Remembering Aunt Bertha

Bertha Emma Freudenstein Carter (1889-1993) was my great aunt. She was also the moral center of our family the entire time I was growing up. Born the eldest of six children, she only made it through the fourth grade. Her handwriting always looked like that of a fourth grader, but it never stopped her from sending letters and cards to her family and loved ones on every occasion. While I was in the army in Vietnam, she sent me packages of cookies, with a note and a few Oral Roberts religious pamphlets. She was an avid Oral Roberts fan and watched him every week on her 14-inch black-and-white television.

She and her husband Alonzo "Curt" Carter married in 1907 and homesteaded a dairy farm near Mount Rainier; they ran it almost until Curt died in 1951. Aunt Bertha never had children of her own but was surrogate mother to dozens of us, especially the children of her brothers and sisters. After Curt died, she sold the farm and, even though she was then in her 60s, she opened what today we would call a board-and-care home for the elderly. She operated it until she was well into her 70s, cooking three meals a day for as many as 10 people, doing massive amounts of laundry, and cleaning -- always cleaning. Until 1965, she drove the 1940 Ford V-8 that Curt had bought brand new while they were living on the farm. But by the mid-1960s, she had decided she needed a new car with automatic transmission. So she traded the Ford in on an American Motors Rambler, four-door with push-button radio and electric windshield wipers. (If only I had been smart enough to buy that Ford from her back then. It only had 60,000 miles on it in 25 years of driving, and the original grey-green paint and felt upholstery were still in good condition. Sigh.)

Aunt Bertha would pull up to our house, usually on a Saturday morning, just to see how we were doing. She'd usually bring us something she'd baked or picked out of her garden. Her baked goods weren't the most elegant, but they were always tasty. My mother, however, wouldn't let us eat her pies because she used lard in the crusts. Mother also tossed out a lot of the apples Aunt Bertha brought because they were too bruised from falling off the tree. Bertha never wasted anything.

She was very religious, but in a way that I wish more people would be today. She attended two different churches, one in the city and one out in the country where she used to live on her farm. She never preached or proselytzed. Instead, she showed what she believed by what she did. She cared about people and didn't judge them. She laughed with us when we were happy, grieved with us when we were sad. When my dad died at the age of 47, she was a rock of strength for my mother, sister, brother and me. She had a big painting of Jesus on her wall everywhere she lived -- the Euro-centric kind that showed him with light brown hair and blue eyes. But she never spent any of her precious time trying to convert others. You just knew what she believed. This is the kind of faith I have tried to have. I hope I measure up to her example.

She never stopped doing or caring. Very late in life, when she was too frail to be helpful to others any longer, she grew increasingly impatient with God. She really wanted to leave this life and get on with the next. It took longer than she wanted it to, but she endured the wait and called it the price she had to pay. She died in 1993 at the age of 104.

Two of my most treasured possessions today once belonged to Aunt Bertha. When she was well into her 90s, she began giving away her possessions to those she loved. When I paid her a visit one afternoon, she told me what she wanted me to have. She walked over to her old curio cabinet and took out a tarnished silver cup and saucer. Her father brought it back for her when she was 10 years old from his time as a failed prospector during the Yukon gold rush of 1898. She had kept it all those years, and decided I should have it now because I was interested in history.

My other prized possession from Aunt Bertha is a Packard-Bell table radio in a red bakelite case. For years, it sat on her kitchen counter. She would listen to music and the news while she cooked. When I got it, it had been stored by my mother for years and no longer worked. Fortunately, I found a man while we were living in Dallas who repaired old tube-style radios. Today, Aunt Bertha's radio plays just fine. While I cook or wash dishes, I listen to it. It's usually tuned to KIXI-AM in Seattle, which plays music of the 40s, 50s and 60s. And when I hear a tune by Tommy Dorsey, Jo Stafford, Frank Sinatra or Ella Fitzgerald, I smile.

Biting The Hand That Used To Feed Me

I worked for five different shareholder-owned, private corporations for nearly 40 years before I retired last year. I was fortunate enough to work in close proximity to top management most of that time, and I saw the internal workings close up. I made a good living and managed to save a decent nest egg for retirement, although my definition of "decent" has changed dramatically since the economy melted down in September 2008. So what I have to say now probably won't sit well with some of my former colleagues.

I think American capitalism has gone terribly wrong in the past couple decades. Companies have grown "too big to fail," to use the term that became popular a year ago to justify government bailouts. In my opinion, however, "too big to fail" is simply a convenient cover to hide the self-preservation instinct that seizes corporate managements when the economy heads south. "Too big to fail" has given too many companies an easy means to protect senior management and almost nobody else.

I'll give you an example. I am investor in a company (I'll be polite and not name it) that sold "auction-rate notes" secured by municipal bonds. Easy redemptions were supposed to be readily available at any time to small investors like me because the company simply went to the credit markets every week for short-term borrowing to fund them. "Nobody expected all credit markets to seize at the same time," was the explanation I got when suddenly none of the company's investors were able to redeem any notes. Now, almost 18 months later, "market conditions" still aren't good enough for investors to get most of our money out. But when I read the fine print in the company's regulatory filings, I found another reason for the problem: During the boom years, the company had borrowed massive amounts of money under its bank credit lines to fund an ambitious growth strategy. So much borrowing, in fact, that the banks have refused to extend any further loans, leaving the company at the mercy of the "credit markets," which is code for billionaires, foreign banks, hedge funds and other shadowy fat cats. And these "credit markets" will only invest if they're comfortable that a company has the wherewithal to survive. Smart of them. I wish I had that option right now.

I add all this up and here's what I get: This company's knows there are ways other than the mysterious "credit markets" in which it could raise capital and take care of its investors. But its managers also know that those other ways -- acquisition, merger, sale of assets, etc. -- would jeopardize their own jobs, bonuses and future employability. So management's solution has been to stall the small investors with reassuring gobbledygook while it finds "other solutions" that will "facilitate investor confidence." Um....right, sure. But let me suggest that if any lower-level worker in any American company tried to stall this long to cover a problem, she or he would pounding the pavement right now and their kids might be using food stamps to eat.

This is just a small example of what's wrong with American capitalism these days. We have allowed an entitled class of executives to take control. These folks refuse to accept responsibility for what has failed us. In Japan and elsewhere, managers usually resign when things go badly -- even if they are not directly to blame. But not here. Our entitled executive class holds on with with a clueless ferocity that would make Marie Antoinette proud. The delusional explanations take my breath away: the scope of the crisis was "unanticipated," "market conditions beyond our control" created the situation, "external factors" affected results. They ought to add that the dog ate their homework. What do shareholders pay executives for if not to anticipate crises, plan for changing market conditions and stay ahead of external factors?

