Frank Schaeffer Gets It Right – Open Letter to the Republican Traitors

Frank Schaeffer’s open letter to the replublican traitors hits the nail on the head – read here or watch this.

Special Day – 10/29/2008

We had been talking about doing this thing since the California Supreme Court released it’s decision. Eunice (Dave’s Mom) called us the next the day and said when are you guys going to get married. Rosalie, Colleen and Steve at work asked the same thing. We hadn’t really given it more than a few minutes thought. When we got back from Paris this year Marshall talked about how he and Douglas had gotten hitched while we were away. And yet neither one of us was jumping to get on this band wagon. We talked about getting a license and getting rings but we didn’t move on it. In all actuality we were hoping that Prop. 8 here in California would not pass and we would be able to get married when Eunice was here in February and closer to the day we use as our anniversary date – Feb 2. Which is ground hog day of course and is also the day that David and I first met.

Then as the weeks were passing by we decided some time late in August that we were going to do this thing. I mean after 24 years together it wouldn’t hurt us to get together with the people we enjoy being around and speak some vows. We got the license in Indio and then about 3 weeks later we drove into Los Angeles and bought these two really great looking wedding bands at the Beverly Center store TitanFactory. They carry the TeNo brand of rings – which we both have liked for sometime. It’s about time we both said after we found the rings we both liked. Simple titanium with a gold band in the center.

Next it was the ceremony. Where were we going to do this thing. Col and Harry had suggested their house at one point, Rosalie the parking lot behind the business, our backyard – but the flowers from the spring were all gone and the yard was looking pretty dry at this time – so we both thought about how much we liked the area called La Casa at the La Quinta Resort. David checked with the hotel if it would be alright to have the wedding in the yard and then have a simple party in the courtyard. My thought was about 10 people at the most. Well it turned out to be about 30.

The invitations were handed out and everybody said they would come. We got dressed up in suits even though it still was hot even in the late afternoon. The staff at the hotel really put together a really special looking display and i have to admit that I was getting nervous, anxious to say the least.

Photos privided by Chris Martin and Andi Dobi. Thanks so much for taking such great shots.

We had decided to say our own vows and provide our own music – ala iPod and HiFi BoomBox.

I’ve got to say that it got pretty emotional. That was shocking, but the friends that showed up for the ceremony made it feel very tight and alive, and all day i had been tinkering with the words i wanted to say, and I was anxious to hear what David had decided to say. Coming down the stairs from the La Casa onto that lawn with all of these people who have become part of our family made us both feel full. Cathy’s handling of the ceremony was perfect – and I guess I struck a cord with my words – cuz I felt like tearing up and I could see it in David’s eyes, that he knew I meant what I said, and his words to me struck me deep – almost as deep as the first time we looked into each other’s eyes. I read a few poems and said alot of things – I thought i went on a bit long, but it felt good.

Then we were saying our “I Do’s” and then Cathy said you may kiss now and we had talked about this – neither one of us is very physical in public so we didn’t want to make a big deal of the kiss and we didn’t – Chris (by the way he took most of these great photos) said it had to be the shortest kiss he had ever seen, but it was just perfect for us. And then we got to take one of our special photos ourselves – David had his camera with him and held it up and took a picture of the two of us with the whole gathering behind us. Then it was over.

I guess that the Nov. 4th thing is supposed to make us sad and angry. We did go down to the Francis Stevens park for one rally against the vote, listened to the Keith Oberman video they played – watched the media whores sopping up the crazy antics of the crazy woman with the cross – one of her, hundreds of people gathered – as usual the media makes no sense – then we walked down through Village Fest and most of the onlookers cheered and clapped – and then it was over. But you know what – no matter what happens with the California Supreme Court – no matter what the majority voted (52?61 – the tide is turning) they will never be able to remove from our hearts, from our memory, from the gathering that we experienced with those people that attended – the one true thing that counted – that before our friends, new and old we declared ourselves and we joined in their presence. That is something that none can break.

The music set list is here:

