The obessive-compulsive birdwatcher

I hung a tube feeder on the rail of my deck a week or so ago, and for the first few days, I didn't see a single bird in its vicinity. Then I went away for a week, and when I came back, the seed level in the feeder had dropped significantly. Seeing a scrubjay nearby, I figured it was he and his pals who had been at the feeder, but in the last couple of days, there have been several different kinds of birds showing up. Every time I see one out there, I grab my binoculars and stare at it, hoping to get some idea of what it might be; a finch? Could be . . . Or a sparrow? Maybe . . . but what kind of sparrow? Leaf through the Sibley's field guide, look fixedly at the drawings, try to match what I'm seeing on the deck with the beautifully drawn illustrations in the book. Hmmmm . . . Decide to record what I see (or think I see), and get a new notebook to write my guesses down. They kept coming, sometimes just one at a time, sometimes two, or three. Spot bird, grab binoculars, focus, stare, get Sibley's, stare some more, make notes, think I might have misidentified, make another note . . .

Birding . . . it's not just for Sundays . . .

A birthday remembrance

Today my older son, John, would have been 44 years old. He died Oct. 12, 1986, a few weeks before his 23rd birthday. I guess you really can't wish a happy birthday to someone who no longer celebrates them, but I don't care; I think of him every day.

Happy birthday, son. I miss you.

John at 18
August 1982

Long winter's night

It's 5:15 p.m., and I'm in my pajamas. I'm not ill; it's just that my pajamas are fleecy and warm. It's been cold and drizzly all day—not really raining, more like a fat fog that can get you as wet as a real rain if you stay out in it long enough. I walked downtown a bit ago to have tea with Alison and Allan, and now that I'm in for the evening, getting into my pajamas seemed the perfect wardrobe choice for a cold winter's night. Plenty of things to read (my accumulated mail came with a couple of new magazines and about six catalogs, and I'm two-thirds of the way through Richard Ford's The Sportswriter, which I'll probably finish tonight), not to mention my recently acquired cable TV hookup, which may actually have a decent movie on it somewhere (or a marathon showing of Law & Order: [insert spinoff subtitle here]. And I'm pretty sure there's some wine around here. Summer will be here soon enough; right now, I'm enjoying winter.

Home again

Back home. SoCal was cold and dry; Davis is cold and damp. I prefer the latter, and so does my hair. I had a good visit with my family, got caught up on events and states of mind, delighted in my granddaughters' exuberance and sweetness. Glad to have gone, glad to have returned; the best kind of journey, I think.

From spin class to Canter's

Went to the YMCA this morning with my cousin to do a spin class. It just takes one of those to remind me a) how out of shape I am and b) how much I hate spin classes. But it was good exercise, the most I've had in weeks, and if a little sweat is good, a lot of it must be even better.

Then, needing a dose of Jewishness to balance the Christmasness, we got in the car and drove over to Fairfax Ave. and Canter's Delicatessen for corned beef and coleslaw on rye. Delicious.

Heading home tomorrow . . .

How little we know

Watched the Kennedy Center Honors on TV this evening. Brian Wilson was one of the honorees. I loved the Beach Boys' music, still do, but I haven't paid much (read: any) attention to the pop music scene in years. So I missed hearing about Wilson's struggles with mental illness, drug abuse, weight gain, loss of the creative spark that made him such a seminal figure and his comeback in recent years. None (or very little) of this was mentioned on the show, but he looked so uncomfortable, so stiff and wooden, almost like he'd had a stroke, that I couldn't help noticing. It took my cousin's telling me about all of it to make me aware. And what I thought was, we go along taking pleasure in things created for us by others, blithely unaware (and not wanting to be) of what their lives may feel like, what the giving takes from them. We just want more of what we like. Made me sad for him in a way I can't be very articulate about yet, and that I owed him an apology.

SoCal Christmas

Another beautiful Christmas Day in Southern California, both inside . . .



and out . . .

A beautiful day, period.

Lights! Lights! Lights!

A house a few blocks from my cousin's, lit to the teeth and synchronized to Christmas music, and so over the top it's good . . .

The night before the night before Christmas

To Torrance and cousin Joe's yesterday evening; I'll be here through Friday. The kids brought me down and stayed for dinner: enchiladas and tamales and a green salad, preceded by chips, dips, etc. etc. etc. It was all delicious, as usual, and anyone who went away hungry has only him- or herself to blame. We were nine at table: Joe, Debbie, son Alan and wife Elizabeth, cousin Sue, my 88-year-old aunt, Marie (Joe and Sue's mom and my mom's sister), Fred, Jen, Shannon, Courtney and me.

