Airy Persiflage

Autumn Leaves

basykes@gmail.com — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 08:02:00 +0000

I picked up these leaves in front of the hall where Peach and Kathy's craft show was held on Sunday.

We are well and truly into fall at the moment, Walt will attest, having raked up a ton of leaves from our one tree in the front yard yesterday.

Every year at this time I look hopefully at the tree in our back yard and, once again sigh in disappointment.

I love fall color, but we don't really get the riotous displays of color that people in other parts of the country do. Growing up in San Francisco, I was barely aware of changing seasons from looking at shrubbery. It wasn't until I moved to Berkeley that I realized that trees really looked different at different times of the year!

I remember the very first time I encountered true "fall color." I had gone to Brattleboro, Vermont in October for a meeting and everywhere I turned I was hit with a color palette that would have impressed even Vincent Van Gogh.

It was October of 1999 before I got a full dose of fall color again. It was a year we were all in need of something to lift our spirits. Walt, my mother and I flew to Boston to visit Jeri and to take a drive up into Cape Cod to see the fall color. It was worth it, and yes, it lifted our spirits!

When we were deciding on the kinds of things we wanted to plant in our back yard, I was determined to have fall color. Chinese Pistachio trees are all the rage around here and at this time "raging" is what they are doing. They turn bright yellow, brilliant red, flaming orange, often on the same tree. They line some streets in our area and it takes my breath away whenever I happen to come across a street of Pistachio trees in full bloom.

So when it came time to plant a tree for color in our back yard there was no question but what it would be a Chinese pistachio tree. I eagerly awaited the first fall and was disappointed when the leaves went from green to the ground without any noticeable change of color along the way. I figured it was just a baby and surely by the time it became an adult it would burst into color. Year after year, I hope that it will join its brother or sister trees in a glorious fall display of color, but it just sits there, drab and colorless until all the leaves fall to the ground.

Why does my tree hate me?

A Davis Pistachio. Not Ours.

Thursday Thirteen

basykes@gmail.com — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 08:01:00 +0000

I see a lot of theatre. Here are thirteen of my favorite stage shows, in no particular order, and by no means all of my favorites.

1. Wicked
2. Les Miserables
3. Noises Off
4. The Music Man
5. 1776
6. La Cage aux Folles
7. Death of a Salesman
8. The Last Session
9. The Big Voice: God or Merman
10. Iolanthe
11. The Secret Garden
12. The Laramie Project
13. The Mikado

Crafty Cousins

basykes@gmail.com — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 08:02:00 +0000

The Krafty Cuzzins have now become the Crafty Cuzzins. More visually alliterative.

Today was scheduled to be Cousins Day, but Peach's husband slashed his right hand open the other day (he's right handed) while helping them get ready for the craft show and has 12 stitches. Peach really didn't want to go off and leave him alone.

Instead the three of us got together at Peach's house, where we started working on a web site for The Crafty Cuzzins. In the wake of the disappointing results of the craft fair, they have lots of inventory to sell and are eager to get into making more and hope to get a following. I also suggested that they make a video where they could show how to put the baskets together, for those who can't quite visualize it.

When I first arrived, Kathy's daughter Karen was there with 4 month old Brandon. I got a little wistful watching Grandma playing with her grandson, realizing that Bri is now a toddler and how distance prevented me from having this kind of playtime with her when she was this age.

They grow up so fast. It sucks to live so far away.

We spent a lot of time admiring Brandon, who laughed and chuckled and enjoyed being tossed around. 3-4 months is my very favorite baby age, and I think we missed it entirely in Bri's life because we didn't manage to get down to Santa Barbara.

Peach and Bob's two dogs were particularly interested in this strange little alien.

Anyway, after Karen and Brandon left, we got to work on the web site and on making a video where Peach and Kathy demonstrate how the baskets go together.

The Crafty Cuzzins from Bev Sykes on Vimeo.

The web site is under construction, but the shell of it is visible at http://craftycuzzins.com. I will be working on adding things to it over the coming week, but take a look and give me feedback.

I'm trying to decide right now if they need PayPal or not, or if people can simply send them an e-mail to order and pay by check, while they are trying to decide if they will have enough business to justify taking it to the next level.

Right now they are just selling the bread baskets (and now they can make matching napkin-shaped baskets too) and acrylic coasters that they made. Soon they'll be adding this cool little basket that they are in the process of making.

This is a small bowl, but will be part of a set of (3?) nesting bowls, probably not available before Christmas (but what do I know--I don't even sew buttons!)

Anyway, whether the web site is actually FINISHED or not, the shop is now open and if anybody is interested in buying any of the baskets, as some said they might be, feel free to write to Peach and place an order. There are lots available for immediate sale!

PS--I Love You

basykes@gmail.com — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 08:02:00 +0000

Ben Willmore is homeless.

Well...not exactly homeless, but three years ago he bought a 40 foot touring bus bus, sold 95% of his household possessions and bought camera gear, and started traveling around the country, taking great photos, editing them with PhotoShop, and teaching classes in PhotoShop.

In his time (thus far) he has taught over 80,000 Photoshop users, authored numerous award-winning books and was inducted into the PhotoShop Hall of Fame.

Today he gave a seminar at the Sacramento Community Center ... and I was there.

Actually, this was the second of Willmore's seminars that I've attended, and my third seminar hosted by NAPP (The National Association of Photoshop Professionals). His seminar three years ago was my first. I remember feeling so jazzed when it was over. He spent an awful lot of time working on "curves," a function of PhotoShop that up to that point I had never understood.

I went home from that seminar understanding Curves for the very first time. Ben made it so easy I couldn't understand why I hadn't seen it before. Then I sat down at my computer and tried putting what I thought I had learned into practice and was right back at square one...but I have since worked with it and while I still don't understand Curves, at least I know better what I'm trying to do!

I really enjoyed last year's seminar too, though it wasn't designed for what I wanted to do with PhotoShop. It was given by a PS artist, who creates photos from scratch using PS. Spectacular pictures with amazing effects all created in PS. I learned a lot from him, finally joined NAPP and looked forward to my whopping discount for this year's seminar, as a NAPP member.

When I saw that this year's seminar was going to focus on photographers rather than artists, I was thrilled and signed right up. Today was the day. As I have in all the other seminars, I came awayso jazzed about everything. I want to go out and do light painting.

There were several things that went on today that made it all worthwhile. For one thing, I was amazed at how much I already knew. There were several techniques that he taught that made people in the audience gasp and go "oooooo" collectively...and I realized that I'd been doing those things for a long time.

But there were other little tricks that he showed that solved two of my biggest frustrations with PhotoShop....if they will work for me when I try them.

I missed Peggy so much today. One of the best things about being with her was that we were both learning PhotoShop and excited about all the new things we'd learned. It was she who taught me about the "healing brush" tool, which significantly changed my work on almost every photo I take in PhotoShop. I wanted to be able to turn to her today and say "did you see THAT?" and have us rush off to our own computers to try out all the new stuff.

But she's not here, and there is nobody I know who is excited about PhotoShop, so I'll just take my workshop book and see if I can remember all the good stuff I learned in the seminar today.

As I believe I posted to Facebook at least three times today--I just love all this stuff!

Pigs and Primadonnas

basykes@gmail.com — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 08:02:00 +0000

Not that I needed one, but I think I have developed an eating machine. It has 12 legs, 3 mouths and is focused 100% of the time on food.

It's no wonder these puppies have grown so big. They will eat anything and everything and are constantly on the hunt for More Food. They have turned this house into a canine version of Little Shop of Horrors.

This makes feeding the primadonas in the family very difficult.

I guess maybe it's the return from daylight saving time to to normal time, but the puppies are demanding to be fed somewhere between 4 and 5 a.m. these days. I think if there were only ONE of them this would not be the case but they feed (pun intended) off each other's demands. One wakes up, perhaps thinks "Feed Me," and comes to find me. If I'm lucky, I will be blissfully asleep. Puppy will whine and perhaps paw at my leg. I will ignore him. BUT, the noise and the activity will wake the other two, so rather than be discouraged and go back to sleep, now I have THREE puppies jumping and pawing on me until all hope of staying asleep is gone and I get up to feed them.

Now here is the problem. I feed them and they dive into the bowl (knocking half the food on the floor as I try to get it to the floor because they haven't eaten in like three hours and are about to die on the spot this very minute if they don't get fed), inhale whatever I've given them, and are finally happy and may actually go back to sleep. But it's 4 a.m. Dexter, who used to eat breakfast with the bigger pups, kind of looks up bleary eyed and says "you've gotta be kidding me. It's the middle of the night!" and, sensibly, goes back to sleep. Sheila and Lizzie, who are in the other room don't even bother to wake up because it's like, you know, FOUR FRICKIN' A.M.!

But peace is momentarily restored. Puppies have full tummies and are happy. And sleepy. And except for the fact that they all want to sleep on me, we are all happy and go back to sleep, except me, because by this time I have one puppy on my face, one with his butt end aimed at my face, and one clawing my legs trying to figure out how to climb into the chair to get with the other three who are already there.

But that's OK because it's cold in the morning and at least I am warm, if not able to sleep and we all finally settle in usually until Walt comes downstairs.

Now Walt, being up in a bed behind a closed door AND a gate that keeps the dogs off the steps, has had a nice night of sleep and by the time he comes downstairs there is actually light in the sky and this is a good thing.

All the dogs run to the stairs and he sits down and greets them one by one. Sheila and Lizzie yawn and stretch and get their morning skritches and then go outside to do their morning business and then they look at me and say "OK. Where's my breakfast?"

