Two things were on my mind as I drove to the DMV: my eyes and my smile. In California, your driver's license renews twice automatically for five-year terms, then you have to go into the office for renewal, so they can check your vision and take a new photo.
They made a big deal about vision on the renewal form that came in the mail. It was against the law, they said, to withhold any changes in vision since your last check. I had none of the changes (macular degeneration, etc.) listed, but I did have 15 more years on the eyes and the moment when they asked me to read the eye chart weighed heavy on my mind.
And I have trouble smiling for the camera. Look at my photo there, just to the right. Karen got me to smile that much by saying, "Imagine you just found out you won the Pulitzer Prize." So I practiced, looking in the rear-view mirror. Totally goofy. I just don't know how to do it. How does Brad Pitt flash the pearlies with such relaxed effect? How does Harrison Ford bring up that lazy grin? Does he even think about it? Tell me: looking at the photo, can you tell that I am trying to grin, or survive the pain of a colorectal exam?
If you are a San Diegan, my closest DMV (Department of Motor Vehicles) was in El Cajon. You understand how lucky I was when a parking space opened up right by the doors. Inside was like stepping into a crowded terminal, supplicants clutching papers like the refugees in "Casablanca," clustered at a boarding gate to the highways of California. Maybe triple the crowd for an Oprah taping, all nondescript Does, Janes and Johns, no one standing out. There WAS one person, in flipflops, shorts, a blue wifebeater tshirt and a gut the size of the first atomic bomb.
The operation was take-a-number. I had tried last week to call for a reservation, but the first available was March 12. My number was G130. Facing the rows of seats were monitors, suspended from the ceiling, on which numbers appeared as they were announced by a mechanical woman's voice (thoughtfully softened by a bit of echo): "Now serving A084, at Window 14." And a lucky participant would scuttle forward. The G series of numbers stood at G066. Not so bad, if there hadn't also been A, B, C, D, E, F, H and J series showing on the screens.
I stood awhile, then sat down. I was nervous about my number. I felt to make sure it was in my jacket pocket, then with my other hand caught the slip in a pinch of fabric as I withdrew the feeling hand. When "G130" was called, I didn't want to be scuttling forward as my passport to freedom was fluttering to the floor back at my seat. There were several children, and they all seemed to be a year, or a year and a half, old. They studied each other like miniature social scientists. They were well-behaved and did not cry. I wondered if it was because the crowd and its expectant tension gave them some reason to believe that SpongeBob Squarepants was about to suddenly appear.
An hour had not quite passed, and the woman's voice announced "G98." I felt a thrill rush through my body. My G130 was assuming value. The reward, for each of us, was to be called. When I was called, would I be ready? I practiced my smile. Then just on impulse, I practiced a half-smile, first on the left side, then the right. And there it was! On the left side, it felt like a smile. On the right side, it felt like a grimace. It was the right side all along, that had been the trouble! I practiced again and again, just the left side. It felt good. Leave it to the DMV, to bring out a lifelong truth about a person.
At "G115" I was so jumpy that I stood up. Back at G079, I had reckoned my window would be No. 11. I found a standing place close to it. I packaged my checkbook, renewal form, and old license in one jacket pocket and located my number again in the opposite pocket. To my left, seated at the end of a row, was an older woman in dark glasses clutching her number: G154. She seemed abnormally calm.
G128. G129. My God, they were about to raise the curtain and I would have to speak my lines. "Now serving G130, at Window 9." It was ME. I scuttled forward into the custody of a nice man whose tag identified him as Robert. If his name had been Rick, I think I would have laughed out loud. "How are you?" he said. I said, "I'm so excited I hope I don't fall over." He smiled – a nice, easy smile – and said, "Well, let's have it," and I handed over the G130. "When I got here," I said, "it was G066."
"Just sign the form," Robert smiled, and I did, and wrote him a check for $28. "Now look at the chart." It was above and behind him. The letters stood out. I read them easily. "Go get your picture taken, and you're outta here." I reached over the counter and shook his hand. "Thanks for waiting," I said. "Thank YOU for waiting," he said. There was one in front of me in the photo line. It took less than a minute. I flashed the old half-smile and it was over. Into the sunny day I sauntered, good for another 200,000 miles. They will mail the new license to me. I can't wait to see the picture.
February 28, 2009
February 22, 2009
We play too nicey-nice with the rhinovirus
I am fortunate to have been battling a cold for the past two – maybe three, now – weeks, because it has focused my attention.
If I had felt fine, I might have missed the story in the media about research advances that could result in curing – or preventing – the common cold. Researchers now have a complete genome map for the rhinovirus that causes a cold. They believe there might be a way to neutralize the genetic strategy the rhinovirus uses to infect cells in the lining of the human nose, where the virus attacks.
I can't see the umptillion-dollar cold remedy industry throwing its entire weight behind this research, but it is immediately useful to me to know that a cold starts in the lining of the nose. In the story, a physician says that while we are waiting for the rhinovirus genome research to go forward, the only real treatment for a common cold is to wash out the nasal passages, drink warm drinks, and get plenty of rest. I know how to drink warm drinks and rest, but I am not up on washing out the nasal passages. And the story offered no guidance.
It did make me think of a new commercial I have seen for Zicam, a cold remedy in which an actress holds a Zicam-loaded cotton swab up to her nostril, not entering it into the void, but just touching it to the edge of the nostril, leaving no confusion about what happens next. A trusted friend then, last week, recommended Zicam, but the store was out. Apparently a lot of people read the same story and saw the same commercial.
We did get a version of Zicam that you spray into the mouth. I can't say if it has worked or not. One day my cold seems to be gone, the next day it is back. Today it is back. I should say the THREAT of it is back. I am not so much battling a cold as I am battling coming down with a cold. Battle is probably the wrong word. Washing out the nasal passages does not conjure a battle image, nor does suggestively touching a nostril with a cotton swab, lest we wretch into our Cheerios. Battle is not a strategy of the remedy industry, which wants a cold to last as long as it can.
And, of course, then, I remember my grandmother Susie. Susie DID battle colds. As a young girl in 1890s Alabama, she learned that a woman's medical mission was to keep the men in the fields. I am awed to having had a direct living link to someone who knew about life in 1890s Alabama, and to be only one more living link away from someone who lived during the Civil War, and how far medicine has come in less than three full human lifetimes.
