A quick evening post. On Sunday I went to Steve and Martha's home in Kenwood to see the Academy Awards and when I arrived a good friend of Steve's was there: Rodney. I hadn't seen Rodney in two or three years. I met him at least 25 years ago when both Steve and Rodney were graduating from nursing school in Santa Rosa. Rodney was a character, a short guy, not attractive but a great personality. He had a large goiter-like bulge on his neck that made his voice sound odd and made his appearance even odder. But you got over that in about five minutes and he was just a regular goofy guy in his thirties. I had a lot of fun with the two of them, mostly involving wine and grilling meat.
The thing about the neck growth was that it was inoperable and it was probably going to shorten his life because it would, supposedly, wind around his spine or something and eventually kill him. But it didn't, he kept on being a nurse and being goofy.
But tonight I got a call that Rodney died today of a heart attack and other complications. The fact that I saw him just three days ago makes the death more real and immediate. When one of your peers dies, well, it sets you back. It stops you for a moment. You don't know how to respond. How can someone my age die? How can mortality be so close?
We have to take care of each other. We must speak out loud our feelings for each other, tell those we love that we do love them. We need to acknowledge what friends and family mean to us and we need to do it now. Death is sneaky, it doesn't give us a lot of warning and it happens all the time. We can never be prepared. We can simply try and be aware and be kind to each other while we are here.
Love.
.
Wednesday, February 29, 2012
Monday, February 27, 2012
Things they dropped
When Cooper and I moved into our small place in Santa Rosa, it was November and most of our morning walks were in the dark. We were oblivious to what was around us, just walking to wake up and get back to the house to either eat food (Cooper) or leave again for work (me.) These days, however, as the light appears earlier each day, I am paying more attention to things scattered about the sidewalks and streets and there is an astounding variety of what people have tossed or dropped or deliberately left. Over the past two weeks we have seen the following, and more:
Fast-food wrappers and miscellaneous liquor bottles, of course, but also many kinds of food products: a half-eaten Safeway chocolate layer cake in the clear plastic Safeway dome, plastic fork included, carefully placed next to a telephone pole. Plastic grocery bag containing an unopened package of tortillas, some tomatoes, a plastic bear with clover honey. A neat pile of about 20 small packets of ketchup. Six-pack of small plastic containers of applesauce, unopened. A glazed donut, unbitten. Two jars of baby food, half used, sitting upright near a chain-link fence. Brown paper grocery bag containing an empty six pack of Sam Adams beer, all bottles in the six pack carrier, so neat and tidy, right next to an open dumpster.
Clothing items: ragged jeans, dirty jacket. One Ked's tennis shoe in decent shape. A kid's pink and green knit glove. A plastic bag spilling out toddler-size shirts, not in fine repair, perhaps rejected from Goodwill. In a parking lot behind a local bar, a pair of lacy red panties. Several pairs of sunglasses, some whole, most not. A watchband. A striped tie, in good shape, tied around a fence post. Many knit caps. A sad, dirty handmade neck scarf, crumpled on the sidewalk.
Personal items: oddly, several toothbrushes. Nice looking hair brush. Mean looking broken combs. Half empty tube of lube (not near the red panties, alas.) Dental floss, still wrapped as if just bought from the drugstore, must have fallen out of a bag. Half finished packets of pocketsize Kleenex. Many scuffed hair clips and ratty scrunchies. A cheap plastic ring near a torn, wet coloring book.
Random stuff: a headless Barbie doll and the red, smiling head from an Elmo doll, not near each other. Hubcaps. Dog collar. Address book run over many times. Several paperback books, mostly tattered, most without covers, spotted a few blocks from the local high school, don't know if there's a connection. A baseball mitt, (almost picked it up,) also near the high school. Broken crayons, broken pieces of chalk. An old coffee mug on a curb. Sometimes I see a photograph lying on the sidewalk or in the weeds and I wonder who it is, who lost it.
So many people, so many stories, so many things cast off. Makes you wonder why.