My auntie and my granddaughters. My mother died when my sons were very young, so I'm happy to have Shannon and Courtney be with her sister, even for these brief visits.

Arboretum, L.A. version

This afternoon I took Shannon and Courtney to the Los Angeles State and County Arboretum, just up the road in Arcadia. It's a fabulous arboretum, with specimens from every continent, and in addition to a place for serious botanical research is a marvelous place to take kids. It's full of meandering paths, ponds, fountains, and Lake Baldwin with its Queen Anne cottage, built by Lucky Baldwin for his fourth (!!) wife, a 15-year-old who stayed married to the old goat for approximately one year. The best spot in the arboretum, though, is what we used to call the Jungle Trail, now renamed the Prehistoric Area—groves of tall bamboo, mysterious tunnels through dark undergrowth, part scary, part fun. When my sons were little, my mom used to take them to the arboretum to wander along the Jungle Trail, so it was a treat to go there with my own grandchildren.

Here they are at the Queen Anne Cottage. The interior is furnished in period style, complete with mannequins in costume, and at this time of year, it's beautifully decorated for the season. You can't go inside but you can look through the windows. Courtney wanted to know if we would see the queen, and we did spot a lady who could very well have been royalty, or at least quite high-born.


There are jillions of peacocks here, too, and not only in the arboretum proper but throughout the surrounding neighborhoods. People who live around here get used to hearing their unearthly shrieks and slowing for them as they meander across the streets. One wandered in front of the camera as I was taking the girls' picture.


The three of us had a great time. This evening, after dinner, we exchanged our Christmas presents. Here are the girls wearing their presents from me: headlamps from REI:

They spent several happy minutes in their closet, trying them out. Now, all we have to do is keep them from blinding each other with the beam.

P.S. Shannon read this post and said, "You didn't say anything about the dead squirrel!" OK. As we were walking up to the Queen Anne cottage, we saw a dead squirrel lying by the side of the path. It had a hole in its neck, with blood coming out. We don't know what happened. It could have been attacked by a raptor, like a hawk, but it's a mystery. Shannon said at the time, "When I go back to school, I'll say, 'On the second day of my winter break, I saw a dead squirrel!' It was sick!" Courtney wanted a second look, but not Shannon.

Notes from 30,000 feet

Takeoff from SMF, 3:55pm, into north wind, destination Burbank; flight path more easterly than usual . . . streets and houses below make patterns like inlaid mosaics, some white, some dark . . . trees cast long shadows on this solstice afternoon . . . land all lumpy, mousy brown, trees look like pebbles that could be brushed away were there a hand large enough . . . snow in the high country . . . and hanging over the wing, a nearly full moon in a pale blue sky . . . river canyons dark slashes . . . passing Yosemite, El Capitan with a cap of snow, Half Dome looks like half a bundt cake dusted with powdered sugar . . . White Mtns visible, seeming to dwarf the Sierra . . . right turn, and we're back over the Central Valley, roads and canals cutting their way south . . . grid of valley towns, straight roads, smooth rectangles, all under control . . . dozens of large plots containing scores of long, silver-roofed buildings . . . poultry? . . . don't know . . . and some odd, crisscrossed plots I've never seen before, even though I fly this route frequently . . . now some badland-looking terrain plopped in the midst of the groomed, tidy landscape . . . the big Central Valley Project canal appears below, fat as a nightcrawler, and as smooth . . . land now corrugated, arid, bleak-looking, some appears to have been flooded . . . where, exactly, is this? . . . Here are the Tehachipis, stark and beautiful as always, dusted with snow, ochre and pink in the long rays of the sun, places that look like William Morris paper . . . a river valley, dry riverbed branched and braided like sinew and muscle . . . over the top of the wing I can see the San Fernando Valley hoving into view . . . another turn and the orange paint on the wings looks lit from within, then another slight turn and it once again looks just ordinary . . . hard right, and the portside wing's angle reminds me of the raptors I saw wheeling in the sky last Sunday . . . Touchdown, Burbank, 4;45 p.m.

