Falling - A Blue Bridge, Morning Nip, First Yellow Leaves, End of Summer Anchorage Botanical Garden

I woke up and looked out into the backyard.  The sun lit up a a section of yellow cottonwood leaves.  Fall's on the way.  But when I went back out later to catch it in my camera, the light had changed and it wasn't as obviously fall.

Here's a bridge I cross on my most common bike route.  The morning light, as the sun rises later and from a more southernly angle, isn't summer light any more.

OK, so it's not Amsterdam, but the bike rack was full when I visited the dermatologist this morning for a checkup.  It's been a while, but he didn't find anything of interest.

Then after a lunch with a friend, I went off to go home the long way.  I felt sluggish and the bike seemed  particularly clunky, but slowly I got into it and when I got to the cutoff where I had to decide to keep riding further or loop back home, I found myself going for the longer ride.





I turned around at the Campbell Airstrip trail head, but first went to the bridge and listened to the creek a while.  Here is the view from the bridge looking west.

And looking east.  There was a man sitting on a bench near the parking area with his little white dog and we chatted a bit.  He talked about dredging for gold near Nome.  There was a guy from Yugoslavia, he told me, who had a young son, maybe four or five.  One day the guy was going out on the water to dredge and asked the man to watch the boy.  They did some work in the sand and the boy was very helpful.  At the end of the day, he told the boy he worked so hard that he should pay him a dollar.  And the boy looked at him and held out two fingers.  Smart kid, he said.

Then I stopped at the botanical garden on my way home.  Here are some shots as most of the flowers are gone, but there still are many out.

I looked around for the sign that seemed to be connected to this pinkie. I just confirmed with google that this is the flower for that sign.  It's a filapendula Kahome or Meadowsweet.  From the Missouri Botanical Garden:

"Genus name comes from the Latin words filum meaning a thread and pendulus meaning hanging for the root tubers in some species that hang together with threads.

‘Kahome’ is a dwarf form of meadowsweet. It is an upright, clump-forming perennial that typically grows only 8-12” tall and features branched, terminal, astilbe-like panicles (corymbs) of tiny, fragrant, rosy pink flowers in summer. Compound-pinnate, bright green leaves (7-9 lance-shaped leaflets each) provide a fern-like appearance. This is a good foliage plant that is valued as much for its leaves as it is for its flowers."

This one's a Globe Thistle.


And here's a lily finishing out its life cycle.

And the seed pods of a peony.  

This is part of Lile's Garden.  It's a wonderful spot, though at first I was a bit conflicted.  Originally, the garden was dirt paths through the woods with an opening here and there with some planted things in amongst the natural Alaska landscape.  But the Alaska Botanical Garden has worked hard to be more than a bunch of volunteers putting some plots in the wilderness (quite literally.)  And this space is elegant and beautifully designed with a great array of plants and flowers.  Most things are gone now in early September.  I sat down on a bench.  It was cloudy, but felt comfortable enough to sit down and enjoy the garden.  I went to pull my book out of my backpack and that's when I discovered that I must have left it where we had lunch.

Now that I'm home, I checked a little more on this serene (I just saw that ABG uses the same word, so it must be true, right?) spot.  From the Alaska Botanical Garden website:

"Lile’s Garden
This peaceful and serene garden is named in honor of Lile Bernard Rasmuson. Recently completed, it was designed by renowned landscape  architect, Carol R. Johnson, in conjunction with local firm, Earthscape. Plantings and selections were guided by local artist and Garden Designer Ayse Gilbert. Fruit trees hardy to Southcentral Alaska are showcased  here, as well as a  “Gold Medal” Peony collection and Primula collection."

'Renowned landscape artist.'  So I checked on that too.  She's headquartered in Boston.   Check out what other things Carol R. Johnson's company has designed.  We're in good company.

Finally as I was leaving I was struck by the quiet beauty of this ornamental cabbage.

The Thai Kitchen had my book waiting for me.

