Friday 08/18/2023

Took a walk, stopping at the hardware store. There are half a dozen brands of “clog buster” chemicals for drains. They list their ingredients because they are poisons so I could tell they all have essentially the same mix of stuff, so I bought the one that was on sale. Tonight I poured the specified amount down my sink drain to marinate overnight.

For about 4 hours spread across the day, I worked on the video for the C&W jamboree.

At 10 I took part in a meeting with the auditorium AV contractor and we resolved a number of points. Then I wrote an email to my committee summarizing what’s going on.

Had dinner with Patty and the Allens. I was talking to Stew and Kathy in the lobby before dinner. They asked, who are you waiting for, and I said, “Patty and the Allens” and then we all laughed because it sounded like a bad high-school band from the 60s.

---

Scott had a comment on the Police Car memory, which made me realize, once again, what a poor, fragmented, spotty memory I have for the period 1960-1975. Rather crucial years of my life. Well my memory since then isn’t so great either, but at least I have our trip reports and photographs to sketch out a fairly consistent timeline.

The timeline 1975-now is very simple: lived with Marian on Tasso street. It breaks into two segments, up to 1996 when I worked for a salary, and after. But from 1960-75 I lived in many different places, had various cars, various jobs, various lovers (well, actually only one). And I don’t remember it in any detail, just images, moments, and it is very frustrating to try to remember what came before what.

So yesterday on the bus ride I got out my phone and started making notes on what I do remember. I have zero intention of writing a “memoir”. My parents each wrote an autobiography? Joyce, too. Good for them. I don’t have the material, or the desire, and it would be a total bore anyway. But I would like to get a sequence of events more or less sorted out.

Here are the rough notes so far. Relatives feel free to point out mistakes.

---

Places lived and cars used

The Ranch aka “Los Helechos” 1942- 1960

1953 Chevrolet sedan, green, parents car used on dates

1941 Chevrolet sedan, black, damaged in accident (my fault) continued driving despite dented right rear door, eg while working at WW State Fair Puyallup summer 1959 & 1960

Lander Hall Undergrad dorm, UW, Seattle 1960-1962

Memory: seeing the Space Needle being built 1961-2, and completion of the Ship Canal Bridge of I-5.

Roommate Michael Murphy. Memory of him showing me FORTRAN program cards.

Joyce got me a summer job parking cars at Cadillac on Van ness. Lived in her apartment at 9th&Judah. Was this summer 1961? or 62?

Returned to UW, hated it, depressed and in emotional turmoil. Dropped out of school.

Brief stay in a boarding house, University district Seattle, ?1962

Apartment ? Seattle 1962? No idea where.

Had a job, for the city in a group doing pet licensing enforcement-door to door in West Seattle. Terrible job that I sucked at.

Bought 1956 Ford sedan, 2-tone blue, flathead v8. Recollection: car ran smooth but low on power. Took to gas station at ?Madison @ Broadway? the guy said it just needs a tuneup. Points plugs timing and the car was transformed.

I can’t remember anything about my living situation for this time. I have a memory of working on the car, probably the Ford, something under the front end—steering rack?—and I had no garage nor jack stands so I put the right wheels on the sidewalk and crawled under in the gutter to work. This would have been outside wherever my apartment was, somewhere in central Seattle, maybe around Seattle University.

Joyce got said I could have the job at Cadillac again, so I drove the Ford to SF. Stayed not very long in her apartment, then moved to a one-room apartment in a building near USF Medical School, one of the very steep streets, maybe 4th or 5th avenue.

John Kennedy assassination 1963 – vague memory of talking about it with a female student, probably at USF.

Started hanging out with the drama students at USF. At some point I moved into a shared apartment somewhere between USF and the Panhandle — Hayes? Grove? shared with Dan —–? and Jackson DeGovia. (A Jackson Degovia can be found online at imdb.com and other media sites, he apparently has had a decent career as a production designer for theater and film. I think probably the same guy.)

---

enough for now.

Thursday 08/17/2023

Well today there was a Channing House bus outing to Half Moon Bay. 16 people on the bus. Went first to the usual walking path along the clifftops for an hour stroll. Took a picture.

Then to lunch at the Miramar Beach Restaurant.

