Harvey's Leap

Wherever you are today, resolve to give some random human being a big New Year's hug and say to that person, "Congratulations on making it one fifth the way through the physical and psychological matrix of the 21st Century."  That is no small accomplishment. And for those of you who might consider yourself in my squad of life-sloggers, it's time to make a bucket list if you haven't already done so. Remember, Marilyn Monroe is no longer with us.  I'm making a suggestion for your list that you might find appealing because of the sheer audacity of the event that is known in the environs of Grants Pass, Oregon, as Harvey's Hundred-year Leap.

It occurred in 1988 as a part of the celebration of Grants Pass High School's 100 years of service to Grants Pass and Josephine County since starting with four students in 1888.  The high school has always been a uniquely special institution for the community and the weeklong celebration reflected  the community's love for their school.  The most dramatic event was the Saturday parade through the city with class floats, some with elaborate decorations, that carried the classmates of that graduation year. The last float was actually an open convertible draped with a banner proclaiming the class of 1912 and carrying  a lone 94-year-old survivor waving to the crowds lining the street..

The parade ended at the fairgrounds, where the closing ceremony would be held.  The entrance pavilion held a huge one layer birthday cake that covered four tables and occupied the center of the room. Georgann and I were near the cake when we heard something behind us that sounded like chanting and rhythmic hand clapping.  It seemed to build in volume: "Harvey, Harvey, Harvey, Harvey, Harvey,Harvey..and suddenly here came Harvey, slicing his way through the crowd, passing us,  running toward the cake and then, with a mighty leap, hurling himself face down, arms outspread like wings, into the center of the cake.

Now that's a hard act to follow, so nobody did.  Realists acknowledged that the cake had been there for a number of days and probably had few prime cuts while many other celebrants were less charitable.  But Harvey had his 15 minutes of fame and you can still view his take-off spot today although there is no memorial plaque.

Put Harvey's historic launch on your bucket list and then go see the Oregon Caves.

Hubble Views the Past

I found pictures from the Hubble telescope on You Tube and sat entranced as those incredible displays of deep space filled the screen, backed up by space music probably generated from galaxies rubbing against each other. I highly recommend the experience, going to where only Captain Kirk and his starship crew has gone before.

It is mesmerizing as you gaze into the canyons of time while real time in your room slips away.  And even the dimmest bulbs among us must have some variation of this thought: WOW!  Something must be going on out there.

Yes, William, something is.  The obvious first reaction is; given what my eyes are telling me about that vast mysterious void of stars and warped time,  should I really give a rip about things that overwhelm me in my boring daily life?  The answer is, yes. Deciding what to make for dinner.  Deciding what to wear. Must I go to work?  Regardless of the awesome spectacle of black holes colliding, what we are seeing happened millions of years ago and we are not in danger of getting sucked into the maw of that violence.  Life goes on down here inside the Milky Way Galaxy and taking care of life's minutiae is part of the deal.

The second obvious reaction is; Who or whatever put this whole complex together and made up the rules? One other thing: Were mosquitoes absolutely necessary?

Solving the mystery of the second question has led to tribal warfare from the beginning of tribes to the current alignment of nations.  "Accept my God of love or I will have to kill you."

 Most space scientists believe our universe was created from a cataclysmic explosion of a sand-grain-sized remnant of a collapsed universe.  Nobody has a proveable theory about how that exploding mass of matter received the codes that would create plant and animal life on a small, insignificant planet orbiting a minor sun in what we have named the Milky Way Galaxy.

Buy a telescope and develop your own best scenario.  It will probably be as close to the truth as all the others. Working with the slide rule I kept from my mechanical drawing class in high school and my children's space-capturing telescope, I have determined the age of our universe to be 13.82 billion years, give a few weeks one way or the other.  I'm still working on Who programmed in the song, "Itsy  Bitsy, Teenie Weenie, Yellow Polka Dot Bikini."

"Lightning" Ray Lampkin, Jr.

I stopped watching boxing (and all those awful spin-offs) years ago. The only point of the "sweet science" is to inflict serious physical damage on the opponent. But I saw a TV promo for a coming boxing event and it triggered a memory for me of "Lightning" Ray Lampkin, Jr. who I knew more than 44 years ago. A very likable young man.

After the Portland Storm football team crashed and burned, putting me on the bricks,  I spent a short time writing sports features for the Portland Oregonian's Sunday magazine.  Lampkin was one of my early assignments.  Many people were not aware that Ray was the number two lightweight fighter ranked next to World Boxing Association (WBA) champion Roberto Duran.  Six months before my interview with Lampkin, in 1975, he had gone 14 rounds with the champion before being knocked out.  When he went down his head bounced on the floor of the ring like a basketball.  The effects of that beating were still apparent when we talked in Ray's living room. Something about his eyes was a shadow out of plumb.

Ray took to boxing early as a kid growing up in his Northeast neighborhood and he would see his fists as tickets to fame and fortune.  Talking about the Duran fight he told me the champ was only one of his problems; his corner was completely disorganized.  After a round he would come for a precious couple of minutes rest and his stool wouldn't be there. And then, in the late rounds, his handlers ran out of water.  Corner chaos.

"I'm getting half-killed out there," he told me, "and everything in my corner is all (expletive) up."

But he thought he would recover and be all right and all his support people thought so, too.  Of course, Ray was their meal ticket, so getting him well was important. Lampkin did live to fight again but the wattage in the lightning was never the same.  At the end his record was 32-6-1.

In 2013 at age 65 Ray was bowling with friends when he suddenly keeled over with cardiac arrest. Two brothers in the next lane were quick to spot the problem and they started chest compressions until medical help arrived.  They saved Ray's life and it was his most serious challenge since that long ago night in Panama, climbing into the ring with Roberto Duran.

A Happy Song

In this season of good cheer and giving of gifts to loved ones and friends, it is appropriate for me to give something to all my blog readers to show my appreciation for their interest in my scribbling.

In the days ahead there will be parties where people gather and, possibly, lift a cup of good cheer.  Or two. And what is cup lifting without song where everyone joins in?  So, my gift to you all: A drinking song (any tune works).

Oh, they had to carry Harry to the ferry,

They had to carry Harry from the shore.

They had to carry Harry to the ferry,

For Harry couldn't carry anymore.

This song is special because it can be tailored to lots of people: Mary, Terry, Carey, Larry,Sherry and on and on.  Merry Christmas.

Zapp App

If you believe national polling (why wouldn't you?)) almost as many Americans believe Donald J. Trump is a gifted shepherd of the national flock as those who believe he is a Macy's Christmas parade dirigible untethered from his moorings.  Whichever view you have of our apparently elected president, one fact cannot be denied: he has created a hugely precious life-app available to every American; rich or poor, gender of choice, black, white, other: ALTERNATE REALITY.

All of us have had some occasion where we said something or done something that, reflecting on it later, we thought, "Oh, my. I wish I hadn't said that. Or done that."

Elaine: (that night) "Good God, Harold, what possessed you to tell that awful joke at the dinner table?"
Harold: "Yeah, and spilling my wine in Helen's lap wasn't too cool either."

But now Elaine and Harold are saved by the new life-app: ⧬
Pull it up and stare into the center and repeat, "That didn't happen" for thirty minutes and, voila, --it never happened. The beauty of alternate reality.  Zapp, it's gone.

Or, on the way home, you think of the killer response you could have used on Mr. Life-of-the-party's put-down of you. Pull up the life-app and staring into the center repeat your come-back line for thirty minutes. Zapp, he's crushed.

Charles Darwin, somewhere, is smiling. Another upward step in our evolving climb to perfection.

Schadenfreude In Yesteryear

The German word in the title translates to taking pleasure from the misfortune of others.  At lunch with my life-long Oregon State Beaver friend, Dick Bayless, he recalled a poem I sent him many years ago that memorialized a basketball game his alma mater played that would, if won, lead to a shot at the national championship.  OSU's great Terry Heisman Baker played on that team.  The game was on a Friday night and I had the poem composed and mailed from Eugene to be on Dick's law office desk the following Monday morning.  It's too long to reproduce here but I've copied a few  verses to give you a flavor of my take on their game.  My schadenfreude.  So let's mosey down Memory Lane...

The Beaver fans were cheering when the Provo news came in,

The Benton County Bandits had come up with a win.

They grabbed a jet for Louisville, they knew they couldn't fail,

And joy flowed through that happy crew, from cockpit to the tail.

It's Friday night in Freedom Hall, the Beavers take the floor,

Then on comes Cincinnati and the crowd lets out a roar.

The ball goes up at center, the game is under way.

No Benton County Beaver will 'er forget this day.

