Fragile Industries

Sunday Morning O.J.

Interviewed yesterday by the LA Times, O.J. Simpson protests his most recent legal woes, under suspicion for armed robbery in Las Vegas:

"I don't hang out with gangsters, I hang out with golfers."

Grandma's Dishes

After 16 years of hauling around this enormous (122 pieces!) set of Franciscanware Desert Rose china, I'm selling it on eBay.  A representation of just a few of the 30 serving pieces is to the left. It's my first step (and an unexpectedly laborious one) towards stripping away the STUFF.  The stuff in the garage that remains in unopened boxes since my move here two years ago is a good start -- if I haven't needed it in two years, I don't need it.  The cake stands.  The old drapes.  Useless Kitchen Stuff: the breadmaker, juicer and lots of deep fryers.  I'm hanging on to: my beloved 1954 Wedgewood stove, big as a 1954 Buick and with more chrome -- I don't care where I move next as long as I can use that stove; my collection of 40 eggbeaters; the old blown-glass Christmas decorations; two beautiful huge rugs (I will rip out any wall to wall in my next residence so I can walk on these again).  That's it.  Everything else, damn the sentiment, is going.

These dishes were a blessing and a curse.  They belonged to my father's mother.  Grandma -- wow, where to start? -- was a character.  She too was a blessing and a curse, depending on who you were.  She was a feisty, independent woman with little education, who defied her deeply Catholic Italian immigrant family and divorced her sullen, alcoholic husband in her early '30's.  Then she set out to make a living for herself and her adored only son, Tony, my father.  She went through beauty training -- "I sweated bullets, honey," she said to me once about the difficulty of going back to school, barely knowing how to read -- and graduated to become a hairdresser, which she continued to do well into her 80's, with a 1930's style.  "I was the best in my class in finger waves," she said modestly.  She did my hair in a perfect marcel -- pure Jean Harlow -- in the '70's the afternoon before I went to a Bette Midler concert.  She didn't know it was camp.  Her other attempts on my hair (The Perm From Hell) were less pleasing to me, but perfect for her aging clientele. 

She was the ultimate Italian Mother, devoted to Tony with a frightening intensity.  When I went through Daddy's photographs after he died, there were at least 20 or more professional portraits of her with her son from the age of 4 to 40, posed more as lovers than as mother and son, cheek to cheek, romantic lighting.  I looked at these and said to my mother, who was helping me clear out his place, "It's a good thing neither of them read much Greek tragedy."  When my mother entered my dad's life (she was 18, he was 24), Grandma went with them on the first date and sat between them in the front seat of his car.  Mom should have read the signs.

Here's a wedding photo.  Note how Grandma is poised between them, tilting her head to edge in even further and force my mother into an unnatural position.  That remained the pattern though their marriage.  Grandma never liked my mother and made her life hell for nine years.  Now when I came along, her only grandchild, I was treated like visiting royalty.  She spoiled me rotten, and would have tried to poison me against my mother after my parents' divorce, but my mother finally put her foot down.  It was the first time I saw Mom, a gracious and unassertive woman, enraged.   She was quiet but firm, and was trembling while she held me and confronted Tony about his mother's meddling.  I didn't understand the reason for her rage, and it made a huge impression -- it's one of my earliest memories.

After that, all was well with our relationship.  I knew Grandma could be a dragon lady, but she always treated me with love, that bottomless Italian abbodanza of adoration for grandchildren.

Here I am at about 4 in her lap, wearing an atrocious black eyelet dress with a hot pink petticoat and yards of pink ribbon threaded through the holes.  A gift from Grandma, who thought black was fine for toddlers.  This was the single time my mother let me wear it on the street.

So of course, she wanted me to be the recipient of her most prized possession, her enormous collection of Desert Rose China.  It was the one luxury this thrifty woman allowed herself.  She well knew the value of a dollar, and had scrimped and saved to buy a sweet Craftsman bungalow in Pasadena.  She was canny enough to buy a house with extra bedrooms, and rented them out to students attending Pasadena City College a short distance away.  Even in her last years, she was proud of her ability to earn and save every penny, take every advantage.  She never had a checking account or invested her money in anything other than a passbook savings account at Pasadena Mutual Bank, swiping all their ballpoint pens on every visit.  Everyone in the family had hundreds of them.  She also stole sugar packets and silverware from restaurants.

