Growing Old

These guys were caught by a street photographer. It's probably sometime in the 30's. On the left is my father-in-law and on the right is his 'baby' brother. The baby brother would become one of the 'Greatest Generation,' cheerfully fighting in Italy, France and Germany with the 36th Infantry Division, called into active service from the Texas National Guard. He would return unharmed and live a long life.

We took my husband's Dad (the smaller 'big' brother here) to his brother's funeral today in Temple. My father-in-law is 95. His baby brother was 91.

As my mother-in-law recounted the births, deaths and marriages of the clan she entered sixty-eight years ago, she said at one point: "And, well, she died. And he died."

Yeah, that's how it always ends.

The trip was exhausting. My in-laws have grown old and a longish ceremony that started late (after we arrived way early) and another ceremony at the cemetery and finding food and bathrooms on the way home was a production. But once my father-in-law and his brother sauntered jauntily down Congress Avenue before the big war, before they married and had kids. Maybe the depression was oppressive but they still found the funds for some good-looking threads. And my husband's uncle smiled just like that from his bed at the nursing home when last I saw him, correctly identifying me as belonging to the right branch of the clan in spite of the fact that he must have a dozen nephews with wives and girlfriends. In fact, at the service they recruited six nephews on the spot for pallbearers and another nephew conducted the service and another gave the eulogy. Several other nephews sat in the crowd.

I have read that about a thousand WWII vets die each day. I lost my own 92-year-old uncle recently. He lived in the same nursing home (for Texas Vets) as my husband's uncle. Outside many rooms there handsome young hopeful faces in military uniforms stare out of frames below the names in the corridor while, inside the rooms, old men (and women) grow older and weaker.

And, well, that's how it ends.

Top Ten Reasons for Moving to Downtown Austin

10. What a cool name for a hot dog wagon! (See picture.)

9. The mussels at Capitol Brasserie.

8. Mercury Design Studio.

7. Walking to Whole Foods Planet. (My name for the downtown Whole Foods because of the signs that say 'Whole Foods/Whole Planet' or something like that.)

6. Walking to Austin Music Hall, the Paramount, the convention center, many restaurants, bars, some museums. Not to mention several coffee shops that don't have 'Bucks' in their name. Like Halcyon. And Little City. And Hideout. And there's Elephant Room with jazz every night and nowadays almost no smoke. Jazz with takeout from Kyoto upstairs and a Guinness on draft. Yum.

5. Walking to Book People. And other shopping besides that cool Mercury place. Home stores, art galleries, Austin Wine Merchant and...

4. The new hip bodega, Royal Blue Grocery, on Third Street in the AMLI.

3. Proximity to City Hall so it's a piece of cake to get in line to speak your mind.

2. Getting on the Hike and Bike trail and walking around Town Lake without driving downtown.

And the top reason for moving to downtown Austin for us?
1. Walking to the new Ballet Austin building at Third and San Antonio. Heck, on a good day and in comfortable shoes we could walk to Long Center or the Opera Building or Palmer Events Center or the Capitol for the Book Festival. But FFP spends a lot of time volunteering on Ballet Austin projects. So being close will be great for him. And if possible, we are going to be really close to their building.

I realize I can walk to lots of stuff from my house. A branch library, three bakeries, restaurants (Billy's Burgers, Blue Star, Jorge's, Fonda San Miguel, Upper Crust, Pacha's, Phoenician, La Victoria, Sampaio, some new sushi place, etc.), thrift stores and, if you are feeling like a long walk...Central Market. And I realize that I often complain that I can't walk to these places because it's too hot or the sidewalks aren't adequate (they are putting sidewalks on Shoal Creek however). But somehow this downtown thing feels right. I guess we'll see. The future is kind of a blur anyway, huh? But imagining life a little different is good.

Airport Trip Seven Complete

About the picture. FFP took it on Second Street in downtown Austin. Maybe now that my '90th Birthday Project' is over I can get out and shoot some pictures.

