Dreamscapes

You can probably tell from this blog post that I’m running out of things to write about. I tend to remember dreams in some detail when I awaken, and I often write them down. Please forgive me for sharing them with you. Anyone who doesn’t want to see a random sampling of what creeps into my sleeping psyche can skip what follows.

Last night I dreamed that I was in a nightclub with a fat man announcing the piano player for the evening. The pianist asked him if he wanted it slow or upbeat and he told her slow. Then she started playing what I thought at first was “Slow Rain” but then I thought about it and it was “Deep Night.” The announcer started singing it along with her and I went up to her, singing along also, and told her it was one of my favorites. I mean, I haven’t heard anyone sing “Deep Night” for umpteen years and now it’s stuck in my head.

Arizona dreams are so peculiar in their complexity. One night almost a decade ago, I had a series of very vivid dreams. I can’t remember many details but I know they were very detailed. In one section I went into a sleazy bar to buy some cigarettes and when I asked the bartender for a pack of menthol Parliaments he said, coldly, “Not your turn.” So I waited until he finally deigned to put them on the counter. I paid with a $20 bill and when I went to reach for them he said, “Not time yet. You can’t have them until 10:00.” I thought, “Another really stupid New York blue law.” In another section I was in someone’s living room with a bunch of people, among them my old high school classmates Sherman and Baer and Catey, when a group of hoods came in to make trouble. I gave one of them a beer and then he wanted another. In another section I met Leefa Lesher and her mother and father walking down a street in New York. I’ve been having many school dreams and golf dreams and New York City dreams. The NYC dreams almost always involve my going downtown into the heart of the city to find a bookstore or a department store or a bar, and I’m always driving circuitous highways trying to find my way back out of the city (always to the west). And there are parts of the city I really don’t want to be in and I always seem to be there. I have this dream probably half a dozen times a year, which doesn’t sound like many, but the sheer number of them over the years has grooved the theme. My golf dreams are nearly always about me on a really awful course, usually with water running down fairways and lost balls and impossible shots through heavy trees. I guess I should consider them negative golf images when I should be training my mind to hold only positive images.
Recently I’ve been dreaming dreams that never seem to end. In the most vivid one I was teaching a class in Arizona history and I was telling them about a record of the Navajo alphabet made by some old Navajonian many years in the past. It was made on a cylindrical wooden recording much like the old turn of the century record cylinders, but it was lost and never found. I was excited about it as were most of the class. All but one little girl who insisted on tearing up paper and throwing it all over the room. I told her she had to pick up her mess and she said NO, and then threw more paper scraps at me. I then asked her if she wouldn’t PLEASE pick the room up and she smiled and said she would. I helped her pick it up. When we were done I said she deserved a hug for being so good about it and we hugged. End of dream. Weird.

I had a restless night of dreams. In one I was sitting in on a seminar in some college or other and the teacher had us all put a coin marker on a date on a huge calendar on the floor. The date was supposed to represent one of the most meaningful times of our lives. No one else wanted to go first, so I did. I started telling them about a teacher I had who so influenced me in my desire to do something creatively, in music. His name was Major Sindar Buchanan Fargis. And everyone in the seminar had heard of him. I was so surprised. The teacher then said that he’d do some research and I could continue my story at the next meeting. What a dumb dream.

Last night I dreamed that a number of puppies tried to lick me to death. They were so happy to see me and I them. Later, still sleeping, I noticed a bat that kept flying around the room above my head. And then it tried to bite me and I grabbed it by the throat and tried to hold it off. Later, in a strange golf pro shop, suddenly it was taken over by a Nazi group that had infiltrated the club. I was there and tried to blend in with the Nazis. I looked in a room and there was my manager at Stardust Golf Course, a neo-Nazi. It was much clearer than my description of it here, but like all dreams, the dimensions tend to fade away and vanish after waking.

I had a long dream about taking a final in some college course I was enrolled in, something like a history course and there were very few students in it. The teacher handed out the tests and assigned us numbers and words to put at the top of the test. Most got numbers, but I got the word “who.” The test consisted of five essays topics and we could take it anywhere we wanted to. I went to some room down the hall and began writing. Or trying to write. I suffered the same kind of paralysis I used to have when taking a timed test and I just couldn’t seem to get started. Time was just whipping by and I had only just begun my first essay. Oh, how painful the process. Trying to get thoughts down on paper but always aware of the clock. Finally, I just gave up and went back to turn in my unfinished test, knowing I would have failed the course. What a dumb dream. But how very accurate was the feeling of being paralyzed.

I had another strange dream last night, another school dream in which I was a student and not the teacher. In this one the teacher was really attractive and sexy and even though it was a test day she kept going around the room dancing and flirting with all the males. Finally, she got around to me. She told me to touch noses with her but that I should look only at her nose and not mine. We did that and then she very lightly put her lips against mine. And very slowly it turned into a full embrace and kiss that lasted a long time, during which I became aware that she was crying. I pulled away from her and tried to console her. I had the feeling she was crying because the kiss was so beautiful, so moving, and she’d intended it to be only silly. Now that’s a really silly dream.
In this one I was joining a faculty somewhere, but I was old and doing it only for one year. I had a section of freshmen and another of creative writing. I was in a faculty meeting and asked who else was teaching freshmen and one scrawny fellow raised his hand. Then I asked who else was teaching creative writing and no one raised a hand. I asked in some astonishment how many students there were in this school and someone said about 1800, and I said, “You mean to tell me in a school this size there’s only one section of creative writing?” Then it shifted to my house or apartment and it was an absolute mess. My two daughters Jeri and Laura were staying with me and it was getting very late. I looked outside and two really scruffy men were sleeping in a car, doors open. Laura said it was someone she knew and I was ready to burst I was so angry. I don’t like dreams like that. Not really nightmares because there’s nothing scary about them, but they’re unpleasant because of the anger and anxiety of teaching when no one listens or I’m unprepared.

Last night, from 3:00 on, I dreamed and dreamed as only I can dream in Arizona—long, involved, complicated dreams about driving strange cars through strange landscapes, trying to sell that house in which there’s that same secret room upstairs in a huge attic, in which I can climb up toward the rafters to find secret passageways. I’ve dreamed of that house for years now, nearly always the same.

Oh, the dreams. I feel like they went on almost all night. The first segment involved an apocalyptic episode in which we had all been informed that the world would end the next day and I and everyone else were so dismayed by the news. Then the next day I discovered that the world hadn’t ended (not yet anyway) but that all vegetation had died. I must have subconsciously gotten that from John Christopher’s novel No Blade of Grass, which I’d read years and years ago. Now I’m lying there dreaming/thinking about all the consequences of the death of all vegetation. All herbivorous animals will die of starvation; all carnivorous animals will die of starvation once they’ve eaten all the dying herbivores; all animals of any kind will eventually die of suffocation once the air has been totally depleted of oxygen because there is no more vegetation to turn the carbon dioxide back into oxygen. So, in order for me to live at least a while longer, I need foodstuffs that won’t spoil—like canned and jarred goods. Society had broken down and we were all scavenging for foodstuffs. I was in an abandoned grocery store filling a cart with as much stuff as I could—canned vegetable and fruits, coffee, canned meats. The last things I put in the cart before I had to rush away were some packages of flat bread and several large pies. When I left the store, a number of other people were just in the process of flying away in old planes. One guy stayed behind and was shooting a thing that propelled a balsa wood plane into the air where it spiraled and swooped and dove before coming back down. End of that segment. Next: I was back at the house in Lakewood, about to drive away on my brand new motorcycle parked out in back by the mailbox. But when I sat on it, it was already running and one of the neighbors came out and apologetically took a key out of the ignition. It seems he’d been using my bike and it was no longer brand new. In fact, there were a number of things wrong with it, like a nearly flat, wobbly front tire. Then someone pulled up at our backdoor in a bright red car, got out, and proceeded to have a luncheon in our living room, and all the while I’m trying to find Chris to take him somewhere on my motorcycle. But he’s busy playing with some other kids out in front. There were other bits and pieces involving golfing and swimming but they’ve since disappeared into that big repository of lost and forgotten dreams.

