This coming Saturday the life of John Stevenson, Coach Stevenson, will be remembered and celebrated.
I grew up in a sleepy little town in Southern California. A town called El Segundo. A town sort of lost in time, a regular Mayberry. The main street through town is called Main Street. Flanked by the Pacific Ocean on the west, LAX on the north, aerospace industry on the east, and a Chevron refinery on the south, El Segundo is an enclave of relative safety just miles from Los Angeles. When I lived there the population was somewhere around 12,000. There is still only one high school and when I attended El Segundo High School it had less than a thousand students. Not the kind of town that you’d expect would routinely turn out brilliant baseball players and winning baseball teams. But that’s exactly what has happened there…and it happened for decades. And that was because of the leadership of one man who loved the game…Coach John Stevenson.
Coach Stevenson dedicated his life to the youth of El Segundo for 50 years. He was never my coach, but he was my teacher. I took freshman social studies/history from him. However, the biggest lesson I learned from him wasn’t learned in the classroom. Have you ever heard of Scott McGregor? George Brett? They are just two of the Gundo boys who went on to play professional baseball. There have been six of Coach’s players who have gone on to play in the major leagues. Many more played in the minors. The lesson I learned because of these players was that if I worked hard, and played well, I could be as successful as anyone else…that being from a small town and not being particularly privileged was not something that should hold me back. This lesson was one of two great gifts he gave to me.
I’m not gonna lie…Coach kinda scared me. He was intense out on the field and he wanted his players to play good baseball. I don’t know if it’s true to say this or not, but it seemed to me that he’d rather his players play good baseball and lose than to play lousy baseball and win. The game mattered to him. Sometimes I would cringe when he would yell at the players that made mistakes. Everyone in the stands knew when Coach wasn’t happy. But if he felt that his players were on the receiving end of bad baseball, like a bad call from an umpire, he was out there in the face of the offender to make sure that the same standards applied to everyone on the field, not just to his players. Coach is California’s winningest baseball coach of all time. A record that is likely to stand for a long time.
The other great gift that Coach gave to me was the gift of baseball itself. My favorite high school memories revolve around baseball. I loved going to those Friday night games at rec park. I still love a really good game of baseball. I don’t even care who is playing. To me, the sound of a wooden bat squarely contacting a baseball is one of the most thrilling sounds in sportsdom. I was privileged to have two brothers play Eagle baseball for Coach. To this day I am proud of the kind of ball they both played.
Thank you Coach, for investing your life into the lives of other people’s children and for helping them, helping me, learn that in life, as in baseball, you get out of it what you put into it.
A redunant name for a beautiful hiking trail in the foothills of Los Angeles. “A place so beautiful, they named it twice”. I went back “home” to the L.A. area for the Easter weekend. Phil and the kids and I headed out on Monday morning to find the trailhead. The trail we were seeking leads to a waterfall, as all of the hikes I go on with them do. This waterfall was along the Gold Creek.
The book we were using as our guide was published in the 80′s, so sometimes the directions are hit or miss. This one was a HIT! The only “glitch” was that the sign we were looking for which would lead to the trailhead was missing on the way. When we turned around to look from the other direction, there it was, and once we found it the directions were spot on.
We hiked in about 2 1/2 miles up (and 2 1/2 miles back, which is good, it’s always good to hike out as far as you’ve hiked in!) on a well maintained trail which completely lacked any evidence of human presence…no trash, no graffiti, no dog poop….barely even shoeprints in the softer areas.
We forded the stream a number of the times on the way there, but didn’t even get our feet wet. I was a bit worried to be hiking since I jacked my right knee up back in December, but it held up nicely. I was very careful about foot placement and avoiding any pivoting on it. I tell you this just to show that the hike, though not totally easy, was doable even for the gimp in the group. (So you could do it, too!) The hike took us through lush green woods along paths liberally decorated with itty bitty wildflowers. This purple beauty measured less than an inch across. Didn’t even see the teensy weensy red bugs crawling around until I uploaded my pictures!
And it took us through more poison oak than any of us had ever seen in our lives! Phil and at least a couple of his kids are really prone to getting horrific rashes from it and warnings rang out frequently about avoiding touching it! (And upon arriving home, all clothes were stripped and washed, and showers were taken, it was that bad!) I haven’t heard if any of them broke out or not, but Richard was already sporting some nasty rashes from his LAST excursion into the wilderness.
Back to the hike. We came around one bend and found ourselves in a manzanita forest. Manzanita is a bush that is found in the chaparrel biome. Manzanita is spanish for “little apple”, I guess because the seeds look alot like little apples. The trunk and branches are a deep rosey red, and they are smooooooooth and satiny. Any way, these were huge TREES! Never seen anything like it. Phil shows how tall the bushes usually are. The trunks were so thick you couldn’t get your arms around them.
The trail led us to something I can only describe as a CLIFF. Rocks jutting out high over a small canyon. Richard loves to rock climb. I am afraid of heights. He decided to pick his way down to the canyon. I wanted to take a picture of him doing it, but couldn’t get close enough to the edge to do that, so I took a picture of him disappearing through a crack in the CLIFF. Bye Richard. I hope I see you again!
He took the short way down, we took the long way down, and we met back up at the bottom.
The last bit of the hike was a little steep and the dirt a bit loose, but when when we rounded the last corner before the waterfall, we entered a little bitty paradise! The cataract measured about 50 feet tall and tumbled into a small, clear pool.
There was a large sycamore tree at the edge of the pool which had a high green and lacy canopy. The canopy provided shade and showed off a brilliant blue sky above it. Off came shoes and socks! The bottom of the pool was firm and sandy/pebbly. But boy oh, the water was cold! Of course I orchestrated one of my famous foot pictures, but I couldn’t stand being in the water for more than a minute or so.
My feet are wimpy because they have spent all winter in shoes (and I just got a pedicure further removing any protective toughened skin!). But Jonathan’s feet suffered no such wimpiness. This kid was swimming in that cold water!
