Trip Prep

We're off to Chicago next week, and I'm leafing through  the Frommer's  guide investigating.  Two questions come to mind:

Whaddya like on trips? 

And whaddya willing to pay for?

Us:  a comfortable room, preferably in a suite-type hotel (Hampton Suites, for example).  We like space.  We like a complimentary breakfast at the hotel.  We eat lunch in museum cafes or wherever we find ourselves.  Dinner needs to be not too expensive and not far from the hotel.

Crowds: Hate 'em, but what are you going to do?  We're going to be in Chicago for Mother's Day, and I figure wherever we go that day will be crowded.  We're opting for the Chicago Botanic Garden, wide open spaces.  Unless it's raining.

Shopping: Don't give a damn, unless it's in museum shops.  The Magnificent Mile is apparently the Rodeo Drive of the Midwest, but who cares?  Wouldn't buy that stuff anyway.  Plus Jerry hates shopping.  And too much to carry home.

Art galleries: Like, but find museums a better bet in terms of consistent quality.  The Chelsea galleries in New York City are the exception.

Nightlife: Don't care at all. We're old. In New York City, though, we go to Broadway shows because, hey, we're in New York. We eat a forgettable dinner and then take the subway to Times Square. We took a cab once and nearly missed the curtain, bad traffic. Sometimes we eat after the show, which sounds romantic, but it's too late.

Our nightlife generally consists of Jerry channel-surfing or working on manuscripts and me keeping up with my trip diary/scrapbook (see below). I sit on the bed and try not to get stamp pad ink on the sheets.


So, there are whole chapters of the Frommer's guide I could leave at home, but slicing them out of the book is tricky (and dangerous if you're using an Exacto knife).

Awaiting content: A blank Moleskine notebook

Trip journals/scrapbooks from past trips.  I try to keep up while I'm away.

 

Peace and Quiet, Anyone?

My front garden, with the neighbor's gardener's truck parked on the street.  You can't fence out noise. 

A beautiful Saturday morning.  I put on old clothes and go out to work in the garden.  In the distance I can hear the heavy, persistent drone of a power mower.  I think, "the perils of living in suburbia," even though I live in Berkeley, which is not exactly suburbia, but people do have yards.  Mercifully, 15 minutes later it stops.

 Peace. 

The man across the street starts vacuuming his car. 

I think about getting my MP3 player so I can listen to music to drown out the noise, but it's too much trouble to take off my gardening shoes and go indoors for it.

The vacuuming stops.   Peace again.

A truck parks in front of my house,  and two gardeners begin an all-out assault on our next door neighbors' yard, with a power mower,  a leaf-blower, and edge-trimmers.  The neighbors, of course, are gone.  The rest of us listen to this chorus of machines.

I give up.

I spray that foul-smelling goop, Liquid Fence, which really does deter deer, on a new plant that's being (quietly) chewed each night by the resident neighborhood herd and retreat to the house.

Techno-Peasantry in Action

A piece of paper got jammed deep inside my printer.   Distress call to Jerry.  Mutual agreement that printers are not worth a damn, bred to breakdown,  maddening, etc.  Was it possible to just pull the paper out?  (No.)   Printer instructions useless.   

We needed a long, grabby thing.

Assembled implements:  forceps from Jerry-the-entomologist, kitchen tongs from me

                                 

Born of desperation:  lint remover tape wrapped around a pencil

                                  

Jerry painstakingly removing bits of paper with the forceps

Success!  The rest of the page removed in pieces.  Surely there's a better way (besides throwing the printer out the window?) ? 

Cosmetic Surgery: Yeah, Right

Anna Quindlen has come out with a new book, "Lots of Candles, Plenty of Cake," a memoir about her life from the vantage point of almost-60.  I heard Teri Gross's interview with her last night, while I was throwing away vegetables that didn't get cooked to make room for new ones that might not, either.  I thought AQ would  understand.

Loved what she said.  She's a stalwart feminist of my generation, a sensible mother, a long-time (realistic) wife. Great, great, great.

