Hooley's is an Irish pub about two miles from here.
Before he moved to Nashville five years ago, my son Tyler was in a band that played a couple of New Year's Day gigs at Hooley's. Only it wasn't Jan. 1. It was Dec. 31.
And that's how the Irish New Year's tradition got started at Alta Mira. Friends would be invited and we would meet at Hooley's about 3 p.m. to drink and listen to Tyler's band while we awaited midnight in Dublin, which was 4 p.m. in San Diego. The big countdown would come, New Year's would arrive in Ireland, and at Hooley's everybody would yell "Happy New Year!" and go into a crazed state for several minutes.
About 4:15, we would depart the tumult and go back to Alta Mira for more toasting and to eat our black-eyed peas and roast pork. Then Tyler moved to Nashville. We went back to Hooley's for the next Irish New Year, even though Tyler was gone. The place was jammed as usual, which is more fun when you are 30 than it is when you reach 60. The following year, we had the bright idea to leave Hooley's to the younger howlers and keep our whole part of the party at Alta Mira. And so Wednesday, revelers will arrive at 3:30, we will drink and keep the watch for midnight to arrive in Ireland, we will yell like crazy when it does, then have a nice dinner starring black-eyed peas.
Guests generally leave around 7, and if they choose, they can find a place to stay up until midnight and yell in the San Diego New Year, or if they can't keep their eyes open until midnight, they can be in bed and asleep by 9 or 10, knowing they have already rung the New Year in. You feel a lot better on New Year's morning that way, and you get to eat black-eyes for luck twice.
Tyler, meanwhile, has a bigger gig than Hooley's this New Year's Eve. He will be playing bass and guitar for the Emmitt/Nershi Band, which is opening for The Del McCoury Band, headliners at the New Year's Eve performance of The Grand Ole Opry, on the stage of the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville. That, I would stay up for.
December 29, 2008
December 28, 2008
Summer is way off to the left, there
Above is the solstice sunrise on Dec. 21, when the sun rose out of Tut's eye. Just to the left of the sun, you see Tut's cute little upturned nose, way too upturned, some might say, for a mummy, but we had nothing to say about it.
Now here is this morning's sunrise, Dec. 28, one week after the solstice, and the sun rose right on the bridge of Tut's nose. Imagine you were looking at this picture on this morning one million years ago, and how happy you would feel. The sun is coming back! It will be swimsuit season in no time.
December 26, 2008
Black-eyed peas for New Year's
You can research the reason why Southerners eat black-eyed peas on New Year's Day for good luck, and you can find some engaging, interesting symbolism, such as, "the peas swell when they are cooking, just as your luck will swell in the New Year."
As a Southerner, I wouldn't doubt that for a minute, even if it does not exactly make my eyes mist over. But if that is a little more symbolism than you can chew, and you prefer a more realistic connection between the solicitation and the result, listen to this, which is a true statement: When black-eyes acquired their New Year's Day reputation for luck, it was because the Southern people had grown their own black-eyes, in the warm gardens and fields of summer, and then "put them up," or what city folks call "canning," in quart-sized Mason jars.
On New Year's Day, they opened a couple of these jars, heated up the black-eyes, put them on the table, took a mouthful, and in that instant knew without doubt that in the whole year to come they could not possibly do better, or feel even half as good as they did at that moment, even if a plane flew over and dropped a million dollars on the porch. A year is a long time, and if you want luck throughout, you need to aim high on Day One. And that's where the tradition came from. People who have had put-up black-eyes realize this.
Having put-up black-eyes in the urban age is pretty much a case of knowing the right people. Before his death, Cliff Sims and I were high school classmates and then lifelong pals, and when we were pals, he married Carolyn Meredith, whose parents were farmers near Roscoe, Texas. When I would see Cliff and Carolyn, she would load me up with all the quarts I could talk her out of to take back to California. Believe me, those peas were a standard most of us will never realize on New Year's Day.
So we do the next-best thing. What follows is a recipe that works with either fresh or dried black-eyes. The tradition is popular enough to cause Southern California grocers to stock fresh black-eyes in the week before New Year's, and they come out fine, but I think dried are even better. They taste more like country.
1 lb. dried black-eyes
8 slices bacon, diced
1 medium onion, chopped
salt and pepper
Rinse the black-eyes and soak 4 hours in plenty of water to cover.
In a bean pot or dutch oven, put the bacon with water barely to cover. Over medium-high heat, let the water reduce and boil away just until the bacon starts to fry.
Stir in the onion, liberally season with salt and pepper, and cook until softened. During this time, a dark sheen will start to form on the bottom of the pot. This sheen is flavor gold. You actually are scorching things a little. But not too much. When the sheen is a nice mahogany, pour in half a cup of black coffee, or water. Turn heat to medium-low and scrape the bottom of the pot to help the sheen dissolve into the liquid. In high-tone places, this is called "deglazing the pot."
Drain the black-eyes and pour into the pot (If you use fresh, just rinse and dump them in the pot) with just enough water to reach the top of the peas. Turn heat to low, cover, and simmer until the black-eyes are soft, but not mushy. Start checking at an hour.
On New Year's we are going to have our black-eyes with roasted country-style pork ribs, drunken tomatoes, and good bread. Black-eyes freeze nicely, so don't be shy about making a lot. With luck, you can always have too little, but you can never have too much.
As a Southerner, I wouldn't doubt that for a minute, even if it does not exactly make my eyes mist over. But if that is a little more symbolism than you can chew, and you prefer a more realistic connection between the solicitation and the result, listen to this, which is a true statement: When black-eyes acquired their New Year's Day reputation for luck, it was because the Southern people had grown their own black-eyes, in the warm gardens and fields of summer, and then "put them up," or what city folks call "canning," in quart-sized Mason jars.
On New Year's Day, they opened a couple of these jars, heated up the black-eyes, put them on the table, took a mouthful, and in that instant knew without doubt that in the whole year to come they could not possibly do better, or feel even half as good as they did at that moment, even if a plane flew over and dropped a million dollars on the porch. A year is a long time, and if you want luck throughout, you need to aim high on Day One. And that's where the tradition came from. People who have had put-up black-eyes realize this.
Having put-up black-eyes in the urban age is pretty much a case of knowing the right people. Before his death, Cliff Sims and I were high school classmates and then lifelong pals, and when we were pals, he married Carolyn Meredith, whose parents were farmers near Roscoe, Texas. When I would see Cliff and Carolyn, she would load me up with all the quarts I could talk her out of to take back to California. Believe me, those peas were a standard most of us will never realize on New Year's Day.
So we do the next-best thing. What follows is a recipe that works with either fresh or dried black-eyes. The tradition is popular enough to cause Southern California grocers to stock fresh black-eyes in the week before New Year's, and they come out fine, but I think dried are even better. They taste more like country.
1 lb. dried black-eyes
8 slices bacon, diced
1 medium onion, chopped
salt and pepper
Rinse the black-eyes and soak 4 hours in plenty of water to cover.
In a bean pot or dutch oven, put the bacon with water barely to cover. Over medium-high heat, let the water reduce and boil away just until the bacon starts to fry.
Stir in the onion, liberally season with salt and pepper, and cook until softened. During this time, a dark sheen will start to form on the bottom of the pot. This sheen is flavor gold. You actually are scorching things a little. But not too much. When the sheen is a nice mahogany, pour in half a cup of black coffee, or water. Turn heat to medium-low and scrape the bottom of the pot to help the sheen dissolve into the liquid. In high-tone places, this is called "deglazing the pot."
Drain the black-eyes and pour into the pot (If you use fresh, just rinse and dump them in the pot) with just enough water to reach the top of the peas. Turn heat to low, cover, and simmer until the black-eyes are soft, but not mushy. Start checking at an hour.
On New Year's we are going to have our black-eyes with roasted country-style pork ribs, drunken tomatoes, and good bread. Black-eyes freeze nicely, so don't be shy about making a lot. With luck, you can always have too little, but you can never have too much.
December 24, 2008
Yes, Michael, there is a Santa Claus
When I was nine years old, hopelessly jaded, cynical and wise, I told the six-year-old neighbor girl, Judy Hamilton, from across the street, and her little sister Laura, that there was no Santa Claus.
Later in the day, Martha Hamilton, a very tall woman, walked across the street and without referring directly to my world-weariness, told me from her great height that she wished I had not told her daughters that there was no Santa Claus.
From that day forward I kept my wisdom to myself and never ever again even thought about telling someone that there was no Santa Claus. Then, around the time I was in the 35th grade, a couple of things happened. By then I was a father; Jessie was 10 and Tyler was eight. We went to Disneyland on an off-season day when workers were repairing the Fantasyland Castle. They had erected scaffolding. Until that moment, whenever I had looked at the Castle from Main Street, it had soared into the sky like the spires of European cathedrals. But I knew the dimensions of scaffolding, and against that grid of data, the Castle seemed no bigger than an ordinary house.
I looked into the wide eyes of Jessie and Tyler and realized they didn't know the dimensions of scaffolding; they hadn't had time in their young lives to acquire such data. If they had, I was instantly convinced, Disney would put up that scaffolding only at night and take it down before opening the next day, so the kids would still believe in the Castle. For me, data had become the decay of imagination. And my imagination woke up when I screamed at it that day, still in good working order. I have kept it that way ever since. It may have been that very day that I decided the best possible life would be to have the imagination of a six-year-old, and the experience of a 65-year-old.
From that experience rose a teaching point. In discussing imagination, I will ask my students: "Can animals talk?" They remain noncommittal. I ask: "Who is the most famous talking animal in the world today?" One or two will say, "Mr. Ed." I have no idea where these 2008 college students learned of Mr. Ed, or why he should sport such qualifications, but there it is. Then I prompt them: "This talking animal oversees an international entertainment empire that has made billions of dollars. We gladly pay sixty-five dollars to go to his park and talk to him. We will buy his ears and take them home and WEAR THEM." And then someone says, "Mickey Mouse!" Correcto.
Actually my favorite talking animal is Hobbes, from "Calvin and Hobbes," and I have a developing affection for the rat who starts his own restaurant in "Ratatouille." But you get the point. A guy will pay $45 (including popcorn and a small coke) to take his girl to a movie starring Shrek.
Then, some time close to the Disney experience, at Christmastime, I was in a mall, shopping, when shoppers in malls were still shoulder-to-shoulder. I never go to malls. Going to malls and hip replacement surgery are only a couple of spaces apart in my list of preferences. I crawled under a bench and said to myself: "What am I doing here?" I knew that somebody like me was there for only one reason: to put presents under Christmas trees. That made me feel better. A jolly old spirit was with me. I wasn't entirely crazy.
Then I thought: if Mickey Mouse can talk, can't Santa Claus give? Absolutely. He just needs a lot of helpers. Elves, if you will. Do I believe in elves? Sure I do. I am one.
Later in the day, Martha Hamilton, a very tall woman, walked across the street and without referring directly to my world-weariness, told me from her great height that she wished I had not told her daughters that there was no Santa Claus.
From that day forward I kept my wisdom to myself and never ever again even thought about telling someone that there was no Santa Claus. Then, around the time I was in the 35th grade, a couple of things happened. By then I was a father; Jessie was 10 and Tyler was eight. We went to Disneyland on an off-season day when workers were repairing the Fantasyland Castle. They had erected scaffolding. Until that moment, whenever I had looked at the Castle from Main Street, it had soared into the sky like the spires of European cathedrals. But I knew the dimensions of scaffolding, and against that grid of data, the Castle seemed no bigger than an ordinary house.
I looked into the wide eyes of Jessie and Tyler and realized they didn't know the dimensions of scaffolding; they hadn't had time in their young lives to acquire such data. If they had, I was instantly convinced, Disney would put up that scaffolding only at night and take it down before opening the next day, so the kids would still believe in the Castle. For me, data had become the decay of imagination. And my imagination woke up when I screamed at it that day, still in good working order. I have kept it that way ever since. It may have been that very day that I decided the best possible life would be to have the imagination of a six-year-old, and the experience of a 65-year-old.
From that experience rose a teaching point. In discussing imagination, I will ask my students: "Can animals talk?" They remain noncommittal. I ask: "Who is the most famous talking animal in the world today?" One or two will say, "Mr. Ed." I have no idea where these 2008 college students learned of Mr. Ed, or why he should sport such qualifications, but there it is. Then I prompt them: "This talking animal oversees an international entertainment empire that has made billions of dollars. We gladly pay sixty-five dollars to go to his park and talk to him. We will buy his ears and take them home and WEAR THEM." And then someone says, "Mickey Mouse!" Correcto.
Actually my favorite talking animal is Hobbes, from "Calvin and Hobbes," and I have a developing affection for the rat who starts his own restaurant in "Ratatouille." But you get the point. A guy will pay $45 (including popcorn and a small coke) to take his girl to a movie starring Shrek.
Then, some time close to the Disney experience, at Christmastime, I was in a mall, shopping, when shoppers in malls were still shoulder-to-shoulder. I never go to malls. Going to malls and hip replacement surgery are only a couple of spaces apart in my list of preferences. I crawled under a bench and said to myself: "What am I doing here?" I knew that somebody like me was there for only one reason: to put presents under Christmas trees. That made me feel better. A jolly old spirit was with me. I wasn't entirely crazy.
Then I thought: if Mickey Mouse can talk, can't Santa Claus give? Absolutely. He just needs a lot of helpers. Elves, if you will. Do I believe in elves? Sure I do. I am one.
Some art is hard to plan for
In the 1990s, when the kitchen nook was being built, I should have caught the carpenters at work installing a light switch in the wrong place. I should have said, "Listen, on Christmas Eve, 2008, the sun is going to rise at just the right moment, and at a certain particular angle, that will cast a silhouette of Karen working on a crossword puzzle on the wall opposite the nook table. If you put the switch there, it will cut off part of her head."
But I didn't.
But I didn't.
December 22, 2008
Ho ho ho for hominy
I want to share with you a recipe that is different and a good last-minute one for the holidays. It goes with everything from turkey to barbecue, it is quick and easy to make, cheap, and sticks to your ribs without too big a caloric hit. Everywhere I take it, including a party we went to last night, people love it.
I wish it was my recipe. But it's not. It is "Jessica's Favorite Green Chile Hominy Casserole," from Tom Perini's cookbook, "Texas Cowboy Cooking," available at the Perini Ranch Steakhouse website. Tom and I were high school classmates in Abilene, and he is now nationally famous for his "Cowboy Cooking" catering business.
I just call it "Hominy Casserole." This is the recipe in the cookbook, with a couple of local wrinkles thrown in (all recipes are only a starting place for what you do with it). It serves 10 ordinary people, and six who have had Hominy Casserole before.
1 cup chopped onion
four 15-ounce cans hominy (two yellow, two white)
½ cup hominy liquid
1 tablespoon liquid from a jar of pickled jalapenos
1/4 pound cheddar cheese, grated
10 slices bacon
1 cup diced green chiles (such as Ortega)
Fry the bacon until crisp and drain on paper towels.
In a little of the bacon fat, sauté the onion until soft.
Drain the hominy, saving half a cup of liquid. Dump the hominy in with the onions and heat, stirring regularly, until the hominy is heated through.
Add the hominy liquid and the jalapeno liquid. Stir over medium heat to reduce the liquids. Add the cheese and stir until it melts. Add the green chiles. Crumble the crisp bacon into the mix. Stir until blended.
It is ready to serve at this point. Or you can make it in advance and refrigerate it, even freeze it. This is what makes it so easy at holiday season. When you're ready to eat, you can sprinkle more cheese and bacon over the top, or not. (I only use ¼-pound of cheese, and the recipe calls for half a cup.) Bake it in a 325 oven for 15 minutes, or 40 minutes if it has been refrigerated.
Hominy Casserole is the kind of thing, if there are any leftovers, that you will wake up in the middle of the night and take out of the icebox and eat cold. In fact it is better to make sure you prepare a bigger batch than the people at your table can possibly eat, no matter how hard they try.
I wish it was my recipe. But it's not. It is "Jessica's Favorite Green Chile Hominy Casserole," from Tom Perini's cookbook, "Texas Cowboy Cooking," available at the Perini Ranch Steakhouse website. Tom and I were high school classmates in Abilene, and he is now nationally famous for his "Cowboy Cooking" catering business.
I just call it "Hominy Casserole." This is the recipe in the cookbook, with a couple of local wrinkles thrown in (all recipes are only a starting place for what you do with it). It serves 10 ordinary people, and six who have had Hominy Casserole before.
1 cup chopped onion
four 15-ounce cans hominy (two yellow, two white)
½ cup hominy liquid
1 tablespoon liquid from a jar of pickled jalapenos
1/4 pound cheddar cheese, grated
10 slices bacon
1 cup diced green chiles (such as Ortega)
Fry the bacon until crisp and drain on paper towels.
In a little of the bacon fat, sauté the onion until soft.
Drain the hominy, saving half a cup of liquid. Dump the hominy in with the onions and heat, stirring regularly, until the hominy is heated through.
Add the hominy liquid and the jalapeno liquid. Stir over medium heat to reduce the liquids. Add the cheese and stir until it melts. Add the green chiles. Crumble the crisp bacon into the mix. Stir until blended.
It is ready to serve at this point. Or you can make it in advance and refrigerate it, even freeze it. This is what makes it so easy at holiday season. When you're ready to eat, you can sprinkle more cheese and bacon over the top, or not. (I only use ¼-pound of cheese, and the recipe calls for half a cup.) Bake it in a 325 oven for 15 minutes, or 40 minutes if it has been refrigerated.
Hominy Casserole is the kind of thing, if there are any leftovers, that you will wake up in the middle of the night and take out of the icebox and eat cold. In fact it is better to make sure you prepare a bigger batch than the people at your table can possibly eat, no matter how hard they try.
December 21, 2008
Sun of Tut comes through again
At 4:04 this morning, Pacific Standard Time, a perfectly vertical ray of sunlight touched, just for an instant, a point on the Earth 23.5 degrees of latitude south of the Equator. This was the Winter Solstice. In the next instant, the tilted Earth continued on its rotation around the Sun. The Sun's falling rays left 23.5 South Latitude and started to track north.
