So now you know the answer to the most commonly asked question.....

...which is, "what do you do down in Palm  Springs if  you don't play golf?".  Clue:  see previous posting.

In addition, there is culture all over the place, and I still haven't gotten to LA yet.  For example, the town was all abuzz - that is, they were talking about it both at the gym  and the Mizell Center where we play bridge - that there was going to be a benefit at the Camelot Theater (don't you love the name?).  It was a musical documentary, about a group called The Wrecking Crew.  And no, it is not the name of a punk band, it is the group of LA musicians who played behind almost every rock artist in the 60's, 70's and 80's.  I had no idea, did you.  Anyway, it was a fabulous movie, with the director and some of the musicians there for Q & A, and everyone who has ever played a lick on a guitar in the audience.  Check it out, at http://www.wreckingcrewfilm.com/ and like it on facebook.  The facebook thing is something I have never recommended, but they are trying to get funding for wider distribution, and numbers apparently talk!

So, what else do I do?  Well, I have already mentioned the eating part.  Everyone who has been down here knows Sherman's Deli.  Also a good pick, and I love the name...

I know most of you know (if you have been in my presence for more than 5 minutes) about the Metropolitan Opera in HD, playing on Saturday mornings in the theaters.  A few years ago, they started doing the National Theater of London's production in HD as well.  They are, of course, available here, and yesterday I saw The Collaborators, a wonderful new play, based on the premise that Joseph Stalin wanted Bulganov (a wonderful satirical anti soviet writer - remember The Master and Margharita) to write a play about his early life.  It was very funny, and very sad, and hugely moving.  See it if you get the chance.

And yesterday was a good day for a movie.  I don't know if it made the news up there, but the Santa Ana winds have hit southern California.  Winds were clocked up to 135 miles per hour (yes, the patio furniture is in), and the power was out in Pasadena and LA (but not here), closing the LA airport for a time.  So, although there was no rain here, it was cold and grey, and, as noted, a good movie day.

But these things don't last here, so then I get to do my next favorite thing.

...driving!

And more bridge.  Wait for it - Art and I are starting to play duplicate bridge!  Oh, no, am I going to become one of those insufferable old ladies who does nothing but play bridge and tennis and/or golf and goes to lunch?

The Crazy, Hazy, Lazy days of Winter in Palm Springs

Well, I have to say, Thanksgiving with friends is better than Thanksgiving with family.  Or so I understand. I never did have much family, and being from  Europe, my parents didn't really get the Thanksgiving thing.  I have learned to love turkey, though, and we had plenty of that and all the fixings.

Floyd, our host

Arlene, my neighbor, and another guest enjoying herself!

Only part of the amazing feast.



We all complain about the excess, but that is somewhat the point, isn't it?                                                                                   

Hope you all enjoyed your day, with family, or friends, or alone contemplating your good fortune.  (I think I am turning into a pollyanna.  It must be all the sunshine, it is baking my brain.)

My friend Peter from San Francisco stayed for a few days, and we enjoyed some of the good food Palm Springs has to offer ...

Dinner at Johannes, put it on your list for the best schnitzel!

and some culture (yes, Palm Springs has something more than golf)...

Palm Springs Art Museum



And a bit of the desert, at the Living Desert ....

More on this later, when the lights go up.

It felt really good, taking memberships in both theMmuseum and the Living Desert.  Like I am finally planning on staying a while!

Peter left on Saturday, after a wonderful visit, which included the above noted tourist world as well as lots of  sitting on the patio watching the view and the flora and fauna visible from my own back yard.

About that fauma, I'm sorry, Peter, but you missed both the roadrunner on my patio rock formation and the coyote about a foot from the deck.

So, I am back to the gym which I need desparately, after all that food, and no, there will be no gym pictures, not even of the hunky, age appropriate men!), and to my walks on the bike path.....

The decadence of greening the desert!

....playing bridge (thanks, Art!), and catching up with friends (like Laurel, down for a while from Salt Spring, and Robin and Grant, down from White Rock).

All in all, a wonderful week, made better by the knowledge that a) it is probably raining in the Pacific North West, and b) I don't have to leave for a while.

I am told I have to decorate for Channukah.  Stay tuned.

Happy Thanksgiving, Redux

Grr.!  This is why we have a love/hate relationship with technology.  I had written a (brilliant, of course) blog on the last day's events, and it seems to have disappeared into the ether.  Well, I will try again.

