Blogger and I are Having a Trial Separation

After pulling out too much hair over working with this blog site I'm switching over to wordpress.com. As soon as I set up a new blog site with wordpress I'll publish the new link. See you soon!!!

Meanwhile, you can try out the new site at
http://toccatamundi.wordpress.com/

Let me know how you like it.

Making Peace Through Golf

Every year here in SeniorLand our street and the neighboring street celebrate the 4th of July by spreading it out over at least 3 days. The first event is the GOLF TOURNAMENT. I will try to explain this grudge match and how I got involved. Believe it or not, I was drafted! Not because I was going to be an asset--oh no--but because I was the worst player that could be found who lived on the street and didn't mind public humiliation.

Last year a new resident, not knowing the chiseled in stone rules for the tournament, asked a friend who did NOT live on our street to be his partner. This friend just happened to have a 3 handicap. Big surprise! They won! The win was contested--of course it was! The upshot was that the big prize of $36 split 4 ways was carried over and added to this year's winning team's purse. An unfortunate grudge developed between the neighbor who had to forfeit his First Place and his neighbor who was accustomed to taking First Place but didn't because of the ringer. Sigh......

So, this year the newer neighbor was on top of the 'hood politics. He asked moi to be his partner thus guaranteeing a probable last place showing and giving his neighbor no more cause not to speak to him. I agreed and comforted my coming embarrassment by buying a really cute pink golf outfit, pink vest, pink socks, 2 pink golf balls, getting an entire new hair style and fresh highlights.

These tournaments have some weird rules--all involving math, best ball, gender, distance from pin and how old your grandmother was when she died. I never did figure out whose turn it was, whose ball was being played, where I was to put my ball or how anyone could keep score.

All I know that the 4 person team was required to use one of my tee shots as THE tee shot on at least one hole in the tournament. They were running out of holes to play when there was a group vote and my tee shot was offered up to satisfy the Rules God of Golf. The only shot I actually remember was sinking one putt that seemed to count for the good of the team.

The winners were announced the next night at the Neighborhood Party. "My" team came in 3rd from last. Unfortunately, there was a 3-way tie for next-to-the last. Even more unfortunately, the grudge-holding neighbor was on one of those teams. So, the double-money First Prize went to someone new and the grudge continues. Oh well--there's always next year.

Golf, Choirs and Jumping Out of Swings

I've taken a break from worrying about my favorite topic (body/soul dichotomy) in order to worry about a physics problem related to golf. I've grappled with this dilemma since I was a freshman in college taking "Physics for Music Majors." You can imagine the level of physics in that class!

Actually, it was taught by the chairman of the department and I know the poor man tried so hard to reach us on any level. He dressed up as a gorilla for the first class; he filled a balloon with something and set it on fire so we got to see a suspended ball of fire; he would spin the rotating lecture area around and around like a carousel just because we would applaud that particular stunt. But he might as well have been speaking a foreign language.

 It wasn't made easier that he also sang bass in the University Choir and I sat either in front of him or next to him. (Basses and altos are on the same side in a choir) We soon got past that awkwardness by never, ever mentioning anything to do with science.

You might wonder where this is going. Well, one of the questions the prof asked us in lecture was this: when you throw a ball up in the air does it have a moment at the top of the toss when the ball is neither moving up nor down? I missed the rest of the lecture because I was transported into my rich interior life where a ball goes up and down.

Of course it doesn't stop--nothing can defy gravity. That's why it's called the LAW of gravity! Something is either going up or it's coming down--no suspension of the LAW of gravity for anything. Now, hang in here with me.

 I refer all such heavy topics to Mr T who majored in physics and is the ultimate authority on all things to do with science/math. He told me that there actually IS a point at the top of the ball toss when the ball is NOT MOVING UP OR DOWN.

Reality crumbled for me briefly. I couldn't swing the club. All I could do was focus on stopping the club at the top of my swing. There I was--forever frozen at the top of my back swing. What to do??

