Clear as Glass

Merry Christmas, all.

Hey, it's a quiet, sunny Christmas morning in Santa Cruz. Since Rhumba and I don't have any kiddies nor relatives nearby, this is just going to be another day. Nothing special. Just a day in which we don't have to work, do chores, or be anyplace at any particular time. Nor do anything except please ourselves.

Wait a second... did I say "nothing special?"

Actually, we both have the week off; Rhumba and I bought each other a bathroom remodel this year, so we took a pass on Christmas presents. Thank God. But God's not letting me off that easy...

See, Rhumba's birthday is on the 26th -- tomorrow -- and I couldn't get a clue as to what she wanted. "Oh, I really don't want anything," she told me. But I'm not going down that road. The shoulders of our nation's highways are littered with the gutted bodies of men who actually believed a woman who said, "Oh, don't get me anything."

So I needed to get her something, but I had no guidance. The days ticked by. Still no ideas.

Have I mentioned that I'm a bit on the slow side? I am. I work in stained glass in a small way, making copper-foil-method panels that you can hang in a window. And I was thinking, "I've spending too much time trying to find something Rhumba wants, it's cutting in to my time for making stained glass this week. Gee, I haven't even scoped out my next stained glass project. I'm glad Rhumba likes my stained glass and doesn't mind me hanging it everywhere around the house.

"Gee -- I've never made any stained glass just for Rhumba. Maybe I should make Rhumba a piece of -- STAINED GLASS?" This thought process actually took several days. Have I mentioned that I'm slow?

Anyway, she loved the idea and I'll try to get it done this week. No, there is no "try" in such matters: I will get it done, by the 26th if humanly possible. "Oh, it's okay if it's a few days late," Rhumba said casually. I believe you not, woman. And the birthday cake you said you didn't want is on order, too.

I generally go a little wacky with my stained glass projects; I figure that the world has seen enough stained glass butterflies and angelfish. Why make another? Rhumba, however, is getting a panel with roses. She loves red roses; they're the first thing I ever gave her. But the cats eat 'em. So she's getting roses that the cats can't eat.

And they better not try. Shay and I still talk about the "$200 Burrito:" the time I idly gave one of our cats a bit of the carne asada burrito I was chomping on. It was $200 later after the vets gave him back. Who knows how much the cats could make a piece of stained glass cost me?

Anyway, as a Christmas gift of dubious value to you all, here's a picture of one of my recent stained glass pieces. And ask yourself: why is this man laughing?

Happy day to all,

Boomer

That Obscure Object of Desire

It had been a long Saturday afternoon at St. Bob the Informal's Presbymethertarian Church. In a moment of madness, Rhumba had volunteered to help with the annual Christmas pageant, and this was the appointed time for the dress rehearsal.

I will spare you the gory details, but here is a sort of impressionistic word mural of the proceedings:

Half-a-dozen six-year-olds in sheep suits careening up and down the aisle; a sullen, buxom 13-year-old Mary glowering at her diminuitive, eight-year-old Joseph; two giggling Wise Girls who consistently ignore their cues; an overworked choir master who hasn't read the script yet; little-girl angels twirling in place to the music until they get dizzy and fall over; and St. Bob's bluesy praise band, The Damascus Road Ramblers, rocking out to "Felice Navidad."

There. That's almost as good as being there, isn't it? Trust me.

It had been a forced march to get everyone to the rehearsal; Presbymethertarians and their kids are as over-scheduled as anybody these days. But the sweetener for the deal had been an offer of free pizza after the work was done, courtesy of the Sunday School budget.

The average seven-year-old will wade through molten lava for a slice of pizza. And the average seven-year-old's mom will make that extra effort to get him to Sunday School functions if it means she doesn't have to cook him dinner. And can maybe take care of her own dinner in the bargain. Believe this: It's food that holds a church together, whatever religion. There's good reason why the core religious ritual of Christianity is a meal.

So, after running through the program twice, the kids piled into the wardrobe room, handed over their costumes and streamed straight to the social hall where a stack of eight pizza boxes stood ready.

