Roots

Many people who aren't from California and have seen too much "Baywatch" are surprised by how agricultural the state is. California's Central Valley is some of the most productive farmland in the nation, and there are small towns a hundred miles from Los Angeles or San Francisco that are as rural as any you'd find in the deepest backwaters of South Dakota (and I pick on South Dakota because I love it). My father-in-law grew up in such a farm town, and it was to that town that Karen and I drove last weekend to attend the wedding of a friend's son.

We arrived several hours early because we wanted to check out a few things and meet Karen's sister and her family for lunch. The town had maybe 2500 people when my father-in-law was a boy working in his father's appliance store, but because it lies on a big highway and is within commuting distance of the Bay Area (it's a two-hour drive each way but some crazy people do it), it's grown to about 25,000. The highway is now lined with a Wal-Mart, Home Depot, Target and the like, which has destroyed the old downtown district three blocks away. Half the storefronts are deserted, the other half you wouldn't necessarily want to go into, but it still retains the architectural bones and charm of its early 20th-century origin. You think, "man, they'd really have something great here if they could just turn it around," but they probably won't and it'll all crumble away and that's the way of things these days.

After lunch, we all went to the local two-room museum because we'd heard there might be something of particular interest to us there. The "open" sign was up but the door was locked and we walked around puzzled, finally finding an unlocked side door that we obviously weren't meant to go through. But it had a bell on it, and we'd just begun to walk away when an 80ish docent poked his head through the door and beckoned us around to the front. He works in the back, you see, and gets so few visitors that it's easier for him to lock the front door and listen for the bell.

The museum had a genuinely interesting collection of artifacts spanning the town's pioneering days through World War II. It also had what we'd come to see: a poster-sized photo of Karen's father at age 9, standing with his father (Karen's grandfather) in front of the appliance store with two workers, proudly displaying the latest mid-1940s models of Maytag washers. We took some pictures of the picture, which the docent was happy to place on an easel for us, and were talking with the old man when he asked, "Say, whatever happened to your grandfather's rock collection?" Karen replied that her father still has most of it, and we walked away amazed and delighted that this really once was a town where everyone knew everyone else and there were still people forty? fifty? sixty? years later who remembered when ol' Frank had the best rock collection around.

We were reminded again at our next stop, the town's one antiques shop. Like a lot of businesses, the family appliance store used to give away things with its name printed on them: calendars, can openers, dolls. A few survive in the family, but we figured if we ever had the slightest chance of finding more it would be at the local antiques shop. No luck, but we did discover the 90-year-old owner, a woman who'd lived there 70 years and clearly intended to end her days surrounded by stacks of mostly junk. She was a real sweetheart. When we explained who Karen was and what we were looking for, she said, "Oh yes, Frank the electric man! He was so nice!" She told us a few stories about the way the town used to be and how it isn't like that anymore. She's been robbed a couple of times recently--see where they damaged the drawer of the antique cash register with a crowbar?--and when we expressed amazement that she actually kept cash in the old thing she taught my wife the trick to getting it open. Fortunately, her trust was not misplaced.

It became an unxpectedly heartwarming weekend for us, thanks to a museum volunteer and an antiques dealer who couldn't have been happier to meet my wife--Frank's granddaughter and little Bobby's daughter--and made us a bit homesick for a home we never had.

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Quick Bits

• I'm very excited about the successful landing of the Phoenix craft on Mars. Unlike other recent Mars machines, but very reminiscent of the Viking landers of my teens, Phoenix can't move. It will sit in one spot, scoop up soil (and, with luck, ice), and analyze it with a small onboard chemistry lab looking for complex organic compounds. The first photos from the landing site are coming in, and I'm again struck with the wonder of seeing something for the first time that no one in human history has seen before. Terrific!
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• We're not finding our quail family around the yard anymore, but trust they scuttled away safely. Taking over their niche in our little domestic ecosystem has been a group of three or four squirrels that look like young siblings. They're having a joyous time chasing each other through the trees and digging up Karen's newly planted flower pots. As always, our indoor cats are not amused. Nor is Karen, much.
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• Following up on this post, the family and I saw the new Indiana Jones movie on Friday. We all found Indy much too indestructable but thought there were enough good character and action moments to compensate. We each had our own quibbles and favorite bits, but on consensus thought it was worth our time and money. Not the painful embarrassment it could have been by any means.
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• EDITED TO ADD because I forgot to mention that I also made ravioli from scratch for the first time in my life this weekend. Fresh ricotta, mozzerella and parmesan blended with oregano and pinched between sheets of homemade pasta. My girls and I did it together and it was good. Suggestions for future ravioli stuffings will be gratefully accepted.

