Christmas Is So Just About Over

The tree is starting to smell old, the votive candles are banished to a box Jerry labeled "candle cups," and all appealing chocolate treats have been eaten, if only to get rid of them.  January's breathing down my neck.  Time to reflect.

One of the very best presents I received was a card from my friend Evelyn.  You may remember a blog post I wrote about her in July ("Being 89").  She's had some health problems lately, and  I thought, why not mail a copy of that post to Evelyn in a Christmas card?  Might cheer her up.  In return I received a homemade card, which you are lucky enough to share:

Front of the card, felt glued to sparkly paper

A message from Evelyn

High Dudgeon

This morning I threw open the little window in the closet of Jerry's study. If I stand on tip-toe, from there I can see directly into Laura's courtyard next door.  I called to her daughter Leah,  freshly arrived home from college in Boston.  She looked splendid, red hair bouncing, with a new green handbag, off to meet someone for breakfast.  Then Laura appeared at their door.

"Come to our Hanukkah party tonight," she called up to me.  "Between 6 and 6:30."

"I'll see," I said.

"Are you in a dudgeon?" she asked. 

"Yes!" I answered. That sounded right.   I came straight indoors and looked up "dudgeon" in the dictionary to make sure: "a fit or state of angry indignation usually provoked by opposition."

Well, if the opposition is the pressure to conform at Christmas, then I've been in an annual December dudgeon ever since I figured out there wasn't a Santa Claus. At that point, it just became a matter playing along.  One year Jerry and I escaped to Hawaii.  Another year I took down the Christmas tree on Christmas morning. Boxed up the ornaments and threw the tree out the door. Laura's been my neighbor for 24 years, and she's heard my complaints many, many times.

This year we have houseguests (Jerry's daughter and her husband) and a number of people coming for Christmas dinner.  It's important to keep up my spirits.  Today's remedy:  A brisk walk around Lafayette Reservoir--nearly three miles--and then a peppermint hot chocolate at Starbuck's.

Sorry State of Personal Chocolate Supply

Day 4 (or is it 3?):  6 left out of 30

Not A Casual Undertaking

I know--another Christmas post, but aren't we subsumed by The Season?  It's hard to get away from it and everything it dredges up.

Here's a Christmas card my cousin Marion sent from England:

Horseguards Parade

This card made me pine for England, and I began to cook up a plan to make a quick, family-only trip, in April. I called United Airlines, with whom we have frequent flyer miles, to find out about upgrades.  In so many words: forget it.  Try about a year in advance and you might be able to score a confirmed upgrade.  For $795 each, we could fly round-trip Economy in April, and for a mad moment--having many of them these days--I considered it.  But we're old, and we find  transatlantic hours in Economy to be physical torture. 

Is there any way to make a casual trip to England, the way we fly from here to LA or even to New York?  Of course, we'd have to make plans for staying overnight.  But where overnight?  London (expensive)?  With relatives (not a good houseguest)?  How would we get around (renting a car is out, too weenie for British roads)?  Are the passports up to date?  And what about the plug adapters I can't find?

After I spent a half hour at the computer,  the dream evaporated.  And yet all of my family, except for my sister and Jerry, live there.  I keep thinking of my mother, who kept a daily vigil at the mailbox, watching for the fluttery blue airmail letters from her family.

Pub lunch: Jerry and me with  three of my cousins and spouses

Family resemblance?  My cousin Marion and me, Yorkshire

Domestic arrangements

We've been having our deck repaired, a two-week job that started in mid-October and still isn't finished. I've agreed to go with Gunmetal Gray paint on railing, even though I didn't choose it.  The stucco is repaired, the new rain gutter about to be installed. In our last conversation, the surly-sexist contractor was so polite  it was unnerving.

This morning on the way home from Safeway, Jerry and I were talking about arrangements for our houseguests, who arrive on Tuesday. My arrangements, anyway.

"You'll move out of your bathroom into mine," I instructed.  "The guests get all the towel racks in yours.  Then when my sister comes, she'll use my bathroom."  We pulled into the driveway, past all the construction junk flung around the yard.

"Then I'll move to the porta-pottie," he said, without missing a beat.   Problem-solving: the Man's Job.

Jerry's bathroom while we have houseguests?

Objet (dans le Salle de Bains?)

Approximately 5" tall. 

Yesterday I bought the above item.  I was quite taken with it.   

This morning I couldn't decide what the hell it is, let alone why I bought it, though it was cheap.  I decided to run it past Jerry.


"What do you think this is?" I said, handing it to him.

"A candle?"  he said, giving it the scientist squint.  "It's hollow," he added, helpfully.

At the mad moment of purchase (what is it about Christmas?) I, honest to God, imagined placing it in the upstairs bathroom next to the Kleenex box.  Nancy Reagan, in her memoir, refers to small decorative items as "objets" and says they "warm up" a room.  Jerry refers to such things as knick-knacks, and he doesn't understand them at all.  Neither do I, except in a mad moment at Pier One just before Christmas.

Here is the object in its intended setting, except I can't actually imagine stationing it here:

When does sanity return?

Addendum:  My friend Lin suggests it's a placecard holder.  I think she's right. Got it all wrong.

Looking Micro

 I was all set to outline My Recent Social Whirl, dinners and gifts and generosity (and also some weariness at quite so many dinners out on consecutive nights), but today I came across a slew of posts on my Facebook page about the death of Christopher Hitchens.  He died yesterday of esophageal cancer at 62.   For months, he's been writing about his decline in Vanity Fair, clear-eyed and brutally honest.

 Hitchens's brother Peter wrote a heart-breaking tribute to his brother ("In Memoriam, My Courageous Brother Christopher, 1949-2011" at www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2075133).    I read it and felt  such a resonance with the recent death of my friend Rob.  Both of them, too soon.  So sad, so  unfair.  My God, is this what lies ahead for one after another of us?  I could feel myself sliding into a global funk, beyond sadness into what Jerry calls  "doooom."

When they were small, my adoptive nieces next door could instantly transport me out of these funks. One day when Leah was eight, she and I counted all the lavender plants in about a six-block radius, which takes a lot of careful looking. I couldn't believe how quickly I shed my worries. And it wasn't about distraction or denial: her world was very real.  Is very real.  Today  I'm trying to figure out the equivalent of counting lavender bushes. Just thinking about it makes me feel on more solid ground.  Doooom is quicksand.

Wall Candy

So, yesterday I'm in a waiting room leafing through an issue of  "Architectural Digest," a magazine that brings out my inner communist, and I come across the description of a Palm Beach penthouse owned by an art collector and philanthropist named Emily Fisher Landau.