Then home, just in time for the 3pm Ice Cream Social on the patio. I don’t think I’ll go on any more of these type outings, though. People walk too slow, and the bus is jouncy. The next planned one is to the Marine Mammal center in Marin. Marian and I were there some years ago, I don’t need to go again.

At 5 I took off again for the Third Thursday open-air concerts along California Avenue. The City sponsors seven local bands of various styles, spaced out along the quarter-mile street. I started with Past Curfew, rock of the 60s-70s-80s.

From there I walked up and down to sample the other bands but came back. Past Curfew was clearly the best and had drawn a pretty good crowd.

---

Oh I neglected to mention an important activity yesterday. 6 months ago, or so, my kitchen sink stopped draining. I called facilities and a guy came and removed the P-trap and did something. I asked what was clogging it; he just said “stuff”. Which is weird, I had never put anything down the sink but liquid (there’s no disposal). Well I was in the habit of brushing off the counter into the sink, so maybe crumbs? Anyway, since then I have been very aware of the drain and no longer put crumbs or any kind of solid down it. Anything but clear liquid goes in the toilet for flushing.

So for the past few days the drain had been very slow to clear and yesterday it stopped completely. Well, water would ooze away over ten minutes. So I decided to see what the “stuff” was. I got my big adjustable pliers from my toolbox in my basement locker and I took apart that P-trap.

Yick! The stuff was just sludge, greenish-brown, the consistency of peanut butter, with a dank smell. I took the two pieces of pipe, one straight, one U-shaped, to the shower to clean them out. Then I had to scrape the vertical sink outlet with a knife. Very unpleasant. Also unpleasant, forcing the three joints to line up and tighten so as not to leak. I hate plumbing.

But now I have this puzzle: why did my sink drain and trap grow a thick coat of sludge? And how can I prevent it? I plan to check the hardware store for drain cleaning chemicals, but how often do I need to use them?

Wednesday 08/16/2023

First thing was an 8:30am appointment with Dr. Marx, my and Marian’s PCP for, gee, most of this century? For an annual checkup, now called a medicare wellness check. I seem to be well.

Both yesterday and today I have had to spend time helping Joe with his email. I don’t much like Joe, but he has a genuine problem that I haven’t solved. I got Craig involved, he had a suggestion that didn’t help, and Paul the IT guy. Waste of my time and the problem not resolved.

At 1pm I joined the monthly FOPAL post-sale zoom call. The sale last weekend brought in close to $20K. I was asked to talk about the VCF sale as well. Later I was asked to write a couple of paragraphs on VCF for the newsletter.

At 7pm, Palo Alto Mayor, Lydia Kou arrived to have a town hall. I was running the AV which was pretty simple. Ms. Kou is a smooth politician, with ready answers for all the questions the audience had. She is only mayor for another year, but is already running for a seat in the State Assembly.

Tuesday 08/15/2023

Did the gym machine round. Then I spent some time, and more in the afternoon, starting work on the video for the Hoedown event coming up. I want to have a fixed picture of old barn doors between each song. Then when it is time to start the song, the barn doors split along with a rolling-door-sound effect, and the video starts. At the end of the video, there is that sound and the doors close over the video.

I did some tricky stuff with iMovie to create this effect, and got it pretty much right. Then I put together the first two videos, with the barn-door transition between them. (The Carter family singing “Hearts of stone” followed by John Denver “Take Me Home Country Roads”. Hey, I didn’t choose the program.) It’s looking good and I feel good about it.

Then the writers meeting, with the cue “An automobile”. For once I was early, finishing on Monday, instead of writing something at 10am for the 10:45 meeting. I’ll put what I wrote at the end here.

At 4pm it was time for the 4th in the CH lecture series on levels of care. This one was specifically about the process that happens if/when somebody needs to move from independent living to a higher level of care. If found this discussion profoundly depressing. They have to think about and be alert to all the various ways a person can lose it — dementia, stroke, general inability to get around. Over supper with Susan P and the David and Helen, we all agreed that it is very sad to contemplate the fucking inevitability of this. Susan wanted to know if there were any actuarial numbers to say, “what’s the chance I’ll die in IL before I have to transfer?” Which is definitely preferable. David G. was sure those numbers exist because Channing House’s entire business model rests on predicting how long a person is likely to stay at each level.

