Category Archives: Life as we know it

another blog

Ashley posted a link on FaceBook for a college friend of hers. She had a blog starting in 2010. It has the listing of post dates right at the top of the front page so I could see that. I could also see that there were no entries from April 2014 to July of 2017. Part of the reason is that Ashley’s friend developed a tumor on her brain stem. I’ve spent much of this morning looking through her blog and I see that her condition has gone from bad to worse. Her husband has been writing the posts for the last few months because chemo has completely sapped her strength.

It’s all an object lesson for us to treasure the good things we have when we have them.

Best of luck, Jordan and Brack. I’m not a praying person but I am putting positive energy into the cosmos for you.

Here’s the link.

Giving Tuesday

So after two weeks – or more – of ‘Black Friday’ sales, ‘Small Business Saturday’, and ‘Cyber Monday’, now we have ‘Giving Tuesday’. What was Sunday? I suppose ‘NFL Sunday’ is unnecessarily redundant in the fall. Maybe there was something else I forgot. ‘Support the Troops Sunday’? As if an enormous percentage of my taxes doesn’t already go to ‘Troops’. The football coaches are all wearing camo and other military-themed stuff. Sheesh!

Where does this stuff get started? ‘Throwback Thursday’ is a thing on FaceBook. Now there is a thing where you’re supposed to post seven days of black and white pictures. Who makes black and white pictures any more? I don’t look at them on principle.

Today FaceBook is choked with appeals from – mostly worthy, IMO – organizations for donations because it’s ‘Giving Tuesday’. Is it a guilt trip for people who spent a lot of money on stupid consumer goods all weekend? I just don’t know.

I know I didn’t spend any money on consumer goods this weekend (unless you count groceries) so I kind of resent the guilt trip. I give when I can to organizations that, in general, don’t send me appeals all the time. I’ve been writing checks and sending them in the mail more because I noticed that there are now intermediary organizations on the Internet that facilitate donations in return for a fee. Then they hold your money for ’60 to 75 days’ (Network for Good). No thanks. I’ll write a check.

where is god?

I was half – ok, about 10% – watching football today while at work. Running a straight symphony show is pretty straightforward. Pay attention to a few critical things and everything is usually ok. That said, even if I had the time I can’t watch football seriously anymore. Hell, I can’t even watch baseball seriously anymore and I like baseball.

Anyway, I happened to see the kicker right after he kicked a field goal (or something). The looked up and pointed his finger to the sky. Now I am reading into this but I think I’m on solid ground. I’ve seen this type of thing many times in the last few years, in all sports, and even seen it explained. He’s thanking god for his successful performance.

So I thought, wouldn’t it be funny if the successful sports person recognized that god is everywhere and pointed to the ground to thank god. Or even something like, ‘Mother Earth, you rock!”

Yeah, I know, It’ll never happen.

(Why do I capitalize Mother Earth but not god? I don’t know. Just perverse I guess. Don’t tell me god will be pissed that s/he isn’t respected. Puhleeze.)

this year

It’s not even the end of the year yet but I saw something tonight that gave me a little shock of time passing.

I have a folder in my photos folder titled 2017 miscellany. I use it for things that aren’t easily categorized. Kind of like miscellany. You know, you just can’t get this kind of insight anywhere! Seriously, I think I started on a manic phase this afternoon when I got off work. I don’t have to go back until Saturday!

Any time I go somewhere and take pictures, I save them in a folder titled with the date and where I was. 2017 August Germany is a good example. Often there are subfolders. Miscellany usually turns out to contain pictures of relatives that have been posted on Facebook. Tonight I was looking at Noah’s 3rd grade photo Ally posted. Along with it in my miscellany folder is this one:

It’s from January. It seems like ages ago but I remember well the shock I felt when I first saw it. What a cool thing! Thank you, Laurie, for your efforts to have Zach remembered in this way. May it never fade!

back in the saddle

Home. My little apartment. I got back last night after a day of travel: driving from Spokane to Seattle, to the hotel where I rented the car, then walking to the Transit Center to catch a bus to the airport ($2.75, a deal!), hurrying through checking my bag and through security to the gate where the plane was 30 minutes late. Then it was an hour, then another half hour. I got to SFO at nearly 7, twelve hours after I had left Spokane.

