One Man’s Weed (Is Another Man’s Flower)

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The spring equinox has come and gone and today marked the first full day of the season.  It rained so hard yesterday driving actually slowed to well below the speed limit on Highway 101– slowing on California roads when there is no horrendous crash to rubber-neck is unheard of here.  Rain yesterday enough to flood farm fields in the Salinas Valley and overflow the banks of the Nacimiento River but today only sunshine, shadows unseen for days (if not weeks), and bursts of energy from bluebirds and squirrels and other yard inhabitants hunkered down since this latest rash of storms began almost two weeks ago.  Renewal is everywhere– there are blossoms blowing off my cherry tree, the fruitless mulberry I refuse to butcher back to a stump (as my quite unfriendly and unlikeable neighbors to the rear do every late summer) is spewing out allergy-inducing pollen, and the grass is rising faster than I can keep it mowed and has invaded the planter areas abutting the identified lawn with impunity (a tribute to the late spring rains now arriving almost every day with only the occasional storm break– the same rains that render basic weed pulling more like a backhoe excavation than a check and balance exercise between the laws of nature and my hori hori knife).  My roses look like they live down range on an artillery base or maybe amidst the craters of the moon.  Renewal comes at a price and this year’s payment for the privilege of working the land will include new topsoil to replace dirt carted away in the green can along with the trespassing grasses and the weeds to be returned someday as mulch at 10,000 times the mark-up it would cost me to let it mulch directly on site.

We do this dance every year as the spring showers subside and the sun emerges– the reclaiming of the yard from the ravages of winter rains, massive runoffs from up the hill, and the impossible to stop scattering of weeds and debris that flow gravity-fed from the hills farther up our block.  You can’t push back the tide forever and I long ago conceded the December to March mud season to nature’s whimsy and an inevitable backyard flood plain only to try and exert my will beginning with the solstice.  That usually gives me a month before the annual “Paris in the Spring” dinner party we host every year for 30 or 40 starving Presbyterians– just large enough that I’m forced to anticipate outside seating on the back patio and thus necessitating my annual reclamation project.  Nobody wants to savor Côte des Bœuf and a nice Rhone blend while being pollinated by 12 inch dandelions and staring at grey-brown snapdragon skeletons from last season or wafting the sometimes pleasant [and sometimes not] fragrances from the suddenly warming soils of the yard.

My hands achieve a perpetual state of callous within days and the cracking and scaling of workingman’s hands coincides with the still chilly mornings to make dexterity painful.  Workingman’s hands aren’t pleasant for the workingman or the workingman’s wife and I concede easily to hand lotion and gardener’s creams in an effort to remain occasionally invited to wrap my arms around my wife in the middle of the night.  In addition to the weeding and pruning and raking and trimming in my own yard, I work with a small but committed group of dedicated weed pullers to try and eradicate Yellow Star Thistle from our thousands of acres of protected open space.  There are other non-native invasives there… milk thistle, Italian thistle, and yellow mustard.  Most hikers and dog-walkers love the yellow mustard and don’t think of it as problematic but the fields where it has set up shop have slowly squelched out all other life below its stalks and the winters reveal easily the large grey patches of earth where mustard decay has leeched a just toxic enough natural poison from the leaves and pushed back life from the perimeters where the spring growth once staked a claim.  Mustard is at once beautiful and ugly, depending upon your vantage.

There’s a movement afoot to make an attempt at eradicating the yellow mustard but I suspect that movement will rise and fall with the volume of shouts from an uneducated populace seeing only the floral arrangement side of the mustard dichotomy. These will be the same people who have planted Scotch Broom around California and destroyed the native vegetation of the wild lands. They don’t know any better.  Our small group of dike-plugging weeders have tried with some success to focus on winning the solo battle of the Yellow Star rather than all of the other thistles and though we’ve chatted from time to time about the mustard problem, we never seriously carry forward any plan for its removal– impossible as the task would seem it would be even more challenging because most people love the look when spring arrives and the yellow flowers rise above a man’s height and bring bees and butterflies and sneezes and the outcry over trying to pull the stalks out before they flowered and went to seed would echo through the hills louder than the hissing of crickets and ribbets of bullfrogs.

I prefer the bullfrogs.  Besides, like I said, you can’t hold back the tide forever.

But plant your hope with good seeds,
Don’t cover yourself with thistle and weeds,
Rain down, rain down on me,
Look over your hills and be still

Mumford and Sons — Thistle and Weeds (2009)

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Absolution (Just Say Three Hail Marys and I Love You)

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I suspect things have changed since I last went to a Catholic mass.  Generally accepted as among the wealthiest organizations on Earth, the Catholic Church’s wealth remains for the most part locked up in the vaults and treasures and vast real estate holdings of the Vatican rather than trickled down to feed and clothe and care for the masses– seemingly a contradiction to the mission of love and the vows of poverty espoused by church leadership.  The Church has been hammered repeatedly in recent years for the sins of the Fathers and some enormous settlements have been reached to avoid other, costlier, judgments at trial.  Pedophilia in the headlines, it seems, makes for poor recruiting.  I read somewhere that the number of priests ordained from First World countries these days was barely a sliver of a percent relative to those from Third World places where for children the church is still viewed as a way out of a life destined for hopeless desperation and poverty and into one of salvation and hope and– well, still poverty until you navigate the Church’s political hierarchy.  Simple black robes or a nun’s habit can’t hide all that wealth.  Someone up that food chain is getting fat.  The attraction of serving God and becoming one of His disciples here on Earth seems to have waned in Western cultures or maybe that’s just the perception.

A Festivus for the rest of us....

Of the seven sacraments, being ordained is still known as receiving Holy Orders and is the least common.  Baptism is still Baptism but they call Holy Communion the Eucharist now, Penance is called Reconciliation, and the Last Rites have been whitewashed into something called the Anointing of the Sick.  The phrases sounds vaguely lawyerish or maybe Kramerish on Festivus but they don’t sound like the tough as nails message drilled into us when we were kids about discipline and sacrifice and contrition.  I’m reasonably confident my adult children couldn’t define the word genuflect and I’m OK with that.  The generation of family priests and nuns stopped with my mother and father’s and my children will never have to fall to their knees, kiss the ring, or otherwise behave deferentially unless they choose to (an unlikely choice, I’m sure).  There are no lapsed Catholics in our house– only one ex-Catholic still amused by my Grandmother’s certainty that someday (despite my marriage to my wife) I would become a priest and carry on a family legacy.  That, as they say, would be a Festivus miracle like no other.