Now Baker goes to fore-court, then watches in dismay,

As Cincinnati slickers deftly steal the ball away.

This scene will be repeated each time Terry starts to act,

It's as if the Heisman Trophy was strapped upon his back.

Mel Counts fouls out too early, while Pauley's hitting four,

Poor Terry's got a goose egg and Peter's little more.

Two Beaves are hitting only one, and two have hit but two,

With Jarvis scoring only five, what will those Beavers do?

Things are looking hopeless, the Beaver's plight is grim.

Continuing disasters, balls bouncing off the rim; 

Then inspiration hits the team, the scheme they choose is bold,

In Freedom Hall, before the world, the fabled Beavers fold.

Of all the great disasters, Pearl Harbor and the rest,

Columbus Day, the Alamo, Dunkirk's bloody test;

Of all these terrible set-backs, at one the memory sticks:

Cincinnati eighty, the Beavers...forty-six.

Did I send a copy to Terry Baker?  Do you think I'm nuts?

Atlantic

The Methuselah Report never drafted a mission statement because the Board of Director believed such a document might create goals that would intimidate the writing staff, some of whom still admit  being challenged by the order of letters in the alphabet.  But, although no formal document of purpose was ever drafted, the consensus of the Board believes it is Methuselah's responsibility, whenever possible, to enhance the intellectual powers of our readers.  If we try and fail, so be it. If we try and succeed, God bless us.

Which brings us, this posting, to our sincere wish that each of you out there on the blogosphere will pledge to read from cover to cover the December 2019 issue of the Atlantic Magazine.  (A link to some of it is posted here.)  The newly redesigned cover carries the headline, "How to Stop a Civil War."  Every American would profit from this read.

Abraham Lincoln considered the Atlantic Monthly (its original name when it was founded in Boston, Massachusetts, in 1857) to be the most important public journal of that time.  It was created as a literary and cultural magazine using leading writers of the day (Ralph Waldo Emerson, Herman Melville, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Nathaniel Hawthorne, among others) to address the important issues.  That tradition has continued to this day, even though it posted its first profit in a decade in 2010.

Don't miss this issue.

The Prize Is Wright

Once in late July of 1982, it is reported that someone in Bangor, Maine, saw Stephen Wright laugh.  Probably just a rumor but what is not a rumor is that wherever Wright pops up there are mobs of people laughing.

My friend John Hanson (as a Dartmouth College undergraduate, John was that institution's inspiration for drafting its Guide to Student Deportment) recently reminded me of the remarkable creativity of Stephen Wright.  As a stand-up comic, his material was delivered in his dour, lethargic voice.  I will share with you, my enraptured readers, some of the wit and wisdom of Stephen Wright.

Never criticize a man until you have walked a mile in his shoes; then you are a mile away and you have his shoes.

It's a small world but I wouldn't want to have to paint it.

Everywhere is in walking distance if you have the time.

There's a fine line between fishing and standing on the shore like an idiot.

All those who believe in psychokinesis raise my hand.

Eagles may soar but weasels don't get sucked into engines of jets.

Boycott shampoo.  Demand the real poo.

99% of lawyers give the rest of them a bad name.

I was sad having no shoes until I saw a man with no feet; so I said to him, "You got any shoes you're not using?"

Shin: A device for finding something in the dark.

The sooner you fall behind the more time you will have to catch up.



Thank you, Stephen.  Pick any of the above and memorize the line so you can slip it into a future conversation.  Don't mention Stephen Wright.  If John Hanson is in your group, don't try it.

Jesse,You Out There, Boy?

Do you know anyone named Jesse?  Neither do I.  I wonder why parents stopped naming their little boy babies Jesse. It really is a fine name that is easy to spell and easy to remember.  When you hear the name you probably think of either Jesse James or Jesse Owens, both of whom made their claim to fame way, way back in those other centuries.

It is my belief that Jesse James owes his notoriety in large measure to the alliteration of the two names.  After he robbed a bank or a train his name just rolled off the tongues of the lawmen.  "Yes, it was Jesse James who shot the engineer.  Jesse James."  If Jesse had been born to Ethyl and Ignatius Snodgrasse the lawmen would would have just said, "Yeah, it looks like it was Snodgrasse on the train shoot."

A case could be made for calling Jesse Owens the greatest athlete of all time.  In the 1936 Olympics, Jesse set five world records and tied a sixth, all in the space of about 21 minutes.  His long jump record stood for 25 years. One might surmise that the next 9,827 boy babies born after Owens dazzled the Olympic spectators (except you, Adolph) would have had  "Jesse" inscribed on the birth certificates.  Didn't happen.

Then there was Jesse Applegate who made his bones on the Oregon Trail by blazing a southern trail across the Cascade Mountains into the Willamette Valley thereby giving settlers an easier option than the dangerous Barlow Trail or the treacherous Columbia River. A southern Oregon river bears his name and his grave is the only interesting attraction in Yoncalla, Oregon.

So come on people, now, (remember that early '70s song by Jesse Colin Young?) let's all get together and do right by the name, "Jesse."  How about a baby boy, Jesse Jones? Or a Jesse Jerome (instead of Harry Jerome)? Does anyone have "Hesse" as a last name?  That would be cool.  Jesse Hesse.

Oh, wait...Holy sh--! JESSE HELMS. Yikes. OK. Class dismissed.  Enough with the Jesses. Stick with Johns and Jons and Michaels.  No more Jesses.

Funny You Should Ask

People like to laugh and will be attracted to anyone or anything that will make that happen.  I'm no exception and I consider my most precious asset to be that small pocket in my brain that is still functioning where I store funny memories. With so many of my body parts reaching their shelf life, I think it might be prudent to record some of the contents of that humor locker before the whole thing goes dark.

Fred Allen was one of the early radio comedians and wrote great material.  He once made reference to his agent by saying if the man's heart was crammed into the navel of a mosquito, it would rattle around like a bee-bee in a box car.

I quoted Sam Levenson once in a letter to a friend when my four children were young inmates in our home: Insanity is hereditary; you can get it from your children.

My sister Mary had some major surgery recently and in the recovery room as she began to come around the lead nurse leaned in close to her face and said, "Say your name." Mary said, "Your name."
It runs in the family.

I had the good fortune to have my life overlap with that of Dorothy Parker.  This is my favorite of her many contributions:

I only drink one martini,

I sometimes have two at the most;

Three I'm under the table,

Four I'm under the host.

My father, John Earl, was a funny man.  He was also a warrior who ran away from home at 17 to join the  army and his mother was so happy to see him gone she signed the papers to facilitate his underage enlistment (she came to live with us when I was growing up but that's another 103 blogs). In 1902 he found himself in the Philippine Islands fighting the fierce Moro natives and then, later, his unit was sent to China to take part in the Boxer Rebellion. He fought alongside Black Jack Pershing chasing Pancho Villa around northern Mexico and that army formed the core of the AEF that went to France in World War I. In all those adventures he took a liking to adult beverages and he claimed drinking caused him to fall victim to Syncopation which he defined as irregular movement from bar to bar.  A friend of his told me he once ran into my father at one of their hang-outs in Grants Pass called the Wonder Bur and said to him, "Hi, John, how's it going?" My father replied, "I've been having a little trouble with yers."  His friend said, "What's yers?"  My father said,"Oh, thanks, I'll have another Budweiser."

My friend, Bill Bowerman, the legendary coach of Track and Field at the University of Oregon and co-founder of Nike, was born funny and never got over it. The steeplechase race in track involves running and hurdling and at one of the hurdles there is a water pit that must be cleared by the runners.  One spring day Bill's attention was drawn to the pit where the water was covered by a floating mass of larva.  "Get me a jar from the grounds shed," Bill instructed one of his runners.  He then scooped the larva into the jar.

Bill had an army of track volunteers who acted as officials for putting on the meets and these fan-volunteers included doctors, lawyers and other professionals from the business community.  Many of them had offices downtown in a building with a large atrium that featured a rock-surrounded pond and it was there that Bill gave his captive larva their new home.  He was delighted to learn some days later that chaos ensued with screaming secretaries running about when the hatch became multi-winged frying creatures filling the air.

Let's see, there's more. Do you have another 14 hours?

by area

Who Thought That First?

If you ever imagined you had an original thought it probably wasn't. Consider all the creatures who have ever lived on this earth who could pass the classification test of being human.  Now suppose you could give name to and list all the thoughts all those individuals have had in their lifetime. Whoeeeeee.  That's a lot of thoughts, Pilgrim. So let's play a little game:  Guess who claims to have first thought the following:

Given that nearly half the citizens of the USA believe President Trump to be an inspired leader, who first thought people don't need facts to support belief?  Give up?  Julius Caesar, 74 (approximately) B.C. said, "Men willingly believe what they wish."  Somebody before Julius might have had the same thought (and probably did) but didn't have an army and followers who wrote down everything he said.

