Lunch Money

Veterens Day

2005-11-11T13:45:00.000-08:00

Another Veterens day has come. Another chance to take a moment to measure the terrible cost of this war and all wars. I have to wonder---what has all the suffering really accomplished?

I am compelled to re-post my blog entry for last Veterens Day:

In 1918, on the eleventh hour of the eleventh day in the eleventh month, the world rejoiced and celebrated. After four years of bitter war, an armistice was signed. The "war to end all wars" was over.
I was standing at the checkout stand today while the lady ahead of me struggle to fill out a check to pay for her purchase. After what seemed a lifetime she handed the check the cashier who reviewed it and then handed it back saying "you need to change the date to the eleventh" . Oh, said the lady as she looked back at me apologetically. I smiled and said "no problem, today is Veterans day you know, the eleventh hour of the eleventh day, of the eleventh month. That’s the way I remember it". Both the lady and the cashier looked at me dumbfounded and the cashier asked " what’s that, I’ve never heard that before !". I actually felt a tear well up in me. At that moment I heard the collective sigh of thousands of young souls. Young soldiers buried throughout the world, lost to the various wars (maddness) that has come to almost every generation . Had their loss, their sacrifice, their blood, their bravery and gut retching agonizing fear been lost from the collective memory of those they died for, the next generations ? I am a Veteran. I do not say that often or do I often talk about my experience in Viet Nam from 1966 to 1967. I am like thousands of others who went to war and did the not so glorious part of war called support. I did not participate in any battles, sieges, campaigns or actions. I was not physically wounded. I lived in a tent with twenty other guys and did a job ten to twelve hours a day, six days a week for three hundred and fifty five days (I circled every one on a calendar). As so aptly put in a scene from what I believe is a great antiwar movie Mr Roberts, I "sailed from boredom to tedium to apathy and back again". It was a backward , foreign country and a war zone, and I never was not scared and lonely , except when I was drinking to much beer which was all the time that I was not working or sleeping. There was a skinny young guy from Los Angeles in the tent next to mine. His parents would occasionally send him copies of the L.A. Times and he would share them with me. A taste of Southern California, of home. I remember how great it was to read about familiar names and places. I cannot say we were close friends but friends we were. Comrades in the struggle to stay sane in a crazy world. Coming from a small mostly white and Hispanic Southern California town, Cleve became the first black American I had ever known let alone befriended. And I felt privilaged that he would let me in his small circle of friends. Even in my training companies there had been few blacks and everyone seemed to self segregate themselves. Black and white alike. Many of my racial prejudices based from ignorance were erased by Cleve and his friends.About halfway through our tour of duty in the Nam, Cleve, became quite ill. He would go on sick call and the medics would send with back with a handful of aspirin to try to reduce his fever, and orders for "bed rest" which meant that he got to lay in his bunk in 110 degree heat all day. On the third day of being sent back from the hospital with aspirins and bed rest, Cleve collapsed in the middle of the company area while trying to walk to his tent. One of the few decent Officers in our outfit saw Cleve, found out what was going on from us and immediately drove Cleve back to the Hospital. We were with him when he literally ordered the intake Medics to admit Cleve or heads would roll. Two days later while laying in one of the largest Field Hospitals in Viet Nam, Cleve Jackson of Los Angeles California died of an infected bowel.
In 1985 I visited Washington DC and one of the first things I did when I arrived there was to visit the Wall (The Viet Nam Memorial). I searched the list of names for Cleveland Jackson and found nothing. I went to the information booth and asked for help. Why wasn’t Cleves name in the book? How could I find his name on the Wall ? The guy at the booth was a Veteran himself and I think understood my sense of urgency. He told me in matter of fact but understanding way that because Cleve did not die of wounds received in hostile action or in combat, his name is not on the Wall. I was dumb struck and still am. So to Blogging world, on the eleventh day, of the eleventh month, I offer in memory of a fallen soldier the name:
Cleveland Jackson

What Happened???

2005-10-31T21:13:00.000-08:00

I have been following with interest and distrust the undeniable connection between the current U.S. Administration, aka Dubya, and the "Christian Conservative Right". If memory serves me the Church and the Presidency issue has reared its' head many times in the past. More recently in the 1960's when it was feared JFK would be controlled by the Pope since as a Catholic, he was beholden to the "Church" in all things. He answered the critics in a speech given September 12, 1960 to the Houston Ministerial Association. Perhaps the current wanna be Texan should consider JFK's words. Perhaps Americans should take again heed to JFK's wisdom:

"I believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute--where no Catholic prelate would tell the President (should he be Catholic) how to act, and no Protestant minister would tell his parishioners for whom to vote--where no church or church school is granted any public funds or political preference--and where no man is denied public office merely because his religion differs from the President who might appoint him or the people who might elect him.

I believe in an America that is officially neither Catholic, Protestant nor Jewish--where no public official either requests or accepts instructions on public policy from the Pope, the National Council of Churches or any other ecclesiastical source--where no religious body seeks to impose its will directly or indirectly upon the general populace or the public acts of its officials--and where religious liberty is so indivisible that an act against one church is treated as an act against all."

"For while this year it may be a Catholic against whom the finger of suspicion is pointed, in other years it has been, and may someday be again, a Jew--or a Quaker--or a Unitarian--or a Baptist. It was Virginia's harassment of Baptist preachers, for example, that helped lead to Jefferson's statute of religious freedom. Today I may be the victim--but tomorrow it may be you--until the whole fabric of our harmonious society is ripped at a time of great national peril.

Finally, I believe in an America where religious intolerance will someday end--where all men and all churches are treated as equal--where every man has the same right to attend or not attend the church of his choice--where there is no Catholic vote, no anti-Catholic vote, no bloc voting of any kind--and where Catholics, Protestants and Jews, at both the lay and pastoral level, will refrain from those attitudes of disdain and division which have so often marred their works in the past, and promote instead the American ideal of brotherhood.

That is the kind of America in which I believe. And it represents the kind of Presidency in which I believe--a great office that must neither be humbled by making it the instrument of any one religious group nor tarnished by arbitrarily withholding its occupancy from the members of any one religious group. I believe in a President whose religious views are his own private affair, neither imposed by him upon the nation or imposed by the nation upon him as a condition to holding that office. "

WHAT HAPPENED TO THAT VISION????

He's Back

2005-04-03T12:20:00.000-07:00

Some years ago I learned about a Vulture that lives on my headboard. The sick little voice that talks to me late at night when I can’t fall asleep or whispers in my ear, early in the morning, just before I really gain consciousness. The voice that whispers things to me for which there is no factual basis and talks directly to my inner most fears and doubts. And because it seems to know how to talk to those parts of me that I seem to have little defense for, those things that scare me to the core, I tend to listen and believe if only just a little. Here is how some of those early morning exchanges went:

Hi there, glad to see you awake ‘cause I’ve been wanting to talk to you. You know, you really don’t want to get up. So why bother, you just have to go to work. And, after all that really is a crappy job. They never truly appreciate all you do. The boss just doesn’t like you no matter how hard you try. In fact, they are just looking for a way to get rid of you so why bother. The hell with them, you can do better----screw it, stay in bed, your in a dead end career there.
Of course there is no mention that I have 20 years at this job and have always received a good job evaluation and regular salary increases. So now after approximately 10 seconds into the new day, the Vulture has me convinced that I am under appreciated, in a go no where job from which I am about to be fired. It is at that point that I become aware enough to realize that there is that someone lying next to me. And the Vulture continues:

Oh yeah her. You know she is really not good enough for you, you could do better. Hell over the past few years she has really let herself go. Of course that is because she really doesn’t love you. You don’t really think she is hanging around just waiting for you to come home do you? You know she is cheating on you, has to be, only makes sense. Give her just a little more time and she is going to dump you dead ass.
No mention of the long and intimate nature of the relationship or the many ways she shows her love for me. Now I am about 20 seconds into this and not only am I going to be fired from a dead end job, and my cheating partner is about to dump me. At this point I might be just stir a little. And of course since I am not quite the youngster I used to be, I feel just a slight ache, somewhere. So the Vulture continues:
Yeah sure, try to convince yourself that is just a sore muscle. You know the truth. Cancer. You’ve seen and heard it before. Oh sure miracle drug, modern treatment, blah. They just cut you up a little at a time over the next few months, fill you full of weird chemicals that make you sick, then blam, you’re dead. Why bother with anything, you’re just a dead man walking.

Never mind the recent physical that show me in good shape. So there ya go. 30 seconds into the new day and the Vulture has me convinced that I am about to be fired from a dead end job, dumped by my partner and dead from cancer in the next few months. And all that really happened was------ I woke up.
There are times when the Vulture has some factual basis for his bile. When Diane was alive we spent a lot of time comforting and holding one another after the Vulture had backed us into the corner of fear over her cancer. The Vulture knows how to exploit real fear with a factual basis. But, it was during those times that we discovered that just holding each other and getting in the here and now would usually quiet the filthy beast. The fear was, of course, not based on any imaginary monster. But the Vulture was exploiting fear of the future to gain his evil control of today. With mutual reassurance we were able to get grounded in today, to understand that even though the worst may happen we would loose the best of today if we get overwhelmed with that fear. The mantra of "just for today, I’ll be OK" got us through a lot of tough times.
Factual based fear is not what has been going on with me lately. With the new paradigm I find myself living in, my old nemesis has been trying real hard to work his way back into my life. All the rational understanding of how this filthy beast is just taking advantage of my mourning and exploiting old fears of abandonment are sometimes a weak defense against the insistent Vulture. But lately I have been hearing another soft strong voice comforting me with the learned wisdom, " just for today, you’’ll be OK".

