Rentonia

Trains - Part Two

2012-02-13T10:21:00.000-08:00

Due to my error, we posted Part 3 before Part 2, so this is chronologically misplaced.

In the thirties, British mainline trains had been consolidated into four separate private companies: LMS (London, Midland & Scottish), LNER (London & North-Eastern), GWR (Great Western), and SR (Southern). Our convenient stations were on the SR, which had been electrified. This was convenient for fast trips to London's Victoria Station and the West End, but for me, familiarity bred contempt for this rather "boring" line.

My favorite was the GWR, which still used powerful steam engines. I enjoyed doing jigsaw puzzles, featuring the "Castle" and "King" classes of locomotive. I enjoyed the history of the company, headed in early days by the famous engineer, Isambard Kingdom Brunel. I mourned the passing (many years earlier) of the "Broad Gauge" tracks, which allowed passenger trains to offer a more comfortable ride than the "Narrow Gauge" lines; I felt that it was tragic that the GWR eventually had to convert to Narrow Gauge to conform to the majority choice.

Early in 1936, I was recovering from 'flu shortly before my 9th birthday, and I couldn't return to my boarding school during convalescence. I'll never know if my father had to "pull strings" but, to celebrate my birthday, my mother drove me to the GWR Works at Swindon, not normally open to visitors, and we were given a personally conducted tour. Not until many years later did I learn that I had been shown around by the General Manager, as if I were a young prince of the royal blood!

The LMS was probably the biggest and most profitable line, as it served the cities of Birmingham, Liverpool, and Manchester. as well as Scotland. There was a rivalry between the two northbound companies. The LNER's "Flying Scotsman" was matched by the LMS "Flying Scot". In 1936 came the "Coronation" (LNER) and the "Coronation Scot" (LMS), to celebrate the new reign of King George VI.. In London, the main LMS station was Euston, but also St. Pancras was an LMS terminus. In those days, no trains ran through London from North to South (or vice-versa). LNER used King's Cross for its main line, as well as Liverpool Street and Fenchurch Street, mainly used by commuters.. To this day, (on PBS) the initials "LNER" can be seen on the opening credits of the Poirot programs, which feature a fast steam train moving from left to right.

I'm not certain why I preferred the LNER to the LMS. It was a logical choice, since the LNER took the East Coast route, and was the line to take to reach Hull, Grimsby, and Immingham, the ports which received the imports of most of the timber brought in to the UK for G.H. Renton & Co, which my father controlled. As a small boy, I was probably more affected by the LNER's sleeker, silvery rolling stock, than by any family loyalty. To reach Scotland, one could take the overnight sleeper on either line, and the LNER coach for northern Scotland was at some point joined (probably at Perth) to the LMS train.

In 1938, our family enjoyed a summer seaside vacation at Nairn a few miles east of Inverness. The chauffeur (Frank Coles) drove my father there, while the rest of the family went by train. I was able to persuade my mother to take us on the LNER train north.There was a dining car on the train, and we enjoyed our evening meal there, but the dining car was taken off (also probably at Perth) during the night. To my delight, breakfast trays were brought aboard at Kingussie. It was there that I first enjoyed a "bannock", the Scottish version of a breakfast bread roll. Six years later, I took the same route to join my ship (H.M.S. "Norfolk") at Scapa Flow in the Orkney Islands. I remember looking forward to the breakfast tray at Kingussie, but in 1944 it seemed greasy and unappetizing. Perhaps my tastes had become more discriminating, but I really think that wartime had brought lower standards. Remember, north of Perth, we were in the care of the LMS. I'm glad I can't blame it on the LNER!

Trains, part three

2012-02-06T09:31:00.001-08:00

I clearly remember the joy I felt in 1949, soon after I had returned from naval service in the Far East. I was lucky to have spent time in Ceylon, Hong Kong, the Philippines, Singapore, Malaya, Sarawak, China, and Japan. Now I would be able to return to the Continent of Europe, off limits since 1939, due to the German occupation.

My elder sister and I, with two friends, took a train from Calais to Paris, where we entered a train that took us to Austria, a wonderful journey. In Zurich, we changed into a train that took us almost all the way to Obergurgl, for our first skiing holiday. (We had to walk the last leg of the journey, while our baggage was brought up by road, but it was all part of a thrilling journey.)

A few years later, I remember the excitement of a train journey to meet my fiancée in Venice, my first visit to that romantic city. Then there was the trip awarded me by business friends on the reconstituted Orient Express. Three memorable train trips in Europe. But for sheer luxury, I have to choose the Blue Train journey Barbara and I made from Pretoria to Cape Town. We also loved the train ride to the Copper Canyon in Mexico.

We still love long distance train travel, although the many journeys we have made on AMTRAK from the Bay Area to Denver lack the luxury of those in Europe or South Africa. In fact, we are scheduled to take the overnight journey again next month. We start at 9:10 one morning, and arrive on the following evening in Colorado. Alas, AMTRAK has to yield to freight trains, so arrival time is not up to Mussolini's standards!

Trains (part one)

2012-01-31T11:27:00.000-08:00

As a small boy in England, I always loved model trains. I had a set of Hornby Gauge O equipment, which I steadily built up with gifts on my birthdays and at Christmas. I began setting up the track in the billiard room at our family home in Surrey, using the space under the billiard table. I didn't care much about the station buildings and other scenic embellishments: I just wanted an oval track and "points", where trains could be sent onto a different set of rails.

After a time, I was allowed to move everything into the loft over the stable buildings, which had become a three-car garage. I began with clockwork trains, and later converted to an electric system, which allowed me to start, stop, and make adjustments to the speed of the engine. My elder sister had little interest in trains, but in time my younger sister enjoyed her set of Hornby "dublo" (00 gauge) trains, which took up a lot less space.

My enthusiasm waned when I went to my (British style) boarding prep school at the age of 8. I can't even remember what happened to my toy trains when I grew out of them. My love of trains continued, but it was transferred to scale models in which one could actually ride. I particularly remember the Romney, Hythe, and Dymchurch railway, which ran along the south coast between Kent and Sussex. It is a one-third scale model of a main line train. My prep school was at Broadstairs, a short drive away from the Hythe terminus of the line, and from time to time my parents would take me there when they visited me at the school.

I am glad to report that the line is still in operation, 75 years after I first knew of it. Hythe can easily be reached from the M20 motorway, which was not even dreamed of during my childhood.

More about my "romance" with trains will be featured in future blogs.

Red - another ambiguous color

2012-01-24T10:52:00.001-08:00

Red can be a very positive color. From red wine to red roses, I have nothing but good things to point out. Hearts are red, a red-letter day is to be treasured, Major Feasts in Anglican Prayer Books are printed in red--as were "rubrics" originally. "Red-blooded" folk--usually male!--are prized for their courage. Newly-minted cardinals are given a "red hat".

Yet red is also the color of danger, as in a red flag and red alert. We stop our cars at a red light. A "red light district" holds houses of "ill repute". When we are ashamed or embarrassed, our flushed cheeks betray a red face. Red is the color of Communism, not usually welcome in the circles most of us move in. "Red Ink" refers to a loss in business, etc. We should try to avoid going past the red line on instruments, such as a speedometer. "Rednecks" is not a positive description. We avoid "red-eye" flights if we can.

There is ambiguity, even if sound advice, in the old proverb: "Red sky at night, shepherd's delight; red sky at morning, shepherd's warning". In the Bay Area, Stanford supporters love red--but don't wear that color to a Cal game!

Blue, an ambiguous color

2012-01-17T15:37:00.000-08:00

Blue--particularly medium-dark blue--is my favorite color. It is Oxford blue, the color of my university, and star athletes are awarded a "blue". (Rumor has it that "blues" are also awarded at the Other Place, but in the Fens the folk use that insipid light blue.) Blue is also one of the two colors of my local favorite, the University of California's main campus in Berkeley. It is the color of the St. Andrew's Cross, to be seen on the Scottish flag. Being of half Scottish heritage, I support Scotland in sporting events, but I am happy that dark blue is also found on the Stars and Stripes - and on the Union Jack also, for good measure. As a former Naval Officer, I like "Navy Blue".

In many respects, blue is a happy color. My father kept a pedigree Jersey herd, and our cow barn at my first home was decorated with a lot of blue First Place prize certificates. As a Bow Group left-of-center Tory in England, i was glad to wear a blue rosette on Election day. We enjoy blue skies, and prefer sailing in blue water. A trustworthy ally may be considered "true blue". In a hierarchical society, the aristocracy is alleged to have "blue blood". Ships are made to sail, so it is positive when the Blue Peter flag is flying, indicating the vessel's imminent departure. Bluebells and Texas Blue Bonnets are attractive flowers. The Blue Grotto and a blue lagoon are renowned for their beauty. Blueberries are delicious. A Blue Ribbon committee normally commands respect. A possibly glorious future is "beyond the blue horizon".

Then there is the other side of the coin: If you are unhappy, you have the "the blues". Melancholy music is described as having blue notes. In freezing weather, we can turn blue. If you're afraid, you may be in a blue funk. A blue baby will die if not treated promptly. A censor uses a blue pencil to delete unacceptable text. Obscene humor is "blue". Some folk curse a "blue streak" Most of us dislike the insect known as a "bluebottle". Spoilsports may be "bluenoses". Blue Sky laws help limit fraud. A "Blue Norther" in Texas brings unwanted cold weather.

Sometimes the word emphasizes rarity, as in the phrase "once in a blue moon". Another neutral usage is the "blue plate special", our version of the plat du jour.

Indeed, this is a very ambiguous color....

More Google grief

2012-01-09T10:35:00.000-08:00

I had just posted last week's blog when something even more egregious showed up on my monitor.

I have three friends, who don't know each other, and live in three widely separated states. Let's call them Tom, Dick, and Harry. Over time each has sent me an amusing email, and so we have built up a pattern. One of them sends me an item, and I forward it to the others. (I don't forward everything: Tom sends the occasional somewhat raunchy story, and I prefer to delete such offerings than to risk offending Dick and Harry.)

Tom sends more items than the other two, and I seldom originate such emails. However, on this occasion Dick sends an amusing item, which I start to forward to Tom and Harry. Immediately, in a red font, there appears a message from Big Brother Google, suggesting that I would also like to send it to Dick! No way: he just sent it to me... The system isn't sophisticated enough to realize that.

I think there should be a way for me to opt out of this annoying kibitzing of my personal correspondence. Just because I know that Big Brother is reviewing every keystroke doesn't mean that I want to be verbally accosted by Google's asinine comments--in red, yet, as if I'm in danger.

I also noticed a message, presumably added by Google when I composed a email, to the effect that an invitation would accompany my outgoing email. I'm used to the incessant entreaties when I'm writing to someone not on Gmail, to "invite" them to join. Are automatic messages to that effect now being sent without my specific approval?

I'm not in any peril: I'm just seriously ticked off.

Google grief

2012-01-02T14:08:00.000-08:00

Don't get me wrong: I'm a fan of Google, particularly of its search engine and Gmail. But...

I'm not into secrets, and I have nothing to hide. I also understand why the system notes the names of those to whom I write. I can't prevent that. I often send emails to several addressees, and even more often send items to just one or two people. For some time now, Google has put a note on my draft of an email to (say) Tom, asking me if I also want to send it to Dick and Harry. I find this very irritating. I have no way of responding "Listen, Buttinsky, if I'd wanted to send it to them as well, I'd have added their names, already!" Also, I'm not enough of a techie to know whether I can eliminate this unwanted "feature", and (if so) how to do it. On only one occasion, after scores of emails, did I actually decide that I might as well add a cc. to "Dick", although this was far from vital.

I suppose I average about five emails a day from a very active church listserv. This has several hundred subscribers. Recently, all these emails have been prefaced by an unwanted message in a red font, warning me that maybe the message didn't actually come from the purported sender. I have yet to receive a message with that warning that wasn't from the named sender. I can usually spot a message from some hacker--including those ingenious ones that tell me a good friend has had all his money and his passport stolen in London, and begs me to send money to a "trusted" intermediary!

Why can't Google's clever programmers design an algorithm that picks up the fact that these are genuine contributions to the listserv?

"Centering around"

2011-12-26T10:37:00.000-08:00

Does anyone else share my distaste for this phrase? It seems contradictory. One can center "on" something. One can place items "around" things, and people can gather "around". But how can one "center around"? Enough of that short rant.

_______________________________________

This will be posted on "Boxing Day". (I apologize for the delay in a recent posting, but normally we post on Monday, so that the blog is available on Tuesday mornings in all the time zones in which my readers reside.) In the UK, Boxing Day is a recognized holiday--not in the US. Because Christmas fell on a Sunday this year, December 26 will be a Public Holiday here. My calendar notes "Christmas Observed", which isn't exactly how I would state it.

Traditionally, December 26 was the day when wealthier Brits would give their Christmas "boxes" to their servants and to the tradesmen and public servants who delivered goods, newspapers, and mail to their homes. When I was an employer in my insurance brokerage business, I handed out bonuses earlier, so that everyone had some money enough to go shopping for gifts and goodies before the holiday. These days, the letter carrier and the paper deliverer, the house cleaner, and our two wonderful assistants are the main recipients.

Wheelchairs

2011-12-21T13:41:00.001-08:00

A few years ago, hurrying to make a connection at Dulles Airport, I was struggling with a heavy carry-on, and I keeled over. I was soon up and on my way, but I felt weak and humiliated. A year or two later, I rebelled at Barbara's suggestion that perhaps I should take advantage of a wheelchair. Who, me? I was only 80. Sure, I can't walk as well as I used to do, but I'm otherwise healthy...

I began by just using a cane, but sometimes it's a long walk, and I began to need an arm, and it was hard to manipulate a "wheelie", and walk the long distances to be found at many airports.

Now, I don't own a wheelchair: not much use in the Berkeley hills. I do have a "walker", which I reluctantly use on level ground. But it wasn't easy to realize that it was as much for Barbara's sake as my own that I should stop relying on her arm and a cane, but should ask for a wheelchair at airports.

I do that now, and I have learned that there are compensations. Mostly we fly on Southwest, and we are both "pre-boarded", so we can choose seats in the second row. I take the aisle, and she takes the window. With luck, there's a vacant seat between us. We have met many interesting immigrants who push my wheelchair, and they are always grateful for the tip we give them. .

I have found flight attendants uniformly friendly, courteous, and helpful. Yes, having learned to accept my disability, I find air travel not that bad--although I do miss the "good old days" when I could check in a few minutes before take-off without having to go through "security".

Poppies

2011-12-12T14:48:00.001-08:00

Growing up in England, I always associated poppies with November 11, Armistice Day. When I was about 3, WWI had ended just a dozen years earlier, still much within the memories of all adults. On Armistice Day, one was expected to contribute to the British Legion in exchange for a red poppy. The larger the poppy, the more one gave. I recall we also contributed for a poppy to display on each of our cars. We were told that red poppies were features of the Flanders fields on which so many of our countrymen had fallen, during what we called the Great War.

The British have moved the commemoration to an adjacent Sunday, which is called "Remembrance Sunday". I am told that Armistice Day is still observed, but that the emphasis now falls on the Sunday.

Whereas the Flanders poppies are an attractive shade of red, our State Flower in California is the golden poppy. In many areas, these grow profusely, but an early lesson for me was that there is a state law against picking those beautiful poppies..

We think positively about those red and golden poppies, but there is another poppy which usually elicits a negative reaction: the opium poppy. I had often read about fruitless attempts to eradicate this important cash crop, and so I always had a very negative feeling about opium poppies. Recently, a good friend told me about the time (towards the end of the 19th century) in which the attitude towards opium was far more benign. A lot of paraphernalia is needed for opium smokers, and in its heyday this drug had many admirers, who became collectors of expensive equipment used by opium smokers. I was told that, although opium can be addictive, and those who abuse the drug often become very "lazy", for most smokers the effect is not harmful or lasting. They become very relaxed and carefree. My informant told me that it was commonplace for friends to share a pipe after a dinner party, much as smoking a cigar (after the ladies had left the dining room) was normal, during the years when I was growing up.

I seldom see poppies now: the opium poppy is illegal, I mustn't pick the golden poppy, and there aren't many red poppies around my home.

Pantomime!

2011-12-05T13:32:00.001-08:00

It has been many years since I have attended my last pantomime, a form of entertainment primarily enjoyed by the British. My experiences are mainly from London in the years before WWII, but the peculiar art form of the pantomime continued to flourish 50 years ago, and probably still does. Other major cities, such as Birmingham and Manchester, have their own productions.

Pantomimes have names that are familiar to most British children, usually relating to fairy stories or legends. Some examples are: Dick Whitington and His Cat; Puss in Boots; Little Red Riding Hood; Sleeping Beauty; and Beauty and the Beast.

There are certain additions to this entertainment. It is primarily designed to attract families with young children, and performances begin in December, lasting into at least early January, when many school children are on holiday.

The plot is usually very loosely based on the traditional story. Almost always there is a Principal Boy, (played by an attractive young woman in tights), and a Principal Girl, usually wearing a pretty dress. There is usually a Dame, played by an older man. There may be a horse (played by two men as "front legs" and "hind legs").

The Dame is usually played by a famous comedian; in some instances, a pair of comedians appear.

The show is designed to make use of popular songs. Any relationship to the plot is strictly coincidental.

A typical ending will bring the Principal Boy and Principal Girl together, perhaps singing a duet.

The humor (especially as introduced by the Dame) if often broad, but never quite obscene. The young people I knew usually tired of the "treat" of attending a pantomime after puberty. However, I did have one more experience of a pantomime. I was living and working in London after graduating from Oxford. Almost every week my best friend (Perry Calwell), also a graduate of Oxford, and I would visit a "settlement house". These were establishments to be found in the poorer quarters of a city, largely used by young people as a place to gather and entertain themselves. A few staff members, typically young university graduates, lived on the premises, while working at jobs in central London, a short bus ride or tube journey from the settlement house.

Perry and I, with support from the staff, decided to write and perform a pantomime one year. We soon faced the problem that one could never count on the appearance of cast members at our weekly rehearsals. Perry and I spent a lot of time and many evenings working on this project, despite our frustrations. We convinced ourselves that our efforts were worthwhile, as they did serve to keep a good many teenagers "out of trouble".

We did eventually put on a performance, which (despite it's major shortcomings) was very successful. At the end, Perry and I agreed that this was the last time we would try to put on a pantomime. I have not attended one since.

Tickets

2011-11-30T11:06:00.000-08:00

I have a special drawer where I keep advance tickets for the four musical groups and one theatrical company to which we subscribe. Recently, I searched feverishly for tickets for an upcoming concert by one of the Bay Area's outstanding early-music group Voices of Music. It was a productive search, because it turned up several out-of-date brochures, etc, which I was glad to recycle. But the tickets? Nah...

Fortunately, when I called the organizers, it was explained to me that I had to go online to download the tickets. Where online? She didn't have time then to explain, but she kindly promised to tell the ticket takers to let us in. That worked! We greatly enjoyed the program, including the work of the tenor, Thomas Cooley, in a program of Purcell's vocal and instrumental compositions.(Voices of Music offers a free High Definition online example of its work: go to www.voicesofmusic.org, and check it out.)

This is the second time that I have had so-called "tickets", that are actually simply printouts. I am accustomed to obtaining boarding passes for airline flights this way, but I don't like that system of obtaining "tickets" for artistic events. I am sure it saves printing costs for the organization, but I unrealistically wish that there were an option to receive real tickets.

This year, another organization has begun to require us to print out tickets, and for that concert series I have already printed out the paper tickets. When we attended a recent performance, I handed those clumsy sheets of paper to the ticket collector. I had hardly walked forward more than six paces before she came running towards me, saying "Here are your tickets!". We have reserved seats, and I really didn't want those printouts again: no one was going to attempt to occupy our seats, but obediently, I stuffed those sheets of paper into a pants pocket, anxious to recycle them as soon as we returned home.

There is a special feel about a pasteboard ticket, which I really like: it's a foretaste of future pleasure. Also, they don't take up much space. I can put them in a small envelope, and find them on the day of the performance. I do not look forward to the day when every artistic organization decides to save a few bucks by having subscribers print out "tickets" on those wretched pieces of computer paper.

Wiki leaks

2011-11-21T11:15:00.000-08:00

It's old news now, but do you remember the spirited defense put up by the Wikileaks founder, Julian Asange, when he was criticized for publishing supposedly secret diplomatic cables? I didn't agree with him at the time, although he had a point: that too much was being kept from the public. I was especially distressed when a further batch was released, in which the names of informants were not "redacted" (edited out), thus endangering informants and lessening the likelihood that we would obtain further good intelligence in the future.

I thought of these happenings recently. It seems that a well-known person had written a memoir, presumably for future publication after some possible revision. It seems that someone had obtained the draft material, and was selling it to an eager public. The memoirist is reported to have taken major umbrage at this, complaining bitterly at the leak. Such complaints will probably help the "thief" to sell more copies of the purloined material.

Who was the angry author? Ironically, it was Julian Asange.

Toothpaste, Eggs, and Fruit

2011-11-15T10:24:00.000-08:00

I recently needed to use some toothpaste from a tube that belongs to my wife. It had been squeezed from the middle.

Instinctively, I squeezed from the bottom up. It just seemed tidier that way! When I stop to think about it, I know it makes no real difference, but this pathetic example of my rigidity made me think of similar idiosyncrasies.

Any sane person taking an egg or two from a box of a dozen just takes one out without worrying about symmetry. Not Nigel! Half the time, when there is an odd number of eggs, absolute symmetry is impossible. But I always move eggs from one side to as close to the center as possible. With ten eggs, I leave one "top right" and one "bottom left", and so forth. I kid myself that centering the eggs reduces the likelihood of one or more eggs spilling. Come on! When has an egg been broken just because the eggs in the box are arranged haphazardly?

If I'm (say) arranging fruit in a bowl, it has to be evenly set out. That could mean all the apples together and likewise the oranges and the plums. Or maybe apple, orange. plum--then apple, orange plum again. It has to be a regular pattern!

You could say I am obsessively compulsive--or just anally retentive. Maybe. I simply like things arranged in an orderly fashion.

Would I behave this way if every move were monitored? I don't know. Maybe it stems from the time I trained as a Naval Officer, when we formed up for "Divisions" (a parade). the tallest took their place at the ends of the line; the shortest (usually me) in the center. Again, when putting books in a bookshelf, I typically "size" them, with the shortest in the middle--unless there are several books from a set, in which case they belong together.

Sometimes I remind myself of the character "Felix Ungar" (as spelled in the play and the movie: he became "Unger" in the TV series). as acted by Jack Lemmon in The Odd Couple. He is described as neurotic, neat, and uptight. I don't claim to be neat, however.