"When the wall candy runs from Willem de Kooning to Ellsworth Kelly to Agnes Martin," as [the interior designer] put it, "who's going to look at a piece of upholstery first?" 

Indeed.  But describing paintings by de Kooning et al. as "wall candy"?  Describing any art as wall candy?

The Season of Exasperation

A first, perhaps?--My hairdresser returned his Christmas tree.  A real one.  It was too short  for the room and the branches didn't hold up under the ornaments. He got a taller one and brought it home, scratching his newly refinished floors.   He painstakingly threaded strings of lights through the branches.  When he finished, the tree lights went off. He re-worked all the plugs on the strings. The lights came back on.  He decorated the tree.  All the lights went off.

He's put in 7-1/2 hours of work on the tree, and the lights are still hit-or-miss.  He says when Christmas is over, he's throwing out the lights with the tree.

Pockets of Community

We all have them: groups of people we know from jobs or recreational activities or volunteer work, or whatever.  I have several POCs,  and right now all of them seem to want to gather to mark the season.  I feel run off my feet but thankful.

A week ago,  the Food Pantry had a dinner for its volunteers, potluck but mostly cooked by Wes, the most faithful volunteer of all, who works at the Pantry every day it's open.   There were couple of dozen volunteers, plus some spouses, around thirty all together.  And six pies.

Gifts for my quilt mini-group's party

Yesterday,  five us who met in a water exercise class had Chinese food in a restaurant and then a batch of highly-carbed,  decadent cupcakes I brought from "Love at First Bite," a shop in the Gourmet Ghetto.  One of the women had a birthday (70, but who's counting?).

Next week, my quilt mini-group, twelve of us, meets for its annual Christmas party, which always includes a feast and Prosecco. Also next week, three of us who worked together twenty years ago are having dinner at LaLime's in Berkeley; one is bringing his girlfriend.

After that, it's all about family and the handful of other people coming to Christmas dinner.  But now that I think about it, that will include my good friend and neighbor Laura and her two daughters, so that's another POC:  neighbors. 

Contractor Hell

Oh, readers, you are hearing from a weary woman.  I have friends with much worse stories, people  who had exterior walls removed and then the contractor disappeared to McLaughlin, Nevada, to gamble away what they'd paid him.   My story is about a deck railing painted a color I don't want and didn't choose.   The railing is languishing in a warehouse in San Leandro because I don't want it installed.  The clerk who answers the phone at the ironworks says the railing is "real pretty."

The long view:  How much can a deck railing color matter?  People are hungry ; I see it every week at the Food Pantry.

The short view: The contractor didn't listen.  I'm right, he's wrong.

Didn't sleep well last night.

How About a Suggestion, Ho, Ho, Ho?

Jerry's got the door to his study closed, and I can hear him mumbling into the phone.  I'm pretty sure he's ordering my Christmas presents.  I helped him by tearing pages out of catalogs and supplying 800 numbers. (He doesn't do online ordering, too much frustration re forgotten passwords.)

Years ago, pre-internet ordering, I was in a golf shop buying a putter Jerry wanted,  and I mentioned to the salesman that I supplied Jerry with a list of things I'd like for Christmas and the names of stores where he could find them.  "Oh, boy!" the salesman said.  "If my wife did that, she'd get twice as much."  These days, I'd order the putter online, but I'd still need direction about which putter. 

When I was college,  I worked at a department store during Christmas breaks, and I saw many bewildered husbands buying gifts for their wives.  Once I waited on Willie Brown and two other lawyers.  They commiserated.  "I see you've got some bills there," said WB,  surveying the clothes one man was buying for his wife.  "Yeah," said the man.  "It'll add up to enough so she can return them for something she really wants."

Sigh.  Is this a way to run Christmas?  Probably not.   Catalog-page suggestions are a better fit for us, even if it doesn't leave a lot of room for surprise. I tell myself it's a form of communication, and God knows I would have never known Jerry longed for a tome on native plants (Done!  Courtesy of  the UC Press website).

When You Run Out of Netflix

So here's how it looks:  PBS is on near-permanent pledge, and I can't take another round of Peter, Paul, and Mary, let alone those inspirational speakers.   The ads on network TV drive me crazy.   Last night, at loose ends, Jerry and I tried to figure out if there are any DVDs or videos around the house that we hadn't seen yet.  Yes!  The videotape that came with our Corian countertops in 1999, and a DVD he was supposed to watch when he got a knee brace in 2007.  Still haven't watched them.

Encounter with a Fellow Traveler

One of the things I really like about travel is that I meet strangers on  trains and planes who tell me things about their lives.  Without fail, each person seems remarkable:  The mail carrier's wife from Long Island; the secretary to the former owner of the Warriors; and one of the most interesting--during a 50-block shared taxi ride down Fifth Avenue--an interior designer who'd tired of the Dalai Lama ("everything he says is so obvious").  I love these encounters and sometimes write about them in travel blogs.

The other day, taking a break from helping out at the Pantry,  I was eating lunch when a man sat down across from me with a pot of tea and a banana.  He introduced himself as Stanley, from Kenya.   He's a Quaker and  works as a custodian at the Friends Church four days a week.

Stanley

He began asking friendly questions.  How often did I volunteer?  How did I like it?  Usually I'm the questioner in encounters with strangers, revealing little about myself.  I countered with questions. How long was he in the U.S.?  Three years,  accompanying his wife while she earns an MBA and soon a Ph.D.  What was he doing while he was here?  Helping his wife with research, working at the church, and mentoring young African-American men in East Oakland.

He asked what I'd done when I was employed.  I said I'd been a writer. And what did he do in Kenya?  He's a writer.  Ha!  After that, we got down to what we like to write about (him: young people.  Me: everything, including mortality,  a topic he vigorously protested, waste of time, he said).  I took his picture and told him I might write a blog post about him.   He laughed and said fine.

While he's here, Stanley's writing feature articles in Swahili and sending them back to Kenya.  He seemed to think Jerry's job sounded pretty interesting and hinted that he would be a good subject for an article.

Christmas Cooking

Year after year, my sister and I struggled to cook Christmas dinners.  We've produced overdone pork roast, underdone prime rib, and only passable turkey.  We've cooked blurred by cocktails and stone-cold sober (not as fun).  Things got so desperate that several years ago, I began keeping track of what we did each Christmas so we could do a better job the next year:

1996: "Potato casserole got overcooked.  Dad complained green beans were stringy."

1999: "Dinner not so successful. Green beans would NOT cook; Yorkshire pudding was flat."