Go Down Death

2005-03-08T20:40:00.000-08:00

To All,
Thank you so much for the messages of support. I will be sure that Diane's Family receives them also.
Diane and I were members of an online support group, LMSarcoma hosted by Yahoo groups. We both received huge amounts of really good information about this leimyosarcoma curse and tons of support for what we were going through.
It was odd that when I went to the LMSarcoma site to post about Diane there was a lot of chat going on that day about fear. Diane had often talked about her not wanting people to talk of her "brave battle" or "strong struggle" with LMS. She said that because she believed that no one who was as fearful of this disease as she, should be labeled strong or brave. She said she experienced some fear almost every day. I disagreed with her then and continue to believe that she, like all those battling cancer, are some of the bravest and most caring people I have ever known. I believe that all of those Chemo Warriors know , like Diane did, what they are fighting and each of them know, like Diane expressed, what it is like to regularly have that pit in the bottom of the stomach fear. Yet despite that, each day they get up, go forward, support each other and do what they need to do to continue the business of living. It is not the absence of fear that makes bravery but action regardless of the fear. From what I have seen, all of those Chemo Warriors and Care Givers, are very deserving of being labeled brave.
There comes a time a most of our lives when the body is just not able to continue. A major organ failure, medicine that no longer works or just plain old age can cause us to reach the point that it is time to let go of this mortal shell. I have seen it before and saw it again when Diane was just no longer able to fight. My mother went through it in her battle with cancer many years ago. After her death, a friend gave us a book called "Gods Trombones" by James Weldon Johnson, a collection of African American poetic sermons written in free verse that are so simple, in language yet so very profound. One of the sermons in the book is a funeral sermon for an old woman to whom death appears not as a fearsome spectre but as "a welcome friend". I was so moved by its’ appropriateness for my Mother that we had it read at her funeral. And now, some 29 years later, I feel the exactly the same towards Diane’s struggle and final release. I have changed a few words to make it more specific for Diane.

Diane had requested no funeral services for her so it is here that I offer this sermon and it’s message of love.

In loving memory of Diane Marie Perry .

Go Down Death !

Weep not, weep not,
She is not dead
She's resting in the bosom of Jesus.
Heart-broken husband--weep no more.
Grief-stricken son-weep no more.
Left-lonesome daughter--weep no more.
She's only just gone home.
Day before yesterday morning,
God was looking down from His great high heaven,
Looking down on all his children,
And His eye fell on Sister Diane,
Tossing on her bed of pain.
And God's big heart was touched with pity,
With the everlasting pity.
And God sat back on His throne,
And He commanded that tall bright angel standing at His right,
"Call me Death."
And that tall bright angel cried in a voice
That broke like a clap of thunder;
Call Death!--Call Death!
And the echo sounded down the streets of heaven
'Til it reached away back to that shadowy place,
Where Death waits with his pale, white horses.
And Death heard the summons,
And he leaped on his fastest horse,
Pale as a sheet in the moonlight.
Up the golden street Death galloped,
And the hooves of his horse struck fire from the gold,
But they didn't make no sound.
Up Death rode to the Great White Throne,
And waited for God's command.
And God said: "Go down, Death, go down,
Go down to, Washington State,
Down to Bellingham
And find Sister Diane.
She's borne the burden and heat of the day,
She's labored long in my vineyard,
And she's tired-
She's weary-
Go down, Death, and bring her to me.
And Death didn't say a word,
But he loosed the reins on his pale white horse
And he clamped the spurs to his bloodless sides,
And out and down he rode,
Through heaven's pearly gates,
Past sun and moon and stars;
On Death rode
And the foam from his horse
Was like a comet in the sky,
On Death rode,
Leaving the lightning's flash behind,
Straight on down he came.
While we were watching round her bed,
She turned her eyes and looked away,
She saw what we couldn't see;
She saw Old Death. She saw Old Death
Coming like a falling star.
But Death didn't frighten Sister Diane;
He looked to her like a welcome friend.
And she whispered to us: I'm going home.
And she smiled and closed her eyes.
And Death took her up like a baby,
And she lay in his icy arms,
But she didn't feel no chill.
And Death began to ride again-
Up beyond the evening star,
Out beyond the morning star,
Into the glittering light of glory,
On to the Great White Throne.
And there he laid Sister Diane
On the loving breast of Jesus.
And Jesus took his own hand and wiped away her tears,
And he smoothed the furrows from her face,
And the angels sang a little song
And Jesus rocked her in his arms,
And kept a' saying, Take your rest,
Take your rest, Take your rest.
Weep not--weep not,
She is not dead;
She's resting in the bosom of Jesus.

Good bye my Daisy

2005-03-05T16:55:00.000-08:00

This Tuesday evening, Miss Diane Marie Perry, my friend, my companion, my lover, my Daisy, died of Leiomyosarcoma a most awful disease. In memory of my Daisy and the joy she brought to my life, portions of a Poem #20 by Pablo Neruda:

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.

Write, for example, 'The night is starry
and the stars are blue and shiver in the distance.

'The night wind revolves in the sky and sings.

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too.

Through nights like this one I held her in my arms.
I kissed her again and again under the endless sky.

She loved me, sometimes I loved her too.
How could one not have loved her great still eyes.

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
To think that I do not have her. To feel that I have lost her.

To hear the immense night, still more immense without her.
And the verse falls to the soul like dew to the pasture.

What does it matter that my love could not keep her.
The night is starry and she is not with me.

This is all. In the distance someone is singing. In the distance.
My soul is not satisfied that it has lost her.

My sight tries to find her as though to bring her closer.
My heart looks for her, and she is not with me.

====== break========

Because through nights like this one I held her in my arms
my soul is not satisfied that it has lost her.

Though this be the last pain that she makes me suffer
and these the last verses that I write for her.

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.

Where's Santa?

2004-08-11T13:18:00.000-07:00

Thanks to Alaska Airlines summer special mid-week airmile deals, I just finished a short but wonderful visit with my daughters’ family in Southern California. California, the land of my youth, my old home State. The origin of many childhood memories.
Halfway between Santa Barbara and Ventura on US Hwy 101 lies the improbable and strangely placed Santa Claus Lane. I mean think about it. Here, right on the California Coast between two major beach communities, next to Carpenteria California once dubbed the safest beach in the world, lies a cluster of shops which include Santa’s Kitchen, Santa’s Workshop and various other replicas of Santas' North Pole compound. And standing in the midst of this some 30 feet tall, was a large, brightly painted, smiling, stylized replica of the Old Boy himself, waving at the cars speeding by on US 101. I say was because on this trip I noticed that Santa was no longer there. All the other shops seemed to be in place, but where was Santa?. It is not that this Santa had any particular special meaning except for two things. Santa kinda marked the half way point between Santa Barbara and Ventura, a trip I took many times as a child and later as an adult with my children in the car. So, first, it was the sign that we were half way to where we were going. It was the landmark I could use to console whiney kids with "we’re almost there when we see Santa". Second, it had been there for over forty years. It was as much a part of the landscape, or should I say beachscape as any hill, or rock, or other natural feature.

I got to thinking that there must be thousands of "Santa like" landmarks throughout this country. I’m sure all of us can come up with an image of something that we used as a landmark to direct people, or reassure ourselves with, or take bearings off of. Some Billboard or little store that marked being close to home or verifying we are on the right path. Then I got to thinking this. There are the great Icons of this country that are protected by one agency or another, one regulation or another so that they will never disappear. You know, the Statue of Liberty, the Golden Gate Bridge, the worlds largest thermometer in Baker California, the giant Uniroyal Tire in Detroit, all that national icon stuff. But what about all that personal icon stuff. The things that we hold dear as landmarks in are own little sphere of influence, the small but important roadside things that give us comfort or add meaning to our lives. Who is out there protecting those things? What becomes of the small things that are so easily sacrificed in the name of progress or re-development. Things that have meaning to many but most have no say in the fate of these markers of our lives. Oh sure, I’m sure there is some sort of Planning Board or Commission that publishes something, somewhere about decisions that are about to be made. But, really, do most of those who will be affected by the decision have access or input to the process. I think not. I’m not even sure of how many would if they knew how.

What I am struck with is how much of our life is changed, or affected, or modified by forces that we have no input or control over and for the most part we just seem to make note of it and then move on. I’m not sure what else I should be doing about such changes in my life except to make note of them in my blog and maybe personally recognize the fact to not to take the giant Santas of my life for granted because someday I may look up and they'll be gone.

By the way, I later found out that Santa had been purchased and moved next to a used car lot in Oxnard. That alone is fodder for a whole other posting but suffice to say it seems to me there is something terribly wrong about that.

Genuine Red Ryder 200 Shot Carbine Action Air Rifle

2004-07-17T22:02:00.000-07:00

One of my all time favorite movies is "A Christmas Story" which follows the plight Ralphie Parker (narrated by Jean Shepherd acted by Peter Billingsley) who is a nine year old boy from Indiana. The main point of this story centers around Raphie's desire for a `Genuine Red Ryder 200 Shot Carbine Action Air Rifle' for Christmas. Throughout the movie, all the indicators are that it is just not going to happen. His mother is thoroughly against the idea and reinforces her argument with the chant "you’ll shoot your eye out". Dad seems ambivalent and just brushes him off. Even the Department Store Santa ignores his plea and instead follows the stores marketing line by directing Ralphie to tell his parents about the latest special toy the have on sale. Everything points to Ralphie not getting his hearts desire. But does that discourage Ole Ralphie ? No way ! He never misses the opportunity to put forward his case of why the BB gun is really the right present for him. He clings hard to the belief that if he just wishes hard enough , stays true to the dream, clings to the hope, he’ll get his `Genuine Red Ryder 200 Shot Carbine Action Air Rifle' for Christmas. Of course, in the movie, Ralphie does get his `Genuine Red Ryder 200 Shot Carbine Action Air Rifle.' But to me that is really irrelevant to the reality of the story. You see, I believe that even if he had not, Ralphie would not have given up the dream. No, after a short period of disappointment Ralphie would have rekindled the dream and started his campaign for his next birthday. After all, he would be a year older then and certainly old enough for a `Genuine Red Ryder 200 Shot Carbine Action Air Rifle.'
Some years ago I unwittingly started a family tradition for our Christmases. It was based on the premise that all kids deserve a toy on Christmas and that everyone was a kid at heart. There were a number of people that I new through my new found recovery from Alcoholism that really had no family left and no place to go on Christmas Day. So, I made it a point to invite them to my house "if only for just a little while" and of course "they were welcome to stay for Christmas dinner." I never knew who would actually show up since commitments were not high on these folks agendas. Before Christmas I would by up a number of small inexpensive fun toys. You know, tops, yo-yo’s, gyroscopes, Tonka trucks etc. I would wrap them up untagged, and stick them under the tree. On Christmas day when a few of the many I had asked would show up, I would randomly pull out one of these special presents announcing "see Santa knew you were coming and left a gift here for you". I have many cherished memories off the looks on toughened faces as they opened the gift and were truly thrilled at the small toy inside. Watching a couple of guys with tattoos and prison records having a ball pushing around Tonka trucks on the kitchen floor is one of the fondest Christmas memories I have. One friend, Rob, was especially thrilled with his gyroscope. So much so that the following year he was one of the first to arrive anxiously eyeing under the tree as he walked in the living room. That year my wife had bought some of the gifts and unbeknownst to me she had picked out some gag underwear as one of the gifts. As luck would have it, the randomly selected gift for Rob turned out to be the underwear. I cannot describe the look of disappointment on his face as he opened the package. "I was hoping for a toy" he uttered. His disappointment was so obvious and we tried to offer up other presents to no avail. "No" he said, "this is fine. They really are cute".
Later that day I asked him about the underwear trying to assure him that it was OK to take another present to get a toy. What he shared with me is this. Seems that he grew up in a home that was oppressively strict and his parents did not believe in "toys for Christmas". So every year he would get practical and needed things. Things like sweaters, pants, new shoes and of course new comfortable underwear. In fact Rob said, last year was one of the first just for fun gifts he had ever really received for Christmas. And, though the underwear was cute, it reminded him when he was taught to not get his hope "too high" for Christmas. The lapse to childhood memories was short lived and he was OK, but it was intense and something that he thought he had ridded himself of.
It seems that much I have done in my life has been a lot like the Ralphie form of logic. There seems to have always been a sense that if I just do the necessary footwork, and wish it hard enough , stay true to the dream, cling to the hope that I’ll get the `Genuine Red Ryder 200 Shot Carbine Action Air Rifle' I’m wanting. This theory has matured over the ages to include a little more rational thinking, but in actuality, in many ways, it is still at the root of how I view things like new jobs, moves, golf shots, work projects, new cars, a change in hair style, new clothes and any number of wants and desires that come up in my life. Most recently the theory has shown it’s face as I start trying new relationships. It seems that in spite of what the evidence may indicate, no matter how much I’m counseled "you shoot your eye out", no matter what else is on sale, I want the `Genuine Red Ryder 200 Shot Carbine Action Air Rifle' and I know one when I see one. And although one can always use some new comfortable underwear, that practicality just won’t cut it in my relationship wants.
So no matter what the cost, I’d rather be Ralphie that Rob. After all, one will have lots of comfortable underwear over a lifetime but we often only get one chance at a real `Genuine Red Ryder 200 Shot Carbine Action Air Rifle'