Seward Highway Backup Causes Change In Plans And Spectacular View

There were eight us plus two dogs, so we headed for Bird Point in two cars.  When we got to Potter Marsh we were suddenly in stop and go traffic.  This was one of those times when cell phones really make an important contribution.  We called the other car and asked if it might not make more sense to take a trail nearby.
The other car was thinking the same things, so we turned at the Potter Trailhead and did a short walk along the Old Johnson trail. (Alaska Hike Search calls it the Turnagain Arm trail, but says 'Some of the locals refer to this as the Old Johnson Trail.")

We didn't go all that far;  to a rocky viewpoint over the inlet.  We had some people recovering from foot and leg issues and someone who had to get back by 5pm.  The view was spectacular as the tide was out and the clouds were reflected dreamily on the wet.





And my granddaughter got to see her first moose on the hike.  I think she would have felt safer had we been in a car rather than on foot.  But no harm.  The moose was eating a little above the trail.  Others in the group were waiting for it to move further away.  I think the moose was thinking, 'Just go on.  I see you and I'm eating and why should I have to move just because you want to go by.  Just go."





Today's paper said there was an accident further down the road involving four cars and a boat being towed.  So changing plans meant we spent our time in the woods instead of in the car.  And in the pre cell phone age, we could have pulled by the side of the road and waited for the other car to catch up.  But that would only work if the first car wanted to make a change.

A Good Alaska Day - Winner Creek Tram

Drove down to Girdwood with my daughter and granddaughter in the car.

A stop along the way to check out the Dall sheep above the highway.

In the other direction were the mudflats of Turnagain Arm. (I didn't do any editing of the shot below.)

The Winner Creek trail includes a tram across the river.  Here's looking at the next people in line pulling the ropes that got us across the gap.

Someone said there aren't too many of these left in the U.S.  And as I was looking up whether there are others, I kept getting sent back to just this one.  I did find this 360˚ view of the tram which gives you a much better view than mine.  (And for Jeremy, I found this video of Tram D201 hand wired with nine original tram tubes.)

And here's a view of Winner Creek from the tram.  The tram was much more primitive when we first pulled our way across, I don't know how many years ago.

From the tram it's a short (really short, sign says .2 miles) walk to the bridge over the Winner Creek gorge.  Here's a picture long down creek from the bridge.

And here's looking up the other side where the wide creek is forced into the narrow gorge.  Again, from the bridge.

Here it is from a little trail going up the creek a ways.

And since silent, still photos simply cannot do this experience justice, I took a bit of video from this spot to give you a better sense of the glory of this spot, one of my favorites in Alaska.  (Which means, of course, in the world.)




And then you can look on down below to see where it goes after the end of the video.

Here's a closer view of one of the rock walls above the water.

Then we took the tram back.  It's Independence Day holiday and people have found out about the tram.  There were 30 people waiting to get back across.  The tram holds two people (we took my granddaughter, but she's a wee thing).  It gets hand pulled across the gorge, then hand pulled back.  So it was a bit of a wait.

Late lunch at the Bake Shop and dessert at The Ice Cream Shop at what can only be called a strip mall where the Alyeska road meets the Seward Highway.  Good day with good friends.

Is There Time To Both Garden And Blog?

I ran into an old UAA colleague at the botanical garden yesterday and she asked what kind of plants I was looking for.  Shade.  I need things that grow in the shade.

Monk's Hood

M is a botanist and asked if I wanted some monks' hood.  They're one of my favorite Alaska
wildflowers so I said yes!  Today I went over with my granddaughter to get some monk's hood.  I ended up with a ton of different plants from M's amazing garden.  She needed to pull things out, she said, so I rationalized I was helping her thin out her garden.  Even after a mom and two calf moose pruned her garden and spent the night last night.

But then I got home and had to plant and water everything.

My yard is essentially wild.  Part of it is natural Alaskan wild - spruce, birch, cottonwood with an undergrowth of high bush cranberry.  Other parts are pretty scraggly looking.  I'm not a fan of lawns and ours is a mix of grass, clover, moss, and dandelions.  And there are a few beds that I've tended to that look like a garden that's not totally wild.

