August 30, 2006 – Watching Grandkids Grow

August 30, 2006 – Watching Grandkids Grow

Sunday morning at around 9:30 IM and I get a call from our youngest daughter RF who lives in Irvine, where she decided to stay after graduating UC Irvine too many years ago. She works Sundays and she semcalls us on the way to work or during a slow spell at the office—Sunday mornings are typically slow. Some while back she bstarted working in the home building industry and took a break to have her oldest, a lovely girl, three-year old AF, named after a character in a Willa Cather novel, and her youngest—two-year old TF,ch named after one of King Arthur’s knights of the round table. stShe’s back working now that the two kiddos are off at preschool, though today they’re home sleeping in with their dad.

These two provide no end of amusement for IM and me. AF is a thin, wiry dynamo of a girl who talks a mile a minute—we’re often asking her to slow down so we can keep up with her endless stream of conversation. Waist high, AF has straight dark brown hair that reaches below her shoulders, a high forehead covered by her bangs that her right hand continuously removes from her smiling eager brown eyes. Those eyes are a marvel with a thin ring of autumn green around the pupils’s circumference—the right eye looks to me ever so slightly smaller than the left, and its easy to get lost in her lush brown eyebrows. She has her mom’s straight nose that points without drawing attention to itself. Her rosy full lower lip complements her thin upper one and both reveal her top four front teeth when she smiles, which is often and always when you’re pointing a camera at her, something that happens quite a lot. From an early age, she has understood the function of a camera and has presented it with a varied repertoire of poses: coy, serious, devilish, playful, head cocked pensive, straight on saying hello to the future... She very much reminds us of her mom’s older sister, Auntie MS, who would strike a pose as soon as a camera was brought out. She shares much in common with her auntie.

TF, by contrast is a man of few words but when he does speak or more accurately when he acts, you know there is something very clever behind that handsome face of his, probably the result of a cranium size in the 80 percentile among his peers, his doctor declares. TF has a wide face, the same brown eyes as his sister, both arc slightly downward at the two extremes another feature he shares with his sister and both share with their dad. While his sister’s chin comes to a point in a slightly “V” shaped, his is a “U” with its arms pried apart at the top. He too has a high forehead that gives way to a head of brown hair a little lighter than his sister’s. It’s being lightened by exposure to the Southern California sun. Dressed in khaki shorts, a Hawaiian shirt, and sandals you can see the surfer dude he’ll one day become. His thin lips cover his baby teeth, both lorded over by a 2-year-old’s pug nose.

I put the phone on speaker as IM comes back into the room and we both ask for an update on the latest with the grandkids. RF starts by relating the latest installment in getting AF to sleep properly. AF has always had a hard time settling down at night. She is not content with her own company. From the time she was an infant, she has had to have a DVD continuously playing in her room while she sleeps—Baby Einstein at first, now Sponge Bob and a large assortment of Disney videos. (I can think of no more insidious marketing monster than the Disney Company. It begins building brand loyalty from the time a child can focus its eyes and tune its ears to hear outside stimulus.) AF resembles her auntie MS in that way. When MS was a baby, I would spend a good hour or more every night getting her to doze off—it was our quality time together. (In retrospect, I was abetting her dependency.) IM and I speculate that both AF and MS need continuous stimulation.

I think the techno-nerds I grew up with and their progeny have created a generation of kids that for lack of a better word have become stimulation-addicted. They require music playing or the television playing when they are doing some other activity, reading a book, typing away on a computer, walking, running, exercising, eating… A weekend getaway in a cabin without electricity would incur some serious withdrawal symptoms. Certainly, AF and her auntie MS fall into that category—as does MS oldest daughter ES. Curiously, all of them are first children, could that also be a factor? As a first born, I certainly craved stimulation from radio, television and movies—though we lacked the 24/7 access common today—TV stations would shut down at midnight. TF and his cousin JS don’t seem to suffer the addiction to the same degree. Both can immerse themselves in play with nothing else going on around them. Why is it that the later born children need less stimulation? Is it because the first born are their parent’s trial and error experiment in child rearing and the kid knows that the adults are clueless and have good reason to worry?

