Life of Wry

Here are before and after shots.

The before was taken a few weeks ago and is a bushy tangle of trees; from left to right: a tangelo, a Meyer lemon, a sycamore, all in front; and in back, the last remaining redbud. Further cluttering up the front are a handful of old fortnight lilies, an unruly rosemary bush, a couple of leggy nandinas and a newly planted Matilija poppy.  But the biggest offenders are the trees.

It’s heavy, dark, you can’t even see the house… it just looks weighty and unkempt. And the frustrating thing is, it’s very kempt… but who’d know?

I am despondent… well, in a landscape design kinda way.  I am eager for some daylight. I’d like to lighten all this up and give the yard some definition.  I’m sure I’ve kvetched about this before.

A couple weeks ago, Frances and I removed most of the tangelo and trimmed way back the Meyer lemon.  Yesterday, with Derek the bee guy’s help, we removed some strategic branches from the sycamore (the two pile’s worth in the street).

Think it helps?

The tangelo stump’s coming out in the next couple of days, along with one fortnight lily. We will put in its place something smaller and lighter in density, like a pluot maybe. Looking for fall color and spring blooms.  Something eye-popping for each season.

The Meyer lemon will hopefully thrive in the backyard.  When it goes, we’ll have a lot of daylight in the middle, giving a better street view of the terrace and the flowers on it.

I think we’ll continue to hack away at the sycamore until we’ve shaped it into something more elegant.  There must be a way to preserve its canopy of shade while giving it a more uplifted profile.

Eager, as well, to build a short split rail fence along the border of the bed that butts up against the house (hard to see in this picture).  I think that will go a long way toward offering some definition.

Should probably start all over from scratch.. but instead trying to work with what’s there. Definitely gives us a lot to hack on every Wednesday.

I announced at dinner tonight that I was going to bed really early. Too many successive nights of 4-5 hours of sleep. I seem to have found my limit. So, aiming for 9:00. This will certainly be a world record bedtime for me, I proclaimed. Everyone was cool with that.

Then Peter said he needed some extra credit in his food science class (he does if he’s going to avoid his first high school C) and he was going to make something before he went to bed. He’s required to work on his own, which is great; no interference with my go-to-bed-early plan.

I should note that earlier in the week, also for extra credit, he made a plum and apricot cobbler which his teacher thought was pretty great, and today he delivered an extra credit power point presentation on the Italian Peninsula, as part of their Mediterranean food unit. He’s serious about this no-C thing.

Somehow, he settled on flan. I wouldn’t let him make churros unsupervised…because: hot vat of oil for deep frying long sticks of sugary dough… uh no.

So, I was going to finish up the dinner dishes and head off to bed, leaving him alone to his baking. The operative words there: head off to bed. But then noticed, above the kitchen sink, that we’d been invaded by a swarm of flying insects. An hour’s worth of Facebook commentary and amateur entomology sleuthing later (I do love my friendverse), I was satisfied that they were fairly benign flying ants.. not unlike the annual infestation I experience in my office, which after a few years, I don’t pay the slightest attention to.

By the time that resolved, Peter’s flan was ready to come out of the oven, so I was there to share in his little late-night success.

Now I’m going to bed, but before I do, here are a couple of pictures:

The flan mess.. not too bad, I just like the picture.. taken from the stool, as I was getting a better look at the flying insects over the sink:

The finished flan.. not bad, Peter! (who made a liar out of me when I told him it’d be a tricky recipe):

And a closeup of one of the flying ants. It is not a termite because it has a shapely abdomen, wings that are different shapes, and crooked antennae.

I may get to bed by 12:30am, if all goes smoothly from here on out.

Election Day. It’s been a very nice day with a few really choice moments, which is nice because for years, I’ve laid pretty low on local elections days.