By this time Dexter, too, has come awake and, not having had any food when the other puppies ate, is ready for breakfast too.

Lizzie has always been the worst dog to feed, but when there are no puppies here, it's OK. Lizzie would do well with feeding on demand, always having food available that she can snack at throughout the day, because she leaps and leaps and leaps and comes to get me if she's hungry, standing behind my office chair and putting her paws on my shoulders. "Hey, remember me? It's time to FEED ME." She does an impatient little dance while she's waiting for the food, but you put it in her bowl and apparently she didn't want to actually EAT it, she just wanted to LOOK at it for awhile. You'd think I'd arranged it decoratively and put a sprig of parsley in the bowl for her to admire.

But of course, the 4 a.m. puppies are now awake again and ready to attack anything that smacks of FOOD so they dive into the bowl while Lizzie stands by and watches, in disbelief, as her breakfast disappears. You'd think that by now she'd know that was going to happen, but it seems to surprise her every morning. I try to wrest the bowl away from the puppies while there is still food in it, hoping to sneak it to her when they are busy elsewhere.

In the meantime, Sheila, the only really nice dog around here these days is very patiently waiting for HER food in the other room. I take a scoop full of food and pour it in her bowl and Dexter, who has been aced out of Lizzie's bowl by the other puppies, tries to sneak in a bite of Sheila's.

Sheila is a lovely dog and a wonderful dog, but nothing comes between her and her food, so she growls her loud, scary "I'm not kidding...get out of here, kid" growl at Dexter, who thinks that he is about to have his head bitten off and runs screaming and trembling and won't stop screaming until I pick him up and comfort him.

(I'm now thinking that Sheila may have done
a bit more than just growl at Dexter)

So now I have three dogs who have had two breakfasts and two dogs who have had NO breakfast. If I put Dexter in the playpen, as I used to do, with food that he can have without interference from the other dogs, he feels he's being punished and he cries to get out and completely ignores the food. I'm not nearly as concerned about Lizzie who could stand to lose a few pounds and I figure if she doesn't eat this morning she'll eat tonight, when I feed all six together.

And the puppies have now had too much food to eat, but it's like trying to herd sheep to get them away from Lizzie's bowl. They are getting much too strong, especially when working as one body.

The only good thing about their voracious appetites is that they will do anything for peanutbutter, so the pills that they are taking this week go down without any problem at all, deeply imbedded in peanut butter. Give them a glop of peanut butter and they think they've died and gone to heaven--and then spend the next five minutes licking each other's mouths to make sure they get every single bit of peanut butter they can.

I love these dogs, in an "I hate you this morning" kind of way (let's not even talk about last night!). But it's definitely time for the puppies to have their own homes.

Pigs and Primadonnas from Bev Sykes on Vimeo.

Krafty Cuzzins

basykes@gmail.com — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 08:02:00 +0000

In a way I kind of feel a little bit guilty,but it's not really my fault. Honest!

Some time ago, Peach and Kathy, the creative wing of Cousins Day, decided to pool their talents and go into the craft business. They both cross stitch beautifully and had some really beautiful projects they wanted to work on that they thought would sell well at a craft fair and make them some money for Christmas. They started a business called Krafty Cuzzins.

Every time we went to Cousins Day, Kathy would drive to and from my mother's and Peach would sit in the back doing her cross stitch.

Then Jeri and I went to Europe.

I had a great time shopping for gifts in France and one of the things I brought back from Arles was a bread basket for my mother. I wrote about this before.

You can see it up there in the right hand corner. The thing lies flat for storage but when you tie up the four corners, you have this great little bread basket. Kathy leaped on that thing and decided she could figure out how to make it and that it would be a great craft project, since she was getting burned out on cross-stitch.

At our next Cousins Day, she had a prototype to show us. She was so excited about how they were coming out and how much she was enjoying making them.

She was particularly excited about it because every time she showed a basket to someone, they liked it so much they bought it and she was afraid she wouldn't have enough time to make the 50 baskets she wanted to make in time for the craft show.

We got all carried away talking about their use beyond just a bread basket. We thought of making up a gift basket for a baby shower present, filling it with powder, rolled diapers, pacifier, rattle and anything else that you would give a prospective mother. Or a sewing basket, a place to keep all your sewing supplies. A nice basket to store your Christmas cards in. We talked about marketing it for the RV-er, since it folds flat so there is no storage problem, and it's both reversible and washable. The uses seemed endless.

I remember that when I talked about the baskets here on my journal back in September I had at least two people write and ask me for information about how they could order a basket.

And so today was the day of the craft fair. Peach and Kathy, and Peach's daughter, had managed to make fifty baskets for the fair. They also had made some very nice framed cross stitch pieces, some coasters, some pepper jelly, some bread-n-butter pickles, and a little book-type thing that you can keep earrings in when you're traveling. And the fifty baskets.

I found them easily enough in the crowd.

As small craft fairs go, it seemed to be a well attended one, though I am no expert in these things. There were lots and lots of tables set up. Peach and Kathy were next to a lady selling blankets, which seemed to be just big pieces of cloth with pieces of fringe cut into it. But she seemed to be selling some because some of the patterns on the cloth were very cute.

The fair started at 9 a.m. and I got there between 9:30 and 10. Peach and Kathy hadn't sold a thing. In fact, hardly anybody had even LOOKED at the display. By the time I left they had dropped the price of the baskets and one woman had bought one. I had bought three of the other things on display, and so by noon, when I left, they had made a grand total of four sales. They were very discouraged....and they had a huge box of bread baskets left over. I don't know if there was a big influx of customers between noon and 2, when it ended, but what they had sold by the time I left would not cover the cost of having a table at the craft fair (to say nothing of the investment in materials and labor making the things!)

It's a shame because they are really high quality baskets, and while I sat there several people seemed to like them. I know for a fact you can buy them at Williams-Sonoma, and they cost more than what Peach and Kathy are selling them for.

So the next step is that I'm going to design a web page for them, including a video on how to put them together and showing possible uses for the basket. We'll get that up, as well as establish a site on Etsy to see if maybe they can get some customers there too.

This all sounded like such a perfect project in September and it's disappointing that it is looking like such a dud in November.

Only 10 Days Left Til Christmas

basykes@gmail.com — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 08:02:00 +0000

No, don't go running to your calendars and don't think I've finally gone off the deep end, but if you want to participate in what seems to be a nice program to help make a good Christmas for kids who might not otherwise have a good Christmas, you only have 10 days left. Let me explain, and then at the end of this entry, I want to talk about my guilty feelings about this and about Compassion International.

There are lots of ways to give to underprivileged kids at Holiday time, but I kind of liked this organization that you may have heard of. It's called Samaritan's Purse and the idea is that you fill a shoe box with goodies for children for Christmas. You wrap the box and take it to a drop-off site and it is combined with all the other boxes and they are shipped to children around the world.

This morning I went to give blood (successfully, this time...yay!), then had my hair cut, and then went to the Dollar Store to see how much bang I could get for my bucks. (Ironically I saw my "real" hairdresser down an aisle, and tried to hide so he couldn't see that I had obviously just had my hair cut!)

I had four piles of things in my basket -- one for me (just a pair of Christmas socks, since I don't think I have any to wear this year), one for the Compassion kids (coloring book, stickers, and a puzzle), and then a stack for a young boy and one for a young girl.

You really can get a lot for a little amount of money. I bought coloring books, crayons (64 pack, not that cheap 8 pack!), Christmas pencils, warm gloves, kid-patterned tooth brushes, brightly colored bandaids, bubble soap, kazoos, and Christmas candy for both boxes. Then I got a little car, ball, and Spiderman digital watch for the boy and a little stuffed puppy (of course), and headbands for a little girl. I will add more things after I fill a shoebox and see how much room is left over.

I wanted to do this last year, but by the time I found out about it, it was too late.

This is, of course, a non-denominational Christian group which is running this program, as is the group which runs Compassion International.

I got my second letter from Fred, in the Philippines, yesterday and I must admit to feeling some guilt about the whole "Christian" thing. One thing that is stressed over and over again is how important our sponsorship is in the Christian development of our sponsored children and we are always encouraged to pray for our kids and to encourage them to go to church.

Well, my problem is that I believe there is a supreme being, who may be God or may be Allah or may be Buddha or may be Mork from Ork (or is more probably "S/he who has no name" because I also believe that s/he has no gender either!)

I believe there is more to existence than this one life and I believe there is an afterlife. I have to hang onto that because I'm determined to ground Dave and Paul for all eternity for being so stupid (tho s/he who has no name may have already taken care of some sort of "Stupidity Consequence" by now).

But the last time I actually prayed was after Gilbert died. I took his relatives to lunch in Chinatown, dropped them off at the restaurant, parked across the street from my favorite Catholic church in San Francisco and stopped in to say a prayer for him. I don't think I've officially prayed since, though I may have said words in unison with other people when the time was appropriate.

I feel I am a spiritual person, but I've had such problems with organized religions -- lots of them. So I don't go to church, and I don't create an alternate church-like "thing" that I do on a regular or irregular basis to ritualize any sort of worship of a higher power. I just try to live a good life, do what I can when I can do it, and hope that this is the plan that I'm supposed to be following.

But I do feel like I'm kind of an in-the-closet non-Christian. It's not that I'm a non-Christian. I think there are lots of wonderful people who are Christians, just as there are lots of wonderful Jews and Muslims and atheists, etc. I believe that Jesus lived and died, whether he was actually "god" or simply "god's messenger." I just have not, to use the proper terminology "taken Jesus Christ into my heart as my Lord and Savior." That doesn't mean I haven't unofficially done so. It's just that I haven't had that religious transformation that so many speak about.

