Revolving doors

For Sunday, August 24, 2008


The first week of school has come and gone. It wasn’t so bad. Funny how during the summer I can wake up at 5:30 a.m. and jump out of bed like a swarm of jiggled bees, rush down the stairs to perk my Peets and pull in the newspapers off the front porch, and while the Cuisinart is dripping my honey brew, I can be in the garage yanking on my work shirt and preparing for a day in the yard, or on deck duty.
Now the alarm blares at 6 a.m. and I barely have the strength to clamber from my slumber and slap the snoozer. Now I stand in the kitchen rubbing my bare belly, bleary eyed, trying to remember what comes first, grinding the beans or filling the carafe with water.
It will prove to be an interesting year for me as I’m experiencing four significant job changes. On the dark side, I’ve been relieved of all my technology curriculum support duties around the campus “because it’s a bad model” I’m told, so I’m back teaching English full time. We have no technology curriculum support at our campus currently.
I’ve been relieved of teaching digital photography and digital filmmaking after building up the course for five years “because I’m not qualified” I’m told by No Child Left Behind auditors. It seems the course is an art course and I’ve got only an English credential and a masters in educational multimedia technology.
Odd thing that NCLB. If I were a world-class photographer in my spare time with published books and a couple of Pulitzer prizes, and maybe an Emmy, I still would not be qualified to teach photography and film making because I have an English credential only. Apparently local administrators have zero flexibility to allow teachers to instruct electives outside their credential.
It plays hardball with our electives. It implies teachers are one dimensional and can only be competent in one field. They call it educational reform, a term I’ve been hearing for the last 25 years.
Next thing you know they’ll have us all teaching exactly the same lessons on the same days, like robots, assuming we cannot even construct the content of our own areas of expertise.
On the bright side, Touro University has come to town. They have hired me to bring a Masters in Educational Technology Program to Benicia, open to all Benicia teachers with a 25-percent discount in tuition, and the courses will be taught right on campus one night a week, so there’s no extra commute. I will facilitate the program and teach the courses. So far we have a healthy enrollment of about 16 teachers.
I’m extremely excited about this program. It gives me an outlet for sharing my 25 years of tech-curriculum expertise with educators. As they say, when one door closes, another door opens.
I’ve also been asked by Chapman University to teach an additional fall tech-curriculum course in addition to the spring course I’ve taught for five years. I just returned from an all-day workshop where we practiced tying core lesson plans to state content and state technology standards. Sonoma State’s office of Extended Education has also invited me back next summer to teach digital photography and digital film making in their summer Excel program. Go figure.
I took my sophomore English students to the computer lab for the first time today. Our plan was to each create a personality profile with PowerPoint so we could all get to know each other – favorite books, movies, songs, hobbies, and so on.
We’re off to a rocky start. The first step was for each student to create three folders in their private drives and name them sophomore, junior, and senior. Then they were to go inside their sophomore folder and make sub-folders for each of their six classes. This way students will have an organized approach to file management for their next three years. Then we were to open PowerPoint and begin our personality profile.
We didn’t get that far. It took the entire hour just to make three folders and six sub-folders. Sorry to say more than half of my sophomores did not know how to create folders or move files. I demonstrated on the big screen, but it didn’t translate. I had to work one-on-one around the room and the bell rang before we ever opened PowerPoint.
We have no mandatory introduction to computer courses in our program. I teach 27 freshmen who volunteered for computer training.
Another change on campus: we are about to embark on an entire campus-wide overhaul of how we structure our lessons more closely to state content standards. Sadly, state technology standards (Standard 16) and CTAP-approved ISTE Standards (newly revised this year) are not included in this 2008 overhaul. Why not ask why?
My candle: I intend to bring all my students up to speed in 21st Century technology-in-education skills. Perhaps I can’t support the whole community anymore, but my students – freshmen, sophomores and masters candidates alike – will push on.

School starts tomorrow, ha, ha!

For Sunday, August 17, 2008


Well, well, well, boys and girls. You went and did it, didn’t you? You went and used up the whole summer vacation. You couldn’t save just a little bit to use now. No. You had to burn right through it, every day. Now it’s payback time. You have to go back to school, back to the classrooms, back to the homework and the tests and quizzes, and all that hard thinking.
Classes start in less than 24 hours. Think about that. Today is the last day of summer vacation. What do we do? Where can we hide? Do you have the jitters? Are you anxious, excited, frightened, dreadful, sad to see summer end? Are you restless? Is that why you’re reading the newspaper?
Take heart. You know deep down that going to school is a good thing, Knowing this gives us the courage to face the first day, instead of diving under our beds.
We know that filling our heads with language and life skills will make us better, happier, healthier people. Knowledge is a no-brainer. It is what drives people to continue to go to school all their lives, even old people. Learning is earning.
Wouldn’t it be great to just lounge about your house, travel at random, sleep in, sleep out, goof on your eyebrows? Well, boys and girls, we have words for that. We call it “early retirement.”
You know how you earn early retirement? You get smart. Getting rich is good, but you still need smarts. You need to evaluate always, at every stage of life. Weigh and adjust. Analyze the world. Synthesize your place in it. Search for society’s greatest needs, and fill them. That what’s makes millionaires and good friends. That’s what makes the world go around.
You think you have it hard. Consider poor, old Mr. Gibbs. You are on your first dozen first days of school. Ha. You’re babies, beginners, amateurs. I just did the math in my head. This will be my 43rd first day of school since I passed kindergarten. I still get the heebie-jeebies.
Here’s what I can tell you from experience. The heebies wear off about 8:15 a.m. and the jeebies are gone by the end of lunch. Once you see all your friends, meet your teachers, hear what’s cooking in the classroom, you’ll fall right back into the pattern. Come Tuesday you’ll be relaxed. By Wednesday you’ll be making year-long plans. Thursday you’ll be smarter than you are today. Friday you’ll realize it still feels good knowing that the next day is Saturday.
Let’s be serious for a moment, my young co-learners. Look around you. You’re living in a world where competition for the good life comes from around the globe. We’ve woven our planet together in glass fiber and binary strings. Any work that can be sent across the Internet can be done by anyone on the Internet.
Imagine applying for an opening at the local hospital as an x-ray technician and finding that 387,000 other people have applied for the same job from 43 countries, offering to do it remotely, for less.
“Bit torrent the x-rays to me at my igloo on the outskirts of Dead Horse, Alaska, Dr. Jenson, and I’ll email you my findings in ten minutes. And I’ll do it for less, because my igloo is built with green technology, and I eat a lot of frozen food. I’m well insulated.”
Mrs. Gibbs has a favorite Youtube video she intends to show her classes. It’s called Shift Happens. Did you know that schools in China have more honor students than we have students. China will soon be the number one English speaking country in the world. Last year, more Chinese students took the English AP Exam than American students.
According to the Dept of Labor, today’s learner may change jobs up to 14 times by age 38. According to former Secretary of Education Richard Riley the top ten in-demand jobs in 2010 did not exist in 2004. This means you must prepare yourselves now for 14 jobs that don’t exist. Be adamant about flexibility.
Last year a retired teacher from India became the first millionaire to earn her fortune selling virtual real-estate in Second Life. Up ahead, third-generation fiber optics will carry 10 trillion bits per second down one strand. That's like downloading 1,900 CDs a second.
What I’m saying is that school is fun, serious business. Learn to balance. Hang with friends. Weave yourself into the social fabric. Do your homework. Learn your lessons. Don’t think about grades. That’s like thinking about tomatoes without watering them. Grades are your shadow. You lead, they follow. Do not study for tests. Do not study for quizzes. Study forever. Actively put all the information you can fit into your long-term memory. You’re not learning vocabulary words for the sake of some silly English test you took back in high school 25 years ago with Mr. Gibbs. You’re learning so you can give an eloquent speech when you run for president.

