quotes

Zach did a lot of reading. When he read something that he thought was worthwhile, he made a note of the quote. A year ago I could have told you where his quote files were but now I’d have to look around a bit.

I do have a sheet of paper on my wall with some quotes on it. I don’t remember how it came to be printed. Was it in his effects or did I find it in a file and print it here? It doesn’t have his name on it but I know it came from him. In front of the paper, tacked on the wall, are two photos, taken on the same day. Here is one:

To see the other one you’ll have to go here.

Anyway, here are the quotes. Only one is attributed.

A great person attracts great people and knows how to hold them together.
— Goethe

We are not what we know but what we are willing to learn.

The art of teaching is the art of assisting discovery.

People seem not to see that their opinion of the world is also a confession of their character.

We’re not really taught how to recreate constructively. We need to do more than find diversions; we need to restore and expand ourselves. Our idea of relaxing is all too often to plop down in front of the television and let its pandering idiocy liquify our brains. Shutting off the thought process is not rejuvenating; the mind is like a car battery – it recharges by running . . . A playful mind is inquisitive, and learning is fun. If you indulge your natural curiosity and retain a sense of fun in new experience, I think you’ll find it functions as a sort of shock absorber for the bumpy road ahead.

To laugh often and much; to win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children; to earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends; to appreciate beauty; to find the best in others; to leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch or a redeemed social condition; to know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded.

diaries

At the risk of incurring Sarah’s wrath, I’m going to confess I saw some of her diaries yesterday. Honestly, I didn’t look at them except to determine what they were. I was transferring some of her things stored at my apartment from old boxes into a nicer plastic tub.

The reason this is blog-worthy is that it struck me that all of my kids are writers and that makes me happy. On my front page I make reference to Zach’s prodigious writing being an inspiration. Now I realize that Sarah has written a lot as well. I haven’t seen anything of Jeremy’s writing but I know he’s done a lot.

Last year Mom brought out – I don’t remember why – a diary that my grandfather had written in 1915 of a train trip he took from Denver to southern California. Very little philosophizing, just the gritty details of travel. Great stuff!

It’s an arguable point as to whether pencil or pen on paper has more value than these electronic squiggles. I’m the first to agree that handling the actual paper that my grandfather held had value more than the words themselves. Paper can be free form in a way that is more difficult in e-writing.

It’s all valuable. I treasure those glimpses of my ancestors as I hope my descendants will enjoy a look into my mind, whether it’s this blog or some moldy spiral notebooks. Write on!

memorials

I went to a memorial yesterday. That’s what I was calling it anyway. It could have been styled as a celebration of life, as we did for Zach. I’ve been calling it a memorial since celebrating a dead person doesn’t work very well for me.

Lynn McKee was a stage electrician for the Opera for the whole time I worked there, with the exception of one year away at ACT. He went on for quite a while after I left. I don’t know exactly when he retired but it was less than ten years ago. He died earlier this year in Thailand, where he had been living. Lynn was 69 years old and had children and grandchildren in his life, most of whom were at the memorial. They all seemed like very nice people.

Many of my old friends and colleagues were there. Late in the afternoon, when it was time to leave for the memorial, I hesitated because I had had a bad day grieving Zach. I thought I would have a hard time handling the emotions. Luckily, I went, but it was a roller coaster ride.

Several people express sympathy over my loss of Zach but when I asked how they were doing, I heard stories of spouses with cancer, children on heroin, strokes, and divorces. In most cases, these people had a vision of a certain kind of life going forward and now everything was changed. Sound familiar?

There’s another memorial today, for Kirk. I’ve committed to driving a couple of other people so I have to go. I want to go, because I get to see people I like and respect and I don’t often get to see them. And I want to pay my respects to the family of the dead man, just as I did yesterday. We are a community.

missing Zach

A bunch of things happened today that were not particularly significant by themselves, but, taken together, they got me to where I’m missing Zach more than usual.

There was a question about his finances and I couldn’t find anything. I guess I sent it all to Ally. But I looked through the bulging file from 2015 that has all the cards I got.