---

Monday 08/14/2023

Went for a walk, a bit shorter than usual, 1.8 miles, but I see by the end of the day I’m up to 3.3. Lotta walking around FOPAL I guess.

Met with Ian to experiment with the Zoom Room hardware in the Activity Room. He runs the weekly Current Events discussion group, which has been zoom only since 2020 and he’d like to get back to a physical meeting, but with optional zoom attendees. It will probably work.

Then down to FOPAL to do the usual post-sale triage of my section. Talked there with Frank about the FOPAL PCs. He and I have been in a running email discussion about how to speed up these pathetic objects. They are Lenovo M820Zs, which was Lenovo’s attempt to make something like an iMac, just a fat screen standing on one foot. They are seriously slow and we have a plan to speed them up by replacing their hard drives with solid-state ones.

Sunday 08/13/2023

Last night’s play, Happy Pleasant Valley, a Senior Sex Scandal Murder Mystery Musical, was all of that. The playwright, Min Kahng, does a great job with clever lyrics and some fun scenes. The main characters are a 20-something woman who is trying to build a career as an internet influencer, and her 70-something grandma who is a wanna-be amateur sleuth in the style of “Murder, She Wrote.” And the running gags are about how she and other residents of Happy Pleasant Valley are having very active sex lives, but unfortunately grandma’s last two partners dropped dead on her, possibly because someone poisoned their viagra.

As part of a new works festival, the brand new script had only had two weeks of rehearsal. It wasn’t fully staged; the actors were carrying their scripts and standing in a line across the stage reading or singing their parts. There were a lot of laughs and some nice singing performances. It ran about 20 minutes too long and the final resolution of the mystery was too complicated.

---

Going back to the trip to the SJ Historical Park, here is a picture of some of the 1940s cars.

OK, that’s a 1926 chevy in front. But the green one is a 1941 chevy, a two-door but otherwise just like the one I drove in high school.

---

Today by arrangement four of us drove “over the hill” i.e. west over the coast range to the San Gregorio General Store, which is a kind of general store, bar, bicycle refueling spot and general tourist trap near the beach. The point was to listen to the Keller Sisters. My neighbor Sandy and I had heard them at a house concert a few months ago. She had signed up for their email list so knew about this performance. I drove, and Sandy, Joanne and Erica rode along for the long twisty drive up 84 and down. And the even longer drive back via Alpine and Page Mill.

---

And tonight I went out onto the balcony to hang the hummingbird feeder and what do I see but a huge sunset rainbow.

Saturday 08/12/2023

In the morning I did a little desk work, then spent a couple of hours on the video for the upcoming C&W event. Actually what I did was search the internet for pictures of barn doors. I need a static picture of a half-open barn door, or better still a video of a barn door closing, to use as a “bumper card” between each song in the final video. You would think… but no. It’s been very hard to find what I want.

At 2pm I got on the bus with 20 others for a visit to the San Jose History Park, which is what it sounds like, except they were celebrating VJ day, the signing of the Japanese Surrender, ending WWII. They had army people in period uniforms with period equipment, jeeps and artillery and such, in a model encampment. And 20 or more 1940s-era restored cars parked around the square. The park has a restored doctors office and dentist office, and a barn full of period fruit-picking machinery, and stuff like that.

At 7:15 I’m going to head out walking to the Lucy Stern theater for the “Happy Pleasant Valley” musical we had a preview of last Wednesday. I’ll report on that tomorrow.

Friday 08/11/2023

Gettin’ lazy there, with the titles. But really, I just did miscellaneous stuff, and not the stuff that was on my mental to-do list, either.

First off, I took the standard walk, which went ok. I was going to stop for coffee at Verve, when I noticed that Starbucks had opened across the street. Starbucks used to be in a dismal cave a couple of blocks down University. They closed that location, and have now opened in this open, spacious place at University and High. It used to be an organic restaurant but it makes a great coffee shop. Lots of interior space and also a large, shady outdoor patio facing the street.