I delivered my sister to the airport yesterday. She stayed over after my dad's party to visit. She is somewhat disabled (requires a wheelchair to get to the gate although she can walk short distances with her cane) and the only person I could find to help me take her to the airport was...my ninety-year-old dad. I deposited the two of them and her luggage on the curb next to United's curbside where there was no one helping people. "If you have to, just wait here until I park," I said. Then I raced around to short term parking. I couldn't find a place for the van so I used Dad's handicapped tag and got a handicapped place and raced up three flights of stairs to the departure level. [If you were at the airport and saw that, well when Dad and I left I would have had to leave him on the curb again and go for the van if I hadn't been able to park it near the elevator. I never use his tag when I'm just out and about in his van. I don't use the one in my glove box assigned to my father-in-law either unless he's with me. It's illegal. And I wouldn't do it. But I felt I had the right here.]

They had gone inside and there was a wheelchair person arriving. Turns out they were cancelling her direct flight to Denver. Yikes. They were trying to rebook her and finally gave her some paperwork and sent us to Continental. I called my brother-in-law with the info. She was going to have to fly to Houston and then Denver. After more snafus between the airlines she got her luggage checked with Continental. Since she was going to be even later than we'd thought I sprinted down to buy her some candy bars which is what she said would sustain her. . My dad got tired during all this process and had to go sit down. We said our goodbyes to her and the wheelchair attendant took her to the gate.

Dad and I walked out to the curb. I pointed to the elevator bank across the street. "If you can walk that far, the van is right there." He made it. He had told me that he had to get home because he was taking two lady friends to a musical show later. He does pretty well, but he's a little slow and standing a long time or walking a long distance is tough. But he takes care of himself pretty well.

When I retrieved my car from Dad's and went home, the house was empty. FFP was at a board retreat. I couldn't believe it...ten days of visits and the party and all the logistics were over. Time to worry about something new. I checked on my sister's flight. It was delayed. Yikes. What if she missed the flight to Denver? FFP got home and we were watching the football game (UT's, of course, this is Austin) when thunder roared and they suspended the game in a downpour featuring lightning. Fortunately, my sister's plane was already headed to Houston. Maybe her plane out would be delayed and she'd get home just an hour or so late. The rain stopped. I hoped my Dad wasn't out in it. I tracked my sister's progress. Yup, missed the plane. I reached her and my brother-in-law on their cell phones. She did get a later plane. I worried a little but what can you do if someone is in the Houston airport? Or sitting on the tarmac in Houston on a plane delayed by weather? I think she finally landed about midnight.

It's over. All seven trips to the airport. My sister had the roughest airport trip although my niece and her husband were bumped on the way here. At least two other people flew in for the party that I did not have to pick up or take to the airport. Thanks for that. Many drove in and all apparently without incident. Although my Dad's great nephew forgot his dress up clothes. He fit in fine with the Austin vibe in a black T-Shirt and jeans. All the comings and goings, months of invites and RSVPs and changing hotel reservations. Arranging for everything. Trying to keep the hoopla from wearing my dad out while letting him enjoy it.

Now, what should I worry about now?

Well...That's Almost Over!

Living ninety years is well-deserving of a lot of hoopla, celebration, adulation and such. However, that requires a bit of planning and a lot of luck to pull off. Especially to make the ninety-year-old person in question not feel like he's been through the wringer.

Since last Thursday, I've made five round trips to the airport, organized six hotel stays, answered the inevitable last minute calls and e-mails, and overseen a party for 140 people that included music, valet parking, name tags, flowers and some minor decoration, hors d'oeuvres, a bar and a full buffet dinner. I've tried to keep several meet-ups of out-of-town relatives organized while dealing with the fact that two of my AC units in my house decided to fail in different ways. I have two out-of-town guests remaining and two more airport trips to make.

I'm not complaining, but I told Dad that he isn't getting a big party for 95. Maybe for his 100th. So...he has set his sights on living to be 100. Well, there are worse goals.