In an attempt to wean AF off her continuous-loop DVD dependency, RF describes putting a timer on the player hoping that after a couple of hours of endless play, AF would have drifted off into a deep enough sleep that she won’t realize that the stimulus is no longer there. But, in every instance, as soon as the player shuts off, AF wakes up asking for it to be turned back on. We keep speculating that AF is over stimulated and she’s learned that she has to have something always going on around her. Perhaps the great curse of modern times is that we’re teaching successive generations of children that life is to be lived 24/7. Or perhaps some of us like AF don’t want to spend much time sleeping because they are afraid they are missing something.

On the other hand, TF is one of those kids who are a blessing to his Mom when it comes to sleeping. First, he has always been the kind of kid you could put down in his crib and he would go to sleep without complaining—much like his mom. Both enjoy their own company. Now that he’s a bigger kid, he will go into his room at bedtime and fall asleep in no time. When he awakens he likes to lounge. Even as a baby, you would go into his room and find him lying on his back wide awake daydreaming for lack of better description. And if he’s not ready to get up, he’ll continue lounging. I’ve picked him up when he’s just woken up and he’ll lie peacefully in my arms until he’s lounged enough before full blown activity. It’s one of my favorite things to do as a grandfather.

From birth, you could tell TF gave the impression he was going to grow into a stout, big frame lad. One indication was his appetite and palate. He has always eaten a lot and when he started taking solid food, his diet was just about anything adults would eat, fruits, vegetables—even olives and garlic, salsa, fish, and the staple meat and potatoes. The one thing he loves but can’t have is dairy—cheese, whole milk, and ice cream. Watching him eat when he went on solid foods was a treat. He would take great delight in a mouthful of food, and when he wanted something especially, he would bang his hands to get more. Remarkably, when he’s sated, he stops eating. Now, he signifies by saying “all done.” And he means it. You can’t tempt him with anything else. What kind of kid is like that? Must be the excess of gray matter he possesses.

RF relates stories that shed light on TF’s relationship to his older sister and provides insight into his nature. One day last week RF says the two of them were inside on a beautiful sunny day and she finally asked the two of them if they didn’t want to go outside and play. Both say yes and she tells them both to put their shoes on. TF complies but AF become petulant and refuses. A classic mother-daughter stand off occurs. TF sensing the tension between the two, dashes up the stairs to his sister’s bedroom saying out loud “Ana’s shoes, Ana’s shoes.” Finding them he comes back down the stairs and places them in front his sister. His mother is beside herself with pride in her young caring son. AF on the other hand pitches a fit. Unfortunately, he chose the wrong side in the battle and had to suffer his sister’s wrath. To her defense she normally doesn’t hurt his feeling in this manner. She’s usually in a good mood and divine more devilish ways of upsetting the little guy. Asked why she was so mean to her brother, she replied that it was must be because she was sleepy.

Our conversation is interrupted abruptly by a customer. RF is beside herself happy to have some work for the rest of the morning. We ring off wishing her good luck.

August 27, 2006 – Simple Things in Life

August 27, 2006 – Simple Things in Life

Yesterday, my wife IM and I promised to visit our oldest daughter MS and her family in Pleasanton for a barbeque. We were looking forward to the outing because we hadn’t seen her, her husband GS and our grandkids ES and JS for over a month. We promised to bring a rack of pork ribs we had in the freezer and be there by 2:00 PM. The weather has been great these past few weeks in the San Francisco Bay Area and we were looking at a temperature in the mid 80s Fahrenheit at their place, perfect for dinner in the back yard. IM and I had a late breakfast, lingering over coffee and talking about her buddies in the San Jose line dance community—IM is a great dancer unlike me.n The community is worldwide with a concentration of dancers and choreographers in the San Francisco Bay Area as well as in Great Britain, Australia, and New Zealand. It also has a big following in Asia, particularly Taiwan. The group keeps up to date with the tlatest dances via the Internet and often gets together with choreographers at different locations worldwide to dance their most recent works.