In the primitive world, this was cause for whooping and hollering. This great big hot ball in the sky that you couldn't look at was all that made the Earth tolerably warm from time to time. If that big hot ball went out for whatever reason, like what we now call nightfall, then on Earth it was freezerville. Even worse, in the Cradle of Civilization, there came a stretch of days when it looked like the Sun was leaving the Earth altogether, tired of warming this rock and drifting way down in the sky – what we would call south – as if it just might leave altogether.
It never did. Just when the days were starting to get really cold, even in the middle of the day, a day arrived when the Sun looked like it had decided not to leave after all, and started back toward the huddled primitives in time to make the days reasonably bearable again by what we call April. But then maybe the primitives celebrated too much, enjoyed the green, stopped praying to the Sun, prayed to the Rain instead, to the point that the Sun became dissed and said, "I'm out of here," and started wandering off again. Who knows what kind of horror stories the primitive brain could launch, about an object as important as the Sun?
So the Sun, in its fickle winter fancy, developed a nice pagan crowd of celebrants on that crucial day when it decided not to leave, tens of thousands of years before more scientific minds came along and decided that the Earth didn't orbit the Sun at all, but just the other way around.
Thousands of years more passed, and one day at Alta Mira I noticed that at the dawn of the day of the Winter Solstice, the Sun rose out of King Tut's eye. I thought that was very cool. Within me rose an ancient, visceral sigh of relief and a voice whispered, "You and me, Tut." I showed you Tut a few blogs ago. Here he is this morning with the Sun rising out of his eye. Tomorrow, it will rise to the left, a sliver closer to his nose. Then in a week, his mouth, then his chin, his throat, his folded hands, after which April is not far behind. Makes me feel good, I'll tell you.
In the primitive world, this was cause for whooping and hollering. This great big hot ball in the sky that you couldn't look at was all that made the Earth tolerably warm from time to time. If that big hot ball went out for whatever reason, like what we now call nightfall, then on Earth it was freezerville. Even worse, in the Cradle of Civilization, there came a stretch of days when it looked like the Sun was leaving the Earth altogether, tired of warming this rock and drifting way down in the sky – what we would call south – as if it just might leave altogether.
It never did. Just when the days were starting to get really cold, even in the middle of the day, a day arrived when the Sun looked like it had decided not to leave after all, and started back toward the huddled primitives in time to make the days reasonably bearable again by what we call April. But then maybe the primitives celebrated too much, enjoyed the green, stopped praying to the Sun, prayed to the Rain instead, to the point that the Sun became dissed and said, "I'm out of here," and started wandering off again. Who knows what kind of horror stories the primitive brain could launch, about an object as important as the Sun?
So the Sun, in its fickle winter fancy, developed a nice pagan crowd of celebrants on that crucial day when it decided not to leave, tens of thousands of years before more scientific minds came along and decided that the Earth didn't orbit the Sun at all, but just the other way around.
Thousands of years more passed, and one day at Alta Mira I noticed that at the dawn of the day of the Winter Solstice, the Sun rose out of King Tut's eye. I thought that was very cool. Within me rose an ancient, visceral sigh of relief and a voice whispered, "You and me, Tut." I showed you Tut a few blogs ago. Here he is this morning with the Sun rising out of his eye. Tomorrow, it will rise to the left, a sliver closer to his nose. Then in a week, his mouth, then his chin, his throat, his folded hands, after which April is not far behind. Makes me feel good, I'll tell you.
December 20, 2008
He says control your attention, I say unhook your buttons
David Brooks wrote this earlier in the week in The New York Times:
"Most successful people also have a phenomenal ability to consciously focus their attention. We know from experiments with subjects as diverse as obsessive-compulsive disorder sufferers and Buddhist monks that people who can self-consciously focus attention have the power to rewire their brains. Control of attention is the ultimate individual power. People who can do that are not prisoners of the stimuli around them."
He was not writing about Christmas, but he may as well have been. Christmas is the ultimate stimuli crucible and thus the ultimate power battlefield, in a peace-on-earth kind of way. Actually, it's always about peace. People are born with a war room in their brains where "keeping the peace" is the only mission. I don't know about you, but I knew where the war room was, and what the mission was, by the time I was four years old.
During the year, the time spent on keeping the peace is inversely proportional to the distance between you and anyone who likes to push your buttons. At Christmas time, when the universal wish is peace on earth, the war room is humming 24/7 with plans and strategies to keep the peace. I love the "peace on earth" Christmas cards. How are we going to have peace on earth when we can't keep the peace at the dinner table?
Actually, peace at the dinner table is very doable, as long as you settle for peace inside your own head. I don't know exactly what David Brooks meant by "successful people," and I couldn't say how you judge or measure your own success, but I say without hesitation that there is no success quite like getting up from the Christmas dinner table with a mind as peaceful as when you sat down, when everyone else is bleeding from bullets fired by moms and dads and sisters and brothers and aunts and uncles who have been thinking for months of ways to control your attention. They only have to hit one button. And they know where the button is.
But what if you have disconnected the button? When someone tries to push it, it no longer works. You will still hear what was said, but it doesn't hit you. It passes through as if you were invisible. The effect on you is astonishing. It is not only a feeling of freedom, it IS freedom, and power. One way to say it is, "Control of attention is the ultimate personal power." Another way to say it is, "Pushing my buttons doesn't work any more, Mother." Getting up from the table with a mind as peaceful as when you sat down is so powerful that you want to go outside and fly. It is a feeling of liberation that most people only realize in their dreams. A popular term for it is "taking back power." I call it flying sideways.
"Most successful people also have a phenomenal ability to consciously focus their attention. We know from experiments with subjects as diverse as obsessive-compulsive disorder sufferers and Buddhist monks that people who can self-consciously focus attention have the power to rewire their brains. Control of attention is the ultimate individual power. People who can do that are not prisoners of the stimuli around them."
He was not writing about Christmas, but he may as well have been. Christmas is the ultimate stimuli crucible and thus the ultimate power battlefield, in a peace-on-earth kind of way. Actually, it's always about peace. People are born with a war room in their brains where "keeping the peace" is the only mission. I don't know about you, but I knew where the war room was, and what the mission was, by the time I was four years old.
During the year, the time spent on keeping the peace is inversely proportional to the distance between you and anyone who likes to push your buttons. At Christmas time, when the universal wish is peace on earth, the war room is humming 24/7 with plans and strategies to keep the peace. I love the "peace on earth" Christmas cards. How are we going to have peace on earth when we can't keep the peace at the dinner table?
Actually, peace at the dinner table is very doable, as long as you settle for peace inside your own head. I don't know exactly what David Brooks meant by "successful people," and I couldn't say how you judge or measure your own success, but I say without hesitation that there is no success quite like getting up from the Christmas dinner table with a mind as peaceful as when you sat down, when everyone else is bleeding from bullets fired by moms and dads and sisters and brothers and aunts and uncles who have been thinking for months of ways to control your attention. They only have to hit one button. And they know where the button is.
But what if you have disconnected the button? When someone tries to push it, it no longer works. You will still hear what was said, but it doesn't hit you. It passes through as if you were invisible. The effect on you is astonishing. It is not only a feeling of freedom, it IS freedom, and power. One way to say it is, "Control of attention is the ultimate personal power." Another way to say it is, "Pushing my buttons doesn't work any more, Mother." Getting up from the table with a mind as peaceful as when you sat down is so powerful that you want to go outside and fly. It is a feeling of liberation that most people only realize in their dreams. A popular term for it is "taking back power." I call it flying sideways.
December 18, 2008
Getting around to answering comments
I have made an executive decision about my blog. I will always read all of the comments to any specific blog, but I won't reply to them via another comment to that specific blog.
There are three reasons for this. One, the blog software won't let me post my comment without a username and password, and I refuse those terms for posting a comment to my OWN BLOG.
Second, the software refuses my password when I attempt to post the comment, and it is the same password with which I log in to Blogger. Long short stories, novels, movies, sitcoms and docudramas are written about this level of insanity.
Third, a blog starts to age the instant it is posted. I don't know why a reader should be asked to check an old blog for new comments. Part of this is my newspaper background, in which all news shortly after dawn becomes fishwrap, and part is my aversion to asking readers to go into the stacks to find responses to their comments.
There is a fourth factor. Blogger sends copies of comments to my personal email, but WON'T LET ME RESPOND TO THE EMAIL. Do you see a pattern here? If you do, please let me know what it is.
These things being so, I have decided to respond to comments in new posts. Like this one. Ray, I don't know how many draws we ate to at Lavender's, but every one was competitive, fair, cheap, filling, and fulfilling. I wish we could do it again, give you one last chance to win, but I know I would be full after one chicken-fried steak, a few potatoes, some green beans, and one roll. Hell yes, I have all the Elvis 45s. I do remember nearly ripping a stitch at the Paramount, and I still play the guitar, sort of, and sing, REALLY sort of, but if you want to hear a Grant play the guitar, listen to Tyler, as you already know. He is arriving tonight for the holidays, and I imagine in the next day or two he will bring his guitar over and we will play the same songs I was playing in 1959. Did I already mention he is the 2008 National Flatpicking Guitar Champion of the United States of America? I did?
Jen, you said you were still interested in the sunset story. I would like to tell you more. What are you interested in? Jessie, my daughter, will be here next week for Christmas, and she promises to show me how to insert photos into stories where they should go, and not where Blogger puts them by default. Just for the heck of it, at the top of this blog, is a photo of the dawn after all the rain we had. There is in that photo, and in many others, evidence of living suspended between earth and space, which is a big part of the ongoing sunset story. I'll be blogging soon about the business of living between earth and space. It has been my address since 1992.
There are three reasons for this. One, the blog software won't let me post my comment without a username and password, and I refuse those terms for posting a comment to my OWN BLOG.
Second, the software refuses my password when I attempt to post the comment, and it is the same password with which I log in to Blogger. Long short stories, novels, movies, sitcoms and docudramas are written about this level of insanity.
Third, a blog starts to age the instant it is posted. I don't know why a reader should be asked to check an old blog for new comments. Part of this is my newspaper background, in which all news shortly after dawn becomes fishwrap, and part is my aversion to asking readers to go into the stacks to find responses to their comments.
There is a fourth factor. Blogger sends copies of comments to my personal email, but WON'T LET ME RESPOND TO THE EMAIL. Do you see a pattern here? If you do, please let me know what it is.
These things being so, I have decided to respond to comments in new posts. Like this one. Ray, I don't know how many draws we ate to at Lavender's, but every one was competitive, fair, cheap, filling, and fulfilling. I wish we could do it again, give you one last chance to win, but I know I would be full after one chicken-fried steak, a few potatoes, some green beans, and one roll. Hell yes, I have all the Elvis 45s. I do remember nearly ripping a stitch at the Paramount, and I still play the guitar, sort of, and sing, REALLY sort of, but if you want to hear a Grant play the guitar, listen to Tyler, as you already know. He is arriving tonight for the holidays, and I imagine in the next day or two he will bring his guitar over and we will play the same songs I was playing in 1959. Did I already mention he is the 2008 National Flatpicking Guitar Champion of the United States of America? I did?
Jen, you said you were still interested in the sunset story. I would like to tell you more. What are you interested in? Jessie, my daughter, will be here next week for Christmas, and she promises to show me how to insert photos into stories where they should go, and not where Blogger puts them by default. Just for the heck of it, at the top of this blog, is a photo of the dawn after all the rain we had. There is in that photo, and in many others, evidence of living suspended between earth and space, which is a big part of the ongoing sunset story. I'll be blogging soon about the business of living between earth and space. It has been my address since 1992.
December 16, 2008
One-car family
Karen was driving me to school this morning when she said, “I can’t pick you up this afternoon at 4; Oprah comes on at 4.”
She had a point. If I had to choose between watching Oprah and going to pick somebody up from work, I know which it would be, every time, even if I did love the person at work and slept with her every night. And I don’t even like watching Oprah near as much as she does.
“You make a good point,” I said, “but I am afraid I must insist.”
Karen was driving me to school because going into 10 months now, we have had only one car. The lease on my old ride expired last February and we figured no second-car expenses – lease, gas, insurance, maintenance – would add up to at least a grand a month, which was pretty good, and that was BEFORE the economy collapsed and we started considering keeping our cash in pillowcases. If in these difficult times you are looking for a bang-for-the-buck to cut expenses, getting rid of the second car is a pretty good way to go, even if it is the guy giving up the car and he has to deal with the emasculated crater where his manhood used to be.
“But hey,” I said to her, having an idea, “I bet Oprah would give us a car. You email her and say you love to watch her so much, but you have to go pick up your husband at work. And he says he insists. And then Oprah would invite us on the show and say, here is your brand-new Mercedes ML350. And free gas for a year.”
Actually I think I would hold out for a Toyota RAV4, with leather and bells and whistles but still a small engine that burns regular. I had an ML350 and it was a great ride with a German turning radius, but I burned out on $50 tabs for a tank of premium and in fact one day LONG before gas went over $4 vowed that when I got rid of this vehicle, I was going to get a Prius.
But then I went down to the Toyota lot and sat in a Prius. Cute car. Then the helpful salesperson reached over and pushed a button. Gauges and instruments and dash lights popped to life. “What did you do?” I said to the salesperson. “Turned it on,” she said. “It’s running.” “The engine isn’t running,” I suggested. “Yes it is,” she said. “Right now, it’s electric. Step on the accelerator and you’ll go.”
That was it for me and the Prius. I am too steeped in GTO geezerhood, and I think it probably has something to do with manhood as well, to feel comfortable in a car whose engine may or may not be running when you are seeing if she will get rubber in third gear. So I shifted my vision to a RAV4. I would consider a Pontiac. I have seen Oprah give away Pontiacs.
But it grows on you, this business of being up a grand a month and buying stuff other than gas and insurance. Our schedules have been more or less compatible, with a little coordination, and it was just a quirk in my schedule today that made me available to go home at 4. I imagine we will keep the arrangement this way for awhile, possibly even if Oprah insists.
She had a point. If I had to choose between watching Oprah and going to pick somebody up from work, I know which it would be, every time, even if I did love the person at work and slept with her every night. And I don’t even like watching Oprah near as much as she does.
“You make a good point,” I said, “but I am afraid I must insist.”
Karen was driving me to school because going into 10 months now, we have had only one car. The lease on my old ride expired last February and we figured no second-car expenses – lease, gas, insurance, maintenance – would add up to at least a grand a month, which was pretty good, and that was BEFORE the economy collapsed and we started considering keeping our cash in pillowcases. If in these difficult times you are looking for a bang-for-the-buck to cut expenses, getting rid of the second car is a pretty good way to go, even if it is the guy giving up the car and he has to deal with the emasculated crater where his manhood used to be.
“But hey,” I said to her, having an idea, “I bet Oprah would give us a car. You email her and say you love to watch her so much, but you have to go pick up your husband at work. And he says he insists. And then Oprah would invite us on the show and say, here is your brand-new Mercedes ML350. And free gas for a year.”
Actually I think I would hold out for a Toyota RAV4, with leather and bells and whistles but still a small engine that burns regular. I had an ML350 and it was a great ride with a German turning radius, but I burned out on $50 tabs for a tank of premium and in fact one day LONG before gas went over $4 vowed that when I got rid of this vehicle, I was going to get a Prius.
But then I went down to the Toyota lot and sat in a Prius. Cute car. Then the helpful salesperson reached over and pushed a button. Gauges and instruments and dash lights popped to life. “What did you do?” I said to the salesperson. “Turned it on,” she said. “It’s running.” “The engine isn’t running,” I suggested. “Yes it is,” she said. “Right now, it’s electric. Step on the accelerator and you’ll go.”
That was it for me and the Prius. I am too steeped in GTO geezerhood, and I think it probably has something to do with manhood as well, to feel comfortable in a car whose engine may or may not be running when you are seeing if she will get rubber in third gear. So I shifted my vision to a RAV4. I would consider a Pontiac. I have seen Oprah give away Pontiacs.
But it grows on you, this business of being up a grand a month and buying stuff other than gas and insurance. Our schedules have been more or less compatible, with a little coordination, and it was just a quirk in my schedule today that made me available to go home at 4. I imagine we will keep the arrangement this way for awhile, possibly even if Oprah insists.
December 13, 2008
Sunset stages, the story
Sunsets proceed in stages. Maybe you know about that. I didn't discover it until I was in like the 40th grade (I am in the 60th now), which surprises me a little. I have looked closely at quite a few sunsets in my time, starting with the gorgeous West Texas sunsets when I was a kid in Abilene.
But it was a long time before I noticed the stages. You have to reach a point in your life where you are willing to hang around for the whole thing. Mostly, people will take a minute to look at a spectacular sunset, then go do something else. To see the stages, you have to give it a half-hour, or at least 20 minutes. When it happened to me, I was watching a sunset and saw the shimmering, bright‑gold veil of light pass through its moment of peak radiancy, then fade as usual to something grayer. Several minutes later, I thought I saw the luminosity increasing once more. It did increase, and peak, and fade to something grayer still. I waited and watched. The luminosity returned a third time.
"Hey," I said. Since that night I have watched for the stages. The most I have ever seen is six. They are easiest to see when clouds are present. The sunset last night was perfect for stage‑watching. We had clouds coming off the ocean yesterday in advance of what the weathermen are advertising as a good series of storms coming down to us from Alaska. Karen saw it first and went out and took these photos. In the first, you are looking at the tip of Point Loma jutting into the Pacific. The second shows the silhouette of shorefront condos in Coronado and the ocean beyond.
BLOGGER: PUT PHOTOS 1 AND 2 HERE (SEE PREVIOUS POST)
But the show, of course, is in the sky. This is the second or third stage of a sunset, still in the gray and gold registers. On the clock it was about 5 p.m. Then Karen had to leave for a meeting. I was in the back of the house. Five minutes after she left, I came to the front, looked out the windows, and ran for the camera.
BLOGGER: PUT PHOTOS 3 AND 4 HERE
I got the fifth and sixth stages. The stages arrive in luminosity waves. The light changes in color and intensity each time but there is always an increase, a peak and a fade. The colors go from bright gold to gold‑trimmed peach to rose to dusky rose to the very lowest register of red to charcoal to pearl. It seems as if the clouds might simply be swapping colors with the sky behind them. When the sky was peach, the clouds were rose. When the sky turned rose, the clouds became peach. As the sky moved from pearl to charcoal, the clouds moved from charcoal to pearl.