2000:  "Beef tenderloin too rare. GET A NEW INSTANT MEAT THERMOMETER."

2002:  "Christmas dinner was  excellent!  M. and I made a detailed schedule that was so helpful because we made it up while we were sober."

2003:  "Read this before doing a damned thing!  Make potato casserole the night before and cook it,  otherwise the onion and garlic are too sharp."

2006:  "Pork roast  that should have taken 75 minutes according to cookbook easily took two hours.  Took it out when thermometer read 135 degrees but was too soon."

2009: "Be sure to plunge thermometer DEEP into meat.  Don't start with  chilled roast."

And 2010?   In late middle age, with no more elderly relatives to cook for, only forgiving pals and younger family members, we threw in the towel and ordered the entire dinner from A.G. Ferrari.

Blocks

My friend Rob is  much on my mind these days.  It's been two months since he died, a  dear friend of 49 years lost to  cancer.   Even though I didn't see Rob often after we graduated from college,  I feel haunted by the loss of  him.   Laura, my good friend who's also a therapist, says that each death stirs up memories of other deaths.  This feels right to me.  I'm preoccupied not only with Rob but with my mother, who died 19 years ago.

I'm a quilter, and I've been working on a quilt that is all about green vines.  Apparently.   It's going nowhere.  The other day, I suddenly had an image in my mind of a new quilt block, completely unrelated to vines. I thought, what the hell, and rummaged around in my fabric collection. Then I sewed what I saw in my mind's eye:

  I felt better.  After I stared at that block for a few days and tried to figure out how to incorporate it into a "real" quilt, a bed quilt, I gave up. My hand reached for other fabrics:

The hand-dyed fabric in the center has the suggestion of a horizon.  I can't tell you what this block means exactly, but I can tell you it's in synch with how I feel about Rob right now, that he's just off-shore, in the amorphous blue. When my mother died, I collected pictures of rowboats, and sewed paper xerox copies of them onto plain gray fabric.  I was comforted by the image of her rowing to heaven.

Melon Ice

The painting project in the minute downstairs bathroom is done:  two weeks and two days.  Bruce-the-painter just about moved in with us.  Of course, there was more to do than a bathroom: a hall, the entryway, and a bunch of doors that had to be hand-painted in oil-based enamel.

It turns out that for a large sum of money, you can have your 1980's  faux-sponged wallpaper  removed, and the mess of a wall it leaves behind completely rehabbed and painted with a very smooth and elegant color called "Melon Ice."  (Jerry calls it "Dilute Salmon.")  My sister and I spent part of Thanksgiving Day poring over Benjamin Moore color chips to come up with this color.  The first color, which I chose on my own, "Golden Apricot,"  felt wrong from the first swath on the wall.

Here are a couple of photos:  The After shot (no art, can't bear to hammer holes in it yet) and the Before.  It's hard to capture the cool sophistication of  the new color: think pink grapefruit sorbet.

After:  Melon Ice

In progress: Tribeca Loft ?

Look Up!

Yesterday we went to Pt. Pinole Regional Park to look for Monarch butterflies.  Each fall, Monarchs migrate from inland areas west of the Rockies to coastal areas with milder climates.  This is called "overwintering."  It's a mystery how they choose the same coastal areas year after year, but they do, and if you're lucky you can see masses of them at Natural Bridges State Park near Santa Cruz or in Pacific Grove near Monterey,  hanging from branches of eucalyptus trees. 

Sign directing us to trail to see Monarch butterflies

We set off.  After an ill-advised trek on a bumpy dirt road led us to  the San Pablo Yacht Club, not a Monarch in sight,  we got back in the car and found our way to Pt. Pinole.  We followed a well-marked trail to the trees where this year's migrants congregated. 

After about a mile, we found fifteen people, heads thrown way back, trying to see a couple of small Monarch clusters in high in a  tree.  A sign with an arrow indicated where to look up, but I could see nothing but two small patches of what looked like dark leaves.

Sign indicating where to look up

 An East Bay Parks naturalist had set up a camera on a tripod, and we got a good look at the clusters that way.  My own digital camera was useless--way inadequate zoom. A steady stream of gazers joined us.

This morning Jerry explained to me that entomologists have never figured out how the butterflies know where to migrate each fall. It's the grandparents of the current migrating generation who came last year, and those butterflies died long ago. The current crop had no guide to Pt. Pinole, they just knew where to show up.

The close-up of Monarch butterflies high in a tree

Happy Birthday, M!

Today is my sister's birthday.  She was a Thanksgiving baby, which accounted for my mother being missing when I got up on Thanksgiving morning, 1953.  I remember standing in the drafty garage of our brand-new tract house, and my dad telling me I had a baby sister.  I didn't know what to expect.  When we picked her up at the hospital, she cried in the car, and I said, "Send her back!"  Which would have been a big mistake.

Thanksgiving, 2011,  with a cake I brought from Berkeley

Some of her  pals lamented that they couldn't see her face in the grainy newspaper photo I posted earlier this week, so here's a picture of her taken a year later.  She was in the first grade when my mother made this dress, which featured blue cherry fabric and an organdyhalf-apron worn over the dress.  I had a matching one. 

c. 1960

Hey, thanks!

If you read my blog regularly: thank you.  I love having an audience, and I hope I don't sound too much like Andy Rooney, ranting on about bottle openers and how you're supposed to eat an ice cream cone. I used to think,  "Just how much do we need to know about one person's off-the-wall opinions?"  Ditto blog.

We're off to San Jose for dinner with my sister. It's supposed to be an indoor picnic. Yesterday she called because she couldn't find a package of  real linen tablecloths she stores under her bed. I'm assuming that means it's going to be fancier than I thought, but I'm wearing a flannel shirt and jeans.

Happy T-giving.

Nursery University

That's the title of a documentary we watched last night, and I recommend it unless you're a person who doesn't like to shout at the screen.

The filmmakers follow five families as they try to get their three-year olds into Manhattan nursery schools.  There's been a baby boom in Manhattan over the past ten years, and competition is fierce to get kids into the nursery schools that feed into the right private elementary schools,  right on up to Harvard.  Parents grovel, connive, and donate to get their child into one of the top schools,  most of which cost $20,000 a year.

I liked the family of color whose child got into the Mandell Nursery School with a scholarship and the Greenwich Village family who opted out of the rat race and put their daughter into a co-op nursery.  I did not like the highly competitive investment banker whose adorable daughter got into seven schools.  I was neutral on the single mom who had twins at 57 (yes!). And the overentitled mother who says she's always gotten everything she wanted, but couldn't get her kid into City and Country Nursery School and so moved to Boston?  Whatever.