We finished breakfast 30 minutes after noon, cleaned up the dishes, grabbed our rack of ribs, and left for Pleasanton a little after 1:00 PM. I decided to make it a leisurely drive up and so avoided California 101 opting to drive north of Monterey Highway through San Jose and pick up Interstate 280 East turning right on East Virginia Street. This being summer, the traffic on Monterey would normally be light and if the lights aren’t against me, I can usually make the run from Capital Expressway to Alma Avenue without stopping for a red light and I can usually average 40 MPH along the way. Today, my plan for avoiding 101 was ill advised as something was going on at Santa Clara County Fairgrounds and the right lane of 3-lane Monterey Highway was backed up from Umbarger Road to the entrance of the fairground just south of Old Tully Road. Thankfully, there wasn’t a back-up in the two remaining lanes and we got through the stretch without much delay. We made the right onto East Virginia, drove through the blocks of the warehouse district south of the San Jose city center—gradually being gentrified as warehouses give way to condominiums starting at under $500,000.

Once we merged onto Interstate 280 we soon passed over California 101 where the freeway we were on turns into Interstate 680 as the northeast-bound, high-speed, four-lane highway curves north and slightly west. On Saturday, this road runs easily 20 miles and hour faster than the posted 65 mile-an-hour limit and today was no exception. I get into the fast lane and maintain its 80 to 85 mph speed, which is only slightly faster than the other three lanes—I can’t drive slowly on this stretch of road. It takes us no time to reach the summit of the Andrade Grade and begin the rapid descent toward the Highway 84 exit and the city of Sunol. From there 680 begins another gradual climb up the Sunol grade, where at the summit is our exit Sunol Boulevard, which snakes though a large industrial park on the left and a community of million-dollar-plus homes clinging to the hills rising off to the right of the road. Three lane Sunol Blvd eventually crosses Bernal Road at the entrance to downtown Pleasanton and becomes two-lane First Street. We proceed along First until its intersection with Stanley Boulevard where we turn left. First Street beyond the intersection becomes Stanley Blvd, a high speed road that carries on through East Pleasanton to the city of Livermore beyond.

MS and her family have a nice place in the community across from Amador Valley High School. It’s on a quiet tree lined street in an older neighborhood of single family homes with fenced backyards where you can occasionally see kids playing on bicycles and skateboards on the sidewalk; the perfect place to raise our 9-year old grand daughter, ES, and her 4-year old brother JS. When we arrive, we park in the shade of a tree—the genus of which I don’t know but should—in MS’s front lawn near the street. When IM rings the front door bell we hear an argument between ES and JS over who will let grandma and grandpa in. As the door opens, it’s hard to tell who won. However, both forget the contest as IM grabs ES and I grab JS in a big hug and kiss, and then swap off the two before greeting MS and GS in the same manner. They have just finished their lunch and we join them at the dining table and catch up on what's been happening in their lives. ES has gotten private piano lessons, something she’s been asking for long enough that her parents think she’s seriously committed to learning, starting the first week of September. JS will begin Tae Kwon Do lessons at the same time. Both of them go back to school next week. ES knows what’s about to happen JS is oblivious, probably for the best. As a kid, I remember dreading the start of a new school year. ES, by contrast, seems resigned, perhaps eager to reconnect with friends last seen three months ago. She’s going into 4th grade and continues to talk about how much she wants to be a teenager—her anxiousness for time to pass undiminished by our years watching it pass too quickly.

MS is keen to go shopping for the ingredients for this evening’s barbecue. There are two stops: Peet’s Coffee at Tassajara Road, where Santa Rita Road crosses Interstate 580 and becomes Tassajara Road, and Gene’s Market at Hopyard Road near Valley Avenue. MS has become a fan of Peet’s Garuda whole bean coffee and she knew I wanted to stock up on some as well. ES decides to stay home with her dad but JS wants to come with his grandparents and mom for the drive. He comes into the living room with a pair of shorts and shoes. At home JS likes to remain all day in his pajamas—usually a close fitting pullover top and matching shorts, the outfit we found him in today. He insists on wearing the navy blue shorts he’s brought to me over his pajama bottoms. He knows pajamas are not appropriate attire outside the house during the day but insists on keeping them on under his street clothes. He gambles we won’t insist on a shirt to go over his pajama top and wins. We strap him into his child seat in the passenger side middle row bucket seat of ME’s late model Honda Odyssey. Driving about in a highest-safety-rated, high-gas-mileage, Japanese Minivan is de rigueur in Pleasanton.