I Haven't Been Writing

And, honestly, I miss it when I haven't been doing it. Even my 'personal' journal entries have been terse. I am currently in that familiar mode whereby everything is being delayed until something else happens. OK, it does take focus to have a party for 150 people and have a couple of dozen people coming in from out of town. And in the midst of that, I had to shop for a car with my almost-90-year-old father. That'll stop you in your tracks. And then there is the crick in my neck. Yesterday I woke up with a sharp pain in my neck. Tried warming it up (with exercise and heat applied). Tried wine. Tried Advil. Got it rubbed. Got my feet rubbed. Tried cookies. Woke up better off this morning.

Life deals things out. Little things. Big things. Little things that will become big things. Seemingly big things that will be forgotten.

But I did have a good vacation. And enjoyed a visit to this cute little bookstore in Tilamook, OR.

Another excuse I've had is tennis. The U.S. Open has provided way too much TV time. At least I don't care about football.

In Case You Haven't Been Flying

The way things keep changing in the nation's airports, it seems that even experienced flyers quiz their friends about flying if they haven't been 'out there' lately.

We made a trip to Portland, OR (PDX) recently from Austin (AUS). We went through Dallas (DFW) on American (AA).

This was our first flight since liquids became evil. It's funny how it works, but they had me thinking of my hair gel and shampoo as sinister. When I fly, I have to take decongestants to keep my ears clear. On the way, we had a short layover in Dallas. I'd had a bottle of water after security in the Austin airport. I was going to have to take a second pill on the long (almost four hours) DFW-PDX leg. But I couldn't carry water on board. We had a short layover. In the departure longue they announced that there would be a $4 snack for sale but there would probably not be enough for everyone. We were welcome to take food on board. We rushed off and got a sandwich and coffee. I managed to swill about half the coffee before I had to discard it. DFW had clever poetic signs. "Avoid Delay; Throw it Away." I had to swallow my pill dry before the service cart reached our row.

I was wondering how a friend of mine would get along, given he'd admitted a chapstick addiction.

The whole flying experience out there went remarkably well, though, in spite of full flights. It was almost as if all that was needed to smooth things out was to ban big gulps and Starbucks.

When we flew back, I noticed a couple of interesting things at PDX. One, they were now allowing lipstick and chapstick. My addicted friend can relax. And...they had an interesting way of talking about stuff you buy after security. They said that 'drinks purchased inside the sterile zone must be discarded before boarding.' I wouldn't take that 'sterile zone' thing too seriously when considered the soap and automatic faucets in the restrooms. Yeah, I'd keep washing.

Coming home went quite smoothly, too. We got upgraded to first class for the PDX-DFW leg. And we had a long layover at DFW which allowed my volcanically hot Starbucks to cool so I could finish it before boarding. I hadn't been in first for a little while. You still get glasses that are glass. (I would worry about them being cracked to make a weapon but they are that indestructible thick glass.) You still get linen napkins but they have shrunk over the years. Of course, they only have to be wrapped around plastic dinnerware now. They still have a buttonhole in them so if you have on a proper shirt you can button them on and protect yourself from marinara sauce. Not that I had any marinara. A croissant sandwich it was.

I appreciate the Austin airport and its cultivation of local businesses. No being subjected to Starbucks there. And I appreciate PDX for having a Powell's (City of Books) outlet. By far the best little bookstore I've ever seen in an airport.

Yeah, things are always changing in the air. When is the last time you thought of a leggy attendant with a beehive as your mother?

Not Good at Posting

I've been really remiss at posting. I've been doing something else. What? Hard to say. Going through piles of books. Looking through pictures and slides. Other cleaning and straigtening tasks that are beginning to feel a lot like moving stuff around, like motion. Reviewing films for Austin Film Festival. Tennis. Water aerobics class with my dad. Then yesterday I had to take my dad to the hospital to visit a twenty-something friend who had a brain aneurysm rupture. Well, not to visit the kid, because he was in surgery and having procedures but to visit with the kid's parents. The dad is the son of a nurse friend of my dad's who is dead now and he has kept up with the family.