Since I left my very community-centric job at DCTV eight years ago, and because of the circumstances under which I left, I’ve not had much interest in local politics. Don’t feel like going into that, but suffice to say, my unhappiness about leaving left me sort of unhappy about all things community and I just retreated into a pretty quiet place and focused on new, other, non-community things. (At least those non-community-ish things were happy-making.)

But I do remember with incredible fondness the thrill of [many things, but especially] election time. Back in the day–and for over twenty years–election season was huge for me. Our small television station factored large during campaigns and on election night, especially in our early years (mid-80s to mid-90s, pre-world wide web, if you can believe there was ever such a time) because we were the best source for election information and–as soon as the polls closed– for returns.  In the earliest days, I served as host on our election night programs, which would begin promptly at 8:00pm and continue “until the final ballot was counted,” which back then could be 2:00am. It was all wildly thrilling. As host, I would deliver updates via slips of paper (really) that would be passed to me live, on the air. We had enormous election-night audiences. For days after, I would be stopped everywhere I went, “I saw you last night on Channel 5!” (and later, “I saw you last night on Channel 15!”).  “Great show!”  Election seasons loomed large and were an incredible high.

Etc., etc.  It was fun. Because of my role as executive director of a thriving media outlet (then it really was), I was in the middle of all kinds of community and political life. Knew the people, knew the issues, and totally cared about it all.

But then, after leaving DCTV, I didn’t care so much.  Or rather, just wanted to redirect.  And since 2006, I have really been community issues-stupid. I’m not kidding. For most of the last eight years, I’ve hardly picked up an Enterprise, save for the youth sports stories (no offense Davis Enterprise, it’s not you!) and have had to rely on Jim to keep me minimally conversant on local topics of the day. For much of this time, I’d have had a hard time telling you who the city council people were or how they aligned on this issue or that. After twenty-plus years at the epicenter of community life, that is just totally weird. But it’s sorta been my reality. Call me a sore loser. Or maybe just a very wounded person.  Whatever.

[Don’t feel sorry for me; like I said, I redirected. Happily.]

Anyway.

I have found a whole, whole bunch of places to volunteer my time and these chosen volunteer outlets have been deeply satisfying, like…

For years, I’ve been working with David Breaux on his journey of compassion, including editing his first book, promoting the construction of the Compassion Corner Earthbench and recently planning the upcoming Compassion Tour and, last week, its benefit dinner. I have edited, for free, three other books (ridiculously fun) and written–for a variety of purposes–literally countless articles, features, and press releases for the Enterprise (right, the newspaper I’ve had a hard time bringing myself to read). I’ve been driving for the winter homeless shelter, regularly checking in on my 92-year-old neighbor June (and doing errand and shopping support), baking & cooking for various school hospitality committees, tabling and getting more involved with Moms Demand Action and the Yolo Brady Campaign, and, of course, scorekeeping for–and reporting on–dozens upon dozens of baseball games.

And writing a daily, journally, photo blog thing.

(And wow, here I go list-making again.  Sorry.)

Back to the election.

The context for this post is: I haven’t been all that involved in elections, but this time, not only did I care a little bit more than in elections past, I did a teeny, meeny bit of volunteering for this one guy’s campaign.

And by teeny, meeny, I mean I volunteered to make some telephone calls to get people to the polls. Nothing worth a king-sized medal or anything, but a little bit of a contribution and a little bit of fun. Yay me.

Sooooo, on this election day in Davis, there were a few things that really, really made my day:

1. Having volunteered to Make Calls for the Joe Krovoza campaign, and having not been able to allocate the time over the weekend, today was my day. So this morning, I went to pick up a bunch of call sheets at campaign headquarters, and planned to make calls this afternoon.  While there, I was given a short orientation.  One thing a campaign volunteer suggested to me, in addition to making my calls, was, “you might want to make sure your neighbors vote.” And I thought, right… June may need some assistance…