2004-04-20T20:15:00.000-07:00

I found this on Sandhill Trek a favorite blog of mine.

Here's what I came up with;

Doug suggests

Grab the nearest book
Open the book to page 23
Find the fifth sentence
Post the text of the sentence in your journal along with these instructions

"Aside from that, the flight was uneventful"
Tom Robbins, Fierce Invalids Home From Hot Climates, Bantam Books

The time machine

2004-04-16T20:32:00.000-07:00

In one of my favorite Ray Bradbury books, Dandelion Wine, there is a chapter titled "The Time Machine". If you are a sci-fi like fan me and know anything about Bradbury, you might make the same mistaken jump to a conclusion I did when I first read the book. The chapter has nothing to do with space travel or time travel per se. No, Bradburys’ time machines are the old men who hang out on the down town park benches and spin long winded yarns about what it was like "back then", when they were young. And the kids of the town would occasionally hang around and listen to the stories of civil war battles and wagon trains and all sort of things from the past. In their minds they would travel back in time to before they were born as they listen to the sories from the old timers.

I had a conversation with a friend and co-worker the other day. She was morning the sudden loss of a friend. A friend who had worked at the Park with her years ago, when she first started her career with the National Park Service. We got to talking about the losses and the scars, both internal and external, that befall us all. While we were talking I notice the rather large scar on my left thumb. It’s been there for years. But, in re-noticing it I began to remember how I got the scar. I was about 14 and helping out my Mom by painting the garage. I fell off the ladder and sliced my thumb open on the sharp edge of the coffee can that I was using as a paint bucket. This was before the days of consumer protected "safe Coffee cans". With that first thought I began to remember back to that time in my life, to all that was going on, the good and the bad. The scar became the "on" button for another kind of time machine. My own personal time machine. The kind that we all have and ride on when we take that mental journey back in time to what once was for us.

A few days later I was cleaning out the old "junk box" on my dresser. Actually an old metal box in which I keep rings, tie tacks, coins and various other trinkets that I have collected over the years. It was full of old memories including 17 years worth of AA "birthday" coins, pieces of jewelry that were once worn by my father and my mother, and a couple of wedding rings. Lots of fodder for trips on the "time machine". But the major find was six pieces of plain 3" by 4" paper with some very poorly penciled lines of text. I immediately remembered it. I vividly remembered being 10 years old, sitting in the rocking chair next to the fireplace, in the old house on Santa Paula Street. I remembered what I was feeling as I tried to journal some of what was going on in my life. I felt it. I traveled back in time and smelled the smells and tasted those home cooked meals. I traveled on my own personal time machine.

I am sure there is tons of stuff for some Freudian Psychiatrist in this short journal but I am not including it for that reason. I am still not too sure how I feel about the child who wrote these words. So, I include it, spelling and all, in the hopes it will kindle someone else to take journey on their own personal "time machine".

Hear I seat beside the Christmas tree so beautiful and bright and the wind blows by outside. Grandma is in the kitsion and mother in the dinning room, daddy is dead. Around by the fireplace by ther is the T.V. The roof in here is newly painted but still a few cracks that are hard to see. My life story is not very good but now I have learned right from rong. I used to steal lie and ceat but I know that is gone. I can remember back as far as frist grade in Oxnard Calif., but that is hard to do. Lets go back to thrred and maby I can do better. My teacher Roggow. I only stayed there a little and then we moved to Santa Paula and I went to Glen City School. I think I will rest now but I will be back sone. Hear I am back again. I made many friends their like Gye Ingles. He was my best friend he was a year older then because I was in 3 & 4. We played baseball and all other games. Sone summer came and I got ringworms . I almost notissed all the swimming that summer. Then summer was over and we moved to Santa Paula St. and I went to McKevette School. I was in Mrs. Rogers room. She was all right except when you rong. We did allmost all work and no play but day by day the months went by. And summer came and I had fun swimming and playing and then we had to go to school. Not much happen then but as time went by Christmas came and that brings it up to date and I will add to the book as things happen.

And Today in Iraq

2004-02-27T19:08:00.000-08:00

Almost every day on one news cast or another, I hear those words. And they are usually followed with a body count of young men or women who have been wounded or killed in one awful way or another in Iraq. And for a while like too many others, I often hesitated for only a moment, then moved on with what ever it was that I was doing with only a slight pause or reflection of "oh how awful" or " that damn Bush".

It seems to me that in this society, we have done a good job of sanitizing or cleaning up everything that may happen to us which would in any way make us uncomfortable. Mel Gibson hit that nerve with his recent movie "The Passion of the Christ" which depicted the gruesomeness of the Crucification far beyond the straight toothed, hair combed "cleaned up", Caucasian dominated story that Hollywood had always portrayed in the past. Oh, we glorify war or violence and seem to take a morbid fascination in the macabre things such as mass murderers or Columbines. But those things are so far on the fringe of reality they don’t really seem real to us. But think for a minute what we tend to do with the death of a family member or friend. What we do not do is personalize the tragedy. We tend to do all we can keep the process of burying and mourning, neat, orderly, civilized and ritually restrained.

The current Administration has decided to not allow the filming and broadcast of the soldiers caskets as they return home from Iraq. They learned the lesson of Viet Nam. The long line of flag draped coffins had a lot to do with feeding the antiwar movement of that time. Not so this war. On the evening news today we only show the bodies of Iraqis. After all we do not want to disturb any Americans with the reality that people, no Americans, are dying in this war. OK, to show the bloody, mutilated bodies of Arabs. I watched with familiar horror the news film footage of the U.S. Marines shooting at a prostrate, wounded Iraqi, who had moments before been shooting at them, until the tell tale of a bullet hitting its’ mark and the man moved no more. I do not criticize, I understand what war can do and what it means to be someone’s target. This is a war, and wars are not neat, orderly, civilized and ritually restrained.

I met this person and she has become a friend, a good friend that I do not want to see hurt. And, as result of getting to know her, I have learned about her life and her family. She has a twenty something son and she has shared many stories of his teenage years with me. He reminds me so much of me at that age. I was always in one form of trouble or another. I was a constant source of worry for my Mom. I meant well, but just couldn’t resist the seedier side of life. But, unlike those who dwelled and seemed to prosper there, I didn’t have the heart for it so I was really not a very good wise guy. So it was with her son. The more I hear about her son the more I identify and the more I see how much he means to her. He is the lost sheep found, the prodigal son come home, he is a young soldier serving with the 82nd in Iraq.

Today, when I hear the evening news or the NPR news update that tells about another "incident" in Iraq, I stop and say a sincere prayer, "please God not Chad". You see this war has gotten personal because I now know and sincerely care for one young soldier over there. So, let me suggest this to you who stumble across this Blog. Take time out of your busy lives to find out about one, just one, American Soldier serving in Iraq. Get to know him as a person. Get to know his family. Make this war personal. Don’t let the media sanitize this war anymore. Every heart in America should pain, really pain and feel the fear so many families feel when we hear the evening news announcement " and today in Iraq, there’s been another incident---".

Turn, turn, turn

2004-02-07T21:44:00.000-08:00

There is an old joke that goes something like this: Seems there was an Admiral who had been in the Navy for years and years. Many of them in shore side command. He had a secretary who watched him every morning like clockwork, go through the same routine. He would arrive promptly at 7AM. Hang his hat on the rack. Go to his desk and before sitting down for the days work, he open the top right drawer, stand for a moment looking in the drawer. He would then close the drawer, sit down and begin the day. Though very curious,. The secretary would never violate the trust with the Admiral by looking in the desk drawer to see what was there. Finally the day came. The Admiral had retired, and the secretary was left there alone awaiting the next command. Curiosity won and the secretary could stand it no longer and went to the desk, opened the drawer and peered in. There taped to the bottom of the drawer was a well worn and yellowed piece of paper with the following "Port = left, Starboard = right".

It had to be a distant relation of this Admiral that AJ (aka webmonkey) that went sailing with us that fine day. The boat was a well rigged chartered Beneteau 34. The skipper (provided by the charter service)and interesting able sailor, the crew AJ, Adam(the significant other), me (The Dad), a Japanese national working in Australia (cannot remember nor would it be likely that I could spell his name) and Bill, an Aussie brick salesman and I’m sure a descendant of the above mentioned Admiral.