My dad has always been a compassionate sort. He called the hospital today and tracked his friends down to see how the son was doing. And he hates telephoning. I'm still finding pictures of him. This one was taken in 1945 or 1946 and I'm guessing he is comforting my sister because he has to go back to some army duty. My dad was lucky to be rejected for service until late in the war when, although he wasn't fit for duty, I think they decided to induct him and make him fit for duty. The war ended before that trajectory could get him in harm's way.

So, yeah, I'm busy in my own usual erratic way. So I'd better get on with it. I'm going on something called a 'gallery crawl' this afternoon. I'm going to hear some music tonight later on. I've already hit the tennis courts and done a few minutes on my favorite aerobic machine (the recumbent bike). I've eaten leftovers, showered leisurely. Life is good. I should appreciate it.

I Should be Working on it NOW

Yeah, this cleaning up thing is taking a life of its own. The pile of books shown here represents about half of the ones I'm going to give away. Most are probably useless because they are so obsolete. Some are good, standard references. If I ever need to know any of this again, I'll find the info somehow.

Every time we drive into the garage now, FFP says how its (relatively) cleaned out look gives him pleasure. We plan to spiff it up with paint and sheetrock and some attractive cabinets or shelves. We think a big functional garage is a selling point for a house. But only if it's pretty uncluttered.

Behind our garage is a 'storage room.' We perched FFP's office above this area when we remodeled. We have a laundry room there and shelves, storage cabinets, old file cabinets, a closet under the stairs, a closet we call our 'wine cellar.' FFP is set up there to paint with a drop cloth, easel, etc. although the first and last paintings he completed were done on the floor of the garage when we remodeled the bedroom. There is also an enormous 'rack' of wood and pipe that held oversized file folders for negatives and PMTs and pasted-up art. Back in the day when such were necessary to produce ads. Now we don't produce ads, mostly, and if we do they are just pixels until they are realized in print. We actually offered the filing cabinets on Freecycle and had a pickup set but the people never showed up. FFP and I are discussing what we might use to 'furnish' a storage unit. Should we actually save the enormous beat-up filing cabinets? I think storage units are so expensive that we might reconsider even having one. But I find it hard to see how to do without it. We are definitely going to have the handyman dismantle the giant rack. We've disposed of most of the ancient adverstising stuff.

While I write this, I should be looking through a pile of magazines I just uncovered in my office. I'm feeling better about discarding copies of The New Yorker since they have announced the upgrade of the complete DVD set. I think this is the way of the future, mine anyway. Where you discard the magazines and have the archive available. Ideally it would be on the WEB, but this is certainly more compact. I no longer really want to own movies either. And I'm going through old cassette tapes. One criteria for discarding them is 'do we have the CD?' Another is 'are the tunes available on Rhapsody?' If we could listen on our computers or download the tunes if we wanted them, that would be great. We aren't even talking about the CD collection yet. I'm thinking that when we go to the condo we might have the collection ripped to a hard drive.

What was that tag line for VW back in the sixties? Think small! Yeah, that's it.

Moving in the Right Direction, Stuff-Wise

I was thinking today how we acquire stuff and discard stuff. Year in and year out. For the last couple of weeks we've been burning faster than we were filling, you might say. And that's a good thing. It's horrifying to think how many possessions we still have, especially considering how much we have disposed of over the years.

When I moved to Austin, in 1975, I couldn't fill a small one bedroom apartment with the stuff I owned. Sad. I wanted stuff. I even bought some furniture for that place. When I combined my stuff with FFP's in 1976, it was a little crowded in his house which was probably 800 square feet. When we moved a block away in 1977 (twenty-nine years ago this month), we had a larger house. We filled it with a business we were running and all the stuff it needed and things we were eager to own.We bought a building and moved the business there. We remodeled a few times and redecorated, stuff coming and going. Always thinking it was the ultimate stuff. One remodel made room for the business (smaller now) to move back. With the complications that engendered.