When I got home, I went over to June’s.  It turns out, she’s been really ill (as has Tracy, her ancient, overweight, arthritic, poorly groomed pit bull).  Voting was the last thing on her mind. But she also said she’d never, ever missed voting in an election and she’d hate not to vote. In case you don’t know, June was born in Davis. Her mother was born in Davis(ville). She grew up in a house at the corner of 3rd and C Streets (coincidentally, Compassion Corner). She’s got a lot of history in this town, so voting’s a big deal. She decided that, yes, she did want to vote, so she and I started looking everywhere for her vote-by-mail ballot. She found it (in spite of the fact she’s functionally blind) and we commenced to filling in the blanks. She was very cranky today (sick, hurting, hungry, sad because of Tracy, and I sensed a bit peeved at me for being MIA in recent weeks…) and wasn’t up on most of the races. I offered to share my thoughts on those races she was clueless about. She is a republican so defaulted most often to republican candidates, but I scored two victories in the two races I cared passionately about: City Council (Robb Davis) and State Assembly (Joe Krovoza).   Yay me.

To make this long story short, I took her ballot over to Davis Community Church (while downtown fetching her a Subway sandwich and Tracy some dog treats). They were willing to overlook the proxy matter (I’d neglected to get her signature on the envelope that would officially authorize me to serve in this capacity), and the fact I’d torn off the privacy flap (and thus the envelope’s sealant). They enjoyed my story about how she’d grown up just one block south and how her mom had planted what is now that huge, heritage elm tree on that corner. FOX news was also at this polling location, but decided not to have me recount my whole story again for the evening news (phew).

I was just glad a) June got to vote, and b) I was able to facilitate one more vote for Robb and Joe.

2. I finally got some time at 4:15 to make my Joe calls. I gathered all my call sheets and my cell phone and went into the back yard to lie in the hammock and call people in St. Helena, Rohnert Park, American Canyon, Woodland, Winters and Davis.  I did that for two hours and made 56 calls, reaching a small-ish percentage of those, but leaving a lot of messages. I don’t much like that kind of thing, but it wasn’t nearly as bad as I thought it’d be. I did get a kick out of the sweetness of lying in the hammock in the garden in the shade on a 90 degree day making get-out-the-vote calls. And kind of kicking ass at it.

3. I summarized my effort, clipped the batch of call sheets together and headed back over to campaign headquarters. The buoyant, bustling crowd of this morning was gone. When I pulled up to the cul-de-sac at the end of Waxwing, there were no cars. The sun was low, the shadows were long, and there was Joe sitting on a chair in the middle of a shady patch of grass bent over a call sheet making calls.

At the end of the campaign, the polls and projections have not been favorable. He’s been a long shot from the get-go, but his campaign generated so much momentum because, actually?, he’s the best guy for the job. Independent newspaper, after independent newspaper, and environmental organizations and cultural and social interest groups galore have been endorsing him. He is the real deal, a committed public servant, not a machine politician and people recognized that. But it’s hard to overcome the money that comes from machine endorsements (especially when one of the candidates is the son of a popular State Senator), and our assembly district is a huge one with lots of republicans, in the far reaches of which the mayor of Davis is not well known. Anyway, an uphill battle for Joe from the start. But he’s run an amazingly positive, issues-based race and would have won if the campaign had been based on experience, knowledge and integrity. What a concept.

Seeing him alone, making calls at the end of the campaign as the sun was setting… that was poignant. As I write this, he is losing pretty significantly.  I’m disappointed as hell, but proud to have supported him. Good guy.

So those were this election day’s choice moments. Felt good to get a little bit back in the community saddle.

First high school sports banquet.  It was primarily to honor the varsity players and coaches, but the JV players, coaches (and families) were also invited and took up an adequate portion of the program.

It was held at the outdoor cafeteria area at DHS and featured gaggles of studly athletes, their ever-supportive families, coaches standing in clusters, giant trays of food from Outback Steakhouse, more desserts than even all those studly athletes and their families could consume, and blue and white everywhere.

Oh, and there were speeches, letters, awards, and championship rings given out. Accolades flew and emotions were touched.

