At 52

I am not as the new buds of Spring
Tender and innocently yearning for the sun

I am not the hearty leaves of Summer
Thriving and unafraid against the elements

I am not yet the withered fallen leaves of winter
Staring backward upon the bare branch memories of my life

I am the early leaves of Autumn
Just revealing the colors of my final vibrant bursting

m.scott

Packing the Elephants

My Mom likes elephants. She always has, so, over the years, we kids have all given her elephants to add to her collection. Every Christmas, and each of her birthdays, one of us kids would manage to slip in an elephant of some kind.  She displayed them all, the hand made elephant coffee mug, the row of tiny green ones trailing each other across a bookshelf, a big one carved from exotic wood on the floor, a three dimensional tin one hanging on the wall and a small ceramic one with a big smile who sat happily on a little swing just above the sink.

Now Mom, being the woman that she was, would never had let on that perhaps, her love of elephants didn’t necessarily mean that she wanted to be given an elephant at every gift giving opportunity, nor did that love of pachyderms mean that she wanted her house to be turned into a shrine for the things…no, Mom, being the woman she was, loved the gifts and proudly displayed them all, and we were never told whether, in fact, she really loved them THAT much.

It was more important to her to show off the gifts that her children were thoughtful (or unimaginative) enough to continually give her. That was Mom. She was always the one thinking about what would make all of us happy and feel special, even at her own expense.

It wasn’t just elephants though. She had inherited a commemorative spoon collection from her mother-in-law, and over the years each of us would dutifully buy a spoon wherever we travelled. My brother, while he was in the Navy, definitely won the prize for bring back spoons from the most exotic places, but my sister and I did our share to add to the collection. I even found one in Florida that had elephants on it…what a score! These too, my Mom carefully displayed in wall racks.

I found out though, that perhaps she didn’t quite have the love for spoons that she had for elephants when, after I returned from a trip to Chicago, with new spoon in hand my Mom said, gently, ‘Thank you, but I’m not sure that I have space for any more spoons.” I may be limited as far as my gift-giving prowess, but I can recognize a hint.

No more spoons.

That was also about the time that we all started noticing that Mom was no longer quite as interested in a lot of things that she used to love. It was subtle at first, little things like the types of books she was reading, shifting from dense English History tomes to lighter mysteries, albeit the Brother Cadfel mysteries were set in middle ages Britain…but the change was there.

Other things changed as well. She stopped doing needlepoint, and her quilting passion diminished from sewing beautiful, intricately patterned bed-sized quilts to sewing together the occasional small decorative wall hanging to display as part of her themed bathroom. She stopped watching movies or staying up late to watch Letterman. Crosssticks puzzles were left half finished…things were changing.

These changes continued until they demonstrated an undeniable pattern that lead to a series of difficult and sad transitions…and painful choices for my sister and I. Mom could no longer drive. Mom could no longer live alone. Mom needed care givers. Mom needed to move into assisted living.

The other weekend, we moved Mom to a more dedicated care facility and had to once more pack her things away as the new facility had far less space. There was precious little space for more than a bed, a side table and a TV cabinet that now was heavily laden with family photos in a vain hope that they would somehow seem ‘homey’ and familiar.

But no more room for elephants.

So, in the process of packing her remaining possessions, I filled a box with a collection of carefully wrapped elephants…including a set of tiny green ones trailing each other, a 3-D tin one that hung on the wall and a smiling one who happily sat on a swing. The box went into the garage and will eventually go into storage where someday, some future relative, possibly who will never have met my Mom, will open the box marked “Mom’s Elephants” and will unwrap each of the carefully wrapped elephants and wonder why such care was taken for a collection of such worthless little things.

What is love?

Don’t worry, I don’t really have an answer to that.

I can’t tell anyone what love is, only that it is something that you know exists only when you have truly felt it for yourself. Love is many things of course. It is a fire that rages and burns you with fierce desire, but it is also the quiet of that gentle glance across a shadowed room. It is hands holding while tears stream and the ache that comes in the wee hours when a byzantine argument seems that it will have no end…and all you want is to fall into the person’s arms instead of screaming.

Love is fast moments of overwhelming passion and years of warm routine, it is sharing the world through each other’s eyes and being mystified by how someone cannot see what you see.

It is contradiction and consolation and condolence and a deep sharing of strength when it is most needed. It is being alone and forever together. It is respect and caring and anger and forgiveness. It is touching and kissing and longing for a touch that is withheld.

No, I can’t tell anyone what love is, only that I have found it myself and it still is amazing to me, and still so baffling. It is wanting to understand and being content with the journey of discovery…a journey that will last forever.

I can’t tell you what love is, because if you have found it yourself, then you already know.

One Dim Lamp

Imagine that you are sitting in a room, alone. There is a chair, a table and a small lamp with a weak bulb. The room is small and the walls are made of frosted glass that lets in the light, but no clear images, save for a few clear panels spaced randomly. These clear windows are small and allow you to only see a tiny clear image of someone perhaps walking past outside…but quickly the image disappears before you have a chance to focus on it. 

The room is not soundproof, but the walls are thick enough that they muffle the outside noise, so that unless someone stands close to the wall and shouts, you are not able to hear anything distinctly.

When you first enter the room, you can see well because there is a lot of light coming from the outside shining in. The light makes you feel less lonely, especially when you can see the outlines of people walking past outside, and you are able to recognize the faces that pass the clear windows.