Actually, I never learned how Susie may have battled colds in the 1890s. From other treatments she practiced, I expect her original cold treatment may have involved a black, tarry substance she swore by. By the time I was born, the remedy community had introduced Vicks Salve, which was brutal enough for her cold treatment standards and had the advantage of avoiding injurious violent resistance by the victim.
Still, it was a battle image: me against her, and her and Vicks against this cold that was keeping this six-year-old man out of the first-grade fields. She layered it on my chest and on top of that placed a cuptowel that she had pre-heated to 500 degrees in the oven. She pulled the covers up under my chin, got a teaspoon, heaped it with Vicks, handed it to me and told me to swallow it.
That is the kind of battle image I almost want to deploy against this cat-and-mouse cold. Almost, but not quite.
If I had felt fine, I might have missed the story in the media about research advances that could result in curing – or preventing – the common cold. Researchers now have a complete genome map for the rhinovirus that causes a cold. They believe there might be a way to neutralize the genetic strategy the rhinovirus uses to infect cells in the lining of the human nose, where the virus attacks.
I can't see the umptillion-dollar cold remedy industry throwing its entire weight behind this research, but it is immediately useful to me to know that a cold starts in the lining of the nose. In the story, a physician says that while we are waiting for the rhinovirus genome research to go forward, the only real treatment for a common cold is to wash out the nasal passages, drink warm drinks, and get plenty of rest. I know how to drink warm drinks and rest, but I am not up on washing out the nasal passages. And the story offered no guidance.
It did make me think of a new commercial I have seen for Zicam, a cold remedy in which an actress holds a Zicam-loaded cotton swab up to her nostril, not entering it into the void, but just touching it to the edge of the nostril, leaving no confusion about what happens next. A trusted friend then, last week, recommended Zicam, but the store was out. Apparently a lot of people read the same story and saw the same commercial.
We did get a version of Zicam that you spray into the mouth. I can't say if it has worked or not. One day my cold seems to be gone, the next day it is back. Today it is back. I should say the THREAT of it is back. I am not so much battling a cold as I am battling coming down with a cold. Battle is probably the wrong word. Washing out the nasal passages does not conjure a battle image, nor does suggestively touching a nostril with a cotton swab, lest we wretch into our Cheerios. Battle is not a strategy of the remedy industry, which wants a cold to last as long as it can.
And, of course, then, I remember my grandmother Susie. Susie DID battle colds. As a young girl in 1890s Alabama, she learned that a woman's medical mission was to keep the men in the fields. I am awed to having had a direct living link to someone who knew about life in 1890s Alabama, and to be only one more living link away from someone who lived during the Civil War, and how far medicine has come in less than three full human lifetimes.
Actually, I never learned how Susie may have battled colds in the 1890s. From other treatments she practiced, I expect her original cold treatment may have involved a black, tarry substance she swore by. By the time I was born, the remedy community had introduced Vicks Salve, which was brutal enough for her cold treatment standards and had the advantage of avoiding injurious violent resistance by the victim.
Still, it was a battle image: me against her, and her and Vicks against this cold that was keeping this six-year-old man out of the first-grade fields. She layered it on my chest and on top of that placed a cuptowel that she had pre-heated to 500 degrees in the oven. She pulled the covers up under my chin, got a teaspoon, heaped it with Vicks, handed it to me and told me to swallow it.
That is the kind of battle image I almost want to deploy against this cat-and-mouse cold. Almost, but not quite.
February 21, 2009
Archives: here's an interview I did with Willie Nelson in 1986
Willie Nelson grinned amiably -- all of Willie's expressions rise from amiability -- at the suggestion that, as the 800-pound gorilla of country music, he can sing anything he wants.
"Well, I am country," he said. "Always have been, always will be. Country is what I write, what I sing, what I think I do." He grinned again. "But I do like to sing other kinds of songs."
And so in any given concert, Willie with his Family Band will offer rock and roll ("Whiskey River"), hard country ("The Party's Over"), blues ("City of New Orleans"), ballads ("To All the Girls I've Loved Before"), ethnic folk ("Seven Spanish Angels"), maybe a classical instrumental ("Bach Minuet in G") if the mood strikes him, and of course "Blue Skies," "Georgia on My Mind," and other pop standards, including -- you can count on it -- "Stardust."
" `Stardust' is probably the greatest song -- well, `Stardust' and `Moonlight in Vermont' are the two greatest songs -- that I think were ever written," Willie said.
"This is the same guy that says, `I'm country,' but I also know what is really beautiful and what's good and what's difficult. `Moonlight in Vermont' is a difficult melody, it's a difficult lyric. Your regular ordinary run-of-the-mill picker don't jump out there and start playing `Moonlight in Vermont' like he might `Fraulein,' you know."
For the moment, Willie was only talking about music, over cups of coffee in his suite at the L'Ermitage in Beverly Hills. He had come to Los Angeles in T-shirt and jeans to dangle before distributors rough cuts of another in a series of movies -- this one featuring, among others, Morgan Fairchild -- in which Willie has basically played himself.
A month ago, in a studio he owns in the rustic Texas hill country, he and his pal Merle Haggard finished a duet album -- "I like to sing duets" -- for release next month.
This week, Willie picked up the tour again, 100 dates (including "Farm-Aid II," in Austin, July 4) carrying into August, where from Maine to San Diego he sings the songs he likes and the songs he writes and the standards that he grew up loving. Next Wednesday, Willie will be 53 years old, living beyond the need for image, dabbling in music and film and vinyl, an eclectic cowboy recording his autobiography one day at a time.
Its title song is his own "On the Road Again," and you can see the lyric coming again to his mind when he says, "People say, well, how long are you gonna be out on the road, and it's really hard for me to say, because I feel like I've always been out. I travel around, and I play music. That's what I do."
This is Willie's silver anniversary on the road. It was in 1961 that he left Texas for Nashville and his first music job, playing bass for Ray Price. Pretty soon he was writing songs and selling them to Price ("Night Life"), Faron Young ("Hello Walls") and Patsy Cline ("Crazy").
