Trolley Dodgers at PetCo Park

When a friend comes to town and you haven't seen him in 11 years and it's 4:30 in the afternoon and he grew up in San Diego but hasn't yet seen the downtown ballpark and the dastardly Dodgers are in town, whaddaya do? Go to the Ball Game! So we drive downtown and park in our secret parking garage, grab an idle lawyer from his downtown office (just kidding Sam), consume the beverages of our choice and fish tacos at the Tin Fish, procure tickets (the deal was made on the street corner, but it was not illegal), and gawk at the baseball fans streaming in from the trolley.

Here's Big Mike's take on the evening:

A good time was had by all!
Especially the Padres.
Of course, our hearts go out to the poor poor Angelenos and their Trolley Dodgers, who failed to dodge the San Diego FREIGHT TRAIN.

After the Padres built their picket fence (one run in four consecutive innings), closure came in the form of Trevor Time, savored by Padre fans lucky enough to be in the park when it happens!
Next Entry: Happy To Be in North Carolina

Mystical Transformation; or, Life Begins at Ninety

The year I turned ninety, I wanted to give myself the gift of a night of wild love with an adolescent virgin.

And so begins our Book Club selection for this month. I must admit, as a product of a more egalitarian society than that described by Gabriel Garci­a Marquez in his novella Memories of My Melancholy Whores, I was a bit put off by this opening sentence. Is this a tale of child abuse couched within the fantasy of literature? Perhaps. However, we are privileged to witness the lyrically orchestrated self-discovery of the narrator ("the Scholar"), a ninety-year-old newspaper columnist. Whatever you think of old age, this story tells us that people of any age have the ability to find love, even those whose previous intimacies are paid for liaisons. Here is a man with no family and whose only friends seem to be women whose love he has bought. He is certainly loveless. He has squandered his life. Somehow, in spite of himself, in his ninety-first year he finds love. The fact that physical love in this new-found relationship remains unconsummated makes his adoration not unlike a religious veneration. It is with religious zeal of his new love that he transforms his life:

The house rose from its ashes and I sailed on my love of Delgadina with an intensity and happiness I had never known in my former life. Thanks to her I confronted my inner self for the first time as my ninetieth year went by. (p. 64-65)

Besides his own transformation, the Scholar offers up pearls of wisdom on aging, such as

. . . you go on seeing yourself as you always were, from the inside, but others observe you from the outside (p. 7)

And,

On the other hand, it is a triumph of life that old people lose their memories of inessential things, though memory does not often fail with regard to things that are of real interest to us. (p. 10)

Although a translation (by Edith Grossman), the words flow, the prose is rhythmic, and the language is uncomplicated.

We think that this will be about the many women the narrator has known. Yet, really, the story is about the narrator himself: his transformation from loveless to one who loves and is loved, from one who begins life at ninety. He must deal with and overcome adversity. He triumphs. This transformation is his own deflowering. At the end, he leaves us with this forward-looking farewell:

It was, at last, real life, with my heart safe and condemned to die of happy love in the joyful agony of any day after my hundredth birthday. (p. 115)

And Delgadina, the child? We never know what she thinks. Indeed, she is always asleep. She never loses her purity. In the fantasy world of fiction, she loves her Scholar in return. After he and Rosa Carbacas, his loyal procuress, make lasting financial arrangements with each other to secure Delgadina's future, Rosa tells him

"Ah, my sad scholar, . . . That poor creature's head over heels in love with you." (p. 114-115)

Next Entry: Trolley Dodgers at PetCo Park

Ogunquit Offering

Ogunquit, Maine is a glorious summertime destination. My brother and I visited this coastal community in June, had a lobster lunch at Barnacle Billy's, and hiked the Marginal Way, a paved walking path from Perkins Cove to Ogunquit Beach. Upon our return, we ran into a couple of ex-presidents who have been hanging out of late, fund raising for causes such as Tsunami Relief and Hurricane Katrina victims. Their lunch spot, Barnacle Billy's, allowed us to take some photos and meet President Clinton. If nothing else, these two obviously get along.

Next Entry: Mystical Transformation; or, Life Begins at Ninety

Killer Combo

Summer brings out the most delicious vegetable garden combo: tomato and basil. I'm not an expert gardener by any means, but am blessed with year-round mild climate. I am able to grow many herbs and lettuce all year; summer time, however, brings luscious tomatoes and delicate basil. Sweet and aromatic. Growing edibles makes you more attentive in the kitchen. The best use, by far, for this killer combo is sliced tomatoes (not to be confused with Attack of the Killer Tomatoes), fresh slivered basil, a bit of olive oil, and fresh ground pepper.
Next Entry: Ogunquit Offering

Meet the Skimboarder

Water temp: 70. Air temp: 70. Surf: choppy and surging. A shore break develops as high tide approaches. Two kids are romping in the shallow soup and I'm watching a lone skimboarder who looks like he's training for the X-Games. I'm thinking of speed-dialing my chiropractor in sympathetic pain.

The skimboarder has a routine, timed with the cyclic wave action. He stands on the beach and times his run as the wave recedes, throwing down the skimboard in front and chasing after it in a short sprint. He jumps on the board as it skims in what seems like a quarter-inch of water, just enough to hydroplane the board.