Head to toe wet. Brrrrr.
We played and laughed for a time and decided this would be a great place for a picnic. Plenty of large flat rocks to serve as a picnic table. I don’t know if we got lucky that day having the place to ourselves, or if it is a little visited place. I wonder if we went back in the summer for that picnic if there would be a horde of people vying for the best seats on the rocks!
Time to put our shoes back on and go.
A hidden place which seemed to have been created, at least for that day, just for us!
For the LORD your God is bringing you into a good land—a land with streams and pools of water, with springs flowing in the valleys and hills…Deuteronomy 8:7 (NIV)
Some of the best times of my life are spent exploring God’s creation with my big brother and his kids.
Kari and Michael are Ian and Colin’s parents. Ian was “one of my kids” on my mission trip to Sicily in 2007. Colin is Ian’s little brother. I love the boys and they let me, which is pretty cool, cuz I’m just an old lady.
This week I got to meet their parents, who live in Chico. The ladies on my mom’s side of the family get together every December for a shopping trip. This year we met up in Grass Valley. Kari and I, who have become friends without actually meeting in person, have been wanting to meet, and they live “sort of close” to Grass Valley, so I extended the trip a bit and planned on making that happen.
I flew into Sacramento and was very glad that I hadn’t checked any bags because I don’t think I would have been able to find it in piles of luggage in the baggage claim area!
I retrieved my rental car (a Ford Focus which got nearly 34 mpg, btw) and had the most lovely and serene drive from the airport there to Chico. This sunset was happening out my driver’s side window. The smell of freshly turned earth was in my nose. The mist was settling into the valleys and around the hills. Geese, swans, and heron were settling in for the night in various water filled rice fields. The grass was emerald green between the groves of fruit and nut trees. It was one of the most nearly perfect drives I have ever taken. It was too dark for pictures, but the sunset made it all magical.
Kari and Michael? Love them. I stayed with them before going to Grass Valley for the weekend. I drove out to Grass Valley and pulled up to where I would spend the next two days…a beautifully restored victorian home, A Victorian Rose. There I met up with my mom, my aunt Leslie, my aunt Lynne, my cousins Jane and Jeannie, Jane’s mother-in-law Norma, and an old family friend Susie. We spent time together, laughed together, dined together, and shopped together. We had the house to ourselves and we made ourselves at home.
My Mom, Jeannie, Jane, Norma, Leslie, Susie and Lynne enjoying dinner together
We left there on Sunday morning with a light snow falling. Perfect. I returned to Michael and Kari’s to spend more time getting to know them and fellowshipping with them.
Michael, Me, and Kari in Bidwell Park by the redwoods
Good times with family. Good times with new friends. But it’s always good to get back home, isn’t it?
Thanks to all for making this trip a wonderful one. And thanks to Vickie for taking care of “my girls”, Mew Ling and Lu Na, once again.
Here’s the latest update I received from Walter Moore, LA mayoral hopeful. Because I love Los Angeles, I am excited to see such great progress being made by a MOST WORTHY candidate!
Congrats, Mr. Moore, on making such huge strides in your bid to clean up the mess that is Los Angeles
Great News About The Other Debates! By Walter Moore, Candidate for Mayor of Los Angeles, WalterMooreForMayor.com September 25, 2008Great news, my friends: tonight, our fellow Kevin James Show listeners pushed us across the $150,000 contribution level!
That’s the minimum amount needed to qualify for matching funds. It’s important for several reasons:
Double Your Money.From now on, when you contribute to my campaign, the City will match your contribution, up to $500. So if you contribute, say $100, I’ll get another $100 from the City, for a total of $200. That will double our ability to reach voters who don’t follow local politics.
“Viable Candidate.” The (biased) local media have, so far, justified the “news blackout” on my campaign by claiming I wasn’t a “viable” candidate because I hadn’t raised enough money to be worthy. Qualifying for matching funds eliminates that pretext. Now they’ll have to stop ignoring me, and start lying about me. But even that will be progress, because our fellow voters will figure out, despite the disinformation, that they can get a Mayoral upgrade.
Debate Showdown. Matching funds come with “strings attached.” One of those strings is that any candidate who accepts matching funds must debate any other candidate who accepts matching funds. So Villaraigosa will either have to debate me or forego at least a million dollars in matching funds. Either way, he loses, and we and the people of L.A. will win. If he debates me, we’ll win in a landslide. If he refuses, the public will infer, correctly, that he is afraid to try defending his record and his policies.
This Is The Beginning, Not The End. Please donot make the mistake of thinking we can stop raising money. Quite the contrary. Qualifying for matching funds simply gets me in the arena. And I’m not sitting on a $150,000 war chest by any means: the money I’ve received so far has gone into all those ads you’ve heard so far, plus the yard signs and bumper stickers, rent for the auditoriums for the rallies, and so on. You know the expression: you have to spend money to make money.
We still need hundreds of thousands of dollars to buy radio and TV ads to reach our fellow voters. You would not believe how much TV ads cost, by the way. So if you haven’t contributed yet, please do, and urge your friends and neighbors to do likewise.
We can win. We can fix this city.
Thank you so much for your support and your encouragement. I really appreciate it. And I look forward to seeing you at the rally on October 14, 2008, starting at 7:00 p.m. at the Woodland Hills Marriott. We’ll get to hear from Doug McIntyre and Kevin James, and we’ll have yard signs and bumper stickers galore, too.
Catching up on my assignments! This was last week’s topic, but last week I did THIS week’s. Cuz I’m a dope, basically!
From the time I was a little kid, like most Southern California beach kids, I wanted a Volkswagon Bug. An OLD one, the kind with the small tail lights, not the big round ones.