I did a lot of corresponding with people by email. I’m involved in a couple of on-going email discussions, one about upgrading the computers at FOPAL that is very interesting. I advised Susan P. on downloading music. Actually I told her that I personally didn’t know anything about that and gave her some links to look at.

At 2pm I, David G, and Kass met with IT manager Gerald for a tutorial on using the ZoomRoom on the big mobile TV. Kass had signed up to handle AV for a memorial on 9/7, which is good because that weekend I’m away. Then the organizer decided that they need a zoom session too, which greatly escalates the tech. That’s when I got David G. to join Kass, who is not experienced with Zoom. And all three of us got shown the ropes by Gerald.

Thursday 08/10/2023

Did the gym machine round, tidied the apartment for Wanda’s 2pm cleaning, then headed to Milpitas to work at the Shustek center. In the morning shift, I worked with Dave B. to catalog items from a donation by Len Shustek himself. Shustek has made several appearances in my life lately. Two weeks ago I spent several sessions watching a 12-hour course he recently taught at Stanford on the history of computing. Over the VCF weekend he was hanging around CHM, I saw him go by several times. Now I’m cataloging stuff he has donated from his personal collection.

Shustek got a physics doctorate from Stanford, then worked for a while at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, the electron-smashing place in the hills west of Stanford. Then he founded not one but two successful Silicon Valley companies, Nestar and Network General. He did that along with another Stanford physicist, Harry Saal, who for several years was a star researcher at IBM San Jose. I believe I met him one time back in the 70s. Shustek married Donna Dubinsky who herself was founder of Palm (remember the Palm Pilot, the first real PDA?) and another company.

So what he had donated that we cataloged today was a “Sniffer”, which was a portable Compaq PC set up to do network traffic analysis. It was Network General’s first big product. But the other was the real prize, as far as I and Dave B. were concerned. It was an Altair 8800, the first real home computer. Just an Altair would not be such a big deal, we already have several, and in my docent tour I always stop at the one on display and talk about it. But this one was different. It had a SLAC property sticker, and it had been heavily modified, and was just stuffed full of boards, many of them hand wire-wrapped.

We got out the donor letter and found out that this had been ordered in 1975, so it was an early one. It was used in the experimental physics lab at SLAC, for various kinds of experimental measurements. That makes it very much one of a kind.

After lunch I worked on de-duping documents. We have piles of documents, mostly manuals from early computer companies, in a big donation. Some of them exist in the collection already. The game is to pick up a document, and try using various searches to find the same document in the collection. The records aren’t perfect, so sometimes to be certain you have to down the long aisles in the document storage area and pull out a box and look in it to find the match, or not. Non-dups go in a pile to be cataloged. Dups go in the recycle box.

Wednesday 08/09/2023

Started the laundry. But before that I took a poop sample, before my upcoming wellness exam (next week). I sealed the little sample bottle in its bag and in its stiff cardboard mailing envelope. It was addressed to the lab at PAMF, so I thought instead of mailing it I would walk it up there. So once the first load was started, I put the envelope in my hip pocket and set off for a brisk mile walk to PAMF. When I got there, went down in the elevator to level A and turned toward the lab. Put my hand on my back pocket and — no envelope.

Clearly it must have fallen out. So now I walked briskly back the way I’d come, looking for the envelope on the sidewalk. There it was, about half a block from CH. So I carried it back into the building and put it in the outgoing mail slot.

Finished the laundry. Spent what seemed like most of the rest of the morning emailing people and calling people about one thing and another. There’s an even scheduled on 9/8, which was a simple event, and then the organizers decided it needed to be a zoom event, in an unusual location. Lots of emails back and forth.

At 6:30 I went to set up for a Wednesday Night Lecture. Standard event, only unusual because for once, the presenter had no visuals, didn’t want any projection. Fine, makes my life easier. Except not, because the Zoom Room equipment expects the projector to be used. I had to make one change in its settings, but it wanted a password I didn’t know. I called several people and eventually Bert, who was at Tahoe, answered and he knew the password.

The presenter was Giovanna Sardelli, the new artistic director of Theaterworks, along with the playwright and a singer from a new play. Mainly asking for money because it seems that regional theater is in trouble everywhere, and they are launching a new “save theaterworks” funding campaign.