Geico Gecko

Now that we can DVR our favorite tv shows and watch them whenever we want and fast forward through all the commercial gunk, we don’t pay much attention to network sales pitches. And it’s especially nice to be able to skip that annoying dufus in the Toyota commercials, or that silly family who discover they have no money to pay their restaurant bill and have to wash dishes, bemoaning the fact that they hadn’t gotten a loan on their car title, or the Cox Bundle guy who blurts out to his neighbor the end of a big game the neighbor had DVRed and who captures his son in an embarrassing moment and puts it on YouTube. But there’s one company whose writers must just click their heels at the thought of going to work to come up with more clever and funny stuff to woo the public. Yes, I’m talking about Geico Insurance. There’s never been a cuter, more clever little sales icon than the Geico gecko. The Pillsbury doughboy can’t touch him. The Eveready bunny can’t touch him. The Aflac duck can’t touch him. Jack in the Box can’t touch him. They started out with the indignant caveman, who finally ran his course, and they then began the more popular gecko series. In addition to the gecko ads, in the course of a week we might see a dozen or more different commercials they’ve made: Maxwell the pig who can’t believe that flight attendant actually said she’d believe that when pigs fly; the series about unwise owls and old MacDonald who can’t spell “cow”; all the “How happy is he?” bits about Dracula volunteering at a blood drive, the Pillsbury dough boy on his way to a baking contest, Mutombo blocking shots, a body builder directing traffic, an antelope with night vision goggles, and funniest of all, the camel who keeps asking everyone in the office what day it is. If I ever needed to change my insurance, I wouldn’t hesitate to call up the Geico guys, in hopes I’d one day get to meet that funny UK gecko. Or is he Australian?

Euthanasia

Well, we did what we finally had to do. We took Squeakie to the vet, paid the fee, kissed her on the head, and said goodbye. It wasn’t fair to her or to us to put it off any longer. She wasn’t going to get better and we couldn’t get up every morning to see if she was still with us. This past week she moved less and less each day, unable to drink or eat or use the litter box. And for the last two days we were barely able to see that she was still alive: no more Squeakie talk, no more climbs up onto our bed, only a tiny twitch of tail and occasional blink of eyes. So, lot of tears, a few recriminations, but we’re now resigned to what had to be done.

Last January we were selfish in waiting too long to release our older cat Dusty, and were now sensible enough and kind enough to release Squeakie when we did. Too bad the same kindness can’t be given to people who have lived too long. The average life span in the US has risen to 78 for men, 80 for women., but in too many cases that life extension has people living non-quality lives: Alzheimer victims slipping slowly into vegetative states, comatose patients hooked up to life-sustaining machines, stroke victims physically and mentally incapable of anything but living in their heads. I think we should extend our present euthanasia laws to all those who no longer want to live. I remember Dr. Kevorkian and his legal battles regarding assisted suicide. I remember Karen Ann Quinlan and her vegetative state and her family’s battles regarding pulling the plug and how she remained a vegetable for another decade even after the plug was pulled. How would we tell who wants to go and who wants to stay? Have everyone given the legal option at any time during his life to state what his parameters are. In each state have a committee of five with the power to grant a death permission, the committee having to be unanimous in that decision, a decision that would override family members who might not agree with such a decision. If the patient has stated under what conditions he wants to be euthanized or allowed to die, why should anyone else go against those wishes? I know, I know, we already have “do not resuscitate” provisions, but that doesn’t cover all those who might not need resuscitating but who still aren’t living the way they want to live, too many people in our assisted living facilities who aren’t really living and who sit all day in wheelchairs hugging a doll or staring at some distant nothing, too many people who have lost the power of speech along with all their other bodily functions. No thanks to that, I say. I need to keep that bottle of pills handy, but what happens if I forget where they are? I need someone to find them for me. I need a Dr. Kevorkian. I need someone to acknowledge my desire to leave a life no longer worth living.

Squeakie

The little ones, Tiger and Tuffy, had to have their six-week shots today and they came home a bit groggy but none the worse for wear, just not their usual ebullient selves. Here they are dozing off the effects of the shots.

And then there's Squeakie, who isn't even squeaking anymore, just lying on our bed waiting to die. The people at 4-Paws told us that there was nothing they or we could do for her, just let her pass on her own as long as she's not in pain. But the waiting is painful for us. She's been with us for fifteen years, our little squeakie calico we brought home from 4-Paws fifteen years ago along with her buddy Dusty. Dusty was three years old then and we were always embarrassed when Squeakie would suckle on him. But if Dusty didn't care, why should we have cared? So we let her do it for nearly a year. Then she gave up her youth and quit the suckling. And now she's nearly ready to join Dusty in that big heavenly cat haven in the sky. Very soon now I'm going to have to take her to our vet, just as I did with Stephanie, who died just before we got Dusty and Squeakie. I remember the pain of having to take Stephenie in. I'd planned to sit with her when they gave her the shot, but I simply burst into tears when I handed her over to the receptionist. I just couldn't do it. I also remember the Dickinson poem that seemed so appropriate then, just as it will be again with Squeakie.

The Bustle in a House
The Morning after Death
Is solemnest of industries
Enacted upon Earth--

The Sweeping up the Heart
And putting Love away
We shall not want to use again
Until Eternity.

Here she is in better days with her good pal Dusty. This is my favorite picture of them.

The Conjuring

When it comes to ghosts and ghoulies and things that go bump in the night, I’m pretty much a disbeliever. I say “pretty much” to leave myself an escape hatch in case I’m wrong. It’s also why I’m an agnostic rather than an atheist. You know, a two-door burrow in case there really is a God who might take note of my disbelief and send down a lightning bolt to dissuade me of my disbelief. Sort of hedging my bet.