We didn’t stick with the church on Sunday routine for long when I was a kid– my father worked ridiculous hours to try and keep us living a middle-class lifestyle despite earning what was probably a lower pay and grade in fact for how we lived.  It needed to be spread across six children, a wife and a mortgage.  Giving up church on Sunday meant there was time for scrambled eggs and pancakes and orange juice–but more important it meant sleeping in and enjoying a day of actual rest rather than rising early, showering and dressing nicely, and driving to Saint Anthony Claret.  Breakfast for eight cost less than new clothes and dress shoes for six, and eggs and bacon didn’t require tossing something respectable in the collection plate.  After the first few years trying to appease my grandparents we even skipped the midnight mass on Christmas Eve and gave up all pretense.  The catechism classes became just another necessary carpool and disappeared off my radar entirely after I was confirmed (coincidentally, so did participation in all things Catholic, once it was explained to me by my Grandmother what it ‘meant’ to have been confirmed in the church.  Thank you, but no…).  I know my folks had a fancy Bible given to them by my grandparents as a wedding treasure.  I vaguely remember owning a Bible as a child but I have no recollection whatsoever of ever reading one much less studying it.  We didn’t consider ourselves heathen but I’ve been moving in that direction ever since.  I’ve come to grips with it.

My relationship with a god has been challenging at times for my kids, mostly, because of the conflicting messages they inevitably discern from their parents.  My wife is a member of a Presbyterian church; I am one half of a ’couple’ and that occasionally means I engage in activities deemed ‘couple-worthy’ that also involve the church and other church members.  They are good people with good hearts and healthy pocketbooks and they reach out in their way to try and make the world a better place.  When they bow their heads and extend their hands to pray a blessing before diving in for a group meal I clasp the hands of whomever reaches out for mine and try not to make it uncomfortable or obvious that I don’t bow my head for any god, however well-intentioned.  I don’t begrudge them theirs, I merely don’t share the same need or want for communion with a higher being (but for the record, I don’t deny them their insistence that such a Being exists for them).  Whether there is a God or not doesn’t really matter much one way or the other to me here in this temporal life.  I’m still going to live until I die and I’m still never going to know what, if anything, becomes of my soul until I move on– so worrying about whether I’ve pleased a kind and merciful God or if I’ve slighted a cruel and vindictive one seems pointless.  I sense when I have a need to know, it will all be made clear but thus far clarity has eluded me.

I approach my final hours maybe I’ll feel different.  Perhaps I’ll be one of those who, having lived apart from the sacraments for so long, will feel compelled to call out for a priest to comfort me and deliver me back to God during my final breaths.  I suspect not– I even hope not.  That kind of shadow cast across the way I’ve lived my life would certainly stain the confidence with which I’ve maintained my earthly beliefs, but I’ve heard of such things happening to even the most devout non-believers and the most lapsed of the lapsed.  I cautioned my sister to be aware of the phenomenon as my father nears death, slowly wasting away from cancer and emphysema and the spiral of negative side effects these bring on a path to the next world.  It seemed only right we prepare to honor his request if he should have a decades long reversal of faith and suddenly cry out for the gentleness of a Godly touch to comfort him as he approaches his maker’s kingdom.  If he asks for a priest, I want him to know that his God will be there guiding him in.  If as I suspect, he doesn’t feel that need and never makes that utterance, he’ll know the people who have always loved him despite his faults, his weaknesses, and his failures will guide him on toward whatever awaits beyond that last earthly breath we all someday breathe.

When my father was a younger man, a more devout or full of faith or Catholic man I’m not certain, he wore a sterling silver St. Christopher medal around his neck– St. Christopher, the patron saint of travelers. The thought brings back fond memories of my childhood and my father as a young man.  It seems certain he will be leaving this world before much longer but probably not guided openly by the St. Christopher I suspect is tucked away in a case on his dresser somewhere.  His days of paying outward homage to his faith disappeared years ago– maybe his faith as well, I don’t know.  Still, he’ll be protected– just by living saints and different articles of faith.  Lapsed or not, he’ll be guided by a warmth and love from blessings more personal and meaningful than what a priest can give.  He’ll start his journey to the next world comforted in the knowledge that he lived a life in this one as best he could, loved as truly as he was able, did some good along the way, and that people cared for him.  Those closest to him, his family, shared their lives and their love in much the same imperfect manner with him and did so freely.  When he has a need to know anything further, I suspect it will all be made clear for him and I hope he will find comfort there as well.

Today my heart is big and sore
It’s tryin’ to push right through my skin
I won’t see you anymore

I guess that’s finally sinkin’ in 

Patty Griffin – Goodbye (1998)

Outrunning Time (It’s Relative)

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There are concepts and then there are [insert Keanu Reeves voice saying "whoa" here] concepts– for those of us with feeble minds, some are just easier to grasp than others.  Long division and multiplying fractions?  I got that. Hitting the gas coming through a turn and offsetting centrifugal force instead of braking through?  Got it.  Conservation of mass and that all matter is made up of infinitely smaller pieces of matter [we just can't see that small stuff yet]?  OK, got that too but the thought that my whole concept of everything in my universe stretched out infinitely large is probably nothing more than a tiny cell in some other thing’s universe still makes me pause and consider shutting of the computer and turning on an old re-run of Friends to just disengage my brain.  E = mc2 and the theory of relativity?  Maybe not so much on those concepts.

Relativity is the one that seems more approachable– but isn’t.  The notion that things are not absolute when viewed from different relative vantage points offers a certain pseudointellectual comfort somehow but I’m no more comfortable with the Lorentz factor now than I was 35 years ago.  Is a yard really 36 inches– every time? Maybe yes… maybe no [insert Firesign Theater's Rocky Rococo voice from 2:03 of the New Adventures of Nick Danger here].  If I roll a marble 36 inches and it takes three seconds to finish the route while rolling on a flat table you can say the marble travelled 36 inches.  If the table was inside a train going 100 mph and you were sitting with me on the train, you’d probably still say the marble travelled 36 inches.  But if you were on the side of the road along the tracks and saw me as the train passed by, the distance the marble travelled would probably be different–greater than 36 inches and substantially so because you saw it move from one side of your field of vision to another.  50 feet?  100?  More?  Your particular vantage could be measured and recorded but 30 different observers of the same marble roll could also be measured and recorded– and all would be equally accurate while being distinctly different results.  Is one truer than another?  If not, does truth exist.  If so, where does the truth lie and falsehood begin?  If distance is relative, given a vantage point, what about distance’s fraternal twin, time?