I dug out his iPad and found that an ‘administrator’ had deleted his Outlook account. That was his LSU email. Nothing significant has come through there for a long time but still . . . His Yahoo mail account has a few postings from services that I couldn’t (or didn’t bother to) cancel. Nothing from real people. Yahoo had thoughtfully notified us that several attempts have been made to log into that account using an email address from his early days at Xavier. From China, Russia, you get the picture. Time to shut that down, I guess.

Zach used an app called Evernote to make to do lists. Opening Evernote shows me his list from the last week of his life. I’m not ready to give that up. There’s also a recording app that has some interviews he did in that last week for his research. I think I downloaded them but right now I can’t remember where.

MLB At Bat. Oh yeah, there was a message in the Yahoo account about how they re-upped him for this year using the same credit card as before. I hope Ally has cancelled it. I took it off the iPad. ESPN Radio. Gone.

Jeremy called today and among other things he said he had some things he wished he could talk to Zach about. We all miss his wisdom, his empathy, his humor. I was a poor substitute.

It’s not an anniversary or anything special. It’s just an ordinary day and I’m missing Zach.

Zach’s music

Rose mentioned to me the other day that she was still listening to The Airborne Toxic Event song that Jeremy had posted about last fall. I vaguely remembered it. There’s a link to a video of the song in the post.

I don’t like music videos, even of tunes I like, so I didn’t watch it. Also, the emotional overhead was too much.

But Rose’s comment started me thinking about music that Zach liked. He had a stack of home-brew CDs in his car which I inherited. I remembered them. I had gone through them while we were driving from Baton Rouge to Jeremy’s house during what would be his last summer. Most of them didn’t interest me. In fact, I had a hard time picking out anything I wanted to listen to. Zach was cool, though. He didn’t press anything on me or complain when I found a mash up of Eagles songs to put on the player

I went through them a year ago. I kept a couple. Some were mixes I copied onto my hard drive. A couple were mixes with people’s names on them so I sent them back. The bulk of them I sent on to Jeremy. I did copy some of them and they come up every once in a while on my random playlist.

It’s funny, despite having many thousands of tunes on my hard drive, it’s rare that one comes up that I don’t recognize. When I check, it most often is from that group of Zach’s CDs. Even though the music usually doesn’t move me, it’s a good feeling to have a little connection with Zach through his music.

I bought the Airborne Toxic album with that tune on it this morning. I think I’ll listen to it now.

Franz

I looked at my birthday calendar this morning and I noticed that it’s been a year since my cousin Franz died. It was actually the anniversary last week but I didn’t note it then.

I’ve been better (if you want to call it that) about anniversaries lately. I’ve made it through quite a few 14th’s of the month now without getting all knotted up about Zach. The sorrow comes at odd places and times now. Odd in the sense that they are not predictable. Sunday I was in my car on the way down to Santa Clara when I just started weeping. There was no obvious trigger; I was just missing Zach.

Today Jeremy sent me a detailed itinerary of his and Ashley’s move in June. Seeing in glorious detail their plans for finding a place to live and jobs while also being concerned about places my sister Jane’s family can take Rosalie for fun brought on the waterworks again. It’s the kind of gutsy move you don’t see often. I am so full of admiration for them.

My thinking about Franz recently has mostly been about looking forward to visiting Germany this summer. I will be paying my respects to his mother – turning 100 in August! – his brother and sister, and his grave. Two men gone too soon.

weekend in Portland

Now it can be told . . .

Actually, I was laughing about it yesterday. I love Mike, but I’m pretty sure he doesn’t read this blog. Nevertheless, I was studiously avoiding saying anything about going to Portland because it was to be for a surprise retirement party for him.

It all worked out fine. Mike was surprised and everyone had a good time. I did allow that restriction get me somewhat twisted about writing posts over the last couple of weeks. I hope to catch up this week.