Standing Ovations, by Richard Reynolds

2011-11-07T11:30:00.001-08:00

I normally write every word of my blogs, but this is an exception. I totally agree with the writer's viewpoint, so I am naming him and forwarding his comments. Barbara and I attended the Berkeley Symphony concert which inspired his words.

Richard Reynolds is a French horn player and longtime member of the Berkeley Symphony and other orchestras. His report first appeared in the Berkeley Daily Planet online.

We’ve all been there.

The concert ends, the applause begins. A well-dressed woman up front (the chair of the board?) stands up. The other board members see her standing, and they stand up too.

Other audience members see people in front standing up, and they begin to stand as well. The conductor or soloist bows to the audience and exits stage right. By the time she returns, most of the audience is standing.

This is all wrong.

It misses the point.

A standing-ovation performance is one in which you are so excited at the end that the only possible action is to leap to your feet. If you have to think about it, forget it. The performance doesn’t deserve a standing ovation.

Bay Area audiences are way too ready to rise to their feet at the end of a performance. I have, on occasion, given in to the crowd and joined in when everyone around me has risen to his or her feet, but I do so grudgingly, and if I saw nothing exceptional about the performance, I will remain seated.

Last Thursday, when Johannes Moser performed the Shostakovich Cello Concerto No. 1 with the Berkeley Symphony, I didn’t have to think about it. Like most of the audience, I jumped to my feet before the last hair on his bow had snapped. Moser grabbed that concerto by the throat at the very beginning and never let go until he was finished.

It was a tour de force. I suppose one could take issue with the way he nearly threw his bow into the air when completing a particularly energetic phrase, but it never felt like theatrics. He was immersed in the concerto throughout.

Treat or Trick?

2011-10-31T17:11:00.000-07:00

Of course there's no way anyone is going to change the hallowed Halloween formula, but think about it: the first option is for the caller to receive a treat. Only if none is forthcoming is the caller supposed to perform a trick on the householder.

In practice, very few tricks are played, because almost all households are prepared to offer candy or other Treat. Can readers ever remember any tricks being played? I believe that most collectors of Treats don't have potential Tricks to play.

If you don't want to give out Treats, it's wise to be out of the house. It's really not kosher to trick an absent householder. If you want to challenge the caller, probably the best thing to do is to have lights on, music playing, and avoid opening the door. What would the caller do? Maybe turn over a garbage can. If one is a polluter, unraveling a length of TP is a possibility. Vandalism might tempt a teenager, but is unlikely from a child under ten.

Another point occurred to me when I was thinking about the annual conclusion to October: the phrase is really mixed up. The one treating doesn't trick. Fortunately, we don't have to hear "Give me a Treat, or I will Trick you". So, I guess we are stuck with: "Trick or Treat".

Applause

2011-10-24T11:47:00.001-07:00

Barbara's multi-talented musical daughter, Laurie Lewis, celebrated the centennial of the birth of Bill Monroe, the inventor of Bluegrass music, by organizing two successive nights of his music, either written by him or notable for his performance of it. This was at the beautiful newish venue of the Freight and Salvage Coffeehouse, in downtown Berkeley. What was described as the "core band" (Laurie, Tom Rozum, Chad Manning, Patrick Sauber, and a bass-player, filling in for the recently-departed Andrew Conklin) was supplemented by such old friends as Kathy Kallick and Keith Little. We attended both nights.

By now, I am accustomed to the practice of applauding "breaks"--brief solos on a single instrument. When I first began listening to jazz, from about 1940, it was the recorded music of such greats as Muggsy Spanier, Bix Beiderbecke, and Louis Armstrong, and any such breaks in a studio performance were free of audience appreciation. Only when I listened to live music did I hear folk clapping after an inspired impromptu break.

The practice of applauding breaks has certainly spread to Bluegrass. It's commonplace for each solo instrumentalist to take a short break in almost every number. There's a scatter of applause every time--too frequently, in my personal opinion. It has become a routine, and I can't see any change happening in my lifetime. It would take a major change to limit the applause to imaginative improvisation, where the applause really belongs.

Three commercial artists

2011-10-17T13:47:00.001-07:00

When I attended my British-style (age 8 to 13) prep school, one of my fellow students, about a year younger than I, was "Gilroy". We knew each other by our last names, and I have no recall of his first name, any more than I have of his father, but the latter was at the height of his fame. This arose primarily from his ads for Guinness, the famous brand of Stout. These featured the Toucan, which didn't seem to have much relationship to the product. They mentioned (suggestively, but I was too young to understand) "You know what Toucan do".

The Bateman family lived in Reigate, as we did, but I hardly knew H.M. Bateman, the famous cartoonist. I knew his two daughters, Diana and Monica, from attending parties when we were young. At the age of seventeen, I thought it was time for me to have a "girlfriend". In those innocent days, this was more of a "pen pal" relationship than anything else. I do remember that Monica was visiting with us, and accompanied my mother to Devonport, to say goodbye to me when I left for a tour of duty in the Far East.

Perhaps the most famous of the many cartoons that H.M. Bateman contributed to Punch and other magazines was the one which showed a jubilant member of Lloyd's chortling, while everyone else was looking gloomy. The caption read The Underwriter who missed the Total Loss.

The third famous commercial artist is our neighbor, Ralph McQuarrie, whose chief claim to fame is his work for George Lucas, especially in creating many of the characters in Star Wars. Ralph kindly gave us an original painting, showing a beautiful dying flower. Alas, Ralph has been suffering from Parkinson's disease for some time now, and can no longer exercise his artistry. Nevertheless, I think that his work on such characters as R2D2 will live on for many years.

Meeting Ladybird Johnson

2011-10-11T10:52:00.001-07:00

In June, 1976, when my elder son Jeremy had just graduated from Berkeley High School at the age of 17, we celebrated by taking a camping trip together.. We shared the driving, and covered a lot of ground. It was an exciting trip, because as we left Craters of the Moon National Monument, we began hearing reports that the Teton Dam had ruptured, causing widespread flooding.near Rexburg, Idaho. This was on our route to Teton National Park!

We found a camping spot, and spent a short night there in our sleeping bags. (We had no tent) It was in late June, and we were north and east of Berkeley, so our watches (not yet reset to Mountain Time) told us that it it was only about 4 a.m. Pacific Daylight Time when I awoke at dawn, and told a reluctant Jeremy that we should be on our way.

We were able to drive into Rexburg without difficulty, and soon found a diner, where we had a good breakfast, and checked for local news. We found that we could drive past what was left of the dam, toward Grand Teton National Park. That's a very beautiful area, but this isn't a detailed account of our trip, so i'll move along to our visit to nearby Yellowstone.National Park, which we eagerly explored, seeing all the variety of wildlife.and other features, such as Old Faithful.

We drove up to a viewpoint, where a river runs far below. We were almost alone, but I soon recognized Lady Bird Johnson, the widow of President Lyndon Baines Johnson, who had died three and a half years earlier. Ladybird was accompanied by just one staff person, who didn't intercept us, as moved forward to introduce ourselves. There was no-one else in the immediate vicinity, and Ladybird was friendly and welcoming. We chatted with her for a few minutes, probably talking about the dam break and the beauty of our surroundings. I don't recall Jeremy's reaction: I'll send him a copy of this, and see what he remembers. To me, it was a highlight: one doesn't often get to chat to a former First Lady. I'll always remember her gracious Texan manner to a pair of Californians, met in a corner of Wyoming.. .

Meeting Jimmy Carter

2011-10-11T10:52:00.000-07:00

It was several years after the end of his Presidency, but he still liked to "press the flesh". I preferred to fly into Gatwick on my visits to the UK, because it was much less crowded than Heathrow, before the buildings of Terminals 4 and 5 there. This meant flying on Delta and changing planes in Atlanta, but in those days my mother was still alive, and the drive from Gatwick to where she was living in Kent was much shorter than that from the larger airport.

My seat in Business Class was on the right side of the plane, but after boarding I noticed Jimmy Carter working down the left side from his seat in First Class, shaking hands with the passengers. It's not every day that one gets a chance to meet a former President of the United States, so I moved over to an empty seat on the left side of the plane. Sure enough, Carter walked into the middle section of the plane, and began greeting the passengers there. Soon he was shaking my hand, and telling me what a pleasure it was to travel with me that day. Content now that I had something to report to my wife, I moved back to my assigned seat on the right side of the plane.

Carter walked back into the crowded Coach class section, and continued to shake hands as if he were still running for election. When he reached the rear of the plane, he started walking back, shaking hands with everyone sitting on the right side of the plane. When he reached Business Class again, I felt somewhat embarrassed, but he clearly didn't recognize me or catch on to what I had done. Once again, he shook hands warmly, and told me what a pleasure it was for him to be traveling with me today!

Yes, I did have something to tell Barbara when she met me at SFO later that day!

A perfect squelch

2011-09-26T13:19:00.001-07:00

Because Barbara's multi-talented daughter, Laurie Lewis, was appearing (as she does every year) at Not Strictly Bluegrass, we went over to Golden Gate Park a few years ago, and joined the crowds.This is an annual event, free to the public, funded entirely by the generosity of wealthy financier Warren Hellman, who also happens to be an enthusiastic banjo player with a band called The Wronglers. Warren pays the performers generously: Laurie says it is her best- paying gig of the year, and I have heard unconfirmed reports that it costs Warren some $2 million annually.

The Main Stage featured headliners like Emmy Lou Harris and Joan Baez that year, but Laurie was playing at the next level, on a stage about a quarter of a mile away. Barbara & I walked along a quiet path towards Laurie's location, and then I saw Warren and a friend walking toward us.

Laurie had introduced me to Warren elsewhere, though I don't believe he recognized me. I had also met him at an Investment Forum, put on by the San Francisco Foundation, for which he was an important member of its Investment Committee. I hadn't expected to run in to him, and I wanted to add my voice to those who expressed their gratitude to him for his gift to the people of San Francisco.

I blurted out "Warren, I didn't expect to see you here" (meaning, to encounter him along a lonely path). Immediately, he replied "I don't know why not. After all, it is my party". Then they were off, leaving me speechless, embarrassed, and feeling pretty stupid.

A perfect squelch.

Elephant Heels

2011-09-19T11:10:00.001-07:00

I had been chatting with a church friend (now deceased) in a distant state, and realized that her husband would soon be there for dinner with their two children. I asked her what they would be eating. She said "Elephant Heela".Huh? What did she mean. She laughed, and explained that this was the family's private name for leftovers.

I am reminded of that, because I am writing this at our house in Colorado. Since we were last here in May, we have lent the place to three different sets of people. We invite them to help themselves to what they find: we don't want them having to shop for (say) pepper and other spices. What happens is that they buy groceries and don't finish them. so they leave them in our refrigerator.

When we arrive, being "frugal" (to put it mildly) we consider it our duty to finished opened containers. Hummus, for instance, would never be my first choice for a lunch item, but when we found three different containers of it, I have cheerfully been eating it with some very tasty crackers. My more usual choice of baguette, Black Forest Ham, and a good cheese, has had to wait.

I do transport small quantities of foodstuffs by air, between Boulder County and Berkeley, and vice versa. This isn't a problem with checked baggage, but on the way to Colorado, my carry-on bag was searched, and a container of cream cheese (with chives and onions) was confiscated. Why? The TSA person said it was "liquid". Huh? A mite viscous, methinks. I didn't argue, but I did wonder whether it would end up spread on someone's bagel. But I digress.

Another place where visitors leave items is the shower. An amazing variety of shampoos, conditioners, skin lotions, and the like are there. Some of these we'll use--but we did throw out some bright red unidentifiable pills. that found their way to my desk.

Passed

2011-09-13T13:06:00.001-07:00

The past participle of the verb "to pass" is very useful. Sometimes, it's very positive, such as when one has "passed the Bar" or "passed one's driving test.

Sometimes it's neutral, as in "We passed your house on our way into town",
.
Sometimes it's ambiguous, depending on one's point of view, as in "The Senate passed the re-authorization bill".

Sometimes it's descriptive, as in "Smith passed the ball to Jones, who promptly scored".

Sometimes it's part of unhappy news, such as "Tom drank two more shots of whiskey, and then passed out"

Sometimes it's sad, as in "my husband passed away last month"

Lately, I have noticed increasing use of the euphemism "passed", unqualified, meaning "died". If it is someone's belief that there is some sort of future life (such as the Christian concept of Heaven), I have no quarrel with their belief that a loved one has "passed" on to another place. However, far too often it is people who have no such faith that say someone has "passed". If they "passed", what was their destination?.

Three small gripes

2011-09-06T09:45:00.000-07:00

1. For some months now, our daily newspaper has come with one page wider than the rest. Presumably, the newspaper makes additional advertising revenue by using this extra strip of paper for an ad. I personally doubt that there is much value in this for the advertiser or for the newspaper, and I find it quite annoying that the pages are not cut flush. This makes it harder to fold up the paper neatly.

2. Tiny sticky labels now appear on most pieces of store-bought fruit. Few consumers will base their decision on whether or not to buy the fruit, based on those labels. They are a nuisance to remove, and to dispose of properly. I especially deplore them on soft fruit, as removing them easily causes bruising and tearing of the skin. They are even worse than the larger ads, such as the one stuck to the front page of my morning newspaper, offering a discount on men's underwear. Grrr!

3. When I order refills of my prescription drugs by mail, it saves a trip to the pharmacy, standing in line, and paying with cash or by credit card. (The mailing center has my card on file, and doesn't charge for mailing.) So far, so good. But when the package arrives, the problem begins. The pharmacy use a sealed plastic bag, almost impossible to tear open--I need to use a knife or letter opener to pierce the envelope, which I can then tear open. What do I find inside, in addition to the refill? Four or five pages of paper with cautions and instructions, which go directly into our paper recycling container.

When I picked up the first batch of the pills at the pharmacy, I had to wait for a qualified pharmacist to take me aside (for confidentiality), and listen to her spiel about the need to take just one pill at the same time each day, with food; if i missed one dose, not to take two the next day, and so on, blah, blah, blah. Now I, of all people, having trained countless architects and engineers about professional liability loss prevention, well understand why drug dispensers have to do this, but do they have to send me the same information in writing every few months? Couldn't they just insert a note along these lines? "Our records show that you received instructions on the use of this medication on May 31, 2003. If you would like to be reminded of these instructions, please call 800--111-9999 during regular business hours (M-F, 8-5)."

Spy in the Office

2011-08-31T10:59:00.001-07:00

It is no secret that those very useful Search Engines have sophisticated programs to harvest what we type, to help target "audiences" for products. I don't have a fetish for privacy, and I don't buy much "stuff" these days. That analysis of my online activity shows that I'm a Classical music and travel lover, comfortably off, retired and married Episcopalian with an interest in environmental causes and our grandchildren, is fine by me. I don't visit porno sites, seek extramarital liaisons, or even do much online shopping: I'm not of great interest to marketers.

Lately, I've noticed some innovations that bring home how pervasive is this "eavesdropping" on my jottings. When I open email from certain sites, such as a church-related list-serv, a warning appears, to the effect that the purported sender may not be the actual sender. So far, after a couple of hundred of these warnings, every listed sender has been the real sender. Further, when I do receive spam (a rare occurrence), I can readily identify it. Most of this "malware" invasion comes from Canadian drugstores, anxious to undercut Kaiser's pharmacy, and trade illegally with me.by mail..

I tolerate these intrusions for two reasons: in theory, they are for my protection but, more significantly, I can't prevent them and continue to use.such programs.

Much worse is another "helpful" new feature. Let's say I have sent a message to Tom, Dick, and Harry, and on some future date choose to send an email to Tom alone. On the screen will appear a message: "Consider sending this also to Dick and Harry."
Dognabit, if I had wanted to include them I would have done so! Do you take me as hopelessly incompetent, just because you know I'm an octogenarian, and thus may be suffering from the onset of some form of senile dementia? Couldn't I at least opt out of this pushy kibitzer's "suggestions"? Is there an app for that? Bah!

Oh, well! If I were more technically savvy, I could design a program that automatically generated a response that said (say) "Stay out of my emails, Nosey Parker". Alas, that would probably trigger an immediate reply, offering me 50% off the regular price of an online Anger Management class...

Edit! Edit!

2011-08-31T10:58:00.001-07:00

I guess I may as well post another "gripe", to get them all out of my system. This relates to the courteous way to send a reply to an email.

The only sensible reason to send back previous messages is to leave just enough to assist the reader to understand one's response. Unfortunately, too many folk just hit the Reply button, and type away.

If there's just one message, it's not much of a problem, but I belong to several church-related groups, and often a topic is commented on by many different people--and, on many occasions, the thread will contain more than one message from the same source.

Last week, I received a message on a very long thread. There were five previous messages in the same thread, and they weren't all brief. I had to spend what seemed like two minutes scrolling, scrolling, to get to the first message so that I could delete the long string of peoples' opinions.

Hence my request to those who post: edit you response, please!

Solitaire

2011-08-15T14:04:00.001-07:00

When I didn't have a computer, I sometimes passed the time by using a deck of cards, for what in the UK we called "Patience". In the US, we usually call solo games "Solitaire".

For some years now, I have been restricting myself to one hand of "Free Cell" a day, to control my addiction to the game. However, when I began playing this game a few years ago, I didn't really "get it". The version of it that I now play online, allows one to go back to start if one gets "stuck", or to go back a few steps if you see a better way out. With that, I brought my success average from somewhere around 50% up to about 98%. However, unless you restart at zero, the statistics continue to build up game after game. Recently, I worked up from that low level, as far as 90%. I recently achieved that level, including all those old sub-par games.

At that point, I decided to try to start all over. Unfortunately, there was some kind of problem with the system so that I found it hard to delete the last unsuccessful game. It kept appearing every time that I tried to restart from scratch. (Every time you have to abandon an incomplete game, that's one loss in the statistics.) Finally, I found that there were some controls that I could apply, so that I could start over at zero. At the time of writing, I am still at 100%, but that reflects only 26 successful games out of 26 tries!

I know that in due course I will come across insoluble deals, and I'm ready for that. I just never want to fall below 95% again!

Cheese

2011-08-08T14:39:00.001-07:00

I don't think I have ever met a cheese I didn't enjoy. I'm not fond of Norway's gjeitost, a sweetish brown cheese. (According to legend, the Norwegians managed to keep this foodstuff from German hands during WW2, by telling them it was laundry soap!) My other favorite Norwegian cheese is Jarlsberg, as long as it hasn't dried hard.

We buy almost all our cheese from The Cheeseboard, a North Berkeley institution that maintains a large selection--and also grants a generous discount to "senior citizens", which increases every decade. Barbara & I now receive 20% discount. (At 100, we are told "What you see is what you get". Fifteen years to go!)

The Cheeseboard was closed last week for a short vacation, and so I had to buy some of its outstanding pizza, needed for last Saturday, ahead of time, and freeze it. I am also addicted to their baguettes and English muffins, but this blog is about cheese.

There are several hundred cheeses from France alone. What follows are some of the great cheeses i have personally enjoyed, from several different countries. I haven't included grated cheeses: this is just about

I enjoy many English cheeses. Lately one of my favorites, the orange-colored Shropshire Blue, has been tasting especially good. I like it as an alternative to another all-time favorite, Stilton. Another favorite is Cotswold with Chives.

Californians love Brie, and I am fond of it when it is ripe, but I really prefer Camembert. Another favorite French cheese is Bleu d'Auvergne. I mustn't forget Boursin, Epoisses, Roquefort, or Tomme de Savoie.

From Germany comes Cambazola, from Switzerland Gruyère, Appenzell, and Emmenthal, from Italy Gorgonzola, and from Greece Feta.

Sharp Canadian Cheddar often beats all except artisanal English cheddar. Old Quebec is delicious, a nose ahead of Black Diamond to my taste. They are very similar to Vermont's Cabot.

And, yes, I do enjoy Wisconsin's version of Limburger....

There's a French saying that goes somewhat like this: a meal without cheese is like a woman with only one eye. (Well, it sounds better in French.)

Meeting John Stott

2011-08-01T13:28:00.000-07:00

This great English evangelist died recently, and the papers have carried helpful obituaries. They list some online biographies, and I was delighted to read one that gave credit to The Rev E.J.H. Nash (known as "Bash" to all who knew him) for influencing John when he was a Cambridge undergraduate. This brought up some happy memories. I first knew them both, over 70 years ago.

In those days, "Bash" was the chief organizer of the "VPS Camps". These were under the auspices of the Children's Special Services Missions, which ran Evangelical activities at the seaside during the summer holidays (vacations).

"VPS" stood for "Varsity and Public Schools". They issued a short prospectus, which used the word "Christian" just once.
They promised recreation and supervision, designed to attract parents who could afford the relatively modest expense, and were content to part with their sons for a spell during the school vacations. (If there was an equivalent opportunity for girls, I have no idea!)

These "camps" were held at a minor public school (Clayesmore), located in the village of Iwerne Minster, in the county of Dorset. Boys were told to bring their bicycles, and take a train to a small station (Semley), a few miles north of Clayesmore. There they were met by one of the staff; luggage was put into a vehicle, and the boys cycled down to the school.

I was recruited for my first camp in the summer of 1940 by a wonderful teacher, Harold Elborne, known as "Jumbo" to the campers. "Mr. Elborne" was the "Maths Master" (teacher) at my excellent Prep School, Port Regis, which flourishes to this day. He also taught Scripture and Engineering. For many years, "Jumbo" was one of a few older members of Bash's staff, most of whom ( including John Stott) were undergraduates.

It was wartime, and in the summer we worked for about five hours a day as farm laborers, with a break for a packed lunch and a soft drink. (In the other vacations, we did "forestry", clearing brush, etc.) But the real purpose of the camp soon became clear: to indoctrinate us to become evangelical Christians. The efforts were unrelenting--but I still had a great time, and returned some ten times. I learned a lot about the bible and other aspects of the Christian life. I just didn't "buy" the fundamentalism of the evangelical wing of the Church of England.

John Stott was impressive, even then, clearly the most promising of Bash's young men.

His mother took him as a boy to All Souls, Langham Place, in the West End of London, and that remained the center of his church life, as curate, vicar, and emeritus, during the many years when he was traveling all over the world.

Bris

2011-07-26T10:31:00.001-07:00

Several jurisdictions in the US have introduced--or talked of introducing--legislation to ban male circumcision. It is suggested that this is in line with changing attitudes, so that this is seen as preventing the mutilation of a human body before the child involved can decide for himself. Such a proposal is reported to be on the November ballot in San Francisco. There is also talk of a proposed State law that would prevent such a proposal as the one proposed for San Francisco.

I can't imagine that such an ordinance would pass without an exception on religious grounds, which would permit the mohel to continue to practice his trade. We are assured that this isn't an idea that's really "anti-semitic", that misleading phrase which is the euphemistic version of anti-Jewish.

