HinesSight

Sliding downhill on Father’s Day

Perfect. This is just the way I feel much of the time, now that I've reached the semi-geezerish age of 59.

Like I'm sliding down the hill of life, faster than before, since the descent seems steeper the closer you get to the bottom.

So photos of me and my granddaughter, Evelyn, that my daughter emailed today were just what I wanted, Father's Day wise.

I sort of thought that Starbucks would offer up a discount on my latte this morning. But no. Disappointed, I cut my tip in half and just clinked a couple of dimes into the jar.

Giving starts at home, they say, and I'm never far from the domicile called Me.

The records show that it's a lot older than I feel it to be. My birth certificate affirms that I was born in 1948. However, I don't feel anywhere near as mature as that.

And my goal is never to grow up. Which Evelyn is going to help me to do, for sure. When she visited us for the first time last March, I hadn't slid down a slide in quite a few years.

I was pleased to discover that my butt hadn't forgotten what to do (not much, admittedly), as the photos above attest.

Here we are in a more serious moment, pausing on a walk around the lake near our house. I like this photo. There's a yin and yang to it.

Evelyn's youth and softness; my mature (I resist saying elderly) grizzledness.

More and more, I find myself pondering what I'll be when I'm no more. I don't know, naturally. Nobody does. All we can do is make up stories about an afterlife – which, in reality, likely will amount to a big pile of non-existence.

That bothers me, since Woody Allen and I have a similar attitude toward death.

"I don't want to achieve immortality through my work. I want to achieve it through not dying."

But looking at Evelyn, especially when she's in the arms of my daughter, Celeste, I realize that death can't be cheated – but everyone still wins at the game of life. Even at the inevitable moment when life is lost.

Each of us leaves behind traces of ourselves.

Children and grandchildren are obvious continuances of living. However, all that we do, including the elemental act of simply being, creates ripples that continue to move on the ocean of life after our physical body and mind are inert and motionless.

That's everlasting life. Not the sort religions would have us believe in, but something that I can count on, unlike heaven or salvation.

I hope my last breath and final heart beat mark the beginning of another form of life, rather than nothingness.

Yet if that really is The End of my life's story, I'll turn the last page knowing that others are continuing to enjoy a tale that I helped write.

Making my baby granddaughter into an existentialist

I'm discovering one of the joys of becoming a grandfather: since I don't bear the responsibility for my granddaughter's ultimate development, I can play with her psyche as much as I want to.

When she eventually seeks psychotherapy, Evelyn never will connect her existential angst with the children's book that I read to her over the weekend.

Of course, she didn't grasp the deeper aspects of "Ned Goes to Bed" this time around. (When you're not quite a year old, pondering philosophy plays second fiddle to seeing if the pages rip out of a book.)

But I intend to keep reading "Ned Goes to Bed" to her every time she visits.

In my late adolescence I was heavy into Sartre, Camus and other existentialists. It isn't too early to start trying to turn Evelyn into someone who'll feel comfortable in a Parisian coffeehouse, smoking unfiltered Gauloises, sipping a darkly strong expresso, wearing black, and expounding in deeply accented French, Life is so…I don't know…nothing!

I've got my work cut out for me, because right now Evelyn has a decidedly sunny personality.

Yet during our visit to Salem's Gilbert House Museum yesterday, I saw a more existential side of her. Turning a wheel connected to a structure that never changes direction.

So I think she's going to enjoy "Ned Goes to Bed" more and more. My wife got the book. After I finished reading it to Evelyn, I asked Laurel: Did you look at it before you bought it?

No, she said, the cover just looked cute. I like dog books.

Well, Ned starts out as a seriously troubled dog. Crawling into bed,

Ned feels lonely when evening draws nigh,
Like the solitary moon in the dark blue sky.
Into his room, moonbeams creep
And Ned just cannot fall asleep.

He gets under the covers and wonders what he might discover. Off to the moon!

"Is anyone there?"
calls out Ned.
There was nothing but silence,
Not even a fly
As the sun began its slow descent
Behind the earth's sky.

So now Ned has realized that the anxiousness he felt in his bed extends into space. There's emptiness everywhere.

Then blackest night finally arrives
And loneliest Ned just wants to cry.

I need to rip out the rest of the book's pages. Because this is a wonderful ending for an existentialist children's book.

Unfortunately for my fantasies about discussing "Being and Nothingness" with Evelyn before too long, "Ned Goes to Bed" ends on a positive note.

Some stars come down to cheer Ned up, blah, blah, blah. I was so disappointed that Ned wasn't left on the moon all alone, staring into the darkness, unable to sleep, unable to stay awake.

What's wrong with kids realizing early on that life doesn't always have a happy ending? It sure seems that at least a few children's books could end with, "And so he lived uncertainly ever after, not being sure what the heck was going on."

Well, I guess I need to write one myself. "Ned Goes to Bed" started existentially strong, but finished weak.

Sleep tight when you close your eyes at night,
And may all your stars be very bright.

A one-year old takes my house apart

My granddaughter is making her first visit to our south Salem home. It didn't take Evelyn long to figure out how to begin taking it apart.

