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.

For Sunday, April 27, 2008 Drummer Column, Gibbs, 837 words



Betting on uncertainty


My wife just took out a $100,000 life insurance policy on me. She did it against my better judgment. I don’t like insurance of any kind, though I’m insured to the eyeballs on property. I’m especially averse to life insurance because of the morbid nature of it. It’s a lose-lose proposition. If I outlive the policy, we lose money. If I die, I lose it all. She loses me. Only the creditors win. That’s the only joyful outcome. That whole line up gives me the puckers.

Why did she take out the policy? Of course, so she could pay off some bills if I go and prepare herself for a life of comfortable if sad solitude. But why now? Because I turned 54? That’s not a big, important number on the death charts. There is no spike in dying at age 54. Is it because she’s watched me eat poorly, gain weight, collect a string of health problems, and grow indifferent to my blood pressure, cholesterol, body mass index? If so, why didn’t she take out this policy when I was 30?

Personally, I think it’s because of something she read in the checkout line at Safeway or Raleys. She picked up a Ladies Home Journal or Money magazine that advised her to insure her spouse for her own well-being.

I think it’s because of something she heard on Oprah or in her monthly subscription to AARP magazine. Usually she leaves those out for me in our bathroom library rack, but lately a few recent installments have been missing.

I also think she is inspired by the hardships of those around her. She doesn’t mind that men my age are dropping like flies all around the planet Earth. However, if a friend’s husband goes to his dirt nap prematurely, she goes immediately on guard.

Whatever the inspiration, she became determined that I get myself insured against SHDS, Sudden Husband Death Syndrome, right away.

I remember when the traveling health inspector came to the house about a month ago. She advised me he was coming to take my fluids and measurements. She even forced a hearty oatmeal breakfast on me for one day out of 365 in the hopes of magically lowering my bad cholesterol by noon. She didn’t take into consideration the fine print that said I shouldn’t eat or drink for 12 hours before the test.

The man came while I was trimming my garden. I had just put an orange peel in my mouth to frighten my grandchild when he pulled up to the curb. I spit it out, and offered to take him into my living room, but he was happy to set up his blood tests on a cluttered workbench in my garage. We blew away the sawdust and I laid out a red rag from the bulk pack I had bought at Home Depot.

I confess, I did what I could to make myself appear a bad candidate. I told him I’d just finished a big bowl of oatmeal piled high in brown sugar, plus two coffees with cream. He didn’t seem to care. I told him of all the sick people in my family, mentally and physically, and all my aches and pains and irregularities. He didn’t seem to care. He took my blood and drove away.

This agency then began to send me letters for my signature so they could view my Kaiser records. I’d find them in the mail and secretly shred them. They’d send them again, and I’d shred them again. Finally, they sent them to my wife. She made me sign them and mail them back.

I passed their tests with flying colors and we got our first bill, which Susan paid with alacrity. The very thought of it almost brought on a coronary for me. Mailing money to some strange company to insure my life. Arg. I know that if I did keel over, they’d find some fine-print oversight in my application that would disqualify me.

The inspector asked me about my family’s health history. What do I know about them? My mother and two sisters don’t tell me their health problems and I don’t ask. I told the inspector my family is fine. After all, they are alive. If I keel, they’ll probably dig into my mother’s health records and find she has undisclosed high blood pressure, or my sister will have undisclosed kidney problems or something, and they will disqualify my insurance claim and my poor grieving wife will get nothing, and in the meantime they will get monthly checks from us.

I try and explain these concerns to my wife, but she just calls me paranoid, skeptical, cynical. I say, “Yes, that’s true. But those things won’t kill you. If anything, they’ll keep you alive longer.”

Still we pay for her peace of mind. Her peace of mind gives me peace of mind. Now I’m going to be calm and relaxed and screw it all up and live forever.

For Sunday, April 20, 2008 811 words



No rhyme or reason


This has been a bad week for me, full of fumbles, failures, and phlegm. I don’t even know where to begin. I guess I’ll start with my brand new blown-up $400 Toro lawnmower.

