Life of Wry

The day started with a mad dash down to Virginia Beach… because: Atlantic Ocean and… gotta see it. It was a Sunday morning and we were advised against canvassing too much before noon because people go to church, which gave us some extra time to while away.

Turns out, Virginia Beach is a pretty touristy place, but heck… we’re tourists, so it was a-ok. We picked a place called Pocahantas Pancakes. As we waited to be seated, we had time to take a walk on the boardwalk and took in the vast view, endless row of hotels, and a landmark statue of the Greek god Poseidon (Roman name: Neptune).

Then, canvassed for a few hours, ate a quick lunch at Panera, spent some time at the headquarters (always fun and interesting), then decided to head back to VB for dinner. Dinner was a fish house called Waterman’s. Not the best meal I’ve ever had, but a nice view.

Some pics:

Nice day to canvass. Sometimes you talk to folks, sometimes you just leave literature. We had a 22% contact rate; pretty decent. They track all kinds of things: number of voters in house, how they are registered, their ages, how often they vote. We also document our experience at their door through an app (Minivan), so campaign follow-up can happen as needed. This is a numbers game and campaigns know how to maximize their time and effort.

Headed back to VB in time for a nice sunset (though the sun doesn’t set over the water!)

Kelly and I started our day at Waffle House (because: Waffle House). We then met up with the Chicago Sister District gang (including another Kari!) and got a quick orientation from the campaign staff at the Michael F headquarters, then out we went for about three hours of walking and knocking. We stopped at about 2 for lunch.

We found a wonderful Puerto Rican restaurant in Virginia Beach. We started with some coconut soda and empanadas (chicken; guava and cheese), and when asked to recommend something light, our sweet server suggested the chicken soup with rice. An hour later, we got our soup, which the chef made from scratch, including running across the street for a missing ingredient (cilantro, turns out). The long lunch break precluded late afternoon canvassing, so that was our day.

Stats show we knocked on 68 doors and made 15 “contacts.” This 22% contact rate is strong, and we were happy with that! We got a little rain, but only at the very end (which earned us a couple of sympathy points from door openers. By and large, a very good day of canvassing.

We dropped our leftover soup at our VRBO, then headed out for some sightseeing before dinner. We went to the old part of town (Portsmouth area?) and loved the vibe! Lots of water in central/downtown Norfolk. Then had a glass of wine beside a big fire pit watching the sunset. We then joined the Chicago gang, plus Michael and his girlfriend for dinner at Tupelo Honey Southern Kitchen in a cool part of town (not sure where we were, to be honest). Talked campaigning… so interesting! Michael is fantastic young man and totally deserves this seat. He is all about public service and fits the district perfectly. Feels absolutely wonderful to work on his behalf.

Great, long day. Here are some pics.

(The above was our last house.. which we had to drive to. Kelly did a quick lit drop — you can make her out if you look closely between the drops — and we called it a day.)

Wolf was the first word I got today on the NYT Spelling Bee (letters: FIRAOWL). Virginia is the distination I spent the entire day traveling to.

No wonder I needed a margarita!

I like how the margarita matches my shirt. It was a great Mexican dinner.. a surprise find in Norfolk.

Norfolk is also the North America home of NATO. Who knew?

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And PS on that Spelling Bee: I got 40 words out of 44.. not bad for a day on the fly.

I am, quite certainly, the world’s slowest packer. Packing for a trip brings together every single one of my neuroses…. my ocd; my need to be neat; my need to be thorough; my need for order, organization and process (lots of overlap there, but you see where this is going); my need to solve for every problem and plan for every possible situation.. etc, etc. etc.

So damn tedious.

This trip is a wee complex as it includes some warm weather, some wet weather, and likely some cold weather. Plus clothes for canvassing, clothes for walking around Washington DC all day (including inside the White House and Capitol), clothes for nice, clothes and supplies for hiking at Acadia National Park, and workout stuff. Plus gifts. Plus laptop + cables. Plus toiletries. Plus reading and writing stuff.