  
  

• Today is Memorial Day in the U.S. Take a second to remember why.

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Mothers Day '08

Yesterday was Mothers Day in the U.S., and I let it pass without mention. One reason is that Karen and I were out of town spending the day with our kids. Another is that I couldn't think of much interesting to say.

But of course I was thinking about and missing Mom. It's only in retrospect, and with the perspective of being a parent myself, that I realize how much she loved her children and genuinely wanted nothing but happiness for us. And gave to us unconditionally... including, I realized too late, giving me the final gift of letting me write a book about her. Thanks, Mom. Love you, too.

Cap'n, There Be Quails Here!

About 11 months ago, I wrote about a family of blue scrub jays that had nested in our backyard. Those fledglings are long gone (though I wonder if some of the babies I so carefully nurtured have grown into the annoying squawkers who dominate our bird feeder--if so, nice payback, guys), but today we found that another family has assumed their lease: Quail.

We count seven young'uns. Sorry the picture quality isn't better...

We've seen Dad around a lot in the past week. He's particularly handsome, a finely plumed dandy. He flies pretty well for a quail, too. We've been surprised to notice him watching us from high tree branches overhead. This morning the reasons for his diligence introduced themselves by scrambling over to a small shallow birdbath we have sitting in the dirt, taking a quick refreshing dip, then scurrying back to cover. I couldn't catch it with the camera, but there was a squirrel sitting nearby watching them the entire time, while one of our cats was perched on the windowsill watching both quail and squirrel and cursing the inventor of glass.

Family photo of Dad, Mom and a couple of chicks

I like the idea of our little suburban yard being a nature preserve. Once word gets out, there'll be no keeping the critters away.
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Cat-Shaving Weather

It's spring. The days grow longer, flowers shoulder their way out of the warming earth, the scent of barbeque wafts through the neighborhood. Have you shaved your cat today?

I've written about Amber the Simple Cat before. Amber joined our family after a veterinarian friend of ours saved her wee kitten life. She was found alone in a field, just a few weeks old, comatose, and our good friend nursed her back from the brink. Then this good, good friend called us and asked if we could give the kitten a home because, if we didn't, he was regretfully going to have to send her to the pound and his heroic life-saving effort would likely be in vain. "Oh, and by the way, she's probably brain damaged."

Well, you can't say "no" to a good, good, good friend like that. I wanted to name her "Eileen" because she had no cat-balance abilities at all (like the old joke: "I lean"), but my wife and kids vetoed that as an affront to her dignity (like how's she gonna know?) so we settled on "Amber" after her golden color. And she's been a fine addition to our family, with luckily no lingering health problems and a disposition just as sweet as she is stupid. Which is very.

Now, Amber is a tabby with long hair. We didn't know about the long hair when we took her in, nor did we anticipate that she'd never really get the hang of grooming herself, she'd hate brushing, and our other cats would be no help whatsoever. All autumn and winter she builds up massive mats and tangles, shedding ever more elaborate tufts throughout the house; every spring when the weather turns warm enough, we have our good, good, good, good friend shave it all off.

If you're ever in my home and want to know if spring has arrived, just look for the naked pissed-off bobble-headed cat.

More a "Guideline" than a "Rule"

A few entries ago, I posted a photo of my identical twin girls when they were wee babies just a few days old. In the comments, Jan asked, "Shouldn't we get an 'after' photo of the girls, since the 'before' is so lovely?" That's a more interesting request than you might expect.

When I first started blogging, one of the "rules" I set myself was to keep my family out of it as much as practical. Especially after exposing my mom, dad and sisters in Mom's Cancer, it seemed the least I could do was respect everybody's privacy. And in general, I think the less personal information you broadcast about yourself, the better. As a result, I've only posted one or two photos of my wife and none at all of my kids (as non-infants).

However, as I later discussed privately with some friends and fellow bloggers with similar concerns, the unintended consequence is that you end up writing about everything in your life except the most important people in it. That doesn't seem right, either. Besides, we're all friends here, right?

