Driving Audhumla

The season of marigolds

The last few pieces of the Dia de los Muertos altar need to be brought in, and the fading marigolds fed into the gaping maw of Kali Ma, also known as my compost bin. There's a definite chill in the air, and sunset is beginning to encroach on 5 p.m. We are truly entering the dark time of the year.

For me, fragrances are always the harbingers of this descent into the dark times. Clouds of copal smoke rise from the altars, combining with the intense vegetal scent of marigolds. Not the dwarf French marigolds of my childhood, but the tall African marigolds -- Cempasuchil or Flor de Muerto --  in bright orange and yellow. People pull petals from these flowers and strew them in front of the altars, as their pungent odor was believed to entice the ancestors home for a visit at this time of the year.

I spent part of last Sunday out on 14th Street in Oakland's Fruitvale neighborhood. It was the community's annual Dia de los Muertos fiesta, with altars set up down the middle of the street, Aztec drummers, kids in masks and costumes, and everywhere the scent of marigolds and copal.  Here's one of the temporary floral shops set up for that day. People were buying marigolds to take home and place on their own altars.

 

Some of the flower vendors were mobile.

 

Each altar was different, but they had many common elements: copal, marigolds, bright colors, pictures and mementos of those we've lost. Some honored not only people, but cultures and the environment that are threatened. One heartbreaking altar commemorated lost babies and young children.

 

Last year in Oakland, we lost four police officers to one lone gunman. The entire community was in shock and grief for a long time, so I wasn't surprised to see an altar in the four officers'  memory featured at the fiesta.

 

Another altar focused on harm done the environment and featured an Hispanic mother goddess at its apex.

 

Typically altars have photos of the ancestors who are being remembered, and often, some of their favorite foods.

 

This next altar celebrates a culture colonialism tried to annihilate.

 

One of the other things I like best about this festival is the number of wonderful Mexican craft items for sale, most of them by the people who made them. All seem to celebrate that cycle of birth-death-rebirth, with no fear of death or those who are gone from us. I love these candelabrum with skeletons and skulls, and the papier mache skulls in bright pastel colors. The bright colors are part of Hispanic culture's peace with death and understanding of the nearness of our ancestors after they've gone.

 

 

Skeletons and skulls were everywhere. This woman was a vendor, selling some of her Dia de los Muertos paintings.

This was one of the best skull makeups I saw. She's standing in the plaza watching the Aztec dancers perform.

 

And here's the youngest skeleton I found. At this point in the day, he's pretty much dead to the world.

 

Some of the Aztec dancers even painted their faces with skull designs.

 

This woman's huipul is embroidered with Meso-American skull designs.

 

When I talk about Samhain and Dia de los Muertos, I almost always use the phrase ``dancing with the ancestors.'' Our Beloved Dead are gone, and yet we call them to mind when we speak their names and when we dance with joy. Here's my favorite -- and, in some ways -- most thematically appropriate -- photo from the fiesta. It's two little ones dancing to some conjunto music played at a stage on the plaza. The dance of life goes on, while the  ancestors are whirling about its edges.

  

 
 

Growing up on ``the hill''

I recently discovered a Facebook group called ``I grew up on Capitol Hill.'' That's the Seattle neighborhood where I spent my childhood. I wasn't all that surprised to see the group already has 500-plus members, for it was on the hill that all the Catholic doctors and lawyers found the big turn-of-the-century homes for their 12-child families. A LOT of people grew up on Capitol Hill.

I scanned through the list of members and found a few relatives, a couple of classmates, and  many people who were either younger or older siblings of those who went through Holy Names Academy with me or St. Joe's and Seattle Prep with my brother.

In many ways Capitol Hill was a world unto itself in 1950s America. It was probably far more homogenous that many Seattle neighborhoods, and the clustering of so many important Catholic institutions may have led to some smug triumphalism that was part of my makeup back then. We had all the answers, we built our own community, and we had enough safety in numbers that we never needed to fear -- or, alas, explore -- worlds beyond our boundaries.

Still, I have many many fond memories of the years there. They've contributed largely to the adult person I have become, and maybe even to my profession as a journalist.

We lived somewhat distant from the Capitol Hill epicenter, which was probably located within a couple of blocks of 18th and Aloha. Instead, we lived far down on the eastern side of the hill, in an odd little section that was almost entirely Jewish. As a result, our neighborhood friends were not the kids we knew from school. We were ``other'' to the neighbors because we went to Catholic school, and we were ``other'' to our classmates because we lived on the opposite side of ``the busy street,'' 24th Avenue that most kids were forbidden to cross.

Because we didn't live upon the top of the hill, close to our classmates; because we weren't Jewish like our friends in the neighborhood, because our dad had taken the extreme step of marrying a Catholic and our mom had behaved in an equally unusual fashion by marrying a Protestant, I got used to  being a perpetual outsider, standing on the periphery, waiting, watching, evaluating and analyzing. Having an alcoholic parent contributed to this too, for we'd never invite friends home for fear of what they'd encounter, and our parents never socialized with the neighbors or parents of our school friends. At the same time, I had aunts and uncles and a passle of first cousins on the hill, and my maternal grandparents spent the last years of their lives living there, too.

So while we had some powerful connections to the community, I became the equivalent of a Martian anthropologist sitting on the chandelier, always watching, always curious, always trying to decipher others' behavior and attitudes for some clue to whatever ``normal'' might have been. 

When I climbed up the big hill to Holy Names Academy for the first day of first grade, I looked like all the other little girls in our navy blue jumpers and white blouses. But I can remember being amazed that they all seemed to know playground games I'd never imagined existed, and they even all knew each others' names.  Even now I can remember how surprised and indignant I was that everybody else seemed to know a set of rules that eluded me. Certainly the ``outsiderness'' I felt then is part of what makes me stand back and observe today, like a good journalist should.

We lived on Interlaken Boulevard, a graceful, curving tree-lined street designed by Frederick Law Olmstead that led directly to the University of Washington Arboretum, also known as Washington Park.  Our front yard actually was Arboretum property, with part of it a grove of rare dogwoods.

Our house was one of the grand examples of carpenter's gothic, built around the turn of the century by a Swedish immigrant who, stories had it, got rich in the timber trade and decided to build a house that would outdo the grand house his brother built next door. When we moved in in 1950, the house had inlaid hardwood floors, leaded glass french doors, marble counter tops, dark woodwork and wainscoting, a separate maid's staircase and a butler's pantry, a 3rd floor attic ballroom, and a genuine Tiffany chandelier that was larger than a wringer washing machine and had matching stained glass doors for the built-in china cabinets.

Our parents appreciated none of these features and systematically went about ripping them out to replace them with new modern 1950s details like huge picture windows, dropped ceilings made from acoustical tile, linoleum counter tops, recessed fluorescent lighting, and 4'X8' sheets of paneling that covered up the old lath-and-plaster walls.  I suppose we were like a lot of the kids on the hill in this regard: we lived in beautiful old homes that were raped and bastardized and became monuments to the worst of the 1950s' appetite for remodeling. Certainly a father with a couple of beers in him and a crowbar in one hand was a dangerous thing in those days.

