Monthly Archives: July 2017

photography

Despite publishing many of my own pictures here, and speculated on my future activities as a retiree, I haven’t written directly about my own photography.

Until now.

I’ve listed photography as a hobby many times in the last 40 odd years. In 1976 I went to Europe with the Blue Saints Band and carried my trusty Kodak 110 camera. The pictures I got, however, were very disappointing, especially compared to some others on the tour who had 35mm cameras.

I had a job so I had money for a real camera. I got a Pentax MX with a 40mm standard lens. It was one of the new generation of ultra compact 35mm cameras. (The Olympus OM-1 was the archetype.) I think in my first year with that camera I took about 700 pictures. That doesn’t sound like so much nowadays but then you had to buy film in batches of 24 or 36, then have it developed, before you really knew what you had. None of this checking the screen moments after you take the shot!

So when Tim said he was going to go out to Pedro Point this afternoon, I brought my camera. One feature of my photography in recent years has been my focus on small scenes. I’ll use the telephoto on a flower right by the trail to crop out the context and create a photograph that is nearly abstract.

Here’s an example from today:

When I took that photo I had a flashback to many years ago (1978, actually) in Dutch Flat where I took what might have been my first nature close up. Take a look:

There was precious little sunshine on the Point today. Being a typical summer day the fog was rolling over the ridge. Here’s today’s mob at the summit, 600 feet above the Pacific Ocean and Linda Mar:

Here’s another one from today:

Just before I was going to publish this post, I looked at the category list. ‘Family’ is good, but shouldn’t photography have a category? ‘Life as we know it’ doesn’t really work for this. I think I’m reluctant to make the focus of this blog photography because there is so much on the web and it is so easy to steal. I don’t have any grand illusions of the value of my pictures but I’ll just use them as support for my words.

trip planning

I’m starting to get serious about my upcoming trip to Germany. I talked to Mary yesterday and we agreed to talk tonight when we’re both able to concentrate better. (She was driving home and I was at Mom’s.)

Today I picked up a Michelin guide to Germany at the library and brought it home. I didn’t check the due date but it may be that I could just take it with me . . . Don’t lose it! There are lots of interesting things to do there. I was sort of blasé about it before but now that I’ve looked at the book, I’ve got lots of ideas.

Bernkastel and the Mosel River valley are no brainers. I always wanted to go back to Trier which is at the west end of the valley. Leni’s party is near Bonn so Beethoven’s birthplace is right there. The Rhine River valley south from Bonn is beautiful. The cathedral at Cologne is a must. There’s a wonderful Roman-German Museum right nest to the dom. I’d love to be able to go back to Aachen and see the throne of Karl der Grosse again. Wilfried and Elisabeth are near Baden Baden so that is a must.

Mary wants to see Neuschwanstein so that is near Munich where Andreas and Luisa live. I’d love to be able to show Mary the upper Rhine valley from Freiburg to Lake Constance.

Mary wants to go fast on the autobahn but I’m not sure how or where it would work to do this. We’ll consult with Wilfried. He and Elisabeth will be picking us up in Frankfurt and it’s a 2 hour drive to Bonn. Maybe he’ll let Mary drive for a bit! I believe they are joining us for the Sistergold concert which is 3 hours from their home. That will likely be a drive too.

Lots to think about!

goals and quotas

Quotas are, of course, related to things quotidian so I’ve been thinking about the relationship of these two with the idea of goals.

Quotas are even more pejorative than quotidian. Quotas are something assigned to a sales person. It implies things that must be counted which takes us away from the rarefied air of ‘goals’.

Yes, sales people have goals, no doubt, but I’m trying to stay in the realm of goals that can’t be counted, at least not with numbers. Today, for example, I have a goal of getting my laundry done. I am nearly done with my goal of writing in this blog today. I have a longer term goal of preparing for my trip to Germany in 11 days.

None of these can be subject to a quota, but are they quotidian? Laundry is quotidian. A trip to Germany is not. Is the goal of getting my laundry done less of a worthy goal because it is quotidian?

