Strangers in a Strange Land
January 29, 2016
I.
January 29, 2016
I.
We’ll have to meet at the front gate, the agent says. This turns out to be very appropriately cautious: nobody could ever find this place on his own, notwithstanding how convenient it was described to be in the “Sales” mode. This is Customer Service.
At the front gate, there is a nineteen-digit key code to get in. Fortunately, the agent knows it. We follow her car.
After five minutes of driving through a winding parking lot flanked by garages that support … bungalows, I guess, above, we come to a steep uphill, a turn, then a steep downhill. Into an underground parking garage, with another gate and another code. The garage is reminiscent of the Millennium Park Garage on a weekend when nothing is going on in Grant Park, only much smaller.
Up from the garage into the light of day, more or less. The elevator requires a special fob to be waved in front of a keypad, or you will go nowhere. Later, it turns out that if you are in the elevator and the door closes and you have no fob (like if your spouse, with the fob, exited while you were gathering up the stuff you set down), you are entombed. If this happens, better have patience, a loud voice, and no particular urgency about visiting the bathroom.
Front door; entry hall; kitchen to the left, living room to the right. Flamingo statuary everywhere, and starfish on the surfaces. 1980s far-western-suburbs. As I walk farther into the apartment, I become conscious of an … odor. Like the proverbial French whorehouse, it’s sickly sweet. Suitable for obscuring the effects of a recent, messy demise. Behind me I hear Janet coughing, which quickly turns into wheezing and gasping: an asthma attack. I turn and rush her back out the front door: no breathing within 15 feet of entrance!
There are little plastic things plugged in to just about every wall socket. They emit noxious fumes that, if you are of a certain cast of mind, may smell pleasant. You know the kind of person who wears way too much perfume or cologne? Now put yourself in a Smart car with him or her, heater full on and windows closed. Now multiply by ten.
The property agent, mortified (it was her doing, apparently) and I rush around the apartment unplugging little perfume monsters; we come up with maybe 40 of them, and she hustles them into a sack and out the door. I open every window and door in the place, and turn on ceiling fans. Soon, Janet is able to come in. It takes another day, with the smell lingering and me wondering if plastic flamingos can fart, before I find another one of the little gizmos, in a socket behind a door.
But so be it. The furniture appears to be new, and of very high quality. The footstools in front of the matching Stressless® recliners themselves pop open, on hydraulic arms, to reveal convenient storage compartments beneath your very feet. Why, you could keep your book, your newspaper and magazines, right there, tastefully out of sight but close at hand.
Only no one has, apparently, ever thought of reading in this particular setting: a single miniature lamp graces the shell-encrusted side table in the living room, with a robust 25-watt bulb, which is just enough to see the floor. And, if you hold it close to your face, the TV remote controller.
Shopping list: Light bulbs, 100 watt, 2 ea. (we borrowed a second lamp from bedroom #2)
II.
Out the sliding glass door to the rear patio, one-half story above ground, the morning unfolds: cool, sunny, with the lagoon at our feet … well, okay, past the swimming pool and the dirt path just outside the fence, so maybe 75 feet away. And beyond, in the distance, the Pacific Ocean fills the horizon. Not bad.
Comfortable deck furniture, too, and the deck itself is huge, with separate areas for the large grill, a nice breakfast/lunch table with an umbrella and high chairs, and a sitting area with two easy chairs and a sofa. All the furniture is wicker, but expensive, tasteful, comfortable wicker. Not bad.
The newspapers, efficiently re-routed from home delivery for the duration of the vacation, are right outside the door, as ordered. Oops, no coffeemaker, except for a Keurig thingie with confusing operating characteristics. But good enough for the first day.
Off to the grocery store, Target, Petco; thank you, Waze! And an afternoon learning, to our great relief, that the various access codes can normally be shortcut by garage-door openers and the like. Still dangerous to get stuck in the elevator, fobless, though. The security in this land of white-bread suburban-style respectability would do a jewelry store on the West Side of Chicago proud.
Dinner at home, cooked in the well-appointed kitchen with, admittedly, a laminate floor that has the look of having been well-watered in the recent past. But Janet is a great cook, and even with plastic serving spoons (the subject of a strongly-worded email to the property agent, right then and there) dinner at the solid wooden table in the dining room looks great. Well, okay, make that tastes great: the four bulbs in the fixture overhanging the table, even with the dimmer switch pushed as far to the north as possible, emit a sickly, vaguely orange, glow. But Janet’s dinners, in general, do look great as well, so we’ll make that assumption, this once.
Add to shopping list: More light bulbs. Beer. Gin.
Vacuum doesn’t work. Drive belt hanging from the handle not a promising sign. Let’s make this shopping list the agent’s job: a working vacuum, real kitchen tools, numerous light bulbs of 60 or greater wattage. And, while she’s at it, storage for unwanted statues of flamingos.
After dinner and the dishes, perhaps a bit of TV. Oops, no response from either of the clickers. Booklets under the set from Direct TV, from AT&T U-Verse, from Comcast. Too many remote control devices for a Gutenberg man.
Never mind: a good book (however dim the light) in the comfort of the Laz-E-Boy, beg pardon, the Stressless®. And, a bit later, a trip back to the kitchen for a fizzy water. And lo! Water there is, all over the floor, under the sink, dripping from around the dishwasher. Towels! Isolate the doggie, so as to avoid unnecessary wet footprints on the thick pile carpeting in the living room! And call the property agent!
Sufficient unto the day. So then Exeunt, to the helpfully dry bedroom, and, mercifully, dreamless sleep.
III
A busy morning: greet the plumber. Greet the TV guy, who is also the vacuum repair guy.
The plumber says, “The dishwasher is brand new, and was installed incorrectly by someone from Ace Plumbing. I’ll have to rib those guys when I see them.” And then, “There’s obviously water damage to this floor. Not from last night; this is old. And this wall, here, is wet for the entire bottom 6 inches (we had maybe a quarter inch of water on the floor). I’ll tell the property agent.”
Apparently I am not the only one with the agent’s number, by now, on speed-dial.
Later, a guy shows up with a hand-held meter. Dampness throughout. Kitchen floor must come up; wall must come down. No trouble, phones the property agent: we’ll put you up in a hotel for a few days.
And Janet, in her inimitable way, agrees sweetly: “Just make sure it has two bedrooms and a full kitchen. Or you can pay for all our meals, if that’s easier. And we really enjoy having an ocean view.”
We spend that evening packing everything we unpacked less than 48 hours ago, plus all the groceries and supplies we bought yesterday.
IV
Goodbye Carlsbad! Hello, Encinitas! Ten miles down the coast, and at first glance a winner for our new digs: we are exactly on the bluff overlooking the ocean, a bluff which later proves to be over 100 feet high. Spectacular view! Big deck, if a bit worse for wear! Plate glass windows, floor to ceiling: surf below, the horizon seemingly a zillion miles across the blue expanse. Granite in the kitchen. Steep, steep driveway, but what the heck: no codes, no odd combinations, fobs; only a single house key.
The property agent has sent two people to help us move, and likkety-split, we are re-ensconced. We brought everything with us, including the light bulbs we bought. Good thing: this place uses yellow (no kidding) 25-watters.
We celebrate our new location by going over to the tastefully-appointed coffee shop at the corner of Highway 101 and A Street. The croissants are very good; there are water bowls for doggies. The day is sunny and just a touch cool. All is well.
There ensues ten days of living in temporary quarters. Not bad, except that this place isn’t really ours, for long, and so we don’t exactly unpack. And although the views are spectacular, the place is really pretty tiny, and it’s hard to feel really comfortable, somehow.
Still: Janet drives to Ann Miller’s barn to ride, and Tony walks daily into Encinitas’s main drag, with its idiosyncratic shops, good coffee houses, Whole Foods. A 1920s-vintage movie theatre, where we see Spotlight one evening in the company of maybe 50 others, the popcorn dispensed by an earflap-hat-wearing twenty-something with all the finesse of a recent survivor of the DTs.
At one of the coffee houses, a barista (baristo?) named Raoul, hearing that I am from Chicago, waxes enthusiastic at his upcoming trip there with his girlfriend. “Never been there, or anywhere, really,” he says. “I hear you need a coat.” Reports of below-zero temperatures the day before. I warn him, gently.
V
On the second day at the temporary place in Encinitas, two of the vertical blinds’ vanes fall off the sliding door (having been held up, upon inspection, by scotch tape). A few days later, the metal louver above those blinds comes crashing down to the floor when no one was even in the room.
As a precaution, we decide not to use the dishwasher.
Six P.M. And now the news!
Well, maybe not: the territory of the Carlsbad television god must extend farther down the coast. Can’t seem to get anything, except a message that says: “No Reception. Go to www.directv.com. Error #61778429807-A41.” Or something like that. And notice: it’s “Directv,” not “Directtv.” The modern digital world was not made for English majors.
It seems that Error #61778429807-A41 is simply not capable of resolution without a phone encounter with an 800 number. To make it more fun, we are tenants, not the owners of the TV or the TV service. Hell, we don’t even know the owner’s name. But after sweet-talking the operator (why did I develop this skill so long after a forgettable high-school experience with the girls?) I got the name, and even the PIN.
So the technician was able to help me: an hour of trying one thing after another yielded, in place of a snowy background with a depressing message, a black-and-white screen on which I could choose from 675 equally silly channels, and two usable ones for the news sources. Sorta like the 1950s; Newton Minow called television a “vast wasteland.” He had no idea how vast.
No, I am not interested in a service call to restore the color picture. Again, sufficient unto the day. But I must say, the “Directv” tech was a marvel of persistence. And (heh, heh) now I know the Direct TV password for the Robinsons on Neptune Avenue!
Bitsy, the dog, keeps losing her super-balls under the furniture. I buy more at the Ace Hardware. One night, we drive to Solana Beach to dine at Rubio’s, a local fast-food wonder bearing no apparent relation to any smiling Florida politicians. Pretty good Mexican food, actually. But Stone IPA is the Budweiser of IPAs.
At the Beachcomber Bar and Grill, there are excellent burgers, and seven IPAs on tap, five of which are local. I like Racer-5 best.
It turns out that in Encinitas, the mornings are uniformly foggy and chilly, possibly because of the high cliffs on the oceanfront. So It’s hard to estimate what the day will be like; once or twice the fog never really burns away. And the cramped-feeling house gets less and less fun. When the time comes, we are ready to leave.
VI
The day comes when we are to return to the restored place in Carlsbad, and we both feel sorta eager, no matter the shortcomings of the severe security and the long, winding drive after the gate.
The property agent sends the two people to help us, again. I remove and pack our light bulbs and replace the yellow ones in the fixtures; I feel as if I am hoarding Faberge eggs, or putting the family chickens in their cages on top of the bus –not sure which.
