When The Saints Go Marching In - Or, Who Dat Winning the Superbowl?

No pictures - I wasn't there. You probably saw the game, anyway.

I didn't have a digital camera four years ago when Katrina hit Louisiana with even greater devastation than Andrew, the hurricane that chopped off everything that was higher than six feet, destroyed the groves managed by my brother-in-law, and filled their home with showers of rain and glass shards from what used to be their windows.

But Katrina did more, and the stories I heard were heart-rending.

I was living in Keller, Texas, then, attending Northgate United Methodist Church, a small congregation in Irving that does so much more than you'd expect from a church its size. A food pantry and clothing closet was ramped up to help the Katrina evacuees that had traveled as far north as the Dallas-Fort Worth area. Folks came in as soon as the doors were open, and they kept streaming in.

Mary Morgan, a friend of mine, and I volunteered to assemble supply bags so that toothpaste, toothbrushes, razors, soap - things you don't realize how much you appreciate till you don't have any - for quick distribution.

Others were dealing firsthand with folks who needed our help. They wanted jobs. They wanted their kids back in school. They looked shell-shocked, but they maintained their dignity. I don't know how they coped.

Then our church got a call to help a family move from Irving to Garland, where government-subsidized apartments had been found to house them. They were staying in a cousin's 2-bedroom apartment. They were a multi-generational family of 16.

By the time you get to N for Northgate, or U for United Methodist or M for Methodist, maybe you've been making lots of phone calls. Maybe they thought we had a church van.

We had one soccer-mom type van and one white Silverado truck (mine.) We made so many trips moving them and their newly-acquired household goods and clothing (all packed in garbage bags....) Once the first round of family members arrived, they found that there'd been a snafu with the government paperwork. One young member of this family, possibly college-age, started another round of calls on his cell phone, mostly waiting as he repeatedly was put on hold.

He was directing the moving operation for his family. What a weight on those young shoulders....

During one of the return trips to Irving, while he waited again on hold, and his cell battery was draining, he told me their story.

His grandmother didn't want to leave their house. The family obeyed its matriarch. They watched the water rise, drowning the dog that lived next door. They fled to their house's upper floors. They realized they had to go.

Packing some family treasures they couldn't bear to leave behind into a few suitcases, they made their way out somehow and escaped. When the young man told me that, I first wondered, "If I had to leave, what would be the family treasures I couldn't bear to leave? Pegasus, the rocking horse my father made. Man o'War's photo. My two best ukuleles, one belonging to my mom, the other made by the late John Ogao. Photos we've never put on computer or posted on Facebook. Things from Hawai`i we can't replace. My wedding photo album. Family Bibles. I don't know - I'd need a trunk, not a suitcase. I'd need my Silverado....

Then I thought, "They don't have suitcases - where were the suitcases? They just have plastic bags...."

This family couldn't get the car started - it was overrun by water. They walked.

They became some of the folks you may remember waiting on I-10 to be rescued. They were there for a few days. Finally, help came. This family, with its few rescued family treasures packed in suitcases, and nothing else.

And when they finally could leave their destroyed city, they were told, "You have to leave the suitcases behind."

And that's why the evacuees fled into Texas with nothing but the clothes on their backs.

But, they had each other.

They were gracious. The grandmother reminded the children to "Thank Miss Beth" for helping them get to their new homes - but the youngsters needed no reminding. The young man, who did manage to get through the government red tape, tried to offer me money, but I couldn't take it. I accepted their hugs, and asked that they'd pray for me, just as I would pray for them.

I never saw them again, but I think of them now and then and hope they did as well as the Keller post office worker who landed a job there after leaving New Orleans after Katrina.

I certainly was thinking of them Sunday night, and all the other folks who sought a helping hand from our church, just to get back on their feet and get their lives going again.

I thought of the kind people at the Louisiana visitors' centers who gave me respite, Community Coffee and a little fluff of auburn-colored cotton during my many trips from Texas to Florida as I rescued my cabin. I thought of the nice Louisiana Mason who gave me one of his state pins when we met up with a Masonic convention in Baltimore.

(I also thought about the Baltimore Colts. . . I liked 'em when they were the Baltimore Colts.)

