PV Nostalgia
January 4, 2025
A couple months ago, I joined Derrick and Gayna (Lamb-) Bang for their 3x/year lunch with David Calkins (and his wife Nancy) in Williams. Mr. Calkins was my favorite math teacher and I hadn’t seen him in over 50 years. Derrick was a year ahead of me at Palos Verdes High School. He also had Mr. Calkins for at least one math class and had become his teaching assistant. Derrick and Mr. Calkins got to know each other because David was the faculty advisor to the bridge club. A lifelong friendship was born.
Mr. Calkins was considered a very cool teacher back in the day… erudite, rigorous… knew his stuff and demanded a lot of his students. I thrived in his class. He’s still very erudite! I always loved math, but Mr. Calkins was probably the teacher most responsible for my applying to colleges as a math major. (I lasted one year as a math major before switching to econ and then undecided. I ultimately graduated with a degree in PE. Lol.)
Back to our lunch…
Here are a couple pictures from that day… me, Nancy, Mr. Calkins himself (!), Derrick and Gayna.
We ate at Grazella’s (a fantastic deli), which has a lot of dead animals on the wall. It’s worth noting, there was a “State of Jefferson” sign across the street from the restaurant. Only one hour from Davis, but a world away.
I kinda treasure this photo.
These are from my high school yearbook:
I learned a lot about David at this (too short) lunch, including: he was great friends with Coach Kelly! Joe Kelly was another favorite high school teacher of mine. Joe taught english, and was also a football coach. David and Joe were friends then and remained friends long past their retirements. They still correspond. Joe now lives up in Washington and is also in his 80s.
Lordy.
Derrick passed along Joe’s email address and Joe and I have exchanged numerous emails since November. He remembers me (he said, even convincingly), as he followed all the school sports programs, including (especially) girl’s track. He and Rod Flagler (also in the english department) used to serve as timers at our home meets and he recalled our successes at big invitationals and State meets. He remembered how exceptional our team was. I was thrilled (beyond thrilled) to hear this. He also recalled some of the other girls who were standout athletes in my class (like Kris, Marta and Brenda).. which, 50+ years — and probably thousands of students — later, is absolutely remarkable. He said the females athletes in my class were among the best ever at PVHS.
In fact….. here’s an excerpt from one of the emails:
Occasionally I get a great surprise. Your email is one of them! Thank you for taking the time to write and fill me in. I can truthfully say I absolutely remember you, believe it or not! And one of the reasons is that when you were running track, Rod Flagler and I used to time some of the meets when I could sneak away from football practice to help out. Yup, you guys really had some good track teams. I even worked the CIF track meets most years, and had the extreme pleasure of watching a young Jim Spillane long jump 24’ 10” at Arcadia, unheard of at the time. And yes, I remember English as well.
You really were a “jock” before there were many quality female athletes at the high school level, and I so much enjoyed watching the women play.
How about THAT!!
Here’s Joe, who I had for Comp C:
I’ll always, ALWAYS, be grateful for that english class, because he required us to keep a daily journal (which he collected, read, and commented upon), which led me to a lifelong practice of journal writing, which led me to…. BLOGGING. Huzzah!
Joe sent me a more recent picture:
He aged well.
Finally…. as I bask in 70s nostalgia… here is a picture of our beautiful high school… and the track where I spent my glory-est of days.
2025 Baby!
January 1, 2025
I’m starting up daily blogging again! Yay New Year’s resolutions!
My intent, just so you know, is to not post publicly anymore. However, I haven’t figured out yet how to do that, so for now, you are still seeing this. I’ve lost track of who all gets my blogs.. some subscribe and I believe for them my blog shows up in an email, while some get my blogs in some other way… but honestly, I just don’t know how any of this happens. The truth is I’m feeling increasingly self-conscious about what I write and who sees it, so I’m planning to just make it all private. I’ve long said, I blog for me, and it embarrasses me to consider that lots of people, some of whom I don’t even know, are reading my daily musings. Like… who do I think I am to think these things have any kind of broad appeal? Well, I don’t. So as soon as I figure this out, it’s lights out. Thing is, blogs are, by nature, public. But don’t have to be. So… that’s where I am.
Anyway.
Long as I have you here (for now), I hope the dawn of 2025 finds you rested up after the holidays and recovering from all those sweets what was an exhausting year of body-shuddering politics. I’m deeply disgusted at the outcome of the November election and, as I write this, working mightily to find my way to a place of healthy resistance. That is, a recognition that it all sucks, and I will find a way to stay engaged, be smart about picking my battles and do what I can — when I can — to keep really bad things from happening. My goal is to be a useful cog in a large wheel. I trust the smart people who will be leading us in this fight and, importantly, building a foundation for victories down the road. I’m in.
It wasn’t all about politics though, of course. 2024 was full of all kinds of other things.. fantastic travel, exceptional family time, valued friend time, good health and fitness (minus two overworked knees)… lots of other stuff, too, from light to heavy: movies; puzzles; music; the amusements (and frustrations) of aging; life lessons; attitude adjustments; beautiful community; weathering the storms in friends’ lives.. and more.
This being the new year, I am in the middle of a 2024 reflection — a list, actually — of the year’s notable elements… always a satisfying look back and reminder of how wondrous life is. I’m addicted to list making and this is a fun one.
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With that… here are a couple of shots from the last day of 2024 and the first day of 2025.
Yesterday, Jim, Peter and I drove for the second time in three days down to Mountain View to take care of Marie’s kitty Tommy and then visit Marie in a hospital in Fremont where she ended up following a ghastly one-car accident on Christmas night driving home from our gathering at Monica and Dror’s. As of this moment, it seems as though she’ll not lose her left leg, though that is/was not certain after an accident that mangled her car beyond recognition and beat her up pretty badly (said leg, broken elbow, fractured cervical vertebrae, bruises overall).
As long as my blog’s still public, I won’t post a photo of Marie, but I will post some lovely photos from a walk we took at Baylands Park in Mountain View on the first sunny day in a long while! If photos were audible, you’d hear us mulling over Peter’s post PhD life and all the various paths before him. That conversation’s been happening a lot this past week and I imagine will continue for months. He’s still got a year to go..
Today was cold and dreary, perfect for hanging around the fire and watching the Rose Bowl.
(Yeah, no big screen TV in our living room… poor Peter has to watch pirated sporting event coverage on my laptop.. a bit pathetic.)
We had no real dog in the fight, but Peter was routing for the University of Oregon Ducks against the Ohio State team, because: Ohio (Michigan’s biggest rival). It was a blowout.. Ohio proved to be the far better team, much to Peter’s disappointment. Good to note: Ohio suffered two defeats this season, one to Oregon (who they beat handily today) and one to Michigan. So maybe there’s consolation there.
While the game was going on, Jim was fixing our garbage disposal which broke down (after 20 years) on Christmas Eve.
Not his favorite job.
And may I say, it’s great to be blogging again. Not documenting every little thing make me feel anxious. So.. glad to be back on the horse!
Life of Wry 