I was 23 when I walked into the garage of the guy who was selling the 1971 Beetle and I almost heard angels sing. Fire engine red, factory sunroof, Hurst shifting, dual carbs, baja-style…shiny and beautiful. It was a race car! It cost more money than I ever imagined I would spend on a car…2500 dollars! But I wanted that car. I actually needed a car. I’d never owned one and I was in college driving my dad’s old VW van with a shot tranny which threatened to die at any given moment.
I decided to get the car. Before I even left the house that evening I was thinking “what should I name a fabulous car like this??”. On a hunch, I asked the owner if the car had a name. He looked at me quizzically and slowly answered…”yeeeeesss, his name is Dudley”. Dudley he was and Dudley he remained. The previous owner liked that I kept the name. But if you knew Dudley, you knew he was a Dudley. I think Dudley was alive, just like Herbie in Disney’s “The Love Bug”. Ask anyone else who knew him, they’ll tell you the same.
In the dead of night one night I decided I needed to see if Dudley really needed that speedometer that went up to 250 mph. I snuck onto a brand new freeway that was slated to be opened in the next couple of days and I opened him up. I got him up to 117 mph before I freaked out thinking I’d end up with a felony on my record if I got caught. But even at 117 mph Dudley was running smooth!!! That was a GREAT moment.
But old bugs can be fussy. I took a basic mechanics class in college, so I was able to deal with small problems that would arise. It wasn’t rare that I’d have to pull off the road and remove the fuel filter to bang out the rust from the fuel tank. But years later I took a job that required very dependable transportation, transportation that wouldn’t leave me smelling like gasoline. I kept two cars for awhile as I didn’t want to give Dudley up, but eventually it became clear to me that I needed to downsize to a single car, and I said good-bye to my old friend.
Now, do you think I could find a single picture of him to share here? Nope. I have some, but they are in a box somewhere. I did know where the ignition key I kept was though, so I thought that might do for this challenge. Here’s Dudley’s key:
Please check out the other participants’ work! They are all doing “Stained Glass Windows”. I’ll activate the links as I get them.
12th September: Author’s choice – Step Inside (Pics of inside your own home: they can be of favourite corners, or things, or windows, or unusual features or just unusual angles of somehing in your own home)
19th September: CuriousCs choice - Food (a still life, or food growing on the allotment or in the garden, or at the market, or in a shop, or your fave food on a plate, or any pic of food)
3rd October: Eiain’s choice – Music (musicians, concerts, still life of musical instruments or musical scores, musical boxes etc - I could go on and on …..) You may also like to add a YouTube clip of your favourite music!
10th October: Mrs Nascar’s choice – Night ( moon, stars or any interpretation of night)
I am thinking of entering a photo in a local photography contest. The subject matter is “Pollenators” and we are to show them in the process of doing their thing.
I have a few pictures I am considering and would love your feedback!
There are three. The third picture is simply a “brighter” version of the second.
Which do I enter? Help me choose!!!!
Or are none of them even good enough to enter. Dunno!
Your thoughts?
(I took these pictures in my brother’s yard this past week in California…he has a most wonderful garden. The entire southern wall of his home sports rose bushes – many taller than I – simply loaded with roses of many colors. The bees on this day seemed partial to these vermillon blooms)
I have lots of pictures for this particular entry. Why? Not because I had my choice of so many great photos and just couldn’t pick, or anything like that AT ALL! Nope. My pictures are a set of photos taken on a little walkabout I took through my old neighborhood in California this past week while visiting my family.
I had decided that I wanted to see if I could get a good picture of St. Matthew Greek Orthodox church which is about a half a mile from my brother’s house. We, my niece Avalon and I, set off one afternoon with our cameras in hand…she’s nine. My original plan was simply to take a picture of that particular church. About a tenth of a mile into our journey we walked past St. Andrew Episcopal Church:
and the idea hit me that I should share ALL of the churches I came across in our walkabout! Across from the Episcopal church is Nativity Catholic Church:
which is a particular neighborhood favorite of mine.
Almost to our intended destination I came across these lovely flowers which (to steal from last week’s challenge!) grew in lovely and unexpected juxtaposition to a fire hydrant:
And these fantastic morning glories winding their way up a telephone pole:
Finally we reach St. Matthew. It, like the other churches we’ve past, is situated in between homes on these old city streets:
We walked some more. Avalon, despite her youth, began to flag and wished to return home, so we headed off that direction, but before we reached the house, we passed the United Methodist Church:
the First Baptist Church:
AND finally, the First Samoan United Methodist Church:
Finally tally? SIX churches tucked into one small neighborhood, all passed while walking just a little bit over a mile…and only one of them has a parking lot!
Let’s just say this little part of town has got religion!
But where DOES everyone park??
It was a beeeeuuuuuutiful day!
Please take the time to visit the other participants’ entries! I will post additional links as they come in
Next week’s challenge comes to us from Jan of “A Curious State of Affairs” and it is “Self-Portrait”. Click HERE to see the particulars! It’s another FUN one!
One more picture, because what is a mini-adventure without one of my foot pictures? Incomplete! So, then, here it is! A curb picture with a friendly reminder of where it ends up when you dump it!
No pictures to share. But I used to live in the cutest little yellow and white cottage with a picket fence. The house was built in 1917 and I was only the third owner. There were dozens of types of flowers and an equal number of types of bushes and shrubs in the large garden situated in and surrounded by a very lush and long and soft green lawn. The steps and paths and front porch were slate. The undulating fence was capped off with copper finials which mellowed with a verdigris patina. My house was, for sure, THE cutest house on the block. I had a gardener who came regularly and always had the place looking bright and cheery and kept. The sprinkler system insured that all stayed green and in bloom. In the back yard was a peach tree, a plum tree, a loquat tree, some other trees I can’t remember the names of, and a fenced off garden filled with with blackberry bushes. The front yard sported a profusely flowering Jacaranda tree and another tree with flashy peachy-orangey-red blossoms. In the spring the whole 7,000 square feet of my garden and yard was a riot of colors. Even in the winter it was a beautiful collection of evergreens and grasses and winter blooms.