But, as time goes on, the light from outside fades, and is replaced by the weak lamp in the room with you.  Because of the light in the room, it becomes harder to see the shapes of people passing by outside, and the faces in the clear panes of glass become less noticeable, and pass by less and less frequently. Also, for some reason, fewer people speak loudly outside the walls, so that you hear less and less distinct sounds, just muffled echoes.

Soon, the light from outside fades almost completely and you are left sitting alone in a small pool of light, with only an occasional echo or shadow coming to you out of the growing darkness. Once in a great while, a face will hover at the window long enough for you to notice, but often the shadows make it hard to recognize who the face belongs to, and even if you call out, the face disappears before you can get an answer.

The darkness becomes deeper, until all that seems to remain is your chair, the table and the lamp sitting in a pool of weak light. You are scared, and lonely and uncertain, and distrusting of the darkness because you have forgotten that there were once walls that you could see out of.

Now, if sounds come to you, they are frightening because they have no meaning, no attachment to anything real. If a face suddenly swims in from the darkness it is startling and distorted by the odd shadows cast off by the dim lamplight, making the face seem only vaguely familiar…like a face from a dream that you once remember having.

This is how I imagine Alzheimer’s must feel.

That is not my Mother

My mother laughs easily and doesn’t look out at the world through suspicious, haunted eyes. My mother tells stories about all the relatives that I will never know, but come alive in her words. My mother played games with me, and didn’t let me win just because I was too young to lose.

That is not my mother.

My mother knows what day of the week it is and remembers the last time I came to see her. My mother remembers the stories of all the stupid art projects that my brother and sister and I brought home from school through the years. My mother saved 3^rd grade report cards and handmade mother’s day presents slopped together by 5 year-olds-pudgy fingers. My mother never forgets birthdays.

That is not my mother.

My mother read books, so many books. She could tell you every one of the Plantagenets and then explain how they interwove themselves through English History. My mother could explain the relationship between Mary Queen of Scots and Elizabeth and all the intrigue that surrounded them. My mother could have written books.

That is not my mother.

My mother loved musicals because in college she loved working behind the scenes. My mother would iron and do housecleaning with the stereo blasting Camelot, The Music Man, South Pacific and My Fair Lady. “Each evening from December to December…” my mother knew all the words.

That is not my mother.

But, it is the woman she has become. She fades away a little more each day, my mother that I knew is disappearing. I love that woman with all my soul, but…

That is not my mother.

Defending Bill O'Reilly

Already the title of this blog has me cringing, but in this instance, I feel that Mr. O'Reilly, the Fox News scion of conservative bombast needs someone to agree with him that is not in his camp.

Recently Mr. O'Reilly posted a video commentary positing that the motion of the tides was proof of God's existance. Apparently some people took issue with this statement and called him on it, to which Mr. O'Reilly posted this response:

Bill O'Reilly on the Tides

Essentially, Mr. O'Reilly states that while we know that the moon causes the tides, we don't know where the moon came from, or where the solar system came from or anything.

Well, scientists were quick to jump all over these statements and label them as typical ignorant conservative creationist-theory rhetoric, thus perpetuating the kind of polarizing debate that Fox News and Mr. O'Reilly thrive upon.

But what is missed in this type of black and white, either/or debate is the subtlety that I think Mr. O'Reilly actually was pointing out, which is that while science can indeed explain how the tides are affected by the moon, and provide theories as to how the moon came to exist as a satellite around the earth, the thing that science has yet to explain if the overriding question of "why the universe (and everything within it) exists in the first place."

The universe is a incredibly complex and wondrous place, filled with intricate systems and processes that scientists have been exploring for centuries, and will continue to explore. As humans, we have been endowed with minds that are curious and driven to continually ask "Why?" and "How come?". As we learn more, we also discover that there is ever more to learn.  In addition to our curiosity, humans have also been endowed with a remarkable capacity for faith, in essence faith is the ability to believe in things that cannot be scientifically proven, things like a greater intelligence or supreme being that is the ultimate creator of all things. This idea of a creator of the universe crosses almost all religions and cultures.

So why is it so hard to reconcile these two human capacities? Scientific exploration and faith in a supreme creator? The two are by no means mutually exclusive as some would argue, rather if we look at our scientific curiosity as a way to continually discover the incredibly sublime mechanisms and complexity of a universe that was created by an intelligence far far superior to our own, then these two human capacities of curiosity and faith can be reconciled.

I'll take the analogy down a few levels to where it is more clear for me to understand, maybe it will help. Say I have a natural aptitude for mechanics and come across a vehicle that I have never seen before. Being curious I start to examine the vehicle, even start to disassemble and reassemble it. Along the way I discover that it runs on a certain type of fuel, that it has a navigation mechanism, that it has safety features and other systems that regulate and optimize its operation. In short, I find out all sorts of things about this vehicle except for who made it.

Obviously it was made. Obviously the vehicle exists for me to examine, disassemble and reassemble, and obviously it was manufactured somehow,,,therefore implying a manufacturer. So, even though we are unable to identify the creator of the vehicle through examining its parts, we can imply that the creator exists.

The disconnect seems to come when that same analogy is applied to natural systems and objects. A tree, for instance, has many component parts, utilizes intricate systems that facilitates its growth and development, and the tree interacts with the environment around it, which in turn presents even more intricate systems and interactions. Scientists are still exploring these inter-dependencies and systems...but none of their discoveries identifies who the creator of those systems and inter-dependencies is.