So from time to time, when I have good reason and I get their permission, I'll try to loosen up and sneak in my family. In that spirit, for Jan and anyone else who cares, here's a photo of my girls now, all growed up and headed back to college today after spring break. As good and important as it gets.

Laura and Robin

Edited to Add: And here they were a couple of years ago, when I drew them for my book. That's me at left (yes, I own that Hawaiian shirt) and my wife Karen at lower right.

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Cats, We Got Cats

Here's a late birthday present for my girls, who I know will relate, as will many cat owners:

To quote detective Adrian Monk, "I LOL'd out loud."

We all had a great birthday weekend, I think. Now back to work for everyone. Kids, quit goofing around online and study for your finals!

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Ides of March Eve

Today is a really good day. The evidence:

1. It's "π Day," 3.14. Please notice that I've manipulated the post time to read 1:59 (p.m.), which pointlessly carries the digits of π out three points further. (If I wanted to do it right, I'd calculate that 0.159 of a day equals 3 hours 48 minutes 58 seconds, and reset the post clock to 3:48:58 a.m. But I'm not that big a nerd.)

2. A few days after 20 years ago tomorrow, I was doing this:

Apologies for the picture's stripes.
A new scanner is on order.

My two little pooquita chiquitas celebrate their birthday tomorrow, and Karen and I are taking a cake, gifts, and a couple of their girlfriends to spend the day at their all-grown-up big-girl university. In contrast to 20 years ago, I think today if they ganged up and used some strategy, they'd have a fair chance of taking me. Good thing I instilled all that respect when I had the chance. Right, girls? Right?

3. One other reason.

I hope you have a great weekend, I think I will.

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I Am Old

My wife, kids and I are all fans of the Indiana Jones films (someday I'll tell you about our bathroom decor), and we all agree that our first look at the online trailer left us pretty happy and eager for May 22. Happy? "Giddy" is more like it. Harrison Ford still cuts a credible figure with the hat and whip, and we're impressed with the look and tone glimpsed in the preview. However, the point of this post isn't to give a bit of much-needed publicity to Mr. Lucas and Mr. Spielberg's obscure little art-house film.

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The point of this post is that I'm old. We were talking about the trailer when one of my girls said, "This'll be our first chance to see Indiana Jones on the big screen!"

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My wife's and my reactions were identical: "What do you mean? Surely that can't be true. Never once seen an Indiana Jones movie in a theater? How is that possible? How could you even become an Indy fan without seeing it as God intended? You obviously forgot!" Even after we spent a few minutes working out the timeline, we couldn't quite comprehend how our kids had reached adulthood only seeing videotapes of Indiana Jones on television.

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Here's how. My twins are nearly 20, born in 1988. The last Indiana Jones movie--which I clearly remember seeing as a full-grown mature adult--came out in 1989. QED.

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Today we all went to the movie theater to see "The Spiderwick Chronicles" (not bad), which was preceded by the same Indiana Jones trailer we'd huddled around my monitor to watch two days before. The first time my kids have seen Indiana Jones on the big screen.

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I was thrilled for them. And a little wistful for myself.

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This movie better be good....

Ah, Reddy Kilowatt, My Old Nemesis

A severe winter storm swept through the West Coast at the end of last week, splitting trees, loosening mudslides, and knocking out power to 2 million people between central California and Oregon. Unfortunately, I couldn't blog about it until now because my electricity's been out since 9 a.m. Friday.
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Now, there's a stretch of time after the power goes out that's kind of fun. You slip a flashlight into your pocket, light candles, break out the camping lantern, start a fire in the fireplace, dance to 78s on the antique hand-cranked phonograph, play "Clue." When the lights flicker back on everyone groans a disappointed "Awww!" because they were having a neat little adventure without them.
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This weekend I learned that "fun time" lasts about 12 hours. After 67 hours, it gets really old. You run out of "Little House on the Prairie" and Donner Party jokes on Day Two.
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Part of our back fence blew over. We lost much of the food in the fridge and freezer, which wasn't actually a lot. Some of it made for an excellent barbeque Saturday night. I don't usually barbeque in the rain, but this was a special occasion. Like well-prepared Boy and Girl Scouts, we took stock of our resources. What worked: the fireplace, gas water heater, gas stove top, laptop computers (but no wireless Internet in range). What didn't work: lights, heat, refrigerator, oven, Dance Dance Revolution, the computer with all my good stuff. Fortunately, we had sufficient firewood, blankets, sleeping bags, and cats to prevent hypothermia.
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Also fortunately, our children were home from college for winter break. They were delicious.
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It was both a blessing and a curse that our neighborhood was a little island of darkness surrounded by otherwise normal, fully electrified homes and businesses. All our usual supermarkets, restaurants, shopping centers and movie theaters worked fine. Sunday night my wife and I went to see a movie in which we had no interest just to sit somewhere warm and distracting for two hours ("The Waterhorse," which was not bad). That was the blessing part; the curse part was that because our outage affected a small number of people in the middle of a functioning civilization, we were a very low priority for repair work. At night, we could see the lights of homes around us--twinkling, mocking, bragging about all the electrons flowing through their wires--and fantasize about long extension cords that would deliver us sweet relief at last.
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Everything clicked on at 4 a.m. today, and all is nearly forgiven. The inside temperature of our house has risen 20 degrees. My wife is at the supermarket restocking our larder. And we have vowed to never take electricity for granted again, in a spirit of thankfulness and appreciation I expect to last at least another hour.
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Best Christmas Ever