I was not circumcised as an infant--or later, even!--but my sons were, soon after birth, as was generally routine fifty years ago in local hospitals. I don't think the doctor waited until the eighth day, since the procedure was being undertaken for "hygienic reasons" I sometimes wondered whether this practice was influenced by Jewish doctors, but we were told that there are health reasons for this procedure, largely for a reduced chance of certain cancerous conditions. It occurs to me that Jewish boys were not circumcised by an obstetrician, but were "done" in accordance with religious tradition.

Personally, I find this ritual to be unfortunate, and a relic from a more primitive age. But I am not Jewish, and this is not my business. It is interesting to me that not only Orthodox, Conservative and Reformed Jews continue this practice, but many secular Jews, who may never darken the door of a synagogue, continue the practice. Any move to change what is clearly significant to virtually all Jews, would need to start somewhere, and it seems to me extremely unlikely that this would happen in the foreseeable future.

For the rest of us, I don't think that an absolute prohibition is desirable. Nowadays, I tend to prefer adult baptism, rather than the more traditional infant baptism, but both my sons were baptized soon after birth, and I am not convinced that there is permanent damage to children who are baptized before they can make a decision for themselves. One cannot be "unbaptized", but my guess is that a high proportion of those baptized as infants simply "drop out" of Christianity. I believe that the parents of male Jewish babies should have the right to have them circumcised.

The word of my subject here (bris) actually comes from an Ashkenazi (or Yiddish) pronunciation. "Brit milah" is the full formal name of the procedure.

The males I really feel sorry for are those who convert to Judaism after infancy. It's a painful procedure--but I have never heard of any concession: if a male Gentile wants to become a Jew, he must sacrifice his foreskin.

Sorted

2011-07-18T14:13:00.001-07:00

I'm not a particularly tidy person, but I do find joy in putting items in the right order. This can be as simple a task as sorting out cutlery from the dishwasher, putting knives, forks, and spoons in the right place in a drawer. I don't waste a lot of time on computer games, but I do allow myself a daily hand of Free Cell, a form of solitaire, in which the object is to sort a deck of cards from a random formation into neat piles of 13 cards in each of the four suits.

When I was an Oxford undergraduate, each December I would work a daily eight-hour shift at the main Tunbridge Wells post office, sorting mail destined for the West of England. I found this deeply satisfying, especially when my detailed knowledge of the geography enabled me to complete an address, secure in the knowledge that the mail would reach its destination in ample time for Christmas. My "station" was set up for two sorters, but from the first year I persuaded my supervisor that I could handle the "West Road" alone.

The British have developed a specialized meaning for "sort": to straighten out or correct something. Example: "We'll soon have this sorted", said in an optimistic tone, when something significant has gone wrong. (Note that they don't add "out", although the meaning is similar to our use of "sorted out".) I find this comforting: it helps me minimize my tendency to become irascible and intolerant with bureaucratic mistakes.

We have been very satisfied for about thirty years with GEICO handling our car insurance, but in recent months we had some problems. It seemed simple: the Volvo we had kept in Colorado for a few years, having brought it from California, was once again in Berkeley, and we had bought a used Subaru for Colorado. This seemed to buffalo the polite clerks when we called GEICO--not usually from the same office, because in their system GEICO offers service from many locations, not from the same place. I became frustrated at unexpected incompetence, although I really try--and sometimes succeed--in being clear and calm.

Luckily, one of our two excellent part-time helpers (Nancy Laws) is superb in dealing with bureaucrats. She is calm, firm, demanding, and terrier-like in following through until she is satisfied.

When we have problems with merchants, banks, and authorities, our best answer is "Let Nancy sort it."

Two British Peculiarities

2011-07-12T08:29:00.001-07:00

1. When Barbara and I were in England recently, we were amazed at the number of pages in English newspapers. One Sunday paper had 110 pages, with three additional separate supplements. Imagine the Sunday edition of the "New York Times" every day...

I also noticed the strange British habit of treating the names of football teams and county cricket sides as plurals. For example, (imaginary): "Villa seek new manager". I can interpret the shorthand names of teams (in this case "Aston Villa"), but I still find it very strange to see a singular subject and a plural verb. I suppose the logic (if you can call it that) is that sports teams necessarily involve a number of players, and the singular noun becomes an implied plural.

Most American football teams have a "coach", normally paid much more than the General Manager. In UK soccer, the "Manager" does the coaching, usually with several assistants.

2. Important features of British life are the two annual "Honours Lists". One of these is issued as the New Year opens, and the other is the so-called Birthday Honours List. This is issued on the Queen's "official birthday". It is also an occasion for celebration and pageantry, all good for the tourist trade. (A supplementary List may be issued on the resignation of the Prime Minister, etc.)

Not only politicians are featured in the Honours Lists. Movie stars, sports figures, and many other people from all walks of life are recognized. Few new hereditary titles are added, although occasionally an existing hereditary Baron (say) may be raised to a Viscount, and so forth. There are many Life Peers being created, however.

An exception is made for Royalty. The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge (aka William & Kate) are wildly popular, and their wedding was the Event of the Season.

The Queen's actual birthday is on April 21, in the early spring. In some years that will be a bright sunny day, with displays of daffodils in the many London parks and elsewhere, but there is the old saying that "April showers brings May flowers", and the ever-present threat of rain often makes it unsuitable for parades and picnics. Also, there aren't many tourists around in April - they are more likely to be spending "April in Paris".

I don't know who invented the concept of an "official birthday" at the time of its origin in 1748, but I hope the clever person who came up with the idea received a suitable award in one of the Honours Lists.

Cloak

2011-07-05T07:28:00.000-07:00

In my recent blog about euphemisms, especially words and phrases about--er, bathroom fixtures--I omitted a common British word: "cloakroom". There is an ambiguity with the word: in some places (such as a theater or restaurant in colder climes than California's) the room so designated is indeed a place to store hats, coats, briefcases, etc. It is usually a place presided over by a woman, who often makes a pretty good income from tips.

"Cloak" as a verb is a useful word, implying a complete covering, as in "the ground was cloaked in snow". As a noun, I visualize a "cloak" to be a garment with no buttons, and probably no sleeves. It is the sort of outdoor covering that Little Red Riding Hood would have worn with her hood. It would go well with an opera hat--a sort of collapsible top hat--and a silver-headed cane: in fact, there is such a garment as an "Opera Cloak", very similar to a "cape", but longer, also designed to be worn over evening clothes. We don't see many such cloaks in California now.

We mostly encounter "cloak" these days in the phrase "cloak & dagger". Sometimes this refers to espionage, and always implies secrecy and mystery. The phrase probably originated from a form of one-on-one combat, in which a cloak was used to disguise the movement of the dagger, and generally to distract the opponent. (Compare a matador's use of the muleta to distract the bull he is about to dispatch.) Some considered this form of fighting deceptive and even "dishonest", by comparison to fencing openly with a rapier or other dueling weapon.

Probably the most famous cloak in English history is the one deemed to have played a vital role in what is considered a great example of "chivalry". Virtually every English schoolchild knows the legend, which may be based on an actual incident. Reportedly, Sir Walter Raleigh cast down his cloak over a puddle, to protect Queen Elizabeth's shoes from the mud. Indeed, this may be considered chivalrous, but I sincerely doubt that Sir Walter was expected to wash out his own cloak! That would have been a job for one of his servants.

Euphemisms

2011-06-27T12:58:00.001-07:00

I don't want to offend anyone, so if you find this topic distasteful, skip this one.

A friend from the South told me an anecdote about a "rooster". Just back from the U.K., I note that Brits don't hesitate to call the male bird by its original name.

My thoughts turn to euphemisms (in both countries) for the place where my British contemporaries used to go to "spend a penny"--that's the coin they used to need, to obtain access to a "public convenience". In Britain, the upper and middle classes go to the "loo". I noticed that some Brits (notably on the BA planes which took us to and from Heathrow) have adopted the Canadian term "washroom", which I had not heard across the Atlantic until this last trip. That's really a variant on "lavatory", the normal term when I was growing up: it wasn't a place where you went to wash. I heard "bog" used in England, also.

At my British "prep school" (aged 8 through 13), matron was always ready to hand out a laxative to those who answered in the negative to "Have you been through?"

In the U.S., I tend to prefer "john" to describe the "s***house", where a stepdaughter once expanded my vocabulary by saying she was going to "dump a load".

In the British Navy, I learned to use the term widely known by yachtsmen and others on vessels of all types, the "head". I've read of the place being called the "Jakes", but not met that term in conversation. "Toilet" is widely used by English speakers. "Would you like to wash your hands?" really means "Do you want to use the loo?".

Another expression from the UK, widely used, is "W.C." this stands for "water closet", and probably dates from the 19th century, when this invention superseded the outhouse. The famous plumbing specialist of the early 19th century, Thomas Crapper, has given his name to the water closet, although he didn't actually invent it. He might be dismayed by knowing how the first four letters of his name have come to be used.

Names

2011-06-20T23:25:00.000-07:00

One of the major differences between my native land of England (I am about half English and half Scottish) and the U.S. is the profusion of first names in this country. There are some bizarre names in England, such as "Marmaduke", but they are rarely encountered. "Quentin" was about as exotic a friend's name as any I can recall. It helped that his last name was "Hockliffe"
When I see a name that is new to me, I try to puzzle out its country of origin. With last names this is often easier, as with -ian endings for those of Armenian ancestry, or German-Jewish names ending in -stein. I get most French, Italian, and Spanish names right.

A new one on me was "Rogelio". My guess was that this was Spanish, reminding me of "Julio", and that turns out to be correct. It's not a common name, however. I came across the name in a story about a computer hacker, a successful one responsible for $36 million in fraudulent transactions. He is reported to have stolen more than 675,000 credit card accounts.

What made the news story especially memorable was his last name: Hackett...

Assault Weapons

2011-06-15T10:14:00.000-07:00

Amid all the earlier discussion of the causes and future remedies relating to the Tucson murders, there has been relatively little said or written about the weapon used.

Barbara and I have for many years been in support of Sarah Brady in her efforts to bring about some form of gun control in our country.

We would prefer the type of gun control prevailing in such countries as the UK. This has worked well. There are strict limits on gun ownership, and the rarity of incidents involving any form of such weapons as handguns and rifles speaks for itself.

However, I know this form of control will not work in the United States. This is not just because of the successful efforts of the NRA to crush any attempt to limit the ownership of guns. As a boy of about 10, I was taught target shooting (at school) with a .22 rifle . My father later gave me my own .22, but I never used this after 1939. I had no problem with registering this gun, but I had given up shooting at targets, and never did try to use it on rabbits - or rats, for that matter.

One day, when we were living in Devon, a very polite police officer knocked at our door, and suggested that I might allow him to take away my rifle. Perhaps this was when there was a justifiable fear of invasion. We lived near Slapton Sands, a wonderful stretch of beach that was used by the army to practice landings before the invasion of France. The idea may have been to round up as many weapons as possible out of fear that they might be used against our own forces, although I have come to doubt this explanation.

Living in England, we never felt any need to retain some firepower in our home, and we have continued to feel this way in California. We do realize, however, that we are in a minority, and that what I consider a twisted interpretation of a clause in the constitution permitting citizens to bear arms, in case they were needed for service in the militia has been stretched so that it severely limits any restriction on firearms. I have come to accept that ownership of handguns, as well as shotguns and rifles will be legally protected in our lifetime.

There will be no restrictions on weapons used for hunting or self defense.

What I find almost incredible is that we do not regulate assault rifles, including such "semi-automatic" weapons as the one used in Arizona. What purpose does an AK47 or other similar weapon have except to engage in multiple killings? Could we not find a middle way, accepting our nation's love affair with certain firearms, but absolutely ban such terrible killing machines as can be readily bought at gun shows in most states?

In other words, instead of arguing as to whether talk radio, video games, and aggressive speech are responsible for "crazy" behavior, can't we do something to control excessive weaponry?

Favorite Authors

2011-06-06T10:56:00.001-07:00

When we arrived for the wedding reception on Saturday, we were told that our table was "Bronte". One of the many creative touches set up by Justine and Joe was to name the tables after their favorite authors. That's not all: instead of some wasteful "party favor": in front of each of over a hundred guests was a paperback book to take away: mine was Kurt Vonnegut's "Slaughterhouse Five". I had read this brilliant anti-war novel years ago, but we didn't have a copy at home.

This put me in a reminiscent mood. Over the years there has always been at least one author whose every book I have greedily reached for when available. I suppose that after my sister taught me to read at the age of four I began with Beatrix Potter, but soon I graduated to Thornton W. Burgess, a Canadian writer of children's books about wild animals. I think I had begun to enjoy the works of Arthur Ransome about children who camped out near the lake district, the first in the series being "Swallows and Amazons". These stories were based on real families he knew. For humorous reading, there were the "William" books by Richmal Crompton.

At my British-style boarding prep school (ages 8 to 13), I soon found the adventure stories of Percy F. Westerman, and read all those in the school library. At about this time I discovered John Buchan, thanks to an inspiring math teacher, who read "The Thirty-Nine Steps" to us in class after our exams were over, and finished it out of school hours. I then took hold of all the "Saint" books by Leslie Charteris I could find. They were formulaic, and I enjoyed the relationship between Simon Templar (the "Saint") and "Pat", with whom he cohabited but did not marry.

Soon I moved on to the works of Graham Greene, whose two suppressed youthful works I managed to read, years later, knowing that they had to have been in the Bodleian collection at Oxford. Then I discovered Evelyn Waugh, and read every one of his published works. I also read every one of Jane Austen's works while at Oxford--much more entertaining than "Beowulf".

As time passed, I began reading all Patrick O'Brian's great Naval adventures. John Le Carré attended Lincoln College, Oxford, a few years after my time there, and I have read every one of his books. I have read almost all of Anthony Trollope's works. I read all of Laurie R. King's books, and look forward to her future writings.

Sometimes I have used Recorded Books: the abilities of most of their readers make the printed word come alive. For many years, I have enjoyed the "Scarpetta" novels of Patricia Cornwell, about a woman forensic pathologist, although I was disappointed by her latest, "Port Mortuary".

There you have it: fifteen gifted writers of all sorts, who have given me enormous pleasure over the past eighty years. I have enjoyed many other works, but I have limited this list to writers whose every word has drawn me into reading. I encourage any persons reading this to send me their own list of favorite authors.

More on Bradley Manning

2011-05-30T13:05:00.001-07:00

Pfc. Manning has been moved from the U.S. Marines brig, but is still in prison, with no trial date announced. I recommend that readers here research his name online. I only have space for a short comment on an ethical question. A recent 60 Minutes episode featured an interview with the man (Adrian Lamo) who reported him to the authorities. Lamo and Manning became friends online, and Manning revealed that he was the source of the Wikileaks materials.

Lamo told the interviewer that he was faced with a dilemma: to betray a friend or keep his knowledge to himself. He says that (in effect) he put his country first, only reluctantly reporting that Manning had confessed to him that he was the source of the leaks.

Lamo said that he wanted to stop the leaks, but that Manning told him it was too late. It occurred to me that there was a third choice: to tell Manning that the leaking of secrets had to stop:if it continued, Lano would have to turn him in. I also think it likely that good detective work might have revealed Manning's involvement in time, anyway. Admittedly, this is speculation.

I continue to wonder at the folly of the army in allowing any junior soldier, let alone a clearly disgruntled one, to have access to secret documents. Manning had been reduced in rank from Specialist to Pfc., for allegedly punching a woman officer in the face, and had been informed that he was to be discharged. At that point, he should no longer have been allowed access to sensitive materials.

No-one comes out well in this story: not Manning, not Lano, not the army, including those who made him live in solitary confinement in harsh conditions, and not the politicians who allowed their anger at the leaks to cause them to mistreat Manning.

In my opinion, Manning should be brought to trial promptly, and his eventual sentence should take into account his cruel incarceration over the past year.

The Oldest Profession

2011-05-24T13:38:00.001-07:00

In recent years I have increasingly heard or read the term "Sex Worker". As a feminist and "concerned citizen", I deplore the exploitation of young women, lured abroad and forced into prostitution. I well understand that references to "sex workers" is typically sympathetic to the plight of those who are forced to turn "tricks" to pay for food and shelter.

I guess one of my reasons for disliking the phrase is the juxtaposition of "sex" and "work".Sexual activity, at its best, and when it is what the lawyers call "consensual", is joyful activity. Musing on the concept, I began to run over in my mind the many terms used in English to describe those who "play for pay". These terms are by no means synonymous; let's consider some of those terms, and what lies behind the words.

Starting at the pinnacles of the profession, I like the term "courtesan".I visualize an intelligent beauty, not promiscuous, but able to choose her lovers from the ranks of Society, the European equivalent of a well-trained geisha.

An ambiguous term is "harlot". In the bible, it seems to call for approval, in the person of Rahab, who helped in the capture of Jericho. However that may just be from an Israelite perspective. In general the term (which is seldom used today) simply means a woman who "sells her body"

. A "prostitute" is a generic "sex worker".

Another generic term is "hooker", but the origin of the word has nothing to do with the Civil War General Joe Hooker. Wikipedia led me to the actual origin, via a four-minute video. (You will find Marina Orlova is not your typical philologist.)..

"Streetwalkers" ply their trade outdoors, taking their "johns" to their apartment or a cheap hotel.

A "call girl" sets up her appointments.to meet her "clients" at the location (usually a hotel or motel) of their choice.

A "tart" is usually an "amateur". A "woman of easy virtue" is also typically an amateur. A "lady of the night" is typically a streetwalker.

There are other terms with the implication of sexual activity, often words used of women being disparaged by a man: "slut", "floozie", "bitch" and so forth. Shakespeare wrote of a child "ditch-delivered by a drab".
"Whores" are looked down on by most folk who use the term.

Perhaps I should disclose not merely that I have never paid for sex, and that I'm not obsessed by the topic. I am just a lover of words!.

Partings

2011-05-16T09:22:00.001-07:00

When writing a recent blog, in which I remembered Tony and Dale, two barbers whom I would miss more if I were not so content with Nina's work on my hair, I began to think of many other people whom I no longer see. As we age, we become accustomed to the deaths of older (for the most part) family and friends. We may take out an old photograph or postcard, and we almost certainly discuss a loss with loved ones who are close to us. All this is normal and healthy.

Then there are the names of good friends with whom we have lost touch. Looking at a personal phone directory, or checking on a list of contacts, we come across names that we remember, although we have not been in touch for several years, perhaps. Even on Facebook, one needs to take action to stay in contact with those with whom one has not exchanged communication recently.

Barbara and I have found that there are a number of wonderful people we have met on trips abroad, such as when we have taken passage on a ship steaming up the Norwegian coast, or even taken a cruise, folk with whom we have lost touch. Perhaps we exchanged Christmas cards for a year or two, but never met our friends again.

In this life, there are always new friends to meet, and we should not long grieve over such lost contacts. Once or twice, we have come across old friends whom we had virtually forgotten, and found that the ties of friendship were soon re-established. Even with a fairly recent paring down of numbers, I have 632 names in my email contact list. Of course, some of those are business entries, which brings me to remember a group of people who don't happen to be relatives or personal friends.

Recently, I have become aware of how many people I miss from former days. There was my excellent podiatrist, whom I have not seen since becoming a Kaiser Permanente member. There was a very skillful dentist, who left his practice to concentrate on his hobby,
blowing beautiful glass objects. I was glad when my hygienist moved to another dentist, because we did not like the attitude of her new employer after the glassblower moved on. I was so lucky, because when she chose to retire, I found an excellent replacement. Alas, now the successor has retired.

I used to buy men's clothing from a store on Bancroft Avenue in Berkeley, long out of business. Barbara and I enjoyed being waited on by a young Cal graduate, Stuart. We were delighted to find that Stuart had become the manager of the Walk Shop, where we have purchased many pairs of shoes. I later found another shoe store, which sold the most comfortable shoes I've ever owned, but I miss buying from Stuart.

I used to have many good friends in an organization which I set up for agents representing DPIC (Design Professionals Insurance Company). These friends ran their own businesses in various parts of North America. I miss them all, especially Devon and Sid. We became close friends of the company's president, Peter, and his wife, Ginny. Peter died tragically early, but we are still in touch with his warm and generous widow.

I had many good business friends in England, through my membership of Lloyd's. We often think of Francis, our first Member's Agent, who was adopted into a famous Jewish family as a baby.

I can't leave this list of memorable people without mentioning three really close friends from the business for which I worked for over 40 years, all now deceased. There was Jeanne, so much a part of the business that I named a room after her, at our old office. Then there was Lora, who grew from an effective CSR (Customer Service Representative), into our first and most exuberant Saleswoman. Finally, memories of Sandra, who died while awaiting a liver transplant. She was a wonderful Personal Assistant to me, and became a good friend of us both. We are happy that her widower, Grant, is a frequent dinner companion of ours to this day.

Seasoned scrambled eggs

2011-05-09T13:38:00.000-07:00

For your convenience, this recipe calls for four eggs. I usually use just three eggs for the two of us. Also, feel free to adjust the amount of seasonings to your own taste. It is the combination of flavors that makes this recipe special.

Dice one quarter cup of onions and slice two cloves of garlic, and sauté them over medium heat (preferably in a no-stick pan) until the onion is soft. (You can also use minced onion and garlic powder if fresh items are not available.) Turn the heat down to low.

Place the number of plates you will need into the oven to warm them. Toast English muffins (or good bread) and butter them.

Break four eggs into a medium-sized bowl. Add about half a teaspoon of each of the following: black pepper, onion and/or garlic salt, tarragon, oregano, marjoram, and curry powder. Beat or whisk the eggs and spices until they are well mixed. Pour the mixture into the pan. Using a rubber spatula, carefully scrape the bowl to release and include most of the spices.

Bring the heat up to medium, and stir continually with a wooden spoon. As some of the mixture hardens around the edge of the pan, carefully scrape the cooked egg back into the remaining mixture, and turn the heat down to low again. Be careful not to over-cook.

Spoon out the cooked egg onto the warm plates, accompanied by the toasted muffins (or bread). Serve immediately.

PS: Last week, I mainly wrote about how to prepare eggs alone. Yesterday I made Huevos Rancheros, and I also enjoy Frittatas, two of many recipes dependent upon the humble egg. I have yet to meet an egg dish I don't enjoy.

Eggs

2011-05-02T14:19:00.001-07:00

A clever cartoon on Easter Day shows a boy with chocolate smeared on his face, plaintively asking his mother "Do I hafta eat breakfast today?" When I was nine, Easter chiefly meant chocolate Easter eggs. Nowadays, much though I love good dark chocolate, Easter is for me the Queen of Feasts of the church.