Fast-food wrappers and miscellaneous liquor bottles, of course, but also many kinds of food products: a half-eaten Safeway chocolate layer cake in the clear plastic Safeway dome, plastic fork included, carefully placed next to a telephone pole. Plastic grocery bag containing an unopened package of tortillas, some tomatoes, a plastic bear with clover honey. A neat pile of about 20 small packets of ketchup. Six-pack of small plastic containers of applesauce, unopened. A glazed donut, unbitten. Two jars of baby food, half used, sitting upright near a chain-link fence. Brown paper grocery bag containing an empty six pack of Sam Adams beer, all bottles in the six pack carrier, so neat and tidy, right next to an open dumpster.
Clothing items: ragged jeans, dirty jacket. One Ked's tennis shoe in decent shape. A kid's pink and green knit glove. A plastic bag spilling out toddler-size shirts, not in fine repair, perhaps rejected from Goodwill. In a parking lot behind a local bar, a pair of lacy red panties. Several pairs of sunglasses, some whole, most not. A watchband. A striped tie, in good shape, tied around a fence post. Many knit caps. A sad, dirty handmade neck scarf, crumpled on the sidewalk.
Personal items: oddly, several toothbrushes. Nice looking hair brush. Mean looking broken combs. Half empty tube of lube (not near the red panties, alas.) Dental floss, still wrapped as if just bought from the drugstore, must have fallen out of a bag. Half finished packets of pocketsize Kleenex. Many scuffed hair clips and ratty scrunchies. A cheap plastic ring near a torn, wet coloring book.
Random stuff: a headless Barbie doll and the red, smiling head from an Elmo doll, not near each other. Hubcaps. Dog collar. Address book run over many times. Several paperback books, mostly tattered, most without covers, spotted a few blocks from the local high school, don't know if there's a connection. A baseball mitt, (almost picked it up,) also near the high school. Broken crayons, broken pieces of chalk. An old coffee mug on a curb. Sometimes I see a photograph lying on the sidewalk or in the weeds and I wonder who it is, who lost it.
So many people, so many stories, so many things cast off. Makes you wonder why.
.
Tuesday, February 21, 2012
Privileged People
This is one of my most common complaints: people who think their stories, their situations, their requests, are special. People who believe that they are privileged in some way and should get whatever they want. This is so apparent in the hospitality industry and it makes us, the workers, feel very inhospitable. Case in point: I am here today in Calistoga at my two-day-a-week job where we have four rooms checking out today. One room left at dawn. The other three have all requested a late check-out. Late like 1:00 pm when the check-out time is 11:00 am, clearly stated on their confirmation, reinforced upon their check-in. And the reasons for their needing a late check-out are so important! One wants to take a walk through town. Why she can't simply check out first and then walk, I don't know. Another worked until 4:00 this morning and wants to sleep. Too bad. The third has a massage at 11:00 and wants to take a shower after the massage (which is 90 minutes) and therefore won't be out of the room until 1:00 at the earliest.
"Special circumstances" should be something important, like someone came into your hotel room last night and stole all your clothes and you are waiting for a delivery of something to wear instead of walking around naked. Honestly, other than convenience, what other excuse is valid? You're sick? Then we really want you out of that room ASAP so we can totally disinfect it. You're tired? Go home and sleep or take a nap in your car or simply pay for another day and sleep as long as you want.
It's different (a bit) in a hotel with many rooms. The housecleaners there can juggle their room assignments a little easier than they can when there are only 12 rooms. With late check-outs in a small place, if several rooms stay until 1:00, it leaves a two hour window to get those rooms all cleaned before the 3:00 check-ins begin. And sometimes people were promised a 2:00 check-in, which makes it even more difficult.
Sigh. Thanks for listening, I feel much better having gotten that out of my system. Now if I can just get these people out of their rooms, it will be a fine day.
.
