My 10th Christmas

This is my 10^th Christmas at Patterson House as house manager…

My 10^th year dealing with the task of decorating a 7,000 foot mansion… preparing for as many as 4,000 visitors… Then dealing with the 4,000 visitors… Walking the thin line between “Victorian” and “Macy’s Window. ” We have too much Christmas… way too much… There are trees, garland, lights (not many lights… and the lights appropriate for 1903… we think about these things…) wreaths (lots of wreaths), and decorations… lots of decorations…

This year, as we head into the season, I am feeling unprepared… There are rooms so far not claimed… I have claimed one room, the library, for a homage to Father Christmas and Santa Claus… using Santa dolls… lots of Santa dolls… which usually live in the attic…

Now, 5 days into the season things seem to be coming together… all rooms are claimed… 6 rooms are done… 6 more are mostly done or at least well started… only a few are so far a dream… but all have stuff staged… all are working towards the day, now two weeks away when we open… and welcome guests…

I am doing the library… (how appropriate) in a Santa theme… (as reported above…) I am using our Santa doll collection to illustrate the progression from Father Christmas and St. Nick to Santa… the red white and blue Santa of Lincoln in 1863… to the red and white Santa of the 1890’s Coca Cola tray and shopping mall of today…

With all this Christmas at work… I am trying to figure out how much Christmas is appropriate at home… I am thinking outdoor lights… a tree, but maybe a small tree… a nativity scene… (Prohibited at work) It is not clear how or where we will celebrate… We will celebrate, we just don’t know where…

Thanksgiving, fast approaching is similarly undefined… I need to think about it more… acquire a turkey (a small turkey) and other supplies…

It's now a bit after 8:00… time to head off to work… and way too much Christmas

12 photos…

I have created a gallery of 12 photos… the best 12 photos I took on the recent trip… (at least today’s choices… my choices could be different tomorrow…) They are not a story about the trip… just 12 images that caught my imagination… My eye…

I took a many more that 12 photos… after a pass through the photos, turning them, editing, deleting the obvious, I have 574 photos taken over 9 days… 5 ports…

I find that I take photos, use photos in three distinct ways… for three purposes… The vacation photos from the recent trip are of all three types… The first type are snapshots, family photos… and most of the photo from this trip, are vacation photos… a way of remembering where we have been… All together are a way of documenting our lives… The second type, are information… taken solely as a form of note taking… there are a couple of museum display labels… a museum information card… a menu… I also take photos of books (but not on this trip)… I have in a few cases taken photos of each page of a book, a magazine, a diary, or a ledger… hundreds of pages to document a single book… They are not about art or composition, but about the information. Finally, the third type of photo, the least common, but the highest form are photos as art… The 12 photos my poor effort as art…

There is a long, now more than 100 year old debate about photos as Art… (Art with a capital A, is a form… a practice…) for some photos are technology, chemistry, documents, but not Art… Others recognize that by the act of taking a photo, framing a photo, you are editing reality, and creating an image… a vision… a moment… Many of my photos are not Art… but some are…

Some are closer to a copy machine, a Xerox machine… just recording…

I do both… for different reasons… Today we are celebrating Art…

Back, at work… And Christmas… in early November

Back, back from vacation, at work…

It’s a big day at Patterson House… it is the beginning of Christmas… when the house is converted from Victorian house museum to Macy’s Christmas window… It is Chaos… with me at the eye…

I got up with the sun… and headed to work… my clocks had not been set back for the change from Daylight savings time… a week or more ago… we were traveling… There are blog posts about the travel… Maybe our home clocks do not accurately tell time…, instead they are telling an older time, an earlier time… a wrong time…

I got to work a bit before 7:00 (as in am… morning…) then wondered why others were not there… I made coffee… I made soup (for the docents…) Turkey vegetable soup… The reviews suggest good turkey vegetable soup…

Eventually others arrived… They started to decorate. I ran around in circles running errands, bringing garland and such down from the attic… hanging wreaths…

We ate about noon… Soup, good French bread… friends…

The trees arrived about 1:30… the artificial trees… many, many artificial trees… a truck load of trees… There are bags of garland, down from the attic… there is other Christmas stuff, boxes of other Christmas stuff… There are ladders… 5 or 6 ladders… Ladders are important.