1. I’m Glad There Is You – (All My Tomorrows) Grover Washington Jr.
2. If Not For You – (All Things Must Pass (Disc One)) George Harrison
3. Wild Honey – (All That You Can’t Leave Behind) U2
4. Ever Fallen In Love – (Bande A’ Part) Nouvelle Vague
5. Hier Encore – (20 Chansons D’or) Charles Aznavour
6. Complainte de la Butte – (Moulin Rouge) Rufus Wainwright
7. One Man Guy – (Rufus Wainright Poses) Rufus Wainwright
8. Amarcord – (Amarcord) Nino Rota
9. Make Someone Happy – (Sleepless In Seattle) Jimmy Durante
10. I’m Having a Good Time – (Amtrak Blues) Alberta Hunter
11. Because the Night – (Tunes Originals – Patti Smith) Patti Smith
12. Old Friends – (The Best of Simon & Garfunkel) Simon & Garfunkel
13. Angels – (The Ego Has Landed) Robbie Williams
14. Cactus – (Heathen) David Bowie
15. A Case Of You – (Live In Paris) Diana Krall
16. Distant Dreamer – (Rockferry) Duffy
17. Boys Don’t Cry – (Staring At The Sea: The Singles) The Cure
18. I Don’t Know What It Is – (Want One) Rufus Wainwright
19. Another World – (Another World – EP) Antony & The Johnsons
20. The Dull Flame of Desire – (Volta) Björk
21. As Time Goes By – (Sleepless In Seattle) Jimmy Durante
22. La vie en rose – (J’ Ai Deux Amours) Dee Dee Bridgewater
23. Here Comes The Rain Again – (Greatest Hits) Eurythmics
24. Watching The Wheels – (Double Fantasy) John Lennon & Yoko Ono
25. Blue – (Live @ The Fillmore [Disc 1]) Lucinda Williams
26. Speed of Light – (Come to Where I’m From) Joseph Arthur
27. It’s Oh So Quiet – (Post) Bjork
28. Doctor! Doctor! – (Into The Gap) The Thompson Twins
29. Je Suis – (Un Jour D’Eté) Amel Bent
30. Rent – (Actually) Pet Shop Boys
31. Prove It All Night – (Darkness On The Edge Of Town) Bruce Springsteen
32. Near Wild Heaven – (Out Of Time) R.E.M.
33. Summer Kisses, Winter Tears – (Until The End Of The World) Julee Cruise
34. Calling All Angels – (Until The End Of The World) Jane Siberry
35. Lust For Life – (Livin’ On The Edge Of The Night) Iggy Pop
36. The Windmills Of Your Mind – (The Singles+_ Dusty Springfield
37. The Look Of Love – (Remixed And Reimagined) Nina Simone
38. I’m Too Sexy – (Right Said Fred: Up) Right Said Fred
39. Savior Of The Sun – (And The Thieves Are Gone) Joseph Arthur
40. There She Goes, My Beautiful World – (Abattoir Blues (Disc 1)) Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds

NO ON HATE(8)

moron

In the comments to be aired Tuesday, Dobson said Obama should not be referencing antiquated dietary codes and passages from the Old Testament that are no longer relevant to the teachings of the New Testament. and yet the very basis of all the anti-gay marriage crap coming out of the mouths of these backward bible thumpers is that gays are condemned because of Old Testiment tracts – personally anybody who would allow their lives to be moved, ruled, mapped out by the lunatic babblings of homeless wandering nomads from a desert over 2000 years old needs to have their heads examined, their children removed from their homes, their guns removed from their fists and they should be put in the mental wards that Ronald Reagan cleared out so long ago. Please go back to your hair shirts, your caves and your wives and shut the fuck up.