Who first thought accumulating great wealth doesn't guarantee great happiness? No, not Bill Gates.
Socrates. 459 B.C.  "Having the fewest wants, I am nearest to the gods."

Who first thought, if it were not for my compulsion to devote my life to helping others to be successful and constantly sharing my acquired financial resources with those in need,  I would be a wealthy, serene, senior citizen, basking in the loving adoration of all whose lives I have touched?
Yes.  William Landers, November 1, 2019.

" I Want More."

The bullies in the cruel orphanage who forced Oliver Twist to go up after the evening meal and ask for more gruel inadvertently gave us a symbol of today's ultra-billionaires whose appetite for more gruel is never satiated. In this decade-long, top-heavy boom, the 1 percenters keep going back for more.  Unlike Oliver, who falls under the influence of the evil Fagin, they become Fagin, using their power of the purse to keep their good times rolling.

In the words of some prescient sage of another time, the rich are not like you and me. After getting more than would satisfy you and me, they want more.  Why would Tesla C.E.O. Elon Musk want to add to his accumulation of $23 billion by maintaining a work week of 80 to 90 hours?

"Elon, honey, do you want your eggs scrambled or fried?"
"Which is quickest?"

The distance between the wealth of the 1 percent and everybody else keeps growing but is not sustainable and the smartest of the upper group know it. An adjustment must come. I urge each of you to go on line and Google the Ted talk by Nick Hanauer, "The Pitch Forks Are Coming."  Don't miss this.

Bob Dylan gets the last word:

Yes 'n' how many times can a man turn his head
And pretend that he just doesn't see?
The answer, my friend, is blowin' in the wind
The answer is blowin' in the wind

Cop Tales

Ex-police officer, Lou Barrett, the charter member of our breakfast club, was the kind of cop you would want arresting you.  He starts you off with credit points for being human.  I know this from the stories he tells.

He and his partner spot a car pulled off to the side of the highway with the driver slumped over the steering wheel.  Lou knocks on the window with no response and so he opens the door and shakes the guy who finally comes around.  Lou tells him he was driving over 80 miles an hour and weaving all over the road until getting pulled over.  His partner says to the driver, "Who was that guy who jumped out of the car and ran across the field?

Long pause trying to remember: "Probably my brother but you'll never catch him because he's really fast."

Lou gets him out of the car and walks him around away from the edge of the highway and asks him where he was going.  The guy names a town about 80 miles in the opposite direction from the way the car is pointing.  Lou figures he has been there for awhile because he is pretty steady on his legs and he gives the guy bonus points for having pulled over and stopped driving.  But he can't leave him there with his car so he tells him he is going to give him a break and write him up for public drunkenness instead of DUI.

Lou said all the way back to the jail the guy is in the back seat singing, "A boy Named Sue."  Over and over.  The guy called out to Lou as they were leaving him in his cell, "I'll never forget you, officer, for saving my life back there."

Lou eats a large bowl of oatmeal with his black coffee every morning.  Over and over.

Confrontations With Strangers

The lubricating agent for social intercourse is civility.  In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus Christ addressed the need for civility by telling the multitudes to put aside, "an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.  If your cheek is injured, turn the other cheek"

Like so many things Jesus tells us to do, that one is hard. Just ask the guy currently occupying the White House. Or ask me.

Those of us who passed the finish line a long time ago spend an inordinate amount of time digging out little snapshots of incidents from the past; some for giggles, some for a deserved cringe.  Like what I call my probably 20-years-ago Dick Tracy episode.

I needed a refill of meds I was completely out of and so would have to wait for the pill guy to do his business.  No problem; I'll take my front section of the NY Times and go to Freddie's Starbucks and wait for the refill to be ready.  After dropping off the empty pill bottle at the pharmacy, I remembered we were out of the mints we always kept in the glove compartment so I rolled up the newspaper, stuck it in my back pocket and got in the checkout line to buy the mints.  As I cleared the checkout I heard the guy behind me say to the checkout girl, "He's stealing a paper." What?  This guy's talking about me? When I turned around the guy is embarrassed that I heard him and he won't look me in the eye. "Hey, Dick Tracy," I say to him while pulling the paper from my back pocket, "this is a paper I subscribe to and bring along to read while waiting for a prescription to be filled."

It's one of those "Gotch'ya" moments.  The poor guy looks around for some place in the store that doesn't include me, probably wishing he was in Anchorage, Alaska or any place but Milwaukie, Oregon. The checkout girl is confused, embarrassed and wondering how I knew the guy's name was Dick Tracy. It's plain that it's time to strike the set of this little social melodrama, so I leave.  Jesus frowns.

Looking back now I see my angry reaction to being called a thief (Newspaper headline: "Heist of New York Times in Fred Meyers Foiled By Alert Citizen") triggered an over-reaction.  Forget the Dick Tracy business: just turn around and say, "This is a paper I subscribe to" and leave.  I wish I had done that.

About This Girl I Knew

I was older but she was wiser.  Georgann tried to keep it a secret from me that she was smarter than I was and she made all her friends promise not to tell me.  Of course, I had figured that out 15 minutes after we first met.

As the cutest girl in Crow High School, she was a pom pom twirler who, after graduation, was recruited, along with three other girls from northern states, by an all Black college in Mississippi who needed white girls to dot the "i"s in their band's cursive spell-out maneuver.  I'm pretty sure that's true. Too far from home, she decided, and instead chose Southern Oregon College in Ashland for her continuing education.

There were distractions (fermented hops, the Applegate River) but she left SOC with an Mrs degree and pursued a banking career with First National Bank, soon to become Wells Fargo.  Fast-forward 10 years or so and Georgann has removed McNeal as her last name and replaced it with Landers.  She has immersed her daughter, Kathleen, in Catholicism at All Saints Elementary and Central Catholic High School and now points her toward Eugene and the University of Oregon.

Then a life-changing course explosion: The mature mother of one resolves to go back to finish that original quest for knowledge and she does exactly that.  She took to the rhythms of college classes like an alcoholic finding a key to the keg cellar.  Straight "A" all the way in Economics.  And then that walk across the stage in cap and gown to claim her Honors degree with a smile that lit the arena.

She retired as a Vice President of Wells Fargo Bank.

Getting To Know You

You can't hide what's on your face. It's hanging out there for the world to see and unless you go Muslim and adopt the hijab as your attire of choice, you're stuck with what you created.  Because, of course, we all design and sculpt, minute by minute through the hours and years of our lives, the face we show to people as we maneuver through our days and nights.  It's such a subtle thing; impossible to pin down individual features but the mystical combination of those fleshed out thoughts and attitudes send the message of who we are.

So I'm on the train heading to my workout and I see, facing me three rows down and across the aisle, a man, probably early 40s, with a striking face.  Could be an American Indian warrior (maybe a cowboy or two thrown in) with strong cheek bones, hawk nose, intense eyes, short pony tail.  If only he had a scar running across his nose and down his cheek.  But he has that eye-grabbing look. I don't want to stare so I keep looking at him with my corner-of-eyes technique and wish I could know his back story.

I imagine this:

Me: "Hi.  I'm Bill and I wonder if I could hear your back story?"
Him: "What are you, some kind of creepy weirdo?
Me: "No, no. I'm a student of faces and yours fascinates me and challenges me to find out all about you."
Him:  "SECURITY, SECURITY."

It's not easy being a wannabe famous story teller.

To Buy Or Not To Buy

Georgann was the Albert Einstein of shopping.  To watch her move through a store, feeling and touching, was like watching Picasso paint.  Beyond the limits of  most mortals.

I would never presume to match the girl in her God-given talent for bringing price and quality together at their most advantageous point, but I'm attempting to learn some of the basics: Never purchase the first option.

One year we went to find the perfect Christmas tree and in the first lot we entered I spotted a prospect, which I stood up and slowly rotated.  Perfect configuration and balance.  "No," she said, "there may be a better one."  After cruising the entire lot we agreed to go back for the first one and, of course, it was gone.  One minor loss must not corrupt a master plan, she explained.  Do you want to tell Picasso his lady has two eyes on one side of her face?

So I'm doing my morning walk and this salon has a sign proclaiming a huge saving on eye lash extensions:  Three days only, $100, normally $175.  Wow! I could save $75.  But what if later I see some place that is offering them for, like, $50 and I'm stuck with these $100 jobs?  I don't know what to do and I've only got two more days to decide.  What would Georgann do?

