Day 123, trash, Yosemite, trash

Thursday, 4/4/2019

In the hour before it was time to leave for a day at the Yosemite warehouse, I completed clearing those two shelves from the shop. Carted 50 copies of Secular Wholeness to the blue bin along with some other books, and wheeled it to the curb. That book was my first effort at self-publishing, and I ordered 50 copies. I had some notion that I’d be asked to give talks and could sell books at those talks. I did give one talk and sold a couple of copies. That was it; and the rest sat on the shelf for fifteen years.

Also cleared out about 50 CD-ROMs of old pictures. In the years after 2004 or so, when our photography was fully digital, I’d load the images on my computer. Then we’d cull them jointly, on the screen. Marian, always practical, assumed that the rejected pictures would be dragged to the trash can. Me, I was always worried I’d want to go back and recover something. So after the group of images was all organized into a folder, I would burn all the rejected image files onto a CD-ROM and save it in the shop. All those discs of rejected images went in the black can. I saved the jewel cases, thinking a pile of jewel cases might sell in the estate sale.

After I dragged the roller cans to the curb for pickup tomorrow morning, I went in the house and had a few minutes of emotion. Actual crying, sobs and sniffles and all. Crying over “shards of the old life, going away,” in the phrase I came up with back on Day 15.

All those saved checks, saved pay stubs, saved books, saved image files — records that we never once referred to over the years — what was the point of curating that collection? I think now we were (unconsciously) trying to make a monument to our lives, something that proved we were here, we were competent, we behaved in a laudable way. That nonverbal message was the only possible value for that stuff.

Now, throwing it all away, I was grieving for a life that is over. Not Marian’s life, although her death precipitated this clean-out, but the comfortable, stable, quiet, mediocre life that we crafted for ourselves for forty-odd years. The life’s gone, and the evidence of it, that we had so carefully organized and hoarded, is on the way to the landfill. And that reveals just how pathetically sad and futile it was to save it in the first place, which is another good reason for crying.

Well. That’s a lot of navel-gazing for 8:30am. Off to Yosemite for a day of cataloging and other museum scut-work. On the way home I detoured to Lowes in Sunnyvale, because last night I found they carried a toolbox that is about 30% bigger than the one I have now. Brought that home,unboxed it, looked at it. It’s ok but the metal drawers need lining. Ordered rubberized drawer liner from Amazon Prime, to be delivered tomorrow. We live in a wonderful world in some ways.

Then I started going through a big old box of files from my days as a free-lance writer in the 1980s. Found some reviews of, and ads for, my early books. I tucked those under the covers of the single copies of the books that I set aside yesterday.

I found a program that I’d designed, coded, and documented in 1978, while working in England. That was a fun read.

Day 116, Yosemite, laundry, music

Thursday, 3/28/2019

Started a load of laundry and then headed out to do museum work at the Yosemite drive warehouse. I spent the day with Steve, cataloging the parts of a donation of a Data General file server from the mid-90s. There was a “deskside” server, a box about a the size of an ottoman and weighing a couple hundred pounds, full of big circuit boards, with its associated terminal and keyboard; and a RAID array of twenty plug-in disk modules, and a heap of spare parts, extra disk modules, extra power supply modules, circuit boards, cables. Over a 6-hour day we cataloged 24 items, with another 15 to go when next the volunteers hit Yosemite, in two weeks.

Back home I ate and continued the laundry process, and then had to go out to a Voices of Music concert. This is a local organization that puts on Baroque and other classical works. The musicians are skilled and I find some the music very enjoyable. Some, kind of boring.

Voices of Music was Marian’s discovery; she found their concerts a couple of years back and signed us up as season subscribers immediately. I considered not going to this, the final concert of their season, mainly because the prospect was causing uncomfortable emotions. I just have to get used to the fact that thinking about anything that she enjoyed is going to cause prickly eyes and constricted throat. That doesn’t seem to be changing with time. If I were an actor and needed to cry on stage, I could do it easily by thinking about her favorite azalea plant. Or in this case, her favorite concert series.