Solstice

Walking home up E St. yesterday afternoon from downtown Davis, I spotted a hawk flying low over the parking lot between 3rd and 4th. He landed in the big elm at the corner of 4th and E, which has so few leaves left on it that I could get a good look at him. No doubt it was a red-tailed hawk—light-colored breast, with what I think (imagined?) was a lightish belly band, and when it took flight again the pattern on the tips of its wings resembled the red-tail. But its head was quite dark in contrast to the rest of him, and I swear I didn't see the red tail. I didn't find any other hawk in the Sibley's that it could have been, so I can't be certain one way or another. The more birds I see, the more complicated it becomes. But Tuesday afternoon there were three turkey vultures perched in a big sycamore across from my house. Those, I recognize; no problem there.

I'm getting ready to leave town in a couple of hours, heading to SoCal to spend Christmas with my family. I'm taking Mr. Wonderful along, but blog entries may nevertheless be slightly more erratic than they already are. My winter solstice countdown clock tells me there are 14 hours, 52 minutes and 5 seconds left until the sun reaches its southernmost point and begins the return trip. Spring, with its longer days—and baseball!—will be here soon. Happy hols to all!

Two anniversaries

Nine years ago today, my son Fred married Jennifer Stewart aboard the Queen Mary in Long Beach Harbor. The bride wore Chantilly lace and a tartan sash. The groom and his groomsmen wore full-dress kilts. It was a wonderful wedding of two people who were clearly in love. They still are.

Eight years ago today, I crashed while riding my bicycle in Amador County. When I came to, my first question was, "Is my bike OK?" Then the paramedics showed up and loaded me into a helicopter, at the end of which I threw up. Too bad; it was the only helicopter ride I'll probably ever take, and it wasn't much fun. Diagnosis: five fractured vertebrae and a whole lot of (luckily) superficial road rash. My outfit for the next three months: a cervical collar and a brace thingy that made me resemble a cross between Madonna and a trussed-up turkey. Pictures of this you don't want to see.

Morning sun

When it's full-on summer, the sun pours directly into my kitchen window. But now, as we wheel closer and closer to the winter solstice, just around 8 a.m. its rays enter at an acute angle and light up the shelf where I keep my teapots. Hanging above that shelf is a framed lug label from the San Fernando Heights Lemon Assn. It's called "Morning Sun." The other day I took a picture of it when representation and reality coalesced.


P.S. No sun this morning; instead, we had an honest-to-god rainstorm. Supposed to do it again tomorrow, too.

Cheep thrills

Yesterday was the Christmas Bird Count, and I went along. As I mentioned in my Dec. 6 post, I'm a total beginner in the bird-watching world, so I wasn't at all sure how it would go. I told myself that I'd be happy if the day ended with my having been impact-neutral; i.e., having caused no chaos or havoc amongst the "real" birders or rendering their statistics useless.

I needn't have worried. I had a wonderful time! I was in a team of four, led by Mike Lawler, who, in my opinion, should be the designated newcomer-shepherd-in-perpetuity. He was patient, good-natured, easy-going, a great teacher and seemingly happy to have me along. And the best part was that we were covering an area extremely familiar to me, as it's a favorite bicycling route, one I've ridden numberless times. But I never saw it like I saw it yesterday. It's one thing to look at a cliffside or pasture, even at a slowish pace, and quite another to stand quietly and look at the ground underneath a pile of branches—I never knew there were so many birds out there. (I usually think of them as being only flying from one place to another, not hopping around under the shrubs.)

It was pretty amusing, though, at least to me. For instance:

Mike: Hear that? It's a [insert name of any bird smaller and quieter than a crow].
Me: Uh . . . no.
or
Mike: Those markings around the eyes mean it's a [insert name of interesting bird]. Did you see them?
Me: We-l-l-l . . . no.

Clearly, if I'm going to do any birding at all, I'm going to have to a) train my eyes to see more and/or get new glasses, and b) get hearing aids. Luckily, I was the designated recorder, my job being to note on the species list what we saw and how many of them, so nobody was relying on my impaired senses. (The printed list presented its own challenges, as it was arranged according to some convention known to people who do this all the time and based on some arbitrary ordering of species, not, as I would have preferred, alphabetically. I spent a lot of time searching frantically for the name of some bird or other and hoping I'd find it before somebody called out yet another species.) It was wonderful fun, though, and I was utterly absorbed in it, like you are when you're doing something new and interesting. It was cold, but it didn't matter. I didn't think about anything that didn't have to do with finding and recording birds.

