Category: Family

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Twenty-Five

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In keeping it simple, we got up late after a late night getting ready for our day off. Got up late, but we were both up at dawn to check in on work stuff before turning in. Then we walked the dog, phoned friends (including Pete, who

se birthday is today), didn’t call other people we were thinking about and would have loved to talk to (hello, Oakland, Campbell, Chicago, Brooklyn), then got ready to go out.

In keeping it simple, we reconnoitered a little and figured we’d drive south to see monarch butterflies. After we stopped to look at some warm jackets. After a warm jacked was looked at and purchased, we decided that the remaining daylight would best be spent driving a shorter distance, north to the upper reaches of a creek that flows down off Mount Tamalpais in Marin County.

So we did that–keeping it simple. Once up on the mountain and out in the woods, we walked until it was nearly dark, then drove up and over a high ridge that drops down toward the Pacific. On the way down, we could see lights, and once we made sense of them we realized we were watching dozens of crab boats working offshore into the night. We descended down to the water’s edge, then down the shore to Stinson Beach, where we stopped and ate and left the dog in the car.

After a mess of plates and some locally caught crab (in cake form), we came home. Then I looked at all the pictures I took, and you crashed early–another busy day tomorrow.

A simple day, twenty-five years to that day we married, and one I could do over and over.

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My Beautiful Blogette

I have received an actual message of concern about my lack of posts here recently. More specifically, that maybe the case of poison oak I reported earlier in the month had combined with some kind of drug-resistant pathogen to put me out of action.

First, I appreciate the expression of concern. I haven’t posted anything for ten days, and that may be the longest I’ve kept my mouth shut here since this place went live in 2003. Although this is a desultory and purely personal writing project and I’ve never had a clear idea what it might be leading to or away from, I admit that I’m conscious of the handful of regular readers and often think of this as a letter to them. That also means I’m conscious when I don’t write; I feel like there’s a connection out there I’m not making; and believe me, ten days does seem like a long time.

Second, the poison oak is fine. The heavy-duty pharmaceutical approach I took worked. It turns out prednisone combined with some strong topical steroid can still kick poison oak’s ass. Not that I recommend it; the prednisone made me feel very speedy, and I had a couple episodes at work where I found it very hard to concentrate on anything.

Third, speaking of work: The real reason it has been hard to sit down and write has been the daily demands of the radio newsroom. Hours have been long, and I’m not getting home until late, and it’s been hard to make myself sit down and record the precious, pithy observations upon which this world depends. I’ve been conscious that the number and frequency of my posts has been declining for several months, and that pretty much tracks with new programming we’ve been doing at work that’s led to the higher time demand.

Fourth, if I had been writing the last couple of weeks, I might have scribed items, and still might, about the elections, the Berkeley casual carpool, the World Series, soccer, water, salmon, rain, weather, incredibly warm November days, University of California football, Berkeley’s Measure R campaign, steroids, Zenyatta, Secretariat, and maybe something about The Dog.

Anyway, that’s where I’ve been. And I’m still here. And to the person who called to see if I was OK: Thanks..

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Post-Weekend Rumination

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*Had planned a visit to the East Bay Municipal Utility District’s fish hatchery, on the Mokelumne River northeast of Stockton. But other stuff intervened. We got up late and indulged in our long Saturday morning dog-walk routine. We were due in Fair Oaks, out at the very edge of the foothills on the American River east of Sacramento, to read poetry with friends early in the evening (the picture: dinner before the reading began). So the hatchery never happened.

**And then yesterday, I thought I might make an early start to beat the heat of the day and get out to that hatchery early. But we slept in, did our Sunday dog-walk routine, which is different from Saturday’s, and found a football game on the tube (flat screen, actually) when we got home. We were due in the afternoon at a memorial for a friend who died this summer. I thought maybe I’d finish some take-home work from my Public Radio Job, too. Well, we made it to the memorial, anyway. Maybe the hatchery will happen next week. I’ll be taking the take-home work back to the office.

***Birthdays: Saturday, my brother John (who’s now reached the Double Nickel). (I meant to call.) Sunday, my niece Maddie. (I meant to send something out there, though belated gifts are good, too.) Today, Niko Danko, who I remember seeing the first weekend he was here on planet Earth. That was in 1999. Hard to believe the time has gone so fast. (See note about belated gifts.) Tomorrow — my late identical-twin uncles, Tom and Ed, born in 1934. Still missed.

****You have got to love a poem that starts:
“my grandmother had a serious gas
problem.”
It’s from Charles Bukowksi, here. We did not read this on Saturday night.

*****You also have to love a poem, also from The Writer’s Almanac, that compares the travails of modern office life with a Homeric bloodbath.

“…I too have come home in a bad mood.

Yesterday, for instance, after the department meeting,
when I ended up losing my choice parking spot
behind the library to the new provost.

I slammed the door. I threw down my book bag
in this particular way I have perfected over the years
that lets my wife understand
the contempt I have for my enemies,
which is prodigious. And then with great skill
she built a gin and tonic
that would have pleased the very gods,
and with epic patience she listened
as I told her of my wrath, and of what I intended to do
to so-and-so, and also to what’s-his-name.