Some folks said you wouldn't be given a Superbowl just because you survived Katrina. That the Colts' quarterback wouldn't go soft on the Saints just because his daddy played for them years ago.

But then, I thought of all the folks who came into our church, heading to the jobs listings before they got the supplies we gave them just to get them through till their lives restarted again. The Saints weren't looking for charity Sunday night - that would have lessened the victory.

But as they kept saying, they were playing for a cause. And I hope that all those Louisiana folks were screaming as loudly as I was when the Saints marched into their first Superbowl victory.

Umpteen Days of Christmas In No Particular Order

On an early day this Christmas, I kinda gave this to me:
One Monkey-Cat up in the Christmas Tree.



On another day this Christmas, someone gave to me:
A squished skunk in the driveway,
And One Monkey-Cat up in the Christmas Tree.

On another day this Christmas, someone gave to me:
Vultures on the back fence....
Looking for the squished skunk
That I'd slid into a box
And hauled off to the back yard...
And I'm ignoring Monkey climbing up the Tree.



On another day this Christmas, someone gave to me:
A cold I can't get rid of.....
(---ended with a preposition! --
And I'm too sick to care;)
And the Monkey-Cat's still climbing up the Tree..

On another day this Christmas, someone gave to me:
KENNY HOME FOR CHRISTMAS!
(WHY DO I have this bad cold?)
There's vultures on the back fence,
Looking for the squished skunk.
And Monkey! Please get off the Christmas Tree!

On another day this Christmas, someone gave to me...(well, it was Kenny, not just "somebody"!):
A lovely dinner at Hotel Mac,
Great company with friends,
Two apple-pie-hot-drinks,
A taste of creme-broulet,
More time with Kenny,
---And my gosh what HAS the Monkey done to the Tree?????

On another day this Christmas, someone gave to me:
A solution for not finding the stockings:
I went and made some new ones;
And these were really big ones;
I even made cat-paw ones,
And where's the coal for Monkey?
The other cats get cookies;
(And yes, there's some for Monkey,
Although he wrecked the Tree;)
I didn't ship folks' presents;
I'm too sick to care;

I'm missing Anita's dinner;
Still to sick to worry;
The vultures have flown off now;
I won't check on the skunk;
I'm in love with my new job -
I'm writing for a paper,
Just like in the old days;
The horses are happy;

They've got their very own pasture;

It's Freya's First Christmas
In her new adopted home;

I didn't need a third yard-cat,
Not counting the neighbors',
Who come and eat the cat food
I set out for Texie and Sadie,

Who now live in cat-mansions
That used to be play-houses...
I hung their mitten stockings
Just outside their doors....

Back inside, the Dog-Cat,
Tired of Little Monkeys,
Is sleeping by the heater,
After eating all her cookies -

She's 20 years old now,
And still enjoys her Christmas...
But now she's sleeping....and...
It sounds like a great idea.....
So.... Merry Christmas - I'm gonna take a nap!

Christmas 2009 - Or...what the Monkey did to the tree THIS year....

What a beautiful tree! Topped by an angel that's been in Kenny's family for quite some time, with crystal bead garland cascading down from the top, lights arranged in an orderly fashion, and branches loaded with vertical icicles, dangling stars and angels, and an array of other ornaments.


It was nice while it lasted......

Then we got Monkey Help.

Nobody decorates a tree quite like a Monkey Cat. This year's tally...so far...are 5 Christmas balls, 8 icicles, one spray of cherries, 5 ribbons (some chewed in half so if they had been holding ornaments, those, too, were now on the floor....) The skirting around the tree's base has been pulled to one side, and the bottom layer lies wadded up on top.

You'd think that at 4, The Little Monkey - who isn't quite so little anymore - would be bored with tree redecorating. Or that perhaps he couldn't wedge himself into the tree.

But you'd be wrong.

Here, he's halfway to the top, and the only reason he didn't go higher is because I pulled out the camera. Notice the no-longer-beautifully-cascading-crystal-garland.....

This is what our tree looked like on Christmas morning.

Poor tree!