I won't embarrass my sister by revealing what year this picture of us was taken. Let's just call it an obviously pre-digital era. Possibly pre-transistor. I'm pretty sure we at least had steam engines.

The best Christmases ever experienced in the history of humanity happened in this house, my grandparents' log cabin, on the banks of Rapid Creek west of Rapid City, South Dakota. To call it a "log cabin" conjures images of "Little House on the Prairie" privations and is a bit misleading; it was a full-sized home built in the early 1960s with all the modern conveniences, but the walls were in fact made of stacked and interlocked yellow logs. Plus, "log cabin" sounds way cooler.

This house had the biggest stone fireplace in the world, across the room from which stood the biggest, shiniest, tinseliest Christmas tree in the world (as obviously exemplified above). Although my grandparents had neighbors, their home backed up against pristine Forest Service land. The pine trees of the Black Hills stretched into infinity, the creek was laden with 12-inch trout, and a small pond across the highway froze every winter for us to practice our wobbly skating skills.

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My sister and I with Mom and my grandparents' nippy little dog Salome on the pond across the highway. (See, we had color film, too!)

This was where the family gathered for my first nine or ten Christmas Eves. I'm pretty sure my grandma was the best cook in the world, though later in life Mom tried to convince me that her mother had actually been terrible in the kitchen. I'm dubious. Anyone who can line a fireplace hearth with pans of unbaked cinnamon rolls rising under moist kitchen towels and fill an entire house with that sweet yeasty scent is a five-star chef in my restaurant guide.

On Christmas Eve, the kids were readied for bed at some unjustly early hour while most of the adults steeled themselves to drive to midnight church services in town. Some years, depending on how that day's contest between snow and plow had fared, the trip was harder than others. I remember my sister and I, shivering under electric blankets turned to 9, trying desperately to keep each other awake while simultaneously pretending to sleep. Tough task. I still have an absolutely clear recollection, as real as the keyboard I'm typing on now, of hearing sleigh bells on the roof one of those nights.

What can be said of the big day itself? Anticipation, greed, the unthinking cruelty of adults marching children through the living room to the kitchen with our eyes closed so we'd eat breakfast before laying eyes on a single gift (as if there's ever been a child born who didn't master the trick of peeking sideways through downcast eyelashes). The triumph of a Lionel HO oval or G.I. Joe. And disappointments as well, such as the year my uncle broke my genuine Batman flying batcopter before I laid hands on it. I never let him live that down.

Although no holiday celebration could possibly rival my old ones, I hope the coming weeks are good for everyone. Just remember: if there are children in your life, you're making lifetime memories for them whether you intend to or not. Might as well make them nice.
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The Trip Report

The Mighty Housatonic
(I hope to someday learn how to pronounce that)

One of the nice things about travel is it makes you appreciate home. My wife and I are happy to be back, although I return to face a mountain of work that has to get done before Thanksgiving. You may judge how eager I am to tackle the mountain by the length of this post. Let's see how well I can procrastinate.