It makes me feel better to pare the stuff down. But it's going so slowly. The garage is looking pretty good now. But my office and the spare room are still a sea of things being sorted and dealt with. There are closets and shelves begging for a good cleaning. There are large pieces of furniture that will ultimately need to go. I get depressed about it sometimes, but at least the needle is moving in the right direction at the moment.

The Dilettante Collector

I read something the other day about a guy who collected comic books very assiduously for many years. They were stored in very optimum conditions for a long time, too. His family is now ready to sell them for millions although they have found out that some are missing. And because he obsessively made some small cryptic pencil marks on each and every one, his heirs were able to trace them and it was probably some contractors who were 'alone with the collection' who pilfered them. I can't find this story online just now or I would link to it. So what does that have to do me anyway?

Well, that's not the kind of collector I am. I don't stick to collecting anything with that kind of single-minded diligence. Unfortunately I am tempted to save things because they might be (pick one) useful / valuable / interesting later. And I might start collecting something...say cocktail shakers, globes, bendable posable figures, etc. and amass quite a few of them without a clue about what I should be saving or discarding, how to store them, etc. I feel like a lot of times I discard something just before it becomes valuable.

I have decided to seriously get rid of stuff. We've been cleaning out the garage. We've tossed a lot of stuff, given away a lot of stuff. We are trying not to worry if it will ever be valuable, useful, sentimental. A 10x10 climate-controlled storage unit in downtown Austin goes for $377 per month. We want to move downtown one day. I must get rid of stuff. I have too much stuff. If some of it is useful, I can never find it when I need it.

I will admit, however, that it is interesting to find a box in the garage containing my tax returns from before I married and the Christmas cards I got over a decade ago. As I looked through the latter, I choked up at notes written by people who have died. I wondered at a photo of someone that I simply don't recognize. Well, OK, she is vaguely familar. But I can't save all this stuff. It's going to be hard enough to decide what to do with boxes and boxes of bendable, posable figures. Every time I go through the stuff, less and less survives. Oh, I'm going to save some things all right. But I don't think I have to worry about any contractors stealing a million dollars worth of collectibles. And that's a good thing.

I don't think dabblers end up with million-dollar collections. I once wrote a poem about me and my attention span for organizing and doing. You can see it here but I'll also reprint it here in blogger-land where I seem to spend most of my time writing to you.

Dabbler, Babbler, Dilettante
Flitting about
Cannot stop.
Focus Free
Excuse me,
I must hop!

I've Been Busy Since Last We Spoke

It started with that cheap Mexican breakfast I mentioned. My companions and I shared the guacamole pictured here next to some good hot sauce with our migas. We were at Aranda's on Burnet Road.

I got invitations out to my dad's birthday party in September and have even received quite a few RSVPs.

We have been working on the clean up project alluded to here. We hope to move out of our house and into a (smaller) condo in about two years. And we are thinking it may take two years to get things tidied up and sorted. I stood in the garage today with sweat pouring off my face, chopping up cardboard boxes for recyling, filling garbage sacks with things to throw away when there is space in the 'pay as you throw' bin. You can only discard about twelve cubic feet of stuff in our bin per week and if you want to leave garbage bags on the curb as well you have to attach a two dollar sticker. We did leave a few things on the curb with a free sign, gave some things to the handyman and the yard man. FFP made a trip to the thrift store and I have another pile of stuff in my car now to go there. Slowly, we unwind our acquisitions and see most of them for what they are: anchors. There are a few shocks. Like when I found my tax returns from before I married FFP. Yeah, I am thinking shredder.

I think we may be, for this small period, getting rid of stuff faster than we acquire it. Now if we can just keep it up for the next few years.