The ornaments are in disarray. You may see some of the icicles are horizontal, as if they were frozen during a stiff wind. The garland is a mess. Some of the branches have been stripped of their decor.

However, Kenny and I were puzzled early Christmas morning. Something else was off. It was if the ornaments had been moved around on the tree....???

When we looked more closely, Kenny and I finally realized the angel on top of the tree was facing the wall. This year, The Monkey - yes, that innocent little fellow in front of the presents - had managed to turn the tree around during the night.

That's some feat, since we always tie the tree to the ceiling beam before we dare decorate it.

He's lucky he didn't get coal in his little paw-shaped stocking this year!

Who....me???

Would I, your own sweet Little Monkey, do anything to harm the pretty Christmas tree?

Me, wrapping myself up in this box to be your bestest best present ever?

I have no idea who unraveled the skirting under the tree.

Must have been some OTHER Monkey.

Not me.

Nope.

Let the Christmas Games begin!

The waiting is over! The Christmas Games have started!

Those of you who have read this blog in its Yahoo version know this time of year has its own sport - Monkey vs. the Christmas Tree. The tree comes armed with flashing lights, guardian angels, icicle spears and stars. The Monkey is armed with teeth, claws and a determination to strip the tree of its decorations.

The only reason the tree remains standing at the end of the Christmas season is because it's tied to the ceiling.

This year, Monkey is 4. You might think that with maturity comes a disdain for such childish - kittenish? - sports as climbing the tree, snagging a feathered bird ornament and plucking its tail right out of its body. You would be wrong - clearly you haven't met The Monkey.

The one thing those bird ornaments have going for them is they're embedded into branches, and ornament sprays at the very top of the tree, right at the base of the beautiful angel that has adorned the top of Kenny's Christmas trees since he was a child. (Yes, the angel is tied to the ceiling, too - just a precaution, of course, but we don't want the angel to topple to the floor the way it did the first Monkey Christmas! She IS an heirloom!)

The Games this year started as I dragged our tree out of its box and started assembling this three-part, ceiling-high, pre-lit beauty. I had just placed the middle section atop the base portion and was surprised I wasn't getting any..um...help. "Where's the Monkey?" I asked.

Surprise! Wham! Here came a paw, grabbing at my hand. Chomp! EVERYthing goes into the Monkey Mouth. Stealth Monkey had slipped amid the branches and was getting a head start.

I managed to get all three parts of the tree in place, then lashed the top branches with sturdy fishing line to the wood screws drilled into the ceiling beam overhead. The angel, wings wedged into the fishing line lashings, topped the tree even before I tested the lights.

The ornaments came next. Monkey was VERY helpful....

I may have spoiled the game a bit this year. I've draped our beaded garland vertically. In the past, the horizontal spiral around the tree made for easy pickings for The Monkey and daily replacing the lopsided garland I'd find drooped onto the floor every morning.

But the tree is up and decorated. Its pre-lit white lights shine constantly. Strands of blue lights are on a slow-glow setting, and a set of multicolored lights are on random flash for the moment. The crystal - okay, clear acrylic - ornaments catch those lights when they're on, and reflect the living room's ambiant light when the tree's lights are off. It's shiny and sparkly, just like I like it.

The Monkey likes it, too. He's already taken up residence on top of the double skirting under the tree. His spot. His tree. Who needs presents when you have The Monkey?

It's Just How You Look At Things

Sway the Limit isn't the easiest horse in the world to own. Today was another day in handling his strangely-wired brain.

It was time to get his and Ginger's toes trimmed, and I brought the pair up from their new four-acre pasture they were awarded after a couple of other pasture mates tried to turn them into hamburger. We love the new spot, but it's not the easiest place to reach, especially during California winter rains. So, rather than have the farrier haul all her supplies the long road to their paddock, I led Sway and Ginger up to a round pen to await their manicure.

Sway was unnerved when the horses in the adjacent pasture raced to greet them - well, to greet Ginger, who welcomed their attention. Sway was furious, so I put him in a pipe stall next to the round pen, and while I left Ginger in the round pen, I tied her near to Sway.