My wife and I drove to Sacramento to mow the lawn at our rental house. We need to hire a gardener now that I have installed a sprinkler system that makes the grass grow so I can cut it down. We haven’t seemed to yet find the time to scour Craig’s List and the Sac Bee for someone to trust with our gate keys. So, in the meantime, we do the mowing.

I was running the weed whacker while Sue was pushing the mower through the tall grass. Suddenly, the mower stopped. I checked the gas. It was full. I primed and pumped and pulled the rip chord again and again to no avail. Then I checked the oil dipstick, or should I say lack-of-oil dipstick. Or should I say I’m a dipstick. Doh!

We’d just performed a typical small-town American mistake. We didn’t check our fluid levels as instructed. Letting the mower cool, adding oil, nothing helped. I’m bitter. I’m going to go cling to my guns and my religion.

I contracted lung sludge from somewhere. I wrote last week about my trip to the doctor to check for strep. Good news – it’s not strep. It’s just 6 buckets of Crazy Glue clinging to the linings of my lungs, throat, and nostrils. It kept me home from work on Monday and has made every day since an endless snag in the space-time continuum, fraught with pounding head, nostril spigots, and useless coughing.

Worst of the worst: I accidentally painted my beautiful three-level redwood deck orange. Oh, it’s so ugly. I could hide pumpkins on it. Spilled apricots would look like burl. I can hardly stand to go into my backyard. And I worked so hard to make it beautiful for my upcoming annual Cinco de Mayo Hawaiian Backyard Luau.

I began the maintenance a week ago using a 1750 psi pressure washer. I scrubbed away the old stain down to the bare wood. Then I went shopping for new stain. My core mistake – I never buy the same stain twice.

I began this year with Behr semi-transparent California rustic for the railings. It looked good in the store, but applied it was a hard red and I didn’t like it. The natural wood grain got buried. However, I paid $40 to have two gallons blended and couldn’t return it, so I used it, swearing to use something else on the floor boards.

For the floor I first bought three gallons of Behr Natural Tone. It looked benign and was premixed and returnable. I sponged it onto one level. Yuk. It looked like nothing. It looked like the wood was wet. No luster. No enhanced grain. No glow at all. Too understated.

I returned it and spent a half-hour looking over the color samples. Behr Semi-Transparent Redwood looked less red that CA Rustic, and my deck is redwood after all, so ordered three gallons of no-return redwood deck stain for $65. Seems like a safe bet, right? I felt confident I’d love the look.

Oh, my stars and stripes. Oh, my guns and religion. The stuff is ORANGE! I kept sponging it on thinking, “What am I doing? This is terrible. I should stop! I should stop! But I paid for it. I can’t return it. I should stop. Maybe it just looks this way while it’s wet. Maybe it will tone down when it dries. Yeah. That’s it. It’s a temporary condition, like drinking too much carrot juice.” Wrong.
I have an orange deck, spanning three levels. It looks like a fake deck. Behr should have called the color California Poppy. It looks like a deck from a coloring book for color-blind children. It looks like candy corn. It looks like I found Nemo. It looks like a landing strip for monarch butterflies. It looks like I’m a Bengal’s fan. It looks like my 32 Irish Setters are shedding. It looks like I painted my deck with yams. It looks like OJ’s prison jumpsuit. It looks like a CalTrans Safety ad. It looks like Cheesy Poofs. It looks like cheddar. It looks like a Coppertone Tan. It looks like a loading dock for life jackets. It looks like three Reese Cup wrappers. It looks like I burgled the paint warehouse for the Golden Gate Bridge. It looks like a baboon’s behind.

My wife says, “I like it, honey. I think it looks fine.” Of course, in the back of her mind are my doctor’s recent words rattling about, warning me of my high blood pressure. If I kick now we’d go into foreclosure. And who in their right mind would buy a house with an orange deck?