My day in San Francisco (Monday, the 21rst) was, as always wonderful.  San Francisco is always wonderful of course, but because it is filled with memories of David, and those memories have become comforting rather than painful, it is particularly wonderful for me.  I met friend Mary for lunch at the Museum of Modern Art; lunching at those sorts of places always makes me feel - oh, I don't know, sophisticated I guess.  The special exhibit was Richard Serra.  His sculptures are wonderful (Google him if you don't know his work, but no picture could do those massive pieces justice), but saw the photography exhibit as well, and the design exhibit too (nothing like seeing your 20 year old Braun juicer in an exhibit), before have a wonderful dinner at Bluestem.  Bluestem is a trendy new (relatively) steak house near the museum, and I can now highly recommend it, although I suggest you mortgage your first born before you go!

Home on the bus (yes, Virginia, in San Francisco buses run - and often - even at night), to collect myself for the long trip on Tuesday.

I picked up friend Peter at 9 A.M., and we headed south for Palm Springs.  We did miss the rush hour in San Francisco, but caught it in Los Angeles.  Actually, the traffic started at the grape vine, for those of you who know the route.  In any event, we were in Palm Springs by 7 P.M.  It is an easy drive, really, and with company, very pleasant.

Ah, and what can I say about Palm Springs?  Again, I will let the pictures do the talking...

I should say that the pool is 50 feet from my front door, and so few other people use it that I have taken to calling it "my pool".  The last picture is the view from my deck.  So, when are you coming?

So, I am off to do Thanksgiving like things.  Initially, I was supposed to cook, but, perhaps because my friends have tasted my cooking, plans were altered, and some one else is hosting.  I know, everyone always complains about the fuss and feathers around Thanksgiving, but I feel very lucky, and am glad to have the opportunity to express it.  Granted, we have all lost familyand/or friends, and most of us have health issues, and lord knows I am not a pollyanna (sorry PA!), but really, don't you feel lucky too?

Best to all. 

Happy Thanksgiving!

What is about Weddings?

So, I might have mentioned that Hank's family tree is a bit gnarled?  His mother married 7 times, twice to the same man (he's not sure whether she liked the state of being married or just getting married).  Anyway, her last husband (one of those she married twice) was Ed, a man 26 years her junior, making him Hank's stepfather and one year younger than Hank at the same time.  After the death of Hank's mom, Ed married Dorrie, a single mother of 4, making the 4, if you have been following along, Hank's step brothers and sisters - sort of!  Anyway, it was the last of these, Laura, who was marrying in Phoenix (well, not quite Phoenix, actually Gilbert, Arizona, an altogether different zip code, linked only by freeways).

It was a lovely wedding, about which I won't say much more, but let the pictures do the talking.

This is Ed, stepfather of the Bride - and Hank!



Okay, that's enough (probably more than enough) of that!  Suffice it to say, the wedding was well organized, the bride and party were lovely, and I think all considered it a great success.  As did I, although I have to say for a single person with next to no family, it was somewhat like attending a wedding with the Waltons!!  Nonetheless, all were very gracious, and made me feel welcome.  All in all, it went much better than I had anticipated.

Phoenix is so large that we had to change hotels to be close enough to the action on the appropriate day!  Ed had booked us all into a golf resort for the night of the wedding, and arranged for a shuttle to and from (a good thing too, considering the open bar!)  It was a lovely place, and I was sorry not to be able to spend more time there.

I couldn't resist one more....

no, make that two - prarie sky pictures.  It is the best thing about the place.

Sunday, in spite of having had too much to drink the night before (countless beer for Hank and 4 crantinis for me, not to mention the champaigne),  - and a later night for Hank, who found a sports bar and caught the last quarter of the Arizone/Arizone State football game -we had a relatively early (for Hank!) morning, to join the family (there were 24 - I wasn't kidding about the Waltons) for a buffett breakfast at the resort.  It was, as to be expected, a wonderful spread, with excellent service.

Hank was staying on in Phoenix for a family Thanksgiving, and I wasn't due at the airport untile 5 P.M., so we killed some time going to Arizona State University for more nostalgia (Hank went to the University of Arizona for undergrad and Arizona State for graduate school), and then to a mnall (there are plenty of them to chose from, believe me), for a movie.  We saw J. Edgar, the newest Clint Eastwood movie with Leonardo di Caprio.  I actually highly recommend it.  It is a bit - fuller - (translation: longer) then Eastwood's movies have been, but still wonderfully shot and cast, and di Caprio has turned into way more than a pretty face.  Let's call it 4 stars, or, if you are from the Bay area, the little man is clapping.

