Cathouse

A big thank you to Don, the world's best ex-husband. He made this little cathouse so I can keep feeding the ferals in our backyard. I had a rickety contraption made of a Tupperware storage box and bricks, but the raccoons knocked it over pretty much every night. I needed something to keep the food dry in the rainy weather, and Don made this. It's incredibly cute and a perfect size. Big enough for the cats to poke their heads in and feed, but small enough that the raccoons can't get in. Yay!

Photo of the day: The Real Golden Arches

Stanford. Circa 2009 A.D.

Hallmark Love
I've never been a fan of Valentine's Day. First off, I cannot be romantic just because it says so on the calendar. There are days when I am extra in love with Husband, and days when I am just normally in love. And it has nothing to do with the date, but everything to do with who we are.

Secondly, I don't like the idea that people need a commercial holiday to remember the people in their lives.

The only good thing about losing those you love to AIDS is that it reinforces how important it is to make sure that everyone in your life knows you love them. And luckily it's a lesson that I have learned.

I say "I love you" a lot. And I always mean it. It's not a toss off, or something that I say lightly. If I have said this to you, it is because I love you. Because you are dear to me an always will be. I suppose it is nice, once a year, to get a card or flowers that make you feel appreciated. But I find it means much more when I am appreciated on an average Tuesday rather than on V-Day. Because it seems more sincere, more real.

To be loved on February 14th is a very good thing. But to be loved on August 9th is even better.

Photo of the day: Neverfear, Stpring is Near!

At least it is in my mom's front garden.

Photo of the day: Up or Down

Everyone choses to the escalator. The stairs are lonely.

Connections
It's no surprise, having majored in Classics and Art History, that I am interested in the past. Two years ago I started looking into my family tree, and that of Husband.

I love genealogy and the stories of who we came from and how. Not just my family, but anybody's. I want to know about your great-grandparents and how they left Ireland/Poland/Mexico to come to America. I've just finished watching the first episode of Faces of America, another wonderful Henry Louis Gates special on PBS. This time he's looking into the roots of Americans whose ancestors came to the US for various reasons. He discussed how Kristi Yamaguchi's mother was born in a relocation camp at the same time her grandfather was fighting for the US. And how Mike Nichols' family escaped Nazi Germany just in time to avoid the Holocaust.

My own family story is rather tame. On my father's side we come from French Basque people, mostly in and around the village of Pau (known now mainly for being a stop on the Tour de France). On my mother's side we're originally from Scotland and then from Canada....but I've hit a dead end and cannot seem to go any further. I'm hampered by the fact that the ancestor who left Scotland was named John Campbell -- and it seems every other man in Scotland at the time was named John Campbell. Her mother's family is also a dead end. I can get back to my great-grandparents, but no further.

But, alas, no Charlemagne. No Henry VIII. No royalty or riches. I don't even have any good outlaws. My maternal grandfather did make illegal beer during Prohibition, but that's about the only black sheep I can find. And the only real interesting story is that my paternal grandmother and her family lived through the great 1906 San Francisco earthquake. She was 9 at the time and remembered it clearly. It knocked her out of bed. She lined up in the park for bread. But family stories weren't tossed around the dinner table, unfortunately, and so I knew little about where I came from. Research through various online ancestry websites have helped, as has some documents that come from distant cousins still living in Pau. Those documents get my father's family back to the 1600s, but I must confess to having my doubts as to their accuracy. According to their research, everyone in my family lived to be 80 or 90, which is hard to believe since longevity wasn't one of the hallmarks of the 17th century.

Husband's family is in many ways more interesting. He is African American and we've been able to get back to his slave ancestors. Of course, it's almost impossible to go farther back than that. We're fortunate in that the family who owned his many-times-great grandfather (and I can't believe someone once "owned" his relations) was prominent in the county and there's a lot of information about them. Husband has always been curious about his identity so last year for his birthday I gave him a DNA test to help give him more information about his history.