"Special circumstances" should be something important, like someone came into your hotel room last night and stole all your clothes and you are waiting for a delivery of something to wear instead of walking around naked. Honestly, other than convenience, what other excuse is valid? You're sick? Then we really want you out of that room ASAP so we can totally disinfect it. You're tired? Go home and sleep or take a nap in your car or simply pay for another day and sleep as long as you want.
It's different (a bit) in a hotel with many rooms. The housecleaners there can juggle their room assignments a little easier than they can when there are only 12 rooms. With late check-outs in a small place, if several rooms stay until 1:00, it leaves a two hour window to get those rooms all cleaned before the 3:00 check-ins begin. And sometimes people were promised a 2:00 check-in, which makes it even more difficult.
Sigh. Thanks for listening, I feel much better having gotten that out of my system. Now if I can just get these people out of their rooms, it will be a fine day.
.
Tuesday, February 14, 2012
San Valentino
This morning as Cooper and I were strolling through the 'hood, just as dawn was breaking, I noticed a new sign on the Chevron gas station near us. It read: "Roses. Gifts. Chocolate. Cards." And I thought how sad it would be to get a gift from a gas station mini-mart. Plus who is the jerk who waited til he (or she) was almost home from work and then thought "Oh, yes, it's the day of love. I guess I better get something while I gas up the car." However, I suppose it's better than getting a can of Colt 45 Malt Liquor from that same mini-mart. Still. Gas station roses. Sigh.
On that note, I wonder what delightful evening my date is cooking up for me while I am out earning rent money. Knowing his fine taste in food, it will probably involve bacon products. An entire dinner based on smoked pork strips. But, alas, since Cooper has no money, no transportation and no thumbs to open the front door, I fear a celebratory dinner will not be happening in my house. Only in my mind.
But hey, an imagined San Valentino dinner is still better than roses from Chevron.
On that note, I wonder what delightful evening my date is cooking up for me while I am out earning rent money. Knowing his fine taste in food, it will probably involve bacon products. An entire dinner based on smoked pork strips. But, alas, since Cooper has no money, no transportation and no thumbs to open the front door, I fear a celebratory dinner will not be happening in my house. Only in my mind.
But hey, an imagined San Valentino dinner is still better than roses from Chevron.
.
Sunday, February 12, 2012
Job Update
Quick update for those of you who are either tired of my book and movie reviews or who are wondering what I am doing now and how whatever I am doing is going. (bad sentence structure, that.) Some of you have been faithful followers, so I thought I owed you a short update.
Still working Mondays and Tuesdays in Calistoga at the funny Eurospa. (www.eurospa.com) It's a fine little place and the regular managers are happy I am there. Doesn't pay a lot and it's a 10 hour day, almost, which means little Cooper has to be home alone from 7 in the morning to 5:45 in the evening, but he seems to manage. I like it, it's easy, but if something full time turned up I would say "adios" in a snap.
Also I am still working at the more upscale b&b in Healdsburg, the Calderwood Inn. It is not full-time either, especially now in the winter, but it's an easy job and I am good at it. Margaret, the innkeeper (and friend) whom I replaced because of her broken leg, has decided not to come back full-time so that gives me more work in the future. I will try to convince the upper tier of management that they should pay part of my health insurance which would be a huge help financially for me. To the tune of $6000, an outrageous sum to pay each year for someone making around $35,000 a year. We'll see how that plays out.
Bottom line, things are good. I am trying to adopt some of the Zen philosophy that everything that happens to us leads us to the state of being happy. That sounds too simplistic, of course, but I have been reading some Zen stuff along those lines and it certainly beats the alternative, being grouchy all the time and lamenting one's fate and feeling that life isn't fair, and all that. It isn't fair, it was never supposed to be fair and even and equal. It just is. What we make of it is up to us.
Part of me still wants to go to France or Italy this year (a huge part, truth be told) and I might. Or to Hawaii to visit my friend Flip. Or both. Money issues are less bothersome right now because I feel settled and at ease. I figure if my money runs out, and it won't for a long time, then it was suppose to run out. (Oddly enough, as I type this, my duplex mate is playing Grateful Dead right now, at a higher volume than usual, and they are singing "We will get by, we will survive." Not ever having been a Deadhead, they aren't my first choice in music but everything that has been playing today has sounded perfect.)
