Elsa, by Elsa

Deborah Fallows -- Dreaming in Chinese: Mandarin lessons in life, love, and language

2010-11-19T10:25:00.000-08:00

Deborah Fallows, wife of the Atlantic magazine columnist James Fallows, moved to China with him about five years ago. They lived in China for three years, during which time Deborah, who has a PhD in linguistics, struggled to learn the Mandarin language and in the process learned much about the Chinese people, their customs and culture, and the struggles and pleasures of life in modern Beijing.

Her book, Dreaming in Chinese, is gracefully written and a charming series of short essays, each featuring an aspect of the Chinese language which she uses to inform her insights. Any of us who has struggled to learn a foreign language will appreciate her frank appraisal of her progress, her teachers, and the Chinese people she meets. Anybody who is interested in language or language learning will find the book fascinating.

I hope she will continue to write. She is gifted and honest and a sensitive observer. I highly recommend this slim book to all.

Dreaming in Chinese: Mandarin lessons in life, love, and language. New York, Walker, 2010.

28 October -- Making Posset

2010-10-28T08:52:00.000-07:00

It is simple to make and absolutely delicious to eat. As a dessert it is a dramatic dish, uncommon enough to impress the most sophisticated diner. That's because it is an old English recipe (dating from Elizabethan days) which is almost unknown here. We were served Posset in an Asian Fusian restaurant in Gloucester, England and declared it Best. Dessert. Ever.

Naturally, we had to learn to make it at home. Now I have made it three times and I'm beginning to get the hang of it. Here's how it goes:

First, buy a quart of heavy cream. Here in California, every dairy case is filled with non-fat, low-fat or reduced fat milk. It took a lot of looking to find the small collection of cream containers. I wanted to hide it at the bottom of the grocery cart so that I wouldn't get disapproving stares. You could probably buy just a pint of heavy cream, but suppose you want to make it a second time? You don't want to make any more purchases of this aorta-clogging substance than absolutely necessary.

On the same trip, invest in a box of Baker's Sugar. This is a finely granulated sugar typically used in cakes and icings, they tell me.

Also, buy one lemon.

Here's how it all works: Measure out 300 ml of cream. I'm sure it's equivalent to some common measure, but I trust my Pyrex 2-cup measuring cup. Pour the cream into a small saucepan.
Start the cream warming on low heat.

Pour in 1/3 cup of baker's sugar, stirring all the time. Stir, stir, stir. At first you will see something that looks like bubbles, but until the posset is almost boiling, those bubbles are little lumps of undissolved sugar which must be stirred or pressed out. Stir, stir, stir.

Somewhere along the way, squeeze the juice out of your lemon. You'll want about 2 tablespoons of lemon juice. Since there are only three ingredients, it seems like really cheating to use the bottled juice.

While you are stirring, you'll notice that the solution is getting warmer, then hotter. Once it is really bubbling, cook it two minutes longer, continuing to stir. Then remove the pot from the heat, stir in the lemon juice, and pour your posset into four small cups or dishes.

Let it cool slightly, then put the dishes into the refrigerator until it is very cold, or until you are ready to serve it.

We like it with a little spoonful of raspberry jam dropped on top just before serving.

Indexes and indexing

2010-08-03T17:23:00.000-07:00

I think Google has permanently spoiled me. How easy it is to type just a few words into its search screen and get -- along with some bad guesses, frequently -- the information I'm seeking. Even the wrong answers can be amusing, and my usual searches of place names or short biographies generally work.

So I forget that indexing is an art as well as a technique. Genealogists have known this for years, of course, and even when they can digitize records they prefer adding human indexers to proof read and give sanity checks to the data. Libraries were pioneers in machine-readable indexes for their card catalogs. I seem to remember that it was Los Angeles County library which issued an index of all of its periodical holdings, except that they forgot to specify that "Los Angeles" (and the other "Los" and "Las" names) were part of the name, and not simply the definite article in Spanish. Consequently anybody wanting, say, the Los Angeles Times had to look under A, for an entry reading "Angeles Times, Los". Kind of embarrassing for them.

So after all these years I expect any index I use to be useful. Imagine my surprise when I opened the big user's guide for my new Android phone (you can get this guide, free, by calling the number they give online). Leafing through the index I didn't find much that was useful until I came to "to" and found entries like this, which occupy most of the index:

To accept an invitation to chat
To access your voice mail from your wireless device
To add a bookmark shortcut to the Home screen
To add a contact to your favorites
etc.