We headed out on a beautiful day on a beautiful bay and it was not long before AJ and both shared with each other how good it was to have a boat under our feet again. AJ, her mother and I had lived on board a 38’ cutter named Katherine. She (Katherine) was the culmination of several years of sailing and a series of ever bigger boats. She (AJ) was the culmination of a trip on Nicole, one of those series of boats. AJ was 2 ½ when we sold all shore related stuff and moved aboard. Living aboard was for me, and I think for AJ, one of the most wonderful times in our lives. And, I believe that shared experience is part of what has bonded AJ and I so strongly. We sailed a lot of miles and spent a lot nights at anchor and shared all the experiences that come with that. If you have never sailed or have never learned to become comfortable at sea I suspect you will not "Grok" any of this. If you have ever had the wind on you cheek, sailing a well trimmed boat as she rises and falls to a gentle sea, realizing that the tears on your cheek are a result of both the brisk salty air and the shear joy in you soul, then I need say no more about how AJ and I were feeling.

It did not take the skipper long to find out that there were those aboard who had sailing experience. So, after a quick safety talk he began the process of changing from skipper to crew as he turned over the helm to me and started showing the rest some of the basics of trimming sails. Before long it was AJ and I doing a lot of sailing while the rest of the crew refused the helm or stuck to sail trimming. AJ was a little apprehensive on the helm at first but soon got the feel back and steered a good course. Unspellable name Japanese guy took a turn and did well though to me, he never seemed to have a "feel" for the boat. Adam and Bill both refused to have anything to do with the helm. Noontime came and we powered into a neat little cove adjacent the Ku-ring-gai Chase National Park on the far side of the Bay, picked a mooring buoy, and settled in for comfortable lunch at anchor. Refreshed, we cast off and headed back to the Bay. It was not long after leaving the cove that and after some prodding from all, we convinced Bill to take a turn on the helm.

I have been around boats of all kinds most of my life and have become to believe that operating a boat with ease is as much an art as a science. When I was Senior Deputy Harbormaster I was part of the hiring process for several Patrolman. Part of the testing process was to take the applicants, one at time, out in one of the Patrol boats and give them a series of maneuvers to accomplish. It was not so much to see how well they accomplished the maneuvers, but more how they handled themselves with the boat. After five minutes of watching I knew whether the applicant had the makings of a rescue boat operator. The moves have to be instinctive, the operator and the boat become a single machine and even though in docking the operator might miss the mark it was more due to not being familiar with the idiosyncrasies of that particular boat than it was to poor operation.

I have never seen such a mismatch of man and machine in my life, as that of Bill and that 34’ sailboat . Left became right and right left, ease the helm a little became a violent turn, fall off became no, no left, left, no the other left. Now I have to give to Bill, he tried. He really, really tried. And, the more he tried the more we became the boat that I’m sure the Harbor Patrol had in their sights as a wreck in the happening. A fairly good gust and a near knock down did it and Bill surrendered. We were all supportive after he gave up the helm and sat down with a look of embarrassment on his face. During the trip Bill had talked about wanting to take up sailing and hoped he could do more chartering to learn sailing skills.

I hope my instincts are wrong and Bill becomes a wonderful sailor.

"So what is a Gestalt"

2004-01-21T21:19:00.000-08:00

My intent was to post a series of stories about my recent visit with my daughter, aka webmonkey, in Sydney Australia. There is plenty of material to write since it was, for me, the trip of a lifetime. But as usual life changed and I got distracted in another direction. So to close up this side trip I took, I will leave the stories of "Down Under" for a little later.

A couple of things that have happened to me as I ply my way through this life. First, as I grow older, I find myself trying to close those unfinished pieces of business that are a result of earlier, lets say negative experiences in my life. Fritz Perles talked about such in his Gestalt Therapy theory. Closing those Gestalts or unfinished emotional experiences we can carry around like jewels instead of realizing they are old bags of garbage we need to take out to the dumpster. Second, I try to live my life today in such a manner as to not create any new pieces of garbage that I will have to deal with later. A task not as easy as it might sound.

On Veterans Day 2003 I posted a story about one of my experiences as a Veteran. On that day, after finishing the story, I decided to Google search around for any links to something that might resemble what I remember was my experience in Viet Nam. As an aside let me say here that I hope someone, somewhere has documented the fact that Google is only an Internet search engine. From the way we refer to it in our current society I fear that future archaeologists will assume that Google was some for of Cyber Deity that we prayed to for the answers in our lives. But enough of that. My search led me to the site ATAV Army Transportation Association Viet Nam. Entering the site was like a time warp for me. There I found a group of a few hundred vets who had bound together to document on the site their experience in the Viet Nam war. More specifically, as members of the Transportation Corps serving in Viet Nam. Now trying to explain what that means to me, or to those guys, is like trying to explain to a non-drinker what it means for an alcoholic to find AA. They hear the facts, understand the principle but never rely can "grock" what it is all about. We were the support troops, the ones who operated "behind the lines" in a war where there were no lines. During the war the press and focus was generally on the grunts, the combat soldier or fighter pilot etc. Mind you I say this not taking away anything that those guys did or went through. Nothing I experienced could equal what the average grunt went through. But as a result of that focus, not too many stories were written about the support troops. But the truth is, support troops suffered and some died just like the rest of their brothers in arms. If you doubt me look at the statistics of who is dying in the current piece of insanity we are asking our young soldiers to endure. Many who are killed are truck drivers and repair persons just like in Viet Nam.

So there I was, surfing through pictures of "Deuce and half’s" with fifty caliber’s mounted on them and LCM’s (Landing Craft Mechanized) and Helicopter repairmen and skinny young men with cigarettes and M-15’s and all the images I had long since buried. And even though I did not know the name of any of these guys I knew these men and these places and had lived as they had. I joined the ATAV. No small event for me for I am not generally a joiner.

The memories evoked by my visit to the ATAV site lead me to dig through some old boxes I had long since tucked away. And there in the bottom of one box were more than a hundred 35mm slides I had taken during my "in Country" tour. I dug out my old slide projector and as I strolled down memory lane I wondered if these pictures might be of some use to the ATAV site. I contacted Dr Ralph Grambo the site webmaster and, as I learned later, quasi historian. His answer was a firm yes. He wanted to use them in adding a section to the site documenting the MMAV (Marine Maintenance Activity Viet Nam) Unit the unit I was assigned to. We corresponded back and forth. In one message I referred Ralph to my 11-11 blog entry about Cleve and his untimely, tragic death and, my frustration at his absence of his name on the Viet Nam Memorial. There is a Memorial section in the ATAV site but I was pretty sure it would be like the wall, for combat related deaths only. Today I received this simple email from Dr. Grambo. " Today I created a section on the ATAV Memorial Page for the 82nd TC and posted the name, Cleve Jackson".

I get around

2004-01-03T17:35:00.000-08:00

Good, bad or indifferent I am, in certain ways, the product of being raised in Southern California. Therefore I am what one might call "mass transportation deprived". I was raised in the era of the automobile. That is to say the automobile, car, wheels, short, sled or what ever else you might call it, was almost as important as sex. In fact for most young men of my generation sex and the automobile are joined at the hip (no pun intended). With all that aside the idea of relying on "Public Transportation" was unthinkable. Not only would you never get any , you would never get anywhere since there was never much of a Public Transportation system anywhere near where I grew up and therefore I had no faith in such a mode of transportation. Later in my life during the 70’s I did try to get environmentally conscious and did a combination of bike and bus riding while living in Santa Barbara. But that was strictly to and from work and to tell the truth I did not keep it up for much more than a year. For everything else I relied on my car. The mega-important extension of most of our middle class, testosterone driven male egos.

So when I arrived in Sydney I faced two major hurdles. One, those crazy Aussies drive on the wrong side of the road and there was no way I was ever going to adjust to that in the short time I was going to be there. Secondly I had no car available to me. Without some sort of endorsement or proof I could negotiate driving in that Superman Bizarro World of driving no one was going to rent me a car and AJ (aka webmonkey) is doing the urban living thing so does not own a car. That left the dreaded Public Transportation System. I did not know what good hands I was in. Sydney has an amazing interconnected system of rail, bus and ferry. AJ took me by the hand on my first day in Sydney and bought me my first "Weekly Red City Pass". A small card about the size of a credit card with a magnetic strip on one side. For $32 AU the card gave me one weeks’ access to almost all of the buses, trains and ferries that crisscross the entire city. The routes and schedules are posted at every stop and it took even a small town hick like me little time to soon learn that I could get almost anywhere I needed to go with just the swipe of a card without having to negotiate the backward traffic pattern or finding a place to park. After long ago realizing that my sex life, or lack of it, is not tied to an automobile it was easy to get hooked on this "Public Transportation System". Sydney has every reason to be proud of its transportation system. Each weekday City Rail alone moves approximately 930,000 customers to over 300 stations. I could not help think what it might be like in Los Angeles or Seattle if those cities had invested in an integrated transportation rather than the freeway mess full of solo operated cars looking for an off ramp and a place to park. Oh well, no worry because I was hooked on Sydney Public Transport and never really became disenchanted with it during my entire stay. And believe me, I think I personally accounted for a good portion of the reported 930,000 daily customers during my stay there.

What did slightly irk me was the following irony. I live in one of the wettest climates in North America. The Olympic rain forest receives up to 120 inches of rain a year. Bellingham averages over 30 inches of rain a year and averages only 136 sunny days per year. I traveled to the driest continent in the world and guess what. Rain. Cloudy days. In near record levels. Now admittedly the rain was much warmer. And, when it rained, it really rained. Not like the misty gray drizzle that I usually falls in Bellingham but a real gully washer down pour kinda stuff. And there were some really sunny, beautiful, hot days. But I did not travel 8000 miles from Winter in Bellingham to Summer in Sydney to get regularly rained on. I’m sure the travel gods got a good laugh out of that one. I survived. But it was just a little disappointing.

Where did it go ?

2003-12-24T22:39:00.000-08:00

I did something entirely new for me this last month. I bought a small pocket notebook and began jotting down impressions of my day to day events. I was driven, of course, by the fact that I spent a good portion of the month with my youngest daughter AJ (aka webmonkey) in Sydney Australia and a few days just before Christmas with number one daughter and grand kids in Southern California. As you can probably tell from that opening, I am going to try to convert my sketchy notes into something that describes what happened over those magic 21 days. But not all in one posting.