All and all, a very nice evening.  Here are some pictures:

Good ol’ principal Will Brown showed up again and delivered some inspiring words:

Here are some shots of the JV coaches:

Jaret on left and head coach Bob Creely…

Father and son coaches, Brent and Jed Mille….

And Rich (Jaret’s father) and Bob again…

And the JV boys:

Soloman, Daniel and Jake (Gooey)…

Alex and Ray…

Hunter, Gabe, Peter, Mason (in back) Noah, Gavin (way in back), and Tyler…

Tyler, Gabe, Peter, (Noah) and James…

Mason, Gavin, Alex, Ray…

And finally, coach Creely recognizing Peter (with Ray, Gavin and Jake waiting their turn)…

(Not pictured, Jacob.)

This is what I wanted to do today:

This is the hammock, now set up in the backyard, all ready for a long summer of gentle swaying and reading and dozing and listening to music on one device or another. I took this photo last week when trying out the new set up.  The white is a golfer’s umbrella I rigged for shade, and that was the view.  Sweet.  it’s exactly what i wanted to do with most of my day (and go to an art show, and make calls for Joe Krovoza’s campaign, and have a long leisurely conversation with my mom about the French Open, and knock out some laundry… none of which I did.  None.)

This is what I did….

… watched my son pitch. That’s him on the bump.

Now, you know that’s my favorite activity of all time–baseball, Peter, a nice day. And today was a bonus because it was a double header against a reputedly good team from the East Bay. But I didn’t think I’d be camped out in the DHS announcer’s booth for seven hours, give or take. The second game (not the one he pitched in) was a barn burner. Davis got off to a very rocky start, giving up 6 runs in the first inning and 4 more in the second to trail 10-2 after an inning and a half. But then we started throwing up runs (6 in the bottom of the second, another 6 in the fourth, 5 in the fifth…. yeah… it was that kind of circus) and my, but it went on and on and on and on, and in the end, we won 19-12, AND for most of the game, Peter was at first, for something completely different.

So.. you know.

It was baseball, it was Peter and it was a nice day…  I was happy.

But, I have to ask myself, where does the time go? I had hammock on my mind, like I did all week long, and the time to lie in the hammock just simply did not materialize.

Which I don’t get.  I am not a busy person.

Here it is almost 11pm and I still need to clean up dinner, try to do some laundry, get a call into my mom, take a shower (I did manage a workout)….

Sorry about the to-do list. But where does the time go?

As I understand it, it goes something like this: The entire Sac-Joaquin Section of the California Interscholastic Federation (CIF) has 49 schools. They are divided into North and South. Davis is in the North section.  In each the North and South, there are four different leagues.  Davis’s league is the Delta Valley Conference.

For the baseball playoffs, the top three from each league advance to a post season tournament.  So, in the North’s playoff tournament, there were twelve teams.  The top team for each league gets a first round bye. Davis had finished second in league play behind area powerhouse Elk Grove, which meant they had an extra, must-win game to play. Single elimination games continue until four teams remain.

Davis won all its games (two or three, I can’t remember) and ended up being one of the top four finishers in the North’s bracket of the S-J section tournament.

So far, so good.

The next phase of the tournament is a double elimination series with the four remaining teams, which, after a couple rounds of play, was narrowed down to two teams: Davis (2-0) and Elk Grove (1-1). Elk Grove and Davis then went head to head.  Elk Grove won the first game, which gave both teams a 2-1 record. Davis prevailed in their second game to win the S-J North section title and advance to the final, championship round.

This is very cool.

Meanwhile, down in the South, St. Mary’s of Stockton rose through the ranks in a similar fashion to reach the best-of-three championship series, played at the very nice stadium of the University of the Pacific in Stockton.

The series began last night and Davis won 7-4. Today, a double header.  Davis lost the first game 1-0. Now the series is tied: Davis 1, St. Mary’s 1.  In the third and final game, Davis won 3-2 to take the whole enchilada.

wOOt, wOOt!