I find it hard to grasp the reality that there is slavery in his past. It's even harder to accept the more recent racism. The fact that his grandmother, one of the most beautiful and admirable women I've ever known, had to ride in the back of the bus just burns me. This is my family, the people that I love, and yet at one point they were discriminated against, hated and, most unbelievable of all, owned.

So my sheep-herding Basque ancestors had the easy life. But dull. And I have to admit, if there were going to do a PBS special on my family, nobody would watch. Including, truth be told, me.

Photo of the day: Lost at Sea

In the Presidio, looking out towards Land's End. A monument to those lost at sea during WWII. How beautiful, and how sad, to spend you days looking out on an ocean from which they will never return.

Photo of the day: My Namesake

Thanks, Decca.

Address Unknown
An unassuming little volume that nevertheless packs quite a punch. Address Unknown by Kathrine Kressmann Taylor is a powerful anti-Nazi short story, written in 1938. It is a series of letters between two business partners, one a Jew based in San Francisco, the other a gentile who has returned to his native Germany and taken up the Nazi cause.

It is surprisingly short, but equally as impressive. And quite devilishly plotted. I cannot explain fuller, or else I would give the plot away, but I have to admit that I found this book lived up to its reputation. It was hugely influential when it first came out, providing one of the first glimpses into just how bad things were for Jews in Germany. After the war it became somewhat forgotten but a new edition has been released and certainly deserves a wider audience.

Photo of the day: Cheers

In honor of the Saints. In fond remembrance of a trip to New Orleans, and drinking shots out of test-tubes at a cheesy tourist bar on Bourbon Street.

Chopin at Midnight
Sometimes I don't mind being an insomniac. There's a nice sort of calmness in being up all night. I can watch movies or catch up on whatever I've saved in TiVo. I can read trashy books all night or do something improving like delving into Dickens or browsing through the Brontes. Sometimes I'll listen to music, try to find something suitable for the book, the weather, and my mood.

When I'm in a classical mood I always turn to Chopin. More specifically, Chopin's piano works played by Vladimir Ashkenazy. I'm surprised I haven't worn a groove in my CD because I play it so often. It's perfect for a rainy night and a good book. Oddly enough, the same music is also perfect for a heat wave and total brain-candy-trash. Quite versatile, that Chopin.

The classical realm is one area of music where I will gladly admit my ignorance. I can beat anyone at world music knowledge (thank you KZSU), and I'm pretty good at blues, certain genres of jazz, and bits of bluegrass and country. I know my 80s pop as well as anyone, and have a fairly good grasp of what's new in the world of music. But when it comes to what's old well, there I'm lost. I've been to the symphony, but not too many. I've seen operas, but don't particularly like them. And yet I love opera CDs -- not entire operas, but certain singers performing selections from many composers. My favorite is Jose Cura, who has a warm and delicious voice. His music is reserved for intricate and cryptic literary novels full of delicious passages of prose. I cannot put on Jose Cura and curl up with, say, Nora Roberts. But he goes quite well with Arturo Perez-Reverte.

Oddly enough, since I'm surrounded by jazz, I tend not to listen to it on my own. Husband is both a jazz radio DJ and a jazz journalist (in fact he's just gotten the gig to cover the Portland Jazz Festival for JazzTimes Magazine later this month). His collection of jazz is huge, varied, and intimidating. It's so intimidating that it's in it's own room. The front room has my music and our joint collection of classical and blues. But the music office is his domain. I am perfectly free to go in and select anything I want, but I wouldn't even know where to begin. So I keep my own selection of favorites out here. They're pretty thin, Louis Armstrong, Ella Fitzgerald, the big bands of WWII. The Brubeck and the Monk, the Coltrane and the Pharoah Sanders, they're all in the music office.

But tonight, it's Chopin and The Pre-Raphaelites in Love by Gay Daly. Excuse me, won't you, Frederic is calling me.

Photo of the day: A Capital Idea

Ah, my deep and abiding love for Corinthian capitals. All those lovely acanthus leaves. Modern architecture is so dull, isn't it?

Olympics
Husband and I are total Olympic junkies. For the entire two weeks we'll be glued to the TV, watching athletes we've never heard of compete in sports we would never normally watch. It's an addiction. Winter or summer games, it doesn't matter, we'll watch it all.