Help!

Hair Today, Gone Tomorrow

Sadly, John Bolton has no redeeming qualities that might offset the horrors of that hideous growth of hair that commands the incredulous attention of anyone seeing him live or in pictures.  It makes one think of hiring thugs to pin him down to eradicate that offense to a humane society.  And it pains me to admit that John Bolton's unfortunate facial affectation has made an intrusion into my personal life.

He has made it necessary for me to change the way I shave.

I was probably 17 or 18 before I had to deal with the issue of facial hair and dealing with it established a life-long routine that, year after year, became a set-in-stone ritual: Soak face with hot wash cloth.  Apply shaving cream to whiskers (in early days with a brush and soap). Starting next to the right ear, down stroke to jaw line (rinse razor) and continue under jaw to base of neck. Back to top and repeat down strokes until reaching nose. Then go to left side of face and repeat down strokes at left ear.

OHMIGOD!  What's that foamy white blob above my top lip?  I'M JOHN BOLTON.

At my age I'm vulnerable to anything that plays tricks on my mind and so I changed a deeply ingrained ritual.  I now start at the foam mustache. Whack, whack.  Mustache gone (along with anything that might call up a thought about what'shisname). Continue with old system.

When life throws you a curve ball, bunt.

All's Well That Ends Well

Our home in Jerome Prairie where I grew up depended on a dug well for water.  It was just outside the house and was about six feet in diameter and a little over 35 feet deep. A rickety old wooden ladder gave access to the water below for whatever maintenance was needed.   And one day it was apparent some maintenance was needed because the water coming from the faucet was dirty.  Sister Virginia's husband, Carl, would supervise the operation while little Billy (that's me) would be the ladder descender (Carl was a big guy and that ladder would never support his weight).

What could go wrong?

First step was to get what water was in the well out so the additional dirt removal could proceed. Carl's and my knowledge of air pressure and gravity as it relates to moving water vertically was zero.  I would later learn that at sea level the weight of pressure from the air will move water up a pipe just short of 34 feet while the weight of the water in the pipe will be pulled down by gravity.

Carl lowered a fiber hose with about a two inch diameter into the well and connected it to a pump activated by a gas motor,  The pump started, sucking air out of the hose which caused it to collapse and seal shut so no water could enter.  Head scratching by the well cleaners.

OK, Carl said, what we got to do is push the water up the hose instead of trying to suck it up.  So we will build a little platform and put the motor on it and lower the pump down next to the water and Billy can go down the ladder and run the pump.  Doesn't that make perfect sense?

So we build the platform.  We rig a tripod over the well with a wheel to guide the support rope that is attached to the platform holding the pump (reviewing this operation years later I knew at this point we should have arranged for music to start playing, "Send in the clowns").  Down went the platform. Down went Billy (who learns where the expression, "colder than a well digger's ass" came from).  Billy pulled the rope to start the motor and the operation began.

Another scientific calculation  the well restoration crew failed to consider: how long does it take a small gas motor to fill a thirty-five foot deep, six-foot-diameter well with carbon-monoxide fumes?  Answer: Not very damn long.  I started getting dizzy and knew I had to get out of there.  Without shutting off the motor I started up the ladder and kept feeling worse and worse.  Just short of the top I passed out and Carl caught the back of my shirt and pulled me out of the well. (Where was Lassie?)

Close call.  I was very sick and spent the rest of the day stretched out breathing fresh air.  Later, a few days of rain cleared the well water and we all lived happily ever after.  Not sure we ever got smarter.

Clean Sheets Every Monday

Editorial note: This blog and all others to follow, will be published in a new type face: "Georgia", from the Time Roman family. My friend Roy Paul Nelson, Professor of Journalism at the University of Oregon back in the day, taught his students that it is important to choose a type face that is appropriate to the subject of the narrative.  Since my blogs are written to give the reader my take on whatever it is I'm writing about, Georgia just seemed a perfect fit for my views.

Late last evening after the TV pontificators had called it a night, I was reflecting on the change that has come to my life as a lone ranger.  The culture change is shocking.  From
living with your life's companion in a big house with wonderful neighbors and a terrific shower, to living in a commune with many nice people connected to you by long hallways and occasional group gatherings, it shivers your timbers. It is not what you would prefer but it is what you've got and if you can slip by that boogey-man then you can deal with it.

The people who run this place do a nice job of providing a variety of activities to appeal to different interests. They run excursions to everything from shopping tours to destination travels to particular road side attractions. Fortunately, we are never required to hold hands and sing as we side-step around tables.

Conversations tend to focus on: Ailments. Weather. Food.  Everyone avoids politics and religion in group settings, and that is good.  If I was to be slammed against the wall by some truth-seeking vigilante and forced to confess my favorite part of my new situation, it would be this:  It's when, from time to time, I grab my rail pass and haul ass.

Get on the bus, Gus; make a new plan, Stan...

Those Were the Days, My Friend

Was that a school bell I heard ringing?  With September sneaking in and the autumn leaves starting to fall, it probably was.  Causing my wandering mind to drift to the fall of 1947 when a couple of Grants Pass High School students became a pair to draw to: Mary Joyce Smith and Bill Landers.  A line in the song, Summertime, from the opera Porgy and Bess goes..."Oh, your daddy's rich and your ma is good-lookin'."  That was us (who says you have to be modest in a blog?) The top girl, blonde, head-turner and the student body President/football Captain styling in their senior year.

The important take away from that scenario is, after high school, and through the years that followed, Josie and I remained good friends.  Along the way she hit the ball out of the park when she married Jerry Larson. He was a handsome, charismatic, funny, professional warrior who would rise to the rank of General in the United States Air Force.

A number of years ago, Josie and Jerry flew out from D.C. to meet Georgann and me, along with Larry Aschenbrenner (another classmate) and his wife in Arizona for the Fiesta Bowl where Oregon would play football against Colorado.  At one of our social hours,  Jerry asked me if I had ever been to the Air Force Academy and I told him I had.  When the Academy dedicated Falcon Field in 1962, the University of Oregon was their opponent for the game and I was there as a member of the Oregon athletic department.  I told the group that while I enjoyed the fact that Oregon won the game 35 to 20, my most awesome memory was being in the press box at half time and seeing two Air Force jets come screaming in from opposite ends of the field, about 12" above the stadium.  They were trailing smoke, and then they shot straight up with one hell of a roar, leaving their smoke trails crossing (swear to God) precisely over the fifty yard line.

Josie laughed and said, "It might make your story more interesting to learn Jerry was flying one of those jets."  (Sound of jaws dropping) Jerry said, with a grin, "I tried to talk my partner into doing the stunt flying upside down but he didn't like the idea."  Larson was actually in command of the Air Force Demonstration Squadron Thunderbirds at that time.

At one of our class reunions, we had a bon voyage Sunday brunch in the city park.  As the Landers and the Larsons were leaving, a number of Josie's and my classmates came running over and asked us to stand together for a photo op.  We, of course, modestly consented and as we moved into position, Jerry leaned into my ear and said, "Try not to look too guilty."

Fun to revisit the fall of '47...Summertime "So hush little baby, don't you cry."

Laugh And the World Laughs With You

OK, everybody off the train.  We're going to get serious about funny.  I never liked Bob Hope because he just told jokes other people had written for him.  I found exploding laughter watching Johnathan Winters.  He could just stand there doing nothing but moving his head and shifting his eyes and I was on the floor.  My search for laughter has been a favorite pursuit all my life.

When I was 10 and 12, like every other kid in America, I loved  the comics. Who knew if I had kept that original Superman in pristine condition, it would have made my declining years more comfortable? But my favorite 'zine was a monthly called 1,000 jokes. Ten cents for a collection of one- or two-liners that actually counted out to be about 100 basic jokes told in a hundred different ways.  Fine with me. But an incident in the sixth grade really did put a notch in the tree of my life- trail regarding humor (I wonder if my sister Mary will remember this since in the little country grade school we attended, two grades were in each room so that every other year we shared a class room?).

One day our teacher, Miss Hensley, introduced an exercise she must have picked up from some Sociology class in college.  She had every student in the two grades take a sheet of paper and write down three qualities they would look for in the person who might become their husband or their wife.  She then collected the papers and had a boy and a girl go to the black board and list the results as she read each paper.  Then she had a class discussion regarding the answers.

My take on the exercise was that every single girl, without exception, listed a variation of "sense of humor" or "funny."

Oh, look...I think I've found a key to the candy store?

What's Playing On the Blue Line?