It is spring now. My brother’s yard is exploding with roses and hibiscus and, well, you’d have to ask him the names of all his plants and flowers!
I sold the house and moved to Colorado going on three years ago.
I am visiting my family this week back in Southern California. My brother lives but five blocks or so from my old house. I drove by it yesterday. I wondered what beautiful things were happening in MY old gardens!
The man who bought my house is a well known local real estate developer. There is a for sale sign in the front yard with his name on it. I guess his plans for the property didn’t pan out.
The lawn is dead.
The plants are dead.
The flower beds are dead or dying and overgrown with weeds.
The roses bushes are shriveled and brown.
Even the trees are brown, and drooping.
The property looks pitiful.
It doesn’t look or feel at all like I ever lived there.
It doesn’t appear that anyone at all is living there.
“If he really wanted to be with you, he’d be with you” — Phil
This was pretty much the only thing my brother had to say about the struggles I was having in my last serious relationship. The guy lived a thousand miles away, and had only come to visit me a single time. I had visited him a couple of times and we had made plans for him to come and visit me again on Valentine’s Day last year. Things were getting very serious between us. At least I thought they were.
It didn’t take long after my getting back home after my last visit for him to back away from his plan to come on Valentine’s Day. He was going to come some other time in February, after all “It doesn’t need to actually be ON Valentine’s Day”. And shortly after determining that a Valentine’s Day visit wasn’t in fact necessary, he backed off from the visit entirely. At the same time professing his love! I didn’t get it. I believed he wanted to be with me, but his actions certainly didn’t back that up. I kept making excuses for him. I soooo wanted to believe he wanted to be with me, but that there was something about him and his unknown struggle that seemed to make it difficult for him. So I excused his behavior and lamented what seemed to be an insurmountable chasm between us. And, my brother quietly and matter-of-factly said “if he wanted to be with you, he’d be with you”. When the guy decided to bail from the relationship pretty much without any warning, and with a set of very odd explanations as to why, and after having done this to me already a number of times in the past, I finally decided I’d had enough and said, fine, you want to walk away, walk away. To myself I finally admitted that I was tired of the games he seemed to be playing with me and that I couldn’t take his inconsistency and the incongruities of his words and his actions any more.
As the days turned into weeks and months, I kept making excuses for him. And Phil’s words kept coming back to me….If he had wanted to have been with me, he would have been with me. If he loved me enough and there truly WAS some unknown struggle that was keeping him from me, he would have addressed that issue…
Then “Colin and Stephanie” and “Clare and John” happened, and I realized that not only were Phil’s words true, but that I NEEDED to have a guy show his intent by pursuing me…by wanting to be with me.
At sixteen, seventeen, and eighteen years old, these four teenagers have shown me that love does what it takes. Colin, who lives in Northern California, has worked and saved and has traveled to Colorado to visit Stephanie three times since November! Clare’s John also lives in Northern California. Both John and Colin have flown in this weekend to take Stephanie and Clare to their prom. What fun! And what message does their coming here send to these girls? That they are valued. That the boys recognize the importance of things like the prom and that if the girls think its important, so do they. It tells these girls that they want to be with them. That they want to spend time with them. And that they will do what it takes to make that happen, even though they have no idea what the future holds for them.
Don’t they look amazing?? Thanks for the love lesson, kiddos. I needed that. Have a GREAT time at the prom!
I’m on the e-mail distribution list of L.A. Mayoral hopeful, Walter Moore. I doubt he’ll ever win. But he’s the most straight-talking, realistic-goal-setting, voice-of-reason to enter into politics in my lifetime. When I lived in Southern California, though not in L.A. proper, I financially supported his first campaign. He lost to Villaraigosa, unfortunately. However, I have stayed on Mr. Moore’s e-mail distribution list just so I could make sure that my ulcer never completely heals! Here’s one of his latest offerings. I doubt he’ll mind that I have taken the liberty of reposting it here in its entirety.
The Philosopher Kings of the South Coast Air Quality Management
District (AQMD) have decided that government must stop you from
burning wood in your fireplace.
The AQMD — which is funded with $125 million of your money each year
– just made it illegal to install wood-burning fireplaces in new
homes, and adopted regulations to stop you from using your existing
fireplace on days they deem too polluted.
In a region where massive wildfires are as routine as televised car
chases, these kill-joys want to stop you from burning logs? Are you
kidding me?
We’ve got ten jillion cars and trucks stuck in traffic, idling, for
about 18 out of every 24 hours. We’ve got a governor who fires up the
Gulfstream twice a day to commute from L.A. to Sacramento. We’ve got
kids getting shot while minding their own business. And yet we need a
new law to ban the burning of logs in fireplaces? Really?
Maybe I’ve led a sheltered life, but I don’t remember ever hearing
about a coroner listing, as the cause of death, “lived in a city with
wood-burning fireplaces.”
Laws like this make you wonder what they’re smoking at the AQMD.
Wonder no more: our city’s representative on the AQMD’s board is Jan
Perry. That’s right: the same City Council Member who wants to
“protect” you from fast food in South L.A. because you’re too fat and
stupid to decide what to eat and where.
Remember common sense? I really miss it, especially when it comes to
people who have the power to tax and regulate.
People used to understand the concept of “priorities” and
“reasonableness.” Now we’ve created so many agencies that they need
to manufacture new problems to justify their continuing existence and
ever-increasing funding.
The AQMD will never issue a press release saying, “The federal and
state Environmental Protection Agencies, along with county and city
agencies, have pretty much taken care of everything, and since we’ve
gotten to the point of regulating wood-burning fireplaces, we
recommend that our agency be disbanded.”
Okay, enough ranting from me for one day. I’ll think I’ll go buy a
McBreakfast and light up a cigar just to spite the Philosopher Kings.