We've gotten into the habit of watching the opening ceremonies with dinner from the host country. For the Athens Olympics we made gyros. The Torino games featured pasta. What the hell are we going to make for the Vancouver games? Aside from Canadian bacon, Molson beer, and Tim Horton's doughnuts I can't think of typically Canadian food. Seal meat? Anyway, we'll have to figure that one out. But we totally love the opening. All the pageant. The over-the-top effects and entertainment. And yes, i still do get a tiny lump in my throat when I see all the athletes marching in. Not just team USA, but everyone. All full of hopes and dreams. All dedicated and young. Healthy and strong. Hoping that a lifetime of work will pay off in the next few weeks. It's enough to make even an old cynic like I get all misty.

Our favorite winter sport is biathlon. Weren't expect that, were you? We got totally addicted to it the last winter games and cannot wait for this year's competition to begin. It's the cross country skiing flat out and then stopping to shoot accurately sport, which sounds less like a sport than a Nazi war tactic. And it did, in fact, stem from a military exercise. But it's so cool to watch because the lead can change so fast. If you miss a shot you get a time penalty, so the first guy into the shooting range might actually end up in fourth place at the end of the round because he missed shots and the other guys went clean. It's nail biting to watch because you'll find yourself cheering for some guy (the big money is going on somebody Nordic) and he'll miss one shot and that drops him back six places in something like 10 seconds.

We'll also be watching hockey. Husband is a huge hockey fan (go Flyers!) and it's always interesting to see NHL players competing on their national teams. It must be odd when some guy you play with on the same team suddenly becomes your opponent because you're from Canada and he's from Finland. Three Flyers (his favorite team -- that's my Philly boy) will be in the games, all playing for team Canada. I'm thinking it'll be a Canada vs. Finland or Sweden final. But it's gonna be a good time no matter who ends up in the finals.

There are a few sports that we care nothing about. Like snowboarding and freestyle skiing. But everything else we'll settle in and actually find ourselves caring who wins in long track speed skating or luge. And yes, we'll even watch curling.

Photo of the day: Cowardice

White feathers were once used as a sign of cowardice. Men who were deserters or even conscious objectors would receive them, usually anonymously (because the senders were too cowardly?) as a sign that others thought him a shirker. There have even been movies with that title, two of them I believe, where, of course, the recipients went on to brave deeds of derring-do that proved the senders wrong. The hero even saves the life on one of his detractors.

But there's no symbol here. Just two white feathers I found on a walk.

Words and Books
My fascination with the English language occasionally leads me towards speculations for which I cannot find an answer.

For instance, is there a word for a word where you have a negative but no opposite positive? As an example, you might here the word "unkempt" but no one is ever "kempt." You might be told that you look disheveled, but nobody will ever call you sheveled. You get the idea. Couth and uncouth. Gruntled and disgruntled. Someone suggested that the concept can be described as "lost positives" which sounds great. But I think there needs to be a word for something where you only hear the negative and never the positive.

Another example. Is there a word for those two-word rhyming nonsense phrases like hocus-pocus or helter-skelter? If not, there should be.

I also have this weird thing where I cannot continue with a book if I come across a word I do not know. I have to put the book down, get the dictionary, and find out what the word is. Usually this is not a problem as I have quite a large vocabulary (no doubt because I am forever looking up words). But every so often I come across a book where there are so many words I do not know that it's disruptive to be forever putting it down. Such was the case with Lempriere's Dictionary by Lawrence Norfolk. I read it many years ago and it is #2 on my all-time favorite fiction books of all time. (Number 1, for those of you who care, is Possession by A.S. Byatt. Rounding out my top three is Pride and Prejudice.)