The Spanish language half of the guide perpetuates this silliness, except you have to look for "para".

If I didn't like this phone so much, I'd be upset!

July 2010 -- A bird sighting at Monterey Bay

2010-07-23T14:12:00.000-07:00

03 July -- Bob and Laura and I spent the day on the Monterey peninsula enjoying the sun and the sights and the seafood, and trying to name all the authors we knew who had connections here. Naming John Steinbeck reminded us of Ed Rickett's lab on Cannery Row. The city has preserved at least the exteriors of the buildings and the holding tanks that the marine biologist used for many years.

It turned out to be the ideal home for a pair of seagull babies.

T. C. Boyle -- The Women

2010-05-20T15:40:00.001-07:00

Awhile back -- in 1998, to be exact -- I was quite angry with T. C. Boyle. He had written a story which was published in the New Yorker, which depicted his version of the life of Baldasare Forestiere, one of my favorite eccentrics. Forestiere, a Sicilian immigrant, arrived in Fresno, California, in 1905, dreaming of farming his own land. Sold a patch of hardpan, Forestiere eventually tamed it, tunneling deep enough to find good fertile soil, building a home and planting an orchard in which trees lived underground and grew up through holes in the surface soil. I thought Boyle's story was disparaging and condescending, and was an unhealthy cross between fiction and biography.

Now I must change my opinion, or, rather, decide that this one story was uncharacteristically meanspirited. Boyle, is seems, has written a number of novels centered on American eccentrics, and most of them are very good. I have just finished The Women, a fictional retelling of the wife and mistresses of Frank Lloyd Wright. It's prime Boyle, filled with events and passions and Wright's living-on-the-edge flamboyant style. He failed to pay his bills, he built houses in which the roofs leaked and the fireplaces failed to warm the rooms, but his successes were dramatic and the customers who were happy were ecstatically happy. The women, now, that's another story. Even Boyle's skills fail to convince me that they are more than spoiled, needy and selfish.

The story is told by a fictional narrator, a Japanese apprentice who spends much of his young adulthood at Taliesin. His own story gives additional depth to Wright's biography.

I began reading this book with great misgivings, not only because of my memory of Forestiere but because E. L. Doctorow did such a misleading job of fictional biography in his story of the Collier Brothers. Boyle is an accomplished story-teller and a wise man, and I hope he's busy writing his new novel, whatever it is, right now.

Sam Lipsyte -- The Ask

2010-04-23T19:40:00.000-07:00

Occasionally I get the feeling that the book I have requested, because of its glowing reviews, is not the book I am reading. It's not that I got the wrong item: nothing as easy as that! My confusion is due to the fact that other people, people who should know better, like critics for major papers or awards committees, maintain that this is a humorous and important, book. And I, struggling through to the end, find it neither.

This happened to me this week with The Ask, by Sam Lipsyte. This novel is the tale of Milo, a nobody, a would-be artist soldiering away on a college campus (Mediocre U, he calls it) in the Development Department. That is, he looks for people to give money for new buildings or endowed professorships or the like. Due to a series of unfortunate events, mostly having to do with his lack of tact, he is thrown out until an old college friend, Purdy, arranges to have him work on a donation which Purdy may make to the college.

The story then veers off into the relationship between Purdy and his son, born of an affair and not recognized until after the boy has returned from Iraq as a double amputee.

Do you notice anything humorous so far? Me neither.

It was only my determination not to let the book get the better of me that made me read through to the end, not caring whether Milo will save his marriage, or rescue his too-adorable and precocious three-year-old from the absent-minded non-care of the babysitter, or even get a permanent job.

The satirical targets are too broad (e.g., yuppified experimental pre-schools, over-age hippies). I can't recall one attractive character, and I think that even if all else fails, at least one character in which one can believe is necessary for an emotional connection to a novel.

James McManus -- Cowboys full: the story of poker

2010-04-20T15:19:00.000-07:00

Let's hear it for the new historians, who take a subject -- an idea, an artifact, a slogan, a style of dress, a game -- and study it carefully, using the same analytic tools their colleagues use while studying the "big" topics like war. To understand our culture, it's sometimes more useful to view it from ground level rather than from the broader academic lens.