A personal note:  Without a doubt, I would not have been accepted at any of these schools.  One show of separation anxiety, my bete noire,  at the interview, and you're out.  A tantrum?  Forget it.  A dad who brags about affiliation with a college he didn't really have much to do with?  No go. The director calls to check.

I went to the San Jose State nursery school affiliated with the Home Economics department.  I remember the row of little toilets and the constant washing of hands.   My sister  didn't go at all, but managed to get a graduate degree.  Those were the old days.

Not For Public Consumption

I've been watching the PBS American Masters special on Woody Allen, and God, I find him refreshing.  Death!  Anxiety! Hypochondria! Death!  Remember that scene in "Hannah and Her Sisters," when he is so relieved to find out he doesn't have a brain tumor that he leaps along the sidewalk and then stops dead (no pun) realizing that one day it will be bad news?  Oh, Woody!

Shelves 2 and 3 

  I've got an out-of-the-way bookshelf in my studio with books pertaining to my own personal obsessions, which overlap with some of Allen's. Shelf 1:  Death and Anxiety  ("Dying at Home," "The Heal Your Anxiety Workbook,").  Shelf 2: Travel guides, always more than one for any locality because you never know what could go wrong. I've seen a documentary about Woody Allen in Venice and he is very anxious about water and boats and canals.  A definite tie-in.  Shelf 3:  Biographies and memoirs of first ladies, starting with Eleanor Roosevelt.  I'm at a loss here re Woody, although I would love it if he did a time-travel number on Pat Nixon.

The other day a contractor I've known for a long time was in my studio checking out leaky windows.  I saw him studying the shelves.

"Ah, Liz, I see you're interested in first ladies, " he said.  He is a very progressive Berkeley liberal.  "Laura Bush?"

I doubt Woody would have been chagrined, but I was.  He reveals the damndest things about himself, and people find them entertaining, maybe because they think he's more neurotic than they are.  I wonder.  In the meantime, Shelves 1-3 stay upstairs and pretty much out of sight.

The 1958 Caddie

Yes, this is us. My mother, me, and my sister  accepting the keys for a 1958 Cadillac we won at a gas station.   The San Jose State prof-- that would be my father--is nowhere in evidence.  He might have had to teach that day (or he might have thought that art professors should not be seen with Cadillacs.).

There was no question of us keeping the car, but my mother dressed up in her fake fur stole, and my sister and I put on matching fuzzy knit hats with our school dresses and patent leather shoes, and off we went for the publicity photo.

The actual car we won was red, with fins, and the proceeds from its sale became the seed money for a trip to England the following summer. My mother hadn't seen her family since 1947, when she emigrated to marry my father, whom she'd met in London during World War II.

Family lore.

You Decide

I went out to breakfast today with friends, and I heard a story that stuck with me.  See what you think:

One of the women, whom I'll call "A,"  now the girlfriend of a man who's been a friend of mine for years, was informed by her husband a few years ago that he was leaving her for a much younger woman.  This came completely out of the blue.   She was about 55 and  had retired recently thinking that their joint financial future was stable; her husband was a very well-paid attorney. 

She was shattered.  A divorce case followed.  She was eligible for ten years of spousal support.  Her lawyer insisted that there be a life insurance policy, so that if her ex-husband died, her spousal support allowance would be covered by the policy.  It was up to her to pay the premiums.  She did.

Her husband just died unexpectedly at 60.  She now has enough money to live comfortably for the rest of her life.

What's your first reaction?  Mine was:  "Ha!"  My second was:  "Good for A!"

It's the "Ha!" that troubles me.

In the meantime, she and my friend, whose wife left him years ago, are very happy together.

The Managerial Mind Needs Some Help

Years ago I heard a woman psychology professor at the University of Washington say that "women have the managerial mind."  No doubt about that today.  I have no choice.

I've got a painter downstairs, a pair of housecleaners working around that disruption, and a sick husband.  The sick husband was born in southern California and has been forever imprinted with a notion of chilly that I do not understand.  No windows open, ever, is his preference.   The painter has just laid down a coat of smelly primer.  I fling open the windows due to the fumes.   The husband whimpers ("This is awful," he said, seeing the kitchen windows open. "It's a gale in here.").

Sonia at work, cheerful and adaptable

The housecleaners are like my sister-wives for the day: sympathetic,       adaptable, humorous. They, of course, have managerial minds.  Here's to you, Sonia and Anabelle, who arrive twice a month and  lighten the load.  I am lucky to have you.

Laying Down Color



Tribeca Loft?

Bruce Bostwick, Mr. Uber Meticulous Painter, is here imparting some desperately needed freshness to the downstairs front hall and bathroom.  Houses get tired-looking (hell, I get tired-looking).  You know those Open Houses  with graying sheers on the windows and ancient chipped paint?  We were on the road to that.  Truly.

After two days of work, Bruce has stripped the faux paint-sponged wallpaper from the bathroom walls and filled the three big holes.  He's talked me out of a mad moment of  thinking I'd go Tribeca Loft and live with the stripped surface.

"Won't go with the house," he said, calmly.  Bruce is not going to let me drive off the deep end.  On the other hand, I wouldn't have an audacious red dining room if he hadn't forced the issue in 2001.  Stop dallying, he told me after I agonized for a year. I  finally chose a red, closed my eyes, he painted five coats, and I love it.

With a properly prepared surface, the bathroom will be painted with Pratt &  Lambert "Cream Whip," an unaudacious, airy peach.   Bruce refers to that stage not as painting but as "laying down color."

Could there be a more meticulously organized brush box?

Lining Up for Thanksgiving

Yesterday's record number of households for a Monday at the Berkeley Food Pantry:  82.  Number of  brand-new clients: 5.  Number of regular Monday crew: 6.   Cal students helping out especially for Thanksgiving: 2.   People who told me they were hungry but had already come in too many times this month: 2  [they got "make-up" bags].    People who said they either paid the rent or bought groceries: 2.   This is the story for many Pantry clients.

In the meantime, my sister and I are trying to scale back Thanksgiving dinner, or at least the hassle that goes with it.  Turkey sandwiches?  Do we want all that labor-intensive brown, mushy food?  We don't, but people who don't have a choice definitely do.

Quilts (?)

On Sunday I went to a show at the Berkeley Art Center called, "Paper Quilt Project: Collaborations in Contemporary Craft."  The place was almost empty, and I had a good, long look.