Wouldn't it be refreshing if a company "too big to fail" owned up to the fact that its management borrowed too much, took too many risks and blinded itself to the dangers ahead in order to boost executive perks and rewards? Refreshing indeed, but it'll never happen. Just consider the lawsuits that would be filed! The personal liability that might be incurred! You'd have to be crazy to say that! The lawyers would never let us do that!

To be sure, American capitalism has always been about who could clobber the competition and grow bigger, faster. It has also always been about greed -- which Gordon Gecko memorably told us is "good." Andrew Carnegie and J.P. Morgan were hardly warm and fuzzy guys. But I can also remember some better angels of corporate nature in my own career. When I started with Times-Mirror Company in the early 1970s, the Chandler family of Los Angeles considered the company a reflection of themselves. It was their patrimony for generations. When you went to work there, you knew the company would take care of "its people." Of course the Chandlers grew fabulously wealthy because of "its" company, but there was always a feeling that they cared about us. Most importantly, bonuses at Times-Mirror Company were based on performance. Nobody ever got several times their annual salary, which became almost a norm in some Wall Street firms.

That's what missing today. Few shareholder-owned corporations have institutional memory any more. New management comes in, cuts costs, boosts revenue, gooses the stock, makes huge salaries and bonuses -- and then cashes its chips and leaves the poker table. Then the next management arrives and the cycle starts all over again.

No heart, no soul.

Turning 65, Part Two

I will turn 65 this Sunday at 5:24 p.m. Pacific Standard Time, according to my birth certificate which is also stamped "legitimate." (They cared about such things in 1944; how old-fashioned.) But, for Medicare purposes, I have been 65 since November 1, 2009 at 12 a.m. That's how it is, now that I am a ward of the dreaded thing we've been hearing so much about: a government-run single payer health plan. Yipes! Does this make me a socialist?

But let's begin at the beginning. In preparation for the Big 6-5 (and also to free myself from the $1,104 per month I had been paying for COBRA coverage since I retired), I studied the Medicare web site -- which is really good, considering it's put together by socialists. To assure that Medicare coverage begins on your 65th birthday, which is the earliest it can begin unless you're disabled, you need to start the official process 90 days before. But even before that you need to know what you want, and you have to have a passing knowledge of the lingo: Part A, Part B, Part D, MAGI (modified adjusted gross income), MedAdvantage (with or without Rx). You get the idea.

Medicare used to be pretty simple after it was passed in 1965. You turned 65 and you automatically got Part A (hospitalization coverage) free of charge, courtesy of the taxpayers of the United States. Fortunately, Part A hasn't been fiddled with too much, and it's still free for everybody. Part B (doctor visits, labs, outpatient procedures, etc.) was added a bit later and required you to pay a premium, but everybody paid the same amount. About a decade ago, Congress decided to means-test the Part B premium ("means-test" is code for "pay more). As a result, the IRS sends your MAGI to the SSA (Social Security Administration), which sends you a letter saying you made too much money two years ago and therefore must pay more than the Part B premium you thought you'd be paying when first started thinking about Medicare. Because I was a corporate fat cat two years ago (as opposed to the senior citizen on a fixed income I am now), I will pay the maximum until my lower MAGI on my tax return catches up in a couple years.

Part B only covers some things, therefore leaving you in jeopardy of getting gigantic bills you didn't expect. So, to alleviate that stress on us oldsters, the government permitted private insurance companies to offer Medicare supplement policies to cover things Part B doesn't cover. So-called MedAdvantage policies go a step further by relieving the government of the burden of paying my Part B bills by covering everything HMO-style. The government then rewards MedAdvantage carriers by paying them a stipend for taking my bookkeeping off its hands -- a situation that has come under considerable, and in my mind justifiable, scrutiny and criticism in the current health reform debate.

Part D (prescription coverage) was added in 2005; I have no idea why they skipped the letter "C" in adding a new Part -- another of those Don't Ask, Don't Tell government things, I suppose. Since Part D is handled entirely by private insurance companies (thus eliminating the socialists from the process), you have to spend an inordinate amount of time figuring out which carrier to use for prescriptions, which to use for Part B supplements or which to trust with both Part B and Part D. It's enough to give to you rheumatism or at least stigmatism.

Here's what I learned in the process: you have to be observant as an owl and opportunistic as an eagle to make the system work for you. The Medicare web site lets you compare Part B and Part D private plans in your area. It's a good system, but it doesn't protect you from the downside risks. Part B and Part D plans only guarantee your premium rate for one year. But what's particularly worrisome is that they may eliminate services they cover at any time, provided they send you a notice well in advance. Prescription drug plans use a formulary to decide which drugs they will pay for and how much your co-pay will be. They are free to raise the co-pay of any drug or to drop it altogether from their formularies at any time, once they give you advance warning.

Of course, you are free to change plans once a year during open enrollment. But what this means for most seniors is that they must engage in a guessing game each year: How sick do I expect to be? (If not very, go with the plan with the lowest premium.) How many prescription drugs -- especially the expensive brand-name types -- do I think I'll need? (If more than a few, it pays to check the formularies in advance of enrollment and pay a higher premium to get a lower co-pay.) And, after the first year on a plan, you're likely to get a hefty premium increase from just about any private carrier. No matter how much research you do in advance, registering for Medicare is a crap shoot.

I must say that the socialists have made the basic registration process pretty easy. I called a toll-free number; waited on hold for about three minutes; got transferred to a Social Security agent in Chicago; and completed the initial registration by phone in about 20 minutes. (The socialists have done an interesting thing: calls from the toll-free line are routed to any available Social Security agent anywhere in the country. I was so very, very happy not to be talking with a person at a call center in India. And I was pleased that no American jobs were sent overseas to achieve efficiency in Medicare.) At the end of the registration process, I was told I'd receive my official confirmation my mail and that my benefit would begin the first day of the month in which I turn 65 (November 1, 2009). And I was told I should sign up for a Part B supplement and a Part D prescription plan as soon as possible to make sure they are in effect when my basic Medicare benefit begins.

So, here I am today. Turning 65. A Medicare and supplemental plan beneficiary, and also a survivor of the registration process. To protect our free-enterprise system and prevent encroachment of socialism we have made the process more complicated than it needs to be. It's full of tricks and traps. I wonder how my dear mother, of fond memory, would have dealt with this process in her frail mental state. My guess is she wouldn't have. Just ignore it until you're broke.