Carlsbad is the same; it never noticed we were gone. It turns out you actually cannot walk out of the apartment and go anywhere, unless you leave via the back patio and the dirt path past the swimming pool (for which our key into the enclosure does not work). How does the newspaper guy get to my front door in the morning? He must have clout.
But the Carlsbad place is larger –not large, but with a bit more separation between various areas (kitchen; dining room table / work table; sitting area for reading & TV watching) and with a much nicer bathroom (the one in Encinitas was 1950s vintage, and tiny to boot). It is also in better repair, by about two generations.
Bitsy repairs to her former resting place, in the kitchen where she sleeps contentedly inside her crate (bought at PetCo, or pet-something, as soon as we arrived); yes, the noise of the waves is replaced by the sound of I-5 traffic -we can see the freeway from our balcony/deck. But we feel rather at home quickly enough.
The agent meets us the next day, to show us another place, right on 101 overlooking the beach, ten or twelve minutes’ walk closer to town, and with just a front door with a key, no secret handshakes and codes needed. She looks a little peak-ed; tells us that she forgot the little smell gizmos in the trunk of her car, ten days ago; they leaked flamingo juice or whatever was in them all over, and now she gets sick whenever she has to drive anywhere. Is thinking of selling her car to an olfactorily-challenged person.
The vacuum is returned, and works fine. The washing machine is another matter; Jan can’t seem to get it to work, and, of course, as an observant member of the Husbands’ Pact, I’ve never actually operated one. But I give helpful instructions, patiently explaining what she is probably doing wrong with the settings and the (digital, of course) options and controls.
Suddenly, as we stand there, she reaches behind the machine and turns a knob. There follows immediately the sound of rushing water, filling the machine, which is soon working vigorously.
Told her so.
It’s 25 or 30 minutes of brisk walking to the center of the village, most of it along Route 101 / Carlsbad Blvd, heavily traveled by pedestrians, bikers, runners, dog-walkers, and moms with strollers. Also a very nice, big beach 25 stair steps below. So I can easily get my 5 miles a day of walking (with a beer at the halfway point –you can overdo this fitness stuff, you know) just by going into the village center and back.
Meanwhile, back at the ranch, Silvia says there’s no money, and we owe $8 Million next Tuesday, something like that. That, and business in general, seems much less of a problem when the temperature is 68 degrees. and it’s sunny.
In the late afternoons, the sun is just right on the deck, where I invariably fall asleep in the nice wicker chair, Bitsy nibbling occasionally at my bare toes. I deserve a nap; this vacation thing is hard work!
Beach Town Reveries
February 1, 2016
February 1, 2016
I
Walking along the sidewalk above the Robert Frazee Beach.
Down below there are perhaps 15 volleyball games in progress. The players are
uniformly young, sleek-looking; they dart about on the sand in a sort of
choreography. The balls stay in the air for what seems like a long time, even
in the pretty stiff breeze.
The sign in the window of the Warm Waters Surf Shop
announces that low tide will be at 6:58 this evening, and that the surf is 5 to
7 feet today. But it is a bit chilly (i.e., below 65 degrees); I see no surfers
at all, at first. Then, farther south, the waves are higher, and a half-dozen
black specs hover far out in the water, apparently waiting for the right
moment. Surfing must be much more difficult that it is portrayed in films:
these wetsuit-clad adventurers stay out there for many minutes before
attempting to hoist themselves up on a cresting wave, and often they fail to
catch it.
On TV, the surfers effortlessly stand, erect as statues and
with gleaming smiles, as they ride their boards seemingly for hundreds of
yards, insouciantly heedless of a towering curl of wave inches behind and yards
above them, which they invariably outrun until, relaxing slightly, they coast
to a stop inches from the shoreline, grinning at the bevy of adoring females
awaiting their arrival, like Penelope. Unlike her, though, they are not
knitting, then unravelling: all the unravelling has pretty much been done, and
they are barely covered at all. And Odysseus does not wreak havoc among the
assembled suitors; he goes with two or three of the girls to the soda shop
right on the beach, where young Telemachus produces chocolate malts.
But such heroes seem to have the day off, here. One person
eventually rises to his feet, bobbing on a moving carpet of water. But then he
crashes in foam. Another one has a bit more success; but the overall impression
is of long waits in the water punctuated with brief flurries of action, always
ending in collapse. Kind of like me, on the Lake in Michigan years ago, putting
little Rachel on a Boogie Board and losing my glasses in the surf as she skimmed
happily towards the shallows. The drive back to Chicago was a bit harrowing
–good thing I knew the way by heart, and so didn’t have to see much.
A 20-year-old androgyn approaches, jogging at a brisk pace.
For a moment I'm uncertain; then I decide it's a woman --I've studied these
things in my jogging along Lake Michigan. Women move their shoulders together, in
a sort of rotating side-to-side manner, their clenched fists held at a constant
level and moving as one, whereas men tend to pump in alternating rhythm with
their fists, their shoulders flexing but otherwise immobile. Probably related
to differing hip structures or something.
Well, I have to think of something
while I’m jogging, don’t I?
I walk along the ocean every day, getting my exercise, for
what the Fitbit calls “active minutes.” It’s a nice place to walk, once I spend
the ten minutes on “city” streets getting there. There is a long stoplight at
the intersection of Tamarack and Highway 101, along the beach. The funny thing
is, what with 101 being a reasonably lightly-travelled route (Interstate 5 is
less than a mile to the east), you can cross pretty much at will. But no one
does: they wait patiently for the “walk” sign (accompanied by a stern voice,
which also issues a sharp “Wait!” when you press the button to cross). They do
this even in the center of the village.
In Chicago, I guess pedestrians generally regard “wait” or
“walk” signs as sort of advisory: observe them, and you are marginally less
likely to see the inside of a fire department ambulance. But here, you get
alarmed or scornful looks if you just cross when you think you’ve got a good
chance, or take a sort of long lead-off in anticipation of that last oncoming
car getting past. Even the joggers and skateboarders generally stop at
crosswalks. I am suddenly reminded of my father, who, in Tulsa in the 1950s,
got a ticket for jaywalking while crossing the street from his parked car to his
office. He was pissed, and in those days you could let the cop know you were
pissed.
All that is different here. And, on the far side of 101,
which is called Carlsbad Boulevard, flanking the beach and the water, it
doesn’t matter: no cross streets, just thousands of yards of uninterrupted
sidewalk, bike lane, and, below the bluff, seawall promenade. There are the
people who go very fast, running or on skateboards, with faces lit by
concentration; and those who stroll in a leisurely fashion, often in twos and
threes, or with dogs. And there are a few like me: walking, as my mother would
have said, with a purpose. My face, if lit at all, shows determination, I hope
-determined to show that I am not like the strollers, not a flaneur, but a goal-oriented mover, if
not exactly a shaker. I’ve still got it,
see?
Proof? Well, the three kids who stopped me yesterday. “We’re
on a scavenger hunt,” one of the girls told me. Obviously, I am worth
scavenging! Two girls, one boy, the boy hanging back like the boyfriend of a
hitch-hiker who knows that the girl is much more likely to draw the necessary
attention. They might have been high-school kids, or college kids, or, hell,
they might have been thirty-five for all I can tell these days.
Of course, I graciously allowed that I “had a minute.” “We’re
on a scavenger hunt. Do you have a business card?”
Well, actually, I generally keep a card in the pocket of my
coat, so as to avoid wondering which one is mine on coat racks and so forth.
But I don’t believe coats are, strictly speaking, legal in southern California.
Like cellulite or wrinkles. So, no business card.
“Well, will you play rock, paper, scissors with me?”
I’d play anything with you. But what I said was, “sure, I
guess so.”
“You’ve played rock, paper, scissors, right?”
“Well, I’ve seen it on TV.” Not wanting them to know that,
when I was their age, all we had was rocks. Paper and scissors came later. And
playing Rock, Rock, Rock somehow never caught on.
But we got down to business, me covering my confusion well.
The first round was a tie, paper vs. paper. And the second, two scissors. But
then, my unconscious patterning failed me: I went to rock, and she back to
paper. My stab at celebrity was over. Before they moved on, we had to take a
selfie.
“This will be on You Tube, is that okay?”
I wondered how to locate my moment of fame on You Tube; but I
didn’t ask. Off we went, in our opposite directions
In the Coyote Bar and Grill, I sit alone at the bar sampling
an IPA new to me. Somehow I forgot its name, so I’ll have to try again. Two men
in their forties sit down and begin discussing, obliquely, how wonderful they
are.
“I work in the liquor industry, and I attend a lot of social
functions. So I’m always meeting athletes, and that’s how I know quite a few of
them.” A discussion ensues about the proposed move of the San Diego … Penguins?
Rams?-- team of some sort, to Los Angeles. The comments reminded me of those on
the radio talk shows, while I’m driving to work: callers-in with apparently
sophisticated knowledge of matters so arcane that, had there been football
during the Renaissance, only Descartes could have qualified as an analyst (ever
think about the root of “analyst?”): “I think; therefore, I call an audible.”
These discussions, no matter whether the participants are in
the liquor industry, invariably overflow with knowledgeable comments about the
personal characters of people whose characters are generally revealed only in
brief interviews during which, with dirt on their faces in the midst of a
barely-controlled chaos surrounding them, their statements mainly consist of,
“Well, we really need to execute better,” –I wonder if Robespierre ever said
that in an interview? -- or, “We’re controlling the ball pretty well.”
Back to you in the booth, Fred. I finish my beer and tear myself away from these two philosophers. Back outside. It's 4:30, and groups of 2 and 3 are starting to assemble at tables on the patio. Later, I read some Yelp reviews, most of which refer to the excellent people-watching available at Coyote. But my favorite review said, " ... really young busboy there clearing tables and handing out chicks and salsa, he had a great smile ..."
Well, I would’ve had a great smile, too. ‘Spose he kept one
for himself?
II
Today I set out on my walk, out the front door (yes; I’ve
found how to get out of the complex this way!) and around the long sidewalk to
the east of the building, out to the dirt path overlooking the Agua Hedionda
lagoon. To the left, the endless, muted (I’ve left my hearing aids behind) roar
of Interstate 5; off to the right, past the lagoon, the railroad tracks that
carry the “Coaster” (not because it does not progress under power, but because
it goes up and down the coast, see?), more lagoon, and Carlsbad Boulevard in
the distance with the endless, also muted, Pacific beyond.
Beautiful, sunny day with small ripples marring the surface
of the lagoon below me. On the mud at the border of the lagoon, I can see small
scurryings –crabs?--, busily back and forth, and a large shapeless thing at the
very edge of the water. Possibly a bird, reminding me of the large bird Bitsy
found the other day on our walk down to the lagoon’s edge, she eating pretty
much everything she came across, until we found the large, tangled bird mashed
in the weeds at the bottom of a muddy slope to the water. Extremely interesting
to Bitsy, but not to me; we pulled back and walked elsewhere.