Are You a Blogger or Not?

When you let yourself off that leash of writing every day, then there are questions. How often should you show up? And what to write about? You have to read your own last entry to see what you were talking about. You can't just talk about today or yesterday and be confident that you have brought your readers up-to-date.

We've been having an 'arts weekend' so far. We went to a gala on Friday benefiting Austin Cabaret Theater and saw Eartha Kitt perform. Before that a jazz group from San Francisco and a Tony Bennett tribute singer entertained a bit. Afterwards, Eartha was surrounded by people getting autographs and pictures so I took a picture of Holly of the Downtown Planet and the piano and sax player from the jazz group. Holly recently scooped all the local media on a possible embezzlement scandal at the Downtown Austin Neighborhood Association. And she's a bright and pretty girl. Unfortunately, I don't remember the muscians' names. See, I'm no journalist.

Even though I don't have a picture to show you, I will say that Eartha was amazing. Soft and melodic to screeching in several languages. She sang an African song that would stand up well to Mariam Makeba and she sang a "La Vie en Rose" (after setting the stage by talking about seeing the little sparrow in Paris back in the day) that, if you closed your eyes, you would have thought Edith Piaf was up there. She was sensual, showing us legs and movements someone her age really shouldn't have.

Last night we saw a play at Zach Scott called "I Am My Own Wife." A one person play about a transvestite who survived WWII and communist rule in East Berlin, the story is fascinating even if the facts are in some dispute. I found it a little slow, though. It would have made a better book where pages of exposition could evoke Berlin during all this time. I like Berlin and am intrigued by its history. There is an autobiography I find. This play did win a Tony for best play, though, so my opinion doesn't count, I guess.

We had a couple of guests last night. FFP wanted to go to Jeffrey's after and no one objected. We had some half price appetizers on their late Saturday night happy hour and some expensive drinks (a delicious glass of Bogle Pinot Noir for me) and enjoyed our company.

No arts events planned for today. But this morning it looks like we will go for a cheap Mexican breakfast. Always a good thing to do on Sunday morning in Austin. You know, if you aren't a church goer.

It's the Not Knowing

Yeah. It's the not knowing that drags us along. We can predict certain things, assign them a probability, but we don't know until it all plays out.

My dad's brother died. He didn't recover after we visited him in the hospital. The picture on the right is my dad's family with his parents and all his siblings save the one as yet unborn. Dad is the small, hopeful-looking boy, dwarfed by his brother and older sister and even a bit shorter than his younger sister on his right.

Dad and I were talking about all the unknowns and how it is good not knowing as we drove Monday to the funeral in a little town northwest of Dallas.

Dad has had his eyelid lift since I last posted here. Technically called a blepharoplasty according to the surgeon, what was done was the removal of excess tissue from the eyelid. This excess flesh was pushing his eyelashes against his eyes and generally making his eyes uncomfortable and interfering with his vision. It went rather well. His face was (and still is) bruised but he never had swelling and the incisions have healed nicely. He said he kept thinking he wasn't going to last long enough to make this surgery worthwhile but, after finding it uncomfortable for two years, he just decided to get it fixed. I don't like the idea of cutting and I hate the nurse maid role, but I went along with it. And it has turned out well. Soon the only evidence will be his rather more wide open eyes. The bruising around his eyes has faded leaving bruising around his cheekbones that puts everyone in mind of Kiss makeup. And I guess he'll get Medicare's money's worth and last a while with his better vision and comfort.

We spend a lot of our time planning for the future, doing uncomfortable things for comfort later. We are never sure how it will pan out. We know we will die but not when and the journey until that time can take a lot of turns. August 1 approaches. August 1, 1966 saw a sniper (Charles Whitman) on the UT Tower ending a lot of lives and turning others in directions that hadn't been dreamed of. FFP was on campus that day. He escaped harm. But it would be wrong to say he wasn't changed.

Blogging isn't Progress!