But I admire what these missionaries are doing for children in need and I think that they probably need my money more than they need my piety....and you don't see a lot of non church types out there running schools for poor children.

But it makes it feel awkward to speak in "tongues" (as it were) and to answer Fred's mother's question, which was "How's your life for being Christian. What year you've been a Christian?"

I think I'm going to tell her that I was born into a religious family and learned about Jesus in school. And then I'll send Fred a sheet of stickers that I found at the Dollar Store today, which are designed for religion school kids. Think that will work without actually lying about anything?

What Constitutes a "Man"?

basykes@gmail.com — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 08:02:00 +0000

On the heels of my "things to be depressed about" entry, I got a note from Peggy yesterday alerting her friends to a very depressing situation in Denmark.

The waters here aren't red from any bizarre climate change or overabundance of marine life that is feeding along the shores. This is the result of human cruelty. I suppose the Danes would not classify it as cruelty, but they slaughter hundreds of the "famous and intelligent" Calderon dolphins.

Apparently this takes place in the Feroe Islands and the main participants in the slaughter are teens. Why? As a right of passage into manhood.

It becomes a big spectator sport.

Quoting from the e-mail, "Is it necessary to mention that the dolphin calderon, like all the other species of dolphins, is near instinction and they get near men to play and interact. In a way of PURE friendship."

"They don’t die instantly; they are cut 1, 2 or 3 times with thick hocks. And at that time the dolphins produce a sound similar to the cry of a new born child."

While I understand (while not exactly condone) a slaughter in order to feed or clothe a family, I don't find anything honorable about mass killings just to prove manhood. If you are as appalled about this situation as I am, there is a web site where you can go to register your outrage.

Psychic Woman

basykes@gmail.com — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 08:02:00 +0000

I've mentioned before that over on Flickr, I've been doing this "take a photo a day" project, which I'm now continuing into year 3. After 2+ years of taking your own photo every day, you are desperate for new ideas. In September I discovered that there are actually holidays to be celebrated in this country every single day of the year. Wonderful holidays like National Step in a Puddle and Splash Your Friend Day (January 11), National Garlic Day (April 19), Wiggle Your Toes Day (August 6), etc. It's wonderful reading.

So I've been using my daily photograph to celebrate that day's holiday. Many of them have been fun to work on, with the help of PhotoShop, like this one for "World Smile Day" (October 3)

A couple of days ago was "Increase Your Psychic Powers" Day and I did my best to represent that.

It was the next night when I had the dream I talked about yesterday, which began with my being so depressed that I drove off the road and into a body of water. This morning I'm thinking that maybe I actually did increase my psychic powers, 'cause I sure am depressed this morning.

Maine joins the host of other states where gay marriage has lost by only a few percentage points. How would you like to have only 5% of the population of your state decide whether you can be married or not? Think it can't happen to a nice heterosexual couple like you? How about that judge who decided that he shouldn't marry an interracial couple. Who is next? Maybe some day they'll decide that since the bible refers to left-haned people as "evil," only right-handed people should marry...and my nearly 45 years with Walt will be dissolved. Civil rights should not be up for a vote, or be decided at the whim of someone else.

(Someone is collecting signatures to get a petition on the ballot to outlaw divorce in California. Let's see how serious those right wingers really are about preserving the sanctity of marriage!!)

I'm not listening to the news today. It's all too depressing. I'm one of those who had the audacity to hope and I haven't given up hope yet that Obama can be viewed by history as one of the great presidents, if he manages to follow through on his promises. But we live in an instant gratification society and everyone expected him to "fix everything" overnight. ("it's been a whole week since the inauguration and he hasn't done anything yet!") Remember the Patriot Act? And how aghast we were to discover that this sweeping intrusion into our cherished freedoms was passed without anybody having the opportunity to read it? It is my fervent hope that the slowness with which Obama seems to be doing everything comes from his wanting to get it right. I continue to hope, but talking heads make it difficult.

Then I watched Al Gore on Letterman last night and heard about the continuing erosion of our earth, the probable irreversible death of coral, the animals species which are on the brink of extinction, the island of garbage twice the size of Texas floating in the Pacific ocean, the sinking of the entire country of Bangladesh, and most of humankind's indifference to it all.

One of my blogging students from the other night has started a blog about the conditions in Congo right now. Reading that is also enough to make you depressed. I have friends from Congo who have family there now.

This morning I listened to NBC's financial expert talking about the astronomical rise in interest rates and annual fees that banks have decided to charge and how we are essentially helpless to do anything. Call the banks and protest, but if they ask you for information, don't give any or it can be used against you. Don't start a new charge account because it can show up as a negative on your credit report. Don't stop using credit cards because that can show up as a negative on your credit report. It's the ultimate Catch 22 situation.

No good news ever comes out of the Middle East.

Sometimes it just seems like there is nothing good to live for...and maybe that drive out into the wilderness and into the body of water was prophetic.

Thursday Thirteen

basykes@gmail.com — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 08:01:00 +0000

Thirteen of my least favorite things to do

1. Exercise
2. Diet
3. Iron
4. Clean the bathroom
5. Have a nerve conduction study
6. Have a colonoscopy
7. Have a mammogram
8. Get root canal
9. Get junk mail or junk e-mail
10. Buy new shoes
11. Cook dinner every night
12. Sit through committee meetings
13. Garden

Tell the Chinese Guy I'm Sorry

basykes@gmail.com — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 08:02:00 +0000

I have said for years that one of my big disappointments is that I don't dream. My sleeping habits have been so poor for so long that I know that either I don't get deeply enough asleep to dream, or I don't remember my dreams. In any event, I have always felt that I was missing out on some fun stuff.

Last night I woke up at 2 a.m. This wasn't the dogs' fault this time, it was the fault of my bladder. I fully expected to go right back to sleep, as I did the night before, but I didn't. The dogs were very cooperative and no problem at all, but I just simply could not go back to sleep.

I tried watching a movie that I knew well, figuring I would doze off, but I didn't. I finally got up at 5 a.m. and did some stuff on the computer for awhile, but around 5:30 was feeling sleepy, so I decided to try getting a little sleep again.

Walt came downstairs around 6:30 and the noise of the dogs greeting him woke me up, so my dream took place within an hour and it is so crystal clear in my mind (and since I so rarely dream!), I decided to share it.

I was depressed and decided to go for a drive. I was driving a car along a path that got more and more narrow until it finally abruptly disappeared and the car rolled off and into water. The car was immersed and I had two things that I needed to do--I had to get Ned (who somehow was strapped in the back seat) and my purse (with my camera in it) out quickly. I managed to get out of the car and dove down under the water to unstrap Ned and get him out, and I grabbed my purse and tossed it up on a rock nearby (miraculously it was still dry inside). The car and I were stuck in the water when a Chinese guy came down to the edge, very angry with me because apparently the water was in the middle of his restaurant and he kept telling me that I had to get out because I was on private property. I kept trying to explain that I had had an auto accident but he just yelled that he didn't care, I was on his private property and I needed to get out.

I was standing in the water and checked my cell phone and discovered that it still worked, but the SIM card had been erased, so I had lost all the information stored in it, and couldn't call AAA to come and get the car out of the water. The Chinese guy continued to yell at me as customers arrived at the restaurant.

I finally did manage to get hold of AAA, but the call was dropped before I could give them my location.

Somehow I was now inside the restaurant. The Psychiatrist and his wife arrived and I was chatting with them while they were waiting to be seated and telling them about a birthday party that we want his bluegrass group to play for.

I was still trying to get back to AAA when I realized that the nubby rubber cover to my cell phone was broken and so I was also trying to find a new cover for the phone and trying to call the number of the company, which was printed on the rubber cover itself.

Somehow I wandered to the house next door to the restaurant and rang the doorbell. Apparently Jon Voigt lived there. When he didn't answer the door, I wandered in as if we were long time friends and plopped down on the couch and asked if I could use his telephone book to look up the number of AAA. He started coming on to me, which made me very angry so I got up and left to return to the restaurant.

I went in the back door and through the kitchen and then wandered through the restaurant looking for The Psychiatrist to continue our conversation. I realized that one room was full of only gay men and the other room was full of heterosexual couples and thought it odd that they divided the restaurant into gay and straight.

I think that was about when I heard Walt coming downstairs. As far as I know the car is still stuck in the water outside the restaurant and the Chinese guy is still angry with me! And I don't have a clue what happened to Ned. Or Jon Voigt either, for that matter.

Old Friends, Hairy and Otherwise, Return

basykes@gmail.com — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 08:02:00 +0000

Two days ago, I optimistically reported that I thought that Higgins' "test placement" must be going very well, since I had heard nothing from the woman who took him.

Well. I spoke too soon.

I had a call from her over the weekend, saying that after a week, her dog still was not bonding with Higgins, that the dog still barked whenever Higgins got near. She herself loved Higgins and had even taken him to work with her, where he behaved very well, but her husband was now thinking he didn't really want a second dog, so she was going to be bringing him back.

We made arrangements to have her drop him off in the late afternoon because we had plans in the middle of the day.

Walt's old college buddy, Jim and his wife Ann were going to be driving through town on their way from Lake Tahoe to San Francisco, where they would be flying back to Maryland and had called to ask if we wanted to meet for brunch.

We had a delightful visit over pasta at Caffe Italia here in Davis, where we occupied a booth for about 2 hours, while patrons came and went and the wait staff climbed all over us taking down Halloween decorations.

We guessed that had been about ten years since Walt and Joe had seen each other (though I saw Joe and his wife a year ago, while they were in California for their son's ordination and Walt was in London). They are such lovely, gracious people and I always enjoy our brief meetings.

