Marie's theater

This trip is really a working trip for me; I'm gathering info and atmosphere for a new novel. So I've been paying lots of attention to Marie Antoinetteisms both at Versailles and in Paris (next stop: Conciergerie).

I also saw the new Sophia Coppola movie here in Paris. It's hard to ignore subtitles even when they're in a different language! I enjoyed the movie but thought it glossed over Versailles: no one had fleas, no one was pissing in the hallways...

Anyway, I'd never before seen Marie's little theater where she performed for friends. It is incredibly lovely with the scenery currently on stage, a verdant woodland path that looks like one at Versailles. The theater is behind the Petit Trianon, Marie's refuge from the crazy court life at Versailles, and only holds maybe 50 people? I should have counted the seats.

Also on the grounds at the Petit Trianon are the Rock, a pseudo grotto with running water built for her. I loved that and thought of a scene I could set there. (It also reminded me of the fake cliffs at Parc aux Buttes Chaumont, if I spelled that right, which I also really liked. Why do I like fake natural things?)

She also had a tiny chapel and numerous pavilions tossed around the grounds... it was a total playground. NOT to mention... the hameau. Which makes me wild with envy. Why couldn't **I** have a tiny mill on a brook, and swans, and a little tower with an eensy, tiny winding staircase that encircles it, and goats and sheep of a certain size and cuteness?

At the hameau (which means hamlet), Marie pretended to be a peasant (ominous irony), dressing as a shepherd. I've heard that they perfumed the animals so the smell wouldn't offend her nose. I read in another book that although she enjoyed the playacting, selling milk, cheese and vegetables from the hameau actually raised money for Versailles and was a real enterprise. It bears more research.

Unfortunately, I have no photos of the hameau. The memory card was full and I was too zonked to review the pics and delete some.

F-f-f-f-fashion

Cue David Bowie.

Kirsten had me take this picture because apparently leopard print is again in vogue, and she thought this portrait was funny. I don't happen to remember the man's name or even where the portrait hung (in the Petit Trianon, maybe?)

Also got to love his lavendar cravat and cuffs... this guy's got it going ON.

Woman statue

I've no idea who this woman is, if she indeed is someone specific, rather than just "woman with flowers."

She is one of the hundreds (thousands?) of statues that dot the gardens at Versailles. There's almost so many you can't even see them anymore, if you know what I mean. Just one would totally enrich a garden and invite thoughtful repose...throw fifty at a visitor at a time and you just walk by them.

But I thought she was lovely and I did take some time to notice her.

My favorite statue at Versailles

I love the statue of Poseidon's horses pulling his cart up out of the water... the horses are half-submerged still, hooves rearing in the air, and the effect is really cool.

We paid a few euros extra to see the fountains turned on and hear music piped through the gardens. The water sprays are exceptional for the horse fountain, because they look like water the horses themselves are kicking up. Add in a rainbow, and I felt like the official court photographer.

We've found Marie's head

One of the questions I've had in Paris is: what happened to all the heads? I saw the mass grave at Picpus where the headless bodies went... but what about the rest? What does one do with 1,300 heads? (and that's just the Place de la Nation heads, let alone Place de la Concorde)

I saw some plaque I half understood. It seemed to say that people wondered if the heads were paraded on pikes but no one knows for sure. If only blogging existed back then!

Anyway... the friends we have stayed with several nights are ex-pats Karen and Dave and their child Elodie. Karen and Dave are ***wonderful*** and I wish I had known them better when they lived in San Francisco! Elodie is a true bilingual charmer and an incredible artist. Kirsten saw some paint/bleach print she made and vowed to uncover the technique for her own work!

Elodie has a head she got from a friend of the family who graduated from cosmetology school. Unknowingly, she named it Marie and her parents had a good laugh at that. I was there for the "big reveal," as they say on reality TV, but she seemed unfazed at the idea that her mannequin might be Marie Antoinette.

Her parents say they have been totally creeped out by Marie because if you glimpse her at night in Elodie's room, she really does seem to be another person in the room, just hovering at the wrong height.... ew!

Pray that my trip gets better

Well, after arriving in Paris to find that our rented apartment was a tenement, then spending a week unsuccessfully trying to find another apartment (alternating between staying with friends and staying in a hotel), then going to the emergency room, I think this trip could stand improvement!

Don't worry, I'm all right but sort of bedbound today, so what better to do than download photos and post to my blog?

By the way, the French ER was wonderful. We each spoke muddled versions of the other's language and mostly found satisfaction. I was seen immediately by very kind people. At the end of the visit, they told me to return the next day to pay my bill. I smiled a little bit at the amount of trust involved in this arrangement, compared to the PPO Reign of Terror in the U.S.

This statue was one of the ones in the long hall of kings and queens at Versailles. I didn't happen to catch her name.

I'm a married woman!

Still don't have official photos from photographer yet, but here's an image from the rehearsal.

Surprise!

So much has happened recently that I've really behind in my blogging...

but several weeks ago our friends Chris and Shelly surprised us with a wedding shower that was INCREDIBLE. Shelly machiavellianed her way into locating email addresses for as many of our guests as she could track down, and there they were gathered in the living room shouting Surprise!

It was such an insanely wonderful day that I realized even if the wedding sucked, I would still be happy from the shower. Besides the fab cake above, Shelly cooked our Oakland faves, chicken and waffles. She only has a single waffle maker, so she literally spent hours cooking those for all the guests. What a labor of love, and what an amazing friend. And all the effort: totally worth it. We all gorged ourselves (word is her patented sugar bacon made at least one Jew seriously consider breaking down....)

We lingered in the backyard, enjoying a summery afternoon at lavishly appointed tables with linen tablecloths and small, perfect bouquets. It was heaven, surrounded by such wonderful friends... thank you guys!

You know you're in Berkeley...

... when the bathroom graffiti compels you to write it down. This is from the women's room at Au Coquelet. Each color is a different, ahem, writer:

Don't ever antagonize the horn.
Pynchon references? Aren't we an erudite bunch.
What's erudite?
Pretentious fuck.

MP3s Killed the Record Store (sung to the tune of Video Killed the Radio Star)

Hunting for the Lovemakers CD to give my nephew back East, I parked at the nether end of Lakeshore Avenue and then walked down the row looking for the record store Earwitness Music. And walked. To the other end of the row.

Huh.

That can’t be right, I thought, and retraced my steps. Where I thought the record store should be was an empty shop with papered glass. I was just there! (Well, a few months ago). How did it die so quickly? Very sad: Earwitness was owned by the same guy who owns Walden Pond Books and we all know how well bookstores are doing these days (I’m wearing black crepe for Cody’s on Telegraph and A Clean Well Lighted Place for Books on Van Ness. But WP Books looks like it’s thriving and may it have a long life.)

