The heart of the story

I’ve referred my readers before to Story Corps, the oral history project that sends recording booths out to various locations across the country and permits people, usually in pairs, to tell their own stories, as though they were in the kitchen having a cup of coffee. Some of the vignettes are broadcast on Morning Edition on Friday mornings. They always, always grab me by the heart and the throat.

There was the exchange between long-time friends Peter Obetz and Jeff Jarrett on the ever-changing landscape of their lives. “Our friendship is really the only thing that’s constant,” is a statement that applies to more than one person in my life.

Or the Valentine’s Day broadcast of North Carolina National Guardsman Tracy Johnson, whose wife, Staff Sergeant Donna Johnson was killed by a suicide bomber in Khost, Afhghanistan. Tracy spoke with her mother-in-law about receiving the notification of Donna’s death, and pushing to escort her home from Dover AFB.

Or the Veterans Day inauguration of the Military Voices Initiative, where Vietnam vet Harvey Hilbert recalled the sight and sound of a comrade who was killed more than 45 years ago; and Justin Cliburn spoke of coming to know two little boys when he was deployed to Iraq in 2005.

Story Corps is celebrating its tenth anniversary this year. Yesterday, there was the conversation between Will Smith and his daughter Olivia, about how he felt being a 27-year-old single father, raising an infant daughter, at Bowdoin College in Maine. Their initial exchange was recorded last year, just after he was diagnosed with colon cancer. The update recording between father and daughter goes into how Olivia helped Will through his treatment.

You should listen to it. Not just read the story; listen to their voices. Listen to all the voices—Justin Cliburn, Harvey Hilbert, Tracy Johnson, Peter Obetz and Jeff Jarrett.

These are extraordinary stories, and all are—at the heart—about love. We could all use some of that.

Good citizenship

Sorry, folks, but I’m at my wits’ end—I have to revamp my LinkedIn profile, because evidently I’m driving away potential hiring companies in droves; and I also have to prepare a one-page “summary” of myself for a brainstorming session. So I really don’t have much left over to share with you today.

Here’s the deal: I’d rather swallow a family of live hedgehogs (PETA: this is a metaphor) than talk about myself. Ergo the apparently coma-inducing profile. (The brainstorming session is to help out a friend, who’s running an “Uncover Your Calling” workshop. I’m a special guest calling-uncoverer, to give the participants an example of how you go about giving the class an idea of what you're looking for so they can brainstorm on your behalf. This will be my third time brainstorming for Marcia's workshops. Either I'm good or no one else will come back.)

But it’s got to be done.

So I’ll leave you with this heartening photo.

 

It’s nice to know that there are good people out there.

I just wish they could rewrite my profile for me.

Psychic bankruptcy

Death, taxes and change are the only inevitabilities in this life.

This includes storefronts on El Camino Real.

I was driving through Mountain View a while ago and realized that the paranormal part of my iconic “psychic cleaners” had gone. It’s been replaced on the sign by a post box shop (which in actuality is part of the drycleaners). The actual shop space is vacant.

I wonder if the psychic saw it coming?

Gratitude Monday: Not the Library of Alexandria, but...

For Gratitude Monday today, I’m grateful that the Sunnyvale Public library finally transferred the Santa Clara County Library book that I accidentally turned into them back to SCCL.

I admit full culpability—I thought I checked that it was a SPL book before I took it in, but obviously I didn’t check carefully enough. I’m also not sure why their computerized system accepted it—in the past, it’s rejected books from other systems. This time it took it, but just receipted it with a barcode, not the title.

Then, when I got the “you’ve got books coming due” notice from SCCL, I realized what I’d done. I went to SPL to see if they’d shelved it—if they had, surely their system wouldn’t have let anyone check it out, right?

Well—not on the shelves and not in their collection of “books from other library systems”. The person at the information desk said they’d send it off to SCCL, but “it takes time.”

“Time” is apparently nine days.

I renewed it electronically, and kept checking SCCL online every day for its return. And finally—O bliss—it was off my “checked-out” list.