Or is it? It's instructive to look at pictures taken before you were born, isn't it? My sister looks happy, doesn't she? Just kidding. She was always good to me. And she liked having me around, I think.

I have to get that invitation done for my dad's party.

Instead of working on that or working to get the place tidy and organized I spent yesterday in dalliance. (I bet that word isn't used too many times on the WEB today.) Yeah, we went downtown for brunch and walked around, saying 'hi' to other people brunching who we knew. I dozed over a couple of disks from Netflix. (This Indian movie, 'Fire,' was very good.) I'd been neglecting Netflix for reviewing movies for the festival. I also watched the very long 1987 movie 'Cry Freedom' which I'd never seen. I read the entire Sunday newspaper and finished Saturday's, too. Which doesn't mean that there aren't still piles of unread newspapers in these parts.

It was a nice way to spend a day. But not very productive. As the week unfolds, I have appointments and duties. I should have done more yesterday.

My First Year

The original of this photo is on a newly exposed clean part of my desk, stacked among others representing milestones in my dad's life. I have a HUGE desk, by the way, but there is rarely a clean space to work and look at things like this. The desk wraps around me and goes about six feet in two directions. It is 36 inches deep but of course that means some space is wasted in the corner. There are surge protectors, a stack of storage cubes with a TV and cable box on top, a computer, phones, scanner, ink jet, reference books, external hard drive, a cable modem, router, hub and chargers for various batteries. I try to relive the clutter every now and then. There are two keyboard drops and two stacks of drawers. Anyway, there is a little work space at the moment but something will suck something into that area any moment. But I have scanned the little heap of photos into the computer. That is some tiny progress.

This photo was taken during the first year of my life. I don't know what I'm doing. Stretching? Reaching for Momma? She must be taking the picture. Dad seems comfortable holding me but my sister, clutching her doll, seems a little disappointed in the living doll she has received. For the record, that's the shadow of my dad's work shirt collar, not an early evidence of the spiky hair I exhibit occasionally now.

So I am cleaning up. I need to go buy some more archival photo storage sheets and get these back photos filed away. What's that I hear you saying? That things are getting messier faster than I try to clean them up. Ah, well, yes.

My Dad in Pictures

I haven't found any of him as a young kid, but I've captured him in 1941 with Mom. He's about twenty-five.

I have actually been working on the organization and such. I've scanned some pictures for the 'story' of my dad's ninety years. I'd actually scanned this one before and used it on a 'save the date' card I distributed earlier in the year when I reserved a time for his party.

I actually did a couple of other things to get organized, too. I like to keep the disks and instructions for software and gadgets in their original boxes. But they take up so much space that I decided to just fold the outer boxes for some of my stuff into a folder and put the stuff inside. I came across, also in the same closet, my parents' first photo album. It was falling to pieces so I had earlier taken it apart and put each fragile page in an inert plastic sleeve to preserve it.

All that youth and hope. It amazes me to see my parents quite a bit younger than I am. In this picture they are less than half my age! My mother is probably nineteen.

The only question is: will I get organized before I'm ninety years old?

Watch Me Clean Up!

I have this obsession with getting things tidy. I long for clean neat rooms, open space on the desk, neat drawers and closets where you can find everything.

But in the digital age there is more to getting things organized than all the physical stuff. There are all the docs and photos on your computer. Copies and variations and obsolete and useless stuff. With good things scattered about, too.

Then there is that intersection of the physical and the digital. Like the document on my computer that purports to list the contents of my fire safe. And finding a physical photo and thinking "maybe I should scan this into my computer." Where, of course, the picture becomes more clutter.

But I *AM* trying to tidy up. At the same time I'm trying to give some stuff away and get an invitation together for my dad's 90th birthday in a couple of months. But it's hard to get started on it. I'd rather blog. So I thought I'd let you guys follow along.