We stayed so long at the restaurant that the woman who was returning Higgins actually called as we were leaving. I didn't realize it was so late.

Walt dropped me off at home and went off to work on the set he's helping to build right now. I waited for Higgins, who arrived very shortly after I got home again.

The woman who dropped him off stayed for 20-30 minutes, playing with the dogs and watching Higgins reunite with his siblings again. There were some squabbles and some minor territorial challenges, but basically they all seemed happy to see each other again.

After she left, I took them all out to the back yard, where they exploded into a flurry of hairy masses chasing each other around and around and around.

Lizzie seemed to vacillate between wanting to being one of the gang and wanting to exert her superiority over the smaller guys. I just LOVE the look on Higgins' face in this picture:

For the moment, Higgins is back home again. I hesitate to be optimistic, but last night all three puppies slept all night cuddled up next to each other. Nobody demanded to be in my lap with Dexter, and even when I got up to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night, they sat up and looked at me, but immediately went back to sleep as soon as I returned. I hardly dare hope that this will be how things will go now that Higgins is back, but I sure appreciated the sleep last night!

When Friends Write Books

basykes@gmail.com — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 08:02:00 +0000

It's always cool when friends get books published. I have a shelf of books by people that I actually know, some of whom are actually kinda sorta semi-good friends.

Today was a big week for friends writing books. Only in this case they aren't exactly friends. One is a lady I sat next to at a Says You taping two years ago, and the other is a blogger whose blog I've been reading for awhile.

Harriet Reisen is the wife of Says You panelist Tony Kahn. Tony isn't exactly a friend either, though he feels like one since I've been listening to him on the show for years, did typing for him on the Morning Stories project, was interviewed over the telephone by him, and have actually had a couple of brief face to face conversations with him. And I sat next to his wife at one of the Says You tapings. We got along so well during the first half of the taping, that she found another seat for the second half of the show!

BUT, she's a huge Louisa May Alcott fan. Like me, she was taken in at a young age by Little Women (a book I read numerous times...and of course, like every other little girl, I identified with Jo). But she went further and immersed herself in all of Alcott's life and all of her works, even the pulp fiction penned under another name (A.M. Barnard).

And now she has written a book about the woman who brought the March family to life.

Reisen has so immersed herself in Alcott's world that it makes me want to visit Jeri in Boston again, so I can make my own little tour of the homes in which she lived and try to visualize the New England world of the 1800s which shaped the life of such a prolific and eclectic author, who was truly the J.K. Rowling of her day.

It seems to me that on one of our trips to Massachusetts and driving around the countryside we passed the home where Alcott lived when she was writing Little Women (or it may have been another author writing another famous book...I just thought I remembered it was Alcott). Now I want to tour the house with that thought in mind.

Reisen's book is not one that you rush through to find out whodunnit, but rather one to be explored, savored, and studied, as you allow yourself to be inspired by the lively Alcott. (In reading about the difference between her and her older sister, I am very much reminded of how our life changed when Ned arrived as the second child and the relationship he had with Jeri when they were the only two children in the family. And just reading the first few chapters and watching Little Women when the puppies woke me at some ungodly hour this morning made me realize how semi-autobiographical that story is!)

As for the second "friend" book, Ree Drummond isn't a friend. She doesn't know who I am from Adam, but I was introduced to her blog, The Pioneer Woman, by my friend Joan. She's the kind of blogger you love to hate, or at the very least feel extremely jealous of--she can do anything. She takes gorgeous photos, creates amazing foods including canning, baking and pickling. She keeps an immaculate decorator-worthy house, raises beautiful children (whom she home schools), and lives on a ranch with beautiful cows and horses and other four-legged critters. In addition to all that, she's a terrific writer who tells wonderful stories. You go to her blog to learn how to use PhotoShop, to find an idea for dinner, to see the beautiful animal photos, look at the pictures of her kids, read the story of her love affair with her husband, "The Marlboro Man," or be inspired to improve your own writing.

And the thing about her is that I've read other SuperWomen bloggers before, who do a lot of what she does, but they all seem so arrogant, but I don't find Drummond to be arrogant at all; in fact, she comes across as quite likeable (which is why I continue to read her blog).

And now she has written one of the nicest cookbooks I've seen in a long time.

I don't buy cookbooks any more, as a general rule, because I can always research a recipe on the Internet for free, but I love the way she explains recipes, and I also wanted to be supportive of a fellow blogger.

The book is set up beautifully, a little bit country, a little bit cookery!

As on her web site, the recipes are easy to follow with gorgeous step by step photos to guide you along the way.

And every so often you come across something you least expect in a cookbook.

But then it takes you right back to the purpose of the book.

This book is more than a mere cookbook and I look forward to not only checking out some of my favorite recipes and discovering new ones, but also delving into the narrative sections as well.

Ree Drummond will probably never know who I am, but I'm glad to have her cookbook on my shelf.

Another Corner Heard From

basykes@gmail.com — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 07:02:00 +0000

I finally heard from the third of my three Compassion kids. I'm not sponsoring Fred, but his sponsor doesn't have time to write to him, so he needs someone to write to him and I volunteered.

Fred lives in the southern part of the island of Luzon, in the Philippines. According to the information that came with this letter, "Bicol is one of the major tourist destinations in the Philippines and is primarily known as the home of Mount Mayon, an active volcano with a perfectly shaped cone. It is the Philippines' most active volcano. It has an elevation of 2,462 meters (8,007 feet) with a base diameter of 20 km.

"Bicol is also famous for its rich and spicy dishes which are mostly cooked using "gata," or coconut milk and flavored with "siling labuyo," or chili. Well known Bicolano specialties are "bicol express," "inanaqat," "liang" and "kinunot." Must buys include "pili," nut-based delicacies, and handicrafts.

"Compassion has a total of 3,849 registered children in Bicol, coming from 30 projects as of March 2009."

The above is a picture of Mt. Mayon, the Philippines' most active volcano and considered to be the world's most perfectly formed volcano for its symmetrical cone. The name Mayon is derived from the Bicolano word "Magayon" which means "beautiful." (See how instructive this blogl can be?)

Many of the children come from non-English speaking countries, and so their letters need to be translated before they can be sent. However, Fred's mother, Lyra, wrote the letter for him, in English, which opens up all sorts of possibilities for sending him little books and things that require the ability to understand English, since the translators only translate the letters.

According to her letter, six year old Fred is the oldest of four children (this sounds like MY family!) and his younger siblings are all girls. The father is, according to Lyra, "a tricycle driver." But she doesn't say what he does on the tricycle, whether it is delivering stuff or something like a street taxi driver.

So I have now heard from all three of my Compassion children and already the letters to them are starting to be individualized -- up to this point, I was sending the identical letter to all three kids, but as I begin to learn about their likes and dislikes, and to answer their questions, they will start getting individually written letters.

The nice thing about Compassion is that you can either send a real letter or you can send an e-mail. I send little things like stickers or photos or things like that through the mail, but if I have nothing to send (or don't feel like getting something ready to send), then I can send an e-mail instead. And we all know I know how to send e-mail!

I am cautiously optimistic that Higgins has a new home. A woman picked him up the other day to take him home on a "trial run" to see how he got along with their dog, who has had problems with other dogs in the past. From all reports, though the two dogs have not yet bonded, Higgins seems to have little separation anxiety! The woman hasn't called yet to say she is going to be bringing him back.

Higgins on a day he went with her to her work

The other three have become adamant about being in my lap whenever my knees bend. Dexter has learned how to jump into my lap (but then he's the older puppy, by at least a month, even if he is much smaller). Eliza knows how to climb up the footrest of the recliner if I tilt it down for her a bit. Freddie has more trouble, but if he can get his front legs on the footrest, I can pick him up by my feet (it's difficult to pick up a big dog when you already have two other dogs in your lap!) Doing this at 3 a.m. is just so much fun!

There was no adoption at Petco this week, since it was Halloween and it's a bad idea to try to introduce a new pet into the family on a night with so much confusion going on, so it will be at least a week before we have our next shot at finding a new home for all the puppies.

NaVloPoMo

basykes@gmail.com — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 07:01:00 +0000

I'm doing -- or attemting to do -- one vlog post a day, so this is my post for November 1.

NaVloPoMo #1 from Bev Sykes on Vimeo.

What? No Apple??

basykes@gmail.com — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 07:02:00 +0000

Aren't students supposed to bring apples for the teacher? I didn't get so much as a strawberry. But I sure got a hefty dose of ego-boosting.

Last night I taught another round of my blogging class. I did this last year and didn't think it went well, though people asked for a follow-up class. I had I think four students who came. All of them seemed to be needing a web site, not really a blog. The only one who was possibly really wanting a blog was going to use it to write a cookbook, but over the year when I checked back on her site, she never did anything with it.

This year I made sure that the course description included a brief explanation of what a blog was, and, more importantly, what it wasn't.

When I checked on the status of sign-ups last weekend, they had nobody signed up and my hopes rose that maybe nobody wanted to come. Maybe blogging was so common now that nobody needed to be "taught" anything about it.

But then I had word that three people had signed up. By the time of the class there were seven people who came to learn about blogging and none of them really needed a web site--they were interested to learn about blogging.

Of course I had performance anxiety. I don't really think of myself as a teacher, but if there is anything I can teach at least fairly, it's blogging. I at least have lots of experience.

Tsui, from DCN, and I went to the lab to meet with one of the tech guys to learn how to set up all the new equipment. Good thing we did, since there were a couple of little glitches that needed to be fixed and he was able to do that for us.

