tongue and groove

Our Lady of Monetization

Jesus would have killed on social media. he would have had more Twitter followers than Ashton Kutcher and Justin Bieber combined. think how many hits his YouTube videos would have gotten. he'd have broken viewing records if he'd streamed his sermons at UStream. everyone and their uncle would have been clamoring to be his apostle. he could have been keynote speaker at every conference. his product line could have grown increasingly expensive and his retreats even more exclusive.  his blog could have been such an effective marketing platform. the gospels could have been sold as downloadable e-books, earning important revenue streams for his affiliates.

what a shame he was born way too early.

Mill Valley

(snapped a few years ago one evening when J was playing at Sweetwater with Joe Louis Walker)

seeing Linda's post about Joe's Taco Lounge in Mill Valley instantly made me want to spend a day there. in Mill Valley, i mean, not the taco lounge...though given how much i love tacos, that wouldn't be outside the realm of possibility.

Mill Valley and i go way back. somewhere around 1980-81, i lived there briefly, in a house on the east side of town with two roommates. one was an old friend, a dancer and choreographer; the other was someone i didn't know, a Scientologist who worked at Heath Ceramics in Sausalito.

i was working at an upscale men's and women's boutique in the heart of downtown Mill Valley, on the corner of Miller and Throckmorton. (the last time i was there, a coffee place was in that space.) it was a store geared to the affluent Mill Valley crowd...$400 linen shirts for women, Italian gabardine slacks for men, Lucchese boots. i was paid the whopping sum of $5/hour and was basically in charge since the owner and her partner mostly hung out in the office in the back.

one day a quiet, middle-aged man came in and purchased some slacks. i recognized the name on his credit card. he changed into his new slacks and as i kneeled on the hardwood floor to pin the hems (did i mention that my $5/hour, no commission pay included having to hem every pair of slacks i sold?), i thought how odd it was to have come of age during the Watergate era and now find myself hemming the pants of Daniel Ellsberg. Jim Lange shopped there. i once waited on a barefoot, coked-out woman in ratty jeans who paid for her purchases with a huge wad of hundred dollar bills she had stashed in her pocket.

the first time i ever saw a car phone (back when cell phones were car phones) was while working at that job. i was standing at the counter when i saw a guy in a gold Mercedes convertible (of course) turn left onto Throckmorton. i thought, "was that...? was he holding a phone?!" it looked like something out of Get Smart.  :)

after work, i'd walk around the corner to Sweetwater, sit at the bar and have a glass (or two or three) of white wine. i've spent many a night in Sweetwater--seen lots of live music there. it was  probably my all-time favorite music venue and i was heartbroken when it closed. a friend of mine in Marin actually looked at buying it at one point in the late 90's. i was also sad when Village Music closed since it was one of the most amazing record stores in the country. maybe i sound like an aging baby boomer whining over the old days, but these were cultural institutions. (if you don't believe me, start Googling.) and to replaced by what? another cupcake store?

in the evenings i'd sometimes go to an aerobics class in a studio above a bookstore not far from my house. a bookstore where Van Morrison could sometimes be spotted reading at a table in the cafe. i'd see Carlos Santana having lunch at my favorite sandwich spot. when you live in Marin County (which i did for a total of about 8 years in 5 different towns), you're used to seeing celebrities--it's no big deal.

i love Mill Valley. i've never known why it tugs at me so hard. maybe it's the physical environment. there are redwoods there and since i'm from redwood country, redwood groves instantly make me feel at home. when i read Linda's post, i suddenly realized i didn't know anything about Mill Valley's history. my genealogy research has given me a new fascination for history. so i looked it up at Wikipedia. well, looky there...in the mid-1800's: "Some of the rest of his land was leased out for dairy farming to Portuguese settlers.^[13] A majority of the immigrants came from the Azores Islands." i haven't yet figured out how my paternal great-grandparents made their way from the Azores to Del Norte County. wouldn't that be something to learn that as part of their journey, they went through Mill Valley. and this: "...Ranch 'B' is one of the few remaining dairy farm buildings and located near the parking lot at the Tennessee Valley trailhead." i haven't been to Tennessee Valley in ages, but i've hiked to the beach there dozens of times in the past and probably looked at and walked right by that building.