But I'm not sure. It would need more study. I have thought occasionally to make a more formal study of these sunset stages, but then the sunset arrives and I forget about it. I would not be a good one to record notes during a sunset. Someone, however, should. Possibly someone already has. As an issue of physics, the stages of sunsets must be a fairly interesting matter of angles, declinations and refractions, the purely mathematical interplay of sunlight with Earth boundaries. Maybe someone out there knows exactly how many stages there are, and of what duration, and how far apart.
I watched a little longer, then took one last photo.
BLOGGER: PUT PHOTO 5 HERE.
I didn't know if there would be enough light, and I don't have photographer skills to go adjusting apertures for this sort of thing. But the shutter gave a sharp "click," so I figured I had it. It wasn't another 10 seconds before this sunset's final fade began. I like it that sunsets have stages. It makes them like a rainbow for the day, acknowledging a present beautiful moment and promising more to come.
But it was a long time before I noticed the stages. You have to reach a point in your life where you are willing to hang around for the whole thing. Mostly, people will take a minute to look at a spectacular sunset, then go do something else. To see the stages, you have to give it a half-hour, or at least 20 minutes. When it happened to me, I was watching a sunset and saw the shimmering, bright‑gold veil of light pass through its moment of peak radiancy, then fade as usual to something grayer. Several minutes later, I thought I saw the luminosity increasing once more. It did increase, and peak, and fade to something grayer still. I waited and watched. The luminosity returned a third time.
"Hey," I said. Since that night I have watched for the stages. The most I have ever seen is six. They are easiest to see when clouds are present. The sunset last night was perfect for stage‑watching. We had clouds coming off the ocean yesterday in advance of what the weathermen are advertising as a good series of storms coming down to us from Alaska. Karen saw it first and went out and took these photos. In the first, you are looking at the tip of Point Loma jutting into the Pacific. The second shows the silhouette of shorefront condos in Coronado and the ocean beyond.
BLOGGER: PUT PHOTOS 1 AND 2 HERE (SEE PREVIOUS POST)
But the show, of course, is in the sky. This is the second or third stage of a sunset, still in the gray and gold registers. On the clock it was about 5 p.m. Then Karen had to leave for a meeting. I was in the back of the house. Five minutes after she left, I came to the front, looked out the windows, and ran for the camera.
BLOGGER: PUT PHOTOS 3 AND 4 HERE
I got the fifth and sixth stages. The stages arrive in luminosity waves. The light changes in color and intensity each time but there is always an increase, a peak and a fade. The colors go from bright gold to gold‑trimmed peach to rose to dusky rose to the very lowest register of red to charcoal to pearl. It seems as if the clouds might simply be swapping colors with the sky behind them. When the sky was peach, the clouds were rose. When the sky turned rose, the clouds became peach. As the sky moved from pearl to charcoal, the clouds moved from charcoal to pearl.
But I'm not sure. It would need more study. I have thought occasionally to make a more formal study of these sunset stages, but then the sunset arrives and I forget about it. I would not be a good one to record notes during a sunset. Someone, however, should. Possibly someone already has. As an issue of physics, the stages of sunsets must be a fairly interesting matter of angles, declinations and refractions, the purely mathematical interplay of sunlight with Earth boundaries. Maybe someone out there knows exactly how many stages there are, and of what duration, and how far apart.
I watched a little longer, then took one last photo.
BLOGGER: PUT PHOTO 5 HERE.
I didn't know if there would be enough light, and I don't have photographer skills to go adjusting apertures for this sort of thing. But the shutter gave a sharp "click," so I figured I had it. It wasn't another 10 seconds before this sunset's final fade began. I like it that sunsets have stages. It makes them like a rainbow for the day, acknowledging a present beautiful moment and promising more to come.
December 12, 2008
Sunset stages
There is a story that goes with this succession of photos, that shows the stages of the San Diego sunset last night. But I am too ticked to mess with it anymore. For the last hour and a half, I have tried to post the story with the photos INTERSPERSED IN THE STORY AT APPROPRIATE POINTS. Instead, every time and every way I tried it, Blogger put the photos at the TOP. And INVERTED from the order in which I POSTED them. So the hell with it. If that's where Blogger wants them, that's where they shall be. For the time being. Blogger is put on notice that I will figure out how to put the photos where I WANT THEM TO BE. Sometime in my lifetime I will have the satisfaction of knowing that in their command posts deep below the Rocky Mountains, Blogger controllers will bash their foreheads into their polished steel desktops because someone up there put his pictures where they were SUPPOSED TO BE. Meantime, it's martini hour. I'll post the story tomorrow.December 11, 2008
Presenting a look at media's future
For their semester projects, students in my media class developed proposals or pilots in one of the seven media businesses – books, movies, magazines, newspapers, radio, recording and television – and then pitched them to me in class as if I were the media mogul who would buy the project.
I can’t provide specifics. We all signed non-disclosure agreements, and I told the students, truthfully, there is no reason why an idea generated in this class can’t go on and make a bazillion dollars in the industry. If one of them DOES, trust me, you will hear about it in this blog. I can tell you that the projects reveal a lot about the future of media. When my kids were little, if I wanted a peek into what was going on in their culture, I could watch “The Simpsons” and “MTV.”
Same thing now. Students know things about media that would draw blank stares in Geezerville (over 40). These guys are already their own TV producers and directors, thanks to YouTube and MySpace, and in class they used these online resources to present their TV pilots and movie trailers that, when we were their age, would have required months of work and thousands of dollars. Watching this, I get a clearer conviction that, in media, the Web is changing everything.
One student, who has some prior acting and producing experience, has already pitched his project to genuine moguls. He won an audience with them last week in Los Angeles. I asked in him class if that pitch was different from pitching to me and the class. Yes, he said, it was. There was an oval table. He sat on one side, and three cable TV execs sat on the other. They didn’t speak, he said, or make gestures, or smile, or ask any questions at all.
So I stopped him and asked the class. “These three guys had one thing on their mind. Do you know what that is?” From four or five places in the class, there rose the word: “Money.” Either they learned something this semester, or they knew it already. I know I learned a lot. Question: how is prime time television the same as being stopped at a railroad crossing?
I can’t provide specifics. We all signed non-disclosure agreements, and I told the students, truthfully, there is no reason why an idea generated in this class can’t go on and make a bazillion dollars in the industry. If one of them DOES, trust me, you will hear about it in this blog. I can tell you that the projects reveal a lot about the future of media. When my kids were little, if I wanted a peek into what was going on in their culture, I could watch “The Simpsons” and “MTV.”
Same thing now. Students know things about media that would draw blank stares in Geezerville (over 40). These guys are already their own TV producers and directors, thanks to YouTube and MySpace, and in class they used these online resources to present their TV pilots and movie trailers that, when we were their age, would have required months of work and thousands of dollars. Watching this, I get a clearer conviction that, in media, the Web is changing everything.
One student, who has some prior acting and producing experience, has already pitched his project to genuine moguls. He won an audience with them last week in Los Angeles. I asked in him class if that pitch was different from pitching to me and the class. Yes, he said, it was. There was an oval table. He sat on one side, and three cable TV execs sat on the other. They didn’t speak, he said, or make gestures, or smile, or ask any questions at all.
So I stopped him and asked the class. “These three guys had one thing on their mind. Do you know what that is?” From four or five places in the class, there rose the word: “Money.” Either they learned something this semester, or they knew it already. I know I learned a lot. Question: how is prime time television the same as being stopped at a railroad crossing?
December 06, 2008
The grass is greener in December
We got our first soaking rain of the season on the day before Thanksgiving. Then we started watching the hillsides. We didn't have to watch long. By Monday after Thanksgiving, there it was: grass.
Well, not grass, really. In Southern California, wherever a hillside is brown on Thanksgiving and a fuzzy, deceptively adorable (like lion cubs) green four days later, what you are viewing is the birth of weeds. Cute now, but wait till they grow up.
The weeds have been down there for months below the brown surface, meeting in their seed communities and grumbling about the long wait. If there is any living thing who looks forward to a nice rain more than I do, it is a Southern California weed seed. When November arrives, you can put your ear to the ground and hear them rumbling down there, desperate in their instinctive drive to come roaring out of the ground.
And now here they are, in the first week of December, loosed upon us, giving the landscape a green sheen that regular human beings associate with a spring month like April. Intruding into our dreamy considerations of cozy fires and Christmas scents and togetherness is a Scroogian voice whose annual mission is to nag us until we go down to the garage with a broom and sweep the cobwebs off the weedwhacker.
I have lived now in Southern California for 36 years and I have yet to digest the idea of pulling out the weedwacker in December. From Texas, where seasons are normal, I moved into an upside-down world, where December is the busiest month for the lawnmower repair man.
Actually, I moved into a coastal desert next to a cold-water ocean. It is not a fruitful combination for rainmaking. For rain to fall in Southern California, mammoth weather systems have to be spawned over Alaska at just the right moment to catch a ride on the jet stream when it decides to sag southward. Even in our rainy season November to March, rain is a chancy event. Ours is a culture that stirs like cattle at the low thunder issuing from the Weather Bureau warning that this next storm is likely to be a killer. There is never a stampede. We know in our collective brain herd that there's no storm out there. The No. 1 parody headline in Southern California newspapers is: "Killer Storm Looms."
But the quarter-inch the clouds do manage to squeeze onto us is enough to create chaos on the freeways and bring the weeds roaring out of the ground. If you think nothing grows in the desert, just put a little water on it. In a week, you'll have a golf course. Or a hillside of baby weeds. By the Rose Bowl, they'll be waist-high. I'll pull out the weedwacker when I pull out the Christmas decorations.
Well, not grass, really. In Southern California, wherever a hillside is brown on Thanksgiving and a fuzzy, deceptively adorable (like lion cubs) green four days later, what you are viewing is the birth of weeds. Cute now, but wait till they grow up.
The weeds have been down there for months below the brown surface, meeting in their seed communities and grumbling about the long wait. If there is any living thing who looks forward to a nice rain more than I do, it is a Southern California weed seed. When November arrives, you can put your ear to the ground and hear them rumbling down there, desperate in their instinctive drive to come roaring out of the ground.
And now here they are, in the first week of December, loosed upon us, giving the landscape a green sheen that regular human beings associate with a spring month like April. Intruding into our dreamy considerations of cozy fires and Christmas scents and togetherness is a Scroogian voice whose annual mission is to nag us until we go down to the garage with a broom and sweep the cobwebs off the weedwhacker.
I have lived now in Southern California for 36 years and I have yet to digest the idea of pulling out the weedwacker in December. From Texas, where seasons are normal, I moved into an upside-down world, where December is the busiest month for the lawnmower repair man.
Actually, I moved into a coastal desert next to a cold-water ocean. It is not a fruitful combination for rainmaking. For rain to fall in Southern California, mammoth weather systems have to be spawned over Alaska at just the right moment to catch a ride on the jet stream when it decides to sag southward. Even in our rainy season November to March, rain is a chancy event. Ours is a culture that stirs like cattle at the low thunder issuing from the Weather Bureau warning that this next storm is likely to be a killer. There is never a stampede. We know in our collective brain herd that there's no storm out there. The No. 1 parody headline in Southern California newspapers is: "Killer Storm Looms."
But the quarter-inch the clouds do manage to squeeze onto us is enough to create chaos on the freeways and bring the weeds roaring out of the ground. If you think nothing grows in the desert, just put a little water on it. In a week, you'll have a golf course. Or a hillside of baby weeds. By the Rose Bowl, they'll be waist-high. I'll pull out the weedwacker when I pull out the Christmas decorations.
The solstice is nigh
What you see here is King Tut, who lies at the extreme southern end of that part of the horizon we call the Alta Mira Calendar. The Calendar extends 46 degrees from its south to north limits, where the winter and summer solstices are marked, and if we were that anal, we could create a chart showing exactly where the sun came up each day of the year. This morning the sun rose with a bang near Tut's throat. You see his feet on the left, then his arms folded across his chest, and his head and mummy's headdress at the right. On the winter solstice, the sun will rise out of Tut's eye, then the next day begin its long journey north. That the sun rises out of his eye gives the solstice a nice pagan ceremonial feel, and so we toast it with strong water. Even when it's cloudy.
The road to the 3Day
This morning I took what I consider my first training walk in preparation for next November's Breast Cancer 3Day walk in San Diego. I can't believe I am doing this. I should never have gone to the closing ceremony of this year's walk, even if Karen was in it. Sixty miles in three days. The Germans have a phrase for people like me: "Ich, Narr." It means, "I Fool," or, "You Effing Idiot," or, "Inspire THIS!" I believe I will put "Ich, Narr" on my walk tshirt next November.
When I walk, I am two countries, North Michael and South Michael. The two are separated by the thin nation of Titania. Titania used to be Arthritica, until Arthritica fell to a physicians' coup. You can see it clearly in xrays: titanium hip joints, like gigantic, deformed golf tees, and those chicken scratches between them are some kind of interior metal stitching where they took my prostate cancer out. This maturity business has its hazards, I tell you.
So North Michael is sort of teed up on Titania, and when he leans forward South Michael sort of follows along by dint of the long shafts of the titanium tees rammed halfway down my thigh bones. Missing is the old sense of natural attachment between North and South, but I don't miss it that much, because Arthritica was a dictatorship of pain and evil sadists wielding bone spurs.
Walking doesn't hurt now, which makes a big difference in miles per gallon. I walked for 50 minutes this morning. Yeah, I know. But it's the first day. I don't know how many miles, but this morning I decided not to measure that way. There's no way I will ever be able to walk 20 miles in one day. I am training to walk seven or eight hours in one day.
The farthest I have ever walked at one time was probably eight miles. When I was in college, I was a summer substitute mailman. It turned out to be a great job – second-best job I ever had – but I almost didn't survive the first day. I carried the route in penny loafers because my mailman shoes hadn't come yet. It was June in West Texas, and the route was mean, dusty and long. By noon I was as done as a rest-home ribeye.
I stumbled into the first blocks of the afternoon leg. Three blocks along, a screen door slammed two houses behind me and the resident yelled: "Hey! This isn't my mail! This is Peach Street!" I looked at the letters in my hand. All for Palm Street. One block over.
So I have experienced walking survival. Why I undertake it again, Ich Narr, I do not know. So far, I am walking for my late wife Meredith, for prostate brother Mike Bryant, for Peggy Odam, battling breast cancer in Houston, and for Karen, who this morning walked twice as far as I did in 50 minutes. Did I say I have to raise $2,700 in donations?
When I walk, I am two countries, North Michael and South Michael. The two are separated by the thin nation of Titania. Titania used to be Arthritica, until Arthritica fell to a physicians' coup. You can see it clearly in xrays: titanium hip joints, like gigantic, deformed golf tees, and those chicken scratches between them are some kind of interior metal stitching where they took my prostate cancer out. This maturity business has its hazards, I tell you.
So North Michael is sort of teed up on Titania, and when he leans forward South Michael sort of follows along by dint of the long shafts of the titanium tees rammed halfway down my thigh bones. Missing is the old sense of natural attachment between North and South, but I don't miss it that much, because Arthritica was a dictatorship of pain and evil sadists wielding bone spurs.
Walking doesn't hurt now, which makes a big difference in miles per gallon. I walked for 50 minutes this morning. Yeah, I know. But it's the first day. I don't know how many miles, but this morning I decided not to measure that way. There's no way I will ever be able to walk 20 miles in one day. I am training to walk seven or eight hours in one day.
The farthest I have ever walked at one time was probably eight miles. When I was in college, I was a summer substitute mailman. It turned out to be a great job – second-best job I ever had – but I almost didn't survive the first day. I carried the route in penny loafers because my mailman shoes hadn't come yet. It was June in West Texas, and the route was mean, dusty and long. By noon I was as done as a rest-home ribeye.
I stumbled into the first blocks of the afternoon leg. Three blocks along, a screen door slammed two houses behind me and the resident yelled: "Hey! This isn't my mail! This is Peach Street!" I looked at the letters in my hand. All for Palm Street. One block over.
So I have experienced walking survival. Why I undertake it again, Ich Narr, I do not know. So far, I am walking for my late wife Meredith, for prostate brother Mike Bryant, for Peggy Odam, battling breast cancer in Houston, and for Karen, who this morning walked twice as far as I did in 50 minutes. Did I say I have to raise $2,700 in donations?
December 04, 2008
Get your "Toolpusher from Snyder" right here
When his eyes fell on Slim Willet's name in my Thanksgiving blog, my old (approaching ancient) Abilene pal Ray Finfer more or less immediately posted a comment saying: "Slim Willet has a CD?"
Well, yes, he does, but that is getting ahead of the story. The CD I was listening to on Thanksgiving morning was loaned to me by another native Abilenian, Jon Standefer, who got it from a thoughtful Texas friend of his. It was home-burned, a compilation, and I have to say I was disappointed when there were like only five cuts on it. One of them, "Toolpusher from Snyder," though, is an all-time favorite and naturally left me wanting more. But there was only "Hadacol Corners," and then "Don't Let the Stars Get in Your Eyes," which of course hit the national charts in 1952 when it was covered by the crooner Perry Como.
I actually thought "Don't Let the Stars Get in Your Eyes" was inferior, compared to the primary Willet genre, which were songs about the oilpatch. They were vigorously regional (if you didn't know what a stem and a rotary table were, it was no use listening to Slim Willet) and never would make the charts, but you couldn't beat 'em for unique.
So when I saw Ray's comment, I thought, no, Slim Willet doesn't have a CD. But for a couple of years now, every time I say or think the word, "doesn't," I immediately think of Google. So it was more or less automatic that my eyes, reading Ray's comment, told my fingers to Google Slim Willet. There were 3,360 results. One of them is artistdirect.com and, yes, they do have a Slim Willet CD, 30 cuts in all, including all the oilpatch songs "mastered from original vinyl," and available on special order for $16.99. I hope their site doesn't crash in the rush, which is why I'm going to wait awhile to order.
I'm in no hurry. See, I don't have a Slim Willet CD, but I do have the original LP, "Oil Patch Songs," with Slim in oilpatch duds and hard hat, looking down at the camera from the rig floor. I haven't played it in years because I haven't had anything to play it on. The only people with turntables anymore are still churning their own butter. My plan is to order the CD and frame the LP and hang it in the hallway and every time I pass it think about Ray and the boys eating their hearts out.