But it sent me, well, not exactly scurrying, to the dictionary, to find out if, as I suspected, iot was a cormorant. And it was, one of the family Phalacrocoracidae, order Suliformed, genus Phalacrocorax, a salt-water coastal inhabitant apparently descended from fresh-water ancestors. Pretty good-sized bird.
But it sent me, well, not exactly scurrying, to the dictionary, to find out if, as I suspected, iot was a cormorant. And it was, one of the family Phalacrocoracidae, order Suliformed, genus Phalacrocorax, a salt-water coastal inhabitant apparently descended from fresh-water ancestors. Pretty good-sized bird.
And this takes me to my childhood, and Dylan Thomas reading, on one of the first LPs I owned, "Poem on His Birthday," and the opening lines:
In the mustard-seed sun,
In the mustard-seed sun,
By
full-tilt river and switchback sea,
Where the
cormorants scud
… and I recall wondering,
at the time, what a cormorant was and how it managed to “scud.” I loved Dylan
Thomas then, his rich Welsh voice on the record that my father couldn’t stand
(“No music. On a record. Not even that damned screeching woman [editor’s note:
Joan Baez] you listen to!”). Thomas read
“Lament” and “A Refusal to Mourn the Death, by Fire, of a Child in London,” and
“The Hand That Signed the Paper;” and a couple of years later, in ninth-grade
English class I performed the last, and was mocked for my assumed Welsh accent
but it was better than when I read Whitman to my eighth-grade class.
Anyway, the cormorant the
other day, and, if such it was below today, the new one, will quickly return
their assembled components to their origins –maybe that process was what the
crabs were helping out. And Bitsy, squirmy, athletic, alive as she is, will do
the same, as did Webster before her (something in me still lurches when I think
of him), and so, of course, shall I. But in the meantime there are books to be
read, thoughts to be thought.
About the dictionary: of course, it’s electronic. it is
continually amazing how convenient the Internet can be when you want to do
something like that, whether you want a snippet, or a volume, of information
half-recalled or completely new. When we went to Australia for two months, in
1996, I took a trunk of nothing but books, about 40 books in all. Some were to
read while there; but others were because I couldn’t imagine being without
them: Ulysses, and Browning’s
dramatic monologues, and so forth; things I need to refer to without notice. Lucky
I did: books, indeed paper of any kind, were extremely expensive in Sidney.
Now, all that is unnecessary: Molly Bloom’s last soliloquy is
available at the flick of a pixel, as it were. I know that we have lost
something in all this digitation, especially those of my generation who are,
most of us, frequently confounded by the intricacies of manipulating all this
information. And that’s ignoring the time wasted in frivolous games that
present themselves relentlessly: Play Solitaire! Once a barely-tolerable relief
from the tedium of Oklahoma summer afternoons when, because of polio, we
weren’t allowed to play outside, such pursuits are now everywhere, the
single-minded intensity of clench-jawed commuters, hanging from CTA straps,
necks bent, ignoring everything and everyone around them, focused on little
screens with dancing figures.
Yes, all that frivolity is probably bad; but people will find
the warmest, most shallow water they can, when they want to wade a bit. Nothing
to be done about it. Cars are wonderful, too, but poor Buzz went over the cliff
in the stolen coupe in Rebel Without a
Cause; he’d be a dazed octogenarian now, but for the existence of leather
jackets.
Another snippet -why is so much reminding me of my father,
these days: watching the early scenes of that movie on television, in the ‘60s,
we came to the scene where James Dean asks Natalie Wood, “You live around
here?” She replies, “Who lives?” And
my father stood up. “Oh, for Christ’s sake!” he said, and that ended his James
Dean experience. So he never saw Dean steal the Ferris Wheel scene so
completely from Julie Harris in East of
Eden, let alone the cascading wine racks in Giant.
His loss. He had his own memories, I know, and they were
undoubtedly more tangible: sneaking one Halloween out back of Ferguson’s place
with several pals, and carefully picking up the outhouse in the pitch dark, and
moving it six feet farther away from the back door of the farmhouse. Or evening
walks with a girl, past the bushes where, everyone knew, old Father Friedl
would hide, on the lookout for hand-holders or something, and saying loudly as
they passed, “Praised be Jesus Christ, good evening, Father!” He imagined the
priest, foiled, gritting his teeth in frustration.
Two months in Australia. We lived in Sidney, on the north
shore of the Harbor in a suburb (Sidney itself, it seemed, was about the size
of the Loop, encompassing a single postal code; what we would call neighborhoods
were, to them, suburbs. Virtually nobody actually lived in Sidney) called
Mosman just down a lane from Cremorne Junction. No car; but we didn’t need
one. The bus went straight downhill to the Ferry, and the Sidney Harbor Ferries
went pretty much everywhere.
The girls (Rachel, 8th Form, and Jessica, 5th)
walked everyday down Military road, past the restaurant at the corner, the news
agent’s, the odd store that sold (1) scented candles and (2) chocolates
–hideous combination of smells—and the McDonalds across the road with its
loss-leader 15 cent ice cream cones, past the Woolworth’s (which in Australia
is a grocery chain), to the gates of the Sidney Church of England Coeducational
Grammar School, or SCEGS. For the first week or so, I walked them. Each day
they firmly told me that they could go the rest of the way themselves; each day
we reached this point farther and farther from the school’s gate. So, for dad,
it was back to the cottage we were renting, and my 40 books.
SCEGS: school uniforms, as with virtually all schools in
Sidney, with the side effect that the merchants could instantly identify
misbehaving students on the sidewalks in the afternoons, and complain to the
headmasters. And complain they did. I recall one of the weekly, ten-page
notices that would come home on Fridays: “The Headmaster has received several
specific and pointed comments from merchants on Military Road concerning the
behaviour [that’s how they spelled it] of SCEGS students. All students will
behave with appropriate decorum henceforth, so as to avoid the imposition of
counter-measures that most students would find onerous.”
Never met the headmaster. But I liked him.
The main effect of the school uniforms was that there was never
any early-morning moaning and complaining about what someone was going to wear
that day. There was no choice. I also liked that.
Here in Carlsbad, the schools seem to let out about 1:00 P.M.
Maybe I am mis-noticing, but the intersections fill up with kids, and the
sidewalk and short driveway in front of the Sun Diego Surf Shop with
skateboards. The kids are good, on these boards.
But they still stop at all the lights, and wait for “Walk.”
I start out today (where was I?) along the dirt path to the beginning
of Harbor Drive and my walk along Tamarack to the shore. But, once beyond the
shelter of the lagoon on the dirt path, the wind, which barely rippled the
water there, is stiff and in my face. Not fun. I am here for fun. So I decide
to deny any would-be interviewers of substantial personages such as myself the
opportunity to learn, or to teach. I turn back to the shelter of my deck in the
late morning sun.
Mentioned in Passing
February 10, 2016
We are settling into California. This has not been all that
easy.
Of course, I have been here many times, starting when I was
17. I spent a couple of months living in a fraternity house at Stanford, with a
dozen or twenty other high-school boys. We studied “The Greek Polis” under the
tutelage of two distinguished professors (one of them was from Oregon, if I
recall correctly, and drank large amounts of whiskey) and a graduate student
who later became a neo-con enthusiast helping to figure out ways for Donald
Rumsfeld to kill Iraqis.
A couple of decades later I used to spend a week each year
teaching young tax people all about “S” corporations, in a hotel at LAX. And of
course there were the short vacation trips here and there. I suppose one to
“Cabo” doesn’t count –that’s “Baja” California. But the state was not a total
blank in my mind, as far as personal experience goes.
Still, living here, on an extended vacation, has required
some adjustments. Not the least of them is getting used to the idea that, by
the time I am well awake each morning, people in the real world are having
lunch, or are about to.
And like all locales, southern California has its
peculiarities.
One of them showed up several days ago, while driving to Balboa
Park. Waze is a wonderful “app.” It tells you where to go (so does my Donald
Trump app; but I actually want to hear from Waze). Put in the address, and you
get a nice, perky, “Let’s take I-5 South. Turn left at Layang Layang Circle”
–that’s what the street is called, no kidding. And it tells you every turn, and
whether there’s a truck parked up ahead, or a pothole.
Anyway, with Waze it is virtually impossible to get really
lost, as long as you just do what it says.
But on this particular day, I confess
that this excellent resource befuddled me.
“In one thousand feet, turn left on a street,” it said. Come
again?
A moment later: “In four hundred feet, turn left on a
street.” Yeah, sure, I generally use a street when turning left, or any other
direction, for that matter. But which
street?
Fortunately, a moment later, I saw the street sign: “A”
Street.
Waze could have provided some emphasis to indicate the
capital letter, or something. But beyond that, what the hell kind of a name is
that, for a street?
They do this in Encinitas, too: the streets along Coast
Highway 101, right through the center of town, are named A, B, C, D, E, F, G,
H, I, and so on. Okay, “B” is also called Encinitas Boulevard. But, west of
101, you have 2nd Street, 3rd Street, 4th
Street, all the way to the ocean. Not particularly imaginative.
I mean, California is supposed to be this font of
creativity: Hollywood, and all those great movies; Silicon Valley, where very
young busboys hand out chips. Cannot they come up with actual names for their
streets? And, not to put too fine a point on it, it is less than impressive to
be told that, downtown, Café 21 is at
5th and F. C’mon, California! Show us tourists a little flair! Name
‘em after Vice-Presidents, or something.
And don’t tell me that they do that also in Washington, D.C.
That town was designed by somebody from France, or somewhere, maybe Dan
Ackroyd. They didn’t name their streets like that in Paris: they were dissing
us, is all.
But Balboa Park, once I had mastered “A” Street and a couple
more turns, was wonderful: an enormous piece of real estate that houses scores
of facilities: museums, galleries, gardens, theatres, an entire Spanish-style
village full of artists’ studios. Why they named it after Balboa I don’t know.
It’s not on the ocean. And anyway the famous explorer, when he “first” laid
eyes on the ocean, was about fifteen hundred miles south of here; I doubt he
was ever in San Diego.
But never mind. It was a beautiful day, and we spent several
hours wandering around. Walking through
an alcove on the way to see the “Old Globe Theatre,” I heard a musical sound
that called me back decades: it was a steel guitar player named Eric Freeman,
playing old blues numbers and folk songs. I listened for a few moments, and
bought his CD Rattlesnakin’ Daddy,
which I later played on my computer and which did not disappoint.
I thought of that sound a few days later, when a local
television station had a show about Huddie Ledbetter –Leadbelly. They showed
archival film of him singing his most famous songs: “Irene, Goodnight,” “Rock
Island Line” (which, I had not known, he actually didn’t write), “Bourgeois
Town,” and several others. And they told his life story, from prison (for
murder) in Texas to fame in New York, helped by the essential work of Alan and
John Lomax, who lugged 300 pounds of recording equipment across the South in
the ‘30s and ‘40s to capture the voices of singers who would otherwise never
have been known outside the impoverished backwaters where they lived.