We reach Peet’s in no time at all, extract our grandson from his car seat and enter the aromatic realm of the coffee seller—there is no more pleasant odor than ground coffee. Even IM, who does not drink coffee—preferring the taste of tea instead, finds the fragrance irresistible. We stand in line behind a lady about MS’s age buying coffee beans. The young clerk behind the counter is giving her a tutorial on the coffee bean she has selected, instructing her on the consistency to grind the beans for the optimum flavor, the proper use of a coffee press, the correct storage of the beans upon opening the bag—is in a sealed plastic container stored in the freezer. (I’ve been doing it right all these years.) Five minutes later, she is allowed to depart, happily clutching her precious one pound cargo of beans freshly roasted today.

In the time we’ve been standing in line, I notice that one of the beans on sale is Kona, which I’ve not had in several years. When we get to the counter I order a pound bag and the clerk queries me if I’m sure I want that amount. I confirm the order and he says that it will cost $50. I point to the sign behind him advertising Kona for $24.95 and immediately realize that the price shown is for a half pound. I opt for the smaller quantity and he rings me up. MS asks the clerk his opinion of Kona since it’s so expensive. He explains that this batch of Kona is not to his taste and that he currently prefers the flavor of the Ethiopian beans, though the Garuda blend is particularly good right now as well. He then dives into a dissertation about how coffee taste can vary over time and that the way to ensure the best result is to go with the coffee that’s best at any given moment—did he just criticize my purchase of Kona? MS is downright giddy over Garuda. she’s given me a couple of bags that I’m half-way through and it is good but I like the distinctive flavor of Kona and wanted to get some while it was available. She decides on a pound of Garuda which the clerk measures out from a large plastic bag that he unseals showing her that the roasting date on the package is today. My Kona by contrast was roasted several days ago—I’m getting buyer’s remorse the more I listen to the clerk, but I resist the temptation to ask for my money back and make another selection and we leave the store with our purchases.

As we retrace our path home from Peet’s down Santa Rita toward Valley en route to Gene’s, JS falls asleep sucking his thumb. I poke him playfully in the ribs and he stirs, smiles, and then falls back to sleep. I pull out his thumb and his hand lays limp in his lap, his head resting on the head rest of his car seat, blissfully dreaming. When we get to Gene’s, MS parks in the shade of one of the many trees in the parking lot and IM decides to stay with JS as we go gather free range chicken legs and thighs, potato salad, sweet French bread—two loaves, a nice dessert, some Calistoga sparkling water and a large plastic container of still water. I pick up a $10 bottle of Merlot and we check out and return with our booty to the minivan. Back home we sit around the dining table and talk until it’s time for dinner: the politics behind Prop 87 on the California ballot, the John Mark Karr confession, likely future presidential candidates…

Later as I watch GS barbecue the ribs and chicken, we talk about his job and mine. His company has some opening overseas, accepting one would help his advancement in the company but the two-year assignment would mean upheaval in their lives. We discuss the pros and cons of Europe, Asia, and other offices around the globe. I recall what it was like as a kid in a family that had to move every three years when the army assigned my dad to a new duty station. When we were all young, we got over the moves quickly but once we got into middle school and high school the changes wrecked more havoc, though we bounced back fairly quickly. I said it would probably be harder on the two of them than on the kids. We ate dinner about 8:00 that evening just as the sun was about to set. The fog had begun to stream in over the East Bay Mountains and the heat built up during the day was starting to cool. We finished dinner and I made a pot of the Kona coffee for everyone. The flavor was as I remembered it and I got over any misgivings I had earlier about the purchase. We finished off the dessert and went inside to clean up the mess. Just as we finished tidying up we heard explosions outside and we all ran out back to see the fireworks going off at the Contra Costa Fairgrounds. It was a colorful spectacle that kept all of us, grandkids included, enthralled for a good quarter of an hour until the explosive finale ended the show. Shortly afterwards, IM and I took our leave and drove back to our place in San Jose.