Besides the overwhelming experience of flying all most 8000 miles non-stop (13 hours in the air) there is another phenomenon that occurs when traveling west to Australia. One of the days of your life just goes away. No I don’t mean the long hours in the plane and in Airports are a wasted day. I mean that for me December 2, 2003 never happened. I boarded QF 12 on December 1, 2003 and took off for Sydney at approximately 11 PM. I flew for 13 hours and landed in Sydney on December 3, 2003 at approximately 8 AM . So where did December 2nd go. I really don’t know or do I understand this International Dateline thing. All I know that it is gone forever and I never experienced it. Ya, sure, there are those who say you gain it back on the return flight but that is just travel agent propaganda. The only thing I experienced on the return flight was the longest December 17th I’ve ever know. I left Sydney on the 17th at 12PM and arrived in LAX on the 17th at 7AM so you figure out how I arrived 5 hours before I left (more on that flight later). I was vigilant in checking, and on the return flight I never saw any evidence that we found or experienced December 2nd. It just disappeared. So, I’ve left instructions to have carved on my head stone the dates of my existence with the following disclaimer "except for December 2, 2003". I don’t want to be remembered for eternity as being inaccurate.

The return flight had its sense of irony also. Seems that in the previous week there had been a world wide gathering in Sydney of Jehovah’s Witnesses (apprx 60,000 believers). I knew something was going on during the last week in Sydney by the large numbers of camera carrying folks with name tags that were headed "Give God Glory". What I did not know was that most of the U.S. contingency would be on the plane with me. I mean no disrespect to the Jehovah’s Witness folks. It is just that most of my contact with them has come at inopportune times, at my front door, when one or more of the believers would offer literature and attempt to sway me to their way of faith. I have never been much for any strict religious doctrine or rigid interruption of the Bible so once I realized during boarding what was happening I was glad for the good novel that AJ had armed me with for the flight home. As it turned out, I ended up sitting next to a Park Interpreter for Australian Parks and Wildlife, who was on his way to Havana and a marketer for an Australian magazine published in Woolloongabba called "Your Local Wedding Guide" who was on her way to Europe via New York. These Aussies really know how to travel. My pleasure at the circumstances says something about my strong distaste of strict religious doctrine.

The great irony for me on the return flight was not the Jehovah’s Witnesses or the similarity in the problems facing the Australian Parks and U.S. National Parks. It was simply that 100 years ago, on December 17, 1903 a couple of bicycle makers took their home built contraption out to the sands of Kittyhawk and for the first time in history flew a powered aircraft. Their first flight was about 120 feet which is less than the wing span of the Boeing 747-300 I was flying. Their longest flight that day was just over 800 feet. On December 17, 2003, I flew with around 400 other people just under 8000 miles non-stop.

In 1969 I had the privilege to sit with my Grandmother and watch live and in color, Neil Armstrong walk on the moon. My grandmother was born in 1886, long before the Wright brothers flight, long before Henry Ford started producing automobiles for the masses, long before the electrification of the country, or the information age, or the atomic age, or many of the things we today take for granted. I remember her telling me of a worker the family had hired to help on the farm who was a freed slave from the Civil War. I remember the wonder and delight in her eyes as we watched the fuzzy pictures live from the moon. I do not believe she fully comprehended the science involved with that historic day but I do believe she saw the magic in it. And for me, QF-104, non-stop from Sydney to LAX on that historic day was also magic.

CONNECTIONS

2003-11-25T18:56:00.000-08:00

I spent three years as the Maintenance Mechanic on East Anacapa Island, Channel Islands National Park. While there, I did some reading as to the history of the Island. I am also an avid sailor and had the good fortune to become friends with another avid sailor named Larry Dudley. In the 1940’s Larry was first mate on the vessel "Santana" owned by Humphry Bogart. From my reading and conversations with Larry I pieced together this interesting group of connections:

There is a late 19th century government etching of the east end of Anacapa Island, now part of Channel Islands National Park, which depicts the arch rock located at the east end of the Island with a few sea gulls flying above the arch. The drawing was part of a set of navigational charts produced by the government for mariners. The artist who made that drawing was James Whistler, of Whistlers’ Mothers fame, who was later fired from his government job at the United States Coast and Geodetic Survey, for including the sea gulls in that etching, a no no for government drawings, and various other non-permitted inclusions in his drawings. A report on his job performance stated "he is often tardy or absent and has a tendency to doodle on government charts." The Anacapa drawings were later used as the basis for locating what eventually became the Anacapa Lighthouse. Built between 1928 and 1932 it was one of the last major remote lighthouse stations to be built in the U.S.

Whistler moved to Europe and pursued his career as an Artist where he would occasionally take on paying students in order to generate some income. One of those students was a young lady from New York who wanted to improve her skills as an illustrator for the children’s books she was writing. While studying in Europe she met a young American man who quickly displaced her interest in art for romantic interest in him. A marriage soon followed and the couple returned to New York, Maud Bogart nee:Humphry continuing with writing children’s books, De Forest Bogart pursuing a career as a surgeon. The child of that union we all know today as Humphry Bogart born in 1899.

The adult Bogart was an avid sailor and owned a beautiful ocean racer named "Santana"(also the name of the boat in "Key Largo"). He would often sail in the "Channel Islands Race" which ran from Long Beach Harbor, around the Channel Islands, back to Long Beach. The navigational aid used by all participants in the race to locate the Channel Islands was of course Anacapa Lighthouse, placed there from drawings made by Whistler, who had been his mothers illustration instructor.

Small world.

2003-11-11T13:02:00.000-08:00

In 1918, on the eleventh hour of the eleventh day in the eleventh month, the world rejoiced and celebrated. After four years of bitter war, an armistice was signed. The "war to end all wars" was over.

I was standing at the checkout stand today while the lady ahead of me struggle to fill out a check to pay for her purchase. After what seemed a lifetime she handed the check the cashier who reviewed it and then handed it back saying "you need to change the date to the eleventh" . Oh, said the lady as she looked back at me apologetically. I smiled and said "no problem, today is Veterans day you know, the eleventh hour of the eleventh day, of the eleventh month. That’s the way I remember it". Both the lady and the cashier looked at me dumbfounded and the cashier asked " what’s that’ I’ve never heard that before !". I actually felt a tear well up in me. At that moment I heard the collective sigh of thousands of young souls. Young soldiers buried throughout the world, lost to the various wars (maddness) that has come to almost every generation . Had their loss, their sacrifice, their blood, their bravery and gut retching agonizing fear been lost from the collective memory of those they died for, the next generations ?

I am a Veteran. I do not say that often or do I often talk about my experience in Viet Nam from 1966 to 1967. I am like thousands of others who went to war and did the not so glorious part of war called support. I did not participate in any battles, sieges, campaigns or actions. I was not physically wounded. I lived in a tent with twenty other guys and did a job ten to twelve hours a day, six days a week for three hundred and fifty five days (I circled every one on a calendar). As so aptly put in a scene from what I believe is a great antiwar movie Mr Roberts, I "sailed from boredom to tedium to apathy and back again". It was a backward , foreign country and a war zone, and I never was not scared and lonely , except when I was drinking to much beer which was all the time that I was not working or sleeping.

There was a skinny young guy from Los Angeles in the tent next to mine. His parents would occasionally send him copies of the L.A. Times and he would share them with me. A taste of Southern California, of home. I remember how great it was to read about familiar names and places. I cannot say we were close friends but friends we were. Comrades in the struggle to sane in a crazy world. Coming from a small mostly white and Hispanic Southern California town, Cleve became the first black American I had ever known let alone befriended. And I felt privilaged that he would let me in his small circle of friends. Even in my training companies there had been few blacks and everyone seemed to self segregate themselves. Black and white alike. Many of my racial prejudices based from ignorance were erased by Cleve and his friends.

About halfway through our tour of duty in the Nam, Cleve, became quite ill. He would go on sick call and the medics would send with back with a handful of aspirin to try to reduce his fever, and orders for "bed rest" which meant that he got to lay in his bunk in 110 degree heat all day. On the third day of being sent back from the hospital with aspirins and bed rest, Cleve collapsed in the middle of the company area while trying to walk to his tent. One of the few decent Officers in our outfit saw Cleve, found out was going on from us and immediately drove Cleve back to the Hospital. We were with him when he literally ordered the intake Medics to admit Cleve or heads would roll. Two days later while laying in one of the largest Field Hospitals in Viet Nam, Cleve Jackson of Los Angeles California died of an infected bowel.

In 1985 I visited Washington DC and one of the first things I did when I arrived there was to visit the Wall (The Viet Nam Memorial). I searched the list of names for Cleveland Jackson and found nothing. I went to the information booth and asked for help. Why wasn’t Cleves name in the book? How could I find his name on the Wall ? The guy at the booth was a Veteran himself and I think understood my sense of urgency. He told me in matter of fact but understanding way that because Cleve did not die of wounds received in hostile action or in combat, his name is not on the Wall. I was dumb struck and still am.

So to Blogging world, on the eleventh day, of the eleventh month, I offer in memory of a fallen soldier the name:

Cleveland Jackson

Dos Guys

2003-11-08T15:12:00.000-08:00

For those of you who still remember some of your High School Spanish 101, dos guys loosely translated means two guys. I t was the name of a two person motorcycle club that a couple of old friends of mine started years ago. They both had purchased motorcycles (Harley Sportsters I think). They formed the club, had jackets made and of course limited membership to the two of them. I would see them all over town, just the two of them, with jackets and bikes having a great time together. What fun!

I just spent over a week with my daughters' (aka webmonkey) Australian boyfriend (aka significant other). He was in the States on Unversity business and arranged his schedule to spend time with me.

Why is it people always seem to wait for company to arrive in order to take advantage of the fun things to do around there home town? My sister lives just south of San Francisco and often remarked she hardly ever went into the city until I came to visit. I guess we all just get caught up in our day to day routines and forget how to play in our own back yards. Adam and I played well together in my back yard. We enjoyed the Experience Music Project in Seattle, bike rides around Bellingham harbor, and the funky and fun Bellingham radio museum. It was good to have someone to kick around with or just hang out with. It was just as great to play some cards (he thoroughly thrashed me) or share a video and discuss it afterwards. It's been a while since I've been able to do that and for sure I need to do it more often. I think we kinda became dos guys. What fun!

Thanks Adam

Where are you Emperor Ming?

2003-10-12T21:52:00.000-07:00

It was a dark and stormy afternoon sooo---. No this is not the beginning of one of Snoopys’ famous novels. It really was a dark and stormy afternoon hear in Bellingham.