World AIDs Day – Dec. 1, 2007

Billy Joel sings “Only the good die young” and that at times is how we would like to view the world that is dressed in the costume of disappointments and unanswered prayers. My lover’s ex-lover’s older brother was swiftly killed in a car accident. The ex-lover was shattered inwardly over this happenstance moment in time and built and kept building on the top of the family piano, shipped here to Southern California from Minnesota from his parents house, a memorial to this lost brother. Three months after my brother Michael was put to the earth my brother Steven and I talked of putting together a quilt square for Tony and our intentions were good but we did not do it. The gathered goods that we culled from his house are in a brown paper bag out in the garage. I had great ambitions. When I found out my brother was ill I had even greater ambitions, but I have over the years come to know that all that those ambitions were not fulfilled. He told me during one of our last conversations that he forgave me all the things I asked him to forgive. He said he truly loved me. I must admit that over the years those words – spoke to me through the trembling plates of magnets and electricity over long distant miles do not so much ring true. I did not want to build a monument to him. He was not a saint. He was not a bad man. He had his quirks. He could be very quarrelsome. He had good heart. He at times was lost in this world that no one can prepare us for. I know he felt abandoned. He felt wretched. He told me he knew that his God loved him. He loved his mother and father, his sister and two brothers. He had a special smile. His smile…I see it every time I think of him. God he had horrible habits. He smoked like a fiend. He could run like the wind. He was a cat man. He wanted to be known as Tony. All the many friends that showed up to his memorial called him Tony. This is my quilt square. My brother Michael Anthony Jones was born a Christmas Eve baby, 12/24/55, to Arline and Gerald Jones in Sacramento, CA and left this plane of existence March 23, 1991 one of the many millions who contracted the HIV virus and succumbed after a valiant fight to the disease that made him only another statistic. He is not a statistic to me nor to the other’s in his family. He was a baptized Christian, something he searched out and investigated with great care during his teen years. Our discussions during that time must have been very off-kilter. My own spiritual dilemmas during that period had me quoting from Allen Watts the Protestant turned Buddhist and from the Bhagtvita – the tales of Krishna and Arjuna while my brother gave me his proselytizing sermons from a very stilted new testament/old testament slant. We were really two whacked out teens who had felt the influence of a very religious culture my father and mother had moved us into during our teen years. We were living in Idaho Falls, Idaho at the time. The main attraction in the city up until my senior year in high school had been the white phallic splendor tower of the Mormon temple looking out over the falls of the Snake River. During the years that followed Tony would slip in and out of his religious stance – his life filled him with great dilemma – reconciliation with his life in Christ and his life disposition did not tally correctly. Most of our childhood was spent on Vale Drive in Carmichael, California where my parents bought a small three bedroom house and then added on a bath, two bedrooms and a large family room, an endeavor that brought my dad and uncle Larry to a great friendship. My brother Mike and I lived in the newly built removed to the back of the house bedrooms. From our bedrooms we could go quickly outside through sliding glass doors to the backyard pool. One of my fondest memories from childhood were from this time – Michael and I stood at that glass sliding door holding hands in great anticipation of the sleigh we may see in the dark night. We didn’t say anything and I never asked him if he remembered that moment but to me it is one of those moments in my life I remember vividly, the feel of his hand in mine, the cold floor under our feet, the anticipation. My brother was quiet and taciturn. He was the younger of us two and being his older brother I teased him unmercifully. We would turn the evening dishwashing chore into a bickering tease fight that often turned into fistfights. This not only caused us to fight but also drove our parent crazy. I know I pushed Mike too hard once to often when he came back at me wielding a butcher knife. He had had enough and I knew it. I never teased him after that. Michael had the heavy weight of being compared to me. I had made an easy time of fooling teachers that I was a good student those early years and my brother was unfortunately compared to me by those idiot women disguised as educators – today I most likely would think they could not have passed the teacher requirement courses. Although my parents felt Mike was not meeting his potential Mike was adamant that he was and he was put to test. He somehow lost his stature in my parent’s eyes and they did not stand behind him. They believed the teachers and ridiculed my brother. They held him back one year in school. This ongoing battle between Mike, my parents and the teacher caused many fights that spilled over into our life. Mike kept this problematic year stored away in his psyche…it scared him and his relationship with his parents and with his sister and two brothers for many years. There were times later on in his adult life when these old scars would make their way to the surface and Mike would be very difficult to understand and be sympathetic too. Michael liked Glenn Campbell, Peter Frampton and Simon and Garfunkel. During his last year I introduced him to the Smiths which he seemed to really enjoy. Tony enjoyed the outdoors. He loved to go camping by himself well not really by himself he would take his cats or sometimes he would take Sue and Timmy along with him. Sue was a woman with whom he had a special relationship. Sue had a young boy named Tim whom my brother acted as a surrogate father too. I think Mike/Tony would be proud to know today that Tim is a father and that Sue is doing well. I don’t know if Tony would have been a great dad but I know he would have tried if the opportunity had arisen. The years has swiftly gone by our lives have changed immensely, nothing seems like the same thing anymore, and yet just thinking for a moment back on the sharing of my life with my brother I feel right there again, enjoying his quirky sense of humor, his way of smiling with a smirk, his ever blinking eyes, his always smoking cigarettes. Dec. 1 seems like a good day to post this, not a number, not a statistic, not a memorial – just a sweet memory.