Then we returned at 6 to get all the computers up and running. I put some links into the machine so I wouldn't have to type them over and over again, and we waited for students to arrive.

Seven is a full class (that's all the computers there are), and we had exactly seven students show up. Now performance anxiety sets in.

I had them go around the class and introduce themselves and explain what they hoped to get out of the class. I expected to have the same result I did last time, with people not really being there to learn about blogging, but surprisingly they were, to one degree or another. One guy runs a Mac Users group at the senior center and also wants to start a blog for his Sons of Norway group. Another woman is setting up a blog for deaf users. A woman from Congo has a lot to say on her blog. A gentlemen, who is probably in his 90s, just wanted to find out what it's all about. Another woman was interested in blogging but concerned about privacy issues.

There were all sorts of levels of experitse, from people who knew the lingo to the older man who had difficulty moving his mouse and whose hearing impairment made it difficult for him to understand everything.

I had everyone set up a blog on Blogger, because that's the site I'm most accustomed to, but I also gave them a handout with several other blogging sites and examples of blogs from each of those sites, if they wanted to check them out.

It seemed that everyone had either problems I couldn't solve, or questions I couldn't answer because they dealt with situations I had never considered before.

Tsui was a godsend, because I've learned that you can't do this class in an hour and a half with only one person. Everybody needs individual attention and Tsui was able to handle one side of the room while I took the other.

When we left, everybody had a blog set up, whether they ever use it again or not. They had all asked for a follow-up class, which I agreed to teach. I had promised the older gentleman that I would make a step by step instruction sheet for him, and even offered to come to his house where we could work one on one and he could do it at his own speed. I had also offered to help the woman from Congo by proofreading her writings in English, which she has been looking for some help with.

The ego boost came when the woman from Congo was shocked to learn I was 66...and later referred to me as "Professor."

So I guess it wasn't as bad as I always think it's going to be.

But nobody brought me an apple. (Though, come to think of it, this was a PC class...what did I expect? LOL.)

How Obsessive Am I?

basykes@gmail.com — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 07:02:00 +0000

Once upon a time, a long time ago, there was a little place called GeoCities. Steve had a journal called "Living in the Bonus Round" there. When I decided to start writing a journal, I joined GeoCities.

When you joined GeoCities, you were shown a real "virtual neighborhood," a map of roads and houses. You picked the neighborhood you wanted to "live" in and then chose the design of the "house" you were going to fill. Seems all kind of silly now.

I don't remember what my neighborhood was, but it had something to do with theatre, I'm sure. I picked out my house and started to decorate it with journal entries.

It didn't take too long before all those "houses" were bought up and GeoCities dropped the graphical context. Now you just posted things to a web site called GeoCities.

Then Yahoo bought out GeoCities and things continued pretty much as they always had, but somewhere off in the distance, a death knell was sounding. You could still log into GeoCities, but if you wanted to set up a web site, you had to do it through Yahoo.

With GeoCities you had free web space, which was great, but it was limited. So I actually had three sites there. One for beverlysykes, one for bevsykes and one for bevasykes. About the time bevasykes was starting to fill up too, I decided to bite the bullet and get my own domain for Funny the World, which has been the address for many years now, still hosted by Yahoo.

Well, I knew it was coming. I heard rumors. And you can't say that Yahoo didn't give GeoCities members plenty of warning. Steve even wrote about it a couple of days ago. But two days ago, I was putting in the "Today in My History" section, and, as I frequently do, I was clicking through entries for the past ten years.

Imagine my shock when I clicked the entry for 2000 and was told that it didn't exist! All of my beverlysykes, bevsykes, and bevasykes entries were now gone.

As I said, it's not that it took me by surprise, but seeing it there on my screen gave me a strange feeling in the pit of my stomach, as if a beloved friend had died.

Fortunately, though my life is an instruction book for how to live in chaos, there are parts of it which are organized, and, envisioning this possibility several years ago, I have been saving all of my journal entries for many years now. They all get saved to my hard drive and at the end of the year, the entire year is moved to a CD. The entries weren't gone, exactly--they all exist on disk, but they would all have to be reformatted to put on the Funny the World domain.

Did I really want to go through all that work? It took about 5 minutes for me to decide that...yes, I really did. It would be so much better if they were all in one place. I knew it was going to be a horribly time-consuming project, but I couldn't not do it.

I discovered that it takes about 3-4 hours to put one month worth of entries back, so I'm going to be doing one month a day, and at the same time putting in the current year 2000 entry while I am doing the current day's entry. (I.e, I've finished March and April, and also October 28, 29, and 30).

For some reason, when I saved the entries originally, not all of the photos saved with them. Some photos I've had to delete, some I've been able to find elsewhere on my hard drive, and some I just took again. If the photo is essential to the entry and I can't find the original photo, I've left a note explaining that the photo is gone. I'm sure lots of links are wrong, but I'm trying to upgrade them as best I can along the way.

Someone on Facebook introduced me to The Wayback Machine, which was brand new to me, a massive internet archive which has stored over 150 billion pages archived from 1996 on. You enter the old URL and it searches to see if it's still stored. While I have all of my entry pages on disk, I didn't have the table of contents for each month. I checked to see if I could find any through the Wayback Machine and they were all there. I just needed to edit them, not recreate them.

So this will be my activity for the next several weeks, along with all the other stuff. I anticipate that as I complete this project I'm going to find I've missed a lot, so I invite anybody who finds a mistake somewhere to let me know and I'll try to get it finished. (I should really take time to double check all those links to other sites and remove the ones that are dead, but I'm not going to do that at this point.)

I may never dust furniture in my house, but I really do like to have my journal / blog entries as correct as possible!

Be A Clown

basykes@gmail.com — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 07:02:00 +0000

Did you ever want to run away and join the circus? I did, when I read "Toby Tyler, or Ten Weeks with the Circus" as a kid. Of course I never would have done it. I was much too inhibited.

My friend and fellow blogger, Mary Wise, did it. She went to clown school and traveled with a circus and even wrote a book about it. The only clowning around she does now-a-days is on line (I think), but she does keep her hand in by meeting with a group of jugglers on a regular basis.

Today I met another clown. His name is Paul Del Bene and he is going to put on a benefit performance for DPNS (Davis Parent Nursery School) next weekend, November 6 and 7.

I would never have known about Paul and would certainly never have thought about going to his show, were it not for my friend / writing buddy / Scrabble partner Joan, who told me about it and suggested that his show might make a good article for the newspaper.

I contacted my editor, who said he had received a press release and had all the information that he needed, really, but if I wanted to do a feature article, go ahead.

So I contacted Paul's mother-in-law (that's how these things go...she's a friend of Joan's which is how Joan found out about the performance), who put me in touch with Paul. And then, in one of those small world moments, when Paul wrote to set up an interview time, he mentioned in passing that he had done a movie in Davis a few years ago and that Jeri had written the music for it.

Back to Mishka's I went, recorder in hand, to have coffee with a clown.

Paul has been a clown for nearly 30 years, but, though he went to Ringling Bros and Barnum & Bailey Clown college, where he graduated top in his class and then worked for them for a year in Japan, but he has performed mostly in Europe, where the tradition of vaudeville and clowns is very lively and it's easy to get work. He speaks several languages and was able to work in France, Germany, Italy, Switzerland and several other countries and supported his family on his work as a professional clown.

But they returned to the states to help care for his ailing mother-in-law and it's not so easy to find work as a clown in this country, which does not have the mindset of going out to see a live show on a weekend, but rather prefers to sit home and watch TV or go to see a movie.

The character Del Bene has created is Olaf, and he is often hired as a comic waiter,

which seems to be where he gets most of his bookings these days. He finds that his ability to relate to his audience, whether a restaurant full of eaters or a theatre audience is what has made him such a success.

At one point, as he talked with intensity about his feelings of frustrations involved with trying to find work, about his "other" job as a fund raiser for a medical company trying to fund research that will aid those with Type 1 Diabetes (a job he convinces me is not all that far removed from what he does on stage), and about his vision for how his kind of performance, and others who would do the same thing, in an area like this, using sustainable technology, local products, etc., would be beneficial for everyone, I had to turn away to take a swig of my coffee. His passion, his body language and everything about him reminded me so much of our own Paul when he was excited about a project that it was hard to watch, for a few moments.

He gave me a videotape, which included the video that he made with Jeri's musical assistance (unfortunately it's not on line, so I can't link to it) and I watched several of his videos, such as this one:

After 10 years of working as a critic, when the weekend comes around and there is no show that I have to review, the very last thing I want to do is go out to the theatre, but I was so taken both with Paul the man, and what I saw on the video, that I've decided I really want to see his show, even though I won't be reviewing it.

No greater praise can I give to anybody that I've interviewed!!!

It sounds like it's going to be a fun show, suitable for all ages, and it will benefit a great cause.

Anybody in the Davis area who is interested in getting more information can check the DPNS web site.

Thursday Thirteen

basykes@gmail.com — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 07:01:00 +0000

Thirteen Names I've given foster dogs (or groups of dogs)

1. Higgins, Eliza and Freddie (the My Fair Lady puppies)
2. Chunk (who was "Daisy" until she gained so much weight)
3. Tater & Tot (because when they arrived they looked like little potatoes)
4. Jed, Toby and Leo (the West Wing puppies)
5. Dexter (because he has a skin condition called Demodex)
6. Panda, Blue, Golde and Pinkie (the "Rainbow puppies"--they were all black and white)
7. Half Pint
8. Dakota (because he was found by a guy driving a Dakota)
9. Rupert (named for a fellow vlogger)
10. Google
11. Bissell (named for the steam cleaner I'd just purchased)
12. Gizmo (because he looked like a Gremlin)
13. Poochini and his sister Tosca

Childbirth

basykes@gmail.com — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 14:00:00 +0000

Any woman who has given birth knows that if enough time has passed, you begin to forget the pain of the birth process itself and concentrate on the love you feel for the little baby in your arms. It's the only reason why there are families that have more than one child, I suspect! That lovely process of selective memory. We remember that it hurts, but we can't actually feel the pain any more and only remember that we recovered and had something that we loved and were so proud of in our hands.