Even so, she and her sister Mae spent nearly every Saturday through the '50's taking the long bus ride to Atwater and the Gladding-McBean factory, which made Franciscanware for half a century. It's still manufactured in England, but is far inferior than the original Californian product.  She'd buy as much in the Desert Rose pattern as she could carry home in her lap, and had a silent competition with her sister in acquisition of the best deals, the greatest quantity, the most unique serving pieces.  Often, she'd gaze proudly at the collection displayed behind the built-in glass cabinets in the dining room, and say to me, "Honey, someday all this will be yours."  I was torn.  I knew Grandma loved the pattern, but it was never me.  I'm just not a pink person.  Why not Apple, or Ivy?  Desert Rose was the most popular pattern of its time, perhaps of all time.  For once in her life, Grandma was in the mainstream.  Everyone's mother or grandmother had a set.  But Grandma won, she had the most.  Dinner service for 12, even though I never remember more than 6 people in her home at a time.  And only used on holidays -- the rest of the time, we ate spaghetti off Melmac she probably got free in boxes of detergent.  Not only dinner plates, but salad plates, bread and butter plates, teacups, three kinds of bowls, and funny crescent shaped dishes to sit next to the dinner plates, harking back to the Victorian tradition of a separate plate to hold discarded bones.  I doubt she knew their purpose, I certainly never saw them used.  A baby plate for me.  Then there are the serving pieces, enough to hold food for a crowd, say the Italian Army.  Again, not just the usual set of salt and pepper shakers and single platter.  Tureens, turkey platters, fancy tiny open roses for individual butter pats (she used them as ashtrays), every kind of divided dish and platter offered in the pattern, celery dishes, giant water pitcher...  yep, she won.

Grandma died in 1990 at the age of 85. (In an eerie link to their weird karmic bondage, Daddy died ten years later to the day.)  This is the last picture of her, taken weeks before her death, the two of us on the same porch thirty years after the above picture.  (And I'm still badly dressed.)    I loved her dearly and was sad to see her go, sadder for the emotional devastation her death wreaked on my father.  Her bequest, the dreaded Desert Rose, was shifted to the attic of her house where Daddy lived for nearly all the rest of his life.  When Daddy moved to assisted living, there was nothing for it, I had to take the dishes home.  I still was torn: there was definitely a sentimental attachment.  Just looking at them, I could smell the spaghetti sauce.  I intended to sell them eventually.  Eventually turned into six years of storage on top of the ten years my father held them for me. 

You see, Grandma wasn't completely gone.  She haunted the house when Tony was in the last stages of his decline, looking for him, turning on lights.  Seriously.  The ceiling fixture in the room where I stayed while caring for Tony and later during his move and the sale of the house, would click on in the middle of the night, over and over.  Finally, I unscrewed the bulbs, but I could still hear the clicking.  I called an electrician, who pronounced the wiring sound.  This went on for months.  I could hear clicking down the hall, too, where other switches remained to light fixtures removed when Daddy remodeled.  During the time the house was on the market, the realtor called me to ask whether I'd been at the house in the last few days.  I was in San Francisco, 400 miles away.  "Then I can't figure it out," said the realtor.  "I know I turned off the lights when I last showed the place, but today, every light in the house was on."

So I hung onto the Desert Rose, with as much superstition as sentiment.  Finally, I realized that with Daddy now gone for six years, she had what she wanted.  Whatever the afterlife holds for us, I'm sure they are together again.  And she would be delighted if I made money on the sale -- satisfying her innate appreciation of a dollar earned -- especially if the set could go in a single lot to another family that actually liked them.