I makes me think I should just drive all the way next time.

Today I did laundry and caught up on the myriad things that the real world demands: bringing my checkbook up to date, paying bills. One bill was for car insurance. My traffic light indiscretion last year cost me nearly $500 at the time. Today I found out that it will cost me another $300 on my insurance. Grrr . . . . As far as I can tell, there is no mechanism for removing the one point I now have by any kind of traffic school so I guess I’ll have to eat the increase for the three years! the point is on my record.

There is a thing called Mature Driver Discount that AAA will give me if I complete an online class so I started that today. I thought about shopping other insurance companies but it makes me weak.

Then there is work. I called in and the Christmas crunch is getting rolling. We’re ok through next weekend but after that I may be working 5 or 6 long days each week. That’s 60 or more hours for those of you who haven’t been paying attention. Welcome, real world!

that awful night

‘That awful night’ has been my code phrase for the night two years ago when Zach was killed. I’ve been thinking about it a lot in the last couple of months. Actually, not about the night itself, but the anniversary of it. I’ve been thinking that while I certainly won’t forget what happened on this date, I want to focus on celebrating Zach on his birthday rather than his death day.

The group I was going to in Santa Clara, Compassionate Friends, begins each monthly meeting with a reading of the names of those who died in that month. They also read the names of those who were born. I was never comfortable with that, though. I really wanted – and I still want – to focus on moving forward rather than looking back.

This blog, which began as a tribute to Zach, has become a chronicle of my activities and thoughts. Sometimes they are looking backwards, but more often they are in the moment and with a positive outlook. This, I believe, is how Zach would prefer that he be remembered. In the words of his grandfather Clark Ewing, ‘Pick up the slack for Zach.’ Do something positive, push yourself a little.

I’ve been staying since Monday in Spokane with my friends Peter and Nanci. Peter had a stroke three years ago and has limited speech ability and his right side is paralyzed. The three of us have had discussions about trauma, about change in our lives, and even some good talk about people we knew in high school. In some ways, Peter’s condition reminds me of my father’s. In both cases, their intellect is intact but the mechanism for connecting that intellect to the rest of the world doesn’t work properly. For Peter, there have been some positive signs: he can walk a little with a cane; he has been able to speak a few new words. For my father, I fear there will be no return.

For both men, those who love them have to treasure what we have and not get wrapped up in what we don’t have,

Yesterday was a good day. I helped Nanci hang some cabinets and fixed a broken door. The wind blew the hot water heater pilot out in the afternoon and I helped relight it. But we didn’t go anywhere, we just stayed near each other and talked and treasured the moments.

Dia

The Dia de los Muertos concert was today. The art has been in the Davies lobby for about three weeks. As usual, I find the exhibits moving. The same artist that did The Tear last year did something similar. It is a basin with water in it and a pump that circulates the water gently. Visitors are invited to place the name of their loved one on a piece of paper and put it in the water. The ink dissolves in the water meaning . . . something. I walked past this work every day and I could not put Zach’s name in the water.

Many of the concertgoers today were painted in the Dia style. That is to say, they had faces painted in stylized skulls. I couldn’t feel it. I felt plenty of loss. Sarah played the concert, as she did last year, and, like last year, I was able to have a semi-private moment with her. No words were spoken, but we were both thinking of Zach and sharing our grief.

Later, I shared some moments with some of the ushers I’ve become friendly with. I also saw, and spoke to, Martha, who curated the whole lobbies installation. She knows about Zach and gave me a big hug. She told me it was fine that I didn’t put his name in the water. I told her about my shrine in my apartment.

I got to spend yesterday with Mom and Dad and coming in to work today it was hard to get back into work mode. Eventually, I got squared away. Now it is past midnight and I will be getting on a plane at 9 to go visit Rosalie and her Mom and Dad. Yay!

new post

I see it’s been 8 days since my last flurry of posts following the death of my friend Robin. I haven’t been super busy, but I had the grind of showing up for work every day at Davies. On only one did I have to stay past 5 pm. I tried for two nights to go without sleeping pills and the results were not very good. The first night I did ok but the second night I woke up at 3 in the morning and was not able to go back to sleep. That put a bad spin on the rest of the day, as you might imagine. I started feeling like a cornered animal, desperate to escape but not knowing how to do it.