But the music would be good and I have an on-going goal of getting the heck out of the house and to performances. So, go. (And, note to self, sign up for their next season. Their usual venue, the Episcopal church at 550 Waverley, is about four blocks from C.H.)

This was a selection of works by Handel and by Bach, and like most of their concerts in my experience, some pieces were snoozers and some were wows. Most of the wow this time came from the vocal performances of Amanda Forsythe, a soprano.

Here she is with a group very similar to Voices of Music doing a similar Handel number: youtube link. Brava! It felt like a privilege to be in the same room as that voice. The thought occurred to me during some of her twiddly bits, “How come there are no sopranos in jazz?” Because what she’s doing is not that far from scat, except Ella et. al. did their scatting in a much lower register.

So that was good. Back home to fold the laundry and crash.

Day 109, Shustek, sound bar, play

Thursday, March 21, 2019

Drove to Shustek center in Milpitas (or I guess it’s officially in Fremont) to work on cataloging. One of the paid staff there was having a birthday so at 10:30 everyone, staff and volunteers, had cake and goodies. I’ve been trying to eat low-carb; boy, blew it today with doughnut and a piece of cake. Did photography with Bud; took 40 pictures in all of 29 objects. Out of work to do, so left early at 3:30.

Took advantage of the extra time to stop at a TV place, Video Only, to continue shopping for a sound bar. (I began that search at Best Buy on day 91.5.) Unlike Best Buy, Video Only has all their sound bars hooked up so you can try them easily, and a helpful, informative, and not-pushy sales dude to assist. I zeroed in on a $99 special, a Yamaha that sounded OK and was on sale. Done. The box is unopened for now. My Google Calendar for today, tomorrow, and Saturday is bizarre. Maybe Monday I’ll have the open time to tear into the wiring of the sound system and try it out.

Noticed the three hummingbird feeders are low, so after I fed myself I brought them in and refilled them. This is not a simple job because the sugar water, as it hangs outside for a week, tends to grow a nasty mold. You have to clean all the parts carefully with hot water and soap.

It takes one cup of sugar, diluted to 4 cups of liquid, to fill the three feeders. Looking at the sugar canister, I judge there is about enough left to refill them twice more. Then that will be it. When the sugar runs out, the feeders, whose plastic parts are rather perished and brittled from years in the sun, will go in the trash. By then there will be plenty of natural blossoms and the little buzzers can make it on their own. Actually, after I’m established at C.H. I might just buy a new feeder for my deck. But that will be later.

Chuck sent along the termite inspector’s report. It isn’t horribly bad, although he did find isolated spots with evidence of both subterranean and dry termites, and recommends doing a fumigation. To my surprise, if I’m reading the report correctly, the estimate for tenting the house is only $1800. That seems terribly low for something that involves a crew of several workmen and a bunch of equipment over two days. Still, the report in all is not the death-blow to an occupier sale I thought it would be.

Shortly now I will head out to see a play. Report on that tomorrow, along with lots of other happenings.

Day 102, cataloging at Shustek

Went to Armadillo Willy’s for a big plate of pulled pork and a beer.

Thursday, 3/14/2019

Took the IBM songbook and went to the Museum’s Shustek documentation center in Fremont. Chris, one of the curators, was there and immediately recognized the songbook but thought we already had one. A search of the catalog showed we did, but not the 1931 edition. Then he noticed what I had not: on the top of the flyleaf in pencil was one of the Museum’s accession numbers. This same book had at one time been cataloged in the collection! A search on that number turned up the fact that some prior curator had deemed it inessential and returned it to its donor. Chris thought probably it should go back into the collection.

I worked with Toni to catalog a bunch of stuff of no great interest. The most interesting was parts of a 1989 attempt at a pen computer with software based on MS-DOS.