When it comes to eggs, I can't remember an egg I didn't like. Eggs are the supreme breakfast item for me--well, good kippers and Finnan haddie (haddock) make great variants, but it is the humble egg that I choose to write about today. It is very versatile. Let's list some options:

1. Soft-boiled, the basic simple dish, needing only a little salt & pepper to bring it to perfection, especially when served with an English muffin. (The Brits don't have these: a crumpet is the nearest alternative.)

2. Fried egg, the perfect companion to bacon. I like mine "easy over", rather than "sunny side up", let alone fried hard.

3. Poached. We have an excellent poacher; alas, someone threw out two of the metal containers, so this is just a treat to share with Barbara.

4. "Sur le plat", a French method, in which the egg is put into a ramekin and baked in the oven.

5. Coddled eggs. The egg is poured into a pre-greased china "coddler", with chives and some grated cheese,

6. Omelets: I like them with cheese, mushrooms, or ham. Well, with any two or three of them is even better!

7. Scrambled (or "shirred"). My specialty: I will share my "secret" recipe next week!

Yes, I also love hard-boiled and deviled eggs, but this is about breakfast...

Not Proven

2011-04-25T15:27:00.000-07:00

I checked out this verdict on Wikipedia, chiefly to see if it is still in use in Scotland. Apparently it is. Despite the negative comments posted at the head of the Wikipedia article, I believe that it is accurate, as far as it goes. Personally, I wish that the verdict were available in other English-speaking jurisdictions.

If you check out the internet by entering "Not Proven" in your browser, you can learn much more about the verdict: for example, that it is still not quite 300 years since it was first in use, and that in Scotland, it is "Not Guilty" that is the newcomer.

One aspect of the verdict that I had long believed was that a Not Proven verdict enabled the accused to be retried if fresh evidence were discovered. Apparently that is a misconception: the legal effect is identical with that of "Not Guilty".

A cynic has suggested that the subtext of a Not Proven verdict is "Not Guilty--but don't do it again".

These musings have arisen because of the farcical trial of Barry Bonds, whose already brilliant baseball career was boosted by steroid use. He was found guilty of obstruction of justice, but the jury was divided on the other charges alleging perjury when he denied having knowingly used steroids. I suggest that Not Proven would have been the ideal verdict, ending the matter. As it is, the disappointed prosecutors may insist on a second trial. I sure hope not: this matter has cost us taxpayers millions of dollars and dragged on too long as it is. IMHO, it is time to let go of this sorry episode.

What happened to the "Near East"?

2011-04-18T16:11:00.001-07:00

I grew up distinguishing the Near East from the Middle East. There were no lines on the map, but the division seemed logical. Egypt, Libya, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, and Palestine (Israel) were Near Eastern countries.

Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Iraq, Persia (Iran), Afghanistan, Kuwait, Bahrain, Oman, Qatar, Dubai, Abu Dhabi, and the other sultanates in south-east Arabia, were in the Middle East.

Then came India, Ceylon (Sri Lanka), Sikkim (now absorbed into India), Bhutan, (Pakistan, Bangladesh), Borneo, Sarawak, Brunei, Burma (Myanmar), Indonesia, Malaya, Nepal, and Tibet--all in the East, but not the Far East.

Finally, Japan, Formosa (Taiwan), China, the Philippines, Siam (Thailand), and parts of the Soviet Union, could properly be called the Far East.

I may have omitted a few past and present nations, but I'm sure you understand this breakdown, from a pre-WWll British perspective. But few (if anyone) in the US today speaks of the Near East. I checked this out recently, asking a well-educated American-born cotemporary what the expression "Near East" meant to her. It didn't resonate. So I am giving up my grouchy reaction when an announcer speaks of a country bordering on the Mediterranean (meaning in the middle of the world) as being in the "MIddle East".

Many Californians, and most of their parents or grandparents, came from the eastern side of the Mississippi. They continue to say "Back East" and "Out West". Since I reached California from a more distant shore, I have occasionally referred to the other coast as "Out East", but that hasn't caught on. Many a native Californian says "Back East", and I usually let it go! All I ask is that folk try to understand when I refer to (say) Lebanon as being part of the "Near East".

Haircuts

2011-04-11T14:37:00.001-07:00

Barbara & I enjoy the one-hour Poirot adaptations on PBS. One, which we have enjoyed a couple of times, is How does your garden grow? A side plot has Poirot's hapless sidekick, "Captain Hastings", messing up Miss Lemon's payment system, by overpaying "Trumper's". There really was a fashionable West End "Gentlemen's Hairdresser" by that name. The incident triggered an early memory, although I never patronized that establishment. My Bond Street hairdresser was "Robert Douglas".

When I was about 6, my mother would take me in the train from Redhill to Victoria, from there we could catch a bus to the West End. Her objective was often the up-market store known as "Marshall & Snellgrove". She would "have her hair done", sometimes a "perm", sometimes what I dimly remember was a "wash and set". I was allowed to sit and read while my mother's hair was being worked on, and when I was a little older, I was permitted to explore, checking out other departments. We would have lunch in the restaurant: in those days, a plate of Roast Chicken and vegetables was quite a treat for me. When my mother bought something in another department, she would simply tell the shop assistant to "put it on my account: Mrs Lindsey-Renton, Dovers, Reigate." This was before the days of credit cards: no I.D. was needed.

On occasion, we went to Harrod's, my favorite store, instead, and even patronized Selfridges: I think my mother preferred not to shop there, since it was owned by an American...

When I was considered old enough to have a London haircut, I didn't need to make an appointment. I don't remember ever having to sit and wait for a empty chair. I soon learned to pay the modest price and include a suitable tip.

Years passed, and in 1957 I had my first American haircut somewhere in the journey by car from Chappaqua, NY, to Los Angeles. The price shocked me: it was close to the same number of dollars as I was used to paying in shillings! I certainly remember paying $5 later, and thinking it extortionate...

For over forty years now, I have gone every few weeks to the same barber's shop on Shattuck Avenue, about a mile from our home. First, the barber was Tony, an amazingly fast cutter. I used to go on Saturday mornings, as I usually didn't go into the office on the weekend. His advertised starting time was probably 9 a.m., but I soon learned that he arrived before then. I was one of his customers who would line up until he arrived, in order to be early in line. Tony only made appointments for Thursdays. He could cut six heads in an hour, so the wait wasn't too long.

Tony had a hobby, investing in the stock market. I think he received tips from some of his customers. He would talk of his successes while cutting hair. He also enjoyed golf, so he spent much of his waking life on his feet. I suppose I began paying about $8 for a haircut.
In due course, another fine barber (Dale) took over the second chair in the same shop. One day, when Tony must have been about 50, he decided to retire. Dale then became my barber. He had been in one of the concentration camps during WW ll.

Slowly the price of a haircut rose as the years passed. An interesting young woman, Nina, took over management, and brought in her own customers. Nina is the daughter of a Pakistani army officer and a Thai mother, and doesn't look her age (late forties). Dale continued to rent the second chair. When Dale in turn retired, Nina began cutting my hair, and she has probably been my barber for close to twenty years now.

The price continued to rise, and my friend Nina says that she only raised it when her rent went up. Fora few years it has been $30, and I pay it ungrudgingly. Nina is the only person who calls me "Mr. Nigel". She does an excellent job with my very conventional hairstyle. I still have plenty of white hair, and I was secretly delighted when she found it necessary to thin it, on my last visit.

There are other branches of Peet's, where I buy my coffee. We even have a Trader Joe's in the neighborhood. But there's only one Chez Panisse, and one "Nina's Place". Can you wonder that I prefer to live in the home I share with Barbara? Who needs a retirement home?

Smart Meters

2011-04-04T15:01:00.001-07:00

At both our Berkeley and Boulder County homes, there's a program in progress to install so-called "smart meters". I imagine that the same is true in many other parts of the country. Instead of sending a meter reader out every month to determine electricity usage, the readings are obtained by radio contact. This reduces labor cost, human error, weather-related inaccessibility (such as snow covering the meters), and the homeowner's need to avoid covering the meter with vegetation.

My initial reaction to the howls of protest was that the protesters were a bunch of Luddites, hostile to change and unwilling to embrace technology. There were people calling it an invasion of privacy, and I didn't agree with that.

Then we began hearing of some family being billed for their neighbors' usage. Also, someone in a large apartment building claimed that all her electronic devices were being affected because there were scores of meters in that building.

It may take some time to investigate such claims and eliminate problems. "The jury is still out" on smart meters, but I do think that they are the right answer, after such problems have been solved. I await developments with interest.

Organics

2011-03-28T13:56:00.000-07:00

I have mixed feelings about organic foods. We have a few acres of our Colorado property from which we have carefully avoided any use of pesticides. This land is much too small for going through whatever formal procedures are needed to be "officially" able to sell produce as "organic", but in fact the land is treated as if it were. Before we bought the property, that land was used as grazing for cattle, so it is naturally fertile. In some years, lettuce and other greens have been taken to the nearby Farmer's Market, but otherwise we have eaten or given away what we have grown there.

Like many others, I deplore the exploitation of the term by aggressive marketers. In a store, I have been known to avoid high-priced organic items almost "on principle". I read somewhere that if fruit has a peel, it makes no difference--for example, with bananas. Certainly, if (say) insecticide can't penetrate a banana skin, spraying ripening bananas won't be affected.

But what if "artificial" fertilizer is used on the banana tree? Although I have visited a banana plantation (in Costa Rico), I don't pretend to be familiar with the cultivation techniques used by "Chiquita" (the notorious United Fruit Company). However, I checked out "Banana.com", and learned (in addition to a lot of interesting history on the development of banana cultivation) that after the bananas have been harvested, the giant stems are cut down to provide rich humus for the next crop that has already begun to sprout new shoots.

When i was a boy of about 8 (in 1935), I used to play some of the old 78s on what we called a "gramophone" (the British version of a phonograph) and in its American form a phonograph. Among the records was a performance of what had been a very popular song "Yes, we have no bananas". This came true in WWll, when importation of such standard fruits as oranges and bananas had to be eliminated in favor of more humdrum food.

I still enjoy whole milk in my cereal bowl and coffee cup. When I am shopping, I don't choose the more expensive "organic" milk, but when it is bought for me, I don't complain. After all, it tastes just as good as regular milk...

Bradley Manning

2011-03-24T12:22:00.001-07:00

He is the person accused of the leaking of thousands of documents to Wikileaks. He has been kept in solitary confinement at the Marines' base at Quantico, in Virginia. His treatment there has, I believe, been inappropriate. Until recently, he had no sheets, and at night he is forced to undress, and put on some specially designed smock to sleep in. He is kept in his cell for 23 hours a day

I do suspect that Private Manning is guilty of the leaks. He has been charged for certain offenses as a result of this, but he has not been brought to trial.

I hold no brief for the actions of whoever did the leaking, but I think it goes against American ideas of justice to "punish" Manning before he has been brought to trial and, if found guilty, sentenced. Until that time, he should be treated as any other prisoner awaiting trial.

Delay in bringing him to trial is also not the "American way". Surely by now all the evidence needed for his trial has been obtained? It seems that his continued solitary confinement at Quantico is simply a matter of punishment for something of which he has not been found guilty.

Whether his treatment amounts to "torture", as some have alleged, is unclear.

One of the disappointments I have in this matter is the attitude of the President. He tells us that he has been assured that Manning's treatment is "appropriate". I suppose he is standing aside because of possible damage to his re-election prospects, if he were to use his authority to treat Manning in a more humane manner.

Shame on us for continuing this humiliating and vindictive discrimination of a suspect!

Pensions

2011-03-15T11:03:00.001-07:00

Sixty years ago,it was commonplace for graduates to stay with the same company for their entire working life. One knew that if one worked to "normal retirement age", one would qualify for what is technically known as a "defined benefit" pension. This wa a very important aspect of one's employment..

In more recent times, changing jobs in mid-career has become commonplace, and is often recommended to ambitious young folk. Due to mergers and changing needs, "moving on" is often involuntary. In these circumstances, a "defined contribution" plan has much greater appeal. Its customary "portability" allows a person who changes employers to build up retirement income relatively painlessly.

However, it is important to recognize that defined benefit plans are still important for certain employees. For example, state, county, and municipal employees often spend their entire working life in the same employment. Also, in some trades the only viable provider of pensions is the union, since over a long career in (say) the construction industry the worker may have many different employers.

The media often finds outrageous examples of swollen pension plans, and rightly highlights them as brakes on our nation's
economy. In this brief blog I merely wish to point out that pensions are mostly beneficial, but "one size doesn't fit all". As we read about these issues, it is important to keep an open mind.

"Decimated"

2011-03-07T13:59:00.001-08:00

For years, I have noted this word being confused with "devastated". In it's strictest sense, the word means the loss of 1/10th of a total, a very precise proportion. The word is derived from Latin. Classic examples of it's use are when Roman officers would kill one man in ten, to punish a unit for cowardice or mutiny.

It is perfectly reasonable to use the term in a less precise sense. For example, if the owner of an apple orchard were to claim that her trees had been "decimated" in a severe windstorm, no one in his right mind would find it necessary to check on this to see if precisely 500 trees had blown down from a total of 5,000.

Last week, watching the PBS News hour, I heard one very sharp commentator state that some entity had been "devastated and decimated". That was quite absurd! It is akin to say that the weather was "freezing and a bit chilly".

Primogeniture

2011-02-28T07:46:00.000-08:00

Two of our granddaughters are getting married this year, so I have been thinking about weddings recently. Much of the world will soon have eyes on Westminster Abbey, where "Wills" Windsor will be marrying Kate Middleton.

With my dual citizenship, I still maintain some interest in the British Royal Family. I sometimes ask myself the same questions that are asked in the UK. It is remote that HM The Queen would ever abdicate, but as time passes, she may appoint her son, Charles, as Regent.

As I am a male, I may well pre-decease the Queen, who is almost one year older than I. It seems likely that her eldest son will succeed her, despite the suggestion that perhaps her grandson should be the next king.

Will the Duchess of Cornwall become Queen? I may never know, but I think that a majority of the British public would be in favor. Camilla seems to have done well in her role as the wife of the heir apparent, and one understands that she and her stepsons have a cordial relationship

Prince William may well be given a courtesy title, perhaps becoming a Royal Duke, on the occasion of his marriage. Presumably, Kate understands that marrying the future Heir Apparent carries with it the expectation that she'll have children. I am interested in this for one main reason: primogeniture.

If their first child is (say) a George, Charles, or Phillip, he will be next in line after his father. But what if it's Elizabeth, Diana, or Ann? And then a brother is born? The precedent in the UK is one of "male primogeniture". A first-born girl would not become next in line to the throne.

In some other European monarchies, the practice has changed.Perhaps the British public, the Royal Family, and the Establishment are not ready for the change at this time. I don't expect a move will be made before the first child of Wills and Kate is born. My guess is that by the time that first child succeeds to the throne, the UK will be ready for a change--but it would be too late then for the happy couple's first child. If she's a daughter, followed by a son, it is the latter who will be raised to reign--and to make a change before he inherits, doesn't sound appropriate or likely

I think that's a pity. Such Queens as the two Elizabeths and Victoria have had very successful reigns. Edward VIII is just the worst of several unsatisfactory male monarchs.

Yes, I'll almost certainly never know how this plays out. But it interests me..

Don't Change!

2011-02-21T11:59:00.001-08:00

I have never considered that celebrating Valentine's Day should be a one-way street. I learned a lesson this year, however.

I can no longer drive, due to limited vision. So I arranged with my amanuensis for her to do some shopping for me. Barbara loves Dark Chocolate, especially Nuts and Chews. Rather than the See's Candy, of which Barbara is now rather tired, I asked my shopper to find a box of Godiva chocolates, together with a nice card without a pre-printed message, other than something simple like "Happy Valentine's Day". I added some loving words to the card, and safely stashed away both card and chocolates.

I'm normally first up in the morning, making coffee and preparing breakfast. So on Feb. 14, I was able to set the table in the dining room, and place the card and the candy. in front of Barbara's chair, before she came down to join me.

All worked perfectly. Barbara was delighted! I didn't necessarily expect her to reciprocate--we've been married for over 40 years--but I was grateful for her offer to me of three chocolates--as long as I didn't touch the only three dark chocolates. (She needn't have worried: she had eaten them all that morning, before I indulged in one milk chocolate after lunch.)

I now accept the reality that Valentine's Day is more a day for men to express their love for women than vice-versa. I enjoyed the loving words, the hugs, and the kisses that acknowledged my efforts.. However, I must admit that I had a few nostalgic pangs of regret that nary a card nor a simple bar of chocolate came my way that day.

Here let me admit that I do have some bad habits, so I am used to hearing "Sit up straight", "Don't slurp", "Keep your elbows off the .table", and similar words of wifely advice. So as we were packing to take a train the next morning, i was pleasantly surprised after breakfast to find a note on my bed, reading "Don't Change!". I felt that my efforts, however unsuccessful, to kick those bad habits, were truly appreciated. A rush of loving happiness came over me.

When Barbara came into the room a little later, I expressed my appreciation for her affectionate words. To my surprise, she laughed, and promptly burst my bubble. She said "That note is for the house cleaners, when they come next Monday. Since you had clean sheets only yesterday, I am telling them not too change your linen this week..."

Sound effects

2011-02-14T15:42:00.001-08:00

I love the skill of the sound effects person working in a theater. Before anyone thought of recording sound effects and playing them during the production, the sound effects - creaking doors, howls of wolves or coyotes, horse hooves, etc, had to be made with perfect timing during the production.

Sound effects can add immeasurably to the atmosphere in a radio program or a movie. An important tool is the effective use of music. Barbara and I enjoy watching Sherlock Holmes stories, Poirot episodes, and similar productions. They all depend for their effectiveness on well produced sound effects.

Alas, I have recently noticed inappropriate overuse of loud music, often played at the same time as dialogue is taking place on the screen. It is as if a new generation of sound technicians believe that loud noise is more important than allowing the viewer to hear the words. I deplore this.

Trojan horse in reverse

2011-02-08T12:39:00.001-08:00

We have all heard the legend of the Trojan Horse. The Greeks make a gift of a large wooden horse, in which are hidden Greek soldiers. The Trojans bring the horse through the gates of the city. At night, the Greeks climb out, open the gates, and the Greek army pours in, bringing the lengthy Punic War to an end. Thus arose the famous saying "Beware of Greeks bearing gifts!"

A couple of weeks ago, I welcomed the news that KDFC was going non-commercial. Sure, they'd need to give up their long-established frequency (102.1), but KDFC would move to a couple of other frequencies, one in the North Bay, which would also serve the East Bay, and one in San Francisco. Living in the Berkeley Hills, I thought that we would have a choice. This would mean that my listening life--mostly on NPR and KDFC--would be commercial-free. These changes would occur thanks to the generosity of USC. As a Cal supporter, the folks from the "University for Spoiled Children" are not my favorite college football team, but Hey, let's not look a gift horse in the mouth...

I don't think that KDFC is an ideal Classical Music station. I miss KKHI. I enjoy the baroque and other pleasant instrumental music on KDFC, but it's not exactly challenging. No vocal music. Some pop opera tunes, but forget Berg and Bartok. There's plenty of music in our lives, thanks to the Berkeley Symphony, the Berkeley performances of the San Francisco Early Music Society, Philharmonia Baroque, and the New Esterhazy Quartet, and assorted Cal Performances offerings.

So we tried both new frequencies. We can hardly hear the San Francisco station, and the North Bay version sounds like a fading station one hears on a long car trip into the boonies when one is desperate enough to tune into Rush Limbaugh or Country Western. It would be far worse in the South Bay.

Yes, beware of Trojans bearing gifts.

Trailers

2011-01-31T14:32:00.001-08:00

No, this has nothing to do with vehicles, whether pulled by a tractor, or permanently parked somewhere on the wrong side of the tracks. This is about the trailers one sees, willingly or under silent protest.

(The name "trailer" implies that it will follow, not precede, but who would stay to watch this advertising if trailers actually followed the "main feature"?)

In the market town near where I was born, there was originally only one "cinema", the Hippodrome. Despite its name, no horse ever entered the place--let alone a hippopotamus. In the mid-thirties, another movie house was opened, the Majestic (a mundane structure that belied it's name). Each movie program was shown for a week, usually the main feature, a second feature, a "B picture", plus newsreel and a cartoon. Before the main feature, we were shown a "trailer", listing the next week's main feature, the principal actors and actresses (we never called female performers "actors" in those days), and a few clips from the movie itself. I never found these objectionable, despite the somewhat extravagant claims for the "coming attraction".

I seldom go out to movies these days, but when I do I try to arrive shortly before the stated performance time. No longer is there just one trailer, but five or more of films "coming shortly". In some movie theaters, they show trailers of films being shown at other venues under the same management.

However, there is one type of trailer which actually does follow the main feature--that's on TV. I can understand that on commercial television, it make sense to try to encourage the audience to tune in to the next episode, be it a sitcom or a crime series. We seldom watch commercial programs (other than the venerable 60 Minutes), so this doesn't annoy us.

We do watch programs on PBS, in addition to our regular dose of the PBS News Hour. I have two criticisms, one of which has nothing particularly to do with trailers: the tendency to broadcast loud "incidental music" over dialogue. But what really distresses me is when we've watched an episode of some excellent series, such as the just-completed Downton Abbey, we are subjected to "scenes from next week's episode". Yes, one can always switch off the set; also, thanks to our DVR, we can rush through that unwanted material without losing anything that we want to watch.

I suppose even in public broadcasting, there is an incentive to try to hold on to as many viewers as possible. In my case, this just turns me off--especially if a character is shown in a death scene--or making a miraculous recovery.

Gestures

2011-01-24T20:26:00.001-08:00

Our driver braked sharply, as the car at a stop sign on a side street made a right turn right in front of us, and drove off at high speed. A fellow-passenger made a disgusted gesture with a middle finger at the retreating vehicle. The miscreant could not have seen it, but it undoubtedly made my fellow-passenger feel better. Another person commented "American Sign Language" and we laughed, intending no disrespect to the wonderful communication system so named, developed for those with speech and/or hearing challenges.