I had been moping around in the hallway while the kids changed clothing. As somebody's husband, I'd had plenty of gofer jobs to do, but no real responsibility. Which was fine. But as the kids hurtled past, I realized that no adult had yet made it to the social hall. And that 20-plus young children plus eight stacked, boxed, unattended pizzas is an equation for disaster.

I'm slow on the uptake in many ways, but this time my legs made for the social hall at a dead run before my brain even sent the order. I got there just as the first six-year-old started to open the first box.

"I"LL SERVE!" I shouted. "WHO WANTS CHEESE?"

"ME! ME! ME!" There was a forest of hands. Kids are genetically programmed to eat only plain cheese pizza until the age of seven. After which point they might broaden out so far as to eat a slice with pepperoni. Maybe.

I got a couple of boxes open and hurled slices of cheese pizza onto plates for the waiting munchkins. Strangely, the more they ate, the more there seemed to be; the mothers had ordered enough. It was like the miracle of the loaves and fishes, courtesy of Tony and Alba's Pizza. Everything was under control.

Then a high little voice piped: "Can I have the table?"

And a sharp-faced little girl asked, "Can I have it?"

"No!" I snapped. And snatched them up. "Who wants pepperoni?"

No, the kids weren't asking for furniture. The "tables" are white, molded plastic triangles on three legs, perhaps two inches tall. After a cook slides a pizza into a "to go" box, he throws one or two of these things on top of the pie before closing the lid. They prevent the box lid from collapsing on top of the pizza and sticking to the cheese.

And for some reason, if you get a group of kids together for pizza, they'll compete for the table. If you give it to one, the others will bitch and moan about it being "not fair" 'til the end of the meal. The lucky one will monopolize the table and maybe even tease the rest of them about it. If he's not the biggest one in the room, somebody will try to take it from him. It's a mess.

And all for a little piece of plastic that's not even a real toy. I mean, these kids have toys galore at home, PlayStations, anything you can think of. But right here, right now, a dinky little plastic table is the center of their desire. Because everybody else wants it, but only one of them can have it. Having it makes them special. And special is superior. Special gets attention. And to kids, attention is power.

The only way around the table dilemma is to give them to everyone, or give them to no one. We had eight pizzas and eight or ten tables, but 25 kids -- not good enough. So I kept snatching up the tables and sticking them in my pocket. A no-nonsense Sunday School Mom materialized beside me and began serving from the other boxes. She picked up the tables, too. She knew.

Which is how I ended up with a greasy pocketfull of triangular plastic tables. They live on top of my dresser now; the cats like to push them over the edge and watch them drop. The cheap thrills never stop with these things.

It's easy to dismiss this whole table-lust phenomenon as childish behavior. But as an observant man once wrote, the thoughts of children are the thoughts of men written in crude, heavy letters. Children don't have the subtlety of adults, but adults and children all share the same impulses. We all have desires, and, like children, some adults give into theirs recklessly.

A certain number of adults want more than their share of things, just because they want it. Because having it makes them special, superior. And if they can't get what they want -- and if no one's there to prevent them -- they cheat until they do get it. And pretty soon, everybody cheats because there are no rules anymore and they feel they have to cheat just to get anything for themselves at all. It's as if I'd had 25 tables, one for each kid, but stood by passively while three kids grabbed them all.

It's all simple schoolyard behavior -- when the yard duty isn't around to keep things straight. The way I see it, the yard duty on our national playground stepped out for a smoke 25 or 30 years ago, and hasn't been seen since. Wall Street is corrupt, creating worthless securities based on worthless home loans that never should have been made. Corporations are corrupt, even to their own stockholders. The health care industry is killing and cheating people at the same time, and government is controlled by people who think that "every man for himself" is the way to the promised land.

Oh, mama. Franklin Delano Roosevelt has left the building.

But it can't go on forever. If I hadn't beat the kids to the social hall -- if I'd slouched out to the parking lot for some peace and quiet and missed the whole thing -- it is conceivable that they would have spilled most of the pizza onto the floor while jostling to get their pieces first, and further, ground the fallen pieces into the new, expensive church carpet with their little feet. It is also possible that one or two alpha kids could have hogged all the tables and started their own table-based empire complete with haves, have-nots, and a squad of subservient beta bullies to keep order.