Those songs were country, and then again they weren't, quite. Willie built into their country framework a little of the sophisticated '40s styling that he so admired; "Night Life" was to "Fraulein" as a buggy was to a buckboard.
"There's a lot of people in Nashville that didn't think I was country when I went there, and maybe still don't," he said.
As a singer, Willie scored in Nashville with "Touch Me," but it was not until after he moved to Austin in 1972 that the gorilla began to stir. He tapped into the "progressive country" scene already underway in Austin, and later cultivated, principally with Waylon Jennings, the "outlaw" image that, in its appeal to studio executives, propelled Willie and Waylon into the recording mainstream.
Willie survived the image, moved beyond it, on the strength of musicianship and personal chemistry. Seldom is so compelling a face matched exactly by the voice.
A person's voice, when it is recorded and played back, does not sound the same to him, and it is a curious thing when the voice is Willie Nelson's. Is he the only one who doesn't know what he sounds like?
"I know now," he said. "I didn't; I thought I sounded different for a long time, and I couldn't get used to it. I've accepted it because I don't dislike it. It sounds probably higher than I would like it to sound."
Right now, the voice is about 70 or 80 songs ahead. The album by Willie and Haggard, due out next month, features the work of a young songwriter, David Lynn Jones, who wrote the lead song on Willie's new "Promiseland" album.
There are another "40 or 50 sides in the can" after a different session including Nelson and Haggard and a long-time but underpublicized Texas musician named Freddy Powers.
"I'm definitely going to do something with them," said Willie. "They're all the same kind of stuff we were talking about, '40s stuff."
And there is also Willie the singer re-interpreting Willie the early songwriter.
"I've re-recorded a lot of those songs with my band," he said. "I'm just kind of waiting for a slot to put them out. I've had so much product out there over the last few years that I don't want to flood the market.
"The only way to know if you're getting overexposed or not is if people quit coming to see you. So far, the crowds have been pretty good."
"Well, I am country," he said. "Always have been, always will be. Country is what I write, what I sing, what I think I do." He grinned again. "But I do like to sing other kinds of songs."
And so in any given concert, Willie with his Family Band will offer rock and roll ("Whiskey River"), hard country ("The Party's Over"), blues ("City of New Orleans"), ballads ("To All the Girls I've Loved Before"), ethnic folk ("Seven Spanish Angels"), maybe a classical instrumental ("Bach Minuet in G") if the mood strikes him, and of course "Blue Skies," "Georgia on My Mind," and other pop standards, including -- you can count on it -- "Stardust."
" `Stardust' is probably the greatest song -- well, `Stardust' and `Moonlight in Vermont' are the two greatest songs -- that I think were ever written," Willie said.
"This is the same guy that says, `I'm country,' but I also know what is really beautiful and what's good and what's difficult. `Moonlight in Vermont' is a difficult melody, it's a difficult lyric. Your regular ordinary run-of-the-mill picker don't jump out there and start playing `Moonlight in Vermont' like he might `Fraulein,' you know."
For the moment, Willie was only talking about music, over cups of coffee in his suite at the L'Ermitage in Beverly Hills. He had come to Los Angeles in T-shirt and jeans to dangle before distributors rough cuts of another in a series of movies -- this one featuring, among others, Morgan Fairchild -- in which Willie has basically played himself.
A month ago, in a studio he owns in the rustic Texas hill country, he and his pal Merle Haggard finished a duet album -- "I like to sing duets" -- for release next month.
This week, Willie picked up the tour again, 100 dates (including "Farm-Aid II," in Austin, July 4) carrying into August, where from Maine to San Diego he sings the songs he likes and the songs he writes and the standards that he grew up loving. Next Wednesday, Willie will be 53 years old, living beyond the need for image, dabbling in music and film and vinyl, an eclectic cowboy recording his autobiography one day at a time.
Its title song is his own "On the Road Again," and you can see the lyric coming again to his mind when he says, "People say, well, how long are you gonna be out on the road, and it's really hard for me to say, because I feel like I've always been out. I travel around, and I play music. That's what I do."
This is Willie's silver anniversary on the road. It was in 1961 that he left Texas for Nashville and his first music job, playing bass for Ray Price. Pretty soon he was writing songs and selling them to Price ("Night Life"), Faron Young ("Hello Walls") and Patsy Cline ("Crazy").
Those songs were country, and then again they weren't, quite. Willie built into their country framework a little of the sophisticated '40s styling that he so admired; "Night Life" was to "Fraulein" as a buggy was to a buckboard.
"There's a lot of people in Nashville that didn't think I was country when I went there, and maybe still don't," he said.
As a singer, Willie scored in Nashville with "Touch Me," but it was not until after he moved to Austin in 1972 that the gorilla began to stir. He tapped into the "progressive country" scene already underway in Austin, and later cultivated, principally with Waylon Jennings, the "outlaw" image that, in its appeal to studio executives, propelled Willie and Waylon into the recording mainstream.
Willie survived the image, moved beyond it, on the strength of musicianship and personal chemistry. Seldom is so compelling a face matched exactly by the voice.
A person's voice, when it is recorded and played back, does not sound the same to him, and it is a curious thing when the voice is Willie Nelson's. Is he the only one who doesn't know what he sounds like?
"I know now," he said. "I didn't; I thought I sounded different for a long time, and I couldn't get used to it. I've accepted it because I don't dislike it. It sounds probably higher than I would like it to sound."
Right now, the voice is about 70 or 80 songs ahead. The album by Willie and Haggard, due out next month, features the work of a young songwriter, David Lynn Jones, who wrote the lead song on Willie's new "Promiseland" album.
There are another "40 or 50 sides in the can" after a different session including Nelson and Haggard and a long-time but underpublicized Texas musician named Freddy Powers.
"I'm definitely going to do something with them," said Willie. "They're all the same kind of stuff we were talking about, '40s stuff."
And there is also Willie the singer re-interpreting Willie the early songwriter.
"I've re-recorded a lot of those songs with my band," he said. "I'm just kind of waiting for a slot to put them out. I've had so much product out there over the last few years that I don't want to flood the market.
"The only way to know if you're getting overexposed or not is if people quit coming to see you. So far, the crowds have been pretty good."