Now, back to Lempriere's Dictionary. It is a dense and yet captivating story of John Lempriere, an actual 18th century mythologist who wrote about the stories of the ancient Greeks and Romans. The book follows his research and the weird parallels that occur in his life that seem to mirror the classic myths. It is most definitely not an easy read. And it is full of obscure and intricate words that were completely unfamiliar to me. Eventually I jotted down every word in a notebook and would look them all up at the end of the day, rather than having to constantly stop and lose the flow of the narrative. I picked up this book ages ago, and yet just the other day I ran across that notebook and knew instantly what this list of odd words referred to. Nobody I know has ever read this book. I can't even recommend it to them, as it's such an intimidating volume. You must love mythology, words, mysteries, and intricate plots. You have to be patient and willing to work for the outcome. But if you do, you will be highly rewarded.

In case you are even mildly interested, here are my favorite non-fiction books of all time:
1. Testament of Youth by Vera Brittain. Taken from the diary she kept during WWI. She was a sheltered student who volunteered as a nurse on the front lines. During the course of the war she lost her only brother, her fiance, and her two best friends. The loss of all she loved is beautifully captured. It made her one of my heroes. The way she turned such a negative into such a positive. After the war she became committed to the cause of pacifism and worked for it the rest of her life. She's not an entirely likable person, but you cannot help but respect her courage and strength.
2. Between Silk and Cyanide by Leo Marks. A fascinating look at British espionage during the second World War. Marks was one of the code-creators who came up with ways for British spies behind enemy lines to communicate information back to England. The fact that it's true only makes the nail-biting exploits of the brave men and women of the SOE more captivating.
3. The Devil in the White City by Erik Larson. On the surface, an odd topic for a book - a look at the 1893 Chicago World's Fair combined with the story of one of America's first serial killers. But it works. It's a well-researched, well-written tale about a changing world, an amazing event, and an evil mind. It's full of fascinating information about how the fairgrounds were built and what an effect the fair had on both American and international culture. The crime section is equally interesting and you read how one man planned and committed a series of horrendous crimes.

OK, now I want to go book shopping. Thank goodness for Amazon!

Photo of the day: Hardware

I love random bits of ironmongery (how's that for a word?). This is on a telephone pole a few houses up the block. No idea what it is, aside from something that I couldn't resist photographing.

Another Lost Language
I came across this London Times article about the last surviving member of an Andaman Island tribe dying, taking with her 65,000 years of culture. And a language.

Languages are as endangered a species at the salt marsh harvest mouse or the giant panda. And equally worth saving.

In college, as a Classics major, I spent several years studying so-called "dead languages:" Latin, ancient Greek, Egyptian hieroglyphics, Sanskrit. Useful for nothing, but one obscure proud achievement -- I've read The Iliad in the original. I also studied one modern language, French, which I completely forgot the day after the final exam.

I'm fascinated by languages, and by the way they survive in spite of all odds. When Europeans took over North America and stole land from the native peoples, in addition to smallpox and Christianity, they also made it illegal to speak their own language. Children were forced onto reservation schools and told to speak English only. There were severe penalties for speaking in their mother tongue.

Ironically it was one of these indigenous languages, Navajo, that played a crucial role in the allied victory in WWII. If you don't know the story of the Navajo Code Talkers, you should. Using their ancient language, Navajo Marines set up communications stations throughout the Pacific and spoke to each other, openly over the radio, knowing full well the Japanese were monitoring their transmissions. But the Japanese were never able to decipher the code. It was a simple substitution code, using real Navajo words, (using "turtle" to mean "tank" for instance) but outside of the Navajo reservations, nobody knew their language -- certainly not the Japanese, and so valuable information was able to be transmitted without fear of the enemy catching on.

What I find amusing is that these young men who still spoke Navajo did so because they broke the law. They and their families thought it was important to keep their culture alive and so, in spite of laws against it, they spoke in the old tongue at home. And because so much of Native American culture is passed down orally, many other native languages still survive, thankfully.

For a while, they were in danger of dying. But a new renaissance and pride in native culture, combined with the establishment of tribal colleges, made it possible (and even admirable) for elders to pass on their knowledge. Not just of how to speak Hopi or Lakota, but of other cultural treasures, such as how to weave, make pottery or baskets, and the correct way to conduct tribal ceremonies.