the more i study my family's genealogy (on all sides), the more i realize just how small this world really is...and just how much wonder is waiting to be discovered.

everyone has a story.

last night i watched episode 2 of season 2 of NBC's Who Do You Think You Are? last night's episode traced the ancestry of country singer Tim McGraw's fraternal lineage. episode 1 last week did the same with actress/singer Vanessa Williams. both were fascinating. what i love so much about the show is not that it's about the ancestry of celebrities--the series uses celebrities to hook our interest, since we might not tune in if the promo said we'd be viewing ancestral research for Bob down the street (Americans are nothing if not shallow)-- it's what i learn about our history that compels me to watch it. what i learn about our nation's history and the people who comprise the fabric of its very existence.

and just like last Friday night, as soon as the show was over, i made coffee (J was at a gig) and logged onto Ancestry to dig further into my own family's history. i did extensive research on my family tree last year at Ancestry, mostly on my mother's side. what's ironic is that prior to that, i knew much less about my maternal lineage than i did about my father's side of the family, yet i've been able to learn tons more about mom's side than dad's at the site. (but not to worry re my dad's lineage, a distant cousin's husband traced my Italian roots back to the 1700's about a decade ago. still working on finding our Azores Islands roots on the Portuguese side.) next thing i knew, 3-1/2 hours had gone by.

i can easily lose hours rooting around in my genealogical roots because each new piece of information leads to more questions. it's like putting together a giant puzzle that has tiny pieces. it really does make one wonder (at least it does me) about the power of DNA when you begin to see certain trends--certain patterns appearing in lives that are separated by generations.

last night i didn't feel like adding to my tree--seeing how far out i could stretch a particular branch. instead i decided to dig a little deeper on just one branch. i began to look for additional information on my nearest great-grandfathers on my maternal grandfather's side. in doing so, i came across a city directory from Omaha, Nebraska that listed three generations of great-grandfathers. i believe this one was dated 1889:

Milo S. Barnum was my great-great-great grandfather, Milo Seeley Barnum. (what a great name!) his son, my great-great-grandfather, was Jehiel R(ichards) Barnum and his son was my great-grandfather, Louis (it's misspelled in the directory) Octave Barnum. their ages would have been about 82, 50 and 20 when this directory was printed. Milo lived to be 88. he died in Omaha in 1895 and last night i found his burial plot information. Jehiel died young--he was only 52. he died before his father, in 1891. both he and his wife Marie-Adelaide (she was French-Canadian) are, i believe, buried in Omaha. my great-grandfather, Louis Octave, died in Port Hueneme, California (Ventura County) at age 75. his wife, my great-grandmother May Emmaline Ludlow (who i vaguely remember visiting when i was about seven) is buried in Weed, California, about three hours north of here. that's where my younger brother and i visited her when she lived in a trailer park next to my maternal grandparents.

my great-great-great grandfather, Milo, was born in Enosburg, Vermont in 1806. Enosburg is in northern Vermont, near Quebec. in 1834, he married Abigail Flint in Shipton, Quebec. in their later years, they ended up in Iowa and last night i learned that Abigail is buried in Dunlap, Iowa. Milo is listed as a farmer in that Omaha directory. it makes me wonder what sorts of crops he grew and what compelled him to relocate to Iowa from Quebec. it's not like his wife Abigail was from there--she was born in Danville, Quebec. did they know people in Iowa? had they heard stories about it being good farming land? Dunlap is near Omaha, even though it's in the next state, so Milo's relocation to Omaha isn't surprising.

Milo and Abigail gave birth to my great-great-grandfather Jehiel in Danville, Quebec in 1839. he married Marie-Adelaide Morin in Quebec at age 26. by the time he was 41 in 1880, they were living in Omaha. the Barnum men lived to ripe old ages (my grandfather lived to be 85)--what was the cause of Jehiel's death at age 52?