Now, I am what is called a traditional quilter.  I work with fabric, in a pattern based on a grid, and the finished quilt has a back, a front, and batting all sewn together.  The whole works can be thrown on a bed. Or a wall.

The quilts on display were contemporary interpretations of quilts.  They were made of paper, fabric, collage, lace, gouache, graphite, photographs, pastel, mica, colored pencil, masking tape, and/or gold leaf.  Back, front, and batting not required.  A departure from traditional quilting, yes, but I was game.

Game, but edgy.

I liked a lot of the pieces, even one that consisted of a video projected onto the back of a old, beat-up quilt:  Quilt as Screen.  The video showed a boy and then a man, wandering around with another quilt wrapped around them.  As a conceptual piece, it worked.  As a quilt, per se, no.  According to me.

In the little booklet about the show ($3), I read this:  "Aside from being an inviting, warm and humble medium, the quilt has an intrinsic capacity to connect people...this uniquely democratic folk art."    It's humble I have a problem;  I completely buy into "democratic."  People who didn't go to art school can make art with fabric and a sewing machine and batting.  Do we need quilting to be elevated via new materials and methods into something more than "warm and humble"?  Can't  we call this new species of collaborative art "collage," or "works on paper," or "mixed media,"? Leave quilting alone, I want to say.   Let it be.  And while you're at it, take a good long look at the Gees Bend and the Amish quilts.  Their makers may have been humble, but they needed no more than thread and fabric to make art.

Tammy Rae Carland & Allison Smith
Unititled (Sears Roebuck catalog), 2011 (detail)
digital inkjet print on hand-sewn paper

This piece had squares and lattice but was an utterly flat representation of a traditional quilt.  My questions were "why?" and "what's new"?

Back at the Little Farm...

There was an era in the '80's when many of my pals were having babies and I was always finding myself at the Little Farm in Tilden Park. God, it was boring!  The kids, usually toddlers, were endlessly entertained, and I, a non-mom, was bored to the point of vowing I'd never, ever go back.   Don't care re cows, chickens, and pigs.  Not interested.

Well, today I went back.  Claudia's adorable nephew, Rylan, made a long-awaited visit to Berkeley, and the Little Farm was a welcome destination for a 19-month old who wanted to get out of the house (which he indicated by  knocking on the inside of her front door).  Off we went, him with his pacifier hanging out of the corner of his mouth like a forgotten cigarette.  He was delighted beyond measure.   Photos below.  Indulge me.

Rylan and Claudia admiring a cow

The first of two lunches



 

Where the Hell Am I?

I spent part of a rainy afternoon labeling photos from our trip to Italy and England last spring.  Six hundred photos with no labels and an aging mind grappling to figure out what I'm looking at.  Not good.  Anyone know where I am, above?  It's somewhere in the Villa  Borghese Gardens in Rome, a museum of some kind.  Did not go inside or I might remember.

The other day, my friend Laura called to ask when she and her daughters went to Paris.  She couldn't remember, possibly 2005 or 2006.  I rummaged through my datebooks for those years and found that I'd scrawled "Laura and girls leave for Paris," on August 3, 2006.  She needed to know because Leah's getting a visa for education abroad.

I don't really need to know where I am in that picture, except that it pisses me off that I can't remember.

Off the Male Radar

Yesterday I asked Jerry to haul up some cans of paint from the basement.   I got home: not done.  This morning I asked him to get a package of chicken out of the freezer for tonight's dinner.  We were upstairs.  I had little faith that he'd remember by the time he got downstairs. (He did it, but only after much shouted consultation/instruction up and down the stairs). Dinner is not on his radar before 7:30 pm.

I just finished a book called "'I Don't Know How She Does It," by Allison Pearson, a young British woman who is witty and heartbreakingly accurate in her assessment of what women notice and feel burdened by and DO, and what men do not.

"Women," she writes, "carry the puzzle of family life in their heads, they just do."  She's referring to couples with children, but this applies to couples, period. In my experience, men do not notice what needs to be done.  If you point it out to them, they don't think it needs to be done.  And even if they do, they don't know how to do it.  Or, to be fair, they make a stab at it and the woman has to do it over again.

Some men are on top of the details of running house, remembering birthdays, putting on a Christmas dinner. We once had a very anal male guest who inspected every glass in our cupboard and systematically dropped each mildly cracked one (and not at the rim) into the garbage.  I didn't know whether to be ashamed or pissed. Pearson covers this dilemma very thoroughly.

I used to think that not noticing what needed to be done was a diabolical plot Jerry had hatched to get me to do them.  It took me years to figure out that he simply does not notice.  It is not on his radar that 30-year old white paint has turned gray and needs re-coating.  Or that due to recent repairs,  the downstairs bathroom has three large holes in the wall that need to be filled.  Not on his radar, and that's just the way it is.

It's Not Optional!

This morning, reading about the Penn State coach who  (allegedly but there is much evidence) sexually abused numerous young boys, a practice that apparently went on for years even  after campus officials were notified, I asked Jerry if  really it wouldn't be best if this person were marched out and shot.  A more wicked crime I can hardly imagine.  Once again I tried to understand how anyone could hear of such incidents and not immediately call the police.  I have had this thought many, many times while reading about child sexual abuse by Catholic priests and how bishops repeatedly looked the other way.

I think Penn State should now pay for unlimited therapy for these victims, the administrators involved should be fired and perhaps imprisoned, and even the venerable Joe Paterno should go.  Somewhere.  And think about what happened because he didn't follow-up on what an eyewitness confided in him.

These children will never be the same.  They have been violated and robbed.  When is it going to be beyond question that such predators are reported to police?  I just don't understand.

Memorial for Rob

Yesterday morning I got up at 7:30, flew to Los Angeles for Rob's memorial gathering, and returned to Oakland Airport at  7:40 pm. A very long day.

Chris Yee, another friend of Rob's, went with me, and thank God he did, because this involved  renting a car and making our way to a house in Laurel Canyon.  During the drive from Burbank Airport,  I told Chris that I bet there'd be valet parking, and sure enough, when we arrived at the house,  there was a squad of women done up in black pants, bowties,  white shirts inscribed with "Valet of the Dolls."  They disappeared our silver Kia.   We got lost trying to find the front door. 

Several male guests getting out of cars wore dark suits and ties, and Chris momentarily freaked out because he was wearing jeans and a North Face jacket.  I said, Rob was in the entertainment industry!  The business types will wear suits and the creative ones will wear jeans.  I was right.  It was about half and half, if you count black t-shirts and jackets in the suit category. Overheard snippets of conversation re scripts and nominations.

