Mom is dead… part 2… and an earthquake in Japan…. Layers of crap

A few days later,

Tina, aka the wife has flown home, back to work and such…

I remain here, in Florida…

Things here are well, all considered, and getting better day by day.

I shadow dad… to the pigeon club… to the store… where ever…

We shipped pigeons yesterday… to a race… I marked off pigeons as they were put in crates… I needed to participate…

This morning… the race… we wait, we watch… Dad was 46^th… not good but on the first page… on Saturday he was 4^th… he is still first place in one of the average speed categories…

We drop the clock… we shop… a new TV… new sheets…

Since I got here… each night we return home… generally I cook dinner… we went out Sunday… we return… I drink beer… later in the evening I drink Mom’s scotch… she won’t notice… Then too, to bed…

Horror Earthquake, Tsunami, Nuclear meltdown… Will Godzilla climb out of Tokyo Bay next? A personal story in several parts…

For me it was more personal than a giant green monster stomping on buildings…

Mom died.

I had been in Washington DC… sitting in libraries, visiting nieces, nephews, and the kids… I flew home Tuesday night… Tuesday March 8th… Wednesday morning Dad called at 7:00 as we were waking… Mom had died. It was a shock but not a surprise, but it was not expected. I had already had plans to visit a week later… plans changed.

I think I walked around in shock for a while…

Tina took on the problem of finding flights and reservations… I hadn’t been at work for a week… there were things that needed to be checked… I had unpacked the night before, but mostly had filled the hamper with laundry… I checked email…

Tina found flights… for both of us. I drove to work, spent a half an hour… made calls, answered emails, checked in… then drove home… packed… laundry had been done in my absence…

We had a flight to catch… a 11:05 flight… a flight 4 hours after we found out…

You really need to be at the airport an hour ahead… they can refuse luggage 4 minutes out or so… I dropped Tina 45 minutes before our flight, then parked the car, but forgot my carry on’s… then went back, gathered carry on’s… cleared security, and made for the gate…

The night before, I spent 5 or so hours on a plane west bound… now it was 2 hours eastbound to Denver… a wait… then on east…

We found a place to eat in the Denver airport… elk medallions eaten with plastic silverware… and a bottle of wine, and a scotch… I am looking for a crutch.

Back in line… for the flight to Tampa… more hours on an airplane… We are about the last to board… we only booked this morning… In the Southwest system, we are “C”’s

A very nice lady takes pity on us and changes seats with me and we get to sit together…

We arrive a bit after 10:00 pm… in a thunder storm… tossing the plane about… exciting and probably scary for some… but all is well… we land… we deplane… take a breath…

Dad has a friend picking us up… by now he has been up for 48 hours… he is in no condition to drive… John, the friend, drives for a limo service… he finds us, takes care of us… well… I don’t realize how much I needed it…

We arrive at the house about 11:30 (EDT) about 11 hours after we found out… Dad awakes… we sit and talk for a while… we all go to bed, but I suspect none of us sleep well…

The next morning we rise… coffee… Dad and I sit and read the newspaper with coffee… much like other visits… not that much is said… I think we are establishing a normalcy… A place we both are comfortable in… Tina sleeps in…

People stop by, there are telephone calls, discussions of what should be done… who needs to be called…

I break into mom’s computer, find the address list, and look for my uncle’s phone number… I send some emails to family… Dad is ok, but has trouble talking to people… the closer he is to them, the harder the conversation… I call my uncle and break up when telling him… I guess we are a lot alike…

As we talk to people, we mark them off a mental list… its harder than expected and dad in particular is relived when he gets to leave a message, talking to a machine, not a human… humans are still to close and too hard.

We deal with more as time goes by… by late Wednesday, stuff is starting to come under control… By Thursday the obituary is written and sent off, one to friends via email, another to the funeral home… a third to our daughter…

We make dinner… we eat… we take a collective deep breath…

Late in the day there is a remote distraction… An earthquake, followed by a tsunami hits northern Japan… It is bad… we watch the evolving news coverage… we search the web… people elsewhere are suffering more than we are… I think that it makes it easier for us… we are distracted…

We continue with life with the news on in the background. Dad ships pigeons to the race… We make dinner… we go to bed…

We awake to a new day, and increasingly dire coverage of the earthquake… the pigeons come home… Dad does well… 4th place among 1,600 pigeons…

Life continues in the shadow of death…

I am starting to slip into black humor… I write an alternate obituary… “Betty Hees, She got old, she died, get over it… thanks for your thoughts” I only send it to my daughter, Betty’s grand-daughter… she knows and understands me… I read it to dad… he laughs…

Tina and I go looking for lunch and new bedding… (Dad threw the sheets that were on the bed when she died away)… We find lunch in Bayport… a long time old style Florida road house with bar, deck, former whore house out back, motorcycles out front and an alligator in the canal… a big gator… we eat grouper sandwiches and drink beer…

We look for new bedding without success… we will turn to an online retailer…

Home… dinner again (my brother has left us wells stocked with shrimp and scallops…) watching the continuing coverage of the Japanese disaster… Issues with their nuclear reactors are increasingly severe…

Dad goes to bed… he is starting to relax… starting to crash… Tina goes to bed… So far I am not tired… it is probably as much emotion as anything else…

I need to go to bed… good night…

Not a Tourist...