The real drama unfolds at the end of the ride. The ebbing water and skimboarder collide with the incoming wave as the shore break shoots the board skyward. Board and boarder fly up; arms, legs, and torso contort in an effort to survive. He crashes into a foot of swirling foam, but like a cat with nine lives, somehow lands on his feet. And then he does it again. Sunday at the beach.
Next Entry: Killer Combo

An Inconvenient Truth

If you haven't seen Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth" do yourself and your (future/current/even if you're not even seeing anybody right now) children|grandchildren|the neighbor's kids a favor and see this movie. Be sure to stay for the credits. Learn more at climitecrisis.net. Tell your friends. And go get that hybrid car you've been thinking about. Oh yeah, and recycle. It's a serious topic, but believe it or not, wooden Al has loosened up a bit and even cracks a few jokes. He inspires and finishes with encouragement and hope. I'll leave you with one last[ing] vision, courtesy of NASA . . .

Next Entry: Meet the Skimboarder

Summer Beach Days

When the home office heats up, when the portable fan becomes useless, when the ocean breeze isn't quite cool enough to clear my thoughts, I head west where sand and surf and wind are just the cure for the summertime blues.

This is D Street Beach in Encinitas taken in late afternoon from the beach access stairs. It's low tide in March. I purchase a Tide Calendar every year and use its blue line sine wave to check the daily tide. In short, is there enough beach to run?

The beach changes constantly. Not just the twice daily high tide-low tide, but the daily changes of storm surf, rocks, sea weed, sand movement, currents, red tide, wind direction and strength, and the erosion of the cliffs. The rollers, source of great (and cheap!) fun, are affected by the bottom, the tides, and the wind. This summer has produced uncommonly high water temperatures (mid-70's for all of July).

Low tide unveils otherwise hidden treasures. This is Swami's Beach here at low tide exposing algae-covered rocks.

Cliff erosion is a constant threat to cliff-based homes and naive cliff climbers who tempt fate. Cliff collapses are not infrequent and have closed beach access stairways more than once. This particular stretch of cliff has beautiful erosion-produced caves carved by water in the fragile sandstone. And my favorite beach, Stone Steps, has warning signs advising people to keep back from the bluffs.

Next Entry: An Inconvenient Truth

Training in Downtown San Francisco

Sun Java Studio Creator is an integrated development environment (IDE) geared to simplifying the development of Java-based web applications. To complement the Creator Field Guide book, the Anderson Software Group has created a 3-day overview of the Creator IDE.

Last month Paul and I delivered the Java Studio Creator IDE Overview courseware in downtown San Francisco, just a block from the famed TransAmerica building. When attending JavaOne, we always stay in the Union Square/Theatre district. This time we stayed in Chinatown. It's a great location and a nice change. Walk out of the hotel, turn right and you're in the midst of Chinatown. Walk out of the hotel, cross the street, and you're in North Beach, with its fabulous selection of Italian eateries. We did not go hungry.

The course itself was well-attended with participants from as far away as Ireland and Canada and as nearby as a few blocks. In the three days the students worked through 15 different labs, with the most popular being a drag and drop master-detail database page and an AJAX auto-complete component example. One of the advantages of a public course is that attendees get to see what the other students are doing and can learn from each other.

A highlight of the course occurred when three Sun Microsystems staffers visited the class to answer a whole bevy of questions, from esoteric technical to general marketing. Participants were enthused about Creator being integrated into NetBeans (as we all are). Winston Prakash, one of the engineers and our go-to guy for all things technical regarding Creator, wrote about the session in his blog here.

We will be providing additional training as requested. If you're interested, contact Sun Microsystems.
Next Entry: Summer Beach Days

Have You Scene It?

Okay, it's time for a little fun. Warning, this is a major time sink! I recently received an email from my daughter that included an XLS file with scenes from films with the actors' faces removed. This file is making its way around the Internet community like wild fire (I don't know its origin, so if anyone does, feel free to comment). For example, do you recognize this movie?

Yes? No? How about this?

Here is the complete xls file. Here are the answers. Good luck, and don't say I didn't warn you! (By the way, I'm still working on mine and with lots of help, I have identified 35 out of 60.)
Next Entry : Training in Downtown San Francisco

Yielding Up to the Dark Impulse

My most recent selection for Book Club was Close Range, Wyoming Stories, by E. Annie Proulx. This collection of short stories is brutal and intense, with characters that are a product of the harshness of a Wyoming winter--a long Wyoming winter. Proulx (pronounced "Proo") uses elegant language to describe the forlorn landscape and haunting lives, where few find happiness. Here's a few choice examples

"The house trailer I rented was old. It was more of a camper you'd tow behind a car, so small you couldn't cuss the cat without getting fur in your mouth." (A Lonely Coast, p. 189)

". . . until you pull off the road to close your eyes or look up at sky punched with bullet holes." (A Lonely Coast, p. 189)

"There were times when I thought the Buckle [a bar] was the best place in the world, but it could shift on you and then the whole dump seemed a mess of twist-face losers, the women with eyebrows like crowbars, the men covered with bristly red hair, knuckles the size of new potatoes, showing the gene pool was small and the rivulets that once fed it had dried up." (A Lonely Coast, p. 200)

Yet the stories don't just apply to Wyoming, but show us what can happen to people in an isolated society where civilized rules of behavior--morals--are replaced by the anarchy of too few social interactions, too few group support networks. It's every ranch, every family, every soul for himself or herself. Indeed in the story "Pair a Spurs" we learn that the state's unwritten motto is "take care a your own damn self" (p. 151).