Also, the trip to Germany can be quantified in the sense that the date will come and I will go to Germany and come back and then it will be done. Or accomplished, if you will.

What about my goal of staying healthy? That is open ended and ultimately not achievable. We will all die, some too soon like Zach, and others after a long and fruitful life. So I shorten my time frame on that goal and concentrate on eating right and sleeping properly. Exercise is what I get only at work, sad to say. When work ends, I will be faced with a challenge to exercise my body.

(I still haven’t looked up quotidian. I’m pretty sure I’ve got it right but if I don’t I’m looking awfully silly right now. I suppose another long term goal is to go out on a limb, to take chances, more often. No saws allowed!)

quotidian

It’s a real word. I’m sure of it. But I’m not going to look it up. I want to riff on it based on what I think it means.

It’s what my life has been the last nearly two weeks. In a way, though, it’s been longer. My trip with Jeremy was fraught with meaning but it was really just quotidian for me. I mean, I planned it, and I did it. No muss no fuss.

Visiting with Rosalie shouldn’t have been quotidian but it kind of was. Jeremy was away and we did some stuff. It was nice but it never seemed unordinary.

When I got back, I took  the CueStation class for three days, then spent an afternoon and evening in Santa Clara (after going to the dentist to have a broken crown fixed), then I had a long day (15 hours) at work, then I drove Rose and her sister Leigh and Gavino’s other grandmother to Pollock Pines for his birthday party. Then the next day I did laundry, then went back down to Santa Clara where I hung with Tim and his family. Then it was Monday and Tony Bennett at Davies. That was another long day. Tuesday I met Tim’s family along with Julian at Davies where I showed them around the whole building. Then I did another Tony Bennett show followed by a load out. Wednesday I went to Alameda for a haircut, followed by lunch with Leti and Hal, followed by dinner out with Rose for her birthday. Today I was back to work at 8 and just got home at 10:45. Tomorrow I get my permanent crown at the dentist and go back to work in the evening.

So there hasn’t been much time for reflection. Tonight the featured artist was a woman named Rhiannon Giddens. A classically trained singer from North Carolina, she became interested in the folk music of the area she grew up in after graduating from Oberlin. She has a band and some Grammy’s so I suppose I should have heard of her but I hadn’t. She sang Summertime and a Kurt Weill song that were sort of ordinary. there was a gospel number before intermission that was cool but in the second half she sang a song she wrote about a slave woman who was sold but her child was not, so they were separated.

I found myself weeping in the darkness of the light booth. Then she sang a song about the four little girls killed in the Birmingham church and I wept some more. Where did that come from? My life was moving along more or less under control and suddenly these couple of songs unhinged me completely. Loss of a child, of course. I’m quite sensitive to that for obvious reasons, but the sight of this young woman standing up there delivering this message almost defiantly was moving in and of itself. Seeing Sarah in the orchestra behind her made it even more intense.

I suppose, compared to a year and a half ago, I’m ‘better’ at handling this. I was able to remember that I could be heard through the glass if I got too loud. I was able to get it together enough to bring up the bow light at the end of each number. By the end of the show I was back to my quotidian life.

After tomorrow I have some days off. I will try to write more here and work on my new jigsaw puzzle. I did get one started the other day. It’s a scene from Yosemite Valley.

Denise

One of the great joys of being back in San Francisco to work is the people I get to work with. I apologize ahead of time to my colleagues in Sacramento. The reasons I did not enjoy my time there do not reflect on you, they are mine only.

Case in point is Denise. I’ve worked with Denise many times over the last eight years. She has a specialty within the world of sound people that dovetails with mine so we sometimes get on the same jobs. Today she told a story of her being told to slow down because she was working too hard. We all laughed, because it is so Denise. She is always thinking ahead and always taking the responsibility of action. I’ve been lucky to have her as my #2 in SoundBox for the last two years.

She had shown me her art quite a while ago. It’s not dramatic, it’s full of subtlety. She told me what ‘ATC’ meant long a go and I don’t remember now, but I think it means pretty small, like post card size.