So, Rose’s brother Mike retired. Friday was his last day. He’s the same age as me so I hate him. No, not really, but nowadays I’m a bit jealous of people my age who are retired. I’ve started using the term ‘semi-retired’ to describe myself but it seems that it is more ‘semi’ than ‘retired’.

Well, that’s a post for another day. Rose and I left early Saturday. We had a 6:30 am flight so we were up and left the apartments at 4. Once in Portland, breakfast was a high priority. Rose suggested the biscuit place where we had eaten with Zach and his friend Chris B in 2014. Google eventually revealed that it was Pine State Biscuits so we went there.

The food was fine but being there brought back a flood of memories of Zach. He had come out to California in December then came up to Portland a few days after Christmas to visit Chris. He stayed with us and Mike’s family for a couple of days before going off with Chris. Actually, the breakfast at Pine State Biscuits was the transfer point.

It was my first time back in Portland since that visit so seemingly everything was fraught with memories of Zach. Sitting at those picnic style tables, I actually broke down for a minute. It was at the end of our meal and we shortly after that got up to leave. It wasn’t until I got to the car that I realized I had left my backpack in the restaurant net to the table. Kinda scattered, I was . . .

The back pack was still there and after retrieving it we headed out to visit Mike’s daughter Sarah. She lives on 5 acres just outside of Oregon City with her husband Mike C and their two lovely daughters. Also pigs, chickens, ducks and goats which we all went out to see. Sarah made us deviled eggs from her stock of literally dozens of fresh eggs. Mike and Sarah are not quite self sufficient but they’re close.

Soon other visitors arrived. Sarah’s aunts, Jean and Elaine, had driven down from Bellingham and came over. Then we heard that Mike H was coming. Rose and I hid in a bedroom until he got in the house, then stepped out to greet him. Somehow this was distinct from the surprise party. At this point I was just doing what I was told. Mike had done quite a bit of drinking the night before so he was hungover. He was glad to see us but not trying to hard to connect the dots. Mike and Rose’s brother Steve had come up the night before so I think the story was that there would be a family dinner that night.

After lunch, Rose and I left to check into our hotel and get some rest. The surprise party was at 7 and we were there on time. The bar was open and there was food – what could be better? There were about 40 people there when Mike was brought in by Steve on the pretext of the family dinner. He was gobsmacked so that was good. There were lots of Mike’s work friends there besides family.

The next morning, Rose and I breakfasted at the hotel then went to Mike’s club – he’s an avid golfer – for brunch. His other daughters Caitlyn and Keriann were there along with Caitlyn’s daughter Elliot. Also Sarah with Josephine and Devin so we had the kids corner. I was originally not intending to eat much but changed my mind. It was kind of a lunch. In fact, I didn’t have to eat again until we got to the airport.

Anyway, good food and good conversation. Afterwards we went back to Mike’s house where we mostly just sat around and watched the kids play in the front yard. Josephine set up an imaginary restaurant and went around taking orders from everyone then bringing them their gravel ‘food’. Just like Rosalie!

A good day but eventually it was 4 o’clock and we had to leave for the flight home. There was some problem at SFO so Alaska had to fly us to the San Jose airport then bus us to SFO. There were some silly moments but we got back to SFO about 9:30, about an hour and a half later than it would have been.

I was able to talk to some of the family members about Zach, which was good. I told the Bellingham people about Jeremy’s moving to Washington and promised I would try to get up to see them in July. My angst of the previous week was gone, which was best of all.

Posture

Sarah called me the other day and one of the things she had to say was that she felt my height was not what it used to be. I’ve been interpreting that as a posture issue but she made it clear that she was worried that I might be headed down the same road as Dad.

Medical terms confuse me so I never can remember if kiphosis is the correct term for his condition or if it’s just osteoporosis. Many people have osteoporosis, I think, and don’t exhibit his symptoms. He has lost at least a foot in height in the last ten years or so. He’s badly bent over now.