Palm Springs Rainmaker Fountain Public Arts Commission

When I moved to Palm Springs 23 years ago there was absolutely no public art in the city, but for the Mexican Plaza fountain in front of the airport and the seasonal opening of the B. Lewin gallery, which was always a highlight with the unveiling of new Tamayo acquisitions and of course the Riveras that were always on display. Unfortunately the Lewin’s gave their collection to the Los Angeles Museum, but did give the city of Palm Springs Arts Commission the Felipe Castaneda, Standing Woman. When Sonny Bono was mayor – his administration formed the first arts commission and the goal given to the commission was to bring art to the city that would add to the culture of the city. A Tony Berlant was purchased for the Convention Center and the Doug Hyde sculpture was added to the downtown area, the dog park fence, the Richard Wyatt mural at the Highland Community center and several other smaller pieces were added to the city’s art coffers – each with a particularly different enhancement to the city. The city has a diverse grouping of art and the charge to the arts commission in the 90?s was to find an artist to create a gateway piece of art – a fountain to sit in the Frances Steven Park ? as there was very little art and commerce in the area at the time it was thought that art activity would bring traffic and business to the area. Today the area seems quiet vibrant with activity and it boggles my mind why the city arts commissioners – who are charged with purchasing art for the city and maintaining the art that has been passed down by other commissions – is even voicing these concerns over the small costs of maintaining a major fountain. When the Rainmaker Fountain in Frances Stevens Park is correctly maintained the wands float majestically in the air – in a kinetic performance that not only dances as if on wind, but has the wonderful playfulness of large volumes of water falling – much like the canyon waterfalls that Mr. Morris was trying to emulate, the sound of water when sitting in the amphitheater is very refreshing on a hot summer day and could if put to use be a gathering place for small musical performances and then there is the arroyo which is a reminder of how the water comes to this city. I remember during the construction of the fountain Mr. Morris took me over into the hallways of the theater that opens onto the fountain to let me experience the sound of the water falling into the smaller pool on a quiet evening – you could hear this sound in the lawn between the buildings – and I am always struck when driving by or bicycling – by the grandness of this fixture that has become apart of the city for over 7 years. It is not the opinions of mayors or want to be mayors, or the personal opinions of arts commissioners or even individual residents that have a bearing on art. Personally I don’t like the pieces that line Gene Autry Trail nor do I like the Reverb on South Palm Canyon Drive but I can see why some may. Once art enters the realm of the public it is open to discussion and more than likely there will be those that don’t like a piece. Once a city takes on the task of purchasing art pieces it is going to have to stand by it’s decisions to maintain the art piece. I remember the long arduous task of deciding on which artist would be the artist to create the fountain in Frances Stevens Park ? there were many qualified and non qualified artists who proposed many extravagant pieces- each that would be a landmark piece of art for the city – and I can say that each in its own way would have caused a stir in some sector of the city. The arts commission moved the artists of choice through public awareness meetings, newspaper articles, all of the city commissions and departments and this project went to the city council and was given approval. There have been some issues with the maintenance of the wands – Mr. Morris has been involved in some aspects of correction – and Mr. Morris has stated that those that are maintaining the project have stepped outside the boundaries of his required steps. As to the water deposits on the wands – anybody who lives here knows that the water here has a heavy calcification – and more than likely a good water treatment set up could take care of this problem. Finally the biggest complaint I have heard is of the homeless – well frankly that is not a case of the art being wrong but that the city has still not found a solution to its homeless problem. It is your task as arts commissioners to step aside from the politics of the different administrations that will be floating through the city to choose art that will please and may make some think and question art – and to maintain the collection and not to continually be bringing up the need to question a piece, I can assure as an artist myself I am not going to sit back and let small mindedness take away a wonderfully conceived project.