I hauled the six huge heavy boxes into the house and went through the laborious process of inventory, finding and listing every perceived flaw, and photographing them all.  I have 12 photos of different sets on my eBay site, with a link to over 70 photos posted on flickr.  Without visual evidence, no one would believe one person could own all this crockery.  I'm selling it in a lot, hoping a family gets it.  However, the real money is to be made by dealers who can then resell each piece individually at a markup, and I made that a strong selling point.  I don't have the time or energy -- there's more crap in them thar garage needing to be strip mined.  In less than 12 hours, I've had five bids, over 100 clicks, and the item is being watched by 15 people.  It hasn't reached my reserve price, yet.  The reserve is ridiculously low given the current market value for vintage, mint condition Desert Rose.  It has as many fans as ever if not more.  Entire websites and discussion groups with hundreds of members are devoted to these dishes.  I had a sense of what Grandma would consider "real money," and that's what I'm happy to get.

It isn't about the money.  I don't really need it.  It's merely self-protective capitalism in action.  As for the next owners, I don't think her presence will follow.  But now and then, no matter what they're cooking, a faint aroma of garlic and oregano may linger in the room.

(P.S. Just noticed that this is entry #200.  My god, I do go on...........)

Father's Day

My ex, about whom I have written with affection and bitterness, in equal measure, is dealing with his father's impending death.  He's going to go visit him during his final days.  This merely seems like common filial duty, but it involves a long trip to a foreign hellhole, and a ton of emotional baggage that must be checked at the gate, so to speak.  My thoughts are with him.  He never had a father figure in his life.  Life dealt me a different hand.  I had an overabundance of fathers.

I've posted a lot about my dad Tony.  I don't want to slight him today.  However, he's passed on for nearly six years, and wouldn't mind if I spent a little time talking about this guy.  Tony loved him too.

Uncle Hal

This is going to be an unapologetic paean of love.  The man had his faults and weaknesses, he was human, but not in my eyes as a child.  Even as an adult, looking at him with as unbiased a view as I can muster, given my adoration, I can't say that his sins were ever those that harmed anyone but himself.  That alone sets him apart from anyone I've ever met.

Professional history, with varying degrees of accuracy and detail: link #1 , link #2 , link #3, link #4, link # 5 , link #6 (and note that omitted from the list of cast members with whom he worked in that cinematic masterpiece "Crash Landing" is Nancy Davis, aka Nancy Reagan -- who at the time of filming, 1958 or so, was still widely known as "The Best Blow Job In Hollywood") , link #7 (which proves his international appeal) . . . etc. etc.  I've made my point. (Photo gallery to right courtesy of Spookytoms, with much gratitude.)

I've said it before, I come from a family of Z-List actors.  My parents, Hal, and his wife Ruth, toiled together in little theater years before I was born.  They eventually became best friends.  Childless, Ruth and Hal (when a toddler, I had a blanket name for them both: "Uncarootenhal") were anointed as my godparents, and took the job seriously. They were primary residents of the village that it took to raise this child.  After my parents divorced when I was quite young, Hal took it upon himself to visit me weekly, even after my mother remarried.  He never talked down to me, was never "too grown up" to happily join in whatever I wanted to do, was probably the only person whose love for me I never doubted, and vice versa. I learned more from him in an offhand way than nearly anyone else in my life.  There's too much for me to say about what he meant to me, and this isn't about me (well, of course it is, it is ALL about me, 24/7, it's my damn blog).

Hal was born in the piney woods of some backwater town in Georgia.  He got out early.  He was handsome as hell, tall, powerful, and was drawn to acting, after some stints as a boxer and, rumor has it, a moonshine runner.  He had a perfect deep baritone actor's voice, and lost the Georgia accent quickly (although he dipped into it when telling a joke or when he patiently read all the Brer Rabbit stories to me, with a different voice for each character.)  After his time in community theater, he did get some film and TV roles in the late 50's-early 60's.  Mostly in the rash of sci-fi-horror films of the time -- giant bugs, space invaders, zombies, you name it.  He was a good enough actor for classic theater (and I'm sure he would have preferred it), but he viewed his career with philosophical good humor.  Actors take what they can get. (That's Hal as lead zombie towards the bottom of the poster to the left.)