The house was built up the side of a steep hill, four levels, the second of which was devoted to the party.  A sumptuous buffet, a bar, photos of Rob and his sister in 1950's Roy-and-Dale cowboy outfits,  pictures of Rob and his partner Emanuel  in European sidewalk cafes, and  a framed cover of the New York Times magazine that featured Rob when he was a dancer with Merce Cunningham.  Elegant bouquets of yellow roses and white hydrangeas.  An poster-sized photograph of Rob, the one that appeared with his  obituary in Variety.  Outside, the back garden was terraced, the main level a worn astroturf lawn with tables and more bouquets and another bar, another poster of Rob.  The sun shone, the eucalpytus swayed in a light breeze.

The most touching moments:  Meeting four of the "Six Saints," as Emanuel called them, close women friends of Rob's who brought food to him, called 911, spent nights in hospital rooms, and kept him company when Emanuel was traveling.  Each wore a tiny silver wishbone pinned to her sweater.   And talking to Rob's stepmother, Mary, whom he adored and who had traveled from San Jose, with her sister, who lives with her in the house where Rob grew up. 

Meeting Mary was both moving and instructive.  In her eighties, having lost both her stepchildren to cancer this year, she is grieving but lively,  deeply empathic but accepting of death in a way that I can imagine was a great comfort to Rob.   As Chris said, she is a role model.

And then, very soon, it was over, and we stood on the front steps of the house waiting while the lady valets  rushed around retrieving and delivering cars.  People chatted about all sorts of things, plans for getting together for lunch next week.  And I thought, is this it?  It's over?  The way I always do after a memorial service or funeral.  We reclaimed our Kia and drove back  to Burbank.

Another Marriage Down the Tube(s)...

So, Kim Kardashian's marriage of 72 days is over.  She filed for divorce yesterday. Somehow it was more interesting seeing if she'd get to this point than knowing that she'd actually done it.  Her mother had a facelift to get ready for this wedding!  Her stepfather, Bruce Jenner, has apparently had "several facelifts" over the years.   He's a year older than I am.  These K-people exist in another universe.

The wedding cost $10 million to put on.  The couple made $18 million on TV rights.   The rest of us--well, some of us--spent time scouting the internet for photos and "news" and/or watching a four-hour TV special on the wedding.  All this time, money, and energy that could have been channeled into something else.  Crazy!  I'm done with Kim.  This morning I spent two hours reading about rubberized roofs and composite decks, and honestly, my brain thanked me.  It was getting tired of junk food.

Unloading Stuff

I've had a burst of energy after being struck down  by a cold.  Yesterday I cleaned out my closet, got rid of a lot of clothes I never wear because they're too old, too small, too dreary (remember knit tops before stretch?).  Three handbags, several pairs of sandals and shoes, including a pair of sandals from Target so cheap I couldn't resist buying them but hell on the feet. A pair of jeans I wore for years until I caught sight of my rear end in them a few months ago: deeply unbecoming. God knows if they'd make anyone else look any better; they're outta here.

After that,  I got going on books.  I don't LIKE Anne Tyler!  Or a second earnest book about peach farming. Or any more Annie Dillard.  I don't need a copy of "Rebecca." At the same time,  I can't bring myself to get rid of any literature books from college, even though I haven't laid  a hand on any of them since 1972  except to pack and unpack them during moves.  I discarded three mostly unread books by Ruth Prewar Jhabvala: I don't care if she wrote wonderful scripts for Merchant/Ivory-- I don't like her fiction, so there.

I've got a lot of empty hangers and roomy bookshelves.  Feels good.

Kim Kardashian

I am hooked.  She is opportunistic, exploitative (shopped around for an NBA player to marry and took her second choice), vulgar, driven, and talentless, except at getting people riled. She wore three Vera Wang dresses at her wedding  and demanded that guests wear black or white.  She marched down the longest aisle in modern history, except maybe the one at St. Paul's Cathedral.  Her wedding cake was black and white.   Her husband is a baby-faced dope.  And now, some six weeks post-wedding, the marriage is on the rocks, and the couple has been video-taped having a fight in a car.  The groom has taken to not wearing his wedding ring.  Her ring is a 20-carat diamond, and she always wears it.

There is speculation that she got married as a publicity stunt and so she could make $17 million from having the wedding videotaped by E!.

Isn't this disgusting?  I'm riveted. 

Museum-itis

My cold is better today, and I was up to reading the Sunday NY Times over soup at lunch (that would be last Sunday's Times and soup I sent Jerry out to buy).  There's an article by art critic Edward Rothstein called "Extreme Museum: The Rigors of Contemplation," about his experience with "Museum Mind," which he describes as "when I couldn't really pay attention to da Vinci at the Louvre or Rembrandt at the Rijksmuseum...the evidence can be seen in every museum as people rush through galleries, seeming to seek relief from something in hot pursuit."

God, do I know what he means!  The worst attack of Museum Mind I ever had was last May during my first visit to Florence.  We were in the Uffizi Gallery,  where  every last painting was iconic, something I'd seen in art history classes,  The Real Deal, thinking, "Oh, no!  Not another one!" Afterward,  I wrote in my trip journal, "I feel a bit guilty for not being enraptured.  Went to roof cafe and watched a small boy chase pigeons."

An antidote to Museum Mind can be museum gift shops, which, Rothstein says, "often function as decompression chambers," to prolonged submersion in art.   True for me.   When Museum Mind strikes, I begin to think of having to look at art as the price I pay for getting to the gift shop.  Very, very bad.

What to do?  Rothstein says Museum Mind can be controlled by careful rationing, limiting exposure to the most demanding and consuming forms of contemplation.  Exhibits that are not art--historical or natural history exhibits--are less demanding, he says, and I agree.

But I want to look at art!  Who gives permission to skip some masterpieces and concentrate on only one?  To call it a day when you're thinking more about the gift shop than what's in front of you on the wall?  This takes more discipline than I have.  Afflicted by Museum Mind,  I've rushed through the galleries get to the gift shop, where I buy postcards of masterpieces I strode by.  It's nuts, but I get a lot of pleasure from postcards of paintings I was too overwhelmed by to  look at on the wall and ended up pasting into my trip journal.  What the hell.

The Anti-Epiphany

Stuck at home with a cold, but guys are here doing deck repairs, sanding away, so forget rest.  The noise is deafening.  Just discovered a fine white dust coating the bedroom floor, possibly carcinogenic.   There is nothing good to be said, so I'm decided to become Fran Lebowitz.  Stay tuned.