This isn’t the half of it, but you get the idea.

And I’d decided to go with my “mama bear” suitcase (as opposed to my giant papa bear or my teeny baby bear). So had to limit my clothing choices. We’ll see how this goes.

Now that it’s done: I’m excited!! Up at 4:30am, see ya.

I’m a fan of the late afternoon sun pouring through our west-facing wall-o-windows, specially when rays bore through the yellow petals of a rose.

So, for the first time in the history of our country, the House today threw out its speaker. All because he worked with democrats to keep the government open. All because of a history of personal animus between the dumper and the dumpee. All because of a psychopath who long ago hijacked and redefined the GOP and, unfathomably, continues to have a stranglehold on the entire party. All because of the tyranny of the minority. All because of a stupid rule that let one guy call the question. So many reasons.

What kills me is that the vast, vast majority of the country does not want any of this chaos. They (we!) want a functioning government. We want our reps to work — together — to address our country’s needs and problems. The majority of us wants that.. and yet.. we get this.

The republicans are a big hot mess.

Today was a sad and even tragic spectacle. But you have to admit, this is funny:

Last Friday, Jim and I went to maybe our third concert at the Melon Ball. It’s Watermelon Music’s live music venue, oddly located in a strip mall of sorts way out in far northwest Davis. But hey, there’s parking and it’s pretty easy and close, as music venues go. (Better, by far, is the Mondavi, which is a pleasant walk for us. Cool to be able to walk to a world class venue and see folks like Itzhak Perlman or Bonnie Raitt or B.B. King or John Prine….)

At the Melon Ball, we saw Rita Hosking and she was so good. She plays with her partner Sean Feder and another guy who plays bass (I’ll be damned if I can find his name on her website — ritahosking.com — maybe you’ll have better luck). We were introduced to her (and band) probably at least ten years ago at the annual Home for the Holidays concerts (they’re regulars) and have really (really!) enjoyed her music.

Folk, country, americana.. story telling. Check her out.

A couple pics…

I don’t want to trivialize memorial services by counting how many we’ve gone to in the last couple months.*

We attended a service yesterday for Maynard Skinner. To hear the stories, Maynard was a complicated guy with both a public persona (a very well known one, at that) and a private one. I don’t want or need to read between the lines of the family speakers, I’m sure everyone comes with their own set of complexities.

For my part, Maynard was a boss and a casual friend. He was the chair of the Davis Community Cable Coop board when we made our transition from the nation’s first urban cable cooperative to a nonprofit community television organization. I believe (I’d have to check my records and I’m loathe to go into that file cabinet) he was also Davis Community Televison’s first chair following that 3-year, very complicated transition. We worked together a lot during those years. I’ll remember how he finessed the politics and negotiated with the folks at Malarkey-Taylor and ultimately got a good deal for the city and the community. United Artists Cable took over the coop, the management company got out of their contracts, the bank loans were paid off, all the limited partners got their investments back, all the coop members got their investments back (what an ordeal), and we ended up with hundreds of thousands of dollars left over to buy an office building and build a studio. We negotiated with the city to commit the entire 5% of the new cable company’s franchise fee to support noncommercial locally produced community media which gave us an enviable budget for a town our size. And I got to be the founding executive director. I mean.

Thank you Maynard.

I will take plenty of credit for having the vision of what we could be and setting it all up, recruiting and training a founding board, hiring staff, outfitting the studio, etc. Maynard was all ears and eager to get a win out of the coop’s failure (its failure was def not our fault.. coops just turned out not to be viable business models for cable companies! A worthy attempt, however; A+ for effort, Davis!)

Anyway, back to Maynard.

Because we shared so many mutual friends, we saw a lot of Maynard over the years and ended up at big parties at his house, as well as informal hang outs in his backyard. And many random events here and there.

I liked Maynard a lot. He was funny. He was Cristy’s husband (and I love Cristy). He was wry (and I love wry). He was renaissance, traveled, well-read, globally minded. He was athletic. He was shrewd. He was understated. He was fun.