I reflected on the many types of non-verbal communication with one person's hands, which most of us would recognize. Here are some of them:

1. Thumbs up, and thumbs down: universally understood to show approval o dis approval.

2. One or more fingers--usually the whole hand, facing the gesturer, beckoning one or more others to approach.

3. Arm--usually the right, raised, with palm of the hand facing out, meaning "stop!".

4. Shoulder shrug, usually accompanied by facial movement, and often by outstretched hands, indicating indifference.

5. Arms crossed and held up in front of the gesturer: stop there (as when helping someone park.

6. Single hand, facing inward outside an open mouth: a real or pretended yawn, indicating sleepiness or boredom.

7. Hands held, palms together, as if in prayer, leaning forward: making an important
request.

8. Hands held, palms together, facing another, bowing slightly: "peace to you" .

9. Single fist, shaken towards another person, indicating anger.

10. Clenched fists, moved up and down: enthusiastic encouragement, as in "Go, team!"

11. Single hand, palm down, moved slightly down: : "No, thank-you"

12. One hand miming writing on the other hand: "Please bring the bill!"

13. Arm raised, hand high: "Call on me, teacher!"

14. Single fist, thumb extended up and to the rear: "Get outta here!"

15. Both arms extended upward: "Touchdown!" (or other athletic success).

If others occur to you, please comment: remember, no "high fives", and no other body language. These are just examples using arms and hands of a single person. When i began to list them, I certainly didn't expect to think of so many.

Walkers

2011-01-17T13:56:00.001-08:00

I can't walk safely outside a house these days without support. At home, I do use a cane to walk from the dining-room into the-living room, but I don't use one upstairs, as I migrate from my bedroom to the bathroom, my office, or the stairs. I have two canes, one furnished by Kaiser Permanente, my health insurer; and another one which can be pulled apart into three pieces--useful when it has to be packed.

What I like to do is to use a cane (preferably in my right hand) and be supported by a friendly right arm accepting my left arm.. My dear wife, actually a few months older than I am, is fit and spry, and walks daily for pleasure. For much of the past few years, it has been she who has supplied the "friendly arm". For some time, she has been encouraging me to try to move around without linking arms with her.

I have tried using two poles, one in each hand, and that works reasonably well for short distances on flat land. Since we live on a hill, and Barbara can no longer drive me down to the flatlands, this is not a very satisfactory solution.

We have a four-wheel walker with a basket, and this walker can be set to act as a portable seat for me. I like that, but it also requires flat land and transportation to reach level ground. Again, not a satisfactory solution. There are battery-powered wheelchairs and "scooters", but I'm not ready to cope with either yet. Besides, they really aren't very well fitted for my needs.

When we go to concerts, the theater, a restaurant, or a meeting, we usually go by car, driven by a helper, and then I walk in, with a cane and someone's arm. When I visit a grocery store, a "basket" to transport our purchases doubles very well as a walker. It has the advantage to my vanity that there are other shoppers, not needing the support that I need, also pushing a grocery store's shopping basket.

For weeks, Barbara was telling me that I should buy a lightweight walker. I made a few brownie points when I showed her an ad for a discounted two-wheel lightweight model. The store was in Hayward, calling for a round trip of close to fifty miles. It had occurred to me that the distance might happily cause a further delay--but Barbara was determined, so quickly went to the store with our driver, coming back with the perfect answer to her pleas.

We tried it out for an Early Music concert recently. We had dinner at The Musical Offering (a restaurant which shares the space with the record store), perhaps 200 yards from the church where we were to hear the music. I hated using the walker! It took us perhaps ten minutes to walk that short distance.

There was the annual party afterward--free wine and delicious finger food, an annual event I had enjoyed many times over the years. I told Barbara that i really didn't want to walk back to The Musical Offering. So we arranged to be picked up outside the church, and went home to bed.

I realize that a major part of my resistance is because I am being taken out of my "comfort zone". There is also the psychological factor of appearing weak. It's no fun getting old and immobile! As a contemporary friend of ours puts it: "Growing old is not for sissies".. I prefer to rejoice that, thanks to our driver, we can still attend concerts and plays, eat at restaurants, go shopping, attend meetings in San Francisco--and I can attend church each Sunday.

Egg nog

2011-01-11T03:09:00.001-08:00

Plenty of eggnog mix is sold in the US, mainly between about November 15 and New Year's. However, it is my perception that it has become less popular in recent years, at least in the circles in which we move. We don't attend many pre-Christmas parties, let alone the many business-related events I used to attend. I can remember many occasions in which an eggnog was available, although there were usually some alcoholic as well as non-alcoholic alternatives.

I can remember making eggnog from scratch, but in recent years we have relied on commercial eggnog mix. We have several family members who will have one eggnog when it's available, but one of our sons would find the holidays incomplete without it.

My recipe is straightforward: 10% brandy, 10% dark rum, 80% eggnog mix, with grated nutmeg sprinkled on top.

We were given most of a "leftover" half-pint carton of "light" eggnog mix on December 27, so I made a weaker-than usual serving daily. I finished the last of the mix on January 4. No more until next Thanksgiving, I imagine.

-

"Christmas observed"

2011-01-03T13:15:00.001-08:00

For years, we have received a calendar/diary on which we record our appointments. It is a vital source for keeping us on track with medical appointments, concerts, parties, and other engagements. Each day has its own space, and some of them list important dates. I'm not really sure why Americans want to know the date of the Japanese Emperor's birthday, but it is listed.

I recently took a look at some entries for December. I was astonished to see "Christmas observed" listed for Christmas Eve. Now, it is true that our family celebrates Christmas (in accordance with Barbara's Norwegian roots) on Christmas Eve. However, we observe Christmas on only one day: December 25. Of course, I understand that these calendars are designed for business people. When a day which is normally a holiday occurs on a Saturday or Sunday, the holiday is "observed" on an adjacent day.

I looked ahead in the new calendar. It has several entries for December 26. I read that Christmas will be observed in the United States, Canada, and Mexico. At the same time, it will be "Boxing Day" in Canada. Furthermore, Kwanza begins that day. Not surprisingly, another entry reads "all markets closed".

Fake tree

2010-12-27T18:27:00.001-08:00

Many years ago, I deplored the loss of millions of young trees, to be cut down and displayed for a couple of weeks before being tossed out. Couldn't we just eliminate this somewhat dated symbol of the season?.

We had some friends who developed a small Christmas tree farm. It was a useful tax shelter for them. I also realized that sales of Christmas trees gave employment to many, and often resulted in income for various "good causes", so I relaxed about it. Every year, Barbara and I would go down to buy a Christmas tree, usually from Home Depot. We would somehow load it onto the car, drive home, and then mount it in a reusable stand designed for that purpose.

It was a tradition for some 20 years for our eldest granddaughter (Justine) to help Barbara decorate the tree. We placed the stand on an old sheet, to collect fallen needles, and minimize the work when it became time to clean up.

I always felt that the Christmas tree should not be in place until Christmas Eve, because it was "still Advent". Barbara's plan was to put it up about ten days before Christmas. So I agreed to a compromise: It could go up that early, as long as it stayed in place until Twelfth Night, when it could be taken down, and the unbroken decorations could be put away for another year.

Now that I am not so mobile, Barbara went down with our driver and brought back a small tree. When I saw it, I almost choked, and spluttered "That's a fake tree!".

I am still not completely reconciled to this deception. Where is the delightful smell of pine leaves? Somewhere, out there in the world, there's a tree which is being cut down and will just be put out with the trash. That tree was really destined for our house.

Oh, well; I must admit there are some advantages to the use of a fake. It is (of course) perfectly shaped. It doesn't shed any needles. It can be brought out again next year. Packages can be placed under the tree just as easily as if it were real. Also, I am determined to be more tolerant when Barbara wants to take it down before Twelfth Night.

I am reminded of the time, many years ago, when we brought into the house a somewhat mangy looking live Christmas tree. When the time came, we planted it in our front yard, for use the following year. Over the months, it didn't exactly seem to flourish. No matter: we didn't want it to become too large. But it was so ugly!

One day, Barbara asked our wonderful Japanese gardener (George Y. Sujishi) what he could do to help it along. "Christmas tree?", said George, "I make 'im Bonsai!".

All about "Eve"

2010-12-20T11:41:00.001-08:00

No: not the wonderful movie about an ambitious young woman schemer. This is about the ambiguity of the word "eve". It can imply a time late in the day, typically between the evening meal and bedtime, but that usage is relatively rare. We tend to use the longer form--"evening"--for that. The main meaning of "Eve" is the entire day prior to some occasion or happening.

As I wrote here some months ago, another variant ("e'en") is best known for forming part of "Halloween", the day before All Hallows Day, aka "All Saints Day". Most of us consider "New Year's Eve" to be the entire day of December 31, even though we may primarily think of the time leading up to midnight, and the start of a new year in our time zone.

Likewise, "Christmas Eve" is all day on December 24, even though for some worshipers the emphasis is on the "Midnight Mass" at their church. (In most parishes, the service begins earlier. At St. Mark's, Berkeley, we begin with carols at 10:30, and start the service at 11:00, so it is about midnight before the bread and wine of "Holy Communion", the elements of the Eucharistic Banquet, are distributed.)

This year, for the first time, I heard the ghastly phrase "Christmas Eve Day". I shuddered. Then, quite recently, I heard a member of our wonderful extended-and-blended family repeat the solecism. I flinched.

Of course, I knew what the speakers were trying to do: to distinguish between the events of the working day, and the Christmas Eve celebration, which (in our family) takes place in accordance with Norwegian practice, on Christmas Eve. Call me a pedant, call me a stickler--and, yes, language (however "incorrect") is a tool we use to communicate, and the speaker's intent was clear--but, do me a favor, folks, don't bastardize Christmas Eve.

Illiteracy

2010-12-13T12:18:00.000-08:00

From time to time, I respond to an online poll, which covers various issues, some serious and some fatuous. Politics are always part of this. I'm asked if I'm a Republican, a Democrat, or an Independent. I truthfully respond that I am a Democrat. (I'm of an independent bent when it comes to voting, but I learned years ago that if I wanted to vote in a primary I needed to be a member of a party.) The next question is whether I'm a "strong" or "not-so-strong" Democrat, and I select the latter.

What I truly regret is the polarization of American politics. So I was delighted when Lisa Murkowski's campaign for write-in votes brought her success last week, long after polling day. Although her "official" Republican candidate (Joe Miller) still has a chance to appeal, the State judge who heard the case said that even if all Sen. Murkowski's challenged votes were tossed, she would still have a clear majority. Even in Sarah Palin's back yard, I really doubt that an appeal would get anywhere for Mr. Miller.

I understand that most of the challenged votes had simply mis-spelled "Murkowski". I do think it appropriate for election officials to support the clear intent of the voter.

However, I am shocked that so many voters, who must often have seen the name "Murkowski", can't spell her name correctly. Are they functionally illiterate?

The elitist in me sometimes wishes we had a simple rule to ensure that only those who can read and write have the right to vote. The egalitarian in me knows that isn't feasible, and that there are folk with (say) some physical disability that are quite capable of choosing for whom to vote, even though they could not pass such a test.

Welcome back, Senator Murkowski! You are now free to vote for what seems best for your constituents and your conscience.

Robust

2010-12-07T14:00:00.001-08:00

This seems to be a new buzzword. Until recently, it seldom appeared, although it was understood when it did. I have recently seen it in several different manifestations. Sometimes, it is used as a compliment, and sometimes as a politely negative epithet.

Most people would probably yawn at any reference to "baptismal theology". I recently found this referred to as "robust". I suppose that means that it is a lively form of that rather academic concept.

When there is a political confrontation, we hear that there has been a "robust" discussion. That is the equivalent of reporting a political argument (especially between leaders of two nations) as a "full and frank discussion".

When the word is used with health, I visualize a person who brags about being "in shape", and suggests that I need more exercise..

A red wine may be described as "robust", meaning that it lacks subtlety, perhaps to the point of being rough or overpowering.

It's a useful word in sports reports. When I read that a local team has put up "a robust defense", it's probably trying to comfort local fans, who have just had to swallow another defeat...

Food Storage

2010-12-01T14:57:00.001-08:00

Our refrigerator is bulging with Thanksgiving leftovers. It brings to mind some changes that I have experienced in my lifetime.

I can just remember when my family obtained a refrigerator to replace the icebox, in about 1930. Our large home in England had a room (which we called "the dairy" ) on the north side of the house, next to "the larder", which in turn was next to the kitchen. The dairy was where the "fridge" was located, and where we stored items that kept best when cool..

My father maintained a prize-winning herd of Jersey cattle, so we had an ample supply of full-cream milk. He was a successful businessman, not a farmer, and six days a week he was driven by his chauffeur to catch an electric train from Redhill to Cannon Street, where his company driver would pick him up and drive him the short distance to his London main office.

He loved to have his cattle compete at Agricultural Shows (somewhat similar to County Fairs in the U.S.), and the walls of the cowsheds were papered over with colored cards, celebrating awards, many of them First Prizes.

Our milk wasn't pasteurized, but the cows were "TT" (tuberculin tested). Even with our parents, three children, and about ten household servants, there was probably a surplus of milk, presumably sold to a commercial dairy.

Adjacent to the dairy was the "larder", the main food storage room, next to the kitchen. Then there was a cupboard for cans and unopened packages.

In the "pantry", on the other side of the kitchen, were cutlery, china, glassware, and other supplies for the dining room.

Like so many terms related to food in English, two of those words derive from Norman French--"lard" meaning bacon, and "pain" meaning bread. One doesn't see much lard these days, as Crisco and other vegetable shortenings have taken its place. It is essentially bacon fat, and was used in cooking, where today we would mostly use olive oil, canola, or other frying oil.

A "joint" of Roast Beef was a frequent feature of "Sunday Lunch", the most important meal of the week. Fat was collected from the roasting pan, and this "dripping" was often served (later) to all, being spread on bread. (In small quantities, I'd probably still think it delicious.) I remember the amazement of an audience watching a Pinter play when a character asked what was for breakfast, and was told "fried bread". When served with (say) bacon & egg, fried bread is delicious.

Enough, already. Time to eat some of the superb turkey & mushroom pie that Barbara has made, followed by salad and a cranberry cake dessert. Yum!

Verbal Ineptitude

2010-11-22T21:52:00.000-08:00

I like simple prepositions: "on peak" and "off peak" are clear and simple. Most switches have an "on" position and an "off" position.

For some reason, many Americans add "of" after the word "off". I don't know why this was started, but I dislike adding another redundant preposition.

I also dislike hearing "unbelievable" or "incredible", instead of "amazing" or "spectacular", or other adjective to express appreciation or surprise, rather than disbelief.

t not disbelief.

Colors

2010-11-17T09:54:00.000-08:00

There's a family further up our street, appropriately named "Rose". (We don't live on Rose Street, but the usual way to our home on Spruce Street is to drive up Rose Street. However, the appropriateness arises because this is about various colors, including rose.) The parents are unable to have children of their own, and adopted a daughter, who recently celebrated her second birthday.

By a happy coincidence, there was a young single mother, not a blood relation, but related through a "blended marriage", who couldn't afford to give up her forty-hour-a-week job if she were to be a "stay at home mom". When she is old enough, the little girl will be told that the loving woman she knows as a family friend is, in fact, her birth mother. We were lucky enough to get to know both adoptive and birth mother at this happy birthday party.

The little girl has already developed a color sense, and is particularly fond of pink and purple. Her home was decorated with approximately those two colors, mainly with balloons. All guests were asked to wear, if possible, those two colors, and I changed into a pink shirt. Barbara wore a beautiful top which incorporated a variety of colors, including those requested.

Looking around the room, I saw many variants, ranging from violet to crimson. The word "purple" is in fashion, for those states that are neither as blue as California or as red as Texas. No doubt some of you have read Alice Walker's best-seller The Color Purple, or seen the movie: purple is in fashion.

In the Episcopal Church, where we elect our bishops, we use the expression, "will be wearing a purple shirt", for someone who has been elected bishop. You will see bishops wearing that same variety of colors, from violet to crimson. There is no strict rule about this, but I do wonder why the various outfitters that specialize in clerical clothing don't get together and decide one consistent shade.

Rose is a pretty color. The Episcopal Church has a "penitential" season (Lent), when purple vestments are usual-- or (as my parish prefers) "Lenten Array", a "natural" off-white. In many places, including my parish, the Fourth Sunday in Lent sees vestments in rose, denoting the relaxing of the strict (or not so strict!) rules of fasting still complied with by many Christians.

The Season of Advent is properly not considered one of penitence, although one may see purple vestments in many churches. Rather, it should be a time of patient, watchful, waiting for Christmas. The Third Sunday in Advent is the Rose Sunday in Advent.

I am looking forward to Rose Sunday next month, as for the first time the Presider and the Assisting Priest will be wearing rose stoles (the long scarves they wear).

All this reminds me: next summer I must serve some of the Rosé wine that isn't very popular--although some that isn't sweet is much to my taste. I have about a dozen bottles in my cellar, great for quaffing on a hot day.

2010-11-09T12:30:00.001-08:00

I began this on a Thursday morning. I had just ordered the restart of a newspaper that has been on "vacation hold", with the first restarted issue to arrive in nine days' time, on the Saturday of next week. I would call that "Saturday week". The clerk who was responding told me that the paper would arrive "next Saturday". I resisted the temptation to say "No, the following Saturday".That highlights another cause for confusion between "Brits" and what those Brits would call "Yanks". By now, after more than fifty years in the US, I have learned that "Next (anyday)" doesn't mean literally the next Monday, Tuesday, etc., but is shorthand for (anyday) in next week.

In both cultures, there's no ambiguity when folk say "this (anyday)". So the very next Saturday is "this Saturday", or perhaps "this coming Saturday". Also clear is to give the date: "I'll be there on Saturday the 13th" avoids any ambiguity.

I wonder how many Brits have decided they were being "stood up" when an American friend who'd agreed to meet for lunch "next Friday" didn't show up? Or how many Americans visiting the UK appeared at a rendezvous seven days late? The sentimentalist in me feels sorry for those who fail to connect because of this misunderstanding. It is a less tragic happening than the unnecessary deaths of Romeo & Juliet, but equally illustrates the importance of timing.

Then again, the romantic in me (don't look so surprised!) imagines arriving solo, to find a beautiful maiden staring into her empty glass, deciding she never wants to see that other guy again, and I "seize the day"...

Something similar happened to me over forty years ago, when I first met Barbara--but that's another story...

Holidays

2010-11-01T21:56:00.000-07:00

In the U.K., "holidays" in the plural usually refers to what we would call a vacation. There are School Holidays, Summer Holidays, Winter Holidays, and so forth. Here in the US, the meaning is usually narrower. When you ask someone if they have plans for the holidays, it tends to mean Christmastide, maybe the period up to and including New Year's Eve, and possibly even Thanksgiving (the fourth Thursday in November).

Public Holidays in the UK are called "Bank Holidays". As Wikipedia notes, "There is no automatic right to time off on these days, although the
majority of the population not employed in essential services receive them as holidays; those employed in essential services
usually receive extra pay for working on these days."

Originally, a "holiday" was indeed a "Holy Day", commemorating a religious feast day. Few of these remain as secular "days off" ; in the UK, until relatively recently, "Whit Monday" was a Bank Holiday, being the day after Whit Sunday (Pentecost). .

Good Friday is a holiday for most folk in the UK. Generally, it is used to make a four-day break, with Easter Monday being a Bank Holiday.

In the US, Good Friday is a working day for most employed people. I remember my surprise in 1958, when I spent my first Good Friday in San Francisco. One could take three hours off in the middle of the working day, because many churches, particularly (but not exclusively) RC places of worship, offered a Three Hour Service, from noon to three p.m., the traditional hours when Jesus is said to have been nailed to the Cross. We were not released until the hour of twelve, so office workers who went to church arrived late and left early, to be back at their desks by three. It was evident that not everyone fasted or went to church: the bars did a roaring trade, and not much work was done between three and the hour of release. It has always seemed to me a defective system.

My parish church has three services on Good Friday: usually at 7 a.m., the three-hour service at noon, and an evening liturgy at 7:30 p.m. A Frequently Asked Question is "Why Good Friday? What was good about the day of crucifixion?" Far-fetched explanations point out that it was ultimately good for humankind that Jesus died for our transgressions, but English is the only major language to use the adjective "good". It has probably arisen from confusion with "God". (We say "goodbye" when friends leave, but most folk don't realize that this is a corruption of the pious "God be with ye".)

Most offices now close on the day after Thanksgiving, making it more feasible to turn it into a time to visit out-of-town family. There is a tradition that one takes children to "Grandma's House" for the Thanksgiving meal. I attend church on Thanksgiving, knowing that it was originally a harvest festival, to give thanks to the Almighty for successful crops, though now a largely secular occasion.

American children, adolescents, and adults young in years or spirits, treat Halloween as a holiday, although it isn't usually a day off work. I remember how shocked the parents of my best friend were, when they visited the US one autumn in the forties, and hordes of children came to their hosts' home, shouting gleefully "Trick or Treat!", and demanding candy. Most revelers don't realize that the name comes from it being the day before November 1, and thus the eve of All Saints' Day: All Hallows' Eve.

An important "non-holiday" in the UK is November 5, "Guy Fawkes Day",
when fireworks and "bonfires" (where permitted) celebrate, to the
delight of young and not-so-young.

November 2 is All Souls' Day; as "The Day of the Dead", it is a major celebration for Latinos.It is a Lesser Feast in my Church's calendar, whereas All Saints' Day is a Major Feast. It isn't moveable, but in our current Book of Common Prayer, there's the very practical rule that the day can also be celebrated on the Sunday following. That will happen this year at St. Mark's, when we shall also be baptizing the newest family member, Holden James Clifford, son of Justine Lewis and Joe Clifford.

Dialects and Accents

2010-10-25T21:48:00.001-07:00

Barbara & I accompanied daughter Kristin to the theater in Denver recently. Kristin subscribes to plays at the Performing Arts Center, and normally attends with two women friends. She was out of town for her regular Tuesday night performance, as she had been at Jalapa, in Nicaragua, attending a 25th anniversary celebration of the opening of a school building she had designed "pro bono" for the youngest children, using inexpensive "vernacular" materials. This was part of Jalapa's "sister city" association with Boulder. Kristin and her friend Susan, the mayor of Boulder, had been invited to attend the celebration (at their own expense, of course--Jalapa is a very poor city, close to the border with Honduras). So Kristin had changed her performance date, and invited us to accompany her.

The play was a 1990 adaptation of Bram Stoker's ever-popular novel Dracula. Kristin would not have chosen such a play, any more than we would, but when you buy a season subscription, you end up with the theatrical equivalent of a table d'hote meal. I had never read the book, nor had I chosen to see any movie or TV version of the story. I did remember that Count Dracula was a vampire, living in Transylvania; I had heard about the use of garlic and a small wooden cross to ward off the Evil One; and the need to drive a wooden stake through the heart of an "Un-Dead" victim, as well as that of the Count himself. The play was fun, but that's not the subject of the musings.

As I thumbed through the program, I noted that the production had used a "dialect coach". I also noticed that much of the action took place away from Transylvania, in England and elsewhere in Continental Europe. Among the characters were seamen and working class Londoners: hence the "dialect coach", I assumed. I did not think that the English "gentry" in the cast would need such training. Evidently, I was wrong.