Well, I thought, I’ll go up to Montclair and hit the record store on Mountain Boulevard, Village Soundz. Guess what? It is also closed. Also fairly recently: I remember popping my head in not too long ago.

Record stores are like blacksmith shops. Livery stables. Telegraph offices.

I got a little nostalgic thinking about the record store in Montpelier, Vermont, where I grew up, and how freakin cool I felt when I walked inside and was hip enough to order a Depeche Mode album. Fred, the owner there, was very, very awesome. So I just had to google Buch Spieler Music and thank you God it is still open!!! Yah Buch Spieler!

A house I can afford

Starting Sept. 1 there will be an exhibit at Ego Park Gallery, a group show about real estate. Guessing from the very cool postcard (scanned in here) of Monopoly-esque miniature homes, I think this show will be more useful to me than looking at Polaroids in a REAL real estate office. Sad to say, a two-bedroom home in a decent Oakland neighborhood is a half-million dollar home.

Lub Dub

Last Friday, Alan and I went to Oakland Art Murmur, where a dozen art galleries open their doors from 7 to 10 p.m. Equally exciting, Telegraph near 24th was completely blocked off to traffic, and twenty-somethings milled around drinking from their bottle-in-a-bag (you know, homeless chic) and there was a drummer’s circle and a fire dancer. It was so great. Oakland has so much creative energy: these kinds of things show it.

Jeff of Oaklandish was there broadcasting an HBO show “City of Rebels” about the A’s and the Raiders in the 1970s, screening onto the back wall of his tent where he sold Oakland love merchandise. Jeff’s a huge asset to Oakland, and he told me briefly about some of the things he’s tried to organize and how the city pushed back because they’re cautious and truculent and don’t get that people like him are good for Oakland. I’m going to interview Jeff at some point for the Montclarion about the events he is even now trying to organize with lots of resistance.

Anyway, back to the positive. We saw lots of fabulous art, and even two pieces I looked at the price list for. Someday when I’m a high roller….

Art Murmur happens every first Friday, so the next one will be Sept. 1.

P.S. I didn't even realize until I was creating a title for this post that Art Murmur is a play on "heart murmur." Those guys are so clever!

National Night Out

August 1 was National Night Out, a movement across the country for neighborhoods to throw small block parties. The idea behind it is that the more you know your neighbors, the better you can band together to keep the neighborhood safe.

This night was a mindblowing exercise in Let's see. I've seen this person getting out of their car a few times, and waved as I went by, but really haven't seen them very much. They must be new to the neighborhood. And then you ask them how long they've lived in the neighborhood and they say THIRTEEN YEARS.

And since you've lived there since 1995, you realize that you've been living, thinking, eating, sleeping, laughing next to this person for over a decade without even really recognizing them or learning their name.... and they live in the house that is kitty-corner to yours.
And this happened over and over again.

I grew up in a small town in Vermont where I not only knew everyone on my street and surrounding streets, but had basically been in every home many times and knew the floorplan. I guess it's different when you're a kid growing up on a block with many kids: when you're tired, you all troop into whoever's house and ask for kool-aid. There are kids on my block here in Oakland, and maybe (I hope) they too think of the neighborhood as their extended living room... but I kind of doubt it. I got the sense from Neighborhood Night Out that many of us were strangers to each other.

The police came by and gave us whistles and penlights... and best of all.... A's tickets! I didn't at first realize the import of the tickets. Since they were handed out to all of us, that means that when we all go to the game, we'll all sit together, yet another chance for neighbors to get to know each other. That game is tonight, and unfortunately I have a class to teach, but I passed the tickets to my friend Chris who USED to live in my duplex, so close enough!

The intent of the event was also to gather names and phone numbers to organize a neighborhood watch. I'm up for that. We are lucky in that our neighborhood is fairly safe. Crimes on surrounding streets have been car theft, but as far as I know, not on our street, and no break-ins or the like. My only experience of crime on this street has been that someone once stole swim goggles from my unlocked car. If you know of anyone in possession of black market swim goggles, email me.

And thanks to neighbors Sharon, Paula and Roger for organizing Neighborhood Night Out.

Go see Joe Quirk

My friend Joe Quirk will be reading from his book Sperm are from Men, Eggs are from Women in two days. Thursday, August 3rd @ 7:30 pm at Black Oak Books, 1491 Shattuck Avenue, Berkeley. (510) 486-0698.

Why should you go?

• Because Joe is wickedly funny
• Because the book rocks
• Because Joe uses an easel when he presents
• Because that easel has funny flow-charts and pie charts he drew and labeled in his third-grade boy handwriting
• Because Joe is super nice
• Because how else are you gonna know about why the sperm come from men and the eggs from women?

Pressing buttons and burning rubber

I visited an acupuncturist for the first time last week. Along with a stick of mugwort I must light and hold next to my ankles every day, she put a little Barbie-sized band-aid inside my ear. Embedded in the “band-aid” is a tiny gold BB. When I am stressed, I am supposed to press and hold the BB for ten seconds. I really like having a tangible thing to do when I’m stressed. I’m sure my acupuncturist wouldn’t have predicted this, but I basically have my finger on that button 24/7 these days. It’s addicting.

Today, I was on the freeway, motoring along 70 mph-ish, when the driver of a huge van realized he/she was about to miss their left-hand exit. I was in the lane NEXT to the exit lane—the van, which was initially in the lane to my right, moved across my lane and over. The only problem was, there wasn’t enough time or space to do this.

I braked so hard the tires squealed (more like screamed) and the car shimmied in a desperate lurch, and laid on my horn HARD, but the van didn’t stop. It was going to exit there, by god, even though physics were not on its side.

We nearly collided. Had I not been absolutely alert, and had my brakes not worked really well, I would have been toast. After all, the van was large and I was in little Lewis, the van was aggressively moving across THREE LANES, and we were both pummeling along at 70 mph. This would have been the kind of accident that the airlift helicopter comes for.

The van exited (barely) and I continued on, shaking, smelling for miles the burning rubber coming in from my tires. I reached up and pressed my little stress button for all it was worth.

People! It is not the end of the world if you miss your exit. Take the next one and double back. It’s not worth killing yourself and others.

P.S. After I went to google and looked for an image to accompany this post, I realized my last post was ALSO about helicopters…. coinky dink?

Helicopter Dollars

If you come across a Helicopter DollarTM, it's from us! My stamp, Alan's idea. I hope our dollars make it to all fifty states. Report back if you would.