Why then, is it so unacceptable to imply that there is indeed a creator, and then continue our explorations. Nothing is lost by accepting this idea, except that in accepting the idea that there is a supreme intelligence that ultimately created everything, we become humbled and awestruck by the possibility.

This is where the real divergence takes place. Some who are awestruck by this supreme intelligence, then decide that there is no reason or merit in further exploration, and thus shut down the curious part of their minds to just accept that all things were created by God. While others, who see this kind of behavior are appalled that someone would willingly close such a valuable human capacity without question...and thus, in a kind of retaliation, shut down the idea that such a creator can exist at all.

But the divergence does not have to take place. As humans, we are capable of reconciling these two capacities, faith and curiosity, and use both to fuel and drive the other. The more we discover about the workings of the universe, the more in awe we can feel of the omnipotent power of a supreme maker.

And perhaps one of the greatest realities of this reconciliation is that the discovery process is infinite.

So Bill O'Reilly is right, we don't know...but that doesn't mean that we won't keep trying to find out more.

My Cynicism

I have become quite cynical and I really don’t like it. It is easy to be cynical these days because everywhere I look, I see evidence to support my cynicism. The most recent examples were the revelations that only 10% of the money donated to the American Cancer Society actually gets used to support cancer research,  the other 90% is used to support and perpetuate the ACS itself (including providing the CEO with a $1.7 MILLION dollar a year salary…or the Susan B. Komen foundation using 20% of its income to sue other charities who use the words “for the cure” in their title.

These are just a couple of the most recent examples that have come to light. Look anywhere, politics, education, business, the media itself and you’ll find ample evidence of humans subverting ideals with base objectives and self-serving intent.

So why not be cynical? Cynicism is a defense against the absurdity and blatant hypocrisy that seems to infect any endeavor that includes more than a handful of people.

So is the common element people?

Of course, humans are flawed beings that while capable of nobility, heroism and altruism, are also subject to the baser qualities of greed, covetousness, fear and ego.  In our evolution and progression through the ages we have developed so many advances, many positive and beneficial, yet we still can’t seem to get beyond our lusts of power, and acquisition, or our need to piously tell others how they should live their lives while at the same time righteously opposing any of those others who dare to tell us how we should live our lives.

My religious friends would recommend that I find God and give my heart to Jesus, but to do so would seem to require that I also allow myself to believe in the organized churches that promote these beliefs…and time and again the hypocrisy of organized churches just further fuels my disappointment and anger. How can organizations that have as one of its foundational tenets: “Love Thy Neighbor”, also advocate the alienation or outright destruction of another faith whose believers interpret the supreme being differently?

The problem is that cynicism erodes the spirit and ultimately destroys the soul. It makes believing in anything feel like a childishly foolish pursuit that denies the intellect and subsumes common sense.

And yet, we humans have been endowed with the incredible capacities for faith and caring and trust. We have the ability to feel empathy and compassion for others, to feel love and the joy of altruism…all capacities that are also subsumed and eroded by the repeated onslaught of the evidence of human greed, avarice and evil.

So how do we balance our better capacities against our baser elements, and still maintain some kind of sanity?

The only answer that seems to offer some hope is on a purely personal level. I can control myself and how I treat others. I have a mind that allows me to make my own decisions, and a soul that guides my actions using a moral compass of my own creation. I cannot make anyone else act in any way, nor do I feel that I have the right to judge someone else, even though I may feel those judgments are justified according to my own moral beliefs.

Conversely, I can’t stop others from having their own judgments about me, though I don’t believe that they have any right to impose those same judgments on me. But if they try to impose those judgments, then I reserve the right to accept or deny them as I feel is right.

Is this enough? Does it free me from the weight of my cynicism?

Yeah right.

Smumb...Smug+Dumb

So I was shopping today, and as I walked through the busy Marin parking lot, I happened to look over and see a bumper sticker that caught my eye. It read:
 
"Spill Baby Spill! How's that whole offshore drilling thing working out for ya?"

Now, I have never been a fan of Sarah Palin's whole Tea Party cadre of angry conservatives, and this bumper sticker is obviously a direct jab at her "Drill Baby Drill" catch phrase refracted through the lens of the tragedy of the Gulf oil spill disaster...but there is one other salient fact about this bumper sticker that has driven me from the grumbling depths to tap words to blog...that being that this particular bumper sticker was slapped on the rear of one of the many SUVs crowding the busy Marin parking lot that I was carrying my groceries through.

Marin County, along with being one of the wealthiest counties in the country, is also a heavily liberal place. Election results regularly run 60-80% Democrat, with the Progressive arm of the party being strongly represented.

So it is not surprising that a Marinite would feel compelled to take a bumperstickered shot at Sarah Palin. The problem is that this self-same Marinite seems to be oblivious to the irony of placing that bumperskicker on the back of a vehicle that desperately relies upon the whole "Drill Baby Drill" ethos, regardless of how many carbon offsets the owner may smugly wave about in their own defense.

The fact is that we: me, you, the smug Marinite in the stickered SUV, and the wingnuts from the Westboro Baptist Church, all share an addiction to refined crude that is only increasing. Sure, that shiney new Lexus Hybrid SUV sucks less of the stuff...but it still sucks...and sucks and sucks and lord knows you need the thing to run Aiden to his soccer practice after your Yoga class and before you pick up little Courtney from her jr. Pilates program.