And we did see some good ones. Here are some of them:

This is a phainopepla, a bird I'd never heard of until yesterday. Isn't he important-looking? I love his impertinent crest.

This guy is a ferruginous hawk, the only one seen yesterday by all the teams out on the count. Again, a bird I knew nothing of until yesterday.

And this lovely creature is a lark sparrow. Until yesterday, I had no idea there were so many different kinds of sparrows. Or that they are as large as they are. I learned a lot.

Let there be light

The best thing about the Christmas season is the lights, and in the past couple of weeks, the neighbors on the west side of my block have done a fine job of putting lights on their houses—nearly every one has some assortment or other. In bleak contrast, with the exception of one bravely cheerful home, my side of the street has had the look and feel of a block under blackout orders. So this afternoon I went downtown and bought two 35-light strings of LED lights and festooned them through the passionflower vine at my front door. Looks beautiful, and I feel much better.

Becalmed in December

That's how I am right now: becalmed. I've done what Christmas shopping I'm going to do (since I'll be traveling to Southern California for the holiday, I've ordered all the gifts for the SoCal family online and had them sent directly there so I don't have to stuff them into a suitcase), Hanukkah is on its way out (I'll light eight candles tonight), and, well, I just don't feel festive. My neighborhood is filling up with lighted houses, and they all look wonderful, and when I'm out in the evening, I love seeing them. But . . .

Laying low, reading, thinking . . . maybe this is the state of being we'd all return to if there weren't offices to go to, shopping to tend to, meetings to conduct. Or maybe I'm just in a slump.

Sayonara, Indian Summer

Cold! A sharp north wind has appeared, making the daytime temperatures feel lower than they probably are, and giving the nights a bite. It's beautiful, though. Out walking this morning, early, the sun just cresting the roof line of the houses, a persimmon tree, bare branches hung with fruit, each vivid orange globe seemingly lit from within. Whether it's the time of day or the time of year, that inner-light effect turns every autumn into a visual stunner. And the cold clear nights makes the stars hard and bright; every night, just before I go to bed, I step out on my deck and say goodnight to my old friend, Orion, the first constellation other than the Big Dipper that I learned to recognize. Always nice to welcome him back to the neighborhood.

Bird brain

Last night I went to the bird identification workshop offered by Yolo Audubon. I went because, though I like birds and enjoy looking at them, I can scarcely tell the difference between a chicken and a chicken hawk (and I don't really know what a chicken hawk looks like). The program included a lot of slides of various similar kinds of birds, the challenge to the audience being to say which one was which. I had no idea, of course (though I did know the mourning dove wasn't the ring-necked dove). But most of the differences came down to things like one bird having a darker stripe on its head (except when it didn't) or a larger patch of rosiness around its throat (except in the spring). Or something. All the birds were interesting, though, and beautiful to look at.

Despite my appalling ignorance, however, I was encouraged to sign up and take part in the annual Christmas Bird Count. So I did, and, along with my friend Dana, will accompany a much more experienced (and I hope infinitely patient) birder come Sunday, Dec. 16, out in the wide open spaces south of Winters. I hope there are a lot of chickens out there.

Speechless

I'm not much of a TV watcher. If you don't count baseball games, I've probably seen fewer than 100 hours of it all year. But I have been following the writers' strike. I occasionally write for pay. Once it's out there, in the world, it can kind of get away from you; no telling who's xeroxing it, or using it whole cloth in something they're writing. Not that this has happened to me, or at least I have no knowledge of it. But the point is, what I write, what anyone writes, is a singular thing, and wouldn't exist without the brain behind it. So it only seems fair and equitable that writers should share in profits generated when what they've written appears on the Internet, or on a DVD, or is transmitted in any other fashion. Kindergarten was supposed to teach us all to share. Were the studio execs absent that day?

For a look at the writers' take on all this, check out Speechless. Ditto the writers' blog. And if signing petitions is your sort of thing, you can do that here.

Back in the saddle again

I fell while hiking four weeks ago—caught my toe on a ridiculously small stub of some shrub or other and went down like I'd been sandbagged—and though it felt like every inch of the front of me made contact with the earth at one and the same moment, my right knee apparently struck a millisecond or two ahead of the rest. Diagnosis: a bruise behind my kneecap that has kept me off my bicycle ever since.