Unlike most New York and West Coast actors, the Colorado actors apparently hadn't been trained to speak in "stage English", so necessary for an authentic performance of the plays of Oscar Wilde, George Bernard Shaw, or Noel Coward. It appeared that the dialect coach had tried to teach some of the performers to speak like upper-middle class English men and women. As far as the men were concerned, they failed, in this harsh critic's judgment. They sound phony, with exaggerated vowel sounds.

Now, I have modified my own speech during half a century in the US; I have never tried to sound like a man born in the US. My basic speech was "BBC English", as it used to be called before regional voices were acceptable for reading the news in the UK. It was also known as "U" speech, as opposed to "Non-U", with the letter "U" allegedly standing for "upper class". Sometimes this way of speaking was called "Public School" English--as opposed to the"Grammar School" version.

Some of these class distinctions have disappeared by now. When I hear younger British members of my sons' generation, and even those younger still, they use a more blended accent. (When you listen to the recorded voice of the Queen, you hear authentic old-style BBC English.)

This is not about "dialect", of course: it is about accents. In my day, we didn't think we had an "accent": we spoke proper English. I remember the very mixed feelings I had, many years ago, when an older woman, who clearly enjoyed hearing me speak, told me "I just love your brogue".(Irish has a word "barrog", from which we derive the word "brogue", meaning a strongly accented way of speaking.) The idea that I spoke with a "brogue" seemed hilarious, rather than insulting, and I knew she thought she was paying me a compliment.

Vegemite

2010-10-18T13:57:00.001-07:00

"Vegemite" is an extract of yeast, marketed by Kraft in Australia. Several years ago, a friend brought several jars, correctly guessing that I would enjoy it. When freshly opened, Vegemite can be easily spread on buttered bread. If there's a difference between Marmite and Vegemite, I don't know it. My guess is that the name "Marmite" has been trademarked, but that the extraction process is "in the public domain".

A few years ago, Marmite developed a witty advertising campaign, on the theme "Marmite--you either love it or hate it". I was shown some of the commercials, probably displayed on YouTube. For any readers who don't know about Marmite, it is a sticky brown paste, usually spread on bread, toast, or a plain cracker, with a salty, tangy taste.

As a child, I used to see two brands of meat extract, Oxo and Bovril. As their names imply. these were made from beef . They looked rather similar to their vegetarian cousins, and were mainly used to make "beef tea", a warm drink for cold weather, essentially just the beef extract dissolved in hot water. I seldom saw beef tea, apart from when we were spending days on long sea voyages. On cold nights in later years, keeping watch as a Naval officer, i learned to prefer the strong cocoa we called "Ki", made from dissolved bars of solid chocolate.

The other common usage for Oxo or Bovril was to add flavor and body to soups and stews. In 1951, I learned how these meat extracts were a byproduct of the beef trade between Argentina and the U.K. I took passage in a ship which picked up a cargo of chilled beef in the busy port of La Plata, south of Buenos Aires. A prize-winning article of mine (Meat Boat) about that trade was published in the Spectator later that year.

At our Colorado house, I recently finished my last jar of Vegemite, which had dried up since it was opened many moons ago. I was able to scrape out most of what was left, and even (with difficulty) spread some on an English muffin. Delicious! But there were several lumps that I was able to enjoy, much as I would suck what Brits call a "boiled sweet" and we call "hard candy". I washed out the almost-empty pot and recycled it.

Farewell, Vegemite! Now I can start the little jar of Marmite, awaiting me in the pantry!

Mary, Mayhem, and The Rotten Husband (cont.)

2010-10-12T10:38:00.001-07:00

III.

I was sitting in my car, the red Acura, at the edge of a large parking area at the end of a driveway. It was

neatly covered with a fine yellowish-brown sandy gravel. I was looking at a large country house. It was
somewhere on the Peninsula, perhaps in Hillsborough or Atherton. There were lights in the windows,
clearly visible behind the drapes. It was about 9pm on a clear evening.

Then, from the left, came the sounds of a marching band. There weren’t “76 trombones”, but it was
certainly a large band, although the uniforms and instruments were not very distinct. Somehow, I knew
that I had organized this band, and that they were there to serenade someone at the house. (The very
idea is absurd: one guitar or a gypsy violinist would do a much better job than blaring out one’s feelings
to the entire neighborhood, even in an area of huge park-like estates!)

I locked the car door, and walked over to the house. After a while, the front door opened, and I was
greeted by a man and his wife, probably in their late forties. Although it was the type of house that
would need servants to be run efficiently, I don’t recall having seen a butler or parlormaid.

The evidently wealthy couple who had let me in were contemporaries of mine. [In the dream I felt as if I
were (say) forty-five.] They treated me as an equal, and said something along the lines of “I expect you’d
like to see Mary. She’s out, but we expect her back very soon.” (Actually, the name has no significance.
If I had known the young women’s name in my dream, I had forgotten it by the time that I awoke in the
morning.) The parents were informally dressed. They did not seem surprised to see me, nor did they
comment on the music.

I have no sense of time delay, for very soon three or four people entered the room. They were young
people, but I only had eyes for one. She had medium-length black hair, a pale complexion, and bright
red lips. She was wearing a white blouse with a black skirt. She stood out, a strikingly self-possessed,
even charismatic, figure. She was very beautiful. I knew that I wanted to be her friend, and to be seen in
her company, but my feelings were of admiration, not inflamed desire.

The parents excused themselves, and left the room, together with the shadowy figures who had come
in with Mary. As soon as they had gone, she turned on me, and berated me for calling on her in this
conspicuous fashion. I was aware that I was a married man, although it wasn’t specifically to Barbara
of whom I was thinking, I just had the knowledge that I was married to another woman, and yet had a
considerable interest in Mary.

Mary said that she was very angry with me: how dare I come and attempt to woo her again with sweet
words and gifts of books? It was as if I had had one previous meeting with Mary, and had moved her to
care for me. Apparently, this had happened some weeks or months previously. For all that her parents
knew, I was a suitor, and by no means an unwelcome one. Mary was single, in her early twenties, and
given considerable freedom by her parents. Even while she was expressing her anger I felt immensely
drawn to this striking and intelligent young woman.

Mary then suggested that my interest in her was in part due to snobbishness. I knew that she was
closely related to some noble family, whose surname differed from the family title. My interest in her

was for her family connections, not for herself, she suggested. I protested at this calumny, but I was
aware that her family’s name impressed me.

Although the scene could have played in the United Kingdom, it was certainly taking place in California.

I have no specific memory of Mary leaving the room, but I have a recall of her returning and throwing
down in front of me some miscellaneous objects, which at first I had presumed to be some things that
I had given her on a previous visit, and which she was now rejecting. I also recall that there was at least
one piece of rubber – or plastic-coated wire.

Somewhat taken aback at my reception, I walked out to my car. To my amazement, I found that a front
window had been smashed, and that a lot of damage had been done to the instrument panel. Various
dials and wires leading to them had been pulled out. Mary had done a thorough job of trashing my car!
There seemed to be no way that I could drive the car, and I also noted that the hand brake appeared to
have been disconnected. I remember being concerned that even if I could get the car to start; there was
no way that I wanted to drive it off without having effective brakes.

At this point, I remember a number of other people coming to the car, expressing amazement at the
destruction, and some puzzled sympathy. I don’t think there was any doubt in anyone’s mind who was
responsible for the damage. The next thing I recall was that some family members, including at least two
males, one of whom was Mary’s father, had somehow done a miraculous repair job on the car, so that I
could drive it away.

It was at this point that I awoke for the first time, becoming aware that I had just come out of a
significant dream. I was amazed at the vividness, and the manner in which I had evidently angered Mary
because I had come a-courting. Her anger had in no way been directed at me on the grounds I was a
married man, and it is not clear to me whether in the dream I had revealed this to her. It is also not clear
that her anger was in any way affected by our age differential. We seemed very evenly matched. The
anger seemed to be a combination of her accusations that I was motivated by snobbishness, rather than
by love of her as a person, and because of the ostentation of my serenading her, catching her off guard,
and identifying me (to anyone who was watching) as her suitor. And then I fell asleep again.

IV.

There was Mary again, as striking as ever, but in an entirely different mood. She was extremely contrite
about the mayhem she had created in her rage, and she acknowledged that it wasn’t really justified. In
fact, she was very glad to see me, and she loved me.

In a few moments we were touching, laughing, kissing, and playfully happy. Mary had apologized
and I had forgiven her. That’s as far as things went in the dream, and I awoke again. Darn it!

Mary, Mayhem, and the Rotten Husband: An Unusual Dream

2010-10-04T13:49:00.000-07:00

April 14, 1993

Mary, Mayhem, and the Rotten Husband:
An Unusual Dream
By Nigel A. Renton

I.

I often have amusing dreams, and on several occasions I have awoken from a dream, and later fallen back to sleep, finding myself starting another chapter of the same story. In this dream I played the part of a rotten husband, had my car trashed as a result of chasing after a younger woman, and then – but let’s not spoil the ending.

My dreams remain very vivid in my memory immediately after I awake. Since this is usually in the middle of the night, it is rare for me to relate the dream (which would mean waking my wife) or to go upstairs and dictate the details while they are fresh in my mind. If I don’t do this, it is all too easy to forget the details. On this occasion they remained with me, and I felt impelled to record them. Barbara was out of town.

II.

It is often easy to relate my dreams to events in my waking life. Very often there are a number of different happenings which affect my dreams. It is as if I take a little piece from many different parts of my waking life, including plays, movies, and the TV screen, and put them into a kaleidoscope. Then my brain shakes them all up while I sleep, and turns them out as marvelously complex and fascinating dreams.

There also seems to be some correlation between my having eaten cheese and having vivid dreams. I was told about this as a child, but this “old wives’ tale” may have some basis in fact. On the evening of April 13/14, 1993, I had liberally sprinkled a large salad with parmesan, before realizing that a similar amount would improve the flavor of the left-over spaghetti, which was the main course of my supper.

I had been talking to or thinking of women all day, but not with “evil thoughts”. That morning, I had had an intense conversation with AL. I had then arranged with my young friend from church, MB, to be my guest at the forthcoming DRA theater evening. I had also had good reasons to think about JK and MS, young women friends, and of RC and KL, women priests.

I had later been to the doctor, (the only man in this account), where there had been talk about a relatively minor operation for the removal of toenails, deferred until a possible future date: and of possible future urethral or prostate surgery. I had then gone up to a blood-drawing station, only to find that it was closed for the afternoon, and I would need to return the following morning.
During the evening, I had a phone conversation with Barbara in Colorado, where I plan to join her for the coming weekend. The call was more in the nature of passing on messages than a lovers’ chat. I should add that Barbara had worn a white blouse and black pants when I last saw her.

We also discussed whether Barbara would take Kate Learson to Rocky Mountain National Park on the day of my arrival, or whether we should spend part of my precious few hours in Colorado amid those glorious snow-capped peaks. (Kate is the daughter of the former chairman of IBM, and I vividly remembered how we had been drawn to each other’s company at the outset of the trip Barbara and I made to the Antarctic. Kate was unaccompanied: I remembered how I had come to terms with the realization that to maintain this friendship it was important that she and Barbara becomes friends, which they did very easily, while I worked through my feelings about this glamorous and intelligent younger woman who had found me a good companion. At the time, Kate had confided in me, and later to us both, her complex feelings about her lover, who subsequently became her husband. John won’t be with Kate in Colorado, so the three of us will be reunited, as we were for a couple of delightful days in New England last fall.)

On my rides to and from the office and for part of the evening, I had been listening to a wonderful recorded book about the Borgias, and the passionate involvement of male clergy, of all ranks and including the Pope, in licentious affairs, sometimes involving incest. A few days before, I had re-viewed the scene where Orson Welles as Citizen Kane trashes his mistress’s room in a violent rage.l

Then, after supper, I had watched Steel Magnolias, a movie I had recorded earlier. The main theme concerns a young woman (Julia Roberts), as a severe diabetic who rejects the advice of doctors and her own mother to avoid becoming pregnant. She wants to have her own child, and gives birth to the son and heir ardently sought by her husband. As a result of this, she had kidney failure and in due course, the kidney transplant from her own mother is rejected, and she dies. The movie is much more about middle-class white society in a small town in Louisiana, not too far from Shreveport, than it is about death, which comes at the end of the movie. It is generally upbeat and funny, and also stars Sally Field, Shirley MacLaine, Olympia Dukakis, and Darryl Hannah. These are the strong Southern women of the title, each very different, involved to some extent with men who are felonious, foolish, out of work, or pathetic. This affected me, because the mother of my own sons had also been a severe diabetic. We were not warned to avoid having children because of potential danger to a diabetic mother. Had I unwittingly put Lola into a life-threatening situation – twice? Had she deliberately – or unwittingly – downplayed the dangers to her own health?

Then, somewhere on the news, I saw a picture of a car that had been broken into, with bits of window glass on the floor. And so, to my dream …

to be continued in next week's post ...

National anthems

2010-09-27T13:16:00.001-07:00

When I was at the Royal Naval College, Dartmouth, during WWII, I used to hear the band play a national anthem every weekday morning, as we assembled for the regular morning assembly (known as "Divisions") on the parade ground. We played the anthems of our allies, even if some of the nations were occupied by German forces. After Pearl Harbor, we added "The Star Spangled Banner". I liked the tune, although the words were hard to sing - not a requirement at Divisions.

In recent times, there have been suggestions that we should change our National Anthem, and that would be fine by me, but I should be surprised if it happens during the remaining years of my lifetime. The US Senate is far too busy filibustering to take up such a controversial topic.

What I most abhor is the "rendition" of our "Anthem" by pop singers, who give it their own "interpretation". I was heartened when a friend sent me an email, attaching a link to an excellent "straight" version, by the assembled cadet choirs of the Navy, Army, Air Force, Marine Corps, and Coast Guard.

I think you will like the recording, made at the start of a professional football game. It is here:

I'll admit that what is left of my taste for triumphalism in the Armed Services was stirred by this performance.

Until towards the end, when that terrible bane of premature cheering began. I just wish that stadium crowds would allow the singers to finish the anthem, before starting to applaud.

Barbara and I attended another concert by the Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra last night. It was an all-Mozart program, and the civilized audience avoided applauding the individual movements, and allowed the conductor a second or two of respite, as he brought Symphony #41 ("Jupiter") to its rapturous conclusion. Happily, no premature applause marred our appreciative enjoyment.

Mangled French

2010-09-20T13:24:00.000-07:00

Despite the heading, let's start with German.

Americans can't do umlauts, so today I read that the prominent Presbyterian theologian Frederick Buechner pronounces his name "Beekner". That triggered thoughts of American pronunciation of some other languages, especially French.

In my early days, I didn't care much about French, although I studied it at my British-style prep school (typically age 8 through 13). I continued to study it without enthusiasm, when I moved to the Royal Naval College, Dartmouth, where Naval training shared class time with a general secondary school curriculum. We were "streamed" for academic subjects into four groups, according to our ability. I was always placed in the "A" group--with one exception. At the start of one term, I was initially placed in the "B" group for French, but one of the masters (teachers) who taught French was either called up, or possibly suffered a long-term disability. The classes were reduced from four to three, and I found myself back in group A. That seemed to communicate a message! From that day forward, I have learned to appreciate French, and I can still speak enough to find my way around France.

The secret for English speakers in France is to start to communicate in French; if the person to whom you are speaking has better English than French, she or he will soon switch languages.

Particularly in California, French is not widely spoken or understood, because we have an unofficial "second language": Spanish. The French that I see and hear is mangled in several ways:

1. There are certain sounds, common in French, which Californians cannot pronounce. A particularly egregious example is the feminine of masseur. This is pronounced "massoose", instead of something like "masserz".

2. Usage. The main course (and this is true generally in the US) is called an entree. (This is usually pronounced with an approximation of correctness, as "ontray".) As the meaning of the word ("entry") suggests, an entrée is the course preceding the main course.

3. Pronunciation. Good pronunciation of French requires care with the stress. The phrase "Gay Paree" illustrates this point. Stress in French requires a light and delicate touch, not a heavy emphasis on the final syllable.

What does one do when using French words in California? If I pronounce the words correctly, I risk being identified as the linguistic snob I am. To "dumb down" my French risks being considered an ignoramus by those who know better. In defense of my amour propre, I have developed a middle way.

Perhaps this just makes me sound like an ignorant snob...

P.S. To my readers: I am going to mark a time close to my anniversary of blogging, by asking Jane to copy and publish, in two long(ish) episodes, something I wrote in 1993. Normal blogging service will be resumed thereafter..

Clean Plate league

2010-09-14T11:35:00.001-07:00

We recently bought dinner for two of our best friends. Let's call them "Bill" and "Mary". The food at the restaurant was excellent, but Bill left a little on his plate. Mary, Barbara, and I did everything short of picking up the plates and licking them. We used some of the excellent bread to mop up the last drops of superb sauce.

Later, Mary told me that Bill had been brought up in the US always to leave some food on the plate. She had given up trying to change that.

I told Mary that I had heard an expression "leave something on your plate for Lady Manners" when I lived in England. The justification (if you can call it that) given to me was that if you ate everything on the plate, the hostess might feel that she had not fed you enough. I told Mary that I thought that this was ridiculous, and she agreed.

An omnivore, I have always been a member of the "clean plate league", which sometimes causes some dismay to Barbara - not because I want to eat everything, but because I am so slow about eating such food as cracked crab.

Those of us who lived in the UK during WW II knew that it was unpatriotic to waste food. German submarines sank many ships bringing food to the British Isles. Many hundreds of merchant seamen lost their lives as a result.

Americans waste a lot of food. I was incensed at a recent question in a survey, asking which of the following leftover foods from a holiday meal did we throw away: Turkey, Dressing, Mashed Potatoes, Pumpkin, or Cranberry Sauce? There was no option for "None of the above".

We don't throw food away at our house. Leftovers are refrigerated and eaten within a few days.

WW II is long over, but I still consider wasting food to be sinful.

Turn off that light!

2010-09-06T21:55:00.000-07:00

Seventy years ago, in wartime Britain, one might hear those words, probably from an Air Raid Warden, during the blackout. The words go through my mind unspoken these days for another reason. Well, yes, I do understand that we as a nation need to save energy, but that's not my main concern. It's not just because I pay our electricity bill, although that is certainly a consideration. It is because I abhor waste in any form.

Watching a British TV show on a local PBS channel, I recently learned the meaning of OCD (obsessive-compulsive disorder). Yeah, there's a touch of this in my personality, but my limited vision gives me an excuse: I do believe there should be "a place for everything and everything in its place"--especially in the kitchen, to help me make our daily breakfast.

But there's more to it than that. I almost always try to be generous with others, but I am "economical" with myself--some would say "cheap" or even "miserly". I remember being offended when a very good friend--a fellow native of the UK--pulled out a handful of tissues--maybe 6--when one would have done. I long ago learned that one doesn't need toothpaste to brush one's teeth. But mint or other pleasant flavor makes the chore more agreeable, so I do still use toothpaste. All the illustrations in the advertisements show an inch or more of toothpaste: i use about a quarter of an inch.

A while back, when there was a shortage of water in much of California, and it became patriotic to limit usage of this precious resource. Barbara even went so far to collect dishwater, etc., in a large bucket, which she would take outside to sprinkle on flowerbeds.
Wit her cooperation, I instituted a "limited flush" routine ("Yellow is mellow, but brown goes down" was my mantra).

Barbara replaced two perfectly good toilets with "low flow" models, at significant expense, but in a couple of hundred years or so, if our 1909 house is still standing, future inhabitants may have recovered the cost....

With all the rain this year, months ago the restrictions on use of water were lifted, but I cling to my routine. (After all, limiting the use of water is still environmentally desirable--and we save a little money, too!)

I am at my chintziest with food. Although my relatively affluent parents didn't suffer deprivation in the Depression, my father's business suffered, and millions of Brits lost their jobs, just as in the USA. When WWll began, it was a sin to waste food. I still feel that way. When no-one is looking, I even eat the edible rind on cheeses and stale bread. We do our best to keep milk from going sour, but on the rare occasions (once a year?) that this happens, I usually have a cup of coffee in which the milk has curdled before the rest id discarded. Many years ago, I tried (with limited success) to make cheese when half a quart carton went sour.

Do I suffer from OCD? I leave it to my readers to decide.

Widow's pension

2010-08-30T13:48:00.001-07:00

I recently read somewhere about elderly couples living together as a married couple, without the benefit of actually being married. The article suggested that they stayed unmarried because of "dire tax consequences", if they actually tied the knot.

In at least most cases, the writer had it wrong, usually it is advantageous to be married as far as taxes are concerned. I believe it is even possible in some jurisdictions to file joint returns when the folk involved are members of a domestic partnership or registered civil union.

No, when people say "they can't get married", they usually mean that they have chosen not to get married, because of financial considerations. Usually, this is because one of them is receiving a "widow's pension". I am certainly not going to sit in judgment over those who make that choice, in the light of current practice. However, I do think we should look at what is behind the reluctance to get married. In times past, the man was usually the principal, if not the only, breadwinner. The expectation of life of adult males was shorter than that of females. A considerate society felt it was appropriate to provide some support for impecunious widows. However, many widows remarried, and of course they no longer needed a widow's pension. So the employer, trade union, or even the state, could save the money.

I consider this a very dated concept. Men and women are both eligible for their own Social Security pensions. Admittedly, many of those women now receiving Social Security benefits spent years as homemakers, or worked in low-paying jobs; as a consequence, their benefits are often relatively small. But "times they are a-changing", and I believe that any pensions paid to women (or to men!) after the death of a spouse should continue until the survivor's death, whether or not the survivor remarries. Also, the importance of pensions for survivors has diminished, and in the present state of the economy, we may find that they are gradually abolished by most employers.

Consent forms

2010-08-23T13:41:00.001-07:00

A few weeks ago, I underwent a relatively minor outpatient procedure at Kaiser's Richmond medical center. The usual precautions were taken: my blood pressure and pulse before and after the procedure, and my name was written on a tape attached to my wrist - presumably in case something unexpected occurred and I had to be rushed off to the hospital's operating room.

All this I understand, but this particular procedure required me to lie supine on a table, and have straps secured around my calves - presumably in case I tried to escape!

After I was made quite comfortable, with pillows under my head and under my knees, a complicated document was stuck under my nose, and I was asked to sign a consent form. I did this quite cheerfully, being an obedient patient, but it got me thinking. It occurred to me that if a patient were unhappy with the result of the procedure, any competent attorney could easily discredit this so-called "consent form". In my mind's eye, I saw myself as a famous plaintiff's attorney, doing my best Walter Mitty act. (If that means nothing to you, ask an older person who can remember Danny Kaye's wonderful 1939 performance in "The Secret Life of Water Mitty".)