So, last Friday at Golf Clinic, Johnny the Pro was pointing out that my back swing is slow and I pause before beginning my downswing. In fact I believe he pointed out I had time to read Gone With The Wind by the time I actually got around to making contact with the ball. He said there should be no time between the back swing and the downswing.
http://toccatamundi.blogspot.com/2009/06/if-its-friday-it-must-be-golf-clinic.html

Enter Lady Pro. I begged her for help. I begged her to give me an example that I could relate to. I pleaded with her not to give me any sports analogies. She thought about it. She did not use the word 'hozzle.'


She simply said, "Did you ever jump out of a swing?"

YES!! YES!! I've done that!

"Do you remember that brief moment at the top of the swing arc when you 'knew' it was the moment to jump out?"

YES!! YES!! I remember that!

"Then that's the moment on your back swing when you start your hips moving with the downswing right behind."

That was beautiful. I understood. I can't do it but I understand! Right now I'm at the place where I bring the club back, think of my old physics professor, remember singing in the University Choir, jumping out of swings, forget to move my hips first, then take a whack at the golf ball. Progress is being made!

A Local Multiverse

Vineyards. Old Churches. Abandoned train depots. Train tracks that no longer go anywhere. Sonoma is a very old, well-preserved town. You could fool yourself that it might be 1911.
But don't look too closely behind the carefully landscaped wineries to see the state of the art machinery that puts out 300,000 bottles(?) barrels(?) gallons(?) of wine a year. Giovanni the old winemaker isn't there--but there's a wing of chemists and professionally trained tasters.

Did you know that the roses planted so carefully along the edges of the vineyards are not to please the tourists? They use roses much the same way miners used canaries in coal mines:  the first nasty mold, virus or plague to come near the precious vines will be picked up first by the roses.

Look closer and you will see train tracks running everywhere but going nowhere.

The depot has graffiti and is now used to store pesticides. The nostalgia for all things trains can send one spiraling down pretty quickly--good thing the Irish Pub is close by.

A new discovery today was an old pump organ in the local Congregational Church.

My years working for churches stood me in good stead as I easily found the weak link in the security system and was able to uh, gain entry and snap some quick photos of a once-grand instrument that is now replaced by a piano. At least it was a real piano and not some appliance that pretends to be a piano.

Dang but it gets harder and harder to sort out the fake from the real. Parallel worlds--a Multiverse indeed.

Hey! You! Get Offa Mah Cloud

I take my technical continuing education seriously so when Amazon began the hard sell with its 'cloud' I was curious. After all, cloud sounds like such a nice concept. I was promised 5 somethings of free storage and if I bought even 1 MP3 album and put it on this cloud I could have 20 somethings free storage. Now, I don't understand a word of this but I knew something had to be done about storing some music for our RV trips.

Let me back up. My 12 loyal readers will know that I have suffered with a POS Dell laptop for 4 long years. It was born a lemon and it stayed a lemon with no recompense from Dell and left me with a lifelong determination to badmouth all things Dell for the rest of my days. I taunt you, you Dell people--your mothers are hamsters and your fathers smell of elderberries!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QSo0duY7-9s&feature=related

Our last RV trip to Arizona left something to be desired in the music department.
http://toccatamundi.blogspot.com/2011/02/music-left-behind.html

So---when I read about keeping music on a cloud and being allowed to play that music from a total of 8 'devices', I thought I should pursue this.To sweeten the deal, Amazon went through a mad spree of giving away FREE MP3 downloads--if they went onto the cloud.



The cloud is like a TV--you don't have to understand it to use it. The free part I don't believe but all the free music was too much to ignore. Then they added the hook to sweeten the deal--the entire opera Don Giovanni for just $2.98!!!! That gave me my 20 somethings of storage for an entire year at no charge!

Now add a new laptop. Yes, the POS Dell is history and I'm trying out a new Sony Vaio. All the cloud settings have to be reset. In the midst of doing this I saw that Amazon was giving away a FREE album of Gregorian Chant. Somehow, I ended up with the new computer playing--I kid you not--simultaneously--a Bach Brandenburg Concerto, "Blessed Assurance"( free daily MP3 download) and the Gregorian Chant FREE album I was trying to upload to that cloud. I couldn't find any OFF button for the cloud. I could pause it but there would still be 2 of the 3 pieces going at once. Mr. T was practically begging for "Whiskey Lullaby."

