Monthly Archives: January 2017

Mummies and me

Maureen had asked me what  i wanted to do for my birthday yesterday, and i made a short list, modifying it as predicted rain made modification required.

But unwavering, even with the threat of rain, we drove to Balboa Park, one of my favorite places on earth. The schedule modification dropped the zoo from our schedule. But we figured with the rain, the museums would be virtually empty.

They weren’t. We were astounded at the amount of cars in the parking areas even though it was a little less crowded than usual and disbelieving that many people would be in the park. They were.

We walked down the colonnade on the south side of the El Prado, the avenue from the large Bea Evenson fountain on the east end of the park to Plaza de Panama (a large number of the park buildings were built for the 1915-1916 Panama-California Exposition) and stopped in the San Diego History Museum, one of several in the Casa de Balboa, which was featuring the structures created by  Irving Gill, a renown architect. It was our first time in that particular museum. We will go back.

Coming out, i gaped, as usual at the architecture. Across the prado was the Casa de Prado, the sister of the Casa de Balboa. The beauty of this place never ceases to make me feel good.

To get to  the San Diego Museum of Art, we continued down the colonnade to the Plaza de Panama, the center of the park. The plaza has gone through many renovations. Recently, they banned parking there and soon will reroute traffic around it . That makes me feel good. To me, the beauty of this place is in its ties to a century ago and makes the current beauty of the surroundings even more beautiful. Standing on the edge of the plaza, we are in the heart of the place. The Prado, a restaurant with an atmosphere of old charm, serves a mixture of California, Southwest, and Mexican cuisine (at least, that’s what i call it).  The patio in good weather makes me feel elegant. And the bar area with no real bar makes me think of the Long Bar at Raffles in Singapore where the Singapore Sling was invented (the original tastes like cough medicine). But before being renovated into upscale, this one was where my father-in-law, Ray Boggs liked to stop for a Beefeater’s on the rocks with a twist. Of course, i went along.

Plaza de Panama: the Mingei on the left, the California Tower and Old Globe in the center background, and the Panama 66 restaurant on the right.

Outside the Prado where we were yesterday, we were a stone throw away from the Japanese Gardens, the Mingei Museum dedicated to folk art and craft, The Timken Museum featuring classical paintings, the Lily pond, and on and on.

It is a gathering place for all kinds of folks, families, just a place to relax. Beautiful.

On the north end of the plaza is my favorite, the San Diego Museum of Art. It was the reason i wanted to include the park in my birthday. In particular, i wanted to see the “Visible Vaults” exhibition. The museum has made it possible to experience the many, many works of art that has been in the archives, not available for viewing. The collection is astounding. With every piece displayed and with every drawer upon drawer Maureen and i examined, i thought of two people: my daughter Blythe and my friend Maren Hicks. i knew they would understand more and consequently enjoy more than me this treasure.

Our final stop in Balboa Park was at the Museum of Man. i had not been there for a score of years, and i remember being fascinated by the exhibits. It has been upgraded and is now very children friendly. In fact, Maureen and i kept laughing at how our grandson Sam and other boys between six and seventy-three would enjoy some exhibits. They had a special “cannibal” exhibit, there was the evolution of man exhibit, and the Egyptian exhibit featured mummies. For the older guys, there was the “Beerology” exhibit. Maureen and i laughed at a number of ancient civilizations which drank as much as four gallons of beer a day, especially the ones in Peru which practiced shrinking heads.

The Egyptian exhibit had a mummy not of that civilization. The “Lemon Grove Mummy” was that of a young woman and a child curled into a fetal position. She was the one that captivated me those many years ago. She got her name because two San Diego teenagers stole her from a cave near Chihuahua, Mexico in 1966. Getting home, they became afraid of what their parents would do if they knew and stored the mummy in a box in a friend’s garage. Shortly afterwards, they were sent to serve in Vietnam. They and the mummy became separated. In 1980, the mother of the friend was cleaning out her garage when she found the mummy (i’m still trying to imagine her moment of discovery) and donated it to the museum.

Somehow, i connected the mummy to some old destroyers. In 1974, they had been taken out of mothballs and were moored on the quay wall of the Long Beach Naval Station,  just aft of the U.S.S. Hollister, on which i was the chief engineer. When we found out the destroyers were to be used as targets for missiles and sunk on the Pacific Missile Test Range, we went aboard to salvage any supplies we could use. i also acquired a magnetic compass, an engine order telegraph unit, and a brass plate off a main feed pump of one destroyer. The brass plate is a paper weight in my office, the compass is part of Maureen’s arrangement including a metal cruise box, cacti, and orchids on the stoop of our courtyard porch.