I don’t even think I have anything pithy I can add to this well-crafted and succinct masterpiece.
More idiocy in bureaucracy at its finest…
A brief follow-up note:
Looks like Mr. Moore has someone searching LexisNexis! I got an e-mail from him today! Love the internet! Here’s the nice note I got from him:
L.A. needs you! Come back!
It is so crazy here. I’m glad to see you stayed on my e-mail list.
And hey, I may win this time. I’ve raised nearly $80,000, and
Villaraigosa is SO bad that I think he’s going to increase turnout
among people who would ordinarily ignore the election.
We’ll see.
Bye for now.
Walter Moore
I have decided to make “California In Danger of Falling Into the Ocean” a regular feature as I come across items that make me shake my head. I’m sure I’ll be posting more from Mr. Moore in the future!
My computer has been out of commission for a week. I have it back, and it seems to be working just fine. I missed having it GREATLY! Seems it was “killing” AC adapter/chargers. The connection inside had come loose fromt the mother board and so it was arcing electricity and causing power spikes. The man who fixed it checked my two adapters and confirmed that they were completely dead. I put an order in from Dell for a new one and was anxiously awaiting its delivery, but when I tried my old adapters one last time before throwing them away, I found that one of them, despite having been declared legally dead, worked! I wasn’t sure I’d have my laptop back and in working in order in time to post something for this Friday’s Photo Friday. But I do. Happy happy joy joy!
Despite my morose, loner, pessimistic leanings, , I manage to find much to be joyful about in life. It has taken practice and work, let me tell you! I have made it part of my personal life plan to find joy where it can be found, and to embrace it as fully as I know how to do so. There’s a verse in the Bible that says “do not grieve, for the joy of the Lord is your strength” (Nehemiah 8:10). If I enjoy the things that bring joy to the Lord, I find strength to endure the things that cause grief. I think children are one of those things.
One of my brothers and two of my sisters have given to me the gift of nieces and nephews. Children inately find joy in unexpected places. We can learn much about joy just by watching children. On one of my visits to California to visit my family, I took one of my nieces and two of my nephews to the park. We happened upon pigeons while we were there and the chase began. I know this is a photo meme, but I’m posting a video this week. The quality is horrible as my old digital camera had limited video capabilities. When I played it back, it shocked me a little to hear my own voice and laughter…I enjoyed their chasing the birds more than they enjoyed their own chasing of the birds.
Now, although the whole point of chasing pigeons would be to catch one, when my nephew Mitchell actually did, it stunned him! The lesson I took away from this pigeon chasing escapade? Don’t chase what you aren’t prepared to catch! And if laughter is the best medicine, then this little trip to the park cured what might have ailed me.
I had to make a choice between the nurse in me that screamed “PIGEONS ARE FILTHY, DON’T TOUCH THEM!!!” and the person in me who wanted to experience the potential joy of the moment. I guess you can see and hear that I picked the joy option…
Please visit Lady Luck’s blog “A Curious State of Affairs“ to see her entry, and for links to the other entries for this week.
I made an unexpected trip to So Cal this past week as I wanted to attend the funeral of a friend. It was a sad reason for a visit. But the service was a lovely tribute to a wonderful man. Lots of tears. Lots of laughter. I’m so glad I was able to be there.
As usual, I stayed at my big brother’s house. We did some fun things while I was there. One of those things was this!
Phil, his kids and I, went on a hike. We went to the Santa Paula Creek area of Ojai in search of a waterfall. My brother has this book of California waterfalls. It’s most cool. It lists the waterfalls and gives directions on how to get to them. This was one his family had not yet gone to. The book promised a 3 miles in/3 miles out hike with the holy grail being a series of “punch bowl” pools connected by small waterfalls leading to a 30 foot waterfall at the end. The hiking instructions would have lead us to a campsite overlooking the pool which fed the larger cataract.
Somewhere along the way we got off the trail and ended up hiking the river’s path. I came across this lovely little creature in a dry part of the river bed. It measured about a half an inch across!
While this diversion provided what promised to be a “direct hit” on our target, it also entailed multiple rock crossings of the river, some ankle twistings and one occasion where we had to work our way along a rock wall using toe and foot holds which nearly had me at my tolerance for the heights and falling “thing” I have! But with the patient help of my brother, and the occasional hand holding by my nephew, Richard, I persevered.
I like this picture soooo much. I call it “Album Cover – No Band”.
We hiked and hiked and hiked. It was getting late. We found what we believed to be the punch bowls, but no big fall. We thought we’d probably passed it when we ended up off the trail. We took a moment to rest and drink water before starting back out of the canyon. But Richard (who LOVES to rock climb) ventured farther up and in and came back with the news that he’d found the fall. “Is it too scary, or can Aunt Lou make it?” The answer was “Yes, she can.”. So, me included, we decided to continue to climb our way in. Very worth it! The directions would have had us over looking the fall, but since we came up by way of the river, we were instead at the bottom where it filled a large deep pool. We were so glad that we’d ended up off the path. The algae on the rocks at the bottom of this crystal clear twenty foot deep pool lent the most gorgeous emerald color to the water.
The pool was surrounded by rock walls and a small rocky “beach”. Evidence abounded that many had gone before us. There was the sad bit of trash, a towel that looked like it hadn’t been there long, a few charcoally spots where fires had been built, and of course, graffiti. And you know what? I wasn’t much bothered by the graffiti.
Today’s graffiti are tomorrow’s “prehistoric” cave drawings…
A good time and place for one of my “foot pictures”!
It took us about a third of the time to hike back out. Why is that? Just wondering.
All in all, a wonderful smallish adventure. We were all tired and sore at the end (and for the whole next day!). Especially Avie. We’d barely started the hike and she was complaining that “it’s a terrible time to be a kid”. She’s growing, and her legs are sore. But she stuck it out. Barely. Had that hike been a tenth of a mile longer, one of us would have been carrying her!
