The Bear Truth

Way back when I was a kid, we used to sing a parody version of “On Top Of Old Smokey” that went something like, “On top of spaghetti, all covered with cheese; I lost my poor meatball, when somebody sneezed!”

I know it’s an odd connection, but last week I couldn’t help but hear that ditty playing in my head when I read that our beloved local celebri-bear, “Meatball”, had been trapped once again. This time, however, he wasn’t simply taken deep into the Angeles National Forest (but never deep enough, apparently) and released, only to reappear in someone’s backyard refrigerator or swimming pool within weeks or even days. No, this time authorities decided it was time to give the 400-pound porker-of-a-bear a one-way ticket out of Dodge.

As had been ably reported by media outlets from the CV Weekly to national networks, last Wednesday Meatball was captured for a third and final time and taken to an animal sanctuary in Alpine (near San Diego) aptly named “Lions, Tigers and Bears.” Oh, my.

Unfortunately, once at the sanctuary the bear showed his true gastronomic standards. After his arrival, according to online reports, Meatball’s handlers became concerned that he wasn’t eating well. They quickly solved that problem with mountains of meatballs donated by local restaurants. Well, of course.

Many locals (my dear wife, included) were saddened to learn that Meatball has been permanently removed from this bowl of pasta we call the Crescenta Valley. I have to admit, it’s been kinda fun to think that our community had its own “mascot,” even if it was the kind that attracts hovering news choppers and panicky calls to 911.

But I completely understand the need to permanently remove this increasingly aggressive and emboldened bear both for his own good and ours. As cute as they may appear, bears can be dangerously wild animals. They’re powerful, unpredictable creatures who – in spite of their shuffling and snuffling demeanor – can attack with lightening quick reflexes at the slightest provocation. Just last month a photographer hiking in Alaska’s Denali Park was fatally mauled by a Grizzly. Winnie the Pooh, they ain’t.

Bears without fear of human beings, like Meatball, can be the most dangerous kind. In high altitude town of Mammoth Lakes, where I escape to as often as possible, there are just too many bears in and around the town to “relocate” them all. So residents and officials have learned how best to live with each other. In Mammoth the mantra is, “A fed bear is a dead bear.” Meaning, if you make it easy to get to food, a bear will do whatever it takes to eat that food. That’s why nearly every truck, car, bike and snowboard in town has a sticker on it that reads, Please Don’t Feed Our Bears!

Mammoth residents know fist hand that bears will keep coming back to wherever food is easiest to find, whether it’s a trash can, campsite cooler or food left in a car. Eventually, the animals will either wind up having to be shot and killed by Fish & Game officers or, as happens all too often, hit by a car while crossing the road.

Coincidentally, that’s exactly what happened to a yet another bear in La Canada only days before our latest visit from Meatball. And sadly, that bear was so gravely injured it had to be put down by Animal Control authorities.

On another note, I find it interesting (you’re probably not surprised) that this particular bear was hit on Foothill Blvd. near the McDonalds. Maybe he had a hankering for Big Macs instead of meatballs. Or maybe he should have paid attention to the warnings that fast food can kill you.

I’ll see you ‘round town.

Unplugged & Unhinged

That’s it. I’ve officially changed the lyrics of the classic Christmas song, “Let It Snow” to “Let It Blow!” I’m mean, chill out, Mutha Nature. That Santa Ana event our county weathered last week was nothing short of epic. In my many years here in Southern California, we’ve  made the national news several times due to spectacular wildfires that make for riveting video footage. But never (at least to my knowledge) have we received network coverage for our windstorms. Until last week.

Listening to the winds as they ripped through the trees around our home last Wednesday night, I kept looking at the clock on my nightstand so I’d know when we lost power. In the backyard, I could hear pine cones dropping like heavy mortar-fire onto our lawn from a neighbor’s pine tree that towers over our back fence. With nervous laughter, our family has always called these football-sized pinecones “widowmakers” because of their wicked, talon-sharp scales and impressive weight. The thuds as the cones hit the turf made me thankful our dog was sleeping fitfully alongside our bed and not outside in the line of fire. Thankfully, no animals or small children were lost in the pinecone barrage.

We eventually lost our power sometime early Thursday morning and didn’t get it back until Saturday. Which meant, of course, that we also lost a significant amount of food from our kitchen fridge and the separate freezer in which we store all those great Costco buys out in the garage. Sigh. As frustrating as it was having to throw food away, I have to admit to feeling a sense of adventure as I dusted off our ancient Coleman gas lantern (and had to remember how to replace the fragile cloth mantles) and hung it from the ceiling fan in our den to read by. Without Facebook, email or TV (among other e-distractions), I read more in the few days we were powerless than I’ve been able to read in months. In fact, I almost finished author Stephen King’s latest cinder block-sized novel (all 800-plus pages of the beast) released only a few weeks ago. I was sure the book would last me well into the New Year.