For those of us in a continuing search for reasons to get out of bed each day, the MAX lines (Metropolitan Area Express -- who knew "Xpress" would need an "E"?) offer a never-ending source of entertainment if you look without staring.  Corner-of-the-eye shots.  Or, better yet, window reflections. Avoid eye contact. Eye sweeps with head swivels work. It's all in 3-D with surround sound and you can choose the extent to which you want to get intertwined in the action.  Bold voice involvements must use the Kathleen McNeal technique of friendly assumption that you and the other person have been pals for fifteen or twenty years.  "Hey, nice shirt.  It goes with the color of your dog." The person's response will let you know whether to proceed or STFU.

You can choose which theatre to visit: the Red Line will offer international fare as it freights people to and from the airport, and sizing up the luggage of the travelers invites speculation about what's going on with them. The out-the-window scenery along the Red Line from Gateway TC to the terminal is dull-minus.

 You can't miss on the Green Line coming from and going to Clackamas Town Center.  So-so scenery but a good rolling zoo.  Twenty minutes from the Gateway TC.

The Blue Line comes in two flavors: East and West.  Blue Line West moves through a lot of  high number real estate and gets a favorable rating for scenery but a thumbs-down for people watching.  The tattoos are pedestrian at best and wardrobe fashion is high-normal.  The most interesting part of your ride will be the long, long tunnel under the West Hills.  There is a station partway through where you can get off and take a long, no-stop lift to the Portland Zoo (animal kind with lions and tigers and bears) or stay on the station platform and check out the core sample that was drilled from the top of the mountain to the tunnel level.  It's in a long, long, long, long glass tube where you can examine the strata the engineers had to deal with in this big dig.

 But Blue Line East is where the fun is: Going to or coming from Gresham (part of the challenge is figuring out where the town is) presents the opportunity to immerse yourself in the human comedy.
Lots of dumpster divers with their dirigible-size can and bottle collections. Next week's blog will cover some of the others: the guy ahead of me to the left whose head looks like a Kansas wheat field in the tenth month of drought. The dude in a wife-beater top (Gresham proud).  Bike people.  Stay tuned.

Who Sees You?

 In 1943 George Orwell came to see the corruption of his vision of socialism and started writing his seminal novel, Nineteen Eighty-four, that would shake the world when it was published in 1949. I took a course in college titled: Ethical and Political Theory three years after that book came out -- it, along with Emile Zola's Germinal and Arthur Koestler's Darkness At Noon, were the assigned texts for the term. Digression: The miners in Germinal who brought the coal to the surface were "landers."

Orwell saw the future America 35 years later as being a dark autocracy led by Big Brother, who maintained control with formulated lying and camera installations that recorded the activities of all citizens 24/7.

What's left of my memory of the actual 1984 tells me George was off a little on his timing; like 70 years.  Of course, "Two Thousand Nineteen" just doesn't have the punch of Nineteen Eighty-four and is irrelevant to the theme of the narrative. Count the cameras mounted on buildings in our cities and camouflaged as telephones in the hands of our citizens.  Or in the trains and busses of public transportation. Let me tell you about that.

Last Saturday I went to Sellwood to get a haircut from my stylist, Lo-Lo.  Everything above my shoulders that sticks out, Lo-Lo mows with a #1 guide slapped on her electric clippers.  Whatever Lo-Lo sees, Lo-Lo clips.  It's a two train, one bus journey to get to Lo-Lo and the second train I transferred to was lightly peopled as I took a single window seat right next to the train driver's compartment.  We're rolling along when suddenly the train stops and the door to the driver's compartment flies open.  The lady driver leans out (about 12" from my face) and pointing at some rider behind me, screams, "Hey, you, get your hands out of your pants or I'm going to call the police."  WHOA! The miscreant apparently complied with her wishes because she slammed the door shut and we were soon moving down the rails.  I didn't look behind me.

But here's the thing:  Some people read to pass the time on their commute and most people focus on their iPhones.  But some, apparently, find other ways to pass the time.  If we could somehow contact George Orwell to ask him his thoughts on this incident it is likely he would say, "Didn't you read my book?"

What's Your PR?

I'm looking for investors to join me in a can't-miss scheme to fill a need that no one has ever recognized: the calibrated flag pole (pat. pend.).  Let me explain.

The almost unbelievable capabilities of our computer culture give us the means to measure  the popularity of individuals in our society at any given moment.  Most of us have a popularity factor of zero because other people don't know us and don't care that they don't.  But as time passes, some individuals begin to stand out from the herd and become recognized by large numbers of people who tend to make judgments about them.  We call them "celebrities."

It's a fact that sooner or later everybody dies, and when they do, someone must make the decision: do we lower the flag to half-staff, or do we leave it up there? I say it is time to take it out of the hands of anonymous deciders and leverage Technology to reveal the the deceased person's PR (polling popularity rating). That is, an instant national Poll (P) of Americans, run through a sophisticated algorithm to arrive at the departed's total popularity rating (R) or PR. We the people would vote on whether and how much to lower the flag (in sadness), keep it as-is (signifying who cares?), or--here's my twist -- raise it even higher, proclaiming: "good riddance." This is where the calibrated flag pole comes in,

Every person at birth starts with a PR factor of 0. If the kid never makes a blip on the public radar, the flag stays at full mast. But say the kid grows up to become famous, then kicks the bucket; now his/her PR will dictate the movement of the flag on the pole, up or down.  If it is up, a smaller pole rises out of the top of the main pole to accommodate the extra altitude. The calibrated flag pole lets us pin point the degree of downess (sadness) or upness (joy) we're feeling for the loss from the formula programmed into the polling exercise.. Example: Charles Manson would have gotten a maximum pole extension; Mr. Rogers, a half-staff or lower.
                          
 It's a bit complicated but if you're not too dim I think you can see how it works.  When I've worked out a few minor details having to do with setting this idea into actual motion, I will let you know where and when to start sending serious money.

Meet Edie Rieken

Here at this place I call home, I have about 150 neighbors, most of whom I've never met, a few of whom I nod to and say, "Hi," and another, smaller group, of whom I've become acquainted and now call friends. One of them is Ethel (Edie) Dorothea Plaep Rieken. Unlike 99% of my other neighbors, Edie is a gifted writer and she is the author of a book to prove it: "Growing Pains: A Childhood on Bear Creek"

We met at lunch one day when I saw she was alone and invited her to join me (that's how we do things here at Russellville Park) and she did.  I learned Edie had a life-long love of writing (an interest we had in common) and that she was the chair of a group who share that interest every week.  When she told me she had written a book and had it self-published, I asked to borrow her copy.

Read a self-published book and the first paragraph usually indicates why that volume didn't come from Random House. Imagine my amazement as I turned page after page to find that this was a brilliantly crafted narrative about the life of a girl growing up on a dairy farm snuggled into a small forested canyon 15 miles inland from the town of Florence on the Southern Oregon coast in the years 1924 to 1937.

Edie was born six years after her nearest of six siblings to parents who were immigrants from East Prussia in Germany. She tells the story of her mother, Henrietta Dorothea Kahlhaw Plaep, to whom she dedicates her book. Henrietta, at 25, was living in East Prussia in terrible circumstances.  Her father had died leaving the family impoverished; in desperation she agreed to go to America with a family that had earlier immigrated to Coos County on Oregon's southern coast.  This was in the early 1900s and part of the agreement with this family was that she would marry a son whom she had never met. The drama is darkened by her cruel future mother-in-law.

It's a wonderful story about that little girl who attended a one-room school where nine students were taught by one teacher and who, in her eight years of grade school, never had a classmate.  Here is a sample of Edie's lyrical prose when early in the book she writes of that Childhood home.

"The forested hills that watched over our valley, the fields surrounded by solidly built, straight wooden fences, and the meandering creek with its own mini-universe of marine life created a background of peace and serenity.  The morning songs of many birds and the chorus of a thousand frogs croaking their welcome to springtime evenings complemented the constancy of our lives."

The lady has a way with words.

Edie's book is shelved in Portland's Oregon Historical Society but is otherwise out of print.

You Get the Popcorn, I'll Get the Seats

CNN is running a new six-part series every Sunday featuring movies from the Golden Age onward;  Tom Hanks is one of the producers.  As someone who loves movies, I took a look but then gave up in despair. I thought they would select a few outstanding movies from the different eras and perform in-depth examinations of the film and its stars.  I was looking for nostalgia on steroids. That's not what this treatment is about and, to be fair, I think it is well done for what they are doing.

The CNN presentation is a sociological exercise showing how the movies of particular decades reflect the culture of those times.  So you have a scene or two from a movie with voice-over comments and then a cut to another movie and the continuing theme of that era. And it is loaded with commercial breaks (eight minutes of entertainment,  five minutes of ads).

