Vacation

It has been a very challenging summer. I haven't been freed up to be able to post anything here for a long time. It will probably be awhile before I can have time to write anything substantial here for awhile. School has started amidst quite a hurry and flurry. Stepdaughter #3 had to be flown back from Puerto Rico for a breast biopsy and lumpectomy while we were on vacation. Gratefully, it was only a fibroid, but frightening for us all. Then the day after we returned to Fort Worth from spending several days in Branson, Missouri, we had to take Dad to the ER for heart problems. We flew out while he was still hospitalized. He had a pacemaker placed the day after we left (and is doing fine).

These are all pleasant visits--time with family and being away to see new things. But all of these unexpected issues have been quite taxing. I am really thankful for the fun times and am now just collecting myself for the new school year. It started last week, but I just got back from presenting a paper at a national conference in Sacrament. I just flew up for less than 24 hours and returned after the presentation. Needless to say, I've been lazing around in bed all day today, hoping to get my feet back under me. I think Sam's cooking and care today really helped. There will be time for posts another day in the future. So stay tuned. I might post some pictures but for at least a couple more weeks there won't be anything here.
Ya'll come back now, ya hear?

Fire, Fire!

I was getting ready to leave work the other day when my phone rang. "Are you on your way home, Honey?" Sam asked.
"Just leaving now. Why?"
"Our hills are on fire. You might not be able to get up our street, so you'd better hurry home."
"Okay."
"But be careful."
"Otis' cat carrier is on the top shelf of the garage, if you are going to be evacuated in a hurry."
"Okay."
"I'm on my way."
"Right."
So this is what I saw as I turned off the freeway and headed up the boulevard toward our house.

About eight fire trucks passed me on the way up the street, sirens blaring. Indeed our hills were on fire. The wind had turned to the northwest and the fire had already eaten up all the vegetation on the hills behind our house. It was now moving toward the community college at the end of our subdivision.



The Channel 9 News van was at the corner of our street and helicopters raced back and forth over our house: down to the pond in the golf course where they sucked up water, and then up to the fire to pour it over the flames. Kids and parents lined the golf course, watching the helicopters lower the spickets into the water. I was just worried that they might suck up an unsuspecting duck that lives down there on the water's edge.


As it got dark, the sky looked ominous. It would have been much worse had the wind been blowing the smoke toward us. But it was a clear evening and I could sit on our balcony and watch the planes dropping flame retardant on the fire, and the busy helicopters buzzing back and forth. It sounded like a war zone. Heavy equipment droned up the hill toward the fire where firemen dug up a 20 foot wide swatch of fresh dirt to impede the spread of the flames. We could see sillouttes of firemen up on the ridge. People lined our street watching the fire and taking pictures of the odd colors in the sky.


In Southern California, so many people have lost their homes or have been evacuated in the dead of night. We are thankful that "our" fire was contained by nightfall. The next morning there was a layer of fine ash over our cars in the driveway. A few areas on the hill had ethereal smoke patches, but that was all.

This is what our hills look like today. Poor, baren, charred things.
Authorities caught the 16-year old who set the fire, and incidentally, two or three other area fires that resulted in considerable loss of property. I hope he is dealt with properly and swiftly. Meanwhile, our neighborhood is peaceful once again. We are very grateful, even while another fire just got started up on Cajon Pass tonight, about 20 miles from us. It is all part and parcel of living where we do.

Bienvenido Maestro!

The Los Angeles Philharmonic has a new conductor, whose innaugural concert is playing as I write these words. He is a 28 year-old Venezuelan Gee-whiz kid. Another Mozart type. But most engaging and entertaining to watch. He started out his career in Los Angeles by conducting a group of young inner city children playing in an orchestra formed only two years ago. They screeched and sawed, a bit out of tune. The parents were straining to see and hear their little ones, and you could see lots of tired hard working faces of laborers in the front section where they were seated as guests of honor. Most of the children were Latino, and the fact that Gustavo is, too, made the crowd go wild. Particularly that he would give his first attention to the inner city children of Los Angeles. The place went wild when he walked onto the stage of the Hollywood Bowl.