OK, time to toss a half chicken in the oven with some veggies: dinner tonight, lunch for the next two days and a final dinner of leftover chicken with veggies in a curry sauce later in the week. Many meals from that little chickie. Laurel, my duplex mate, is a gardener and our garden abounds with winter greens right now as well as lovely lettuces and onions and shallots and herbs. She is planting more things this week and the tulips should be in bloom soon. Daffodils already here, crocuses, too.
It's good to be alive, isn't it?
Still working Mondays and Tuesdays in Calistoga at the funny Eurospa. (www.eurospa.com) It's a fine little place and the regular managers are happy I am there. Doesn't pay a lot and it's a 10 hour day, almost, which means little Cooper has to be home alone from 7 in the morning to 5:45 in the evening, but he seems to manage. I like it, it's easy, but if something full time turned up I would say "adios" in a snap.
Also I am still working at the more upscale b&b in Healdsburg, the Calderwood Inn. It is not full-time either, especially now in the winter, but it's an easy job and I am good at it. Margaret, the innkeeper (and friend) whom I replaced because of her broken leg, has decided not to come back full-time so that gives me more work in the future. I will try to convince the upper tier of management that they should pay part of my health insurance which would be a huge help financially for me. To the tune of $6000, an outrageous sum to pay each year for someone making around $35,000 a year. We'll see how that plays out.
Bottom line, things are good. I am trying to adopt some of the Zen philosophy that everything that happens to us leads us to the state of being happy. That sounds too simplistic, of course, but I have been reading some Zen stuff along those lines and it certainly beats the alternative, being grouchy all the time and lamenting one's fate and feeling that life isn't fair, and all that. It isn't fair, it was never supposed to be fair and even and equal. It just is. What we make of it is up to us.
Part of me still wants to go to France or Italy this year (a huge part, truth be told) and I might. Or to Hawaii to visit my friend Flip. Or both. Money issues are less bothersome right now because I feel settled and at ease. I figure if my money runs out, and it won't for a long time, then it was suppose to run out. (Oddly enough, as I type this, my duplex mate is playing Grateful Dead right now, at a higher volume than usual, and they are singing "We will get by, we will survive." Not ever having been a Deadhead, they aren't my first choice in music but everything that has been playing today has sounded perfect.)
OK, time to toss a half chicken in the oven with some veggies: dinner tonight, lunch for the next two days and a final dinner of leftover chicken with veggies in a curry sauce later in the week. Many meals from that little chickie. Laurel, my duplex mate, is a gardener and our garden abounds with winter greens right now as well as lovely lettuces and onions and shallots and herbs. She is planting more things this week and the tulips should be in bloom soon. Daffodils already here, crocuses, too.
It's good to be alive, isn't it?
.
Tuesday, February 7, 2012
Book Review: Salvage the Bones
"Salvage the Bones" is only Jesmyn Ward's second novel and it is stunning. Not only is the story compelling in a tough way but the descriptions are sometimes so true that you read them over a couple of times just to set the picture in your mind. This is not an easy book to read, it doesn't have a smooth, lyrical cadence. It is choppy, at times abrupt, intense and hard-edged. In the beginning, the reader has to work at liking it, or at least accepting it and continuing on. There were passages that I couldn't read, specifically about dog fights, that were too gruesome even for me. But those are balanced by beauty and honesty: "Skeetah stands in the sun, the only boy in the yellow clearing who braves the light with the dogs. He ignores us, looks past us off into the woods, still as China at his side, who ignores us and looks off as well, standing, never sitting. I wonder if he has trained her to do this, to stand at his side, to not dirty even her haunches with sitting so that they gleam. China is white as the sand that will become a pearl, Skeetah as black as an oyster, but they stand as one before these boys who do not know what it means to love a dog the way the Skeetah does."