Yes, it was cold in our house, but we bundled up and made the best of it. And to be honest, I wasn’t looking forward to resetting all of the digital clocks in our house when the power returned. For me, however, the worst part of the power outage was witnessing how dangerously ignorant (or willfully reckless) many of our fellow Crescenta Valley drivers were in blasting through busy intersections where the signals weren’t in operation (which means almost every intersection along Foothill). Did the DMV change the law about treating an intersection as a four-way stop when traffic lights aren’t working? I lost track of how many times I waited at an intersection – watching the dance of the drivers try to figure out whose turn it was to creep out into the no-man’s land – only to have some clueless chucklehead blast through it without so much as tapping their brakes. How there weren’t more head-ons or destruction derby-like collisions is a mystery. Note to the DMV: make it more difficult to pass the driver’s test from now on, please.

Thankfully, the winds seemed to shut off just in time for the annual Montrose Christmas parade to go off without a hitch – or at least without spectators and participants alike having to be tied down like so many warmly dressed balloons. I hope everyone who made it out to the parade route had as much fun as all of us on the CV Weekly float did waving to you all. Oh, and thanks for all the much appreciated shout outs of support as we passed by. We love you too.

With my LED flashlight and a boatload of AA-cells close at hand these days, I’ll see you ‘round town.

Note: This is a post of my edited column first published Thursday, 12.8.11, in the Crescenta Valley Weekly newspaper (cvweekly.com).

© 2011 WordChaser, Inc.

A Bushel of Thanks

I’ve written on this page before about a cherished tradition my family once had of putting up a Thanksgiving Tree on our living room wall in mid-November each year. My wife is uniquely gifted when it comes to creative handicrafts (and cooking, too, but if I follow that train of thought we'll be here for a week!).

Every year, she would somehow transform a stack of brown paper grocery bags into a whimsical tree trunk and branches. Then, using yellow, orange and red construction paper, she’d cut out dozens upon dozens of autumn leaves about the size of your hand. We would put those blank leaves into a basket on the dining room table. As Thanksgiving approached, any family member with something to be thankful for would take a blank construction paper leaf from the basket, write their name and that particular sentiment on the leaf with a marker and tape the leaf to one of the brown paper branches on the Thanksgiving tree.

By the time Thanksgiving Thursday rolled around each year, our “tree” was in full Autumnal bloom with yellow and orange leaves of thanks from every member of our family and relatives or friends who may have stopped by to visit. The tree was always a thing of beauty – each year similar to others, yet with distinctively different thanks given from each of us.

Today, our “kids” are scattered from Kailua to Missoula and from San Diego to Santa Clarita. That, plus the reality that two of them have their own young families, in-laws who not-surprisingly also want time with them, the miles between us all, our busy lives (and throw in a shaky economy to really mess things up) – it all combines to create a situation that simply doesn’t allow us to gather together for Thanksgiving these days. Life happens, right?

I miss those days. But while our wall may not have had a tree on it on recent Thanksgivings, I’d like to take the opportunity to express my thankfulness in a slightly more public way. And so, with your indulgence, I’ll pull out just a few of my “leaves” from this year’s bushel, namely:

I’m profoundly thankful for the privilege this year of celebrating 25 years of marriage to my beautiful, patient, talented and devoted (among her many other qualities!) bride. In a rapidly changing culture that increasingly discounts the foundational importance of strong marriages, I don’t take our cherished union for granted and pray that I never give my wife a reason to think that I do. I am a blessed and grateful man, indeed.

I’m thankful that our four kids have grown into responsible, thriving persons who love God, love life and love this country.

I’m thankful for four beautiful, healthy, happy and growing grandkids. God willing, we’ll be blessed with many more in the coming years (along with the time, energy and resources to visit them all often!)

I’m thankful for cold and rainy days, dry firewood, a good roof and a sleepy old dog.

I’m thankful for contemporary technology like Facebook, Skype, IM’s, emails and smartphones. With the airline industry and Homeland Security teaming up to make travel costlier than ever (in terms of both finances, time and personal dignity), today’s technology has been a godsend for staying in touch.

I’m thankful that the nearby bucolic burg of Montrose, CA is still the same sleepy, home-town place it was when my mom would drop me off in front of the old, long-gone single-screen movie theater on Honolulu to catch the latest double-feature with my best-buds.   

I’m thankful for Robin Goldsworthy (Publisher/Editor) and her tireless CV Weekly staff, its loyal and growing multitudes of subscribers, advertisers and supporters who have made the publication of this paper possible each week for well over two years now.

I have many more leaves, but no more space. So I’ll close by wishing you and yours a day to surround yourselves with the warmth of food, friends, family and faith.

I’ll see you ‘round town.

Note: This is a post of my column first published yesterday, 11.24.11, in the Crescenta Valley Weekly newspaper (cvweekly.com).

© 2011 WordChaser, Inc.

A Whale of an Expensive Day

Welcome back. Okay, where were we last week? ("Getting Soaked at SeaWorld" CV Weekly, 10/20/11) Oh, yes … outside the exit to SeaWorld’s Shipwreck Rapids ride discussing the $5-a-pop walk-in “drying stations.” It’s actually an ingenious set up – first you soak shivering riders to the bone, then offer them immediate relief, for a price.