I never did solve the problem. I had to turn everything off and don't dare go back to my cloud to see what is happening. Speaking of clouds, I will tell you more about this recent trip up to see the giant coastal redwoods. It has not been our finest hour.

Good Taste Above All Else

In the midst of trying to plan a 3 week RV trip and Mr. T deciding retirement wasn't exactly what he had in mind when he retired last year, Mah Mama had a small stroke. She is living in Assisted Living which is yet to become assisted living so I am keeping a closer watch on how she is doing. (They took in residents with the promise it was only a few weeks from being fully credentialed for assisted living and that was 5 months ago!) I don't want my blogging to turn into a depressing chronology of trying to provide care for an aging parent with dementia but it might. Unfortunately, there's not much humor in dementia and watching the sad decline of a loved one--but Ah Declar'--mah Mama found it.

I'd called doctors, gotten ignored, sat in the ER for hours, treated by doctors who looked barely out of Junior High, rounds of tests, etc. The medical conclusion is "nothing can be done" which might be true but not what I want to hear. I hired a caregiver to come in each day just to make sure Dah Mama gets her meds and to take her down for at least one meal. DM can find her way to the dining room--she just usually finds her way there at two in the morning.

Anyway....I was helping her get dressed and we were doing pretty well. (Translation: she agreed to put on the clothes) But then we got to the shoes! I had pulled out some white sandals that I know don't hurt her feet. 

STOP THE TRAIN! No, she was not going to put her bare feet into sandals--she wanted to wear hose. I talked her out of that by convincing her that it was acceptable to just wear sandals in May. Okay, that might be alright--she didn't think she'd run into anyone she knew anyway. 

STOP THE TRAIN!! Daughter! What are you doing? Those are White Sandals!  Yes, Mama, they are indeed.

But Daughter, is it after Easter???? I simply will not wear White Shoes before Easter!

Now how can someone have dementia when they can remember one of the first rules of dressing like that? True, she didn't know Easter was the week before but hot damn! she remembered not to wear white shoes until afterwards. Things are not as far gone as I thought. 

Toc Is Reprimanded Yet Again

A refresher about my last encounter with the gardeners back in 2008.
http://toccatamundi.blogspot.com/2008/02/hall-monitors.html

A tree is ailing at my mother's condo. The Wandering Neighborhood Gestapo (WNG) makes its daily rounds under the guise of environmentalism. What they really do is check and see if any resident has dared plant a new plant without filling out the forms, submitting a request to the Architectural Committee, and getting approval--which is never granted.

Like the rest of the country, the HOA is feeling the financial pinch and there isn't a lot of money for new landscaping on any scale. I feel my mother's property has gotten the short end of the stick in the communal landscaping general plan so I offered to pay and plant APPROVED plants on her property.

I WAS TURNED DOWN!!

It seems that if people are allowed to use their own money then someone might have a condo that looks better than someone else's! Did these small-potatoes terrorists take on-line classes at the Lenin Landscaping and Annoying Everyone site??? I offered to buy a few rhododendrums, azaleas and other "matching" plants and plant them myself. Apparently this would mean I would be violating the egalitarian nature of the HOA! I wouldn't be offering to do this if the property didn't already looked like the poor stepchild. Logic is useless with this crowd.

All this is prelude to reporting that I dared to speak to the traveling iSpies doing their snooping. I saw that the owner of the Landscaping Company was accompanying them on their rounds and I wanted to ask about the tree in distress. The poor man was obviously cowed by the Committee because he pretended not to understand English and answered "No habla Ingles" in the most awful Spanish ever uttered. Sigh.....bullies are the same everywhere and they had him by the delicate parts.

I must admit I called out from the deck that I knew he spoke English and that he looked as Mexican as Prince William. By now the WNG was getting loaded for bear.