Looking up at the intense green of the hills behind Fremont I thought again of taking a scenic drive in them before the green fades. Then thought about how the idea of a solo scenic drive is so very much less appealing than the thought of a scenic drive shared with someone else. Why? The scenery is the same! The eyes looking at it are the same!

Think about that.

Day 90, Shustek and old movies

Thursday, 2/28/2019

Toddled off to the Shustek center for a day of archival work. I and Toni worked together to photograph items that had been cataloged. Three years ago when we were doing this work the photo setup was a couple of (in my opinion) lousy little HP pocket cameras, and the day’s pictures had to be uploaded for later processing. Now we have a fairly decent Canon connected to a laptop so the pictures go directly into the database.

We caught up, clearing the shelves of a backlog of “To Photo” items. Like the FOPAL work this is good exercise: I was on my feet, moving items on and off the table and composing the images, for about five hours all told, and when I got home I could feel it. But before I ate I sat down and scanned old slides for an hour. Got to keep that project moving.

I’ve accumulated a bunch of famous movies on the DVR which is getting under 40% available. So tonight I swore to get rid of some. It’s a Mad Mad Mad Mad World lasted only ten minutes. I stuck with Casino Royale for nearly an hour but finally lost interest. Two down.

Got an email from SouthWest reminding me of my reservation for a flight to Vegas for the PAC-12 women’s basketball tournament. This will be my first solo travel in, practically, ever(*). I’m nervous! Which is nuts; traveling by myself has to be easier than the last half-dozen flights I’ve taken, when Marian’s mobility and stamina were greatly limited, having to book wheelchair assistance, always checking the location of the elevators so as to avoid stairs, always looking to minimize walking distance between gates. And I booked those flights, and we executed all those travel plans, with confidence and panache.

So here’s another difference in my new bachelor life. Planning and carrying out travel as a couple, was easier (at least in anticipation) than it is solo. I need to think about what the difference really is.

At least partly it’s that I had the confidence of knowing Marian agreed in the plans. It’s like what I wrote about on Day 83: having made plans as a couple, the plans feel solid. When I make the plan by myself, for myself, I get the feeling I’m over my head and probably messing it up. I don’t know any cure for this but experience: go out and do it and verify that I haven’t screwed it up.

(*) The last solo trip I can think of is when in 1980 I drove to Seattle to attend the Clarion West writer’s workshop. After the ten(?) day workshop Marian flew up to join me and we drove back together.

Day 83, yosemite and imposter

Thursday, 2/21/2019

Drove to the “Yosemite” warehouse for a day of storing artifacts. Putting heavy objects (old servers, very heavy metal boxes) onto a pallet, strapping them down. Thought about how hard it is to spell pallet because of the confusion between

pallet, a small wooden platform for piling goods for shipment,
palate, the roof of one’s mouth
pallette, the flat piece of wood on which a painter mixes colors.

Trying to make a note, artifact number so-and-so moved to palla… palle… pala… shit! It’s really hard. One ell or two? Second vowel an a or an e? How many t’s?

In the morning, making plans for the day, I had an episode of something like, but not quite, imposter syndrome. I’ve had spells of this earlier, but this was the first time I thought about the sensation and tried to describe it. Basically I feel like I am faking my life. I see myself from outside, sort of, and feel a sort of contempt for a commendable, but obviously flawed and ineffective, effort to act like a real person.

This is new to widower-hood, I’m sure. When I was part of a couple, there was the constant agreement and validation that what we were doing was right for us, appropriate, sensible. I mentioned on one of the very early days that I missed the frequent little verbal validations we gave each other; but here I am missing something deeper and more subtle. It’s the implicit, unverbalized, confidence that what “we” are doing, the course “we” are charting, while it may be difficult, may not be as we’d ideally like it to be, is still correct, inevitable, impeccable, and would be approved-of by anyone else who really understood our situation.

Now, while there are times I feel quite correct, and even times when I positively enjoy the new possibilities, the loss of old constraints; but there are also times like this morning, where for a while I get a sinking doubt in my rightness, a sensation that I’m clearly faking it and could be called out as a failure and mocked at any moment. Not a sensation based in reality, and it isn’t crippling or even very bothersome. But I thought I should write it up as one more effect of bereavement.