At the end of the very exciting game, there was a dog pile, which I missed because I was clapping and whooping it up with everybody else. But I did get this shot:

Those boys did a great job.

Peter and his JV cohort (and lots of the freshmen players, as well) showed up to most of the post-season games in support. That was very nice to see.

It will be fun to see what happens in the next two years.  Especially fun should Peter make the varsity team.

So wonderful to see Larry today (the man with his head inside the hole where the action goes (action is the word for the part of the piano where the keys are (which are connected to pads that go up and down to strike metal cables (I’m sure they’re not called that (and now I’m totally lost in my parentheses…

Here’s Larry and the piano:

This is the piano my dad (and my Uncle Vic and Aunt Ellie, as well) learned to play on in the 30s. It’s a Cable Nelson, not a first cabin piano, but serviceable for depression era families.  I understand a nice concert piano can go for something like $100k. This is not one of those.

The piano is basically Peter’s… he’s the one who plays it all the time. Knowing it was going to be tuned this morning, he actually came right home from school, dropped his pack at the door and bolted straight over to sit down and play. He was thrilled the right pedal (the sustaining pedal, I think Larry called it) was connected again and worked. Things are going to sound very different around here from now on.

Last friday, a guy gunned down six UCSB students in Isla Vista. Alienated, disenfranchised, unstable guy with easy access to a gun. Issues of gun control; issues of the lack of services and support for people with mental illness; the randomness, senselessness and sadness of young lives lost in an instant.  All of it: huge and overwhelming.

So.. a vigil was organized and held on campus tonight to honor the fellow UC students who died. I went in part because I liked the idea and the power of thousands of people in Davis gathering in solidarity to show their support for the kids in Santa Barbara–the grace and humanity of it. And I also went in protest and anger and despair over the state of gun policy in our pathetically misled country.

Just what the f*ck are we ever going to be able to do about this? The NRA has played the public and politicians brilliantly. The talking points are pure bullshit and yet our poor, uneducated, paranoid country is stuck in this numbingly stupid theater of the absurd.

It is such a horrible mess of misinformation and fear and stupid.

Okay.. so the vigil wasn’t about any of that. Though Chancellor Katehi, once she’d finished reading some prepared remarks, spoke from her heart and said there are just too, too many guns.  She said they outnumber our population and are easier to get than a bike license, and that’s not right.  Really, she said that. (Which is the absolute truth.)

I also learned that Richard Martinez, whose son Christopher was killed, went to law school at UCD. Martinez, through his anguished and impassioned comments in the days following the shootings, has reignited the national debate about gun laws.  A movement is forming called (somewhat awkwardly) “Not. One. More.” I’m really hoping it gets some traction. That’s the gun-related reason I went to tonight’s vigil.

But the gathering was appropriately and movingly about the people who died. They identified the six students and then shared backgrounds and sweet details of each of their life stories. They invited people who might know them to come up on the stage to offer remembrances.  It was really nice. One young woman was there during the shooting and she cried all the way through her recounting of the experience; I think most everybody cried along with her.

Here are some pictures.

This one was taken by Lucas Frerichs and shows the size of the crowd (thousands):

Here’s looking behind me before things got started:

Here are the people I sat with… I was looking for and found folks I’d met and/or worked with when I tabled at Farmer’s Market for the Yolo Brady Campaign and Moms Demand Action.  (Naomi, her husband Dan, Lucas, Jennie, Susan and her daughter Meg):

Here’s Mayor Joe… he had some good comments about the stress students feel and how we need to provide more support, not less.

After the speeches, the candles were lit and remained throughout the remembrances. It was cool to see how candles were lit on one end and, person-to-person, were then lit throughout the crowd.

At last, the Dinner for Compassion Tour.  Very gratifying to see this project grow from the tiniest seed of an idea to a full bloom of an event.

