Category Archives: Daily Life

Smoke

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Woke up just now to the smell of smoke. I’ve looked all around the house, inside and out; there doesn’t appear to be any fire here, anyway. I can smell it outside, especially in front of the house. Might be from a neighbor’s chimney…but the sky is clear, and there are no obvious plumes. (Most particularly, there are no obvious plumes coming from our roof!) Still, I can feel the smoke at the back of my throat and in my eyes.

And given the lack of immediate evidence of fire, my throat and eyes tell me there’s a forest fire somewhere in Southern California, close enough to smell but far enough away that I can’t see it. There’s no indication on any of the news web sites or the US Forest Service’s fire map, so remember, you heard it here first.

Update: There appears to be no forest fire anywhere plausible, nor is there smoke in the air this morning; possibly it was smoke from one of our neighbor’s chimneys. Weird, if so—it’s not hot here in SoCal like it is in the rest of the country, but it’s only getting down to 60 degrees or so at night.

Family Life

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What does it say about my family that, having watched a production of The Two Gentlemen of Verona in the local park, we came home and wondered what a mashup of Sweeney Todd and The Sound of Music would sound like?

Some examples:

Pie! A meal, a meat-filled meal!
Made—with pussycats and toast!

and

Somewhere in my wicked, miserable past,
There’s someone who tasted good.

You’ll have to imagine the music.

Ray Bradbury, RIP

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The web has been alive today with notices of Ray Bradbury’s death, and reflections on his work. I remember when I first read him. I was in fourth grade, and loved science fiction, and while out with my mom I saw, probably at the grocery store, a paperback entitled S is for Space by “America’s greatest living author of science fiction!” I was unfamiliar with marketing hype in those days, and it was about *SPACE* and I badgered her into buying it for me. I think it may have been the first mass market paperback I got that was entirely my own. (Mind you, I had lots and lots of books, but they were mostly kids’ books, and various odd sizes.)

S is for Space is not what I was expecting. I was expecting science fiction, and though Bradbury is often called a science fiction author, he really wasn’t. What he was, was a poet who worked in the short story form and who often used notions from fantasy and science fiction in his works. To call him a science fiction author is to imply that there’s some similarity between his tales and those of others; and there simply isn’t. Bradbury stands alone.

I am not a huge fan of Bradbury; I’ve often read him with pleasure, but I have to be in the right mood, and many of his stories leave me cold. But his writing was unique, lyrical, evocative, eerie, but never jagged, shocking, or gritty. Hence I was surprised by this description I saw in one report:

His major breakthrough as a science fiction writer was the publishing of “The Martian Chronicles” in 1950. The story of the effects of man’s attempt to colonize Mars after a massive nuclear war on Earth, the book reflected the anxieties over nuclear war in the 1950s and the fear of foreign powers.

Um, what? Whatever The Martian Chronicles is, it isn’t that. It’s a collection of many, many stories, all united around the theme of being on Mars; but if there’s a coherent story running through all of them, I certainly was never able to find it. The description makes it sound like a gritty depiction of the struggle for survival on a harsh world, a book obsessed with the politics of the day. I suppose the book might indeed reflect anxieties over nuclear war; but that’s not what it’s about.

I still have that old paperback of S is for Space. It’s in lousy shape, but at this point it’s probably one of my oldest possessions.

Whoops!

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I got home today, and everyone else was at the dentist’s. The house was silent. There were so many things I could have used that time for: a decent blog post, for example. But no…I spent it reading other people’s blogs. And when I had just turned my attention to blogging, everyone came home.

Oh, well.

First Communion Retreat

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Today I shall be attending a “First Communion Retreat” with my youngest, who will be making her first communion in about a month. This is a new thing for me. They’ve been doing these retreats for the kids for some years, but I think this is the first time they have asked a parent to attend as well. At least, it’s the first time we’ve been asked.

I’m quite curious about it. I don’t know whether I’ll be with my daughter all morning, or whether the adults and kids are going to spend some time getting catechized separately. (I’m hoping the later; more adult faith formation is a Good Thing.)