But in reality, before it had gotten that bad -- as soon as enough of the kids realized that the stronger kids were getting first crack at the pizza and the tables -- a delegation of less able predators would have run down the hall to find the adults. Who would have come at a run, dressed down the troublemakers, confiscated the tables, made the kids clean up their mess themselves, and send the worst offenders home with no dinner. Then there would be a long lecture about how the rest of them were only getting two pieces each because the others had been dumped on the floor, all because everybody forgot how to share. And no, they weren't allowed to eat the ones that fell on the floor.

There would be more wailing. And grumbling. And sulking. But in the end nearly every child (except the bullies who had been winning) would have accepted it. Because deep down, even the jiggliest, most rambunctious child likes order and security. Wants food, a warm bed, an order to his life that he can depend on. And of course hugs from Mommy and Daddy.

Grown-ups like the same things. Oh, we can fall under the spell of people who tell us that speculation -- in real estate, in stocks, in commodities -- is a sure path to riches, so why invest in society and take care of each other? If somebody doesn't thrive in that opportunity-rich environment, it's on them, right?

But when the real estate markets begin to collapse and the financial instruments that we were told were so strong turn out to be based on fraud, and even our pensions and savings begin to be in danger, and the smooth salesmen who sold us on all these things are nowhere to be found.... well, an oversized house and a couple of expensive cars and an Acapulco condo and fancy electronic toys become unimportant. What does become important is a regular income, reliable health care, old age security, opportunities for the kids. In other words, order and security.

So at some point, a lot of us will start screaming for the adults to come and fix things and punish the bullies and make them share. Who yet knows who these adults are? Maybe we'll invent them.

Maybe -- and here's a hope -- we'll become them.

Walkin' in a Cro Magnon Wonderland

The world became a richer place when PhotoShop was invented. Then bored paper-shufflers could use the office computers to come up with things like this:


My friend Fang, a middle-aged child of the 70s, is a die-hard record-collector. And when I say records, I mean vinyl and nothing but. He roots through boxes and boxes of moldly LPs every week at thrift shops and flea markets. He knows more about certain kinds of popular music than a mortal should. And once a year, he compiles a CD of banal and bizarre Christmas music that he's found in his travels and passes them out to his friends, complete with cover art and liner notes. Needless to say: "Not available in Any Store!"

This year, his theme is "the very first Christmas album ever." And that would be "Christmas Greetings from Thog Crosby," featuring Thog Crosby and the Neander Gals (if you can't read the small type). Featuring timeless Christmas classics like "Chestnuts Roasting on Hot Thing Thog Call 'Fire';" "All I Want for Christmas is Opposable Thumbs;" and the ever-popular "It's Beginning to Look Like Another Ice Age."

From the liner notes: "Anthopologists generally concur that the first Chirstmas song was composed and performed in the fertile cradle of civilization which we now call the Middle East during the Pleistocene Epoch by a Neanderthal named Thog Crosby, accompanied by his band, The Hunter-Gatherers, and backed up by his favorite singers, the Neander Gals. The song Thog composed was titled, "I Discover Fire! Someone Go Find Chestnut."

"Ironically, Thog is also pointed to as the first-ever victim of sectarian violence a few years later. A convention of Homo-Erectus salesment, in town for the annual FireCon show, stoned him to death during a late-show repreise of "Jingle Bell Rock."

And it goes on from there. Fang has seen just a few too many Christmas albums for his sanity. The actual songs on the album range from the cliche (Der Bingle and the Andrews Sisters singing "Here Comes Santa Claus) to the bizarre ("Chipmunks Roasting on an Open Fire") to the amazingly obscure ("Alone at Christmas Time," by the E&E Insurance Players.")

One of the things I love about America is that nobody remembers anything from generation to generation. Tell some sixteen-year-old that Abe Lincoln was president during World War II and fought against Napoleon Bonapart, and he'd probably buy it if you acted confident enough. I like to think of somebody digging up this CD a couple of hundred years from now and, for a briefly and giddy moment, actually believing it.

This is America. Anything's possible. Including bored paper-pushing record collectors who know too much about Christmas music for their own sanity. Thanks for sharing, Fang!