Fashion

Claudia M. and I hightailed it out to Walnut Creek today to get me some clothes other than jeans and t-shirts, for dress-up occasions.  I'd watched a bunch of fashion make-over shows on cable while we were in Inverness, and I realized I didn't know a  thing about current fashion.  I'm worse than the lady priest they had on "What Not to Wear."

We went directly to Nordstrom and found the not-so-expensive department I like to go to, which has been moved to the opposite end of the store (replaced by Gucci and St. John).  The usual squad of sales associates tried to help me, and I finally gave in to an older saleslady who was a goldmine of information re current styles and what to wear with what.  Plus she didn't judge me.  No wool! I said. No sleeveless!  No ponchos!

She got us a dressing room and kept running in clothes, while Claudia advised on fit-and-flatter and hung up the rejects.  I bought two pairs of pants and a few tops.  The pants are stretchy and tight.  I had to go upstairs and buy special underwear so I wouldn't have a visible panty line.  I was totally out of it re underwear, also.  Now there are panties with no elastic around the leg; instead they have an adhesive that sticks to your thigh. Hard to describe.

Staggered home.  The stuff is all still in the bag.  But I feel as though I look a little more with-it, and some of this stretchy stuff is actually flattering.

And now to Jerry's fashion statement:  Here is the purse that he found at the West Marin Thrift and he's going to use as a camera case.   Hard to describe how delighted he is with it,  especially the "J."  He dispensed with the shoulder strap and matching checkbook cover.

Being Prepared

Yesterday there were two earthquakes in Berkeley, both on the Hayward Fault, which is two blocks from our house. After the first one, I tossed the TV remote in my hand across the living  room and ran out the front door. Breathed and went back into the house.  A second earthquake while we were eating dinner--a quick rumble--and we leapt into action.  Honestly, here's what we did:

1. Decided to move one of our cars to the street because our garage is under the  house, and if the house collapsed we'd have no cars.  Which car?  Jerry's because it's less liable to be stolen.

2. Dragged ancient earthquake supplies out of hall closet.

3. Emptied 4 gallons old water out of plastic containers and refilled them.  Worried that the plastic was so old that the  water would pick up carcinogens.

4. Checked earthquake kits for clothes for each of us.  Jerry would have been fully clothed, but I had no shoes and no pants.  Hastily rooted around in upstairs closet for pair of pants that would fit.

5.  Filed several months of paid bills in an accordion folder--fast, fast, fast--and put near front door so we'd have account numbers.

6. Pondered whether canned tuna and soup in kit were too old to eat.  Concluded they were and tossed after argument with Jerry re wastefulness.

6. Dashed back upstairs and grabbed four binders of investment statements.

7. Gathered up prescription drugs, paying particular attention to having enough Xanax.

8. Ran upstairs again to get binder of photos of quilts I've made.

Went to bed with a flashlight and a pair of slippers at the ready. Nothing happened.  Got up this morning to find a mess of stuff near the front door.  (Note: we are not taking the plant.)

 

Quilt Addendum

It arrived safely.  Carling sent an e-mail last night.  She says it's  the prettiest thing in their living room.

Here is a picture of Jerry lying under the quilt top several weeks ago, pretending to be 6'4" (Scott's height), so I could see if I'd made the quilt long enough.  Also wide enough for two.   He is a very-good-sport Quilt Husband, although he sometimes worries that I'm going to run out of storage space for fabric and fill up his shower.

The Quilt's in the Mail

I finished up the wedding quilt for Carling and Scott.  I packed it in blue tissue paper in a stray box from Costco, taped it up, addressed it to them in North Carolina, and took it to the post office.   Then I crossed my fingers and hoped for the best.  This is the third quilt I've mailed, and I'm never comfortable with it: my baby!

Carling chose the quilt pattern from photos of quilts I've made; there was no way to adapt it, so I duplicated the quilt.  Then  I threw in the bright back to please myself.  On the lower left corner of the back, there's a label: "For Carling and Scott, Sept. 4, 2011," and then an embroidered heart, and my name.

Done.

Eerie and Sad

Yesterday Jerry and I drove out to Briones Reservoir, in Contra Costa County,  for a late afternoon hike. When we got to the trailhead parking lot, there was an EBMUD ranger in his truck, engine running.   When Jerry got out of the car, the ranger asked if the silver Subaru we'd parked next to, a twin to our own, was our car.  No, said Jerry.

The ranger said the car had been there overnight, which isn't permitted, and that we should keep a look out for someone injured on the trail.  He was going to call the sheriff, and he was wondering if he should call out a search party.

Jerry and I started off on the trail, me selfishly hoping we did NOT find anyone injured we had to help.  We walked about half our usual distance. Back at the parking lot,  I looked through back windows of the stationwagon.  There were men's clothes on  coathangers, several plastic boxes of packaged food and jars of honey and dried fruit, a box of classical piano music and another of books.  Everything was very orderly.  Then I looked in the front windows and saw a sealed white envelope, face down, lying between the two seats.

We drove off and hiked another trail, and soon we could hear a helicopter, which seemed to be circling the reservoir.  I wondered if we'd read about the search in the newspaper.  We agreed  that the envelope was not a good sign.

Home from a Trip

Why is it the minute I walk through the door of my own house I feel in charge--and burdened?  Food to be put away, laundry to be done, mail to be sorted through?  How much of this do I choose to take on?   Can I lower my standards and let go of a lot of monitoring and planning?  Would everything fall apart if I did?  What if we moved to a rental house permanently?  Would life be easier?

So anyway, I'm offering a reward of several million dollars or at least some minor publicity if anyone can answer these questions.  Plus, you could probably get a book contract if you could write  it up and find an agent.  I have a feeling that a lot of women want answers.

Report from Town

It's raining again!  We're just back from town (that would be Pt. Reyes Station) where we had lunch at the Pine Cone restaurant, but at the little yellow table for two that no one wants because it's too small.  The woman in the booth behind me  was deafening and wheedling; her husband a low, bickering growl. Paid the check and then set off for the West Marin Thrift Store, where my friend Elisabeth finds elegant clothes, but I saw nothing approaching elegant, all  was tired and pile-y and stretched out.

Jerry,  however, found himself a small handbag,  black with a white "J" on it, a child's purse. He was  so delighted with this, the initial and all, that he bought it to use as a camera case. I said nothing, but it reminded me of the kindly vicar in one of Barbara Pym's novels who becomes enamoured of  small animal-shaped soaps, which everyone but himself finds very odd.

Then we proceeded up the main street of PRS, where the Station House restaurant has had a smart coat of paint, and the whole town looks a little less of-the-rancher and more of-the-tourist, but the discerning tourist.  A shop called Vita is so wonderful that I'd take anything in it (as a gift, pricey).