Day 78, busy Saturday

Saturday, 2/16/2019

A busier Saturday than it had to be, as it turned out. The Museum is preparing to open its new Education Center, and I am signed up for two events related to that. The first was for docents only, today, from 11:30 to 2pm. And I was signed up to lead a tour at 2pm. The other event is for the public, next Saturday, starting with a brunch at 10am. Somehow I had mixed up these two events and thought today’s started at 10, so I arrived at the Museum at 10, and spent a while searching all the conference rooms etc. for the meeting until I got myself straightened out and had an hour to kill. Anyway…

The Education Center is going to be a very interesting experiment. It’s a cleverly designed space that can be put to all sorts of uses. We’ll see how it goes.

There was a biggish crowd — probably 35 or so — for the 2pm tour, and I managed to keep at least 25 of them to the end. I’m getting better at ending my talk cleanly, so the audience knows it was the end, and will start clapping. Often before I just kind of wound down and nobody realized I was finished; they would kind of stand around waiting for what I’ll say next, and I don’t have anything. Today there was a definite end and a nice hand.

Then home for a one-hour turnaround before heading out to Chuck and Suzanne’s place for a concert. They are music teachers and I expected student work, but in fact the star was Hanna Huang whom Suzanne introduced as “a professional musician who happens to still be in high school” and this was not overstatement. She ripped through a Beethoven Sonata with the skill and authority of a much older musician. After that I wanted to jump up and yell “Brava” but the rest of the audience of 40 or so — mostly parents and relatives, I would guess — didn’t stand, so I didn’t. Hanna also accompanied a young baritone, Austin Thompson, singing two Schubert leider, and then she was joined by a high-school-age cellist and violinist to do a Brahms trio. They played that very competently but I kind of lost the thread in that long and complex piece and my mind was wandering. Kudos to the kids for just being able to play it.

During the snacking and hospitality period after the music I managed to get some time with Chuck, to ask him if he would represent me in selling the house, and was glad when he said he’d love to. He was our agent back in the 80s, first selling an apartment house in Menlo Park, and then buying a rental complex in Seattle. Those deals were the real foundation of our fortune, such as it is. We came back from our years in England with a surplus of cash, which we put into the Menlo Park place; then (with Chuck’s help) did a tax-deferred trade-up for a larger place North of Seattle. I’m trying now to remember when we sold that; it must have been late in the 90s. Anyway the appreciation on those properties left us comfortably fixed. So I am confident Chuck can help getting the best value out of the house here.

Day 76, simple day

Thursday, 2/13/2019

As usual drove to the East Bay to the Shustek center to meet with other volunteers and work on the collections. Today I was assigned to taking photographs. Each object that comes into the collection is documented with photographs before being stored. In prior years, for example 2015-2017 when I was cataloging at the Yosemite warehouse, the photo setup was, in my opinion, substandard. The photo equipment now at Shustek is much nicer, a decent Canon camera connected directly to a PC so the photos can be uploaded into the database instantly.

In the afternoon, all hands turned to packing the objects that had been processed in the preceding month or two. After being cataloged and photographed, objects are carefully packed into acid-free boxes eventually to be housed high on shelves in the warehouse. Each object has its unique number on a barcode tag. So first you play a tetris game of fitting objects into a box so they aren’t touching, and are cushioned with chunks of archival plastic foam so they can’t move around. Then you scan their barcodes, along with the unique barcode of the box, into the database, and put the box on a numbered cart and enter the cart number as the box’s current location. Eventually movers will move the cartloads of boxes to the warehouse, put them on shelves, and scan the box numbers to enter their new shelf locations. So any of the over 100,000 objects in the warehouse can be found again.

Last week we actually ran this system in reverse, going to find a dozen objects that were needed by someone doing research. Find the boxes, look in them for the objects — and there they were.