For Sunday, April 13, 2008 774 words


Run, fat boy, run


Went to see my doctor today. Got scolded, soundly. I asked him to scold me. I need that. I explained that I am more motivated to be healthy when my doctor gives me orders.
I had a sore throat. Thought it might be strep. I babysat my 3-year-old grandson, Jack, last Saturday, and we shared an orange juice. Got a call two days ago from his father, Chad.
“Dude. If you get a sore throat in the next few days it’s probably strep. We all have it. Jack has lemons hanging in the back of his throat.”
Yesterday, I got a sore throat. This morning, Thursday, it was worse. I called the Advice Nurse at 5 a.m. – no waiting. She scheduled me for a same-day appointment with my old doctor buddy, Neil Watter. I just got home.
Neil took my temperature, blood pressure, and gave me a quick exam. He concluded that it was probably not strep, just a run-of-the-mill sore throat. He did a swab and sent it to the lab to be sure, but he had strong doubts.
I started to get up. He said, “Hold on. I want to talk to you about your blood pressure. It’s high and you don’t take any medication for it.”
“Eh, yeah, Doc, I know. I am doing my best to avoid the pills.”
“Well,” he said, squinting at his computer screen, “your best isn’t good enough. You have the same weight and blood pressure you had last year.”
“Eh, that’s good, right? I’m maintaining a plateau.”
He shook his head and gave me a big white-bearded smile. “You promised me you were going to drop 20 pounds and modify your diet.”
“You’re right, Neil. I confess. I blew it. I spent the last six months sitting at computers and dinner tables and theaters.”
“So, should I order up the pills?”
“No, Neil, please, give me one more chance. Didn’t you read my recent column. This summer is Camping Summer. I intend to do a lot of hiking and exercise.”
“Steve. I don’t read your column. I live in Napa.”
“OK. Well, I do intend to eat better and exercise more. Please don’t give me the pills. Instead, threaten me, Neil. Give me a deadline. Give me a goal. I do better when I’m under doctor’s orders.”
He swiveled his chair away from his computer to face me. He said, with his hands on his knees, “All right. I’ll give you one more chance. You have until August to drop 15 to 20 pounds. I also want to see a drop in your blood pressure. Otherwise, the pills!”
“Arg. Not the pills. I’ll do it. I promise. I’ll even alert the media. I’ll let the whole town know. Then if I fail I’ll be publically humiliated. That might push me.”
“Hmm. I’m also prescribing a diet.”
“Ah. Rats. I suck at diets.”
“Too bad. You’re doing it. It’s called the DASH diet. ‘Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension’. I’ll print it out. You can start today. It’s all about fruits and vegetables and whole grains.”
“Oh, geez. I eat that stuff now. It hasn’t helped. I guess I need to eat a whole lot more if I want to lose weight, huh?”
“Go ahead. Crack jokes.”
“All right, I’ll do it. Well, I’ve got to go. Bye, Neil.”
“Hold on. Not so fast. As long as I have you here. You’re past due for a colonoscopy, and a blood sample, and a physical, and a stool sample. And how is your diastasis recti? It’s been 10 years.”
“Arg. You mean my Pregnant Woman’s Disease? My busted gut? I confess. It hurts, Neil, ever since I pushed that wheelbarrow of wet cement up the hill in 1998. It hurts when I run, sit up, sweep, rake, hoe in the garden. Maybe that’s why I’m overweight?”
“Maybe. You know surgery is the only cure. We’d sew a Gortex patch over it. You’d be laid up for a few weeks.”
“Yes. I need to do that before I retire and my benefits crumble. But I wouldn’t want to do it with all this excess weight around my middle. I’d have to lose 15 to 20 pounds first. Hey, wait a minute. You’re thinking what I’m thinking. If I lose the weight, I could maybe have the surgery this fall.” He nodded. “Now, there is a motivation.”
“I’ll enter that request into your records,” he said. “It’s all dependent on you losing the weight and lowering the blood pressure. If you fail, you keep your pregnant woman’s disease another year, and you get the pills.”
“I shall not fail.”