Because the reviews were all so positive, we went to see The Conjuring, and I’m pulled in two directions—my skepticism about such things as exorcism and demonism and possession pulling me one way and my admiration for movies that are truly scary pulling me the other way. Anthony Perkins as Norman Bates in Psycho scared me. Anthony Hopkins as Hannibal Lecter in The Silence of the Lambs scared me. And Jack Nicholson as Jack Torrance in The Shining scared me (but then, Jack Nicholson as Jack Nicholson is a pretty scary fellow). The Conjuring scared the crap out of me. The story is much like that in The Amityville Horror, a New England house seemingly possessed by ghosts and past crimes. And, as with Amityville, the filmmakers would have us believe these events are all true. Bah, humbug! I say. The film doesn’t need that to be effective. The house in Rhode Island is a wonderful set location, large, multi-roomed with all kinds of hidey holes, especially the hidden cellar the new occupants discover soon after they move in. In 1971, Carolyn (Lili Taylor) and Roger Perron (Ron Livingston) have bought the house as a fixer-upper at a bargain price. Well, yeah, not many buyers for a haunted house. They and their five daughters move in and start to fix it up. It’s out in the boonies surrounded by huge creepy trees, with a dock in back on a silent creepy lake. Their dog Sadie on move-in day refuses to come in the house and is discovered a day or two later dead and bloody. No explanation for such a calamity, just there for us to imagine. To escape the boredom of their new country home, the girls play a game of hide and clap—the one who is “it” is blindfolded and must find the others who are hiding but must clap hands when the searcher says “clap,” three such requests all together. Ah, yes, all kinds of room here for ghostly skullduggery, and it’s creepily effective. There are enough spooky happenings (Carolyn’s unexplained bruising, a daughter’s sleepwalking, another daughter’s conversations with a dead boy) that the Perrons contact Ed and Lorraine Warren, two well-known paranormal investigators, to come investigate their apparently haunted house. Lorraine (Vera Farmiga) is clairvoyant and Ed (Patrick Watson) is the investigator. I love Vera Farmiga for her role in Up in the Air and as the fidgety Norma Bates in tv’s The Bates Hotel, but I love her equally in this movie. The Warrens come to stay at the Perron house and set up all kinds of recording equipment to document any paranormal activities, and they get plenty of opportunities, capturing video footage of one daughter’s being dragged around by her hair. All of it is quietly, spookily, scarily creepy. The final episodes are more violently creepy but are still effective. I think the best scary parts involve that really interesting house with all its cobwebby secret spaces and the creepy music box and that really creepy doll so reminiscent of Fats, the ventriloquist’s dummy in Magic.

Go see The Conjuring and enjoy the thrills and chills, ignore the implausabilities.

No News

Very little worth writing about these days. The weather around the country is still strange and stinky . . . or should that be “sticky?” We’ve had one haboob and one torrential rain here in the Valley, and the monsoon season has our Arizona air really hot and sticky . . . or should that be “stinky?” Enough of sticky stinky weather.

The world is enthralled by the arrival of Kate and William’s yet-to-be-named baby boy (ah ha, I just heard it's George. Surprise, surprise). And the Brits are going gaga over the arrival. I guess I’m conflicted about the idea of a monarchy in this day and age. It’s such an outmoded idea. What exactly does the royal family do? It’s not as though Queen Elizabeth and those that will follow her to the throne rule anything or govern anything. They’re just figureheads representing the past glory of the British Empire. Even that word strikes me as vainglorious—Empire—although I’m sure the rest of the world would view the United States as a kind of vainglorious empire. But our kings and queens are elected, not born to the throne.

I’m also conflicted about the concept of a Catholic Pope. He (or someday she?) serves the same purpose as a king or queen—sort of a figurehead of past glory, in this case that of the Catholic Church. I guess I just don’t understand the need or the desire to worship a figurehead, whether it’s a queen or a king or a new-born prince or a newly elected pope. Someday, in the near or distant future, we’ll see the end of both. These comments will probably raise the ire of a few Brits and a few Catholics. Or a boatload of Brits and a carload of Catholics. But I’m too old to care if I’ve offended anyone. Let me know if you’re offended or if you agree with me. I’d be delighted to hear from either side.

The 2013 Open

Another Sunday at one of the majors, and another Sunday on which Tiger couldn’t play a Tiger round. As Paul Azinger remarked, Tiger doesn’t seem to have that youthful enthusiasm he used to have, all the uppercut arm pumps, all the smiles. Maybe it’s because he doesn’t have much to smile about on these Sundays, and too few arm pumps, too many “goddamit”s, too many missed putts. I was hoping I’d live long enough to see him win that 18th major, but it now looks like I’d have to be Methuselah to see that happen and Tiger’s got only five or six more prime years. It was nice, though, to see the happy farmer win the Open for the first time. I call Phil the happy farmer because he always seems to be smiling that sappy smile and he walks like a farmer. What a final round he put together. He says it was probably the best final round he’s ever played and I and most of the announcers would agree with that. All right, Phil, now go for next year’s US Open.

Another update on Tuffy and Tiger, our two new kitties that have brought such sunshine into our lives. The day after Tiger recovered from whatever he had wrong with him, Tuffy came down with the same thing, couldn’t stand up, couldn’t walk, listless and crying whenever we touched him. And forty-eight hours later he was back to running and playing. According to the folks at the animal shelter, it seems to have been a 48-hour virus and isn’t all that unusual. Now why wouldn’t our vet have known about such a thing? Beats me.

Here’s a picture of two critters that are normally thought of as sworn enemies, but here they’re lovey-dovey. Don’t you wish all peoples could put their enmity aside, could hug and love each other despite genetic or racial or religious or national differences? We’ll finally realize world peace when that happens.

Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat

We went to the Arizona Broadway Theatre last night to see what turned out to be an amazing show. The word "spectacular" comes to mind, but even that doesn't do this show justice. The set design, the lighting, the costumes, the singing, the choreography--all were better than ever. Each production seems to outdo the previous one, and this one certainly did that. I think I'll let a real critic have his say. David Appleford, Phoenix film and theatre critic, raved about ABT and this show:

There’s a rumor that from time to time Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber is prone to secretly turning up at a production of one of his shows, unannounced, just to see how it was being interpreted and whether standards were being met. I’m not sure how true this is, but if this is the case, let me extend an invitation for the celebrated composer to drop by Arizona Broadway Theatre in Peoria to see what they’ve done with Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. He’ll not only be impressed, he may even be overwhelmed.

Joseph began life as a short production for a British high-school in 1968, but when Jesus Christ Superstar became a smash, Joseph was revisited, expanded, and has now become almost as popular as Superstar itself. And with good reason. It’s a bright, infectiously tuneful and at times, very funny interpretation of the famous biblical tale that virtually bursts with color and life, and that’s exactly how this outstanding production at ABT is being presented.

You have to hand it to ABT. It knows its audience and it has a clear vision of what its audience wants, but there’s something more. It also knows what its audience has now come to expect, and that’s a high standard of production way beyond anything considered the norm at a dinner theatre, but allow me to qualify that in case anyone thinks I’m down on dinner theatre. Quite the opposite. Yes, ABT is a dinner theatre and quite possibly one of the best in the country, but in the end, no matter how good the food and service is – which is first class, by the way – in the end, the show is the thing, and it’s here where the theatre truly delivers.

Watching Joseph come to life is like watching the sum total of everything the theatre has learned about production and presentation since it opened, and it has poured every talented trick into this one show. When going to the movies is becoming more expensive and less of an option due to content and style for many adults, theatre continues to deliver, and with this production of Joseph, ABT has now proved that beyond a doubt it is quite simply among the most accomplished of its kind anywhere in the United States. Having been to several and even performed in some, I feel quite confident in making such an exclamatory declaration without fear of contradiction.