But i saw a relationship between those ships and the mummy. That’s when i wrote this poem:

Thoughts about the discovery of the well-preserved and very old remains of an Incan boy and young woman high in the Andes Mountains of Peru, circa 1995

the magazine photos riveted attention, fascination:
children, forced to grow up and die
before their time in our time
yet probably not a great deal more
than their time in their time.
did they volunteer to the sacrifice?
now they are a source of interest in ages past,
and macabre beliefs:
i only feel sadness.

hulks.
dead, empty hulks.
eyeless sockets staring out
into a world gone techno,
not a great deal more advanced from
what they saw when they could see:
world still full of ignorance, hatred and religious zealots
out to rid the world of all other gods.
the hulks,
not just dead, but dead and gone, yet not gone,
still here, rediscovered,
creating fascination, ghoulish interest in such relics.

hulk: dead warship lady
i wandered through during my navy days
hulk.
lady warship “mothballed” with foam
until cleaned up for her sacrifice,
i, sailor man, entered the hulk,
semi-official equipment scavenger
for my man-of-war, pronounced female,
herself already obsolescent:
aboard: quiet and eerie,
a presence here beyond me felt:
an old unfinished letter,
desk drawer of a small stateroom forward,
“Dear Clara,” was the only identification;
nothing much more than the opening hello;
no great heroics here,
just a khaki clad lieutenant
meeting obligations to clara.

down below in the steel machine guts of the lady,
the clang against the emptiness of fireroom ladders,
once filled with hiss and heat and screams over the blowers
stirring the moist heat to just above tolerable.
it was more incan.
i could see the sailors shirtless sweating,
changing spray nozzles as the orders from above
required they rev up the steaming to where
the sides of the boilers heaved.
gone.
just as gone as the incans.
eye sockets empty,
bodily fluids extracted or dried up long ago.
sacrificed,
but no petrification here.
no, she will be hauled to sea
to feel the heat of missiles,
practicing the art of war,
slamming into her innards
as her body is twisted, rent asunder,
gaping holes filling with the briny sea
as she slides, stem down
into deep bliss.
sacrificed like the incans,
dead and gone,
but no longer seen
like the incans.

at least the old war lady
will have some peace and quiet.

After leaving the museum, we departed the park and drove to The Rose in South Park. The Rose is a special place for us and it seems we spend a number of our special days there: light dinners and good wine. Yesterday, it did not  disappoint.

The rain had been kind to me, stopping in the late morning before resuming after nightfall, a break just for our trip. In fact, it rested until i brought in an ample amount of firewood.

The television was not turned on until i went to bed. i sat by the fire and read in silence. Maureen was stretched out in the love seat across the rug with the two cats asleep on her legs.

Not a bad day.

 

It’s Official

Before i finish this post, it will be 8:30 a.m. Lebanon, Tennessee time.

It hit me that is the time my parents would call every year on this day when i was accessible by phone. After i would say the perfunctory “hello,” they would burst into “Happy Birthday.” As they aged, the voices were a little more scratchy, a little more off key, but i could feel the love pouring out over the phone like they were in my room hugging me.

It did not occur to me until this morning, they would wake me up at 6:30 a.m. PST, because that was the time i was born. They loved to tell the tale of how Daddy finagled a week of liberty, by cobbling together several liberty passes from his Seabee friends. He took the train from Gulfport, Mississippi where his 75th Seabees were waiting to be shipped to parts unknown. I was late, so after the instruction of Dr. Charles Lowe, he walked Mother around the neighborhood, “not until she was tired, but until he was tired.” It appeared not to be working. i was stubborn even then. But finally on Tuesday, they went to the hospital. My grandmother, Katherine “Granny” Prichard was the attending nurse. i was anxious to get out i guess as Dr. Lowe did not have time to get in his gown and delivered me in his shirt sleeves.

i think of Daddy waiting in the lobby. i wondered what he thought as he waited. He had a new house, his future was more uncertain than we can comprehend now, his wife was going to have to take care of a newborn while he was away, there was this war going on.

After he saw me, he caught the train back to Gulfport and was not UA (Unauthorized Absence).

And for sixty-nine years, they sang to me as close to 8:30 a.m. Lebanon time on this day.

i do miss that rendition of “Happy Birthday” and them.

 

No Magic Number But That’s Okay

Seventy-Three. 73. Birthdate year 1944.

Seventy-Three is not a magic number. i mean it’s not like 75. If it were my 75th, i could steal from the anniversary connections and say this was my “diamond” birthday. i can’t. They don’t have a connection like that even for anniversaries for 73, let alone birthdays. i figure this birthday should be connected to lead.

Seventy-Three is not even significant in most categorizations. Seventy-Two seemed, not magical, but certainly mathematically clean and associated.