Profession

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So today I renewed my profession as a Lay Dominican. Last year, I promised to live as a Lay Dominican for one year; today I promised to live as a Lay Dominican for the next two years. If all goes as planned, then in two years, I’ll make my Life Profession, and that will be that.

So this is a milestone of sorts; but it’s kind of like turning 45. 40 is a significant milestone; 50 is a significant milestone; 45 is 45.

Still, it’s good. It’s very, very good.

Walls and Hobbits and Spock

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I walked into our kitchen today, and we had walls! With panelling on them! (Well, OK, about six to eight linear feet of wall, but still! Walls! Wow!

In the meantime, I ran into this truly amazing video of Leonard Nimoy singing “The Ballad of Bilbo Baggins”. I’ve been familiar with the song for over thirty years, thanks to the Dr. Demento Show, but I don’t believe I’d seen this video before.

It is horribly ’60’s: Leonard Nimoy, with Spock hair, surrounded by a bunch of (admittedly very nice looking) ’60’s chicks with Vulcan ears who make bunny-hop-like wiggly motions as Nimoy sings the song. Strange, very strange.

And if you go to Youtube to watch, you find other interesting things, like Leonard Nimoy singing “Proud Mary”. And “I Walk The Line.”

And William Shatner singing “Bohemian Rhapsody”.

Please, make it stop!

Levon Helm, RIP

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I just heard that Levon Helm, drummer and lead singer with The Band, passed away this last week. He was 71.

Early in 1986, Jane and I went to see the reunited Crosby, Stills and Nash perform in Orange County. Originally there wasn’t going to be any warm-up act; but we’d heard on the radio that The Band was going to be playing with them, and so the show was going to be starting an hour earlier. Neither of us knew much about The Band; we’d heard “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down,” and probably a few others that we couldn’t have put names to. We had low expectations. Still, The Band was part of music history, so we made it a point to get there in time.

And after The Band was done, CS&N was a major anti-climax. We could have gone home after hearing The Band, and been happy. Never have I heard a rock band playing with so much delight. And a large amount of that delight emanated from Levon Helm, sitting at his drum kit in the back, his head turned to the mike, singing songs like “Up On Cripple Creek” with joyous abandon.

We were hooked.

We were also in one of the last audiences to hear The Band in all its glory; because a month or so later, Richard Manuel, the group’s other lead singer, committed suicide.

And now Levon Helm is dead, too; it’s the end of an era. Bill Vallicella, the Maverick Philosopher, has a list of links to songs by The Band, headed up with (you guessed it) “Up On Cripple Creek.” Go over and give ’em a listen.

My First Digital Camera

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My first digital camera was a Sony Mavica FD5. It had a resolution of 640×480 pixels, and saved images on 3.5″ floppy disks. (Remember those?) I could get twenty to thirty images on one disk, if I recall correctly; I had a little belt case that would hold 10 disks, and I’d swap them out like film cartridges.

Here’s one of the pictures I took with it:

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Please note: this is not resized; this is the resolution at which it came from the camera.

It was taken the day my eldest son learned to stand up. He never really pulled himself up on things; he just stood up, like you see in the pictures. (Note to baby-snatchers: don’t come looking for him, he’s in High School now.) A delightful memory, but the image quality is nothing to write home about. Or perhaps it is: “Hey, Mom, you won’t believe how bad these pictures look….”

The camera cost me lots of money, and I loved it and enjoyed it immensely.

Out of curiosity, I decided to take a look and see if anybody had an FD5 for sale at Amazon, and what the asking prices were like. I don’t want to buy one; I still have mine, though I haven’t used it in over ten years. But I thought to myself, you know, it might be a collector’s item. It was Sony’s first floppy disk camera, sold when the industry was young; it has historical interest; maybe it’s worth something.

And, it turns out, it is. If you want to get your very own Sony Mavica FD5, known to work as recently as 2009, you can order one for the rock-bottom price of $24.99. Yes, you heard me right: 24 dollars and 99 cents.

Oh, and $5.99 shipping.

Don’t delay, they are selling like hotcakes.