Director Joseph Martinez keeps his production close to what is now considered the accepted standard book of Joseph, after all the various revisions, but he incorporates the occasional storytelling invention of his own. At the beginning, school children explore the cavernous Egyptian exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art with flashlights, presumably on a school trip. Among them is our show’s narrator, the wonderful Laura Berger, who begins to tell the children, and us, the tale of Joseph, his jealous brothers, and how a young dreamer from humble beginnings went on to greatness. You know the story. Once the tale begins, part of the set rises and we’re instantly transported back to ancient Egypt.

The part of the narrator is demanding one. She not only has most of the songs but she needs to have the audience warm to her and her voice in order for the show to work. Often, those cast in this challenging part can occasionally sound shrill – Lloyd Webber didn’t exactly make it easy for the character – but Laura has an exceptionally gifted voice with an enviable ability to sing with such great clarity, I swear she surpasses any of the professional recordings of Joseph that I’ve previously heard, and there are many out there.

Ryan Michael Crimmins injects the right amount of naiveté required for Joseph. He’s a young man so thrilled with his coat of many colors and the ability to interpret his dreams he’s oblivious to the annoyance he causes among his brothers and has no clue of their jealousy. Ryan’s engaging manner and ability to sing – Close Every Door stops the show – is exactly what you want from Joseph.

Paul Black’s scenic design coupled with lighting designer Tim Monson’s ever changing array of colors is as captivating to watch as the performers themselves. In fact, all technical areas, including Tamara Diersen Treat’s colorful costumes, Kurtis W. Overby’s fun choreography, Adam Berger’s excellent music direction and Jason Lynn’s sound design, all add to make Joseph something quite special.

Go and see Joseph for yourself. It may well be one of the most satisfying nights of family entertainment you’ll have in a local valley theatre for some time. You’ll not only leave ABT with the broadest of smiles with the sound of the climactic Joseph Megamix still echoing in your head but you won’t know what song to start singing first on the car journey home.

Tiger Update

Rosalie took Tiger to the doctor and even he couldn’t figure out what was wrong. After extensive tests (expensive as well as extensive)—blood draw, three x-rays, temp taken, thyroid exam, infusion of fluids, and a shot to calm him (Tiger, not the vet)—Rosalie brought him home (Tiger, not the vet). The x-rays didn’t show any kind of break or injury. Now we have to wait to hear the results of the blood tests to see if that explains what was wrong. I’m happy to report that by evening he was able to walk . . . a little drunkenly, but walk nevertheless. And today he’s able to roam his new digs without all that mournful squealing he’d done at first. I’m also happy to report that Charlie and Squeakie have now decided to accept them . . . although a bit grudgingly. Give them all more time and I’m sure they’ll be buddies forever. I hope so. And we’re hoping that whatever affliction Tiger had is now past and he’ll be able to grow up healthy and strong. Isn’t that what we want for all our children, cats and dogs and humans?

Tuffy & Tiger

Yesterday, Rosalie came home from 4-Paws with two kittens, two brother tabbies about six weeks old. At the shelter they’d been name Pinto and Poncho but we decided to rename them Tuffy and Tiger.






Here's Tiger:

And here's Tuffy:

Tiger is just a little bigger than Tuffy, but Tuffy is the more aggressive of the two. Are they ours to keep? Actually, we have them on a foster-parenting deal, keeping them until it’s time for shots and tutoring (we try not to use the n-word around them). But I ask you, are we going to keep these two for another four or five weeks and then take them back, telling the folks at 4-Paws that we decided we didn’t want them? Yeah, like that’s gonna happen. Squeakie sort of ignores them but isn’t afraid of them, but Charlie refuses to accept them and spends his time underneath our bed whenever the two interlopers are out and about. We put food and water and a litter box in our guest bathroom and keep them there most of the time, letting them out occasionally to get used to the house. Last night, while I was watching the D-Backs game, both of them slept on my lap for about an hour before I carried them into their new digs in the bathroom. This morning, Tiger had somehow hurt his front leg and didn’t want to walk on it. We can’t figure out how he could have done that. So on Monday, it’s off to the vet to see what’s wrong. We hope it’s nothing serious because we don’t want our 4-Paw friends to think we’re lousy foster parents.

Calvin & Hobbes

It’s a really slow news day, at least for me. I just can’t seem to get too worked up with what’s going on in the nation or the world, so instead of commenting on the Zimmerman trial or what’s going wrong or right in Egypt, I’ll keep it light with some Calvin & Hobbes. I love peanut butter and I love Calvin, so Bill Watterson naturally had to give me both in one strip. I love what Watterson had to say at the bottom of this one: "Calvin will probably have trouble getting dates when he'd older." But then, Calvin will never get older, because time can pass ever so slowly for him.

And this one about the impatience of youth, especailly that of Calvin.

And one about political apathy.

And, finally, here’s one about modern art, especially the kind about which no one seems to know what to say.

There, hasn't Calvin made your day a little brighter?

The Heat

Melissa McCarthy, in The Heat, came close to duplicating her role in Identity Thief--rough, foul-mouthed, slovenly. I didn't care much for her in Identity, almost no redeeming qualities, but I liked her in Heat. In Identity she plays a nasty felon but in Heat she's Shannon Mullins, a non-conforming but effective Boston cop. Sarah Ashburn (Sandra Bullock), a New York FBI agent, travels to Boston on a drug ring case and has to team up with McCarthy. And it's not a happy union . . . at first. The two start out as personality polar opposites, agent Ashburn a hard-to-like, uptight, by-the-book ex-nerd. But, naturally, by the end they meet in the middle, both coming to admire the other. In fact, it was apparent throughout that the two of them got a kick out of playing these two dissimilar people, bonding in real life as well as in the film.

Only one part bothered me. There's a long scene in a grungy bar where they're doing shots of tequila (at Mullins's urging) and it goes on for the entire night. It was suggesting that real people can do shots and do shots and do shots without any ill effects except for a hangover. That gives young people a dangerous example to follow. One can't do shots for a whole evening. One tends to die. But although this wasn't even close to great cinema, it was certainly better than Identity Thief and was entertaining enough to warrent a trip to the theater. Besides, what a great excuse to munch popcorn.

Sketch Surprise

I had an unusual morning. Rosalie and I drove to the Kia dealer on 91st to have our annual maintenance on the car. We sat in the waiting room, Rosalie with a magazine and I with the latest Sandford Prey book (I never go anywhere without a book). A bearded man was sitting against a wall facing me, engaged in some kind of hand business with what looked like an I-Pad. Another game player, I thought, or a texter busy with messages to anyone who’d listen to or read it. Just before our car was ready, the man got up to leave.

And he handed me a pencil drawing of me, showing me intently reading my book. I was amazed and pleased, flattered that he found me worth his while. No one had ever before thought enough of how I looked to spend half an hour doing a portrait of me, albeit in pencil and hastily done. I thanked him and he handed me his business card,

the self-portrait on one side, his website and e-mail addresses on the other. Interesting man. You should check out his website and view some of the paintings he’s done. www.geraldruggiero.com.