Just a few months ago we were talking and she mentioned her web page. Web page?? You mean like a blog? Well, sort of. She writes a little, but mostly it is just images of her art. I invite you to take a look at it here.

The Pianist

When I got divorced, I let go of many things from my married life. One of those things was having a lot of books near at hand. Moving from a house to an apartment involved a lot f downsizing and I realized that books could be had at the local library. It wasn’t the same as having them in my living room, but it was good enough.

I kept my science fiction books, my Apollo books, some baseball books and a few music books. Among my music books was a water-damaged copy of The Pianist by Wladislaw Szpilman. Some may remember this book from seeing the movie of the same name. In fact, we only got it after seeing the excellent movie.

I actually got it out before I left, but I didn’t open it until Saturday. I’m not sure why I had it in with the music books. It really has very little to do with making music. It is the story of a musician, though. A Jewish pianist, caught in Warsaw when the Germans came in 1939.

I’m including this as a Zach story because I associate this book with Zach. I don’t remember where I was when I saw the movie, or who was with me, or where we got the book, but I remember Zach telling me he had read it and at the time it surprised me. The printing is 2003 so Zach would have been a freshman or sophomore in high school. I believe he even had it in his room although I don’t remember that for sure either.

So somehow I associate it with Zach and I was thinking of him when I picked it up. He was moved enough by the story to keep it near him. Perhaps he even read it more than once. If he kept journals in those days, I haven’t seen them.

Reading it myself now, I am struck by the thought that evil is everywhere. Here in America we tend to have the belief that we are morally superior to everyone else in the world. When someone does something odious in the political world, we often brand him or her with the epithet of Hitler. I try to remember that Hitler didn’t kill all those people by himself; many people did his bidding. Szpilman’s story is told in simple, unemotional prose. The most horrific things happen. They are done by Germans, Poles, Lithuanians, even Jews.

They could be done by Americans. It could happen here.

the second week

Jeremy and Ashley had rented a nice house in North Bend months ago as a place to land in Washington. It was there for them when they flew out on June 20th and they were still there on Thursday afternoon the 29th when I pulled that ungainly rig up in front of it. Jane had flown up earlier in the week and Joe and the boys had driven up. They were all there. Before long, Rosalie had me out across the street to the little park there. Actually, it wasn’t so little. It had a group picnic area and two play areas next to a rather large pond surrounded by trees. Here’s Rosalie beseeching the ducks to come back and play:

Here’s the merry-go-round:

Jane and her family left Friday for points south and home. We got in the car and headed north to Duvall, where we met with the landlord at the new house. They signed a two year lease. The neighborhood was very nice. The houses were newish, about 1980’s vintage, but many of the (presumably) original trees had been saved so there were tall firs and cedars all around. All the houses were well kept up.

Saturday was moving day. Jeremy took the truck, I took the Forester, still loaded with things from Georgia, and Ashley followed in the Murano after doing last minute clean up at the rental house in North Bend.

We got the truck situated in front of the house with the trailer off by around 10:30. Most of the unloading was done by 1:30 and the truck was off the lawn by 2:30. Rosalie had had a chance the day before to select which bedroom would be hers. It didn’t take long on Saturday for her to establish herself there.

Her new bed came not long after I took this picture. It went where the yellow bear is sitting.

Here are some earlier and later pictures of the inside of the truck:

That evening we went out to dinner in Carnation, which is the next town south of Duvall.

The next day, Sunday, I had volunteered to take the truck back to Yakima. Jeremy had done this as it was about $1,000 cheaper than dropping it somewhere closer in the Seattle area. That was another 145 miles in the truck and the same in the Forester coming home. 7:15 am to 2 pm.

Here’s a last look at the combo at the rest stop outside of Yakima. Mt Rainier is in the background. I thought I had Mt. Adams too but I couldn’t see the phone viewfinder very well in the bright sun light. It’s either just out of the frame or behind the sign, honest!