This southern California baby saw her first snow today. Thanks, Oregon. Here she is, a bundle of cuteness, up early with her dad on a chilly morning.

I got to push her stroller most of the way around our neighborhood's two mile loop. Of such events are a new grandfather's dreams made of.

Llamas aren't all that common in Evelyn's Hollywood environs. She took them in stride, with my daughter Celeste by her side.

Oregon must have looked larger up on Dad's shoulders, where Evelyn was transported for part of the outing.

Laurel had her walking pretty well, with a little help from some friends: ten adult fingers. Soon she'll be prancing around on her own and we're going to have to do a lot more home childproofing.

What I'm enjoying most about spending time with a one-year old is being reminded of simple pleasures. At one point in my life, I was as transfixed as Evelyn is with a wooden spoon, a metal pot, a colander, and crumpled up pieces of paper.

We had an amazingly fun time with these things today. And they've been sitting in my kitchen all along, while I've been looking for interesting entertainment in so many other directions.

At fifty-nine, Evelyn is teaching me the wisdom of one.

2007 Christmas Letter released to an eagerly awaiting world

Here it is, world! What you've been waiting for to complete the Christmas season: Laurel and Brian's 2007 Holiday Letter.

Download 2007_christmas_letter.pdf

Download 2007_christmas_letter.doc
(shared in both PDF and Word formats)

By "world," of course, I mean the subset of Earth's 6.3 billion people who look forward to the wise, witty, and moving sentiments we express in our annual letter.

Not being Christians, I prefer the term "Holiday letter." Yet as a worshipper of Google, whose search engine is attuned to "Christmas letter," I shamelessly have used those words in the title of this post.

If you read the letter, as you should, you'll see that it features:

--photos of my granddaughter and not-so-fond memories of my daughter's one and only college award
--an update on our blogging and dogging
--our exposure, which wasn't entirely flattering, on KATU television news this year

I always enjoy writing our Holiday Letter, particularly after it's finished.

Last night it took a strong cup of coffee to ramp up my brain into a sufficiently caffeinated state to figure out how to flow text around photos in Word 2007, which, though not completely intuitive, sure is a heck of a lot easier to do than in Word 2003.

I concluded the letter, using a humble "we" (though, as usual, I wrote the whole thing), with these thoughts – which now go out to the entire world of the blogosphere with the same good wishes.

We're writing this on the solstice, Dec. 21. From now on, there's more light each day. May this be true for all of us in 2008: more light, more brightness, more energy, more love.

How I was blown away by a nuclear bomb

Whenever I fret too much about modern environmental degradation, I like to think back to the not-so-good old days of the 1950s when the United States conducted over 150 above ground tests of nuclear weapons.

Most of these were at the Nevada Test Site. In 1955 my mother, who was divorced, moved with me to Three Rivers, California. Three Rivers is in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada Mountains, on the other side of which lies Nevada.

Nowadays people worry over miniscule bits of contamination in our food, water, and air. Back in the '50s it was no big deal to set off honking large nuclear bombs above ground in the Nevada desert, spewing radioactive material all over the place.

I do remember concerns about us kids (I was six when we moved to California) being exposed to radiation in milk via cows that ate contaminated feed. But in general nobody raised much of a fuss over the testing.

After all, this was the height of the Cold War. We needed to make sure that our nuclear shield worked so the Commies couldn't take us over.

My brother-in-law, Bob, used to be a survival instructor in the Air Force. He gave me a parachute. It came in handy in the late '50s, when there was advance notice of a nuclear test on the other side of the Sierras.

Our local newspaper said that it was going to be big enough to generate a shock wave of wind that we'd be able to feel in the Kaweah River valley (the Kaweah's three forks give "Three Rivers" its name).

Shortly before the nuclear bomb was to be detonated I unfolded the parachute. I laid it out on our yard so the chute faced away from the mountains. I fastened the straps around my too-small nine year old body (I believe this test was in 1957 or 1958).

It was exciting. I can still vividly recall the whoosh as an intense blast of nuclear test wind carried over the mountains, down the river valley, and into the parachute. It filled up and pulled me along our back yard.

Wow! Nuclear bomb tests are fun!

Except for all the people who got cancer from the radiation. And their family members.

Fortunately, we've come a long ways from those "What, me worry?" days of nuclear ignorance.

But not nearly far enough.

Kohlrabi Black Belt and other images of Illinois

Well, actually this is a photo of me wearing my Kohlrabi Black Belt shirt back in Oregon. But since I bought it from a quirky creative artist, Larry Steinbauer, at a Champaign-Urbana Saturday market, it counts as an image of Illinois.

I love it. I wore it during a visit to the Rantoul Air Museum, and I'm wearing it today – after getting back from the flatlands of America yesterday (I got another Steinbauer t-shirt that says: "Champaign: in the foothills of mount level").

The Kohlrabi shirt's message is from the renowned Turnip Cabbage IV, "Be inwardly strong but gentle to others." Just like kohlrabi itself, or so I assume, not having a recollection of ever eating it.