Until today. Today I rode again—not far, just to the Co-op and then took the long way home—but after four weeks of not riding, just being on the bike for that short time was exhilarating. The sore knee has kept me from riding, from doing any brisk walking, from doing much of any exercise of any kind. Not being able to do those things put me into a serious decline; been feeling quasi-blue and shut in. I'm not a rabid athlete by anyone's definition, but the lack of exercise, of being outside and breathing deeply, was beginning to wear on me. (Among other things, this blog has suffered from my lack of energy/motivation.)

So I'm keeping my fingers crossed that even though my knee is still sore to the touch, I'll be able to ride like I did today—easily and (relatively) pain free. I can cocoon only so long.

Distinguished speaker

I heard Luis Urrea speak last night. He's the author of The Devil's Highway, which tells the grim story of 14 "walkers" who died in the Arizona desert attempting to cross into the U.S. from Mexico. The book is about more than that, though; it's about people--on both sides of the border, on both sides of the law--who are working at cross purposes, sometimes even within themselves. A fair-skinned, fair-haired guy, he was born in Tijuana to a Mexican father and an American mother, and he spent the first half of his talk describing his family background and their quirky ancestral mix (his paternal grandmother's surname, for instance, was Murray, "pronounced," Urrea said, "Muurrrray.")

I've heard a lot of people lecture at UC Davis, but I have never heard anyone better than Luis Urrea (he joins Bill Clinton and Mario Cuomo in that category). Smart, engaging, moving, a riveting storyteller with a self-deprecating sense of humor who talked for a solid hour with nary a notecard to guide him; he made me laugh . . . and brought me to tears. He opened with a prayer to the four directions, which he spoke first in (I think) Nahuatl (I'm not sure I'm remembering the name correctly), then Mexican Spanish, then English: "I am West, I am . . . ; I am South, I am . . . ; I am East, I am . . . ; I am North, I am . . . ." Beautiful, moving, wonderful to hear how the words sounded in each version (and reminding me how words are only symbols of the things, themselves).

Urrea's Web site, La Vista, is worth a visit. And do I ever wish I could have dinner with him.

Visiting

I'm at my cousins Joe and Debbie's house in Torrance, where Debbie is in the throes of preparing to host about 18 people for Thanksgiving dinner. The woman has an abundance of courage, along with a 26-lb. turkey. I peeled potatoes, as close to unskilled kitchen labor as you can get and which suits my talents. Other than that chore, I spent the day chatting, reading the Los Angeles Times (still a good newspaper), and having fun watching J & D's 6-month-old granddaughter. At 2 o'clock, realizing I hadn't left the house yet, I went for an hour-long walk in the neighborhood. Dinner, some TV, more reading, and that's today.

Tomorrow, I will board the L.A. Metro's Blue Line, ride it to the Red Line, take that to Union Station and get on the Gold Line, riding it to Pasadena to spend Thanksgiving Day and my younger granddaughter's 5th birthday on Friday. I've only been on the Metro once, and that was a long time ago, when it was fairly new; rode the Red Line from Union Station to Olvera St. This will be a longer journey, and I'll have my large suitcase and a carry-on bag with me. Could be an adventure to remember . . . or forget.

Only in L.A.

I'm in SoCal, here for Thanksgiving week with family. Usually I fly into Bob Hope (nee Burbank) Airport, but this trip I came via LAX. There may be a spot in the world that's laying down a bigger carbon footprint, but if so, I don't want to go there. The airport itself wasn't too crowded, but outside, in the passenger pickup zone, it was zoosville, an unbroken stream of vehicles—passenger cars, buses (shuttle and public transit), taxis, vans, pickup trucks, police motorcycles, airport utility vehicles—all maneuvering, honking, creeping, making their way in a slow counterclockwise circle around the terminal, eyes peeled for an opportunity to dart into or away from the curb. Add to this mix the intermittent P.A. announcements ("The white zone . . . ," etc.) interspersed with Muzak that was nowhere near decipherable, and flight-deprived nicotine users puffing away, and you have a scene from one of those surrealist movies where you can't ever figure out what the whole thing is about. Many of the vehicles have a theme. I saw one white passenger car covered with a lacy decoration of pink vines, flowers and butterflies, the name "China Laundry" on the door. Another, a white 12-passenger van, had "H.I.S Tours" stenciled on it in blue, the "I" encircled by a halo. When I saw it, no one was aboard.