Turning 65, Part One

I am not a Baby Boomer. I cannot be blamed for the failures of what I hope will be our only two Boomer Presidents, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush. Nor for the Boomers' greed, selfishness, materialism and excesses of the flesh. OK, so maybe I dabbled around the edges of those things, but I was born too soon to indulge in all the hedonistic pleasures. I didn't result from my parents' long wartime separation and lack of sex, followed by an immediate post-war pregnancy. I am a War Baby, born five months after D-Day, two weeks after Franklin D. Roosevelt won a fourth term, and five months before the Germans surrendered. With my birth, my father was hoping to avoid the draft. He didn't. He left for basic training a couple months after I was born and didn't get back from occupied Japan until September 1946.

And next month I will turn 65, well ahead of the Boomers. What's left of my hair is turning gray. My joints hurt and I complain about it. I just can't seem to sleep beyond 7 a.m. or stay awake past 10 p.m. (OK, maybe more like 9 p.m.) Most new movies, music and TV shows don't interest me much. I listen to oldies on AM radio that I once bought on 45 rpm records. I have started clipping grocery store coupons. I eat raisin bran with skim milk. I mix Metamucil into my orange juice. I get junk mail from people trying to sell me raised toilet seats "contoured for comfort" and Total Body Cleanse "to eliminate unnecessary toxic build-up." (See above). Sigh. I have become my grandfather.

Of course I know that, considering the alternative, turning 65 ain't so bad. Problem is, I wasn't expecting to get this old. I went to Vietnam and didn't think I'd come back. I watched a lot of friends die of AIDS. My college roommate was murdered at age 34 for no reason by a crazy guy with a handgun. But I'm still around, now approaching the traditional boundary of Old Age. I do wonder, sometimes, why I made it and so many others didn't.

Being on the cusp of the Boomer generation, I know I have been infected by the Peter Pan syndrome so common to the 1946-64 group. "I'll never grow up, never grow up, never grow up!" But, then, why get old when you can have Botox, a nip or tuck, and knee-replacement surgery, and feel great? Why wear glasses when you can have laser surgery and "look years younger"? Why get fat when you can staple your stomach and pretend you're back at your "fighting weight"?

There are any number of indignities associated with reaching 65. Younger people call me "sir." I hate that. The well-behaved ones even open the door for me. That's not so bad. I enter cars butt-first now because it's easier to drag my legs in behind me. It also takes me longer; I no longer "hop" into a car. Two glasses of wine put me to sleep; double bacon cheeseburgers give me gas. Peeing takes longer during the day but happens too much in the middle of the night. My feet get cold if I don't wear warm socks. My doctor, my preacher and my broker are all younger than I am.

My Aunt Bertha, who lived to be 104, once told me that "old age is bunk." She hated the loss of vigor, the death of her friends and siblings, and the gradual narrowing of her world. However, she managed to drive until she was 90, live independently until she was 98 and enjoy a glass of sherry "for medicinal purposes" until she was 102. I intend to follow her example, God willing.

It is true that, just when you start getting good at this thing called life, your machinery wears out. But, if I follow the manufacturer's maintenance schedule diligently, rotate the tires and occasionally buy a new battery, maybe crossing the Old Age boundary won't be so bad.

Part Two: The joys of registering for Medicare

Lions and Nazis and Bears, Oh My!

Maybe it's because I was born in the waning days of World War II, but I am thorougly disgusted by all those in the current health care reform debate who so easily throw the Nazi label at those seeking a a fairer system than the wasteful, costly version we have now. They ought to be ashamed, but of course they are too enamored of their own rhetoric to blush or to see how filthy they have made themselves.

Adolf Hitler was an insane monster, full of deep hatred for Jews, Gypsies, gays, the disabled or anybody who didn't fit his crazy idea of Aryan perfection. He was surrounded by fanatics and sycophants who saw an opportunity to enhance their own power by bolstering and fulfilling Hitler's nightmarish delusions. These fanatics and sycophants actually believed in the Final Solution and the 1,000-year Reich, or at least they gave a good imitation of it. They put away their consciences and buried their souls.

I won't say that the today's rabid Nazi comparers are in the same league as Himmler, Goering, Goebbels, Eichmann and the like. But they are too dangerously close for comfort. Here's why I say that:

Modern propaganda was invited by Joseph Goebbels, and it was based on the Big Lie theory. Push the same point of view often enough and eliminate competing ideas that might create doubt, and gradually you breed fanaticism. Germans listened only to Nazi radio, watched only Nazi films and read only Nazi newspapers and magazines. It's easy to see why most German came to agree that Jews were to blame for almost everything.

Fortunately, we live in a society where a free exchange of ideas is still possible. I can read the Wall Street Journal editorial page but I can also read the New York Times editorial page. I can listen to Bill O'Reilly (did I really just write that?) but I can also listen to Keith Olbermann.

The problem, however, is that technology now permits us to voluntarily eliminate any points of view with which we disagree. The technology that was supposed to bring us closer together has instead given us the ability to cocoon ourselves and hear only what we want. I believe that today's Nazi comparers have done that to great extent. They listen to Rush Limbaugh and Glen Beck but shut out any other ideas that might disagree with those right-wing commentators. This situation is very different from 1930s Germany. But the result is the same: fanaticism....unlimited hatred....unbridled, unreasoned use of disgusting and violent language.

I pray that those who show up at town halls toting assault rifles and those who proclaim that Obama should die a painful death will be forced to read "The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich." The only problem is that fanaticism, once bred, is harder to tame than lions and tigers and bears....oh my!

Happy Birthday, Charlotte!

Charlotte and Addie

Charlotte, our Basset hound, turns one year old today. She was born out in the country, near the town of Greenland, in northwest Arkansas. Her mother was named Ruslana and her father was named Mishka Baryshnikov. (Her human mother was a Russian lady, which explains the names.)

Charlotte arrived at our house on Christmas Eve, 2008. We weren't sure we wanted another dog. We were happy and very comfortable with the Basset we had -- Addie, a perfect pet who rarely barked, loved every human she ever met, took slow walks and slept a lot. But both Terry and I finally agreed that Addie need a playmate, a younger sister to keep her active and, um, help her lose a little weight. (Addie is sensitive about her full figure, so we try not to bring it up in front of her.)

Terry found Charlotte on the Internet, the 21st Century pure-bred puppy marketplace. We had found Addie on the Internet four years earlier, born on a farm outside St. Louis. Addie flew from St. Louis to Dallas and changed planes to come to Los Angeles, where Terry picked her up while we were living in Santa Barbara. Addie was a jet setter before she was four months old.

Charlotte's breeders had posted irresistible photos of Charlotte, and they had also received good online reviews from others who had purchased puppies from them. Charlotte had her papers and puppy shots. We decided we had to have her.