August 16, 2006 – Ownership of a Life

August 16, 2006 – Ownership of a Life

I’ve been thinking about my blog and its contents in light of an ongoing discussion I’ve been having with my wife IM about the ownership of the information I include in the blog. I’ve written a number of posts about my parents. I’ve described them and their friends, especially Charles Upton, in detail. Mr. Upton passed away and has no known family members. I could say I’m free to write about his life. He’s no longer on earth to object. And he has no heirs to claim ownership of what I say about him. I’m harping on this because I’m confused about who owns what when it comes to something that’s been written or filmed or made into an audio program.

One day last week I watched an A&E network presentation on the trial of Aileen Carol Wuornos. Her life was made into the movie entitled “Monster,“ which grossed $34.5 million in U.S. box office and earned the star Charlize Theron an Oscar for best actress. You could make the case that the writer, filmmaker, and actress Theron owned the story since they synthesized her life and her crime spree into a story that an audience was willing to pay to see Ms. Theron portray. However, if Wuornos had not lived the life the way she had there would be no story to tell. Her antisocial behavior, for which she received the death penalty, became the profits of highly socialized individuals who fit into the mainstream of the genteel middle class.

When I described the life of Don Steele in one of my blogs and then presented the transcript of the conversation I had with Don and his wife—the latter being a more compelling story than the former—that my original piece was based upon, did the story belong to Don and his wife or did my converting it from conversation to written text provide me some ownership of it? Since I’ve not published the piece for profit, there is nothing to argue over. Don got to tell his story in his own words and I got the satisfaction of writing something that some number of people read. Someone, like me, who longs to be a story teller is in reality retelling other peoples’ stories.

In this world of ours where everything becomes content: one of the London bombers setting off an explosive caught on someone's cellphone video camera and later broadcast; the last moment of a spurned male lover killing his girlfriend in a Manhattan bar before turning the gun on himself; thousands of lives being swept away by the tidal wave sweeping over Banda Aceh caught on video cameras—innocent vacationers in some tourist destination captured in digital still images or motion video and unknowingly posted on some website attracting any number of hits… Like Don’s transcribed remarks I captured and posted, these still and moving images and audio were likewise captured and published, though Don consented to my taping his conversation for later publication. The others, however, had no say in whether their images and utterances should be exhibited for public consumption.

When the white man, with their cameras and recording devices, first encountered primitive civilization, the natives refused to have themselves recorded, fearing that their spirit was somehow being imprisoned. You ever stop to consider that recording is doing just that. It’s capturing a fleeting moment in time and imprisoning it for as long as storage technology will allow it to be maintained. Looking back at the images IM and I captured of ourselves and our daughters, I see people who ceased to be the moment the picture was taken and the audio recorded—we have audio recordings of ourselves too.

In this modern age, I often wonder how many times I’ve been captured in someone else’s video or digital photo. When IM and I vacationed in Manhattan just after the new millennium, I had just gotten a new Nikon CoolPix digital camera and as we walked down The Avenue of the Americas, I kept snapping photos as we strolled. As I viewed the images later on my PC, I saw countless faces on the busy sidewalk coming toward us captured in the JPEG images now stored on my hard drive, many with expressions you’d find on the sidewalks of any large city, sullen, ecstatic, angry, sad, bored, every emotion you can imagine. If I showed the owners of those images these photos, they would probably ask that I not publish them for whatever reason—an unflattering expression, being with the wrong person, being with the right person but caught with an emotion that should be kept private…

You could argue that capturing someone in a photograph or video clip is no different than watching them with your eyes. In essence those images are caught in your mind consciously or unconsciously, but the great distinction between captured in the mind of the beholder and captured in digital video or still images is the ability to manipulate and proliferate the image, in a sense giving the captured moment a life of its own. I’m reminded of the picture on the cover of a 1985 National Geographic. It shows a pretty young peasant girl in Afghanistan with piercing green eyes and a sad resigned expression of a refugee orphaned during the Soviet Union's bombing of her country.