February 16, 2009
Universe again neglects needs of human photo taker
I am always on the watch for what I call the "proscenium effect" after a rainstorm. You have seen a proscenium effect ("proscenium" means the wall that separates the stage from the audience and makes an arch over it) if you have ever sat in a theater with darkness overhead and darkness below and a wonderful slash of light coming from the stage. Tonight looked like a good bet. The back edge of the storm was moving inland from the ocean just as the sun was dropping into position to light up the eastern horizon. But then the overhead lighting director fell asleep and let the black ceiling break into clouds and sky. Imagine if the sky above the house in this photo was a black ceiling. That would put the house into the proscenium effect I keep watching for.
It didn't happen, but I can't complain too much about the result. Below, I cheated some with a tight shot to take out the blue sky, and it gives an idea what a good proscenium effect might look like. You can only do so much with the timing of these things.
It didn't happen, but I can't complain too much about the result. Below, I cheated some with a tight shot to take out the blue sky, and it gives an idea what a good proscenium effect might look like. You can only do so much with the timing of these things.
February 15, 2009
Cobbler fails to inspire global reaction
First of all, you can't put peaches, bing cherries, Trader Joe's whole grain artisanal loaf, butter, cinnamon, and peach schnapps together and somehow manage to screw it up.
At the same time, some original recipes take a little work. In my second attempt at Cobbler Jubilee, for example, I plan to drain the heavy syrup off the bing cherries. This first version came out too wet.
Here's how it went. I got a Rosemary Sourdough loaf and the whole grain loaf at Trader Joe's. I cut the bottom crust off the sourdough and cubed enough to pack into a single layer in the bottom of a lightly buttered three-quart Corningware casserole. As you recall, the goal was to create a peach cobbler with a dumpling-like bottom crust. Having achieved that by baking Dinty Moore Beef Stew on top of take-home sourdough from the Fish Market, I reasoned the same result might be possible with peaches.
I mixed together a 29-ounce can of sliced cling peaches in heavy syrup and a 13-ounce can of bing cherries in heavy syrup (this is the syrup I will omit next time). I added a teaspoon of cinnamon and a couple tablespoons of peach schnapps. My original vision called for Grand Marnier, until I saw the price of Grand Marnier. From the liquor department I walked to the meat cases and saw for the price of one bottle of Grand Marnier, I could buy 12 pounds of hamburger. I knew we had triple sec at home and decided that would work. Then I the liquor cabinet, behind the triple sec, I spotted a bottle of peach schnapps. I have no idea how we came into possession of a bottle peach schnapps, but for a Cobbler Jubilee experiment it was serendipitous, and free.
I poured the fruit mixture into the casserole, instantly wondering if I should have put in a second layer of sourdough. There was a reason, incidentally, for using rosemary sourdough; same reason I added the bing cherries. It would give the cobbler a Tuscan influence. Then when a guest said the cherries gave it a Tuscan influence, I could nod and refer to, also, a hint of rosemary. Guests might also surmise that the name, "Cobbler Jubilee" derived from the bing cherries, which star in the classic dessert, Cherries Jubilee.
The whole grain loaf was dense, slightly sweet, and with a nuttiness provided by the whole grains. I cubed enough to cover the top generously, swirled the cubes in melted butter, and spread them over the top, pressing them down gently into the fruit. I baked it at 350 for 45 minutes.
It smelled great, but it came out too wet. Even after cooling, the bottom crust was soggy, and there was some standing juice. I like my cereal soggy, but not my bottom crust, which had been saturated beyond the desired dumplingness. I tasted the crust while it was still warm, and it was definitely soggy. Our friend Janie, who is a fellow Southerner, dropped in just at that time, and I sent some home with her to share with Roland. That was day before yesterday, and I have not heard from them, so it's not likely they thought it was the best thing they had ever eaten.
I refrigerated it, and yesterday morning heated up a bowlful for breakfast. Not bad. Less syrup next time, and I am toying with the idea of the whole grain on both the top and bottom.
At the same time, some original recipes take a little work. In my second attempt at Cobbler Jubilee, for example, I plan to drain the heavy syrup off the bing cherries. This first version came out too wet.
Here's how it went. I got a Rosemary Sourdough loaf and the whole grain loaf at Trader Joe's. I cut the bottom crust off the sourdough and cubed enough to pack into a single layer in the bottom of a lightly buttered three-quart Corningware casserole. As you recall, the goal was to create a peach cobbler with a dumpling-like bottom crust. Having achieved that by baking Dinty Moore Beef Stew on top of take-home sourdough from the Fish Market, I reasoned the same result might be possible with peaches.
I mixed together a 29-ounce can of sliced cling peaches in heavy syrup and a 13-ounce can of bing cherries in heavy syrup (this is the syrup I will omit next time). I added a teaspoon of cinnamon and a couple tablespoons of peach schnapps. My original vision called for Grand Marnier, until I saw the price of Grand Marnier. From the liquor department I walked to the meat cases and saw for the price of one bottle of Grand Marnier, I could buy 12 pounds of hamburger. I knew we had triple sec at home and decided that would work. Then I the liquor cabinet, behind the triple sec, I spotted a bottle of peach schnapps. I have no idea how we came into possession of a bottle peach schnapps, but for a Cobbler Jubilee experiment it was serendipitous, and free.
I poured the fruit mixture into the casserole, instantly wondering if I should have put in a second layer of sourdough. There was a reason, incidentally, for using rosemary sourdough; same reason I added the bing cherries. It would give the cobbler a Tuscan influence. Then when a guest said the cherries gave it a Tuscan influence, I could nod and refer to, also, a hint of rosemary. Guests might also surmise that the name, "Cobbler Jubilee" derived from the bing cherries, which star in the classic dessert, Cherries Jubilee.
The whole grain loaf was dense, slightly sweet, and with a nuttiness provided by the whole grains. I cubed enough to cover the top generously, swirled the cubes in melted butter, and spread them over the top, pressing them down gently into the fruit. I baked it at 350 for 45 minutes.