We continued to decorate… it takes a lot of time to decorate a 7,000 foot house… by end of day a couple of rooms were looking good… maybe 4 more were started… Its Christmas…

Now home… cooking dinner… what’s with having to cook… where is the kitchen staff… the waiters… the bar keeps… Oh, S#@t, I am home, now responsible for my own food, my own dishes, my own laundry and beds and such… This ain’t a cruise… its life… real life… I miss the cruise…

It is now 7:30 pm… Tina, the lovely Tina, just called… headed home from work… Time to finish dinner…

Home

It’s is Sunday evening… we are home…

The day started when we awoke to find the ship safely at dock in Ft Lauderdale… We rose, we dressed, we went to the last breakfast (I finally ordered eggs Benedict…)

Back to the room, mostly to waste time… then, gathering our stuff, we bid our room goodbye and went upstairs and found a table outside at the stern, and sat and read, and waited… Most of the time at the end of a cruise we are desperate to get off… on a schedule to get a flight, or drive, or something for which we need off… not today… we have a flight to catch, a flight leaving about 5:00, at an airport 15 minutes away… we are going to sit somewhere… either aboard, or at the airport… the ship is a better choice… a nicer place…

For the first time in my travels I heard the “this is the final announcement, would all disembarking passengers make their way to the gangway…” The Lovely Tina and I were being kicked off a cruise ship (in a good way)

We made our way downstairs… to the gangway… off the ship… the port staff had us work our way completely around one room… when questioned (by others) the detour was for crowd control… for a nonexistent crowd… a crowd that had long passed… but the result was we had to walk once around the room, maybe 300 feet, when if fact we could have walked from the gangway to the stairs in maybe 25 feet…

Downstairs we needed to find our bags… Lots of staff wanted to tell us where to find our bags… every 20 feet someone wanted to know our color and number so they could direct us… after the 4^th encounter we were headed for our bags… but still ran a gauntlet of staff… all wanting to tell us where to go… (in a good way… not the common and rude joke…) but by the end we wanted to tell some of them where to go…)

We claimed the bags (there were few left to chose from… we really were among the last off…) we joined the line for customs/immigration… We presented our passports and custom forms… we were waved through… emerged out on the street, in search of a cab… lined up… waited for a very short time and loaded our stuff, our luggage in the cab… for a short journey to the airport.

Strangely, the cabbie had NPR on the radio… not the expected choice… most local cabbies are from one of several Caribbean islands… most commonly Haiti… I have received some of my best information on Haiti from cabbies in South Florida… today instead I listened to NPR…

We reached the airport… we checked in… we tried to check our bags… but you can’t check bags before 4 hours before the flight… so we found seats in an overcrowded airport… Many others, like us were waiting to check their bags… We sat… Ft Lauderdale’s airport has free Wifi… I logged on, but eventually, too soon the battery in my laptop was failing… I went in search of power, a wall plug… I am wondering how they vacuum this place… there are very few plugs, most in hidden side halls…

I find one in a public area, plug in and continue… Tina watched the bags… I checked email, I uploaded the photos from Grand Turk… I read about the Carnival ship and its fire… Among cruise passengers there are stories... lots of stories about what happened to which ship... mostly fictional... but there are stories... Spam... the ship aground.. its the ship that was in port with us in Grand Turk... all fictional... but stories...

Eventually I finish the upload, then make my way back to where Tina is sitting… we check our luggage… we go to lunch… we pass through security… again we sit and wait… I find a new power source… (this isn’t easy… but I am good… this one is behind a barrier… I reach, I plug in, I have the power…)

Eventually we board… a full flight… we find places for our bags… we sit… the plane leaves… we sleep… we read… we sleep some more… finally, 6 hours later we are home… we make our way to baggage claim… we call the daughter… we wait for bags… we claim bags and go outside… the daughter arrives in the car with the dog… we load luggage… we depart… the dog sticks her tongue in my ear…

Home… Luggage unloaded… I need supplies for tomorrow… I go to the store… for supplies… I need to make soup for the volunteers… the stock is already made… made some 10 days ago, from a turkey carcass from a previous docent feed… boiled, then strained, and put away… for tomorrow… currently frozen solid at work… I buy vegetables and sausages… and beer… (beer is a reoccurring theme in my life…) Returning home I chop vegetables… onions, carrots, celery, green beans… sauté them… set them aside, chop Italian sausage… brown it… break it up… the put all of the stuff in the fridge… to go to work tomorrow to be combined with the stock, with some kidney beans, some tomatoes, maybe a bit of salt… a soup… I bought bread too… I know what I am having for lunch tomorrow… Unlike the cruise, I had to make this lunch…