For Sunday, April 6, 2008 820 words

The story of Gino

Gino’s gone. He moved out. He’s my old college roommate who has been living with us since the start of 2005. Yippee for him.
We’ve been friends since Penn State 1974. We parted ways at graduation. I moved to Modesto to live with my ex-girlfriend, Cheryl, and her new husband, Al. Gino moved back to Philadelphia with a Wildlife Technology degree and took up work as a carpenter.
Times have changed. Gino could be the Poster Boy for Good Karma.
He had a hard first 50 years, then things turned around. He moved to California on his 50th birthday, fell in love, and as of last month lives with his sweetheart, Deb, in San Francisco. They met on match.com. I see true love between them. I’ve given the matter my keenest discernment. I am greatly happy.
Gino is a good soul to the core, but he’s had tough times. He blew out a knee over a decade ago playing volleyball in a lumpy backyard. Pop. Laid him up for a couple years. Operations. Rehab. It cost him his vegetarian lifestyle. His leg muscles were so atrophied that he needed a heavy protein diet to recover. He ordered up a hamburger one day, and never looked back. He now eats more chicken than any man in the state, except Jim Morrison.
Gino’s wife of a year, Deb, also dumped him while he was in bandages. He had to pack his bags hopping on one foot and move out to nowhere on crutches. Deb had another fella she wanted to move in his place.
Miserable and limping, he holed up in an expensive little apartment, dedicated himself to his craft, and worked seven days a week for the next umpteen years, mostly for family members. They paid him squarely when he asked for it. Often he worked for fun and stayed for dinner.
Gino lived alone after his breakup. During this time he honed his craft through experience and much reading of construction periodicals. He learned to do everything – plumbing, electrical, masonry, cabinetry, fine finish work. He was Mr. Zippity Doo Dah.
Huge family he had. Brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles, cousins, all noisy and scattered all over the southeast corner of the Keystone State. They kept him busy and gave him enough references to last a lifetime.
He would visit me in California about once every two three years. I always made his visits whirlwinds of activity. We drove all over the state. Hiked Yosemite and Big Sur. Took the Fun Train to Reno. Drove Highway 1 from stem to stern. Camped among the big, big redwoods up in Orick, the coastal center of Redwood National Park.
He’d fly home after his visits to his long, dark apartment, and the comparison contrast dilemma of memories would manifest in his mind and bring a burden into his soul.
He finally threw down the C clamp. Said, “I’m done. I’m moving to California.” And he did. You’ve read of our many exploits since he arrived. We’ve kept up the Schedule of Fun.
Anyhow. To loop back to the start. Gino is gone. Of course, he didn’t say anything. What’s to say? I came home one day and my garage was empty. His 65 tools were gone. I opened the drawers in his bathroom. No toothpaste, soap, toenail clippers. He was out of there.
Brooks our cat meowed a lot when Gino left. Gino used to rub Brooks’s belly with his sock foot for hours watching TV. He called the cat Frankie. He didn’t like the name Brooks. Refused to use it.
While Gino lived here our kitchen sink was under a magic spell. I could put a dirty dish into it and the dish would disappear. That magic is gone. Right now it looks like the Cypress Expressway.
While Gino lived here our dining room table was under a magic spell. A cornucopia of well seasoned meals in delicate sauces used to appear in the evenings. The pop of fine wine signaled the start of our many banquets. Now it’s steamed rice and store-roasted chickens.
Gino is in his happy place. He’s with Deb, and the dogs, Winston and Shiloh. He doesn’t have to work so hard for the first time in his life. Deb’s family has done all right for themselves. Deb and Gino are able to live a good life. He walks the dogs. Scoops poop. Sleeps without pain. Smiles a lot. Has time to pay attention to details, like the smell of roses.
We go visit a lot. Deb has a beautiful house off Union Street, walking distance to a dozen night clubs and restaurants. The Betelnut is only two blocks away. How great is that?
They come here. Last week Gino helped me put in a sliding glass door and bathroom window.
It’s funny ironic how Gino’s life has revolved. Now, visiting me means work, and staying home is bliss.