Many of our classmates were from Catholic families with Irish or German roots, or, to a lesser degree, Italian. We were different. Our dad was a Norwegian immigrant who escaped the wheatfields of Washington State's Palouse country to become a Boeing engineer. He was Protestant, from an Evangelical Lutheran sect known for its austerity. Mom came from a pioneer Washington State family that was so ultra-Catholic that we even had our very own Jesuit priest cousin, famous for saying mass atop Iwo Jima during World War II.  Religion was, as you can imagine, a big deal in our family.

Every time I return to Seattle and drive by our old house on the boulevard, I take a look at the huge hill I climbed every day to school and wonder how I managed it with a heavy load of books and a violin case.  In many cases, adults go back and find the distances of their childhood weren't so great, but when I take a look at the infamous Galer Street hill and know I climbed it every day rain or shine, I'm amazed.

Although we participated in the wide games-- British Bulldog, Kick the Can, Hide and Seek, Red Rover -- that took in the whole neighborhood on those northern latitudes' long summer evenings, I  spent most of my free time alone. The Arboretum was my place of singular magic, with species of trees and flowers that only much later I learned were rare and unusual. I used to climb under 50-year-old rhododendrons that were two stories tall, and make leis of their dropped cone-shaped flowers.  I sat on the edge of the ponds carefully capturing strings of frog eggs I took home to hatch in a dishpan in the basement. In the spring I'd walk under one of the weeping cherry trees along the Arboretum's Azalea Way and jiggle the branches so I'd be caught in a blizzard of pink petals. And often I'd climb a weeping willow tree where I'd perch on a branch with a book in hand and disappear for hours into the adventures of Josephine March and her sisters. 

Our house was within easy walking distance of two great museums where I also spent hours. At the Seattle Museum of History and Industry in Montlake I fell in love with the button blankets and carvings of the Haida people, the Inuit masks,  and the Coastal Salish baskets. I'd look up with pride into the rafters to see the seaplane that was one of the first in the Boeing fleet and know that my dad was helping to design the newest jets coming off the line.  And the diorama of the Great Seattle Fire of 1889 always left me with a frisson of terror.

The Seattle Art Museum in Volunteer Park awakened my love of Asian art, from the rows of tiny Chinese snuff bottles to the terra cotta Haniwa figures to several folding screens depicting Japan's Heian era. The museum also had part of the Kress Collection of Renaissance art, most of it third-tier, but still impressive to my untutored eyes. And its occasional traveling shows were wonderful, including a Monet show that featured some canvasses that later perished in a museum fire in France. Of course like every other Seattle child, I rode the Chinese marble camels outside the museum's front door, and later photographed my kids riding them, too.

I'd also traipse through the Volunteer Park Conservatory, breathing in the warm heavy tropical air, and delighting in the way the mimosa ``sensitive'' plants would wither whenever my hand brushed their leaves. I'd wade with my younger sibs in the Volunteer Park wading pool that probably had a rather high number of parts per million of little kids' pee, and we'd race each other to the top of the Volunteer Park water tower, which was housed in what looked like a medieval brick castle, and gave us views for miles in all directions

It seemed our childhoods were much freer and less fear-filled than the lives of kids' today. I'd get out of the house as soon as I got home from school and changed out of my uniform, and spent weekends roaming the Arboretum with virtually no restrictions placed by parents. This was true for my three siblings as well.

We did a lot of the things our classmates did: bought penny candy at the same mom-and-pop stores, took 25 cents to the Roycroft Theater every Saturday afternoon for a program that included a serial, a newsreel, a cartoon and a feature film; built wooden hydroplanes and tied them to the back of our bikes for our own versions of the Gold Cup Races run on Lake Washington.  We sometimes went to the original Red Mill on Friday night with our aunt and uncle so we could have fish and chips and not have to go home to a kitchen that smelled like fried fish. 

We went to the Friday night social dancing classes when we were in seventh and eight grades, and stood on one side of the hall while the St. Joe's boys were on the other. I can still remember a couple of Jack Reilly's sequence of steps and calls from that 7th-grade square dance class where they partnered us up with the boys by marching us in intersecting lines. Reilly, who owned the Aqua Barn out in Renton, taught us square dancing in 7th grade and social dancing in 8th.

I played in the string orchestra at school and was nerdy enough that I stuck with my Girl Scout troop all the way through high school. (And some of the women who were in Girl Scouts and the orchestra with me remain close friends to this day). I was both intellectually precocious and physically awkward:  a teenager who suddenly sprouted to six feet tall by her 13th birthday, and who thought physics was almost as much fun as writing notes in Morse code and passing them to my friends.

I had crushes on the St. Joe's boys even though many of them were still so short their heads could tuck under my chin when we were dancing. I'm sure they thought I was impossibly tall and weird. Weirdness aside, I actually did get to some of the high school dances, and still remember the spicy smell of a carnation corsage a Seattle Prep boy brought me on my very first date. I also read ``Seventeen'' magazine like a Bible, and used to have such envy when I'd go to mass at St. Joe's and see my more well-off classmates wearing outfits I'd seen featured in the magazine's pages.

Saturday mornings belonged to Miss Ruth Doherty's ballet classes at the Odd Fellow's Hall on Pine Street. She was dwarfed and bent by what was probably severe scoliosis, but  every Saturday she stood by the barre in a gauzy pink tunic and tights and led us through each step. The classes were probably not the best, and we had to stop halfway through and put on the tap shoes for the hated tap class, but it was enough to feed my passion for ballet that remains with me to this day.

St. Joe's itself was also important, of course. In 1950s Catholic America, life revolved around the parish church.  I can remember being terrified of Father Rinn, who would stand outside of church wearing a cape over his cassock and his hands on his hips, ready to catch latecomers to mass. I'm sure I was one of the kids who fiddled with the communion rail and caused one of the cast-metal bunches of grapes to come loose. I remember walking up the aisle on my First Communion day, trying to step on and pop the white snowberries that fell loose from wreath that crowned the veil of the girl in front of me in line.  And of course, even long after my immediate family left the parish. St. Joe's remains the place where we go to get married, and from which we bury our dead.

We left the Hill in the summer of 1960 because Dad was transferred to Cape Canaveral, Florida, initially to work on the Minuteman missile and later, in the space program. Life was never the same again. A certain center and certitude disappeared. I returned from Florida to attend Seattle University--technically on First Hill, but certainly within the Capitol Hill ambit -- but I never again lived on the Hill.