Work will come too soon… really crazy get ready for Christmas work… too busy… and it will continue for a couple of weeks… it really is a season… Christmas at Ardenwood, at Patterson House is not a week in the Caribbean… it may be the opposite of a week in the Caribbean…

Soon I will be working on the next trip or trips… there are weekends in Healdsburg (aka the wine country) in Reno (a Rotary train trip) to Florida (parents… I need to spend more time with mom) and maybe Hawaii… (trains… there is a wooden passenger car…) and New Orleans in May (Rotary again) I need reservations for a Yosemite trip, a family reunion in November 2011… Somewhere among all the planned trips are likely trips to Washington DC and somewhere in the American West… the desert… maybe Yellowstone… so far undefined, but a camping trip into the wilderness, the wide open west…

Now at home… food done (for now) a beer at hand… (Sierra Nevada Torpedo IPA) writing this blog post… trying to make sense of the trip, now past… working on photos… I am tired but not sleepy… home… with cat hair… Tina has too many cats…

Packing… for home

Back aboard the ship, after our day on the beach… dinner is done… we shared a bottle of Zinfandel Port brought from home with our table mates… We had a nice table for dinner… a couple from Boston, a couple from Florida (formerly from New York)… a couple from Scotland… we also had a couple from Florida (also formerly from the northern eastern seaboard) who while not assigned to our table acted as substitutes when one or another couple was eating elsewhere… much in the spirit of the people who sit in the seats at the Academy Awards when someone needs to go to the restroom…

Part of cruising is socializing with people you don’t know… much as one might at a B&B (bread & breakfast…) We made friends at lunch… at cocktail parties… we made connections… but the connections remind me of Vonnegut’s false connections… connections in passing… connections for the moment… Literature again defines life…

Now after 10:30 pm… We are in our room… We are mostly packed… In 10 minutes or so we will be ready to put the suitcases outside… the clean clothing for tomorrow is laid out… The library is packed…(I travel with books… books collectively constitute a library… this one is about travel… ) We have thrown out much of the mass of paper we received… ads for art auctions, the New York Times “at sea” edition, invitations to make reservations for future cruises… multiple invitations to multiple Captain’s cocktail parties… I took a couple of AAA travel guides, one for Florida, one for the Caribbean, and abandoned them in the ship’s library… I don’t need to carry them home…

The computer is still out, along with appropriate cords… (without the computer I would not be writing this…) I have backed up all the photos to a portable drive, and that is packed… there are a lot of photos… most have been sorted… flipped or cropped as needed, the bad ones deleted, the good ones named… ready to upload when I find a place with a decent internet connection… There is the tail end of a bottle of Scotch on the table… too little to take home, too much to just gulp…

The seas have calmed… we are likely in one of the many passages inside the Bahamas, and are now sheltered from the Atlantic swells…

I have the Waifs playing on the computer… I never think of my laptop as a music device, but it is, and there is some good stuff there… the Waifs, Gillian Welch, and some Matt Nathanson… bits and pieces from others… While I own and use (the lovely Tina might say addicted to) computers, I am a grey beard, and occasionally don’t think of them beyond their abilities as word processors or portals to the internet… I understand that they are also musical machines; movie players… a complete entertainment system… but I usually don’t think that way…

Tina just peaked out into the hall… our bags are gone… beyond recall… the cruise is fast moving towards the end… The end brings thoughts of why we journey, and about the next journey… of the purpose of the journey… The questions are likely rhetorical… without a specific answer… This trip was more about relaxation… a respite… we did visit a couple of new places… Grand Turk and San Juan… I found a San Martin I hadn’t before… an old Dutch city behind Diamonds International…

I took a lot of photos… Some I really like… I am thinking of picking 12… the best 12… or maybe just my favorite 12… 12 that tell a story, or at least say something about the places I visited… a portfolio… Off the top of my head I know of two that will make the cut… The first a photo of a hawser, a heavy mooring line, against a background of the ships dark blue hull…. The second, a series of arched passage ways in the depths of El Moro… Beyond that there are many that come to mind… not any that are automatic… there is a pawn shop sign from St Martin… a sign for the African Market… also from St Martin… There are several of doorways in San Juan… one of a bar… There is a photo of a statue through a barred window in San Juan… there are actually several of that statue… of the same statue, from different windows, from the same window but framed differently… it was a powerful image… I will choose one. There is a photo of the cracks in the iron light house, on Grand Turk… maybe the sign for the prison… I need to find 12… this sounds easier than it is… the 12 need to be good, no, great… If this works, if it gels… I will print each photo, mat each photo… a proper portfolio…