Well, yes, he does, but that is getting ahead of the story. The CD I was listening to on Thanksgiving morning was loaned to me by another native Abilenian, Jon Standefer, who got it from a thoughtful Texas friend of his. It was home-burned, a compilation, and I have to say I was disappointed when there were like only five cuts on it. One of them, "Toolpusher from Snyder," though, is an all-time favorite and naturally left me wanting more. But there was only "Hadacol Corners," and then "Don't Let the Stars Get in Your Eyes," which of course hit the national charts in 1952 when it was covered by the crooner Perry Como.
I actually thought "Don't Let the Stars Get in Your Eyes" was inferior, compared to the primary Willet genre, which were songs about the oilpatch. They were vigorously regional (if you didn't know what a stem and a rotary table were, it was no use listening to Slim Willet) and never would make the charts, but you couldn't beat 'em for unique.
So when I saw Ray's comment, I thought, no, Slim Willet doesn't have a CD. But for a couple of years now, every time I say or think the word, "doesn't," I immediately think of Google. So it was more or less automatic that my eyes, reading Ray's comment, told my fingers to Google Slim Willet. There were 3,360 results. One of them is artistdirect.com and, yes, they do have a Slim Willet CD, 30 cuts in all, including all the oilpatch songs "mastered from original vinyl," and available on special order for $16.99. I hope their site doesn't crash in the rush, which is why I'm going to wait awhile to order.
I'm in no hurry. See, I don't have a Slim Willet CD, but I do have the original LP, "Oil Patch Songs," with Slim in oilpatch duds and hard hat, looking down at the camera from the rig floor. I haven't played it in years because I haven't had anything to play it on. The only people with turntables anymore are still churning their own butter. My plan is to order the CD and frame the LP and hang it in the hallway and every time I pass it think about Ray and the boys eating their hearts out.
A rose in my teeth, pizza in his
My dog bit my wife. On our wedding anniversary. Seriously.
Of course he’s my dog when he bites my wife or barfs on the living room rug. All other times, he’s OUR dog.
And we are HIS people, but only on dog world terms, whose inhabitants view life thusly: 1. food; 2. people; 3. everything else. And that is how he got in trouble.
Wednesday morning, Dec. 3, the third anniversary of the main people (the people who feed him) in Gulliver's life, he and I went down to the street to get the paper. I came back up with the paper, and Gully generally is right behind. Not on this morning. I stood by the front door and called him, then walked back down toward the street and called him again.
He darted past me with something in his jaws. I followed him back to the door. He was standing at the door but as I approached he moved away several feet and turned to face me. In his jaws was clamped a thick wedge of not very tasty looking pizza, probably of the frozen, bake it at home variety. Didn't matter to him. He had a prize.
I called him to come to me. Damned if he didn't, a step at a time, until I could reach out and get my fingers on the crusty rim of the pizza. He tore away and retreated. "Okay, fine, I don’t care if you do eat it," I said. That was true. In the back of my mind I viewed myself later in the day scooping up pizza barf off the floor, but that was okay, compared to actually wrestling him for it.
He was also telling me something in dog language. He hadn't eaten the pizza yet. Why didn't he eat it where he found it on the street? Because he wasn't hungry. He had just had breakfast, before we went out for the paper. He intended to bury the pizza for later. In fact he intended to bury it in the house. When I opened the door, he ran right in. I advised Karen, my lovely bride of three years that very morning, what was happening, then walked back down to the street to find where the pizza came from.
Karen sized up the situation for about one second and decided that Gully was not going to eat the pizza in her house, or bury it, or retain possession, or do anything else with it but give it to her. This of course was the last thing on his mind. Just a couple of days previously, we had watched a show on television featuring a brave man called the "Dog Whisperer," who was able to correct bad dog behavior by a routine of "exercise, discipline and affection." During the show he demonstrated several times. Unfortunately, they didn't include a male Sheltie with pizza clamped in his jaws.
I found no pizza evidence on the street, and when I returned, Karen described what happened. Gully is gentle but skittish when he doesn't approve of what people are doing to him, such as grooming or brushing or scratching him around the tail. He regularly snaps at me when I am trying to brush foxtails out of his coat. So when Karen, dog whisperer style, got him on his side and commenced to relieve him of his pizza, he took umbrage and actually snarled, she reported, as he struck at her hand.
It was over when I got there. Karen showed me a bloody scratch on the back of her wrist and another tooth mark farther up. The pizza was in the sink. Gully was brooding in the hallway. He now knew, as Karen had said to me, dog whisperer style, that he was in her pack, and not the other way around. He laid low for several hours, then was his old self, but I don't think he'll be bringing prizes to the front door any time soon, and never, I hope, on anniversary mornings.
Of course he’s my dog when he bites my wife or barfs on the living room rug. All other times, he’s OUR dog.
And we are HIS people, but only on dog world terms, whose inhabitants view life thusly: 1. food; 2. people; 3. everything else. And that is how he got in trouble.
Wednesday morning, Dec. 3, the third anniversary of the main people (the people who feed him) in Gulliver's life, he and I went down to the street to get the paper. I came back up with the paper, and Gully generally is right behind. Not on this morning. I stood by the front door and called him, then walked back down toward the street and called him again.
He darted past me with something in his jaws. I followed him back to the door. He was standing at the door but as I approached he moved away several feet and turned to face me. In his jaws was clamped a thick wedge of not very tasty looking pizza, probably of the frozen, bake it at home variety. Didn't matter to him. He had a prize.
I called him to come to me. Damned if he didn't, a step at a time, until I could reach out and get my fingers on the crusty rim of the pizza. He tore away and retreated. "Okay, fine, I don’t care if you do eat it," I said. That was true. In the back of my mind I viewed myself later in the day scooping up pizza barf off the floor, but that was okay, compared to actually wrestling him for it.
He was also telling me something in dog language. He hadn't eaten the pizza yet. Why didn't he eat it where he found it on the street? Because he wasn't hungry. He had just had breakfast, before we went out for the paper. He intended to bury the pizza for later. In fact he intended to bury it in the house. When I opened the door, he ran right in. I advised Karen, my lovely bride of three years that very morning, what was happening, then walked back down to the street to find where the pizza came from.
Karen sized up the situation for about one second and decided that Gully was not going to eat the pizza in her house, or bury it, or retain possession, or do anything else with it but give it to her. This of course was the last thing on his mind. Just a couple of days previously, we had watched a show on television featuring a brave man called the "Dog Whisperer," who was able to correct bad dog behavior by a routine of "exercise, discipline and affection." During the show he demonstrated several times. Unfortunately, they didn't include a male Sheltie with pizza clamped in his jaws.
I found no pizza evidence on the street, and when I returned, Karen described what happened. Gully is gentle but skittish when he doesn't approve of what people are doing to him, such as grooming or brushing or scratching him around the tail. He regularly snaps at me when I am trying to brush foxtails out of his coat. So when Karen, dog whisperer style, got him on his side and commenced to relieve him of his pizza, he took umbrage and actually snarled, she reported, as he struck at her hand.
It was over when I got there. Karen showed me a bloody scratch on the back of her wrist and another tooth mark farther up. The pizza was in the sink. Gully was brooding in the hallway. He now knew, as Karen had said to me, dog whisperer style, that he was in her pack, and not the other way around. He laid low for several hours, then was his old self, but I don't think he'll be bringing prizes to the front door any time soon, and never, I hope, on anniversary mornings.
December 02, 2008
Looking for an angle on a brand
The New York Times had a reporter in Abilene for at least a couple of days last week, writing a story about a couple of Abilene Christian University football players.
It was a terrific opportunity for the city to make the sort of impression envisioned by the Abilene Branding Partnership. But the opportunity went pffft. The reporter, Thayer Evans, came into town and left again, then wrote not one, but two stories, one of them very long, that appeared in last Saturday's Times. Nowhere in either story is there any evidence that Abilene, the kind of city it is, or that it might aspire to be, entered Evans' consciousness, though in both stories there was a natural opening, if the right brand had existed.
Of course there are no guarantees. Even an effective brand couldn't have done anything more than give Abilene its best chance to enter Evans' thinking, as he worked on his stories. As it stood, the city had no chance at all, and free publicity for Abilene in The New York Times, publicity with tangible value, was lost.
I am looking at this loss through a couple of lenses. One, I have been writing newspaper stories for almost four decades, and with every story I was always looking for a good angle, which is one that attracts readers because it provides more than information. If you want an example of the master of the good angle, look at the way Calvin Trillin wrote his story in The New Yorker about Snow's Barbecue, Texas Monthly's choice as the state's No. 1 barbecue joint. The story is one good angle after another, and to me, reading the story was almost as good as eating the barbecue.
The second lens is the brand that I think would be right for Abilene: "Abilene, Texas Style." I have been blogging about that for more than a year, most recently, coincidentally, in the last couple of weeks as the Branding Partnership went public with its brand choice, "Abilene Frontiering," which did not receive a warm response.
Then I opened up Saturday's Times and there were two stories with an Abilene dateline, complete with a photo of Shotwell Stadium, and neither story said a thing about Abilene, except to refer to Abilene Christian University as "an unlikely place on the rolling plains of West Texas," which doesn’t exactly set the imagination ringing like the bells of Notre Dame. There was good stuff Thayer Evans could have said about Abilene, which would have been applicable to the stories he was writing. He just didn't have a trigger. The brand is the trigger.
I was reading the stories a second time when I wondered if I – playing Evans now – might have found something useful to the story in discovering, in signage or in media or on restaurant book matches, that Abilene marketed itself as "Abilene, Texas Style." Even Evans would have heard of Texas Style, which is an old, familiar, even storied, brand: big, best, west, excess, strong, courage, honest, the Alamo, "Giant," oil, cattle, wide open spaces, lone stars, stars at night, friendly, warm, pious, tough, hard-working people as good as their word, deep in the heart of Texas.
Abilene, Texas Style, would be new to him, but he has seen western movies set in Texas towns like Abilene, with wide streets and stores and hotels and barber shops and cafes and saloons and churches and rodeos and stock shows and piety and power and characters and bankers and leaders and plain citizens always going about their business in the background and a sheriff and scalawags and renegades and all of them local representatives of their native Texas Style and proud of the local spin they put on it in a demanding country under a vast West Texas sky.
I don't see how Evans could use any of that in his stories, but the point is, the brand, "Abilene, Texas Style," engaged his thinking. And he keeps thinking. Is there something about Abilene, Texas Style, that gives me an angle? Then he remembers: giving people a second chance always happens in the westerns. And that's what Evans' stories were about: two football players getting a second chance, not in an unlikely place with rolling plains, but in a town that markets itself as doing things Abilene, Texas Style. And that is all he has to say, for the town and its brand to get the publicity. Not a bad angle.
It was a terrific opportunity for the city to make the sort of impression envisioned by the Abilene Branding Partnership. But the opportunity went pffft. The reporter, Thayer Evans, came into town and left again, then wrote not one, but two stories, one of them very long, that appeared in last Saturday's Times. Nowhere in either story is there any evidence that Abilene, the kind of city it is, or that it might aspire to be, entered Evans' consciousness, though in both stories there was a natural opening, if the right brand had existed.
Of course there are no guarantees. Even an effective brand couldn't have done anything more than give Abilene its best chance to enter Evans' thinking, as he worked on his stories. As it stood, the city had no chance at all, and free publicity for Abilene in The New York Times, publicity with tangible value, was lost.
I am looking at this loss through a couple of lenses. One, I have been writing newspaper stories for almost four decades, and with every story I was always looking for a good angle, which is one that attracts readers because it provides more than information. If you want an example of the master of the good angle, look at the way Calvin Trillin wrote his story in The New Yorker about Snow's Barbecue, Texas Monthly's choice as the state's No. 1 barbecue joint. The story is one good angle after another, and to me, reading the story was almost as good as eating the barbecue.
The second lens is the brand that I think would be right for Abilene: "Abilene, Texas Style." I have been blogging about that for more than a year, most recently, coincidentally, in the last couple of weeks as the Branding Partnership went public with its brand choice, "Abilene Frontiering," which did not receive a warm response.
Then I opened up Saturday's Times and there were two stories with an Abilene dateline, complete with a photo of Shotwell Stadium, and neither story said a thing about Abilene, except to refer to Abilene Christian University as "an unlikely place on the rolling plains of West Texas," which doesn’t exactly set the imagination ringing like the bells of Notre Dame. There was good stuff Thayer Evans could have said about Abilene, which would have been applicable to the stories he was writing. He just didn't have a trigger. The brand is the trigger.
I was reading the stories a second time when I wondered if I – playing Evans now – might have found something useful to the story in discovering, in signage or in media or on restaurant book matches, that Abilene marketed itself as "Abilene, Texas Style." Even Evans would have heard of Texas Style, which is an old, familiar, even storied, brand: big, best, west, excess, strong, courage, honest, the Alamo, "Giant," oil, cattle, wide open spaces, lone stars, stars at night, friendly, warm, pious, tough, hard-working people as good as their word, deep in the heart of Texas.
Abilene, Texas Style, would be new to him, but he has seen western movies set in Texas towns like Abilene, with wide streets and stores and hotels and barber shops and cafes and saloons and churches and rodeos and stock shows and piety and power and characters and bankers and leaders and plain citizens always going about their business in the background and a sheriff and scalawags and renegades and all of them local representatives of their native Texas Style and proud of the local spin they put on it in a demanding country under a vast West Texas sky.
I don't see how Evans could use any of that in his stories, but the point is, the brand, "Abilene, Texas Style," engaged his thinking. And he keeps thinking. Is there something about Abilene, Texas Style, that gives me an angle? Then he remembers: giving people a second chance always happens in the westerns. And that's what Evans' stories were about: two football players getting a second chance, not in an unlikely place with rolling plains, but in a town that markets itself as doing things Abilene, Texas Style. And that is all he has to say, for the town and its brand to get the publicity. Not a bad angle.
December 01, 2008
An Idyllwildian Thanksgiving
We had a very quiet and restful Thanksgiving and only gained about 5 lbs. each. Hope you did the same.
We always spend Thanksgiving in a knotty-pine cabin in Idyllwild, a community in the Riverside County Mountains about two hours from here. Southern California is an amazing place to live. Any kind of atmospheric, cultural, economic and entertainment bioclimate is available within two hours of our front door.
With encouragement from the imps at the Weather Bureau, I had hoped for some weather, which in Idyllwild would have meant snow. But no, after some sprinkles on Thanksgiving Day it cleared up, nice blue skies, and temperatures that Idyllwildians would call suntanning weather.
We were in serious hibernation mode. Karen went up on Sunday after the closing ceremonies of the Breast Cancer 3Day and set foot out the cabin door one time, she said. I drove up on Thanksgiving morning, and it was a drive for a lifetime. Overnight rain had broken into patchy showers, enough to keep the interstate wet so it reflected the sky, with clouds letting enough light through to create an encompassing Impressionist smear of gray and rose and ivory. The highway was almost deserted at that hour, and the wet lanes became part of the sky smear, losing all suggestion of concrete, lane markers disappeared, flooding me with the impression of riding on the sky, words rolling over in my mind, looking for the ones that would best describe this suspension between earth and heaven.
I decided that if there was something I could be thankful for on Thanksgiving morning, it was being born into a species equipped with a brain that could seriously process its surroundings, admit they were too beautiful to describe, but possible to enjoy to the point of rapture even as it became convinced it was flying in total contradiction to the vibration of the tires on the interstate.
I also had hot coffee in a traveling mug and Slim Willet on the CD, so if you know who Slim Willet is, you realize my rapture was complete. I was in a moment unique to my life thus far, and I was thankful. And then I got to knock on a cabin door, and there was Karen!
Karen, with nothing more than a pot and a spoon, produced a turkey breast of considerable juiciness and she is hereby an honorary member of the Kettner Blvd. College of Turkey Surgeons and Airport Relocation Committee. We had stuffing, gravy, green bean casserole with real mushrooms, and Karen's special gorgonzola salad with pine nuts. Then pumpkin pie with walnuts and whipped cream. By then it was 4:30 in the afternoon and I was ready for bed. We watched a movie until 7, and then I did in fact crawl into bed and slept until 7 in the morning.
The Idyllwild community, augmented by a throng of flatlanders, has its Christmas tree lighting ceremony in the town circle every Thanksgiving holiday. On Saturday we stood bundled against shirtsleeve temperatures and precisely at 5 p.m., with the sun down and temperature dropping, the lights went on in a hundred-foot pine topped by a star of white lights. Above it, the sky was in evening blue, with Venus and a new moon in the background, and way up, the silver contrail of an airliner headed southeast.
We drove home early Sunday morning to beat the return rush, unlocked the front door, and there was Gully! Life is good.
We always spend Thanksgiving in a knotty-pine cabin in Idyllwild, a community in the Riverside County Mountains about two hours from here. Southern California is an amazing place to live. Any kind of atmospheric, cultural, economic and entertainment bioclimate is available within two hours of our front door.
With encouragement from the imps at the Weather Bureau, I had hoped for some weather, which in Idyllwild would have meant snow. But no, after some sprinkles on Thanksgiving Day it cleared up, nice blue skies, and temperatures that Idyllwildians would call suntanning weather.
We were in serious hibernation mode. Karen went up on Sunday after the closing ceremonies of the Breast Cancer 3Day and set foot out the cabin door one time, she said. I drove up on Thanksgiving morning, and it was a drive for a lifetime. Overnight rain had broken into patchy showers, enough to keep the interstate wet so it reflected the sky, with clouds letting enough light through to create an encompassing Impressionist smear of gray and rose and ivory. The highway was almost deserted at that hour, and the wet lanes became part of the sky smear, losing all suggestion of concrete, lane markers disappeared, flooding me with the impression of riding on the sky, words rolling over in my mind, looking for the ones that would best describe this suspension between earth and heaven.
I decided that if there was something I could be thankful for on Thanksgiving morning, it was being born into a species equipped with a brain that could seriously process its surroundings, admit they were too beautiful to describe, but possible to enjoy to the point of rapture even as it became convinced it was flying in total contradiction to the vibration of the tires on the interstate.
I also had hot coffee in a traveling mug and Slim Willet on the CD, so if you know who Slim Willet is, you realize my rapture was complete. I was in a moment unique to my life thus far, and I was thankful. And then I got to knock on a cabin door, and there was Karen!