Elaborating on my previous post's highlights:

1. Western Massachusetts and Connecticut. The Berkshires. Beautiful country, perfect little villages full of nice people. If there is a single home in the entire region that doesn't look like it belongs in a painting by Grandma Moses, Currier & Ives, or Norman Rockwell, we didn't see it. Ordinary houses well off the beaten path have all the clapboard, dormers, gables, cupolas, cornices, finials, and flying buttresses you could hope for (maybe not flying buttresses). Beautiful brick construction of the type we simply never see in northern California because ours all fell down in 1906. We're pretty sure everyone keeps their one-horse sleighs locked up in their garages until the first snow falls, because that was the only detail missing.

We met several locals who were almost apologetic about the state of their trees' leaves. Leaf tourism is a big deal, and we were alternately told that we'd missed the best colors by a few weeks, that we'd see better color a little farther north, or that the colors were bad everywhere this year. As we explained to a few folks: we're from California. Our standards for fall leaf color are pretty low. However, I don't see anything wrong with vistas like these:

2. Opening of the LitGraphic Exhibit at the Norman Rockwell Museum. What a beautiful facility. I only realized as we drove to it that the reception was scheduled to begin after sunset, and it was pitch dark by the time we arrived at 5:45 p.m. So of the building exteriors and surrounding landscape, I can only say that the photos I've seen look very nice.

The interior, I can report first-hand, is terrific. Galleries are arrayed around a small central rotunda featuring Rockwell's "Four Freedoms" paintings. Many of Rockwell's huge, stunning originals are on display, in some cases accompanied by the sketches or studies he used in their creation. It's not an enormous place; I'd call it appropriately intimate, in an architectural style that seems to reflect a Rockwell aesthetic without calling attention to itself at the expense of the artwork.

The LitGraphic exhibit occupies three galleries in the back, with one dedicated to "historical" work by artists such as Eisner and Kurtzman, and the other two to more contemporary pieces. A tiny side gallery--almost a corridor--has benches facing two TV monitors that looped five-minute interviews with six of the exhibit's contributors, including me.

Me and my wall.

Watching myself on TV.
Because I'm just that vain.

It's hard to estimate how many people attended the opening reception. More than 100 for sure. Several were museum patrons and members, though the museum staff told me there were many new faces they didn't recognize--presumably people just drawn by the subject matter--and they were thrilled with the turnout. The first person we recognized shortly after we arrived was curator Martin Mahoney, who came to my home to interview me. I also reconnected with Jeremy Clowe, who ran the camera and did a fantastic job editing all the interviews into a great presentation. He worked very hard to find five minutes that did not make me look stupid. We also enjoyed meeting their friends and loved ones as well.

3. Meeting Artists. Dave Sim, Peter Kuper, Howard Cruse, Marc Hempel, and Mark Wheatley all had work in the exhibit and attended the opening. I spent a few minutes and had good conversations with each, during which we said nice things about each other. Dave was great, and Peter and I turned out to have a mutual friend in Editor Charlie (not as big a coincidence as it may seem; Charlie knows everybody). Even artists much cooler, better, and more experienced than I admitted that showing their work in the Norman Rockwell Museum was something of a career highlight, which made me feel a bit less like a freshman at the senior prom.

With "Cerebus" creator Dave Sim.

4. Terry and Robyn Moore. I mention Terry Moore of "Strangers in Paradise" separately because we had a little more time to talk and, maybe, connected in a less superficial way than usual at an event like this. We really had a good visit about writing, the creative process, family, all sorts of stuff. As I wrote in my last post, Terry and Robyn seem like especially nice people I look forward to seeing again whenever I can.

Terry (center) and I chatting with a museum patron who was very proud of the comic-themed tie he'd worn for the occasion.

Dinner following the reception was held at the palatial (literally) Cranwell Resort in nearby Lenox, where I got to know more of the museum's staff, curators and administrators. I was impressed by how excited they seemed to be about hosting the exhibit. They talked about the emergence of a new narrative form and the continuum of telling stories with pictures that linked Norman Rockwell to us. Good food and better company. It was after 11 when we finally parted.

5. Guy Gilchrist. Guy began his professional cartooning career at age 14. Mentored by "Beetle Bailey" creator Mort Walker and often working with his brother Brad, he's had an impressive career that's included "The Muppets" and "Nancy" comic strips as well as many books and commercial art projects. Now he works out of Guy Gilchrist's Cartoonist's Academy in Simsbury, Connecticut, which serves as his studio, a school, and a summer day camp for kids.