Firm against the wind like grass
Gino is Back in Town


For Sunday, August 10, 2008


Guess who’s back in town? Guess whose relationship cracked like the Liberty Bell? Guess whose relationship crumbled like my mother’s Thanksgiving turkey? Guess whose relationship dried up like a top limb lime? Guess whose relationship fell apart like pressure-cooked pork? Guess whose relationship died like alfalfa sprouts on the moon? Gino is back in town.
My old college buddy, Gino, who moved in with us back in 2004 after he turned 50 and ran screaming from Philadelphia and his family to start anew, is back in Benicia after his nearly-two-year relationship with a San Francisco girl.
“Everything was fine, until I moved in,” he explained. “It was just too much pressure.”
Like radioactive isotopes that get together, they came apart.
I can imagine that just logistically for Gino, living in the city, even alone, considering his line of work, had to be exhausting. He is a carpenter-electrician-plumber-mason-designer who does finish work, remodels, additions. He drives a big open F-250 truck full of expensive tools everywhere he goes. In the city, he had no guaranteed parking. He had to move his many tools from his truck to the garage, sometimes a block away, in several trips, each trip leaving behind whatever he couldn’t carry, unguarded.
Back in Philadelphia his truck was robbed on several occasions, once while at Home Depot, so he’s perpetually anxious about his tools while traveling. Whenever we have parked anywhere, we have had to move all his gear from the bed of his truck to his cab, then put it back again after we bought our 2x4 or saw blade or Dennys breakfast.
I can imagine Gino gingerly trotting up a San Francisco hill at sundown carrying a tile saw, knowing his compressor and his saws-all are alone and defenseless back at the truck, parked around the corner. I can imagine the same scenario in reverse each morning, and gauge the time it would take. I empathize with his angst.
This situation no doubt perhaps most assuredly made Gino cranky at times. Whenever the world vibrates beyond the alpha range, Gino senses it in his bones and grows testy. Usually, he can control his environment and maintain a steady baroque. The hubbub of San Francisco proved too much, however, for this Philadelphia boy.
She, on the other hand, had heavy family complications, extremely heavy, in the millions. All this and that and the other thing, and here he is at our doorstep once again looking for his old bedroom back. Of course, it was as he left it, waiting for Godot.
The rest of the story is the meat of his own personal monkey’s paw inside the coconut of love and not mine to crack open and distribute. If you want to know more, you’ll have to ask him yourselves. If you don’t know him, just look each Thursday at the Farmer’s Market for a balding Italian guy buying tomatoes and listening to jazz, looking for that certain someone.
We like having him home. He’s like our grown son that we had when we were two. He carries his share of the household upkeep like a senior member. He built and maintains our vegetable garden. It looks like Eden. Fat, flat cucumber leaves, zucchini vines, zinnias and marigolds sprout up from an abandoned corner of our yard like one of Mother Earth’s reified dreams.
He helped me rescue my deck and build a shade roof, for which I have a permit, thank you very much. Of course I have a permit. Who, what homeowner would build without a permit? That would be silly and wrong. Especially considering how easy it is to acquire all the permits one needs, including electrical, and how kind and friendly, and forgiving, the people are down at the city office.
So Gino’s back. Our dinner volume will rise to normal. We’ll have more seafood in our diet. The dishes will always, every minute of the day, down to the spoon I just used to stir my coffee, be clean, dried, and put away. Greg Brown music will once again fill the air. We will once again loudly and continuously criticize every movie flaw we see. We’ll go to the Chris Club more often. We’ve got a new kick we’re experimenting with – backyard deep-fry. We bought a monster pot and buy our vegetable oil by the gallon.
Gino is for hire, by the way, for home construction projects. You’ll have to negotiate individually for his extended services. Alan Lemone, Mr. Best Cabinets in Town Guy, can hook you up. Or you know where to find me. Google.
Want to turn your living room into your kitchen, your kitchen into your bedroom, your garage into a nightclub with a mahogany bar and recessed lighting? He’s your guy.
We’re sorry for his sad romance. It’s not a funny situation. He’s heartbroken and depressed. I ache for my friend. But he’s also resilient. He’s hard like water.
“It’s life. It’s what happens,” he says. “Try again.”

Can you keep a secret?

For Sunday, August 3, 2008



My wife is turning 60 this October and I’m planning a big surprise party for her. Our children will lure her out of the house for the day, while I stay at home and welcome all the guests. We will all be hiding down in the garage, so we must make sure she doesn’t come in that way. The children will guide her up to the front door. Once she’s inside, we’ll come streaming up the steps one at a time, shouting “Surprise!”
Shhhh. Don’t mention it.
Actually, my daughter, Kristi, wanted to throw the surprise party. I was against it. I figured if someone is turning over a new decade, and there is no mention of a birthday celebration, they’re going to be suspicious. They’ll know right away someone is planning a surprise party.
I figured I’d let Susan in on the secret, in case she had some preferences we hadn’t considered. Maybe she’d want a certain dish cooked; maybe she’d want me to fire up the barbecue; perhaps she’d like to help plan the guest list; possibly she’d prefer to have the party downstairs in the family room instead of upstairs in the living room.
So, I said, “Honey, your big birthday is coming up. It deserved a huge party. What are your thoughts? What do want to have happen on that day?”
She said, “I want to go to Mexico on a seven-day cruise.” There was no hesitation in her voice. No hem. No Haw. No either or.
“Whoa. Oh. OK, eh, sure. If that’s what you want, baby, that’s what we’ll do. Royal Caribbean, here we come again.” Maybe the surprise party wasn’t such a bad idea after all.
Honestly, I’m happy to take her back to Mexico. There’s nothing more fun than being pampered aboard a pleasure cruiser, and she deserves the pampering.
“This trip, I don’t want to even get off the boat at the ports of call,” she said. “Why trudge all over town in the heat and pay for food and listen to pitches to buy time shares when we can lounge on the sundeck with no crowds and eat for free?”
“I’m with you, baby. I don’t want to march through Mazatlan again. Maybe we’ll leave the ship in Cabo, though, eh? It’s a small, fun town. What do you think?”
“OK. We’ll do Cabo. But beyond that it’s…” She snaps her fingers in gesture “…oh, waiter! Over here please. Would you refresh my umbrella drink, por favor?”
I guess that’s why I dig the chick so much. She’s never lost her spirit for revelry.
Ten years ago we got off light. All she wanted to do was walk across the Golden Gate Bridge. That was her long-term wish. Of course, she didn’t realize that she would also have to walk back across the bridge to get to the car. That realization came as we reached the parking lot.
She deserves more than just a party and a Mexican holiday. I need to plan a few other surprises as well, things I don’t even know about yet.
This woman has put up with me for over 20 years. I’ve dragged her all over the country, sleeping on hard ground down rocky roads. Took her to rural PA for our wedding. We got married by a Free Methodist because no one else would marry us, her being a divorcee, and had our reception in the Grange Hall, that we rented for $35. The main course was venison. Guests came in jeans and flannel and drank whiskey out of the trunks of their cars. It was like the wedding in the movie Deer Hunter. On our wedding night, we slept on my niece Wendy’s single bed, a thin, sagging mattress on a flat spring frame, with my legs hanging off the end up to my calves. My four nieces, sister and brother-in-law were sleeping in the other bedrooms on the far sides of the thin plaster walls, trying their best not to listen. Creak. Creak.
On her 40th birthday I planned a total fiasco. I rented the Burlington Hotel in Port Costa, sight unseen. I didn’t know it had vines growing in through the windows, chickens in the lobby, springs and spines protruding from the furniture, frayed carpets, a chandelier hanging only from its light cord, a speed-limit sign stuffed under the couch, and the funky aroma of decaying fabric. To this eccentric haven I invited many of her life-long friends, accomplished folks from all walks of life. “Meet my husband,” she said.
The true beauty of this plan, and this published confession, is that now I can plot a surprise party and she’ll never suspect it. She’ll think her birthday plans are in the bag. So, maybe she’ll get a surprise party, and maybe she won’t. One never knows, does one?

Fluff, the magic dragon

For Sunday, July 27, 2008


I’m sitting in a Doubletree Hotel room in Rohnert Park. As I look out the window, I see the greens of the golf course across the road. The setting sun is casting warm shadows of the hotel across the parking lot. As I look over my left shoulder, I see my lovely wife lounging on one of the queen beds. She is laughing, munching carrot sticks, and watching her other favorite man, Keith Olbermann, make news funny while skewering Faux News and Bill-o “The Clown” O’Reilly. Obama just spoke in Germany. Right-wing pundits are trying to tailspin it.
On the desk to my left are the following books: Handbook on Research and Evaluation, Experimental Designs for Research, Issues in Teacher Education, and Integrating Educational Technology into Teaching.

I’m here on an invitation from Sonoma State University, which is footing the bill for this beautiful room. I am teaching a week-long course called Mastering Multimedia. It’s a working vacation. While I go into the classroom each day, Susan stays in bed reading, watching CNBC, strolling down to the spa, and walking the treadmill.

In the evenings we go out to dinner, a new restaurant each night. On Tuesday we also visited the local movie theater and saw The Dark Knight. I’ll predict now that Heath will win a post-humus Oscar.

I’m also writing this column. It’s 5:20 p.m. Thursday and I just got back from the campus. Susan is patiently waiting for me to finish so we can go to dinner again. Tonight -- Outback Steakhouse.
“What are you going to write about?” she asks me.