World, I'm wearing pants

My friend, and wonderful photographer, Gaby Laz came over last week to shoot me, both for Woman of Ill Fame and for Hexe. Since the two novels are so different in flavor (one’s a romp, one’s very somber), I wore different clothes. I’m really happy with the Hexe photo, which is outdoors and I’m wearing a simple white oxford shirt.

But for Woman of Ill Fame, I wore an ice-blue camisole with an empire waist and silky fabric flowing down from that …. I had thought it was flattering, but instead it made me look like I was happily making California cheese (i.e., a cow). Then one day I was digging around in a drawer and came up with a shirt I’d completely forgotten about, eyelace lace threaded with pink ribbon, which seems a little bit of a nod to Victoriana.

Gaby offered to come over and re-shoot, but she had been so nice and gone out of her way already, charging me a significantly reduced friend price, so I felt guilty doing that.

Instead, I prevailed upon Alan and our jerry-rigged digital camera. Can I just say, photography is very hard? You don’t think about things like shadows when you’re just looking with your eyes, because you adjust and discount that. And if there’s a big object looming out of the person’s head, you just focus on the foreground and it’s not a problem. Then there are things like… sheen on my forehead because the day is so hot, or my hair looks funny, or the picture is out of focus, or my smile is crooked… Alan was a champ and didn’t complain as I’d look at the current offerings on the computer, dismiss them all and drag him into the living room again.

Finally, we came up with one I could live with (top photo), except it is framed in such a way that you can’t see my jeans. Since the shirt is a little lingerie-ish, I really wanted at least a strip of blue jeans to let people know I wasn’t posing in my skivvies… and possibly one where my smile wasn’t crooked, basically an impossibility. Anyway, Alan’s suggestion is to tell the world I’m wearing pants, so that’s what I’m doing. And I’m also including a reject so you can spy with your little eye that that was in fact the case.

My author photo will undoubtedly run in black and white so this is a chance to examine all the doodads in the background. That's an encaustic painting by Kirsten Stolle behind my head and a swan and sperm whale carved by my dad. And California Art Tile in the fireplace.

Erika and Alan spare the air

When ground-level ozone in the Bay Area is projected to be very high, a Spare the Air Day is declared. All public transportation is free, and the hope is that erstwhile drivers will instead jump on a train, thereby lowering the smog levels.

Of course, these ozone days are connected to very hot days.

Fittingly, Alan and I decided to use our free BART train ride last night to go to a San Francisco theater and see Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth.”

Go see this movie; whatever your political bent, it conveys an important idea, that we are seriously, seriously effing up our planet. 

Drinking water which millions depend on is being dried up, animals’ symbiotic cycles are being screwed up, and most importantly major parts of Oakland will be underwater. Unacceptable! I do live on a hill, but I sometimes venture to the flatlands for my crack fix. 

Seriously, though, I’ve been concerned for a long time that we aren’t forward thinking. Nor are we backward-looking. Few of us think about repercussions, or study history for patterns. Part of our culture as Americans is just to enjoy now. And that’s great, that’s very zen of us, but we are just a tiny blip in our planet’s story – yet we have the power to type “The End.”

The great part about An Inconvenient Truth is that it talks about how revocable all this is, given that we jump on the problem. At www.climatecrisis.org, there’s a list of things each person can personally do to help out.

On a lighter note, when public transportation is free, it includes cable cars. Although it is a very touristy thing to do, riding cable cars is incredibly exhilarating and just makes you grin. Feeling the lurch of the cable beneath you as you surmount the steeps hills of San Francisco…. ah, it’s bliss. So we rode four times last night! We rode Embarcadero to the top of Powell, switched cars to go down Powell, transferred to go back up, and then switched again to ride back to Embarcadero. At each transfer, there was a cable car already waiting. 

We can’t figure out why our litigious society still allows the cable cars; you are literally holding on only with your clenched hands as SUVs and other cable cars whoosh by with only a hands-breadth between you and them. The girl next to me had to turn her backpack around so it was on her stomach because that’s how close you are to traffic.

When we switched at the bottom of Powell, the next cable car was already on the move, but I ran as fast as I could and jumped onto it, with Alan right at my heels. Unfortunately, no talent scouts were around to witness this and offer me a part in an action-packed summer movie.

Finally, we took BART back to Oakland, where ULEV (ultra low emission vehicle) Lewis Charles Honda III was waiting for us.

A special shout-out to CH. Hi old buddy!

Bear Attack at Malakoff

I made reference in an earlier post to seeing a bear at Malakoff. It was in the campground! In daylight!

Alan: Uh, Erika, there's a bear!
Erika: Oh my god, you're right!
Alan: [turns around and walks other way]
Bear: [watches]
Erika: [starts to do same as Alan, remembers you're not supposed to turn back on bear]. Hello, MISTER BEAR! [loudly] What's up, BEAR?
Bear: [turns around and runs away, terrified by girl's shrill voice]
Later...
Alan: Sure, you're terrified when you encounter a little tiny bug, but when you see a bear that could maul you, you're unaffected.
Erika: I'm not scared of mammals.

One thing I like about Alan is that he thinks of, and does, things other people might scoff at. Like, for instance, hanging the entire cooler from the tree. It didn't seem logistically possible, but it was! All night long the cooler gently swung and deterred bears from eating its contents. Forget renting a bear box from REI: this is the way to go.

Malakoff Diggins

Our camping trip recently was to Malakoff Diggins State Park, 20 miles north of Nevada City. Here is a "mini Yosemite Valley," carved out by miners enthusiastically directing pressurized water at the hillsides to make the gold run off. Since this flooded farms down the valley and was ecologically reprehensible, an 1884 court case ended the diggins. By 1940, the boomtown had shut down and in 1966 became a state park.
Malakoff Diggins has a really sweet little ghost town with about six buildings you can tour. It puts Goldfield to shame!
I was pretty much in ecstasy the whole time. Plus the campground itself (3,000 acres!) is really lovely. We had tentsite no. 27, which is closest to the diggins overlook. We had a great evening walk down to Blair Lake where we saw turtles, fish that swam in tight, fast, perfect circles, weird bugs, and best of all, really BIG frogs.
Here's Alan panning for gold. Gold flakes are terribly small, it turns out, more like gold molecules. We were told that the launderers would shake out the miners' clothes to collect up the gold dust.

Striking it rich at Malakoff

We panned for gold in a trough under the auspices of a ranger who was very nice and told us if we'd shown up 15 minutes later she would have seeded our trough with gold flakes from the gift shop. Our timing is always wretched.