This morning I read an article in the Seattle PI about how we Americans were working to long and hard and relaxing to little. Believe it or not I related to a lot of what the article had to say. I currently have over one thousand sick leave hours on the books with my employer and three hundred sixty vacation hours. I am really looking forward to the seventeen day visit I am going to make to Sydney to be with my daughter AJ (aka webmonkey) this December. This will be the longest contiguous time off I have had in about fifteen years. So of course, by mid day I found myself thinking, as usual, about what I needed to get done that day. Then it stuck me, duh, "you just read an article about taking time to play and relax". Is this what you are going to do with today. Try to "accomplish" something.

When I was growing up in Southern California, a rainy weekend afternoon was the perfect day to head off the a matinee, catch the show, eat junk food and generally have a fun afternoon at the theater. The show would usually start with a Buck Rogers, Lash LaRue, Flash Gordon, Dick Tracy or some other serial or two, at least two or three cartoons, previews of coming attraction’s and of course a main show targeted at the young audience. If we were lucky it would be an Ed Wood horror movie or a classic cowboy good verses evil flick or an Abbot and Costello comedy or one of the many other Saturday afternoon fodder movies produced by Hollywood in the late fifties and early sixties. Not once do I ever remember thinking that those Saturday afternoons were time wasted and unproductive.

Armed with my new self awareness, I headed off in the rain and cold to the local theater. The first thing that struck me other than the cost of the movie , small Coke and small popcorn equaled what I once paid for a good used Schwinn bike, was the absence of people. Granted it was a multi-screen theater so that thinned the crowed in each one a bit. But as the lights dimmed in a room built to hold about one hundred sat about twenty people equally dispersed throughout the seats. A far cry from the noisy chaos of the almost full theaters that I attended when I was a lad. There were no ushers with flashlights ordering us to take our feet off the back of the seats in front of us. There were no pubescent couples in the back row more interested in physically exploring each others anatomy than any image that might be on the screen. There was no cheering, whistling, talking, popcorn box throwing, coke spilling, running up and down the aisles, or any of the "fun" stuff that happened on the Saturday afternoons past. In fact, it was really quite sterile.

The lights dimmed and we were treated to a short series of commercials for things I have blocked out, about one half hour of previews and finally the main feature. I watched Bill Murry in " Lost in Translation" which could be the subject of another posting, but not this one. The movie ended and we were reminded to pick up our trash as we left.

I do not regret spending the afternoon at the movie theater. It was truly the right thing to do with this cold rainy Fall afternoon. The movie was OK and as I said, possibly the subject of another posting. I have become accustomed to the sticker shock of theater tickets and junk food so can accept that as the price of admission, literally. I am old enough to know that I would not enjoy the chaos of the past though I would someday like to spend the afternoon in the back row "physically exploring each others anatomy" with some sweet thing. Something I never experienced first hand in my youth.

But I really, really did miss the action serials and cartoons.

BUMS ON BIKES

2003-09-27T22:49:00.000-07:00

Some years ago I had the unique experience of watching the limited showing of the live production of Bums on Bikes. It was a high school written , produced and acted two act play that my daughter (aka webmonkey) was involved with. I do not remember much about it except it involved a lot of high school kids riding around the stage uttering lines that I only half heard and understood less. But, My daughter was in it and I was truly the proud Papa.

I recently became a "bum on a bike". No, I don’t ride around uttering unintelligible lines, I don’t need a bike to do that, but I did buy a bike and I have become addicted to riding around the excellent bike paths that Bellingham has to offer. We are having the greatest Indian Summer right now and I have found myself counting the work days until the weekend so I can get out and just explore the area by bike. This morning I got up early, finished the last of my chores so I could get out on the path near the Bay during the early morning hours. I was great to be by the bay, feel the fresh ocean air and smell the salty sweetness that only the seashore can produce. As I rounded the north end of Boulevard Park, there she was and she stopped me cold. She was about forty feet long, sloop rigged and well outfitted for sea. She was alone, resting on anchor, in almost flat calm waters with only the occasional small swell that rocked her gently. Her dingy was drifting off the stern and I fantasized the crew snug below, rocked into sweet slumber by her gentle motion.

I spent a long time just watching her as a flood of memories came to me. The many soft foggy mornings at anchor I had laid wrapped in the arms of Morpheus on my own 38’ sailboat Katherine, or the Grampian 31 Nightfall, or the Columbia 26 Nicole. There is no way I can explain to those who have not experienced it, that feeling and sense of security that comes from being tucked away in a snug harbor, anchor well set, aboard a well founded boat. Of course there was no way for me to know what storms this boat had weathered to get to that spot. I know I weathered quite a few during my voyages. Any sailor with some sea time knows that every voyage has the potential for moments of shear terror. But, right then, right there, just for a moment, I envied the crew of that boat as they let her rock them ever so gently like a loving mother with a baby in her arms. Maybe that is why boats are always referred to in the feminine.

Then I rode on.

2003-09-06T23:04:00.000-07:00

One of the things I became aware of years ago, as I learned to sail, was that I could not enjoy what sailing had to offer until I got rid of a lot of the fear that often controlled my actions. I used to spend inordinate amounts of time, money and energy working on the boat, installing oversize rigging, studying sailing techniques and worrying over each voyage. It was not so much afraid of getting hurt or dying or anything so dramatic. Oh no, what drove me was the fear of somehow failing and there in being humiliated. I spent many hours at sea working hard at looking good. And while doing so I missed most of what the voyage had to offer.

On one windy afternoon I decided to take my 26’ Columbia out in spite of the small craft waning flags that were flying. The wind was 25 to 30 kts and seas were getting big. But I had just rigged the boat with reefing gear and felt it was time to try it out. All went well on the first two tacks after we left the harbor and I was feeling more confident but edgy as we ran before the wind and seas on our way back to the harbor. It happened in an instant. A large rogue wave came up on our stern, crested, broke and knocked the boat completely down. She wallowed for a moment, shuttered, the stood up, wind caught the sails and off she went as if nothing had happened. Of course I knew different. The cockpit was full of water but draining well. We were all soaked. And, the outboard was trailing behind the boat like some big lure attached only by the safety chain rigged to the outboard mount.

For me it became a small epiphany. The worst had happened. I had been knocked down and for a while I was out of control and at the mercy of the breaking wave. But, the boat took care of herself. She was well built, well rigged and did what she was designed to do. And we, the crew did what we needed to do. We hung on. For me there was no sense of failure or humiliation. I had survived and was feeling exhilarated. We continue on in to the harbor, rescued the dangling motor and secured the boat in her berth. Dried out and warm again I felt a sense that I had gone through something that had the potential to be disastrous and that had not only bonded me to the boat but had change me. From then on every boat I owned became a trusted partner in this thing I call sailing and I came to trust that partners ability to do what she was made to do. I was free to enjoy the sail, to feel the boat move with the sea, to listen to the song she would sing as the wind moved through the rigging, to sense when she was trimmed proper and running free.

I have been able to apply the lesson learned that afternoon to many aspects of my life. And, I have come to grow more and more confident in my ability to handle the breaking waves that come up on my stern. I am now I starting out again after another one of life’s’ knockdowns. My marriage of almost 29 years came to an end and I moved into a small apartment overlooking Bellingham Bay. There is no need for me to write of the details of the divorce. That is too personal for this site and has no relevance to what I am trying to say. What I am feeling is that it is time to slacken the sheets a little, fall off and let the boat run with the weather for a while, she can handle it.

2003-09-03T22:06:00.000-07:00

I've spent the last week and a half trying to work with the most god awful citrix connected program that ties my office with some mega sever in DC. Nothing, absolutely nothing has gone right with this program and almost everyone involved agrees this whole project has been a farse. Add to that virus infections, lockouts and unrealistic deadlines. So as I sit hear in answer to my daughters gentle nag " now that you have broadband connection you'll probably be posting more often, I look at the keyboard, the flickering monitor and the only thought that comes to mind is-------------- BLAHHH

My Best Friends Wedding

2003-08-24T21:57:00.000-07:00

I've been stalling posting this story because I have not been able to organize my thoughts enough to tell about Don and Carols' wedding. And, as I was talking to AJ last night I realized I would not ever be able to tell the story the way I wanted to.

Don is my longest and bestest friend and one of the things I love about him is the ecclectic and interesting people that surround him. They were all there on June 21st and it was beautiful. But the most beautiful thing to me was the affirmation we, Don and Carols friends, were able to give them by just being there for their wedding. It is not often in life that we are able to experience how our existence affects others. So often it is only after we have lost a friend or loved one that we realize how precious they are to us. I once heard a story about a missionary who was working in Africa. A small boy he had befriended brought him a gift one day and when he opened it, he realized that the boy had had to travel many days just to get such a thing. The missionary thanked the boy profusly but went on to say what a chore it must have been to travel such a distance for the gift. The boy smiled and said "I know and the trip is part of the gift".

The "Happy Couple": http://www.jngm.net/pix/LunchMoney/DandC.jpg

Road Trip/ My Best Friends Wedding

2003-08-03T19:28:00.000-07:00

Thanks to AJ (daughter aka webmonkey) for the new Lunchmoney look. I know the look is right because there is a picture of Hop-a-long Cassidy in it and God knows anything affiliated with "Hoppy" just has to be good!

My best friend Donald had made the decision to marry the girl of his college dreams. He had loved her from afar through his college years, and after many years and different marriages for both of them the circumstances arose for them to get back together, and Donald did not hesitate to pursue Carol. A respectable courtship, then reasonable period of cohabitation and on June 21st, "My Best Friends Wedding".

The event was to occur in Santa Fe New Mexico which is no short hop from Concrete Washington. However, soon after receiving the invitation, I made the commitment to go. Exactly how I was going to make the trip had not been decided. But, I would be there.

I have always had a yearning for the road and have come to learn that the road trips I have taken have always been much more that just "puttin on miles". In 1985 I took my wife and daughter on a 3 1/2 month odyssey that covered 25 states and three providences of Canada. A one ton truck, a small fifth wheel trailer and the three of us. I had cashed in everything and we were heading out to see the country. Shades of "Lost in America" the Albert Brooks movie of similar theme, however we started out before the movie was released so take that Hollywood. In my youth I had done a trek with across the old Route 66 from Santa Paula CA to Edina Minn. The stories on that trip could fill another page so I’ll save them for another time. Also, throughout my life have been a series of small personal road trips some of which included my youngest daughter AJ (see above reference ). The point I’m trying to get to is that for me, road trips have held a magical / mystical quality that have almost always lead to something more than just the trip itself. For me, such a trip is a way of cleaning the spiritual windows or airing out the dusty corners of my soul. Literature is full of similar themes and I am not trying to compete with Jack Kerouac here but, my road trips tend to help me better understand me, by seeing how much there is out there that does not have to do with me. So, with all that in mind I decided to avoid the airport and shuttle buses and the swiftness and drive the 1602 miles to Donald’s wedding.