Jeremy and Ashley had lots of shopping to do so I said I would stay with Rosalie after I got back until they were done. They had to go to Monroe and Redmond and some other places with big box stores. After a nap and a snack with Rosalie, I got to play tea party and dress up for about three hours. They finally got home about 7:30!

Monday we didn’t do much except work on putting the house in order. I got in touch with my friends from Bellingham, Teresa and Susan. I wasn’t willing to go that far, but Susan had a spot in Oso, only about an hour from Duvall, that she went to on weekends in the summer. It floods every winter but there’s a spot for her Airstream 100 feet or so from the Stillaguamish River. In the end, Teresa couldn’t make it so I sat with Susan by the river for a couple of hours in the afternoon and chatted while the dogs occasionally chased toys into the river. Before going to Susan’s place, I had gone up to the site of the mountain collapse and paid my respects to the lost lives. The county has purchased the land and will eventually make a memorial park there. Now there are just 43 newly planted trees in rows by the road.

When I returned, much had been done in contacting the neighbors. We got invited to a 4th of July barbeque. Rosalie had discovered that the girl next door was just a few months older than her. They weren’t instant pals but it didn’t take long before they were chasing around together.

Tuesday all Rosalie could talk about was wearing her new swimsuit to the party and going in the pool. Finally the hour arrived and we went over. It was very nice and we met lots of new neighbors. Jeremy had to leave early as he was going to Portland for a basketball referees workshop. Before he left, we went home and lit a couple of sparklers. Rosalie wasn’t sure about them at first.

That night the explosions started well before dark, around 9:30, and continued without letup – literally with out so much as 15 or 20 seconds silence – until at least 11 pm, when my sleeping pills took hold. At least two different skyrocket shows could be seen out the back window of the house that were no more than a couple of hundred yards away.

Wednesday I went into Carnation to do laundry. The washer and dryer that Ashley and Jeremy had bought on Sunday wasn’t going to be delivered until the following Sunday and I was out of clean underwear. (It did come today and Ashley was on her 4th load when I talked to them earlier tonight.) Rosalie played a lot with Emma, the girl next door.

Thursday, Ashley took me to Snoqualmie Falls, about a half hour up the valley from Duvall. It’s a pretty falls but also a hydroelectric power generating facility. We waked the trail to the bottom and checked it out from there as well.

Friday we went to McCormick Park, which is a little city park right off the main drag in Duvall and right on the river. This was maybe ten minutes from their house. There was a nice sandy beach to play on. Rosalie made mud pies (or something) and dabbled in the water looking at the little marine animals. Afterward we had lunch in a little cafe and got a library card at the library across the street. Rosalie took out three books.

Saturday morning, Ashley took me to Sea-Tac and I came home. I had originally intended to come home on Amtrak or a bus but it would have been 24 to 26 hours en route vs 2 1/2 and the cost was comparable. In the end, it was about 12 hours short of two weeks. It was great!

‘goal oriented’

Mom used this phrase on FB referring to my trip across the country with Jeremy. I don’t think I have a lot to say about it right now except I thought it was interesting in light of my earlier angst over the term.

I will continue to think upon the whole subject and will post more on it.

my trip with Jeremy

Two weeks ago today my alarm went off at 3:30 in the morning. I had a 6 am flight to Atlanta. From Seattle, Jeremy was doing something similar. He got there first and got his car out of long term parking and was waiting for me when I came out of the terminal. It was about 4 pm local time.

We stopped for a bite to eat, then went to the Home Depot where the Penske 26′ bobtail and trailer were waiting for us. The trailer was for his Subaru SUV. It took about an hour to do all the paperwork and get instruction on how to hook up and get the car onto the trailer. Jeremy had gotten a TB test in connection with one of his volunteer fireman gigs and had to get it read within a 48 to 72 hour period. Basically, now, so he headed to the clinic and I head to his house with the truck. Rather gingerly.