I started looking through digital files. To tidy them up and to look for pictures of Dad for use in the birthday invitation and maybe to make a slide show for his party. This picture is of the Sony Center canopy in Berlin. It has nothing to do with Dad. I just stumbled on it. It was taken in 2002, I think, on my last trip to Berlin.

Bien moins jaloux de leur survivre

So yesterday was Bastille Day. I was driving home from the club and the local public radio station was playing a rousing version of La Marseillaise with a huge choir and an orchestra. It was long and I wondered if there were really that many choruses. I thought "I bet you can find the words on the WEB."

So this morning, when I was trying to sleep in but FFP and the dog kept waking me up for this and that, I got up, brewed a cuppa in the Capresso and found that about.com had the words. In French and in English. So I settled in for a pleasurable few minutes with my computer and my giant Harrap's French/English dictionary. I realized that I just don't know that much French. That, coupled with my difficulty understanding sung words in any language, has meant that for years I couldn't get past 'Allons enfants.' Which means "Let's go children." Those are the first words.

Before the last refrain there is a strange chorus that is a bit ghoulish. It is all about avenging or dying and it expresses an eagerness to join one's ancestors in death. "Bien moins jaloux de leur survivre." Much less eager to survive them. " Que de partager leur cercueil" Than to share their coffin. Hmm. What an interesting song. And even though I had the translation there I looked up a couple of words in the dictionary. And I remembered using my pocket translator to translate this word in 1989: cerceuil. I was in the hills of Provence near Mougins village in a country inn. I'd gone on a trip with some girlfriends. I'd gone to the village and gotten some papers. An earthquake had devastated the San Francisco area. The paper talked about the double decker freeway collapse in terms of "cerceuils de béton." Coffins of concrete.

Illness and death are on my mind. Who knew the French National Anthem was just going to reinforce it?

I tried to find a picture from Paris that I hadn't shown you. Well, this one was taken in the Musée d'Orsay. They have a giant cutaway of the old Paris opera house and this is a detail of it. I suppose it would have been more appropriate for a rumination about "The Phantom of the Opera." But, oh well.

I made another decision this morning. When we downsize and severely curtail the amount of stuff we are carting through life, I'm going to keep my gaint French/English dictionary. But a lot of stuff I'll just count on looking up on the WEB.

Closing In

The world is an enormous place. Sometimes your little part of it feels like it's closing in, however.

This photo was taken out the hotel window (the Fairmont in Dallas) on our little jaunt up there the other day. My hand and camera look enormous with respect to the buildings. All those offices. People inside. (Well, usually. I think a lot of them might have been empty when I took this.) All those people, everywhere.

FFP and I've been discussing downsizing a lot. The very admission that we need to reverse the acquisitive trend and reduce our stuff and move into a smaller place with less responsibility highlights the general helplessness we all feel as our time winds down.

Yesterday I took my Dad to see his older brother in the hospital. When we arrived a woman from admissions was arranging a small marker board on his chest and snapping a digital picture. It was a VA hospital but I still found it a little shocking. "Can you open your eyes?" she asked. He didn't though. Not for her. He did for my dad. My dad's brother is ninety-two. It looks like he might recover from this pneumonia and move back into his small room at the nursing home. Maybe.

As we headed downtown last night to celebrate a bit for FFP's milestone birthday (we are celebrating the entire month), I got a call that my friend in South Africa had some upsetting news about her cancer. She's been fighting it nine years. Will it finally win?

The reminders of the finiteness of one's life flit around me. The big old world keeps turning...but we may get off at any time. And, if not, a lot of our mates will.

Times Change

This picture was taken on Cole Avenue in Dallas. When I was living nearby (on Abbott St. in Highland Park) there was an upscale (to me) restaurant in a deconsecrated church. Today it's a burger joint. Here it is reflected in the glass facade of a tall building across the street. That wasn't there when I lived there.

My trip to Sherman and Dallas over last weekend and the holiday sure put me in mind of how much things change over several decades. And yet there are glimpses of what was. And even I don't remember the church being a church.