I would view scenes from a movie such as Chicago and then, SLASH, it was gone and scenes from another movie appears. And on and on.  It was like those annoying informercials that come on in the cheap time-buys for people selling music from the past: Country Western, The Fifties, The Sixties, and on and on by decades. Listen to "Autumn Leaves" by Nat King Cole:  "The falling leaves, drift by the window, the autumn leaves of red and gold." SLASH "I wonder who's kissing her now" Hey, damn it,  I'm singing here...go back and pick it up, "I see your lips, the summer kisses, the sun-burned hands I used to hold. Since you went away, the days grow long, and soon I'll hear old winter's song..."  I'm not buying your freaking music because you cut me off from Autumn Leaves.

Same with the movies.  I would have wanted a "60 Minutes" format with 15 minutes segments devoted to great movies.   Important scenes could be shown with appropriate comments as you remember the magic of the film and its stars.  For the truly great films you could focus a half hour,  such as Godfather I & II.  But Tom Hanks never called to ask my opinion.

I will digress to tell you I believe the Godfather I & II combined to be the greatest movie ever made.  The writing, the casting (every character dead on), the location shooting, the theme music, (la da da da da da da da, da, da, oh, my).  If you don't agree with me on this it doesn't mean your judgment is suspect or you're a bad person; just don't ask me to go to the movies with you.

Sometimes a Great Notion

The late Roy Paul Nelson taught journalism at the University of Oregon where I met him during my association with that institution in the 1960s and '70s. Roy Paul was an authority on print typefaces  and taught classes on the subject. Writers, he instructed, should select a type face that is appropriate to the subject of their narrative. He was also a cartoonist and his editorial cartoons were used by the local Eugene Register Guard newspaper. I once told him I had observed that his distaste for smoking often showed up in his cartoons by his drawing any negative character with a cigarette held in his fingers. A book he wrote for his cartooning class was titled, "How To Draw a Straight Line".

We became friends and I take a modicum of pride in having something I wrote included in a textbook Roy Paul used for a class he taught in satirical writing. Imagine that; a wannabe famous author getting something he wrote included in a real college textbook.

My contribution was titled, "The Passing of Gas".  It made the case that new advances in the automobile industry had created energy generating technology that would eliminate petroleum as a necessary ingredient for the internal combustion engine.  The revolutionary result included parts that would create a vacuum that would suck air into a pipe protruding from the rear of the vehicle and send it into a chamber where multiple jets of high pressure air programmed with alternating blasts would move pistons up and down causing the drive shaft to turn which would make the wheels go around. All of the technical jargon, of course,  was strung together as a means of supporting the title.

Someday when my time comes to depart this mortal coil, one line in my obit must read, "His published writing included manuscripts for college text books. Also he predicted electric cars."

Chop Sticks For One

AUTHOR'S NOTE: All prestigious journals must have a restaurant review from time to time and for this publication that time is now. Full disclosure:  It is my favorite Portland restaurant without cloth napkins and Greorgann would never go there with me because of something she called, "ambiance" (they don't serve wine).

                                                      Chen's Good Taste Restaurant

Chen chose the spot to open his restaurant in a section of Portland where tour groups do not visit.  If you go by train, as I do,  get off at the Skidmore Fountain under the Burnside Bridge and climb two flights of metal stairs to street level on West Burnside, then walk three blocks to 4th Ave.  It will be necessary to walk around various citizens who are sleeping, some face up, on the sidewalk but your passing will not disturb them.  Chen's window to the street is covered with pictures of various offerings along with a menu and a favorable newspaper review that is starting to yellow with age.

The room seats 35 or 40 people and if you arrive around noon you"ll find it filled with diners,  90% of whom are of the Asian persuasion  --  a good sign you've made a wise choice.  It'll be best if you avoid visiting the restrooms, which are through a door that leads to a long hallway. Turning left you pass a view of the kitchen where deceased poultry hang from hooks. Then you pass small rooms filled with disorderly stuff.  The restrooms are, well...  Finally, as you try to re-enter the dining room, a sign reads, PUSH DOOR.  If you pull instead of push, the handle comes off in your hand and you must reinsert it to get back into the room.

Now about my favorite dish, which is the only item I've ever ordered over the years: Dumpling noodle soup.  $7.50. Four large dumplings in a delicious broth with those tiny Chinese noodles and one small sprig of boc choy.  The dumplings are stuffed with something I could never identify but consist of black lines intermingled with something white and kind of puffy.  To quote Chen, "good taste."  Really, really good taste.  I suppose I might have asked what exactly the filling was but, hey --
what's the difference?

Over the years I've watched other menu items being served and they all looked terrific.  From time to time I've been tempted to order some of them,  but those dumpling kept drawing me in.

Chen wouldn't lie to you.  Good taste.  $9.50 with tip and endless tea.

Be Still My Heart

When is the last time you had an experience that made your heart race?  OK, some things are best kept private but life gives us plenty of opportunities to make that personal pump surge into motion and sound the alert to all the valves and switches to get ready for some serious action.

Let me share a recent event that got my heart pumping in moon-shot velocity.

Three or four months ago when I moved into my lodging at Russellville Park I was issued a small name tag that I was told to wear whenever I was moving about in the public areas.  It would help the servers at the restaurants to charge my account for meals and also help fellow residents to get to know me.  I always tried to remember to wear my name tag.  It was an attractive gold plate that attached to whatever I was wearing by a magnetic bar lined up with the name bar from inside the garment.

After doing my alternate day workout at the gym and returning home I discovered I had forgotten to remove the name tag from my shirt before leaving home and as I took the tag off I noticed the magnet bar bore this inscription: "DO NOT USE WITH PACEMAKER".

YIKES!

I have been wearing that thing directly over my implanted pacemaker ever since moving into this place.  So I called Dr. Davies, who implanted the pacemaker, and his nurse told me he thought no harm had been done to the device or to me but to definitely keep it away from the pacemaker.  He said he would contact the pacemaker company and they would call me, which they did.  They reviewed my data records and found definite signs of the magnet affecting the device and sending my pulse rate well over 100 many times.  God knows what it did this morning after my pulse-raising workout and then slapping the magnet on top of the pacemaker when I donned my shirt.

The Russellville office apologized for not telling me about the pacemaker issue.  Thanks.

I think I'll light up my Sonos and see if I can find some Lawrence Welk music.

Lights, Camera, Action

Did you ever wake up one morning and after wobbling into the bathroom to brush your teeth you discover from the mirror-messenger that you have become old?  Yeah, bummer.  Then, after denial and the other steps to acceptance, you start composing your obit, and as the years drift by, you do many, many revisions. One line in mine might read, "...he was one break short of becoming a giant star of the silver screen."

A verse in the Rubaiyat of Omar Kahyyam reads:

"The moving finger writes and having writ,
 Moves on; nor all thy Piety nor Wit
 Shall lure it back to cancel half a line,
Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it."

Yeah, Omar, no do-overs, right?

In the early 1970s Hollywood came to the University of Oregon in Eugene with a plan to make a movie about basketball using the university's iconic MacArthur Court as its principal location for the shoot. After the huge success of the movie, "Easy Rider," one of the emerging stars of that film, Jack Nicholson, got the go-ahead to direct a movie about his favorite sport: basketball.  The movie  titled, "Drive He Said." would use well known actors Bruce Dern  and Karen Black.  As the associate athletic director at the time, I became the liaison between the movie company and the university.

It was the first day of my contact with the movie's production manager. After introductions and make nice chats he said, "So, Bill, have you ever done any acting? You look like our man to play the coaching assistant to our head coach, Bruce Dern."  Bill:{nervously modest) "Well, I did have one of the leads in a high school production of, 'My sister Eileen'".

PM:  "I think you're our man."

Bill:(to himself "YeeHawww")

How to grease the skids for future production needs.

First day on the set I'm seated on the bench next to Bruce Dern. I ask, " Is this going to be a good movie, Bruce?"

Dern: "Bill, this is a piece of shit."

I had one close up scene where I delivered the line, "Nice shooting Bloom!"  Bloom was the young star of the movie who's only future roles would be standing in food lines).  With Nicholson behind the camera, flood lights on me, I delivered the line (without forgetting the words.)

One take. Time is not wasted on scenes that will never make it past the cutting room.

Bruce was not wrong about the movie.  In the Time magazine review of "Drive He Said" the critic summarized, "When future bad movies are made, this may well be the model they choose."

I could'a been a contender, but Jack Nicholson didn't give me the break I needed.

Drill Me a Butterfly

OK, enough of that Oregon lesson stuff.  You all got an A on the pop quiz. Now we will move to what is intimately important to each of us as we contemplate the life-changing decision we each must make at some point: tattoo, yes?  Tattoo, no?