“I don’t know yet. Not much happening right now.”

“Are you kidding?” she says. “Write about our camping trip last weekend at the Bear River Resort up by Kirkwood. That was fun. You spent 13 hours fishing with Chad on his boat. You were a good grandpa. We got that great cabin.”

“Hm, yeah, I could,” says I, “but nothing special took place. We didn’t meet any oddballs or have any unexpected encounters. What’s my hook?”

“I know. Write about that strange young man we saw dancing at the Chief Crazy Horse Saloon in Nevada City. He was so odd. You said you were going to dedicate a whole column to him one day.”

“Yes. I did. You’re right. I also said I didn’t know if I was capable of describing him in words. He was a visual experience, and so unusual. The way he danced with so many people, but seemed so alone. I still can’t figure out if he was a crazy outcast or the life of the party. I think about him a lot, but writing about him still scares me. I prefer to postpone that topic for now.”

“Well, why don’t you write about the process you went through getting a building permit for your deck. That was definitely an unexpected encounter.”

“Naw. I’d rather not mention that little episode. It’s too embarrassing.”

“So, write about HR 1955 and the new laws on the books to deal with ‘homegrown terrorism’ that has you so upset your veins are popping.”

“That’s a biggie, baby. I do need to write about that. It’s the latest assault on our civil liberties, especially the part about the government building detention centers in every state to deal with growing domestic insurgency. However, I need to do a lot more research on it first. I don’t want to sit on the Internet all evening. Also, it’s depressing. That theory we heard on the radio about Bush declaring Martial Law and refusing to leave office. President for life! That creeps me out. I’m here to relax and have fun.”

“If you want to write about having fun, why not tell people about Tyler Day. People would enjoy a good story about you and me taking our six-year-old grandson to San Francisco. Tell them how much he enjoyed the ferry ride, and all the oysters he ate at the Ferry Farmer’s Market, and his amazement at the IMAX Theater. You were so proud to be showing him all these great things and he was so excited.”

“Good point. That was fun. I could do that. It just doesn’t have a peak. We went. We did. We returned. It was a personal pleasure. Where’s the hook?”

“Well, honey,” says she, rising from the bed and coming over to my side. She runs her fingers through my hair and kisses me on top of my head. “You need to write about something. I’m getting hungry, and the wine has fully chilled. Don’t you want to go outside and play? It’s warm tonight. We have to go home tomorrow.”

“Honey,” says I. “You can’t rush the writing process. It takes time and intense concentration. You’ll just have to wait. I don’t want to write a fluff piece.”

Tunnel at the end of the light
Sunday, July 20, 2008


You know what is hard? Making money with money. Cheese and rice on Friday, as my non-swearing grandmother used to say. Where and how can one plant a savings where it will grow? The stock market? Yikes! Real estate? Arrg.
In the last eight years, both of those options took turns collapsing and siphoning off all the equity we poured into them. What’s left? The mattress? Idle money shrinks with inflation and the dying US dollar.
I don’t have much spare money to plant, so I can’t be investing in art. We must be discerning.
Susan and I recently visited a financial planner. We spent two hours hemming, hawing and strategizing. We came out with a ragged plan, but a plan nonetheless.
Here are the three key options considered: (1) pay off high-interest loans, (2) avoid taxes by deferring salaries, (3) budget expenses by dropping our standard of living. Any money left over goes into a money market or other low-return financial service that forever scrambles to catch up to inflation.
Here are the three key obstacles we discovered: (1) our high-interest loans are not credit cards, but mortgages for hundreds of thousands of dollars that are not easy to pay off and nearly impossible to sell off, (2) avoiding taxes by deferring salaries involves investing in the volatile stock market in 403 and 401 plans, (3) our standard of living already has us growing our own vegetables, watching movies at home, and abandoning our roles as community fashion icons. Any money left over goes to prop up a leg on our kitchen table that wobbles.
With humility I admit many others are worse off. Many have lost their homes to foreclosure, their jobs to outsourcing, their entire standard of living to support the war and the plethora of corporate and upper-class tax breaks.
If misery truly loves company, then we should all be happy and in love because these financial woes are nationwide and involve just about every low- and middle-class person. I recently read an AARP article called “Oops! I retired too soon.” It tells of the hardships of retirees and how many are being forced back into the job market, if only to cover their health needs, which deteriorate more quickly because of the renewed work load on their weary bones.
At least we aren’t retired, lucky us. Those poor, poor people . At least we get to work every day, and accept side jobs, and push out our projected retirement dates into our late 60s. At least we have that luxury to comfort us.
At least we don’t have our youth. Woe to the young people just starting out, looking for a job that offers a living wage, benefits, and security. Those poor, poor people. Many are being funneled toward one of the only job opportunities left for today’s youth that offers perks and a pension plan – military service.
One pathetic piece of advice we got was to sell our losing stocks and take the $3,000 annual maximum tax write off. That should only take us a decade or so to clear up, barring any more of my crazy investment schemes like buying phone company stock in Qwest Communications and alternative energy shares.
The alternative energy play has me seriously perplexed. We’re into hydrogen, solar, bio-fuel, coal-to-liquid, even plug-in hybrid, and we bought in long ago, and still the stocks languish like high-hanging fruit. We’ve mitigated our risk with clean-energy RTFs and we’re still losing ground. How can these stocks not go up? I guess we will mass produce electric alternatives as soon as electricity cost as much as gas.
So how can money make money? The system obviously works. I guess we’re just not smart enough to be rich. We chose rewarding, secure careers as teachers, but that income ceiling is too low to ever work ourselves into wealth through labor. We could have been captains of industry or chosen high-paying fields in specialized medicine, but that often takes a century of breeding, grooming, networking, or being born as a mutant genius.
This is America. We are limited only by our dreams, our aspirations and government regulations. With one down and two to go, we should be able to realize our gray lives in some sort of comfort that allows us to sleep at night.
I suspect hanky-panky is the ultimate culprit.
Best-case scenario: we hit the lotto and pay all our debts. That is the desperate dream. Then where do we store the remaining cash? The stock market? Yikes! Real estate? Arrg. Bonds? Zzzz. Venture capitalism? There’s a black hole that sucks up even millionaires and billionaires.
Having money is like having water on a hot day. It’s vital to life, but prone to rapid evaporation when exposed. If you swim in it, you can’t drink it, and if you drink it, it turns to blood, sweat, and tears.

A foothill holiday
Sunday, July 13, 2008




Susan and I just returned from a five-day foothill vacation full of good times and great food. We drove to one of our most favorite destinations in California – Nevada City, the most exciting, vibrant, lively, well-organized little village in the Sierras. As usual we took a room at the expansive Northern Queen Inn.
Downtown Nevada City is small. It’s only a few blocks long, easy to walk, and tourist friendly. Nearly every store is either a restaurant, bar, nightclub, boutique, antique shop, bookstore, or novelty shop. Our walks through town resembled a sewing machine needle – into a store, out, down, into the next store, out, down, into the next store, and so on.
Nevada City has been a vacation destination of ours since the 1980s. We’ve either taken a room at the Northern Queen, or pitched a tent six miles north of town at the Yuba River Recreation Area.
Even when camping, we would generally drive into town for dinner. The food is that good. I thought we had visited all of the 19 restaurants in town, but this trip, on our first night, July 3rd, we were sitting at Cooper’s Ale Works (Leon Russell will be there on 14th) and met George and Christine Foster. George is the city treasurer; Christine was vice-mayor and is now a realtor. We asked their opinion of the best restaurant. They said, “The New Moon.” I confessed that I’d never heard of it. They pointed up the street. “It’s two blocks from here.”
“Up there?” I asked, pointing beyond the intersection where we usually turn when walking. He nodded. “Ha. I’ve never been up there. I thought it was residential.”
“Well,” George smiled. “It’s called Commercial Street, Steve. There are several restaurants up there.”
“Duh.” It was a 20-year blind spot. We walked up there and found three restaurants, Ike’s Corner Café, Sopa Thai, and the New Moon, where I ate the best rib-eye steak in my life.
Early on the 4th we carried folding chairs to Broad Street for the big parade. The town was packed. The 20-piece Nevada County Concert Band set up across from us and opened with ABBA. The parade ran for several hours with firemen, marching bands, and business floats from Nevada City, Grass Valley, and Washington. George and Christine were 7th in the parade, riding by in a horse-drawn white carriage. They waved at us in the crowd and asked how we enjoyed our meal. I rubbed my belly and smiled in response.
That night we went dancing with the 20-somethings at the Chief Crazy Horse Inn and lasted until 1 a.m. One day I may dedicate a whole column to an unusual young man we met there that evening. He danced alone and with everyone, cycling through a series of gestures, pantomimes, and facial contortions. Susan called him a “Jim Carrey.” I confessed a fear that I would not be able to describe him clearly, that his personality and quirky behavior exceeded my talents. I’ll say no more.
On July 5th, our 23rd anniversary, our kids and grandkids drove up from Sacramento and we spent 8 hours swimming and sunning on the Yuba River. That was the highlight of the trip. The Yuba hosts at least 30 miles of great swimming holes, the remnants of gold miners’ dredging efforts. We chose a secret spot frequented by locals that took me 10 years to discover. It’s perfect for children with many shallows and climbing rocks.
They spent the night with us. Some things to know about the marvelous Northern Queen Inn. They have 86 rooms, eight cabins, eight chalets, and own 33 acres. They run a narrow-gauge train on a 90-minute ride that visits historic mining country and a Chinese cemetery called Village in the Clouds. They have a special weekly run where the train gets robbed by costumed outlaws who kidnap everyone and take them to dinner in the forest. In the winter they have a Santa run.
We left on Sunday and drove Highway 49 south for many miles. We had no plans except to explore and find a room at sundown. We discovered Sierra Knolls Winery, isolated on a mountain top, powered by solar panels. We drove through Plymouth, Drytown, and Amador City. At sunset we arrived in Sutter Creek, the Jewel of the Mother Lode. We took a room at a quaint Bed and Breakfast owned by an 87-year-old woman and Iris, her deaf, black cat. Our bed hung from the ceiling on chains.
We ate late-night apple cobblers at the Ice Cream Emporium. We were the only customers. The animated proprietor, Stevens Price, wore a rumpled, red and white Seuss top hat and a tie. While we ate, he put a roll of “Ain’t She Sweet” into his player piano and sang us a song, dancing about with his broom. I joined in. Susan sat flushed and happy while we pointed to her during the motif. “Ain’t she nice.”