Sure enough, a week later I got a letter from their lawyers threatening me with liability if any of the gardeners quit and reminded me that I had already been warned not to speak to any of the gardeners.

I guess they didn't get my response about my First Amendment rights.
I wonder if Home Depot has any rhododendrons in yet?

The Role of Community Organizers

"Now the chief priests and the elders persuaded the people to ask for Barabbas and destroy Jesus." 
--Mt 27:20

"And the crowd came up and began to ask Pilate to do as he was wont to do for them. And he answered them, "Do you want me to release for you the King of the Jews?"

For he perceived that it was out of envy that the chief priests had delivered him up.

But the chief priests stirred up the crowd to have him release for them Barabbas instead. And Pilate again said to them, "Then what shall I do with the one whom you call the King of the Jews?"

And they cried out again, "Crucify him."  
--Mk 15: 8-13



March 18, 2011

The desert is a place that dreams go to die. The ruins of someone’s attempt to make a living in the middle of the miles of sand and big blue rocky mountains litter the desert everywhere. There’s nothing ‘soft’ about the desert—anything living there bites, stings or scratches. It’s an unforgiving place.



Traveling through the dry rocky hills and the gravelly land that barely supports a bit of grass and a quick blaze of wildflowers in the spring has little appeal for most folk. But oh what a different story is told by those who have been bitten by the desert bug—to them the desolation seems a sleeping opportunity only waiting for the dreamer to bring his earth-changing visions to the desert and transform the dusty, gritty Mojave into a miracle, a Garden of Eden, a total transformation because of a “unique and great” plan.

But it never happens. Driving through the desert you can see ruin after ruin of dead dreams. Shacks, adobe, rocks, boards—anything that would make a dwelling. There are ruins of old barns, corrals and doomed wells. Along the edges of the first two original Route Sixty-sixes you can find old car parts, cans, the occasional coin and even the rusted stays from the women’s corsets. (The first dream the women abandoned was the hourglass figure—corsets were too hot so they were tossed by the side of the road to rot away—except the stays, dozens and dozens of rusting metal stays—they’re still out there in odd little patterns.)

Mr. T and I are desert rats. I was raised on the desert and learned to be both respectful and wary of the lure of the Mojave. The beauty of the desert imprinted early in my soul. I also learned how easy it would be to lose my bearings out there and learned early on the landmarks that marked my child’s world. (This would never happen today but my cousin and I from the age of 6 on were told our boundaries were that we had to be able to see my aunt’s garage roof from the highest hill we could climb. That was it! And off we went for hours at a time! Compared to today’s shackled children, our world was very large.)

My godfather was an early Canadian environmentalist-turned-painter-turned gold miner who happened to marry my well-heeled Bluebook godmother and brought her West. (She was promptly disinherited by her family—smash that dream!) My grandmother was teaching school in Richmond, Virginia, in 1921 when my grandfather who worked for the Santa Fe Railroad sent her a letter asking her to marry him—he enclosed a one-way train ticket to Ludlow, Arizona, because his dream of making a new life included her. She went. Eventually she found herself living in Barstow, CA, with her neighbor being the woman who would eventually be my godmother. I can’t imagine that they were living out the dreams they might have had as young girls.

Even the monks could not make the dream of a desert monastery come true. Ten years of living in military cast-off metal portable “buildings” and battling the heat, wind and isolation eventually drove them to the mountains. More ruins added to the desert’s ongoing collection.


Everywhere you look, it’s just more evidence of someone’s dream that died. I wonder what happened to the bearers of all those dreams. They left no clues—just the detritus they couldn’t take with them when they finally gave up and moved on like the hundreds before them. Uncle Jack always thought the “Big Strike” was just one hill over. But it never was so he’d paint a picture, sell it, and that would grubstake his meanderings for a bit longer. I’m glad my grandfather didn’t live long enough to see the passenger train service evaporate for the railroads. He wouldn’t have believed it. He always thought the desert was his dream come true since he was lucky enough to be employed during the Great Depression and could provide for his family.