But as I tried to find places to plant all of M's gifts, I realized there were places on the sides of the house that I'd just given up on.  We don't usually go that way and when I tried to put raspberries in, they didn't do well at all.  I found one sprouting as I was seeking out spots I could at least give the plants a temporary home until I figured out where I wanted them.  I also thought I'd test different locations to see which ones thrived where.

And as I did all this, I realized how much I like digging in the dirt but also how much time it takes to keep everything in tip top shape.  M's garden is truly amazing.  There are beds everywhere and everything is blooming.  Or at least it seems that way.  I still have to move the sprinkler to water some of the out of the way spots I planted.  And I have to do an inventory of where I planted everything so I'll know what didn't make it.  (I'm assuming I'll know what did survive.)

Flax

A couple of discoveries while I was wandering the yard.
1.  My flax plants that I started from seed and looked so terribly frail when I planted outside, are still alive several weeks later.   This is exciting because the last time I planted flax, they survived and receded about 16 years.  Last year I realized I was down to my last surviving cluster of flax plants so I got more seeds.  The flax flowers are about dime sized and the bloom all summer long.

2.  The choke-cherry (May Day tree) whose branches I cut off earlier this spring to keep the flowers from sending seeds all over is totally gone!  I had just cut off all the branches.  It was just over the fence in the alley.  I couldn't even see a trace of the trunk - it was about four or five inches in diameter.  I'm guessing the electric utility must have taken it because it was growing under the power line.  I thought I was going to have to do away with the rest of the tree.  Whoever took it down, thanks.  I still have another one in the yard to deal with.  I cut off all the flowers, but left it because the leaves are doing a good job of screening the neighbor's yard.

Ok, back to the original question.  Yes, I think one can do both, especially if one is a garden blogger, which I am on occasion.  The key to the garden, I'm trying to convince myself, is to regularly spend 30-60 minutes in the garden doing stuff and occasionally taking on longer projects.

My Tire Got Screwed

It was pretty easy to see why I had a flat tire.  Fortunately, the car was in front of the house and I have a great neighbor who loves working on cars.

First he unscrewed it.  You can see the grayish mark of the head of the screw and the hole in the middle.  He had a tool to go in the hole and clean it out.

Then he pulls out this sticky rubbery strip - looked like sticky licorice - and threaded it into another tool and applied the glue.

And then he shoved it into the whole.  The two ends go up as he pushes down.  Then he pulls out the tool and there's just a bit of the two ends sticking out when he's done.  He fills the tire and we're back in business.

Good neighbors make life so much better.  Thanks Roy.

Fellow Anchorage Blogger's Book Get's Notice From Top Medical Journal

I've been a strong fan of Peter Dunlap-Shoal's book, My Degeneration: A Parkinson's Journey since

before it was even a book.  He was blogging cartoons - he was the Anchorage Daily News political cartoonist before his Parkinson's diagnosis - about his adventures with the evil Parkinson's.  I coined the term cross-cultural translation to describe the kind of research I was doing, and Peter's work fits perfectly into the field.  He's helping able bodied (at least people without Parkinson's, since no one is 100% able bodied) folks understand what his world looks like and feels like, with great detail and even greater sly humor.  He's also helping people with Parkinson's understand their own journeys.

So I was delighted when he first started blogging, then when his blog got awards, found a publisher, and ecstatic when I was able to get a copy. (Disclosure: I'm humbled and honored that he even mentions me in the book as someone who encouraged him to publish.  It was obvious to me how sensational the book was going to be, but I realize we can't always assess our own work objectively.) And his blog is linked to the column on the right under Alaska Bloggers.


And now, The Journal of the American Medical Association has highlighted Peter's book with effusive praise.  This is wonderful, because doctors should be reading it and recommending it to their patients.  I'm always delighted when good, decent people like Peter get recognized for their work.  Way to go Peter!!!!