It's funny though, every single time I come to Seattle, the car automatically heads up Pine or Denny, I cross Broadway, make a few turns and find myself on Aloha Street. I always take a quick left turn on 14th, drive around the water tower, head for the conservatory and circle around the statue of William Henry Seward. Then I head back toward the art museum, always looking to the meadow to my right to see if my favorite maple tree is still there. (On my last trip, I discovered it was gone). Then I park for a minute facing Isamu Noguchi's ``Black Sun,'' and, if I'm lucky, watch the sun sink behind the Olympics. 

Afterward, I head back to Aloha, drive past St. Joe's, circle the Holy Names block, then head down 24th to Galer. I turn right and hope the rental car has good brakes as I head down down down that very steep hill. At the bottom I turn onto Garfield Street and look at the back side of our old house, then nip under the Interlaken Boulevard overpass and take a right turn into the Arboretum. I take a right turn on the boulevard and head back up hill, slowly, peering for a glimpse of the old house that is now almost completely hidden by trees on its front side.

It's just one of those rituals I have to perform. It's a way of connecting to my particular set of Capitol Hill roots.  Today I'm a silver-haired grandma with bifocals, a member of a Pagan coven and a hard-nosed legal journalist here in the Bay Area. But every time I pass the corner of 18th and Aloha, I remember once again that I grew up on Capitol Hill and will always be a Holy Names girl.

We're the coven that makes stuff

On thing that distinguishes my coven from some others is that we're always making things. It seems we are seldom closer than when we're gathered around the table sewing, decoupaging stuff, carving pumpkins, carving gourds or . . . .

This year we made a new altar cloth for Samhain. In our tradition the altar is always on the ground in the center of the circle because we are non-hierarchical and we like having the altar as a central visual focus. And increasingly the altar is very simple, as we let fabric and clear votives provide the focus.

I saw a pattern for a small wall hanging in one of the quilting magazines. The pattern started with a snail's trail block that evolved into four intertwined witches' hats. I liked it right away, and thought it would be fun to make that a key element in our altar cloth.

At our Samhain celebration, we always remember those who have come before us who were persecuted and killed for being witches. So often these people--mainly women--were tried and killed on trumped-up charges because they were maybe mentally ill, were just plain uppity and cranky women, possessed property someone coveted, or had children or neighbors who wanted them out of the way. Yes, some were also healers and midwives, and had religious/cultural practices that were at odds with the patriarchal power structure. But for the most part, they were people who were unpopular and that somebody in power thought threatend the prevailing civil and religious order.

We read some of their names aloud and are always surprised every year that the burning times continue and some witches died only in the past year or two, in parts of the world that are still governed by fear and superstition.

So, to get back to the altar cloth, we decided to make the faces all different colors, to represent the fact that women all over the planet have been persecuted and should be remembered. I made one of the witches with a green face to represent Elphaba, the heroine in Wicked, who went on to become the Wicked Witch of the West in The Wizard of Oz. Yes, Elphaba is fictional, but she stands in for those who mainstream society rejects, and calls too strange to be accepted.

The four blocks are bordered with dancing--and flying--witches, 13 on each side. We saw a fabric in a catalogue that contained these images, but no matter where we looked, we couldn't find it in stock. So we made our own little witches, and my coven sister Meg cut out every single one of them. LInda and Julie helped trace them onto WonderUnder, with which we've created more than one spell or two over the years.

Here's the whole altar cloth. And I'm planning to take it in and have it quilted so it will be more stable and hold up better over the years.

 

The witches have decidedly different facial expressions, including one who's downright crabby. 

 
And here you can see some of the little witches. They dance around all four corners of the altar cloth.

 

The other thing we do every year for Samhain is decorate candles for the Dia de los Muertos altar we set up out on my patio. Some of the candles are decorated with a variety of muertos images, while others have photos of family or friends or public figures we admire who died in the past year. This year I made a candle for my friend John Dauns and another for my Aunt Bertha Tjerandsen Slind. I also made candles for Teddy Kennedy and Walter Cronkite. Others made them for parents or grandparents, or even beloved pets.

Here's what the altar--ofrenda-- looks like in the daytime. It has big bouquets of marigolds (cempazuchitl) that are traditional for Dia de los Muertos altars. And on the ground to the right of the largest vase of flowers is the incense burner from which clouds of copal smoke rise during the day.

 

And here's a detail that shows some of the candles close up. That's John's up on the top with the red heart, with Ted Kennedy's candle at the left top. Down one shelf is a candle with a photo of Aunt Bertha and Uncle Ole (we honored him last year as he died just before Samhain 2008, but it was inconceivable to use a photo of Aunt Bertha without including her husband of 68 years), and Walter Cronkite. You can also see some of the little muertos figures I've made over the years.

Here are two life-sized wall hangings that have become part of the altar of the years, La Catrina dancing and Senor playing the guitar. They both have some anatomical issues, but after all, they're muertos . . . .

And here's the altar at night. It will come down tomorrow night, something I always hate to do, for I love to walk out onto the patio and see the glowing candles, and smell the marigolds and copal.

 

In this detail shot you can see La Sirena (the mermaid), the muertos bridal couple, and a tiny figure that's meant to be Frida Kahlo. And on the shelf below that, La Catrina, complete with a little fur stole.

 

All in all, it's been a wonderful Samhain season for me, and for the coven. Our Friday night ritual here was solemn and beautiful, and we were pleased to have four new friends join us for the evening. Saturday night we danced under the almost full moon on a mountain top, and called the names of the Beloved Dead to join us in our dance.  Next weekend some of us will go be part of the Besom Brigade, the all-witch precision drill team, which will make and appearance at the Pagan Alliance's Children's Samhain event.

When you get to my age, your personal list of Beloved Dead grows longer and longer. I think on some levels, I'd be awash with grief if I didn't have the chance to get together with my coven sisters and make things that added to our celebration, and provided us with special ways to remember those who have crossed the rainbow bridge into Summerland.

You know you're in Louisiana when . . . .

I didn't have all that much spare time on my quick trip to New Orleans. But I did have a rental car and a couple of free hours after I first arrived, and a few more the next morning before John's memorial. So I checked out a few of the old familiar places and saw that some things never change.

Like the drive-up daiquiri window, for instance. If you can get your beer in a ``go cup'' in the Quarter, it's not too far a reach to be able to drive by the Daiquiri Shop and get your daiquiri in your flavor of choice for the road . . . .

 

The Lucky Dog man still lives! If you read John Kennedy Toole's Confederacy of Dunces, you knew that fictional New Orleans resident Ignatius P. Reilly took a job as a Lucky Dog man. One of my friends says that when all other job opportunites dry up, she'll head for New Orleans and take a job selling Lucky Dogs in the Quarter.

Here's  a genuine Lucky Dog man in the classic striped-shirt uniform in the Quarter, partially obscured by the street sign. I wonder how many of them get tired of people saying ``Hey Ignatius . . . '' to them. You'll note that the Lucky Dog cart is parked outside a restaurant offering the gourmet combination of daiquiris and pizza.