For Sunday, March 30, 2008                                      Drummer Column, Gibbs, 808 words

 

Into the Wild with accoutrements

 

     This summer has been dubbed Camping Summer by me just now. I haven’t been out in the woods in too long. As you know if you’ve been reading this column over the years, I used to be the backpacking club advisor at the high school. I spent every summer in the California backcountry, hiked 1,000 miles, rafted a dozen rivers, explored caves, endured countless bouts of poison oak.

     Then in October of 2000 I twisted my back carrying a table. All that wilderness jazz went right out the window. I spent the next three years unable to sit down without excruciating pain. I went through therapy, acupuncture, epidurals, exercises, Vicodin. I spent my waking hours coming to terms with my new future – a lifetime of chronic misery.

     Then the pain went away around the fifth year. I found I was able to work hard, tote barges, lift bales once again. If I overdid it, I got sore, but it was acute, not chronic.

     I spent the next few years catching up on my chores. I’ve been fixing things for three summers. We bought a couple of houses when the stock market went in the crapper, and now it’s my fate to maintain them or pay professionals.

     Happy to announce I’m caught up for the time being. Summer 2008 is mine all mine. That spells road trips and random left turns. Yosemite here I come.

     I can hardly wait. Here’s my idea of a favorite day in the woods: Get up. Go. Build a fire. Make coffee. Drink coffee in front of the fire. Socialize. Watch the morning sun rise over the campsite. More coffee. Eat breakfast. Wander off and do something – hike, swim, climb, explore, fish, ski, boat, read – return to the campsite in late afternoon, build a fire, cook, eat, watch the sun set, socialize with jokes and long stories, star gaze, turn in, flip my pillow to the cool side. No unique rituals. Just plain and simple leisure.

     Speaking of leisure. We camped with our children and grandchildren for a weekend last summer. Chad and Kristi had a huge tent with an inflatable mattress and fluffy pillows. Susan and I slept nearby in my 2x8’ stuff-tent on Therm-A-Rest pads with clothes jammed into t-shirts as pillows.

     Next morning, Chad gave me a hard time. “Dude. What are you doing sleeping on the hard ground? You should be nicer to your wife. Why are you making her sleep on that elongated pancake?”

     I explained, “We like to travel light. She’s comfortable. We’ve been sleeping on these same Therm-A-Rests for 20 years.”

     “Dude. That’s what I’m saying. Move up. Get an air mattress. Think of Susan.”

     To this Susan said, “Yea. Think of me.”

     “Hey, wait a minute. You’ve been sleeping in my thumb tent on these pads without complaint all these years. Now suddenly you’re uncomfortable? Thanks a lot, Chad.”

     “Face it, dude. You’re both getting older.”

     Last week I blew $500 at REI. I did not buy an air mattress. I bought a new sleeping bag and two nice latest-model Therm-A-Rests. They’re thick. Inches thick.

     Chad won’t like them. He favors his king-size floater with its electric pump. I’m hoping Susan will like them. Chad’s having an influence on her.

 

     On the way to the cashier, feeling ambivalent, I walked past a camping display in the tent area. There was a cot, and it caught my eye. It was six feet long, a foot off the ground, and firmly padded. Folded, it fit snugly into a small bag. I bought one. It’s not a mattress, but it doesn’t need a pump.

     If Chad starts ragging on me again in Yosemite about my poor suffering wife, and she decides to chime in, I’ll whip out the cot. That will put them in their places. Or I’ll look like an idiot.

     I can hear him now. “Dude. What is that? You bought your wife a cot? What, is she in the army? Come on. What were you thinking? Pamper your woman.”

     “Cut it out, dude. You’re blowing it for me.”

     Nice thing about REI: you can bring anything back for any reason. We’ll see how these new accommodations fair in the field. If Susan doesn’t like them, I’ll trade them in on a Serta.

     Besides Yosemite, we intend to visit Crystal Basin, Kennedy Meadows, South Fork of the Yuba, Dinky Lakes, and maybe down the coast to Andrew Molera Park near Big Sur. We will go other places of which we know not yet. Random lefts will determine that.