The problem was, she was in northwest Arkansas and we were in Dallas, almost 400 miles away. We decided it would be too expensive to fly her to Texas during the Christmas holiday. So we struck a deal with the breeders: we would meet them in the WalMart parking lot in Checotah, Oklahoma, about half way between us, and exchange cash for puppy on Christmas Eve. It almost sounded a drug deal, but it turned out to be a wonderful holiday adventure. Off we went, stopping for breakfast at the Texas-Oklahoma border. At the appointed hour, we pulled into the WalMart parking lot. We drove around until we found the car with the breeders, Olha and her husband Doyle. They got out and so did we. Olha held little Charlotte in her hands. She was sleepy and a little confused. We offered the cash and they gave us the puppy. The deal was done.

From the moment we held her, we loved her. She cuddled in Terry's lap, her little nose cold as ice. As we drove away from the WalMart parking lot in Checotah, she went back to sleep. We thought maybe she wasn't feeling well. But then we crossed the border back into Texas and she sprang to life. We pulled over at the rest stop near Sherman, and Charlotte quickly relieved herself and grabbed a drink of water. Nothing at all wrong with this girl!

When we got home, Addie wasn't sure what to make of this tiny creature who had invaded her space. She ignored her as much as Charlotte would let her. Following the advice of all the puppy manuals, Terry built a small crate for Charlotte to sleep in. Puppies are supposed to like enclosed, warm spaces until they grow older. Of course, we had conveniently forgotten that as a puppy, Addie had tipped over her crate the very first night and refused to sleep in it ever again. Since then, she's been sleeping on the bed with us. (Please stop with the lectures. We know. People are nuts to let their dogs sleep with them. Bad habit to get into. We should know better. Too late now.)

The first night, Charlotte howled and cried incessantly. She kept climbing up the wire on the side of the crate until she finally jumped over and escaped. End result? Two dogs have slept comfortably in our bed ever since, sometimes crowding their human bedmates for space.

From the moment she arrived, Charlotte has been a blizzard of activity. Unlike Addie, she needs to be in the middle of everything. She loves to find rocks outside and chew them. She likes to tear labels off the back sides of area rugs. (Who did this? Bad dog!) My socks are a particularly favorite chew toy. (No! Leave my socks alone!) She barks a lot and, like most hounds, has an operatic voice that projects somewhere near the baritone range. She especially hates it when, as she watches through the French doors, the neighbor dog relieves himself on our property. If allowed, she will return the compliment on his property as soon as possible.

We have purchased innumerable chew toys for Charlotte, but most are quickly destroyed. Only a set of large vinyl keys, now well scuffed with teeth marks, has survived more than a few days. Since we've moved to our little farm on Whidbey Island, she loves to be outside, roaming to find evidence of deer or other wild critters on the property. Our challenge has been to keep her from rolling in the evidence. Not an easy task, and not always successful.

At this moment, Charlotte and Addie are sleeping soundly, listening to the radio station I favor because it plays music from the 1940s and 50s. But I expect they will awake in awhile, demanding attention that must be paid.

Happy birthday, baby dog!

Crabapples

We have an elderly crabapple tree next to our house on Whidbey Island. It was likely planted right after the house was built in the early 1960s. In the spring, it is covered with beautiful pink and white blossoms that last just a couple of weeks. Then, in a month or so, it is covered with hundreds of little red crabapples, most no more than an inch or two in diameter.

When I grew up in the Pacific Northwest, I remember being warned not to eat raw crabapples. Very sour and nasty, and they caused what was politely called the Crabapple Two-Step. But my grandmother would occasionally bring out her crabapple jelly for us and spread some on a biscuit or scone. It had an intense flavor like no other. I haven't tasted anything like it since then. She also made pickled crabapples that were served as a side dish at Thanksgiving and Christmas. Those of us who sat at the kids' card table wouldn't touch them.

So, here I am 60 years later, with a crabapple tree of my own. At the same moment, we're all are living through the hangover of an era of waste, greed and excess that has made us less wealthy and more sober. I'm more aware than ever that nothing should go to waste, that the abundance of our planet should be treasured and used wisely. If you read the book of Genesis, it says that God gave us dominion over the earth and everything on it, which means we were given control but not ownership. It's ours to love and care for, not pillage and destroy. Big difference.

That's why it just seemed to make sense for us to make crabapple jelly this week. We picked about five quarts from our tree, cut them up, cooked them into a fragrant mush, drained the juice overnight, added sugar, boiled it all until it became jelly and poured it into sterilized jars. My grandmother, I know, was smiling and chuckling. It's ready now for Thanksgiving and Christmas. We can't wait.

I also learned from Wikipedia that, among Anglo-Saxons, crabapples were used as part of cure for almost anything. They were known as wergulu in Old English and were among the nine herbs that made up the Nine-Herb Charm. Essentially, you made a paste of the herbs, applied it where the ailing person hurt and then chanted this poem:

A snake came crawling, it bit a man.
Then Woden took nine glory-twigs,
Smote the serpent so that it flew into nine parts.
There apple brought this pass against poison,
That she nevermore would enter her house.

Well, since sub-prime mortgages, high-flying stocks and lots of shopping didn't make us feel better, why not give this a try?

Father's Day

My dad Orrin in 1938

My dad was quite a man. Full of dreams, many unfulfilled because he died so young -- only 47 years old. We were not alike and were not very close when I was growing up. But we have bond that seems only to have grown stronger in the 45 years since he died.

He always had too many projects going at the same time. He always looked for a bargain, almost never bought new or full-price. And he always wanted to do things himself, whether it was hand-digging a well, installing a furnace or building new kitchen cabinets. If he didn't know how to do it, he'd find somebody who did and learn from them. For many of his projects, I was his not-so-willing laborer. But now I'm happy with the memories.

When I was eight years old, my dad gave my sister and me "new" bicycles for Christmas. Actually, he put them together from junkyard parts that he hand-welded. They looked great to me, even if I had a hard time to learning to ride mine. He was impatient when it came to teaching me how to do things. If I didn't get it right away, he'd get angry or bored. I eventually mastered bicycle-riding on my own, after he gave up teaching me. The same was true of driving a car and any number of other things.

I was a bookish, awkward kid. Growing up, it seemed as if he knew how to do everything and I would never be as good or smart or clever as he was. It wasn't until I was middle-aged that it dawned on me that I had spent so much of my life trying to show my dad that was I worthy of his affection. Several years of therapy also helped me understand that such yearning isn't unique. Many boys feel inadequate compared to their dads and in striving to be like them or even better they build healthy self-esteem.