You really can get a po' boy sandwich filled with french-fried potatoes and gravy. You probably have to squint to read this menu, but trust me, that was one of the offerings at a little cafe near the Harvey Canal over on the West Bank. There are three ways to get a po-boy, ``dressed,'' which means with shredded lettuce, tomatoes and mayonnaise; ``heavy on the my-nez,'' with an extra slathering of industrial-strength Blue Plate mayonnaise; and ``nuttin' on it,'' which is just plain bread with whatever filling you choose. By the way, if you click on this or any other photo in this posting, it will pop up in a larger size so you can see more detail.

 

Everyone chows down what I used to call (back when I was editing the food section of the West Bank Guide) ``hearty man-pleasing meals.'' Every table at this little West Bank cafe was jammed at lunchtime, and folks were putting away jambalaya, po'boys, red beans and rice,  pork chops and mashed potatoes and there wasn't a salad--or an opened laptop--in sight. These guys probably all work for oil-field service companies or are involved in the construction of the $36 million Harvey Canal hurricane floodgates.

Plants grow leaves the size of a coffee table. This is a shot of a garden in Gretna, and the leaves were big enough that I could have set out place settings for four people on a single leaf.

The Roman Chewing Candy wagon is parked on front of one of the big houses on St. Charles Avenue.  When I lived in New Orleans, the candy was only 25 cents a stick, but inflation has even hit the very small world of Roman Chewing Candy. I think I remember this wagon's being pulled by a mule, but now, at least on this day, the animal's been replaced by a pickup truck.

The Quarter still offers what midwestern tourists consider raunch and sin.

Despite the damage from Katrina, many of the Louisiana Live Oaks (Quercus Virginiana) still stand and shade the stately homes along St. Charles Avenue. Every time I drive down St. Charles, I always hear that poem of Walt Whitman's in my head:

I saw in Louisiana a live oak growing

All alone stood it and the moss hung down from the branches

Without any companion it stood there uttering joyous leaves of green. . .

Here's a photo I shot through the front windshield as I was driving down Carrollton toward the riverbend. Many beautiful oaks still hang over the street  I don't recall seeing  moss on any of the trees this time. Spanish Moss (Tillandsia usneoides) is an epiphyte cousin of the bromeliads, and is very sensitive to air pollution. The moss on the trees along St. Charles was endangered long before Katrina, and I bet I'll have to go ``out the contree'' to see any at all.

Here's a typical Uptown New Orleans home on St. Charles, fronted with two stories of galleries, and a cast iron fence, and framed by one of the surviving oaks. Incidentally, the trees all belong to the Louisiana Live Oak Society. Trees, not people, are members of the society, and the ``president'' is the oldest surviving oak. Martha Washington, which is the largest oak in New Orleans, survived Katrina and still flourishes in Audubon Park, continuing to expand her 28-foot girth.

 

Commander's Palace with its turquoise and white striped awnings appeared to be alive and well. Some of John's colleagues took me there for a wonderful dinner after the memorial, and I found myself remembering so many special evenings from the past I'd spent there with John or other friends. Without a doubt, Commander's remains my favorite Louisiana restaurant, although I still lament the loss of LeRuth's across the river. Commander's is on Washington Street in the Garden District.

And meals at Commander's still finish with a flourish. Here's the creme brulee they brought me at the end of the meal, and I must say it's the most opulent presentation of creme brulee I've ever seen.  Yes, it was served in a soup plate! (And yes, I ate every single bite. I always say really good creme brulee is like licking angels' wings, and this was a particularly beautific version).

 

'Gators remain an ubiquitous feature of the landscape. This one was found over across the river in Algiers Point, the location of  many of the carnival krewes' (clubs that sponsor parades during carnival season, running from Epiphany through Mardi Gras day) ``dens'' where they construct and store their floats. This alligator is outside Blaine Kern's studios and probably once was the primary feature of a Mardi Gras float). Kern is the major builder of floats for the commercial krewes like Endymion and Bacchus, and many of the smaller krewes rent Kern floats, too. 

 

The St. Charles streetcar is once again running down the neutral ground on St. Charles and Carrollton Avenues. We had one of the former St. Charles streetcars running on San Francisco Municipal Railroad's ``F Line,'' and every time I saw it, I got a case of the homesick blues. But now, four years after Katrina, the whole St. Charles line is finally running again and while things are very far from all right in New Orleans, for me, the streetcar is a huge sign of hope.

The oil, gas and chemical industries still reign supreme. I shot this plant along River Road in St. Charles Parish, which is two parishes (counties) up the river from Orleans Parish. Refining and chemical plants are big on the east bank of the Mississippi here, while the West Bank is more focused on the oil field service industries that serve the 4,000 oil and gas production platforms out in the Gulf of Mexico.

The sky fills with big heavy cumulus clouds every summer afternoon, and often you get a thunderstorm around 4 p.m. Back in our days of working for the West Bank Guide, we could almost guarantee a thunderstorm would knock all the power offline at deadline time (also 4 p.m.) every day.  I shot this photo from the room I had at the Westin Canal Place, right on Canal Street. That low building in the foreground is one of the big casinos, and, to be honest, I didn't see a lot of people coming and going from the casino.

 
You can tell folks in New Orleans you live in a shotgun with a camelback and everyone will know what you're talking about. Here's a bright pink example of this particular housing genre. A house is a shotgun if you could fire a shotgun through the front door and the buckshot would pass through every other room in the house on its way out the back door. A camelback has a second story in the back (allegedly to fool tax assessor, who taxed houses depending on the number of rooms they had. Apparently the tax assessor couldn't see, or pretended he couldn't see, the second story at the back). 

 

No, I didn't go see the remnants of the hurricane-caused devastation down in St. Bernard and Plaquemines parishes, or out in Gentilly or down in the lower 9th. I didn't need to.

To the casual tourist, it may look like everything's all right in New Orleans, but when I went to the Hertz lot to pick up my rental car and they only had one person on duty and 12 cars to be picked up, it was easy to see how deep the city's economic malaise remains. And when I drove through the central business district at 5 p.m. and heard only silence and saw few people on the street, it was clear to me that New Orleans has a long long way to go before it comes back again.  When we arrived at Commander's at 6 p.m. and were the first guests in the dining room, and when the hallways of the New Orleans airport echoed from the sound of few footballs, I knew how bad things must have been, and what a long slow way back is is from what my friend Mark Folse calls ``the federal flood.'' And when I hear in my friends' voices and see in their faces the effects of the four long and very hard years that have passed since Aug. 29, 2005, I know recovery is still far away.