The story takes place in a small, poor hamlet in Louisiana ten days before Hurricane Katrina destroys the place. The narrator is a young teenage girl, Esch, who lives with her father and three brothers in a life ringed by poverty and hardship. She is a girl surrounded by men, trying to navigate a world that is in many ways a dead-end. One of the central characters is a white pit bull named China and as the book opens she is whelping her first litter of puppies. China is a strong metaphor for everything this family is desparate for: safety, comfort, hope and a future.
The family ties are mercurial, as family ties often are: tight and strong when forced but loose and careless when anger and resentment, fear and hunger show up at the table. The community this family lives in revolves around survival, dog fights and razor sharp teenage sullenness. The upcoming storm is at first barely heard, just a shadow in the background, no one but the father paying any attention to its potential. As it approaches and as it becomes apparent that it will be a Category 5 hurricane, its awful presence grows. The wind picks up, the kids try to board up the windows of their shack of a house, they scavenge for food to last a few days. When Katrina finally arrives, they huddle upstairs, trying to wait it out. "The sun will not show. It must be out there, over the furious hurricane beating itself against the coastline like China at the tin door of the shed when she wants to get out. But here we are caught in the hour where the sun is hidden beyond the trees but hasn't escaped over the horizon, when it is coming and going, when light comes from everywhere and nowhere, when everything is gray."
The last section of the book, as the water rises through the house, upstairs, forcing them to crawl to the attic and then break through to the roof, is mesmerizing and frightening: "Light floods the flooded attic, close as a coffin. Randall grabs Junior, who swings around and clings to his back, his small hands tight as clothespins, and Randall climbs out and into the hungry maw of the storm. It is terrible. It is the flailing wind that lashes like an extension cord used as a beating belt. It is the rain, which stings like stones...."
Again, this is a very, very good book. Tough, gritty, unrelenting and beautiful, it deserves to be read. This honest portrayal of poverty and violence, family and survival is one you will not forget. I personally cannot wait for Jesmyn Ward's next book.
.
The story takes place in a small, poor hamlet in Louisiana ten days before Hurricane Katrina destroys the place. The narrator is a young teenage girl, Esch, who lives with her father and three brothers in a life ringed by poverty and hardship. She is a girl surrounded by men, trying to navigate a world that is in many ways a dead-end. One of the central characters is a white pit bull named China and as the book opens she is whelping her first litter of puppies. China is a strong metaphor for everything this family is desparate for: safety, comfort, hope and a future.
The family ties are mercurial, as family ties often are: tight and strong when forced but loose and careless when anger and resentment, fear and hunger show up at the table. The community this family lives in revolves around survival, dog fights and razor sharp teenage sullenness. The upcoming storm is at first barely heard, just a shadow in the background, no one but the father paying any attention to its potential. As it approaches and as it becomes apparent that it will be a Category 5 hurricane, its awful presence grows. The wind picks up, the kids try to board up the windows of their shack of a house, they scavenge for food to last a few days. When Katrina finally arrives, they huddle upstairs, trying to wait it out. "The sun will not show. It must be out there, over the furious hurricane beating itself against the coastline like China at the tin door of the shed when she wants to get out. But here we are caught in the hour where the sun is hidden beyond the trees but hasn't escaped over the horizon, when it is coming and going, when light comes from everywhere and nowhere, when everything is gray."
The last section of the book, as the water rises through the house, upstairs, forcing them to crawl to the attic and then break through to the roof, is mesmerizing and frightening: "Light floods the flooded attic, close as a coffin. Randall grabs Junior, who swings around and clings to his back, his small hands tight as clothespins, and Randall climbs out and into the hungry maw of the storm. It is terrible. It is the flailing wind that lashes like an extension cord used as a beating belt. It is the rain, which stings like stones...."
Again, this is a very, very good book. Tough, gritty, unrelenting and beautiful, it deserves to be read. This honest portrayal of poverty and violence, family and survival is one you will not forget. I personally cannot wait for Jesmyn Ward's next book.
.