So I say to you Mr or Mrs Smugginess, learn the meaning of "irony" and recognize that leveraging a horrific ecological disaster to make a weak political point (to an audience that mostly gets it already) is not clever or enlightened or any of the other qualities that I am sure that you embrace over tapas and Merlot with your friends.

Be smarter than that and realize that complex problems, especially those that you are contributing to, require far more thought that a snappy bumper sticker.

Heart Attack Grill

So, if you haven't heard of this place, it is real. Click here for one of it's ads:
Heart Attack Grill

Now, the fact that some entrepreneur has turned the current obesity epidemic in the US into a clever marketing campaign for a restaurant is not what I am writing about. I mean, people want to eat crap until their arteries explode in a gummy-bloody mess, that's fine with me...and if some guy is smart enough to give these same people exactly what they want, along with soft-core porn nurse-waitresses...well that's just fine with me also (though I can almost guarantee that the waitresses are forbidden to date any of the customers, as much as I am certain that they would like to).

No, what is causing me to write today is that when I first came across an article on this place, I happened to drift down and read through some of the comments that were attached to the article. In case you have never done this kind of exercise, you really should. It is an enlightening view into the current state of online discourse and intellectual acumen that burbles under the surface of our great nation...much like the enlightening world of slugs and pillbugs that is exposed when you turn over a rock in the garden.

The argument that was fomenting back and forth was between a commenter who opined that it was disgusting that the restaurant would hire a person who was grossly obese (6'8" and 600lbs to be exact) to be the pitchman for the place; and another, more sensitive individual who accused the first commenter of a range of prejudices including "body-image issues" and "buying into the mainstream fantasy of the anorexic super-model mentality".

It was a spirited debate that involved references to the supposed unattractiveness of commenter one's sleeping partner along with casting doubt upon commenter one's references to various medical facts regarding obesity, type II diabetes and the cost of treating those afflicted with the disease; these arguments were countered with equally sanguine arguments about the fact that someone so obese would actually cost less (in terms of medical care) because they are more likely to die sooner.

Now, I am a firm believer in one's right to choose the way that one wishes to live one's life. So, if one chooses to eat healthy, exercise regularly and adhere to the majority of medical literature regarding how to live a "healthy" lifestyle, then I fully support that choice...as do I support the choice of someone who chooses to eat buckets of lard-infused beef and potato products while sitting immobile for 23 hours a day watching "Jersey Shore" and secretly pining for Snooki.

I just hope that Snooki understands that should she happen to actually fall for the devil-may-eat-what-he-damn-well-pleases swain, her love will likely include the following:
Maneuvering her beloved onto his personal scooter so that he can accompany her to their weekly night out at the Heart Attack Grill, and then later, utilizing their personal lifting device to return that same beloved to his bed where he can lay in comfort and reduce the pain on his knees and back.

Snooki will also enjoy the nightly heaving and shoving of mountainous thighs required to attend to her beloved's personal evacuation needs (as self-same beloved will likely be unable to lift himself sufficiently off of the bed pan) and of course there is the attendant cleaning up afterward. Of course, this nightly ritual may be exacerbated by her beloved's paralysis, caused by his massive stroke (unfortunately, the heart attack comes later), and there is the joy that his family will experience getting to watch their father deteriorate into a huge, immobile mass that can neither communicate nor tend to his own basic functions.

I am sure that the family will continue to fully support his exercise of personal freedom to eat whatever and whenever he wanted to, because he was an American, and no one tells an American what they can and cannot do...certainly not some namby pamby doctor with obvious body-image issues.

So by all means, dig in and support the Heart Attack Grill and it's brilliant nod to total gastronomic abandon. After all, its your life...just remember that when your life ends up depending on someone else to support it, well, its that person's right to choose to do what they want as well.

My Revelation

I think that I understand why some people turn to faith in God and Jesus with such complete, and blind conviction, its because God is intangible and , being omnipotent, never has to be accountable for the anything that God does.

Basically, if your house burns down during the tornado that came right after the locust plague, while you are welcome (and probably right) to blame it all on God, God has the out of being all-knowing, so that you also have to admit that  "God works in mysterious ways and never does anything without a reason."

Living, corporeal people can't get away with that sort of blanket excuse.

If I walked up and burned down your house, and told you that it was "my will" and that "I have a reason for what I do, that you just can't understand because you cannot comprehend my mind" you would
A: Kick the hell out of me and
B: Have me locked up as a derange loony.

But for some reason, some people are capable of leaping beyond these basic perceptive realities and allow God to get away with (literally) murder with no accountability or even an explanation.

OK, why am I talking about this? Well, probably because the whole repeal of Prop 8 and all the arguments surrounding it is so prominent in the news right now. The Anti Prop 8 arguments (that won the reversal) are all fact-based, rational and grounded in sound legal precedent and documentation, while the Anti Prop 8 arguments seem to consist of purely irrational (from a legal standpoint) faith-based (or at least a slim interpretation of faith) screeds consisting of phrases like "It's evil" or "Its against God" or the wonderfully vague "Its destroying the institution of marriage"

...um How?

The Pro-Prop 8ers never seem to be able to answer that part of the question. If two men or two women marry each other, how does that physically, rationally and fundamentally threaten the institution of marriage, or your marriage for that matter? When the argument devolves to a purely faith-based, moral objection then the argument ceases to be an argument, and just becomes a yelling-match soundbite on the evening news.