Two days later we got to see Tiger Woods and Vijay Singh. But that’s another post!
Home again. Home again! I have spent much time away from home since moving to Colorado. This latest trip took me to Utah, Nevada, Arizona, California, and Wyoming. And Mexico! Almost forgot Mexico. I was gone for three weeks. This trip was a driving trip. It ended up being MUCH more driving than I had planned at the beginning. The final tally? Four thousand four hundred and fifty eight miles driven! Yikes. I haven’t even bothered to add up all the tanks of gas I bought. I am only hoping that the trip falls into two different credit card billing cycles, and doesn’t all show up on one bill! I am going to have to do some serious carbon footprint penance for this little vacay of mine!
Highlights? Driving Utah’s Highway 128 (post on that to follow) on the way to Arches National Park. Spending 9/17 with Phil sharing memories, stories, Dom Perigon and Creme Broulee. My family’s meeting about and decision to start our own ministry to work alongside “Connie’s Heart” in Africa. (Much more on this as things develop). Seeing Janet, Shawn, Susie, Abner, and Koni. Sharing a stateroom with my sister Liz on her birthday cruise to Mexico (and winning the onboard “Pictionary” competition with all three of my sisters). Taking my four nieces and nephews (Phil’s kids) for haircuts. Having lunch with Liz and her son Louis. Shopping for Donna’s jewelry store in L.A.’s jewelry district. There were others, too. But I need to post my “I am home” post before I leave again!
(Lowlights? Sure. Had some of those, too. But we won’t talk about those here and now!)
Watched a couple of movies. I forced myself to watch “An Inconvenient Truth”. It was my latest Netflix offering. I dragged it to Cali specifically to watch with my friend, Shawn. I had started to watch it a number of times prior to watching it with her, but failed as it was sooooo bad. So we watched it together and lamented that a movie so poorly made and sophomoric was awarded an Oscar. I have lost whatever shred of respect I had for the academy. I’ve seen better films made by junior highers on YouTube. I also tried to watch “Spiderman 3″ while on the cruise to Mexico, but fell asleep each time. I have added it to my Netflix queue so that I can see the ending. I need to find out if Peter lost Aunt Mae’s wedding ring!
I ate at my favorite Mexican restaurant, La Capilla. I also dined at some of my fave joints that don’t have franchises here in Colorado. Like “Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf” (a Starbuck’s competitor which is far superior), Togo’s (a Subway competitor which is FAR superior), El Pollo Loco (a char chicken joint), and In ‘N’ Out (by far best burger in the known universe AND a mean pink lemonade to boot!).
I got home yesterday afternoon after spending most of the three day time span before getting home in the front seat of my car either driving or sleeping. I worked today. I’m wiped out. I’m glad to be home, but could have spent weeks longer seeing friends. I really wanted to try to see Yosemite and Yellowstone, but that will have to be another trip. I’m trying to figure out how I’m going to wrangle a trip to Washington for a wedding the first week of November and then a Chicago trip for Thanksgiving later that month.
Thanks to Mike and Brandy for taking such good care of my Mew! She was spoiled rotten, but I think she’s glad I’m home. Not a lap cat, she has spent much time there since I got home.
Thanks Whitney and Mitchell for sharing their space with me and for putting up with all my junk in their room.
Thanks to Phil for his friendship and love. Phil…I’m prenvious of you!
(Why do you suppose some of my emoticons are turned into animated faces, and some are left as punctuation?)
We (my brother, his four kids, and I) were on our way back from eating the most fabulous BBQ Tri-tip sandwiches out at a take-out place called “Green Acres” in Simi Valley. This was an eating establishment that my brother found as a result of his being a freight delivery guy and driving all over So Cali. (My family is committed to driving great distances to enjoy the best taste sensations. This trip was no exception and was easily 60 miles each way… Worth the drive? Oh, you bet.) I am giving the “Green Acres” Farmer’s Market’s BBQ Tri-tip sandwich my “unpaid product endorsement”. Google it yourself and see what others have to say about it!
“Have you ever seen the Wizard of Oz house?” my brother asked as we entered his neighborhood on the way back home. I had, but only briefly, and I’d been wanting to take pictures of it. So we decided to swing by the house on our way back home. This house is an abomination really. We all decided it might not be TOO bad to live next to it, but it would be a daily horror to live across from it. I may go back at a later date and try to get a few more good pictures. However, the streets in town are narrow and it’s hard to get far enough back to encompass the whole monstrosity in a single frame.
As I am shooting various aspects of the front of the house my eight year-old niece Avalon piped up with her opinion on what the experience of this house was like for her.
“It’s like a horror movie, only horribler…”
Go ahead! Enter that gate if you dare!
Every house needs a “mission statement” plaque imbedded in the front wall, doesn’t it?
This is what meets you by the front door. (Was that baby in the movie?)
Details…
Details….
I must admit to a certain degree of morbid curiosity as to what the INSIDE of this house looks like…and to an even greater degree of curiosity as to what the people are like who live there!
I like taking pictures of graffiti. I recently uploaded to Flickr.com a few of the graffiti pictures I took in Sicily this past summer. I got an e-mail today from another Flickr user alerting me to one of my pictures showing up in someone else’s collection without my having been given credit for it. Thanks to ablankface for letting me know that my “Pozzallo Punk” was hijacked!
I found this nice piece of graffiti work (and I’m not saying I think that graffiti should be applauded, I just like it as an urban art form as an idea, not as a defacement of property) in a park in Pozzallo, Sicily, ITALY.
On one particularly beautiful Saturday morning in Sicily this past summer, we took a train from Ispica to Siracusa (Syracuse) to see the sights (more on some of those sights in future posts!). On the bridge from Siracusa proper to the island of Ortigia was this collection of locks. Written on each of the locks were what could only be the names of lovers.
I’d love to know the history of this collection of locks hanging from this light standard. I’m curious to know who started it and when. I don’t think it could have been there very long or there would have been many more locks. “How incredibly romantic,” I thought to myself.