Fascinating report; it called to mind the old 10-inch LPs that I was given by
Ted Berrigan in 1959, and which I still have -somewhere. I listened to
Leadbelly all the time then; and I taught myself a few of his songs when I got
to Chicago and could spend my first quarter’s allowance on a 12-string Gibson
guitar.
But if my father hated Joan Baez, he was stunned into
silence –a nigh-inconceivable state—by Leadbelly.
Leadbelly died in a New York hospital, of Lou Gehrig’s
Disease, a few months before “Goodnight, Irene” became a national sensation
–sung by the Weavers with more generally acceptable harmony and instrumentation
than the rawness of its creator.
Balboa Park, right. The “Museum of Man” had some interesting
skeletons, and a fairly detailed exhibition on the history of Beer, photos of
which I snapped so as to send to John Raines. We wandered through big open
spaces, into a few of the scores of buildings housing one museum or another,
through lush vegetation of the kind you don’t get in prosaic Illinois. We spent
a lot of time in the Spanish artist village, Janet inspecting the wares in a
dozen studios. It was all interesting and very pleasant; the day was warm but
not hot, and there were no crowds.
Lunch was at The Prado, on a veranda overlooking the
Japanese Garden, and was probably the best lunch we’ve ever had. The waitress
was a nice, informative, and considerate young woman, who kindly glossed over
my ordering for Janet a Mojito with Patron tequila, when I meant a Margarita
(although I am rather familiar with alcohol, I know little or nothing about
mixed drinks; like the olives in a martini, those other substances leave less
room for the good stuff). The waitress made the entire dining experience even
better, more interesting and fun.
She had pet rats. I’m not sure how we got onto this topic;
although the place was pretty well full, and she was busy, she made it look
effortless; she had time to chat. When she brought up her rats, I thought
immediately of the one I saw crawl out onto Van Buren Street one evening at rush
hour, fat and malevolently gleaming, sitting on its corpulent haunches in the
middle of the sidewalk, the rushing commuters giving it a wide berth. Rats are
the things the Park District works to eliminate, with pointed sticks, and hoses
attached to the exhaust of their trucks, pouring CO into the holes they find in
the grass. Rats are the marauders who appear when everyone else at Taste of
Chicago has gone home, to gorge on scraps of waffle cake and dropped hot dogs
and barbecue. Rats are why they put rat bait in the alleys. Ugly things. Carry
disease, I shouldn’t wonder.
But this waitress described her 5 pet rats in loving detail,
how they crawled fondly over her and were so cute and nice, cheeping like baby
chicks. Disconcerting. Especially the feeling that I may have misjudged them,
like maybe Afghan warlords or something. But her rat conversation did give the
delightful lunch a certain je ne sais
quoi, a touch of piquancy.
Her rats came to mind subsequently, the next time I saw the
squirrels on the bluff below the sidewalk along Carlsbad Boulevard. These
squirrels are brown, not like the sensible gray ones we have at home. And they
are small –they could almost be … what are those little guys? Chipmunks or
something. Except for their tails: their tails are scrawny, like the tails of
the ones at home after an exhausting winter. They could almost be rats’ tails.
And that, given the small size of these critters and the way they scurry close
to the ground –none of the leaping and tree-climbing (there aren’t any trees on
the bluff, but still) I am used to seeing— makes me think of them as sort of
rats. There are a lot of them, all
along that bluff above the beach, and they dart here and there sometimes
crossing the sidewalk with no regard for the humans they run past. They don’t
seem to be scared of people, not enough to avoid them, anyway. The signs along
the sidewalk above the bluff say, “Don’t feed the birds or squirrels.” So I assume
they are squirrels, regardless of what they look like.
But at this point I have pretty well mastered the approach
to Carlsbad Village: out the confusing tangle of gates where we live; down the
path above the lagoon; up the long block of very ordinary Harbor Drive; beside
the railroad tracks for a bit; to Tamarack Avenue; and then over the hill to
Carlsbad Boulevard where the ocean sits and the people-watching begins.
The
days have gotten pretty warm, and the beach is filling up. Today there were
quite a few people along the mile or so into the village. Girls in bikinis.
Mothers struggling with strollers on the sand. Elderly people in chairs up
along the sidewalk, to avoid the stairs down to –and back up from—the beach.
Wherever you walk that is a good dog-walking area, like along this sidewalk,
there are metal boxes on posts that dispense small plastic bags for picking up
the dog poop. Whether this is the reason I don’t know, but they do an admirable
job here of keeping the streets and sidewalks, um, unfouled.
That reminds me of a singular feature of the swimming pool /
hot tub area right behind our deck: a sign, on the gate entrance to the pool:
Persons having
currently active diarrhea or who have had active diarrhea within the previous
14 days shall not be allowed to enter the pool water.
Honest. I am not making this up. As I pass this sign on my
way out to the lagoon path each day I can hardly help contemplating the
sequence of events that led to the posting of this sign. The sign looks a few
years old, so perhaps the water in the pool is of more recent vintage than the
sign. And, by the way, it doesn’t say anything about passive diarrhea.
Right by the gate to the pool, alongside the gate, a few
feet away, that goes out to the lagoon path, is one of those metal boxes on a
post, with doggie supplies. The juxtaposition of all this bemuses me.
But these are the features of my daily wanderings. In
Chicago, the dog poop is safely beneath the snow; it’ll show up, greatly
degraded, in traces this coming April and May.
California, or at least this locale, has other idiosyncrasies.
It is, in most respects, just like the rest of the country: predictable stores,
streets, cars, and so forth. Local news is the same as in Chicago, except that
the names of the streets where the accidents and crimes take place (even if they
are not just letters of the alphabet) are different, as are the names of the
high schools who win, or lose, the big game. But there are a couple of
oddities, for me, that perplex.
First, the traffic lights can be extremely long. Very, very
long. In Chicago, traffic lights are there so that you have time to read the
entire cardboard sign being held up for your inspection by the panhandlers who
walk between the lines of waiting cars with their coffee cups, jingling with
change. But here, these same panhandlers could start entire businesses,
partnering with you in your Chevy to develop a Strategic Plan, between lights.
Waiting for the light to change can be endless. Sitting in traffic at a red
light I’ve mused about curbside car repair, an obvious choice: get your oil
changed while waiting for the green. Or maybe a barber, offering red-light
haircuts. That would work. Mini-flower shops, and portable candy stores, for
commuters to pick up something for wifey (or, these days, more likely hubby) on
the way home. You could get an awful lot done at some of these intersection
while waiting on the light.
Now, I had finished the previous discussion, and moved on.
Finished this piece, honest; but I had to go back to this point, tonight. Today
is Ash Wednesday; and on tonight’s news there was a special item: nuns gathered
at street corners, in San Diego, dispensing ashes to people walking by, and ---yes!
--- people in their cars, waiting for the light to change, getting ashes
smeared on their foreheads.
I am not making this up. So let’s add dispensing the
sacraments at red lights (I know: getting your ashes is not a sacrament; it’s a
mitzvah or something). Let’s see: baptism would be a cinch, only takes a
moment. Ditto Confirmation, if I remember correctly. Matrimony? Well, they
already have drive-thru wedding chapels in Vegas, I hear, so that’s a cinch. I
don’t know about all the others, but this would be a good start. They could
pass the collection plate, too, as long as there wasn’t too much competitive
pressure from the panhandlers.
Another anomalous feature of southern California: the
weather report is about 20 minutes long, on the evening news; and that’s with
these girls talking fast. The little graphic that shows the temperatures for
the week ahead looks like a 3-dimensional matrix, out here. There’s the weather
along the Coast (“the Beaches”); then the weather “inland,” and in the
Mountains, and then in the Deserts. So they sort of have to do it in chapters,
as it were. I mean, back home we have, “Low in the seventies. Cooler near the
Lake.” One guy, years ago, got tired of saying “near the Lake,” so he just
abbreviated it as “NTL.” Anyway, that was it: It was going to be, in general,
like such-and-such. Oh, yeah, but NTL it would be cooler in the summer, and warmer
in the winter. Everybody knew that tornadoes were illegal in the City, so any
references to such phenomena were by definition for the Western, or
South-Western, ‘burbs.
Here, it is as if they produce more weather than can be
consumed locally (as Churchill said about the Balkans and history), so they
have to break it up into segments and assign it to various sub-locales. The
weather report took longer, by far, to explain than the results of the Iowa
Caucuses. And this in the place where Steve Martin, playing a weatherman in a
movie (L.A. Story?) was somnolent during his nine-second stint on camera: 72
degrees, everywhere, every day.
There are plenty of restaurants in Carlsbad and environs.
One of the pleasures of vacation is the sense that you can treat yourself to
dinner whenever you want. And although nothing beats Janet’s spaghetti, and the
roast she cooked last week from a recipe currently sweeping the Internet was
great, it’s nice to go out.
The other night we dined (I first typed “ate”; but at these
prices, you “dine”) at Vigilucci’s, on Carlsbad Boulevard. We sat outside
looking at the ocean across the street, and had the best meal we’ve had out
here. The food was truly exceptional. As was the price; but we felt it was
worth it. Janet had a Patron Silver margarita, and I a martini, and we each
even had a dessert. We talked a lot, and spent probably twice as long as we
typically do when it is just the two of us dining. I have little memory of what
we talked about; but remembering it wasn’t the point; having a nice
conversation over dinner is its own justification. Not everything deserves a
memorial. Although I am trying, here.
Another dinner-conversation instance: Sushi Yama, in
Carlsbad Village, right above the Coyote with its music of a style designed for
those places, like the Empty Bottle on Western Avenue in Chicago, where they
sell earplugs at the bar. No earplugs here; just a lot of volume, and outdoors,
so that it bleeds everywhere, like a nasty head wound. But inside the sushi
place upstairs it was reasonably quiet, permitting normal conversation. The Ahi
Tuna with avocado was wonderful, thinly sliced and succulently tender. And
served by a waitress with a most extensive and interesting –and
interestingly-placed—tattoo. And the hot sake just topped off a very nice
experience.
What did we discuss? Something about Ann Miller’s horse
establishment, I am pretty sure; other than that I draw a pleasant, sated
blank.
I often come away from a nice evening with a hazy memory of
the conversation itself, which, after all, is just one feature out of many that
together produce a memorable experience. But the holes in my recollection can
be trying for Janet, whose experience of dinner with friends is often
significantly focused on the conversation. For her, discussions are replete
with significance, the more intense the discussion the more significance. And
she has a great memory for such things. Her conversational style, as it relates
to me, is often results-oriented: things we are going to do, stuff I am supposed
to pick up, and so forth. I am not good at retrieval of the daily ebb and flow
of such casual exchanges, any more than of most others.