Then, Gustavo conducted the L.A. Philharmonic performing Beethoven's Ninth Symphony. From memory. It is one of the best renditions I"ve ever heard, and certainly one of the most excitingt ones. He tends to play with the orchestra as he conducts, bowing and mincing at times when the orchestra plays marching tune portions. Other times, he looks a bit spastic as he conducts with short shaky jabs of his baton. But as I commented to Sam, his hair is what makes him a fabulous conductor. It bobs and shakes long after his body stops moving. To see a bald conductor isn't terribly exciting, but what this guy's hair does as he gesticulates and weaves back and forth. Particularly during the loud sections with drums and loud chorale passages, and of course, Beethoven's Ninth has plenty of this!
At the end, he addressed the crowd first in English, then said in Spanish, "I understand that some of you here speak Spanish." The crowd went wild. He continued in English and said that he was so proud to be an American. It was terrific. At the end of the concert, the applause went on for a good 10 minutes, bringing him and the soloists back to the stage time and time again. As he left the stage for the last time, he stooped down to greet some of the young kids he had conducted earlier in the program. What a role model, and what a thrill to have him recognize them. You know that the inner city of Los Angeles will be pressing over into the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion and the Disney Concert Center to hear him every time they can.
Let Los Angeles have music!

Photo attempts

Here are some pictures of flowers I've taken over the last few months in my travels. Some are good, others, you can just tell what they are. They are actually easier to see well if you click on them to make them larger. I enjoyed taking them and I hope you enjoy looking at them.

Lily pond at Mission San Juan Capistrano.

Hibiscus at the Mission

Mandeville in our backyard

I saw this odd flower on a very fuzzy big-leafed plant

up at Lake Gregory, Crestline.

A pumpkin blossom in my garden

Solucia, Branson Missouri

These are some sort of Calla Lily

Prospect Park, Redlands

On the vacation trail

Sam and I have had the pleasure of having a visit from my cousins from New England. (Their pictures aren't on here since we don't have permission to use them here). Here is a shot from our cruise out into the bay at Long Beach.

We also took a great stroll along the Promenade at Santa Monica. There were three huge vine-covered dinosaurs with menacing looking metal sculpted heads. You can see one of them spewing water directly behind us.

We had a nice little jaunt up to Jenks Lake in the Angeles Oaks area of the San Bernardino National Forest. The lake was like a mirror and the temperature was a mild 69 degrees, while the valley was burning up in 99 degree heat.

Here I am trying to get back to the days when I ambled up and down mountains, conquering peaks and feeling immortal. Ha! Here I am wondering if I will slide off into the algae or sink into the hollow log.

Overall, it was a wonderful few days with family. We have vowed to do a lot more of these short day trips. It helps to go back to work with a new perspective, even if the break was only a few days.

Day Trip

We decided to take a drive this afternoon so I could introduce Sam to Pine Springs Ranch up in Idylwild. I used to drive up there when I lived here in the early '80s and I wanted Sam to see where I'd done some silent retreats and where some of my first speaking appointments took place. So we took off up the mountain.

You can see where some fires burned at the side of the road. This was on Interstate-10 out toward Palm Springs.

It was about 100 degrees up there and the sun was blazing down mercilessly, so we didn't stay there very long. We would have melted. The receptionist at the camp told us that the road down the back way home--via Hemet--was closed due to fire. We had the choice to either go back over those challenging mountain turns all the way back to the Interstate, or we could follow Route 74 over toward Palm Desert on a road unknown. We took that road less traveled and it was a wonderful albeit, a lengthy drive. The terrain changed from tall, stately pine trees to scruffy Manzanita bushes and finally, the rocky, dry terrain that you can see in the above picture. If you click on the picture and look closely, you can see the highway winding back and forth as it goes down the mountainside.

We stopped and took a picture of ourselves on a Vista Point. We were unsure what there was to see except for rocks, sand, and the rare boulder.