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Westering Twilight

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Flew back home last night, a flight that lifted off on O’Hare’s eastbound runway 9R at 6:35 p.m. CDT, circled north, then climbed into a long westering sunset and twilight. We had cloud cover most of the way, but got glimpses of the Fox River, the Rock River, and the Mississippi. More gliimpses: Iowa farms, the North Platte River, Interstate 25 north of Denver. Further west, saw Utah Lake and the cities of Provo and Orem in the dusk. Then mostly blank, dark countryside until we crested the Sierra Nevada, where the lights of the foothills and Central Valley, the Livermore Valley and the Bay Area, all shone.

My seven Chicago days went fast. My dad is prone to what I might euphemistically call confusion about some day-to-day events (a confusion that does not extend to all things, though. When we drive around Chicago, he’s generally pretty quick to answer requests for navigation help). I had told him I was leaving Thursday and reminded him of that a couple times before yesterday. I kept him abreast of my preparations to go yesterday. Still, he twice expressed surprise when I appeared with my suitcase and satchel and said I was heading out. “You are?” he said. “When are you coming back?”

“When would you like me to come back?” I asked. “Tomorrow!” he said. Soon, I hope. But today, here I sit, 1,836 air miles away.

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Labor Day

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Late the night of Labor Day, and one of those southerly winds is blowing in Chicago: gusty, warm, the kind of wind that even when it’s blowing hard seems to have a welcoming edge to it; the kind of wind that can stir up in these parts almost any time of the year–that can lead to a rapid thaw in January, force the first spring day while the calendar still says February, retrieve an evening or two of summer well after the first frost.

I drove with my dad on a round-about route out to Holy Sepulchre Cemetery this afternoon to visit my mom’s and brother’s grave and to see if I could find her parents’ and brother’s graves (I did, and did a little excavating in spite of myself to keep their markers visible). Then we went out to the area where I grew up late in the afternoon just to look around, to see what’s changed (a lot), what’s the same (a lot again) and what’s still recognizable (virtually everything, with allowance for surprises like the old par 3 course where we used to go to play miniature golf having been allowed to go back to nature).

Wandering some of the backroads, we found ourselves in Monee Township, where I tried to find the corner that I had determined, in my 15-year-old’s consultation with U.S. Geological Survey maps, was the high point in our area (something a little higher than 800 feet above sea level. In fact, the Stuenkel Road crossing on the Illinois Central, less than a mile west of us, appeared to be the highest point on the I.C. in the whole state). I had to noodle around a little to get to the place I was aiming for, winding up driving through Monee. On the way out of town, we crossed the Pauling Road overpass above Illinois 50 (Governors Highway, former U.S. 54) and the old Illinois Central mainline. As my brother Chris told me the other night, that I.C. line is now down to one track from the two to four that ran there when we were kids.

The sky was gorgeous as the evening came on. Just two weeks until the equinox.

(Here’s the Google Maps link for the locale where the picture was taken.)

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Pop: 89

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Flew to Chicago today. The proximate cause: my dad’s 89th birthday today. Also, I haven’t checked in here since April. Too long, though I very skillfully missed the heat. It had been around 90 all week. Today when I arrived it was a blustery 65 or so–very similar to the conditions that have obtained much of the summer in Berkeley. I feel right at home.

One surprise upon greeting Dad when I arrived: He’s decided after all this time to let his hair grow. Me, I sport his former buzzed style. He actually has a nice head of hair going there–much more appealing than anything I’ve been able to grow in a while.

Anyway, I’m here. Dad: Happy birthday.

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Worst of Weeks, Best of Weeks

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The worst: Well, we won’t go into all that here. But we’ve had plenty of fodder for soul-searching the last little while or so. We expect we’re not alone in that, and we also are close to folks who are going through far, far harder times. Maybe we’ll learn something from it all and go on to higher understanding, a more upright life, and great accomplishments. OK–we’s take the understanding, anyway, and maybe some of the rest will follow.

The best: We took a car-camping trip last week, our first in years. Completed an unplanned and somewhat haphazard circuit that happened to encompass the watersheds of the Tuolumne and Mokelumne rivers (the former is impounded by a series of dams and shipped by aqueduct to San Francisco and some suburbs; the latter is dammed and shipped to the East Bay). Some pictures–forgive the redundancies–are on Flickr: Car Camping, August 2010.

Above: Part of the Great Bayshore Viaduct, aka Overpass World. Shot this morning; color manipulated afterward because we needed to do a little experimentation.

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Father’s Day: Instant Retrospective

Father’s Day: I talked to my own dad, briefly–back in Chicago, which once upon a time didn’t seem like so far a distance. But he sounded good, and then Kate talked to him while we drove over to a brunch we’d been invited to.