Cowboys Full, written by a journalist who himself was a participant in a World Series of Poker, is an entertaining and educational trip through western history, starting before the 1400s and continuing to the present. In fifteenth century Italy, decks of cards had coins, cups, scimitars and polo sticks. Stiff cardboard, too stiff to shuffle, was used later, and just about any group of people -- especially wanderers, warriors, professional gamblers and prospectors -- made decks of cards from whatever material was easiest to come by.

One of McManus' favorite topics is the connection between poker and politics. He includes the well-known stories, such as Nixon's financing his first political campaign with his poker winnings, but he also tells stories of other presidents and important people, illustrating the importance of discipline: the poker face.

Closer to the present, he covers the beginning and growth of the World Series of Poker, which all of us have seen at least on television. Since its inception, the admission fee has been $10,000. McManus says:

...For perspective, it's what Robert Ford was paid to kill Jesse James in 1882, and what John Backus cheats the cheaters out of with a double cold deck during the voyage to San Francisco in Twain's "The Professor's Yarn." ...

...Ten thousand dollars had been roughly the median family income when the World Series began in 1970, and despite inflation the sum will still buy a year's tuition at an excellent state university, a used VW Beetle in pretty good shape, or a family vacation to Hawaii. It's also the amount won by the high-stakes pro Howard Lederer, a vegetarian, from his fellow pro David Grey, who had bet him that he wouldn't eat a cheeseburger...

This book is stimulating, a fun read that will send you off in many direction as you decide you want to know more about the people, places, and events relating to poker. A born story-teller, McManus delights.

Barbara Kingsolver - The Lacuna

2010-04-01T21:15:00.000-07:00

Barbara Kingsolver - The Lacuna

Oh my, what a fine book. And what a necessary book for these days, when militias and birthers and tea partyers are behaving with the same hysteria that Senator McCarthy and Richard Nixon and their ilk produced a half-century ago.

Harrison Shepherd moves with his mother to Mexico, after the mother leaves her marriage in search of romance and adventure. The adolescent Shepherd finds work with the household of Diego Rivera and his wife, Frieda Kahlo. Shepherd cooks and mixes plaster and generally makes himself useful as Rivera and Kahlo blaze across the Mexican political landscape. Before too long, Trotsky and his entourage become part of the party.

And that is the first third of this novel.

Like many recent novels, The Lacuna combines real historical personages with fictional treatment. We have seen it done well and clumsily, and here it works masterfully. Violet Brown, the no-nonsense stenographer Shepherd hires once he has returned to the United States, tells much of the story, which allows Shepherd to be two or three times removed from the historical events. Thus, WWII and the subsequent anti-communism witch hunts are described from her perspective as well as his.

I must mention the vivid descriptions of all of the places in this book, especially Mexico. Shepherd as a cook allows us to participate in many meals, lovingly described. The weather, both in Mexico and in Asheville, North Carolina where Shepherd made his U.S. home, can make your fingers feel frost-bitten, or make you sweat from the summer nights on the town plaza.

The implacable, unimaginative, self-righteous minions of McCarthy are chilling. They conjure up visions of life as seen by the Tea Party rioters we see on television today. As one who lived through the excesses of McCarthyism, I can testify that I was more frightened by the last third of the book than by any preceding threat, even the physical threats against Trotsky.

Readers and critics may well concentrate on Harrison Shepherd, but the real heroine here is Violet Brown. She has made her own life, moving beyond her peasant hill country family. Intensely loyal to her employer shepherd, she plays the role of Greek chorus here.

I hope this book gets wide readership and lots of comments. It's far and away Kingsolver's best book.

Gail Collins: When Everything Changed

2010-03-30T08:40:00.000-07:00

Her subtitle accurately describes the book: "The amazing journey of American women from 1960 to the present." Since this also describes my life from college graduation onward, I read it avidly, nodding and muttering with each of her examples. Collins begins with the experience of a secretary trying to pay her boss's traffic ticket (ok, it's 1960, so the situation -- a secretary trundling down to court to do an errand for her boss -- seems archaic now). But she is wearing slacks, so the judge sends her home to change her clothes. Instead, she gives the ticket to her new husband and he pays the fine. At this point the judge lectures HIM about taking more control over his wife's behavior!

The subsequent chapters, on the growth of feminism, on job discrimination, civil rights, education provide the details which paint the nuanced picture of the changes in the lives of American women of all races and classes. It's sad to learn how many of our leading women died before the changes they had sought. One woman I hadn't studied before was Alice Paul, author of the Equal Rights Amendment. Did you know that it was re-introduced in the House of Representatives just last summer? Here's a good link: http://www.equalrightsamendment.org/

This book is written in an entertaining and thoughtful voice. Gail Collins is one of the regular columnists on the New York Times, and has been editorial page editor (the first woman to hold that job). Go find the book and read it, and share it with your daughters!