A photo is an interesting thing… a vision of a moment… a fraction of a second… a point of view… an edited vision of a place, a time… I took many, some illustrations of the place… some with deeper emotional meaning… at least to me… If my vision was pure they may have meaning to others as well… maybe even you…

The Waifs are still signing… their singing is more than song… for me, it is taking me back to an evening in a theater in Santa Cruz… The lovely Tina and I drove down after work… found the theater… listened… both girls were pregnant… very pregnant… The concert was good, beyond good, special…. The songs are taking me back there… as I hope the best 12 photos might take me back…

The photos may be the answer to the question why we journey… as the blog is the answer… I am not comfortable just going… just escaping… I want to record it… to explain it… mostly to myself… If you enjoy it all the better… but this blog is really for me… sorry if I am being selfish…

Here on the ship there is an art auction… all cruise ships have art auctions… it is part of the ritual… The art auction folks will tell you why you should buy the art they sell… each piece seems to have a story… I don’t think I buy the story (I have never bought the art…) Tina and I have a house full of art… Her mother was a painter… we have many of her paintings… many good… others just part of a family tradition… we have a painting, a wedding gift from a cousin. We have a couple of prints… from known artists… we have some of my photos… We have folk art... a 19^th century Indian basket… items from Mexico, from Peru, a rug from Peru on the wall… it seems that the difference between the art here on the ship, and the art on the walls at home is the story made up by the commercial auctioneers… I think I prefer our art… the art created or collected by our family… just as I prefer to escape the cruise port where they plan my experience, in favor of the local town, the local market and the beach shack…

I think I am defining my future travel choices… my “why I travel”

Now late Saturday, or maybe early Sunday… trying to post the above, but the computer gods are not cooperating… To bed for now…

The last Supper…

It is Saturday, November 13, our last full day aboard… not exactly aboard as we spent most of the morning sitting on a beach in the Bahamas, but the last full day of vacation…

The dreaded luggage mats appeared on the bed while we were ashore… We must pack this evening… leaving our bags outside our door… from where they will disappear into the bowels of the ship, only to reappear in the cruise terminal tomorrow…

It was a glorious Caribbean day… blue skies, warm water, a breeze… The waters around the island, Half Moon Cay, were those shades of blue only found in tropical waters, deep blue for the deep waters, a azure blue for the shallows, and turquoise near the beach… The clouds are white, never dark grey… the a bright band separating the sea from the green of the islands…

We sat on the beach… I swam… the water was warm…

We returned to the ship about noon, for lunch in the ships Asian restaurant, Tamarind… we had “Japanese” beer with lunch, Kirin brewed in Los Angeles by Anheiser Busch (aka Budweiser), and Sapporo and Asahi brewed by Molson in Canada…

Upstairs people are lounging by the pool… people are getting sunburned… Some are napping, some are behaving badly… This is the way of people on tropical vacations…

Early tomorrow morning our ship will queue up and join the parade of cruise ships entering Port Everglades, aka Ft Lauderdale… take our place in the line of ships, and dock at pier 26 about 6:30 am… The Customs and Immigration inspectors will board, and request our papers… (not ours, as in Tina’s and mine, but ours as in the collective records of all the passengers and crew, this is one of those times that the old saying “We don’t need no stinking papers” just won’t work… you really do occasionally need papers, and we believe ours are in order…) There will be announcements over the ships PA system… people will crowd the public areas around the gang way… impatient to end their vacation… to start the journey home…

I am starting to think about packing, or rather what not to pack… (it is best not to walk off the ship naked, and they get upset if you take the bathrobes, and reportedly, they charge you for them…) Tina is resisting the thought of packing…

Tina and I expect to rise, go to breakfast, the watch the ship wide chaos that is disembarkation… Our flight is late in the day, the airport is nearby, and we are in no hurry… Eventually we will walk off, find our luggage (a much simpler task later when there are fewer bags to search through) present our passports for inspection, declare our $57.00 worth of foreign purchases (the books bought in Porto Rico don’t count, despite what many Americans think, it is legally part of the U.S.)… We will hail a taxi and make our way to the airport… there to check our bags, then sit, and wait for a late afternoon flight… We have a long wait, but not long enough to think about doing something… just a long airport wait… I believe that Ft Lauderdale airport has free internet… if so I will finally post the photos I have been taking… If not they will wait until I get home, and get some sleep, and catch up on work, and more sleep, sleep is important… eventually they will find their way to the web…