And the ones that kept the flame going were the outlaws. Those who refused to do what they were told. In public they'd learn English, just as the Europeans insisted. But at home, with the doors closed, elders would pass on centuries-old stories in centuries-old languages. And because of that, we haven't lost these linguistic treasures.

Thanks to technology, we'll never truly lose another language. We can record the old ones telling the ancient tales. But it's not the same as having a native speaker around to teach their gift.

Many years ago I was touring the Royal Shakespeare Theatre in Stratford-Upon-Avon. At the time they were putting together an impressive archive of Shakespeare being read in every language on the planet. Everything from Hamlet in Swahili to Measure For Measure in Mandarin. I'll always remember the guide mentioning how people all over the world had gotten into the spirit of the challenge and gave their grandparents passages of the Bard to read in whatever language they spoke. They had dozens of African dialects, sonnets read in the many languages of India, and everything from Icelandic to Esperanto. They also had one tape that, up to that point, they had never been able to identify. They couldn't tell what play it was from, but it came from Canada and they thought it might have been Inuit or some other First Nations language of Canada. But they weren't sure. They said for a while they asked tour groups if anyone visiting spoke Inuit, hoping they could play the tape and get an "yes" or "no" as to whether they even had the right language. Identifying the play seemed an impossibility.

I have often thought about that, and wondered if they ever figured it out.

Some day I'd love to see a Cherokee version of Much Ado.

Things That I've Laughed At Lately
Because we all need a good laugh:

First up we have Charlie Brooker's Newswipe The World's Most Generic News Report, a hilarious parody of how predictable "news" stories have become. I've watched this three times now and it still cracks me up.

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Always good for a laugh, People of Walmart, which demonstrates why I do not shop there. It'll make your jaw drop at how few people seem to own mirrors.

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What happens when you have too much icing and not enough education? Cake Wrecks. Dedicated to showcasing the worst dessert errors ever served up at your local bakery counter.

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And finally, there's Totally Looks Like, which can be hit or miss. But when it hits, it's pretty funny.

In Praise of Thelma Ritter

One of the things that connects Husband and I is our love for old movies. Further than that, our love for the character actors that made so many of those old movies memorable. Character actors seem to have died out. But "way back when" every hotel clerk, every waiter, every wise-cracking salesgirl was someone worth remembering. Fans of old movies love to play the "hey, that's..." game where you realize the guy driving Myrna Loy's cab was seen two movies ago serving Humphrey Bogart a slice of pie. Today you might recognize a waitress in a movie as a dancing toothbrush from a TV commercial, but these actors have no names and there are as forgettable as a waitress is in real life (with apologies to waitresses everywhere).

My all-time favorite female character actor was Thelma Ritter. She wasn't so much a bit-part player as she was a supporting actress, and every movie she was in was made magical by her dry wit and delicious line delivery.

She was a wonderful actress, earning four Academy Award nominations for Best Supporting Actress, starting with her role as Bette Davis' dresser in All About Eve. Her movie career covered everything from Hitchcock (Jimmy Stewart's nurse in Rear Window) to romantic comedies (the scene in Pillow Talk where she drinks Rock Hudson under the table is a classic) to musicals (acting as Fred Astaire's secretary in Daddy Long Legs. But she was always flat-out fabulous.

She specialized in the smart-aleck roles. The secretary who likes a shot of rye and a snappy come-back. The maid who doesn't hesitate to tell her mistress that she's making a fool out of herself by treating the nice guy like dirt. And there's always something so spot-on about the way she slips in her comments. Of course it helps that back then they wrote scripts with dialogue that was equally memorable. Sadly, that kind of rough diamond with a heart of gold character seems to have gone the way of stockings with seams in them and men in fedoras. But very few people could ever compete with Thelma Ritter for delivering just one line with such an air of dry disdain that she could infuse a word with a world of meaning. In today's movies, I think only Alan Rickman can match her for that ability to make a single word drip with venom.

Only with Thelma, the venom really had no lasting sting. Only a smartness that would make you stand up and take notice.

Oh Thelma, we miss you.

Photo of the day: Welcome Home

Husband bought me flowers as a "glad you got sprung from the hospital" gift. I love Husband.