Cookies from the Bovine Bakery and now home to search for "Say Yes to the Dress" on cable. No matter what your size or shape, this bridal salon in NYC can shoehorn you into a strapless white dress with a boned bust that seems to have a life of its own.

R&R in PR

We're near the end of a ten-day visit to Pt. Reyes,  really to the nearby town of Inverness, and I'm feel refreshed.  I almost cancelled the trip because I couldn't face the hassle of packing up for it--we don't travel light--but sitting in a small cottage surrounded by oak and bay trees turned out to be a good idea. 

My friend Rob died ten days after I said good-by to him, and five days before we were scheduled to come here.  He's been  much on my mind.  At first I felt heavy with sadness, discouraged by the way life works out sometimes (hell, ALL the time; it ALWAYS ends in death).   Soon after we arrived in Inverness, rain started and went on for three days.  I wondered why we'd bothered to come.

Now the weather's cleared up, no rain, less fog.  We've taken some good hikes. I've visited with a couple of Inverness friends.  Jerry and I walked all the way out to the Pt.  Reyes Lighthouse (300+ steps), and we  also visited the historical Coast Guard Cemetery, both  firsts in 15 years of vacationing here.   I feel better. 

Still sad, though.

FLOTUS

You know, of course, who FLOTUS is?  Michelle Obama, First Lady of the United States. 

I like to see what she's up to and what she's wearing to whatever it is.   One of my favorite blogs is "Mrs. O",  which features her fashions in great detail, with up-to-the-minute pictures.  Mrs. T, who writes the blog from New York City, identifies the designers of various outfits, and if she can't, her considerable following can.   Most of the comments are adoring, although there was a cat fight last week over what Karl Lagerfield REALLY said about Michelle's clothes.

Google "Mrs. O," and you'll see.  Last night's outfit at the Black Congressional Caucus fundraiser drew raves.  And POTUS didn't look too bad himself.

Having said good-by--

I am so glad I went to say good-by to Rob.  I was very nervous about going, and it was one-foot-in-front-of-the-other drudgery  getting to the airport and through the security nuisance, waiting around, finding a seat on the plane, arriving at LAX, getting a cab.

But when I arrived at his house, I was welcomed into  a zone where people spoke the truth about the scariest thing in the world, and that was a big relief.

Rob insisted on getting up and dressed to talk to me in the living room, and he made his way tentatively up the stairs from his bedroom with the help of his partner, Emanuel, and a walker.  He settled in a big comfortable chair, and I pulled a side chair close so I could hear him (his voice is dimmed by illness and morphine).  We did not review times we had in junior high, high school, or college, which is somehow what I'd expected.  Instead, it was very much in the moment, where he finds himself right now and what he thinks about it.   After about 45 minutes, he was fatigued.  Emanuel reappeared, and we guided Rob to a sofa and urged  him to take a nap.   I reached out and  touched his smooth bald head.  He dropped off instantly   I watched  him sleep and stitched on a label I'm making for Carling and Scott's wedding quilt.

After about an hour, Rob woke up, and I sat next to him on the sofa  and  said what I'd gone to say and had come close to saying during the two years he's been ill.  I'd  kept putting it off, and I was very lucky that I got one last chance to say it.  Lots of people want to see Rob now, but I was among the last who will get to.  Note to self.

Then I called a cab to take me back to LAX,  and Rob insisted on taking his walker out on a balcony so he had a view of a nearby cross street and he could make sure I gave the cab company the right street name.  I left and started to cry the minute the wheels of the plane left the runway at LAX,  knowing  I was leaving him for the last time.

POSTSCRIPT:  Nora Ephron said in the director's comments for "Julie/Julia":  "I do think writing a blog would be one of the hardest things you could do, writing every single day, that every single thing you did, you'd barely experience it before you'd be processing it into material for your blog.  You would be like a predator sitting watching your own life.." 

True.  It took me some days to decide to post this account, although I wrote it right after I returned from Los Angeles.

Saying Good-By to Rob

My mind is pretty much taken up right now with flying to Los Angeles on Friday to say good-by to my friend  of nearly 50 years, Rob Remley.  He is dying of  duodenal cancer.   I've seen him intermittently during the time he's been sick, and he 's always been full of hope, but the disease has caught up with him.   Doctors predict he will live only another week.

I don't know what I'm going to say, which has me a little worried, but I figure (hope)  it will come to me while I'm sitting with him.  In the meantime, my sister has sent a recipe for excellent oatmeal cookies, which I may make tomorrow and take with me for other friends of  Rob's coming to say good-by.  I'm also taking a quilt label to embroider and a book to read while I fly and  while I wait, which is going to take up most of the day, except for the half hour or so I have with Rob.

A Wedding in the Gold Country



Carling and Scott

 It was magical. Three miles outside of the tiny town of  Mountain Ranch, about a half hour from where we stayed in Angel's Camp.  The high heels were left in the car, flats substituted, when I saw the downhill trek we'd make to get to where the wedding was held.  No matter.  One of the bridesmaids wore flipflops after the ceremony.

A generous clearing encircled by oaks and Ponderosa pine,  the moon rising,  dragonflies circling,  a slow-moving creek, and a laidback, loving crowd.  Carling, the bride, told me later that there were about 20 doctors present, med school classmates from New York, but you couldn't pick them out.  Scott  was tie-less, the groomsmen  jacket-less and  wearing suspenders.  Strings of lights crisscrossed the meadow.

Most of the 80 or so guests were under 30, but they were friendly, interesting, and interested. 

The ceremony was brief,  no obeying but "as long as we both shall live."  A blue grass band played during the cocktail hour (four kegs of home-brewed beer from a Berkeley friend,  plus wine and  the usual drinks).  There were two very long tables, about 20 people to a side and a vegan buffet  presided over by a caterer in a cowboy hat.  For dessert, a pie buffet. ( Jerry's favorite kind of wedding: a short ceremony,  no ties, and plenty of pie.)  Lots of funny, articulate toasts with tiny cups of champagne.

The sun went down, someone flipped the switch, and the lights came on.  You could just make out dragonflies circling over the tables. No mosquitoes. We stayed for the first dance, and then slipped away about 8 pm, as other older people did.   The young woman who sat next to me, a snow-boarder and mechanical engineer, said that at midnight  hotdogs were going to be served.


Wedding party in a joyful scrum after the ceremony

Cups for beer and punch

One of two long tables set for dinner




And there were more pies to come...

Bride and bridesmaids' bouquets









A centerpiece