The Lone Ranger

Johnny Depp has played, in a wild assortment of outlandish makeup and costumes, nearly all of the odd characters in the past three decades of film—Gilbert Grape in What’s Eating Gilbert Grape (although it was only the name that was odd), Edward Scissorhands, Sweeny Todd, the Mad Hatter, Ichabod Crane, the pirate Jack Sparrow in The Pirates of the Caribbean series, Willy Wonka, John Dillinger, Barnabas Collins of Dark Shadows, and two cross-dressing oddballs (Bon Bon in Before Night Falls and Ed Wood in Ed Wood, about Hollywood’s worst director). And now, in perhaps his greatest odd character of all, his hilarious portrayal of the Lone Ranger’s Cochise sidekick Tonto. I wasn’t sure I’d like this modernization of the hero I grew up with on early radio and in early films about the Lone Ranger and his valiant horse Silver. But I was pleasantly surprised at how funny this version was, with Depp’s Tonto and the ranger’s Silver delivering most of the laughs. Armie Hammer was very good as the lawyer who became a Texas Ranger and then the masked lone ranger (although not alone as long as Tonto was at his side). The humor was set at the beginning when a young boy, in white cowboy hat and black eye mask, visited a carnival in 1933 to see a western display. And there, behind glass, was an ancient Tonto outside a teepee. The boy is amazed when the figure comes to life and converses with him, Tonto telling the boy about how he had come to know and ride with the masked man.

Quite a bit of Tonto’s face and head makeup were of Depp’s devising, the white paint with two black vertical lines from the eyes to the chin, the crow sitting above his head. But even without the garish makeup, Depp’s facial expression and eye rolling would have been a riot. Most of the action and stunt sequences had to do with two trains near the end of the track being laid to finish the east to west railway system. And much of the humor came from the craziness of those action stunts. The scenery was spectacular, the action frenetic and silly but exciting, and the humor mostly related to Johnny Depp. The audience was vocal in their laughter throughout and their applause at the closing credits For a fun filled afternoon or evening, go see The Lone Ranger.

Heat Wave

Hot, hot, HOT! Instead of calling it The Valley of the Sun we should redesignate it The Valley of the Heat. We’ve never in our nineteen years here experienced a June as hot as this one has been. We can’t even fall back on that old Arizona platitude “But it’s a dry heat.” Doesn’t matter. One can’t do much of anything whether it’s dry or humid. Either way it’s unbearable. With all the climatic oddities this year has thus far brought us—tornadoes, flooding, blizzards, hurricanes, extreme drought, excessive heat—our science guys should be working on some way to control the weather. Like finding a way to straighten out the jet streams that now dip and rise and make for all kinds of odd scenarios. This latest shows us on the weather map a huge reverse sideways S across our nation, with the western half inside the top of the S, the eastern half in the other end of the S, extreme heat in the west, extreme rain in the east. Just pull that baby by its ends and straighten it out and stop all this nonsense.

Match Play

I just finished two novels by John Coyne, both about golf from the past, featuring Ben Hogan and Walter Hagen in The Caddie Who Knew Ben Hogan and The Caddie Who Played with Hickory. Both were pretty good and both just crammed with golf, shot by shot matches that served as the centers of both plots. I remember long ago trying to pedal my golf novel, Match Play, to New York publishers, having them all tell me it was too full of golf. And I tried to tell them that was the point, to give golf enthusiasts a novel about non-PGA golf. But none of them ever bought that argument. After the two Coyne books, I decided to go back and reread Match Play, to see how it held up after all these years. It held up very well. In fact, it was better than either of the Caddie books by Coyne. I may be biased, however. And one of the passages I’m most proud of was the valedictory speech made by the young Amy Forrest. I wish I’d somehow, sometime, somewhere, been able to deliver that very speech. Here it is. See what you think.

When it was her turn to speak, she climbed the steps to the stage, crossed to the podium, and then paused for a full thirty seconds just looking at the audience, smiling, waiting for everyone to become quiet. She seemed totally assured, totally in control. When she had everyone’s attention, even that of her fellow seniors, she very quietly began:

“Thank you.” A warm smile and another short pause. “Thank you. I wasn’t really waiting for anything in particular. I was just waiting . . . savoring the moment. Because, you see, I’m already aware how quickly life passes. I know I’m very young, and probably youthfully presumptuous to make such a statement . . . but I had great teachers . . . most of them dead, I’m afraid.” A smattering of puzzled laughter from the audience. “Some very good ones still living, I’m happy to report. I’ve learned this lesson about life’s brevity mainly from the things I’ve read, my dead but still very alive teachers. Nearly every writer worth his salt at one time or another has had something to say about how brief, like morning dew, is this thing called life. I’ve learned it in school, from teachers, live ones, who have warned me, scolded me, to make good use of my time, for time is precious. ‘Tempus fugit! Tempus fugit!’ they say, shaking their collective fingers at me. ‘Time flies! Carpe diem! Seize the day! Seize it before the day seizes you, because, God knows, it will seize you.’ ”

She paused for the Latin maxims to sink in.

“And I appreciate that lesson from them. I’ve learned that all too often we wish the time away, wish for moments in our lives to hurry up and get here, and too often we forget to live while we’re waiting for those moments. I’ve heard many of my fellow graduates saying for the last four years how they could hardly wait to get out of high school, to get out on their own and away from all the controls on their lives. You know—parents, teachers, mean old principals . . .” and a low chuckle with that last comment accompanied by warm laughter from the audience, an audience that was entirely with her now, listening to what she was saying. “Well, I’m here to tell you that that moment is here . . . and now . . . and you’d all better just slow it down and savor the moment . . . whether you’re graduating from high school as we are, or you’ve just received that hoped-for promotion, or you’ve just had a birthday or a newborn son or daughter, or you simply woke up this morning and found yourself alive and healthy. They’re all moments worth savoring.”

She went on to talk about how she hoped she and her fellow graduates all over the nation would be committed to improving the quality of life not only in our country, but everywhere in the world. She alluded to things that Mark Thorne, the salutatorian, had said, to things the congressman had said. She was obviously extemporizing, winging it, and it was wonderful. I don’t know three people who could do what she did, speak to a group of people with as much clarity, sincerity, and the skill to hold her thoughts together and communicate them to an audience that was actually listening to every word she said. A remarkable feat. And if I hadn’t realized it before, I certainly realized it then—Amy Forrest was a remarkable girl. No, a remarkable woman.

Her concluding remarks returned to her opening theme—savoring the moments of our lives. “. . . and everyone, it seems, comes eventually to the same conclusion about life, that there wasn’t time enough to do all the things we’d planned, or that we regret not having done all the things we wanted to, or that we’d spent—spent, what an appropriate way to describe it—that we’d spent our lives living what Thoreau called ‘lives of quiet desperation’ instead of what Omar Khayyam recommended, that we ‘make the most of what we yet may spend, before we too unto the dust descend.’ And Ben Franklin’s Poor Richard asks, ‘Dost thou love life? Then do not squander time, for that’s the stuff life’s made of.’

“But nearly all of those who write of or speak of their regrets, their conclusions about life and time and the brevity of the one and the swiftness of the other, nearly all are looking back at life, almost as though none of us can learn the obvious and universal lesson until it’s too late, as though we’re all too blind or too ignorant to learn from the words of others. Singers sing the message, telling us to ‘stop and smell the roses,’ urging us to ‘hold this moment fast, and live and love as hard as you know how, and make this moment last, because the best of times is now!’ ”

She looked out over the audience and paused for a moment, to let that last now sink in, and although I knew she couldn’t see me in the darkened auditorium, I felt she was looking at me and had been directing her words at me. And then she smiled and continued.