My dermatologist had detected a suspicious spot on my nose, which wouldn't heal. She had called for a biopsy, which indicated that it was some form of skin cancer. Hence the procedure. It was a complex, painstaking, and meticulous business, lasting a full hour, but all is well, and the stitches were taken out early the following week.

It would be wise for those instructing hospital personnel to train them to obtain these consent forms before the patient arrives at the operating table .Perhaps it would also be wise to have a witness sign, in case the surgery ever becomes part of a lawsuit. Such a witness could testify, if necessary, that the patient was not under duress to sign.

Project

2010-08-16T22:34:00.001-07:00

In Britain, this word usually means a task or plan for the future. Just as a "projectile", refers to an object moving forward, so a "project" means a proposal for (say) a new building, a park, or a business venture.

Not that these senses are misunderstood in the US, but there is another usage, probably better known in New York than in California. When people talk, often disparagingly, about the "projects" they refer to public housing, originally built for re-housing folk living in slum areas. Often, these "projects" become the new slums.

It is an interesting change of meaning from something forward-looking, and usually positive, to part of what architects call "the built environment", steadily growing shabbier and less desirable.

Lakes

2010-08-09T16:21:00.000-07:00

This is another blog of several brief items about different meanings of words used in the UK and the US.

For years, I have been alternately amused and irritated because Americans visiting England talk about "the Lake Country". Just about everyone in the UK knows this area as the "Lake District".

I shall probably go on gently correcting any American friends who "get it wrong". However, only recently did I come up with an explanation. The word "district" has a different connotation in the US, in a country where the chief prosecutor is a "district attorney".

Another usage of "district" on the western side of the Pond is for school districts. We just don't think of an open country area as a "district". That is perhaps a minor part of the problem, Brits do not enjoy hearing the area called the "Lake Country". That word is used in two main senses: to refer to a nation, and to refer to rural (rather than urban or suburban) areas. This confusion is one of many reasons to recall the witty remark, attributed to George Bernard Shaw.

Scheme

2010-08-02T15:58:00.000-07:00

My blog has gone international! Check out the comment section, and you will see Chinese characters. Thanks to Google, I have been able to read a rough translation of several comments, all of which are encouraging. I wonder whether these are students of English, who prefer, reasonably enough, to comment in their native language.

If you would like to check this out for yourself, go to: http://translate.google.com/?hl=en&tab=wT#

Now back to this week's blog entry:

Scheme.

Here's another word which causes confusion, because its use is completely different, depending on which side of the Atlantic you live.

In Britain, the usage is entirely benign. A particular use of the term with which I have been familiar for over half a century is a "pension scheme". This merely means that it is a plan or an arrangement. Brits do talk about villains "scheming", but the noun carries no such negative connotation.

In the US, the term is less common, but when it is used it carries the overtones of a scam or plot. I remember that, many years ago, I confused a colleague when I used the term to describe a perfectly innocent plan.

Common language, indeed!

Paul Larudee

2010-07-26T14:23:00.000-07:00

Some of you will have heard about the ships that were attempting to take supplies to Gaza recently, which were attacked on the high seas by the so-called Israeli Defense Force (IDF), when numbers of Turks were killed by the boarders.

You may also have heard about one of the American protesters, on a different ship, who was an advocate of Passive Resistance. He (Paul Larudee) is 64, has a PhD in linguistics, and for many years taught at St. Mary's College. For many years, he has been a professional piano tuner, and that's how we met him. For many years, we have seen him when he comes to tune our piano, and when we buy another case of the excellent Palestinian olive oil that he and a number of friends (some Jewish) bottle and sell to help raise funds for the Middle East Children's Alliance.

Paul is a founder of the Free Palestine movement, and on one of several previous visits he was shot in the leg by a member of the IDF.

Paul lives nearby, and so an article about his passive resistance and subsequent beatings by the Zionists were published in the local press.

Paul came to our house on Monday, bringing us fresh supplies of olive oil, and to tune our piano. Mondays are when Martha Hernandez and either her mother (Digna) or brother (Joel) come to clean our house. At one point, Paul could not exercise his tuning skills, because of the noise of a vacuum cleaner, but we were able to mitigate the noise so that he could continue.

When he had completed his work, we asked him to join us for lunch, and we were treated to a first-hand of this self-described "troublemaker" and his successful passive resistance. It was thrilling for me to hear him, and to share his pleasure at the fact that the thwarted attempt to take goods to Gaza has, in fact, achieved much of it's ultimate objective, as the harsh conditions imposed on the Palestinians in Gaza have been somewhat ameliorated, in response to the world wide criticism of Israel, and the many deaths of Turkish crew members.

When we are invited to dinner at the house of friends, we now often take a bottle of olive oil, in place of the more conventional bottle of wine.

I greatly admire Paul, for his courage and good humor. He is remarkably fit for a diabetic in his mid-60s, and I am glad to report that he is almost entirely recovered from the savage treatment he received from his Zionist captors.

Take your time!

2010-07-19T14:53:00.001-07:00

As many of you know, I don't move very quickly these days, and am slow getting in and out of vehicles. Kind people often tell me "Take your time". Frankly, I hate it. What do these people think that I am doing? My instinct is to respond angrily and sarcastically.

Of course, I don't do that. I am completely aware that, like a healthy majority of the people I meet, these are kind, supportive folk, wanting to let me know that they care about me.

So I bite my tongue, grit my teeth, and endeavor to respond with some affirming phrase, such as "I hate to keep you waiting" or "Thanks for your patience with me".

I would like to come up with a friendly, pleasant, affirming method of asking these wonderful people to "cease and desist" from telling me to "take my time". (Of course, if they read this blog, they'll know better next time!)

Any suggestions readers have to suppress those well-meaning, kindly words would be gratefully received.

Confusion

2010-07-12T13:36:00.001-07:00

I am not a major fan of sports, although with a granddaughter who excels in cycling, I have had to learn some of the jargon, such as "podiumed", meaning that the rider was one of the first three (or more, in certain instances) who appear on a podium to receive their medals.

As I write this, the Soccer World Cup is in progress. British readers may be surprised to learn that when the final score is even, American papers call it a "tie". Brits would call it a "draw".

In British soccer, competition for most of the year is in "league" play. Towards the end of the season, in professional soccer (known as "football" in the UK) the matches they play are known as "cup ties", as they vie to win the prestigious FA (Football Association) Cup. Feet don't play much part in American "football" after the kick off and until an attempt is made (usually, but not always) by kicking, to add the "point after", very rarely unsuccessful. In rugby football, a "try" is not the attempt, but the way in which points are scored by carrying the ball across the goal line. Then there is a chance to "convert" by kicking the ball over the horizontal bar, when the "try" becomes a "goal". (In most sports, a "goal" is scored when the ball (or "puck") passes under the bar.

As a small child, I did not understand why there was so much interest in a "test match". I thought it was the equivalent of a so-called "friendly". When would there be a real match? Americans should know that "test matches" are very serious affairs. Many years ago, the final cricket Test Match, when England played Australia, was played to a finish. Happily, these contests appear to be limited to five days at most.

In the UK, and in other parts of the world where cricket is played, the area between the wickets is called a "pitch". In the US, a "pitch" is made when a ball is thrown to the batter. If the "bowler" throws a ball in cricket, the umpire will call "no ball". (That adds a run to the score of the batting side, although the "batsman" is permitted to strike it and to increase the number of runs to be scored.)

A "bowler" in cricket is the one who projects the ball. In the US, a "bowler" is a participant in an indoor sport, a version of what I once knew as "Ninepins". In the UK, "bowls" refers to what those of us on the western side of the Pond would call "lawn bowls". "Bowls" in the US are end of season contests between College football teams, played by highly recruited young men on "athletic scholarships".

Confusing, certainly, but always entertaining.

Mitregate

2010-07-06T08:11:00.001-07:00

Americans are used to combinations of words ending in "-gate". It dates back to the Nixon-era Watergate scandals. It is now used for almost any scandal, such as "Travelgate", an almost-forgotten scandal in the White House travel office, during the Clinton presidency.

Lately, those of us active in TEC (The Episcopal Church), have been hearing about "Mitregate". The first half of this word is indeed about the headgear traditionally worn by a bishop, which is somewhat reminiscent of the top part of a bishop in a chess set. In the UK, it is always spelled "mitre". American reformers have managed to amend the spelling of many English words, so the usual form (even in the Episcopal Church) is "miter". If you look up that word in a dictionary, you will find that it also refers to a method of joining two pieces of wood together, by cutting off the ends of two pieces at a 45 degree angle, so that they will fit together smoothly - especially when glued.

Recently, our Presiding Bishop, the Most Reverend Katharine Jefferts Schori, attended a meeting in England, and was invited to preside and preach at a Eucharist (Holy Communion) service in Southwark Cathedral. Word then reached her from Lambeth Palace, where the Archbishop of Canterbury maintains his office and residence. She was told that she should not wear her mitre, although it would be in order for her to carry it!

Some commentators explained that visiting bishops should not wear their mitres: they were only appropriate in an area that officially recognized the wearer's authority as a bishop. Unfortunately for those theorists, there was ample photographic evidence of visiting American bishops, including our Presiding Bishop's predecessor, wearing their mitres while functioning in England.

There are now 28 Anglican women bishops, mostly in the US, but also in Canada, New Zealand, Australia, and Cuba. However, in the "Mother Country" of the Anglican Communion, there will be no women bishops until 2014 at the earliest, and already there is talk of some conservative male bishops "swimming the Tiber" (converting to Roman Catholicism) with as many of their flock as they can gather. The two Archbishops (Canterbury and York) in England have drafted a resolution (for the next meeting of Synod) which has drawn fire from both the proponents and opponents of women being admitted to the Episcopate.

This may sound like a "storm in a teacup", but articles about "Mitregate" have appeared in the London Times as well as in US church publications.

I think that Rowan Williams, to whom we refer in the convenient shorthand as "ABC", is the second least-admired Brit this week. BP CEO Tony Hayward is in first place, especially after going sailing in his fine yacht with his son, one day before we celebrated Father's Day here.

Making soccer more palatable for Americans

2010-06-28T15:37:00.001-07:00

It is widely known that, even with a World Cup in process, non-immigrant Americans are not as fascinated by soccer as people in most other parts of the world.

I began drafting this tongue-in-cheek, but a friend pointed out that we could try some of my ideas in US professional soccer leagues.

I claim no originality in suggesting that most sports-loving Americans become impatient when watching soccer. While they may appreciate the ball control and amazing skill at passing manifested by professional players, there simply isn't enough scoring to keep their attention. They are accustomed to professional basketball, where a score of (say) 118-115 is not uncommon. In our version of football, although it often takes a little more time for one of the teams to get on the scoreboard, a game in which the two sides combine to score on
ten occasions or more is fairly frequent.

We need more viewers of soccer games on TV, to support our economy by yielding to the beguiling advertisements. This could be achieved if we could make some changes to increase the
scoring.

I have given considerable thought to this question, and I have several "modest proposals" to speed up the scoring. Just as we have different rules in baseball's National League and American League (which allows a "designated hitter" to perform). I just suggest that we could adopt an optional program to ensure more scoring. I am not suggesting that traditional soccer rules be banned.

How to achieve this? Well, one very simple change would not cost very much, and would allow stadiums to offer traditional or "improved" soccer games. That would be simply to make the "target" more readily available. Wider goal posts and higher crossbars would soon accomplish this.

A second idea would be that when a defender accidentally kicks or heads the ball over the end line, the other side be given half a goal. If this seems too generous, I would suggest moving the point from which the attacking side kicks the ball half way in towards the goal from its traditional corner.

A minor change would grant two goals when the ball is headed into the net. Another change which could be made without additional expense would be to abolish the "yellow card". If the referee detects an infraction, the offender should immediately be given a "red card", and sent off, improving the odds for his opponents.

The simplest change of all would be to abolish the so-called "offside" rule. If a player can move quickly enough past all the offenders (except the goalkeeper), so much the better.

There have been complaints about the amount of "flopping" occurring these days: in other words, a player attempts to have a foul called on a member of the other side. I would introduce a rule that anyone detected flopping should receive a red card.

I would divide the game into four quarters, as is done in American football. In each quarter, one of the teams would have one fewer player, increasing the odds for scoring. Each team would need to do this in alternate quarters.

With these changes, soccer scores should at least become similar to those experienced in baseball. The anomaly in that sport is that when no player on one team even advances to first base, it is called a "perfect game". For the pitcher, yes; for the viewer, far from it.

Farewell, Elderhostel!

2010-06-21T15:41:00.000-07:00

The paid folk working for Elderhostel were getting worried. The average age of participants in their programs kept rising.

Commonsense should have told them that this was inevitable, for several reasons:

1. Educated middle-class Americans have been living longer, and aging more slowly. These are the people who have supported Elderhostel programs.

2. Many folk enjoy their first Elderhostel program, and then attend other sessions as they age.

3. Generally speaking, the average attender has prospered, and can afford to attend more sessions in retirement.

That is my totally non-scientific analysis. The paid staff began to be worried, and they sought to attract more folk in their 50s and 60s. How to do this? Why, hire an expensive consultant firm, of course.

What did these well-paid visionaries come up with? "We have a bad name. These people don't want to be thought of as 'elderly', so we must avoid any reference to 'elder' at all costs."

About a year ago, these brainy thinkers coined a word . When Barbara and I attended an Elderhostel program in the Monterey area last fall, the new name was revealed to us: "Exploritas". None of us liked that name, and we expressed our feelings vividly in our evaluation forms. I presume that many other otherwise happy Elderhostelers did the same thing in other parts of the country. Back to the drawing board, then.

Recently, we received a rather lame letter, indicating that a "small travel company" had sued to stop the use of "Exploritas". (The name of the other company wasn't given, but I'll bet it was "The Explorers Club", which runs small-group travel.) The letter we received explained that, although "Exploritas" had been carefully checked out by lawyers, and had been properly trademarked, the former Elderhostel management had decided to back off, although it was clearly in its rights to retain the name. They did not wish to cause any "confusion".

Phew!

Having been let off the hook for a lousy choice, the management decided to come up with another name. In future, participants are to be known as "Road Scholars"...

Ugh! I gritted my teeth when I saw this, in part because it is another assault on the primary meaning of the word "scholar". Moreover, I abhor the pun. I can imagine the new team of wealthy consultants giggling when this name came up. (Yes, it's funny. You might also say that it could be just as"confusing" as the banished "Exploritas")

I am now wondering whether the other shoe will drop. Will we be hearing from Rhodes House in Oxford? Will the legions of distinguished former Rhodes Scholars rise up in arms? If the name remains, will it actually attract younger participants? Only the future will tell.

Tipping

2010-06-14T15:11:00.000-07:00

By nature, I am not a big tipper. I prefer the "service charge", which still allows one to add more if the service is outstanding.

When I lived in Britain, I generally conformed to the practice of tipping 10% of the bill, somewhat rounded up. Nowadays, I conform to the usual American practice, in which 15% is the standard (or at least it used to be: there is some "creeping inflation" pushing the level up to 20%, which I tend to resist.)

On a recent evening, I came to pay the bill for a party of twelve at a family dinner. The menu clearly stated that a gratuity of 18% would be added to all bills for parties of 6 or more. (I understand why restaurants do this, but that doesn't mean that I like the practice) To my surprise, when the bill arrived, no such charge had been made. I didn't have a portable calculator in my pocket, and so I multiplied the total shown on the bill by 18%, and wrote in that amount as the gratuity. I smiled at myself: Why did I do that? I could have simply asked the waiter to add the 18%. Again, with the amount of the tip left blank, why didn't I just add a tip of 15% or thereabouts? Truthfully, the service had been slow and spotty, although quite "professional".

In earlier years, I used to become quite irked when expected to include the tax before computing the tip. What did the governor's impost have to do with the service we had received? Going back several generations, I am half English and half Scottish, and the stereotype of Caledonian frugality has occasionally been justly applied to me, although I have mellowed on this with the passage of time.

On one occasion, about thirty years ago, I gave a substantial tip in advance of the meal, with the promise of more to come at the end. Barbara and I were entertaining a friend who had an exaggerated idea of his own fame as a painter. I coached the waiter to pretend to recognize the man, and to flatter him almost to the point of the artist's realization that he was being "set up". Perhaps the waiter was an actor "resting" between engagements, because he engaged in this jest magnificently. Barbara and I sat giggling to ourselves, and the man never caught on. I don't consider myself a vengeful person, but this was my payback time, since our friend had told Barbara that I was "irascible". That adjective has been featured in Barbara's comments whenever I speak wrathfully--and she certainly has a point!

Elections

2010-06-07T14:51:00.000-07:00

We have a primary election here in California today, and we have already completed our mail-in ballots. It reminds me of how simple elections are in the UK. There are local elections, normally every year, largely for members of local councils. National parliamentary elections occur when they are called, and this must take place at least once every five years. Then there are by-elections, caused when a Member of Parliament (MP) dies, is raised to the peerage, or "applies for the Chiltern Hundreds", technically an office of profit under the Crown, which requires leaving Parliament, but actually a fiction allowing for departure without resigning - an action forbidden under the law. (There is an alternative "office of profit", the Manor of Northstead, although I have not heard of anyone taking that route in recent years.)

The British system seems sensible and attractive, by contrast to our system, in which wealthy persons can virtually "buy" public offices. Meg Whitman, the billionaire former eBay CEO, is reported to have spent some $81 million to date, in her quest for the governorship of California. (You might wonder why anyone would want to try to govern our unruly state, but it is believed that Ms. Whitman hopes that her election will enable her to be selected as running mate for Mitt Romney, who is expected to run again for the Presidency in 2012.)

We trumpet our "initiative process" as being very democratic. There are two problems with this process, which allows a vote to enact a law which can only be overturned by another "vote of the people". However, those who propose an initiative can usually find plenty of money in support, from "special interests" and anyone else who thinks they would profit from it. I don't believe I have ever heard of enough money being raised to modify these "initiatives" by a subsequent vote. Often I have found myself voting in favor of an initiative, based on my view of the preponderance of the arguments in favor, but where i have felt that some part of the initiative is misguided.

The late Democratic politician and Speaker of the Assembly, Jess Unruh, aptly remarked that "money is the mother's milk of politics". How true! I suppose that I should be pleased that millions of dollars are being spent on television, radio and print advertising on these "initiatives"; it is, after all, helping us in our slow recovery from our economic downturn. On the other hand, "there must be a better way" for making these decisions.

Since I came to this country some fifty-three years ago, and chose to become an American citizen (while retaining my British citizenship) as soon as feasible, perhaps I should refrain from any criticism of our political system.

I need to mention one more aspect of political life. We are constantly being bombarded on our landline by pitches from candidates and those supporting initiatives. We seldom watch commercial TV these days, so we are spared most of the flurry of political adds, although I can't escape them on the classical music radio station I visit most mornings.

I would prefer the British system, in which a representative of each contending party would ring a doorbell, and ask me how I planned to vote. This form of canvassing enables political workers to try to ensure that their supporters actually go to the polls. I can remember from my time in England that I and my colleagues would give laggards rides to the polls, as time was running out for them to cast their votes. Once the voting in the UK is over, the British leave it to the politicians to make decisions. That system works pretty well in a country which still maintains a free press and other media.

I guess that, instead of griping about our U.S. system, I should give thanks that I don't live in one of the many countries where the right to vote is either a sham or non-existent.

Exhibition

2010-05-31T12:41:00.000-07:00

If you look this word up on Wikipedia, you will find a straightforward description of the term as used to describe a display of art or other objects at a museum or art gallery. However, I have known three other threads of meaning.

A misbehaving child is sometimes told to stop making "an exhibition" of herself or himself. Another less desirable use of the word is one I first heard in Egypt some sixty years ago. As male visitors would go ashore in Alexandria or Port Said, they would be accosted by touts, encouraging them to watch an "exhibition", often abbreviated to "exhibeesh". I always resisted the temptation, but I was reliably informed that these were displays of sexual athleticism, sometimes involving donkeys or other creatures, usually relating to a human subject.

It is mainly about another form of "exhibition", that I write today, a usage I have not heard in the United States, but of which I was reminded in a recent communication from my alma mater, Lincoln College, Oxford. It refers to a sort of minor scholarship, although in the UK we used to hear of major and minor scholarships also.

In Britain, a "prep school" refers to a private school for children from about the age of eight until they move on to a so-called "public school" (which is, of course, a private school as opposed to the American version, which one attends if not enrolled in a private school.) Confusing? You bet.

In my day, prep schools and public schools were for boys or girls, but not "co-ed". This has long ago changed in the UK. Other changes may make my comments here rather dated: for example, in my time, prep school boys did not take the notorious "11+" exam which, before the advent of Comprehensive schools as the norm for all children, was used to separate "the sheep" destined for secondary modern schools from "the goats" who were admitted to "grant aided" grammar schools.

In my time, virtually all public schools required those seeking admission to take the Common Entrance (C.E.) exam. There were a few holdouts: in my day, Winchester required applicants to take that school's own examinations, heavily laden with the classics. Whereas I understood the appeal of learning to read and understand history and poetry in Latin and Greek, I felt that the art of turning English prose into Latin - or, God forbid, Greek - verse reflected the sadism of our mentors.

It is possible that some schools offered scholarships or exhibitions to gifted students based on the results of their C.E. papers, but the norm was to require applicants for these honors to take separate scholarship exams. The best results earned a scholarship; others with not-quite-so-good results were awarded an "exhibition".

On the other hand, I have recently also encountered further abuse of the term "scholarship" for those unable to pay their way to a church camp, etc. I am still firmly of the opinion that there are more appropriate ways of describing monetary relief to those who cannot afford to pay the full charges. I don't see the word "bursary" these days, but sometimes I do see reference to "grants" or "financial assistance".

Punitive Damages

2010-05-24T15:16:00.001-07:00

I am a believer that both the British and US systems of jurisprudence have their merits. However, one aspect of Civil Law in the US troubles me. It is about punitive damages.

The theory of this feature is easy to understand. If I drive my car into yours and damage it, I'm clearly responsible for repairs, any depreciation in value, and the loss of use when your car is being repaired. The same applies to any injuries incurred by you as a result of the incident, and the law properly allows for such matters as "pain and suffering". If you (as Plaintiff) claim that I have recklessly or maliciously caused the damage, you may choose to claim "punitive damages" in addition. The idea is to punish me for my behavior.

This is where it gets murky. It has been held that, to be appropriate, such damages must take into consideration the wealth of the offending party. Thus, an oil company or other wealthy corporation must pay huge punitive damages, for a small penalty would be a slap on the wrist, or "a mere flea bite" as a British schoolboy would say.