I did take the shirt off Monday when Laurel's sister and brother-in-law, Dee and Jerry, took us to Allerton Park near Monticello. Robert Allerton, who gave his estate to the University of Illinois in 1946, had a thing for Chinese Fu Dogs and other statuary. Fortunately, my Napili Bay t-shirt matched the purplish Fu Dogs. (you can see how happy this one is about that)

The centerpiece of the family reunion was Lexie, a bundle of cute. I quickly learned that baby photography is tricky, given the ever-changing subject. Here I managed to capture her in an equine contemplative moment with her mother, Monica. The horse is Dee's.

More Lexie, quasi-crawling.

Laurel did some baby-holding. And matched her clothing nicely with Lexie's toy.

Jerry is the head honcho of county parks, so we got a tour of the Lake of the Woods park. Here's the lake.

And here's part of the woods, a stately heartland tree with a swing that pleads, "Sit a spell."

I enjoyed the scenery and general vibe of central Illinois more than I thought I would. We Oregonians are justifiably proud of our towering fir trees and high mountains, but there's something equally majestic about being able to look forever in every direction – nestled in the foothills of mount level.

(Which reminds me: if you find you can't live without a Kohlrabi Black Belt or Champaign t-shirt, Steinbauer can be reached via his art gallery, Wind Water and Light. He told me that he hasn't gotten around to putting his t-shirt creations online yet, but would be happy to fill an order over the phone.)

How to tell you’re not in Oregon anymore

Clue 1: the horizon is really flat. And there's lots of corn. Not only at this Champaign-Urbana farmer's market, where the corn is stacked as high as a child's eye, but also stalking in the fields – along with soybeans aplenty.

Clue 2: when the husband of your wife's sister, Jerry (reaching out for corn in the photo above) tells you that a subdivision is going to replace a corn field near their house, and you say, "But isn't that zoned farmland?," after which he smilingly reminds you that you're not in Oregon anymore, which still has some good land use laws that protect corn and other vegetative living things even after Measure 37, in contrast to most other unenlightened states of the union.

Clue 3: you get off an airplane and you don't hear harp and piano music playing in concourses anymore; nor are your surroundings bright, cheerful, clean, and well-designed; and you have to search hither and yon for a hint of the healthy food that is so readily available at the airport you left from, which happens to be Portland, and appears to be banned at your not-quite-final destination, Chicago – along with any paint that isn't gray, black, or otherwise depressing.

(Portlanders, there may be some things to complain about as regards your town, but your airport is not one of them. Further, speaking as a Salem resident, be thankful you have an airport with planes that go more places directly than just Salt Lake City – our one and only non-stop destination choice.)

From fifty-eight years to one month old--in two hours

I flew from Portland to Hollywood yesterday to see my (one and only) granddaughter for the first time. The plane trip took two hours.

Along the way I lost a lot of years. All the way down to Evelyn's age--one month.

Maybe not in rock solid reality, since I'm still able to put up a blog post on an unfamiliar computer, and Evelyn doesn't do much but sleep, cry, poop, pee, eat, and look around in an unfocused fashion.

Still, we've got a lot in common. Don't you see the resemblance? This grandfather can. In his "the circle of life continues" mind.

I struggled mightly with Alaska Airlines to get me an aisle seat for my trip to the Burbank airport. None were available. So I ended up crammed into a window seat next to a large man who couldn't help oozing over into my own none-too-large space.

Which put me even closer to the window. Fortunately, it was clear almost all the way to southern California. From the left side of the plane I had great views of Mount Hood, Lake Tahoe, Yosemite Valley, and other sights.

Including a vapor trail. It was just above my plane. We paralleled its path for many minutes. Another jet must have passed by on the same route not too long ago. The vapor trail was beginning to dissipate, just like me.

And all of us. Even including Evelyn. But almost certainly she'll be passing through life for a lot longer than I will, on her own journey that, unlike the two jets', won't come close to parallelling mine.

That's the circle of life. When my daughter was born, I felt more a part of it. Now that I've held Evelyn, even more so. I'll die one day, as will each of us. Yet we all will leave behind traces--"vapor trails" that interect the paths of other life-travelers.

My daughter, Celeste, and her husband, Patrick look wonderfully familial now. We actually sat down last night to a dinner prepared by these two previously "let's eat out" types. Of course, a one month old baby puts a crimp in your Hollywood dining options.

Patrick already has got the Internet-surfing while baby-sitting style down.

I taught Evelyn how to Tango and Tai Chi today. She's pretty good. Knows how to follow beautifully, like a babe in my arms. When she learns how to walk, we'll be able to progress even further.

Just a few hours until Mother's Day. My daughter is looking the part. Amazing! She makes salads, she changes diapers, she pushes a stroller, she dances with Evelyn to the same "Grease" record that I listened to a jillion times in the '70s when Celeste was young.

In short, she's a mother. And a vapor trail. That another oh-so-cute little plane is following.

I become a grandfather. And dig up a septic tank.

Grandpa Brian. A new aspect of my persona, thanks to Evelyn Elizabeth Vos. She was born Thursday to my daughter Celeste and her hubby, Patrick.