The photographer, Steve McCurry, captured all the anguish, loneliness, anger and despair of a 12-year trying to come to terms with a world which was for her then completely horrendous and hopeless. The photographer trapped the one last thing this young girl had, her stricken emotional state, and turned it into one of the most memorable photographs to ever grace the cover of the National Geographic. She went on trying to survive and to make sense of a senseless world. He went on to awards and praise for his work. Somehow it seems unfair. Her image was truly a captured spirit that affected everyone that looked upon it. In the modern world of content, a captured image is something pop culture idols turn into wealth. You could argue that paparazzi are stealing images of celebrities constantly. And that’s true, but the return for the celebrity is the proliferation of his image—there is no bad publicity, there is only publicity. The picture or angry outburst might easily lead to a part in a movie or play.

The great injustice comes from the unwitting participants in the game. In December 2002, I heard on National Public Radio’s “All Things Considered” a piece by John Burnett entitled “The Leaf Player of the Zocalo”. It told of a street musician named Carlos Garcia who played an English Ivy leaf that he blows across in Zocalo, a public square in Mexico City. He was recorded playing the song “Perfidia” and the recording was included on the Kronos Quartet CD “Nuevo.” The Mexican recording company that captured Garcia’s performance never paid him for his work, though Kronos had paid the recording company. I suspect that the piece on NPR raised the the Kronos Quartet’s consciousness to the injustice done to Garcia. The story stated that the group had set about raising funds to compensate Garcia for the money he should have received. I wonder if he was ever compensated—he supports his wife and four daughters on tips and a $60 a month government payment.

The discussion with IM—she hates me talking about her—made me aware that I too should tread lightly when it comes to telling the tales of others. My father doesn’t seem to mind so you can expect more tales of my Dad in future posts. He asked me once what he could leave me in his will and I said he could leave me his story and let me tell it. I only hope I do it justice.

August 6, 2006 – California Heat Wave

August 6, 2006 – California Heat Wave

Beginning July 15th through July 26th Northern California felt the grip of the heat wave that had been afflicting a good part of the rest of the country. My wife IM and I escaped the heat on Sunday July 16th and Monday July 17th by driving south on California 101 to Cambria and spending the night at the Sand Pebble Inn on Moonstone Beach Drive. Temperatures along the route south of Salinas were in the 90s reaching into the 100s by the time we left King City behind and headed toward Bradley and Paso Robles further south. The elevated temperatures were causing the miles of vineyards we passed south of King City on either side of Highway 101 to stop growing—reducing the level of sugar in the harvest for this year’s crop. As we descended the Coast Range on California Highway 46 leading from Paso Robles and dead ending into scenic California Highway 1, the outside temperature on the car thermometer was still registering in the low 80’s Fahrenheit. By the time we turned right on Highway 1 heading north toward Cambria the temperature had begun to fall steadily and was in the low 70s when we pulled into the parking lot of the Sand Pebble Inn. A on-shore breeze was bringing cooling relief to the coast but not penetrating inland more than a mile or two. The gigantic high pressure system dominating the west and the Coast Range held the breeze at bay. We luxuriated in the cool ocean breeze after being cooped up in an air conditioned car for the past 170 miles.