     We expect to be taking the grandkids with us as often as possible. I look forward to showing them the splendors of nature. I shall get many vicarious thrills watching them climb and jump about. We will all go barefoot and grow calluses on the soles of our feet.

     

     

For Sunday, March 9, 2008                                        Drummer Column, Gibbs, 789 words

 

If I were President of these United States

 

     If I were President of the United States of America, these would be the planks of my platform.

     Before I give them, be advised, I’m a liberal democrat when it comes to social policies, and a fiscal conservative when it comes to restricting the money flow. I’d have voted for a Ron Paul Dennis Kucinich ticket.

     I don’t want to restrict how people live their lives or shape their families. If gays want to get married, good for them. If people feel that medicinal marijuana helps them deal with their perceived illnesses, leave them alone in their victimless indulgences. If people want to visit Vancouver or Tijuana, I’d make it easy. If people from Vancouver or Tijuana want to visit America, I’d make it harder, but not impossible. At least currently, more people want to sneak in than sneak out. That may change if I’m not elected.

     One of the first things I would do is trash this nonsense about small government. I would trash the claim that deregulation is good for Americans. I would stop the move to privatize everything we do for profit. I will turn a deaf ear to the hollow claim that business can do anything and everything better than the government. Business needs profits. Governments don’t. Doing it right is all about hiring the best people and paying them well.

     Most say that a government’s core responsibility is to protect its citizens. The rest should be left to the open market. I agree with that. My lingering question is protection from whom? We all agree terrorists and invaders need repelled. However, I think the government also needs to protect its citizens in the open market.  We need a powerful law-enforcing guardian against price fixers, shortage makers, faulty manufacturers, careless providers, false marketers, rampant polluters, market corner-ers, scoundrels and other such flim-flam. There is too much of that going on.

     I would take back the voting process 10 seconds into office. All voting machines would become government property. Voting computers would be programmed by government technicians or through contracts with private companies who win their bids open and fair. The software and hardware would be thoroughly criss-cross-cross-criss-cross checked for accuracy. Every one of them would produce paper receipts. Those receipts would be dropped into sealed vaults in case recounts are needed. I would work to make voter math the exact science it was intended to be.

     I would bring back the Fairness Doctrine. Equal time for opposing viewpoints would be resurrected from its tomb. This notion that news corporations have the same first amendment rights as humans, and the right to squelch all opposing views, would end. No more could their amplified voices that reach millions be allowed to say, “My network supports one political ideology only, and we do world news.” They could have both. It is a free country. But news and opinions would have to be separated: objective reporting on one channel, philosophical debates on another, and a third channel for the detractors – sort of like Fox owning Comedy Central.

     I would take back the private prisons. I would repeal all bills passed by the lobbied efforts to increase prison sentences for lesser and lesser crimes in order to increase the prison population and turn a profit. I would release a lot of our victimless criminals, or lower their sentences, or send them to hospitals and therapy.

     I would protect and reward all whistle-blowers. I would provide them with witness relocation if it were necessary. I would encourage them to step forward through a series of posters that read: “Uncle Sam Wants You.”

     I would protect our public water system. I would push back the private interests that are buying up many of our lakes, reservoirs, and streams in preparation for controlling water. Water would forever be, during my administration, a public resource, safe, sound, and inexpensive.

     I would rewrite NAFTA until it fairly met the needs of the American worker and stopped its enticements for factories to outsource.

     Oil. What would I do there? I’d take the trillions we are spending trying to seize it from others and invest in the alternatives. Instead of sending 12 billion a month to Iraq, like we are now, I’d put 12 billion toward solar, 12 toward wind, 12 toward hydrogen, 12 toward conservation, a few million toward ethanol, and 12 for education. That would take me into the summer of my first year in office.

     I don’t hate big business, my fellow Americans. That’s not it. Big businesses are just small businesses run right. I only want them to play fair. That, too, is a battle I wouldn’t expect to win, but it is a battle I would commit to fight ceaselessly. If elected.

For Sunday, March 2, 2008                                        Drummer Column, Gibbs, 811 words

 

Taking time to stop and smell the contractors

 

     “O.K. We’ll go, but we’re not buying anything. Agreed?”