Here's the start of the JAMA review:

My Degeneration: A Journey Through Parkinson’s 

My Degeneration by Peter Dunlap-Shohl is the true account of the author’s life with Parkinson disease (PD), and it is terrific, a read-in-one-sitting book that engages, teaches, and challenges readers from the first page until its conclusion. It’s one of the best graphic medicine books of 2016.
It starts with a punch to the gut when Dunlap-Shohl receives the unwanted diagnosis, contemplates a future of drooling and dependency, and seriously considers suicide. He’s brutally honest about his fears and struggles, and the beautifully rendered drawings show both the external reality of this chronic and debilitating disease and his internal struggles to cope.

I went through the University of Alaska Anchorage library to get to this, but you can see the whole review at the link here.

Jane Wyman's 100th Birthday, Rain, Clouds, And Fences

Jane Wyman was an Oscar winning actress and she married a B movie actor in 1940 named Ronald Reagan until they split in 1949.   Here's the New York Times obituary.  She'd be 100 today.  Here is the first birthday from my list of people born in 1917.

It's been mostly cloudy, with breaks of sun and breaks of rain.  Southern California can use every drop of rain it can get, so I'm not complaining. When we came home after seeing Fences Thursday evening, it was raining, which I tried to catch, not too successfully, in the lights at this soccer field.  But the fence is a good lead into talking about the film.

Fences was powerful.  The language was magnificent, but then it was written by August Wilson, a playwright who has written some of the best American plays of the 20th Century.  I couldn't help thinking about Death of a Salesman - another play about a father who was doing all he could to cope in his role as the family provider.  But while we can see that Willie Loman is a victim of the social expectations of his times, he's essentially a weak man who could have made different choices in his life.

But in Fences the father, Troy, - played by Denzel Washington in the film - was a much stronger and competent man, restricted by much harsher limits.  But flawed as well.  His anger at the injustices he experienced and perhaps some he just perceived prevents him from enjoying the comparatively decent life he has built.   He was a great baseball player, he hit home runs against Satchel Paige he claims, but it was before Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier in baseball.  Now he's fighting the system to break out of the restrictions of the Pittsburgh sanitation department.  He's tired of throwing the garbage into the truck.  He wants a promotion to the job reserved for white men - driver.

As the play progresses, we learn why he's such a hard ass father, and why he can't tell his son, Corey (Courtney B. Vance  in the 1987 version and Chris Chalk in the 2010 version)  he likes him, let alone loves him.   Here's that scene I found online from the play - first the 1987 version with James Earl Jones as Troy and then in the 2010 version with Denzel Washington in the role he plays in the movie.  (Washington also directs the film.)




Troy's father had abandoned him and we can see throughout the play* how stretched he is trying to provide for his family - which includes his mentally unhinged brother, a son from an earlier wife, and a son from his present wife of 18 years or so, played by Viola Davis. And you can see the pressure he feels to raise his son to be responsible and tough in a world that shortchanges black men.

And Davis is fantastic. Here's a later scene, after Washington had told Davis he's going to be a father again, and how he just needed a place where he could let go of all those pressures, where he didn't have responsibilities to pay the rent and feed the family, where he could escape and laugh and be himself. She doesn't take kindly to that at all.



No one should be saying that while men have it easy in today's world. Few people have it easy.  The system isn't kind to human beings.  But all things considered, there have been fewer barriers to success for white men than for black men. (I'm avoiding women because that's a whole other issue.) 

But I wonder how many white men who hate the slogan 'black lives matter' can watch this film and get its humanity. The issues are universal, but will the racist wing of the Trump team  be able to see past the skin color and the language? One would hope so, but how many will ever see it? And if they do, and if they felt Troy's pain, could they tell their friends?  I don't know, I'm just asking.

* I say play deliberately as I'm vaguely aware of some critics finding the movie not cinematic enough.  As I was looking for cast names I saw a link to a New Yorker article on that topic, but haven't looked because I wanted to finish this first.  I'll look now.