Then Teri asked about cosmetic enhancements she's had done to her face.  Oh, yes!  Even Anna Quindlen!  Well, she's had Botox to plumb the scowl lines between her eyes and "filler" pumped into lines around her mouth.  She did this, she says, so she wouldn't look "grumpy," because she doesn't feel grumpy.   It boiled down to a reason I've heard before from aging women having cosmetic surgery/procedures: "My outside didn't match my inside."

Oh, honey, me, too!  I've got a pair of vertical lines between my eyes and hook-like wrinkles framing my mouth.  Bummer.  I've even investigated having my droopy eyelids hiked up, which would have meant an eyebrow lift costing $4,000.   It was tempting.

But there's a fallacy in the argument that you want your face in repose to reflect how you're actually feeling.  Where do you stop?  I have a friend who said on her 90th birthday that she felt "about 18!"  Thank God she didn't have surgery or procedures to reflect that.  She would have looked ridiculous.

So, Anna, do what you want--I'm totally pro-choice on this-- but let's call it for what it really is:  Vanity.  And a losing battle with every tick of the clock.

The Woody Allen Moment: Shocked, Terrified, and Then What?

Nightmare scenario:  You're sitting across the desk from your doctor, who is telling you that the news is bad, that you have incurable cancer (or heart disease or Alzheimer's).   Maybe she follows up right away with Things That Can Be Done, but your mind is reeling.  You're stunned, shocked,  sad, terrified.

Twice I've been present when bad news like that was announced.  Once when a neurologist told my sister and me that our mother had Alzheimer's Disease (inexplicably, she was kept waiting in another room).  The second time was when my sister and I sat with our aunt while she was told that her uterine cancer had not been cured by surgery.  These were very difficult experiences, but neither was about my own personal mortality.  Or my sister's, thank God.

But I've wondered how I'd feel.  And how on earth I'd go on.

Through a loose network of high school classmates, I just came across a blog written by a woman in my class who's been diagnosed with Stage IV breast cancer, a recurrence of cancer treated four years ago.  I read the first few entries with trepidation--did I really want to put myself through this,  reading about biopsies and surgery and chemo?   But then I got engaged and read through her 2011 blog and on into her current account. 

Although Pat, my classmate,  recounts awful experiences (a  liver biopsy) and new worries (lung nodules),  she  is uncommonly resilient and upbeat, bouyed by her strong Mormon faith.  She includes pictures of having herself getting her head shaved when her hair falls out and then modeling a wig.  There are photos of her undergoing scans and getting chemotherapy and being hugged by her various specialists.   Her account left me--Mrs. Anxious--actually feeling less scared of what may lie ahead, even though I can't imagine following her example of staging a theme party for each chemo infusion (yes, she does).

She turns on a light in a dark and scary room.

Dept. of Rogue Artistic Action

The North Berkeley branch of the Berkeley Public Library recently reopened after a lengthy renovation.  A yarnbomber named "Streetcolor" sheathed the bike racks in colorful knitting.  Alas, the librarians were affronted because she didn't ask if she could do this and took them down before the grand reopening. 

Which do you think looks best?

As sheathed by "Streetcolor" on  April 5

As seen on April 20

AM I Married?

A bracing phone conversation today with Secova,  a company hired by the University of California to audit the legal relationships of employees/retirees to the people they put on their health insurance.

Doesn't that sound dreary?  Wouldn't you shoot yourself if you had to have badgering conversations with people all day about whether or not they're really married?

I thought I'd proved it.  In March,  I sent copies of our marriage certificate and our most recent mortgage payment coupon to show that we are  still married and own a house together.

Two days ago Secova sent a letter saying we'd done nothing.  I put through a call to Secova, which is in New Jersey and answers the phone 24/7.   Woman on phone said not to worry. Today another letter, this time saying our marriage certificate "does not meet requirements."  Another woman on the phone, this one claiming the photocopy of the marriage certificate was blurry and might, might,  be only a  marriage license.  We might have wimped out and not gotten married, but gone ahead and bought a house together that we live in 35 years later.