Mostly, for me, as I said last week… being together with community members, so many of whom we know, for services like this, is both important and affirming. Affirming of our place in our own community, our place in the circle of life. I see a lot of love and support in gatherings like this which is exactly why we choose to be in a community like Davis, to lay down roots. It’s why we don’t move. (Well, one of the reasons.) It’s why we watch as folks enter these sanctuaries and spaces, saying things like, “is that…” “what happened to …” The collective aging is not subtle, either.

Maynard: December 20, 1927 to August 23, 2023. RIP.

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(*) Maynard’s was our fifth service this summer-ish, following David’s, Jim’s, Jim’s, Cap’s. I believe we will be doing this a whole lot more as time goes on.

I just learned about the death of Trudy Keel. Miss Keel was one of my PE teachers in high school. I found out sort of unexpectedly. I did a google search last night… while I was standing in the bathroom brushing my teeth, actually. Not sure what in the world prompted it, but some thought crossed my mind and I wondered where/what she was up to. I typed her name into the googles and up popped an entry (from three and a half years ago) on the Palos Verdes High School Memories 60s and 70s Facebook page, a reference to her death. It was a small post, only a handful of people responded to it, but it stopped my heart. I’d felt really close to her in high school and it was a serious blow.

As it was very late, I went to bed, but today I did a deep dive and gleaned a wee bit more info.

Best I can figure, she left Palos Verdes at some point and returned to Arkansas. The obituary says she moved to Heber Springs to buy a marina. Here’s the obit…

While there is no mention of Betsy in the obit, they were a couple. Betsy was also a PE teacher at PVHS. They arrived together and left together everyday. We learned that they shared an apartment in Torrance. In the 70s, not very many people were talking openly about same sex couples. Students, I imagine, suspected (and gossiped) about their relationship, but I can honestly say it didn’t register with me one way or the other.

I think it’s odd Betsy was not mentioned in the obit. I actually did a search, as well, on her and turned up what I believe is strong evidence their relationship continued right up until the end (wonderful). I found her listed as Betsy Keel in some sources, suggesting they may have married once it was legal. I hope that teeny, tiny town in the middle of rural Arkansas welcomed and embraced them.

Back to Miss Keel. I am serious when I say she made a huge impact on me. I can’t say I do anything differently because of her, or learned anything in particular, but I can say she affected me in profound ways, ways I’m sure I did not understand then.

I’m not sure I understand it now, except that the news has hit me surprisingly hard.

She coached our tennis team for all but my freshman year, so that’s probably how I first got to know her. She then asked me to be a PE assistant, and I did that for my junior and senior years. I spent a lot of time in that PE office with all the other PE teachers and coaches. Pretty quickly I became just her assistant. She taught me to swing a golf club (golf was her sport), then sent me out to coach students in the golf class. (Funny.) I can’t remember all the other things I did. But I loved that period.

I remember dreading the end of my time at PVHS because I felt like I’d miss the daily connection with Miss Keel so much. I suppose the end came and I moved on.. went to college and that was that. I must have returned to visit a time or two, but I don’t remember. Quite honestly, I’m not sure how I made the break.

I am not sure what the attachment was for me, but it was strong and it scared me a little. She was 22 years old than me, just four years younger than my mom, so clearly it wasn’t that kind of crush. But it was clearly an infatuation, a near obsession. At 15 (16, 17, 18), it was beyond me. I just liked her and looked forward to my job as PE assistant.

I do know she saw me. She recognized my athleticism and encouraged that part of me. She knew it was defining for me. I’m not sure my mom got that. My parents were generally supportive of all the things I did, but my mom was also sending me plenty of messages about what I should look like, how I should dress, the importance of style. I’m not sure she was really comfortable with my being a jocky jock. A tennis player, sure (they were tennis players), but I’m not sure she got the rest of it. She/they came to some of my track meets, certainly the big ones, but, honestly, I don’t have much of a memory of bleachers full of family. So I guess the attention Miss Keel gave me mattered a lot.