Home for a quiet dinner and TV.

Day 69, Yosemite day

The play, American Night, the Ballad of Juan Jose, is a wild satirical farce, the fevered dream of a Mexican immigrant who’s been studying too hard for his U.S. citizenship exam. Toward the end I realized what it had been reminding me of: the old S.F. Mime Troupe (which to my surprise is still a going concern). It had the kind of wacky political farce I remember from watching the Mime Troupe in the 60s. It got a little weak in the final scenes, when Juan Jose and a couple of others are on stage, but other members of the ensemble are out in the audience shouting Trump/Tea Party slogans at him. “Send them back along with their anchor babies” and the like. The actors on stage did not have good responses to this kind of unfair but emotive heckling. Anyway, it was well done and fun to see.

Thursday, 2/7/2019

Not much to say. Drove to Yosemite warehouse for a day of work arranging and archiving old machines. Enjoyed eating lunch with a bunch of friendly people. Home again. Told myself to remember I had tickets for another play, at the Pear Theater, tonight.

And then forgot about it, and here it is 10pm and I didn’t go. Well, shit.

Day 62, “Yosemite”, Insurance

Thursday, 1/30/2019

I spent the bulk of the day at “Yosemite”, the CHM’s big storage space on Yosemite avenue in Milpitas. With six other regular volunteers I worked on “palletizing” a number of machines. These are smaller units that were stored at floor level. Aurora, the curator, wants to move them to one of the higher racks with the fork-lift. To do that, each unit has to be gotten onto a pallet and strapped down with “cordlash”, a high-strength fabric strap.

Allen, Steve, and Dave Bennet move a piece of a PDP-11/70 onto a pallet

Palletizing is heavy work, especially when you consider the volunteers are as old or older than the historic machines they’re moving.

One persistent problem is plastic foam. Designers liked to incorporate foam into these machines for sound deadening or air filtration. Unfortunately after 40+ years, the foam degrades to a crispy, dusty texture that fragments at a touch into a sticky snow that coats the inside of the machine and encourages corrosion. Foul stuff! I spotted black snow in one machine and traced it to air filters that had not been removed when the machine was initially archived several years earlier.

At lunch I mentioned having visited the Hiller aviation museum and it turned out four of the eight people at the table had been there, some several times.

Insurance

Back home there was one piece of mail on the doormat: an envelope from The Prudential. Thinking it would be an ad, I almost tossed it, but when I opened it found a check for $5000 — the payment for Marian’s IBM life insurance. I’m not sure how it came about that she had this policy. Maybe it was a perk they offered in the years before I was hired; or maybe it was an optional payroll deduction thing. I certainly wasn’t offered life insurance, that I recall.

At any rate, this check is one of the last pieces of bureaucracy related to her death. The books aren’t quite closed; I had an email from the financial advisors, saying they are preparing the paperwork to merge her IRA accounts into mine, and would get it to me soon.

This was a bit of a surprise. I had assumed that on her death, her IRA would have to be closed and the long-deferred federal tax on it paid. If I understand the email, though (and I’ve asked for a clarification) it looks as if her IRA will simply be merged with mine, and the money will continue to be tax-deferred. That’ll be a nice perk for a widower! Possibly with more net value than the old life insurance.

Basketball

Stanford women played at Cal. I lost track of the time and didn’t start the audio stream of the game until just into the fourth quarter, when the score was tied 69-all. (Which reminds me of the old joke about the couple who arrive late at a baseball game, to find the score 0-0 in the ninth. “Oh good,” says the wife, “we didn’t miss anything!”)

In the next few minutes Stanford got down by 5, then came back to lead by 1 point. With seven seconds left, Cal’s Aja Jones drove the lane and made a layup on the buzzer; Cal wins by one point. The announcer on the Stanford audio stream was going nuts, talking about the best basketball game he’d seen all season. Cal plays at Stanford Saturday afternoon; I’m looking forward to attending that game.