20 March -- "Let The Great World Spin"

2010-03-20T10:37:00.000-07:00

Colum McCann won the 2009 National Book Award for this intricate, poignant, vivid novel set in 1974 New York City. On a sunny August morning, people become aware that something extraordinary is happening. As they turn and look up at the World Trade Towers, they see a tiny speck, a man first on the ledge of one of the towers, then on a wire stretched between them.

We learn about several of these viewers during the course of the day. Each section features an individual or a small group: a radical "liberation theology" priest, some prostitutes, a judge, grieving mothers of sons killed in Vietnam. With elegantly simple prose, McCann takes us into their lives.

The great achievement of this novel, however, is in the way in which he draws connections between his characters. Just as the tightrope walker threads his way from one tower to the other, the threads joining some of the watchers -- surprising and touching -- are connected.

11 February -- Al Zampa

2010-02-11T15:39:00.000-08:00

The Carquinez bridge crosses the Carquinez Straits north of Richmond, California, carrying Interstate 80 from Oakland to Sacramento. The first Carquinez bridge was opened in 1927. The two bridges we see today date from 1958 and 2003. The newest bridge is officially named the Alfred Zampa Memorial Bridge.

Travelers stopping at the Vista point just before the bridge can see a plaque dedicated to Al Zampa. It reads:

AL ZAMPA MEMORIAL BRIDGE
CROCKETT, CALIFORNIA 2003

Alfred "Al" Zampa was the first-born son of Emilio and Maria Zampa, Italian immigrants who migrated to the USA from Abruzzi, Italy. Al was born on March 12, 1905 in Selby, California down river from where this plaque sits. He was the eldest of three brothers and two sisters.

Al started his career in ironwork when he was 20 years old on the first Carquinez bridge opening in 1927. He worked on all of the highway and railroad bridges in the area, including the san Francisco-Oakland Bay bridge and the Golden Gate bridge. In 1936 Al fell from the Golden Gate into a safety net designed by famous bridge engineer Joseph Strauss. He survived the fall but it severely injured him. After recovering Al immediately returned to his job on the bridge and along with other fall survivors, he helped form the Halfway To Hell Club. The highlight of Al's career came when his two sons joined him as ironworkers to help build the second Carquinez bridge that would open in 1958 to carry traffic eastbound on the new Interstate 80 highway.

In 1987, some years after his retirement, on the 50th anniversary of the completion of the Golden Gate bridge a play called The Ace was produced based on Al's life story. The play ran at Ft. Point in San Francisco for several weeks. Al began to share his story with the media and was interviewed by magazines, radio shows and TV programs such as "on the Road with charles Kuralt". Later Al contributed to the documentary "Skywalkers", a story of the ironworkers.

Al always spoke highly of being a union ironworker and the benefits he received as a union member. He was very competitive and did not like to fail. He enjoyed playing pool and coaching Little League baseball. He started the first Tri-City Little League with friends in 1947. He coached his Crockett team to victory, winning the League 6 consecutive years. While working, coaching Little League baseball, playing pool, or any of his pastimes, Al Zampa was dedicated to achievement.

In March of 2000 ground was broken on a new suspension bridge to replace the original Carquinez bridge. Al was there to see history repeat itself. This new bridge is named in memory of Crockett's own Alfred Zampa, and in recognition of the men and women of the building and construction trades who build these great monuments.

We enjoy learning about individuals named on roads, bridges, ferry boats and the like, but it's not often we find such a graceful appreciation of their work.

Friday, January 22, 2010 The golden age of murder mysteries

2010-01-22T17:21:00.000-08:00

The 1930s and 1940s were the days of Lord Peter Wimsey, Albert Campion, Gideon Fell, Ellery Queen. These were the Gentleman Detectives, who with great civility and wit solved murders, restored jewels, and saved kingdoms, all without breaking a sweat. I have loved these books, have read and re-read them over the decades, always fearing that this time the villain would win but knowing that justice would eventually triumph. It is much more fun than today's more complex and dark stories.