Back To The Future

We try and mark distance with time, time with distance.  How far can we travel in one hour?  How fast can we cover the quarter mile?  When the big hand reaches the 6 you may have a cookie.  There is a relationship of some sort but the relationship is fluid and relative.  A second isn’t necessarily a second, an hour not always an hour in absolute measure.  How can that be?  Perhaps in the same way some experiences seem to take no time at all and others drag on seemingly forever– an hour massage often feels like 20 minutes and an hour meeting can feel like a lifetime.  The perception with which you view an event structures our concept of time as the event plays out– even though the minute and second hands click forward seemingly the same as they always do.  Were they the same?

The whole issue of time and relativity intrigues me more from the vantage point of travel and history (insert Einstein’s voice saying “Careful now…”).  Is the universe a closed system or an open system?  If there are bounds, the system is most certainly closed but can’t you make the case that a system infinite in bounds actually behaves as a system closed by an infinite border?  We know sound travels far slower than light but both do travel relative to the observer [or the observer travels relative to light and sound, we can't really be sure, can we?).  If you accept the premise that, within a closed system, energy can neither be created nor destroyed, but only transferred from one form to another then sound dissipates only to some different form.  If we could travel far enough, fast enough, couldn't we outrun the energy emitted as sound from what we think of as our past and re-experience it [in 'relative real time' seems, somehow, silly to say at this point]?  Or could we simply arrive at a point within our universe where our vantage of ‘past events’ is now altered and we can experience them from some new point of view?  Can we outrun time?  If you accept the premise that light travels at the same speed regardless of the speed of its source, then the light which strikes an object– what we interpret as sight– must exist somewhere conceptually, relative to that image, and if we could only travel fast enough, far enough, or reposition ourselves relative to the light that once passed the object or event in our ‘past’ that we could see again what once was seen, though from a new vantage?  Would we be allowed to participate and alter outcomes or would we be limited to merely observing– a sort of historical voyeurism?

The mysteries of the universe are fabulous and complex for feeble minds like mine but that giant energy form that holds my infinite world and everything I can imagine it to be as no more than a molecule among trillions of trillions of trillions of like molecules in that world must certainly understand more than me.  The hope that knowledge is infinite, acquisition of knowledge is Godlike, and the benevolent use of knowledge will somehow make the time pass more comfortably is all that keeps us pressing forward toward our universal destiny.  Or would Einstein say we’re pressing backward and just don’t realize it because time and space are relative?

Time is the essence, time is the season
Time ain’t no reason, got no time to slow
Time everlasting, time to play B sides
Time ain’t on my side, time I’ll never know

It’s An Addiction (Ode To An Aging Star)!

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Ahem.  My name is Chris and I’m addicted to real estate pornography.  I admit it– I like house porn.  New listings, stale listings, listings of places I’ll never afford in places I can only imagine I’d ever be able to live.  Cheesy dialog and flowery descriptions using sentence structures no one in the real world ever uses.  And pictures.  I like pictures.  Listings with 30 pictures showing every closet and nook and claw foot tub and from all the angles.  Wide-angled lens, fish-eyed lens, closely cropped and panoramas.  It doesn’t matter.  I like ‘em all.  I came of age during the 70′s when the classics were being made– old grainy black and white shots that all looked somehow the same on the page– fuzzy mostly and not well-shot but clear enough that you could make out all the good stuff– the really important parts.  Curb shots with no creativity or originality made with a technician’s eye instead of a director’s vision.  Formula shots.  Money shots.  Shots they only use on retro sites nowadays and even then when they’re poking fun at the past.  New listings today really rev up my engine and get me going.  Freshly finished hardwood floors and granite countertops bigger than a king-sized bed make me tremble.  I get weak in the knees when I get a look at a custom made potting shed.  The real kind, not those plastic fakes they install for you from the kit that anyone with too much money can buy for themselves.  Something original and real, with a few natural  imperfections on the surface like they all have but with just the right combination of size and warmth for nurturing tender seedlings when it’s cold out.  My knees begin to buckle when I see a finished garage and I just can’t get enough.  I look and look and even when I say I’m going to stop, I look some more.  I’m not the only one, either.  I used to keep it a secret from my wife but I don’t even bother now.  I just bookmark the good stuff and she finds it.  In fact, she might be worse off than me.  I know she’s got the same sickness– I’ve noticed her trolling Craigslist looking at craftsmans, sunrooms, bigger and better kitchens with real eat-in areas instead of just a countertop and with a separate dining room big enough to hold a huge family table for grandchildren to sit around at the holidays someday.  She can spend most of an entire evening staring at the pictures.  I don’t have that kind of stamina anymore.

The house we’re going to spend a few days at during the New Year’s holiday is porn-worthy.  I know because we’ve stayed there once before and it was exactly that– amazing.  The kind I don’t have enough words for so ‘amazing’ will have to suffice as the chosen superlative.  High on a hill overlooking Lake Tahoe and almost nothing but National Forest between the house’s back deck and the shoreline.  It’s not your typical break from reality place– the one with all the normal stuff in all the normal places except not quite the same shapes and colors and styles as the ones you see every day at your home.  I mean it’s ‘off the charts’ different, a real looker, and the kind of place you only hope to get a shot at once in your life– and when you do, you want to make sure you savor every moment and give it your best because you know it’s way out of your league.  It’s a ‘lightning strikes once’ kind of place, the kind of place where, halfway through, you start to realize the chances of ever coming back are, well, remote at best.  Except lightning just struck again and we’re invited for another magic sleepover!