Is she insane?  AM I married?  And how much is UC paying this company?  How much will they save by hiring these people to police us? 

This gives me a whole new take on what lesbian and gay couples are up against.

SF Foray

Birthdays can be kind of depressing, as a friend wrote to me yesterday.  This no doubt accounted for the Italian flats, cropped pants, and two new lipsticks.  But the day itself was a good one: I chose a foray to San Francisco, and Jerry was game.

First, we went  to lunch at the cafe at  Legion of Honor, my favorite SF museum restaurant.  I had a nicoise salad, which came with the distinctly non-foodlike item pictured at right (it's actually a fingerling potato).   Then we had a look at the current show, "The Cult of Beauty: The Victorian Avant-Garde, 1860-1900,"which features paintings, furniture, jewelry, sculpture, and other esoterica of the British Aesthetic Movement. One of my heroes, William Morris, was well-featured.  Worth seeing, I thought.

Two crones forbade me from photographing ANYTHING in the musem, even in the bookstore, although I sneaked in a couple with surreptitious use of my iPhone.

Catalog of the show, which is at the Legion of Honor until June 17.

From the Legion of Honor, we drove to the Presidio, where we took a walk on the Ecology Trail, near the Arguello Gate. Jerry pointed out the serpentine grassland habitat that the Park Service is trying to restore (below).  Many poppies, including some rare species.

Serpentine habitat that the National Park Service is restoring at the Presidio

The trail ended behind a building at the Main Post with a beautiful patio sheltered from the wind, not a soul in sight, empty rocking chairs grouped around a fire pit.  We shared a roll left over from lunch and speculated on what the building could be--an office for a nonprofit?  Through the windows I could see gleaming brass doorknobs, elegant Roman shades, and modern furniture.

Mysterious patio with fire pit

We walked around to the front of the building and discovered it's the brand-new Inn at the Presidio ($195-350/ night).  It looked so quiet and pleasant that I wished we'd booked a room.  You could do lots of walking in any direction.

The Inn at the Presidio with a diminutive Jerry to left of sign

After that, we drove past the hospital where I was born (then Children's Hospital of San Francisco, now California Pacific Medical Center) and then made a quick stop at Crissy Field to watch the window surfers skimming over the bay in a fairly stiff breeze.  Some caught the wind with enormous kites.  It looked like a freezing undertaking.   A quick drive through Fisherman's Wharf (nostalgic, despite the hordes) and back to Berkeley.  Later, we had dinner at Five, in the Shattuck Hotel.  The food was delicious, but the view of the abandoned Penney's/Ross building left something to be desired.

It's over for another year!

Whose Pants Are These, Anyway?

I've been having a string of mad, bad moments.  Last week I bought two pairs of expensive Italian flats because they fit, and I'd already had several disappointing innings with Zappos, The Walk Shop, and Nordstrom online.  The real-life  salesman at Nordstrom was ecstatic.

Over the weekend, I regained my sanity,  and yesterday I went to Walnut Creek to return one pair.  Good girl!  But then my (disappointed?)  feet carried me upstairs to a moderately-priced department called "Narrative," where I had two hours of mad, bad moments with my favorite salesperson, Geri.  She is older and understands about bothersome bulges and upper arms needing to be covered.  She also pushes me to try something new, something a little trendy.

This spring is all about neon colors (turqouise and orange are very big), metallic shoes/sandals, and tightly pegged, cropped pants.  Much of this I dismissed, but I did, dear reader, buy two pairs of cropped, ankle-length pants in which I can hardly breathe (see above).    Among several other items.

Note that I  am not modeling these pants.  I tried them on last night while we were cooking dinner, and Jerry, admittedly the ultimate non-fashionista, said, "Are they supposed to be that short?"  They looked ridiculous.  Even with the expensive Italian flats. 