I’m really grateful I didn’t have to pay for it. It wasn’t that good a book.

They're baaaack...

You’ll recall that the folks at Air New Zealand have been creative in their in-flight safety videos. I mean, the wonder down under to me is that the Richard Simmons one didn’t spark the passengers to rush out of the plane onto the runway.

But they’ve updated their approach, perhaps to meet the perceived expectations of American Baby Boomers—at least the ones who still have money in their retirement accounts.

Viz.: Betty White

Happy Friday.

Down in the cottage

You know why I like different seasons? Well, lots of reasons, but one of them is because different seasons call for different food.

In the summer, probably 80% of my evening meals are salads of one sort or another. Spinach, Niçoise, Greek… That’s one of the reasons why I’ve got an entire cupboard shelf of vinegars and oils.

This year I added grilled asparagus and steak salad, with mango on a bed of cress and a hoisin vinaigrette, courtesy of Danger Girl. Dear God, that sucker is wonderfully good, and because I live in California, I’ve got access to some wonderful produce. A couple of months ago, a farm market in Sunnyvale had the most amazingly luscious mangos for $0.79 apiece. You could smell their ripeness from across the parking lot.

(Okay, you can see that I went a little wild with the mangos on this particular salad. But I admit it—I’m a complete mango whore. I love them much more than is natural.)

But Autumn signals to me that it’s time to make cottage pie.

You can stuff your meatloaf—even if you put anchovies in it, or ground veal or whatever. And don’t even get me started on mac and cheese—the very thought of it makes me gag. (And that’s not hyperbole.)

No—my comfort food is cottage pie. That’s shepherd’s pie, only with ground beef instead of ground lamb, which is hard to come by in the Valley they call Silicon. And expensive when you do.

Cottage pie has the ground meat (or “mince”, as they call it in the UK), sautéed onion, carrots and peas; and it’s topped off by a nice layer of mashed potatoes. All your cold-weather go-tos in a single dish. You bake it until the potatoes are all crispy-brown at the edges, and then break through the crust with your fork to let all the steamy goodness out.

Just don’t try to eat it too fast, because you’ll burn your tongue. Every time. Just like I do.

Communing with Nature

A while ago a friend of mine was telling me about a drawing meet-up she went to, in Hakone Gardens. It was on the one day in the past five months when we had 15 minutes of rain, but I was interested in the venue, so I went there last week.

Hakone touts itself as the oldest “Japanese estate gardens” in the western world. Whatever. (Frankly, any organization that officially uses a plural subject with a singular verb has cracked its own credibility with me.)

But I thought it would be nice to get out into, you know, Nature. Even if it is carefully crafted. (Maybe especially if it’s carefully crafted.) So I took my cameras and spent a couple of hours wandering about the place…not exactly lonely as a cloud, but not bad. It's not a patch on the Huntington Gardens, where I grew up, but it'll do.

Naturally there’s the obligatory waterfall:

  

And the koi pond with bridge:

But I quite liked the persimmon tree:

Which is rather odd, as I was traumatized as a child by the persimmon tree in our back yard. (The little unripe fruit that drops are like acorns when your bare feet find them. And the ripe ones that fall squish between your toes are so gicky. For the life of me I can’t feature ever actually, you know, eating one.)

As I said earlier this week, we don’t get a lot of leaves turning colors here in the Valley they call Silicon, but the Japanese maples there afforded me a couple of splashes. First this one:

And then this:

And that’s about my limit for nature.

Mother of all Spitfires. & Hurricanes

It’s the fifth annual Ada Lovelace Day—the international celebration of women in STEM (science, technology, engineering and science). Lovelace was the Englishwoman who pioneered the precursor of computer programming in the first half of the 19^th Century.

In past years, I’ve written about Grace Hopper (computer programming), Rosalyn Sussman Yalow (physiology), Joan Strothers Curran (physics) and Hedy Lamarr (radio frequency). Today I give you Beatrice Shilling.