One acting story: he was on the studio lot for one of these roles at the same time Elvis was making a movie.  Hal's path to the parking lot at the end of the day took him past Elvis's trailer, and the King was leaning against it, bored.  Elvis called out a greeting, and Hal replied, lapsing back into a semi-Southern accent, instinctively, I suppose.  Recognizing another good old boy, Elvis invited him into the trailer for a conversation that lasted for nearly an hour, full of humor, memories of the South, and love of music (Hal played a passable guitar, Carl Perkins as a favorite).  Hal said there was no pretension to the man, in fact he seemed to genuinely appreciate Hal's own friendly, unpretentious nature.  They were two of a kind.  Elvis could have used a Hal in his life.

He was a wonderful, wise witty gentleman of the old school. Everyone, and I mean everyone, loved him from the moment they met him.  Even people who generally disliked all of humanity made exceptions for Hal.  Like many actors, he was secretly very shy, self-effacing, and more than a little insecure, I realize now.  But he was so charming and entertaining, both one-on-one or at parties, that everyone else in the room receded into the background.  His secret was how special he made you feel, which is the key to true charm.  (Hal is to the left, and my father to the right, of some actress in the photo to the right.)

Hal never went to college (a very poor background), but he was brilliant.  His favorite reading, which he would try to explain to me even as a child, was Civil War history and quite advanced works on physics, cosmology, and the higher reaches of mathematics.  I understood a little more as time went on, but when he got to theories of relativity and the search for the Unified Theory, he lost me.  When I was about 10, I had to write a science report on a topic of my choosing to read aloud to the class.  My first choice, "color" was rejected, which demonstrates my limited grasp of even what science was.  The only source available was Hal, and I remembered him talking about relativity, so I asked him to tell me about it.  As beads of sweat formed on his brow from the impossibility of the task, he essentially dictated a child-accessible description of Einstein, relativity, its proofs and effects.  I took it down verbatim, and actually understood it in a dim way at the time.  When I read it to the class, the silence was deafening.  Everyone, including the teacher, had the glazed-eyed expression that told me that I had just recited Swahili.  I got an A, I suspect because of its incomprehensibility to any layman, anyone not actually hearing Hal's version. ("Uncarootenhal" to the left.)

He was intensely loyal.  As I said, until I became a blase teenager, he visited me weekly (always greeting me by pressing his face to mine, nose to nose, eyes open, and exclaiming, "We're stuck!")  Some jokes are funny once.  Some are funny every time, and if it came from Hal, its humor was inexhaustible.  So we had an entire catalog of shared rituals, stories, jokes.   Even when I was in my impossible teens and despised all adults, his regular visits -- no longer overtly to spend time with me, but just a family visit -- I found a reason to hang out, casually, pretending to ignore everyone, but hanging on his every word.

I'm not revealing anything here by saying he adored my mother.  Their completely platonic love affair lasted nearly 50 years.  No one ever talked about it, but it was the world's most poorly kept secret.  Every childhood visit to me was concluded with several hours, and many drinks, with my mom.  They'd laugh, and drink and smoke and simply bask in their affection for each other.  None of their spouses were threatened.  It was chaste and pure and perfect.  It formed an ideal for me, and I think I have something similar with another friend, or I hope it can become an approximation. (Mom and Hal onstage during their theater days together to left and below right.)

He even tried to create with my little brother (half-brother, technically, my mother and her second husband's son) the same kind of relationship as he and I shared.  He largely succeeded, as Steven loved him with the same intensity I did, and to this day cannot talk about him without a crack of loss in his voice.  Steven chose a different path for his life, and I can't say what lessons he learned from Hal.  Still, I'm grateful for Hal's efforts with Steven.

Random memories:  Hal sitting on a tiny chair in my tiny playhouse (he was 6'2" and the ceiling on the playhouse was maybe 5 foot tops) pretending to eat with all due respect something I had concocted from mud, weeds and a few artfully placed pebbles (even before Martha Stewart, I knew presentation was everything).  A Halloween when I dressed up as a Beatle (back when they were cute mop-tops in black suits) and he plucked the Official Beatle Wig from my head and placed it on his own, picked up my play guitar, and sang "Yeah, Yeah, Yeah."  My mother has the photo of this, or it would be here for your enjoyment.  A full hour when we crouched together in the back yard, watching from beginning to end the process of a spider building its web, with his quiet commentary illuminating the remarkable beauty and complexity of nature even in its most common events.  That is possibly my favorite childhood memory.  Hal's tender, abashed, response when I asked him an appalling question.  I went through a period of questioning my paternity in my early 20's.  The most eligible (and hoped for) candidate was Hal.  After liquoring myself up for courage, and him for in vino veritas, I asked him if he was my biological father.  He did not flinch, but blushed, and said softly, "I'm not, honey, but I wish I was."