I hope she’s every bit as fabulous as the first time.  It wasn’t that long ago but she was clearly young and taut back then and had many good years ahead of her before signs of age would start to show.  I hope she stays clean and safe because bad things can happen when you open your doors to anyone that has enough money to come inside.  Our hosts for the holidays have a magazine where she is prominently featured on the outside cover.  I hope that doesn’t start attracting the wrong crowd and that she at least tries to maintain some kind of standards.  I bookmarked a copy of her website just to keep up with any new photos and comments from visitors.  I guess it’s being sentimental, in a way– that whole ‘shared experience’ thing by seeing the things said by others who have spent time with her over the years. I hope she grows old gracefully and settles down some day and I especially hope she doesn’t resort to all that ridiculous cosmetic stuff to make her look younger when she’s not and livelier than she is as she ages.  All that youthful activity, people coming and going and using her in whatever way they want for a wild week of romping around before they just drop her flat and leave will inevitably bring the wear and tear scars of an aged beauty.  I hope she outgrows the lifestyle in time and learns how to be happy in her own skin– the whole Meg Ryan makeover thing just scares me and I want to remember her as she was when we spent that beautiful few days together– not as some sad and lonely caricature of her former beauty!

There’s a beautiful full moon rising
above the mansion on the hill  

Bruce Springsteen – Mansion on the Hill (1982)

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Making Adjustments (Fine Tuning the Machine)

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Election Day 2010 in America is over and the social media is abuzz with chants from supporters of the victors and rants from the losers. The snarky feedback commentary following online articles about election results, mostly rants from losers, spells out the gloom and doom likely ahead of us now that the [ignorant] electorate has [insidiously] spoken their [misguided] minds. The morning after is a time for reflection, not platitudes, so if our candidate was elected, the appropriate response is mostly a knowing silence; but if our chosen one wasn’t chosen but, rather, sent off ignominiously to begin the long ‘walk of shame’ toward 2012, if the proposition we supported was repulsed like a cheesy bar pick-up line, or if our philosophical party lost some of the strength in numbers that helps governance plod forward gently bypassing tedious things like compromise and consensus, we’re likely keeping a close eye on Facebook, writing anonymous invective-laden nasty-grams on Craigslist, and tweeting our 140 character ‘end-of-the-world-and-life-as-we-know-it‘ salvos up to the cloud. By tomorrow we’ll have stopped posting and by the weekend we’ll be back fully-engulfed in the NFL and the NBA (now that that collection of castoffs and misfits and no names called the San Francisco Giants has won the World Series). Whether better days are just around the corner or not, we’ll soon forget the path toward destruction this election and this electorate has beaten into the ground, sending us along on our bi-annual societal death-march. We’re full of vitriol, opinionated and hot today, but we’ll cool quickly– about the time Taco Bell gives away some free chalupas or Macy’s has a One-Day sale on bras and panties or LeBron dunks hard on Kobe we’ll calm down and move on to more important (or at least more immediate) matters. We’re Americans.  Our passions rise and fall faster than a twenty dollar hooker’s at a truck stop after dark.

Our system is one of checks and balances, of perpetual tweaking and tinkering and tuning. The engine of our democracy never purrs for long like the well-oiled machine we thought we were getting when the wax was fresh and the chrome was polished and we gunned the motor and drove it off the lot. We’re in many ways like a British sports car—we look phenomenal all washed up and shiny but after a few short miles in the country we realize most of our time together will be spent lifting a floor jack in the garage, wearing oily dirty coveralls, and wiping mud from between the spokes to keep this bucket of bolts moving and recognizable. We’re a mechanic’s dream– there is nothing about this rig that is maintenance-free here and everything that breaks involves expensive parts and special tools to fix. We need to give our government constant attention and adjustments just to keep the thing running.

The winners and losers every two years are a necessary ingredient to our democracy and we shouldn’t get too excited or too concerned about any one election and its results, no matter how game-changing the outcome appears. Candidates, parties, and election strategists gain valuable experience and exposure when they win but they also gain these when they lose elections. It’s not unusual for issues and personalities to appear on the ballot long before the public is intellectually-prepared and knowledgeable enough to embrace and apply them and sometimes that’s what it takes to move our collective psyche forward. Not every candidate and idea fades away after a defeat at the polls.  We’re a nation of phoenixes.  Significant changes are almost never made quickly and rarely are they an overnight phenomenon; the process of aligning where we stand as a people and where, in fact, we should be standing is a gradual and oft times frustrating one—especially when we can see the desired spot off in the distance but can’t adequately gauge the right path to lead us there. Our collective growth is spawned more by making constant adjustments and minor improvements than from complete overhauls and if we decide we don’t like the color of our democracy, we can always repaint. We don’t have to change our leadership as often as a teenage girl might change her outfits– but we have that right if we choose to use it. That makes our ‘mechanic’s dream’ worth every tune-up, every fouled spark plug, and every tedious valve adjustment. We cuss out loud in the garage while we torque the democracy wrench but we’re singing her an aria with the top down when we get her out on the open road for a drive! We forget easily and the grease under our nails can be washed and our  scraped knuckles heal quickly.

By the way, speaking of forgetting things quickly, did I mention the San Francisco Giants are the World Series Champions for 2010?  By this weekend there won’t be stories about the Giants and their incredible season anywhere but in the San Francisco press.  All the eastern papers and ESPN and Fox Sports will be asking is whether Cliff Lee has signed with the New York Yankees yet? Apparently there’s a five-day period immediately following the end of the World Series so teams can exclusively try to negotiate with their own free agents before the Yankees sweep in and steal them away.  What were those idiots thinking when they made that a rule? Or have you cooled on all things baseball and simply moved on to more important headlines like the Lakers and the Patriots and the Sharks already?

He loved to drive in his Jaguar
So welcome to the Machine.

Pink Floyd – Welcome To The Machine (1975)

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Crayon Foul Lines (Wearing Shades of Gray)

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The Latrine

My daughter and her English fiancé have decided to marry. They’ve picked the date and set it for a year from today, selected a place they enjoy, and are busily making plans for their special day (of course the truth is that she’s making most of the plans– he’s smiling a lot, nodding at appropriate intervals, and likely wondering over and over again what he might have been thinking at the time…). They’ve decided neither of them prefers a chapel or a church ambiance– they want something more ‘shabby chic’ to better reflect their personal style together, and they both insist on a family-style meal rather than a sit-down– avoiding the ballroom rounds with eight or ten freshly-introduced people awkwardly trying to become mildly acquainted while simultaneously trying to decode which water glass can be reached for without risking looks of disdain and which bread plate might have already been claimed by the bride’s childhood babysitter or the groom’s college roommate’s date who actually remembers the etiquette rules for table-sitting with strangers.