I guess I am absent-minded, as they used to say. Even if
it’s on the list in my pocket, I regularly overlook one of the six things I
have gone to the store to buy. I rely on my memory probably more than I should,
and this turns out to be a failing (both the reliance and the memory). But
conversation, even more so, is elusive for me. I am pretty sure that there are some
things that I cannot, literally, comprehend, even though they are perfectly
pedestrian, everyday exchanges.
“Did you get the email I sent you?” This, somehow, often
makes no sense to me, at all. Yes, I understand all the words; but somehow, the
sentence itself just doesn’t register.
Maybe my memory is not primarily verbal. I am generally
pretty sure of where I am driving, for example, if we are leaving for some
destination for dinner or otherwise. And I often realize, when we have almost
arrived, that, actually, I only know vaguely where the place is. I know the
block, or the closest major intersection, but not the precise location. I just
drive around a bit and the place appears. OK, sometimes it’s more than a bit.
But I seem to have pretty good spatial memory. In two dimensions, anyway.
I admit that this navigational imprecision drives Janet
nuts, and sometimes gets me into trouble.
Having decided that Bitsy needed some dog-training classes,
we found a place down in San Diego that offered them on Sundays. And we liked
it. And, on the way to a special evening class, we went to Milton’s Deli, an
establishment of, evidently, close to landmark status in Del Mar. Milton’s is a
real Jewish Deli. We have them in utilitarian Chicago, of course; but to find
such a one in lush, sunny southern California is a bit disorienting, like
finding a spark plug in your underwear drawer. How’d that get there?
It turns out that the founders of Milton’s were two guys
from Chicago. And the seeming incongruity of finding such a place out in the
suburbs here was redeemed rather neatly by the fact that Milton’s is in a large
shopping center, right next to a Whole Foods and a Starbucks.
But the food was great: matzo ball soup with lots of
chicken, and LEO (lox, eggs, and onions) as good as any I’ve had in Chicago
since Mrs. Levy’s on the second floor
of Sears Tower closed. I used to take my daughters to Mrs. Levy’s on Saturday
mornings. They loved to walk down Franklin Street, watching the people.
“Tourist!” Rachel would call, not loudly but just enough for
Jessica and me to hear. “Tourist!” Jessica would respond, indicating another
group. Of course I asked, “How can you tell?” although I could think of several
answers.
“They’re always looking up,” one of the girls would say.
“And their mouths are open,” the other would add.
Well, yes. But that’s a bit unfair. Wouldn’t you look up?
And doesn’t looking up cause your mouth to tend to fall open, a bit? Go ahead:
try it. No one’s looking, and assuming you are not standing in front of a very
tall building, wearing elastic-waistband Bermuda shorts, no one will know.
Back to Milton’s. It’s a cavernous place, with maybe a
40-foot ceiling and a huge dining room. The menu, as with any self-respecting
deli, is endless, and features the things that only a real Jewish Deli has:
Matzo Brye; Nova Lox Platters; Blintzes and Knish and Pastrami and Brisket and
Kreplach. I think the menu, in fact, was identical to that at The Bagel, on
Broadway in Chicago.
(Broadway is the only street in Chicago without a suffix,
like “Street,” or “Avenue,” or “Place” or “Drive.” There are some 2500 street
names, but only Broadway is just “Broadway.”)
Where was I? Milton’s is not like Tex Meyer’s Deli on Peoria
Avenue in Tulsa, when I was growing up, which had barbecue and coleslaw. Milton
himself, like Tex, was apparently not Orthodox, though: you can get crab cakes
in his place. And, in concession to modern tastes, a latte, and vegan options.
Anyway, we had a fine meal, and then left for the
dog-training class. The class was farther south, in the Sorrento Valley, in a
sort of light-industrial park. So we drove down there, in the dark, and waited
for twenty minutes, because we were early, and then gradually became aware that
the place was dark, that no others were arriving. And, after a bit of shuffling
for phone numbers and so forth, we found that the class had been cancelled. The
email to Janet had gone astray because they misspelled her address.
Of such things are adventures made; but our only adventure
was the fun of finding a deserted one-story building in a dark complex, on a
deserted street with no streetlights, and then driving back north in the
barely-controlled chaos of I-5. But no harm; no foul, although Janet, who tends
to see such mishaps in cosmic terms, was seriously bent out of shape for a bit.
But we’d eaten dinner at Milton’s!
Other meals are more prosaic. A couple of nights ago, after
running a few errands, we went to Las Olas, a good Mexican place smack-dab in
the middle of the village. It being a Friday, the place was jammed and noisy;
but we had a very nice waitress and a good meal. I particularly like the ceviche at Las Olas, and of course the
location is perfect. The Mexican food out here is, as would be expected, very
good. But then we never eat Mexican in Chicago; and for all I know it is quite
good there, too –there is certainly a significant Mexican community, enough to
warrant the development of some decent cuisine.
The dog training classes have been interesting. Last Sunday
we heard the phrase “Operant Conditioning” and the name of B.F. Skinner. We
talked about those professors who taught pigeons to walk without moving their
heads. Pretty funny, if you’ve ever seen it.
As for me, I’ve been walking (moving my head, somewhat), most
days, into the village and back. This is a good way to wind down in the
afternoon when it is warm and sunny and I’ve been involved with emails or a
novel or other terribly heavy intellectual lifting. Sometimes I stop for a
beer; sometimes not. Sometimes I walk down by the seawall; sometimes up at the
street level, atop the cliff. The skaters and buggy-pushers and joggers tend to
be on the sidewalk by the street, where there is more room; and so of course
the people-watching is better there. I’ve noticed that there are virtually no
black people around here, which is weird, but, once I realized it, explained
something of the foreign feeling. It’s not just that people obey the “Wait”
signs.
As for the local aversion to jaywalking --I’ve had hundreds
of inquiries about my own progress in this regard—I must say that there is a
sort of social pressure, when everyone is waiting patiently at the light
(possibly hatching plans to open cottage industries at the curb), to follow
suit, and wait for electronic permission to go. I’ve reached a sort of
compromise: Out on Tamarack Avenue, crossing Carlsbad Boulevard, I tend to wait
for the light. In Carlsbad Village, I usually just go. Unless I intend to
execute one of those catty-corner moves diagonally across two streets at once
(“Walk sign is on for all crossings. Walk sign is on for all crossings.”) They
give you 30 seconds of “Walk.” In Chicago, I think it is five seconds.
I have also discovered something efficient and helpful: on
Carlsbad Boulevard, there are crosswalks where there’s no red/green traffic
light, but there is a yellow light that you can activate (without any wait)
when you want to cross. The sign says, “Push button to activate warning light.”
And, by gum, push the button, a blinking light goes on, and traffic stops to
let you get across. This is a huge improvement on the system back home, where
cars routinely ignore the rule that you are supposed to stop for pedestrians in
crosswalks, and send old ladies with grocery bags and mothers with baby buggies
diving for the center median.
So, California has its charms. Everyone seems very polite
and considerate. Horns never honk. Generally, the place reminds me of a visit,
when the kids were little, to Beaver Creek, Colorado. We went to a very nice
grocery store, and after we checked out, Rachel said in a kind of whisper,
“Mommy, why is everybody so nice?’
Although a Chicagoan born and bred, she didn’t ask it as if asking, “What’s
their angle?” She was just surprised.
Maybe they are a bit like that here. Just … relaxed, in a
way that makes them nice.
I guess the people here may think that, with the ocean and
all, California is somehow different, and they ought to be different, too. Above
reproach, kind of. They may be right. What about all those earthquakes,
including the Big One that, please, please, will not happen just now, while I
am here? What about the drought, and how many zillions of gallons of water they
use just to grow a single almond? What about the traffic?
“Ocean,” they can say, and that kind of ends the discussion.
The Pacific is just … there. Enormous. Uncaring. Beautiful like the sky is
beautiful, and seemingly as extensive.
Of course, there are other oceans. Name one! Well, the
Atlantic. You know, Jersey shore; Cape Hatteras; Florida.
I’ve been to the Atlantic Ocean. And as I look at the
Pacific, I say to that other one, “I’ve seen the Pacific. And Atlantic, you’re
no Pacific Ocean.”
Jersey Shore? Gigantic floods. The Carolinas? Hurricanes.
That ocean is the occasion of mischief. How does the Pacific misbehave? El Nino; more rain than usual, which
they need. Waves once in a while too high for casual surfboarders.
When the British sent ships around the coast of Africa, on
the way to Australia, the ships crossed the Atlantic twice on the way. That’s how dinky the Atlantic is: look at the
map. Probably the British ships just sorta ran into Brazil, sticking out like
that –they could hardly have sailed in a straight north-to-south line in that
ocean.
The Pacific is more than twice the size of the Atlantic.
No; I’m sold on the West Coast, if it’s coasts we’re going
to talk about. Even my hometownie cute little Third Coast, with its nonexistent
tides and the Michigan shore directly opposite Chicago visible for the price of a drink
–okay, an overpriced one—at the top of a downtown building or three, is a gawky
pretender when it comes to coasts. And in spite of the freshman who, strolling
with friends upon her arrival at the Northwestern campus, was heard by Jessica
to say, “I didn’t know Chicago was on an ocean,” the Lake is not in the same
class.
So, I’m going to give California a pass on some of its
idiosyncrasies. Ocean.
We had a fun week. Janet took Bitsy to the swimming pool
–Bitsy does not have active diarrhea, so it was okay-- to make sure she could
swim. She can; but she obviously hates it.
We watched the Democratic candidates debate -the entire
debate, the first one I’ve watched all the way through in 16 years (Bush v.
Gore –the debate, not the Supreme Court’s disruption of the
Constitutionally-mandated process). We even watched a bit of a Republican
debate, which was a bit of a farce by comparison, as they all are, apparently.
We set off the smoke alarm (hamburgers); finally found the
See’s Candies in Encinitas; printed some tax forms at the local Fed Ex / Kinkos
–I am, regrettably, keeping my hand in--; enjoyed a great brunch outdoors in
the little plaza in the village Saturday morning; the Naked Café, I think they
call it.
So the pace is, clearly, frenetic. And slowly, we get to
feel like California types, sitting in the cloudless afternoon on our deck and
falling asleep in the sun while Bitsy chases bits of fluff at our feet.
Revelation
February 12, 2016
Today is the anniversary of the birth of two men, important
for two different reasons: Abraham Lincoln chose to take the country to war
rather than let the backward parts go their own way. And Bryce Caron married my
daughter. I think Bryce made the better choice.