The first impression any fan of comics and cartoons would have when entering Guy's academy is jaw-dropping wonder. The walls are covered with original art, some by Guy but most by other great pros: Milt Caniff, Stan Drake, Curt Swan, Cliff Sterrett, Jack Davis, too many others to count or recount. As I told Guy, I think young cartoonists can learn more from looking at original artwork for 10 minutes than they can from a shelf full of books, so he's done them a tremendous service right there. The academy is also outfitted with desks, art supplies, light boxes, and computers for the students to make their own comics and flash animations. It's quite an undertaking.

Guy very graciously treated us to lunch and spent about two hours of his day off with us. He's known a lot of the old-guard East Coast cartooning elite and is quite a raconteur. He's also very generous. I won't embarrass Guy (or me) by revealing how generous; let's just say I'm pretty sure if I'd expressed admiration for his microwave oven, he would have unplugged it from the wall and carried it to my car. All in all, it was one of the nicest, most interesting, insightful and engaging conversation I can recall having with any cartoonist. Thanks, Guy.

Talking cartooning over the foosball table. Guy's students do animation at these computers, hence the cels on the wall for them to study.

6. Historic Boston. Not much to add here, except that we spent a day walking the "Freedom Trail" and seeing all the highlights. A couple of hours were spent in the company of this delightful man, who led a group tour and enhanced our understanding and enjoyment enormously.

My wife Karen and I flanking Revolutionary-era hat maker Nathaniel Balch.

We spent some time exploring the Common, the Public Garden and Beacon Hill, and Boston seems like a perfectly fine city that well deserves it reputation for nighmarish traffic. Now, I expected that in the heart of the city, laid out 250 years before the invention of the auto. Jumbled narrow streets are part of the charm. My real puzzlement and frustration was with the modern stuff, which was a lot more baffling than it ought to be. Tunnels you can't get to, streets with five names within four blocks, interstates to nowhere. And the Massachusetts Turnpike: seriously, what the hell? I'm familiar with the concept of toll roads, but this thing's got booths that take cash, booths that dispense little tickets with teeny Excel spreadsheets printed all over 'em, booths at every exit manned by three guys who collect $1.10 from the six cars per hour that wander through. We went through one booth whose entire purpose seemed to be circling us around to a different booth. To misappropriate an old saying, this is no way to run a railroad.

However, it's a poor guest who leaves badmouthing his host, so I'll wrap up by saying we had a wonderful time in Massachusetts and Connecticut, and only regret we didn't have a chance to see everyone we wanted to. Also, I have never seen so many Dunkin' Donuts franchises in my life.

UPDATE: At the request of exactly one person, I've linked the first four photos above to higher-resolution version of the same. OK, Sherwood?
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I Can'nae Change the Laws of Physics, Cap'n!

That's my oven. It's a 20-year-old Whirlpool with the oven underneath, a microwave on top, and controls for both at the upper right. Yesterday, the control panel went dark. Dead. Joined the choir invisible. Same for the microwave. The oven still worked, although if we wanted to do something fancy like set a delayed cooking time--not that we ever have before--we were out of luck. We couldn't live like that ... like animals. Something had to be done.

It is understood that repairing a broken microwave costs more than replacing it. This wasn't just the microwave, though; it was the whole control panel, too, and they're both integrated with the oven. Either we would have to call in a sure-to-be-exorbitantly priced repairperson or replace the whole darn thing, and what are the odds we'd ever find anything that'd fit into our 20-year-old cabinet hole? Neither option was appealing.

This morning I figured I'd take a peek at its guts. Just in case there happened to be a huge, clearly labeled switch inside that had somehow flipped from "Work" to "Don't Work," because if it were more complicated than that I was pretty sure I was out of luck. I turned off the circuit breaker, unscrewed the control panel at upper right...

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"What should I tell the paramedics?" asked my wife.

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"Probably 220 volts," answered I.

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And there, sitting fat and pretty under a tangle of wires with a big blinking neon arrow pointing at it saying "Look Here!" was a 20-amp fuse. Gingerly reaching in (yeah, I know what a capacitor looks like), I pulled the fuse and checked it with my multimeter. Resistance = infinity; that's a hopeful sign (a good fuse would have had a resistance near zero). Called the hardware store half a mile away, went and picked up a new fuse for $3.75, and popped it in. Asking my wife to watch the oven and scream in panic if she saw sparks or flames, I flipped the circuit breaker and.....