At his house we fell to it. The truck wouldn’t go up the driveway so everything had to be carried down the hill to the street. Early on, I asked if he had any rope to secure the load. The answer was no so I had a trip to Home Depot at 8 pm on a Sunday night. We kept plugging away and at half past midnight we were close enough to call it and go to bed. The beds were the last things remaining.

Originally, Jeremy had wanted to leave his house at 4:30 to avoid Atlanta morning traffic. I told him we had at least another hour of work to do before leaving so at midnight he consented to getting up at 4:30 with the goal of leaving by 5:30. I had suggested we push on and get out of town and stop somewhere a couple of hours past Atlanta but he wanted the rest first.

In the morning there were a myriad of little things, and then there was lining up the truck ball with the trailer. The trailer weighed almost 2000 pounds (without the car!) so picking it up and rolling it to the truck was not an option.

Finally, we were ready. I took a picture of the rig at 6:45 and we headed out.

The clinic had been closed the night before so Jeremy had to find another one right away. He also had his Comcast modem to return. He had looked up ahead of time and found that there was a Comcast store near the freeway in Murfreesboro Tennessee. We got there about 11 am. I had found a clinic close by to the store so that was good but they had to be talked into doing what Jeremy needed. Once I saw that it was going to be difficult, I bailed and got some lunch. Jeremy was in there at least a half hour for a test reading that took ten seconds. Paperwork. Turning in the modem was not a problem and we were off again by noon.

I had vaguely remembered seeing something the day before about the maximum speed with the trailer being 55 mph but I couldn’t find it in the cab. Eventually, I pushed it up to 65 on the Interstate and felt pretty secure. We were still passed by lots of big trucks. When Jeremy took over he got it up to 70 and passed a couple himself. After the trip was over, I was unloading the car and saw the notice on the trailer: 55 mph maximum speed. Oh well. Once I got used to it, the whole setup seemed very stable. The roads were generally good. Through Tennessee and Kentucky we mostly kept it at 70. Slower up the hills.

The weather was perfect. Sunday night loading the truck I soaked my T-shirt with sweat but it was warm enough that I didn’t worry about getting a chill. Monday was sunny and pleasantly warm with a few wispy clouds.

Google had us routed up through Paducah and thence to I-64, then west through St Louis joining I-70 there. At the rate we were going, I saw that we would go through St. Louis at rush hour. We actually used a combination of Google maps and Jeremy’s trusty 2002 Road Atlas for navigation. I found a highway, US 60, that led west out of Paducah straight over to Missouri via Cairo, IL. Looking at it now, I don’t see why we didn’t take US 62 which covers essentially the same route through Kentucky in less time.

Whatever. We crossed first the Ohio River, then about two minutes later the Mississippi River on high, two lane bridges. I think we were technically in Cairo for those two minutes but we saw nothing of the town. I took videos of the crossing complete with enthusiastic narration. Jeremy, who was driving, later told me he thought his blood pressure was at about 200 during those crossings. That was about 4 pm, now Central Time.

We eventually stopped for a real dinner in Arnold, MO, still short of St Louis, at around 7, so the issue of traffic was moot. Our goal was Kansas City and we made it around midnight. Actually, we went through KC, MO into Kansas and stayed in a motel on the west side. Here’s a map of our first day. 843 miles and 18 hours on the road. Whew!

Tuesday morning we were out getting gas (diesel) at 8:30. West on the Kansas Turnpike. Our goal this day was the home of Jeremy’s cousin, Suzanne, and her partner, Greg, in Avon, CO. Per Google maps, a mere 688 miles. We made good time across Kansas but unfortunately couldn’t avoid Denver at rush hour.

This was about 6 pm local time, now Mountain of course. Jeremy was at the wheel and pushed on up into the mountains.  We found that the Colorado I-70 grades were much steeper than the ones in Tennessee. In some cases, we could only go 35 mph with the accelerator floored. The final pass was of course much higher too. I’ve got a crappy picture of the sign: Vail Pass summit, elevation 10,662 feet!

Going down was an adventure, dropping into lower gears to slow the truck, and watching apprehensively the runaway truck ramps.