I'll be returning to New Orleans Nov. 21 and will spend the rest of the month there. This time I hope to get down to the Barataria Preserve in  Jean Lafitte National Park,  Bayou Segnette, and Grand Isle; and visit Galatoire's,  Angelo Brocato's, Audubon Park, Arnaud's,  the Moonwalk,  the Maple Leaf Bar and many of my other favorite places. And I'll also spend time with my New Orleans friends, something I simply could not do on my quick trip for the memorial.  I'll have my youngest with me, just home from a public-health stint fighting malaria in Malawi, and I will finally fill my long-ago promise to show her the Crescent City I love so much and other parts of Southwest Louisiana, the land of dreamy dreams . . . .

A final goodbye

Two weeks ago I made a quick trip to New Orleans for the memorial for my friend John Dauns, who died in June. I was very honored that they asked me to speak at the event, which was held in the beautiful Rogers Memorial Chapel on the Tulane University campus;  and also that they listed me in John's obituary as one of his survivors.

Here's the program from the memorial with a portrait of John drawn by his colleague and friend, Professor Karl H. Hofmann, and below that, more John stories resume.

  

At the memorial many of John's colleagues talked about his achievements in mathematics, the warm associations they had with him in his many years of teaching at Tulane. It was clear to me that they truly ``got'' him, and remembered him with much affection. Of course, some of them had some very funny John stories, too.

My personal favorite is about what happened when John first arrived in New Orleans after receiving his PhD at Harvard. John was not terribly worldly, and, like many other mathematicians, lived so utterly inside his head that he sometimes missed some important clues from the environment around him. Before he found an apartment, he needed to stay in a hotel for a couple of days. He found one on St. Charles Avenue, and tried to check in and was very frustrated that they wouldn't let him. The problem? He was trying to check in to Bultman Funeral Home (which is famous for having buried many of the kings and queens of Carnival, not to mention Jefferson Davis and film star Jayne Mansfield).

Another new-to-me story was about the time John was mugged on his way to see a movie at the Prytania Theater. He handed over his wallet as requested and then asked if he could have $5 back so he could see the movie. Amazingly, the mugger very politely handed John back $5 and John did go on to see the movie.

One thing that did surprise me was the people talked about John's very large bubble of personal space and his need for physical distance from others. That was never the case in my experience. I remember particularly well one night during the Louisiana World's Fair (attended by virtually no one but New Orleanians, but still, a fabulous party, all told) when we were out on the steamboat Natchez, watching the nightly fireworks over the river.  John held on to my hand like a toddler clings to his mother in the supermarket.  Later I realized that for someone who spent some of his childhood as a refugee moving from Latvia to city after city in Germany during World War II, seeing things explode in the night sky might have caused more than a little anxiety.

On one of John's last trips to California, we  took the boat over the Angel Island, which is a state park in the middle of San Francisco Bay. It had a long history as a military garrison, and also formerly functioned as a sort of Ellis Island for new immigrants from Asia. We took the little tram tour all over the island, then had a picnic in a glade overlooking Ayala Cove.  It was one of those rare, really warm summer days in the Bay Area, and both of us were too tired for much exertion. So after we had the picnic, we walked down to the dock and sat on a bench watching the little kids play on the beach, and the boats sailing across the bay. I leaned my head on John's shoulder, shut my eyes, and fell fast asleep there in the sunlight. And so, I think, did John.  It was such a warm peacful day, and I think he was the most relaxed I'd ever seen him, at least certainly post-Katrina.

Several days before John died, the entire math department went to the nursing home to say goodbye. They posted some photos they shot that day on a memorial page. Here's what is probably the last photo of John. And I note that sick as he was, he was also aware of proprieties, so he dressed for the occasion in his good navy blue blazer.  It makes me sad to see this photo, of course, but I am pleased that it seems to capture the essential sweetness I always found in this dear, but more than a little bit eccentric, man. The memorial page also has several audio clips of John's telling his own life story, including his account of his childhood during the war, at this event. It's good to be able to hear his voice once more.

 

I told the people at the memorial about the time John and I went to Oaxaca together. John did have one vice, but it was something he controlled rigidly. He simply loved chocolate. I think chocolate was  rare and  delicious treat he had just a few times during his terribly hungry years as a child refugee during World War II.  The few occasions John would permit himself any chocolate, it was always only unsweetened baking chocolate.

We were walking down the street from the zocalo in Oaxaca and we passed by an open storefront where they were grinding just-roasted cocoa beans with sugar and almonds. The fragrance wafted out the door, grabbed John by the nose and drew him. in There in the middle of the shop was a large shiny steel cylinder with an open top, looking like a small cement mixer. It was filled with this fragrant mixture of sugar, chocolate and almonds. John reached and stuck his finger into the middle of the turning cylinder and brought it out loaded with chocolate. I'll never forget the ecstatic look on his face once he tasted it. Given that he was ordinarily so very reserved and polite, the fact of his walking in and tasting this chocolate without permission speaks to me of how powerful his craving was.

Whenever John came to see me, particularly in the post-Katrina years when he was clearly losing so much weight and not eating well, I tried hard to cook him things he liked and could eat. He was very suspicious of most food he saw in restaurants, and had an extrordinarily  limited range of things he could cook for himself, largely boiled cauliflower, Knox's unflavored gelatin, and hard-boiled egg whites. But he'd eat with relish anything I cooked, and  particularly loved the fritattas I'd make, loaded with mushrooms, onions, tomatoes, garlic, artichoke hearts and lots of cheese.  He' also likes soups of all kinds and the Irish steel-cut oatmeal I'd make for him with raisins, walnuts and brown sugar.

The last Christmas he came to see me, I stopped at the Crate & Barrel store and bought some  big deep soup bowls, three white and three red. Every day he was here, I cooked him things he liked and served them in those bowls. So now I think of them as John's bowls, and remember him every time I see them.

It surprises me how much I miss John. I think on some level, we had one of those very rare meetings of the mind and heart that endured despite our considerable differences, and even though we ended up living more than 2,000 miles apart.

Every morning when I go to work and boot up the computer, I have to stop myself from bringing up the Latvian news queue, from which I'd  send John a story or two so he'd be up to speed on the latest political and economic happenings in the land of his birth.  He loved having what he thought of as insider knowledge of the country he, in some ways, never really left.

Last week I wrote a story about the annual Ig-Nobel Prizes, and remembered how much he enjoyed talking about these awards and the odd research that ``won'' these awards for various scientists.  He wasn't much for humor, but he loved these very funny glosses on scientists and their research. And of course he always complained about the fact that there is no real Nobel prize for mathematics.  

Friday I packed the binoculars he gave me for Christmas into my backpack to take to work so I could watch the Blue Angels' Fleet Week flight over San Francisco Bay.  And of course they'll go with me to the ballet when San Francisco Ballet's season begins in January.

I married someone else after I moved to San Francisco, but John and I still  stayed in touch and we always remained friends. During the last year of my husband's life, I took him to New Orleans to meet my friends and see the city I love so much that I still always think of as home in many ways.