Karen, with nothing more than a pot and a spoon, produced a turkey breast of considerable juiciness and she is hereby an honorary member of the Kettner Blvd. College of Turkey Surgeons and Airport Relocation Committee. We had stuffing, gravy, green bean casserole with real mushrooms, and Karen's special gorgonzola salad with pine nuts. Then pumpkin pie with walnuts and whipped cream. By then it was 4:30 in the afternoon and I was ready for bed. We watched a movie until 7, and then I did in fact crawl into bed and slept until 7 in the morning.
The Idyllwild community, augmented by a throng of flatlanders, has its Christmas tree lighting ceremony in the town circle every Thanksgiving holiday. On Saturday we stood bundled against shirtsleeve temperatures and precisely at 5 p.m., with the sun down and temperature dropping, the lights went on in a hundred-foot pine topped by a star of white lights. Above it, the sky was in evening blue, with Venus and a new moon in the background, and way up, the silver contrail of an airliner headed southeast.
We drove home early Sunday morning to beat the return rush, unlocked the front door, and there was Gully! Life is good.
November 24, 2008
Humanity girds anew against dry turkey
I posted this blog a year ago, but here it is almost Thanksgiving Dinner again, so I thought I would post it now, for those who might need the information. Also in the last year, I have figured out how to "Label" blogs, which is to say I can get it to work 75 percent of the time, so I will label this one "Cooking," for future easy reference.
Best Turkey: Shot, and Smoked
For the 26th straight Thanksgiving Day, the findings of the Kettner Blvd. College of Turkey Surgeons and Airport Relocation Committee remain unchanged.The surest way to have a moist, flavorful turkey for Thanksgiving is to shoot it and smoke it.
If you are new to the debate, the KBCTSARC was created to research answers to two dilemmas of our time:Is there a way to make turkey moist?Where should San Diego locate its new airport?The first issue is universal, or at least as widespread as those regions on the planet where turkey is cooked and served.
The second issue is local. I was born in Texas, where you can put an airport almost anywhere, but since 1972 I have lived in San Diego, California. Sometime in the 1930s, San Diegans started talking about the need to relocate their airport from Lindbergh Field to some better location.
Three-quarters of a century later, that question is still in the hands of a committee (not the KBCTSARC) which meets regularly to discuss potential locations as disparate as the Imperial Desert (a two-hour drive) and the Pacific Ocean (airport built on piers or pontoons).
The KBCTSARC, meanwhile, goes about its business casually, a pace consistent with our motto: “Not likely to happen in our lifetimes.” Our current airport relocation advice is: leave it where it is.
Regarding the turkey, a fresh bird (not frozen, or previously frozen) is best, about 18 pounds. You will need a large syringe, used originally by large-animal veterinarians but now a popular item in kitchenware stores and catalogues. And you will need a Weber kettle cooker, the 22-inch size, and a bag of charcoal briquets laced with mesquite. With the syringe, inject into the bird’s breasts and thighs a mixture of melted butter, chicken stock, and a couple tablespoons of sherry. In this mixture, saturate a clean dishcloth and place it over the bird.
Build small, 20-briquet fires on either side of the fire grate. Close the kettle and lid vents halfway. Place the bird, unstuffed, in the center of the grille, to create indirect-heat cooking. Moisten the cloth every 45 minutes and tend the fires, adding a few briquets each time. Remove the cloth the last hour of cooking and inject the bird again. Cooking time should be about four hours. When a thigh wiggles freely, he is done. When he is finished, he will come out with a deep mahogany glaze.
But he won’t taste “barbecued.” He will have a smoky essence, but he will be all turkey. Turkey is like hamburger; it remains turkey no matter what you do to it. Thus the usual accompaniments are correct. Roast a big pan of dressing, with oysters and walnuts in it. Make a mess of giblet gravy, and sprinkle a quarter-cup of leftover coffee on the giblets as they are sautéing. Make a big pan of oven-roasted (350 degrees) vegetables: new potatoes, onions, carrots, red and green bell peppers, broccoli stalks, all chunked and tossed with a little olive oil, salt and pepper. When these are starting to get tender, add the broccoli florets and plenty of crimini mushrooms and let it go another 15 minutes.
Have fresh white bread and a full jar of mayonnaise ready for the turkey sandwiches on Friday. Always the best part of Thanksgiving dinner.
Best Turkey: Shot, and Smoked
For the 26th straight Thanksgiving Day, the findings of the Kettner Blvd. College of Turkey Surgeons and Airport Relocation Committee remain unchanged.The surest way to have a moist, flavorful turkey for Thanksgiving is to shoot it and smoke it.
If you are new to the debate, the KBCTSARC was created to research answers to two dilemmas of our time:Is there a way to make turkey moist?Where should San Diego locate its new airport?The first issue is universal, or at least as widespread as those regions on the planet where turkey is cooked and served.
The second issue is local. I was born in Texas, where you can put an airport almost anywhere, but since 1972 I have lived in San Diego, California. Sometime in the 1930s, San Diegans started talking about the need to relocate their airport from Lindbergh Field to some better location.
Three-quarters of a century later, that question is still in the hands of a committee (not the KBCTSARC) which meets regularly to discuss potential locations as disparate as the Imperial Desert (a two-hour drive) and the Pacific Ocean (airport built on piers or pontoons).
The KBCTSARC, meanwhile, goes about its business casually, a pace consistent with our motto: “Not likely to happen in our lifetimes.” Our current airport relocation advice is: leave it where it is.
Regarding the turkey, a fresh bird (not frozen, or previously frozen) is best, about 18 pounds. You will need a large syringe, used originally by large-animal veterinarians but now a popular item in kitchenware stores and catalogues. And you will need a Weber kettle cooker, the 22-inch size, and a bag of charcoal briquets laced with mesquite. With the syringe, inject into the bird’s breasts and thighs a mixture of melted butter, chicken stock, and a couple tablespoons of sherry. In this mixture, saturate a clean dishcloth and place it over the bird.
Build small, 20-briquet fires on either side of the fire grate. Close the kettle and lid vents halfway. Place the bird, unstuffed, in the center of the grille, to create indirect-heat cooking. Moisten the cloth every 45 minutes and tend the fires, adding a few briquets each time. Remove the cloth the last hour of cooking and inject the bird again. Cooking time should be about four hours. When a thigh wiggles freely, he is done. When he is finished, he will come out with a deep mahogany glaze.
But he won’t taste “barbecued.” He will have a smoky essence, but he will be all turkey. Turkey is like hamburger; it remains turkey no matter what you do to it. Thus the usual accompaniments are correct. Roast a big pan of dressing, with oysters and walnuts in it. Make a mess of giblet gravy, and sprinkle a quarter-cup of leftover coffee on the giblets as they are sautéing. Make a big pan of oven-roasted (350 degrees) vegetables: new potatoes, onions, carrots, red and green bell peppers, broccoli stalks, all chunked and tossed with a little olive oil, salt and pepper. When these are starting to get tender, add the broccoli florets and plenty of crimini mushrooms and let it go another 15 minutes.
Have fresh white bread and a full jar of mayonnaise ready for the turkey sandwiches on Friday. Always the best part of Thanksgiving dinner.
November 23, 2008
Big heart, bad blisters
It's tough, living with an athlete who has had to go on the disabled list. They rage at themselves.
Karen called me yesterday noon to come pick her up. She was halfway through the 3Day 60-mile walk when she finally agreed with her feet that she couldn't and shouldn't continue.
At the close of the first day's 20 miles, she marched into the 3Day's sprawling pink tent city, pulled off her shoes and socks, and examined blisters the size of brazil nuts, one on each foot, where the deep part of the arch meets her heel. She wears plastic orthotics, to straighten out a natural pronation, and the edge of the device rubbed at that vulnerable arch-heel spot.
She got the blisters lanced and treated and next morning, with "Second Skin" applications and bandaging, she continued. Nine miles out, after a second lancing and treatment at a medical tent, she had to stop. I came and found her and took her home.
The hard part is that she knew she had the 3Day in the bag. She knew it after the first 20 miles. Everything was fine, except for a blister on each foot that truly looked like a brazil nut. At these, she raged and cried. She needed to be out there with her team, and the four thousand other walkers. They were like an army, marching to liberate a people, and residents came out of their houses and businesses along the way to cheer the army and tell how proud they were. Buzzing around the marchers were "spirit people," on bicycles and motorbikes and in cars, wearing whimsical costumes like parade mummers and cheering the walkers on.
"I feel great," she said. "Everything is fine. Except for two little bleeping blisters." I told her what a little something like a sprained toe can do to a magnificent athlete like Antonio Gates, and how a Cy Young pitcher feels when a finger blister puts him on the bench, but it didn't do much good. She wanted to be out there, part of the experience of thousands of people acting together magnificently in behalf of a cause, breast cancer survivors out there marching, and she couldn't be with those brave sisters because of a couple of lousy feet. "All that training," she fumed. "No blisters then. I'd like to add up the number of miles I walked. A hundred, two hundred."
I would say at least two hundred, probably more, and it wasn't fair for the blisters to wait until game day. Injury never is fair. But, now we know how it happened, and next year she'll get the footwear right. Part of being an athlete is knowing that there's always next year.
She wasn't ready to give up. She thought she might be able to go today. Blisters always harden up when they are exposed to air. We took the patches off and gave them most of the afternoon and overnight to dry out. I was actually optimistic that she could get out there this morning. But the damage underneath was too much and continued to ooze. When she took a little test walk out to get the papers this morning, she could feel how full they were.
Her teammates called her last night to tell her how great she was. We are going to meet them this afternoon for a drink at a bar up the street from PetCo Park, where the walk ends, and then Karen will join them on the field for the closing ceremony. The check that the 3Day writes for the breast cancer fight will include the several thousand that Karen raised, but that won't close the deal. She knows she owes them 30 more miles. She will be fine in 2009.
Karen called me yesterday noon to come pick her up. She was halfway through the 3Day 60-mile walk when she finally agreed with her feet that she couldn't and shouldn't continue.
At the close of the first day's 20 miles, she marched into the 3Day's sprawling pink tent city, pulled off her shoes and socks, and examined blisters the size of brazil nuts, one on each foot, where the deep part of the arch meets her heel. She wears plastic orthotics, to straighten out a natural pronation, and the edge of the device rubbed at that vulnerable arch-heel spot.
She got the blisters lanced and treated and next morning, with "Second Skin" applications and bandaging, she continued. Nine miles out, after a second lancing and treatment at a medical tent, she had to stop. I came and found her and took her home.
The hard part is that she knew she had the 3Day in the bag. She knew it after the first 20 miles. Everything was fine, except for a blister on each foot that truly looked like a brazil nut. At these, she raged and cried. She needed to be out there with her team, and the four thousand other walkers. They were like an army, marching to liberate a people, and residents came out of their houses and businesses along the way to cheer the army and tell how proud they were. Buzzing around the marchers were "spirit people," on bicycles and motorbikes and in cars, wearing whimsical costumes like parade mummers and cheering the walkers on.
"I feel great," she said. "Everything is fine. Except for two little bleeping blisters." I told her what a little something like a sprained toe can do to a magnificent athlete like Antonio Gates, and how a Cy Young pitcher feels when a finger blister puts him on the bench, but it didn't do much good. She wanted to be out there, part of the experience of thousands of people acting together magnificently in behalf of a cause, breast cancer survivors out there marching, and she couldn't be with those brave sisters because of a couple of lousy feet. "All that training," she fumed. "No blisters then. I'd like to add up the number of miles I walked. A hundred, two hundred."
I would say at least two hundred, probably more, and it wasn't fair for the blisters to wait until game day. Injury never is fair. But, now we know how it happened, and next year she'll get the footwear right. Part of being an athlete is knowing that there's always next year.
She wasn't ready to give up. She thought she might be able to go today. Blisters always harden up when they are exposed to air. We took the patches off and gave them most of the afternoon and overnight to dry out. I was actually optimistic that she could get out there this morning. But the damage underneath was too much and continued to ooze. When she took a little test walk out to get the papers this morning, she could feel how full they were.
Her teammates called her last night to tell her how great she was. We are going to meet them this afternoon for a drink at a bar up the street from PetCo Park, where the walk ends, and then Karen will join them on the field for the closing ceremony. The check that the 3Day writes for the breast cancer fight will include the several thousand that Karen raised, but that won't close the deal. She knows she owes them 30 more miles. She will be fine in 2009.
November 20, 2008
I have a 6:30 a.m. assignment for you
Karen is naturally athletic, but she did not become an athlete until about a month ago.
It started in August when one day her brain overheated and took a wrong turn. She decided she was going to sign up for our 3Day Breast Cancer Walk in San Diego. The 3Day starts on a Friday, and the walkers go 20 miles a day until they reach the finish line on Sunday afternoon.
I have had big ideas like that, but they always go away after I lie down for awhile and have a few sips of cool water. Karen did take a cool soak at my suggestion, but when she toweled off, she still had that look in her eyes.
She has connections to breast cancer and the 3Day. Nataly Pluta, her great friend, is a breast cancer survivor and has done the 3Day for the last three years. Each year, Karen and I have driven down to the overnight camp to say "Yay!" to her and give her a bottle of wine to sneak back to the tent. Karen is married to me, and I am a man whose late wife, Meredith, died of breast cancer in July, 2000. Karen has other family, friends and associates who have experienced breast cancer. She made a list of names, 32 when she was finished, and showed it to me.
"These are the people I will be walking for," she said. To the original names, she had added three more: Caitlin, her granddaughter; Addie, Meredith's granddaughter; and Evie June, my granddaughter. The idea being that what Karen did now might mean these three little girls might go through their whole, deserved lives in a world free of breast cancer.
She started off at three miles. Then we drove to Miramar Lake, where lots of people walk, bicycle and skate the five miles around the lake. Off she went in one direction and 90-odd minutes later, back she came from the other direction. I started getting impressed. I walked, too, all of 30 minutes, and then I waited in the car, drank coffee and read the paper. In fairness, I am just getting back on the trail after hip replacement surgery, but I could have all my original parts and be 30 years younger, and would not voluntarily walk 60 miles in three days, or five miles in 90 minutes.
She bought special shoes and socks; socks with toes in them. Weekends came when she left the house before daylight to meet her team and walk 12 or 14 miles somewhere. She would get back at noon with the classic rode-hard look. One day during the week she dropped me at school at 8 a.m. At 1 p.m. my phone rang. "Just got finished," she said. "Dang," I said. I had taught two classes and eaten lunch. All that time, she had been walking a trail at Lake Murray.
Her body was changing. It was more than weight loss. It showed in her skin, her eyes, her smile, her mood. "Just going out for a short one," she would say at 5:30 a.m. Five miles later, she was back in time to take me to work. She shifted from cotton to a kind of garment that wicks away moisture. She had a waist pack, a special hat, a scarf, an iPod, water, other paraphernalia. She was not just going out the door now, she was carrying gear. She looked like a baseball player getting on the bus. I said to her: "You look like an athlete." And of course she was. I told her she was "dedicated," but an hour later decided I had used the wrong word. "What you are, is distinguished," I said.
About a month ago, she came home from a 15-miler looking like she hadn't done much more than a little gardening. "I feel different," she said. "I feel like I've got 15 miles under my belt." She was in a place most of us don't reach.
Last week, she and her team did back-to-back training, 15 miles on Saturday and 14 on Sunday. Her last week has called for only one three-miler on Tuesday, then rest. But she can't rest. She has dreamed about the 3Day every night. She started getting her gear ready on Monday. Today we double-checked it all. "My mind is doing a million things," she said. She is jumpy. She paces. She's in there right now taking a soak. Nothing special for dinner, she says. I hope she can sleep tonight. Before bed, we are going to watch "Chariots of Fire."
I will drop her off at 5:45 tomorrow morning. Starting-line time is 6:30. At 6:30 California time, if you have read this, I want you to go outside and yell, "Go, Karen!"
It started in August when one day her brain overheated and took a wrong turn. She decided she was going to sign up for our 3Day Breast Cancer Walk in San Diego. The 3Day starts on a Friday, and the walkers go 20 miles a day until they reach the finish line on Sunday afternoon.
I have had big ideas like that, but they always go away after I lie down for awhile and have a few sips of cool water. Karen did take a cool soak at my suggestion, but when she toweled off, she still had that look in her eyes.
She has connections to breast cancer and the 3Day. Nataly Pluta, her great friend, is a breast cancer survivor and has done the 3Day for the last three years. Each year, Karen and I have driven down to the overnight camp to say "Yay!" to her and give her a bottle of wine to sneak back to the tent. Karen is married to me, and I am a man whose late wife, Meredith, died of breast cancer in July, 2000. Karen has other family, friends and associates who have experienced breast cancer. She made a list of names, 32 when she was finished, and showed it to me.
"These are the people I will be walking for," she said. To the original names, she had added three more: Caitlin, her granddaughter; Addie, Meredith's granddaughter; and Evie June, my granddaughter. The idea being that what Karen did now might mean these three little girls might go through their whole, deserved lives in a world free of breast cancer.
She started off at three miles. Then we drove to Miramar Lake, where lots of people walk, bicycle and skate the five miles around the lake. Off she went in one direction and 90-odd minutes later, back she came from the other direction. I started getting impressed. I walked, too, all of 30 minutes, and then I waited in the car, drank coffee and read the paper. In fairness, I am just getting back on the trail after hip replacement surgery, but I could have all my original parts and be 30 years younger, and would not voluntarily walk 60 miles in three days, or five miles in 90 minutes.
She bought special shoes and socks; socks with toes in them. Weekends came when she left the house before daylight to meet her team and walk 12 or 14 miles somewhere. She would get back at noon with the classic rode-hard look. One day during the week she dropped me at school at 8 a.m. At 1 p.m. my phone rang. "Just got finished," she said. "Dang," I said. I had taught two classes and eaten lunch. All that time, she had been walking a trail at Lake Murray.
Her body was changing. It was more than weight loss. It showed in her skin, her eyes, her smile, her mood. "Just going out for a short one," she would say at 5:30 a.m. Five miles later, she was back in time to take me to work. She shifted from cotton to a kind of garment that wicks away moisture. She had a waist pack, a special hat, a scarf, an iPod, water, other paraphernalia. She was not just going out the door now, she was carrying gear. She looked like a baseball player getting on the bus. I said to her: "You look like an athlete." And of course she was. I told her she was "dedicated," but an hour later decided I had used the wrong word. "What you are, is distinguished," I said.