Thinking about isolated facts, or events, often puts me in a
sort of bifurcated mood, in which one idea is at once simple and endlessly
complex. I have always had trouble reining in the part of my brain that
produces random associations between unlike things. Sometimes such associations
are harmless and basically meaningless (such as, both Bryce and Abe Lincoln are
(were) unusually tall). But this habit has also gotten me into trouble, many,
many times; and it has taken me decades to learn what not to say, and how to
harness and control, if only most of the time, my penchant for inappropriate
comments.
Of course, often an inappropriate comment is just too good
to suppress. That’s when it’s nice to have a friend nearby. Friends will
forgive.
But random associations are, for me, often the source of
insight. I think I actually learn something new just from recognizing (or
forcing) some haphazard association, verbal or syntactical or aural, between
unlike things. Sometimes this comes as a flash of understanding. At other
times, it’s just a random flash, like a faulty high-wire sparking,
threateningly.
Life is, from one perspective, a process of increasing
revelation, whereby we gradually improve the extent and sophistication of our
understanding of how the world works. Much of this is eminently practical: a
kid figures out, on entering high school, the interplay of one’s locker with
the ebb and flow of the day’s class progression, the importance of location to
social interaction, and so forth. And the success of one’s progress in
receiving and internalizing these innumerable bits of information has important
effects on one’s overall success in navigating daily life.
But there are also lots of small revelations that add to
one’s understanding of the world without really having any perceptible effect.
An example that I have treasured since, years ago, she confided it to me, is
the sudden realization of my wife Janet, when she was maybe seven, that the
music she listened to on the radio was not, in fact, being produced in the
radio station’s studio. That’s right: the band wasn’t there at all; the guy on
the radio was just playing records. I had a comparable moment when I was home
from school with measles, in fourth grade, and I listened for the first time to
radio soap operas. Whether my mother’s explanation had anything to do with this
I no longer recall; but at some point I became aware that these fifteen-minute
radio plays were recorded. There were no actors in the studio doing this live,
just for those of us in Tulsa who happened to be listening to KRMG.
Moments like these are a child’s first encounter with
epiphany. They are revelations of cosmic significance, in a way that goes far
beyond their immediate importance. Janet still recalls the way her ears burned
when she suddenly had that flash of understanding about the disc jockey. No one
was there, and she of course didn’t confide the extent of her former naïveté to
her friends. It remained, for decades, a private embarrassment. Now, of course,
thanks to this outing by her husband, the world (well, okay, maybe 4 more
people) will know. No secret is safe.
All this is by way of self-exposure (the private vice of all
writers). My latest experience, not the first since the soap opera bombshell,
happened yesterday, at the Coyote Bar and Grill.
The Coyote is a very nice place. It is well-appointed
inside, but it is even nicer, of an afternoon lately, on the outside. There is
an extensive patio –not the five or six chairs with postage-stamp tables
squeezed between the front door and the curb that you get at a lot of places,
but more like the often expansive space you find in Paris, where the outside
seating is way more extensive than the inside. The Coyote has tables of various
sizes on its patio, and also individual chairs facing various circular stone
ledges that are at knee height and which surround fire-pits eight or ten feet
in diameter, like big pow-wow circles.
On my afternoon walks, I have been sampling various bars as
stopping places: Las Olas, Swami’s, one or two places whose names seem to be
“bistro” or just “bar and grill.” And lately, the Coyote. So I sit on the patio
in the afternoon shade -the sun is too intense—and spend maybe a half-hour with
a rather good Scuplin IPA (a local brew) while checking my email or playing
“Words with Friends” with my sister Marj.
Yesterday I got a late start to my
walk, a bit after 3:30. It takes 13 or 14 minutes to get to the oceanfront, and
from there the rather shorter distance to Carlsbad Village takes a few minutes
longer (because the scenery is better). So by the time I settled into one of
the plastic chairs on the Coyote’s patio and put my feet up on the stone ledge
and ordered my beer from the comely waitress (the pale one this time, not the
dark one –waitress, I mean; the beer is a darkish amber) it was past 4:00
o’clock. As usual, she gave me the check with the beer: the patio is sparsely
populated and this waitress likes to chat up the bartender inside, and she
knows I won’t be ordering anything more.
And lo! The bill was about half the normal amount. This is
the point at which I had my own personal revelation. “Happy Hour,” she
explained, when I asked about the steep decrease in price.
Now, I must, I must
have known this: that Happy Hour wasn’t just an expression, an exhortation for
people to be happy (or Happy). Like everything, it’s a marketing device: come
in during these hours and we’ll make it worth your while: half-price beer! No
doubt it’s not just beer, either. But so
help me, I was floored. I even said, “you mean all this time, if I just came in
fifteen minutes later I’d have saved all that money?”
I suppose there was a sort of pitying tsk-tsk in her aspect.
“Right!” she answered.
The Sculpin tasted that much better.
And by the way, I am exaggerating, for effect, how much I
drink beer in the afternoons, at Coyote or anywhere else. My use of “all this
time,” for example, actually referenced maybe two or three previous visits.
So relax, Janet.
But there it is: at my advanced age, I am still capable of
experiencing Revelation. A testament to life’s imponderability. Or, on the
other hand, a pointed reminder of the entropic direction of life itself, and in
particular my own course, as I serially forget things and then am bowled over at
the experience of finding out, in my dotage, everything I knew thirty years
ago.
People handle this sort of intimation of mortality (as if our
servers are getting full, and lose bits of data routinely; one day, they will
crash) in different ways: with religion, or facelifts, or dim lighting. One way
is through the use of increasingly fancy toys. Out here in the sun, I see lots
of snazzy cars, many of which are convertibles. California cars don’t spend
half the year sloshing through salt-encrusted gutters and curbs that produce
the rust that eventually devours them; they last decades, gleaming in their
1950s and 1970s pastels in mint condition. A pretty high percentage of these
well-preserved vehicles are driven by often indifferently-preserved guys displaying
impressively tanned wattles and arms with skin darker than the age spots.
The other day, for example, I saw a 1970-something Pontiac,
wide as a 747 and two parking places long, top down, of course, with the radio
blaring something approximating hip-hop music. What was noteworthy about this
display was the fact that this car was piloted by a guy old enough for even me
to call “old timer.” Eighty, if a day. He couldn’t possibly have gone from
dancing to Glenn Miller’s orchestra in the 1940s to choosing Joey Bada$$ all on
his own, in 2016. Could he? He had a deep tan, of course, and a shirt open,
rather dispiritingly, to the waist; and he drove in that self-conscious way
some guys do, with their right arm spread expansively across the back of the
empty passenger seat beside them in a pose of exaggerated leisure, the old
white guy version of a gangster lean (look it up).
Now this guy, for all his breezy aspect, cannot possibly
believe that his studied insouciance and flashy car is enough to recommend
serious consideration by any one of the legion of nubile joggers on the
sidewalks beside which he pulled up, and whom he ogled. There may be no fool
like an old fool; but there are no fools at all as old as this guy; eventually,
age inoculates everyone. No matter that, deep inside, you always sort of feel
the way you did when you were 25 or 30.
So what was he thinking?
I believe that the car, the tan, and so on were simply his
way of not going gentle into that good-night. He knows he is terminally ill
with the disease that catches us all, in the end; and that, in his personal
movie, no matter how healthy he may be, “the end” is a reel closer than it is
for most people.
A car, sensible people say, is a tool: keep it in good working
order and it can be very useful. For this guy, it was no longer a tool to get
him into the city and the daily strife of the world at large; but it was
nevertheless helping him do something.
Other guys use other cars –out here, the car looms very
large in the scale of necessary things—for other things. And, because a car is
so necessary, its non-essential aspects come to assume more importance than
does its sheer utility: the question is never “do I need one?” And so that
question doesn’t get asked, and lesser ones come to the fore more readily, and
more weightedly, than they probably do in cities with decent public
transportation and reasonably high population density. And very expensive
parking.
On my walk home I saw another guy, in another car, that was
also seemingly the answer, for its owner, to secondary questions. This was a
small, sporty red car –I couldn’t tell what brand, and so don’t know whether it
was a high-priced bauble or a workmanlike buggy wearing lipstick and spandex.
It pulled up to the stop sign on Tamarack at Garfield, where Tamarack is pretty
steeply uphill. And when he pulled away, he gunned the engine. Not like a
hot-rodder would do, to lay rubber while squealing away from the stop sign.
Rather, he was using a lot of rpms, and producing a lot of noise, without
starting up very fast at all. So I could tell the car had a manual transmission
(we used to call them “standard” transmissions, decades ago when they were …
standard). And he was inexperienced, so he was giving it too much gas and yet
leaving the clutch insufficiently engaged. I mentally snorted; “beginner,” I
thought as I watched him gradually get underway, with a roar, in first gear.
Unsympathetic of me, I realize. I recall vividly the
experience of seeing the light turn green in front of me, on Lewis Avenue in Tulsa
at age 14, and nervously popping the clutch on my father’s ’54 Ford, so that
the car sort of frogged halfway into the intersection before coming to a stop,
the engine dead. Everyone who has learned to drive a stick shift has done this;
there’s no other way to learn than by testing the springiness of the clutch
pedal, and your own coordination of left foot with right, so as to start up
with minimal application of gas and yet without jerking amateurishly.
But I still gave this guy poor marks. Take the time to learn
how to do it right, I groused mentally. Kids these days! And then I caught
myself. After all, he hadn’t stepped on my lawn; this is California, Tony:
lighten up!
But such reflection is why I like so much walking through the
streets and parks and down the sidewalks of wherever I find myself. I see
things, and they suggest other things to me, and, well, my mental picture of
the world is constantly refreshed. Not without difficulty, sometimes, or sudden
hesitation: is the world really the way I think it is?
Every day, my walk begins on the path behind the complex
where we are living. It’s a dirt path that is some sort of
officially-recognized City of Carlsbad place; I can tell by the sign that
asserts this fact while warning people about unleashed pets, the use of
vehicles, and so forth. But it really is just a footpath, about twenty inches
wide, between the complex’s wrought-iron fence on one side and the increasingly
steep slope, on the other, down to the lagoon. The slope of the hill is densely
covered with underbrush, with a very few trees here and there and brackish
lagoon at the bottom.
Yesterday, for the first time, as I set out on the path, I
saw a lizard. Just a tiny one, but the first wildlife, other than the birds out
over the water, that I have seen. And on my return home, two hours later, I saw
at two different places some sort of big creatures just as they disappeared
into the undergrowth. Janet said, when I remarked on this, that they were most
probably rabbits.
“That place is filled with rabbits,” she said. “There must
be two dozen of them out there.”
Never having seen any, although I’ve walked that path dozens
of times more than she, I was a bit dubious. Then, today, I saw three or four
rabbits as I embarked on the afternoon’s journey. I’ve always wanted to use the
word “nonplussed;” well, this nonplussed me. How could I possibly have taken
thirty or forty trips back and forth along the three hundred yards or so of
that path, never having seen a single rabbit, and suddenly they were popping up
all over?