It smelled great, but it came out too wet. Even after cooling, the bottom crust was soggy, and there was some standing juice. I like my cereal soggy, but not my bottom crust, which had been saturated beyond the desired dumplingness. I tasted the crust while it was still warm, and it was definitely soggy. Our friend Janie, who is a fellow Southerner, dropped in just at that time, and I sent some home with her to share with Roland. That was day before yesterday, and I have not heard from them, so it's not likely they thought it was the best thing they had ever eaten.
I refrigerated it, and yesterday morning heated up a bowlful for breakfast. Not bad. Less syrup next time, and I am toying with the idea of the whole grain on both the top and bottom.
February 13, 2009
February 12, 2009
Lighting up Dolly's Right One
This is from yesterday morning, Feb. 11. That line of cloud is the contrail of a jetliner, headed for Los Angeles from South America. Every morning, that contrail appears and provides me a terrific lift before my day even begins. I am so happy not to be on that airplane.
Earlier this week, the Sun began its transit of Dolly's Right One, which is the most prominent feature in the Alta Mira Calendar. Through binoculars or a telephoto lens, the Sun, just as it begins to appear, lights up the distant ridgeline as if it had caught fire. On some mornings you can see the silhouettes of individual trees outlined for an instant against the brilliance. The sequence below offers a glimpse of that presence. In the top photo, you can just see the first speck of Sun, then the ridge catches fire, and then the Sun appears. The last photo is pulled back to show Tut on the right as a reference of where we are on the calendar. This morning, the Sun would have transited the summit of Dolly's Right One, but it was cloudy, darn it. For a closer look, you can click on the photos to expand them.
Earlier this week, the Sun began its transit of Dolly's Right One, which is the most prominent feature in the Alta Mira Calendar. Through binoculars or a telephoto lens, the Sun, just as it begins to appear, lights up the distant ridgeline as if it had caught fire. On some mornings you can see the silhouettes of individual trees outlined for an instant against the brilliance. The sequence below offers a glimpse of that presence. In the top photo, you can just see the first speck of Sun, then the ridge catches fire, and then the Sun appears. The last photo is pulled back to show Tut on the right as a reference of where we are on the calendar. This morning, the Sun would have transited the summit of Dolly's Right One, but it was cloudy, darn it. For a closer look, you can click on the photos to expand them.
February 11, 2009
A Michael Grant here, a Michael Grant there
I am hearing from people who think I am the Michael Grant who wrote “Gone,” a popular novel published last summer. Actually I am not that Michael Grant, or the Michael Grant who is a deceased English scholar, a New York crime writer, a heavyweight boxer, a 12th-century baron, a character in the “Manhunt” video game, an Arizona television personality, a Washington Redskins cornerback, or a hockey player.
I do pop up third, among 381,000 results, if you Google “Michael Grant.” That is mainly because I have posted a mess of blogs in the last four years, and every blog I write, when it encounters a search spider in the byways and barrooms of the Web, influences that spider to identify with me. I am the Michael Grant whose Google results tagline reads, “Life is infinitely interesting, as long as you are interested in life.” (Hint to the other 380,997 MGs out there: if you want to move up on the list, write a blog.)
I am the Michael Grant who, among other works, wrote “Michael Grant’s Cookbook.”
In the cookbook is the recipe for peach cobbler that I was blogging about recently. I don’t care which other MG you talk to, none of them will know as much about bottom crust as I do, even though it is only theoretical knowledge. I write about it very warmly, in the cookbook, but I never can get it to come out right, which is to say like a dumpling. Jessie, on the other hand, brought over peach cobbler for dinner the other night. She said she made it from my recipe, and it had a terrific, doughy, bottom crust. Can you see the unfairness here? I heated up the last of it for breakfast yesterday morning, poured a little half-and-half over, and it was like I was back at my grandmother’s table again.
I promised the visitors who have made me No. 3 on the Google returns an experiment with peach cobbler that uses high-quality sourdough to achieve the desirable dumplingness on the bottom. I discovered by accident that Dinty Moore Beef Stew poured over inch-thick slices of sourdough in Corningware and then baked at 325 for 30 minutes produces a terrific dumpling effect. It should work with peach cobbler, but I need to try it first. I haven’t yet, because we have all been glued to the bread-and-water news about the economy. My old cookbook was based on recipes my grandmother used to “stretch things” during and after the Great Depression; wading through the present doom and gloom, it occurs to me to revise the book and publish it as “Stimulus Cooking.”
Of course a recipe, even in experimental form, is only a starting place. Lately I have developed a vision of sourdough on the bottom, a mix of syrupy peaches and bing cherries with a dollop of Grand Marnier inside, and on the top, cubed whole wheat artisan bread I get at Trader Joe’s, swirled in butter, and the whole thing baked at 350 for 25 minutes. I would call it Cobbler Jubilee. Then I might become in the public consciousness “the Michael Grant who invented Cobbler Jubilee.” Or maybe not. I swear, however, I am going to try it this weekend, which is supposed to be rainy and cozy.
I do pop up third, among 381,000 results, if you Google “Michael Grant.” That is mainly because I have posted a mess of blogs in the last four years, and every blog I write, when it encounters a search spider in the byways and barrooms of the Web, influences that spider to identify with me. I am the Michael Grant whose Google results tagline reads, “Life is infinitely interesting, as long as you are interested in life.” (Hint to the other 380,997 MGs out there: if you want to move up on the list, write a blog.)
I am the Michael Grant who, among other works, wrote “Michael Grant’s Cookbook.”
In the cookbook is the recipe for peach cobbler that I was blogging about recently. I don’t care which other MG you talk to, none of them will know as much about bottom crust as I do, even though it is only theoretical knowledge. I write about it very warmly, in the cookbook, but I never can get it to come out right, which is to say like a dumpling. Jessie, on the other hand, brought over peach cobbler for dinner the other night. She said she made it from my recipe, and it had a terrific, doughy, bottom crust. Can you see the unfairness here? I heated up the last of it for breakfast yesterday morning, poured a little half-and-half over, and it was like I was back at my grandmother’s table again.