About a month ago, she came home from a 15-miler looking like she hadn't done much more than a little gardening. "I feel different," she said. "I feel like I've got 15 miles under my belt." She was in a place most of us don't reach.
Last week, she and her team did back-to-back training, 15 miles on Saturday and 14 on Sunday. Her last week has called for only one three-miler on Tuesday, then rest. But she can't rest. She has dreamed about the 3Day every night. She started getting her gear ready on Monday. Today we double-checked it all. "My mind is doing a million things," she said. She is jumpy. She paces. She's in there right now taking a soak. Nothing special for dinner, she says. I hope she can sleep tonight. Before bed, we are going to watch "Chariots of Fire."
I will drop her off at 5:45 tomorrow morning. Starting-line time is 6:30. At 6:30 California time, if you have read this, I want you to go outside and yell, "Go, Karen!"
November 18, 2008
Frontiering and elements of style
It is not a bad idea, whenever a person encounters annoying language, to look in Strunk and White’s timeless writer’s booklet, “The Elements of Style,” for clues why the annoyance occurred. It becomes a very good idea when the annoying language threatens to become official and influence thought without challenge.
That prospect of thought without challenge is what bothers me so about “Abilene Frontiering,” the words proposed to become a commercial “brand” to advertise my hometown.
No way to know how “Elements of Style” co-author E.B. White, the famed 20th-century essayist and author of “Charlotte’s Web,” might react to the word “frontiering.” That opportunity is lost, but in matters of words not to use, White has been helpful to me before. So again I go to “Elements.”
White begins the book’s Chapter Five, “An Approach to Style,” with a shot directly to the heart of the matter.
“Up to this point,” he begins, “the book has been concerned with what is correct, or acceptable, in the use of English. In this final chapter, we approach style in its broader meaning: style in the sense of what is distinguished and distinguishing. Here we leave solid ground. Who can confidently say what ignites a certain combination of words, causing them to explode in the mind?”
Such style, White says, is “an increment in writing. When we speak of Fitzgerald’s style, we don’t mean his command of the relative pronoun, we mean the sound his words make on paper.”
Since high school, I have taken the sound that words make on paper to be the goal of selecting the right words to say what I mean. Sound implies effect, some action that relates the word to what is actually happening on the ground. White states it this way: “Young writers often suppose that style is a garnish for the meat of prose, a sauce by which a dull dish is made palatable. Style has no such separate entity; it is nondetachable, unfilterable.” The beginner seeking style, White says, “should begin by turning resolutely away from all devices that are popularly believed to indicate style – all mannerisms, tricks, adornments. The approach to style is by way of plainness, simplicity, orderliness, sincerity.”
I stand the style of “frontiering” against this counsel, and it fails the test. It fails by itself, as a word untouched by style, which is simply annoying. Annoyance turns to alarm when officials propose to use such a word to influence thought about Abilene. The city may lack the style of Paris or Rome, or even San Antonio, but “frontiering” insults the considerable style that Abilene does have. What would be the words that make the right sound on paper for Abilene? Look for a combination that explodes in the mind, or at least ignites, and spreads across the face in a smile, or a glow of pride, Abilene, Texas style.
That prospect of thought without challenge is what bothers me so about “Abilene Frontiering,” the words proposed to become a commercial “brand” to advertise my hometown.
No way to know how “Elements of Style” co-author E.B. White, the famed 20th-century essayist and author of “Charlotte’s Web,” might react to the word “frontiering.” That opportunity is lost, but in matters of words not to use, White has been helpful to me before. So again I go to “Elements.”
White begins the book’s Chapter Five, “An Approach to Style,” with a shot directly to the heart of the matter.
“Up to this point,” he begins, “the book has been concerned with what is correct, or acceptable, in the use of English. In this final chapter, we approach style in its broader meaning: style in the sense of what is distinguished and distinguishing. Here we leave solid ground. Who can confidently say what ignites a certain combination of words, causing them to explode in the mind?”
Such style, White says, is “an increment in writing. When we speak of Fitzgerald’s style, we don’t mean his command of the relative pronoun, we mean the sound his words make on paper.”
Since high school, I have taken the sound that words make on paper to be the goal of selecting the right words to say what I mean. Sound implies effect, some action that relates the word to what is actually happening on the ground. White states it this way: “Young writers often suppose that style is a garnish for the meat of prose, a sauce by which a dull dish is made palatable. Style has no such separate entity; it is nondetachable, unfilterable.” The beginner seeking style, White says, “should begin by turning resolutely away from all devices that are popularly believed to indicate style – all mannerisms, tricks, adornments. The approach to style is by way of plainness, simplicity, orderliness, sincerity.”
I stand the style of “frontiering” against this counsel, and it fails the test. It fails by itself, as a word untouched by style, which is simply annoying. Annoyance turns to alarm when officials propose to use such a word to influence thought about Abilene. The city may lack the style of Paris or Rome, or even San Antonio, but “frontiering” insults the considerable style that Abilene does have. What would be the words that make the right sound on paper for Abilene? Look for a combination that explodes in the mind, or at least ignites, and spreads across the face in a smile, or a glow of pride, Abilene, Texas style.
November 14, 2008
The branding of Abilene, next chapter
The branding saga in Abilene, Texas, my hometown, has entered a remarkable new phase. For background, I will now re-post two blogs first posted in the summer of 2007, at the time the saga began.
The first blog, posted July 26, 2007:
My hometown, Abilene, Texas, is seeking to establish itself as a brand, to better compete in the state, national, and international, public consciousness for the purpose of attracting business and tourism.
A "brand" is a term, phrase, or symbol that makes a product or service unique in the public consciousness ("Xerox," "Google," "Neiman's"). Examples of branded cities are "The Big Apple," "Big D," "Cowtown," "Vegas," and "L.A." Abilene had an original brand, "The Key City of West Texas," and now uses "The Friendly Frontier." The first has lost its scope, and the second is restrictive and not memorable. "Abilene" is the title of a famous song by George Hamilton IV, which rightly describes Abilene as pretty, but lies about the women there, and does not provide any other information.
Abilene has proven attributes which include location, seasons, civic pride and motivation, existing attractions and opportunities, opportunities for new attractions, savvy, future-oriented municipal, civic and business management, a favorable business climate, affordable cost of living, three universities and affiliations with others, strong traditions but no longer straitlaced, and friendliness. Abilene could truthfully adopt a slogan: "America's Home Town." "Abilene" is also a very pretty name, and easy to remember.
I first learned of Abilene's branding effort a few weeks ago in a story in The Abilene Reporter-News. The Abilene Branding Partnership, a consortium of five civic entities, had called for a Statement of Qualifications from five marketing companies. I have affection for Abilene, and the Reporter-News, where I began my career in 1969, and I have interest in how people feel about Abilene. In researching a book about Abilene history three years ago, I had the opportunity to spend time there on several visits, and talk to Abilenians about the city's present strengths and weaknesses.
Thus was I compelled to stick my branding iron into the fire. Three or four days later, I had an idea. On June 21, I emailed the Abilene Branding Partnership, but I was too late. The June 14 deadline for submitting my Statement of Qualifications had passed. I asked to be considered if the search was reopened, and that was agreed to.
Today, the Reporter-News reported that the consortium has agreed to hire North Star Destination Strategies, out of Nashville, Tennessee, to develop an Abilene brand, and a branding strategy, for a fee in the "low six figures," should the money be found locally and a contract signed. North Star was one of only three companies, out of the 11, responding to Abilene's call for a Statement of Qualifications.
So the deal is done, and I can publish my idea. For a penny less than six figures - $99,999.99 – I would have provided Abilene all rights to a three-word brand that co-opts an already global brand, has four distinct applications and one state of mind, and it offers multiple branding strategies.
It would identify a place.
It would identify a thing.
It would identify an event.
It would identify a product.
It would identify a state of mind.
It would be:
"Abilene, Texas Style"
Published, copyrighted, protected. North Star will earn its money and give Abilene something that works better than "Friendly Frontier." And I will always know "Abilene, Texas Style" was good, and came in in an x-way tie for second place.
The second blog, posted Aug. 15, 2007:
I appreciate Jim McDonald's comment on the branding Abilene blog. He is another member of the Abilene High Class of 1961, which is a damn good group if I do say so. Re the fee for the Abilene brand, I waxed sentimental about those roots and briefly considered setting my fee for "Abilene, Texas Style" at $61,616.161, tacking on the tenth of a cent, like the gas pumps do, to preserve symmetry.
Then I decided against it. My fee is firm, $99.999.99, one cent less than the six figures the Abilene authorities are willing to pay North Star Destinations. That name – "North Star Destination" – pops to mind another possibility for the Abilene brand: "Lone Star Destination."
But you can't do as much with that as Abilene, Texas Style. I know the deal is done, but it is still fun to play with the thing. Right, Jim? On a yellow pad, I doodled everything that Abilene, Texas Style, might go with, in setting Abilene apart in the global mind. "Global" includes Tye, Potosi, Hawley, Hamby, View. Global starts at the front door, and it's as vital that "Abilene, Texas Style" means something in Colorado City, as much as it does in London, Paris or Dallas. Imagine, Dallasites driving 180 miles for a weekend of "Abilene, Texas Style." Getting somebody to leave Dallas for a weekend wouldn't take all that much, actually, but that is a direction for another day.
So I doodled.
Thanksgiving, Abilene, Texas Style
Christmas Parade, Abilene, Texas Style
Fourth of July, Abilene, Texas Style
Easter Sunday, Abilene, Texas Style
Education, Abilene, Texas Style
Football Classic, Abilene, Texas Style
Football playoffs, Abilene, Texas Style
Golf tournament, Abilene, Texas Style
Resort Ranch, Abilene, Texas Style
Weekend getaway, Abilene, Texas Style
Corporate retreat, Abilene, Texas Style
Regional Outlet Mall, Abilene, Texas Style
Filming location, Abilene, Texas Style
Senior prom weekend, Abilene, Texas Style
Culture, Arts, Music, Abilene, Texas Style
Broadway road show, Abilene, Texas Style
Concerts, Abilene, Texas Style
Championship rodeo, Abilene, Texas Style
Livestock shows, Abilene, Texas Style
Horse shows, Abilene, Texas Style
Any kind of celebration, Abilene Texas Style
Barbecue championship, Abilene, Texas Style
Premier, Abilene, Texas Style
Partnership, Abilene, Texas Style
Conventions, Abilene, Texas Style
Drag racing, Abilene, Texas Style
NASCAR, Abilene, Texas Style
Worship, Abilene, Texas Style
Leadership, Abilene, Texas Style
Patriotism, Abilene, Texas Style
Business, Abilene, Texas Style
Caring telethon, Abilene, Texas Style
Historical pageant, Abilene, Texas Style
Lifestyle, Abilene, Texas Style
Pride, Abilene, Texas Style
So there are things that can be done with it. The project has not turned out to be a burning issue in the Abilene community. I've counted about a dozen letters to the editor, some in favor, some opposed, most against paying anybody money to create a brand. There were a couple of offers to do it for free, or have a community contest with the winner receiving not much more than recognition and a few free dinners at participating restaurants.
I would never do it for free, and no one else should, either. I do think six figures to Tennessee thinkers is excessive, but there is a thing called "perceived value," which gives a thing value in the public mind simply by placing a value on it. Branding Abilene is something that will have to have value, both in the public mind and the participators' mind. This is a business deal. A brand should prove to be worth millions of dollars to whatever the branded thing is. To a city like Abilene, it should be worth hundreds of millions of dollars, to spend on infrastructure, schools, culture, subsidized water rates, rehabbing the near north side before the wind blows it over. Whoever conceives it, the brand should not be cheap, and it certainly should not be provided free by its creator.
While we're on the subject, does Abilene have a city flag?
Which brings us back to the present day, and the saga's next chapter.
On Wednesday, Abilenian Betty Sims alerted me that North Star Destinations, after 17 months of research and creativity, had revealed its new brand for Abilene at a Tuesday press conference in the historic Paramount Theater.
The brand:
"Abilene Frontiering"
Response was immediate, and furious, and pretty funny. Scores of comments were posted at The Abilene Reporter-News by citizens appalled at the idea of becoming frontieringers. As an Abilenian living in California, I am in total sympathy and will renounce my Perini's club card should this brand go forward. I will give my lettering jacketings to Goodwill. If I saw "Abilene Frontiering" cold, without context, as on a highway billboard, I would think it was an ad for an Abilene travel agency booking tours to Alaska, not for a pretty nice town in West Central Texas.
Of course I remain committed to "Abilene, Texas Style," but the commitment that matters most today is the one against "Abilene Frontiering." For heavening's sake. No comment on the furor from Citying Halling yet.
The first blog, posted July 26, 2007:
My hometown, Abilene, Texas, is seeking to establish itself as a brand, to better compete in the state, national, and international, public consciousness for the purpose of attracting business and tourism.
A "brand" is a term, phrase, or symbol that makes a product or service unique in the public consciousness ("Xerox," "Google," "Neiman's"). Examples of branded cities are "The Big Apple," "Big D," "Cowtown," "Vegas," and "L.A." Abilene had an original brand, "The Key City of West Texas," and now uses "The Friendly Frontier." The first has lost its scope, and the second is restrictive and not memorable. "Abilene" is the title of a famous song by George Hamilton IV, which rightly describes Abilene as pretty, but lies about the women there, and does not provide any other information.
Abilene has proven attributes which include location, seasons, civic pride and motivation, existing attractions and opportunities, opportunities for new attractions, savvy, future-oriented municipal, civic and business management, a favorable business climate, affordable cost of living, three universities and affiliations with others, strong traditions but no longer straitlaced, and friendliness. Abilene could truthfully adopt a slogan: "America's Home Town." "Abilene" is also a very pretty name, and easy to remember.
I first learned of Abilene's branding effort a few weeks ago in a story in The Abilene Reporter-News. The Abilene Branding Partnership, a consortium of five civic entities, had called for a Statement of Qualifications from five marketing companies. I have affection for Abilene, and the Reporter-News, where I began my career in 1969, and I have interest in how people feel about Abilene. In researching a book about Abilene history three years ago, I had the opportunity to spend time there on several visits, and talk to Abilenians about the city's present strengths and weaknesses.
Thus was I compelled to stick my branding iron into the fire. Three or four days later, I had an idea. On June 21, I emailed the Abilene Branding Partnership, but I was too late. The June 14 deadline for submitting my Statement of Qualifications had passed. I asked to be considered if the search was reopened, and that was agreed to.
Today, the Reporter-News reported that the consortium has agreed to hire North Star Destination Strategies, out of Nashville, Tennessee, to develop an Abilene brand, and a branding strategy, for a fee in the "low six figures," should the money be found locally and a contract signed. North Star was one of only three companies, out of the 11, responding to Abilene's call for a Statement of Qualifications.
So the deal is done, and I can publish my idea. For a penny less than six figures - $99,999.99 – I would have provided Abilene all rights to a three-word brand that co-opts an already global brand, has four distinct applications and one state of mind, and it offers multiple branding strategies.
It would identify a place.
It would identify a thing.
It would identify an event.
It would identify a product.
It would identify a state of mind.
It would be:
"Abilene, Texas Style"
Published, copyrighted, protected. North Star will earn its money and give Abilene something that works better than "Friendly Frontier." And I will always know "Abilene, Texas Style" was good, and came in in an x-way tie for second place.
The second blog, posted Aug. 15, 2007:
I appreciate Jim McDonald's comment on the branding Abilene blog. He is another member of the Abilene High Class of 1961, which is a damn good group if I do say so. Re the fee for the Abilene brand, I waxed sentimental about those roots and briefly considered setting my fee for "Abilene, Texas Style" at $61,616.161, tacking on the tenth of a cent, like the gas pumps do, to preserve symmetry.
Then I decided against it. My fee is firm, $99.999.99, one cent less than the six figures the Abilene authorities are willing to pay North Star Destinations. That name – "North Star Destination" – pops to mind another possibility for the Abilene brand: "Lone Star Destination."
But you can't do as much with that as Abilene, Texas Style. I know the deal is done, but it is still fun to play with the thing. Right, Jim? On a yellow pad, I doodled everything that Abilene, Texas Style, might go with, in setting Abilene apart in the global mind. "Global" includes Tye, Potosi, Hawley, Hamby, View. Global starts at the front door, and it's as vital that "Abilene, Texas Style" means something in Colorado City, as much as it does in London, Paris or Dallas. Imagine, Dallasites driving 180 miles for a weekend of "Abilene, Texas Style." Getting somebody to leave Dallas for a weekend wouldn't take all that much, actually, but that is a direction for another day.
So I doodled.
Thanksgiving, Abilene, Texas Style
Christmas Parade, Abilene, Texas Style
Fourth of July, Abilene, Texas Style
Easter Sunday, Abilene, Texas Style
Education, Abilene, Texas Style
Football Classic, Abilene, Texas Style
Football playoffs, Abilene, Texas Style
Golf tournament, Abilene, Texas Style
Resort Ranch, Abilene, Texas Style
Weekend getaway, Abilene, Texas Style
Corporate retreat, Abilene, Texas Style
Regional Outlet Mall, Abilene, Texas Style
Filming location, Abilene, Texas Style
Senior prom weekend, Abilene, Texas Style
Culture, Arts, Music, Abilene, Texas Style
Broadway road show, Abilene, Texas Style
Concerts, Abilene, Texas Style
Championship rodeo, Abilene, Texas Style
Livestock shows, Abilene, Texas Style
Horse shows, Abilene, Texas Style
Any kind of celebration, Abilene Texas Style
Barbecue championship, Abilene, Texas Style
Premier, Abilene, Texas Style
Partnership, Abilene, Texas Style
Conventions, Abilene, Texas Style
Drag racing, Abilene, Texas Style
NASCAR, Abilene, Texas Style
Worship, Abilene, Texas Style
Leadership, Abilene, Texas Style
Patriotism, Abilene, Texas Style
Business, Abilene, Texas Style
Caring telethon, Abilene, Texas Style
Historical pageant, Abilene, Texas Style
Lifestyle, Abilene, Texas Style
Pride, Abilene, Texas Style
So there are things that can be done with it. The project has not turned out to be a burning issue in the Abilene community. I've counted about a dozen letters to the editor, some in favor, some opposed, most against paying anybody money to create a brand. There were a couple of offers to do it for free, or have a community contest with the winner receiving not much more than recognition and a few free dinners at participating restaurants.