We met John on the Tulane campus and took him to dinner at Cannon's on St. Charles.  And I still laugh whenever I remember this meal. John and my husband ordered the same thing for dinner. The two of them spent much of the meal in animated conversation about their favorite  science-fiction authors. They were even wearing clothes of the same color. Clearly they got along very well. After John stepped up onto the St. Charles streetcar to head back to Tulane, my lawyer husband turned to me and said ``I know why you like him. He's a lot like me, only I'm cooler.'' Probably that was so on some levels. On others they were very different. 

In any case, John was a huge gift to me in many ways and for many years, and for that I am grateful  In two weeks I'll be making a candle bearing his name and photo for the Dia de los Muertos altar, and on Samhain, his is one of the names I will call when we summon and remember the Beloved Dead. What is remembered lives.

Lammas 2009 revisited

My niece Nicole, who was my good right hand during the Lammas dinner, somehow also found time to shoot a lot of photos. I think some of these can give you an idea of what we do every year at the end of July to celebrate Lammas (the feast also known as Lughnasadh).

As I've probably said before, I'm the daughter and granddaughter of wheat farmers, so the idea of celebrating the grain harvest as one of our Pagan world's eight great holidays makes perfect sense to me. Every year when I invite people to my home for the Lammas dinner, I decorate Lammas candles for everyone to bring home and keep the Lammas spirit  of gratefulness for the earth's abundance alive at their dinner tables.

This year we honored the farm families who grow our food, and in their memory, I decorated the candles with the my family's immigration passport photo from when they came over from Norway in 1922. We lost the last two members of my family's immigrant generation in the past year--both of whom worked incredibly hard in the wheat fields--so it seemed appropriate to me that we remember them this way.
 
  

My garden was at its seasonal best, but Nicole and I decided we needed more flowers, so we made an early morning trip to the Oakland Flower Market. Every time I buy flowers there, no matter how profligate I am in my selections, I am always shocked at how little money I end up spending. Trust me, this place is one of the all-time great East Bay bargains.  Here's my garden and then you can see some of the selections at the market.

 

And here's a photo of Nicole with her arms filled with the flowers we bought. It's one of my all-time favorite photos of her. She's my artist niece, so it makes sense for her to be photographed amid a riot of color. I think I probably reminded her she's my favorite niece when I shot the photo, hence the big grin.

 

There are some dishes that we have to have at the Lammas dinner no matter what. I cook a lot of Norwegian-heritage foods--particularly hundreds of Norwegian meatballs--and of course make home-made bread. But for my family, no sacred occasion is truly blessed without the presence of a salmon. This year it's a wild silver salmon the folks at Seattle's Pike Place Fish Market sent me. (And yes, these are the guys who got into trouble with PETA for tossing salmon around at the market and I am NOT making this up.. As my friend Macha would say, hnf!).

I always poach the salmon in the dishwasher (no Cascade, of course). I've done this for so many years that I can't even remember when I learned how. Most people think this is a rather radical notion but hey, fish poachers are about $400, and I already have a $400 appliance that does a perfectly fine job, and washes dishes to boot (albeit, not at the same time).

When I was back teaching a workshop at the Sacred Harvest Festival in Minnesota one year, I mentioned to a clutch of Minnesota Pagans that this is how I cook fish, thinking they'd never heard of this method. Oh no, this is how they cook all those weird fish they catch when they're out ice fishing in the winter. Who knew? So maybe dishwasher poaching is a Scandiloopian thing.

Here's the salmon as it came from the airplane, and the second shot is of it poached, lightly coated with a mixture of chopped dill and sour cream, and decorated with English cucumber ``scales.''

 

Nicole prepared the heirloom tomatoes, topping each slice with one basil leaf. Then she lightly salted and peppered them, and gave them a sprinkling of olive oil and some very old and rare balsamic vinegar. One of the other dishes was an hors d'ouvre: fresh figs stuffed with Pt. Reyes blue cheese, wrapped in prosciutto and baked until the cheese melts. You can see some cookie sheets topped with the figs in the background of the next photo.

 

Lammas is, of course, about the bread. Nicole and I baked two kinds: a limpa rye flavored with grated orange peel, and a basic white bread. Here I am mugging when the bread came out of the oven, and next is a plate with some of the bread freshly sliced for the dinner.

 

Besides Nicole, my coven sister Meg was one of the stalwart members of the kitchen crew. She's making a last-minute check of the table to see that everything we need was there. Ironically, we forgot and left both the green salad and three dozen deviled eggs in the refrigerator. Another of the sisters is deep into the refrigerator in this photo. In the second photo Meg's putting one of the bouquets on our coven's special table. Sometime I'll write about that table in another blog posting.

 

Before we started the meal, we had the blessing of the bread. We don't bless the bread per se, but are--it seems to me--blessed by the earth's abundance that makes it possible for us to have bread. I'm always reminded of the Eucharistic prayer from my Catholic past that speaks of bread:``which earth has given and human hands have made.''

So we pass the plate with the bread from person to person, and everyone has a chance to express gratitude to the earth and make Lammas wishes for the coming year. This year one of the guests, who is a Pagan with Jewish roots, also made a bracha over the bread, which seemed just fine and appropriate.

Here's the beginning of the blessing of the bread. Nicole was standing by my side holding one of the Lammas candles. The only other thing I can say about this photo is that it looked like my grandmother showed up uninvited and donned my apron. That's  OK because she was one of my favorite people in the world and she did teach me to bake bread, so I don't really mind looking so much like her.

 

One of the things I love about the Lammas dinner is that friends from a variety of backgrounds show up, and they're not all Pagans. One of my friends who is a Buddhist priest came, as did some of my new friends I see every day on the Alameda ferry boat. And it's particularly cool to me that now we have little kids in our Pagan family, and even a well-behaved dog showed up for the festivities. It feels like the great family feast and celebration that Lammas is supposed to be. So here you will see Aradia, Alex and then Maddie, the red Australian Sheepdog, who is playing her part as The Appealing Dog.

Here are some of the horde descending on the table, and then a few of the people who chose to eat dinner indoors. It was one of those semi-chilly Bay Area summer evenings with fog sneaking back in after the sun began to set. I'm sorry to say the photo at the left represents the last day in the life of the black Oaxacan pot holding Palouse wheat in the middle of the table. I accidentally knocked it off the table the next morning and it almost exploded when it hit the concrete slab floor.I had carried that pot on my lap back from my trip to Oaxaca with John many years ago, so am very sad to lose it. But it was truly shattered beyond any hope of repair.

 

After dinner Beltaine's Fire performed out on the patio. They play, according to their Web site, ``revolutionary hip-hop Celtic fusion.'' They're a very smart, literate, politically-oriented and very talented bunch of young musicians, and I love their music. 

 

And now the wheel has turned and Mabon (the Autumn equinox) is looming ahead. This is the one Pagan holiday I actively dislike, for I hate saying farewell to Persephone and getting ready to move into the dark half of the year. So it's a good thing I'm fortified for the journey by a wonderful Lammas evening with friends, family, good food, music and celebration.