Like most wedding parties, there will be food, wine, and song (probably an abundance of each) but also plenty of raised eyebrows– the betrothed have decided to use as their venue a former enlisted men’s barracks and mess hall (complete with a traditional military-style latrine) from a long-retired artillery installation once used to protect the city of San Francisco from enemy shelling by naval vessels armed with long guns outside the Golden Gate. The lack of a ‘comfort station’ suitable for the ladies wasn’t problematic around the turn of the 20th century when the building was commissioned– the architects never considered such a use of space.

Blazing Saddles

A century later, dividing the latrine into ‘his’ and ‘hers’ halves receives, out of polite necessity, slightly greater attention. The current solution involves a ‘your side, my side’ line, a couple of well-hung curtains, and likely a multimedia display projected on the common wall above the row of urinals broadcasting amusing snippets appropriately-themed for military and latrine-oriented enjoyment from American and British television, movies, and popular music (to create a loud but somewhat sound-muffling privacy in an environment that simply never contemplated the need for anything resembling privacy). If someone can explain for me how to position the campfire scene from Blazing Saddles somehow as a ‘military moment’ allowing it to be incorporated into the theme of the bathroom wall screenplay, I’m all ears (thematically seamless or not, it may find its way onto the wall– “For a Good Time, Call Mel Brooks” will make some of the folks laugh and sometimes you just have to go with ‘funny and silly’ and risk ’mildly tasteless’ without getting bogged down in whether it’s too much). A sense of humor is a lot like modern art– easy to categorize as ’I like’ or ‘I don’t like’ generally, almost impossible to explain rationally, and not typically in need of tedious intellectualization. Some folks will see the clip and think it’s crass and over the line– but then most lines are made to be moved.

Unless I’m driving, I’ve always tended to err on the side of one too many rather than one too few.  One too many steaks on the grill when company is coming over, one too many potatoes roasted for tomorrow’s microwave will be faster than baking again, one too many slices of pumpkin pie because I just like pumpkin pie (I question the very validity of ever having ‘too much’ pie).

I Like Pie

The question of when enough is really enough has always been a hard one and like many folks I’ve struggled with pressing right up against and occasionally violating that line.  When does a discussion become a disagreement and when does the disagreement become argument?  Is there a point where guiding and protecting crosses over and becomes simply controlling?  Are the first few teases playful and silly but the last ones callous and mean?  I respect having convictions but what divides having a ‘strong opinion’ and ’browbeating’ others for having their own– can you be so dogmatic that your convictions become disrespectful of others’?  When things are black and white, is there any gray sliver at all resting right where the two opposites touch?  Is there such a thing as too much love and a line there you shouldn’t cross?  Life’s little coloring book isn’t pre-printed and every next page is blank.  Where are the lines we’re taught to try and stay within?

Fear The Beard

My beard has changed color as I’ve aged and there will come a time not too far from now when continuing to wear my whiskers will label me senior at any observable distance.  I’m of the age where the Just For Men commercials have me targeted as the ‘sweet spot’ demographic, but I can’t even begin to imagine buying much less applying the ‘make me look younger’ product (I love that the Giants appear headed toward winning the World Series and that closer Brian Wilson’s beard is mysteriously far too black for his face these last few months but the closest I’ll come to touching up my gray with ink is with the doctored photo on my Facebook profile during the 2010 Series).  As my beard naturally grays with age my temperament has also tended to soften that line between black and white as well.  There was a time when things were absolutely one way or the other with me– you were or you weren’t, you did or you didn’t, you would or you would not, it mattered or it didn’t.  Now things seem to have swaths of gray between them and the line seems to be more a road than a path.  There’s a wider stripe of chalk separating the fair and the foul these days.

When the planning was taking place for our wedding I smiled a lot and nodded at the appropriate intervals and didn’t have strong opinions one way or the other about most of the decisions.  Things mattered or they didn’t– and for the most part, for me, they didn’t. I was marrying the woman I loved and the details of the event and the day weren’t especially important.  Our ceremony was in a lovely small chapel, we hosted a small buffet for family and friends in my bride’s parents’ back yard, and the only time a man and a woman were in the same latrine, I am told, is something my brother and several of my wife’s attractive bridal party friends will need to explain.  Still, I wish I had been more black and white about one thing:  I should have worn a nice gray suit instead of that awful tuxedo I’m reminded of every time I walk past the framed wedding photo in our living room.  The fact that I wore it– and that the proof will hang in our home until well after I’m dead– is testament to the fact that there is no such thing as too much love.

All that other stuff in the book, though, isn’t so black and white.

You’ve got a way to keep me on your side
You give me cause for love that I can’t hide
For you I know I’d even try to turn the tide

Because you’re mine, I walk the line

Straw, Sticks, and Brick (Down the Rabbit Hole)

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When I was in high school I worked as a laborer for a contractor who built nice fancy houses, not-so-nice, not-so-fancy houses, and pretty much anything in between that might require a carpenter’s belt, a pickup truck, and a well-rounded vocabulary for swearing loudly after finish nails bent when hammered into dried oak ["...%#$@ cheap Japanese steel..."]. Our days typically involved arriving at the jobsite around 6am, a cup of coffee and a smoke before rolling out the power cords, a couple of hours working up a good sweat to warrant the 9:30am break for a couple of Pall Malls and a six-pack of Bud, followed by another couple of hours of good, solid effort before heading off to a local bar for ‘lunch’ (typically more Bud and slices from a gigantic cheese block to keep calorie-low patrons from wandering off too quickly into the dining portion of the place). I couldn’t drink in the bar so my refreshment of choice after the morning jobsite break became water—and there’s only so much water you can drink from a bar tap with brick cheese before the prospect of staying on the jobsite and finishing whatever work needed finishing starts to look good. There were plenty of days I drank that much water or more– probably the reason I don’t hydrate well enough for my internist’s liking these days.  There were other days when lunch and dinner collided without a single afternoon nail being driven and there were days when my most important responsibility was driving back to the jobsite to roll up the cords and keep them from growing legs before heading back to the bar to wait for ‘lunch’ to end. We didn’t call what I did those evenings “Designated Driver” back then but that’s what it was; drive the truck, drive the nails, drive the boss home but make sure he’s the one in the driver’s seat for the last mile in case anyone’s in the driveway when the truck pulls in at the house. I didn’t really mind– I was on the clock from the moment I got to the truck in the morning until the moment that truck reappeared in the driveway at the end of the day.