The weather was holding. We saw some rain and lightning in the distance approaching Denver but only a few drops fell on us. Every night we saw spectacular sunsets. Here’s a map of our second day. 693 miles in 13 hours.

Suzanne was on duty in Vail, so we ate a late dinner with Greg and chatted before going to bed. We had gotten to Avon at 8:30. In the morning, we headed back up to Vail – about 6 or 7 miles back up the mountain – to see Suzanne. She is an EMT and the shifts are 48 hours. Anyway, we had a brief visit with her at her station in Vail and we got back on the road about 9:30 am.

A couple of hours later, I was merrily getting settled after fueling up in Grand Junction when I saw a state patrol car along side of me with his lights on. I pulled over, expecting a lecture – or a ticket – for going too fast with that rig. Instead, the very young Trooper Pritchett (he gave me a card when we were done) wanted to tell us one of the straps had come off the car wheels. He helped us get it fixed and in ten minutes or so we were on our way again.

Unfortunately, our timing around big cities was again poor. We came into the Salt Lake City area around 5 pm and suffered through the slowdowns there. The Wasatch Mountains behind the city in the westering sun were beautiful, though. Around 7, Jeremy found a Mongolian ‘Bar-B-Q’ place a couple of miles off the freeway in Ogden so we stopped there for dinner. Here is where we were parked:

At dinner we discussed stopping earlier for that night so we settled on Twin Falls, ID as an objective. We figured we could get there by 10 but in reality it was more like 11 and there were no rooms available there.

We pressed on, Jeremy still driving since Ogden but determined. My efforts at securing a place to sleep kept failing. There wasn’t much between Twin Falls and Boise. I did have Internet access on my phone along the highway. I was thankful for that. Finally I made a reservation for a motel in Boise. We pulled in about 1 am and had to park a couple of blocks away. In the lobby, though, my name wasn’t on the manager’s list. I had talked to an operator for Super 8 motels and she hadn’t understood that I wanted a room for right now. It was confusing because by then it had already passed midnight. The Super 8 guy told us there were other motels nearby that likely had rooms. I called one who confirmed that and I said, ‘We’ll be right over!’

We parked in an office building lot. I figured that we were going to be gone before anyone showed up to work in the morning. We hauled our tired bodies out of bed and into the truck by 7 am. Destination: North Bend, WA, the end of the road! Belatedly, I had thought of potential problems with morning rush hour traffic in Boise but most of the slow downs were going the other way. Phew!

Here’s a map of our third day. 763 miles in 16 hours.

By now, everything was started to blur. I guess it was the country north out of Ogden that I thought was pretty: wheat fields in the evening sun. Or maybe it was the country west and north of Boise on up into Oregon. I remember crossing the Columbia River around 1 pm. I remember the Yakima River valley starting around Prosser with its beautiful vineyards and orchards.

This picture is from Oregon. It shows how our rig was almost as long as the guys towing the 53 footers.:

While eating lunch in Prosser, I convinced Jeremy that we should take the car off the trailer so he could go ahead so as not to be late for his training class. Originally, he had set 3 pm as a time to be in North Bend. His class was at 5 but he wanted time to clean up and eat. It was becoming clear that the truck wouldn’t get there until 4 at the earliest. We had the grades of Snoqualmie Pass coming up. At Ellensburg, we pulled off the highway, did that, and he went off in the car.

I got to their rental house in North Bend as predicted, about 4. Rosalie came running out to give me a big hug and Jame and her family were all there with Ashley too. Jeremy had gotten there about a half hour earlier and was ready to leave in his clean clothes.

Here’s a map of our fourth day. 475 miles in 9 1/2 hours. Actual miles driven start to finish using the truck odometer were 2,858. I’ll leave it to you to do any averaging arithmetic. It was a fast trip. Jeremy and I had some good talks. He had some Bill Simmons podcasts that he & I listened to. I tried to write in my journal but eventually gave up as it was too bouncy. I took a few pictures with my phone. Good times.

I’ll put up another post about moving into the new house and other activities in Washington.