Turkey Trot

This morning, about 9 o'clock, the 10K runners in Davis' 20th annual Turkey Trot began streaming up 6th St., less than half a block from my house. I could hear them before I could see them, a murmer of sound that swelled as the crowd came into view. It was like being near a river—people filling the street from curb to curb, moving at a steady pace, talking, laughing, an occasional cheer, just like the sound of water as it flows downstream. They just kept coming . . . and coming . . . and coming. I belatedly checked my watch, and clocked more than two minutes before there was any lessening in the volume.

Among the spectators were a man and a little boy. The boy was really small, wearing a sweatshirt with the hood up, and from my second-story vantage point, he looked exactly like a garden gnome. When the two of them reached the curb, the boy just joined in with the runners, his dad falling into step beside him. Everyone cheered.

Two approaches to cycling

Approach No. 1:
Make sure you have a good, lightweight road bike equipped with moderate- to high-end components. Wear lycra cycling shorts, knee- and/or arm warmers, a lightweight, brightly colored vest or jacket, cycling gloves and shoes with cleats that are compatible with your clipless pedals. Ride 20 miles, stop and eat lunch, then ride home. Total: 40 miles.

Below is an illustration of Approach No. 1, as exemplified today by Stu, me, Barbara and Dave just after a lovely lunch at Tomales Bakery.


Approach No. 2:
Find your bike. Pump up the tires. Put a rack on the back and attach a pannier-type bag to one side. Put some clothes and other stuff in it and into a couple of large, black garbage bags, which you can also attach to the rack. Put on a sweatshirt and a pair of pants and some shoes. Gloves can be of any description. Start riding in Olympia, Wash., sometime around the first of October and head south to San Francisco. Total miles: 750.

Below is an illustration of Approach No. 2 as demonstrated by Kate, riding solo from Olympia. (Not her first such trip; this past summer, she rode to Chicago.)

Conclusion: Stop reading all those cycling magazines and just get on your bike and ride. (Disregard if you are older than 25.)

Bloggers, take heed

Today's New York Times ran the obituary of Robert Shields, who devoted the last quarter-century of his life to writing entries in his diary, documenting his days in five-minute segments. Everything he did—eating, performing household tasks, urinating—he considered worthy of note. By the time a stroke ended his ability to type, he'd entered 37.5 million words.

I think I'll stop now.

Way back . . . way back . . . gone!

The baseball season is now Officially Over, both too long (baseball is a summer game and should not be played when the forecast is for snow) and too short (both league championship series and the World Series were done in four games each, darn it). Congrats, Red Sox; you are definitely the best team in baseball. And congrats to the gritty Rockies, whom I fear we Giants fans will see plenty more of (but how about that Matt Herges, who used to be Our Guy, ditto Yorvit Torrealba? And the Rocks have the best-named player in baseball: Troy Tulowitski).

So now begins my personal drought. I listen to a lot of baseball during the season, and when the end of October comes around, I go into withdrawal. Aside from the games, themselves, I miss the Giants' play-by-play guys—Jon Miller, Mike Krukow, Duane Kuiper, and David B. Fleming—who are vastly entertaining. I learn a lot about baseball by listenening to them, and their post-game rap is often hilariously funny, even (or sometimes especially) when the Giants have tanked (sadly, a commonplace this 2007 season).

I'm not a football or basketball fan (don't hate 'em, just can't relate to players I either can't actually recognize because of all the gear or, in the case of basketball, are running back and forth in incomprehensible patterns), and until recently (like, yesterday, when hell froze over as the Comcast guy was installing cable in my flat), I haven't had TV access to the more arcane sports, like bass fishing and rodeo, that are featured on the Versus channel.

Now that I have cable, though, I'm gonna check out bullriding. The cowboys are cute and exotic, the bulls are handsome, and I can recognize all the players. It's not baseball, but it'll have to do until spring comes round again.

Peg Bracken, 1918-2007

In September 1964, I was living in Chicago with my then-husband and our 9-month-old son when a package arrived for me from my mother. It was a book, and on the flyleaf she'd written

"With love to Barbara. Happy housekeeping!"

The book was The I Hate to Housekeep Book, by Peg Bracken, and it was terrific—funny and irreverent about maintaining a house, it wasn't the slob approach but dedicated, she said, to those of us who are "random housekeepers." There were chapters on how to clean things ("Stains, Spots, Blots, Scars, and Dueling Wounds") and how to cook things ("Dinner Will Be Ready As Soon As I Decide What We're Having") and overall, how to not take it all--or yourself--too seriously.