And their first "child," who looks like a feline plot is in the making. I'd keep the cat away from the baby for a while, Celeste and Patrick, until you know what's going on in that furry head (as if you ever will).

Speaking of furry heads, Evelyn looks a lot like Celeste did when she was born: hirsute. People said Celeste looked like an Eskimo, though I'm pretty sure nobody who said that had ever seen an Eskimo baby.

Patrick was kind enough to email Evelyn's vital statistics to family and friends, facts I forgot to ask when I talked with the new mother: 6 pounds, 1 ½ ounces; 20 inches.

Seems about right to me. Celeste was in that ballpark, but then remained on the skinny side for several years of babyhood. We raised her from birth as a vegetarian. Her pediatrician was dubious about this.

That's how it was back in the early '70s—vegetarian unfriendly. Evelyn will be raised in 21^st century Hollywood, a much more receptive environment for an alternative infant foodstyle. (Patrick, keep her away from those McDonald's burgers you love to sneak out and eat!)

Patrick already has the sensitive doting father look down. Though he's in Hollywood, I know it's no act.

Baby carriers sure have come a long way from how I remember them. You could make it through an earthquake in this model. Didn't think of that, though, when I chose to give these southern Californians one after perusing their online baby gift registry.

I haven't yet adjusted to my grandfather status. It'll probably take Evelyn Elizabeth saying "grampa," or whatever, for it to really sink in. At the moment, I don't feel as old as my new title implies.

This morning we were just about to head for a Fix Measure 37 rally at the state capitol when I noticed that dark smelly water was overflowing our laundry room floor drain, plus the downstairs toilet and shower. Not good.

A little over an hour later I was out in the dog yard, uncovering the access hatch to our septic tank at the behest of the Roto Rooter guy. For a grandfather, my digging in the wet clay soil was pretty darn impressive, if I have to pat me on the back myself.

The Roto Rooter team saved our bacon tofu. But not in time for us to make the rally. Laurel's sign-making went for naught. Might as well get some use of it via this post.

(She was uncharacteristically photo-shy, not having had an opportunity to prettify herself today what with all the clogged drain excitement).

Pregnancy can be cute

My daughter, Celeste, finally has shared some pregnancy photos. She's due April 10, so she's really pregnant.

We talked by phone this evening. Celeste said, "There's nothing cute about being pregnant."

Hey, this grandfather-to-be begs to differ. Patrick, her hubby, and she are Hollywoodish cute here (which fits, since that's where they live).

And this shows more than the belly of the demure mother-to be. Who, I'm told, is eminently ready for Baby Girl ______ to make her appearance.

They're down to three potential names, but won't choose the winner until they see their child and know that the name fits.

At the moment, according to Celeste, "Kicker" would win out. I suspect this won't be their ultimate choice.

2006 Christmas letter

Hot off my laptop is Laurel and Brian’s 2006 Holiday Greetings, a.k.a. our Christmas letter. I ponder my incipient grandfatherness and speak of dog walking, colonoscopies, Tango, land use activism, and why blogging beats book writing.

PDF and Word versions are available:
Download 2006_christmas_letter.pdf
Download 2006_christmas_letter.doc

My complete 1995-2006 Christmas letter oeuvre may be perused in “Collected Christmas letters.”

I like to say that a man's soul is revealed through his Christmas letters. Well, if God rewards humor, cynicism, and blatant self-promotion, my salvation is in darn good shape.

“Little Miss Sunshine,” a tribute to dysfunction

A VW bus that has to be pushed or rolled to start it. A family comprised of wildly disparate members, including a heroin-snorting grandpa, a platitude-spouting motivational speaker father, and a Nietzsche-obsessed son who hasn’t said a word for nine months.

What’s not to like about “Little Miss Sunshine”? We saw the movie last Friday, thanks to Salem Cinema’s decision to bring it back for another run. It’s a feel-good tribute to eccentric dysfunction, something I know more than a little about.

Automotively, I felt right at home watching the family of Olive, an aspiring seven year-old beauty queen, coax their VW from New Mexico to California so she could enter the Little Miss Sunshine pageant.

In 1968 I became the owner of my mother’s ’57 VW Bug when she got a ’67 model. I loved it. And I hated it. VW’s of that era were equally (1) marvels of German engineering and (2) pieces of crap.

That’s what made them so interesting. You never knew whether Dr. Jekyll or Mr. Hyde was going to appear when you turned the key. I remember the day my VW got me safely through a nasty Sierra snowstorm. I also recall driving along scraping ice from the windshield. On the inside.

There were a lot of positive qualities to my ’57 Bug. The heater wasn’t one of them.

So it was an enjoyable flashback to watch the VW in “Little Miss Sunshine” drive the family crazy with little quirks like a horn that wouldn’t shut off and a broken clutch that required the push-starting routine.

When my VW’s engine compartment caught fire on a San Jose street in the late ’60s it didn’t surprise me at all. I just pulled over, grabbed a fire extinguisher, and called it another day in the life of a Volkswagen owner.