On the Rocks

(I wrote this piece several years ago for another website, but it's as relevant or irrelevant as it ever was to the Christmas/Solstice/Kwanzaa/Hannukah season. Enjoy, I hope. Boomer)

It's the holiday season again. Time to roll out inspirational thoughts about the family of man, about finding God in the world, and about Figuring Out What It All Means.

I was halfway through a column about all that when I realized that I was summarizing Harold Kushner's book "Who Needs God?", and gave up. Kushner does a better job than I ever could; if you want a relationship with God (by any name) but don't feel you can trust organized religion, give Kushner a read. He's got some important things to say.

So I'm writing about the '89 earthquake instead.

Everybody who was in Santa Cruz for the Loma Prieta quake has an earthquake story. No exceptions to that rule. Maybe you were downtown when the quake hit and helped dig survivors out of ruined buildings. Or maybe your chimney collapsed and left a big hole in the living room. Or maybe the old house down the street fell off its foundation and left some friends of yours homeless. Or maybe you remember just how damned weird it felt to stand in long lines for simple things like bottled water.

Me, I remember screaming. Not right at the time, but several days later.

For the first day or so I took the quake in stride. I rushed home and found my second-story apartment in good order, though the supporting pillars that held it off the ground were somewhat out of line. I managed to get phone calls out to my girlfriend in Oakland and my mother in Modesto before the phone lines overloaded. And I helped out a neighbor with disabilities, which took my mind off my own problems.

But the sneaky thing about an earthquake is that it goes on and on. Hurricanes, tornadoes, forest fires -- they all move through quickly. But earthquake aftershocks can continue for weeks, two or three every hour at first. And every time the earth starts to move, everybody in the room goes silent for a moment, thinking "Is this the next big one? Will the building fail this time?" A few days of this can wear you down, no matter how strong you think you are.

Other things started to gnaw on me, too. They say that hysteria spreads like a disease, and I'm here to tell you that it's absolutely true. One loudmouth in our apartment complex was the disease vector: he knew "for a fact" that the building was unsound, that the misaligned posts and beams were unsafe, that the only sane thing was to get in our cars and drive out to the country. Pretty soon we all started to freak, even though everything seemed okay, and the apartment manager said a building inspector had checked the place out. (He might be lying! I didn't trust him!) Where would I go if I lost my place? What would I do?

The quake hit on Tuesday, and by Thursday night I was in moderately bad shape. I felt alone and cut off: I didn't have any friends to hang with in town, work was shut down, I couldn't get out of town or even contact my loved ones easily by phone. I needed some reassurance badly, or at least the presence of fellow humans. So I went down to the old Saturn Cafe on Mission Street, which had just reopened.

The place was packed, I think with a lot of people who felt just like me. I ordered and ate a Chocolate Madness, but sometimes even chocoalte doesn't help much. Then I ran into Lisa and Brian, a young married couple from work. They gave me a big hello and asked how I was holding out. I told them the truth -- not very well -- and the next thing I knew they'd pulled me into a group hug. I'm not much of a hugger, but once they had me I didn't want to let them go.

But we did break it up eventually, and I felt a little better; good enough to have a lump in my throat and get a little teary-eyed, anyway. But I still wasn't great, and Lisa and Brian jointly proclaimed that I would feel better if I somehow let out all of my tension and fear. Specifically, by heading down to the ocean's edge. To scream.

I was up for it. I was up for anything that might help. So I thanked them, got in my car and motored carefully over to West Cliff Drive.

For those of you who've never visited, much of the Santa Cruz shoreline consists of low cliffs that tumble down to meet the sea in a jumble of rocks, narrow beaches, and sea caves. At intervals, staircases allow a safe climb down to the beach or rocks, though plenty of impatient folks take more ad-hoc paths downward that lead right by signs that read "Warning" and "Danger". West Cliff Drive runs along the top of the cliffs. There are very few buildings on the ocean side of West Cliff; mainly there is a bicycle/pedestrian path and little spits of land where you can step off from the path a ways for a fine, 270-degree view of the sea and shore.

I walked out to such a view point for my privacy, to be as far from the street as I could. But it didn't really matter; it was 10 pm and West Cliff was deserted. What did matter was that the sound of the surf was loud that night at the cliff's edge; if I screamed 'till blood dribbled from my ears, no one would hear me.