Paying a call on Yemaya

Last weekend I took two of my coven sisters to my favorite run-away-from-home-for-a-day spot: Pescadero State Beach on the coast of California's San Mateo County. It's about 14 miles south of Half Moon Bay, which is where my parents told me I took my first steps (on the beach, of course).

I love Pescadero because  in addition to being a state park, it's also a nature preserve. Many many different species of migratory birds make a stopoff around the Pescadero lagoons during the year. It also has one of the greatest varieties of wildflowers that I've ever seen on the California coastline. And yes, it's true, I did have my one brush with the law to date when I got caught picking a small bouquet of wildflowers there a few years ago. Blame it on my grandmother, the all-time plant larcenist.

The park has several beach sections, one with offshore rocky outrcroppings  that are a favored  habitat of Brandt's cormorants (Phalacrocorax penicillatus),  California sea lions (Zalophus californianus), and, on rare occasions, elephant seals (Mirounga angustirostris) that have wandered over from the large colony at Año Nuevo to the south.

Here's the surf crashing on the rocks at Pescadero Beach.

 

And here's a long shot of one of the coves. The rocks away from the shoreline were all covered with cormorants the day we were there.

 

Many of the wildflowers had been burned dry by our summer with no rain. But Meg still found a few worth checking out.

Before we hit the beach ourselves, we made a detour into the small town of Pescadero so we could stop and buy the artichoke garlic herb bread from Arcangeli Grocer Co.  We also went out to Harley Farms Goat Dairy for organic goat cheeses. What a variety! They had feta, ricotta, herb-crusted logs of cheese, and beautiful little flat cheeses ornamented with edible flowers. We had to stop and  pet Cadbury, who is the farm's oldest--and now retired--milk goat.

 

Here are some of the pretty -- and delicious--goat cheeses the farm sells.

One the way to the dairy, we saw a magical garden with a forest of sunflowers, filled with trailing pumpkins vines and bright blue cornflowers.

 

 

And finally we got to the beach where we said hello to Yemaya, planned an upcoming ritual for the coven, ate a sumptuous picnic lunch, and Julie and Meg went for a stroll on the beach. No, they didn't coordinate their outfits in advance. But this is what happens when you take your fashion tips from Yemaya.

 

 

While my two elegant co-priestesses were sashaying down the beach, I was enchanted with two little guys who'd brought their trucks to the beach and were embarked on a mighty earth-moving project. They reminded me so much of my sons when they were little boys and we took their big yellow Tonka truck with us to the beach. 

 

All in all, it was a wonderful day, and we brought it to the perfect close by seeing ``Julie and Julia'' at the Alameda Theater.  One of my more fun ways to spend a Saturday, all told. The day had its poignant moments as it was the first time I'd been back to Pescadero since my friend John Dauns had been here for a visit and I took him to the beach. And this time I was using the binoculars that were his last present to me. As we Pagans say, what is remembered lives.

Trolls in Jingletown?

Yah, sure you betcha. A few trolls have taken up residence in my garden here in Fruitvale's Jingletown neighborhood, and more are on the way. Since I'm a good Pagan gardener with Nordic roots, I know that if I leave them alone they'll cause little harm.

It seems that they knew this was a summer when I'd have to water so sparingly that my garden wouldn't be as lush as usual. So they decided to move in and add some color to a few of my pots.

This ancient fellow is presently living near my front door. He surveys all visitors and stands there with his hands behind his back, muttering about all the comings and goings.
 
This next troll has the special ability of being able to remove his head and stick it somewhere else to watch what's going on. His body's in a pot of feverfew, and his head looks around from a pot containing a white Buddleia davidii. 

I don't know why anybody thinks the troll in the photo below is a dog, although a number of benighted people in my ceramics class insist this is the case. (They're the same ones who say my Green Man looks like Rodney Dangerfield).  This one-eyed troll has opposable thumbs, which dogs clearly lack. He hangs out in a pot from which a lovely and fragrant pink nicotiana erupted as a volunteer.

Unfortunately this fierce troll with a red nisselue is peeking over the edge of a galvanized wash tub I use as a planter, so you can't see his feet. Which are, by far, the best part. He has three of them, each with an enormous big toe. I think he must have ingrown toenails or something as he's thoroughly cranky. But then, it could be because his backside is constantly being pricked by cactus spines.

One other troll is sitting on the shelf at my ceramics class. In a few weeks he'll come home to Jingletown, too. All I remember for the moment is that he has very big ears and jutting eyeballs.

What I'd really like to make is a huldra, which is a troll that looks like a beautiful maiden when you see her facing you. But when she turns around, she has a hollow back, like a rotting tree trunk, and a cow's tail hanging down.

Huldras show up in a number of Norwegian folk tales, and a feminist interpretation would have them serving as the protectors of the seter maids, who are the women who spent the summer alone in the high pastures taking care of the cows, making cheese, and knitting.  I'm sure there's got to be some good reason for a huldra to come and live in my Jingletown garden.

Well, I suppose I should show you the Green Man, and the Roman Goddess Flora, who flank a doorway in my garden. Now really, do you think he looks like Rodney Dangerfield all that much?

Incidentally, Jingletown, which is a subset of Oakland, California's Fruitvale section, has become a happening place. Mosaics are popping up everywhere on building walls, and now there's a monthly art walk taking place in the community. Creeping gentrification is certainly upon us, what with two Starbucks within walking distance.  But we still have freight trains occasionally making a trip down the middle of one of the streets, and more than our share of raccoons and possums.

Bread and butter days

That's how I think of Imbolc and Lammas. Each of our eight major Pagan holidays has its partner at the exact opposite point of the year. The summer solstice marks the fullness of the sunlight, but looks ahead to the coming of the dark. The winter solstice celebrates the shortest day and longest night of the year, but promises the joys of summer ahead.

Samhain (Halloween) is when we think of our beloved dead, and Beltane (May Day) is when we celebrate the life force within us. At the Autumn equinox, we say goodbye to Persephone as She descends into the underworld; at the Vernal equinox, we welcome Her return, with  the world once again robed in green and flowers popping up all over the landscape.

Every year at Imbolc, (Feb. 2), I make home-made butter. I do this to celebrate both Brighde of the kine (cattle), and to remind myself--and my coven--that it was at this time of the year that the cattle and sheep would freshen again, and milk and butter would once more become available. That this is the time of year when the terrible winter hungers our ancestors endured would abate. When I bring the butter to place on our altar for the Imbolc ritual, I always set a tiny figure of a cow in the middle of it, just so there's no mistaking its source.

And Lammas (or Lughnasad), which we are celebrating right now, I always bake home-made bread. This is the holiday the honors the ripening of the grain, which is the first harvest of the year. I'm a wheat farmer's daughter and the granddaughter of one of the best bread-bakers in the universe, so Lammas is a day when I remember and honor my ancestors' work and skills. And just so everyone remembers where it all comes from, my Lammas table always includes a bouquet of wheat.