I filled the role of daughter for him and Ruth; family is largely what we make it.

His last years saw a frightening decline in health.  There's no question that he was an alcoholic (of the kind that simply grew a little quieter and unsteady, never loud, abusive or foolish) all his life.  He constantly smoked unfiltered Chesterfields (but in a rakish holder, one of his few vanities).  By the time he was 65 or so, it caught up with him.  The robust, physically magnetic man shrank, the voice became weak, his mind remained sharp, but his presence was so much smaller, the hidden insecurities and shyness now visible.  It was painful to see.  I was young enough (mid-20's) and callow and stupid enough to avoid him.  It hurt too much and I couldn't muster the decency to push aside my feelings, to stop taking and start giving.  In terms of karma, it worked out.  My shame in deserting Hal gave me the strength to stand by my father during his last years, and his own sad descent into Alzheimer's.

He eventually developed lung cancer.  I had lived in San Francisco for several years by that time and had seen him rarely during that time.  It was inoperable, terminal, and quick.  My mother called to give me the news, and reported that he wanted no visitors or calls, he wanted to go with dignity and not leave anyone with memories of his difficult end.  I could not let him leave the earth without trying to express what he meant to me.  I wrote a letter, something along the lines of this post, but shorter, more to the point, and full of all those old in-jokes we shared.  Ruth, his widow-to-be, remained at his bedside in the hospital, and a few days before he slipped into a coma, she received the letter.  She read it to him.  He asked it to be repeated several times, and according to Ruth, tears rolled down his cheeks.  He then asked her to put it under his pillow, where it remained until he died shortly thereafter.

Hal, I hope there is a heaven full of wonders for you, spiders building webs, audiences cheering your Shakespearean performances, endless golf games, many children of all ages with whom to share your gifts, large frosty glasses of bourbon and branch that never make you ill, and when it's my time, I hope with all my heart I join you there.

Happy Father's Day.

Michael Schneps 1944-2005

On Christmas Eve, my friend Michael died.  He spent his last days at the hospice in Laguna Honda Hospital in San Francisco, enjoying many visitors, human and canine, according to his life partner, Adrianne.  They, and their gifted, sensitive son Nathaniel were frequent guests at my home in SF.  This is a picture of Michael looking uncharacteristically gaudy in his Hollywood Smoking Jacket at my Casablanca-themed Oscar Party. Michael was the most appreciative audience for my cooking efforts, largely, I think, do to my lavish use of butterfat and his spartan diet at home.  Michael was a brilliant photographer and man of many talents and interests.  He was never less that entertaining, and always kind.  I remember his gentle warmth to my father during his visits, particularly during my father's decline with Alzheimer's.  They talked about Japan, where my father was in the army of occupation and Michael had spent much of his childhood.  Michael took my favorite portrait of myself: a blatant rip-off of the famous shot of Bette Midler nude on a bed of roses, but in my case I was swathed in my massive collection of fuck-me pumps.  It would have made a great Christmas card.  Michael was a loving father and loved cats.  He was the only person who could pick up my bad bitch cat Kitch by both ends and play accordion with her.  She loved it.  I loved him and his family.

Safe journey, Michael.  You will be sorely missed.

Two Elvis Links That Priscilla Never Visits

http://www.linkydinky.com/graceland/

http://www.devilducky.com/media/8178/

Elvis lives, bless his heart.

The Kindness of Strangers

Had a terrifying, exhausting night.  No good deed goes unpunished.

Over the last month, I made a new good friend who I'll call Stella.  A beautiful woman a few years younger than me, with a warm, humorous intelligence and many of my own demons: bipolar disorder and, shall we say, a taste for drama and intoxicating substances.  Stella had been a bit flighty and over-animated the last few times I saw her.  I enjoyed her appetite for excess.  It gave her wit and sensuality.