Arline Jones

“Do not go gentle into that good night, Old age should burn and rave at close of day; Rage, rage against the dying of the light.” Dylan Thomas Although Arline Audry Jones passed the final weeks of her life in a hospice bed in the front room of her family home, medicated to ease the pain, she held on with a fight even the hospice workers were impressed with, without food and very little liquid she did not pass into the void easily. This is how I think of my mother. She was always a fighter. Strong willed and loving. And the one thing I knew about my mom – the one solid truth was that out of everything in life she wanted to be a good mom. Hands down she was great. Forgive me if I get overly sentimental. I’m hoping that a few of you who knew Arline will leave a memory or two – just submit a comment below. If you have a personal photo you would like to include on this page – send it to me – durandjones@mac.com and i’ll add it to this page. My mom didn’t like to have her photo taken so I’m not sure if there are that many out there, but i would like this entry in my blog to be dedicated to her loving memory. I actually started this memory blog a week before Christmas 2006 so that I could tell her all the things that I was going to hold close to my heart. When I sent her my simple list – she commented that “I was busy wasn’t I?”, she had forgotten some of the things I listed and she said that my brother and sister didn’t remember somethings from my past and I’m sure they have things they could add if they wanted to the list of memory gifts she gave them. Of course Mom wouldn’t have been Mom without Dad. He was steadfast by her side. A silent man who balanced her, loved her and encouraged her. Her main worry upon finding out about her cancer was making sure Dad was going to be taken care of – ”He’s going to need a lot of help – you have to promise you will look after him”. I don’t know how many times she made me make that promise. It has only been two weeks since she took leave of this mortal coil, and I so would like to talk to her over the phone again. I last spoke with her the day before the new year, that was the last time she would take my call, from that point on whenever I called, my Dad would say she was not feeling well enough to take a call. My dad sat by her side these last months, bathing her, feeding her, caring for her in every way possible, rubbing her cracking heels as the dehydration took it’s affects on her skin, administering her medications. Slowly watching the woman he had lived with for the last 55 years slowly waste away. Everyday I could hear how the drain of this journey was bearing down upon him. We both talked of our wish that it would end soon for her, why was she holding on so long? The day before she left us she awoke out of dead sleep and said to my Dad, “How much longer?”, he said she was very clear and precise for the first time in days. He called me Sunday morning two weeks ago to tell me she was gone. I wished I could have been there with him to hold him as he let the mortuary take her away, but he wanted to be alone to tackle this uphill battle, struggling with my Mom in her journey. It has not been easy for my Dad these last two weeks – the loneliness has been very difficult to adjust to. My mom had such a life energy in her. So many memories pile up in my heart and soul of this woman who was my Mom I don’t know where to begin but here goes: This is my favorite picture of my Mom Although I have no memory of it my Mom told me that she used to walk me down the street where I was born in Manitou Springs, CO to the Garden of the Gods. I visited it 10 years ago and was awed by the beauty of the rocks and took a shot of the house my Mom and Dad called home when I was born. My parents moved to Sacramento, CA after my Dad got out of the service – where my brothers Michael, Steven and sister Cheryl were born. My mom had been born in Sacramento. Here’s a picture of mom when she was pregnant with either Steven or Cheryl – she always showed – and had big babies when they were born – she always said she missed the experience of actually having a baby because her children were all so large when they were born. Me I was a real fat little boy. I remember when my sister Cheryl was born that Mom was in the garden that day doing the weeding with me, Mike and my Dad. The delivery came on quick in fact she had Cheryl while they were wheeling Mom into the hospital. Me I took an extra month to arrive. Mom was at home, always – cooking, hugging, laughing and waving her spatial when necessary, tickling, card playing, little league scorekeeper and rah-rah section for the catcher and the team, den mom, bowler, fisherwoman, great skater, dancer, seamstress, cake decorator, gardener, full of encouragement and a great card player. So many things wound up in one great package. I was very lucky. I know that she had a rough childhood – shuttling between my Grandmother Bea’s house and her multiple husbands and my Great Grand dad Irl’s home. She loved her grandfather very much. It may be just my opinion but I think she wanted to make sure my brothers and sister and I had the home she never had. I’m just going to float out these memories as they flow – they probably won’t make alot of sense – hopefully they will trigger one or two or your own. Swimming in the pool in our backyard. Visiting grandpa Cook’s house, it was always so cool and old in that house with the big walnut tree shading the house, the ivy on the brick patio in the backyard and the walnuts that had dropped to the ground, and of course his wife May, what a whirlwind she was, May would always want to give us kids something to take home and Mom would never let her. Visits from Grandma Bea and George which were always nerve wracking for Mom – her mother was always so critical – checking the door tops for dust, telling her that she didn’t know how to cook, the visits were always fraught with anxiety and good behavior admonishments to us kidsâ€_the visits were bound to be full of disappointment. I know later when my Grandmother Bea was gone that my mom missed her and felt like somehow she hadn’t been a good enough daughter because of the estrangement that happened where Bea never spoke to any of us again after our last visit back what – 67. Visiting Grandma and Grandpa Jones at the shop, their swimming pool. Playing long afternoons of monopoly games and Michigan rummy The swim party she threw for my 6th grade class. New Years celebrations with Lois and Larry Sitting in the front room watching football and parades on Thanksgiving. Dinner at the table every night all the time the whole family together. Going to the zoo The always great birthday parties with special cakes made – batman theme, beatles themed – she made alot of cakes. Going to the drive-in in the station wagon. Going to the Crest Theater to see Mary Poppins and the How the West Was Won. The long vacation up the coast to Canada in the trailer up the coast of California, Oregon and Washington – the ferry boat across the sound to Victoria Island – she hated riding on the boat, the Buchart Gardens, Space Needle – who knew then that Mom and Dad would live in Tacoma years later. Dad’s getting us lost in San Francisco All too many trips to Stinson Beach and Bodega Bay The vacation in the trailer up to Mt. Shasta, tubing in the mountains near Squaw Valley, going to Crescent City for the Ostrich races, the trailer vacation down south to Los Angeles and Disneyland, twice – some kids are so lucky, all those den meetings, the pack meetings – clean fingernails, kerchiefs, shoes shined, flags – it’s all apart of who I am. The little league games, dust, hot suns, picnics and friends, and the long Sacramento evenings playing in the yard out front and back, Easter baskets, and special gifts on Halloween, good night kisses. Teaching me to dance for that first junior high school dance at Starr King School – her hair was long and she loved to jitter-bug – and she could really do the jerk and twist – we had a lot of fun. She was so curious – when something appealed to her she was very curious about it – especially animals – she found all of the animal shows on tv and in the national geographic simply entralling – her excitement could be so infectous. Reading like writing was instilled by mom – Dr. Seuss, and fairy tales and i loved reading the trashy magazines she loved to read when i was younger – stories of romance and murder and secret rendevous. There was the newsletter she did for the school PTA which was done on a memiograph machine she used to make the PTA newsletter – lots of ink and a stylus for lines and typing and the mechanics of the drum with the ink and the stencil