Know Winter Soldier
For Sunday, July 3, 2008

I’m upset with myself and more upset with the national news machine that I have never heard of the Winter Soldier Investigation until about two weeks ago, though it took place in 1971. I like to consider myself astute, a worthy researcher, a concerned citizen, yet this one slipped by me like the contents of a closed truck on the highway.

I was scouring Netflix looking for something interesting and found a documentary on Vietnam that grabbed my fleeting attention, until I read the summary, then it had my full attention:

“Banned by network television when released, this daring 1972 documentary examines reports of atrocities committed by U.S. soldiers during the Vietnam War.”

Anything that’s been banned by the networks peaks my curiosity because that’s often where the good stuff lies. I ordered it, expecting it to be just one more interesting documentary for a random Tuesday. What I saw left me slack-jawed, dazed, agitated, angry, fascinated, angrier, and hungry for more. I watched not just the film, but all the bonus footage, then ran to the Internet to further my research. I’ve been at it for four days, reading, following links, watching support videos, and downloading free documentaries on the subject. I learned Winter Soldier was not covered outside of Detroit, except by Pacifica Radio (papa to KPFA).

I couldn’t help wondering as I dug and gasped, “Am I alone in my lack of knowing of the Winter Soldier? Our soldiers must know of it. It is so immensely important today considering all the talk of torture, prisoner abuse, and injury to non-combatants. It strikes at the central nerve of current affairs.

I won’t go too deeply in describing the content specifics because it is disturbing and this is a family publication, but I will walk you through the front door into the lobby so that you can hear snippets of the soundtrack and peek through the cracks in the door at the film itself.

In Detroit, January 1 – February 2, 1971, 109 Vietnam veterans and 16 civilian contractors and support personnel gathered in an auditorium and gave public testimony of first-hand, personally witnessed, sometimes personally committed, accounts of atrocities in Vietnam. The event rose from American veterans’ widespread concern over the court martial trails of William Calley and others involved in the My Lai Massacre. There purpose was to show that My Lai was not an isolated incident, but the result of policy. It was about soldiers protecting soldiers back home in the aftermath.

Before testifying, each panelist when through elaborate scrutiny by organizers, Detroit journalists, and Pentagon officials of their military records, discharge papers, units and locations of service. They testified by units so as to corroborate each others’ stories.

Here is what was said by Scott Camil, one of the veterans who became so involved in the anti-war movement after his disillusionment that a separate movie was made of his life. It is on the DVD as a bonus. He said at his first encounter with the enemy he was guarding an US encampment with other men, a few guarding each corner. By orders, their grenades were taped shut and their rifles were empty. They needed permission to fire from the officer in charge, who spent nights walking between guard posts making sure no one was asleep. The enemy attacked quietly and first killed the roving officer. When the full assault came, guards cried out in vain, “Permission to fire! Permission to fire!” which went unanswered. Three guard posts were overrun and unarmed men were killed. Scott loaded and fired without permission and in the end five Americans were dead and 40 Vietnamese combatants. He said, and I’m paraphrasing, “After that, I realized how easily I could die and decided I would shoot anything that moved to protect myself. If I entered a village and had to kill 100 people so that I wouldn’t get shot leaving, I would do it.” That was a common mindset of these men at war.

The number of kills was a big concern for everyone, and a source of competition and reward. One common way to prove kills was to collect ears. “Ears for beers,” was the phrase used.


In March 2008 Winter Soldier returned. More than 200 veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan convened in Washington to hold the second round of Winter Soldier hearings. Again publicity surrounding the event has been minimal. Those interested can visit ivaw.org to learn more. About 100 theater-quality videos of individual testimonies are available for download. Most are a gigabyte or larger. It takes sincere dedication to collect them. I’m doing that. If you’re curious for an easier introduction to these events, visit Youtube and search for Winter Soldier. The stories told by Jon Turner are powerful and revealing.

How good, kind-hearted, average Americans can be turned into indiscriminant killing machines is a sad legacy for our land. We can only hope that education and enlightenment can quell the beast.

Summer deck blues
For Sunday, June 29, 2008

I’m not supposed to be here right now. Something is wrong with this picture. You should be reading some generic, timeless backup article from my miscellaneous archives. I should be sitting under a tree somewhere in the smoke-free forest next to a tent, my wife, and a barbecue pit. I should be camping upwind of the fires. Instead I’m here at home. This was to be my summer of camping.

Yes, I went to Yosemite for a week. That was reserved, booked, boxed, locked. It was good. I got that far. But that was supposed to be only the first pearl in my summer necklace of fun.

I’m trapped at home, rebuilding my deck, still. Alas. Instead of exploring the California back roads and meeting interesting people with curiously troubled lives, I’m home with driller’s thumb, nursing a splinter wound. You don’t get to read about Dogwood Charlie or Loudmouthed Lucy of the Lowlands or whomever else I happen to meet and chronicle. You get to read about digging holes in clay and mixing concrete. Craps, everybody loses.

Let me address the flipside. I do not want to put down my new deck. Don’t want to disparage the hard work and responsible behavior associated with repairing a 30-year-old deck that could have collapsed at any number of our house parties, sending our dear guests crashing down through pointed shards of shattered wood and rusty nails onto our sloped hillside far below. Don’t want to begrudge the time spent saving lives and lawsuits by extracting the spongy joists and flaking floor boards.

When I moan that I would rather be swinging in a hammock next to a waterfall with a Pousse Café in one hand and a Steinbeck sleeper in the other, instead of fixing an age-old problem that could maim and irritate friends and family, it seems selfish, childish, spoiled. I should be glad I’m not out enjoying myself. I’m doing the right thing. My conscience is clear. I can sleep at night, mostly because I’m exhausted and sore.

If I had put off this deck repair and gone camping anyhow, I’d be miserable. I wouldn’t be able to relax. I’d be fidgeting with the fire. Pacing. Kicking pine needles. I’d be rolling in my sleeping bag, punching at lumps in the ground.

I should be happy I’m not off resting somewhere. Old wood is gone. Holes are dug. Concrete is poured. New 4x8” beams are leveled and close. On top sit new 4x6” joists. On top of them sit new redwood planks stained a pleasant off-orange color. I am four boards short of a floor. That will come tomorrow. And it’s solid. I could throw a dance party. I could store elephants. I could drop a pallet of fruit cakes from a helicopter.


When I limp up the hall to bed at night, reeking of wood preservative, wincing from back strain, grimacing as I squeeze the door knob between my blisters, I must think how appropriate it is that I’m not in a sauna sipping jasmine tea while having my feet rubbed and my ears massaged with warm apricot oil.