The problem though, is that this just further reveals the underlying (and growing) neo-conservative/religious right sentiment among a lot of Americans. The tea-baggers and fundamental Christians that we on the coasts mock and laugh at, are gaining strength and power, and we smug coasters may wake up one day (maybe in 2012 after the next election), and discover that we have suddenly become a reviled minority.

I know, I never seem to be happy unless I am forecasting doom, and now that the Gulf oil leak has been plugged and all my dire predictions have come to naught (for the time-being), I need to find a new target for my pessimism, but this neo-conservative-religion based movement has been steadily growing and fomenting for quite a while, and seems to be gaining momentum as more people struggle to survive in the tanking economy.

I am haunted by this nightmarish vision of President Sarah Palin pointing her finger at me and saying "You're going to prison for un-American thoughts...you betcha!" and then some clean-cut young storm-troopers will come and haul me off to a gulag in Idaho where I will be brainwashed by relentless hours of watching Fox news and the 700 Club.

But, if that's God's will, he must have a reason...right?

What To Do With the Opo

This is an opo

So, as a challenge, I bought an opo at the farmer's market on Sunday. I also got a lot of other neat veggie-goodies, but the opo was definitely the most unusual. The busy Asian man behind the counter was little help when I asked him "How do you cook this?" and he just said "Its like zucchini."

Right, well it was a start. So I did the modern thing and posted a message on Facebook with a picture of the thing and a question..."Anyone know what to do with an opo?"

Well, I have a wide variety of interesting and multicultural Facebook friends and sure enough, two came through for me. Thanks to Tricia and Marvin for directing me to their Philippine roots and getting me started on some basic opo recipes.

If you know me at all, then you know that a recipe is just a nice reference point for me to jump off of. But I didn't stray that far. So here's the recipe that I built off of their great suggestions:

3/4 opo, cubed
1 medium tomato diced
1/2 onion diced (I used a sweet Maui onion...yumm!)
3 cloves of garlic chopped
1/4 cup diced pepper (I used a 'chocolate' pepper, but a bell pepper would be fine, or spice it up with an Anaheim or hotter variety)
1 cup chicken broth
1 chicken breast (boneless-skinless) cubed
2 tbls lite oil (I use a canola-olive blend by Smart Balance)
Salt
Chipotle pepper (or regular ground black pepper)

Step one:
Saute onions and 1/2 peppers in oil until onions turn brown at edges

Step two:
Add tomatoes, rest of pepper, garlic and opo along with 1/4 cup of broth
stir and blend all components

Step three:
Add chicken and rest of broth, salt and chipotle to taste
Bring to boil

Step four:
Reduce heat to high simmer, cover
Cook for 10-15 minutes until liquid is reduced by 1/3

The opo is mild tasting and picks up the flavors surrounding it well, while imparting a light vegetable/grassy scent that is not unpleasant. The opo has dense white flesh that turns soft and translucent when cooked like this.

Overall, I'd give this recipe about a 6. It was hearty and filling, and the flavor had a definite 'homey' appeal, comforting and non-threatening, especially when paired with brown rice.

I could see making more of a light-quick stew like meal as well, or even a hearty soup from this recipe.

So, that's my opo story and I'm sticking to it!

Billie Joe McAllister

Bonnie Hayes plays “Ode to Billie Joe” for me on her jazz nights at Cucina. I appreciate it, and I have always dug the song, but she doesn’t know why it means so much to me. I didn’t really get the connection myself until tonight …when it hit me in that full moon, wine haze of realizations.

You see, , if you’ll recall, “Ode to Billie Joe” is an enigmatic song about why “Billie Joe McAllister jumped off the Tallahatchie bridge”…now there’s a back story in the song about the preacher seeing Billie Joe and the young girl in the song “throwing something off the Tallahatchie Bridge” up on Choctaw Ridge. Nobody knows what it was that they were throwing off the bridge, but later in the song, the girl confesses that she spends a lot of time “throwing flowers in the muddy waters off the Tallahatchie Bridge”.

Well, is she throwing those flowers in memory of Billie Joe, or is she throwing them in memory for the other thing that they both threw off the bridge before Billie Joe threw himself off the bridge?

It’s the mystery of the song that appeals to me, because it leaves open the question as to why someone would take their life in that way, or any way. Suicide should be a personal and mysterious thing, though too often it isn’t. Too often, the people who die make sure that those left behind know exactly why they jumped off their own particular Tallahatchie Bridge.

I wish that I didn’t know the reason that my own personal “Billie Joe” jumped off his bridge, but I do. And I understand his reasons, though I wish I didn’t have to. Sure, the mystery could haunt someone for a long time, maybe forever and that would be another kind of hell, but knowing doesn’t make it any easier.

So, thank you Bonnie for playing the song for me. I do appreciate it, even if, while digging the groove, I am crying a little inside.

Bonnie Hayes and The Right Hand Of God

We went to another Bonnie Hayes gig tonight, and as usual, we danced our asses right off. Bonnie Hayes has been playing great danceable music for a long time, but she has the heart and fiery soul of a rocker who knows how to paint a phrase so that it sticks in your brain like sweet candy lingers on the back of your tongue.

Part of the sheer joy of hearing Bonnie Hayes in concert is the that she pulls together a monster band that you almost don't notice, because they are that freaking good. Bonnie comes from a gifted musical family, she has brothers who play or have played for some of the top acts in rock and blues, and tonight, we were treated to hearing her brother, Kevin, playing on drums.