The orange is actually red

The tops I bought  are flirty and make me feel younger, and I guess the cropped pants did, too, for a fleeting moment in the store.    Otherwise, as Geri says, "I would have "let them go," which is probably what I'm going to do.

But if I have more mad, bad moments and you see me wearing the pants, please be kind.

Loss of a Big Tall Daddy

Got sad news last night about the ex-husband of a close friend:  He died of alcohol poisoning  on Saturday after years of estrangement from his wife and two daughters.  That rattled around in my head last night while I was trying to get to sleep.  My friend and her daughters deserved much better from him than he was able to give, and it is just enormously sad.  He loved his tiny daughters and they him, and there are moving photographs today on both girls' Facebook pages of them with their big daddy years ago.

The sleep doctor told me no lighted screens before bedtime, no computer, no TV.  Last night, I cheated and checked my e-mail and learned this sad news.   I wanted to say to the sleep doctor:  "Lady, sometimes life interferes."  Sometimes it shakes you up all over and takes command of your heart. 

Love to D.,  L.,  and A.

Pimp My House!

So, here's the story:  Jerry's stepsister and her husband are arriving at 4 pm.  Our house is a cluttered, gritty mess, in my opinion.  

The stepsister and her husband are very wealthy.  They have live-in help.  The only live-in help around here is/are Jerry and me.  We often forget that part of our job.   We often look past dirt and grime and especially the state of the kitchen floor.  We hate cleaning bathrooms. Twice a month we have housecleaners.  This was their off-week.

Hell!  I'm in the kitchen madly cleaning and pretending this is the way we always live: spanking clean, with no gritty crap on the floor, no spider webs around the windows. What is Jerry doing?   He is carefully grooming the driveway.  Our guests will not see the driveway; it's behind our house.  Another time when we had guests, I asked him to vacuum, and he started in the basement.

End of italics.

Now,  why won't the tulips stand up straight?

The Nature of the Crime

That was the problem.

 I got a jury summons, and for the first time I actually had to show up.  With dread and some curiosity,  I took BART to the Wiley W. Manuel Court House in Oakland, down near the 880 freeway.

All went fine in the jury assembly room, with its comfortable sofas and chairs and the pleasant woman who was in charge of us.  There were forms to fill out and explanations of how it all works,  and a roll call, and then one by one we were called to go to a room on the sixth floor known as "Department 113."  That turned out to be a court room.  The defendant, the defense attorney, and the assistant DA rose to greet us with big smiles.

We sat.  Another roll call.  The judge appeared, a tidy figure in his black robes, very deferential to us, polite, and funny.  We were sworn in.

The judge told us the charges against the defendant: Assault on a woman with whom the defendant had a "long-term dating relationship or engagement," plus vandalism. 

That was  a big problem for me.    Sitting at the check-in table at the Food Pantry, I hear stories from women who are victims of domestic violence, how their lives have been turned upside down; how they find themselves and their children in poverty, living in fear;  how restraining orders don't work.  They lean across the table and whisper the details.  I also have a friend works at an agency for homeless and low-income women and children, and I hear about her work.  She estimates that 90% of the clients have domestic violence in their background.

I mentally prepared a speech for the judge telling him why I couldn't serve.

But it never came to that.  The clerk pulled 18 names out of a hat, and none was mine.  For six hours over two days, I sat with my speech at the ready and listened to other prospective jurors being questioned. One woman was excused when she said her sister-in-law had been assaulted and killed ten years ago.  She wept.  No fewer than six women requested that they tell their stories in the privacy of the judge's chambers.  All were excused.  If it's possible to be rapt, bored, sad, and outraged all at the same time, I was.

Late in the afternoon, the judge gave us a ten-minute break.  The wide corridor outside the court room had floor-to-ceiling windows with an expansive view of downtown Oakland and the hills.  Just below us, painted on the side of an old brick building, was an ancient ad for MJB coffee that consisted of a single word: "Why?"  Enigmatic and also sad.  Downtown Oakland is beginning to look like Detroit.

Anyway, I didn't have to find something to do for an hour-and-half at lunchtime.  On the second day, we non-chosen were excused just before noon.