The night sky was overcast; sky and ocean together made one seamless, black, roaring void; the only thing to see was the phosphorescent froth of mighty waves breaking on the rocks below.

And in the midst of all that noise and chaos and isolation, the steady beat of a drum drifted up from the shore. Somebody was down there in the rocks with a lightweight hand drum.

I could hear him, even guess his general direction; but I couldn't locate him. The drumbeat was clear, but not particularly loud; he could have been right beneath me, or a hundred yards down the shore. I had no chance of seeing him in that blackness, even if I knew where to look.

I decided to go ahead and scream. It probably wouldn't bother him much, and I wanted to get this over with. But as I nerved myself up to let go, the whole idea started to seem artificial and self-conscious. Why would a scream make me feel better? It wasn't like I was repressing anything that I needed to let out. I knew exactly why I felt miserable. Still, I was here; the ocean was there. I screamed.

My first scream was strangled, ugly, small. The surf sound swallowed it up and ate it. My second try was louder but still ugly, the wordless cry of someone in pain; well, that was right, wasn't it? My third try was the same, but more full-bodied. I began to hit my stride.

Can't say I felt any better, but I did notice one thing: the drumbeat from the beach was no longer steady. Every time I screamed, the unseen drummer sped up his rhythm; his drumbeat grew louder, wilder, more primal. When I paused to catch my breath after a few screams, the drumbeat quieted a little. And when I began to scream again the drum shouted along with me.

The drummer was accompanying me. Suddenly, screaming seemed less like an empty exercise and more like something that really helped. Because someone I couldn't see was screaming along with me -- maybe because he felt that way himself, maybe because he understood and wanted to help.

When my throat finally went hoarse and every scream hurt like salt on a raw wound, I -- still didn't feel great. But I knew I had the strength to carry on, because I wasn't alone. If I could come out to West Cliff in the middle of the night with my problems and receive offerings of help from a total stranger, then I knew I never would be alone.

And if you were in Santa Cruz for the quake of '89, you know that after the shock wore off, everyone in town helped one another without question or hesitation, be it a friend or acquaintance or stranger, whenever there appeared to be a need. We pulled together. We made it through.

So when my voice was nearly gone, I screamed a thank you to my unseen benefactor and walked back to the car. And behind me, the drummer on the rocks beat out a calm and mellow benediction.

May you and your loved ones find strength in each other for the coming year, and in all the years to come. And may we as a community and as a nation someday remember how to pull together, and not apart. How much stronger and better and happier we will be on that shining day.

An Invisible Christmas

Invisibility is the great lube gun of civilization. Some aspects of life -- things that are unavoidable, cruel, and unfair -- are just too gritty to think about every day. So we make them invisible. We put them off the beaten path. And then we don't think about them, ever. Makes the gears of our lives mesh more smoothly, Like a good lube job.

Apropos of all that: when was the last time you actually noticed a convalescent home? Driftwood Health Care, Cresthaven Nursing Home, Maple House, all the rest? They're all out there on major streets across Santa Cruz, Capitola, Live Oak, and beyond. There's usually a discrete sign, a parking lot, and a large, low building that attempts -- but fails -- to look like an oversized tract home.

And your eyes slide right over them without registering anything -- I know mine do -- and if I asked you to steer me to a convalescent home, the odds are that you couldn't do it. They're not meant to be noticed, unless you need them. And you hope you never do.

Because these places are where people go to wait to die when their bodies and brains give out. And some of them wait for death a very long time without any dignity except what the staff and their families -- if they come around -- have time to give them. It's grim, and it could happen to any of us. And it'll probably happen to a lot of us.

Oh, by the way: Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to all! Do I have the Christmas spirit, or what? But in a way, I am writing about Christmas spirit, because once every year or so Rhumba and I join a jolly crowd from St. Bob the Informal's Presbymethertarian Church and sing Christmas Carols at a few convalescent homes. Spent all Saturday afternoon going from home to home.

As always, our leader is Rudolph. Rudolph is not exactly an extrovert; he spends his days testing software. He learned the accordion late in life, and he own several. And yes, he's our accompanist. He's also the master of ceremonies, and he's no better or worse at it than a somewhat introverted man should be.