Kevin Hayes regularly plays with Robert Cray, but when he is home, he sits in with Bonnie's Super Bon Bons, and let me tell you, his right hand is blessed by God.

I have been a good enough musician to recognize two things: One, I am competent on a couple instruments, but never had the touch that true musician's have, and two: I am good enough to recognize when I hear a truly great player. I was also fortunate to have a good friend who happens to be a brilliant drummer. As the drums were never one of my instruments, I learned from my friend to really listen to what differentiates a great drummer from a good one.

And tonight, I heard the solid, unwavering right hand of God banging out every back beat and kick in exactly the right place and time. He never missed and his right hand drove the band and every dancer's feet across that hall tonight without most of the dancers knowing what it was that kicked their feet and tossed their souls. His right hand popped through Bonnie's lyrics, Eric Schram's hot guitar licks and Vicki Randall's sweet vocals and sharp percussion, and maybe most important, Kevin's drums complimented and built a steel foundation for the sheer badass brilliance of Daryle Anders' bass.

So while Bonnie lit the room with her exuberance and sublimely infectious songs, it was the men and women that she gathered around her that set the room ablaze, with the heart of the inferno blasting out of the D'Amico furnace that were Kevin Hayes's drum kit and that brilliant, blessed right hand.

In The Land of Hypochondria

I have a lump on my back. Its not a big lump, somewhere between a quarter and a half-dollar in size. Its under the skin and doesn't really hurt, or itch...or really do much of anything besides be...there.

Of course, I am convinced that this lump is just the very tip of the proverbial iceberg of all manner of horrible and incurable maladies.

Why?

Because that's just how my brain works about these things, especially when I am pushed to acknowledge that they exist. You see, I have someone who cares about me and noticed this lump in the first place as I am neither inclined to, nor flexible enough, to regularly examine the terrain of my own back. So, this person who cares about me also recommended that I see a doctor about my mystery lump...which I have agreed to do.

And that is all that it takes to ignite the fuse of my rampant hypochondria. Somehow, there is something wired into the male brain that allows us to actively deny physical ailment so long as that ailment does not interfere with our far more important pursuits of say...watching a rerun of our favorite show or passionately discussing the latest technological gadget that we covet. But, once that ailment pierces our shield of inconsequence then the ailment becomes all consuming.

Its presence gnaws at our psyche like a bulimic termite in a woodpile. And, in some sort of x-chromosome-fueled calculus, the more insubstantial the ailment, the greater the degree of imagined peril the ailment possesses.

And, I am helpless to stop this calculus until I am assured by a doctor that the lump is just a lump and I am still in astoundingly good health.

Sigh...until then, please bear with me...for I fear the candle is growing dim...cough cough...save yourself....

Making TBTAM's Butternut Squash Soup

So, there is is this neat blog called "The Blog That Ate Manhattan" http://theblogthatatemanhattan.blogspot.com/ that is written by a doctor in, of all places, Manhattan. Along with lots of good medical advice and articles, the author, Margaret Polaneczky,MD (aka TBTAM), also writes about a wide range of other topics including cooking and food.

Recently, I came into possession of TBTAM's infamous Butternut Squash Soup recipe, so tonight I am making the stuff. I have never personally dealt with a Butternut Squash, I have had pleasurable dealings with pumpkins, which are a cousin of the Butternut Squash who just happen to have had a much better publicists when the English tradition of carving turnips for Halloween made its way across the pond to America, where we, jumbo sizers that we are, decided that a turnip was just too puny for our needs and transferred the tradition to the more suitable pumpkin.

And, of course, none of that has anything to do with making butternut squash soup, other than that pumpkins smell and taste similar to butternut squashes, and also do quite well as soup.

I am excited about this recipe as it pushes me out of my comfy cooking comfort zone, not only by making me work with an unfamiliar squash, but also by forcing me to use 5-spice and Ginger, two spice choices I don't normally utilize.

So, here's the basics.
Get a butternut squash (you'll find them lurking in the shadowy back corners of the produce section, loitering near the potatoes and yams)


Peel the squash and then slice it in two, which will reveal a neat little cavity filled with much the same schmutz that you find inside of a pumpkin...scoop that stuff out so that all the seeds and stringy bits are gone.


Then, slice the squash into neat 2-inch chunks and place them in a bowl where you then toss them with olive oil, salt and pepper. (My apologies to TBTAM, but I replaced the pepper with Chipotle for a somewhat zestier twist).


Next place the oiled up chunks of squash onto a baking pan and shove them into a pre-heated to 350 degree oven. Leave them there for 30 minutes or so (turning occasionally) until they are nicely browned all the way around.


While the squash is cooking, mince two tablespoons of ginger and mix it with 1/2 teaspoon of 5-spice.

When the squash is baked properly, place the chunks into a food processor along with the ginger-5 spice blend and processorize it. Add a cup of vegetable broth and continue to processorize until it is smooth.

Pour the smooth squash into a medium sized stock pot and mix in one to two more cups of vegetable broth along with one cup of white wine (yeah!). And...simmer.

Before serving, mix one cup of creme fresh (I used fat-free half and half) and a tablespoon of orange juice and before serving, swizzle this mixture on top of the soup.

That's it. A great soup for a chilly winter's night.