Today, I admit that I've become quite a bit like my dad. And, like Al Franken's character Stuart Smalley on Saturday Night Live, I'm good enough, I'm smart enough and doggone it, people like me. And Happy Father's Day, dad.

Lookin' Back, Texas

Luckenbach, Texas -- Home of Willie Nelson's July 4 Picnic

We didn't quite know what to expect when we arrived in Texas nearly five years ago. Being West Coasters by birth and disposition, we were intimidated by some stereotypes we had heard about. For instance, I expressed some fear that Southern Baptists might abduct us and send us off to a reeducation camp for recalcitrant Biblical relativists. We worried that, if word leaked we had voted for John Kerry, the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth (funded by a Houston gazillionaire) would torpedo our moving van. Dallas is Laura and Dubya's hometown, after all, and Dick Cheney lived here when he ran Halliburton.

Now, as we prepare to move to our new home in Washington State, I laugh when I think about the misconceptions and misplaced anxiety which afflicted us. Texas doesn't come close to living up to the stereotypes that smug Coasters assign to it. We've made lots of great friends here, found it easy to fit right in, and quickly came to adore Tex-Mex food. (I am fearful of serious withdrawals when we hit Puget Sound, where taco shells are sold in a box and salsa is canned.)

I remember the day we moved into our house. The movers took all day to unpack our stuff, and in the process the giant van blocked our neighbor's driveway for several hours. We rang her door bell to apologize for the inconvenience, not quite sure what to expect. Imagine our surprise to find that we had parked ourselves next to a native Texan who had spent 18 years working in Southern California. She had returned to Texas just a few years before. Even more surprising, she was an Episcopalian just like we are! And when we told her we were a gay couple, she didn't bat an eyelash and immediately told us she had friends she wanted us to meet. I saw the stereotypes evaporating before my eyes.

Later, I learned that Dallas had changed dramatically in the past couple decades, as more people moved here from all over the country. During our time here, the city has had a Jewish woman mayor, an African-American district attorney and a Latina sheriff who is also a lesbian. The city can sometimes seem more progressive than our old hometown of Los Angeles, that bastion of Hollywood liberals. Of course there are ignorant, intolerant, stupid people here, but they are as easy to tune out in Dallas as they are in California.

Throughout our years in Dallas, we have continually been surprised by the diversity of people, culture and geography here. It's been impressive to see how seriously this city works on improving its quality of life. The Meyerson Symphony Hall, designed by I.M. Pei, compares well with any in the world. The art museums house some of the finest collections anywhere. And the city is about to complete its downtown Arts Center by opening a new opera house and theater center.

So, dear Texas, please accept my sincere apology for underestimating how friendly, diverse and open-hearted you really are. Sure, you sometimes have swagger and attitude, but I finally figured out that you do it mostly with a wink to impress or scare non-Texans. I will miss your affection and hospitality. Thanks, y'all. And come on up and see us in Washington State.

The Long, Long Goodbye of General Motors

The 1977 Chevette

In the fall of 1975, I had recently become the auto writer in the Business section of the Los Angeles Times. I must confess I knew very little -- and cared very little -- about cars in those days. I had just ended my fling with a red sports car, a 1969 MGB that died a slow, painful death in 1974. I replaced it with a sensible yellow Chevy Nova. My Spanish-speaking friends later reminded me that "no va" in Spanish means "doesn't go." Appropriate, as a I think back on that car.

The newspaper had assigned me the auto beat because they thought a fresh eye from somebody who wasn't a "car nut" would bring a new perspective to coverage of that industry. Too often in the past, auto writers had been uncritical industry cheerleaders. In the mid-1970s, The Times decided to change that.

Among the first things I had to get used to as a newly minted auto writer were the extravagant junkets that auto companies sponsored to introduce new models. I was of the Watergate generation of reporters who didn't like taking even a free lunch from a news source. So imagine my conflict when I was told to cover the introduction of GM's Chevette, it's third attempt to compete with tiny cars from Europe and Japan. The first attempt was the Corvair. No need to say more about that. The second was the Vega, a genuinely innovative little car with an aluminum block engine and a European design. It failed miserably, however, so GM tried again by modifying a boxy little Chevy it had been building in Brazil for a few years.

To trumpet the arrival of the Chevette, GM invited the nation's auto writers to a junket in the Napa Valley. We stayed at the Silverado Country Club, and the splashy introduction itself took place during a wine-soaked five-course gourmet meal served at the beautiful Sterling Vineyards, overlooking the entire Napa Valley. The next day we drove the little cars on a "concours" through the wine country. I enjoyed the scenery, but I wasn't impressed with the car.

General Motors never quite understood the small car market, particularly in the 1970s. The negative attitude of GM executives toward Volkswagen, Renault, Toyota and Datsun (as Nissan was known then) was palpable: Little cars aren't sexy. They have no power. They're designed for poor people. And, worst of all, GM thought they weren't very profitable. GM's tradition was producing cars "for every purse and purpose," in the words of Alfred P. Sloan Jr., its visionary chief executive in the 1920s. The culture at GM was about moving people from cheaper cars to more expensive cars as they grew older and wealthier. You start in a Chevy and die in a Cadillac, they used to brag. GM's corporate structure and profitability were entirely dependent on that philosophy for more than 70 years.

So, given that attitude, it was no surprise that GM thought the Chevette was a car only for young and/or poor people. And it showed. The stripped-down Chevette Scooter model the company promoted as a "starter car" for the 1976 model year had no backseat as standard equipment. It had no carpet on the floor -- just black mats. It had a flimsy, floor mounted stick shift. It had painted bumpers -- no chrome unless you paid extra. And it had a rear-wheel-drive transmission. Is it any wonder that the Chevette compared badly against the spiffy, front-wheel-drive Volkswagen Rabbit that VW had just introduced to replace the original Beatle? Or that VW was opening an assembly plant in western Pennsylvania to produce the high demand for Rabbits it expected (and got) in the United States? (I remember a GM executive telling me that he thought VW's plant would fail within three years. It didn't.)

Today's bankruptcy filing by GM is the culmination of more than 40 years of myopic thinking at what was once the world's most successful company. GM's culture was so insular, so defensive and so smug that it let the rest of world walk away with its market. While GM was figuring ways to sell more Chevy Impalas and Cadillac Sedan de Villes, Honda was introducing the Civic and Toyota was selling the Corolla. Small cars that didn't feel cheap or poorly built -- and which became the best selling cars in America.

Let's hope that the keelhauling of GM in bankruptcy court will do what the marketplace has been unable to do for 40 years: get its head out of the sand.