I loved it. She made me laugh. I read it over and over again. I bought her other books—The I Hate to Cook Book, The I Still Hate to Cook Book, I Try to Behave Myself (this one an etiquette book) and The I Hate to Cook Almanak—but my favorite was, and still is, the housekeeping one.

I sometimes thought about writing to Peg Bracken to let her know how much I enjoyed what she'd written, but, like so many other things I think about doing, but don't, I never did. And now I never will.

I still get The I Hate to Housekeep Book out to look something up, and every time I do, I see my mom's inscription and wish again that she'd lived a whole lot longer. I wish I'd thanked Peg Bracken for her books; I'm sure I never thanked my mom enough for everything.

Parenting Rule #1: Stay on the offensive

In line at the small grocery store in Nevada City, behind a mother and her two preteen sons. Mom and younger boy are in conversation, and mom is growing increasingly irritated with what son is saying . . .

Mom [exasperated]: That's the wrong thing to say! I don't know how many times I have to tell you!
Son [in a reasonable tone]: You've never told me.
Mom [same tone as before]: I shouldn't have to tell you! You should know it yourself!

Desperado

Saturday's "This American Life" was called "Act V," as in Act V, the final act, of Shakespeare's Hamlet, as performed by inmates of a high-security prison in Missouri. The cast included men who had committed violent crimes—first-degree assault, rape, murder. Most, if not all, had never seen or read a Shakespeare play. To hear their impressions, their reflections on the characters and motivations of Hamlet, Horatio, Laertes, et al, was to hear Shakespeare interpreted as I've never heard it before.

It was hard for me to continue thinking of these men as not nice people, as people who need to be locked away for a long, long time. In talking about their crimes, they sounded compassionate, self-aware, resigned, remorseful. They talked about what prison life feels like--dehumanizing, demeaning. And yet their crimes were horrible, and they did do them. They learned to act, to interpret Shakespeare; was all the other talk an act, too?

Some years ago, I was on a ferry in San Franciso Bay that passed close enough to San Quentin that I could see the exercise yard, prisoners in their orange jumpsuits standing at the fence, looking out toward the boat as I was looking over at them. "They were all once 3 years old," I thought. What had happened to them between age 3 and that moment of my seeing them from the ferry?

Why do we put people in prison? To keep them away from us? Certainly. To teach them a lesson? That, too. To purge them of their "badness" and rehabilitate them? Not so sure about that last one; seems like that ought to be part of it, but how can any rehabilitation occur in such a place? I don't know the answers to these questions, and it seems pretty clear that the people in charge of running our prison system don't, either. Maybe, though, we need to start with the 3-year-olds.

The cast and director of Hamlet, Act V

Missouri Eastern Correctional Center

Wombat

The Wild & Scenic Environmental Film Festival screened last night at the Vets Memorial Theater. Wombat was the best—unlike many environmental "message" films, this one is short, clever, and utterly hip. Oh, and it's spot on with the message, too

One down

Yesterday's Los Angeles Times carried the obituary of Barry Tunick, who, along with Sylvia Bursztyn, had been writing the Times' Sunday crossword puzzles since the '80s. I've been working crossword puzzles for nearly ever, and those puzzles have always been my favorites for their clever clues, the wit and the puns, for how smart they are. Turns out Tunick was the one who wrote those clues, the one who loved the puns.

I never knew anything about either one of them before yesterday, only that I enjoy their creations immensely. Working one of their puzzles is one of the small yet completely satisfying occupations of my life. And now one half of that partnership is gone. Coincidentally, just yesterday I began Puzzle No. 50 in Vol. 22 of their collected puzzles. I hope when I finish it, I'll find Vol. 23 at the bookstore.

Thanks, Barry. I'll miss you.

Wild things

The cedar waxwings are back, making themselves fat (and probably tipsy) on the grapes still present in great quantities on the vines that climb into the almond tree and onto the railing of my deck—elegantly dressed bandits in their black masks and grey morning coats traveling in big gangs.

The other returning visitors are the leaf-footed bugs that for reasons known only to them have found the inside of the metal reinforceing plate on my screen door to be an ideal home. They don't bother anything (leastways, not me), but I suppose they could be gathering their strength in preparation for an onslaught on some plant or other. I get an up-close-and-personal look at them, as they're usually clinging to the screen, making it easy to view both topside and underside.

I have images of both these critters, but there seems to be a glitch at blogspot HQ, and I haven't been able to add them to this post; thus the links. Maybe later . . . maybe tomorrow . . . maybe never. It's a virtual world thing.