I just spent 10 days in Hawaii…

I didn‘t blog… I generally blog a lot when traveling, but this was different… It was a weird trip in a good way… It wasn’t a vacation… It was a job… a side job… I was there to write a preservation plan for a railroad car… a really special railroad car.

The weirdness came from being in a tourist place, a really nice tourist place, but not as a tourist.

I was working… each morning I rose early, worked on the project, then I packed the computer, and went off to the museum site… Each evening I returned to my hotel on Waikiki, more often than not after dark… Again, I wrote… the report... not the blog...

Waikiki is Hawaii, but it is not reality, it is tourist… overrun with tourists… at night, there are flaming torches everywhere you look… it cannot be mistaken for any other place… tourist hotels, primal torches, tourists… and a beach… Worst, while I was there, the Pro Bowl and the accompanying circus was in town…

The project went well… I was there to create a plan to rebuild a 110 year old wooden railroad car… it was sagging in various places… It was working, moving in all kinds of ways it wasn’t supposed to when they operated it… I was the consultant; there to speak to how to rebuild the car… instead, by the end of the second day, the car was fixed… Instead of talking about rebuilding the car, we were talking about how to improve it, to interpret it (to “talk story”)… We talked about the organization, about other cars held in the collection…

Wooden cars are all about wood held in compression by steel or iron rods in tension… the best use of each material… at a time when wood was cheap, iron expensive… The car is built like a wooden bridge, with trusses… the trusses all adjustable…

I worked with the museum’s volunteers to adjust the tension rods… we pulled a 2” sag out of one corner… a 1” sag out of a platform… we tightened various vertical rods, tightening up the car body… We made a shim to help space a corner post that had rusted… They now know how to care for the car… maintain the car…

The other weird part, was that since I wasn’t a tourist, on some level I was part of the community… Hawaii is a complicated community… Hawaiians, Haoles (derogative term for anglos, meaning “without breath” meaning without the knowledge that makes one a Hawaiian) Chinese, Japanese and Pilipino, (the last three brought as cheap labor) as well as a sizable community of both active duty and retired military… All with their own rules, all co-existing on 7 small islands…

I was working for a member of the royal family… working mostly with former military and Haoles… Somehow it seemed that I belonged and was accepted. Several Hawaiians referred to me a “local”, the highest compliment…

I visited the royal palace, the Io lani Palace, with a member of the royal family… Followed by a visit to the Mission Houses… two house museums, a block or so apart… with very different views of the same events… I visited the Bishop Museum, but not the galleries, the archives… I walked on the beach, but didn’t go swimming… I regret that. I visited Bailey's Antiques and Aloha Shirts and bought a couple of Hawaiian shirts… One a replica of the very expensive vintage shirt Tony Bordain bought when he visited… So maybe I was a tourist… at least occasionally…

It was an intense trip… not a vacation… I want to do it again.

Hawaii

I am in Paradise...

I arrived in Honolulu late Thursday night... found my hotel at Waikiki amid the tiki torches and checked in...

Yesterday I got up early and braved the traffic on the H-1 highway headed north to Ewa and the Hawaiian Railway Society museum... and spent the day with parlor car 64... she is in pretty good shape for 110 years. Surprisingly good shape... She is a pretty car with really nice wood work...

I spent my time underneath poking a pocket knife into wooden beams, checking iron rods and generally getting dirty. Had a beer and dinner with my hosts them made my way back to Waikiki and my hotel... so as of last night I had been in Waikiki for 24 hours and hadn't seen the beach or ocean... This am I got up early, and based upon yesterday's inspection started the preservation report... then I took a walk on the beach... Its now about 9:00 and I will once again head west away from Waikiki to Ewa, and the railroad project...

Next trip looming

Two days from now I fly away… to Hawaii… It is not just a pleasure trip (but it will be a pleasure) but instead, a working trip… I will be doing a preservation study for a railroad car, a Hawaiian railroad car.

I will be studying a single car, making suggestions on how she should be preserved… It is a process that I am comfortable with…

But the car (the railroad car) is owned, preserved, operated by a group, a preservation group who I don’t know… Preservation groups, particularly volunteer based groups have thoughts, directions, and ideas… and those ideas and such must be taken into account…

Of course, while there I will be tourist… a searcher… a visitor… This is my second trip to the Islands... the first time I flew into Honolulu, then flew to Kauai to explore. Explore the Grove Farm and Missionary houses at Princeville, Boone’s railroad, and whatever I found interesting… Several days later I flew back, then joined my son on his destroyer, for a tiger cruise back to Everett. I spent a night in ships berthing at dock in Pearl, visited the Arizona the next day, then we sailed west. This time I will explore Honolulu and Oahu.