Sway seemed to calm down after that, and behaved as usual when I cleaned their feet in preparation for the trim. But when the farrier arrived, Sway began to melt down. He wouldn't hold still. He tried to rear. He tried to sit down. He resisted everything, and we were about to leave his feet alone - except he's been dealing with a quarter-crack, and really needed my repairs examined, and the hooves reshaped and beveled.

The last time he reacted this badly was 2002, when I was trying to redirect his behavior after he attacked me. But we've come a long way since then, and I could tell by one of his actions that he meant me no harm.

I asked the farrier to give me a few minutes alone. She wisely backed off. Another boarder came by, and I told her, "Now's not a good time," and returned my focus to Sway. He needed quiet, without interruption.

And, I could tell he wanted help in regaining his composure - he dropped his nose to the ground periodically.

Getting him to lower his head was our first breakthrough on the long road to giving him a veneer of normalcy. Some days, early on, the only good thing he would do was to drop his head on command. A technique I learned from Bill Dorrence's book, it makes sense. A horse throws his head up when he's nervous, and lowers it when he's calm.

But Sway was nowhere near calm - in fact, he was on the verge of one of his increasingly-rare breakdowns, when he loses any contact he may have with reality. Lowering his head was his cry for help.

So, I got everything and everyone stopped. And Sway and I talked. We walked a bit, then stopped. He finally began breathing normally, and his heart, pounding so wildly I could feel his pulse on every inch of his body, finally started to slow. I got him to focus on me.

And, finally, he stood calmly, and the farrier could finish her job. He let me pick up his feet - even handed them to me - and once I knew he would tolerate it, I would let the farrier hold the hoof so she could continue her work. She even liked how his quarter-crack hoof was healing, and told me to continue the cotton ball and glue treatment that has prevented the crack from spreading and allowed his hoof to heal. "Keep up the good work," she said.

Ginger's trim was nowhere near exciting, even when she flinched because of arthritis in her 30-ear-old back legs.

I paid their bill, praised the farrier for her patience, and got an atta-girl from her for handling Sway so well. And I led the horses back to their four-acre spot, and they behaved as if nothing untoward had happened at all.

I know not everyone would be able to see today's adventure as a success story. And it certainly could have ended badly. But then, not everyone would understand what this fractious horse was saying when he lowered his head.

Fortunately, my precious Sway and I have learned to see eye-to-eye.

It's Nice To Be Back

Some time ago, Harlan Ellison called me a writer. Actually, he did more than that. He announced that I was a writer. He proclaimed that I was a writer. He pointed his finger at me, one of many in his audience at his talk at a World Science Fiction Convention, and made sure the rest of the folks in the room knew I was a writer.

I'd prefaced a question to him by saying unlike many science fiction readers who all seem to be working on novels, I wrote stories for a daily newspaper and had no aspirations to write a book. I never got to the question - Harlan took that point and expounded on it. He reminded all the others whose "books" were still rambling thoughts not yet fastened to paper that writers actually write. And pointed out I wrote on a daily basis.

I wrote for newspapers for 23 years, until one office where I worked made life so peculiar I switched to managing Kenny's cartoon studio. And you know things must be peculiar if working in a cartoon studio felt better than working in a career I had loved.

Then Kenny got hired at Pixar. Then we moved to California. Then I needed a job and figured, hey, with all these papers in the Bay Area, getting hired as a reporter should be a cinch.

Instead, it was a bust.

Folks think newspapers have recently run into problems. I got my heads-up on the matter in 1997.

Ever hopeful, I filled the time between applications with office temp jobs, a short-term bartending gig, telling folks about Hawai`i, trying and failing to be a travel agent, and becoming a top-notch cashier until a nasty fall made them send me home for good.

I turned to teaching ukulele and Hawaiian language in Texas, and started my own halau after we returned to California. Love the teaching, won't give up the halau and other students, but realized at last I couldn't survive solely on that pay.

Thanks to Roger Colton, whose keen eye spotted the ad, I applied to the Benicia Herald for a part-time reporting job. Didn't make it on the first round, but when they posted another opening, I got hired. (Thanks Marc! - He's my new boss!) And this is the door I walk through five days a week.

