. No cars, no pedestrians, a coffee shop opens its doors. We continue down Shattuck, turn right on Central, and begin preparing communion for 125.

It’s Christmas, so each of our parishioners receives a box with fruit, two hard-boiled eggs, three pancakes, a doughnut, salt and pepper, coffee, and two slices of bacon. Oatmeal is an option.

Nico, Hody, and Stella doing the heavy work.

Parishioners on Christmas morning

9:30. The service is over, doors closed, coffee cart wheeled back into the kitchen. Several boxes of food, bowls of oatmeal, coffee and doughnuts are left on a table inside Dorothy Day Center. Jadyne and I abscond with a couple of slices of leftover bacon, head up Center and wait until 9:57 when the #7 bus takes us back up Arlington. There is another parishioner sitting in a doorway. A red blanket covers her face, but she can see over it. I hand her a bill, too. She takes it, says nothing. Church is over. WWJD?

Different Countries

ONE

For years America has been divided into different countries, separated by a myriad of differences between people of different races, heritages, customs, and more recently, by different political choices. There are red states, blue states, and purple states. The red states embrace political conservatism, mostly as spewed out by the current iteration of the Republican Party, whose versions of conservatism vary considerably even among the soldiers who march under that banner. No different for the blue states, either. Progressives are farther to the left than moderates, smugly subscribing to positions without concern for party. While a moderate might choose to send money to its ally Israel, a progressive would demand a ceasefire an apolitical stance. And purple? When you mix red and blue you get purple. Purple states have nearly equal support of both Republicans and Democrats.

In the past such differences have been overshadowed by the commonality that we all share—the American experience, nearly 250 years under one banner, one flag, one set of rules and one set of values. We call such things the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and for those 250 years we have subscribed to what was written in them.

Until now. Extreme Republican politician Marjorie Taylor Greene had this to say in September, “We need a national divorce. We need to separate by red states and blue states and shrink the federal government. Everyone I talk to says this. From the sick and disgusting woke culture issues shoved down our throats to the Democrat’s traitorous America Last policies, we are done.” I’m not writing about her lunacy and hopeless stupidity, but she does give voice to a thought shared by other Republicans, that the differences between the red and blue are insurmountable.

The Atlantic had this to say: “But all of the emotions that are attached to a desire for secession—seething resentment, existential fear, an unforgiving spirit, contempt and hatred for those who disagree with you—are stoked by the kind of rhetoric employed by Greene and those who see the world as she does. Such language will further destroy America’s political culture and could easily lead to extensive political violence.”

These people are crazy. I’m seventy-seven now, and although I’ve had political differences with others throughout my life (Vietnam) I’m witnessing something I not only disagree with, but I don’t understand. Republicans believe what they choose to believe, not what is true. And therein lies the heart of the darkness that surrounds us today.

They’re wrong. I’m right. Everyone, as Jeff Tiedrich says, is entitled to my opinion.

TWO

If it were only political differences that separate us I could live with that. But the differences go way beyond Congress. Some believe the 2nd Amendment gives unlimited license to firearms. Others believe that the words “A well-regulated Militia being necessary to the security of a free State”,…are important. I do. Gun lovers don’t. Big difference.

THREE

Today I discovered a third difference, perhaps more cataclysmic than politics or firearms. Typically, parents don’t care for the music that their children like. When Jason first played rap music I didn’t like it. It was without merit or value. Besides, it wasn’t music. Still, we kept our separate ways. I know that kids like rap; adults don’t. The difference between them isn’t unlike any other difference between children and parents.

But today a line was crossed. NPR, a touchstone of sanity and reason, published a list of The 50 Best Albums of 2023. I wandered down the list, looking for a familiar face, a singer, a group, a genre that might awaken me from my constant need to play music from my youth. I came across this:

Let’s just take one isolated lyric, taken from the writer’s quote of Sexyy Red,

“Even if her lyrics come off as out-of-pocket for unprimed ears — who would ever think we'd hear a whole football team scream "My coochie pink, my booty hole brown"? — it never feels out-of-character for the truly unbothered Big Sexyy.”

“My coochie pink, my booty hole brown.”

It isn’t that the music or the image of Sexxy Red jars, or the offensive lyrics stun the listener into disbelief, it’s that NPR believes that this album—I admit, I haven’t listened to it— is one of the best of the year. Marjorie’s lunacy doesn’t hurt, nor does the long simmering disagreements about firearms, nor even the differences found within musical interests. What’s killing me is that even traditional, staid, neutral, apolitical NPR has chosen to wear a black hat.

Mica and Carl

I don’t know either of them. But here’s Carl’s father, Joe.

Joe stirring grits.

I’ve been a volunteer at Dorothy Day since before Covid. And this image was taken before Covid. (B.C.) Joe and I prepared large pots of oatmeal and grits, and with fruit, bread, and coffee, drive them to a church where we served breakfast to the homeless on Monday mornings.

Covid changed everything. We still serve breakfast, although there are no tables, no congregations. Food is served in recyclable containers, through a window. Joe still works on Mondays. Jadyne and I on Thursdays. We don’t see each other very often. Joe substituted for Mary Ann one Thursday late August. I was pleased to see him again. He said, “My son was in a serious motorcycle accident last week. We don’t know if he’ll make it.” The bottom fell out. I couldn’t imagine Joe’s coming in to fix oatmeal, continue his work at UC Berkeley, while his son may be dying from his injuries.

He didn’t. Carl’s recovery is documented daily by his partner, Mica, on Caring Bridge, a website tracking people with life-threatening health issues. Jadyne’s brother Greg was on Caring Bridge. Sean kept track of his progress. Friends could read Sean’s posts, comment, donate. Mica writes daily. I’ve been following Carl’s progress for several months now. Finally, Carl wrote, a first person account of what he’s going through.

I wrote to them. “I would love to meet the two of you.”