     “Agreed.”

     “Nothing. Not one solitary thing.”

     “Right. Nothing. We’re just looking. Window shopping.”

     “Exactly. It’s going to cost five dollars to park. That’s our limit.”

     Thus our conversation tumbled out last weekend as Susan and I drove toward the Home and Garden Show at the Solano County Fairgrounds in Vallejo.

     It doesn’t matter who said what in that conversation because we were in agreement. Our budget is limited to bills, food, and fossil fuels.

     Notice some tense shifting between past and present verbs. Ideals are eternal. Our resolve was adamant, initially.

     Keep in mind this wasn’t a craft fair. It was not about knick knacks, baubles and porcelain statuettes of painted ladies in hoopskirts holding parasols. This show was all about house and home, living quarters, daily comforts, daily needs. I would have called it the Mostly Essentials Trade Fair.

     We barely made it in the door to the first booth before I said, “Oh, honey, look at that. We need that. We’ve needed that for years.”

     “True. True. Let’s move on. We can always come back.”

     Twenty steps later Susan said, “Now, that I like. That makes a lot of sense. Honey, this would be a wise investment.”

     “Wow. Look over there. I’ve never seen anything like it. Follow me. It’s a new invention. We have to have it. It will save us money.”

     “Oh, isn’t that beautiful? Come here. That would really finish off the dining room.”

     “Hon, can you see that in our back yard? I can.” I said and went bounding off to the big back wall display. Susan turned right and disappeared down aisle two, where I heard her say, “Oooh. Oooh.” Then she walked quickstep back to find me, fluttering her hands, grinning, beckoning me to follow her. “You’ve got to see this. You won’t believe it. They’re using our exact kitchen as the ‘before’ picture.”

     “Um. Nice. That’s the look. We need that in time for Cinco de Mayo. Geez, oh, man, look down there. See at the end? It’s the thing, the thing above all things.”

     And so it went through the afternoon, from booth to booth. We fluttered about like honeybees in a flower garden, soaking up brochures and signing on for free home estimates. We became hypnotized with the practicality of the ambiance.

     I’ve had a string of estimators and sales people at my house throughout the week. All told we may be into this home improvement hysteria for about ten grand. Where does it come from? I guess it will fly out with the monkeys.

     Here’s what we bought. A company named LeafGuard makes an ingenious never-clog gutter. It has a solid aluminum cover over the gutter pan. This cover is curved at the outer edge and tucks underneath. Water follows the curve under, while the leaves fall harmlessly to the ground. I have a towering maple tree in my front yard that goes bald every year. “I’ll take one.”

     We hired Natural Light Inc to install another solar tube. We have two already. I bought one for this dark den. The new tube has an electric light and opaque plates inside. I can light up the night, or lower the plates and block the sun in the day. That’s perfect if my den becomes a bedroom again someday. I also bought two solar roof fans for cooling my attic air in the hot summer. Pay once and I’m done. They whir silently all day every day. I’m disconnecting my 30-year old, rumbling, rattling, electric bill-killer fans.

     Granite Transformations makes solid-slab granite counters that adhere to existing counter tops. No need to tear anything out. They just drop new tops over old tile. Slip, slap, slam, and you’re done. Theirs was the demo that had our white tile countertops in their ‘before’ display.

     In fact, the estimator for the counters called me while I was typing that last paragraph. What are the odds of that? She was parked in front of my house. I peeked out my den window and waved at her. She came in and she just left. Susan and I went ooh and aah over our color choices. We decided to go with a granite sink as well. What the heck, eh? As long as we’re in it up to our necks, might as well get our hair wet.

     You see, ten years ago I tiled our kitchen. It was my first tile job. It shows. It looks OK, but barely. The grout is too high, too wide and gets dirty. My contractor friends laugh at me when they see it. Laymen visitors don’t notice – or if they do, they are being polite. At last I’ll be able to cover over my daily embarrassment. There will be peace in the valley.

     I’m seriously looking at that artificial grass.