It’s a tender time… high school. If someone pays a lot of attention to you and supports and encourages you, shares your interest, rewards you for the stuff you do well… I imagine that’s big. I imagine it gets a little confusing, as well.

I read the comments on the PVHS FB page from others who also, apparently, liked Miss Keel:

:: I still remember how much I loved her. She was a wonderful person!

:: She mentored me as well. She helped me feel normal in an unreal world.

:: I had her for PE in the early 70’s at PVHS. She very gently told me I wasn’t cut out for the track team. 

:: Coach Keel was my PVHS swim team coach ‘72-‘76. She was a disciplined and dedicated person. Made me work harder and swim faster to CIF Finals.

I loved reading these… corroborated my version of her.

I found these in my yearbooks from junior and senior years.

This is a pic from my senior year:

I know this: learning of her death really stopped me in my tracks. I felt sorry we’d lost touch (well… nearly fifty years has passed!). I looked up the town she moved to, google street-viewed around to see what the town was like, read the obit a number of times. A lot of feelings came up, whatever they are. I hope she had a happy life.

I planted a tree tonight in her honor.

Dianne Feinstein passed away late last night, first news of the day for me. I’m a progressive democrat, but I can also greatly appreciate and never begrudge the need to govern from the center, and DiFi was one of those.. a moderate/centrist dem. The tributes pouring in highlight her work on assault weapons; her “firstness” (woman: mayor of SF, senator from California, chair of a couple powerhouse senate committees); her taking on the CIA’s torture practices. All impressive.

I like this little tiny factoid: she was a supporter of the Nepalese people, through an organization her husband Richard Blum founded, The American Himalayan Foundation. I didn’t know about this before I trekked in Nepal, but imagine my huge surprise and delight when in a tiny, remote teahouse* high in the Himalayas, I saw photos of both Dianne Feinstein and Bill Clinton, photos taken on a shared trip to the Kumbu (a region at the base of Mt. Everest, inaccessible to cars). I’m like, I KNOW THOSE FOLKS! Which… as a Californian/American traveling in such a remote place, surrounded by Nepalese folks who could not possibly have related, they were like my people. Funny.

The AHF sent this out today:

As long as we’re on the subject of DiFi…. here’s a photo a high school friend posted today. Winter is a horse person (among other things!) and was a sorority sister of Dianne’s daughter when they were both at Cal. I really love this picture. She was a junior at Sacred Heart High School in SF and a member of its horse drill team.

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Here is a shot of one of those iconic tomato trucks we in the Central Valley are SO accustomed to, esp at the end of summer as the tomatoes have come ripe and are harvested and hauled off to some tomato processing plant (alas, no longer in Davis). I like this shot b/c you can also see the last days of a corn field.. all spent and brown.

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The above was shot on our way home from Kaiser, where Jim and I got our Covid shots. We’re feeling all smug and bullet-proof. We are good public health citizens. Take that, Rick!

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The government looks to be on the verge of a shut down. I’m so very, very tired of all of this. Just hate politics and this extreme polarization. The far right flank of the congressional repubs most certainly have no interest in service and their role in government. It’s all performative. And they’re all controlled by the crackpot puppet master himself. Pure dysfunction and not a shread of principle.

That, and I’m seriously annoyed because it actually threatens our trip next week… flights (airports and airport security could be choked up); our tours of the White House and Capitol may not happen; they will close national parks (Acadia!)… and who knows what else. They have a week to sort this out. Chop chop!!

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Our boy is flying sky high…. he’s on the idea-pitching end of an impressive grant application (that resulted in an impressive award), he’s deep into stimulating research that he loves, he’s got a girfriend whom he loves even more, he’s living a full life (they attended a vocal concert last night .. Renee Fleming .. and enjoyed it, and paddled boarded last weekend with L&C), Maya’s beyond happy in her new job. How great is all that.. for just this moment’s snapshot?

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And speaking of snapshots.. that’s mine on the day.