Wants and needs at odds again.

How about these fires? Man. I can’t see the neighbor’s refinery, only ours. The state is on fire, in a state of drought, in a state of debt, in a country in chaos, in a world filled with nightmares, war and doom. What do I have to complain about?

I will be free one day for a week. If I work quickly, I’ll be able to rest slowly. I’ll be like one of those cars that fly past me on the street that I catch up to at the next red light. Perhaps Susan and I will drive up to the fires. It won’t be a relaxing get-away, but I’m curious about the damage. I’m drawn to disasters. I hope it’s the journalist in me. I’d rather see a supermarket flattened by a tornado than a Broadway play.

Also on the bright side, I’m losing weight. In May my doctor instructed me to drop 20 pounds by August or go on blood pressure medication. Every day since the beginning of June I’ve labored in the hot sun from dawn to dusk, carrying heavy equipment, swinging heavy tools, nibbling fruits, vegetables, and bun-less burgers, gulping ice water. Day in. Day out. Relentless. I just hopped on the scale. I’m down six pounds.

Six pounds! That’s so depressing I want to bite a skunk. What does it take to lose weight, for cripes sake? Either I suck at this, or it’s just a lot harder than I imagined. I thought I could will the pounds away. That’s not working. Gino suggested I get salmonella once a week. “Just lick some mayonnaise off the sidewalk,” he suggested. “I guarantee it will work.”

Housekeeping in Yosemite
Sunday, June 22, 2008

We just spent a week in Yosemite Valley. I don’t work for the place, but I have no hesitation in promoting it as the ideal family get-away.

Six of us, wife, kids, grandkids, took up residence in the Housekeeping Units along the Merced River in the center of the valley. From our front yard around the fire pit, in our reclining chairs, we could see Yosemite Falls to our left and Half Dome to our right. Not a bad way to wake up in the morning and sip coffee.

On our first day we saw a bear. He was 30 feet from the trail tearing grubs out of a fallen tree. I got some great pictures (picasaweb.google.com/gibbs54). It wasn’t long before a crowd of people gathered, many from foreign lands, thrilled beyond belief at this big, wild animal so close to us, and unaffected by our presence. One Japanese woman next to me gasped and clutched her chest, mouth agape, suspended in awe. I could tell this would be the highlight of her vacation.

We returned to camp to find deer in the field next to us, chomping leaves. They strolled by, oblivious, and took a long drink from the river. Got pictures of them, too.


Visitors have many options for lodging at Yosemite. You can stay first class in the Ahwahnee (approx. $492 per night), park your RV, or sleep in a tent ($15) at a walk-in campground. Regardless, getting a reservation is a major challenge. You have to be early, aggressive, and persistent.

Campground reservations (recreation.gov) fill up fast. You can book up to 5 months in advance, beginning at 7 a.m., on that date, but often just a few minutes after 7 a.m., they are sold out. It’s like trying to get front-row seats for a Beatles reunion. Lodging (hotels, Curry Village tents, Housekeeping Units – managed privately by Delaware North Companies) can be booked a year and a day in advance (yosemitepark.com) and fill a wee bit slower because they cost more.

I highly recommend the Housekeeping Units. For $74 a night they are like a hybrid lodging-camping facility. You get a room with three hard walls, roof, two bunks and a double bed, canvas door, roofed porch with electricity, water, community flush toilets, hot water, showers, and a pool pass for Curry. They are centrally located walking distance between Yosemite and Curry village. They are also the only lodging facility that allows visitors to cook.

About making reservations, if what I’m writing inspires you to add a Housekeeping Unit to your future vacation destinations -- according to camp employees at the desk, you should call (801-559-5000) rather than make reservations on the Internet. Delaware North has a great site, but you can’t pick your exact location in the 266-unit Housekeeping Village. Over the phone, you at least have a fighting chance of specifying your location.

What you do is call and take whatever they’ve got, even if it’s only one night. Then you keep calling back every few days checking on cancellations. Many cancel because there’s no charge until a week before check-in. We were able to add extra days and move closer to the river by calling, calling, calling.

Units are in two groups – near the river and not near the river. You want near the river. The Village is clustered in groups A through J, with each having its own bathroom, trash, and recycle. A, K, and J are river-side. Regardless of where you first reserve, keep asking for A, K, or J.


As we strolled through the camp making friends we saw that many sites were decorated with lights, streamers, and sometimes signs and banners. I said, “I bet sites with rope lights are return customers. That is a learned amenity.” We tested my theory by visiting lighted sights and asking, “How long you been coming here?”

“Been coming four years.” “Been coming 12 years.” And one couple, “Been coming for 30 years, every summer.” Their technique – reserve for the next year right at the front desk before leaving. Inspired, we did the same and booked four units for June 2009. Now, we just need to find friends to fill three of them.

This is my third stay at Housekeeping in 30 years. Nothing to brag about, but I did bring blue rope lights. This year, we learned a future lesson. Don’t bring a giant cooler. It won’t fit in the bear box. Bring several small coolers.

Each day, we took a hike. Having a three-year-old with us, none of our hikes were too long or strenuous, but every step was an adventure of “Ohh, Ahh,” and “Can we climb that rock?”


Each day, we clustered our chairs in the shade on the beach and did nothing for hours at a time. We talked of nothing. We watched the children play. The roar of the falls sided with my good ear. Those hours are my fondest memory.


We hiked the famous Mist Trail up as far as getting drenched by Vernal Falls icy spray. The boys giggled and squirmed and climbed for all they were worth (Got pictures). We didn’t make the top; maybe next year…

My mother and the Big Red Miracle
Sunday, June 15, 2008

This story is about my mother, Beulah “Boots” Riley Cannon Gibbs Yale. She just turned 84 on May 30 this year. She’s had a rough life, not a lot of marital love or fortune in it. Yet, she has persevered.

Through her good times and bad, one thing has plagued her for 20 – 30 years: she’s been sick. It was a free-floating nausea and stomach pain. She has never been able to eat a full, robust meal without tossing it back up before the night was out. She was frequently doubled over or weak and listless.

Back when I was a sprout, before this began, she had ulcers something terrible. She finally had a piece of her stomach removed because of scar tissue. She became sick after that surgery and stayed sick. She always attributed her illness to her modified stomach. “They cut some nerves that aided in my digestion,” she said.

She has been to doctors from time to time. They always told her the same thing. “Acid reflux.” Stomach’s too small to hold the food. And so on. Boots finally adjusted to a life of pain and nausea. It partially defined her. “Mom’s feeling sick tonight. Too much butter in the potatoes.”

This year, a miracle occurred. My little rural Pennsylvania village got a new surgeon. “She’s a young gal with red hair,” my mother said. My mother was being seen for chest pains. There was concern she might need surgery to fix an aortic aneurysm.

The new red-haired doctor determined my mother did not need surgery yet. During the conversation, Boots mentioned her chronic illness. She explained her symptoms for five minutes and the Big Red Miracle Worker said, “It sounds like gall bladder.”

My mother said, “No doctor has ever said that to me before.”

Big Red said, “You’re kidding. For 30 years no doctor has diagnosed your gall bladder?”

“You’re the first,” said Boots.

Within days my mother was scheduled for gall bladder removal.

She made it through the surgery OK, just before her birthday. The doctors planned a small incision originally, but they said her gall bladder was dissolved and pasted to her other organs. They had to cut her wide open and scrape it out.


She called me at school two weeks ago, which she never does, and she was crying, which she seldom does.

“What’s wrong, mom? Why are you crying?”

“Oh, Steven, Steven. I had to call you. I just feel so good. I’m not nauseous and I’m hungry as a horse.” She was barely able to speak. She said, “I had biscuits and gravy this morning, and I didn’t it throw up. I can’t remember the last time I was able to hold down biscuits and gravy.” My mother is an Oklahoma girl.

She couldn’t continue the conversation. She was too shook up. She promised to email me. I’ll close the story with an excerpt of my mother’s wonderful, rambling email, what I can fit.

In my mother’s words:

“My Dearest Steve,

“Guess you can tell I am better. I want to get out and look at the world and yell, THANK YOU GOD!! Steve. I have had so many years of embarrassment of being sick to stomach. And even Poor Whitey, we would have to stop along the road for me to throw up. Steve, I have not been nauseated ONCE, not even from the anesthetic. since that monster has been taken out of my belly. I CRY, I Thank God, over and over when I awake, when I go to bed. when I am out in the yard. I had forgotten what it felt like to be -- what do I say? Well? what? This is all a new life for me. It’s like starting over. LIVE LIVE. I know I won’t keep some of my promises to me that I am making. But I will try. I hope I don’t get grouchy --with old age, I hope I don’t criticize
Steve it’s so great to have a new lease on life.