I've been thinking a lot about that phenomenon since the e-mail arrived yesterday afternoon...and anybody who has known me since the mid 1980s is going to be shocked to hear what I'm about to write.

The letter was from a woman whose name I didn't recognize, but she was telling me that the Lamplighters, which will celebrate its 60th anniversary in 2012, wanted to put out a Volume 3 of the company's history and she wondered if Alison or I would be interested in being involved.

My first reaction was to laugh hysterically, think that there was NO WAY I wanted to put myself through that again, and to forward her message to Alison. I knew Alison, too, wouldn't be in the least interested.

I thought that I had told the story of the Lamplighter histories before, but research shows that it's only come across in bits and pieces, so let me set it all down in one place. The year was about 1975. Walt and I had been attending Lamplighters shows since the 60s, before we were married. We had become Lamplighter groupies, were subscribers, had introduced lots of other folks to the company and we were on the mailing list, receiving company notices.

In one of the notices was a little announcement that a woman named Alison Lewis was going to be working on a book to celebrate the company's 25th anniversary and she was looking for volunteers to help. Two of us wrote to her and showed up to work on the book. It was serendipitous. Carolyn McGovern, Alison and I were all the same age, we all had kids and we were all at a place where our youngest child (in Carolyn's case her only child) had just started school, so suddenly we found ourselves with time on our hands. We all loved the Lamplighters and thought it was important and would be fun to record its history.

I still remember the first day I showed up at the Lamplighter warehouse. It was like Dorothy opening the door into Oz for the first day. It was just this dusty, dingy old storehouse but for me, it was entering the land of Oz. I remember seeing a suit of armor from a production of Yeomen of the Guard as I walked up the rickety stairs to Company Director Spencer Beman's office. I could recognize costumes, props, and all sorts of paraphernalia that I'd seen in shows over the years. It was magic. Of course by the time the book was finished the magic was long gone and you can't go home again, but that first day was really magic.

We worked on the book for months. There were lots and lots of interviews, most of which I transcribed since I was too far away to be part of the live interviews. But I did interview some of my favorite people. We built a humongous roster of everyone who had ever appeared in a Lamplighter program and all of the things that they did (>4000 people and 25 years of shows). We had hundreds, if not thousands, of little slips of paper with information on them that we spent months compiling for the roster. We made a list of every show the Lamplighters had ever done (whether in their own theatre or a guest appearance somewhere else).

We started with two huge garbage bags stuffed full of programs, reviews, and photographs and then scoured everybody's photo albums for missing programs and additional photos to get a complete picture of the company.

And then there was the text. We decided to divide the book into three sections and each of us would write one section of it. But I chickened out. I felt I didn't have the skill to write my section and make it sound as scholarly as the other two women, so Alison ended up writing two sections, and I wrote the first draft of the preface.

Though we had the nominal support of the Board of Directors, the deeper we got into the project the more roadblocks were put up by Spencer Beman, the Company Manager. Spencer hated women, and especially competent women and the more competent we were, the more he made our task difficult. He belittled us at every turn and put up as many roadblocks as he could to thwart the project. In fact, when it came to "acknowledgements" in the book, we were tempted to leave Spencer out completely, but Alison, ever the diplomat, wrote "Because of this history, Spencer Beman suffered numerous distractions from his already monumental job as producer and executive vice president of the Lamplighters; this book could not but become an additional burden for him." It was much kinder than he deserved.

We were not celebrated for our accomplishment when the book was published (except years later), but the board did get together to have a dinner for us. We sat off in a corner feeling like we were intruding on them!

However, despite our bitter feelings after the book was published, I stuck around the Lamplighters and worked off and on as a volunteer for the next ten years, which is when my friendship with Gilbert became very strong. The two of us started what became the permanent company newsletter, "Cock and Bull" and forever changed the course of Lamplighter Galas, when we wrote "Major General Hospital."

When Gilbert died in 1986, I was adamant that we put out a supplement to Book 1. I wanted there to be somewhere where Gilbert's accomplishments could be recorded for posterity. I also wanted MY period of time with the Lamplighters to be recorded.

Carolyn was so burned by Book 1 that not only was she uninterested in a second book, she refused to ever go to another Lamplighters show. But Alison was willing to work with me on a second book. It was she who convinced the Board to let the project go forth, while I sat waiting for her at a cafe. I suspect many things were said that she protected me from, but ultimately we had our OK.

The second book went easier. People who had joined the company since Book 1 was published felt they had missed out and so were eager to cooperate. They were familiar with what we were capable of producing and there was less skepticism about the project. Again, we did interviews and updated the roster, now including members of the orchestra as well.

By the time the book was underway, Spencer had been eased out as Director and Alan Harvey had taken the job (both men have since died). Alan was wonderfully supportive. Things still did not go smoothly, but with Alan's backing, so much better than the first time around. I was also not only more confident in my writing ability by this time, but it was also important for me to tell Gilbert's story. I did most of the writing, with Alison coming in to help me sound scholarly.

When the book was published in 1987, I felt I had done what I could to preserve Gilbert's legacy, as well as continue the story of The Lamplighters' next ten years, and I was ready to close the door on my involvement with the company.

When the 50th anniversary was coming up, people started hinting that there should be another book and I steadfastly said I was definitely not interested. And so the 50th passed with no updated history.

We have continued to go to Lamplighter shows, but my heart was not with the company the way it was before Gilbert died. I worked on scripts for a few of the annual Galas, Walt worked on the tech crew. We traveled with the company to England for an International competition (which The Lamplighters won).

But as time passed, I was of less and less value to the gala committees as more and more talented people who were there all the time became involved. Walt (and the rest of the tech crew) was eased out when the company started performing in a union house and had to work with union tech people.

We don't see all the shows any more, but we see most of them. We don't have season tickets any more, but buy single tickets, sometimes for a San Francisco performance, sometimes for a Walnut Creek performance, sometimes for a Sonoma performance. Sometimes we don't go at all (I wouldn't mind never seeing HMS Pinafore again, thank you).

After I forwarded the e-mail off to Alison yesterday, I started toying with the idea of working on a book for the 60th and I decided that, to my great surprise, I was interested. It would be completely different from either of the previous two books. It would be like going in cold because I don't know the performers any more--I don't even pay attention to their names any more so with few exceptions I can't tell you who is new and who has actually been around for several years.

Then an even more surprising thing happened...Alison said she was interested too, though didn't want to take a leadership role. So we have let the woman who wrote to me know that we're both in, and that she (or someone else) will have to be the leader 'cause we don't want that responsibility this time around.

We'll all meet next month and map out what needs to happen and who is going to do what. I can't believe I'm actually going to do this again, but...what the heck! It will involve commuting back and forth to San Francisco, and will give me a chance to listen to a lot of audio books!

The Thrill of a Letter

basykes@gmail.com — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 07:02:00 +0000

I finally heard from Anjali yesterday. This is the little six year old girl in India that I began sponsoring through Compassion last May. I also sponsor Pedro in Brasil, but heard from him almost immediately after sponsorship began. However, it had been so long without any word from Anjali that, on suggestions from other sponsors, I finally contacted Compassion and found out that a letter was "in process." It finally arrived.

She's only 6, so she can't actually write a letter yet, but did add some words in English, and drawings of flowers

But there was also a long letter from whoever helped her prepare this message, responding to things I'd sent her and telling me about the things she likes. She thought the pictures of the eggheads on the UCD campus, for example, were very funny...

...and she has never eaten an artichoke (which I pretty much didn't think she had, but I thought a photo of an artichoke was an interesting thing to send her).

I also had made tiny little books with pictures of some of our foster dogs in them for each of the kids, which I thought they would like. She said she did.

She told me about her favorite food, which is rice with dal. I remember long, long, long ago Walt and I used to go to an Indian restaurant in San Francisco and I remember eating dal soup, which we always called "gunpowder soup" because it tasted like gunpowder smells.

These are just the early days of establishing a relationship with this little girl and I hope that I get to learn more about her as the time passes. The thing I like about Compassion is the real feeling of community that it creates. It's not just me and these kids, but it's me and hundreds of other people and their sponsored kids. They established a social networking site for Compassion sponsors, where you can exchange good news and bad news and concerns and ask questions. I joined several groups, including a group for people who sponsor kids in Brasil and a group for people who sponsor kids in the same project where Anjali lives.

Compassion sponsors trips for sponsors to meet their sponsored child. I read stories of kids who travel hours (as many as 12 sometimes) to meet their sponsors. Also, sponsors who can't afford to take the trip themselves can hook up with someone else who is going to send bigger gifts to their child--there are wonderful videos on line of some of these meetings.

There seems to be a great transparancy about this organization that I like. You'd like to think that all of your money goes where it says it's going when you donate to an organization, but with some of them you just don't know. But with the opportunity to share experiences with other sponsors and the chance to visit the children and sometimes see the places where they study, you get a better feel about it.

I trusted Christian Children's Fund too, but only because I knew the guy who ran it was a very good guy with whom I'd worked with the Experiment in International Living. I figured if Charlie MacCormack was heading up CCF, it had to be good.