Tonight I had old friends from New Orleans here for dinner. I didn't really make a big deal of its being Lammas, but I tried to serve a dinner that had all of the best things to eat we have here in the west at this time of year: sockeye salmon, heirloom tomatoes, and a fresh-baked blackberry galette. I made home-made rolls, because I couldn't imagine serving store-bought bread at Lammas.   On some levels, dinner was very similar to the big Lammas dinner at my house last week. Main difference was that I broiled the salmon shio-yaki style rather than poaching it in my dishwasher as I did for the Lammas dinner.

As I was cooking, I was thinking of this Lammas/Imbolc connection. Here at the beginning of August, we celebrate the bounty the earth itself has given us. I always get a mental picture of the rolling hills of the Palouse, covered with golden grain.   And in February, we honor gifts of the animals themselves: the milk we make into butter, yoghurt, and cheese.

A Jewish friend of mine once jokingly said that all Jewish holidays had the same theme: they tried to kill us; we survived, let's eat.

I suppose one could say something similar about our eight great holidays (which are also known as sabats). The wheel of the year turns, something wonderful is happening on our good earth, let's gather together to celebrate and give thanks.  My hope is that I will always remain mindful of this turning of the wheel, and that I will always have a community with which to celebrate.   

My greatest uncle

Yesterday my Uncle Toby turned 94. That he's this old is hard for me to believe, but I'm very glad he's still with us, and is alert, reasonably healthy, and still very connected to all of us in the family.

I've probably had a mad crush on Uncle Toby since the first time I can remember seeing him in his Army Air Corps uniform during World War II. That's what he wore when he married my aunt, and there are photos of him in his uniform standing on in front of my first home in San Francisco, holding a toddler in his arms that was me.

I thought he was the most handsome man in the world. He was--and still is--tall, slender, with fair skin and dark hair that grayed over the years. He always worked at staying in shape. I can remember as a child watching him do the Royal Canadian Air Force Basic Exercises every morning. It wasn't until years later that I realized all those exercises were attempts to mitigate back pain relating to injuries he suffered from the wartime crash of the B-24 Liberator bomber he crewed.  I never once heard him complain. Here's an early-day photo of Uncle Toby and Aunt Doris with me and my brother Eric. It was shot in Ellensburg, Washington, in about 1946.

Uncle Toby was a cradle Catholic in Seattle's most Catholic neighborhood of Capitol Hill. He's lived there all his life, except for his wartime service. Even today, he lives less than 10 blocks from the house in which he was born.  And he remains devoted to the church, in particular St. Joe's, the parish of which he's been a member forever. Here he is  in 1949 with my mom, who's holding our cousin Chris Blundell. Chris is the baby being baptized, and Uncle Toby is his godfather, welcoming one of the family members into the church he so deeply loves.

Despite his dedication to Catholicism, Uncle Toby's never been one of those judgmental moralistic folks toward those of us who have strayed from what we were all taught to call ``Holy Mother the Church.'' Uncle Toby's love and acceptance of all of us washes over us like a tidal wave. He doesn't quite get my Pagan life, but he tried hard to understand it, and has never said anything negative about who I am and what I do.

His piety is the stuff of both legend and a few family jokes. He's been known to say the rosary aloud while on his exercise bike, and everyone's favorite story is about the time Aunt Doris sent him to the liquor store and caught him sneaking off to mass instead. Until recently he was the one who would pick up the elderly and disabled and drive them to church for daily mass. Now, most often, he's the one who's driven.

When I was a young child living on the 10 acres where my father built a house out in Snohomish County, Uncle Toby and Aunt Doris, who were still childless at the time, would often come out to pick up us kids and take us on a Sunday ride, which is what people used to do before NFL football began owning Sundays.  On one of those rides he took us for a fried chicken dinner at one of the very first restaurants I can remember. This was back way before drive-ins and fast food, so it was a big deal to take a bunch of little kids into a restaurant.

Uncle Toby could--and probably still can--whistle across his lower teeth. Whenever I hear someone whistle that way, I am instantly reminded of him. And he'd always tease me about my name, reversing consanants, and calling me ``Slictoria Vind.''

My funniest memory of Uncle Toby is from just a few years ago, when the last in his family's series of dachsunds was still alive. The smoke alarm in the condo where he and Aunt Doris live is ultra-sensitive, and whenever it would go off, the dog would stand underneath, yapping and yapping. Whenever Aunt Doris started to broil something, she knew the smoke alarm would go off, and that shortly thereafter, the yapping would start. So she'd yell to  Uncle Toby to get into position. He'd stand under the smoke alarm, holding a big bath towel, with the dog at his feet. The alarm would go off, the dog would start barking, and Uncle Toby would then begin waving the towel up and down in efforts to waft the smoke away.  He'd stop to take a rest, the smoke alarm would go off again, the dog would begin anew the yapping, and Aunt Doris would yell at him to start waving the towel again.  

Here's a photo of Uncle Toby, Aunt Doris, and the infamous dog.
 

To say my aunt is a dedicated garage sale patron is to make a huge understatement. Nearly everything in her house is from garage sales, and that includes some of Uncle Toby's clothes. I remember seeing him one time in a pink polo shirt with a knit collar, and, for some strange reason, a puff-paint flower in the middle of his stomach.  I asked him why the flower, and he said, ``oh, it's one of your aunt's garage-sale finds. It had a stain, so she covered it up with this flower.''

I Googled my uncle today, and I found the oddest thing. Apparently a lot of old newspapers have now been scanned into the Google database. There was a page from the Ellensburg Daily Record, with a society-column mention that ``Lt. Robert E. Tobin Jr. of McCord Field was a guest of Mr. and Mrs. George Mead at their home over the weekend.'' The date of the newspaper was July 23, 1945, so I assume he was there courting my Aunt Doris, whom he married in December of that year. 

When my siblings and I were growing up, things were very much not OK at home. We've often said that without our aunts and uncles, we wouldn't have survived, or at least wouldn't have grown up safely. The aunts and uncles on both sides of the family were the ones who gave us unconditional love and approval, and who provided us with the moral compass we needed. And no one was more present--or dear--to us than Aunt Doris and Uncle Toby. We always knew they'd set a place for us at dinner, listen to our stories, and just make us feel safe and loved. Here's a favorite photo I shot of Uncle Toby and Aunt Doris in the summer of 1989. They're standing at the roof garden of the Inn at the Market, right above the Pike Place Market, a favorite place for everyone in the family to visit.

Every time I see Uncle Toby now, I fear it may be the last time. So I always kiss his whiskery cheek and remind him of how much we love him and how grateful we are that he has always been a presence in our life.  This photo, which I took a month ago, is what Uncle Toby looks like today. He's had a few nasty falls, and a small heart attack, but for now, he's still with us. And I am very glad.