Thanks to the wonders of Netflix Watch Instantly, I've been working my way through Wimsey, Campion and now a post-World War II series: Ngaio Marsh's Inspector Alleyn mysteries. Marsh herself had a rich association with theater, producing plays in New Zealand. This may account for some of the intricate plotting.

Of course I quarrel with the casting of all of these series, because I have such a firm understanding of how the actors SHOULD look! Troy is too severe and looks older than Roderick Alleyn, Albert Campion is rather too well-fed to be as dashing as I know him to be, and Lord Peter does look as dopey as he supposedly disguises himself to be. But it's a grand treat all the same.

E. L. Doctorow's Homer and Langley -- Twisting the Facts in Fiction

2009-12-16T11:35:00.000-08:00

This is the author's newest book, 200 pages about the Collyer brothers, New York City recluses who filled their Manhattan house to the brim with junk, from newspapers to an entire automobile. The brothers, long known locally for their eccentric behavior, gained national notoriety after Homer's body was found but Langley was missing. His body was later found close to his brother but buried under tons of rubbish from their piles of hoarded goods.

Doctorow's novel tells their story from Homer's point of view, emphasizing his detachment from world events, his blindness and later deafness, his reliance on his brother. The style is poetic, the story rather romantic. Too bad it isn't true.

In reality it was Langley who played the piano, not Homer. Homer became blind in later life, not at 18. Many of the events and details were added by Doctorow and weren't part of their lives.

I object to the fact that Doctorow uses the skeleton of the Collyer brothers' history, without indicating anywhere in the book that he has manipulated facts (I remember reading that he has said he did little research, relying on his own childhood memories of the event as learned from newspapers at the time). By using the names and locations as he had, I believe that he has done an injustice to the Collyers (strange though they might have been).

The story would have stood on its own if it just told the story of two brothers. By giving the reader a portrait of specific individuals, without revealing which elements are not true, Doctorow has cheated us. And because of his reputation, too many book reviewers, including writers in major publications, have allowed him to get by with it.

I'm in favor of the separation of fact and fiction.

22 October -- Toddlers and picture books

2009-10-22T10:36:00.000-07:00

The current New Yorker carries an essay on parenting styles as reflected in picture books. I feel very strongly about this, although not in the same way as the author, who seems to care most about the parents' being ineffective. After I wrote my letter to the editor and sent it off, I remembered an essay I wrote shortly after I took the helm of the Center Library at China Lake. Here it is:

Collection Development — or What About “All Alone With Daddy”?

When I started collecting books for the story hour today, I took my first really detailed look at the picture book collection. Previously I’d settled for getting rid of the worst offenders (those with actual peanut butter on the pages, or notes like “missing pages noted 4/11/77”) but today for some reason (including the nagging realization that, like Miss Clavell in Madeline, Something Is Not Right) I knew I needed to do some work here.

We know going in that the previous (40 years’ tenure) librarian did not like children. Why else would she have shelved the children’s books by height, including noting on the catalog cards small, medium, large, so that you had to use the catalog in order to find, for example, all of the Curious George books because they were on separate shelves? Why else would she have filed the children’s fiction all along the aisle across from the adult non-fiction? It takes a brave child to crouch in that aisle while grownups are stumbling over him. It reminded me of the Baton Rouge public library’s attempt to resist integration — they filed all of the fiction on the top two rows of shelving, so you browsed your way from the front door all around to the circulation desk and you never sat down at all.

I knew we had some rather peculiar books in the picture book collection and I had formed a half-plan of moving them to a Parents’ Shelf. I have no idea how big this shelf may become — I’m only in the middle of H — but I’m stunned. Imagine your toddler having her first experience with the library. Attracted by the pretty colors of the books she pulls out The Fall of Freddy The Leaf. This book explains death in an extended boring metaphor which ends with Freddy falling to the ground right after the first frost.

I won’t even mention the holiday books we have already dispatched, including two or three where Jewish children learn that Santa Claus is not for them.

Today I found, among other treasures “Fly Away Home” by Eve Bunting. “My dad and I live in an airport. That’s because we don’t have a home and the airport is better than the streets. We are careful not to get caught.” That’s the text on the first page of this picture book.

A couple of shelves over, there was “Not in here, Dad!” by Cheryl Dutton. Dad keeps trying to find a place to smoke, but we learn about all the awful stuff it does to your lungs and your teeth and your social life.

There was a lovely-looking picture book called something like “Time To Go” about what happens when your family farm is foreclosed and you have to sell everything off and move. The last page shows the boy with tears on his face.