So why am i so obsessed about turning seventy-three tomorrow. i don’t know.

But i have an excuse: i’m old.

Now if i live as long as either one of my parents with a sharp mind to the end as they did, i could have at least twenty-four more productive years left, maybe twenty-five. But i won’t: i lived one hell of a lot harder and wilder life than they did.

So i figure i will be damn lucky if get another twenty years out of this thing called living.

That’s okay. Either way.

Now, it’s time for me, as i have written, to reinvent. It won’t be hard. There are things to remind me of how to do it. Two Tuesdays ago, i played golf with one of my all-time best friends, Pete Toennies at the Bonita Golf Club. For a number of years, we have watched two red-tail hawks soar the heavens looking for game and survey their prospects from a dead eucalyptus, a sentinel  near the sixteenth green. In that recent round, they perched on their outpost, almost like telling me to do it right. They did.

But that is just a recall of a wonderful moment.

With the seventy-third inevitably upon me. So is the rain. So we prepared for the rain, five days of it, an unheard of event in the world of the Southwest corner since the rains of the late seventies. So Maureen prepared, with my help. Her orchids were pulled out from underneath the overhangs in our courtyard so they could bask in the downpours headed our way for the next five days.

Then, i made my last martini…ever…i think. My age does not handle booze well. It is time for me to back off or quit entirely. The trial, hopefully successfully segueing into my lifetime habits, excludes hard liquors and limits all of the others. Appropriately, i had used the last olive already, so i had to forego garnish. Not a big deal but symbolic. So i wandered into the front room, sat down at the piano, arraigned a jury-rigged coaster out of my ever present bandana, placed the martini there for occasional sips. i played a simple piece i made up a hundred years ago and makes me feel like i can do this sort of thing. Then i began “Stardust,” which i learned out the Hoagy Carmichael songbook years ago, but now it requires relearning after layoffs like this long one. i got almost two-thirds of the way through, slowly, haltingly, but always expressively, when the number of my inabilities made my playing un-fun and i stopped. After all, Maureen is making shrimp with risotto, a new dish, so it is time to get on with it.

And then it’s on to night time. i bring in some firewood  and light the fire. Fire in the hearth has become a standard part of our routine from late November through February. It is one of my connections to the past. We never had one fire in our living room fireplace on Castle Heights Avenue. My parents were practical people and they converted from goal to gas with no thought of  connecting to their past with a fire in the fireplace. But my fire tonight is a beautiful fire. i think of my Uncle Pipey Orr, who in his living room fireplace in Red Bank outside of Chattanooga seemed to always have a fire. i think of Uncle Remus. For some reason, i always imagine him telling me his stories of Brer Rabbit, Brer Bear, Brer Fox, and all of the other wonderful creatures in those tales while we sit by a fire in a slave cabin made of logs. Tonight, i thought of Uncle Remus.

And Uncle Remus is a good place to start. He has become some kind of “Uncle Tom” symbol to some folks, who apparently didn’t understand he was the hero, making good when it was hard to make it, living like a piece of furniture, owned. Yet he was the one who did things right. The “white” folks in the that film, which had no real connection to Joel Chandler Harris, except for Uncle Remus and his stories, are really the bad guys, not understanding, bigoted, blind. And Uncle Remus survived.

And he is old, like me.

That’s what i hope to do at seventy-three and beyond: be like Uncle Remus.

 

 

My Kind of Humor (Thanks, Norm)

One of the folks i have reconnected with on Facebook is Norm O’Neal. Norm was a radarman (right, Norm?) on the USS Hawkins in 1968-69 when she was my first ship. i do remember him but must confess not as clearly as i would like, a difficulty i have with many parts of my life over fifty years ago…okay, over 50 minutes ago.

Norm sends out some wonderful emails and occasionally posts something on Facebook. Many are beautiful photographs of animals (so i can forward them to family members who are crazy about animals) or historic events. My favorite emails of his are humorous.

This morning, he posted quotes from Steven Wright, a comedian and award-winning film producer. Being challenged to know any performer who did not perform before 1985, i did not know Steven Wright, i looked him up on Wikepedia (God bless you, Wikipedia. If it wasn’t for you and my confessing you are my frequent source, people might think i know a lot). From Wikipedia:

Steven Alexander Wright (born December 6, 1955) is an American comedian, actor, writer, and an Oscar-winning film producer. He is known for his distinctly lethargic voice and slow, deadpan delivery of ironic, philosophical, and sometimes nonsensical jokes, paraprosdokians, non sequiturs, anti-humor, and one-liners with contrived situations.

i mean i have to like anyone who comes up with a lot of paraprosdokians and non-sequiturs. It’s my kind of humor.

But i digress. Wright’s quotes are below. p.s. i think he stole a couple. Thanks, Norm.