Nevertheless, my friends, without the assistance of said seeding, I found several flakes of real, true gold. Alan did too. The ranger in this photo uses a plastic syringe to point to a speck of gold. Yup, that's how small it is.

Panning is really mind-numbing after a while. Initially, exciting. But when you realize you will have to find many, many specks to even begin to craft a necklace, you think that maybe it IS a good idea to aim a hydraulic hose at the hillside and let mercury float down to the San Francisco Bay.

For a quarter, we bought a little vial to put our gold flakes into. Upon subsequent viewings, I think some of the "gold" was mica since it is dark on one side... sigh.

Alan visits the brothel

First he looks around to see who's watching... then he drops trou and knocks. Hello, ladies!

Time flies at Malakoff

You can be M. Simon and own a men's furnishings establishment, but before you know it, the building falls down and grass begins to grow and all your clients are dead and the only way anyone ever knows about your store is that there's a wooden sign to mark where it was....

How to catch rats in the 1800s

This rat trap was on the floor of the kitchen in the main house in Malakoff Diggins. Can't remember the name of the family, but the father supposedly was a grubstaker. He'd seed land with gold, sell it to excited suckers, and then sit back and watch the land fail.

He also ran a saloon and let miners keep a running tab. Now and then he'd ask them to pay up the tab, and some of them would say, "Man, I don't remember drinking at your establishment last Thursday..." and he'd say, "Yeah, that's because you were drunk." Some people think he was dishonest in creating entries in the credit log...

Kashi said this house is reputedly haunted. An audio tape left recording apparently picked up a piano playing, when there is no piano in the house. Another recording has a woman adamantly saying, "Downstairs... downstairs," as if she is ordering a bad child to go downstairs. There's a legend that a child fell down the (indeed very steep) stairs in the house and died.

Malakoff drugstore

The drugstore has an incredible array of old elixir bottles and snake oil remedies. The tour guide said once a visitor pointed out the old-fashioned version of Viagra but she's never been able to find it since. My sister is a major bottle dump excavator, so it was fun to look at these and think of them at the bottom of a riverbed in Maine. I saw some Lydia Pinkham's bottles here, which my sister has found underwater. The bottles were really pretty with all the light shining on them.

Malakoff saloon

We had a great tour at the Malakoff Diggins with Kashi, the state park ranger guide. Here she is behind the bar at the Jack King Saloon, one of seven in North Broomfield during its heyday. Jack King gave the miners free drink tokens on payday, knowing they'd stay and buy more beverages. Kashi said the miners had a fifty percent suicide rate. You can still see the hops planted by those brewers.

Till death do us part... or a dingbat

In the early days of our relationship, Alan used to take off all my rings at night and put them in a little wooden trinket box he bought just for that purpose. It was very tender/sexy and I don’t know why/when we stopped doing that. Now the box is on top of my bookcase, and I just put my jewelry in a little cluster on the bedside table by myself each night.

Now that I have a fabulous diamond ring, I tuck it in to sleep back into its black velvet box, so it looks like I’m being proposed to night after night. The first thing Alan saw me doing that, he looked shocked. “You don’t keep it on all night?” he asked.

“I don’t think so. I don’t really know!”

I was going to ask the ladies of my book club and/or watch movies very closely to see who wore theirs to sleep, but never got around to it. I do know that I take it off to do dishes and to go to the gym: just common sense.

On our camping trip this weekend, we were tramping through the woods when this little dialogue happened.

Alan: You know how you take the ring off at night?

Erika: Yeah?

Alan: And sometimes you’re not wearing it?

Erika: True….

Alan: So you won’t be angry now and then if I don’t wear mine?

Erika: Sure, as long as you wear it when you go clubbing.

Alan: I’ll wear two just in case the dingbat I’m hitting on doesn’t know which hand to look at.

And then we saw a bear!

Actually, we did see a bear but that was on a different hike and deserves its own post.

Ed. note: Alan does not go clubbing. And it’s wrong to refer to women as dingbats.

I really must insist that you people of metal not rise up and kill me and my family

It's upon us.
Scientists are releasing a guide to robot ethics. I knew this day would come.
The scariest thing I've ever seen is not The Shining or The Ring, but instead the Honda Robot commercial where the robot opens up the garage door and then is seen climbing stairs to humans' bedrooms.
I've tried to get Lewis Charles Honda III to talk about this, as he may have seen things on the factory floor, but he is unwilling to discuss it.
Another website poses a few questions:

• Is it moral to turn a robot off? I shiver to contemplate this being an issue.
• Should robots themselves participate in discussions of robot ethics? Uh.... maybe not?

We were the first of our friends to get TiVo, but I draw the line there. That's bad enough: it suggests programs it thinks you would like to see and records them for you. That's all the thinking I want a machine to do.

San Jose Book Expo

I attended the Book Expo with a bunch of friends from the writers group. It was great! Highlights:

* Hearing M. Allen Cunningham describe his book The Green Age of Asher Witherow. The book is set in a 1800s mining operation that had no less than three thriving towns in Contra Costa County and is now only rolling hills (and tunnels!) I had just been to hike the Black Diamond Mines earlier this year (in fact, I think I blogged about it if you scroll down) and found the place incredibly evocative. I have to admit, the thought crossed my mind that it would be great to research the place and write a novel about it... thank God someone else did it! I asked the author if he had been inspired by a hike there, and indeed he had. I can't wait to read it; it's on my bedside table next in line when I finish The News from Paraguay, which is for my Book Club, which I am loving.
* I liked the panel about writing about grief, because I'm working on a grief novel now. There was a buoyant feeling to the panel, which made me again acknowledge that grief is part of the whole cycle. We laughed so hard the moderator said she thought the other sessions must be thinking terrible things of us, given our topic...
* The best laugh of the day came from this enormous 6' panel (pictured), displaying the sessions in Salon C for the weekend. Apparently, you get "Climb Every Single Woman of a Certain Age" when you combine "Climb Every Mountain," a session about travel writing, with "Single Women of a Certain Age," a session about women writers.

Car talk

My car history has been spotty.

My first car was tiny and I called her Bella. Although I bought her brand new, she was so tiny that I couldn’t stand the ribbing and traded her in a year later for a different, used car. This one I also called Bella, in the spirit of Victorian families who called every maid Bridget whether or not that was her name.

The second Bella was troubled. She required several head gasket jobs and new engines. Most alarmingly, her front bumper somehow split (did someone hit me when I was parked? I’ll never know since Bella’s lips are sealed… unlike her bumper). Day by day this split widened until it is somewhat fjordous and I fear it will completely split into two.