You’ve gotta give the SeaWorld people credit (but I’m sure they’d take cash). Because they’ve done everything possible to make sure you don’t leave the park at the end of the day with even loose change in your pockets. For example, overlooking one point in the same Shipwreck Rapids ride, spectators can push a big button to spray the riders on the rapids below with water jets that increase the wet factor. Mischievous fun, right? Sure, but you pay for that privilege too, at 25-cents a spray. See what I mean?

Want to feed tiny dead anchovies to the seals or dolphins? Who wouldn’t. Just plunk down $6 for a paper tray holding five, count ‘em, five of the little fishies no bigger than your little finger. For the mathematically challenged, that’s $1.20 per slimy sea lion snack. Can you say insane profit margin, boys and girls? So where’s the “Occupy SeaWorld” movement?

As for people food, a SeaWorld food pass costs $30 per person and allows you to eat all you want throughout the park, but only at certain concession stands – not at all of the in-park restaurants – or at least that’s what I read in online reviews of the new option. Other than one small $5 bottle of water (I almost choked!), we bought no food or drink during our visit. In an attempt to save at least a few dollars, we brought along a picnic lunch and had to walk outside the park to find the one and only concrete bench near the one and only patch of lawn under the one and only bit of shade where we ate lunch.  

Once back inside the park, as our day progressed I became more and more numb to all of the creative extra costs and charges. In fact, I even began to look for revenue-enhancing opportunities they missed. I imagined the profit possibilities of “accidentally” being pushed into the water at the Shark Encounter. A park employee could be stationed nearby with a credit card reader and laminated menu of rescue options: the Standard Rescue ($50) would take up to 30 minutes before a ladder could be lowered into the tank. Of course, park guests could opt for the Premium Rescue option for only $89.50 and be placed on a priority list for rescue – PLUS!! – receive an 8x10 glossy keepsake photo of the experience to cherish forever. For the best value, however, the popular Rapid Rescue Pass (value-priced at $295) would allow guests to fall into the shark tank at anytime during the calendar year and be rescued immediately. Afterward, guests would enjoy a catered tank-side meal of fish and chips as the same sharks who almost had you for dinner swim slowly by giving rescued guests the stink eye.

And if they use that idea, I want a commission.   

To be fair, the SeaWorld people don’t hang you upside down from a yardarm and shake the money out of your pockets or purses. We certainly had a choice whether or not to pay the money and spend our day there. (It does bring new meaning to the phrase, “spending the day”, doesn’t it?) We also learned that free admission is offered to both military veterans and current service personnel – a wonderful gesture certainly worthy of noting. More importantly, the four of us did have an awesome day – although I’m pretty sure we would have enjoyed ourselves just as much if we’d spent all day at our son’s college talking and drinking coffee.

Then again, the smell of dead sardines on your fingers has to be worth something, right? I’ll see you ‘round town.

Note: This is a post of my column first published yesterday, 10.27.11, in the Crescenta Valley Weekly newspaper (cvweekly.com).

© 2011 WordChaser, Inc.

A Mountain of Memories

In an article for the Sierra Club Bulletin in February of 1932, legendary photographer and  California native, Ansel Adams wrote about the feeling of being surrounded by the majesty of the High Sierra mountain range. “No matter how sophisticated you may be, a large granite mountain cannot be denied,” he wrote. “It speaks in silence to the very core of your being. There are some that care not to listen but the disciples are drawn to the high altars with magnetic certainty, knowing that a great Presence hovers over the ranges.”

I felt that same primal attraction – that massive, nearly smothering silence of the mountains first as a teenager hiking the entire length of the John Muir trail with my Dad and again two weeks ago when my wife and I made our attempt to reach the summit of Mt. Whitney. Even hiking several hours in complete, predawn darkness, we could not help but feel the cliffs of vertical stone around us, over us, ahead of us with every step. That’s just one of the fantastic, almost other-worldly memories she and I have talked about with each other countless times since our return to Southern California and the “real world.”

Another of our never-will-forget memories is of that same heavy silence being broken suddenly with the first rays of the sun coming up over the Owens Valley, thousands of feet below us. As if in response to a carefully rehearsed script, when the first golden glow of light lowered down to touch the tops of the Lodgepole and Red Firs clinging to the steep granite hillsides, a lone cry of a hawk screeched from somewhere high above. Almost immediately, its solitary call was answered by a chirping and cawing chorus of birdsong from every direction – echoing off the nearby granite cliffs. The swirling, soaring symphony of sound was so purposeful and practiced we instinctively knew that the Stellar’s Jays, White-headed Woodpeckers, Vaux’s Swifts and other birds were welcoming the warmth of the morning sun with their appreciative voices.

Somehow we had been fortunate enough to be in just the right spot on the mountainside – at just the right time – to witness this particular miracle of the mountains. We stood momentarily silent and still listening to the morning musical as it continued for several minutes and then … it was over. As quickly as it had started, some unseen conductor brought the high altitude concert to a certain, silent stop. In the distance, a river tumbled over a rocky precipice. But there was no other sound. Wow. What a privilege to have experienced that moment.