There were custom houses with fancy staircase railings and redwood decks overlooking the blue Pacific, nice tracts of tasteful but ordinary houses the real estate agents would call 70’s chic today built on plowed under lemon and orange groves, and rows upon rows of smaller, cracker boxes that I’m sure today aren’t the well-maintained working-class neighborhoods the developer envisioned but rather more likely became the sprawling suburban ghettos that rolled the traditional project high rise concept over on its side and stretched it out laterally over the cheap acreage of a high desert those same real estate geniuses would come to call the Inland Empire. The babies had boomed and it didn’t matter whether you were rich or poor or bobbing somewhere in between and it didn’t matter whether you were headed up or down as the economy turned, you had to lay your head somewhere.

We closed escrow on our first house together just before we married in 1981 and were thrilled to sign for a 13 ½% mortgage that included the builder buy-down— a loan that now seems astronomically high but a solid bargain compared with the 18% note a co-worker signed up for not too long after. By then I had already decided there was not enough money on Earth to get me to live in Southern California again, not enough opportunity, or enough good lovin’ to bring me back down south [so it’s a really good thing the woman I fell for was a solidly-entrenched in Northern California girl].  We made a shallow foundation in a development near the river and started putting down roots. We put shelf liner in the cupboard drawers and boxes of college remnants in the garage and set about building a life together in a house constructed with the same cheap materials and haste that more closely resembled those sprawling projects I used to build in Highland and Laverne than the clear redwood hot tub palaces in Mission Viejo. Eventually the shift from a $350 a month duplex rental to the $825 PITI stopped worrying us and we started nailing decorative oak paneling to the walls, filling the custom-made wine bottle rack I installed under the kitchen cabinets (custom-made by me at my brand new workbench installed in my brand new garage along with my brand new saber saw and brand new 3/8” chuck drill– these and a lot of sandpaper), and pushing back the rear fence to enclose the additional lot of otherwise useless land between our yard and the levee that was the city limit (the best views in the County, except days when they burned the rice straw, were from the top of that levee). We had our children there but the world moved quickly in the 80’s and we soon moved with it. We’ve lived in two different houses since– each time agonizing over the increased commitment to a new mortgage and each time adjusting relatively quickly to a new lifestyle and a new distribution of what we used to think of as ‘spendable’ cash.  Each time we try and make just the right little improvement to what any other family would most certainly have thought was already a perfectly serviceable house.  We were always trying to make it just a little bit nicer.

I used to think there was no Easy Street until I looked it up– they’re everywhere! I imagine the people on Easy Street struggle with bills like everybody else, wish it were easier to make ends meet like most of us do, and think about how their lives would be different if only they had a little more. Everyone has those thoughts—they’re a pleasant fantasy but really just a trip down the rabbit hole—the more you have, the more you think you need and wherever you’re at in life you’ll wonder what it would be like to have just a little bit more. I don’t really dwell on those thoughts any longer; the things I truly need I already have in my life– a loving wife, children I am proud of, and the limitless affection I get from my dogs no matter what mood I’m in.  I’m trying to appreciate and enjoy these rather than chasing after more stuff.  Better to build a small, well-made house of bricks than a large, flimsy palace of sticks or straw. The modern-day forest is a dangerous place, things can change in an instant, and the rabbit hole isn’t well-lit.

The house we own is made from the usual things: studs, siding, nails, and plaster. The home we have built is better-constructed and made from none of these things.  I’m not opposed to a new house in a different community but there’s not enough money on Earth to get me to live somewhere else. Our house is where we sleep but our home is where we live.

If you find somebody to love in this world
You better hang on tooth and nail
The wolf is always at the door

Don Henley — New York Minute (1989)

Eye Black and Seeds (Wait ‘Til Next Year)

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The Dog Days at AT&T Park

The dog days of August are ending and September baseball is just around the corner promising the excitement of pennant races, final weeks of scoreboard watching, and the possibility of miracle finishes. Just as likely though are the calendar countdowns planning fishing trips, family vacations, and waiting for deer season to open. Fast-tracked rookies will get their first call up to the Major Leagues, minor league veterans deserving of recognition for their seasons of anonymous toil in second and third-tier cities will be added to the rosters of teams that play in ballparks with more than one level for organizations which make certain a segment of their employee list never themselves carry a suitcase.  Grizzled and waning veterans will hope for one last month of heroics that might stave off for one more year the inevitable early retirement brought on by eroded skills and weakness that can no longer be hidden or prolonged by more days off between starts or only late-inning pinch-hit at-bats. Players with ‘the game’ as their only marketable skill-set will re-plow old relationships hoping to land some kind of post-playing days career on someone’s minor league staff or in some front office capacity after their glory days end and those with a wider vision will begin to reprioritize their professional lives away from the dugouts and the grass and the noise of the crowd. How sad does the last singing of the Star Spangled Banner sound when the first one next year will be heard from the stands or the radio and not from the grass between the infield and the dugout? For some, September holds late-season promise but for most it paints only the clearest reminder of blooms which fade and eventually part ways with their rose.