to create the newsletter – later on in my life I came to love the hand press because of those fond memories. Watching johnny carson with her, the smell of her smoking cigerettes and knowing it wasn’t good for her but associating it with her, alpine – the most horrible menthol cigerette i have ever had the pleasure to smoke Gladioulas and irises and her love of her dogs just like they were her kids. The tales of her restaurant days as a manager and as a waitress – boy she wasn’t going to take any guff from anyone on the floor – managers and customers alike and i am thinking right now how she never saw herself as old especially when dealing with older people she would always talk like they were sweet old things that she had to sort of mother and treat with so much respect even when sometimes they were younger than she was , she could still carry a big tray with a ton of food and plates on it up until a few years ago, and she paid dearly for that with a back that for the rest of her time on this planet plagued her with pain, but she always said if she could she would go back to work. We would go out for dinner and she always looked liked she would rather be somewhere else – that place was Denny’s she didn’t like pretense and Denny’s had that homey feel, and i don’t think i ever ate a meal with her when she didn’t find something wrong with the food or the service but she always left a good tip. Roller skating in the back yard and at the skating rink in Carmicheal, she could do a backward skate that appealed to me, skating at the roller rink with such ease. I remember how worried she was that birthday, when she was so sick and she came home just to be there for my birthday and i remember waking up and they were taking her back to the hospital – she tried so hard to be there that year – that’s what i remember – not that she wasn’t there but that she tried and wanted to be there so badly. The time i got hit in the mouth with the baseball – going to Dr. Peterson for the stiches and it hurt so bad – she was with me, and when we got home she sat there with my head in her lap, cold compress on my lip. Sitting at the dinner table drinking coffee with her while Dad was up in Idaho just talking. How she never felt satisfied with her cooking, i hated the tuna gray caserol thing she would make – but i loved the beef heart(yes I know I’m a vegetarian now – but then I loved it) – floured with pepper and salt and fried up with garlic, she loved asparagus and artichokes, she used to make a pork roast boiled and served up with egg noodels that would last for days – hominy served up with butter and pepper, hot bologna sandwiches – slices of bolgna pan fried in butter – then put on white wonder bread with butter – pure cholesterol now – but yum was that good. She went to school when i was in the fourth or fifth grade to learn about the new math as it was called then so she could help us with our homework, babysitting all those kids – Lois’ two kids – Michael and Tammy, the two girls i remember she baby sat for a while – their mother one day just didn’t come back, David and Lynn Chamberlain, Eve their mom worked. I remember distinctly the time the dog Queenie had puppies, Mohammed Ali won the fight that night against Sonny Liston, and either Uncle Bob or Larry was at the house while the dog gave birth and it was hot and sticky. I remember she was so worried because the mother dog was having such a hard time giving birth and give birth she did – I think there were seven pups. And then there was the special secret she and I shared when Queenie got so sick from her tumors and we had to take the dog to the vet and had to put her down and I remember we couldn’t tell anybody because we were going on a camping trip, and it was a special weekend cuz my Dad had some time off and we could spend it together and we weren’t going to have to worry about telling everybody about the demise of Queenie until we got back home and the trip could be enjoyed. She so didn’t want to ruin my Dad’s weekend camping trip. How upset she was when Grandpa Cook died – she was upset with me because I didn’t cry – I did later at Grandma Jones’. Pushing the cart for her in the grocery store when we would go grocery shopping. How angry she was when she found out I had lied about taking the bus home. How worried she was when my grades began to slip in the 7th grade. How she could put me on the ground by pushing my fingers back. Playing cowboy and indians with her on rainy days. How much work she put into making all those bells, swans and garlands for the wedding cake she made in cake class, making fudge and popcorn balls and sugar cut out cookies for christmas and then putting frosting on them – it was often a three day project that all of us kids were involved in. Going christmas shopping with her, buying clothes for the new school year – sears, jc penny and then there was this specialty store for teen boys. How when i started playing the guitar she wanted to learn how to play South of the Border, and Eve of Destruction by Bob Dylan. How upset she would get when we would just sit in the house on hot afternoon in Carmicheal and watch tv. Sitting with her and dad watching the first episodes of Johnny Quest, Flintstones, watching Captain Kangaroo together, watching Romper Room. She was the den mom for my cub scout den, how much effort she would put into those meetings, and the special place she would find in her heart for boys like David Haynes who came from a broken family, i remember especially the day we made kites out of newspaper and we painted on the newsprint and made the kites. Her kisses good night. Her in that hospital bed when we were taken in to say goodbye before Christmas soon after Steven’s birth – but she came back and we had her all of these extra years. Working out in the yard with her and Dad, her smile. How she liked Irises, roses. The time Nicki who with the three girls and baby Scott were living with us, made tacos for the first time in our house. How she loved pork slices from the Chineese restaurant. Her putting medicine on Cheryl and Steve as their rashes got bad, putting ice in the bathtub for Cheryl when she broke out in hives. How she hated riding in the car on bridges. The time she got all dressed up in this wonderful blue dress for I think it was Dad’s class reunion – how beautiful she was, easter dress yellow with Cheryl’s yellow easter dress. Making sure that she had a special gift for us kids on Halloween – she would give it to us when we came up to the door. Easter baskets so full and making easter eggs the smell of heated vinegar. Her voice behind me at the little league games cheering us on while she was scorekeeping. Bowling with her and Dad, fishing – her cigerette hanging out of her mouth and the beer in hand, sitting at the campfire with her roasting marshmellows. Lois and Larry and Michael and Tammi coming to visit in Idaho and going up to Yellowstone. Boyd and Nicki, Kathy, Natalie, Debbi and Scott coming to visit in Idaho and fishing on the river. I remember Mom coming to pick me up at work in the International which was this great big what is now an SUV and i started to get in the door and out jumped Nicki – nearly scared the shit out of me – they both had a great laugh. That’s what I remember about those visits – and the parties that Mom and Dad would have with Lois and Larry and Boyd and Nicki and Wally and Brenda – that they always had a good laugh and loved playing games. She really loved her brother Boyd. And she was very close to my Dad’s sister Lois – Lois rode around with Mom and Dad when they were first dating – Mom was like an older sister to Lois and her friend. And she loved my Grandmother Grace. Of course then there was the move to Idaho. Dad away for 3 months and the move into the northern country. I really had a difficult time, Cheryl and Steve adjusted well enough and Michael too, but I just didn’t fit in, guess I didn’t try to hard either. I really screwed around in school and just didn’t give a damn at the time. But I made it through. And most recently add to this list the 50th anniversary where they got to know David and the couple times we got to meet together at Grandma’s in Auburn, spending time together, sharing, going out to coffee with Mom in that Volkswagen. The great time David and I recently had up at my Mom and Dad’s house, visiting the glass museum, going down to the pikes fish market and the Chinese dinner and the Mexican restaurant with the bee in the window. That’s all I got – too much to remember but it’s feeling good to know that I have so much to remember – hope you do too. Hope this brings back fond memories and maybe you can add a few. We’re all going to miss you Mom:

Against The Day

Slogging my way through “Against the Day” by Thomas Pynchon. It’s a mighty leap that shouldn’t be taken lightly. A thousand pages of dense entanglements, characters of such a magnitude notes should be taken, calamities and landscapes that float into the picture to be swished away like a flash tween after a single frame, and time – time that is invariably a very fixed commodity and can’t be given short shift by the rapid filing away of words by grazing. 30 pages a day and i have just recently met the 400th page, still not sure where Mr. Pynchon is taking me. While reading this tome I have seen other postings out on the blogsphere about this book, some are reading it, some are critical, others are writing running dialogs about what they are encountering during the read, myself I am finding myself questioning the relationship of reader and writer. The investment. The book is hefty. $40 dollars with a discount at Barnes and Noble, still it wasn’t the $1.95 I paid for my first copy of Dhalgren or the similar price I paid for Pynchon’s Gravity’s Rainbow paperback in 1975, both of which I picked up in a grocery store in Idaho Falls, ID, neither book would be found in a grocery store today, let alone a bookstore rarely carries Dhalgren and the copy of a paperback of Gravity’s Rainbow today goes for about $18.00 with a discount at amazon.com. The simple matter is that I did not give thought then, and do not now give much thought to the cost of the book – dollar wise, instead it is the time spent with the writer’s words, the investment of my time. It seems when I was younger I could give large draughts of time to reading, but today that time seems very precious and the writing should be damned good or I will toss the thing away immediately. I thought perhaps after reading the early reviews that the bulk of the book would be an easier read than “V” and “Gravity’s Rainbow“, sadly these reports were not true. The text is dense, the lists paragraphs entangling, some of the descriptive narrative breathtaking and some numbing, all combining into a work that must be read slowly to savour a wordsmith’s work. The most surprising aspect of this book for me has been the similarity of science dialog that coincides with other books i have read recently this year or am reading at the same time. Mr. D and I bought Phillip Ball’s Critical Mass a couple months ago and I have been reading through it slowly on days when I don’t want to be involved in a novel’s drama, and during these forays into Ball’s book I am reminded of the history of science novelistically portrayed in Neil Stephenson’s The Confusion I was reading back in February this year. A nice way to tie up the end of the year, as I was devastated by my readings of four books by Michel Hollenbeque. Atomized, Platform, Whatever and The Possiblity of An Island. Devastated. Well I read them, swallowed them actually, couldn’t help myself. They are not difficult to read, simply written, compelling, and yet the bitter candor of the writer and the what seems to be utter disregard of humanism is repellant and enticing at the same time. I have gone back over and over the pages – rifling through passages to find those moments that conspired to pull me into the clutches of this compelling writer’s take on the condition human. There are moments that are ponderously infantile in their male erotica, trite in their portrait of the sixites-sevenities cult religions, and overbearing in their masculinity, yet there is a positiveness that shines through even through the abrupt death of central characters, and a shining sanitized world at the end of Atomized and a overtly thought out end of the world scenerio for the end of The Possibility of An Island. Would I read more Hollenbeque, yes – they were torturous in their world view, akin to racist in some parts, mysoginistic in others, but there was thought provoked, and a dialog was created between the writer and myself, and between my inner self and my outer world. Unlike Murikami you are not left with a questioning void at the end – you are left instead devoid of feeling anything but the wish to go out and walk in the fresh air and hope that there aren’t many people with such a gray miopic view of the world out there. As to Mr. Pynchon’s Against the Day – I have put it aside as of late. I have found it difficult to read his book let alone write on these fleeting testiments. Last year in February my parents called to let me know that my mother after many many years of smoking had contracted lung cancer. They were undecided at the time what route they were going to take, hadn’t talked to the doctor as to the course of treatment they were going to follow. Soon they began a bout with chemo, where my mother lost her hair and energy due to the radiation, and her platelet count dropped drastically, but she was stubborn and struggled forward. I went to visit her in August after Mr. A and I got back from Paris. I had a great time with her even though she wasn’t up to doing much but talk and be with me. I knew though that when I kissed her goodbye this time – it was going to be more difficult than usual – I always have said goodbye to my parents with the knowledge that this could be the last time, but this time it was more real, more solid. The future didn’t bode well even if we were all trying to put a good face on it. After my visit, my brother visited my parents, then my dad’s sister and then my sister and her kids got a visit from my Mom and Dad who went over for a short visit, my mom really wanted to go visit. At Thanksgiving time my sister and kids went over to stay with my parents and ended up spending two weeks because of the snow storms in the mountains between Seattle and Eastern Washington and then my parents were quiet for a couple weeks. About three weeks before Christmas, a week after my sister’s visit, they called to break the news that the doctor had taken my mom off her therapy and said there was nothing to be done. It was very unsettling to my mother to have to tell us this news right before the Christmas holiday. It has been very difficult to think or to move beyond this state of waiting since then, her health slowly has deteriorated, the hospice workers started coming over and the week between Christmas and New Years they moved the hospital bed into the living room, where my Mom has watched TV in her easy chair for many years. Dad has been sleeping in the living room with her on the couch. It is now three weeks since she last ate, she sips water occasionally, the hospice workers come over, Dad wakes up each morning wondering if she has left him in the night. This all weighs heavily on each of our thoughts and hearts. Her strong will has no end it seems. Why do I write about this – this personal emotion. As I have contemplated my life these past few months, awaiting the day my Dad says that my Mom is gone, I have found myself thinking about the writing relationship I have had with her. I must say I have been frightened by the thought of her leaving would leave my writing barren, so much has writing been apart of my relationship with my Mom. My Mom was never a great writer, she wrote simple letters of relating what was happening in her and my Dad’s life. I have many memories of watching her during my childhood rewriting letters she had started to my Dad, my Uncle Boyd, my Grandmother (her mother), Aunt Lois, making sure that the spelling was correct, that a sentence was correctly structured, she was worried that her lack of education would show through her writing. She always had a letter going and when I left home I began to receive her letters. 35 years later, I am going to miss her letters. Over the past couple of years the paper letters filled with her handwriting have changed to emails filled with colorful backgrounds, and emoticons. Writing is tied to her. I haven’t finished the Pynchon book yet. My mind has seemed to wander down all sorts of different paths as I await my mother’s passing, but right now I am thrilled that words haven’t left me, and the pleasure of reading and writing has not been lost because I am losing her.