I would never do it for free, and no one else should, either. I do think six figures to Tennessee thinkers is excessive, but there is a thing called "perceived value," which gives a thing value in the public mind simply by placing a value on it. Branding Abilene is something that will have to have value, both in the public mind and the participators' mind. This is a business deal. A brand should prove to be worth millions of dollars to whatever the branded thing is. To a city like Abilene, it should be worth hundreds of millions of dollars, to spend on infrastructure, schools, culture, subsidized water rates, rehabbing the near north side before the wind blows it over. Whoever conceives it, the brand should not be cheap, and it certainly should not be provided free by its creator.
While we're on the subject, does Abilene have a city flag?
Which brings us back to the present day, and the saga's next chapter.
On Wednesday, Abilenian Betty Sims alerted me that North Star Destinations, after 17 months of research and creativity, had revealed its new brand for Abilene at a Tuesday press conference in the historic Paramount Theater.
The brand:
"Abilene Frontiering"
Response was immediate, and furious, and pretty funny. Scores of comments were posted at The Abilene Reporter-News by citizens appalled at the idea of becoming frontieringers. As an Abilenian living in California, I am in total sympathy and will renounce my Perini's club card should this brand go forward. I will give my lettering jacketings to Goodwill. If I saw "Abilene Frontiering" cold, without context, as on a highway billboard, I would think it was an ad for an Abilene travel agency booking tours to Alaska, not for a pretty nice town in West Central Texas.
Of course I remain committed to "Abilene, Texas Style," but the commitment that matters most today is the one against "Abilene Frontiering." For heavening's sake. No comment on the furor from Citying Halling yet.
November 11, 2008
A veteran in preparation only
Veterans Day brings far more to me than I can give to it.
In the 1960s, with the Vietnam conflict raging, I prepared for almost three years to become a vet, but then spent all that preparation guarding freedom’s frontier in the kaserns and maneuvers areas of West Germany.
I only did that because I had to. My draft notice arrived on a hot Texas afternoon in August, 1966. The Vietnam thing was far enough along by then to keep college kids in their 20s vigorously trying to cover their butts with what was called the II-S Deferment for students. Graduation in June had taken my cover away, and I was doing my best to get accepted to graduate school when my Local Board decided I would make an excellent soldier, and dropped the letter in the mail.
Instead of the draft, I enlisted for OCS. It seemed like a better use of the time. I took Basic at Ft. Bliss in El Paso, Advanced Individual Training at Ft. Sill in Lawton, Oklahoma, and I was graduated from the Artillery Officer Candidate School in June, 1967. At that time, the School was graduating 170 second lieutenants a week, and all but 30 were receiving orders to report to Vietnam. I was one of the 30. Report to Kitzingen, West Germany, my orders read, and I didn’t argue.
I spent almost two years terrifying the Russians with a dinosaur of a device called the Honest John, a huge, barely mobile, truck-launched rocket whose launch blast could be seen from the Moon. Setting them off was great fun, but fire just one of them in anger, and your position would be slivered into atoms by return fire before you could get the truck started.
We fired nine practice rounds a year and spent the rest of the time scrounging sparkplugs (ALL the supplies went to Vietnam), drinking $5-a-liter Chivas Regal, smoking 13-cents-a-pack cigarettes, and licking clean platters of schnitzel and bratwurst. The exchange rate was 4 marks to the dollar. During that time I met a young Southern California woman touring Europe on the cheap. We were married in November, 1968, dress blues, crossed sabers, and all.
My tour was up in June, 1969, we came home, I was discharged at Ft. Dix, N.J., and that was that. I never fired on anyone, and no one ever fired on me. So I am not the stripe of veteran that we honor today. I still embrace the day. There is within me a certain content that I still use, all the time, which would not be there without my experiences of 1966-69. And Veterans Day symbolizes all the physical circumstances of my life today. No way would I live where I do, and do what I do, if that letter hadn’t been there on that hot afternoon. Veterans Day for me commemorates the absolute first day of the rest of my life.
I was lucky, and I used to feel guilty about that. Young men I knew – and older men too, the officers and drill instructors – at Ft. Bliss and Sill, went to Vietnam and became the honored veterans of today, living and dead. Then one afternoon in the 1980s in Washington, D.C., I visited the Vietnam Memorial. It is an astonishing monument, black, and so reflective that it pulls the living day into it. In there was where I could have stood. Out here was where I in fact stood, and guilt could do nothing about how lucky I felt. So I let it go, and nothing changed. I have felt lucky ever since.
05428524
In the 1960s, with the Vietnam conflict raging, I prepared for almost three years to become a vet, but then spent all that preparation guarding freedom’s frontier in the kaserns and maneuvers areas of West Germany.
I only did that because I had to. My draft notice arrived on a hot Texas afternoon in August, 1966. The Vietnam thing was far enough along by then to keep college kids in their 20s vigorously trying to cover their butts with what was called the II-S Deferment for students. Graduation in June had taken my cover away, and I was doing my best to get accepted to graduate school when my Local Board decided I would make an excellent soldier, and dropped the letter in the mail.
Instead of the draft, I enlisted for OCS. It seemed like a better use of the time. I took Basic at Ft. Bliss in El Paso, Advanced Individual Training at Ft. Sill in Lawton, Oklahoma, and I was graduated from the Artillery Officer Candidate School in June, 1967. At that time, the School was graduating 170 second lieutenants a week, and all but 30 were receiving orders to report to Vietnam. I was one of the 30. Report to Kitzingen, West Germany, my orders read, and I didn’t argue.
I spent almost two years terrifying the Russians with a dinosaur of a device called the Honest John, a huge, barely mobile, truck-launched rocket whose launch blast could be seen from the Moon. Setting them off was great fun, but fire just one of them in anger, and your position would be slivered into atoms by return fire before you could get the truck started.
We fired nine practice rounds a year and spent the rest of the time scrounging sparkplugs (ALL the supplies went to Vietnam), drinking $5-a-liter Chivas Regal, smoking 13-cents-a-pack cigarettes, and licking clean platters of schnitzel and bratwurst. The exchange rate was 4 marks to the dollar. During that time I met a young Southern California woman touring Europe on the cheap. We were married in November, 1968, dress blues, crossed sabers, and all.
My tour was up in June, 1969, we came home, I was discharged at Ft. Dix, N.J., and that was that. I never fired on anyone, and no one ever fired on me. So I am not the stripe of veteran that we honor today. I still embrace the day. There is within me a certain content that I still use, all the time, which would not be there without my experiences of 1966-69. And Veterans Day symbolizes all the physical circumstances of my life today. No way would I live where I do, and do what I do, if that letter hadn’t been there on that hot afternoon. Veterans Day for me commemorates the absolute first day of the rest of my life.
I was lucky, and I used to feel guilty about that. Young men I knew – and older men too, the officers and drill instructors – at Ft. Bliss and Sill, went to Vietnam and became the honored veterans of today, living and dead. Then one afternoon in the 1980s in Washington, D.C., I visited the Vietnam Memorial. It is an astonishing monument, black, and so reflective that it pulls the living day into it. In there was where I could have stood. Out here was where I in fact stood, and guilt could do nothing about how lucky I felt. So I let it go, and nothing changed. I have felt lucky ever since.
05428524
November 06, 2008
Great God Almighty
This is a strange feeling I am having for the last couple of days, since I woke up Wednesday morning, went out to get the paper, slipped it out of its wrapper, flipped it open, and saw the one-word headline in a huge, fat, boldface font:
Obama
I thought: Free at last. Not him; ME! And I think that’s what Dr. Martin Luther King meant, or at least it strongly and strangely feels that way to me. He wasn’t thinking about a day when blacks would be free at last. He was thinking about ALL of us. Free at last. Great God almighty. As long as blacks were kept in a place, it meant whites were kept in a place, too. No more. For 45 years, I loved that line but misunderstood it so severely that I gave it only half-credit. Now on an early morning in the 60th grade, I finally understand it.
I folded the paper and quickened my step up the walk. Normally I go in, sit down with the paper, look at the sections above the fold, and hand over the front page to Karen. Not this time. I was going to go inside, flip the paper open, drop the paper on the nook table right under Karen’s nose, and watch her eyes. She looked and actually jumped in her chair. What kind of national power are we tapping into, when all are free to contribute the content of their character?
Talk about reactions.I keep looking for an interview with Rev. Jesse Jackson. His face, finger to his lips and tears on his cheeks, was to me the most riveting image from the entire coverage of this presidential campaign. I decided his entire life might be passing before his eyes, not flashing by, as at the threat of death, but in some slow pace of one being born again. So far, I haven’t found anything to read about it, which is not really like the old Jesse Jackson. But you know, talking about, or reading about, such experiences can never equal the experience.
Very sad, that newspapers are in peril. No other medium has delivered the electricity that that Obama headline blasted into me. That is another chemistry whose source I would like to examine. Later on, Wednesday morning, Karen said she would like to get our local paper – we only take the local paper on Thursdays through Sundays – to see the local election results.
For the second time in an hour, I framed a line so as to watch her reaction. I said: “You can get the results online.” She flinched like I had hosed her down with lemon juice. "No," she said. "I want the paper." No way could online results be a matter of record. Later in the morning, we got the local paper. It was the last one in the rack. Newspapers have a long reputation as being the first draft of history. Sure don’t know what’s going to replace that, in the years to come. Hey! Probably Obama can figure it out.
Obama
I thought: Free at last. Not him; ME! And I think that’s what Dr. Martin Luther King meant, or at least it strongly and strangely feels that way to me. He wasn’t thinking about a day when blacks would be free at last. He was thinking about ALL of us. Free at last. Great God almighty. As long as blacks were kept in a place, it meant whites were kept in a place, too. No more. For 45 years, I loved that line but misunderstood it so severely that I gave it only half-credit. Now on an early morning in the 60th grade, I finally understand it.
I folded the paper and quickened my step up the walk. Normally I go in, sit down with the paper, look at the sections above the fold, and hand over the front page to Karen. Not this time. I was going to go inside, flip the paper open, drop the paper on the nook table right under Karen’s nose, and watch her eyes. She looked and actually jumped in her chair. What kind of national power are we tapping into, when all are free to contribute the content of their character?
Talk about reactions.I keep looking for an interview with Rev. Jesse Jackson. His face, finger to his lips and tears on his cheeks, was to me the most riveting image from the entire coverage of this presidential campaign. I decided his entire life might be passing before his eyes, not flashing by, as at the threat of death, but in some slow pace of one being born again. So far, I haven’t found anything to read about it, which is not really like the old Jesse Jackson. But you know, talking about, or reading about, such experiences can never equal the experience.
Very sad, that newspapers are in peril. No other medium has delivered the electricity that that Obama headline blasted into me. That is another chemistry whose source I would like to examine. Later on, Wednesday morning, Karen said she would like to get our local paper – we only take the local paper on Thursdays through Sundays – to see the local election results.
For the second time in an hour, I framed a line so as to watch her reaction. I said: “You can get the results online.” She flinched like I had hosed her down with lemon juice. "No," she said. "I want the paper." No way could online results be a matter of record. Later in the morning, we got the local paper. It was the last one in the rack. Newspapers have a long reputation as being the first draft of history. Sure don’t know what’s going to replace that, in the years to come. Hey! Probably Obama can figure it out.
November 04, 2008
Brooks, Cohen look backward to see forward
I suggest that the two best commentaries about this Election Day have come from David Brooks at The New York Times and Richard Cohen of The Washington Post.
They are so effective, and so intriguing, because they look backward to see forward. And they look backward far enough – 45 years – to require us to challenge our assumptions as we try to see forward 45 years. This is a trick I learned how to do trying to see the future of media. From here, looking back 45 years at the media of 1963, and comparing it with the media of today, when I turn around and try to see 45 years forward, I am hit with the same enormity of distance and change that I had just felt looking at 1963. If I had not been there, I might not believe how primitive was media at the time of the Kennedy assassination. How primitive will 2008 media appear, to the citizens of 2053?
Cohen says Barack Obama, popularly described as a transformational figure, is in fact a confirmational figure, whose candidacy and probable election confirms Lyndon Johnson’s work in the early 1960s that resulted in the Civil Rights Act of 1964. So great is the change from that day to this that it took us 45 years, traveling one day at a time. Today, if we take Obama as a halfway point, and try to see forward from here, what will American liberty look like in 2053? The youth of today, such a new force in this election, will be in their 60s. What will they think, looking back at a 2008 America so quaint that Barack Obama’s election made history?
David Brooks says today “is not only a pivot, but a confluence of pivots.” He calls today the end of an economic era, a political era, and a generational era: “Generationally, it marks the end of baby boomer supremacy, which began in 1968.” Trying to see forward, what will be the synergistic opportunities for three eras, coming to life as one, midwifed by a leader whose watchword is inclusion? As the new, young, green generations assume leadership supremacy, where will the new economic and political eras be steered? What will they look like, by 2053? Will there be fossil fuels? Will there be parties?
My wife has a way of putting her finger on a thing. This morning she said we may never see another presidential election with four white males on the ticket. After 2008, women won’t be pushing their way into politics anymore. They will be pulled. I think that may be the most telling pivot point, as we set out on the first day toward 2053. We are shifting from a push to a pull society. For so long, so many vital issues have had to push their way into consideration. Starting today, they will be pulled.
They are so effective, and so intriguing, because they look backward to see forward. And they look backward far enough – 45 years – to require us to challenge our assumptions as we try to see forward 45 years. This is a trick I learned how to do trying to see the future of media. From here, looking back 45 years at the media of 1963, and comparing it with the media of today, when I turn around and try to see 45 years forward, I am hit with the same enormity of distance and change that I had just felt looking at 1963. If I had not been there, I might not believe how primitive was media at the time of the Kennedy assassination. How primitive will 2008 media appear, to the citizens of 2053?
Cohen says Barack Obama, popularly described as a transformational figure, is in fact a confirmational figure, whose candidacy and probable election confirms Lyndon Johnson’s work in the early 1960s that resulted in the Civil Rights Act of 1964. So great is the change from that day to this that it took us 45 years, traveling one day at a time. Today, if we take Obama as a halfway point, and try to see forward from here, what will American liberty look like in 2053? The youth of today, such a new force in this election, will be in their 60s. What will they think, looking back at a 2008 America so quaint that Barack Obama’s election made history?
David Brooks says today “is not only a pivot, but a confluence of pivots.” He calls today the end of an economic era, a political era, and a generational era: “Generationally, it marks the end of baby boomer supremacy, which began in 1968.” Trying to see forward, what will be the synergistic opportunities for three eras, coming to life as one, midwifed by a leader whose watchword is inclusion? As the new, young, green generations assume leadership supremacy, where will the new economic and political eras be steered? What will they look like, by 2053? Will there be fossil fuels? Will there be parties?
My wife has a way of putting her finger on a thing. This morning she said we may never see another presidential election with four white males on the ticket. After 2008, women won’t be pushing their way into politics anymore. They will be pulled. I think that may be the most telling pivot point, as we set out on the first day toward 2053. We are shifting from a push to a pull society. For so long, so many vital issues have had to push their way into consideration. Starting today, they will be pulled.
November 03, 2008
Still Obama
Last April, I decided I should vote for Sen. Barack Obama for president for this reason: Of the three candidates at the time – Obama, Clinton, McCain, all fine people – Obama was the only one who gave the citizens of this country room to take a leap of faith. My belief in that unique opportunity has not been altered by anything that has happened in the intervening months of the campaign.
It relates to his famous speech about race delivered last March, after the other candidates attacked his relationship to his controversial minister, Rev. Jeremiah Wright. I found that speech again yesterday and printed it out, all nine pages, and read it again. When I finished, my reaction was the same as at the time. The speech transcended not only the candidates’ attacks, but the candidates, the campaign, and politics itself. In that 45 minutes, Obama laid before a national audience a simple depth of thought and understanding that was not obtainable by Clinton or McCain.
Now it is Nov. 3, and the election is tomorrow. Clinton is gone, Obama and McCain remain. I have thought that Obama should have made one of those 45-minute speeches at least every other month, on the issue of his choice, to remind Americans of the man's transcendent ability simply to think, explore, and resolve. It would have provided a natural and effective barometer of his qualifications for office. That did not happen. Instead, it was John McCain who provided a new benchmark. He selected Sarah Palin. I am trying to imagine what a Sarah Palin 45-minute speech on race relations would sound like. Obama is not running against Palin, but he is running against the individual who gave Palin a national voice. I would describe that as a telling update on the depth of thought and understanding available to John McCain.
For that quality of depth, in the entrenched shallowness of politics, I feel ready to trust Obama’s vision. It is an apolitical trust. This is not an election to be voting politically, or even to be voting against the present administration. What good would that do? The cattle are all out of the corral. We are a people in deep trouble. There is evidence that, given a few days to think about it, Obama could make a 45-minute presentation about people in trouble that would transcend politics. What a starting place that would be. In this election, I am betting on a man's ability and willingness to change the status quo in America in the years 2009-12. In what ways? I don’t know. My belief in Obama is a leap of faith, a roll of the dice. But he is the only one who gives me a chance to roll. That, I am convinced, is a lesser gamble in my future as an American than placing trust in John McCain, even if we had never heard of Sarah Palin, but certainly since we have.
It relates to his famous speech about race delivered last March, after the other candidates attacked his relationship to his controversial minister, Rev. Jeremiah Wright. I found that speech again yesterday and printed it out, all nine pages, and read it again. When I finished, my reaction was the same as at the time. The speech transcended not only the candidates’ attacks, but the candidates, the campaign, and politics itself. In that 45 minutes, Obama laid before a national audience a simple depth of thought and understanding that was not obtainable by Clinton or McCain.
Now it is Nov. 3, and the election is tomorrow. Clinton is gone, Obama and McCain remain. I have thought that Obama should have made one of those 45-minute speeches at least every other month, on the issue of his choice, to remind Americans of the man's transcendent ability simply to think, explore, and resolve. It would have provided a natural and effective barometer of his qualifications for office. That did not happen. Instead, it was John McCain who provided a new benchmark. He selected Sarah Palin. I am trying to imagine what a Sarah Palin 45-minute speech on race relations would sound like. Obama is not running against Palin, but he is running against the individual who gave Palin a national voice. I would describe that as a telling update on the depth of thought and understanding available to John McCain.