Today Sarah’s quartet is playing a very ambitious program over in the East Bay. One of the pieces, Steve Reich’s Different Trains, requires the use of amplification of the instruments along with the playback of a pre-recorded track of train sounds and speaking. I was able to arrange for the use of some of the Symphonyu’s sound equipment so in a couple of hours I’ll be going back to the hall to gather all that together and take to the concert.

The weather was hot earlier in the week but today the fog is in over Linda Mar. Windows that were thrown wide open just a couple of days ago are shut again.

I finished my jigsaw puzzle this morning. It was only 750 pieces and not too difficult. It took just under two weeks and that included not even touching it at all for several days. With no band music to prepare, I am hardly playing music at all. I might have picked up the guitar for a total of ten minutes in the last ten days.

Last Saturday was a nice day. My nephew Danny hosted a get together with just about all the Northern California Woods. The best part was seeing, and playing with, all the young kids – great nieces and nephews to me. In all, there were 5 under the age of 6 years. Here they all are with Mom and Dad.

the theatre

Yesterday, after getting the news of Robin’s death, I did fairly normal things which you can read about in yesterday’s blog post. Even before getting the news, I had been determined to get out of the apartment and go for a walk somewhere, so I did that. Just south of Half Moon Bay is a parking lot for a trail that leads 1/2 mile straight through some fields to bluffs overlooking the ocean. On one end are stairs that go down to a beach; on the other a couple of benches where you can sit and look at another beach that is protected for the seals.

There were no seals, and very few people. In two hours there, I saw five people (and one dog, which wasn’t supposed to be there, but that’s another story).

On the way back, I walked down Main Street and looked in the cute little shops. There is a nice card store there where I bought some cards, including a sympathy one for Kris. I was going to have lunch there but the cuteness of the street was bugging me. For that, I went back north of town to the Cafe 3-0 at the airport. Just your basic, no bullshit, greasy spoon.

I got home about 1 and was pretty pooped so I laid down and picked up a book I had gotten at the library last week. I’m not sure why I got it because I didn’t recognize the name of the actor who wrote it, even though he was evidently successful. He had grown up in San Francisco. I think that’s why I picked it up.

I never did sleep. I read that book from cover to cover. It’s called Are You Anybody? by Jeffery Tambor. When I was done, I just started sobbing. For Robin, for Zach, I don’t know, but it hit me somewhere deep.

I got involved in the theatre at DeAnza College when I was 18. I don’t know why I insist on spelling it that way. The spell checker says it’s wrong. I think I do it to differentiate between live theatre and the movie theater. Live theatre is just the best. Sort of like live music. It’s an activity that a group of humans take on for the purpose of presenting something to other humans in a communal setting. I’m sure there were aspects of theatre in caves thousands of years ago. I think it’s one of the most beautiful things that a human can do.

Anyway, I was at DeAnza, my local community college, because I had quit being a math major at UC Santa Cruz in favor of playing in my rock band in Cupertino. After six months of flailing around, my parents said that if I wanted to live at home I had to go to school. So, I went to DeAnza as a music major.

Literally my first quarter there I was just looking for a class to fill out my schedule and my eye fell on Stagecraft. I thought, ‘I’m going to be on stages for the rest of my life, I’ll take a class in stagecraft.’ I had never been particularly interested in theatre. I don’t think I’d ever even been to a play. I had no idea what stagecraft really meant.

The purpose of the class was basically to build sets and run the technical end of the play which the department was doing. My first theatre job was taking care of props for the play that fall. It was called Marathon 33, about marathon dancing during the 1930s depression.

Theatre at DeAnza was done in a facility then called the Box Theatre. It was a room roughly 60′ square which included the shop area. The was a grid for hanging lighting instruments over most of it at 16′ high and a lighting and sound booth overlooking the whole thing. Seating risers got pushed around to suit the configurations of what ever performance was being done.

Abutting the Box Theatre, touching but not really connected, was a 2,500 seat auditorium called The Flint Center for the Performing Arts. Actually, the Calvin C. Flint Center, named after the man who who had been the first Superintendent of the school district. After being in the school theatre for a while, I got to know the people running it and discovered they had student help for setting up community shows. Pushing the shell towers around and setting up risers and chairs, mostly. Incredibly (in my mind), rather than look to the drama department for workers, they had felt that strength was more important so they had football players working there. Oh, and the football players’ girlfriends . . .