Don't move impetuously to your decision because tattoos are forever and once in place they are like a bad habit you can't break. Full disclosure: I'm not a fan of skin art.  But, apparently, there are a few billion people who don't give a hoot what I think and keep those injection needles drilling.  It is estimated that one in five Americans has at least one tattoo.

In the gym where I work out I marvel at some of the body modifications on display by both men and women.  And they are often on body parts you wouldn't necessarily want to call attention to.  Some of the guys have both arms completely drilled with black, wavy, thick lines with jagged edges that look like nothing in particular.  Seeing that, my mind says "What the F were you thinking?"

The oldest known tattoo was on a chap named Otzi who lived in the Alps around 3,300 BCE.  Not sure what form his tat took but its my guess a female was involved even if formal names had yet to be invented.  Which is a cautionary note for young men today:  Tattooing the name of a female anywhere on your body is the least good idea you will ever have.  The bumpy road of romance is strewn with cooled and cast aside one-time hot understandings and finding another arrangement with the same name dramatically narrows the availabilities.

Gregory Paul McLaren would catch your eye with his record-holding array of tats covering 100% of his body.  Tattoo artist: "So, Greg, what'll you have, my brother?"  Greg: "One of everything".  George C. Reiger Jr. comes in second with only 99% of his body covered with art Disney gave him permission to use. His 1,000 tattoos of the Disney characters include all 101 Dalmatians.

Maybe I'll change my mind.  Maybe I'll honor my father's long life working on the railroad by having a 50-car classic railroad train (with graffiti on the sides of the box cars) tattooed with the caboose over my heart connected to the box cars going across my chest and under my right arm. Then around my back coming out from under my left arm and so on until the train goes into the tunnel around back with black smoke from the engine bellowing out of the tunnel entrance.

Cry your eyes out, Gregory Paul.

Maybe I better think about this.

The Contenders

A friend of mine, the late Ken Metzler, was a Journalism professor at the University of Oregon when I was associated with that institution in the 1960s and '70s. He was a native born Oregonian and in 1986 wrote a book about his home state.  Ken tells his readers that Oregon exports more than lumber, filberts (a.k.a., hazelnuts) and oscilloscopes.  It exports mystique. He explains while Oregon will never be the financial, industrial, intellectual, or entertainment capital of the nation, it does have something most of the others do not: its beneficent nature has made it, in the words of Portland artist Byron Ferris, the first-class cabin of Spaceship Earth.
                                                                                                                                                              The question before us today is which citizen, through his/her individual efforts, made the most significant contribution to that beneficent nature? Let's review the contenders for The Most Valuable Player award in order of their appearance on the big stage.

First up: Abigail Scott Duniway.

The Scott family with, 17-year-old Abigail, left Illinois to follow the Oregon Trail in 1851. It was a terrible journey with drownings and deaths from Cholera that took her mother and younger brother. That crossing of the continent was a formative experience for the young woman and it surfaced time and again in her writing and her involvement in the battle for women's rights.

Abigail became a school teacher and a pioneer farm wife wedded to Ben Duniway.  When Ben suffered financial setbacks and then injury in an accident, Abigail assumed the support responsibility for their family that included six children.  She built a successful millinery business but then discovered her real gifts as a relentless campaigner for women's equal rights.  In 1871 she began publishing a weekly newspaper, The New Northwest, devoted to promoting not just suffrage but an entire agenda of women's issues. She benefited from the mentorship of the far more experienced Susan B. Anthony who visited the West Coast and traveled with Duniway throughout the Northwest.

You can imagine the fierce opposition women in the movement faced at that time.  Married women did not even have ownership of their own wardrobes. Despite staunch opposition from some of the most influential men in Oregon,  including her own brother and long-time editor of the Portland Oregonian, Harvey Scott, her victories ultimately came to pass.

Governor Oswald West asked Abigail to write the proclamation announcing Oregon's opening of the ballot box to women in 1912, eight years before the passage of the national amendment. Abigail Duniway had become one of the nation's most famous leaders of the Women's Suffrage movement.

And, she was the first woman to register to vote in Oregon.

Next up: Oswald West

The Union Forever

Between 1836 and 1884 about 12,000 immigrants made the 2000 mile journey from Independence, Missouri on the Oregon Trail. William Jay Bowerman, the University of Oregon's iconic one-time  coach of Track & Field and whose forebears came to Oregon in that migration, would tell his team members, "The cowards never started, the weak died along the way and that leaves us.  The men of Oregon."

Those were the men and women who, on February 14, 1859, brought Oregon into the Union. Those courageous women who survived that incredibly arduous experience were, of course, not allowed to vote as citizens of the new state.  Nor were African-Americans, Chinamen or Mulattos. But as America drifted toward the bitter, bloody chaos of the Civil War, Oregon joined the Union forbidding slavery.  It wasn't until August 26, 1920 that the 19th amendment to the Constitution finally gave women the right to vote and Oregon Suffragettes had played a leading role in that movement.

The Chinese, Mulattos, and African-Americans had to wait until 1927 for their deliverance to the ballot box.

Bowerman identified a culture in the state of Oregon that was shaped by those pioneers who crossed the plains and the mountains, forging rivers and, in some cases, resisting the welcoming committees of hostile Native-Americans.  That gritty code of the trail is evident in the way, from the beginning,  Oregonians vote on issues.  On the Trail, no person was an island.  Everyone was dependent for survival on the others in their party and that spirit of interdependence became an element of the Oregon culture.  In those early family farms surrounding the settlements, doors were left unlocked so a neighbor could get something needed if the owner was away.  This willingness to help a neighbor also became a part of the culture.

Why did Oregon voters time after time vote against allowing gas stations to put in self-service pumps?  The principal reason was to save jobs for their fellow citizens.  Oregon and New Jersey remain the only states to forbid self-service.

It would be an interesting study to discover what percentage of today's Oregonians are native-born compared to arrivals on the now friendly Oregon Trail. Whatever that number might be, the reality is there are lots more coming than there are going.  Coming soon: Who wins the Most Valuable Player trophy for the state's high achievers from 1859 to 2020?

In The Beginning

Three centuries after Columbus sailed the ocean blue in 1492, almost every coastline of every continent on earth had been mapped and explored, except for the polar regions and one other: the coast of the Oregon territory.  It took an American Captain, Robert Gray, to open the gate to our region by sailing into, and naming, the Columbia River.  That leads to the big question;  How the hell did he turn that sailing ship around in the narrow main channel when he figured out this thing was a river?

The Russians and the Brits had been bumping heads exploring Alaska for years before any serious expedition headed south subsequent to Bob crossing the bar at Astoria.  Don't you think at least one or two Ivans or Berties would have gone to their leaders and said, "Hey, Captain, we're freezing our asses off up here?  There's got to be plenty of fur bearing creatures down there where it gets hot."

Anyway, they finally came, Russians, Brits, French, and of course, Americans.  It would take awhile for everything to settle down and I will be looking into some of the adventures that followed. One more thing: How about that Captain George Vancouver (nickname: "The Couve") of the British Royal Navy, who took it upon himself to name everything he laid his eyes on in the Pacific Northwest?  He named our best mountain, "Mt.Hood" after his pal, British Viscount Samuel Hood, some Teddy-boy commander in the British navy who fought against our brave sailors in the Revolutionary War.  Doesn't that bloody well piss you off?  It does me.  Let's give it a real Oregon name.  How about Mt. Protest?

You don't think so...OK, a contest: Give me a better name and the winner (I command 51% of the votes) will be the point thrust of our start up protest against Samuel Hood and his George Washington-hating cohorts. This thing could get legs.

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The Write Stuff

The best thing about blogging is that now you're part of a distinguished profession.  You're a published writer. You know, like Bob Woodward, Shakespeare, Sam Clemens, Tom Jefferson, Martin Luther, and Maureen Doud. Whether people read your narrative or not is irrelevant; if you say you're a writer and you string words together then stop them with a period, you're a writer.

So I will continue blogging, sending my complete sentences out into the ether for the enjoyment of intellectually advanced blog followers or those who feel superior making fun of the stumbling presumptions of would-be Pulitzer prize winners.

I'm going to focus a series of future blogs on the state of Oregon (home of my birth).  Taking my bachelor's degree in History at the University of Oregon under the guiding scrutiny of my major professor, Ed Bingham, I read a lot about my home state and found much that was unique, interesting, and inspirational about this Land of the Empire Builders.  Maybe you, too, will agree that Oregon is a special place.The writers of the TV series, Portlandia said it was where young people come to retire.