At one point there was a third car in my life. It would have been Bella as well, but it only lasted a millisecond. During one of Troubled Bella’s downtimes, as I contemplated whether to give her a new engine or not, I bought a used car for $500 that didn’t pass smog. Rather than swiftly returning it to its previous owner, I spent money to make it pass smog. Those repairs somehow affected the car’s already dicey acceleration ability, and I found myself trying to merge onto the freeway at 45 mph. A couple death-defying episodes and I went back to the smoggers and had them undo whatever they did to make it pass smog. It didn’t make things better. Reluctantly, I had to conclude I had screwed up. I tried to sell the car but could get no takers. Finally, I turned to garages who might buy it for its parts and one place offered me $1. I kid you not. One dollar. And this information was delivered without even the suggestion of a guffaw. Dead serious. I found a place that would give $100 and delivered the car up with a sense of relieved disgust. I had spent, in the brief month I owned it, $500—plus the $500 to purchase it. Bad Bella!

But all that has changed.

There is a new car in my life now, and it’s not a female.

It’s Lewis Charles Honda III, and I love him dearly. Lewis has incredible gas mileage and low emissions. Lewis handles like a dream; he practically steers himself! Lewis has not only working air conditioning… but MAX air conditioning which is even colder. Shiver! He likes to play CDs, whereas Bella only let me play my pirates cassette. His windows go up and down with the press of a button; no more pesky circular hand motions. His cologne is Eau de Nouveau Voiture. He has lots of airbags from all sorts of angles and the dashboard display is a lovely purple halo. I press a button to pop the trunk. I tuck Lewis in for the night with a Club grasped in his sleepy steering wheel because he is desired by other drivers. He is in fact the #1 stolen car in America, my dealer informed me after I’d signed everything.

Of course he is: he’s a valuable, lovely boy. And fissured Bella is sitting out on used car row with a Sale sign in her back window. I do feel bad, but she shouldn’t have asked me to make those endless expensive repairs, and she knows that.

Important development in paper news

I had to open up my resume to check this, but I last worked in a law firm in the year 2000.

Attorneys produce incredible amounts of scrap paper. Endless drafts that are revised, templates. One client had reports I ran each month which numbered in the hundreds of pages. We always recycled, but as an aspiring writer I also took home lots of paper so I could run drafts of my novel(s) on the other side. I had reams and reams worth that I kept in my closet.

I run through a lot of paper myself, printing out copies of my 300-page novels to give to beta readers, running copies of any new scenes. As an English instructor of yore, I’d print out instructions, handouts… that’s hundreds of pages.

I kept a box called Scrap near my printer. Whenever I ran out of recycled law firm paper, I’d go replenish from the stacks in the closet.

My point is: given all the printing I do, it took me until two days ago to reach the end of the paper. Paper that I spirited away from the office in the year 2000. Six years ago.

!!!!

The Hawaii report

Can’t believe I haven’t blogged for over a month! I’m back in Oakland now and one of my writer friends Ed told me tonight he had looked at my blog. I was thrilled to have confirmation that an actual person was reading it.

So my most happy Hawaii news is that after the luau on our 10th anniversary, as we walked in the surf on the deserted Ko Olina lagoon under a nearly-full moon, someone pulled out a ring and asked me to marry him. The setting was dizzyingly romantic and I will always remember that night.

Here’s a picture of my parchment-pale hand ... I had to use sunscreen, people! It's either white or lobster red and nothing in between.

Little waves on the north shore

I just pushed the camera out the car window and shot without looking...
didn't realize my Home Shopping Network hands would be in it. Doesn't it look like I'm trying to sell the camera?

Ko Olina at sunset

Our favorite lagoon is abandoned and romantic...

In Oahu

Ah, Hawaii. Here is our favorite place to swim, the Ko Olina lagoon. It’s a manmade series of lagoons with rock walls to break the waves. It’s pretty exciting to swim in the tranquil water and watch the fearsome breakers dashing against the rocks – like being indoors in the middle of a lightning storm.

I swam at Makaha, which is unprotected, and what a difference. Hard to explain how powerful the undertow is. Just walking along the surf, no deeper than my ankles, I was literally afraid I would get knocked over. It just pulls. I swam in maybe three feet of water and definitely got the sense that only vigilance kept me from being swept out to sea. I’m chicken but I almost died in skyscraper-sized surf in Maui a few years ago, so I learned my lesson from the sea.

Hilariously, Waikiki is not safe to swim in right now (sewage problem)… one of the world’s most exclusive beaches is untouchable.

A marine biologist student I met on the bus explained to me, though, that two currents fork around the island, so beaches on the leeward side or on the north shore are fine.

I’ve been taking some bus trips on my own since Alan is working. Everyone is really nice and I’ve had good talks with fellow busriders and with drivers. Very friendly.

We did a nice hike today in Makiki and drove out by Koko Head which is gorgeous.

As for writing: it took me a few days to settle in and open the laptop. But I’m happy with my production so far: three days of writing and 16 double-spaced pages to show for it. One scene involves a man planning a sophisticated dinner so I took some cookbooks out of the library (yes, I’m such a dork I got a library card already. The library in Kapolei is gorgeous) and enjoyed looking at the recipes. One recipe requires you to start cooking 2 weeks beforehand! (Duck confit)

I’ve been reading a collection of short stories by Andre Dubus III, one of which was the basis for the movie In the Bedroom. What an amazing writer. I hope the folks at Chabot are enjoying House of Sand and Fog. Remember, always open your mail even if you're depressed and thought you dealt with the county already!

Seattle airport

Here’s a picture from the airport. A boy was kneeling counting the rings in the translucent image of a redwood. He never saw me on the other side of the glass. His dad eventually joined him and they were pointing and counting together, but their shadows merged and looked monstrous so it didn’t make a nice photograph like this one.

Pirate store

In case you can't read the sign, the pirate's joke is "How much did the pirate pay to get his ears pierced?"
Answer: a buccaneer.

Hello Seattle

Seattle is a beautiful city.

I had a five hour layover there, because of course when flying from Oakland to Hawaii the most expeditious route is to go north…. When you’re using a frequent flyer coupon you go where the airline tells you, without complaining. Well, maybe just a little complaining.

Anyway, Seattle is fabulous and it was totally worth it. I love their public transportation system. Downtown, the buses are all free, and the routes/schedules are very easy to figure out. I took a bus from the airport and walked along the waterfront. There’s a great view across the water of snow-capped mountains (look at the background of the photo of a boat being lifted by a crane). I was excited to find a Pirate store… in my car, 9/10s of the time I am listening to my pirates sing on a cassette. I almost bought a mini pirate bobblehead for my dashboard.