The final story in the collection is "Brokeback Mountain", a heart-wrenching love story, a modern-day tale of star-crossed lovers. But besides not figuring out how to live happily ever after, Jack and Ennis must hide their love. After all, this is Matthew Shepard country. And Matthew Shepard is no award-winning short story, he is real. (Proulx originally published Brokeback Mountain in the New Yorker in 1997, a year before the Shepard murder.) Like Matthew Shepard, Jack meets a brutal death. Tire accident or tire iron? Ennis is convinced it was death by tire iron murder: "So now he knew it had been the tire iron." (p. 282) In the end, Ennis accepts Jack's death, remembering their love as best he can. "There was some open space between what he knew and what he tried to believe, but nothing could be done about it, and if you can't fix it you've got to stand it." (p. 285)

Consider some other stories in this collection:

• The heartless castration of poor Ras in "People in Hell Just Want a Drink of Water". The story ends with "We are in a new millennium and such desperate things no longer happen. If you believe that you'll believe anything." (p. 117)
• The shooting melee in "A Lonely Coast". What was accident, what was dark impulse? "Friend, it's easier than you think to yield up to the dark impulse." (p. 207)

Lest you think Wyoming is its own isolated evil, we are reminded in a recent LA Times article entitled "Right, wrong? In a group, it's harder to tell" by Shari Roan (July 17, 2006). The article's premise is that, depending on the social dynamics (or lack thereof), people have a hard time acting morally. One of her key examples, which we discussed in Book Club, occurred in Iraq, where five American soldiers are accused of raping and killing a teenage Iraqi girl and also killing three members of her family. There is no definition of liberation I can think of that comes close to describing these actions. Where was the moral compass for these young men? What sort of social network are we building over there that even allows these brutal actions? Yeah, I know, it's a war!

Here's another example. A two-part series in the LA Times "The Enclave: Blind Eye to Culture of Abuse", May 12, 2006, Part I and "The Enclave: Where Few Dare to Disobey", May 13, 2006 Part II by David Kelly and Gary Cohn, details the polygamous culture of Colorado City, Arizona. While polygamy itself is not inherently evil, the culture, yes, the people, in this community abuse children, abandon boys, encourage and indeed, force, very young girls to marry, and offer little relief to any who would protest. Individuals who want to act morally by protecting the children must buck the system and risk complete ostracism.

So Proulx's stories might take place in Wyoming, but they reflect a hidden darkness that humans share. Lest you despair that we're all doomed to be evil, look to your own village and look to your own God for love and support and moral guidance.
Next Entry: Have You Scene It?

Most Important Rule of Book Club

I belong to a Book Club and we meet the second Saturday of the month. The club membership has evolved over the years. Although it began in 1998, I've only been a member since 2003. We have two married couples, various unattached singles, and a couple that has been dating since meeting each other in book club. I am married, but am in book club solo. I have brought in one of my long-time friends who also participates without her significant other. We all like the fact that our club is co-ed, since it helps cultivate the book selection variety.

As far as I have been able to figure out, there are several rules of book club.

1. You have to have already read the book before selecting it. We don't want anyone to judge the book by its cover.
2. Don't select a book that's on the best seller list. Best sellers are easy to pick up and read on your own. Part of the joy of book club is your exposure to books you might not otherwise read.
3. The book should be readily available, preferably in paperback, or at least available from the local library.

In my experience with book club, all of the above rules have been broken at one time or another. And that is the first rule of book club: that although there are rules, they sometimes get broken!

However, there is another rule, a rule that apparently is so in-grained with our group that it has never been articulated: an unspoken, yet firmly adhered-to rule.

Thou shalt not peak into any participant's book bag, since it may contain the next month's selection.

The selection is unveiled with a dramatic buildup at the end of our meeting. Early exposure of a book selection can rob the selector of his or her highly anticipated offering, a selection that has been incubating in the Book Club Possibility Bin for perhaps many months.

Well, unspoken rules like this one exist solely in our common psyche until a newcomer, who hasn't quite assimilated into the group, breaks the rule. The raucous! The affront! And yes, my poor, unsuspecting book club guest, who bravely attended on her own since I was sick at the last moment, innocently peaked into Chad's curious-looking brown paper bag. Taken by surprise, Chad quickly reacted to the faux pas, grabbing the bag away from her before any damage was done. Relief! My startled invitee could only ask "What? What did I do?" And thus, the Most Important Rule of Book Club was finally, clearly, and unambiguously verbalized for all.
Next Entry: Yielding Up to the Dark Impulse