I promised the visitors who have made me No. 3 on the Google returns an experiment with peach cobbler that uses high-quality sourdough to achieve the desirable dumplingness on the bottom. I discovered by accident that Dinty Moore Beef Stew poured over inch-thick slices of sourdough in Corningware and then baked at 325 for 30 minutes produces a terrific dumpling effect. It should work with peach cobbler, but I need to try it first. I haven’t yet, because we have all been glued to the bread-and-water news about the economy. My old cookbook was based on recipes my grandmother used to “stretch things” during and after the Great Depression; wading through the present doom and gloom, it occurs to me to revise the book and publish it as “Stimulus Cooking.”
Of course a recipe, even in experimental form, is only a starting place. Lately I have developed a vision of sourdough on the bottom, a mix of syrupy peaches and bing cherries with a dollop of Grand Marnier inside, and on the top, cubed whole wheat artisan bread I get at Trader Joe’s, swirled in butter, and the whole thing baked at 350 for 25 minutes. I would call it Cobbler Jubilee. Then I might become in the public consciousness “the Michael Grant who invented Cobbler Jubilee.” Or maybe not. I swear, however, I am going to try it this weekend, which is supposed to be rainy and cozy.
February 09, 2009
The weather dreamers were right this time
I can’t bitch about the weather this week. In my last post, Saturday morning, the weather dreamers had forecast rain and possible thunderstorms. All the thunderstorms in Southern California are “isolated,” so you have to be near that isolation to notice any effect. At noon on Saturday an isolated thunderstorm approached from the southwest and found our house. We had rain, lightning, thunder and hail. I turned the rocker around toward the windows and watched it for almost an hour.
It was not a thunderstorm in the biblical sense. Coincidentally, on Saturday, both my children, Jessie and Tyler, were in San Diego, not at our house, but close enough (Jamul) to share this storm and possibly comment on it. When they were little, we were together on a visit to Abilene when they encountered, and remember, the kind of thunderstorm that I admire. It was summertime, a perfectly still day with stunning humidity. They were at my grandmother’s house, and I was watching my uncle play in a golf tournament.
At about 2:30, north of us, thunderheads shot into the sky as if launched from the earth. By 3, the base of those clouds was black and reached to the ground. I judged I had maybe 15 minutes to get home before it hit. I was a couple of minutes late. Our block was a black box shaking with thunder, lightning, rain and wind when I piled through the screen door onto the porch. I yelled to Jessie and Tyler to come out to the porch and watch. But they were inside, on the floor behind the couch. Trying to crawl UNDER the couch.
By comparison, the storm on Saturday was a polite cough. But still it set a record for me as a Californian. Never in 35 years’ residency here had I been in a storm that lasted an hour. The lightning, all cloud-to-cloud, stayed directly overhead and gave instant thunder. It HAILED. Nothing you would report to the paper. “BB-sized hail pummels La Mesa residence.” The pellets were tiny and jumped in a darting fashion, like ice fleas, as they hit the ground. It was hail, all the same. I have pictures, and I will post them when I get a minute. I am writing this from my office at school.
Jessie and Tyler were here on a sad weekend, after the death of their stepfather. He was a builder, and loved the outdoors, and the avocado groves he brought to life on the slopes below their house. I hope the storm brought significance to his family and their memories and stories of him. I know it was ironic that Jessie and Tyler should be close, all these years after that Abilene afternoon, at the time a storm set a record for me in San Diego.
It was not a thunderstorm in the biblical sense. Coincidentally, on Saturday, both my children, Jessie and Tyler, were in San Diego, not at our house, but close enough (Jamul) to share this storm and possibly comment on it. When they were little, we were together on a visit to Abilene when they encountered, and remember, the kind of thunderstorm that I admire. It was summertime, a perfectly still day with stunning humidity. They were at my grandmother’s house, and I was watching my uncle play in a golf tournament.
At about 2:30, north of us, thunderheads shot into the sky as if launched from the earth. By 3, the base of those clouds was black and reached to the ground. I judged I had maybe 15 minutes to get home before it hit. I was a couple of minutes late. Our block was a black box shaking with thunder, lightning, rain and wind when I piled through the screen door onto the porch. I yelled to Jessie and Tyler to come out to the porch and watch. But they were inside, on the floor behind the couch. Trying to crawl UNDER the couch.
By comparison, the storm on Saturday was a polite cough. But still it set a record for me as a Californian. Never in 35 years’ residency here had I been in a storm that lasted an hour. The lightning, all cloud-to-cloud, stayed directly overhead and gave instant thunder. It HAILED. Nothing you would report to the paper. “BB-sized hail pummels La Mesa residence.” The pellets were tiny and jumped in a darting fashion, like ice fleas, as they hit the ground. It was hail, all the same. I have pictures, and I will post them when I get a minute. I am writing this from my office at school.
Jessie and Tyler were here on a sad weekend, after the death of their stepfather. He was a builder, and loved the outdoors, and the avocado groves he brought to life on the slopes below their house. I hope the storm brought significance to his family and their memories and stories of him. I know it was ironic that Jessie and Tyler should be close, all these years after that Abilene afternoon, at the time a storm set a record for me in San Diego.
February 07, 2009
A pot of wet gold for San Diego today
We had steady rain overnight. This morning, the sun popped through.
On the other side of the horizon, the sunlight dropped a rainbow in the lap of downtown San Diego.
The weather dreamers have forecast more rain today, and thunderstorms in the afternoon. We will take what we can get. By sunset, maybe, the sun and the rainbows will have switched places.
February 05, 2009
New evidence from an airplane in trouble
I have written before – more than once – of my experience on board an airplane that I believed was about to crash. Now comes information that compels me to visit it again, because it is new evidence of an odd thing that happened to me on that airplane.
The new information, now finding its way onto the blogs, is an account by Susan O’Donnell of her experience as a passenger on board U.S. Airways 1549, that ditched in the Hudson River on Jan. 15 after hitting birds on takeoff. But O’Donnell was no ordinary passenger. She is an American Airlines 767 pilot, based in New York, who, after completing her flight sequence, was hitching a ride – they call it “jump-seating” – on 1549 on her way home to South Carolina.
Her account is fascinating in its detail, which is detail only a pilot could provide. She made the presentation to the Allied Pilots Association, which is the pilots’ union for American Airlines, but I read it at a site called PlaneTalking. Here is the excerpt that applies to my experience. It begins shortly after O’Donnell felt thumps shake the aircraft, followed by “a bit of smoke and the stench of burning bird.”