I also went in Ye Old Curiosity Shop. Fascinating for a look at the morbidity of last century’s collectors. But I was distressed to see that they were also selling fudge! I mean, after looking at the shrunken human heads with their overly-long eyelashes and the mummified woman whose flesh was ravaged by larvae and the sad, curled-up stillborn fawn and the momma cat and kittens, all poisoned by eating a poisoned rat, my last thought is of “What can I put in my mouth?” Especially given that the fudge seems to be manufactured on the premises.

Pike’s Market is fun to wander around in… but if you enter at street level on one street, it’s impossible to figure out how to exit on the parallel street, which I needed to do to find my bus back to the airport. Construction around the structure didn’t help, either… A nice shoptender kindly left his till and walked me up two or three flights – how counterintuitive to ascend when you are trying to exit; this never would have occurred to me!

I’m so glad I had a chance to see Seattle (my first but not last time). I can’t wait to return.

Ginger versus Bush

Paul Robeson

Paul Robeson…. a pity we don’t know this name better. He was an amazing man. This guy fought for what he believed at great personal cost. For one thing, visit here to read the transcripts of his appearance before the House Un-American Activities Committee; he held his own and showed those interrogators as the buffoons they were. It’s interesting to read this after seeing Good Night and Good Luck not too long ago.

The funny thing is, I had decided quite randomly to write my history column on Robeson, based on a photograph in the Oakland History Room of him singing to inspire WWII shipworkers in Oakland. For lack of a better reason, I was going to tie my column in with the movie I just mentioned… but the librarian at the History Room said, “Oh, you’re writing about the exhibit?”

Huh?

Turns out that serendipitously, there’s a fabulous exhibit up now at the African American Museum and Library at Oakland (AAMLO) with all kinds of video monitors so you can see the great man in action and hear his insanely deep baritone voice. One of the things this exhibit stresses is that Robeson was the first to underscore the importance of Negro spirituals by performing them in sanctified concert halls. They're more than just work songs—they have a depth and power and distinct philosophy about life and pain; they are a legitimate artform.

Speaking of powerful songs, the exhibit also talks about “Old Man River” and how Robeson was best known for that song, although its lyrics are stereotypical and he had to change them. I still get chills, however, at that line, “I’m tired of living and scared of dying/But Old Man River he jes keeps rolling along.” As a young girl growing up in Vermont looking through our Broadway showtunes book, I remember being awed at the desperation that lyric expressed. I’ve still never seen Showboat; I should rent it.

There’s a Paul Robeson tomato on display, created by Moscovites… maybe that’s why the HUAC was so suspicious!

AAMLO is graced with six Arthur Mathews murals, out of an intended 12 (the library ran out of money, back in the early 1900s). Two panels were completed and burned in the fire associated with the 1906 earthquake (whose centennial was yesterday), so Mathews had to repaint them. My museum friend Diana says the Oakland Museum will be doing a Mathews exhibit next year: can’t wait.

Tulips and morbidity

My favorite flower is a tulip, and my favorite color in tulips is red. These are at the Mountain View Cemetery right now, for the Tulips Days they hold annually.

Frederick Law Olmsted, who designed the cemetery and also New York's Central Park, was adamant that cemeteries should not be like parks. I had a hard time understanding this for a while. Mountain View is designed with beautiful curving roads that sinuously and organically cut into the hillside, and its stretches of greenery are visually stunning... isn't that what you mean by park?

But yesterday I spent some time thinking about it as I climbed the cemetery's hills. I think the Victorians were into picnicking at cemeteries, bringing the whole family and a gingham blanket to sit upon. And maybe that's what park meant then: simple, mindless enjoyment -- whereas Olmsted wanted an acknowledgment of the sobriety of death...?

I think he would have approved of how I visited the cemetery yesterday. I was there initially to take a photograph of a monument for my history column, and then decided to walk for an hour (yes, the cemetery is that large) for exercise... but the tombstones I read as I walked soon had me in a thoughtful frame of mind.

The mowers had just mown the grass, so the air was filled with that staggering scent of summer, and the trees in blossom also sent their odors wafting... the grass was the bright almost translucent green of a heavily rainy winter... The lawn rolled down to a vista of ocean and distant cities. I stood there gulping down all the ecstasy the earth was serving up: dazzled; really, lucky. Lucky to still be here and experience it.

As I looked at the 1800s graves of children who lived for hours, or lived for months, with a granite lamb atop their stone to say how the parents grieved, as I smiled at some of the outlandish names, as I saw newly-placed flowers and even several true mourners crouched or on their knees, fresh in their sadness, I thought that all I could do was try to be good in my own way. This would all pass, this sensation, this brightness, my skin... my only job was to be aware and thankful.

And Olmsted's landscape made such "large" thoughts possible. It is easy to see the earth's cycle and know your place in it when nature is hand in hand with the dead.

And on to some cemetery gossip: the unendowed section of the cemetery? What a frightening mess. Gravestones buried half-cocked under grasses, split into pieces. I found a pile that looked like they had simply been thrown in a mass from wherever they once stood. I thought if ghosts exist, they're here in the unendowed section, furious, bewailing their forgotten state...

My cats were like bishops....

...but Gary's dog is God. Come see my writer friend Gary Turchin read from his very cool novel in progress My Dog God. Happens 7 p.m. on Thursday the 20th at the Rickshaw Stop in San Francisco. More details here.

Kismet

Yesterday I was out photographing various Oakland landmarks that had been saved through efforts of Oakland Heritage Alliance members. Here’s a startling one: City Hall itself!

After the Loma Prieta earthquake, there was a strong push to knock it over and start over. Luckily, our gorgeous Beaux Arts building got the seismic retrofit it deserved.

I was photographing these buildings for the Oakland Heritage Alliance newsletter, which I lay out. It's OHA's 25th anniversary, so I was trying to get images to illustrate a looking-back kind of article. Since Friends of the Oakland Fox, the group working to re-open the fabulous old Fox Theater which has been abandoned for decades, was an OHA offshoot, I decided to take pictures of the Fox façade.

Façade only, since the front is barred with chain link fence. I’d only been inside the theater twice, for very abbrievated looks.

So I was there holding my camera, peering through the fence, when I discerned a live human behind it, sitting in a chair. Upon seeing me, he rose to his feet and walked to the gate, saying, “You’re here to take photographs? Come on in.”

He was treating me like he was expecting me!

Although it crossed my mind to pretend I was whoever he thought I was (which always works in movies), I decided to come clean. “Are you expecting a photographer?”

“Yes.”

“Someone from a newspaper, media?”