Anyway, Sarah said that she thought I’ve lost some height in the last year and wanted to encourage me to do what ever I could to prevent the same thing happening to me as happened to Dad. There is some thought in the family that he had the opportunity to take action and didn’t

I haven’t had good posture for a long time, but I felt that there were a number of reasons for that. One is that I’ve never felt comfortable talking to people from a height. Since I’m taller than most other people, I find that I stoop to try to get to the eye level of whoever I’m talking to. Another is self confidence. Perhaps these are related. I think I often try to be inconspicuous. Put down here in writing it sounds really dumb – a 6′ 2″, 200 lb guy trying to be inconspicuous – get real!

One of the things I always liked while being with Zach was not having the excuse of stooping to talk to him. He didn’t stoop to me and I had to stand up straight to talk at him.

I had to admit to Sarah that I hadn’t been doing the exercises I had started with my physical therapy last year. I promised to get going on them again. Self confidence doesn’t come from a magic pill, so I will just continue to try to get good sleep and keep my work load low so I don’t feel beaten down.

Zach on Powder by Jeremy

Jeremy wrote a lovely response to my last post but I want to elevate the meat of it to top billing. Here’s a partial quote:

Zach was quite the cynic when it came to animals. He was a guest in my home probably more often than anyone else in the lifespan of one Powder Lucifer Wood, the kitten I adopted (at Ashley’s behest) in 2006, right before she and I got engaged. Powder got his first name from his snow-white fur, but the middle name is an accurate reflection of his personality, and Zach had a couple of memorable one-liners about his enmity for my cat.
On one visit, when Powder was only a few months old, he was to sleep on a futon in the downstairs (this was prior to Ashley and I moving in together). I offered to take the futon, telling him that the cat sometimes liked to play at night and he said not to worry about it, it wouldn’t bother him.
Late in the afternoon the next day, he looked sideways at Powder, then looked at me and said flatly “You’re sleeping on the futon tonight.”

Another time a few years later, he arrived at our house on Laurel Haven. As Powder often does when strangers enter the house, he greeted Zach with his trademark hiss/growl combination. Zach grinned sardonically and, with perfect aplomb, put on his Sean Connery voice and said “Once again, we play our dangerous game, with our old adversary.” (That’s a line from The Hunt for Red October, one of his and my favorite movies). I went out of my skull with laughter.

Yosemite

I drove to Yosemite yesterday. It was 8 hours of driving for about 6 hours in the park but totally worth it.

Rose had mentioned a while ago that she was interested – apropos the NPS 100th anniversary last year – in seeing National Parks, so I asked her a couple of weeks ago if she wanted to see Yosemite. She was thrilled with the idea but as it came closer I was not so sure. There was a big storm predicted for Sunday in the evening and I had to work (1 am) late the night before.

We went anyway and it worked out great. It was cloudy all day and we only got rained on a little. I took pictures but for the most part they were crappy. Our first stop was the Tunnel Overlook where busloads of tourists emulated Ansel Adams. Here’s my version.

Later at the Ansel Adams store I bought a post card with his version. I’m not going to put it here.

We tried to go at least to the bridge below Vernal Falls but the parking lot was full. Yosemite Falls’ trail was severely reduced due to ice on some of the foot bridges. Everywhere we went, there was evidence of the recent flooding. This is just below Yosemite Falls.

Finally, towards the end of the day, we made it back to Bridalveil. I hadn’t gone in there earlier because that parking lot was full. Rose finally got the experience of getting slammed with spray from a big waterfall. There’s nothing like it!

All day long I was trying to remember the last time I had been there. All the scenery coming in on Highway 120 felt familiar to me but it turned out the last time I was there was in May 2003. Only 14 years ago! My best memory is going up the 4 mile trail to Glacier Point. The trail had only just opened the day before and there were a couple of dicey spots. One of them caused Sarah and Nancy to turn around but the boys and I persisted and we were rewarded with being the first ones at the top on a spectacular day. Here’s a taste:

And earlier, a little lower on the trail:

S	M	T	W	T	F	S
	1	2	3	4	5	6
7	8	9	10	11	12	13
14	15	16	17	18	19	20
21	22	23	24	25	26	27
28	29	30

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