And then one of my many shortcomings, my sense of
referential association, came into play: one everyday thing suddenly calls to
mind something else that it wildly out of proportion to the simple event I am
confronted with. And so it was this afternoon. I immediately, upon asking
myself the question, “where did all these critters suddenly come from?” begin
to wonder if they were only put there in order to fill out my mental picture of
the path. That is, I started thinking about rabbits, and so the cosmos supplied
them; and like the cosmos always does it over-supplied what I was thinking of,
or worried about.
I was reminded of a television drama I saw, decades ago,
probably on “The Twilight Zone.” In it, an airplane full of people was coming
in for a landing at a big-city airport. The captain couldn’t raise the control
tower, and he cautioned the passengers to remain alert: he couldn’t see any
other planes on the runways, so he determined to land without control tower
permission. He did so, and taxied to the gate; but there was no one there,
nobody extending the jetway, and so forth. With some difficulty, the passengers
disembarked and entered the airport, which was totally empty. And not just
empty, there were no newsstands, no bars or souvenir shops –nothing but an
empty building. And gradually, as the tension built, things started appearing.
Kiosks with tee shirts, cash registers next to rows of gum and mints, all the
usual stuff.
The conceit of the drama was that the airport and all its
people and accouterments only came into being when the airplane full of people
would need it to be there, and things were sort of running late. The
implication was that everything was more or less an illusion: the only things
that had any real substance were those that were needed at the moment. Kind of
analogous to the movie, The Truman Show:
“Cue the Sun,” the director says at one point, because Truman needed it to be
daytime.
By extension, the entire world is an illusion. It’s only
presented as physically real to me when I need to encounter it. So, today,
there’s no actual “Chicago” back there, because I am in California. One set
gets stricken as another is put up.
This is actually some sort of real philosophical problem, or
dispute, or something. Jessica will know all about this, and be able to tell me
what Pythagoras or David Hume or Alfred North Whitehead had to say about the
matter. For me, it’s just sort of delicious to contemplate it for a few
moments; then, like the dilettante that I am, I move on. To the next set piece,
as it were.
The next set piece arose last night, on the television news.
Some throwaway feature story involved the political candidates and their
supporters, and the fact that Marco Rubio’s campaign was trying to get people
to buy shirts that said “Rubaeo.” They interviewed a bunch of Rubio
supporters, asking them if they would wear such a shirt, and call Rubio “BAE,”
which they pronounced “bay.”
Of course, I had no idea what “BAE” was supposed to signify.
But the trusty internets told me it means “before all else.” Apparently it’s
used to indicate extraordinary devotion to another person or a thing. And that
got me thinking about codes.
As the world gets more and more complex, one has to reach
further and further to achieve that special sense of inclusion and exclusivity
that informs a personal identity. It has long since ceased to be sufficient to
consider yourself, say, “Throg, of this village.” That’s just not enough: there
are four million people in your village now, and ninety-five thousand of them
are called “Throg.”
Codes like “bae” are just the latest device to employ in this
self-defining process; they are the digital-world equivalent of the slang of
decades ago, when to be an early adopter of “hip” as an adjective to replace
“cool” was a sign of one’s quotient of, well, cool, of where one belonged in
the scheme of things. Of who you were. More recently, a certain subset (I guess
it was a subset) of the young population started using the expression “word” to
mean “I agree with what that person just said.” This marked a mid-point between
the use of a trendy new adjective and the current use of impenetrable acronyms.
So now we seem to have “bae,” an apparently recent entry in a procession that
has included “bff” and so forth. Those who use that style are saying something
about who they are, not just what they are referring to. If you are
insufficiently au courant, you think
“LOL” means “lots of luck,” for instance; and you are thereby demonstrating
your backwardness.
It’s not just people that use ceremonial processes to make
statements about themselves; animals do it all the time, and often they have
(or think they have) a lot more at stake in such usage than just their extent
of cool-ness. I’ve been observing Bitsy’s approaches to other dogs, for
example. The dog trainer says that dogs need to learn to socialize with other
dogs, to get used to different sorts of people –tall ones, ones with hats, with
sunglasses, skinny ones, and so forth. So on a long walk yesterday, over on the
oceanfront, I watched Bitsy’s encounters, safely on a leash, of course, with
other dogs. And there seems to be an almost instinctive dog protocol, or
etiquette.
It appears to work like this. Assuming you are on neutral
turf, start by sniffing the other dog’s butt. Smells are great identifiers, for
dogs; and besides, there are no dangerous teeth there. If that initiative goes
okay, move around slowly, until something close to nose-nose contact is
achieved. Do this carefully: any sudden moves on the part of the other dog, or
unexpected noises, from the dog or anywhere in the immediate vicinity, means
“bail,” and fast. Sometimes, instead, the fight-or-flight response dictates, by
some imponderable process, “fight.” Then it’s the owner who has to act fast.
I don’t know why it works this way; but, especially with
small dogs, there seems routinely to be a good deal of tension in these
encounters. Dogs that get used to one another by this means, though, can end up
playing like ten-month olds, rolling around on the rug and falling over one
another, all in good fun. This is what happens in puppy class. Except with
King, the terrier. Bitsy says King is a dumb sumbitch.
Today was a magical day, approaching the beach. The water
fairly sparkled, in the late afternoon sun, twinkling so extensively and
brightly that it may well have been designed by George Herbert Walker Bush:
there seemed to be a thousand points of light, gleaming on the surface as I
walked down the hill to Carlsbad Boulevard.
Along the beach there were hundreds and hundreds of seagulls
–for the second day in a row— standing near the incoming tide. They stood
silently, arrayed each by himself like pieces on a chessboard: no crowding; no
two birds on a single square, please. And they just stood there. The people
were gathered, as people will, in groups of various sizes, clumped here and
there with no discernible pattern. But the birds were exemplars of discipline
and organization. They were kind of intimidating as they stood there, patiently
looking out to sea, waiting.
Waiting, very patiently. For what? I had the sudden feeling
that something momentous would happen soon. So far, nothing has, except another
Democratic candidates’ debate. But if that was it, why were the gulls all
looking towards China?
As I walked on, a helicopter sounded above, noisier than
usual. There are always helicopters, over the beach or a short distance out
over the water. But they are invariably high
overhead. Rich people, probably, taxiing back and forth without the inconvenience
of traffic on the I-5 or the I-15. But this ‘copter was different. It was
lower, and noisier. And it was yellow, and overly, um, mechanical-looking. As
if it had a lot of gear, somehow. And it was barely moving, hovering not quite
motionlessly over the beach.
It was watching. Watching us, no doubt.
Or, along with the seagulls, getting ready.
And Now, The News!
February 20, 2016
Politics
Politics is
in the air! The primary election season has begun, with Donald Trump off to a
promising start. Next, the voters of South Carolina will have their say.
South
Carolina is not just any state. For starters, it’s where the Civil War began.
And a just-released poll of that state’s voters found strong support among Trump supporters for:
· The wish that the South had won the
Civil War
· Banning Muslims and homosexuals from
entry into the USA
· Creating a national registry of
Muslims
· Making the practice of Islam illegal
in the US
So, with all
this patriotic enthusiasm, I have been feeling that I just have to get myself a
bit more educated. So this week I set out to investigate one of the most
controversial issues of the day: Measure A.
Haven’t
heard of it, you say? That’s the trouble with the American electorate:
ignorant!
As all
thinking men and women know, Measure A asks the voters of Carlsbad, California
whether a new shopping center should be built on the south edge of the Agua Hedionda
lagoon, which runs approximately from the Coaster railroad tracks just west of
the ocean all the way past Interstate 5 and still farther east.
“Agua
Hedionda” is Spanish for “pestilential water.” Don’t drink it. The lagoon is
the home of the Tidewater Goby, an endangered fish, and the soon-to-open
Carlsbad Desalination Plant, which is expected to produce 50 million gallons of
desalinated water per day.
My initial
venture into local politics was an information-gathering initiative. I stopped,
on my daily walk, at tents along the oceanfront at Carlsbad Boulevard, to visit
the “Vote Yes” people and the “Vote No” people, in turn.
The “No to
A” people had facts: the 177 acres of now-public land that would be turned over
to the developer of a new mall. They complained of the failure of the City
Council to require the state-mandated environmental, traffic, and other studies
before voting to approve the project.
The “Yes”
people had testimonials. The Carlsbad Strawberry Company will double its
acreage and become “sustainable for generations.” A small businessman attested
to the future prosperity of his company and his ability to hire more workers, if
only this development is allowed to occur. Nordstrom’s (which is portrayed kind
of like Jeb bush’s campaign logo: Nordstrom’s!) will be an anchor tenant at the
new mall, which is not a mall at all, but a promenade.
The “Yes”
commercials on TV are frequent and compelling. There are no commercials on TV
for the “No” side. I wonder where the “Yes” campaign is getting the money for
all these commercials, the four-color brochures, and so forth? Not hard to
guess, though.
This is a
hard-fought political campaign, one might say, it’s bare-knuckled. Dirty tricks
are alleged, involving the theft of yard signs. But, oddly, when I tried to contextualize
this, as they say in the political discourse of the day, to get down to the
really important stuff, neither campaign had much to say. They were
non-committal, for instance, on the question of partial-birth abortion, or the
rights of TGIF people.
“Do you mean
“LGBT” people?” one lady asked me. Oops. But even after the correction, she had
nothing to say.
Is Ted Cruz
a natural born citizen, and so eligible to run? Nobody offered an opinion
(although a lawsuit filed a day or two ago in Chicago --not by D. Trump--, and
accepted for argument by a judge there, may resolve the matter).
What’s wrong
with these people?
How are
voters supposed to make up their minds if they don’t have a grasp of the big issues?
I was pretty
disappointed. Nevertheless, I predict that the “Yes” people will win, probably
handily. The guys with the flashiest brochures, I have found, often prevail;
they pretty much always prevail over earnest, reasoned types with thick
documents. And who could be opposed to strawberries, regardless of gender
preferences?
So I resumed
my walk, But I did see one lonely expression of a larger sensibility, in the
form of a “Ben Carson for President” sign on the lawn opposite the Robert C.
Frazee Beach. I even snapped a photo of it, both because it was the only sign
referencing the national campaign that I have seen, and because I judge it
likely that it is the only Ben Carson sign I shall ever see, in person.
Sitting, a
few minutes later, in the open-air front porch of Las Olas, I enjoyed their
excellent ceviche and an Islander
IPA. And I scanned the news updates on my phone:
· Whackos (no, Waco is a town in Texas) are suggesting that Justice Scalia was
murdered, and that Obama had a hand in it. I find this hard to credit: if, as
Senator Rubio has stated … and stated … and stated, Obama knows exactly what
he’s doing, why didn’t he do it right after winning re-election, more than 3
years ago? Pretty sloppy, Barack!