Jehiel's son, Louis Octave, my great-grandfather, was born in Quebec in 1868. some documents say he was born in Danville, but the U.S. Naturalization form he completed in 1924 lists his birthplace as St. Johnsburg, Quebec. he married May in 1892 and they were in Omaha in 1900. but they left Omaha and moved to Calgary, Alberta for a time. i just learned this last night when i found them listed on a 1916 Canadian census form. they later moved to Tacoma, Washington and ended up migrating southward. 

i'm sure you see how you could lose hours and hours rooting around digging to find information on just a handful of people, and by now i have hundreds in my family tree at Ancestry!  i could literally spend the rest of my life on this 'work' and if i did, i suspect i'd never find it anything less than fascinating. i realize that reading this may not be interesting to anyone else. but i truly do love hearing about everyone's ancestry, because it's each of our individual stories that has created our grand national story.

as synchronicity would have it, this morning's Daily Om email was titled, "Everyone Has a Story":

It's easy to forget sometimes that everyone has a story to tell if we take the time to listen. We are so accustomed to hearing the stories of people in the news that we sometimes lose track of the fact that the random stranger on the bus also has a fascinating story about where they came from and how they got to be where they are. The sheer variety of paths taken in this world, from farmers to CEOs to homeless people to world travelers, is indicative of how much we can learn from each individual.

that's just my way of saying that if you'd like to share any of your family's story in the comments, please feel free to do so. as Frasier Crane used to say, "i'm listening..."

The Cowgirl Way

in Gary Shteyngart's brilliant satirical novel, Super Sad True Love Story, women in his future America wear transparent onionskin jeans that expose their genitals and porn is part of mainstream media. it seems a bit shocking at first, until you realize...wait a minute, didn't MTV just premiere a teen 'drama' called Skins that's now being called out for child pornography? when we live in a culture where Snooki can have a NY Times bestseller (and i know nothing about Jersey Shore or her book) and the Kardashian sisters are famous for, well, being famous, it's suddenly not such a big stretch of the imagination.

i love to scour the new releases section of our library to discover wonderful books i might otherwise not think to look for. last night i read a wonderful YA book by Holly George-Warren, The Cowgirl Way. who doesn't love cowgirls?! the opening line in the introduction:

"Always saddle your own horse!" That was the motto of Connie Douglas Reeves, a Texan who stayed in the saddle until her death at age 101 in 2003.

it's a wonderful book and i learned about an important slice of American history. while women back East were leading traditional, buttoned-up lives, women who came West in the 19th century were blazing trails:

...for most of the nineteenth century, no woman in America could vote, run for public office, or own property. This began to change in the West, however, before anywhere else in the country. In 1869, Wyoming passed legislation that gave women the right to vote and hold civic office...The leader in the fight for women's rights in Wyoming was Esther Hobart Morris. Esther helped draft the women's suffrage bill there with William Bright. When the legislation was signed into law on December 10, 1869, newspaper headlines declared, FIRST WOMEN IN THE WORLD TO WIN EQUAL SUFFRAGE! The women of Great Britain sent a congratulatory telegram: "To the women of Wyoming on the triumph you have won for all women by the emancipation of the women of your state from political serfdom."

Women were buying ranches and doing their own cattle drives. We've all heard of Annie Oakley, but there were so many other women who performed amazing stunts in Wild West shows. They had to fight to be included in rodeos, especially when they could beat the men at their own competitions. These were amazing women who could ride bucking broncos and rope steers. There are still cowgirls trying to make it on the rodeo circuit today, but given the decline in the ranching life, many have to leave their ranches to seek employment in more urban areas.

how did we get here? how did we find ourselves in a place where our cultural images of women are often ones that objectify rather than revere them? i see it all the time on Facebook, where girls and young women post self-objectification photos of themselves and it makes me so sad. this isn't about Puritanical values or about being a prude--it's about wanting to have female role models that inspire us through courageous actions rather than the size of their silicone breasts.

call me old-fashioned if you like, but i know one thing: the Women's Professional Rodeo Association has just gained a new fan. given a choice, i'll take The Cowgirl Way any day.