Moving Too Fast

I gave up caffeine awhile back, which is kind of a big deal for me as I was drinking a lot of coffee each morning. The headaches I would get from either drinking too much coffee or not drinking enough were really getting tiresome, so I weaned myself onto decaf, which is all that I drink now.

I get fewer headaches, which is nice, and aside from a few mornings where the old starter just won't turn over, I have not been missing the early morning buzz. I still enjoy the warm cuppa every morning, its just a warm cuppa unleaded.

Anyway, I figured that once I got off the java-juice, I would become more relaxed and thus, more tolerant of the slower pace that the world surrounding me seems to have adopted of late.

No such luck. You see, I have the fortunate/unfortunate circumstance of living in the lovely county just north of the Golden Gate Bridge...once the center of the new age movement and 70's haven for all things spiritually and cosmic.

Its also freaking expensive to live here as well. Lovely climate, proximity to San Francisco, beautiful landscape...it all adds up to the ideal place to come and enjoy the fruits of a successful life. Except, it seems that all the people who moved here in the 70s and 80s to gobble up those fruits have stayed on here, and now the median age of the residents of this lovely little county is approaching triple digits...AND THESE PEOPLE MOVE WAY TOO FREAKING SLOW!!!!!

I mean seriously, it is incredibly annoying to me to be stuck behind someone driving a Jaguar who can't manage to push the peddle down far enough to overcome basic inertia. Fine, you made it, and you can buy that snazzy, expensive sports car...now drive the thing like it is supposed to be driven. Or, when you manage to claw your way out of it, pay attention to your physical presence in the world so that you don't meander up and down store aisles, essentially impeding any type of normal progress as you scour the shelves for just the right brand of Metamucil.

I know, I know, there but for the grace of God, and all that. Sure, I'll be old one day (sooner than I'd care to admit), and I too will be getting in the way of some irritable younger jerk who is just moving too darned fast...but I'm not there yet and I think that I need to face up to the fact that the pretty county that I grew up in has morphed into a big ex-hippie Sun City.

Sigh...hurry up with that double decaf! I got places to go!

Infected By New York

It’s happened, I’ve been totally infected by New York. I am not complaining. I have been reawakened by the mainline jolt of electricity that is now buzzing along my veins. Up until now, I thought that San Francisco was about the biggest city that I could handle, being the shy little Marin country boy that I thought myself to be.
But that boy is gone now, seared away by the epic truth that I have now walked the streets of a real city. I have walked the streets of Paris, and she is beautiful and large as well, but I am far too American in my soul to ever feel at home there. And though San Francisco is where I have always called home, I wonder now if I have just accepted San Francisco because of proximity and because of growing up in a place that everyone tells me is so beautiful and desirable. Yes, this is my home, my roots and family are here, but aside from those strong ties, I have never felt the instant affinity for a place like I felt on the streets of Manhattan.

San Francisco has many charms and does look lovely as it sits like a princess on an azure silk pillow…but once you get closer you find the people cold and unfriendly, rushing about furiously trying to justify the expense of sharing the azure pillow with the princess.

I wonder if the coldness that pervades most of the people you pass on the streets of San Francisco comes from a deep-seated discontent. So many people come here to California, and San Francisco thinking that this place is the answer to the restlessness in their soul, but then they discover that San Francisco is just another place and the answer that they seek is really supposed to come from inside of them…and it just isn’t there, the answer continued to look even further on.

Maybe I am just smitten with New York, like the vivid thrill inspired by a new lover, but something feels so right and connected within me now that I have walked those streets.

Does this herald a new beginning? I rebirth? Not sure, but I think that I need to explore this new lover some more to find out.

Halloween in Penn Station

After the American Cancer Society pasta dinner on Saturday night, we were planning on just heading back to the hotel and having an early night so as to rest up for the race on Sunday. As we were leaving though, Sarah Colloum, the project manager for the ACS Team pointed out that we were very near to Penn Station and that we might want to check it out, being that it was Halloween and all.

So we walked the block to Penn Station and ducked in to get out of the rain.
So there we are, in a walkway leading up to 6th Ave, watching thousands of people coming off the trains dressed up for Halloween…WHAT A TREAT!!!

Many of the girl’s costumes seemed to have a common theme:

• Sexy cop with badge and hot pants


• Sexy nurse with a cap and very short skirt


• Sexy zombie with bloody mouth and very short skirt


• Sexy ganster girl, with fedora and very short skirt


• Sexy…well you get the picture

Now, I wasn’t complaining, but I was more interested in the wild and unusual costumes that passed by, the ones NOT purchased at SexyCostumes.com.

And there were plenty to choose from, several pig outfits with the word Flu written on them, many centurions and gangsters and pirates and zombies and an extremely buff guy dressed as Snow White(boy wouldn’t the 7 Dwarfs been surprised!)
Then there were the just plain out there costumes that defied description, my favorite being a man (I assume) dressed head to toe in a bright green body stocking that covered his face and body completely…or the guy who was a walking Facebook Page with a cutout for his face where the profile page would be.
I was used to the parade and variety at the Castro in San Francisco, but this was truly a special moment for us and we just stood and gawked (and took pictures to be posted later).

Funny, I don’t mind being such an obvious bumpkin here. Besides, Halloween is made for watching and staring right?