“Sorry--(no I am not--) for such a long letter. But I just feel I want to --yes cry a bit-- and just tell everyone. I don’t have to wait now till I am ashes for everyone to know I was sick. I am not sick any more. Weak maybe. and a few lbs lighter, Tell Sue (this is to her to) I love her so much and she was so patent with me when I was so selfish and thinking of myself all the time. . No one else felt the pain but I did. I love her very much. I have my family love and more love, I am alive. I love to top off the dessert with all the love from my family and friends.. I can eat ice cream now. I can drink milk. Gotta go rest a while. Love ya. MOM”
She can be reached at beaulah@alltel.net

Ode to Summer with decking
Sunday, June 8, 2008

It’s here. Summer vacation. Started late Friday afternoon, the last day of school. A whole day of it has already come and gone. Oh, no. Panic.

Ah, summer. I enjoy tidying up my classroom on the last day of school because it’s so easy. Everything goes in the trash. Every paper on my desk has expired. No more sorting for announcements of future events. Abandoned student papers become, quoth the raven, “nevermore.” If my garbage can were wider, I could clean my desk with one firm sweep of my right arm.

Ah, summer, you wily rascal, full of potential adventures and new found friendships, campgrounds and vistas, swim suits and sandals, open highways and back country roads, sleepy villages and vegetable festivals. Oh, how you beckon.

First, I’ll be tearing out my backyard deck. The orange one. Not because it’s orange, though that thought crossed my mind. It’s because it’s structurally defective. We’ve been living with it for 30 years. It was built by the previous guy using guesswork. Joists are too far apart. The nails bounce loose. Planks are too far apart. Moisture collects between the planks and the joists, which are not pressure treated. The joists have rotten spots in key locations – anywhere.

I’ve been sanding it, staining it, reinforcing it, replacing a plank from time to time, putting lipstick on the pig, but I have never resorted to tearing the whole thing out and starting over. That would be a radical move. It’s a long deck.

Last week Gino offered to help me put a quick shade roof over part of it. I wanted a place out of the sun and rain where I could relax, read, and sip my lemonade. I wanted to buy patio chairs with cushions for the first time, and sit in them. “It will only take a few days,” he assured me. “We can have it up before school is out.”

Gino instructed me to pull up six planks so we could dig footings. That’s when he got his first look ever at the underbelly of our beloved deck.

“Oh, my God,” he said. “This is a mess. It can’t be salvaged. You can’t build a roof over a rotten, poorly made deck. It wouldn’t be worth it. It’s all got to come out.”

That was that. I got my marching orders. I came home each evening last week and pried up a few more of the 46 remaining boards. Whenever we work together, I’m always on demolition duty. I tear down the old, and he builds up the new. I have about 10 planks to go before Gino plugs in. I’d be out in my backyard right now if I didn’t have typing to do.

Ah, summer. You have not warmed up to me yet. Literally. I hope to work swiftly at this orange Magoo and be free to roam before the cool breezes from the melting polar ice caps die down and I may once again swim without horripilation.

Ah, summer. In the dog days, Barack shall battle McCain in the heavyweight championship of the free world. As Barack wins more and more rounds, speculators will sell their war stocks and buy peace stocks. Trillions will be lost by the military industrial complex. Powerful enemies will be made. Trillions will be gained by innovative, environmentally friendly companies and employed American workers. They will grow stronger. America will be respected in the world once again. New friends and well threaded coalitions will form. We will enter a new age of peace and prosperity. Then it will all come crashing down again when the dream dies.

Ah, summer. I yearn to wear shirts I do not have to iron. I long for short pants with extra pockets for sun block and flashlights. I yearn for slip-on shoes that I can get wet. I’m eager to retire my socks for the season. I long to don hats with floppy, wrap-around visors and chin straps. I want to put dry pants over a wet swimsuit and chafe. I welcome my increased need for ice. I always feel good when I’m at the store buying ice. It usually means someone is having a party.

Ah, summer. You bring tomatoes, zucchini and snap beans in your bountiful bosom. Backyard gardens all around California will be bursting with home-grown sustenance. We will be able to augment our dinner tables with our own fruits and vegetables. We will swing toward greater self-sufficiency in this difficult economy.

We need only buy the planting soil, seeds and sprouts, fertilizer, water, garden hoses, nozzles, timers, drip hose, insect deterrents, stakes, netting, fencing, bed boards, screws, stakes, shovels, hoes, rototillers, and marigolds.

Ah, summer. You hold potential for rest and vigor, calm and commotion, peace and quiet, hoots and gaiety. I hope to crawl deep into the folds and recesses of your novelty and lose myself for a spell in your embrace.

A stampede of need
Sunday, June 1, 2008


The economy is tanking? Consumer spending is down? Tell that to the shoppers at the Vacaville outlet stores. Tell it to me, who just paid $311 for a pair of shoes.

What I saw last Sunday, followed by what I did, still amazes me.

I needed shoes. It’s a necessity item. Not a shopping spree. I wanted some run-abouts. My old pair is ripped, torn, scuffed, limp, frazzled, and smelly. Susan and I were driving back from Sacramento and decided to stop for Rockport ProWalkers at the outlet stores because I have weird feet. It seems only Rockports fit me well.

We took the Nut Tree Exit and pulled into the massively huge parking lot ringed in shops. We immediately encountered gridlock, bumper-to-bumper traffic. “What’s this?”

Cars were stopped to allow throngs of bag-toting pedestrians to traverse crosswalks on their way to their next shop stops. The mall was bulging. People and cars everywhere.

We couldn’t find a single empty parking space. We threaded our way slowly, like a shoe lace being put on without gloves at 20 below zero, across the whole parking acre, clear to the back. Nothing. Worse, in each aisle sat two or three cars, idling, in gear, drivers at the wheels, waiting for someone to pull out.

“Can this be? How can this be?” we chanted. Why are so many on a shopping frenzy? What happened to the recessed economy, the collapsed consumer, the foreclosed and the forlorn?

Could it be that all these people were spending their tax refunds?

Mobius logic, Batman. That behavior runs counter to the stream of spring surveys and interviews with Average Joes and Natural Janes around the country. Those surveys concluded that most Americans intended to use their tax rebates to pay bills. Climb out of debt. Pay down Comcast, ATT and Visa. They were going to pay dentists and gym fees. Buy gas.

Could all these nationwide surveys be wrong? Were those survey participants white lying out of a sense of pride and responsibility, concealing their latent impulsivity? Could it be that Americans’ will to shop is so strong that many succumbed to temptation?

Most Americans have already gone without shopping for a long time. A lengthy list of necessary items has backlogged -- shoes, cologne, jelly beans. It could be that this phenomenon was a stampede of need.

Anyhow, we left without shoes. What to do?

Somewhere over the weekend with our kids, during a shoe and foot conversation, after thirty years of describing my sorry feet, my daughter Kristi asked me.

“Pops. Have you ever gone to the Good Feet store?”

“Never heard of the place” ended that line of questioning.

However, leaving the sold-out mall on Sunday, Susan said, “Well, let’s try a Good Feet store. There’s one near Costco at the Cordelia Exit.”

We did. Got there 4 minutes before closing. Funny little shoe store. They only had about a dozen pair, off in the corner. “Hi, I’m Terry. Welcome to Good Feet.”

“Where’s all your shoes, Terry? I need me some Rockports.”

“Sorry. We don’t carry Rockports. We’re in the shoe insert business. Arch supports.”

“Ahhhhhhh. I seeeeeee. Arch supports. I didn’t know. Hmm. Not a bad idea. Worth investigating.”

Back in college, DuBois, Pennsylvania, Gino and I were walking atop a row of abandoned railroad boxcars, planning action for a film. I suggested a dramatic leap down to a flatbed car to please the audience. My actors called me crazy, so I jumped to prove them wrong and collapsed the arch my right foot in an extremely hard landing.

“Let me see those inserts, Terry.”

“I am going to start you at the far end,” he said after taking my footprints and measurements. “I’ll set you up with maximum arch support first.”

He put beige lifts in a nice pair of black sneakers. I laced them on and walked across the floor. “Holy Toledo Ohio. That hurts so good. I feel like I’m walking on golf balls.” I sat back down. “Terry, my friend. These are great. I think I want them. How much?”

“The shoes are $100 and the lifts are $299.”