Flash forward several hours and thousands of feet in elevation as we climbed the notorious “99 Switchbacks” section of the trail. We watched with growing unease as a few puffs of whispy white clouds quickly grew more impressive. And dark. And ominous. Looking back the way we’d come, I scanned the trail far below us, looking for any other hikers coming up towards the summit and didn’t see a single one. Growing numbers of hikers were coming back down, however, having turned back due to wind and ice that had already turned a narrow, orifice-puckering trail into a treacherous and risky route.

And so, somewhere above 13,000 feet and with snow beginning to fall, we turned back. We did not talk to a single hiker who made the summit that day. We did meet several who had gone even further than we had and still turned back. I can only imagine their sense of defeat. Then again, the rational adult in me knows that it’s better to be disappointed than dead. But the romantic, weather-be-damned adventurer side of me is still back on the massive mountain, gulping the thin air and wondering if we should turn back or climb even higher into the black clouds. We were so close. So. Danged. Close.

I’ll see you ‘round town.

Note: This is a repost of my column first published yesterday, 9.29.11, in the Crescenta Valley Weekly newspaper (cvweekly.com).

© 2011 WordChaser, Inc.

Racking Up Needless Spending

I’m probably going to ruffle some home town feathers with my comments this week, because the subject of this column took considerable effort by some of my fellow Crescenta Valley residents to make happen.

As an avid cyclist, I’m thrilled that my home town now has bike lanes on our main drag, the appropriately named Foothill Blvd. I thank the CV Town Council from the bottom of my goofy and dangerously tight bike shorts for their hard work in making it happen. It probably won’t solve the motorist vs. cyclist wars that have gone on since Mr. Ford invented the Model A. But it does give us pedal-pushers at least a narrow ribbon of pavement that we can rightfully claim as our own. Again, beaucoup kudos on behalf of current and future cyclists in our community.

I just have one question. What’s with those new bike racks? It seems to me the majority of the new racks are as close as it comes to being useless due to their odd locations. Who’s actually going to use the things? I mean – a large, metal, bike-shaped rack cemented into the sidewalk outside a dry cleaners next door to a florist? Really? I guess that’s good news for all those cyclists who take their tailored suits and designer dresses to the cleaners on their Huffys. But I can hear the romantic conversation now. “Honey, I bought you this beautiful dozen red roses. I know they’re mostly stems and thorns after bringing them home stuffed into my bike jersey. But it’s the thought that counts, right?”

Another odd placement is the shiny new peg and hitch installation imbedded in the sidewalk in front of an old rock church at Rosemont Avenue – a sidewalk far away and way below grade of the church entrance. In other words, completely out-of-site from anyone on the church grounds, but ideally situated for someone to drive up next to it in a pickup, cut any cable lock with bolt cutters and toss a bike into the bed of the truck and drive away without anyone ever seeing the heist.

Seriously. If you rode your bike to St. Lukes, would you park it on the street, completely out of sight from the church? I know God is always watching over us, but I’m not so sure He cares all that much about our bikes.

When I first saw the new racks being installed I thought, okay, they’ll probably get around to putting the things outside the library, or in front of Vons or Ralphs, Walgreen’s, Office Depot – the sort of destination where you can reasonably expect at least some bikers to go, especially local students. That might be a worthy expenditure of municipal funds. Maybe.

But drive along Foothill and look where the new racks are. The locations look either ridiculously random or as if it’s been done to strict ‘governmental guidelines.’ As in: “a galvanized device for securing manually powered modes of transportation shall be installed at intervals of precisely 150 yards between the business establishments present for public egress and ingress and blah-di-blah, blah, blah.”

Actually, according to the recent article in the newspaper that prints my column each week ("Bicyclists No Longer "Rack" Their Brains for Place to Park" , CVWeekly.com, July 14, 2011), business owners we’re asked if they wanted a bike rack installed in front of their establishment. Merchants who were “hesitant” were bypassed.

I can only think there must be quite a few Foothill business owners who think cyclists are a sketchy bunch of hooligans who shouldn’t be encouraged to visit their establishments. That’s too bad.

It’s been several months since the new racks have been installed along Foothill. I drive this route several times every day and have yet to see a single bike parked at any of the new magic metal municipal money erasers.

So, here’s an idea. If there are any racks still laying around in a warehouse somewhere, maybe we can install a few of them at the wonderful new dog park that will soon be built at nearby Crescenta Valley park for use by all those dog owners sure to be arriving on their Schwinns. Makes as much sense as putting one outside a florist or dry cleaners, doesn’t it?

And now that the entire CV Town Council will be driving around looking to run me over on my bike, I’ll see you ‘round town.

This is an edited version of my column first-published yesterday, 8.25.11 in the CV Weekly Newspaper (www.cvweekly.com).

© 2011 WordChaser, Inc.

Oh Baby, How Things Have Changed

Our daughter and son-in-law had their first baby, a beautiful girl, a little less than a year ago. Although she was my wife’s and my fourth grandchild, she is the first to live within an easy drive from us. Our other three grand-munchkins live heart-wrenchingly far away in Hawaii. My dear wife and I are not extreme swimmers, we don’t own a boat or have stock in an airline, so that means we get to visit the grandkids in Hawaii far less often than we would like – an understatement if ever there was one.