“No, a preservation group or something.”

“Oh. It’s just a random coincidence that I’m here taking pictures of the Fox. But I wonder… is that preservation group the Oakland Heritage Alliance?”

He wasn’t sure, but he was kind enough to let me inside anyway. I was blown away by the luck of my timing, to be there holding a camera when he expected someone holding a camera….

So for the third time in my life, I entered the cavernous and gorgeous Fox Theater, built in 1928 and moldering since the 1970s. The 4,000 or some odd seats are all gone, so the auditorium is vast and curved and empty. On either side of the stage are two gigantic Buddha statues. Back when the Fox was operational, incense would burn in the figures’ laps and their eyes would glow. One statue’s eyes glowed ruby, and the other’s emerald.

The theater was very dark and of course my flash didn’t serve to light the space, so the interior shots didn’t work. But here are some shots of the dazzling Art Deco entrance, where the ticket booth used to stand. The marquee and blade (the long vertical sign) were very badly deteriorated, and in 2001 the city paid to have them professionally restored, so they beam brightly at night although the Fox itself is still pretty dismal. 

The Friends of the Oakland Fox just kicked off a capital campaign to get the theater restored enough to hold performances there, sort of a placeholder until the whole thing can be restored. Even just this stopgap restoration, called the Ruins project (i.e., keep the theater as a ruin, but operational) is supposed to cost $27 million! I’ll be making a donation once I get my advance, and you should too!

My love affair

Today I renewed my love affair with Oakland. What a city! Usually, I'm overcome by city love when I'm at the lake, but today it was the cherry blossoms in front of City Hall that got me going. My feelings were probably fortified by sunlust... after all this rain, it's so great to take a breath that doesn't involve getting water in your lungs.

Also, something very special and coincidental happened to me... more later.

Aht! Culchah! My dawgs were bawkin!

Went to the SF MoMa yesterday (sans Randolph and Kirsten this time) to see the 1906 earthquake photographs. Odd that a museum of MODERN art is showing 100-year-old photos, but no matter; for me, history and modernity co-exist peacefully.

Because I was wearing high-heeled and quite pointy-toed boots*, standing and looking at the exhibits for three hours became painful. So I sat down to watch Steve McQueen’s Drumroll for a lot longer than I would have otherwise.

This is a film McQueen made with three cameras affixed in a rolling cement mixer he pushed down the street, apologizing to passersby as he went for the space he took up on the sidewalk. Two cameras were mounted inside the mixer, facing outside right and left, and one on the outside that rotates with the drum, so you can see the blur of McQueen’s body over and over. The three circular images are displayed side by side. As soon as you walk into the dark exhibit space, you’re instantly disoriented because the circling images make you feel like you’re rotating as well.

At first I thought the images were mundane, endless taxi wheels and pedestrians’ feet, but my cruel shoes encouraged me to stay and watch longer. And hey, it got really cool the longer I stayed. I’m always telling my critical thinking students to “observe longer,” and it definitely paid off here.

I started noticing little things I wouldn’t have otherwise, like how the three images fit together and share some cornerspace with each other and figuring out that the blur was the artist (of course the placard says this, but I didn’t get it until I got it, and then it was an aha). I became in tune with the rotation, breathing with the grinding sound the mixer made, at peace with being upside down. Way cool.

And I’m guessing this is not the Steve McQueen of the acting world.

The day previous, I had heard a DJ on the radio saying that the Beatles and the Beach Boys had a sort of competition to see who could be more revolutionary and groundbreaking in their music, apropos of “Yesterday” being the first rock song to use a classical quartet. And then I came to the MOMA and saw that artists were doing the same thing: Jeff Koons with his ceramic Michael Jackson and monkey, the surrealistic photographers, the artist who bounced a basketball covered with paint over a canvas and called it art, the artist who did the same with naked women’s bodies (well, I guess instead of dribbling the women, they writhed on their own.) It was a nice synchronicity to see the same principle applied to two different art forms.

I loved my afternoon there.

And then I walked to BART, seriously looking around to see if there were any shoe stores because my feet hurt that badly. And wouldn’t you know it, it was commuter rush hour after five o’clock and I didn’t get a seat. I stood all the way to Oakland thinking evil thoughts about my beautiful boots.

*my boots are taller and pointier than the ones pictured… and also less Prada.

Redhead returns to east coast

I was so sad to say goodbye to my redhaired sister... we had such a wonderful time together. Her whirlwind visit was the highlight of the spring! Can't wait to lure her back out here again. Actually, the airline owes her a free flight, imho, for how they treated her on her return. Maybe a strongly-worded letter will yield a certificate that she just has to use before it expires.

One of the most fun things we did was have high tea at Lovejoy's Tea Room in San Francisco. I just love those hot scones with lemon curd! And the teeny triangle sandwiches without their crusts... The place is filled with antiques, as is the store across the street, which made the redhead very happy and in her proper habitat.

We had other great adventures as well, like when she kicked a dinosaur in the head... repeatedly. So sorry about the inside joke, but she told me not to put her on my blog so I'm going very under the radar here. Miss you, Red!!!!

No logs in peasant fireplaces in the 1500s, it turns out

This week I finished a small self-inflicted revision of Hexe. Teo Ruiz, the man whose Terror of History lectures inspired the book, very kindly agreed to read it and comment on historical accuracy. He has been so patient and wonderful and answers all my follow-up email questions (every one of which I’m convinced will be the last one… but then… wait! what about 16th century window sills?) I owe him so much.

So I did a round of firming up little anachronisms and next my editor will read that version and send me her edits. I’m dying to see what she has to say.

Useless update

Today I finally put fingers to keyboard and eked out six pages on a short story, just enough to bring to my writers group tonight (we're allowed a maximum of six double-spaced pages; I was typing right up until I left!) Right now I feel all sort of "between projects" -- but it's just better to keep writing. I do look forward to my five weeks in Hawaii and the ability to dedicate each day to working on a new book, whatever it will be (I have three ideas: one historical, one not, and one involves re-tackling my first-ever novel).

That first-ever novel is very badly written but has such a cool concept that I really want to try to do it justice. In fact, I tried for eight years to give it, uh, justice... the sheriff just wasn't in town apparently.

But I think writing two full-length novels (and a few other shorter projects) since then has helped me become a better writer. It'd be fun to test that theory.

They say every published novelist has six unpublished manuscripts under their bed... that's a very unpleasant number to contemplate. When you finish the first draft of your first novel, you're exhilarated! You think this is it! Editors across the globe are simultaneously drawing up contracts for you! It's time to figure out all the witty things you'll say in interviews! You must decide now whether you should smile or look mildly contemplative in your author photo! Ah yeah... and then ... years pass... cobwebs develop on the manuscript... and then eventually, with a sigh, you put it under the bed (in my case, the closet).