Other tempting goodies include “Grandfather died today” “I had a Friend named Peter”, and, chillingly, “At Home with Daddy.” Oh, also, “My Mother Travels a lot”.

I repeat, I’m only to the middle of H.

First step, they go to my office, to the Parents’ shelf. Second step, I’ll decide whether to re-catalog them into children’s non-fiction which is at least less deceptive.

Possible third step, they go Out The Door.

I remember Phil, seeing for the first time two copies of Curious George in the library. He trembled with what? excitement? apprehension? and insisted on getting both of them and putting them down side by side to compare them. I remember Bryan, aged 2 or so, waking from a nap after having a story read to him, and finding the book and trying to separate the page to find his dream story, which he’d incorporated into the real book.

I can’t imagine what we have done to children who, accustomed to delight, find despair and sorrow and no hope. I’m getting these out of the way so our littles can find Frances and Little Bear and Lilly with her Purple Plastic Purse and Little Toot and — of course — Madeline.

15 Oct -- Second day of school update

2009-10-15T13:44:00.000-07:00

Now they have been in class for a month. Seventeen three-year-olds (more or less -- at least one is already four)have mastered Sitting On The Rug, and Everybody Do A Puzzle, and Say Thank You. Probably they have learned more, too.

Brian, who had wailed and sobbed all through my first visit, is doing much better. He seems cheerful and busy, and helpful to teacher. Of course, he is still following his own work plan and only occasionally joins the others.

And now I know, a little bit better, why: Brian speaks only Chinese. I think one of the teachers speaks some Chinese, but nobody at Brian's house speaks English so the classroomis the only place in his life where English is spoken.

The teacher tells me she knows about the Chinese-language story hours at the Oakland Branch library which specializes in Chinese. We both hope Brian's family will make a habit of taking him to the library, starting NOW!

09 September -- Second day of school

2009-09-09T20:03:00.000-07:00

I read to a Headstart class one day each month. Today was my first time for this Fall at the Angela Aguilar Center, their second day of school. I haven't spent a lot of time around three-year-olds lately (Everett lives too far away and is, after all, only two) but I suspected it would be a challenging day.

I heard the wails before I got the classroom door open. Brian, just three years old (or possibly not quite three) was standing in front of his cubby, where his little pack of possessions had been hung up. He was sobbing steadily, hopelessly, without looking anywhere else.

I had set up myself on my chair, with the other dozen or so three-year-olds sitting solemnly on the carpet. I passed around the llama puppet. Brian, now carrying his package but tearless, padded out from the cubbies and toward the door to the playground. A teacher's aide redirected him toward the carpet. Brian started to wail. He has a powerful voice.

The teacher's aide carried him back to the cubbies.

I read the first story. Koary, toward the back, started to cry. Another teacher's aide removed her. Brian wandered around the corner, took a good look, and increased the volume.

Loyal, an African-American boy who appears older than the others, or at least is more interested in talking to me, reached into his pocket and pulled out a long piece of orange fabric. Was it a sash? It appeared to be a necktie.

"What shall we do with this necktie?" I asked. Loyal shrugged.

A mother in the back was holding the llama puppet. We decided she should put the necktie on the puppet. It seemed to be just fine with Loyal.

We got through the stories and the song. I got ready to leave.

As I opened the classroom door, Brian, sensing an escape route, picked up his package and headed out. The teacher's aide captured him.

Poor tyke. His mother wouldn't be picking him up for two more hours.

Poor teachers' aides. But after all, it's just the second day of school. I wonder what will be happening in October?

Charlie Brown in Santa Rosa

2009-07-02T16:07:00.000-07:00

If you have heard at all about Santa Rosa, California, you probably think of it in terms of Luther Burbank, who gardened here at the turn of the twentieth century. After all, his gardens are still managed as a small but pretty local museum. Or you have heard that this was the real epicenter of the earthquake of 1906 -- because it was a Really Small Town then, the loss of life was less than in San Francisco.

But Santa Rosa's current claim to fame is as the home of Charles Schulz.

Schulz lived here most of his adult life. He based some of his cartoon characters on his childhood friends, and even though the town is a full-sized city (county seat of Sonoma County in fact), it's easily possible to imagine Charlie and Lucy and Linus still playing in one of the many parks.

To help your imagination, a drive through the town reveals Peanuts characters in unexpected places. These photos are from the grounds of the Kaiser Permanente Hospital, but there are others, both here and in Windsor, just a vew miles up the road.