Suffice it to say that our newest grandchild has so far had no shortage of time or attention lavished upon her cuddly little self. In fact, the fun had already begun with the pre-birth celebration of a baby shower that was thrown last year for our daughter and her soon-to-arrive child.

Now, I was told that it’s bad form to show up for a baby shower without a large gift in hand (apparently providing chicken salad, croissant sandwiches, a big honkin’ fresh fruit platter and homemade gourmet cupcakes wasn’t enough!) So that’s how my dear wife and I found ourselves a few days before the shower wandering the aisles of a super-baby-warehouse store in the Los Feliz area of Glendale, California.

I have to tell you, the visit to the store was an eye opener. Granted, it’s been quite a while since my kids were babies (there’s a joke here, but my kids swear they read this column at least occasionally so I’ll refrain), but I simply wasn’t prepared for what I saw wandering the aisles of this store. I mean, I remember that when there were only a few basics one had to have as a new parent. You needed a crib, possibly a bassinette to have near your own bed when you first brought the baby home, a relative gave you a hand-me-down dresser for the baby’s clothes, and you got a big spongy pad thing that you put in the kitchen sink and laid the baby on to bath it. If you really wanted to equip a baby’s room, you got one of those rickety changing tables with the cheapo foam pad on top and a shelf for thousands of diapers underneath.

New parents also needed half a dozen or so baby bottles, a couple of pacifiers, a stroller and a car seat. That’s pretty much it, unless you truly wanted to spoil a kid with one of those swings guaranteed to put even the most colicky kid to sleep in minutes. (But seriously, weren’t those blessed wind-up-baby-sitters invented for parents more than babies?) Oh, and you absolutely, positively needed a diaper pail of some kind. A big, easy-to-empty diaper pail to contain all the little neutron stink bomb bundles of joy, each with the power to instantly bring a fully grown, testosterone-soaked man to his knees begging for mercy and fresh air.

By the time our fourth child was born, the list of have-to-haves had grown to include a portable play pen (you know, the kind that never, ever fold back up as neatly and compactly as when you first take it out of the box). You also needed some sort of electronic baby monitor to eavesdrop on your spouse as they wrongfully whined to the baby about what a slacker you were for not getting up at 3 a.m. to check on him/her even though you did it already at 1:30 and your wife slept soundly through the entire incident and you didn’t get any “what-a-good-dad” credit like you deserved. Not that this happened to me. Much.

Anyway, that’s the sort of equipment we needed twenty or so years ago in order to bring up baby. Apparently, today’s babies need a whole lot more stuff. So much more, in fact, that I’ll need another post to discuss the catalog of goodies it apparently takes to be a parent in 2010. Hang on to your wallet, and check tomorrow’s My Thoughts Exactly post. I’ll see you ‘round town.

Note: This is an updated version of a column first published in the CV Weekly newspaper (www.cvweekly.com) on June 3, 2010.

This version: © 2011 WordChaser, Inc.

The year Easter stayed in the attic

Because we added well over a thousand square feet onto our house somewhere during the last century, we have two separate attics. In our original attic, stacks of boxes reach to the rafters in places, filled with accumulated family history that archeologists from the future are sure to go through with collective awe and reverence. Or not. You enter this attic (on the rare occasion anyone needs something that was thrown away … er, carefully placed in storage up there) through a trap door in the ceiling of a hallway. It’s hot, it’s stuffy, and I wouldn’t be surprised at all to learn that a colony of bug-eyed North American house trolls lived in the far corners of its darkness. I hope they’re happy up there.

The newer attic is a different animal entirely. Due to odd architectural features of the addition to our home, there was considerable unused space above what had been our old garage roof and alongside one wall of our new second story. When beginning the project, I had foolishly decided to be the general contractor, so it was easy to make last minute construction decisions. As such, we decided to frame out a utility hatch door into the wall of the stairway leading up to our second story to access this dead space. Voila, a second attic.

Even though we had to build a special access ladder with offset legs to match the angle of the stairway, or that getting into the space has always seemed like the birthing process in reverse, we use this newer attic much more than the original one.

More than anything else, we store holiday decorations in this bonus attic. Okay, we keep empty gift boxes up there too. And suitcases. And sleeping bags. But by far, most of this attic space is filled with boxes, basins and bins of decorations. This attic is full. As in, fifteen pounds of fertilizer in a ten pound bag, full.

In previous columns I’ve written about the big deal we make of Christmas when it comes to decorations, so it should be no surprise that a majority of the decorations are for the Christmas season. Having said that, however, our family’s almost as crazy about other holidays, birthdays, anniversaries, our dogs’ birthdays, trash pickup day, ladies hot wax day at the car wash. You get the idea.