Boing. “Say what?” I asked. He smiled wanly and nodded. “Geez, oh, man, Terry. That’s steep. What else you got?”

He showed me a less radical pair, the Midflex Maintainers -- wafer thin, springy, transferable to all my shoes, “$190.”

They felt spectacular. “Terry, how can this little patented piece of hoodoo plastic cost so much?” He smiled wanly and shrugged.

I bought them. Wore them home. Used them to walk down to the Goodwill Store near the taco truck the other day and buy myself a taco and a $3.99 Abercrombie & Fitch pinpoint oxford cotton dress shirt to celebrate my new happy feet.

We haven’t got our checks yet.

Bay to Breakers, a California kaleidoscope
For Sunday, May 25, 2008



Went to the San Francisco Bay to Breakers Race again this year. This is my sixth tour of duty. I’ve never run, except to get a photo of a costumed reveler before he or she disappeared.

This year was a survivalist year. Our group has always numbered six to eight people. Schedule conflicts, age, exhaustion, and injuries left the responsibility of chronicling the 2008 event to Gino and me alone.

As we strolled amidst the crowd of 60,000 people, 33,000 of them ING registered to actually race, we could not for the life of us understand how our friends could possibly skip this most momentous celebration of life, liberty, and licentiousness. How often does one get to share the streets in a seven-mile stroll with happy, laughing, friendly gorillas, gladiators, salmon, men in hula skirts, Little Bo Peeps of every gender, a 100 Elvis impersonators, Smurfs, genies, Tele-Tubbies, tubbys, robots, zombies, men in dresses, women in undresses, and every other costume devisable by the human mind?

Bay to Breakers is a combination foot race, Mardi Gras, Rio Carnival, Burning Man, Kinetic Contraption conglomeration. For Gino and me it’s a party we wait impatiently for all year long. We were not fazed by our peers’ cancellations. For us it just meant it was harder to get lost from each other. I brought extra camera batteries and for the first time a movie camera so I could capture the spectacles for our missing spectators.

We began the Sunday race, as usual, early Saturday morning. I rode over on the ferry and Gino took a cab from his girlfriend’s house on Laguna to meet me. Saturday is our day to stroll aimlessly about the city, sort of get in shape, mostly explore, and ultimately settle on a place to banquet.

Last year we rode Bart to 16th and Mission and explored the shops and sites on the south side. This year we zigzagged up to Union Square. There was a restaurant I very much wanted us to eat at on Taylor called Fish and Farm.

Three months ago I expanded my Comcast to include HD and On Demand. I immediately fell in love with the On Demand option called Bay On Demand. It does 3-4 minute infomercials of Bay Area restaurants and night clubs and changes them every couple of weeks. Ever on the prowl for a new experience, I pour through the Bay On Demand options frequently, notepad and pencil in hand.

I found Fish and Farm two months ago and pinned the address to my den wall. It is totally organic, right down to the décor. Doors come from old farm houses and such. They serve beef, pork, fish, and fowl with their vegetables. Even the bar serves organic tequilas, beers, wines, and liquors.

Our 2008 annual banquet was all I’d hoped for. We had one of the greatest meals of our adult lives. We racked up a $125 tab, but we sampled most everything on the menu – octopus, prime rib, sardines, duck liver, short ribs, chilled potato-leek soup, steamed fava leaves, salt-brine fries, and onward. We departed two hours later, stuffed, and climbed the knob to the top of the city. Our crawl ended in North Beach shooting pool at Gino and Carlo’s.

Early Sunday morning we suffered briefly finding a cab to the start line. Union Street was lined with costumed revelers all looking for rides to the same place.

The race itself doesn’t fit well into words. It’s a multi-sensory experience the defies capture in mere prose. At the Chieftan Irish Pub, three blocks from the start line, it was standing room only as runners in jogging gear, wearing numbers and foot timers, stopped for Bloody Marys. This would definitely bite into their finish-line times.

At Hayes Hill, the uphill section, the tempo definitely rises with the patrons. Residents mount industrial-size speakers on their porches and pump Sweet Home Alabama and other irresistible dance music over the crowd. Like marching bands pausing to perform before judges’ booths, the procession pauses for a spontaneous street dance before proceeding a few hundred feet and doing it again. This goes on all the way to Golden Gate Park. Fell Street was all Cab Calloway and the Beatles.

The floats are like no others. Some brought bouncing rooms on wheels with battery blowers and invited pretty girls to step inside and set themselves free, which they did. We saw tiki huts, pagodas, cardboard Bart trains, and portable dance floors. One group pushed an over-sized beer pong table seven miles, never once playing pong.

Gino and I are low key. We wear Hawaiian shirts and colorful hats. We have no desire to push anything heavy, amaze others with our brazenness, or break any land speed records. We go just to watch, take pictures, and walk amongst the human kaleidoscope of free spirits.

Frenzy and friends
Sunday, May 18, 2008


Frenzy. That describes this week. What frenzy there was to it. Lots of frenzy. Wait. How can such a beautiful, sunny week be labeled with such a word? Perhaps frenzy is not always a negative term. Hmm. Let me look it up. “Violent agitation of the mind. Madness and rage.” OK, not frenzy. Fine. But it felt like frenzy.

Frenetic. Maybe that word works. Let me check. “Transported with rage and violent emotion.” That’s not it. Ah, nuts.

Really busy. That works. The phrase lacks flair. It’s wordy. It’s got that annoying, parasitic adverb attached to it. But it works.

I think I’m not alone. It seems like really busy is going around. Everyone I talk to has it. It’s like a disease. It’s the anti-disease, actually. A real disease gives one some bed rest. “Take it easy. You have a disease. Stay in bed. I’ll bring you some soup.”

No one brings you soup when you’re really busy. You have to get your own darn soup. And you don’t get any, either, because you’re too busy to heat it and eat it.

I have this class of adults over at Chapman. They are all suffering from being really busy. They are student teachers learning technology. One assignment is to create and maintain a weekly Internet blog. That’s nine entries times 21 people. I read them and comment each week. There is one prevailing, overriding theme. Everyone is really busy.

I hear every permutation. Someone is holding down three jobs, student teaching, taking classes, caring for a family, prepping for exams, dealing with health issues, rocky relationships, puppies being born, moving to new communities, moving to cheaper apartments, and on and on. I feel guilty giving them big assignments. Will it be the straw? Two students dropped the first two weeks because they couldn’t handle the work load on top of the rest of their lives. Another dropped today, five days before the end of the course. Too much on the plate.

We do all this busy work and we have less money, more bills, higher expenses, greater responsibilities, and less fun. No wonder people don’t take the time to get more involved in social issues, like war protesting and such. We’re all too busy just staying afloat. We don’t have the luxury to rail against injustice. Perhaps this all intentional. “Distract them with exhaustion while we rob them blind.”

I’m a fan of extremes. If it’s going to rain, let it storm. If it’s going to be hot, break a record. If I’m going to be busy, being moderately busy is boring. It’s so baroque. If I’m going to be busy, make it really busy. Then it becomes absurd, hilarious, giddy. I want to be so busy I don’t have time to think. I want to run amok, here and there, pockets full of notes, shirt partially tucked, phone beeping, people calling my name as I rush by.

My home answering machine is blinking full. Actually, it’s beeping. I let it beep. My computer power supply is beeping too. Let it. We’re out of cat food. My cats are meowing at me. Brooks, the old one, keeps clawing me. The other cat, KC, is faking nice. They follow me from room to room. “Meow. You’re letting us die. Meow. Ow. My empty cat gut.”

“Send back these Netflix, honey. We watched them last month.”

My unread emails go back five pages. They are full of questions and favor requests. My unopened mail is spilling off my desk. Student projects are pouring in, or not pouring in and I’m calling parents. I have tests to write. I took a last-minute field trip to San Francisco on Tuesday. I will take another one to Sacramento tomorrow, Friday.

Currently, I’m in my classroom with my student journalists rushing to meet an 8:30 p.m. Thursday deadline. Typos are cropping up like toadstools. Lines are crooked like earthquake rails. Ads are missing like missing ads. It’s hot. It’s really hot and we’re really busy. I like it.

Summer is just ahead, like the Mona Lisa behind bullet-proof glass, like oxygen just above the ice, like the Free Game slot under the pinball glass. I can’t get to it without a tilt, but I know it’s there.

Speaking of, for anyone who might be interested. Friday is Pin-a-Go-Go Festival in Dixon. Pinball aficionados from all over the land bring their classic pinball machines to the fairgrounds and set them all to Free Play.