Your Voice, Your Vote, Your Constitution

Nov. 7th is a day that each of us needs to review the processes of our government. A government that was created to collectively protect it’s citizens and yet remove itself from regulating the daily life of each individual. No matter which major party you find yourself affiliated with it is your one true duty as a citizen of the United States of America to fullfill.

Fathers, brothers, mothers and sisters have sacrificed their lives so that we who carry-on will protect this democracy with our involvement and voice ” the promise of a better future for all is the rule on which we should be guided. It is obvious of late that very special groups are trying to steer the country in very narrow ways – be they overtly religious, warmongering, business only and racial/sexual biased – each one has been hacking away at each of ours right to live a life free of tyrany. Those men and women who went to our state capitals, our city governments, and the national areana have been glorifiying themselves as protectors of the common cause, but of late they suckle only upon the tit of greed and disinformation. From stealing land from property owners for the good of others not the good of the whole, denying each of us the right to share our life with whom we choose to share, freedom from religion and the church, freedom to disagree without being targeted as a traitor…the list is long. I don’t care who you vote for – I know who I’m voting for – I’m doing my duty – Are you?

pol

Brokeback Mountain – Ang Lee. Finally a film where the characters aren’t sent into the drag queen, double entendre, fag hag, ghetto clichés that Hollywood has been foisting upon us for far too long. A sad tale indeed, sad straight couples, sad towns, sad workers, sad lovers, but the scenery is beautiful. David said, “all I could think through the entire movie was this guy needs therapy”. Ennis Delmar is a sad character unable to break out of his closed world, his lover on Brokeback Mountain try’s to get him out of the shell – seeing the tenderness of him in those unclenched moments, but to no avail. After all that beauty you know there can only be lonely streets, ramshackle homes, poverty and ignorance – not only in the towns, homes, churches – the lives are filled with loneliness that can not be cured by touch. It’s a truly sad commentary on the world we live in – love can be lost so easily – count your blessings if you have it and can share it.

Next Page »