The egrets are building their nests

2009-06-02T16:32:00.000-07:00

The trees are chock full of the large white birds. A few of the more enterprising egrets have staked out territory on neighboring trees, while others pluck twigs and small branches from here and there for nests. It's tempting to think that the mother bird is watching her chick, but I truly believe she is simply relieving an itch.

They are still saying "plock, plock" to each other, but the activities are generally calm, with lots of preening of feathers and occasional food flights.

The ducks, down below in the lagoon, go about their business without turning their heads to watch the larger birds. Ducks chuckle softly at each other. It's more pleasant to hear the ducks. We seem to have attracted a pair who walk each day from the lagoon to our front yard. So far they have investigated the front yard ivy but do not seem to have picked it for a nest.

25 May -- Just a place holder

2009-05-25T09:14:00.000-07:00

Just like everybody I know, I get occasional emails containing cartoons, amazing photos, cute animal pictures, the odd poem. Many get the "burn before reading" treatment, while others, whose contributions I always enjoy, get read and occasionally forwarded (although I try to restrain myself) to close friends and sister.

But I realized this morning that there is an entire category to which I belong, and which I really don't appreciate AT ALL: place holder.

This morning's email was yet another chain letter: "send this to five people within three hours and you will have good luck". Some of these messages -- the ones from friends and other rather frequent correspondents -- I remove without prejudice, knowing that they wanted to play and just wanted to use my address. Most of their correspondence concerns more substantive stuff.

But there are a few from whom I never, ever hear unless it is to be a pawn in the all-too-frequent chain letter traffic. I suddenly realized that they must have a special list, just to make up the three or five or twenty names needed in order for them to follow the rules of the chain letter game. A couple of times I have responded to them directly, but have never had a reply, so I'm pretty sure they don't actually read most of their email. Obviously, I am not interesting to them as a person.

I had a pretty good idea while writing this: I would email all these chain-letter-only people and remind them that email is a source of global warming (because of the energy needed to run the Internet servers). But when I googled this, all I found were invitations to email friends to get them to fight global warming.

I must admit, however, that my email life would be poorer without the occasional gem: chalk paintings, sardonic cartoons -- have you seen the video of the hamster trying to eat the pencil? I can send it to you....

20 May -- Picture Books

2009-05-20T16:55:00.000-07:00

Each month during the past school year I have been a volunteer reader at two Head Start classrooms. I pick up a crate containing picture books and a puppet and carry them off to a classroom where I spend a half hour with about 20 wriggly three- and four-year-olds. It's fun to see these little ones month after month -- the difference between September and May is astonishing. By the end of my tour, the children who were just learning how to sit on their space in the circle are chattering and busy and ready for stories and songs.

This project reminds me of my long-time rants about the quality of picture books. First of all, I want children to know the classic books because picture books are the first building blocks to an understanding of literature in English. Many expressions, illustrations, vocabulary words, rhymes, even attitudes come from children's literature, notably Mother Goose. (But don't forget Make Way For Ducklings and Charlotte's Web and Harold and the Purple Crayon. Mike Mulligan and his Steam shovel, The Indoor Noisy Book of Margaret Wise Brown. Lentil. Pooh (with the original illustrations). The Story About Ping. Madeline ("In an old house in Paris/ That was covered with vines, lived twelve little girls in two straight lines...") The shared experience of having been read to provides connections between children of with greatly different backgrounds.

But keeping this body of work alive becomes harder and harder, as booksellers produce so many new products each year. Many books published a quarter-century or more ago (e.g., Harold and the Purple Crayon) simply don't look as dramatic and rich because the paper and inks weren't available then, or were too expensive for mass market publications. They don't compete on bookstore shelves or in publishers' catalogs with the shiny new publications. In the library the copies gradually wear out. If they go out of print, they are as good as gone forever.

This leads me to the second half of my rant. Too many children's picture books are designed, with a wink and a nudge, to appeal to the adult shopper or borrower. Take "Mary had a little lamp", for example: the child makes a beloved companion of a desk lamp; it's a cute story -- she outgrows the lamp and takes up with a toaster -- but what is funny to an adult is just confusing for a three-year-old, who would also be bewildered by the title's play on a nursery rhyme.

But maybe I'm just becoming an old grouch!