· A trove of letters has surfaced, between
Pope John Paul, who has actually, I believe, been declared a saint, or maybe
just a well-above-average, and a woman with whom, some suggest, he had “an
inappropriate relationship.” Now seriously, folks, find me a woman who would be
caught dead with a guy who wears flaming red robes and red shoes! So after
careful thought I decided that this story should be placed in the “uncertain”
category.
But I was antsy: I was doing
research! So I finished my snack and set out for another spot that cried out for
analysis: the water place two blocks farther north.
The water place sells water,
reasonably enough. The sign says “100% pure alkaline water! 70¢ per gallon.
It’s just a structure on a corner, maybe ten feet square, with various spigots
on three of its four sides. People come and go, elderly ladies who can barely
manage their walkers, lugging three- and five-gallon containers up to the
place, filling them, and somehow getting them back to their SUVs.
What could be so attractive about
this that someone could, evidently, make a business of it? I mean, I know they
sell water in the grocery store, a fact that would have struck dumb my mother,
50 years ago. Who the hell pays extra for water when you have perfectly good
taps right in your kitchen?
Ignoring the obvious responses
concerning Flint, Michigan, I mean.
So I walked around to the back, to
the fourth side of the building, where a young man was talking to a customer.
When he was free, I asked, “what is this all about?”
His response was, in effect, that
this is California, man! He even gave me a free cup of the stuff, and pointed
out the well, right there, fifty feet from Carlsbad Boulevard, from which they
were realizing this economic bonanza. The water was kind of warm; and it was
not enhanced by the contrast with the Jamba Juice smoothie I was still working
on. But we journalists have to endure discomfort, sometimes, to get the story.
The unspoken subtext to this item is
the continuing drought, here in California. Although I myself have seen one
very windy rainstorm (we’d call it “breezy” at home), the reservoirs remain at
40% or so of last year’s already-low levels. Out here, you don’t get water in a
restaurant unless you ask for it.
So maybe there’s a reason for this
water business. But, if the water table continues to decline, how good is this
water, maybe two hundred yards from the ocean, likely to be?
Religion
News came
last week of an historic meeting between the Pope and the Patriarch of
Constantinople, who is more or less the Pope for Orthodox Christians. This
meeting took place at Jose Marti Airport in Havana, “neutral ground,” as PBS
characterized it on last Friday’s News Hour; and was the first such meeting
since the split within Christianity in 1054.
On the News
Hour, Hari Srinivasan interviewed two giants of the clerical establishment in
this country, for their respective takes on this fast-breaking story: the Most
Blessed Tikun of Washington, D.C. (“the leader of all Orthodox Christians in
the U.S. and Canada”), and Cardinal Emeritus Theodore McCarrick. The Tikun
appeared, as the two men sat side by side, smiling, to be roughly twice the
size, physically, of his Roman Catholic interlocutor. Really; the Cardinal must
be a very, very small man, or the Tikun a Bunyanesque giant.
Srinivasan,
a smooth, practiced journalist, began his interview with a question, “for those
who haven’t been following the 1000-year history of the split between your two
churches.” Things continued in that vein for a mesmerizing ten minutes or so of
harmony. I thought to myself, “I don’t know why you’d even bother trying to
educate someone who hasn’t been following the course of this thousand-year
spellbinder.” But then, more charitably, I revised my opinion. After all, I’m
on vacation, and away from some of my normal sources of breaking news. Even I
may not be 100% up to speed on these developments.
But I was so
caught up in these thoughts that I missed Hari’s actual question. So,
regrettably, I am still rather uninformed, and so subject to the ridicule of
those better prepared than I.
And if this
is not enough on the religion front, we have the spectacle of politics and
religion together, like the worst family Thanksgiving dinner with relatives,
ever. The Pope (the new one, from South America, not the old one with the
girlfriend) suggested that people who strive to build walls rather than bridges
are not Christian.
As the Pope sort
of has the trademark when it comes to Christianity, Donald Trump took umbrage.
“Disgraceful!” he called the Pope. Fortunately, the Pope, back in the Vatican
(which, as Trump pointed out, is surrounded by a wall), moved on. And, it must
be said in support of The Donald: if Ted Cruz can claim to be a Christian,
what, exactly, are the disqualifiers?
Doggie
Class
Since
shortly after arriving here, we have been taking Bitsy to Doggie Class. The
class is down in San Diego, on Sunday afternoons, and is run by Karma Dog
Trainers. Karma has the most extensive dog-training website imaginable, with
dozens of bios of their staff, information about classes, videos, checklists,
and on and on.
Bitsy hated
doggie class at first, hiding under my chair or gluing herself to Janet’s leg
in terror. But she’s loosened up; and at the third class she spent her entire
recess wrestling with a somewhat bigger puppy of indeterminate breed –well, it’s
the 21st century. She rolled around the floor, chased, tackled and
was chased and tackled in return.
And she has
gradually learned a few things, as have we. She has homework: meet at least 5
new dogs each week; practice groveling on the floor for food; meet all kinds of
people: fat ones, skinny ones, ones with sunglasses, with hats, and little kids
also.
A couple of
days ago, on our morning walk, we met eleven week-old Buster (another
Chihuahua, although perhaps his mother’s postman was of a slightly different
breed), and Buster’s owner, Debbie, here in the apartment complex yard. Buster
and Bitsy hit it off at once, and played until their respective leashes were
hopelessly tangled. No growling, no threats or violence. So Bitsy’s training is
paying off!
It should
be: doggie class is work; and Bitsy
comes home on Sunday afternoons completely wiped out. She sleeps right through
to Monday morning. Unless my shoes have been left out in the living room.
Wanderings
Back to Encinitas yesterday,
to visit the Kinko’s store, now known as the FedEx Kinko’s, to print a few tax
documents. This gave me an excuse to stop at the Sun Bum coffeehouse, where
they roast their own coffee; it was my first visit since we departed Encinitas
for Carlsbad. Raoul was there, safely back from Chicago where, he said, it was
not that cold, in the 30s, and he had a great time. The scone, which he warmed
up for me, and the latte were as good as I recalled, and better than anything
I’ve found in Carlsbad.
After a walk up and down Coast
Highway 101, I also stopped at the Better Buzz coffee roasters, where they
advise you on a printed sign of the “acrylamide” in your coffee. “We don't put
it there,” the sign says; “it’s a product of the roasting process.” But the
State of California has determined … well, something or other. After several
microseconds of consideration, I determined to just drink the damn coffee.
The Whole Foods on Coast
Highway 101 was a welcome sight. Somehow, although it’s a bona-fide Whole Foods,
it seems somehow to have a bit of a bohemian character, even compared to most
of the chain’s stores I have visited, whether the one at the south edge of
Union Square in New York or the super-fancy new one on Kingsbury in Chicago
where they have a wine bar and you sort of expect to see a Genius Bar in the
next aisle.
I like Encinitas much more
than Carlsbad, as far as the feel of the downtown streets is concerned. Encinitas
has some pretty odd places, like a Mexican store that sells a lot of
Guanajuato-type “day of the dead” merchandise, a nails-and-hairdo spa that
advertises itself as “the best spa in North County – 2014 (worst tacos).” In
other words, it is eclectic and eccentric. And it has several coffee houses
with good coffee, and several sketchy-looking bars, like the Daley Double,
which, being from Chicago, I could barely resist (but, owing in part to the
impenetrable darkness inside, I always did).
Carlsbad, by contrast, has …
well, less of everything. Fewer surf shops, bicycle shops, restaurants, and
virtually no coffee places unless you count Starbucks, which I do not. I can
walk through pretty much everything even mildly interesting in Carlsbad Village
in maybe 15 minutes. In Encinitas, it takes twice as long. Carlsbad is
prettier, more orderly … less likely to confront the flaneur with much that is intriguing. The shops are more upscale
and less interesting, on the whole.
But, of course, there's the
matter of the oceanfront. Carlsbad’s is world-class, and is right there,
basically on Highway 101, while in Encinitas it is not only several blocks away
but a hundred feet or more down from street level in most places. So the feel in
Carlsbad is more 1970s-California beach movie. This may not be as interesting,
but it is aesthetically more pleasing.
The people in Carlsbad Village
seem to be mainly of two types: elderly folks (sigh, like me) taking their
constitutionals along Carlsbad Boulevard/101, and high-school students who
always seem to have just been let out of a school that must be about fifty
yards from the Village center. Of course that’s an exaggeration; but on the
whole, allowing for a sprinkling of mothers with kids and muscular
twenty-somethings, it’s an older crowd with a lot of teenie-boppers.
In Encinitas, you find many
more twenty- and thirty-somethings. More college people, to judge by overheard
conversations. Overall, it is a younger place; fewer retirees, more surfer
types. And, in the bars I have visited, more regulars who look, well, like
they’ve occupied those same barstools for decades.
The contrast between the two
places, ten miles apart along the oceanfront, is interesting. I prefer living
here, in Carlsbad; but it is a more sedate place; and I’d prefer that my daily
walks, but for the ocean itself, were along the main street of Encinitas. But
the walk along the oceanfront is always magnificent. Carlsbad can say, in
response to my snooty comparison with Encinitas, “Ocean.”
Politics (cont’d)
I was going to end at this
point, but I have to speak up. The results of the South Carolina Republican Primary
were announced this evening, and they are, in large part, what was predicted.
On TV, I watched a triumphant Marco Rubio –meaning a Marco Rubio who finished,
roughly, third—say to his assembled worshippers, “If it is the will of God that
I win this election …” I couldn’t listen to any more.
I am so sick of candidates who
pretend that Jesus wants them to be president. Rubio is, of course, a piker
compared to Ted Cruz when it comes to ostentatious religious showboating; I’ve
heard Cruz literally praying, in a campaign speech, for the “Heavenly Father”
to “awaken the body of Christ.” He apparently does this pretty much at every
speech. I didn’t know “Christ” needed help in having his body awakened.
All this bible-thumping is
unseemly, of course. But it makes me wonder why the Repubs dislike Iran so
much: after all, Iran has achieved the theocracy that these guys are always
praying for. The clergy rules!
Beyond that, it appears that,
for a large number of Repub voters, the number one qualification for president
is being a Christian christian (Jesus wouldn’t recognize the “values” of
this crowd, what with the misogyny, xenophobia, enthusiasm for violence,
bearing of false witness, and so on). I wonder if they pick their preachers
based on athletic ability, their attorneys based on the quality of their
comedic routines, their doctors based on political opinions … I could go on. But
it is too disheartening, when it’s not scary.
Half the Republican electorate
appears to be crazed to the point that they are listening in tongues. And their
candidates are making Donald Trump, who does not humble himself before … anyone
(or Anyone), look reasonable, which shows how low that bar has been set in
GOP-land.
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