I’m horribly un-mechanical. But with the aid of that marvelous book, “How to Keep Your Volkswagen Alive,” I learned how to crawl under my successor VW (a Karmann Ghia) with a screwdriver and get it running again when, for some forgotten reason, it decided that it didn’t want to start. Which was frequent, as I recall.

Still, I remember those cars with much more fondness than the blandly reliable Japanese models that, when I became a family man, I eventually turned to. A dash of dysfunction adds spice. Too much of it gives you psychic indigestion. But too little leaves a hunger for the wild side.

Growing up, I took for granted that the abnormal was normal. For that, I’m now grateful to my dysfunctional nuclear and extended family. We had alcoholism, divorce (lots of it), affairs, scandals.

I don’t know if the “cocktail hour” is still common. It was in my family during my pre-teen years. As the youngest in the room, usually, during family gatherings my job would be to hand out the drinks. Then I’d perch in a corner, sip a coke, and listen to the gossip.

I accepted all the dysfunction as part of usual family life, not having any other basis for comparison. My uncle played the bagpipes. And, polo. (Not at the same time, though, so far as I know). I thought that was normal too. Now I honor him for his eccentricity, and am sorry that I gave up so soon on the starter bagpipes that he sent me.

When I became a teenager I went through my own existential despair phase. I wasn’t into Nietszche, unlike Little Miss Sunshine’s Dwayne. But the weirder side of Bob Dylan (was there any other side to him in the ‘60s?) touched my dark soul. Also, Henry Miller, who wrote in “Tropic of Capricorn”:

But if you would laugh when others laugh and weep when they weep you must be prepared to die as they die and live as they live. That means to be right and to get the worst of it at the same time. It means to be dead while you are alive and alive only when you are dead. In this company the world always wears a normal aspect, even under the most abnormal conditions. Nothing is right or wrong but thinking makes it so.

I included this quote in a letter that I wrote to my high school girlfriend, Mary. She and her family were wonderfully functional. They helped keep me on as even a keel as I could manage during some extra-dysfunctional adolescent years. For that I’m also grateful.

However, I still resonate with Henry Miller. You’ve got to laugh and weep on your own terms, not anyone else’s. That’s what made “Little Miss Sunshine” so appealing to me. The members of this family march to their own dysfunctional drummers.

And by the time you get to the closing credits, they seem like the most engagingly normal people you’ll ever meet.

Embargo is lifted on my daughter’s baby news

I’ve gotten the go-ahead from Celeste to start my grandchild blogging. She told me the big news, that she’s pregnant, shortly after she picked Laurel and me up at the Burbank airport last Friday.

But she asked me to hold off on tooting my grandfatherly horn over the Internet until she’d told her boss. Which now has occurred. So here’s the first public photo of my daughter’s child.

Isn’t he or she cute? Celeste sure thinks so. She kept cooing over this ultrasound image as I struggled to make out any identifiable human (or even quasi-human) features. Well, that’s mother love. She’s excited. As is Patrick, her husband. As Laurel and I am.

Not so sure about her cats. Smokey and Cici have the run of Celeste and Patrick’s Hollywood house. They pretty much do what they want and are used to being fawned over, so it’s going to be interesting to see how the spoiled little felines handle some cuteness competition.

When we got to the Vos home after the plane trip from Portland, Celeste went all out and put together a cheese, cracker, and fruit plate, which we ate on their patio.

I was thrilled. My daughter is thirty-four. I can recall only one meal that she’s personally prepared for me: a macaroni and cheese (from a box) dinner at the apartment where she lived for a while after college. Even now, she and Patrick are mostly eat-outers. For my grandchild’s sake, I hope Hollywood has baby buffets.

Anyway, when we were done chatting on the patio Celeste took the snack plate back into the kitchen and laid it on a counter. We went into the living room to talk some more and await Patrick’s return from work.

Smokey walked in from the kitchen, dragging a large piece of cheese in his mouth. He dropped it on the living room floor. I glanced at Celeste, wondering how she’d handle the situation.

She got up. Strode purposefully over to Smokey. Looked down at him. And said, “Oh, Smokey, you’re so cute! Here, let me break the cheese into smaller pieces so you can eat it more easily.”

Well, that was my childrearing style with Celeste. Permissive. Like father, like daughter. Her mother was stricter, as I suspect Patrick will be. Currently he’s the cat disciplinarian, insofar as the discipline goes. It’ll be interesting to see how they work out baby-raising roles.

I’ll looking forward to helping out, when the time is right. Like, when the child is toilet-trained and can prepare his or her own bowl of cereal (it takes me a while to get going in the morning).

I told Celeste that I’d been fantasizing recently about how nice it would be to have a grandchild visit us on our rural ten acres, getting to play in the creek and run around our woods.

Celeste said, “Great, Dad. How does taking care of him or her for three months in the summer sound?”

“My thinking was more along the lines of three hours before my afternoon nap,” I told her. But I have a feeling I’m not going to hold to that. Since I was a permissive father, I suspect I’m going to be an even more permissive grandfather.