And yet Rudolph finds it in himself to visit rest homes every week of the year. He holds services; he tries to comfort the people that the rest of us don't think about. While I get out there once a year, at most. So, I'm going to shut up now about Rudolph.

Rudolph led our musical convoy from St. Bob's over to Happy Acres, and from there on to Silver Sunset Manor, and finally over to Flotsam Convalescent. Convalescent homes are all different, and yet they're all the same. They contain a great many people who've almost forgotten how to be people. Or worse -- they do remember, but can't talk or move the shell of unresponsive flesh they live in.

So at every stop those who could sit in a wheelchair would be rolled into the common area to hear us sing. Some of them rolled themselves; in fact, at Happy Acres a few of the guys decided that this sh*t wasn't worth their time and rolled themselves outside for a smoke.

A convalescent home audience would seem to be a tough crowd. It's not clear that most of them know that you're there, or why they're there. There are slack faces with eyes that stare without focus. There are aged women -- almost always women, at that age -- who look as if they could say something or pay attention if they had even an ounce of energy to spare. And there are those attention seems completely and utterly monopolized by the wallpaper.

And yet... as Rudolph swung us into "Jingle Bells" and through "Frosty the Snowman" and on into "Silent Night.." something happened. Patients started to sing along, or at least say the lyrics quietly to themselves Some of them were clearly with us in this world 100 percent; they smiled at the choir, and beat time.

Others... not so much. The blank staring eyes did not focus, the facial muscles did not tighten with recognition. But as the familiar words flowed past them, a few began to move their lips. Somewhere in the dim crevasses of their minds there was recognition, and response. Music has such a power to stir people, even those who seem beyond any stimulus. Rhumba thinks music is to humans is what the cries of the pack are to wolves, or dolphins, or apes: not just a means of communication, but sounds and tones which evoke a time and a place and an emotion. Christmas music, she tells me, evokes the memory of a gathering of the tribe, and a remembrance of belonging to that tribe.

Yes, their facial muscles remained slack; their eyes remained fixed on the ceiling tiles; yet their mouths said the words, perhaps evoking ancient Christmases in their minds: gifts that they opened decades ago, long-vanished trees garlanded with spectral popcorn, parents and friends since lost to time. But now all back for the moment, as long as the old music, the old words, boomed through the rec hall along with Rudolph's plucky accordion.

I began to understand this as we packed up our act and traveled from one home to the next, and as my back began to ache from hours of standing still on concrete floors. (I'm still paying for that, by the way.)

At our last stop, at Flotsam, we went into a private room to sing a few songs for an elderly clergyman struck down by Parkinson's Disease. Most of the choir had known his well before his illness and greeted him personally. Parkinson's doesn't affect your mind; apparently he understood everything that went on around him. But he could not move, and he could not talk. His mouth gaped open like that of some large fish. The disease had pinned one arm tight across his chest. It jerked rhythmically, endlessly, as if it were trying to free itself.

He was clergy, so we skipped "Jingle Bells" and went straight for the old Christmas carols. As we sang his expression changed not a bit -- it couldn't. But his arm started to relax. Its jerking motion slowed. And when we got to Silent Night, his arm fell still. The old carols, the old words, have their power: to evoke memory, response, a feeling of what life is supposed to be. And for a few minutes, they gave him that feeling again, and challenged briefly the power of Parkinson's.

I almost didn't want to stop singing, as long as it meant that his arm would remain motionless. It's a funny thing, to judge the worth of your actions by the stillness of an old man's arm. But it was true.

In the end we did leave the room, and sing our last concert to the other residents. Throats raw and feet aching, the other Presbymethertarians went back to St. Bob's for Costco cookies and instant cocoa. But Rhumba and I peeled off and drove back to the Cruz down East Cliff.

Where East Cliff swings down alongside Twin Lakes Beach, we saw a circle of figures in Santa Claus suits out on the sand. They were performing some sort of ritual in the clear, dim light of evening. A video cameraman lurked nearby. Maybe it was performance art, I don't know. And I don't care. To each his own, and to each his own Christmas. Whatever you do, make it one to remember. Because that's going to be important, down the line.