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UPDATE:  this NYTimes story was apparently published the day i posted this, but i'm just seeing it two days later via a journalist's tweeting of it. the title of the story? Only Cowgirls Run for Office

reverb 10 - moment

Ali Edwards provides the day 3 prompt for Reverb 10:  "Moment. Pick one moment when you felt most alive this year. Describe it in vivid detail (texture, smells, voices, noises, colors)."

this was taken on July 4th inside the stadium in Watertown, South Dakota. that's my youngest niece, Ciara, taking in the fireworks. (you can just see her outline.) she was a wearing a cute black-and-white sundress my mother had sent her. my brother (her dad) was sitting to our right. it was a very warm evening and there were a lot of people inside the stadium, both in the stands and spread out picnic-style on the grass. they had food and drink booths set up inside the stadium. we each had a sweaty bottle of cold water and Ciara had a box of candy. it was a great fireworks show with lots of color. there was a rock soundtrack being played over the P.A. system and it was accompanied by a lot of delighted oooh's and aaaah's from the crowd.

it was my first day in South Dakota that trip, having just completed a three-day road trip with my parents and Ciara. i remember this moment vividly because it had been such a classically All-American day. we'd left Gillette, Wyoming that morning...run through a rainstorm in Rapid City to get drinks at a Starbucks...had lunch at a diner filled with vintage car memorabilia in Murdo...stopped at a large rest stop visitor center at the Missouri River to take in some history...and driven through the flat farmlands of eastern South Dakota to reach my brother's house in Henry. my brother and sister-in-law had prepared a classic picnic-style dinner of barbecued ribs, corn on the cob, salad and watermelon. then the three of us jumped into my brother's pickup for the 15-minute drive to Watertown to take in the fireworks show. 

i was tired. we'd been on the road for days and it had already been a very full day, but i was so glad i'd gone with them. they'd moved to South Dakota nine months earlier. Ciara and i had always been close and i was thrilled that i was getting to spend some time with her over the summer. she didn't know that i took this picture. i leaned back on the bleacher seat, snapped and was delighted that i had somehow captured both a splash of fireworks and the faint outline of her with my little point-and-shoot. i remember thinking that i would want to remember this...to remind myself that beautiful memories await us...but it's up to us to go out and capture them.

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for Jen's A Month of Music, here are the Mamas and Papas with "California Dreamin'"...

 

 

a remembrance

i imagine most Americans vividly recall the morning of September 11, 2001. but unlike most, i didn't live in the U.S. at the time. Jeffrey and i had been living on St. Thomas in the U.S. Virgin Islands for a year-and-a-half at that point. and as surreal as it was to watch the events unfold from afar, it became even more surreal in the ensuing months watching the Bush administration use fear to begin taking away our rights and liberties. (how ironic that the far right always makes it out to be the Democrats who've done that.) it made me seriously question whether or not i ever wanted to return to my country.

but back to that morning. you might think living on a little rock in the Caribbean would make one feel very far removed from the events of 9/11. after all, we lived in 'paraidise,' right?  au contraire, my friends.  let me set the scene. i worked in a law office (which wasn't your typical law office, mostly real estate) on Government Hill. we weren't connected to the government; the office was the childhood home of my employer. it's a classic Danish-style home built in the 1800's with only shutters on the port-facing windows. it was an open-air office, with the doors and shutters thrown open to look out on the St. Thomas harbor, the busiest cruise ship port in the Caribbean. i had a small Radio Shack transistor on a shelf in my office where i'd quietly listen to the not-so-quiet (but highly entertaining) local call-in talk shows. it was on that little transistor that my coworkers and i heard the events of 9/11 as they happened.