Long story short, I eventually got on their list and joined the crew doing risers and chairs. That eventually led to a staff position and, later, getting overhire jobs with the union for the professional shows and, still later, joining the union and making theatre my career.

In all this time, I’ve done relatively little in what I would call real theatre. Plays. I worked at SF Opera for 13 years. I worked on lots of traveling musicals in Sacramento for ten years. The last five or six years I’ve been working pretty steadily for the SF Symphony. All worthy communal human activities. Just not really theatre.

In the relatively few times I’ve gotten involved in actual plays, it always felt like home. There is a certain kind of bonding that takes place with theatre people that I really enjoy.

Robin and Kris are theatre people to the bone. And Jeffery Tambor’s book is about theatre people. And maybe I have some regrets that I took the jobs that paid better and didn’t get so much of real theatre. And I thought of Robin being dead and how vibrant she had been, and how dedicated she was to real theatre, and how she was gone too soon, and Zach was gone too soon. So I was crying.

I eventually calmed down enough to go over and sit with Rose for a few minutes. She doesn’t get the theatre stuff but she gets everything else better than anyone. She had a lumpectomy and radiation treatment three years ago. We cried a little together, then I came home and ate some dinner and went to bed. I was beat but I ended up laying there reading posts on the guitar and bass forums until midnight.

Susie texted me last night that Kris is in assisted living because the left side of her body doesn’t work any more. Susie is another real theatre person. Today I hope to be making a call to Susie and perhaps to Kris. I couldn’t face it last night.

Robin Gray

Logging in to FaceBook this morning I see a note that Robin Gray died yesterday afternoon after a five year battle with breast cancer.

Robin was married to Kristin. Kristin was my first pal when I started working at the Sacramento Community Center (as it was then known) in the early ’90s. We had gotten hired at the same time and spent many hours trying to figure out WTF management was up to there. There was no discussion of sex, or sexual roles. I don’t remember the first time I met Robin. It may have been after the two of them came back from Florida around ’95 or ’96.

Whatever. The memories I have from the last ten years or so of my time in Sacramento are of the two of them being happy together and completely open about their relationship. I’ve always been pretty liberal and tolerant so I didn’t have a problem with this, but nevertheless, Robin and Kris showed me from a much closer perspective how two people can have a solid relationship regardless of what they do in the bedroom.

Robin had been a stage manager for many years and was one of the best. I found out she had stage managed the San Francisco Phantom Of The Opera show for its five year run only when she mentioned it in passing one day. There was no pretension, no bullshit, yet her wicked sense of humor was always ready.

I kept up with her through FaceBook, but I hadn’t spoken to her or Kris for a while. Three or four years, maybe. I wrote on Kris’ FB page today but I felt I wanted to put something more here. Robin and Kris were one of the very few bright spots for me in Sacramento.

<Edit> One of my other good friends from my Sacramento days is Susie. I’m going to close with her words about Robin (I’ve taken out the last names and links):

Friends, loved ones, extended family and all who loved Robin…it’s my sorrowful duty to inform you that Robin passed away today at about 5pm PDT. She was surrounded by her partner and wife of 26 years, Kristin T., her beloved old chum and champion, Kiki W., and her tribe of devoted caregivers, Kathy M., Jamie J., Mindy G. and David G. Robin’s courageous and extended battle with breast cancer was one for the ages. Her work with UCSF in clinical trials not only extended her life, but IS extending the lives of thousands of women who survive today because Robin participated in that ground-breaking work. Robin was devoted to her work at UCDavis’ Department of Theatre and Dance, where she taught stage and production management, in addition to a variety of other courses. Her pride in her students, her respect for faculty and staff, and her affection for the campus itself was sincere and heart-felt. She loved working there. Robin called her last cue shortly before she passed, saying she was “done.” Shortly thereafter, to the sounds of songs and some laughter, she passed. More information to follow in the days to come. Tonight, as you all drift to sleep around the world, think of some time you had with Robin that made you laugh. She would love to hear you all laugh, not cry, tonight