“And poets rhyme the message. Phillip James Bailey says, ‘We live in feelings, not in figures on a dial. We should count time by heart-throbs.’ Fitzgerald’s Omar Khayyam warns that ‘Time is slipping underneath our feet, unborn tomorrow, and dead yesterday, why fret about them if today be sweet.’ Longfellow tells us that ‘art is long, and time is fleeting, and our hearts, though stout and brave, still, like muffled drums, are beating funeral marches to the grave,’ a sentiment echoing Andrew Marvell, who over three hundred years ago with tongue in cheek said, ‘The grave’s a fine and private place, but none I think do there embrace.’ And Robert Herrick advises me to gather my rosebuds while I may, because ‘Old Time is still a-flying, and this same flower that smiles today, tomorrow will be dying.’ ”

Then she paused again, for at least fifteen seconds, looking at various sections of the audience and smiling at each as though sharing some secret, a very nice bit of dramatic business that didn’t seem at all affected or planned.

“Yes. All of us here—parents full of pride for this moment in their children’s lives, relatives and friends here to share in this moment, teachers who have meant so much to us in preparing us for the moment, I and my fellow graduating seniors who have for so long wished for this moment—all of us should pay better attention to the lesson of those who have gone before us: Andrew Marvell and Longfellow and Ben Franklin and Omar Khayyam and nearly every other writer since time began. And all of those who may not have been writers but who have expressed or even felt the lesson. Let’s listen to what they said. Let’s listen with our hearts as well as our ears. Maybe we can’t halt time, maybe we can’t stretch it beyond its given length . . . but we can certainly make what little time we have more valuable. Let’s really stop and smell the roses. Let’s really love instead of hate. Let’s really savor the moment, . . . this moment, . . . because the best of times really is . . . now!” And her head was nodding as she held us for a moment longer, looking around the audience, smiling. And we sat in total silence.

“Thank you,” she said quietly, and left the podium to return to her seat in the audience.
* * *
If anyone is interested in reading Match Play, it’s available in hard copy at Amazon.com, or in e-book form at lulu.com. Granted, I’m as biased about the book’s merits as a proud father is biased about the good looks of his children. Too many publishers have called my child ugly. I hope you disagree.

The Sea of Grass

South Dakota

More on big-belly meals. The next morning we breakfasted at the Grand Oasis, a restaurant near the motel where we were staying after four nights at the casino. Rosalie had a 3-egg cheese and mushroom omelet that covered her plate and I ordered a new item on the menu—eggs and hashbrowns with locally made German sausage. The eggs were standard, the hashbrowns about twice what I needed, and the sausage, two huge chunks of meat that no one could have managed to consume in one sitting. If you know what a ring of bologna is, just imagine this German sausage as a ring. I was served what would have been nearly half a ring. Whoa! From now on I’ll order from the children’s menu.

The relativity of time. The years go by increasingly swift, like a film in fast motion, and I can never believe how many years have flown by from someone’s birthday or the birth of a child or a grand niece or nephew. What seems like only a year or two turns out to be eight or ten. Not possible, I say. Quick time. Not so for our stay in South Dakota. In the past, whenever we’d return, usually for some class reunion and usually over the Fourth of July, almost from the first day I would be in a countdown mode looking for our departure. We were always there too long, each day a day merely to get through, marking time as though I had all the time in the world to watch each day crawl like a snail mired in molasses. Well, the days were even slower on this trip. After only three days we’d been there far too long and we could hardly wait to board that plane to take us home. It was all about relatives, and the time with them was relative.

We were there to help my brother Bob celebrate his ninetieth birthday. The festivities went well. His daughter Jackie had put together a twenty-three minute photo album with music, many shots of Bob and all his relatives (and there were a bunch) cascading across the screen from youth to old age. It was very nice. And we ate a bountiful dinner before the eating of birthday cake. Again, whew! He wasn’t asked to blow out ninety candles, thank goodness, or we’d have never gotten any cake. We got to see and converse with relatives we hadn’t seen in a long time and may never see again. Sad how the last chapter of one’s life is so filled with final goodbyes. Rosalie’s sister Phyllis is in the final stages of Alzheimer’s and probably won’t last much longer. I hope not. What she’s now enduring isn’t life. It’s a death not quite completed, but should be. If I were ever put in a place like the one she’s in, I’d find some way to escape—out an emergency exit into a South Dakota blizzard where I could lie down in a snowdrift, a snow pillow to soften my ascent (or possibly descent) into eternity. That’s the way I’d go. But by then I probably wouldn’t remember what I wanted to do. I really must keep that bottle of pills near at hand so I can use them just before someone takes me to the Golden Bridge Old Folks Home. Golden Bridge, my ass.

Flight & Fatties

I realize how few people who follow this blog would be interested in hearing about our trip to South Dakota. But there are a few things I have to say if even to myself.

First, a comment about air travel as opposed to ground travel. Flying is almost too complicated these days. In the past, pre-9/11 days, one could get to the airport, check luggage at the terminal entrance, find the right gate, sit a bit, and then board the plane. All a process requiring at most half an hour to an hour. Now, one has to arrive at least two hours ahead of departure, standing in a line for thirty or forty minutes to check in luggage, then another ten or twenty minutes to go through a security check sans shoes, belt, everything in the pockets, then an hour or so waiting to board the plane. Whew! Then a heavy sigh as one sits too near a seat companion and waits for takeoff. But first, nearly all passengers cramming ponderous carry-on luggage into overhead compartments, then a helium-voiced attendant shrilling incomprehensible pre-flight instructions at a rate of 1,000 wpm. No longer any free amenities as in the old days; now you pay, through the nose—$2 for water or soda, $3 to $5 for assorted snacks, $5 for beer or wine, $7 for cocktails. And $6 if you want a pillow and blanket. It all seems so complicated now. I think I’d almost rather spend three days in a car than fly to my destination. The old days of flying were better, but the new days require a necessary security thanks to all the terrorists who would prefer to kill as many of us infidels as they can.

We got to Bismarck, ND, at 7:30, then stood in line for half an hour waiting for our luggage and an Enterprise rental car. And finally, finally, we were on our way south into South Dakota. But first, naturally, we had to stop at a Perkins restaurant not far from the airport. This is a Perkins we had visited many times coming from and going to the airport, and we should have remembered the size of the portions. But we didn’t. Rosalie ordered a cheeseburger and fries and I a Reuben melt and fries. Her cheeseburger was huge, with lettuce, tomato, onion, and enough fries for three or four NFL linebackers. My Reuben was huge, with enough fries for three or four NFL offensive linemen. Why do too many restaurants now serve meals that are at least 40% too much for normal people? Maybe that’s why we now have too many abnormally large people, too many big-bellied, big-butted girls and boys, too many roly-poly men and women all galumphing around the country.

To be continued.

Fathers' Day 2013

Happy Fathers’ Day, all you fathers who may be reading this. I’m spending my day watching U.S. Open coverage, hoping either Phil Mickelson or Steve Stricker can pull it out. But, oh, the pain of watching Tiger play like a pussy cat. His short game is just awful, bad chipping, bad putting (36 putts on Saturday). And Merion is acting more like a tiger than Tiger is. What an interestingly awful layout. Anyone within six or seven shots of Phil can win it because at any time a double, triple, or quadruple bogey, or even something like Sergio’s ten yesterday, could pop up in a leader’s round. All us hackers like to watch tour players suffer in Opens. But part of me hates to see what the USGA sometimes does to make it such a painful tournament.