my employer had gone to a tire store to get some new tires. the AM station i was listening to often carried CNN reports, so it was probably CNN i first heard report that a plane had hit the first tower. i walked into the next office to tell the other attorney about it, since it seemed like pretty big news. she seemed surprised by the news, of course, but then i walked back to my office. and then it seemed like very quickly all hell broke loose on all fronts.  if anyone thinks radio is not a powerful medium, i can tell you that although i didn't see the CNN images until a couple of hours later, the reporters i heard on the radio painted very vivid images. the local station was rapidly cutting back and forth between reports from CNN and ABC, and it was Peter Jennings  and ABC reporter (at the time) Don Dahler who described the fall of the first tower that i will never forget. i grabbed the transistor and ran into the next office where i told my friend/coworker what i'd just heard and we looked at each other (as i'm sure all of you did) with utter confusion and shock. there were two other employees in the office and we quickly filled them in on what was happening.

our employer had been sitting in the tire store waiting room and had watched it unfold on TV. he called to say that it was very bad and that we should begin closing up for the day. the USVI stays on Atlantic Standard Time year-round, so we were an hour ahead of New York. we were all relieved to go home, since no one felt like working. but within minutes it became clear that we couldn't have stayed to work if we'd wanted to. the USVI is a U.S. territory and all state capitols were being secured. the Governor's office on St. Thomas was half a block up the hill, across the street; we were directly across the (narrow) street from the Lt. Governor's office. all of Government Hill was being secured.

Jeffrey worked at the golf course during the day and we lived in a rented condo there overlooking one of the most scenic holes. he came home for lunch every day. he, too, had a transistor at work. it sat on his golf cart as he tooled around doing groundskeeping, so he'd heard the same radio reports i had. by the time he came home for lunch, i was home and we sat there eating in shock, watching CNN. (we didn't get MSNBC in the islands.)

it seemed like we watched a lot of CNN in the following weeks and months. but the strangest moment came one afternoon when i was sitting there watching and suddenly saw something about St. Thomas go by on the crawl. Cindy Adams, a gossip columnist for the NY Post, had run an item about Mohammed Atta, the lead hijacker, having hidden weapons in a home on our island. the home referred to was already the subject of a lot of gossip and speculation. it was situated atop one  of the highest peaks on the island. it was a huge place, with an enormous fence around it. the man building it owned a couple of supermarkets in the islands. the fence alone must have cost a million bucks. as soon as that story broke on CNN, rumors ran wild that there were tunnels beneath the home, that Atta had been there, that the hijackers had stored weapons and cash there. you might think this sounds as ludicrous as many of the other rumors that ran rampant in the post-9/11 atmosphere. but when you live there, you begin to understand what a lawless and corrupt place it can be. it looks like paradise on the surface (for the tourists), but it's not for no reason that the ATF is kept busy down there.

in the post-9/11 panic, suddenly ports seemed very insecure. i can't begin to describe what little comfort i felt as i drove to work over a very steep hill looking down on the harbor as cruise ships pulled into port and seeing one tiny Coast Guard boat (dwarfed by the ships) patrolling the harbor. it didn't exactly seem like they had the island secured.  ;) 

we didn't own a computer in those days (which seems so archaic now) and i had to share a computer with my employer, so i was unable to surf around to get news at work. i had to wait until we were at our friend's cafe/bar/cybercafe. so most of our 9/11 information came from CNN, wire service reports in the local paper and national news on the radio.

the Cindy Adams/Atta rumor ran on the CNN crawl for a few days and then suddenly there was nothing about it. i tried to learn more, but it was as if it had never even been reported. later that supermarket magnate with the huge hilltop mansion was arrested in an ATF sting for having illegal immigrants employed and housed in his stores.

in the spring of 2005, we decided to return to the States. i'm glad now that we came back, but it makes me very sad to see what's happened to our country in the ensuing years. i find it hard to understand why there's so much hatred and intolerance...why we're regressing as a society. that said, after watching in horror from afar as our Supreme Court awarded the Presidency to Bush in 2000, i could never have dreamed in the immediate aftermath of 9/11 that eight years later, a mixed-race man would be elected President. i believe there is still hope, even though it seems and feels so much fainter than it did two years ago. i hope that today of all days we can remember as the President said yesterday that "there is no us and them...there's only us." i hope that we can remember that we are the united states.