Because of the limited storage space, our boxed decorations are labeled so they can be stacked, stored and organized according to the calendar. Which means that a month ago, the hearts and cupids, bright red geegaws and dangly down thingies of Valentine’s Day should have been put farthest away from the attic door. So, in a perfect world with perfect teenage boys to help their perfect parents, that also should have meant that the Easter decorations (bunnies, baskets, plastic eggs, plastic grass, egg-dying paraphernalia, pastel-colored wrapping paper, tinted cellophane, more baskets, tacky rabbit-themed knic-knacks, geegaws and chotchkies, etc.) would have then been closest to the attic door when my wife and I went looking for them last week.

Not a chance.

In fact, after climbing up into the attic, with my feet dangling out into the void of the stairway, my wife and I pawed past box after box of Christmas paraphernalia, but didn’t see a single container with “Easter” written on it. Digging deeper into the crowded attic space, belly crawling under and through stacks of boxes, suitcases, and who-knows-what-else-is-stored-up-there, I felt a momentary wave of panic sweep over me and was sure I knew what it must be like to be a miner trapped by a cave in.

Somehow, we found our way back out to fresh air. We didn’t find the Easter decorations, but we were alive. And because crisis counselors don’t work on holidays, we decided to end our search and save our marriage. Somehow, our storage “system” had gotten screwed up.

With our luck, the Easter decorations will probably turn up when we go searching for our Fourth of July trimmings and trappings.   

And so, for the first time ever, last weekend we celebrated Easter without the usual seasonal bling adorning our home. The only decorations were bunches of gorgeous yellow daffodils and fresh pink tulips my wife bought to grace our dining table. No cute bunnies, plastic eggs or other distractions. Just a morning of heartfelt worship at church, then home for a great home-cooked meal and precious time well-spent with family around the table. All in all a simple, special day of faith, family and fellowship with those we love dearly.

Hopefully we can lose those boxes of decorations again next year. I’ll see you ‘round town.

[Note: A version of this essay was originally published in the CV Weekly Newspaper (www.cvweekly.com) on April 8, 2010].

This version © 2011 WordChaser, Inc.

The beast within

If you’re a fan of scary movies, you’ve likely hunkered down in your seat as a familiar scene plays out on the screen. You know the one; where unsuspecting merchant seamen or long-haul truckers are transporting a huge and not nearly secure-enough enclosure with some unknown “thing” inside. They only know that something live – and very large – inside wants to get out. As these doomed workers move the crate, jostling whatever is trapped (for the moment at least) within, an occasional grunt or bellow or even primal scream emerges from within. Cut to extreme close ups of frightened peasant eyes, nervously glancing at the suddenly flimsy plywood – the only barrier between their very lives and the gnashing, snarling, slobbering beast within.

What does this cinematic cliché have to do with this column? I thought you’d never ask. During my recent two month-long, self-imposed hiatus from writing the column, “My Thoughts, Exactly”, I’ve had many recurring instances where ideas for possible columns would “grunt and growl” at me from deep within the dark and mysterious recesses of my mind, wanting desperately to get out and roam among the unsuspecting populace of these foothills. Occasionally, column topics would loudly shake their confines, roaring for release. (While not a life-threatening condition, it can be a noisy and raucous one for sure – just ask my longsuffering wife.)

Every time something happened at my house, or a news story would be reported that I digested with more than the usual amazement, I would feel the beast of a column stir within. For example, a voter’s guide arrived last month printed in Korean, Farsi, Spanish and, oh yeah – English, wasting who knows how much money and paper. Why not Japanese, Chinese, Hungarian or Egyptian? After all, I know local residents who are fluent in those languages, too. Growl, scratch, thump.

Also in March, a once-in-eighteen-years opportunity to witness a overly large “perigee moon” in our nighttime skies was wasted due to unseasonably thick cloud cover. Snarl, slobber, bump.

Charlie Sheen made frequent moronic, sad and tragic pronouncements in his downward rush towards obscurity and has-been status. Winning! Even worse, the media covered it ad nauseam while simultaneously obscuring our nation’s continued loss of credibility and relevance throughout Europe and the Middle East. Roar, slash, crash!

Repeated and very much unwanted calls to my unlisted home phone were made by “retired Glendale area school teachers” virtually demanding to know if I will or will not vote in favor of school bond Measure “S” on the April 5 ballot. The only way they could have gotten my number is by poaching it from the emergency phone forms filled out when I still had kids in the local public school system. Whether or not the particular ballot measure is worthy of support, the tactics used to pressure voters into supporting it were annoying if not borderline intimidating. Howl, bellow, shatter!

I even felt compelled to discuss the media-induced hysteria about the possible likelihood of potentially detecting trace amounts of Japanese nuke dust in our west coast air, dairy cows and vegetable crops. No wait, maybe that was the fugitive New York Zoo cobra I should’ve been panicked about. I’m easily confused, you know.

Thankfully (for my sake, at least), after two months away from writing a weekly column, I’m back! So I no longer need to keep my most dangerous thoughts harmless and confined. Be afraid. Be very afraid.  