Tomorrow I’m going on a week-long hiatus from the blogs. We’re flying to South Dakota for a family get-together. And it will be a week of temps in the seventies instead of our triple digits here in Arizona. But a week away from Squeakie and Charlie is long enough. Going back to our home country is always good, but coming back to this home is even better.
So, so long, dear readers. I’ll see you in a week.

How about a little father humor?
Jon: What’s the difference between a high-hit baseball and a maggot’s father?
Tom: What?
Jon: One’s a pop fly. The other’s a fly pop

Four men are in the hospital waiting room because their wives are having babies. A nurse goes up to the first guy and says, “Congratulations! You’re the father of twins.”
“That’s odd,” answers the man. “I work for the Minnesota Twins!”
A nurse says to the second guy, “Congratulations! You’re the father of triplets!”
“That’s weird,” answers the second man. “I work for the 3M company!”
A nurse tells the third man, “Congratulations! You’re the father of quadruplets!”
“That’s strange,” he answers. “I work for the Four Seasons hotel!”
The last man is groaning and banging his head against the wall. “What’s wrong?” the others ask.
“I work for 7 Up!”

The Cat House

Cats, cats, and more cats. As you can tell, we're fond of cats, even Garfield. Especially Garfield. You'd think we'd have dogs, since I call this blog "Doggy-Dog World." Instead, we have two cats (or they have us), Squeakie, the aging and shrinking calico who's still boss of the house, and Charlie, our young tuxedo cat who thinks he owns every nook and cranny in our house. Squeakie knows better.
There she is with those big soulful eyes.

And here's Charlie in one of his hidey holes. He's just licking his chaps when he thinks he'll take over from Squeakie. Squeakie says, "Think again, Chuck."

And finally, another cat collage.

Tonys & Into the Woods

How do you spell “talent?” Tonys. How do you spell “spectacle?” Tonys. How do you spell “class?” Tonys. Or you might spell them all with “Neil Patrick Harris.” Last Sunday’s Tony Awards Show was talented, spectacular, and classy, better by a wide margin than the Academy Awards Show. And if the Oscars producers don’t beg Neil Patrick Harris to host their next show, they’re making a big mistake. Even the acceptance speeches (with only a few exceptions) were classy and relatively short. I wasn’t quite sure what Cicely Tyson was doing when she was led to the stage to accept her award. She seemed to be either drunk, high, or in serious need of some ginkgo biloba. What a strange acceptance speech she gave. Cyndi Lauper, who won for writing the music to Kinky Boots (which also won for best new musical), gave a heartwarming acceptance, thanking all of Broadway for taking her into their family. The only time the speeches reminded me too much of the Oscars was when forty or fifty people would troop to the stage to accept one award, with speeches that went far too long by far too many people trying for their fifteen seconds of fame. And then you have Neil Patrick Harris, one of the most talented, funny, classy guys on Broadway or the tube. His opening number with a cast of what seemed to be hundreds was spectacular. And how he ever pulled off the closing number is beyond me. The lyrics included nearly all of the show’s winners. How did someone write it in such a short time? How did Harris and the others learn the lyrics in such a short time? I don’t know. But I also wonder how he managed to get to the back of the theatre when he supposedly escaped from a magic box on stage. He must have run like Superman. The highlighted musical numbers from nominated shows were, as usual, wonderful, especially the one from Pippin, with dancers and acrobats spinning around all over the place while singing the lyrics to “Magic to Do.” Talk about magical.

And while I’m on the subject of Broadway musicals, last night we went to the Arizona Broadway Theatre to see our local rendering of Into the Woods, book by James Lapine, music by—who else?—Stephen Sondheim. Into the Woods is perhaps my favorite musical. Before I retired, I used a video of it to teach my English students about staging, set design, and theatrical tricks of the stage trade. The set design of Woods in one of the most complicated ever, and I wondered how our ABT would be able to handle the triple sets and story lines of the opening number—Cinderella, Jack and the Beanstalk, and the Baker and His Wife—handle the setting in the woods with characters from the seven different story lines all crisscrossing in and out and around the large tree in the center, handle the foot-crunching noises of the giants that came down Jack’s beanstalk, create the many costumes and props needed (Milky the cow, the Witch’s magic cane, the horse that carried Cinderella to the castle for her wedding;, the scrim used for grandmother’s house with the wolf gobbling up both Granny and Red Riding Hood). All of it—the staging, the set design, the lighting, the costumes, the props—were done as professionally and as well as the original Broadway production. And the voices were all excellent, requiring ten actors with big voices to handle Sondheim’s near-operatic score. Wow! I think I’d like to see it again. And again.

Mark Murphy & Kurt Elling

I haven't written anything about music in a long time. So, now it's time again. I'm a long ago jazz fan, going all the way back to Stan Kenton in the middle of the last century, whose band sent me crashing on my way. And all the early jazz vocalists, like Sarah Vaughan and Ella (I don't even have to give her last nema) and Carmen MacRae and a host of others. Notice that I haven't mentioned any male jass vocalitsts? Frank (I don't even have to give his last name) doesn't count, since he's not really a jazz singer, even though what he does is better than anything anyone else has ever done. And I guess I was a fan of the Velvet Fog, Mel Torme, but only with one ear. Then I found Mark Murphy a decade or so ago. I don't remember how I found him, maybe YouTube or Amazon or browsing at the now defunct Borders. Or maybe he, like magic, found me. Mark Murphy isn't a singer any but jazz fanatics would know. He was always better known and listened to in Europe than here. And anyone who doesn't care for scat wouldn't care for him, because he's the male Ella when it comes to improv scat. He has about a four-octave range, and he takes us and a song up and down and around and around till it comes out here. Just listen to what he does with "Speak Low" when he was a youngster of eighty.

And then I found Kurt Elling. I found him through Rene Fleming, the opera soprano, who once said that Elling was one of her favorite singers. The Murphy influence on Elling is obvious when you listen to them side by side. Listen to his version of "My Foolish Heart. Listen carefully to the central portion about the moon being a moth. Wow. And notice what the piano player does during that moth segment, playing keys with his left hand, plucking piano strings with his right. Wow.

And if, after listening to these two, you aren't a captive Murphy and Elling fan, then you can just shake your head and wonder what in hell I was talking about.

Two Biggies

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Bad Weather

All the bad weather news of late—tornadoes like avenging devils swooping down on our nation’s midsection, especially Oklahoma, fires in California, torrential rains and flooding in the upper Midwest, hurricane season about to begin its devastating ugliness. All we now need is a series of earthquakes and a plague of locusts and we’d have it all. Meanwhile, we in Arizona look at the news, the weather channel people telling us and showing us this destruction and loss of life, and we say a silent prayer that we aren’t subject to these weather aberrations. We have occasional flash floods through which a few idiots try to drive but only the occasional idiot ever dies. We have towering dust storms, haboobs, through which a few idiots try to drive, but only the occasional idiot ever dies. These dust storms are more a nuisance than a hazard, with all the home pools (of which there are many) filling to the brim with sand and grit. We have devastating fires in the pine forests to the north, mostly destroying residences but few people. But we have no tornadoes, hurricanes, earthquakes, mud slides, blizzards, flooding,no plague of locusts, and only a few bothersome insects. People will say we have killer heat in the summer. Heat, yes. Killer heat, no. And one does not have to shovel heat.