For Sunday, February 24, 2008                                  Drummer Column, Gibbs, 824 words

 

Put technology into your education

     It’s that time of year again, parents and students. It’s time for high schoolers to choose their classes for next year. The forms are out, the course descriptions are published, the presentations are being made, kids are running around campus gathering teacher signatures for electives.

     It’s time for me to speak on technology in education, by bailiwick.

     Note an odd paradox riddled with reasons and open for self determination. We have international technology standards, goals, and expectations (ISTE.org) that set detailed and specific guidelines for administrators, teachers, and students. We have national technology standards put forth by Washington, the department of education, and No Child Left Behind. We have state technology guidelines, and we have our own local district guidelines detailed in a ever-evolving 5-year plan.

     However, and this is the crux of the climb, when we get right down to the school site and the classroom, all involvement in curriculum-based technology is voluntary. There are no mandatory tech-centric classes. It is possible for a student to weave his or her way through four years of high school without every sitting in front of a computer.

     It is not mandatory that any specific teacher integrate technology into his or her classroom activities. Tech integration is all voluntary. A teacher can go an entire career here without ever doing a tech-centric lesson plan with students.

     There’s the rub. It’s up to you, boys and girls, moms and dads, to show a desire for better understanding of the academic applications of computers and software.

     What we do have is a plethora of tech-centric electives and a whole new paradigm for how they inter-relate. We are moving in a new direction with careers and technology. With guidance from the state, we have overhauled and rechristened our traditional vocational education program. It is now called Career Technical Education. Our electives are being daisy-chained to create pathways to careers. Interested in business, medicine, construction, art, broadcasting? Students can now participate in multi-year preparatory classes to better prepare them for college and their preferred field of study.

     We have nine (9) computer labs and a mobile lab at Benicia High. We offer yearbook, journalism, graphic design, biotechnology, architectural design, animation, photography, film making, keyboarding, virtual enterprise, web design, and a new and important elective for freshmen – Computer Applications for College.

     It is possible for a student to become a computer whiz kid at BHS. It simply requires personal initiative. It requires self-determination. And it requires an early start.

     Here is where I pitch the first class – a mostly freshman elective – Computer Applications for College. This course, though voluntary, is an essential gateway to proceeding to all the other tech-centric electives at BHS.

     In this class students will be introduced to operating system and network navigation, file and folder management, and the whole bouquet of top-flight software titles we have to offer. Students will explore to the advanced-feature level all of Microsoft Office and all of the Adobe Suite of programs. We’re talking Excel, Publisher, PowerPoint, Word, MovieMaker, InDesign, Photoshop, Illustrator, Flash, Dreamweaver, Acrobat, and so on.

     With the lessons of this class ingrained into a student’s skill set, they will glide easily into the more advanced classes that specialize in specific applications.

     For example, I teach a challenging and popular elective called Art Production, aka photography and film making. We go deep into these areas. The students who are best equipped to hit the ground running are those who feel comfortable with the basics - how to map themselves around our network to access resources, printers, and scanners; how to save, move, and submit digital work; how to structure folders to build multi-year portfolios of accomplishments, and so on.

     Students who come into my digital photography class as upper classmen without any focused technical experience have a tough go at it. They mis-name files. They lose files. They save in incorrect formats. They submit the wrong files for grading. Presentations crash and crumble because their multimedia resources are in disarray. It also slows the whole course down in the beginning as we address these issues. September through November are fraught with technical difficulties that could be remedied by taking the preferred prerequisite freshman introductory course. These same issues plague the other advanced technology classes.

     As a closing statement, I implore parents and students to plan ahead. If you want computers and technology to play a major role in your high school education, take the initiative to utilize our voluntary tech-centric electives and start early.

     I know many students feel like they are already experts because they spend so much time on their computers at home. Some feel an intro course would be beneath them. Ho. Ho. Ho. I know better from field experience. I see it every day. I know what teens do mostly on computers – they play games, listen to music, watch video, and communicate with friends. That’s important. Now, come play with Word. Come play with Excel. Come play in the major leagues.