Time Out

I can say no more than that it's a criminal case, and the jury is being chosen.  My question is:  What am I going to do in downtown Oakland on a rainy day during an hour-and-a-half lunch recess?

The downtown Marriott Hotel is nearby, and for a nanosecond I considered renting a room to get out of the rain and watch HGTV.  Kind of pricey when they're paying only $15/day and mileage.

Hey, it's Easter!

My sister and me, c. 1957

Best Practice?

Catalog from 1970-71

In January,  UC Berkeley was delighted to tell me that this year marks the 40th anniversary of my graduation.  They promised to stay in touch all year.

I'm ambivalent about Cal. Yes, I went to school there, I loved it, I made lifelong friends, and the culture of the place fit me like a glove.  Consequently, I've lived in Berkeley for 40 years.  I happened to marry a professor (who describes me as "a non-practicing faculty wife").   But I've never been tempted to write checks.


 I prefer to buy cereal and peanut butter for the Berkeley Food Pantry where I see the food move right out the door, untouched by the hands of UC development staff and a 6.5% rake-off on every gift (2.5% if the school or college has its own development office).

So I was already biased against giving money to Cal, but the question was DOA when I saw that the contribution slip enclosed with the letter gave me the choice of donating  $5000, $2500, or  $1000.  That's it.  I wrote "dream on" on this paper and stuck it on  my refrigerator.

Two months later, another letter arrived, again with the choice of giving in the thousands, period.   I was cranky.  I e-mailed the head of class campaigns.  Was she unaware,  I wrote, that many people my age  have a) lost their jobs, b) seen their retirement savings evaporate in the recession,  and/or  c) have  kids to put through college?   How about lowering the bar?  She wrote back and said it was "best practice" to ask for "leadership gifts to commemorate this important anniversary."  Most people who donate write checks for considerably smaller amounts, she said.

Am I the only one who feels cheap due to "best practice?"  The class campaign lady said she'd see about including smaller amounts in the next mailing.   We'll see.

Brisk Nurse: The Concept

Brisk Nurse is a  bossy, sensible woman who's available to ride to the rescue when I'm feeling overwhelmed.  She is clipped and brusque, and I kind of hate her, but sometimes I feel no choice but to send for her. Yesterday,  I invoked her so I  could gain some control over my internet use.  "Get the computer out of your studio," she lectured me. "And put it somewhere where you have to stand to use it."  Then her lips settled into a thin, satisfied line.   

The Brisk Nurse concept is based on  Peter Feibleman's memoir about playwright Lillian Hellman ("Lily: Reminiscences of Lillian Hellman," 1990).  He writes,

"Ever since I'd known [Hellman] she had an imaginary companion, an elderly woman whose name, God help her, was Nursey, and the two of them often got into fights before noon when Nursey told Lillian to mind her  manners or put on another dress or have some sense about what she was writing.  Nursey was a boring old crank but she meant well and she had been there so long I was used to her..."

Hellman actually spoke in different voices, depending on whether she was Nursey or herself; Feibleman was hearing these arguments through a wall.   I myself have not gone that far.   Brisk Nurse bosses me around, but only in my brain.  Also, BN is middle-aged and does not necessarily mean well.

The problem with Brisk Nurse is that what she prescribes never sticks.  I  always hope she'll whip me into shape, but it's all external bullying and never gets to the root of the problem.  My social worker friend Claudia says that  Brisk Nurse is my super-ego (society's rules and regulations) beating up on my ID (my inner two-year old).   My ego stands aside and watches, and then, thank God, steps in and reasserts control.

Which happened this morning.  I set up my computer at the kitchen table rather than in my studio.  Brisk Nurse has crawled back in her cave, starched white uniform and all.

Sitting rather than standing, and at the kitchen table

Sorta Sad

New rule: Laptop must live on chest of drawers in hall, not in studio.  Ditto smartphone.  Otherwise, nothing else AT ALL gets done. And have to stand to work on computer, no chair.