Who, you ask? Beatrice Shilling, the aeronautical engineer who solved the problem of engine cut-out in the Rolls-Royce Merlin engines that powered the Spitfire and Hurricane fighter planes that were the backbone of British defense during the Battle of Britain. Her simple addition to the SU carburetor—a flow-restrictor (a disc with a small hole in it)—was the fix that enabled RAF pilots to perform the extreme maneuvers needed to outfly the Luftwaffe.

It was known informally as “Miss Shilling’s Orifice”. Gotta love those RAF wags; really.

Shilling was a butcher’s daughter who lucked out in an early (female) employer for whom she was installing wiring and generators. The employer encouraged her to study electrical engineering; then she took an advanced degree in mechanical engineering and worked as a research assistant.

She also raced motorcycles successfully. Meaning she beat professional riders.

Following the war, Shilling continued studying the problems of aeronautics. She dismissed the notion that she could be inferior to any man just by virtue of having the XX chromosome configuration.

She refused to marry her husband, George Naylor, until he’d matched her record of lapping the Brooklands circuit on a motorcycle at more than 100 MPH.

Shilling was limited in her career by her social skills, but not by her intellect, her curiosity or her ability to develop practical solutions to critical technology problems. She deserves to be remembered for her contributions.

April may not be the cruelest month after all

Okay, I understand that it’s October, the month when Autumn starts. And the month of Halloween and its Jack O’ Lanterns. And I understand that, by now, Starbucks has probably dispensed a quantity of Pumpkin Spice Lattes that equals the Indian Ocean.

But Trader Joe’s has just gone beyond the beyond for pumpkin crap.

Don’t believe me? Here’s my count from this month’s Fearless Flyer:

Pumpkin Bread Mix

Pumpkin Cream Cheese Muffins

Organic Canned Pumpkin

Pumpkin Cream Cheese

Pumpkin Pie Spice

Pumpkin Bar Baking Mix

Pumpkin Cranberry Scone Mix

Pecan Pumpkin Instant Oatmeal

Kennebunkport Brewing Co. Pumpkin Ale

Pumpkin on a Stick

Pumpkin Body Butter

Pumpkin Flavored Dog Treats

Pumpkin Walks Into a Bar

Pumpkin Cranberry Crisps

Pumpkin Biscotti

Pumpkin Cheesecake

Pumpkin Spice Granola

Pumpkin Spice Rooibos Tea

Pumpkin Spice Chai

Pita Crisps with Cranberries & Pumpkin Seeds

Pumpkin Bread Pudding

Pilgrim Joe’s Pumpkin Ice Cream

Pumpkin Croissants

Pumpkin Macarons

Pumpkin Butter

Pumpkin Pancake & Waffle Mix

Pumpkin Spice Coffee

Oh—and…pumpkins.

Gratitude Monday: the changes of colors

Today, practically midway through October, I am deeply grateful that we’re finally getting an edge to the morning air. This endless bleeding summer that started somewhere around April is finally waning and Autumn is commencing, even if it is stealing in quietly.

A friend of mine, originally from Chicago although she hasn’t been in a proper fall season since the late 80s, sniffed, “Of course, the leaves won’t turn colors here; they don’t.”

Well, actually, they do—perhaps not the spectacular riot that we had in Virginia, on account of we don’t get the sharp cold that seems to spark the brilliant hues I loved. But they turn scarlet and rust and gold right outside my windows.

Coming from Southern California, it wasn’t until I moved to Korea that I saw leaves actually changing color on the hoof, as it were; before that it was all theoretical. I’ve never lost my sense of wonder and delight at the show of nature, even though I know it’s going to end in a bunch of naked trees for four or five months.

I once was standing at a third-floor window in Morton Hall at William & Mary, watching the last of the leaves being tugged from the branches by a brisk wind. I wondered what students from Hawaii thought when they saw this process—if they were afraid that the trees were dying. Probably not, but it had to be a weird sensation the first time they ever saw it.

So even though Ms. Chicago thinks this isn’t real fall, I say bring it on. I’m very grateful for the changes around me.