A short time later we walked past a very tiny and most lovely beach on Ortigia. From the minute I stepped off the train I loved Siracusa. As we explored and saw more and more of the town, I fell head over heels. Ortigia sealed it for me.
“THIS”, I said to myself “is where I want to come on my honeymoon, and I want to buy an apartment here”. My goodness, if it was that romantic while I was there in the daytime with 14 teenagers and five, well, aging German men, I can’t imagine how over-the-top romantic it would be with a brand spanking new husband under a starlit Mediterranean night!
I was adopted this summer. “She” showed up the day that we did at the Camp in Ispica. She was sitting behind a fence that separated the camp from the property next door. She attached herself to our team almost immediately. She was fearless and always underfoot. Initially I attempted to keep her out of the kitchen, but it was a losing battle. And she would sit on the floor and look up at me with the most soulful eyes begging me for a taste of that beef, that chicken, that turkey, that tuna, or whatever else it was that caught her nose’s attention. (She particularly loved melon rinds. How bizarre is that?)
I missed my cat, Mew Ling. So sue me. I started to feed the skinny gray kitty. She needed a name. The girls first came up with Etna, which I thought was really a cute name. But it didn’t stick. Isabella, and then eventually Izzy, and Iz, did stick. And Izzy somehow became my cat. She had been abandoned by her mother along with a couple of siblings. The next door neighbor sort of took them in and occasionally fed them. But only Izzy came over the fence and made friends with us.
Last summer I missed my cat tremendously. But I had Abner to keep me company, to make me laugh, and to have deep grown up conversation with. It was a pretty lonely summer for me this past summer. I was the only head leader. My assistant leaders were both very young. All the adults that were at the camp spoke either Italian or German. Some spoke a little English, but not enough to easily have more than the most simple of conversation. I think God sent Izzy to me to keep me company and to alleviate my aloneness. She did a great job of it, too. It seemed to me like it was her personal mission to be my companion. And I know that God loves me enough to take the time to arrange something like that for me, too.
At first Izzy never made any sounds except purring. It was a couple of weeks before I heard the most faint little mews coming from her. I don’t know if she was abandoned so young that she didn’t know how to meow or what. When she finally did “learn” to talk, it was so pitiful sounding I couldn’t help but want to make sure I did whatever necessary to make sure she was safe and healthy. I got sucked in by her situation and her phenomenal cuteness. I was a goner and it didn’t take long til I was crazy for this kitty.
I think Izzy thought I was her mother. She would snuggle up to me or snuggle down in my clothes and find a little wrinkle of fabric and suck on it. For hours she could do that. I once woke up with a huge wet spot on my shoulder. She had been sucking on the back of my shirt for who knows how long. She’d play all day with the kids, following them out to the work site and playing with them into the evening hours. But when it was time for bed, most nights found Izzy in my room and on my bed. Since no one was allowed into my room without my being in there, Izzy would retreat there when she needed alone time. I would often find her stretched out (or curled up) on my bed in the afternoon taking a long leisurely uninterrupted nap.
Izzy’d come when I’d call her, too. I’d make a very loud long kissing sound, and if she was within hearing distance, she come running like a gray flash. Sometimes I’d do the sound when she was being held by one of my kids just to see all the acrobats of her twisting and twirling and trying to get down. It was fun to watch whoever was holding her to try to hang onto her as long as possible. It was like watching someone trying to hang onto loose Jell-O!
Izzy liked to hang out in the kitchen. Probably because she knew she’d be able to get food out of pretty much anyone, especially me. She got stepped on a lot. Eventually she found a place she could hang out without getting crunched. She’d curl up with the pots and pans in the kitchen island.
When I’d go to my room to do paperwork, or whatever, Izzy liked to jump up on my shoulder. Why do you suppose she would do this? I have no theories. But it seemed like she was very interested in whatever I was doing and liked a good view.
And we all absolutely loved her. Me especially. And I had to leave her behind. Sad day. I had been hoping to bring her to Colorado to live with me. The missionary’s son said he’d help me get her if it was possible. It doesn’t look like it is. Even if I could arrange to get her to a vet there in Sicily and get a certificate of health (a requirement of British Airways), British Airways makes all animals travel as cargo. They don’t offer cargo services from Catania, Sicily. The only way I could get her to the U.S. IF I had a certificate of health, would be to have her fly out of Rome. I guess Iz is staying in Sicily.
I’m worried that Izzy has no one to feed her. I wonder if she is trying to get into my room at night. Do you think she wonders what the heck happened to all of her people? I feel terrible that we had to leave her behind.
While driving to our hotel in London where we’d stay for a day and a half before heading home to the U.S., one of my kids said “Wow! Gas is even cheaper here than it is in Sicily! We should move here!”. I looked over to see what gas price she was referring to and saw the price listed at the local gas station as 99P, or 99 Pence (just about 1 Pound), per liter. I quickly did the math… 1 Pound X the exchange rate of 2.2 USD to a Pound, X approximately four liters to a gallon = approximately $8.80 per gallon for gas.
The gas in Sicily was 1.35 Euros per liter. The math… 1.35 Euros X the exchange rate of 1.4 USD to a Euro X approximately four liters to a gallon = $7.56 per gallon for gas.
After explaining to my kids about what gas REALLY costs in London and in Sicily, we all decided we were pretty glad to live in America where gas was relatively cheap.
Now, if you live in America, put down your $4.00 Starbucks ($4.00 for 16 ounces/one pint X 8 pints in a gallon = $32/gallon) and stop complaining about how expensive your gas is.
Adjusting for inflation, gas now costs about what it did in the 1970′s and 80′s. Except back then you could only buy it every other day…
Ian is a particularly amazing person. He was one of the members of my team this past summer. For the first few days of Boot Camp, Ian was pretty certain that he was going to go home. It wasn’t exactly his choice to be there in the first place. But he changed his mind and decided to stay. So he sent for his guitar. And when that guitar showed up, so did the real Ian. Music makes Ian alive.