Cosmic Tease

Even before we landed at JFK, there seemed to be some kind of cosmic conspiracy to keep us from getting to New York quickly. I know, the cosmos was just trying to build our anticipation, but enough already. Virgin America has wonderful in flight entertainment option s including a way that you can track your actual flight, so that was what I was doing as we approached New York. I popped up the nice Google map and saw our plane pointing East, taking dead aim at New York, but then a funny thing happened, the plan started pointing up (North) and then to the left, (Back West!) Along with the map, the display pops up altitude, airspeed and outside temperature (in case you were wanting to take a stroll on the wing at 30,000 feet, bring a coat…its a nippy 48 below zero and at 500 miles an hour the windchill might be severe).
For the next several minutes, the plane maneuvered through a series of complicated loops and turns that, according to the map, took us over much of Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and quite possibly half the Eastern Seaboard. Finally the altitude started to reduce (the outside temperature started to creep up toward zero) and we seemed to get closer to something New Yorkish.

So, down through the clouds and onto solid ground again. We’re getting excited now and it helps that we are in row 5, so we figure that we’ll be some of the first ones off the plane (crafty thinking huh?), except that they don’t open the doors, and we wait, all of us on the plane flooded into the aisles or hunched over by the windows, waiting. Eventually the pilot came on and told us that one of our engines wouldn’t shut off so they couldn’t bring the jet way out to us. I could hear the engine whining in the background and had visions of some crazy cartoon jet spinning around on the tarmac with one engine blasting away…that didn’t happen by the way, we just sat there…waiting.

After about 20 minutes of this, the pilot came on and told us that they had managed to find the off switch and the door opened. We were released, New York here we come!

Not so fast dere bud!

New York wasn’t finished teasing us. We made it down to the baggage claim, only to be held outside the carousels by security guards who said that they were checking out a suspicious bag.

So, another 20 minute wait until they let us in, the suspicious bag having been checked out and whisked off to suspicious bag purgatory. But we were on our way…right?
Nope. The carousel spit out a couple of bags right away, and then…stopped. We all figured that between the delay before we were let of f the plane and then the delay getting into the carousel that there would have been plenty of time to get the bags out of the plane and into our hands.

We figured wrong, so another twenty minute wait…are we ever going to get to New York?
The bags came eventually, K’s alarm clock was going off inside of her bag so I was fairly certain that we were going to be descended upon by all manner of security forces…but they let that slip.

We had planned on taking the New York Airport Service bus to Manhattan. I had called a few days earlier to see if they would take us to the hotel and was assured that “Yeah, we can take you dere.” Funny though, when I spoke to one of the NYAS representatives at the airport itself, he looked at me with a grin and shook his head ‘no’.
He did give us a tip to go to the travelers aid who could arrange a shuttle for us. So we trooped on over to the traveler’s aid and a wonderful lady from Queen’s, Janey, got us set up with a shuttle.

Janey was pure Queens joy, with long blond to grey hair and friendly pretty face that complimented her open-direct demeanor. She was excited to find out that we were running the marathon and when we told her that there was a way to track our progress online, she asked for our numbers and then told us that she’d be at the 56th street bridge in Queens and that she would be rooting for us.
“You don’t gotta worry”, she told us, “Now you got family here in New York!”
Our shuttle driver arrived and we followed him out to the van where another couple climbed in with us.

Great we are on our way, New York here we come!!!!

“Heh, heh, heh. Man, you outta towners are the best y’know?”

The shuttle driver was really quite good, in fact he provided us with an extended tour of every possible turn and terminal available at JFK while he wound his way around looking for more passengers. I had no idea that one airport could be so convoluted and massive.

After a several stops we had filled the van with people and made it to the airport exit.

Woo hoo! Now we’re on our way! Just a quick ride down the Van Wick Expressway and we were there.
That’s when I remembered the Seinfeld episode where George was trying to get to JFK in record time except that, “I’ve never beaten the Van Wick”.

We didn’t either.

2 hours after landing we emerged from the tunnel into Manhattan and now it didn’t matter to us how long it took because we fell into instant tourist-yokel mode. Gawking out the window and being glad that somebody else was driving, especially when it became evident that New York celebrates the last Friday of the month like they do in San Francisco, with the streets being flooded with bikers participating in Critical Mass, although I have to say that New York Critical Massers have a far greater amount of courage than their sometimes noisy SF counterparts. These people were truly insane to try weaving in and out of New York traffic.

I have to say also, that while intense and crazy, I like New York drivers and pedestrians because both have an innate understanding of the physics and motion dynamics. None of this “how-dare-you-think-of-touching-me” pedestrian attitude that seems to pervade West Coast streets. No, here, people on the street understand that a speeding cab will run you down because they are faster and a whole lot heavier that you, so people on the streets pay attention and walk when there are no cars coming, not stepping blithely into the street as if they were impervious to physical laws and damage.

But, we’re here now, and we are ready! And already got family here!

In Flight

So, we’re in flight, somewhere over …umm, someplace snowy with turbulence. I have been bouncing off the walls for the last several days, the excitement about the marathon and getting to New York. K- has been doing a lot of research, which is good because my concentration is shot. I keep running through logistics: how will we get to the ferry? How will we get to the expo? How will we get from the end of the race to the first hotel to pick up our bags and get to the second hotel without collapsing?

But it will all work itself out I am sure.

And then there is New York. A lot of people find it hard to believe that I have lived this many years without ever setting foot there. I have seen it from the Jersey shore, and it is beautiful and thrilling and terrifying and mysterious…and I suspect, intoxicating. Though I wonder if I am still able to be addicted to such things.

We shall see in just a few hours.