Working at this paper reminds me of working in the bureaus for the Daytona Beach News-Journal and the Orlando Sentinel. Bureaus are office outposts, satellites operating away from the main office, usually in suburbs of the main office's home metropolis. Sometimes the downtown folks look down on the bureaus as not being as prestigious as working at the main office. But for some of us, it's appealing to get away from the big building, compete with the local papers and other papers' bureaus, and meet killer deadlines that make scooping the competition so much sweeter.

As a bureau brat, I got to know more townsfolks a lot better, which can work both for and against you. But, sometimes the residents would remind me that the bureau belongs to a big metro paper, and I wasn't working for the "local" paper - even if none of their staff was born or grew up in the home town.

Now, I do work for the local paper.

The Herald publishes five days a week. It's the home town paper in Benicia, just a short bridge ride from my home in Martinez. It's not on line, and they've ended subscriptions by mail. You get your paper the old fashioned way, by delivery carrier or by slipping a couple of quarters in the paper machine.


Snagging this job wouldn't have happened if it weren't for many friends, because my clips collection had been ruined. Kenny found a few of my surviving clips, some of which were so damaged they couldn't be scanned - I typed them into the computer and printed them out as if they were raw copy. Gerri Bauer, who worked with me in the News-Journal's DeLand office, located some of my stories about Stetson University, where she works now. That included my scoop on Barbara Bush. T. C. Wilder found some of my historic pieces on Eldora, an unincorporated community within the Canaveral National Seashore. Countless folks offered to be references.

I found other co-workers through Facebook who gave me sad news - most of my work has been dumped.

I had written copiously about the Central Florida Zoological Park, where I met Jack Hanna and Stan Brock. Among my stories was one about employees who learned sign language on their own and taught it to the chimpanzees on display. They did it simply to entertain the animals and stimulate their minds, not to make history. But they noticed the chimps were signing to communicate to each other, and were putting signs together to make new words to ask the employees for things. Scientists who had been working with chimpanzees and other great apes were astonished to read the article, which published worldwide by the Associated Press. It had never occurred to those working in labs that apes on display could learn sign language, or that they could learn outside of isolated, one-on-one lessons.

I wrote many stories about the nation's Bicentennial. I did a series on folksinger Barbara Muller's trek up the east coast, gathering obscure songs along the way. I rode along for a day so I could file a story on the Bicentennial Horse Ride that gathered horseback riders from all over the nation. I chronicled older residents' memories of their lives, written at the prompting of another senior, Nikki Wahl, whose story we always had hoped to tell, but who, instead, sent us to others who, like her, had lived in fascinating times.

I'm sorry those stories are gone, but as I now say, I'm writing new clips. God willing, I will never need to use them. The owner and publisher has told my boss that this paper is a survivor, and I would like to think I'll be a reporter here for a long time.





That's me at my desk, at the end of the week. I've got a story up on the screen, and my steno pad ready for notes.

Best feature on the desk is a photo that Kenny got for me, with the help of his buddy John Field, who may know more about "The Adventures of Superman" television show than anyone who wasn't part of the production. They both knew that when I watched the show, I focused on Lois Lane, played by Noel Neill. Lois wasn't stuck writing for the Society Section, the only opening for many woman reporters when this show was airing. Lois in all her incarnations - tv, movie, and original comic book - wrote hard news, and I found that exciting.

So, when I landed this job, after trying for so many years to get back into the industry, John helped Kenny surprise me with this photo of Noel Neill (posing with Clark Kent doing his side job as a superhero), which she signed "From one reporter to another."

My beats include the city of Benicia, and I'm in the middle of covering election campaigns. I've interviewed the first woman brigadier general in the California Army National Guard. I've written about how our carelessness with trash has caused a floating island the size of Texas, made of plastic garbage, to form in the Pacific. I've filed a story about Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's refusal to sign several hundred bills until the legislature addresses water problems, and I interviewed our assembly member and county and city representatives about how this affects the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta - Benicia is a Delta town.

Unlike Lois, I've also written about a recent style show, but this is because the event was organized by Main Street Benicia, which promotes downtown business - I cover business, too.

The important thing is I've been writing. My by-line is back on Page One.

And, yes, sir, Mr. Ellison - I am a writer!