Sunday Rambling

I went to breakfast this morning, to Carrie’s because I knew it would be less crowded than the Hole in One. Rosalie didn’t go. She only goes to keep me company and I assured her I was not alone even though alone. I always had my friend, whatever book I was then reading, in this case Kate Atkinson’s short story collection Not the End of the World. She has become one of my very best friends.

I sat at a small table along the wall separating the waitress run and the dining room. Carrie’s is a pleasant little restaurant in a U-shaped shopping area across the street from the Hole in One, with assorted artifacts from the Thirties and Forties residing on a high shelf along the walls—canisters of ancient coffee, empty boxes of saltine crackers and CheeseIts, oil lamps and tiny dolls and porcelain cats and dogs. Beneath the upper shelf were a dozen Norman Rockwell reproductions—the cop and the runaway boy sitting at a lunch counter, the triple self-portrait of Rockwell leaning out to see himself in a mirror as he painted himself (I wonder if any of our mirror images would be more dexter than sisister, as Rockwell's pipe now seems to be in the dexter side of his mouth), three baseball umpires checking the amount of rainfall, the apprehensive boy in the dentist’s chair, the grandfather and grandson fishing in the old mill stream. Where would the Saturday Evening Post have been without Rockwell? Where would Rockwell have been without the SEP? I think theirs was a mutual success story. Unfortunately, I was seated too near a tall old man and his grandson (and not the Rockwell pair). The man must have been a bit deaf, as are many of our seniors here in Sun City West, because he kept up a steady barrage of over-loud questions for the grandson, a boy of four or five. He (the grandfather) was wearing shorts (what else?) and a vary-colored shirt and his legs were knobby and varicosed and ugly. Why not wear long pants when one’s legs are as ugly as his? I certainly do. My legs, from ankle to knee are so ugly that no one but I and Rosalie and assorted doctors and the cats ever see them. I wouldn’t want anyone to see them and wonder why I didn’t wear long pants. The cats no long arch their backs and his when they see my legs. My legs are blackened from the psoriasis, still psoriatic scaly but less so than a year ago, and stitched all over from various surgical scars, with two deep depressions from my ill-advised radiation treatments, the main one the silver dollar-sized wound I treated for three years, like a meteor crater near my shin bone. As I said—ugly.

I ordered eggs over medium, fried potatoes, ham, and a biscuit, all of which was about twice as much as I needed. I wonder how in my pre-denture past I was able to eat all the food I was served when out to dine. I’ve since found that almost every restaurant serves dishes that are nearly twice as much as a diner needs, a fact that partly explains our rising obesity in this country. And yet we all seem to oink it all down for fear of not getting our money’s worth, or of hearing that parental voice when we were young, “Just think of all the little boys and girls starving in Africa or India. You must clean up your plates.” And clean them up we did. Can’t let the rest of the world think we’re throwing good food away. Can’t let all those starving children think we’re wasting food. Maybe we should take half of all the food we try to consume and ship it to all those starving children. But I’m sure we’d find some way to screw up that kind of charity.

Life After Life, by Kate Atkinson

Well, Kate Atkinson, you finally did me in. I just finished your latest novel Life After Life, and I was both fascinated and confounded at the same time. How in the world did you do it? How did you manage to keep all the story lines in order and all the tiny details that were encased in each of those story lines, each one slightly different each time they were introduced? By story lines, I mean the various lives the main character leads each time after she dies one way or another. The main character, a young English woman named Ursula Todd, born in 1910, dies in childbirth, drowns as a child in a tidal undertow, dies from a fall out her upstairs window, got pneumonia as a young girl and dies, dies again of influenza as a young girl, dies as a young woman from gas in her apartment when the pilot light goes out, dies from a savage beating from her husband, commits suicide in a bombed out city in Germany at the end of WWII, and dies a number of other ways. Life after life. And each life is parallel to all the others but with variations in the details of each. Amazing. Atkinson handles time like a fruit cocktail: puts all the temporal elements in a blender and stirs them all together. She moves back and forth, in and out, nothing straightforward in the telling, labeling each time segment but including within it backward details as the various characters remember events. The settings are the English countryside, a blitzkrieged London, prewar Germany, a bombed-out Germany, pre-war London, post-war London. I’d love to see this as a movie, but the script writers wouldn’t be able to pull it off. I’d also like to recommend this book to anyone with the fortitude to wade through Atkinson’s complicated world view. But any impatient readers should avoid it like the plague. If you'd care to read a review of the novel that explains it far better than I can. go to Meg Wolitzer.

Life in the Arbor

I’ve written (fairly often) about the arbor vitae trees that guard our back property line. For those unacquainted with arbor vitae, they’re an evergreen from the cypress family, soft, not prickly leaves or needles, shaped like hands, with blue berries that appear once or twice a year as invitation to birds. Some are tall and skinny (pyramidalis), some are low and squat like fat munchkins (globe). And some, like ours, are tall and stately and rounded like Christmas trees. Most people here in the Valley of the Sun keep them pruned down to five or six feet, but we’ve let our go as high as they want. And apparently they’ve wanted to touch the clouds. When I came to Arizona in 1994 to buy a house in Sun City West, one of the things that most attracted me to the one we bought was that wonderful privacy hedge of nine arbor vitaes. Not that I don’t love my neighbors. Good fences really do make good neighbors, as Frost told me years ago. I just don’t want to have to see my neighbors or exchange neighborly hellos from one back yard to the other. The trees were about fifteen feet all when we moved in. They’re now up to thirty feet. One on the left side gave up the ghost about ten years ago, becoming a ghastly brown skeleton of its former green glory, and we had it taken down. But the hole was filled in nicely by an oleander bush. They first hung lower branches to the ground like hoop skirts, providing shelter for the many birds and beasts that lived with us—rabbits, lizards, quail and doves, even a family of javalinas that grew fond of the quail block we’d put out for the birds. We have since had them trimmed up about four feet, and, sadly, depriving most of the backyard beasties of a home. The javalina mom or dad, around midnight, would drag the block into the sheltering arbor vitae and chomp down as much as they could break off the block. Their little pink son, as far as I know, didn’t get any. After retrieving the remains of the quail block two or three times, we finally gave in the pigs and let them have it. But we bought no more quail blocks, and the javalina family moved on to more generous pastures. The trees and their inhabitants became the focus of my children’s novel, Life in the Arbor—Rollie Rabbit, Fred Lizard, Mollie Monarch, and Buzz Hummingbird. I love that book and wish that every third or fourth grader in Arizona could read it. But that’s not in my publishing cards. They’ll just never know what they’re missing. Sounds too much like sour grapes on my part. If there’s anyone who might read this and are interested in my Life in the Arbor, it’s available at Amazon.com in hard or soft cover, or at lulu.com as an e-book. I’d hope you’d be as enchanted as I am. But then, a writer shouldn’t be enchanted by his own work. However, I am.