I can’t wrap up my first column back without thanking the many valued readers of the CV Weekly newspaper for the notes you’ve sent to both myself and to editor/publisher Robin Goldsworthy. Your kind words were encouraging in ways I can’t begin to express. By the nature of the profession, writers tend to work in deep solitude – which makes it even more reassuring to know that so many of you missed my weekly musings and mutterings enough to say as much and to ask when I would be returning to these pages.

It’s good to be back. And once again, I’ll see you ‘round town.

(AUTHOR’S NOTE: This post is a revised version of a column first published in the 4.7.11 edition of the CV Weekly newspaper.)

© 2011 WordChaser, Inc.

Tech Time

I spent the better part of two hours a couple of weeks ago waiting for my wife’s delayed flight to come in to LAX. At least I think it was two hours. Few builders of public spaces seem to bother installing clocks on the walls these days. And like a majority of people, I stopped wearing a wristwatch years ago. Who needs one? Every cell phone I’ve owned as far back as I can remember has been able to give me the precise time whenever I need it. It’s just one of the amazing benefits of ever-improving wireless technology – when I can find the clock/time function, that is.

Let me explain. Last month, it was time for our entire family to upgrade our wireless phones to newer models (which not surprisingly always seems to “upgrade” our monthly bill, too).

And therein lies the problem. Because, every time I get a new phone, the learning curve to make a simple call seems to get steeper and steeper. Heaven forbid I should want to check emails, send a text, check a voicemail, or any of the 63,452 more advanced things the phone will do. We all know about the dangers of texting and driving. But sheez, I’m not even sure I should breathe and use my phone at the same time – I might suck in a low flying finch while I’m so distracted.  

In my defense, it’s not like I’m some technological mouth-breather or anything. As a once serious musician/songwriter, I could record songs using state-of-the-art, multi-track reel-to-reel tape machines. I wouldn’t bat an eye doing sound-on-sound recordings, ping-ponging tracks and running a wall full of outboard gear including parametric equalizers, or compression and noise reduction hardware. In other words, I’m not afraid of – nor am I in any way a stranger to – the use of bleeding edge technology.

Nevertheless, there I was at the airport, simply trying to figure out how get the #!*%&^! time/clock function visible on my cell phone screen. While currents of arriving travelers ebbed and flowed around me, I sat there on a hard plastic chair in the baggage carousel waiting area, staring at that stupid, mocking screen of my cell phone -- pushing buttons and opening and closing menus and trying to bring up the clock. I was so intently focused for so long I almost didn’t see my wife walking right past me on her way to the baggage carrousel. And she didn’t see me because I was looking down and engrossed in trying to decipher what should have been a straightforward function on my phone.  

The thing is, when making our recent upgrade, I had tried to choose the simplest phone available. Not wanting or needing the latest and greatest 4G touch-screen i-wonder (or its expense!), I looked for a phone that would merely survive the next two years in my presence. My last phone barely functioned after spending 30 minutes in the pocket of my board shorts while soaking in a very hot tub on the good ship Celebrity Millennium bound for Ketchikan, Alaska two years ago.

The replacement phone I chose was even listed in Verizon’s “simple phone” category. Little did I know that its manufacturer also assumed I would regularly be lost in the wilderness and need additional features like a digital compass, emergency lighting, GPS orienteering apps and many other bells, whistles and survival tools – all of which, it turns out – are much easier to find than the stupid clock. Sigh.

However, the same weekend I nearly chucked my phone onto a runway at LAX, my technologically advanced son – he who was born with a sterling silver flash drive in his mouth – was delightfully dumbfounded when we dragged out an old portable record player to hear what some of our old vinyl LPs sounded like after all of these years. With great hesitation, my young wizard of the web and all things digital, put a big round, black vinyl platter on the spindle of the turntable and turned on the power. As the disc turned at 33-1/3 rpm, he lifted the tone arm off the post and … was stumped. He looked at the slowly spinning LP, looked at me, looked back to the record, back at me and said, “You start this needle thingy at the center, right?”

The poor lad. Such blissful naiveté. Dear old dinosaur Dad was, of course, happy to instruct the boy in the old ways, although I must admit the most difficult part was not chuckling under my breath the entire time. Nearly an hour later, my son was still sitting in front of that turntable, listening with newfound appreciation to the scratchy sounds of my youth.

Sometime I’m going to ask him how to find the dang clock on my phone. But not yet. I’m enjoying this too much.

I’ll see you ‘round town. 

(AUTHOR’S NOTE: This post is revised from a column first published in the March 11, 2010 edition of the Crescenta Valley Weekly newspaper -- www.cvweekly.com.)

This version © 2011 WordChaser, Inc.

Clarifications & Disclaimers

I've been asked (please don’t make me swear to this) if the posts of my columns [new columns will begin appearing April 8] on this blog will be identical to what is printed in the Crescenta Valley Weekly newspaper each week.

Actually, yes. And no.

Yes, many of the columns posted here will be virtually word-for-word accurate with the printed versions that litter the streets and gutters of the Crescenta Valley communities served by the newspaper. No, however, because my intent is not to simply archive every column I write.

For example, when I post a column that has been written to specifically address a topic or concern unique to the Crescenta Valley area that I live in, I’ll try to revise or edit the piece for a broader audience. Make sense?