In preparation, I have been scanning slides… slides of restoration work… for a presentation while in Hawaii. It is tedious… it takes 3-4 minutes for each slide… I need to scan a little over 200 slides… so over 10 hours… I probably will use less than 30 in my presentation… I just don’t know which 30 slides… The scanning comes as I find myself abandoning slides, slide projectors and silver as a photographic method. I am not the only one… Only last month the last Kodachrome processing machine was turned off… Instead of Kodachome we have jpg’s… instead of a carousel we have a laptop… the world moves on.

The upside to the scanning process is the memories I am finding as I look through the slides.

National Hat Day

Apparently, today, January 15^th is “National Hat Day”….

As a blog which who’s name includes a reference to headwear, written by someone who frequently wears a hat, (I have a bunch) it seems that it is appropriate to acknowledge the day… For we are all about the headwear… Members of my Rotary Club using me as an example have started a “bring back the hat” movement…

But the blog isn’t really about hats…

When it started, and I had to chose a name, I choose “Too Many Hats” as a reference to too much work, too many responsibilities… It wasn’t really about the hat… the hat was an accessory… At the moment I started the blog, among my other job duties I had to attend a 3 day conference on recreation programs… (a really good conference, if ill-timed) while decorating the house… the house museum for Christmas events… many of the seminars I attended were about E-communication… Blogs, E-newsletters, social network sites… too many hats was about too many job responsibilities…

The blog (about Hats… remember, there is a blog about hats… or at least the name includes hats…) has morphed as I find my muse… mostly my muse has been travel… not hats, although hats appear often…

Christmas and family also inspire posts… particularly Christmas….

But today we talk about hats… After all, its National Hat Day

My current daily hat is an oil cloth fedora… I bought it at the San Gregorio General store during a Houston Jones concert… It was a replacement for a wool felt fedora purchased in Pisac Peru in March 2007… I left that hat in a cab in Buenos Aries a year ago… I miss that hat, but the new hat has grown on me… it has become the hat… except at work, where I ether wear a brown wool Peruvian bowler, a straw boater, or a black bowler…

For non work use, there is also a cheap white woven plastic cowboy hat… part of my uniform when volunteering for the San Jose Grand Prix… It has become my hat of choice on hikes and other hot days in the sun…

Maybe it is about hats…

A Christmas night, with fire

It is Christmas evening… a cold night (at least for us in the land of no snow and orange trees) There will be frost on the roof tops tomorrow… I will leave the Christmas lights in the orange tree on tonight (big C-9 bulbs… inefficient heat generating bulbs… my anti freezing plan)

The others have gone to bed…

There is a fire burning on the hearth… It has been burning for the last 4 days… dying back overnight… but with more wood, and maybe a bit of kindling it will burst back into flame again each morning… It will burn all night… I will add more wood tomorrow morning… If Tina and I were home tomorrow night I would stoke it again, and it would continue to burn… in the past I have kept the fire alive for as long as 3 weeks at a time…

It creates warmth… not just a higher temperature as measured by a thermometer… but it makes the home warmer… The fire is alive… it glows…

Some years ago in spring, or maybe early summer, a friend, from Maine told me his mother, still in Maine… “Had let the fire go out…” I realize that this wasn’t an unintentional result of lack of maintenance… but a statement… A deliberate act… winter was over… and she could choose to let the fire die…

Now fires, fires in a fire place… real wood fires (gas logs don’t count…) are uncommon and occasionally illegal… At least in urban northern California… they contribute to air pollution… A maker of “fire place logs” aka fake wood, pressed wood, (they don’t count either) has commercials about limiting pollution from fires… and instead, when fires are legal, we should use their pressed wood imitation fire wood… a log wrapped on paper… traditional wood fires are under siege…

We “did” a program for 3 year olds at the farm earlier this month… I built a fire in the wood stove in the granary… our public space… to heat the space… to make it warm for 3 year olds and parents… Many of the three year olds were awe struck… a parent said… “He has never seen a real fire…” I believe that it was a revelation for her… But, we are fast losing the relationship between fire and warmth…

One local TV station offers a Yule Log program… tune (tuning a TV or radio is probably a forgotten idea as well) in to the picture of the burning log… Christmas songs playing… It’s almost as good as a fire… or not.

A well maintained wood fire in a masonry fireplace (not the tin things that house gas logs) while not efficient can warm… beyond the light, the smell and the bit of heat… they warm the heavy masonry mass… a giant heat battery.

There is more to it… the gathering and splitting of fire wood… the storing of the wood… staging it for the fire place… This is more than a thermostat… it requires one to think about how one could heat his house… how to maintain the fire…

I am not a Luddite… I really heat my home with a “modern” gas heater… but I still know how to heat with wood… and occasionally do… I know that fire is not always dangerous and can be a friend… I sit here blogging, on my laptop, by the fire… A fire I value.

In our modern world we are far removed from the need for fire to heat our house… But fire, elemental, visceral can still warm us in many ways… Its Abbey’s beer can again.