It was a terrific drive and a delightful time to get to be together.

Life Goes On

I was thinking today, as I watched part of the tributes given to Ted Kennedy, how life keeps going on even after people die. The tributes that I heard were humorous and touching. The camera panned over the Kennedy family and I could see traces of Bobby, Ted, and Jack in the faces that were present. Their lives go on in their likenesses and traits of those whom they have left behind.

It made me wonder what traits and characteristics I have taken from my father. Now, three years after his death I see myself saying and doing things that sometimes remind me of him. I'm not nearly as close to the way he was as my younger brother is. Their voices sound the same and they both have that John Wayne curl of the lip and swagger, ready for a good fight. And their humor is quite similar--except Brother is hysterical and Daddy was corny most of the time.

So now I'm thinking about what I will leave behind and more than that, who will be the ones who carry on anything at all from me. That would be my students and my neice and nephew. But I hope I can also pass along these lilies to whomever will have them when the time comes. You see, they are from my great-grandmother's garden in Chittenango, New York.

She gave these lilies to my grandmother, Nana, at some point when she and my grandfather had a home in Manlius, New York. They were up against the house and I remember looking at them, all lush and green in the shade. They were also in the back yard under the trees. When Nana died and the house was up for sale, Mother made sure that she dug up a few of Nana's lilies to keep her memory alive. They were at the side of the house for many years.

When I finally had a home of my own in Indiana, I needed hosta lilies to go up against the front of my house in the shade. So on a trip to New York, I dug up five of Nana's lilies that Mother had and brought them back to Indiana. They went into the ground and thrived. But only for one year, because I had to dig them up and carry them off to Washington where we lived for two years. They resided in the back of the house in the shade. Mother asked me if they had ever bloomed, but they hadn't. They just must not have had the right soil or light there.

When we moved down here to Southern California, I dug up Nana's lilies and put them in an old enamel wash tub to bring them here in the back of our car. When we pulled into the hotel for the night, I made sure they were watered and not too hot. As we got closer to California, I began to worry that we wouldn't be able to get them across the border because of the agricultural restrictions.

We came up to the agricultural checkpoint and it was closed! We sailed right on through. Nana's lilies came to live on our back porch in two big pots for two years. They were either too hot, too dry, or in too much sun, so they didn't do too much for us. It was a major feat just to keep them alive. One doesn't see these kinds of lilies out here in this arid climate very often, so it was likely that they could die without constant attention.

When we moved to our current house, I was thrilled that Nana's lilies would finally have a home. We have a shady spot in the front garden under the front window where I put them in amongst a philadendron, calla lilies and star gazer lilies. The sprinkler keeps them moist and they get just about an hour of sun a day--it is just right. What a shock to come home last week and see that not one lily, but all of my lilies have buds on them. The bloom you see above, is the first blossom of this plant since it was dug up from Mother's garden six years ago. I am so delighted to have something of my Nana and her mother, as well as from my parent's wonderful country home--all right here in my garden.
As I contemplate leaving influence, experiences, and what I am, behind for others to whom any of it will be useful, I look at Nana's lillies and know that beauty and dear memories can continue on even in the absence of those who were once here.

A wonderful weekend!

Make a Smilebox scrapbook

Bizarro

Have I mentioned my before, my belief that some people are stranger than strange?
I attended a funeral this evening and much of it was shocking. One of the dead man's sons launched into what seemed to be an esoteric political satire-esque type of tribute to his father. Among his statements, in which he proudly called his deceased father a heretic, he recounted that his father had died alone, a victim of some sort of ---I don't even know what the word was that he used. Some kind of political system or something. He ended with a shouted sentence that only the very erudite understood. One man sitting in my row with two doctoral degrees, guffawed. I had no idea what he was talking about, and I'm no dunce. It was such a shocking display that I looked at the floor, concerned for what else this son might yell out if provoked.