Memories on Memorial Day

Me in Vietnam, 1969

This is the 40th Memorial Day since I was in Vietnam, a not-so-happy draftee serving with the 25th Infantry Division at a hot and dusty place called Cu Chi. Like most Vietnam vets of my acquaintance, I don't think much about the experience any more and I really don't like talking about it much. We got no parades when returned and we didn't win the war. Most of us just ditched the uniforms, grew our hair long and faded into our generation as quickly as we could. The last thing I ever wanted to do was tell war stories and drink beer at some VFW hall. I came away from it thinking Vietnam was just a big national misadventure that ended up doing little besides killing almost 60,000 Americans. Not a particularly popular position in VFW halls.

I was fortunate. Although I was drafted and trained to be a mobile radio operator with an infantry platoon, I never really was "out in the bush." Platoon radio operators were prime targets for snipers and their survival rate wasn't great. When I got to Vietnam, my journalism experience helped me talk my way into a job as communications specialist, writing press releases and articles for the Army newspaper at the division headquarters. I was also assigned a Polaroid camera to take pictures of the division commander and the wounded soldiers he visited in the makeshift hospital at the base in Cu Chi. My job was all about presenting a positive image for the Army and what our nation thought it was doing in that sad place. I call it my sportwriting period -- root, root, root for the home team!

I also was confused about my sexual orientation at the time, and very afraid to express what I was feeling to anybody. In other words, they didn't ask and I didn't tell. It was difficult to keep that kind of secret, always wondering who suspected and what would happen if the truth were known. I remember meeting a goodlooking Navy guy once who told me his job in the investigative unit was to get "queers to hit on him" so they could be drummed out and dishonorably discharged. He laughed about it, but it pained me to think about how many lives of decent, patriotic people they were wrecking. And I vowed that I would never become one of those statistics. I kept my secret. But if I had it to do again, I wouldn't. Why be part of a club that doesn't want me? All I had to do was raise my hand and I would have been spared the privilege of an all-expenses-paid trip to Vietnam -- keeping company with Dick Cheney, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and a host of others with good connections or at least good luck.

I have made several visits to the Vietnam Memorial in Washington, D.C., and I cry every time as I read all those names of lives cut short. I also think about all those who have survived Iraq and Afghanistan but in horribly burned or mangled condition. Maybe it's almost better that so many of my generation didn't survive their Vietnam injuries, if their future would have meant the endless surgeries and hospitalization our Middle East veterans are enduring.

When we lived in Santa Barbara a few years ago, the local symphony used to give a free concert at City Hall every Memorial Day. A highlight came when they played the song associated with each branch of the service, and veterans of that branch were asked to stand as it was played and the crowd cheered. I got a lump in my throat when Terry and I stood as they played "The Caissons Go Rolling Along." Sure, we were reluctant warriors in a muddled war that maybe never should have been fought. But it felt good as people applauded us more than 3o years later. The applause we never heard when we came home.

Apple Blossom Time

Our house on Whidbey Island is almost finished at long last, and we will be moving in mid-June. In the side yard of our house stand four very old fruit trees -- three apples and one pear. I believe they were planted when the house was built in the early 1960s. They had not been pruned for many, many years, and they looked sad.

A couple of months ago, a friend who works for our construction company offered to prune them before the spring blossoms came. They really needed a haircut and now they look positively spiffy. When I was at the house early this month, I noticed that the apple blossoms were out. What a beautiful sight!

It is amazing how this world works. Gardens will produce abundant crops if you tend them. Fruit trees will bear food for many people if you look after them. They don't ask anything in return except our attention.

I expect that, when we get to Whidbey, we'll have lots of food to share.

In Love and Together

Our good friends Terry and Greg exchanged rings during a very touching commitment ceremony in their backyard recently. They are special people, and I was honored to be asked to give a toast in their honor. This is what I said:

Tonight we’re here to celebrate something very special. Terry and Greg made their own private commitments to each other over the past six years, but this evening they decided to state them publicly, in front of all of us.

My partner Terry and I were together 30 years before we had our commitment ceremony in 2005…so congratulations, you two, on getting it together a lot sooner than we did!

There is something very profound and spiritual, I think, about making a solemn commitment to the one you love out loud, in front of your friends and family. It’s a testament to the pride and love you feel for each other; you want the world to know this is a lifetime commitment – thick or thin, rich or poor, flabby or buff, or even when one of you is flat on his back on a gurney in the ER.

That’s what so many people who are opposed to same-sex marriage miss. It’s not just about a piece of paper called a license, or a tax deduction – although that would be nice, or even a holy sacrament. It’s about two people in love who want to be together, and who also want the world to know, in some formal and public way, that they’ve found something very special with each other.

I’ve known Terry for more than eight years since our paths first crossed at work. He’s everybody’s friend, a bundle of energy who’s incredibly organized. He’s always eager to help solve your problems. Or act as your father confessor. Or give you free counseling for all that dysfunction in your life. Whether you want it or not. In the corporate world you meet a lot of sharks and phonys. But I knew right away that Terry was a loving, genuine, caring person with a real passion for everything he does.

When Terry introduced us to Greg a bit later, we couldn’t help but see what a perfect match he was for Terry. A quiet and generous man of integrity and honesty, who cares deeply about other people and never stops giving of himself to the things he believes in. Terry and Greg truly are a match made in heaven. It’s obvious that they were meant for other – no matter what the Pope and James Dobson think.

Love is what holds two people together. It’s a gift that helps us see what God intended in this world. It is also a wonderful mystery, but it what demonstrates is simply this: being together is better than being alone. Congratulations, Terry and Greg on finding each other and for showing all of us, through your relationship, a bit more about what love is.

So, ladies and gentlemen, I would ask you raise your glass with me in a toast to our dear friends, Terry and Greg…..in love and together.

Happy Birthday, Virginia May

My parents, Virginia and Orrin, circa 1938

Today would have been my mother's 91st birthday. She was born Virginia May Harris on April 30, 1918. World War I was raging and the Spanish flu epidemic, which would spread worldwide and kill more than 20 million, had just been begun. Her father was a brakeman on the city trolleys. Her mother was homemaker with a 9th grade education.

I have lots of memories of my mother, warm and not-so-warm. She was complicated and insecure, frustrated in many ways. Had she been born 50 years later, she almost certainly would have been a career woman. Instead, she was of the June Cleaver generation, expected to stay home, raise kids and keep a tidy house. That was so not her natural inclination. She was a strong person who married a strong man. That made for some interesting arguments.

She died in 2002 and I miss her. As time goes by, only the good memories remain in Technicolor. The others fade to black and white.