She said: “The passengers were concerned but calm. I couldn't see any part of the aircraft out the window from my aisle seat. Although I didn't hear much that sounded encouraging from the engines, I expected we would have at least partial thrust with which to limp back to LGA. We rolled out of the turn, and I could tell we were not maintaining altitude. Then we heard the PA: ‘This is the Captain. Brace for impact.’
“Obviously we weren't returning to LGA, and I could see enough out the window to realize we'd be landing in the river. The flight attendants began shouting their ‘brace’ litanies and kept it up until touchdown. The descent seemed very controlled, and the sink rate reasonably low. I believed the impact would be violent but survivable, although I did consider the alternative. The passengers remained calm and almost completely quiet. As we approached the water, I braced by folding my arms against the seat back in front of me, then putting my head against my arms. There was a brief hard jolt, a rapid decel and we were stopped . . . .”
Now to go my experience of Nov. 28, 1958, over Big Spring, Texas. I was a member of the Abilene High School football team, flying to El Paso for a playoff game. We were on two planes, both chartered twin-engine DC-3s with 27 seats. About an hour out, without any sense of anything happening, or of time passing, I suddenly found myself glued, spread-eagled, to the ceiling of the aircraft. I could not move my arms or legs or even close my eyes, though I tried to. Directly below me was a window of the aircraft, and below that was the brown West Texas ground. I did not feel I was falling toward it, but that it was rising to meet me. My life passed before my eyes; I was only 15, so there wasn’t much on the reel, but I saw it all.
Again, without any sense of something happening or of time passing, I found myself on the floor of the aircraft. Another player was across me, and other materials, including a long, square stick, like a measuring stick, white with red and black markings. Since I was a nut for airplanes, I knew that this stick was used at the airport to dip into wing tanks to determine fuel levels. For a quick, reflexive second, I thought: this stick is supposed to be outside of the airplane. If it is, then I must be too, which means I must be dead.
But I wasn’t. We picked ourselves up and listened as our pilot, Charles L. Kageler, came on the intercom to explain we had almost been hit by a military jet trainer, taking off from Webb AFB outside Big Spring. Later he told reporters that to avoid the collision, he cut all power to both engines, stood the DC-3 on its left wingtip, and dropped like a rock for 1,000 feet. That was the g-force that glued me to the ceiling. Kageler also said he estimated the jet missed us by 25 feet.
We flew on to El Paso, played the game the next day, won, 45-0, and flew back without incident. But all on board that DC-3 had become members of a club. As a member, I knew three things: one, your life passes before your eyes; two, the ground comes up to get you; and three, there was no panic on that airplane at any time, no yells or screams, only silence throughout and a strange, complete calm.
Which is what O’Donnell described among the passengers on Flight 1549. After my 1958 experience, I formed the conviction that the brain, being a logical instrument, wants to place patterns on all the data it receives, but the data was coming too fast on Nov. 28, 1958, and Jan. 15. And probably on most of the other aircraft, that crash and kill people, which is why I am so interested in new evidence of my old conviction. It means all those people did not suffer the indignity of terror in those last seconds, and that has always been important to me.
The new information, now finding its way onto the blogs, is an account by Susan O’Donnell of her experience as a passenger on board U.S. Airways 1549, that ditched in the Hudson River on Jan. 15 after hitting birds on takeoff. But O’Donnell was no ordinary passenger. She is an American Airlines 767 pilot, based in New York, who, after completing her flight sequence, was hitching a ride – they call it “jump-seating” – on 1549 on her way home to South Carolina.
Her account is fascinating in its detail, which is detail only a pilot could provide. She made the presentation to the Allied Pilots Association, which is the pilots’ union for American Airlines, but I read it at a site called PlaneTalking. Here is the excerpt that applies to my experience. It begins shortly after O’Donnell felt thumps shake the aircraft, followed by “a bit of smoke and the stench of burning bird.”
She said: “The passengers were concerned but calm. I couldn't see any part of the aircraft out the window from my aisle seat. Although I didn't hear much that sounded encouraging from the engines, I expected we would have at least partial thrust with which to limp back to LGA. We rolled out of the turn, and I could tell we were not maintaining altitude. Then we heard the PA: ‘This is the Captain. Brace for impact.’
“Obviously we weren't returning to LGA, and I could see enough out the window to realize we'd be landing in the river. The flight attendants began shouting their ‘brace’ litanies and kept it up until touchdown. The descent seemed very controlled, and the sink rate reasonably low. I believed the impact would be violent but survivable, although I did consider the alternative. The passengers remained calm and almost completely quiet. As we approached the water, I braced by folding my arms against the seat back in front of me, then putting my head against my arms. There was a brief hard jolt, a rapid decel and we were stopped . . . .”
Now to go my experience of Nov. 28, 1958, over Big Spring, Texas. I was a member of the Abilene High School football team, flying to El Paso for a playoff game. We were on two planes, both chartered twin-engine DC-3s with 27 seats. About an hour out, without any sense of anything happening, or of time passing, I suddenly found myself glued, spread-eagled, to the ceiling of the aircraft. I could not move my arms or legs or even close my eyes, though I tried to. Directly below me was a window of the aircraft, and below that was the brown West Texas ground. I did not feel I was falling toward it, but that it was rising to meet me. My life passed before my eyes; I was only 15, so there wasn’t much on the reel, but I saw it all.
Again, without any sense of something happening or of time passing, I found myself on the floor of the aircraft. Another player was across me, and other materials, including a long, square stick, like a measuring stick, white with red and black markings. Since I was a nut for airplanes, I knew that this stick was used at the airport to dip into wing tanks to determine fuel levels. For a quick, reflexive second, I thought: this stick is supposed to be outside of the airplane. If it is, then I must be too, which means I must be dead.
But I wasn’t. We picked ourselves up and listened as our pilot, Charles L. Kageler, came on the intercom to explain we had almost been hit by a military jet trainer, taking off from Webb AFB outside Big Spring. Later he told reporters that to avoid the collision, he cut all power to both engines, stood the DC-3 on its left wingtip, and dropped like a rock for 1,000 feet. That was the g-force that glued me to the ceiling. Kageler also said he estimated the jet missed us by 25 feet.