On Friday I will drive to Sacramento, attend an Adobe InDesign Training Seminar, drive home, pick up my son, drive back to Dixon, play pinball until 10 p.m. and drive home. Saturday morning, I have a date with the DMV, then off to Bay to Breakers.

It’s frenzy. No doubt. But it’s a happy, kinder, gentler frenzy.

For Sunday, May 11, 2008 Drummer Column, Gibbs, 826 words



Mi patio es su patio


Our fourth annual Cinco de Mayo Mexican Luau Celebration began promptly at 2ish to 5ish Saturday, May 3, in my backyard.

No disrespect meant with the multi-cultural addition of the Hawaiian themes to the revered Cinco de Mayo Holiday, a celebration of Hispanic and Latino heritage, not to be confused with Mexico’s Independence Day, which is September 16.

On Tres de Mayo friends gather together in my backyard to celebrate mid-spring in all four cardinal directions. We celebrate ourselves, our beloved brethren in Mexico, from Mexico, and all things south and north of the border.

The western luau theme came from shopping at Party America in Vallejo four years ago. They didn’t have enough Mexican decorations, so we turned right, down the Hawaiian Luau aisle, and finished stocking our cart with grass skirts and leis. Gino and I are from the east.

We bought all of our fish and vegetables at Seafood City in Vallejo, an enormous, bustling Filipino-owned extravaganza mega grocery store of whole and filleted water-borne food sources and exotic fruits and vegetables. Gino cooked it all Italian style on a 4x6-foot marble tabletop sitting on two saw horses in the back lawn.

I made my usual experimental chili from a new unwritten recipe each year, and my standard experimental barbecued chicken for the first time.

We had two chimeneas stoked with eucalyptus wood, a tent, a keg, rope lights, outdoor speakers creating alpha waves with the Gypsy Kings, and eleventeen chairs strewn about my three-level redwood orange deck.

“Steve, it’s not that orange,” said most of my guests.

“Ah, but you didn’t see it before,” I tried to explain. “In comparison, it is.”

We had about 50 guests. People arrived between 2 and 5 p.m. and stayed from 6 to midnight. People brought their best dishes and spread them out. We ate and ate and ate and milled and swilled and talked. I manned the barbecue on level three. Gino and Debra hosted their seafood kitchen on level one. Our shifts included several frequent intermissions. I wore a funny straw hat.

The lovely Rosemary Pinkstaff, mother of Roger, a veteran high school backpacker from the Golden 1990s, who was also in attendance with his wife and two children, Mae and Hunter, stitched me an apron that reads Mexican Luau BBQ. I wore that, too.

The party ended with five guys sitting around the campfire in the dark talking about politics and the price of corn.

Corn, by the way. Where is the darn corn? We had a shopper’s panic. It was like trying to buy the most popular toy on Christmas Eve. It was like trying to buy 26 pounds of rice.
Corn news grows worse

Every year for three years I’ve bought a couple dozen ears of sweet corn and steamed them. They were our after-dinner treats. This year corn was 69- and 79-cents an ear. What’s with that? Ethanol to blame? Not an ear was to be had at the Farmer’s Market. We opted for four boxes of mango popsicles.

Who gets invited to this party? Hm. Everyone I meet. Actually, it helps if I have your email. The invitation is a homemade multimedia Internet thing, which has an origin of its own that is tied to the root boot of this event.

Back in year one, two needs and a yearning converged to create our first Mexican Luau. I needed to learn Adobe Flash, a program for making website animations, and Gino, new to California, needed work. He’d just remodeled our bathroom and patio stair, so we decided to throw a party showcasing his talents to friends; I created the Flash invitation with zany pictures and whacky sound effects. We both had a yearning to party.

It came to pass.

Each year since then Gino has fixed something new at my house, and of course he cooks like Emeril. Each year I’ve created a new Flash animation, always trying to top the previous one and apply new features. Each year we’ve returned to Party America for more decorations.

I began my fascination with rope lights, stringing them along my fences and deck contours. The strands have grown considerably since then. I made a personal pact. Every time I visit Home Depot for anything, I buy one new strand of colored rope lights. On my back fence currently is a glowing outline of the Sierra mountain range with Highway 49 crosscutting the foothills. I’m about to buy a dedicated solar panel.

For Gino and me this year’s party lasted three days. We built a practice fire Friday night and sat out on the patio until 1 a.m. deep-frying chicken in the propane cooker and eating every fourth piece. On Sunday after the clean up, we sat in the sun. In that context, the word sat was not a verb. It was not something that happened quickly and ended, as in “Edward sat in the catapult.” It was a constant state of being, an abstract noun.

For Sunday, May 4, 2008 Drummer Column, Gibbs, 821 words


Just fishing


Give a man a fish and he’ll eat for a day. Give a fisherman a fish and he’ll cut it up and make bait. Teach a man to fish, and he’ll eat for a lifetime. Starve a man and he’ll figure out how to fish on his own.

These and other circular semantics were shared around the campfire along the East Carson River south of Markleeville last Saturday night.

Gino and I went first-day fishing again with the boys. These boys range from tall teens to our senior member who is 90. For about 40 years these men have rendezvoused at the same primitive campsite made up of boulder-strewn fire rings, rocky roads, tall trees, and a one-pit bathroom shack.

This was an exceptionally cold weekend in the high country. The sun had difficulty beaming through the canopy of ponderosas and cedar to warm the campgrounds, and at dusk, which comes early in the Sierras because the sun sinks suddenly behind 8,000-foot high mountain ridges to the west, the alpine chill settles in like invisible fog.

Notice I said the words campfire and Saturday in the same sentence.

Funny thing happened on Friday night.

For the first time in anyone’s memory, the local sheriff paid a visit to the campground. If you can picture this arrangement, there are so many guys in this fishing party that they split off into about five groups, each with its own fire ring. The largest core group has a huge, deep fire pit, big enough to roast a hippo and have room for potatoes. As usual it was banked with huge piles of cut logs, diced up with chainsaws in advance, ready for their bonfire sacrifice.

Groups with younger members, like father-son teams, camp further away, away from the wild influences and bohemian behaviors that emerge at the core when the moon rises. Gino and I are in one of those fringe groups. We’re with the the semi-retired and the geezers.

Anyhow, the sheriff pulled up to the core camp. We watched from afar. Many gathered around the SUV. Heads were scratched. Shoulders were shrugged. Finally, one of the guys, who happen to have traveled all the way from the Florida Keys to be here, walked down to our site, just as the sun was vanishing.

“Hey, eh, any of you guys have a fire permit?”

“Fire permit? Why do we need a fire permit? This is a campground. There’s a toilet over there.”

“Don’t matter. The fire rings aren’t maintained by a park service.”

Don, our graybeard patriarch life-long veteran, knew this. He came on Wednesday. “I tried twice to get a fire permit,” he said. “I stopped in Markleeville on Wednesday and drove back again on Thursday. The fire station was closed both times.”

“Well, guys, no fires tonight. Sheriff’s orders.”

Brrrrr. That was bad news for our old bears. We sat around the Weber barbecue in the dark trying to draw some warmth from its glowing embers. Our poor 90-year-old friend sat bundled up like Kenny from South Park. Finally we all turned in early, eager to slip into our sleeping bags.

The next day, all that misery was forgotten. The trout were biting. Gino and I drove down the road a few miles, took our folding chairs and tackle down the bank, found a flat spot, cast our lines into a deep pool, and took naps. Now, that’s fishing.

I slept with my pole jammed in some rocks and the line wrapped around my index finger. From some rapturous dream I felt a tug. I awoke to find a nice foot-long rainbow bending my pole. I reeled him in, measured him, and set him free. Gino caught one and released, lost two.

At 1 p.m. we drove back to camp for another tradition: Joe Capone’s cold cut sandwiches. Each year he stops at Corti Brothers in Sacramento and buys pounds of various salami and Italian meats and big bread.

We shared fishing stories. Some had their limits of five. Some had fewer. Some had none. After lunch, we headed back to the river. This time Gino and I walked from camp through the woods and down a steep bank. It was a smart move. We got a lot of nibbles and bites. Our bait kept getting stolen. And we each caught another big trout, biggest of the day.

We let them go.

That’s about it. Nothing exceptional. Just relaxation, good company, and hungry trout.

One the way home, Gino and I engaged in another tradition. We detoured and explored the Sierras. This trip we left Highway 50 at Placerville and drove up to Mosquito, across the cable bridge. Then we drove 23 miles of dirt logging road and came out at Stumpy Meadows, above Georgetown. We stopped halfway, in the middle of absolutely nowhere, pulled out our chairs, and had a picnic in the road. Ate salami. Listened to the birds.