I don't really have a relationship yet with Anjali, Pedro and Fred (a little boy I am not sponsoring, but am writing to because his sponsor doesn't write to him), but I enjoy sending them letters and little gifts (you can include things that are made of paper and are no thicker than 1/4", which allows for things like thin coloring books, puzzles, stickers, patterned bandaids, etc.) and I know that as the time goes on, I will begin to learn about them and then things will get a bit more personal.

And it really is a thrill, after waiting so long, to finally get a message!

I also received notification from KIVA that enough money had been repaid from the micro-loans I've made that I could make another loan. I looked through the loans that are active and found a mother of five in Nigeria who sells food and "local gin." How can I not help out a gin-lover?? (And, trust me, if you're the mother of five, you need some gin from time to time!)

And while we're talking about helping out those less fortunate than ourselves, have you gotten yourself over to the National Association of Free Clinics yet? You can donate money to help sponsor a free clinic day for the nation's uninsured. Keith Olbermann mentioned the group in his eloquent program about health care in America and enough people donated that they were able to sponsor two free clinic days. Other shows are hopping on the bandwagon too (Dr. Oz is one I know of). Not only does it offer people without insurance (many of whom have jobs currently), but it also is an undeniable picture to our legislators of the dire need for health care reform in this country.

Curmudgeon

basykes@gmail.com — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 14:40:00 +0000

I guess this entry is the anthesis of yesterday's "feelin' good" entry. I realized this weekend that, my protestations to the contrary, I really am turning into a curmudgeon. I am in danger of turning into my father, hence the need for a "feelin' good" list!

After my mother left my father, he went through his social period, where he went out a lot, dated every woman over a certain age in Marin County (and slept with most of them, if he is to be believed). He had friends who visited regularly. He threw parties. And then, as he was wont to do, he began turning them all away. He would turn on them, get angry with them, have big arguments with them, until there was nobody left to care about him except my mother and me, and then he turned on us too.

There was a sign on his front door that said "if you haven't been invited, you are trespassing on my property."

By the time he died, his world had shrunk down to only himself, and a neighbor he had asked to check in on him if he hadn't opened his window shade in the kitchen in the morning. It was that neighbor who found him, 3 days after he died, in a house that would have qualified for one of those TV news exposes about the clutter in a house. The house was full of empty diet Pepsi cans, the kitchen table piled high with cigarette ash--when his ash tray filled up, he just dumped the butts and ashes on the table and filled it up again. The floor was covered with cotton balls and diabetes test strips and needles he had just dropped after he'd taken his blood sugar reading.

For some reason he turned off the water to the house and so every dish, pot and pan was piled high in the kitchen and, since he fried almost everything he cooked, everything was coated with grease. It killed me to throw away a huge collection of cast iron pots and pans that were just too gross to even try to clean up. (I did save a dutch oven and it took a lot of cleaning and scrubbing to get it to where I could bear cooking in it.)

His closet was piled high with dirty underwear. He once told my mother it was cheaper for him to buy underpants on sale and throw them away than to pay to wash them in the laundromat. So he'd wear his a pair of underpants once and then toss it in the closet.

And because there was no running water in the house, the place was filled with feces, the toilet overflowing, the bed full. My mother spared me that part of the clean up. She and her husband took care of that before I got to the house after his death.

I actually hadn't intended to be quite so graphic, but maybe I did it so I can say "I'm not THAT bad yet!"

But I am becoming a curmudgeon. As you get older, your circle of friends shrink, whether from death or distance or moving in different directions. The smaller it gets, the less you care about a lot of things. What's the point?

I don't think I'm as grumpy as my father. I don't think I've deliberately turned people away by my bad attitude. But then, he probably didn't think he did either.

However, this weekend, my curmudgeonhood rose to the fore.

The high school has just completed this beautiful million dollar sports complex. Since we aren't at the high school, I'm not sure what all it entails, but a new football field is part of it. This was homecoming weekend. There was something Friday night (I saw lots of balloons in the set up as I drove home from the store that afternoon), and a game Saturday during the day.

How do I know? Because the new loudspeaker is so bloody loud that I can hear everything that is announced, though we live four blocks away. I heard who made every touchdown--through closed windows. We would have heard everything that went on Friday night too except we were at a show and only caught the tail end as we got home.

This is a town which cited someone for snoring in her own home because it violated the town noise ordinance and her neighbor complained (imagine the police waking you up out of a sound sleep to give you a ticket for SNORING!). This is the town where the police showed up in our driveway five minutes after 10 p.m. because Walt, who had been building a set cut one last piece of wood at 10 p.m., the cut-off time for the noise ordinance. A neighbor called the police because he was keeping their child awake.

And yet now we have a loudspeaker system which can be heard all over West Davis. In truth, the announcements didn't go on past 10 p.m., but it was damned annoying, especially knowing that we have all of football season to get through.

So I did what any red-blooded curmudgeon would do. I wrote a letter to the editor.

I don't want to be a curmudgeon, and I don't want to begrudge the high school its fancy new sports complex, but it seems incomprehensible that in a town with such a strict noise ordinance that you can be cited for snoring in your own home, the volume level of the sound system in said new complex can be allowed to be so high. I live several blocks away and heard every announcement from Friday's football game, through closed windows. I can't even imagine how terrible it must be for the folks who live across the street.

I don't suppose this is going to win me any fans, especially among the high school football folks, but I'd like to think my father would be very proud!

Feelin' Good

basykes@gmail.com — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 07:02:00 +0000

I found a new (to me) web site yesterday. It's actually on the page for some health product (Sam-E). I'm not in the least interested in some kind of supplement, but part of the site is something called the "feel good blog," which seems to be a bunch of entries about uplifting things. In this day and age we can all stand to be uplifted, or to be reminded of how many really good things there are around us.

One of the first entries I read was "Lisa's List of 50 feel-good things," prompted by a blog called 1000 Awesome things (which I really like!). The latter blog is one entry a day about something awesome...which I may try doing some day, but not today. In the meantime, however, I decided to think about 50 things that make me feel good. What makes YOU feel good?

1. Puppy breath

2. Snuggling under a blanket in the recliner, especially on a cold day when it’s storming outside, and watching a really good movie (preferably a tear-jerker!)

3. A phone call from a friend who "just called to chat."

4. Having my PhotoShop project work out just right...or better than I expected.

5. Finishing a writing project and feeling good about the results, knowing I've said just exactly what I wanted to say.

6. Going on a long trip by myself and listening to an audio book.

7. A tall, very cold glass of water.

8. An NCIS marathon on a day when I’m all alone in the house.

9. Finding a parking place close to my destination in San Francisco. (Thank you, Gilbert!)

10. Finding what I think is the perfect Christmas gift for someone, then watching them open it and realizing that I'd chosen right.

11. Cousins Day

12. An unexpected call from any of my children, just to say hello.

13. A new batch of puppies to bottle feed.

14. Trying a new recipe that comes out great.

15. Having someone else clean up the kitchen.

16. Fur-lined slippers on a cold day.

17. Eight hours of (almost) uninterrupted sleep

18. Conducting an interview and not stumbling over my words and actually asking intelligent questions.

19. The sound of a pipe organ in a cavernous church

20. The smell of the ocean, with a sea breeze in my face.

21. A visit with Brianna

22. A thick, fluffy towel that actually wraps all the way around me.

23. Going out to dinner

24. Getting giddy with a friend over nothing in particular

25. Freshly squeezed orange juice

26. Fall color

27. An almond orchard all in bloom

28. Beautiful choral music

29. Bagpipes!

30. The end of a dental appointment when they tell me everything's fine.

31. Running into someone who tells me they've actually read something I've written in the paper and agreed with my opinion of the show I was writing about, or came to see a show because they read what I'd written about it before hand.

32. An interesting conversation that goes on late into the night.

33. The smell of brewing coffee or baking bread

34. A box of See's candy.

35. John Denver

36. A great rainstorm (that doesn't harm anybody)

37. A beautiful sunset, the kind that turns the whole sky red and makes you wish you had remembered to bring your camera along.

38. Making a wish on the first star...and having it come true.

39. A good book.

40. Seeing a movie on the big screen in the theatre.

41. Getting a letter from one of my Compassion-sponsored kids

42. A field of sunflowers

43. Home grown tomatoes

44. Any field or orchard-ripened fruit (especially strawberries)

45. Watching sea lions cavort on the beach or on the piers at Fisherman's Wharf

46. Standing on any tall point in San Francisco and looking at the view

47. The smell of the pages of a magazine when you open it for the first time.

48. A clear, crisp spring day where the temperatures are in the mid 70s, with fluffy clouds in the sky and no pollution in the air.

49. Still-warm donuts

50. Watching my kids do anything that makes my heart swell with pride.

Transitions

basykes@gmail.com — Sat, 24 Oct 2009 07:02:00 +0000

The period of transition has started around here.

Yesterday, Cayce, a local dog trainer, took Higgins to visit a family who is looking for a second dog. They need one who is gentle but who is going to be big (that certainly describes Higgins to a "T"). It was a test play date and she brought him back a couple of hours later saying it had been a great success. The family's other dog had been attacked by a big dog some time ago and is very afraid around dogs, but the two dogs seemed to get along well. She thinks this may be the perfect placement for Higgins. So we'll see where this goes.

The puppies are all getting so big. I know it's time for them to find forever homes. They've now been at Petco two Saturdays and it's only a matter of time before they all find new families.

This morning I took this picture. When I'm sleeping in the recliner they all sleep directly in front of me, on the dog bed. When they hear the sound of the footrest on the recliner click down three heads immediately pop up and they sit there staring at me for a few seconds before they come over to me for snuggles. I've been meaning to keep a camera directly next to me so I'm all ready to take a photo as soon as I sit up and today I finally got it.