I remember talking with David months and months ago, maybe almost a year ago, about where he goes from here.  The idea of taking the compassion message on the road seemed like a perfect next step.  It may have been months after that that the idea of a benefit dinner came up. But ever since, our small group of six (and then we were seven) has been meeting and planning.

It was a lovely and eclectic evening that included an exquisite Indian meal, live music from a guy named Brett who performs blues music most often as part of a four-member band called Packard Slim, hula and belly dancers, two teen girls who offered henna tattoos, a silent auction with a fantastic array of items, a raffle, comments from David about the tour and what lead him to this moment, and finally some wonderful MC’ing by council candidate and likely/hopefully Davis’ next mayor Robb Davis.

Here’s a picture of Robb–this was toward the end of the evening when, with the help of his able assistants, he distributed silent auction items to the highest bidders, and conducted a raffle.

Here’s a look down the silent auction table. I’m pleased with the variety of items.. from original photography and some wonderful art, to massages & acupuncture sessions, to homemade honeycomb, pies, french macaroons and wines, to CSA subscriptions, to a wine tasting, to garden services and tennis lessons, to Rivercats tickets and goodies from Guatemala.  And all those generous donations brought in about $1000.

And here’s the raffle table… again lots of local stuff… gift cards, note cards, books by local authors, balms, sachets and more acupuncture.  Plus the un-bid upon silent auction items.  It made the raffle fun to have so many wonderful things. Yay.

Here’s a shot of the food spread: Chicken Biriyani in foreground, chard and potato (what eventually became of the chard I cut yesterday), carrot & yogurt raita, and samosas with mint chutney.  Dessert, not shown here, was rice pudding. All incredibly good:

Here’s Mary Philip, who personally buys all the ingredients and oversees the entire cooking operation, a process that takes a day of shopping and two days of cooking:

She is a gem.

And here’s my good friend David, delivering some closing comments about his five-year  journey to date and the upcoming one-year tour, and a heavy dose of inspiration:

Closing shot of Jeff’s magnificent painting of David on the corner of 3rd and C. We’re planning to hang it in a downtown location, hopefully close to the corner, so there will be a reminder of David’s five-year tenure in Davis.

Final touches on the benefit dinner for David’s upcoming Compassion Tour.  The Compassion Tour Team has included David, Carrie, Margaret, Michelle, Jeff and me. Later, Kristin joined to assist with some of the logistics. I like everybody.

You know?…. I’ve been out of the work force for awhile. Some things have changed: We arrange meeting times via Doodle. We conduct virtual meetings over Google Hangout. We share planning spreadsheets, to-do lists and meeting minutes on Google Drive.

The rest is pretty routine event planning.  But nothing is really that routine.

Nobody’s really in charge and David is content to let the universe speak; things will happen. He sometimes opens meetings or closes them with inspirational comments, he assures us we will all be changed by this experience. He states this with absolute certainty and with a characteristic sparkle in his eyes. I love these meetings. I actually love this whole non-process.  A couple of us are administratively minded, another couple of us are deeply passionate, and David is enough of everything to keep the ball moving down the field.

To wit: the dinner is tomorrow night and I think we’re ready.  David and I had lunch yesterday and said: People will come. There will be food. Funds will be raised.  It will happen.   And that’s all that matters.  There’s a lot of love, so, really, that’s all that matters.

So today, prep cooking happened. I cut chard, basically. I was in and out, mostly out, so my role was minimal in the cooking department.  Tomorrow, I’ll cook more.

Here are some of the volunteers. They are part of a regular crew that supports Mary Phillips, who, with her husband, puts these dinners on. For free. She acquires all the ingredients, mostly from local farmers, and spends two days with a crew of volunteers — anywhere from six to ten — cooking for very large  groups of people. Kind of amazing. I’ve had her dinners three times before, and they are exquisite.

This is the samosa portion of the program (you just can’t imagine how heavenly it smelled):

Tomorrow: more prep pics and dinner pics.

Excited.