The Quotes of Steven Wright:
1 – I’d kill for a Nobel Peace Prize.
2 – Borrow money from pessimists — they don’t expect it back.
3 – Half the people you know are below average.
4 – 99% of lawyers give the rest a bad name.
5 – 82.7% of all statistics are made up on the spot.
6 – A conscience is what hurts when all your other parts feel so good.
7 – A clear conscience is usually the sign of a bad memory.
8 – If you want the rainbow, you got to put up with the rain.
9 – All those who believe in psycho kinesis, raise my hand.
10 – The early bird may get the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese.
11 – I almost had a psychic girlfriend, ….. But she left me before we met.
12 – OK, so what’s the speed of dark?
13 – How do you tell when you’re out of invisible ink?
14 – If everything seems to be going well, you have obviously overlooked something.
15 – Depression is merely anger without enthusiasm.
16 – When everything is coming your way, you’re in the wrong lane.
17 – Ambition is a poor excuse for not having enough sense to be lazy.
18 – Hard work pays off in the future; laziness pays off now.
19 – I intend to live forever … So far, so good.
20 – If Barbie is so popular, why do you have to buy her friends?
21 – Eagles may soar, but weasels don’t get sucked into jet engines.
22 – What happens if you get scared half to death twice?
23 – My mechanic told me, “I couldn’t repair your brakes, so I made your horn louder.”
24 – Why do psychics have to ask you for your name
25 – If at first you don’t succeed, destroy all evidence that you tried.
26 – A conclusion is the place where you got tired of thinking.
27 – Experience is something you don’t get until just after you need it.
28 – The hardness of the butter is proportional to the softness of the bread.
29 – To steal ideas from one person is plagiarism; to steal from many is research.
30 – The problem with the gene pool is that there is no lifeguard.
31 – The sooner you fall behind, the more time you’ll have to catch up.
32 – The colder the x-ray table, the more of your body is required to be on it.
33 – Everyone has a photographic memory; some just don’t have film.
34 – If at first you don’t succeed, skydiving is not for you.
35 – If your car could travel at the speed of light, would your headlights work?

January 19: My Second Day of Reinvention This Year

i’m back on Facebook.

Actually, i never went away. i monitored, but not as intensely or frequently. i shared links to the posts on my website and my Democrat columns, and i posted albums of pictures i’ve scanned for posterity because i’m too damn old and ornery to learn how to share those old photos with my family any other way.

The truth is i like sharing stuff back and forth with friends and family. Those reconnections and new ones give me a lot of pleasure. i decided i just couldn’t give up those connections.

But i’ve made some rules. i’m only going to “like” posts i truly enjoy or find especially interesting. i am no longer going to “like” a post because i want you to know i’ve actually read it.

i’m going to skip all those pass-along jokes, feel-good videos, prayer requests, political comments, copy and paste demands, etc. That doesn’t mean i don’t respect you. It just means i’m not on the social media for such stuff. i like the social aspect.

You see, i set myself some goals, not resolutions, before the  end of the year to reinvent myself. i want to live the rest of my life in a better, healthier, more productive, and more giving back mode of operation. i also don’t want to sweat things anymore. i want to truly retire except for that giving back thing, which i plan to do through writing.

Well, i backslid on those goals, not resolutions, pretty soon after the turn of year. Not completely, mind you, not even too badly, but i did backslide in my opinion. But you see, i have an automatic reprieve. My birthday is January 19, which i share with Robert E. Lee, Edgar Allen Poe, Paul Cezanne, Jean Stapleton, Tippi Hedren, Phil of the Everly Brothers, Janis Joplin, and Dolly Parton, among others.

And of course there is James Winston Watts, who developed the frontal lobotomy.

It all seems to fit.

So i’m renewing my efforts to reinvent myself. Whatever is left in this life for me, i intend to enjoy it.

This morning, i completed a project, the first one among many. It’s not that impressive. i made an herb table which we will put out in the old dog prison (no dog, no prison) where Maureen can work on raising her herbs and potting flowers.

It’s really not impressive. i made it out of scrap lumber and some sheet metal. It is not square, but i did it with no plans, just sort of began puttering.

Still it’s a change. i have somewhere in the neighborhood of fifteen thousand projects in my garage and office, and that’s not counting the four billion and growing list Maureen has for me. This herb table is the first step in completing those tasks and the beginning of the reinvention of my reinvention.

And as i drug the table from the garage work area to the old dog prison, i passed the rose bush Maureen has in a planter.

i didn’t see this at first what with rousting about the table. i experienced the aroma first, one of the sweetest smells i’ve come across in a while.

Then i saw the rose. ‘Bout damn near perfect. Not a bad way to kick off a reinvention.