I go to Hollywood and eat lunch with Kirsten Dunst

Really. I did. For the whole meal we were just a few feet apart. I was sitting at the very M Café table shown in this photo. On the near end, next to the window. My new best friend, Kirsten, she of “Spider-Man” fame, was eating by herself at an outside table right behind the glass.

So our relationship has some room to grow. Like, we could be in the same room. And meet each other. But, hey, this was a good start.

Last weekend Laurel and I visited my daughter Celeste, her husband Patrick, and fabulously spoiled cats Cici and Smokey. After picking us up at the Burbank airport, Celeste showed us around their recently-purchased (and revamped) Hollywood home, looking slim and stylish as always.

My celebrity-seeing karma was even better this trip than last, when we ran into Cameron Diaz and Justin Timberlake. As we walked into the 101 Coffee Shop yesterday to eat breakfast, Felicity Huffman and William H. Macy were on their way out.

And on Saturday night, at the opening of a photographer’s show at a Santa Monica art gallery, Laurel and I were introduced to Annabeth Gish of Showtime’s “Brotherhood.” This time I actually shook hands and chatted with a celebrity. (She and Celeste share a yoga class).

What’s great about the Hollywood area, though, is that so many people look like celebrities, even if they aren’t one. Take Patrick, for example. He should be in the movies. Definitely. He already dresses the part. (Love the t-shirt, baby).

The four of us went for a walk in the Hollywood Hills—a different (and less steep) path than last year’s out-of-breath trek. Celeste acquitted herself admirably. I had to prod her into acting more tired than she was as she and Patrick posed in front of the mostly hidden “Hollywood” sign.

Naturally the fit older folks cruised up the hill without any problem at all.

I got to make another pilgrimage to the Bodhi Tree bookstore, a must-see for anyone who wants to browse the best collection of spiritual, mystical, new age, and religious books I’ve ever come across. Fittingly, the next block down is lined with marvelous trees.

Our last stop before heading to the airport yesterday afternoon was the Paul Smith store on Melrose Avenue. Patrick is the manager. It’s tres hip. And colorful.

Flying into nearby Burbank as we did, I was worried that we’d miss the classic LA experience: a freeway traffic jam. Fortunately, the drive to Santa Monica was just slow enough to fulfill me, without being a full-blown nightmare.

Leaving aside the freeways, there’s a lot for organic Oregonians such as us to like about the Hollywood area. We ate great. The 101 Coffee Shop looks exactly like its name. But the food, while coffee shop priced, is way above typical. Health-minded vegetarians can thrive there.

As they can at the macrobiotic M Café. The menu is typical of what we found whenever we sat down to eat at one of the restaurants Celeste and Patrick took us to (they’re a true Hollywood couple; they mostly eat out rather than cook).

Salem, get with it. I don’t expect to sit down with Kirsten Dunst every time I eat lunch. But it sure would be nice to have food like this to choose from. (Yeah, I know, Eugeneians and Portlandians; I should move an hour north or south).

21. Madras Tempeh Wrap 10.25 masala-baked tempeh, brown basmati rice, toasted almonds, raisins, frizzled onions & crisp vegetables with curried soy yogurt dressing in a whole wheat lavosh

A fabulous Father’s Day present

It was worth being woken up from my Sunday nap to get a terrific Father’s Day present: a phone call from my daughter, Celeste. Our connection was all the way from urban hip Hollywood, California to rural laidback Camp Sherman, Oregon.

Today I felt that I’d earned a nap after rousing myself enough to take my bike into Sisters and get a flat tire fixed. After talking with Celeste I felt like I needed another nap. Listening to her passionate 34-year old plans for the future with my lethargic 57-year old psyche was a vicarious energy drain.

And also, hugely satisfying. Yeah, it’s a cliché, but I kept thinking, “The torch is passed.” The flame of my own life is burning less brightly now. Outwardly, at least. I’ve lost much of my youthful desire to change the world and make a name for myself. Celeste hasn’t. I couldn’t be prouder of her.

Not just because of what she’s doing: planning to start three entrepreneurial enterprises while still working as a highly successful manager with Oliver Peoples designer eyewear. My daughter told me that she intends to be a millionaire by next year. I’m confident that she will be.

Celeste already is priceless to me, though, for who she is. I love her creativity, her enthusiasm, her competitive drive, her sense of humor, her intelligence, her good looks. (Here she is in 2005 looking L.A. shopping stylish at the Prada store on Rodeo Drive.)

Gosh, she reminds me of a younger me, as unhumble as that may sound. Which is a large part of the joy of fatherhood. I’d like to live much longer than my allotted life span. Through Celeste, I will.

And if she ever has the child that I shamelessly urge her to bear so that the one and only child of her one and only father will not have to leave this earth grandchildless, then I’ll live on even longer. If the wheel of life continues to revolve through her progeny, forever.

Hanging up the phone a few hours ago, I was filled with emotions. One of which was relief. For over thirty years I’ve been burdened with a semi-subliminal worry about that baby-shaking episode (see reason #4). It’s gone now.