It worked.

I think I now understand how a soldier feels dragging a wounded buddy to safety under fire. How a surgeon feels pulling a patient back from death's icy grip. But mostly, I now know what it feels like to be this guy:

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Congrats to Kid Sis; Curses upon Bill Gates

Congratulations!
Hey, there's a writer in the family! My sister Elisabeth ("Kid Sis") wrote a screenplay that just won first prize in the 2007 Screenwriting Expo Screenplay Competition!

She won in the "Thriller" category for a movie script titled "Pistoleras," which I have read and she hopes to put into production soon--just as soon as she splices together another independent film she just finished shooting. The awards are sponsored by Creative Screenwriting magazine and I'm sure will draw the attention of investors and scouts looking for emerging talent. If anybody wants to back a feminist spaghetti Western set in a Mexican bordello, I can hook you up.

Gosh, if I hadn't let her read my comics and taken her to see "Star Wars" 30 years ago, who knows where she'd be today? That's right, I'm taking the credit.

We're proud of you, kid.

The Gates of Hell
Bill Gates and I are going to have a long talk someday. Sometime yesterday morning, he sat in his Redmond lair stroking his long-haired cat and pushed a button that made two months of my e-mails disappear. It took me most of the afternoon to figure out where they'd gone and how to get them back where they belonged. Grrrrrr.

I don't wanna hear from you smug Mac or Linux cultists. I've used Macs in professional settings and found them just as temperamental and prone to bog down or crash in the middle of The Big Job as PCs. My experience has not convinced me of their superiority. I don't have the time or interest to tackle Linux. When my computer is acting up, I can usually figure out the problem and I like being able to tinker under the hood. The downside of that: sometimes you have to tinker under the hood. Still, I'm considering making my next box a Mac just because I don't want to have anything to do with Vista. Everything Microsoft has done in the past decade seems based on the assumption that they know how I want to use my computer better than I do, and Vista looks like the worst yet.

Bill Gates owes me an afternoon.
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Happy Birthday to Mom

Wednesday, August 22 would have been Mom's 68th birthday. I can't let the day pass without many private thoughts and at least a public mention.

When I was being interviewed by the Rockwell Museum guys last week, the conversation turned to what Mom's Cancer means to me now that some time has passed since the events I wrote about. That's a hard question to answer. One surprising thing I realized is that my understanding of Mom's ordeal still changes and grows. For example, it was many months later, long after the book was published, that I looked back with astonishment at just how unbelievably brave Mom was. I wrote in Mom's Cancer that "it's amazing what you can get used to," and until everything was long over I didn't quite understand what a miserable situation she'd gotten used to--we'd all gotten used to--one sad and disspiriting setback after another, Mom trying to maintain hope for herself but mostly for her children. It was an amazingly graceful exhibition of love.

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Here's to Mom, still teaching me stuff.

In the TB sanatorium as a child

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School portrait

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Dressed for prom

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A brief turn as a model, around age 19. What a babe.

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A young mother and ... er, ahem, well ... Me.

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The day she married my (step)Dad

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Her 64th birthday, when she received her pup, Hero.

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Return to Hearth, Home & Paranoia

For the interested regulars, my daughters have returned home safely from their month in Scotland. They brought back a few souvenirs and 1300 photos, most of which look a lot like this:


What's not to love? Happily, they received A's and full credit for their Medieval Warfare classwork. More importantly, they also seem to have picked up all the intangible benefits of youthful international travel--independence, confidence, new perspectives and friends--that my wife and I could have wished for. A tremendously successful trip on all accounts.

What's funny is that they just drove off to visit a friend seven miles away and I asked them to call me when they arrived. I'm fine when they're eight time zones from home but turn into neurotic Dad when they're under my roof. I trust them; it's just all those other drivers I worry about. And hey, it's a narrow winding road. Anything could happen.

Parenting = Always envisioning the worst-case scenario.
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Fledglings Update

1. Our two young scrub jays are doing just fine in our backyard, skittering around while their parents fuss over them. They're getting bigger and more aerodynamic every day, though I don't know enough about avian development to predict when they'll be flying. We're trying to leave them alone to develop on their own.