Sunday night when we return home, home to California, home to San Mateo, I will quickly fall back into the rush of work… I need to shop, for supplies to make soup… a hearty vegetable soup for the volunteers at work, volunteers who will start to decorate the house for Christmas on Monday, Monday November 16^th, 40 days before Christmas… I shouldn’t be surprised or upset… we have seen the harbingers of Christmas on this trip… In Ft Laudedale, the Bass Pro Shop held their “Christmas unveiling” 8 days ago… Christmas Reggae music was heard… more than once… Christmas displays and Christmas decorations for sale in Grand Turk, in Porto Rico, in St Martin… You too can have a tropical Caribbean nativity scene grace your mantle…

So in two days I will be back at work in the Victorian House Museum… preparing for Christmas 40 days before the blessed event… It’s enough to make me dread coming back (not really Laurie…)

As we leave Half Moon Cay, the weather is changing… It is starting to cloud over… to turn grey… The color of the sea is turning from bright blue to steel gray… everything is grey… The seas are rougher, but not the choppy rough of earlier… tonight it’s the long swells of the North Atlantic… all to welcome us back to our regular, not vacation fantasy, world…

At Sea

It has been a slow day in paradise… we are at sea, sailing from St Martin to the Bahamas, and a stop at Holland America’s private island, Half Moon Cay… A cruise ship like Neiuw Amsterdam has a top speed of maybe 25 miles an hour… We will travel at close to 22 miles an hour for about 40 hours… of course all of this is done in nautical miles aboard a ship… But in the end we will travel over 800 miles to get from St Martin to our stop in the Bahamas…

Tina and I got up late, had breakfast in our state room, then dressed and walked around a bit… We were invited to a cocktail party before lunch, where Tina got her 100 day award… (Apparently she has really only cruised with HAL for 99 days, but they are allowing for a 1% error rate… so she got her copper medallion) then lunch, then sit by the pool and lounge and read… We attended a cooking class, then went up to explore the new Asian bar, have a drink, before retiring to our room to get ready for dinner… It is a truly lazy day…

The end of the trip is coming too fast… tomorrow we will lie on a beach, swim a bit, then back to the ship for lunch, probably sit by the pool, think about packing… (but we won’t really pack, just think about it… packing will wait until after dinner… after all we waited until a few hours before the flight to pack for the trip… you may not want to try this, but we are professionals… )

Of course the ship is full of rumors about the Carnival Splendor… an ill fated cruise ship which had a problem off San Diego… variously reported as an engine room fire, or an electrical fire… some rumors have the passengers eating spam… (the cruise line denies that passengers were fed spam) The ship has since been towed into San Diego, the passengers off loaded and safe… but that doesn’t stop the rumors… Apparently the Navy flew resupply missions… (Supplies that included the dreaded Spam… (I would like to point out that there is a really nice Spam museum in Austin MN, I have been there and recommend it, but I digress) Two passengers have been arrested (on felony warrants unrelated to the cruise) There are jokes being made on late night TV… Several passengers have told me that the Carnival ship we saw in Grand Turk last Tuesday has since broken down... We have been told the ship (which may or may not be the ship we saw in Grand Turk last Tuesday) has gone aground... of course... the ship with the issues... a fire or an electrical issue was in the Pacific, never went aground (it was about 200 miles off the coast) and is now in San Diego, safe... but rumors are rumors, and they are so much fun...

Strangely four years ago, Tina (aka the lovely Tina, aka the wife) was aboard a cruise ship off San Diego that suffered an electrical fire that for a short time left it without propulsion, but never without lights, air conditioning, functioning kitchens, an internet connection and the other associated niceties that make a cruise special… Even stranger… our captain on this cruise, Capt. Mercer, was the captain on that ill fated cruise… It is in fact a strange, small world…

Now, sitting here finishing this posting… it is after dinner, after the show, after midnight (or not, we turn the clocks back tonight, and gain an hour of precious sleep) I will post this and head for bed, and sleep, for tomorrow is full of strenuous activities, like lying on a beach, lying by the pool, eating, and drinking those silly drinks many of which contain pineapple or coconut, rum, and small paper umbrellas in them… We must rest, so we can give it our best effort…

A thought on the photos... the internet connection at sea is a best slow... at worst glacial... photos will be uploaded once I have access to a proper high speed connection, and links inserted into each of the posts... I have photos... lots of photos... already sorted... most renamed... but putting them online requires resources not available on-board...