The brunch: Our friends and neighbors Piero and Jill invited us out to Piero’s laundromat in East Oakland. The building has an enormous lot behind it, and Piero has turned it into an urban farm: olive trees, tomatoes, potatoes, corn, beans, peppers, zucchini, and some more exotic stuff. A few Lombardy poplars. Jill and Piero’s kids were there, and some other Berkeley friends and neighbors, and some of Jill’s family.

We were out there at least a couple of hours, then headed back to shop. Our son Eamon and his wife Sakura were coming up from the South Bay. The plan was a Father’s Day barbecue, preceded by a viewing of the last episode of the second season of “Lost.” We stuck to the plan. Our younger son Thom showed up after he was done at work, and just as I was starting to talk about coffee. That prompted Eamon and Sakura to tell me I ought to open the box wrapped in “Happy Holidays” gift paper that they had brought.

It was an espresso machine. Wow. I have thought of these as only slightly less exotic and difficult to operate than a nuclear reactor. But after a trip to buy some beans, I fired the machine up and actually managed to make some cappuccinos. Then we sat around and talked for awhile. Eamon and Sakura left on their drive back down toward San Jose. And I got ready to ride my bike with Thom back to his apartment in North Oakland. He had ridden over, and I grabbed the opportunity to go for a ride I wouldn’t have done myself this evening.

So we rode, mostly without any tangles with traffic. I’ll admit I rode partly because I’m still nervous about my grown-up kids contending with the streets of the big city. I saw Thom to his front gate. We talked for a couple minutes, then I turned my wheels back north to Berkeley. A couple minutes after I got in the door, the phone rang. It was Eamon, calling to say he and Sakura were back home. After we hung up, Kate and I took the dog out for his late-night walk.

Coming in just now, I had what I wanted most but would never have known to ask for on Father’s Day: the feeling that everyone I care about is happy and home safe.

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Father’s Day: Instant Retrospective

Father’s Day: I talked to my own dad, briefly–back in Chicago, which once upon a time didn’t seem like so far a distance. But he sounded good, and then Kate talked to him while we drove over to a brunch we’d been invited to.

The brunch: Our friends and neighbors Piero and Jill invited us out to Piero’s laundromat in East Oakland. The building has an enormous lot behind it, and Piero has turned it into an urban farm: olive trees, tomatoes, potatoes, corn, beans, peppers, zucchini, and some more exotic stuff. A few Lombardy poplars. Jill and Piero’s kids were there, and some other Berkeley friends and neighbors, and some of Jill’s family.

We were out there at least a couple of hours, then headed back to shop. Our son Eamon and his wife Sakura were coming up from the South Bay. The plan was a Father’s Day barbecue, preceded by a viewing of the last episode of the second season of “Lost.” We stuck to the plan. Our younger son Thom showed up after he was done at work, and just as I was starting to talk about coffee. That prompted Eamon and Sakura to tell me I ought to open the box wrapped in “Happy Holidays” gift paper that they had brought.

It was an espresso machine. Wow. I have thought of these as only slightly less exotic and difficult to operate than a nuclear reactor. But after a trip to buy some beans, I fired the machine up and actually managed to make some cappuccinos. Then we sat around and talked for awhile. Eamon and Sakura left on their drive back down toward San Jose. And I got ready to ride my bike with Thom back to his apartment in North Oakland. He had ridden over, and I grabbed the opportunity to go for a ride I wouldn’t have done myself this evening.

So we rode, mostly without any tangles with traffic. I’ll admit I rode partly because I’m still nervous about my grown-up kids contending with the streets of the big city. I saw Thom to his front gate. We talked for a couple minutes, then I turned my wheels back north to Berkeley. A couple minutes after I got in the door, the phone rang. It was Eamon, calling to say he and Sakura were back home. After we hung up, Kate and I took the dog out for his late-night walk.

Coming in just now, I had what I wanted most but would never have known to ask for on Father’s Day: the feeling that everyone I care about is happy and home safe.

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Introduction to the Half-Day Fluke

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Last summer, we visited Kate’s family in New Jersey, where one of her nieces was getting married. The family is scattered mostly along the Highway 36 corridor, which runs east along the shore of Raritan and Sandy Hook bays. As you drive out toward Sandy Hook, you’ll see signs that say “Fluke” or “Half-Day Fluke,” with maybe a telephone number and reference to one of the shore towns. We’ve been going out along Highway 36 since the late ’80s, and I don’t remember seeing the fluke signs before, and I had no idea what the reference was (As opposed to the signs for Bahr’s, a seafood-and-beer place right at the bridge over the Navesink River; we took note of those a few years ago and try to go out there every time we visit).

A fluke, it turns out, is something like a flounder (one nickname for it is “doormat,” for its flounder-esque habit of lying flat on the sea floor). And a half-day fluke is a half-day fishing trip to catch one. You can also sign on for a three-quarter day fluke. According to a sign at one of the harbors we visited, Atlantic Highlands, the limit is eight fluke, minimum 18 inches long. The catch isn’t the only thing that’s regulated in the fluke fleet. A sign on the gangway to one boat read, “You are permitted 4 cans of beer per person. Absolutely no drinking permitted prior to departure. Strictly enforced.”