So what is it about driving east through Idaho and Montana that allows me to clear the clutter of the ever day, work a-day, relationship a-day, money a-day, aging a-day world and find inner peace or as Chuck C. says in his book " A new Pair of Glasses" see the world in an entirely different way, like a new pair of glasses, seeing it clearly. Is it starch heavy meals in the small town diners that I always choose for food. Or the beautiful averageness of the people I see in towns like St Regis Idaho, or Montecello Utah, or the marvelous panoramic views of lakes and mountains viewed from I-90 while passing though Cour de Lain. I don’t know where the magic lies, maybe in all of this. But I do know the magic happens and the clutter goes away and I begin just for a little while to better see me and where I may fit in this thing I call life. And for me, it is a wonderful experience. And so it was traveling east then south to New Mexico.

Peacefully exciting.

Next to come, "My Best Friends Wedding"

2003-05-09T00:11:00.000-07:00

My youngest daughter Andrea has been struggling for the past fourteen or fifteen months to get a permanent work visa for Australia. Never mind why or how she came to pursue this endeavor, enough to say it is something she really wants to do. She has already "migrated" to Sydney, Australia and is living there on a tourist Visa awaiting final acceptance from the Australian Immigration authorities. Lo and behold three weeks ago she finally received notification that she could pick up her Visa. However she had to do it at an Australian Consulate Office outside of the Country. So----- after dutifully notifying the proper authorities of her itinerary ( as required by them) she flew it New Zealand to pick up the precious document at the Australian Consulate’s office in Auckland. Of course, things did not go as smoothly as one could hope for and I and many other well- wishers waited on pins and needles for word of her final approval. She had worked hard to get this damn thing and no bureaucrat was going to stop her.

I came home from four days in the field today and there was a printed out email message from Andrea. Visa was in hand, success at last. I could not have been happier and wanted to share my feelings with her so I took the chance to dial up her cell number ( we had spoken earlier that week so I knew it was possible to reach her). Again surprise, she answered right away. Where are you I asked, since she sounded out of breath and quite excited. Half way up a volcano on Rangitoto Island, New Zealand. Your kidding was my response. " No really" she quipped, " It’s beautiful today and I’m going to hike to the top". We talked more about the visa, her adventure, and I could hear the excitement in her voice and almost smell the fresh air of the mountain. "What a world". I told her. "I’m talking to you half way across the world while you climb a volcano. These are marvelous times". I felt a real sense of wonder and hope at what is possible with technology.

I was reminded of another time when the marvel of modern technology filled me with awe and hope. It was the middle of the cold war and pall of nuclear annihilation seemed to always hang in the background. But on one magic day, I sat with my seventyish year old grandmother in our living room and watched live, grainy TV images of Neil Armstrongs’ walk on the moon. What marvelous time and what an appropriate person to be with. This woman who in her life time had seen so much change. Airplanes, cars, TV, so much technology in such a short time. We both felt and shared a sense of awe and wonder and hope. Of course, the wonder and awe was short lived and as a Nation we soon became blasé about all the wondrous things that NASA was up to, and Viet Nam came along, and Nixon sold out the White House. etc., etc.,
And the hope faded ------------.

I finished the call and still felt elated not only at Andrea’s success and the start of a new chapter in her life, but just for a while I was hopeful with this techno world and the future it might bring. I decided to sit down with the Seattle P.I. and catch up on the news. Within three pages I had read : how the USS Lincoln rather than enter port had steamed for over 20 hours just off the San Diego coast so "W" could make a side show of his arrival on the flight deck. (this is the same guy who went AWOL for over a year from the Texas Air National Guard during the Viet Nam war) And, how the current band of idiots in the Bush administration are proposing that we scrap our treaty commitments and begin new research in and new production of nuclear arms thus thumbing our nose at the world, spending billions more dollars, and re-opening the madness that was the nuclear arms race. etc., etc.
And the hope faded----------------

2003-03-22T15:01:00.000-08:00

These selected excerpts from a speech given by JFK express better than I ever could what I am feeling today along with anger, distrust, and disgust with the current adminstration. God save the USA !

On June 10, 1963 John F Kennedy in part spoke:

"I have, therefore, chosen this time and this place to discuss a topic on which ignorance too often abounds and the truth is too rarely perceived - yet it is the most important topic on earth: world peace.

What kind of peace do I mean? What kind of peace do we seek? Not a Pax Americana enforced on the world by American weapons of war. Not the peace of the grave or the security of the slave. I am talking about genuine peace, the kind of peace that makes life on earth worth living, the kind that enables men and nations to grow and to hope and to build a better life for their children-not merely peace for Americans but peace for all men and women - not merely peace in our time but peace for all time.

I speak of peace because of the new face of war. Total war makes no sense in an age when great powers can maintain large and relatively invulnerable nuclear forces and refuse to surrender without resort to those forces. It makes no sense in an age when a single nuclear weapon contains almost ten times the explosive force delivered by all of the allied air forces in the Second World War. It makes no sense in an age when the deadly poisons produced by a nuclear exchange would be carried by wind and water and soil and seed to the far corners of the glove and to generations yet unborn.

Today the expenditure of billions of dollars every year of weapons acquired for the purpose of making sure we never need to use them is essential to keeping the peace. But surely the acquisition of such idle stockpiles - which can only destroy and never create - is not the only, much less the most efficient, means of assuring peace. I speak of peace, therefore, as the necessary rational end of rational men. I realize that the pursuit of peace is not as dramatic as the pursuit of war - and frequently the words of the pursuer fall on deaf ears. But we have no more urgent task.

First: Let us examine our attitude toward peace itself. Too many of us think it is impossible. Too many think it unreal. But that is a dangerous, defeatist belief. It leads to the conclusion that war is inevitable - that mankind is doomed - that we are gripped by forces we cannot control." -----------------------------

---------------------- "Our problems are manmade - therefore, they can be solved by man. And man can be as big as he wants. No problem of human destiny is beyond human beings. Man's reason and spirit have often solved the seemingly unsolvable - and we believe they can do it again.

I am not referring to the absolute, infinite concept of universal peace and good will of which some fantasies and fanatics dream. I do not deny the value of hopes and dreams but we merely invite discouragement and incredulity by making that our only and immediate goal.

Let us focus instead on a more practical, more attainable peace - based not on a sudden revolution in human nature but on a gradual evolution in human institutions-on a series of concrete actions and effective agreements which are in the interest of all concerned. There is no single, simple key to this peace - no grand or magic formula to be adopted by one or two powers. Genuine peace must be the product of many nations, the sum of many acts. It must be dynamic, not static, changing to meet the challenge of each new generation. For peace is a process-a way of solving problems.

With such a peace, there will still be quarrels and conflicting interests, as there are within families and nations. World peace, like community peace, does not require that each man love his neighbor - it requires only that they live together in mutual tolerance, submitting their disputes to a just and peaceful settlement. And history teaches us that enmities between nations, as between individuals, do not last forever. However our likes and dislikes may seem, the tide of time and events will often bring surprising changes in the relations between nations and neighbors.

So let us persevere. Peace need not be impracticable, and war need not be inevitable. By defining our goal more clearly, by making it seem more manageable and less remote, we can help all peoples to see it, to draw hope from it, and to move irresistibly toward it."----------------------------

"The United States, as the world knows, will never start a war. We do not want a war. We do not now expect a war. This generation of Americans has already had enough - more than enough - of war and hate and oppression. We shall be prepared if others wish it. We shall be alert to try to stop it. But we shall also do our part to build a world of peace where the weak are safe and the strong are just. We are not helpless before that task or hopeless of its success. Confident and unafraid, we labor on - not toward a strategy of annihilation but toward a strategy of peace."

2003-03-01T21:29:00.000-08:00

I don’t do sick well and for the last week I have been as sick as I have ever been with flu followed by infected sinuses. Double yuk!

In one of those half aware fever driven times I crawled into my sick bed ( wearing my sick jammies, those magic jammies that I only wear when I’m not well and which I hope will impart some healing properties) and sunk down into my pillow and felt that warm, primal, all will be OK feeling that has it’s roots in childhood memories. Memories of my room, my bed, my mom taking care of me, and I free associated into the following:

I was twelve or thirteen. My Mom and I would travel one Friday a month to an old family friends house for an evening of "mad canasta". A card game more complex than I can now remember to explain but kind of a cross between canasta, gin and pinochle. We would play for nickels and dimes and mom and I each had a small stash of change we would horde for the game. More than the game this was something that my mom and I shared. A night out together. The game required four not three players and I became moms’ partner. Not child, but playing partner. It was my introduction into the world of adults and a special time for mom and I.

The friends, Merle and Vera, were previous neighbors and my mom had kept the friendship alive long after we had moved to another city after my fathers death. Merle was as much a gentle-man as I have ever known. He was strong but kind, wise but earthy, and never ever talked down to me. He had taught pilots to fly during world war two, traveled extensively and shared many fascinating stories that always held me in awe. Vera, a short perky woman of Spanish, not Mexican she was always quick to remind, decent. She was the perfect hostess, homemaker and wife. It was obvious that they cared for each other deeply and I always felt comfortable in their well kept upper middle class home on the hill.

The evening would always fly by. Lots of small talk about this and that and lots of witticisms about the play or the cards or life in general. Merle would smoke his Viceroy cigarettes, lit by the coolest Zippo lighter with it’s WWII Army Air Force emblem on it, and nickels and dimes would change hands. More importantly we talked and laughed and shared the evening. Somewhere into the evening we would break and Vera would produce cake or pie or some other wonderful treat and the card playing stopped and the feasting began with hot coffee or milk and more discussion and laughter. The refreshments finished we would delve into another round and continue until the wee hours of the morning until brain dead from counting tricks and sorting hands we would call it a night. Nickels and dimes back into the pouches, we would gloat over the winnings and moan over the losses and say good night.