When I was a kid there was the usual lunch line chatter about who made it to Majors, who got into Babe Ruth league and who was still in the Minors but I really wasn’t even a part of the club. I never played Little League ball (we were a large family and extra-curricular activities for me included things like pulling weeds and mowing the lawns and cleaning up after the dogs) so when tryouts for my high school team took place I remember feeling absolutely lost while coaches shouted out their instructions about drills in what were, for them, tried and true diamond lingo every ‘player’ would understand. Not me. My friends and I didn’t learn those phrases in the schoolyard playing pick up games and ‘over-the-line’ and ‘three flies up’ so I clearly made a bad impression trying to play ‘organized’ ball. I could always hit for power and I roped the ball for the high school coaches when I had the chance to swing, but defensively I must have been seen as clueless and a liability because I couldn’t follow directions. It turns out I just didn’t ‘speak the language’ yet and understanding coach-speak was a prerequisite. I was cut with the first wave of sophomores and castoffs and the experience soured me enough I never bothered to try out again. Only later, in college, did I find my stride and figure out the whole ‘language of the game’ thing (as a freshman I snagged the moniker ‘Toy Cannon’ after a meaningful walk off grand slam) and it was about that time I had developed physically and carried the size and strength and enough quickness to be an asset in the field as well as with a bat in my hand that would last my whole ball playing career, such as it was. First fast-pitch and later slow, guys I played against season after season came to understand the wisdom of not running on me when I played the outfield. We won our share of hardware and I led the league once in batting but my legs fell off in my late Forties.  By then, I could stretch a triple into a double as well as any ‘has been’ but I never lost the ability to drive the ball into the gaps. Stepping away for me just happened naturally– as the team aged it just became less and less fun playing with all the kids that started appearing on the roster– kids who could rely on nothing but raw talent and young wheels instead of a head’s up savvy for making plays and a sense for the beauty of the game.

When I stopped playing I missed not heading out for the first spring workout that initial ‘retirement’ season and I missed the jawing with the guys over a beer after the game was over but I quickly replaced the game and its habits with other activities and I developed new routines that made not playing less noticeable. Eventually I didn’t miss playing as much and eventually I stopped thinking about being out there except those occasional trips past the diamond at night while a game was in progress when the ball field lights made it impossible not to notice. There’s a wistful sentimentality that permeates the brain and hits on those pleasure points– not unlike the smoker that reminisces about a good smoke twenty or thirty years after having quit the habit knowing it was bad and would kill him (I haven’t touched a cigarette since the 80′s but there are those occasional moments where the old tapes go off and the brain starts playing a kind of mental Twister around those little nodes of pleasure).  I know guys that moved on from playing to umpire and stay engaged but that never seemed right for me.  I umpired a lot of Little League and high school games once upon a time.  My strike zone was consistent and I kept the game moving– coaches and players both let me know they appreciated how I called a game– but that was more a civic duty than a personal satisfaction and the thought of withstanding that abuse today for a few shekels just to be on the field makes the game and my time playing it seem less worthy to me than I remember it. I haven’t put the umpire’s gear on in years but I haven’t parted with it either– my inside protector, mask and shin guards most recently served as a Halloween costume for my daughter’s British significant other who has adopted baseball and my Giants as if they were always a part of his life story.

My baseball life and my professional life are following much the same trajectory and I find myself wondering if the only teams left are dominated by cocky young talent with speed and attitude but little longevity. Youthful arrogance has a way of tempering into a maturity and wisdom in veterans that has to be appreciated– no team plays well for long without that blend of experience to soften the rough edges of those rookies who see only their rise and never their fall. It may well be that I’ve already reached the apex of my curve but I can still drive the ball with authority and I can still turn it on and leg one out if it’s essential for the ball club. I just need to find the right team– one that needs a solid veteran presence in the clubhouse and occasional power at the plate.

Time, time, time, see what’s become of me
While I looked around for my possibilities.

Simon and Garfunkel – Hazy Shade of Winter (1966)

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The Beautiful Game (Take A Dive)

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My daughter is a group leader for a company that hosts international students spending a summer vacation in the San Francisco area and this year’s crop hails from Spain.  Usually regimented with a detailed agenda of activities that daily lead them to and fro amidst the iconic cultural and recreational experiences the city has to offer (those which can be enjoyed by a ‘sorry, you’re not legally old enough to drink that here‘ crowd) the timing of the World Cup in South Africa has created new resume skills she can point toward: flexibility and creativity.  Yesterday’s Germany vs. Spain semi-final match is the classic case in point.  Scheduled to be near Fisherman’s Wharf for most of the day making the rounds of the T-shirt shops, wax museum, crab stands and lounging sea lions, the group of twenty five or so high-school-aged hormone factories made it known they’d gladly boycott the tourist zone trinket shops and anchovy-diving mammals for the chance to see their country play a potentially historic World Cup match (a win would put España in the final game for the first time ever)– but with an 11:30am local time start to the match the challenge became where to land a group so large but unable to open a beer tab.  There was talk of a restaurant for a long lunch but my daughter has worked as a server and quickly realized filling an entire section for two hours during the rush with “I’ll have a Coke and we’ll split an order of fries” kids just looking to kill time while their national team spends a couple of hours running around an acre and a half looking for one or two good chances to score a goooooooooooooooooooooaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaal would draw instant ire from any fellow “hey, I work for tips and you’re killin’ me” wait staff.  Raging [teenaged nationalistic] hormones aside, she just couldn’t do it to a fellow restaurateur.  These are the moments a father lives for….  Hearing her share her dilemma with a friend, my semi-annual contribution to the ‘Daddy is old but Daddy can be wise’ pile came to me almost immediately:  re-route the pilgrimage from Pier 39 to Civic Center Plaza and hang out with the homeless for a couple of hours.

People will tell you that San Francisco is a lot of things– good and bad things alike and we could argue which is which– but one thing hard to dispute is that San Francisco is a world-class city, a world-class destination, and one of the most cosmopolitan places on Earth.  The city is only seven miles by seven in its entirety and quite manageable on foot.  If you’re a tourist, the best time to visit San Francisco is October when the inland summer heat that draws the fog in from the sea during the summer months has calmed and San Francisco weather and temperature seem more like a Côte d’Azur Mediterranean vacation than an Arctic expedition (though if you’re a sweatshirt vendor you still prefer those summer tourists who arrive thinking California is one long Malibu row of lifeguard stands with bikinis and surfboards and tans).  In July a trip downtown might be pleasant and comfortable but it just as easily might require a parka and ski goggles for the foggy mist and chilly winds as you walk along Market Street.  There’s just no predicting unless you look at the forecast a hundred miles away in Stockton or Sacramento.  One thing you can predict, though, is that whatever neighborhood you frequent in San Francisco on any given day, you’ll find plenty of tourists speaking plenty of languages and staring at guidebooks.  It’s that assurance that tourists will congregate that made me think to send the kids off to Civic Center Plaza– normally a place reserved for street people and derelicts (who, surprising to many, aren’t always the same thing).