Before I found it, I found an article by Kareem Abdul Jabbar and I can't think of a smarter or more suited man to talk about this film.  The link also includes a video interview he had with the two lead characters of the film.  Jabbar writes as part of the intro:

"The Maxson family's unhappiness results from a toxic mixture of the patriarch's unapologetic hubris and the pressures of being raised black in a white society that marginalizes, degrades and oppresses anyone not in the mainstream. Troy Maxson (Washington) isn't aware that while he battles for equality from the white society, he's imposing the same tyrannical restrictions he's struggling against on his own family. He has become the very enemy he's fighting."

Most of it is the transcript of the video and the video itself.  They are exactly the same.  There are a few things in the written interview that aren't in the video and vice versa.  Also, in the video Davis correctly says 'baseball league,' not the 'football league' that's written.

Thursday was a break from the rain.  When I did a quick bike ride down to the beach just to move my legs a bit, the clouds were out over the ocean, but it wasn't the solid gray we'd had.

We had dinner with a friend of my mom's, a woman who came by weekly and always brought some food for my mom.  They'd been good friends for a long time.  She told us stories about after WWII when she met her husband in London.  They were both young refugees in England during the war.  They'd both gotten out of Germany before the war started.  His sister had lived through the war in Berlin with fake papers.  They had both applied for jobs as translators for the American military in Europe.  Her father took her down to the station and started talking to a young man while she was away a moment.  So, it turned out he introduced her to her future husband.  She was 20 and they first were sent to Paris for a week of training and then to Germany where their fluency in German and English were helpful.  Despite the hardships of those immediate postwar days in Germany, love and adventure are what she remembered most.

For those of you who are wondering about the New Yorker article, I did find it after I finished this.  I think the reviewer got so hung up on the idea that this should have been done more cinematically that he missed the fundamental power of the story.  He's focused on technique, even when he has praise, which he has.

Chicago Artists

We're here to catch up with lots of friends and relatives.  It turned out Thursday was artist day.







First, a familiar Alaskan artist transformed the landscape.  These two pictures are a couple of hours apart.







Then we went to visit a first cousin of my mom's, who is also an artist of some stature - Gerda Bernstein.  We, fortunately, met her at her studio.  My mom's had a lithograph of hers hanging in her house forever and I've seen catalogues of her work.  But since most of her works are large installation pieces, there's nothing like seeing things as they were meant to be seen.  The studio is a small gallery.  Some of the installations are up, but most are represented by photographs.  I want to do more on Gerda, but were busy every day visiting folks so this is just a brief post.

On the left is view from near the entrance to the studio.

This piece is called Gaza Tunnel.  It's a reconstruction of the tunnels used to smuggle things into Gaza.  But this tunnel is reimagined to be lined with books and the idea of the transformational power of books.

Most of her works raise issues of people's suffering in the world.  As I understand it - though I'm not positive - many early works were holocaust related and the focus has taken in other oppressed peoples.

I'm afraid I was overpowered by the art in the studio.  My initial interest in Gerda is that she's the only person I know of who is still alive who knew my mother when she was a young girl in Germany.  We talked about that a little bit, but the art was too strong to resist.

Here's a break as we drove through downtown Chicago.  The snow hadn't stuck everywhere.

I've been reminded that I'm no longer on the West Coast.  Drivers don't even think about stopping for pedestrians.







Thursday evening we followed up with folks we connected with at my Peace Corps group reunion in Portland.  We went to hear Edward G. McDaniels playing the base at Buddy Guy's blues club.  It was a wonderful evening.  Ed is on the right.  Great music, food, and conversation.

There was a picture of Barack Obama and Buddy Guy with this quote:  "People sometimes ask me what the biggest perk of being president is.  Number one is the plane.  Number two is Buddy guy comes here all the time to my house with his guitar."

Some Personal University of Missouri History

In the summer of 1967 I was returning to the second summer of Peace Corps training in DeKalb, Illinois.  Friends had moved from LA to Minneapolis and asked if I could drive their second car; so I got a chance to drive across the US before heading for Thailand for several years.