I spent eight years on that first book, rewriting, changing the ending probably five times (I mean how the book ended, not just the way it was written), changing the beginning, making some characters more malevolent, adding more supernatural hoodoo... I'm glad I was smart enough to stop working on it, because my next book sold. And so did the third one.

So that six books under the bed theory? I guess it applies to me if you consider that I should have written that many books in eight years rather than spinning my wheels on just one.
But I'm just idiotic enough to want to go back to it.

C'mon, what's another eight years?!

At the bottom of a dark Scottish lake

I just yesterday realized the synchronicity of the fact that I am reading White Oleander, about foster care, at the same time that we are hosting Boddington for five weeks.

Boddington is an amazing cat and we don't want to let him go. We've had him for five weeks while his mom was in Hawaii. And now she's back in Oakland. She wanted to come get him yesterday. The heartbreak began.

She'll be coming today to get him... and the little furry guy who would nestle under my chin to sleep, lodged against my neck, will be gone. The sound of scampering claws as he bats around one of my hair ties on the hardwood floor, and then races after it as it flies: gone. His idiosyncratic way of twisting his head upside down, as if the floor had fingers and would scratch his head: not to be seen by me any longer.

I'm sure Boddington would prefer to stay, given the top tier treatment we offer cats in this household. Ah, Boddington, I hardly knew ya!

(Here's Boddington emerging from the bottom of a "dark Scottish loch"-- the mural of Lake Merritt).

What the hail?

Before I left the house yesterday morning for my run, our visiting cat Boddington was on the windowsill basking in the sunlight. His fur was hot to the touch.

Halfway around the lake, it began to hail. Big white chunks that hurt my skin. I continued to run, watching the hail bounce on the ground like someone had dropped a bunch of very, very tiny ping pong balls. I muscled on, because running through hail makes you feel like an Olympian. But when it turned to rain a mile later, it was dreary.

After my run, it became hail again.

I came home and saw hail nestled in the grass, not melting, like some infestation of insects had laid their icy eggs all through the lawn. Here is a picture of some plants on our porch, with the hail nestled in the pot and on the leaves.

An hour later, I stepped back onto the porch and the hail still hadn’t melted.

Fast forward to the evening: big time thunder, which we almost never get here. Lightning too. We went through some weather extremes yesterday.

And now I know I am officially a grown-up, since I thought it was interesting to write about the weather.

My day in the hills has come to an end, I know

I am in ecstasy. Why? Because last night my German dance group began learning a very special dance, the Laendler.

This is the dance from the patio scene in The Sound of Music, where Maria dances with the Captain and they have some serious chemistry. I love that dance!
In the movie, Maria says that it's a traditional Austrian folk dance, but my dance leader says it's German. Nuns in training do lie.

It involves a Mazurka step which we were all sort of floundering with, but it is a pretty dance step if we can master it. We just learned the first half and will learn the second part two weeks from now, with the romantic "windows." I can't wait.

The only person that I know reads this blog on a regular basis is my oldest sister, and I'm sure she will be excited to hear we're learning this dance. We grew up in a musical household, with that sister playing piano for the vocal stylings of the Mailman Family Singers! The Family von Mailman! Another round of applause for the von Mailman Family Singers! (this joke makes sense if you remember the scene where the von Trapps win the contest). And we had a player piano with a fat piano roll of all the Sound of Music songs.

Maria von Trapp is very dear to us, because after the family climbed every mountain at the end of the movie, they came out on the other side and came to America, where they settled in... Vermont. My home state. They established a ski resort called the Trapp Family Lodge in Stowe. My mother said when she and dad first moved to Vermont, the family was still giving concerts, but by the time my oldest sister saw Maria on the street one time (by then, widowed, portly and apparently grumpy), she was not very enthused by her young fan.

We still loved her, though, and watched TSOM every year on TV, suffering through the endless commercials. For Xmas this year, one of my other sisters gave me a copy of the deluxe anniversary DVD. I can't wait to look at the bonus features. (And I want to watch the dance scene a few times).

So, Brenda, deep in the dark green shadows are voices that urge you to stay... so you pause and you wait and you listen... for one more sound, for one more lovely thing that the hills might say.

Chico in a Day

One thing Alan and I like to do to revive ourselves is to get away for a night. Sure, it’s great to get on an airplane for a week, but sometimes we’ll just throw a change of clothes in a gym bag and get in the car. That’s what happened recently, when we decided to hit Chico and were on the road within a few hours of the decision.

Why Chico? Alan wanted to see a concert of Kaki King, who was performing at Chico State that night. We left around 4 p.m., the concert was at 7:30, and Chico was three hours away. Cutting it a little close, wouldn’t you say?

Alan had heard Kaki on Prairie Home Companion and thought she was reminiscent of Michael Hedges. She performed that night with two other guitarists in an evening called La Guitara.

Afterwards, we bought one of her CDs and waited to have her sign it. The woman ahead of us in line had not been foresightful enough to take the plastic wrapping off her CD, so Kaki did it for her, breaking the jewel case in the process. Mystifyingly, she did not laugh or apologize or make any kind of comment. She was utterly silent through the signing process. Alan asked her, when it was his turn, “Will you please sign this for me?” Again, no response, not even to a direct question! No smile, not so much as a tic.

In the car, Alan said, “She’s young, she’s talented, and she’s autistic.”

We stayed at a motel that I convinced myself was haunted, based on the very frightening sounds of a ghost peeing in the bathroom (thought it was Alan, but then I turned my head and he was still *** in *** bed***. Creepy!)

We visited the Bidwell Mansion, the highlight of our trip, where Mr. Bidwell of the 1800s refused to bribe people to become governor, and his wife was a suffragette.

We had an amazing breakfast at the Sin of Cortez (I thought the sin was how he treated the native peoples, but Alan says it’s coffee). Check out this hipster offering on the menu:

Bohemian Breakfast. Three eggs scrambled with scallions, roma tomatoes, jack cheese, with salsa, rosemary potatoes and your choice of a cigarette or a multi-vitamin.

We also trekked part of Bidwell Park, which reminded me of Canada for its barren winter trees and almost-Europeaness. The fast-flowing Chico Creek is apparently so clean that you can swim in it: one stretch is partially dammed to form a swimming area, with aqua-painted walls, stepladders for getting in and out, and white wooden lifeguard chairs. We were impressed.

Chico is charming. After our 20-hour visit, we turned around and drove home.