In civil litigation, about which I have some knowledge through my experience as an expert witness, punitive damages are often alleged as an additional bargaining chip, and awards are relatively rare, although certainly not unknown. (I guess that I should explain that my experience has largely been with California litigation, although I have also been involved in cases in Colorado and Nevada.)

Often, claims for punitive damages blur the distinction between civil law and criminal law. I see civil law as a system primarily designed to assure equity in our common life, whereas in criminal law the malefactor is properly subject to punishment.

I realize that some who are reading this may be qualified lawyers, which I am not. There is little prospect that punitive damages will be eliminated in the foreseeable future, so I need to accept them. I just believe that there needs to be some work on this issue if a heavily divided Congress, full of lawyers, ever takes serious action on Tort Reform.

Cocktails

2010-05-20T07:56:00.001-07:00

When we attend a reception here in California, we are often responding to an invitation which indicated (say) cocktails 6:00, dinner 7:00. It is rare indeed for cocktails to be featured, although anyone who askes for a "martini" may well be served with the traditional ingredients of a "dry martini".

No, most of what is offered is a choice of at least one red and one white wine, perhaps scotch, vodka, or gin; probably beer and non-alcoholic alternatives. Since I so rarely drink anything but wine these days, that's not a problem for me, I do like to know whether I am drinking chardonnay or sauvignon blanc, cabernet sauvignon or zinfandel, and so forth. Cocktails? Never!

It was very different when I began to imbibe alcoholic drinks at the age of 21 (the delay was in fulfillment of a pledge I made to assuage my guilt at smoking when I was 11 years old. I pledged not to smoke until I was 18 and not to drink until I was 21). Admittedly, my fellow Naval Officers took me ashore soon after my 21st birthday, and I drank enough brandy and ginger ale (we called this concoction a "horse's neck", for reasons which remain obscure) to walk a little uncertainly up the gangplank, and endure a major headache that night. Oh, there have been a few instances of over-indulgence since, including one within the past five years, but heavy drinking is fortunately not part of my customary pattern of life.

However, there was a time in my twenties when I was very interested in cocktails, without actually drinking any. In fact, I had my own manuscripted book of recipes, copied from many sources, all neatly and orderly arranged in order of the principal ingredient, such as Scotch, Bourbon, Brandy, Vodka, Gin, etc.

Besides table wine, in my time I have sipped small quantities of fortified wines, including port, the preferred after-dinner drink of British males of a certain status in life. When it comes to aperitifs, I will take the occasional Dubonnet, but for the most part I stick with dry Sherry. In Sherry terms, that is "fino", the most famous brand of which is Tio Pepe , but my personal favorite is La Ina. For the occasional contrast, I usually have a bottle of Amontillado open. Purists will tell you that Sherry and Port should be consumed promptly once a bottle has been opened, but I don't buy that. Fortified wine stays pretty good after opening, if re-corked and stored at typical room temperature.

During the past 50 years, the quality of wines from many countries has improved greatly. I remember a trip to Banff over 30 years ago, when I learned that most Canadian wine then being produced was hardly drinkable. In a recent visit to Ontario, I discovered excellent wine. The same is true of California wine. We drink a fair amount of wine from South Africa, Chile, Argentina, Australia, and New Zealand. I have learned to appreciate wine from Spain, Portugal, Croatia, Hungary, Georgia, Germany, and Austria. Well, wine from Switzerland, Romania, and perhaps other parts of Europe are certainly better than they used to be.

Almost every state in the US now makes some wine, including Colorado, where our second home is located. I know there are many other parts of the United States, including the Finger Lakes region, where good wine is to be found, although I cannot speak from personal experience.

If you don't live in the UK, you may not know what an "Offy" is, but the word is an abbreviation for "Off Licence", an establishment in the UK licensed for the sale of alcoholic beverages, for consumption "off the premises". There are parts of the country, devoid of such a fancy establishment as a wine merchant, where a citizen may buy a bottle of "cooking" (inexpensive) sherry or a bottle of wine for dinner. The term "off licence" puzzled me as a boy: I thought it must mean that the establishments license had been suspended for some offense, such as selling liquor outside the government-mandated drinking hours.

On one occasion, when I had business in Evanston, Illinois, I went into a Safeway store, and wandered around looking for the wine section. I wanted to take a nice bottle of California wine to a party given after a child's baptism. When the assistant manager asked me if he could help, I explained my quest. He laughed, and said "You must be from out of town". I admitted to this. He then explained that Evanston had been the birthplace of the Women's Christian Temperance Union, and it was still a "dry" town. He helpfully explained to me that if I drove a few blocks down the street, I would enter the Chicago city limits, and I would find what I was looking for. Indeed I did, and I found one of the best wine merchants that it has ever been my good fortune to encounter. My bottle of "California Sunshine was greatly appreciated.

Open Houses

2010-05-10T10:16:00.001-07:00

I am happy to report that Barbara and I have many interests in common, although she does not share my interest in matters ecclesiastical. Nor, for that matter, do I share her perennial hobby of visiting Open Houses. There are plenty of these in Berkeley, and Barbara loves to stop the car on a weekend when she sees that there is a house for sale. In she goes!

I used to accompany her, and suppress my embarrassment when she would chat to the realtor as if she were genuinely interested in acquiring the property. I don't know if it was my inhibition, but I excused my lack of interest by telling myself that I really didn't feel it was right to waste the realtor's time. Now, I do understand that it is probably helpful for the seller's representative to have someone apparently interested in the place, as this might well encourage interest of those really planning to buy a house for themselves. Besides, in her time Barbara has bought several houses in the area, either as an investment for her own account, or as a place in which some other family member might want to live.

My excuse is that we already have a very nice home in Berkeley, and a lovely second home in Boulder County, Colorado. However, although I fiercely deny any tendency to snobbishness, I must admit that I love to visit Stately Homes, whether somewhere like Hearst "Castle" at San Simeon, on the coast road from San Francisco to Los Angeles, or somewhere like Woburn in the UK.

Nowadays, with reduced mobility, I usually prefer to sit in the car and listen to the radio. When Barbara returns, she is usually happy to tell me about the places she has visited, so I'm not about to discourage her from her inquisitive hobby of visiting Open Houses. I prefer an Open Bar....

Racecourses

2010-05-10T10:15:00.001-07:00

As someone who would rather be a book maker than a bettor, perhaps it is a little strange that I would pick this topic. However, I would like to contrast our well-known courses in the US with some of those in Britain.

I don't think the general public is very familiar with racecourses outside their own area. Most of us know that the Kentucky Derby is raced at Churchill Downs. We have heard of Santa Anita, Hialeah, but the names of famous races, such as the Belmont Stakes and the Preakness are probably better known than Aqueduct and Pimlico

I can recall my first visit to Epsom Downs, although it wasn't Derby Day. It was very colorful, watching the bookies communicate with each other as soon as too much money was laid on one of the horses, causing the bookies to shorten the odds. I did attend a meeting at Goodwood, a beautiful course in Sussex. Because the UK is more compact than the USA, most folk are familiar with at least the names of Cheltenham, Newmarket, and Ascot.

A good friend of mine, who was truly a Squire from Lincolnshire, was for several years a Steward (racecourse authority) until some hanky-panky was alleged (if I recall correctly) concerning actions of his trainer. Although personally blameless, and upheld by his friends, my friend had to pay the price and was removed as a Steward.

The headquarters of racing in the UK is Newmarket, and I have visited that famous course, although no racing was taking place that day.

One important distinction is that in the UK "National Hunt" racing involves steeplechasing, an interesting name, although I have never seen a horse attempt to jump that high! I used to work in Liverpool, and I do remember that one year I went with friends to Aintree, the location of the Grand National, which engages the interest of a large proportion of the populace.

I enjoyed watching steeplechases, because there is a much greater chance of an "outsider" winning. Also, for reasons I cannot explain, the weight carried by the horse seems to allow for taller and heavier jockeys, including some successful amateurs.

Back to the US: What about trotting races? The only race with a well-known name is the Hambletonian. Thanks to Google, I discovered that this is now run at the Meadowlands, presumably in New Jersey. However, this form of racing is not very well known by the general public.

Back across the Pond: There is another form of sport in England, which I remember as being very popular in the Fifties, the "Point-to-Point". I remember going to a nearby meeting in Kent, not far from the Penshurst area, where my mother lived for many years.

Point-to-Points are usually held at less formal locations, such as large fields otherwise used for livestock grazing. The owner of the land has to put up with scores of cars parking on the land. Events such as the one I attended were a lot of fun, especially when one took a sumptuous picnic, washed down by champagne or Pimms No. 1 (in my day, one could also drink Pimms No.2 or Pimms No.3, but I believe those have both vanished from the scene).

Yes, there was betting there, with loudly dressed bookies very much in evidence. I suppose you could consider a Point-to-Point as being largely for the "Country Club set", but out in the countryside, its adherents came from all classes. Now that fox-hunting is essentially banned in Britain, something which one of my favorite authors, Anthony Trollope, might find amazing, I hope that Point-to-Points are still thriving.

Disclaimers

2010-04-26T13:45:00.001-07:00

The use of written disclaimers is understandable to anyone familiar with the climate of litigation in this country. Their language is reasonably clear, and the purpose of their use as a loss prevention device is self-evident.

Then there are those noxious messages that are virtually incomprehensible, which appear after an advertisement on radio. The advertisers find people who can read quickly, and then use technology to reduce the space between the gabbled words even further.

Since the purpose of these messages is to protect the advertiser from claims, surely they should be understandable? One might hope - vainly, it seems - that the Advertising Council would come up with some form of self-regulation, so that these disclaimers could really fulfill their purpose, instead of cocking a virtual snook at the listener. The greed of the advertisers is made clear by these incomprehensible messages: the truth is that the advertisers don't want us to be able to understand what is being said. If these messages were spoken more slowly, the advertisers would have to abbreviate their sales pitches, which they would obviously be reluctant to do.

How long will we put up with such nonsense, before Congress is forced to consider legislation designed to prevent this abuse?

GM

2010-04-19T14:04:00.000-07:00

No, this has nothing to do with General Motors. In this case, the initials stand for "genetically modified". When some folk see those words, their hackles rise. They are absolutely opposed to genetic modification of agricultural products. They stress that (for example) designing corn that incorporates a pesticide can upset the balance of nature. If the bugs can't feed on the corn, then the birds that depend on the bugs can't survive either. If a GM crop is grown in a field adjacent to one containing unmodified crops, the latter can become contaminated. Of course, I am not saying there is nothing to these and other points raised by opponents of GM food.

At this point, I should disclose that, many years ago, our stockbroker bought some Monsanto shares, and that company and its ubiquitous pesticide "Roundup" are seen as the chief villains. Notwithstanding our minor investment in this company, I'll try to remain objective.

There is a strong case that we need GM crops to help feed a hungry world. Those who express this viewpoint sometimes consider their opponents as latter-day Luddites.

As you might expect, I am somewhere in the middle! On balance, I believe that the advantages of GM agricultural products outweigh the disadvantages. However, in one respect I am 100% in agreement with Barbara. Food often doesn't taste as good as it did when we were growing up. One of the most obvious cases is that of the strawberry. The huge red berries one can buy at the supermarket seem virtually tasteless. We look for smaller berries, often to be found at local Farmer's Markets.

Another example is the tomato. These look great, being firm, beautifully curved, and attractive. Yes, and often virtually tasteless. A partial exception to this judgment is the so called "Cherry Tomato". We almost always use cherry tomatoes in our salads these days.

Related concerns apply to animal husbandry. There is a move toward larger sizes and standardization. I have another concern: When we breed such a bird as the turkey into obesity, we increase the poultry farmer's profits, but are these waddling creatures leading as happy a life as their ancestors? I don't know, but I do have my doubts. We have even learned to raise the offspring of some creatures by cloning. This and other breeding techniques can produce a standardized product welcomed by the purveyors in the marketplace.

My beloved elder sister, Evelyn, who died over twenty years ago, was a supporter of "British Breeds", a society whose objective was to ensure reproduction of many types of domestic animals in their original form. The motives of those who supported this movement were varied, but all felt it was important to maintain established breeds for future generations.

I think that such a concept is equally important for fruit, vegetables, and other agricultural products. I hope that growers who concentrate on GM agriculture will maintain a supply of seeds, etc. of the original product.

Stereotypes

2010-04-12T18:37:00.000-07:00

Have you ever been told that you are guilty of using stereotypes? Many of us are told that we should avoid stereotypes at all costs. Some stereotypes are so far out that one can't take them seriously. For example, there's the nursery rhyme that begins "Taffy was a Welshman, Taffy was a thief..." Because of my upbringing in England, I learned that the Scots were mean and the Irish were drunkards. Such stereotypes are obviously prejudicial.

However, few, if any, stereotypes are made up out of "whole cloth". There is often some folk wisdom behind them: just because some concept depends on a stereotype doesn't mean it is always wrong.

My late mother, who died in 1996 at the age of 105, had a favorite joke. She said that Heaven was where the French were the cooks, the English were the police, the Swiss were the organizers, the Germans were the mechanics, and the Italians were the lovers.

Hell, on the other hand, was where the Italians were the organizers, the French were the mechanics, the English were the cooks, the Germans were the police and the Swiss were the lovers.

See? The whole joke is based on stereotypes. Most of us would say that there is a good deal of truth behind these supposed national characteristics.

Judging people based on stereotypes is clearly inappropriate. Nevertheless, we probably all know of situations in which the stereotype accurately reflects some personality characteristics. There is certainly some truth when I sign myself, as I sometimes do, as "Nitpicker". It's quite ok to grin at that!

Bread and cheese

2010-04-05T14:03:00.000-07:00

In wartime Britain, there wasn't much choice of cheese. There was a somewhat bland variety, allegedly "cheddar", but usually described by those I knew as "mousetrap" cheese.

To digress for a moment from time to time some mice have crept into our Colorado home. Our wonderful handyman (Roger Opfer) has stopped up most of the crevices and other "ports of entry", thus preventing more mice invasions. However, we did need to use some traps, which he baited with peanut butter, which works very well.

I have no objection to peanut butter, but it is not part of my regular diet. One day, Barbara found a jar of peanut butter in the refrigerator, and wondered why it was there. I explained that Roger had put it there to preserve it for the next invasion.

Soon after the end of the war, we were able to obtain Camembert and Danish Blue, and then there was Brie, very much a favorite in Northern California these days.

In the 50s, one of my friends was a Cheese Factor in Cheshire. He would travel to farms in the area where cheese was made, and purchase it for later retail sale. Cheshire makes its own blue cheese, which is very similar to a cheese I buy these days from the Cheeseboard, Shropshire Blue.

The Cheeseboard is a Berkeley institution. It's just about a mile down the road from our house, in what was once known as Berkeley's "Gourmet Ghetto", before Cocolat was brought down by an employee's embezzlement, and the Pig-by-the-Tail charcuterie went out of business. One can sample a variety of cheeses at the counter before buying anything. Instead of awaiting the calling of one's number, you take a playing card, and these are called out in order. If you are lucky enough to draw the "Joker" you are attended to immediately. Another advantage is that there is a discount for older folk, which increases as one ages. Barbara and I cheerfully accept a 20% discount these days. (If we make it to 100, "what you see is what you get"). Barbara doesn't look her age, so she usually carries her driver's license, but she has an honest face, and I think that the employees trust her when she explains that she is over 80 now.

The Cheeseboard also sells olives, sometimes free-range eggs, and a variety of bread products. Barbara and I really love their English muffins, but my favorite product is their fresh baguettes, often still warm when they are sold. I eat a slice of baguette almost every day of the year, usually with some cheese and a small slice of Black Forrest ham.

Perhaps the Cheeseboard's best known product is its vegetarian pizza. Always delicious! From Tuesday until Saturday, quantities of these pizzas are sold, including many ready-baked, sold whole, half, or a quarter. The Cheeseboard recently expanded, with a separate entrance, where they sell warm pizza. The new premises have tables and chairs to sit at, and offer beer and soft drinks to accompany the food, and (on Saturdays) live music. However, we usually buy our pizza half-baked, and pop it into an oven at 425 degrees F for 8 minutes.

On many visits to the UK, I have chosen a "Ploughman's Lunch". Involving a thick slice of bread and a chunk of good cheddar, usually served with olives or other condiments. In many British pubs, one can order a "Stilton Ploughman's" for a slightly higher price.

This brings me to tell you the names of some of my other favorite cheeses. I love Gruyere. This comes in two varieties at the Cheeseboard. There is the "Reserve", and "Cave-aged", slightly more expensive. When I am shopping at the Cheeseboard, I usually ask the server to give me a "blind" taste of each of these, and up to now I have always been able to determine which is the cave-aged, my favorite.

I am fond of "stinky" cheese, even Limburger. Actually, I don't think I have ever met a cheese I didn't like. Of the many excellent English cheeses, I also enjoy Cotswold with chives, Double Gloucester, and several others.

Of the many other excellent French cheeses, I particularly appreciate Bleu d' Auvergne. I buy strong German cheeses and several Italian cheeses, including Gorgonzola, Parmesan, and Romano. That's enough: I am beginning to get hungry!

I really prefer a cold lunch, whereas I like hot food at dinnertime. Recently, Barbara and I visited a delightful restaurant at Larkspur Landing, which features an impressive array of South-East Asian food. Barbara and I weren't very hungry that evening, but with my glass of red wine I needed something to eat. You guessed it: I chose a small slice of baguette, the last morsel of Camembert, and a deliciously creamy Montagnola.

Yes, I am a creature of habit when it comes to bread and cheese.

The two matriarchs

2010-03-29T15:33:00.001-07:00

A friend who reads my blogs aptly described them as "musings". Today's effort will stray a bit, and be more of a personal recounting of a special day.

After a couple of weeks absence out of state, I returned in time to appreciate the Palm Sunday service at St. Mark's, being escorted there by my granddaughter and her fiancé, Joe. Later, I selected wine to take to the potluck celebration of the birthdays of one matriarch, my dear wife Barbara, 84 on Monday, and that of the youngest of her three daughters, Lisa, who became 56 on the same day. With Lisa was her partner, Tristan, who had taken her, Barbara, and me out to dinner on Sunday at "Cafe Gratitude", a vegetarian/vegan/raw food establishment.

Barbara's son, Brian, and his partner, Marlene, very kindly opened their home for the celebration on Sunday evening. My daughter-in-law, Jennifer, brought two of our grandchildren: Anna (7) and Thomas (5). Lisa's daughter, Justine, came with Joe.

Marlene's mother, Nina, is 94. With her came Marlene's younger daughter, Alison, and her husband, Brad. Her elder daughter, Karen, came with her husband, Owen, and their son, Collin. Another of Nina's granddaughters, Dawn, came with her husband, Matt, and their son, Luc. Was indeed another example of happy "blending".

Several close family members could not be there. Barbara's eldest daughter, Kristin, and her husband, Chuck, had recently spent a lot of time with us at our "second home" in Colorado, and were about to leave to be with their daughter, Shannon, at a pre-graduation ceremony at UBC (University of British Colombia) in Vancouver. Barbara's second daughter, Laurie Lewis, and her partner, Tom Rozum, had gigs in the Austin area last weekend, and my elder son, Jeremy, was on his way back from a business trip to Nashville. My younger son, Nicholas, and his family live in Burbank, too far away to travel for a birthday party.

At first, I felt sad that so many of our closest family members could not be there, especially because three accomplished musicians were absent. However, Collin performed two of Beethoven's works - and the "Pink Panther" theme! - on the piano. Luc accompanied his cousin on the clarinet, and Anna played the violin. Matt had brought his accordion, but mostly left it to the children to play. (Thomas had forgotten to bring his violin!) So when the time came, we had a musical accompaniment when we sang "Happy Birthday" to each of the honorees.

The food was delicious, topped off by an uncooked dessert, created by Tristan. Lisa took three puffs to extinguish the candles, but when they were replaced and re-lit, her mother blew them all out at her first attempt.

I counted my blessings that evening, knowing that on Monday I would be working with two other members of our extended family, Jane and Nancy.

Matriarch? Nina already has great-grandchildren, and the other matriarch, Barbara, hopes soon to see our first great-grandchild.

In praise of "blending"

2010-03-22T15:18:00.000-07:00

"Blending" is a word that often has very positive implications. In our personal life, Barbara and I are delighted that we have a "blended family": her children, my children, and our seven grandchildren all love each other.

True Sherry is made by blending in the "solera" system, which involves mixing wine from a recent vintage with that from many years past. My favorite is a Fino, a pale dry blend. Tio Pepe is widely available, but I prefer La Ina.

Vintners in the US went through a phase of meeting the demand for varietal wine by limiting or eliminating altogether any blending. More recently, blends of several types of grape have come back into fashion, perhaps particularly with red wine. What may seem as counter-intuitive is the practice of including some white wine to blend with the Sangiovese that makes up the principal ingredient of Chianti. Likewise, one may find Viognier blended with Syrah in domestic and imported Shiraz.

I know little about blended whiskey, and less about blended tobacco, but these products are also blended, I understand.

I have a positive attitude towards blended fabrics, such as a mix of wool or cotton with Orlon or other acrylic fibers. There is a biblical prohibition against this in the book of Leviticus, but only the most orthodox of Jews takes this seriously in the present era.

Where blending was generally not well regarded during the past few centuries has been with our fellow humans. We think first, perhaps, of Hitler's drive to produce purely "Aryan" families in Germany; Apartheid in South Africa; and racism in the United States. The offspring of unions of Jewish and "Aryan" parents in Germany were characterized as "Mischlings" - that is to say, Mongrels.

In Western movies, the union of Native American "Indians" and white settlers were known contemptuously as "Breeds", an abbreviation for "Half-Breeds". ("Breeds" were acceptable only for their skills as Trackers, Scouts and Interpreters.)
During the British Raj, "Half-Castes" was a favorite derogatory expression. Any liaison between "white men" and "natives" was abhorred: That between "native" males and white women was almost unthinkable.

I am told that being Muggleborn is another form of blending, not in itself negative, but less desirable than being of true stock.

How we have changed! Before I was married, I had a Tamil girlfriend, training in England to become a teacher in her native Malaya. I did not want to marry her: if I had, my mother would have been greatly distressed. I am now proud of my talented and beautiful granddaughters, whose mother is Korean. I rely heavily on the work done for us by Nancy, herself half Korean. We still talk about "thoroughbreds" in another world in which I claim no expertise: the breeding of racehorses. Yet it is generally accepted that many animals are stronger when inbreeding is avoided, and the same is probably true of human beings - notably, in dynastic families.

Living in California, we like the diversity at all levels of society, and rejoice at the success of men and women from many backgrounds and cultures that are successful in business, education, and professional sport.

Perhaps the biggest change in my lifetime has been the acceptance by a majority of voting Americans of a man of mixed race, President Barack Obama. Long live blending!