On the way I stopped to visit my roommate from the previous summer's training  He was, in the language back then, a Negro.  While I went to a demographer's dream of a high school and had many interactions with black students there, this was the first time I got to have a close friend who was black.  (He's still my close friend all these years later.)  But he didn't make it through that first summer of training.  At the end, he was told to pack up and leave, as were others.  In hindsight, it was obviously racism.  He was the only black in our group.  It wasn't til much later that I learned it was his first time in an all white setting.  Thais have a thing about light skin, so it may have been the influence of the language teachers that got him kicked out.

Why do I say it was racism?  Because he did get into a Philippine group later where he served his two [three] years well.  And because there were so few volunteers of color and because he has an infectious smile, he ended up on a Peace Corps recruiting poster that was used for years and years.

[UPDATE July 9, 2016: rereading this I realize this is not a good explanation of why I feel he was deselected (the term they used) because of racism.  He and I were a team in training (and still are when we get together now) and there's no reason that our foolishness should have gotten him deselected and left me in the program.  I'd been labeled 'high risk-high gain' by our shrink, Dr. Feldman.  My sins?  In hindsight, I realize it was the first time I'd been discriminated for being from California.  What Feldman said was, "You wear cutoff shorts, a silly hat, and go barefoot everywhere."  Well, that was my native dress and we trained in DeKalb, Illinois where it never got below 90˚ F, and we didn't have air conditioning.  My dress was entirely appropriate to the weather.  (My hat was just a normal little hat the gave me some shade, not particularly silly.) I could ditch the hat and wear long pants and shoes - which I did for the rest of the summer - but my friend couldn't change his skin color.  I think my pointing out that he served well in the Philippines was to show that he eventually did become a successful volunteer, good enough to be used in recruiting posters.]

He lived in St. Louis and he was a student at the University of Missouri, which was still in session as I drove to Minneapolis.  I stopped in Columbia to visit him.  What I remember from that day was that he saw things I never saw before.  As we walked around campus he showed me escape routes, little paths he could use to disappear, if say, a threatening looking group of white students was approaching him, or if a campus police car was nearby, or any number of things that would make a black student at the University of Missouri nervous.  This was only ten years after the Little Rock Nine, four years after the University of Mississippi took black students, and three years after Governor Wallace blocked the entrance of the University of Alabama in an attempt to keep black students from enrolling.  The University of Missouri, through a court order, had integrated 'way back' in 1950.
But only for students in the nearby black college who wanted majors not available at their school.

I had lunch that day with my friend at a campus restaurant with his friends (all black.)  I was very conscious of all the people staring at me from other tables.  And later I learned that my friend was chewed out by his friends for having me eat with them.

I got the message that day, that Missouri was a southern state.

So it's with a mix of sadness and awe that I watch the news now of the University of Missouri's black football players standing up to the crap that's apparently still going on after all these years.  Football players threatening to boycott the game means people risking their scholarships and their education for their principles.

It says something about American universities that the threat of a cancelled football game can get a president and a provost to resign in a couple of days.  These aren't issues that are confined to Missouri or even the south.  These are issues on every campus.  And what will it take to get campuses safe and comfortable for women?

Lewis, do you have anything to add?  I was only there a day or so, you spent four [two] years in the mid 1960s at the University of Missouri.  You must have lots of stories to tell and lots of thoughts as you watch your alma mater today.  [UPDATE July 9, 2016:  Lewis emailed me after this was posted to say that he didn't comment here because it was still - over 40 years later - too painful to dredge up other memories of those days.]

Shmira - Sitting With Crysta

I got an email Tuesday afternoon that a good friend had died.  A good friend, to me, is someone you have an ongoing mutual affection for and with whom you can talk openly about things big or small.  When you see each other, no matter how much time has passed since you were last together, you pick up the conversation as though you'd just been away an hour or two.  Crysta was such a friend.