When we returned to San Jose on Monday afternoon July 17th, the heat was still on and the temperature inside the house read low-80, still cooler than the mid-90s outside. By evening the temperature outside began to drop as the sun went down, but inside, it had climbed to 90 degrees. At dusk, we opened all the windows in the house and I brought out two large stainless steel 18-in., high-velocity Hampton Bay floor fans. I put one outside each of the two sliding glass doors in our back yard and turned them up full blast to blow the accumulated heat out of the house and bring in cooler air from outside. Normally, the sun going down in Northern California is accompanied by an on-shore wind that can cool our house from 85 to 70 in an hour or two depending on the force of the wind. Monday evening, the wind was becalmed and what little cooling there was had to be moved into the house by the two large fans. We have another slightly larger black no-name brand floor fan that produces less air flow than the other two but moves air better than our five 12-in. pedestal Hampton Bay fans. The black fan was doing duty upstairs blowing hot air out of the bedrooms aided by the four smaller pedestal units. The fifth 12-in. pedestal unit was downstairs in front of the rear window staining to purge hot air stuck in the northeast corner of the house.

Our place sits on a cul de sac facing southeast with our backyard oriented northwest getting the lingering summer sun hitting the back of the house with full force most of the afternoon until nearly 8:00 PM when the neighbors’ vegetation starts to block the direct rays. On a normal evening, the onshore wind would begin blowing from the northwest and sometime later at night turning around and blowing southwest. The only explanation for this change I can fathom is we’re located south and east of the bottom of the bay. When the fog streams through the Golden Gate, it moves unimpeded south the length of the bay and has a direct shot down California Highway 101 to our place. Later at night when the fog makes it over the Coast Range (Santa Cruz Mountains) along California Highway 17, the breeze blows through our place in the opposite direction. But the evening of Monday July 17th the on shore flow had been stop well off shore by the stubborn high pressure system. Television weather forecasters tell us the pressure compresses the air increasing the heating effect of the sun, thus the elevated temperature. However, we should be thankful that the off-shore flow normally associated with the high pressure systems that afflict us in the summer is nearly absent with this heat wave. Otherwise, we would not only be sweltering but we would be punished further by an angry hot wind.

But this high pressure system is not without its own form of dread: subtropical moisture coming up from the Baja Peninsula afflicting the desert Southwest before moving north through the California Central Valley and out over Northern California where it produced sporadic thunderstorms in the higher elevations and muggy conditions everywhere else. The humidity reminds me of my few days in Shanghai a few weeks ago, though not quite as bad. Here my sweat does dry up. There I walked about outside in moist clothes. During the news hour we view the satellite photo of the California coast. The summer fog bank that usually hugs the coast is seen miles offshore, exiled from the land it visits without restriction otherwise. In the mid 70s the California coast is a delight for those beachgoers splashing playfully in the surf who would otherwise be shivering. IM and I are not much for the beach. Even when we were in Cambria we were more comfortable watching the waves lapping the shore from our perch in a second story room at the Sand Pebble than down on the beach.

By 10:00 PM on Monday, the noisy 18-in fans—imagine being near a prop plane with engines revving—have managed to drop the temperature to 85 degrees. By midnight, the temperature cooled a couple more degrees and we close the house up and turn in for the night, leaving the windows upstairs wide open and the fans all going full blast—sleeping amid the whine of fans though the smaller fans are less noisy than the bigger ones downstairs. When I awake at 5:30 in the morning for my run, the temperature is close to 70 degrees outside and the upstairs has cooled down to the upper 70s. The temperature downstairs is still over 80. When I return an hour later, I open all the windows downstairs and crank up the fans to their highest speed. By the time I leave for work an hour later, the house has been cooled to the mid 70s. I close everything up and draw the blinds on the front of the house to keep the radiant heat out. During my 20-minute commute, the car thermometer shows the outside temperature starting to rise. I’m off to my air conditioned office and poor IM is left to ride the thermometer up to the mid-80s inside the house.

We survived the heat wave as we have for the past 32 years and there were stretches in the past equally severe and as long, but as you get older, the stretches seem more ominous and foreboding. Perhaps the constant talk of global warming is contributing to our sense of anxiety. In any event, we decide to replace out 26-year old gas furnace with a new heating and air conditioning unit. The day it’s installed, of course, the heat wave has passed and we’re back to a normal pattern of upper 80s, low 90s during the day and low 60s at night with a cooling on-shore breeze. Why is it when you fix a leaky roof it stops raining?