Rocktober

The Colorado Rockies have swept the Arizona D'backs, four games to zip, and are headed to the World Series—first time for the franchise. I like both those teams but am happy for the Rockies and especially for Yorvit Torrealba, who once upon a time played for the Giants. Liked him then; like him now. Matt Herges, one of the Rocks' relief pitchers, was also once a Giant. My best memory of him is something he once said about how he focuses when he's on the mound: "I look for a pebble, and I concentrate on it before I begin my windup." When he began faltering and losing games, some of us considered sending him a handful of pebbles to help out.

Meanwhile, east of the Mississippi, the Boston Red Sox are down two games to one against the Cleveland Indians, and I'm rooting for the Tribe, mostly because they haven't won a Series since 1948 or so. Plus, they have Kenny Lofton, also a former Giant, who knocked in the winning run back in '02 (or some such year—I'm not very good at remembering that kind of stuff) to send the Giants to the Series.

What I'm enjoying most about watching these games is how nice it is not to care so bloody much about who wins. When the Giants are playing a game, every pitch is fraught with anxiety. Nevertheless, despite my more-detached attitude, it's my nature (and maybe human nature) to come down on the side of one or the other (which may explain world politics). Anyway, just having baseball for a few more days is happiness . . . soaking it up to try to make it last until spring.

Lovely Rita

Today is my sister's birthday. She's now 62 years old. I find this incomprehensible. I'm not bothered being 63—to my mind, getting older is much preferable to the alternative—but having a younger sister who is working her way into her 60s just doesn't compute for me. She's my little sister, fercryinoutloud! So stop kidding around—surely she's scarcely into her 30s!

Happy, happy birthday, dearest Reet! I'm very glad you were born.

Hot dam!

The Monticello Dam is 50 years old this year, and today the Solano Irrigation District, which owns the dam, was having a birthday celebration. I'd thought vaguely about going. Instead, I decided to do a bike ride out to Winters with four other Davis Bike Club members.

Beautiful October day, easy ride to Winters, where we had some lunch at Steady Eddy's coffee house. "Hey," I said, "there are tours this afternoon up at the dam. Anybody want to ride to Lake Solano and take the shuttle up to the dam and take the tour?"

Three of the four others headed back to Davis, but S of D and I headed to Lake Solano. "Sorry," the volunteer said, "all the spaces on the rest of the shuttle trips are filled." We thought briefly of waiting around to see if anybody turned in their tickets, but it didn't take long for us to decide to just ride up there, ourselves, and try to tag along. So we did, and bingo--got up to the dam at the same time the shuttle did. No problem getting on to the tour.

Tour itself was a bit disappointing--I had hopes of actually going down into the dam, itself (turns out the only way to do that is through the dam's "front door," located nearly at the base on the downstream side), but we did get to walk out on the top and look over each side. Best little tidbit: The "glory hole" (the overflow structure) is a seamless 30-ft in diameter concrete tube, which, until 9/11 precipitated major upgrades in the dam's security measures, was a magnet for skateboarders. Cowabunga!

The best part of the day, though, was how leisurely it all was--I ended up riding 52 miles without even thinking about it, chatting with S of D, whom I hadn't seen for a while, drinking in this marvelous fall weather, the trees coloring up, the buckeye seeds looking like pears hanging on the almost-leafless branches. October is the best of months.

Here comes the bride, J.D.

The Thursday edition of the local paper features what used to be called the "Society" pages (earlier version: the "Women's Section")--wedding announcements, anniversary celebration stories, that sort of thing. I always read them, especially the wedding ones. I don't know why I'm so interested. I don't know the couples, and I was in a wedding once (my own) and am not looking for ideas for another one. They're just these little slices of people's lives, and you can sometimes figure out what's important to them from what's included. For instance, yesterday's paper featured an attorney couple who apparently were so proud of their law degrees that they had "J.D." appended to each of their names. I suppose it's possible it was not the bride, herself, but her mother who was so eager to have her daughter's status (and that of her new son-in-law) highlighted front and center, but I think Miss Manners would disapprove. The reception was pretty lavish, though; the bride and groom sat at a 25-foot-long table (called, for some reason, the "King's Table") decorated with an equally long floral swag and a 6-ft. curly willow arragement, so maybe those not-so-discreet references to the couple's professions will bring in the money to pay the bill.