The email also asked if volunteers were available "to perform the mitzvah shmira."  I've been Jewish, more or less, all my life but I didn't know what shmira was, so I consulted Rabbi Google, who introduced me to Elizabeth Savage at Tablet who'd written about her shmira experience earlier this year:

"Shmira, which literally means guarding, is one of the prescribed Jewish rituals surrounding death. The group in charge of these customs is called the Chevra Kedisha (literally “holy group/community”), which attends to the preparation and protection of the body between death and burial—a time when it’s believed the soul hovers in a sort of liminal space. Someone must clean and dress the body, and someone must sit shmira at all times."

The Chevra Kedisha website offers a little more:  

The Concept of Shmira

Many of the traditions and laws that pertain to the care and preparation of the Jewish dead are founded on two basic principles:

1. The body as the container of the soul is to be treated with the utmost dignity and respect.
2. Although at death the soul departs the body, it still remains present near the body and is fully aware of all that transpires in its vicinity.
Thus the Shmira serves two purposes:
1. To guard the body from becoming prey for rodents and insects.
2. To give respect to the remains and consolation to the soul by not leaving the body

unattended like something useless and no longer worthy.

As I said, Crysta was a good friend, and we still had some things to tell each other and this seemed like a good opportunity.  So I emailed back we were available except Wednesday evening.  I guess I hadn't thought it through completely.  The email with the Shmira schedule had us down for Wednesday morning from 4:30am to 6:30am.  It took a few minutes for me to realize it was already Tuesday night and that meant we were expected in less than 10 hours.  I told J she didn't really have to come with me at that hour, but she insisted. 

Actually, I do like it when I manage to get up and out really early in the morning when no one else is out and about.  We knocked on the back door at the funeral home and the people before us let us in and even offered to leave some chocolate for us.  I'd already learned that I wouldn't be literally sitting with the body, but rather in the same building.  But there was no one else there but us and whatever bodies were there with Crysta. 

I can't imagine Crysta not being around.  She can die, yes, hard as that might be on those of us left behind, but I know she'll always be around.  That strong English accent despite her 50 some years in the US, always gave her a veneer of class and authority that hid, until you got to know her better, the very warm and funny woman she was.  We chatted a bit and I read her from the The River of Smoke.  Everything now is taking place in Canton and the Pearl River down to Hong Kong and I knew that Crysta would enjoy it.  Crysta and Ray had asked, way back when I was going to teach a graduate class on Chinese Civil Service Reform that included a trip to Hong Kong and Beijing, if they could come along.  It would help with the cost of the travel for the students so no one had a problem.  And despite being 30 years older or more than all of the students, Crysta and Ray never wore out, so none of the students could complain that I was pushing them too hard.  And their calm demeanor and travel experience made them great chaperons for the students, most of whom had never been out of the US.  And it raised our friendship to a whole new level. 

So I read and I could hear Crysta asking questions or correcting me, always with an impish smile in her voice.  And as I thought about our special relationship, I was reminded of Lydia Selkregg's funeral when one person after another stood up and talked about their special relationship with Lydia.  What, I thought at the time, everyone had a special relationship!?  It took a while to realize that didn't diminish the relationship I had had with her.  I know that's also the case with Crysta.  It's good to know that you can love lots and lots of people without diminishing any of those relationships.  I remember wondering when J was pregnant with our second child:  I love my son so much; how can there be enough love for yet another child.  And after M was born, I learned that love is infinite. 

Thanks, Crysta for being in my life.  Your departure would be much more difficult if you hadn't lived life so well that seeds of your goodness are planted in so many people's hearts. 

"When the news reached the king of Nineveh, he rose from his throne, took off his robe, put on sackcloth, and sat in ashes."

Japanese Garden, Lilies, Birds, And Water

We visited with an old friend we hadn't seen in years.  She recommended the Japanese Garden in Van Nuys as the meeting place. 


Wow, we didn't even know it existed.  It was a great place to walk and talk. 

We know the Japanese Garden in Portland fairly well, having lived close to it when we were in that city for six months.   This one is totally different and interesting in its own way.