She was a lionness when it came to protecting her children. She was generous, emotional and very loving. She was forced to be stronger than I think she really wanted to be. My father died young, when my brother was only eight. She had no career to fall back on. But she picked up the pieces and got on with her life, finding a real passion in working with the elderly as a mobile librarian.

I'm grateful that we drew quite close in the last 15 years of her life, sharing many feelings that we never shared when I was younger. I wish she were here to help me navigate the tricky shoals of growing old.

Driftwood

Driftwood is an amazing creation. It starts out as a plant or tree. Then it falls in the sea, where it's rolled against rocks, bleached in the sun, polished by the sand. The end result is like art pottery, shaped by God's own hands.

In my life, I feel as if I've been rolled, bleached and polished quite a bit. I've been places, met people and done things I couldn't have imagined growing up in Tacoma, Wash., in the 1950s. I just hope the end result is as good as the driftwood on a Whidbey beach.

What's My Line?

I was five years old when my dad bought our first television set in 1950. It was a 16-inch Westinghouse in a big mahogany cabinet with solid doors that closed over the screen when we weren't watching. There were just two stations on the air, and programming began every afternoon about 4:30 p.m. Because we were in the Pacific time zone, we saw programs from New York either live (three hours earlier), on film or delayed on kinescope (filmed live off the TV screen). There was no videotape.

Sunday night was always a big night for TV in our house. By the mid-1950s, we were avid fans of Ed Sullivan's variety hour and Jack Benny on CBS, and the Dinah Shore and Steve Allen hours on NBC.

But what I remember most was a little panel show called "What's My Line" that played at 7:30 p.m. our time, live from New York. It featured people I didn't know -- an actress named Arlene Francis, a journalist named Dorothy Kilgallen, a publisher named Bennett Cerf and a news broadcaster named John Daly. The point of each show was to have the panel guess the occupation of the contestants and identity of a mystery celebrity.

They all talked in what my dad called a high-falutin' way. Very articulate. Very witty, in a New York way. No slang. I was too young to know why I liked the way they talked so much. But now I realize, after a lifetime of working with words, that I admired them because they spoke the English language so well. They came from a generation that prized elegant repartee and wit. Network radio, in its heyday during the 1930s and 1940s, was known for this style of speaking, and What's My Line carried that tradition into television. It's ironic, isn't it, that a lesser-educated generation, with many fewer college-educated people than we have now, was attracted to high-falutin' speaking and made shows like What's My Line very popular. The show ran in primetime on CBS from February 1950 to September 1967.

Imagine my surprise and joy when I discovered several months ago that the Game Show Network on cable television is showing kinescopes of What's My Line at 2:30 a.m. every day. I have been recording every episode, and there they are: Arlene, Dorothy, Bennett and John, as if they never went away. Speaking so well, making witty remarks and bad puns.

The kinescopes are an amazing time capsule of the 1950s and early 1960s. I had forgotten that the show attracted "mystery guests" of every stripe. I've watched the panel try to guess the identity of celebrities such as opera star Helen Traubel, boxer Ingemar Johansson, architect Frank Lloyd Wright, historian and poet Carl Sandburg, and teen-idol Fabian. Meantime, they also giggled and punned their way through guessing the occupations of the guy who made horse feedbags, the champion woman wrestler, the toilet tester and the thimble maker.

What's My Line probably couldn't succeed today. The prize was small ($50 if the panel was fooled), the pace was rather slow and the decibel level was very low. But I think what would really make it fail is our modern lack of appetite for well-spoken use of language on television. Our 21st Century ears just don't get it. Too high-falutin'; just ain't worth our time.

A Beach on a Windy Day

Some friends here in Texas have asked why we're moving to Whidbey Island. So remote from the urban life we've led for most of our lives. So damp. So far away. So....boring.

Yes, all true. But if you'd been there on this clear, chilly day last November, on this north Whidbey beach, looking out at the Straits of Juan de Fuca and the Pacific Ocean beyond, Vancouver Island to the northwest seemingly close enough to touch, a lonely American flag planted in the sand up just a few yards, you would understand.

Nothing to do but think and see and hear. And be amazed.

Forever Blowing Bubbles

By my count, I've lived through five economic "bubbles." They really were the Days of Wine and Roses, weren't they? Didn't we have a good time? But why does each hangover seem to hurt more and last longer?

First there was the post-war bubble in the late 1940s and 1950s fueled by the G.I Bill of Rights and Eisenhower's interstate highway construction project. Everybody was either going to college or pouring concrete, courtesy of the federal government.

Then came the guns-and-butter Johnson bubble of the 1960s when we fought a war in Vietnam, fought another war on poverty and sent humans to the moon in less than a decade to beat the Soviets to the punch. So much money to spend, so much to protest, so little time.

And then there was the Reagan bubble of the 1980s when we cut income taxes, dramatically increased defense spending and deregulated savings and loans. Of course the S&Ls promptly used their freedom to do a Thelma-and-Louise and drive off the cliff. But hey, it was such a fun time and Nancy's red china in the White House really was beautiful.

Next we had the tech bubble in the Clinton 1990s. While Bill and Monica were diddling, the child wonders from Harvard were using the Internet to create a "new paradigm" in the economy. I always thought paradigm was a strange word, and I figured that nobody really knew what it meant -- especially those who threw it around a lot. In the 1998-2001 period, I was among those who had serious doubts that technology could revolutionize ingrained economic patterns overnight. In most meetings, however, those of us felt that way were hooted down by the bright young things who knew a new paradigm when they saw one. They had no patience for dinosaurs living in paper caves. Unfortunately, the new paradigm evaporated along with the phantom profits from initial public stock offerings as the the Nasdaq stock market crashed to earth.

Finally we had the housing bubble of the Bush Two years. Isn't it ironic that the smartest, shrewdest, most cunning people in the world -- those working on Wall Street -- fell under the sway of the oldest economic myth in the book. The myth, of course, is that housing prices can only go up. Talk about a new paradigm! Apparently none of them had read about the Florida real estate bubble in the 1920s or the California real estate bubble in the 1990s. These smart people thought they had solved the problem: they eliminated all risk in the real estate marketplace by tossing mortgages around like hot potatoes. And of course they were much too smart to be caught holding the hot potatoes when the music stopped, weren't they?

Bubbles are such fun things. They make us giggle. Too bad they eventually pop.