I will write about some of the people who made this place the way it is. So stay tuned and grease your axels as we get ready to hit the Oregon Trail.

No Man is an Island

As I start my third month as a resident at the retirement complex, Russellville Park, a quote from John Donne's "No man is an island" crawls into my mind from some long ago literature class. John might have been writing about my new home. He tells us that every man is a piece of the Continent, a part of the main and he finishes with the line"...therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for thee."

About 600 apartments occupy the west and east units of Russellville Park and my place on the third floor of the east building features a large balcony overlooking a Portland residential neighborhood.  In my first few days here a strange feeling about the occupants of this place became apparent to me... Words are difficult to find that will define it but if you twirl together thoughtfulness, compassion, respect, helpfulness, and friendliness that will give you a clue to the vibe.

You first notice among both the men and the women a wide ranging degree of physical disrepair. Lots of walkers.  Lots of canes.  Some wheel chairs. Many eyes are brightly lit while others not so much. But everyone still appear to be serious players in the game.   Early on I joined a breakfast club that proved to be a microcosm of Russellville Park's residents except for the all male feature.

The large round table seating seven or eight regulars at the back of the dining room opened at 7:30 AM under the supervision of the Director of Operations, Lou, an ex-cop from California. Assigned seating. An outside observer would find amusement in the ordering of the table mates, starting with Lou.  The server stands by him and Lou nods his head, without speaking, and she writes on her pad.  Next, another nod of the head and she writes. And so around the table until I am the first to break the silence with my order.  In time, she will know my head nod.

If anyone at our table spotted an empty cup on a saucer he would reach over and put the cup on the table so it wouldn't rattle when our table mate with Parkinson's disease was cutting the food on his plate. Small acts of kindness. Part of what makes this rich environment of Donne's Continent main.  The common bond shared by the residents of Russellville Park might come from the awareness that each of us will eventually learn the secret of life's darkest mystery.

The ambulances that come for their guests at Russellville Park shut down their sirens well before arriving.  But sometimes in the dark of the night you might hear one far away and if it awakens you recall the words of John Donne (updated from 1623):  ...therefore never send to know for whom the siren wails, it wails for thee."

Oh, Say Can You See

Traveling with University of Oregon basketball coach Dick Harter in the early '70s was never dull.  The ex-Marine brought a game plan out of his war room that sometimes clashed with other athletic department programs but his all-out, hell for leather, take no prisoners style of basketball won him a wildly enthusiastic fan following.  One opposing coach was quoted as saying, "God, his players come at you like a squadron of Kamikazes."  Harter jumped on the name and from then on they were the "Kamikaze Kids."

Following an away game at Washington State, the Oregon basketball team bused from Pullman to overnight lodgings in Spokane before the return trip to Eugene the next day.  After getting his team settled in, Dick took a few of us to the bar for a nightcap. The place was empty but for a lone man at the end of the bar.  It was longtime Pac-12 official Frank Buckowitz who had worked our game.  Dick sent him a drink and he raised his glass to us.

The bar was closing when Buckowitz passed our stools.  Dick said "Hey, Bucky, nice game (we won).  Come by the room for a nightcap."  As the assistant athletic director  I knew this was dangerous territory bringing an official to the coach's room, but confronting Harter had no appeal for me either.

Bucky said, "Lead the way."

Revelry ensued.  Drinks all around and war stories of past games flavored with Bucky's tales of officiating filled the room with a constant roar of laughter. Finally the Whistle-Blower got up and said, "I've got to get some sleep but, Dick, I want to tell you what I like about your team. When they play that Star Spangled Banner, your guys are standing straight and showing respect." He continued,  "And I'll tell you something else, Dick.  I'm working your game against the Beavers in Corvallis next Friday and if I see your guys SINGING the Star Spangled Banner, I don't see how you can lose."

The room exploded in laughter and whooping.

True story.  After every practice the next week Dick Harter held choir practice and on the following Friday night, in Gill Coliseum, Oregon's hardwood warriors could be mistaken for the Mormon Tabernacle Choir.

They didn't lose the game.

Dress To Impress

Selecting the perfect garments to wear in public so as to alert discerning viewers to the secrets of your vibe is an art.  Like painting.  Or cooking at its highest level.  My wife, Georgann, had the gift while I had the gaffe.

The one time in my life when I could match the appropriate apparel to the occasion was when I worked summers in the logging woods between college semesters.  I admit my outfits were not the result of my flair for woodsy attire but, rather, the dictates of the logging environment.

You wore a metal helmet to soften the blow of a limb striking your head.  You wore wide elastic suspenders to hold up your pants because a belt might snag on something and take you along on an unpleasant journey; the stretchy braces would at least give you a chance to survive.  And you cut the hem off your pants legs, leaving a frayed but snag-proof row of little dangling threads. Complete the ensemble with your calk (pronounced "cork") boots with metal spikes on the soles and you are styling as that most heroic of all common laborers: the Oregon Logger (never "Lumberjack").

My attempts at cool dressing have gone downhill since those days setting chockers.

In the early '60s I took a job as Alumni Secretary for the University of Oregon.  In 1958 Oregon's football team went to the Rose Bowl and the Alumni Secretary at that time had purchased neckties for the alumni to wear to the game.  The ties had regimental, alternating stripes of lemon and green.  Those babies were BRIGHT.  You might wear one on a hunting trip to avoid getting shot.  And, oh my, after the game there were hundreds of neckties that never made it to Pasadena. One of my early challenges in the job.

A few years later Oregon played Texas in football and at half-time those of us in the press box were served a lunch by Texas co-eds. A young lady approached me and asked, "Are you from Oregon?" After acknowledging that, yes, I was indeed from Oregon, she continued, "That explains it.  When I first saw your tie, I just thought you had bad taste."

Yeah, Texine, your first thought was right.  And we lost the game.

The Doors Are Closing

Her voice is perfect. Pleasing timbre with undertones of sincerely caring about your comfort and safety. "The doors are closing." A definitive statement of fact letting us know we are prepared for action.  "The train departing." She puts a slight up-rise inflection after the "ing" in "departing" that suggests we are about to share an exciting adventure and then she says with quiet urgency, "Please hold on." There is an accent mark in tone over the word, "on."

"The doors are closing.  The train departing.  Please hold on."

Whatever Max train you're on you will hear her (I think her name is Monique) repeat these three sentences at every station and it never becomes annoying. Not like those songs the Good Humor Man assaults us with every summer. Monique's calm message is an almost musical reassurance that we are moving out and we are going to get there.  Safe and sound.

I'm tempted to investigate how to find Monique so that I might retain her to record the words I will compose.

Everyone forgets things from time to time, Bill.  Just forget it.

It is OK to eat lots of ice cream because you can balance it by not eating lots of kale.

Being a bit older will only save you the annoyance of people stopping you on the street thinking you are George Clooney and asking for autographs.

Maybe I'll hop on the Blue Line to Gresham and give this some thought.

Oh, my Pa-Pa

My father was 47 years older than me.  No matter how old I got he was always 47 years older and so when I got to be in my teens he seemed like an old man.  At that age I was confident I knew about all there was to know and as the epicenter of the universe I made no attempt to find out about his life. That remains among the most serious regrets in my life.

He was highly intelligent, articulate (he loved words), funny, and gregarious. Once, returning home late from his job as a switchman for the Union Pacific Railroad, to a waiting group of friends on a Saturday night, he entered wearing his work clothing and announced to the the group, "I shall go upstairs, submerge, emerge and return immaculate."

He ran away from home to join the army when he was 16 and his mother was so pleased to have him gone she signed the papers that allowed his enlistment.  He was sent to fight in the Philippine Insurrection of 1902 and later joined the American forces sent to fight in the Boxer Rebellion. This was the start of a life as an American warrior who would go on to fight in the Mexican Border War, chasing Poncho Villa  around Northern Mexico and then going to France with the American Expeditionary Forces in World War I.

His military life exposed him to adult beverages and he said he saw a billboard once that read, "Drink Canada Dry" and so he did what he could.  When criticized for excessive drinking he claimed it was a birth defect diagnosed as "Syncopation" which he defined as, "irregular movement from bar to bar."
Onetime he brought a gift home for his daughter, Virginia.  It was a stuffed bear with plastic eyes designed with little black centers that rolled around except the eyes had somehow been damaged with both black dots wedged together over the bear's nose.  Seeing the problem, Daddy told Virginia they would name the bear, "Gladly." (He got the name from the church song, "Gladly the Cross I'd Bear."
Virginia loved Gladly.

Sadly (as opposed to Gladly) we don't get overs in this life.  I should have known him better.