San Francisco is a good civic host and we try to make people feel comfortable and welcome (if you don’t believe that, ask every homeless person you meet here where they came from…).  As part of making people feel welcome and still encouraging them to get out and enjoy the city and spend those hard-earned Euros and Pounds, and Yen, the Parks and Recreation Department decided to install a huge screen TV in Civic Center Plaza to allow a public place for people to watch the various World Cup soccer matches (a rumor that the most vocal of the homeless population threatened a class-action suit against the city for not providing adequate access to the World Cup experience is unconfirmed though it certainly soundslike a San Francisco kind of case).

The World Cup at SF City Hall

Regardless of motive, San Francisco (like Seattle and other progressive cities) made the World Cup a massive public event and did so in a way that minimized the inevitable spike in public drunkenness normally associated with a major sporting event in this country.

The kids from España yelled and screamed and cheered for most of the 93 minutes it took for their team to outplay, embarrass, and summarily dispatch the German team.  The score was 1-0 but in fairness it wasn’t this close.  The match never really seemed like the Spanish team was in jeopardy of losing– they played aggressively and spent most of the match on the offensive side of the pitch (see, even old Daddy’s can learn new phrases).  There were the usual player flops– mysterious ‘sniper shots’ where a player suffers what must appear from one angle as a brutal foul but from another reveals absolutely no contact was made– but I never noticed any bad enough to warrant the ridiculous stretcher team dragging the [malingering] bad actors from the field of play only to see them pop up laughing on the sideline.  I used to think the NBA was ridiculous for allowing players to flop on a foul.  NBA players are babes in the woods compared with their counterparts in the World Cup.

My daughter writes today that she had to phone a host family father and ask permission to enter his home looking for one of the exchange students who failed to show up on time for a scheduled trip to see Alcatraz Island.  After an hour of holding up the group from departing they found him asleep in his bed at his host family home.  Clearly the post-game celebration sapped all his strength.  Either that or he doesn’t own a parka.  I hope he wasn’t flopping for the crowd.

For those who come to San Francisco
Summertime will be a love-in there

Scott McKenzie — San Francisco (1967)

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Thorny Problem (In a Seedy Area)

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I love where I live and after 25 years here, this is now home.  But living near San Francisco, like living close to any major urban area, means living with blight and bad neighborhoods filled with filth and decay, and the challenges these bring with them are inevitably just around any corner.  The occasional nice coat of paint and freshly-trimmed lawn only serve as misdirection for the eye and deflect from the real ugliness settled just below the surface waiting to explode and overtake the area.  Where I live is considered middle-class and by almost anyone’s standards a decent place but heading off in any direction there are rundown patches in need of redevelopment and rejuvenation and they are always closer than I’d like to think.  Certainly wealthy areas are within easy distance from me but more of the landscape is filled with neighborhoods closer to falling away from being fabulous than fabulous acreage on the rise.  When I shut out the lights and crawl off to bed, bad seeds are still out there never sleeping and are working to bring my neighborhood down.  Every municipality wants to think they can fight back the blight and maintain civic pride and encourage well-groomed properties.  And pockets of well-maintained and well-manicured landscape do, in fact, exist– but they are becoming rarer and rarer as the creep of seedy infestation encroaches on the periphery of what was once pristine and beautiful.  People in general just don’t care for their communities as they perhaps once did and the effects of this benign neglect are starting to appear obvious to even the casual observer.

There is a theory that addressing quality of life crimes quickly in a community, such as litter, graffiti, and broken windows, will discourage additional more serious crimes from taking root there because the neighborhood maintains a sense of pride in itself and residents remain vigilant toward preventing escalation of the negative influences.  If you repair the first broken window quickly enough, the logic says, vandals aren’t as inclined to see the building as an opportunity for additional mischief whereas leaving the window visibly broken actually encourages additional vandalism.  Eventually the building becomes a target for vandals, for more significant damage, and for break-ins.  Left unattended, the damage fosters an area where squatters, rats, and litter thrive.  It isn’t hard to see how an otherwise decent neighborhood can deteriorate relatively quickly into one far less desirable simply by being inattentive when small problems are first noticed but not dealt with quickly.  With that in mind, pull weeds.  Specifically, pull yellow star thistle– and pull it from the hills and ridges and trails around Mt. Diablo near my home.

Centaurea solstitialis, the yellow star thistle weed, is the broken window in the open space neighborhood.  Highly invasive, it came here in the mid-1800′s from Europe in contaminated agricultural seed and has spread across virtually every open space area in the western United States [it has been reported in all but 6 of the lower 48 states].  One report has it as the dominant flora on over 15,000,000 acres in California alone and it can quickly crowd out the native plant species and overtake entire hillsides by outcompeting native vegetation for water and essential nutrients [it has a taproot that can often reach more than three feet underground in search of moisture].  Even during hot, dry summers and droughts, yellow star thistle can thrive.  Left unchecked, it will become the predominant vegetation wherever it takes hold.  The plant is toxic to horses and painfully sharp if stepped on or brushed against creating a sever puncture wound.  Areas overtaken by this weed can become impassable within a few short growing seasons.

Eradication is unlikely but control and elimination of the weed within specific areas is possible.  Because the seed isn’t normally wind-borne, spread occurs primarily from animal and human activity carrying the seed from site to site.  This means a conscientious weeding program is possible over limited areas.  Once the plant has gone to seed, these remain viable and can germinate normally for three growing seasons.  Weeding before the plant has matured to the point of bearing seeds can, if performed diligently, actually remove an infestation.  Fixing the broken windows early and often can prevent the decline and degradation of the entire neighborhood!

A handful of volunteers near where I hike with my dogs have taken it upon ourselves to push back the invasion, if only to push it off a dozen or so key acres of treasured nearby hillside and ridgeline.  In our little way, we’re trying to keep control over the quality of life crime before the neighborhood sinks into accepting the invader as a natural part of the landscape and merely stops hiking up there.  I’ve spent more hours this year weeding than walking but I’m at least optimistic for the future– maybe one of these years we can claim we’ve pushed back the yellow star thistle hordes but I suspect it will be more like we’ve learned to peacefully coexist as long as we both stay on our respective sides of the tracks.

However far we travel
Wherever we may roam
The center of the circle
Will always be our home

John Lennon – Cleanup Time (1980)

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