We flew on to El Paso, played the game the next day, won, 45-0, and flew back without incident. But all on board that DC-3 had become members of a club. As a member, I knew three things: one, your life passes before your eyes; two, the ground comes up to get you; and three, there was no panic on that airplane at any time, no yells or screams, only silence throughout and a strange, complete calm.
Which is what O’Donnell described among the passengers on Flight 1549. After my 1958 experience, I formed the conviction that the brain, being a logical instrument, wants to place patterns on all the data it receives, but the data was coming too fast on Nov. 28, 1958, and Jan. 15. And probably on most of the other aircraft, that crash and kill people, which is why I am so interested in new evidence of my old conviction. It means all those people did not suffer the indignity of terror in those last seconds, and that has always been important to me.
February 02, 2009
The Steelers' record hat trick
I don’t think anybody realizes – at least no one has reported it – that the Pittsburgh Steelers have made absolute NFL history three times since Jan. 11.
On Jan. 11, the Steelers beat the Chargers, 35-24, at Pittsburgh, in the second round of the AFC playoffs. In the third quarter of that game, the Chargers only ran one offensive play. I thought at the time that something like that had never happened before, at least in the NFL. After some research, The San Diego Union-Tribune reported a couple of days later that that one-play quarter was in fact the first of its kind.
In yesterday’s Super Bowl, Pittsburgh linebacker James Harrison turned in the longest play in Super Bowl history with his 100-yard interception return on the last play before the half. Given the yardage, it was a perfectly classic, and symmetric, 14-point turnaround. (Of course San Diego’s Antonio Cromartie holds the ultimate NFL yardage record for a play, 109 yards, on a return of a missed field goal at Minnesota, Nov. 4, 2007. Since the end zone is only 10 yards deep, Cromartie’s record can never be beaten.)
Also yesterday, the Steelers became the first team in NFL history to win six Super Bowls.
So in 21 days, the Steelers set three records, which no doubt is a record of its own. So in fact, they set four. Just for the record.
On Jan. 11, the Steelers beat the Chargers, 35-24, at Pittsburgh, in the second round of the AFC playoffs. In the third quarter of that game, the Chargers only ran one offensive play. I thought at the time that something like that had never happened before, at least in the NFL. After some research, The San Diego Union-Tribune reported a couple of days later that that one-play quarter was in fact the first of its kind.
In yesterday’s Super Bowl, Pittsburgh linebacker James Harrison turned in the longest play in Super Bowl history with his 100-yard interception return on the last play before the half. Given the yardage, it was a perfectly classic, and symmetric, 14-point turnaround. (Of course San Diego’s Antonio Cromartie holds the ultimate NFL yardage record for a play, 109 yards, on a return of a missed field goal at Minnesota, Nov. 4, 2007. Since the end zone is only 10 yards deep, Cromartie’s record can never be beaten.)
Also yesterday, the Steelers became the first team in NFL history to win six Super Bowls.
So in 21 days, the Steelers set three records, which no doubt is a record of its own. So in fact, they set four. Just for the record.
February 01, 2009
The month of purple flowers dawns
On the Alta Mira Calendar, on the morning of Feb. 1, the sun rises out of the top of the head of the Bust of George Washington. Below you see our old friend, the Mummy of King Tut, at the right side of the photo: his head, then his folded arms, then his feet poking up. His feet are pointing at the Bust of George Washington, whose head is at the left edge of the photo, and then his torso.
On Dec. 21, the morning of the Winter Solstice, the sun rose out of Tut's eye, below, and then began its long trek northward across the planet's face and, as we see it from the porch, across the features of the Alta Mira Calendar.
This morning, we reached Feb. 1 on that trek, and the sun rose out of the head of the Bust of George Washington. I can hear you thinking, why do I give a rat's patoot where the sun comes up from the porch of a doofus living in California? Well, I too wish the Alta Mira Calendar had some sort of Stonehengian oompf, that the sunrise on Feb. 1 lined up with something eerie or important. But it doesn't. At least as far as I know. I do think it is cool that the Alta Mira Calendar has been accurate for millions of years, patiently waiting for a doofus with a camera to come along and prove it to a waiting world. Something else I think is cool. When the sun first peeks over the ridge, for a long instant or two, you can look straight at it and note its brilliance. It looks exactly like a blazing, bazillion-carat diamond. I see it as a diamond on the rim of the world, connoting the marriage of the sun and the earth, together about to create another day and all the life that goes with it on this tiny dot in the universe.
Among those creations, around here anyway, are streams of purple flowers, a variety of iceplant or succulent that goes nuts in February, cascading like bridal trains across our hillsides and highways. It is the Southern California version of the Texas bluebonnets, which will be hiding from the icy northern winds for another six weeks or so. These are outside our front door. I wanted to get Gulliver in the shot, but you know about dogs and holding still.
On Dec. 21, the morning of the Winter Solstice, the sun rose out of Tut's eye, below, and then began its long trek northward across the planet's face and, as we see it from the porch, across the features of the Alta Mira Calendar.
This morning, we reached Feb. 1 on that trek, and the sun rose out of the head of the Bust of George Washington. I can hear you thinking, why do I give a rat's patoot where the sun comes up from the porch of a doofus living in California? Well, I too wish the Alta Mira Calendar had some sort of Stonehengian oompf, that the sunrise on Feb. 1 lined up with something eerie or important. But it doesn't. At least as far as I know. I do think it is cool that the Alta Mira Calendar has been accurate for millions of years, patiently waiting for a doofus with a camera to come along and prove it to a waiting world. Something else I think is cool. When the sun first peeks over the ridge, for a long instant or two, you can look straight at it and note its brilliance. It looks exactly like a blazing, bazillion-carat diamond. I see it as a diamond on the rim of the world, connoting the marriage of the sun and the earth, together about to create another day and all the life that goes with it on this tiny dot in the universe.
Among those creations, around here anyway, are streams of purple flowers, a variety of iceplant or succulent that goes nuts in February, cascading like bridal trains across our hillsides and highways. It is the Southern California version of the Texas bluebonnets, which will be hiding from the icy northern winds for another six weeks or so. These are outside our front door. I wanted to get Gulliver in the shot, but you know about dogs and holding still.
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