My daughter has survived all the mistakes her father and mother made raising her. Not only survived, thrived. What a great Father’s Day gift you are, Celeste. Thank you. There are no more words.

A tale of two toothpastes

A man who doesn’t have any grandchildren yet, but who looks forward to telling bedtime stories one day, needs to be prepared. And dream…

“Grandpa Brian, tell me the Tale of Two Toothpastes. Oh, please, I love your stories so much!”

“Dear Grandchild, I just told you this story last night. Are you sure you want to hear it again?”

“Yes, yes, yes! I could hear it every night and never, ever get tired of it. Grandpa, I love your stories of the old days. And especially, especially about what you used to write about on your blogs. Did I tell you that my friends and me have started kindergarten blogs?”

“No, honey. But we can talk about you later. Bedtime is all about my stories, remember?

“Yes, Grandpa. Now, please tell me the Tale of Two Toothpastes. I can’t wait!”

“OK. Here we go…”
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Once upon a time there was a man, a lot like me, who went to the dentist. The man didn’t like to go to the dentist, even for a teeth cleaning. He especially didn’t like to see the dentist’s black Porsche parked out back, because he knew that his crowns and cavities had helped pay for that very nice car. And that bugged him.

So the man wasn’t in a wonderful mood when, after his teeth had been x-rayed, and cleaned, and polished, and fluorided by a hygienist, which already had cost the man more money than he wanted to think about, the dentist who owned the very nice black Porsche came in to look at his teeth for a few seconds so he could call it an “exam” and add even more to the man’s already outrageous bill.

And then what the dentist said made the man even more upset. “You got the bad luck of the genetic draw when it comes to your saliva. Your mouth is a natural breeding ground for nasty tooth-destroying stuff.”

Now, the dentist talked more dentistly than this, but the man, who was a lot like me, stopped listening closely after he heard “bad luck,” because he knew that these words, when said by a dentist, meant that the man likely was going to be helping to buy an even nicer black Porsche.

“You’ve got several choices,” the dentist said. “You could brush your teeth many times a day. You could brush with Listerine mouthwash, like I do. Or, if you don’t want to have Listerine running down your arms and chest, like what happens to me [eew! the man thought, wondering if the dentist brushed his teeth in his very nice black Porsche and, if so, how this affected the leather seats], you should at least brush with Listerine toothpaste.”

The man, who had a razor-sharp logical mind, a lot like me, ran through the possibilities in a flash and picked the very best idea, meaning, the easiest idea, because the man wasn’t interested in letting increased teeth-maintenance take time away from all the much more important things the man had to do—like look on the Internet for photos of that cute blonde member of the Russian women’s curling team he had seen on TV.

So after he had written a check to the dentist’s receptionist for more money than a new car cost not so many years ago, the man went to his local Fred Meyer store and bought a tube of Listerine toothpaste. He liked the looks of it. The outside had words like “clinically proven,” “powerful,” and “kills germs.”

This toothpaste, thought the man, would help keep him from buying the rich dentist an even more expensive Porsche. Plus, it would help him keep his teeth healthy. But that was a secondary consideration.

He had a new friend. He would call him “Listy.”

The only problem was, the man already had a toothpaste friend, “Remy.” Remy was what he called his Rembrandt toothpaste that supposedly whitened his teeth—which the man believed with all his heart, because it said “whitening” on the tube, and he felt that the government wouldn’t let someone make a claim that wasn’t true, though when he thought about what was happening in Iraq he sometimes wondered if his teeth were really getting any whiter.

Anyway, the man had been told by his dentist to use Listy, so he reluctantly put Remy away on a bathroom shelf. He often thought that he could hear his old friend Remy crying at night when he used his new friend Listy instead. The man was happy that he had a new clinically proven powerful toothpaste that killed germs, but he was sad that his teeth weren’t getting whiter anymore.

He would think to himself during the two minutes that he timed on his atomic watch every time that he brushed his teeth, “I am going to have germ free ugly teeth soon.” And that made him even sadder, especially when he thought about what a nice Porsche the dentist was going to be able to buy if the man’s Aging Ego ever led him to want ceramic veneers.

Then, one day, the man had a epiphany. Suddenly he felt wonderful! He wasn’t sad any longer. For one thing, he knew that now, if he ever had grandchildren, he could tell them a story with the word “epiphany” in it, which would do a lot for their vocabulary.

But just as important, he knew that he didn’t have to choose between his old friend Remy and his new friend Listy. And he didn’t need to brush his teeth any more often either to spend time with his old friend. The epiphany was so, well, ephiphanous, the man felt like the cosmos had opened up and revealed a Great Truth to him.

He could have it all. He didn’t have to choose. He had been thinking of Remy and Listy as separate things who couldn’t be combined. Yet, they could. There could be two toothpastes on one brush. He had been caught in a dualistic dream from which he'd been awakened by Unity.

“Come together. Right now. On my toothbrush.” The man, who was a lot like me, could hear the Beatles singing. Which might have been a flashback (but that’s another story, dear grandchild).
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“Tell me the moral, Grandpa! You forgot the moral!”