For that quality of depth, in the entrenched shallowness of politics, I feel ready to trust Obama’s vision. It is an apolitical trust. This is not an election to be voting politically, or even to be voting against the present administration. What good would that do? The cattle are all out of the corral. We are a people in deep trouble. There is evidence that, given a few days to think about it, Obama could make a 45-minute presentation about people in trouble that would transcend politics. What a starting place that would be. In this election, I am betting on a man's ability and willingness to change the status quo in America in the years 2009-12. In what ways? I don’t know. My belief in Obama is a leap of faith, a roll of the dice. But he is the only one who gives me a chance to roll. That, I am convinced, is a lesser gamble in my future as an American than placing trust in John McCain, even if we had never heard of Sarah Palin, but certainly since we have.
November 01, 2008
Feeling Like Barack Obama's Cultural Cousin
I am starting to feel like Barack Obama's cultural cousin.
When he left the campaign trail to visit his grandmother, who was a key figure in his rearing, I kept thinking about Susie Grant, my grandmother, in whose house I grew up. Today, news comes that Obama has a half-aunt on his father's side, found in circumstances about which he knew nothing, and that development is similar to the half-brothers I never knew, then met twice, and may never see again.
Susie was my mother's mother. She was born in northern Alabama and came with her family to West Texas at the turn of the 20th century, about 1900. There she met and married Roy Grant, who grew up in Pulaski, Tennessee, just across the state line from Susie's home. They grew up 40 miles apart and had to travel clear to Haskell County, Texas, before they would meet.
Susie and Roy had six kids, including my mother, June, who was next-to-youngest. Roy died suddenly in 1929, and Susie raised the six on her own. She was gentle, pious, and remains the toughest individual I ever knew. Was she a racist? I don't want to believe that, but every time she saw a black man on television – one of the few places we saw black people in 1950s Abilene, Texas – she made a face. I suppose it is possible I was reared by a racist, and the people I vote for are just going to have to live with that.
World War II came, and a huge Army training base, Camp Barkeley, was opened a few miles south of Abilene. My father, Don Wayman of Colorado, was sent there to train. He was a wonderful singer, a tenor from the old school, and my mother always said she heard him (at the downtown USO) before she saw him. They were married at Camp Barkeley on Easter Sunday, 1942. I was born on March 6, 1943, by which time my mother and father were divorcing.
My mother and I, and two of her sisters, lived with Susie. They told me my father was dead. There were no photos of him, no letters, no notes, no insignia, no nothing. The only evidence I had of him was me.
In 1989, following an inner pulse, I took steps to find him, and I did. I saw him for the first time on July 27, 1989, in the driveway of his home in Greeley, Colorado. He was happy to see me. He said that on the day after I was born, he snuck into the hospital nursery in Abilene and held me in his arms for 15 minutes. He said my family, particularly Susie, didn't like him. He left Abilene, returned to Greeley, married, taught school, and with his wife Shirley had four sons, my half-brothers. It is an interesting feeling, at age 46, to learn you have four brothers. Circumstances: two of them were in lifelong schizophrenia battles, and a third was gay. In some circles, my political stock must be seriously dwindling.
The weekend was interesting and fundamentally informative on both sides. Don Lee, my dad's oldest son – other than me – said to me: "I'm not the oldest brother anymore." "Sure you are," I said. "I wouldn't know the first thing about being the oldest brother." That is as true on this day as it was on that one.
My father and I remained in touch, but he bonded more with my wife, now my ex, and with my children, than he did with me. That was fine. In our short years of contact, he resolved a lifelong fear of mine, and he told me I removed a weight from his days that he felt was lengthening his life. I went to Greeley twice more, once with my children and the third time at his death. That was in 2002. His sons and I have had no contact since.
Obama and I, and who knows how many others, were spun out of a swirl, created by a century of change, and motion, and mobility of events and of people. Our histories are unconventional. Make of them what you will.
When he left the campaign trail to visit his grandmother, who was a key figure in his rearing, I kept thinking about Susie Grant, my grandmother, in whose house I grew up. Today, news comes that Obama has a half-aunt on his father's side, found in circumstances about which he knew nothing, and that development is similar to the half-brothers I never knew, then met twice, and may never see again.
Susie was my mother's mother. She was born in northern Alabama and came with her family to West Texas at the turn of the 20th century, about 1900. There she met and married Roy Grant, who grew up in Pulaski, Tennessee, just across the state line from Susie's home. They grew up 40 miles apart and had to travel clear to Haskell County, Texas, before they would meet.
Susie and Roy had six kids, including my mother, June, who was next-to-youngest. Roy died suddenly in 1929, and Susie raised the six on her own. She was gentle, pious, and remains the toughest individual I ever knew. Was she a racist? I don't want to believe that, but every time she saw a black man on television – one of the few places we saw black people in 1950s Abilene, Texas – she made a face. I suppose it is possible I was reared by a racist, and the people I vote for are just going to have to live with that.
World War II came, and a huge Army training base, Camp Barkeley, was opened a few miles south of Abilene. My father, Don Wayman of Colorado, was sent there to train. He was a wonderful singer, a tenor from the old school, and my mother always said she heard him (at the downtown USO) before she saw him. They were married at Camp Barkeley on Easter Sunday, 1942. I was born on March 6, 1943, by which time my mother and father were divorcing.
My mother and I, and two of her sisters, lived with Susie. They told me my father was dead. There were no photos of him, no letters, no notes, no insignia, no nothing. The only evidence I had of him was me.
In 1989, following an inner pulse, I took steps to find him, and I did. I saw him for the first time on July 27, 1989, in the driveway of his home in Greeley, Colorado. He was happy to see me. He said that on the day after I was born, he snuck into the hospital nursery in Abilene and held me in his arms for 15 minutes. He said my family, particularly Susie, didn't like him. He left Abilene, returned to Greeley, married, taught school, and with his wife Shirley had four sons, my half-brothers. It is an interesting feeling, at age 46, to learn you have four brothers. Circumstances: two of them were in lifelong schizophrenia battles, and a third was gay. In some circles, my political stock must be seriously dwindling.
The weekend was interesting and fundamentally informative on both sides. Don Lee, my dad's oldest son – other than me – said to me: "I'm not the oldest brother anymore." "Sure you are," I said. "I wouldn't know the first thing about being the oldest brother." That is as true on this day as it was on that one.
My father and I remained in touch, but he bonded more with my wife, now my ex, and with my children, than he did with me. That was fine. In our short years of contact, he resolved a lifelong fear of mine, and he told me I removed a weight from his days that he felt was lengthening his life. I went to Greeley twice more, once with my children and the third time at his death. That was in 2002. His sons and I have had no contact since.
Obama and I, and who knows how many others, were spun out of a swirl, created by a century of change, and motion, and mobility of events and of people. Our histories are unconventional. Make of them what you will.
Google seeding didn't work
About 45 minutes after I Googled "Rain" yesterday, a few clouds showed up in the west.
"Dang," I said. But 30 minutes later they were gone. Beautiful sunset. You should have seen it.
Beautiful, clear, sunrise as well. The sunrise this week transited, from north to south, a feature on the eastern horizon that we call "Dolly's Right One." This marks the beginning of the rainy season in Southern California.
Well, parts of Southern California. Wherever I go, the anti-Joe Btfsplk, a sunny circle opens in the clouds. It is a good thing I was not a farmer. It is now 9 a.m., and outside is just so clear and pretty. The weather bureau says a 30 percent chance of rain tomorrow. I'm not getting my hopes up. Have you ever noticed how hard it is, not getting your hopes up?
Meanwhile, the weather bureau has issued a flash flood watch for Ventura and Santa Barbara counties, and the north part of Los Angeles County, about 150 miles north of us. Thunderstorms are developing in a moist, unstable air mass off the coast and are expected overland before noon.
On Google, Wikipedia identified "rain" as "liquid precipitation." Thanks for the heads-up.
"Dang," I said. But 30 minutes later they were gone. Beautiful sunset. You should have seen it.
Beautiful, clear, sunrise as well. The sunrise this week transited, from north to south, a feature on the eastern horizon that we call "Dolly's Right One." This marks the beginning of the rainy season in Southern California.
Well, parts of Southern California. Wherever I go, the anti-Joe Btfsplk, a sunny circle opens in the clouds. It is a good thing I was not a farmer. It is now 9 a.m., and outside is just so clear and pretty. The weather bureau says a 30 percent chance of rain tomorrow. I'm not getting my hopes up. Have you ever noticed how hard it is, not getting your hopes up?
Meanwhile, the weather bureau has issued a flash flood watch for Ventura and Santa Barbara counties, and the north part of Los Angeles County, about 150 miles north of us. Thunderstorms are developing in a moist, unstable air mass off the coast and are expected overland before noon.
On Google, Wikipedia identified "rain" as "liquid precipitation." Thanks for the heads-up.
October 31, 2008
Rain? Don't get your hopes up
I guess you have to be born a weather junkie, as I was, to gripe about Southern California weather. Wednesday, the forecast suggested a change (!) in the weather, calling for a windy, cloudy, day Thursday with a chance of sprinkles (!!) and more clouds and moisture for Friday.
On Thursday afternoon, sure enough, the wind rose, clouds came over, and a sprinkle of rain fell from the sky just long enough for me to raise my face and catch a couple of drops in my eyes. And with that, it was gone. Now it is Friday morning, 10 a.m. Outside there is not a cloud between here and Hawaii. There is some sprinkly weather, all right, but it is about 100 miles north of us. The good weather always goes north of us. I am a twin to Charlie Brown, and Lucy Van Pelt is the weather bureau. "C'mon, Charlie Brown, I mean it this time, it is going to rain with clouds and wind, and temperature in the 60s. I'll bring this weather, I promise, so you can go ahead and get your hopes up."
So I do, every time, and out there right now the sky is a beautiful, deep, warm, blue, and I am working up a sweat, sweeping up another splintered pile of dashed hopes. I know this is unreasonable. People spend millions of dollars to leave the East and move to Southern California for the weather. I love our weather, I really do. The East gets snowstorms, we get sunstorms. Who's to complain? Yet I have the feeling there are other Charlie Brown cousins out there this morning, wondering why they feel so grumpy.
The depressing effects of gray weather on humans is documented. Light-emitting devices have been invented and marketed to counter these effects. I have always thought such devices were silly, but no sillier, I suppose, than a device to block out sunstruck blue skies and drip water on your head. I am the reverse Joe Btfsplk. In "Li'l Abner," Joe went around with a gray, sprinkly cloud over his head. I go around in a spotlight of blue sky. When I go home to visit Texas, I always hope there will be some weather. There never is. When I moved to San Diego in 1972, God decided that was it for me. I stepped forever on the bad side of the Weather Nazi. No rain for you. No thunder, no lightning. Old friends in Texas know of my plight. When they get a thunderstorm, they actually call on the phone and let me listen.
I would never have been able to spell "Joe Btfsplk" without Google. I wonder if Al Capp, fulminating in his grave, feels betrayed by Google for providing such easy access to a secret he thought would probably be secure forever, outside of a circle of devoted comic strip scholars. With that kind of power, I would think I could Google "rain" and sit back and wait for a shower within the hour. Hm. I actually haven't tried that yet. I will go do that now, and let you know what happens. Sounds like a last resort, doesn't it?
On Thursday afternoon, sure enough, the wind rose, clouds came over, and a sprinkle of rain fell from the sky just long enough for me to raise my face and catch a couple of drops in my eyes. And with that, it was gone. Now it is Friday morning, 10 a.m. Outside there is not a cloud between here and Hawaii. There is some sprinkly weather, all right, but it is about 100 miles north of us. The good weather always goes north of us. I am a twin to Charlie Brown, and Lucy Van Pelt is the weather bureau. "C'mon, Charlie Brown, I mean it this time, it is going to rain with clouds and wind, and temperature in the 60s. I'll bring this weather, I promise, so you can go ahead and get your hopes up."
So I do, every time, and out there right now the sky is a beautiful, deep, warm, blue, and I am working up a sweat, sweeping up another splintered pile of dashed hopes. I know this is unreasonable. People spend millions of dollars to leave the East and move to Southern California for the weather. I love our weather, I really do. The East gets snowstorms, we get sunstorms. Who's to complain? Yet I have the feeling there are other Charlie Brown cousins out there this morning, wondering why they feel so grumpy.
The depressing effects of gray weather on humans is documented. Light-emitting devices have been invented and marketed to counter these effects. I have always thought such devices were silly, but no sillier, I suppose, than a device to block out sunstruck blue skies and drip water on your head. I am the reverse Joe Btfsplk. In "Li'l Abner," Joe went around with a gray, sprinkly cloud over his head. I go around in a spotlight of blue sky. When I go home to visit Texas, I always hope there will be some weather. There never is. When I moved to San Diego in 1972, God decided that was it for me. I stepped forever on the bad side of the Weather Nazi. No rain for you. No thunder, no lightning. Old friends in Texas know of my plight. When they get a thunderstorm, they actually call on the phone and let me listen.
I would never have been able to spell "Joe Btfsplk" without Google. I wonder if Al Capp, fulminating in his grave, feels betrayed by Google for providing such easy access to a secret he thought would probably be secure forever, outside of a circle of devoted comic strip scholars. With that kind of power, I would think I could Google "rain" and sit back and wait for a shower within the hour. Hm. I actually haven't tried that yet. I will go do that now, and let you know what happens. Sounds like a last resort, doesn't it?
October 26, 2008
Let computers wake up at human speed
News arrives in today's Times that the computer industry is working to introduce computers that boot up faster. This work is in response to human impatience with the time it takes a computer to boot up. Those three minutes, the impatient humans say, feel like "an eternity."
Let me go on record as believing this is not a good idea. For more than 65 years I have been operating a computer that makes the PCs and Macs look like a box of cotton wads. Operating at what researchers say is only 10 percent of its capacity, this computer provides me five, and sometimes six, senses, a huge memory cache, and an ability to turn blankness into thought into action at astounding speeds.
Yet there is one thing my computer is not very good at, and that is starting up. When I wake up in the morning, it may be not three minutes, but four or five, before I am alert enough to swing my feet over the edge of the bed and search for the floor. Then I hear my computer issuing sort of DOS commands: "Stand." "Walk." "Bathroom." "Kitchen." "Coffee." "Sit." It may be a full 10 or 15 minutes before the computer is ready to check email.
I know my computer can boot up a lot faster, but it doesn't like it. When I was in Army officer training, at 5 a.m. lights went on and voices boomed commands and threats of what would happen if we weren't outside and in ranks in 60 seconds. I think the point was to teach us that we could boot up that fast if we had to. I also knew, standing in ranks, that it would be another couple of minutes before I could point a rifle and hit anything.
Living in Southern California, I have been awakened by earthquakes, and the process was the same. Quick response, slow reaction. Computers have no choice but to jump at the first surge of electricity, but they stay groggy while circuits hook up. Functions in those moments are prioritized. So it was in the first moments after the 1994 Northridge quake: "Stand!" "Run!" "Warn children!" Not until I banged on the door of my teenaged daughter and step-daughter and, when they opened the door, followed their eyes, did I become aware that I was totally naked. I take solace, knowing they were also booting up, that they probably didn't register me very well.
I have never known, certainly never lived with, a human who could boot up in seconds, and I expect the first one I see will be in either a science fiction or an aggravation movie. It seems unreasonable to me to expect it of PCs and Macs, which, compared to our onboard models, are third-rate systems second to none.
I do feel the annoyance of being personally up to speed, then starting up my PC and twiddling my thumbs while it wakes up. It's the same annoyance we feel trying to get children out of bed.
But we have to watch what we wish for. Given the choice, considering the past decade and peering into the next, I think we're better off if we engineer computers to wake up like sleepy people, instead of engineering them to be instantly up and dressed and ready to work, thus allowing the digital age to whittle our patience even closer to the bone. We still will live in the analog world, and patience is the analog world's cartilage.
Let me go on record as believing this is not a good idea. For more than 65 years I have been operating a computer that makes the PCs and Macs look like a box of cotton wads. Operating at what researchers say is only 10 percent of its capacity, this computer provides me five, and sometimes six, senses, a huge memory cache, and an ability to turn blankness into thought into action at astounding speeds.
Yet there is one thing my computer is not very good at, and that is starting up. When I wake up in the morning, it may be not three minutes, but four or five, before I am alert enough to swing my feet over the edge of the bed and search for the floor. Then I hear my computer issuing sort of DOS commands: "Stand." "Walk." "Bathroom." "Kitchen." "Coffee." "Sit." It may be a full 10 or 15 minutes before the computer is ready to check email.
I know my computer can boot up a lot faster, but it doesn't like it. When I was in Army officer training, at 5 a.m. lights went on and voices boomed commands and threats of what would happen if we weren't outside and in ranks in 60 seconds. I think the point was to teach us that we could boot up that fast if we had to. I also knew, standing in ranks, that it would be another couple of minutes before I could point a rifle and hit anything.
Living in Southern California, I have been awakened by earthquakes, and the process was the same. Quick response, slow reaction. Computers have no choice but to jump at the first surge of electricity, but they stay groggy while circuits hook up. Functions in those moments are prioritized. So it was in the first moments after the 1994 Northridge quake: "Stand!" "Run!" "Warn children!" Not until I banged on the door of my teenaged daughter and step-daughter and, when they opened the door, followed their eyes, did I become aware that I was totally naked. I take solace, knowing they were also booting up, that they probably didn't register me very well.
I have never known, certainly never lived with, a human who could boot up in seconds, and I expect the first one I see will be in either a science fiction or an aggravation movie. It seems unreasonable to me to expect it of PCs and Macs, which, compared to our onboard models, are third-rate systems second to none.
I do feel the annoyance of being personally up to speed, then starting up my PC and twiddling my thumbs while it wakes up. It's the same annoyance we feel trying to get children out of bed.
But we have to watch what we wish for. Given the choice, considering the past decade and peering into the next, I think we're better off if we engineer computers to wake up like sleepy people, instead of engineering them to be instantly up and dressed and ready to work, thus allowing the digital age to whittle our patience even closer to the bone. We still will live in the analog world, and patience is the analog world's cartilage.
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