2. Our two young daughters are doing just fine in Scotland, finding their way around a small hamlet adjacent to campus and figuring out which bus takes them into the next decent-sized town. They got e-mail access today and found an Italian restaurant so I know they won't starve. We're trying to leave them alone to develop on their own.
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The Highland Fling

In theory, the point of parenthood is giving your children the confidence and skills to be independent. In practice: harder than I thought.

Around noon today, my wife and I put our 19-year-old daughters on a plane bound for Scotland, where they'll earn college credit studying medieval history and warfare for a month. This seemed like a really fine idea a few months ago. It even seemed like a fine idea as the departure date got closer and more concrete, and we had to do things like buy electricity conversion kits and contemplate our girls being completely beyond our ability to swoop in and make their boo-boos all better. It didn't even seem like a terrible idea when a couple of car bombs were found in London yesterday; London's a big city, our kids were only going to spend a few hours passing through, and the terrorists seemed pretty inept anyway.

So today we saw them off to Scotland, waving goodbye at the security checkpoint leading to their departure gate. I swear, less than a minute later and 20 steps away I stopped at a television showing footage of a flaming car crashed into an airport terminal. My wife walked up behind me.

"London?" she asked.

"Scotland," I answered.

Urk.

It took the network another five minutes to tell us that the scene we were watching was in Glasgow, not our girls' destination of Edinburgh. As terrorism goes, it seemed like a relatively minor incident (and, again, idiotically inept), but I saw that Glasgow Airport suspended flights and, at this writing--with my wee bairns still en route somewhere over the Arctic Circle--we have no idea how it'll impact their flight and the connection they need to make in London. Guess we'll find out in the morning.

Rationally, I know there are a lot of 19 year olds doing much riskier things in the world, and that mine won't be blown up. Whatever happens, they'll figure it out and be all right. But I don't think I'll rest easily tonight.
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UPDATE 1: Well, they called when they got to Edinburgh a few hours ago (6 a.m. Sunday our time). That's most of the way there. We're expecting to hear from them when they reach their final destination soon.

UPDATE 2: Took a little longer than we expected, but they made it all the way. Whew.
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Moving Out, Moving On

At the end of Mom's Cancer I wrote that Mom, Nurse Sis and Kid Sis moved to Hollywood and bought a home together, at least partly to realize Mom's life-long dream of living there. In the book's Afterword, added to the last page as it literally went to press, I wrote: "I don't think I ever saw her happier living anywhere than she was in Hollywood. She loved her new neighborhood: the fluorescent bougainvillea spilling over her back fence, the giant avocado tree that dropped guacamole hailstones into her yard, the towering palm at her curb, new friends walking dogs and pushing baby strollers past her door. It was where she needed to be."

I spent the past few days helping my sisters leave that Hollywood house forever. After Mom died, it was simply too much work and expense for them to keep up, and not particularly suited to either of their lifestyles. It was Mom's dream that they shared with her and for her but couldn't continue without her. Kid Sis found a great apartment and moved out several weeks ago. Last weekend was Nurse Sis's turn and it meant making some overdue decisions about Mom's belongings, facing some strong memories and emotions--but mostly it just meant a ton of exhausting work. Packing and moving is hard under any circumstances.

Out of respect for my family's privacy, I never wrote much or posted any photos of that house. Now that they're gone, here are a few pictures of a place that made Mom very happy:

The front porch. Mom loved sitting in the white wicker chairs and talking to passersby like the Queen of the Neighborhood.

Bougainvillea completely covered the backyard fence. Calling it "fluorescent" hardly did it justice.

The giant avocado tree in the yard next door. I shot this a couple of days ago and the tree is considerably cut back from when Mom lived here, when branches hung over the fence and fruit dropped year-round, splatting to the ground to be happily devoured by Mom's dog Hero.

Mom's palm tree, which I suspect was a big reason she had to
have this particular house. It was part of her vision.

It was good to spend time with Mom there and, for my sisters' sake, good to let it go as well. It was necessary and overdue, but sad nonetheless.
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Best Day of My Life

Although I have a poor memory for dates, often misremembering when events happened by years, I can tell you exactly where I was and what I was doing 19 years ago today:


That's an armful. Somehow in the intervening years my hair has gone gray; I can't imagine why. Happy Birthday, Chiquitas, we'll see you this afternoon. Pizza's on Mom and me.

Sometimes, I find myself drawn to the simplest possible
way of explaining what may count in rearing children:
your children are either the center of your
life or they're not, and the rest is commentary.

--Calvin Trillin

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