Lots of birds.  Like this osprey. 

And lots of lilies in a long flat rectangular lily and lotus pond.





And a wonderful way to catch up on lives. 







Not much time now.  Headed for the airport and Seattle before we get home.  If all goes well, we'll meet our granddaughter's plane in Seattle, which is why we're on such an early flight.  (Well, an 8 o'clock flight doesn't sound so early, it's getting to the airport on time that's the killer.)

So here are some of the pictures.

Lotus

Snowy Egret

There's an American Bittern sitting on the rock

There's also a very big modern building on the grounds that seemed too big and the style too space-agey for a Japanese Garden.  It turns out the garden is really part of a large water reclamation plant which sits directly next door and the building is for that rather than the garden. 


I didn't take any pictures of the building except of the garden through the walkway around the building.


The AAA explains this relationship:

"The Japanese Garden at the Tillman Water Reclamation Plant, 6100 Woodley Ave., is a water-treatment facility highlighted by a 6.5-acre Japanese garden."

It's a stark contrast between the garden and the plant which abut each other. 

And, apparently, I'm not the only one who thinks the building (not the plant, but the building which I didn't take pictures of) is space agey. From a Memory Wikia:

"The location can also be seen in episodes of Knight Rider (1986), Murder, She Wrote (1993), Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers (1995), L.A. Heat (1997), Charmed (1999), and Numb3rs (2009) and was featured in the action comedy Dead Heat (1988, starring Joe Piscopo), the crime drama Rising Sun (1993), the science fiction film CyberTracker (1994), the action film Red Sun Rising (1994), the comedy Bio-Dome (1996), the comedy Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery (1997), the thriller Most Wanted (1997), the science fiction thriller Terminal Error (2002, with Marina Sirtis and Michael Nouri), and the science fiction film Sci-Fighter (2004). [1]"

Work, Then Play

Spent the morning on the phone doing things like negotiating with Verizon to put my mom's  tv on hold, but keeping the phone and internet.  Cell phone reception in here is terrible and I need the internet when we're here.  Also cancelled her supplemental insurance and arranged for reimbursement for the two months they've taken through their 'easy pay' system.  I don't like any system where someone else is taking money out of my account until I say stop.  Also stopped by the bank to give them some more paperwork.  Everyone was very polite and helpful, which makes it easier to go on and do the rest of these chores. 

We had lunch with friends and then started the second attack on my mom's room.  We made the first attack last July before we left, but there is still so much we hadn't seen yet.  Like this self-defense tear gas permit.  Never knew she had this.

Also found an old invitation to a baby shower for my wife.  And lots of purses and necklaces.  And pens.   Readers, recycling and reusing are both great, but if you haven't used it in the last five years, consider starting the process of giving away, selling, or tossing.  Rubber bands, I've learned, have a short shelf life.  Paper clips last much longer. 

I didn't mention it's hot in LA.  And it's humid.  Hot and humid didn't use to happen in LA.  And it's supposed to be warmer for the next two days.  I was feeling sticky most of the day and needed a break. 

We got to the beach just as the sun was going down. 


I went down and tested the water.  It's almost always chilly when you do that here in LA, but after you catch the first wave, it's fine.  This time it felt only refreshingly cool.  So I got rid of my shirt and watch and went to get unstickied.  It was fantastic.  The surf was not very big and just rolled gently down.  Easy to catch, and even though it was breaking close to sure, it was just deep enough not to scrape the sand.  Body surfing a few waves was heaven. 

I watched others enjoying the small, but catchable surf  as I dried off.

Then before it got much darker,  we walked back to La Fiesta Brava for a little Mexican food.

Now, let's see how my Achilles tendon reacts to the sand walking and sandals.  It's been fine for a couple of months now.  No problems walking, though I still know it's there, and I'm not running yet.  That may be a thing of the past. 

Tomorrow more garbage bags to give away and throw away, plus consolidating the things to keep this round in smaller piles.