“All right. The moral is…don’t get caught in the Twosies Trap. It’s easy to believe that you have to choose between two things, two people, two ideas, two beliefs, two political parties, two religions, or two whatever. Our Twosies mind likes to divide stuff up, but Onesies is more how the world really works.”

“Thank you, Grandpa Brian. I love the Tale of Two Toothpastes. They’re really one toothpaste, aren’t they?”

“That’s right, dear grandchild. If you see them as Onesies, they are. Good night.”

[Next day update: as noted above, this is how I spent the time I saved by not brushing twice with two different kinds of toothpaste. Except, it took a lot longer than two minutes to find a photo of Ludmila Privivkova, skip (whatever that is) of the Russian women's curling team. If it weren't for hoos Mike, who asked, and Guy, who provided, I'd still be trying to prove to myself that anything can be found on the Internet if you search diligently enough.]

My daughter, the DJ

Finally. Destiny has lifted her skirt and permitted me a peek into her shadowy secrets. For now I realize what karmic impulsion, way back in 1972, led my ex-wife and me to name our one and only daughter Celeste Jeanne Hines.

At the age of 34 she has become a DJ. And, naturally, she is known as “DJ CJ.”

Friday was her coming out, after several weeks of DJ school in the back room of a Hollywood-area record store. With her husband off on a business trip, and her birthday the day before, this was the perfect time for her girlfriends to party on to DJCJ’s tunes.

I have little idea of what DJs do these days. My clubbing days are not only finished; they never started. My ignorance was evident when, in a recent phone conversation with Celeste, I asked her what she said while DJing.

“You don’t talk, Dad! That’s what DJs did in the old days.” OK, I stand corrected. But DJ Madman Mike Your Musical Slave says that some DJs talk and some don’t.

Of course, DJ Madman probably doesn’t live in Hollywood, as DJ CJ does, so I’ve got to believe that my daughter is higher up on the “what’s hip and happening” food chain (question: do hip people say “hip” anymore? probably not).

My daughter, the DJ. She’s so cool. Since I supplied half of her genetic heritage, I must be at least half-cool too.

But the evidence, I readily admit, is lacking.

Silver Falls State Park, rediscovered

Here we are, living in Salem, just 40 minutes or so away from Silver Falls State Park, and it took relatives visiting from Indiana to get our butts up there. Thanks, Jerry and Dee, who are shown here in front of the South Falls along with Laurel (who is Dee’s sister).

This photo fulfills a promise to Jerry, who is making a career move after a lengthy stint as Indiana State Parks director.

Jerry told me that he had Googled himself to find out what a prospective employer would learn about him, and my “Images of Indiana” post, which included a dramatic photo of Jerry being strangled by a kudzu vine, popped up. So I assured Jerry that I’d balance that image of him with another more professional-appearing photo.

It was interesting to walk the Silver Falls trails with Jerry and hear him comment on what he saw from a park director’s viewpoint.

Mostly he had lots of good to say about Silver Falls State Park. But Jerry said that he wouldn’t have put in the metal pipe guardrail that shows in the photo above (wood would look better, though isn’t as long-lasting or sturdy). And this sign next to a parking area struck him (and me) as overly controlling and busy.

But these little things mean nothing compared to the great natural beauty of the park and the generally excellent facilities. We hadn’t been there for so long, I’d forgotten what a enjoyable hike the shorter loop from South Falls to Winter Falls is (about five miles).

The South Falls weren’t falling a lot, given the time of year and Oregon’s semi-drought. The view from behind the falls was still beautiful though.

Here’s the Lower South Falls.

And the Lower North Falls.

As if all this wasn’t enough reason to visit Silver Falls State Park, the snack bar in the lodge serves a fine cup of hot chocolate. I’d also forgotten the joy of hot chocolate after a five mile hike--had quite a few memories refreshed yesterday.

My daughter buys a Hollywood house

If you think that it’s expensive to buy a home in Oregon, particularly in Portland and Bend, take a look at the listing for the Hollywood house that my daughter, Celeste, and her husband are in the process of buying.

$849,000. Two bedrooms, two baths. 1300 sf. Built in 1922. Whew!

And they’re happy to have found it. As they should be. It’s a cute house, nicely redecorated by the current owners. It’s just hard for me to get my head around the idea that this Hollywood house is selling for quite a bit more than double the assessed value of our 3,000 sf South Salem home that sits on five rural acres.

Portland home prices appreciated 11% last year. But that’s nothing compared to what’s happening in L.A. Last night Celeste told me that the Hollywood-area condo they bought three years ago has sold for 74% more than they paid for it. That’s amazing: an average of almost 25% a year.

I hope the southern California housing boom isn’t about to go bust. But even if it does, Celeste and Patrick were able to sell at the peak and buy at the peak. Plus, they’ll be living in their house, no matter what. It’s short-term speculators who likely will be hurt the most in a housing crash, not long-term homeowners.

Best of all, Celeste told me that "It's only two minutes to the hottest clubs!" If they ever get depressed about sinking LA home values, they can easily drink and dance their worries away.