On the way home in our land barge of a 59 Chevy Bel-Air, I would talk mom into stopping at an all night burger joint that had as a specialty, "Boasted Chicken Basket". The specialty consisted of chicken cooked as I have never again been able to find, french fries made from real fresh potatoes and a hamburger bun buttered and toasted on the burger grill. I would devour the meal on the twenty or so mile ride home while mom and I talked. Can’t exactly tell you what we talked about, we just talked.

We would arrive home around two or three and the house would be still, cold and feel a little alien. I never felt right moving about the house after midnight. I would go quietly upstairs to my room, get ready for bed and crawl in between the covers and sink down into my pillow and feel that warm, primal, all will be OK feeling.

2003-02-08T19:41:00.000-08:00

As the drums of war beat louder I have found myself remembering back to the early 60's when we were told by our government we must protect the world from the "threat of communism in the far east". When in 1967 I found myself drafted, "trained to kill", and sitting in a 5 ton truck riding from the Saigon airport to a receiving area just outside the city. I had never felt such a sense of impending doom as I did on that hot, humid, smelly afternoon. Never before and never again until now as I listen to leaders, who used their power, connections, and money to avoid experienceing what I did ( remember George W went into the Texas Air National Guard and served all of 4 years of an 8 year commitment in the good old USA), try to convince me, this nation and the world that this war is necessary to preserve peace and freedom.

So, I relied on my old friend Google to see what I could find to give me some words to what I believe is going on. I typed in the words Adolf Hitler because my gut has been telling there is a lot similarty to what I'm hearing from Washington and what he told the people of Germany. Next I did a search within using the word speech, then another search within using the word peace. I list below two paragraphs from the first link listed from that search. I leave the interpretation to the reader.

Adolf Hitler
Speech of April 12, 1921

"Certainly a government needs power, it needs strength. It must, I might almost say, with brutal ruthlessness press through the ideas which it has recognized to be right, trusting to the actual authority of its strength in the State. But even with the most ruthless brutality it can ultimately prevail only if what it seeks to restore does truly correspond to the welfare of a whole people." -------------------------------------------------

"And fourthly we were further persuaded that economic prosperity is inseparable from political freedom and that therefore that house of lies, 'Internationalism,' must immediately collapse. We recognized that freedom can eternally be only a consequence of power and that the source of power is the will. Consequently the will to power must be strengthened in a people with passionate ardor."

A love story.

2003-01-31T20:09:00.000-08:00

I had been on a quest to try to resolve some really old issues with my father. He had died of alcoholism when I was nine years old and I had never come to grips with the resulting childhood scars that came from growing up a fatherless child. There was also a sense of shame around his memory since he had left the family pretty much destitute. My mother did not speak poorly of him she just did not speak of him at all so I never really had any information on this man who sired me. Only that he had died a shameful death and left us to fend for ourselves.

Some years ago I decided to visit his grave. I thought that maybe there maybe I could finally put him to rest in my mind and move on. I had not been there in 25 years so I had to stop by the cemetery office to get directions. So with map in hand and, plot number on a slip of paper, and a prayer in my heart for some closure I walked out to the green grassy field. Without to much trouble I found the headstone with the words "Clarence Cecil James " dates of existence and the word "Daddy" carved in the stone. I thought what an irony, for of all the things my father may or may not have been, Daddy was not a very good description. I stood waiting for some epiphany and drew only silence except for the occasional chirping bird and the highway sounds off in the distance.

It was then that I noticed that the plot next to my father was vacant. Odd, since this was an old section of the cemetery and there were few empty spaces. My mother had died some years ago and we had buried here in our home town, miles from where I stood. In a moment of panic I wondered had we buried Mom in the wrong spot. Was there some plan, that we did not know of, for her to be interned here. I went back to the office and inquired as to the ownership of that plot. The clerk dug out a dusty book, thumbed through the pages and wrote down the name of the owner and the date of purchase. Addie James, March 4 1954. The date was close to the date of my fathers death and the last name was the same as mine however, I had no idea who Addie James was and the date and name similarity were too close to let it go.

I immediately drove to the home of my uncle Ward James, the only surviving relative I had on the James side of the family that might be able to help me solve the mystery. It was there I learned of Addie James or Ted as she was affectionately known. She was the first wife of my Uncle Ward and they had divorced long before I was born. She had know my father since childhood, but no explanation as to why she was scheduled to be buried next to my father. I found out that my Uncle had stayed in some contact with Ted and she knew of me and always had asked about me. She lived just a few miles away so with address in hand I continued to try to solve the unfolding story.

I called first and was told how wonderful it would be if I came by for a visit. Thirty minutes later, and with great anticipation, I knocked on her apartment door. The door opened and it was then I first met Aunt Ted. Not more than 5’ 2" and pretty trim for a woman in her early 80’s. She invited me in and after the usual niceties I had to ask the obvious question. Why had you bought the plot next to my Father. It was from that moment that the healing process began and I learned about the roots of my and my fathers life that I had never know. She told me how she and all the James brothers had grown up in the same small town in Oklahoma before and during the great depression. She brought out tons of pictures of my Dad, his brothers and sister, when they were just kids struggling to have fun in the harsh environment of depression Oklahoma. Pictures of kids standing in front of a circus tent being used as a school because the town was to poor to replace the burned down school. High School football pictures and stories of a kind and loyal young man who stayed in Oklahoma to care for a blind mother when the rest of the brothers had fled to California to find work. We talked for hours and the enigma that was my father began to unfold. And as the afternoon wore I began to love this wonderful old woman who looked you in the eye when she talked and even when she spoke with some anger in her voice, she never spoke with bitterness or spite. She told me that even in the final days of his alcoholism, my Father always told her how proud he was of his son and how he wished he could spend more time with me (Mom and he had separated when I was seven and there were only occasional visits) . She told of the time he was showing off a new comb. Seems he had gotten it as a present from his son, me. Then after 35years I remembered that time. We had had a visit together. He was living in a flea bag hotel and we spent the day just browsing downtown. He bought me a small toy helicopter at the toy section of the drug store. For some reason I thought I should give him a present back. So, I gave him my comb. Ted went on to say that in his final days she took care of him. She did it because that’s what friends do. And, when he died she still had some of his things at her house including that comb. She said no one knew, but she visited the funeral parlor alone before he was buried and slipped that comb into his pocket.

By now I was choking back the tears. My father, the stranger who had abandoned me so many years ago, the man I never knew had become a person just like anyone else. A man with all the complexities of any of us. Good, bad, loved, lonely, all of the things I had never known till then. He was just a sad drunk who never found sobriety. But still, why did Ted buy the plot next to my father. She said that in his final days he had told her that he did not want to be buried. He did not want to be stuck in the cold ground alone. He had spent enough time cold and alone . He wanted to be cremated. Ted was not able to convince the family not to bury my father so she bought the plot next to him so he would not have to be alone for eternity.

Ted and I became friends in the ensuing years and I have visited her as often as I could. I am always refreshed by her energy and good spirit. Up until a few years ago, while in her 80’s, she would drive to L.A., some 90 miles, once or twice a month to help out at a downtown shelter for street winos. She felt is was something she just needed to do. She always has stories of the times in Oklahoma with my Dad and family and has shared a lot of my family genealogy with me that I never knew. Though we are not blood, I believe she is the best Aunt I could ever have had.

A few years ago and after much healing and forgiveness for my father, Ted wrote and asked if I would consider taking the plot next to my father. She had decided to make other arrangement but did not want to abandon her commitment to my father. After much thought, I wrote back and accepted her offer. I felt that though we never were able to be together in life, perhaps we could in eternity. And, since I am a recovering alcoholic, perhaps I could share what I have found with my Dad.

Addie (Ted ) James died January 23, 2003. One thing I know to be true is that by her living, the world is a little better place and with her death, heaven is a little brighter place.

God bless you Aunt Ted,
rest in peace.

So for those of you in Blogdom who may see this I ask in memory of Aunt Ted.
Do something kind for someone, give a smile to someone who doesn’t have one, live life with out bitterness and keep her legacy alive.

2003-01-16T21:38:00.000-08:00

Been entirely too long since I've posted anything (as if someone is really checking) and my guilt voice is yakking at me " Andrea gave you this sight and you shoulda, hadda, oughtta, better do something with it. At least after some reading and snooping around at other sights and finishing the first of two books on blogging that were a Christmas present, I have a better understanding about what this is (or may) be all about. This is my blogging site to do with as I wish. And thats' all I have to say about that!

2002-12-27T21:34:00.000-08:00

I stood next to the orange tree just a couple of tree rows from the road. It was a beautiful warm southern calfornia afternoon and I was dealing with one of the side effects of an afternoon at the park and just a few too many cold beers. I really had to pee and there was no waiting till getting home. I never heard a sound. I just noticed movement next to me. There she was, my daugher of 31/2. Her mother had sent her from the car to join me. She never hesitated. Just took off her panties and joined me as we christened this spot. I remember the smile as she looked up at me with no understanding of the somewhat bizzar scene of father and daughter standing in the orchard, taking a pee together. Instant bonding. That was twenty two years ago.

Christmas night 2002, We sat on the couch together as she tried to give me a peek into her world. Templates, html code, web page layout, I think I got about half of it. She was patient. I was attentive. And to the stranger it would not look as odd as I believe it was as the old man tried to grasp some of what this blogging might be about as I marvel at the ease with which she danced over the keyboard. As easy as peeing next to an orange tree . Re-bonding.

The next day a whirl wind afternoon and off she went on a plane bound for Australia and a new chapter in her life. And for me, as I deal with a myriad of emotions from joy to emptiness, from exitiment to sorrow, from pride to fear, for me ---re-bounding.

2002-12-25T23:48:00.000-08:00

Hello. I am helping my dad learn a little more about this fascinating practice, enjoying a pleasant Christmas evening in front of a laptop together. Ain't technology grand?

- Andrea

I have a new look, blog look, that is, thanks to my daughter. Wish she could reprogram the rest of my body that way. ;-) A special Christmas for me, as Andrea heads out on a new adventure in her life, and my oldest daughter Mary gets her Christmas wish of her first home for her family.

Merry Christmas to all.

2002-12-14T21:12:00.000-08:00

While I ponder how I want to enter the world of blogging, here's how to reach me if anyone out there has some words of advice for a slghtly confused middle aged, middle class novice to the realm of blogging. smjames12@yahoo.com

My favorite quote will perhaps help me move forward with this new chapter in my life

"Willie" Shakespear said; " our doubts are our traitors, they keep us from the good we oft might find by fearing to attempt."