My desert dreams that have died have been mostly dreams that stayed in my imagination. The pull is still strong so we pack up the RV and hit the road. I’m my most comfortable out in the remote shadows of towns that are still holding on—but I’ve seen too much. I prefer to leave my desert dreams in my head and so I have the possibility of some of them turning out to be success stories rather than risk calling them into existence only to leave one more set of bones cluttering up the desert floor.

But when we park the RV, I put on my hiking boots, stuff camera gear in my vest, arm myself with a walking stick and slap a hat on my head that says The Crowbar I can still catch that whiff of a desert dream that just might materialize over the next hill.

And Now for Something Completely Different

The Desert Golfing Outting Experience falls in the category of "I'm glad I did that one time." I opted to play 3 of the 4 days of the trip. Remember, I haven't ever played 18 holes on a full-sized golf course--and I think these courses were 'supersized.'

The first thing I noticed was that people here have a real rattlesnake fettish. Either they really do have more snakes than in "our" desert or they just love putting up rattlesnake warning signs. Johnny the Pro had warned us to bring plenty of golf balls because we would not want to waste time trying to find our balls in the rough. Well no kidding, shinola!!! What they call the rough is a canyon, arroyo, wash whatever you want to call it and it's filled with cactus. Being good green golfers they don't have water hazards--they substitute canyons, washes, arroyos filled with things that sting, bite, kill, scratch and snag.

I brought 50 golf balls with me--no problem, just pick them up from my backyard. I'm going home with fewer than 20. I also snagged my new pink golf pants and vest on the ever-present cholla. In fact, they even have a hanging cholla and a cholla that flings its needles at you! I never knew golf could be so fraught with danger.

And this was not the laid-back golf of SeniorLand. Oh no--this was "Hurry Up! Hurry Up! You're slowing down play" kind of golf. Well paint me gray and call me a jackass but we are all grandparents and playing these treacherous holes for the first time. It was rather stressful golf--not much time for taking photos--but driving the golf cart was fun.

The roadrunners came right up to our tables and the javelenas rooted around our patios. The company was great and tolerated having me, the miserable beginner in their midst. Everyone was very encouraging but no one was particularly interested in hearing my theory of the Corelation between the Decline of Western Democracy and the Adoption of the Golf Handicap theory. Maybe next time.......

The Music Left Behind

It is not a good idea to go on an extended RV trip and discover that the only songs left on one’s dying laptop are 1) Close Up the Honkeytonks, 2) Yesterday’s Wine, 3) Whiskey Lullaby, and 4)Angels We Have Heard On High. (You know what else is aggravating? Having Word 2003 tell you that honkeytonk is two words! Gimme a break!)

Given the limited repertoire it means that we have listened to Whiskey Lullaby about 17 times in 36 hours. That plus the heavy rain and cold is contributing to a group wrist-slashing atmosphere. Dang—but that is one of the most depressing songs to ever come out of Mama, God and Country music. If we had internet access we could download a few more upbeat songs—like “Murder’s Been Committed Down on Music Row.”

At the next big city—which will be Quartzsite, Arizona—we might need to score some band width and download a little more varied selection of songs.

Quartzsite is the Mecca for RVers. You can't believe it--you have to experience it. Last week as it concluded the annual RV Fair and Gathering, the estimate was that about one million RVers passed through a town that has 2 stop lights and one real house.
 

We woke up this morning to sunlight and the sparkling blue water of Lake Havasu. We were suffering from the "No Room at The Inn" Syndrome when we pulled into Cat Tail Cove in the dark and pouring rain. The RV was so cozy and we had enough solar to run our lights. But other than that, we were dry camping in a parking lot.
 
 
 

As we cruised down Highway 95 in Arizona along the Colorado River we were once again reminded how thirsty California is. It's not as much fun being a Californian as it used to be. We've pretty much blown all our street cred and seem to be looking for more ways to self-destruct ASAP. We saw many self-haul trucks towing small cars and they were all heading just one way--out of California.
 

Now, as I peel yet one more orange from the RV park in Bakersfield I can't seem to get those words out of my head--She put him out, like the burnin' end of a midnight cigarette......We have got to get another song!!!