Higgins, Eliza, Freddie

(Actually, it's not cuddles so much they want as that this is their "OK--you're finally awake...when are you going to feed us?" look!)

At the same time, Dexter has been to the vet's and been neutered. He was gone 3 days (because they go up to UCD and they keep the dogs for a few days to give the students an opportunity to work with them). I swear he doubled his fur while he was there.

Furry Dexter

As you can see, he's well on his way to looking like a real dog again (though extremely nervous being perched on top of my desk!) It won't be too much longer before he's ready to go up for adoption too.

This is always kind of the bittersweet time. It's nice to think of not having the piles of poop to clean up every day and as they start literally eating me out of house and home (Higgins will chew anything, though stops when you tell him to, thank goodness. He decided to chew a wall the other night.) it's nice to think of someone else taking on the task of training them not to chew, but yet these guys have been with me literally since birth, so it's always sad to think of them leaving.

I always say, as each group of puppies looks toward leaving, that these were the best puppies ever. And I always believe that every time. Maybe I just have really good puppies (though there were a couple of litters that I was very happy to see leave). But these guys definitely rank up there among the best. Maybe Tater and Tot were the best, but probably only becuase Tot/Lester has stayed in the family and I see how happy she has made Jeri and Phil.

But I will really always remember the My Fair Lady puppies fondly. Of course it's not like they're all leaving tomorrow. They may still be here for several weeks. But I can see the clock ticking and I know that it's only a matter of time--and someone else recognizing the sweetness that I see in all of them.

There's No Place Like Home

basykes@gmail.com — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 07:02:00 +0000

Our writing group met today, for the first time in a very long time. It was so good to see everyone again. I really have grown very fond of those three women. Though we don't often write something -- sometimes we do -- the conversation is always fun and the snack aways delicious.

Today one of the women had brought an essay she had written, at her children's request, about what she and her husband had been doing in the years before the first child was born. They were a military family and her husband was a pilot. I grew dizzy trying to keep up with the number of times they moved. It seemed that they moved more in a year than I have in my entire married life, so I decided to examine the places where I have lived.

Here is where my parents were living when I was born and where I lived for the first 18 years of my life.

This is one of those Google street map pictures. When I lived there, there was no diagonal parking; you had to parallel park (and wasn't THAT fun with a stick shift!). There also were no trees planted on the street when I lived there.

The outlined area is the length of our flat. The windows on the right were in the room that my sister and I shared. There are bars on those windows now and an iron grate on the steps that lead up to the door. It shows you how times have changed since 1943. When I was very young, the landlords lived upstairs in the flat with the door to the right of ours, and the next flat over was occupied by the woman who introduced me to my first boyfriend, and later by my aunt Jean. Between those two flat doors is a light colored door that went into what we laughingly called our "back yard," a square of cement where my mother hung clothes to dry, where we had a teeny plot in which she tried to grow vegetables, where we first learned to roller skate, and back stairs that led up to the other flats, or down into the dirt basement.

There are reports that the man who owned Seabiscuit, who lived in the penthouse of the apartment across the street, would look down into that tiny cement plot, watching my mother, Karen and me and say that was what real happiness was.

I left San Francisco at age 18 when I moved to the dorms at UC Berkley. Some of the dorms had a larger occupancy than my entire high school and I was intimidated by the size, so I chose the smallest one, Smythe Hall, which was at the top of a steep hill and overlooked the campus. It was actually two dorms in one, Smythe and Fernwall and the grad resident in Fernwall was this stern student who didn't seem to like me very much. I was actually afraid of her. Her name was Charlotte--and who knew then that she would end up being one of my best friends for the rest of our lives and share with me most of the craziest things I've ever done in my life.

My first roommate was someone I chose because when we toured the dorm, she was the only other resident there. Her name was Judy and she seemed nice, but she had no roommate, so I requested her. It didn't take long to discover why she had no roommate and it was so unpleasant living with her that I spent most of my time at the Newman Center (where Char and I became friends, and where I met Walt--as well as everyone else in the Pinata group). By the time I changed roommates and had a really nice one, my social life was pretty much centered around Newman Hall and I'm afraid that I wasn't the nice roommate, because I was never home. I never did feel that I "belonged" in the dorms.

I quit the university after a semester and a half and went to work in the Physics Department and had a series of apartments, one across from what is now the site of the new Newman Center. I lived with Gerry, one day to be Ned's godmother, for awhile, then I moved in with Mike and Char while I tried to pay off the bills I ran up on my charge cards. Finally I had another apartment of my own, where I was living when Walt and I got married.

After Walt and I married, we moved into a little upstairs apartment on Prince Street in Berkeley.

(love that Google Earth!)

We had the apartment on the right and there was a big living room in front, then a dining room and one bedroom and kitchen. There was a huge walk-in closet that we converted into a nursery when I was pregnant with Jeri. It was large enough to accomodate a crib, a dresser and a bathinette and still have room for us to hang clothes in the walkway that went off of the closet (in the space that was at one time a Murphy bed).

We moved to Albany, next door to Berkeley, when I was pregnant with Ned and had a wonderful 2-story house, which you can't see from the front in this Google earth photo.

I was interested to see that it's still a double lot. We had this HUGE back yard because it was really intended for there to be two houses on it. The little roof you can see to the left was a shed, which would have made a great office, if I'd ever set that up, but I was too busy with babies to think of it. It backed up onto the grounds of a school and the two properties were separated by a fence and a line of Eucalyptus trees. One night one of the trees crashed down, knocking over the fence. The school paid to have it put back up again, but called the police whenever our dog got out and wandered onto the school property until the work got done! (I always thought that was unfair.)

That house had a front room, a dining room (which became Ned's bedroom), a kitchen and a bedroom downstairs and then something like a "widow's walk" upstairs, where Jeri slept. There was no room for a washing machine in the house, so it was in the basement and we were too poor for a dryer, so I hung clothes out on the line in the back yard and went into apoplexy every time the dog ("Ho Chi Mutt") pulled all of my clean clothes off the line and dragged them around the yard.

I remember that Jeri and I watched the very first Sesame Street in the living room of that house, I remember recording Jeri and me reading Dr. Seuss' ABC book so I could send the recording to Sister Anne, who had sent her the book, and I remember standing over the floor heater in the hall outside the bathroom one morning, opening the newspaper and reading that Bobby Kennedy had been shot. I also remember when we were going to be doing something with the refrigerator and Walt tipped it up onto one side and asked me to hold it there, the weight of it resting on me, while he went to get a tool or something. I was 7 months pregnant at the time. I've never let him forget that!

I also remember having a craving for Italian peppers while being pregnant with Ned and calling Walt at work each day asking him to bring another jar of peppers home for me. I don't think I've eaten Italian peppers since then--but I probably ate a lifetime worth of them during that pregnancy.

When Paul was expected, we had to find a bigger house and figured we were ready to buy our own. Pat and Rich were looking for a house too. Mike and Char were already living over in the Glenview District of Oakland and said there were several houses for sale in their neighborhood, so Pat and I made an appointment with a realtor to look at houses. I think Pat always felt I stole the best house out from under her. We walked into this house and I fell in love with it immediately. I called Walt from the kitchen phone of the house and we arranged to see the realtor that night and I think we agreed to buy it right then and there. Pat and Rich ended up buying a house about three blocks away.

I loved that house. I still love that house, though it would never have accommodated five growing children. Paul, Tom and David were all born while we were living there. David was 18 months old when we moved. The house had a nice big living room with a fireplace, a big dining room that held not only a nice table, but also the piano we recently sold, and a day bed that was always piled high with laundry. It had three bedrooms and a huge kitchen with a big island that I fell in love with. Me being me, the island became a place to stack stuff and it was usually a mess, but it was also a great place to cook. I made all of our bread in those days, buying whole grains from a bulk food store and making wonderful things like cracked wheat bread and lots of things made from sourdough. Char and I baked our famous pumpkin pies in that kitchen. I made all of the babies' solid foods. The kids and I made cookies together. I made soups and stews in the wonderful sunken pot in the stove. I made horrendous messes that drove Walt crazy, but I hope somebody also has some nice memories of that kitchen. I do.

Beyond the kitchen was a back porch where the washer and dryer (we could now afford a dryer) went. I remember the time it flooded. I was ankle deep in water, trying to wring out diapers that I could hang outside (yes, I had cloth diapers). We also had a small yard with a garage that never held a car and a gorgeous brick BBQ that we never used because it was too big (we barbequed on a smaller grill). The yard also had a prolific Meyer lemon tree that I loved and a prolific bottlebrush tree that I hated because it always dropped red needles all over the place.

Upstairs there was an attic that was half finished, so there was a nice small room up there and beyond it space on the rafters to balance boxes and things like that. When we were in the middle of trying to sell the house, I lost my balance, slipped off of one of the rafters, and ended up putting my foot through the ceiling of the living room. After she stopped laughing, the realtor postponed showing the house until Walt had fixed the hole.

Best of all, the house had a tiny little office (it was designed as a sewing room) just inside the front door where I set up my typewriter and both worked and started the journal that would one day evolve into Funny the World. The office looked out on the wonderful front porch where we liked to sit and talk to the neighbors as they walked by...and which was a great place for a baby to get a bit of fresh air, or to raise a turtle in a plastic wading pool.

I was so sorry when Walt was transferred up here to Davis, though we have settled in here and have been in this house for 36 years. so we must like it. But we both miss the front porch and neighborhood camaraderie, which we have never had here.