Wednesday, February 1, 2012
Book Review: "A Drop of the Hard Stuff"
"A Drop of the Hard Stuff" was written by Lawrence Block, who published his first novel in 1958. Why I haven't read him before is beyond me. He has written more than 50 books, novels, short stories, non-fiction, you name it. Again, this book made someones "Best Crime Fiction of 2011" and thus made its way to my library list.
I really liked this book, not because of the crime but because of the characters and the writing. The protagonist is Matt Scudder, a retired cop, an alcoholic who goes to at least one AA meeting a day and is just short of his one year sobriety mark. The other main character is AA itself. Now, I am not a stranger to the world of alcoholics and meetings and the Twelve Step program. But I have never gotten such an amazing, up-close, real depiction of the meetings and the process as I have in this book. Not in any sort of preachy way, just in a matter-of-fact, this is how we do it, kind of way. The meetings and the 12 steps are very important to Matt Scudder and several other characters and they become important to us, the reader as well.
The novel takes place in Manhattan and Block obviously knows his city. Descriptions of bars, liquor stores, hotels, streets are all finely tuned but gritty at the same time. "I was tired and was all set to hail a cab until I remembered that it was the heart of the rush hour, and the traffic would be impossible. I didn't want to sit in an unmoving taxi while the lights changed and changed again, but neither was I ready to face the sardine-can crush of the rush-hour subway." It reads simply yet gets the job done.
From the beginning of the book, there is an air of sadness about it. The plot is simple but the thought process of Scudder is not. Everything is colored with his quest for sobriety. He sees everything, everyone through the haze of fear that he will take a drink. We really feel his desperation to be sober but we also feel the power alcohol has over him. "One day at a time" was never made more real to me than in this novel, probably because Scudder talks about it more than most alcoholics I personally know.
Eventually pieces fit together and he figures out the mystery of the "random" murder and two other seemingly unconnected killings. The nice thing about the ending is that unlike most cop/detective/crime novels, it is not a pat ending. Nothing really gets resolved but it doesn't seem to matter. We have been part of Matt Scudder's life (as fictional as it is) for a short while and if we have paid attention, we are a little wiser about the struggles of addiction. Plus we got a good story at the same time.
.
I really liked this book, not because of the crime but because of the characters and the writing. The protagonist is Matt Scudder, a retired cop, an alcoholic who goes to at least one AA meeting a day and is just short of his one year sobriety mark. The other main character is AA itself. Now, I am not a stranger to the world of alcoholics and meetings and the Twelve Step program. But I have never gotten such an amazing, up-close, real depiction of the meetings and the process as I have in this book. Not in any sort of preachy way, just in a matter-of-fact, this is how we do it, kind of way. The meetings and the 12 steps are very important to Matt Scudder and several other characters and they become important to us, the reader as well.
The novel takes place in Manhattan and Block obviously knows his city. Descriptions of bars, liquor stores, hotels, streets are all finely tuned but gritty at the same time. "I was tired and was all set to hail a cab until I remembered that it was the heart of the rush hour, and the traffic would be impossible. I didn't want to sit in an unmoving taxi while the lights changed and changed again, but neither was I ready to face the sardine-can crush of the rush-hour subway." It reads simply yet gets the job done.
From the beginning of the book, there is an air of sadness about it. The plot is simple but the thought process of Scudder is not. Everything is colored with his quest for sobriety. He sees everything, everyone through the haze of fear that he will take a drink. We really feel his desperation to be sober but we also feel the power alcohol has over him. "One day at a time" was never made more real to me than in this novel, probably because Scudder talks about it more than most alcoholics I personally know.
Eventually pieces fit together and he figures out the mystery of the "random" murder and two other seemingly unconnected killings. The nice thing about the ending is that unlike most cop/detective/crime novels, it is not a pat ending. Nothing really gets resolved but it doesn't seem to matter. We have been part of Matt Scudder's life (as fictional as it is) for a short while and if we have paid attention, we are a little wiser about the struggles of addiction. Plus we got a good story at the same time.
.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)