Another son who seemed opposite tempered from his younger shouter, seemed stilted and rather religious. He gave a tribute to his father that went on and on, complete with obscure stories of his father's childhood. They were so obscure that few people laughed, although the son thought they were quite funny. He seemed to have little personal to say about his father, calling him by his given name, not "Dad." Until the very end of his 10 minute speech.

A third son spoke warmly and the most sensibly about his father, calling him "Dad," and saying how much he loved and missed him. He was the most sane presenter the whole evening.

Perhaps the signature atrocity was the homily. It was given by a man who is extremely intelligent (read, high IQ) but not terribly attuned to people (read, low emotional intelligence--EQ). He started out by making three "confessions," as he called them:
1. If this man died alone, it was not the fault of hospice. People should just call these folks earlier and get them involved with their loved one earlier on. Everyone got tense when he said that.
2. He then discussed the ethical issues when an individual no longer "knows they're alive and they don't want food or water." He gave the assurance that it was fine to withdraw food and water at that point in order to allow them a "good death." That seemed a bit insensitive, given that no one knew what had really happened at the end of this dear man's confused life (he had severe senile dementia). But given that this man had already rebutted one son's perspective about hospice care, what was one more surprising comment?
3. He then said, "Sitting on my right and your left is Dr. Barbara Couden Hernandez" (I almost fell through the floor. What on earth?) "Her research is very important on this topic of people who have to watch others slowly die and their experience of ambiguous loss. You will want to follow her writings and research--very important." I could hardly breathe, I was so stunned at how inappropriate this comment was at such an occasion.
Then off he went into a tangled web of a homily. At one point he said, "I don't know if [the deceased] has any money and who will get it." I could hear someone in the family behind me gasp softly. He continued, "I don't know who will get [the dead man's] books. Save the ones with his personal notes in the margins and give the rest to Goodwill." Now why would someone weigh in so boldly on such a private matter?
This man was so far out in left field as he meandered through the field of grief, kicking every sacred cow within reach. At the end, he did segue into the final congregational hymn, but as I looked around behind me, everyone looked pretty disconcerted.

What ever happened to good, old-fashioned, halting but heartfelt comments about how much the dead person is loved and will be missed? Why not refer to scriptural passages that provide comfort in the face of grief and loss? We got served up a confusing tangle of platitudes and esoteric musings. Lord, preserve me from having anyone like that rattle on when I am the one in The Box!

Live Entertainment

I am sitting here in the den working on a talk for this weekend. Suddenly, there was a flurry of wings and several sparrows flew into the sliding glass window. They seemed to be in a hurry to get away from something. Something indeed! A young hawk had just flown into the yard and sat perched on the edge of the fence. I've been watching him for several minutes now. He appears to be a red-tailed hawk and is about a foot high from tail feathers to his head.
He isn't very noble, actually.
He's a teenage hawk.
This little guy is wobbly, trying to keep his balance on the fence. When he scratches himself he looks like he might fall off into my lavender below. I think his feet are cold because he keeps drawing one or the other of them up into his feathers and trying to stand on one leg. Perhaps this is "The Hawk Perch" that all adult hawks need to learn how to do in order to be cool. He is not very swift looking... He is quite a sight: a wobbling, bespeckled hawk, gawking around the yard, turning his head as though it is resting on a ball bearing. Very goofy looking as he scratches himself and sways to the left, nearly falling.
Such a teenager! All the equipment is there but he's not got command of it yet and he's still trying to figure out how to do all those things that adults do. He did scare the begeebies out of the birds in the yard, so he is an intimidating sight. But he's got a way to go before one would call him a proper, noble, fear-inspiring hawk.
Isn't it interesting how teenagers act the same way? He has speckles over his chest. Teens have spots on their faces. He looks a bit cuddly, as though he would be most comfortable cuddling up under his mother's feathers and his eyes look a bit sleepy. Not unlike the kids who, although they are out doing pretty interesting things in their techie lives, still want nothing more than to be close and comforted by their mom. They just don't often admit to it.
This guy finally swooped off across the neighbor's lawn and disappeared into the trees beyond. I hope he'll come back again. I'd like to see him again. It is fun to see how life develops over time.