Archie, Lucy, and Camilla

When the census-taker came to our house in April 1940, he found Archie Strout,  his wife Camilla, and adopted son Lindsay (14).  Archie's occupation was listed as "technical engineer" in the oil industry.   His annual income was $5,000, which was sumptuous in those days.

But who the hell were the Strouts?  What was their story?  I shifted from the National Archives to Google.  A few clicks revealed that Archie Strout went to UC Berkeley, graduating in the class of 1909.  He married Lucy Ray Finley on June 1, 1911.  They adopted Lindsay at some point and built our house in 1924. 

Why was Lucy replaced by Camilla?  According to the Berkeley Gazette archives, Lucy was driving from a volunteers' meeting at The Baby Hospital (now Children's Hospital, Oakland) on February 6, 1935, when she suffered a cerebral hemorrhrage at age 56.  She was buried in the family plot at the Santa Rosa Cemetery.  

The Strout plot in Santa Rosa Cemetery

Archie soldiered on in the house until 1960, when he sold to the Ellis family. When he died in 1970, he was buried next to Lucy in Santa Rosa.   

The  Ellises lived here until 1984, when we bought the house. They remodeled the original kitchen and added a bathroom, enclosed a porch, and extended the garage.  They also put up calico-ish wallpaper in my studio that I don't like but  am too lazy to do anything about.  But under that wallpaper:  A remnant of the Strouts?

Did Lucy or Camilla pick it out?

Rummaging Around in the 1940 Census

Yesterday the National Archives released the 1940 census to the public.  Seventy-two years is the proscribed time between an actual census and releasing the data.   So many people went online that the servers at the National Archives crashed.

Today I decided to take a stab at finding the census data on my grandparents, who lived in Oakland in 1940.  You can't look up a person by name (volunteers are in the process of alphabetizing the names), so you need to give a geographical area.  If you know a street and a cross-street, you're set.  I knew my grandparents lived on Holly Street, because I went to the house regularly as a child and helped my dad and his sister sell it in 1995.  And I was able to track down the house number from this picture:

My grandfather, my dad, and me, c. 1952. The house number is visible.

In 1940, the door-to-door census-takers were called "enumerators," and the areas they covered were "Enumeration Districts."  Based on the address,  I figured out the Enumeration District (61-271) and then had to check page after page of digitized images of the census for that district   Finally, there they were:  My grandparents and my dad as they were on April 15, 1940.  I didn't learn anything new except that my grandfather, a streetcar conductor, earned $1,684 annually, well above the 1940 median of about $950.

I was still in detective mode, so I decided to look up census data on the house where I've lived in Berkeley since 1984.  Brand-new people sprang to life, the people who built the house in 1924, who hung the ancient wallpaper we've had stripped off,  who used the old cooler space I can see remnants of behind kitchen drawers.  More on them tomorrow.

Burn the Bra! Etc.

We went to the Oakland Museum over the weekend to see the "1968 Exhibit," a watershed year of assassinations, the Vietnam war, a presidential election, riots, and political demonstrations.  In my own life, it was the year I graduated from high school and started college.

There were lots of  people my age wandering around, remembering, pointing out things that struck a chord.  Young people, too, but they did not come to a halt in front of a Selectric typewriter the way I did, instantly taken back to my first job.  Or gaze at a  Peanuts wall calendar exactly like the one I took away with me my freshman year of college.

There was so much I didn't want to remember:  the loss of Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr.,  Nixon winning the presidential election,  the war in Vietnam, the dopey TV shows like "The Flying Nun".  The reviewers of the show, which was assembled by the Minneapolis Historical Society, have criticized its lack of coherence, and Jerry and I agreed.  Lots of random cultural stuff  is what it felt like, organized by topic here,  month there.  Overall, I found it both stale (been there) and disturbing (don't want to revisit the details of my youth).  I've come a long way, baby.   So long, 1968.

To the trash can:  bras, curlers, and permanents

The generic dorm room.  Note the "War Is Not Healthy" poster