Even blurry, this picture is worth the cost of admission!
Ian is the front man for a band out of Chico, CA. The band is called Everyday Hero. It’s like a retro christian punk rockish sort of band. I’m not sure how Ian would describe his band. (Here’s a link to Everyday Hero’s MySpace page – click HERE to go there!) But Ian and his guitar are comfortable in more than that genre.
I spent the vast majority of my awake hours in Sicily in the kitchen. Some of my favorite times were when Ian was out in the big hallway or down on the porch playing the guitar. His music would keep me company and make me smile. Ian’s music was, I think, my favorite thing about this past summer. There was one song in particular that I could listen to him play for hours. I’m not sure what it is I love about it so much. It’s lyrical and delicate and makes me want to close my eyes and lose myself in it. I asked him to play it for me one last time at the airport in Orlando while we were waiting for flights. He obliged! Even though he is “competing” with a hundred other voices and overhead announcements, his talent and the beauty of this song is unmistakable. I hope that maybe some day he records this. I’d pay goooood money to get my hands on it. Here’s Ian’s command performance.
Thanks, Ian, for staying and sharing your summer with me and the rest of the Sicily team. And thanks for sharing your gift with us and for being soooooooo generous in that sharing.
If Americans are obsessed with sports and the French with all things fashionable, then the Sicilians are obsessed with the dead. Just down the road from the camp where we stayed and worked this summer, there was a large cimitero (cemetary). I’ve been to cemetaries in the United States. Rarely, unless a funeral is in progress, are there many visitors. Not so at a Sicilian cemetary. This cemetary had a constant stream of visitors. And on the weekends, you would be hard pressed to find a parking place, though parking was plentiful. Widows dressed in black stood out to me. I asked our missionary Vincenzo what the length of time was that these women wore black. Sometimes for a year. Often for many years. Every day spent in a constant memorial of death. Everywhere, women dressed in black.
And in Sicily, you don’t just bury your loved one in the ground. That is only for the poorest of the poor to do. No. Every family has a family crypt. And families will do without, and scrimp, and save, in order to have the best crypt that they can possibly afford. And these crypts are not like your average American crypts either. They really try to outdo the Joneses. You need to spend at least 50,000 Euros to get a respectable crypt. The exchange rate of USD to Euros was just about 1.4:1 when we were there. In USD, a respectable crypt would cost you right around $70,000. That’s not even for a really nice crypt. That is just for one that you don’t have to be completely embarrassed about. Before I left I put this picture in a post:
I had initially believed it to be a view of the city, Ispica, from our campground. Now that I am home, I recognize it as a view of the cemetary taken from the road from Ispica down to the campground! It looks very much like a city with a cathedral, but it isn’t. Each of those buildings is a crypt! I was so fascinated by this cemetary. And each town had a similar one. The road signs even included signs pointing down the road you’d take to get to the “cimitero”.
Though all very different, each of the crypts had things in common. You could enter them as they were chapels. There was an eternal light on inside and pictures of the loved ones that were entombed there. There was an altar, a place to pray. Some had large quantities of fresh flowers, others had permanent plastic or silk flowers. Very few of these crypts looked like no one had visited in some time. I had to resist the urge to enter the ones that were unlocked.
Between the poorest famlies and those families who could afford crypts were the families who could only afford a place in these large banks of community crypts. Each of these crypts also had a picture, two vases for flowers and an eternally burning light.
Not speaking Italian, I initially wasn’t sure what all these papers plastered up all over the place were significant of. After learning a little Italian, and having my overgrown curiosity get the better of me, I finally set out to find out what they were.
They are paper memorials to the dead. Placed by the family of the loved one for years and years to come after their death. They could be found everywhere, even pasted to the fronts of people’s homes.
I am not sure why the Sicilians are so preoccupied with their dead. I have a theory, but had no method with which to test the theory. Sicily is a mostly catholic nation. The type of catholicism practiced there is quite different from the catholicism practiced elsewhere. It more resembles polytheistic religions when it comes to the number of individuals that are on the receiving end of worship. The worship of saints is pervasive. In most of the cathedrals I visited, in the most prominent spot hanging over the altar was not Jesus, as you would expect…there were statues of Mary, as though she was the most important element of their worship. Nearly every weekend there were festivals celebrating Mary of This and Mary of That. There were statues of many and varied saints in every town. People were often seen to stop by and pray to these saints. Sicilians, it seems, have lost their belief in Jesus. Perhaps having a cultural memory of the truth of Jesus plays out in their anxiety over having lost that truth and now, not having the hope of Jesus, are left with the fear of eternal loss. They fear that their loved ones are not going to heaven, but they don’t know why their fear is so great. They have ancient memory of having known the truth, but they no longer do. They try to remember and pray their loved ones into heaven instead of being able rest assured in the knowledge of the saving grace of Jesus Christ. It’s worse to have known the truth and lost it than it is to never have known the truth (2 Peter 2:20-22). And, if they are so anxious over the fate of their loved ones, how much more so are they anxious over what their own fate will be when they, too, die?
The small church that we went to work with was the only evangelical christian church in the three towns in the area. The only evangelical church for a population of nearly 100,000 people.
Sicily is a very beautiful, and very sad place with the dead present everywhere. The island where the early Chrisitan Church once flourished, and where the Apostle Paul once walked and taught, has forgotten Jesus.
, I manage to find much to be joyful about in life. It has taken practice and work, let me tell you! I have made it part of my personal life plan to find joy where it can be found, and to embrace it as fully as I know how to do so. There’s a verse in the Bible that says “do not grieve, for the joy of the Lord is your strength” (Nehemiah 8:10). If I enjoy the things that bring joy to the Lord, I find strength to endure the things that cause grief. I think children are one of those things.
