Grammie and Grampa

For my grandparents' 60th anniversary:

When I think about my grandparents…

I see natural wonders—Devil’s Tower, the Grand Canyon, and Crater Lake—as well as the great palaces of the world: the Cow Palace and the Corn Palace. I see a needle-point wall hanging, whose loops are gradually filled with the names of grandchildren, and a yellowed comic about a destitute man explaining that his wife collects dolls. I see bubble lights, and puzzle pieces, and the countless stars of an Echo Summit night.

I hear the San Francisco Symphony playing animal noises and cousins telling knock-knock jokes over the CB radio. I hear dice rattling frantically in a tin lid and a church choir belting out their Christmas program. I hear hand bells, and the clatter of Scrabble tiles, and sleepy tales of Lake Wobegone.

I taste pink Jello salad with walnuts, and the distinctive flavor of a tall Jim washed down with a rootbeer float. I taste several weeks’ worth of bearclaws and sandwiches from a cooler, but also High Tea scones. I taste Chex mix and Danish butter cookies and soft serve from Sizzler on my birthday.

I smell the warm steam of Cabin waffles, mixing with smoke from the morning fire. I smell November turkey and December salmon, and sulfur bubbling out of Yellowstone mudpots.

I feel the heat of a long car ride through the Badlands and the chill of a September afternoon at Candlestick. I feel a well-worn “Cookie Monster blue” carpet and the rough ribs of the Yellow Room’s bedspread. I feel tip-toe hugs and bent-over kisses, and hands held for grace, in short… I feel love.

Reunion

So, I am quickly coming up on my 10-year high school reunion, which I'm actually really looking forward to. (Last night I dreamt that it was being held in the supermarket by my house. Not much seating, but the food was great.) Anyway, I was spending a lazy Sunday afternoon listening to Prairie Home Companion (which would make it seem like I'm coming up on my 50th high school reunion) when they read "The Fire of Drift-wood" by Longfellow, which I've excerpted below:

The Fire of Drift-wood

by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

...We sat and talked until the night,
Descending, filled the little room;
Our faces faded from the sight,
Our voices only broke the gloom.

We spake of many a vanished scene,
Of what we once had thought and said,
Of what had been, and might have been,
And who was changed, and who was dead;

And all that fills the hearts of friends,
When first they feel, with secret pain,
Their lives thenceforth have separate ends,
And never can be one again;

...The very tones in which we spake
Had something strange, I could but mark;
The leaves of memory seemed to make
A mournful rustling in the dark.

And now the thought of my reunion is fairly depressing. Thanks a lot, Longfellow.

Neo-Eo

While this may not quite live up to its original 3-D showing in Tomorrowland, it is definitely worth the next 15 minutes of your allotted surfing time.

"True to our Founding Documents"

The title of this post comes from President Obama's inaugural address. The call to remain faithful to our Constitution is admirable. But I don't know if there has EVER been a time where we ignored our founding document more. This may seem like a shot at the new administration (which it is), but the buck doesn't end there. We, as a nation, are all complicit in remaining ignorant or apathetic to how far we've drifted from our nation's ideological moorings.

The parting shot of our Bill of Rights states:

"The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."

Anybody want to take a shot at what powers actually ARE delegated to the Federal Government? A glance at the our Founding Document will tell you that Washington has the Constitutional right:

• To lay and collect taxes
• To borrow money
• To regulate international and interstate trade
• To come up with a method for naturalization
• To regulate bankruptcies
• To coin money and punish counterfeiters
  
• To set standards for weights and measures
• To establish post offices and post roads
• To issue patents
• To create courts lower than the Supreme Court
• To punish pirates
• To declare war and the rules thereof
• To raise an army, a navy, and a militia and govern them
• To govern Washington, D.C.
• And finally, to make all laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into execution the foregoing powers, and all other powers vested by this Constitution in the government of the United States.

That's it. Those are the only things the U.S. Legislature has legal jurisdiction over, at least according to the Supreme Law of the Land. And yet, we sit and accept a vastly different reality every day. Republicans, Democrats, everybody. We are a nation no longer governed by our Constitution.

But we don't have to be.

A Good Week for Speeches

Not only did we commemorate the perhaps the greatest speech ever (the good Reverend's "I Have A Dream"), but we also had a chance to look back at these inaugural gems. See if you can finish them.

"Ask not..." JFK

"The only thing we have to fear..." FDR

"With malice towards none..." Honest Abe **At least the 2nd best speech in America's history.**

"Government is not the solution to the problem..." The Great Orator

And Obama's inaugural address yesterday was pretty darn good too. I almost feel the need to qualify that statement (and have started to several times), but let's just leave it at that. As Ol' Mr. Lincoln said, with the country much more divided than today,

"We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature."

Ahh... there's nothing like a good speech.

Hobbiton, Part One

Bitter, desperate disappointment welled within me as the realization struck: Hobbiton was closed. Not for the day. Not for the season. It was closed forever.

It was the final day of a week-long trip along the northern California coast, the land of my youth. Over the course of the vacation Star and I had lived in the lap of hostel luxury, held hands with Sasquatch, discovered hundreds of starfish in almost as many tide pools, and of course, wandered among the redwoods themselves. Steinbeck described these ancient giants as “ambassadors from another time… a stunning memory of what the world was like once long ago.” The towering dignity and “cathedral hush” made a walk in those Woods more of a rite than a hike.

Almost as awesome as the redwoods themselves, though, was the main road that runs through them, a winding stretch of highway known as the “Avenue of the Giants.” Part-tourist trap, part-nature museum, the Avenue is a curvy little jaunt through roadside Americana. Necessary stops include such magnificent specimens as a six-foot ear of corn and a sixty-foot Paul Bunyan, who, along with his blue ox sidekick, beckons weary travelers to come and behold the “Trees of Mystery,” an arboreal Believe-It-Or-Not. None of these grandiose spectacles, however, could rival the expectations for the last stop of our trip.

Flipping through guidebooks a few days prior to the flight out to California, I had come across an intriguing passage, little more than a bullet-point. At the very bottom of a list of things to see, came the following line:

“Hobbiton, USA; a kitschy walk-through tribute to Tolkien’s The Hobbit.”

I was enthralled. I wanted—needed—to know more, but even the typically omniscient internet could only tell me that Hobbiton USA was maintained by the San Francisco Guild of Hobbits (an intriguing concept in its own right). One thing I did know, though: I had to see this place. Not only did I like the idea of a kitschy walk-through, but Tolkien’s masterpiece held a special place in my heart: on another road trip long ago, listening to my mom hiss out Gollum’s lines, I learned to love good literature. And so it was decided—Hobbiton USA would be the culmination, the grand finale, of our journey.

Continue to Part Two...