Also, many times I write about a subject that winds up being well over the 650 word limit imposed the print-version of my column. While having to write and edit to a rather concise word-count is a worthy challenge for any writer and learning to tell a story or argue a point in a page and a half is great for honing one’s writing chops – sometimes I just want to say more on any given subject.

This online platform will allow me to do that and frankly, I can’t wait to play out a little more leash on some of my thoughts. Better brew up a few extra cups o’ the bean.

I’ll also be able to post random and sometimes ridiculous (maybe even redeeming?) thoughts or links or comments as they happen to be relevant to whatever’s going on in my life, the life of our country, even our planet.

Wow, heavy.

One more thing: If you do happen to want to read or even compare the original versions that are written for print, you can always find them online at: http://www.cvweekly.com/. But I’ll warn you: the official newspaper web site only seems to archive columns for a month or two at most. And that’s another reason why I wanted to have my own place to archive columns.

We creative types are such control freaks, y’know.  

A Hiatus Is Not A Medical Condition

For regular readers of the print version of the My Thoughts, Exactly column, you may have been wondering where I’ve been during the past two months. (And if you didn’t notice that my column wasn’t in the paper for the past eight weeks, please don’t tell me. In this economy, my professional ego is already on life support with family members gathered close by, voting on whether or not to pull the plug.)

Was I fired? Did I quit? Did I run out of thoughts? No, no and hell no. After writing a column every week for three years without missing a week, totaling over 150 essays, I just needed a break from deadlines and blank, mocking, nightmare-inducing computer screens. That’s all.

So I took a self-imposed hiatus. Teachers and preachers have sabbaticals (although the lucky so-and-sos usually get paid for their time off). Writers and other working folk take a hiatus to fix things around the house (my wife is laughing hysterically right now), talk long walks (stop laughing, already, honey) and generally recharge their creative mojo.

The funny thing is – it wasn’t quite as restful as I had hoped. I didn’t stop thinking. In fact, I COULDN’T stop thinking about topics that would make for interesting (or at least less-boring) reading.

So after two months and many inquiring emails from the CV Weekly’s editor as to whether and when I was going to return to writing My Thoughts, Exactly – I’ve decided that I need to get back to it. And so, without further procrastination on my part, I’ll be publishing an all new column in the upcoming April 7 edition of the newspaper. (cue trumpet fanfare!)

If you don’t run your car over it on your driveway next Thursday morning, you can read the entire essay right here next Friday.

Try to contain your excitement. 

Welcome

Welcome to the new My Thoughts, Exactly blog. Having written well over 150 weekly columns – first for the now-defunct Crescenta Valley Sun newspaper (owned and killed by its dysfunctional parent, the LA Times, which also owns the Glendale Newspress, and the ... oh, never mind), and then the CV Weekly newspaper (published with great pride and at equally impressive expense by Robin Goldsworthy, the former editor of the former CV Sun paper), I knew there had to be a way to keep these 650-word (give or take a few) musings “out there” for anyone who wanted to read them at any given time.

After all, I realize that not everyone has a CV Weekly paper thrown onto their driveway every Thursday morning. Heck, even I don’t have a CV Weekly paper thrown on my driveway every Thursday morning and I’ve written a column in the dang thing since its debut edition. To be fair, I live on what’s called a “flag lot” with four other homes that share a common driveway. One other neighbor actually has a paid subscription to the paper and the dear woman is well into her eighties. For some reason, the folks who deliver the paper in the wee hours of Thursday mornings are unable to throw more than one paper onto a single driveway – no matter how many times they’ve been admonished to do so by the powers-that-be at the worldwide headquarters of the publishing empire affectionately (and legally) known as the Crescenta Valley Weekly.

Anyway, back to my neighbor. I’ve watched her take the better part of a morning to shuffle from her front porch down the end of the driveway to retrieve her paper. So believe me, I’m not going to be the chuckle head who takes the lone copy of the CV Weekly that is delivered to our collective driveway. Beside which, the paper is available free of charge at many retail locations throughout our fair Foothills community – places such as Starbucks, Walgreen’s, all of our supermarkets and many other places. In other words, my neighbor’s paper is safe.

Where was I? Oh, right. I’ve long wanted an online place to archive the My Thoughts, Exactly columns that is easily accessible, searchable by key words, and managed by yours truly rather than a pimply-faced, I.T. mole web-master at the newspaper’s home office. (Not that I’ve ever even seen the aforementioned I.T. nerd, er … person at the paper – but you know what I’m getting at.)

And so … in addition to posting my latest column on the Friday after it has been published in the CV Weekly (if you want to read it the same day it’s published, you’ll just have to subscribe to the paper), I also have every intention to post lengthier versions of my columns as time and thinking permit – along with unpublished (at least in newsprint) columns or posts that may not be appropriate for my regular weekly column in the newspaper. I’ll also throw down the occasional odd or random thoughts and comments as they occur to me and as I think someone may be interested in reading.

Stay tuned. Check this space often. Tell a friend. Please.