She called me the night before last.  I knew the bottom of her world had fallen away, from the sound of her voice, her rushed interruptions and the scattered nature of her conversation.  She had been drinking again, and had for the first time taken crystal meth the night before.  To say it turned out badly would be a gross understatement.  The meth dealers had beaten her to a pulp, sexually assaulted her, and left her to crawl to the ER for stitches and pain killers.  She was terrified and manic.  We had several conversations, the last when the police arrived in response to her call when a neighbor was threatening to break her door down for drugs.  The police took photos of her injuries, including the most intimate.  Though a report was taken, she refused to press charges, afraid of the thugs' retribution and injury to her reputation.  I invited her to stay at my place, as a safe haven from it all, but she refused.

She called again last night.  As it happened, Robert, a mutual friend, had come over to unwind and discuss his own personal woes.  Stella again declined my invitation to come over, but invited us to come to her place, about a 25 minute drive away.  I was concerned, of course, and thought a visit might calm her.  I packed soft foods for her injured mouth, knowing she hadn't eaten for days.  When Robert and I arrived, it was apparent that she was in a bad way.  Her eye and lip were cut, swollen, purple-black as a Concord grape with bruises.  She flew around her tiny apartment like a caged wild bird and drank wine directly from the bottle.  Her conversation followed no discernable track and hopped from topic to topic mid-sentence.  Robert and I looked at each other and knew she had to go to the hospital.  She was in no condition to take care of herself.  It was like Doctor Jeckell and Mister Hyde -- the sweet funny Stella was gone and this crazy thing had taken her place.  As the evening progressed, it became obvious that she would do herself harm if left alone -- she hadn't slept in nearly four days, couldn't stay in her own skin, tore her clothes off in front of us, tried to run outside, threatened to run out the door.  "All I need is a good walk," she said, then fell on the floor laughing.  Then she propositioned us.  There was a scary edge to her voice.

Robert and I worked on her jointly and separately to convince her to come with us to the local acute psychiatric hospital -- a very capable and upscale institution in the hills.  She alternately ignored us, tried to con us that she was all right, then her mood would crash for a minute as she saw the sea of bruises on her broken face and body.  She'd have moments of clarity when she'd agree to the next step: gathering clothes, calling her psychiatrist to ask if she should go to the hospital, letting me call the after-hours intake line.  Then she'd fly up again and retract all intention of going.  "Let's just go get something to eat.  Let's watch a movie.  I don't really need the hospital."  She admitted that she had taken eight sleeping pills the first night and ten the second, and it hadn't made a dent in her fevered energy.  It turned out that there was no room on the open, voluntary admittance ward, or perhaps the intake nurse sensed the severity of Stella's situation.  It took four hours to convince her to come with us -- the cat bowls needed filling, the house had to be put to order, she had to notify people, and every tiny step we took in the direction of the hospital was undone again and again.  She said she wanted to beat her head with a hammer.  Once in the car, she threatened to jump out, insisted on buying a beer and more cigarettes, demanded to be let out and told us she'd stay at the Motel 6, told us she'd walk back, told us she'd take a cab, then begged us to stay with her during the intake process and not let them take her involuntarily, a "5150", in the psych lingo.  I crossed my fingers and promised.  That was the worst, but the only lie I told.  We did stay with her and Stella became even more outrageous.  The intake nurse was brisk and not quite sympathetic.  Robert and I gave the nurse the information that Stella either refused to give or misrepresented.  She admitted that she had not taken her medications in seven days and in the meantime had been drinking and using meth.