The plane to Oakland, and trip to Hank's went like clockwork, and I am off for lunch and a browse of the Museum of Modern Art with friend Mary Harvey in a few minutes.  Tomorrow, I pick up Peter (another long time friend), who is making the drive with me back down to Palm Springs.  Stay tuned.

The Three C's - Copper, Cotton and Cattle

Well, what can I tell you about Phoenix except that I don't need to come back.  It is a huge, sprawling place of freeways and malls and tract houses, interspersed, I am  sure, with some lovely suburbs, but who cares?  

Not that the day was wasted, however.  Hank took me out to Gila Bend, and the ranch where he grew up, about 1 1/2 hours out of town.  Some roots!

The ranch is on a road subsequently named after it, Poco Dinero Road - for the uninitiated, that means "little money" in Spanish, although the truth is that Hank's father had 72 square miles of grazing land, although some of it was leased out to him  by the Bureau of Land Management.

The ranch is that way....

And yes, you read it right, it does not say "Private Road" as I had originally thought, it says "primitive road", and it was that (although I have seen worse).  And there, two miles in, was the ranch itself, apparently somewhat changed but totally recognizable, says Hank (partially, I am  sure, because there is nothing else for miles.  And no, we did not get out of the car to take picturs.  It definitely looked like the kind of place where someone might come out of the door with a shotgun if you did that.....

So, is it true that you can take the boy out of the ranch but you can't take the ranch out of the boy?

On the way back to town, we saw a local historical site, the petroglyphs.

What can I tell you?  You had to be there....

And then there was the town...

One thousand seven hundred friendly people and five old crabs!  Hank tells me that they now vote on who the five crabs are!

Hank goes back to his old elementary school, now administrative offices for the school district, and although he does not find his high school picture on the wall, he does find pictures of other friends (Kathleen, that's you) and a candid shot of Hank and his arch rival in school!  What a trip (in the slangy sense of the word!).

And then he revisits his first job, gas jockey at the one station, owned by the father of a classmate.  Ah, the joys of small towns!

There is, of course, the obligatory cactus...

The town is not dying, though,.  It has not lost and may even have gained in population, Prince Harry was apparently seen in the local Italian restaurant (something to do with his military training here, don't you know), there are two huge solar facilities being constructed just outside of the town itself, still very much alive.

We failed to rustle up any of Hank's old friends (one of whom  was the mayor, but apparntly city hall is closed on Saturday), but did have lunch in the "Space Age Diner"  (no joke!).

And then there are the prarie skies!  The sunset wasn't spectacular, but I will try again tomorrow!  Hank very much enjoyed sharing this with me, and I loved getting to know his past, although I have to say, how he got from  there to here is still somewhat of a mystery, although it probably just boils down to "how are you going to keep them  down on the farm (or in this case, the ranch) once they have seen Paree (or, in this case, San Francisco).

Up tomorrow is, of course, the family wedding which was the pretext for this whole trip.  News at 11!

On the road again

Is there anyone out there?

I know, I know, I haven't been here myself for a few weeks.  But shes back! 

Vancouver was actually wonderful.  I have been in a great head space, I enjoyed working for a while (all the time making lists in my head of the expensive bucket list items I might be able to afford), and certainly enjoyed having lunches and dinners with many of my friends. 

But I'm off again.  Hank's family tree is rather gnarled, so I won't even begin to try to explain the relationships; suffice it to say that there's a wedding in Phoenix, Hank asked me to join him, so here I am.  God bless Allegiant Air from Bellingham for its cheap fares , and good friend Lesley who was able to drive me there.  The flight was as it should be, uneventful,  and I even beat Hank to the hotel (he was driving up from San Francisco).  The sunset, which arrived while I was in the cab, was spectacular, in the way that it can only be in the desert - would that I had my camera out.  Perhaps tomorrow.....

Tomorrow, as I understand it, we are going to Gila Bend, Arizona, to see Hank's old homestead.  A ranch, no less.  How that sophisticated, urban man escaped from the ranch, a story which I have never heard, will probably be revealed in the fullness of time - hopefully tomorrow!

Stay tuned!