Pitchforks

As I prepare to move to our little 3-acre "farm" on Whidbey Island, I've been considering the purchase of a pitchfork. Is there a handier hand tool on a farm than a pitchfork? They have been around for at least the last millenium to pitch hay, dung, leaves and what-have-you. Pitchforks have also become a symbol of hard work and physicial labor, the kind most citified folks don't do much any more. The artist Grant Wood created the greatest tribute to the pitchfork in his famous "American Gothic" painting:

The more I study this painting, the more I realize how the lowly pitchfork has also come to be a weapon of mass destruction. Take a good look at the grim expression on the farmer's face, guarding the homestead with his fork's tines newly sharpened. No out-of-town jasper in a pinstriped suit from Citibank or BofA is going to foreclose on this farm. If he tries, he may receive a few holes in his well-stuffed gluteous maximus. The pitchfork has also served as a WMD for villagers seeking Dr. Frankenstein's monster and French peasants looking for Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette. And we've been hearing a lot of pitchfork references in the current anger over the economic meltdown.


The pitchfork does seem like an appropriate weapon to use against hubris, doesn't it? Why shouldn't those who ate cake while the rest of us were seeking bread be stuck in their rears with a big fork? At least metaphorically.

Harry and Esther

In my post a few days ago about "seeing through" the current financial fog, I mentioned my paternal grandparents, who raised three sons during the Depression and lived their lives with dignity. Their names were Harry Waldemar Anderson and Esther Emilia (Olson) Anderson. Both were born of Swedish immigrants in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan in the 1890s. Harry's father was a locomotive engineer; Esther's father loaded iron ore on cargo ships in Lake Superior. Both their fathers were alcoholic, a fairly common occurence at the time given how dreary, hard and short life was for working men then.

Harry left home when he was just a boy, sleeping for awhile in the back of a saloon and earning coins by cleaning out the spitoons. Later, he and a friend tried a vaudeville song and dance act which didn't draw much applause. Then he met Esther and decided he had to get a decent job if he was going to persuade her to marry him. He got a job as a railroad bookkeeper which sent him to Minneapolis. In 1916, Harry and Esther eloped and my father was born in April, 1917. The picture above is of Harry and Esther with my father and his younger brother Kenneth sometime around 1922.

Harry worked for the Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul & Pacific Railway Co. off and on for almost 40 years. There were layoffs -- a lot of them -- in the 1930s, but he always managed to go back to work when times got better. He retired in November 1955, right after this 65th birthday. And he lived happily in retirement for another 22 years.

Harry and Esther were married for almost 58 years before she died in 1974. When his job with the Milwaukee Road transferred him to its western terminus in Tacoma, Washington, sometime in the early 1920s, Harry and Esther bought a new two-bedroom, one-bath house. Nothing fancy, but it did have a cellar, an attic and a garage. Behind the garage, Harry cultivated his vegetable garden. He raised corn, beans, tomatoes, cucumbers and carrots from the day they moved in until the day he died in 1977. We all enjoyed the bounty of that garden all year, which my grandmother canned and stored in the cellar. Her dill pickles were a particular family favorite.

Theirs was an unprententious life. One set of good china for use only on special occasions. Linoleum on the kitchen counter tops. One car, usually a Chevrolet purchased new and kept for at least a dozen years. No long vacations, just an occasional week in Reno after the kids were grown. But they also had no debt, a lesson they learned in the Depression. They never bought anything new until they had saved enough to buy it. Their lives weren't easy, but somehow they had control over them. Never foreclosed. Never bankrupt. Never homeless. All three sons grew up to be successful men. They had a lot to be proud of, but they were much too Midwestern and Scandinavian to boast. All they'd ever say was that they did the best they could. And that's saying a lot.

Harry and Esther with my brother Ron in 1964

Who Knows Where The Time Goes?

The first Judy Collins concert I ever attended was in Seattle in the summer of 1968. I remember it only vaguely, given the effects of marijuana smoke and cheap wine at the time aggravated by the haze of more than 40 years. But I still hear her soprano voice in my mind's ear, so sweet, crystalline and pure. It was before she recorded her big hits "Both Sides Now" and "Send in the Clowns." She was singing a lot of Dylan then, as well as Leonard Cohen and an unknown songwriter named Randy Newman. She was gorgeous in voice, body and spirit. A true woman of her times. As I think about it now, I can see how we actually thought we were changing the world in the late 1960s. So naive.

This reverie comes about because last month we visited some old friends in Santa Fe and attended a Judy Collins concert at the beautifully restored Lensic Theater near the historic plaza. Of course, it was sold out. A few minutes after 8 p.m., she strode on stage, guitar in hand and with only her pianist to accompany her. Her silken hair is gray now but still very long. The voice is amazingly the same, with only a slight loss of upper range in tribute to advancing age. About half way through, she sang "Over The Rainbow," which I thought was an odd choice for a singer so bound to her own times. She reminded us that the song was written in 1939 for "The Wizard of Oz." And then came the killer: She told us she loves the song because she was born in 1939. That means Judy Collins turns 70 this year. Is that possible? She reminded us that if you remember the 1960s you weren't there. We laughed. Then, as we looked around the audience, we noticed how old everyone looked. Sure, we were mostly 60s people still dressed in jeans and flannel and camouflage jackets. But the hair, what there was of it, was so gray and Judy was one of the few who had kept her figure. Nonethless, we looked pretty damn good for our age, given how things turned out. And we take comfort that Judy's still singing about better worlds we can build.

Seeing Through The Fog

The last eight months have put us all into a financial fog. Having recently retired, I am acutely aware of the damage done by the Wall Street geniuses paid all those millions supposedly to make money for all of us. We now know for whom they were really working. My comfortable retirement plan is now on a diet, and the future is a lot foggier. Thank you Bear Stearns, Lehman Bros, AIG, Merrill Lynch, Washington Mutual, George W. Bush and all the others who took us all for this ride. May you live long and prosper . . . not.

The more time that goes by, however, I begin to see through the fog to the brighter horizon beyond. What's clear to me is that our whole nation grew morbidly obese in the past couple of decades. We ate too much, bought too much, borrowed too much. Now our national health is in such bad shape that we may soon die if we don't change our ways. So it's starting to feel good to me to be on a financial diet, to watch my pennies. It feels responsible and morally correct, the penance required to get through a hangover.

I think a lot about my grandparents these days, the Depression generation. They managed to raise three sons during the 1930s, even though my grandfather was laid off repeatedly from his railroad job. Somehow they paid the mortgage, kept food on the table by growing their own vegetables and chickens, and for a time lived off the coins their boys brought home from selling newspapers on streetcars. They had no luxuries, no savings and only one pair of shoes each. Even so, they shared what they had with neighbors and relatives who had less than they did. They lived their lives with a quiet dignity and integrity, and I greatly admire them for it.

I hope that, as we all navigate the troubled waters of our own day, we find the strength within ourselves to live as well as they did.