The nurse did indeed place her on a 72-hour involuntary hold as "gravely disabled."  The diagnosis was accurate and necessary.  Repeatedly, she'd switch on her charm, saying, as if at a royal tea, "I've had a lovely time, thank you so much, now I think I'll just go home."  The saddest part was when a glimmer of Stella occasionally surfaced amid the ranting, protesting, twitching maniac.  The real Stella would suddenly go still, her eyes would droop, and she'd breathe, "All I want is to sleep."  When it sank in that she could not leave, when she tried the locked door and beat her fists against it, only to sink to the floor in defeat, she turned to where Robert and I sat, mouthing "fuckyoufuckyoufuckyou", staring at us with the wildest eyes I've ever seen.  It was a mask of pure insanity. On the walk to her ward, she suddenly grabbed a bottle of some pills and started pouring them in her mouth. Robert instantly slapped them away, pills flying across the concrete walk and into the shrubbery.  At the door, she insisted on finishing her cigarette, then made a break for it.  I grabbed her.  I knew her pride would force her to walk in on her own rather than being dragged in by burly aides.  At the last possible moment, she stalked in, rage radiating from every fiber of her being.

When the door clicked, my knees unexpectedly buckled, and Robert caught me.  We stood hugging until our hearts slowed a bit.  I hadn't realized how utterly horrified I had been, how brittle my facade of calm reassurance was until it broke.

Stella thinks of herself as irretrievably broken.  She is a beautiful person inside and out and I'm a little in love with her.  The wreckage is real, self-inflicted -- but not irredeemable.  She has reservoirs of strength she has not learned to draw on consistently.  I wish she loved herself as others love her.  There but for the grace of God.......  If I ever needed an object lesson in simply taking my medications, in not taking the first drink, in self-preservation, I received it last night.  I can't go through this again with her --- I understand now why other friends retreated, threw up their hands.  (Can I pick potential girlfriends or what?)  But I will visit her today to keep my promise.  Not to save her but myself, by staying rigorously honest.  I know there is something inside everyone, including myself, worth saving, even if  I can only save myself.  The whole evening's enterprise was selfish in that sense -- I could not watch her slip away and live with myself, nor could Robert. 

Stella has a phrase: two three-legged dogs don't make a fast six-legged dog.  Yet somehow, two three-legged dogs managed to get another into safe haven.  Please remember Stella in your prayers tonight.

Happy Birthday

Hall of Fame sportscaster Vin Scully turns 78 today, but the memories of his golden voice are ageless.

I can never hear Scully speak without remembering the summer of 1965 and Jesse Gee.  Baseball was not a feature of my childhood until about 1963 when Jesse arrived in our household.  Her official title was "housekeeper", but she quickly became much more than that, a confidant to my mother and my friend and source of inspiration.  Jesse had no children of her own, and quickly adopted me.  Sundays, she took me to her church in Downtown LA and once I heard the gospel choir, I understood the power of the human voice raised in praise.  She was the first African-American I met, and when I was very young, I had a secret yearning to lick the inside of her wrist to see if she tasted like chocolate, the forbidden fruit of my junk-food deprived family.  (My mother was very health conscious; I was denied sugar due to her fears of diabetes, the scourge of her side of the family.) 

Jesse followed the Dodgers with demonic fervor.  Spring, summer and fall, a transistor radio stayed at her elbow as she went about her day.  I had no idea what a "hiiiiigh liiine driiive" meant, but when Vin Scully said it, and Jesse reacted to his smooth tones, I knew something more important had happened than the umpteenth repeat of "Hard Day's Night" on my station of choice, KRLA.  One June, Jesse was given the assignment of watching the house and me when my parents were on vacation in Mexico, or the Bahamas, or somewhere beyond my grasp of My Little Town.  During these times, I was spoiled outrageously.  Dinners were along the lines of smothered pork chops (yum) instead of broiled chicken breast and brown rice.  We ate well, giggled during "Let's Make A Deal", and wore tennis shoes she brushed to an immaculate white with shoe polish.  Vin Scully was the musical counterpoint to all our activities.  One afternoon, we walked to the produce market at the corner and she bought a bag of bing cherries.  We sat on our front porch, ate cherries languidly, spitting the seeds onto the lawn.  Jesse always won the distance competition.  I was more of an incompetent shot-putter with the seeds, simply glad that they cleared my chin and made it on the lawn at all.  I remember that afternoon as endless, as we shared a wordless companionship, and Vin Scully announced the play by play.  I couldn't follow the game, but simply listened to the inflections, the crowd noises, the occasional crack of a bat.  The tinny radio could not disguise Scully's long, warm vowels that blended seamlessly with the sweetness of the cherries and the setting sun painting our faces with golden light.