13 May -- The Oldest Warriors Gather

2009-05-13T10:13:00.000-07:00

THE OLDEST WARRIORS GATHER *

The oldest warriors gather
In the corner of the room nearest the bar.
Not for them the wine and cheese. They hold adult beverages -- bourbon and vodka.
They share again the stories they have all heard many times.
Learning to pack your parachute.
No parachute for the tailgunner; you were sealed in until you landed -- or didn't.
Jumping out of a perfectly good airplane.
Learning to land on grass, on water, on ice. Building the runway.
We visited Germany last summer; told my wife Last time I was here I was driving a tank.
Baseball caps on bald heads, embroidered with a ship, a unit, a mascot.
An occasional chuckly ripple, or a reflective silence.

The color guard enters.
The oldest warriors stand.
They've changed the law, they reassure each other. It's ok to do this.
They perform the shared gesture of their exclusive club:
In their brown or gray or blue suits, or their jeans and sweaters, fingertip touching eyebrow
They snap a perfect military salute.

* During the ceremony of hoisting or lowering the flag or when the flag is passing in a parade or in review, all persons present in uniform should render the military salute. Members of the Armed Forces and veterans who are present but not in uniform may render the military salute. 2008 amendment to Sect. 9, Title 4, U.S. Code

11 May -- What was my grandfather's name?

2009-05-11T10:53:00.000-07:00

My maternal grandfather, Charles Cadwell, was a tall and taciturn man, an engineer who taught at Case Institute of Technology when it was a young and struggling college. Earlier he had briefly mined for silver in Mexico, had been elected surveyor of Ellsworth County, Kansas, when still in his teens (he took the job to pay for his education at Case). He invented Cadweld, an electrical bonding method for joining railway track, and developed a piece of equipment still in use today. He was a formal man, always in hat, white shirt, and tie even when gardening.

Grandpa's grandfather, it turns out, was Irish immigrant Patrick Cadwell, who left Ireland in 1847 and brought his wife Bridget and their five children to this country. Family legend talks about "seven souls in an old wooden boat" who crossed the sea to America.

The search for information about the Cadwells has occupied many months of our family history study. As we learned more about them, we began to understand that the name Cadwell may have been given them only after they arrived in New York State. The best immigration records we have found show a Codale family. Records of a deed signed by Patrick and the seller, improbably named Encyclopedia B Dewey, give his name as Caddle.

Patrick was illiterate, not surprising since he was an Irish peasant. But he made sure that his children attended school, and the three who survived to adulthood all became, at least for a time, schoolteachers. The love of learning and teaching is a strong thread running through the Cadwell family ever since.

So what was Patrick's REAL name? Codale, Caddle, Cadwell? None of them are common surnames. Codale and Caddle can be explained by imagining him earnestly telling a court clerk, or a ship's officer, his name in his Irish brogue. There are Caddles in Ireland, including County Meath near Dublin, where Patrick had lived as a young man. The arrival of Cadwell into the mix is more of a mystery, because of that "w" sound. Did the children, learning American English and wanting to leave Ireland behind, specify the pronunciation? Did they hear of other Cadwells and decide, as children do, that father did not know best?

Of all the stories, of the travel by sea, the Mexican adventure, the intriguing strongly-held belief that Bridget had been a maid for Queen Victoria but quit to marry Patrick, nobody in the family had ever heard of any variation on his name. He was Patrick Cadwell, no question about it.

That may be part of the reason we are reluctant to look further into the name question: Cadwell is just too good a name -- easily spelled, easily pronounced, just uncommon enough -- to give up.

08 May -- The Egrets are back

2009-05-10T16:20:00.000-07:00

At least two dozen pairs of egrets have appeared each spring for the three years we have lived here. We are two blocks away from a large lagoon lined with trees and populated by ducks, geese and coots. These egrets, we are told, have migrated from Lake Merritt in Oakland. We must be seeing the second and third generations, because they have returned to the exact tree in which we observed hatchlings and their parents last summer.

Now they are in the settling-in, nest-building phase. We walk past the scraggly tree and hear them making soft plock-plock-plock sounds, while occasionally one lifts off and flies down the lagoon, long legs stiffly trailing, broad wings beating the air. When the flying bird comes in for a landing, there is a flutter among the birds already on the tree.

By summer the birds will begin to hatch and the egret noises will become much more strident; even the other birds seem to notice and keep their distance. The last hatchlings won't be ready to leave the nest until late August or perhaps even later.
Then the sidewalk under the tree will be scrubbed, and the human residents along the lagoon will relax.